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Episode 258: The Saturation of Not Doing It with Brian Broome
142 Plays4 years ago
Brian Broome (@bbromb) is the author of the memoir Punch Me Up to the Gods (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
In this episode we talk about:
- Shame
- Black masculinity
- Writing
- Memoir
- And Writing on the Bus
Patreon: patreon.com/cnfpod
Social Media: @CNFPod
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Punch Me Up to the Gods'
00:00:01
Speaker
As many of you know, I read quite a lot of books for this podcast. Many of the books are very good. And then sometimes you come across a truly great book. And that's what we have here in punch me up to the gods by Brian Broome. You know, you never know, like, you know, when you're sitting alone, you know, just banging out words, you just never know if it's going to connect. And it's always nice to hear that people appreciated it.
00:00:28
Speaker
And that's the damn truth, man. What a book.
About the Creative Non-Diction Podcast
00:00:32
Speaker
Oh, hey, I'm Brendan O'Mara, and this is the Creative Non-Diction Podcast.
00:00:44
Speaker
Ooh, that's right. Now in my ninth year of doing this little shindig, this is the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. Welcome to it.
Conversation with Brian Broome Begins
00:00:55
Speaker
Got a great conversation for you with Brian Broome as we talk about being a late bloomer, giving up, shame, love, identity, losing yourself in the work, only to have your stomach roar and snap you out of that trance.
00:01:12
Speaker
It's great stuff man. Glad you're here.
Sponsorship by WV Wesleyan College
00:01:15
Speaker
I'd like to introduce you to a new sponsor who's gonna be on this CNF and journey for the next 40-ish episodes or so. You ready? So Creative Nonfiction Podcast is brought to you by West Virginia Wesleyan College's Low Residency, MFA in Creative Writing, excuse me. Now in its 10th year, this affordable program boasts a low student to faculty ratio and a strong sense of community. And you know how big I am on community.
00:01:44
Speaker
Recent CNF faculty include Randen Billings Noble, Jeremy Jones, and CNF pod alum Sarah Einstein of Mott fame. Check it out, it's like episode 11 or 12. There's also fiction and poetry tracks. Recent faculty include Ashley Bryant Phillips and Jacinda Townsend as well as Diane Gilliam and Savannah Sipple.
00:02:07
Speaker
No matter your discipline, if you're looking to up your craft or learn a new one, consider West Virginia Wesleyan, quote, right, see that pun, in the heart of Appalachia. Visit mfa.wvwc.edu for more information and dates of enrollment.
00:02:29
Speaker
As always, you can keep the conversation going on social media at CNF pod.
The Importance of Podcast Reviews
00:02:33
Speaker
And if you're feeling kind, man, leaving reviews on Apple podcasts goes a long way toward validating the enterprise for the wayward CNF. You know, guys, you know, I'm not a big name by any stretch. I argue that I'm a no name. Maybe somewhere in between, maybe like a name. In any case,
00:02:55
Speaker
If someone's passing along and they're just like, I'm looking for a new podcast, but then they see that there's like hundreds of ratings and they're like, I'll give that guy a chance. You know, that's, that's where you can step in and say, Oh, I'll do a little review here and help other people in getting on the joke. So in any case, if you have the time to do that, by all means, I know Apple doesn't really make it easy, but if you can do it, big fist bumps to you here, I'll hit my little pop filter. This is a fist bump. Okay.
00:03:26
Speaker
Only the good stuff here. You might also want to consider becoming a member at the Patreon page. Why? Well, I'm putting together the next issue of the Audio Mag. Issue 1 on isolation, free for all, will remain in the podcast feed. But issue 2 and beyond, exclusive to the Patreon community.
00:03:45
Speaker
Patreons get lots of cool goodies on top of that, and also the knowledge that they're supporting writers and the CNFing community.
Announcement of Hippo Camp 2021
00:03:53
Speaker
You don't want to miss this one CNFer, so go to patreon.com slash CNFpot, do a little window shopping. Doesn't disappoint.
00:04:01
Speaker
And from now until August, I plan on giving the loudest of shoutouts to Hippocam 2021. It's back, baby. And Lancaster. I grew up pronouncing Lancaster, Pennsylvania Lancaster. It's Lancaster. That's how you do it. That's how you're in the know. You'll probably get a little button in your goodie bag. In any case, Lancaster.
00:04:24
Speaker
Registration is open. It's a conference for only creative non-fiction writers. Well, let me rephrase that. It's a creative non-fiction conference. You can write whatever the hell you want, but this conference focuses on CNF, baby. Marion Winnick will be this year's keynote speaker.
00:04:41
Speaker
And I'll be delivering a podcast-themed talk. I got a good one lined up, man. Working hard on it. It's gonna be good, dude. It's gonna be good. Can't speak highly enough of this conference. August 13th to 15th. You dig?
Brian Broome's Background
00:04:55
Speaker
Good. I think that's enough housekeeping. Brian Brooms, Punch Me Up to the Gods is a special book. It's a brilliant book. Gut punch of a book.
00:05:05
Speaker
And here's a little info, a little more info on Brian from his website. He's a poet and screenwriter, is Kay Leroy Irvis, fellow and instructor in the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh. He's been a finalist in the Moth storytelling competition and won the grand prize in Carnegie Mellon University's Martin Luther King Writing Awards.
00:05:27
Speaker
He also won a VANVANN award for the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation for Journalism in 2019, and he lives in Pittsburgh. Hey, Brian, his book checks all the boxes, man, and if I'm being honest, so does this conversation. Here is Brian Broom.
Exploring Themes of Shame with Broome
00:05:57
Speaker
Well, you know, I shift back and forth from excitement to, like you said, disorientation to just abject terror. You know, I had somebody asked me the other day, like, why didn't you? Like, this is a lot like you give it up a lot of yourself and this book, and I think it finally hit me like, you know, oh my god, you know, lots of people are going to be reading about
00:06:22
Speaker
things that I have been ashamed of for years. But in a way, it's kind of cathartic. I didn't put all my secrets out there, but I put enough of them out there so that I think that I'm being truer to myself by telling some of this stuff. For sure. For sure. And I hope it helps other people who may be going through the same kind of things.
00:06:49
Speaker
I imagine because there is such a central tenet to the whole book is this is identity and finding identity and being at odds with it too from a from a culture trying to impose a certain identity on you and then you trying to really swim through all that that swamp to find out like who you are and embrace who you are that's really you know I found I felt that tension throughout the whole thing. Yeah I think that I think that a lot of what
00:07:19
Speaker
If somebody asked me what the theme of the book was, I think if I had to boil it down to one word, it's shame. Just being ashamed of who you are and what you are and going really, really out of your way to avoid feeling that shame, which includes just getting messed up on drugs every night and pretending to be something that you're not.
