The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Poetry of Strangers: What I Learned Traveling America with a Typewriter by Brian Sonia-Wallace

Episode Date: August 22, 2020

The Poetry of Strangers: What I Learned Traveling America with a Typewriter by Brian Sonia-Wallace Rentpoet.com Before he became an award-winning writer and poet, Brian Sonia-Wallace set up a typewriter on the street with a sign that said “Poetry Store” and discovered something surprising: all over America, people want poems. An amateur busker at first, Brian asked countless strangers, “What do you need a poem about?” To his surprise, passersby opened up to share their deepest yearnings, loves, and heartbreaks. Hundreds of them. Then thousands. Around the nation, Brian’s poetry crusade drew countless converts from all walks of life. In The Poetry of Strangers, Brian tells the story of his cross-country journey in a series of heartfelt and insightful essays. From Minnesota to Tennessee, California to North Dakota, Brian discovered that people aren’t so afraid of poetry when it’s telling their stories. In “dying” towns flourish vibrant artistic spirits and fascinating American characters who often pass under the radar, from the Mall of America’s mall walkers to retirees on Amtrak to self-proclaimed witches in Salem. In a time of unprecedented loneliness and isolation, Brian’s journey shows how art can be a vital bridge to community in surprising places. Conventional wisdom says Americans don’t want to talk to each other, but according to this poet-for-hire, everyone is just dying to be heard. Thought-provoking, moving, and eye-opening, The Poetry of Strangers is an unforgettable portrait of America told through the hidden longings of one person at a time, by one of our most important voices today. The fault lines and conflicts which divide us fall away when we remember to look, in every stranger, for poetry. Brian Sonia-Wallace is a street poet and performance artist who challenges notions of art and value. He began RENT Poet, an experiment in paying his rent through writing poems for passersby on the street and at events, in September, 2014. Since then, he's written for tech companies and governments, toured nationally and internationally, and been nominated for a 2015 Doris Duke Impact Award. Brian is a Partner at the Melrose Poetry Bureau and lives in Los Angeles.

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YouTube.com, Forge.us, Chris Voss, if you want to see the video version of this wonderful gentleman we're speaking with today. And, yeah, there you go. We're going to be talking today with Brian Sonia Wallace. He is the author of the new book, The Poetry of Strangers, What I Learned Traveling America with a Typewriter. You're going to love this story. He has been described as a creative genius by LA's Department of Cultural Affairs and a disappointingly normal by the New York Times. His debut book, The Poetry of Strangers, which came out earlier this year, tracks his journey across the country

writing poems one-on-one for over 5,000 people as a poet in residence for Amtrak, Mall of America, a political campaign, and more. His company, Rent Poet, was featured on NPR, or NPR is How I Built This, and Brian's writing has appeared in The Guardian and Rolling Stone and more. Welcome to the show, Brian. How are you? Hey, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on. Dude, I Welcome to the show, Brian. How are you? Hey, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on.

Dude, I talk to authors all day long. We talk to, you know, politics and we talk about news and there's a lot of people who write really brilliant novels. This is really a first. I don't talk to a lot of poets, number one, but you have an extraordinary, unique and very cool sort of story. So let's get into it. What are some plugs, actually, where people can look you up on the interwebs first? Sure. So I'm in most places as Rent Poet, R-E-N-T Poet. The joke I always make is, as in, it is due.

And people always hear Rent a Poet, and I'm like, no, no, no, it's Rent Poet, and we'll get a little bit into the origin of that story and the company name. But I'm on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and all of that is Rent Poet. Or you can look me up as BrianSonya-Wallace. Also on Facebook, LinkedIn, and BrianSonyaWallace.com, RentPoet.com for the interwebs. There you go. There you go.

So give us an origin story on you and what, uh, drove you to write this book. Sure. So the book came about, um, really with the Amtrak and the mall of America residencies in 2017. And I had been doing this weird thing for, I guess, three years, um, full time at that point. Uh, in 2014, I had a three years, full-time at that point. In 2014, I had a job and I was laid off and had spent about six months job hunting, graduated, I'm a millennial, graduated mid-recession and sort of did that early career sputter start. And after about six months of job hunting,

I had heard a story on the radio about this weirdo in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, who would bring a typewriter out and write poems for people. And I thought, well, I can, I can do that. to be a fun experiment that I do for maybe a day and ended up just getting this incredible response from people when they had the chance to share a story with someone calling themselves a poet behind a typewriter. And I had written poetry and stuff before, but it wasn't, I didn't set out to be a poet. I wasn't like, yes, this is my thing. I, you know, studied sustainable development. I'd been working in nonprofits. And so what also ended up happening is that I realized that I was making enough tips that if I did this every day for a month, it would be about the equivalent of taking a minimum wage job, which is what I was considering doing. And so that's where the rent poet part comes from. So I set out in 2014 to pay my rent through writing poems on the typewriter for folks. And yeah, fast forward three years, people started sort of taking notice. And I actually got these sort of strange corporate residencies and companies wanting me to come in and work with their clientele and do poems for them. And based on that, the publisher reached out and was like,

maybe there's a book in here. And I went, oh, you think so? Like, yeah, let's find out. And so it's been this bizarre chronicle of adventures and misadventures with the typewriter. Everything from working on a political campaign to visiting a trans witch collective in Salem, Massachusetts, to, you know, posting up at the Mall of America and writing poems for shoppers as a kind of roadside attraction. So it's roadside attraction poetry. I always talk about it as service poetry. I'm like, I'm not in the ivory tower.

I'm not, you know, managing anything. I'm just sort of there like a shoeshine boy. But instead of shining your shoes, I'm going to, you know, do a little like emotional shoeshine. So you started out and you're there, I guess, in the park or something? Yeah, I started out. The best context that I found were always street festivals, which it's ironic in COVID time.

So it's like farmer's markets. I live in Los Angeles, so we've got a lot of taco truck festivals where everyone's carrying cash and drinking. That's probably key. Get that cash ground. Oh, drinking. That's probably key. Get that cash, that cash ground. Oh yeah. Bars, bars are great.

I mean, where the company ended up going was a lot of corporate parties. Wow. And it was something that was a little bit different. Really? Wow. Interesting. That's pretty cool.

That's brilliant. Totally without advertising. Totally just from like meeting folks on the street who were then like, oh, my law office is having a Christmas party. Do you want to come on Friday? And at first I didn't even know to charge for it. I was like, no, I'll just take tips. And then I was like, wait a minute, people get paid money for this.

This is insane. Yeah. I used to know this guy in Vegas who looked exactly like Tom Jones. I think he had some work done, but he looked like Tom Jones pretty close naturally before he had his work done. And he would make just stupid money at corporate events to go do Tom Jones covers and do the act. And I would just be like, why don't people just pay Tom Jones?

