Latest / Arroe Collins Like It's Live / Bachelor Holiday From Poet Musician And Scientist William Huhn
Transcript
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- 0:34Speaker 1: Hello and good morning. How are you doing?
- 0:37Speaker 2: Good morning? How are you?
- 0:38Speaker 1: And fantastic looking forward to always having a conversation with you?
- 0:42Speaker 2: Oh? Same here?
- 0:44Speaker 1: You have this way of using your words? I mean,
- 0:47Speaker 1: does it come from that second or third grade teacher
- 0:49Speaker 1: that says, use your words? You know how to use them?
- 0:53Speaker 2: It? Does? I have instrations from back then?
- 0:56Speaker 3: I definitely do have some A teacher who thought I
- 0:58Speaker 3: was the greatest friend in the class. She thought I
- 1:00Speaker 3: should apply myself, of course, but I wasn't applying myself,
- 1:05Speaker 3: you know, But now I am.
- 1:06Speaker 1: What was it like to receive while you were just
- 1:09Speaker 1: you know, living life and all of a sudden, this
- 1:11Speaker 1: new book idea comes to you. It's like, because we
- 1:13Speaker 1: never get to see that side of the story of
- 1:15Speaker 1: how it just kind of drops into your life.
- 1:19Speaker 3: Well, this actually took decades to write, and it began
- 1:24Speaker 3: as an idea just to write poetry in general, and
- 1:28Speaker 3: then they accumulated over the years, and I actually traveled
- 1:33Speaker 3: around Europe and through Greece and you know, all over
- 1:38Speaker 3: the world basically trying to finance my poetry by writing
- 1:41Speaker 3: by playing.
- 1:42Speaker 2: Music of fiddle music.
- 1:45Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's how I found the time to write it.
- 1:48Speaker 1: Well, my first book was supposed to be poetry, and
- 1:51Speaker 1: then when I went in there to kind of start
- 1:53Speaker 1: putting the book together, I realized the poetry wasn't the impact.
- 1:56Speaker 1: It was everything else that was written around it, explaining
- 2:00Speaker 1: what the poetry was about. Do you ever run into
- 2:02Speaker 1: a situation.
- 2:03Speaker 2: Like that, Oh? Yeah.
- 2:05Speaker 3: The poetry is completely dependent on my own observations of
- 2:10Speaker 3: the world and of history and the sense of language
- 2:14Speaker 3: I gather from the conversations like this one. Now, I
- 2:18Speaker 3: might notice something you say and I'll think, oh, that's
- 2:20Speaker 3: an interesting way of putting it, and the tone you
- 2:23Speaker 3: use might somehow get into a poem. So it's completely
- 2:26Speaker 3: comes from outside of me, but it's generated from a
- 2:29Speaker 3: sort of spirit within.
- 2:30Speaker 1: So when you speak of those voices, who are you
- 2:33Speaker 1: listening to while you're writing, because I say, I'll name them,
- 2:35Speaker 1: I'll call them out in a heartbeat, and I'll say
- 2:37Speaker 1: I'm not looking for that character today, I'm looking for
- 2:40Speaker 1: this personality to show up on this page.
- 2:43Speaker 3: Well, I don't discriminate in a way because you know,
- 2:46Speaker 3: Joyce said there's no such thing as a boring language.
- 2:50Speaker 3: So I don't go for the high falutin language nor
- 2:54Speaker 3: the low language.
- 2:56Speaker 2: You know, I find all of it interesting.
- 2:59Speaker 1: Speaking of big interesting. You brought it up just a
- 3:01Speaker 1: couple of seconds ago about that old time fiddle. I
- 3:03Speaker 1: gotta ask you, do you feel like that you're being visited?
