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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. This

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Speaker 1: episode contains discussions of suicide. Listener discussion is advised. If

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Speaker 1: you are a loved one is struggling with suicidal thoughts,

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Speaker 1: please call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at three. For

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Speaker 1: the next year, I was always on the road, or

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Speaker 1: on the phone, or lying on my couch a Washington

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Speaker 1: television gathering the strength to leave again. I answered every

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Speaker 1: question like no one had ever asked before. We do

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Speaker 1: not turn into what we pretend to be, but what

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Speaker 1: we pretend. You can still unmake us, worship the false

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Speaker 1: idol and tell yourself you are only playing the game

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Speaker 1: of survival. How long before that graven image comes to

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Speaker 1: mean something or everything? How long before we confuse happiness

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Speaker 1: with distance from disaster, closure with being unable to remember?

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Speaker 1: That's Adam Man's back. Award winning novelist, screenwriter, cultural critic,

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Speaker 1: and number one New York Times bestselling author of the

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Speaker 1: hilarious instant classic Go the Funk to Sleep. Yes, there

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Speaker 1: are going to be cuss words in this episode. It's

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Speaker 1: in the book's title. After all. You know that expression,

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Speaker 1: God doesn't give us anything we can't handle. I hate

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Speaker 1: that expression sometimes God or the universe or whatever gives

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Speaker 1: us a lot, and sometimes something absolutely terrible coincides precisely

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Speaker 1: with something absolutely wonderful, And how are we supposed to manage.

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Speaker 1: Adam's story is about exactly that, when it all explodes

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Speaker 1: all at once. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets,

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Speaker 1: the secrets they are kept from us, the secrets we

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Speaker 1: keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

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Speaker 1: I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, which is a close

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Speaker 1: suburb to Boston. My parents moved to Newton, like a

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Speaker 1: lot of people, because it was known to have good

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Speaker 1: public schools. Both of them are from the Boston area.

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Speaker 1: My father grew up in Boston and Brookline. My mother

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Speaker 1: is from Cambridge, so I had also four grandparents living

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Speaker 1: in the area for most of my childhood. Now that

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Speaker 1: I'm a parent, and I look at the relatively constrained

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Speaker 1: level of freedom that my kids have because of the

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Speaker 1: way we are placed geographically, I look back at my

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Speaker 1: childhood and think about how much freedom we had to

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Speaker 1: just kind of run the neighborhood, you know, walking to school,

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Speaker 1: taking the train into Boston, playing pickup basketball or football

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Speaker 1: at different arcs and playgrounds, walking to friends houses. Like

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Speaker 1: there was a game we played there was kind of

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Speaker 1: a modified, more violent version of like Hide and Seek,

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Speaker 1: where it was hide and Seek plus throwing tennis balls

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Speaker 1: and people and uh, it raged over you know, like

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Speaker 1: probably a couple of square miles, which was ridiculous because

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Speaker 1: you never found the other team. They were hiding for

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Speaker 1: like three days. So when I think about the geography,

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Speaker 1: that's the first thing that comes to mind, is just

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Speaker 1: sort of having the run of a large, pretty safe

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Speaker 1: suburban space and then also having the freedom to take

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Speaker 1: the train and explore. I could get on the train

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Speaker 1: and go to my grandparents house in Cambridge, you know,

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Speaker 1: take the green line, switched to the red line, be

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Speaker 1: there in less than an hour. I could take the

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Speaker 1: train two different record stores. You know. I was a DJ,

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Speaker 1: so I was always looking for vinyl. So I could,

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Speaker 1: like even before I could drive or anybody I knew

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Speaker 1: could drive, I could get around the greater Boston area

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Speaker 1: with a certain amount of ease. Tell me about your mother,

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Speaker 1: your father, and your younger brother, David So. My parents

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Speaker 1: met at the Worcester Telegram and Gazette. Um, my dad

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Speaker 1: was an editor and my mom was a reporter fresh

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Speaker 1: at a grad school. My mother is very funny and

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Speaker 1: a serbic and has a quick wit and curses like

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Speaker 1: a sailor. So like when go to fund to Sleep

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Speaker 1: came out, you know, I placed a lot of blame

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Speaker 1: on her for teaching me to talk like that. My

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Speaker 1: mom comes from a family of writers and words smith's

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Speaker 1: my grandmother. Her mother was a poet and a playwright.

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Speaker 1: Her father was a law professor and a judge who

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Speaker 1: was known for the eloquence of his legal writing. Both

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Speaker 1: of them were very present in my life growing up.

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Speaker 1: I think in a lot of ways, my mom sort

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Speaker 1: of rebelled against the culture of their house. They were

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Speaker 1: both very social. They threw a lot of parties. They

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Speaker 1: went to a lot of parties. Their friends and their

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Speaker 1: careers in some ways came first. I mean, this was

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Speaker 1: also a different time, but like you know, they weren't

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Speaker 1: probably as present as parents as she would have liked

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Speaker 1: them to be. And as time went on, I think

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Speaker 1: she found the elevated, sort of intellectual, artistic social life

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Speaker 1: of her parents house to be a little bit oppressive

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Speaker 1: um and kind of rebelled against it. She didn't like

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Speaker 1: to go to their parties. I like to go to

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Speaker 1: their party. She brought me to their parties and then

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Speaker 1: like hung out in the kitchen and ignoring everybody. But

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Speaker 1: she was pretty close to her parents, I think in

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Speaker 1: her own way, and her parents were very much a

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Speaker 1: presence and an influence on me growing up. You know,

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Speaker 1: these were the first My grandmother was the first writer

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Speaker 1: I ever met, And as I grew up and got

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Speaker 1: into hip hop, I found this very close parallel in

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Speaker 1: my grandmother's work because she was writing rhyming political poetry

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Speaker 1: that you word politicians and social morays, and it was

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Speaker 1: like published in our local newspaper ship poetry column called

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Speaker 1: the Muse of the week in Review that was in

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Speaker 1: the Boston Globe, and um syndicated in a bunch of

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Speaker 1: other newspapers, which seems insane in retrospect, but like in

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Speaker 1: the eighties you could have a syndicated political poetry column. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm sitting here shaking my head. Oh those right, right. Also,

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Speaker 1: there are these things called newspapers in those days. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Imagine that. My father was very much a working class

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Speaker 1: kid from Brookline. My dad came from a family without

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Speaker 1: much money. His dad was various kinds of salesmen over

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Speaker 1: the years. I always think of him as kind of

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Speaker 1: a Willie Loman kind of guy. His mother was a painter,

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Speaker 1: but not really a successful one, and also was manic depressive,

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Speaker 1: although I don't think they had that diagnosis then, and

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Speaker 1: was in and out of the hospital. So my dad

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Speaker 1: lived at home through college, went to Boston University, and

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Speaker 1: then went straight into the workforce as um a reporter

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Speaker 1: at the Worcester Telegram and Gazette the tn G as

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Speaker 1: they called it, and uh, you know, is a brilliant guy,

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Speaker 1: and spent forty years subsequently in the Boston Globe newsroom

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Speaker 1: and became kind of the institutional memory of the Boston

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Speaker 1: Globe newsroom. My dad has an incredible memory and spent

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Speaker 1: forty years like laying out the front page of the

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Speaker 1: paper deciding how it looked and what went there. One

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Speaker 1: of the things about my dad that I really always

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Speaker 1: loved and noticed was how much he loved his work.

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Speaker 1: He worked weird hours. He went to the newspaper at

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Speaker 1: like three four in the afternoon, he packed a dinner,

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Speaker 1: he didn't come back until one in the morning. But

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Speaker 1: he loved it. It was somewhere he was excited to

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Speaker 1: go every day, and because of that and his job

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Speaker 1: and his sensibilities, we lived in a house where everybody

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Speaker 1: read the newspaper and discussed what was in it. We

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Speaker 1: were very much creatures of politics. We followed elections the

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Speaker 1: same way we followed the Red sox. Um. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of the culture that that I grew up in.

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Speaker 1: And so how old are you when you moved to Newton? Uh?

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Speaker 1: I was two years old when my family moved from

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Speaker 1: Worcester to Newton and my dad moved from the Telegram

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Speaker 1: to the Boston Globe. I think in nineteen. And your

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Speaker 1: brother David is born when you're he old. I was

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Speaker 1: born in seventy six and he was born in seventy nine.

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Speaker 1: We're two years nine months apart. My brother was I think,

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Speaker 1: you know, some of my earliest memories of him were

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Speaker 1: of a certain kind of unspoken worry and anxiety around

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Speaker 1: him for reasons that I think didn't actually make any sense,

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Speaker 1: but that as a parent now I understand very well.

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Speaker 1: Because kids developed differently, and I was really gregarious and

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Speaker 1: learned to speak really really early, as firstborn kids often do.

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Speaker 1: My brother didn't learn to speak quickly, and when he

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Speaker 1: did he had kind of a minor speech impediment, and

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Speaker 1: I think these things made my parents think that he

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Speaker 1: might not be smart. And in my family, particularly my

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Speaker 1: mother's family, there's really nothing more important than being smart,

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Speaker 1: and I think that was their big fear that he

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Speaker 1: like wasn't so bright. This is a kid who went

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Speaker 1: on to get a six hundred on his s A

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Speaker 1: T S go you get a PhD in atmospheric science.

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Speaker 1: But I remember there being a certain kind of like

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Speaker 1: worry and coddling of him, um particularly around the talking.