00:07:46
Speaker
placating people in order to just be loved or get some sort of semblance of love. So yeah, that's another thing that I think the book helped me personally or is helping me to overcome because I'm still trying to overcome it. But yeah, I hope that other people who may have felt that way in their lives or are feeling that way now connect with it and sort of look at my book as a set of cautionary tales.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's, when you speak of the shame, the consequences of it are, I mean, sometimes it would come down to your father, like doubling you over, just, you know, beating you senseless sometimes.
Cultural Pressures on Masculinity
00:08:31
Speaker
And then there's just other, you know, social ostracizations or whatever, however you want to call it. It just, it seems to come from all sides, physical and mental and intellectual, like you name it.
00:08:43
Speaker
It was a hard turbulent waters for you to paddle through. I didn't know how to deal with or process the kinds of emotions that it spawned in me.
00:09:02
Speaker
you know, I wound up hurting myself in a lot of ways. And because I didn't know how to process the, you know, my darker or more tender feelings, you know, I wound up hurting other people, which is something that, you know, I'm greatly ashamed of as well. Yeah, you know, I think another, you know, another aspect of the book is, you know, men are talked out of our, our more tender feelings. We, we don't,
00:09:29
Speaker
in our culture that so values this idea, this weird idea of masculinity. We don't get to process the things that hurt us or the things that make us sad. You have to put up this front all the time. I think particularly in black male masculinity culture, you are not supposed to have any feelings apart from maybe anger and lust and everything else just gets pushed down. But in the way that I did, I took my bad feelings out
00:09:58
Speaker
You can look around you look at the news and you see men taking their bad feelings out on people every day Yeah, and you illustrate that brilliantly by using You know the you know twan as a as a device a young Antoine this a you know this little boy on the bus that you see and that just crops up every single way is a as a way for you to have the Almost like a conversation with your younger self, right? absolutely, you know, I
00:10:28
Speaker
When I saw the father and son on that bus and the way that they were interacting, I immediately got out my pad and pen and just started taking notes about their interactions because it did remind me very much of myself and not just my father, but all the other male figures in my life growing up. The father on the bus was teaching his son what not to do.
00:10:58
Speaker
These are things that you cannot do. You cannot cry. You cannot sing and flail your arms. You cannot sit a certain way. And it reminded me of all the things that I was told. Because you're a boy, this is the long list of things that you can't do. I just immediately connected with the child and did see myself in him. And I also saw a lot of other young black boys in him.
00:11:29
Speaker
Yeah, and it was so, so poignant. And every each time each section of that would come up, I was I was just always just so intrigued of the direction you're going to take it. What was going to be the next insight that you were going to glean to kind of trampoline you into an element or something from your from your own life. And, you know, in one one particular instance that I thought was particularly poignant was when, you know, a white woman had sit across, sat across from him and was being, you know,
00:11:59
Speaker
playful and goading and kind of doting on him. And you wrote that, I want to get up the blocker view and tell Twan that when it comes to white people, he has a shockingly short time to be cute before he becomes threatening. And so I was just like hitting the gut by that, because there just was so prescient. And it's an observation that just really hit home. And so it's like this, I don't know, it just really struck a chord.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah, you know, and I, I, I absolutely believe that that's true. You know, I think black childhood lasts as long as white fear, you know, until white fear kicks in. Um, you know, I think that there's been research done that shows that black children are often seen more as more adult, you know, at the same age than, than white children. Um, but then their white counterparts.
00:12:57
Speaker
And I noticed that myself in my own life, we do get very short childhoods. Black girls are sexualized earlier. Black boys are seen as threats, whereas white children don't have that to contend with. Black children don't get the folly of adolescent or childish mistakes. I think that black children are viewed much more harshly by society in general. And you can see that in the news.
00:13:28
Speaker
just with the stories that are going around right now. The folly of youth does not exist in black childhood. Can't do anything wrong. And at what point did you realize that that was this device of using this experience of observing, you know, Twan and his father was going to be this recurring thing that would crop up at the beginning essentially of every chapter, every section?
00:13:54
Speaker
really late into the process. You know, the book was being written, you know, I had already decided to use the Gwendolyn Brooks poem, and I was going to sort of use that as a skeleton on which to hang the narratives. But then, you know, I saw this kid and, you know, I was like, I got to find a way to wedge this in there. So it was, you know, it was pretty late in the process of writing the book that I decided to use that
00:14:23
Speaker
that narrative tool. Yeah, that must have been, given how far along you might have been in the process, it must have been almost like unsettling in a way, but the urge to do it was like, no, this has at all costs, I have to get this thing in. Oh yeah, and my editor has the bald spots in her head to prove it from tearing her hair out.
00:14:49
Speaker
Yeah. And she was a great help. But yeah, I was like, we got to, we got to wedge the story in there. I need another, you know, to, to buttress these stories. Like this is, I think this is really important to tell the story of this, of this young boy. And how long was that bus ride? Oh my God. Have you ever taken a bus in Pittsburgh, like a slow bus? It was the 61A, I believe.
00:15:18
Speaker
from McKeesport to downtown. So however long that takes, I think you probably have to look at a Port Authority schedule. But it's gotta be like, you know, an hour. I dare you to go take, after we're done here, go take the 61A, drive to McKeesport, take the 61A and take it all the way downtown. It was a pretty long, long bus ride.
00:15:38
Speaker
Very nice. Yeah, I was wondering how long it was just in the book. Is this like a 15-minute exchange that Brighton was able to kind of tease out throughout the whole book, or was it really a very long, long ride?
00:15:51
Speaker
It was a long bus ride. I had plenty of time to sit there and eavesdrop and look like a complete crazy person by taking notes about this father and son's interaction. I want to get a sense of what you're reading these days. I'm always intrigued by what writers and creative people are putting into the tank that nourishes them and also inspires them.
Broome's Current Reading List
00:16:20
Speaker
Well, you know, I have started Kiese Leimann's heavy. Now, I wanted to start it earlier, but I was writing my book at the time and I started reading his writing and I was like, I can't read this while I'm trying to write something. I will be just discouraged and I will never want to write another word. So I'm reading that now, but I really haven't had a whole lot of time. I've just done graduate school and I haven't had a lot of time to read for pleasure.
