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My Favorite Things Episode 20: Writer And Editor Nick Triolo · My Favorite Things

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Nick Triolo, thanks for being here.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks for having me, Brendan.
0:04
SPEAKER_01: Nice to see you.
0:07
SPEAKER_01: Boy, I've been waiting to have you on this podcast for quite a while now.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: This is episode 20.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
0:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm committed.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: Can you tell us a little bit about who you are in your current iteration?
0:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I am a writer, editor,
0:33
SPEAKER_00: runner,
0:34
SPEAKER_00: emergent wannabe educator,
0:39
SPEAKER_00: doing some more teaching as of late,
0:42
SPEAKER_00: and currently living in Missoula, not too far from Brendan Leonard himself.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: We should be doing this in person, but we're a bike ride away.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, and yeah, um, that's, that's the gist of where, where I find myself these days.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, thinking a lot about letters, um,
1:03
SPEAKER_00: thinking a lot about books, um,
1:07
SPEAKER_00: and spending a lot of time on foot these days,
1:10
SPEAKER_00: fewer miles, uh, FK teen and more miles walking, um, sleeping in the dirt.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: I also would add that people actually pay you to teach, so you're not like an emergent teacher.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: You're paid to teach writing.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: Also, you're an award-winning author as of a few weeks ago, I'm pretty sure.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: What's the name of your book?
1:33
SPEAKER_01: People reading that thing?
1:35
SPEAKER_00: The book is called The Way Around, A Field Guide to Going Nowhere.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: And I'll say that this is not a plug, sort of is a plug.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: It's coming out in paperback in October.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: We've redesigned the cover, and they suggested that we recast the subtitle.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: So not that anyone cares,
1:51
SPEAKER_00: but the subtitle as it stands currently in the hardcover is a field guide
1:54
SPEAKER_00: to going nowhere,
1:56
SPEAKER_00: which my dad was always like, who's going to want to read a book about that?
2:00
SPEAKER_00: Like, you want to go somewhere, right?
2:02
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Pop, you got to read the book.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: It'll make sense.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: But the paper book subtitle is A Walk Reimagined.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: What's the new cover?
2:15
SPEAKER_01: It's just like you shirtless, black and white.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Six-pack abs, kind of like the men's health style, black and white, really ribbed abs.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, I'll buy it.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: I'll buy another copy.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's going to sell like hotcakes.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: It's actually like a really buoyant sort of like,
2:36
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say like Ross Gay,
2:38
SPEAKER_00: Book of Delights,
2:38
SPEAKER_00: but it's like way more like light blues and yellows and like It's not as dark
2:44
SPEAKER_00: and sort of self-important or something.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: Self, what's the word?
2:48
SPEAKER_00: Not self-important, but I actually really love the hardcover art.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: I love the black and yellow contrast.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: But it feels kind of like really earnest or something.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: It feels really sharp.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: And so I feel like the paperback is giving it a little levity, which I think was the point.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's interesting.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, that'll be fun.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: I'll have to buy some more copies of that.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Which is actually,
3:11
SPEAKER_00: it's celebrating its one-year anniversary tomorrow,
3:14
SPEAKER_00: so I'm going to put out a little Substack tomorrow.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't know when this is going to come out.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: Happy birthday, Book.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: We might be, I think we're, it'll be a week and a half from now, so.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
3:27
SPEAKER_01: It'll be a little over a year old.
3:29
SPEAKER_01: So, as you know,
3:31
SPEAKER_01: this podcast is called My Favorite Thing,
3:33
SPEAKER_01: so I've asked you to send me a list of five
3:37
SPEAKER_01: of your favorite creative works throughout your life.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: And you first sent me six,
3:44
SPEAKER_01: which is,
3:45
SPEAKER_01: I'm happy you trimmed it down to five on your own because I would have had
3:48
SPEAKER_01: a hard time choosing.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: But let's talk about the first item on your list,
3:54
SPEAKER_01: which is the book Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: David Abram, yeah.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know how many listeners will know of this book.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: I feel like sometimes when I see people post about it these days, I'm like, where have you been?
4:10
SPEAKER_00: This thing's been around for 30 years.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: But I think that I got to it fairly late in the game.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: David Abram is a philosopher,
4:23
SPEAKER_00: cultural ecologist,
4:26
SPEAKER_00: and he's also a sleight of hand magician,
4:28
SPEAKER_00: which is kind of an interesting fact, which you'll read about in the book.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: And he wrote this book.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know this until I was preparing for this call that it was published in 96.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: So we're looking at a 30 year anniversary of this book, which is wild.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: He is a visiting lecture writer at the Harvard Divinity School.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: In fact,
4:49
SPEAKER_00: there's a fantastic conversation between David and Terry Tempest Williams
4:54
SPEAKER_00: that you can find on YouTube that maybe we'll link to.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: He writes the book is essentially about How language is animate,
5:04
SPEAKER_00: how he gets into like the history of the alphabet and how
5:08
SPEAKER_00: the written language is both something that is something that is an invitation
5:15
SPEAKER_00: to deepen our intimacy with the world and also a distancing,
5:18
SPEAKER_00: a potential like distancing factor where language was historically an oral tradition
5:24
SPEAKER_00: or storytelling.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: And so with that came a deeply embodied somatic phenomenological,
5:29
SPEAKER_00: like it became It was a deeply transmitted through the body and through the senses.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: And we gathered to listen to stories and they were sort of the permutations of story
5:39
SPEAKER_00: through time.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: The subjective response to a metabolism of stories became this sort of like living creature.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: And as soon as we started writing and writing these kind of these ink splotches
5:51
SPEAKER_00: on paper that were sort of representative of images,
5:56
SPEAKER_00: it became sort of this evolutionary Abstraction from the real,
6:00
SPEAKER_00: from actually like,
6:02
SPEAKER_00: like we actually,
6:03
SPEAKER_00: we made sort of language inert in some ways by creating an alphabet.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: And so it's this kind of interesting conversation about language,
6:11
SPEAKER_00: both its animacy and vitality and how urgent and necessary it is to get right.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: And also how potentially like weaponizing or distancing it can be,
6:24
SPEAKER_00: or estrangement of language to between us and the real and the living world.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: And so I don't know, I just remember it rocking my world.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: I was in my 20s living in Portland, Oregon.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: I was running like way too many miles every week.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: It was a moment in my life where I was really getting into ultra running
6:45
SPEAKER_00: and also like didn't have Internet where I lived.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: I lived under under this this old like 80 year old woodcarver from Hawaii up in Forest Park.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: And she like rented me her little daylight basement.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: And it didn't have internet and I'd like terrible internet.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: And so I just would read like crazy.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: And so I would like run and read.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: There was a trail 30 seconds from my door and there was no internet.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: And so I just did a lot of things.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: And I was working at a nonprofit job and making,
7:11
SPEAKER_00: I like worked at Red Robin at some point,
7:13
SPEAKER_00: like right in there, which we talked about, serving tables at Red Robin.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: And so I was not making a bunch of money and just wolfing down this cannon
7:25
SPEAKER_00: that I'd never really heard about.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: But was really interested in about environmental writing or,
7:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
7:33
SPEAKER_00: reading sort of Gary Schneider and starting to get into like eco psychology.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: So without getting too far into that rabbit hole,
7:40
SPEAKER_00: David Abrams,
7:41
SPEAKER_00: Spell the Sensuous was one of these books that was recommended by people in
7:45
SPEAKER_00: the canon.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: Friends of mine who started we started sharing books.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: It just kind of kept circulating.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: And he's he's since written a book called Becoming the Animal.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: Which was great also.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: And he hasn't written anything for about a decade that I've seen in terms of books, book length.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: But he has a couple of great essays on emergence.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: And he's just a wonderful thinker.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: So you and you have a copy of this book.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: Is this is this a copy?
