Author event! David Duchovny & Miranda Cowley Heller
[0:00]I did. How are you?
[0:03]First of all, we just addressed issues of tech by an avocado for this week.
[0:10]We have a lot of use.
[0:13]Still at large.
[0:15]And it's ripening.
[0:17]And this stuff is all true.
[0:21]This is all true.
[0:23]Yes, hence the bad makeup.
[0:26]I did my best, but I'm not a makeup girl.
[0:29]What are you going to do?
[0:30]And the avocado is vicious and relentless.
[0:34]But we are here and very happy to be so.
[0:38]And you have to be the eye candy as usual, so.
[0:45]Well, I'm going to do a little welcome if that's cool.
[0:47]So obviously welcome everybody.
[0:49]I wanted to say I did an event here a couple of weeks ago.
[0:53]And I did sign body parts.
[0:55]So it's very exciting to be back.
[1:02]And.
[1:05]Just wanting to say that.
[1:08]I don't know how many of you have actually already read the collection.
[1:10]If you haven't, if you have, you're very lucky.
[1:12]And if you haven't, you're in for an incredible.
[1:16]Even you're, I was going to say that I stopped myself.
[1:20]I try to stop myself.
[1:22]It's true.
[1:24]But, you know, I mean, I think the real reason that we're here is all to.
[1:29]Join an incredible irritation.
[1:32]At Mr. Decoveney.
[1:34]Mastering yet another creative field.
[1:39]It's not enough.
[1:41]You know, movie star, TV star, heart,
[1:44]there are New York Times best selling author.
[1:47]You know, director of five, six novels.
[1:53]And what am I forgetting?
[1:56]Oh, great rock star, father.
[1:59]You know, it's, oh, oh, no, you're forgetting that you graduated Phi Beta Kappa and
[2:05]summa cum laude from Princeton went to Yale.
[2:09]And in fact, which we'll get back to, I discovered at the age of something like
[2:13]21 or 22, received a poetry honorable mention from the Academy of American
[2:19]poetry for a poetry prize at Princeton.
[2:23]So clearly this is a long, long career that I want to hear all about.
[2:29]And, but, you know, the irritation being that you turn out to be also just an
[2:35]amazing poet, this collection is fantastic.
[2:37]And it is thought for voting and intellectually challenging and moving
[2:44]and bear honesty, lyrical course, you know, all the human,
[2:51]all the human things and just to reference your own references full of
[2:55]sound and fury, but in the best possible sense and not
[2:59]told clearly by an idiot as we just saw.
[3:04]So what I would love to just kind of talk to you about or
[3:09]start with, let's say, is, let's talk about the journey,
[3:14]the interviewing, the intervening 40 years between or whatever it is,
[3:19]between a poetry award in college and now.
[3:24]Well, that's what it's called about time.
[3:26]Yeah, I wonder, I wondered about that because that doesn't come up in the
[3:29]collection.
[3:30]Yeah.
[3:31]That's a theme.
[3:32]It's like it's about time.
[3:34]Exactly.
[3:37]So, you know, I think that was an American Academy of poets thing.
[3:40]I don't know, I don't know how legitimate that outfit is to be honest
[3:45]with you.
[3:46]It's a little bit like getting, being able to marry somebody,
[3:49]you know, getting the certificate of money.
[3:51]Oh, yeah.
[3:52]I think, and it was just honorable mention.
[3:54]So, but I do have it in a new site kind of a thing nearby,
[3:59]because it amuses me.
[4:01]The honorable mention from the American Society of poets.
[4:04]It's excellent.
[4:05]Being a society that I've probably never met as a body.
[4:09]They don't really exist.
[4:11]So, sure, I have it.
[4:14]I wrote poems as a kid in high school.
[4:21]My father was a writer.
[4:23]My mother was a school teacher.
[4:26]So, I was very involved with reading.
[4:29]And that was really, my mother's goal was to make me a reader.
[4:35]She really thought that she came from a very small town.
[4:39]It's got me through a very, very poor.
[4:42]And the only way to advance oneself was to become educated, really.
[4:48]And she has to choose the first person in her family.
[4:52]And her woman took out a college.
[4:54]So, she was pretty curious and she was a teacher.
[4:59]So,
[5:00]That was inescapable for me, even though I just wanted to play ball outside the head to read.
[5:06]And then my dad was a writer, identified as a writer, and they didn't publish this first novelty.
[5:11]It was 72.
[5:12]But he did.
[5:13]And he did.
[5:14]And he did.
[5:15]And we did a reading at Dutton's, actually, in 2000.
[5:21]And I think it was 2001.
[5:23]It was shortly after 9-11.
[5:25]And it was sad because he finally, you know, obviously for others,
[5:29]but he finally written this novel and he was going on, he's going on this tour.
[5:34]And nobody was coming out, you know, to see.
[5:37]So we actually did this reading at Dutton where it was literally just me and my brother and my sister.
[5:43]And the best part was at the end.
[5:46]He opened his effort question.
[5:48]And he was like, what are you going to do to the end of the day?
[5:55]And he ended up in the end of the day.
[6:03]And I learned when I did finding a roots that show a pair of skates on PBS.
[6:10]Which which is public television, which used to exist in this country.
[6:14]I don't know if it does anymore.