00:16:50
Speaker
But I do remember the last book that I really enjoyed was Interpreter of Maladies. I can't remember the name. Oh, Jumpa Lahiri. But I'm not reading as much as I want to. I think that when all this is over, when the book comes out and I get a little bit of downtime, I cannot wait to go into my back garden just with a book and just read, read, read. But I have been binging some TV shows.
00:17:18
Speaker
Yeah, that counts. I mean the way TV and certain movies are these days I mean you can glean a lot of inspiration from that that you can try to transfer onto the page somehow Absolutely. I've been doing a lot of love death and robots, you know I forget what else I'm watching just really crap like just nothing Nothing that's gonna feed my soul or intellect just you know, really light Lightweight stuff, but I do have a stack of books that I Really want to get to
00:17:47
Speaker
one of my favorite authors who wrote a book called The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas, Reginald McKnight. I reread that recently. And yeah, people don't talk about him a lot, but I think he's a brilliant writer.
00:18:03
Speaker
And given that you've got a big stack of books, grad school, this book's coming out that you've been working on, no doubt, for a long time. How do you handle overwhelm and making sure that you're getting work done, but in such a way that you don't feel paralyzed by the sheer glut of it all? Oh, man. That's a question I was hoping you could answer for me. Yeah, I have no idea. There are days when I'm like,
00:18:32
Speaker
you know, oh God, there's a lot of stuff to do. And also, you know, I have the kind of brain where if you give me four tasks to do, it's really as if you've handed me like four screaming babies, like I don't know which, I'm bad at prioritizing. So there are days when I feel overwhelmed, but then I remind myself, you know, you go back to what your shrink says, you can only do one thing at a time, you know.
00:18:59
Speaker
There's no way you can do, if you try to do two things at a time, you're gonna do two things badly, you know? So I just try to, you know, I do my breathing exercises and I just remind myself.
00:19:10
Speaker
You can only do one thing at a time and you also have to build in time just for yourself so you can just lay on the couch and watch, you know, Love, Death and Robots or just sit outside in your back garden and do absolutely nothing drinking a cup of tea, you know. So those are ways that I try to calm myself down from all the stuff that there is to do.
00:19:31
Speaker
in a day. Thank God I don't have kids or anything. That would just be a disaster. Yeah, no kidding. I know. My wife and I don't have kids. We just have a wonderful dog. We're just overwhelmed by just the sheer, I don't know, just the everyday-ness of every day. Yeah.
00:19:53
Speaker
It's all I can do to just say, and I don't know, it's just, sometimes it just, I think it's Cal Newport who says, you know, you just have to slay the productivity dragon sometimes, which is, you just got to go in there and just start knocking off things. And the momentum of it, it's like, okay, this is doable. You just check off one thing and you get, and you just, it creates its own momentum. And the flywheel goes like, okay, this isn't so bad after all.
00:20:19
Speaker
Right, right. And then when you get done, you know, you do feel like, okay, that wasn't, like you said, it wasn't so bad after all. Like I did the thing, the thing that I was dreading, the thing that I didn't want to do, I did the thing, the thing's over and, you know, now on to the next thing. I was talking to my mom about, speaking of kids, you know, I was talking to my mom recently and my mom had three kids, you know, and a job and a house and bills and she made dinner every night. I was like, you know, how do you, how did you do it?
00:20:48
Speaker
And she just said, you know, there's some things that just have to be done. You don't have time to think about how much you don't want to do it. You know, you just do it. And I try to take that into account in my own life.
00:21:00
Speaker
For sure, for sure. And regarding your writing, I wonder what you, you know, everyone brings to their own, brings to the page and into the work their own struggles with the craft of it and putting it together. And I have myriad struggles that I deal with and insecurities and you name it.
Writing Challenges and Acceptance
00:21:21
Speaker
And so I wonder what are some things that you, you know, struggle with that you overcome to write the things that are, you know, that just at least light my brain up for sure.
00:21:31
Speaker
Well, you know, I'm trying to get over my fear of just letting it suck. Um, I somehow seem to be under the impression that the words that are the story that I want to get across should fall out of my head and onto the page perfectly, you know? Um, and by the time I get to the page, you know, I'm like, Oh God, you know, what was I just thinking? I have no idea. It all just leaves my head. Like, and so I'm trying to get over that. I, you know, I'm just trying to let it suck.
00:22:01
Speaker
you know, like my first drafts, because in a lot of ways, like this fear of it sucking is what keeps me from writing anything, you know, that fuels that's some fuel for my procrastination. I'm trying to form wise, I'm trying to learn how to write shorter sentences. I'm the, I'm the queen of the run on sentence, like just trying to get every thought
00:22:28
Speaker
an idea and detail all into one sentence. Form-wise, I'm trying to be okay with just smaller sentences and smaller ideas and also just having a little bit of faith in the reader.
00:22:47
Speaker
that the reader can figure out what I'm trying to say or the emotion I'm trying to get across or the visual I'm trying to implant. So those are definitely struggles. But the biggest one is just do it and let it suck the first time. There's room to improve. There's room to change. You can go back to it.
00:23:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's just it. For people who say that there's writer's block, what they're saying is they don't know how to write poorly to get the good stuff. You have to be able to sit with the bad stuff. I love hearing you say that. I love hearing what other people say that. It's just a matter of being comfortable with bad because if you can sit with that long enough, it has no choice but to get good if you just keep at it over and over again.
00:23:37
Speaker
Exactly. And I also had problems, you know, having other people tell me it was bad. You know, just doing like workshops and things like that, you know, you get very precious about your writing and I'm trying to be less precious about, you know, just writing a wholly bad piece of essay, you know, it happens and the art of it is just whittling it down until you get that thing that you bought and hopefully people can appreciate it.
00:24:06
Speaker
If we talk about like, you know, baseball or a sport or anything else that's kind of, let's just say physical, where there's a tangibility to what it means to do for rigor and hard work. There's sweat, there's blisters. It's like, yeah, I put in the work.
00:24:25
Speaker
When it comes to writing or something more creative, it can be a little more fluid or liquid. It's hard to get your head around. So for you maybe, Brian, what does it mean to have rigor and tenacity in this line of work?