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Speaker 1: And I remember being the only person in the house

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Speaker 1: who could sometimes understand what he was saying, and I

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Speaker 1: would translate what he was saying for my parents. And then,

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Speaker 1: you know, I remember just a goofy, giggly kid. I remember,

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Speaker 1: even at the time seeing how some of my friends

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Speaker 1: and their younger brothers or sisters interacted. And I don't

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Speaker 1: know that David and I were like as easy and

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Speaker 1: free with each other. You know, we fought a lot,

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Speaker 1: all kids do, I guess, but I loved him and

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Speaker 1: we hung out to some extent, and we sort of

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Speaker 1: did our own thing to a large extent as well.

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Speaker 1: We had very different kind of interests David didn't have

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Speaker 1: as many friends as I did. He went on to

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Speaker 1: not be a creature of like words and jokes and

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Speaker 1: arguing the way that I was, in the way that

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Speaker 1: kind of the rest of my family also was. He

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Speaker 1: became a scientist, and I mean, even at a young age,

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Speaker 1: he sort of had the proclivities and the inclinations of

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Speaker 1: a scientist. A lot of my childhood memories do revolve

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Speaker 1: around like how we were each treated by our parents

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Speaker 1: and the compensatory things they seemed to do um maybe

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Speaker 1: to give him more agency or more of a sense

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Speaker 1: of himself. Like I remember them buying him like a

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Speaker 1: Nintendo and basically telling him that it was his and

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Speaker 1: that I could only use it with his permission. So

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Speaker 1: you know, like in retrospect, that's kind of a it's

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Speaker 1: kind of a weird move, right, Like, Okay, you bought

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Speaker 1: your like eight year old a Nintendo and he's the

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Speaker 1: gatekeeper of it. There's no equity here. There's no like

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Speaker 1: you're gonna play for half an hour and your brother

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Speaker 1: is gonna play, or like we're gonna set a timer,

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Speaker 1: or like you gotta share. I think that they felt

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Speaker 1: like giving him sort of ownership was was gonna be

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Speaker 1: i don't know, good for him somehow, empowering to him somehow,

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Speaker 1: or that I would overwhelm him if they didn't. I

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Speaker 1: remember feeling a lot like there was the fear that

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Speaker 1: I would overwhelm him, or my superior ability to speak

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Speaker 1: would somehow sort of subsume him, which in some cases

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Speaker 1: was true. I also remember being a real dick to

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Speaker 1: him because I could talk circles around him, and knowing

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Speaker 1: that a eventually, if I did it long enough, he

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Speaker 1: would just resort to hitting me, and and and that's

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Speaker 1: and that was sort of like when I knew I

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Speaker 1: had won, you know, if he just gave up and

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Speaker 1: started flailing his fists at me, that was a victory

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Speaker 1: for me. It's so interesting because now I'm sure as

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Speaker 1: a parent yourself, once you become a parent, so many

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Speaker 1: of these moments from your own childhood are understood differently, right,

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Speaker 1: or the or the worry of your parents when they

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Speaker 1: were being your parents as as as little kids. From

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Speaker 1: the way you're describing that story to me, probably a

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Speaker 1: lot of thought went into David's Nintendo, you know, and

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Speaker 1: like leveling the playing field somehow, or like the idea

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Speaker 1: that they needed to level the playing field so that

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Speaker 1: you know that it could be his. Yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of thought probably did go into it.

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Speaker 1: I wonder in retrospect if any of that thought was

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Speaker 1: directed towards consulting people who knew anything about child psychology. Um,

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Speaker 1: my guests, maybe not. Yeah, it sort of wasn't the time.

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Speaker 1: You know, in art in our times, that would be

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Speaker 1: stop number one. But in those times, no matter how

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Speaker 1: educated and sophisticated people were, it wasn't the first thing

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Speaker 1: they thought about. Adam and David are two very different kids,

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Speaker 1: with different interests and different paths. David is on track

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Speaker 1: to become a scientist and Adam is on track to

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Speaker 1: become a writer. Though of course, when it comes to

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Speaker 1: a career as a writer there is no well lit path.

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Speaker 1: It helps that Adam comes from a family of writers,

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Speaker 1: which gives him a kind of permission, the sense that

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Speaker 1: such a life is possible. His father is an editor,

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Speaker 1: his uncle is a sportswriter, his grandmother is a poet.

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Speaker 1: It is, as you might say, the family business, and

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Speaker 1: yet it can take a long time for writers just

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Speaker 1: starting out to find their footing. There are no guarantees

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Speaker 1: you write in your extraordinary poem slash memoir, sort of

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Speaker 1: genre defying book. I had a brother once. It's a

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Speaker 1: sentence that begins with not even just the word and

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Speaker 1: but actually an ampersand and you you're right, And now

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Speaker 1: it was eleven. What was going on in your life

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Speaker 1: at that point? So you know, for a number of years,

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Speaker 1: I've been basically just a novelist, a literary novelist who

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Speaker 1: at any given time was like knee deep or waist

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Speaker 1: deep or shoulder deep in a book and coming up

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Speaker 1: to maybe do a little journalism on the side. I

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Speaker 1: had a two year old daughter. I was teaching in

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Speaker 1: the m f A program at Rutgers Camden, which was

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Speaker 1: kind of the first full time academic job I had had.

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Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to get it, and then lucky

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Speaker 1: enough to get offered a second year in my visiting

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Speaker 1: writer position. And you know, I was just kind of

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Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to make a career as

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Speaker 1: a writer. Like I had a career as a writer,

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Speaker 1: but I was trying to figure out how to not

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Speaker 1: lose that career, not have to fall back on teaching

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Speaker 1: full time, which I enjoyed but didn't want to do forever.

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Speaker 1: And I suddenly had a kid and a greater degree

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Speaker 1: of sort of financial responsibility than I'd ever had before,

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Speaker 1: and my teaching appointment was going to end in a

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Speaker 1: couple of months, and I was going to go back

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Speaker 1: to California, and the mortgage on my house and all

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Speaker 1: kinds of things. So I was just trying to figure

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Speaker 1: out what my next move was going to be. While

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Speaker 1: he's figuring out his next move, Adam writes an unusual

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Speaker 1: and unquantifiable twenty eight page book. He really writes it

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Speaker 1: for himself. He's not sure there's any market for it

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Speaker 1: at all, and neither is his literary agent. He ends

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Speaker 1: up selling it to a small press owned by a

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Speaker 1: friend with very low expectations. The book in question, though

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Speaker 1: The Funk to Sleep, is not quite out yet, but

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Speaker 1: it will be soon. It's about to go viral, but

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Speaker 1: Adam does know this yet. He's a new dad in Philly.

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Speaker 1: He's teaching dj ing, hoping for the best. I wrote

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Speaker 1: that book really with no expectation that it was even publishable.

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Speaker 1: Certainly was not part of my like strategy to secure

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Speaker 1: future for myself, for my family. Um, you know, the

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Speaker 1: book was really just kind of something I did for fun.

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Speaker 1: It was my attempt two kind of cross stitch all

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Speaker 1: of the board books B O, A, R D. But

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Speaker 1: it kind of works both ways because they're incredibly boring,

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Speaker 1: like the little cute see books that you read to

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Speaker 1: your kids at bedtime that have all of these A, B, C,

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Speaker 1: B rhyme schemes and these like cute animals who are

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Speaker 1: all toddling off to bed. To try to kind of

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Speaker 1: remix that by inserting a real parental monologue into it,

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Speaker 1: something that expresses the frustration of a parent who cannot

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Speaker 1: get his kid to go to sleep, which was the

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Speaker 1: position I found myself in every night with my daughter Vivian,

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Speaker 1: who was probably two two and a half when I

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Speaker 1: wrote the book in two thousand ten, and you know,

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Speaker 1: a year later when the book started to inexplicably make

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Speaker 1: all this noise. The book was supposed to come out

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Speaker 1: in October, but the day after my daughter Vivian's third

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Speaker 1: birthday April, I did a gig in Philly where basically

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Speaker 1: I read the book out loud on stage. I had

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Speaker 1: just gotten a PDF of the entire book with illustrations,

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Speaker 1: and I was able to project it on the screen

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Speaker 1: and I, you know, I read it to maybe a

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty people, and I got a good reaction.

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Speaker 1: They thought it was funny. People asked me where they

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Speaker 1: could buy it. I told them they couldn't because it

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Speaker 1: wasn't coming out for six months. So from that initial reading,

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Speaker 1: people began to order the book, and the buzz began

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Speaker 1: to spread. By the end of the week, the book

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Speaker 1: was number one on Amazon. This book that that that

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Speaker 1: did not yet exist, hadn't even been printed yet, was

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Speaker 1: not even on a boat headed for the United States yet.

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Speaker 1: And from their things sort of accelerated and got even

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Speaker 1: crazier because the fact that an obscenely titled book from

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Speaker 1: an obscure publisher was number one sort of engendered around

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Speaker 1: of media attention, which I think then led to a

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Speaker 1: PDF of the entire book beginning to ricochet around the Internet.

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Speaker 1: And meanwhile, we're rushing to get the book out as

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Speaker 1: soon as possible, so instead of October, we publish it

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Speaker 1: on Father's Day, which I believe was June four, So

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Speaker 1: we're sort of rushing towards that, and I'm fielding phone calls,

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Speaker 1: and we're trying to make decisions about whether I'm even

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Speaker 1: going to talk to the media. Because now there's an

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Speaker 1: element of strategy in place, like someone, if I remain quiet,

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Speaker 1: can get an exclusive with me. And I'm like, you know,

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Speaker 1: an exclusive, like I'm I'm used to talking to anybody

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Speaker 1: who's willing to talk to me. Like, you know, as

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Speaker 1: a literary novelists, you're not giving exclusives. You're hoping that

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Speaker 1: your phone rings, you know, But we have at this point,

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Speaker 1: like a publicist in place, and she's talking to the

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Speaker 1: Today Show and Good Morning America and pitting one against

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Speaker 1: the other, and you know, people are trying to get

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Speaker 1: the exclusive, and things are just out of control. We're

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Speaker 1: auctioning off foreign rights and audio rights and movie rights

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Speaker 1: and all kinds of stuff again for a book that

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Speaker 1: does not technically exist yet. So it's kind of a whirlwind.

