0:15

Pushkin is

0:25

this extraordinary opportunity to

0:27

experience solitude. And

0:30

I keep hearing people say this is really hard psychologically

0:33

on people. Humans are social

0:35

animals, We're meant to be together, and that's

0:38

inarguably true, but that's not the only

0:40

thing we are. We're also spiritual animals. And

0:43

every spiritual tradition

0:46

in the history of the world advises,

0:50

at some point or another, going and being alone

0:52

for a long period of time, and

0:55

being in retreat, and

0:57

being in stillness and being in isolation.

1:00

But if you're asking me how I'm experiencing

1:02

it, this is a country I've never been to.

1:04

And I don't mean America under lockdown.

1:06

I mean living complete

1:09

solitude for a long, extended

1:11

period of time. That

1:15

was Elizabeth Gilbert. I'm San Fracoso

1:18

and this is Talk Easy.

1:21

Welcome to the show. Hey,

1:45

everyone, Today's guest is Elizabeth

1:47

Gilbert. She's the author of many

1:50

wonderful books, including Eat, Pray,

1:52

Love, The Signature of All Things,

1:54

and most recently City

1:56

of Girls. On a personal

1:59

note, I wanted to give some context before

2:01

we jumped in here. Four years

2:03

ago. I started this show with

2:06

my friend Coreya Tad. He was

2:08

helping me at a the podcast at the time,

2:10

and I remember we started putting

2:12

together a short list, as one does,

2:15

of some of our dream guests. These

2:18

were people that we wanted to sit with for an hour,

2:21

all of whom we're probably out

2:23

of our reach for a podcast with about

2:25

one hundred people listening, half

2:27

of them my family. But

2:30

in the interviewing four years,

2:32

some of those folks on that list have

2:34

come on. Gloria steinem Werner,

2:37

Hertzog, Laura Dern, Malcolm

2:39

Gladwell, Noam Chomsky. I

2:41

mention all of this because at

2:44

the top of that list was Liz

2:46

Gilbert. You'll understand

2:48

why in this conversation if you don't

2:50

already, but it was her book on

2:52

Creativity Big Magic that

2:55

helped me not only make talk easy,

2:57

but continue making talk easy.

3:00

You know, we try to make each of these episodes,

3:02

all one hundred and sixty nine of them

3:04

special. That's a hard thing to

3:07

do week after week, but

3:09

it's something we do try to do, whether you're listening

3:11

at home, or in the yard or

3:13

on your walk, wherever you are in

3:16

this quarantine, we do try.

3:18

We don't always succeed, or let me

3:20

be fair, I don't always succeed,

3:23

but God knows everyone on this team certainly

3:27

tries. As for Liz, I feel

3:29

a certain kind of kinship with

3:31

what she does on the page and what

3:33

we do on this podcast. She's

3:35

irrepressibly curious, a

3:38

searcher, interested in

3:40

getting to the heart of things. I

3:42

don't want to spoil this conversation, but know

3:45

that this is the first time a guest

3:47

has convinced me not to edit a

3:49

couple parts of a conversation. I

3:52

guess I should have expected that, of all people,

3:55

Liz would challenge my ideas about

3:57

what is permissible to share and what is

4:00

not. So we kept

4:02

in the imperfections, and you

4:04

know, in this moment of ours, maybe

4:07

that's exactly what we need to be making visible

4:09

to people. I hope you enjoy

4:23

Elizabeth Gilbert, Thank you so much for being

4:25

here. We just went through a

4:27

really enjoyable process of setting

4:29

up these microphones. Are you feeling okay?

4:32

I'm feeling good. And I also feel like

4:35

like you and I have been through something together

4:37

now and we know each

4:39

other in a way that you know, other

4:41

people could never understand the particular

4:43

bond, and

4:46

I'm proud of us. I feel like we went through it with a lot of

4:48

grace, a lot of patience, a

4:50

lot of compassion. It was good. It was a good

4:53

moment. I definitely think you went

4:55

through it with a lot of grace. I

4:58

was just trying my best to keep

5:00

cool and all of it. We're here, though. I

5:02

was impressed by your patients. Also. Thanks

5:04

well. You know, these are hard times and I feel like these,

5:08

these moments of time archeological challenge,

5:10

are the times that test man's soul. So

5:15

some people have greatness thrust upon them, Sam, and

5:19

this is just one of those occasions. There's really

5:21

this is just one of those occasions. A zoom mix

5:23

up turns into a moment of heroism.

5:26

And just you

5:28

know, I'm not a hero. I don't want to be called

5:30

a hero. No, And I would never accuse you

5:32

of being. No. Absolutely

5:35

not. So your latest book, City

5:37

of Girls, I'm sure you have talked about it a

5:39

lot, but I want to read from something here.

5:41

You describe your protagonist, Vivian

5:44

Morris as a good person who

5:46

may not be a good girl. She's

5:49

sexually curious and eager, a

5:51

nineteen year old who moved to New York City

5:53

in the nineteen forties. As

5:55

I started reading this book, I

5:58

was suddenly reminded of someone

6:01

else's story of a

6:03

woman who moved to New York at about

6:05

nineteen, leaving her family

6:07

in Litchfield, Connecticut, it for

6:10

college, And I guess

6:12

I just wanted to start here and

6:14

where your story dovetails with

6:18

Vivians. Well, I'll start

6:20

by saying that I've heard it said,

6:22

and I think there's a lot of truth to it, that every

6:25

novel is a memoir, and

6:28

every memoir is a work of fiction. And

6:31

I've long said that

6:33

if anybody is interested in really

6:36

learning about me, I think you would learn more

6:39

by reading my novels than by

6:41

reading my memoirs. And it's not because I'm trying to be

6:43

obtuse in the memoirs. It's

6:45

just that writing a memoir is so

6:49

it's so studied, it's so

6:51

curated, there's so much care

6:53

that has to go into it. There's so many ethical

6:55

questions that you're struggling with when you write it.

6:58

Is my truth? The only truth? Am I being fair

7:00

to the people that I'm writing about? Will I be sued?

7:03

Can I put this detail in here? Do

7:05

I want people to know this about me? How do I

7:07

be revealing? And I'll so not over revealing.

7:10

It's it's just a lot of mental

7:13

work. In a different kind of way.

7:16

When I'm writing a novel, I can put everything

7:18

into it that's actually from

7:20

my life without very

7:23

much reservation whatsoever. So there's it's

7:25

a kind of a free for all. So

7:29

to answer your question, where does it dovetail? Yeah,

7:31

I'm very My life in

7:34

many ways was very similar to Vivian

7:36

morris is, except not in New York City in

7:38

the nineteen forties, in a theater company

7:40

run by my eccentric aunt. Yeah.

7:42

But there is something to you. Coming to

7:44

New York in nineteen eighty seven

7:47

going to college, you worked as a cook,

7:49

a bartender, or waitress. I love this

7:52

quote you have. You said, young adulthood

7:54

is about finding out what your boundaries

7:57

are. And for me, the only way I can

7:59

figure out where the boundary is

8:01

is by crossing it by about ten miles

8:04

at full speed. I'm

8:06

interested in going back to this year of eighty

8:08

seven and in that period where

8:10

you are this young person away

8:13

from home running around.

8:16

It was a distressing combination because

8:18

I had huge, ungovernable

8:20

appetites for adventure,

8:23

for sex, for

8:27

intrigue, for everything

8:31

that New York city had to offer to

8:33

somebody who grew up on a small family Christmas

8:36

tree farm and who

8:38

could not wait to get out of town

8:41

and be free. I

8:43

also had huge intellectual

8:46

appetites. I was like,

8:48

I didn't waste my time as much as

8:50

I was running about and being wild. I felt

8:53

this huge urgency to take

8:56

advantage of being in New York

8:58

and take advantage of being at

9:00

NYU. And I would remember being,

9:02

you know, as a freshman in college, and whenever I would meet

9:05

a senior, I would bring out a notebook and I would ask

9:07

them to write down the names of the most citing

9:09

professors because I wanted to

9:11

be in the most exciting classes. And

9:15

I was hungry. I was thirsty, and

9:18

a lot of that hunger grew

9:21

into the person who I've become and

9:23

the life that I've created for myself. And

9:26

some of that hunger grew into, you

9:29

know, basically emotional car accidents,

9:32

um, you know, or driving off of cliffs accidentally,

9:35

or driving your car through someone's house accidentally.

9:37

You know, some of it was it was a lot of thrashing

9:39

around. Not all of it was disastrous, but some of

9:41

it was. Did you know

9:44

it was disastrous? At the time. Well,

9:47

denial is an amazing thing. I knew it when

9:50

when the disaster hit, you know, but not

9:52

not usually until then, um like,

9:55

and then I knew it, you know. I knew it through heartbreak.

9:57

I knew it through shame. I

9:59

knew it through as I as you had that

10:02

quote about crossing boundaries. I knew

10:04

it through the pain that I caused other people and

10:07

the incredible distress that that would

10:09

ring to me. But I didn't know how to stop

10:11

wanting what I wanted, which

10:14

was to be really really

10:16

overstimulated all the time. How did

10:18

you cause pen to others? Oh by by

10:21

various kinds of misbehaving, lying,

10:24

cheating, double timing,

10:26

people breaking their hearts, making

10:29

promises I couldn't keep. And I

10:31

don't say that like I'm sort of laughing at

10:33

it, but I don't say it lightly because people's

10:35

hearts are real things, and it's there's

10:38

something that's a great contrast with what my My

10:41

true nature is very kind, and I don't want

10:43

to do that. But I also just had,

10:45

really I just had really big

10:48

appetites for experience that I that were

10:50

governing me more than I was governing

10:52

them. And when when people talk about

10:55

this novel, and they talk about City of Girls. They

10:57

say, Oh, it's so refreshing to see a novel about a

10:59

woman who's in control of her sexuality. And I'm

11:01

like, not, really, that's not really what

11:03

this book is about. It's a book about a

11:05

woman whose sexuality is in control of her

11:08

and and and that's a story

11:10

that I don't feel like I've seen very often. And when

11:13

I do see it, the female protagonist

11:15

tends to not survive it. And

11:18

so I survived my appetites, and

11:21

I'm most people that I know survived there. And

11:23

that's sort of the basis for the story

11:25

was, how do we survive our shame? How do we survive our

11:27

mistakes? You know,

11:29

how do we come into being in ways

11:32

that where we can be both as free

11:34

as possible but causing as little

11:36

damage as possible to ourselves and others.

