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Episode 530: Finding that ‘Sinewy Strength’ in the Prose with Maccabee Montandon
446 Plays10 days ago
"Maybe your first images are some bulked up organism, or whatever. Then there's that kind of like sinewy strength that you see in like middleweight fighters. Roberto Duran comes to mind as the epiphany, like a super powerful, sinewy guy, right? And so I think that's what we're talking about too, is just those different forms of power, economy is really seductive to me now," says Maccabee Montandon, whose piece on his brother Asher is featured as a "revived" Atavist story.
The factory is running behind here at CNF Pod HQ, but we’ve got the first of two Atavist pods coming this month. It’s Maccabee Montandon being featured for The Atavist’s “revived” series. This story, originally published by Gawker in 2013, details the story of Mac’s brother Asher, who was murdered in Los Angeles in the 1990s.
Mac is a journalist, writer, filmmaker, all around creative person and in this episode we talk about:
- Obsessions and the best forms to tell stories
- Being creatively impulsive
- Word economy and sinewy strength
- How the proximity to tragedy often activates people
- Writing through grief
- And his strength as a writer (he’s fast)
Visit magazine.atavist.com to read "A Hollywood Ending."
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Anniversary Highlights
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, hey, CNFers, I know I ask a lot of you. I ask for your time, and then I have the gall to ask for reviews. I mean, what an asshole. I also ask that you check out Pitch Club at welcomethepitchclub.substack.com. Pitches ranging from agent queries, feature stories, and off-the-cuff unhinged essay pitches and more. And to celebrate one year of Pitch Club and one year of The Front Runner, I dropped my book proposal overview in there and audio annotated it, did the thing, and hope you check it out.
00:00:33
Speaker
And I'm raffling off signed copies of The Front Runner for people who subscribe and follow the all the rules. Go check it out. Forever free, man. You read a little, you listen a little. You're going learn a lot. Welcome to Pitch Club.
00:00:45
Speaker
The Substack.com. It's easier to ride the light thing when you have a smaller drum kit.
00:00:59
Speaker
Oh, hey, CNFers.
Creative Nonfiction Podcast and Atavist Stories
00:01:00
Speaker
It's the Creative Nox Fiction Podcast, the show where I talk to tellers for two tales about the true tales they tell. I'm your host for more than 13 years, Brendan O'Meara. Welcome to it. It's that Atavistian time of the month.
00:01:13
Speaker
It's a little late. I mean, the factory's running behind here at CNF Pod HQ, but we've got the first of two Atavist pods coming this month. It's Maccabee Montandon being featured for the Atavis Revived series. It's the second revived story. And this story was originally published by Gawker in 2013.
00:01:34
Speaker
And details it details the story of Mac's brother Asher, who was murdered in Los Angeles in the nineteen ninety s And when I was booking Mac for the show, he had selected a date, you know kind of way at the end of of May, May 24th, to be exact. And I was like, oh, that's a choice. It was about two weeks after the piece ran. And I was like, oh, I kind of want to get this thing going so I can publish this thing close to your publish. Whatever. whatever That's the date you're free.
00:02:01
Speaker
That's the date we'll do it. But it turns out May 24th is Mac's brother's birthday, so it was perfect, really.
Reviving Stories: Criteria and Process
00:02:07
Speaker
Show notes of this episode more at brendanomero.com. There you can read hot blogs, find out what episodes from the backlog you didn't know you were missing, and to sign up for my two very important newsletters, Pitch Club and Rage Against the Algorithm. And there's also patreon.com slash cnfpod in case you want to chip in and get access to the Flash 52 sessions and one-on-one calls with me.
00:02:29
Speaker
I'll even turn my camera off if you don't want to see my ugly, ugly mug. And you can also leave reviews on Apple Podcasts or ratings on Spotify like this review on Apple Podcasts.
00:02:42
Speaker
It's free. just takes you a couple moments. Jay from Knoxville wrote, could it be better? No. I'm so angry. I only discovered this wonderful podcast last month.
00:02:53
Speaker
I'm a part-time author with dreams of making every sentence a joy. And what I find here is everything I want. Great advice, wisdom, and talented authors, all shepherded by O'Mara's wit and skill. You will love this podcast. And with hundreds of episodes in the can,
00:03:08
Speaker
You will find what you need. Awesome. Thank you, Jay from Knoxville. It's amazing. can always use more of these. They help validate the enterprise for the wayward CNF-er.
00:03:20
Speaker
So this episode with Mac will pair well with Alexandra Marvar's revived piece from earlier this year, among other Atavist stories and Atavist podcasts as well. But first, we're going to hear from Sayward Darby, the lead editor of this revived piece. As always, visit magazine.atavist.com to read this story and consider adding it to your list of subscriptions.
00:03:41
Speaker
For $25 a year, it's the best deal in magazines. And no, I don't get commissions or kickbacks, so you know my recommendation comes from the heart. Riff.
00:03:57
Speaker
I don't even know what's in my tool belt, let alone how to use it. Yeah, I mean, what is this genre if not hybridity? I respect that sentence. Is that an option? Because I choose that option. This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:04:22
Speaker
how this this came to pass, how how this became the second one you wanted to remaster. Yeah, well, you know, I think we're still deciding, right? Like what exactly is a revived piece? Obviously there are a million pieces out there that have been lost to internet decay and collapsing media, and we can't republish all of them. And so, you know, what really makes sense for us? And I think there's probably I think I've said this before, you know it needs to be narrative, it needs to feel writerly, it needs to feel like an activist story. But I also think like things fall into kind of two categories of something reported and something more personal. And the first one that we did was reported.
00:05:03
Speaker
And I really liked the idea of finding something that was more personal that sort of fit the bill. And this was such a good example. i mean First of all, R.I.P. Gawker. OG Gawker um and love to be able to bring something from OG Gawker back to life.
