Dani Shapiro, SIGNAL FIRES: A Novel
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[0:58]Today's episode is with best-selling author Danny Shapiro
[1:01]Danny has been one of my favorite authors of all time since I read her memoir Slow Motion decades ago
[1:07]And have been following her career ever since this was a recording of the live striker center event
[1:14]We did together for 500 plus people in real time and I hope you enjoy it
[1:19]Danny Shapiro is the author of 11 books and the hosting creator of the hit podcast family secrets
[1:24]Her most recent novel signal fires was named a best book of 2022 by Time magazine Washington Post Amazon and others
[1:32]And it is a national bestseller
[1:35]Her most recent memoir inheritance was an instant New York Times bestseller and named a best book of 2019 by L
[1:42]Vanity Fair wired and real simple
[1:45]Danny's work has been published in 14 languages and she's currently developing signal fires for its television adaptation
[1:52]Danny's book on the process and craft of writing still writing is being reissued on the occasion of its 10th anniversary
[1:58]In 2023
[2:00]She occasionally teaches workshops and retreats and is the co-founder of the siren land writer's conference in positano
[2:06]Italy enjoy
[2:08]Danny how are you
[2:10]How are you?
[2:11]I'm great. This is so fun
[2:13]As you know, you have been like my favorite author forever and ever and I should have filled out
[2:18]I have all your original copies of like so much and all the other ones behind me
[2:22]But anyway, it's so nice to be talking to you again today. That's the lifetime fan
[2:28]Most of us in our studies
[2:32]Signal fires. Oh my gosh. So so beautiful as you saw. I just recommended that morning America
[2:38]But it didn't do that. It's already just so
[2:41]You know everybody who's read it is like oh my gosh. Have you read signal fires?
[2:44]It's my it's the best book I've read and so long. It's such a great novel and I totally agree. It's just
[2:49]Wonderful, so and I didn't realize because originally I had the galley
[2:53]But that on the hardcover you even have this little fingerprint and cut out of the tree situation here as I know
[3:00]Such a beautiful detail. I mean every
[3:03]Can off my publisher did such a gorgeous job with with this book and
[3:07]just
[3:08]What it what it what it looks like is is I think what it feels like or at least that's what I hope because
[3:14]In my computer when I was writing it and it didn't have a title yet
[3:17]My title for it actually still is in my in my files magic novel
[3:22]Just magic novel. I didn't have a title until I finished it and I think that design really captures some of that
[3:28]Totally Danny for those who have not read signal fires yet. Would you mind giving the quick synopsis?
[3:35]Sure, so the way that I think of signal fires is that it revolves around this constellation of characters
[3:42]There are seven main characters that are comprised of two families the wilts and the shankmans and
[3:49]The wilts and the shankmans live in a fictional town called Avalon
[3:53]That is something like if Dob's ferry met west port like early west port
[3:59]That's how I think of Avalon the the wilts first moved there in 1970 and the shankmans don't move there until just before
[4:07]New years of
[4:09]1999 but these families end up very powerfully
[4:14]Connected to each other not simply because they live on the same street division street
[4:21]But because there are these kind of complex connections between them
[4:26]Over the span of their lifetime
[4:28]So the novel takes place over the course of 50 years, but it's not chronological it moves in and around time and
[4:36]I think that the beating heart of the book for me is a young boy
[4:41]He's young a young boy when we meet him. He's 11 named Waldo shankman
[4:46]Who really is the one who sees everything and connects everything
[4:50]both in this neighborhood and in terms of the history of what happened in on the street in this town
[4:57]A tragic accident does start the book out
[5:00]But I'm really trying to not describe it that way because the book is not about
[5:05]A tragic accident. It's about the aftermath and the thing about I mean all of life is an aftermath in a way and
[5:13]I was really interested in exploring
[5:16]What these characters how the impact of both having had something really
[5:21]Difficult happen and then the choice to keep that a secret
[5:26]How that was going to impact them over the course of decades and decades in their lives
[5:32]I feel like the book has an accident, but it's about the meaning of life and the meaning of family
[5:39]It's about like everything everything from
[5:42]The the trees the matter around us to the stars above to the people you love. I mean, it is the most
[5:49]You know, it's about everything in a way, but the totality everything you have to go really specific
[5:54]So I feel like that's what you you did as a point of reference in a way
[5:59]Yeah, I mean, I think I started the book a long time ago
[6:04]and sort of lost my way which we can talk about
[6:07]if that's of interest
[6:09]But the thing for me is that when I returned to it, which is not something I ever thought I was going to do
[6:15]I never thought I was going to return to that manuscript. I thought I just lost it
[6:19]It was in the early days of the pandemic and
[6:22]one of the
[6:24]Many things swirling around my head and my heart in those early days of the pandemic
[6:32]I think this is true for so many of us
[6:34]was the
[6:35]Understand the deep understanding of how connected we all are the deep understanding of
[6:40]Just the interdependence and interconnectivity of you know
[6:44]What it is to be a human being on the planet and I wanted
[6:48]You know, I mean the book was already about that
[6:50]But it sort of went into warp speed of of really being about the ways in which we rely on one another
[6:58]both
[6:59]consciously and
[7:01]Sometimes without ever knowing why and I was
[7:04]I was so interested in exploring that in the ways that our lives can glance up against each other with perfect strangers
[7:12]I mean and and and yet
[7:15]Why sometimes do we meet someone and think I know you you are so familiar to me
[7:20]And that just that that sense of of of deep and powerful connection and I wanted I wanted to explore that
[7:26]So there are people who are connected to each other in this book because they are
[7:30]Family because they have grown up together because they're related to each other
[7:33]But there are also people who are connected in much more mysterious ways that become clear over the course of the book of it
[7:40]I feel like this is your whole soulful spiritual thing at play
[7:44]Yes, I and when I saw you
[7:46]McNally Jackson with amir toes and you talked about how you had it in the drawer
[7:50]And you were you found it and said well, what's what's this kid up to?