11:39

In your twenties, it seems like you've

11:41

valued experiences at

11:43

the expense of other people sometimes.

11:46

Is that fair to say? I don't want to mischaracterize. No,

11:48

no, no, it's it's okay. I think you can say that I

11:50

also sometimes valued experiences at the

11:52

expense of myself. And

11:54

what does that mean? There's well, putting

11:57

myself in dangerous situations.

11:59

And I certainly valued

12:01

experience over

12:04

stability, and I definitely

12:06

valued freedom over safety.

12:09

And that's something There's a

12:11

line in the book where Vivian says that even into her middle

12:14

age, she said, it was more important for me to be free than

12:16

it was for me to be safe. And

12:18

there's always this is another thing

12:20

that I wanted to to just I'm

12:23

not saying it's a good thing. I'm just saying that there's

12:25

always going to be women like that.

12:29

There are always going to be women like that. They came to New York

12:31

in nineteen eighty seven, they came in nineteen forty,

12:33

they came in eighteen thirty. She arrived

12:35

in New York two months ago. I don't know what she's doing now in

12:37

quarantine, but like, there's there's

12:39

always going to be that girl. And she's

12:42

hopefully home. Hopefully she's home, but

12:44

she's probably not. She's

12:48

probably not. She's probably breaking

12:50

all kinds of rules. And is she going

12:52

on like a bunch of skype zoom dates or

12:54

something or whatever maybe or maybe

12:57

you know, I mean, or maybe just behaving

12:59

in ways that put other people at risk and put

13:01

herself at risk because that would be in keeping and

13:05

and and it's not that I want to

13:07

glorify that, It's just that I wanted

13:09

to tell a story about it. You

13:11

were a fondness for people

13:15

that look like and did what you

13:17

did in your twenties. Yeah, And I have a funness

13:19

that's taken me years to develop for

13:22

myself in my twenties, because for a long time I

13:24

had a shame about like, God,

13:26

why couldn't I just be normal?

13:29

Why couldn't I hold it together? Why

13:31

couldn't I be Why couldn't

13:33

I be what I had been taught a good girl was?

13:37

And the answer is

13:39

because I couldn't. You know, There's a certain nature

13:41

that I had that I came in with

13:44

and had to kind of work my way

13:46

through and explore my way through. So so now

13:48

I have a great deal of funness for it. And as I say,

13:50

a lot of that kind of riotous appetite

13:54

also really gave me my life, you

13:57

know. I mean, that same spirit is the thing that

13:59

made me go take really

14:01

strange, unusual jobs and pursue

14:04

things that I was curious about and be able to write

14:07

stories about them, be daring and to

14:09

walk into spin magazine's

14:12

offices and talk my way through three personal

14:14

assistances until I got to an editor to ask for

14:16

a job. Like a lot of it was also

14:19

why I have what I have now.

14:23

A meeker, more polite,

14:26

obedient girl wouldn't have gotten those things.

14:30

You know when you

14:32

were in the fourth grade. You have a teacher, Miss

14:35

Sandy Carpenter. She

14:37

announced a fundraiser and students

14:39

were asked to sell grinders, which are just sandwiches

14:42

for people who don't know what grinders are, to

14:44

pay for a class trip. In

14:46

The New York Times, they wrote there was never any

14:49

question whether Gilbert would participate.

14:52

Still, door to door sales of

14:54

a perishable food stuff can provide intimidating

14:57

even to a zealous nine year old, so

15:00

her mother, Carol, initiated

15:02

a training program. She made

15:04

Gilbert go outside and close

15:06

the front door. Gilbert

15:09

then had to knock, introduce herself

15:11

and explain what she was selling and why

15:14

our family is going on vacation next week.

15:17

Carol might announce what if

15:19

we want the grinders two weeks from now, to which

15:21

Gilbert would generally respond I don't

15:23

know and start crying. Back

15:26

it up. Her mother would say, try

15:28

it again, get it right, kid, and

15:30

close the door. How

15:33

much do you think your parents are informing you

15:36

at that age, because you described your dad

15:38

as someone who was never happy

15:41

unless he was wet and cold still

15:44

and you had your own version of that. Well,

15:47

I okay, all of this has to be

15:50

spoken with a caveat that the

15:53

most brilliant minds in the world don't know how

15:56

much a child is informed by their

15:58

parents and their training and their upbring like.

16:01

That's one of the big mysteries

16:03

that I doubt we will ever solve. Nature nurture,

16:06

how much of you, how much of it is your inherent

16:08

software, or how much of it is your environment. I don't

16:10

know the answer to that anymore than anybody else does,

16:13

but I know that in

16:16

the case of my mom, her

16:19

biggest anxiety about her

16:21

daughters was that she would raise girls

16:24

who were dependent on

16:26

people and who were frightened

16:29

or unable to take

16:31

care of themselves. My

16:33

mother was incredibly resourceful. She had

16:35

She was a self made woman

16:38

in terms of she moved out of her family

16:40

farm when she was fifteen years old and supported herself

16:42

from the age of fifteen on, always

16:46

working. Worked her entire way through high

16:48

school, put herself through nursing school, just

16:52

had a real sense of the world

16:54

that no one's going to take care of you, and

16:57

saw what happened to the girls and women

16:59

and her family who were waiting

17:01

for somebody to take care of them, or who believed

17:04

that somebody was going to take care of them.

17:05

And so that drill

17:08

at the door about with the door, you know, when

17:10

I was selling grinders for fourth grade, you

17:13

know, she took that very seriously,

17:16

and she imparted to me that it was

17:19

that it was serious business. You

17:21

have to learn how to knock on a door, you have to learn how to

17:23

look someone in the eye, you have to learn how to introduce yourself,

17:26

you have to learn how to you have to learn how to work

17:28

harder than everyone else. And you definitely

17:30

will be selling more grinders than anyone else

17:32

in the fourth grade. Um, you know, that's

17:35

a matter of survival, not even a

17:37

matter of competition. Maybe

17:40

I arrived with that hardwired into me,

17:42

or maybe that was drilled into me,

17:45

but I definitely knew

17:48

from a very early age that nobody

17:51

and especially not my parents were going to be looking

17:53

after me. When I was over

17:55

the age of eighteen. That was made very clear, and

17:59

so there really was a sense of like, I gotta

18:01

go get this thing, but that sounds that sounds really

18:03

sinister and anxiety

18:05

producing, and part of it was. But

18:07

part of it too was like I was pretty excited

18:10

to get out there, you

18:12

know, like I was.

18:16

I keep using the word hungry, but I was really

18:19

hungry for the world. That makes you smile,

18:21

it does. There was a look

18:23

that you gave to the left

18:25

side over there, and it

18:28

really felt like you saw yourself

18:30

in your twenties in that moment. Yeah. Yeah,

18:32

and that God, I

18:35

just I just remember that everything

18:38

was so exciting. Everything

18:41

was so exciting, and everything was the

18:43

opportunity for new experiences.

18:46

The summer between my freshman

18:49

and sophomore year of college, I went to Philadelphia

18:51

to live with my sister. She was in graduate school at UPEN

18:54

and she had an extra bedroom and I moved in with

18:56

her. And there was this diner where

18:59

we used to go to eat, and I loved it. It was like

19:01

an American, classic

19:04

American silk city diner from

19:06

the thirties

19:08

forty He's maybe, and the

19:10

guy who owned it was just really eccentric

19:13

and loud, and it was just this bustling

19:15

live vivid. I have

19:17

so many great stories from that place.

19:20

And I remember it was my first

19:22

waitressing job and I asked him for a job, and I'd never

19:24

waitressed before, but I convinced him to let

19:26

me try. And I remember coming

19:28

home thrilled because he'd given me the job and

19:31

saying to my sister and her her

19:33

boyfriend, who was also a graduate student, I was

19:35

like, can you believe it? I get to I

19:37

get to go to the American

19:40

Diner every single day. I get to go there every

19:42

single day, and I'm going to get paid. And

19:46

I remember him looking at me, her boyfriend looking

19:48

at me with sort of contempt, and he said, yeah,

19:51

I remember what it was like to be nineteen. And

19:53

I remember, even at the time, thinking, no, you

19:55

don't asshole you You

19:57

were. I can tell just by looking at You've

19:59

never been fucking excited about anything, you

20:02

know, Like I was like, shut up, like, don't degrade.

20:04

This is awesome. And it

20:06

was awesome, and working there

20:09

enabled me to be able to

20:11

save my money and go traveling. I met

20:14

people who I'm still friends with. I got stories that became

20:16

part of my first short story collection. It was a gold

20:18

mine that place. But yeah, that that

20:21

level of enthusiasm was a little hard

20:23

for some people to take. But

20:27

I submit and still

20:30

hold to this day that

20:32

that was a pretty cool way to be nineteen. By

20:34

the way, it's still there. You're

20:36

still nineteen. I'm gonna be honest,

20:39

I'm twenty five and I feel

20:41

like more crabby than you. Thank

20:46

you. That's very nice to say. It's the last compliment

20:48

I'm going to give to the end, So okay, thanks.

20:51

I can't wait to see what the one at the end is.

20:56

I haven't planned it, but I have to figure it out in that

20:58

time. Make it

21:00

a good one. Make it a good one. Sam. No,

21:04

but really, there is such an enthusiasm

21:07

that you have. It's

21:10

infectious. It's it's absolutely

21:12

infectious. Man. It's

21:15

something I hope you hold dear

21:17

to yourself because it's it's not it's

21:19

not so common. Thank you for saying

21:22

that. Um. There are times in life when I lose

21:24

it, and when I do, I get really upset.

21:28

I get really upset, and I feel like they're oh

21:30

great, violation has occurred, and

21:33

it's like, oh no, no, no, that's not okay.