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Speaker 1: And I'm doing this as I'm wrapping up my final

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Speaker 1: weeks of my tenure at Rutgers and Adam, how did

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Speaker 1: it feel to go from being a literary novelist spending

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Speaker 1: years at a time with your head down working on

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Speaker 1: one book at a time. You know, the sound of

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Speaker 1: a literary novel being published is a little like a

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Speaker 1: tree falling in a forest. Um, except on the rare

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Speaker 1: times when when it's not and this entirely left field

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00:19:54,680 --> 00:20:02,560
Speaker 1: thing happens completely unexpected, no impossible to have imagined. Along

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00:20:02,600 --> 00:20:05,840
Speaker 1: with trying to do everything right, what did it feel like?

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Speaker 1: There was definitely a lot of joy and exhilaration and

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00:20:12,400 --> 00:20:16,400
Speaker 1: shock and surprise. Um. I mean I was feeding off

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Speaker 1: of the people around me, and my friends were watching

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00:20:18,920 --> 00:20:22,159
Speaker 1: this happen, and they were tickled by it because it

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00:20:22,280 --> 00:20:24,920
Speaker 1: was something that was just done with so little calculation,

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Speaker 1: And I was excited, but I was also nervous or

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00:20:29,600 --> 00:20:33,639
Speaker 1: kind of jitteryan on edge, I guess, because what was

343
00:20:33,680 --> 00:20:37,480
Speaker 1: happening was clearly very good, but it was impossible to

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Speaker 1: see even three days into the future, so, you know,

345
00:20:41,520 --> 00:20:45,000
Speaker 1: it was impossible to know whether this was such a

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Speaker 1: flash in the pan that the book would actually be

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00:20:48,359 --> 00:20:51,920
Speaker 1: forgotten already by the time it was published, or whether

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Speaker 1: it was conceivable that we could ride this and stay

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Speaker 1: at number one until it was published. I was refreshing

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Speaker 1: my Amazon page every fifteen minutes, you know, I was like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: still number one, still number one. Click, okay, still number one.

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Speaker 1: You know, go make a coffee, come back, click still

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Speaker 1: number one. Okay, so far, so good. It was a

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Speaker 1: wild moment. I mean, it was more exciting than anything

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Speaker 1: that had happened in a long time. But I also

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Speaker 1: felt like I had to be very strategic and careful

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Speaker 1: and do anything I could to help this thing continue

358
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Speaker 1: to succeed. And I also felt powerless over it. I

359
00:21:34,240 --> 00:21:36,800
Speaker 1: didn't really know what the hell I was doing or

360
00:21:36,800 --> 00:21:40,000
Speaker 1: whether any action of mine could affect this in any way.

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Speaker 1: At the very least, this was an industry I knew

362
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Speaker 1: and had been making a living in for the better

363
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Speaker 1: part of the last decade. So you know, it's not

364
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Speaker 1: like I was just some schmuck who'd never written a

365
00:21:51,840 --> 00:21:53,919
Speaker 1: book before and this was happening to me. I was

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Speaker 1: some schmuck who'd written several books and this was happening

367
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Speaker 1: to me. So at least I had that going for me.

368
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Speaker 1: We'll be right back with Father's Day just around the corner.

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00:22:20,440 --> 00:22:23,879
Speaker 1: Adam is cautiously riding the high of his forthcoming publication

370
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Speaker 1: in June. On May eleven, he's playing records in a

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Speaker 1: lounge bar in Philly. He's just taught his last class

372
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Speaker 1: at Rutgers, and many of his grad students are in attendance.

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Speaker 1: It's a joyful night, a victory lap of sorts, and

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00:22:40,080 --> 00:22:43,479
Speaker 1: a goodbye to his students, and a goodbye to Philly too,

375
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Speaker 1: as he's planning to move soon. A lot of good

376
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Speaker 1: friends are there, and Adam is basking in the great

377
00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:52,760
Speaker 1: energy of the evening. Then his phone rings and he

378
00:22:52,800 --> 00:22:57,240
Speaker 1: sees that it's his father. He doesn't answer. It's unusual

379
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Speaker 1: that his dad is calling so late at night, but

380
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Speaker 1: doesn't clock it a stranger, unsettling in a state of

381
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Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance, he ignores the call with no inkling that

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Speaker 1: anything could be wrong. But then his phone rings again.

383
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Speaker 1: It was about twelve thirty nine times out of a hundred,

384
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Speaker 1: I would have been home and asleep and in bed

385
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Speaker 1: at that time. My father was always up at that

386
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Speaker 1: time because he would be coming home, probably from the newspaper.

387
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Speaker 1: So I saw his name on my phone, and I

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Speaker 1: didn't pick it up because I was in the middle

389
00:23:30,840 --> 00:23:33,600
Speaker 1: of playing this set um and you can't DJ and

390
00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:37,240
Speaker 1: talk on the phone at the same time. And inasmuch

391
00:23:37,240 --> 00:23:40,520
Speaker 1: as I thought anything, the quick calculation that I made

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Speaker 1: about my father calling me unprecedentedly at this time he

393
00:23:44,720 --> 00:23:47,800
Speaker 1: never called me that late, was that it had something

394
00:23:47,840 --> 00:23:51,240
Speaker 1: to do with the book, that some new bit of

395
00:23:51,560 --> 00:23:55,159
Speaker 1: news around go to funk to sleep had emerged that

396
00:23:55,240 --> 00:23:57,320
Speaker 1: I didn't know about it. He did because he'd spent

397
00:23:57,359 --> 00:23:59,720
Speaker 1: the last eight hours in the news room and he

398
00:23:59,800 --> 00:24:02,479
Speaker 1: was haul in to tell me something funny, or you know,

399
00:24:02,560 --> 00:24:05,240
Speaker 1: tell me that one of his colleagues had had the

400
00:24:05,280 --> 00:24:08,040
Speaker 1: PDF land in their in boxing, you know, some something

401
00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:12,919
Speaker 1: trivial and cool like that. So I didn't answer, and

402
00:24:12,960 --> 00:24:17,960
Speaker 1: then he called back again, and so I answered. And

403
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:20,199
Speaker 1: the first thing my father asked me was whether I

404
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:23,879
Speaker 1: was sitting down, which I don't think anybody had ever

405
00:24:23,920 --> 00:24:27,800
Speaker 1: asked me that in real life before. You know, I guess,

406
00:24:28,160 --> 00:24:30,440
Speaker 1: I guess that question is only asked when you think

407
00:24:30,440 --> 00:24:33,160
Speaker 1: that the news you're about to deliver might literally knock

408
00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:36,240
Speaker 1: somebody on their ass, that that the person's legs might

409
00:24:36,280 --> 00:24:40,880
Speaker 1: stop working. So I walked outside through the back room

410
00:24:40,920 --> 00:24:42,920
Speaker 1: of the club and then also through the front room,

411
00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:47,960
Speaker 1: and sometime I think before I got outside, my father

412
00:24:48,040 --> 00:24:52,000
Speaker 1: said to me, David has taken his own life. That

413
00:24:52,080 --> 00:24:57,320
Speaker 1: was the phrase he used, and and I was unable

414
00:24:57,800 --> 00:25:01,240
Speaker 1: to even really process he was saying, it seems so

415
00:25:01,359 --> 00:25:06,280
Speaker 1: outlandish that the first thing I said was what I mean,

416
00:25:06,359 --> 00:25:10,280
Speaker 1: it's I couldn't even wrap my mind around it. UM.

417
00:25:10,359 --> 00:25:12,679
Speaker 1: So I made him say it again, and by that

418
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:18,080
Speaker 1: time I was outside, and he proceeded to explain to

419
00:25:18,119 --> 00:25:22,560
Speaker 1: me that my brother had been missing all day, that

420
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:25,360
Speaker 1: he and my mother had been at my brother's apartment

421
00:25:25,440 --> 00:25:31,080
Speaker 1: with my brother's wife um with the sinking growing feeling

422
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:35,600
Speaker 1: that something had happened, um, but that they had just

423
00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:39,680
Speaker 1: received the news from I guess it would have been

424
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:43,320
Speaker 1: the police officer or the emergency worker or something who

425
00:25:43,359 --> 00:25:47,119
Speaker 1: found his body in his car where he chose to

426
00:25:47,200 --> 00:25:49,960
Speaker 1: kill himself. So this is what my father told me

427
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:54,840
Speaker 1: A twelve thirty On that night, I had some further

428
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:59,960
Speaker 1: conversation with my father that I can't really remember very well.

429
00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:03,200
Speaker 1: I remember the it was extremely hot, even at night.

430
00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:04,639
Speaker 1: We're in the middle of a heat wave, and I

431
00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:06,639
Speaker 1: was sort of, you know, I sort of stepped outside

432
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:08,639
Speaker 1: into this hot air and it felt like somebody was

433
00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:14,480
Speaker 1: breathing right in your face, and I remember crying. I

434
00:26:14,600 --> 00:26:19,000
Speaker 1: remember asking further questions. I remember my father sort of

435
00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:23,760
Speaker 1: inquiring into my safety and well being, like he really

436
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:25,959
Speaker 1: wanted to know, like where are you and what are

437
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:29,359
Speaker 1: you gonna do now? And like can you get yourself home?