- 3:06Speaker 1: Because in my forest here in Carolina, I do not
- 3:09Speaker 1: believe that I am the writer or the broadcaster. There
- 3:11Speaker 1: is somebody, in some energy, in this force that is
- 3:14Speaker 1: controlling me. I'm just the receiver and then I pass
- 3:17Speaker 1: it forward. And I feel like that when you're talking
- 3:19Speaker 1: about the fiddle and things, and I'm reading the story,
- 3:21Speaker 1: I'm going God, dang, I swear to God, he's walking
- 3:23Speaker 1: the same path.
- 3:25Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel that way all the time.
- 3:27Speaker 3: Especially when the poem gets to its final version, I
- 3:31Speaker 3: feel as though something just takes.
- 3:32Speaker 2: It over and I'm just waiting for it to show
- 3:35Speaker 2: me it's done.
- 3:36Speaker 3: I totally get that. That's the way I feel about
- 3:39Speaker 3: music too. I feel as though the music, when I'm
- 3:41Speaker 3: really hitting my stride and not sort of struggling with
- 3:44Speaker 3: my muscular you know, the way my fingers go, it's
- 3:49Speaker 3: something takes over and it plays the music through me.
- 3:52Speaker 2: I completely get that.
- 3:54Speaker 1: And isn't that the reason why when we're watching a
- 3:57Speaker 1: live band and we see the fiddle player or the
- 3:59Speaker 1: guitars or even the drummer go into their own zone,
- 4:02Speaker 1: wouldn't you like to just be there? And I think
- 4:04Speaker 1: you have lived that where you just go, you just
- 4:07Speaker 1: enjoy that ride.
- 4:10Speaker 3: Yes, And I think that's that's part of it.
- 4:13Speaker 2: You know.
- 4:14Speaker 3: It reminds me of someone said about Jim Morrison and.
- 4:17Speaker 2: Of the Doors.
- 4:18Speaker 3: They said, you know, the guys want to be him
- 4:20Speaker 3: and the girls want him.
- 4:22Speaker 2: And that's that's that's very true, right, But it's kind
- 4:25Speaker 2: of like that.
- 4:26Speaker 3: You feel as though, when when you see a musician
- 4:29Speaker 3: or an artist, or even a painting, you feel as
- 4:32Speaker 3: though you could you want to sort of inhabit it,
- 4:35Speaker 3: and if it's music, then you feel as the music's
- 4:38Speaker 3: taking you to another place and you're in the song,
- 4:40Speaker 3: and the song itself is its own land, its own realm.
- 4:46Speaker 2: So I completely get that.
- 4:47Speaker 1: What do you do in situations though, because I know
- 4:49Speaker 1: that being in the studio for me, when when the
- 4:51Speaker 1: engineer would say, dude, those words aren't working. We're gonna
- 4:54Speaker 1: we need to rewrite them so that we can get
- 4:56Speaker 1: things moving. And that means that I have to go
- 4:58Speaker 1: in there into my poetry or the lyrics of a
- 5:00Speaker 1: song and change them up. I in the beginning, it
- 5:03Speaker 1: took the longest time. I was offended. He's like, this
- 5:05Speaker 1: is my poetry, dude, don't tell me how to handle this,
- 5:08Speaker 1: But how do you handle the situation like that?
- 5:11Speaker 3: Well, fortunately, I've never had some very few times if
- 5:15Speaker 3: I had someone say change something in the poetry, in
- 5:19Speaker 3: the in the lyrics, because as.
- 5:21Speaker 2: A songwriter as well, I've done.
- 5:23Speaker 3: I was in a rock band in California, but I've
- 5:25Speaker 3: had people change it and I do the same thing.
- 5:28Speaker 3: I'm so well, really, but sometimes if I let it happen,
- 5:33Speaker 3: it'll come out to someplace good.
- 5:35Speaker 2: One time a poem.
- 5:38Speaker 3: Was a literary editor in a magazine wanted me to
- 5:42Speaker 3: change something, and they didn't.
- 5:44Speaker 2: She didn't say change, said are you sure you want
- 5:46Speaker 2: to do this? Maybe you want to drop this word?