21:36

You know, it's not okay that that's gone and

21:39

I will fight tooth and nail to get it back. When

21:42

of you lost it, I lose it when I get

21:44

really I can get just so distressed

21:46

that that it shuts down. And um

21:49

some thinking of times where I've lost it. I mean I certainly

21:51

lost it when I was thirty and I was going

21:53

through my first divorce

21:55

and through what became an almost

21:58

three year long depression, you

22:01

know, and it really did feel like something that I had lost,

22:04

you know, like something that I had misplaced. And I remember

22:06

getting really frightened about two years

22:08

in because I thought, wait a minute,

22:10

what if this is What if this

22:12

isn't just a bad season

22:15

of my life, what if it's permanent? Yeah, what if this

22:18

is what I am now? That

22:20

just felt absolutely terrifying

22:23

and I and I've lost it at times in anger.

22:26

Anger can override it when I feel I've

22:28

been done wrong, you know, and

22:31

I can get really righteous and really

22:34

outraged and really hurt,

22:36

and that can shut it down, and I

22:38

can get lost in that story for a while. But

22:42

yeah, mostly it's been through heartbreak

22:44

or disappointing myself for shame or

22:47

anger. Yeah, the big emotions that you

22:49

know, they

22:51

can bring it in, But

22:54

I think the enthusiasm is my screen

22:56

saver, Like I think that's my default

22:59

setting that my nature

23:01

wants to return to and will always

23:03

try to return to. And everything else that

23:06

disrupts that is. Yeah,

23:09

it's really painful for me to lose that

23:11

when I lose it. Can we go back to

23:13

that time that you're speaking of, because in

23:16

two thousand and two, you're

23:18

thirty three years old traveling

23:21

to Indonesia and

23:24

you're in a terrible depression, like you just talked

23:27

about, You go to this remote fishing

23:29

island. You decided that

23:31

you needed to spend ten days in silence

23:34

to try to have a truth and reconciliation

23:36

with yourself because you were,

23:38

as you put it, so full of

23:40

shame and pain. What

23:43

was that pain and shame that you felt like you

23:46

had to work through? I just felt

23:48

like such a failure because my marriage had

23:50

failed, and

23:53

and because it's

23:56

so funny, but it's like now it just seems

23:58

like I just want to go back and pick her up

24:00

and put her under my arm and be like, oh, honey,

24:02

I can't believe you're that this is what you're

24:04

allowing to take you down. It would

24:06

be hard to express how

24:09

much I had internalized that by

24:11

a certain age, you're supposed to be

24:14

married and you're supposed to have children. And

24:17

I did not want to be married, and I did not

24:20

want to have children, and I tried so hard

24:22

to override that with you

24:24

know, I really stuffed that down. And I

24:26

had gotten married with the promise

24:29

that I would be a

24:31

mother. That was the plan

24:34

promised to who, to my then

24:37

husband and in a weird way, to the world,

24:39

you know. And but the deal that I had

24:41

struck, which is again it's like, oh my god,

24:44

this kid, I got married really young.

24:46

I got married at twenty four. My sister

24:48

also got married at twenty four. My mother also got married

24:50

at twenty four. It's like something in me had

24:52

just believed that that's the age you get married.

24:55

And and the promise I made to my

24:58

then husband was that when I turned thirty,

25:01

I would we could start a family. But

25:04

that date, as it approached, and

25:07

I'm not speaking with hyperbole here,

25:10

genuinely felt like a death sentence. I

25:13

mean, I felt like my thirtieth birthday would be the

25:15

day my life ended. And the light

25:17

by by which I mean that life of enthusiasm

25:21

and adventure and travel and creativity

25:23

and all of that would just have to be

25:26

put away forever. And it

25:28

truly felt like death. It was

25:30

like the opposite of a biological

25:33

clock ticking. It was like a bomb ticking

25:37

and I and I hit it and I

25:39

suppressed it and I tried to talk myself out of it.

25:41

I mean, I did everything I could, but

25:44

my whole being shut down, my whole

25:46

body. I remember vomiting

25:49

every single day in the six months

25:51

leading up to my thirtieth birthday. It was

25:53

like this weird, like comic

25:57

joke on morning sickness, you know, like instead

26:00

of it was, it was vomiting because

26:02

I didn't want to get pregnant. But you

26:04

know, I was like, you know, and because

26:06

I didn't trust myself in

26:09

any way, I was too young to trust myself.

26:11

All I could do is try to override all of

26:13

that, you know. But literally

26:16

every atom of my being was like, don't

26:18

do this, you know. And I was like, yeah,

26:20

but I have to, but I have to, but I I

26:22

said I would. I said I would,

26:25

and then I couldn't do it, and and

26:28

and I was very ashamed. And then

26:31

shame was heaped upon shame because my

26:34

husband was really hurt and he turns his

26:36

hurt into into rage

26:38

and blame. And I took it. I took

26:41

every single bit of it as my

26:43

fault. And so that's what I

26:45

was grappling with there. Yeah, just

26:48

failure, bad person, hurt

26:51

people, disappointed people. How dare

26:53

you? Who do you think you are? What are you going to do? Now? Yeah?

26:56

It was It was awful. The universe

26:59

was speaking to you. I

27:01

mean, it doesn't always speak in such clear signals.

27:04

It will if you don't listen to the subtle signals,

27:06

you know, it will speak to you as loud

27:09

as it fucking has to, you

27:13

know. And I remember my friend Richard

27:15

from Texas and I met and wrote about a lot and pray

27:17

love, saying to me, if you hadn't finally

27:19

listened to that, it would have made you have a car accident,

27:22

like like whatever it had to do, you

27:24

know. And I think people who have been through

27:27

these sorts of things in your life, you know what I'm talking about,

27:29

where it's like there's something that is

27:32

being spoken that you are overriding

27:34

and it won't let you, and

27:37

it's going to win because it's the truth,

27:40

you know, and the truth usually wins no

27:42

matter, you know. I think it was David

27:44

Foster Wallace who said that the truth will set

27:46

you free, but not before it's had its way with you,

27:50

you know. So those years where the truth having

27:53

its way with me, and I'm much much

27:55

better now about catching it

27:57

so much sooner. You know, I really

27:59

do believe in trust, and I have learned that

28:02

when my whole sort of physiological

28:04

being starts to shut down, there's

28:06

a lie that I'm telling, and

28:09

and and then the question is to see if I can find

28:11

it. You know, where am I lying? What am I lying about?

28:13

Why am I what am I pretending I want

28:15

to do that I don't want to do? Who am I pretending

28:18

that I love that I don't love? Um? What

28:21

am I martyring myself to? You know? In

28:23

in a way, I've come to appreciate the fact that whatever

28:27

my physiological mentals, whatever,

28:29

my whole like entity just

28:32

can't survive in a lie.

28:35

It just can't. It just it just breaks down, and

28:37

it breaks down immediately, and the breakdown

28:39

starts really quickly. So now I catch it a lot sooner,

28:41

I don't. I like to think I will never put

28:43

myself through three years or four years of

28:45

torment like that again. I'll

28:48

change what I have to change a lot sooner. What

28:50

was the universe telling you in

28:53

nineteen ninety three when

28:55

you have that first short

28:58

story published? They

29:00

called your your piece the debut

29:03

of an American writer, the first

29:05

unpublished short story writer

29:07

in the magazine since Norman

29:09

Mailer. And that's really the only way I

29:12

think you two have something in common.

29:15

What did you make of that title? Okay,

29:18

so a couple of things. One is

29:21

it was an enormous relief because

29:23

I remember feeling like, even

29:26

if nothing ever happens again, after

29:29

this, this happened, and

29:32

now I'm a published writer, and that had

29:34

been my goal for as

29:36

long as I could remember. So I was like, oh,

29:38

that's done right. You know, you

29:41

had a steady stream of rejection

29:44

letters for seven years going into this and

29:46

by Esquire two and by that same editor.

29:48

But he made the mistake about five years

29:51

prior of sending me a rejection

29:53

letter that had his name on it, and then it had him

29:55

in my sights. You know, I was like, I got a

29:57

name. Now, I'm not just sending this to some blank,

29:59

you know, faceless fiction department

30:02

at Esquire magazine. And I started

30:04

just assaulting him with short

30:06

stories, and

30:09

you know, I was like clinging to him like he

30:12

was my God. And in a way, I in my mind

30:14

I had imagined him. He had this very still

30:16

has this very elegant name, Anthony Barzilay

30:18

Freund, and I imagined him to be

30:21

some august bearded sort

30:24

of you know, patrician corner

30:27

office, and he was like an intern.

30:30

You know, he was I think the first time

30:32

you read my stuff, he was an intern reading through the slush

30:34

pile. But cool. It was somebody. It

30:36

was the first person who I had ever had

30:39

intimate direct contact with at

30:41

a magazine, and I wanted I wanted to be in

30:43

there. So yeah, I pushed and pushed

30:46

at him. It was a great joy. There

30:48

was very little apart from joy. I remember

30:51

some anxiety that it might not happen,

30:54

that something would happen between when they bought

30:56

it and when the magazine went to print

30:58

and it would be disrupted and it wouldn't occur.

31:01

So I had some anxiety about that. But then once

31:03

it actually existed where I

31:05

could hand it to people, you

31:07

gotta understand what a fuck pamphleteer

31:10

I had been my entire life of my own work.

31:12

From the time I was a kid. I was just like, read this,

31:14

look, I made this. Hey, I wrote a play.

31:17

Let's do that, you know, like just pushing and

31:19

pushing myself into

31:21

the world so much, and finally there

31:23

was somebody other than me who believed in me. So

31:27

it was just such a great It

31:29

was such a great, great, wonderful,

31:31

exciting feeling, and I didn't

31:33

know whether I would be able to ever

31:36

do it again. And as for the debut

31:38

of an American writer thing, I think

31:40

even then I understood that.

31:44

And I say this with all love and respect

31:46

to Esquire, who gave me my place in the world

31:48

and gave me my foothold. I

31:50

knew that that was a marketing thing for them.

31:53

And it's so funny now it's such a different world.

