Speaker 1: The secret is, you know, we have rhetoric, we have politics,
we have economy, mathematics, we have all these ways of
knowing and of seeing, and we have science. But art
is actually underneath it all. There's the making of space,
that is architecture. There's the making of the story and
the making of the image, and those three they are
the secret binding for everything else. Everything else exists within
that world. And it's like almost like an esoteric secret.
That is that if you can control the story, not control,
if you can tell the story, then you're actually changing
the way people see and think about the world before
they have any opinion. This is Jonathan Pegel, Welcome to
the symbolic World. About a month and a half ago,
I went to Ralston College where we had a wonderful
roundtable discussion about meaning about art, about the future of culture.
And in that time I had an amazing discussion with
Greg Hurwitz. As you know, Greg Hurwitz is a best
selling author, but he's also become a friend of mine
and we've started to collaborate on some interesting projects. So
in this discussion, we talk about what it means to
be an artist in our different spheres, what it means
to work together, and also giving advice to young people
who are trying to figure out what they want to
do now. And I also wanted to tell people that
Ralson College is such an amazing place if you are
young and you are kind of trying to figure out
what to do. They offer some amazing opportunities. They also
offer great scholarships. You can go there for a year,
You can learn Greek in ways that is just astounding,
and you can also get a really powerful general culture
with some of the most amazing professors. And so I
would suggest that you look into it. In theory, the
date is already passed to sign up for Ralston, but
they told me that for very high quality people they
would be willing to reconsider. And so now's the time
to take a chance if you're interested in preserving our
culture and a civilization. And so in the meantime, please
enjoy this conversation with Greg Hurwitz.
Speaker 2: Welcome everybody.
Speaker 3: This is a conversation with Jonathan Pajo and Greg Hurwitz,
who are very excited to have here with us at
Ralston College. We have been holding career and life conversations
for the last couple of terms here at Ralston in
the effort to connect students with opportunities that they might
be interested in pursuing post studying at Ralston. The humanities
education is ideally preparation for a beautiful life story, a
well lived life, and in many directions that can take us.
We have had many experts and guests who are here
to tell us what they've done with their humanistic pursuits.
So with that, I would love to introduce President doctor
Stephen Blackwood to introduce us to our guests.
Speaker 4: So now it's such a great pleasure to be able
to participate in these seminars, which I think is Lidia
just said. So well, you know, there's a lot of
questions that people who study the liberal arts and humanities
often get cynical or skeptical, or at least somewhat eight
orant or unknowing ones that lead something like what are
you going to do with that? And it's often not
a mean spirited question, because after all, we'll find a
way through life and of course put a roof over
our heads and all that, all that kind of necessary stuff.
But at the end of the day, I think we
can argue very powerfully that there's actually nothing more useful
and that which enables you to live the one life
you have in a way that you can make it
count that to you, it is meaningful. And so these
career life conversations on Fridays, which are to those listening
who may follow us online entirely offsome to ustudent, are
really part of helping us think about how we navigate life.
You know, in the classroom we're often reading ariosol or Dante,
we're parsing our Greek and all that kind of stuff,
and all those things. Of course, we're down and resound
in all kinds of ways in our lives, but in
the classroom we're not necessarily asking the question about, well,
how do I get a job, or how do I
present myself the world? Or how do I think about
the relationships in the healthiest, most positive and important way,
and how do I navigate my way through questions of
religion and all those kinds of things. And so these
career life conversations are meant to be an opportunity to
kind of book I would open and ask anything that's
you as a human being at this point in time.
The questions that are you're asking that you can ask those,
And it really is for me just an enormous pleasure
to have Greg Herwitz and Jonathan Pagot here. They are
friends of the college. They've both been here multiple times before.
They both addressed our students on to great acclaim and
much adored in the past a number of times. They're
also friends of each other. And one of the reasons
I was it may I'll be the most obvious thing
to bring an acclaimed a writer and thriller novelist and
comic book writer and screenwriter and all things. Greg has
been together with this champion of the world of symbolism
and theology. And yet at the same time they are
in such powerful ways as I think their friendship attempts
thinking about the same or similar questions and the stakes thereof.
So with that said, I'm just going to what I
thought would be the most fun, would just be to
let the two of them engage in a conversation with
all of you. Of course, we have formally a title
of this why we tell Stories? I think that is
the formal title of this session that we don't need
to say at confined to that already limitless question. We
can go in any other directions, but you should feel
free at any moment to jump in with the question
that you'd most like to ask one or the other
of both of these.
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: How do we start? I'm thinking one of the things
we could talk about, and it's gonna be a question
even to find out is I have to agree with
the ways even presented it in some ways. My friendship
with Greg is a very surprising thing that's happened in
the past few years. It's so surprising that my wife
at the beginning was like, what is this guy like? You?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: What is it like? It doesn't make sense that this
Hollywood you know, kind of a successful writer. Why did
he want to be friends with you? It doesn't make
any sense. He's like he must be some kind of
CIA agent or something like, yeah, I do something. And
so maybe we could ask the question I would ask
is why do we like each other? Like? What is
it about? I can start because you go first, and
so I think that you know at first. For me, Greg,
he was involved in a lot of things that I
was really interested as a teenager, Like when I was young,
he was writing comics. He was kind of in that world,
the world that I had kind of set aside for
a long time, but that he was deeply involved, and
I was so curious to find out about this guy,
like he's writing Batman like that was like my childhood hero.
That's how it started. But then I quickly realized that
he had like a natural insight about exactly about storytelling.
And because of that kind of natural insight about human nature,
that that really, you know, woke me. Yeah, so you
know he has you know, you hear him talking about
he even he perceives you. Guys don't know, but he's
watching all of you. He can kind of perceive things
in very subtle ways, and that insight to me was
really refreshing and for me at least, it started there
and then just spending time together at some point realizing
that we're in such different camps, but for some reason,
there are these places where it bridges. Some of it
is storytelling, some of some of it I think is
just a kind of intuition. And so that's my that
would be the beginning of that. I don't know what
your insight on that is.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, that's very kind. I mean, it's a
little bit awkward now for me to confess that actually
ms CIA agent and my interest in you is being
part of the Christian nationalist movie.
Speaker 6: There you go.
Speaker 2: Look for me.
Speaker 7: I think, hello, friends, this is Richard Rowland, and I
am inviting you to join me for my new symbolic
world course, Tolkien and Universal History. And this course we're
going to go over the deep mythological and universal history
roots of Tolkien's Legendarium and see how Tolkien sort of
shows us a blueprint for reclaiming a legendary mythical Christian
framework for storytelling, and in fact, we're going to even
do some storytelling of our own. This is a five
week course. It starts on March the third. We had
to postpone it a week, which means there's a little
more time for you to sign up, and I hope
to see you there.
Speaker 2: I'm very much governed by the instinct for what is
maximumly curious and shiny and engaging for me. So everything
I did, like undergraduate, I studied English and psychology, like
I only went into arenas that were maximumly compelling. And
the same thing for me is true for friendships. And
friendships are a kind of attraction. And I think that
the first level that I connected with you is you're
a true artist. And even if your art is something
that in so way seems on an opposite pole of
what I do, like you're doing, like these beautiful carvings
that are that the symbology is foremost, and they're iconic
and archetypal and deeply resonant from symbol down. And you know,
when I'm writing, I'm writing everything has to grow up
from specifics. I can't write a novel that's good if
I think I'm writing a novel about the triumph of
the human spirit. Everything I think about is what's a
line of dialogue? What's an action scene? What's a way
that some little detail is illuminating about character? Is there
somebody on the subway across from my character who you know,
has a worn pair of black loafers filled in with
magic marker because they can't afford to buy new shoes,
like what are It's all comes from the specifics and
the details. And I'm much more geared towards words, and
you're obviously geared. You're you're immensely and mensely visual. And
so the first thing was in my conversations with you,
it was just evident that there was nothing about you
that was dogmatic or propagandistic or rigidly ossified, ideological. You're
sort of a living, breathing embodiment of what it is
to be an artist, and that is suffused with your
work and your belief system. And I didn't really have Orthodoxy.
I'm from a very let's just say, a much more liberal,
secular Jewish background. Initially my parents sent me to Jesuit
high school. So I have a lot of affinity for Catholics.
I have a lot of friends who are Evangelicals, but
I didn't know a lot about the Orthodox Church, and
so I was captivated by you. Like meeting you is
sort of like, you know, it's like winning the lottery
the first time you buy a ticket in terms of
a point of ingress for that field, because there's so
much in it that is so it's such a muscular
belief system, and there's so much darkness that's incorporated, and
there's so much nuance and there's so much texture. I
think the way that that informs your thinking and your
grounding and then your art and the reasons why you
do things is very, very solid. And I think that
solidity is something is something that you know, we talk
all the time and overuse the word fractal but it's true,
like you have, your artistic integrity is aligned by dint
of what you do with your belief and your faith
and your character. And in a lot of ways, you know,
if if all people are hypocritical in certain regards, because
we're humans, you have the least aspect of that in
your persona and your dealings. And so you know, I
always say so Jordan Peterson, I go back quite a
long way. Who's my thesis advisor when I was an undergraduate,
So I've known him a very long time. But I've
said to him before, I say, Pago is a holy person.
It's so annoying, you know, and when there's arguments or disputes,
you there's just a real solidity, and I think in
a lot of ways, I'm more exploratory, and you're very
grounded in what you think and everything's really bolted down
to the earth. And so you know, we've been working
on a project together recently, and it's been that's been
captivating to work on a narrative project because it's sort
of like meeting in the middle from these two sides.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's what's so fascinating too, is
that so Greg and I I think it was last year,
and I remember how the idea started. We kind of
had this idea that we could because that I think,
I really believe that nobody has been able to create
a narrative version of Genesis. Like no one has ever
been able to do it. It's always extremely cringey and
you know, tacky, and you see to naked people in
the garden and you're just like, what is this? This
is not possible. And so we kind of gave ourselves
this challenge to dramatize Genesis, and we started just exchanging
and working together, and I was really surprised. I was
curious to see how that would go. But it's as
if it just went as well as you could imagine,
Like everything just kind of flow together, and we when
we finally were sitting in the same room, everything was
just coming together in ways that was just was astounding,
And I think we cracked it, like I think we actually,
I think we actually were able to do it to
tell the story of the Fall and of creation and
of all of this in a way that is actually
narratively compelling. And I think it has to do. It
does have to do in some ways like in that
because I would the way that Greg writes. He would
be like he has this thing does with his hands.
