Episode 78 - Dylan Brody
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Really?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:And it's also... Eh, what the fuck?
Marc:What's wrong with me?
Marc:It's time for WTF!
Marc:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what-the-fuckers?
Marc:What-the-fuck buddies?
Marc:What-the-fuckineers?
Marc:What-the-fuck nicks?
Marc:What's going on?
Marc:Welcome to What-the-fuck.
Marc:I am Marc Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:I am still in Toronto.
Marc:I don't know if you knew I was here, but I am here.
Marc:Been here for a few days.
Marc:I love Canada.
Marc:I love Toronto.
Marc:Every city I go to in Canada, I really like.
Marc:They're like American cities without all the fear.
Marc:There just seems to be a pleasantness up here that isn't quite there in America.
Marc:Got nothing against America.
Marc:Don't get on my case.
Marc:I'm not sitting up here thinking I'm going to move.
Marc:But I always have a relaxing time and the people are very nice.
Marc:The crowds at Yuck Yucks have been great.
Marc:The club is great.
Marc:A couple of things I want to talk about before I get into the show proper here.
Marc:I will be in the Bay Area again at Cobb's Comedy Club in San Francisco on June 18th and 19th for Greg Barron's Bring the Rock Show.
Marc:Now, I am trying to prepare a song.
Marc:Basically, the structure of the Bring the Rock Show is you tell a story.
Marc:that's music related.
Marc:And then the band on hand, which I believe is going to be Grant Lee Phillips, will then play a song by the band mentioned in the story.
Marc:Now, the last time I did the show, I spent a lot of time preparing a song that I ultimately chickened out and playing.
Marc:I did the same thing this time, but I told Greg and I told the guys, I said, look, I don't know if I can do it.
Marc:I'm too frightened.
Marc:I'm too frightened to sit up there and sing by myself, but there is a chance that I will play and sing with the band.
Marc:I'm not going to tell you what songs.
Marc:I'm not going to tell you what bands because that could ruin the fun.
Marc:Some other business.
Marc:Thank you for all your feedback on the Carlos Mencia episodes.
Marc:I'm glad you found them so compelling.
Marc:And I really enjoyed doing them.
Marc:outside of the fact that they were a tremendous amount of work and obsessive worry about content, about getting what we needed to get.
Marc:But I'm really glad that the feedback was so huge and people were able to build and have their own opinions on those situations that occurred in my garage.
Marc:There were some situations in the garage.
Marc:So let me tell you a little bit about Toronto.
Marc:It turns out I have a bit of a history here in Toronto.
Marc:Now, I don't know what kind of life you lead.
Marc:I don't know where your life is taking you.
Marc:But sometimes we make decisions that may not be good, but you don't know at the time.
Marc:And even if they're bad, they're your life.
Marc:I was sitting at Starbucks here in Toronto just looking at people walking down the street and wondering, Jesus, what kind of life does that person have?
Marc:Have they done what I've done?
Marc:Have they made the mistakes I have made?
Marc:Have they lived?
Marc:What is anyone's life?
Marc:I mean, what defines your life?
Marc:What are your habits?
Marc:What little hobbies have you gotten yourself locked into?
Marc:Are there moments where you just don't know what the fuck is going to happen?
Marc:I guess every moment is like that.
Marc:But sometimes I realize I get stuck into a series of ticks and habits and things that I do every day to give myself a sense of order.
Marc:And it feels good to have that.
Marc:But then I look at the other part of my life where I've just been flailing and falling and not knowing where the fuck I am or what's going to happen or what's going to end up, how I'm going to end up.
Marc:And I don't know if I really remember as much as I should.
Marc:I don't know if it's by virtue of age, but I can't.
Marc:Or maybe it's just denial.
Marc:I mean, sometimes feelings from the past are so fucking strong that you can't afford but to just have them as kind of detached memories.
Marc:Like, you know, yeah, I was here.
Marc:Yeah, I remember being here once.
Marc:You know, I remember it being one of the best weekends of my life.
Marc:But why is it that I don't... How come I don't feel the emotion connected to that?
Marc:This is Toronto.
Marc:I was in Toronto and I had one of the most important weekends of my life in this city.
Marc:And it feels so far away and so detached.
Marc:And then I started to realize I was going through some stuff the other day, going through my past pictures of my two marriages, pictures of my two weddings, pictures of, you know, college because I'm cleaning out the garage, which is a never ending fucking project.
Marc:Where does all this shit go?
Marc:Why don't I just throw it away?
Marc:We've covered that.
Marc:And I come upon an artifact, a Marc Maron artifact that reminded me before I came up here to Toronto that Toronto plays a very important part in my life.
Marc:And all I can say right at the beginning of this story is, fuck you Air Canada and thank you Air Canada.
Marc:That's how I'm going to start.
Marc:Here's what happened.
Marc:Back when I was married to my first wife and miserable and drunk and full of the drugs and not knowing how I was gonna live another day without putting a bullet in my head, not by her, not because of her, just because that's where I was at.
Marc:My career was in the toilet, everything was shit.
Marc:I was not in love with my wife and I liked her, but I didn't know how to get out, didn't know what was happening.
Marc:I had begun to have an affair.
Marc:with this gorgeous girl who was helping me get sober.
Marc:I know a lot of you know the story.
Marc:And during that time, I got caught twice.
Marc:You know, I don't know if I copped to it, but I got caught that I was involved with somebody else.
Marc:And you people can judge me.
Marc:People can judge all they want.
Marc:But let me tell you something.
Marc:There's a very short menu for how human beings fuck up in this life.
Marc:And sometimes those fuck ups are necessary to move you on to the next phase of your life.
Marc:Everybody makes mistakes.
Marc:Everybody lies.
Marc:Everybody does bad shit.
Marc:But sometimes there's no way around it.
Marc:Everybody gets hurt.
Marc:Everybody hurts other people.
Marc:It happens sometimes.
Marc:You try to temper it.
Marc:You try to limit it.
Marc:You try to not do it as much if you're compelled to be doing that kind of stuff.
Marc:That's the test of becoming a decent person.
Marc:So here's what happened.
Marc:I fall in love with another woman, as some of you know.
Marc:And I'm married and it's awkward because, you know, when you're having an affair, you're running around on somebody.
Marc:I mean, I think half the thrill is the fact that, you know, you've got a half an hour to fuck in a bathroom somewhere or you got a half an hour to meet up somewhere or you're under a house or you have to drive out of town.
Marc:I mean, it's very dubious and very secretive and it's all charged up and you don't know what's real and what isn't.
Marc:But, you know, you're having a good time.
Marc:And I was pretty sure I was in love with that woman.
Marc:I was.
Marc:There's no doubt about that.
Marc:So here's what happens.
