George Saunders

George Saunders is an author known for his inventive short stories and the Booker Prize–winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo. His works include the collections Tenth of December and Liberation Day and the craft book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. This week, he released Vigil, a new novel that follows his trademark blend of imagination, compassion, and dark humor as it explores life, death, and moral reckoning in the twilight hours of a dying oil executive’s life. Named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, he has received numerous honors, from a MacArthur Fellowship to the National Book Foundation’s 2025 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Saunders teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University, where he has mentored generations of emerging authors. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: AG1 https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www. AthleticNicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Rick Rubin?

  Tetragrammaton.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Actually, honestly, the last few years, my whole intake has changed. I don't know if it's just it takes more time to do my work. I feel a little more delicate outside of it, like I'm a little more protective about what I'm listening to. So I think when I was younger, I was like, I gotta hear everything, I gotta read everything. And the last few years, I'm like, eh, maybe you don't, maybe you can kind of be a little quieter. And I'm doing this Substack, which is, we do a story every two weeks. So that means, pretty much, I'm reading that story for two weeks, which shuts out a lot of stuff.

• 0:51Rick Rubin?

  How did the Substack start?

• 0:52Speaker 01

  I wrote that book about the Russian short story, and then I just kind of enjoyed that. There was a different modality.

• 0:58Rick Rubin?

  Swimming the Pond, I love that book.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. I'd been teaching all those years, you know, at Syracuse, and I came back from a tour, and I had my first class, and it was like the kids left, and it's just like the chalk dust in the air. I'm like, I love this. I didn't, I always knew I liked it, you know, but I had this notebook that was like an accumulation of all the notes I'd taken in teaching those Russian stories over 20 years. And nobody else could make any sense of it, it's just scribbled. But I thought, you know, if I kick it right now, all that goes away. And it wasn't only me, it was all those generations of students that were giving me feedback. And so, so anyway, I wrote that Russian book, and then really missed it when I was done. And somebody said, would you like to do a Substack?

• 1:39Speaker 01

  And I thought, yeah, I could do it on StoryCraft, like always going back to, okay, forget everything you know, what's a story really? And especially, experientially, what is it? You know? So the whole idea of kind of, which you explore in your book, like, what is the mind on art actually doing? And at some point, when you watch what the mind on art is doing, it's what the mind is always doing. And so that opened a door for me, I was a kind of a working class person, so I had a real anxiety about art, like, that's the thing that everyone else can do, but I, I'm not smart enough. And somehow, thinking of it this way, it's like, well, you can perceive, you can perceive your perceptions, you can adjust, you're an artist, you know, like that.

• 2:21Rick Rubin?

  Is that the way you find out what you think through you surprise yourself when you're speaking?

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:26Rick Rubin?

  Come to understand your worldview?

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Yes, although I also notice it's not necessarily a worldview I'd endorse. But it's the one that's most authentic or it gets spit out by my process. So that's interesting to sometimes I'll say, well, I'm starting a story to demonstrate this aspect of my worldview. The story goes, no, you're not. We don't do that here, you know? So you start tweaking it and working with it. Then at the end it says something and you're like, oh, is that what you mean to say? And the way you check that is you, you know, you check all the seams. And if everything holds up, you squeeze it all tight and then that's what you said. And is your worldview, it's, I think it's a leader. It sometimes will show me what I ought to be thinking.

• 3:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. In a swim in the pond, there's a lot of wildly analytical detail. Do you think that the writers wrote knowing those things or no?

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Depends how we define knowing. I think not intellectually, I don't think they said, I'm gonna do this.

• 3:23Rick Rubin?

  They couldn't explain it to you?

• 3:25Speaker 01

  No, I would even say they might not even know that they did it.

• 3:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  But.

• 3:30Rick Rubin?

  But somewhere you think inside they knew?

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Yes, and I think it's through, my theory is, and again, all this is just based on my, you know, my, my thing. And I'd love to hear how it is in the studio because sometimes you just keep micro choosing this over that, this over that, this over that. And I would say that being a great artist has something to do with creating the maximum number of choice points. Because if you're choosing one time, that's only one dollop of you. But if you're choosing a thousand times over the course of the thing, a lot of you is getting in there. And you don't necessarily vet those things. You just go, you prefer A to B. So I think with these great Russian writers, I think they did things. I think they'd laugh at me talking about it as analytically as I do. But it doesn't mean it's, you know, it's not.

• 4:15Rick Rubin?

  It may be accurate.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Yes, so there are ways of knowing that are deeper than the ones that you, you know, I can articulate right now.

• 4:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  And that's for me, the beautiful thing is I don't, you know, it's 66, I'm kind of, I'm kind of know this guy. And I'm like, yeah, I can predict his neurotic behavior to some extent. But the person that comes out when I'm doing this writing process is more interesting. So I think you can have a, by having micro attention to the thousands of choosing points. And even then, you're not saying what fits my theme or what you're just saying. I like the gaptometers. I like this better than that. If you do that a thousand times in six pages, there's a lot of you in there and it's not this you, it's some other you. So to me, that's the enduring kind of addictive thing is you to keep luring better parts of yourself out onto the page. Oh, that's.

• 5:07Rick Rubin?

  Would you say that's the editor part of you?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Yes, although at this point, I don't really make much separation between. I mean, I've been thinking lately, if I had to boil down creativity, I'd say it's reaction. So I crank out some crap this morning, doesn't matter what. Tomorrow I look at it and I react to it with a pencil in my hand. That seems to me where creativity actually happens, not so much in that first.

• 5:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Well, also, I've kind of been thinking lately that one of the things we do with craft is, at least for me, is I'm trying to get my anxiety down. I'm a very anxious person. So my artistic approaches aren't necessarily true, but they are anxiety reducing. So for me to say, don't worry about what you put down on the blank page. That's a real anxiety reducer.

• 5:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Type any old thing because you're such a good reviewer that tomorrow you'll, you'll look at that mess and go, oh, poor baby, you know? And you'll start tweaking and you'll find something in there that's got some life on and on and on. So yeah, it's editing, but I don't really make a, at this point, a big distinction between editing and writing. It's just referring.

• 6:11Rick Rubin?

  Is anxiety a big issue in your life?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  It's been a slightly under the surface issue my whole life. And to which I would say, when I was young, I responded by being very jovial. You know, like there's always, I can do it, you know, puppy energy. But yeah, it is, it is. And especially artistically, it was because when I was younger, I had that terrible lockup of like, which artist am I going to be? I have to decide. And then you can't be any of them, except the one that you haven't found yet. Yeah. So there's a lot of, you know, obsessing over which lineage and should I be funny or not and so on. And so I think as an older person, I can kind of say, well, all that deciding is in the realm of conceptual thought. Which can be helpful, but it can also kill you, you know, because I don't think what we do works on.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  I mean, you can describe it conceptually, but I'm not sure you can make it conceptually. So to say, I don't know what writer I am, I don't know what lineage, I don't know whether I'm going to be funny or experimental. And to keep saying that till you're dead, that seems to me the tricky part, you know, to say, I'm going to start a story tomorrow. As much as I can manage, I don't have any, any concepts about it. I'm going to go to it and see what it wants to tell me, you know, so that's all good. And but then, of course, I'm sure you felt this, you're a master. So don't you have some theories?

• 7:26Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I do, you know, trust them, you know, but you know.

• 7:31Rick Rubin?

  When you sit down with the blank page and you write some not great stuff like may have happened this morning. Where does the starting point come from?

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's usually as little as possible, you know, if I guess here somebody say something funny, put that down and I'm like in biology, the seed crystal, you put the seed crystal down and it kind of just spontaneously accretes outward. That's the best case, some little funny line of dialogue, you don't even know who said it, you put it down and you react to it over and over. But other times there are bigger, like with that Lincoln and the Bartle, it was just like a two line outline, Lincoln comes to the crypt, interacts with his son's body and leaves. Meanwhile, the son shouldn't be here and he is, that's it, you know, so that's a whole other one. But for me, the less, what is it, is it repressus, is that the word? If the, if the, if the thing is front loaded with meaning, then I don't like it.

• 8:22Rick Rubin?

  It'll end up being too narrow.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 8:25Rick Rubin?

  The sentence already did that. It's like, why continue?

• 8:28Speaker 01

  He wrote your book already.

• 8:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  There's that thing, I always quote Einstein, I don't think he said this, but it was no worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception. So if you do that, it's a buzzkill for everybody. So I think that's part of the as a young person with literary aspirations, you think your job is to be super smart, have a worldview and then just shit it down on people, you know, and that's how they'll know you're powerful. And then it turns out, that's not it.

• 8:53Rick Rubin?

  I love the idea of the reaction being what creation is about. Also, I haven't thought about it in that way before, and it's a helpful framing for moving forward. And it's true, everything we do is in reaction to something. And I love the idea of writing a sentence and then the next sentence is a reaction to the last sentence.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:16Rick Rubin?

  That's a different way of looking at the process.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it also, I think it mimics what the reader's doing. The reader, you know, you have a sentence that's a little wobbly on its feet.

• 9:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  The reader notices. So what do you do with the reader's noticing? That's the reaction to. So I don't know, is it true in like in the studio? Is there other analogues to this? When you're producing somebody, are you reacting?

• 9:37Rick Rubin?

  Always. If whatever's happening makes me lean forward and want to hear what happens next, it's good. And if something happens I wasn't expecting, it's very good.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:49Rick Rubin?

  If it starts and I lean back and nothing happens, chances are I want to stop it.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  So, because I'm thinking about this in terms of my teaching, what does the corrective look like?

• 10:00Rick Rubin?

  I would say, what else can we listen to? What else do you have? In that case.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  That's, that's, yeah.

• 10:05Rick Rubin?

  Or I would listen to the whole thing and say, it got interesting to me at this point. How do we make the whole thing feel like this?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. See, that's something in my, I teach at Syracuse and I talk a lot about specificity of response. Because, you know, in a workshop if someone says, this is boring, it's hurtful. And also you can't work with that. But if you push down and say, where is it boring? And do you have a different word for boring?

• 10:28Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Then, oh, it's repetitious on page six. We can fix repetition.

• 10:31Rick Rubin?

  Agreed, by the way, on specificity. When I'm making notes, the more specific I can be in comments that I give, the more helpful they are.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 10:42Rick Rubin?

  Early in my career, I would state what I thought the solution was, and now I don't do that.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:47Rick Rubin?

  And the solutions turn out to be much better when I'm not suggesting them.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  See, that's a beautiful idea because I think part of the reader writer thing is intimacy and trust. So if I say, something on page six, hm, then all the energy goes to the writer. And they usually know, actually. So that move where I say, I trust you to find out.

• 11:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  That's, you know, and likewise, if I'm writing something and I do three repetitions of the same idea because you might not get it, my theory is you suddenly feel that as condescension, which is disengagement, and you like me a little less. So if I, a lot of the editing is going, you know, let's pretend that my reader is actually 12% smarter than me. Make cuts on that basis. A little scary because sometimes you might, you know, have to trust more than you feel like it. But if it works, then you get that thing where the reader is having a normal day, picks up the book and goes, oh shit, this, this person likes me and respects me. And this experience is coming out of a shared pool of experience. We've both been here. He knows that and he's speaking to the higher me.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  So the higher me comes out and you get this kind of engagement of, I always think of it as ghosts, like ghosts coming out of the writer and the reader. And they meet up in that sort of high territory where, and then afterwards they go back and they.

• 12:02Rick Rubin?

  How did you come to that?

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Just through feeling, feeling it like, it's like nothing mystical, but you know, the sacramental space of hard work. Like, blah, blah, blah, bearing down on manuscript and you look up and you go, whoa, that ghost did some good shit, you know, and, and then, and also feeling that you, you would meet people at readings and they would talk about a certain story. And we met in another place, the two of us, you know?

• 12:25Rick Rubin?

  I love the idea that you talk about the writer and the reader, ghosts come out of each of them and meet, but it's nothing mystical or metaphysical.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, it's completely.

• 12:36Rick Rubin?

  Like, okay, I understand.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Very quotidian, quotidian ghosts, but yeah.