I'm like, he's too expensive and he doesn't have time. He's doing Vegas, baby. And so so yeah, corporate money. There you go. So why a typewriter? Why? I mean, as a millennial, you probably grew up on something else. When did you touch your first typewriter or come up with the concept of a typewriter? God, I think i was probably 22 23 i definitely did not grow up with them um my mom actually worked in in it when i was growing up so we always had the like newfangled tech we had the you know switch from floppies to cds early on um but the typewriter is a weird thing and because it's because it's antiquated because it's out of place, especially when you see someone on the street or at a party or in a public setting with it, I think it codes differently, right? Everything that we do, everything that we wear is a code, is sort of eliciting a response from someone else. And if you're sitting out in public with a notebook or a computer, you're saying, stay away from me. I don't want to talk to you. But if you're in a public space with a

typewriter, like you are begging people to come up and ask you what the heck you're doing. And so for a long time, and I still don't have very good signage. Like my signage is really minimal because the typewriter is the sign. The typewriter is the sort of sirens call. And the great thing about it as well is it makes the noise. So not only do you have a visual, but people as they're walking past or hearing this and either having a memory jogged or, you know,

for, for kids and folks who didn't grow up with typewriters, it's like something out of a movie and they're like, Oh, wait a minute. This is a scene. Now we're doing. Yeah. it has that very very kinetic sound and then when you do the one thing it was the ding of the bell and stuff i don't know if that

is under yours but i imagine that one of the beauties of using a typewriter is you're writing poetry for people so you've got to print it off and hand it to them right right you can't do that with a cell phone well yeah let me email that to you and there's no real satisfaction in email i mean there's something about the tactfulness of it i i would i would guess and it's funny because i've done a couple of events now in our new you know post-pandemic zoom apocalypse uh using the typewriter on zoom and doing these interviews and writing for people on Zoom. And there's something really beautiful about that. There's a corporate event I did at the end of June where I had people in offices in Australia and the Philippines and Amsterdam and, you know, across the world all sharing this same experience. But there is

something I think that you lose when you don't have that physical thing. And one of the coolest things for me is that I will run into people and, you know, it's, I say over 5,000 and that's because I don't necessarily keep track, but it's significantly over 5,000 folks who I've written for. I will run into people and they'll say, you wrote me a poem four years ago and I've got it on my fridge or I've got it like on my bed stand framed. Or there was a right after the pandemic happened, I had a corporate client just Venmo me some money. And I was like, what's that for? And she was like, oh, we were sharing our home office setups on Zoom. And someone had your poem next to their computer in their home office setup. And I thought of you, you know,

wanted to make sure you were doing okay. And so it's, it's this cool thing where it's, and that's, I think also why it, why it is interesting in some way to companies, because how often do you go to a party or just go out and then come back with something that you're going to keep for that amount of time.

So I think of it as almost like a photo booth with words, where it's that similar effect. People are able to kind of capture that snapshot. And there's the typography of it. I mean, there's real tactile nature to typewriters. And fortunately, I grew up with them, fortunately or unfortunately, I don't know if it's better or worse, but I do have to tell you, I've talked about this before, the one most important thing that I learned in high school,

in all of my college, or all of my, I didn't go to college, clearly. In all of my 12 years of schooling, there's one significant class that made a difference in my life, learning to type. And mostly because I went into business. And so being able to, you know, do the QWERTY type or whatever it's called was really important. Whenever we started our first business, I would, you I would sit and hammer out the invoices. And the next week, my partner would have to do it, and he would be sitting there spending all weekend henpecking the keyboard. So I was always glad that that was something I learned. I wasn't really that excited about it.

I think I had to take typing class. Either a gun was to my head or it was like the only class left or something so this is actually a little bit of how i started poetry i was i think 10 or 11 and i was just the worst typist i had no patience for it i was terrible i didn't practice and um my mom set a hard and fast rule that I had to type a page a day. And I realized that poetry has line breaks. And so you can type a page of poetry in about 15 minutes. Oh, wow. And so in some ways, and what I do now is really speed poetry.

I'm talking to someone and they're not going to hang out for two hours while I compose the next song of myself. They're going to hang out for maybe five minutes, and that's about the space of time that I have to write something. But I think in a lot of ways that, like, 10-year-old, 11-year-old year that I spent speed typing poetry to try to get out of typing practice was really the start of it. That's funny. So when did you write your first poem?

I mean, probably around that time or a little bit before. I actually just moved houses, and one of the things that I'm really enjoying is I have a couple of boxes of old journals and doodles and whatnot going back to when I was 10 years old. And so it's

cool to get a chance to reconnect with the past in that way and to kind of just do that spring cleaning of the self. Um, but I, I do remember, uh, I'll share this little bit with you. I wrote a poem around that age to my mom's spaghetti that I still remember. Ode to spaghetti. Ode to spaghetti. I love my mother's meat spaghetti with its bits of cheese confetti. You know, it's not,

uh, it's not Shakespeare. That's something that's up there. That's Walwood. I don't know. So, so when people ask you, uh,

to write poems for them on the street and, and through your different activities, what do they normally ask? Is it personal? Like, do they want something for themselves to tell, something for you to be descriptive about them or for about them to, or you write maybe about a subject that isn't about them?

Or what is it normally majority-wise, I guess? That's a great question. People normally are pretty open, and I try to keep my question as open-ended. And one of the interesting things is there are people doing this practice all over the country, right? There's probably not a ton, but there's probably 50 folks. And I know all of them now across the U S and more broadly who are doing this and everyone has their own way of approaching people. And mine is, I always ask, what do you need a poem about? And there's a couple of things in there. I like the verbiage need instead of want because it's this idea that you do need a poem.

You maybe don't know it yet, but this is something that you need. This is something you should have. Everyone needs a poem. Everyone needs a poem. That's actually my little, it's on all my business cards. It's everyone needs a poem. Everyone needs a poem.

Everyone needs a poem. Yeah. Have the curve. But so subjects people will either get – I always ask, do you want one for yourself or for someone else? And so a lot of people will get one for a romantic partner or a parent or a kid or about their family. When people want them for themselves, it's a whole range of things. Everything from I've had people tell me really intimate personal stories about, you know, medical stuff that's going on with them or mental health stuff that's going on with them.

And equally often, my least favorite, but omnipresent poems, you cannot have a gig go by without getting a request for a poem about someone's dog. Really? That is perhaps the most universal thing across the country, whether you're in Tennessee or Massachusetts or California or Arizona. Everyone wants a poem about their dog. Which is funny. I have two dogs, but they can't read for crap, so there's that.