- 5:49Speaker 2: And uh. And when I did it, I said, well no, no, no, no,
- 5:52Speaker 2: and you want to make two changes, the first one.
- 5:55Speaker 2: In the end I actually agree with her.
- 5:57Speaker 3: And it was it was that was I think, that's
- 5:59Speaker 3: the only time so edited my poems. And but for
- 6:02Speaker 3: the one word she wanted me to drop it, Actually
- 6:05Speaker 3: she was right, But there's another thing she wanted me
- 6:08Speaker 3: to change that would, in my view of ruined the poem.
- 6:10Speaker 3: And I argued with her back and forth until I said,
- 6:13Speaker 3: I mean, I wasn't gonna change it, and then and
- 6:15Speaker 3: then that poem ended up being on Verse Daily, you know,
- 6:19Speaker 3: a great venue. It's like the New Yorker of the
- 6:22Speaker 3: of the web, and that in its final form where
- 6:25Speaker 3: she had dropped one word, but I argued for the
- 6:28Speaker 3: last line, and without that last.
- 6:30Speaker 2: Line, the poem would have been ruined in my view.
- 6:33Speaker 1: Wow, my second book. My editor and I we didn't
- 6:36Speaker 1: get along, but we knew that we were working together.
- 6:38Speaker 1: So that's the reason why her name is spelled backwards.
- 6:41Speaker 1: On the cover edited by and it's because she didn't
- 6:43Speaker 1: want to. She didn't want her her name as people
- 6:46Speaker 1: knew it to be a part of the book.
- 6:48Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
- 6:49Speaker 1: Really yeah, and so but it was one of those
- 6:51Speaker 1: I said, all right, cool, that good, that's got a
- 6:53Speaker 1: story to it. I don't care. Yeah, I need your editing.
- 6:56Speaker 2: Good.
- 6:56Speaker 1: We're not getting along, that's good. We're artists, why we
- 6:59Speaker 1: get it. We're supposed to be this way.
- 7:01Speaker 3: That's really funny, though, I mean, because why really, I mean,
- 7:04Speaker 3: could it really be that bad?
- 7:06Speaker 1: She said it was too dark. She said it was
- 7:08Speaker 1: too dark, and I'm going, yeah, yeah, that's the thing.
- 7:10Speaker 1: Come on, we all face darkness every day. I think
- 7:13Speaker 1: it happens about nine o'clock every night.
- 7:15Speaker 2: I mean, come on, Eggarl and Poe. Is that too dark?
- 7:18Speaker 2: You know? You know what I mean?
- 7:20Speaker 3: Everyone on the planet knows who he is because he's dark.
- 7:23Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with William Hume coming
- 7:26Speaker 1: up next, the name of the book Bachelor Holiday. We
- 7:31Speaker 1: are back with poet and author William Hume. When you're writing,
- 7:36Speaker 1: do you feel like that it's like the birds in flight?
- 7:39Speaker 1: Or how is it that you're able to start even
- 7:41Speaker 1: a piece of poetry because it has to have a
- 7:44Speaker 1: breeding ground.
- 7:47Speaker 3: Yeah, it has a It begins with sort of an
- 7:50Speaker 3: inspiration for a whole idea for a poem, and that
- 7:53Speaker 3: might come from a line I hear, for example, Devil
- 7:59Speaker 3: one of one of the poems that it's called Devil Mirror,
- 8:01Speaker 3: and that's about a sort of a reflection of the
- 8:04Speaker 3: mind and the mirror sort of twist twisted.
- 8:08Speaker 2: Okay, so that was the whole idea.
