Speaker 1: The more things that I've found in my life that
Speaker 1: you do for your craft, or you do for your
Speaker 1: community or your neighbors. Man, the reward is huge on
Speaker 1: that stuff. It's just huge. Welcome to the one you feed.
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think, ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Nicholas Butler, an American novelist, short story author,
Speaker 1: and poet. He's the award winning author of four novels
Speaker 1: including Shotgun, Love Songs, and Godspeed, along with many short
Speaker 1: story collections and poetry collections. Hi Nick, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, well, I'm a fan of your work. Also,
Speaker 1: Matthew Quick introduced us, who has been a guest on
Speaker 1: the show multiple times, and so I got to know
Speaker 1: your work after that introduction and have really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: And we'll be talking about that. But we'll start like
Speaker 1: we always do, with the parable. There's a grandparent talking
Speaker 1: with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents the is like
Speaker 1: kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a
Speaker 1: bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
Speaker 1: And the grandson stops and thinks about it for a
Speaker 1: second and he looks up at his grandparent. He says, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandparents says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Yeah. I've been reflecting on
Speaker 1: this a lot as I've been listening to your show
Speaker 1: more and more over the past few months, and I
Speaker 1: think in terms of the good wolf, I don't worry
Speaker 1: about my personal life a great deal. I think I'm
Speaker 1: a pretty good dad and husband and son and citizen. Artistically,
Speaker 1: I know that feeding the good wolf means sitting at
Speaker 1: the desk and being a writer and doing what I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing, which is writing my stories. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think I'm gonna be super honest during
Speaker 1: today's interview because the bad wolf has been on my
Speaker 1: porch more lately. I I think the bad wolf for
Speaker 1: me means being stricken by fear of not writing a
Speaker 1: perfect sentence, or by putting a book out there that
Speaker 1: doesn't go somewhere, or facing creative rejection, and and so
Speaker 1: my writing has been a lot slower in the last
Speaker 1: three years. It's been interesting listening to your show and
Speaker 1: all the wonderful experts and artists that you speak to,
Speaker 1: and they all seem to be on top of it.
Speaker 1: And I'm actually fighting that bad wolf quite a lot
Speaker 1: these days, and I'm hoping to kind of come out
Speaker 1: of it. I appreciate that honesty. I think it's always
Speaker 1: good to be open. It makes for much better conversations.
Speaker 1: And I will tell you that behind the scenes, even
Speaker 1: a lot of these writers who seem to have their
Speaker 1: game together will say similar things like, when you're in
Speaker 1: the midst of something difficult, doubt always seems to creep in.
Speaker 1: And I always have been amazed even these people who
Speaker 1: have written, you know, multiple New York Times bestsellers will
Speaker 1: be like, well, just reference the fact that you, you know,
Speaker 1: wrote two good books before, and they'll be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but my brain tells me that was then, this is now.
Speaker 1: Don't have it anymore. Yeah, And for me, I feel
Speaker 1: in this moment, I have so many good ideas. I'm
Speaker 1: aware of the fact that I don't think I'll have
Speaker 1: enough time on this planet to record all those good
Speaker 1: ideas in the form of the novels that I write.
Speaker 1: And I know from having written five pretty successful books,
Speaker 1: that so much of it as a writer is just
Speaker 1: writing that draft, just getting it down and finishing something
Speaker 1: and then going back and honing the rougher parts. But um,
Speaker 1: I think for me something was lost when COVID came
Speaker 1: around that I just didn't expect, you know, I think
Speaker 1: as like a child. You know, my dad was something
Speaker 1: of a prepper, you know, he was always preparing for
Speaker 1: worst case scenarios, and and I think there was a
Speaker 1: part of me that always like fantasized about that, you know,
Speaker 1: fantasized about some moment where I would be tested or
Speaker 1: my family would be tested. And surely, as an eagle
Speaker 1: scout and somebody who owned sixteen acres of land in
Speaker 1: Roisconsin and gardens and hunts, I would be wildly prepared
Speaker 1: for that scenario. And actually, what I discovered was that
Speaker 1: I really missed socializing with people. And even though my
Speaker 1: job as a novelist requires that I spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time by myself in my own head, I had
Speaker 1: always taken for granted the interactions that I have with
Speaker 1: librarians and booksellers and other readers. And when I didn't
Speaker 1: have that, it was like the wind fell out of
Speaker 1: my sales real quickly. And I realized that I had
Speaker 1: built up a pretty good routine. You know. I used
Speaker 1: to go to this cafe in town and shoot the
Speaker 1: ship with the brist is there, talk about music for
Speaker 1: a while, get my cup of coffee, then moved to
Speaker 1: like what was my seat in the cafe and worked
Speaker 1: for three or four hours. And if you do that
Speaker 1: every day, you can write a book pretty quick. But
Speaker 1: COVID just took all that away, and suddenly I'm at
Speaker 1: home teaching my kids who don't want me to be
Speaker 1: their teacher, So I'm just trying to get back into
Speaker 1: that routine. And I think, have you been able to
Speaker 1: get some of it back as we've moved a little bit.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what the right thing to call it.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think we call it post COVID.
Speaker 1: But as life has gone a little bit back to normal,
Speaker 1: have you been able to get back out on the
Speaker 1: road and and meet the librarians and booksellers again, And
Speaker 1: are you finding any energy from that? Absolutely? Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some sense of normalcy coming back, and it's been great.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite writers is Jim Harrison, and he
Speaker 1: talked about driving is being real therapeutic interior time to
Speaker 1: think about his stories and to think about the narratives
Speaker 1: he was working on. And that's always been true for me.
Speaker 1: Living kind of in the middle of nowhere, I have
Speaker 1: to drive everywhere I want to go or anywhere I'm
Speaker 1: requested to be, and so I spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time thinking about my novels behind the wheel and writing
Speaker 1: poetry and also working on journalism, and and losing that
Speaker 1: I think hurt quite a bit. But that's finally coming back,
Speaker 1: and I think I just got to finish the novel
Speaker 1: and then really my schedule will be somewhat more restored.
Speaker 1: So when fear is kind of on you, how does
Speaker 1: it materialized. Is it materialize as a reluctance to write?
Speaker 1: Does it materialize as just something you carry around with
Speaker 1: you the other hours of the day, some of both.
Speaker 1: It's been educational listening to your show. I think it
Speaker 1: was Paul Gilmartin who was talking about various distractions that
Speaker 1: he uses to get away from work. And one thing
Speaker 1: that I recognized and listening to that show was I'm
Speaker 1: a collector. I collect vinyl records, I collect books, I
Speaker 1: collect sports cards. And I've always noticed that between projects,
Speaker 1: when I'm in this area where I'm not actively working
Speaker 1: on a novel, those pursuits take over in a big way,
Speaker 1: much to the chagrin of my checking accountant, my wife's
Speaker 1: financial management. So I've noticed that that I'm distracting myself
Speaker 1: with those things, and I think it's just this kind
Speaker 1: of fear of writing a sentence that's not up to
Speaker 1: my own standards, which is ridiculous because you have to
Speaker 1: in order to sell a book, you have to finish
Speaker 1: a book, and if you never finish a book, then
Speaker 1: you're doomed to never put anything out. And I know
Speaker 1: that intellectually, but it's strange how those fears cripple productivity.
