The Art of Conversation with Paul Holdengräber

Paul Holdengraber, a renowned figure who has had conversations with some of the most influential figures of our times, discusses his unique approach and the pains and pleasures of life as a conversationalist. 
Andrea and Paul explore the profound impact of the art of conversation on forming deep connections. They also delve into Paul's background, influences, and the unpredictable paths life has taken him, from his parents' escape from the Nazis to his own philosophical and geographical journeys. Paul opens up about his recent jobless status, his reflections on care, conversation, and the power of listening, as well as contemplating the future in a rapidly changing world. Throughout, the discussion explores themes of transience, the creation of spaces for dialogue, and the importance of remaining open to the myriad possibilities life offers. The conversation weaves together topics such as the significance of digression, the therapeutic power of reminiscing on familial history, and the complexities of identity and human relationships.
#artofconversation #holdengraber #andreahiott

00:00 Welcome to the Library: A Night of Conversation
00:29 Paul Holdengraber: A Man of Many Conversations
00:59 Exploring the New York Public Library with Paul
02:27 The Art and Power of Conversation
02:56 Paul's Unique Path: From Philosophy to Public Programming
05:12 Digression as a Form of Revelation
10:59 Returning to Roots: Conversations on Identity and Place
17:16 The Solitary Journey of a Conversationalist
22:16 Navigating Friendships and the Fear of Intimacy
26:42 Creating Landscapes of Conversation
32:03 From Hitchhiking to Hosting Influential Conversations
36:17 Unveiling the Art of Conversation and Personal Insights
37:40 Exploring Fame, Influence, and Personal Connections
38:56 The Craft of Creating Meaningful Conversations
40:26 Personal Reflections and Family Dynamics
52:09 The Power of Listening and the Art of Interviewing
59:26 Navigating Life's Transitions and Future Uncertainties
01:06:09 The Journey of Self-Discovery and Community Support
01:09:46 Contemplating New Beginnings and Creative Outlets

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Transcript

Art of Conversation with Paul Holdengraber

Paul Holdengraber: [00:00:00] Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Paul Holdengraber. I'm the Director of Public Programs here at the New York Public Library. It's a great pleasure to have you here. My goal here at the library, as you know, is to make the lions roar, to make a heavy institution levitate, if possible. 

Andrea Hiott: Hello, everyone. Today is another one of those more personal episodes with someone I've known a long time. A man named Paul Holdengraber. I first met him when I was a student in New York city. In some strange way.

We ended up in similar publishing circles and became friends and. This was, around the same time that he was becoming something of a famous man. In this literary world of New York City. And the events he was building. were at the New York public library in the Steven Schwarztman building. These two [00:01:00] big lions out front, couple of blocks from Grand Central on 42nd street. If you've been to Bryant park, it's that giant building. Framing the park and when you go inside. And up two floors up these big staircases. You come to the rose reading room, this big sort of almost church-like space. These murals of clouds on the ceilings and circulator chandelier's and it might sound kind of kitchy, but it feels very. Luxurious. Makes you feel like you're part of something special sitting there all day studying, which I did a lot. And, at the end of those days, quite often, it would be a really sweet reward to walk out of that gorgeous cavernous reading room. Down a few flights of stairs and into another very spectacular space. 

That's part of this huge. New York public library building called the Celeste Bartos forum. Because that was where Paul. As the director of public programming would hold his event. I'd hear him talk with Rebecca Solnit. Jhumpa Lahiri [00:02:00] Jay Z, Mike Tyson, Christopher Hitchens, Pete Townsend, Zadie Smith. Adam Phillips who Paul really loves and mentions a lot in this conversation. Marina Margaret Atwood. Bill Clinton, John hope, Franklin. It would just went on and on. 

There was so many. People at these events. But the events themselves were very special. It wasn't just another talk. It was a real event. There was something about being in that room. Being in that landscape of conversation that was created. So that's why I reached out to him to talk because he does create landscapes of conversation. At least I've experienced him doing that many times. And as I've started to imagine conversations as landscapes and what a power it is to have them be changed by them and be in them. I've started to wonder what is a conversation how, how does this happen? 

And. Should we even think about it too much. So Paul is definitely. Sort of curator or conductor of conversations. And I talked to him a little bit about [00:03:00] how that came to be in his own life and what it means for him. Paul's also just a really interesting conversation partner in his own. Right. 

Probably the only person in the world to ever get a recommendation letter from Foucault. Paul calls himself a Qutomaniac by profession. Uh, he's he likes to say he's a Digresser. And he does often digress and steer away from his own biography, but. He does talk to his parents a lot. 

He obviously loves them very deeply and they shaped him in. All sorts of ways, not least by having escaped the Nazis. Uh, the last minute sort of in 1938, fleeing, Vienna, and then only meeting and finding one another in Haiti. Here we talk a bit about what conversation means, the power of it, the art of it, what it does to us. Paul's own path. Some of the challenges he's had to face or is facing now. The landscapes. And. I just want to thank Paul for for all the conversations he's gifted. Over these years. And [00:04:00] I hope you enjoy. This conversation. I hope you also look at some of Paul's other conversations, which I'll be sure to put in the show notes. Also hope you're doing well, wherever you are and whatever landscapes you're moving through.

Werner Herzog: There's always been a quest for truth, and nobody knows what it is. I think there was some sort of, um, a ballot taken where the pulse felt among philosophers. 2, 000 worldwide. What is truth? And they had no real answer. Nobody can explain and declare what truth actually is. We do not know. 

Paul Holdengraber: And I keep thinking that that is a real blessing.

Werner Herzog: Uh, that's the first time I hear such a thing, yes. Uh, I, I do agree. Sometimes things do not need to be fully explained. We cannot explain it. It's a very good question. Most of the time it's better than a very good answer. [00:05:00] 

Andrea Hiott: We were trying to figure out how we had met, and it was Somehow through Berlin 

Paul Holdengraber: it was so lovely to hear from you. I must say it, it sort of made my heartbeat a bit stronger.

I was really, very pleased. I may or may not have told you that I wanted to teach a class once on digression. And I really only had the first line of the class. The class was, this is a class on digression. But before I begin, anyway, anyway, it's a good one. And it's true, the very first year I taught at Williams College, a hundred years ago, when I was a pretend scholar, I, I, had this idea already back then that it really would be interesting to teach a class on digression.

And I'm sure already then I knew the wonderful line of Laurence Stern, who said that digression is the sunshine of narrative, which was something that stayed in my mind forever. And about [00:06:00] 15 years ago. Princeton, where I got my graduate degree a hundred years ago, had been asking me again and again if I would come and give a talk in the humanities departments.

They invite people usually to show themthis is kind of fitting for your conversationto show that people who have studied literaturenot neuroscience, but literature in the humanities May have a future. And they believe probably that I had a future. They had invited the year before David Remnick, who also had a future.

What year are 

Andrea Hiott: we talking about now? 

Paul Holdengraber: About 15 years, about 15 years ago, maybe, maybe only 10 years ago. 

Andrea Hiott: Okay. I think you already had a pretty clear future. I had a 

Paul Holdengraber: future and now we can talk about the future, which is a little, a little more of an issue. But, um, I kept saying to Princeton, I [00:07:00] don't give talks, I don't give talks, I talk, but I don't give talks.

There 

Andrea Hiott: is a big difference. Yeah. Yeah. Big 

Paul Holdengraber: difference. And I said, you know what? And I said, you know what I like doing? I like talking to people. 

Andrea Hiott: Conversation is a little different than giving a talk, or giving a talk maybe, but a lecture and all this. A lecture is not my 

Paul Holdengraber: thing. Not your word. No. No. Also because I wouldn't know how to structure it.