- 8:10Speaker 3: So I thought, well, you can take words and you
- 8:11Speaker 3: put them on the page, and as you're going along,
- 8:13Speaker 3: you realize the words are sort of twisting your thoughts
- 8:17Speaker 3: a little bit and taking in irrational ways, but it's
- 8:20Speaker 3: also reflecting you at the same time. And that was
- 8:24Speaker 3: the inspiration, and then I went from there. The rewrites
- 8:29Speaker 3: are lengthy and they usually take several months. I'm working
- 8:33Speaker 3: on other things as well, but yeah, the only problem
- 8:37Speaker 3: I had that that came all at once was a
- 8:39Speaker 3: poem called Expedition. Also I think one of my best,
- 8:43Speaker 3: and that came in three weeks. I did about nineteen
- 8:46Speaker 3: drafts and I never changed another word.
- 8:49Speaker 2: That was very rare.
- 8:50Speaker 3: Other ones have been changed over time for decades, little tweaks.
- 8:54Speaker 2: Here and there. But finally it tells me when it's done.
- 8:56Speaker 2: That's the thing. It'll tell me when it's done.
- 8:59Speaker 3: So once it's finished, I very rarely will tweak something.
- 9:04Speaker 3: Years later, it kind of says, Okay, I'm done, and
- 9:08Speaker 3: it tells me.
- 9:09Speaker 2: I had a girlfriend once who said that to me.
- 9:11Speaker 3: She's like, you know, it's very interesting because I was
- 9:12Speaker 3: talking about I said, yeah, it's almost done.
- 9:14Speaker 2: It's very interesting. The way you refer to it. It
- 9:16Speaker 2: like it's it's almost done. It's like, not, you're almost finished.
- 9:20Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Well it's it's living in breathing dude. You
- 9:23Speaker 1: know that, William. I mean it's it's like it's it's
- 9:26Speaker 1: it's a living creature that's sitting right there in front
- 9:28Speaker 1: of you, and you just happen to be the physician
- 9:30Speaker 1: that's bringing it to life.
- 9:32Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's that's exactly the way I see it.
- 9:35Speaker 3: Honestly, I I almost think it's it's uh, it sounds
- 9:39Speaker 3: a little crazy, but it's it's not human in a way.
- 9:42Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels that way.
- 9:45Speaker 3: It's as though if the human race completely died, the
- 9:49Speaker 3: poetry would still be there, even though there'd be no
- 9:51Speaker 3: one reading it.
- 9:52Speaker 1: Do you think it's because poetry is no different than doodling.
- 9:56Speaker 1: We're playing with words. It just doesn't take the picture
- 9:58Speaker 1: of somebody within big nose or eyes or anything like that.
- 10:01Speaker 1: It's words we see. We're interpreting what we're feeling.
- 10:07Speaker 3: Yeah, it is like doodling, and then it kind of
- 10:10Speaker 3: gells or crystallizes into something.
- 10:12Speaker 2: Yeah, but it begins.
- 10:13Speaker 3: By just the different forces pressing in on each other
- 10:17Speaker 3: from all different directions, and somehow that forms a complete hole.
- 10:22Speaker 3: But it is, yeah, a lot to do with that,
- 10:23Speaker 3: especially with that one I just told you about. It
- 10:25Speaker 3: began as a doodle, you know, and eventually those doodles
- 10:29Speaker 3: found a sort of structure, and at the end it
- 10:32Speaker 3: had very precise structure, and yet it still maintains the
- 10:36Speaker 3: doodle behind it, because that was what I was trying
- 10:40Speaker 3: to get at in the twistings and turnings.
- 10:43Speaker 2: It's kind of like shel Silverstein. Yeah, like that, like
- 10:47Speaker 2: this stuff.
- 10:48Speaker 1: Oh my god. So I've got to ask you Julia
- 10:50Speaker 1: Cameron question. She's the one that gave us the artist way.
- 10:53Speaker 1: So now that you've cleaned out the closet with Bachelor Holiday,
- 10:57Speaker 1: what's next? I mean, are you going to give us
- 10:58Speaker 1: more poetry, do you start going deeper into it and
- 11:01Speaker 1: and and give us, you know, lengthy short stories of
- 11:04Speaker 1: some sort. Because a poet isn't just a poet. A
- 11:07Speaker 1: poet is a story sharer that we It doesn't have
- 11:10Speaker 1: to be a full book. We can have sentences and
- 11:13Speaker 1: still get the job done.
