Speaker 1: It's not a perfect piece, but in a strange way,
Speaker 1: that kind of makes me enjoy it more because you
Speaker 1: can see how it could evolve into something like that.
Speaker 2: It's emanating from it. It's a live the piece.
Speaker 3: I can't wait. I don't want perfection. Perfection should actually
Speaker 3: go in a big hole in the back garden.
Speaker 4: Yeah, along with the words should hello, I'm mini driver.
Speaker 4: I've always loved Preust's questionnaire. It was originally in nineteenth
Speaker 4: century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty
Speaker 4: five questions aimed at revealing the other player's true nature.
Speaker 4: In asking different people the same set of questions, you
Speaker 4: can make observations about which truths appear to be universal.
Speaker 4: And it made me wonder, what if these questions were
Speaker 4: just the jumping off point, what greater depths would be
Speaker 4: revealed if I asked these questions as conversation starters. So
Speaker 4: I adapted Prus's questionnaire and I wrote my own seven
Speaker 4: questions that I personally think are pertinent to a person's story.
Speaker 4: They are when and where were you happiest? What is
Speaker 4: the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real
Speaker 4: or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you
Speaker 4: most like answered, what person, place, or experience has shaped
Speaker 4: you the most? What would be your last meal? And
Speaker 4: can you tell me something in your life that's grown
Speaker 4: out of a personal disaster. And I've gathered a group
Speaker 4: of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and
Speaker 4: humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You
Speaker 4: may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions.
Speaker 4: We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to
Speaker 4: their experience, or the most surprising, or created the most
Speaker 4: fertile ground to connect. My guest today is the musician
Speaker 4: and composer Rufus Wainwright. I remember waking up super hungover
Speaker 4: in the early summer of nineteen ninety eight. Elliot Smith
Speaker 4: had been sleeping on my sofa, and we went down
Speaker 4: to this old diner called the One oh One, which
Speaker 4: was near where I used to live, and we listened
Speaker 4: to Rufus's self titled first album on my CD Walkman
Speaker 4: leaning in so we both had a headphone. I remember
Speaker 4: how much we loved a song called April Fools and
Speaker 4: how that record became the anthem of our summer. Then
Speaker 4: I used to see Rufus at the Chelsea Hotel where
Speaker 4: my aunt Serena Bass used to have a bar, and
Speaker 4: when his next record Poses came out, I always wanted
Speaker 4: to go up to him and tell him how his
Speaker 4: music spoke and gave voice to a part of myself.
Speaker 4: I couldn't articulate. I never did, though. He's been one
Speaker 4: of the most diversely prolific artists of the past twenty
Speaker 4: five years, in my opinion, writing operas and musicals, setting
Speaker 4: Shakespeare's sonnets to music, and writing songs that hum with
Speaker 4: a kind of raw Americana that reaches out into folk
Speaker 4: music but is really an invention all of his own.
Speaker 4: I am so happy I got to talk to him today,
Speaker 4: and I hope you love our conversation as much as
Speaker 4: I do. I was talking with Sam the other time. Yes,
Speaker 4: we were talking about our mutual adoration.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I know, I know we've all.
Speaker 1: Sam and I have both just been through, you know,
Speaker 1: the whirlwind of the British of the British press with Also,
Speaker 1: you know, I just came back from London because I
Speaker 1: put on my first musical. I'm very happy with the piece.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's necessarily finished. I will say though,
Speaker 1: that experiencing the kind of English press and how they
Speaker 1: just once they kind of find a little crack or anything.
Speaker 1: It's just amazing how it just it's becomes like a
Speaker 1: blood sport between all the different papers, and you know,
Speaker 1: certain people are you know, so so so whatever. So
Speaker 1: it's it's uh and I know with samso movie, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a it's a really brutal world over
Speaker 1: there in that in that sense, so so yeah.
Speaker 2: Well but I still love England.
Speaker 4: So oh my god.
Speaker 3: I know I have only ever really been at the
Speaker 3: hands of the British press, and it is there is
Speaker 3: honestly nowhere more that likes blood letting more.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's astonishing. Love.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to crack on with these questions, and
Speaker 3: I'm so grateful that you're here.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 3: What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, the greatest love I have to say,
Speaker 1: or I hate to say it, but I don't hate
Speaker 1: to say it, are with some dead composers. For me,
Speaker 1: I really I have this inordinate love for opera composers,
Speaker 1: especially Verdi and even you know, we went to see
Speaker 1: a Puccini opera the other day in New York, and
Speaker 1: I had a similar reaction or Mahler or any of
Speaker 1: these great composers, because it is, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: can always go to them and listen to their music
Speaker 1: and be comforted by their spirit and their artists offerings,
Speaker 1: and it always does the trick, you know, it always
Speaker 1: does the trick. So I think my love for great composers,
Speaker 1: that really is what keeps me going in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways.
