Speaker 1: You do need to go through difficulties in order to
Speaker 1: glean the information that you need to create something that
Speaker 1: transcends you that is better than your daily reality. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Matthew Quick. He's the
Speaker 1: author of nine novels, one of which is the New
Speaker 1: York Times bestseller The Silver Linings Playbook, which was made
Speaker 1: into an Oscar winning film. Matthew's work has been translated
Speaker 1: into more than thirty languages, and he's received a Penn
Speaker 1: Hemingway Award Honorable Mention. He was the l A Times
Speaker 1: Book Prize finalist and a New York Times Book Review
Speaker 1: Editor's Choice. Today, Matthew and Eric discussed his book We
Speaker 1: Are the Light Him Matthew, welcome back. Hey, it's great
Speaker 1: to be here with you today. Eric, thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. So when you were on last time, I
Speaker 1: said you were our first three time guest, and you
Speaker 1: were not the only person in that club. Some other
Speaker 1: people have joined you. But I do believe if you
Speaker 1: are now breaking ground again and you are the first
Speaker 1: four time guests. So congratulations, Thank you. I feel very honored.
Speaker 1: It's amazing that you've been on four times, given how
Speaker 1: long it's been since we last talked. Yeah it's been
Speaker 1: I think we were saying about five years years. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good to be back. Yeah, and you've been on
Speaker 1: a quite a journey. We're all on a journey, but
Speaker 1: you've been on one since then. We'll get into but
Speaker 1: let's start like we always do, because we have to
Speaker 1: do the parable and I think this will be your
Speaker 1: fourth crack at it, so hopefully you'll get it right
Speaker 1: this time. There's a grandparent talking with a grandchild and
Speaker 1: they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins, and the grandparents says, the one you feel.
Speaker 1: So I'd love 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. But you know, I've had
Speaker 1: a long relationship with that parable as a listener and
Speaker 1: you know, being on the show, and I've heard many
Speaker 1: people answer it, and it's interesting how my take on
Speaker 1: it it's changed over the years, and in my life
Speaker 1: right now with my creative work and the personal work
Speaker 1: I'm doing, has been heavily influenced by Young in analysis.
Speaker 1: So the way I looked at it now is would
Speaker 1: probably be a very young and take. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that Young teaches is that it's very dangerous
Speaker 1: to relegate things to shadow, and so why you might
Speaker 1: not want to feed um the bad wolf, so to speak.
Speaker 1: You definitely want to get to know the bad wolf.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times what we're afraid of, what
Speaker 1: we label is bad or wrong or ego, weeutend to
Speaker 1: not really deal with that. And there's two reasons why
Speaker 1: you want to get to know the dark side of
Speaker 1: your shadow or the bad wolf. One is because when
Speaker 1: you push it to unconscious, comes wild and when it
Speaker 1: comes back, because it's in you, it's never gonna leave.
Speaker 1: It will come back aggressively, It'll act very wild, it
Speaker 1: won't be domesticated, you won't know it, you won't have
Speaker 1: a relationship with it. So for example, if you label
Speaker 1: anger as as bad and you relegate that the shadow,
Speaker 1: when you need your anger and it comes out, it
Speaker 1: will it will come out in a way that it's
Speaker 1: very childish or you know, not very mature. And the
Speaker 1: other thing that young An's talk about is that there's
Speaker 1: gold in the shadow that again, sometimes you might need anger,
Speaker 1: you might need fear, you might need those things that
Speaker 1: we label as quote unquote bad, and they might have
Speaker 1: gifts that you can integrate into your life. So my
Speaker 1: work with the shadow work and the young and stuff
Speaker 1: that I've been doing is trying to go and tame
Speaker 1: the bad wolf, to get to know the bad wolf,
Speaker 1: and to integrate that all of the many aspects of
Speaker 1: my personality which are both good and bad, to integrate
Speaker 1: them all so that I can be whole. And that
Speaker 1: is part of my healing process. I love that, and
Speaker 1: I think it's so true. I'm curious what was it
Speaker 1: that drew you to Young in analysis as a way
Speaker 1: that you really did most of your healing, because in
Speaker 1: you know, reading the newsletters you've been putting out, reading
Speaker 1: your latest book, which has a lot of that, that's
Speaker 1: clearly been a really big and important piece for you.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious, out of all the different modalities
Speaker 1: that are out there, was there something about that that
Speaker 1: you were drawn to or how did that happen. Young
Speaker 1: was a bit of a mystic, you know. He was
Speaker 1: definitely a scientist first, but he was very interested in
Speaker 1: the transcendent. And I grew up in a very religious family,
Speaker 1: fundamentalist Christian and so that dance with the transcendent was
Speaker 1: kind of ongoing as a child. And then I kind
Speaker 1: of banished that two shut up. I went to college
Speaker 1: and I got educated. You know, I learned about the world,
Speaker 1: and you know, religion just seemed kind of silly to me.
Speaker 1: But Young talks a lot about synchronicity and just things
Speaker 1: happening for a reason, which can sound very like wooo.
Speaker 1: But I've always been drawn and curious about Young. I've
Speaker 1: been drawn to and if you read The Good Lucky
Speaker 1: Right Now, which is a book I published I think
Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen, a very tongue in cheek played
Speaker 1: with the idea of synchronicity and a lot of Young's
Speaker 1: ideas in a way that I thought was kind of
Speaker 1: goofy at the time. But again, I think I was
Speaker 1: dancing with it. Actually, my wife Alicia started listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast called This Young in Life, where every week
Speaker 1: they'll tackle a modern problem or you know, an issue
Speaker 1: or a symbol, and they'll deconstruct it, they'll it'll circumambulate it,
Speaker 1: and then they'll analyze a dream. And I started listening
Speaker 1: to this and I got really really into it, and
Speaker 1: it just kind of clicked. It felt like a way
Speaker 1: forward for me. And then I started researching and I
Speaker 1: found an analysts and it just felt like this was
Speaker 1: the thing for me. Interesting too, Young had a very
Speaker 1: big role in starting alcoholics Anonymous, like he was consulted,
Speaker 1: and so I think my alcoholism that I was not
Speaker 1: dealing with for decades, it was more than just you know,
Speaker 1: wanting to drink. It felt like this archetypal force that
Speaker 1: I needed to really kind of combat and I needed
Speaker 1: to go deep. I needed to go inside of myself.
Speaker 1: And the young and frame really allows you to have that,
Speaker 1: to be very introspective, to not be as concrete, to
Speaker 1: kind of dance with the trends, and I think that
Speaker 1: that was really really important for my recovery process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the young In idea that he gave to Bill Wilson
Speaker 1: that has always stuck with me is that the alcoholic
Speaker 1: was looking for the transcended that the very word spirits
Speaker 1: that we use for alcohol speaks to that desire for spirit,
Speaker 1: for something greater, for something bigger. You know. We could
Speaker 1: certainly talk about the ways that we use alcohol as
Speaker 1: a numbing agent to avoid things, but for me, it's
Speaker 1: always felt more true to say that I used alcohol
Speaker 1: as a connecting agent. I used alcohol as a way
Speaker 1: to connect me to life. We were talking beforehand that
Speaker 1: some of the things we connected to we probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been connecting to, or weren't the right for us.