31:55

You know, fiction was published in magazines

31:57

twenty five years ago and people

32:00

cared about it and noticed it. Like now, it

32:02

seems like what did that even

32:04

signify? You know, But at

32:06

the time, they had found a way to and

32:09

they'd found a way to also make themselves good by publishing

32:11

a young woman and with

32:14

a voice that worked in Esquire, So

32:17

I could see they were running a little hustle there too. So

32:20

I didn't take it too seriously, but

32:24

I was happy about it. They

32:26

were trying to sell some magazines, you can't

32:28

blame them, and they were trying to re establish

32:30

themselves as the Esquire of the nineteen sixties,

32:33

which was what everybody always wanted

32:35

to be back then in the nineties, because

32:37

Esquire in the nineteen sixties had been this

32:40

literary tour to force. And so

32:43

yeah, I think they were. They were

32:45

working their own angle there. God

32:48

bless them, and thank you to

32:51

this day. Thank you. It's like nothing

32:53

could have It was the launchpad for everything.

32:56

Inside the short story itself,

32:59

there seems to be a parallel between Martha

33:02

and the protagonists. These

33:04

are two young people who

33:09

are excited by the idea of Denver,

33:12

you know, they're excited

33:14

about leaving, about going

33:16

anywhere else. And

33:19

it reminded me of this film called River

33:21

of Grass. I don't know if you've seen

33:23

it. Oh, it's so so good.

33:26

It's Kelly Reichart's

33:28

first movie, and it's

33:30

set in Florida around these two

33:33

kids. They're about the same age as

33:35

the characters in Pilgrims Your Short

33:38

Story, and it's people in a

33:40

small town who

33:42

have these lofty ideas about venturing

33:46

outside, about leaving

33:49

their family, their hometown,

33:51

everyone they know, and

33:54

the tragedy of that film

33:57

in its in essence. Some of

33:59

the sadness of your story is

34:02

that for most of those people

34:05

who grow up in a Litchfield,

34:07

Connecticut, the

34:10

lofty dreams of leaving are

34:12

just that they stay there.

34:15

They stay as dreams, and

34:17

most people live their lives thinking,

34:19

God, I wish I just tried it. I don't know if

34:21

I would have liked it, but I wish I'd tried and

34:23

moved to New York. I wish I did the

34:26

thing that I had dreamt about doing under

34:28

the stars, as

34:30

I do in your story. And

34:33

to me, you

34:35

are an example of

34:38

this story, except the

34:40

next act of it is you actually do leave.

34:43

It's funny because when you were talking about the

34:46

regret of Oh, I wish I had done that, you

34:48

know, my mind goes

34:50

to, I wish I had moved

34:52

to Europe.

34:54

I wish I'd moved I wish

34:56

I'd moved to Europe. I wish I had like found

34:58

a way, even though it would have been

35:00

so out of reach for my family, But I wish I had found

35:03

a way in high school to do a year

35:05

abroad, so I could have learned a language

35:07

when my mind was more nimble, and I

35:09

could be bilingual now, like I wish,

35:11

like I don't. I feel like I've lived

35:13

a pretty big life and done a lot of things, but it

35:16

doesn't matter. There's always that Oh,

35:19

man, you know, if only I had gone

35:22

to France when I was sixteen, like

35:24

what that would have been like? Um. So

35:27

it's not that I'm without those thoughts myself.

35:30

But from the time that I was I'm

35:32

going to say thirteen was

35:34

when it became almost

35:36

unbearable for me to live in my town. And

35:39

I think I probably became unbearable

35:42

as a result of that. I'm going to take out probably I

35:44

think I became unbearable as a result

35:47

of that because I

35:49

was so aware that the town

35:51

was so small, and I was aware

35:54

there are parts of it that I loved. I was aware that

35:56

I grew up in a beautiful place. I grew up in New

35:59

England and in the Berkshires.

36:01

It's really really pretty there, and

36:04

I had a sense of the natural beauty of the place, which

36:06

is still the thing that I like about it when I go back

36:08

and visit my parents and they still live on the same farm.

36:11

I still get the same hit that I

36:14

got as a kid from

36:16

those pine forests, and it's

36:18

so special in that way. It's as

36:20

pretty as anywhere in the world. But

36:23

I couldn't bear the fact

36:25

that I was still in school with the same eighty

36:28

kids so I went to kindergarten with and that I

36:30

would be with them until the end, and that we

36:32

were all white, and that we were all

36:35

exactly the same. And

36:37

I was so frustrated.

36:40

I was so incredibly frustrated.

36:42

I could not get out of there fast

36:44

enough. And I really was

36:46

correct to go to New York because

36:48

it's where I belonged to. New York made

36:50

space for me and still

36:52

does, and I still call

36:55

it the Great Mother, you know. It's still the

36:57

place that gave birth to the life

36:59

that I get to have now. So

37:03

yeah, it's just really hard to

37:05

be It's like a Bruce Springstein song, it's

37:07

really hard to be a teenager in

37:09

a small town when you long

37:12

for so much more. And I remember

37:14

being frustrated. This is a weird angle

37:16

of it, but I remember being really frustrated with

37:19

my friends who didn't want more. I couldn't understand

37:21

that my friends who didn't

37:23

want to leave. It just that

37:25

baffled me. It just was

37:27

like, why don't you Why

37:31

is this enough? What's it like? I'm still

37:33

I'm still amazed. I have I have certain cousins

37:35

that I look at and I think, what's

37:38

it like to be

37:40

satisfied? Like

37:45

to just be like, here's my high school

37:47

boyfriend, you know, we got

37:49

married, here's our kids, here's

37:51

our house. And I stare at them and

37:54

look for signs of misery,

37:56

and I don't see it, Like they have really lovely

37:58

lives and they're lovely people, And I'm like, what's

38:01

that like, Liz.

38:04

I'm sure they really appreciate you going to these

38:06

family gatherings and you sitting down

38:08

and thinking where's the misery? Where is

38:10

it? Why? Well, actually,

38:13

what I want to say is like, what's it like to

38:15

not feel like you're on fire? You

38:17

know? Um like to not feel like you're on fire

38:20

and the world's on fire and you have to go be

38:22

in the fire of the world. I'm

38:25

marvel at it, and and I remember,

38:27

I have one cousin who I really love, and she has

38:30

a beautiful life that she's

38:32

created with her partner that she's been

38:34

with forever. And her kids and and and

38:36

she said to me like, if I if I had one life

38:38

to live that wasn't mine, I think I would like it to be yours.

38:41

And I was like, well, I've got maybe

38:44

I said, what percentage of that of you

38:46

is that? And she's like maybe two percent.

38:48

And I was like, that's cool, because I've

38:50

got like two percent of my life that would want

38:53

to be. So it seems like we're living

38:55

the life we want. You know, there's just a little

38:57

bit of curiosity of what would what would have been

38:59

like to take a totally different path. But

39:03

she doesn't really want it, and I don't really want

39:05

her life, but um, but I do wonder what

39:08

would it like you like to just be like this

39:10

is fine. You know, this is

39:12

fine here, this place is fine,

39:14

this person is fine, this job is fine. That's

39:17

just not what I'm like. If

39:20

people like you and I could do it, it

39:22

would be wonderful, but

39:25

since we can't, it

39:27

would be agony. Well, I also just

39:29

think it's what your nature is. And there's a little

39:31

anecdote that's a neat prey love about this guy

39:33

who I met when I was in Indian and he was from a

39:36

dairy farm in County Cork in Ireland,

39:39

grew up in a very conservative, very traditional,

39:42

very rural Irish setting,

39:46

pretty restricted world. And

39:48

but he was on fire, you know,

39:50

he was on fire from the time he could remember.

39:52

He was on fire. He was hungry.

39:55

He was full of yearning, longing,

39:58

agitation, emotion, craving,

40:01

desperation, all of it. And he went out in

40:03

the world, threw himself, impaled himself

40:05

on the world and had various

40:07

adventures in misadventure, and then finally,

40:10

in his thirties, found his way to this ashram

40:13

where I met him, and he's just it was so it's so funny

40:15

that people you meet in places like that. You know, it's

40:17

like, here's this guy who's got a face like the

40:19

map of Ireland. You know, he's just like he looks

40:21

like he should be like mucking out sheep,

40:24

and he's got the accent to match. And here he is,

40:26

like on his knees in at

40:29

four am, chanting in soundscrit

40:32

you know, like with the rest of us, hungry

40:34

weirdos, trying to find something. And

40:37

he told me that he went home to see

40:39

his father, who is a man who

40:41

had like my father had no interest

40:43

really in leaving the farm and

40:46

was perfectly happy having each day look like the

40:48

day before. And he was

40:50

trying to explain to his dad about what

40:52

he had discovered in India. And they're sitting there

40:55

and they're staring at the fire, and he says to his

40:57

dad, no, you gotta understand. You know, I found

41:00

this this path of meditation

41:02

and prayer and and it's

41:04

it's an amazing guy. You know it. It

41:07

really stills your mind. It

41:11

quiets your mind. That's he said, It really quiets

41:13

your mind. And his father, without lifting

41:15

his eyes from the fire, says, I've got

41:17

a quiet mind, son, like

41:23

I didn't have to leave my house, Like

41:26

I've got a quiet mind. And Sean was

41:28

his name. Sean said, but I don't, bah,

41:30

you know, I don't and and

41:33

I don't either. And if you don't, you have to

41:35

go find whatever you have to find

41:37

to satisfy it. Putting

41:41

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com today. And

42:35

now back to Elizabeth Gilbert

42:41

throughout your magazine

42:43

writing period, and I

42:45

think it's important to get into this because

42:48

so many people around the world read

42:51

Eprey Love, and that

42:54

book was their introduction to you. Before

42:58

that you are this magazine

43:00

writer at GQ. You have

43:02

an incredible job. I mean

43:04

you're a contract writer who has to write

43:07

five articles a year. It is

43:09

a very coveted position. But

43:13

the thing I keep going back to and thinking

43:15

about your work in that time,

43:18

whether it's the Frankie Manning piece, the

43:21

Tom Waite's piece, You've always talked

43:23

about how you wanted to be

43:25

one of the guys that you felt

43:27

more comfortable writing about

43:29

men, that you were more interested

43:32

in men. Now that we

43:34

have some distance from it. Why

43:37

do you think that was. I think it's a

43:39

combination of things. I for

43:41

one thing, I was boy crazy, so I was

43:44

There was a little bit of it was just obsession of

43:46

just wanting to be around male energy

43:48

and being really turned

43:51

on by mail energy, excited by mail energy.

43:53

And it wasn't even necessary.