Baldwin's Influence on Broome's Work
00:24:40
Speaker
I think James Baldwin said something, and I'm going to paraphrase it. I read it a long time ago, and he said something like, talent is not
00:24:53
Speaker
special, you know, he said, and I sort of quoting him here, he said, I know a lot of talented ruins, you know, people who were super talented that didn't do any work, you know. And I took that to heart like when I read that a long time ago, in terms of like tenacity, like I really
00:25:12
Speaker
There's two, two motivating factors. You know, one is like, I really, really gotta, I really, really want to tell this story. I really want to, and to, to push myself to do it because, you know, I'm also the queen of giving up. So, you know, I feel better after I want that feeling of, you know, accomplishment after, um, it's done after I've done it, you know, and I feel like, okay, now you're,
00:25:38
Speaker
Look, you're building a muscle. You can do this. You prove to yourself that you can do this. And also money, like I don't get paid unless, you know, if I like living indoors, you know, I got to do this work. I just try to, I try, the fight is to just clear out all those voices in your head that just keep telling you that you can't do it, you know, and that nobody wants to read this and, you know, you're wasting your time.
00:26:07
Speaker
I still have those voices, by the way. But that's where the tenacity comes in, the fighting of those voices. Because that's all the people who told you that throughout your life. And of course you want to fight those people. So yeah, that's where it comes in for me.
00:26:27
Speaker
You're speaking about sitting with, letting the work suck and staying in that pocket for it to get better. Of course, over the course of an essay or in the course of a book too, you're going to be sitting with that for a long time and then the honeymoon period is going to end when at the germ of that idea, like this is great. Then you're going to get to the middle and you're like, this fucking sucks.
00:26:54
Speaker
How do you push through that ugly grind of the middle to get to the end? Sometimes I don't. Sometimes you give up, right? Yeah, sometimes I don't. It's so complicated. Sometimes you're writing something and you're like, this just isn't working at all. Or you finish something, not even the middle. You get to the end and you're like, that didn't work at all.
00:27:21
Speaker
And you either decide like, okay, maybe this was just sometimes it's just a bad idea, you know, or maybe not a bad idea, but just something you can't do. The sucking, you know, I try to let it suck, you know, I try to at least get to the end and then walk away from it and come back if it still sucks two days later than it probably sucks if I don't feel like
00:27:45
Speaker
OK, this little tweak here, or maybe move the structure around a little bit. If I feel like there's absolutely nothing that can be done with this garbage, sometimes I do just go, OK. And I never throw anything away, because there's something in there in this sucky piece of whatever I just wrote. There's something in there that can be used. I didn't get the idea for no reason at all. There's something in there that can be used. So I have this huge folder on my computer that's just called Sucky Drafts.
00:28:14
Speaker
And then when I'm writing something else, you know, I'll think back like, Oh, in that sucky draft, like I wrote my three sentences that would work perfectly here. So, um, hopefully, you know, you know, those are things that, that, that helped me get through the sucky, you know, this sucks part.
00:28:32
Speaker
Oh, I love that. And do you just kind of as you're writing something else and you realize that maybe in that sucky drafts folder, do you just kind of remember that you might have a few sentences or do you have a way of potentially like organizing it or is it just memory? No, it's just if it didn't exist, like on a computer, it would be a pile of just paper on the floor. It would just be a messy, messy pile. But sometimes, you know,
00:29:02
Speaker
I'll be writing something new and it will, you know, connect to, I'll just remember like in that sucky draft, I was kind of talking about this. Um, and then you go, you know, through that pile, through that pile, that messy pile. And you find that sucky draft and you're like, yeah, this, this works perfectly here. I did that, you know, for the book, um, with different terrible things that I had written before. There are some lines in the book that definitely come from the sucky draft folder.
00:29:30
Speaker
And over the course of anybody's rider journey, there's usually some sort of an early victory that's just like, oh yeah, maybe I do have a little bit of what it takes to parlay this into something greater or something sustainable, even a career.
Broome's Writing Journey Post-Rehab
00:29:49
Speaker
So maybe for you, what would you identify as an early win that put fuel in your tank that put you on this path?
00:29:59
Speaker
You know, when I got out of rehab, you know, I started writing again while I was in rehab. I got out of rehab and I was afraid to leave my house because I was afraid that if I go out of this house, I'm going to relapse. No questions asked. So I stayed at home all the time. And the way that I communicated with people was I just wrote all these super long, you know, tomes on Facebook. And a friend of mine said, you know, there's something you're writing on Facebook. Like, I think it's publishable.
00:30:29
Speaker
you should submit it somewhere and I didn't know what that meant at all. He sent me a link to a place to submit something that I had written and I submitted to them and then like I don't know it wasn't even that long later like they contacted me and said this is great we want to put it in our literary journal and that's when I thought wow okay like maybe you know of course you know I've since learned that that doesn't happen ever
00:31:01
Speaker
It has not happened to me since, but I think that that felt really good. I felt like, you know, this is something that I can do. And I thought maybe this is what I'm for. I remember consciously thinking like, because I've never known what, what I'm for in this life. Like, you know, I don't, I'm not, you know, I didn't think I was very talented or, you know, I thought, well, okay, I should probably just work in call centers to make money.
00:31:28
Speaker
And, you know, maybe find a boyfriend. That was like my, that was my big goal. You know, I remember thinking this is what I'm for. I think this might be what I'm for. Um, and that's a big, that's a big moment. And now where are we in time when that happened? Oh, this was when I've been sober for eight years. So this was maybe nine years, no, eight years ago. It happened after I was sober. It was one of the first things that happened to me after I got out of rehab. Um, you know, this friend of mine who was teaching
00:31:58
Speaker
writing at the time and who lived in Boston, I think at the time, said, you should really try letting other people besides your Facebook friends read this stuff. So yeah, it wasn't that long ago. And there are days where I still doubt it too, but I do remember that original feeling of like, maybe this is what I'm supposed to be. I've been searching for something to supposed to be for a very long time. Maybe this is it.
00:32:27
Speaker
That's incredible, because that would have put you probably what, late 30s, maybe early, early 40s? Let's not talk about that. But for the late bloomers out there who? No, I'm 51. And so it was when I was 42, I think. And I'm definitely a late bloomer. I deeply regret the first 41 years of my life.