[7:54]What would he be up to now if we fast-forwarded him in time to today?
[7:58]So yes, talk about that. I found that fascinating
[8:01]Well, I loved that realization because don't we all want to do that in some way?
[8:06]I mean, I know I do I would just like a glimpse
[8:08]Can I just see what?
[8:10]You know when I first started signal fires magic novel my son was
[8:16]Around Waldo's age. He was he was 10 11 years old and and I could imagine
[8:25]Little sort of glimmers of who he might become. I mean Waldo now my son
[8:32]But I was really I was I was very focused on his life as an 11-year-old boy
[8:37]I was just just in love with this character and
[8:42]When I sort of lost my way in those pages
[8:45]Those initial pages it was because I was telling the story backward in time and I was very committed to that structure
[8:51]And the structure wasn't working, but I was just hell bent on making it work and having it conform to my will and it doesn't work that way when you're writing a novel and
[9:02]So when I returned to it and I reread those pages and I had the thought
[9:07]Now it's 2020 who would that 11-year-old boy be oh he'd be a college student probably
[9:14]He he was a special brilliant child, you know if he if he wasn't sort of broken by life
[9:20]He would end up being this kind of really remarkable young adult
[9:23]Which is of which is what I wanted for him and what happened?
[9:27]And this would be the beginning of the pandemic where would he be would he be back at home in his childhood
[9:32]Room what would have happened to his parents another character in in the novel his name CEO Willf and he is a chef and
[9:41]When we meet him in
[9:44]In 1999 and in 2010 in sections that I had already written
[9:49]He is actually becoming a well-known chef was a tiny little jam of a restaurant in Brooklyn and I thought well who would CEO be in 2020
[9:59]Right in the first
[10:00]wave of COVID hitting New York City. What would he be doing? I mean, food is love for him.
[10:05]How would he be navigating the pandemic? And so it just really opened up in my mind and I thought
[10:13]I can, instead of telling this story in a linear way and instead of telling the story backward,
[10:18]which didn't work, I can really unplug time, you know, up end time and tell the story in all
[10:26]these different layers of time with these seven characters and these key moments in our lives.
[10:34]I mean, not every year, not every day, not every month, not even every decade is necessarily
[10:41]the most profound, but we know the moments that are. And I wanted to explore those moments,
[10:47]but in a, as you said, to be in a very detailed, specific, you know, very grounded way,
[10:54]for each of, for each of the characters. So it's easy to say that theoretically. I'm going to play
[10:59]with time. I'm going to mix it up, but you have so many pages of stories and scenes and material
[11:04]and characters. How did you do that? Did you print it out and put it on the floor and rearrange?
[11:09]Did you just like cut and paste? Like how did you execute that vision?
[11:13]It's a great question. I mean, I think in the 15 years between when I started this novel and when I
[11:19]I returned to it, I learned a lot in my nonfiction writing in my memoir writing about how to
[11:28]tell a story in a more kaleidoscopic way. I mean, my memoir Hourglass begins and ends in the same
[11:36]place. I mean, I was very fond of saying when that book came out, there is no plot.