 And I kept saying no every year. And then finally I thought, okay, they really want me, and it's very lovely to be desired. And I said, why don't I interview someone? Or why doesn't somebody interview me? Which is something that people had kept saying, and Adam Phillips, a psychoanalyst I much admire,

Andrea Hiott: he kept saying.

I saw you talk to him in New York quite a few times. Yeah, I'm sure. Great talks.

Paul Holdengraber: We've done it a few times. And Adam, um, Adam, 

Andrea Hiott: who is tickling, and being bored. 

Paul Holdengraber: And being bored. And, and he has a [00:08:00] great line in the Paris Review. I, I quote it because I, I did an, a Paris Review interview with him, the only Paris Review interview in the 75 years of the Paris Review that has a psychoanalyst as a subject of an interview.

 I think you would enjoy it, by the way, and if you can't find it, let me know. I know it's behind paywalls, but I can get it to you. And he says that digression is secular revelation, which is beautiful. Digression 

Andrea Hiott: is secular revelation. 

Paul Holdengraber: It's very 

Andrea Hiott: interesting. It's very, I mean, it's a version of sunlight, of the Yeah, it is.

Sunlight of narrative, 

Paul Holdengraber: isn't it? Oh, and so I said, I have an idea. Why don't we have, because Adam kept saying, next time I'm interviewing you, which of course I've never let happen because, my goodness, to be interviewed by a psychoanalyst, I can think about, it might be more pleasurable. [00:09:00] But at any rate, um, I haven't yet submitted myself.

Maybe I will before I die. 

Andrea Hiott: Oh, I thought we were leading up to it happened. And I was going to say, how did I miss this? But 

Paul Holdengraber: I said, I said to Princeton, to the, to the head of the complaint department, I said, I have an idea. Why don't we ask my advisor, Victor Brombert, to interview me? Now Victor at that point was 90, day before yesterday.

He turned a hundred. Oh wow. Happy 

Andrea Hiott: birthday to him. He's 

Paul Holdengraber: a wonderful, wonderful man. This was 

Andrea Hiott: your advisor at Princeton? 

Paul Holdengraber: B. Yeah. B-R-O-M-B-E-R-T. He wrote the most beautiful books on French literature on the idea of the prison in literature. He's just written a book, um, at the age of a hundred called Musings on Mortality.

Ooh. And another book called The Pensive Citadel, which just came out. I mean, imagine that, and he does remind. Of my father, in the [00:10:00] sense that my father at age 97, when people would ask him when he would retire, he said, I'm too old to retire. But at any rate, um, 

Andrea Hiott: Paul, let's start there, actually. Let's start where I am, which is close to where your father has been, was, is still, and that, guess where I am right now?

Leuven. Yeah, no. No. No. Belgium. No. Yes. I'm in Leuven. I think I say it wrong. Because there's The L E U V E N. I never know how to say it right. At 

Paul Holdengraber: the Flemish, the Flemish Yes, the 

Andrea Hiott: Flemish, Leuven. What are you doing there? I'm here visiting a friend, , she's at the law school, she has a, um, like a visiting thing that just happens to be only this time that I could come see her, so it's a little bit interesting that that's where I am.

Yeah, that's where I am right now, in a hotel room. And I just realized, isn't this kind of the area that your parents eventually came back to?

And you too, maybe, as a teenager, or as a boy? 

Paul Holdengraber: You remember, you remember things well, yes. So my [00:11:00] parents, so you know, my parents left Vienna just in time. My father left the day before the last day you could leave Vienna, in June 1938. My parents met in Haiti. So your 

Andrea Hiott: dad fled to Haiti, right? 

Paul Holdengraber: And your mom. My father fled, and my mother, separately.

Andrea Hiott: Separately, but both from Austria? 

Paul Holdengraber: Both from Vienna. Both met in Haiti. There were 137 Jewish families in Haiti. They met there. They were married in Haiti. They remained married until they both died. Uh, at the age My mother was 89. My father was 97. They were married for 71 

Andrea Hiott: years. That's amazing. I remember you visiting them often in Belgium, I think, around here, but I didn't have an image 

Paul Holdengraber: of them.

I went, the year I went to undergraduate school when I studied [00:12:00] philosophy and law, I went to Louvain la Nerve. They had just separated the library. 

Andrea Hiott: That's the French one. That's like an hour from here, right? It's an hour from here. 

Paul Holdengraber: You know, they separated the library in two in a very Belgian way.

Volume 1, 3, 5, and 7 was in one university, 2, in another. They separated. The orchestra with the Flemish speaking violinist and the French speaking violinist. Oh wow. 

Andrea Hiott: Crazy country. Amazing you say that because we were just at the law faculty and there's those double staircases. Yeah. And they're kind of two staircases right beside each other and my friend asked why Why, why was it built like this?

And it was like, oh, because the French students and the Flemish students didn't want to interact, so they had to have separate staircases or something. 

Paul Holdengraber: It's amazing, you should say that. When I visited Vienna with my father, he showed me two staircases. Um, going to the medical [00:13:00] school, and the Jews were asked to take, uh, a different staircase.

It wasn't built for that purpose, and then the Nazis already at that point wanted to go up the staircases, um, that they had designated for the Jews, and there were huge fistfights. Father spoke to me about that. That's a whole other story. They went from Vienna to Mexico, and then, since you were mentioning this, Um,

for many reasons, my father became rather restless and decided he wanted his children to be, get a European education, and so very much, um, wandering Jew kind of way, we went from country to country, including Back to Vienna, where my mother started to speak German with a French accent. We went to Dusseldorf and to Zurich and to [00:14:00] Lucerne, and then finally to Belgium, Brussels.

Why Brussels? My father would have told you because Brussels was central. I'm not sure central to what, but it was central. And so we lived in Belgium. Which is, um, not the place where my mother was happy, not the place where I would have really wanted to grow up, though, interestingly enough, um, I think a lot about Brussels now.

It comes back in my mind, and I was invited by a Pan African, literary festival to come to Brussels last year to give a keynote speech, which I did do, so I'm, I'm not 

Andrea Hiott: So you do speak. You do give speeches. I 

Paul Holdengraber: do give speeches on the notion of what it means to return. That's quite powerful. Yeah, I remember telling a friend of mine that I would do this, and he said, don't forget what Bob Dylan said about going back.

You can always [00:15:00] go back, but you always can come back, but you can't come back all the way. And so I mentioned all of that and spoke in a panel, I was nearly the only white person among all those people who, for whom the idea of home, of course, was much more complicated than for me. They were, from the Congo and from Senegal and from all kinds of different places.

At any rate, yes, I did grow up in so far that I grew up. I did grow up in Brussels. 

Andrea Hiott: It feels interesting that I came back here to talk to you because I associate Belgium with you, but only in the past a few years, I've had some memories or images of it. And, so it feels a little bit richer, but for some reason, I seem to remember you moved around a lot, even once you were here, didn't you?

Or did, or is it more like I'm thinking of you reading lots of books or? 

Paul Holdengraber: Well, uh, reading books is a way of moving around, but it wasn't, it wasn't that. You're absolutely right. I, I studied in Louvain, and [00:16:00] then I went, uh, after I studied philosophy there, I went to Paris. So, I studied in Paris, and in the real heyday of the waning of French Intellectual, philosophical, uh, greatness in some 

Andrea Hiott: way, right?

So right after all the big philosophers Well, I studied with 

Paul Holdengraber: Foucault and I studied with Hancombart. You 

Andrea Hiott: studied with Foucault? 

Paul Holdengraber: I didn't know that. Yeah, Foucault, Lévy. Foucault wrote to me my letter of recommendation for Princeton. What? 

Andrea Hiott: I mean, I knew you knew Lévy and all those 

Paul Holdengraber: people, but It was, it was two lines long.

