Why Creativity Demands Discipline | “Good Bones” Poet Maggie Smith (PT. 2)

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1:19Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down. Be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

2:10Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Just got back from spring break with the family down at the beach. It was wonderful. It was funny though, sort of pulling back into Austin. It was like we were arriving in a different place. Like we left and it was still winter. We arrived and it was spring. And it always, I don't know why, it catches me by surprise every year, not just spring, which we've been talking about on the spring forward challenge, which I'm not going to talk about here. But I think what surprises me every year is just like how pretty it gets like immediately on my ranch.

2:47Like you could see through all the trees. They're sort of spindly and, you know, lifeless. And then the green comes and all of a sudden it's like, oh yeah, we live next to a forest, this sort of dark, shady, cool, beautiful forest that's beckoning you in. Every March, my wife and I go, we got to remember if we ever sell this place we gotta sell it this month or next month because it's the prettiest that it will be i guess what i'm noticing is that although the aesthetics can change like the bones the core of it are good right like the leaves fall and there's a sparseness and a harshness to it but when the seasons change all that goes away and it gets pretty again And I think a metaphor there for life, which is like when you start to lose hope, when it gets dreary and depressing and dark, it doesn't take much for that to completely change.

3:53In part one, I was telling you that my wife turned me on to Maggie Smith's work. She sent me that poem. We bought that book during the pandemic. I've thought about it a lot since. Good Bones has inspired a bunch of Daily Stoic and Daily Dad emails over the years. Like when I read stuff that shapes me, it almost inevitably shows up in the writing. So here's one we did for Daily Dad called We Keep This From Our Kids, which is cribbing from a line in the poem. We keep this from our kids. We tell them inspiring stories. We tell them the history we're proud of. Tell them they can be anything they want to be.

4:28We tell them that everything is going to be OK, that they are safe. Of course we are lying, or at least we're not being fully honest. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, Maggie Smith writes in her beautiful poem Good Bones. And for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. We keep this from our children, she writes, because we are trying to sell them the world. We are trying to paint a picture for them of a world at its best, a world defined by cooperation and compassion, not by fractious tribal primates fighting over resources.

5:03That's the picture we're painting over, because we need our kids to have hope. We need them to believe in a better future. We need them to buy in. There may be a part of us that wonders what the point of all of this is sometimes. We all have a part of us that feels guilty about the deception, and sometimes that guilt coalesces into a movement towards confessional transparency, And these days it has taken the form of political pressure to drop the full weight of the awfulness of the past and the present on school children. But we can't do that. We must not do that. We have no right to weigh down our children with our cynicism.

5:39We have no right to deprive them of their innocence too early. It is our obligation not to do that because our only hope as a species, as a planet, is to sell them the world and to support their goodness and hard work and earnestness so that they might manage to craft a new reality from the world we have left behind for them. Anyways, she has a new book out called Dear Writer, Prep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life, which has got both poems and memoir and advice in it. She's a New York Times bestselling author. She's won all sorts of poetry prizes. She's an amazing writer. And I really enjoyed this conversation.

6:18We talked about the ethical implications of our writing routines, living about what you write, and so much more. You can follow Maggie at Maggie Smith Poet. You should definitely buy her books, grab signed copies from The Painted Porch, and then listen to us chatting here. Here we go.

6:40I want to go back to restraint too, because there's another thing. I read this article, maybe Patty, I think Patty Davis for the New York Times, she's Ronald Reagan's daughter. And she was talking about, we think of memoirs like you say everything you think, whatever happened to you. And she was just talking about how, that even in this genre, restraint is important because your words have impact on other people. Sure. Right. And so, again, I think sometimes people think that courage for the artist is just saying whatever you think. And there is something maybe dashing and bold again about that, but there's also something maybe cruel about it, too.

7:17And so you don't want to be someone who's pulling your punches, but at the same time, how do you think about how your work lands for and on other people? Yeah. I mean, that's just responsibility, right? That's just being a good person. Yeah. think. I mean, I think when you're writing, the writer can't always win, I guess is one way to put it, right? So I'm a writer, but I'm a human first. I'm not a writer first and then a human. And so the human being in me has to be part of the editorial process and part of the shaping process. And so when I was working on my memoir, a lot of what I was doing was thinking about boundary setting, like what I wanted to say, what I didn't want to say.

