A Writer's Life: Goats, God and the Deep South with Literary Soulmates K. Hank Jost and Bonnie Hall

Ever wondered what magic brews when the lives of literary soulmates intertwine?*

Hank and Bonnie, the literary power couple who've journeyed from the Deep South to the vibrant streets of Brooklyn, sit down with us to unravel their story. They share their voyage through life and literature, offering glimpses into their existence as a couple that breathes words and wisdom. We peel back the layers of our podcast's creation, a tale of neighbors turned co-creators, transforming casual discussions into a symphony of storytelling and camaraderie.

Through our discourse, we confront the emotional whirlwinds and the risks of desensitization that tales of intensity can stir within us. We discuss the delicate art of balancing the shocking with the sublime, digging into works like "My Little Life,"  "Hogg," and Flannery O'Connor's unflinching exploration of humanity's dark side. Prepare to be enveloped in a conversation that probes the heart of storytelling, where the power of the pen is revealed in its capacity to both disturb and captivate.

Our chat follows Bonnie's experience working at a dairy farm and Hank's quest for truth as he deconstructed biblical texts and argued with church figureheads. Bonnie and Hank were both raised in religions that left them desiring a different relationship to faith; here in New York, they found what they were looking for at the Brooklyn Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, a Quaker form of worship that is centered on gathering as a community without a formal service.

*Please be patient with us as we improve our recording and editing techniques and equipment. Every conversation we have had with our guests have been too rich and wonderful to not share. We appreciate you all hanging in there as we continue to learn and grow.
 
**Bonnie Hall and K. Hank Jost bonus episode reading excerpt will be available  May 31st.*

K. Hank Jost Links:
Website
Instagram

Bonnie Hall Links:
Instagram

Books by K. Hank Jost 
Deselections
MadStone

Mentions:

• A Common Well Journal
• Brooklyn Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends 
• Flannery O'Conner's A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories
• Sam Delany's Hogg: A Novel
• John McPhee
• Harry Crews

Follow us on Instagram! People at the Core Podcast
Email us! peopleatthecorepodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

From the Greenpoint Palace Bar in Brooklyn, new York, writers and bartenders Rita and Marissa have intimate conversations with an eclectic mix of people from all walks of life about their passions, paranoia and perspectives. Featured guests could be artists or authors, exterminators or private investigators, or the person sitting next to you at the bar. This is People at the Core.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Oh, you want me to start. Why can't you start? I don't know, because I'm having a rough morning today.

Speaker 4: 0:31

Marissa, that's okay. You had a long day yesterday I had a very long day yesterday.

Speaker 2: 0:36

I was very busy here. And then my dog's new thing is if he sleeps all day, then he wants to party all night and I have this like 50-pound bulldog that can't get up and down the bed, but he wants to party all night. And I have this like 50 pound bulldog that can't get up and down the bed, but he wants to. So, yeah, he just wakes me up every hour on the hour trying to get up there, and then he's like yeah, let's party versus zelda.

Speaker 4: 0:55

I took her home. We were home by like what six and she just snuggled and napped with me all night.

Speaker 2: 1:02

All right, let's brag about it Anywho.

Speaker 4: 1:06

So today, rita yes, we've got a couple people with us we're doing a two-person interview, guest combo Woo-woo, very exciting. We met person one Actually I did at a reading at the KGB in the village, was introduced to me and we got to chatting. And then here we are now, who is a writer of fiction, born in Texas and raised in Georgia. He's the author of the novel and stories Deselections, the novel Madstone, and is editor-in-chief of the literary quarter Lee, commonwealth Journal, place and Hobart. He's a contributing writer for Poverty House and the New Haven Independent. He's currently seeking representation for his newest novel, aquarium, while he works on his fourth book.

Speaker 4: 2:16

The partner in question is Bonnie. We met Bonnie through Hank and became instantly delighted by their presence and their words. Bonnie is a poet and short fiction writer in Brooklyn. With their partner, hank, deeply rooted in the tradition of American South, they are constantly paying homage to the great southern gothics like Flannery O'Connor and Harry Cruise. Bonnie has spent the better part of two decades reading more than they write and listening more than they read. Now, breaking into the indie publishing scene, bonnie is working with Whiskey Tit and a Commonwealth Journal as an in-house debauchery assistant. Please welcome Bonnie and Kay Hink. Thank you all for having us.

Speaker 5: 3:01

Thank you so much for having us. This has been such a fun uh fun time getting to know you guys. I was actually just thinking about how, uh, we were chatting about the birth of this podcast at black spring books back in july, and it was in july.

Speaker 5: 3:15

Yeah, it was like the hottest month of the year. I almost passed out that night. I got heat poisoning that night, if you remember correctly. Um, but just like what a what an interesting full circle from from thinking about this and then here we are, manifesting yeah, and I, I, I think this goes for everyone that the more you talk about something, then you're committed to it.

Speaker 4: 3:39

If you just keep it internally, it's like it's my little wish dream and I'm gonna put it in my pot and keep it in my pocket. And the more you talk about it, then you hold yourself accountable. And then when people say, hey, what's going on with that, you know XYZ with that podcast, it's like, oh yeah, let's keep going. Yeah, I only have one motivation it's Marissa.

Speaker 1: 3:57

She literally knows everything. She's my next door neighbor too, so she'll just be like.

Speaker 2: 4:02

You know, how we started with the reading series was we were literally just crossing each other on the street and I was like we should do a reading series she's like what a great idea and then took it all and just ran with it. You know like she is my motivation in in all things writing, reading, podcast I mean, it's just true.

Speaker 2: 4:19

I mean I'll lay in bed and I'm like such I've talked about this before, but I'm such a such a David Foster Wallace person in that sense, where I will watch a week's worth of television and not do anything and then and then write for two weeks and not do anything, and then watch you know, what I mean. There's just these like ebbs and flows of of creation.

Speaker 4: 4:37

And then I send her calendars and tell her when she has to be somewhere and what she has to do.

Speaker 2: 4:50

And mostly it's just showing up and just being awesome. You know, if I yeah, if I show up, I show up, you show up, you show up for me? Yeah, I do show up for you, that's true.

Speaker 4: 4:54

So let's go moving forward um out of the kissing party yeah, yeah, I wanted to be so so yeah, they, before we started recording the in preparation uh for the for the pod, had a little uh shared kiss we'll do it again. We'll do it again for the for the people, for the people that want it. They want it. They want it, make it, make it loud and make it loud, make it wet.

Speaker 4: 5:18

A smooch, it's a smooch, so one of our motivations for inviting Hank and Bonnie were that they are a writer couple and we were really interested in hearing more about that dynamic. But first, you both have mentioned that you're from the South different sections. Curious how and why you came to New York. I'll let you get going first.

Speaker 5: 5:41

You came here first.

Speaker 6: 5:42

Yeah, I moved here six years ago after living in Indiana. At the time Sort of like tried an undergrad degree three times in three separate departments and just couldn't get my shit together enough to finish.

Speaker 4: 5:59

What were those attempted degrees?

Speaker 6: 6:02

Jazz, bass and music composition was the first two years. The next year was comparative literature and the third year was philosophy.

Speaker 4: 6:10

Wow, I feel like that tracks from what I know Just increasingly pretentious and impossible.