What did it say? It said something like, the premises of Holden Graeber's work on European nihilism seems to me well founded. Michel Foucault. 

Andrea Hiott: Wow. That's like a blurb you should be using. 

Paul Holdengraber: Yeah, it's like a blurb. I don't know where the letter is, but I'm, I am positive. That's incredible, Paul. Wow. In Princeton. The [00:17:00] professors were impressed, not by me. But by the letter I got. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, that he wrote. I mean, that's probably very unusual. So I think, I feel like, okay, maybe this is wrong, but I have this image of you as like a teenage boy, reading a lot and also moving around a lot.

Didn't you walk a lot? Or maybe we used to talk about walking a lot or driving or hitchhiking. No, no, no. You know, you had this kind of restlessness too, right? You said your dad was restless. 

Paul Holdengraber: And still now. So my father believed, and I'll use the word he used. My father believed that it was immoral for a boy to travel any other way than hitchhiking before he reached the age of 21.

So um, I And my mother didn't agree with my father at all. 

Andrea Hiott: where did this come from? This was just his big belief. Um, from 

Paul Holdengraber: [00:18:00] his own past. Okay. From thinking, and I, I owe my father my ability to talk. That's a big 

Andrea Hiott: thing. 

Paul Holdengraber: Because I was able to talk 

Andrea Hiott: anyone. I just lost your sound.

Right when you said you could talk, there you go. Yeah. A little joke from your dad there. 

Paul Holdengraber: I know. I think he, um, he believed very much that, that, um, that, you need to be able to talk to anybody and hitchhiking is a wonderful way of inventing your life. You know, you tell all kinds of stories, some true, some less true. And so I hitchhiked. And I actually went to Vienna with my father. I went hitchhiking, he went by train, and I was there earlier than he was because I went on these autobahns in Germany that were, where people used to drive 200 kilometers an hour and picked him up at the, I know, and picked him up at train [00:19:00] station, and he thought I had been on the train and, um, that I just ran out to, to greet him.

Andrea Hiott: That's beautiful. So is that really how you learned how to talk? Was that like a lesson in how to converse with anyone? This 

Paul Holdengraber: is the owl of Minerva taking its flight at dusk. It's me, uh, believing, it's me making up a story about how I learned, you know, I have, I have these.

It does force 

Andrea Hiott: one. 

Paul Holdengraber: Yeah. It's a good one. It's, it's probably, there's probably some truth to that, but I did, I did, and you, it's amazing the memory you have. Really amazing, because what I did when I was 14 or 15 years old is I walked from the Lac de Constance to the Lac Le Mans in Switzerland by myself, having read Rainer Maria Rilke.

read the letters to a young poet, I took it to heart, and I imagined that, um, that one had to be alone. And I took a [00:20:00] backpack, and for three weeks, I walked from one part of Switzerland to the other three hundred and some kilometers on my own, sleeping in huts one night. and in tents another night. And so I did lead, I did lead, now having children, I realized to what extent I led a somewhat a friend less solitary life.

Um, my friends being books and music and, and really. I was completely devoid of any understanding, any understanding, knowledge, or, or any, any contact with, um, popular culture. I mean, my wife, Barbara, is always amazed that, I just know nothing.

 I have a wonderful t shirt with the cover of, uh, an album by Joy [00:21:00] Division that somebody gave me. And I, I mean, I just didn't even know it was that. 

Andrea Hiott: There's always been something of, of the solitary. I actually wanted to ask you about this next when you were talking before, because you studied philosophy.

I studied philosophy. I, I understand what it is to get lost in books and be solitary and walk. I think that's why I remember your stories. Cause we, they were similar to mine and it's a really solitary space, but yet. You're also very voracious, gregarious, and so on in your public life with conversations and you can, I could never have hitchhiked across, anywhere at that age when I was in that philosophy bubble.

So how did, how did these two worlds come together? 

Paul Holdengraber: I think to some extent, perhaps I was less in a bubble than you. Maybe my bubble had little holes. Um, I always I also loved the contact with people, though I don't think I had very many deep friends.

And I think friendship, [00:22:00] perhaps, is something that I've developed later in life. I feel like now I have some friends, though I wouldn't I would say that the idea, the notion of friendship is tremendously important to me. I don't think I've been particularly good at it. Um, Why not? But I do, I do create, I think I do create the illusion of friendship and proximity through these conversations.

Andrea Hiott: Well, I feel like you can go very deep with people. Um, but, yeah, why, why do you think you're not a good friend, is it that 

Paul Holdengraber: I, I think I don't maintain contact enough, I mean, um, you know, it's, it's really a pleasure to speak to you now, but it's so odd that if we had something in common, why, why didn't I stay in touch with you?

Yeah, I don't know. 

Andrea Hiott: I mean, we didn't we both didn't really I think 

Paul Holdengraber: you know, I know I'm not actually I'm not even I'm not saying why didn't you stay in touch with [00:23:00] me? No, no, I'm that this is not the but I'm illustrating it because I'm talking to you, but I would say this happens 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I feel it about you.

There's something about you that goes very deep but also It's not that you turn away, but, I don't know, is it, are you, maybe, I think I try to put it back into the books, right, where you can go really deep in the books because you can close the book at the end, or something, or, you know.

That's a good idea, good image. Yeah, there's some, there's something about, Not having to maintain that depth in a consistent way that allows one to go deep. It's hard to maintain that stuff over time and space I remember from your time in New York, I mean, that takes a lot of energy and it, it gets You know, people just assume it will happen. It's not an easy thing. It's not an easy space to create, right? So I don't know. Maybe that's part of it, too, that you just.

It's energy wise, it's very hard [00:24:00] to, once people know you can go there, they think you should just always be there in that deep space. Maybe that's, 

Paul Holdengraber: So interesting. It reminds me of, of what happens when I'm quiet in places and people wonder. If I'm okay, um, which is, which is a very, uh, peculiar kind of reaction, but I understand it.

And, and it, it probably does have something to do with the notion that a conversation for me is performative. And, and it isn't, I'm not, I'm not quiet. Um, I bring my body. I'm very present, I'm, uh, I'm, I'm present, I try to maintain the space also in terms of what you mentioned earlier, the silences. I try not to fill them at all, I don't mind the discomfort.

But I think like an actor who might be on, on stage, they might be off, [00:25:00] off stage. And so I think there's something of that that happens to me, um, and, you know, without using you as my psychoanalyst at this moment, there probably is in me, um, a fear of intimacy. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I was going to say that earlier, but I thought it, if it's true, you probably wouldn't want to hear it.

Paul Holdengraber: Well, now that I've said it, I heard it. It's better 

Andrea Hiott: that you said 

Paul Holdengraber: it. Yeah, so I think there's, there's something about that. And when I brought up Adam, I'm sure he'd have a hundred things to say about that. But there is something, getting, you know, this week I'm speaking with Werner Herzog again.

on, on Saturday. 

Andrea Hiott: Is it like the 20th time or what? I think you met him too when I met you. 

Paul Holdengraber: About the 20th time and I, I understand that we have an accent that is not utterly dissimilar. [00:26:00] So, um, we, but you know, and his, the subject he chose is the future of truth, whatever that might mean, which is kind of 

Andrea Hiott: fascinating.

You always have interesting subjects. What was the one? 20th century something. Was 

Paul Holdengraber: the 20th century mistake? Which was, yeah, you can look it up. It's actually his favorite interview. Oh, great. It was published by Michael Ondaatje in, uh, in Brick Magazine. Brick like, like a brick. You can read it. It's online.

I think you'd enjoy it because he has fabulous things to say there. Really interesting. But, you know, one thing you wanted to bring up in your preliminary comments was what happens in in conversation, and what what is it that that that conversation reveals. And I've come up, as you know, I'm a Quotomaniac by profession, and [00:27:00] there's there's there's a line that I adore, Andrea, which is a line from Tristan Tzara, one of the founders of Dadaism.

