David Duchovny, ABOUT TIME: Poems

[1:31]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com and follow me on Instagram zibby owens. David Duchovny is the author of About Time Poems. David is an award winning actor, director, New York Times bestselling author, and singer songwriter. With an acting career spanning more than three decades, Duchovny is a two time Golden Globe winner and four time Emmy nominee. His novels include Truly Like Lightning, Holy Cow, The Reservoir, which he was on this podcast to discuss, which was a novella, and Better Effing Dent, which Duchovny adapted into the film Reverse the Curse. The film, directed by Duchovny, premiered at the twenty twenty three Tribeca Film Festival. As a musician, Duchovny has released three studio albums, Hell or High Water, Every Third Thought, and Jesterland. He is the host of the podcast, Fail Better. Alright. Welcome back on Totally Booked. David, thank you so much. Here to talk about About Time, your poetry collection. Congratulations.

[3:06]David Duchovny: Thanks for having me on again. It's my pleasure. My pleasure.

[3:10]Zibby Owens: Okay. Your whole argument in the beginning of this book is that poetry is so unnecessary. Why read it? Why write it? And yet it's essential. Can you explain that a little bit? Well, I mean, it gets into the whole argument about what

[3:23]David Duchovny: is the use of poetry. You know? And I think that one of the main draws for me is that it's pretty useless. I mean, it's a bitchy. It's it's really just a a form of expression that's kind of antiquated. Nobody reads it anymore. A a great poet once said the best thing about poetry is you can't get rich doing it. You know? So there's really no there's no other motives. You know? There's no motive. There's no political motive, you know, which I think is in fact is taking the wrong word, but it's in fact, a lot of our art over the past ten, twenty years is like, well, what is it saying politically? And that's not an issue with poetry or or it was never it's not it's not. Everything is political in some sense because it's talking about the world, but not you can't really get into specifics in poetry that way. So there's a certain kind of lack of agenda that I like about it, or I I hope that I that I can maintain in it. You know what I mean? So I think all those things, fact that nobody reads it, great.

[4:31]Zibby Owens: I mean, I I read it, but it's okay.

[4:35]David Duchovny: Rich Allen, great. It seems useless. Fantastic. So so because it's useless or doesn't doesn't have an overt political agenda, then, you know, it's it becomes about just basic lessons and language and communication and

[4:53]Zibby Owens: those kinds of things for me. And what does it do for you to write poetry?

[4:58]David Duchovny: I don't know. It's like when I'm when I'm involved in when I have an idea for a poem or I start to write a poem, it's really like a puzzle, you know, because usually, I just have an image to start with or a thought, and then the poem becomes an unpacking of that thought over and over, and the thought changes over the different unpacking of it. Or the image, for some reason, if I have it, I'm gonna do it the honor of thinking that it came there for a reason, and I gotta figure out what that reason is. So I unpack the image, and I'm always focused. And I think that's the nice thing about, for me about writing poetry is, you know, I start with this one thing in mind, with this phrase, or this image, or this idea, and then the surprise comes as I unpack it, as I try to write around it, you know, a lot of poems are about the inability of me to say it, to get at it. So as I take different stabs at it throughout the poem, I'm surprised.

[6:04]Zibby Owens: So if poetry really has no use and you enjoy the fact that it's not widely read, why publish it at all?

[6:11]David Duchovny: Well, roses have no use. People love them. There's many things in this world. Behold the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spend. It's what's our most ancient wisdom. It's about things that have no use at all. I think we get wrapped up in what is the use of things in this culture because we're a capitalist culture or whatever. What is the use of it? How can this make money? How can this how can this do anything out there in the world when in fact, you know, most of the things if we were honest, most of the things in our lives that really hate us are are not useful. They're beautiful. Well, the the usefulness is in touching our emotions,

[6:53]Zibby Owens: not anything else. But if you argue that there's no use to bringing joy and connection to people, then I guess. But isn't that the most useful thing you could provide?

