John Darnielle (The Mountain Goats): Looking Back Without Nostalgia

0:04Blake Smith: Hey folks, it's Jeremy Kirkland. How are you doing? You're listening to Blamo. We got a freaking banging episode this week. I'm very happy you're here. I'm happy I'm here because it's John Darnielle Day of the Mountain Goats. It's John Darnielle. First off, he is the Mountain Goats, but he's one of my favorite people ever of all time. Just... God, I'm not, don't make a goat joke about Mountain Goats. Don't do it. Don't do it. I literally am biting my tongue while I'm doing this intro. But if you're not a fan of the Mountain Goats or John Darnio, you're about to become one because he's just the freaking best.

0:50Blake Smith: But I'm really glad he came on the pod. We actually recorded this, I don't know, a few weeks ago, but I wanted to sit on it a bit because he has a new album that comes out this week called Days. It is a Mountain Goats album. But if you are a person like me, you know, digging into the canon of the Mountain Goats and John's music over the years has just been one of the best parts of my life. I mean this so much because I put it on when I feel good. I'll put stuff on when I feel bad. And like, he's there. He's got some great things to say and sing to me. For every mood I've ever been in. But hopefully you'll dig into this because we kind of go all over the map.

1:37Blake Smith: I'll say this at the beginning. I first met John when I worked at 4AD, which was the beggars group early on. And he had come in to show us his new record. And I'm putting this story in there because I don't know if this made the cut in the original recording that, you know, because a lot of times I'll have guests on and I try to explain to them like, look, here's how I know you. And some of them don't care. John cared because he always cares because he's John, right? But I was working at Beggars and at the time, a lot of times artists, we would get a new record from an artist and, you know, sometimes it would be presented to us by one of the people from the label who is in personal contact with the artist and the artist would bring it in.

2:25Blake Smith: But John is different. he came in and brought the his new album at the time which was the life of the world to come um to the beggar's office and sat in with all of us on staff as we listened to it so we got to listen to this record that most of us had not heard before in front of him with him also like narrating it and explaining it to us and it was so good it was so freaking good it's still one of my favorite records ever it's a heavy record by the way if you're gonna dig into that uh but we're talking about his new record days but i just want to give you that context because that's the kind of guy he is he's like the kind of guy who is he's explaining things to you but you can also just enjoy his art and he's okay with how you enjoy it or what you pull from it he's a pretty cool guy he's confident guy all right enough about that crap he joins me to talk about the band's new album days and why he's finally allowing himself to look back on a career that's always been focused on what's next.

3:28Blake Smith: We get into aging without becoming nostalgic. Very, very key thing there. Why every act of creation is ultimately hopeful and what it means to see your own life and your parents' lives with fresh eyes. By the way, this gets a little bit heavy. There's just stuff in there that got me a little emotional because it's hard not to feel the weight of life when you're talking with a person as prolific as Mr. Jonio. So we chat about Randy Newman, which, oh man, now there's the goat. Fans that shaped him, grief, faith, songwriting. Oh man, it's all in there. I'm so excited for you to listen. I'm going to shut up.

4:04Blake Smith: Here we go. Let's do it. How you doing? I'm good. Life of the World to Come is still a record I play all the time. Thank you. For many Mountain Goats fans, I don't know. They all have their own sort of record that they're obsessed with, within your catalog. And Life of the World is still personal favorite. But I want to talk about this new record. Some of this stuff with this record, you know, has made me think a lot about, you know, a big part of this record was you looking back and realizing that you have a catalog, you have a history, you have...

4:35John Darnielle: I have a few records, yeah.

4:36Blake Smith: Yeah, quite a few. And you have stuff that people are now looking back at. But it sounds like this is the first time you were becoming more aware of that history.

4:43John Darnielle: Well, no, I'm always aware, but I'm usually resisting engaging much backward looking. People, I mean, I don't like, I try to avoid speaking in generalities, but I do think people are very quick to begin looking back when there's too much in the present and ahead for me to want to do that, right? I don't see what the value is and part of this is like if you are in touch with people you knew when you were younger and you're the same age now those people hit 40 and start talking about how music was only good when they were in college or whatever and it's like I fear that kind of stance I want to remain engaged and so I apply that to my own catalog too right I'm not listening to old mountain goat stuff unless I'm trying to exhume it to do something new with it right I'm not trying I have no desire to be that person again right I enjoyed being that person when I was that person, that artist, when I was that artist, and that artist grows and that person grows.

