Finding Meaning In Life's Mundane Challenges- James Parker EP 383

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Close your eyes and imagine. What are the things in life that cause us the greatest pain? The things that bring us grief are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow, to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth. And I am your host, Brian D Smith. Hey there, welcome to Grief 2 Growth, where we explore life's most profound questions to help you navigate through its toughest challenges. Whether you're a longtime listener, you're tuning in for the first time, I'm glad to have you with us. My name is Brian D Smith. And my mission is to delve into who we are, where we came from, why we're here, and where we're going. Today we have a special guest who embodies this journey in his work and his writing. His name is James Parker. He's a distinguished staff writer at The Atlantic and is the author of the compelling new book, Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes: Odes to Being Alive. James is known for his profound explorations of human experience, vividly captured in his acclaimed biography of punk rock performer Henry Rollins, and it's called Turned On. His writing has garnered numerous accolades, including New England Newspapers and Press Association Awards, an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music criticism, and a National Magazine Award nomination. In his latest book that we're going to discuss today, James offers a unique collection of odes that reflect on the raw and real experiences of life. These, these are not just literary works, but they're practical guides to appreciating and navigating our existence, which is what we're all about here at Grief 2 Growth. From the confusing and despairing times of his mid-20s to the present day, James shares insights aimed at helping us enjoy life a little bit more. In today's episode, we're going to explore questions like, why did James write this book? What are the ways to enjoy life that he advocates? And how do odes serve as tools for digging into reality and celebrating it? We'll also dive into some of the book's more eclectic topics, and there are some very eclectic topics, such as the importance of managing our nervous system, the significance of James Bourne as an action hero— Jason Bourne as an action hero, and even an ode to constipation. James's journey is one of self-reflection and sharing learned wisdom, making him the perfect guest for our show. So as always, after the podcast, join us at grieftogrowth.com/community to carry on the conversation. And with that, I'd like to welcome to Grief to Growth James Parker.

Thank you, Brian. Thank you for having me. Very, very pleased to be here.

Yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation today. We started talking a little bit before we got started. We just kind of jumped right in. Yeah, before we get into other things, you use the word odes. It's not a word that we use very often. So what is an ode?

An ode? Well, so, so, you know, I tend to do everything backwards, so I wrote a lot of them before I actually researched what they are. But when I, when I did finally research what they are, I discovered that Pindar in ancient Greece, the poet, he's generally credited with the invention of the ode. And what he would do is he would write these poems in celebration of great athletes and great feats and, and great sporting achievements, and So that's kind of the origin of the ode. It's a way of celebrating something. And people have used it in many different ways. You know, Keats' Ode to a Nightingale is very famous. That's— you'd have a hard time describing that as a celebration, but it's a very profound investigation of a state of mind, a state of being. Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, he's one of my models because he was incredibly sort of voracious and omnivorous and random seeming in the subjects he picked for his Ode to fish soup, ode to lost socks, ode to newspapers, whatever it is, whatever he was feeling. So basically, that's— I mean, for me, I'm probably answering like 4 questions at once here or none at all. But basically, they serve for me as just a way of getting into it, a way of focusing, a way of using the gifts that writing gives me, which is the gift of attention and the gift of the detail and just kind of getting into it.

Yeah, I think, uh, I love it. I love the way you, you take in these things that we consider mundane or routine and you really, uh, observe them and really get into them and kind of, it's kind of a mindfulness practice almost to say, let's think about, you know, these, these little things that we, we often overlook. Um, now the title of the book, Get Me Through the Next 5 Minutes, really jumped out at me because as I was telling you earlier, I deal with a lot of people that are, that are in grief. Yeah, a lot of times we're in that intense part of grief. We're like, you know, we can't even think about the next 5 years or 5 days even. We're like, get me through the next 5 minutes.

Yeah.

What does that mean to you? Get me through the next 5 minutes?

Well, well, as you were saying that, Brian, I was like, I just time traveled back to, to, you know, sitting in front of a doctor when I was 23, 24. And, you know, he was the family doctor. And I just, you know, I'd been having panic attacks, but back then, you know, this is like early '90s, people didn't even say panic attack. You just, you know, I mean, nobody knew what to say about it. But I thought I was going nuts basically. And I was trying to explain that to this doctor who'd known me since I was a kid, but he was not a particularly imaginative man. And he said, well, have you, you know, do you have a, do you have a, like, a career path? You know, have you considered— he literally said, have you considered accountancy? Like, that was the, that was, that was the remedy, you know what I mean? That's— and, and then I said, I don't think that's, I don't think that's going to do it. And he said, well, we've got these, you know, we got these tricyclic antidepressants that we can give you. This is pre-Prozac as well, um, tricyclic antidepressants. And, you know, they take, they take a couple of weeks to work. And at that moment, I had that exact thing that you're describing. I had like, how am I going to do this? How am I going to sit around and wait for 2 weeks for these things to work? I can barely take it just minute to minute, you know. So I think the urgency of the title comes from that. And it's also to do with gratitude. I mean, I'm very grateful to the artists, you know, the musicians and the poets and the athletes and the actors who have, who have got me through, you know, who've got me through, who keep me excited, who keep me interested, who keep me focused. So it's partly that too. Like, like, I mean, whoever has got me through the next 5 minutes, I owe them, you know, big time.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's great. So, and you say you write the book to your 25-year-old self. But also to your present self. So, what, what about your 25-year-old self? What, what do you, what would you like for your 25-year-old self to know?

I would like him to know, um, which I'm sure is, I'm sure you go into all the time, which is that, you know, you, you, you know, if you hang in there, if you hang in there and you, and you respect your equipment, you respect your perceptual equipment, you respect what you came here with, you don't talk harshly to yourself, you, um, and you just sort of, if you can lie back into it, it will sustain you. It doesn't feel like it's going to. It feels like it's like a trust exercise with the universe. You feel like you're going to fall into the abyss, but you actually don't, rather miraculously. But it takes, it takes courage and faith and a lot of help, I think, to, to do that. And I think I'd also say to him, you just look, there's the practical stuff like, you know, do your pull-ups, take your cold showers, listen to your AC/DC. Like, these are the— for me, these have been the fixes, you know. And, you know, you know, everybody knows what their own fixes are because it's happened in their lives. You know, your nervous system has responded positively to such and such a stimulus. Go there, you know, if it's healthy, if it's not an addiction, you know, go there. So, you know, these are the— these are the things that will help you keep going until the, the, the deeper healing, which you, over which you have no control, unfortunately, I don't think. I mean, you can open yourself up to it, but it's going to happen at its own rate, right? You're the expert, Brian. I mean, I mean, am I making sense?