And he says that Thought is made in the mouth.

And I love that. I love that. It's probably not true completely, because it's made in many other places. But it is also made, if you think of it in a philosophically Greek context. of the dialogues and the whole notion of what happens, or if you think of it with Bakhtin in mind, and the dialogical imagination, and you think of le va et vient, the coming, you know, the exchange.

I think something happens when we talk to each other. We are, human beings are creatures who talk to each other. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I think I [00:28:00] would say that makes sense if you understand talk as an embodied act, it's movement for me. That's why I brought up the stuff about walking and even with Herzog, the way he creates worlds or spaces or landscapes, this physical, mental, emotional kind of way that we move. For me, that's what thinking is.

And I guess speaking like language and conversing is, is a form of movement through a space, isn't it? I mean, do you think about that when you're doing your conversations that you're actually in a landscape? 

Paul Holdengraber: Um, I'm writing this down because I love it.

And one of the titles of a conversation I had with Werner, you can find all of these things online. uses the word landscape. Oh, great. I have to hear that one. As the title. You'll find 

Andrea Hiott: it. But I think you were already talking about that even in New York with him, because 

Paul Holdengraber: We were. And in a way, I'm still talking about it.

Yeah, it's similar. I haven't [00:29:00] progressed, um, you know, in many ways. Well, 

Andrea Hiott: it's just that Yeah, these things change and it gets deeper, and there's more to talk about. I 

Paul Holdengraber: think so, and I think body language matters to me enormously. And so, um, for instance, yesterday I was speaking to the man, to the man who's organizing the conversation with Werner, and he works for the Thomas Mann House.

Thomas Mann lived, um, in Los Angeles. The Pacific Palisades. Do you ever come out here? 

Andrea Hiott: I do sometimes. Yeah, I haven't been there in a while, but funny you just bring that up because I just met I actually just met this person. He's not, I don't know him so well, but he was just saying he's going there for the, the Thomas Mann House now has fellowships apparently.

Yes, who is that? I can't remember his name. It was at a conference thing and he was just telling me he's going to go to the Thomas Mann House. You 

Paul Holdengraber: should look into it because you could maybe get a residency there. Yeah, 

Andrea Hiott: I should look at that. You [00:30:00] should 

Paul Holdengraber: look at it, but you know, so he asked me yesterday, so we're doing this at Red Cat, which is right next to Disney Hall, a little black box theater, about 300 people, which, you know, sold out with Werner literally in two minutes.

Andrea Hiott: Two minutes. Literally, 

Paul Holdengraber: I mean, gone. It was the same thing at the Royal Festival Hall, where there were 3, 000 people, gone. He just intrigues people forever. He asked me, so how would you like the setup? And I said, I'm glad you asked. I want two chairs, two tables, and I want the tables, the chairs to face each other as much as possible, without, you know, being like this, but like this.

Hmm. 

Andrea Hiott: Open to the 

Paul Holdengraber: audience. Because I want to look into the eyes of my opponent. Ah, opponent. I didn't use the word opponent, of course. I don't believe he's an opponent. But I, I, I, I want to. You said something 

Andrea Hiott: interesting there. You [00:31:00] guys do have a bit of a It's not a sparring, but there's But we do have 

Paul Holdengraber: a sparring.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, there's something there. Competitive almost, in a way. Yeah, there's something. Even with just quotes and words and ideas. Of course, 

Paul Holdengraber: yeah. Yeah, and I, you know, I will use for him the wonderful line he has, which sounds like Hölderlin, but isn't. He says, the poet must not avert his eyes. 

Andrea Hiott: Oh, that's great.

Who says that? It sounds like him, 

Paul Holdengraber: though. It's holdin through, through hat, so through Kurasawa. It's, you know, various people have said it. Mm. Holderlein I love the tower, but crazy tower, I think it's, I think it's right. I think it's correct, 

Andrea Hiott: You've had these amazing conversations with Werner since I first met you, which as I think we said before we came on, has been over, been a long time.

So you've been having these conversations with him regularly. He's not the only one. There's kind of, if we made a list of everyone you've talked to, it would sort of be a list of like the most [00:32:00] influential people of the past. decade or something, right? But how did you get there, Paul, from traveling around, hitchhiking, studying philosophy with Foucault?

I mean, did you envision this path did you have a vision? What was the landscape? I 

Paul Holdengraber: think, you know, when I studied law and philosophy, I abandoned law very quickly. I wasn't cut out for it at all. Studied philosophy with all these fancy people.

Because I was born in the United States, I had an American, I have an American passport. I was born in Houston, Texas, where I spent four very important days, a memory of which is slight. 

Andrea Hiott: We moved Four days? Oh, I didn't know it was that short. Days, days, days. So your parents came from Mexico to Houston, had you, and then left.

Paul Holdengraber: Left. Had me because I had a medical condition, RH negative, blood condition, and they decided my father didn't trust the medical establishment in Mexico. He was right. Had me in America. Had an American [00:33:00] child, perhaps partly because he couldn't come into America during the war, which is another whole story.

 But then, got back to America by having a child who is American. Um, and then, it became quite, quite obvious that jobs in, in Europe teaching, um, would probably not be many, with how, how impossible, let's say, in France it would have been. So off I went to do a comparative study of comparative literature departments, hitchhiked around the U. S. to go to various universities, Princeton and Yale and Harvard and Penn and Michigan and God knows what, got into Princeton because of Foucault's letter, studied complete there, then taught at various fancy universities. Um, for a while, and I think, um, I think by somewhat by, by necessity. Because I wasn't cut out [00:34:00] either for the publish or perish.

Um, I think I rather perished than published. 

Andrea Hiott: You mean the whole academic, you have to publish papers. The whole 

Paul Holdengraber: academic. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Yeah, the, the politics of petty difference. the, 

Andrea Hiott: the. Also the find your niche and stick to it. You know, you can't, you can't hitchhike in the academic world.

You can't 

Paul Holdengraber: hitchhike. And, you know, again, my father said the more interests you have, the more interesting you are. And I, I think I developed kind of a rapacious appetite for many different things. 

Andrea Hiott: That doesn't fit well in academia in terms of It doesn't. It 

Paul Holdengraber: doesn't. And, you know, I, I never really managed to specialize in anything, even though I wrote about Walter Benjamin. And, you know, I, I did it because I had to in some way, and I've never, I've never been able, you know, this coming week I speak on Saturday with, um, Werner, on Monday in New York at the Ford Foundation with Rua [00:35:00] Benjamin, and on the following week with Rebecca Solnit. Three different worlds, connected.

By, by the fact that I'm speaking to them. And it, it is true that, um, I was a jolly good fellow at the Getty, um, where I was supposed to write my, my dissertation into a book. Instead, I met Barbara and, um, spent more time at the, at the farmer's market buying fruit that I found and delivered to her, so much so that she thought that I was thinking she should begin making, uh, jam.

And so then, uh, we, we got to know each other. A little bit there, and then I, and then I worked, and then I started this adventure of speaking, uh, gigs at LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and seven years after doing that and speaking to a lot of people there, the [00:36:00] president of the library, in New York called me up and came to New York, came to LA to recruit me, which made Barbara very unhappy because she didn't want to go already.

And he said, I would like you to oxygenate the library. 

Andrea Hiott: That's a very important phrase. Yeah, 

Paul Holdengraber: yeah. And then I would say, you know, as you probably recall, I would always say before I brought somebody on stage, I would say my goal is to make the lion. Yeah. Elevate.

Roar. Exactly. So I changed the oxygenate to Um, roar. 