Speaker 1: Let's maybe talk about your most recent novel that came out,
Speaker 1: which was Godspeed, which is a wonderful novel in a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways, and I don't want to give
Speaker 1: away any of the key pieces of it, but there's
Speaker 1: an idea in there. It actually runs through multiples of
Speaker 1: your books that I want to talk about, and it's
Speaker 1: really about how we often compare our lives to other
Speaker 1: people's lives. And in the book specifically, there are three
Speaker 1: men from a town in Wyoming who are commissioned to
Speaker 1: build a house far faster than a house should be built,
Speaker 1: but it's a spectacular house. And one of the protagonists
Speaker 1: said in the book that at him and his wife
Speaker 1: were looking at houses, they were going to buy a
Speaker 1: new house. You know, it was a big thing for him,
Speaker 1: and he said, but working on Gretchen's house, this is
Speaker 1: the house they were building, had pretty much ruined him
Speaker 1: for any other house that he found. This endless tour
Speaker 1: of the town's less desirable real estate to be something
Speaker 1: of a death march, that everything about this property they
Speaker 1: now stood upon depressed him. And that passage really hit
Speaker 1: me because it really speaks to our capability of getting
Speaker 1: something really good. Like for him, this was a big deal.
Speaker 1: They were gonna be able to buy a house, but
Speaker 1: comparing it to someone else almost took all the magic
Speaker 1: out of what should have been a special moment. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and I think writers are horrible at this. You know,
Speaker 1: we're always comparing you know, book sales and whose had
Speaker 1: a book developed into a movie or something like that.
Speaker 1: I think writing Godspeed, in some way, it was kind
Speaker 1: of like an exorcism for me. Back in my wife
Speaker 1: and I moved back to Oaklare, Wisconsin, which is her hometown,
Speaker 1: and commenced the process of building a house. I won't
Speaker 1: speak for my wife, but for me, it was the
Speaker 1: embodiment of the American dream, building a house in my
Speaker 1: own architectural vision on a piece of land that I
Speaker 1: found to be charismatic and inspiring. And I thought, I
Speaker 1: think during that time that surely once I moved into
Speaker 1: the house, I would be a happier, more fulfilled person.
Speaker 1: And then two months go by and as a dad
Speaker 1: of two small kids, Like somebody quickly vomits on your
Speaker 1: carpeting or scratches some woodwork, and you realize, this is
Speaker 1: just a box I live in. This is just my house,
Speaker 1: and I am the same person, and I just have
Speaker 1: less money now that I built a house, and so
Speaker 1: I think I wanted to explore those feelings. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's just me. I think it's a
Speaker 1: pretty common expression of the American dream of being an American.
Speaker 1: I think it's more and more pervasive now that social
Speaker 1: media is so everywhere. While we were building our house,
Speaker 1: we would look examples of other people's kitchens and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want that. I want that, whereas maybe even twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, you had to go on a house tour
Speaker 1: to get inside somebody's house to see what the designs
Speaker 1: were and what the new features might be. So I
Speaker 1: also think like the book is true to, you know,
Speaker 1: this sort of unhealthy real estate market that we're in
Speaker 1: right now. You know, I mean people were watching their
Speaker 1: personal wealth grow and grow, and they wanted more and
Speaker 1: more house and so I think that the book is
Speaker 1: true to that reality of being an American too. You
Speaker 1: have an eighteen month old dog. Above you, I have
Speaker 1: a thirteen year old dog who somehow has surmounted the
Speaker 1: barriers I have placed at the top of the stairs.
Speaker 1: Her back legs barely work, has made it down two
Speaker 1: flights of stairs and is standing outside my door whining like,
Speaker 1: no tomorrow. And I assumed was upstairs, but I opened
Speaker 1: the door. I'm like, oh, you're right here, so I
Speaker 1: have let her in. She is wandering around, the poor
Speaker 1: sweet baby with a diaper on because her back legs
Speaker 1: don't work. She's incontinent, and on top of having to
Speaker 1: wear a diaper, the diaper won't stay on, so she
Speaker 1: has to wear suspenders to hold on her diaper. And
Speaker 1: she looks like the funniest old man. When I look
Speaker 1: at her, it makes me laugh and it breaks my heart,
Speaker 1: all in the exact same moment. What kind of dog?
Speaker 1: She's a Boston Terrier. Hang on, yeah, I'd love to
Speaker 1: see her. This is beans beans, oh sweetheart? Oh man,
Speaker 1: you could see her diaper and her suspender. Oh no,
Speaker 1: oh sweetheart, that's im poor thing. Yeah, she really seems
Speaker 1: unbothered by it, like she just carries on. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like her back legs don't work at all.
Speaker 1: It's just they sort of drag behind her. She's got
Speaker 1: some neurological disorder, but it doesn't bother her. She just
Speaker 1: like still has her ball she likes to play. When
Speaker 1: they get to this point, you start having to ask
Speaker 1: tough questions about like is it time? But I think
Speaker 1: right now it's not, but it could be anytime soon.
Speaker 1: She's a thirteen. So I actually love having that insider
Speaker 1: perspective into your life and into the podcast. I feel
Speaker 1: like the issues that you cover are very heavy, very human,
Speaker 1: very complicated issues. And the notion that there's this old
Speaker 1: dog dragging itself around your house happily. I I like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I call her zen Master Gray Brow sometimes because she's
Speaker 1: black and white like zen is, and obviously she has
Speaker 1: the gray brows, but she's also just like animals are
Speaker 1: just their thing there this anyway, Okay, let's pick back
Speaker 1: up here. I'm going to respond to your thing about
Speaker 1: God's speed. Yeah, I agree, And I think the reason
Speaker 1: I wanted to sort of bring that idea up is
Speaker 1: because I think it's something that so many of us,
Speaker 1: as you said, really do wrestle with and the ability
Speaker 1: to compare our lives with other people's lives has been
Speaker 1: accelerated way out of proportion. Not that we haven't always
Speaker 1: done it, right, I mean, I imagine from cave men
Speaker 1: comparing their cave to the guy next door, right, nice
Speaker 1: saber tooth, tiger teeth, you know on your neck there
Speaker 1: or whatever. We can do it all the time today.
Speaker 1: To your point, you know, we would have had to
Speaker 1: go on a home tour before. And it's just such
Speaker 1: a pernicious way to relate to the world if we
Speaker 1: don't work on it, because it just robs us of
Speaker 1: any of the enjoyment for many of the things that
Speaker 1: we have in life. So how have you gone about,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of being able to reappreciate the beautiful
Speaker 1: land and the home that you have, And is there
Speaker 1: anything you do to sort of kind of keep that alive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I'm in a much better space when it
Speaker 1: comes to that sort of thing than I've ever been.
Speaker 1: You know, I think one cool thing about building this
Speaker 1: house is that it's always been our families. It's our
Speaker 1: family's story. So you know, the scratches in the floor
Speaker 1: from our dogs feet, you know, those are our scratches.
Speaker 1: We put a wood stove in during COVID, which was
Speaker 1: like our one big COVID kind of purchase, and it's
Speaker 1: the best thing that we ever did. It became the
Speaker 1: heart of our house. People gather around it. They're not
Speaker 1: plugged into any device, they're reading or just resting, closing
Speaker 1: their eyes. That was a wonderful thing that we did.
Speaker 1: And it also causes me to be out there cutting wood,
Speaker 1: moving wood, stacking wood, so it's good exercise. I love
Speaker 1: where I'm at now. But Godspeed was again like kind
Speaker 1: of this exercise and thinking about that time, and thinking
Speaker 1: about the ways in which was I guess comparing myself
Speaker 1: to other people's lives and had this expectation that a
Speaker 1: giant material purchase was somehow going to change my life
Speaker 1: for the better. And I'm glad that I'm over that.
