The New Yorker Radio Hour - High-Fashion Hijabs, Jill Soloway, and Bluesman Blind Joe Death

Episode Date: March 17, 2017

In this episode, Jill Soloway, the creator of “Transparent,” goes after the patriarchy; a Muslim designer unveils high-fashion hijabs; and we look at the tragic life and lasting influence of the guitar legend John Fahey.   New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

in the conversation with someone when they have that revelation. It seems to make me a sure. You're good if you have a source for it? Yeah, the telegraph. From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick. Generations of guitarists have been obsessed with the work of the late John Fahey. And later this hour, we'll learn why. And we're going to learn a thing or two about what feminists call the male gaze. My colleague Judith Thurman visits the Muslim designer of some beautiful high-fashioned hijabs to talk about what it means to dress modestly in our not-so-modest culture. And I'm going to talk with Jill Soloway, one of the most influential directors

and one of the most committed feminists working in television right now. Soloway's show Transparent debuted in 2014, starring Jeffrey Tambor as a person transitioning, rather late in life to a new identity as a woman. I think it's already joined that small list of TV shows like All in the Family or Blackish that capture an issue that everybody's talking about and makes it more real through fiction.

Salloway's got a new show coming out on Amazon this spring, and if anything, it's even more provocative. And we'll get to that in a minute. Jill, Transparent is a phenomenon, and it's brought something new into our lives, but through an old means using comedy, family, and poking at the narcissism of families. But politically, it's bringing something completely new,

which is the life of a trans person who's making a transition from male to female. I wish I could start, I wish we could start by talking about the environment into which this show came, the media representation of trans people, how you saw it and what you set out to do. Yeah, I didn't really have major political aspirations when I was writing. They were very personal. My parent had come out. I was very nervous. I didn't really quite get it.

I knew younger trans people, but I didn't know people my parents' age, early 70s. And I think I was writing myself into being okay with it. Your father, you're calling your parent, but you grew up with a dad who you did not get along with particularly well. as I understand it from Mario Levy's profile of you that was in the New Yorker sometime back. Yeah. It was a complicated relationship. We had a complicated relationship.

Okay. Complicated always covers a huge geography. Yeah. And then you encounter a phone call that you get. Yes. And describe that and then what happened to you internally in the months to come? Yeah, I think of the phone call as a huge turning point in my life as a light going on

because I think I had really, really struggled to understand what this missing piece, not only in my family, in, you know, your memories of your childhood, and you go, I had a sense there was something else going on and I didn't really know what it was. I think a lot of people have that. And so as you become an adult, you start to realize, oh, this was the way my mom struggled. This is the way my dad struggled. I had sort of on top of that this like unavoidable, you know, constant obsession with gender. My whole life, probably, you know, from the age of 15.

up until, you know, when I got this phone call. Beginning with one. What's said at all? I just hated, you know, a lot of it's just feminism. Growing up in, you know, patriarchy, you have this real sense as a young woman growing up or a girl. Like, I have so many, there are so many things I want. I want power. I want to be brilliant.

And then you're being told constantly, you know, be cute and engage the male gays. G-A-Z-E, not G-A-Y. I know. I know, but you're nodding, but I just want to make sure the listeners aren't. wondering why I'm trying to engage male gays if I was... We'll get to that. So as I tried to really kind of become myself, I was always, you know, anything that involved being female or feminine, I did because I was identified, I identified a straight,

but I always felt a lot of confusion, you know, about dressing up or makeup or high heels or sororities or things that tons of women actually feel confusion about. So I just thought I'm a feminist warrior and warrior. And yeah, I think when my parent came out, I went, oh, I come from a queer family. I come from a gender queer family. And you're how old when you get the phone call from your parent? I don't know. Four years ago, 47, 46.

It's got a complete, your head must have almost come off. Yes, my head came off. Just as it does in the show. Just as the film does in the show. Yeah, no, it was, it was. It was illuminating and also I was obviously emotionally struck. And it's not as simple as, aha, now I know everything. It's got to be much more complicated.

Yeah, I think it's now I know why I never understood anything. And I think I'm still in the process of understanding all of the versions of having a transparent. Were there writers, were there presentations of either feminism or trans people in the arts, in film, in books that helped you get to the point where you are. were able to write transparent? Well, there was Liver and Cox on Orange is the New Black. And there weren't a lot of other sort of regular, positive experiences of just trans people living their lives. It's usually as victims on crime shows.