Speaker 1: But alcohol basically brought life to life for me. It
Speaker 1: wasn't entirely oh, I'm trying to avoid. It really was
Speaker 1: I'm trying to connect and I didn't know how to
Speaker 1: do that, or I had tamped down my ability to
Speaker 1: do that. So I think, yeah, that's something about Young
Speaker 1: that has always drawn me towards him, and I've always
Speaker 1: had sort of an ambivalent relationship with some of young stuff.
Speaker 1: Some of it resonates very strongly, some of it is
Speaker 1: a little bit more challenging for me. But I just
Speaker 1: loved seeing it come through in your latest book so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I think to the first point, alcohol can
Speaker 1: be diaingne easy, and you know it can take us
Speaker 1: through another level. In an analysis the other night, I
Speaker 1: asked my analysts if if I used to use alcohol
Speaker 1: to get my ego drunk, just to get my ego
Speaker 1: out of the way, to allow for the transcended to
Speaker 1: come through and so that I could write, because ego
Speaker 1: is always screaming like this has to be perfect. You
Speaker 1: know you're going to get in trouble, like people are
Speaker 1: gonna hate you, you know. So I think for me
Speaker 1: it was to knock the ego offline and allow like
Speaker 1: the work to come through. And when I got sober,
Speaker 1: I went through a period of very awful five year
Speaker 1: writer's block, which was just really really awful for me.
Speaker 1: And to your second point, you know, young is not
Speaker 1: for everybody. You know, there's a lot of things when
Speaker 1: I talked about some of the young and stuff that
Speaker 1: works for me obviously might not work for everyone. And
Speaker 1: I think that's with any type of recovery or any
Speaker 1: type of mental health. There's always things that you can glean.
Speaker 1: But I think we're drawn to certain paths for a reason,
Speaker 1: and for whatever reason, this was just my path for
Speaker 1: the last five years. So last time you and I talked,
Speaker 1: you had started making some big life changes. You had
Speaker 1: started to run a lot, you had lost at that point,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of weight, you had started to
Speaker 1: question your relationship with alcohol. You were still sort of
Speaker 1: mildly ambivalent. I think about, you know, does it really
Speaker 1: have to go completely? But I'm recognizing it's not great
Speaker 1: for me. So that was sort of uranize last real
Speaker 1: connection point. And as you describe it, you sort of,
Speaker 1: I think went deeper into that healing journey after we talked,
Speaker 1: and then that healing journey really turned very difficult for you,
Speaker 1: and you alluded to it with the writer's block. But
Speaker 1: talk to me a little bit more about what happened
Speaker 1: and how it sort of transpired. Well, I tell people that,
Speaker 1: you know, you want to get your right together, you
Speaker 1: want to lose weight, you want to stop drinking. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of hooray, you know, that's great, like, you know,
Speaker 1: you look wonderful, like everybody's so proud. But then after
Speaker 1: you dropped the weight and you get drinking under control,
Speaker 1: for me at least, I started to realize why I
Speaker 1: was doing so much eating and drinking in the first place,
Speaker 1: and it was to know pain that I wasn't dealing
Speaker 1: with very real and deep psychological problems and never had
Speaker 1: gotten the tools to kind of manage my own spiritual,
Speaker 1: psychological and emotional being. And so after that kind of
Speaker 1: initial ego hit of wow, I did this, like I
Speaker 1: got my drinking under control, and in very much wasn't
Speaker 1: ego hit. It was like, okay, well, next, you know,
Speaker 1: and I woke up one day and I was facing
Speaker 1: all of the pain that I didn't face for twenty
Speaker 1: five years or you know, like you know, since I
Speaker 1: was a teenager since I started drinking, and so I
Speaker 1: had to really look at that in a sober light,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't a lot of fun by any stretch
Speaker 1: of imagination. And I had kind of drawn this line
Speaker 1: that I wasn't going to drink. And I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that kept me from drinking was almost
Speaker 1: this kind of masochism, that relief is not there for
Speaker 1: you anymore, like you need to suffer through this. And
Speaker 1: I spent about three years doing pretty much nothing but
Speaker 1: running in insane amount of miles, trying to write and
Speaker 1: being holed up in my house and spending time with
Speaker 1: my wife. My life got very, very, very small, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that I thought I enjoyed
Speaker 1: doing when I was drunk, I did not enjoy doing
Speaker 1: at all when I was sober. One of those was
Speaker 1: going to NFL games, you know, which was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun when I was hammered and you know, I
Speaker 1: was drinking all day. I just didn't enjoy it as
Speaker 1: much when I was sober, and that felt really alienating.
Speaker 1: I started to think, do I even know who I am?
Speaker 1: You know, I've been drinking so much over the last
Speaker 1: twenty years, do I know who I am, and when
Speaker 1: I sat down to write, I could not access the
Speaker 1: part of me that makes writing easy. I am an
Speaker 1: intuitive creative, so I don't sit down with a plan.
Speaker 1: I sit down and connect with something inside of me,
Speaker 1: and I just kind of let it flow out onto
Speaker 1: the page. I did not have access to that anymore
Speaker 1: when I stopped drinking, and I think it's because I
Speaker 1: was dealing with this overwhelming reality of not knowing who
Speaker 1: I was and not having any relief from that at
Speaker 1: the end of the day. Whereas that might be a
Speaker 1: nagging concern fifteen years ago, but I could drink enough
Speaker 1: scotch to make that go away. And then I was
Speaker 1: hung over in the more earning and it was caffeine,
Speaker 1: and then it was get to work. And there was
Speaker 1: parts of me that were just so deadened by that
Speaker 1: process that kind of knocked ego offline and allowed me
Speaker 1: to just access those parts of me that you know,
Speaker 1: it's no secret that many musicians and many writers they
Speaker 1: use alcohol and drugs to access that creative spark. Accessing
Speaker 1: it sober for me was much much much more difficult.
Speaker 1: That surprised me, That scared me, and that just kind
Speaker 1: of rocked my world. In a way that I was
Speaker 1: not prepared for it, and I didn't have anyone to
Speaker 1: help me at that point. I wasn't in analysis, I
Speaker 1: didn't have any spiritual practice. I did not go to
Speaker 1: a A. So I was doing this all on my own,
Speaker 1: and it took me to a very dark and paranoid
Speaker 1: place for a couple of years, and it was a
Speaker 1: very lonely place. I can totally imagine. I mean I
Speaker 1: got sober both times in a A. I think everybody
Speaker 1: finds the path they need to find, so sort no
Speaker 1: bias towards one or the other. I do think one
Speaker 1: of the things things that was helpful about A for
Speaker 1: me was the normalization of Yep, that's what you're going through.
Speaker 1: That's normal. But it's interesting because you really turned to
Speaker 1: running for a while, running was your way, and then
Speaker 1: it was sort of when running got taken away from
Speaker 1: you by injury that things really collapsed for you. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting because in A one of the things I
Speaker 1: think A A does both well and then you know,
Speaker 1: like anything, you you overplay something and it becomes a problem.
Speaker 1: Is this whole idea of help others, help others, help
Speaker 1: others help others, which is a very powerful and transcendent
Speaker 1: thing to do. It's a great thing to do, but
Speaker 1: it can be used to the point that you never
Speaker 1: look internally. Now, luckily a has the steps, and if
Speaker 1: you follow the steps, it will cause you to some
Speaker 1: degree to go internal. But I had a similar experience
Speaker 1: to you. I got sober a few years and things
Speaker 1: were awesome, and then my wife and I split and
Speaker 1: I fell apart. You know. I had a two year
Speaker 1: old son at that time, and I was separated from him,
Speaker 1: and that drove me into my deep internal work, you know.