5:40John Darnielle: And that's the person I'm always interested in is the one who has grown into something new and the one who's looking towards something new. And that's, I mean, you know, that's both an artistic ethos and, and a personal ethos, right? It's also, you know, what you want to be in your personal life is like, there's that thing that evangelical say that Jesus is the same today, tomorrow and forever, right? I like that in some ways and I don't in other ways because Jesus is human being. Human beings change, right? That's, that's the thing. You grow. If you don't grow, you're never a human being. Well, Jesus is supposed to be fully God and fully human.

6:10John Darnielle: He cannot be fully human if he did not change, right? If he, if he did not grow as a person inside, not just in his body, right? So if you're going to claim fully God and fully human, then he had to change, right? That you don't get to make that claim otherwise. I think that's what makes human beings beautiful, that they grow. You are not the same. The you, all the yous you used to be are still in there and you can honor them or repair them or bargain with them or, or, you know, make peace with who they were when you were at your worst, but you are a new person today, right? Every day you wake up with new opportunities to grow.

6:42John Darnielle: That will be true up to the last day of your life, right? And that's why I'm always trying to not look back too much because you can go, well, I'm going to say, you know, I felt this way about this political position or whatever, forever. I don't think, I think you always should be dealing with new facts on the ground, open to change, open to learning new things, you know, that's how the joy stays in life, right? And so that's why I've been so resistive to any type of nostalgia. But as you age, you are going to at some point look back and taste the sweetness of that, right? And not just the sweetness, though, the harshness of it.

7:18John Darnielle: If you look at passages in your own life or in history where you go, and actually that was perilous, you know, maybe you didn't feel the peril at the time and you look at it and you go, no, that was danger. Actually, could have gone and could have shook out a couple ways there. The same as when if you are driving and somebody cuts you off, right? And you think, wow, that was actually that close to a crash, but I was looking and I didn't crash my car. Well, you don't even usually think about it that much, but if you do stop to think, your whole life would have changed if you'd have crashed, right?

7:48John Darnielle: In some way or another, right? And so I'm looking back in that way. I'm engaging the past in some way. In part because I feel like I'm now old enough to want to be doing that, to not miss out on that errand before I go in 20 or 30 years, right? And so, you know, like I've been fairly reactionary about it up to now. Now I think if I'm going to engage that terrain, now is the time.

8:12Blake Smith: Yeah. The thread that you're pulling at though too is, you know, being aware of your immortality. But you've always had a very, you're not a pessimistic person. No. And I think, you know, when I'm, when I've heard you speak, whether it was when you were talking about your record at 4AD or just seeing you on tour and seeing you having you engage with the audience, I'm always perplexed by the amount of joy you have. Hmm. And. You're not perplexed. You know I'm right.

8:37John Darnielle: No, no.

8:38Blake Smith: It's, well, I think life is hard. Life is weird. And for me, my entry point to your music was through pain and suffering.

8:48John Darnielle: Yeah.

8:48Blake Smith: Right. and I felt that I could commiserate with your pain and suffering yeah and I as a young I don't know irresponsible patron of an artist right you know I wanted you to stay in that world yeah and when I saw you and I got to learn more about you and obviously your catalog grew and grew and I saw that there was a lot of joy in it there you know I was like I still wanted you to exist in this person to kind of commiserate with me when I'm down, but I feel like you as an artist and a musician, you're constantly challenging what it means to engage with you in the state that you're in.

9:27John Darnielle: Well, I hope, I hope what I'm challenging is not just me, but what it is to engage with art, right? Like even, I mean, I've made this claim a number of times, but, but like art is inherently affirmative, right? It is not, you can't make, you can't write a book, you can't write a song, you can't make a painting that does not affirm. There are artists who tried, the Marquis de Sade is the most famous, right? It's like, they're supposed to, but there's people who work in that vein, people who make really, you know, very, very gruesome movies and books that, you know, you leave feeling bad. Michael Haneke makes these movies that like, they make you feel like shit when you watch them, right?

10:05John Darnielle: But it remains an affirmative thing to do because it's an act of creation, right? It is making something where nothing was. That's what God does, right? And we can't really do that, but you can do it in the creative realm that you express in a way that creates something that is infinitely engageable, that you can take and use in any number of ways as background music, as something you're crying to for hours on it, as something you share with a friend because that helps you communicate with them. Those are three of infinite ways of experiencing the things that we make. Not me, everybody who makes stuff, right?