Victims or villains. And then, you know, talk shows and this kind of very sensational kind of circus feeling around transness. There's a book called Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano, which, totally changed my life and my thinking really just kind of zeroing in on trans misogyny. And that really kind of helped me to understand something I knew a lot about, which is misogyny, and being able to connect it to trans women. And in particular, people from my parents' generation who might be a little bit older, who might not, quote, unquote, be passing

as easily, who might be the brunt of a lot of anger in society or people yelling things on the street. And it just kind of really helped me to understand how everything fit together. You got a little bit of criticism that you have Jeffrey Tambor playing this role instead of a trans actor. How do you react to that criticism? Yeah, I mean, sort of my headline is I take that criticism full force and absolutely positively agree with all trans people who say that cis people should not be playing trans people. I 100% agree with that statement. Is it understood as a kind of the equivalent of? Blackface?

Yes, it's considered trans face. All of my trans friends are rightfully really angry. And I do kind of agree that four years after transparent, or three years after transparent, in many ways we as a culture should know better. There have been some amazing defenses of transparent out there that I really appreciate. One is that Mora was transitioning at a late age, and this is really the best. way to show somebody who went all the way up to the age of 70 presenting male. Jill, I also want to talk to you about your new show, also on Amazon, called I Love Dick, based on a book of the same wonderful title. This is a story about a couple, married for what

seems like a very long time, maybe erotically bored with each other, and they go from their house in New York City on a creative adventure to Marfa, Texas, which I think may be the second great stronghold of hipsterism in America today. What drew you, to that story? Well, I loved the book. I couldn't believe that Chris Krause existed and somehow she had been kept from us. In particular, though, I think this triangle

where here's a couple, Chris and Solver, who haven't had sex in a while and who have a real intellectual connection but the physical is no longer really working and they meet a guy. The writing instructor. Yes, aptly named Dick. And suddenly

they have a new dick. in their marriage. Love that you just go by Dick because usually someone would, you know, if one is born or richard, they were rich, rich, Rick, Richie, Ricky. There's so many. Just Dick.

Is it possible that I saw you on a horse yesterday? Yeah, I have a ranch just outside of town. Oh. How big? Curious. You want to know how big my ranch is. Dick is played, I should say, by Kevin Bacon with the steelyest of blue eyes.

And even, and every wrinkle exquisite in his neck and face. It's just he, it's like Richard Ford come to life. Yeah. On the screen. Yeah. I mean, he's the he's the sort of ultimate man object and Dick is performing

masculinity hard and he's doing it to, yeah, he's doing it because he's worshipped for that masculinity. And I just love watching this marriage attempt to, first they see him and then they try to use him and then they, you

You know, they have them in their minds. And to me, I feel like I've never seen this story before. I've never seen, you know, the story you think is that the woman's going to have the affair. But in this story, Silvery goes, let's keep talking about this. I'm in. Let's keep talking about Dick. And that is so transgressive to me and so unheterosexual American male, but yet so incredibly common. There are so many ways in which heterosexual men allow other men's masculinity into their relationship as a way to keep it up.

Yeah. Maybe porn, maybe patriarchy. There are ways in which men depend on other men to be a man. And I love the way that this story takes that and makes it really personal. And do you feel that you've said what you're going to say about, I don't think, I can't imagine it is, about feminism with these shows? Or is this going to remain your theme or generalized theme for years to come? And what plans do you have? Yeah, I think the shows are a document of my becoming, as cheesy as that sounds.

I sound like Tammy. She had like, I am becoming so horrible. And it's a document of all of our becoming, you know, everybody in my family and the people in the writer's room and the people on the set. And I was having a conversation with Jeff Bezos at the Golden Globes. He was sitting next to me at the table. Because Transparent is produced by Amazon. Yes. And I said, I'm going to ask.

I got to. I got to use this time wisely. I'm going to ask him some important questions. And I said, you know. You wanted a discount on books. Exactly. I said, sometimes I get really distracted from TV making because I really get excited about the idea of movements

and changing the world and feminism. And he said, you know, storytelling is probably one of the most effective levers I could think of that changes the world, even more so than politics. And, yeah, that kind of calmed me down and said, okay, I am doing it. You know, I think as a kid I was so like, okay, I have to, you know, my mom was involved in the women's movement and the civil rights movement was going on. You know, I was growing up in the 70s in Chicago and an integrated neighborhood in the middle of the city. And it was all about ERA and the Black Panthers.

And I really wanted to be part of a movement. And he made me realize that I am part of it and I'm doing so through storytelling. Right now, you have awareness of gay and lesbian issues that is far greater than it's ever been before, even to some extent trans issues. When you look at the American scene when it comes to the issues that you are most passionate about when it comes to gender issues, where are we and where do you expect to see us in a short period of time down the road? Is it seem like forward progress or is it that dark? Well, we're absolutely moving forward. And this feeling of possibility plus this incredible, fearful, violent fascism are both marks of the end of something. When you say, is it getting better or getting worse, it's both at the same time. It's the end of a patriarchal construction is what you're leading to. That's the plan. Can you help me with this? Majorical revolution imminent. Yes, that is coming. The question is will happen soon.