I always wonder, you know, like, what happens to these poems? What are you going to do, go and read at your dog? It's actually, so I, after about a year of despairing about dog poems, I decided to lean into it, and I went and I, there's, you know, a few collections of everything

that famous poets have written about dogs. And I was like, let me read what other people are writing about dogs because I'm out of material. Yeah. When my dogs passed, uh, there were people that sent me beautiful poems and they did some artwork and rainbow bridge and stuff like that. And it was really beautiful and thoughtful. I imagine you can make a lot of money sitting outside of a row shop at

Valentine's Day asking people. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of Father's Day, Mother's Day, Valentine's Day. It's definitely there's a it's a it's a seasonal kind of seasonal kind of occupation. That's awesome. I think it's really cool. So you wrote about your stuff. Now, how did you get this gig with Amtrak where you're the poet in residence? How did that work out? You know, it's all – so I think a huge boon to me as an artist, as a sort of entrepreneur, has been a past life as a grant writer. Because there are all these online applications.

And even the – you know, with Amtrak, I don't remember where I first saw it. I think it was a news blast that someone sent out. The residency with Mall of America was a Facebook post that someone shared. And so in some ways, it really is these long shot, weird things. And I don't, or I didn't, at least before, you know, before now, I didn't have the literary credentials to get into sort of formal residency programs and all of these, you know, prestigious writing, whatever, whatever. But I always feel like I kind of came in through the side door because, you know, Amtrak doesn't care about that. Mall of America doesn't care. They want something that's going to be engaging for people. They want something that's going to be literary, but also really draw people in. And I have started talking about my stuff a little bit as like social practice poetry, with the idea that it's not, it's about the lens that you look at it with, right? Like, this isn't poetry for you to go,

ah, like, let's look at the meter and the line breaks and think about what they mean. Like, the line breaks are mostly determined by when I get to the end of the little three by five card I use on the typewriter and I go, well, that's the end of that line. Um, and there's some, you know, some intentionality to it, but, uh, really, and what the book is, is it's about the stories. It's about the stories that people share. And it's about the communities that people, um, want to represent in this poetry, how people identify, how people like what you claim. I always think about that idea. Like what are the communities that you claim for yourself? And it was interesting how you found, um, and there was something in your writing, uh, where you talked about, uh, people were striving to be heard or, or people were striving to have a voice and try and find it.

If you can expand on that. Yeah. I think that what surprised me and it's foundational to the whole practice, I think is the idea that people just really want someone to listen to them. It's sad, but it's true, right? What? What? No, i'm just kidding we live in this age where we're like constantly putting crap out like we are writing on facebook and twitter and posting and there's just this explosion of production i mean one of my favorite

facts is we're writing more than we ever have in human history. Now, are we more literate than ever in human history? Maybe, you know, debatable. Depends on if you look on Twitter or not, I guess. Exactly. But like even sharing memes, right, is a form of writing, a form of curating, a form of like putting together your own personal book of your life in public for everyone to see and there's the thing that i think it's gets kind of lost in that is is that ability to just kind of sit down and particularly with a stranger i think that's that's an important factor too to have someone who you don't know who's able to some people joke they're like this is like therapy and i'm like well like if you want

to use it as that you're welcome to to. I don't have a license. I can't prescribe you meds. Look forward to the forthcoming Chris Voss book, My Autobiography and Memes. I'm sure someone's done that. If they haven't, they should. You know, what you were saying leads me into the question I had set up for you was, I mean, do you feel like you're a little bit of a psychiatrist? You kind of have to do a little eyeball on people and go, hmm, what should I write about this person? Or do you kind of, are you kind of like a bit like a psychic where you

draw some information out of them first? I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, some of my favorite moments are where when I'll write something and like what comes to mind is there was a poem that I wrote over quarantine for a woman who had two sons. One was graduating high school. One was graduating college. Neither were getting graduations. She's like, write me a graduation poem for these boys who are not getting graduations. I'm like, sure, that's an easy task. Let me just do that emotional labor for you real fast. Emotional labor,

I like that. And that's actually something that's, I think that's a therapy. I'm going to start using that term when people give me, when people are being stupid around me, I'm like, are you giving me your emotional labor, you idiot? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I get the number of people who I'll have be like write me a poem and my response is always give me money this is starving artists right but so so this woman uh i the poem i wrote for the the older son i talked about the idea of kintsugi which is the japanese art when um like a historical urn or vase or

something breaks when you mend it rather than trying to make the cracks disappear you mend it in gold so the cracks are all filled in with gold and this was sort of the central metaphor of this poem of like well the world's broken but uh like let's not pretend it's not. Maybe we can put it back together in a better way. And at the end of that, all of our correspondents had been over email and she said, oh, you had no way of knowing this but I'm actually Japanese American and that's my ancestry and that's my family.

Oh, wow. And so there's little moments like that where it's just like, oh, cool. There's something, you know, I don't particularly have any superstitions about what's going on there. I think it is coincidence, but it's cool when that happens. The nice thing in what I do is I get to ask follow-up questions. Like, I'm not trying to look at someone and say, ah, I've decided the future of your life. Mostly what I do is I say,

you know, what are you doing with your life, and would you like to be doing and what's going well? Often I'll ask for a specific memory. So the poem is kind of centered in space and time in their own experience. So that's basically how you better connect with an audience, right? You use the three easy step program that you mentioned? Yeah, so I have these three steps that in doing this practice over and over again, I've kind of come up with. The first one is open the floor. I think that the typewriter does that really naturally for me,

but it's something that we're all doing. And again, now in Zoomtopia is a challenge. How do you start when people are logging in here and there and everyone's, you know, making sandwiches while they're on their calls? I know I am. But opening the floor... This just in.

What Brian is doing on his Zoom calls. Creating the number of calls that I will... The camera will be moving. It's like, just go into my fridge. Don't mind me. Um, as long as we don't hear a toilet flush,

we're okay. That's when it gets, uh, that's when you become famous on zoom. Just got to mute it. But yeah, it's that remembering that, right.

If only had that happened once and it wasn't in a, wasn't in a, it was kind of funny how those are all popping up. Oh God. Right. Yeah. Um, it was kind of funny how those are all popping up. Oh, God. Right? Yeah. So have you ever written a poem for someone, and then they got it, and they went, I don't know who the hell you're talking about right here. This is me?

No. Well, there you go. You must be a good judge of character. I remember one time I got a card, and I was at the end of a relationship with a girlfriend who I was trying to get to move out. And I got this card for my birthday. It said all this stuff that was nothing compared to anything she had been saying to me recently because we were in the throes of breaking up and uh the throes are breaking up um and uh and i opened the card and i read it and it was such a um sorry word it was it was such a juxtaposition from where we were and the things she was saying to me and basically her opinion of me uh that she

was verbalizing and i was just like did you read this damn card before you when you bought it or you just buy any had she written it or it was just like the message on the card yeah yeah basically just phoned it in you picked up any card that said happy birthday because i read the inside and i was like what the you know i was and so i always read the insides of cards because i'm like do i love this person as much as much as this card says i don't know so that's very interesting is this hallmark is this hallmark card accurate to my feeling is this accurate to how much i either hate or like them or kind of i'm on the fence you know i don't want to tell them i love them too much unless i do or don't but you know you gotta you gotta be factual i think that's know, I don't want to tell him I love him too much unless I do or don't.