00:05:19
Speaker
And then also just what a deeply personal story that you know someone decides to tell. And that's kind of their telling, right? like I mean, he can tell the story as many times as he wants, but like this is this is what he poured his heart and soul into to tell the story of of his brother's murder. And the fact that it was no longer available was just so crappy, quite frankly. um And it was a really cool piece. And he has such an interesting voice. And so I think it just made sense. um And we published it. We didn't like flag this, but we published it right before what would have been Asher's birthday. And we did it as like a little mid-month bonus just because we wanted to kind of hit that mark. And we're also kind of playing around with when do we do revived stories? like When do we feel like one
00:06:04
Speaker
is our big monthly issue when is it something that's a little more bonusy? Just making up words over here. But um but no, i was i was really glad when he reached out about it because it feels like exactly the kind of thing that's like, this is a story that deserves to to live.
Preserving Digital Work
00:06:21
Speaker
And not only because it's a good story, but because it was such a passion project for this person. Yeah, I think when I spoke with Mac, one of the things someone at the time told him, oh, just make sure you save this as a PDF you know just so you have it. and the ah
00:06:34
Speaker
Pretty much in the event that Link Rot would decay this thing into non-existence. and it's like It's such a good exercise now for all of us to be like, if were we have a story we're especially proud of, to to back it up in it in a PDF form in the event that it's no longer available online because... We take it for granted that these things are permanent, but they are very not permanent. And with the flick of a switch, anyone can just kind make it all go away.
00:07:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I think that's right. he shared the PDF with me, right? Like when when he pitched me, he was like, here's here's what I have. You know, I have this PDF. And I think that's absolutely right. And, you know, I obviously hope that work finds...
00:07:15
Speaker
the tech gods of the world find ways to better protect work, but, um, you know, because they probably won't, um, yes, absolutely. PDF everything. Um, you know, if keep, keep a hard copy, like, yeah um, because you just never, never know. And this is such a good example of a story that again, it's not just, oh, something I reported that I was proud of. It's like the articulation of this traumatic event in my life and like what it meant for me and my family. and Like there's something magical about that and wanting, you know, making sure that it, and I will also say like this piece, we very much kept it intact. Like, you know, we had updated Alex's story a little bit more back in December because it had some newsy elements to it, right? Where it was like, oh, we kind of need to acknowledge like this has changed or, you know, politically this has shifted. And so we use like side notes to do that. And in Mac's piece, we didn't,
00:08:07
Speaker
It very much just kind of stood on its own in time. um of You know, a capsule from this moment. Please, God, PDF everything. And you brought up a moment ago, o g Gawker.
Legacy and Challenges of Gawker
00:08:19
Speaker
you know, for those who might not be familiar with what Gawker was in its heyday, how would you describe it?
00:08:24
Speaker
Mm, Gawker was a blog. And Gawker was a no sacred cows kind of place, right? Like they would go after, they would tell stories about anyone, everyone. um They were into muckraking. They were into, you know, exposing elites. They could push the envelope a little too much and probably cross some lines. But there was something like,
00:08:53
Speaker
scrappy and irreverent and just cool, quite frankly, about Gawker. um And they also tried different stuff. you know Like Mac's piece, this beautiful essay about his brother's murder, is not a mean, muckraking story, right? But they were they they were sort of creating space for new voices, different voices, different ways of telling stories. And then man,
00:09:20
Speaker
peter thiel man the the villain of our times. That's not true. There are so many villains of our times. But you know he's up there on the list, um you know funded the lawsuit that that killed him. So there's actually a good piece, I want to say, in The Hollywood Reporter from, because this marks 10 years this summer that OG Gawker shut down. I wanna say that they quit publishing in like August of 2016 or something. There was a piece pegged to that in the Hollywood Reporter that's about ah the the rise and fall of OG Gawker.
00:09:55
Speaker
So when you are taking on this piece, yeah how are you looking to maintain its core ethos, but give it that that re-shining, there the the re-waxing, if like waxing the car?
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah, totally. You know, um it really largely is like I said, you know a capsule story. There were a couple of originally it had some section heads that I just didn't think quite worked. um And if I recall, he had pieces of there were like two chunks that were separated that we pulled together. And it just had to do with like you know, 13 years later, it published 13 years ago, like, oh, everything can be shined. um And it was just like some little structural tweaks that I think gave it a slightly better flow. And, you know, we also have the luxury of kind of doing that stuff. And again, OG Gawker, it was a blog, like they were churning out so much stuff that, we got to kind of sit with it and think about what little polishes and tweaks would would really make it into the best version of itself. But yeah, I mean, ah we didn't have to sort of do any additional conversation reporting. Some of the people in the story are are no longer are with us. And so That wasn't really possible anyway, but we did run it through fact checking um and which was great. One of my favorite like little fact checking things of all time happened, which was that Emily, the the fact checker, there was this lovely line where Max said something like the air smelled of
00:11:31
Speaker
burning charcoal and birds of paradise. And Emily, sweet fact checkers. I just, I love them so much flagged that birds of paradise don't have a smell. oh my god And which is like, but it's one of those things that if you're not putting something through,
00:11:48
Speaker
crazy fact checking, yep, there are birds of paradise in Los Angeles. They are very cool. You would assume they have a smell and they don't. So anyway, we changed it to Jasmine, which you know does have a smell. But but like little things like that where it's just like if you're able to kind of go back to something and spend a little more time with it, put it through, you know or go through it with a fine tooth comb, like you're going find little things that just zhuzh it up, make it all the better. um And that was like, I just love when fact checkers find stuff like that. Um, and, uh, I told her, I like in the Google doc, i was like, yes, yes, this is exactly the kind of thing I love when fact checkers find.
00:12:25
Speaker
What is the, the challenge verse, uh, in, in sort of judging up the, uh, the reissue, ah versus one that you're really kind of crafting with the writer that is like a new story. Like what is the editorial challenges for you?
00:12:40
Speaker
you know, one versus the other.