He's like reaching, He's like grasping. Yeah, you do this
thing like You're like you're like grasping, You're like and
then and then you have this like image You're like
like a finger with paint. Do you remember that. He's
like you see this image and it's like where is
this coming from? Like what is this? And then he
kind of he kind of scratching at it and then
when it comes together, you're like, oh, yeah, that makes
total sense. But it's like you're really coming at it
from the ground up in that sense, like I it's
true that I'm more top down. I see the structure
and like this is how it should be. But that
is also can be kind of cold right into in
terms of you wanted to have something that's narratively compelling,
and you have like this kind of almost like really
think you're imagining you know, like dirt and and the
you know, the leaves hitting their legs and you have
this kind of really ground up approach.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, part of what we want to
do is really show this tell the story and way
that's humanizing, tell the story in a way that's psychological. So,
what's it really like if you've never felt pain the
first time you feel pain?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: How angry is Adam at Eve given his sort of
cringey blame of her for being the cause of his
downfall the first night that they're alone. What happens the
first time she offers him an apple? In the fallen world?
What happens the first time you see your own blood
if you've never seen blood? And how does that insurmountable trauma?
It's like one of the greatest traumas that's imaginable?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: How do you tell that as a story of intergenerational
trauma that gets passed on to canaan Abel?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And then Seth And then there's this there's a flow
for how this moves that. If it's in the psychological,
then we feel like we're on narrative pacing and narrative footing.
And I think part of this is when I talked
about you being an artist is sort of one of
the first things that I was drawn to. This kind
of collaboration. Wouldn't if there was ideology or dogma or
ego where best idea doesn't win, right, or all those things.
Or if you're things are really graspy. I've had a
couple of movies made and some TV, and one of
the things that you realize is that production, when you
get to production or creative collaboration, it's like it's like
a marriage. It's either getting better or worse. It's never stable.
And if you have the right tempo and you set
the right value structure, which is the best idea, wins
and the project is elevated above individual needs or ego,
right like the actors who always pull you aside like
I just think I need some more lines here, and
like you're servicing their ego all the time. If you
get those alignments or correct what happens is it can
elevate exponentially. Everything feels like a double trampoline bounce of
creative exaltation. And when it goes wrong, you know, and
you're the screenwriter, then all of a sudden, you feel
like you're the drunk asshole behind a bar at four
in the morning with like a broken bottle, fending people
off to protect your script. It's like going to shit
and there's no it's going one way or the other.
And I feel like there was this alignment we had
where there's not a lot of jousting and other stuff.
That's the noise, right, So I have these images and
there's sometimes where Jonathan would be like, no, that doesn't
work at all, Like that's completely sacrilegious and we'll fend
everyone in the Orthodox Church. I'm like, okay, sorry, we'll
just leave that up. But you know, but there's a
there's a working within it where you want to grab
the thing and have it kind of shiney, and so
that interplay where there's not a fence, there's only sort
of artistic integrity being brought to this. It's that's what
you're sort of looking for. And in a way, it's
a microcosm of what of what you want in your lives.
Is you pursue whatever fields you pursue, whatever relationships you pursue,
whatever careers you pursue. You want to be pursuing the
thing that sets you most fully in your in your discipline,
in your art, in your craft, and those crafts have
different sets of ethics that have to hold above all else.
You know. One of the things we've seen is this
subversion to individual to the political, where it's like I'm
not a church, I'm really pro politics. I'm not a school.
I'm really ideological, right, I'm not a writer who entertains
I need to create propaganda. And you have to adhere
to the ethic of the of the individual crafts that
you're doing. And that's a meeting place, and so that's
something that you learn and uphold and then that way
and form. Anything that you dig into all the way
contains the whole secret of the universe, like anything that
you apply to You can be a jeweler, you could
be a veterinarian, you can be a computer scientist, you
can be an artist, you can be a teacher. If
you give your full devoted focus to something and you
go all the way down and you watch what its
reach is, it contains the same information, right. And then
I think part of the aim is do you embody
or go close towards the top of one dominant hierarchy
of achievement and meaning, right, And then if you get another,
all of a sudden, you start to have almost like
a pattern recognition that seems preternatural. You can anticipate things
it had, and then you can add more things along
the way. And I think that if our meeting places
for a place that's artistically pure. It also means you're
very rounded and lined out and scored away in your
overall belief system and your understanding of your place in
the world, and so we can create together then because
you're not bringing in a bunch of friction and static
from other things that you have a need to feed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. I think you've brought a
lot of interesting insights. You know. One of the things
that I realized while you were speaking is when you're
doing the when you're doing the right thing, there always
has to be the right balance of difficult and easy,
in the sense that when something is so can I
say this like when something I imagine this is something
you're going through because zony Greek is obviously not easy,
but there's a sense in which you're putting in effort.
But there's also a flow, like a natural flow that
you fall into and it carries you through, and what
you end up with is like joy. You end up
with joy and more ennery and more possibility. And I
think that that a lot of that has to do
with disposition. Like what you're saying, basically, you just have
to be disposed in the right way and you have
to be attentive to what's happening. And so, you know,
I think that that's also one of the thing that was
happening with us and some wee are coming from two
completely different, completely different worlds, but we are attentive to
the other person, attentive to what's happening, kind of open to,
like you said, not holding on to ego, not trying
to not trying to to make sure that this one
thing fits in. And then we work through it and
it's like it's almost like you're just going downstream, almost right.
It's just it's just kind of carrying you through. And
I think that all the things that I've been involved
in that have been successful have have been like that,
where it's it's hard, like you might maybe you're poor,
maybe you still struggle, you're trying to make things fit together,
but there's something that's like that's just carrying you and
it's and it has and it produces more joy at
the end. It's even though even though it's it's difficult.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't we talked about this a little
bit last night. I don't know any writers who are successful,
whether it's novelist or screenwriters where the writing isn't a compulsion.
It's almost like it's a good illness, right, And part
of what you're striving for in your varied endeavors is
to figure out the thing that you're compelled to do,
to figure out the thing that and you get. And
it doesn't mean that it's always this way and it's
magical and the heavens open up and the muse is,
you know, bleeding on a trumpet. But for the most part,
when you're doing what you're meant to do, you want
to feel compelled. And when I'm writing, well, it's harder
for me to not write than to write. And whatever
that thing is for you, that's the damon that you
want to pursue and follow. You want to follow a
source of a compulsion that you have to do something
and that you have to know more about it and
you have to get better at it. And that's true
in any field.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. The craftsman. You know, there's
a saying that you can't pull the craftsman away from
his craft. That it's actually difficult, you know, because the
person like when I'm I'm not carving a lot of
icons now, but when I was carving icons, you know,
it's like, you know, it's five o'clock and I need
to go back. I need to go back to my family.
But just just another ten, just another, just another and
you're just you're just like, you know, this is opening up,
and this is doing that, and and like that feeling
is is Obviously you do have to stop and go,
you know, and do the other things, but that sense
of like, no, you're just being carried is really important.
Speaker 2: My wife and daughter have something. When I say it'll
be ten minutes, they'll go your ten minutes or my
ten minutes. Right with work. Yeah, it's it's really interesting
as you're as you're trying to kind of figure out
your way to that you can see which things shine
and which thing's call to you. I mean, the one
of the things that I think is very important and
it's it's it's highly relevant to Ralston. None of you
are getting degrees, like you'd all be way better off
going to community college and getting a degree in graphic
design if you're worried about employment right or immediate easy
employment after a degree. But one of the things that
you're doing is you're not being trained for that. You're
being trained for being artists. And entrepreneurs and philosophers and
leaders and soldiers and you know, innovators. And there's such
a temptation. When I go on book tour, I have
a lot of people come up to me and say, yeah,
I really want to be a novelist. You know, I
want to be a novelist. But you know who could
do that with money? I had to make a living, right,
So I've been an accountant for you know, thirty years.
But I'm going to retire and then, you know, then
I'm going to really do it because I had a family.
And how are you supposed to do it? And I
always think, like you, how do you exist in the
world that you have a notion that all of your
enthusiasm and all of the youthful drive that you have
early you can just pause that and do something else
for thirty years and then just pick it up again
as if you haven't been altered. And so part of
what's happening with you. And there's an environment around Ralston
that is that is truly I think magical. There's an
environment here, there's a quality of people here. We were
sitting down and I said to Jonathan, I said, everyone
the Ralston student is so incredibly varied, but there's a
sort of look still right for this is the third
class that I've met that or you know, second that
you just see there's like an energy around it. And
part of it is you have to be the keeper
of that, you know. I still remember the guy in
a bar my senior year, The Bow and Arrow was
like the local kind of shitty bar at my college,
and he was back for graduate week. He said, you know,
what do you want to do when you graduate?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: I said, what I really want to do is be
a novelist. Well, keep your day job, right, there's so
much of this sneering. You'll join me in the real
world soon enough, you know. And part of it is
is you want to shelter the enthusiasm that you have
right now, like a pilot light. You want to shelter that,
and you want to hold it, and you don't want
to worry too much about if you put your faith
in pursuing the thing that's of interest to you. Obviously
you're here, so you're exceptional in a bunch of ways
that don't make a whole lot of sense, probably because
that's the selection process, and you want to be able
to shelter that as you move and continue to grow
that and not take measures that are expedient and say, well,
you know, but I need And that doesn't mean you
don't live in the real world. You don't have to
figure it out. You don't need to pay rent, you
don't need to get jobs and take care of who
you need to take care of and see your responsibilities.