[11:41]My publisher wasn't so happy with me, probably, but there wasn't a plot in the traditional sense
[11:46]of is plot what keeps us turning the pages. In some books, yes, in mysteries, yes, I have become
[11:54]increasingly interested, both as a writer and a reader, over these years, in the way that we
[12:00]experience time. And, you know, we're always bringing our pasts along with us. We are always
[12:08]every age we've ever been in some way. And a smell or a sight or a sound or a moment or an event
[12:17]can be like a portal to, you know, like a game of shoots and ladders is the way that I always
[12:25]think of it as like you're kind of moving along, moving along, moving along and oh, well, actually
[12:30]you're back to square one or you're back to that memory or that moment. Our memories are not
[12:36]chronological. And when we think about our future, we don't know what will happen, but we also
[12:44]have fantasies or dreams or fears or anxieties. All of that is always at play. So we're
[12:51]kind of carrying our futures and our pasts alongside us all the time. And I wanted to create that
[12:57]on the page. So no, I did not cut in paste. I did not spread it all over my office floor, although
[13:04]in the case of others of my books, I've much more had to identify the pattern.
[13:11]In this case, and it was really just this really profound experience, those 100 pages that I had
[13:17]written 15 years ago, they remained intact. They were like in a time capsule, they were like an
[13:22]insect trapped in amber. They already existed really as they were. And when I went back into the book
[13:32]with the knowledge of I'm going to add 2020 to this mix, suddenly I realized that the events that
[13:38]begin to take place on this one night in 2010, well, we can come back to that. We can move forward,
[13:44]we can move backward. And as long as the reader is with me, as long as I've created the way that
[13:52]I think of them is not a particularly literary term, but it's like lily pads, you know, like we'll jump
[13:59]from one lily pad to another, if the author has given us the faith and the confidence and the trust
[14:07]that she knows what she's doing and is going to be able to sort of guide as a story,
[14:12]you know, and create the story. So when I returned to the book, I actually wrote what is now
[14:18]the very, very opening that those few pages of the accident of the tragedy that happens that
[14:27]takes place on a night in 1985. I wrote them, but they had been like somebody recently
[14:34]wrote something online about that opening page and very admiringly, which was lovely,
[14:40]and like asked me how long it took or something like that. And I said, 15 years,
[14:47]that opening sentence took me 15 years to write. I mean, it was sort of building in me somewhere,
[14:52]even though I never thought I would return to it. So that's how really it just from then on,
[14:59]I understood the way that I wanted time to move and I wanted these characters to be
[15:07]carrying along their pasts and also inhabiting their futures as we were reading about them
[15:13]in whatever slice of life they were in. I remember taking a writing class at one point
[15:18]and it was like, we were all explaining things so much. And I remember the teacher saying something
[15:22]like, don't underestimate the reader. The reader can pick things up so quickly and figure things
[15:27]out. And I feel like you've given so much respect to the reader here to be like, I'm in it,
[15:32]I get it. And I can follow you wherever you go. But it's really masterful to pull it off. I mean,
[15:37]it might sound simple, but it is not. So anyway, that was great. And interestingly, you're talking
[15:44]about memory, right? And all of how our past experiences build into who we are at a certain time
[15:50]and going down these rabbit holes, if you will. But yet, Mimi is struggling so much with
[15:56]even being in the here now as her memory is all slip. And so you have to inhabit her character
[16:03]and try to portray a world where everything is like the ultimate time mashup is sort of how it is
[16:09]at the end. Talk about writing that. Yeah, there were two particular points of view that I was
[16:17]sort of on the edge of my seat as I was writing them because I thought, can I, can I do this?
[16:22]Is it doable? And is it doable by me? And one of them was Mimi. Mimi will is the mother of this
[16:32]family, the Wilson. And when we first meet her, well, when we first meet her, she's younger,
[16:39]but when we meet her again, we really sort of enter her consciousness. She's in the throes of Alzheimer's.
[16:45]And, you know, I knew something about that. I had had a front row seat to my beloved mother-in-law's
[16:54]decline. And I think, I mean, I certainly was never sitting with her and thinking I would
[17:00]ever write a character like that. It just, I never thought about it. But when Mimi, when Mimi's
[17:06]mind started slipping away, one of the things I thought about was that she, she no longer
[17:15]recognizes people. And she doesn't really know where she is. She's kind of unstuck in time herself.
[17:22]But she does know who she loves. She, she, she experiences love. She might not be able to recognize
[17:33]her grandchild or, or her, her, her, her child. But she knows that this is someone that she loves.
[17:40]And in a way, what she's trying to do is get home to them. And so with that understanding and also
[17:47]the unpinning of time, so that she is really at every age she's ever been in her mind.