10:42John Darnielle: And I have another shtick, which is like, and everybody does make stuff. Some people get credit for it because it takes the form of a song or a book, but we're all living creatively in whatever we do in our lives. Our lives are expressions of creativity. Those are inherently affirmative. Faulkner talks about this at his Nobel address, you know, that like you're sitting there, whatever you're doing, wallowing in the, on the worst day of your life, you are still expressing here I am. No one has ever been exactly where I am. And at the same time, yes, they have. We've all shared these experiences, right?

11:14John Darnielle: You know, when you get away from them, that your pain was not unique, right? That actually is human. It's human. You get to be this.

11:21Blake Smith: There was no,

11:21John Darnielle: it was almost, it's funny. Some of the evangelicals who are total hucksters, right? Like who, you know, I don't think they actually believe in God or anything. This is one of their favorite points, right? Is to say that the chances of you being a human being on this planet were infinitesimal, right? Like you can't even contemplate how rare this gift is. And the gift remains a rare gift on the worst day of your life, right? It's like, it's still this amazing possibility of experience. So when you are singing about sad and terrible things, you're still expressing that right you're expressing the harder side of that but it's still that harder side exists in a broader context i think all the doom metal bands know this i think all the people who do more monochromatic art where they don't smile where they play it still know this that is an active if not resistance of of sort of um uh uh you know heels dug in affirmation right of of of presence, right?

12:20John Darnielle: It's an affirmation of self to engage with art in any way, right? It affirms where you are in that moment. And that is inherently positive, whether that's taken place with an extraordinarily dark piece of art or a light and fun one, right? So it's the same. It's all the same, right? It's just a long different, it's just in different colors.

12:41Blake Smith: How do you, as an individual, engage with art without letting it become you?

12:46John Darnielle: Oh, without having it informed my process, you mean?

12:48Blake Smith: Yeah.

12:49John Darnielle: Oh, I don't worry about that too much. When I was younger, I did notice this. This is a funny story. When I was first getting into indie rock, the biggest band was Pavement, right? Yeah. Every record you ever read about in those days, every seven-inch, oh, this sounds a lot like Pavement, right? It's like, so I did not listen to them for several years. Slanted and Chanted, you heard Slanted? Nope, didn't hear it because I'm not going to listen because everybody seems to get really impacted by this guy. And I knew that that could happen to me when I was a young writer because if you are a young songwriter and you listen to too much Leonard Cohen, you end up reading bad Leonard Cohen.

13:24John Darnielle: And we've all known people who get too into Dylan when they're in high school or whatever, and then they write stuff and it's bad Bob Dylan, right? Because you can only be the one Bob Dylan. Now, Bob Dylan is the sum of his influences, but he was so precocious that he could listen to a bunch of old blues and old country and still bring his own thing. Most of us, though, if we listen to a bunch of Leonard Cohen, then we try to write a song after we're deep in our Cohen phase, it's just going to sound like Leonard Cohen minus the wisdom, which is not good Leonard Cohen. And so I remember writing a nine-verse song one day after dredging too long in Cohen.

13:58John Darnielle: So I resisted listening to that stuff. Once you've established your own voice, and especially because I learned that mine comes more from poetry and books than it does from the music I listen to, my phrasing, my singing, my song phrasing comes probably more from jazz singers than anything else, and soul singers maybe. uh yeah uh gospel singers too but um but but yeah i don't if something does rub off on me i have no no anxiety about that sure somebody spots it that's fine because art's a big conversation you know one of my one of the most important figures in my life my uh my classics from my latin professor uh most of her work was in the subject of influence right uh which when we think when we talk especially in the 21st century we talk about influence we have a really infantile way of talking about it, right?

14:44John Darnielle: Where the influence is perceived as exerting some power, right? Like, oh, the influential, big air quotes around that, the influential artist is the one who made a thing that somehow made other people sound that way. That's not how that actually works. The nominal influence actually is completely passive in that relationship. The nominal influence made a thing. The other people take things from it. They eat it, right? Or they, in my old professor's way, they have an intimate relationship with it, where by engaging it, they transform it through their own self. So to be influenced is not something to be anxious about.

15:29John Darnielle: It's something that happens, that you are actually the deciding factor in it. When you learn something, it really isn't a big deal to say, oh, so-and-so just rhymes shower with power. And I like the way that that worked to use shower as an adjective in a line rhyming it with power or whatever. I'm just saying that because there's a fan over there that says power plus. But any of those things, you can cop those. You can bite those. If you bite too hard, then you wind up sounding like other people. Be conscious of that. But that's where it really is just craft. I'm talking a lot of mystical stuff, but this is nuts and bolts.