00:32:53
Speaker
Because I was just drunk all the time. That's what I did. That's what I thought I was for. Just drunk and high and getting thrown out of bars and treating people badly and lying. That's what I thought I was for. But to come on the other side of rehab and find out, wow, there was actually something that I was good at this whole time. Definitely a late bloomer. I encourage people who are older
00:33:23
Speaker
No, don't give up. I know how cheesy that sounds, but your life isn't over just because you've gotten older. In some ways, you can even start it all over again.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's great to hear you say that because so many people, we live in a culture that celebrates and almost fetishizes precocity and youth to the point where it just really can suffocate someone who might be a late bloomer or comes to it late and feels like maybe, well, the fact that I didn't make any of these anthologies by the time I was 31 or whatever,
00:33:57
Speaker
Maybe I shouldn't even start or if I'm or if I've been on the journey for a long time and I haven't reached that sort of metric Then maybe I'm not good enough at all. So it's just it's just always reassuring to hear people who come to it late or bloom late to realize that if you really love it and love the craft and love getting better and Celebrating the work of others that yeah there your time, you know, it's there for you if you just want to improve and love the work Absolutely. Absolutely. And I would say that you know with with anything
00:34:27
Speaker
And not just writing, just any, you know, I mean, maybe not, you know, becoming a gymnast at 50 might not be a realistic goal, but, you know, there are other things that can spark, spark joy in you. Like, you know, and like you say, I think that's a really good point. Our culture really, really celebrates youth. And I think that there are specific reasons for that. And as you get older, you start to feel less and less relevant in the world. But I think that that's, that's a,
00:34:56
Speaker
a constructed thing. Now I feel better about myself than I did when I was 25, and that's worth it. I was talking to an old friend of mine the other day. I used to work in a lot of restaurants in Pittsburgh, and she and I worked at a restaurant together. And when we were really young, she said, would you want to go back to being young? And we really sat there for a while, because now at 50-ish, we're starting to feel it.
00:35:26
Speaker
This is a downhill slope now. And we both came to the conclusion, no, I don't want all that craziness again. I did it. It has made me who I am. But I'm OK. I'm OK with who I am right now.
00:35:46
Speaker
And one thing I love about your memoir as well, and being most, I feel like most people who write memoirs, there's always a moment in the memoir where they talk about writing or writing the memoir or becoming a writer.
00:36:01
Speaker
And I love that your book doesn't do that at all. It just it just lays out your story and doesn't, you know, have this moment of, you know, how you became a writer just is your story. And I don't know if that was tactical or you weren't thinking about it, but it was definitely something that caught my eye as someone who reads a lot of these. And I just I just really liked it because it really allowed us to really just sit with your story. Yeah, I mean, I think me becoming a writer isn't really relevant.
00:36:29
Speaker
to the story that I was trying to tell. There's a mention of it. I mentioned, I think, in one of the earlier stories that I used to write all the time. My sister gave me a diary that she didn't want. And I used to write in it until somebody told me that was faggy, I think is the word that they use. I got made fun of for it. People thought it was weird, and so I stopped.
00:36:56
Speaker
And I do mention it in an early story. I do want people to read my stories. But then I got teased out of it. I think a lot of men get teased out of a lot of things that they might be interested in, in their youth. And writing was one of them. But I think that's the only time I actually mentioned writing in the book.
00:37:18
Speaker
Where do you feel most alive and engaged in the process, whether that be the writing or the editing or whatever? Where's the big spark for you?
The Immersive Writing Experience
00:37:28
Speaker
There are moments when I have to fight myself into a chair. I have to fight myself to look at the thing that I'm supposed to be working on. I have to trick myself into maybe touching up a couple sentences here and there, and then that's the last thing I remember. Yeah.
00:37:49
Speaker
Then I'm in it and hours go by. When I was writing this, I would start touching up little sentences and then time would erase and then the only reason that I would know that, okay, maybe I should stop now or maybe I should take a break now is that my stomach would just be grumbling from just hours and hours of not eating or drinking anything.
00:38:16
Speaker
feels kind of good. It sounds really weird. But when you're in that zone and you're just in your head and you're trying to remember details and you're trying to really talk to somebody who isn't there, that's what a lot of writing is for me. You're trying to talk to somebody who isn't even there. So you don't get a facial reaction. You don't get anything. You're really trying to
00:38:43
Speaker
make them listen to you. Those moments where you just kind of zone out, like that's the most enjoyable. And then after I'm done, you know, I go and I eat a pop tart or whatever. And, you know, I come back and I look at it and I'm like, this sucks. But, you know, but actually when I'm in that zone, it very rarely sucks completely. It's always something that I can
00:39:09
Speaker
work with or change or something that I'm proud to hand to my editor and say, what do you think of this? But those little time loss moments, those are the best.
00:39:20
Speaker
Oh, I love that. Kind of a two-parter here in terms of you're getting into it, as you said. And regarding this book, you can piggyback it onto this. Is there a ritual by which you try to prime the pump so that you can better get into it? And maybe what's the routine by which you set up your days to make sure you're in the chair as painful as it can be sometimes to get into that chair? Oh, God. I got nothing for you.
00:39:52
Speaker
I was just trying to explain to somebody, there's a point of saturation of not doing it, when it's just looming. Jonah Harvey, one of my favorite people and one of my favorite writers,
00:40:12
Speaker
I asked her, how do you do it? And she said, sometimes you just got to go fuck, I just got to do it. I may as well go write the damn thing. So there's no rhyme or reason. I wish I was one of those writers. And I know these kinds of writers who they sit down at 9 AM with a cup of coffee. And they were like, OK, I'm going to write until 3. And they do that three or four days a week or something like that. I wish I could be that kind of disciplined person.
00:40:42
Speaker
My routine, I guess, is to just not write until it's just beating me up inside and I have to go sit down and try it and get over the fear of it sucking. Sometimes I just completely trick myself. There's a desk at which I write all the time and sometimes I just go into the room where the desk is and just sit around the desk and walk around the desk like a lunatic.
00:41:06
Speaker
Um, like in this weird game of duck duck goose, and then I'll just jump into the chair and start to sort of trick myself. It's really very dramatic. You should see it. Um, yeah, I think we definitely need some video of that for sure. I can provide it like, um, and, and just start, start working on it. But, you know, I don't, I don't, I can't prime the pump because I'm always too sort of anxious around it.
00:41:33
Speaker
So the only way for me to do it has been the best way for me to do it is to just rip off the band aid, as they say, and start, and just start going, you know, unless I'm on the bus, like I really like writing on the bus for some reason that calms my nerves. And I just write, I've written on the bus for, you know, before this book, I used to just write this daily update on Facebook about the P one bus here in Pittsburgh.
00:41:58
Speaker
Um, just for, you know, laughs and people to get people to read the story that was happening on the bus. So writing on the bus calms me, but you can't really, you know, I can write about the bus when I'm on the bus, but I can't write anything else. Um, or I just have to trick myself into doing it. Yeah. Well, what I like about what you're saying too, there's a, there's a context there, whether it's, you know, circling your desk and anything like that is the area where.