Speaker 1: And we're not really the kind of people like we
Speaker 1: don't drive new cars, we don't really wear fancy clothes.
Speaker 1: This is pretty much what you're seeing me where today
Speaker 1: is my uniform. That's pretty much what I wear every day.
Speaker 1: In mentioning your wood stove, I was reading a column
Speaker 1: you wrote. You write a column for your local newspaper,
Speaker 1: and one of them was titled the Purpose of firewood.
Speaker 1: And I'm just gonna read something that you wrote because
Speaker 1: I thought this was really interesting. You said, as a child,
Speaker 1: I used to hear old men speak like this about firewood,
Speaker 1: and it always fascinated me. Men who seemed incapable of
Speaker 1: emoting anything, their feelings as unreachable as the furthest stars
Speaker 1: talking passionately about firewood. Now I am that man lusting
Speaker 1: after firewood. Did that give you an insight into the
Speaker 1: other generation by sort of being brought into that relationship
Speaker 1: with nature in that way? Yeah, I guess it did.
Speaker 1: I mean, as a culture, we absolutely take for granted
Speaker 1: where our energy comes from, where our food comes from,
Speaker 1: our heating and cooling. We just don't think about it.
Speaker 1: We just turn a dial on the wall and it's
Speaker 1: warm or it's cool. And I think about somebody like
Speaker 1: my grandpa, who's gone now, who grew up during the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, and surely he would have had a greater
Speaker 1: connection to those basic things. I remember him talking about
Speaker 1: walking the railroad tracks and gathering bits of coal, you know,
Speaker 1: that had fallen off the train, and that was illegal,
Speaker 1: of course, because he was trespassing on the railroad tracks
Speaker 1: and technically stealing cold But one thing I've learned as
Speaker 1: a writer is that when somebody tells you a story,
Speaker 1: they're trying to reveal something about their life. And in hindsight,
Speaker 1: I think about my grandpa talking about that, and what
Speaker 1: he was trying to reveal is that he and his
Speaker 1: family overcame something that was extremely difficult, and he was
Speaker 1: of that survival. I can remember cutting wood with him.
Speaker 1: That was one of the things we like to do
Speaker 1: most of all, because he wasn't really capable of emoting
Speaker 1: a whole lot, but in work we would fall into
Speaker 1: this sort of rhythm of like him cutting the tree
Speaker 1: and then I had helped split it, and then we
Speaker 1: loaded into the truck, and that was a good thing
Speaker 1: and a productive thing and something we could share together
Speaker 1: without talking about, you know, complicated feelings or something like that.
Speaker 1: So I think it does link me to somebody like
Speaker 1: my grandpa specifically, and probably two people in the past.
Speaker 1: I was listening to your interview with Matthew Quick, you know,
Speaker 1: Matt's a friend of mine, and talking about the men
Speaker 1: in our past and how we judged them rightly or wrongly.
Speaker 1: And one thing that my dad, though he was flawed.
Speaker 1: He would say my Grandpa grew up without a father.
Speaker 1: His dad died in the coal mines, so he had
Speaker 1: no role model, and my grandpa worked on merchant marine ships.
Speaker 1: He was always gone sailing. So my dad had a father,
Speaker 1: but not much of a role model. And my dad
Speaker 1: was a product of the sixties, did any drug he
Speaker 1: could find, was an alcoholic, and I think he did
Speaker 1: the best he could, but you know, he just didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of help. And he said, you know,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be better than me. You're gonna be better
Speaker 1: than Grandpa, and your son or daughter will be better
Speaker 1: than you. And even though he hadn't been taught to
Speaker 1: emote a whole lot, he could kind of lay that
Speaker 1: foundation for me and project a lineage of of goodness.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's been true too. You know,
Speaker 1: I remember the bad aspects of my dad's personality and
Speaker 1: my grandpa's personality, and I'd like to think that I
Speaker 1: don't duplicate those things and try to project a better
Speaker 1: image from my son. And so I don't know, I
Speaker 1: still haven't gotten him in on the firewood thing yet,
Speaker 1: but maybe that's to come. How old is your son?
Speaker 1: He's okay, that's about time. About time, I think so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this idea of generation. I've heard a therapist
Speaker 1: say before that everything we're doing is generational level work,
Speaker 1: and speaking to kind of what you're saying, which is, look,
Speaker 1: we're trying to take what has been passed down generation
Speaker 1: to generation and transform it and maybe make it a
Speaker 1: little bit better for our kids. And I look at
Speaker 1: my son, and I'm certain there's all sorts of things
Speaker 1: he's twenty three, by the way, all sorts of things
Speaker 1: I didn't do correctly, right, I'm certain, And I don't
Speaker 1: know even what they are yet. I'm sure they will
Speaker 1: be revealed. But I also know that I think I
Speaker 1: did for him better than my parents did for me.
Speaker 1: And I think my parents did better than their parents did,
Speaker 1: you know. And as you were talking, it made me
Speaker 1: think about how people have been saying, like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: for the first time in a while, the next generation
Speaker 1: may not have it better than the previous generation here
Speaker 1: in America. And while that may be true economically, and
Speaker 1: it's very possibly going to be true in a variety
Speaker 1: of other ways, uh climate, while eyes and all that,
Speaker 1: I do think that when I look at kids around
Speaker 1: that age today, they have an emotional awareness that was
Speaker 1: simply not present in me at that age, and no
Speaker 1: one to model it at that age. I totally agree
Speaker 1: with that, and I'm so glad you brought that up.
Speaker 1: I mean, as an artist, you know, one pitfall that
Speaker 1: a person can be trapped by is judging your career
Speaker 1: based on how much money you're making, you know, in
Speaker 1: your book contracts, or how many copies are selling, or
Speaker 1: something like that. It's an awful way to view your career.
Speaker 1: You should be trying to be better as a crafts person.
Speaker 1: You should be trying to get better at your craft
Speaker 1: all the time. I was thinking about that even this morning,
Speaker 1: long before our talk, just thinking what I want to
Speaker 1: instill in my kids is not that they need to
Speaker 1: make a shipload of money. It's be happy within yourself,
Speaker 1: have a good connection to nature, have a great marriage,
Speaker 1: Be good to your siblings, be good to your friends,
Speaker 1: be part of a community. Like, if you're doing all
Speaker 1: those things, everything else falls into place. The happiness falls
Speaker 1: into place. You know. I do think like my son
Speaker 1: and daughter's generation, there's so much more sensitive than than
Speaker 1: I was. You know, I was a Barbarian as a teenager.
Speaker 1: I'm not proud of the person I was ages twelve
Speaker 1: to twenty, probably right, and I think they are light
Speaker 1: years ahead of where I am. You know, they accept everybody.
Speaker 1: They're aware of the challenges in our natural world, and
Speaker 1: I feel like they're a little more attuned to it
Speaker 1: than I ever was. And so part of me thinks
Speaker 1: like one of our challenges is just how do we
Speaker 1: bring young people into politics, How do we bring them
Speaker 1: into power. Let's let the old guard go go by
Speaker 1: the wayside, you know, let's move into some fresh territory.