16:00John Darnielle: right it's like it really is deciding how much to take the same way you would if you're a woodworker right when somebody shows you how to do something you don't have any anxiety about saying that's how i fit these two logs together right you know you will probably have a way that you join them at some point that really is kind of your fit right uh but but you learn the nuts and bolts as you would and that's what you're learning from other people right is how they did stuff right how how to have fun with words.

16:28Blake Smith: Yeah, I mean, you certainly do. The new record is great. And it definitely, I think it's interesting because a lot of artists that'll put out records like, oh, let's compare you to Dylan for a second because it's easier on the top of my head. You can put them in the different eras and different genres of their life, right? Yeah. I'm curious because this new one was supposed to be called Grunges.

16:51John Darnielle: Yes. That was just the joke idea that kind of gave birth to the album.

16:56Blake Smith: But what do you feel that really made it become Days?

16:59John Darnielle: Well, I wrote that song, and I really like that song. And I wanted to bring attention to it. There's always a few titles that are being worked on. But it was after, I mean, it's like when I had enough to start looking at what it's about, it's like, oh, this is really kind of an album about mortality in some ways, and about angles on the past, right? You know, about how, but perspectives on the past as seen from some ways down the line, you know? And so I thought about that when I wrote the song Days, right? And which just has a very super, there's a lot of songs with very simple choruses on this, which is sort of where I'm at at the moment.

17:38John Darnielle: And so this just, do you know how short the days are? Which I was very pleased with that. I mean, I think this is...

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19:02Blake Smith: That's getbezel.com. All right, all right, back to the show.

19:09John Darnielle: Also a continuation of the last album in some ways that like some there's a the last album takes place in a very short period of time with people who come to understand that their time is is profoundly limited right that they're dying right they're dying this week right and so yeah you and i right but but uh but you know the jackson brown line they say in the end it's a wink of an eye right and uh uh and so yeah so so when i thought about grunge i was wondering why am i thinking so much about grunge well it's because a lot of those guys didn't make it right andrew wood lane staley uh uh even chris cornell lasted a long time but but like it's uh you know i mean you know over time no one from any genre will will wind up doing that well it's like if doing well not dying right but the grunge guys uh there's been a lot of hard hits early on me as a pot i got murdered right and uh uh and uh and i thought i was thinking when that stuff was happening it was on mtv news it sort of is in the news cycle the news cycle has a strong degree of unreality to it.

20:08John Darnielle: But those are people, those were young men and women, you know, uh, dying young, right? How old are you? I'm 40. What if you died when you were 23? I know. How awful would that have been to not have gotten any of this, right?

20:21Blake Smith: I think about people like Croce and Hendricks and yeah.

20:24John Darnielle: Your whole story to be whoever you were at 23, right? That's all anybody knows about Jeremy is, is, is what he was up to that point. I mean, it's like, really, you can see at 40 where you go, oh my God, most of my story is after that. Well, that would, right? And so most of your story is after that. There's a lot of very important prelims. There's lore, right? There's lore that goes into the Jeremy who lived from 23 to 40, but it's just preliminaries, right? And I was thinking about that stuff, that like these stories that get so hot and tight, you know, are on some alternate timeline, really just prologue.

21:01John Darnielle: And, uh, and yeah, and thinking about, you know, bands who played Carnegie Hall, who people don't talk about anymore, but were very important to me, you know, and the sort of kaleidoscopic sense of what's important is unknown to others, but was also important to somebody else who doesn't know who you are. There's many, many layers of, of perception and meaning and all these things. Right.

21:20Blake Smith: yeah like who who is a carnegie band that you talk about renaissance this is a song on the album

21:26John Darnielle: called annie haslam imperial phase uh about the singer from the band called renaissance um yeah uh annie haslam who has perfect pitch and has one of the clearest voices in the whole history of rock and i bet you've never heard of them uh but they played carnegie hall uh because prog was having a moment and they had good management and uh uh for that time well i can't I don't know what they would say about that, about their management. But whoever was handling them was, did enough work to get them into Carnegie hall. And they just did a live album of it that I owned when I was a child. Right.

21:56Blake Smith: Oh my God.