43:55

You know, all of the men who

43:57

I wrote those profiles about, they weren't

43:59

my lovers, and I wasn't interested in that

44:01

way. But I was excited by them as

44:04

by their masculinity, and that

44:07

was sort of thrilling for me to

44:09

want to be around. Some of it was

44:11

wanting to break

44:14

the code almost like I

44:16

wanted to become somebody who could be in a room with

44:18

men and they would just act like what they're like,

44:21

and you know, so it was like, what

44:24

is this weird other half of the species?

44:26

You know, um, what are their secret

44:29

ways of being in their codes? I was always

44:31

really excited when like

44:33

when I was out when I worked on this ranch in Wyoming,

44:35

and you know, after everybody got used

44:37

to me and I was a trail cook

44:40

and we'd we'd be out in the woods for you know, ten

44:42

days or two weeks at a time on these hunting trips

44:44

and just sitting around the fire with these

44:46

like really gnarly hardened cowboys

44:49

and they're just telling stories and it's

44:51

like they're speaking in their native tongue, as

44:53

if there isn't a woman around. That

44:56

always, to me felt like such a victory. It

44:58

reminded me of when I was a kid, and

45:02

so I'm just remembering this now. But like when when

45:05

people ask that question, if you could have dinner with anybody

45:07

in the world, who would it be living you're dead? I

45:09

hate that question. It's

45:12

such a and everyone asks that question,

45:14

but for me, it's such an easy answer. It would

45:17

be in nineteen seventy seven, seventy

45:19

eight. I would be seven or eight years old.

45:21

I would be at my grandparents house and upstate New

45:23

York. My great grandfather would

45:25

be there, my grandfather, my uncle's, my

45:28

dad. It was back when all

45:30

of them were active alcoholics, before

45:32

they became recovered alcoholics or

45:34

died, and they

45:36

were the most incredible

45:39

storytellers, and they were so outrageous

45:42

and they were so in their world that

45:45

there was that same feeling I had later in life

45:48

of they were drinking a

45:50

lot too, and they were competing with each

45:52

other and telling these these amazing, incredibly

45:55

inappropriate stories, stories you would that no

45:57

person in their sanity would tell with a seven

46:00

year old girl at the table, you know. But

46:02

if they could forget about you, then you could. You

46:05

could witness this amazing explosion

46:07

of this kind of adult that looked

46:09

very different from what female adulthood

46:12

looked like. And in my family, female

46:14

adulthood just looked like resentful

46:16

martyrdom. You know. It was just women

46:19

cleaning up shit, women taking

46:21

care of shit, women washing the dishes. What

46:23

was happening while those men were sitting around, passing the

46:25

bottle and telling amazing stories, is the

46:27

women were cleaning up the kitchen. And

46:29

I would often be pulled away from that table to

46:32

help. And I didn't want to be in that sphere, in

46:34

that domestic feminine sphere. And I think,

46:37

when I look back at myself in my twenties, what

46:40

I really longed for was to be those people,

46:43

you know. And when I think about some of the men

46:45

who I fell desperately in love with

46:49

throughout my life, it was a mixture

46:51

of love and envy, of

46:53

wanting the freedom that they had, and

46:56

the more free they lived their lives, the more

46:58

I wanted to be with them, but I actually think what I

47:00

wanted to be was them. Do you think you fall

47:02

in love easily? I do. Yeah,

47:06

with everything. With

47:08

a restaurant with a color,

47:12

with a person with a

47:14

bagel, I don't know, like yeah

47:16

aa, but

47:19

if it's the right bagel at

47:21

the right time or the wrong bagel at

47:23

the wrong time. Yeah. I

47:25

definitely am very susceptible to

47:28

to love in

47:30

many forms, and I fall in love with my friends easily.

47:35

Have a friend who said to me that you said, your

47:37

relationships with your friends are more emotionally

47:39

intense than most people's marriages. You

47:43

know,

47:46

it's like the level of

47:48

partnership and commitment and devotion.

47:51

When a pray love came out and did as

47:53

well as it did, you

47:55

said it was a tornado, But

47:58

I was no longer the tornado. Is

48:01

that what it felt like? There's a question people have

48:03

about eight praylevel, and like was that difficult

48:05

for you to manage? Like that level of scrutiny

48:08

success, the phenomenon that

48:10

it became. Anything that wasn't

48:13

the depression that I had gone through before that was

48:15

just a breeze, you know, Like anything

48:18

that wasn't that no problem.

48:23

That was the easy part, you know. The hard

48:25

part was before the book, and the

48:27

book settled so much of me

48:29

into myself and helped me so much.

48:31

The living of that book and the writing of

48:33

that book, it like

48:36

landed me in myself in a way that I had never

48:38

been before, not fully, because

48:40

the journey wasn't over and life isn't

48:42

over, and there's still more stuff to figure out always,

48:45

but I

48:47

was a very different person on the other side of that

48:49

journey than I was before it, and a

48:52

much happier person. So when

48:54

the tornado came of that book's success, I

48:57

was in a good place for it to happen because

48:59

I was. I was pretty grounded, I mean

49:01

as grounded as I can be, and

49:04

I was pretty you know, I was pretty steady.

49:07

What do you think that success did too? As

49:09

a person? Gave me an enormous amount

49:11

of freedom, and it gave me, to

49:14

a certain extent that that freedom that I envied

49:16

so much and longed for and

49:18

wanted to emulate in some of the men who I knew

49:21

in my life. I

49:23

mean to just answer it

49:25

very honestly. It gave me financial freedom for the rest

49:27

of my life. That's no joke for

49:29

a creative person, and that's no joke for a

49:31

woman to I mean,

49:33

I'd never been dependent on anybody anyway. I'd always

49:36

made my own way in the world. But to truly

49:38

be able to say to my creative

49:40

self, you can now do whatever you want.

49:43

And I have done. I

49:45

have done, you know, I've I've used that

49:48

to pursue whatever I was

49:50

interested in creatively, to

49:52

write the books that I wanted to write, not necessarily

49:54

the ones that I thought would sell. And

49:58

and I've used it to give freedom to other people

50:01

as well, and be able to

50:04

bail out friends who are in trouble, or finance

50:06

their art projects or so there's

50:09

you know, there's a freedom that

50:11

it brought that it still brings that

50:13

I'm incredibly grateful for, and

50:16

I won't ever stop being grateful for. Hows

50:18

any of that freedom been taken

50:21

away because of that? Books success

50:24

less than you would think. And

50:26

I think that if I were a private

50:28

person, that answer would be very

50:30

different. If I were somebody who

50:33

was a retiring sort

50:37

or felt

50:41

uncomfortable in the

50:44

public gaze, or felt uncomfortable

50:46

but people knowing anything about her, then

50:49

that would be agony. But if I were that person,

50:51

I would not have written any prey love. I'm

50:53

the one who told everybody everything,

50:56

you know. So it's not like

50:58

my life has been hounded by paparazzi

51:01

or that I was born into royalty

51:04

and never could have privacy.

51:06

You know, I chose to

51:08

live my life in this way that's really open.

51:11

And I also chose what

51:13

I told you. So there's

51:17

nothing that's out there in the world about

51:19

me that I didn't put out there in the world about

51:21

me. And what's not out there

51:24

in the world about me isn't out there

51:26

in the world for me because

51:28

I'm not important enough for people

51:30

to be like chasing around and so you

51:33

know what I mean, Like I'm not a Kardashian,

51:35

you know, I'm so and I'm

51:37

a writer at the end of the day, like the

51:40

least famous, fourteenth

51:42

most important character on a reality show

51:45

is more famous than I have, you know, Like

51:47

I'm not I can walk around in the world

51:49

back when we used to be able to walk

51:51

around in the world, and you know,

51:54

people don't recognize me that often.

51:56

It's not that, you know, I'm just not that I'm not

51:58

as famous as it might sound.

52:01

My books are more than I am.

52:04

I saw you looking, so

52:07

I was, are you have to go No,

52:09

I'm drawing a picture. Oh you are. Yeah.

52:12

I really thought I thought you were like texting,

52:14

and I was like, wow, you're really talking well

52:17

for justdling. I'm

52:21

just drawing half moons. That is. That is.

52:24

I'm sorry I had such a cynical read of it. I'm

52:26

glad you spoke up. I would hate to if you think that I'm

52:28

sitting here texting. I was

52:30

like, wow, you're really articulate

52:33

for being able to text at the same time.

52:35

I can't do that at all. Holy

52:38

shit, I'm just drawing a picture.

52:41

I'm just drawing a picture. Um. There's actually

52:43

a TED talk about how doodling

52:45

makes you be able to focus more. Yeah.

52:48

So I like to keep a piece of paper next to me when

52:50

I'm talking so I can doodle that on it.

52:52

I'm going to edit this out, but I just it's this is

52:55

a strange way of

52:57

doing this podcast. I can't tell you,

52:59

like how

53:01

much I'm enjoying our time, but I

53:05

I don't know something about people coming

53:08

into this udeo that we have that's like not

53:10

like a normal studio, and it's there's

53:14

music on that I like, and it just

53:17

it's so hard to replicate that, and we're

53:19

doing I think we're doing a good job. I have a question,

53:21

why would you not leave that in the podcast?

53:24

Because I think that's interesting, Liz,

53:28

damn it, now we have to leave it in there. It's

53:32

interesting. I mean, I think the longing and

53:34

the sadness in that and the melancholy is

53:37

interesting. And it's like part

53:39

of it's like your version of what this

53:41

weird quarantine moment feels

53:44

like. I mean, I don't think you're saying that it's as bad

53:46

as being on the front lines of a you

53:48

know, a triage nurse in an emergency room right now,

53:51

but it's it's like you feel it.

53:53

It's what you're feeling it is,

53:55

and it's my

53:57

very privileged version

53:59

of it, because

54:02

I do find the

54:04

joy of doing this show is

54:07

that ninety percent of people who come on

54:10

I do not know them. They do

54:12

not know me. We are two

54:14

strangers in a room, and

54:17

I try to create a space

54:20

that is safe and honest

54:23

and vulnerable. And it's

54:26

really much harder to do that when

54:29

I'm in a closet and you're in your house, and

54:32

you know, a galaxy in between us. But

54:35

I've been thinking about to your point,

54:37

I've been thinking about this idea of intimacy.

