Adam Juskewitch is a co-host of The Relentless Picnic. You could follow him on Twitter, but at present his account is being operated (i.e. neglected) by me.
CODY FRANK: You asked me what’s going on with my newsletter, and, truth be told, what happened with my newsletter is I like, really, really loved writing the 9/11 one. It like, absorbed all my energy, and I like, went a little crazy. I had a deadline to hit, so it was like….and then, since then I just like haven’t felt, like, motivated to do anything like that and send out. So I thought maybe it would be fun to start interviewing people, use the platform for that, and you suggested interviewing people I know, and so I will start with my Story Time co-host, Adam Juskewitch.
ADAM JUSKEWITCH: Hannibal Lector says we covet what we know, you know. The serial killer starts by killing…
CF: That’s right.
AJ: …someone in their orbit. Writing about 9/11 is, or in any way discussing 9/11, is such a great jumping off point, because either don’t do it, or you’re a crazy person and it does itself, which is wonderful. This is like, I dunno, occasionally when I’m meeting new people I’ll sometimes mention, like, “You know, I’m a little obsessed with…plane crashes.”
CF: [laughs]
AJ: And like, one out of every three new friends is like, “What’s your favorite crash?”
CF: [laughs]
AJ: You know what I mean? Just like, so into it. And that’s what I’m like about 9/11. I don’t mean to be like, dismissive of the, you know, blah blah blah tragedy.
CF: Sure, sure.
AJ: But like some people talk about 9/11 different.
CF: [laughs]
AJ: And those are my people. The problem though, with the newsletter, is it’s a beautiful way to express yourself and practice your like, writing, until it turns into homework.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: That’s tough. You get excited, you get lost in some 9/11 plane crash project, and then the next one you’re like “Ugh I gotta get this done.” And that’s much, that’s a whole different kind of writing.
CF: It’s also, it’s homework, and also, I mean, I kind of like the newsletter because it’s like a performance, I’m putting on a little show, and I really liked that one, and now I feel like I can’t top it.
AJ: Oh, can’t live up to it, totally.
CF: Yeah yeah.
AJ: There were times in the Relentless Picnic when after our best episodes, I would be like, “This one should just be chaos,” is what I would say. Like, “fuck all our normal,” I would have to do this rhetoric like, “people are gonna hate this one. This one should just be…”
CF: Yeah, right, yeah.
AJ: “…fuckin mad.” You know what I mean? You need to create that space for yourself and just like, this will be, like, “No one will like this and that’s why we should do it.” You try to find that space that feels sort of comfortable again. Because it’s impossible to try to talk in a way, to speak or express yourself in a way where like, you think you’re nailing it to everyone’s expectations again and again, and if you could do that, you’d be terrifying.
CF: Uh, well, maybe that’s my aspiration, is to be terrifying.
AJ: [laughs] Just to nail it.
CF: [laughs] Yeah.
AJ: Would you really, would you want to be, we were talking about Stephen King a minute ago.
CF: I…Yeah. yeah.
AJ: Would you really want to be somebody who could just no problem like, write a fucking a newsletter that like delivered in the same…I. I dunno.
CF: I would be suspicious of someone who says that that’s how it works. Cuz I feel like…a common refrain from artists I admire is that like, they approach everything as though they’re like, learning it from the beginning.
AJ: Mhm.
CF: So I think what makes it like, really impressive is when it’s, you are engaged with how to tackle some problem as though it needs to be solved, or not “solved” necessarily but it needs to be given like your full, uh, all of your soul to like, deal with. So if you do it where you’re cranking it out and it is easy, that seems like not, like maybe just not, I wouldn’t believe…
AJ: Right right right.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: Another way to say this, I don’t know if this is saying quite the same thing but like, I dunno, if I was going to write about subject X, I would be worried that other people had written already about subject X…
CF: Oh yeah.
AJ: And then I would be caught up in this whole thing about like, “does this even need to be written, how good does it need to be, I need to be so good” and then I’d be like “well it doesn’t need to be so good, you just need to get it out, you just need to do another newsletter,” and that whole struggle…I do think that that sort of, labyrinth of desire for something to be better…
CF: Mhm
AJ: …and criticism of the self, that can be kind of paralyzing. There is, occasionally, it seems like, a window where if you’re just honest enough and personal enough, you can kind of cut through that.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: And even if subject X has been covered, if you can honestly talk about how you see subject X, how you’re approaching it, you know what I mean? It can still be valuable to somebody, not just like, they should have read the better thing about subject X.
CF: And on the last point, I sometimes think that it’s like an honorable thing to put the effort into doing that expression, of doing it personally, but like, then if you get someone to go look at the thing, the better way of, I think that, as a writer, I think that’s like an honorable thing to do…
AJ: Oh, yeah.