You also use a phrase that has been around for a while, the female gaze, the male gaze and the female gays. G-A-Z-E. G-A-Z-E, I got it. And I want to get a sense of the way that works in practical terms where you work in terms of writers and producers and people doing lighting. How will you work, Jill Soloway, as opposed to the way generations of male directors and producers in television and. and film have worked. What's different? Yeah, I bring sort of, you know, whether or not it's the female gaze or the feminine style of leadership, meaning that you stand in the back of your troops and you push them forward.

I'm definitely not inventing this. This is, you know, when a lot of people are talking about management right now, they talk about, you know, working from underneath or from behind their staff. And I think it's a really common sense way of, you know, being lazy, actually. I love to come to work and have the attitude of, I don't know the answer. Let's ask the production designer. I have no idea. What do you think? To ask people what they think actually allows me to come to work and kind of just be a leader rather than micromanage every department.

So less Napoleonic. Yes. And what happens on the set? You know, we just kind of connect over the feeling that we can't believe that we get to do this for a living. We do this thing called box where we waste a ton of time standing in a circle, talking about how we're doing. We waste like a half an hour every day. So describe what that discussion is like. So, you know, it's call time.

It's 8.30. It's time for the first rehearsal. So if you were on a normal set, it would be time to go to the set and rehearse. But instead, the AD kind of starts clapping a little slowly. And then the clap kind of moves throughout the stage. And we all just kind of start to murmur, box, box, box, box, box, box, box, box. And then we all kind of move into a circle. Sounds really culty, right?

A little bit. But it has a purpose. So we move into a circle. and so whoever wants to gets up on the box, and they just speak for a minute. And it's non-hierarchal. Yes, it could be anybody. Okay. From craft service to, you know, the executive from Amazon.

And they just speak for a minute or two, and they say this is... About what? However, they're feeling that morning. You know, I had a really rough weekend because this happened, and, you know, my mom is ill, and I was spent all weekend in the hospital. It feels really good to be here. Okay, half the audience is applauding this, and half the audience is rolling their eyes. Why is it effective?

Because... What does it bring to the... Okay, so it brings... the fact that we actually spend the day working faster because we're all emotionally connected. We all kind of heart connect early in the day, so we actually are able to then just jump into the sense of a really quick-moving machine. Was anybody not with the program? They probably are.

I don't hear about them. But nobody walked. No. We do it all the time now. And then what else? It prioritizes emotions. We're making a TV show about feelings. So I think a lot of times when there's a sort of masculine or patriarchal set, a lot of people are spending a lot of energy trying to come back from the ways in which they cut the energy by going, you know, we're in a hurry, we're running out of time, we're running out of light, prioritize the equipment, hurry, hurry, hurry, schedule, schedule, schedule, yelling, quiet and action.

And now the camera is rolling and we're looking at two people who are attempting to portray feeling. So all we do by some of these methods is just protect feeling from the beginning of the day. We don't have to figure out how to bring it back. We're just spending the whole day being and feeling. It's fascinating. I should do my job differently. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Thanks so much for coming.

Thank you so much for having me. Jill Salloway, the creator of Transparent. I spoke with her last fall just after the first episode of I Love Dick premiered. Amazon is releasing the entire season this May. Ahead this hour, your 2 p.m. meeting. Looks like it's shaping up to be a little bit more interesting than usual. Yeah, I haven't understood a single thing anyone said to me in three years. Have you guys ever heard me crying in the bathroom?

I have. Yes, it's really loud. I wasn't sure how thick the walls are. I don't know what our company does. We make software. I knew what you. Oh. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Welcome back. Some months ago, the New Yorker's Judith Thurman wrote about a fashion designer named Naila Lymus. Now, Limus has a particular specialty. She designs hijabs. And they're not what you might imagine. They're bright and they're bold and full of color and pattern.

And they're pretty stunning. You can see some photos of them on New Yorkeradio.org. Lymus is also a model. And she talked with Judah Thurman about the unusual model agency that she's founded and she calls it underwraps. On a very hot Saturday in August, I went downtown to Lower Manhattan to a photography studio where the temperature was about 42 degrees, and I watched a photo shoot on which the two models, two very beautiful young women, were hijabies. They were modeling hijabs that one of

the models, Naila Limas, had designed. Normally, we associate the hijab with a black headscarf, but it doesn't have to be. And Naila, partly because she's so exuberant herself, and as she says, my taste runs to Jazzy, she loves vibrant colors, she loves African fabric,

she loves prints, she loves glitter. So her hijabs are very, very fanciful, and they're sort of a cross between an Easter bonnet and, you know, one of the great Easter bonnets,

you especially see in African-American neighborhoods or that you see at the races at Ascot. She loves leopard skin. She loves taffeta. She loves West African prints. She can whip up a hijab out of almost any sort of fabric. It seems to need some body for the turbines and for the ziggurats. You know, there's some wonderful ziggurot-shaped hijabs.