Speaker 1: But the other thing I want to touch on, though,
Speaker 1: I think it is really important what you said there,
Speaker 1: which is that for creative people, change from a life
Speaker 1: that's filled with substances to a life of sobriety can
Speaker 1: be enormously difficult, and I think it's important to lay
Speaker 1: that out and be honest about that. Otherwise I think
Speaker 1: it's very disorienting. My experience is most true creatives eventually
Speaker 1: find their way back. They learn how to create without it.
Speaker 1: But boy, it's hard. I mean I went through as
Speaker 1: a musician. I just was like, it seems like it's gone.
Speaker 1: Two things come to mind, you know, in the young
Speaker 1: and work I do my analysts is always hammering, and
Speaker 1: there's a cost for everything. Oh I love that if
Speaker 1: you want to get sober, you're gonna pay the costs.
Speaker 1: And if there was no cost, everyone wants to say, sure,
Speaker 1: I want to have a problem with alcoholic drugs, but
Speaker 1: there's a real cost that you have to pay. And
Speaker 1: I also think too that creativity is is something that
Speaker 1: people that are trying to scam money out of you
Speaker 1: will say they can teach you how to do, but
Speaker 1: it's not. You know, nobody can teach you how to
Speaker 1: write a great novel or to write a create song.
Speaker 1: It's something that's very intimate and it comes from parts
Speaker 1: of us that I think are damaged. I think it
Speaker 1: comes from parts of us that are trying to get
Speaker 1: needs met. I think it's very, very, very complicated. And
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, alcohol allowed me to hang in and
Speaker 1: do that dance in a way that I didn't really
Speaker 1: give it credit for. And I want to be careful.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not saying that I want to start
Speaker 1: drinking again, but I didn't realize how much work alcohol
Speaker 1: was doing for me. And when I had to give
Speaker 1: it up, you know, for health reasons, and you know,
Speaker 1: for many reasons, it was a good idea to give
Speaker 1: it up. I had to find something else that would
Speaker 1: take the place of the alcohol. And for me, I
Speaker 1: can say without a doubt it was the relationship that
Speaker 1: I had with my analysts and and doing the young
Speaker 1: in work and dream analysis and trying to find the
Speaker 1: transcendent in different ways, and coming to the realization that
Speaker 1: I needed to get drunk without alcohol. I needed to
Speaker 1: find a way to be creatively drunk, to be spiritually drunk,
Speaker 1: to be emotionally drunking, like the most positive way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I couldn't take that shortcut anymore by just buying a
Speaker 1: bottle at the store and you know, dumping and down
Speaker 1: this room. Yeah, I think that's a great way to
Speaker 1: say it. And sort of back to what I was
Speaker 1: saying earlier, like I had to find a way to
Speaker 1: connect to life sober, you know, I had to find
Speaker 1: a way to go Well, the world looks completely bleak
Speaker 1: and gray to me. Okay, I know that's not the
Speaker 1: truth of the way the world really is. So how
Speaker 1: do I turn the lights back on without the ease
Speaker 1: of a bottle? And I think what you said also
Speaker 1: that is so important is we've got to have something
Speaker 1: that comes in it takes its place. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that's what a a does for so many people.
Speaker 1: It fills a void. Again, I'm not saying it's the
Speaker 1: only way to do it, but I think we have
Speaker 1: to find our way to what is the thing for
Speaker 1: us that brings us to life. And I really love
Speaker 1: that idea of thinking of being sort of drunk, but
Speaker 1: in a really positive way of the word. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think for me, I am just such a
Speaker 1: hardcore introvert and so alcohol was the thing that allowed
Speaker 1: me to be around totally people for long amounts of time.
Speaker 1: So for me, you know, it wasn't so much I thought,
Speaker 1: oh I don't want to do it was just I
Speaker 1: don't want to be around anybody, you know. And ironically,
Speaker 1: the thing that happened during that time was I started
Speaker 1: to really crave community. And when people read We Other Light,
Speaker 1: it's it's a book that's totally about community. And so
Speaker 1: it was this thing that like in my ice and
Speaker 1: relation and my alienation, I had to find this sense
Speaker 1: of community through my art. And as I started writing,
Speaker 1: one of the things that happened is I started reaching
Speaker 1: out to people almost like one of the steps is
Speaker 1: like make amends, right, Like, I started writing people that
Speaker 1: I lost contact with, I started reaching out to old friends.
Speaker 1: I started to really take some risks with some of
Speaker 1: my male friends, you know, being intimate and opening up
Speaker 1: and talking about things I've never talked about before. That
Speaker 1: was later on in the process, it was like year four.
Speaker 1: But when I started to do all that, that's when
Speaker 1: I started to reconnect with my writing, and that's when
Speaker 1: things started coming back online. So it's interesting that you
Speaker 1: brought up that need for community because I think very masochistically,
Speaker 1: I denied myself that early on. I think there was
Speaker 1: a big part of myself that was dealing with a
Speaker 1: heavy sense of shame and unworthiness that I needed to
Speaker 1: wrestle with. Part of it, I look back and think, like, wow,
Speaker 1: I was really punishing myself unnecessarily. But I think that
Speaker 1: that was part of the process. I think I had
Speaker 1: to deal with that, and for me, I didn't want
Speaker 1: to put that on other people. And I know that
Speaker 1: that's that's like kind of a negative masculine characteristically, that
Speaker 1: kind of lone wolf. But I do think that that
Speaker 1: was a really really big part of my journey because
Speaker 1: I got so low that the value of friendship, the
Speaker 1: value of community, it obvious at that point. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so I'm not recommending it, you know, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that's ready to go. But for me, it took a
Speaker 1: lot of pain before I allowed myself to accept love again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so interesting to think about that because I've been
Speaker 1: more or less around the recovery community and people recovering
Speaker 1: for twenty five years at this point, even if you
Speaker 1: take the few years I went back out and drank.
Speaker 1: So I've just seen a lot of different people and
Speaker 1: a lot of different things. And you know, there are
Speaker 1: so many paths, but I do think that for everybody
Speaker 1: at some juncture in their path, not doing it alone
Speaker 1: becomes part of the game. Like if you remain alone,
Speaker 1: and where you get that support could be a therapist,
Speaker 1: it could be friendships, it could be a support group
Speaker 1: like a A or recovery Dharma, or it could be
Speaker 1: your grandma. I mean, it could come a lot of
Speaker 1: different ways. But we just stay alone, we will not
Speaker 1: win this very difficult struggle. I totally agree. My wife
Speaker 1: was with me the whole time, and I think that
Speaker 1: was really grounding. Yes, I always Satealicia. I had a
Speaker 1: few close friends, and then I really think the work
Speaker 1: that I did with my analysts. I spent three or
Speaker 1: four hours a week with my animists. So yeah, it's very, very,
Speaker 1: very intense, and that relationship has allowed me to work
Speaker 1: through a lot. And that's a community of two, but
Speaker 1: it's also it's there. It's a steady thing, like I
Speaker 1: need that every week. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean a
Speaker 1: community of two is still a community, I mean not
Speaker 1: being alone. So is your analyst their local is it
Speaker 1: someone you see in person? Is it virtual? Was it
Speaker 1: local in person? And then it went virtual during the pandemic?