CF: If you get your reader to go find something else to go read.
AJ: I have felt, my whole life, that one of my best talents…
CF: Mhm.
AJ: …seriously, [laughs] is basically useless in our world, like from an artistic or like, commercial standpoint, which is to say that like, I think I’m pretty good at taking in stuff, and then my capacity for enthusiasm, without being a chump, I think is unusual. Like I think I can be like, “Holy shit!”
CF: [Laughs]
AJ: “You have to see!” like, you know what I’m saying? and just like, go crazy about this thing.
CF: I have referred to you as “psychotically enthusiastic.”
AJ: I can be psychotically enthusiastic. And I don’t think that that necessarily means that whoever I’m talking to is going to share that enthusiasm, but I do think that whatever I’m being enthusiastic about, I’m likely to get across.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: Like I go crazy about a poem or a book or a movie, that doesn’t mean the other person is gonna feel that way, but because I do think I have that capacity, when I like, get into something and express it fully, fearlessly, they’re likely to like, I dunno, pick up something of that and find it in the thing.
CF: Do you feel like you’re trying to convince people though?
AJ: I think, I mean, yeah this a complicated question, but yes, oftentimes, I think….I think I don’t know what to do with the experience of loving, especially like, an art object, if I’m not like, evangelizing, if I’m not like. If I’m not winning converts I feel like I’m not a real Christian, or whatever.
CF: [laughs]
AJ: It’s funny because I also have the opposite experience. Like, we were talking about me being off social media, which is such an immediate way of expressing, but it’s funny to talk to friends I haven’t talked to in a few weeks and we’re talking about movies and I want to tell them about a movie I loved but I like, end up with these long prologs. I don’t know if this is the modern condition or just I’m out of the hot take game, but I’m like, “Okay so I watched this movie, at 3am, and I was feeling very sad, but I loved every moment of it. Now, you may watch it, and think it’s dumb.”
CF: [laughs]
AJ: “So maybe that’s about me and like, where I’m at.” I’m not always willing to throw down in that way. When you feel like, it’s a funny thing to love some art object, or hate some art object, and not have any context. Just no one agrees or disagrees, this is part of the weird thing about being off social media. I’ve gotten used to having a sense of what everyone else thinks, and I have loved not having a sense of what everyone else thinks, but it is weird. You find yourself adding caveats that are weird.
CF: It’s weird, art and trying to convince people. Because I think art maybe does something where you feel less alone, you feel like, recognized, or you recognize something. And, there’s like, a desire to share that with other people because it’s a reminder of society in a way. But the art object itself is not another person.
AJ: Fundamentally, when I love something, I want to talk about it. I dunno, I now, as a, I dunno how old I am, like, 80.
CF: [laughs]
AJ: I now know how to conduct myself when someone says they love some piece of art that I absolutely do not love and have a hard core critique of, I feel like I 100% know how to be like, true to myself, like know how to work it, and if somebody says to me, “you know what I hated was such-and-such movie,” which I love, I also know how to conduct myself there. What’s tricky for me is I never heard anyone else’s opinion about a movie or a book that I have interacted with in some intense way and loved, then I feel very out on a limb. There just like, “Adam, what did you think of this movie?” Then it’s very funny, I’m like, “I loved this movie, but, you may not.” Like “meerrhhh,” like caveats. I don’t wanna like, promise them, necessarily.
CF: Since we’re talking about social media, social media promotes, people say this all the time, promotes where you’re either “for” or “against” something. With art specifically, I think a lot about what David Hume said about these things, where it’s like, you cultivate “taste” by interacting with the art objects and by trying to interact with other people who have interacted with the art objects, and in the discourse, you cultivate what your preferences are. And I think that social media wants everyone to be on the same page. It wants everyone to agree, or not necessarily agree, but at least to have given the attention in a binary way.
AJ: There’s this, there’s a way in which, interactions…
CF: That wasn’t a question [laughs].
AJ: [laughs] It was, it was, it was good, it was mostly subtext. There’s a way in which interaction on social media has a homogenizing effect, where even when you’re like, disagreeing…I mean, fine, sometimes you’re disagreeing and you’re like, dunking on them, or being dismissive, but a lot of the times you’re like, granting the other person’s point, but not really, and reasserting your point, but in a way that is the most defensible, rather than the most sincere.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: You’re like, “I agree he’s like, a little, like, tone deaf…”
CF: Yeah, right.