Speaker 1: As you were talking there, it made me think about
Speaker 1: one of your books. I don't remember where I saw
Speaker 1: this line, but it was on my mind today because
Speaker 1: today is election day. I believe it was either a
Speaker 1: father talking to his son or a grandparent talking to
Speaker 1: his kids. And he said when he talked politics with
Speaker 1: me or my sister, pointing a steady and patient finger
Speaker 1: at us, saying, I don't care about left or right,
Speaker 1: it's all nonsense. All I ask of you is this,
Speaker 1: be kind, be decent, and don't be greedy. And that's
Speaker 1: pretty solid advice. Yeah, that was from Shotgun Love Songs.
Speaker 1: I think Matthew talked a little bit about this in
Speaker 1: his interview too, and I hope it's okay that I
Speaker 1: reflect a little bit on that interview. He's a friend
Speaker 1: of mine and we're in conversation all the time, so
Speaker 1: our stories, i think, are somewhat similar to Look, I
Speaker 1: live in a part of the country that is pretty
Speaker 1: darn purple, and I don't have the luxury of making wide,
Speaker 1: sweeping political statements that I think are just going to
Speaker 1: be accepted by everyone that I'm speaking to. Any audience
Speaker 1: that I speak to in west central Wisconsin is going
Speaker 1: to be more complicated than that. And it's like that
Speaker 1: in my rural neighborhood, you know, if it could be
Speaker 1: called the neighborhood. Everybody's on many acres of land, so
Speaker 1: I can't see other people's houses. But I'm just kind
Speaker 1: of interested in making connections with people in the community
Speaker 1: that we have and trying to find things that we
Speaker 1: share in common, because man, the political environment right now
Speaker 1: is superheated and it scares the hell out of me.
Speaker 1: And I want to be on the best relations with
Speaker 1: everyone that I can, and I want them to see
Speaker 1: me as a whole human being and not as a
Speaker 1: blue human being or a red human being, as artists
Speaker 1: were always talking about empathy. This is an a novel idea.
Speaker 1: But it's easy to be empathetic with somebody who's just
Speaker 1: reflecting your Yeah, it's much harder to be empathetic with
Speaker 1: somebody who's quite different from you, and to understand where
Speaker 1: that's coming from, whether it's fear based or something that's
Speaker 1: been drilled into them by the media or their parents
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. So I think West Central Wisconsin
Speaker 1: is a complicated place politically, and I'm just looking for understanding.
Speaker 1: I think here, Yeah, yeah, that's what I try and do,
Speaker 1: to try and have some empathy and understanding and have
Speaker 1: some dialogue. But yeah, so many of us are looking
Speaker 1: at it and feeling frightened to buy sort of the
Speaker 1: political instability that feels, you know, underlying the core tenants
Speaker 1: of of what America has been up to this point.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to go down that rabbit hole
Speaker 1: too far. I'm going to pop back to parenting for
Speaker 1: a second because we were just sort of talking about
Speaker 1: parents and I came across a quote of years and
Speaker 1: I have probably said it to like four other people
Speaker 1: over the last week because it struck me so profoundly
Speaker 1: as being so true and yet I'd never heard it
Speaker 1: phrased like this before. It's from the book Little Faith,
Speaker 1: and it's as part of being a parent as loving
Speaker 1: your child more than they'll ever love you. And wow,
Speaker 1: I think our kids can love us a great deal,
Speaker 1: but I doubt it's to the same level that we
Speaker 1: love them. And that's just part of it. And what
Speaker 1: I often see parents do is get wrapped around the
Speaker 1: axle because they expect that their children will love them
Speaker 1: as much as they love their children, and I think
Speaker 1: that's a recipe for disappointment and problems. Yeah. Absolutely, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm entering into a period of time. As I
Speaker 1: told you, my son is is thirteen, so you've gone
Speaker 1: through this stage already with your son. But I remember
Speaker 1: just absolutely idolizing my father. He was a deeply flawed guy,
Speaker 1: but he was my dad. And my favorite part of
Speaker 1: the day was when he came home from work. He
Speaker 1: sat in his recliner, he smoked a long chain of
Speaker 1: cigarettes and drank a Coca Cola out of the can
Speaker 1: and I would try to steal SIPs of it and
Speaker 1: driving bonkers, and you know, what he wanted to do
Speaker 1: was just relaxed. But I was so excited to be
Speaker 1: around him, and then as my teenage years progressed, I
Speaker 1: began to see more and more of his flaws. And
Speaker 1: I think we all go through that sort of natural
Speaker 1: moment where we're pushing away from our parents emotionally so
Speaker 1: we can kind of leave the nest. Well, my son's thirteen,
Speaker 1: you know, I think he's just kind of entering into
Speaker 1: that moment where he's testing his boundaries and he's beginning
Speaker 1: to see me and his mother as humans and not
Speaker 1: just as like God's And I've just been stealing myself
Speaker 1: emotionally for the fact that, you know, he's got to
Speaker 1: push away. And I love him so much and I
Speaker 1: know he's got to do that. Yeah, And I don't
Speaker 1: wanna expect anything out of him, Like my job as
Speaker 1: a parent is just to make sure that this kid
Speaker 1: is extremely well loved, clothed, nourished, that they've got somebody
Speaker 1: to talk to, that he knows that he's got a
Speaker 1: system that that loves and supports him. But that's that's it,
Speaker 1: you know, at some point, and he's got to leave
Speaker 1: me and that and that's the idea. That's every that's life,
Speaker 1: you know, that's human life. Yeah, And I was lucky
Speaker 1: for the most part. I think my parents didn't leave
Speaker 1: me with a ton of baggage, so I had pretty
Speaker 1: good role models. It is difficult, though, even though we
Speaker 1: know it's the right thing, like Okay, they need to differentiate,
Speaker 1: they need to go out, they need to do their thing,
Speaker 1: it's still hard. It strikes me as one of those
Speaker 1: human conditioned dilemmas because the jokes have been going on
Speaker 1: forever about like call your mother, because it's so true.
Speaker 1: It's so true that that relationship has that little bit
Speaker 1: of the parent wanting more from the child typically, And
Speaker 1: I remember when my son went off to college. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think I had a friend who was like,
Speaker 1: you know, their kid who had gone off to college
Speaker 1: was calling them all the time, and a little part
Speaker 1: of me was jealous, But then the bigger part of
Speaker 1: me was like, I'm glad he's at school and he's
Speaker 1: just doing his thing and he's not thinking about me
Speaker 1: and he's thriving. Like that the better thing than having
Speaker 1: him still sort of dependent upon me. But boy, I
Speaker 1: think this is really tricky waters for those of us
Speaker 1: that our parents, is how do we let go of
Speaker 1: them in a way while remaining supportive and tend to
Speaker 1: our own emotional lives that the emotions that come up
Speaker 1: as a result of them moving away from us, Whether
Speaker 1: that's when they're fourteen and they spend more time in
Speaker 1: their room, or that's when they go off to college,
Speaker 1: or when they're twenty five and they don't come home
Speaker 1: for the holidays or whatever. It is, like, how do
Speaker 1: we tend to our own internal emotional work versus dumping
Speaker 1: that on them? Yeah, it is hard work. Both My
Speaker 1: children are still so young that I haven't like fully
Speaker 1: moved into that period yet. But mostly what I'm feeling
Speaker 1: these days, and maybe this is naive, but real excitement
Speaker 1: for the future to find out what people they develop into.
Speaker 1: As parents were trying to introduce them to ideas and
Speaker 1: music and books all the time and a different experiences.