8:14
SPEAKER_01: Did you borrow this from somebody and never give it back or like where did this come from?
8:20
SPEAKER_00: I had a friend in grad school who didn't pay rent for three years.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: He lived in a school bus.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: He's one of the most brilliant people I know.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: I would call him in the dead of winter,
8:34
SPEAKER_00: like in February,
8:35
SPEAKER_00: and be like, hey, Chris, how are you doing in your bus without heat?
8:39
SPEAKER_00: And he's like,
8:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm under two feet of blankets right now,
8:41
SPEAKER_00: and they're all frozen, and I can't get out of my bus.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: But he had a master's in physics,
8:49
SPEAKER_00: and he had a stack of master's, and just this sort of He would eat bugs.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: He's a really curious dude, but he borrowed this book.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: This looks like him.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: He used it as a pillow.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've seen Merlin Sheldrake's book on mushrooms,
9:09
SPEAKER_00: but Merlin Sheldrake did this experiment where he inoculated his own book
9:14
SPEAKER_00: and grew mushrooms out of it.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: And this feels similar.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: There might be some mycelium running through this thing.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, so this isn't,
9:22
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know what happened to this copy, but, uh, it's a beautiful thing.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: It's, it's living, it's a living book.
9:27
SPEAKER_01: So that's, that's Chris's book.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: Or it's,
9:31
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's my book and I lent it to him and he gave it back,
9:34
SPEAKER_00: but nonetheless it went through his, his, his world.
9:38
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter.
9:39
SPEAKER_01: It's not from the Portland public library.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: It's not, it is not.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: Um,
9:46
SPEAKER_01: I have not read this book,
9:48
SPEAKER_01: but when I read the description of it and kind of flipped through
9:50
SPEAKER_01: the first couple pages that are online,
9:52
SPEAKER_01: I was like,
9:52
SPEAKER_01: this sounds like a Nick book in that sort of like Rob McFarlane analysis of language
9:59
SPEAKER_01: in a beautiful, beautiful manner, painting with words as paintbrushes sort of thing.
10:06
SPEAKER_01: How do you think...
10:08
SPEAKER_01: How do you think that comes in?
10:10
SPEAKER_01: Does this book influence what you do now in some way, do you think?
10:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's funny.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: I was listening to your beautiful conversation with Heather,
10:20
SPEAKER_00: and I heard you talk about this person you ran into on the trail,
10:24
SPEAKER_00: a friend of yours who also likes to write.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: I think it might have been me.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: I can't be for sure.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: But you said something like, this dude...
10:34
SPEAKER_00: You know,
10:34
SPEAKER_00: writes with the paintbrush and I write like with the screwdriver,
10:37
SPEAKER_00: you know, which I love.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: You know, I really I mean, I've admired your work forever.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: Of course, I don't need to,
10:41
SPEAKER_00: you know, blow too much smoke on this call.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: But I do understand and love that we have different approaches to this craft.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: That's like what makes it cool.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: And I learn from you every day because of it.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: And David Abram has sort of calibrated my approach to language.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: Calibrated.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: What a big, clunky word, right?
10:59
SPEAKER_00: Don't use big words.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: Shunk and white.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: But But I also love language that's kind of big and sometimes when done right.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a yes and.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: I think David Abram is activating the animacy of language in the mouth
11:16
SPEAKER_00: and how can language be...
11:19
SPEAKER_00: He inspired me to write this essay that I wrote recently about air saloons,
11:25
SPEAKER_00: About selling air bars in Vegas, etc.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: David Abram talks a lot about the animacy of air, the commonwealth of breath, as he says, and...
11:37
SPEAKER_00: That kind of language I love is, you know, it's really, it plays tricks.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: It plays, it like casts spells to call in the title.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: And so you can do that way too thick and it's terrible, of course.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: And then, so it's a place of, it's a play of discernment, I think.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: But David Abram,
11:57
SPEAKER_00: you know,
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Solnit was another,
12:00
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I'm putting them in the same necessarily category,
12:02
SPEAKER_00: but Rebecca Solomon was also a voice at that time
12:05
SPEAKER_00: that really helped me both write nonfiction with rhythm and specificity
12:11
SPEAKER_00: and precision to language.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: It took me a while to actually really heed the advice to read more You know,
12:21
SPEAKER_00: Hemingway or like read really beautifully platonic stripped down language
12:27
SPEAKER_00: that is getting to the point and getting to it immediately.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: And so I don't know where I live between those two poles,
12:33
SPEAKER_00: but David Abram and that sort of tradition got me into this language salad
12:40
SPEAKER_00: that is reflective of the natural world and all its nuances.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: That's what McFarlane writes a lot about in Landmarks.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: We're losing cultural and linguistic diversity.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: And so is it a form of activism or a form of reclamation
12:55
SPEAKER_00: to relearn how these words feel in our mouths,
12:59
SPEAKER_00: these 16 different words to describe ice or something?
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: You've told me before that it was like a composition class you took in college
13:10
SPEAKER_01: that you did so poorly and that the professor just wrote on your paper,
13:14
SPEAKER_01: go to the writing center.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: Were your early writings that were maligned by this professor,
13:25
SPEAKER_01: was it like you trying out lots of beautiful language?
13:30
SPEAKER_01: Or what was going on there?
13:32
SPEAKER_01: And like, did that...
13:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, probably.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: There's a story that I won't expand,
13:42
SPEAKER_00: just give it 15 seconds here,
13:43
SPEAKER_00: but my mom would always tell me this story where they would like,
13:48
SPEAKER_00: like as a kid,
13:49
SPEAKER_00: they would get high after I went to bed and like read some of the stories
13:54
SPEAKER_00: that I would write to like submit to kindergarten,
13:56
SPEAKER_00: not kindergarten, I don't know, like second grade or something.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: Because what I would do,
14:00
SPEAKER_00: I like got a hold of the dictionary or the thesaurus and I would like,
14:04
SPEAKER_00: I would like splice in these crazy words like vicarious or,
14:08
SPEAKER_00: you know, I don't even know.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: And like no, no child of that age, you know, and they would just like love it.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: They would just, they thought it was the funniest thing ever.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: And so, so flash forward to like freshman year in college.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: I just was a terrible writer straight up, like no, no to no other.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: I just didn't know what the F I was doing.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: This international relations professor from Harvard,
14:30
SPEAKER_00: like got my first paper on the UN or some shit.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: And he was like, this is ungradable.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: This is on, this is on, there was no red ink because he couldn't even know where to start.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: That's how bad it was.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: So in some ways I say this, I said this on book tour that was, you know, 2001.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: I'm like,
14:47
SPEAKER_00: this book is dedicated to grandma and the professor who like told me that,
14:51
SPEAKER_00: you know, I need to go to the writing center.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: And like, I went, I went, okay.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: Is he, is he around still?
14:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: You didn't send him a copy of the book?
15:01
SPEAKER_00: I should.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: I should.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm going to make that note right now.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: Just a little post-it.
15:05
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for telling me to go to the Writing Center 25 years ago.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: In all sincerity, I bet that would be a lovely thing to receive.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: Oh, my God.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: That would be hilarious.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: Just close the loop.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: That would be great because you never hear from your
15:18
SPEAKER_01: students, you know?
15:19
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
15:25
SPEAKER_01: Next...
15:27
SPEAKER_01: You know,
15:28
SPEAKER_01: what's funny is that on your list of possible things that we were going to include,
15:32
SPEAKER_01: I was a little disappointed you went with the higher brow sort of thing with Spell
15:36
SPEAKER_01: of the Sensuous instead of the R.L.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: Stine books.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: But maybe I'll just throw that in the links anyway.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: You know,
15:44
SPEAKER_00: I was about to push,
15:46
SPEAKER_00: I saved,
15:46
SPEAKER_00: you know, a few of these are funny or a little more like self-poking, but...
15:52
SPEAKER_00: R.L.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: Stine was like a huge influence.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: You know,
15:55
SPEAKER_00: these things were like,
15:56
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:56
SPEAKER_00: like I was interviewed by Powell's books and like,
15:58
SPEAKER_00: what's your kind of formative book that really turned you on to literature?
16:01
SPEAKER_00: And it's true.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: And I mean this,
16:02
SPEAKER_00: and it sounds totally like pretentious,
16:05
SPEAKER_00: but they're like,
16:05
SPEAKER_00: like Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment was in fact a book
16:08
SPEAKER_00: that like my high school AP English teacher,
16:11
SPEAKER_00: you know, gave me to read and it totally rocked my world for sure.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: But the real reading started with R.L.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: Stine.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: R.L.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: Stine, absolutely goosebumps.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: Like that's when I, when transported, nobody, nobody, nobody prescribed it to me.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: The, you know, I just couldn't, I was waiting at the bookstore.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: You know,
16:28
SPEAKER_00: I knew when the new book came to town,
16:30
SPEAKER_00: I lived in a small town in the Sierra foothills and I could smell,
16:33
SPEAKER_00: I could smell the wood of the bookshelf in this place.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: I can say, I know exactly.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: You walk into the right, goosebumps.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: And so R.L.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: Stine, absolutely.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: So R.L.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Stine to spell is sensuous.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: That pipeline is, you heard it here first.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm happy to let that in as a bonus pick there.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: That's fun.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: Well, technically this is number two.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: Music, Dark Side, Psychic.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: Where are you when you find this music and how does it come into your life?
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: So this is an interesting record.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: I actually have it right here for those who are watching.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: Look at me all prepared.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful record.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: I have it on vinyl.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: Psychic came out in 2013.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: And that's when I found it.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: I was actually fast forward,
17:33
SPEAKER_00: sort of moved myself out of Portland after sort of big life transition and landed
17:40
SPEAKER_00: a sort of a house house sitting job on the tip of the southern tip of Baja, Mexico.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: For a winter, so like for four or five months.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: And I met down there, I met this woman who was dating a pretty famous, like Scandinavian DJ.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: And he was, I think she was their sort of publicist or sort of tour manager or something.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: There are two twin brothers and they're like famous,
18:05
SPEAKER_00: famous in the, like the house music scene, which is not my scene.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: Like I grew up on punk rock, you know, And yet this woman was amazing.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: And these two brothers are just kind of quirky and all they would do, they would not surf.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: Like I went there to like run in the desert to get in the ocean as much as I could.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: I was volunteering at like a turtle rehabilitation thing.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: And, um, I was, I was building this like protest to stop a gold mine, which we could talk about.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, but, but these guys were like spent all day inside.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: Like they didn't go outside.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: They didn't do the thing that people do when they go to Totes Santos.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: They like, They sat in their closet and were just making beats all day.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: And I kind of loved that.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: So I would go and hang out with them.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: And she one day sent me this link and was like,
18:48
SPEAKER_00: based on what I know about you,
18:49
SPEAKER_00: Nick, this band is the perfect sort of signature that meets the hybridity of you.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: That's sort of like you love punk rock and you love music.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: Rock and roll.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: And you also seem to love the sort of rhythmic beats of House that I was sort
19:06
SPEAKER_00: of getting into because of these people.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: And so Dark Side is this beautiful electronic duo between Nicholas Jarre,
19:13
SPEAKER_00: a famous Chilean electronic musician, and the multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: They met at Brown.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: They're two sort of brilliant, brilliant folks.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: And they started putting out music in like 2011.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: So I was there in the winter basically of 2013 when Psychic, this record, came out.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: If anybody's listening,
19:32
SPEAKER_00: hasn't ever heard of these people, which I find a lot of people haven't.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: But those who have, there's a little bit of like a... We see each other.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: I read somewhere in a review that they're sort of like Krautrock meets Club.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: It was like a cool, weird qualifier.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: So Paper Trails would be a beautiful intro to this band.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: That's what introduced me to their music.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're into...
20:01
SPEAKER_00: If you're into the sort of rhythmic consistency of electronic music,
20:06
SPEAKER_00: but also love the sort of riffy rock
20:13
SPEAKER_00: inputs, then you might love this band.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: And they've put out a couple of records since Psychic that I'm less fond of,
20:20
SPEAKER_00: but they're all pretty experimental.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: Alter running identity and getting into writing and reading a bunch.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: I was considering grad school and this sort of interstitial sort of moment living
20:41
SPEAKER_00: in Mexico,
20:42
SPEAKER_00: which sort of delivered me the soundtrack of this record delivered me to
20:46
SPEAKER_00: where I am now, which is in Missoula, where I came to grad school in 2013.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: You're going from rainforest, essentially rainy Pacific Northwest to dry desert Baja.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: Was this their second album, first album that came out?