But that thing is so important. It's the most important
thing that you can do, is to shelter that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally agree. The truth is I probably shouldn't
say this, but the truth is that our world right
now is the best world possible in which to be poor.
It's actually like, it's not that it's not that bad
to be poor, because there's everything is there to prevent
you from starving, which is pretty much all you need.
You just need to not starve and make sure that
like that you don't have rain falling on your head.
If you can figure that out, then then the world
the world is open, you know. And every time someone
asked me about becoming an artist, that's one of the
first questions I asked them, is like, are you willing
to be poor? And it doesn't mean that you will
be but you have to be willing to and that's okay.
And it's hard because there's pressure, Like there's pressure from
your family, there's pressure for all around, you know, people saying, well,
you're not being responsible, you're not doing the right thing.
Forget that, Like, actually, you just have to you have
to ignore that. If you're healthy, you know, somewhat healthy,
and you're eating and you're staying, you have a roof
at least when you're like in your twenties, you're good.
That's good to go. And you have and you have
the time now and the space to develop the big
questions that you have, because that for some people it
doesn't but for a lot of people, as you get older,
that space runs out like that, it runs out. The
capacity to ask the big question just kind of gets
taken up by the worries of the world.
Speaker 2: You know, you have to practice it for atrophies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like you said, you meet people all the
time that are exactly the way that you said. They
come up to you and they said, I, when I
was in my twenties, I wanted to be an artist,
but now I'm so and so and it's just like
gray in their eyes, like a drab thing, and I
keep thinking, well, why didn't you just do it? Like what, well,
you know, you got to pay the bills, you got
to do that. I would say, I don't know, but
I think Greg is right in seeing that the fact
that you're even here shows that you already understand some
of that, you know. And the thing, the weirdest thing
about it is all the people that all the people
that will criticize you. And I've experienced this myself. All
the people that criticized my family when we were like
dirt poor with three kids, like just barely making making it.
You know, they forgot that. Now they forgot that that's
how they saw me now, and and now they're just like,
oh wow, it's so great. You know you're successful with
like yeah, but you you know, you were totally like family,
even like you're totally judging us and having this kind
of disdain towards us, and now you're like this, it's
kind of funny. So it's like, don't worry about that stuff,
not too Yeah, it's not worth it.
Speaker 3: Can I jump in and ask a question? Why do
you too think you feel compelled to create stories, whether
that's through imagery or words. What is it if you
could put a word to it that defines or describes
that compulsion.
Speaker 2: Well, for me, part of it is the novels. The
only time I get to speak for four hundred pages
without being interrupted pot kettle. You know, I think it's
weird for me. It's almost like, you know, for those
of you have a habit of working out. You know,
when you don't work out, you just feel all plugged
up and not write in the world. If I'm not writing,
if I don't write properly, rough draft writing, I don't
feel good. It's almost like it's like the sun to
a plant. It's just a huge part of how I
express myself. And I always wrote. I mean, when I
was a kid, I loved reading. My parents didn't let
me watch television, and I read the entire young adult
section of our library. By the by fifth grade, I
was reading Stephen King and I thought, anybody who loves stories.
My sister is a fanatical reader. I thought anybody who
loved stories would want to write stories. I just thought,
because you know, we're in our own little little world,
or we're looking at through our own weird colitoscope. And
I was like, if you love stories, why wouldn't you
want to write stories? Isn't that the coolest thing anyone
could ever do. I remember asking my sister, who's now
a you know, clinical professor of pediatric astonrology, like when
are you going to start your book? When she was
in like seventh grade. She's like, I don't want to write.
I just like reading them, you know, you know there's
things that we like. So it was it's so weird.
It's so integral to who I am and how I
function and how I see the world and how I think.
I think in stories, I think in words. I've even
had really weird dreams when I was deep editing. I
had a dream one time that the dream was in
Microsoft Word and I was editing the dream, and then
and then I had I had another dream that was
a nightmare that I was walking through and something came out.
I was walking through a dark house and something came
out and scared me. And a jump scare is always
like the cheapest thing in movies, right, And so I thought, well,
this would actually be a lot scarier if I had
suspense first. So I like rewound the dream and had
like bloody footprints too, so that the tension mounted so
that when the scare happened, I was more scared. So
I think I'm just I'm very hardwired. It's like it's
like a calling for me.
Speaker 1: Really, I think that for me, you know, the secret
is this is I really believe this that we have.
Speaker 2: You know, we have.
Speaker 1: Rhetoric, we have politics, we have economy, mathematics, we have
all these these ways of knowing and of seeing, and
we have science. But underneath that there as a art
is actually underneath it all, which is that story making.
There's three I think there's the making of space, that
is architecture. There's the making of the story and the
making of the image, and those three they are the
secret binding for everything else. Everything else exists within that world.
And it's like almost like an esoteric secret that is
that if you can control the story, not control, if
you can tell the story, then you're actually changing the
way people see and think about the world before they
have any opinion. And so that's why fairy tales, that's
why I love fair tales so much. That's why I
love the Bible stories, That's why I love myth because
that's what those stories are there to do. And you know,
and there's a sense in which in the last few decades,
I would say that the story making element of our
society has been was colonized or was parasitized by ideological strains,
and that has an effect, like it actually changes the
way people see the world. People don't even realize that
they're seeing the world through these new stories, and so
it's exposing I hope you can see how important the
story is. That is that how you frame the world
in which you live. And now is the time to
tell stories again, right, it really is because everything is
shaking and everything is kind of in flux, and we
don't know what's going to happen, and it's kind of wild.
Anything's possible. But it also means that those that plant
the right stories now they will be the ones giving
their directions. And so can we be the ones that
tell stories that are true, that aren't captured, that aren't ideological,
but are true in the sense that they have the
most reality in it. And so I think that's why
I'm so fascinated by stories and image making. You know,
I can't be an architect, it's complicated, but like the
stories in the image making, you know, it's like I
just want to be involved because I know that now
is the is the moment.
Speaker 2: There's a tendency when things are moving a certain way,
and I think, like just to put a label on it,
let's call it increasing postmodernism. Right, to think that progress
is better than not progress. Number one, there's a value judgment,
but also that the right side of history is always
on the side of the way that momentum is going.
And obviously we're seeing that in a lot of cases
where that's gone too far into a kind of insanity.
And when I think about the way that storytelling has changed,
it ripples throughout all of the professions, across everything. So
you think just twentieth century. So you have The Sound
and the Fury by Faulkner, right, which is what's one
story that's told from four perspectives. One of them is
a retarded brother. There's different siblings in one family. You
have rasham On right, which is that the movie Krosawa movie,
where it's one story told from four perspectives. Cubism Right,
what's a nude look like to sending a staircase? It's
an image of a woman in sixteen different dimensions all
at once. You have three of relativity where all of
a sudden, science starts asking those questions. Even in psychology,
you have a shift in perspective of Freud sitting smoking
his pipe while the patient lays and stares up at
his own, you know, the abyss of his own unconscious
versus Rogers, who sits someone up and looks them in
the eye. There's a perspective shift that happens. And all
those things are very interesting and compelling. They're movements towards
examining and exploring different modes of perception. Right, And obviously
theologically you can talk about all the ways that happened.
But when they go too far, what happens is the
form begins to elevate over the function. Right, So all
of a sudden, it's what's the most fragmented something can be,
what's the most diabolical, disintegrated into parts? Right, Then you
get doatas poetry, you get urinals hanging on walls of
museums as works of ears. Right, you get the thing
that's sort of absurd, and it becomes an intellectual exercise
that's focused around it. And I think that that pendulum
swing has gone far enough into this direction that's so
sort of intellectually masturbatory that now there's going to be
a time for resetting and a bringing together again of
form and function in a way that the form has
to suit it. It's something can be a really cool trek.
Once we were talking about Paulack last night, Jackson Pollack.
Something can be amazing if somebody does it once or
innovative renew But if you keep moving in that direction,
what you have is a complete, shattered mosaic of different impulses,
all of which are individual cries of self expression.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's also if you think about how, say
you have a story, right, you have the identity of
something that's encompassed in an image and a story, and
there's room in that story, on the edges of it
to question it, to poke at it, right, to create
ironic commentary on the story. And it's actually completely coherent.
You see that all through history, right, if you think
of Ovid's metamorphosis, like that's what Ovid was doing in
the first century, right, he was basically deconstructing his own
mythological tradition. And so there's room for all of those
things within the tradition. But we have limited we've come
to a point. We've also limited the idea of what
it is to be a cultured person to that deconstruction, right,
and that's that's obviously runs out and somebody just runs
it falls into like fragmentation and just breaks apart into
a million pieces. And now and there are moments when
it's actually time to recast the story, right, to rediscover
the center, to kind of come back to what is
the shining light that you that later someone will deconstruct
for sure. And so I think that that's the greatness
of the moment. Now is that I think this is
possible because in some ways we now have the fertilizer
of the decomposed, you know, cynical narrative which to plant
a seed of and authenticity.
Speaker 2: There's a lot like psychopaths and fraud men will shortcut
the process and just pick up like I like Jackson Pollock,
I'll flick paint on the wall and we forget. I mean,
if you look at Picasso's early work, he's a staggering
traditional painter, right, It's not like he just all of
a sudden made a face on a napkin and everyone
lost their minds. So there's something about you know, I
wrote my eighth novel has a sort of a bit
of a meta element to it that there's a crime
writer who gets accused of a crime and he has
to write the story of what's happening to him and
edit the story which is the investigation that he's solving.
But if it was all meta, all it is is
a parlor trick. It's pick a card. And so in
a way, not that there's ever mastery of an art form,
but you want to be as close to mastery of
what everything is before you take that and you start
to twist it and play with that. And I remember
when I wrote a very profoundly mediocre rough draft in
my first novel. I started very young, nineteen. But when
my first agent asked who I eventually did sixteen rewrites
with before we sold them, we said, you know, what
is it? It's like, well, it's kind of an action thriller,
but it's a parody of an action thriller. And it's this,
and it's like, you can't do eight things at once,
like what section of the bookstore does it go in?