• 12:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Tell me about your spiritual life.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Well, I'm, uh, practice Tibetan Buddhism and the Nyingma tradition. I'm a little lapsed at the moment. I don't quite know why. But we, my wife and I lived near a, a community for many years and had at that time, a really intense three, four hour a night meditative thing, which kind of changed my.

• 13:01Rick Rubin?

  When did you get into it?

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Well, I was about 40 and my wife went, actually she was turned on to Thich Nhat Hanh by a Catholic nun.

• 13:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  And then she went to a Tibetan empowerment, which was very exotic and strange. And then came out kind of saying, yeah, that's, that's pretty weird stuff. And then I started practicing and there was this big change in her that I, you know, as a husband, you're like, how come we're not having Fight 9A anymore, you know? And I thought, I, I want some of that. So I started kind of messing around with kind of just homemade meditation. And then we eventually found a teacher and, and it seemed to me, I mean, not so much like. That I'd already been a Buddhist before I knew what it was, just from, from writing. So that's been a real interesting crossfiring, you know, to say this aspect of, of Dhamma has a corollary in writing. Maybe this one doesn't quite as much yet, but I could try, you know, and then.

• 13:51Rick Rubin?

  Did you have any spiritual life growing up?

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Catholic and like seriously beautiful Catholic experience for me, you know, it was in Chicago, kind of south side of Chicago, kind of Dorothy Day progressive Catholicism. And I remember, well, I think probably getting into some kind of meditative state during the long masses. And then there would be, you know, Stations of the Cross, they were visualizations basically. And so, and I think I also, I remember kind of being stunned by some of those stories about Jesus being super empathetic, like the woman at the well, you know, what I took from that, I don't know whether a nun told me this or I just took, but is that, that Jesus was sort of a, a novelist in that sense, because he could approach this person that other people didn't like and judge.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  And just by being in the presence, he could pick up on a lot of data that a normal person couldn't pick up on. And that increased data made him fond of her. And the fondness made her open up and then brought up a ghost, you know? So, so I, I love that idea. And I think when I started to read more, I thought, oh, that's kind of what my job as a novelist is, I can put anybody in front of me, even if in real life I can't stand them. And by contemplating them through revision, basically, I can find a way in and sort of recognize that they're me on a different day, briefly, you know, while on the page.

• 15:11Rick Rubin?

  Do you have to do that to be able to write them?

• 15:14Speaker 01

  I don't think so, because I think there are a lot of people who do it a different way. But I like to do, okay, you know, there's that Flannery O'Connor thing, she says, "A writer can choose what he writes, but he can't choose what he makes live." So you can have all the plans for how you're going to be, but if it doesn't work. So for me, what works is, I call it third person ventriloquist, where it's like, if I'm going to write your story, I'll start off Rick said in the yard, you know? But then I have to quickly get into your voice and your head, and also your limitations and your aspirations and all that. So it's more of a voice thing. If I, if I do that, if I say, okay, I'm now this person, the voice comes alive in a way that it doesn't if I'm me out here looking at them. So just a kind of a trick.

• 15:55Rick Rubin?

  It's still always your. Imagination of who that person is, it's not really who that person is.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 16:01Rick Rubin?

  You're not channeling them.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Right, and mostly they don't exist anyway. I mean, if I write about Lincoln, I mean, the real Lincoln would be kind of unknowable to us. But you could say, I'm, I'm me in a Lincoln suit.

• 16:11Rick Rubin?

  When you write characters, are they often based on people you know, or no?

• 16:15Speaker 01

  No, I mean, they, some of that gets in. But my thing is, it's like, so, so a story will be going along and it has a certain need at a certain point. So, I need somebody, like in Lincoln, Lincoln would be walking across the graveyard and I need him to turn over here and see a ghost. I don't have any thoughts about who, which one, just somebody start talking to me. I think, oh, okay, the word hunter comes into my mind and I start saying, okay, he's a hunter. What would a hunter's afterlife look like? And suddenly, spontaneously, there's this big pile of dead animals, all, all the animals he's killed in his life. So, it's not anybody I ever knew, but it's kind of just being generated. But other times, I will see that I put someone's speech patterns in there, somebody I know.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Or an anecdote that somebody told me will get in there. But I think with stories, there's always like, why do you need this thing? So, the quality of the thing would be colored by why you need it. So, let's say that the hero has a goal and I need somebody to impede him for moral reasons. Well, that person has to have that quality. And so then, once I figure that out, I start throwing in bits from my own life. And it could be something from you and something from my uncle even put into the same package. I'm not a writer who says, I want to write a book about this person. But sometimes they just, stuff just gets in there. And if it's authentic, then like, there's a story called Sea Oak and there's a, the moment in the story was,

• 17:42Speaker 01

  the character is a real working class guy, has got a girlfriend who's a little bit above him and he's gonna have to lose her. And he's gonna have to lose her for class reasons. That wasn't an idea, but that's the way the story was set up. I was looking for something that could happen to somebody for class reasons that would, you know, and I thought back to my own youth. I had a friend who was actually an ex-brother-in-law, who was really an alcoholic. And one time I was on the couch with this girl I was really in love with, who was a couple notches ahead of me. And this guy comes in, just blunders into the house and starts pissing on the wall, you know? And, and I'm there with this- It really happened. It really happened, yeah. And there was this, I'm there with this person I really kind of cherished, you know, and she's seeing this. So all I could really say was, this doesn't usually happen, or, you know?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  But, so that was a painful, you know, like embarrassing memory. Well, Seo comes along and I need something. I'm like, okay, you're in. But at the same time, I'm gonna alter it to make it apropos of that situation. So it was different.

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• 21:01Rick Rubin?

  How much of a story do you know before you start?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Ideally, none. Literally, the best stories are the ones I just start with a little something, and then it grows outward. Sometimes, I mean, there are times when I do know a little more than that, but I think the move for me is to look really askance at that idea. Like, okay, yeah, yeah. You claim you're the story, but can you just wait out here a little bit while I investigate? If I find myself clinging to that, then it's gonna be... I think Gerald Stern, he said if you started to write a poem about two dogs fucking, and you write a poem about two dogs fucking, then you wrote a poem about two dogs fucking.

• 21:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  So I think mostly the idea is I'm really dubious. I just think, stay out.

• 21:40Rick Rubin?

  It sounds like you could literally start with anything, and the story that you are to tell will reveal itself regardless of where you start.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  That's exactly it. Yeah, exactly it.

• 21:55Rick Rubin?

  That's really cool.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, and again, it's anxiety-reducing, because I don't have to have any ideas. I just have to have a first line.

• 22:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  I always say, you know, if we wanted to write a story, we could make that coffee cup talk, that glass of water talk, and your baseball hat talk. And if we spent enough time on it, all of our personal stuff would come out. Of course it would. Because if you revise enough, I mean, what are you revising from? Your own stuff. So I think a lot of young writers, and I certainly did, get locked up on this idea of what's my great idea? I need a great idea. And you won't get one, because there's no such thing, actually. There's no... The great idea is the one that allows you to grow it, you know? And it becomes a different idea, and it... Is that... I mean, I'm wondering, is musically, if someone just goes in and plays a riff... Can that sometimes lead to?

• 22:42Rick Rubin?

  Absolutely. Even when an artist has well-written material, I might suggest that they spend time just jamming. And then out of the jams, something comes up unexpected. No one's trying to write a song.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:56Rick Rubin?

  They're having fun making music. And from that, something happens.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Right. Because I know in literature, it's kind of like, it's not really the, you know, the first line, it's, I throw the first line at you, you go, oh, okay. You throw it back at me and I throw it back. It's the path that the story follows. It's actually interesting. So that, again, that's cool because it means there are no beautiful ideas. Or if there was, you could put it in there, but the story's going to start poking at it and it's going to start tearing it apart and it's going to be. So in this sense, a story is a dynamic, it's like a linear temporal experience that unfolds this way. And like a roller coaster, you're not on the roller coaster going, what does this mean? You know, you're just going, oh shit, we're going off, you know?

• 23:38Rick Rubin?

  Do you ever think about what does it mean or not until after it's all done?

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, honestly, yeah. And this is the kind of cool thing. The kind of purest answer is no, never. But of course you do, because you want to finish it and you want it to be good. So it's kind of like a, the voice that says, I know what it means. Would you like to know? They're like, yeah, okay, come on in. It's about patriarchy. Oh, all right. Duly noted. Step out in the hall again. We'll, we'll find out.

• 24:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  But it would be silly to not let that guy in, you know, he knows something about it.

• 24:07Rick Rubin?

  When that happens, do you say, okay, I know it's about patriarchy now? Or do you think, okay, it might be about patriarchy?

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know it's all patriarchy now.

• 24:15Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  But we're going to see if it continues to want to be.

• 24:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's, there's a great Chicago writer named Stuart Dibek and he said, the story is always talking to you, but you just have to listen. And so the story is saying, I think I'm about patriarchy. And you see, you might, good for you, you know, you might very well be, I hope you are. But at the same time, is the minute I say, oh, yes, it is. Then what happens with me is procedurally, you know, you have five pages and it's about patriarchy. All right. Then since you know that, you now know the next five pages and you're dead. Because the reader feels when you checked out and went on autopilot. So you have to say, yes, conditionally you are. But let's keep going and, and stay fresh and see what else you want to be about, you know? And to me, the fascinating thing is even that's not theoretical.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  It's, it's in this rereading process, you know, your little meat in your head. I like it, I like it, I like it. And suddenly I don't like it. So to say, in the spirit of specificity, okay, we don't have to panic, you know? We're not suddenly a bad artist. Having difficulty on page eight. I always like have an imaginary voice to the story like, oh, what's going on? You know? And the story says, nothing, just I'm fine, just keep going. No, no, really, what's what's happening? Well, I'm kind of boring. You are boring, poor baby, you know? And then then you can kind of go, well, yeah, let's just not use boring and let's look a little closer. And then the story will say, it's basically saying, I'm discontent with your over-management of me. And therefore I put in a cloudy section.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Or I put in an alien invasion or some weird shit. Because I don't like where you're going and I'm I'm stopping in in the road. So I I kind of developed this idea of avoidance moments, which is if a story has bad language or sometimes a factual error will get in there, something that couldn't be true. Or like an unwarranted flashback or forward or change of point of view. That's often the subconscious being very smart and saying, I want the best for you. If you keep going, you're gonna fuck up the story. So can we pause here? I'm gonna make you pause by injecting something yucky. In a traditional workshop format, that would be an error and you would fix it. But now I'm like, no, that's actually your layers of your subconscious process revealing yourself.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  This is a draft six tendency, totally honorable. Let's just note it. You gotta to be continued, sign up there on page six and one on 11 and one on 12. Don't panic, just remember they're there.

• 26:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  And weirdly, those places often speak to each other. If you fix one.

• 26:42Rick Rubin?

  You know them?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Very much, yeah. And I know them and I also will kind of provide a technical description of why I stopped, why it affected my reading energy. So sometimes it's often semantic, it's just a the sentence goes haywire. Just so I just make that correction and then. And as you were saying, I used to fix it, but now I just say, you know.

• 27:01Rick Rubin?

  Leave it alone.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And nine times out of 10, the writer already knew it, you know, they knew. And so if you say, page nine and a half, I know, I know.

• 27:10Rick Rubin?

  I love the idea that. Those roadblocks along the way speak to each other. That's really a helpful idea. Cause then it's the opposite of when it coming up, you feeling like, oh, you failed. It's more like, oh, another clue to unlock the whole picture.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 27:27Rick Rubin?

  It's great.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there's also, I noticed a pattern to that. Like as I get further along the revision process, those become more specific and more glow. Like I've got three now. I've been working on this for six months. I've got three places that, you know, on a scale of one to 10, when I hit them, they're like sixes. The rest of the story might be eight or nine to six. So at first you say, well, we can have a few sixes, can't we? But then you say, well, you can, but what if you don't, you know? And then, yeah, and those are always sort of like, I wouldn't say thematically, but they're causally related. If you fix one, it throws light on the other two and limits the range of possibilities that you could do to solve them, you know? So that's cool because then when you have problems, you're like, in a certain way, the more problems I have

• 28:14Speaker 01

  and the more unsolvable they are, the better the story is gonna be. It's got kind of bigger shoulders. It's like Houdini, you know, like if Houdini said, I'm gonna now, I've got a windbreaker on, I'm not gonna take it off. You'd be like, okay, you know? But if he really, you know, it's got chains and he's at the bottom of the Hudson and he's drunk or whatever, then he's got a real problem to get out of. So whenever now, whenever I get a story that has really impossible problems that I would have, that would cause me to bail when I was 30, I'm like, oh, good. Now we're, the subconscious is giving me a higher place to go on the mountain.