[17:55]And, you know, the ways in which, and I don't, I mean, I don't know that that's what it's like,
[18:00]but I imagine that that might be what it's like. And, you know, so much of writing a novel is
[18:08]an act of the, the empathic imagination or compassion. And one thing that really felt new for me
[18:17]in signal fires is that I had like endless stores of compassion for all of my characters. And in
[18:27]other fiction of mine, there's tended to be, I mean, there were difficult characters in signal
[18:32]fires, but somehow the narrative voice allows for us to really understand these people and to
[18:40]feel for them. And I think I always, I've always felt for all of my characters, but I'm not sure
[18:47]I had quite those stores of empathy. It's as if the narrative voice of, of the, of the novel itself
[18:56]is like a maternal voice that's holding all of these characters can't, can't intervene, can't
[19:03]fix things, can't make their lives perfect. Sometimes stands back and goes, oh no, I wish,
[19:08]I wish you wouldn't do that, but still has such love for them. So I think that that's how I
[19:13]approached Mimi in that way. And then the, the other character where I was really on the edge
[19:18]of my seat writing was there's a scene, and I don't want to give too much away, but there's a scene
[19:22]where I'm basically writing in a, in a newborns point of view for just a couple of pages. It
[19:28]couldn't go on very long. But I thought, can I do this? I mean, accessing, it's exciting for me
[19:34]as, as, as a writer to access something that is both universal, familiar, and that isn't
[19:43]something that I have direct, conscious experience of. It's almost like a maple, you remember
[19:50]in like, had all those things go on the different things. And then by the end of it, you have a wrapped
[19:56]pole, if you will, that's beautiful. And I feel like it's
[20:00]that's the way you threaded all the things.
[20:01]I mean, even a character like Shankman
[20:03]who is not particularly a savory character, right?
[20:06]And it took a lot to sort of get you to come.
[20:09]I feel like finally at the end,
[20:11]we sort of can empathize a lot more
[20:13]and there's almost this like sort of sadness
[20:15]and you know, I don't know, almost not nostalgia,
[20:20]but it's like this melancholy feeling
[20:22]we have towards him, you know,
[20:24]like opportunities lost, right?
[20:25]Like what did he miss out on?
[20:27]So it's even a character like that
[20:30]whose behavior at sometimes is not the best
[20:33]can be redeemed in the overall sort of beautiful end product.
[20:38]That was a ramble, but go with me.
[20:41]No, no, I'm with you.
[20:42]I, I, I, Shankman for me was the character
[20:45]where I'd be sitting back and shaking my head,
[20:47]going, oh, Shankman, oh, Shankman, you know,
[20:49]get out of your own way, do better,
[20:52]you're better than this, you can do better than this,
[20:54]but he couldn't.
[20:55]And to me, he's actually a pretty tragic character
[20:58]because, you know, he's, he's, it's not a spoiler to say,
[21:03]basically he's not a good dad.
[21:05]And he's not a good dad paradoxically
[21:09]because he loves his son
[21:13]and he wants the best for his son,
[21:16]but his idea of what's the best
[21:19]and his own insecurities
[21:21]don't allow him to meet his son where he is.
[21:27]And also, his son Waldo is a very special boy.
[21:32]And, you know, specialness is not always rewarded
[21:36]in middle school.
[21:38]And, you know, who would really want to go back
[21:41]to middle school given the opportunity?
[21:43]I mean, I know I wouldn't.
[21:45]And that's actually what the middle school
[21:47]head of my kid's school.
[21:49]We had a fifth grade, like pre fifth grade parents seminar
[21:52]and he had all of us raise our hands and say,
[21:54]okay, who would actually go back to middle school right now
[21:57]and like, no one raised there.
[21:58]A couple of people raised there.
[21:59]Yeah, I did that in a, in a, in a, in front of a big audience
[22:04]at the Miami Book Fair a couple of weeks ago
[22:07]and I asked the same question.
[22:10]I was interviewing Paulina Porcova
[22:12]and she was talking about the misery of being six feet tall
[22:16]in middle school.
[22:18]And I asked, you know, like a couple hundred people,
[22:21]how many of you would go back in one person
[22:23]in the front row, raised her hand and that was it out of.
[22:26]So, so Waldo is, you know,
[22:31]Shankman wants Waldo to have an easy life
[22:34]and Shankman's idea of what that would look like
[22:37]is be quote unquote normal,
[22:39]do quote unquote normal things.
[22:41]You know, you know, Waldo wants to stare at the cosmos
[22:45]and Shankman wants him to play a little league.
[22:47]It's like that.
[22:48]And he's not able to see the uniqueness
[22:52]and the brilliance of his son.
[22:54]And so he really, really messes up and,
[22:57]but the thing is, and the thing that makes him tragic
[23:00]is he knows he's messing up.
[23:02]He knows he's buying books on anger management.
[23:06]He's, he's trying, he knows his wife Alice is unhappy
[23:11]and disappointed in him and drinking too much Chardonnay
[23:14]and he knows and yet he can't get out of his own way.
[23:18]And so, and in the end, he really does feel like
[23:23]he messed up the one thing, the one thing,
[23:26]I think we can all agree we most don't want to mess up
[23:29]if we're parents, which is he wasn't a good dad.