Like what like accomplish that first, right? And if you
can accomplish something that's within the re and that's part
of what you're doing a lot of what you're doing
with this master's program is you want to get an
expert grasp of the essentials, and then you want to
grow and embody those things, and then you can start
to play and innovate within the form. But if you
just skip straight to innovation, there's no discipline in that,
there's no responsibility, there's no tradition. You're standing on to
sort of proclaim things to higher heights.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's ends up becoming the flatter and flatter
and just more and more shallow as the cynicism increases,
and as the comment upon a comment, you know, it's.
Speaker 2: Because it's more about you, it's more about your own
narcissistic self expression than a tradition that you've embodied.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think that that's what this is. Right
now is the right time to be doing that. And
what's amazing about what Ralson is doing and for you guys,
is as people are running away, as a lot of
the institutions are running away from the foundational stories that
have brought us where we are, you'll have like a
jewel that a lot of people don't have. It's like
a treasure, really, is what it is. You know, and
this is actually the exciting moment of being at the
end of something or at the moment where it's kind
of falling apart. Is you're like, you know, you're like
in Lord of the Rings and or some you know,
some fantasy novel where people have forgotten the tales of
the kings and now everybody nobody knows who they are,
and someone finds this grimoire and inside there's like the
secret history of their own people. It's like, actually, this
is what we're going through right now. Like, you guys
have the chance to do that. Nobody, you know, people
aren't reading the text that you're reading. They're not going
into the tradition anymore, and so you'll have like you
actually will have like a treasure that will illumine and
you can feel it like when people hold that treasure,
like people who have a good knowledge of history, or
people that have a good knowledge of literature, it informs
their conversation and when they're speaking, they don't have to
reference directly the literature or the history, but everything they
say will have an extra weight because even just in
their mind, they know that they have their standing on
something that isn't just fifty years old. That isn't just
you know, like the last fashionable theory that people are
grabbing onto you.
Speaker 2: There's a moral responsibility in coming out of here to
not just live up to your learning, but also to
be interesting. That's a moral responsibility to follow what is
engaging to you and to be interesting in the world,
because that's infectious, and that's a really important part of
it to think about, Like this is a it's a
treasure to be able to spend a year the way
that you're spending it. It's incredibly rare, and you're going
to have something other people don't have. And you know,
for years, my biggest frustration has been the people who
are sort of what's a phrase, semi educated. Right, you
have the degree, you have the viewpoints, you have your
six sources of expertise, and everything's sort of rigid and ossified. Right,
you know what you think about everything, and you go
to these dinner parties at times, Right, I used to
where everything that everybody says you could write for them
in advance. You know all of their perspectives, you know
what their opinion is going to be on everything. And
we see this increase. It's like watching MSNBC versus Fox News,
Like there's never going to be a startling revelation of
incredible duance of some received wisdom that they're accommodating and assimilating.
And there's a complacency within the academic the prevailing academic
world right now, and there's not a living fire in it.
And so part of it is is when you can
wield that as a living thing, you're wielding fire, and
there's an incredible amount of power that you're going to
have that you can bring to things, and you can
it's going to give you pause when you're approaching something,
to stop and step back into what do you really
think what is really going to be the highest and
best good or engagement with something, and you can figure
out ways to innovate in ways to alter and ways
to kind of shatter through a lot of the codified corruption,
whether that's intellectual or moral, that's around things, figure out
ways to do things differently.
Speaker 3: When the two of you look back on your twenties,
what do you think you did well and what do
you know now in hindsight, was something to learn from,
something to alter course? When you were older?
Speaker 1: I mean, my twenties were a time of massive, massive, change,
like just complete one eighty change in my in my life.
So it's hard to know, you know, how it could
have happened. For sure, you know that I went to
art school and I finished, you know with I think
I was the first in my program, but I was
also it was not where I should have been, and
I kind of I kind of knew that after once
I was looking back, I was like, it was there
were there were things showing me that this was not
for me. And then at my last evaluation, you know,
my the professor that was in charge of me, she said,
this is at the end of my degree. She said,
she said, Jonathan, don't worry. You're getting all a's like,
it's everything's okay. But I just wanted to tell you
that you really don't belong here. And she said, she said,
really you why don't you like go to seminary or
something like you don't belong here?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: And she was absolutely right. I just I was in
my twenty I was like cocky, so I was just like, yeah, whatever,
but she was absolutely right. Uh. And so I would
say that that's something. But it's weird because in some
ways you end up recuperating it because my understanding of
postmodernism and my understanding of contemporary art has been extremely
useful for me because I know what I'm standing against,
not completely against, but I know what I'm standing against,
and then also wanting to incorporate just enough of it
into my stance so that I'm breathing right, so it's
not just this ossified, weird thing that I'm no. I
just reacting to it and now I'm I'm against it.
So but I maybe I could have done that without
spending you know, like four years, Like maybe that's possible.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think the one thing I definitely had
the like in the NFL they call it motor, you know,
like I had the work ethic to outwork like because
I knew that my job, this career would take a
lot of luck. And I think of luck as you know,
a hatch is going to open in the ceiling of
where you are, and you got to be ready to
go through me. You got to be flapping against that
ceiling no matter what. And I was. It's all I
wanted to do. It's funny you talk about being broke,
you know I was. I graduated in college and my
roommates were going on to be like ibankers and lawyers
and doctors and everyone's made, you know, like starting salary
one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, which sounded like eleventy
billion dollars. And I wanted to be a novelist, and
so I kind of stalled. I did a year at
I want a fellowship. I did a year at Oxford,
you know, Masters in Shakespeare in Tragedy, just to have
a very practical degree in case my primary career as
a novelists didn't pan out. But I was just working
and I said at the time, if somebody could come
up to me and say, well, we'll write you a check,
you can have twenty five hundred dollars a month for
the rest of your life, and you can live in
a studio and you can just write full time. I
would have taken that deal. Now I'm elated that I
didn't at this point, but you know, it's all I
wanted to do. And so I think I had the
work ethic and I also had at some point for
whatever reason. And it's weird. I'm from a family of
you know, doctors and lawyers and sort of traditional professionals.
For some reason, I had the awareness to break from
everything and risk everything on myself and just say this
is what I'm doing. And even when I finished, I
was pretty fortunate. You know, I sold my first book.
I was fairly young. But whenever I did a job,
it was like, how do I make the most money
the quickest so that I can still have thirty five
hours a week to write? Like everything was geared around that.
And even when I did my first deal, you know,
I thought, if I live on that aforementioned twenty five
hundred a month, how many months do I have in
the bank to keep writing, because it's all I wanted
to do. And if you're a doctor and you have
a bad, you know, stretch financially, you don't have to
then go be the janitor or take another job, right,
But as a writer, if you mismanage that, you lose
the time to do the thing that you love and
that feeds you. And I'd say, you know, the things
that I learned, it's always it's hard because now I'm
just on the back half of fifty I'm fifty one,
and so there's this awareness of I can look back
and have some sadness distinct from regret about the things
I didn't know earlier, but without me going through them
and bumbling through them, there's no way that I could
have integrated to reach the knowledge that I have to
then look back at them. So it's a very weird
thing to not be grievancey or resentful or remorseful, but
to also just look with sadness at some things that
I might have missed at earlier stages. And I think
some of that was I probably earlier on it was
hard to figure out the balance of how much you
go for and grab and reach for and how much
when you do that it receeds. So later in life,
you know, I think I figured out a lot more
about that, you know, like even just an interacting let's
say with Hollywood. Like at one point, my book series
is called Orphan Ax, and at one point i'd adapted
it in a few huge ways for a few huge
movie stars who I had lost all the projects, and
it was sort of seen about the town. And I
remember my manager calling me about four years ago, three
years ago and saying like, well, the series has been seen,
and so for Hollywood, they're not sure it didn't even
if it didn't get made for reasons that I lost
these stars. But I had, you know, these big deals,
and it would just it didn't move forward. I said,
no problem, tell everyone it's not for sale. She's like
what I said, don't like, just take it off the
market completely, Like, I'm not selling it. I know where
the series is going. I have a lot of confidence
on the track record. And we just pulled it back.
She said, okay. The first inquiries that came in, it
was like, no, he's not selling it. And so you know,
a year and a half later, we had seven eight
interested parties. We had four studios bidding, and we started
another right deal. And there's something in not If you
reach for something too much, it recedes, but you need
a confidence to not and figuring out that toggle. I
couldn't have done this when I was twenty four writing
my third novel, right, like, you can't do it ahead
of time. But that's a balance. That is something that
I think it would have been lovely to know how
to manage those things with. I think perhaps a little
bit more grace and displaying even less need. And I
already started with an advantage with that, because you know,
I was I was a full fledged novelist before I
joined Hall. Would with screenwriting and then TV and then comics,
so I never needed it fully, but there is something
about this sort of flow of work and letting things
go and leaving them open, is there's a kind of
gracefulness that I think I'm only starting to learn over
the last years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 8: Let's open up for your questions, guys, and I will
give you this like an It.
Speaker 2: Looks like we covered meaning meaning in life and career.
Speaker 9: Okay, what has been the experience for you and your
families emerging as more public personalities and how have you
grappled with that in addition to the responsibility that I
feel like you both have in the interest that you
have to contribute to human society.
Speaker 10: In the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for me, it's been more recent. Like you, it's
been kind of this just kind of progressive moving to
the p public. Me, it's it is more recent and
in some ways just maybe since COVID, like twenty twenty
is when people really started to start to know us
what I'm doing, and it's it's kind of increasing. I
would say, it's like a fifty to fifty to fifty
to fifty thing. On the one hand, you know, it's great,
you know, there's something you know, my kids. I think
my kids are proud of what I'm doing, Like they
they like their dad, Like they're proud of their dad.
And to me, that's really cool. I love that because
you could have teenagers that are really embarrassed with their
dad and like, you know, it's like want to shy away.