8:03And most of that had nothing to do with me. It had to do with how to protect other people in my life who aren't explicitly consenting to having me write about my life with them as characters in it. Right? And so how do we, without pulling punches, show up in an honest and vulnerable and transparent way, while also not just handing it all to other people, which I think would feel bad in one's body too. And so for me, I knew that the first sentence of my memoir would have something in it that would say, this is not a tell-all. Right. In part because in thinking about it, I realized they don't exist.

8:52And so every book that is marketed as a tell-all isn't that. Sure. Something was left out. Something. Well, but it's also just your perspective. If you're writing a tell-all memoir... It's tell-all from my perspective. From your perspective, maybe, but probably not. Sure. I mean, however many words it is, it's not your whole life. Yeah, yeah, sure. So it's not a tell-all even from your perspective. It's certainly not a tell-all of the situation. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very narrow view of a certain time in your life told from the perspective of your consciousness at the time that you were writing the book.

9:30Yeah. And so the narrator of my memoir is Maggie Smith. Yeah. But I left her in the book. Right. She lives in that book because I'm not exactly that person anymore. And if I were writing that memoir today, it would be a different book. Yeah. And it's not illegal. I mean, obviously there are legal things. Sometimes you can't say this, you have to change this or that. But there's just this decision to say, hey, I'm not comfortable doing this to this person or they don't deserve that. There is this, again, we think of justice too often as a black and white thing and not just a, hey, what am I comfortable with?

10:12What feels right and responsible here? And that the artist's obligation isn't solely to truth. I think about this now, even with platforms and stuff where like people seem to not, your job isn't just to get an audience or just to do what will do well, but to do what feels true to you and what is responsible in some way to the medium and to society, you know? Yeah. And you can do all of those things at the same time. Well, that's the puzzle of it is figuring out how to do it. And that means not doing some things that other people are doing or that would be financially renumerative. Yes. Yes. Or fun or easy and to go, hey, I'm not going to not going to platform this person or I'm going to have to go out of my way to really explain why I'm doing this or that, because there's a responsibility.

11:09I think in the way that company, like CEOs go, oh, my obligation is to the shareholders, you know, or to the share price as a way of excusing morally reprehensible things. I think a lot of artists and then more sort of the more modern entrepreneurial artists just goes like, well, it's doing well. People are interested. A lot of people I know that have podcasts are going, well, my audience is interested in hearing about this. And that's how they sort of, they rationalize talking to a person. Yeah. And instead of, you know, going, hey, is the impact of talking to this person more negative than positive?

11:53You know? Right. Yeah. I mean, would saying a lot of inflammatory things in a book sell more books? Sure. Sure. Yeah. If that's the sole goal, to sell a bunch of books, then everybody would just be sort of like setting fires everywhere. Well, if the sole goal was just to make money, why do a book at all? There's so many things that make so much more money. Right. You know, like. Yeah. I know personally, like, I don't really know that many poets who got into writing because they thought it would be incredibly lucrative. Yes. You fucked up if that's what you got in poetry. Really? I know. It's amazing.

12:30It's amazing that after studying creative writing, women's studies and philosophy in college that I'm not living in my parents' basement right now. So none of this was supposed to be a money-making endeavor. But I think that's right. I mean, so many people ask, like, how do I write the thing I can't bear to write? Yeah. Right? Like, I have this story to tell, but I don't know how to tell it because it's going to upset my mother. Or I'm going to have to finally tell the story about this thing that happened to me when I was a kid. how do we responsibly, like ethically, and also take care of ourselves in the process?

13:03Because there is a difference between writing a story and then living in the world with the story. Yeah. And I think it's really helpful to think as you're deciding how to tell the story you want to tell to imagine yourself a couple of years out on book tour or on a podcast or giving a talk or running into somebody at the farmer's market who has read that book? Yeah. Or running into your child's teacher who has read that book? And what stories are you thinking about telling that maybe you would tell differently if you knew you had to take that show on the road? Yeah. Because you will have to take that show on the road.

13:45Right. And so how does it feel in your body to think about having those conversations or with people in your life who are in that book? Yeah. And so, no, your obligation is not solely to your publisher or the readers or the audience or however you conceive of it. I think when you're making things, your first responsibility is to yourself. Yeah. And your own sense of right and wrong. And also to the people in your life because you are a human being first. Yeah. And there's something earnest and almost self-important about going, no, what I'm doing matters. and that there's an ethical implication for the decision I'm making.