Editing Revived Stories
00:12:43
Speaker
I am not very good at sitting on my hands as an editor. i'm sure every writer I've ever worked with is like nodding vigorously. i am a pretty heavy editor, and intense, I think, um line by line. And i actually really enjoy the revived process because kind of sitting on your hands is part of the project, right? Like we are not trying to, hey, we can make this story so much better than it used to be. That's not the point. The point is there are so many great stories out there that great writers and editors have worked on. And we just, again, it's it's it's like finding a beautiful piece of jewelry that just needs to be polished and maybe you know ah reset in some way or you know a clasp is broken and we're just going to fix it. like
00:13:32
Speaker
it's it it's kind of putting it into its best form possible. um But I mean, I will say working on both Alex's piece and Mac's piece, at no point was I like, oh gosh, I would have done this so differently. yeah you know like that was That was never the feeling. It was always, this is really good and we're just gonna, and again, I should also say like the writers wanna do this, right? Because i don't know, we we publish things, but are they ever really done, Brendan? Probably not. um you know You can, you You can work on things forever. And this is kind of a chance, right? To go back and say, i did this, I was proud of it, but it can always be a little better, you know? Or here's this one thing I you know forgot to say. Or um in Alex's case, it was like, oh, I had this corrupted audio file that I finally got to work and we could include you know a voice that I couldn't at the time. It's very different than putting together something from the ground up with a writer where you know they come to you and we're just working on this from scratch. um I think it's a really good exercise for for me and for the writers, I hope. but ah But yeah, there's definitely a like sitting on the hands and and realizing that it's actually really nice to sit on your hands sometimes. yeah um
Creative Motivation and Loss
00:14:41
Speaker
And yeah, and like revived is just a moment for if writers want to say, you know, oh man, I really wish I'd rephrase that or whatever, like, sure, go for it. You know, as long as it's not changing the shape or, or you know, integrity of the story. Yeah. Why not? You know?
00:15:08
Speaker
Well, well, well. That's nice. It's always nice getting Sayward's take on things. So, Mac. is a journalist, writer, filmmaker, all-around creative person.
00:15:19
Speaker
In this episode, we talk about obsessions and the best forms to tell stories, being creatively impulsive, patience, word economy, and sinewy strength, how the proximity to tragedy is what often activates people, writing through grief, and his strength as a writer.
00:15:40
Speaker
Hint, he's a fast writer. A little parting shot on my desire for a reading retreat, not a writing retreat, a reading retreat. Uh-huh. So for now, why, why, why, why? Why why why why why waste time? It's like Porky the Pig. Why waste time when we can just get right to it with the Mac attack?
00:16:02
Speaker
How often did he hear that growing up? Jesus Christ, Brendan. It's Maccabee Montandon. Huh.
00:16:37
Speaker
my God, if you don't have some sort of artifact of it, it's like, did it ever exist? I know, completely. And I guess I should shout out my friend Matt Haber in San Francisco, Oakland area, because I think maybe like five, six years ago. The piece was still, you could like still get to it online, but he's the one who like told me to make a PDF of it, like a thing like that.
00:17:02
Speaker
I'm like a terrible Googler before I meet people. I'm like a terrible, terrible, like, you know, I should make a PDF of things. Yeah.
00:17:12
Speaker
Thank goodness for Matt Haber. I caught while reading this piece that ah you I think your dad is from southeastern Massachusetts or lived there for a time. That's where I grew up was southeastern Mass. so whereabouts in the Bay State? Oh,
Personal Anecdotes and Inspiration
00:17:24
Speaker
yeah. So you like I tell people the name of the town and not a lot of it was Swansea, Massachusetts. Okay. um is that I feel like it's somewhat central, right? Like he, yeah, he wasn't born there, but his his parents moved there when he was pretty young. And when I was a kid, we would drive up from Baltimore at the time and like,
00:17:44
Speaker
the perfect kind of like squid and whale Volvo, which might be some reason, one reason, like when I see an old Volvo now, I still get very excited. Yeah. We would drive up and go see, I think his dad was still alive when we started doing that. But in my memory, it was mostly to see his mom who we called little Graham, because I think she was old enough that like she had started to shrink and she didn't mind that we called her little Graham.
00:18:10
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. Swansea had Swansea at all. Yeah, pretty much. i think it might have been about a half hour drive from where I grew up in Lakeville. and ah But Swansea had a pretty killer mall.
00:18:20
Speaker
So that was, a but it was different than our Silver City Galleria in Taunton. And it was, ah yeah, it was ah a bit more glitzy. So that was always a pretty special trip to go there.
00:18:32
Speaker
That's so funny you bring that up because, like, I don't. There's a few vivid memories, but one, but maybe the most vivid is there's this kid roughly my age, I think, who lived next door to my grandmother named Corinne.
00:18:46
Speaker
And she, yeah, she like... told me there was a a wicked cool mall and it was like the first time I'd heard that construction wicked cool and just like with her accent it just was like so charming and and fantastic but yeah she like loved that mall also yeah like so when you're when you're writing or know uh you know the the breadth of your writing and creativity is is is pretty vast and a lot of different disciplines which is like really really cool ah you know How do you stay you know motivated creatively you know if you're in that kind of funk and you've got to somehow push through and you don't feel like doing anything at all?
00:19:22
Speaker
So I think when you emailed about about us talking, you mentioned having a sort of like creative tip or something in there. I don't want to like leap ahead to that, but I do think it's sort of related to what you're asking, what I was going to talk about. But you know we can get more into it then.
00:19:40
Speaker
But you're right, like i have never really had like a beat at all. like even expect Like most of my sort of writing life, I started out as a journalist. My first real like paid writing job was what covering high school sports for a neighborhood newspaper and in um Berkeley, California.
00:20:00
Speaker
You know, i've yeah, so I've written and then I've just sort of had this weird sort of eclectic career, if you can call it that. in writing and and journalism and now like trying to do more kind of like script writing and um I think what I mean, what I've always said that there's only like the only unifying force around all these sort of disparate interests and pursuits, creative pursuits, I feel like is, yeah, um just, I get sort of obsessed about stories. And then on top of that obsessed with like figuring out
00:20:37
Speaker
kind of like the best form for it. And while it's really, really hard these days, given the state of media and journalism to sort of like do this professionally, we are at the same time lucky in that, you know, there's all this technology that makes the figuring out of the right form possible, I think. So that is to say, you know,
00:20:59
Speaker
should this be ah written piece for a website? Should this be a podcast or a short film or whatever it is? I think if you have the will and and a little bit of of guile, you can kind of like figure out how to get a thing into the world. It also obviously helps to be sort of like middle class and in New York because you know you have some means and having lived here since 2000, just met enough people that for like collaborative projects. If I think of an idea, there's usually very quickly after that, if if I haven't thought of it with someone else and quickly after that, I can also think like, oh, who would be a great collaborative partner on this?