So that has been for me like a great joy.
But you know, I also it's harsh, you know, because
you're married and you have kids, and so you're traveling
and the perception of the public. You know, your wife
knows that it's like some of it is bullshit. You know,
it's like you're also this grumpy Jonathan to get wakes
up in the morning and doesn't want to talk to me.
You're like, you're also like this other thing that is
less pleasant than the one that everybody sees. And so
I think that sometimes at least I feel that, you know,
like there can be a bit of a of an
annoyance that everybody would come up to you and like
imagine like imagine your like imagine my wife's home comes
up and say, well, isn't it how amazing is it
to be married to Johnson Vedro And she's like, okay, whatever,
it's like.
Speaker 2: Like his only friends or prison.
Speaker 1: It's like if only you knew you know. Uh So
that's been like, that's been one of the downsides. I've
been trying to compensate. It was like trying to bring
them with me as much as I can, to travel
with me and to kind of do the things with me.
But it's definitely.
Speaker 2: Can hear even more about how many, But there is.
Speaker 1: A there is a definitely a challenging aspect to that
because it takes up a lot of space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd say for me, I did you know it
was weird? I had. I had a good amount of
success early, like by twenty three, twenty four. I'm very
glad that when my career started, like I mean, I
had a website, but it wasn't online. I got to
acclimate a little bit more as things progressed. My wife
grew up in a in a Hollywood family, in that environment,
and so she had like her grandmother figure was Lucille
Ball and her first memory is Groucho Marx rocking her.
And what's funny is when we met, I was like, oh,
I got to go to this agent. I was still
kind of like younger about Hollywood guy, like I got
to go to my agent party and she was likeh
Like she was just so if there was arrogance or
vanity or gatekeeping, she just was So. This wasn't the
world she grew up in, you know. She was she
grew up going to like Sammy Davis Junior's parties where
it was just like welcoming and everyone was great and
it was all the real side of things. And so
I think for her, engaging with me then at a
lower level and seeing like big showy agents being great
at parties was completely not of interest, and that was
it was amazing for me. I think we're similar that
we both married women who don't care whatsoever about like
material stature, Like there's like zero concern. And you know,
initially it was a little annoying because I was like, wow,
I'm trying to figure it out, and like this guy
invited us over and he's the you know, president of
this star company and we have to do it. And
she was like, if you don't like the person who can,
and of course it's it's all right in hindsight, and
hindsight like anything that was too grabby, it's funny. I
was at a party, and I still like going to
a premiere or going to like parties like now and then.
But I was with a friend of mine who's from
a South African actor and we were looking around and
there's some of the same faces I remember from when
I was twenty four at the parties. Everyone's just older.
They're higher up in the studio, they're more famous actors.
And we were having a laugh about like, God, remember
going to this where like you'd go around and like
collect business cards and be like, oh, like we're gonna
and like nothing ever comes of any of that, you know,
And so that was really helpful, I think for part
of the process that I talked about earlier of learning
to not press or not you know, move in and
think that you need to do something. And it's so funny.
I settled at a younger age into a real relationship
within community among let's say Hollywood or publishing or wherever
I move, where it's all genuine friendships with quirky, brilliant,
creative people. Like that's all that matters, right, It doesn't,
None of it matters in a way that is expedient
of this is a useful relationship. And so and then
Once you're in that space, it just kind of proliferates out.
So I'd say that the more the older that I get,
but my wife had a significant role in that too,
the more comfortable that it is in a lot of ways,
and in terms of responsibility in a lot of ways.
What's interesting is the responsibility part comes. I think for
me it's twofold. One of them is, you know, I've
written twenty five novels, right, I've been added a while,
and I'm the co president of a group called International
Thriller Writers, and we have like six billion books in print. Right.
We have Patterson and Grisha, like we have everybody as
part of this group, and I've been the co president,
and so we've been able to take a lot of
these steps with relative little effort. I mean, it's definitely
his effort and thought. But like the the amount that
we can help people significantly, it's certain key junctures when
they want to be helped and when they're the right
people to help is just unbelievable. And so that there
is definitely a different responsibility in terms of turning some
corner and then recognizing that like all the people who
helped me along the way, when I was young and
in my twenties and as arrogant as you with your
art teacher, like you can do that and you can guide,
and there's a real there's a real joy in that
to be able to have that. And the other thing
really is, you know, in large part because of my
affiliation and close friendship with Jordan, I've been more and
more public and then in a lot of ways I
did I've done some sperlunking into the culture to try
and first to try and pull the Democrats back from
the far left. I've been on We did Exodus together,
Jonathan and I and Stephen, and we did the Gospels
on daily Wire, and there's been a lot of very
public facing things, and I think in the face of that,
I have felt more responsibility to hold the kind of
center and to be truthful, but also very intensely not
to be reactive and become part of a political system
or the culture wars are all these things, but to
try and to try to be an adult. Like there's
an age you get to where you kind of look
around and you go things are a mess, and like
we're sort of the grown ups now, right, how are
we going to handle this? Like, and so there is
some responsibility from that part of it that comes with
trying to be trying to adhere to a higher set
of standards for myself because it's important, And a lot
of that has to do with speaking speaking the actual
truth as I feel it, but not also overcompensating and
becoming angry or screamy or pushy in a way that
then allows for resistance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love what you said about Also,
like non instrumentality. I think this is something that, like
Stephen has really made me think about. Like I think
then naturally I don't tend to I don't tend to
think that way, But especially as you become more known
or like more in the public sphere, does you have
to be more aware of that question? It's like why
am I in relationship with this person? And is it
just because it's going to you know, it's going to
like you find yourself in this weird position where you're
like meeting billionaires, you know, and then then you're like, well,
why am I? Why am I talking to this person?
It is just because they have a lot of money?
Is that the reason why I'm talking to them? Or
is there something else? Like is there some interesting conversation.
I mean, having these successful people often are sharp and intelligent,
and so it's interesting to talk to them, but what's
the reason. And so I found myself becoming more sensitive
to that and trying to question my relationships in ways
and thinking like why am I pursuing this person or
why am I am I engaging with them? And that's
definitely been a lesson. And I know Steven has been
great because he's in our discussions about these questions. He's
always insisting, like the best world always comes from non
instrumental like if you if you treat people with a
genuine curiosity and you meet people that are genuinely interesting
and just engage with them, that in the end what
will come out of it will actually be better than
if you were trying to figure out like how can
I how can I get something? Or partner with this
person to like to like do something. And that's the
same thing like Greg and I in some ways became friends.
We didn't we hadn't wouldn't have thought at the outset
to like write something together, but we just started talking
and becoming friends, and all of a sudden, I was like, hey,
this makes sense, Like maybe let's try let's try this. Uh,
and then out of that comes something that I think
is is fruitful because it's not built on you know, like, oh,
he's got contacts here, and like, let's use his contacts
to you know, get this done or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, beware the plan that you like sort of push
and manipulate and grasp your way to because then you
have that yeah. Yeah, and then you know people don't
necessarily all the parties in that aren't all row in
the same direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, I have.
Speaker 11: Sorry, I have a question to to fall follow up
up on that.
Speaker 1: And it's like.
Speaker 11: You guys are talking about following your own passions and
like you like it seems like you never intended to
be like I'm like like like famous or something, or
like like you weren't trying to gain fame, Like do
you wish you you like, like, do you ever wish
you hadn't nentwered into the public eye or or I'm
become famous? Is it like a blessing or is that
a curse? Or is it something?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Hm, I mean you only became.
Speaker 1: Because I was right. I was like if I could,
I could just I can ride this to the top.
Like I think for sure, becoming somewhat famous has been
a total surprise, like nothing that I would never have
expected that the decision that I made in life, and
I would say, to be honest in my case, except
for the time and the family part, which sometimes is
a challenge, like because I would say, on the whole,
it's actually been amazing because the things that I do
and the things that I care about, I really care
about them. And so for me, the possibility of having
more of a reach in order to get that out there,
it's like, wow, that is so cool, like so amazing.
And then also you know, living my little life in
my very secluded way and carving in my workshop is great.
But you know, I in that context, you know, I
didn't get to meet Stephen Stephen, or greg or Jordan
Peterson or all the people that I'm able to meet,
And so for me, it's been amazing, Like this has
been like an adventure where I'm like, oh, you know,
I'm talking to Russell Brand, Like why am I talking
to Russell Brand? It's the most ridiculous thing in the world.
But it was like there's been these moments where it's.
Speaker 2: Like with Russell mostly listening to us, Russell's could talk.
He gets these like reveries. He's amazing, He's so incandescent.
I feel a lot the same way. I mean, I
had some luck younger. I mean for me, one of
the things that's weird is it's indistinguishable. I mean, my
natural instincts that is quite commercial. I write big thrillers.
I write big thriller you know, screenplays, and so it's
indistinguishable for me to have a successful career, with me
making more money and me having more fame, they're all
kind of tied up in each other. I'd say. The
one thing that that's been a blessing that I didn't
think about was I didn't have a massively accelerated amount
of fame when I was young, because if it had
hit me in those arrogant twenties, I'm sure I would
have been insufferable. You know. There was a lot of
getting knocked down along the way, and a lot of
like six books in and then the publishing, you know,
a thing with my publisher and the numbers tank and
have to reinvent myself and get back up. And so
as it's come slowly in different ways, I feel like
it's given me a chance to acclimate kind of at
each stage in a way where where I hope that
I'm wielding it with gratitude and responsibility. And as for
the reach part, I love that. I mean, it's like,
you know, so part of what I was talking about
with following things that interest you. I sort of have
two rules in my life in general. I never want
to do anything that's not fun. Everything has to be
fun or an adventure. And my time for things that
aren't I massively compress or delegate as much as I
possibly can, because it's not like you can do everything
that's fun. And obviously this doesn't involve crises and suffering
and family. And the other thing is is I don't
I try and spend as little time possible, and the
more that I the more money I make, the more
resources I have, and the more fame such as it
is that I accrue. I don't want to spend any
time doing anything that. I want to spend as little
time possible doing anything that anyone else can do who's
not me. I want to spend all my time doing
things that only I can do. And so that sort
of influence, that sort of kind of reach that you get,
the kind of power is a real weird word. I
don't mean it that way, but let's just say validity
and being able to say, look, I'll do this thing,
but I want to do it this way. It'll be
more fun, and I want to do it with this person.