21:57John Darnielle: And, and I didn't have any sense of, you know, is this a popular band or not a popular band? These were not questions on my radar. I just knew that I liked their music and I came back to it 10 years ago or so. I was like, God, I love this fucking band so much. They're so good. They're Canterbury style folk or prog. So they're not not wig out prog, but very formal progressive rock. Right. Sort of, you know, experimenting with with something other than doing blues forms to make rock songs. Right. And I adore them. Her voice is incredible. So it's literally just the song is sort of like the story of ELO by by Randy Newman.

22:36Blake Smith: No. Wait, like the band ELO or something.

22:39John Darnielle: Randy Newman on the album Born Again had a song that I could not figure out when I was a kid. And now I think, well, he had a song he wanted to write about. He knew Jeff Lynne at this point. So Jeff Lynne actually, I believe, works on the song. But the whole song just... They were six fine English boys who knew each other in Birmingham. They bought a drum and guitar, started a rock roll band. Johnny played a little violin, and Bobby Joe played the big violin, the one that stands on the floor. They were all in the rock and roll band. Their first song sounded like this. and then the next thing goes into an ELO impression.

23:11John Darnielle: Please get me a witness. Right off, they needed a name. Someone said, how about the Renegades? Johnny said, well, I don't know. I prefer ELO. I love their Mr. Blue Sky. Almost my favorite is Turned to Stone. And how about Telephone Line? I love that ELO. That's the entire song. So, well, I've always had a fondness for that song and for songs like, there's some other bands who've done things like this, is just telling stories of the growth of bands. And this song does that for Renaissance, who people don't think about that much, but I think about a lot. And so it's kind of a fake Ian Hunter song in terms of its structure.

23:48John Darnielle: It's got that sense, but yeah.

23:51Blake Smith: Oh, that's sick. Man, I love, love Randy Newman. And I think there's, I'm curious about this, but there's, yeah, there's bands that I, when I was younger, I definitely would just kind of shit on and roll my eyes at. And as I've gotten older, and I guess I've felt that I've become more mature in ways, that I've kind of rediscovered these bands and artists that I've overlooked. And Randy Newman is probably the one that I am so embarrassed that I would just rip on. And he's the greatest.

24:22John Darnielle: Well, you're younger is the thing is like, by the time you're aware of Randy Newman, he's doing a lot of soundtrack songs, you know, and Short People has happened.

24:30Blake Smith: He did Toy Story.

24:32John Darnielle: Yeah, he did Toy Story. But the thing is, no matter how much you think about Randy Newman's music, there's always a little more. His engagement specifically with New Orleans music, with New Orleans piano styles, with Fats Domino. Nobody talks about Fats Domino. Randy Newman talks about Fats Domino and used to close his shows with Encore of Blue Monday. Because Fats Domino is changing up the game with songs that you think, I found my thrill guy. Yes, the I found my thrill guy. Utterly doing amazing things with New Orleans piano. know uh and new orleans is where american music comes from i mean america comes from a lot of places but the centrality of new orleans to the conversation i mean i just don't think you can name a city that's more important in american music than new orleans right i don't think you can um and uh and randy newman has understood this from early but his father was a film composer right so he's using a lot of classical stuff in the service of popular art right and so it's not you know it's not post-romantic style it's not classical of the salon sort but sort of like you know incidental music thematic music right so the program music um but uh but Newman has all this stuff like written on the inside of his wrist by the time he's five right so you know and and he's one of those first guys to be playing with unreliable narrators uh not not first but to be really one of the first guys in the post-rock era to be leaning in hard on making the listener do more work right to ask who is this speaking what's what's the speaker's uh uh investment in what he's talking about right uh and how am i supposed to be taking this and how does how does what the speaker of the lyric is saying how does that engage with the sentimentality of the music like i mean one of the most devastating random songs is sail away right yeah and sail away is sung by a slaver trying to pitch America to the people he's about to kidnap and enslave.

26:29John Darnielle: It's an incredibly dark song with the sweetest music, just utterly beautiful melody, seductive. And that's speaking to the mindset of both the person in the song, but of people who've bought into the myth of how to enslave somebody but bring them to a country of opportunity might be a positive thing it's not it's like it's not you maybe down the line these people's descendants might pry some positive things from that but that doesn't mean there's anything good about it right so yeah you know and uh and well newman's hip to all all the density of all that and uh but yeah but maybe even i think you got a friend in me from a musical standpoint if you listen to these songs they're quite good right you're sick oh absolutely star movies but and because you have You hear them over and over because they seem simple.