438
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 1: You know, like what are you gonna do, like I

439
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:33,200
Speaker 1: he I think he made me promise not to drive

440
00:26:33,320 --> 00:26:36,639
Speaker 1: or something like that. I got off the phone with

441
00:26:36,760 --> 00:26:42,119
Speaker 1: my father and I stood there crying hysterically. And I

442
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:44,200
Speaker 1: don't think that I spoke out loud to my brother,

443
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:46,240
Speaker 1: but I think I spoke in my head to my brother,

444
00:26:46,280 --> 00:26:48,800
Speaker 1: and you know, I said something along the lines of

445
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:51,399
Speaker 1: like what have you done. I don't think I was

446
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:53,800
Speaker 1: out there very long. I think before I was even

447
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:56,919
Speaker 1: done crying, I went back in the club. I walked

448
00:26:56,920 --> 00:26:59,720
Speaker 1: straight to Emery, who was a good friend of mine,

449
00:27:00,119 --> 00:27:04,280
Speaker 1: be my closest friend in Philly, and I told him

450
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:08,280
Speaker 1: then that my brother had killed himself. And you know,

451
00:27:08,480 --> 00:27:11,400
Speaker 1: the look on his face was sort of the first

452
00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:13,960
Speaker 1: it was the first kind of mirror that I had.

453
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:17,840
Speaker 1: It was the first reading back of what had happened

454
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:20,639
Speaker 1: on someone else's face, which because he's like, what do

455
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:22,480
Speaker 1: you need? Do you want me to drive you home?

456
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:26,359
Speaker 1: I basically just was like, I'm leaving, grab my records

457
00:27:26,359 --> 00:27:28,159
Speaker 1: when you go, or something like that, and I, you know,

458
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:29,720
Speaker 1: I just I just kind of got out of there.

459
00:27:30,280 --> 00:27:32,720
Speaker 1: I think I called my father back from the car,

460
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:36,360
Speaker 1: having already promised not to drive, and you know, currently

461
00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:39,919
Speaker 1: driving to try to get more information, to try to,

462
00:27:41,040 --> 00:27:43,400
Speaker 1: I don't know, understand this thing better in some kind

463
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:47,880
Speaker 1: of way. I remember just driving down the freeway, blinking

464
00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:51,800
Speaker 1: back tears and just kind of like feeling a lot.

465
00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 1: I mean, there was there was the shock, there was

466
00:27:54,520 --> 00:27:57,480
Speaker 1: the attempt to understand what was happening. I should say

467
00:27:57,520 --> 00:28:00,800
Speaker 1: that I can't imagine that then NWS that someone killed

468
00:28:00,840 --> 00:28:05,239
Speaker 1: himself would ever not be surprising and shocking. But in

469
00:28:05,240 --> 00:28:09,000
Speaker 1: the case of my brother, he had gone to Great

470
00:28:09,560 --> 00:28:15,199
Speaker 1: Pines to hide his depression and make sure that no

471
00:28:15,240 --> 00:28:19,199
Speaker 1: one knew about it. So this was entirely surprising to me.

472
00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:21,959
Speaker 1: I had not known that my brother suffered from depression

473
00:28:22,600 --> 00:28:26,600
Speaker 1: in any way. I thought he was a weird but

474
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:31,119
Speaker 1: happy guy. So, you know, I was learning this entire

475
00:28:31,240 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 1: history and this entire secret that his wife had kept

476
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 1: from everybody, that he had insisted she keep from everybody

477
00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:42,520
Speaker 1: on pain of him never speaking to them again if

478
00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:48,280
Speaker 1: she told them. Tremendous shame on his part about what

479
00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:52,360
Speaker 1: he was going through. I learned that my parents had

480
00:28:52,440 --> 00:28:54,760
Speaker 1: known for a little while that my brother's wife had

481
00:28:54,760 --> 00:28:58,920
Speaker 1: eventually kind of buckled under this tremendous pressure and told

482
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:01,640
Speaker 1: them but that my brother had downplayed it, but that

483
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:04,080
Speaker 1: they had all been extremely worried for the past few months,

484
00:29:04,560 --> 00:29:06,800
Speaker 1: and that I had not been brought into this confidence,

485
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:10,840
Speaker 1: which even at the time, like I felt very frustrating,

486
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:15,400
Speaker 1: and I think immediately took me down the track of like,

487
00:29:16,160 --> 00:29:18,280
Speaker 1: what if I would have been able to do something?

488
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:21,000
Speaker 1: What if not telling me was the worst thing you

489
00:29:21,040 --> 00:29:23,240
Speaker 1: could have done? What if I'm the person in this

490
00:29:23,360 --> 00:29:27,480
Speaker 1: family best equipped to do something at least and convince

491
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:30,800
Speaker 1: him to seek help. But there was another part of

492
00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:35,560
Speaker 1: me that, as I was sort of navigating my own grief,

493
00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:42,080
Speaker 1: navigating the roads of Philly, was filled with enormous trepidation

494
00:29:42,120 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 1: because I knew that when I got home, I would

495
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:50,960
Speaker 1: have to wake up my then partner, Vivian's mother and

496
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:55,120
Speaker 1: tell her what had happened. And that seemed, you know,

497
00:29:55,440 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 1: incredibly hard even I mean, saying it out loud felt

498
00:29:59,720 --> 00:30:01,880
Speaker 1: in it will be hard, but having to break that

499
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:06,959
Speaker 1: news felt almost too much. Um. But that's that's what

500
00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 1: I went home and did. There's something that, you know,

501
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 1: in the midst of just profound shock, having to say it,

502
00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 1: being the bearer of it, suddenly you know which you

503
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:22,440
Speaker 1: know you were when you when you told Emory, but

504
00:30:22,480 --> 00:30:24,320
Speaker 1: then you know you're going home and you're telling your

505
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:30,440
Speaker 1: your then partner. It makes it more real, I think, Yeah, definitely,

506
00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:33,120
Speaker 1: it makes it more real with every time that you

507
00:30:33,200 --> 00:30:36,360
Speaker 1: say it, with every repetition you you bring it more

508
00:30:36,360 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 1: fully into reality. Somehow you feel like you're lying, like

509
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:44,240
Speaker 1: these words can't be true. I'm saying these words that

510
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 1: I know are true, but they can't be true. And

511
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 1: then each time you say them, it becomes more true

512
00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:53,280
Speaker 1: or more real. Yeah, and then even realer than that

513
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:59,160
Speaker 1: is watching it becomes true for someone else, destroying someone

514
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:03,240
Speaker 1: else's world with that information, you know. I mean, for

515
00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:08,520
Speaker 1: months and months after his death, I really strove to

516
00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:10,920
Speaker 1: never be the one to break the news to anyone.

517
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 1: I wanted people to know. I wanted the roads sort

518
00:31:14,160 --> 00:31:15,760
Speaker 1: of paved ahead of me, Like I wanted all my

519
00:31:15,800 --> 00:31:17,480
Speaker 1: friends to know, but I didn't want to be the

520
00:31:17,480 --> 00:31:20,280
Speaker 1: one to tell them. And you know, I found ways

521
00:31:20,440 --> 00:31:24,520
Speaker 1: to navigate conversations with strangers. I've developed kind of a

522
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 1: sixth sense for when a conversation might turn in the

523
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:31,160
Speaker 1: direction of families, so that I could steer it another way.

524
00:31:31,440 --> 00:31:33,840
Speaker 1: Before I was asked to kind of account for my

525
00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:36,040
Speaker 1: own family, you know. And this was a time when

526
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 1: I was like around a lot of strangers because the

527
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:42,040
Speaker 1: funk to sleep continue to happen, and I continue to

528
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:45,680
Speaker 1: like have to deal with what that meant and tour

529
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:50,840
Speaker 1: and travel and chat and schmooz. But yeah, the actual

530
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:55,800
Speaker 1: simple act of stating that my brother had killed himself

531
00:31:55,880 --> 00:31:59,640
Speaker 1: was probably the single most painful, Like it was the thing.

532
00:31:59,840 --> 00:32:01,760
Speaker 1: I there's the thing I guess that I felt like

533
00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:05,120
Speaker 1: I had enough agency to be able to avoid, so

534
00:32:05,200 --> 00:32:11,360
Speaker 1: I tried very hard to avoid it. Adam returns to

535
00:32:11,440 --> 00:32:14,240
Speaker 1: Newton to his parents home, where they observe the Jewish

536
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 1: ritual of sitting Shiva, a prescribed week of mourning. Though

537
00:32:18,440 --> 00:32:21,560
Speaker 1: they are descended from ancestors who are famous rabbis, the

538
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:25,240
Speaker 1: family are secular Jews, not religious at all, and these

539
00:32:25,280 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 1: religious practices in the case of David's death do not

540
00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 1: feel exactly healing or helpful to Adam. Because my family

541
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 1: is deeply culturally Jewish. I think my sensibilities are very Jewish.

542
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:46,080
Speaker 1: My sense of humor, my sense of art coming from

543
00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:49,280
Speaker 1: the margins, all of these things to me are quintessentially Jewish.