Speaker 6: 6:21

And then I got a job as a line cook. That like last year and a half that I was in Indiana and just like working as a line cook and eventually managing the place in a small college town started to get to me. And I had a pickup truck and on a whim like the week before Christmas I like drove it up to Indianapolis to the CarMax to just see how much I could get for it. When they gave me the estimate, I called my boss and I was like I don't work for you anymore and I bought. I sold everything I had except for an upright base, five books and a broken laptop, and then bought an Amtrak ticket and moved out here that's awesome. Saved the hotel Pennsylvania for a week and got a real shitty apartment in Sunset Park and was there for five years Wow, and just worked and have been writing the whole time. I guess I love it.

Speaker 2: 7:12

And now do you work in bars and restaurants as well.

Speaker 6: 7:14

Currently still. Yes, I keep two bar shifts a week right now at a spot in the East Village, mondays and Tuesdays. And then right now I'm trying to shift out of it completely. I'm trying to do some copywriting, some editing. Got a book editing job, some stuff, some stuff on the horizon that could be really great. It's nice to not have any college debt and not have any like yeah, any of that, hang over me, because getting a you know, 50k a year copywriting gig is like that's sick.

Speaker 6: 7:45

Yeah, I'm not paying anybody, yeah, right you know like I'm like the dream candidate for some of these places yeah right, it's fine, yeah right, I'd like to repeat that dream candidate how about you?

Speaker 2: 8:01

how long have you been here?

Speaker 5: 8:02

Oh my goodness, A little over a year actually. So not long at all. I moved here in October 2022. I mean, I've lived all over the place as an adult, like we. We both grew up actually about 20 minutes from each other in South Georgia.

Speaker 5: 8:16

We were in the same year in school. We never met while we were living in Georgia. Hank ended up moving around a lot with his family in middle school and high school. But I stayed Town of, like you know, like five or 6,000 people, very small, very rural. My family were farmers. All of this comes into play in a minute. And then I moved to Atlanta for college.

Speaker 5: 8:37

I got an English degree in literary studies, which was great but also took me six years because I was working full time and dropping in and out and dropping in and out. But it finished and by the time I picked my head up I was like man. I've been in hospitality for 10 years. I've been bartending and serving and hosting and running restaurants, and so I said this is more lucrative than writing and followed that for a while. And that took me to Chicago and eventually out to a ranch in Wyoming where I moved from directly to from Wyoming to New York a few years ago.

Speaker 5: 9:15

But I was working at a goat dairy in Wyoming making like high end goat cheeses for a really bougie restaurant and milking goats and loving on them all day long and scooping their poop and stuff, and it was like one of the best things I've ever done for myself just getting out of the restaurant industry and getting out of the city. And I kind of picked my head up as soon as winter was about to hit and said I think I could probably do this for another little while, and by do this I mean live in a city and not lose my mind. Um, so I moved here and I met Hank like maybe two, like a month into the city, maybe two months into the city.

Speaker 2: 9:53

Wow, that was serendipitous.

Speaker 5: 9:55

Very serendipitous there is. I'm going to out us a little bit but there is nothing like looking at hinge and seeing someone with a similar area code to where you grew up. Oh 100%.

Speaker 5: 10:05

I was like Statesboro, georgia, that's where I used to go to all of my movies and the closest, uh, the closest bookstore was in Statesboro. So I went there often and we reminisce often about releases at that bookstore, at that book's a million, um, but yeah. So I mean, new York has been great. I never really pictured myself being here, but I also never really pictured myself pursuing writing as a career or as a even a something more than a hobby. You know, uh, after college I just said like this can't really be for me. I don't think like, um, I need to make money and do all of those things. Uh, but I met Hank and was like man, people are still doing this, like the dream is still alive, yeah, like we can still be creative and and start be struggling artists. And yeah, the fools still run the world.

Speaker 2: 10:54

Yeah, it turns out yeah, I mean, I agree I just want to say I'm so glad that you decided to. Yeah, writing is wonderful. Both of you are incredible. I'm so happy that we have you in this community, oh yeah, and are writing in and so happy that we have you in this community and are writing in and I understand that.

Speaker 2: 11:07

I mean, you know my closest writing partner is Marissa and I for a long time was not writing at all. You know, I went to school. I went to school in Paris for writing. I've gone Portland Maine to school for writing. You know, this is my whole life I've been writing and I kind of gave up. And I just want to bring that up in the sense of, like the bar world, how we all kind of work in this industry and it's really hard to walk away from that money because that money is so easy. Right, it's just easy to work two days a week or to run someone's business, or, you know, to run my bar business and give up the writing factor and then to like go to KGB and go to these places and all these writing communities. Like I have three writings or readings book. You know, I never would have thought that that was possible.

Speaker 5: 11:50

The fact that I am here talking to you guys about writing is absurd to me. Like if you had told me this a year and a half ago, I would have laughed in your face. Like I was still writing poetry, I think, in my really in my own time, but I don't even think I had read a book like a full book, cover to cover, until I met Hank. Like we just something about our kind of our energy together and your passion and your dedication. I was just like man, this is something that can still be tangible and worth the extra effort you know and worth the extra effort you know.

Speaker 4: 12:23

That's awesome. That was one of the things that I wanted to ask you to how have you influenced each other, both in style, in process, in routine? Like, have you influenced each other? Has that been a positive? Or, like, have that changed your work? One in the creation and also in the content? And then the other side of that, have you had writer partners? Before I come from a reader partner. My husband reads my stuff and so he gives me perspective from the non-writerly audience, which are things that catch me off guard and enrich me as a writer. I have my Rita to read my work as a writer, so I'm really lucky that I have those two perspectives and voices that influence my work and through the editing process at least.

Speaker 6: 13:24

I mean for me, I've always had like a pretty ever since I started writing seriously when I was like 19 or 20. Um, I've always had a group of people that I'm constantly trading work with, like brutally trading work and critiquing, and like in the in the first issue of the magazine. There's this writer, Kyle Impini, who I went to high school with, who was also a bass player at the high school while I was a bass player and we both started writing fiction around the same time in college and in both accounts have always had very different approaches and have spent the last you know, 10, 10 years sending work back and forth, basically just going.

Speaker 6: 14:06

I don't like what you're doing right, I don't get it just constantly, like you know, uh, attacking each other's work and both becoming like really, uh, quite set in our thing because of that, because we've always had this, this argument going on and his work is amazing, like his work is it's.

Speaker 6: 14:24

We've both gotten very good at this, I think. I think, insofar as my relationship with with Bonnie the, the most influential thing has been not only having like an immediate first reader right, but also having someone who an idea can be bounced off of, because some of the stuff that I come up with I consider myself a very technical writer, so a lot of the ideas outside of the page, just like the whole narration style of the new project. When I told you about that, your face was like what are you fucking talking about? Which? Is just like okay, sick.

Speaker 6: 15:06

So this is like something that I have to figure out how to do if I want, to like, pull this off. And then you know, and then I show you the work every five pages along the way.

Speaker 5: 15:18

at this point, yeah, I mean I and it wasn't like that whenever we first started dating. Like, I think, you, we were sort of almost hesitant in the beginning to give each other too much critique and I wasn't writing actively. So I think I also was feeling a little embarrassed to be like. Here's a piece of poetry I wrote eight years ago in college, like here's a. Here's like a really bad literary analysis of Virginia Woolf that you can read from my, from my senior thesis you know analysis of Virginia Woolf that you can read from my, from my senior thesis.

Speaker 5: 15:48

You know, um, and and I honestly I felt a little intimidated in the beginning because I mean, I'm, I'm Hank's number one fan, and it's not just cause we kiss, you know like it's genuinely. He gave me his first book and I remember like a couple of days after our first date and I was reading it on the train and I went. Thank God, he's really good at this.