[6:15]anymore. But I found out that my grandfather, my father's father, was also, I knew he was a
[6:23]journalist, but I didn't know he was a novelist as well. But he wrote it in Yiddish and he
[6:30]published, serialized in the forward with a forebait as it's called in New York and so he wrote
[6:37]these serialized kind of melodramatic stories that he didn't know the answers of.
[6:44]He didn't know the the end of him as he was writing it like Dickens. He was just
[6:48]right and right and right and getting paid by the work. Unfortunately, I don't know where I
[6:53]knew those are. So anyway, I didn't know about that. So that was the legacy I was chasing, but I
[6:58]have found that out. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of writing and a lot of reading around me.
[7:04]So I think there was always something that I wanted to equip myself out.
[7:09]Right. I mean, and that in the poems themselves, there's a lot, there are a lot of literary
[7:16]references or what, you know, you know, whether or not I've written in my novels. I'm filled with
[7:24]a lot of other works. And I was reading this, this guy just the other day. And he made the point
[7:34]that, you know, because I've been irritated by things like fan fiction, you know, like we're very
[7:39]irritated. And this guy made the point that all fiction is fan fiction. And I was like, what do you
[7:46]mean? Because you're entering into a conversation with works that have come before your fan of literature,
[7:54]your fan of poetry, when you allude to these things, it's like you're continuing the fiction
[8:00]that they started. And I was like, okay, I'm going to open up my heart a little more to this idea
[8:06]of fan fiction. All right. Well, not reading as long as you're okay with romantic, I'm fine.
[8:11]I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did a conversation.
[8:15]I mean, anything I do is a conversation with books that I've read with books that have influenced me
[8:20]out of consciously or unconsciously. So I thought that was, it really opened up my eyes a little bit.
[8:25]Yeah. I like that idea. Although there's also, you know, copying and not, you know,
[8:31]well, anyway, we know it. We know all about that. Are there just because you mentioned it? Are there
[8:36]who are the poets from back then or writers that you or now? Who would you say are the most
[8:43]the biggest influences in terms of your fandom? Oh. John Barryman, John Dunn, all the John's really
[8:53]songs. Dickinson, Emily Dickinson, Whitman, Ashbury, Wall Street. It's definitely a lot.
[9:05]Shakespeare, obviously. Yeah. Everybody's influenced by Shakespeare.
[9:11]And then through Shakespeare to the King James Bible, because so much of Shakespeare
[9:16]rendition comes out of that first amazing translation. And so much of what we take for granted
[9:23]comes out of the Bible as well in terms of wisdom and parables and phraseology. So I can't,
[9:33]there's lots more of them. No, I'm sure it's a really annoying question to put somebody on the
[9:37]spot. But it changes. I just thought why not. Yeah, absolutely. That good works. You can come
[9:45]back to constantly in your life and have a different reaction to it because you're a different
[9:51]person every, every few years, every month, whatever, however much you change, I would be
[9:56]changing. You can come back to the great poems and find different things.
[10:00]speaking to you. That's the sign of a great poet, I think, that he or she can speak to you
[10:06]different times of your life. Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things you talk about,
[10:10]and that's very much in here, you talk about it in your introduction, is this idea of sort of
[10:15]achieving immortality or the desire we have to as writers and poets to not well, not die. I hate
[10:24]death against it, by the way. I deny it completely. I know. Well, there's a lot about,
[10:35]there's a lot of, you know, philosophy and engaging, obviously, in this book with the concept of
[10:42]death and immortality. But what I'm referring to particularly is the notion that, you know,
[10:50]years from now, that Whitman is affecting you, that there's still, that the great people are
[10:54]still speaking to you, that you exist for them, and that, you know, if poetry is, you know, a sort of
[11:01]a piece of one's soul, and very personal, we also hope it's universal, right? The way that actually
[11:08]says it in the poem, you know, I'm speaking to you, I'm in your ear. I think you say you're a citizen of the
[11:13]world, by the way. So yeah, that's kind of, you know, ego way to go through it. There's something,
[11:22]there's a little bit of the fear of death or being quiet, being silenced, being silent, no longer
[11:30]having anything to say, no longer being heard. There's some, you know, sucker in that, sucker as you
[11:36]see, oh, you are not SUCK. There's some warmth in the idea of not caring about being heard
[11:48]anywhere either, which I embrace a little at the end of the book. But I think, yeah, when I
[11:56]certainly when I was younger, I thought more about being famous, being known, being known
[12:07]throughout time, being known throughout place, and it seems to be, it seems to replace something
[12:17]in you, which is not, you have to, you have to fill that place otherwise, you know, but there is,
[12:27]there is something to the game of thinking, oh, you know, when I'm, when I'm no longer here,
[12:32]maybe the words mean something to people, but then again, you know, I won't care because
[12:38]I'm gone. But in many ways, I thought about for my children, and for the people that I love,
[12:45]people closest to me. Because the things that I write here, in many ways, the truest
[12:52]testament to who I am. So in a way, it's leaving it, not, yeah, for the world in a way,
[13:00]but also for them. For them, yeah. I mean, but what's interesting, you just said it's the truest
[13:06]sort of piece or expression, right? If so, if something is an actor that I think is true or honest,
[13:18]it's just different. It's not, it's not better or worse, but it's, it's on, there's no other,
[13:26]there's no other cook involved in this. And when I'm acting, I'm usually saying somebody else's
[13:31]words, I'm being directed and being cut by some, you know, whatever. There's different cooks
[13:36]working on that stew. This is just a true kind of, this is the best I got, this is what I'm trying
[13:41]to do. And yet you say, and I'm assuming, ironically, that poetry is lies. I think so you're opening
[13:50]salvo in the collection. Well, let me just fight because you have to use words and words or
[13:54]approximations. And, you know, a lot of, a lot of my poetry is really interrogating what these words
[14:01]mean and how we come to use them and trying to get at the truth underneath the, the customer use
[14:08]of the words that we, we have become, you know, customized to me. Yeah, absolutely. And so,
[14:13]but go, and so going back to, you know, you were in academia and obviously you switched,
[14:24]what, what, what made you switch from an academic literary sort of future to
[14:31]acting? I mean, any things. I mean, acting to seem like a lot more fun for one. I was, I was social
[14:40]person. I let, you know, I think I'm an introvert, but I was also social. So I like, I like playing
[14:46]games with people. I like sports. So I like the sporting aspect of what acting was, which was like,
[14:52]if the line is the ball and like we're going to throw these, these lines around and try to catch
[14:58]them. I like all this.