Speaker 4: Wow, is it the turnd do that you just thought?
Speaker 2: No, I saw you.
Speaker 3: My partner's mother is a lifelong Metropolitan opera goer.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 4: And she took him backstage. She took him on at all.
Speaker 3: And Henry, who's fifteen, said that they were bringing up
Speaker 3: the Zephyr early sets and actually.
Speaker 4: Getting to see them. And he said, watching the sets
Speaker 4: coming up and on the hydraulics and then hearing these
Speaker 4: opera singers warming up, he said, it was the most
Speaker 4: incredible feeling. And he has no reference.
Speaker 3: He's never been to the opera, he'd never been backstage
Speaker 3: at the Metropolitan, so there was something really extraordinary about
Speaker 3: kind of seeing it through his Oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, no, No. Opera houses have always been
Speaker 1: my trick, My Catheeds was.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, now, why do you think that is?
Speaker 1: I mean, that happened early for me. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: because I composed a requiem mass that's premiering in Paris
Speaker 1: on the fourteenth of June. It's called the Dream Requiem,
Speaker 1: and there's actually lots of singers and soprano. There's also
Speaker 1: a narrator in it because there's a Byron poem that
Speaker 1: kind of interweaves through it. And actually Meryl Streep is
Speaker 1: going to be the narrator. Yeah, so she's coming in
Speaker 1: for that, So we're going to do that concert. So
Speaker 1: it's exciting. But that's all because when I was thirteen,
Speaker 1: I heard Veriti's Requiem for the first time. My mother
Speaker 1: brought it home and we listened to it together, my
Speaker 1: mother and my aunt, the three of us did, and
Speaker 1: it just by the end of that two hour stint,
Speaker 1: I was a complete opera fanatic. It was like my
Speaker 1: own requiem in a lot of ways of my childhood
Speaker 1: and I just started going to operas all the time.
Speaker 1: It was nineteen eighty seven or so, and I knew
Speaker 1: I was gay, and you know, AIDS was everywhere, and
Speaker 1: it was a pretty brutal world.
Speaker 2: So opera. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It became my salvation in a lot of ways, just
Speaker 1: both the music and going to the opera house to
Speaker 1: seeing the sets and the singers and so forth.
Speaker 4: That's so funny.
Speaker 3: At my school you had to be in the choir
Speaker 3: and thirty's Requiem was the first piece that I learned.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty good one.
Speaker 3: By the way, starters you mean to go on, I
Speaker 3: thought they were all that good. I know that you're
Speaker 3: the child of musicians, But why do you think it
Speaker 3: was composers?
Speaker 4: Do you think it's because it was separate?
Speaker 1: What I love about the whole concept of being a composer,
Speaker 1: and this is, you know, being a traditional Western classical
Speaker 1: music composer is the trajectory, you know. I think it
Speaker 1: was Beethoven when he died. You know, he was obviously
Speaker 1: very sick and deaf, and apparently right before he died
Speaker 1: there was some thunder lightning and he kind of stood
Speaker 1: up and it was like he was trying to conduct it,
Speaker 1: you know, and then he died.
Speaker 2: And look, he arguably wrote.
Speaker 1: The most incredible music near the end of his life,
Speaker 1: like the last Quartets and the Misa Solemnis and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. In the Ninth Symphony, and that tends to
Speaker 1: be the goal for composers, is that you write the
Speaker 1: greatest stuff before you die, and most of them are
Speaker 1: like that. You know, Strauss's Four Last Songs or Verity's
Speaker 1: False Staff, you know, all of these great works. So
Speaker 1: I guess it's the trajectory that I admire, and this
Speaker 1: kind of constant deepening of your palette and trying to
Speaker 1: really make it better each time, which, of course the
Speaker 1: pop world is so lacking and has always been.
Speaker 2: You know, that's more.
Speaker 1: About youth and vigor and what's the hottest thing on
Speaker 1: the block right now, So it's an antidote to.
Speaker 2: That for me.
Speaker 4: My god, I'm thinking about you talking about having.