- 11:15Speaker 3: Right now, I have a couple of poems that are
- 11:19Speaker 3: in the works. So I have a few poems for
- 11:21Speaker 3: my next book of poetry. Definitely that's going to come.
- 11:24Speaker 3: I have a bunch of essays largely outlining my time
- 11:29Speaker 3: when traveling through Europe. So as a fiddler, I have
- 11:33Speaker 3: all these great travel essays that a lot of them
- 11:35Speaker 3: aren't been published. I'm gonna pull those together. A few
- 11:37Speaker 3: I still need to rewrite. And then I'm also working
- 11:40Speaker 3: on a biography of my grandmother, Henrietta Cyberling, who you
- 11:44Speaker 3: may have read about. She she was a co founder
- 11:47Speaker 3: of Alcoholics Anonymous, and her story is a way yeah,
- 11:51Speaker 3: oh my god, and she she is, her place is
- 11:55Speaker 3: so unrepresented, unrepresentative in the history of AA. It's so
- 12:03Speaker 3: I'm actually done that. I'm in the final proofing of that.
- 12:06Speaker 3: And then and then the poetry is always going though.
- 12:09Speaker 3: The poetry is in my heart. The poetry is the
- 12:11Speaker 3: core of my literary self.
- 12:13Speaker 1: Well, I've always believed that creativity is an addiction and
- 12:15Speaker 1: poetry is a part of that. So and I go,
- 12:17Speaker 1: I don't care enable me. Then if it's going to
- 12:20Speaker 1: give me an addiction to write, then I'm gonna write.
- 12:22Speaker 1: I'm just gonna do it. Don't make me stop.
- 12:24Speaker 3: Oh yeah, my wife ask her. She's a complete and
- 12:27Speaker 3: enabler to my addiction to poetry. So I totally get it.
- 12:35Speaker 1: Okay, okay, you brought up your wife, So now I've
- 12:37Speaker 1: got I've got to give. We got to compare notes here.
- 12:39Speaker 1: My wife says, do not cross out any words. Yes,
- 12:42Speaker 1: you are editing, but don't cross out the words, she says.
- 12:44Speaker 1: And the reason why is because she feels what you
- 12:46Speaker 1: put down there and in the beginning touched her. And
- 12:50Speaker 1: why is it that I think that I'm taking away
- 12:52Speaker 1: from her? If you know what I mean by that.
- 12:54Speaker 1: It's like, leave those words alone, go write somewhere else
- 12:56Speaker 1: on the same poetry, but let me have my words
- 12:59Speaker 1: that haven't been scratched out.
- 13:02Speaker 3: I get that, because you don't want to lose that
- 13:04Speaker 3: that fresh that freshness, and especially the ones I rewrite
- 13:08Speaker 3: from many years ago. I try to do it in
- 13:11Speaker 3: such a way evening I'm like, well, this isn't isn't
- 13:13Speaker 3: the best, But if I understand, you don't want to
- 13:16Speaker 3: eliminate it completely, so you have to kind of hold
- 13:19Speaker 3: on to some things that might not even be the
- 13:21Speaker 3: best in order to maintain that freshness of the spontaneity.
- 13:25Speaker 2: So I can understand where she's coming from.
- 13:28Speaker 3: My wife doesn't do that, mainly because I usually only
- 13:32Speaker 3: give her things that are are done, because I'm kind
- 13:34Speaker 3: of like, you know, the cat who brings the mouse
- 13:36Speaker 3: home here, honey, it's it's I put it on our doorstart.
- 13:40Speaker 2: And that's a terrible analogy.