• 28:45Rick Rubin?

  Love that. Amazing. Are you the best judge of your own work?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Well, I think yes, because, well, only, only, I mean, maybe not once it goes out in the world, but no. But I'm.

• 28:57Rick Rubin?

  During the process.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm a late show. I don't, I show nobody anything for a really long time. And it's interesting because I don't know how this must be in music because it's so communal. But for me, to keep it private for a really long time. Cause then I can make those choices with complete openness that like if someone says, I love your story. I can't change it, you know, or harder to change it.

• 29:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Sometimes I hate it. I just feel like throwing it out. So if it's me in private for a long time with it, I can mess it up. I can fix it. I can mess this part up and fix that part. And there's a lot of freedom. And then weirdly, at some point, all that iteration, it starts to solidify, you know, like at some point, like, yeah, okay, I'm not worried about that anymore. That's fixed itself. And then you get just these three little issues or four. And then I still feel like, yeah, I, everybody stay out. I'm gonna decide this. And then to some point, when I'm really done, I think I give it to my wife and she reads my work very emotionally. She knows me. She knows my cheap tricks. So if she has an emotional reaction, then I'm good to send it out. And if she says, oh, yeah, pretty good, you know, then like, oh, damn it.

• 30:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Start over.

• 30:01Rick Rubin?

  Would she give you specific comments? Like I was with you up until page forty or something like that?

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Not really, no. No, she just, at the end, she's either moved or she isn't. And I really value that because she's right. She knows. And so, and we both kind of came from kind of working class backgrounds and art was a very specific thing for us, very important, you know. So, and I think the kind of emotional aspect of it was important to us. We weren't necessarily so taken with wild post-modernism, but like Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff, you know. So, so I trust her emotional reaction to it. She wants a work hard to be about something that we share, that people share instead of just like a pyrotechnics.

• 30:42Rick Rubin?

  Do you ever stop along the way to do research on something that you're writing?

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Sometimes. Well, with Lincoln in the Bartle, I try not to get too in the weeds, but like, so I knew the date that that happened. So I had to kind of research what happened the two weeks before and what happened the next two weeks to see if some ideas that were in play were, made sense. Which weirdly, they did, you know, I, but before I did that, it was just Lincoln on a graveyard on any old night. And then it improved in specificity because he was in a graveyard, I think, three weeks before the emancipation proclamation.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  And he was there four days after a big battle at Fort Donelson, where a lot of, like, the northern casualties were higher than they'd ever been. So then that specificity, out of all the stories about Lincoln in a graveyard, I'm telling you this particular one. I think I'm more of a cartoonist, really. Like, one of my big early things was Charlie Brown, that, you know, the peanuts thing. And that still works for me, like, kids with heads that are too big, you know, and no, the sidewalks come and go, you know, and I, I love that. And all of that in service of something that's, that's kind of deep when you get down to it. But it's cloaking the depth in a lot of sort of surface craziness.

• 31:50Rick Rubin?

  Is writing fiction and nonfiction the same thing?

• 31:53Speaker 01

  It ultimately kind of is. I feel, I feel less freedom with nonfiction as you would. But it's kind of the same, except with nonfiction, I go out and do a trip, be here for 10 days, and then just have a bunch of notes, you know, and recordings and stuff, and then start writing it all. And whatever glows gets in the story. So the structure gets made by glow. Like, these four things are, even this one that shouldn't be important, it's, it writes really well, so you're in the story. And then the structure is just, okay, how do I connect those so that they kind of make sense? And then sometimes with that, you arrange the six glowing items, and you go, oh, oh, that's the meaning of that trip that I didn't even realize. Whereas with fiction, you're kind of more, well, you're creating the incident

• 32:38Speaker 01

  and then trying to make it glow. And so one of the real problems is which incidents are essential. And do you ever know Stuart Kornfeld? He was in L.A. He was a Stuart Kornfeld, really good. He had been so a producer for a while. And he had this idea, he told me once, it was like, in narrative, every structural unit has to do two things. It has to be entertaining in its own right, and it has to contribute to the meaning of the story in a non-trivial way. So sometimes in fiction, you, you write something that's got a lot of jokes, and it's funny, and it's fast, but it's just not, it doesn't know what it's there for. So that has to come out.

• 33:15Rick Rubin?

  Always.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Well, or you have to figure out why it's there. And what I'll do is I'll take something like that and keep it in the back. Like, you're really good, but stay outside of it.

• 33:24Rick Rubin?

  Is there ever a reason that a digression from the main story?

• 33:30Rick Rubin?

  Even if you don't understand it, stays.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Yes, but but then kind of circularly, therefore, isn't meaningless. It's just got a complicated meaning, you know?

• 33:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you just don't know it.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Right, or you only know it in rereading, like, yeah, it has to be there. Because, you know, one of the things with fiction, it's we tend to reduce it to meaning, but it's given off like a piece of music, given off incredible frequencies of nuance that it's not really meaning, but it's flavor, it's quality, all that stuff. So the beautiful thing is a reader, even just a kind of above-average reader, will catch all that stuff and she'll take it to the next thing. So meaningless, we wouldn't want to reduce meaning just to theme. It's it's the whole thing you've received, you're taking it to the next bit, you know? So, yes, I I say this in a way that makes it sound more mathematical than it is. But, for example, if I had a really good bit, I would be really open to the ways it was contributing, even if they weren't linear.

• 34:25Rick Rubin?

  Can fiction be more true than nonfiction?

• 34:29Speaker 01

  For me, it, yes, yes, because one reason for me is that I'm I'm a person who, like, I don't like writing, this is weird, I don't like writing anything that would hurt someone's feelings. So if I was writing a profile of you, it would be so complimentary and I would never have the impulse to go, look, what's the dark side? I just don't, I don't like it. Well, with fiction, I don't feel that compunction. So I can let a certain Pollyanna-ish part of me step aside for a minute and I can let the darkness and the kind of negative valences come in.

• 35:01Rick Rubin?

  Hmm.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  And then also, there's something about a short story that is so free, you know, there's no, like, once upon a time, what, anything? So in a certain way, it's almost like a mirror, because if you start a totally made-up story, which in my case is kind of cartoonish, then, well, what's the fuel of that story? It's 100% my phenomenon, you know, it's it's there's nothing else it could be. So I I like that freedom. I was raised Catholic, always was kind of a good kid, which is nice, you know, like socially, it's okay, but when you artistically, there's a, it takes a lot for me to be really honest, actually, you know? So fiction, it's under the guise of being funny or entertaining, a lot of weird stuff comes out that I didn't know I.

• 35:42Rick Rubin?

  Do you think of yourself as a writer or a storyteller?

• 35:45Speaker 01

  I think a writer, because I know a lot of people who can tell better stories than I can. A lot. And my stories, I don't have any good stories, except when I start working on them. And again, the ones I make up are good. The ones that are like, here's something that happened to me, they're not good. Yeah.

• 35:59Rick Rubin?

  How are writing short stories different than writing a novel?

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Well, I think with a novel, at least I've only written one and there's one coming out. And the first one had a lot of white space, so I'm not sure. But for me, it was that the novel has some kind of through line, like with Lincoln, you know, that I'm gonna put on there and then I'm gonna have fun fulfilling the through line. But I don't really know what it means. I don't know how I'm gonna do it. With a story, in the best case, it's just literally just putting something down and then reacting to it. And then the beautiful thing is, out of that very playful process, something really serious can come out, you know, that something shaped and kind of momentous. So for me, the story is a little more, it's harder, actually, because you don't know that it's gonna work. It's like a joke, sort of. Yeah, and the story doesn't really, like a novel, you know, if I say, there's this guy named Gatsby and he wanted to

• 36:48Speaker 01

  meet his, you know, give his old girlfriend a go, okay, did it work? And then I tell you, in 280 pages, you find out. But with a story, you're not even sure what you're asking. The story starts, it creates its own context and its own meaning. And then it lands itself in a funny way that you couldn't have predicted. And a lot of times, I think there's an over story, which is, you know, will Akaki Akakiyevich get a new overcoat? And that's kind of nautilusic. But then with a good short story, there's an understory that's coming up all the time that the writer doesn't even understand until it bursts through the surface. And that's when that story is a story, when you realize we were telling a story about this over here, but actually, all along, we were talking about this thing.

• 37:29Rick Rubin?

  Without knowing it while you're doing it.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Without knowing it, yeah, yeah.

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• 39:10Rick Rubin?

  I read that your first published short story was one that basically was recounting a dream that you had, is that true?

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 39:19Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was it was called A Lack of Order in the Floating Object Room. I had a dream of, it was kind of like a theme park where you go in there, you press a button and gravity gets suspended and stuff starts floating around. So the narrator was the guy who runs that that place. So that place came to me in my mind, but also there was a narrating voice that that gave me these sentences that were very unlike the ones I'd been writing. Too modern and kind of, you know, yeah. And so I just, ah, that's weird. And I got up and started writing it down and found that I could continue in that mode and wrote for, you know, three or four pages and it's done, you know? And that's the story I got into Syracuse with. So that was the first time I ever had that experience of intuition being part of the game, you know? But it was in a way, it was kind of bitter because I didn't,

• 40:05Speaker 01

  it didn't sound anything like Hemingway. It didn't sound like anything classic or anything. But, you know, that feeling of like, oh, I don't know what that is, but it's new. And in that newness, I go, well, that's, there's something of me in there that I didn't, that I maybe don't even like. But that's kind of what I've been hunting ever since, is that feeling of I guess it's like blurting out. I had, I said, funny, I had a dream the other night of, I, I did an event with, in New York, with Zadie Smith last week, and on stage, she mentioned that book, Civil War Land, and, and the voice of it. So in the dream, she was kind of saying, you know what? You should go back to that. I'm like, huh, how do I do it? And the answer was, I had, in the dream, I had the same feeling I had while I was writing that book, which was, fuck meaning, fuck structure, sound, sound, sound, sound. That's it.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  If a sentence doesn't make sense, if it's, if it sounds good, it's in. And the sense will find me later.

• 40:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. In general, are you looking at the way the words look on the page? Or is it the way they sound?

• 41:02Speaker 01

  That's a very smart, it's a combination. I never read aloud, but it's like, there's a voice reading it in my head that is also taking note of the look.

• 41:12Rick Rubin?

  You purposely not read it out loud?

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz I don't, my voice is kind of, I would mangle whatever I, you know? And also, I think I, obviously a fast talker, and I have a very quick monkey mind, which is sometimes a real curse, but when I'm reading on the page, or when I'm doing this thing we're talking about, where I'm kind of reading, and it feels like I'm reading it in the back of my throat all night, I'm going a little faster than I could read it aloud and be understood.

• 41:36Rick Rubin?

  Are you mumbling it? Even silently? Because you say you're reading it faster than you can read it.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:42Rick Rubin?

  So are you getting every word or not?

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, more so than if I read it aloud, weirdly, and, and I can also, it's very hard to talk about, but I can feel the inefficiencies in it, as I'm scanning, you know, and-

• 41:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. How important is rhythm in that?

• 41:58Speaker 01

  It's everything. So like, sometimes there'll be a sentence, it'll go like, da da da da da da, blah blah blah blah, like, ugh, yuck, that last part, lop that off, and you, then you have the first of them, da da da, and then the correct rhythm will present, and then words will come in to fill that-

• 42:12Rick Rubin?

  It's like writing a song.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Have you written songs?

• 42:15Speaker 01

  I've written no, I'm gonna talk to you about that, I've never written a good song. Because in songwriting, the literal thing takes over. I, on line two, and I think, oh, what should line three be?