Speaker 3: 16:03

Like he's so good at this, like he's so good at this like a.

Speaker 5: 16:06

I don't have to like, I don't have to like be tender about it, but also I get to really see how the sausage is made. Now you know, and I've learned so much from, from your process and and I didn't have to tell you to sit down and write every day, you know, like you had that I think. I think the value is having someone that can consistently read your work and see it, see it come from point A to point B and, like this new piece that you're working on, I mean this is a conglomeration of three things that I've seen you write over the last three months, and then we sat at a bar and put them all together, you know, and bouncing those ideas back and forth, and also I mean just baseline copy editing.

Speaker 3: 16:46

I get to see every preposition that you miss every misplaced ask.

Speaker 5: 16:51

Before everything goes out.

Speaker 6: 16:52

Because you write something over and over again and then you can't see the semicolon, the misplacing T's and O's start to look the same, for Christ's sake.

Speaker 4: 17:00

I wrote a piece how many times have I done it? And I used area twice in the word, in the sentence, unintentionally, non-poetically, and she reads she's like oh, you just need to take care of this area. I was like, oh fuck, yeah, literally this area.

Speaker 2: 17:15

Yeah, you know it's like you can't I mean I go back and look at my little like chat book. You know, and there's so many like this should have had a period, and why was that work? But those stories have been so old. You know, I, there's so many like this should have had a period, and why was that work? But those stories have been so old. You know, I'd written them 14, 15 years ago and I just felt like I had to get them out, so I could. You know refill the. Well, yeah, give yeah give birth to another child.

Speaker 5: 17:36

But oh yeah, I mean, after a while you just don't see it anymore, you know and I think it's like that baseline, like, very like, but that sort of basal stuff that we think of whenever you think of having someone that can read your stuff.

Speaker 5: 17:49

But I mean the piece that you guys heard me read at KGB, that I will likely read a little piece of later for you, because I'm very, very proud of it, is, admittedly, the first full piece that I've written in almost 10 years. Wow, the first full piece that I've written in almost 10 years. Um, so Hank ran a workshop last year, a short writing workshop that I uh audited and TA'd a little bit as an assistant, um, but decided to just kind of do the project, also for fun, um, if only to give feedback on what the assignments were like and all of that good stuff. But I ended up writing just a piece from from nowhere that I did not know I could do and, having you, we were sitting at a bar, like going over, I was like I don't know what to write for this class man and you were like you were, like what's a story, like what's a memory that you've not told.

Speaker 1: 18:41

And then what's a name that you like and you're like you have a story yeah, that is a story and and uh.

Speaker 5: 18:48

So I mean really from the beginning to the end yeah, I think it's been.

Speaker 6: 18:51

Yeah, those are really intense like generative workshop, but I don't think a lot of, I think some of the students are a little taken aback, but we're gonna write a 2500 word short story in a month, because that's how long it takes me to write a short story. Yeah, so I'm gonna try to teach you how to do it this fast. And to do it this fast, you have to write every fucking day yeah and you have to scrap most of it every day yeah, it was just like really sort of like say yes to every idea, immediately go back and fix it.

Speaker 6: 19:24

The thing I was trying to teach was like writing as a reader. It's like write your really bad draft and then read it as a reader not like you wrote it and then see what's there and what you expect to be there as a reader and then rewrite from that position. Yeah, I love that yeah, and it was.

Speaker 5: 19:41

It was honestly really transformative. I mean, I I'm writing from a more of a poetic tradition than a short story tradition, where I'm used to kind of just getting all of the words out and getting out the feelings and doing one big push and then being done with it and saying, like this is from my heart and my soul and I cannot be edited and it is perfect. It's me, so it's perfect. It's perfect, it's me, so it's perfect.

Speaker 2: 20:04

That's funny because I'm such a similar writer Like Marissa and I joke around about it because she'll copy and paste everything as she writes, and I'm very much that way too. You know, I like I don't know why, but just talking to you guys reminded me of my last boyfriend we used to do like Friday nights.

Speaker 2: 20:22

get a bottle of wine and we'd have words in a basket and you'd have to pull the basket because he was a screenwriter and I was a writer and I remember, like the story hats that I have was just I pulled the word hats and had to write this whole story about it right that's how I got the hat.

Speaker 3: 20:31

The hat out of the hat, yeah, but um, where was I going?

Speaker 2: 20:35

with this um but, I'm very much like I'll get it out and I'm like it's and read it out loud. I'm a big reader out. I love reading out loud and just hearing how it flows and then editing that down and then I'm like I can't go back.

Speaker 3: 20:49

I'm done. It's a you know, and so I'm just now re-editing all my work, which is really hard, yeah.

Speaker 5: 20:55

It's a challenge. To like critique I mean A critiquing yourself is hard and also like I just think sometimes we get things done, we get things out of our heads and I'm like I can't even associate with that anymore, exactly.

Speaker 5: 21:06

And this is something that Hank has been teaching me, or just like encouraging me to embrace rather than to reject, is this idea that, like the finished products should be so far away from you as an individual that it is its own thing. Like not everything needs to be representative of exactly who you are and your story and and those things are good and great and and can be really influential, but, like I don't know, I I don't really want all of my personal business floating out there, so, like I think sometimes pulling back and being able to disassociate yourself is important. Um, at least whenever it comes to producing a lot of work, you know, like you gotta, you have to be able to be separate from it a little bit. Yeah, yeah, I don't know, it's just it's.

Speaker 6: 21:51

It's a question of, I think, craft and like a carpenter makes a bad chair and they know why the chair is bad, and then they make a better chair, right, right, and I think that there's something about writing in particular that feels like so close to you, know our hearts and souls, because that's what books do to us, that's what stories do to us when we read them, um, but I think there's a uh there's a, there's a healthy amount of that sort of like carpenter attitude where it's just like I wrote the story.

Speaker 6: 22:25

Is it great? Nah, this one's not. This one's not great. This line is fucking killer, though. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:30

This line's really good.

Speaker 6: 22:31

I'll just do that next time.

Speaker 1: 22:32

If I can do that for seven pages.

Speaker 6: 22:34

I've got something here. Yeah right, Fuck what it's about Like who gives a shit what the story's about?

Speaker 4: 22:47

If pages it can be about anything. I want it to be about right, you know. And so when you create something, are you focused on feeling and sentence or plot? Like where is your, your starting point, or is it plot, character or sentence? Like I can write a whole thing if I have this juicy sentence right and then I'll compose something all about it, and it's about this, just this luxuriating in in the words, and then there's other things where it's oh, I had, there's a situation right that I need to to be exciting and I build around the situation and maybe the sentences aren't gorgeous, but it's an exciting space or a character person.

Speaker 4: 23:25

So I feel like I personally compartmentalize those, but I am sentence forward rather than plot forward.

Speaker 2: 23:32

You're definitely sentence forward. Yes, I think so.

Speaker 4: 23:36

And that's okay. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it's like, oh, you need a little twist of something to happen. But when I read, I'm more about the sentence.

Speaker 6: 23:47

Right when I was studying music. A lot of my sort of like approach to all of the arts that I do, particularly writing, comes from the only like real academic study I've ever done of any art, which is music composition. And something I always like think about is like, like Beethoven, follow me here this is just fucking.