But you know, you gotta, you gotta be factual. I think that's really important. I don't want to say the only poem I ever remember refusing to write was I had a guy come up to me and he was like, can you write me a poem to get my girlfriend back together with me? She's, she's inside.

We just had a fight. And I was like, nope, can't, can't do that. You can't do that. So there is the, there's a line and I was like nope can't do that so there's a line I will not promise you that this poem will fix your relationship

so you'll do the poem there's no guarantees on this you know you might have to have some legal disclosure on some of these maybe actually I have a friend who made me a little sign that sits next to my typewriter that says something like no refunds.

No refunds. You find you aren't the person that I wrote about or the person that you give this to does not like it. We are not to be held responsible in any way, shape, or form. All sales are final. And so companies, this is a question for you. Companies are increasingly looking at employee creativity. Any creativity hacks that can come from your work and your experience? Sure. I think that the big takeaway for me is that we have this

weird idea of creativity as something that like exists in a vacuum or something that you know create people are creative people are are like these magical beings and that's what creativity is rather than the idea that creativity is just like what happens when two unlike things meet each other and have a dialogue like i always use the metaphor of a metaphor, which is comparing two unlike things and finding they're the same. Like, sure, your love is a mountaintop. Why not? How are those things related? And I think that's where creativity is, is looking at two things and finding that sort of middle ground. But I always think about that as being in conversation. And everything that I'm doing, if I was just coming up with stuff off the top of my head and giving it to people, they wouldn't care. So to get them to care, to make that creativity

useful, it's about talking and listening to what another person is saying and kind of applying your different mind to that situation, to that person. And I think that that does translate to all sorts of situations. And I think that really, if you want creativity, I do some creative writing teaching as well. One of my favorite tricks is I'll just give people arbitrary things that have to appear in their writing. I'll ask for five random words.

And I'll just say, great, now you're going to write a poem and these five words have to appear in this poem in this order. That's it. And just that task of trying to work your way between unconnected concepts. I think that's where, where creativity happens. I think that's where it lives. Maybe you've opened up a new avenue of psychology, you know, that or it's a metaphor for life that the real poetry of life

the real beauty of it is that we should actually listen to each other and get to know what the hell we're saying which is look at you you started this saying i'm a i'm a metal head i don't know about poetry and now you're waxing about the real poetry of life yeah i'll do Shakespeare next in a bit here. Something like that. Over ratio. I don't know. So this is really interesting to me. I mean, this is really cool. You put a lot of thought and process into this, and you discovered some interesting things about the internalization of stuff.

One thing I saw talked about here is a lot of people seem to ask about stuff that they love whether it's the dogs or or other people or maybe themselves i know a guy you can write a lot of self-love poetry about in the white house um the uh uh that's and he's got the money for it you might want to consider that um but uh uh you could just write poetry i I love me. I love me. And I love more of me. See, look, I'm a poet right there. That's it. There's actually a book. This is an odd plug, but there's a book of Trump quotes that have been given line breaks and turned into poetry that was put out a couple years ago. That exists.

You know, I use that every, anytime I have food poisoning, I need to extricate stuff from the body. Actually, I think I've seen enough of that poetry on Twitter. So there's that. I think it's really cool. I watched a zoom call that you did with a whole mess of people. Uh, you did like a two hour zoom call. That was interesting. Um, and you guys were interacting and and uh the artistry you know would you say that one of the things that's lost in our world where you know we're always looking

at phones and consuming and like you say we're we're the society that you know we've probably been given too much democratization of voice because people want to spew every BS thing that they have coming through their mind. I mean, 90% of my stuff is that. But a lot of it's garbly gook that no one really wants to hear or no one cares. What was that old line from Fight Club? We buy things to impress people who don't give a shit. Maybe the same can be said about our blogging and stuff. And so I think it's interesting you found this depth where people want to be heard and they're so desperate for it. Like one thing I always like now is, is I, I kind of enjoy calling people and I come from the age of where I used to

call people, but I actually kind of like it now because people don't know, people are kind of like, Hey, you're a human being. Oh, Hey gonna talk oh cool this is like really novel you know in back in the old days when i used to sell stuff uh you know 5 000 people were calling a day and you know the guy had his thing up so uh it's easier to close deals usually if you call people but i think it's interesting um what you found and what you wrote about in your book where um all this stuff so so did you spend, so Amtrak had you, did you do most of your traveling around America with the Amtrak thing and then eventually

you got to the Mall of America or how did that sort of evolve? Yeah, it was a mix of different travels that I talk about here. So Amtrak was a significant chunk of them and I tried to link together a lot of different places on the Amtrak um and then there's other ones where I you know drove out or flew out flew out or I flowed flowed out flew out I flowed um one of the thinking about what you just said one of the the

people who made a big impact on me was when I was on the amtrak opposite me uh in the little roomette which on the website they're like it's like a hotel room it's more like a closet um was this 95 year old guy named oran and he was really smug because he was going solo on the train to visit his brother who was 96 and he was like my brother has a caregiver um and was that was that a one-up on his brother then he was thinking oh yeah oh yeah he was like i'm independent i'm solo traveling on the train but you know just this this guy who you know talked about serving like around world war ii and getting to sit with him and talk with him um for three days on a train um one of the things that that really came out from that was

the idea that you don't have to leave a mark on the world to have a good life and i think we're all so obsessed i'm like i i'm one to talk, right? Like writers are the most obsessed with this. It's like my legacy, this book will be an imprint and it will stand the test of time and never burn. But like, no, of course, you know, there's how many thousands of books published every year. There's so many people speaking. I think there's something very comforting in this idea that like, hey, like, not, not everybody has to hear you. Not everybody has to, you know, you don't have to be Mark Zuckerberg, you don't have to be the Bill Gates of whatever it is you're doing, you can just sort of, you know, make a make a positive impact on 10 to 20 people. And that's kind of that's kind of okay i love that idea that's a beautiful idea um you know i i had one of the russian authors about putin on and you know we we talked about how much money they were they were amassing privately the the leadership of the russia

and i was like you know honestly if i was like a despot sort of leader, I kind of like, I don't get a billion or two. And then it'd be like, Hey, you know what? You guys go have fun with this country stuff. I'm going to another country. So you can't prosecute me for all the shit I did. And then, uh, I'm going to go hang out in the Bahamas and chase chicks around the pool or something, you know?

But, uh, uh, and you know, we talked about how there's just this consumption, like, I gotta be the number one richest guy in the world. I gotta be up in the Forbes list. And it's interesting what you just said, where, you know, sometimes we have to make that difference here. Have you ever made, have you ever touched someone? Like maybe you wrote something and made them cry in the spot? Oh man, all the time. One of my favorite things when I was at the Mall of America, I kept a tally because I was trying to have data for them. You're trying to make people cry, right? I wasn't trying, but one out of every five did. 20% of people who I talked to, I talked to a little over 100 people. And 20% of the people that I talked to cried at some point in the interaction. And this is how I know that it's not my skill as a poet, is that sometimes they'll cry just telling me the story. Like, they don't even need the poem written yet.