Andrea Hiott: Um. But you also would like, say you wanted it to float or levitate 

Paul Holdengraber: or something. Float to levitate. And when successful to, to make it levitate. And so I started to talk with all these people and, you know, six or seven hundred people later, um, I.

I think if you do look at that list, and it's a list I need to make at some point, I never [00:37:00] have, I think one would discover, uh, a lot of important voices. That's for 

Andrea Hiott: sure. I can, I'll put a partial list somewhere or other for anyone who listens to this. But what's the through line is what I was trying to get at. What was it about being interested in philosophy and literature and then the conversation? I mean, you just kind of skipped that. You started doing these conversations in LA. Obviously, like, what was the, I mean, it wasn't just fame. I think there might be something about you that's drawn to not necessarily fame, but people who are big, you know, I 

Paul Holdengraber: think there's something to do with fame, though I'm, I'm worried about that.

I always remember the wonderful line that Rainer Maria Rilke used in his. book on Rodin, he said that fame was but the collection of misunderstandings that gather around the new name. And I think there's something about that which is cool. , I think there is something, if I have to be honest, [00:38:00] that I'm impressed by when I Get to, you know, speak to, um, to Jay-Z Jay-Z or Mike Tyson or Laurie Smith or, uh, or Werner , but there's also something in me that is really interested in, um, in somehow unpacking people's thoughts and bringing them. I'm. To, to be honest, I'm good at that in a way that, that most people are not good at it. By that I mean to say it's very ent. I understand the boosterism and the fact that there's a lack of, of humility in my saying this, but what I know, what I know how to do.

I think when I do it well, when it works, it doesn't always work. There have been marvelous failures, but when it works is. Create an atmosphere or a space [00:39:00] where people feel at ease to, to bring out the multifaceted nature of human interest, and not just, you know, writer writes book, you and pays penance by coming to the library to present book, but there's much more.

There's much more to it. Yeah, 

Andrea Hiott: it becomes a sensory exploration or something. I mean, I really do. I think so. Yeah, I really do want to try to like, think of it as a landscape that somehow you get people to move through together. I love this note or meet to their own trajectories

Paul Holdengraber: um, traje the trajectory. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to know exactly what led me to do what I'm doing. Um, but I, I do think it's, it's um, an ease with speech. Though I have a speech [00:40:00] impediment, which, you know, used to be stronger, but still is there. My lisp is still 

Andrea Hiott: there.

 That becomes part of the charm, or is part of the charm, isn't it? Probably. That you turned what might Have been a weakness into a strength, in a sense,

Paul Holdengraber: Maybe, maybe, but, and I speak funny, you know, my, my younger son, who spent a lot of time, who now is at UCLA, we went to the East Coast and he went to the West Side.

Oh, you have two sons? I have two. My oldest son is unfortunately, um, plagued by having gone through addiction, drug addiction. 

Andrea Hiott: I know that. That's touched me too, and my family. Oh yeah. Very hard. 

You just have to persist to try to open new paths and stuff.

I 

Paul Holdengraber: don't know why we got onto the 

Andrea Hiott: boys. I I think you were going to tell me something else about, something your son said, or, 

Paul Holdengraber: oh, that I speak funny. Yeah, the lisp thing. He spent a [00:41:00] lot of time during the pandemic at home, and got to know me better, and realized that I have an accent.

He hadn't quite realized it as much. And he also realizes that I really mispronounce not only everything, but have strange Tournure de phrase, you know, a strange way of putting words together.

Andrea Hiott: But I think that that's one thing that makes you really good at what you do, too, at least from an outsider perspective, is that you have all this, Things that are familiar to many different people, but also many things that are unfamiliar and all these different languages and countries and there's all this movement and also there's all these other emotional and philosophical and literary landscapes that you visited, and you can sort of mesh it all together. And bring it close to whoever you're talking to.

At least that was kind of the feeling I had in listening to your conversations and things that somehow you'd had covered so much space that [00:42:00] you could always link some interesting, uh, path to their path that they hadn't thought of before.

Paul Holdengraber: And, you know, the conversations that are successful is when a brother, father, mother, sister, a friend, a lover, a husband, uh, And even more so, the subject says, I said something I've never said before, or I made a connection.

And, and I, I suppose, um, what you're saying is true. There's a, for me, there's a, there's a folly of contiguity. There's a possibility of bringing together, um, in, in a way which I have been unable to do on a page. I'm able to do it through speech. 

Andrea Hiott: Mm hmm. It really is like an exploration, getting to the edge of something and then, I mean, isn't that what you like about reading, too, in a way?

Yes. That it takes you somewhere to an edge or a different sensory place, [00:43:00] a different mental place. It's all the same thing in a way. Conversation can do that. Even 

Paul Holdengraber: more powerful. And I, and I also think that conversation, particularly in our time now, uh, it seems like I've chosen a profession. or at least I had a profession until recently, we can get into that in a moment, that is very much in need.

In other words, I think it's not, it's not something that is done frequently. And partly my ability to do this is different from Most ways in which this is done, because either it's done in an academic setting, which I'm sure you know very well, where you go and hear people giving papers, sometimes fabulously.

I mean, my goodness, I've, I've heard extraordinary lectures, no doubt about it. And I've heard some extremely [00:44:00] good conversations. But usually There's something rather staid about them and a little bit stale about them. And I try to bring in everything I've got, which includes most, most importantly, a kind of of listening that makes people, people listen, and then another. Another part that I try to bring up whenever I can is a level of humor. Humor is very important, too. I've often said that I don't think I could ever love someone whose adjectives I wouldn't share, but I also think I couldn't love someone whose humor I didn't share.

This 

Andrea Hiott: reminds me of Barbara again, too. What was the question you asked her before you, like when you were thinking of getting married? And you have to remember it at some point, I remember you used to talk about there was this one [00:45:00] question. Oh, 

Paul Holdengraber: she had a question whether, whether I liked Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Oh, was that it? Okay. I think so. 

Andrea Hiott: But I think you had a question, too. I think there was two questions. That sounds familiar. I have a very good memory. I studied memory, so.

I can remember the times we met. I just don't remember the last time we met.

 I seem to think maybe it was at Grand Central at that, that kind of cool. Campbell Room or something? Yeah! Maybe there. Which doesn't exist anymore. Doesn't? Ah. So we can date it to at least that. The closing of that. It was so nice. But I don't know if that was the last time.

Truly, it was in New York before you left. We haven't seen each other in California, so. And you haven't been here, or I haven't seen you here. And I've been living here, so. And 

Paul Holdengraber: here, here for you is Berlin. 

Andrea Hiott: I live in Holland now. But I have, was in Berlin mostly. Where do you live?

 Utrecht. 

Paul Holdengraber: I bicycled through much of Holland all the way up to the Aflo de [00:46:00] Oh wow. All 

Andrea Hiott: the way up there to the islands as you could take the ferries around and from 

Paul Holdengraber: Brussels.

Yes, I did. Wow. I, and I went over that bridge on the Aflo de and I went all around, from Rotterdam to Amsterdam. Ah, all of that. I did 

Andrea Hiott: very cool on a bicycle the whole way on a bicycle. Well, I had 

Paul Holdengraber: a girlfriend in the south of France who was quite a bit older than I was.

And I bicycled from Brussels all the way to Aix en Provence to see her. 

Andrea Hiott: That's, uh, very

Paul Holdengraber: Crazy, 

Andrea Hiott: romantic. It's very romantic. Yeah. See, that gets to something about you too, right? These big gestures that That are really coming from the heart. There's that Thoreau quote I always thought about.

I'm sure I told you before this, that reminds me of, or that you remind me of, the enthusiasm, uh, is a supernatural serenity. I think it's Thoreau. Yeah, enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity. I'm pretty sure. But you have this, right, this, this overabundant [00:47:00] energy, and when you kind of put it into what you're doing, yeah, something, something 

Paul Holdengraber: happens.

Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity, because, interesting, because of course Emerson, part of that whole group of people, said that nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. Mm. It's a great, yeah. In the etymological sense of enteos, which literally means to be transported by the gods.

Andrea Hiott: There you go, transport right there. It's this movement and transport, being transported. 

Paul Holdengraber: Movement, movement, do you feel 

Andrea Hiott: like you need to, yeah, put your energy somewhere? 

Paul Holdengraber: Well, you know, when I interviewed Pico Ayer once in, in In Jamaica, in a festival called Calabash, a wonderful festival where you're in front of 2, 000 people on the beach and the backdrop is a I quoted this wonderful line from an essay by, um, George Santayana, in The Philosophy of Travel.

[00:48:00] He says that Aristotle talks about plants being firmly grounded in the soil, but man, Aristotle says, has the intelligence of locomotion. Yeah. That's wonderful. This idea, again, this idea of movement, this idea that I would probably talk to Werner about of, of traveling. You know, he doesn't like the notion of walking.

He says, I travel on foot. Oh, right, yeah. Right. This notion of traveling on foot, which he shares with Chatwin. Uh, this whole notion of movement, of movement and of filmmaking as a kind of nearly a, a, uh, something you do with your 

Andrea Hiott: body. It is. It's embodied. Yeah. Cognition is how we make our way through the world. Like that Santayana book is really interesting, right? I think plants are moving, but they're not moving in the same way. And it's really interesting to think of thought as locomotive locomotion. [00:49:00] I would say literally that's kind of true. And so if you put that in a context of something like.

Let's go to New York, right? That's where we met. So, New York Public Library, when you were there, these events, this space, you said you wanted the building to levitate, and I remember walking in, they were often at night, just kind of after sunset, and you sort of walk, you're walking into this amazing building on 42nd Street.

around sunset time. And then you walk in and there was a kind of sensory ambience. I don't know how much you had to do with that, but there would always be music playing. The lights were in a certain way. It almost felt like you'd kind of come to a nice party with the lights and people mingling. The stage would be set up in a very particular way.

And I mean, there was a kind of cognitive space being created there, um, a landscape that everyone was sort of participating in. It was participatory sense making or way making going on. I don't know how much of that was conscious, but when I think back on it, I remember that, that movement and it all became part of the [00:50:00] conversation in a way.

 Did you think about all that or was it just, you were just in the moment, you know? No, no, 

Paul Holdengraber: no. No, it was very much prepared. Very, very, I mean, you picked up on all of it, the music was tremendously important to me when it was the wrong music, I got very upset, and people who worked around me couldn't stand me, um, the light was very conscious, I was always upset by how cold the room was, so I always asked people to make it warmer.

Um, the images were, Werner was very, very instrumental in that, actually this time around he doesn't want us to have any film clips because he wants me to talk about him as a writer and as a poet. So no images, we'll see, I've never done an event without images with Werner, so it'll be interesting to see how that works out.

But no, that, they were very much there to, you know, when I had christopher Hitchens, it was [00:51:00] important for me to play. A snippet of a lecture that Isaiah Berlin gave during his years at Hitchin, took a class at Oxford, or to surprise Harold Bloom with Walt Whitman reading. And you know, this was also, it was a wonderful way also , of creating, again, movement, creating something extraterritorial, as it were.

But, um. You know, and you use the word way making, which is of course a very interesting way of thinking of it as, you know, a pass, which seems to me really what I'm trying to, I've tried to create a pass through, through words to a person. Um, so you go from, oh, that's beautiful. Yeah. It feels that way, you know, through, through our connection now, 

Andrea Hiott: but I wanted to ask you what it's like to listen and what, [00:52:00] how, because we talked about how you learned how to talk we can say it's from your father in a way, from hitchhiking, maybe just also from you being who you are.

But the listening part, is that more your mom's influence or? 

Paul Holdengraber: Well, it's interesting, you know, my mother, when I was 11 years old, said to me, Paulie, We have two ears and one mouth. Probably because I wasn't listening, right, and so I've discovered, um, and this was through social media, somebody wrote to me and said, you know, this line of your mother's is not your mother's.

It goes all the way, and I can send it to you, it goes all the way 

back to the Greek.

There's a long history of that. Listening, for me, is really It's a form of attention. It's a bit like what Simone Weil talks about when she says that attention is a form of prayer.

It's really, [00:53:00] it's what we do when we really are with somebody, is pay attention, listen. It's so important to create that space where you just lean back, actually Mostly I don't lean back. I lean forward. Mm-Hmm. and I bring, you know, I, I know I do this. And sometimes, you know, people have wondered about it and that some of it is is conscious and some of it is unconscious.

It's a mixture. You, 

Andrea Hiott: that you lean forward in your chair when you're talking to people or, yeah. 

Paul Holdengraber: And so. It also creates a space where people, when you used to come to the Bartos Forum, the big one, there would be five or six hundred people there. Wild. 

Andrea Hiott: Why? It is wild. And, and that's interesting too about the listening, because you create a, that you listen in a certain way that, your listening changes the way the [00:54:00] room listens in a way.

Did you figure that out? I mean, was that part of it? I, I 

Paul Holdengraber: think it's, that is again, very, it's, I, I become the medium or the midwife or the, I, I think that if it's really so interesting to listen to this, see an example of it on stage and do the same. And so people pay the attention.

Andrea Hiott: It changes the attention, that's what it does. 

Paul Holdengraber: It does change and it changes the focus. Awareness. And I'm sure that some people also, I know, I'm not sure, I know some people would sometimes think of themselves as a person who would be on stage in my place. A little bit like when you go and see an analyst, um, there's a form of projection.

You would like to become the analyst. The person who listens, um, yeah, and that's since you rubbed some [00:55:00] people the wrong way anyway, 

Andrea Hiott: well, no, that's exactly where I was going to go because there's a dance isn't there between the listening you're also kind of guiding, as you said, you're using words to create a path to someone, but you're also sort of opening this path with whatever it was like 600 people but sometimes you interrupt people or I remember you. Maybe we had a conversation once about someone criticizing you for, for talking and not just letting the person talk, 

but I've noticed with really good interviewers that they do interrupt at key points, have you ever thought about that? 

Paul Holdengraber: I have and, and I think there are two, two sides to it.

There's one where I hold a silence for a very long time and it really can become uncomfortable. Mm-Hmm. . 

Barbara, you know, sometimes, will say, you know, that was a bit much.

Andrea Hiott: The pause was too long or something. 

Paul Holdengraber: Yeah. Too long Sometimes. The pause actually really brings about things that without the pause wouldn't [00:56:00] come about at all.

And sometimes, I think the interruption can be of two sorts, two kinds. One is interrupting the thought, where you lose, you interrupt and you break the person's thought pattern. The other one, which is of course more important, and better is the interruption that brings a person closer to a deeper understanding of what they were trying to do, or brings them back away from the digression upon the digression, back to maybe just the digression that brings them back to the point they were trying to make, though quite frankly I don't believe too much in too many points.

 I believe more in In the randomness of whatever it is that might happen, um, and I think Adam says that when we've had, when we've had a really good conversation, [00:57:00] we really don't know what we're talking about. We've sort of lost, we've lost the thread. 

Andrea Hiott: Did you give people kind of an outline of what you're going to talk about?

Never? Never. 

Paul Holdengraber: Never. Except politicians who always wanted it. But never, and, but I would do this thing where I would call the people I would be talking to, or have an exchange, for instance, yesterday was Rua Benjamin.