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of curious. Yeah, it started off during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, I think, so it was two years ago,
Speaker 1: so I think we're in the middle of a pandemic.
Speaker 1: Then it's a blurned together in my head. But it
Speaker 1: was all it's always been virtually, very much like what
Speaker 1: we're doing here. Okay, So I've got to ask in
Speaker 1: the book, your character is writing to his analysts. In
Speaker 1: a lot of the book, that's sort of the structure.
Speaker 1: It's letters to his analysts, and we can use that
Speaker 1: to splore some different points. But one that made me
Speaker 1: laugh was at one point the character basically says my
Speaker 1: analyst told me he loved me, and I had to
Speaker 1: go home and google what do you do if your
Speaker 1: therapist says I love you? Which made me laugh, but
Speaker 1: it made me wonder is that real? Did that really happen?
Speaker 1: And did it sort of cause you to go like whoa?
Speaker 1: You know, there's different ways to look at it, but
Speaker 1: I think I definitely fell in love with my analysts
Speaker 1: in a very like platonic way. You know. Part of
Speaker 1: that process early on is projection, and you go through
Speaker 1: all these different phases. But I just think that somebody's
Speaker 1: showing up a couple of times a week for me
Speaker 1: and willing to you know, lift up the hood of
Speaker 1: my metaphorical car and like tinker with me and just
Speaker 1: have my best interests at heart was something that felt
Speaker 1: far into me, especially from you know, another older man,
Speaker 1: and so that to me was was so overwhelming. You know,
Speaker 1: the men that I grew up with in my life
Speaker 1: were damaged by war and didn't have access to their emotions,
Speaker 1: and I think they loved me in their own way,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe not in the way that I
Speaker 1: needed to be loved growing up. That is the thing
Speaker 1: that I didn't know. You know, there's this term father hunger.
Speaker 1: I was going to that. Yeah, I think I just
Speaker 1: had extreme father hunger. And when I had access to
Speaker 1: an older man who is teaching me, giving me tools
Speaker 1: that like I could use and seem to have my
Speaker 1: best interests at heart, two things happened. Like immediately I
Speaker 1: tried to find out subconsciously, I was always scanning for
Speaker 1: the trick, you know, where's the trick here? Where is
Speaker 1: it gonna pull the rug out? Like when is this
Speaker 1: gonna you know, hurt me in some way? And the
Speaker 1: other part it was I just became paranoid that something
Speaker 1: was going to happen to him, Like what happens if
Speaker 1: my analysts exsit by KR and dies, you know, then
Speaker 1: I'm all alone again? Or what happens if you know,
Speaker 1: my analyst has a heart attack, or what happens if
Speaker 1: I say the wrong thing in analysis and doesn't want
Speaker 1: to work with me. And it was just like it's
Speaker 1: kind of parent nooia um that I think it's probably
Speaker 1: pretty natural, But it was a very young part of me.
Speaker 1: I think I got drunk, you know, when I was
Speaker 1: in college and never really was allowed to grow up,
Speaker 1: and so part of that is dealing with those young
Speaker 1: parts and hanging in there, and as my analysts showed
Speaker 1: up and made that dedication with me every week in
Speaker 1: the most appropriate way. I don't think that the analytic
Speaker 1: process can happen if there's not some type of love.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that we write letters to each other,
Speaker 1: like I don't hang out with him. I just think
Speaker 1: that as human beings, we care about each other and
Speaker 1: we're trying to accomplish something that requires love, and that
Speaker 1: is to get my psyche back online in a good place.
Speaker 1: And I don't think you can do that if there's
Speaker 1: not a part of you that is loving and caring.
Speaker 1: You know. I just think that that is a very
Speaker 1: necessary thing. There's been some studies that show that lots
Speaker 1: of different methods have useful results, but the key thing
Speaker 1: that matters most is rapport with the person you're working with.
Speaker 1: If you don't have that connection, if you don't feel
Speaker 1: cared for, and I know that you know a lot
Speaker 1: of people are like well, but it's a paid relationship.
Speaker 1: But a paid relationship doesn't mean that there can't be
Speaker 1: love and care. You know, I do coaching work with people,
Speaker 1: and I care deeply about them. They're paying me, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean I don't grow a deep feeling of
Speaker 1: care towards them. And I think you're right. All relationships
Speaker 1: thrive on that if if you don't have it, you
Speaker 1: don't have a relationship that works if both people don't
Speaker 1: feel cared for. Well, I also think, you know, in
Speaker 1: the analytics setting, my analyst talks about a container and
Speaker 1: the importance of having a container, and so the exchange
Speaker 1: of money creates and energys container, and so I can
Speaker 1: say things to him that I can't say to my
Speaker 1: buddy because there's a container and we have an agreement,
Speaker 1: and so it's very important that I wouldn't say things
Speaker 1: I say an analysis and I wouldn't say that today
Speaker 1: with you here, because we don't have that type of relationship.
Speaker 1: We don't have that container. Our relationship is much different.
Speaker 1: So I struggle with the money part of it a lot.
Speaker 1: At the beginning, you know, it felt like it invalidated it.
Speaker 1: But over time and uh, with some heroic efforts on
Speaker 1: the part of my house, I grew to see that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like just like when I was taking money for teaching,
Speaker 1: it didn't mean that I didn't care about kids. Of course,
Speaker 1: you know, like and I was taking a lot less
Speaker 1: money for teaching, but that's just part of the deal.
Speaker 1: They have to eat, they have to live, of course,
Speaker 1: that's right. So going back to father hunger, I had
Speaker 1: not heard that phrase before, but the minute that I
Speaker 1: read it, I didn't have a word for it. But
Speaker 1: I've noticed throughout my life anytime an older man steps
Speaker 1: into my life and is an admirable, caring person, I
Speaker 1: just am like more more, I want more, I want more,
Speaker 1: you know. And unfortunately for me, over the years, most
Speaker 1: of those men not to feed your paranoia died. Sorry,
Speaker 1: things that happened with the old man. Unfortunately, these guys
Speaker 1: died young, unfortunately too young. I'm sorry. Yeah, that father
Speaker 1: hunger really really resonates with me. And I think there's
Speaker 1: probably an archetype in there too, of the wise Guide, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. You know. I first came across that term,
Speaker 1: I believe it was Robert Blithe's Iron John, which is
Speaker 1: an interpretation of a fairy tale, the fairytale Iron John
Speaker 1: psychoanalyzes it and it was part of the Men's movement.