14:28But it's true. And when you don't think that, you get this sort of nihilistic exhibitionist art that might be titillating and exciting or even invigorating to do. Yeah. But there's something kind of empty about it because you're just talking shit about people or you're just exposing things. and what you're not doing is the real weight of exploring it and talking about it. And then also thinking about how it's going to land and what it's going to mean to people. And if also this question of like, hey, if everyone did what I'm about to do, what would that world look like? Actually, that's a really funny way to think about it.

15:13Like, how would I feel if someone was doing it? I mean, it's also just the golden rule, but if someone did this to me. Yeah, she won the other foot. Yeah. And again, radical empathy, right? How do I sort of share my truth, but also treat the story with the care it deserves? Because I'm a person and we're all people and we're all messy and fallible and none of us is doing a perfect job at any of this. I mean, one of the things, I think Gina Frangelo said this about memoir, that it needs two ingredients, self-assessment and societal interrogation. And so if you think about it that way, to sort of write what you would conceive of as a tell-all and sort of just dump everything and likely, I think, in that make others the villains and yourself the hero of your own story.

16:03Yeah. It's a really dangerous stance and probably is going to miss at least one of those two pieces. Yeah.

16:17Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on. Thought this isn't going to work. Stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car. drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

17:02We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course. Because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you, discover your uncharted territory.

17:44Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. We just took our kids to an outdoor performance of the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that. But I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

18:25My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for Good Inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It over the holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr.

19:02Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 percent off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

19:23No, I found this because, you know, I write a lot about history and these long dead historical figures. So you can kind of reduce them to these caricatures. These are their motivations. Yeah. They were. You can be very judgmental because not only are they dead, but all their relatives are dead. No one's coming for you. Yeah. And every once in a while I'll talk about, you know, a more modern figure, you know, it was weird to write, like I wrote about Michael Jordan in one of my books and this sort of endless competitive desire and, and, and how kind of toxic that was. And then I like met his son, you know, and then you're like, oh, okay.

19:55Like here's a person who's reading this about someone they like and know. Right. And, and so it changed one, how I think about it when I write about people who are alive, it just, and I think I've gotten better at it, just like, I now go out of my way to like talk to people that know them or read sympathetic takes and just trying to sort of round out the picture, but also to think, hey, you know, this Roman emperor or this, you know, general or whomever from a long time ago, they probably didn't think they were a piece of shit. You know, like - I feel like most people don't think that, right? Right, right.

20:29I mean, some people are wrong. Yeah, of course. Of course. And what they did can still be objectively reprehensible. But there was clearly something that they thought that allowed, like, so what is that? And so the curiosity of like, well, how did they think about it? And how did they square this? You have to have the curiosity. And if you have, it becomes much more interesting because they're not evil person doing evil thing. their normal person thinking they're doing a good thing that in fact is evil. Yeah. How does that happen? Yeah. But I mean, I think that that is part of just taking people in as humans, right?

21:11And thinking like, oh, you who are doing something reprehensible and it would be easy for me to make you into a caricature. Yes. You are someone's child. Yeah. Like you grew up as someone's child. Sure. You are perhaps someone's spouse or someone's parent or someone's fun uncle. Yes. And so how do I not excuse any of sort of who you are to me and what you're doing and what the impact is, but also refuse to flatten you into just like a bumper sticker. Totally. For this sort of a bad infomercial for what you're doing. Yes. And that's, I mean, hard sometimes, but I think necessary because we're people.

21:51When that's the job of the artist, there's this crazy interview where James Baldwin is talking about like these Southern sheriffs. And he's like, I'm sure this guy, after a long day of work, he gets a beer out of the fridge. He kisses his wife. And he's thinking about him as this human being. And he's trying, how does that human being then stick another human being with a cattle prod? And that was kind of the brilliance of the civil rights movement, which is you have this structure and this system that is profoundly unjust and evil. and these people who had no reason to do the empathetic work of figuring out why this was being done to them.

22:34Like the Black leaders who go, well, why is the sheriff operating this way? And what conscience does he have that we could appeal to? What makes a group of people come to a school and yell at little children trying to, what is that? And what redeemable parts are in them? And how can we hit them there? That is, I think, art on a fundamental level, that empathy and just getting to the basis of the human experience and then being able to either whether it's a political campaign or a slogan or a speech or a stunt that is designed for the TV cameras to hit at that. That's the art. That's, you know, Kafka said that art is supposed to be an axe that breaks this frozen sea.