And we had a half hour conversation yesterday where we touched upon things we might talk about. That's all. That's good. And with Werner, I wrote to him, but he hasn't yet written back, I said, the future of truth, we're talking in the context of art in the times of crisis, perhaps it might be interesting to think about

the present moment and what's happening, some of the calamities that are happening [00:58:00] around the world now, and particularly, I think, the Middle East is important. The relationship Germany has to Israel is, of course, extremely complicated. I just give this as an indication, but what Werner and I will talk about, I don't know. 

Andrea Hiott: Do you ever get lost, Paul, to talk about the present moment a bit, too?

Where are you now? 

Paul Holdengraber: All the time lost, uh, lost in, in what way do you mean? 

Andrea Hiott: In conversations with, that you're having with people, but also in a bigger picture. do you ever get lost? Yes. Off the path you thought you were going to be on, not digressing necessarily, but really, yeah.

Paul Holdengraber: Yes, I do. 

 I've gotten lost also in, in knowing, you know, how to find my way, and I get lost quite simply because I have no sense of direction.

I have no sense of direction, none. In New York, which is a city where one wouldn't get lost very easily, I would, Andrea, I would [00:59:00] forcefully walk with absolute conviction in the wrong direction. Unless the GPS in my car tells me turn left and tells me exactly, I have no sense of where to go.

So I get lost in many different ways.

Andrea Hiott: And right now, where, where are you? That was the question, too, in your life, and, you know. Well, in my, in 

Paul Holdengraber: my life, I do want to, I somehow do, do feel compelled to tell you. Um, so, I came out to LA, as you know, because of Barbara. Mm hmm. In some ways. I say in some ways, not because she wasn't enough of a reason, but because, I, I had been at the library for over 14 years, and that's twice a seven year itch, and maybe it was time to put an end to that.

 It was magnificent there. If I had stayed on more, it was magnificent, but it wasn't because the last few [01:00:00] years were sort of getting old. It was great in probably in the years when you came, the first six or seven were filled with an incredible energy. One that I also have more of than I do now.

Came out here, I'm on the board of a foundation called the Onassis Foundation, which is a Greek foundation founded by Aristotle Onassis. When his son died in a plane crash, he created this foundation for public benefit. And there's a cultural component of it in New York. There's a cultural component of it in Athens.

And I said to The president of the foundation and his wife, Aphrodite, I said we should create a part in L. A. We transport goods from one port to another. Let's transport ideas to the Pacific Rim. They thought this was magnificent. I created something called Ola, Onassis L. A., [01:01:00] where I was going to do all kinds of cultural events.

I did a few, and then the pandemic hit. I created this daily podcast, which you can hear, called the Quarantine Tapes. And so 250 programs later, a little over a million people, over a million people listening, you know, everybody from Henry Rollins to Sonny Rollins to Myra Kalman to Pico Ayer to Werner to,

So many people, blah, blah, blah, you know, lots of blah, blah, blah. Roseanne Cash, I'm forgetting all the people who I spoke to, but a lot of them. And then, about a year ago, the president called me up and said, you know,

We're going back to the cradle of civilization, it was his word. Um, So, Andrea, for the first time in my entire existence, I am jobless. [01:02:00] And I don't know what I'm going to do next. I, I, I'm going to go and see a doctor now to make sure that I still get in on our health plan, which ends in two weeks.

So you catch me at an interesting moment. I'm speaking to a few people. I'm wondering whether to create something on my own. I don't think that's necessarily the wisest thing because I don't think I'm disciplined enough to create my own outfit. Um, so, you know, um, I'm okay.

I'm kind of confident that something will happen. I'm not a spring chicken anymore. I'm not a summer chicken. I'm kind of an early autumn chicken. You know, I'm not young anymore. I'm not a wunderkind anymore. I'm not a kind, and I'm less of a wunder. And so, um, this is a moment which is difficult. The hours between two and four in the morning are not [01:03:00] great.

I keep the night company. Keep the night 

Andrea Hiott: company, there's the line. Remember that. I remember that. 

Paul Holdengraber: You see? Speaking to me today is like speaking to me back then. 

Andrea Hiott: I hope so because I mean, I don't think it's the same but there's definitely continuity and You still have all those gifts and you've been giving to a lot of people for a lot of years, in a way that was what I was trying to get at by asking you if it's hard to hold the space, you know, at, at, I guess you're entering a new space now.

Paul Holdengraber: I am, I am entering a new, I mean, to use the word you so beautifully used, um, and which maybe is a way for me to think about it. So you've helped me also through this conversation, through. a conversation, we help each other, which is another, there's a, of course, a therapeutic aspect to speaking, but there's also one of kindness and generosity, which is also has to do with space.[01:04:00] 

And so not to lose the thread of the word that you used, which maybe is what I need to look at now, is it's a new landscape. And

I don't know, We, I, it will, it will, I mean, um, geographically speaking, it, I think it needs to remain L. A. at least for a while because of our young, older son, because of Oliver being at home. At UCLA, we might as well benefit from the fact that he's close by, um, but there's a mortgage to be paid, and, you know, there are financial considerations which are sort of devastating, and there's no, because also, costs us so much, you know, hundreds of dollars.

I mean, just. It's crazy. I know. Just all of our savings, uh, [01:05:00] disappeared, uh, I mean, all. 

Andrea Hiott: So you have to do something and a new landscape is there. Maybe you have to learn how to read maps. 

I mean that more metaphorically, but no, I understand. We've been talking about, I mean, you, you have this richness, right. Of. Paths and you've opened up paths for so many other people and there's maybe there's some way you can get a like a little bit of a view of yourself and where all these paths that you've opened might already be leading.

Somewhere or other, there's definitely a perspective there that no one else has so I think the question is how do you best in this day and age, uh, communicate it, I don't know what the answer is, but I'm sure the people around you 

Paul Holdengraber: know. And by the way, in this day and age is really an important part of what you're saying because it's probably a little bit different in Europe than it is in the U.

S. But, you know, there's a reckoning happening here. I'm white, I'm [01:06:00] older, now on top of it all I'm Jewish, um, you know, where do I fit? The problem of fitting has always been a problem for me anyway, but now there's that added not fitting, and people are coming, not to the rescue because we can't be rescued, but for instance, on Sundaynobody knows this except for Barbara and now you, so you have a way too, by the way.

On Sunday, just before I go to New York, a group of people are going to have a phone call with me on Zoom to see how they can help me. Wonderful. So, people are, people are thinking, we can't leave this man, uh, jobless. 

Andrea Hiott: Maybe it goes back to the thing we talked about at the beginning too, about it's hard to be, have [01:07:00] friends and friendships and it's scary to be to go deep and be vulnerable and this kind of thing. I mean, maybe that's the landscape that you're entering now and maybe that's the place that all this stuff that you've, I mean, I think of that backpack and Bruce Chatwin and this kind of, I don't know where all that, that comes in, but, you know, talking about landscapes, you've got this backpack full of stuff.

 You've been on all these explorations. Maybe now it's the time to open up your conception of who you are , and, see, see what other people see and, maybe be vulnerable a little bit. Maybe that's the lesson. This, that's what this is in a way. You don't have to hold the space.

Somebody can help you create it. You know 

Paul Holdengraber: who owns Bruce Chatwin's backpack? I 

Andrea Hiott: think, uh, I think I saw it in a movie or something with Herzog, right? Uh. 

Paul Holdengraber: Werner actually has. In his home. Ah, yeah. He has, and he brought [01:08:00] it once on stage, when I, I think he brought it to Barcelona where we spoke, but I'm not sure.

And he has it, and Bruce was, Bruce Chatwin was so sick. And, and, and Wener went to visit him and Bruce said to him let, I want to put on my backpack. And I mean he, he, he weighed 80 pounds. Like in delirium or something. He weighed 80 pounds. He was dying. Oh gosh. It's in his movie about Chatwin. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, that must be what came 

Paul Holdengraber: to mind.