• 42:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Have a good exercise for you to try.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  I'd love to have it.

• 42:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, based on something you said, it's amazing, you said the exact same thing as the exercise I'm gonna tell you for songwriting.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Oh, I, but, but so, so there is, it is sound, and somehow, reading it faster than I, it helps me figure out the sound better. It's almost like turning up the, the, the speed of a tape, and you hear the rhythm a little more acutely or something. So, yeah, I never, I never thought about this before, but, yeah.

• 42:50Rick Rubin?

  In music, when you slow the music down, you can learn more about the rhythm than when you speed it up. Speeding it up tends to fix the slightest imperfections. Slowing it down amplifies the imperfections.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Because there's also something about, okay, so I'm reading the work from yesterday. And lately, I notice there's a second part of my brain that steps aside and goes, how's your reading mind today? And some days, I'm just skimming it. I can't read it. I've read it so many times, I can't process it anymore and I don't like it. This guy goes, okay, just note that. You're in a shitty mood today. You hate everything.

• 43:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  Duly noted. Okay, then other days, I'm like, wow, I'm the greatest. Even this coffee stain is so good, you know?

• 43:36Rick Rubin?

  Do you ever put something aside when you have that feeling of nothing's good?

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Not really. I usually just note that I feel that way.

• 43:42Rick Rubin?

  And work through it.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  And I'm like a little less willing to make a change, maybe. But part of the value of this approach is that even if you mess it up on Wednesday, you can fix it on Thursday. And I remember where I've altered it, you know? But so the idea that you have some awareness of how adept you are at reading that day.

• 44:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  And then the dream day is when everything is landing, kind of like you're a first time reader. Oh, I can really hear this today. And those days, I just try to keep like reading, reading, reading.

• 44:11Rick Rubin?

  Do you only ever work on one thing at a time?

• 44:13Speaker 01

  No. With stories, it's usually like, I'll have, in a perfect world, I have three or four going. And then I just kind of go in the morning like.

• 44:20Rick Rubin?

  Which one?

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Anybody fun, you know? And if one says, no, but I'm, you should finish me. I'm like, yeah, no, I'm not good.

• 44:25Rick Rubin?

  If one isn't working that day, you wouldn't stop working on it to start working on a different one?

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Sometimes, yeah, sometimes, yeah. Lately, I've got one story at home that might be an exception. But if I start something, I feel like I'll finish it. It might take sixteen, fifteen years even. But if something presented.

• 44:44Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  And I like any part of it, then I'm just going to keep, you know?

• 44:47Rick Rubin?

  And if you finish it, it means you'll finish it or it means you'll finish it and share it with the world?

• 44:52Speaker 01

  If I finish it, I'll share it. That's kind of my psychology.

• 44:56Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  So, so there's a feeling of like, if there's four things, I want the most fun one to come. The one that I feel like, oh yeah, I can do something with that.

• 45:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Whereas if it seems tedious, or it seems like, ah, that's the one I'm locked up on, then I just wait.

• 45:09Rick Rubin?

  Is there a market for short stories?

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:12Rick Rubin?

  Where?

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Uh, The New Yorker is the best place. And then I published one in The Atlantic this year. And then collections will tend to, sometimes they catch on, they sometimes sell. And what I'm finding out with the substack, cause it's all about the short story. And they are like amazing readers of stories, people who really kind of live their life by, by short stories. So we, you know, we'll put a story up there, like this week we did a tall story thing. And we get hundreds of comments and they're so like measured and courteous and smart. And then sometimes I'll say, does anybody speak Russian? Yeah, they do. And can you look at this part in the Russian? Are we misreading it? You are, you know, or sometimes I said, any neuroscientists out there? Yes, there are. I mean, it gives me a lot of hope because you can certainly feel that there's not a market for stories.

• 45:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  And it's not a huge market, but I think the people who are into them are really into them. And they tend to be pretty interesting people.

• 46:02Rick Rubin?

  Describe the home you grew up in.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  It was in a, a south suburb of Chicago called Oak Forest. I think my dad bought it when he was 22, kind of a, a tract house. I, I just remember it as a place of so much fun, really. We, we had a pretty verbal, funny, extended family and it's kind of, doors are always open and people come in and out. And he worked for a coal company in Chicago, so he was always downtown and I'd come back with some really interesting stories and yeah, so it was.

• 46:29Rick Rubin?

  If you wanted to drive into Chicago proper, how long would it take?

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Uh, probably 20 minutes.

• 46:34Rick Rubin?

  And how often would you go into town?

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Not that often. In high school, we used to go down to the Earl of Old Town and kind of, I was always trying to catch John Priner, Steve Goodman. I thought they'd just be hanging out down there. But yeah, not, not that often. It was kind of a, more of a suburban life.

• 46:49Rick Rubin?

  And tell me about your parents?

• 46:50Speaker 01

  They're both still alive. They're 88 and doing great. So my dad was a, he was in the air force, met my mom in Amherst, Texas. They got married at 19 and then moved to Chicago, had me when they were 21.

• 47:01Rick Rubin?

  And why did they move to Chicago?

• 47:03Speaker 01

  That's where he was from. And so that was just, and so he worked for a coal company. He would go to the landlords and sell them, well, coal basically. So did that when I was a kid. And then when I was in high school, he quit that job and opened some restaurants. So their franchise was called Chicken Unlimited. And so I was his delivery boy and we just.

• 47:21Rick Rubin?

  You know, got my license and started working the next day just driving the chicken van around. And so that was a chicken van.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  It was a it was a seventy seven Chevy van that had first for no reason we it had carpet on the whole inside carpet and we had something called a crest core in the back, which is a steam here. So you could keep the chicken hot when you were delivering at a little stove. So it was just a dream, you know, like just a kind of. I mean, one of the things is as a delivery guy, you got to stand in somebody's house for a couple of minutes. You know, while they're getting the money. I I always thought that was interesting because you would be kind of just have a few seconds to look around. See what kind of family it was, what the vibe was. And you were kind of told that the suburbs were homogeneous. But then as you go into individual houses, you say, oh, wow, this is really the city, you know.

• 48:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And my mom was just a real sweetheart from Texas, very loving heart, you know. And whenever I would be like in the Catholic church and they would talk about love and acceptance. I think of her.

• 48:21Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about your relationship to school over the course of your life.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  I was a real weenie, good Catholic boy, loved Catholicism, loved the nuns, pretty good student. So I was really good. And then somehow, when I got to high school, I just couldn't be bothered. I didn't study a lick.

• 48:37Rick Rubin?

  Because of what? What else was happening?

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Music, music was happening, weightlifting was happening. It's everything seemed really boring. But then luckily for me, my junior year, there was a great teacher named Sherri Williams. Her name, English teacher, and she had a way of teaching novels and stories that I I really. It really spoke to me. And then she had a, at that point, a boyfriend that she married named Joe Limble, a geology teacher. And they kind of took an interest in me and basically persuaded me to go to college. And he actually called and got me in. He literally called the school of mines in Colorado and said, you won't see it in this kid's record, but he's worth a look.

• 49:14Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  So, yeah, and this being the seventies, they went, OK, have him go to summer school for eighteen hours. Take all the technical stuff.

• 49:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  And if he gets this great point, he can come. So I did, I did it. And I never, I literally had never worked at anything except guitar a little bit in sports. So I I went out there and the funny thing was I had my transcript and I went out to the school of mines in Colorado. And I said, basically, you know, I'm George, I'm here for college. And they were like, ah, OK, hold on a second. And they took the transcript in the back room. And came and said, okay, you're you're in. But that was for engineering because he was a geologist. And I admired him so much that I just thought I'd do what he did.

• 49:51Rick Rubin?

  When did you decide to become a writer? And did you want to do something else before that?

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think before that, I mean, I I think I wanted to be a musician, really. And in fact, I was in a band right before I met this couple. And the guy, he was a really good guitar player. And he knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody in the Eagles. That was the thing. And he thought he could get us on as the opener for the opener. And so, all right, so that's my career plan. And we practiced for a couple of months. And then I just then I met these teachers and I just thought I could. I had a couple of experiences that made me realize I was kind of full of shit. And that was very helpful. Like, I took a classical guitar lesson at this community college in Chicago. And I I had kind of quote unquote, learned this that capito arabe, that beautiful classical piece. It was way above my level. But I could sort of play the first part.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  And so I went into this guy and I played and I just wanted a mentor so badly, you know, somebody. Because I could tell I I was adrift. So I played it for him. I played it probably the best I ever had. But, you know, I was waiting for him to kind of put the crown on my head, you know. And he said, he leaned away and he said, I'm gonna tell you something. He said, if you don't change the way you're living, you're gonna be a very unhappy adult. And it just, I mean, it stung.

• 51:01Rick Rubin?

  Based on your guitar playing?

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And he must have seen that I was kind of stung by it. And he and then he explained that my tone.

• 51:07Rick Rubin?

  I think anybody would be stunned by that.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:09Rick Rubin?

  Based on guitar playing.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  You're seventeen, you know, and I had to do my best. But it was interesting because I still think about that guy and that was a long time ago.

• 51:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  But then what he did was he gave me those Segovia scales, you know, it was really slow. And he he gave me a metronome setting that was insultingly slow. It was so slow, you know. Okay, so I started doing it and sure enough, my tone got better. And I could see that I wasn't a thoughtful player. I was just, you know, doing it fast. And so he so he did me a favor, but I had a grudge against him and I couldn't really continue. But that so that was one big thing. And then that teacher, Joe Lindblum, took me to kind of all Chicago City Science Fair with kids my own age who were doing this stuff. And he was such a sweet guy and he just took me there. And and I hadn't done any work, literally, no work. And these kids were building, you know, nuclear power plants and I don't know, everything. You know, we just walked around and he let that sink in, you know,

• 52:00Speaker 01

  that these are people my age who were applying themselves. Yeah. The thing that I love so much is I get very moved by this because he never, there was not a single touch of judgment, you know? He just let me look at it and he, he knew that it was getting in there.

• 52:14Rick Rubin?

  Was your reaction to that? I can't do this or I'm never going to do this or I need to focus more?

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, actually, the first reaction was, oh shit, I haven't done this.

• 52:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  And they have, you know, what does that say about what I'm doing? And then it wasn't really that I could, but I had to try. That was the feeling like that. And so then a lot of my ambition, and I had a lot, it got channeled into not flunking out of engineering school. So I went to this place called the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, which is a, I studied geophysics, so it was all, all science all the time. So that was, that was deep because I wasn't good at it. I really wasn't good at it and I worked really hard, which was great for an artist, you know, to learn that effort doesn't equal results.

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• 54:36Rick Rubin?

  When did you start teaching writing?

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Years later. So I was writing a little bit there, but I wasn't reading well. I was reading like kind of weird self-help stuff and Khalil Gibran and kind of... So I didn't start teaching until many, many years. I'd been out of the Syracuse program, was working as an engineer, and wrote my first book and had a chance to go teach there for a year. And I sensed correctly that that would be, it would give me a lot more time to work.

• 55:02Rick Rubin?

  What was the first book?

• 55:04Speaker 01

  It was called Civil War Land in Bad Decline, book of short stories. Wrote it at work, actually.

• 55:08Rick Rubin?

  And was it well-received?

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Critically, yeah. It didn't sell very much, but it was critically, had a couple of good reviews that kind of made it. Yeah, and I wrote that one at work. I was just at this engineering job and stealing time here and there. So it was a big, and I was 38, so it wasn't, I wasn't a prodigy, you know? But so that got me this chance to teach at Syracuse for a year, which then grew into a full-time, full-time gig. It was nice because by that time, we had our two kids and I already had a sort of a, you know, a life being a tech writer. And so there was a lot of the stuff that I still write about was already in my experience, you know, from being...

• 55:41Rick Rubin?

  How do you learn to teach writing?

• 55:44Speaker 01

  I think it was gradually, you know? First, you think the job is to find mistakes and fix them, hurt your value system. That doesn't work. And then slowly, you see what works, I guess. It must be like, you see, if I do it this way, the kid stiffens up and leaves in a huff, you know? If I do it this way, they lean in and the next draft is more interesting. So it became less and less talking and more listening over the years.