23:25That's also what great activism and political oratory does, is it doesn't assume that the ice is unbreakable. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of us need to be sort of held by the shoulders and kind of shaken awake. And that's something that art can do, which is why it's important. I mean, sometimes it feels, you know, times like these, but I say times like these, but times have always been like these in one way, shape, or form for someone. Probably works. What's another time you would rather be alive that's objectively better? Right. And I think, you know, if a different time felt better to me, that's probably a mark of privilege on my part.

24:03It would be better for you, but not everyone. Not everyone else, right? So I keep thinking in times like these, but no, in all times, in all harrowing times, because all times have been harrowing in some way for someone, art matters. And yet sometimes it feels like playing with blocks. Yeah. Because it's just like, but I want, it's not a tourniquet. Yeah. Right? It's not, I'm not an ACLU lawyer. Yeah. I'm not a surgeon. I don't have the ability to sort of make large scale decisions that would positively impact people in the ways that I feel frustrated that I'm not able to do. And so I'm like, I'm writing poems, or I'm, you know, working on a new book, or I'm giving talks or teaching.

24:46And sometimes it feels like not quite enough. And it's helpful to remember that sort of frozen sea. Yes. And the kind of wake up that a lot of people need. And maybe it's incremental, but I think it matters. It does matter. It matters a lot. And it's funny how we have no compunction about or doubt that there are people who are making things worse. Yeah. Right? And that the people who go along with it or cheer for it, that they're helping make it worse. and then when we decide first off not to join the mob right uh one of the early stoics said the whole point of being a philosopher is to not be part of the mob like to just think for things yourself when we do that we go we shrug that off as nothing if what they're doing is making the problem worse and not being part of the jeering mob that's doing bad shit is itself a positive thing and then you know speaking out doing whatever your thing is well if we're going to hold these people morally culpable over here.

25:47You have to morally credit yourself for these seemingly infinitesimal or inconsequential contributions. It matters too. And then, you know, obviously it's a spectrum. There's more you can do. And it can make a difference. Like, and art historically has made an enormous difference. I think we're too quick. There's a cynicism, a cynical element of is it's too quick to dismiss these things as inconsequential or meaningless, and they're not. No, not at all. I mean, art has saved my life a thousand times over, and I know that's true for a lot of people. I mean, and also, I don't know what the point is of saving a world in which art is not a part of it.

26:30Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, it's not the same as being an ACLU lawyer, but like there is some self-importance that can come in where you make yourself seem like you're doing the Lord's work when really you're not. But I don't know. I just, there's something like the great man of history theory is not, a lot of people don't, you know, give it much credence these days, but it's like, we definitely see where not so great people made history really bad. And then we're like, but there's nothing an individual can do. It's like, well, if they can make it worse, seems like a person can make it better.

27:09I agree with that. And so I think there's something hopeful in not just thinking that a person could make it better, but then you could be that person. Instead of waiting on someone else to do it for you. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. These big movements, they do start somewhere. Yeah. And sometimes it's a poem. Sometimes. Or perhaps the poem encourages someone who does the thing to not give up. I hear that a lot. Yeah. I mean, it's funny, especially with Good Bones. I have a kind of a strange relationship with that poem because it does get shared when things are particularly terrible. It's like that Mr.

27:45Rogers quote about helpers. Yeah. It just enters the viral commons. Yes, exactly. So, I mean, A, it feels like public domain work to me now. it almost feels like it's not my personal work anymore, but it's also whenever I see it a lot, it's during times when people feel like they need to acknowledge darkness, but look for light. And so I hear all the time that that poem or, you know, I hear from people about the memoir, that it helped get them through a really rough patch in their life. And it is sort of affirming to think that something that you brought forth from yourself and from your own, you know, struggles or experience or, you know, even pain might be helpful to somebody else.

28:31Yeah. And you would probably, I'm guessing, trade if you said, hey, would you like your poem to become irrelevant? Be like, awesome. Sure. Right. Like it would be great. We never needed it again. Yeah. I would love to find out that the need for stoicism has disappeared. And my niche has been rendered obsolete by progress and innovation. I just don't, I don't think that's happening. Yeah. I'd write about anything. I mean, it's funny after my memoir came out, more than one person would say something like, well, at least you got a book out of it. You know, like, wow, you really made lemonade from those lemons.