And I'm on a book tour and I think I
want to be in conversation with a good friend who's
a big prominent New York Times selling writer instead of
me getting up and doing a canned speech. And you
get to move in the world in different ways. And
then the people is the best part, especially when I've
certainly dismissed the like, oh, I just want to be
friends with people because they're famous, Like once you're over that,
because famous people can be terrible and they can be great.
It's just like billionaires. Some are incredibly brilliant and you
understand why they've amassed so much, and some are like
a giant pain in the ass who are egotistical. Everyone
has all that. But if you can choose through your
influence and through people's interest in you good people and
move through the world that way, it's incredible. It's like
you're talking about Steven and Me and James Orr and
Douglas Headley and Douglas Murray and just the people that
in the fellowship that we've had or these are extraordinary
people and humans, not just intellectually, and so it's been
really positive. But again, if I'd hit, if my first
book had been on the New York Times bestseller list
for two years and I sold the film deal, I
probably would be a fairly profound asshole.
Speaker 6: I really like what you said about the fire. That
seems essential to make anything meaningful, and I think that
applies to the creative arts as well as being students
or any anything that you're really being yourself in. So
this question has to do with the of creating as
well as maybe being a student. And yeah, you have
the fire, and then.
Speaker 1: You have what's the word desperation.
Speaker 6: Maybe this feeling of everything will fall apart unless I
do this thing and that can come with the deadlines,
which is a very practical and helpful thing for us,
the weekly essay. For you, maybe it's what the publisher
has given you. So just how do you keep the
fire going and not fall into a sense of desperation?
Speaker 2: Well a metaphor for this in writing, I always encourage
people when they get stuck right, I don't get writer's block,
and part of that is is I'll just go And
I always encourage people to just write a vomit draft,
like just get something down, because you can't fix a
plank page, but if you have something, you can make
it better. And I've been conditioning that sort of momentum
for a really really long time, and that fire and
the desperation can be incredibly useful, like the times where
I've had I've had to have a reinvention in my
career and I feel like I'm writing for my life
and I'm in a mini version of it now. Jonathan.
I've been talking about like anytime there's a dislocation financially
or creatively, you know, the unknown contains equal parts opportunity
and threat, and the first thing you think about, and
when you're younger, you think about threat, and it's important
to keep orienting towards opportunity and to be aware of that.
Get forward motion, get things down. One of the things
I decided really early on, and it actually is an
option for everybody, even though you're going to laugh at me, probably,
but I just decided to do everything way ahead of deadlines,
to never even have to think about them, and so
I wrote my stuff way early in college. I'm a
I'm a year and a half to two years ahead
usually on my publishing schedule. I just want to be
way out ahead and if if that's something you can
figure out and you can do. But it winds up basically,
you know, fun. I mean, I have a book coming
out in two weeks. I'm going to go on a
book tour that's a month and a half. And if
I'm behind on delivering the next book, I can't come
here right and have this weekend. And like, weird shit
comes up all the time, Like I wrote, I help
write the opening to the Last World Cup. It's such
a weird thing. But like you know, to get a
call and go off to like cutthar for a week
and then do all this research, like you need room
to also be able to understand as things come in
that you have the bandwidth to do with and so
a lot of ways it's like just make headway, do
get it. You know, a lot of this is your
own sort of stress, in your own harsh driver. An
important thing to do too, you know. One of the
exercises I find really useful when you have the voices
of desperation, which can be indistinguishable from voices of anxiety
or for some people depression, or for some people it's
OCD when they're going, take them out of your head
and just sit them on the couch next to you,
and then you can really contemplate just how in's saying
you are, and you can think if you were a friend,
if you're like God, you're always late, like you're so useless.
It's like, if you can really try to remove that
voice and think, is that someone I should be taking
advice from? Is that advice I would give my own friend?
And if you can separate out that voice, and then
you figure out what's an encouraging voice that you would
take if you're talking to a friend of yours about
getting on stuff earlier or hitting better goals, and it's
probably one. And this is hard, This part is not
like I figured this out in college. This is I
still refigure it. But if you can find a voice,
an inner dialogue for yourself where you're finding the most
adult part of yourself to lead the way, so those
voices come up, but that's a younger voice in you, right,
Maybe that's you being you know, like for me. I
was the smallest kid when I started my high school
with twelve hundred boys, so I had a real scrappy,
like have to get it, harsh, overbearing voice, and you
can identify them and then you pull them all in.
You can invite all of that, and then you figure
out what's your highest best advice for you to excel
and unfold and expand and shine, and so talking and
working with that, like what's your voice. Is it being
an encouraging coach, is it being a older brother? Is
it being a caring mentor? And if you can try
and cultivate that in yourself, you'll have something to go
to and then more and more, when you are in
the throes of kind of desperation where you're losing your way,
at least you'll know that it's temporary and that an
adult is going to get there in the morning. Yeah here,
and then I'm.
Speaker 12: Gonna go first.
Speaker 5: Okay, Yeah, thank you so much for being here. I
had a question about how to navigate the political because
it seems that there's a story, there's always a story,
but there's a a collective story that it's missing in
our institutions of education and our political institutions and I
as we we're about to graduate and face the world.
Speaker 12: I think, like you, you want to remind people of.
Speaker 5: The story, the story of the West, but everything's just
so politicized today that it's difficult to separate both. I
guess there was some backlash when you both did the
Gospel series and you're sitting on a table with Nisprari
and Bishoparian and it's a Daily Wires, so of course
man Shapiro then his name comes up and it starts to.
Speaker 12: Interfere with your image and how the world sees you.
Where you're just trying at the end of the day,
you're just trying to remind people of the story of
Christ or the story of the West, and it's beautiful.
So I'm just wondering if you have any advice on
how to stick to the story and how to navigate
the political.
Speaker 2: Hmm, if you don't. First, So one thing which is
first is the backlash in the politics. A lot of
it isn't real, Like I don't have I didn't pay
that much attention. I was so busy. I mean, those
are a little further afield from my daily career. They're
hugely important to me, but I'm not on like reading
all these comments and everything else, And so we tend
to pay a lot of attention to something as if
we have to respond to something, and a lot of
times it's like you don't know who it is. You
don't know if Twitter is freaking out, you don't know
if that's foreign you know, a bot swarm, if it's
foreign people, if it's anonymous people. It's just kind of
not real in a way unless it really comes to
your doorstep, and at times it will. And when it
does come to your doorstep, if you've insulated yourself from
the constant storm and drawing nonsense that basically is fed
by I think foreign psy ops, bad faith players, or
psychopathic algorithms, if you're aware of that and not becoming
of them and engaging with them when it comes to
your door in a way that's real, you have more
bearing to engage with it in a way that's transformational
and not getting down in the gut or with it
and getting screamy about it and handling it with a
bit more grace. I mean. The other thing is is
I always come back to, like, you know, there was
a big period in writing which I think we're thawing
out of and entirely of having sensitivity readers, and that
to me is like completely insane right to have, you know,
some twenty two year old graduate of have her for
like reading my shit to see what might be offensive
through a framework. It's just bonkers and so but part
of how I handled that wasn't like, you know, getting
up on a soapbox and screaming. I told my editor,
I was like, I don't want it, and I don't
care about this at all. If this is something you
they'd just been involved in a very big case that
legal and other stuff. I said, if you need this
to cover your ass on your legal side, that's fine.
I'll read it and if there's anything useful in there,
as with anything, I'll integrate it. And it turns out
one thing was like I used a Spanish phrase slightly wrong.
I have a lot of characters who were Mexican in
in my books and in this book in particular. But
the other thing that I did, and you can see
where you could get very reactionary, but for this book
in particular, what was so funny was one of my
close friends is a novelist and nonfiction writer named Luis
Oria and he I think he's our greatest Mexican American
living writer. He's incredible, He's shortlisted, he won, I think
he won the Pulitzer for Devil's Highway. I mean, he's
just a a like a no shit, knockdown writing genius.
And so what I had done with this manuscript, a
lot of it takes place in Mexico, as I'd given
it to him to be like, is my slaying right?
Is this? Like I have a lot of colorful cursing.
And so he'd sort of gone through the book with
me and was like, oh, this is a great phrase,
and you should do this, and here's the food they'd
be serving, and like I did all that the way
I do research for my guns and ammunition. Right, So,
as a novelist, there's two things you can't do that'll
end your career. If you get a gun to tail wrong,
you're just finished. And if you kill a cat like
the cat, people just come for you and they'll put
you in an early grave. But you know so so,
but I do a ton of research, right, I have
a hacking expert. If I'm writing about hacking, I have guns,
I have amo, I have demolition, breaching and I treated
this with a great deal of respect because there was
a lot of stuff that was there. I mean, I'm
in California, I'm very close with you know, I have family, friends, community,
all of this. But I wanted to get that right.
And what was funny was because I didn't have a
big political statement around it, I was sort of like, sure,
you can have this kid, by the way, like, arguably
our greatest Mexican American living writer has already been my
subject matter expert on this, and so it was just
such a side step from a position of solidity that
it didn't turn into the political because I was doing
the things that were based on the ethic of my field,
and that is making sure that my writing is of
the highest standard, and then I'm checking with subject matter
experts so that i can have enough very similitude to
carry the reader across the suspension of disbelief. And so
a lot of ways you can avoid it if you're
not reactive into it too, you can stay the hell
out of it as much as you can.
Speaker 1: And like I think, also in terms of politics, I
don't touch politics a lot in the stuff that I do,
but I think that it's actually totally fine to be
concerned by the political, to be involved in the political.