AJ: “...but you have to admit he made great choices.” But really, what you might think is, like…. yeah I dunno. How do you hone your taste on other people? I just instantly think of like, my fifteen-year-old self, who’s like, read a Dickens novel, talking to some forty-year-old whatever. And, the experience of having them be dismissive of the novel, is not like, invaluable. Like I like hearing the critique, but I also liked being able to say “but here’s what I liked about it,” face-to-face….this is weird, but I tend to like third-person Charles Dickens novels and not first-person Charles Dickens novels, I don’t really know why. But like, one of my friends was just talking about how they didn’t like Great Expectations. They were just like, “who fucking cares?” And on social media, “who fucking cares?” is like, just such a slam dunk point.
CF: [laughs] Yeah!
AJ: It’s really hard to be like, “well I fucking care!” and not sound like a talking penis.
CF: [laughs]
AJ: You know what I’m saying?
CF: Yeah, yeah.
AJ: Just to be like, well, okay, Great Expectations is like a cartoon story, where literally like, a bandit comes out of the woods, shakes the young guy upside down and money comes out of nowhere. But I believe a sincere, open-hearted reading of Great Expectations will remind you of your childhood. Everyone is a little in love with some difficult person who’s poisoned by previous generations. Everyone feels like they’re from circumstances that fucked them, but there’s hope, from nowhere. It has this archetypal architecture, it’s cartoonish, and yet it makes sense. We all feel like the poor kid who might be the rich kid. We all feel like she won’t love us back, but won’t she definitely? That’s growing up, and I feel like I can make that case in person.
CF: Right.
AJ: How you would try on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, how you would even, you know what I’m saying?
CF: Yeah.
AJ: And fine maybe that’s not the place for that discussion, but if a discussion of it happened, I’d just be like…and obviously, no one talks about Great Expectations on social media.
CF: [laughs]
AJ: But if they did, and you loved the book, I think you would see interactions where you would just be like, “Mm, this isn’t universal.” That instinct in me where I believe I can convince you there’s an architecture, a framework that anyone can relate to, I would just see people be like, “who fucking cares?” And unlike in a living room, I would be like, “oh, I guess only I related to it.” I’d be a little more isolated, a little less likely to believe in my instinct. In that way it is homogenizing. It’s not that everyone has the same take, but you take the edge off your take, the hope off your take.
CF: I’ve felt that.
AJ: Right, it’s like, fuck. Dude, if you ever on social media want to throw down for something that you think is great, and everyone else thinks is bad, uh…there is no chance, I don’t care how strong you are, your next tweet is not going be, “everyone’s completely wrong, I love this thing.” Your next tweet is going to be, “I grant your criticisms.”
CF: Yeah. [laughs]
AJ: You immediately give up all this ground. And if you’re just having beers with someone, you’d be like, “Dude, what the fuck? Like, no. No, dude.” That’s the part that scares me, that sense you lose your own ground of what you think and what you’re willing to express, and I think you’re ceding ground to people who don’t even fully think the things they think.
CF: Oh, yeah.
AJ: I don’t think they think “who fucking cares” just because they got bored.
CF: Yeah and the other side of that would be the people who win the most are the ones who are dug in the hardest who are willing to be the most outspoken and crazy.
AJ: And I know people criticize social media all the time but mostly I think they’re criticizing like, bad actors or like, people who are chasing like, massive influence. But most of my experience with social media is with really good people who are trying to honestly talk, but I still think you end up editing yourself and swaying other people in this way that, I dunno, you lose the spark a little bit.
CF: And I think that the architecture, and like, the systematic way social media is set up does that too, with “likes” and all that stuff, and that’s a like, very complicated psychological issue that we have no idea really how to deal with. People have made this comparison, where social media is like our cigarettes, but it seems like, way more insidious than that.
AJ: If only.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: People don’t understand the social beauty of cigarettes. If you could’ve worked at a restaurant in a kitchen in 1999.
CF: [laughs]
AJ: But like, I dunno, let me ask you this.
CF: Mm, mhm.
AJ: Do you get…
CF: Cuz it’s your interview, yeah.
AJ: Yeah, uh, do you get metrics on your newsletter? Can you see how many people read a given newsletter?
CF: Yeah.
AJ: And do you think it has no effect? You think it has some effect?
CF: It’s like, I don’t have that many subscribers, and by “that many subscribers” I have like, less than two hundred, so anyone, hey, thanks for reading. Um…there are people I’m excited to see have opened it, and…
AJ: Yeah, yeah.
CF: And it also tells me when people open it multiple times, and I think that’s very interesting.
AJ: That is interesting.
CF: But it doesn’t really change the way I express things, cuz like, there’s no one giving me feedback that much.
AJ: [laughs] Yeah.
CF: So, which, if you, like, I would love feedback, if anyone would like to give me feedback.
AJ: Yes. And we all crave feedback.
CF: Yeah, you’ve said this about the podcast, and feeling like, you put things out there, and no one says anything. Which, is funny, in my experience, personally, just having enjoyed the product you’ve made, the project you are engaged in, but I’ve also talked to a lot of people who really like your project. So like, tell me, what is your experience, because I feel like you do value the input a lot, more than some people might.