29:06And I just thought, like, I'm a writer. I'll write anything. Like if it hadn't been that book, I would have written another book about something else. Like I don't actually need grief or loss. Joan Didion did not need her husband and daughter to die. She would have written a couple other good books. And I would have loved them, right? The material is everywhere. It doesn't need to be that hard. So yes, I would absolutely trade art made from painful experiences because I wouldn't be trading away my art. I would be trading away my material for other material. Well, you also wouldn't be trading away painful experiences because you just have - I'd have other ones.

29:43Yeah, you just have other ones and they're all equally painful. That is the thing that is our superpower as humans is we can feel everything intensely. And so this is what allows us to survive horrible things and also to make not so horrible things feel like the world is ending. And it's like, you're going to be fine. People have been getting through stuff like this for a long time. Yeah. Life is long, actually. In some ways.

30:19So you don't like writing routines? I don't. Why? Well, because they don't work for me. So I don't not like them for others. Yeah. Yeah, I think if you are the kind of person who can sit down at the same time every day, I mean, I have friends who do this. I have friends who sit down at the same time every day in the same chair. Sometimes they wear the same color. Like, I know people who like routine. And I think whatever works for you works for you. For me, what I would like to do is reassure people that if they're not the kind of person who has a routine or who can manage a routine because of life circumstances, that does not mean you're not a real writer and can't get a lot done.

31:02Writing routines have not worked for me mostly because of raising kids and being a primary caregiver and now a solo caregiver. And so, no, I can't say at this time of day, every day I'm going to be doing this because I might be at the pediatrician. Right. Or I might be walking my dog or I might get invited to do something to give a talk. And I really would like to do that. My life is very kind of haphazard. Yeah. Right now. And so the writing is catch as catch can. and frankly writing with you know a newborn and a toddler yeah taught me to write on scraps with scraps whenever I could whether it was late at night or during a nap or you know on the back of a check or you know while waiting in the carpool line and I don't know I think probably there are probably people out there who can find a little time here and there but maybe feel like they're not doing it for real.

32:03There are air quotes there because they're not the kind of person who has a writing room and a writing schedule. And I just want to tell people it's okay, you're still doing it. Well, that's a routine also. Susan Strait, the novelist, who's my professor in college, she talks about this in her memoir. She would put her kids in the stroller and walk them till they fell asleep because they always fall asleep and they take their nap and they move. And then as soon as they fell asleep, she would stop and sit down and write in a notebook, like on the curb. And it's like, that's a writing routine. You know what I mean?

32:35That's a discipline. And in fact, that's more discipline than the, I wake up at six and I make coffee and then I do yoga and then I meditate for six hours. You know, like you do it within the, like poetry. It's constraints, exactly. You find the parts you control inside all that you don't control and you create a discipline and a practice or a ritual that allows you to sort of do the thing. Just obviously, there are some that are more inspiring and beautiful. Although I would argue there's something actually much more inspiring and disciplined about the, no, I squeeze the writing in between naps or, you know, Toni Morrison being like, no, I get all my writing done before I hear the word mom.

33:18Like that's cooler in a way. It's not as celebrated, but it's cooler than the, I don't know, I use this old typewriter. There's something kind of luxurious and, I don't know, signaling about the more elaborate routines. Yeah. And frankly, I mean, growing up and being a young writer, a lot of the elaborate routines that I was hearing about were men's elaborate routines. And it was probably because they were able to be in that writing room for five hours because their spouse took care of the children. So I just thought, like, what is if you are if you're a writer and you're self-employed and you're a single parent, what is your writing routine look like?

33:58And it looks a lot less like a writing routine and a lot more like carving out as much time for it and sort of like carving around. Well, I say you should have routines, plural. Like, this is what you do when they wake up at this time. This is what you do when this happens first. Like, because the rigidity can become a kind of inflexibility. or necessitating a certain amount of privilege and certainty that life is just not going to offer. And also, you know, a lot of these older ones, it was predicated on an environment where like there was a small group of working writers and everyone else was on the outside desperate to get in, or it was a totally uncommercial enterprise.

34:44Like sometimes people go, you know, what would the ancient Stoics think about, you know, you, I don't know, like selling ads or like the commerce element. And I go, well, look, if I had an estate tended by slaves, you know, in a giant hegemonic empire, maybe I wouldn't be thinking about being directly compensated for my work, but that's not the economics that we live in. Thankfully, like this is actually a much pure and less exploitative system than it was for, you know, even these like poets or whoever in the Renaissance, like they got all their money from the Pope who stole it from other people.