Marc:You know, I get this gig in Toronto, must be 2000, the year 2000.
Marc:And I was in the middle of this thing and my wife was already on to something.
Marc:I was already in trouble, but she thought we were going to work through it.
Marc:So I saw this Toronto opportunity.
Marc:I thought like, well, why don't I bring this woman up to Toronto for three days?
Marc:We'll see if we can get along and that will determine whether or not I changed my entire life and build it around her.
Marc:Now, if that isn't addictive thinking, I don't know what the fuck is.
Marc:All it's going to take is three days, man.
Marc:The pressure's on.
Marc:You got three days to know if this is real.
Marc:If you want to spend the rest of your life with this person or at least leave your wife for this person.
Marc:I mean, this was a big test of a weekend.
Marc:So we flew up here.
Marc:I was doing shows.
Marc:She did a guest spot, I believe.
Marc:We had a great time.
Marc:Went thrift shopping, went to AA meetings, had good food, slept together for the first time ever.
Marc:Free to talk, free to walk, free to go out in the world.
Marc:It was spectacular.
Marc:After the weekend, we flew home and went back to our secret lives, and I still wasn't sure what I was going to do.
Marc:I still didn't know if I had the courage to do what I thought I should do, what my heart felt I should do.
Marc:But Air Canada solved that problem.
Marc:Air Canada.
Marc:I'll explain.
Marc:About a week after the Toronto trip, which changed my life, it was one of the most beautiful weekends I'd ever had in my life with this woman.
Marc:Air Canada sends a receipt in the mail, which I've never even heard of, sends a receipt in the mail to my apartment where I'm living with my wife for the other woman's ticket.
Marc:Her name was in the box on the front of the envelope, the Air Canada envelope.
Marc:I remember the Air Canada logo.
Marc:I remember walking in and seeing her in the kitchen holding an Air Canada envelope with the other woman's name, our dress.
Marc:Frozen in time, that moment of pain and horror.
Marc:My poor wife looks at me and goes, did she go with you to Canada?
Marc:Did you take her with you to Canada?
Marc:It was a difficult moment, folks.
Marc:It was a tough call, but I said, no, what are you talking about?
Marc:She goes, what is this?
Marc:And I said, I don't know what that is.
Marc:It's Air Canada.
Marc:That must be some sort of mistake.
Marc:So busted.
Marc:So fucking busted.
Marc:That was it.
Marc:That was the last straw.
Marc:No more.
Marc:Within days of that, locks were changed.
Marc:I was living in a sublet on the Lower East Side.
Marc:Air Canada.
Marc:I found that envelope the other night unopened in my box of stuff.
Marc:What a fond and devastating memory that was.
Marc:And I remember being very confused about it all.
Marc:And I must have been in a lot of pain or a lot of chaos because I ended up calling my father.
Marc:You know my father.
Marc:for a little advice about how to proceed with my life, given that I just fucked up my marriage.
Marc:And now I was in love with this other woman.
Marc:I know what to do exactly.
Marc:So I said, dad, I mean, I told him what happened.
Marc:And my dad just says, never use a credit card.
Marc:What are you stupid?
Marc:Don't use a credit card.
Marc:Thanks, Dad.
Marc:A lot of help.
Marc:But I guess the broader point of what I'm saying here is, is that that moment changed my life.
Marc:It was founded in deceit.
Marc:And obviously it didn't end well.
Marc:But God damn it, what a great weekend that was.
Marc:I got to remember it.
Marc:I got to connect it to my heart.
Marc:Today, we have Dylan Brody.
Marc:Now, Dylan Brody, I kind of knew.
Marc:I mean, back when we were kids, when I was at the comedy store, I'd heard of Dylan Brody.
Marc:He was a comic.
Marc:He was about my age, and he was a troublemaker, and he was sort of mythic in that he did something fucking stupid.
Marc:I'm not sure what he did, but when I got to the comedy store and I was a doorman, all I knew was like, don't do what Dylan Brody did.
Marc:But then recently I ran into him through a couple of different areas.
Marc:He's still doing it.
Marc:He's still playing the craft.
Marc:He's telling stories.
Marc:He's putting out CDs.
Marc:And he's a very sweet, interesting guy.
Marc:And I was on a show with him.
Marc:It was a storytelling show.
Marc:He told a lovely story.
Marc:And I thought, well, let's have him over to the garage and have a little chat.
Marc:So please enjoy my chat with Mr. Dylan Brody.
Dylan Brody.
Marc:We're here in the garage at the Cat Ranch, and I'm talking to Dylan Brody.
Marc:Now, an interesting thing about Dylan Brody is I don't know him.
Marc:Possibly the most interesting thing about me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, this is about me now.
Marc:I start out about me, and then we move to you.
Marc:All right.
Marc:But I know of him, and the weirdest thing about it is this goes way the fuck back.
Marc:When I was a doorman at the store, as many of you know, my experiences there with Sam Kennison, with Mitzi Shore, and how I hit the wall and all that shit.
Marc:There was a moment where I was losing it.
Marc:I remember I'd been jacked up on coke for a couple of days, and I'm saying, fuck it, man.
Marc:I'm going to go tell Mitzi how I feel.
Marc:I'm going to fucking settle this.
Marc:And it was just a haze in the middle of the night, and I'm surrounded by Kennison and a few other people.
Marc:And Kennison, I remember this because it was just one of those resonating moments where Kennison goes, hey, man, don't do it.
Marc:Don't pull a Dylan Brody.
Marc:And Dylan Brody was this guy that was at the store, and then he was gone, and I ran into you a couple of times over the years, shortly after that, and all I remember is you were wild-eyed, and you wore, I believe, a kerchief around your neck sometimes.
Marc:Is that possible?
Guest:I don't believe I wore a kerchief around my neck.
Guest:You thought that because for a long time I wore a Western duster.
Guest:That made me look a little bit like a crazed cowboy.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What's a duster?
Guest:It's the long coat that Jay Peterman made his name.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right.
Marc:That would be equally as peculiar and interesting.
Marc:But I thought I remembered like, you know, kerchief rock and roll style.
Marc:Not like cholo style on your head, but just sort of hanging there.
Guest:I can't imagine that I did that, but it's not possible.
Marc:But a duster is, you remember the jacket, but you don't think that there's any possible way, given that you made the choice to wear a duster, that you might say, I'm going to wear a bandana around my neck.
Guest:There may have been a few months of heavy coke use in which a bandana seemed like a good idea.
Guest:I'm not saying it never happened.
Guest:I'm saying I don't remember it.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And so you'll understand, during college, I wore a sword at my hip as a fashion choice.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So you needed a lot of attention.