544
00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:52,959
Speaker 1: But we do not go to synagogue there's an, if anything,

545
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 1: a hostility and a skepticism towards organized religion. I was

546
00:32:56,400 --> 00:32:58,920
Speaker 1: not born mids, but my parents don't belong to a synagogue,

547
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:02,200
Speaker 1: nor did their parents, and you know, we go pretty

548
00:33:02,240 --> 00:33:07,280
Speaker 1: far back as secular, agnostic Jews in this country. So

549
00:33:07,600 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 1: when we were sitting shiva, we had no idea what

550
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:12,520
Speaker 1: the funk we were doing. It was an approximation of

551
00:33:12,520 --> 00:33:16,080
Speaker 1: a shiva. We didn't have any guidance. We didn't really

552
00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:20,239
Speaker 1: have a connection to these rituals. You know, suicide in

553
00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:23,480
Speaker 1: some ways is a is a dramatization of that, because

554
00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:25,880
Speaker 1: you're at a loss. I think almost no matter what

555
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:29,719
Speaker 1: your tradition is, like most religions, and most traditions kind

556
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:32,680
Speaker 1: of fail us when it comes to suicide, or they

557
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:34,800
Speaker 1: have a few terse words to say and you're not

558
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:37,400
Speaker 1: allowed to be buried in the cemetery or whatever. But

559
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 1: my family was particularly poorly equipped to deal with any

560
00:33:42,360 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 1: of it because we you know, we don't have that

561
00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:47,760
Speaker 1: as at our fingertips at all. We don't have those traditions.

562
00:33:47,800 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 1: So yeah, I found myself trying to grapple with what

563
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:53,880
Speaker 1: it meant, whether you could invent a ritual, whether that

564
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:56,840
Speaker 1: counted as a ritual, what a ritual was intended to do,

565
00:33:56,880 --> 00:33:59,240
Speaker 1: and who it was for, and how it was meant

566
00:33:59,240 --> 00:34:01,120
Speaker 1: to be carried out. Like, all of these things were

567
00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:07,160
Speaker 1: adding to my state of distress, particularly the feeling that,

568
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:11,319
Speaker 1: in the absence of a regimented path, I was going

569
00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:16,239
Speaker 1: to do it wrong. This idea that if you sort

570
00:34:16,280 --> 00:34:21,600
Speaker 1: of mourned incompletely, like pushed it away, didn't deal with

571
00:34:21,600 --> 00:34:25,200
Speaker 1: it fully whatever, that meant that the grief would somehow

572
00:34:25,680 --> 00:34:29,120
Speaker 1: gree group and come back stronger. And if you didn't

573
00:34:29,160 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 1: sort of face it now, it would become more and

574
00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 1: more unbeatable later. And and I remember, like I kind

575
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:40,879
Speaker 1: of internalized that and let it scare me even even more.

576
00:34:41,640 --> 00:34:43,759
Speaker 1: And I don't think that was a useful thing to

577
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:45,920
Speaker 1: to have put in my in my mind. Like I

578
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:48,000
Speaker 1: think the opposite is true. I think that people grieve

579
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 1: in all kinds of different ways. Certainly there are ways

580
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:54,799
Speaker 1: to not fully grieve. But the idea that that there

581
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:57,319
Speaker 1: is one way, I think for me it was a

582
00:34:57,400 --> 00:35:03,319
Speaker 1: very damaging idea. And remember, this terrible grief is now

583
00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:07,719
Speaker 1: coinciding with the crazy roller coaster ride of Adam's book publication.

584
00:35:08,600 --> 00:35:12,000
Speaker 1: The high point of his career is now underscored and

585
00:35:12,120 --> 00:35:17,120
Speaker 1: forever tied to his agony over his brother's suicide. In

586
00:35:17,160 --> 00:35:20,040
Speaker 1: the midst of all this, Adam struggles to understand his

587
00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 1: brother's life and his brother's death. One of the ways

588
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:28,919
Speaker 1: I think in which for me anyway, suicide is so

589
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 1: difficult to deal with and difficult to mourn, is that

590
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:40,680
Speaker 1: it effectively rewrites everything you thought you knew about a person,

591
00:35:40,840 --> 00:35:43,920
Speaker 1: at least in the case of my brother. I am

592
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 1: someone who, if I'm trained in anything, I'm trained to

593
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:51,680
Speaker 1: kind of create and craft narrative and pulled together threads

594
00:35:51,680 --> 00:35:56,120
Speaker 1: and weave together something that makes sense and tells a story.

595
00:35:56,880 --> 00:36:02,279
Speaker 1: And in trying to understand my brother's life and my

596
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:07,160
Speaker 1: brother's death, I was sort of torn between these warring impulses,

597
00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:10,680
Speaker 1: one of which was to create narrative, create a narrative,

598
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:14,560
Speaker 1: and one of which was to resist the creation of narrative,

599
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:17,600
Speaker 1: even my own narrative, because fundamentally I knew that I

600
00:36:17,680 --> 00:36:21,279
Speaker 1: did not understand and probably could not understand what had

601
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:25,040
Speaker 1: happened and at certain things about his actions. We're going

602
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:29,160
Speaker 1: to just be resistant to the project of creating a

603
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 1: coherent story. Um. So, I mean, there's a lot of

604
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:34,719
Speaker 1: there's a lot of parts to that, Right, there's the

605
00:36:34,840 --> 00:36:40,399
Speaker 1: part where a person can both be planning to live

606
00:36:40,520 --> 00:36:45,839
Speaker 1: and planning to die, and these are simultaneous impulses, and

607
00:36:45,920 --> 00:36:49,479
Speaker 1: you kind of just have to understand that his mind

608
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:51,920
Speaker 1: was running on both those tracks at once. Like I

609
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:55,080
Speaker 1: went to his apartment with my cousin, and among other

610
00:36:55,120 --> 00:36:58,720
Speaker 1: things that we found there, we found in his email

611
00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:03,319
Speaker 1: the receipts for the chemicals that he had ordered that

612
00:37:03,400 --> 00:37:08,760
Speaker 1: he would mix together and use and breathe to kill himself.

613
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:11,440
Speaker 1: He had ordered those, and after he had ordered those,

614
00:37:11,719 --> 00:37:15,839
Speaker 1: he had ordered an expensive skateboard that still hadn't arrived. Um,

615
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:19,000
Speaker 1: he had printed out directions to a memorial service for

616
00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:23,879
Speaker 1: our grandfather, which wasn't for a couple of months. So

617
00:37:23,960 --> 00:37:26,160
Speaker 1: like he was planning to live and he was planning

618
00:37:26,160 --> 00:37:29,000
Speaker 1: to die. And you know, there's a part of you

619
00:37:29,080 --> 00:37:33,000
Speaker 1: that might see all that evidence laid out and turn

620
00:37:33,080 --> 00:37:35,760
Speaker 1: it into a detective story and say, something is amiss,

621
00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:38,839
Speaker 1: something is a rise, something doesn't add up. Why would

622
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:40,279
Speaker 1: he do this if he was going to do that,

623
00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:42,919
Speaker 1: I suspect foul play. You know, you could, you could,

624
00:37:42,960 --> 00:37:46,239
Speaker 1: you could spin up any kind of narrative but the

625
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:48,279
Speaker 1: struggle for me was to understand that all of these

626
00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:50,200
Speaker 1: things were kind of true at once, that this was

627
00:37:50,560 --> 00:37:53,799
Speaker 1: a paradox that I was not going to resolve, but

628
00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 1: that instead I merely had to kind of hold and

629
00:37:57,160 --> 00:38:01,440
Speaker 1: look at and not try to on ravel, not try

630
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:05,480
Speaker 1: to turn the two things into one thing. There was

631
00:38:05,520 --> 00:38:08,480
Speaker 1: also the way in which everything I thought I knew

632
00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:13,560
Speaker 1: about my brother was now rewritten by his act of

633
00:38:13,640 --> 00:38:16,319
Speaker 1: killing himself, and by the revelation that he had been

634
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:21,080
Speaker 1: depressed for years and years. So, you know, things he

635
00:38:21,120 --> 00:38:24,240
Speaker 1: had done and said that I had described one meaning

636
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:27,000
Speaker 1: to suddenly took on a different meaning. Even something as

637
00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:29,680
Speaker 1: simple as looking at a photograph. You know, it's like

638
00:38:30,280 --> 00:38:33,239
Speaker 1: a photograph in which he up until now seemed to

639
00:38:33,280 --> 00:38:36,680
Speaker 1: be looking at the camera. Now he no longer seemed

640
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:38,239
Speaker 1: to be looking at the camera. He seemed to be

641
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:41,399
Speaker 1: staring into sort of the abyss, you know. I mean.

642
00:38:41,440 --> 00:38:45,959
Speaker 1: It sounds dramatic and melodramatic and maybe dumb, but there's

643
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:48,920
Speaker 1: a way in which even looking at a simple artifact

644
00:38:48,960 --> 00:38:51,720
Speaker 1: which has not changed in any way, it feels different

645
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:56,880
Speaker 1: now that this life has concluded. In this way, Adam

646
00:38:56,960 --> 00:39:00,399
Speaker 1: also suspected looking back that perhaps has brought or had

647
00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:04,280
Speaker 1: Asperger syndrome. As David's character bore some of the hallmarks

648
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:08,800
Speaker 1: of being on the spectrum. He was extremely intelligent, high achieving,

649
00:39:09,120 --> 00:39:12,120
Speaker 1: and academically gifted, but it was hard for him to

650
00:39:12,160 --> 00:39:16,280
Speaker 1: connect to have an emotional conversation. The type of questions

651
00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:19,320
Speaker 1: one might expect to elicit an emotional response from him

652
00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:24,359
Speaker 1: often did not. I remember one time, you know, at

653
00:39:24,400 --> 00:39:26,880
Speaker 1: the time he and I were both involved with partners

654
00:39:26,920 --> 00:39:30,360
Speaker 1: who were from other countries. His wife was Brazilian, my

655
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:32,560
Speaker 1: partner at the time was Swedish, and I remember sort

656
00:39:32,560 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 1: of trying to talk to him about being somebody who

657
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:38,040
Speaker 1: sort of has a foot in two different cultures, and

658
00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:39,920
Speaker 1: you know, do you think you'd ever moved to Brazil?