35:19Like that, it wasn't such a pure system. Patritage has its issues too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And just because they could be removed from society, it makes it actually less impressive. Yeah. It wasn't cleaner. Yes. It wasn't cleaner, but also it's less relatable and in some ways involved less discipline. Like to make it work in being a functioning member of society or like knowing the names of your children and the names of your children's teachers is like that's a responsibility that writers even a generation and a half ago didn't have. Right. And so it's more impressive if you can manage to do it and not be, you know, what they call an art monster.

36:02Yeah, exactly. Not be an art monster. If you can, you know, break dance in a straitjacket. Totally. Yeah, I mean, like, look, there's a lot of people who've done incredible things. And what did they trade to be able to do that? It's like, oh, no, this person's an NBA champion and a good hang. You know, like, oh, wow. Like, that's actually, they did two hard things. Let's not trade our humanity away for our art or our jobs or whatever those things are. Yeah. Does the success come at the expense of, yeah, being at all normal? Right. It's kind of impressive if you can be pretty good at what you do and pretty normal.

36:41Yeah. And say, actually, no, I can't do that literary festival because it's my kid's last day of school and they always have a little picnic that I'd like to attend. I mean, these are the compromises that we make. It can't be all or nothing. Yeah. There's a story about Danielle DiPrima and she's at this party with the Beats and she says she has to leave. Oh, Diane. Yes, Diane. Did I say it wrong? Danielle. Oh, yeah. And she's supposed to leave. And she goes, I got to go relieve my babysitter. And Kerouac says, if you go pick up your kid, you'll never make it as a writer. And she says, if I don't pick up my kid, I'll never make it as a writer.

37:21and her point was that this is a discipline to like that hey I said I'd be home at 11 that's a routine too yes not just the hey I'm JD Salinger and I have a separate life in a bunker behind the house and I'm neglecting my other responsibilities as a person as a parent as a decent human and in the rare cases where someone can do both or or is is doing one and earnestly trying to do the other two, that to me is like just an even narrower target or more elite company. Yeah. Like I can't be everywhere at once. I sure try. Yeah. And I'm not using my work as an excuse to not have to try, which is, I think, been the domain of most of the great male artists in history.

38:12I think it helps that I write so much about my domestic life. Like my kids are so much a part of my work and also my community and my neighbors and my friends. And so when people ask me to do things and I'm not able because of family obligations, I'm like, well, you're asking me because you like what I do and what I do, this is it. Like it's not an act. This really is my life. Would you rather I come and be a hypocrite or not come and show that I meant this thing that means something to you? Shall I walk the walk? Because that's what I'm really trying to do. Yeah. Yeah. Which is part of the art, too, I think.

38:56Yeah. Right? Like, if it's just words and you don't mean them or you're not, as we all fall short, you're not trying to mean them. Yeah. What does that mean? That would be odd and inauthentic. But don't you think that's probably more the rule than the exception? Oh, I hope not. I don't mean now. I just mean with a lot of the people that we hold up. Perhaps. I mean, what do they say? Don't meet your heroes, right? Because what if this person, you've been reading their work for years and you think they're one way and then you meet them and they're rude to you? Or I feel very lucky that my experience with most writers that at least I've met has been incredibly positive.

39:38And most people are maybe even better than what you think they are from reading their work. Yeah. It's like how many great men, women, artists of history would you want to have been married to or raised by? Probably very few. Yeah. Right. But I'm independent. Yeah. I'm just saying it's like, you know, it's like, and, and I think when you learn those things, it does reflect on the work. You go, oh, it's not the same anymore. Yeah. And just like, look, presidents used to be able to have lots of affairs and everyone sort of didn't detract from the thing. And now I think it's progress. We go like, don't be so much of a piece of shit.

40:22Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's funny when I meet people and they're like, oh, you're, you're so friendly. You're just like I thought you would be. And then I think, well, what would it have been like if I hadn't been? Like, what a weird thing to think that you know someone because that happens, right? Like when you put books into the world and then you meet someone who's read your books, there is like an immediate, like asymmetrical intimacy that is happening because they know a lot about you and you know nothing probably about them. But just like the point about as you become more successful as a writer, you know, you get more latitude from your editors or from the industry.