AJ: Well I think I value it and I’m like, terrified of it. I mean, when we first started the thing, I remember…I remember being on SoundCloud. And you know, podcast data isn’t that great, generally, but like, then it was even worse, and we were in exactly the same boat as you, you know, pretty small number and just like…I could sort, I had like an office job that I hated, and sorting the data and being like, “Why does Ireland like us?”
CF: Mhm [laughs]
AJ: Being like, five people listened to an episode in Ireland and being like, “We are clicking in Ireland!”
CF: [laughs]
AJ: Or whatever, and, I dunno…all feedback seems a little unreal to me. Like I crave it but the second somebody actually comes at me and is like, “Hey, I’m responding to the thing,” a part of me is just like [sound indicating semi-frantic discomfort]. Like a sort of panic, “really appreciate that dude, really appreciate that,” and just sort of, wants to run away. Like, I don’t actually [pause] know what I want. And I do think as we figured out what we were doing, one of the signs that we were figuring out what we were doing is I was not looking at the numbers anymore. Just I have no idea what any of the metrics are, and it would be sort of silly. Once you feel like, I think early on you really do want to believe that all this work you’re putting into the thing isn’t going into the void, and, at some point, we got to a place where, not completely, but to a much larger extent, I didn’t care, because I was like….Also we weren’t making stuff that anybody needed to listen to right away.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: Depending on what you’re creating, the difference between you want everyone to listen every week as like, a ritual, or you’re making a thing and when they find it it will still be good. When I started to feel like, “they’ll find this eventually,” that was very freeing to me.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: There came a point where I just was like, I love what the fuck we’re making, and I don’t care. Everyone’s wrong!
CF: [laughs]
AJ: [laughing] Everyone who doesn’t like this is wrong! Just firmly believed it. And I think that during the time I probably was still looking at all that weird data, but at some point I was not looking at our data anymore, which is nice. It still…I don’t particularly even love the feedback that we do get, but when there’s no feedback at all, I still have this sense of like, silence, like, “did this really happen?”
CF: I mean yeah, because you do make it to share with people. But I also have a contrarian on my shoulder all the time, so like, I kind of think that getting to the point where it’s like, “everyone else is wrong” is where you want to be working from.
AJ: Yeah, yeah [laughing].
CF: That’s related to something I wanted to ask you, I think that if you look at what you guys do on the podcast and what everyone else does podcasting, everyone else is doing it wrong.
AJ: I, yeah. [laughs]
CF: So what do you think are like, the strengths of the medium, like what makes it an interesting medium to you?
AJ: When we started…I mean we liked having conversations with each other, we liked what we had to say. But a lot of our shit was just feeling like it’s dumb that everyone is so interested in making the same kind of two or three digestible products. Certain kinds of like, explainers, interviews, a certain kind of like very typical, I dunno you know what I mean like, NPR style exploration that you know is going to have a certain kind of happy ending. It’s so funny because there’s no time limit, so not only can you talk about it whatever way, but you can talk about it in a ton of different ways, and cut it together. The reliance on sort of, expertise, and a certain kind of slick…There’s a like, a thing in NPR’s style where they’ll be like, “Doctor, explain to me the complexities of this disease.” And Doctor will be like, “Well, what makes this so complicated…” and they’ll like, fade out. And they’ll be like, “What he explained was…”
CF: [laughs]
AJ: And, you know what I mean, just like, give you a summary? And I’m like in the car just like, “what the fuck?”
CF: Yeah.
AJ: So I dunno, to me, what’s interesting about the medium is: anybody can make it, right, low barrier of entry. You don’t need to be a journalist, you don’t need to be an expert. And you could, in theory, actually include nuance and ignorance. You wouldn’t have to rely on expertise and like, a certain kind of explanatory framework, and that’s sort of where we started. Let’s not even explain who we are, let’s just have our conversations organically, let’s try to not like, take shortcuts. And then as it went on we were like, let’s talk about this other thing, and also don’t we think these two things are related, and then let’s not explain how they’re related.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: That to me, to me what can be compelling is letting the audience figure out why you would put it together this way. If you can, with no expertise, no sort of resume, no regular formula, win people’s trust, then they’re like “okay I’m in good hands,” and they’re listening being like, “okay I’m in good hands but what the fuck is happening?”
CF: Yeah.
AJ: And that could be this meta-question that’s interesting. They trust that we’ve put in the work to not give them bullshit.