[23:33]And so that's tragic.
[23:34]But I had, I had such, I did have such compassion for him
[23:38]because he just, it's like he came from someone
[23:41]who was like that, that who came from someone
[23:43]who was like that and he couldn't break the cycle.
[23:46]I mean, I think it represents that we all have something
[23:50]about ourselves that we wish we didn't have.
[23:53]And he is like the representative of that,
[23:55]that you know you'd like this little piece of you to change
[23:58]but sometimes it's just part of the package,
[24:01]like no matter what you do.
[24:02]So I don't know, I feel like he represents something
[24:04]like that as well.
[24:05]I also, I'm just, I also, I really love the character of Sarah
[24:09]Will, who is also struggling.
[24:11]I mean, they're all struggling in their own ways
[24:13]with so many different things and identity.
[24:15]And I mean, that's why it's so interesting.
[24:16]But could I just wanted to read this paragraph
[24:19]from her point of view if that's okay.
[24:20]She's describing a New Year's Eve in 19 party like it's 1999.
[24:24]You said, it's a cozy domestic scene, the pretty table,
[24:27]the husband back from the market,
[24:29]the twins, their finger stained pink and blue,
[24:32]she observes it from a few angles,
[24:33]a wide shot, a slow pan.
[24:35]It is she herself, Sarah Will, who is missing.
[24:39]She's here, sure.
[24:40]But some essential part of her is not fully present.
[24:43]This has been true of her for so long
[24:44]that she hardly even notices anymore.
[24:47]And certainly no one else would notice.
[24:48]She looks the part, she knows that.
[24:50]She has always looked the part.
[24:52]She is tiny, delicate, very pretty.
[24:54]She thinks this would zero vanity, it's just a fact.
[24:57]She inherited her mother's striking coloring,
[24:59]eyes that change with the light,
[25:00]sometimes greens, sometimes amber,
[25:02]a long tangle of dark curls, a heart-shaped face,
[25:06]and innate composure.
[25:07]It all adds up the degree from the right school,
[25:10]the string of jobs, each more excellent than the last.
[25:13]No one would know that she is only ever
[25:15]a few steps away from the abyss.
[25:17]I love that.
[25:18]Thanks for reading that.
[25:20]I haven't heard that read aloud.
[25:22]I mean, and yeah, that's really, that's Sarah.
[25:27]And it's so many of us.
[25:29]I mean, there's pieces in that in so many women,
[25:32]I know myself included.
[25:34]I mean, I think there's the old added right what you know.
[25:39]This is not an autobiographical novel,
[25:42]but I also think it's not a novel.
[25:44]I could have written any sooner in my life,
[25:46]even though I tried, because there's that feeling
[25:50]of understanding that people's shiny exteriors
[25:55]often don't tell the whole story.
[25:56]In fact, never tell the whole story ever.
[25:58]I think we could probably just say that.
[26:01]And one of the things that literature gets to do
[26:04]in a very direct way is access the interior life
[26:09]in that way is access the, you know,
[26:13]we can see what those party guests might see
[26:16]when they look at Sarah Willff,
[26:18]and we can also have direct access to her own monologue,
[26:22]the things going on in her mind that are private
[26:27]and secret only to her.
[26:30]I thought it was really a beautiful passage,
[26:33]because, you know, you're right.
[26:35]We never know what's going on.
[26:37]And also that that time of life is so hard,
[26:39]the juggling and how much is going on.
[26:42]And it's not always the most personally rewarding
[26:45]when you're a caretaker nonstop,
[26:46]but there are so many caretakers in your book
[26:48]who deal with it in different ways too.
[26:50]I mean, Benjamin Wolf with Mimi is also,
[26:53]also becomes a huge caretaker.
[26:55]And he has a very different approach.
[26:57]Can I, I'm just going to read one more paragraph
[26:59]and then I promise I've done.
[27:00]So this is from Benjamin's point of view a little bit later.
[27:02]And he says, his bride, his wife, his life,
[27:05]she slipped away slowly.
[27:06]Parts of Mimi remain present for so long
[27:09]that it had been possible to have minutes,
[27:10]even hours of pleasure together.
[27:12]Her smell, fresh milky, a hint of the oil,
[27:15]the immortal flower.
[27:16]She spread over her face each morning.
[27:18]She had always hummed while cooking, gardening,
[27:20]showering, walking.
[27:21]And she still hummed, hummed.
[27:22]Though now the tunes had changed.
[27:24]It took Ben a while to realize what was different.
[27:26]And when he did it was with a sharp bang,
[27:28]these were now childhood melodies.
[27:30]She was creaming backward in time.
