So... Alright - Losing Connection

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

Geoff struggles with losing connections and letting go. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So this is gonna be a bit of a test, I think. I was not planning on recording an episode. I have done zero preparation to record this episode. As a matter of fact, it's a really shitty rainy day in Austin right now. Actually, I'm not gonna say shitty because any rain in Texas is good at this point. And so I appreciate, or at least my yard appreciates it. But typically what I do before I do an episode of F*** Face is I go ride up my bike and collect my thoughts.

But because it's such a shitty rainy day, I'm sorry, it's just a rainy day, I decided to just go for a drive instead and kind of, I have this story I want to tell from my honeymoon that I think is pretty funny about how I misunderstood the assignment. And so I was trying to work out how to tell it in my head. But then my mind started to wander and I was listening to music. And I think as you do on gray days, right, when it's a little rainy.

And it's like, I don't know, there's like a sadness to a rainy day that is kind of fun to dip in and out of from time to time and so i was just in that vibe i guess driving around just uh my mind started to wander and i was uh listening to some old music and i got to thinking about how much i used to connect with this particular band and how I no longer do. And, and just about the idea of losing a connection to a thing that you're in, that is important to you at a, at a place in time. I think I, I maybe feel it most strongly with books, uh, I guess more than anything, but you, you're subjected, subjected is totally well i guess if you're in school and they force you to read something that's the appropriate term but

you're introduced to something uh at a point in your life when it really speaks to you as an example in the mid 90s the beat generation kind of went through a renaissance if you weren't around uh at that time, you might not know this, but you know, everything is cyclical, right? So in the early to mid 90s, we were just coming off of our Tom Robbins era, which was, if you don't know who Tom Robbins is, he was a really fantastic, I guess he probably still is a really fantastic novelist. I don't know that he's dead or not. Is he alive? I need to look and see if he's alive.

Hold on a second. Oh, hell yeah. He's still alive. Okay. Tom Robbins is still alive. Anyway, we had this like the late, at the very end of the 80s into early 90s, we had this Tom Robbins era

where everybody was in love with Tom Robbins. If you were cool, you were reading like, oh God, Skinny Legs and All, Even Cowgirls Got the Blues, which was obviously a big movie with Uma Thurman. Still Life of the Woodpecker, Jitterbug Perfume, Another Roadside Attraction. I think that's all of his books that I've read or that I can remember. Anyway, he was very popular and and he definitely hit people in the gut culturally at that time. And then as that was cresting and ending, or waning, I guess,

we started to go into this. This is a very long, drawn-out way to explain where I'm going, but I guess that's kind of the point of this podcast, so I shouldn't feel guilty about it. We started to go into this beat renaissanceissance and it didn't last very long it i think that if we went into that and then we came out of that and went into swing which lasted too long uh if i'm being honest with you but we were in this this this like beat renaissance where there were a bunch of movies and coming out and everybody was rereading Jack Kerouac. Everybody was rereading On the Road. And Allen Ginsberg had a moment. And then William S. Burroughs had a big moment again. I remember everybody was really into him briefly, myself included. I actually had a William S.

Burroughs tattoo for a really long time. Although I guess if you don't get a tattoo removed, you always still have it. It's just under another tattoo but i read uh yeah i was i had a definitely had a hard william s burroughs face brief but hard william s burroughs face anyway i was fucking going with that anyway we were in the middle of that like there was a movie that came out that was kind of a big deal in the indie circuit it was called the last time i committed suicide And it was Jack Kerouac adjacent. I believe it was about his best friend, Dean, and a book that he wrote, which I also read, which wasn't a very good book. Anyway, at that point in my life, I was probably at the height of my wanderlust. I was at the tail end of being in the military. So I was like 21, 22, 23, somewhere on there,

and really feeling the weight of the five-year commitment that I had obligated myself to in the United States Army. As much fun as I had at times and as exciting as it was to see the world and to do a lot of really wild and unique shit, I was very fortunate to be a journalist and a photographer in the military. So I got to do like a little bit of everything, which was awesome. It's like on a Monday, you get to go be a sapper. And then on Tuesday, you're a signal guy. And then on Wednesday, you get to go up at the Blackhawks or whatever, you know, it was just like it never was never boring. I'll give it that. But it was also the fucking military and I wore camouflage to work every day. And I was told when I could eat and when I could go to bed and when I had weekends off and when I was deploying across the world. And I, you know, you're like 21, 22 years old. You've already been doing that for three or four years. You really you like I flew the nest my parents' house in Alabama into the fucking army. And so there wasn't ever really any freedom from one to the other, you know, not that I was particularly oppressed at home as a teenager.