Speaker 1: One thing we love to do as a family is
Speaker 1: go to national parks and camp there and take our
Speaker 1: kids on long hikes and kayak trips and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And I hope that sticks, but it might not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to miss out on being
Speaker 1: a kid, having that intimacy with a young person. But
Speaker 1: I'm also really excited for the period of time that
Speaker 1: you're in right now where they start to become their
Speaker 1: own person and they can come back and you're like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is this is an adult that I've had a
Speaker 1: hand in raising. That's really exciting to me. It really is.
Speaker 1: And I'm in a position where it always feels condescending
Speaker 1: in some manner to be like, I don't maybe it's
Speaker 1: not to say like I'm I'm so proud of him,
Speaker 1: but I am. I'm just proud of the person that
Speaker 1: he is becoming. And then of course there's the inevitable
Speaker 1: slight you know, pat on my back, like good job,
Speaker 1: you know. But that's okay, you know, that's okay. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is okay. You know, when I think about the
Speaker 1: parable that's at the you know, central gravity of your show,
Speaker 1: nobody is harder on themselves artistically or professionally than me.
Speaker 1: I am hard on myself on a molecular word by
Speaker 1: words sentence level. I mean, I'm my worst critic by far.
Speaker 1: But sometimes I think about, like what I just went
Speaker 1: through with the last three years with COVID, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: we got through it. We got through it as a family.
Speaker 1: We're still together, you know, I'm still married to my wife.
Speaker 1: And man, the drinking was getting a little, uh, a
Speaker 1: little out of hand there at times. But it's not anymore,
Speaker 1: you know. And our kids are actually still well prepared
Speaker 1: to go to school. You know, we were still reading
Speaker 1: books through it all. We were still learning things. It's
Speaker 1: not like they went to school in their brains at
Speaker 1: utterly atrophied. And and where does that fit into the
Speaker 1: wolf that I feed? You know? I mean I was
Speaker 1: working on my family during that period of time, and
Speaker 1: that's something I think, right, it doesn't show up in
Speaker 1: the book sales numbers, but it's something and a lot
Speaker 1: of the coaching work I've done with people over the years,
Speaker 1: there's an interesting theme. It shows up with people who have,
Speaker 1: you know, younger children. All say like, you know, the
Speaker 1: age of your son and downwards, right, And these people
Speaker 1: have this idea that in addition to having a career
Speaker 1: and raising good children, they should be doing all these
Speaker 1: other exceptional things in the world. And they come to
Speaker 1: me because they want help and doing those things. And
Speaker 1: sometimes that's the right thing, like let's go figure out
Speaker 1: how to do that. But sometimes the answer is like
Speaker 1: take it easy, Like the stage of life that you're at,
Speaker 1: it's appropriate that your kids take almost all of your energy,
Speaker 1: and it is the most important work that we can do.
Speaker 1: No one else can raise our children, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: like we have to do it. And I think raising
Speaker 1: decent and kind and good human beings as a parent
Speaker 1: is so hugely important. And I just think as parents,
Speaker 1: we don't give ourselves credit for the work that we
Speaker 1: put into that back to the idea of taking things
Speaker 1: for granted, we just sort of go, yeah, yeah, of
Speaker 1: course I do that. But really connecting back into like, yeah,
Speaker 1: good for you, good for you, that you really steered
Speaker 1: your kids through the pandemic in a kind way, and
Speaker 1: that should go more into our internal calculus of a
Speaker 1: life well lived than it often does. Like my mom,
Speaker 1: for example, said that she was so thankful she didn't
Speaker 1: ever have to go through something like this, and hearing
Speaker 1: what you just said, or hearing her say something like that,
Speaker 1: was so profoundly impactful for me. You know, my mom
Speaker 1: has gone through tons of challenges in her life, but
Speaker 1: just a small thing like saying, I wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: able to teach you kids, you know, and I don't
Speaker 1: know that I would have made it through it. And
Speaker 1: it's funny, like, you know, I went to the best
Speaker 1: writing program in the world, harder to get into than
Speaker 1: Harvard Law. For example. You learn a lot of neat
Speaker 1: tricks about writing, but we didn't talk a lot about
Speaker 1: being a human, being, a parent, being a spouse. How
Speaker 1: do you manage those things? You know? I always tell people,
Speaker 1: and I'm happy to share it here on your show
Speaker 1: that my mentor when I was at Iowa was a
Speaker 1: guy named James Allen McPherson, first black man I believe
Speaker 1: to graduate from Harvard Law, first black man win a
Speaker 1: Pulitzer Prise, exceptionally deep human being. You felt like you
Speaker 1: were in communion with a very very deep soul when
Speaker 1: you were learning from him, or even just in his presence.
Speaker 1: And always he would ask me about my family and
Speaker 1: about my wife because I went through Iowa under sort
Speaker 1: of strange circumstances. My family was living north of Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: and I was kind of community into Iowa City back
Speaker 1: and forth every Monday and Friday, and he knew that
Speaker 1: I was doing that. He'd ask about them, and then
Speaker 1: sometimes he would say to us, you know, the Pulitzer
Speaker 1: Prise isn't going to visit you in the nursing home.
Speaker 1: I think about that all the time, because you know,
Speaker 1: especially when we think about comparing our lives to are
Speaker 1: people comparing their relative success to other people? Like you
Speaker 1: see somebody win a big literary prize, or you know,
Speaker 1: their book is made into a movie, and you think
Speaker 1: they've they've got everything. Our culture moves so quick that
Speaker 1: you know, it's like if I had to tell you
Speaker 1: who won the World Series two years ago, I couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. You know, I couldn't tell you who won
Speaker 1: the Pulitzer Prize three years ago. But the important things
Speaker 1: are that generational work that you were talking about. How
Speaker 1: do you raise a decent human being who can in
Speaker 1: turn rate as there's another decent human being. Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I think about what you just said often, which is,
Speaker 1: even if you get the pinnacle of success, those big moments,
Speaker 1: the Pulitzer Prize, the Oscar Award, the podcast of the
Speaker 1: Year from Apple, whatever those things are, there's a momentary
Speaker 1: burst of wow. You know, But like you said, the
Speaker 1: culture moves so fast, it's like that is forgotten by
Speaker 1: the people two days later. They're not paying any attention
Speaker 1: to it. Those things don't nourish us. I was having
Speaker 1: a conversation with a woman the other day, and she
Speaker 1: was talking about what satisfies the soul, and we don't
Speaker 1: need to get into what the soul means. I think
Speaker 1: we all have a sense of it being something deeper, right,
Speaker 1: And she was like, it's never the external award, it's
Speaker 1: the work that goes into it. It's like you said,
Speaker 1: the pride in my craft, the getting better at the thing,
Speaker 1: the loving the thing for itself, And that those external metrics,
Speaker 1: not that they're not important, because they are in many
Speaker 1: cases right. Book sales are important because that's how you
Speaker 1: make a living. Right, So it's not to say that
Speaker 1: those things don't matter, but there never enough, you know.