[15:00]I probably lacked confidence in my writing to think, oh, I'm going to make a life doing
[15:06]that.
[15:07]I'm going to make a career doing that.
[15:10]And I just didn't think.
[15:11]I mean, I didn't make a decision.
[15:14]I'd never make a decision.
[15:16]I don't think I've ever made a decision.
[15:19]So I wasn't like, I'm going to be an actor.
[15:20]I'm not going to be right.
[15:21]I'm going to be a writer.
[15:22]No, it was just like, here I'm going here, you know, here I, I seem to be here, right?
[15:27]Right.
[15:28]So then you just, how did you do this?
[15:31]How did you decide finally after all this time?
[15:34]It was about time.
[15:35]That it was about time.
[15:36]You got it.
[15:37]Yeah, exactly.
[15:38]What was it that made you?
[15:40]Right.
[15:41]What was said?
[15:42]I mean, you said that you've been writing, why I published it?
[15:45]Why suddenly now did you, because I think it's always courageous to put oneself out
[15:50]there.
[15:51]I think poems are, you know, without like copying the title for myself.
[15:54]I think it is courageous to be sincere, you know?
[15:58]Even though some of them are ironic and funny, they're awesome.
[16:01]Here.
[16:02]Can you just read Cupid for us?
[16:07]It's sincerity, it's, it's, it's courageous, OK?
[16:13]Yeah, in this world right now.
[16:15]So yeah, I would, I would accept that.
[16:20]And I, and I think for me, it was a time because I published these other novels
[16:25]and, you know, their stories, they're not really intimate, but they're not intimate
[16:31]in this way, and I also knew that you kind of have to, you don't get to be subjected
[16:38]to the game of all.
[16:39]Is that about that person or is that about that time?
[16:41]Was that about that thing?
[16:43]Which I didn't want to play.
[16:46]But I also knew that the way I write, it doesn't matter, you know, like it's, it's
[16:52]personal and universal enough.
[16:54]I was hoping.
[16:55]Yeah.
[16:56]It's instructive enough.
[16:58]So I just thought, you know, poems have meant a lot to me.
[17:02]I'm not a religious person, poems can function on the center of a religious way for me
[17:07]as a touchstone of knowledge or wisdom or spiritual death.
[17:13]Yeah.
[17:14]And any moment and I thought, that's, that's a good thing.
[17:18]I want to play that game a little bit.
[17:21]Well, you did.
[17:23]You have.
[17:24]Yeah.
[17:25]So the, so about time, which, you know, but it's also, there's so much in here about the concept
[17:33]of time and memory and, you know, past, present, all those dichotomies and searching.
[17:41]But the opening poem that you chose, I mean, and I guess was called doover.
[17:50]So I think I understand having now really engaged with the book.
[17:57]But why did you choose that one first?
[18:01]I don't know.
[18:02]I don't know.
[18:03]He's not as smart as he looks, I just said.
[18:07]No.
[18:08]I don't know.
[18:09]Because it was, name was longest.
[18:11]I don't know.
[18:12]It was, I felt like it was a good poem.
[18:17]I felt like it had, it had stuff, it had a lot of different stuff in it.
[18:24]I thought it was kind of funny, but it was also, it was kind of profane, had a couple
[18:30]of curse words.
[18:31]And I think it, it like had a lot of what I do in one poem.
[18:35]Right.
[18:36]So, and then I thought doover is kind of funny to start a book with that idea.
[18:41]Yeah.
[18:42]It was about time you didn't do it.
[18:44]Well, I also think there's a line in it that I can explain to you why you put difference.
[18:50]No, no, I mean, I think you know better than I do.
[18:54]Probably not, but there's a line in it that you said the past suddenly seems rife with
[19:01]possibility.
[19:04]Which I love.
[19:05]Because, you know, it's like suddenly looking back at everything that you've done, and
[19:11]it's about time.
[19:12]Where's your, here's your chance, right?
[19:15]Yeah, I know.
[19:16]I like that line too.
[19:17]I just say so myself because, you know, we think about the past as a discrete and dead
[19:23]thing.
[19:24]It's gotten, like it doesn't have possibility.
[19:26]It happened.
[19:27]It was the working out of many possibilities, infinite possibilities, but it happened
[19:31]this one way.
[19:32]So I just like this idea of having a perception where all some of the past is opened up
[19:39]into different possibilities, which I don't think of normally.