[27:32]Mimi nestled her head into his shoulder
[27:34]whenever he visited her.
[27:36]She spread her crocheted blanket across their laps
[27:38]as they sat on a sofa in the vast living room
[27:41]of Avalon Hills, tucked them in
[27:42]as if they were companions on a long ski lift ride,
[27:46]keeping warm, dangling high above the mountains.
[27:49]Oh, so beautiful, so beautiful.
[27:54]It's trying to keep hold of her, not let her fall.
[27:58]Oh, it's just, I know all these different ways
[28:01]that they love and take care for other people
[28:04]and despite what's going on with them.
[28:08]Thank you for, I love hearing that.
[28:10]I mean, I think, to go back to the whole idea of time
[28:15]and the way that, you know, sort of time marched on
[28:20]at those 15 years when those characters were basically
[28:25]asleep in the drawer, waiting for me to find them again.
[28:28]And in those years, and this was already a preoccupation
[28:32]of mine, I was thinking about the way when we're beginning
[28:36]our families and the choices that we make
[28:39]to move to a particular neighborhood,
[28:41]to send our kids to a particular school,
[28:44]to live in a particular district,
[28:47]in a particular town, to live in the cities,
[28:48]live in the suburbs, to live in the country
[28:51]that we are entering into a world with other people,
[28:56]the parents, you know, the parents that you're just described
[29:00]in the fifth grade, you know, sort of opening,
[29:02]you know, sort of school opening.
[29:04]The communities that were in, you know,
[29:07]the synagogues, the, you know, the community centers,
[29:11]the wise, the, and just the neighborhoods themselves.
[29:15]And often we don't really necessarily have that much
[29:18]in common with the people that we've basically moved
[29:22]to this place at the same time as had kids
[29:25]around the same ages.
[29:27]And yet it's just this extraordinarily potent,
[29:33]vivid chapter in a life.
[29:37]It's such a potent and vivid chapter
[29:40]that we, when we're in it, we don't have a sense
[29:45]that it's a chapter, you know,
[29:48]that there were all these chapters before.
[29:50]And there will be chapters, you know,
[29:53]God willing, after.
[29:55]And that those chapters actually add up to more time
[29:58]and more life.
[30:00]and the X number of years of active parenting,
[30:05]child rearing, being in the absolute thick of that.
[30:10]What's the expression that the days are long
[30:13]and the years are short?
[30:14]So the days are long, day after day after day,
[30:18]and it can feel like this is all of life.
[30:23]And so with Ben and Mimi, I was really interested
[30:29]in what their lives were like
[30:32]after their kids were grown,
[30:35]after their kids moved to far-flung parts of the world.
[30:40]And they remained in Avalon for a variety of reasons.
[30:44]Ben's a doctor there, he worked at the hospital.
[30:47]Mostly they were really just entrenched.
[30:49]They couldn't imagine a life somewhere else.
[30:51]And so they stay in their house on this street
[30:55]while the other houses turn over.
[30:57]And the shankman's move in and the neighborhood changes.
[31:01]And, you know, fancier cars start replacing older cars
[31:06]and Jim editions get built and kids don't play
[31:09]in the streets anymore.
[31:10]They get carted around by nannies
[31:12]or their parents to their various lessons.
[31:15]And there's just the sense that there is this passage of time.
[31:19]And this place and the trees and the stars are unchanged,
[31:25]but the humanity that's moving in and out of this place
[31:29]is ever evolving.
[31:30]And so that passage that you read of Ben and Mimi,
[31:34]on their metaphorical ski lift is that.
[31:41]I mean, they are living a much later chapter in their lives.
[31:47]And yet they're still in the place
[31:51]where they were young parents,
[31:52]where they first moved in as hopeful, you know,
[31:57]just starting out, you know,
[31:58]couple moving to Avalon from the city.
[32:01]And all of these different faces along the way.
[32:03]And they're all rich and they're all in their own way beautiful.
[32:09]And I think I wanted to try to get at that,
[32:12]that even in their frailty and even in the loss
[32:16]that is inherent in what's happening in their marriage
[32:20]at that point in the book,
[32:22]it's come out of this great commitment
[32:26]and love for each other.
[32:29]I love that.
[32:30]I, as you know, I have four kids, but my youngest is now eight.
[32:34]So I feel like I'm out of the woods.
[32:36]I just wrote this essay that says like confession,
[32:38]you know, I'm glad I don't have small children anymore.
[32:41]Like can I even say that?
[32:42]But it's so hard.
[32:43]Like you, I mean, even just having eight-year-old
[32:45]and eight-year-old is the youngest is like life changing.
[32:48]And you're like, oh, wow, okay.
[32:50]So now I'm here, I am.
[32:51]So I don't know.