21:06
SPEAKER_00: They put an EP out, which is really good, actually.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: There's a track, A1, I think is the track, that I've listened to at least a bazillion times.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: It's so good.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: So a little EP,
21:19
SPEAKER_00: I think,
21:20
SPEAKER_00: right when they first started collabing,
21:21
SPEAKER_00: and then 2013, Psychic comes out, and it's like a full-length record.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: In fact,
21:28
SPEAKER_00: I've mentioned this whole campaign to stop this goldmine There was a track
21:32
SPEAKER_00: on this record.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: I forget the name of the track, but I couldn't stop hearing it and thinking about this.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: So we basically designed a 70-mile run across the Baja Peninsula
21:43
SPEAKER_00: to stop this gold mine with a bunch of Mexican activists.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: And the whole song, when I listen to it, I think of this route.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: I think of the actual route from the east side of the Baja Peninsula to Todos Santos.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: And I kept hearing it.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: I was like, it kind of has this little bridge in the middle.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: It feels like this summit,
21:59
SPEAKER_00: this sort of like cresting Little saddle summit that you have to go over.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: And so every time I'd listen to it and I was listening to this record,
22:06
SPEAKER_00: I would listen to this track and I would,
22:08
SPEAKER_00: I would see the landscape of this crossing and of this campaign we were building.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: And so it ends up that I,
22:13
SPEAKER_00: we ended up using that track in this short low budget film that we created called
22:17
SPEAKER_00: The Crossing, um, that comes out in 2014.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: And we, we like, we reach out to the band.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: They give us, they give us rights.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, they give us rights.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: They ask a bunch of money for us and we're like, we don't, we have no money.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: And then we send them the trailer that we made and they were like, cool, go ahead and use it.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: And so we have a dark side track in this film as a function of falling in love with this album.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: And that's so great when they do that.
22:45
SPEAKER_01: Tom Rosenthal,
22:46
SPEAKER_01: the British musician,
22:47
SPEAKER_01: was pretty famous for just like letting you have music for basically a dollar.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: And it became like this sort of for a period of several years.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: It was in all these adventure films.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: And I reached out to him at one point and was like,
22:59
SPEAKER_01: hey, can I use this for a little trailer for my book?
23:01
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, yeah, just send me a copy of the book.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: So I did.
23:05
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, another friend was like, oh yeah, for sure.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: Tom Rosenthal literally gave me this track for a dollar.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: It is cool.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: And they don't,
23:15
SPEAKER_01: they don't lose anything by it,
23:16
SPEAKER_00: but like, I mean,
23:18
SPEAKER_00: they lose
23:19
SPEAKER_01: potential money,
23:20
SPEAKER_01: obviously,
23:21
SPEAKER_01: but like sometimes if they,
23:23
SPEAKER_01: if they're,
23:24
SPEAKER_01: if you're able to reach them without going through,
23:26
SPEAKER_01: you know, sort of money manager person, it can be really cool.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: That's a great story.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: I think that Ben Gibbard also submitted, you know, contributed a track or two for that film.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: He's extremely generous and a dear friend.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: But he knew more than anyone how like money we're in the red on that film entirely.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: Like we did a bit of a crown funder,
23:47
SPEAKER_00: but it was like a couple thousand like we I think we spent three
23:50
SPEAKER_00: or four thousand dollars on that film or something like.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: And none of it, there was no pocketed money whatsoever.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: So it was all for this thing.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: So that helps.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's great.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: All right.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: Number three.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: That's your only music pick too.
24:06
SPEAKER_01: That's good.
24:06
SPEAKER_01: You kind of did a bunch of different art forms here.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: Number three, visual art.
24:13
SPEAKER_01: Tom Killian woodcut prints.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, can you describe what those look like since this is a podcast and we will link
24:23
SPEAKER_01: to it obviously, but yeah.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: So, um, wood, wood,
24:29
SPEAKER_00: woodcut or woodblock prints are these like,
24:32
SPEAKER_00: uh, these chiseled, basically like almost like a stamp.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: If you can imagine like a,
24:36
SPEAKER_00: like a stamp that you use these like really fine Japanese tools traditionally, um,
24:42
SPEAKER_00: Ukiyue,
24:43
SPEAKER_00: I think is the pronunciation for the traditional 19th century Japanese style
24:47
SPEAKER_00: of wood cut,
24:49
SPEAKER_00: where they actually chisel a sort of inverted version of the print that they want,
24:54
SPEAKER_00: and they chisel it by hand,
24:58
SPEAKER_00: and they have to make different cuts for different colors often.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: So you have to take one cut of one layer of, say, the sky is blue, but the mountains are brown.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: They have to be different cuts of wood themselves, so cherry wood.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: Tom Killian is an artist that is born and raised in Mill Valley.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: He lives in Marin County.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: He is one of the foremost in the West of carrying this tradition on.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: In the West.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: And so he's been doing this for some time.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: He has this crazy German hand-cranked press.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: I visited him while drafting the way around my book because he's collaborated
25:39
SPEAKER_00: with Gary Snyder on several books of his.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: They're buds.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: And so to answer your question, You go into a studio and there's all these crazy blocks.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: You get hit with a big smell of ink.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: It's a deeply slow and it's not fast art at all.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: It's intentionally very slow and probably maddening.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: And they're really intricate.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: They're really intricate, beautiful prints.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: In fact, so when I went to him, I was super poor.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have any money, but But I was interviewing him for sort of pre-reporting.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: I never actually made it too much in the book,
26:18
SPEAKER_00: but it was a lot about just like his relationship with Gary Snyder,
26:21
SPEAKER_00: his relationship with Tamil Pius.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: He wrote a book called Tamil Pius Walking, which is a huge seminal reference for my book.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: And on the cover is his art alongside conversations that he and Gary have had.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: So he sold me a copy, like a really small, super tiny, like a single black print of...
26:43
SPEAKER_00: Mount Tamalpais from Bootjack Canyon, or Camp rather.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: And Bootjack was a place that I had camped several times on my own
26:52
SPEAKER_00: to do some writing and do some drafting and note taking for the book.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: And so I just, I don't know, it was like a pretty special visit to meet him in person.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: And to one day hopefully buy an actual print of his,
27:09
SPEAKER_00: like a completed print with color because they're really exquisite.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's a really special artist.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know how old he is,
27:18
SPEAKER_00: but he looks like he could be like in his 50s,
27:21
SPEAKER_00: but I think he might be in his 60s or 70s.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: But he just seems like he's on a different plane.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: That's unhappy for him.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: That's really good.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: Must be all that ink.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: Must be all like huffing that oil.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: Can you describe how Tamal Pius
27:40
SPEAKER_01: makes its way into your book and Gary Snyder?
27:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll be brief.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: The book is essentially in three parts following this sort of pan-cultural practice
27:55
SPEAKER_00: of circuitous walking.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: So instead of You know, linear walking from point A to point B.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: There's a sort of age old,
28:03
SPEAKER_00: several thousand year old practice of walking in circles to sort of pay reverence
28:07
SPEAKER_00: or pay homage to a sacred place or a monastery or a mountain.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: So I got into the weeds on the sort of cultural foundations and the sort
28:17
SPEAKER_00: of like implications of embracing a sort of counter narrative to sort
28:23
SPEAKER_00: of linear walking.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: I get the second part takes me to Mount Tamalpais.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: The first part,
28:29
SPEAKER_00: you go to Western Tibet and you walk around this crazy mountain in Tibet,
28:33
SPEAKER_00: Mount Kailash.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: The second part takes you to Mount Tamalpais,
28:36
SPEAKER_00: where in the 60s,
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Gary Snyder,
28:38
SPEAKER_00: Allen Ginsberg,
28:39
SPEAKER_00: and Philip Whalen put together this 14-mile spiral loop around
28:44
SPEAKER_00: and up Mount Tamalpais.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: And so I basically help organize the 50th anniversary of that 1965 walk in the book.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: It corresponds with all sorts of other layers to the story.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: My mother had cancer at that point.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: The woman who sort of was the leader of the walk had been doing it like 100.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: She had done it at that point 90 times.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: I think she got to 100.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: She was also suffering from cancer.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: And so she was like this proxy to showing up for my own mother's cancer.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: And so we get into the history of the countercultural history of the Bay Area in the 60s.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: As we walk around this beautiful, uh,
29:26
SPEAKER_00: storied mountain and,
29:28
SPEAKER_00: and Tom,
29:29
SPEAKER_00: Tom is actually,
29:30
SPEAKER_00: Tom Killian is actually in the book,
29:31
SPEAKER_00: in my book a little bit, his dialogue with Gary.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, cause they're, yeah, again, they were really close and, um, yeah.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean,
29:38
SPEAKER_00: they have, he, he,
29:39
SPEAKER_00: he was literally born, I think, and raised on the, on the slopes of that mountain.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: So.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: That's a nice, that's a nice spot to be born and raised.
29:49
SPEAKER_01: It really is.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:53
SPEAKER_01: Uh, number four is the movie Perfect Days.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, I have seen this movie based on your recommendation that it is,
30:05
SPEAKER_01: well, based on you telling me that it is pretty much your favorite movie maybe ever.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, what is it about this movie?
30:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, can you kind of describe the movie and then talk about like,
30:16
SPEAKER_01: what is it about this that makes this your favorite movie ever?
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: So not to like infuse more than five here, but I did, I wrestled with the movie.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: I really wanted to like, like diversify my, my five here.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I was like texting with my brother last night and I was like,
30:33
SPEAKER_00: what were,
30:33
SPEAKER_00: what was the seminal, you know, movies that, you know, that we, that shaped us, man.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: And he was,
30:37
SPEAKER_00: cause we watched a lot of movies together and he was like,
30:39
SPEAKER_00: Captain Ron, Captain Rog, absolutely.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: Like, like he texted back in like five seconds, like Captain Ron, Kurt Russell, of course.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, Tango and Cash, also Kurt Russell, strangely.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: Not strangely.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: Not strangely at all.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: And Blues Brothers, which is actually sort of like one of my favorite movies of all time, too.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: Like I've watched that movie a million times.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: But so those are books, those are movies that really brought like film into my life.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: But I wouldn't call myself a film nerd by any stretch.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: But Perfect Days came to me, well, it was made in 2023, a couple years ago.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: It's this film set in Tokyo,
31:21
SPEAKER_00: and it follows the life of a dude that basically wakes up every morning,
31:27
SPEAKER_00: follows the same exact routine.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: He's incredibly analog, so he puts in tapes of Patti Smith and the Kinks and Otis Redding.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: He reads Faulkner by the light of one bulb in his house at night.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: And basically what his job is, is cleaning toilets in Tokyo.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: He's the toilet cleaning guy.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: And he does it with incredible precision,
31:56
SPEAKER_00: incredible,
31:57
SPEAKER_00: immaculate,
31:59
SPEAKER_00: full embodied presence, almost as if it's his sort of spiritual practice.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: And every lunch,
32:06
SPEAKER_00: he sits on the same bench every lunch,
32:09
SPEAKER_00: and he takes a point-and-shoot film photos of the canopy of this park.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: I did a little research.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: This is not coming from my own inherent wisdom or anything,
32:20
SPEAKER_00: but Komorebi is the name that describes this,
32:23
SPEAKER_00: like in Japanese, the fleeting light among the canopy.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: And so the whole movie is sort of centered on the fulcrum of Komorebi,
32:31
SPEAKER_00: this idea of like the beauty of fleeting,
32:33
SPEAKER_00: of fleeting beauty, the beauty of fleeting, like ephemerality.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: And so he basically sits there,
32:38
SPEAKER_00: eats this little dumb sandwich every day at lunch and like takes a couple photos of
32:43
SPEAKER_00: the Of these of these trees.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: And so what I love about this movie is it's I guess so originally it was going
32:51
SPEAKER_00: to be conceived as a documentary film and it was going to actually it was going
32:54
SPEAKER_00: to be like an architecture,
32:55
SPEAKER_00: like a film for architecture,
32:57
SPEAKER_00: an architectural film to document the toilets that were like the toilet designs
33:02
SPEAKER_00: in this, you know, in this big, you know, metropolis.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: And so but then they like found the right they found the right people for this movie.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: It's simple.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: They shot it in like three weeks or something like it was a super
33:16
SPEAKER_00: and it just follows this guy's life.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: It's like almost Groundhog Day.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: Like you just go over and over through his life.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: But but but over time,
33:24
SPEAKER_00: you start feeling this tension between His life, he's very quiet, very happy.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
33:31
SPEAKER_00: you begin to see,
33:32
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:33
SPEAKER_00: his niece,
33:34
SPEAKER_00: I think,
33:35
SPEAKER_00: starts living with him and starts being a little bit of like an agitation
33:39
SPEAKER_00: to his order.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: The niece being the daughter of his sister,
33:45
SPEAKER_00: who is like the opposite of him,
33:46
SPEAKER_00: drives a nice car,
33:48
SPEAKER_00: super stressed out about work,
33:50
SPEAKER_00: is unhappy in her marriage, etc.,
33:53
SPEAKER_00: And so you,
33:54
SPEAKER_00: you start seeing this tension sort of come up and all these little,
33:57
SPEAKER_00: these little,
33:58
SPEAKER_00: these little pelting,
34:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
34:01
SPEAKER_00: these little pelting rocks in his order that he's constructed for himself
34:04
SPEAKER_00: to keep him safe in some ways.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: And so, I don't know, I just dig it.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: It's like, I love the style.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: It's quiet, but also artful.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of a perfect movie for me.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: It really feels like a, a salve.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: It feels like a, like I feel restored after I watch it.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: I've watched it like several times.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, and,
34:23
SPEAKER_00: I'll just want to bring up the last,
34:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to like, no,
34:25
SPEAKER_00: you know,
34:27
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to ruin the ending,
34:28
SPEAKER_00: but the final shot is one of my favorite shots in all of film.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: It's just a shot of his face and he's driving to work and he's like,
34:37
SPEAKER_00: you've experienced all the stuff in the movie that I don't want to give away,
34:39
SPEAKER_00: but you just see this,
34:42
SPEAKER_00: the sort of multitude, the emotional like universe inside his face.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: He's like crying, but it's sort of joyous and sad.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: And stoic.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: And he like, he kind of corrects and then he overcorrects.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: And then he's, he's just, I don't know.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: It's a long shot.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: It's a long shot at the end.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: And it makes me cry every time.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: It's so good.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: It's like bittersweet, whatever word that is.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: It's like both joy and grief and loss and possibility all wrapped into this.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: Like you can't even write,
35:12
SPEAKER_00: like you can't,
35:13
SPEAKER_00: there's no language that can actually get to the,
35:15
SPEAKER_00: that's when performance becomes so cool and the embodied performance of a,
35:18
SPEAKER_00: of an actor, you know, it's like, you just can't write.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: I don't think you can do that on words.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: It's so good.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that scene?
35:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:27
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: Now that you mention it, I do.
35:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't say it was like my...
35:35
SPEAKER_01: It's not my favorite shot in the history of cinema.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: Did I say that?
35:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what mine
35:40
SPEAKER_01: is.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: But, yeah, no, it's incredible.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: And you have to think about, like, the guy they hired to pull that off, you know?
35:48
SPEAKER_01: And, like, this is how, you know, we know you can do this.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: And this is also going to be our last shot in the film.
35:55
SPEAKER_01: Like, that's crazy.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: I know.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: So, it's, like, why do you think it grabbed you so much?
36:03
SPEAKER_01: Like, it's such a quiet film.
36:04
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's not like...
36:06
SPEAKER_01: It's definitely not like Captain Ron, for sure.
36:11
SPEAKER_01: But it's such a quiet film that I could see a majority of,
36:16
SPEAKER_01: say, Americans falling asleep while watching it.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: Or being like, I'm bored.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: What else is on Netflix?
36:24
SPEAKER_01: But why do you think it works for you so well?
36:29
SPEAKER_00: I think it's that I feel that too.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to like, you know, critique that because I feel I'm like ADHD adjacent.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm, you know, reading seven books at once.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you and I went and watched X, you know, Vast and Furious X.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, like that's the exact opposite.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: And it's joyous also.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: OK, let's be honest.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: But for me, particularly right now in my life, any chance that I can get to
36:56
SPEAKER_00: Whether external or internal ways to reset my nervous system,
37:02
SPEAKER_00: to slow down,
37:03
SPEAKER_00: to actually, like, what's, you know, to, I guess, savor, is that the word?
37:08
SPEAKER_00: You know,
37:09
SPEAKER_00: is there a way that in the maelstrom of our days that are complicated, work,
37:14
SPEAKER_00: you know,
37:15
SPEAKER_00: I think a lot about work these days,
37:16
SPEAKER_00: you know,
37:20
SPEAKER_00: and writing also,
37:22
SPEAKER_00: but how might we be able to You know,
37:26
SPEAKER_00: you can like,
37:27
SPEAKER_00: you can meet like a nonprofit ED who's doing like,
37:30
SPEAKER_00: quote, the most honorable work, you know, for the planet or for people.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: And he's a complete asshole.
37:35
SPEAKER_00: And then you can meet like a, you know.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: What's his name?
37:37
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: We'll leave that.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: For example, we're going to leave that anonymous.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: Or, you know,
37:47
SPEAKER_00: or you can meet someone who's,
37:49
SPEAKER_00: you know,
37:51
SPEAKER_00: the post office man just walked by and he's like the sweetest,
37:53
SPEAKER_00: sweetest man on earth, you know.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: And so.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: All I want to say is,
38:00
SPEAKER_00: it's not necessarily,
38:01
SPEAKER_00: what does William Stafford say, it's not necessarily what you do, but how you do it.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: And I think this movie really gets to that.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: For me,
38:11
SPEAKER_00: it's been helpful and instructive and a North Star in terms of thinking about work,
38:17
SPEAKER_00: not only as what you do so that you have a cool resume,
38:21
SPEAKER_00: but the style that you do it, and also how you treat people while doing that.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: This man is just a beautiful bodhisattva toilet cleaner.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: And he does it for some reason, and you don't quite know exactly what happened in his life.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: That's where he's found himself.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: And he's actually created a beautiful sanctuary because of it.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
38:41
SPEAKER_01: it's like a celebration of someone who's actually just like doing good work simply
38:47
SPEAKER_01: in,
38:48
SPEAKER_01: you know,
38:48
SPEAKER_01: amongst or maybe in contrast to what we what gets more attention these days,
38:55
SPEAKER_01: which is people trying to make money or trying to blah,
38:57
SPEAKER_01: blah, blah, like as you were saying.
38:59
SPEAKER_01: The only other character I can think of that's like, or this film is very similar.
39:03
SPEAKER_01: I've mentioned this to you before is Patterson with Adam Driver, which is a Jim Jarmusch film.
39:09
SPEAKER_01: And he's just like, it's so, such a slow, quiet film.
39:14
SPEAKER_01: And he's a driver,
39:15
SPEAKER_01: a bus driver,
39:16
SPEAKER_01: and he writes poetry like in his basement, you know, and he's such a chill guy.
39:23
SPEAKER_01: But it's very, very similar in my mind to the character in Perfect Days.
39:28
SPEAKER_01: And also, yeah, also really pays off at the end too.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: You turned me on to that movie.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: I watched it and loved it.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I ever texted you about it, but I adore that movie.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: And Adam Driver is like, you know, to have a beer with him.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: Oh, boy.
39:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:45
SPEAKER_01: No, it's fantastic.
39:47
SPEAKER_01: So both those films are like super –
39:51
SPEAKER_01: Super interesting to me in that way.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: But you got to be, I got to be in the mood for that.
39:54
SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, I'll just have this very calming thing.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, on a Tuesday, I'm piping up, I'm queuing up Captain Ron.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: On a Friday, I'm queuing up perfect days.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: So it's like, we contain multitudes.
40:07
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I was just going to say that.
40:11
SPEAKER_01: Speaking of containing multitudes, number five is a food.
40:18
SPEAKER_01: I'm just going to let you say what it is.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: I think this is great.
40:20
SPEAKER_01: I love this so much.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: This is on your list.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: We're going to end with a finale here.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: The fifth and final item of creative expression is Salsa Verde Doritos.
40:35
SPEAKER_00: So I know all of you who are listening are like, oh yeah, your mouth is watering right now.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: So let me back up a second.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: This is sort of full circle.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: When I was growing up,
40:47
SPEAKER_00: sort of my first obsession,
40:48
SPEAKER_00: and this was another sort of like B-side on this list that was really difficult
40:52
SPEAKER_00: to pare down to five.
40:53
SPEAKER_00: I was a sort of a competitive inline skater, which is slash embarrassing slash real.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: But I would,
41:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:00
SPEAKER_00: I got into like, you know, rails and flips on rollerblades back in the 90s, right?