Speaker 3: Suffered whatever British press reactions to the musical that you've written,
Speaker 3: but you're answering that by going to Paris to perform
Speaker 3: a requiem written with Meryl Street narrating it. To me,
Speaker 3: it feels like that's the trajectory that you're talking about.
Speaker 3: It's not chasing the white hot popularity contest music.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And what's interesting about the requiem is that is that,
Speaker 1: like Verity, what I'm hoping is that, you know, if
Speaker 1: the piece does well, there's really pre requiem and post
Speaker 1: requiem for verity. After he wrote that piece, he became
Speaker 1: a much better composer because doing a religious piece you.
Speaker 2: Have to go to this other dimension.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not particularly religious per se, though I
Speaker 1: was a little shocked by how well it all fits,
Speaker 1: like all the Latin texts and the prayers and stuff like,
Speaker 1: it's all in there. But nonetheless, even if you're not
Speaker 1: a religious person, if you're writing religious music, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to at least try to believe in something.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, wait, did it encourage you to believe more
Speaker 3: in some Yeah?
Speaker 2: No, I question.
Speaker 1: I mean I was never baptized, but I had to
Speaker 1: go to church, you know, because of school and stuff
Speaker 1: as a kid. But I did have thoughts of maybe,
Speaker 1: you know, getting baptized just for the hell of it.
Speaker 1: But then I did go to church a few times,
Speaker 1: like over Christmas, I went to midnight Mass, and I
Speaker 1: was reminded of how boring.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: And how I really don't like the whole actually being
Speaker 1: in church and all of that stuff.
Speaker 2: I find it needs an update, major updates.
Speaker 1: I love it, an update, but the prayers themselves and
Speaker 1: the stories and also Jesus.
Speaker 2: I think there are.
Speaker 1: Things that Jesus professed which we need to actually really start,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking about.
Speaker 3: I think perhaps also we need our approach to be updated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think all of that.
Speaker 4: Could we need a little.
Speaker 2: Bit, Yeah, yeah, we need we love.
Speaker 4: Less Didge. Where and when were you happiest?
Speaker 2: I would say.
Speaker 1: Probably a few months ago when I had nothing to
Speaker 1: do in the evening and I was just having dinner
Speaker 1: with my husband and our thirteen year old daughter, Viva,
Speaker 1: and we were just talking about the day, and then
Speaker 1: afterwards we played the game of Uno. And I think
Speaker 1: that fundamentally, it's when I've been happiest. You know, those
Speaker 1: nights are few and far between because I work so much.
Speaker 1: But I just hit fifty And what I'm realizing is that,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're happiest is not necessarily when you're
Speaker 1: happiest that's good meaning, that's sort of you know, the
Speaker 1: euphoria of being happy is tricky. But when there's this
Speaker 1: sort of there's a moment of peace and calm and
Speaker 1: and just beauty, I guess that I think is true happiness,
Speaker 1: even though it's not you know, ecstatic. So yeah, because
Speaker 1: the ecstatic thing always I love it, obviously, but it
Speaker 1: also you know, I've had a lot of ecstatic moments
Speaker 1: when in fact I was very unhappy without sort ofly
Speaker 1: knowing it.
Speaker 3: I wonder if that is something that comes with age,
Speaker 3: because it was the same with love. It was like
Speaker 3: love had to be ecstatic or I didn't recognize it
Speaker 3: as love. And the same with happiness, and I think
Speaker 3: there's such a what's the word.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's mellowing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, around.
Speaker 3: Happiness and love. It's not less, it's ten times more,
Speaker 3: but not be.
Speaker 2: And it's what you refer back to.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the touching moments in my life
Speaker 1: are when I think of those evenings of just me
Speaker 1: and my husband and my daughter having a nice meal together,
Speaker 1: how important that is, and how great that is, and
Speaker 1: how thankful I am for that, and how happy I
Speaker 1: am in that space.
Speaker 4: Can I ask you about writing from that space?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yes, Like, is it harder to write from a happy
Speaker 3: place than it is from a sad place?
Speaker 1: Well, look, I was kind of licking some of my
Speaker 1: wounds from some of what the press said about Opening
Speaker 1: Night and really went to a dark place, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, all I could do was write
Speaker 1: another song, you know, And I started writing this other
Speaker 1: song and I think it's quite good, and it was
Speaker 1: a bit like, you know, you just got to move on
Speaker 1: to the next thing. And it did come from strife.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I don't want to say that.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, I think artists have to always kind of put
Speaker 1: themselves through all of it.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'd like to let go of that notion.