659
00:39:40,040 --> 00:39:42,600
Speaker 1: How does she feel about living in America? Blah blah blah,

660
00:39:42,800 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 1: And his response was sort of just a recitation of

661
00:39:45,880 --> 00:39:49,000
Speaker 1: crime statistics in Rio, and I was like, huh, that's

662
00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:52,799
Speaker 1: that's a that's a weird response. But like, you know,

663
00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:56,440
Speaker 1: with the revelation of this crippling depression and the suicide,

664
00:39:56,440 --> 00:39:59,680
Speaker 1: it's like I found myself looking back on things and saying, well,

665
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:03,440
Speaker 1: maybe it's not that that was the response that like

666
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:07,640
Speaker 1: made the most sense to him. Maybe that was the

667
00:40:07,680 --> 00:40:12,200
Speaker 1: response that prevented him from opening up the Pandora's box

668
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:19,600
Speaker 1: of his own emotions and quickly getting lost. We'll be

669
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:37,319
Speaker 1: back in a moment with more family secrets. Adam's book

670
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:41,800
Speaker 1: is hurtling towards existence, picking up speed in the midst

671
00:40:41,840 --> 00:40:45,239
Speaker 1: of all his grief and family turmoil. He's thrust into

672
00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:47,640
Speaker 1: the public eye in a way that's highly unusual for

673
00:40:47,680 --> 00:40:51,040
Speaker 1: a writer. He's the subject of many interviews and it's

674
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:54,640
Speaker 1: booked a coveted spot on morning television. He's worried that

675
00:40:54,760 --> 00:40:58,000
Speaker 1: some interviewer is going to learn about David's suicide and

676
00:40:58,080 --> 00:41:01,400
Speaker 1: ambush him, forcing him to talk publicly about his loss.

677
00:41:02,160 --> 00:41:07,160
Speaker 1: He's caught between two selves, needing simultaneously to perform and

678
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:13,319
Speaker 1: to retreat. It's almost like there's another there's another Atom

679
00:41:13,400 --> 00:41:16,840
Speaker 1: who is suffering and his grief stricken, and that Atom

680
00:41:16,880 --> 00:41:19,840
Speaker 1: needs to kind of sit out right and not be

681
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:24,959
Speaker 1: the one who's talking to Matt Lower on the Today Show. Right. Yeah,

682
00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:27,440
Speaker 1: I knew even at the time that it was not

683
00:41:27,600 --> 00:41:30,319
Speaker 1: a rational fear that like Matt Lower is going to

684
00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:33,160
Speaker 1: blindside me in the middle of this fluffy interview and

685
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:38,759
Speaker 1: asked me about my brother's Nason death. Nobody actually is

686
00:41:38,880 --> 00:41:41,840
Speaker 1: invested in doing anything of the kind, right, It's completely

687
00:41:41,840 --> 00:41:46,239
Speaker 1: outside the narrative that all of us are agreed upon

688
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:49,240
Speaker 1: in the in that setting and in every every setting.

689
00:41:49,560 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 1: At the same time, weird ship was happening on a

690
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:59,040
Speaker 1: daily basis, like bizarre, somewhat unthinkable, certainly implausible stuff was

691
00:41:59,120 --> 00:42:03,280
Speaker 1: continuing to fold day by day. One day, a bunch

692
00:42:03,320 --> 00:42:06,680
Speaker 1: of topless photos of me quote unquote leak and are

693
00:42:06,760 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 1: like on the internet. I mean, what this was was me.

694
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:12,319
Speaker 1: What this was was like me playing basketball with a

695
00:42:12,360 --> 00:42:14,960
Speaker 1: bunch of friends and students at a summer program in

696
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:17,040
Speaker 1: Anne Arbor that I taught at every summer. They did

697
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:20,239
Speaker 1: not leak. Somebody took him and they existed. But I

698
00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:24,200
Speaker 1: was just famous enough for somebody to think that anybody

699
00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:27,000
Speaker 1: might give a ship and to like put them out

700
00:42:27,040 --> 00:42:29,760
Speaker 1: there and be like, go to funk to sleep. Author,

701
00:42:30,040 --> 00:42:32,680
Speaker 1: you know whatever it was, You're like, that didn't make

702
00:42:32,680 --> 00:42:35,080
Speaker 1: any sense either. It didn't make any sense of like

703
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:38,120
Speaker 1: there was a censorship fight over the book New Zealand,

704
00:42:38,160 --> 00:42:40,680
Speaker 1: it didn't make any sense that Sam Jackson was reading

705
00:42:40,680 --> 00:42:42,879
Speaker 1: the book on the Dave Letterman show like nothing made

706
00:42:42,880 --> 00:42:47,879
Speaker 1: any sense. So it seemed just barely plausible enough that

707
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:51,120
Speaker 1: in a moment where everybody was rushing to find some

708
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:53,040
Speaker 1: angle in some way to write about go to Funk

709
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:55,600
Speaker 1: to sleep and use it as fodder for their think

710
00:42:55,680 --> 00:42:59,320
Speaker 1: pieces and their takedowns and their handwringing about the sorry

711
00:42:59,360 --> 00:43:02,760
Speaker 1: state apparent and whatever it was, that somebody might find

712
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:04,920
Speaker 1: this more sol of information and think to use it.

713
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:08,719
Speaker 1: But I mean, more than anything, I think, what I

714
00:43:08,800 --> 00:43:11,840
Speaker 1: felt and what I was aware of was that just

715
00:43:12,200 --> 00:43:16,720
Speaker 1: as David had sort of chosen to wear a mask

716
00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:20,120
Speaker 1: and chosen to obscure his real feelings and hide them,

717
00:43:20,680 --> 00:43:23,720
Speaker 1: and then in some real sense, this, as much as anything,

718
00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:26,720
Speaker 1: was the thing that had killed him, that he chose

719
00:43:27,760 --> 00:43:32,080
Speaker 1: hiding and chose that shame and that secrecy over telling

720
00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:35,440
Speaker 1: anybody what was really going on and living in that

721
00:43:35,640 --> 00:43:39,040
Speaker 1: and allowing us to help him. It was very real

722
00:43:39,120 --> 00:43:42,560
Speaker 1: to me that I was making a not entirely dissimilar

723
00:43:42,640 --> 00:43:49,720
Speaker 1: choice in putting on this different mask, but still a mask,

724
00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:53,800
Speaker 1: and sort of cleaving my public persona from my real

725
00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:58,520
Speaker 1: persona and going on this kind of like victory tour

726
00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:04,560
Speaker 1: of American media and then international media and repeatedly telling

727
00:44:04,600 --> 00:44:08,960
Speaker 1: a story about my life and my current circumstances that

728
00:44:09,040 --> 00:44:11,360
Speaker 1: we're not in any way reflective of what I was

729
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:14,920
Speaker 1: really going through. That felt on one hand, it felt

730
00:44:14,960 --> 00:44:19,600
Speaker 1: disrespectful to my brother to be out here pretending that

731
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:23,240
Speaker 1: I was indeed like the happiest, luckiest shmuck in the world.

732
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:26,680
Speaker 1: And it also, in an uglier and darker way, felt

733
00:44:26,680 --> 00:44:29,920
Speaker 1: to me like there was a way to spend it

734
00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:33,160
Speaker 1: as an affirmation of everything that he had thought and

735
00:44:33,200 --> 00:44:36,200
Speaker 1: the choices that had led him to kill himself, because

736
00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:39,360
Speaker 1: you don't I think a thing if the literature is

737
00:44:39,400 --> 00:44:43,640
Speaker 1: to be believed, a thing that suicidal people convinced themselves

738
00:44:43,719 --> 00:44:47,200
Speaker 1: of is that everybody will be better off without them,

739
00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:50,480
Speaker 1: that everybody will be okay, will survive, will recover the loss,

740
00:44:50,960 --> 00:44:55,200
Speaker 1: and it will be okay. And in presenting this public

741
00:44:55,200 --> 00:44:58,360
Speaker 1: face to the world, it's like I was turning myself

742
00:44:58,400 --> 00:45:02,080
Speaker 1: into a walking dramatization of that fact, Like I was

743
00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:05,960
Speaker 1: walking around being like I'm okay um. And at the

744
00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 1: same time, I knew that my family very much needed

745
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:11,160
Speaker 1: to see me be okay and do all of these things,

746
00:45:11,239 --> 00:45:14,800
Speaker 1: like they very much were of the opinion that I

747
00:45:14,800 --> 00:45:17,000
Speaker 1: should go out and promote the book. And then there

748
00:45:17,040 --> 00:45:19,480
Speaker 1: was the part of me that was struggling because I

749
00:45:19,520 --> 00:45:22,080
Speaker 1: wanted to at least feel more conflicted about whether I

750
00:45:22,120 --> 00:45:24,319
Speaker 1: should go out and promote the book. But on a

751
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:28,560
Speaker 1: very basic level, I wanted to. And I was ambitious

752
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:33,200
Speaker 1: and desirous of all of the success and the fame

753
00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:37,440
Speaker 1: and the money that would come with this book being

754
00:45:37,480 --> 00:45:41,799
Speaker 1: successful and sort of achieving escape velocity. Right, this was

755
00:45:41,840 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 1: the moment where with enough booster fuel, the thing could

756
00:45:46,200 --> 00:45:49,360
Speaker 1: get into orbit and potentially just kind of circle the

757
00:45:49,400 --> 00:45:51,719
Speaker 1: planet forever. And I knew this this was that time,

758
00:45:51,719 --> 00:45:55,799
Speaker 1: and I knew that I could play a role in

759
00:45:55,840 --> 00:45:59,200
Speaker 1: that because all of these opportunities were available and we

760
00:45:59,239 --> 00:46:02,719
Speaker 1: could see the results from them, like you know, when

761
00:46:02,719 --> 00:46:06,440
Speaker 1: you're tracking a project that closely, you actually see the

762
00:46:06,520 --> 00:46:09,759
Speaker 1: sales bump after you do the Today Show or the

763
00:46:09,800 --> 00:46:11,879
Speaker 1: sales bump after you do this thing or that thing.