00:42:26
Speaker
where it happens, whether you're in the seat or you're walking around and jumping in or whatever. There are these little triggers that put us in a context where we can start to get that work, whether it's one particular playlist that you only play when you're trying to get work done.
00:42:45
Speaker
you know, whatever, you know, pick your inspiration. But if when that, when a note from that playlist goes off, it's like, okay, now it's time to write or I'm around my desk, like that's where the writing happens. Or on the bus, like I write about the like, there's a certain context there. And in a, if you can walk into that context, then it's just like, okay, the mind sort of, you just becomes unbridled within that context, I guess. Absolutely.
00:43:12
Speaker
There's a there's a poet who she I'm blanking on her name, but she wrote a bunch of love poems just on an airplane. Gonna quickly punch in here. The poet I'm referring to here her name is Tiffany Jenna. So she does a lot of traveling for speaking and she just writes poems. And so the whole collection is just like poems, love poems from, you know,
00:43:35
Speaker
in an airplane, but that's kind of a context for her. It's the front of the engines. It's riding in there. It's somewhat isolated experience. Where else are you going to go or what else are you going to do? I kind of like that idea. She gets a lot of riding done on an airplane. Absolutely. My publicist just told me that she knows that one of her clients will take the bus or not the bus, the train from Boston to New York.
00:44:05
Speaker
like two or three times a week or something crazy like that, just so she can have the time to write. I don't know how long that trip is, but like she's like working on her novel or whatever, like while she's on the train, which I think is insane. But at the same time, I can kind of see it, you know, I can kind of see it. I like riding on the bus because I do like that sensation of motion while, you know, I'm writing. It feels safe.
00:44:34
Speaker
You know, there are only a few places that I write where I feel safe to do so.
Braided Narratives and Experimentation
00:44:40
Speaker
That's at my home, like a particular corner in the Carnegie Library and on the bus.
00:44:46
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. And something I wanted to talk to you about too was just structure overall. It's something that people struggle with or it's something that people really have to think about sometimes. And you can piggyback or write to your book too about
00:45:08
Speaker
the calculus or the internal dialogue you were having or maybe the external you're having with your editor about how to structure this particular story. I'm a slave to the braid. I really am. I find it so hard to get away from it. That's just because of the way my brain works. I'll be writing something and I'll want it to be straight up linear prose and then I'll think of something else that might tie into it and then next thing you know, I have a
00:45:37
Speaker
Like the whole book that I've just, that's coming out tomorrow is a braid within a braid within a braid. I do find, you know, kind of playing with the structure to be more fun. You know, I have written things that are just like, you know, that go from A to B to C, you know, and while I like those, those stories, like I really, I'm always looking for,
00:46:07
Speaker
a way to tell the story that is different. And there's only so many things you can do. But structurally, I would love to be able to tell a story like backwards. Just go from the back to the front, put the front in the middle. I would love to be able to do something like that. But who has that kind of time to experiment like that?
00:46:35
Speaker
You know, when I'm writing something that is, that just goes from A to B to C, you know, or when I'm writing the upside down checkpoint or the upside down check mark narrative with the, you know, the climax at the top and the day new mall and all that stuff, I'm always thinking like, how can I, what can I wedge in here that will, you know, play with the structure a little bit? Um, but I think, you know, going forward, I will try to challenge myself and just write something that goes from A to B to C because there's an art in that too.
00:47:04
Speaker
Definitely, there's an art in keeping the reader's attention and just writing a traditionally written narrative. Well, a great decision that you made for this book, too, was you were sort of in search of a certain kind of love, or to have it just said to you, you know,
00:47:27
Speaker
in words that you understood. And you hadn't had the maturity yet to understand the actions of your parents, though they're not saying like, I love you, Brian. But every little action along the way was a form of them saying love without saying the words. And you actually essentially put the pen in your mom's hand for a good chunk of this. And I wonder if I wanted to ask you about that, about the decision. And, you know, if your mom really wrote it, or did you like sort of ghost write it for your mom?
00:47:58
Speaker
Well, I went to her and I said, I'm writing this thing and I interviewed her. Um, so that piece of the book is literally comes from me and my mom sitting in a room at my aunt's house. Um, and me shoving a big old microphone in her face and just asking her, you know, deeply personal questions. Um, and from her answers, um, I,
00:48:24
Speaker
tried to extrapolate what she might be feeling at the time. I was just asking her about specific chronological events in her life. And she was very open, which was very special because my mom is not that kind of person, particularly with her son, to talk about some of the more unsavory details in her life, like my mom comes from a generation that just doesn't talk about that kind of stuff, and a culture that just doesn't talk about that stuff.
00:48:53
Speaker
But, you know, she was super open to it. When I wrote it, I did not show it to her. I told her that I was doing it, you know, and I would call her back and forth and ask her to fill in blanks here and there. And she once again was very forthright and told me the stuff. So, yeah, that comes from an interview. My mom told me originally that she was not going to read this book because she was certain that there were things in it that she didn't want to know.
00:49:22
Speaker
I sent her one anyway and I thought, well, I'll send you a book and you can just put it on your shelf and say, look, my son wrote a book. But two days later she texted me and she said, in that way that Boomers text, love book. And so I immediately called her because I was like, I need more than love book. What do you got for me, woman?
00:49:49
Speaker
She said she loved it. She believes that I portrayed her young life accurately, except she had one little quibble about something that I got wrong. She told me that she was talking to my sister about it and how they were talking about how sorry they were about things that happened in my life. And I thought, that's the last thing I wanted.
00:50:13
Speaker
you did the best you could do and you did what you knew how to do and you were great. But my mother wasn't demonstrative in terms of love when I was growing up. Like I say in the book, I was looking for that TV sitcom love, that produced love that you see on television where kids or parents are constantly fawning over their children and hugging them and kissing them and giving them allowances.
00:50:42
Speaker
telling them they're special all the time. I did not get that. And when I grew up, I found out not a whole lot of people got that. And so the fact that I didn't get that left me feeling unlovable. But now that I'm older, I know that I was deeply loved, I think, both by my mother and my father, even though it may not come off that way or in the book. And it didn't come off that way to me when I was a kid.
00:51:09
Speaker
And there's a real touching moment too, where your mother who never watched a whole lot of television, and especially after your father had been laid off from the mill and that he was a looming presence in the house when he kind of lost his meaning. We were talking about meeting and purpose earlier in our conversation. Your dad had lost that for a time.