Speaker 2: I don't know. There's a grain of truth in there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So I don't know. I agree, No, I agree.
Speaker 3: I always think about Joni Mitchell, about her blowing up
Speaker 3: her relationship and then writing Blue because she was just
Speaker 3: too happy and too yeah yeah, was too beautiful as
Speaker 3: we yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: I think being fundamentally happy and in a good place
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily conducive with great art. But I could be wrong,
Speaker 1: and I'm willing to also accept that if I am, hopefully.
Speaker 4: What is the quality you like least about yourself?
Speaker 1: My lack of initiative and kind of terms of the
Speaker 1: heart meaning that I I don't know. I think with
Speaker 1: the arts and with artistic pursuits and even with my career,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good at shooting the arrow where it needs
Speaker 1: to go. But in terms of my personal life and
Speaker 1: so forth, I seem to have like this delayed reaction
Speaker 1: to everything. You know, I'll only realize three or four
Speaker 1: days later that I've been hurt emotionally or that I've
Speaker 1: done something a bit off, you know. And there are
Speaker 1: moments where I kind of know that I'm saying something
Speaker 1: or someone is saying something to me that's not productive,
Speaker 1: and I just sort of clam up. It's like a
Speaker 1: defense mechanism, and I just was in the moment I
Speaker 1: could actually say what I feel, and say what I need,
Speaker 1: and say what I really want and just you know,
Speaker 1: get to the meat of the matter. So that's what
Speaker 1: I hate about myself sometimes.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's interesting, the delay. But it's that it's not
Speaker 4: you thinking later, oh what I said about that person
Speaker 4: or to that person, but rather also for yourself. Like
Speaker 4: that's really interesting you saying I didn't know that i'd
Speaker 4: been hurt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: With things that you find difficult about yourself, do you
Speaker 3: consciously work on them when they're not actually happening, or
Speaker 3: do you notice them when they do and go shit,
Speaker 3: I got to get to that.
Speaker 1: Well, I found more now and once again, I'm still
Speaker 1: referring to this experience I had of putting on a musical.
Speaker 4: Do you talk about it? It's very fresh.
Speaker 1: So I've gone through that experience and now I find
Speaker 1: just now I'm back to life and back to normal
Speaker 1: quote unquote existence. Yes, there are things that you know,
Speaker 1: with bringing up a child, or being married, or or
Speaker 1: dealing with you know, financial things, you know, nuts and
Speaker 1: bolts of life that I'm like, I got to just
Speaker 1: deal with this right now. You know, I can't blank
Speaker 1: out here, and it's easy for me to just lie
Speaker 1: in my bed and oh, I'm this tortured artist who
Speaker 1: has no room for anything else but creativity in my mind.
Speaker 1: But the truth is that you actually should probably you know,
Speaker 1: express this, And so I kind of slip into the
Speaker 1: artist mood to kind of avert some just normal things
Speaker 1: in life which would eventually bites you in the ass.
Speaker 3: Well, as my dad said, you never run up a
Speaker 3: bar tab you don't eventually have to pay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's horribly.
Speaker 1: It's horrible, and I think especially now because you know,
Speaker 1: because we have a thirteen year old daughter and she's amazing,
Speaker 1: but it's a really treacherous road right now bringing up
Speaker 1: kids and yeah it is, and you've got to really
Speaker 1: be on the ball and be ready to act immediately.
Speaker 4: Real quickly.
Speaker 3: I agree, I agree, I mean it does it forces
Speaker 3: you to be like vigilantly present having a teenager.
Speaker 2: I'm so I'm trying to do that.
Speaker 4: What question would she most like answered?
Speaker 1: I would say, oh god, I'm going to kind of
Speaker 1: go for the million dollar one. You know what happens
Speaker 1: after death? Yeah, you know, it's the one question that
Speaker 1: nobody has the answer to.
Speaker 4: So do you think it would make your life better
Speaker 4: if you knew?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's something that and this goes back to like the
Speaker 1: composer thing is that is that you know, when you
Speaker 1: listen to that music, which is still so alive and
Speaker 1: still grappling with all of those big feelings and philosophies,
Speaker 1: there's always something screaming out from beyond the grave, you know,
Speaker 1: like come to me, or I know there's messages coming
Speaker 1: from there.
Speaker 2: You know that I hear loud and clear.