54:40

I don't know what intimacy

54:43

will look like after this. How

54:45

are you grappling with that idea

54:47

of what future intimacy

54:50

will look like. So I'm

54:53

staying out of the future a little

54:55

bit other than to be like

54:57

sort of openly curious about it, but I'm

55:01

I'm staying out of it in terms of making any

55:03

predictions, whether they're doomsday predictions

55:05

or utopian predictions,

55:09

because I don't know, and I

55:11

can't know, and I've

55:15

noticed that the predictions that people are making

55:18

about the future look suspiciously like

55:20

their own existing worldviews. So

55:22

all of my friends who are utopians

55:25

are saying, you know, this is the moment that the

55:27

Earth reclaims herself environmentally

55:30

and we change all the social systems

55:32

and economic

55:34

injustice. And I was like, okay, maybe you

55:37

know when all my dystopian friends are like, you know,

55:39

this is this is where the beginning

55:42

of the end, you know, where it really truly

55:44

becomes a post apocalyptic nightmare

55:46

landscape where people have to

55:48

cannibalize each other to live. Maybe

55:51

I don't know what I'm really really

55:53

curious about in my own experience

55:56

of this is this extraordinary

55:59

opportunity to experience solitude,

56:01

and I don't want to waste

56:04

that. And I think

56:06

that humans are a

56:08

lot of this stuff that's happening in

56:10

the quarantine and in the uncertainty

56:13

about when we can all be together again. I

56:16

keep hearing people say this is really hard psychologically

56:18

on people. Humans are social

56:21

animals where social animals were meant to be together,

56:23

and that's inarguably

56:25

true, but that's not the only thing we are. We're also

56:28

spiritual animals. And every

56:31

spiritual tradition in

56:33

the history of the world advises,

56:38

at some point or another, going and being alone

56:40

for a long period of time, and being

56:43

in retreat and being in

56:45

stillness and being in isolation. And

56:48

I've sought that out at various times in

56:51

my life. I've paid money for it, and

56:53

now I'm getting it for free, and

56:56

I've paid money for it, and I've had to do it in short

56:58

periods of time because i had other things I had to

57:00

do in the world. So I don't know what the

57:02

world will look like after this, but I

57:04

really don't know when again I'm going to see

57:06

a period of my life where I've got months where

57:09

I can be alone, like

57:12

really alone. I don't just I don't mean single, and

57:14

I am that too, I

57:16

mean solitary and I'm

57:18

living alone. I'm I'm

57:20

doing my COVID nineteen by myself,

57:23

and I wouldn't have it any other way. I

57:26

just have to say, as far as I'm concerned,

57:28

however, anyone is writing out their COVID

57:31

nineteen, this is a judgment free

57:33

zone. Like whatever you have to do.

57:35

And for some people, and especially

57:37

people who suffered from severe

57:40

mental illness, loneliness and isolation to

57:42

begin with, you know, this isn't a joke,

57:44

and this is something

57:47

that could cost them their lives, and we're seeing

57:49

that in the rise in suicide rates. Like this

57:51

is a very hard thing for a lot of people. But

57:54

if you're asking me how I'm experiencing

57:56

it, this is a country

57:58

I've never been to. And I don't mean America under

58:01

lockdown. I mean living

58:03

complete solitude for a

58:05

long extended period of time. On a

58:07

personal level, you arrived

58:10

at this moment on the

58:12

heels of some pretty genuine

58:14

grief. And

58:18

I go back to this poem

58:20

that I have here in front of me. It's

58:22

by Jack Gilbert, someone

58:25

that I believe means a great

58:27

deal to you. It's

58:29

called Alone, and I

58:31

can read some of it if you'd like to hear it.

58:33

I always want to hear Jack Gilbert's poems. No

58:36

relation, You

58:40

don't worry. This wasn't like a plug for your family member.

58:42

No, No, I saw my uncle Jack, he

58:46

wrote. I never

58:48

thought Machico would come back after she

58:51

died, but if she did, I

58:53

knew it would be as a lady in a

58:55

long white dress. It is strange

58:57

that she has returned as somebody's dalmatian.

59:02

I love this poem.

59:04

I meet the man walking her on a leash

59:06

almost every week. He

59:08

says good morning, and I stooped

59:10

down to calm her. He said

59:12

once that she was never liked that with other people.

59:16

Sometimes she's tethered on their lawn

59:18

when I go by, if

59:20

nobody is around, I sit on the crass.

59:23

When she finally quiet, she puts her

59:25

head in my lap, and we watch

59:27

each other's eyes as I whisper in her soft

59:29

ears. She cares nothing

59:31

about the mystery. She

59:34

likes it best when I touch her

59:36

head and tell her small things

59:38

about my days and her friends. That

59:41

makes her happy. The way it always did. I

59:45

can only imagine what that

59:47

poem means to you and

59:50

what you've gone through. Jack

59:53

Gilbert is my poet laureate, so he

59:56

has explained a lot to me in advance.

59:58

He left. I never met him,

1:00:01

and I never wanted to meet him because I love him too much,

1:00:03

and I think it's important not to meet your idols

1:00:07

unless you're absolutely forced to. But

1:00:11

he was

1:00:13

such a beautiful, beautiful

1:00:16

poet, such a beautiful poet of hunger

1:00:21

for life and love

1:00:24

and grief. And he

1:00:27

wrote a cycle of poems about Michiko, who was his

1:00:30

third great love of his life. Really, all of his

1:00:32

poems are about the three great loves of his

1:00:34

life. There's just these epics

1:00:36

in his life of Gianna

1:00:39

in Italy in the fifties and sixties,

1:00:42

and then oh god, I can't

1:00:44

remember his second wife's name, and

1:00:46

then Mitchiko. And Michiko

1:00:49

is a real tragedy because she was much younger than

1:00:51

he was, and so she broke the rules of

1:00:55

younger older marriage and she got

1:00:57

cancer and died very young.

1:01:00

And then he wrote some exquisite poetry

1:01:02

about her. So you

1:01:06

know when Raya was dying. So Raya

1:01:08

was was is the love

1:01:11

of my life. And

1:01:13

she died of cancer two years and a

1:01:15

few months ago, and we

1:01:20

had prior to being together as

1:01:22

romantic partners, We've been friends for seventeen

1:01:24

years. And she was the

1:01:26

single most important person in my life.

1:01:30

And I never knew what to call her

1:01:33

because I was so loyal in my marriage

1:01:36

and I loved her

1:01:38

so much and I never would have crossed a line. It's like

1:01:40

I didn't know what I used to call her.

1:01:42

I mean, best friend just didn't even cut it.

1:01:44

So I used to just call her my person. And

1:01:48

what that meant to me in my imagination is she's the

1:01:50

most important person. She's the person the

1:01:52

first phone call on any emergency, the person

1:01:54

I go to when I when I need to be told what

1:01:57

to do and I'm stuck, the person

1:01:59

I celebrate with. She was everything,

1:02:01

and she was the one person in the world

1:02:04

that I felt I couldn't live without. And

1:02:07

then she died at cancer,

1:02:10

and she died and we

1:02:12

came together after her cancer diagnosis.

1:02:14

I was I finally was able to kind of

1:02:17

articulate even to myself what she was, which

1:02:19

is like, oh, this is the love of your life. There's

1:02:22

a word for that there's a term for that,

1:02:24

and you have to go be with her. Now. I couldn't

1:02:26

let her die without telling her that, without

1:02:29

going and being with her. And I'm so glad I did. And

1:02:32

one of the things when when

1:02:35

she was dying, we would sometimes get into

1:02:37

these kind of fits of anxiety because we were

1:02:39

like, how are we going

1:02:41

to find each other? You know? Um,

1:02:45

we kept talking about the portal. We're like, we gotta find

1:02:47

the We gotta like

1:02:49

that, there's this connection can't

1:02:52

be severed. It just we

1:02:54

we have to be able to communicate. And

1:02:59

and it really felt urgent to

1:03:01

figure that out before she died, and

1:03:04

we did all sorts of stuff try to figure it out. We did

1:03:06

psychedelics together, and we got a shaman

1:03:08

and we did. You know, it's like, I

1:03:11

gotta find it. We gotta find the portal. We gotta find the portal.

1:03:13

We gotta find the portal. We gotta find the portal. What you

1:03:15

know, how where will I find you? Where will I find

1:03:17

you? In the universe? And

1:03:20

she made all kinds of promises like I'll come and find

1:03:22

you, and I made all kinds of promises like I'll come

1:03:24

and find you. Here's

1:03:28

the really sweet, beautiful

1:03:31

reality of it.

1:03:33

It's actually not hard. I'm

1:03:38

just holding up my phone. Note. Here's what I do.

1:03:40

I call her, I

1:03:43

just and the way that I do that is that I

1:03:48

I just go to the voice memos on

1:03:50

my phone that app and

1:03:52

I push record, and I just talked

1:03:54

to her in the same way that Jack

1:03:56

Gilbert was talking to that Dalmatian, in exactly

1:03:59

the same way. I tell her

1:04:02

in excruciatingly granular detail

1:04:04

about my day, just like

1:04:06

I used to. She always used to say that cruciatingly

1:04:10

granular detail. But she

1:04:12

loved it. She's to love it. When I just

1:04:14

when we just would talk about nothing, and these

1:04:17

long walks that I'm taking in the woods out

1:04:20

here in isolation, I bring my phone with me and I

1:04:22

talked to Yah for hours at a time. And

1:04:26

when I really need

1:04:28

her counsel, which is the thing that I miss

1:04:31

the most, I

1:04:33

ask her what I should do. Just

1:04:36

ask, and if I get

1:04:38

really really quiet, I'm given the answer.

1:04:40

And it's not There's nothing fancy

1:04:43

about it. It's not a hallucination. I

1:04:45

don't need to be on psychedelics to see it.

1:04:47

She doesn't come to me like an

1:04:50

apparition of Obi Wan Konobi. You

1:04:52

know it's it's not a voice. It's not even a voice

1:04:54

in my head. All of a sudden, I just know the

1:04:56

answer, and

1:05:00

the way that I prefer to see it is

1:05:02

that she tells me. And

1:05:04

so the portal that we were so desperately

1:05:06

trying to find is just the

1:05:09

same simple piece of intimacy

1:05:11

that brought us together in the first place, which is we

1:05:14

just talked to each other. I

1:05:16

don't need a psychic medium. I don't

1:05:18

need tarot cards, I don't need props.