00:21:40
Speaker
But I think going back to your question about staying motivated, honestly, it does connect also to the piece we're talking about because I was like a pretty bad student in high school and pretty unmotivated. And as I say in the piece, like pretty kind of like somewhat aimless and drifting even in in into my mid twenties, I would say. But um I do think after my brother was killed so young that, you know, not immediately because there's like the shock and grief to get through, of course, but like,
00:22:14
Speaker
Not long after that, within a few years, i would say, it really like what became this motivating force of like, holy shit, it can all just end very quickly.
00:22:27
Speaker
So if you have an idea, you better get on it because who knows what tomorrow will bring. And I do think like that has stayed with me. And you know i think like being sort of like impulsive in that way. It's, it's good in some ways. It also makes me like kind of impatient and not always, which is not always conducive to like a creative project. But I think like on the good side, I do, I am like highly motivated.
00:22:55
Speaker
If I have an idea i'm into to like figure out quickly, like how to pursue it, you know?
Balancing Creativity and Patience
00:23:02
Speaker
Yeah, the that patience is so key, but you also, yeah there's also that tension of like, well, you don't also don't have forever, even just from a actuarially kind of point of view through life insurance. But but to your to your point, like your your brother was tragically murdered in the 90s. It's like, yeah, you do have to balance. We got to do things as fast as possible, but also marry it with the patients. that This is a long game too in the creative fields. For sure, for sure. In ambituaries, I always like take note of the age and it's another sort of like reminder that like the clock's ticking for sure. But um yeah, I'm trying to like reconcile those two impulses you know to like go, go, go and also realize that.
00:23:48
Speaker
So for example, it took many years, but out of the piece about my brother, I wrote like a short novel that covers some similar ground a very, very like fictionalized account or maybe just one very, um, fictionalized account of, of some similar time in my life and, um, that essentially takes place like the year before the murder, the year of the murder and the year after. So it's, it's three successive years in three different cities.
00:24:25
Speaker
So some of the details and time is compressed and altered, of course, but, um, Yeah, so that is maybe get like the most urgent sort of like lesson in being patient and, you know, waiting for feedback and trying to get an agent with it and waiting to hear back from agents and all this stuff. And then so um I'm deep in the like negotiating of patience moment and hoping to get better at it.
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah. And so this piece originally ran in 2013 in Gawker. So when you revisited the piece, like what did that reveal about the writer you were 13 years ago versus, you know, who you've become since?
00:25:14
Speaker
Wow. That's like, I need to s think for a second. um I mean, I think, I think in some ways, truly like there may be a kind of,
00:25:26
Speaker
before and after, at least like stylistically. And I have to say like, you know, you read these stories about, you know, how like, and not that I'm comparing myself to any of these people, but like Raymond Carver's editor, you hear about just like how editors sort of, or like with James Elroy, I think like his agent and or editor, you know, really like helped shape what became, what became known as like the Elroy style. Right. and And I have to say like,
00:25:54
Speaker
With the Gawker story, the editors, I think really, but i think before that, I'd probably still do it too much. Just um ah kind of guilty of overwriting a lot.
00:26:06
Speaker
And i think they, it was mostly this guy, Tom Skoka edited the piece most closely. And I think he was like really very good for for the piece and for me, just in terms of like getting the economy in there and, um,
00:26:24
Speaker
you know cutting through a lot of my overwriting and i've tried to like keep that lesson and style in mind now and just recognize like you know in just simplistic terms kind of like brevity and shorter sentences and how sort of like more impactful they can be obviously like it's sort of the story in some ways dictates to you like how it should be written i think but before the piece came out, I yeah it was just drawn to like much more kind of like windy, opaque kind of constructions. And now I feel like I see the power of remedy and clarity.
00:27:05
Speaker
You know, I think of how, you know, sometimes early on in a career, you know you'd want more of that flourish ah and a bit overwriten overwritten. And people who've listened to the show long know that my favorite band is Metallica. and And early on, like Lars's drum kit was obnoxiously large. But then as he transitioned into the 90s and to today, you know, he went from like four mounted toms to two. And he still has a double kick, of course, but everything leaned down and it was more about that punctuation and a certain leanness. But that comes through age and realizing like, oh, I don't need to be so virtuosic. I just need to be in service of the song and the storytelling. And there's a lot of lessons right there to unpack as a writer.
00:27:49
Speaker
No, totally. I didn't know that about Lars, but I love that. And well as you were talking, my mind was making a dumb joke about how like, it's easier to ride the lightning when you have a smaller drum kit. um but But yeah, I think, you know, I think it's interesting because you when you think about like power and strength, like maybe your your first images are like, you know, some bulked up organism or whatever, but like,
00:28:20
Speaker
Then there's like that kind of like sinewy strength that you see in like middleweight fighters like Roberto Duran comes to mind as like of the epitome of like a super powerful sinewy guy, right? And so I think that's kind of what we're talking about too is just those those different forms of power, right? And and yeah, like a sinewy economy is kind of really seductive to me now. I'm really into like 90-minute movies that, you know, like, I think for a while, we were movies were getting to be like four or five hours, whatever. And yeah, so I just started to really appreciate where like every moment in beat, like really just was, and you know, made sense for the piece and that was trimmed down to its essence.
00:29:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's like if you're gonna pay $20 for a movie ticket, they're probably justifying like, but to pay 20 bucks for a 90 minute movie, even though the labor is significant to tell a very lean story, like ah I think of Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel, it's like 90 minutes, it's so it's just like a wonderful movie, lean, propulsive, but if you're gonna pay that 20 bucks, it's like, well, I guess i'd I'd rather be here for two or two and a half hours, because I feel like I'm getting more of my money's worth.