It's just being able to talk about that and being able to convey whatever it is they're experiencing to someone who is not in a hurry and is not trying to get anything out of it. And is, like, not trying to be their friend, you know? Like, I'm not collecting phone numbers and emails and following up i'm just like oh i'm here here in this moment to do that um and i do appreciate what you say i i think that there is like a this like national and probably global obsession with being number one with with you know being the best and i i like the idea of sort of you know whatever whatever you're doing it's kind of good enough right like it's good enough for now for you at this time and partly i think people just need someone to tell them that and i feel

like so many of my poems especially the ones where often it's young people who come up and they're trying to figure life out and they want a sense of direction or they're you know older and they're in the middle of a career change they're getting a divorce whatever's happening and they kind of just need someone to be like oh yeah that's a thing that humans do that's probably okay that you're doing that like you don't need to be killing the game 24 7 and do you think it's because we because we don't take that time out to be present and what you kind of facilitate is a moment of being present, kind of like a

cartel, we'll talk about the power of now, where you give people a moment, you take them kind of out of their space, you know, they're running around a hundred miles an hour doing their stupid stuff, looking at their phone, and all of a sudden there's a guy with a typewriter. This is pretty unique and extraordinary and he's writing poetry like this isn't something you see at every mall or every place in the corner you kind of take them out of that that routine that they're

doing and you kind of give them an extraordinary moment of presence maybe yeah i i would agree with that i'll say also from like a personal like I don't know, slightly snide side of me, it's so great to be able to make people wait because we have the conversation and then I have to write the poem. And I always tell them if they want to go off and get a drink or chat with their friends or whatever, they can do that. But yeah, I just remember writing a poem for a C-level executive at Facebook. It's like, okay, wait for five minutes and then I'll be right i'll be right with you i'll be right with you

just you know well you have to wait because like you know even with like the portrait guys that you see at public places sometimes where they they draw your portrait this part of you has to sit there and you know be subjected to waiting and you probably have thoughts for a while it's probably you have to think about your thoughts oh my god thank you that's what i did that's why i'm on amazon buying everything i possibly can i don't want to be left alone with my thoughts left alone with myself uh that's interesting when you do your poems do you put your name at the bottom of everyone oh yeah i uh yeah i put my name i put the date um i sign them so you have an extraordinary amount of work that's just running around where where uh where you know one day there's gonna be you know i have this this poem in my attic with this painting of of uh you

know whatever and then there's a poem. And, you know, there might be these extraordinary works of art that will make it into Smithsonian or, you know, someplace in France or crap like that. I mean, this is my long game, right? I feel like books live on shelves, and you read it once, and then you close it, and then you put it on the shelf. And maybe if it really impacted you, you'll take it out, and you'll read it it again and the nice thing about having poems on scraps of paper is that people have to figure out where to put them like that's that's brilliant i don't think about that that's brilliant brian and then other people are seeing it as well and you're

reading it every day rather than a book that you read once and put away you're you're interacting with this piece of literature and you're using it as a metric for, you know, maybe the poem was written five years ago and it doesn't really apply to you anymore, but it reminds you of where you've come from. And I think that's equally valuable. It's a mark in time. That's really interesting. I do that with fortune cookies. When I was younger, I did. I don't do it anymore. There's nothing attached to the screen now. But when I was younger and I was, you know, searching and trying to figure out who I did, I don't do it anymore. There's nothing attached to the screen now, but when I was younger and I was, you know, searching and trying to figure out who I was and what my job was in life, I would, the fortune cookies, of course, uh, you know, those little strips that

I like, they easily taped to the monitor of your screen, you know, cause they're just those little thin slits. And, uh, so, you know, if I found one that, you know, you're good with money, um, uh, you know, you're better looking than Brad Pitt. I'd be like, clearly. So we should put that up on the. Let me remind myself of this. Remind myself. But no, I love the beauty of this.

It's multifaceted and it's, I don't know, how would I describe it? You'd probably describe it better, but it's, it's so interesting to me. And, and I grew up in an age where, uh, you were bored because you didn't have phones and all this kind of crap. And so you would look at the, you would look at the, um,

the typing that goes in the imprint that goes into the paper. And, and whether it's the topography of the typing or it's the nature of it like i've been helping my mom uh during the covid crisis uh with a lot of her historical stuff because we've been trying to she's got all these photos that we've got to get digitalized uh and a lot of this material that we've got to get digitalized because um you know thank god she's never had her home burned down knock on wood. But she has, like, all this old stuff.

And so she literally has, like, all these old, like, letters that were typed and everything. I think she has a typewriter somewhere around here. And I took in the – but I remember, you know, I used to look at it, and you'd feel it. And there just really is a tactile nature to it. Sometimes you just look really closely at the ink imprint and the mark it made and how the ink worked and stuff. And I think Bill Gates, or not Bill Gates, but Steve Jobs brought typography, I think it was, to uh the thing but there's still there's still something about there's still something i think romantic about the typewriter and that's why people probably drawn to use that the romanticism of it you know i mean i know a lot of my author friends

they like to get a picture of them next to it's like some old 18 year 1800s typewriter sort of thing and uh but yeah it's kind But yeah, it's really cool. I mean, just the whole brilliance of it. You can pull it out, hand it to people. You don't have to email it to them. There's an instant gratification of, hey, I've got a poem. And you should sell frames on the side.

That's what you should do. You should be like, hey, you want to buy a frame for that? Because my biggest thing is, I get it crumpled on the way home. Yeah, no, I totally have a box of frames. Oh, do you? Okay, cool. In COVID era, there's not much I can do with them.

But depending on the context, I'll bring that and have that as an option or envelopes that people can put them in. Oh, that's good. That's good because that's a big thing I'd be worried about. I'd be worried to get a – so what is the average cost, if you don't mind me asking, of like – if you're working on the street, I'm sure with corporate and stuff you do something different. But if you're working on the street, what were the average prices you used to charge me when you started out

and then when you got going? Because I'm thinking of a second career. There you go. Consider street poetry. That's where the how much money is in here brian that's really what i'm trying to find out is there there's no money to know about no it's a billion dollar industry venture capitalists but when you when you do stuff on the street would you mind telling me what you charge for a poem for somebody

yeah for sure so uh when i first started out my sign said uh give me a topic i'll write you a poem pay me what you think it's worth. I would not let people pay me beforehand. I would read them the poem and then there was a very beautiful and awkward moment where we had a small discussion about the value of art. I loved that.

But also, I... Was this a bit of a guilt trip or was it the value of art? I mean, probably. Probably. Let's be real. It probably was. And then I had a conversation with a friend who's like a tax accountant.