You pin them in place. It's not like you go to a hat shop and you buy a hat. and you plop it on your head. Take a break. Two second break? The eyes? Yes. Okay.

Good. After the shoot, I sat down with Naila in a quiet corner to talk about the shoot, to talk about her work as a designer, and to talk about the agency. Were you born into a Muslim family, or did you make the decision to convert yourself? I was born into a Muslim family, and in actuality, I was the only born Muslim siblings. My mother, my father, my sisters converted to the religion as a family. So I was the last born, so I was born into the religion. Let's talk about the agency.

Were you doing something before you started this? Did you have another kind of job? How did you found the agency, and when did that happen? I was working prior to the agency as a clothing designer, which I still have a clothing line, and as a wardrobe stylist. And in working with that company, I just met a lot of models, and these are all industry, high, you know, paid models that had like body complexes and really weren't really happy with themselves and what they were doing. And a lot of it was ones that were married or that were mothers.

And they kind of felt a little like they were compromising to be in this industry, but not comfortable with maybe what they were wearing. Like, as a mom, I don't really want to wear like the string bikinis, but my agent says I have to, you know, in order to make my money because this is what I do as a career. And I just felt like that was unfortunate. So three or four years ago, she had the idea of starting an agency for modest and Muslim models. And she called it under wraps because to some degree, but not to an extreme degree, the women are under wraps. Her guidelines for the clients who hire the models are that they have to have same-sex dressing room, they have to have a full-length robe in the dressing room, and that no male is. stylists or makeup people or hair people or crew members will intrude on their privacy and or touch them.

So this was a very daring, and for New York anyway, for the United States, an apparently unique idea, a Muslim modeling agency. You have about eight women, eight models working for you. Tell me about them. They're not all Muslim. They're not all Muslim. No, I have five Muslim models and I have three non-Muslim models. What's unique about the agency as far as the mix of the Muslim models and what I call my modest models, which aren't Muslim, but we all have the same concept, just various levels of modesty, is how we all interact with each other. It becomes like a learning of religions and faiths and like a melting pot where it's easy conversation where a lot of times when you're discussing different religions, sometimes it turns to like a battleground.

You're like, what's going on? But because the commonality is that they're all models, we can easily have these dialogues. Do you ever work with Orthodox Jewish? I actually have a Jewish model. We work on and off. A lot of her scheduling is tight, and definitely on Saturdays. You know, she's not working. But we're so similar.

No, I'm saying it's more similar than not. More similar. Oh, yes. Yes, I agree completely. Yeah, exactly. The dress is like so, so similar. I mean, except for, I mean, a little bit of the skin, bottom of the leg, you know, but the skirts have to be really long.

The arms are covered. Right. The hair has to be covered. Exactly, exactly. And that's a story in itself. Because you know, a Muslim woman who's representing a Jewish model and that becomes like, well, how does that work? But it's like, we have so many more similarities and differences. It works out just fine.

Do they all experience or have they all, as models, experienced sort of a sense of conflict with the demands to expose their bodies? So they have ambivalence about self-exposure. Because if you are a model, you are exposing yourself and you're exposing yourself, your beauty, you're selling your beauty. Right. I haven't really heard that from my Muslim models because they joined the agency with that particular mindset so they never really conflicted in that way. Now, as far as my three non-Muslim models,

they feel like this is more of a home for them where they don't feel like they're settling to be a model. I raised this paradox with Naila herself. I said modeling is about arousing, desire? How do you reconcile the notion of basically positioning yourself as an object of temptation, which is what you are, with the Islamic notion of guarding its daughters from being objects of temptation? And she said, no, she seemed to feel that on the contrary, this would help

to dispel stereotypes that non-Muslims have about covering and about who and what Muslim women and girls can be. So she sees this actually as a sort of, not in any way as regressive, but as a very progressive, even radical foray into changing people's attitudes. I'm very interested in the notion of color, because I think for many non-Muslim people, we associate Islamic dress for women with black or the blue of the burqa. How does it work with color? Are there subcultures in which the dress is very bright? You know, naturally, culture and tradition kind of plays a role into any religion that you practice. So even though they're Muslim by faith, they're Muslim but they're Malaysian or Muslim but Jordanian.