Speaker 1: When I read that book, it was like whoa, you know,
Speaker 1: like a lot opened up and I didn't know how
Speaker 1: Young and It was when I read it, because it
Speaker 1: was before I got into Young and Elsis. But I
Speaker 1: immediately recognized that I was longing to be initiated into manhood,
Speaker 1: you know, And I think that that is something for
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of years, men initiated boys into manhood,
Speaker 1: and that is something that we don't do anymore. And
Speaker 1: my grandfather went away to well we're two very young,
Speaker 1: and his psyche was completely destroyed and he didn't have
Speaker 1: what my father needed. When my father has grown up,
Speaker 1: and so since my father didn't get that, how could
Speaker 1: he give it to me? And so I'm at a
Speaker 1: point now where I look at it and say, people
Speaker 1: can't give you what they weren't given. And so the
Speaker 1: work that I try to do on myself to break
Speaker 1: that cycle. You know, I don't have a son, but
Speaker 1: I hope that by doing this work and putting my
Speaker 1: work out there, you know, late in this book, we
Speaker 1: are the light, it will ameliorate or you know, less
Speaker 1: than other people's father hunger. And you know, women can
Speaker 1: have father hunger too, by the wayst it's not a
Speaker 1: completely masculine issue. Yeah, you talk about that idea of
Speaker 1: breaking the cycle. There's a phrase in the book about
Speaker 1: when you redeem your father, when you heal, and something
Speaker 1: in me felt that really deeply because to your point
Speaker 1: you said it earlier, I think you said it so well.
Speaker 1: They loved me, but not in the way that I
Speaker 1: needed to be And so this is one of those
Speaker 1: things that I found like it took a little while
Speaker 1: to get to and it's one of those times where
Speaker 1: the and word is really helpful. Like they loved me
Speaker 1: and I needed more than I got. Both those things
Speaker 1: are really true, and so I love that idea. And
Speaker 1: I've been so focused with my son on breaking the cycle.
Speaker 1: As I've spent more time with it, I've gone, well,
Speaker 1: I think breaking the cycle is too binary for me.
Speaker 1: What I think is probably more accurate as if I
Speaker 1: was handed a hundred pounds of suffering from the generational
Speaker 1: stuff that came down. Hopefully I only passed on twenty
Speaker 1: pounds of it to my son. Like I don't think
Speaker 1: it's possible to do this thing perfectly, this job of parenting,
Speaker 1: and I know I surely passed on some of my stuff,
Speaker 1: but I do feel pretty good about the fact it
Speaker 1: it did take a lot of it and heal it.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, which felt really important, but I
Speaker 1: had not heard the idea of it redeeming my father.
Speaker 1: And my father right now is in a memory care unit.
Speaker 1: He's he's gone, you know, if he's not gone, he's
Speaker 1: very close to it. But you might find this interesting.
Speaker 1: Is my analyst teaches me that all of the fathers
Speaker 1: are inside of you. You know, um, your grandfather, you're great, everyone,
Speaker 1: all of them are inside of you. When you show
Speaker 1: love to your son, all of them get to experience
Speaker 1: loving a son, And when your son goes on to
Speaker 1: do that, you will experience it too. So you redeemed
Speaker 1: the father that's in you. And at the beginning of
Speaker 1: my analytic work, my analyst was very adamant about find
Speaker 1: a way to not only love your father, but admire him,
Speaker 1: because if you don't, you'll never admire yourself because that's
Speaker 1: in you. His d n A is in you, is
Speaker 1: being is in your You cannot get that father out
Speaker 1: of you. It's kind of like the bad wolf, like
Speaker 1: that's in there. You can way it went bad, But
Speaker 1: if you don't integrate it, and you don't find a
Speaker 1: way to to to find peace and make yourself whole.
Speaker 1: All that hatred you're projecting out at someone, it's just
Speaker 1: really you're just projecting it on yourself. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just just gonna come right back at you. I was
Speaker 1: mentioning when my wife and I split, when my son
Speaker 1: was too and I was several years sober, and I
Speaker 1: sort of plunged into a deep depression. That's when I
Speaker 1: did what I would call my most intensive inner work
Speaker 1: as far as excavating my past. It was not with
Speaker 1: a young an analyst, but it was a woman that
Speaker 1: the term I hated at the time. I still don't
Speaker 1: love it, which was inner child work, but it was
Speaker 1: excavating all that stuff. And so it went through a
Speaker 1: phase of being really angry with my parents, and you know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of gone. But what I've really been thinking
Speaker 1: about lately is exactly what you just said, which is
Speaker 1: I tend to look at the good parts of me
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, look at what I've created, and
Speaker 1: then I look at the bad parts and I go, well,
Speaker 1: look at what my parents gave me, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know that's not really fair. Well it's not really
Speaker 1: true either. You know, they passed something into me I
Speaker 1: couldn't be the person I was. And so what you're saying,
Speaker 1: and I've been working on this is looking at like
Speaker 1: it's easy for me to see what I don't admire
Speaker 1: about them, the ways I want to be different, the
Speaker 1: ways I am, But what can I admire? And it's
Speaker 1: interesting because the one with my mom that I got
Speaker 1: was I was like the greatest love of my life
Speaker 1: has probably been reading. And I got that from my mom.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why it took me till I
Speaker 1: was fifty years old, fifty two years old to put
Speaker 1: those two things together and go look at that great
Speaker 1: gift she bestowed on me. I think the beginning of
Speaker 1: your analytic journey, you do a lot of complaining about
Speaker 1: your parents, right, and it's and I would say things
Speaker 1: like my dad was always working, you know, like he
Speaker 1: wasn't he wasn't around, And my analysts would say, oh, so, like,
Speaker 1: you know, he had a really great work ethic and
Speaker 1: that's what allows you to work twelve hours a day
Speaker 1: and write your novels and you know, have accomplished all
Speaker 1: the things that you accomplished. And I would just I
Speaker 1: would be so angry when you say things like that,
Speaker 1: because it was true you know, and it was there.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of things that I gleaned from
Speaker 1: my father that had been extremely, extremely useful. And you know,
Speaker 1: to put a kind of happy note on this, as
Speaker 1: my father is retired and you know, he's kind of
Speaker 1: mellowed out. As I've been going through the analytical process,
Speaker 1: I find that my dad is at an easier time
Speaker 1: relating to me. And my dad never said he loved
Speaker 1: me for forty seven years, and now every single time
Speaker 1: I call him, he says he loves me. And it's
Speaker 1: weird because I want to be cynical about that and
Speaker 1: say why now, And it's like, maybe he got old,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you know, he's scared about getting up.
Speaker 1: But maybe as I changed, you know, maybe I made
Speaker 1: it easier for him to love me because I'm doing
Speaker 1: this work and I'm not bitter anymore, you know. And
Speaker 1: so I think there's real power in using the right
Speaker 1: lens and sing people in their entirety, and even things
Speaker 1: like my analysts would say, oh, in your childhood, did
Speaker 1: you did you ever not have a meal? Like did
Speaker 1: you ever go hungry for a day? And I'd be like, no,
Speaker 1: he's like your dad did that? Like your dad gave
Speaker 1: you food, you know, like, do you give him credit
Speaker 1: for that? Like he gave you heat, you know, he
Speaker 1: gave you clothes, Like do you give him any credit
Speaker 1: for that? And and just like thinking about those things,
Speaker 1: that's not nothing. You know, there are times when a
Speaker 1: man would get incredible points. You know, two hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: if you put food and clothing, that was a big deal.
Speaker 1: But you know, we we take those things for granted now,
Speaker 1: and we don't give our father, you know, the credit
Speaker 1: for doing those things that have just become expected now
Speaker 1: that it just comes so taken for granted. I agree.