Speaker 6: 24:11

This is just wednesday night at the bar. Beethoven, uh, is a really, really bad composer. Like at at every level of analysis that you do on beethoven, it's like your harmony is that of a caveman. Your rhythm is fundamentally unsophisticated. You literally can't write a melody to save your life. There's no all Beethoven melodies that you can hum and sing. It's because they're one note, it's not because the melodic arc isn't all interesting, but the thing Beethoven does really well and the reason he's like forever canonized and the guy that sort of nailed this thing, is form.

Speaker 6: 24:49

It's the way that he organizes these ideas right it's the fact that you'll never you never know at any point in the piece what the next thing is going to be, when the next thing happens. You can find the justification for it at every other point in the piece. And I kind of think about these questions of whether you're a sentence-forward writer or a plot-forward writer or a character-forward writer to sort of sit within this much more abstracted approach where story or narrative is just events in time described over time.

Speaker 3: 25:24

Right If you abstract that enough, you're just like. Or narrative right is just events in time described over time. Right, you can abstract if you abstract.

Speaker 6: 25:26

That enough, you're just like oh, I can do whatever the fuck I want, so long as I remember that this is events in time described over time. So my primary concern is this over time, right, the time of the reader. When are they going to find things out?

Speaker 1: 25:41

which event do they want to find out after?

Speaker 6: 25:43

or before, whatever right, and then like that being your sort of like the, the macro state that you're at, then zooming in and being like okay, so what is a sentence supposed to do? Right?

Speaker 6: 25:55

and you know there's, there's a, there's a, a feeling sometimes where you'll read someone and it'll be like all of these sort of like middling sentences that build up to like the one, just like glowing insight or whatever. Yeah, and it's like so all of those middling sentences operate functionally right. They serve the purpose of building to almost testing your patience yeah before you get to this insight. So you have some sort of satisfaction, right, right?

Speaker 2: 26:25

100.

Speaker 6: 26:26

I mean you can do the opposite though, right yeah you can just write inside, inside, inside, inside and exhaust your reader yeah like all, of these are options all the time, knowing those options finding the balance, finding the harmony right between the transitions and finding your voice right.

Speaker 4: 26:43

I mean we're all between the transitions and Finding your voice right. I mean we're all.

Speaker 2: 26:46

You look around, I look around this room and we're all such incredibly different writers Absolutely.

Speaker 5: 26:51

Right.

Speaker 2: 26:51

But I mean I respect all of you so much and I just love that push to think about it that way. You know what I mean, because I'm very much not. You know I'm in the beginning beginning such an emotional reader where I would cry the first couple of readings shake, because I was nervous, you know just get really involved. And you're right. As time goes by, I pull myself out of the story and realize this isn't even this is. I mean, we're all calling it auto fiction, right? But whatever it is, you know exactly.

Speaker 2: 27:19

And.

Speaker 1: 27:19

I agree.

Speaker 2: 27:21

I totally agree with you. I think that a nice work of writing is a nice work of writing, right? Why do I have to fucking explain myself? If it was me, or like if it wasn't why why does it matter really?

Speaker 1: 27:33

at the end of the day but.

Speaker 2: 27:35

But it is so interesting to hear that your take on it, because that really just kind of blew my mind in that sense of of how I should start viewing it, you know.

Speaker 5: 27:44

I think it's about like having these tools right and like being able to decide what you want to relay, like they're like you were you asked a minute ago like how stylistically we've influenced each other and and content wise even. And like it's funny because like I'm getting into more of this gruesome body, almost like body horror in a way. I love magic realism.

Speaker 5: 28:08

I love all of these kinds of dream states. You can get really gross whenever you're talking about dreams, but I'm coming from a tradition of poetry where everything is not even on sentence level, it's word level. It's like how does this word relate to this word relate to this word? And being able to kind of zoom in and zoom out and zoom in and zoom out on like I want to tell, like I know I want this, I want to elicit this reaction with this like gross detail, but like how do I cap end it with some of the most beautiful words you've ever heard and like that to me and thinking about how the the reader is experiencing it, rather than how I'm telling my story or how I'm getting like my the little nuggets of truth in there has been really transformative because I've been able to write some of the weirdest shit I've ever read.

Speaker 4: 28:59

it's freeing and exciting, because now you have a perimeter, you have a goal and you have the problem to solve right and you build up through practice and through conversations and back and forth, you build up that school skill set, those tools to be able to use and and to integrate into your work to do things that you never thought possible.

Speaker 5: 29:23

Yeah, like the grotesque and the beautiful is something, and the beautiful is something in the beautiful is something that I certainly learned from all of my favorite southern writers, but like it's something that I saw in a modern sense in your work and I was like man, this stuff is grimy, it is grimy it's textural you can smell it, you can feel it and it's powerful because, on a sentence level, you're doing some very interesting work and you're pushing poetry into your prose, but then at the same time you're telling you're certainly trying to elicit a reaction.

Speaker 5: 29:57

You know, it's not naive, it's not just beautiful for the sake of being beautiful and it's not just gross for the sake of being gross. Right, I don't know. I like to think that we're like like philosophy, like like philosophers, right like, because I mean that we sit around and think about these things constantly, like these are, this is a conversation. We would have been having on a sunday afternoon, like without the microphone. Right, right, right right. This is like pillow talk.

Speaker 2: 30:22

I love that, I love that. Um, what was it? Is it I always? I can never say his name, right, but Chuck Palahniuk. Remember the guy that wrote Fight Club Palahniuk, palahniuk, palahniuk. But what was the book? Was it Choke? Remember?

Speaker 5: 30:33

That was like just so grotesque and like I mean yeah, I just finished. Uh, god, sam Delaney's Hog.

Speaker 2: 30:44

How was?

Speaker 5: 30:44

it. I read it in 36 hours.

Speaker 2: 30:48

Okay.

Speaker 5: 30:49

Because I was like, if I have to put this down and pick it back up, I don't, I can't, I might die Like. I don't know.

Speaker 5: 30:55

Something bad will happen to me or they cancel, I don't know. I couldn't read it on the train because it was like terrified that someone would see what was on the page. Yeah, because it was like terrified that someone would see what was on the page. Yeah, um, it's disgusting, but it is so, so moving and so effective and just like a test of the reader. It's sam delaney really just saying like what if I write that down for us?

Speaker 5: 31:17

hog h-o-g-g I. I bought the only copy in the mcnally's. I don't think they're gonna to buy another one Is it his first novel?

Speaker 6: 31:26

No, no, it's something that he wrote as a protest novel, in a way towards the increasing censorship and the genre that he was working in and the increasing corporatization and straightening of avant-garde sci-fi, whatever. And he was like well, I'm just going to write the gayest, most heinous, most sexually violent, disgusting thing. I could possibly imagine. And. I'm going to do it for 285 pages and fuck you.

Speaker 5: 31:56

I love that it's amazing. It was certainly like a thing where, like I think, like halfway through it. Halfway through it, hank was like, are you still reading it? And I was like I can't, I can't stop, I can't stop, I just got to get through it. It's like a really good episode of like Law Order, svu, and you just like have to know what's happening, oh yeah, and at the end.

Speaker 5: 32:14

I realized like this is just a test to see, like, how far the reader is willing to go. And also how quickly you can desensitize someone to something. Also very true, because at the end I was like the fact this is I'm like, I'm like hesitant to say this in public. But like the main, the main character's name never gets a name. His name is Cocksucker. Like that's his name, right the whole time and by the end of it, it's so normal to me.

Speaker 5: 32:40

I'm like yeah, you know like and then you realize you're talking about like an 11-year-old child. Yeah, yeah, it's horrifying. It's truly horrifying.

Speaker 2: 32:50

Oh, is it all through 11-year-old child's eyes?