CF: Yeah, it’s, I mean, the example you give about the NPR style where it fades out the expert giving the opinion, it’s just so indicative of like, the condescension of like, so much of that form, and like, people, I….I mean people like those things so I guess they like being condescended to, but like, I also think people don’t like to be condescended to, and, you know…and I think that’s what’s appealing about your project. It’s not even about like, withholding things so that people can figure them out, it’s like, I’m figuring this out so that like, you can maybe think about it too.
AJ: Right.
CF: Being in good hands but not giving answers is a way more respectful approach to the audience, I feel like.
AJ: Obviously lots of people along the way have been like, “your episodes should be less than an hour.”
CF: [laughs]
AJ: “And like, people need to like, sort of know where they’re going.” And I get that, like, if I’m going to start a new thing, I would rather know where it’s going and I would rather it be easier and I would rather it be shorter. The problem is, like, I watch like, a million murder crime documentaries or whatever. And they tell you, right, “this is the fuckin, happy knife killer,” they situate you, all the talking heads, I love it, I just sink right into it. And I can’t tell you anything about any of them now, they’re just gone.
CF: Mhm, yeah.
AJ: I guess a sort of vague theory of art I would suggest, and I’m not trying to like, be pretentious about the podcast, although I am very pretentious about the podcast, I think that the downside between easy entry, instant comfort, is that it doesn’t really stick. And the thing we do is always about, we’re anti-expertise, we’re anti-certainty, and so in a certain way we’re trying to treat the audience like they were just us, which is why we didn’t try to emphasize ourselves. But the flip side of that is that, like, you know, it’s hard to get into but I think it’s more likely to stay with you if you feel like an equal participant.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: You know what I’m saying? You remember it better, it matters more.
CF: And that like, the experience you describe of watching the true crime show, that’s how a lot of things are, like, they lay it out very plainly. That’s the experience I have of like, a lot of contemporary nonfiction writing. It’s like, the information’s fine, and like, well organized, I guess, and like, it’s informative and I can tell they did research, but like, it makes me feel nothing in the way that like, I read older works that are probably like, not as factual, but they like, make more of an impression on me. That’s another thing I wanted to ask you, is like, how like, consciously do you feel like the project is a literary one, and what would that mean? Cuz I don’t know exactly what that means but it’s a kind of distinction I make with writing like that.
AJ: It’s funny, I have a problem with contemporary nonfiction in the sense of like, um…if it’s like, flowing, if it’s like, popular, I always find myself like, “how do you know this, do we know this for sure.” I always have like, follow up questions, I always wanna like, know…I just don’t feel like there’s enough uncertainty in a lot of the nonfiction writing. It feels, I don’t know how to say it, it feels like, diluted in some way.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: Or simplified. But not like I’m craving academic writing that has like…cuz if you give me certain kinds of academic writing that does cover sources extensively, I’m like, this isn’t human.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: In that way, what am I seeking? I guess what it is is to connect. I don’t just want information. I want to sort of connect with the relationship the person giving me the information has with the information. But I don’t like documentaries where the documentarian is like, “I’ve always been curious about…” Like who fucking cares about you, just talk about the thing.
CF: Right.
AJ: So those are three distinct objections in the nonfiction space that I have a problem with. I don’t like it being too smooth, no uncertainty, no sense of sources, no sense of doubts. I don’t like hyperacademic, like, this is what every concern is. And I don’t like overly personalized presentations of information.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: So like, okay. What does that leave. What I always wanted, I wanted my friend to tell me about it. My friend who did the academic work to tell me about it, I didn’t care about the smoothness necessarily, but I also didn’t want it to be about them. If my friend Doug is telling me an anecdote but it keeps being about him, I’m like, “Alright Doug, can we get…” That was always the thing. To me, our process in terms of recording was not particularly literary, but as we edited it, you could take really organic conversations that felt like life, and if you worked hard enough, it could start to feel literary. Your conversations with your friends are amazing and sort of beautiful, but messy and all over the place. But stitching those moments together it could be sort of amazing. That’s I think, the idea of selecting and presenting them…
CF: Yeah.
AJ: …is where….you know what I mean?
CF: Yeah, and I think one way I, one thing I think about a lot with nonfiction is, like you say, I don’t want the presentation to be overly personal, and I don’t want it to be….what I’m trying to say is, like, I feel like what’s important is establishing a viewpoint, and like, a position, and that’s how you gather like, the author’s, I dunno about “authority” necessarily but, if you want them to be your friend that’s how you can tell….um, but if you’re too busy making the caveats with everything, or like, trying establish the information too slickly, it’s just going to slide through, so I think that’s what’s more literary maybe is you use rhetoric rather than like….the rhetoric is interesting in the podcasting form because you can use lacunae and like, aural flourishes.