[19:46]When I was writing this, I read this thing about time, about the concept of time.
[19:58]And, you know, we think.
[20:00]of the future that had of us and the past is behind us but there was a culture and I can't
[20:05]remember what it was but they think of the future as behind them because they can't see it
[20:14]and the past called ahead of them because they can see it and that completely is a brain teaser for
[20:20]me but it really got to the root of how our all of our perceptions of the biggest things in
[20:25]our lives are kind of cultural and you know commonplace that were they're given to us
[20:30]you know we all think of the past as behind us but then again what would it be like to write
[20:36]poems if you grew up thinking the past was ahead of you and the future was behind you
[20:42]I haven't I haven't you've actually rendered me silent
[20:49]it would but actually interestingly either of them are true you know yeah but I think actually you
[20:54]accomplished that in a lot of these poems that exact sense of sort of suspension words that
[21:00]are suspended in time almost sort of you know informal the higher something that you know it's like
[21:06]you throw something up into the air a lot of question and idea sort of about the circularness of
[21:12]time or memory or you know all of those things we're talking about and the just sort of stay there
[21:18]you don't you ask these questions in a way and then you but you know that the answer is not
[21:24]doesn't exist or I don't you know you just sort of throw it up and yeah and that is really
[21:28]interesting and a sort of consistency that pulls all this together in a really
[21:33]do over yeah yeah but you have to also promise to read cupid and possibly this and possibly
[21:42]carbon can possibly hope your God and possibly yes this is the first poem that you referred to
[21:54]and I've never read this one out because it's long well it's long-ish do over
[22:02]when you move dark bits of your life are shaken into light a Polaroid
[22:08]receipts from a place you've never been a marble the midnight attic of your choices
[22:16]such labels sink me like a stone so I drive away with you to work on our relationship
[22:22]as naked as the law allows still the spiral narrows deeper in playing me of adjectives
[22:30]being not myself confers strange powers only a couple of which I ever discern but I can see it
[22:38]at night that's one all that is created can be barely understood they say the big bang happened
[22:46]when the devil told God to go fuck himself be that as it may I need to find a fiction we can agree
[22:54]on this bridge this lonely crossing that I build for us you can't leave home unless you have one
[23:03]and if your home is assembled poorly we will be defined by what claims to you in your worst moments
[23:09]your anger your anchor it's freezing on the avenue of the giants
[23:15]lightness I thought would free me does no such thing only desire returns me to a semblance
[23:22]only desire like a tab of ecstasy stamps a smiley face on oblivion
[23:28]I worry your skin like a rosary momentarily even the seals make sense and are in tune
[23:36]they sing as you learn you teach the past suddenly seems rife with possibility in the future
[23:45]I shall let my wordless heart do all the talking on the drive home I record the new names
[23:52]Arcadia Eureka dukaya and I remember writing the lir when I was a kid hearing the
[23:59]magical spells changed by the conductor montage patch of massive people and when the train
[24:05]sometimes slowed I imagine jumping off unseen between stations and walking into these strange
[24:12]towns leaving my parents behind a ten-year-old city boy knocking on a long island door saying
[24:19]I'm a citizen of the world take me rename me I'll move along do the dishes for the hand me
[24:26]downs whatever as each second past geography which changed my faith every moment but new towns
[24:36]new families new lives those were the days but I never did step off no I don't think I ever did
[24:49]gorgeous absolutely beautiful
[25:00]That reminds me a bit of Philip Larkin, the wits and wedding, that sense of traveling
[25:07]and observing yourself and outside world at the same time.
[25:12]So an outreach cupid, so just to please me, cleanse the palette.
[25:16]Yeah.
[25:17]Okay.
[25:18]Oh, do you want to know what page it's on?
[25:22]I think it's on.
[25:24]I should know because I marked it.
[25:27]66, I know, right?
[25:29]This one you should know.
[25:33]Okay.
[25:33]This one's called Cupid.
[25:40]This is the entirety of it.
[25:42]What I want to know is what idiot, a bad fucking blind kid, a bow and arrow.
[25:58]That's partners too, as the pro flies, which goes the shortest distance, the straight line.
[26:05]When the fuck is that it will happen?
[26:07]I love those.
[26:10]There's a very short one at the very, very end as well, which is exactly like heads or tails.
[26:21]There's a lot in here, I don't know if we have time, I mean, I hope you can read some more
[26:26]because I love, well, there's so many puns I love, but the I love drive and LA is a bad place
[26:35]to die.
[26:36]I think it's utterly brilliant.
[26:37]It's page 71.
[26:43]LA is a bad place to die with its ironic sunlight on the day of your passing.
[26:49]It's improbable frost on a winter summer morning, completely forgotten, like you by midday
[26:55]and the mercury hits an 80.
[26:57]The ones hoped for a narrative of your life is celluloid cuttings on a Friday floor,
[27:03]swept by Santa Ana into a keystone sequence, a horror of nonsense.
[27:08]The one in a million shot that was remembered or assembled by chaos,
[27:12]will provoke a tear or a laugh, find an arc, a hedge against projected eternity.
[27:19]A tale edited by an idiot full of surround sound and fury, dignifying nothing.
[27:26]The parched desert plain mistakes your blood for rain and the rest is science.
[27:40]Both of them read it.
[27:48]What are your favorites?
[27:51]Well, I love carbon candy, but I think it's too long to read that.
[27:53]We should open up to questions, but carbon candy is one that was inspired by my daughter.