Speaker 5: 32:53

Yes, Wow, it's troubling.

Speaker 2: 32:58

I'm totally picking this up today.

Speaker 4: 33:00

Not to promote Wikipedia, but just to yeah. The plot features this silent pre-adolescent boy called only cocksucker, sold into sexual slavery to a rapist named Hogg. Who expresses him, exposes him to the most extreme acts of deviancy imaginable. These acts include substantial amount of rape, violence and murder, such as scenes of yeah.

Speaker 1: 33:30

You want to know what mine was.

Speaker 2: 33:33

Did you guys ever read my Little Life?

Speaker 4: 33:36

Oh, no, it's on my shelf and you told me that it is so brutal.

Speaker 2: 33:42

That would be my that's just a recent one that I read that I can't remember who the author is. You have to look it up, but it is so oh yeah, I'm not.

Speaker 5: 33:49

I'm not promoting reading this book, but I am saying that if you are a grotesque writer and you're like interested in how far the language can push yeah um delaney's work is is up there, you're trying to find a new way to literally describe eating shit, shit it's hanya we've.

Speaker 4: 34:05

We've taken a turn.

Speaker 2: 34:06

Yeah, my pronunciation but that is like her.

Speaker 5: 34:10

Oh, just the rape scenes in that, and I mean and honestly, and I think I've been trying to just like come, not compartmentalize, but like parse through, like what makes that different than flannery o'connor's? Like, uh, my brain is blanking, the one with the leg the leg.

Speaker 2: 34:26

I was just gonna say that. I'm literally just gonna say that story where the priest good country salesman, yeah what's it called? Again, I think it's good country people good country people yes, um I mean, what's the same?

Speaker 5: 34:36

I agree, yeah, and like the main and, uh, the main character of my, my little story that I wrote is is pulled from that story, from o'connor. O'connor grew up like 20 minutes from where we grew up, okay, okay um, andalusia is very, very close to where we grew up, and so she's uh. Anyway, I'll just say that, like that was one of my first exposures to like old, grotesque and and how horrifying that story is.

Speaker 5: 35:00

I love that story, but it's also like dusty and dry, and then you see something like Delaney that is very, very wet. Worst and dripping, and so two different versions of the same thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:14

I agree.

Speaker 5: 35:17

So along those lines who has?

Speaker 2: 35:19

influenced both of you. Do you have similar influences or are you guys very different?

Speaker 4: 35:23

In the literary world, in the literary world.

Speaker 5: 35:25

I think we have some bases that are very similar. We're both obviously Southern so we have an affinity, Like Harry Cruz, who I always pop in my bio, barry fucking Hannah Barry, hannah, I mean Faulkner O'Connor, the classics, but then you also have a lot more experience with, like philosophers and European writers. Yeah, my, my answer to this question.

Speaker 6: 35:49

Always feels really annoying.

Speaker 2: 35:52

I know what's the biggest influence on your writing style.

Speaker 6: 35:56

I don't know the fucking Hebrew Bible. I mean, like honestly, though like it is. I spend a lot of time with like ancient literature because they don't tell like ancient literature.

Speaker 1: 36:05

Yeah.

Speaker 6: 36:06

Because they don't tell stories like we tell stories, and if you want to find a new way to tell a story, you should read one written by a really, really, really dead person.

Speaker 5: 36:12

Yeah, you know, yeah, I mean I agree, and I'm a little bit more fascinated by, like creative nonfiction, which is something that differentiates us quite a bit.

Speaker 6: 36:22

Yeah, I can't read an essay. I love John.

Speaker 5: 36:24

McPhee, I've been reading some of his books recently. I just finished the Founding Fish and you couldn't have told me that I would spend two weeks reading about the natural history of the American shad.

Speaker 4: 36:39

He just takes you in and he's novelistic in his world-building of the real world. And yeah, I'm, I'm a big mcphee fan you guys read in sus. Have you read in?

Speaker 5: 36:50

suspect terrain. No, so in suspect terrain is incredible. It talks about new york quite a bit, but it's him following a geologist who was born in brooklyn and kind of going through the natural geological history of New York and why the East Village doesn't have any skyscrapers and why Central Park looks the way that it looks, and it's so, so, so interesting and poetic. He's teaching you but also very much showing you with his language. He's a great writer, he's such a good writer.

Speaker 5: 37:24

If John McPhee is listening to this, I would like to get coffee, Coffee, coffee coffee.

Speaker 4: 37:31

Let's do coffee, so I want a tangent off of that. So you guys are both based, come from the South and influences so obviously, bonnie, you've talked about how that has come into your work and then this new renaissance you have of creating. But also, have you felt that New York has seeped into your theme or subject matter or has it made you double down on, like your origins? Because I always feel that when you're away from where you started, you romanticize a little more your beginnings and you feel representative of your perspective of, yeah, you get a little defensive and or romantic about your origin stories.

Speaker 5: 38:18

Great question yeah, I mean studying. My senior thesis was on nature writing in in college and I got to read a lot of like really great southern authors and doing like and I felt very represented. And then I moved to the north and realized that everyone thought that I was stupid and like that I sounded dumb and like my references weren't hitting and everyone was like I've never read Flannery O'Connor's Born, like why would I read Flannery O'Connor?

Speaker 5: 38:44

and I'm like because she's the greatest and I think for a while I kind of listened to those voices and was like, well, maybe I like missed something, like maybe I was too like sheltered in the south and not smart enough to know who all these other people are. But then whenever I moved here, like people like want to know like they want to know what's going on in the rest of the world, and there are so many people here that are Southern.

Speaker 5: 39:14

like no one here is from New York and that's kind of the big thing Right, and so I think I've I've kind of turned into just trying to be a good voice from the south, to give a good vision of the south.

Speaker 5: 39:30

Um, I used to be really defensive, I think, and I think I used to get really hurt whenever people would say like, oh, like the south is backwards and the south is is is unforgivable and like all of these awful ideas about how the art doesn't even make up for the politics. And being in the North has given me a little bit of a I think, a tougher skin about those things and I can just instead say like, but I am from there, I make this kind of art and and I'm here with you. You know what I mean. So I think I'm just trying to be a good representative, which is making me turn back to it. I mean, they even said whenever we started, like I can't believe I sound like this on the microphone, like I wish I would have kept my southern accent. I do feel nostalgic for it, but I also I understand why I left too.

Speaker 2: 40:20

I was born and raised in Missouri and then moved to Minnesota. My dad's a writer and an editor and we moved to Minnesota. My dad's a writer and an editor and we moved to also a pastor. He writes all religious stuff.

Speaker 4: 40:29

And an unpaid comedian.

Speaker 2: 40:31

And an unpaid comedian.

Speaker 4: 40:33

But, movie.

Speaker 2: 40:34

I remember I miss my Southern accent. Now it's been so long because I moved from Missouri to Minnesota and just kind of they merged together. I kind of picked up, the Minnesota lost my Southern spatial accent and then it kind of they merged together. I kind of picked up yeah, minnesota I picked up the minnesota, lost my southern spatial accent and then kind of combined but, I, but I miss sticking out like that, but I remember.

Speaker 2: 40:51

I just want I bring it up solely because I remember moving and people judging me thinking I was stupid because of the way that I talked, because of my southern draw, you know, and, and being 13, 14 years old, that's so brutal.

Speaker 5: 41:03

Yeah, yeah, I mean even moving to Atlanta, which my papa God rest his soul, if he was still alive, would say the only time he ever left Georgia was to go to my brother's graduation in Atlanta.