Guest:yes and comedy seemed like and and phallic reassurance apparently well how did that go over was that impressive to girls that you wore a saber i first of all rapier uh-huh and much much cooler i mean you're pretty much advertising it like if a girl goes out with you and you're wearing a saber she's got whatever she's got okay let's go back again
Guest:Rapier.
Guest:A rapier.
Guest:Never a saber, always a rapier.
Guest:Oh, I thought you said it was rapier.
Guest:Oh, I understand.
Guest:No, that was not an adjective about me.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I wore a rapier, not a saber.
Guest:What is a rapier?
Guest:Rapier, it's the Three Musketeers sword.
Guest:Like a fencing sword, a thinner sword.
Guest:Yes, but sharp, not a foil.
Guest:It was what a foil was based on.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:But it was a crappy stage rapier.
Guest:So you were a stage rapier and a duster.
Guest:Not at the same time, but yes.
Guest:Yeah, I was a costume queen.
Marc:I made a lot of bad fashion choices.
Marc:Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Marc:And I found that it was a sort of scrambling for an identity, something that would define me externally for the ever shifting, weird, boundaryless thing I was inside.
Guest:And at the time that we were both coming up in comedy, particularly at the store, there was a strong belief in the idea of a hook.
Marc:Right, or at least something identifiable.
Marc:I never really latched onto that, you know, because I knew Kennison did the trench coat and the hat.
Marc:And some people had verbal hooks.
Marc:Some people had singular names.
Marc:That was always a red flag to me when someone changed their name to one name.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was always sort of like, oh, he's heading into... In lieu of a personality, he's going to have a persona.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, everyone has a persona, but I think it's just an ample... If you're lucky, it's an amplification of who you are.
Marc:You become a caricature of yourself.
Guest:Well, I've seen you work recently, and you do not seem like a caricature of yourself.
Guest:You're working honestly and truthfully on stage, and ultimately, I would hope that's what we're all growing toward.
Marc:Well, I don't know.
Marc:It's not for everybody.
Guest:Do you mean you personally?
Guest:No, I mean in general.
Marc:We don't really hope that everyone grows towards that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Too much honesty.
Marc:If everyone was as honest as some people, as really honest people, it'd be very exhausting.
Marc:I have to assume that I'm a little exhausting sometimes.
Guest:I don't know you well enough to know that.
Guest:I know for a fact that I'm a little exhausting at times.
Guest:I'm exhausted now.
Guest:But the truth is, when we're performing, people only have to deal with us for, you know, 45 minutes, an hour.
Guest:How tired could they get?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:It's for our wives and girlfriends to deal with the hard part.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Two of mine are gone.
Marc:They're not dead.
Marc:One I left, the other one left me.
Marc:So...
Marc:It's a tall order, but I'm getting better, but it's not about me.
Marc:But here's what happened with you is that I, you know, I'd seen you around early on and you were one of those guys where I got an Evite or something.
Marc:You were, you were storytelling somewhere and it was at a car at a bookstore perhaps and,
Marc:And I thought like, well, look at that.
Marc:He's still he's still in it.
Marc:You know, because you're a guy that chose a different path.
Marc:And I always wonder about those paths and what leads to those decisions.
Marc:But I was happy.
Marc:I'm always grateful in some ways.
Marc:I'm grateful and a little bit sad.
Marc:When I realized that some people can never let this thing go for whatever reason.
Marc:I dropped out of it.
Marc:Is that what happened?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How early into it?
Marc:What was the trajectory?
Marc:You're at the comedy store.
Guest:Well, I go back from before the comedy store.
Guest:I started when I was 17 at open micing in New York.
Guest:And then when I was 18, I got in at the improv in New York.
Guest:At the original improv on 44th Street.
Marc:44th.
Guest:5th, wasn't it?
Marc:No.
Guest:44th?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:With Silver.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And Bud was already gone.
Marc:Silver made me.
Marc:Silver Friedman was Bud Friedman's wife.
Marc:And the way the story goes is that the original improv was all she got in the settlement.
Marc:That she could have New York, Bud got everywhere else.
Marc:And she had the original improv, which was a beat up little place.
Guest:But it was also sort of the center of hipness in the comedy world for a minute.
Guest:No, no.
Marc:It was the original brick wall.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was a defining place.
Marc:And the pictures on that wall were spectacular because they were pictures that predated comedy where you'd see there were pictures of Liza Minnelli on that stage or pictures of Kaufman.
Guest:When I started, they were still doing two comics music act, two comics music act.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Not burlesque.
Guest:What's the word I want?
Guest:Cabaret.
Guest:Cabaret.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I got in there.
Guest:I was too young to drink, but I was performing like the first spot of the night or the last spot of the night developing.
Guest:I'd come down from Sarah Lawrence College to perform.
Guest:I was having a great time.
Guest:I went to England for my senior year, worked the circuit there and learned to be funny.
Guest:And then after college, moved to L.A.
Guest:thinking I'm in at the improv.
Marc:Yeah, I'm doing it.
Guest:And found out that there's no connection between the two improvs.
Guest:They don't care.
Guest:Come in and open my kind of Sunday.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I've been doing it for four years, five years by the time I got here.
Guest:And then you put on the duster.
Guest:And then I'm back to... Yeah.
Guest:And I... No more sword.
Guest:I used to wear the swords on stage.
Guest:I used to close with the Mercutio-Tibalt sword fight.
Guest:My partner couldn't make it.
Guest:I'll be forced to play both roles.
Guest:And then with two swords, I would fight myself on stage.
Guest:I was a goofy-ass kid.
Guest:So...
Guest:the comedy boom of the 80s and early 90s happened and i was going i'm going to be the voice of truth and leftist politics and that's what i'm going to do and i'm going to be outraged and i was all the time i was stoned and angry and watched the news 24 hours a day and uh was funny part of that
Guest:god i kept thinking so but only intermittently you know yeah i know i i did the same route i was just i was so pissed off i was yelling at people for not agreeing with me and it was a miserable time for me from the stage yeah yeah um but i was getting funny and i was i was doing a piece on homophobia and and gays in the military that was getting good laughs and applause breaks from conservative audiences i was learning how to do it
Guest:And I got my first TV exposure and my manager at the time, it was, well, the first one was Comedy Express on local Fox TV and then A&E's Comedy on the Road.
Guest:Oh, yeah, with John Biner.
Guest:John Biner.
Guest:And on A&E's Comedy on the Road, I got to do exactly what I wanted to do.
Guest:I called the producer before I did it and said, listen, I want to do political stuff.
Guest:And they said, well, fax us the set you want to do.
Guest:Fax it to Messina.
Guest:Messina was the booker on the show.
Guest:And I faxed it to him.
Guest:And he called me and said, well, don't you have anything about airline food and socks?