1:05:23

I don't even really need the phone. But something

1:05:25

about the fact that it's being recorded makes me feel

1:05:27

like it's being received. And it's fun

1:05:29

to make a phone call through

1:05:32

the universe. And

1:05:34

I wrote something in my journal recently about it. I just wrote,

1:05:36

the supernatural is supernatural.

1:05:40

It's just supernatural. It's super it's

1:05:42

natural, it's very natural. My

1:05:45

connection with Raya was

1:05:47

and remains the most

1:05:49

profound intimacy of my life, and

1:05:53

that connection hasn't been severed. It

1:05:56

doesn't mean that I haven't been grieving, and

1:05:58

it doesn't mean that I don't sometimes fall

1:06:00

apart and storms

1:06:03

of tears. It

1:06:05

doesn't mean that she's going to walk in the door, or

1:06:08

that I get to hold her, or

1:06:11

that we get to go to target together,

1:06:13

or that we get to do like the shit we used

1:06:15

to do that was just fun just because it was us.

1:06:18

You know, all of that is gone and

1:06:22

that has to be grieved. But

1:06:25

the only thing that you don't

1:06:28

have to lose is the love. And

1:06:31

the love is that intimate connection, and

1:06:34

it hasn't gone anywhere. So

1:06:39

I mean I used to beg her when she's dying. I was like, you gotta

1:06:41

send me signs. And other people

1:06:43

in her life report these other sort

1:06:45

of supernat more supernatural encounters

1:06:47

with her, you know, like they

1:06:49

they'll say like they'll talk to her in the lights,

1:06:51

will flickr, or they'll you know, things

1:06:55

will happen that seem more like out of a movie about

1:06:57

a spirit communicating with another spirit. And I haven't

1:06:59

had any of that. And

1:07:02

she hasn't even really appeared to me in my dreams.

1:07:04

I've had like maybe two dreams about her since

1:07:06

she died two and a half years ago. It's so

1:07:08

straight forward. We just communicate,

1:07:11

We just talk to each other, and

1:07:14

I feel her really really with

1:07:16

me. And my friend

1:07:19

Martha Beck, who I love very much, said

1:07:21

after Raya died, you

1:07:23

two are so close that you really

1:07:26

become what word's worth called an abler

1:07:28

soul, whereas like two souls

1:07:30

that become a version of a soul that's abler,

1:07:32

stronger than either one of them was separately. And

1:07:35

it's like a braiding together. And

1:07:37

I do feel like I'm kind of part Raya, partless

1:07:40

now that she's

1:07:42

kind of braided into me. And when I ask

1:07:44

her for her advice and I feel like it's given, I

1:07:47

don't know, like I don't know whether that's

1:07:50

her spirit speaking to me, or whether

1:07:52

that's my imagination, or whether it's just

1:07:54

that I knew her so well and I learned

1:07:56

her so well that after she died,

1:07:59

she was downloaded, like her wisdom

1:08:01

was downloaded and I can access it. All

1:08:03

I know is that it

1:08:06

doesn't feel like what I expected. You

1:08:08

know, what I expected was a post apocalyptic,

1:08:11

barren landscape of just total

1:08:13

emptiness, and it hasn't felt

1:08:15

like that. I feel her always,

1:08:20

and I think I

1:08:22

think she's doing that on purpose. We

1:08:27

always really liked hanging out together. I

1:08:29

mean, long before we were lovers, it was

1:08:31

like we were just the person the other

1:08:33

person most wanted to hang out with and

1:08:37

I sense that she still likes

1:08:39

hanging out with me, And

1:08:41

I definitely still

1:08:43

like hanging out with her living

1:08:45

her dead. She's still the most interesting person

1:08:47

I know. What about her looking

1:08:50

back? Do you remember most

1:08:52

fondly? God, She's

1:08:54

so awesome. She's so awesome.

1:08:58

She was so powerful. She was definitely the

1:09:01

strongest person in any room that she ever walked

1:09:03

into. So there was just something so magnetizing about

1:09:05

that. She's so vivid and charismatic,

1:09:08

and she

1:09:10

could just handle everything, you

1:09:13

know, and

1:09:16

she was so honest and blunt

1:09:18

and direct with people. Just

1:09:20

remember sitting at a table with a bunch of our

1:09:22

friends one time and a friend of ours,

1:09:25

my friend Cat, goes, hey,

1:09:27

Raya, what are you doing this weekend? Are you? Like, what

1:09:29

are you doing? Just in this very casual way,

1:09:32

like what do you up to? And Raya just turns, gives

1:09:34

her a look and goes, I'm not babysitting your fucking

1:09:36

kids, Cat, That's what I one thing I can tell you

1:09:38

I'm not doing this weekend. And everybody just

1:09:41

burst out laughing at the table because we

1:09:44

all knew that that's actually what the question

1:09:46

had been. And Raya was the one who was

1:09:48

like I'm not fucking playing

1:09:50

here, Like I like just ask you know.

1:09:52

Like she was so incredibly direct, and

1:09:54

she had this, she had this motto of

1:09:56

life. Her motto was the truth has legs.

1:09:59

And what she meant by that was that it's it's always

1:10:01

going to be the last thing standing in the room, the

1:10:04

truth as legs. Everything

1:10:06

else will blow up to sintegrate, turn

1:10:08

into drama, but at the end of the day,

1:10:11

the only thing that will just always

1:10:13

stand is the truth. And she used to say

1:10:16

to people when they were in a conflict, when there was

1:10:18

a misunderstanding of drama and anger, she would

1:10:20

she had such she loved being in the arena

1:10:22

of truth, and she would just sit them down and

1:10:25

she was so solid and so so

1:10:27

tough and strong, and she'd go, look, let

1:10:30

me break it down for you. That

1:10:32

was her thing. Let me break it. Let me break it down for you.

1:10:35

At the end of the day, after all the bullshit,

1:10:38

the only thing that's going to be left standing is the truth.

1:10:40

And since that's where we're going to end up eventually,

1:10:43

why don't we just fucking start with it.

1:10:47

So you put your truth on

1:10:49

the table and I'll put mine, and let's just

1:10:51

do this, and she had no fear

1:10:54

of that whatsoever. And I learned how to be

1:10:56

so much more honest just

1:10:58

from being with her, because I saw how it cut

1:11:00

through so much drama. You know. It

1:11:02

was just such a direct, incredible way to be. And

1:11:06

she had enormous compassion because she had

1:11:08

been a heroin addict and a

1:11:10

junkie and homeless and a felon and

1:11:13

she's just been such a

1:11:15

failure and putting that in air quotes, but her

1:11:17

life had had so much pain in it

1:11:19

before she got sober, and she had

1:11:21

such a mercy for people, and

1:11:24

it was it was a tough it was a hard mercy.

1:11:26

It wasn't like squishy. She wasn't

1:11:28

squishy. She had incredible

1:11:30

boundaries. She wasn't going to let you run over

1:11:32

her in any way whatsoever. And

1:11:34

she didn't have what the Buddhists called idiot compassion,

1:11:37

you know, which is compassion where you're like, oh,

1:11:39

I feel sorry for you, and then the person's a scorpio

1:11:41

and they kill a scorpion and they kill you. She

1:11:44

didn't have that. She just recognized

1:11:47

that she knew what it was like to be

1:11:49

a really good person trapped in bad behavior and

1:11:51

unable to control yourself, and

1:11:54

she never judged anyone

1:11:56

for where they were at that moment in their life.

1:11:58

And what that conveyed

1:12:01

to the world was that when Raya was in the room, you

1:12:03

were safe, and you were safe to be

1:12:05

who you actually were. She

1:12:07

wasn't interested in your act, and

1:12:09

she wasn't interested in your hustle. And

1:12:12

one of our friends said at her funeral, she could

1:12:14

look right into you and see the

1:12:16

true self that you were trying to hide, and she loved

1:12:19

you anyway. And I've

1:12:21

never met the likes of that. I've never

1:12:23

met the likes of that. And she

1:12:27

was foundational. She was epic, and

1:12:30

I always felt like she should have been famous, because

1:12:33

she was famous in every room she walked into.

1:12:36

She was a celebrity among those of us who knew

1:12:38

her, and I always tried to make her

1:12:40

famous. I convinced her to write a memoir, and i'd convinced

1:12:43

her to make music because I just always wanted the spotlight.

1:12:45

I was like, world, look at this person, and

1:12:48

I'm so grateful that to a certain extent that

1:12:50

worked. And I love talking

1:12:53

about her because I love keeping her famous

1:12:55

because she should be. You

1:12:58

know, she sounds

1:13:00

a lot like you. It's

1:13:03

a very sweet thing to say, Well

1:13:07

she is now, that

1:13:11

is her home addressed now, Like if you wanted

1:13:13

to locate Raya like she does

1:13:16

inhabit me to a certain extent. But

1:13:20

she had we had different

1:13:22

strengths and weaknesses that made our friendship

1:13:25

really nourishing and

1:13:27

healing. And I

1:13:30

have had and have like massive

1:13:33

amounts of creative confidence, and she

1:13:35

had huge creative talents. But she didn't have a lot

1:13:38

of creative confidence. And so one of the my

1:13:40

roles in her life was to just constantly

1:13:42

be encouraging her to create and

1:13:45

to put herself out there in the world and let people see that

1:13:47

she was making. It was a lot scarier

1:13:49

for her than it was for me, and that

1:13:51

part was really easy for me. And she had

1:13:53

this ferocious relational confidence.

1:13:57

There was you know, I'm terrified

1:13:59

of conflict, you know, I hate

1:14:02

it. And she she would just she was a fucking

1:14:04

gladiator, man. She'd just be like, you

1:14:06

know, she'd catch a sort of glance

1:14:09

from someone that looked a little off and

1:14:11

she'd be like, what, you know, what is

1:14:13

it? What say it? What

1:14:16

I pissed you off? Would I do? Let's do this? Like she just

1:14:18

always was ready to be like, Wow, my god,

1:14:20

how can you do that? It's terrifying, Like how

1:14:23

can you just go right in like that? And she taught

1:14:25

me so much about being direct and honest

1:14:29

with people and being

1:14:31

able to demand the truth and being able to hear

1:14:33

it. You know. So um, But

1:14:35

I love that you said that she finds she

1:14:38

seems like me. That makes me very happy. Maybe

1:14:41

that's the compliment you were saving for the end of the body.