27:18John Darnielle: But to do a simple song like that, there's a reason why you haven't heard You Got a Friend in Me Too. You can't name the guy who wrote the song that was almost as good as You Got a Friend in Me. It's the one that actually has the juice, right? But yeah, I had a complicated relationship with Randy Newman. I wouldn't know about him if not from my stepfather, who was the world's number one Randy Newman fan, took me to see him when I was eight years, seven years old. um uh yeah and it which then that concert is burned into my mind because he had had one of his abusive outbursts that very week right um and and it was hard people many physically abusive parents people in relationships go through a deep process of shame after one of these outbursts plenty don't i'm told right but uh but but there's a whole it's so much more complicated than most people think it is they haven't lived with it right it's like they they feel shame and guilt right they've hurt people that they love right um they don't get better the next week at all it happens again and again and again but the shame is incredibly painful for them to carry right and there's no one can do anything about it and we as child and the guy who had hit me a week before went to go see randy newman i'll never forget it was like he was experiencing feelings watching these songs and sharing them with me that he didn't have the way to process a deep

28:36Blake Smith: experience for me yeah thanks for sharing that yeah but he was so he was the guy but my step

28:40John Darnielle: thought I was a smart guy. It's like people often, you want to be careful trying to paint too complex a picture of a person who was a very abusive presence in your life. But like the reason I'm able to talk to you was this complex about Randy Newman, because I was introduced to that music at an early age by a guy who also understood it at a very deep level. Right. And who was hip to it early, who caught it early, who, who heard sail away, or I think 12 songs before that. It was like, oh, this is better than the other stuff. Right. This is actually deep. Right. And so, so yeah, so i listen to it all the time we got every new and album new all the way up through born again which is that when we left the house but uh but but yeah i've stuck with it all he's just you

29:16Blake Smith: know yeah there's nobody quite like him i play harps and angels a lot which is much later randy

29:21John Darnielle: newman and um losing you is a song losing you is amazing it's so good and it just knocks me flat

29:30Blake Smith: and it's like i i don't know how often this happens with you but i feel like probably when i hit my 30s, but definitely in my 40s. Often when I play music, I will get emotional. I'll cry.

29:42John Darnielle: Oh, I'm a big crier when I listen to music. I've always been that way.

29:46Blake Smith: I just don't know. I don't know how to make it stop sometimes.

29:50John Darnielle: Well, man, what you got to do is re-engage that evangelical thing, right? And then go listen to Rich Mullins. Cry your eyes out, listen to Rich Mullins. Listen to Amy Grant's version of Nothing Is Beyond You. This is a song that on one of my darkest days ever in 2008 i just listened to it like 14 times in a row it was the only thing i

30:09Blake Smith: could do well here's the thing that i'm in now right and now like i'm getting a tiny emotional yeah i was my my dad passed in 24 he had come he had parkinson's for 30 years for how long just completely uh 30 years so he he was diagnosed yeah he was diagnosed at 39 um it's totally robbed his music career and he died he he was like 68 about when he died and um you know you don't die from parkinson's for listeners like it's it but it slowly robs your your mental ability and self and your ability to communicate and so his he died from complications related to parkinson's but through the like grief and stuff that i've been going through you know it's weird how my older brother and i have become a lot closer and he shared with me what i thought was like this poem And I was like, oh my God, this is so beautiful.

30:58Blake Smith: Like who wrote this? And he was like, dad did. And I'm hitting this thing now where like I'm going through all my dad's music and I went and tried to get a bunch of his old stuff remastered and I'm like putting it out all out. And I'm, you know, I'm in the situation now where I'm an adult and I want to have an adult relationship with my dad. But I moved away when I was 18 in this like hedonistic pursuit to try to be a rock star and live in New York and all this stuff. And I oftentimes get really upset with myself because my dad was the rock star. My dad was the guy who was playing with Dan Peake and who was, you know, singing songs and writing music and teach me how to do it.

31:39Blake Smith: And now I come like full circle in this moment where I'm looking at his art and looking at his music. And I mean, because also a lot of this, you know, this stuff triggered by the record in the stuff that you're talking about because I'm like trying to have this relationship with a person of this time and era right and I'm now seeing like oh he was younger than me when he

32:01John Darnielle: wrote that song oh yeah that stuff is is very that that I think is a vital you're early actually on this errand who was my dad when he was my age you don't ask yourself that when you're 17 right yes uh but but when you're in middle age you do like I my thing with that is like my dad tried to save my life when I was addicted to drugs and he did the best he could, uh, to get me out of, you know, he want, he, he was, he was in AA, so he should have known that geographicals don't work. Right. But, but his thought was that I got away from my girlfriend, she was the problem. Everybody had an identified problem and that was the, all the fingers were pointing at her.