Speaker 1: I read a quote recently that has been on my mind,
Speaker 1: similar to your one about you know, we always love
Speaker 1: our kids more than they love us. Another one I
Speaker 1: heard was it's hard to get enough of something that
Speaker 1: almost works. And that is why these things are so
Speaker 1: hard to see through, because they almost work, or they
Speaker 1: temporarily work. You know. All this would be so easy
Speaker 1: to see through if getting a new car gave you
Speaker 1: no enjoyment, you'd just be like, who cares, it's a car, right,
Speaker 1: but gives you a little bit of enjoyment for a
Speaker 1: little bit It's just that we habitually overestimate the importance
Speaker 1: of those things. Yeah, I give you credit, Like I
Speaker 1: didn't expect that you would motion towards this little column
Speaker 1: that I write from my local newspaper, which I'm sure
Speaker 1: the literata in New York City and Los Angeles must
Speaker 1: be befuddled by, Like why am I writing for a
Speaker 1: paper that almost nobody really reads and nobody has heard
Speaker 1: of beyond the Chippewa Valley of west central Wisconsin. But
Speaker 1: I did that for the best reasons, Like our newspapers circulation,
Speaker 1: like many newspapers, was in sharp decline, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to do something a little different. So they said, do
Speaker 1: you want to write an essay for us every three
Speaker 1: weeks right about whatever you want? You know, initially they
Speaker 1: told me there was a word count over time, Like
Speaker 1: the word count really didn't matter. I could just do
Speaker 1: whatever I wanted. And what I found was in writing
Speaker 1: those essays, I was writing for the purest reasons. I
Speaker 1: was highlighting people in my community, or I was talking
Speaker 1: about my family, or I was talking about our local
Speaker 1: food systems or the environment around here. And I was
Speaker 1: also working on my nonfiction craft, you know, mostly I'm
Speaker 1: a novelist. I don't really write a ton of essays,
Speaker 1: and so at the beginning of that project, I wasn't
Speaker 1: super satisfied with what I was writing, and over time
Speaker 1: I could see that the craft was improving it. But also,
Speaker 1: you know, Matthew Quick would say that there was a
Speaker 1: mission there, and my mission was writing about something beyond
Speaker 1: money or prize or accolades from the literati. It was
Speaker 1: community based and it's one of the best things I've
Speaker 1: ever done, you know, And no one sees it. Really
Speaker 1: People in our community see it, and I think they're
Speaker 1: pretty darn excited about it. But to our earlier point,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to make a lot of money from it.
Speaker 1: I ain't gonna win a big prize. But the more
Speaker 1: things that I've found in my life that you do
Speaker 1: for your craft, or you do for your community or
Speaker 1: your neighbors man, the reward is huge on that stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just huge. As you can tell. I do a
Speaker 1: lot of research on the people that come on the show,
Speaker 1: and so I did ferret out your column, and I
Speaker 1: love that you do that because I do think it
Speaker 1: speaks to these things we're talking about, which is like
Speaker 1: paying attention to the small parts of our lives that
Speaker 1: really matter, and paying attention to our communities and our
Speaker 1: families and our craft. And the psychologists would say, like,
Speaker 1: most of that stuff is more intrinsic motivation, right, It's
Speaker 1: closer to home than extrinsic motivation, which is what the
Speaker 1: New York Times, in the New York Book Review and
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Times are saying about your novels. You know,
Speaker 1: this column is doing nothing to bolster any of that, right,
Speaker 1: and yet it's still deeply rewarding. And this echoes back
Speaker 1: a little bit to what I was saying about raising
Speaker 1: good children. I think the other thing that our culture
Speaker 1: has done, in addition to giving us all sorts of
Speaker 1: material things to compare our lives too, is it's given
Speaker 1: us the ability to compare our lives with people doing
Speaker 1: what seemed to be these really amazing and fantastic things,
Speaker 1: and that often leads us not looking to do the
Speaker 1: little things that we can do that are actually far
Speaker 1: more satisfying than they seem from the outside. And I
Speaker 1: think your column that you're doing is a perfect example
Speaker 1: of that. Thank you very much. Yeah, And also, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean the ways that we're comparing ourselves to other
Speaker 1: folks online or in the pages of glossy magazines, at
Speaker 1: the grocery store or whatever it is. It's so easy
Speaker 1: to forget that all of that has been manufactured and
Speaker 1: edited and photo shopped. It's in front of the camera.
Speaker 1: You're not seeing anything behind the camera, you know. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so increasingly I'm just focusing on that. And even though
Speaker 1: I began this podcast by telling you that the bad
Speaker 1: wolf seems to be dominating my thoughts more than the
Speaker 1: good wolf or the work of feeding the good wolf.
Speaker 1: I mean that's another example, like I've been doing this column,
Speaker 1: which doesn't get a great deal of exposure during that
Speaker 1: three years that I've been sort of focused on, like, man,
Speaker 1: I'm not making enough progress on this novel. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe I need to be a little easier
Speaker 1: on myself. I've been doing other things that have mattered.
Speaker 1: It's not like I haven't been writing at all. I've
Speaker 1: probably produced two books worth of material during the last
Speaker 1: two three years. It's just not the stuff that I'm
Speaker 1: normally acquainted with producing, if that makes sense, Totally totally,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I do think that it's been a challenging
Speaker 1: few years for lots of people in lots of different ways,
Speaker 1: and and I think, as it's a little bit more
Speaker 1: knock on wood in the rear view mirror, I've noticed
Speaker 1: the ways that it affected me that I didn't even
Speaker 1: see at the time. You know, if you'd asked me
Speaker 1: at the time, I'd say, look, we're okay, none of
Speaker 1: us are sick, we're healthy. I've done my work from
Speaker 1: home always, so I'm doing it from home now. I
Speaker 1: just would have said, like, it's not having much of
Speaker 1: an impact on me. But I'm able to see in retrospect,
Speaker 1: similar to you, I'm not a hugely social person, but
Speaker 1: the amount of it that I did have was more
Speaker 1: important to my well being than I thought. It's either
Speaker 1: started to come back or I've noticed I've had to
Speaker 1: really work to get it to come back. That I've
Speaker 1: seen like, yeah, okay, that was tough. And for me,
Speaker 1: like your mother, I look at people who had kids
Speaker 1: through the pandemic, and I think, my god, like, what
Speaker 1: a time, What a time to suddenly have your children
Speaker 1: at home that you now have to figure out how
Speaker 1: to take care of in school, and you've still got
Speaker 1: to figure out how to do your career, and like
Speaker 1: I look at parents that have been through this with
Speaker 1: a great deal of admiration and respect because it looked
Speaker 1: hard to me. Yeah, I always wish in podcasts that
Speaker 1: the guests were given more time to ask the host questions.
Speaker 1: So when you think about it, like what did you
Speaker 1: miss specifically, what was it about the COVID time that
Speaker 1: you missed? Socially, I think that what I have discovered
Speaker 1: is that I need some degree of novelty in my life.
Speaker 1: I don't want to need it. And I'm a Zen practitioner,
Speaker 1: and Zen we say like the most ordinary thing is
Speaker 1: what you pay tension to, like just love what's right
Speaker 1: in front of you. And I think that's good advice generally,
Speaker 1: and I try and do that, and I think there's
Speaker 1: a depth that emerges there, and there's a part of
Speaker 1: my psychological makeup that needs to be exposed to different things.
Speaker 1: And I start to languish when i'm not. And so
Speaker 1: whether that be other people in person, whether that be
Speaker 1: getting out to a bookstore, whether that be going to
Speaker 1: see a live concert, whether that's having dinner with a friend,
Speaker 1: whether whatever it is. You know, so I've post again.