• 56:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. How long did it take to... Get good at teaching it.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  I think I'm still working on, but I would say there was a big jump after five years or so because then I just got kind of sick of the sound of my voice haranguing somebody, you know, or coaching somebody. Like if I had a conference with somebody, we were talking about their work. If I could just shut up for the first three minutes, they would tell me and they would always identify exactly what I had identified if I gave them enough time.

• 56:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Then you're not the person saying there's something, you know, you're not the doctor saying you're sick. You're the doctor saying, oh, you feel that you're sick and then your advice is.

• 56:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Yes, but it took a long time because the insecurity of being somebody who wasn't exactly trained in English, you know, in English education, being faced with these, we get like 700 applications and pick six people. So they're great. So early on, I was so intimidated by that that I thought the only way to counter the intimidation is with information, you know? So it's been a sweet part of it is to go, oh, yeah, actually 98% of the work is being done by the student.

• 57:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Is that, is that something that rings?

• 57:22Rick Rubin?

  Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The less my fingers are involved in the process, the better it's gonna be.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:32Rick Rubin?

  It's only like in an emergency situation do I step in.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 57:36Rick Rubin?

  You know, if someone's drowning.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 57:39Rick Rubin?

  In general, in the best versions, it sort of happens by itself. And if there's something that I feel when I'm listening, I can share what I'm feeling. But it's never mistakes or what could be better.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:58Rick Rubin?

  It's more like, let's look at this part, like this part may not be as good as the rest. Why is that? Or it seems like there's a better way to do this.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:09Rick Rubin?

  You know?

• 58:09Speaker 01

  What about the sonic things? Because there are.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  And I think there's a corollary in writing, there are things happening off the page in a sense. They're very real and they're actually what makes great and good different. But with what I do, you're just kinda, it's there and you let it stay or you subtract from it. But at some point, you're making decisions on how, what the sonic landscape looks like, right?

• 58:34Rick Rubin?

  I try to have it be as whatever they bring. Like there was a time earlier in my career when we would try to make it sound like something that we liked the way it sounded.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:48Rick Rubin?

  And we don't do that anymore. Like the idea of the best snare drum sound is on this album. So if we try to make our snare drum sound like the sound on that album, that's gonna be best.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:00Rick Rubin?

  That is never best.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  That's my Hemingway years and that's that thing about.

• 59:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's always for what we have. What's the best version of what it is? Not trying to make it anything else.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 59:14Rick Rubin?

  Same.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Same.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  I find that with that mindset, you can let it be a lot more things at the outset.

• 59:22Rick Rubin?

  For sure. And it also takes patience because it's not formulaic in any way.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:28Rick Rubin?

  It becomes what it wants to be over time.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:33Rick Rubin?

  But if there's any expectation it's gonna be good tomorrow or in a week, that's totally out of our control.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  Right, right, scary. And I think that's what a listener feels is that you went to the scary place and you, you know, I think Toni Morrison, my wife studied with Toni Morrison. At one point, she says something about in the early part of her books, she's kinda digging out a foundation and she doesn't control how deep it goes.

• 59:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  But the deeper it goes, the higher the building.

• 59:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  And the reader feels that.

• 1:00:00Rick Rubin?

  How important is setting when you're writing? Where the story takes place?

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  For me, not that much. And I think that's actually a reflection of a kind of value system I have. I don't really. Write very well, like I had to describe this beautiful place. I I couldn't. It would be kind of, it's so beautiful, you know.

• 1:00:18Rick Rubin?

  So you say you don't have a descriptive style?

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  I don't really, except what happens is, so that means I have to emphasize something else, which is usually action or dialogue, something happened. Then a lot of times the description will come in just very lightly, almost just like one line of something that sets you in a certain place. So I had a line in a story called Comic Con, which the guy's walking through some woods. Woods, I don't know anything about trees, you know, so I just said, well, there's, I don't remember the line, but it's like there's three toilet seats with price tags on them there. So that's setting. I think what I do a lot is I assume that if I say graveyard, you give me a graveyard and then there can be some individualization of the graveyard.

• 1:01:00Rick Rubin?

  Earlier you gave an example of Abraham Lincoln is walking over a bridge. He notices something, he looks and you say it's a hunter, you decide it's a hunter. If your first thought is it's a hunter, is it always a hunter for the rest of the story? Or do you ever say, okay, it's a hunter? And then you play that scenario out and then you realize, no, you know, it's not a hunter. It's going to be something else.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  It could, yeah. Some, you know, it's funny, sometimes those ideas, they come in through the window and they trip.

• 1:01:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  And it's ever more, it's an idea that trip and it's got a little, it doesn't quite communicate. So those I definitely will adjust. But in the ideal case like that, mine was a ghost of this guy, a hunter. The idea came up and the words just came right in behind it. And that had a kind of, had a kind of authority that that doesn't go away, you know? So, so there's, that Russian writer, Isaac Bobel, said something like a good sentence is like you throw the switch once and there it is, you know, whereas a less good sentence is you're kind of deciding and you're thinking and you're conceptualizing and it kind of comes up a lumpy. But for me, there's a moment where the you asked earlier about how the words look on the page, and I think that is important.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Sometimes the image or the thought and the sentence wrapping come just at the same moment, and that has authority. And authority in that sense, it's also respect for the reader somehow, and it's the glue that pulls them in. So there are times when that just happens and you go, just leave it alone, you know? And other times you have to work towards it, I think, a little bit.

• 1:02:32Rick Rubin?

  And when it happens, you didn't decide that it happened.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  It happened. It just happened. Yeah, yeah. But it's almost like two trains coming to the station at once, you know? The idea and the sentence and boom, they're just there. And then I can go through hundreds of drafts and that sentence just stays there because it's authentic, you know?

• 1:02:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Would your creative writing class be similar to other creative writing classes?

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  I think it's pretty, it's that workshop model, so it's pretty similar. And the only thing that I think it's not just me, but a lot of people do, are doing now is kind of critiquing that method. Because that's a little bit of a, I mean, it's an economic construct that they came up with in the sixties to get writers and readers paid, you know? And you know, you think about like, the way we're talking about this, if there were seven people here and we're talking about Fred's story, that discourse is always beneath the level of mystery. You know, you're articulating, so you're, you know, so there, it's a little bit good to be suspicious of the form itself. So we do a lot of talking about how are we doing as a group? Are there things we're missing? Something I've done lately is to say, let's not go longer than we have to. Because that's one thing in those kind of meetings is you got an hour and a half.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  So you do all the essential work in forty-five minutes and then suddenly you're talking about the color scheme or something that's not, it's more content. So I think I just try to be a little wary of the, how far below the activity, the articulation falls, you know, like? Because I mean, you know, I'm sure if you're having a session that's really like up here and then someone's, oh, that was good. And you start yapping about it, somehow it's not, I think it's okay to talk about it.

• 1:04:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  But at the same time, like if you just had your peak sexual experience, you could talk about it and maybe you would like to, but it's not the same. Yeah.

• 1:04:13Rick Rubin?

  Are there any accepted rules of writing that it would be better not to learn?

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  I think don't worry about plot. That is a word that gives people a lot of conniptions and I don't think it's.

• 1:04:23Rick Rubin?

  Avoid plot.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Or the word plot. You're still gonna have plot. I mean, a lot of the ways that we talk about writing are.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Post-writing descriptions of things that happened that were magical, and now we're gonna name them.

• 1:04:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  So that's okay, and that's criticism, and it's important. But then when you think about the moment that you did it, I'm not ever thinking about plot.

• 1:04:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Or theme, or character. That's not how it works. So you do a student a disservice if you say, well, how's your plot? You know, who could do that? So it's interesting, because the one thing that might be different in my classes, I really wanna talk about, as you did in your book so beautifully, what does it feel like? In the moment of creation, what's your mind doing? And what can we do to nurture that state? What are the things that peck at it and take us down from that state? Hard to talk about, but when you, with writing, it's nice because you have the text. So in editing it, you can sort of say, if six people are editing a text, and everybody loves page three, then you can say to the writer, think about where were you, you know, what was going on when you wrote that?

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  That's probably a good state for you, you know, that kind of thing. I think about a telescope, like there's the critical end of the telescope, which describes and elucidates and analyzes, and that's really useful, and it can help the creative. But the other side of the telescope is something much more mysterious.

• 1:05:45Rick Rubin?

  Are you superstitious?

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  No, no. I got rid of that because I, that first book I wrote at work. So it was like, there was no time for it. Yeah, I couldn't design the ideal writing moment, so I just forget it.

• 1:06:02Rick Rubin?

  Are you superstitious about anything in life?

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  I'm OCD, which is, which is kind of similar, but no, I'm not.

• 1:06:07Rick Rubin?

  Describe the OCD.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  It's kind of mostly, in the positive sense, it's rewriting with no limit. In the negative sense, it's kind of a self-suspicion, I guess, which is very close to being a good editor, but not quite.

• 1:06:22Rick Rubin?

  Are you a perfectionist?

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. But I think also, honestly, I would say, maybe from Buddhism, I've become a merciful perfectionist, which is to say, perfect really is the enemy of good. So pretend to be a perfectionist, and so you start being a pain in the ass, and then stop, because you're gonna drive yourself into the ditch. Because I published late, I had a real palpable period where I was like, okay, all your life you thought you were gonna be a writer, it looks like you're not. Are you okay with that? You know? And so, once I got going, I was like, okay. Somehow, I just said, I'm not gonna let neurosis get in the way of productivity. Can we agree on that? And for once in my life, I said, I agree with myself. Yeah, we can. So, I don't tend to be superstitious. Or like, if I have a book that's successful,

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  I have about two days of going, oh, no, you peaked. And I'm like, that's so babyish. Don't do that. That's selfish. And it's kind of, it's contradictory to the experience you had while you were writing, which you, the self went away.

• 1:07:19Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  So, don't be all babyish about that. This, you've got some gifts to keep giving. So, so in many, many ways, there's a kind of a, I would say, for me, fairly high functioning productivity mind that says, if that's gonna get us in the weeds, let's not do that.

• 1:07:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  You know? Yeah.

• 1:07:36Rick Rubin?

  Are you OCD outside of your work?

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  A little bit. Probably not clinically, but.

• 1:07:40Rick Rubin?

  In what ways might it show up in life?

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Uh, mostly just, I'll, I'll go to a party and say something and go, oh, my God, what did I say? You know, or feel negative about things that I've said or done that in the light of day weren't much. So, I think that's a form of ego, actually. And imperfectionism, you know? I couldn't possibly be the guy who says something stupid at a party. That would, you know?

• 1:07:59Rick Rubin?

  This part in "Swim in the Pond", where you're commenting on a section of Tolstoy, and you say, "The writing leaves you with envy and resentment."

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Rick Rubin?

  Was that sarcastic?

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:08:10Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  It's, you know, that's actually receding a little bit as I get older. But when I was young, it killed me when somebody was so good.

• 1:08:17Rick Rubin?

  Really?

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it was very egotistical. I just, I just wanted to be the only good one. I think that was, yeah. And then.

• 1:08:24Rick Rubin?

  Are you competitive in life?

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  Yes, although less and less. I, I think at that point, I hadn't done anything.

• 1:08:29Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  So, I just wanted to be the best at this thing I'd never tried. And then, as I, as you get into it, it's a de-ego-fying practice. And so, you go, well, it doesn't matter if, if I did it. It matters that it got done.

• 1:08:40Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  And of course, that comes and goes. Then, when you're done, you're like, I did it. But, but no, for sure, I, I, I think, I read Tolstoy now, I'm like, God. But for the first time in my life, I'm like, yeah, he's great. He's greater than you'll ever be. And that's okay. But when I was younger, that really got under my skin somehow, you know? But the more I did it, the less that feeling was.

• 1:08:58Rick Rubin?

  Do you pray?

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  I meditate, which is, yeah, very similar. Yeah.

• 1:09:02Rick Rubin?

  And how do you meditate?

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Well, lately not enough, but we have practices that are called poojas. They're kind of, they're actually very similar to a Catholic Mass. So they're kind of guided visualizations with chanting and you just.