41:05
SPEAKER_00: Which a lot of kids did.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: Also skateboarded, but inline skates stole my heart.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: During that time, I basically fed myself on like cream soda, white rice.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: And at some point when,
41:19
SPEAKER_00: I don't know when they started like introducing Salsa Verde,
41:22
SPEAKER_00: I tried to look up this,
41:23
SPEAKER_00: like when they were introduced to the economy or the,
41:27
SPEAKER_00: The marketplace, I think it was early 2000s.
41:29
SPEAKER_00: So that was right around the time where I got away from skating and got into college
41:34
SPEAKER_00: and moved a little bit, transitioned.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: So eating trash and skating, that's where this flavor profile came into my life.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: This exquisite heat factor that's a little bit edgy,
41:50
SPEAKER_00: kind of like when you have Sriracha, you're like, this is hot.
41:54
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to tell people it's hot, but it's got a little zing.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: These salsa verde Doritos have a little zing.
42:01
SPEAKER_00: Another asterisk to this was I used to teach English during college to children
42:11
SPEAKER_00: of immigrant families.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: I would teach English using my Spanish and have this at this middle school.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: And all these students would come in eating Flaming Hot Cheetos.
42:23
SPEAKER_00: All my students, all of them.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: And I would We would snack together and I would bring,
42:28
SPEAKER_00: I would occasionally bring my salsa verde Doritos.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: And I was like street cred with these guys, with these kids.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: They were like, okay, Nick's got it.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: Like, he knows, he understands.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: But I would, I would also come like hungover.
42:40
SPEAKER_00: I was a mess.
42:41
SPEAKER_00: Like I was,
42:42
SPEAKER_00: you know, I was,
42:42
SPEAKER_00: I was experimenting with alcohol and drugs at that point,
42:45
SPEAKER_00: of course, as we often do in that time.
42:47
SPEAKER_01: In college?
42:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm so scandalized.
42:50
SPEAKER_01: Who does that?
42:51
SPEAKER_01: Who does that?
42:54
SPEAKER_00: And the relationship between substance abuse and shitty dietary choices, there's a correlation?
43:01
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps.
43:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, youth.
43:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, youth.
43:04
SPEAKER_01: It's the Venn diagram overlap there.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, that's a long story.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: Tee up these Doritos, which fast forward to literally a month ago, or I think several weeks ago.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: So...
43:24
SPEAKER_00: When this book came out a year ago,
43:25
SPEAKER_00: I was called to be in conversation with Rob McFarlane, who we brought up earlier.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: I feel like a name dropping, but I can bring this story up.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: It has a longer tale.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm invited to have a conversation with Rob McFarlane.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: His new book is A River Alive, a beautiful book worth reading, everybody.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: We met in Minneapolis and had a conversation in front of a live audience last June.
43:47
SPEAKER_00: That was one of the highlights of my life.
43:50
SPEAKER_00: I was incredibly nervous.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: I researched everything about him, including the middle names of his children.
43:55
SPEAKER_00: I knew everything I could about this dude's life and his corpus.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: So we had this beautiful evening together,
44:02
SPEAKER_00: was barely hanging on intellectually,
44:05
SPEAKER_00: but got through it, got a lot of positive feedback.
44:09
SPEAKER_00: Several months go by and I get a text from him on WhatsApp saying,
44:12
SPEAKER_00: hey, I'm coming through town again.
44:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm coming back to the States.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: I got some lectures in Seattle.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: Driving to meet the late Barry Lopez's wife and Eugene and working with
44:21
SPEAKER_00: the Mackenzie River Trust on some river related things.
44:24
SPEAKER_00: But I want to stop.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: I have a few days in between and was hoping to stop at Mount Hood and climb
44:29
SPEAKER_00: and run around up and around Mount Hood.
44:31
SPEAKER_00: Would you want to join me?
44:33
SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, yeah, let's do it.
44:35
SPEAKER_00: I hadn't done any mountaineering for a long time.
44:37
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I had to lean on Brendan.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: I'd lean on you for some gear because I just hadn't thrown an ice axe around for a while.
44:45
SPEAKER_00: But I was like, yeah, sure, I got this.
44:46
SPEAKER_00: No problem.
44:47
SPEAKER_00: And so I drive over there.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: I drive to the government camp at the base of Mount Hood.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: And I join him and a couple buddies.
44:55
SPEAKER_00: And we do this.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: We climb Hood.
44:58
SPEAKER_00: We spend a few other days running around the trails, Salmon River, and the PCTs right there.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: We had this exquisite five days together.
45:08
SPEAKER_00: And anyway, we climb Hood.
45:09
SPEAKER_00: And this comes back full circle to Doritos.
45:12
SPEAKER_00: So we're having this moment.
45:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm just, you know, day three or four of hanging out with Rob McFarlane.
45:16
SPEAKER_00: No big deal.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: Sharing like a loft, like a day bed next to his bed.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: And like, we're not too far sharing a bathroom.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: Like we're in the, like we're, it's, it's, it's, it's full on.
45:26
SPEAKER_00: And it just, he's, I'll just say that he's like one of the nicest dudes you'll ever meet.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's like, um,
45:32
SPEAKER_00: Unbelievably unpretentious,
45:36
SPEAKER_00: self-deflecting of any sort of praise has helped me in myriad ways,
45:41
SPEAKER_00: like in terms of getting the book in front of other people,
45:46
SPEAKER_00: just an incredibly generous human.
45:48
SPEAKER_00: And we just became dear friends after these days.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: So we're sitting after,
45:52
SPEAKER_00: we go up hood,
45:53
SPEAKER_00: we come down,
45:53
SPEAKER_00: we go at midnight,
45:55
SPEAKER_00: come down, we glissade together and we're sitting at the Timberland Lodge.
46:01
SPEAKER_00: And that morning,
46:02
SPEAKER_00: the morning before he went, we went to the supermarket or the little mini mart.
46:06
SPEAKER_00: And he was kind of searching for some crisps, as he would call it.
46:10
SPEAKER_00: And he found these Doritos, these Salsa Verde Doritos.
46:14
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, yeah, you should try those.
46:16
SPEAKER_00: You'll like those.
46:17
SPEAKER_00: Because he also pocketed a couple of bird's eye peppers that he had in his pocket.
46:22
SPEAKER_00: He always takes climbing.
46:23
SPEAKER_00: He had these really hot, really fucking hot peppers.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: And he gave me a couple.
46:29
SPEAKER_00: And so we had those in our pockets, too, while we were climbing the hood.
46:32
SPEAKER_00: But we both had these bags of Salsa Verde Doritos that we didn't actually pop until the end.
46:37
SPEAKER_00: So we both get these and I flashback,
46:39
SPEAKER_00: I hadn't had a bag for like 20 years or something,
46:42
SPEAKER_00: you know, but I was like, yeah, those are good, Rob, get those.
46:45
SPEAKER_00: God bless America.
46:47
SPEAKER_00: And we go up and down the hood.