Marc:Messina, by the way, was a big manager.
Marc:He was a Rodney Dangerfield's partner at Dangerfield's originally.
Marc:And then he went on to become one of the partners at Messina Baker Miller.
Marc:He managed...
Marc:His big clients were, I think he made his biggest money on Allen.
Guest:Tim Allen.
Marc:Tim Allen.
Marc:They had Drew Carey at a time, and they had Janine Garofalo was actually there.
Marc:He had a big roster, and he was a big manager.
Marc:He said, how about some airplane jokes?
Guest:He was a very good guy.
Guest:He was a very sweet guy.
Marc:He loves comedy.
Guest:He was saying, can you do some sort of generic material for this thing?
Guest:And I said, I don't want to have a national TV debut where I'm not doing what I do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, you got principles.
Guest:And he said, it wasn't about principles.
Guest:It was about wanting to get work based on my work, not based on faking something else, frankly.
Marc:But the question was, do you have the jokes?
Marc:And you were like, no, you don't have them.
Guest:Yeah, and I don't want to write them.
Guest:I had generic material.
Guest:You know, everyone eventually has a joke about their girlfriend that'll work anywhere.
Guest:But he said, okay, talk to the producer.
Guest:Turned out the producer director of that episode, same guy who had done my Comedy Express.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said, yeah, let's talk about it.
Guest:Let's do it.
Guest:So I was allowed to do exactly what I wanted to do.
Guest:And I sent the tape off to my manager at the time who will remain nameless.
Guest:and said okay let's let's go now you've got the national tv spot let's get me headlining and that was the end of the comedy boom and like the next week it was no you're going to be featuring still the wave crashed yeah all these clubs are closing and i'm sorry it i thought i could do everything for you once you had this spot but no and i went into a depression i sold my first book i hid out in my home i wrote i wrote i wrote i wrote
Guest:um, lucked into storytelling on the radio.
Guest:You sold your first book.
Guest:What was that?
Guest:It was called a tale of a hero and the song of her sword adventure fantasy for the young adult market.
Guest:I didn't know it was for the young adult market.
Guest:Uh, I thought I was writing for grownups, but I'm a simpleton.
Guest:No.
Guest:Um,
Guest:No.
Guest:I thought, you know, now I'm a professional writer.
Guest:Everything's going to go easy.
Guest:And the first year that it was on the shelves, I think we sold nine copies.
Marc:Nine.
Guest:So you got some in the garage?
Guest:Well, no, they still sell them.
Guest:Yeah, it's not even my book.
Guest:It sold a few copies, but they still got them.
Guest:Your book is wonderful.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Guest:Are we on broadcast or are we on podcast?
Guest:Podcast.
Guest:Your book is fucking wonderful.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But let me ask you something, the grieving of comedy.
Marc:I mean, because like, you know, like I've had similar experiences with as I got older, I never was I never got away from it.
Marc:You know, I stayed in it.
Marc:And, you know, the anger, you know, I started to realize later that, you know, you know, what am I really angry at?
Marc:you know where is what's the source of it now i can't imagine what it would be like especially at the age you did it to turn your back on this this dream because it's very specific it's very deep and i and i i i can't imagine how that affected depression or how long it took you to get over it well part of what was happening was i'd been depressed the whole time and hadn't known it because i was so stoned yeah um
Guest:so that was always with me this sort of heavy sadness that i was not acknowledging and once i was becoming a writer as opposed to a performer it seemed to me like oh i should indulge that because that's what writers do and then i was romanticizing then i thought i needed the depression and that was horrible um ultimately
Guest:When I started telling these stories and really revealing myself as opposed to just my political views, I became self-aware in a way I hadn't through therapy.
Guest:I started to figure things out.
Guest:And at a certain point, I was doing the stories into a microphone and I suddenly thought, ooh, I could do these into a microphone in front of people.
Marc:So you were just doing them to a microphone at home?
Guest:Yeah, I was recording them for radio.
Guest:I was just, yeah, sitting in a booth.
Marc:Well, let's talk about this for a second before we go on.
Marc:Anything you like, Mark.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Thank you, Dylan.
Marc:Now, what is interesting to me is that there's this act where you say it was better than therapy.
Marc:Now, you know, we talk a lot about this stuff on my show because these are things that I try to work in my own mind and understand what's happening with me because my style is changing as well.
Marc:Now, the two things that you said there that interest me are that beyond your political views, there was something at the core of you as a human and how you interacted with the world that was was not coming out.
Marc:And in vocalizing those things, there's a moment there, and I think this happens in anyone's occupation or whatever anyone commits their life to, where by speaking it, you take ownership of it.
Marc:It is now out of your head and you realize that you are completing yourself in some way.
Guest:I didn't say that it was better than therapy.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I said that I was discovering things about myself and healing things in myself in ways that I hadn't in therapy.
Marc:So in a sense, as opposed to talking about problems, addressing, you know, talking through them with story.
Guest:Well, yes.
Guest:To me, it was a little bit heavier than that.
Guest:In therapy, I would discuss what was going on.
Guest:I was finding things out about...
Guest:what the experiences were that had made me who I was source of the problem and that was that was useful in some ways intellectually yeah once I began to tell the stories a thing happened and it comes up again and again in my stories I will tell I will begin a story I will nest a story from earlier in my life and then I will come back to the more recent story with the now informed by the earlier experience right
Guest:And at one point, a man that I work with a lot came to me and said, okay, I'm working on this story and I think it's like one of yours because it's personally revealing, but I can't figure out what the point is in it.
Guest:And that was when it dawned on me that people think I'm able to look at the stories of my life and figure out what the point is in them in a way that they can't.
Guest:And that's not what I do at all.
Guest:I take the stories and begin to tell them and then by the end, I figure out...
Guest:what I want the point to be.
Guest:Once I began to treat it as craft and as art rather than as medicine, I was able to make decisions about who I'm becoming out of my experiences.
Guest:I was able to shape...
Guest:the redefining of myself rather than thinking I'm seeking something that is innate and that has happened and that is uncontrollable.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Make me feel better.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was now saying, wait, what is the lesson that I learned from this?
Guest:What is the lesson that I want to have learned from this?
Marc:How does this integrate into my life experience?
Guest:Exactly right.
Guest:And how do I want it to integrate?
Marc:Now, if people are interested, Dylan has several CDs available.
Marc:And we recently worked together at a show.
Marc:And I had not seen you work.
Marc:And it was a great, great story.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:About going to camp or being on an Indian.
Marc:I want you to tell it if it's one of those ones you can do.
Marc:I can tell it.
Marc:The interesting thing to me is that whether you are part...
Marc:There are people that get into this profession or this art, this craft of standing on stage in front of people.
Marc:There are people that that trivialize by saying they need validation.