AJ: I’m in these book groups and like, it’s funny because you’re dealing with adults who aren’t in school talking about a book, and no one really knows the rules, and the degree to which I think you can, the right kind of anecdote about being like, “this reminds me of a break up I had.” Especially if the passage in question you’re talking about isn’t about a break up. If you can just be like, “this vibe” or whatever, and you can tell a personal thing that like, opens it up in the right way? Like, really what you wanna do is break the boring paradigms we have for interacting with stuff, so you can get somewhere sort of fresh. I dunno, someone once told me when I was young and in school or whatever that if you don’t know what’s going on in a discussion, then you can always ask, “I’m sorry, I’ve lost track of what’s at stake?”
CF: [laughs]
AJ: And I feel like that’s great sort of advice for academic class situations, but it’s actually advice I try to take everywhere. Like, “what’s interesting, what’s at stake?” Isn’t that what rules the day in some way? And you get cheated of that with certain kind of predigested audio things.
CF: Yeah it’s just noise, it just fills the air.
AJ: What’s actually at stake is always interesting. I am firmly convinced that what’s interesting to somebody else, if explained honestly, will be interesting to me.
CF: Which, I mean, you were saying that’s something you feel like you’re good at.
AJ: That is something I’m good at.
CF: I also feel like you are good at like, being ironic though. Like you can sell positions you don’t agree with, I think, pretty well.
AJ: Yeah.
CF: Do you feel like having attorneys for parents uh, fucked you up.
AJ: [laughs] Uh, having attorneys for parents definitely fucked me up. Um yeah, 100%. Sometimes in a conversation, to get to the best place, it can be helpful to be briefly wrong.
CF: Yeah, definitely.
AJ: So that other people can be right, and like, I feel like there’s a whole zone there that can be helpful. I think I am weird in that I’m pretty good at that. I can pull you out by being sarcastic, or just straight up faking it and being wrong, or just authentically being wrong and quickly realizing it. Those are three different modes.
CF: There’s like, a kind of intelligence where like, where you’re comfortable being dumb. Where like, you don’t feel like being wrong or saying something stupid…
AJ: 100%
CF: …like, reflects on, so yeah I understand what you’re saying.
AJ: My greatest strength is, probably, is that I don’t think it’s possible for me to say something that like, genuinely undercuts me. Intellectually, emotionally, what I bring to the table I don’t think I can undo by being wrong. My greatest like, weakness is, is that, sometimes I’m not sure, if I’ve convinced everyone else, that I believe the thing.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: You know what I mean? That there’s a flipside, that’s just like…do you know that feeling of like, you’ve made an argument for something and it’s accepted and you’re like “sssst,” you wanna like, walk it back, like “tssss yeah but, I dunno, just, don’t accept it, because I sort of maybe was looking for more push back.”
CF: Yeah.
AJ: This has been a big concern of mine lately is like, how socially concerned I am. If I know where…if I have a sense of where I’m trying to get, I have all kinds of moves to get there, but if I’m not sure, I’m like, “fuck, did I even mean that?”
CF: I mean, you and I are similar in that way, and in a lot of ways.
AJ: We are very similar. Your parents are not attorneys but there is some dynamic similar about…
CF: I mean, divorced parents…
AJ: Divorced parents.
CF: …kind of promote that, you have to navigate different spheres and figure out how to articulate and incorporate like maybe, animosity towards other people.
AJ: We both have pretty…inflexible dads.
CF: Uh huh, yeah.
AJ: Who have very different…I mean, do you see us as, like, to what extent do you think each of has the personality we do because of our dads. Like, it’s not a coincidence right?
CF: No, no.
AJ: Like my dad is very black-and-white and I am obsessed with shades of grey.
CF: I mean for me, part of it is that my dad’s very black-and-white, but like, he believes psychotic things that like, as I got older, I was like, “oh, that’s psychotic.” So I had to l learn how to like, figure out, like, how to differentiate what I thought was normal from what seemed more logical or, you know, less, you know, fascist, not to put too fine a point on it.
AJ: Right.
CF: So yeah that’s definitely, the navigating it. I dunno, it’s like, I’m weird because I don’t feel like I like, rebelled, really, until I got older, and I still feel like…but when I was younger I was not, I was a very “good” kid.
AJ: If you had a real fascist dad, you didn’t like, rebel.
CF: [laughs]
AJ: Like, I don’t know if people understand what fascism is, but like.
CF: [laughing]
AJ: If you were like yelling at your dad like, “fuck you!” at like, thirteen, you didn’t have a fascist dad.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: I promise. Yeah no, it took a lot of work to rebel. For me it’s weird, because like, now, well, one, I think about, we both have dads that have authoritarian streaks that freak us out, but also our parents are divorced, so you get the chance to spot that.
CF: Yeah, right.
AJ: If mom was on board, you’d just be a little fascist, right?
CF: Yeah, yeah.