[7:03]David Duchovny: Yeah. I don't know if it's joy. The connection, sure. Even if it's in connection of, like, oh, this is impossible to do. You know, what we're trying to do here. We're trying to put words. Because poetry is often about itself, know, about the the act of trying to speak, and you know, it really calls attention to this thing called language that we all think means the same thing to us, but it doesn't. We you know, with these words are just approximations, and a poem for me is throwing all these different kinds of words at things or breaking words up from their usual places that we usually think of them in or the way we usually say them, and shedding new light, you know, on the fact that it's kind of artifice and it's all imprecise. Mhmm. And trying to get back to kind of like, oh, let's try to be precise here. And so, yeah, it's connection for sure. Joy? Yeah. It could be joy because I think connection is joyous.

[8:02]Zibby Owens: Agree. Can I read a couple of them and see the backstory? Hear the backstory?

[8:07]David Duchovny: You have to. Maybe or a passage from one of them? Is am I embarrassing you? You whatever can you want. I'm just being I'm just being, you know, bad guy.

[8:17]Zibby Owens: Okay. Let's read something from dead seven. I don't need an occasion to think of my father occasionally, dead now seven years, Better than nothing, I hope waits for him. An afterlife, a rebirth, is it? If so, then is the old man young again in death? A seven years dead boy growing steadily, deadly as he watches me in life grow? Seven years learning the netherworld ropes, Still a child by turns wide eyed and sullen as he crawls, walks, runs into the walls of his newly unlimited understanding. Is seventy five years or so on earth useless except as a dream of power, a moderately successful campaign of tiny plastic soldiers? Who is his mentor there? Who reminds him? Who comforts him and teaches him the otherworldly equivalent of fishing or algebra or empathy for the dead living all around him? Does he sit, dead little head, in little dead hands, on the curb, lonely and abandoned? He who held my hands and taught and did not teach me so many things of nature and that nature. I age like a tree, each new ring and orbiting armor round an empty marrow. The things I did not learn closed off at the center of my being unreachable, of interest only to those who would chop me down to see what I might deliver coldly from another age. Oh, so you see here, this was the problem right here, the worm at the root, the uneven ring. I'm almost done, I promise. Older now and harder than he in death, I see him confused, reaching for my steadying arm as a dead branch purgers life in the wind, his language, his access to our symbols impenetrable. The dead tongue mute, my need for him transcribed into his imagined need for me, my inarticulate want his. Full fathom, five, six, seven, now going on eight, my sweet silken boy calls to me. I am here, I respond, and ready and of absolutely no use. Yeah. That's so it's so emotional. I mean, it's a way of trying to understand the loss of someone you love so much, which, of course, all of us are trying to do every day with various people. Tell me about writing this poem.

[10:20]David Duchovny: Well, clearly, it was on, I think, the seventh anniversary of my dad's death. It's a while ago already. It's fifteen years ago. That poem is probably 15 years old. Yeah. If he died in 2003, I think he did or '4, I think '3, then, yeah, that would be sometime 2010. And I guess I just had that thought on an anniversary, like, oh, seven years. And then this impossible notion of, well, what if what if we can what if we are born again, but we're not here? We're born into some other consciousness, some realm of death where where we grow, where it's not just the end of something. And and then kind of, I guess, I'm I'm trying to think back, but I think I was excited by this idea of him being younger than me and me being me being his mentor or his father in some way and and feeling. Yes. Feeling for his confusion. You know, feeling as as one feels for the confusion of one's own children. And that it it moves me as I speak, so I'm sure it moved me back then to kinda pursue it further. Mhmm. What's what would be those things that a living dead person, you know, not not not our movie versions of living dead, not the last of us or, you know, the walking dead or whatever, but more of a consciousness, less of a spectacle. So just and then, you know, I think it becomes, like, unclear who I'm talking about. Whether I'm talking about me as his son or him as my son, and it's really forging. I think it's me trying to forge or renew a relationship with him now that he's gone. And that's why at the end, it's very sad that I'm ready finally, probably because I have been a father. I'm ready finally to have a connection with him and to help him, but it's too late. The gun of absolutely no use, you know, so because he's dead. So I I guess that's where that poem comes from. If I'm if I'm too explicate it, I think it's I think it's pretty understandable.