00:29:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. No, that's true, too. It is funny, like, what sort of the thing we go through in terms of, like, the value of whatever and, like, yeah, is a double album, like, worth more than, like, a single perfect album or whatever? Yeah, I don't know. But I'm definitely, like, drawn to, you know, like, 200-page novels. I mean, that also might be a function of being older and having less, like, attention span, but I...
00:30:06
Speaker
I'm sort of drawn to those just sort of leaner stories these days. Yeah. So at at the start and the kind of this author's note of your Atavis piece or the re um you know, the Gawker piece re reimagined, remastered ah for, for Atavis, you know, you, we hear about the shootings that grab headlines, but what about those that don't and in your brother's shooting was one of those
Portraying Intimate Stories
00:30:28
Speaker
that didn't. And I love that sort of central question and that you examine in the piece. So just, Take us to that moment of like, yeah, this was one of the probably thousands of shootings a year that don't make those headlines.
00:30:40
Speaker
It's hard to like, sort of like get back to the mind of of thinking about when I first started working on it. But I will say like, when I look back on it and the climate we're in now, and I think I talk about it in the author's note too, how like, you know, if anything, gun violence has only gotten worse since that piece was published. But It does hit me every time, you know, like there's a ah shooting.
00:31:09
Speaker
hesitate to use the word mass shooting because I feel like it's so, I don't know, divisive and distracting. But anytime there's a shooting that does sort of like pull the attention of the country in one direction, it's just so frustrating and infuriating that it takes that pay for like anyone to pay attention and then be how quickly that attention goes away.
00:31:37
Speaker
And I'm not blaming like the average person. It's more like the people who have actual power who could attempt some kind of change legislatively or otherwise. So yes, I think like occasionally there'll be like an incident where you know there's like someone a politician or someone in power in a position to enact change.
00:31:59
Speaker
that The phenomenon of gun violence like gets close to their life, and suddenly they're like motivated to act. So I think I was looking at sort of all those dynamics and and sort of hoping probably naively that if I could create like a very intimate portrait of a person who was killed by a gun at a way too young age, that maybe it would have that that same effect that I was just talking about, where like, you know, if someone is in proximity to a tragedy, suddenly they care much more about that tragedy.
00:32:35
Speaker
So I think like that was as sort of part of what motivated me for sure was to like, give that feeling of like, obviously, most people who read the piece, like didn't know my brother, but I wanted them to to get to know him and to sort of like understand in an intimate, deep way, just how like one one death and tragedy sort of like ripples out and affects a community.
00:33:04
Speaker
And for a lot of people who write in nonfiction and personal stories, often grief is a motivating and animating force to a text or certainly brings people to the page to maybe metabolize it in a certain way. In what way or and maybe even what counsel could you give somebody who is ah writing through a grievous event?
00:33:26
Speaker
I mean, I guess what I'd say, and again, sorry to keep going back to the author's note, but I said a similar thing there. I think that For me, it was like intensely therapeutic to do it.
00:33:36
Speaker
I guess like I for sure understand if you know it would it would appear way too painful to someone to like really sit and and sort of grapple with with the feelings and memories of the the terrible event. But I guess what I'd say is, in my case, at least, it was sort of like worth the struggle and pain because It did feel like and incredibly cathartic to like, you know, get the story out down on the page first and then like out in the world. And I think I can say pretty confidently, like the piece, that piece like got for me, like the most in terms of volume, but also like in in terms of intensity, like the most response of anything,
Writing as Therapy
00:34:25
Speaker
pretty much anything I've like worked on in my kind of professional life.
00:34:30
Speaker
And so, and I think part of that is because a lot of readers sort of like could, it came through to them, the intensity I was experiencing while working on it. So, especially to like writer writers, I would say, i feel like, you know, you you might be surprised just how grappling with it on the page, like what, what that sort of does both for you, you know, spiritually and psychologically, but also, um,
00:35:00
Speaker
just in terms of the work, because it is not just such a personal story, but such a visceral story and with so much drama, right?
00:35:11
Speaker
like And so it going into it, you have these narrative advantages of intensity and and and stakes and and drama. So I think you're like sort of set up if you can get through the hard part of it to like create something pretty, pretty special.
00:35:32
Speaker
And what was the experience of writing this piece? Sometimes these things can come out like a fever dream and other times it can be like real labor to, to forge it. So what was the experience of composing and generating this piece like for you?
00:35:46
Speaker
I think it was sort of like both of those things, um, in part because there was some difficult reporting work to be done. So, That, and this was, you know, but I guess like the internet was very helpful back then still, but it was, um, it was, yeah, some of the reporting just took a while. Um, so, so there was that aspect. And so so, at times I wouldn't like have enough information to really like do the actual writing, but in terms of the writing, don't have a lot of great qualities, but one of them is like, I'm a pretty fast writer.
00:36:23
Speaker
I remember that being true with this too. Like once I had, i tend to do, I do like all the reporting, like I really want a full sense of the story before I even like start, you know, so I don't really start writing until I have the full story in mind and and to get that with, you know, a piece like this, um, that required a bunch of reporting too.
00:36:49
Speaker
So, yeah, I think that was, that was what took Most of the time was just doing the recording. And then once I had all of the pieces, I don't remember the writing happening that fast. I think, can't remember exactly like how long, I think the piece ended up being about 8,000 Um, and I, I know we wanted to like try to publish it around, like not too far away from my brother's birthday, which as it happens, is today. and when you Oh, no kidding. And when you sent me um your calendar and I saw May 24th was available, I jumped on it. I thought it would be a good day for us to talk.
00:37:30
Speaker
Oh, that's amazing. It's about the Dylan's birthday. Billy and his wife, Tin, if you're listening, it's all these wonderful people's birthday. Oh, my gosh. Well, a it being your brother's birthday, what is yeah what what does that stir up in you on a day like this?
00:37:44
Speaker
Well... It's, um, I mean, it's always somewhat weighty, but also that like he was so, um, full of life and sorry, that's like a hackneyed expression, but he loved to party. He loved people. They loved life. And so i feel like it's just a disservice to his memory to mope around all day, even if that's what I want to do, especially on a gray rainy day in Brooklyn. But, um,
00:38:14
Speaker
Yeah, so it's usually kind of a combo of, you know, pushing aside the heaviness and and doing something both fun and that, you know, I think he'd be into whether that's listening to Miles Davis or Led Zeppelin or going and seeing a Kurosawa or Mel Brooks movie or any movie for that matter. Like he was pretty Catholic with his taste.