That's where you saw it. And he, yeah. He actually, um, said to Werner as he was dying, Take my backpack. So it's so interesting you should bring 

Andrea Hiott: this up. That's very strong. Because that's what, yeah, maybe you need to give your backpack to someone. You're just beginning. You're still pretty young, Paul.

And yes, you have all this, I mean, You're not young, but you're not old. So there's a lot of years left to 

Paul Holdengraber: give. When do you think 

Andrea Hiott: I was born?. I'm 

Paul Holdengraber: [01:09:00] turning the age of a song of the Beatles.

Andrea Hiott: The one about, will you still 

Paul Holdengraber: love me? Will you still need me? Will you need me when I'm 64? 

Andrea Hiott: 64. Oh my gosh. That seems so old when I was a kid. 

Paul Holdengraber: It seems so old and I'm that age. 

Andrea Hiott: But there's wonderful, there's something wonderful about it. I mean, you've, you've, you've been alive. You've experienced life and We need that right now.

We need people who've experienced, fully experienced 

Paul Holdengraber: life. Funny you should say this because I got a message the other day from this doctor, who's the head of neurology and palliative care at Cedars Sinai. He wrote me a message, kind of a fan letter, saying that he's been following what I'm doing and would love to create a series with me on the notion of care.

What does it mean to care? [01:10:00] Oh, that's beautiful. Learning to 

Andrea Hiott: care. 

Paul Holdengraber: Yeah, we've, we've been having these these exchanges and I've met a few people through him and we've had these dinners and recently I told him how worried I am, you know, financially and he said, you know, you will find a job. Just continue to do what you're doing, which is to live fully.

You have such a rich life. That's true. It was so interesting. But of course, you know, it's, there are also practical issues I have to address. 

Andrea Hiott: Well, I think this is the artist, the reason, emotion, passion, artist, this is the hard thing, this, knowing life is so full and feeling it in full and going with it and then also there is a practical side I mean that we have to deal with and yes There is a flow you can get into that space where you're surfing both of those things I think part of it is this Like working with it, right?

This is how we this is how we find new landscapes and create new [01:11:00] paths. And it's not like comfortable, but when you were just talking, I had this kind of vision of, 

 a participatory environment, like I was describing with the New York public library, . 

Paul Holdengraber: It's well, it's very you know, you were talking about it The sensuous feeling you had getting in the threshold you passed when you got your ticket and you walked in Sometimes we would even have drinks and there was something happening there.

And, and the whole feeling of it and choosing your seat and the person next to you and I mean, there were a lot of things that that happened in that space.

And for me, yes, yes, there is also the fact, and Barbara talks about this all the time, she always says, you need to go back to an audience. The podcast was good, but an audience is better, being, being on stage. There's something about it. It's better.

It's better. Yeah. And I love it and I feed off 

Andrea Hiott: it. I think that's why it's better because [01:12:00] you're different than you, you really have to listen to yourself, and living in full, it's not about what everyone else thinks is cool right now, or what everyone else wants. You're unique, you have all these different ways of seeing the world, and part of the charm is the kind of thing that might be peculiar in, in the world.

It's just the peculiarity that isn't peculiar to you, you know? And part of that, I do think, I remember those moments of the room being alive, and I don't think you need to try to create that, but see where the environment is where that's created, , for you.

I think there's a grace to it. It's just, who's going to open that space, or where is that space? It already exists somewhere, I'm sure, and we need it. We've had too much Instagram, 

Paul Holdengraber: we want it, we want it, and we need it, and we have to find it. We do need it. And, and, and, you know, to find a charged space.

The other day I'm doing this series with Occidental College, uh, which is a college out here in, in L. A., which is well known because Obama went there, but it isn't well [01:13:00] known, and they, they have hired me to do these various things, so. There was the first event, and now there's Rua Benjamin in New York, and then there's Rebecca Solnit.

So you're working, you're not 

Andrea Hiott: jobless. 

Paul Holdengraber: I'm doing these little things, right? But I, I spoke, I launched the series with someone called Alok, who is a they. Trans, non binary, . It was fabulous. And the non binary way of thinking about the world is really interesting and we need non binary ways of thinking about the world.

Andrea Hiott: We need some non binary media or conversations. 

Paul Holdengraber: Will we set another time to talk? 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, i, no, I 

Paul Holdengraber: just feel like we need to talk again, because I, not only have I enjoyed it, but I think it's, it's, um, I thank you for it.

Yeah, 

Andrea Hiott: and I thank you. It's very helpful for me, so I [01:14:00] would love to talk to you. 

Paul Holdengraber: I feel like Groucho Marx again, no, No, thank you. No, no, no. You remember that. No, it's actually helpful, um, I feel very, I feel This goes back to listening. It's something that they say in America, right? I feel heard, right? It's something that is said.

So, and it's not something that often happens. I think I'm more, and it has to do with pleasure also, you know. That's a good word, too. Yeah, it's a very good word. 

It's, it's about, you know, giving and getting and sharing and what, you know, what the balance is there.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. It's equilibrium. 

Paul Holdengraber: Yeah. Equilibrium or, um, you know (Andrea:dance), Adam's, Adam doesn't believe in balance. Um, and I, I understand that being off balance. [01:15:00] And I think that goes back to your beautiful line of, of peculiarity and following your inner demon and following, you know, following what matters to you, not what everybody else is telling 

Andrea Hiott: you.

Yeah. If you can get clear. That's, that's the path. 

Paul Holdengraber: And anything that you feel, you know, I love homework, so, Mm-Hmm. things you think I, I might read or if you have thoughts about my future glorious life, let me know. 

Andrea Hiott: You know, you could speak a book. Have you, you could just speak a book into your phone about your father or your life or I don't know.

All these conversations. 

Paul Holdengraber: my mind, so many, many people have told me about writing a book. I've had famous agents wanting to be my agent. I'm sure. But maybe you could speak a book. And I think I should speak a book. Yeah. And I've had the thought, um, in speaking with you that I should be speaking to you for the book.

Just think about 

Andrea Hiott: that. We could do a little chapter by chapter conversations. [01:16:00] 

Paul Holdengraber: Because you ask very good questions and 

I also want to I want to talk to you about waymaking. I'm just interested by it. If you have things about it, maybe you can give me a general idea when you send me the links. I just, I feel there's something there that is close to, what I've been thinking. I mean, the fact that I caught up, caught on that word, 

Andrea Hiott: well, you just 

Paul Holdengraber: said it once and, and that's another thing, right, is, is in conversations, So somebody says something and Through conversation, finding a word. , you know, um,

Alva Noe.

 I know Alvin because he came to interview, um, William Forsythe, the, the dancer. And he stayed in touch at the, you see, this is another thing. Yeah. 

Andrea Hiott: It's very, I just looked at his book again because he came to a conference in Heidelberg and I just missed him and I thought, oh, his stuff [01:17:00] is probably interesting to look at. It probably is. Yeah. And

Paul Holdengraber: and this is what happens and it's what, it's the way we were talking about it. Exactly. 

Andrea Hiott: There's all these connections. It's filled 

Paul Holdengraber: with references and sometimes it makes sense. And I don't know things. I don't know things.

I'm so far from being an expert. 

Andrea Hiott: Nobody's an expert. I mean, that's not the point.

Paul Holdengraber: You know, um, Adam has a very interesting book, uh, about experts and, and the short, short sightedness of it all. The only time I want an expert is if I'm ill and I want somebody to take care of something.

Exactly. Then you need an expert. You don't need them to know Heidegger. You don't. 

Andrea Hiott: A 

Paul Holdengraber: huge hug to you. Yeah, a big hug to you too. no? What a pleasure. Amazing. Thank you, Paul. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, it was wonderful. Bye.

 [01:18:00]