Marc:They're just working through the problems.
Marc:They're fucked up.
Marc:They're neurotic.
Marc:And then there are other people that realize that, you know, the human voice and the human experience.
Marc:is about the most powerful thing we really have uh it's it's the most impactful and you know in you know you stand in front of the goliath that is you know everything else that's coming at you from every other medium and you really any one person is still that one person and how they're going to take in and process that shit is is is how they're going to do it so when one person stands in front of people and shares that experience it's almost like coming back from the war somehow well there are two things on that one is uh
Guest:I was starting to feel guilty at one point when I was trying to find success with these stories.
Guest:And I said to my wife, whose name escapes me at the moment, I said, I'm essentially making a career in narcissism.
Guest:And she said reassuringly, no, no, no, no.
Guest:When you tell your stories, we all think of our own stories.
Guest:You speak to the narcissist in all of us.
Guest:Which is, everyone has it.
Guest:And that's the thing.
Guest:I know I'm doing my job right.
Guest:When I come off stage and instead of saying, I loved that part where you said, people say to me, I got a story just like that.
Guest:And then they tell me a story that is nothing like what I said on stage.
Guest:But they were listening to me and saw themselves.
Guest:And then it's by being ruthlessly honest about my experience, I'm allowing people to suddenly recognize and explore their own experience.
Marc:And I hate when people trivialize performers as being narcissistic because narcissism in one form or another is part of everyone.
Marc:I'm willing to step out on a limb and say that the New Testament is probably one of the earliest case studies of pathological narcissism that is available.
Guest:Back that up, will you?
Marc:Well, I mean, selflessness, when it becomes so elevated, I mean, it's just a really clever way to be inoffensively narcissistic.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:You can walk on water.
Guest:Very impressive.
Marc:But, you know, I also think, do you ever have those moments where it's like...
Marc:Because your opinions about comedy interest me in the sense that there is a place, there's only so far you can take stand-up in some areas and have it be stand-up per se.
Marc:Do you have regrets about, do you look at me or other stand-ups and go, do you still have that little thorn in your side about not being a stand-up comedian?
Guest:No.
Guest:Come on!
Guest:I have moments where I go...
Guest:These stories could fit together into a stand-up set.
Guest:I have those moments, but then I get just an inch past that thought and I think, and then I could be on the road making too little money again and driving all night and not seeing your wife.
Guest:And then I go, yeah.
Guest:You have kids?
Guest:No, there's not enough duct tape on the planet for me to raise children.
Guest:I have two beautiful dogs.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You're a dog guy.
Guest:I'm a dog guy.
Guest:All right.
Guest:I'll try to accept that.
Marc:I grew up with dogs.
Marc:I have cats.
Guest:My wife and I, when I met my wife, she had a brilliant cat named Jojo Precious Tiger Kitty.
Guest:Did you have to call him all those names every time you addressed it?
Guest:No, he was comfortable with Joe.
Guest:He preferred Joe.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:So let's talk about that mystical story.
Marc:Now, this story, as I recall, was something that happened when you went on some sort of retreat or a camp.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Before I get to the story, let me tell you the story of why I did that that night.
Guest:We were on a show together called Psychedelia.
Guest:It was to be dealing with psychedelic stuff.
Guest:And I have a lot of stories about explorations of psychedelia.
Marc:Like conscious ones or just in retrospect, that's what you were doing?
Guest:No, I took acid and I did mushrooms.
Marc:But with the idea of pursuing a higher plane or just a party?
Guest:Both.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Both at different times.
Guest:I have lots of stories about experiences with this stuff.
Guest:And I had been asked to come do this show and do that particular story.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then I went into this whole tale's been, well, I have other stories that I haven't yet written.
Guest:I should use this as an excuse to write something.
Guest:And I suddenly remembered, like three days before the show, I remembered a piece of advice that Paul Provenza gave me, a brilliant piece of advice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was not take your hand out of your pants, but it was that same day.
Guest:We were sitting at an outdoor cafe in Venice,
Guest:And having coffee, we were playing Bluetooth or Crazy.
Guest:He's very, very good at this game.
Guest:Prevenza can tell from a block and a half away whether someone is talking to a potential client or an imaginary friend.
Guest:And I'm really competitive.
Guest:So I did a seamless transition from Bluetooth or Crazy into a game that I used to play all the time and I'm still very good at called Three Degrees of Self-Loathing.
Guest:Have I told you about this game?
Marc:No, no, it sounds good.
Marc:I think I probably play it and I don't know.
Guest:Three Degrees of Self-Loathing.
Guest:Here's how it works.
Guest:you look at somebody and you see how quickly you can get from your first thought about them to your current mantra of self-degradation example uh okay uh oh i like the art that you have around your house yeah i wish i had art like this around my house
Guest:Why am I so imitative and venal and greedy?
Guest:And I hate myself.
Guest:So two points right there.
Marc:That was three, wasn't it?
Marc:See, because I would have went like, I like the art that's around this house.
Marc:Why don't I have this kind of art?
Marc:I'm an asshole.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:You beat me on that round by one step.
Guest:So I'm playing this with Provenza and I now have won back everything I've lost on Bluetooth or Crazy and I'm way up.
Guest:And I said, so now you owe me 200 bucks.
Guest:I don't know why I would suddenly gloat about my winnings in the middle of the game.
Guest:That's not very sportsmanlike.
Guest:And I hate myself, 250.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Provenza, this is when he gave me the advice.
Guest:He said, Dylan, don't be an asshole.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:That's fucking brilliant advice.
Guest:Every unpleasant circumstance or situation I've ever gotten into was as a result of that very behavior against which he advised.
Marc:You acted on your internal dialogue, which is not real, and acted in reaction to it and brought it out publicly.
Marc:Don't be an asshole.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Don't be an asshole.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Such great advice.
Guest:Rather than being an asshole, I told the story that I had been asked to do that evening, which was that story.
Marc:You were waffling on the story?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was, oh God, I should tell some other story that I've never told before.
Guest:I should try something new.
Guest:And I had been asked to do this one story.
Guest:So rather than being an asshole, I told that story.
Guest:It's called Vision Quest.
Guest:The summer camp I attended when I was a child had to deal with a nearby Indian reservation.
Guest:Kids could go to the... Where was this?
Guest:It was in Maine, Hidden Valley Camp in Freedom, Maine.
Guest:This is before casinos.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, way before the Indian casino.
Guest:So they had a little more integrity.
Guest:Yeah, but way less money.
Marc:Right, of course.
Guest:So you could go and you could learn a little bit about Indian culture and history and tradition.
Guest:And then you'd spend a week there and then you would come back to the summer camp.
Guest:And I went for a week, my third year at the camp, I went for a week to the reservation.