00:38:37
Speaker
Yeah, so that's kind of the day. It's also, this one's a little weird, especially because My wife and our two kids are, well, the two kids are college age, so they're not around that much anyway, but they're all like sort of dispersed around around Europe at this moment. um And I'm, so I'm solo in the apartment with the dog and the cat and it's raining and I'm drinking tea. And so it's like, it's its own unique experience of May 24th this year. But my plan is to, yes,
00:39:11
Speaker
listen to some Led Zeppelin and maybe like go have a nice meal and like look some tequila at some point. Oh, it's that's a great, yeah. that's It's a great way to to honor ah the spirit ah of your brother, you know, all the, all these years later to be able to, yeah, to lean into things that that lit up his taste and to, yeah, kind of keep that spirit alive.
00:39:36
Speaker
for sure. And like, I mean, those are some of my earliest memories was just him I guess saying impart his taste is the nice way. I mean, you know, like a lot of older siblings, he was very adamant that, you know, I must listen to combat rock right now. And I must watch this or listen to the Steve Martin standup cassette.
00:39:59
Speaker
So, yeah, i mean, that's that was definitely like an early part of our dynamic. It was him. imposing in a good way. It's it's sort of like taste on me. So I agree completely. Like that's, yeah, that seems appropriate to, you know, go back to that somehow today.
00:40:18
Speaker
Yeah. And although it must've been, i mean, I imagine maybe it was part of the discussions, but the fact that this piece was able to come back up to the surface and, you know, in the birth month of your brother, that must've been like a kind of a creative decision and a nod to his life as well. Or maybe it's coincidence. I don't know.
00:40:37
Speaker
It's funny, Brandon, because like, I was looking back at the emails, I think I wrote to the, out it I think I first wrote them like January or February.
00:40:49
Speaker
I think it was January. I know it' was cold. And yeah, just that just seemed like for the first time that I'm talking about this, this series and got really excited. And then I wasn't sure, you know, like what their plans were, how often they were going to publish the pieces and when.
00:41:06
Speaker
But then as we were moving along and it seemed like the calendar was lining up, I did mention it to the to my editor there. And she thought it was a good idea to like get it out around the 24th as well.
00:41:20
Speaker
when you're composing the piece or even reporting, reporting the piece, you know, some, uh, you can get really bogged down in research and reporting. Like, I just want to make one more call, two more calls, 10 more calls, or go to another archive and so forth, whatever it might be. And then we can kind of really kick that writing can down the road. So just like for you and maybe with this piece in particular, like when did you know you were ready to sit with it and start writing?
Concluding the Reporting Phase
00:41:44
Speaker
Yeah. I think with this one, I totally hear you. I'm like, almost every other story, it's like really hard to know when you're done done reporting and maybe like you never are because even after you publish, like then you people, you know, will come out and and tell you new things or whatever. I think that happens a lot with like investigative reporting, you know, or like news sources now that they see the information out there, right? Like news sources feel more comfortable talking about it.
00:42:14
Speaker
But with this one, I remember right, it was pretty much like around the police report and talking to, which I hadn't seen before, starting to work on this, and, like, talking to folks at LAPD, a pd ah detective there. that in my memory, that was, like, kind of the last piece that I think, like, I wanted to know as much as I could outside of that before, like, going to that conversation. So I would know sort of, like,
00:42:47
Speaker
what I wanted to and needed to find out. Yeah. So I think that was always sort of like the finish line of reporting for me when I, when I look back on it. So this was, which was like and uncommon in my experience to sort of know your, you know, the work is like the reporting work is like leading up to that sort of final conversation or to with the detective there.
00:43:12
Speaker
Yeah. And with the with this piece, too, and ah in general, but specifically here, like how are you thinking about the the structure of it and the pacing of it?
00:43:24
Speaker
To be honest, I wrote probably like a fairly messy, more sprawling draft of it. And then, again, like all props to the editors who have imposed more I would say pacing and structure on it. I can't remember now. So one difference between the original piece from 2013 and the remastered edition is in the first piece, it was more explicitly structured around, i think I said earlier in the piece, like, you know, exploring something something about like the ripple effects of the grief, right? And so that was more explicitly
00:44:06
Speaker
structured where you would go, you know, person by person and have sections for each one. So like the dad section, my mom's section, Catherine, my wife's section, et cetera.
00:44:18
Speaker
And so that like, that was but back then like seemed like a kind of neat um structural idea to, to sort of rein in this story that could get sprawling, if not for imposing structure.
00:44:32
Speaker
And then re looking at it, And again, like cross so my new editor who like looking back at it now was like, it's sort of already implicit in there without making it, you know, like you don't have to think it as explicit at that. This piece just naturally sort of like flows in that direction. So I think it, I mean, it's still probably like reads the same, just like you wouldn't know unless you knew that there was any, you know like section headers before, but,
Structuring Narratives with Editors
00:45:04
Speaker
um,
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think truly that was like editors taking a kind of like sprawling first draft and and just chiseling it down a bit and like imposing a neater, cleaner structure on it.
00:45:17
Speaker
And now later in the piece, too, you you write, up but for many years I'd felt a toxic wad of gut-based guilt. It's just a great starter to a sentence there. um because I didn't feel like I felt, because I didn't think I felt enough.
00:45:32
Speaker
I thought I should be sadder. I thought I should be undone. I thought like a Beckett character that I should not be able to go on and that I shouldn't. Take us to that tension there of, you know, what you were feeling and how you so beautifully articulate it Yeah, I mean, i I think like, this is also going back to what I was saying about, you know, how I kind of like to deal with sort go through May 24th every year.
00:45:58
Speaker
Like, again, my ah brother just would not. He was not a punch puller. You know, I talk in the piece about his film he made as a senior in high school called Punk Rules and how that was just eviscerated our headmaster at our school.