I think you are making sense. Yeah. You have to, again, kind of allow that to happen, you know, and, and just that, that trust. And that's what the thing, one of the things I love about the book, there's a lot I love about it, but it's, it's for anybody in any phase in life. And I love the way you recognize that. It's like, okay, this is for I guess because I have a 27-year-old daughter and I know that that generation is struggling with a lot of angst right now. Oh yeah, they're really dealing with— I was listening to an interview with Johann Hari this morning. Oh yeah, yeah, you know, he talks about the loneliness problem. So there's that, there's the, the economy that they feel like, okay, they're almost, almost giving up on life. It's interesting because they're like, well, we're never going to have a house, we're probably not going to have kids. Yeah, um, let's just, it's just, you know, basically live, live the YOLO, right? It's just, but they're, they need to be taught that this thing that you're saying, this lesson from our, our perspective, it's like, yeah, we, we felt that way too. You know, that, that panic that you had in your mid-20s, I think it's pretty common. I did.

Yeah. Yeah. I do think, I do think the kids today are dealing with extra stuff though. Honestly, I think, I think there's, I think there's a level of just environmental ambient anxiety kind of attacking everyone's brain, which I'm not sure it was there when we were kids. I mean, you know, like my, my socially, I felt my surroundings were basically pretty secure. And that was actually one of the things that kind of made it, made it worse in a weird way. Like, what is wrong with me? Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Why can't I? Why? Why am I not having fun like my friends? Why can't I connect to this, to everything, you know?

Yeah. Well, it's different and it's the same. I think every generation feels like it's the worst it's ever been. Um, but everything has been turned up a level now. Yeah, I know, with social media and instant 24-hour news, you know, we, you know, it's just interesting that we're also so connected. Yeah, I think that happens in, in Russia this morning, you know, I hear about now. So there is more, there's a— everything's been turned up a level. So I definitely agree with that, and I think that's why we're seeing this, this level of angst and the loneliness.

But you're right, you're right though, it is, it's the same stuff. It's all, it's always like it Immemorially, it's been the same stuff, right? I mean, it's the human, you know, Geoff Dyer, an English writer who I love. He has a book called Also Known as the Human Condition. Yeah, because that's, that's based, that's it, right? And we all have to come to terms with it at some point in our own way.

Yeah. Well, I was talking with a 26-year-old client the other day who's dealing with, you know, depression and lack of motivation, etc. And he was like, I'm really tired of outside circumstances controlling how I respond. I could take charge of my life right now despite outside circumstances. And that's the human condition. We can't control the things outside. Your book is about, like, looking, what can I do? What can I do? What can I focus on?

What can I focus on and how deep can I dig into the kind of texture and the granular reality of my life as I'm actually living it now? Because, because, I mean, I mean, I keep quoting writers, but, but John Updike, he had this beautiful line, consciousness is an ecstasy. I mean, that's just a beautiful, like, there's something inherently joyful, I think, about, not to say that we always feel it, but just about being alive.

Yeah.

Tremendous field of perception and energy and what's coming at us. I mean, there's, there's inherent kind of ecstasy in that, I think. And that, you know, of course we separate ourselves from it in a million different ways. But if, but if you go into your own circumstances, you, I think you can find it.

Yeah. Well, that's what, that's kind of what I get as just to the book. And I hadn't heard that, that quote before, but I love that because nice, isn't it? It's really a matter of our observations, a matter of our perception. And, you know, I read Viktor Frankl's book, you know, many years ago. Is this his guys in a, in a concentration camp, and he's finding meaning in life. So the thing is, it's digging forward, it's making those observations. And your book takes it, and they're very short chapters, very short odes, um, you know, and I like that because I think that's— that really suits our society today. Um, you can read them really quickly, and— but they're so profound, and it shows the, the profundity of what we consider to be the routine in life. And some of your odes are kind of funny, like Ode to Constipation. Yeah. You know, so that's a very short one.

Yeah.

So let's talk about that. That's, that one's gonna get people's attention. What, what is the Ode to Constipation?

Oh, well, let me read the Ode to Constipation.

Hold on.

This is just so I get it right. It's a tiny little, so some of them are poems and some of them are in prose. This is a very short poem and it doesn't rhyme, which is uncharacteristic for me cuz I'm obsessive about rhymes. Okay. Ode to Constipation. My cat sticks his head round the bathroom door and regards me with small, humorless cat face. So that's— it's almost like a haiku, do you know what I mean? Like, it's a little snapshot of a moment which kind of expands outwards. Me sitting there, my cat poking his head round, the expression on his face is like, oh Jesus, you again, you know what I mean? Here you are again. Yeah, yeah. Having this issue. And it's, there's, you know, there's something beautiful about it, I think. I hope.

I think, I think there is. And that, and that's, again, that's that taking the joy in, in the little moments of life that we could, we just, again, we so easily overlook. It's like, okay, I'm, I have to get from this moment to this moment. And, and we, we prioritize this, this moment's important, but this moment isn't.

Yeah.

And the book really draws us into like, okay, where am I, you know, right now? What's happening right now? Um, when I opened up, one of the first ones I read was Ode to Giving Money.

Oh, thank you. Yeah.

And I thought that was a great observation, you know, because we all struggled with that, right? You're walking past a homeless person, do you give them money? Do you not give them money?

Yeah.

You know, are you concerned what they're going to do with it? So yeah, for people that don't know, tell them about that one.

So my, my, my take on that, which is, which is not exclusively my take by any means, it comes from comes through, you know, Catholic social doctrine. It comes from the homeless people that I know, um, is, is that if you want to give somebody money, give them money. If you don't want to give them money, don't give them money. But if you do give it, give it. In other words, let it go, uh, hand it over without any expectation, without any condition, without any, oh, are you going to spend it on drugs, blah blah blah blah. You know, are you going to make yourself totally responsible for this person and look after them? Probably not. So give them the money.

What—

they have their own business, and after it's left your hands, it's none of your business. So that's, that's, that's basically my, my— and also, you just, you really do never know. You never know. They might spend it on drugs. As I say, Mo, they might spend it on a new copy of Moby Dick. Um, you just don't know, and it's not your business anymore once you've given it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back. You know, one of the hardest things about grief Most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up, so you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it: the community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing— listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there. Time for a real quick break. Make sure you like and subscribe. Liking the video will show it to more people on YouTube and subscribing will make sure you get access to all my great content in the future. And now back to the video. Yeah, I, I love that. And that's, that's my philosophy. And I, and I remember one time I was actually coming out of a, a liquor store and there's a guy standing there and he asked me for money to buy beer. And I'm like, who am I to, to judge what he's gonna do with it? Because exactly, if you give it, that's no longer yours. It doesn't matter what he does with it.

And also, you know, like to just to sort of blow out that moment a little bit, if, if you, if you do give it and you give freely, then I do think you are, you are kind of participating in the larger economy of creation, which is, which is a constant giving of stuff, a constant pouring outward. And if you, and if you orient yourself within that, then you're going to feel, you're going to feel pretty good, I think.