1:14:46

You couldn't have done a better one. That's

1:14:49

as good of a compliment as I'm going to give. I

1:14:52

have one last thing for us. It

1:14:56

is another Jack Gilbert

1:14:59

Palm. I'm really a one trick pony here, as you're finding

1:15:01

out. I was going to read it,

1:15:03

and then I'm reading it over

1:15:05

here, and I think maybe you

1:15:07

should read it. Which one is it? I'm going right

1:15:10

here in the in the zoom chat.

1:15:13

Oh, in the zoom chat. People

1:15:16

are tired of my voice. I

1:15:18

doubt that I

1:15:20

don't know this poem. Okay, let's do it.

1:15:23

It is difficult to speak of the night, Jack Gilbert,

1:15:26

It is difficult to speak of the night. It

1:15:28

is the other time, not an

1:15:31

absence of day, but where there are

1:15:33

no flowers to turn away into. There

1:15:36

is only this dark and the

1:15:38

familiar place of my body,

1:15:40

and the voices calling out of me for love.

1:15:44

This is not the night of the young. They're

1:15:47

simple midnight of fear, nor

1:15:49

the later place to employ.

1:15:52

This dark is a major nation.

1:15:55

I turned to it at forty and

1:15:57

find the night in flood, find

1:16:00

the dark deployed in process,

1:16:03

clotted in parts, in parts,

1:16:05

flowing with lights. The

1:16:07

voice is still keen of the divorce

1:16:10

we are born into, but they

1:16:12

are farther off and do not interest

1:16:14

me. I am forty, and

1:16:16

it is different. Suddenly,

1:16:19

in mid passage, I come into

1:16:21

myself. I leaf

1:16:24

gigantically, an empire

1:16:26

yields unexpectedly cities,

1:16:29

summer forests, satrapies.

1:16:34

What is that word? Satrapies? What

1:16:36

does it mean? Trust me? I googled

1:16:39

it before doing this, because

1:16:41

I was like, she's gonna know what satrapezes

1:16:43

and I don't. I'm not if I don't know, she's

1:16:45

gonna be like, we

1:16:48

interrupt this Jack Gilbert poem

1:16:50

to discuss satrapez what does it mean? And

1:16:52

I bet other people won't know what it means either, Well,

1:16:55

some people will because they're show offs.

1:16:58

So Satrapiez

1:17:00

as the head of the administration

1:17:02

of his province. The say trap

1:17:05

collected taxes and was a supreme

1:17:08

judicial authority, So I guess they're

1:17:12

wow administrators.

1:17:14

It's like a Mandarin, it's

1:17:16

like a some provincial

1:17:20

like outposts. That's so cool. Okay,

1:17:24

thank you Jack Gilbert. Okay, I'll through

1:17:26

that beautiful line again. I suddenly,

1:17:29

in mid passage, I come into myself.

1:17:32

I leaf gigantically. An

1:17:34

empire yields unexpectedly cities,

1:17:38

summer forests, satrapies,

1:17:41

horses, a solitude,

1:17:44

an enormity. Thank

1:17:46

god God.

1:17:51

I read that, and I

1:17:54

thought, that's about where you must be

1:17:56

at right now. That's it, Only

1:17:58

it's fifty, not forty. I wasn't going to make that

1:18:00

correction. That's okay. I'm delighted

1:18:02

to be fifty. It's

1:18:05

so wonderful. And not

1:18:08

to just continue to throw Jack Gilbert

1:18:10

poems around. But it reminds

1:18:12

me of another one of his that I've been

1:18:14

feeling a lot lately, which is about he

1:18:17

spent a lot of time in solitude and

1:18:20

he went to great

1:18:23

links to be very alone. I've

1:18:25

been thinking about him a lot, and in this

1:18:28

time of isolation, he went

1:18:30

to Greece several times and lived for

1:18:32

years in a shepherd's hut on the top of

1:18:34

the hill, all by himself. And there's this

1:18:36

one poem where he's

1:18:38

arguing with God because

1:18:40

God is saying to him. He's in his shepherd's hut and he's

1:18:42

making his dinner and he's having

1:18:45

a fish and he's cutting the tomatoes, and he's

1:18:47

all by himself, and God's

1:18:50

saying, why are you like this? I

1:18:53

gave you. I gave you the

1:18:55

city of Florence that you could be in,

1:18:58

and you want to be here

1:19:00

in this little hut by yourself. And

1:19:03

the whole time Jack keeps cutting his vegetables

1:19:06

and preparing his meal alone, and God

1:19:08

says, I gave you women, and instead

1:19:11

you chose this, and like

1:19:13

the whole world could be yours. You could have had fame,

1:19:15

and Jack Gilbert really could have had fame as a as

1:19:18

a poet. But he didn't care for you. It's not

1:19:20

that he didn't, he just didn't care about it. He

1:19:22

just wanted to be alone. And

1:19:25

so that the interrogation continues

1:19:28

from the Lord, and the last

1:19:30

line of it is why

1:19:33

are you so

1:19:35

stubborn? That's what it is. God says,

1:19:39

why do you just want to be by yourself

1:19:41

and not want to be engaging with the

1:19:43

world. Why are you so stubborn? And

1:19:47

Jack Gilbert arranges his beautiful

1:19:49

meal for one on his plate

1:19:52

in the late dying light of this

1:19:54

Greek island, and he says

1:19:56

to God, not stubborn, just

1:19:59

greedy, just

1:20:03

greedy. And I felt that way. I

1:20:06

went to India this year and I spent seventeen

1:20:08

days alone working on a project, and

1:20:10

at the end of it, I didn't want to come

1:20:12

out, and I thought, I am getting greedy

1:20:15

and getting greedy the

1:20:17

way Jack Gilbert was greedy, greedy

1:20:19

for solitude, greedy for silence,

1:20:22

and greedy for that intimate,

1:20:25

intimate experience of quiet life.

1:20:28

Well, I'll say someone

1:20:30

on the other side of this, I'm

1:20:33

certainly glad you

1:20:36

were greedy because

1:20:38

it made me the person you are, and

1:20:42

I haven't articulated it to you. This

1:20:45

was actually the final compliment. Here

1:20:48

it comes. This

1:20:51

show started four years

1:20:53

ago, and

1:20:56

there are many people who

1:20:58

inspired it, who made it possible, some

1:21:02

of them I knew, many of whom I did not. And

1:21:06

it was a few

1:21:09

passages in Big Magic that

1:21:14

made me want to do this and

1:21:17

that forced me to

1:21:19

continue doing this when I

1:21:23

no longer wanted to, because you

1:21:25

don't do something one hundred and sixty times and not

1:21:28

go a little bit crazy. And

1:21:32

without that book, without you, without

1:21:35

your greed, however, it manifested

1:21:39

you and I wouldn't be here right now, and this thing would

1:21:42

not exist. And that's not hyperboly,

1:21:45

it's just true. That makes me enormously

1:21:48

happy. I

1:21:50

love that shit. I

1:21:54

love that. I love that And if

1:21:57

there's one thing that I don't,

1:21:59

you don't know. You can't know. We can't

1:22:01

know what our purpose is. And I've

1:22:03

gave given up long ago trying to figure that out.

1:22:06

And I don't really care anymore as my

1:22:09

which as I used to care, But like,

1:22:11

if I get to choose what it is, it

1:22:13

would be to be a walking permission slip. And

1:22:19

so when I hear stuff like that, it

1:22:22

makes me really really happy. It

1:22:24

satisfies a part of me that wants

1:22:28

to give people permission to

1:22:30

do what they want and to make what they

1:22:32

want to make, and to

1:22:35

live according to their own nature and

1:22:38

to do

1:22:40

interesting stuff and to be greedy

1:22:44

for their own experiences. So that

1:22:46

makes me really happy. Sam. Thank

1:22:48

you. I think you are giving more

1:22:51

permission to more people than you even

1:22:53

know. Thanks. I hope

1:22:56

it takes allus on that, Elizabeth

1:22:58

Gilbert, thank you so much, Thank

1:23:00

you, my dear, And

1:23:21

that's our show. Special thanks to

1:23:23

this week's sponsor, Thrive Psychology

1:23:25

Group. If you'd like to learn more about what they

1:23:27

do, you can visit their site at

1:23:30

my Thrive Psychology dot

1:23:32

com. I'd also like to give a special thanks

1:23:34

to the team at Random House, and of

1:23:37

course Elizabeth Gilbert.

1:23:39

Her latest book, A City of Girls,

1:23:42

is available on Amazon, Barnes,

1:23:44

and Noble Apple Books wherever you

1:23:46

do your shopping. To learn

1:23:49

more about Liz, be sure to visit our show notes

1:23:51

at www dot tk easypod

1:23:54

dot com. There you'll find our

1:23:56

back catalog of all

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can find this show on Spotify, Apple

1:25:18

Podcasts, Google podcast Stitcher, wherever

1:25:20

you do you're listening, and if you'd

1:25:22

like to drop us a line, you can do so at talk

1:25:25

easypod at gmail dot

1:25:27

com. And as always, this show would

1:25:29

not be possible without our

1:25:31

incredible team. Our executive

1:25:33

producer is Chennick Sabravo, our

1:25:35

associate producer is Nicky Spina,

1:25:38

illustrations by Christiana Chnoy, graphics

1:25:41

by Ian Jones. Our social

1:25:43

media is by Dejo Washington. Our

1:25:45

music is by Dylan Peck and Jin

1:25:47

Sang. Our editors are Andre

1:25:50

Lynn and kat Owen. Our engineer

1:25:53

is Tim Moore, and finally,

1:25:55

the show is produced by Caroline

1:25:57

Reebok. I'm Sam Fragoso.

1:26:00

Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll

1:26:02

see you back here next Sunday with Roxane

1:26:05

Gay. Until then, have

1:26:08

a safe week. Everyone. Chee

1:26:17

choo choo chooooooo

1:26:26

choo

1:26:26

shoo. Sposo