[12:42]Zibby Owens: What do you think happens? Do you are you someone who, like, talks to your dad or says, like, here's what I'm working on with my child? Or what do you think?

[12:52]David Duchovny: Oh, I mean, think they live on, but I think they live on in our in our minds, you know, in our our our souls in some way. I don't think any I don't think anything continues. But it does continue if we continue. He's alive now. We talk about him. He's alive. He's here. We're talking about him. He's here. He's not here in the way he was when he was alive, but he's here. So that's a certain kind of a continuation of life. So as long as we continue to speak as long as I continue to speak of him or write about him or address him in my mind in some way, then he has a certain kind of life. You know? And then I, you know, I also want him to be happy with the way I talk about it. If I'm going to, you know, write a poem about him, I don't wanna lie about anything. You know? I I want it to be this. I'm trying again, you know, imprecisely using these words that I'm given to try and talk about a state of being that doesn't really exist, you know, trying to get at it. So I don't I I I would never want him to be embarrassed, and I also don't want to sugarcoat everything. Mhmm. What was it's none of my business, but what was your relationship with him like? Well, my my parents divorced when I was 11. So my relationship after the age of 11 was attenuated. Is that the word? It was it was less less intense than when I was a kid. And I I I will always miss that. And that's the kind of absolutely no use thing. It's like, didn't get didn't get them. Didn't get it. Like, you don't get to know. You know, other thing is like, things happen. Things happen in life, and you don't get to do them over, and you don't get to not have them happen. But you do get to try to figure out what they are, and you do get to figure out how you're gonna live with it. So this in a way would be my way of trying to live with the fact that we didn't have the kind of father son relationship that in my mind I wanted or looking back I would have wanted. But that doesn't mean we don't have a relationship, and that doesn't mean his death doesn't mean we don't have a relationship either. You know, like, you could try to end this relationship through divorce or through death or whatever, but a father and a son are always have relationship, a mother and a daughter Cross sex is through a father and daughter, mother and son. You know, those relationships never end. And it's called comfort, you know, if you lose a child to say that you still have a relationship, but it's true. You know, and luckily, I haven't had that. You know, to me, that's that's that's the most terrifying thing to confront in life, period, is a child pretty deceasing.

[15:41]Zibby Owens: I went to funeral of a friend this week who's was only in her early forties and her dad got up and kissed her casket and was like, how am I supposed to eulogize my daughter? This isn't the way it was supposed to be. Oh, I just, I keep replaying it. It's just so sad. I mean, for every parent, I'm a parent, you're a parent. Anyway, terrifying. Back to poetry. I think we, I think our conversation is an argument for the usefulness of poetry because it Are you gonna keep the conversation No. It keeps the conversation going. It opens up, like, what would we be talking about if we didn't have the poem? Sure. I mean I mean, you know, for me to start the introduction to the

[16:23]David Duchovny: to the poems that way, It's it's a little defensive because, again, I'm saying, you know, who needs to hear from an who needs to hear poems from an actor? That's the last thing. There's so many pressing there's so many pressing issues. You know what I I I'm saying you do need to hear a poem from them. Yeah. I'm anticipating the argument of, like, who the fuck cares with this guy who's just feeling something about or is writing obliquely about rather than a plot filled novel that's gonna entertain us on the beach or some or, you know, Disneyland series or whatever. You know? Entertain us, actor. You know? Don't don't don't make us feel or think, really. So don't try to be serious. Don't try to be real. You know? Like, it's all bullshit. Right? So so there's all these kinds of things that are in my head. I'm anticipating arguments. Clearly, believe poetry has a a use, you know, has many uses, but I'm trying to get out in front of, you know, that idea. The the contrary to that idea, which is, you know, it's nice to have a little poem here and there, but, you know, it's not really doesn't really help me live. But in my life, you know, poems help me live. They're like religious texts. I mean, the closest thing. I also like certain religious texts, and they are very poetic to me. So for me, I do love novels, and I love movies, and I love those other forms of writing or adapting writing, but I I find poetry to be deeply useful.