Yeah, I think, I think so too. And again, it's kind of that, like, it's, again, those little moments can be life lessons for us. And this happened like many years ago, and something I've reflected on many times. Because there is that tendency that we have to judge that person, you know, yeah, what are you going to do with it? Why are you here? And I'm thinking, okay, well, I'm buying beer. Yeah, exactly. I'm walking out of a liquor store. How am I going to judge him?

Yeah, right on. Exactly. You know, yeah, who throws the first stone? Exactly. That's, that's it. That's exactly it. Yeah.

So I know you're like, you're into poetry as well, and I'm really not so much. So what does poetry do for you? That— what is it that attracts you to that poetry?

For me, I I run a writer's group for homeless writers every Tuesday. And what I say to them is poetry is the highest form of journalism. It's like the latest news on reality. Like, it's the kind of frontiers of perception. For me, that's where poetry exists. And that's why I'm always incredibly refreshed and restored by it. And I've also discovered with writers who might not think of themselves as writers, writers with a lot of very raw experience to deal with, poetry sort of offers itself very immediately as a way of just cracking into what's going on for them. You know, that you can bypass a lot of clichés, a lot of things that happen when you're trying to write prose and just go straight to the heart of it. So that's basically what it means to me. That's a lovely question.

Yeah, well, it's good. I'm glad I asked you that. So you also talk in the book about buzz management. And what is that buzz management for me?

That's just my term for the whole business of trying to keep your levels sort of decent, like not get too excited by anything, not get too depressed by anything, be excited but not anxious. When, you know, I'm a real up and down sort of dude. I get, I suddenly get very tired, you know, what do I do then? Now I'm all anxious and I've drunk too much coffee, what do I do then? Now I need my booze, da da da da da, you know, all of that, all of that comes under the heading. There are healthy ways to do it and unhealthy ways to do it, obviously.

Mm-hmm.

Um, all of that comes under the heading of, of, of, uh, buzz management. I mean, ex— exercise, I think, is prob— for me has been the best, the best way of, of doing it.

Oh really? Okay.

Yeah.

So what, what kind of exercise do you enjoy?

I do, I, I like, I do pull-ups and push-ups and I jump rope outside, always outside. Um, and, you know, do some cool stuff, pretty, just pretty basic stuff, but, but just to be in the air, you know, huffing and puffing, get your blood going. It, and it, you know, it's, it's, it's had like scientifically proven effects on, on, you know, mood elevation, all that, right?

It's good for you. Yeah, absolutely.

And as a side effect, you get strong, which is nice.

Yeah. Well, I think, um, I know in the book you don't really like— it's not prescriptive. It's not like, do these 5 things. Uh, you talk about some of the things that work for you. Exactly. I think we mentioned earlier, maybe before we started, but you mentioned cold showers. Yeah, I tried that. I hate cold showers. It's like torture. Um, so, but that's, that's something that, that you found to be very beneficial.

Didn't you feel good afterwards? Kind of.

I, yeah, yeah, I did it for a while, but I was, yeah, it was, it's a cost-benefit thing, right? I, I am a person, I'm, I'm cold by nature, uh, I, I don't like being cold. I, I, yeah, so I was like, I tried it for a while, I'm like, yeah, I'll find something else. Uh, there's a guy, uh, Wim Hof.

Oh yes, yes.

Yeah, I was like, and I'm like, I would die, I would literally die if I plunge into a frozen lake.

I mean, I've done, I've done, I've done the Wim Hof, you know, ice baths. And it's quite interesting when, you know, when you climb in, your brain for 10 seconds, your brain basically screams at you, you are going to die, you're gonna die in here. And you, and that's, and you have to ride that, ride that out. I mean, but I mean, part of it for me is not, it's not just the, you know, the lovely sort of tingly feeling that I get afterwards. It's the sensation of having overcome myself. That's right. First thing, you know what I mean? I have, I've had this battle with myself and I've won.

I guess I've made the excuse it must be a different experience for other people.

Yes.

Yes. I'm like, they must not be feeling what I'm feeling otherwise.

Right. Yeah. If it doesn't suit you, it doesn't suit you, you know?

Yeah. Maybe I'll try it again.

You've got other tricks, I'm sure, Brian, right?

Yeah, I do have other things I do. And it's interesting because as I've worked with clients, I have general categories of things I recommend to them, like gratitude, which I think you spoke about earlier. Exercise, mindfulness, you know, getting the proper amount of sleep. But it's different for everybody. And it's really interesting because I had a woman I interviewed after her mother passed away. She was deeply depressed. Yeah. And people were recommending all kinds of stuff for her. You should go for a walk, you should do yoga, you should do this, you know, their, their thing. And she's like, I hated all those things. But what she found was powerlifting. So I love powerlifting because it makes me feel strong, it makes me feel accomplished. There's something about counting the reps that was like meditative to her. Yeah. Yeah, so her thing was powerlifting.

Nice.

So I say to people, find what works for you.

When you said— when you, when you counsel people to orient themselves towards gratitude, like practically, how does that, how does that work?

Well, when I'm dealing with people, a lot of times it's in those early stages of grief. So gratitude is like, you know, it's a very lofty concept that they don't— they're going to reject, of course. So what I want to do, I start with a lot of somatic stuff, like, okay, Are you— have you been fed today?

Yeah.

Do you have food? Are you, are you warm? Right. Um, I, I do. When I wake up in the morning, a lot of times it might be my bed feels really great, you know.

Yeah.

Just, just start with those little, those little things that you can appreciate instead of, you know, looking at big things.

Right.

Um, and it's, it's a matter of training yourself to start focusing. And again, that's what I love about your, your book, because it's obvious that you've practiced this. It's obvious that you've practiced mindfulness, because the, the things that, like, I was reading about, like, um, our purpose for being here, and you talk about the Jason Bourne movies.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

A lot of times we sit down and watch a movie, we're just like, I'm just here to be entertained.

Yeah.

And it's like, yeah, it was great, he killed the bad guy, blah blah blah.

Yeah.

We don't see the bigger thing behind it, the connection to the hero. Yeah. And talk about that, because I thought it was really interesting, your observations about different types of heroes, and you chose Jason Bourne as kind of like the the prototype.