So they're going to pick up some of those stylistic ways of just where they're from and incorporate that into, okay, well, Islamically, I need to be modest, but I still want to embrace bold, exciting, jewels, crystals, you know, and you can do that. Islamically, there's no guidelines on that. There's no guidelines. No, there's no guidelines on that. As long as your parts of your body are covered and your clothing is not skin tight. Okay, I wanted to ask about that. So explain that to us because some of the clothes that you've designed that women have modeled,

there's no flesh showing, there's no skin showing? Yeah, but they have a fit. They're definitely. Well, my design aesthetic is a little more kind of fit flare. Sometimes there'll be two more like strapless dresses, which would be more. more fitted in the bust area and then flow out empire ways down. But is strapless okay? It's not, strapless is not okay for a Muslim woman to wear just as a strapless dress.

Right. Now, we can wear a strapless dress, but we'll either, right, we might wear a shirt under it, long-sleeve shirt, or you might wear like a blazer over it or a cami or something of that nature that gives you sleeves. Right. So in the Quran, when it speaks to our guidelines of how we dress, it doesn't say black. It doesn't say colors. It just says what we need to cover and how we need to carry ourselves.

Now, how you interpret that is, you know, that's up to anyone when you practice your religion. You read and you interpret what's comfortable for you. Well, there's a stereotype about submission and obedience. Well, yeah, that's true. And I think that garment that they show so often to kind of drill it in your mind, what makes you think that way as well. The weekend that I went to the shoot, it was a torrid weekend, and it was tired everywhere. It was very tired in the south of France.

where in the past month there's been a tremendous controversy about the banning of the burkini. Burkini is a garment that was invented fairly recently. It's a sort of neck-to-ankle covering that allows modest Muslim women to go into the water on the beach, which is a sort of jokey word. It comes from burqa. It's not at all. It doesn't look like a burqa. But it's burqa and bikini.

So the French were reacting to, of course, many things, the recent terrible acts of terrorism and the influxes of refugees, anti-French sentiment in Muslim neighborhoods. So they passed a burkini ban. You could appear topless, you could appear in a micro-string bikini, but not covered. And so while we were in the photo studio, women were being forced to disrobe, forced to take. take off their burkines in some pretty horrific images on the beaches of France. So I think, though, that some of the reaction that people have is that these women are being oppressed by the obligation to wear these clothes. And it's true that in the summer, you see somebody in head-to-to-to-black on a 95-degree day,

you have to wonder if it isn't oppressive. But then you have to remind yourself that they have made this choice. and it is a free country. From my angle and what I wanted to accomplish, especially with breaking down the stereotypes and keeping and maintaining your modesty or like your femininehood and your womaness, and I feel like we've lost a sense of that somewhere.

I don't know when because in like 40s, 50, 60s, I mean, all women were kind of dressing modest. I mean, they had their poodle skirts and their fitted shirts, but it was like not skin out and knee neck and plungy. Was that it? Actually, you know what it was. It was earlier. It was the year they invented panty hose.

Oh. Because you could then wear short skirts. You couldn't before because women had garters. Yes. Unless you were going to go looking like, okay, you could walk out. But then suddenly they were, that was the lead into the miniskirt. That was one of them. That was one of the technological steps to the wild.

That took us in the route. The youth quake. Now it's party dresses on a Tuesday. I'm like, why are you going grocery shopping with that on? Oh, gosh. Boundaries are a feminist issue. So in that sense, I think you could say a hijab is a refusal in some ways to objectify yourself sexually, a refusal to court desire from strange eyes.

It's a boundary between you and the public. When you're uncovered and walking down the street, let's say you're a young and attractive person. you're sort of a morsel that's out there for to be devoured visually, right? Covering is a way of saying, no, I don't consent. I don't consent to be devoured visually. I don't consent to be looked at with lust. I don't consent. It's a question of consensual participation in the public sphere.

In that sense, it seems to be in line with many of the sexual guidelines that have been passed in universities about what constitutes appropriate sexual contact, making sure that everybody is in agreement. These are my boundaries. These are my boundaries for being looked at. These are my boundaries for keeping my body private. Judith Thurman, a staff writer at the New Yorker. She spoke with designer and model Naila Lymus. And you can see some of those the jobs that they were talking about at new yorker.com. And now, time for your next meeting. So that's the proposed marketing plan for next year. I want to give everyone a chance. to chime in with feedback before we move on to next steps.

Amy, you want to kick things up? Sure, Tom. First of all, thanks for sharing this with us. I know how much work has gone into this deck, and I found it incredibly helpful. Very helpful. It's such a great deck. The diagram toward the end really crystallized the breadth of our strategic opportunities.

Oh, yeah, for me too. Agreed. Excellent. That's great to hear, everyone. I've made terrible career decisions. What? What? What did you just say? Just that it's great to hear you guys like the marketing plan.