But, you know, you want to leave home and strike out on your own and become your own man, become your own person. And, you know, you get a bit of that in the military, but there's still people literally scheduling your life down to the minute. And so it's not a whole hell of a lot of the idea of freedom. And so my wander list was at an all time high at that point. Plus, I think it's just the time in your life when you're figuring either going into a new situation like college, or maybe you're just coming out of it, and then trying to figure out the next phase of your life, or you're just trying to figure out your life. And it's probably when you are the most receptive to wanderlust and that idea that you could get, you know, you're not probably super tied down yet, you could go anywhere, do anything. It's, it's actually a really fun and exciting time

in any anybody's life, I think, but I had it the most right there, especially because I was near the end of the army, and I knew I would be out and I really didn't know what the fuck I was gonna do after I got out of the army. I just knew I wasn't gonna re-enlist. I knew that I was 100% definitely getting the fuck out of the army. And so I read, I got really into, as did everybody at that time, I got really into the Beat Generation.

I had grown up loving, and I've actually thought about talking about it on this show at some point, maybe I'll do an episode to it, but I'd grown up loving Dobie Gillis, the many loves of Dobie Gillis on TV. And, uh, that was like a, a fifties sitcom about a high school kid who was just in love with girls and was always like kind of following his failed dating, uh, shenanigans. And his best friend was was actually Gilligan, Bob Denver. And is that his name? Bob Denver? I don't get that right. Yeah, Bob Denver, you don't want to get Bob Denver and John Denver confused to those, those audiences hate each other. I don't know if that's true. I made that up. But anyway, Bob Denver, he played a character

named Maynard G. Krebs. and he was a he was a beatnik. He was a very cartoonish beatnik. But I was so fascinated by him as a kid. I really looked up to him because he was just fucking out there and he had like this goofy goatee and he played the bongo drums and he was just like far out and he had his own language. And he was he was very counterculture. He was very counterculture. He was one of my first introductions to counterculture, even though it was a very sanitized, very safe 1950s version of it.

It was, you know, definitely, I was definitely attracted to it early on. So I was predisposed to, like, Beatniks and the Beat Generation. And I actually think if you read about it and, like, where the name Beat comes from, and maybe I should do an episode on that at some point. It seems like I should probably because I think it's fascinating. Has a lot to do with the end of the war and people, young people having a lack of direction and not really, and just looking Beat down because they're just walking around,

just looking Beat to shit because they really didn't know what to do with their lives. And there weren't a lot of opportunities in that moment. And so that's how the name got coined, at least as I understand it. on bike, bike plus, tread, row, guide, or app. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything.

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Dharma Bums, for whatever reason, that's the book that spoke to me and my wanderlust. And it connected with me on such a like, on such a core level, like it was speaking to my soul, you know, like, I felt myself in that book, I felt like I was like those characters, I felt like I wanted to be like those characters. I thought that that's where I wanted to go in life after I got out of the military, I wanted to become this nomadic traveling from experience to experience beatnik punk guy with with no obligations. I kind of wanted to be like Bill Bixby in The Incredible Hulk or like David Carradine in Kung Fu. And I had this idea that I could be the current day version of Jack Kerouac in in in his adventures in on the road in the Dharma Bums I I didn't by the way it didn't none of that shit happened

and that not even came close talk about unrealized plans oh my god I I was married and locked down and by the time I I think I had a mortgage by 20 by the end of before I turned think I had a mortgage by 20, by the end of, before I turned 24, I had a mortgage already. Like it was, I couldn't have, the pendulum couldn't have swung harder in the other direction after I got out of the military. Turns out I was way too responsible to be anywhere near a Jack Kerouac, but man, did I live, I live a lot of those fantasies in my head for a long time. And so the Dharma Bums, it like spoke so intensely to me. I read it. I remember I read it back to back because I just, I couldn't leave the world. I couldn't leave those ideas and I couldn't leave those feelings. And I just, I wanted to be, I wanted to get up on that mountain

and I wanted solitude and I wanted to fall in and out of love at different points in my life. And I wanted to go from mishap to adventure to experience and never leave too large of a footprint when I left. And I just had all these ideas. And I think that that book really exemplified who I thought I was going to be to such a degree. And then I tried to read it again in my early 30s. And I couldn't get past like page 30. I couldn't connect with it at all. And it really bummed me out. And I don't know, it kind of hurt because I had such a reverence for the book and for the memories. And so I thought, well,

this must not be the right time then. And so I tried again in my late 30s briefly, and I didn't even make it as far as the second time or the other time. And then I tried, I don't know, like maybe three years ago and decided I'm going to get through the Dharma Bums. And I just, I'll be honest with you, I didn't enjoy, I couldn't force myself to read it. I still. don't know like maybe three years ago and decided i'm gonna get through the dharma bumps and i just

i'll be honest with you i didn't enjoy i couldn't force myself to read it i still and like whatever whatever connection i had with that book is just fucking gone and i have a memory of that connection and it's a really sweet memory and I have a fondness for the book and for Jack Kerouac and for what it meant to me at a time in my life when I read it. But damn, I just don't, I can't get there anymore.