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[20:49]Zibby Owens: Well, it's like a it's better than a sound bite because it's the complete distillation of a concept. I feel like poetry and I said this recently, we published a collection of poetry at my publishing house. Like, I feel like in this day and age of no attention, poetry should be having, like, its biggest moment ever. Right? It's so short. Like, read a poem. You'll feel really good about yourself. It takes two seconds. They're hard. You know? They're hard because they should they're they're not, you know

[21:17]David Duchovny: aside from maybe my my death of my dog poem, and this they're they're not you can read them, but they need to be read a few times. You know? Like, even for me, it's something like I'm not comparing myself, but somebody like Emily Dickinson, deceptively simple. Most stuff is deceptively simple. The words that Jesus speaks, deceptively simple. The the the great, you know, rabbi and masters, deceptively simple. They're all poetic because you think you can't say the most profound truths easily or simply. It's too simple and profound to to say it clearly. You just can't do it. I mean, you can say all you need is love, and if that's the kind of poems that you like, that's cool. But that's not the kind of poems I'm trying to lie. I like it in a song. I don't necessarily want it. I like it as a reminder,

[22:06]Zibby Owens: but it's not to me, it's not like the best that poetry can do. Yeah. Well, what about some of your shorter poems? Like, you have can I read one more? Really short though. You can read them all. This is the dog dying. I guess I'm just sort of drawn to grief, so sorry. That's just me. Another brick. I put my dog down this morning and cried some, mourning, the loss of his mute, expressive soul. This afternoon at work, a blue sky punctuated only by disjointed loitering clouds. The world moves on in its blithe way and doesn't care about a little dog. It's already as if he never existed, but he did. He sure did. Yeah. My dog is, right there. This, like, this got me so much. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

[22:52]David Duchovny: A couple of things that I'm proud of in that poem. When I came upon that phrase mute expressive soul, I thought, yeah. I kinda nailed what a dog is. Mhmm.

[23:02]Zibby Owens: Totally.

[23:03]David Duchovny: And I'm proud of that. And then the he sure did. I think that came, like, five minute. I think the poem just kinda came out, and I put it away. And then five minutes later, I think I went back to he sure did. And then that there's something childish about it. You know? There's something young about that. Like, you know, something boyish about it. Yeah. He sure did. You know? It is. So I like that. I like that button at the end. And, yeah, the truth is, you know, obviously, the world doesn't care about little dog. World doesn't care about little person, but we humans have a need to care about dogs and people and each other. And we have a need to say we existed. We were here. We sure were. We sure were. We were here. So it becomes, you know, mourning for all of us in the future as well. And also, you know, the Marlene aspect of it is always I guess everybody. Every not everybody.

[24:03]Zibby Owens: I don't know what it is about dogs, but we are opened up by them. That's true. So at lunch right before this, my dog came over and I kind of imitated her voice, and it came out, which I never do. And literally, everyone at the table is like, that's not what she would sound like. I'm like, I know it was too Scooby Doo. I don't even know why I did that. But it's so true because we all have in our heads, like, maybe what the dog would sound like really. Like, who it really is. Or what it's thinking or, you know, we're constantly

[24:29]David Duchovny: kind of, what do you think? You know, what do you do? And then there are those camps that are like, he's just with you because you feed him. And then there are the camps that are like, no. That's real love. This is real real, like, unselfish love. So I prefer to think of it the other way. Yeah. You know? Not just the feeder. They love us for sure, but they also love us. Yeah.

[24:54]Zibby Owens: I mean, I know I think of that sometimes too. People who are mean to their dogs. Like, how can you be mean to your dog? But then there are people who are mean to everybody who don't even care about life. So I mean

[25:04]David Duchovny: Yeah. Well, I get frustrated I get frustrated with my dog. Sure. You know? But I I I like to think I'm never mean to my dog, yeah. Certainly. You know? And and Brick was, you know, Brick that dog. That's why call another Brick. That was the name of that dog. So he had a rough, like, last couple years, and it's frustrating, you know, to take care of a dog that's shitting all over your house and throwing up and Yes. Basic basically, he has dementia. You know, and it's hard to know, you know, when when to when to stop the life for for the animal, you know, just as it's hard for us to know that with people, but we don't really do that in this country. I wish that we would, but we don't. So when's the last time you wrote a poem, and what was it about? I added one to that collection, but it was too late. And I don't know where it is. Let me see if I could find it. It's on my iPad, which is what I'm talking to you on. So I don't know if I have it other than other than on my iPad. I might have it in my notes. I've been working on an album too, so something for a lot of that. I mean, yeah, it's another it's another dead one.