• 1:09:15Rick Rubin?

  Do you listen to something or no?

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Yes, I do because I don't, it's in Sanskrit and so I, there's a text and then there's a tape or a recording.

• 1:09:23Rick Rubin?

  And is it melodic, is it chanting?

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  It's kind of melodic, but in kind of pentatonic, you know, it's like, it's not wildly melodic, but it's, yeah.

• 1:09:31Rick Rubin?

  Would you say it's hypnotic?

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Not really, no, no, I don't know how, actually, you know, I'm, I had a friend who was a really serious practitioner. And he said, well, I would describe you as a fellow traveler, you know, some of, and I talk too much about it and know too little. But for me, it seems like it's, it's really similar to the Catholic Mass, which was, as I experienced it, it was a, you were imagining making offerings, you were imagining getting blessings.

• 1:09:56Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  And somehow the effect of that, when I was doing it more, was that a certain kind of ambient negative part of my mind that I thought was me would kind of just go quiet. And then I said, oh, look at, there's something else there, you know? So it was a, like a de-identification process. And then in the absence of that strong identification with self, something else would come up that was, you know, very positive.

• 1:10:21Rick Rubin?

  If it wasn't for your time in the church, would you be a different person today?

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. I think the sacraments and the, it's just, it's the first time that you realize your everyday mind isn't the only.

• 1:10:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  And so you go there every week to just get that reminder every week. And I had some.

• 1:10:42Rick Rubin?

  Like practice, like any sitting practice, same.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  Exactly. Cause you can't, you know, cause it's funny how quickly you just go back to your old regular self. But then the ghost, you know, you see that. Were you a spiritual young fellow? Were you?

• 1:10:54Rick Rubin?

  I learned to meditate when I was 14.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:10:56Rick Rubin?

  And I was always interested in metaphysical things before that, but I didn't have a form to practice. And then when I learned to meditate, it took over and it was a real miracle that I got to learn because no one in my family did it, no one I knew did it. It just worked out.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  And what tradition are you, would you?

• 1:11:12Rick Rubin?

  I learned TM at that time.

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. I mean.

• 1:11:16Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  I just remember the first time I was about 40 and we had our kids and I, I didn't have a technique, but I was just trying. I was trying to make my thoughts stop, that was the goal. Just noticing that little split second between thought and speech suddenly, just, oh, what a blessing when you have little kids, you know, you can. Have an urge to correct and go, eh, that's incredible.

• 1:11:35Rick Rubin?

  Or the need to say how you think it is.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Rick Rubin?

  Right. Who cares?

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  Who cares? And if you don't say it, the moment goes by and you're.

• 1:11:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Rick Rubin?

  What's something that you don't believe now that you believed when you were younger?

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Uh, so many. Well, it's, it's kind of what we were just talking about. The, when I was younger, came from Chicago, kind of working class, had a little macho periods. And I think I was much more a believer that one did great things. One must, you asserted yourself by talking and acting and, and that thankfully has, has started to fade. You know, and one of the things about having a, a public life is that that, that, that delusion gets reenlivened sometimes. You get a lot of attention, you're like, oh, but I, I really liked the fact that if I looked at myself at 18, I just wanted to be noticed. And I wanted to be great at something and it was all me, me, me, me.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  And thankfully it's kind of a little more like you can sort of watch the river go by and the river still goes by. And you don't have to, the river doesn't care that you're watching it, you know, or that you're talking about it. But so in writing, it's interesting because then it purifies the activity to where maybe even 10 years ago, I, I was on a kind of a, I wanted to write my great book. And then now I'm kind of like, well, yeah, I do, but only to see if it can be done, you know? Because it's that feeling of something secret than flowing out through process and being real. That, I love that. And whether it's credited or not, or whether I did it or not, I don't care as much. I, I would actually like to just finish that one and do that, do the next one and.

• 1:13:16Rick Rubin?

  Tell me something you've changed your mind about recently.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Well, it would have to do with. We have a dog at home who's sick. And I can feel my sense of myself as being a flawless person or a flawless caregiver giving way. And just I'm like, what? It's hard, you know? She's old. You're gonna make mistakes, you know? And so that, I mean, that's an ongoing thing. But on the good days, I feel like I'm such a great owner, such a loving compassionate person. And then on the bad days, I'm like, oh, you're fucking everything up. And I'm a little more comfortable with that flux now. Like, oh, yeah, so whoever you are, you're not exclusively either one of those two things. And then noticing the way that my sort of day to day pleasure has to do with identifying with the first one and subduing the second one.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  And so I'm trying, I'm thinking, I wonder what it'd be like if I really was really free of ego and really could say, that guy's going through a hard time or that guy's doing a good job. Instead of, you know, denying the difficult valences. And I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I've changed my mind about, I guess, well, one, thinking of myself as someone who never fucks up. But two, with that, that might be, you know?

• 1:14:28Rick Rubin?

  Might be okay.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:29Rick Rubin?

  In general, would you say you're hard on yourself?

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. Except when I'm way too easy. But yeah, I think I'm, I think I'm pretty hard on myself.

• 1:14:37Rick Rubin?

  And would you say you're equally hard on other people or no? It's only you?

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  In fact, one thing I sometimes will do if I get myself in a spiral is go, okay, if this was your friend.

• 1:14:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  What would you say?

• 1:14:46Rick Rubin?

  What would you say?

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  But, but I think, you know, I, my students, I talk about this, that whatever manifest in yourself. I mean, naturally, we judge it, but we can also use it. So for me, like, I'm very hard on myself, which in editing is a great blessing.

• 1:15:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  I don't know how I would do it otherwise. So in that arena, I'm gonna accept it. Then when you get into some other area, can you be a little bit easier? And actually, you can, you know, you can. Yeah.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  Let me ask you something. At this point, and this is relevant to my strengths, when you get up in the morning and you're thinking about work, what's motivating you now at this point in your life?

• 1:15:29Rick Rubin?

  Just whatever is on the schedule for that day. I don't think past. It just.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Would you describe yourself as ambitious still or ambitious ever? Or is that a word that doesn't?

• 1:15:40Rick Rubin?

  I want to do good things. I feel like to live up to my purpose. There's work to do.

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 1:15:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Ambitious is not the word I would use.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:15:52Rick Rubin?

  Ambitious would be, what am I going to do to make the outcome happen? And that's not what it is.

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  When you look at a, let's say, a day, a day in the studio or whatever you're doing.

• 1:16:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  What are the pleasures? What are the peak pleasures?

• 1:16:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, when nothing sounds good. And then all of a sudden it comes together. It's the most exciting feeling.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  And you know that when it happens.

• 1:16:16Rick Rubin?

  Feel it. Everybody feels it. Yeah, it's a very exciting feeling. It's like, it's probably the reason to continue doing it. The feeling of nothing's happening. And then all of a sudden, something's happening. That moment of spark of creation.

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16:32Rick Rubin?

  Is so exciting.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:34Rick Rubin?

  Thrilling. It's like magic.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  And you're having it with other people, which is beautiful.

• 1:16:38Rick Rubin?

  Not always. Sometimes I could be working on an idea myself.

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16:41Rick Rubin?

  And it just comes together.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:16:45Rick Rubin?

  But most often it's with other people.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  I call that the, in the stories, when the face comes out of the stone. It's just been some words and suddenly it's an actual wow. Man, okay, so I can answer this question. What makes music good? And I can say presence, authenticity, blah, blah. But is there a stratum of descriptors above that? That's more.

• 1:17:06Rick Rubin?

  Authenticity is a big part of it. Because when you hear it, you hear the artist's belief in what they're doing. Doesn't have to be true what they're doing. Has nothing to do with truth. It has to do with. Their truth.

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:17:21Rick Rubin?

  If someone is spilling their guts about something you don't agree with, it's still moving to us. It's that it's someone being human and sharing being human, what that feels like.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:17:35Rick Rubin?

  It could be good or bad.

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  Okay, so David Foswell Wallace used to talk about, he said with young writers, there's, there's some people who think if they're feeling it while they're writing it, it's good writing. And then the more advanced ideas, well, you could use that feeling, but it has to convey feeling to the reader. In other words, if I just feel like I'm in a, I'm stoned, I'm typing, doesn't necessarily communicate to you. So if, let's say that somebody's playing a guitar solo. I mean, presumably they could be thinking about something totally different. And yet authenticity is still there.

• 1:18:09Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  So I can understand a songwriter emoting authentically and being in the moment. But say for a mix or for an instrumentalist, why was one solo cell and the other one doesn't, or cell or move you? And I know it's kind of, you know, when you see it, but.

• 1:18:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I don't think it's an answerable question. That said, I now think, and this is a new thought, it might have more to do with rhythm than anything else. There was a time I would have thought, well, it could be the melody, could be the tone, could be the context. I'm feeling more and more the internal rhythmic feel is maybe the most important thing of anything.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  Now, that's interesting. Does that have a relation to presence? Because in other words, if I'm kind of a.

• 1:19:01Rick Rubin?

  I don't know if it does. Maybe something else. Presence is another one of the things that when you feel it, you know it. It's hard to say what it is.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:12Rick Rubin?

  But you can feel it. I would describe presence as someone truly inhabiting whatever the thing is. Almost as if who they are is no longer around and just this thing is appearing.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:19:29Rick Rubin?

  I would call presence like God steps in.

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that has nothing to do necessarily with the meaning of the song. It just has the moment of it.

• 1:19:38Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, that's beautiful. I love that. God steps in.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  And that, like in writing terms, there, there is a corollary because if, if I'm present

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  as a person, then you know, that moment we talked about where the trains come in together. If I'm on the track going, no, no, no, so you know, even a little bit, it impacts the, the feeling. Which I wonder if that has something to do with this rhythmic idea, like if somebody is fully.

• 1:20:02Rick Rubin?

  If someone's thinking about it, it won't be good.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:20:05Rick Rubin?

  It can't be.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:20:06Rick Rubin?

  The best version is they're gone.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:10Rick Rubin?

  And then only when they get to hear it back, do they understand what happened.

• 1:20:16Rick Rubin?

  Transcendent experience.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  But see, for me, that is interesting, the transcendent, if I would have heard that a few years ago, I would have thought, oh, you're just like in some crazy mystical state. But in writing, it's not at all. It's just, you just step out of the room and for a second, and then you're, you're back, you know?

• 1:20:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. You know, you're not in control of it happening. You can certainly get in the way of it happening, but you can't make it happen.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:20:42Rick Rubin?

  You just have to wait.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:20:45Rick Rubin?

  It won't happen if you're not participating.

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:20:49Rick Rubin?

  You can't just think it'll happen sometime. You have to show up.

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:20:54Rick Rubin?

  But you can't make it happen.

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  And in write, that's right. And in writing, one of the ways you make it happen is to be a little conceptual. You're kind of going, oh, this is the story about patriarchy.

• 1:21:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  And then at some point, your mind goes, step back. Yeah, it's incredible. I think that's where it kind of, it kind of brushes up against the meditative because in a given writing hour.

• 1:21:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  You're doing all the things wrong and all the things right. And it's, it's kind of, I, I can, I can be working and just literally be gone, do something and go, ooh, The New Yorker's gonna love that. I'm back. So, you know?

• 1:21:28Rick Rubin?

  Do you write for one hours that?

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I write for whatever I can.

• 1:21:31Rick Rubin?

  What's your schedule or is there one?

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  It's kind of loose. I, I mean, on a perfect day, I would just get up and walk the dog and then come up and just spend five or six hours. But I, there's kind of an inner rhythm, like if I have a hard copy, marking it up. And then put it in once, read it again and do that about three times. And then at some point I start to make mistakes. I can tell I'm just not, sharpness isn't there, so just quit. But I can go easy four or five hours.

• 1:21:57Rick Rubin?

  When you're not working, do you ever have an idea and make a note?

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:22:02Rick Rubin?

  Right. How often?

• 1:22:03Speaker 01

  I'm not too often. When I was younger, I'd always be thinking about it and then have an idea, which is different than if the idea just comes, I find.