00:46:17
Speaker
We were like scholarship kids at this but pretty posh like prep school and outside of Baltimore. So for his senior project, he made this film and it just tore apart like this, the actual school headmaster and like everyone who watched it in assembly was a fictional piece, but they knew i mentioned all that just to say like this couldn't be hagiography. Like my brothers would have like rolled his eyes in his grave so hard if I just written something that, you know, didn't didn't feel complicated and truthful, I guess. And so, yeah, I just really needed to sort of examine in a true way, like all the different thoughts and feelings.
00:47:06
Speaker
And, you know, I think if if if we're honest, like all, sib or I would say, yeah, all sibling relationships are can be complicated, right? And does that mean, i mean, it doesn't diminish like the love I i felt for him. I think if anything, like those kinds of complicated relationships, there can be like a deeper love, but I just knew that if I was going to do this, it needed to be like as truthful as I could make it and not, yeah, sand sand away like the edges. And, you know, it's true to my experience that
00:47:45
Speaker
both growing up and, you know, later in life, there were times where like, he really fucking drove me crazy. Right. And like, I just couldn't kind of like deal with him. And so I think I had to be in there a little bit. And also, yeah to speaking to the section you just read, you know, and it's interesting because like, I've heard from people who who've read it and like sort of express similar things where, you know,
00:48:14
Speaker
You can't like control your reaction to a thing. Right. And like, we're sort of expected to just be completely undone by these things. And there are times where we, ah where one is completely undone by them, but there's also times where you're sort of like weirdly okay.
00:48:34
Speaker
and And I think it's okay to to say that. hu Yeah. And ah for a lot of people, be it filmmakers or writers, podcasters, it can be really hard to either read your old work, watch your old movies, listen to old interviews or listen
Reflection on Past Works
00:48:49
Speaker
old podcasts. And we kind of alluded to it at the start of our conversation, but what was the experience of reconfronting the text or maybe the apprehension, just knowing that you've gotten 13 years more experience under your body? Like, uh, might've, handle that a little differently or whatever, like, oh, that's a little cringe or whatever, whatever the case may be. Like, so what was that the sense of apprehension going into confronting an older text?
00:49:15
Speaker
It's really good question. I mean, truthfully, I, there wasn't a ton. I hadn't, like, I hadn't read it that much since it came out, honestly, but I guess I wasn't that apprehensive just because because like i was saying before, like the response to it was so overwhelmingly positive. I mean, yeah, it was the only time in my life, like a lot of strangers just got in touch to say like how moved they were and how much they liked it. So ah sort of like remembered that and and trusted that if that was the case, it wouldn't be too terribly cringy to go back and look at.
00:49:54
Speaker
And, you know, even though it's 13 years ago, I was still in my 40s, you know, when I wrote it, I think if if I was, you know, if I had been in like my 20s or 30s, maybe there would have been more apprehension. I was like a fairly formed human by the point, you know, when I when i first wrote it and published it. So, yeah, I mean, I mean, obviously Sally Rooney it in was in her 20s and writing some of the the best novels of, you know, contemporary times. So that's not to say you can't be
00:50:28
Speaker
a brilliant 20 something, but I think you know what I mean, where it's like, I've definitely like gone back and looked at some very early writing and it ain't good, my friend. It is not good at all. um So that's actually poetry. So I think i you know that makes sense.
00:50:48
Speaker
But um yeah, with this one, i was pretty sure and then rereading it, I didn't, I don't remember like too much. It's interesting. There was one comment on Reddit about who someone saw it, the new version, and they were like, it's good, but like overly styled and needed an editor something. And I was like, I can see that.
00:51:10
Speaker
Like, I think like, maybe if I could go back in time, I might like lean slightly away from the sort of like, it does read so at times, you know, somewhat like a kind of like hard boiled, noir-ish stylistically. So maybe I might go back in time and like alter that slightly. But overall, like I think it still reads really well.
00:51:36
Speaker
Yeah, and it came out very close to the Sandy Hook shootings. And and so that's the ecosystem that this was you know published. And now here we are yeah at this point. So I suspect the reaction you might have gotten around that time was still in that environment ecosystem. And now we're you know sometime later. So what has been, or what's the expectations of the reaction you've been expecting to get ah versus, know and what is some of the reaction you're getting so far since the piece came out very recently?
00:52:11
Speaker
Honestly, like it's it's sort of interesting to see it because the the distribution of it now is kind of like pretty significantly different by that. I mean, like it ran on Gawker, it was before they were sort of like,
00:52:28
Speaker
embroiled and in all the Mishigath that ultimately like led to their demise. So it was still fairly at the peak of its powers and popularity. And so, you know, and had this like very engaged readership. So there was it was just seen by it.
00:52:47
Speaker
You sort of knew immediately. like I think they even had like a number on their pieces and you could see who was reading, how many people were reading it. So like, it was very like immediate um and fast and widespread.
00:53:02
Speaker
The response, this feels now a little like more of like a slow burn effect, I think. You know, I mean, that yeah I have no idea like, how many people are who has seen it.
00:53:16
Speaker
Most of the the feedback I've gotten so far, and I guess it's only been out like a little over a week, but um most of the feedback has just been more personal from people I know who had not seen it the first time. So they're like reading it for the first time now, including, you know, like some people who went to our high school who knew both of us growing up.
00:53:43
Speaker
So that's been really meaningful, honestly, like just sort of, you know, there's mostly like people I'm distantly connected to maybe on Instagram or whatever who have just sent some touching and lovely notes.
00:53:57
Speaker
It's been, yeah, just much more kind of like personal messages versus like a real sort of like, yeah, I just, it was sort of, I'd never experienced that before or since in 2013, just like who, you know, I knew Gokur was like popular or whatever, but like just the reach of it was sort of crazy, I think for me anyway. So it was like pretty different experience.
00:54:22
Speaker
Yeah.
Guest Recommendations
00:54:23
Speaker
Oh, very nice. Well, well, Mac at the ah end of these conversations, I always love asking the guests for a recommendation of some kind. That's just like, uh, anything for the listeners that you just, uh, want to recommend that can be used anything that's making, uh, that's kind of fun and exciting, uh, that you want to share. And so I would just pose that to you.
