Today’s podcast is the most informal of the bunch, recorded on the fly during my morning commute to the Gables, and it addresses how I’m basically not feeling great.

I spoke on Monday night with my friend Macaroni, who’d read one of my posts here about how the solitude in which I spend most of my time and that I’m always championing as like this great arena for invention and reflection and growth has suddenly felt a bit like a noose pulling tighter and tighter and she invited me to a Skype call where I could properly vent, and then, true to form, she popped up on the screen in a tank top, her arms very strikingly muscular all of a sudden, and I asked her how she’s doing and I asked how she suddenly got so fit and I pointed out that she exists in such a tangle of animals I can’t tell where one dog begins and the next cat ends—and she sorta cut me off: 

“Stop deflecting. You always deflect. Tell me what’s up.”

And so I gabbed and gabbed, and she listened, and I felt better. Not cured, of course, it didn’t vanquish the problems in my life, but it made me feel better in the moment, which is just as important, and reminded me that, yes, there are people in my life who’re willing to have their ears bent if I need to bend them, which I’m only inclined to do if I feel like I’m reaching a crisis pitch–and y’know what?, I think I just realized, by spelling the whole thing out, that one of the reasons I abstain from pulling people aside and telling them my problems is because, yeah, I’m thinking, How is this gonna vanquish my problem? It’s not. So I’ll just keep the problem to myself and then go resolve it. 

One of the turning points in your sense of the world if you’re an artist aughta be an appreciation for the fact that questions are more important than answers, abstraction more immersive than fact; to dive into your problem, to talk about it at length with somebody, is a way of just sorta…spreading the blueprint across the table, having someone else help you hold down the corners, so that you can better see the angles of entry. The shape of the thing.

Hm.

This is why I like talking to you, reader, is cuz I spell things out more clearly when I imagine that it’s you on the receiving end of the message, most likely reading this on your phone, ideally at a bar by yourself but most likely on the toilet, when time is brief, the point needs to be made.

Alas: go ahead and listen to this week’s episode of the podcast! Apart from some navel-gazing stuff about my shapeless discontent, there’s also a long story about how I got kicked out of the same McDonald’s twice in a week. 

And, as ever, I hope you’ll do me the great favor of giving the show a rating (maybe even a review!) on Apple Podcasts, and subscribing, if you can, on whichever platform you use.

Besos, papo.