[32:52]I'm, I constantly am thinking about the passage of time
[32:55]and how it seemed like forever
[32:57]and then it's not there anymore at all, right?
[33:00]Yes.
[33:01]No more defects and all that.
[33:02]So I'm just wondering because towards the end of the book,
[33:06]and as you said before, the view of sort of the universe
[33:09]is containing sort of like all-in-nothing at the same time
[33:12]and this where we all fit in as people.
[33:15]Like what is your, and you don't have to answer this,
[33:17]but I'm wondering what your view is
[33:19]of what happens like after death.
[33:21]And I know you're Jewish and you include like, you know,
[33:23]young people are references and inheritance
[33:26]was all about a lot about your background
[33:29]and your Judaism and all that.
[33:31]But I'm just curious and what your thoughts are.
[33:35]They, my thoughts continue to evolve and to obsess me.
[33:39]I mean, I've been thinking about this probably all my life.
[33:45]I mean, because I was raised Orthodox
[33:46]and that was one set of beliefs
[33:49]and not beliefs that I really ever adhered to,
[33:53]but they were my families and they were, you know,
[33:57]that's sort of like the music of my childhood in a way
[34:00]or the, you know, it was the landscape of my childhood
[34:03]very much was Orthodoxy and going to shul with my dad.
[34:07]And then I kind of left all that very much in the dust
[34:12]and really thought well if it's all or nothing,
[34:16]then it's going to have to be nothing.
[34:18]I can't do all.
[34:20]And I wrote a memoir called Devotion
[34:22]that's very much about, you know, my son
[34:26]probably around the same age as your youngest, you know,
[34:30]asked me what I believed.
[34:32]And it sent me into a total existential crisis
[34:36]because I didn't know how to answer that question.
[34:40]I didn't know.
[34:40]I hadn't thought about what I believed in a very long time.
[34:44]And I felt like I owed it to him to live inside those questions.
[34:49]And so I wrote, that's when I do
[34:51]when I want to live inside some questions is I write a book.
[34:54]So I wrote, I wrote Devotion.
[34:57]And one of the things that happened
[34:59]as a result of writing devotion
[35:01]is it was really a life-changing book for me.
[35:03]And I don't mean the publication.
[35:05]I mean the realization that we are all more alike
[35:09]than we are different.
[35:10]The it cured me in some strange mystical way
[35:13]of my fear of public speaking
[35:16]because I would look out, which is a good thing
[35:17]because I've had to do a lot of it.
[35:20]I would look out and audience and just think
[35:22]you all have the same preoccupations and fears
[35:25]and secret shams and desires and concerns and anxieties as I do.
[35:30]We all do.
[35:31]And we just don't talk about them.
[35:33]I mean, it's not social chit chat.
[35:37]But understanding that in drilling into the specificity
[35:42]of my own history, I really
[35:43]thought when I was writing Devotion,
[35:45]that I was writing a book that no one would read
[35:47]because it was so idiosyncratically me.
[35:50]You'd have to be raised or as an ox.
[35:52]And I mean, and I didn't know the half of it.
[35:54]But raised or as an ox and an only child
[35:57]and older parents and my father died young and my son was sick.
[36:02]Because like all this mishmash of my life,
[36:05]I felt like you have to pretty much have that exact overlay
[36:08]to identify with that book.
[36:10]And then, and I thought, well, that's OK.
[36:12]I've written a book no one will read.
[36:13]All right.
[36:14]And then the book came out.
[36:16]And I started getting piles and piles of mail
[36:18]from people who were Jewish and Christian and Catholic
[36:24]and Muslim and raised fundamentalist and raised atheist
[36:28]and old and young and men and women and all over the world.
[36:31]And I thought, oh, first of all, it was a reminder
[36:34]that the specific really is what's universal.
[36:37]But also, I thought of this really is this yearning.
[36:42]I remember going and speaking to a conference of female rabbis.
[36:48]It was a national conference of female rabbis.
[36:50]I believe they were reform rabbis.
[36:52]And there were, I don't know, like 75 of them.
[36:56]And what I came away from that day with was, oh,
[37:03]the rabbis don't have the answers either.
[37:05]They have to act like they have the answers
[37:07]because that's their job.
[37:08]But in fact, they're yearning too.
[37:10]And what is this yearning?
[37:12]And I was on stage with a wonderful rabbi, Laura
[37:16]Geller, in Beverly Hills, during that period of time.
[37:19]And Laura Geller actually said, in front of hundreds of people,
[37:24]the God of our childhoods fails us.
[37:27]And it just went through me.
[37:29]And I thought, I couldn't believe that as a rabbi that she
[37:34]could say that.
[37:35]And what I saw on the faces of all the people
[37:38]in the congregation was relief, not horror, or not like,
[37:43]oh, my God, no, you can't tell me that.