Oh, sorry. I just thought you said something else. Nope. Okay. Well, in terms of feedback, my main concern would be making sure that all of our objectives are actionable from a budgetary standpoint. I really dread seeing each of you every day. Oh, it's funny, Amy. I was actually going to say the same thing. But also add that we want to avoid a situation where we're allocating valuable resources to the wrong brand pillars. I can't feel my face when I say things like that. Really good points, you guys. I'm going to add those to the deck. Great. Sorry, isn't it also about aligning with our product team to better define our brand pillars first?

I've snorted oxy cotton twice during this meeting. Yeah, we should absolutely set up a meeting with the product team to loop them into this. That is a great idea. I'm so high right now. Yeah, agreed. The brand pillars have been a bit of a moving target. We can't expect consumers to know who we are if we don't even know. I urinate my fern a lot.

Yeah, I lick the bagels before I brought them in. Let's not forget the important role that the competitive landscape plays in that discussion, though, because if we aren't careful, the marketplace will define us instead of the other way around. My pantsuit is on backwards. Oh, and the cream cheese knife. I like that, too. Yeah, I haven't understood a single thing. thing anyone said to me in three years.

Have you guys ever heard me crying in the bathroom? I have. Yes. It's really loud. I wasn't sure how thick the walls are. I don't know what our company does. We make software. I knew what you...

Oh. When I was a little girl, I used to write horses. That sounds nice. I haven't menstruated since I started working here. Sometimes I think I'm smiling, but actually, I'm frowning. You're smiling now? Am I? No.

No, really. I have nightmares where I live here, like right here in this conference room. My bed's right over there. In my nightmares, it's late. I'm at my desk, and the cleaning ladies coming through with her vacuum, and when I get a good look at her face, I see that she's actually me. Cool. And then she stabs me with her mop. Can you stab someone with a map? Sure can. I keep having this dream where I'm giving birth to our CEO, fully grown suit, beard, the whole

shebang. Then he tries to get up, but his legs buckle like a gooey newborn foals. Cool. So gooey. It takes me two hours to get here every day, and then two hours to get home. That's four hours a day. A third of my waking life. I flipped over the vending machine last week, now the three musketeers don't get stuck anymore. I spend quite a lot of time in the supply closet making sticky note people. There are hundreds of them now.

Soon they will rise and take back what is rightfully theirs. That is so weird I masturbating that supply closet. I know. Me too. I'm riding a horse right now. Whoa. Are you guys hot? I'm so hot right now.

Crazy hot. So hot. I'm going to take my clothes off. Y'all should. What's all doing? I'm going to put a bagel under each arm pit and see if it feels funny. I bet it will. Wow, yeah?

Yeah, it does. Hey, Eric, you know what? I don't like the way you're looking at me. Me? You see another Eric in here? I thought this day would never come. Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight! Give me your shirt. I have a light of the Ural with a torch. Fire. Break your face!

Finish him! Wait, wait, stop, stop! Why is it? Do you feel that? The reins of Alperon are upon us, just as it was written, as it was destined. Quickly, everyone on my horse, there isn't much time. Where are we going? To the castle.

Yeah! To the castle! To kill the queen! Kill her! How far will our journey take us? A fortnight, perhaps, but I must warn you. We will pass through the forest of Ranook. Many have died there.

Surely there's another way. I'm leery of speaking of it, but there is one. We may summon Zorn the dark prince of the north, but black magic comes to the price and costly one. These both sound like terrible options! Get out! It's too late. I hear the footsteps.

of the Queen's Guard approaching. Quickly, build cover. Yes, build cover. There's still hope for us. No, it's too late for me. Eric! Yeah! Hey, sorry, but this room is booked at three.

Are you guys about... Finished? Why, there's sprinklers going on? What happened to the table and the cheers and your clothes? Did you mean the 3 p.m. Salesforce meeting? Um, yeah. Oh, I'm actually in that.

one. Me too. Should be good. I heard the Q4 projections are finally in. About time, right? Yeah, that'll really help inform a lot of the things that were you talked about in here. Absolutely. Good meeting, everybody. Really good meeting. Really good meeting. Whoa. Whoa. How about we take a minute to recover from that one? That was Good Meeting, written by Colin Nissen. It was performed by Scott Adset, Laura Gray, Ed Hrpsman, Tammy Sager, and April Mathis, and produced for us by the podcast, The Truth. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Nick Thompson was until very recently my colleague at The New Yorker and the editor of New Yorker.com.

Now he's the editor of Wired Magazine. So, Nick, you're very much a tech guy, but you also play guitar pretty seriously. And there, you're kind of low tech. Talk about that. That's funny. I hadn't thought about that contrast. Yeah, when I play guitar, I just play acoustic guitar, not electric, and I use my fingers. I don't use a pick. So it's the most organic way you can play. guitar and it's not intentional or it's not deliberate it's just the way it happened it turns out that's the form I can play well so who's who's in the category of people who

are low-tech and that you idolize and as guitar players um you know it started out as a lot of people who play the kind of music I do with a guy named Leo Kotke and then other players at the time Michael Hedges Seth Austin were important influences I liked William Ackerman a lot and then I discovered John Fahey along the way and that was transformative So I don't want to reveal any secrets here, but you keep a guitar in your office, and you keep it sadly tuned to some crazy opening tuning. So open tuning, so I can't play it all that well. Did you just hate rock guitar and immediately went to this? No, my first music experience was in a Gunton Rose cover band, actually, in high school.