He's the—

he's—

yeah, he's, he's the archetype for me. I mean, Tony Gilroy, who wrote the screenplay for the first couple of Bourne movies, he's a genius in my opinion. He did Michael Clayton, the film with George Clooney, which I think is one of the great movies. But the Bourne movies, they, they, they obsessed me for a long time before I understood why they obsessed me. And, and I, I think, I think it's because you know, why we love Jason Bourne and why we love him, why I certainly love him more than James Bond or Jack Reacher or John Wick, you know, as charismatic as those guys are, is because he's on the essential human mission, which is figuring out who he is and what he's here for. You know, he wakes up, he's a nobody. He has no memory. He's pulled out of the sea, you know, which is a classic mythological thing to figure, you know, plucked from the ocean with no name. And he's on the fishing boat and, you know, he discovers that he can tie these fancy knots and And then he discovers that he can speak German, and then he discovers that he's an amazing fighter when he, you know, tackles these two cops in Zurich. So he realizes that he's been trained. But then it goes even deeper because what he's actually been trained to do, which is kill people, is not what he wants to do. So he has to go under that too. So it's a very, you know, and then that's the dynamic of the movie, him on this journey, you know, trying to find his name, essentially trying to find out who he is and, and what happened to him. So yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's why I love Jason Bourne.

Yeah, I think that for me, from my perspective on life, as my, my perspective is we are, we are spiritual beings that have been placed in these bodies, put on this earth, and essentially forgotten who we are. So I think it's interesting when they—

I wish I knew why that happens though, why we forget, you know.

Um, yeah, well, I think it's because we like the challenge. I think people like challenges. And when I say this to people, you know, they'll say, well, I would never ever choose this life. I would never choose to have these challenges. And then I'll ask, I'll say, well, what about people that run marathons? I would never choose to run a marathon. Yeah, but people do. And why do they do it? Because they want to be able to say they finished. Why do people climb mountains? Um, you know, when I went to college, I— my degree is in chemical engineering. That was 4 years of torture. It was not easy. And I would think like, why am I paying them to do this to me? Well, I'm doing it because I want to develop a skill. So as humans, we come here and we face these challenges, and the forgetfulness is what makes it challenging. If we could remember who we were, it would be easy.

It'd be easy.

And we could always just fall back.

I love that though, that we, you know, we choose it, we choose it. But as difficult as it might be, and as alien feeling, as it might be. Do you know what I mean? Like, you might, you know, that, that was one of my sort of— it wasn't a delusion, it never got to that level, but it was definitely a sort of intuition that, that I was, I was kind of under attack. I was under attack by alien forces, you know, like, and it's hostile, and, and, and, and I'd have to protect my— you know, you get very brittle and you get very small, right, and very defensive. But, um, yeah, but once you can, once you can understand it as something— it's all, it's all part of your bloody game in the world. You know, this is why— yeah, that's beautiful, Brian. I love that.

Yeah, I think, uh, that's the, that's the, uh, the model that works for me. And again, when I always said to relate to other knowledge, and I, you know, like, you're obsessed with the Jason Bourne character, I'm obsessed with survival shows. Uh, there's a show called Alone. Oh yes, yes, I love Alone. Yeah. And I watched that and I'm like, okay, first of all, there's a lesson, like, people are not meant to live alone. You can see very quickly that we cannot live alone, that we, we have to live in societies. And it's not just the physical aspect. Some of those people just, they withdraw because they go crazy.

Yeah.

I mean, after, after a week of not talking to anybody, they're like, I have to— they tap out. Yeah. Um, and I, and again, I watched that, and, and they do have a, a prize now, but when they first started, I don't think they even had a prize. And I would describe the show to people. They said, well, why would people do that if they're not doing it for the money? I'm like, they do it for the challenge. They do it because they say, I want to see if I could do this.

Yeah.

And what's really interesting is the spiritual development of the people by the end. Yeah. Some of these people that come in, they're usually poor people. They usually don't have a lot of money. And they, they come in and they're, and they're, they're obviously rugged.

Yeah.

And they just start connecting to, to, to them deeper, to the deeper selves. They appreciate their parents more. It's, it's fun to watch.

Those shows are beautiful, absolutely beautiful. I wrote a piece about that show, actually. Do you remember the guy? There's a guy, he, I think he, I've forgotten his name and I don't know, you know, it's not important. But the reason he struck me was because they put him on the edge of a lake in Patagonia somewhere and on his, you know, he gets there and he sets up his tent and then he goes, Patagonia! And yells it. And you— something about the way he did that, you're like, oh my. And then, and then you— and then he pauses a little bit and you can kind of feel the echoes coming back at him, and you're like, oh, this guy is about to get crushed. And, and again, no, no judgment, because I, I mean, I don't know how long I would, I would last, because it's not, you know, that obviously they can all, you know, whittle the sticks and eat the berries and do all that stuff, but it's the mind, isn't it? It's, it's how, how well you can tolerate your own company, and then what arises after that, you know, beyond that, right?

And I think that, again, that show for me and Survivor and others, um, they're metaphors for the human condition. And so I look at those things. And so again, we say, well, why would I put myself in situations like— because that's who we are as humans. We love the challenge. And, and even putting ourselves where we feel alone, because when we even— in our— in these bodies, I believe when we're in spirit, we're so connected that we don't know what it's like to feel alone. We're always— there's always, you know, we always have that connection anytime we want it. We could just— we're instantly connected. Yeah, we come here and we feel alienated. We feel literally like— you talked about aliens. Yeah, I remember being a kid when I was 4 or 5 years old, like, well, I don't like this place. And even I could be in the house with my parents, my brothers, and I still felt alone. Because it's just— it was— it's— it's hard to even describe the feeling.

But yeah, did that feeling stay with you?

It did. Yeah, for a very long time.

Yeah. What made it— or what kind of alleviated it in the end, do you think?

Um, it— wow, that's, that's my whole life. That's the whole arc of my life. You know, it really kind of started going away when I realized, you know, I was raised in the church and I was taught we're souls, but still it was separate. When I started learning that we have soul groups, that we have, we have teams, that we are, that we are multidimensional beings that are actually, it's not just, we're multilayered, you know, even. So all of that, and this has been in the last several years, and really accelerated after my daughter passed away, which was 9 years ago. Yeah. You know, feeling the connection that I still have with her, realizing that we're always connected in a certain way.

Yeah.

So, but it's through all these observations about life, you know, all the things that your book's about, these, these little, little things and looking at video games and like, why do we play video games? My daughter and I love to play video games. And I would think, why? What's the, what's the deal with it? Well, we like the challenge.

Yeah. And the journey. I mean, the best video games have an incredible heroic journey. Yeah. Level up a level up a level.

Always, always up a level, and every boss is harder than the last. And the, the thrill when— if you beat a boss the first time you play the boss, yeah, that's, that's a terrible game. Yeah, you've got to play that and it's got to feel like you're never going to beat it. You, you have to learn the moves and you have to go back and forth and you have to try it over and over again. You have to develop different skills because this jump requires, you know, this move. Um, and then when you finally beat it, it's that it's that thrill. So people that design games know this.

Yeah.

If you look at that from a higher perspective, if you look, look at this life as a simulation or a virtual reality.

Yeah.

But it makes sense, all the stuff that we go through.