Speaker 1: I've often thought about my father and I thought, like,
Speaker 1: sometimes I feel like you got a little bit of
Speaker 1: a raw deal, Like maybe this happens to all of us, right, maybe,
Speaker 1: but it felt like he was taught to be a
Speaker 1: certain way, this is what a good man is, and
Speaker 1: was that and then part way through the rules change, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was like, yeah, you're doing all that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're providing for them, you're doing everything you're supposed to do,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. But you know what, that's not really enough. Now,
Speaker 1: we also need you to be this type of person.
Speaker 1: And to your point, they were never given that. So
Speaker 1: it's again that and it's like I can look at
Speaker 1: the ways that I didn't get what I needed from
Speaker 1: my parents, and I can heal that because I have
Speaker 1: to do that, and I can use the lens of
Speaker 1: let me look at what I got from them. Those
Speaker 1: things are not mutually exclusive, and I think oftentimes we
Speaker 1: get stuck in one or the other. I see lots
Speaker 1: of people like, my parents are fine. I had a
Speaker 1: good life. They did everything they could, And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm not saying they weren't, and you might want
Speaker 1: to look at a little bit deeper than that. So
Speaker 1: I think we can get stuck on that side of it,
Speaker 1: but we sometimes flipped to the other where we get
Speaker 1: stuck on how bad they were side. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it's important to see people as whole people, you know,
Speaker 1: and that good wolf and bad wolf is within every
Speaker 1: single person. That's right. And you know, sometimes when you
Speaker 1: think about, well, which one are we going to focus
Speaker 1: on in us? But which one are we going to
Speaker 1: focus on? And the people around us? You know, we
Speaker 1: only going to look at their bad wolf or are
Speaker 1: we going to look at their good wolf as well?
Speaker 1: And see the struggle in the kind of dance that's
Speaker 1: happening inside of everyone. Yeah, and which which moment are
Speaker 1: you're gonna take a snapshot out? Because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of moments you know you're gonna take that snapshot in
Speaker 1: a good moment or a bad moment. That's a beautiful
Speaker 1: way of saying it. It's interesting. I know that you've
Speaker 1: got some of that from your analyst, but boy, it
Speaker 1: was really apparent in you before that too. I mean
Speaker 1: your last book, the one before this, right, that book,
Speaker 1: The reason You're alive is is about that, right, It
Speaker 1: is about that basic idea of like, look, we can't
Speaker 1: just say, based on a few things that a person
Speaker 1: is good or bad like they're both, you know. And
Speaker 1: that is what I love about the peril. I don't
Speaker 1: love the part of the parable actually that sort of
Speaker 1: makes it sound like we should isolate or cut off
Speaker 1: these other parts of us. But the part that I
Speaker 1: do still always really resonate with is the normalization I
Speaker 1: hope of We've all got the good and bad in us.
Speaker 1: We all do. It's what it means to be human.
Speaker 1: I think the parable is a wonderful tool, you know.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think it's some kind of catch all,
Speaker 1: you know, key to life. I think it's a tool
Speaker 1: that you know, we can rub up against and try
Speaker 1: to frame and discuss. And look how much my lege
Speaker 1: you've got out of it. Wow, Like I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's amazing how far you've come with just that one tool.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know you're using much more, but you've framed,
Speaker 1: you show around this really powerful parable that I've answered
Speaker 1: completely differently throughout my life, and I'm probably answered differently again,
Speaker 1: you know, in five years, yes, yes, power to thank you.
Speaker 1: I hope it's not five years. Let's talk about the
Speaker 1: newest book, because you are a fiction writer and a
Speaker 1: great one, and I'm so happy to hear you got
Speaker 1: through your writer's block and I was so excited to
Speaker 1: know that there was a new book coming. And I
Speaker 1: have to tell you that I take getting to bed
Speaker 1: on time or close to on time fairly seriously. I
Speaker 1: need my sleep. I'm an old man, right, So I
Speaker 1: try not to let whether it be a book or
Speaker 1: a TV series or anything, sort of co opt that.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not saying I'm perfect, but it's been a
Speaker 1: while since a book caused me to be like, all right,
Speaker 1: I gotta finish this thing like it's midnight. I gotta
Speaker 1: get done. Thank you. But at a certain point it
Speaker 1: was like, all right, this is like a locomotive, and
Speaker 1: I'm just I can't. I can't set it down. And
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful book. I was listening to our older
Speaker 1: conversation and the compliment I gave you then and it's
Speaker 1: still true, is that you can make me both laugh
Speaker 1: and cry, not just in the same book, but often
Speaker 1: in very close proximity. And that is the definition of
Speaker 1: the sort of fiction that causes me to deeply love it,
Speaker 1: because when those two emotions, which I think are actually
Speaker 1: very close together, but they're very difficult I think to
Speaker 1: put close together in art. Most art is one or
Speaker 1: the other, it seems like. And I love how yours
Speaker 1: really puts those two together. And so again, congrats on
Speaker 1: a new book. I'm so happy that called has it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you. Yeah. And I'm going to read
Speaker 1: what you say, we Are the Light is about, and
Speaker 1: then just allow you to kind of at this juncture,
Speaker 1: say anything you'd like about the book. You said it's
Speaker 1: about a lot of things, but it's mostly about the
Speaker 1: tiny little ways in which we save each other. It's
Speaker 1: about how we too often cut ourselves off from love
Speaker 1: because we are afraid. And it is my him to
Speaker 1: the life saving importance of breaking away for a time.
Speaker 1: So elaborate on any of those ideas if you want,
Speaker 1: or tell me what the book represents to you now,
Speaker 1: if it's different than when you wrote that. Sure, Lucas
Speaker 1: good Game is the protagonist of the novel is not
Speaker 1: supposed to be me. He's not an altered ego, but
Speaker 1: he's very much informed by this kind of process that
Speaker 1: I went through that we've been talking about. He's not
Speaker 1: an alcoholic um, but he is somebody who suffers this
Speaker 1: unimaginable tragedy that puts him in this position where he
Speaker 1: has to make a decision to do something that he
Speaker 1: really would never do, has to get into uch with
Speaker 1: his dark side. And because of this, he's kind of
Speaker 1: seen as a hero for doing something that he finds terrific.
Speaker 1: And he also loses his wife through this tragedy and
Speaker 1: he falls apart, and his psyche tries to find this
Speaker 1: way to get him through this very difficult, awful time,
Speaker 1: and lo and behold, you know no surprise coming. Based
Speaker 1: on what we are saying. It's his community and the
Speaker 1: love that he has for his community and the love
Speaker 1: that he has for his former students, and this kind
Speaker 1: of belief in using art and conclusion to create these
Speaker 1: safe spaces where people can come together and love. And
Speaker 1: he's very heroic that way, very very heroic. So the
Speaker 1: book really celebrates things like friendship, like simple friendship, like
Speaker 1: going to the movies for somebody, or you know, talking
Speaker 1: about local project that you might do, or getting together
Speaker 1: to make art with people in your community, things that
Speaker 1: are really simple that maybe people would say for granted
Speaker 1: or not really see the power of, but for people
Speaker 1: who are really suffering, these can be extremely medicinal. And
Speaker 1: so when I was really down and I was out,
Speaker 1: one of my best friends and I started a movie
Speaker 1: club and once a week we were picking an old
Speaker 1: movie and we'd watch it and get on the phone
Speaker 1: for an hour and talk. It seems like a very
Speaker 1: simple thing. It was a lifeline for me when I
Speaker 1: was down and now like I needed that. It was
Speaker 1: like an essential part of me keeping my psyche together,
Speaker 1: or just going to the beach once a week and
Speaker 1: playing coube with my my two best friends and swimming
Speaker 1: in the ocean down here like that is a simple thing,
Speaker 1: but when you're in a low place and you're dealing
Speaker 1: with depression, you feel like your life is spiraling out
Speaker 1: of control. Those simple things are so so important, and
Speaker 1: I think they're always important, but I think we learned
Speaker 1: to realize just how important they are and how medicinal
Speaker 1: they are. What I really wanted to do with this
Speaker 1: novel was to show the importance of simple, simple acts
Speaker 1: of love and kindness and how transformative they really could be.