[27:59]Beautiful home.
[28:01]We have time, I can't wait for it, have a long time.
[28:09]So yeah, we all, it's cool to read it here because everybody knows carbon candy is just around the corner of that.
[28:15]Not around the corner, you know where it is.
[28:18]And we lived in carbon candy then before the fires, untack that given irony,
[28:28]where there are no carbon copies, we sow unique and blessed.
[28:32]There was a time when I walked with my three-year-old daughter, I think three.
[28:37]Anyway, I know we were walking to deep decline of carbon candy.
[28:42]And one of those short, mommyless johns, and we came upon the recently car crash carcass
[28:48]of a gray field mouse, part three-dimensional as in life, part flattened as in a drawing.
[28:55]The weight of the car having made its lower half unreal, a cartoon,
[29:00]the driver long gone on the way of their handiwork, guiltless.
[29:05]A tiny trickle of blood from its slightly open mouth, a last profound unheard utterance.
[29:12]So perfectly dramatic in telling, as if to seem placed by a movie crew,
[29:17]hiding in the bushes perhaps.
[29:19]And my daughter, two, three, four, about to spy it on the ground and I, a daddy,
[29:26]with knowledge spilling out of my pockets, life lessons,
[29:30]sense of teaching moment for the disquisition on mortality that every parent believes every three-year-old
[29:37]deep. See it all ends, best laid plans and all that. Life, sun, fair, carpet,
[29:43]a DM, little one, Latin for heaven. There but for the grace of God. In these moments,
[29:50]I realize I am nothing but a recording of my own parents' voices. They're greatest hits.
[29:56]My soul, their phonograph.
[30:00]Faith in, a father slows his daughter, allowing the chance to happen upon a dead mouse,
[30:06]its death knowledge, consequence, mortality. But it is only now as we kneel,
[30:13]that I notice the vibrant Chachau line of ants, dancing in and out of the ruined creature,
[30:19]in all their anarchic discipline, carrying two and fro, unseeable bits of meat,
[30:25]and nutrient mouse ooms, and my breath catches, because suddenly this lesson is for daddy,
[30:33]and in his daddy who cannot face too much death, for death after death, my death in this mouse's
[30:39]mouth, my daughter's death, I'm not quite stomach enough to face the pieces of us all carried
[30:45]off into oblivion, eaten to wear recognizable, unrecognizable, digested, shit, throw it to.
[30:55]Dizzying, I say, oh, let's go sweetheart. But it's too late, my daughter, two or three or four
[31:03]has seen. It means down farther, her blue eyes at inch or two from the ground and says,
[31:10]daddy, look the ants, there's so many of them. Yes, I see, maybe we should let them out sleep,
[31:16]let her sleep. I take her hand to a leader, though I don't know where,
[31:22]I know I am blind and unprepared, a child leaving a child, and the little one stops and smiles
[31:29]and points back to the carnage. No, the ants, daddy, the ants, look how much they love her.
[31:40]So it would be another example of like a time, of a preconception of time, and the
[31:51]preconception of love, you know, like we think we have these things to teach, the innocent,
[31:57]and then sometimes the innocent's teaches us something that is
[32:02]illogical but more profound than we would ever think of. Yeah, amazing.
[32:07]And the fathers in this book that you, your father, you, God, God, God, as the father who's
[32:21]God is a change to me. That was brilliant. I love that. But also the very last piece that really
[32:29]spoke to me where he says, sorry, it's a little insly baseball, but where I think he says
[32:34]something like, I'm not sure that's that's good for my kid, basically, the God problem.
[32:39]The God problem. Yeah. Yeah, this poem where God is like, why do you keep reminding me that I
[32:43]chose my son? I know, I don't like we both have tried it forget. He's very, I can see he's unhappy
[32:50]when he's pissed on me. Right. Why do you build all these churches just to remind me what I did?
[32:57]Can't we forget? It's a lot about forgetting this. How do we forget? What is right to forget? What is
[33:04]right to remember? Right. And how humiliating it is that he looks so shitty on the cross. He's really
[33:10]skinny. He said, he's poor son must feel awful about that. He wasn't getting fed. God is a change
[33:21]man. Yeah. Well, that kind of came out of that, that kind of thinking came out of I wrote an
[33:28]truly like lightning. And I did a lot of Mormon study for that because the main characters were
[33:34]Mormon. And the Mormon conception of of man, man and woman is that we're all actually God's in
[33:40]the making. So it was like, oh, what an interesting conception of God who changed it so that we're all
[33:47]God or not. I'm not saying I'm a Mormon or a condoning Mormon or anything like that. But I'm
[33:53]just saying, oh, that's an interesting way to look at it. It is. And you want your own planet
[33:56]when you die. Yeah. You do. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.
[34:06]I feel like if you guys are ready. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Open it up to some questions. Thank you.
[34:10]I thank you. My gosh. We're opening up to question.
[34:15]Yeah.
[34:20]Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. We're in there. Hi.
[34:25]So I didn't have some problems. When from your perspective of your character in
[34:32]reservoir? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So was that really the same time as the book or
[34:38]that was written. Yeah. I think when I don't remember to be honest with you, but it was written
[34:46]around that same time. And I think I was thinking I was going to try and write a series of stories
[34:52]about that guy. And so I just started writing poems in that voice. They're more rhyme.
[35:00]Then the other poems, they're different boys for sure.