Guest:And at the end of the week, I didn't want to leave.
Guest:I was meeting people there.
Guest:I was enjoying myself.
Guest:I liked it.
Guest:I didn't know that what I was enjoying was squalor.
Guest:I thought this was an important experience.
Marc:Squalor can be very important.
Guest:You're sitting in it now.
Guest:But this is intentional squalor.
Guest:This is squalor with purpose.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So...
Guest:Phone calls got made.
Guest:My parents talked to chiefs and camp runners.
Guest:And I suspect a check was cut.
Guest:And I was allowed to stay on the reservation for the rest of the summer.
Guest:Now, every Friday...
Guest:We would have a tribal gathering.
Guest:A big fire was built.
Guest:We'd sit around the fire.
Guest:There was discussion, you know, what kind of tribal investments were going out, what was coming in, what was going on.
Guest:And then the kids who were about to step into adulthood were handed an eagle feather.
Guest:Each one was handed an eagle feather by the shaman, a guy named, he guards the village.
Guest:And he would first whisper their medicine name to them, which is the name they would carry into adulthood.
Guest:And then he would instruct them all that they have now learned their medicine name.
Guest:They should never speak it aloud themselves.
Guest:To speak your own medicine name calls forth your guardian spirit who will help you.
Guest:And then he would announce to the tribe the new medicine name for each of them.
Guest:And then they would go on a vision quest the next day.
Marc:And vision quest is... What is the actual definition?
Marc:What is the purpose?
Guest:It is a meditative time of searching externally and or internally.
Guest:And enlightenment is expected.
Guest:Well, it's not just that enlightenment is some form of...
Guest:inner shift is expected to take place.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:I was 11.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And most of the kids getting medicine names were 13, 15, 16.
Guest:It's not like a bar mitzvah, you're 14, you're an adult.
Guest:It was the elders would say- Decide.
Guest:That kid is about to figure something out.
Guest:Do you remember your name?
Guest:Yes.
Okay.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So it's important to me.
Guest:Do you still not speak it?
Guest:I still do not speak it, which is goofy because I'm totally atheist.
Guest:I don't believe in this stuff.
Marc:And how old are you?
Guest:Now I'm 46.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Are you Jewish?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:It's not Jew boy, was it?
Guest:No.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:No.
Guest:Running Jew boy.
Guest:No.
Guest:Jew whose parents paid us.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'd like to see the contracts now and find out if it was part of their... And a medicine name.
Guest:That's if you were writing this check, he also... So I'd been there for, I don't know, five or six weeks.
Guest:And the...
Guest:he guards the village, handed me a feather.
Guest:And it was huge.
Guest:I was going to get a message.
Guest:I was young, and I was a kid, and I was an outsider, and suddenly I was really accepting.
Guest:You were the only white kid?
Guest:I was the only, well, no.
Guest:I mean, there were other kids from the camp that were coming every week, but they would come for a week and go away.
Guest:They would get to one tribal gathering, they would see the thing, and then they would go.
Guest:And in fact, there were some kids from the camp who were there who knew me on the day that I was given my medicine name.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I mean, this was a huge status thing for me.
Guest:It was a very big deal.
Guest:The closest I ever got to a bar mitzvah, with the exception of when I made Martin Mull laugh.
Guest:So I'm given my feather and my name, and then I'm told, go with Michael Redhorse and the others for your vision quest.
Guest:And we camped out for the night in the backyard of the shaman.
Guest:And then in the morning, we hiked to the base of a nearby mountain.
Guest:And then we had breakfast, a very light breakfast of fruit and peyote.
Marc:I think they make that in one box now.
Guest:You can get it at Whole Foods.
Guest:Well, yeah, you can get it at Jamba Juice.
Marc:Tricks and Trips, I think that's called it.
Guest:When you do it at Jabba Juice, it's the enlightenment boost.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So we all threw up and then we started to climb the mountain.
Guest:It's a good way to start a day.
Guest:So I'm 11 years old.
Guest:I'm the youngest in the group.
Guest:We're tripping our asses off.
Guest:We're walking up a mountain.
Guest:I'm feeling pretty good about my world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at around noon, we walk out on this very narrow ledge.
Guest:And we stop.
Guest:We have to go single file.
Guest:And Michael is leading us.
Guest:And he just stops.
Guest:So we can't go any further.
Guest:He can't go around him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we all stand there for a minute.
Guest:And one of the people to my right leaned out and said, Michael, what are we doing?
Guest:And he said, think about your name.
Guest:Think about your place in the world.
Guest:Watch the sunset.
Guest:And it's like noon.
Guest:So it takes us a second to catch up to what's going, oh, wait, that's going to take a while.
Guest:We're standing here for a while now.
Guest:Did someone bring water or food?
Guest:So we're standing on this ledge.
Guest:No.
Guest:We're standing on a ledge.
Guest:We're hungry.
Guest:We're tired.
Guest:Our legs hurt.
Guest:You're 13.
Guest:And I'm 11.
Guest:And we're looking out at the world.
Guest:And it was lovely.
Guest:And there's a lot of stuff that goes on in your head.
Guest:just when you're standing on a mountain, looking out at the green forest, but when you're, when you're 11 and you're tripping, you could figure a lot of shit out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you know, I'm aware of the trees below us breathing and we're breathing and they're breathing and we're exchanging gases.
Guest:And, um,
Guest:Just all this stuff going on that was glowing.
Guest:The photosynthesis was a process you could see.
Guest:It was just the whole thing was happening in my head and in my fingers.
Guest:And I could feel my cheeks in a way I never had before.
Guest:You know, it was that thing.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:And late afternoon.
Guest:So time has been passing and we've been thinking.
Guest:Suddenly, as I'm feeling connected to the whole world, a huge bird, I want to say it was an eagle.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I'm going to, I don't know.
Guest:He's looking for his feathers back.
Guest:But we're going to say eagle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Giant freaking bird comes around the mountain in front of us.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And it does spins.
Guest:It just circles in the air in that space that we cannot step out into.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because it is a fucking bird.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And we are not.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it can fill that space for us.
Guest:And it's circling around and it's looking down below.
Guest:And for just a moment, as I imagined looking down from where it was, I could see through its eyes.
Guest:And way down below in very sharp clarity, I saw a rodent, a raccoon on the ground.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I knew there was no way as a person I could see that down there, but I was seeing through the eagle's eyes so now I could see it.
Guest:And as the eagle dove toward it, I for a moment looked up from the perspective of the rodent and saw the eagle coming for me.
Guest:and i felt its claws dig into my back so i had been the eagle and i had been the prey and the predator and i was breathing the air with the trees and i was part of everything and we were all part of this same huge experience and then the eagle circled around twice in front of us with this thing just bleeding in its claws still moving just and you had the sense that it was saying look what i did i put on a great show for you and then it took off
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Good night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now the sunset.