I just wasn't good at it. And then I discovered finger style of guitar, and I was much better at playing that kind of music. Explain what that is, Fingerstyle. It's not just not using a pick. It's you're, and you're not playing chords, you're not singing. You're just making instrumental music often with open tunings. There's often a lot of harmonies in the background. They're often notes droning.

And it has a fairly distinctive sound. So you spent this summer pouring over a biography of John Fahey. Yeah, the book is called Dance of Death. And I really enjoyed it. So after finishing it, I sent the author Steve Lenthal a note, and I went up to his apartment where I has an incredible collection of Fahey Records, all LPs, of course. And we sat down and listened to a few of them and talked about them.

John Fahey was one of the sort of original record collectors in a lot of ways. He would drive down to the deep south. And, you know, this was during the late 50s, he would literally go knocking on doors, asking people if they had any old records they wanted to get rid of. And this is what, 19 years old? He's just a teenager. Yeah, absolutely. 17, 18.

You know, he did this all through his early 20s. And he finds some incredible stuff, right? He found recordings that literally had been uncatalogued and no one had ever heard before. Who was somebody found Skip James, right? He found Skip James in a hospital, right? Indeed. Let's put on Skip James. Sure.

Let's even lead you. Let's even do. Let me do. All away. He found Skip James. Yeah, literally suffering from testicular cancer in a hospital. And John was so excited because Skip James had this deep, dark guitar tuning that John was just infatuated with, and he really wanted this secret to Skip James' guitar sound.

And Skip James had been sort of forgotten. He had to record it in a long time. And he wasn't a popular artist to begin with. I mean, his recordings were obscure at their time. But, you know, Fahey sort of looked for the most obscure and the most esoterror. Eric of the blues musicians. Why at 18, 19 years old is John Fahey from Tacoma Park, Maryland? Why does he do this?

Is it the adventure? Is it the romanticism? I have to understand there wasn't any music that spoke to him in the way that this old blues music did. The popular music of his time was, you know, Rosemary Clooney and sort of this, you know, Chintill sort of, you know, suburban sort of 1950s pop music. And he was a really unhappy kid growing up. He was dealing with a lot of issues at home. And there wasn't any rebellious music that spoke to sort of the darkness and unweave that the blues to John offered him really a window into his own dysfunction.

Fahy comes back from the South and he starts to record his own music. Let's listen to a little bit of his first album. It's called The Legend of Blind Joe Death. You know, John wanted to make sort of his take on a blues record. but he's not from the deep south and he's never, you know, he didn't have the blues in the classic sense. So he creates this fictional alias, Blind Joe Death, which is sort of his, you know, goof on sort of the legends and the myths that all these writers make of these old blues guys. So his idea was like, I'm going to make the most extreme blues character I could think of. And Blind Joe Death was sort of his approach.

The further he moved away from the blues and the more sort of, you know, avant-garde. and classical elements who would bring into the picture. The music sort of got a little stranger, got elongated. So tell me one of your favorite strange tracks from this period. Oh, sure. This track I'm going to play is from John Fahey, Volume 4. It's called Sail Away Ladies. When did Drinky become a serious problem for Fahey?

Right around when he started performing, he had terrible stage fright, and he hated getting in front of audiences. But I think John was insecure about, his abilities as a guitar player, you know, next to some of the more flashy, technically precise people in the folk scene. So he would just get obliteratedly drunk in order to deal with it. Once he started doing that, he started getting obliteratedly drunk to deal with all of his problems. So he decides to get his master's in folk music, which was a new program at UCLA. He moved West Coast, really, for his academic studies, and, you know, the folk scene there was

was really in full swing. And he didn't really have any use for the 60s folk scene. What he was trying to do is sort of this hybridized, modern, classical, contemporary, like, death chance, which is sort of like the exact opposite of this peace-love sort of pre-hippie movement. To him, there's a bunch of rich college kids sitting around talking about civil rights who had never gone through any hardships themselves. So he felt that it was inauthentic and it was B.S.

I mean, he wasn't interested in it. At some point here in the mid to late 60s, he decides he's actually going to make some money doing a Christmas record. Tell me about this. He did. I mean, that was his thing. He was in a record store, and during Christmas season, and he saw this guy opening up a box of Bing Crosby White Christmas

records, and he asked the guy about it, and the guy's like, yeah, we sell a box of these every year. And he said, that's a great idea. And so he made a Christmas record, and there was actually a market for, you know, acoustic instrumental versions of Christmas songs, and it became his best-selling record. I've got to admit, I've listened to a lot of John Fahey in my life.