Yeah. I always, I always say as well, you know, when, when, when, um, when I talk to people who are feeling bad, you know, I always say if it didn't, if it didn't feel like beep, it wouldn't be real. You know what I mean? Like if, if, if you could see your way through this, then you wouldn't actually be in this state, right? If it didn't feel like there was absolutely no way out and you were completely stuck, then what would be the point of this word depression? Do you know what I mean? If it was something that we could just manage and— but it is, it's a very— it's a real state, and you get there and you feel like you've got nothing. You've got no tools, you've got no way forward, you've got nothing. And, and in a way, just to experience the reality of that is, is kind of a gift. I think it's very painful, but it's still a, still a gift.

It is. And that's what I love about your odes, because there's some odes to things that are higher, and there's some odes to things like constipation. Yeah, just, just a natural part of being human.

Yeah.

And, and, and learning to appreciate the things, quote, good or bad.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's it. You said it.

So in terms of what you want people to take away from the book, what do you think are the lessons? Again, we, we, I'm not gonna probably do cold showers and I don't like AC/DC. So, I'm not looking at it for like, I'm gonna do these particular things. Right? But what do you want people to take away in general?

I think, I think, I think just what we've, what we've been talking about in terms of paying, paying attention to, to your own life and to your own perceptions. Like what you were saying about waking up in the morning and, and, and, and appreciating, you know, I feel cozy in bed, like, I feel, I feel good here. I mean, it's so, it's so easy. There's something in the brain that, that will immediately override that with, oh yeah, but you've got to do this and that and get going and email this person. Oh Jesus, you know, how am I going to get through the day? That, that's, that kicks in so quick. So how do you, how do you anticipate that? How do you sort of give it the swerve somehow into this beautiful organic field which is always available to you? And is so rich. I mean, there's, you know, I've got an ode to my dog's balls in there, my dog, my dog, Sonny. And it's all about, it's all about walking around with him. And he's, you know, he's a real handful of a dog. But learning, learning to appreciate, you know, like the weird little weeds on the curb and the old shoe that he's sniffing at. And, you know, the fact that I have to be hypervigilant because he might get in a fight with another dog at any minute. Et cetera, et cetera. You know, we've all got, we've all got things kind of inviting us into that, into that state. So keeping, keeping yourself open to that, I think, is, I think is the, is the ticket. And I, I, I would really, I really hope that, that, that, that I can just elevate people's moods just a tick, you know what I mean? Just a, just a notch, with, with this. That would, that, I would be very happy if that, if that was the case.

Yeah. Did you think of it as a, as a mindfulness book when you wrote it?

No, I didn't actually. Um, I thought about it as just a series of funny little exercises. Um, and the, and the, the, the larger kind of thing only came into focus when all, when they were all together, you know, the Oodles started talking to each other, and then, and then I kind of began to understand what it was all about. But, but as I'm writing them, I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to concentrate on the thing I'm, I'm writing about.

Yeah. So, um, So you're trying to, you said you want to elevate people's moods by helping them, I guess, make these observations. Yeah. Because I don't, is it the particular observations or is it just the idea of learning to make observations?

It's, yes, the latter, learning to make observations and learning to trust your own perceptions and your own language. I mean, that's one of the hardest things when you're helping people with writing, helping kind of beginners, they freeze like, I can't write, I can't do that, that I can't do that I haven't got access to that language, that special— you know, there's this kind of illusion that there's something out there. Everybody knows how to do this other something and you don't. You know, you are the— you know, you and I and everybody else, we're the leading experts in the fields of who we are. Nobody knows it like us. Nobody can describe it like us. Nobody can go as deep as we can. So go there, you know. I mean, you have a tremendous amount of original experience to to communicate. So, so go for it and avoid cliché, avoid kind of hidebound herd instinct language, you know, go for your own perceptions, your own words, your own style.

I love what you said there about you're the expert in yourself because again, a lot of times people feel like, well, I don't have anything to say. And you know, people even in my field with coaching with people, people, there's always this feeling like, well, I don't, I don't know enough and I need to go get this. I need to get this degree. I need to get this education. Yeah, we all can. This is my opinion. We can all talk to people.

Yes.

None of us says I don't know how to talk. But yes, it comes to writing. A lot of times I think people feel like, well, I don't know how to write.

Yeah.

And there are, there are all these rules around writing that frankly, I ignore. I've written a book. I'm writing a couple more books. I, I just— what I love now is I can put them out whether anybody likes it or not. I don't— I'm not hiring an editor, right? I'm going to put it on Amazon, and people, if there's a mistake in it or whatever, that's fine.

Yeah, yeah.

But we all have a voice. We all have something to say.

Yeah. I've got a— I've got an ode to— ode to small talk, which is— it's basically about how the, you know, the kind of really insignificant-seeming, or on a verbal level, interactions that you have with people in the street around the place, they can actually— I, I wonder if I can connect this to what you were saying about soul groups and teams. Like, there are, there are people who we meet in the street who will just say something completely inconsequential to us, you know, have a nice day, you know, how about those Celtics, whatever it might be. And somehow you feel utterly restored and refreshed. I mean, profoundly. Not, not, not, not just like, oh, that was nice, that seemed like a nice person, but really like it gets to the core of you. Like, you recognize something in them. You might never see them again, probably, probably don't, you know. But there's— but, but they're the, you know, these, these, these moments of, of connection, uh, they're quite— I mean, they're quite mysterious in some ways.

Yeah. Well, there are— there are people that make outsized impacts on our life, and there are people that we meet. Uh, it's interesting because I work with a guy that does a lot of past life work, and he goes, you know, when you meet somebody and you immediately dislike them, yeah, it's probably because of past life encounter.

Yeah.

And at some level, you, you know who that person is. Yeah. There's also the opposite. There's that person that you meet that you have an immediate connection with, that you just— you felt like you've known them forever.

Yeah.

And again, doing these, these exercises, the Odes, reading those and starting to do your own observations. When we start to notice those little moments, they— I think they become more— I don't know if they happen more often or we just notice them more often, but, you know, these things we call synchronicities start to really pop into our lives.

Yeah. My granddad used to say friendship is largely a matter of, of, of recognition. You know, just like I know this person and we're, you know, we're fine, whether we've been fine before, I know we're going to be fine from now on. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny, this is— I'm going to take us down a little bit of a rabbit hole, but there's a song I love by Kenny Loggins called Sweet Reunion. Yeah. And the song, he's meeting the love of his life, and it's about him meeting— like, it's a romantic love.

Yeah.

When I, when I hear that song, I think about when my daughters were born, and he talks about how we've lived a thousand lifetimes before, and, you know, and you're, you're finally here walking into my life.. And I think that's what it is. I think, I think friendship, love, my children, they're, when they, it's like, okay, here you are. I've been looking for you and now here you are.

Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote a band back at you. There's a band called The Pupils and, and the, there's a line, it's just about knowing people and there's a, and there's a line, it's good to know I'll know you till the end. I mean, you just, you just about your friends and the people you love. That's just how you feel. You're gonna know 'em forever beyond this life, of course. Right.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think, I think that's, I think that's true. I mean, at least it's true from my perspective of looking at things.

Yeah.

And again, I, what I, I love about your, your odes is they encourage people to— again, I keep saying it, but we, we tend to overlook our lives. We tend to think that they're just mundane. We tend to only look for the highlights, you know. We don't think about Ode to Brain Farts, which was— I like that one too. That one, that one jumped out at me.

Good. Yeah, I mean, that's about, that's about, uh, well, I try and I try and classify the different, you know, the different types of brain fart. You know, there's the brain fart of, of a technique where you, you know, you suddenly find yourself very, very bad doing something you've, that you have been quite good at for some reason, for whatever reason. There's a brain fart of, uh, of, of memory, you know, where you forget your friend's wife's name or the name of your favorite restaurant, whatever it is. And then there's the brain fart of being, which you actually forget who you are, what you're doing here, which mercifully in my case has been fairly brief, you know, like little 2 seconds, but my God, you feel it. It's like, Jesus, what? It's like you fall down a manhole, you know, like, what the— who— what am I doing here? And it, you know, it fades. But actually, when I was, when I was in my, you know, in my least, least sort of together moment in my, in my 20s, that, that, that was kind of what having a panic attack felt like. It felt like a, like a brain fart amplified, you know, to the edges of the universe. Like, I, like, I've got no sense of why I'm here. Everything's being sort of pulled out of me That was how, that was how it used to feel.

Yeah, yeah, that, that lack of understanding again who you are, why you're here, and, and these exercises can help to, to anchor us.

Yeah.

Um, you know, we, we, when I teach something called positive intelligence and we talk about, uh, you know, getting back in the body, we do things called PQ reps. Yeah. And they're just, they're little moments of mindfulness, um, where it could be a tactile thing. Yeah, PQ stands for Positivity Quotient. So you do little things like, you know, rub— if you're having a panic attack, for example, yeah, that unreal feeling where you feel like your head's gonna explode and everything. Yeah. If you can, if you can focus on something small, like rubbing your fingers together, or the feeling of yourself in your chair or something. Yeah, it can bring you, it can bring you back in, it can anchor you back. Yeah. And I, what I like about this is like, there's always something that I can observe, whether it's you know, it's whether it's what's going on with this character in a movie or whether it's, you know, the brain fart. It's part of the human experience, you know, I mean, it's accepting that.

Yeah. I mean, it's funny, Brian, as we're talking, I'm realizing that I actually— that ode is not complete. Ode to Brain Farts. I should have carried on. I should have gone into panic attacks with it. You know what I mean?

That would have—

that's where it wanted to go. So, yeah, maybe I'll have to do that at some point.

Well, we've discussed a lot of the, a lot of the odes. What are some of your favorites that we haven't discussed?

I'm very, um, there's one called Ode to Coming Round, Coming Round on the Bathroom Floor, which I, I really like because I used to, there was a time in my life when I was, I was a night baker and I'd come in at 3 in the morning and my son, who's 22 now, he was a baby then, so he'd often wake me up, uh, crying and, and I'd jump out of bed and then my wife would hear a great kind of thump and I'd be laid out on the bathroom floor. And, you know, fainting, as anybody who's fainted knows, is really an awful experience. I mean, you just kind of like dying. I mean, you just, you can feel everything sort of slipping and sliding and then down you go and then you black out. But coming round, I found, was rather beautiful. It was very leisurely. I was kind of astonished by, you know, this is what we've been talking about, like the fingers and, you know, rubbing your fingers, feeling yourself in your chair. I would have that feeling like, oh my God, I am grounded. I'm earthed. You know, there's some kind of electrical thing happens. I think when you faint, like, you know, your brain cuts out. And as those circuits kind of restore themselves and refresh themselves, I would think, oh my God, this floor is beautiful. You know, like the bathroom tile feels so cool against my cheek and the light is so clear and that this body feels great. And that, you know, it's kind of about feeling at home in the, in the world. Which is a brief feeling. But you know it when you have it, and it can be very sustaining.

Yeah, awesome. And another thing I want to ask you about, I know you talk about Jesus a little bit in your book. What do you, what are your thoughts on Jesus?

I love Jesus. He's a, he's a, you know, inspiring presence in my life. I was raised Catholic. I'm a fairly sort of collapsed Catholic. There's a lot of things about the church that I do not subscribe to it all, but I love the fact that it's there. I go to Mass when I can, and I get a lot out of the New Testament. I get a lot out of the Gospels, and I get a tremendous amount out of the words of Jesus. Yeah.

Okay. Anything else about you you'd like to say about Jesus? Yeah.

I think, I think You know, I'm not— I wish, I wish— I've tried to write an ode to praying, um, and I've been unable to because I'm not actually very good at praying. I don't mean praying for stuff, I mean praying in the sense of aligning yourself.

Yeah.

With, with the higher thing. Um, and I wish, you know, as much as, as much as I, as much as I, you know, write about this stuff, there's a, there's a, there's a there's kind of a lack of it in my life in that, in, in terms of practice. So that, that's what I thought of when you asked me that question.

Interesting. But you wrote an ode to sleeping Jesus, right?

Sleeping Jesus. Yeah, I, I, I, I got very interested in the moment. There's only one moment in the Gospels where he falls asleep, which is on the— it's, it's on the, on the boat in the Sea of Galilee in the— during the storm, right? And the disciples are freaking out., and Jesus is asleep in the back. And they, you know, they wake him up and you can imagine him sort of coming out of it a little bit sort of groggily, perhaps a tiny bit irritated, like, well, you know, you know, why'd you wake me? Because it's, because it's a beautiful idea that he can be, you know, he gets a bit of rest because he's, you know, he's a busy, he's a busy guy to do so. So you shouldn't really disturb him when he's, when he's, you know, when he's getting his, his 40 winks. But they do disturb him. And of course he rises and he, and he quiets the storm. But I, I just love that idea that there is this, there is this, that, you know, I've got this image of him sort of curled up almost like a, like a little pearl or something at the, at the heart of things, connected to the, to the, to the ocean, to the root of the ocean, not to the surface turbulence, which is what the disciples are experiencing. And by going, by going to him, that's, that's how they settle it down. So, you know, he settles it down, but it's their appeal to him that ends up with the thing being— it's them going beneath the surface, basically, that settles the situation.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a beautiful observation. And there's so much, again, in these stories, whether we take them literally or we take them as metaphor.

Yeah.

You know, because again, they're in the same circumstances. They're literally in the same boat. Yeah. Jesus is like, I'm sleeping.

Yeah, exactly.