Guest:Try the raccoon.
Guest:And then the sun went down and we walked down the mountain.
Guest:And we all went home and we were having trouble sleeping.
Guest:I was going through all this.
Guest:Finally, I fall asleep.
Guest:And very early in the morning, Michael woke me up.
Guest:He sort of shook me awake and said, the shaman wants to see you in his house.
Guest:And I had never been inside.
Guest:He guards the village's house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he led me over and he brought, and he guards the village was sitting in his kitchen, eating like a bowl of cereal and a banana.
Guest:And it felt very linoleum.
Guest:It felt not at all teepee.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, uh, and he said, sit down.
Guest:I sat down at the formica table with him and he said, uh, Dylan, uh,
Guest:I've been thinking about your vision quest.
Guest:And I said, so have I. Because I was 11 and everything that happened in my mind was very, very important.
Guest:And he sort of patiently nodded and said, what have you been thinking?
Guest:And I said, I've been thinking that it was incredible.
Guest:I totally understood my connection to the world, and I was everything, and everything was me, and it was all one, and it was a huge, important experience.
Guest:And I think when I get home, I shouldn't even try to explain it to the other kids at school.
Guest:They would never understand.
Guest:And he said, oh.
Guest:And then he sort of waited, and I finally said, well, what were you thinking?
Guest:And the sigh that this man sighed was so filled with sadness.
Guest:It was the sadness of a man who is forgiving himself for something he knows he is about to do that is wrong.
Guest:It's the sigh that I give when I remember having wronged someone in college and I know there is no way I can go back and fix that hurt.
Guest:It was just a sigh of real melancholy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, I was thinking, maybe you shouldn't tell your parents we gave you peyote.
Guest:That's my vision quest.
Guest:That's my vision quest.
Guest:And how long before you told your parents?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I don't know that I ever told them until I recorded the story.
Guest:I think that was part of my secret history.
Marc:So you kept the name secret to this day.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And you kept that from your parents until you... When I say that I kept it secret, you know, everyone at the reservation knew it.
Guest:All the kids at summer camp knew it.
Guest:I knew theirs.
Guest:We just don't speak our own.
Guest:So there are people you could find in the world who could tell you my medicine name.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I would not object to you calling me by it that would feel a little silly unless I was wearing, you know, a kerchief and a duster.
Marc:Maybe if you go back to the reservation, if they have a casino and you perform there...
Guest:You can bill yourself.
Guest:That's correct.
Guest:But I'd have to have someone else explain what needs to go on the poster.
Marc:That's a great story.
Marc:Well, thank you.
Marc:What other areas do you explore?
Marc:What do you find is a recurring theme in your stories?
Marc:My self-loathing tends to recur.
Marc:How do you think you're going to deal with that?
Marc:What do you think that really is?
Marc:What?
Marc:Well, you know, I used to think I was self-loathing.
Marc:But I find that as time goes on, you know, it's a mixture of insecurity.
Marc:Like, you know, I'm pretty hard on myself, but I really don't think I hate myself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The more I have been exposing it, the less I have been feeling it.
Guest:How does it manifest itself?
Guest:Oh, well, first of all, anytime I don't get any career news for more than three days, I begin to believe that my manager and my agents are conspiring against me.
Marc:And then how long before you start to believe that you're unsellable and without talent?
Guest:Is there ever a time when that's not happening?
Guest:When does that go away for a freaking moment?
Marc:Let me ask you a question that I've thought about.
Guest:Certainly.
Marc:And maybe you can chime in on it.
Marc:I believe that when you look back at comedy stand-up in the 70s and how dominated it was by fairly self-probing, neurotic Jewish voices...
Marc:i mean it was defined by that you know i mean woody allen richard lewis uh you know brenner albert brooks i mean and there's more that i really believe that with the advent of prozac that you know people no longer tolerated it they're like you know take a pill that's a wonderful theory but i don't think so um here's what i think and it wasn't just the the the jewish uh neurotic intellectuals i bob newhart was doing intellectual comedy
Guest:It wasn't self-probing, but it was commentary.
Marc:I just think this sort of like, oh, I'm so this, I'm so that.
Marc:How can I be like this?
Marc:How can I be like that?
Guest:The late 60s, early 70s were a time of intellectualism.
Guest:of uh of collegiate into norman miller would do the tonight show exactly there was a celebration of the intellect uh that started really under the kennedy administration with the the loss of the 50s and this idea of exploration and uh and the arts and all of this coming alive of the intellect uh
Guest:And I hate to be a conspiracy mouse, but I really do think that when it became clear that college-educated people began to think about a world in which peace was possible,
Guest:It became very important for the military industrial complex in its most insidious guise to work its way into the media and vilify intellectualism.
Marc:The thing that I find in this interesting because I get after doing political talk for, you know, a year and a half for two years.
Marc:And being immersed in that, that, you know, I still have people that that expect that from me.
Marc:And what I started to realize from my own beginnings in comedy.
Marc:was that my politics was was in the way I approached it was fairly broad.
Marc:But being in the machine of it and forced to deal with the nuances of legislation and knowing senators names and the whole process of of whatever we're calling what's left of democracy, you know, what what began to really, you know,
Marc:resonate with me was that you know people are confused they're lost they're misled their ignorance by virtue of the fact that they have no time to educate themselves sometimes or they're not interested in it but they're all fundamentally people and they're fundamentally you know plagued with the same existential issues and it's how they are taking responsibility or not taking responsibility for those existential issues that they deal with on a day-to-day basis which determines their particular version of assholeness
Guest:Asshole-ism, I believe.
Guest:I think the idea that they don't have time for it is a lie.
Guest:Because we all have time to watch CNN or Fox News or listen to NPR or whatever our source is of overly distilled information.
Guest:All those sources are dubious in my mind.
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:We have time to view this stuff, but what we get from them is not informative.
Right.
Guest:What we get from them is never really incisive examination of events or ideas.
Guest:What we get from them is repetition of sound bites and the easiest image to ingest.
Marc:See, the only thing that I find that can provoke thought that, you know, we had a discussion in the kitchen about, you know, the inability, the lacking of tools for critical thought.
Marc:For one's own self is that, you know, in my mind, what good poetry does or what a good story does, even if like you're saying that it's not really about the closure or the point of the story.
Marc:It's about it's about what it starts to trigger in your audience's mind.
Marc:And what I think the power of that is, is that when you're telling somebody something, when they're talking points, that the information is like, this is this.
Marc:This is the right way to think.
Marc:This is how we think as a group.
Marc:This is why those people are wrong.