764
00:46:12,000 --> 00:46:16,520
Speaker 1: So like it was all right there at my fingertips,

765
00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:18,719
Speaker 1: and I was sort of struggling with all of those

766
00:46:18,760 --> 00:46:22,759
Speaker 1: things and taggling between all of those things. Yeah, And

767
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:29,239
Speaker 1: I think also there's a kind of self protection involved

768
00:46:29,360 --> 00:46:33,040
Speaker 1: there too. I mean, you're right, something that struck me

769
00:46:33,080 --> 00:46:38,080
Speaker 1: as really a very universal feeling there, which was, if

770
00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 1: tragedy was ever allowed to step into the winner's circle,

771
00:46:41,920 --> 00:46:46,480
Speaker 1: triumph would be incinerated. You know that somehow the magical

772
00:46:46,560 --> 00:46:51,680
Speaker 1: thinking feeling of there are two worlds and they can't coexist,

773
00:46:52,239 --> 00:46:55,520
Speaker 1: which of course they can and they do, but that

774
00:46:55,520 --> 00:47:01,600
Speaker 1: that feeling. Yeah, Adams an event for his book in Georgetown.

775
00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:04,680
Speaker 1: He knows the woman who's organized it. She had gone

776
00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:07,839
Speaker 1: to the same school as him and David, so he

777
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:10,520
Speaker 1: knows it's going to come up. She's going to ask

778
00:47:10,560 --> 00:47:13,680
Speaker 1: how David's doing, what he's up to. Adam can feel

779
00:47:13,719 --> 00:47:17,760
Speaker 1: it coming, and then there it is. She finally asks,

780
00:47:18,320 --> 00:47:22,520
Speaker 1: and he flat outlies. He tells her David is married

781
00:47:22,600 --> 00:47:26,040
Speaker 1: and living in Brookline. I knew I wasn't going to

782
00:47:26,120 --> 00:47:28,520
Speaker 1: get out of this without accounting for him in some way,

783
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:31,440
Speaker 1: like it was, you know, no matter how how I

784
00:47:31,560 --> 00:47:35,040
Speaker 1: deflected or flipped the conversation. I sort of knew the

785
00:47:35,200 --> 00:47:38,359
Speaker 1: entire evening that this woman was going to ask him

786
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 1: about my brother, and I truly did not know what

787
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:45,600
Speaker 1: I was going to do when she did. Like, you know,

788
00:47:45,640 --> 00:47:48,000
Speaker 1: We're at some dinner with a whole bunch of people.

789
00:47:48,160 --> 00:47:51,320
Speaker 1: I didn't know anybody. This is her event. So I

790
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:53,520
Speaker 1: just lied to her. I just told her he was

791
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:56,480
Speaker 1: he was fine, And you know, it felt like it

792
00:47:56,560 --> 00:47:59,879
Speaker 1: felt like it cost me something. It felt deeply unco

793
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:03,720
Speaker 1: comfortable to me. But also I think I think better

794
00:48:03,760 --> 00:48:06,879
Speaker 1: than better for all of us than me telling her

795
00:48:06,920 --> 00:48:12,240
Speaker 1: that actually, three weeks earlier, he had killed himself. Suicide

796
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:15,160
Speaker 1: is also so different than every other kind of of

797
00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:17,359
Speaker 1: death and every other kind of grief. That was something

798
00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:19,719
Speaker 1: that also struck me again and again. You know, I

799
00:48:19,719 --> 00:48:22,919
Speaker 1: would be sitting down to remember getting back to California

800
00:48:23,239 --> 00:48:25,680
Speaker 1: months and months later and sitting down for dinner with

801
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:28,400
Speaker 1: two very good friends of mine, both of whom in

802
00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:31,239
Speaker 1: the in the previous six months had lost a grandparent

803
00:48:31,840 --> 00:48:33,640
Speaker 1: and listening, you know, and they both knew about David,

804
00:48:33,680 --> 00:48:35,640
Speaker 1: and we had talked about it already, so I wasn't

805
00:48:35,680 --> 00:48:38,239
Speaker 1: in the same situation. But I just remember sitting and

806
00:48:38,280 --> 00:48:43,680
Speaker 1: listening to them each talk about the funeral and all

807
00:48:43,719 --> 00:48:48,960
Speaker 1: of the surrounding activity and emotion and how it feels

808
00:48:48,960 --> 00:48:51,040
Speaker 1: when an elder dies in the way that everybody gets

809
00:48:51,080 --> 00:48:53,160
Speaker 1: a bumper here, just all of this stuff that that

810
00:48:53,280 --> 00:48:59,360
Speaker 1: was very like recognizably in line with the natural flow

811
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:03,759
Speaker 1: of life. Sad but not unnatural in the way that

812
00:49:03,840 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 1: suicide continued and continues to feel to me, and just

813
00:49:07,640 --> 00:49:09,960
Speaker 1: feeling like the three of us are at this table

814
00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:15,400
Speaker 1: talking about death, and yet I can't talk, you know,

815
00:49:15,560 --> 00:49:20,000
Speaker 1: I can't contribute. My story does not intersect with these stories,

816
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:26,319
Speaker 1: and so life continues. Adam's riding the wave of his

817
00:49:26,360 --> 00:49:31,440
Speaker 1: public success while privately contending with his grief. Many opportunities

818
00:49:31,480 --> 00:49:35,520
Speaker 1: are coming his way. It's now and he's at a

819
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:39,200
Speaker 1: storytelling event at the Moss in Boston. The evening is

820
00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:42,280
Speaker 1: a turning point for Adam. He feels in this moment

821
00:49:42,320 --> 00:49:44,319
Speaker 1: that he wants and needs to tell the story of

822
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:47,640
Speaker 1: his brother. The other writers participating in the event are

823
00:49:47,680 --> 00:49:51,520
Speaker 1: being vulnerable, and he feels like a fraud. But first

824
00:49:51,520 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 1: he needs to shed his mask, the protected shield that

825
00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:58,719
Speaker 1: has kept him well shielded for so long, and he

826
00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:01,160
Speaker 1: also needs to find the length which to write about David.

827
00:50:01,960 --> 00:50:06,879
Speaker 1: He's written in all sorts of forms and genres, supernatural thrillers, screenplays,

828
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:10,720
Speaker 1: literary novels, but now he feels the pull to return

829
00:50:10,760 --> 00:50:13,879
Speaker 1: to where he began, with a form he'd inherited from

830
00:50:13,880 --> 00:50:19,160
Speaker 1: his grandmother, poetry. Perhaps in poetry he can begin to

831
00:50:19,280 --> 00:50:22,400
Speaker 1: unpack the story that needs unpacking to tell the story

832
00:50:22,440 --> 00:50:27,520
Speaker 1: that needs telling the story of his brother David. I

833
00:50:27,640 --> 00:50:32,840
Speaker 1: certainly think that that moment in Boston was a touch point. Well,

834
00:50:33,160 --> 00:50:37,320
Speaker 1: it was the closest that I probably came to even

835
00:50:37,840 --> 00:50:42,360
Speaker 1: thinking or attempting to, certainly to attempting to talk about

836
00:50:42,440 --> 00:50:47,080
Speaker 1: or write about David. I think that from very soon

837
00:50:47,160 --> 00:50:49,400
Speaker 1: after his death, I always knew that I would have

838
00:50:49,480 --> 00:50:53,640
Speaker 1: to write something about him. This is It's just it's

839
00:50:53,719 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 1: just too central and too critical to the way that

840
00:50:56,200 --> 00:51:00,040
Speaker 1: I processed the world to not um And yet I

841
00:51:00,120 --> 00:51:03,520
Speaker 1: continued to not do it, and to not really even

842
00:51:03,560 --> 00:51:06,200
Speaker 1: attempt to do it. I thought about doing it. I

843
00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:09,400
Speaker 1: never stopped thinking about doing it. I never stopped thinking

844
00:51:09,400 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 1: about it, and I never stopped being stymied by things

845
00:51:13,560 --> 00:51:17,040
Speaker 1: like what the form would be, what the architecture would be,

846
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:19,080
Speaker 1: what the kind of scaffolding of it would look like.