[35:03]They're kind of, I don't know if they're in his voice,
[35:06]Ridley's voice, but they're in a different voice
[35:07]from the other poems.
[35:09]I kind of like them, but nobody ever talks about it.
[35:11]So maybe they're not very good, but thank you.
[35:17]Yeah.
[35:18]What's your writing process?
[35:20]Do you go back to edit your kind of stuff?
[35:23]I think my process, I used to think I was just lazy,
[35:35]because I don't rewrite a lot, and that could be true.
[35:38]I could have been right.
[35:40]But I also think at some point, I learned,
[35:43]or I came to this conception, that I
[35:47]want to honor the original input.
[35:51]Even though my poems are not strictly formalistic,
[35:56]so I don't really have to go back and count syllables
[35:59]or make stuff lines, it's not rhyming.
[36:01]So I don't have to do that kind of cleanup.
[36:05]I can do other kinds of cleanup.
[36:07]Certainly I change words if I repeated them and stuff like that.
[36:11]But there came a time, which I found as an actor, too.
[36:19]Early on, I like not to rehearse so much,
[36:22]because I like mistakes that happen in an organic way.
[36:27]Not to be too on top of everything all the time.
[36:32]That I found to be the most liberating and exciting part
[36:37]of acting.
[36:39]And it can be that way as a writer, too,
[36:41]when you surprise yourself, and you want to honor,
[36:43]in some ways, the sense of that surprise on the page.
[36:49]So if I'm going to rewrite, I really
[36:52]have to have a good reason.
[36:53]And some of these poems were so old that I rewrote a couple
[37:01]lines here and there, but I was really careful not to,
[37:06]because it was rewriting somebody else.
[37:08]I mean, I'm just not that person anymore.
[37:09]So it's like, I don't have the right to rewrite that person.
[37:14]I cleaned up a couple things that I didn't like.
[37:18]But I started going, no, I don't want to open this up,
[37:21]because I don't even know what the fuck he's talking about.
[37:24]I don't know as much as I want to know in order to rewrite.
[37:29]I can't.
[37:31]I'm barely, can you rewrite what I did yesterday?
[37:34]So that's the way I was feeling.
[37:36]OK, is that the question?
[37:38]Yeah, but the answer is not.
[37:39]Oh, my process.
[37:40]My process.
[37:41]We don't want to sit in somewhere.
[37:43]Most of it?
[37:44]Mostly, yeah.
[37:46]I know there was a poet that I loved John Berryman.
[37:49]He used to put his rough grass under glass.
[37:52]And he'd read them and read them and read them until he'd
[37:55]be so angry at all of the shit that he wanted to change,
[37:58]but he couldn't change it.
[38:00]And he'd take it out, like, so maybe I should do a little more of that.
[38:07]Anybody else?
[38:10]Well, you're writing poems, and they come to you.
[38:13]Are you like grabbing the nearest piece of paper
[38:15]or notes on your phone or anything?
[38:18]Yeah, sadly, it's like the iPad stuff now.
[38:21]I mean, I definitely, I think differently
[38:26]with a pen in my hand or a keyboard in front of me,
[38:30]but mostly, I think differently when I'm writing.
[38:35]So I don't even know.
[38:38]I mean, I have an idea of what I want to write about or a phrase
[38:42]or a notion.
[38:46]But I won't know what I'm thinking really about it until I write it.
[38:49]And if I were to compose it in my head, it would be very different.
[38:54]I mean, sometimes I'll compose a couple lines if I'm not,
[38:57]if I'm just kind of waking up, because I like to write early.
[39:00]So if I'm like, oh, yeah, OK, here's something.
[39:04]But I can't get that far.
[39:06]So when I write, I just become a different animal.
[39:09]When I'm actually pencil in hand or pen in hand,
[39:12]I like pencils.
[39:18]I read you forward.
[39:19]And you have this image of the poem being born,
[39:23]and it rides the wave of its own dissolution,
[39:26]like a piece of ice and hot iron,
[39:29]probably like that from across.
[39:31]I just want, it's a very interesting image.
[39:33]But I found it hard to understand if that goes for every poem
[39:38]or that process, that in expressing it, it kind of dissolves.
[39:43]Is that how you feel about poetry?
[39:45]And could it go another way?
[39:47]Could the impulse become something other than a poem
[39:50]that ends up in an action or becomes something entirely
[39:53]different than the idea of an action movie?
[39:56]No, no, no, no.
[39:58]I mean, mostly.
[40:00]The reason I would write something as a poem is because it doesn't have a lot or it doesn't have an action.
[40:07]But oddly, I've come to find that screenplay is when I write a screenplay. They're more poetic than fiction is.
[40:14]They're more poetic than other kinds of writing because the screenplay is really just image after image if it's good.
[40:19]If it's bad, it's explained to see what's going on because you can't shoot the explanation, right?
[40:24]So it's either it's dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, that's important.
[40:28]But then, like, what do I see? What do I see? What do I see? What do I see?
[40:31]What does it look like? What does it look like?
[40:33]And that's very much like a poem, which is like image image image.
[40:37]Thought, thought, thought. Thought image embodied thought. Thought externalized.
[40:46]I think what Frost meant was that each poem is kind of the arbiter of its own rules.
[40:52]It announces itself, this is what I am, this is what I'm about. Here are my rules.
[40:57]And then by the end of it, it's kind of broken its own rules and finished itself.