And he was like, you should really put an average amount because people just need to know what the, you know, what the average is. So then I put, you know, your topic, your poem, your price, average 10 to 20 bucks. And so on the street, you know, if I'm in a context where people aren't expecting to run into me, I think that what you're prepared to pay for a surprise is like the cost of a sandwich, right? Yeah. That's about the value of a surprise. Yeah. That's about the value of a surprise. Now, if people are reaching out to me to have them, you know, to write anniversary poems or wedding vows or whatever. Oh, yeah, wedding vows.

That could be a good business. I've gotten to know more about the wedding industry than I ever wanted to know. I do a lot of weddings. I mean, you know, not at the moment. I have some friends that might want some divorce poetry. Have you ever done divorce poetry? Oh, man, I'm sure I have. Have I?

God, I'll have to look through my – I do take pictures of all the poems. I'll have to look through and see if I have a good divorce poem I can send you. That would be funny. It's extraordinary. But, no, it's interesting to what people will pay for that in in the meaning of it because you know honestly you know if i buy a five to ten dollar like i bought a seven dollar burger yesterday at at uh five guys burgers uh plug um i just picked some cash for that five guys um and uh it was a very good burger, I must say. But I paid $7 for that, but that baby's gone.

Like $7, woo-hoo, boo. And really the value of like a poem, like I just keep seeing him sitting in a frame on the thing. You know, I think there's a picture here of some Chinese symbols I have kicking around the office. I have no clue what they mean, but there's something cool about it but a poem and especially where it's written from somebody like this isn't personalized i don't know who the hell like i probably bought this from like the dollar store someplace and sure i was like yeah that was cool you put that on the wall

somewhere that's not personal what you're writing for people is very personal it's like if i got david frost to write for me, and that's a conversation piece where I get to constantly go, hey, David Frost wrote that for me. There you go. And I think it's cool. For titles for the poems, I don't usually give them their own titles, but I always write for the person's name at the top.

Oh, okay. So they don't get like... At that level from square one you're not like oh he's talking about you know mountains and stars is this about me it's like no no it's about you you're the mountains and stars just connecting these dots if you're not super familiar with metaphor and poetry that's what's going on here it's about you and if you don't think it is you might just want to go home and contemplate it no i love this uh what's interesting somewhere in in the research that i did on you you talked

about how you'd gone you'd gone all over this nation and the stories here in the book which make it quite extraordinary uh check it out guys the poetry of strangers on amazon we'll have a link on the website but uh you talked about going to some some of the towns that were kind of the rust belt or or uh towns that were kind of uh almost ghost towns now and you had some interesting experiences there yeah it's been a lot of like small small cities um and really interesting to see how across the country there is this kind of model that everyone's trying to get a piece of the action in and it's funny because i i started my career doing uh a lot of community development anti-gentrification work and going to all of these

small towns and seeing them desperately try to attract tech companies, desperately try to attract artists, try to make their town the kind of place where, you know, a startup would relocate to. You know, Chattanooga, Tennessee has some of the fastest Wi-Fi in the nation and is a tech hub in the South because they've really deliberately invested in public, in like a public utility as a strategy. And it's fascinating to see, I mean, especially in the national climate right now where it's like, nope, like we're not going to do anything publicly.

Just everything's going to be private and we're going to, you know, the market's just going to decide it all to see all of these small places really working actively to attract that kind of investment to attract um to kind of make their physical space reflect uh that broader national trend of kind of what what does a space need to be able to bring people in what does a space need to be able to be exciting um and that was something that was mirrored across, I think, most of the communities that I

went to. So you felt there was a need for more sort of, you know, this artistry, art and stuff like that? I mean, I'll be honest with you. I have mixed feelings about it because I'm like, oh, am I coming in as a tool of developers to try to up property values and potentially price people out? Did I single-handedly succeed in doing that? Probably not. I'm not going to take credit for that um but it is it is something that uh at least was was aspirational in a lot of these places you know everyone wants to have high property values and tax revenue and all of that stuff did you find that uh people in big cities uh were more receptive to you or people in like smaller towns are more receptive to you? To be honest, it's about the same. So it's more about the people then? It depends a little bit on the context of where you're setting up.

Definitely small towns are more likely to have a central square. Like, ah, everyone comes here to do their shopping. And so if you set up there you can exist there um big cities you have to do a little bit more sleuthing to find where those central arteries are and if there are central arteries that aren't tapped like i've gone out a couple of times in los angeles to like hollywood boulevard or venice beach where there's lots of buskers and there's lots of street performers and that kind of stuff. Those areas are not successful for me.

Oh, wow. Because it's not surprising. People see it and they're like, oh, another weirdo doing a weird thing. Trying to make some art. Whatever. That's interesting. That's really interesting.

I feel like food festivals are successful because really who's making art at the food festival that's true so you got to go someplace where the thing that that's interesting to me about venice beach one of my favorite places to go in the world to shoot photography not to shoot people but to shoot photography is Venice Beach. And I love to go with a long lens, like a 10-200. And I think it's a 10-20-200. I like to take a long lens. And I like to sit. I usually try and get a restaurant.

There's a restaurant that's there. And I try and get an angle where I can sit right by the walk, but I can shoot down long ways. Because I like to shoot people when they aren't paying attention. They're just being themselves. Because if they see you shooting them, then they start going. They either are affronted or they're just kind of like, they start thinking about what they're doing.

But Venice Beach is such a beautiful, artistic sort of thing. But it's interesting that it wouldn't work as good there. Because there's so much art. And to thing but it's interesting that that it wouldn't work as good there because there's so much art and to me it's fun like i remember one time i went there and and uh i have video this somewhere i had so many photos um and i have video of some guy who had a a giant carpet sign where you could kick him in the nuts for like five bucks or 10 bucks oh yeah i remember him and so i paid i paid some chick some hot chick to kick him in the nuts for the photo or the video um he's like you but you need to do it i'm like no dude i really don't want to interact with you in that way it's not it's not my thing wait was this was this woman someone who you knew or did you like no No, I'm pretty good that way.

I can improv on the street when I'm doing photography. I can't want to kick this guy in the nuts. I'll be like, look, I'm going to pay you to pay. And I already paid him. I'll pay you some money to kick this guy in the nuts. And she's like, really? Yeah. So, yeah, it's interesting to me.

But, God, you really have a whole psychology behind this. Any other standout stories you want to talk about in the book that maybe you want to share with us? The one that I love telling the most maybe is there was this woman who came up to my little desk at Mall of America outside of Wetzel's Pretzels or whatever and waited for a while before approaching and then comes up and says, I haven't really spoken to anyone in a week.

I'm just coming from this Tibetan meditation retreat where I was in silence for a full week. And tells me a little bit about that. I'm like, wow, that's really hardcore. What are you doing at the mall? And she says, oh, I came to get Dippin' Dots as a reward for myself. For having

done this big spiritual journey, I'm going to get ice cream. That's why I'm at the mall. And I was like, yeah, that seems like a pretty accurate reflection of who we are as a people. Journey. Right. We're going to go on this big hero's journey. We're going to do all this introspection. We're going to have it be really deep and really spiritual. And then we're going to drive to the mall and get some ice cream. Because treat yourself, right? It's Dippin' Dots, damn it. I think it's so easy to moan about everything that's lost in cultural shifts, in cultural change.