The problem is the partisan politics, because partisan politics is
just basically team Blue, team red, like it's just my team.
There's no substance to it, you know. And I think
the thing that has been interesting, you know, and in
this space there is a kind of space where hopefully
there are people that are able to talk about politics,
still have a side. I think it's okay to have
a side in a conflict, but also be willing to
understand what the argument is, what it actually is, and
to represent it honestly, and to be able to listen
to the opposition, because it's the best thing you can have,
is a good opposition, because it's actually reflecting back to you.
And so, you know, I think that at least in
my case, you know, for example, like the connection with
the Daily Wire is I'm just going to come to
the Daily Wire and say the things that I always say,
you know, and I'm not going to change my I'm
not going to now all of a sudden start talking
about the things that I don't usually care about or
talk about, and I'm not going to let them that
they overpower what I care about and what I think
is important, and you know, and I'll walk along with
people as long as I can, and then when I
can't walk with them, I'll just make sure that people
that you can see that I don't agree with them
after that, and to me, that's that's enough. You know,
And people will rail and people will complain, but usually
those voices are actually not that like like Greg was saying,
they're not that real. Like there's people that scream really loud,
but they actually if you just if you engage with them,
then you're the real Then you just start to spiral.
But if you just let it, you just ignore it
and you just keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker 2: Look, I've had this like pretty early days. I mean,
my communities are exceedingly liberal, and many of them captured
live in La right. I was born in the San
Francisco Bay Area. I'm a novelist. I did a ton
of visible work for the Democrats, trying to pull them
back and wrestle them back from the idiotic left. Like
I'm very you know, I'm a screenwriter. Like if I
was anymore on brand, i'd be like a tesla. You know.
It's like I'm very from that world. But so many
of my relationships aren't, and I've never stood down for
them for a minute, including with Jordan early days when
all that went bad. But I also didn't move over
and pick up a bullhorn from the other side and
start screaming. I was always sort of building bridges. But
like me, going on Daily Wire was huge, Like I
didn't know if that could have had massive ramifications for
my career in publishing in Hollywood and elsewhere. I had
somebody suggest to me that going to a premiere for
a Daily Wire event could terminate the morality clause of
a contract I had with a major studio. Like that's
the level of insanity. And I've just never treated it
like it's I said, you know, I was like, that's
utterly insane. Do you hear what you're saying? It's like
the CCP and I just have not engaged with it
in some ways. And I've stood by my friends when
they're my friends, and I've showed up and a lot
of times if you engage and start the fight and
start the resentment and start you don't understand you need to.
That's the thing that makes it real and tangible. And look,
it might come in a way that you can't do
anything about it, and that's happened to me a few times.
And then what you have is the grace and ployse
that you have from not having given into it and
decided to live in it because it doesn't matter if
it's not real. The people who get killed are those
people who issue those awful hostage statements, Like there was
a prominent actor who mentioned that Ben Shapiro is like
an okay guy maybe, And then there's a star and
who was like, I'm sorry, I'll reexamine my privilege and
I'll do the work. And at that point it's like, look, man,
I mean I learned from Frederick Douglas and Mark Twain
you never apologize to a mob ever, especially a faceless
mob based on you know, deep machine learning learning and
AI patterns on social media. So if you don't do
the thing that's revealing yourself, then you're screwed because then
forever everybody knows who you are and where you're located.
Careful with apologizing, you know, apologize for sure and cleanly
when you're wrong, but you know, don't ever apologize out
of fear of repercussions.
Speaker 11: We have time for one.
Speaker 1: We're question should.
Speaker 2: We have that my car. Well, we got three more,
why don't we run them real fast? Okay?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 10: I have a somewhat back to the basics sort of question,
and this is something that I personally have struggled with.
I think a lot of liberal.
Speaker 1: Arts students struggle with this.
Speaker 10: Not all, but I think one of the problems that
we have coming with such a very general background and
an interest in like so many things, it's very hard
to pin down what you want to do, like the
one thing that you are like very interested in, or
like even the several things that like you're very interested
in and could commit to, like like law term, because
I think to like develop like this sort of this art,
you you kind of have to commit, you know.
Speaker 1: And so how how do we go.
Speaker 10: About like figuring out that one thing or those several
things that are most interesting to us?
Speaker 1: Hmmm? It's hard for me to answer that because I
don't have that problem. So it's it's like I in
some ways, I've I've always I follow threads. This is
actually how I live. I So, like, let's take the
icon carving aspect to my life. You know, I started
carving icons in two thousand and two, but I only
started doing it really seriously in two thousand, like around
twenty ten, so you have a huge gap in between.
And but the way that I function is that there
are threads that I see, and these threads are like
they're like little they're they're like the trap door that's opening,
like the opportunity that's presenting itself. And then when I
see that, I just go and I move in that
direction and I hold on of the other things like
I kind of hold on to them. I never forgot
that I would love to carve icons, like it was
just part of my life for what is it like
almost you know, like eight eight years or whatever or
seven years and then when all of a sudden the
door was open, I was ready and I just grabbed
the thread and I just started moving in that direction.
And so it also depends on on on your on
your opportunities. Like sometimes you just if you do whatever
it is, if you have things in front of you
that are kind of glowing, even if it's not like
the thing that you want to do, and you do
it the best with all your energy and all your love,
and it has that flow to it. Yea, you'll find
your way. You know, it'll leave you and and you
when you once you find you the thing that you're doing,
you know you might thought you might have thought, wow,
ten years ago, I never would have thought that this
is where it would be. And and that's also completely fine.
Speaker 2: I think we all early on coming out of school
worry about this. And one of the biggest things is
you're thinking too far in the future, and you're thinking
too globally and a lot of things is the amount
of things that will change, Like, even if you're successful
beyond your wildest dreams, it won't be aligned with what
your wildest dreams are.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: It's not gonna look like anything that you want, even
if it goes well, because there's so much change. And
all you have to worry about is if you have
your framing right, with your value system right in a
bigger way, what is the most interesting thing for you
to do right now? That's all that matters tomorrow this week.
What's your next paper, what's your next assignment that you're
going to all write ahead of deadline? Yeah, you know,
because if you think out ahead, it's like you're just
borrowing Tomorrow's trouble. By the time you get anywhere close
to that, you're going to have way more information and
way more failures and dead ends and opportunities and corrections.
There's gonna be so much new, more data. But of
course you can't help to be worried about it because
you're human. But think, try and concretize it. Here. What
do you want to do right now? What's the what's
a paper you could write, What's a book you're going
to read? What's a art that you're going to engage?
And it will consume you?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: And then even if it doesn't and it's a failure
you get in you're not interested. That still progress because
you're carving off an option that's moving into something else.
Speaker 13: Thank you both for coming here today. I had a
question about the creative process. When you start with either
an image or a symbol or this kind of picture
in your mind, do you know that it's going to
be something much larger immediately? Is it sort of does
it sort of marinate until it comes to fruition?
Speaker 2: How does that?
Speaker 13: How do you go from this this interesting snippet to
a larger project? And do you know that it's going
to succeed or if it am I just kind of
languish on its own.
Speaker 1: Those of you.
Speaker 2: I used to have a quicker cycle of like idea
to go like. One of the benefits that I had
was I didn't have a break between, Like I remember
the first time I want to write a play, I'm like,
let me just start writing a play. And I remember
the first job I got in TV, which wasn't really
a job. I was translating and counting animated mouth flaps
for Dragon Ball Z and matching English words into a
badly translated Japanese script that was largely perverse. So we
had to get it around the sensors right because there'd
be like an old guy grabbing a girl's ass and
I'd have to be like, oh, let me brush that
twig off your dress. So it was like but the
first job I had, I was literally like on the
plane with the producer flying to the studio in Fort
Worth reading a book about how to format screenplays right,
so that the movement was so fast. I just was like,
let me go and try it. Let me go and
try it. And when you're talking about which ideas take,
I think part of it was I used to move
quicker into it, Like I'd have an idea it'd be
a book. I'd put all my energy in and go,
and as I get older, it's very interesting. I've just
been observing this in a very significant way lately. I
have some where I think, oh my god, that's the
next book, and I'll flesh out four or five pages
of notes and I'll sit on it and give it
more time, and it'll it's almost like stagnan. I never
used to do this. I used to anything that I
was aimed at next I would just do. And I'm
giving a lot more time for breathing. And I just
got into a situation with the manuscript I'm working on
now it's like this will be my twenty six or
twenty seventh where I wrote into it thirty percent and
then recognize that the entire ending and direction I was
going to go isn't what I want. And I haven't
had that since like one of my first books. And
so there's a weird freedom again that's happening now where
I'm slowing in the creative process to take a lot
more time to try and like measure twice and cut once.
That has been a natural process, and I think that
part of it is when you first get an idea,
if it grabs you, you go with it right. It's
like being carried by the way in an undertow almost.
But also if you write things down, you can see
if they continue to live and yield right. A lot
of times when I think of a story, it's like
when you first lay down on a towel on the
beach and it's all uncomfortable and lumpy, and you kind
of have to adjust yourself into it. There's a form
that the story needs to take. And if you can
think about it when you have some notes, you can
see if you can if your mind's continuing to masticate
on the idea and settle it in more and more.
And that's really worth doing to write down a bunch
of notes and see are you compelled to return to
it and to adjust it and to get into it further,
and is it living and breathing? And this other thing
might be four or five pages of bullet points that
you're like, Eh, there's no there there.
Speaker 14: Yeah, thank you both. I was wondering if you could
speak to this idea that an artist should maybe create
what they're interested in, as opposed to catering to an audience.