• 1:22:10Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  So I don't, I tend to just, if an idea comes to me out of nowhere, there'd be a split second reaction, like, oh yeah. Then I'll do it. But there's a slight degradation of that, which is like, it's a little more of a know it all feeling, like, here's what you should do, you know? And if that comes to me, I know it's not gonna work because it's, you know, it's almost like, I think certain ideas come purely out of the subconscious. And then when you go to put it in, it just folds in perfectly. And others are like, put me in, put me in, and you, it doesn't, the surface doesn't want it in there, you know? So I kind of learned a little bit to be really skeptical. Same with dreams, like, most dreams aren't stories, but.

• 1:22:45Rick Rubin?

  Do you write your dreams?

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  No, unless it's a good one.

• 1:22:48Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:49Speaker 01

  But I had to think, one time, after that Lincoln and the Bardo came out, I just had a tour and I was so happy, but also a little bit anxious about the next thing. And I had a dream and in the dream, I could see the second book. It was just a huge book and everything. And I woke up and I thought, I should write this down. No, I'll just write down the title. That'll be enough. And the title was Custer and the Bardo.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  That didn't work out.

• 1:23:14Speaker 01

  Do you know that writer, Juneau Diaz? He, he's really good and he had a first book of stories that was really beautiful. And he had a dream one night of, of the eight stories in the book and they were all color coded. Different sections were color coded. And he understood that, I remember like, all the purple stuff could be cut. And he went in and took it out. Yeah, that was like really bad stuff.

• 1:23:35Rick Rubin?

  Does your knowledge of past writers shape your work?

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:23:40Rick Rubin?

  How?

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Probably, well, these days, just, it's like, I read Gogol and I think, oh God, I love this about that. Let's try to get in that party a little bit, just, just like that, just almost like they're up on this high level and.

• 1:23:55Rick Rubin?

  Would you say inspired by?

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, or you know, I think a lot about permission giving like I read Gogol and his shit. It's so crazy, really, you know? And it just makes me think, okay, so you can do that. You can go there. But honestly, the last couple of years, I'm kind of like, I read them just to be kind of reminded that greatness exists and go, okay, I can't go there in that flavor, but I can go there in my flavor. So I hope I can, you know, just like that.

• 1:24:23Rick Rubin?

  Regarding Tolstoy, you said after a series of fact statements, simple opinion stated in the same way has more credibility. Is that a usable trick? Or is it just something you noticed in the writing?

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  I think it's true because if, okay, so in fiction, you know that I'm making it up.

• 1:24:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  And so if I say something really high concept and personal, you're gonna go, oh, maybe, but that's your opinion. But if I describe this delight on the table very well, and I describe for other things that are very familiar to you, then you're kind of sitting over here with me.

• 1:24:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  You know, but Tolstoy also, he would be incredibly objective about even psychological states. You know, he was so good at it that it landed in the same register as a description of a horse. So, you know, and even when he would kind of cross over into opinion, he does it in the same syntactical thing. So it's a little tricky. He can fool you a little bit with that, you know?

• 1:25:18Rick Rubin?

  And do you think he knew what he was doing or no?

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  I think he was a person with a lot of authority, a lot of confidence. So whatever he said, he said it in a simple, objective sentence because he knew it was true, including God and everything. So I think he, I mean, when you read descriptions of him, people really were like taken by his charisma and his certainty. So I think he, but the thing about him that's amazing is he can do that in one character, and then he can run around to the other side of the table and do it from another character's point of view too. And they both sound equally certain and equally real. So I think that's what makes him so amazing. He's God going into your head and accepting everything he finds and describing it in these precise sentences. Then he comes over here in mine, he does the same thing, and then he just lets it sit there, you know? And you're kind of like, what's true? And he said, I'm God.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  It's all, it's all true.

• 1:26:06Rick Rubin?

  On some level, would you say you're all of the characters in your stories?

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  I mean, you could understand the story is just an argument. Objectified, you know, you you have a a story that takes up this topic. And you let a bunch of people opine on it, but they're all coming from. From you. And I think what I'm starting to think now is that the highest level of that craft is. Like I just described it to let all those voices come out. Calibrate the arguments. So all of them are substantial. Instead of when you're younger, you want to put your finger on the scale and say, this is my belief.

• 1:26:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:39Speaker 01

  But the Chekhov in that both are gooseberries. It's he just. It's happiness, good or bad.

• 1:26:44Rick Rubin?

  And yeah. You have to believe what you're writing.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  You have to believe. In it from the point of view of the person who's saying it.

• 1:26:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  You know that.

• 1:26:53Rick Rubin?

  They have to believe.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  They have to believe. And you have to really get on their team.

• 1:26:58Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  And let them believe it and articulate it in a way that's genuine to them. And that's, I mean, it's tricky because it's stagecraft. I mean, if I'm. If I'm trying to be a Trump supporter. I can get pretty far there, but but then there's a little bit of mystery. And so. At that point, you can make some mistakes. You can make somebody. More sympathetic than they should be. You can make them less sympathetic. You can give them. A reason that isn't authentic. So it's it's tricky work, you know, that inhabiting other people. But I think to go back to the Charlie Brown thing, I mean. If I put six people around the table, none of them are real. They're all emanations of me. And what we're doing is not trying to make it a catalog of real people. We're trying to get some energy going, you know, that that's. I think sometimes a story is like a like a board and it it controls.

• 1:27:44Speaker 01

  Light, you know, so you're just adjusting the things to make the most light come off of the work of art.

• 1:27:48Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  What does it mean? I don't know. But that's the brightest I can make it.

• 1:27:52Rick Rubin?

  Have you ever written anything and come to realize it means something different than you thought it meant?

• 1:27:56Speaker 01

  That's the actually the goal, I think. Or maybe to find out there were overtones that you didn't know were going to come out, you know, and.

• 1:28:03Rick Rubin?

  If you write something and everyone who reads it thinks it means the same thing, have you succeeded or failed?

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  You know, Christmas Carol, everybody knows what that means and they're right, you know. So I think it can go either way. In my personal thing, I'm trying to get more where there's less agreement. Because my story sometimes will be, you know where you stand, you know where I stand, we all. And it happens, you know. And this new book I just wrote, it's interesting, it's giving off complicated light, which I was happy about.

• 1:28:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it sounds more honest, like, yeah, life's complicated.

• 1:28:39Speaker 01

  It's like, like I said, you, work of art doesn't have to solve a problem, it just has to formulate it correctly.

• 1:28:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:45Speaker 01

  When you finish a piece, do you know where the pops are? Like in a six-minute piece, do you know where the the listener's gonna go?

• 1:28:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I just know where I feel it and I assume they'll feel it in the same places. But if they don't, or if they feel it somewhere else, nobody's wrong.

• 1:29:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:29:04Rick Rubin?

  Is what it is.

• 1:29:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:05Rick Rubin?

  The only thing I have to go on is how I feel.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:08Rick Rubin?

  That's my only metric.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, but what I've, I think I believe this is that if I, so if I'm reading my work, let's say it's revising my own piece. I read, something happens on page five. I kind of assume that you're gonna feel that too. And that's part of that communication thing, like if I, if my heart rose at this place. I think my imaginary reader's heart is gonna rise at that place.

• 1:29:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  That's the contract, I think, I have to, I have to have that idea. But in practice, it's just watching myself, you know, yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:38Rick Rubin?

  You can't know.

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  You can't know.

• 1:29:42Rick Rubin?

  What do you think it was about Khalil Gibran that spoke to you when you were younger?

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  Well, I think at that age, I had a real desire to know something that nobody else knew. And he seemed to know, he seemed to be that guy, you know. And also that my friends wouldn't have liked him, so there's a little bit of elitism.

• 1:29:57Rick Rubin?

  It felt more like it was yours?

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  That didn't really, but I just, I liked that he was, seemed to be speaking about something that wasn't just quotidian news.

• 1:30:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:05Speaker 01

  And I, at that age, I really was a kid who wanted wisdom. I wanted, I was looking around for, so like Zen in the Outer Motorcycle Maintenance. And then later Ayn Rand, you know, that was big for me. So I wanted, I thought that the purpose of literature was to tell you how to live. And Khalil Gibran seemed to be, to be doing that. But I hadn't developed any ability to see what things felt like to me. And then gauge it work by that. I was all just, well, that sounds really big, you know, big. And, and if I, if I am a Khalil Gibranite. Nobody can touch me because I know more than everyone else.

• 1:30:41Rick Rubin?

  Funny you say that because I made a note in your teaching, there's a great deal of wisdom. I use the word specifically, it's bigger than information. Where do you think the wisdom you hold comes from?

• 1:30:52Speaker 01

  I I don't know that I really.

• 1:30:57Rick Rubin?

  It's there, I'm telling you it's there because I'm reading it.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  I'll accept it. I I think I think it comes from a kind of trial and error. So to have read as many stories I've read, especially student stories and go, okay, take your knowing mind down a notch and just listen, see what's actually happening there. Okay, and after twenty, thirty years of that, you do kind of know some things conditionally. So I think to offer information conditionally is kind of like wisdom. You know, so if I say that sentence is no good, that's too certain. If I say, it feels to me as if that sentence goes hazy at the end. That's more like wisdom because I'm not sure, you know.

• 1:31:40Rick Rubin?

  I feel like I'm talking more about the actual content, not the writing.

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  So the content of a story or content of the the Russian book or?

• 1:31:49Rick Rubin?

  The Russian book as an example.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  Well, that has to do with twenty years of teaching those stories. Because you you can have a class in nineteen ninety-two that goes off the rails and is no good. Ninety-four, you correct it. And then you start noticing that every time you talk about that story, these are the issues that come up.

• 1:32:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  So you honor that and and think and then, yeah, so it's anticipatory, I think, a little bit. You I know that I've had, you know, eight groups of really brilliant kids have read that Turgenev story and gone, oh, God, you know. So then part of your approach is say, I know what you think. You think it's boring and then maybe that feels like wisdom of some kind. But I mean, I'm sure, you know, for for you, like you, you must have understanding of this stuff that is.

• 1:32:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I have understanding. I don't know where it comes from, but I feel it.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I think for me, it's a bit of, okay, so it is, it's repetition, but it's also trusting, it sounds weird, but it's trusting other people. So I've had all those generations of students.

• 1:32:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  They come in, they come in, they come in, they react authentically to these pieces. So there's a crossroads there. If you're a bad teacher, you go, well, these students reacted correctly and these reacted incorrectly. And I only want to talk about the ones who react. If you're a good teacher, you go, huh, there's a range of reactions.

• 1:33:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  Okay, let's lean into that. And then with years, you, you start to see that that's a reliable thing. And it has something to do with that story.

• 1:33:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:18Speaker 01

  And then you can track that down. So I think it's, and I'm glad you feel the way, I don't, I don't, I don't feel particularly wise, but I do know I used to feel wiser and I used to be much more free with my wisdom.

• 1:33:27Rick Rubin?

  I think now you're getting wiser.

• 1:33:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm saying less.

• 1:33:32Rick Rubin?

  Because you get to see these really brilliant young writers, year after year, would you say there's some part of it that they're mostly good at and some part of it that they're mostly not good at? Or is it always case by case?

• 1:33:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:49Rick Rubin?

  In new writers?

• 1:33:51Speaker 01

  Not that I can discern, but there's a trend in all writers.

• 1:33:53Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  Which is, we all think we don't know the secret and we're faking it. And all our writing lives, we've been faking it better than most, but we are faking it. And so because of that, we're avoiding certain things, whether it's content or voice or something, we're avoiding something. So for me, the job is to just say, the minute the student comes in, I don't say it, but I know you think you're not good enough.

• 1:34:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  Okay, now let's find out what flavor you think you're not good enough. And then I'm gonna do some judo and I'm gonna show you that the thing you aren't good at is actually a unity with the thing you're good at. And the only problem is you're denying so energetically the thing you're not good enough,

• 1:34:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  that you're, you're stifling yourself. I mean, practically what that means is I'm quiet long enough for you to tell me what's bothering you about your story. And then I say, oh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I think everybody has that kind of fear.

• 1:34:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. You're describing a psychological state and I was guessing you were gonna talk about something technical about writing. Is there anything not on the? How they're thinking about what they're doing, but what they're actually doing. What's on the page?