00:51:34
Speaker
And your mom has the neighborhood over to watch SNL because Luther Vandross is going to be on. And the way they ultimately come to identify him and sort of make fun of him, your mom articulated how she felt about him. And it rung right, it fell on your ears in a way. It's just as struggling as a young gay man.
00:51:57
Speaker
And, you know, hearing her describe Vandross indirectly described you. And that was that was just such a I just felt for you in that moment. Yeah, you know, that it's one of the you know, it's one of those big moments in your life that you remember, but nobody else does. You know, I had asked my mom about that and she was like, I totally don't remember. She still likes Luther Vandross, by the way, but
00:52:23
Speaker
She was like, I totally don't remember that. Obviously, she didn't mean to hurt me in that. But I do remember in that moment thinking, that was kind of the last straw for me in thinking that my parents loved me. So my mother had kind of been my advocate for a long time growing up. But in that moment, I remember thinking, well, shit.
00:52:53
Speaker
once she finds out like that's going to be it for me, like I'm not going to have parents anymore. And again, obviously she didn't mean that, but I just remember that evening so well because there was so much female energy in the room, so much women's energy in the room and the excitement around we're going to see what a man is supposed to be. That's what
00:53:21
Speaker
I felt all of the women in the room loved Luther Vandross's voice. They couldn't wait to lay eyes on the man himself. And when they did, something quite different happened. I wound up feeling more terrible about myself in the aftermath.
Improved Family Relations Through Writing
00:53:37
Speaker
In what way did writing this book change or maybe not change the relationship you've had with your mother and your siblings?
00:53:47
Speaker
You know, my brother's the jury's still out. He hasn't read it. I don't know that he will read it. But you know, we're fine. My brother and I are very, very different. You know, he has like 80 kids. Seriously, like 80 of them. Like it's crazy. You know, he has a wife and 170 kids. He's very busy. You know, this book might not be his particular kind of fare. My sister's reading it now.
00:54:14
Speaker
Um, she says that she loves it. Um, and we've talked about a few things that happened in it. Um, you know, she, we had a great conversation the other day where she was telling me something that she remembers from that time, um, that really affected her. And I completely don't remember it like at all. Um, so I love that, you know, I love that there are these, just these little moments that are kind of just for you that other people, you know, don't remember. But as far as my mom is concerned, you know, all I wanted her to be
00:54:44
Speaker
throughout my whole life was proud of me. And although she was proud of me, I didn't feel it because that wasn't something that she said that wasn't like her love language, as they say. But the other day she said, I'm very proud of you. I love this book. We've had more intimate conversations about my father where she's told me more things about him and his life and just my family in general. So I think that
00:55:14
Speaker
this book that I was afraid to put into the world, if it has done one thing, it's really improved my relationship with my mom. And yeah, it was a good thing. And if nobody else likes it, she liked it, and that's good.
00:55:31
Speaker
Yeah, and that's your immediate family. And I love, too, how you talk about the family that you made for yourself, especially when you got to Pittsburgh. So what was that experience like for you to carve out your own path and find your own people somewhere away from Northeastern Ohio? What was it like? I immediately found, I think, the coolest people in the city at the time.
00:56:00
Speaker
queer, partying. We were young, and I had never met people like that before. I had never met people who openly said that they were atheists, and I had never met people who had really sex-positive attitudes toward all kinds of things. They did drugs, and they drank martinis, and they went to
00:56:26
Speaker
to the ballet and it was just great and I felt cool for the first time. I interviewed a lot of them for the book as well and the big moments, they don't remember them either, possibly because we were all drinking all the time, but it was great to feel accepted, my weird self accepted.
00:56:51
Speaker
At the same time, I was lying to them the whole time too about who I was and where I was from and my background. They didn't really get a chance to know me either and that was fine by me because I felt like the real me was unlovable and if they found out that they would reject me.
00:57:14
Speaker
Having those relationships and having that kind of fun that you do when you're in your 20s, you can't replace that. You probably got some good stories. Everybody does, but it felt good to be accepted even though the persona that I was putting out there wasn't totally me.
00:57:34
Speaker
I've talked to many of them too and they were like, we just liked you. We didn't like any of the weird shit you told us. We just liked you as a person and that's why we were your friend and that felt good too.
00:57:46
Speaker
And you end the book by following in Baldwin's footsteps, by going to France and essentially writing from the sharp jagged rocks of the southern French beach.
A Letter to Younger Self in France
00:58:01
Speaker
And I was wondering, why was it important for you to sort of end the book with basically a letter to Antoine from the shores of Europe?
00:58:16
Speaker
When I went there, it was, first of all, a big thing for me. I'm a very anxious person. I am always looking at the worst case scenario. And I've decided I've got to do something. I've got to get out of this. I didn't know what to expect, but I've got to at least try to do something. So I thought, I really like James Baldwin, and this is where he's from, and I'm going to go there.
00:58:45
Speaker
wild hair, you know, decision. And when I got there, I couldn't believe like how I felt, you know. And I say in the book, you know, I'm sure there's racism in France, but it ain't nothing like American racism. You know, I felt free. I felt unencumbered by this idea of race. I felt, you know, I can't say it strongly enough, I felt free.
00:59:12
Speaker
Like I had been carrying a weight around my whole life that somebody, you know, took off, took off me, you know, when I got to the airport. Um, and I just spent the days and I went to Paris as well. And I went to St. Paul de Gaulle. And that letter was really written there, you know, uh, or a draft of it was written there. And I thought, you know, I would love to be able to tell my younger self that this exists, you know, that.
00:59:41
Speaker
the world that he was living in is not the end of the world. That's not everything. There's so much more in terms of just space on the planet and space to be whoever you are. And so that was the idea behind writing that letter. It's really, of course, to Brian. But I thought Tuan should know too.
01:00:11
Speaker
And so that's where that came from. But I don't know if you've ever been to Paris, but it's beautiful. And I just felt like I've never seen anything like this before in my life. And St. Paul de Vence, I was like, I've never seen anything like this before in my life. And I walked around by myself. I was able to prove to myself that I can do things. I don't have to be encumbered by all these constraints that people keep trying to put on me.
01:00:38
Speaker
Right. And speaking of the just encumbered nature of things, that one chapter you wrote called Gravel, when this racist asshole with his presumably two young daughters in the car just kind of rolls up on you there. And then another time when you're in the tunnel walking home from the bar and cars are just buzzing by, you just get a sense of
01:01:08
Speaker
the suffocating nature of what it must be like to be in this country. And that crackling of the gravel to me was just such a haunting sound to hear from you. Yeah. I mean, when you're born into it, it becomes what you think life is. When you're born into it and your parents are telling you, you have to be careful around white people. You experience racism.