Speaker 3: 41:14

Oh really, I love that, yeah, and so like the big city.

Speaker 5: 41:19

Yeah, it's completely outside of the state. Yeah. And even moving to Atlanta, like I remember feeling very, very, very like, almost like targeted, because people would be like oh like you're you're an idiot like where are you?

Speaker 5: 41:34

from like where? Where are you from? You know, just like getting picked, like in the academic world like getting really, really hammered in that if you want to be an academic, you want to be seen as an intelligent person. You drop the accent, you drop the lineage, you start reading proust and become insufferable right and right, and now that I'm like 30 and living in the about as north as you can get um in my opinion culturally, culturally as far north as you can get uh it I.

Speaker 5: 42:05

I miss it so much and I just wish that like I could I wish people could like look at me and be like you're not from here are you, because I'm so proud of it now yeah right agreed and, like man, my dad sounds like he's from a different world. He sounds like he's from mars. Right, like I just wouldn't. Yeah, I honestly am so nostalgic for it. And then I go home to the farm and I'm like, still got cows.

Speaker 4: 42:30

Cows are still here. Is that the quote? Clip yeah, is that the quote?

Speaker 1: 42:36

clip Still got cows.

Speaker 2: 42:38

Well, on that note, I think we're going to move on to the question roulette. Yes, yes, I've got my.

Speaker 4: 42:43

Kill your fuck, kill me.

Speaker 2: 42:46

It just came to me.

Speaker 4: 42:47

So to remind everyone, we are blind, pulling question cards that no one has read, been exposed to I hope so I don't know what you did last night. What is the most surprising conversation you've ever had?

Speaker 2: 43:07

I hate that one that is so dumb do a different one. You guys want to do that, let's ask our guests how they respond to that.

Speaker 4: 43:20

You yelled at me last time I was going to edit.

Speaker 1: 43:22

I don't like.

Speaker 4: 43:24

And then she's like we should just do a podcast on the questions. She goes and she's, so I'm all over the 180.

Speaker 5: 43:32

Okay, what is the most interesting conversation?

Speaker 6: 43:34

Oh, surprising, surprising conversation, I don't know.

Speaker 5: 43:38

I don't know. Finding out that my mom was adopted was kind of weird. So my grandparents that raised me were not biologically connected to me, but I didn't find out until I was like 10 and so that was like find out oh, my mom said oh yeah, by the way, um was it a sit down or was it just like? Oh, so, it was so like it was so quippy, I think I was like talking about genealogies or just being like you were 10 talking about genealogy.

Speaker 4: 44:03

I mean yeah, yeah, it was more along the lines of like more along the lines of like, who are my cousins and why don't we hang out with them?

Speaker 5: 44:10

oh, like, why don't we go to family reunions? Like weird, weird, right, like I go to family reunions with my dad's family but not on this side. My mom was like I have something to tell you, um, and I'm named after my grandfather and my papa, that my mom's non-biological father, um, and it was just kind of like this kind of super surprising but not super surprising, but didn't change anything, but changed everything like really odd moment. Um, and I think about it all the time, to be honest, because they were like such great human people and raised us like we were, like they had birthed us and I think it just kind of I don't know.

Speaker 5: 44:48

It was surprising and also really heartwarming to know that people can can love people, even if they're not blood related. You're chosen yeah, chosen, I think, yeah, yeah, that's kind of absolutely, and I think that's shaped how I look at people now, like anyone can be your family yeah, it doesn't matter and obviously being in the queer community like that's a huge thing.

Speaker 5: 45:06

And it's kind of funny that the closest thing that I have to like queer harmony is my very, very, very republican grandparents, um, who just like allegedly picked my mom out of a gutter. I don't know. Like it's very like dark, stormy, rainy night, energy that they picked her up, kind of a thing, and I'm like you can be, you can be anything, you can have any family and live anywhere. Anyway, out of pocket, you for you.

Speaker 6: 45:30

Next, uh, we actually talked about this last night oh um.

Speaker 5: 45:35

Can I surprise you last night?

Speaker 6: 45:37

no, no, no, okay, I grew up, uh uh, lutheran like religious Same.

Speaker 2: 45:44

I'm a preacher's daughter, preacher's daughter, and we still in.

Speaker 6: 45:48

Bonn. Actually, we maintain a spiritual practice. This has been something within the last year. We go to Quaker meetings every Sunday, so we skip church for this. Oh, wow.

Speaker 5: 45:58

Yeah, thank you, I'm sorry. No, this is a different version of the same thing.

Speaker 4: 46:03

Yeah, absolutely. Church in the minds. Yeah, yes.

Speaker 6: 46:06

But I remember I was I must have been 19 or 20, and I was, you know, going through the whole crisis of faith or whatever, and I had always been sort of like intellectually and theologically interested in, like the church and all of this.

Speaker 1: 46:21

So I did a lot of readings, and that's what ultimately broke the thing for me.

Speaker 6: 46:26

Right, it's just like the revelation they're like no one knows who wrote this shit like. John didn't write the gospel of John.

Speaker 1: 46:32

All of this right and I told my parents I was like I think I might be done with this.

Speaker 6: 46:36

It's like Easter like the week up leading up to Easter, my freshman year of college and my mom was like furious it was like you should sit down with the pastor and I was like, okay, like I'll sit down with the pastor and I remember I went I met up with him at the at the church in carmel, indiana, and I brought with me three separate translations of the bible a copy of paradise lost the iliad, like just like all this shit.

Speaker 1: 47:00

I was like like you know care for guard, meet you all this.

Speaker 6: 47:02

And I put it on the desk and I was like, first off, you're not getting shit by me, brother, like it's not going to happen. I have one question for you Do you believe what you preach? Right, and of course he gives the yes, of course I do answer and I'm like okay, well, let's you believe what's in this thing, the Bible?

Speaker 6: 47:19

And he's like, of course and you know I went through the whole, we went through some stuff we like started with the book of Job or whatever, and I was like, you know, asking like the hard theological questions about like why would God do this to this character, and all this, all this whatever. And you know he had like answers to it, the difficult academic answers, right, and I was like why the fuck don't you say this in church? And he's like, well, it's not for everybody. And I was like I'm out, right, and you know this, like always, like these, just this sort of weird revelation that like these people that run these organizations, they know all of the information, like they know the mistranslations, know the wild stuff, they know the fact that, like there is no archaeological evidence for the exodus and all this and still, for the sake of maintaining a congregation because it turns out it's a gig like still say what they say. I don't know that was. That was one of those sort of like world-breaking experiences.

Speaker 5: 48:23

Yeah, kind of this breaking between the business of the church and the business of the spirit.

Speaker 2: 48:30

I mean, I could talk all day long about that, just being a preacher's daughter, because my father also has a PhD in theology.

Speaker 3: 48:38

So the books he writes are all Hasn't he published like a dozen.

Speaker 2: 48:41

I think it's like seven or eight books, but they're all used for college classes right Like people study.

Speaker 3: 48:47

It's an actual fucking scholarship Like letters of pause. Yes, 100%.

Speaker 2: 48:51

I mean it's crazy. I've read all of them. I mean they're fantastic, it's amazing. But it is really hard to go through that. Questioning your own spirituality after being put in a position of of this is the way it goes, right, right, and then you sort of evolve and figure out what you want yeah, or what you need.