Marc:Is that a lazy person or somebody that doesn't have the ability to think critically for themselves goes, well, that's why those people are wrong.
Marc:This is what we should be thinking because that guy in the speaker told me, that guy in the picture box told me.
Marc:So they just become easily programmed.
Marc:We're not that different than other animals if we don't engage in our self-awareness.
Guest:Even a person who does have the critical thinking skills, when inundated with talking points over and over again.
Guest:They're hypnotized.
Marc:is only able to say i disagree with that i agree with that well this is an interesting moment because i have something pinned on my bulletin board that i've had been there for years and i go to it occasionally and i'm going to read it to you i'm sure you've heard it and i want you to i want you to see what you make of it like i look at it occasionally this is of course hillel rabbi hillel do you know this one if i am not for myself then who will be for me and if i am only for myself then what am i and if not now when
Marc:Is it about integrity?
Marc:Is it about courage?
Marc:Is it about humility?
Marc:Or is it about all of those things that if I am for myself, if I am true to myself and I am righteous, as opposed to... Because it's easy to misinterpret that as if I'm not for myself, that means only caring about me.
Marc:But I think it's more about...
Guest:No, it's about standing for oneself and genuinely seeking out one's own thoughts.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And if you have those, then people will gravitate to you who are like-minded.
Guest:Let me actually amend what you just said to say, when you have those, I think anyone who genuinely seeks out their own thought will find that they have them.
Guest:And yeah, read the whole thing again, please.
Marc:If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?
Marc:And if I am only for myself, then what am I?
Marc:And if not now, when?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:This is about narcissism that speaks to the narcissism in us all.
Guest:This is we have to know ourselves before we can know others, that knowing ourselves is only worthwhile as a route to knowing others.
Guest:And for God's sake, get on with it, because, you know, you can wait forever and then die.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And if you don't get on with it and you are only for yourself, then what a sad, empty life you have you have lived.
Marc:And if you can't stand up for myself again, what a sad, empty life you have lived.
Guest:All I heard there was, what a sad, empty life I've lived.
Marc:Well, if not now, when?
Guest:It's okay.
Guest:I'm back.
Guest:I'm okay.
Guest:When?
Guest:I've recovered.
Guest:That's a great quotation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It makes you kind of think.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I like those.
Marc:It's sort of ambiguous.
Yeah.
Guest:What I'm enjoying lately, and I only remember one of them offhand, but I keep coming across aphorisms that you hear all the time and that, oh, I remember two of them, and then you find you loathe when you really think about them.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:One of them is the Benjamin Disraeli quote.
Guest:Which is?
Guest:which is anyone who is not a liberal when he is young has no heart, and anyone who is not a conservative when he is old has no head.
Guest:And my thought is when you start creating pithy little aphorisms to justify heartlessness, you already know you've wandered off the path of righteousness.
Marc:You just rationalize it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the other one was an aphorism that you hear in the entertainment industry when people read scripts and they say, if you want to send a message, call Western Union, which we take frequently as a call to write more vapidly.
Guest:But I would see it as a call to write more cunningly.
Guest:If that's the response, then clearly I need for my message to be more subversive and better hidden in the fine entertainment I'm handing forth.
Guest:I'm not going to take the message out because then I'm just going to be sending messages I don't intend.
Marc:Empty vessels.
Guest:Yeah, but they can't be empty.
Guest:There's always something being said.
Guest:Shallow.
Guest:What I used to say to comics all the time was if you're going to stand on stage and talk to a room full of people, you might want to figure out what you want to say.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Sometimes I'm up there and I'm not sure.
Guest:Yeah, and that's fine.
Marc:But I won't say anything.
Guest:That's human.
Guest:I've seen you stand on stage and just go.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you find something to say and you talk about it.
Guest:But that's way better than just sort of saying whatever you thought.
Marc:Blathering on.
Marc:You thought might be funny.
Marc:Well, this is an aphorism.
Marc:I don't think it's an aphorism, but it was something I remember when I read The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner early on in my life over and over again.
Marc:There's these very distinct sections.
Marc:And the Quentin section is fairly important because it's a...
Marc:It's I think it's one of the more modern pieces of existential stream of consciousness writing.
Marc:And I remember underlining this one phrase in there.
Marc:And it was there is no time until it was nice.
Guest:Nice.
Guest:People are constantly saying, where does the time go?
Guest:Where does the time go?
Guest:And I want to know where it comes from.
Guest:Where does the time come from?
Marc:You know what I find?
Marc:Because I've been very busy lately, is that when I say I'm busy, people are like, well, that's great.
Marc:It's good to be busy.
Marc:I'm like, no, it's not because I don't know where all the time goes.
Marc:When I'm bored and sitting around wondering what the fuck went wrong with my life, it just drips by.
Marc:Like every day is a year long.
Marc:And I got to tell you, I'm a little concerned about this busy shit because I'm losing a lot of time or I could just be sitting and meditating wondering why I don't have more to do.
Guest:I say take four minutes out of every day to just meditate.
Guest:And then the busyness becomes much easier to handle.
Guest:I'll take your advice on that.
Guest:And thank you for talking to me, Dylan.
Guest:No, thank you for talking to me because so few people will.
Marc:okay that's our show i hope you enjoyed that uh we got a lot of great shows coming up as i said uh gonna do a live show not a live show but a road show from ireland i'm looking forward to that as i told you in the intro i'm in toronto i'm leaving for ireland from here tomorrow so god willing everything will work out ireland is one of the most beautiful countries in the world i'm hoping i can talk to some uh
Marc:Irish comics, maybe some British comics.
Marc:I know Dom Irera is out there.
Marc:This might be my big opportunity to sit down with Uncle Dom and talk some shit.
Marc:Looking forward to it.
Marc:Also, I want to remind you, Bay Area People San Francisco Cops Comedy Club for Greg Barrett's Bring the Rock show, June 18th and 19th.
Marc:I'll be with Nick Thune and Grant Lee Phillips and, of course, Greg Barrett.
Marc:That'll be fun.
Marc:And also, I want to encourage you to go to WTFpod.com for your JustCoffee.coop, for your stand-up records link.
Marc:And most importantly, please get on the mailing list because we're doing that every week.
Marc:I'm sending out more information about the people that I have on the show, some links to their work, some photos.
Marc:I'm writing a little thingy.
Marc:I'm doing a little thingy every Sunday for you, the people, for the what-the-fuckers.
Marc:for the What the Fuck Knicks.
Marc:And you can always donate money, because we like money, because this is a job, and I like the job, and I'm working hard at the job, and so is Brendan.
Marc:We are listener-supported.
Marc:And also, please try to have a good week, and try not to hurt yourself from the inside or outside.
Marc:Okay, bye-bye.
you