Speaker 1: I Mean, I can't say what they are exactly, but
Speaker 1: I'm very attuned to the other world. And if anything
Speaker 1: is just to like calm me down a little bit
Speaker 1: so I can focus on something else.
Speaker 3: I love it, So you'd like to know so that
Speaker 3: you can just relax a little.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I don't think we'll ever know.
Speaker 4: No, I don't. I don't. I don't know that we
Speaker 4: will eat. But you're sure. I think you're right. You
Speaker 4: can feel it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, no, I feel it all the time.
Speaker 4: Do you have a right from that place?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, right from that place all the time.
Speaker 1: I mean in my pieces, there's often references to death
Speaker 1: and whether it's gleeful or sad, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think that's probably my Irish side, you know, from the
Speaker 1: mcgaragyll side.
Speaker 4: Do you think that a requiem could be happy?
Speaker 2: Oh yes, very much so mine isn't those.
Speaker 4: Sadly, it definitely could be mine.
Speaker 1: It's when I think of happy requiems per se, I mean,
Speaker 1: I love for by the way.
Speaker 4: That's the one that was the second one that I
Speaker 4: learned to sing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: It has a very happy middle.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, has moments like that, and Mozart's requiem has
Speaker 1: a sort of sense of relief and peace. Mine the
Speaker 1: end especially is a little bit more spooky because it's
Speaker 1: a bit like where are we going?
Speaker 2: Where is this leading?
Speaker 4: Well, in terms of you wondering where are we going?
Speaker 1: Or yeah, well that's are we being led to salvation?
Speaker 1: Or are we being led to a living or are
Speaker 1: we being led to hell? There's a real question mark
Speaker 1: at the end of mine. It ends with like a
Speaker 1: child's chorus and they're kind of being led off. But
Speaker 1: it could also be like the pie piper.
Speaker 4: Oh that's creepy. I like it. Yeah, that's super creepy.
Speaker 4: So actually your answer to the what question do you
Speaker 4: most like answered that is something that you ruminate on?
Speaker 1: Is this after Yeah, I think on one end and
Speaker 1: one thing I'm obsessed with, and I'm also very afraid
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: It fascinates me. Do you know?
Speaker 3: I became less frightened of it when my mother died
Speaker 3: because I keep thinking, if she's there, I have this
Speaker 3: idea of tethering that because she.
Speaker 4: Was this portal in that there will be some sort
Speaker 4: of like you know, like the guys doing the sammaphore
Speaker 4: or me with the aeroplane. I just can imagine her
Speaker 4: there with headphones on and.
Speaker 3: Like two cons and like a high vis vest, being
Speaker 3: like in coming this way, this way to paradise.
Speaker 4: Men.
Speaker 1: I had to serve of an opposite experience than that
Speaker 1: with my mother, because my mother passed away too, about
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, but it was her birthday, it was
Speaker 1: my birthday, sorry, And this was maybe six or seven
Speaker 1: years after she died. And she wrote this song called Mendocino,
Speaker 1: which was a beautiful song and it's obviously it takes
Speaker 1: place in Mendocino, California, where I'd never been. And so
Speaker 1: I decided to take a trip to Mendocino, my husband
Speaker 1: and I and we had this little dog named Puccini,
Speaker 1: this beautiful little dog, and we went to Mendocino and
Speaker 1: it was gorgeous and it was a wonderful day, and
Speaker 1: it was my birthday and I sang her song on
Speaker 1: the beach and we filmed it, and it was this
Speaker 1: kind of like a happy moment, a little maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit like what we talked about before, like are
Speaker 1: you sure you're happy when you're happy? And then the
Speaker 1: next day our dog was killed by a big dog.
Speaker 1: We had a little puppy and this big dog killed
Speaker 1: Puccini in front of us, And there was a definite
Speaker 1: feeling that I had, and it had to do with
Speaker 1: my mother. She was like, don't come too close to
Speaker 1: me now, like it was like, don't tempt death this way.
Speaker 1: It was very Kate, Wow, it's this fascinats move. And
Speaker 1: I had moments when I love death and you know
Speaker 1: when I wish for it certainly.
Speaker 3: So what person, place, or experience most altered your life.