These guys are freaking out. So it's, it's an example of, of what the, the type of peace that we can all hopefully, you know, try to achieve. And I think again, that's what we're talking about here. It's like, even though in that, in that story he calms the sea, it's really more about that internal peace, I think, that we— I think we can't control our, our circumstances. We're going, we're going to go through crap where— that's again I was talking to someone yesterday, and I say it all the time, the pain, the turmoil, the things we go through here, they're not a, they're not a bug, they're a feature. Yeah, I think, I think we come here to experience that. And I've tried to make the case for that as we've talked about, you know, some of these, these things that humans do with the crazy things that we do. I was watching someone ziplining the other day over this, over Dubai. Yeah. And I posted on my Facebook page, everybody's like, nope, Nope. And I'm like, no, I would never do that. But before that, I saw a story. And this is another— because this is why I connect so much with the book, because this is the way my mind works too. There was a guy that was— he was going up Mount Everest, and he encountered a guy who had gotten in trouble. Yeah, would have died. And he rescued that guy and he brought him down. Okay, that's the story. But I'm thinking, okay, why were they on Mount Everest? Right? Because you don't have to be there.

Right, right, right. Nobody, right. Nobody made this guy climb, climb Mount Everest.

Right. So it's, it's like, this is, this is what humans do. We, we, yeah, we crave these things. And, and yeah, what you're, I think, telling us to do is like embrace it all. Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Don't, don't try to bypass things. Don't, don't think that this thing is a little thing and embrace it all. Observe it all. It's a, it's a, it's a short ride. It's a relatively short ride.

It is a short ride. I mean, what, you know, one of what, what I, I dedicate this book to my, my, my wife and my son and the writers that I work with, and also my therapist, Dr. Cottle, um, who I, I, I saw him for about 10 years, you know, and he really, he really helped me. And one of the things he would say, like, you know, when I was moaning on about, you know, this mood or that mood or these sensations or that sensations, now and again he'd just look at me and go, well, I mean, you're an artist, you're a writer, what do you expect? Like, this is it, this is, this is how, this is what happens when you raise your sensitivity, or to a certain level, which is where you should be to be alive.

Wow. You know, that's a brilliant observation.

Isn't it nice? It's so simple, but it's— but I found it so, so helpful. I mean, Saint, you know, Saint Irenaeus, the Catholic saint— he wasn't Catholic, but you know, he's a saint. Um, he, he said the glory of God is a, is a man fully alive. And that's, I think that's the— and I should say, like, as I hope, I hope it doesn't sound like I'm preaching, because I fall short of all of these things many times a day and have had, you know, long periods when, where I was failing to embrace all the things we've been talking about. But I do. But when I'm on my game, you know, when my system is on its game, I think that's the, I think that's the ticket.

I think that's, I think that's brilliant what your, what your therapist said to you. I was talking with a friend yesterday who has had a brain injury and, you know, they think and operate differently because of that.

Yeah.

And we're looking at going on to maybe medication for it or something. And I'm like, but is it, is it affecting how you function in the world? Is it preventing you from getting things done? Is it, is it, is it? And they're like, well, no, but it makes me act differently and work differently. And I'm like, but it also makes you great at what you do.

Yeah.

So you have to be careful with trying to make everybody like everybody else.

Exactly.

And you made it— I love what you said. It gave me goosebumps about— he said, you're an artist, you've got a high— you've got a level of sensitivity. Well, the world is crazy. Um, so people that— if we do have a higher level sensitivity, we're going to feel pain. There's a reason why artists feel pain. And, you know, you could, you could not feel pain. You could walk around the world clueless. You could walk around the world not caring.

Yeah.

And not—

or you can, or you can drink or drug or do whatever it is. I mean, there's what— there's, there's ways of not doing it for sure.

Right, right. So what I think what we're saying is, okay, embrace it all. And yeah, I, I used to suffer from seasonal affective disorder. I live in Ohio and it gets really gloomy here in the winter. Yeah. And I mentioned earlier, I hate the cold, and I live in a place where it's cold, you know, 6 months out of the year.

He's cold. It's never going to take this cold shower thing, I can tell.

I hate the cold. So, you know, it's really hot right now. People are like complaining about the heat. I'm like, I will never complain about the heat.

Yeah.

But I got a— I got a satellite and I put it on my desk and it helped, and I used it for a couple years. And then one year I was like, you know what, I'm just going to accept the fact in the winter that this is the way I feel. Yeah, I have lower energy. I sleep in a little bit later. I typically go to bed earlier. I'm like, but I looked around, I'm like, that's what nature does.

Yeah.

Animals in nature don't fight winter. They hibernate.

Yeah. But also what I mean, what you're doing there, Brian, just by, just by sort of explaining the condition to yourself, you know, in that, like, by kind of itemizing those, that's, that's like a little ode that you've written just there. Do you know what I mean? Like, like it helps once if you sat down and wrote Yeah, I have less energy. I need this, I need that. These are the things that happen to me under these, you know, under these conditions. Somehow that's a way of conquering the condition in a funny way, right?

Now, a couple of years after, one of my friends said that she had seasonal affective disorder and I sent her my light. I said, I don't use it anymore. Yeah. Because I'm like, this is a temporary thing. Yeah, I know why it is. I know it's because it's December. I know it's going to go away in March or April. Yeah. So I'm just going, I'm just going to embrace it. And, and then when you stop fighting it, it doesn't hurt.

Yeah. But also, you know, part of the, the condition of, of depression and, and grief, I'm sure— I haven't had that much experience with it— is, is this, like what we were talking about at the beginning, this, the sense that time has stopped. I mean, you could— you can't, you can't project forward at all, right?

Exactly..

So, so, so you have to kind of, you have to recognize that like, this is, this is part of it. You know, this isn't, this is not necessarily the case, but it is definitely the case now. And, and it kind of endure that or find a way to manage it, right?

Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. And it's, it's, I, I love, like I said, I was reading about, you said, this is, this is to my 25-year-old self. Cause that's an exercise that we do sometimes. It was like we go back. Yeah. And we, we talk to our younger selves. Yeah. Um, and, and you putting this out there, you know, at, at the age that you are now and, and having had this experience, these experiences. Experiences, hopefully give someone else hope that says, yeah, it's, it's going to be okay. And I know there's, there's a big campaign, um, what is it, It Gets Easier. Yeah, you know, for people that are suffering, it's like, and that's true, life, it gets easier and it gets harder because life is always, it's like this.

That's like, yeah, but whatever. I mean, I mean, one thing I say to people is if it's, if it's acute, the state that you're in, if it's acute, then you know it's going to change because nothing stays acute. Nature is incapable of maintaining a state of acuteness. This for very long. So if you're acutely depressed, that's, that's going to pass fairly soon. Right?