32:40John Darnielle: So he offered, he, he took out a loan to, so he'd be able to give me$560 a month to live on that included rent and tuition right um in portland right well he was in portland made the offer he said you can do this anywhere in the country just get away from claremont i said well i was in portland i didn't expect to live long so i said just sure portland whatever right well there was a lot of meth in portland i'll tell you there's a lot of drugs in portland so but uh but uh and they were only the heroin was extraordinarily high quality it was really dangerous uh but uh but i now at my age, I go, wait, to take out a loan, you have to go to the bank.

33:17John Darnielle: You have to go through a whole process of stuff, right? It interrupts your life to do, you're taking a chance and you're never going to get that money back unless somehow miraculously your drug addicted son a year later lands a good job and is better and is mature enough to go, oh, my dad spent what's 560 times nine on me. I should give it, but I didn't do that. You know, you don't do that when you're a young man. You go, I have money. Parents have money. Right. And so, you know, but actually my dad, you know, did this thing that if I, you know, heaven forbid, when my younger children should seven years from now land in trouble, I'll be facing questions like that.

33:51John Darnielle: If that should happen, how do I deal with this? I now see him as a man, right? Not as dad. It takes so long. I think your parents have to die if you understand that they were people, you know?

34:01Blake Smith: Yeah.

34:01John Darnielle: Yeah. That doesn't, and it doesn't mean, but it also doesn't mean if you went through stuff with them, they go, oh, well, they were just people. It's like, no, they still were people with agency and you make decisions, right? But, but, but it does help you contextualize everything that like, you know, the notion that with that in relationships that anybody knows what they're doing or, you know, or has a program that works. These are, these are actually child's version, versions of how relationships work. Relationships are dynamic, right? They're, they're in this play at all times, right? This is, I think why people who try to game romantic and sexual relationships, well, here's the five steps to dealing with a woman or whatever.

34:38John Darnielle: That is an act of desperate fear, right? Because the actual state of play is there is no, there's no game. There's no, here's how it's done. There are probably things you can do that will persuade or trick people to sleeping with you, but congratulations, whatever. Actual relationships, there's no playbook and there will never be a playbook because those two people have never met before. And so they, and they've never existed before. Well, this depends on your spirituality, whether it was two people that ever existed before. The spirits may have been in multiple bodies but but the people the expressions of them that take place in this husk only existed that time at that time right but so when you reflect on on your parents after they are gone you begin to understand them as people who you know were once as you are now right in the exact age you are now right and they had had their own things uh that's that uh people always quote the first verse of philip larkin but they don't go on through the poem you know this be the verse you don't check it out they fuck you up definitely well they fuck you up your mom and dad oh yes i do know this yes but do you know the second they may not mean to but they do they fill you with the faults they have and add some extra just for you but they were fucked up in their turns by fools and old style hats and coats who half the time were soppy stern and half at one another's throats man hands on misery to man it deepens like a coastal shelf get out as early as you can and don't have any kids yourself so that's philip larkin right uh it's not the only opinion and if you think he's not going that deep just because he can at the end you gotta entertain that possibility that like oh if i say this people will feel the dread you know it's like there's there's a performer's verve in that also but the middle one with the one with the words that we as americans don't hear as much because soppy stern doesn't really mean anything to us old style hats and coats means nothing to us right but uh but they were fucked up in their turn is a deep line right it's like it's true your vision of your parents that you never quite get free of when you are a very young child is they are perfect and they know everything right it is natural for you to think that when you're two when you're three when you're five right they are we had a nanny for a brief period of time, a wonderful person who said to me, I wish you could see how Moses talks about you when you're not here, because I'll be sharing a story with him.

37:01John Darnielle: And Moses was very precocious conversationalist. And he would be like, what can I share? You know, so Kate would be telling a story and Moses would go, my dad, right. And it was clear, like that was his, I'm going to tell you now this, my, my amazing part of this story. It involves this guy. He's incredible, right? Well, now Moses has grown. He knows that I, I talk too much. I'm wrapped up in my own thing all the time. My work possesses me. He understands me in a complex way now. When you are a child, the sun shines out of your parent no matter who they are, no matter what they're doing to you.