[26:14]Zibby Owens: Great.

[26:16]David Duchovny: I'm your market. Yeah. So memory is the language of the dead. So that's the last poem I wrote. Excerpts,

[26:22]Zibby Owens: one line, Teaser.

[26:24]David Duchovny: Memories the language of the dead. I feel my fluency growing even as brutal marriage saves from surround sound storyboards, the melody unheard and near atmosphere. Memories came over there. I had visited it in sleep. Had my passport stamped by a three headed dog. Memory is sick with dogs. Good. That's beautiful.

[26:48]Zibby Owens: More dogs. More dogs. More beauty.

[26:52]David Duchovny: My gosh. That's gonna be I think that's on the Amazon Audible. I I had it in time to record my readings of the poems, but it's not in the actual book. But in the book, a couple of the last three poems of the most recent, God Has He Changed Man is Recent. I'd say no is recent. And

[27:13]Zibby Owens: Homestake the Mystery. Those are all probably the most most recent, and they're towards the end. This one too, how you ended the whole thing. Wonder closes and you cross out closes and write opens. Another door opens, you cross out opens and put closes.

[27:26]David Duchovny: Just keep circling. Yeah. So that's the of that's the kind of knowledge I think that poetry can give us. It never, you know, it's that's what I mean. It's not useful. It's like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that saying? You know, what do you mean? It's like, it's never stopping. It's like it's opening and closing at the same time. What do you mean? And I just say, yes. That's exactly what I mean. You know? When it gets it's not useful, but it's useful in that it puts you maybe in a state of mind that you recognize,

[27:57]Zibby Owens: and then there's that connection that you're talking about. Well, your sort of preemptive defense that the world doesn't need poems by an actor. The world doesn't really need anything,

[28:08]David Duchovny: but From an actor.

[28:10]Zibby Owens: Well, that's not you from any I mean, from anybody. I mean It's true. The world doesn't need, you know, any of the But it doesn't mean that that they won't appreciate it and like it very much. Yeah. No. I

[28:23]David Duchovny: think sometimes maybe you can appreciate it more, you know, if if it has no agenda on you. Yeah. It's not trying to convert you religiously, politically, anyway. You know, it's just kind of trying to put you in a state of mind that it opens and closes at the same time, you know? Yeah. Well,

[28:47]Zibby Owens: well, thank you. Thank you for taking your time to talk about About Time with me and to Well, thank you again for having me on again.

[28:54]David Duchovny: My pleasure. I love I love coming on with you, and I love the fact that you're a reader, and you're and you speak about books, and you try to speak to people who read, you know. Maureen Dowd just had a really interesting article. I don't know if you read it on Sunday. And she was talking about like, the statistics aren't men who don't read any. You know, like, readers are learning. And Maureen was saying, you know, men who read are sexy, not that's Maureen. And there was a picture of James Steen reading a book on the article. But yeah, I mean, I would like everybody to read. I think reading is what makes us human in many ways. And I I wish that men would read more, you know, and men can write poetry, you know. It's not it's not just I'm not saying women shouldn't read or I'm not making a distinction. I'm just saying I I want I want more readers, but I'm afraid. It seems like it looks like because of phones and the way we're living that people just are out of the habit of reading. And I think if they can get something out of a book,

[30:01]Zibby Owens: even one that says you can't get anything out of it Mhmm. They can all continue reading. You know? Yeah. I'm on the same pushing the same cause here. I know. I know you are. So yeah. Yeah. I agree. There's a fundamental empathy you get from reading that you can't get through watching things or hearing things or whatever. Yeah. I agree. Totally allowing somebody to take over your mind. Yeah. I know. I think it's the coolest thing. Like, how can you not do this? Anyway. Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you so much and best of luck with your collection. I appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. Nice to see you again. You too. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Sibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.