[41:05]In that way, I like it. I find it meditative to read poems because you really have to meet it on its own terms.
[41:11]It's not like all I'm reading an narrative and I have this image in my mind what's going on in a physical world.
[41:18]It's like, what the hell is going on? So I think that's the way I see it.
[41:23]Or maybe that's my interpretation of what Frost was talking about.
[41:28]I'm learning a lot.
[41:32]Anybody else? Yes, back there.
[41:36]So when you're writing poetry, how does it compare to when you're writing well, lyrics for yourselves?
[41:42]Well, lyrics are rhyming. You know, I like to rhyme in the lyrics. I'm a big fan of the rhyming lyrics.
[41:49]So I'm not such a big fan of rhyming at poems. I mean, sometimes I'll sort of rhyme in there because it surprises me.
[41:56]But, you know, in lyrics, they have to be like a graspable and understandable right away.
[42:06]You know, like you're only hearing at that one time there's music around it. It's not that clear.
[42:11]You know, often the rhyme will elucidate the word that you missed on the previous round.
[42:19]So, cliche's work really well.
[42:23]You know, everything that doesn't work in a poem.
[42:27]Like, if you saw even the greatest lyricists like Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen,
[42:36]you know, they do publish their books with lyrics.
[42:39]But if you, I mean, honestly, if you looked at them, you go,
[42:43]you know, the best lyrics ever.
[42:47]And that's saying something.
[42:49]But it's not the best poem ever.
[42:52]It's a poem I say they show us.
[42:54]And the lyrics are they have to make way to the music.
[42:57]They can't be everything.
[42:58]So, and once you say I make it without their music,
[43:01]they can really see how kind of an adequate they are on their own.
[43:06]But a poem has to be the music and words.
[43:09]So, it really has to function everywhere.
[43:13]I'm not, I'm not, you know, slagging Dylan and all the great ones.
[43:19]Because that's the genius in and of itself.
[43:21]It's just different. It's just slightly different.
[43:23]I mean, if you want to know about the Pulitzer for poetry,
[43:27]which is a, it's a travesty.
[43:30]But that's fine.
[43:32]Because he deserves everything.
[43:33]He's the best.
[43:34]But not that.
[43:40]I mean, I think he might agree.
[43:42]I was wondering,
[43:44]does there's so many different creative albums
[43:46]that has been in the most rewarding acting part?
[43:49]I think because of my personal history with my father
[43:58]and my mom publishing a novel,
[44:03]like the first time I, even though it wasn't my best novel,
[44:06]the first one, I got one out.
[44:08]You know, I did it.
[44:09]It was like my dad, you know, but I was really younger.
[44:12]And it was really,
[44:15]also they had sacrificed so much to send me to good schools.
[44:20]And I had sacrificed a lot by doing a lot of hard work
[44:24]at those schools.
[44:26]And it was kind of, for me, it was really a sense of,
[44:31]oh, I didn't throw all that shit out.
[44:34]And my parents didn't sacrifice for nothing.
[44:40]And so to have the novel in my hand,
[44:44]and there's a moment when you get your books.
[44:47]And I had that first one in my hand that was,
[44:50]that was meaningful to me.
[44:52]It was very meaningful.
[44:55]And it was the same with my mom,
[44:59]my mom didn't read my dad.
[45:00]But she would like to do this, you know.
[45:05]And it was really that sense in which it existed.
[45:09]It was like, yeah, you did something.
[45:12]I mean, I could look at box sets and things they did
[45:15]or DVDs of movies I've done.
[45:17]It's not, it's somehow it wasn't the same.
[45:21]Testing.
[45:23]Back there in the stripes.
[45:26]Absolutely nothing.
[45:29]Yeah.
[45:34]I hope people learn about themselves.
[45:36]That's always my sense of what a poem is.
[45:43]If it somehow speaks to you, that's the important thing.
[45:49]So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm weirdly private.
[45:54]I think I'm shy in some weird way.
[45:57]I don't like talking about things that have happened to me.
[46:02]So that these poems are not like, and again,
[46:06]I'm going to go after somebody.
[46:07]They're not like Taylor Swift songs.
[46:09]They're supposed to, you know, like connect the dots.
[46:16]Like I'm not engaged in that.
[46:20]So I guess I don't know what, but I want you to learn.
[46:27]Just, I mean, some of the things that I'm talking about tonight,
[46:35]I guess, some of these things.
[46:37]If they come around, if you read the poems and these things,
[46:40]come back and help you enjoy the poems, then that's great.
[46:43]But mostly, it's really what it means to a person who's reading
[46:49]and that's really the magic of poetry or writing is,
[46:53]is not, is not confession.
[46:57]I think we're in a different world now.
[46:59]The world that I grew up in the one that the,
[47:01]the game that I wanted to engage with was this artistic game
[47:05]of self-expression that was universal.
[47:07]I think things have changed that have become more confessional.
[47:10]I'm planning to spotlight back on the creator as a confessional.
[47:17]But that's not what I'm trying to do.
[47:19]It's possible that I've done that from time to time.
[47:21]But, so that's the answer.
[47:27]Okay.
[47:28]This is sticker.
[47:30]Yeah.
[47:31]I'm currently reading my hand.
[47:33]I'm further, any poems that didn't make it onto this book.
[47:36]Yeah.
[47:37]And you feel like you would be open to making a second poem.
[47:41]Yeah.
[47:42]I'm going to continue to write poems that got a, maybe three or four.