Speaker 1: I keep not knowing what to call it, but the
Speaker 1: thing I've sort of made myself do, and I've had
Speaker 1: to make myself do it because I think the pandemic
Speaker 1: settled me into being a homebody more than I want
Speaker 1: to be. That it became comfortable. It's generally Wednesday night,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't always have to be where I have
Speaker 1: to leave the house and I have to do something
Speaker 1: that involves another person. It doesn't matter what it is,
Speaker 1: but I have to do it, and it's been really
Speaker 1: good for me. Like we're in Atlanta right now and
Speaker 1: to I am going to a yoga class with like
Speaker 1: a twenty four year old who lives in this area
Speaker 1: that we're in, that I've just had a couple of
Speaker 1: conversations with, and I'm like, well, all right, let's go
Speaker 1: do that. Not that yoga is that different, but going
Speaker 1: with a twenty four year old is not my own son.
Speaker 1: So I think that's what it was for me, and
Speaker 1: recognizing that I need some novelty and some change in
Speaker 1: my day to day environment. Did you get COVID No?
Speaker 1: I have not. I have not. I mean, I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm one of the last ones standing. Was your
Speaker 1: attention span affected by COVID? By the quarantine? I don't
Speaker 1: know about my attention span. My work really didn't change
Speaker 1: much in that. Again, I didn't suddenly have kids at
Speaker 1: home that we're fracturing my normal four hours of concentration time.
Speaker 1: You know, my life is pretty quiet now, and so
Speaker 1: the bulk of my life looked the same. I read
Speaker 1: a couple hours every night before bed and getting ready
Speaker 1: for interviews. I have two conversations a week, you know,
Speaker 1: where I'm kind of focused, and so I don't know
Speaker 1: if my attention span fractured. I think what happened was
Speaker 1: my overall baseline level of enthusiasm about life drained down
Speaker 1: a little bit. I have a depressive tendency anyway, and
Speaker 1: I think it just was little bit by little bit.
Speaker 1: It was like the level of my mood just slowly
Speaker 1: seeped down. I didn't even really notice it that much,
Speaker 1: but I think it was happening. Yeah. A cloud, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a low ceiling cloud. Yeah. So we are near Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: We've been working on a gratitude episode that will probably
Speaker 1: have been out by the time listeners hear this. And
Speaker 1: I just taught a workshop on gratitude recently, so it's
Speaker 1: been on my mind a lot. And in one of
Speaker 1: your local columns. There was an idea that you had
Speaker 1: that I thought we could talk about, and you got
Speaker 1: the idea from someone else who got it from someone else.
Speaker 1: But the idea was simply choose a tree and every
Speaker 1: day thank that tree for allowing you to Breathe talk
Speaker 1: to me about that experiment, why you decided to do it,
Speaker 1: and what you chose and what that's kind of done
Speaker 1: for you. Yeah. Well, I think the idea came to
Speaker 1: me through my friend, the writer Kristen Browski and another writer,
Speaker 1: Dean Cooper's I think I'm pronouncing his name right. I
Speaker 1: met them at the Beargrass writing a retreat outside of Missoula, Montana,
Speaker 1: which was a really wonderful transformative event for me because,
Speaker 1: as I said, I'm more or less kind of a
Speaker 1: hermit here, you know, focusing on my book. So when
Speaker 1: I get out and get a chance to talk to
Speaker 1: other writers, it's it's meaningful. And there were a lot
Speaker 1: of conversations about the natural world there, and this idea
Speaker 1: of thinking a tree came up. And I love the
Speaker 1: idea right from the start, but it seemed like as
Speaker 1: somebody who cares about the natural world a lot and
Speaker 1: who lives on sixteen acres of land with many, many trees.
Speaker 1: This was a serious question that I put years into
Speaker 1: thinking about. Maybe I shouldn't, Maybe I should have chosen
Speaker 1: a random picking your favorite song. Sure, yes, so I
Speaker 1: thought about it. And you know, there was a white
Speaker 1: pine that stands alone in a field that's very charismatic
Speaker 1: and slightly wind blown. I thought about that tree. I
Speaker 1: thought about this sort of choke cherry tree that drops
Speaker 1: beautiful blossoms in the springtime, and how much I adore
Speaker 1: those blossoms. And eventually I came to one of the
Speaker 1: scraggliest trees on our property, which is a box elder tree,
Speaker 1: which is commonly hated in this part of west central Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: just thought of as a junk tree because its form
Speaker 1: is not very elegant and they tend to pop up
Speaker 1: along fence lines. But it's the first tree that I
Speaker 1: see in the morning when I look out my bedroom window,
Speaker 1: and it's the last tree that I see, probably before
Speaker 1: darkness falls. And there is something really wonderful and warm
Speaker 1: and positive now about seeing that tree, or walking beneath
Speaker 1: its branches and saying thank you, and realizing that the
Speaker 1: tree and I are interconnected in ways that I can't
Speaker 1: really always fathom. Also that that tree is immortal being
Speaker 1: that might not always be there. It could be that
Speaker 1: one day my neighbor who's a farmer, decides that the
Speaker 1: tree is a nuisance and too close to his fence
Speaker 1: line and cuts it down, And that's part of life.
Speaker 1: I hope that doesn't happen. But focusing on time and
Speaker 1: mortality and life and breath and my exhale and the
Speaker 1: birds that migrate and land in the bows of that tree,
Speaker 1: all of that, I feel like it's good work. It's
Speaker 1: work that we don't really recognize in America in two
Speaker 1: but it's work that I think, in some ways our
Speaker 1: ancestors were doing. Maybe they lost it for a little while,
Speaker 1: but I think, deep down maybe they were doing it
Speaker 1: all the time. So I would like to say that
Speaker 1: I religiously practice gratitude for that tree. That would be false.
Speaker 1: I don't do it every day, but the notion that
Speaker 1: I have the practice at all is important to me,
Speaker 1: because when I do practice gratitude for that treat, I
Speaker 1: get so much out of it. Yeah, I love everything
Speaker 1: you just said there. I loved the idea when I
Speaker 1: read it, and you know, you hit on a couple
Speaker 1: of things there that the scientific research on gratitude really
Speaker 1: points to, which is that there's a little bit of savoring, right,
Speaker 1: There's a little bit of pain closer attention to it.
Speaker 1: There's also the recognition that this thing may not always
Speaker 1: be here, you know. That's one of the things gratitude
Speaker 1: can really help us do is appreciate what actually is here.
Speaker 1: And one tool of doing that is to imagine it's
Speaker 1: not you know, imagine it's gone. How how much I
Speaker 1: would appreciate it, or that I'm gone, you know, and
Speaker 1: then I'm I'm here now I can appreciate the things
Speaker 1: that are here now. Yep. So I would be remiss
Speaker 1: if we didn't talk about one last thing before we
Speaker 1: wrap up. I get so much a sense in your
Speaker 1: work about friendship, and most of it is friendship among men,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think you write very well about
Speaker 1: the challenges that come as an adult in continuing friendships.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about why that topic
Speaker 1: is so important to you and what some of the
Speaker 1: difficulties you've seen are. Yeah. Well, it's funny when you
Speaker 1: start off being a writer. I don't think you really
Speaker 1: consider themes, or at least I never did. I've been
Speaker 1: really fortunate in my life to have deep, long lasting
Speaker 1: friendships with people that I've known since I was as
Speaker 1: young as ten years old that are still in my
Speaker 1: life in a major, major sort of way. I've also
Speaker 1: worked really hard to maintain friendships through letters. I have
Speaker 1: pen pals that I've been writing two for over twenty years.