Speaker 1: I also wanted to look at this idea of positive
Speaker 1: masculinity as an antidote to toxic masculinity, you know, like
Speaker 1: we need strong, positive men to clean up the masculinity.
Speaker 1: That's really really important. I also think too, like the
Speaker 1: need for a political spaces. Politics are important, but I
Speaker 1: do think that we need places in our community where
Speaker 1: we come together in a deep polarized setting to lift
Speaker 1: each other up rather than tear each other apart. And
Speaker 1: so that was also a theme that I was experimenting
Speaker 1: with in the book as well. In these polarized times,
Speaker 1: you know, I've seen so many people just hit it
Speaker 1: against each other and just beating each other up and
Speaker 1: destroying each other. And I think art is really a
Speaker 1: great place, start to do some work there, to start
Speaker 1: bringing some people back together. And that's really what I
Speaker 1: wanted to highlight. Yeah, yeah, I see all those themes
Speaker 1: and they're beautiful. What you were just saying about these
Speaker 1: small acts of a movie club with your friend, you know,
Speaker 1: once a week, go into the beach with friends. I
Speaker 1: think what's so interesting about that is it's not like
Speaker 1: any of those things one time pulled you out of depression. Right,
Speaker 1: there were something that just over time and consistency, we're
Speaker 1: a great aid. And that's one thing that I think
Speaker 1: our modern culture, quick fixed culture misses, and it's that
Speaker 1: we're told like, hey, this thing would be good for you,
Speaker 1: it would help you, and so we do it once
Speaker 1: or twice, and nothing magical happens, and we go, well,
Speaker 1: that must not work. And you know, it'd be like
Speaker 1: if you had gone three to five hours a week
Speaker 1: with your analysts for a couple of years now, would
Speaker 1: have been like going twice to him and concluding that
Speaker 1: young in analysis doesn't work, you know. And I think
Speaker 1: that's such an important point about these healing modalities is
Speaker 1: they can be very healing, but they're rarely totally miraculous
Speaker 1: in that like, we show up a couple of times
Speaker 1: and boy like you sit down in medicain eight twice
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, your problems are gone. I
Speaker 1: had a moment in analysis. I think it was about
Speaker 1: the one year anniversary. It was one year in and
Speaker 1: I felt like, wow, I've been doing this for a year,
Speaker 1: and I said to my analysts, like, man, are we
Speaker 1: almost done? You know, I've been doing this for periously, like, well,
Speaker 1: you know I was in analysis for twenty years, because
Speaker 1: that was kind of quick. But I think the point
Speaker 1: is that it took forty seven years to get there.
Speaker 1: It's forty seven years of pain, and thinking that's going
Speaker 1: to go away with you know, one or two sessions
Speaker 1: is just completely arrogant. And I also think too, it's
Speaker 1: not just going to the beach or having a movie club.
Speaker 1: It's showing up and being intimate with people. You know.
Speaker 1: The movie club was the thing that got my friend
Speaker 1: in Kent and I together. But we talked about our parents,
Speaker 1: we talked about how we feel, we talked about our childhood,
Speaker 1: you know, we we talked about so many things, and
Speaker 1: it was the intimacy and it was the consistency of
Speaker 1: this is going to happen once a week. We're gonna
Speaker 1: show up for each other. We're gonna make the time.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be about watching a film, but it's also
Speaker 1: going to be about supporting someone else as a human being.
Speaker 1: And the same thing when I have lunch with my
Speaker 1: friend Triubis here, you know, like we get together and
Speaker 1: we talk about our life for an hour every week,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's just jokes and laughs, and sometimes it's
Speaker 1: like really serious stuff. But that hour is sacred and
Speaker 1: we make that time for each other. And I think
Speaker 1: in our current where we think that putting up a
Speaker 1: selfie online or you know whatever it is, that like
Speaker 1: this kind of quick fixed thing, we think that that
Speaker 1: can replace the work of having deep intimacy with other people.
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, we're finding out that
Speaker 1: that's not the case. One thought that came to mind
Speaker 1: as you were talking was certainly this idea also that
Speaker 1: there's no there there right, like if we could talk
Speaker 1: about the healing journey and being like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's going to take a lot of years for it
Speaker 1: to happen. I think it's important also that we recognize
Speaker 1: that every step along that way is a healing path
Speaker 1: and it's it's always our life. It's not like we
Speaker 1: have to do it for a certain amount of time
Speaker 1: and then we're healed. It is an ongoing thing that
Speaker 1: comes out. And then the second thing. I've often analyzed
Speaker 1: why does a work for some people? And I often
Speaker 1: analyze why doesn't it work for lots of other people?
Speaker 1: Because it doesn't work for lots of other people. But
Speaker 1: one of the things is the repetitive nature, at least
Speaker 1: when I got so where they were like ninety meetings
Speaker 1: ninety days, like you're going to a meeting every day.
Speaker 1: You just did it, and you kept hearing the same thing,
Speaker 1: And some of the time I'd be like, if I
Speaker 1: have to hear them read those steps again, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: cut my hat off. But I've learned this in my
Speaker 1: Zen practice that like sometimes reading the same small thing
Speaker 1: again and again and again, you encounter it differently over
Speaker 1: and over and you're like, oh my god, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of depths here that I certainly did not
Speaker 1: get the first thirty times. Or I'm changing, and so
Speaker 1: the text is changing with me. Kind of back to
Speaker 1: what you were saying about your father, Maybe he's changing.
Speaker 1: He probably is. Humans do and you're encountering him differently
Speaker 1: because you're a different person. Yeah, we're both changing, and
Speaker 1: I think we're all changing all the time. And to
Speaker 1: be humble about that. Think, that's what I've learned over
Speaker 1: the last five years is humility. It's not fun, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's not like it's great when ego feels it's
Speaker 1: in control and as everything you know just so. But
Speaker 1: he really don't learn if you're not dealt those blows.
Speaker 1: And my analyst always says that every defeat for the
Speaker 1: ego is a victory for the self. And when he
Speaker 1: says the self, he means that in like the transcendent.
Speaker 1: I really believe that if I didn't have those blows,
Speaker 1: if I didn't have those ego defeats, like I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I would be where I am today. You know,
Speaker 1: I read a great book recently. It's called Falling Upward
Speaker 1: by Richard Rord. You know it so like he says,
Speaker 1: you know, the second half of life is about the soul,
Speaker 1: in the first half is about the ego. And for
Speaker 1: people that are doing real well and their ego feels good,
Speaker 1: why would you ever do the soul work? Because you
Speaker 1: just keep going. It's the people that have the spectacular fall,
Speaker 1: they are the ones that are gonna do the soul work.