- 13:42Speaker 1: Have you ever had one of those moments though, where
- 13:44Speaker 1: you write a song you say I did that for you, honey,
- 13:46Speaker 1: and she goes, oh, that was nice, and it's like, whoa,
- 13:48Speaker 1: that's not what I thought I was going to get
- 13:49Speaker 1: by putting all that time into it. And and and
- 13:51Speaker 1: you did you see you sit there and it kind
- 13:53Speaker 1: of stunts you a bit.
- 13:56Speaker 2: Yeah, I have had that, I must admit, Yeah, I
- 14:01Speaker 2: have had that. So it's but it's okay.
- 14:04Speaker 3: I mean, you know, you kind of think a lot
- 14:05Speaker 3: of times people just that their minds are elsewhere. Yes,
- 14:09Speaker 3: it's not really I try to think of personally, and
- 14:11Speaker 3: then I might even ask her to reread it later
- 14:15Speaker 3: and I'll lisit a better response, you know, when she's
- 14:19Speaker 3: in a better place to read it.
- 14:21Speaker 2: So I totally get that.
- 14:22Speaker 1: Where can people go to find out more about you?
- 14:25Speaker 1: Because I want them to jump into this and to
- 14:28Speaker 1: fall in love with your expressions?
- 14:31Speaker 2: Thank you? Er, Yes, William Hewn.
- 14:34Speaker 3: That's William h u h N dot com. That's my website.
- 14:40Speaker 3: My book's there, Bachelor Holiday.
- 14:43Speaker 2: You can also.
- 14:43Speaker 3: Contact me if you want to just make any continue
- 14:47Speaker 3: this conversation we're having through there. And yeah, my book
- 14:52Speaker 3: is there on Amazon Bachelor Holiday.
- 14:55Speaker 2: Please check it out. And it's got great illustrations, by
- 14:58Speaker 2: the way, there's there's there's illustrations, not including the cover
- 15:02Speaker 2: that are just beautiful.
- 15:03Speaker 3: I love those old books where they have those illustrations,
- 15:07Speaker 3: those black and white ones, you know what I mean,
- 15:09Speaker 3: from the nineteenth century, and I try to sort of
- 15:12Speaker 3: put a few of those and.
- 15:13Speaker 2: They're very beautiful. I got them off, you know, of
- 15:16Speaker 2: different artists. I didn't make them.
- 15:18Speaker 1: I got to tell you that I've been waiting for
- 15:20Speaker 1: so long to share a conversation with you. All the
- 15:22Speaker 1: way back to and I looked at my daily notes,
- 15:24Speaker 1: because I'm a daily writer. All the way back to
- 15:26Speaker 1: November fifth of twenty twenty five, I was sending out
- 15:29Speaker 1: emails going I need to talk to this guy. I
- 15:31Speaker 1: need to talk to this guy. Okay, hold on, hold on,
- 15:34Speaker 1: hold on, he's got a book coming out. I need
- 15:35Speaker 1: to talk to this guy. So, after all of these months,
- 15:38Speaker 1: we have finally been connected here and you have no
- 15:41Speaker 1: idea how much of a blessing that is for me.
- 15:44Speaker 3: Errow, same here with you. I feel the blessing. I
- 15:47Speaker 3: feel We're in the same vibe, vibe, same wavelength.
- 15:51Speaker 2: I really do. I love the way.
- 15:52Speaker 3: I love the way this started, just like we blasted
- 15:55Speaker 3: right into it. You know, we're on the same plane.
- 15:58Speaker 2: Totally get it. Errow, thank you, will you very complimentary.
- 16:01Speaker 1: You got to come back to this show anytime in
- 16:03Speaker 1: the future. The door is always going to be open
- 16:04Speaker 1: for you, sir.
- 16:05Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you very much. I certainly will. I
- 16:08Speaker 3: certainly will.
- 16:09Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today?
- 16:10Speaker 2: Okay you two Row, thank you so much. You'd be
- 16:14Speaker 2: brilliant