Speaker 1: I think I'm fascinated by friendship because I think it's
Speaker 1: a unique human relationship. It is not, in my experience,
Speaker 1: it's based on money or power, or sex or any
Speaker 1: of a number of other motivations that I think are
Speaker 1: more crass to me. Friendship is about enjoying your time
Speaker 1: with another person and having fun, and other things developed
Speaker 1: out of that, like respect or you know, learning something
Speaker 1: like that. I guess I'm just fascinated by the way
Speaker 1: that people find each other that way and how they
Speaker 1: maintain it, and that it's not easy to be friends
Speaker 1: with somebody. That we do have darker human emotions that
Speaker 1: get in the way, like jealousy. You know, I've been
Speaker 1: friends with people for a long time and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, somebody makes a pile of money, and
Speaker 1: you think, well, why don't I have a pile of money,
Speaker 1: or why don't I have that success? Or why does
Speaker 1: their marriage look so easy? Why did their children seem
Speaker 1: so well behaved? All these sorts of you know, questions
Speaker 1: that really aren't that important, but but we're can pass
Speaker 1: them and and working on the Friendship is just I
Speaker 1: don't know, it fascinates me. And friendship was one of
Speaker 1: the things that got me through COVID. You know, Matthew
Speaker 1: Quick was talking about his movie club. I have a
Speaker 1: vinyl record club. Once a month we would meet. We'd
Speaker 1: exchange records through the mail, along with a handwritten letter
Speaker 1: about why we purchased this record for our friend. And
Speaker 1: then we drink a lot, way too much on our
Speaker 1: Skype meetings and get really emotional talking about music and
Speaker 1: the way it made us feel. And man, that was
Speaker 1: one thing that really carried me through. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: I just find myself coming back to it every single time.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to. It's not like I set out
Speaker 1: to write a novel about friendship, but it's something I
Speaker 1: think I'm trying to understand better with each and every book.
Speaker 1: Friendship is really important to me. It's one of the
Speaker 1: things I feel like I have been fairly good at
Speaker 1: in my life. Some people are savants at it, like
Speaker 1: Chris our our producer and editor is I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just amazing all the friends he has. But it's something
Speaker 1: it's always been important to me. But reading your books,
Speaker 1: I really did get that sense. I really started to
Speaker 1: see that the friendship is there. But then there's all
Speaker 1: these life elements that we've around it. Like you said,
Speaker 1: jealousy one of the things in Shotgun Love songs that
Speaker 1: I loved. And maybe you intended this, maybe you didn't,
Speaker 1: But the core friendship is between Hank. His life looks
Speaker 1: a lot like yours. He's a good father, he's a
Speaker 1: good husband, he lives on some land. He's not a writer.
Speaker 1: But and then the other is Lee, who is a
Speaker 1: famous rock musician who travels the world. And it's so
Speaker 1: interesting because early in the novel it's all Hank looking
Speaker 1: at Lee and going man, you know, occasionally having these
Speaker 1: moments of like look what Lee has, you know, But
Speaker 1: then later as it starts to circle around, and I
Speaker 1: hope I'm not giving away any key plot points, it's
Speaker 1: Lee who starts looking at Hank and going, man, what
Speaker 1: you've got is what I want? And I just found
Speaker 1: that arc fascinating and to see how up until some
Speaker 1: late in the game event that the two of them
Speaker 1: negotiated that pretty well, right, like they found a way
Speaker 1: to negotiate. Our lives are very different, but our friendship survives.
Speaker 1: And there's some beautiful scenes later on after there's a
Speaker 1: breach in their friendship about the way they start to
Speaker 1: put it back together. And and and again, I don't want
Speaker 1: to give anything away, but they do it by getting
Speaker 1: up to some of the high jinks that they would
Speaker 1: have gotten up to his teenagers. I found the whole
Speaker 1: thing really an interesting look at friendship. Thank you very much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a book that still is finding readers around the world.
Speaker 1: It's like in its eighth or ninth printing in Spain.
Speaker 1: It was nominated for major awards in France. Hollywood has
Speaker 1: poked at it with the stick several times. So maybe
Speaker 1: someday it will become a movie. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: And that was my first book. I was naive about
Speaker 1: everything I did. I didn't have any expectation that it
Speaker 1: was going to be published. Eric, I mean none, A
Speaker 1: guy from Old Claire, Wisconsin who knew no successful novel
Speaker 1: is growing up you know, I've had a string of
Speaker 1: crappy jobs up until that point, and I just had
Speaker 1: no idea it was going to get published at all.
Speaker 1: But what I love in hindsight about the writing of
Speaker 1: that book and what I accomplish is that I think
Speaker 1: it's emotionally extremely honest and vulnerable, and it talks about
Speaker 1: friendship and love in really earnest ways and in some
Speaker 1: ways I'm always trying to get back to writing that
Speaker 1: book and how open I was, you know, invulnerable in
Speaker 1: writing that book, because you could imagine if you were
Speaker 1: a literary critic in New York and what you really
Speaker 1: wanted to champion was ironic, super intellectual books. Shotgun Love
Speaker 1: Songs is not going to be your book. You know.
Speaker 1: It is a book about friendship and home and community,
Speaker 1: and it really is passionate about those things. But man,
Speaker 1: readers love that book. Yeah, it's a great book. I
Speaker 1: loved your latest one though, God's be a great deal also.
Speaker 1: So all right, well we are out of time. You
Speaker 1: and I are going to continue in the post show
Speaker 1: conversation for a little bit, and I'm going to ask
Speaker 1: you a little bit about what do you think keeps
Speaker 1: friendship going and will also probably talk about a beautiful
Speaker 1: walk in the rain. Listeners, if you'd like access to
Speaker 1: the post show conversation and other benefits like an episode
Speaker 1: I do each week called Teaching Song and a poem,
Speaker 1: and the joy of supporting something that you care about,
Speaker 1: go to when you feed dot net slash join Nick.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for coming on. I've really enjoyed talking
Speaker 1: with you. Thank you so much for having me on
Speaker 1: your podcast. It's a podcast that I've started to listen
Speaker 1: to earnestly on my walks with my dog, and it
Speaker 1: makes me feel less alone as a writer. That's for sure,
Speaker 1: to understand that I'm not the only one having these
Speaker 1: challenges and feelings. So thank you, Thank you. We could
Speaker 1: all use the occasional nudge, a little wake up from
Speaker 1: the autopilot we fall into in our day to day routine.
Speaker 1: That's why we send brief text reminders to listeners of
Speaker 1: the show for free. The texts help you stay on
Speaker 1: track with what you're learning from the podcast episodes we
Speaker 1: release on Tuesdays and Friday's. They periodically prompt you to
Speaker 1: pause for a second and become more present and mindful,
Speaker 1: and encourage you to engage with the week's podcast topics
Speaker 1: in a bite sized, short and simple manner. We've heard
Speaker 1: from listeners that these texts help them take a moment
Speaker 1: to reconnect with what's important amidst the business of daily life.
Speaker 1: Someone said it feels like a little bit of wisdom
Speaker 1: is being whispered into my psyche, which I thought was cool.
Speaker 1: So if you'd like to hear from us a few
Speaker 1: times a week via text, go to one you Feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash text and sign up for free. If
Speaker 1: what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider
Speaker 1: making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast.
Speaker 1: When you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge,
Speaker 1: you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our
Speaker 1: way of saying thank you for your support now. We
Speaker 1: are so grateful for the members of our community. We
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support,
Speaker 1: and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To
Speaker 1: learn more, make a donation at any level and become
Speaker 1: a member of the one you Feed community, go to
Speaker 1: one you Feed dot net slash Join the One You
Speaker 1: Feed podcast. Would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for
Speaker 1: supporting the show.