46:48
SPEAKER_00: We're sitting there in the sun afterwards,
46:50
SPEAKER_00: kind of looking out at hood and looking out at the other volcanoes in the area
46:53
SPEAKER_00: and just having such a, just basking in the sun and tired.
46:57
SPEAKER_00: And he breaks open the Doritos.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: And so I break out mine and I say to Rob, I say, God, I've never eaten these not high, Rob.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: So like never has ever been a moment where I've eaten these not high.
47:15
SPEAKER_00: And it like tumbled out of my mouth before I like knew,
47:19
SPEAKER_00: I like forgot that I was hanging out with Rob McFarlane,
47:22
SPEAKER_00: which I know like we had become comfortable with each other,
47:24
SPEAKER_00: but that was this new experience.
47:28
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, new zone of comfort with this, with this guy.
47:32
SPEAKER_00: And it like slipped out of my mouth and I was like, oh, put that back in, put that back in.
47:35
SPEAKER_00: But at that point we all laughed and he got it and it was fine.
47:38
SPEAKER_00: Of course it was fine.
47:40
SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
47:43
SPEAKER_00: so we're sitting there eating Doritos with Ron McFarlane and it was one of
47:46
SPEAKER_00: the better days of my life.
47:48
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're already eating Doritos.
47:50
SPEAKER_01: It's not like you're super that highbrow, but it's fantastic.
47:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, what did he like?
47:58
SPEAKER_00: Was he into them?
48:00
SPEAKER_00: He was into them, yeah.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was into them.
48:02
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's fantastic, man.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:06
SPEAKER_01: Because he's British,
48:07
SPEAKER_01: we should say,
48:09
SPEAKER_01: which is part of the self-deprecating slash humility part,
48:13
SPEAKER_01: but also not a country known for spicy food.
48:18
SPEAKER_01: Not a culture, I guess.
48:20
SPEAKER_01: The country is now known more for spicy food, especially London.
48:24
SPEAKER_01: But salsa verde, that might shock a lot of people who don't have their palate.
48:31
SPEAKER_00: I said that to him.
48:32
SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, Brits, they don't like spice, right?
48:35
SPEAKER_00: And he was like, no, actually, we're not stuck in the 19th century.
48:41
SPEAKER_00: We have unbelievable diversity in food.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, cool, man.
48:46
SPEAKER_00: Yep, absolutely.
48:49
SPEAKER_01: Gordon Ramsay had the roughest time of anyone on Hot Ones.
48:52
SPEAKER_01: I think that's something I know.
48:55
SPEAKER_01: And he's not representative of the entire country, obviously, but boy, he got rocked.
49:00
SPEAKER_00: It's an incredible, incredibly uncomfortable hot ones.
49:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
49:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
49:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, wait, that's wonderful, man.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean, so like how often are you, so you haven't had them in 20 years.
49:14
SPEAKER_01: Did you buy another bag recently after,
49:16
SPEAKER_01: do you have a new, um,
49:17
SPEAKER_01: do you have a new memory attached to these that you're like,
49:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to go back and relive my,
49:22
SPEAKER_01: my time hanging with Rob just with a few, just a small bag of salsa Verde Doritos.
49:28
SPEAKER_00: Breathing.
49:28
SPEAKER_00: Breathing.
49:29
SPEAKER_00: Breathing.
49:56
SPEAKER_00: Just being a human.
49:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just do it.
49:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, I did not to, again, I was doing my homework like a good student does before this call.
50:06
SPEAKER_00: And I was looking up the sort of interesting factoids about the Salsa Verde kind
50:13
SPEAKER_00: of line of, because Frito-Lay owns them.
50:16
SPEAKER_00: Side note, I dated a woman, a girl in high school that is now way up in the line at Frito-Lay.
50:22
SPEAKER_00: So I should actually text her or call her and be like,
50:24
SPEAKER_00: hey, just so you know, Salsa Verde chips made it on the top five.
50:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, but, uh, what was I going to say?
50:34
SPEAKER_00: I think that, I don't know how they're going to land.
50:37
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how they're going to,
50:39
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how they're going to land in my,
50:40
SPEAKER_00: in my life now, but I think that they're, they're in, they're in for life for sure.
50:44
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
50:45
SPEAKER_01: Good.
50:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
50:45
SPEAKER_00: What I found also is that they don't,
50:47
SPEAKER_00: yeah, they don't, um, they have like natural chicken flavor in them.
50:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, there's no, people were like up in arms about them having zero cilantro in them.
50:55
SPEAKER_00: Apparently.
50:56
SPEAKER_00: Because the flavor profile is engineered to be a doppelganger of tomatillo, I guess.
51:04
SPEAKER_00: But a central ingredient in tomatillo is cilantro.
51:07
SPEAKER_00: And there isn't any cilantro flavoring.
51:09
SPEAKER_00: But there is natural chicken flavor, just so you know, vegetarian, Brendan.
51:13
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's interesting.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Rob is also a vegetarian.
51:17
SPEAKER_00: So I hope he...
51:19
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
51:20
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if they're technically...
51:22
SPEAKER_00: I didn't bring it up.
51:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:24
SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
51:26
SPEAKER_01: Huh.
51:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm going to miss out on those.
51:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you should send this to your friend and see what she says.
51:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure she'll love that.
51:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, good.
51:37
SPEAKER_01: We'll sell a few bags of those things finally based on this totally obscure podcast.
51:45
SPEAKER_00: 20% off at checkout, everyone.
51:47
SPEAKER_00: Triolo Verde, 20.
51:50
SPEAKER_00: We should sponsor that podcast.
51:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:54
SPEAKER_01: A lot of chips have MSG in them, too, that people have varying responses to historically.
51:59
SPEAKER_01: But I'm a huge fan of MSG.
52:03
SPEAKER_01: But when they're like, oh, I get headaches after I eat at Chinese restaurants.
52:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, what about after you eat a bag of Doritos?
52:09
SPEAKER_00: You okay?
52:10
SPEAKER_00: They're like, also yes.
52:12
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
52:13
SPEAKER_01: But, yeah.
52:16
SPEAKER_01: Awesome, dude.
52:16
SPEAKER_01: This is so fun.
52:19
SPEAKER_01: Somebody said that I should go through the list of five things at the end of
52:23
SPEAKER_01: the podcast as well.
52:25
SPEAKER_01: It'll be in the show notes.
52:27
SPEAKER_01: So we have the book, Spell of the Sentence.
52:29
SPEAKER_01: Intentuous, Music, Darkseid's Psychic album,
52:36
SPEAKER_01: Tom Killian's Woodcut Prince.
52:39
SPEAKER_01: I've got all these visual aids.
52:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:42
SPEAKER_01: The movie Perfect Days and Salsa Verde Doritos,
52:46
SPEAKER_01: which you're going to get a bag of from me sometime soon.
52:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
52:52
SPEAKER_01: Dude, thanks so much for taking the time.
52:54
SPEAKER_01: This was super fun.
52:55
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Brendan.
52:56
SPEAKER_01: Appreciate you.