If you think that's accurate, or if you should cater
somewhat to an audience. And then if you think that,
like the retelling of old stories, insofar as that pertains
to the previous question, is something that should be considered.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely. I mean I have a different perspective
on art in general, which is that I really do
think that art should be useful. That That's why one
of the reason why I became an icon corver was
because there was something missing in the idea of understanding
art as a performer and a public that was in
some ways alienating, because there's a sense in which you're
creating something that doesn't actually participate in the life of
the person. It's like a diversion or a distraction. Entertainment
write that image. There's nothing wrong with entertainment, it's fine,
but there was something about how I wanted the line
the connection to be far deeper, and realizing that in fact,
I wanted more an art that was like making a
chair for someone, where it's like, well, you make a
chair so that people can sit in it and it
participates in their life. And that's how I entered into
icon icon carving was because I wanted the line to
be set. I wanted to make an object that someone
will take and will be their patron saint, that is
that they were given to when they're baptized, or like
a cross that a priest wears, and that it's just
part of their life and it and it doesn't have
that that that structure of the of the the artist
and the public that is is actually very modern, Like
it's a very it's in some ways it's quite a
recent recent recent idea. Like fictional stories in the past
or in the Middle Ages, you know, there would be
they would still be participative in the sense that you'd
have a tributeur that would come and would like tell
the story and and it would engage people into it.
There was this whole participative sense. Even our idea of
the public right, we don't we don't have like even
or in Shakespeare's days, where we don't have the idea
that the public can like kick the people off stage,
that we can yell them down, that we can like
make them stop because they suck. Like we don't have that.
I know, like where there's like the polite public. It's
it's like this pure like alienated, you know, passive public right.
And I'm saying I want to be careful I'm not
saying that that is wrong or whatever. I'm just saying
that's not what I wanted. So as I come towards storytelling,
I have the same approach, which is I want to
tell stories that are that will enter into people's lives
and will become part of their life. And that's why
the first my first tendency is to say, can I
grab things in memory that are anchors for identity, and
now can I represent them in a way that is
fresh and alive and that people can re enter into them.
So even when I think about the entertainment part of it,
which is like, you know, i'd say I'm writing a
graphic novel series, like the graphic novel series is for me,
is something like, yes, it's going to be entertaining and
fun for your seventeen year old, you know guy that's
looking for a kind of adventure story. But everything about
it is trying to re anchor you back into memory
and become a a track for thinking and for and
for identification. So that's been my like, that's been my
approach to storytelling. And I don't think it's the it's
the only one, but at least at this moment in
my life. It's the only thing that makes me care
about storytelling, and so like that's why Greg and I like,
if we're going to do something together. For me, it
was like, well, let's do Genesis, because it's like if
we could do if we could pull that off, like
if we could create a narratively compelling retelling of the
of creation and the Fall and and canaan able, I mean,
can you imagine this in some ways the service we
would be rendering Western civilization, Like it sounds like, it
sounds like it's cocky, but really, like I did believe that.
It's like that's what Milton was able to do, right,
Milton was able to do that, and there are very
few people that have been able to do it. So
I'm like, man, if we could pull that off, that'd
be an amazing thing. And so I don't only see
it as oh, well, we'll keep people happy, we'll divert
them will like it's be entertainment. No, I think it's
like it's really going to the core.
Speaker 2: I can answer this from the more or I think
I'm more consistently in touch with the commercial side of things.
And what's interesting is my advice holds. But for slightly
different reasons. There's a lot of people who say, like,
right after the Da Vinci Code came out with Dan Brown, right,
there's this glot of everybody writing symbology texts, right, or
you know, secret society stuff. By the time you write that, right,
that's a year, year and a half, two years. Then
a book needs a year lead time on publication. You
don't even know where you are. And one of the
things is I sat next to a woman on the
flight out here who's a pretty renowned comedian, but she's
just switching over and doing some writing a pilot, and
she was talking about like, well, how do you do it?
And what do you want? And everyone's you always hear
this in Hollywood, right, everyone's buying stuff that's like this.
And I said, none of them have any idea what
they want, Like there's no version under which you know,
somebody thought that what we really need is a rap
opera about Hamilton and that that's going to take over
the world. Nobody thought that like a magic school for
like you know, little kids. I mean, Scholastic bought that
book for like nothing. It was like educationally, right, they're
not a big commercial house. There's a judge who famously
remarked about pornography like, I don't you know what's the
definition of pornography? I don't know, but I know when
I see it. And there is this notion that, like
you're going into this collective being, like like publishing or Hollywood,
that anybody knows anything. There's a very famous line by
William Goldman, who's the pre eminent screenwriter, a butcher, casting
The Sun Dance Kid at Marathon Man. He says, nobody
knows anything. That's the lesson about Hollywood. And so to
try to anticipate market or to guess or to say, oh,
what's selling right now, or quirky medical shows like House
that might not be aligned with your inner pattern, which
means you might not be able to do that brilliantly.
And the one thing you're going to have as an
artist or as anything that you are, as an engineer,
as a vat, as a doctor, as a diagnostician, pick
your field, is that when it's aligned with you, when
it resonates with you, you have something to say or to
give that only you can say or give. And that's
profoundly true if you're an artist and if you're trying
to go apply it to you know, some formula of
what's going to sell two years from now. When something
gets made, you just can't even anticipate it. And all
the successes that come between now and then are going
to be surprising from things that are made that are undeniable.
And so I would say, again, my own esthetic happens
to be fairly commercial. But when I'm writing, I'm writing
to write the best possible version of it. And I'm
going to talk about this a little bit tomorrow about
you know, what does it mean to be commercial versus literary?
But the best version and so, And what that doesn't
mean is that you can be urcane and you can
be cute, and you can be inside, and you can
be snide, and you can be intellectual, and you can
make a work that's impenetrable. Right. What you want is
to write something that's accessible. But the best version of
writing is where it's accessible to everyone high or low,
and you're not playing games to show how smart you are, Like,
I never want me as the novelist to be what
people are thinking when they're reading a story. I want
them to be thinking about the story. And so in
that way, I'm making sure that I'm guiding and in
conversation with readers in a way that brings them along.
But they don't know what they We don't know what
we want. None of us know what we want right.
So to take it from readers who say, I'd really
love if Orphan X, you know went to the moon,
It's like, no, you don't. You have no idea what
you want right Like, you like it and you're engaged
with it because I'm showing you something that you didn't
think of yourself, so you don't want to seed to that.
Speaker 3: Well, this is in really a wonderful conversation. Thank you
for sharing your friendship and your passion and your stories
of us. In closing, I just want to say how
honored we are at Rolston College to have both of
you here, not only as guests, as speakers, but really
sincerely as friends. You both have given so much to
this little fledgling institution, and I think, speaking as an
actress or writer, myself, a story maker, or someone who's
so desperately clung to this idea that stories matter. The
story of Ralston College comes at a time that I
think the world is ready to hear it, and I'm
curious from your perspectives, if you could leave with us
as a final thought, what does displace this endeavor? What
does Ralston mean to you? And what do you think
it has to give to the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think there really is a confluence
of moments and things happening in the world in general,
and I think Ralston is stepping into that exactly at
the right time. I think right now is the right time.
And the thing is that because it's something like what
Greg said, the idea is that the luminary is invisible
to most people, the thing that is actually going to
be the seed that will bear fruit in the future.
There only it's like it appears as this small light
and you need a certain kind of perception and a
kind of intuition to see that that's the thing that
is going to And when I come here and when
I heard about the way that Ralston's doing things, whether
it's the culture that they're setting up with you, whether
it's the pedagogy, whether it is the way in which
they're structuring what you're learning and in what order and
how they're doing it by bringing you to Greece and
to do that, I personally immediately perceive that this is
a life giving thing, that it is something which will
bear fruit in the future. And my vision is that,
you know, Rawlston now is this little thing with like
twenty something studid, but that this way of thinking and
of doing will will yield. So because of that and
because I can see like and it's partly one of
the things that makes me see that is also the
quality of people that are drawn to it. Right, So
you notice you watch like you just have, and that's
to use like, oh, look at this person who is interested.
Look at this person who is kind of like that
and like curious and coming and moving towards it. Whether
it's the people that are working for Ralston, where there's
the people that are kind of becoming this kind of
network of friends. You're like, oh, yes, I can see
that this is in some ways almost like a vision
of the future. It's a vision of a movement or
a new beginning of something that's growing. And so because
of that, I really, I really believe that that Ralston
is is a treasure and that it and the fruits
are not apparent right now. They can't be because it's
like it's a it is a new beginning. It's like
a seed but I trust and I can see that
through all of these with all of this happening, even
in terms of what's happening in the world, in terms
of politics, in terms of in the fragmentation, but this
like desire to create a new beginning, I see only
a bright future. That's what I that's my perception.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a conference we were at last year in
London and ion Hersya Lee was speaking and she talked
about Western civilization as a beautiful cut flower that's like
resting on a table, and she said, our job now
is to plant seeds, right, It's we're severed from our
roots in a certain way. And Ralston, I mean, there's
a reason you've used that metaphor multiple times. You know.
Ralston is a seed that way. And part of how
I know when I'm in the right place or affiliated
with the right place is a large part. It's how
I feel when I'm here. It's there's a there's an
a liveness that is here, there's an a liveness of learning.
There's nothing that feels sort of stuffed shirt or rigid
or workmanlike. And to me, it's a callback. I went
to fancy colleges back when they were still places to
be proud of, you know, and so I I really
had this. I could find a track when I was
there with incredible professors, incredible classmates, and it's just it's
so absence and when I'm here and the people around here.
And I came with my wife, who is a psychologist
and a psychology professor. We came last year or two
years ago, I can't quite remember. It was very similar
for her. There's students she's still in touch with of
just there's a respect, there's a hunger, there's an a
liveness in the students here. There's an earnestness and you
know that's that's in rare supply, right when snark and
snide is ascendant to be earnestly engaged, but with the
sense of humor, and there's naughtiness, and there's boxing, and
there's you know, there's all the things that are going
to be necessary for any institution to keep it revivified.
But this is an incredibly special place, and so that's
part of why I'm always delighted to come back. I'm
always delighted to be near it because I feel like
one of the best things is when you when asked
to go somewhere to contributor be of help. You feel
like it's nourishing, that the whole process is nourishing also,
and that's how I feel when I'm here. Thanks you,
I thank you, thank you very much.
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