And I think one of my goals as a poet and as a writer is to also find the things to celebrate, to say, you know what, these two things are not mutually exclusive. Like there's an irony there, but it doesn't make either one less sincere or less genuine. And people are living really full and rich emotional lives and the most important place in the world for them is disney world and that's okay sure yeah if that's their spiritual pilgrimage that they go on every year like you gotta have some sort of pilgrimage so might as well do that you know you you said some really beautiful things right there uh i'll have to go find this piece and cut it out for the uh trailer you, you said some really beautiful things right there. Uh, I'll have to go find this piece and cut it out for the, uh, trailer. Um, but you said some really beautiful

things about how, you know, how, you know, we do, we do so much crap, like all day long, we, we don't see a crap. Uh, and, and, uh, our, uh, yesterday I was going through some different, uh, things and, um, I was being told some things that I you know I wasn't excited to hear and and they were about what someone else is going through and and I realized that I didn't want to hear it but and I started to walk away and pull away and then I realized that it wasn't about me. It was about what they wanted to tell me and that they needed to talk to me about this. It didn't really have anything to do with me, which probably was the reason I was disinterested,

which is kind of a shame that we look at the world through that lens. I just had this aha moment where a light went on and gone. This information is uncomfortable, but this person wants to share this with you. It's not important to probably them much other than they – well, it probably is important to them because they need to share it. A lot of times we look at what people share with us. It's like, okay, so what's the value to this? What's the value to me? You're kind of caught in the crossfire. They're doing, they're doing their emotional work

and you're just there. Yeah. And so I said, Hey, Hey, stupid, you need to listen. You need to give some feedback to this person and take 10 minutes out of your day and just listen, man. And so, uh, I kind of learned something yesterday. Hopefully I'll remember that lesson. But, you know, there's some times where people just need to be listened to. And so, you know, sometimes we just need to value different things. I think that's what's really wrong with our society and some different things. We're so busy talking that we don't listen and we don't have a value to listening, I suppose. I think it's how, I mean, everyone's trying to make meaning in some way.

Like, I thought it was really interesting earlier. You talked about, you're like, when I was young and trying to figure out my life and what I'm doing. And I'm like, oh, you figured it out? Like, what is it? That's the never-ending journey. You're so right. That is the never-ending journey i've still reinvent i mean when i hit 50 or 52 somewhere in there uh i learned so much about life and part of it was because i had this uh i had this uh strewn carnage behind me 50 years of of destruction and creation and and but but at this point you can

look back and see the patterns and go yeah yeah, there really is a pattern there. Yeah, I might want to seek some help. And I found out more about me. I mean, I may have found out more about me through this extraordinary podcast I've been doing with you that has been really enlightening. So anything more you want to plug about the book? We could probably sit here and talk for hours because I've really enjoyed this but anything more you want to plug about the book and everything? Sure I think

that I think that the big thing is that idea of showing up for each other kind of what you talked about and one of the things that was interesting in writing the book is especially kind of the things that was interesting in writing the book is, especially kind of the later chapters, start to zoom out from my personal interactions with people. And I start

to talk about, for instance, there's a woman who visits folks in immigration detention, and there was someone at a detention center who was writing poems. And so part of what she did as part of their correspondence was put those to talk to a community and particularly you know small small town red state uh the arts are seen as something that kind of kids do right like you do this up until you're 18 and it's very important and we'll you know put you in the after-school club and then you should have figured yourself out by the time you're 18 and then you get married and you settle down and you you know do do the rest of your life that happens starting then and then you get the divorce uh then you get divorce poems well yeah exactly and then you reinvent everything at age 50 but uh i i think there is something to this idea of of of how we're present for each other and especially now in in

let's see i I had Zoom apocalypse. I had Zoomtopia. What's, what's the next Zoom, Zoom place, Zoommageddon. The way that we're able to show up for each other is different. And I don't have a clear,

you know, one, two, three step solution for that. But I think that it's something that we're all thinking about now. And I think that it's something that we're all having to really get into, like you said, like all of a sudden, I'm talking with all of my friends on the phone. I would, you know, I had gotten out of that habit, because you kind of see each other on social media, you see each other at events, and like a phone call to catch up is, is weird. Why would you

call someone just be like, hey, dot, dot, dot. And you have to have your clothes on when you do it. You can't just be walking around your house in your pajamas when you show up on the Zoom call. So I like what you said there. We have to start showing up. You said it earlier. We need to start showing up for each other. I really like that. And I think people are doing it in lots of different ways. And I think that's part of the beauty of what I found in the book was the extraordinary diversity of ways that people are in, like it doesn't have to be. I think that we're in a moment right now where we're talking about mental health a lot. I'm a big advocate for artists in particular as we look to the next, you know, gigantic recession and cuts to arts across the board, which is going to happen. Artists advocating for and making the case for the arts is part of mental health.

But I think that we get in this cycle of saying, well, mental health is therapy and medication. But like it's also gardening and it's also going for a walk and it's also reading a book. And so finding the ways that and it's also, you know, going to Disney World, if that's your thing. It's making those pilgrimages that are important. For me, for a lot of years, it was vodka. So I do have one question for you. Do you think your experience in what you do and just interacting with so many people, do you think that's really taught you more about yourself than maybe what you've taught other people?

I mean, shit shit i hope so um sitting with other people for five minutes i'm sitting with myself the entire time um i learned more from about myself from other people uh like that's one of the reasons i like doing these interviews is because i i like learning about other people i'm innately curious in them. Trying to describe this book because it's gotten lumped into memoir, which I think is interesting because I always thought of it as essays when I was writing it. So I've kind of come to the conclusion. I'm like, this is a memoir in other people's stories. Because, of course, everyone who I'm talking to is helping to kind of

sketch the limits of who I am and what I'm doing and what I think because we exist in those conversations. So when I'm telling you about the person I'm having a conversation with, what I'm telling you is about myself and, I'm going to be pretentious and call them a protege of mine. And I asked her, I said, how do you know when you're done talking to someone and ready to start writing? And she told me, oh, it's easy. I just talk to them until I find myself. And then I write that. And I said, that's in my book. And you are getting credit for it. But I am going to tell everyone that you said that because it is genius. So that is Natalie. Natalie Nicole Dressel is the person who said that. But I just think it's the best summation of this whole,

I don't know, thing that I've been doing for eight years. And someone else said it. So, goddamn them. Why did you choose the typewriter that you, the model, make a model of the typewriter that you use? And why did you stick with it? So, here's the thing about being someone who is known for doing stuff on typewriters is I have probably 30 maybe more. Holy crap. You might want to see somebody about that. About half of them work. Half of them work.