Speaker 6: 49:12

We were talking about this stuff last night and just like that, the truth of these things, of these, of these you know, ancient spiritual texts, or even just like the ideas of the relation of the self to the great, unknowable other right are so like muted and rendered null by the way that it's done and by the way that it's conveyed, and like the organized, like uh, institutions right like actual, like forgiveness doctrine by way of Christ himself, is apocalyptic, world-ending anti-creation. It's nuts. It is the human power to render the world of no consequence. Right, yeah, right.

Speaker 6: 49:54

That's insane. Yeah, that's insane. It's not, don't fucking like.

Speaker 1: 50:01

it's not this like list of rules and shit or whatever Right in like it's not this like list of rules and shit and whatever it's like, it's the granting of to you an individual, the ability yeah it's not.

Speaker 5: 50:10

It's not. Don't say the bad word, or yeah yeah right

Speaker 6: 50:15

it's fix the mistake by forgiving I don't know it's nuts and it's. It's a true tragedy that this isn't what's being talked about so did you.

Speaker 2: 50:22

So did you walk away from religion then for a while after that, I definitely did.

Speaker 6: 50:27

I walked away from the Lutheran church when I was like at that age, 1920. And so I had my angry atheist phase and all of that. And there's something about like I don't know that simple question of like the individual in relation to the great unknowable other, that I could never shake and I did another sort of read of the Bible and getting into all of these more mystical texts and stuff from other cultures like the Mahabharata, the Buddha, the Confucians and all of this other stuff.

Speaker 6: 51:00

The I Ching in particular is kind of a one. I love that.

Speaker 1: 51:04

And then did some like research into like.

Speaker 6: 51:06

Quakerism. And then, you know, one day I was like we should check this out.

Speaker 5: 51:10

I mean, I remember, I remember us being like, drunk on the train at like 2 am and me being like do you feel like there's a hole in your heart? You know like because we both grew up super religious like Hank was.

Speaker 5: 51:22

Lutheran. I grew up Southern Baptist. I'll plug this. I was the youngest active missionary in the Southern Baptist Convention. Wow, I was 12 years old whenever they inducted me and I was doing mission work every summer from like 12 until I was 18. And heavy, heavy, heavy in the proselytizing and I was always really into public speaking. That's kind of why they, how they got me, yeah, and some I had a very similar like moment. Well, I came out as queer and my brother is gay and I was just like well, y'all don't like him, y'all don't, I don't like you, you know kind of a thing, kind of your classic like rebellious in your teens, my dad gave me a copy of um Charles Darwin origin of the species and I was like what the fuck like?

Speaker 5: 52:13

because I learned I learned um creationism in high school. I grew up in a high school that did not teach us evolution, like we were not learning anything scientific really um, and so I was kind of shook.

Speaker 5: 52:28

I was shook by the idea of evolution, um, and was like, well, if this is, if any part of this is true, then everything you've said is false, which is a very like young 20s way to look at things. And then, whenever we met, I was like, oh, I feel something, I feel something and this is this is love. Um, I feel so full and I feel so whole. But, like man, do I miss having direction? Like I miss having like a thing, a practice, I miss having like a thing that I do every week to center myself and to give me just a little bit more like provocation to my thoughts, you know, like not like a rule book, but at least something to reference yeah you know, and and we both kind of were bumping up against this same thing of like man, life feels a little hollow sometimes, and quakerism has been honestly like kind of one of the coolest things I've done as an adult.

Speaker 5: 53:26

If you don't- know anything about Quakerism. It's essentially non-denominational, loosely Christian-adjacent, but the practice is completely unhierarchical. So there's no pastors, there's no ministers, there's no deaconship, it's hardly an organization. It's hardly an organization. You go and you sit in a room in the quiet for an hour oh, that sounds amazing, it's, it's meditative yep, you go sit in a room, um, they open the service.

Speaker 5: 53:54

You have like 15, 20 minutes of like. Sometimes we're quiet for an entire hour, but the idea is that you're sitting in communion with other people, in communion with other people, meditating essentially and opening yourself up to the still, quiet voice of God, and that there is this connectivity between all of us. And when we're all doing this together, we're almost like opening up a pathway to be able to think about things higher than ourselves and greater than ourselves. And sometimes people stand up and the whole idea is, instead of having a minister, whenever people kind of come to these revelations or having these like really provocative questions, they stand up and they say it oh, it's just like the scene in fleabag that I just watched. Yeah, they go?

Speaker 2: 54:35

yeah, they go, because she's like she's like trying to seduce this priest yeah, they go do like a quaker thing. I forgot that. They did that. Yeah, silence and and you go do like a Quaker thing where you just sit.

Speaker 5: 54:44

I forgot that. They did that. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 54:45

You sit in silence.

Speaker 5: 54:45

And then yeah and like, sometimes like an old lady stands up and goes, I'm seeing a black walnut tree.

Speaker 2: 54:51

And you're, and you're.

Speaker 5: 54:51

You're breaking your heart, you're crying, you know what I'm saying, you know and, and, and. There are just some beautiful, beautiful moments that we've had. Yeah, it's on Shimmerhorn in downtown Brooklyn. It's the Brooklyn Friends Meeting.

Speaker 2: 55:04

Oh, my God, You've got to give me the information for you. There's like six or seven meeting houses in New York.

Speaker 5: 55:09

Yeah, I mean obviously Pennsylvania is where it was all born yeah.

Speaker 2: 55:13

The American.

Speaker 5: 55:14

Wakers, yeah the American.

Speaker 6: 55:16

Wakers and honestly it sounds so cult-y whenever I just say it out loud.

Speaker 5: 55:21

Yeah there's no problem with it. They yeah, there's no problem with it. They also call themselves the Religious Order of Friends.

Speaker 2: 55:25

I think I've heard that before. Actually, now that I think about it, yeah, everyone's, it's your friends, and so that's been.

Speaker 5: 55:31

really I don't know kind of what we've been up to recently is just going to Quaker meetings on Sundays and trying to be like in a community and trying to not be so miserable all the time, wow.

Speaker 2: 55:44

Well, thank you for missing it for us. It feels, so bad now? No, no, this is great, we can have a moment of silence.

Speaker 5: 55:50

Thank you.

Speaker 6: 55:51

Thank you for letting us out A quarter for a person who quaked his teeth Exactly.

Speaker 2: 55:56

It's basically what it is for us actually. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5: 55:59

No that was actually part of the conversation of coming in today, we were just like this is honestly the exact same thing.

Speaker 2: 56:04

This is why we do these meetings is to be able to be in community and open ourselves up to stuff like this I know Wow.

Speaker 5: 56:12

All right.

Speaker 2: 56:13

Well, we'll move on to our very last.

Speaker 6: 56:17

Did we burn through the questions? We burned through the question time yeah.

Speaker 2: 56:19

I feel like that was really satisfactory. We could do one more question, if you want but it has to be one sentence answer, which is a lot of pressure on us writers. I can Right. Can we do it? I?

Speaker 5: 56:30

write high-camps. I can do it Uh-uh. See, now she's digging through them.

Speaker 4: 56:36

Well, I feel like this could go big, but you can be quiet, I mean you can be contained, not quiet. Sorry, freudian slip. No, I meant you can be contained. Have you and your partner or friends ever argued about taste? Well, of course, obviously. But you don't tell people to their faces that I think you have bad taste. You just say that's not my preference or I enjoy this more. Oh, that's not true. I, I enjoy this.

Speaker 2: 57:04

oh, that's not true, I've totally told people that like good, good friends, but not.