Yeah, that's a great point, too. Yeah. So yeah, these things, they come and they go. And again, I think it's— this is a— the book is great because it's not like Man's Search for Meaning was— it's kind of hard to get to. I mean, Viktor Frankl is a very, you know, it's kind of hard to understand. This is a book that anybody can read it, pick up and it's, it's lighthearted, but it's also extremely deep if you, if you take the, if you take the message of it.

I so appreciate you saying this, Brian D Smith.

Yeah. And really, really easy to read. And I think that's, you, you have a thing where you like your books being compact. Is that true?

Yes.

Yes.

I, I'm very pleased. You know, I put people, people have different ways of reading now, but I'm, I'm a, you know, I'm a books guy. I'm like, I'm an analog dude. And I love, so this is, this is, you know, it's, it's, it's little. And it fit and compact and it fits into your back pocket. And I love the thought that people can take it with them around the place and, you know, pop into it now and again and have a little read. And it's just, it's, you know, it's, it's kind of available in that, in that physical sense that, that made me, it made me very happy when I opened the box. I was like, oh yeah, because I was, I was, I was anticipating a big, like, clunky hardcover, like, like something somebody gives you for Christmas that you never read. And, you know, But this, this feels like a little tool, almost toolkit, perhaps.

Yeah, I think so. And you know, it's interesting, because most books that are bought are never read. I forgot what, what percentage of the actual book gets read, but it's a very small percentage. People buy books, and they have intentions to read them. But they're, they're hard, frankly, they're hard to get through. And sometimes it takes me a long time to get through a book. Yeah. But when you have little bite-sized things, you could pick it up and you can read it for 5 minutes. Yeah. And finish an ode, you know, that's— that you feel a sense of accomplishment. You come back to it.

Yeah.

I pick up a book and it takes me, you know, 30 minutes to read a chapter.

I'm like, I'm a slow reader. I'm a very slow reader. I have to keep going back and checking. Yeah. It's all— I mean, it could also, you know, if it ends up being a bathroom book, that's a noble destiny for me. I think that's fantastic.

You know, I don't— I think it would be great to— it'd be a great bathroom book.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Because the odes, they do stand alone. There's some themes that kind of come together. But, um, yeah, it's, it's, um, it's accessible, and I think we do need that. It's great to have academic stuff, that's all, that's all wonderful too. Um, but, you know, some of us struggle to get through those, and some of us never get there. We buy them and intend to, but we never do. I think this is a book that people will, will finish, right?

Thank you, Brian.

So, um, I know we talked about a lot of your odes, and are there any other ones that you want to say before we wrap up?

Um, there's, there's a, there's, well, kind of one of the, one of the bigger ones is called Ode to the Right Art at the Right Time. Yeah, this is very, this is very specific to me, and, and I think, I think this is kind of what we've been getting at. I mean, this is, I'm just writing completely out of my own, you know, quite idiosyncratic experience in a way. So I'm like, uh, I went to boarding when I was 8. I went to boys boarding school, all boys boarding school, Catholic boarding in England. And, you know, I come from a very privileged background, but it was a pretty harsh environment. And so I write about that. I write about the feeling of being homesick. It's a very, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a kind of emerging literature about what being sent away to boarding school does to people. And specifically in England, there's a whole class of men who have emerged from this experience who often end up being politicians., and, and, and what it could, you know, you, I think it encourages you to build a kind of artificial self as, you know, as a, as a defense. Um, and then if you're lucky, life will smash that artificial self and you'll be forced to become who you, who you are. Um, which is what happened to me, but the smashing can be very painful.

Right.

Um, nonetheless, anyway, back to the Ode. So it's about me at boarding school and, and my mum giving me Pink Floyd's album The Wall. Oh yeah, and me, and me finding in that, that album just a kind of incredible explanation of who I was, of what was happening, of what it means to be English, of what it meant to have these psychotic abusive teachers surrounded by frightened little boys who were all being mean to each other. Um, it completely saved my bacon.

Um, wow.

So, so that— so the, the, the oddness of that, if you like, is, you know, what is it for you? What was, what was the moment where a record or a book or a movie came to your rescue and, and kind of matched, matched your circumstances in that, in that way?

Yeah, I'm glad I asked you that last question because, um, The Wall, it to me is like a phenomenal album.

Oh good, so we connect on that. Not on AC/DC, but The Wall.

The Wall came out when I was in, I was in college, I think it was my second or third year in college, and this was back when we had, you know, albums. And so we got that album, we just played over and over and over. And I don't know why, because I didn't really understand the story of it at the time. Yeah, until the movie came out.

Yeah.

And but I just, I love, I love the songs individually.

Yeah.

Then when the movie comes out, you see the arc of the guy's life, and yeah, that is, that might be the single best album that's ever been put out.

I agree. I totally agree. And I've never stopped listening to it, and it never ceases to, you know, give me the goods. It's a masterpiece.

It's so— and for people that don't know what we're geeking out about, it's about this building up of this artificial personality. This little boy who is in a frightened world, he's got an overprotective mother, but the rest of the world is like, you know, coming at him. And she's like, you've got to build this wall, you've got to protect yourself.

Yeah, yeah.

And it ends up, he finds at the end that he's built this wall and he realizes he's basically put himself in jail, that he can't be himself anymore.

He's alone behind the wall.

Yeah.

So that, you know, you get the chant at the end of the album, tear down the wall, tear down the wall. And, and everybody's got their own, their own wall, their own version of it, their own bricks, what they've, what they've done, right?

I think we all do. I think we all do. We all come in this world, um, you know, we come in pure, like we talked about. We come from spirit, we come in pure, but we get bogged down by the way of the world. And they tell us, you've gotta build this wall, you've gotta, you've gotta ha— you've gotta play this part, you've gotta play this role.

Oh, I'm so, so happy talking about this, Brian. I'm this bloody vibrating talking about it. Yeah.

But we all just want to be ourselves.

Yeah.

You know, we want to be ourselves and it takes until we get, you know, in our later years. And yeah, it was a sentence from the Tear Down the Wall. It's like you have to tear down the wall, but it was also freeing.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, uh, yeah, I mean, and it's an ongoing process as well. I think the wall is constantly attempting to rebuild itself and we constantly have to smash it down.

Yeah, always. People are always trying to put us back in the box.

Yeah.

People like to have you defined. They want to know who you are and you do something that, well, That's not, that's out of character for you. That's, that's the way you're supposed to be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yep. Well, that's a, that is a fantastic way to end, James. I've really enjoyed our time together. Remind people the name of your book and where they can get it.

Get Me Through the Next 5 Minutes: Odes to Being Alive. Um, you can get it all at all, you know, Amazon, all good bookstores. Um, get it at your local bookstore if you, if you can, please. Um, support your local bookstore. But, uh, yeah, that's it, Brian. I've got so, I've had such a great time this morning. What beautiful conversation. Thank you.

Yeah, have a good day.

You too.

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