[47:46]Yeah.
[47:49]Sure.
[47:50]Well, not.
[47:52]I mean, if I get it, like a critical mass together.
[47:55]Or if I have an idea for, you know, like concept album.
[48:02]Yeah.
[48:04]But I don't know.
[48:06]I don't know.
[48:09]But yeah.
[48:11]Yes.
[48:12]Volume two.
[48:17]What would the title be?
[48:20]No, again.
[48:22]Yeah.
[48:30]I mentioned in your podcast that you feel like you're more of a conduit now that you're
[48:34]elected to be able to service to that creative world.
[48:36]How do you feel about that and explain that to you?
[48:41]Well, the podcast they talked about failure in my progress a lot with creative people.
[48:46]And so my inspiration for the podcast was I was very offended by the initial kind of Donald Trump
[48:57]saying winning, winning, winning, because I came from a more European sensibility, I guess.
[49:03]I know what it was all about losing, losing, losing.
[49:06]And that he actually made you a human being, not winning.
[49:10]I was really offended by this notion.
[49:15]I feel like I've been born out.
[49:18]Sadly.
[49:21]But so as I just wanted to investigate the idea of failure and shame and the reaction of failure.
[49:33]And just the binary of success and failure being kind of the thing I talked about
[49:38]about time is like maybe what I'm thinking of success and failure is actually reversed
[49:45]like past and present or future.
[49:48]Future.
[49:49]You did pass.
[49:51]And it seems that way.
[49:53]The more I talk to people.
[49:55]There are, if you freeze things in time, you can say, OK, that was a success.
[49:59]So that was a fail.
[50:00]But if you take the long view, we don't know. We have no idea. We have no idea what's working, what's not.
[50:07]We think we do. We do.
[50:09]So that's terrifying, probably unpopular, but it seems to me to be the truth.
[50:20]So I like to have those discussions.
[50:25]I get tired of having to, you know, you had to read my poems to be here.
[50:29]I have to do my homework when I talk to people.
[50:33]And sometimes I'm like, fuck it. I don't want to do it.
[50:36]So I'm tired of doing homework.
[50:38]I want to be like the guys on the smart list where the whole thing is like,
[50:41]I don't know who's coming up.
[50:43]You know, preparation.
[50:46]That's the brilliant part of that podcast.
[50:48]It's like, how do I make a show where the rule is?
[50:51]I can't do any homework.
[50:54]So that's off to them.
[50:57]But as a creative person, as somebody who's like involved in my own creative life and creating things,
[51:05]sometimes it feels, oh, I don't want to, I don't want to like read your stuff today.
[51:10]I'd rather, oh, I'm complaining.
[51:13]I don't need to complain.
[51:15]Yeah.
[51:17]Yeah, man.
[51:18]I get overwhelmed with other people's ideas.
[51:24]Hey, what else?
[51:26]I can't.
[51:27]Me again.
[51:28]Me again.
[51:29]That would be another good time.
[51:31]Yeah.
[51:33]How many?
[51:35]And I'm not asking for an exact number.
[51:37]Four.
[51:40]How many is any phone specific to cut?
[51:45]Oh.
[51:48]I wouldn't know.
[51:49]But they were probably the older ones, a few of the older ones that I couldn't see rewriting.
[51:58]Like I said, to your first question.
[52:02]Or that I just didn't always feel like I was feeling them.
[52:06]Yeah.
[52:09]And oddly, from this question over here, I originally had,
[52:14]it was going to be all the phones that I had and all the lyrics.
[52:18]So the book was originally like that.
[52:21]And I said to Mary Carr, the memoirist, great writer and poet.
[52:27]And I said, we've learned the book.
[52:29]And she does.
[52:30]She blurs her right here on the, she's a great, great lawyer.
[52:34]And she said, but I don't think you should include the lyrics.
[52:39]Confusing things.
[52:40]And I was like, ah, fuck off.
[52:43]I take your blurb and you can go fuck yourself.
[52:46]You know, a couple weeks back until my editor.
[52:50]So Mary Carr didn't think I should include the lyrics.
[52:54]So what do you mean it's interesting?
[52:57]Two weeks later I was like, move.
[53:01]Mary Carr's right.
[53:04]So no lyrics.
[53:07]For all those reasons that I was making fun of,
[53:10]it's a great pop note.
[53:13]I was wondering if in actor preparation to select
[53:16]get to know a character, you've ever written any poetry response to that.
[53:20]No, but I had this movie I did in June,
[53:24]one of the other actors that gave me a poem
[53:27]that he written to my character.
[53:31]I was like, this isn't the way to do that.
[53:34]You saw that.
[53:35]You get me to get me to get a little poem.
[53:40]I had not.
[53:44]But that's not to say that I won't.
[53:48]Just wait.
[53:49]It's coming next.
[53:52]Okay.
[53:53]So I think you're so we have plenty of time for a sign.
[53:55]Oh, sure.
[53:56]A few reminders for people to come in late.
[53:59]Please no photos.
[54:00]Please only sign in books.
[54:02]And when you stand up, if you could hold your chair for me
[54:05]and just put it against the wall,
[54:07]that would be super helpful.
[54:08]It's great.
[54:09]Plenty of copies of the book.
[54:10]It's fascinating.
[54:11]I need the purchase that you can come right up here for that
[54:13]and then we'll go to the floor.
[54:15]She's in New York.
[54:16]She's in New York.