01:01:35
Speaker
You either do one of two things. I think you become really defiant or you learn to try to shrink yourself or just know that there's so many limitations for your life. And I feel like when I got to
01:01:54
Speaker
Paris, like I could just, I just took this deep breath. Like, I don't know what it was. There was just a different feeling in the air. There's a different feeling walking down the street. There's a different feeling going into shops and, and just being, just being, you know, um, that I definitely felt. And I definitely felt like I connected with James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, the American, African Americans who left this country and decided to take up residence.
01:02:22
Speaker
in France and just pretty much never look back. I got it. I definitely got it. More recently, I believe Antoni C. Coates spent a few years in Paris. Oh, really? I think so. I think he's back now. I think when Trump was elected, he realized as a hardcore journalist, too, he's like the fight is back in the States. But he spent a considerable amount of time in Paris, I believe. Yeah. I think that if I ever have children,
01:02:51
Speaker
Like if I ever have the means, like I would take them there. I would move there. That would be the only thing. I mean, my family and obviously my life is here, but I think if I ever had children, I wouldn't want them to grow up experiencing American racism. I would want them to be free of that. They could come back if they want to, but I think they would be different people. I think they would be better prepared to deal with the kind of racism America dishes out.
01:03:18
Speaker
And Brian, I want to be mindful of your time. So as we bring this airliner down for a landing, I want to just ask you. I know, right? That was my airplane noise. Exactly. That's nice. Usually when I bring this down, it's far more turbulent. That was very relaxing.
01:03:38
Speaker
But I'd love to get a recommendation from you for the listeners. I like to preface people. It could be anything from a book to a pair of socks or a brand of coffee. It's whatever you want and whatever is on your mind and what you might recommend to anyone out there. Oh my gosh. I knew this question was coming and I didn't think about it. I guess if you're in Pittsburgh, I would recommend Pauline's Caribbean Food on the North Side. This is a national show, right? Yes.
01:04:07
Speaker
Damn. Love death and robots. That's all I got. That's all I got. It's such a good, it's such a good little escape from reality. Just watching a bunch of different times. I don't know. I can't think of anything. What have I done lately? That's really been super cool. Write a book. That's my recommendation.
01:04:27
Speaker
Right. You know, I'm in agreement with you. I think everyone should write a memoir. Not everyone should publish one, but everyone should write one. Everybody should write a memoir. And I think also, you know, and this sounds really strange, I think everybody should go to rehab. I learned more about just life and depression and anxiety and what I had been doing to deal with it in rehab than I learned anywhere else. It wasn't just about like the drugs and alcohol and get like
01:04:57
Speaker
You get real coping mechanisms, I think, for life. So yeah, watch Love, Death and Robots, go to Pauline's Caribbean Food, write a memoir, and then go to rehab. I love it. Not necessarily in that order. You can take them in any order you want. Fantastic. Well, Brian, I love it. Thank you for the book, and thank you so much for coming on the podcast The Talk Shop. It was great talking to you. Thank you very much, Brendan. You have a great day. I appreciate it.
01:05:34
Speaker
I mean, how great was that? I mean, before we had turned the mics on, he was just like, I haven't said a word all day. You're getting me, you're getting my first words of the day. And I was like, hell yeah.
01:05:50
Speaker
We got good words. And it was on Monday morning when we recorded too. And I got the first words from Brian Broome on a Monday the day before his book published. I mean, come on. Come on. Brian Broome is at Bbrom on Instagram. BrianBroom.com. This is his website. The book has punched me up to the gods.
01:06:13
Speaker
carve out a place for this sucker on your bookshelf. It won't disappoint. It's a book you're gonna want to revisit. And a big thanks to West Virginia Wesleyan's MFA program for making this show possible. Head over to nfa.wvwc.edu to see if what they are offering is right for you. Check it out.
01:06:38
Speaker
Also, Hippo Camp 2021 is happening. If you want to go to the best writers conference, full stop, check out what Donna Talarico has built and join us in Lancaster, PA, August 13th to 15th. You got it? So, I've been decluttering a lot of stuff, donating books, raffling books, and I'm up against it. Like, I don't own that much to begin with and don't have too much clutter.
01:07:05
Speaker
My wife would argue, but that's just because I have a bad habit of not putting things away. And as a result, things accrete. For two people, our house is massive. So, you know, pretty much the smallest house we could buy a few years ago. Anyway, my point is, as I get rid of the physical clutter, I'm finding that it's not physical clutter at all that's really bugging me.
01:07:29
Speaker
It's mental clutter. It's trying to be all these things, juggle myriad projects, hobbies, trying to stay fit, eat right, drink beer, hike, camp, draw, write, podcast, day job, cook, clean, meditate. Gotta always be self-improving and on and on. And there's no amount of physical clutter that can get rid of that will appease this constant sense of overwhelm. Something's gotta give.
01:07:59
Speaker
I have several extenuating progress projects that need to be finished. And when they're done, I can't backfill that space with more. Not yet. Like, like I want to watch a movie without feeling like I should be reading or writing or podcasting or hustling for better clients.
01:08:18
Speaker
I like to read a novel or a biography for a non-podcast related experience. These are all first world problems, I get that, and it oozes with privilege. But it keeps me from being whole and wholly present. It's the whole spinning plates and each pole with a plate is wobbling like nobody's business to the point where the audience can really sense that they're gonna come crashing down to the ground at any minute and shatter.
01:08:48
Speaker
And isn't that what they're hoping for? Will he break? I was telling my wife how much I'd love to build wooden boxes with just hand tools, no power tools, to store my journals and my notebooks, or to even make gifts. I mean, what's cooler than like a handmade box, right?
01:09:07
Speaker
She has looked at me. I was like, okay, I needed to say it out loud. Okay. I know I can't do it. I know I don't have the time to do it. But I just want to make things with my hands. She was like, you have lots of paper and pencils. Why don't you just draw? You already have the stuff. I said, you're right. I won't make boxes. Then she said, you'll just give up when making boxes becomes too hard. And I was like, there's no need to twist the knife.
01:09:37
Speaker
I just needed to say it out loud because the only other time to get to talk is into this microphone. And then I got out my sketch pad and started drawing pictures of grizzly bears paddling canoes. Anyway. Do me this solid, alright? Stay cool, CNFers. Stay cool forever. See ya!