00:54:39
Speaker
Can it be a few things? Oh, of course. Yeah. More the merrier. Well, I've been thinking, and maybe because I'm like pretty solidly middle-aged now, I've been like really appreciating, um,
00:54:53
Speaker
let's just call them older artists who are like making what I think is pretty dynamic and great art still. And um one album I'm into is the new Kim Gordon record.
00:55:06
Speaker
It's great driving around music. I think I first started listening to it. i was in LA for a few days and like listening to it there and like driving around and it like was a great soundtrack for the city.
00:55:17
Speaker
So, and also like, I love seeing, sort of models for aging, like I used to joke about like, wanting to sort of age like a Bill Murray character.
00:55:28
Speaker
But I've known like less of a joke. my That seems pretty great. Like, I love seeing these like, great artists artists, like be models for sort of aging and still creating.
00:55:39
Speaker
And then the other thing that came to mind was the movie Sarah, um which I don't want to give too much away, but is if you have the chance to see it in a theater, like I'm actually not going to say that much about it, just go see this movie in a theater. it's I think it was ah a Spanish company that made it, but a French director takes place in like the Moroccan desert.
00:56:08
Speaker
And that's all I'm going say, just try to see it in a theater. It's S-I-R-A-T, my friend, Carl, recommended it to me and i find like he saw in Europe and then I finally had the chance catch that my wife and I saw it in Brooklyn in the theater, maybe like a couple months ago.
00:56:27
Speaker
It's really hard to describe, but just go, go see it. Oh, amazing. Well, well, Mac, I'm so glad we got to have this conversation and talk about your, um, talk about this amazing piece that is remastered for the atavist and to get to talk on your brother Asher's birthday, which I think adds extra significance and, uh, poignance, uh, to, to your piece and to our conversation. So just, uh, thanks so much for coming on, coming on the show and talking shop and sharing, sharing a backstory to the story and, and nuts and bolts of it as well. So thank you, man. Thank you so much. Um,
00:56:59
Speaker
Yeah, I really love chatting with you. And yeah, i it's funny because you asked about apprehension before and honestly, like, it's almost harder. It was like harder to to talk about this, I think, um but the piece and the event then to write it. And in a way, thanks for forcing me.
00:57:23
Speaker
I'm glad you did. And yeah, it's just really nice. Thank
00:57:32
Speaker
Awesome. Awesome. Thanks to Sayward and Mac. And make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts and Pitch Club at welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. And if you care for the social media thing,
00:57:47
Speaker
Instagram handles at creative nonfiction podcast. YouTube channel is at creative nonfiction podcast. If you want to get those, this American life, that's right. This American life videos.
00:57:59
Speaker
I just fuck around for fun. I like them. It is fun to vlog like a vlogger now. While I was driving, I was thinking of all the books I need to read for the podcast and even some novels I just want to read but don't have the bandwidth to sit with.
00:58:15
Speaker
And then I can put them in my little free library and be done with them. Yeah, my eyes can only take so many thousands of words per day, you know. Many of us fantasize about a writing retreat where we get to sit alone in a cabin in the woods and work on a thing.
00:58:30
Speaker
But what I'd give, my gosh, what I'd give to have a reading retreat where I'm free from distraction and I can bring five books with me and bang them out. Read for 30 minutes, take a nap, go for a walk, read for an hour, lie on the floor.
00:58:47
Speaker
No other tasks, no other work, no other chores. Just eat and read and nap. I guess I just need some sleep, you know, and ah and a bunch of non-alcoholic drinks. The booze, man. I think it's slowly killing me. So it's beer week here in Eugene, and there are these bingo cards to visit as many breweries there or tap houses as you can.
00:59:11
Speaker
Extra points for bingo. And being the maladaptive copers that we are, we went on a mini Tuesday pub crawl to get bingo. And it was a stupid thing to do on a Tuesday night. Miraculously, I didn't have what you would call my signature crushing headache.
00:59:29
Speaker
But I did sleep like shit. And my motivation to do anything constructive the day after I even get like a whiff of beer is next to nothing. Like i was supposed to have a nice tempo run today. And I'm like, i don't know if that's going to happen. And that's a direct result of the sloth induced by having too much beer.
00:59:49
Speaker
So I mainly walk through the world with a lot of shame around it. It's bad for my health. It's bad for my wife's healing after her surgery. And yet we so often find ourselves unable to find other means of having fun.
01:00:01
Speaker
Everything's so boring without a moderate beer buzz. ah But I know future Brendan, which is to say Saturday and Sunday morning Brendan's, never regret not drinking the night before. But we love breweries. I love being at breweries. But having kombucha or non-alcoholic anything at a brewery just doesn't hit the same way. So in the moment, Brendan often loves hanging out at a brewery for two beers or more.
01:00:26
Speaker
or Or sipping on a beer at baseball games. That last one's a little easier to say no to because at $13.50, it's obscene for a 20-ounce pour. And after tip, one round is like $30 for 40 ounces of booze.
01:00:40
Speaker
anyway I suspect there are others who have a weird relationship to booze. Like if you don't drink, you can come across as like teetotaling stick in the mud. But there's a financial, physical, and mental cost to drinking that I'm increasingly finding untenable. I go through these phases every two to three months or maybe two to three times a year is more accurate.
01:01:02
Speaker
And that's where I'll back off for a month or two months, sometimes three. And like not have anything and feel kind of good and rejuvenated. But then I always come back like the incredibly drunk Hulk.
01:01:14
Speaker
Like I don't know how to have fun without altering my consciousness a little bit or a lot a bit. But I love being able to wake early on a Saturday, journal, read, get my coffee, go for maybe a long run and feel like I'm honoring my physical and mental self.
01:01:30
Speaker
I don't know if this is actually low-grade alcoholism or boredom or both. It'd be nice to have that reading retreat, almost like going to rehab to change context, to clear the mind, to stop the hustle, to rejuvenate.
01:01:47
Speaker
I don't know, man. It's just where I'm at on a Wednesday at 12.04 as I track this tape. So stay wild, C&Fers. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.