847
00:51:19,600 --> 00:51:21,880
Speaker 1: I never considered doing it as a poem until I

848
00:51:21,920 --> 00:51:24,600
Speaker 1: did it as a poem. I thought about a novel,

849
00:51:25,200 --> 00:51:29,560
Speaker 1: a screenplay, an essay. I wrote one half of one

850
00:51:29,600 --> 00:51:33,560
Speaker 1: scene of a screenplay, which was basically me djaying in

851
00:51:33,600 --> 00:51:36,080
Speaker 1: a club and my phone ringing, and I don't even

852
00:51:36,080 --> 00:51:38,000
Speaker 1: think I answered the phone, and seeing that I wrote,

853
00:51:38,160 --> 00:51:41,120
Speaker 1: that's as far as I got um. But you know,

854
00:51:41,600 --> 00:51:44,759
Speaker 1: I never stopped thinking about writing about him, and I

855
00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:49,520
Speaker 1: never stopped feeling like something was out of whack, like

856
00:51:49,600 --> 00:51:52,319
Speaker 1: my my life and my my creative life was out

857
00:51:52,360 --> 00:51:55,640
Speaker 1: of balance for not having written about him. That, like

858
00:51:55,719 --> 00:52:00,320
Speaker 1: everything else I was writing, was relatively easy, was light work,

859
00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:04,759
Speaker 1: was trivial because there was this thing that I had

860
00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:07,600
Speaker 1: to write about it and was not even really spending

861
00:52:07,640 --> 00:52:10,600
Speaker 1: any time thinking about writing about you know that that

862
00:52:10,640 --> 00:52:14,080
Speaker 1: moment that the Moth in what got me to that

863
00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 1: producers door at you know, ten o'clock the night before

864
00:52:18,600 --> 00:52:21,319
Speaker 1: the performance was the fact that earlier that night we'd

865
00:52:21,360 --> 00:52:25,160
Speaker 1: rehearsed and I've heard all these other stories, and everybody's

866
00:52:25,239 --> 00:52:29,480
Speaker 1: story was so honest and raw and vulnerable, and there

867
00:52:29,520 --> 00:52:32,360
Speaker 1: was so much bravery in them getting up and talking

868
00:52:32,400 --> 00:52:36,040
Speaker 1: about whatever the thing was. Because you know, the Moth

869
00:52:36,160 --> 00:52:42,240
Speaker 1: doesn't typically do too many light breezy stories, like often

870
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:45,440
Speaker 1: they take a dark turn. The classic Moth story is

871
00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:47,880
Speaker 1: four or five minutes of fun and games and laughter

872
00:52:48,040 --> 00:52:51,160
Speaker 1: and light, and then somebody is diagnosed with something or

873
00:52:51,280 --> 00:52:54,440
Speaker 1: somebody goes through something horrible and the rest of the

874
00:52:54,560 --> 00:52:59,839
Speaker 1: story is really dealing head on with whatever that turn

875
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:02,960
Speaker 1: that tragedy is. The story I was telling was none

876
00:53:02,960 --> 00:53:05,040
Speaker 1: of that. The story I was telling was basically a

877
00:53:05,080 --> 00:53:09,160
Speaker 1: stand up comedy routine. Now they needed that to end

878
00:53:09,160 --> 00:53:12,120
Speaker 1: the night with so that everybody walked out of there.

879
00:53:12,360 --> 00:53:15,799
Speaker 1: You know, able to operate heavy machinery. But yeah, I

880
00:53:15,880 --> 00:53:19,000
Speaker 1: felt newly dishonest in the face of all this other

881
00:53:19,360 --> 00:53:23,400
Speaker 1: courage and bravery from my other co storytellers. And it

882
00:53:23,480 --> 00:53:26,719
Speaker 1: also felt very different to me. Three years later, I

883
00:53:26,800 --> 00:53:29,239
Speaker 1: felt like it was one thing to do my go

884
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:31,759
Speaker 1: to Focus League tour and bullshit with Matt Lower and

885
00:53:31,800 --> 00:53:35,759
Speaker 1: whoever else and promote the book and the way it

886
00:53:35,800 --> 00:53:38,400
Speaker 1: needed to be promoted, and keep my grief and my

887
00:53:38,480 --> 00:53:41,800
Speaker 1: pain to myself. But it felt like a new level

888
00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:47,120
Speaker 1: of dishonesty, and maybe an unhealthy one. Two three years later,

889
00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:51,720
Speaker 1: be crafting my own story in my own words, under

890
00:53:51,800 --> 00:53:56,640
Speaker 1: my own sort of motor, and still be telling the

891
00:53:56,719 --> 00:53:59,880
Speaker 1: story that didn't include my brothers, still be telling the

892
00:54:00,040 --> 00:54:02,880
Speaker 1: fun and Games version. I went out and told that

893
00:54:02,920 --> 00:54:05,839
Speaker 1: story exactly as I was supposed to, and got big

894
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:08,839
Speaker 1: laughs and had a ball, and they kept bringing me back,

895
00:54:08,840 --> 00:54:11,319
Speaker 1: and I ended up telling that story and probably you know,

896
00:54:11,600 --> 00:54:15,080
Speaker 1: ten different cities and sort of subsuming the part of

897
00:54:15,080 --> 00:54:17,879
Speaker 1: me that felt like, I, you know, shouldn't be telling

898
00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:19,960
Speaker 1: that story, but should instead be working on telling the

899
00:54:20,000 --> 00:54:25,520
Speaker 1: real story. In many ways, Adam's book about his brother

900
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:29,840
Speaker 1: reads like a ritual itself, even though Adam is not religious.

901
00:54:29,920 --> 00:54:33,880
Speaker 1: It has an incantatory quality like the Jewish mourner's prayer

902
00:54:34,160 --> 00:54:38,879
Speaker 1: the Kaddish. Another staggering moment begins with an amber's hand,

903
00:54:39,560 --> 00:54:42,320
Speaker 1: Adam writes, and so all I can do is grapple

904
00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:46,320
Speaker 1: my way back? Is right this or maybe I mean mine,

905
00:54:47,040 --> 00:54:50,000
Speaker 1: make ritual of being known as he would not build

906
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:54,480
Speaker 1: a bridge, I do rapple a lot in this book

907
00:54:54,520 --> 00:54:58,960
Speaker 1: with the idea of telling his story, this notion of

908
00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:03,720
Speaker 1: being resistant to narrative versus deeply deeply dependent on narrative,

909
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:08,160
Speaker 1: the idea that the fundamental thing David refused to do

910
00:55:08,440 --> 00:55:11,920
Speaker 1: was tell his story like live in the honesty of

911
00:55:11,960 --> 00:55:14,440
Speaker 1: what he was going through and who he was. And

912
00:55:14,520 --> 00:55:17,000
Speaker 1: so I think I say those lines in the context

913
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:22,160
Speaker 1: of my own children and thinking about what tools I

914
00:55:22,200 --> 00:55:26,080
Speaker 1: want them to have that David didn't in the event

915
00:55:26,280 --> 00:55:29,359
Speaker 1: that they ever deal with any of the things he did.

916
00:55:29,880 --> 00:55:33,520
Speaker 1: You know, I've been lucky enough to sidestep the genetic

917
00:55:33,600 --> 00:55:38,799
Speaker 1: inheritance of depression, but it runs on both sides of

918
00:55:38,800 --> 00:55:43,520
Speaker 1: my family, my mother's and my father's, through the generations.

919
00:55:44,120 --> 00:55:48,920
Speaker 1: So I look at my own three children, and what

920
00:55:49,000 --> 00:55:51,440
Speaker 1: I really want more than anything is for them to

921
00:55:52,719 --> 00:55:56,640
Speaker 1: not feel the kind of shame that would lead them

922
00:55:56,680 --> 00:56:01,920
Speaker 1: to keep something like depression or mental illness a secret.

923
00:56:02,560 --> 00:56:05,120
Speaker 1: So the building of a bridge, I think, is the

924
00:56:05,200 --> 00:56:11,800
Speaker 1: idea of helping them construct a language of framework, a

925
00:56:11,960 --> 00:56:17,160
Speaker 1: life in which they never feel the need to hide

926
00:56:17,200 --> 00:56:24,399
Speaker 1: that really characterized David's life. Suicide is so particular there

927
00:56:24,400 --> 00:56:27,359
Speaker 1: are no natural bridges to it, like nothing connects to it.

928
00:56:27,719 --> 00:56:30,040
Speaker 1: It's sort of an island, and to get there you

929
00:56:30,080 --> 00:56:40,040
Speaker 1: have to swim. Here's Adam reading one last passage from

930
00:56:40,080 --> 00:56:47,560
Speaker 1: his beautiful, powerful book. I had a brother once. Soon

931
00:56:47,640 --> 00:56:50,160
Speaker 1: after his death, my mother tried to make me promise

932
00:56:50,239 --> 00:56:54,120
Speaker 1: I would never write about David. I said nothing, and

933
00:56:54,200 --> 00:56:57,680
Speaker 1: continue to say nothing until now, and still do not

934
00:56:57,800 --> 00:57:00,360
Speaker 1: know what she asked, because it is nobody's business, or

935
00:57:00,400 --> 00:57:03,000
Speaker 1: would be too painful to see rendered on the page,

936
00:57:03,680 --> 00:57:06,800
Speaker 1: or simply because when my mother was a girl, Felicia

937
00:57:06,880 --> 00:57:10,160
Speaker 1: promised never to write about her, and this, she feels,

938
00:57:10,640 --> 00:57:13,680
Speaker 1: is what a writer owes his family. But I will

939
00:57:13,719 --> 00:57:17,000
Speaker 1: make a different plea to my children. I will implore

940
00:57:17,040 --> 00:57:20,280
Speaker 1: them to write it, speak it all, shed light, and

941
00:57:20,320 --> 00:57:48,680
Speaker 1: who knows what else you might shed. Family Secrets is

942
00:57:48,680 --> 00:57:51,840
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Molly's A Core is

943
00:57:51,880 --> 00:57:55,000
Speaker 1: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.

944
00:57:56,280 --> 00:57:58,280
Speaker 1: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,

945
00:57:58,680 --> 00:58:01,120
Speaker 1: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear

946
00:58:01,120 --> 00:58:06,120
Speaker 1: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight Secret zero.

947
00:58:06,520 --> 00:58:09,560
Speaker 1: That's the number zero. You can also find me on

948
00:58:09,640 --> 00:58:14,000
Speaker 1: Instagram at Danny writer. And if you'd like to know

949
00:58:14,040 --> 00:58:16,960
Speaker 1: more about the story that inspired this podcast, check out

950
00:58:16,960 --> 00:58:45,160
Speaker 1: my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,

951
00:58:45,360 --> 00:58:48,200
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever

952
00:58:48,360 --> 00:58:49,800
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.