AJ: Or often, isn’t this often what happens, or whatever? For me, what’s weird is when I finally was old enough to understand what’s fucked up, it’s funny now when my dad says totally reasonable stuff that I agree with. It like, throws me off.
CF: Me too, yeah.
AJ: I’m like, “whoaaaa.”
CF: It’s also funny that like, in some ways, like, my own distrust for like, the police, and for not trusting that the people who carry out the law are really going to do it honestly, is because my dad told me people don’t do that.
AJ: 100%, 100%.
CF: But like my dad isn’t like, my dad is like, a Boy Scout crazy follow the rules person, except for in his personal life, but so yeah, that freaks me out. When my dad gives me good advice I’m like, I always have to like, I make a joke all the time that’s like, “yeah I mean that’s good advice my dad gave me, but because my dad gave it to me I can’t follow it, no matter how good it is.” [laughs]
AJ: Dude, my dad, my dad was never like, literally a police officer. But he was a prosecutor for all these years before he became a defense attorney. I saw him recently and was asking questions about, you know, his experience. But he’s old, he should, if he had like, handled his life right, I feel like he would be retiring, but he’s like, not and he’s like, tired, and I’m like, asking him questions. And he, I swear to god, without any irony at all, like, looked at me and was just like, “I can’t really say this to too many people, but you know, there’s a lot of good arguments for defunding the police.”
CF: [laughs]
AJ: This dude is so tired of the criminal justice system and how fucked up the cops are that he’s like, literally saying to me there are a lot of good arguments to defund the police. Like the last time I saw him I was like, thinking about wearing my “DEFUND THE POLICE” t-shirt just to fuck with him.
CF: Right, right.
AJ: But I didn’t because I’m like a mature person now, but I was just looking at him like, “yeah, there are!” Like, “is he kidding?!” what is happening? I’m just sitting there, like, we’re in a Panera, and I’m like “what the fuck is happening?”
CF: Yeah, yeah.
AJ: Like “Oh, are there? Are there?” Like, “Have you met me, dude?” Yeah, I dunno, that’s a very funny…
CF: You didn’t talk to your dad for a long time.
AJ: Yeah twelve, twelve years.
CF: That’s a long time. I, you know, I, perfectly honest, sometimes I feel like I’m a coward because I do talk to my dad.
AJ: I didn’t, I didn’t make a like, there was no like, “fuck you” moment. It wasn’t like, a big principled thing. It was really genuinely just, um. I went to college, for the second time, and had a cell phone. I was busy, and he did something that bothered me. He basically gave me a Christmas present of a nonrefundable airline ticket to like, go on a trip during a time I was going to be working on a project. It was just like, your gift has a price tag. Like, I have a life.
CF: It’s a way of controlling what you do.
AJ: It’s, yeah, it felt like controlling or whatever, and it like stressed me out. I went on the trip or whatever, and when I got back, and he called me and I felt like he wanted me to grateful for the trip but I was actually stressed because I wanted to use that time, or whatever, I just didn’t answer the phone. And you know, after a few calls, I was like, “holy shit, he can’t call me without me knowing it was him.” Like my whole time growing up with a landline, no caller ID, you just answered the phone. At that moment I was realizing, I don’t have to answer the phone. So I would say, I dunno, for the first month, two months, three months, I was just avoiding his calls in like, a slacker way. And then eventually I just ended up being like, “no, but, why do I have to answer his calls?” Like, I know there are all kinds of ancient authorities that are like, “children owe their parents blah blah blah.”
CF: Sure.
AJ: And I just didn’t feel that. You know what I mean?
CF: Yeah.
AJ: So for a long time I was just basically unreachable. And some of the things he did to sort of try to get in touch, like reached out to my friend, he had things he had to say, that I didn’t like. And there was like, one or two times that I tried to let him back in in like, a limited way, and he wouldn’t accept that, and then I was like, done. It was, I’ll be honest, it felt fucked up. I was embarrassed that that’s how I was handling it. I was constantly afraid that he would die, or one of my siblings would die, and it would be like, all this awkwardness. But when the time finally came years later where I like, on my terms, I came back, everything was different.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: Like, he just, 100%, somebody that I felt like, dominated by who made me feel like I couldn’t be who I was, when I came back, he, we were equals.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: I wouldn’t reco…it’s a path not to be recommended too strongly, but for me, it was really the only way I could have any kind of relationship with my dad. Because now, I feel like I am who I am with him. We don’t like, get along necessarily, but the way it was growing up, I just didn’t feel like I had any sort of space to be me, and I didn’t know how to change patterns that started since I was like, three or four. I came back, and I felt like, yeah, if he pushed me, then he knew that I could just be gone. And that made a big difference. He needed that check, and I need that like, step up. It was twelve, it was twelve years.
CF: That’s a long time.