Speaker 2: 57:09

I mean, I'm just thinking like their taste in a movie or their taste in music, right, or their taste in writing. Like I'll never forget my two friends and I walking out of the theater seeing Hereditary and my friend was like that was the worst movie I've ever seen. And my the other friend and I just turned to her and said you're wrong, you're just wrong, you don't have to like it, but you're wrong, like, so yeah, I'm very opinionated in my opinion.

Speaker 5: 57:35

I mean, I mean I have to like show you music sometimes because Hank's very, like, musically intelligent, because he studied music in college and all of this stuff. It doesn't have good taste. I could agree, we're doing it now, here it comes, but it's like sometimes I'm like why do I?

Speaker 5: 57:53

like this. I think it might be bad, but I like it. And Hank's like here's technically why you like it and he plays stuff like I don't know free jazz, and I'm like this can't be real. Is this what you do when I'm not home like? And the answer is yes, and and I I accept the the free jazz in you, but I just don't understand it it's not for me it's not for it's not for me, but I'm glad you like it well I I grew up with.

Speaker 4: 58:20

you don't call someone else for food, you don't say something's gross. So it's kind of that mentality that I never like. Everyone has their likes dislikes. Nothing is gross.

Speaker 2: 58:32

Right, like if you can't say something, nice, if you can't say something nice Yep, that's not for me.

Speaker 4: 58:37

I'm not a Swifty.

Speaker 5: 58:38

I was going to say are we taking this back to the day?

Speaker 4: 58:41

I'm not a Swifty.

Speaker 2: 58:42

Well now, I feel like I should change. So, okay, I picked my three just spontaneously, but now I feel like maybe I should change it to the Taylor Swift.

Speaker 4: 58:51

But I'm not. I'm going to stick with mine. I feel like you go with your gut. I'm going to go with my gut, my gut is. So I had to look and see Fuck kill be To remind our audience, instead of fuck, kill, marry the children's game, I don't know, did we say? Fuck, kill, marry. The children's game. There's three that I think of all the time.

Speaker 4: 59:12

So I feel like marriage is out. So you want to be someone, not be a partner to them. Ie the ideal life. So to be to kill or to fuck, all right, I'm going Go for it.

Speaker 2: 59:25

This is what just came to me, so we're going to do Prince Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, oh fuck.

Speaker 6: 59:36

I love you so much.

Speaker 1: 59:37

Who's the last guy?

Speaker 2: 59:39

I guess I'll probably. I'm just going to shoot, I'm just going to go for it. Yeah, do it, I mean. I haven't thought about what my answer is but I'm going to obviously probably fuck Prince right, Because it's Prince.

Speaker 4: 59:49

Even though he's like this big, I think we're going to double down on this.

Speaker 2: 59:52

I saw the best interview once with Tom Waits and Barbara Walters, where he kept all his money in a shoebox under his bed.

Speaker 4: 59:59

So I'm going to go Tom Waits and I'm probably going to kill Bob Dylan. I'm 100% copy.

Speaker 2: 1:00:07

I don't know, man it just came to me.

Speaker 4: 1:00:11

I mean because Tom's a musician, he's a poet, he's a weirdo thinker.

Speaker 2: 1:00:17

He's Do it do it. You can say it, you can say it.

Speaker 5: 1:00:19

You're in the same place. Who's Tom Waits?

Speaker 2: 1:00:23

That's okay. He sounds the same place. Who's who's, tom white?

Speaker 5: 1:00:27

uh, that's okay, he's like, he sounds like cookie monster.

Speaker 2: 1:00:29

He's the one. He's your f, but like he's your f, what are you? He's a babe, he's a pretty big babe he's, can someone give?

Speaker 4: 1:00:33

me like an example of a thing that he's done. I just did that I'm showing you. Please see him oh he's cute yeah.

Speaker 5: 1:00:48

I don't like the little goatee. Whatever, I'm not going to come for him. The flavor saver, the flavor saver, don't I?

Speaker 4: 1:00:55

know it's so good. Don't I know. Can we pause and play music?

Speaker 5: 1:01:03

No, I'm going to have to just base this off of that little goatee.

Speaker 2: 1:01:05

Yeah, I think he just kind of yeah. I think he just kind of yeah, yeah, yeah, Just go for it.

Speaker 5: 1:01:09

Okay, fuck, he'll be. Honestly, I would probably fuck this guy.

Speaker 1: 1:01:13

Just because like he's got a vibe, it seems right.

Speaker 5: 1:01:16

For me it's the hat, it's the curly hair, yeah, he's um.

Speaker 4: 1:01:29

so I think definitely fuck him, uh, kill bob dylan because like whatever, um, and then be prince like I would love to have a crazy life.

Speaker 5: 1:01:33

I would love to have that energy. I'd love for people to be so obsessed with me like that sounds awesome. Be a sex symbol that terrifies me being watched, being looked at and being yeah well, I, I would have to also embody his ability to take that in stride, absolutely. Because, what kind of a strong human person does it take to be like? I'm going to be the sex symbol for the rest of everyone's lives? Yeah right right and for you, Bob.

Speaker 6: 1:02:01

This is hard. I have to take this as a pure determinist right that whoever I'm going to be is the life I'm going to have, which, inarguably given he's still alive, won a Pulitzer Award, has a massive farm out in Pennsylvania, has never really had a problem. Bob Dylan, 100% You've got to be Bob Dylan. And I have to add an addendum here with I fucking hate Bob Dylan.

Speaker 2: 1:02:25

I can't get through a song, but I'd be him. You don't have to listen to him, you don't have to listen to your voice. Also, if we're going to be purely deterministic, if I was Bob Dylan, I'd think what Bob Dylan thinks about Bob Dylan. Yeah, exactly Did the fucker kill.

Speaker 6: 1:02:43

Tom Waits, another musician. What Bob Dylan thinks about Bob Dylan? Yeah, exactly right, absolutely the Fuck or Kill. Tom Waits, another musician that I do not like. And Prince, a musician that I respect, but honestly, if it's not when Doves Cry, I don't think I know his song. Yeah, you gotta kill man. Fuck. Prince is kind of a religious nut too.

Speaker 2: 1:03:05

Yeah, he is Prince is like a Jehovah's Witness, but Tom Waits is also.

Speaker 6: 1:03:12

Tom Waits is also kind of crazy, but it's a shtick. I mean I guess he'd fuck Prince. But I don't Kill Tom Waits, I guess I hate that. That's what that comes down to. I want the. Pulitzer.

Speaker 2: 1:03:28

I want the Pulitzer, you know it's that I want to hang out with Kendrick.

Speaker 6: 1:03:31

Lamar and get the Pulitzer 100%.

Speaker 2: 1:03:34

I totally it's hard because after I hear everyone, I always want to change.

Speaker 1: 1:03:38

I'm like and I want to pull different people.

Speaker 2: 1:03:40

I'm like everything you're saying is right. This is why we end with this Exactly.

Speaker 4: 1:03:48

It's a conversational piece, no one wins Everyone loses.

Speaker 6: 1:03:51

Thank you so much for having you this has been awesome Thank you Hope we didn't sound too pretentious.

Speaker 4: 1:03:57

No, we're great Just pretentious, just the right amount.

Speaker 5: 1:04:01

We got to throw in the God thing first. So that's good, that's good, but yeah, it's Sunday, it's Sunday, it is Happy Sabbath. Y'all Happy first day. Yeah, happy first day.

Speaker 2: 1:04:11

Happy Sunday. We will, let's take a break and then we'll do some reading, and then we'll be done. Perfect, all right, folks. Thank you for having me, thank you no-transcript.