[37:45]You've got to tell me that God's a man with a big beard
[37:49]in the sky, and he's getting us parking spaces or whatever.
[37:52]Just the sense that there is mystery that we don't know.
[37:58]And yet, I guess what I would say is in an I am
[38:02]rambling, but in signal fires, Waldo,
[38:06]he said earlier, he's the heart of it for me,
[38:09]he's the voice of that.
[38:11]And in some way or another, I think that's
[38:15]he embodies something of what I have come to believe,
[38:21]which is that it's all connected.
[38:24]And if we can live in that way, or speak for myself,
[38:29]I mean, if I can live in that way, when I am living in that way,
[38:33]I am at my best.
[38:36]I am at my most connected to myself,
[38:40]to the world around me, to those who I love,
[38:43]to the strangers passing me on the street,
[38:47]that feeling of like, well, you use the beautiful metaphor
[38:52]of the maypole, you know, it may be like this giant cosmic
[38:55]maypole, or the invisible threads
[38:59]is the way that Ralph Waldo Emerson would have described it.
[39:04]That it's like a tapestry that connects all of us.
[39:07]And when I can feel that, I feel that I'm at my most
[39:11]spiritual, which is maybe a tenth of the time, but it goes.
[39:16]Now, my son, my eight-year-old again,
[39:18]was like asking me the meaning of life the other night.
[39:21]And I was like, well, everybody has to decide that for themselves.
[39:24]But I feel like, ultimately, it is the meaning that the point is,
[39:28]he was like, what's the point of it all?
[39:29]And I was like, I think the point of it is to love, right?
[39:32]Like, that's the only thing we can all do
[39:35]and like make the world better for everyone else.
[39:36]But I don't know.
[39:38]I think anybody who purports to know is and with such authority
[39:44]raises questions as well.
[39:46]I mean, how can anyone actually know
[39:49]when we haven't been there?
[39:50]But anyway, I want to know what is your next project
[39:53]that we can look forward to?
[39:54]Besides, I'm suing from the continuation of family secrets,
[39:56]which you're like a number one podcaster in the world
[39:59]in case people didn't know.
[40:00]that as well, but aside from that and your movie and whatever. So what else, what can we look forward to?
[40:05]So what I am embarking on, or I already did embark, but I'm returning to embarking on
[40:11]right now, now that I'm coming to the end of the tour for single fires, is writing the TV pilot.
[40:18]So it's in development as a TV show, as a series, as a dramatic series. And I am writing the pilot,
[40:27]which is not something I've ever done. Creating the podcast gave me a real sense of liberation
[40:34]about permission to try things that I haven't done before. When I started the podcast, I didn't
[40:41]make a big study of podcasting and I had no idea how to create a podcast. I think you know exactly
[40:49]exactly what you mean. And learning that this different form of storytelling was something
[40:57]that resonated, something that I love doing. It's completely different from writing fiction
[41:02]or writing memoir. So I'm approaching the TV series and writing the pilot with that spirit of just
[41:10]wow, I get to try something at this point in my career that I haven't done before. And I also
[41:16]get to continue living with these characters. Because in order to write a TV series, I have to imagine,
[41:22]you know, there's a lot of space in signal fires. There's a lot of years where we don't
[41:28]we don't know what we move across decades and whatever happened in those decades doesn't appear
[41:33]in the book. Well, I get to decide now where I want to take them and where I want to go with them
[41:39]while retaining the, you know, the integrity and the magic of the novel itself and of who
[41:46]these characters are to each other. But I can expand it out. And so I'm not losing them yet. They
[41:51]still belong to me. And that's, you know, when you finish a novel and you launch it into the world,
[41:56]the characters stop being yours. And they're, I mean, for me, when a reader has an opinion
[42:01]about Shane Commander as an opinion about Waldo, I love it. I don't say like you're wrong. You know,
[42:07]I love hearing people, you know, argue about my characters or, you know, it's why book clubs
[42:13]are so fantastic. And I really feel like they are now, they are now in the reader's hands,
[42:20]not my hands, except that I still get to hold on to them for in this way for a little while longer.
[42:25]Was it you who posted today or somebody else, the Joan Diddy in quote about how first you get
[42:30]to know your characters and then you never want to see them go. It's on Instagram. That's funny.
[42:34]No, it wasn't me. But someone I follow that was like my first thing that popped up today.
[42:39]I'll have to find it and send it to you. And Zibi, I just want to thank you so much. It was a wonderful,
[42:44]wonderful conversation. I was lucky to hear. I love talking to you too. Thank you.
[42:50]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to
[42:54]follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign
[42:59]up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors
[43:04]on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[43:09]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[43:13]now trim music.