Speaker 1: And so the fall was necessary, and that's where you
Speaker 1: get humble enough to slide into that second half life
Speaker 1: from when I start to do the work that's hard
Speaker 1: but very necessary. Yeah. Richard Roar is amazing. We've been
Speaker 1: out to interview him a couple of times in New
Speaker 1: Mexico and it's just been it's been amazing. He's a
Speaker 1: very wise man, very wise man. Yeah. You actually say
Speaker 1: at some point in the book, you're talking about how
Speaker 1: difficult some of the past five years have been, and
Speaker 1: you said it wasn't much fun. But true education seldom is.
Speaker 1: And I think the healing journey is hard work. It's rewarding,
Speaker 1: it's worth it, and oftentimes it's the only game in
Speaker 1: town for many of us. To your point, like why
Speaker 1: would you do this if you didn't have to? But
Speaker 1: it can be helpful to keep that perspective sometimes that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of it right now. It doesn't
Speaker 1: feel good, but some faith that it's going somewhere. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I know for me, my process with writing is
Speaker 1: months years of horrible, horrible like doubt and fear and
Speaker 1: just not being able to find the opening and trying
Speaker 1: things that are wrong over and over and over, and
Speaker 1: then one day I sit down and the right opening appears.
Speaker 1: And that's the way it was for this book. It
Speaker 1: was five years of every day sitting down and failing
Speaker 1: over and over and over and over, which forced me
Speaker 1: to go into young analysis, which forced me to start
Speaker 1: thinking differently. And then all of a sudden, all of
Speaker 1: that information that picked up through failing and searching, it
Speaker 1: all came together, and then, you know, the novel just
Speaker 1: it came out of me, you know. And it's easy
Speaker 1: to say, I wish I could just do that on
Speaker 1: the first try, you know, I could just sit down
Speaker 1: every day and write, you know, a novel that's publishable.
Speaker 1: But you forget that. It's it's all that work. And
Speaker 1: a lot of times, you know, young writers will say,
Speaker 1: you know, what do I have to do to be
Speaker 1: a novelist? And I say, well, you go spend a
Speaker 1: bunch of years suffering, you know, and and like that
Speaker 1: is not an InVogue thing to say, but you do
Speaker 1: need to go through difficulties in order to glean the
Speaker 1: information that you need to create something. That transcends you,
Speaker 1: that is better than your daily reality. And in my experience,
Speaker 1: I have not found a way to do that, um,
Speaker 1: without doing some necessary suffering. Yeah, you've got this newsletter
Speaker 1: that you send out and and we'll have a link
Speaker 1: to your website in the show notes and so people
Speaker 1: can get on the newsletter. To call it a newsletter
Speaker 1: is to give the wrong impression. It's a personal note
Speaker 1: from you each month that I have loved getting to
Speaker 1: you know, you know, feeling just like you know, it's
Speaker 1: just great to hear from you and see what's happening again.
Speaker 1: And so you talk a lot about the writer's block,
Speaker 1: how difficult this novel was, and I was kind of
Speaker 1: curious about that. What felt different this time for you
Speaker 1: than other times where you worked and worked and worked
Speaker 1: and couldn't find the opening. Was it that it was
Speaker 1: longer this time? Was it that you were sober and
Speaker 1: so it felt worse. What was different this time, because,
Speaker 1: as you said, like, there's been plenty times in the
Speaker 1: past that you've sort of had to just write the
Speaker 1: bad stuff out till the good stuff came. What was
Speaker 1: different this time? Well, I think, you know, I think
Speaker 1: it was longer. Um, you know, so like six months
Speaker 1: of that was just pretty routine. Five years of that
Speaker 1: is it is not routine for me, I think, not
Speaker 1: having the escape into alcohol at night, and also just
Speaker 1: it's just really feeling unmoored and alone because I lost
Speaker 1: my culture that alcohol proloded, you know, the people that
Speaker 1: I was around, so I felt very alone. My analysts
Speaker 1: and I have pondered this lot that psyche might have
Speaker 1: just shut down my ability to write for a while
Speaker 1: because I was too fragile to put a book out
Speaker 1: at that time. And the more that I think about that,
Speaker 1: I really do think that, you know, in young in terms,
Speaker 1: you would look and say, there's no coincidence. You know,
Speaker 1: in retrospect, that makes a lot of sense. Right now,
Speaker 1: I think if I had published a book two years
Speaker 1: after a reason year alive, I probably had had a
Speaker 1: mental breakdown during the tour. Like I just was so
Speaker 1: fragile and all in vulnerable and young. Um, I just
Speaker 1: I was like a newborn baby. There are things coming
Speaker 1: back online that I had not dealt with. Just like
Speaker 1: I said at the beginning of the show, like when
Speaker 1: you know you honest to shadow or unconscious, that's what
Speaker 1: alcohol does, you know, like you drink and you just
Speaker 1: send these feelings to oblivion and then when they come back,
Speaker 1: they are wild. You know, they are not civilized, and
Speaker 1: they are raw, and they are young, and they want
Speaker 1: to be dealt with right away. And so I don't
Speaker 1: think that that would have been a good look to
Speaker 1: be doing podcasts at that point. So at the time,
Speaker 1: ego was screaming, you know, is you can do this.
Speaker 1: You know you should be able to have control. But
Speaker 1: ego is often wrong, and uh, it was an overdue process,
Speaker 1: and I think that you know the reason you're alive.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's an amazing book. I love that book,
Speaker 1: but I feel like We Are the Light is more
Speaker 1: a book that is reflective of who Matthew Quick is
Speaker 1: on a deeper level. I had to go through this
Speaker 1: process to get to this um and it's taught me
Speaker 1: a deeper respect for the craft too. You know. It's
Speaker 1: like I had this idea, I'm gonna pump out a
Speaker 1: novel every year, and you know, it's gonna be easy.
Speaker 1: And you know, when I was drunk and young like that,
Speaker 1: that seemed like a great idea. But now I think
Speaker 1: there's some wisdom in taking some time and battling and
Speaker 1: really being careful about what you want to say and
Speaker 1: really thinking it through. And and I think more than
Speaker 1: ever with this novel, I'm much more confident about what
Speaker 1: I am saying because I know, like I've been through
Speaker 1: a lot. There's no doubt, whereas in the other novels
Speaker 1: I had a feeling of like, yeah, this feels right,
Speaker 1: but I hadn't done all of that work. And so
Speaker 1: what I am hoping is I am leaving that ego
Speaker 1: phase like Richard worstays, and going into a deeper soul phase.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'd like to think that We Are
Speaker 1: the Light is a progression towards doing deeper and more
Speaker 1: meaningful work. And that's not a dis on my earlier work,
Speaker 1: which I'm still very proud of. It's just this is
Speaker 1: a very different Matthew Quick. Yeah, well it's a beautiful book,
Speaker 1: and it's been so great to catch up with you again.
Speaker 1: We're kind of out of time, but I feel like
Speaker 1: I could do this for another six hours. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I've really to this, Eric. It's pleasure to be back.
Speaker 1: I hope it's not five years before we talk again.
Speaker 1: Like I said, we'll have links in the show notes
Speaker 1: for our website and all that and where people can
Speaker 1: buy the book. Fantastic. Yeah, thank you, This is wonderful.
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