I can't even get close. I have the same problem with, people ask me what my favorite book is and I tell them Catch-22 by Joseph Heller because when I read that book, it like, similarly to what i'm talking about uh i mean there was a lot of wanderlust wrapped up and a lot of fantasizing about getting out of the situation that i was in uh when i read dharma bums whereas catch 22 it just it just was beautiful it was heartbreaking and it was hilarious and in equal measure, I'll say. And I thought it was brilliant and clever and tragic and terrible. And it elucidated. It really spoke to me. Another book I read in the military, it really spoke to me about the military because I was in the military at the time.

And I was, I think everybody in the military is kind of afraid of being caught in that catch 22 situation, because when you give up control of your life to another entity, in this case, the United States military, they have the opportunity and the ability to, to alter, alter your future in ways that you don't necessarily anticipate. And so it doesn't happen all the time. But you know, it does happen, as is evidenced by everybody who got called back to active duty during the Gulf War, you know, people I family members I had, were, but more than that, I think it was just a really fucking good book. Just a really, really, really good book. And I even remember reading a quote somewhere, actually, I'm gonna look it up, see if I can find it, because I think it's one of the best fucking quotes ever. Well, I can't find the exact quote, and I'm not going to spend the rest of my life looking for it, but the gist of it, I'll paraphrase, was he's interviewed by this dude. I think it was meant to be kind of a gotcha question, in my memory at least. The guy was like, you know, you kind of had lightning in a bottle in Catch-22, and you've written a bunch

of stuff since then, but you've never really recaptured the lightning in the bottle of Catch-22. And Joseph Eller looked at the dude and goes, uh, who has? Which I think is such a fucking awesome retort and such a ballsy retort to somebody who was clearly, you know, I think being a little derisive with the question. And anyway, I could sit here and talk about Catch-22 forever and why I loved it. But the point is, is that I loved it. I loved it so much that I instantly knew it was my favorite book and that it meant the most to me

out of anything else I'd ever read. And I read it again three or four years after that and connected with it in the exact same way when I was like maybe 27, 26, 27, and just knew that this was gonna to be a book that I was going to revisit throughout my life. And I have been, anytime anybody asked me what my favorite book is to this day, I still say catch 22. Uh, it, I, I can't think of another book that impacted me in the way that it did when it did. However, I tried to read it a couple of years after that

in my early thirties. And 30s, and I couldn't. I was really surprised that I was really weighed down by the prose, and it kind of bugged me. And the stuff that I thought was funnier when I was younger, it wasn't landing with me as much. And so I put it back on the shelf and said, this is not the right time to read this. I tried. Maybe like a year later, I got the audiobook book and I tried to listen to the audio book and I got bored, couldn't make my way through it. And then I decided that I'm never going to read that book again, that I don't want to experience the same kind of frustration that I have with

the Dharma Bums. And so I'm just going to remember how much I loved that book. I'm going to remember, I can remember very clearly what it meant to me and what it felt like and how important it was to me. And I don't want any further attempts at reading it to diminish that. So I'm just going to accept that that book may no longer be for me. But goddamn, dude, when it was for me, it was for me harder than anything else I'd ever experienced. And, uh, I'll still call it my favorite book for the rest of my life, even if I can't get through it now, just because of how much it meant to me when it meant so much to me. And it's weird, you know, I, I, I got off on this tangent cause I was thinking about a band. I was thinking about

a band called J church that meant a tremendous amount to me and that I'm undecided on if I'm in this territory with or not. And so it's been kind of, I guess, in my subconscious thinking about this because I don't want to fall out of love with something that meant so much to me and for a really long time. And so I'm going to take a little break from that band because I don't, I think it would be the saddest thing in the world to lose to lose a connection I'm really sick of getting older and losing connections to things and I know it's inevitable uh I you know I've experienced it from both sides of the coin I've had people come up to me and tell me that they loved Achievement Hunter or Red vs Blue at

a period in their life but they just can't connect with it anymore and that they're, they thank me for loving it when they loved it. And I think that that's awesome. And I really appreciate that. And I totally understand because I have the same thing. You can't love a thing. I guess you can. You absolutely can love a thing forever.

I, the things that I love today, I've loved my whole life, riding bicycles, listening to music, playing video games, collecting baseball cards. Clearly, I've loved those things my entire life. But some stuff you just can't hold on to. And it's okay, I think, to let it go, especially if you hold on to the memories of how important it was to you or how much it meant to you or how deeply it spoke to you at a period in your life, whether that be a punk rock band, or a counterculture novel, or a video game, or some dumb web cartoon. I guess it's better, I think it should just be enough that we loved it when we did. And so I'll never read Catch-22 again, but goddamn, do I love that book.

Alright.