AJ: [laughs] It’s a long, it’s long, long time. Well it was, and, yeah, it’s not to be recommended too strongly. Like, it’s not necessarily the thing to do, but now when we talk…it’s like, going to war so that the peace can be better, or something.
CF: Yeah, that makes sense to me. Except I’m not great about arguing with my dad, but he’s just…he’s hard to argue with.
AJ: Yeah.
CF: I’ve been, and it’s because, it’s the reason I’ve been, you know, let myself be walked over by narcissists for a long time in my life, so.
AJ: I don’t know how to…if I don’t…like, I dunno, let me see if I can say this right. Like…if I set up the rules early for myself in a dynamic, I will keep being like, who I want to be.
CF: Yeah, right.
AJ: But dude, if I’m like, overwhelmed for two days, I don’t know how to get back.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: I don’t know, I like, don’t, do you know what I’m saying? I don’t know how to be me. I don’t know how to redefine the terms sometimes, and like, yeah. So with my dad there were just like, years and years of just feeling like, who I was wasn’t acceptable, but to this day, if I’m, the only way I know how to deal with like, being walked over if I’ve started to let it, is I just have to bounce, I have to be like [snaps]. I have to be cold as shit, calm, it’s the only healthy vibe for me. I don’t know how you fix, there are people I think who can like, constructively work through fucked up dynamics and get to a healthier place. I don’t really know how to do that.
CF: Yeah, I mean, me neither. I don’t have the greatest boundaries. But, the relationships that are the best for me are the ones that I do that, where I like, establish from the outset, you know, where I am in it, and what I’m doing.
AJ: Mhm.
CF: Can’t be recommended enough.
AJ: Yeah, early in class, like if you go to class as a student, talk. Raise your hand, and talk. Regardless of whether you have good ideas or not, because it gets harder to talk. Talk.
CF: My newsletter is big with students so this advice will be helpful. [laughs]
AJ: I only know how to talk to students in a certain way.
CF: You’ve never been a teacher though, have you?
AJ: I have not, no.
CF: But you’ve been coaching basketball.
AJ: No, I’ve been reffing basketball.
CF: Reffing basketball, that’s right. Right, you’re a “basketball cop,” that’s right.
AJ: I’m a basketball cop. Like coaching has lots of appeal but yeah. I think being a teacher or coach, you have a huge amount of responsibility, because you like, really matter…I love being, like, working at a bookstore, or like working at a library, and getting to have a one-off interaction with somebody who’s interested in something.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: And just be like, “Got you.” You know what I mean? But like, Monday through Friday bro? I can’t even, like…coaching me five days a week.
CF: Yeah.
AJ: Like, the team’s disappointed.
CF: [laughs]
AJ: I definitely can’t take a bunch of kids. Or maybe that’s undercutting and bullshit, but like, to some extent. Reffing is funny because, uh, yeah you’re a basketball cop, but you don’t bear any long term responsibility. Like you’re done, you’re gone afterwards. You can try to be good to the people. You can like, say stuff that’s helpful to like, younger kids or whatever, but at the end of the day, fuck it, I’m gone. Which I like.
CF: Yeah, me too.
AJ: I think I could be a great teacher, but, uh, it’s too long.
CF: [laughs]
AJ: It just seems too long a thing. And like, year after year…
CF: Yeah.
AJ: I just don’t get it.
CF: And you never wanted to be like, an academic?
AJ: No. I mean, no, no, not really. Almost all my friends went to grad school to varying degrees, and the people who succeeded, it seemed like their love of the thing was sort of cut out of them, and the people that didn’t, seemed like they were sort of abused by academia. I was able to figure out like, fairly quickly that like, yeah…like, just to be very careful about professionalizing stuff you love. It’s insane to go into academia if you don’t really love the stuff, but it’s kind of insane to go in if you do love the stuff, you know?
CF: Yeah.
AJ: Everybody I know who like, got out of academia, I was proud of. Seemed like a healthy…like, the shit seemed fucked up. I mean even just, like, I dropped out of the first place I went to undergrad.
CF: Right.
AJ: I was like, this is fucked up. I happened to go to weird school that worked for me, but the general system, all of higher education seems to be pretty poisoned to me.
CF: Yeah, and, yeah, I don’t know that’s it’s always, like it seemed at one point maybe to be interested in helping people but yeah, right now, yeah. But, you know, at some point we’re going to have to stop recording this, cuz I have a lot to type up, but.
AJ: You don’t have to type all this, you can cut.
CF: Oh yeah sure, but I do have to transcribe. But you know, “don’t professionalize the thing you love” is a very Cody thing to end on, so we’ll end it there.
AJ: We’ll end it there, sorry man, I feel like I talked a lot.
CF: I’m just going to stop recording.