• 1:35:03Speaker 01

  Yes, I mean, well, sometimes there's there's first order imitation. They're imitating somebody, you can see it. They're avoiding, like we talked about earlier, sometimes the story wants to go here. But for some reason, usually it's an intellectual reason, they don't want to go there.

• 1:35:15Rick Rubin?

  Forcing it somewhere else.

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  And also, what I find with my students is sometimes they are really afraid of being corny. And so at a moment, which is actually going to be an emotional moment, they're afraid of being schmaltzy, and so they take it off into some other. So as an older person, you can kind of go, I love that moment. That was so moving. And then I think you kind of got distracted from it. And they'll go, yeah, yeah. So it's almost like maybe the wisdom has to do with seeing that pattern over and over again.

• 1:35:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  Someone who has come to literature because it has all the stuff in it, all the feelings. But they they're a little afraid of being sentimental. So they veer away from that. And you just gently saying, oh, no, actually, that's that's what we do.

• 1:35:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  You know, so I can sort of, I would say I can see somebody before they do a little bit.

• 1:36:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  And go, oh, okay, I get this. And then then you can skillfully, I'm sure, I mean, it sounds like exactly what you're talking about earlier. You can skillfully move it to the point where they can discover it from themselves, and then you bless it. And that's it. I mean, it is technical.

• 1:36:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:18Speaker 01

  I think what it has to do is having confidence. In the old days, I think I felt students didn't know how to be emotionally in touch. And I had to tell them how to do it. And now I'm just like, of course, they know how to do that. They just haven't brought it into this realm yet.

• 1:36:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  So the confidence that you, I know that you're a fully emotionally formed person. Now, your art is impeding you a little bit, but that's okay. That's normal, you know, then that I think they feel that confidence that, you know, of course, you can get there, you know.

• 1:36:47Rick Rubin?

  Would you say sometimes you have the confidence for them that they don't have for themselves?

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  I think so. And and sometimes I even will be a little overconfident, just so they can just allure them out a little bit.

• 1:36:58Rick Rubin?

  I think we share that.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:59Rick Rubin?

  It's part of the.

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:37:01Rick Rubin?

  The mentoring, really?

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  I think so. Because I know from my own experience, if I, this is so sort of pathetic, but if I go on tour and I get a bad review, I'm flinchy. If I go on tour, I get a good review, I'm confident, you know?

• 1:37:13Rick Rubin?

  What is on tour?

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  It's just, it means like book tour, you know, on book tour, so.

• 1:37:17Rick Rubin?

  And what does that look like?

• 1:37:18Speaker 01

  It looks like eighteen cities in twenty days, just going to a bookstore. And then usually these days, it's a Q and A. It's like this, you just sit in front of people, do a Q and A, sign books, go to the hotel, go to the next place.

• 1:37:29Rick Rubin?

  Do you enjoy it?

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I actually love it. I maybe enjoy it a little too much, but I love the meeting the people because then you're like, if you have any temptation to project negatively about your audience or fearfully,

• 1:37:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  that washes it all away. They're so nice and.

• 1:37:42Rick Rubin?

  Would you say most of the people in all the different places you go are relatively the same? Or is it different area by area?

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  Well, they tend to be left-leaning and they tend to be literary. I don't get a lot of people across the political spectrum, I don't think. But, I mean, in general, they're really nice. I mean, really open to ideas and very, uh, and for me, that's kind of built up over the years. So it's a very welcoming.

• 1:38:07Rick Rubin?

  And they're coming there because they like you. Otherwise, they wouldn't come.

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. I have to, sometimes before I start something, I have to say that, like, they, they came here, you know?

• 1:38:16Rick Rubin?

  When you write something funny, do you laugh out loud?

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  The first time. And then usually never again. Just want to go, okay, but that got a laugh back in nineteen ninety, so you can leave it in there.

• 1:38:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah. What's your expectation when you sit touring?

• 1:38:31Speaker 01

  Not much, actually. I mean, I think to improve something somewhere, but more, I'm looking at how well I'm reading that day.

• 1:38:38Rick Rubin?

  How well you're reading?

• 1:38:39Speaker 01

  How well am I reading? Am I getting it?

• 1:38:41Rick Rubin?

  Do you equate how well you're reading it to how well you can write?

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  Yes. In other words, if I can, if I'm reading it well, I'm correcting well.

• 1:38:52Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:38:53Speaker 01

  Because then I'm reading it the way you'll read it. Yeah. And if I'm a little out of touch with it, then I'm, it's almost like driving a little bit blind, you know?

• 1:39:01Rick Rubin?

  How are speaking and writing the same and how are they different?

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  Well, writing is speaking over and over. You know, I can sometimes blurt out something kind of good. But if I talk for 10 minutes, it'll just be one little thing.

• 1:39:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:15Speaker 01

  I know a lot of people think, you know, one of the things that young writers are obsessed with is finding their voice. And I really was too. And we always think it's voice, it's whatever you blurt out. But what I love is the idea that voice is achievable by subtraction. You know, you can have a page of mediocre writing. And by lining it out, you can make it really unique just by cutting.

• 1:39:35Rick Rubin?

  You think if you have some mediocre writing and two different people edit it, you'll get two very different things?

• 1:39:40Speaker 01

  I think it's a good, it's a good editors. Yeah, yeah, I think so.

• 1:39:44Rick Rubin?

  And might both of them be good?

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  Sure. And in fact, I think, I mean, really, you can be both people. So Monday, you can edit it in a certain flavor. Tuesday, you come back and add a different flavor. And my theory is that over time, that model stabilizes and you're getting the benefit of all your people. You know, yourself grouchy, yourself funny, yourself skeptical, yourself.

• 1:40:04Rick Rubin?

  That's a really exciting idea.

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  And but when you're young, it's scary because it doesn't work that way. You just keep changing it. But then over time, now I can kind of like let whoever's here today come and work and they won't hurt it. And tomorrow we'll do something else to it. And in the end, it starts to kind of lock in.

• 1:40:20Rick Rubin?

  How different are you from day to day?

• 1:40:23Speaker 01

  Not that different, but it's almost like around the edges. There are certain, like I'll go by a line 97 times, 98 times, I'll find the joke. Like, oh, of course, boom. I guess like if you were in this yard looking for treasure, you just look and look and look and look and look. And most days you don't find anything. And one day you find something, you know, so it's, that's where the iteration comes in.

• 1:40:43Rick Rubin?

  And when you're looking for treasure, is it something that's already there usually?

• 1:40:47Speaker 01

  No, it's a reaction moment. There's a little something. That I didn't see and then you reacted.

• 1:40:54Rick Rubin?

  And then you react to it. So it's the new thing that you're adding.

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  Usually, yeah. Or, or just as valuable, you'll have a phrase, a three beat phrase, and you go, that middle section is redundant, cut it out. And then the two beat phrase is much better. And the third is already, is implied, didn't have to say it. And then that can sometimes teach you the voice of the whole piece. Once you find one line that, that sounds the right way, then you're like, okay, the rest of you guys have to respond to this in some way.

• 1:41:20Rick Rubin?

  Is there anything that can't be put into words?

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  Sure, everything.

• 1:41:25Rick Rubin?

  So then what do you do?

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  You just try, you know, it's just, it's a fun game we're playing together.

• 1:41:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  You know, I can't put everything in words that's important. I know I can't, but let me try. And then we get a sort of a simulation of that.

• 1:41:37Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about causation in fiction.

• 1:41:40Speaker 01

  I believe in it. It's, it's just.

• 1:41:41Rick Rubin?

  How does it work?

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  I think it works, I, I think it's another fancy word. And what it really means is when I read you four lines, it changes your location. And now you're ready to receive something. And I'm alertly looking at you to see where I put you. And then I do the next thing. That's causation. And on a larger scale, if the first section of a story is, you know, Jerry had been in love for 50 years and never doubted his love. You're like, all right.

• 1:42:10Rick Rubin?

  Not what?

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, something has to respond to that. So causality really is just the parts of the story being in alert communication with each other. That this part of the story has done something, it's clarified itself. And it's doing something to you as a reader. And as a writer, I can't make the next section as if it, this hadn't happened. But as we said earlier, that can be quite complicated, but it has to take it into account in some way.

• 1:42:34Rick Rubin?

  Does a writer need to have something to say?

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

  Everyone does, I think. But also, it's not, I, I think a story isn't what you say, it's how you say it. So if you have a method of saying something, that's it, you know. So I, I think everyone has something to say, but I wouldn't want to hear it. I don't want to hear what I have to say, because I hear that every day. But when you're writing, you're doing something else. It's, you're making an object that gives off energy or something and.

• 1:42:59Rick Rubin?

  Are there any basic rules about writing, like shorter sentences are better than longer sentences?

• 1:43:04Speaker 01

  The only thing that I honor in my work is that there's a kind of a hierarchy of. Complication. So I always want to start with the simplest. So first person, present tense, continuous time. One character. That's the first. Just because it's just like it's classic.

• 1:43:21Rick Rubin?

  Like grounding?

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  It's grounding and it's simple and I'm not, there's no tricks. Then at some point, if the story says, you know what? This really shouldn't be first person. You feel obstructed. Okay. Okay, it's a third person story, one character, continuous time. Hmm. About draft fifteen, you need a second voice here. Do I really? I don't think I do. Okay. Have another couple of weeks. Then you go, oh, actually, I do need a second voice. So in other words, you only go up the chain of complexity as the story demands it. I'd say that's something I've internalized. I mean, I don't like slop. Like if somebody doesn't, is making a mistake and they don't know it. I don't like that so much and just in syntax and stuff. But other than that, I think it's, you know, since the story is mostly language responding to language, you can do anything.

• 1:44:04Speaker 01

  You, I, I had a kid one time, one of my students, he was analyzing the Metamorphosis by Kafka. And he, his essay, the first sentence was, upon perceiving this work of literature, I felt myself at a distinct tilt. I'm like, wow. So I put that in a story. I started writing around that, you know, and it generated a whole story with really fucked up syntax. But so, so really there aren't any rules, except I think you have to be aware of what you're doing.

• 1:44:28Rick Rubin?

  Are you ever confused by strong emotions that come up when you're reading? And not understand them?

• 1:44:35Speaker 01

  Yes, but not in a like troubling way. Just, I just had a story called A Fabulous Animal by this writer Samantha Schwablin. And it's so good. And I got to the end and I couldn't have said what I was feeling, except the kind of gratitude, like, wow, you picked me up and lifted me and you never let me down until the very end. Then the analyzing is to go back and go, all right. Okay. Well, also where? Where did those things happen? Where were my expectations fulfilled and subverted in that cool way? And then at the very end, after that, you can go, okay, now what does this mean? Yes, I think that confusion is in a good work of art. I think you feel a lot and you don't know why. Then maybe if you want to, you can go back and kind of try to suss it out. But I think the roller coaster designer is the best metaphor.

• 1:45:20Speaker 01

  You know, you get off the thing and you're not exactly analyzing it. You're just feeling it.

• 1:45:25Rick Rubin?

  You just had the experience.

• 1:45:26Speaker 01

  Maybe you want to go on it again. And if you wanted to, you could sit, you know, with some paper and go, oh, this is why. But so, so the trick is you, as a story writer, you're trying to make that magical thing happen and not be reductive for a few minutes.

• 1:46:20Speaker 06

  What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammatin? Counter culture? Tetragrammatin. Sacred geometry? Tetragrammatin. The avant-garde? Tetragrammatin. Generative art? Tetragrammatin. The tarot? Tetragrammatin. Out of print music? Tetragrammatin. Biodynamics? Tetragrammatin. Graphic design? Tetragrammatin. Mythology and magic? Tetragrammatin. Obscure film? Tetragrammatin. Beach culture? Tetragrammatin. Esoteric lectures? Tetragrammatin. Off the grid living? Tetragrammatin. Alt spirituality? Tetragrammatin. The canon of fine objects? Tetragrammatin. Muscle cars? Tetragrammatin. Ancient wisdom for a new age.

• 1:47:07Speaker 06

  Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day.

• 1:47:12Speaker 06

  Take a breath and see where you are drawn.