37:34John Darnielle: They occupy a God-like space in your consciousness, whether you know it or not. And then, as a grown-up, part of your job is to go. They were not God then either. They were a person with a small creature in their life, and they probably hadn't done a lot of math on how that worked. It's like what their actual job was going to be, right? Or even if they did have that, they probably had some fairly rigid notions, whereas rigidity is the enemy of parenthood. You can't have ideas in an outline, but you can't have a program because you've never dealt with that person before. That person is only becoming.

38:07John Darnielle: Your job is to help them become. Terms like shape are strong, but that's in there. You do want to be saying to young men, look, this is what you must not do. Spell out some things that young men shouldn't do, right? Share your feelings as to why. But you don't say, well, do whatever you want. You have to say, look, I believe that there are good ways to live and there are many ways to live. And there are some things that we don't do as people and some opinions that we find noxious that I think I'm right about. And you share those things. But you're only sharing them with, oh, yeah, there's another poem.

38:39John Darnielle: Yeah, continuing to live. God, it's also Philip Larkin. That's wild. What I'm referring to here is the fact that these relationships we have in navigating this are singular. I can share this with you about how, you know, yeah, one errand is understanding your parents as human beings, you know, not your parents, but people, their own people who had their own lives that prior to you were just lives. They weren't waiting for you. They were doing things right. But that relationship, even though I can share that concept with you, it's different in every occurrence. Continue to live, Philip Larkin. Continuing to live, that is, repeat a habit formed to get necessaries, is nearly always losing or going without.

39:20John Darnielle: It varies. There's loss of interest, hair, and enterprise. Ah, if the game were poker, yes, you might discard them. Draw a full house, but it's chess. And once you have walked the length of your mind, what you command is clear as a lading list. Anything else must not, for you, be thought to exist. And what's the profit? Only that in time we half identify the blind impress all our behavings bear may trace at home. But to confess on that green evening when our death begins just what it was is hardly satisfying, since it only applied to one man once, and that one dying. Also another case of like, so these poems are incredibly deep.

40:05John Darnielle: I haven't read the biographies of my understanding. He was a very unpleasant person with a lot of really noxious opinions, but, but the poems are great.

40:15Blake Smith: Yeah. I mean, there's a real art for separate the art and artists situation there. Yeah.

40:19John Darnielle: But yeah, since it only mattered to one man ever and that one dying has always stuck with me since I first learned it at Robert Mezzi's feet.

40:26Blake Smith: That's, that's beautiful. That's yeah. Thanks for sharing that. But thank you. Thank you so much. Oh, my pleasure.

40:34John Darnielle: Good to talk to you.

40:35Blake Smith: Yeah. I will say your music has done far more for me than you will ever understand. So it means a lot.

40:44John Darnielle: Thank you. It's very meaningful to me. I'm going to give you my shtick that I have about that. And that is, you know, I don't think this shtick actually helps anybody except me. Because when people say, well, I was talking about agency and art, right? Like when I'm writing these songs, did I say, man, there's got to be a guy named Jeremy who's struggling, man. If he's not struggling now, he's going to struggle soon. I got to write a song for him. No, I don't have a struggling person in mind when I'm writing, right? I'm just writing. The person who does the work, any text, a song or whatever, is a collaboration between the reader and the speaker, right?

41:17John Darnielle: Now, that doesn't mean that anything means anything you want it to mean. It doesn't mean that. If the speaker is careful, he's made a space in which the play within that space is infinite, but its applications aren't infinite, right? It's like, you can be a lazy reader and say, yeah, they are infinite. I can make it work. Well, you're just showing me your pyrotechnics when you do that, right? But you, when you are drowning and you reach for a piece of art, it's your hand that grabs it, right? The artist didn't sight you in the waves and launch his harpoon at you, right? You reached up, grabbed the thing you needed, and made such use of it as the artist made space for.

41:56John Darnielle: And that's what I'm proud of, right? But that's not an act of benevolent agency. I'm doing what I do, right? I'm doing what God made me to do. But the use that's made of it is part of a joyous and incredible collaborative process that I believe was also instilled by a divine power to connect us more as people, to understand that we make things for each other that are beautiful, and that the made thing has no use unless the person using it makes use of it.

42:23Blake Smith: I should have been a pastor, right? I can do this. Who says you're not? Well, nobody says you're not.

42:32John Darnielle: I know, but I don't get to just do the Bible every week. If I do that, I'll lose my audience.

42:37Blake Smith: That's fair. I get it. I get it. But thanks again so much. It was a pleasure. Cool. Yeah, a pleasure talking to you. All right, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for hanging out. Support the people making good stuff. Wear what you like. Enjoy yourself. I'll talk to you next week.