I swear, Chris. It's really hard to actually... So everyone's like, can you find the ribbon? Yeah, you can get the ribbon on Amazon for seven bucks. But... Holy crap. If you want to get it repaired, if anything goes wrong with the mechanics of it, you have to go see, you know, Schultz who's like a 70-year-old German man in Westwood.

And he's the guy who can repair. There's like four or five typewriter repair people in L.A. who are still left. But they're all older at this point, and it's very expensive because their time has a premium, and there's seven. Oh, bad. Yeah. It's extraordinary. There's enough business going around. That's awesome. It's like

electronic stores that will have the old employee who still knows how to do this. The one you travel with mostly... Sorry. The one you travel with was... I used to own a lot of guitars. There was one I would always write with. Like, I would always, somehow, there was one or two guitars that were always the inspiration.

One was an acoustic, one was an electric. And for some reason, just the juices or creative or the whatever, aphorical sort of inspiration would flow through those instruments. And like the other guitars were just like, I don't know, screw around guitars or make noise with or look for a certain fuzz or something out of it. And sometimes you'd write with the one guitar and then you'd go to the other guitars and see how it would sound over there. Do you find that with a certain typewriter that you like, that that's your inspirational muse?

Totally. So the typewriter that I took around the country, which is actually on the cover of the book, was an Olvedi La Terra 32, Italian model 1960s, 70s. And it's just super compact, super light, fits in a backpack. I would travel all over with it. My favorite thing is going through TSA with a typewriter. They're always confused.

They're like, what the hell is going on? I'm like, do you want me to – and I always tell them. I'm like, I have a typewriter in my backpack. Would you like me to take it out? But that one actually at the end of those travels, I was literally getting back from a road trip and the case was slightly open. And as I was taking it out, the typewriter fell and smashed against the concrete and broke.

So that typewriter that, you know, was sort of the typewriter that all the poems and the books happened on, the little bookend is actually no more. So I have a... Every time I see a typewriter from here on out, I'm going to think of you. Whenever I pass a typewriter, I'm going to think of you. I'll leave you with that curse.

You know, it's a great curse. You know, I've had friends that they tour around and they do photography, and I've been worried in some of the places that I've been in with photography. Sometimes I've had to do a little trespassing on government property. Not personal property, but government property

to get some great photography. Usually it's at the top of like radio tower mountains, you know, and they've got it fenced off, but you want this beautiful shot or sometimes you find these old buildings that have these graffiti on that are really cool and you've got to hop some fences to do it.

And you're just like, I don't know if they're going to confiscate my camera. They can arrest me, but I want my camera back because it's got film in it. And so the beautiful part about your typewriter is no one's going to steal it from you when you're on the road. I've had friends have their cameras stolen on train cars in Germany. But no one's going to steal from you. And then if you need like a weapon, you know, you can kill somebody with a typewriter.

Swing that baby and hit them. Well, I really love this conversation, Brian. This is up there in one of my top conversations. I think this is so extraordinary. And the insight that you have into what into what you doing is quite extraordinary too. And I'm sure the book is as well. Give us the plugs on where people can buy the book and order that up and get to know you better on the interwebs.

Great book is on amazon.com where everything is, or you can also go to a bit.ly slash the poetry of strangers. And that's a whole mess of links to find it. Uh, you can also find it on my website, Brian, Sonia, Wallace.com.

Um, for all business things, rent poet.com, rent poet on any, uh, of the social media as you'll find me there. R E N T poet, not rent a poet,

just rent poet, rent poet.com. Do you think that by the time you're done, you'll have more with your life. Rentpoet.com. going, hey man, we all got to get the poetry together, Brian, so we can compile the stuff in a book. There's like, you know, you find a Rembrandt in your attic that was under a tarp and you're just like, it's like, yeah, it's a Rembrandt.

That could possibly happen. So you never know. It'll be interesting to see the afterlife of everything. Because if I ever got a poem from you and paid you for a poem, I would be keeping it and I i'd just be like someday this is going to be worth like double what i paid for it so you know double but from an emotional value it would be if it's for you does anyone else you know does anyone else care if it's all about your huskies biggest problem is is if it's

not for me like i don't care about anything else so there we go uh the catch-22 of all art but it has an intrinsic value so that's what makes it important uh so thanks for being on the show brian i'd love to have you back anytime if you want to if you want to talk about this that or the other but uh i think it's an extraordinary journey that you did and it's it's wild you got to tour the nation doing poetry like if someone asked me hey man you want to hitchhike across the nation and pay your way through poetry and I'd be like

I don't know about that man but you know I'm not a poet so there's that I remember the I took a picture the first hotel room that I was in that I was ever like someone got me this hotel room to write poems it's like, document, document, document. So excited. I feel like a band,

you know? There you go. Do you get any groupies from the poetry? I have a couple. Actually, on my website, there's the live stream of the book launch because all events now are recorded in perpetuity. And the

folks who I had interview me or do the Q&A at the book launch are actually two people who I met on the street five, six years ago who have since become close friends and collaborators. And there is something really cool about, you know, certainly not everyone. I'm sure there's about half the people I write poems for probably are like, oh, that's cute, and put them in their wallet and throw them away later. But, you know, that's a reality I'm prepared for and realistic about. But you do get these people who are close friends now, and it's like, oh, how did we meet? Oh, yeah, you know, it was in this parking lot where I was writing poems.

See, if I ever did poems, I'd do it just to pick up checks and stuff. But I don't think my poems would ever inspire any checks. They'd be like, that's really cute, boy. But no. Anyway, guys, be sure to check out Brian Soniaja wallace's amazing book here the poetry of strangers what i learned traveling america with a typewriter i think what's interesting about this is what you find in your travels and the experience and what you discover about people or or or you expand about on your experience with people and what there really is about um you know it's we're

in such a political time right now we're in such a political time right now. We're in such a diverse time where no one's talking to each other. And maybe this is more of what we need to do is show up for each other and listen more and be part of a conversation with each other as opposed to just yelling stuff at each other or just tweeting. I tweeted this. I'm not going to stick around long enough for you. I'm on what i'm gonna say next so there's that anyways be sure to check it out be sure to check out brian online uh if you're interested we're going to be having the

patreon.com fortress chris foss it's a book club we're trying to build where we can have more conversations i talk about my experiences with the different authors, the books that I read, how we got them on the show, maybe some of the different cool stories about that. We're going to be giving away books and different things and promotions and things. So a whole back end to the back end of the podcast that you'll be able to experience. Go to patreon.com, 4Chest, Chris Voss.

Also go to thecvpn.com or for all your friends, neighbors, relatives, dog, cats, mistresses, ponies. You know, let them all listen to thecvpn.com or for all your friends, neighbors, relatives dog, cats, mistresses, ponies you know let them all listen to the show just play it for the cockroaches when you leave for work every day give them something to entertain themselves with also you can go to youtube.com forward slash chrisfoss to see

the live version of this thanks to my audience for tuning in be safe and we'll see you next time