41:01I think you also sense when you become a kind of a public figure or a success, you have an audience of people, you go, oh, there are fewer constraints on me now. Like I could get away with more. And that is a weird thing to realize. And it's also weird to realize some people go, well, I'm going to do that then. You know, like the idea that success exempts you or makes lessons the standards, I think is the wrong lesson to take. It's like, no, no, no. Actually, now it's a harder thing because no one's making me and they will make allowances for me, in fact. And so it's like, yeah, when you're doing a talk, you go something like, oh my God, you hear later or they say, you were so nice.

41:44You're not what I expected. You go, oh, so I could have been a dick and you guys just would have, I could have asked for more things. I could have phoned this in. I could have been late and you guys would have just figured it out. Right. That's weird. And there are, I think, people who go, oh, yeah, I just don't have to be on time anymore. Right? That's not a healthy thing, but it's a timeless one. I mean, that's what Marx and Reelius' meditations is so fascinating because here you have this guy fundamentally exempted now from all the rules of society. Yeah. And he writes this book to himself where he's like, no, no, no, here's all the things you're, here's the standards you're going to try to hold yourself to.

42:20And I'm going to hold you accountable when you don't. But that's, when it becomes a voluntary thing, it, I think, becomes more meaningful. Absolutely. But also, you have to live with yourself. Sure. So, I mean, I can't imagine what it would feel like in my body to show up late. It would feel bad. But I think, do you think the people that are doing it, do you think it feels like anything at all to them? I don't know. I bet you become desensitized. I bet it's less of a day-to-day wrestling and choice and more like a choice you make and then it kind of takes care of itself. You're like, that's just what I do now.

42:59That's who I am now. Yeah. I'm late guy. Or it's on time when I get there. Do you know what I mean? It's a kind of a - We're on my schedule now. Yeah, it's a self-centeredness that metastasizes. I think not just everyone has, but I would argue you inherently have as some kind of artist. Because there's some thirst for attention or recognition or desire to be seen, or else you probably wouldn't have been drawn to accounting instead of writing. So it's there, and then it can be metastasized by the radiation that's being - Blasted at you? Yes. Yeah. My joke is that I became a writer because I'm an introvert.

43:42And if you write long enough and get enough of a readership, then you have to sort of put your introvert away. Yeah. Yeah. And start extroverting. Yes. Yes. But if one could just write books in a cabin forever, I feel like I would sign up for that. That's not how the world works. No, no, definitely not. At all. No, you get asked, I say like the reward for succeeding as a writer is less time for writing. Yeah, absolutely. And you have, that's again, we're back to the discipline because doing the other things often pays more and it's more immediately validating and it's easier. Even if you're an introvert, I'd rather give a talk than write a fucking book.

44:36You know, like it's not so - I'd rather write a book. I just mean like the talk takes an hour. That's true. Like it's immediately simpler thing. And time-wise. So you can, yes, as much as you love what you do, there's also the resistance and procrastination that wants to not do the thing. You can find yourself with a lot of very good excuses to not have to do it. A hundred percent. And good excuses that are also the way that you are supporting yourself and your family, right? And so to be able to look at some of those things and say, okay, I actually need to, I have to have some restraint here, right?

45:15And say, I have to say no. Yes. Which I love to say yes. I'm really good at saying yes. I'm Midwestern. I'm early and I love to say yes. And having to say no is difficult for me. And it's something I'm learning to do because I realized that saying no to that is saying yes to the other thing that I'm tacitly saying no to every time I say yes to these other things. So if I'm saying no to this, so I'm saying yes to my children, or I'm saying no to this because I'm saying yes to working on this book, and I can't be out flying around everywhere while I'm doing it. Well, yeah, you don't want to be rude.

45:54Yeah. And so you say yes. And then there's something powerful about having kids because then when that crying six-year-old is you're talking to them on the phone and they're asking where you are, or they're, you know, I thought we were doing this or whatever. or the thing you're late because you said you would, you couldn't extricate yourself from a conversation that you didn't want to be rude. Yeah. You were rude. You were rude to a person that is feeling it much more deeply than this complete stranger. And you're also being rude to yourself. And if you love what you do and you love that person that gets to do the thing, the main thing that you do, like why are you treating that person shitty by stealing all their time?

46:35These are the things. We got a second to go look at some books. Yeah. Let's do it.

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