Speaker 1: I would definitely say that when I decided to go
Speaker 1: to rehab back in the nineties of my own volition,
Speaker 1: that was an amazing gift of grace that I bestowed
Speaker 1: upon myself because I wasn't forced to go there and
Speaker 1: I just kind of packed up everything and I knew
Speaker 1: I had to get my shit together. I didn't stay
Speaker 1: sober necessarily the whole time, and it was kind of
Speaker 1: a rocky road for a while, and it's a battle
Speaker 1: that you never totally get over. But just having that
Speaker 1: moment at that point in my life, when I was
Speaker 1: twenty seven twenty eight, of just saying like, stop the world,
Speaker 1: I got to take care of myself. I'm stepping out
Speaker 1: and I'm going to go off and do this was
Speaker 1: just so valuable. And I say that to this day, like,
Speaker 1: whether you stay sober or you don't stay sober, if
Speaker 1: you're able to just stop everything and just totally focus
Speaker 1: on yourself, one hundred percent nobody else for a good
Speaker 1: chunk of time. If you're able to do that, then
Speaker 1: do really take that chance, because it makes all the difference.
Speaker 1: So I'd say say that was probably a.
Speaker 4: Very very young to have been able to take yourself
Speaker 4: in hand like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was young.
Speaker 1: I mean there's other It's an interesting thing because I
Speaker 1: actually had no money at the time. I was pretty
Speaker 1: or i'd had some success. But what happened is I
Speaker 1: had done that the song halle for Shrek, and not
Speaker 1: knowing at all what that meant or anything, just I'd
Speaker 1: done it in an afternoon because they told me to
Speaker 1: do it, and then my life was all crazy and
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I really have to go away
Speaker 1: to rehab. And then the day after I decided to
Speaker 1: do that, my first check arrived for Hallelujah, and it
Speaker 1: was for seventy five dollars and it was the exact
Speaker 1: amount of money needed to go right into rehab. So
Speaker 1: it was like my first big check ever was from
Speaker 1: that song. And that's the other thing is that I
Speaker 1: think if you really do anything like that profound and
Speaker 1: it's true, and you really have the intent to try
Speaker 1: to follow through on it, you know the world will
Speaker 1: help you get there.
Speaker 2: So I was lucky to have that experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think thatwithstanding the storm and keeping on is
Speaker 3: is most of the battle.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, totally totally.
Speaker 4: What would be your last meal?
Speaker 2: My last meal? Oh my god?
Speaker 1: Yes, it would definitely be Vener schnitzel. First, I would
Speaker 1: say Vener schnitzel by my husband, because he makes amazing
Speaker 1: vener schnitzel.
Speaker 4: Is he German or is he Austrians German?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's German but he but he can make a
Speaker 1: really good vener stencil. Second though, is the Veener Schnitzel
Speaker 1: from Delawnay's in London.
Speaker 4: I love from the Delauney that's right.
Speaker 1: They Yeah, they do a great vanis Stinsel there, So
Speaker 1: it would be a Delaunay vener Sninsel.
Speaker 3: So you'd have double schnitzel. I'm actually double schnitzel. Yeah,
Speaker 3: husband schnitzel and then they.
Speaker 4: Very good. Now did you like that before you met
Speaker 4: your husband or is it because he that's a love food?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean I I think I think I knew
Speaker 1: I loved it, but then you know, subsequently he would
Speaker 1: make it. But we would also go on these wondrous
Speaker 1: Viener Schnitzel expeditions, you know, go to Vienna and all that.
Speaker 1: And also especially there's a great place in Berlin. You
Speaker 1: probably know, Borchard's.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great it has an amazing but also
Speaker 1: especially in the spring, you have it with white asparagus,
Speaker 1: and that's a big German thing. And and and so
Speaker 1: the vner Stinsel and white asparagus is you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's I've died many times, I guess.
Speaker 3: Oh rufus. Thank you so much for answering my question.
Speaker 3: I want to tell you Phogocracy is one of my
Speaker 3: most played.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 4: It is, honestly, it's masterful and beautiful. I love the
Speaker 4: music that you make.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: Thank you a million times for doing this.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Many Questions. Is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver,
Speaker 4: Executive produced by Me and Aaron Kaufman, with production support
Speaker 4: from Jennifer Bassett, Zoey Denkler and Ali Perry. The theme
Speaker 4: music is also by Me and additional music by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 4: Special banks to Jim Nikolay Addison, O'Day, Henry Driver, Lisa Castella,
Speaker 4: Annick Oppenheim, a. Nick Muller and Annette Wolfe a w kPr,
Speaker 4: Will Pearson, Nicki Etoor, Morgan Levoy and mangesh At Tickedore