I have never listened to his Christmas music. So let's hear something. Sure. It's actually pretty good. All right, maybe I'll listen to this record in full when I get home. All right, so during this period, 1967 and 1969, he's recording an album every 15 minutes. Yeah. He also starts a label, Tacoma, and he finds a young musician named Leo Kaki.

Let's put on Leo Kaki's record, six and 12-string guitar. I just love this record so much. listened to it a thousand times. Leo Kaki was in a lot of ways everything John Fahey wasn't. He was young, personable, an amazing technical guitar player, lightning fast. In some ways, to John's credit, that he could recognize, you know, sort of the potential of someone like Leo Kaki. I mean, this is an album that every guitarist has listened to.

So how important was Fahey to the recording of this album, six and 12 string guitar? hugely important. Leo sent in his demos and asked what he should do and if he should sing and whatnot, and John said, no, just do acoustic guitar, just do an instrumental record. John heard the potential of what Leo had,

and Leo Kaki delivered a tour to force guitar record that changed the nature of acoustic guitar music. Leo's from the Midwest, this young guy, and John invites him to stay with him in California, And he goes to John's place and John puts mine on the couch and says, listen, whatever you do, don't wake me up. So, you know, a couple hours later, Leo's just sitting there, just watching TV, you know, mind his own business or something. And John Fahey slams the door open, puts a shotgun in his face and screams at him, I told you not to wake me up. How dare you wake me up?

And Leo was terrified and perhaps lacking a certain amount of common sense. He did not flee. but he stuck around and he said afterwards, Leo said if he survived that first night, then he figured nothing worse would probably happen to him. So after this, after Kotki, Fahey's music evolves a little bit more and he puts forward, I think my favorite album is Fair Forward Voyagers.

I know I'm in a minority opinion on that among John Fahey fans. There's a lot of people that think so. And he puts out America, which I think a lot of people think is his best. Why don't we listen to America? Sure. Both America and Fair Forward Voyagers are find John at the height of his powers as a guitar player and as a composer.

I think it's the furthest away from the blues, and it's the most unique in his catalog in terms of just straight guitar playing, and it's the most phagie-esque. He's a pretty bitter, unhappy guy. He hates the whole new age thing. He hates playing with all those people, and yet that's his livelihood,

and he absolutely resents it. He moves out of L.A. in the 80s, He moves up to Oregon. He's kind of out of the music scene and gets increasingly angry and hostile and difficult. And he sort of devolved so much that he didn't really want to be part of society anymore. And he sort of moved into a cheap, you know, weekly motel and just, you know, covered himself in pizza boxes and garbage and, you know, lived basically like a crazy person. All right. So he's living in pizza boxes, in cheap motels. in shelters, and he kind of gets rediscovered in 1994. Tell me that story. There's this guy, Byron Coley, who's a music writer, he's got this idea to write this story about John Fahey,

so he pitched it to Spin Magazine. They flew him out to Oregon to do an interview with John Fahey, and Byron tracked him down at some motel and knocks on the door, and John opens up the door and total squalor with his robe hanging open, naked underneath, asking who he was, and Byron told him what he was, and John said, come back some other time. Byron comes back the next day, and he goes, you know, what do you want to do? And Byron's like, oh, yesterday I just went around to record stores.

And John, and it goes, oh, you didn't tell me you were going to record stores. That sounds great. Let's go. And so Byron's like, all right, let's go to every record store in Oregon. So this article in Spin comes out. And then Fahy's life changes for the last few years of his life. He's actually, he's kind of back on the scene. It's a really interesting time, the mid-90s.

So, like, it's 1994, Kurt Cobain's accepting an MTV Music Award wearing a Daniel Johnston T-shirt. Daniel Johnson was a schizophrenic who made home-recorded cassette tapes of his songs. Daniel Johnson got a deal on Atlantic Records. So all of a sudden, being a mentally unstable, you know, underground icon for the only time I can recall in American history was a viable commercial commodity. So John Fahey all of a sudden is the right guy at the right time. And of course, he rejects it and wants nothing to do with it. Yeah. And decides to make avant-garde industrial sound collage music. He fell in love with this woman

named Hitomi at a late 90s tour of Japan, which is a woman he met once and he just became so deep. deeply infatuated with her. He couldn't think of anything else. It got to the point, it got so bad that he tried to go see her in Japan and he was greeted at the airport by the police. He was pretty despondent. He was an unhealthy guy with extreme excesses. And sadly, John Fahey died at the age of 61 due to complications of a sextebel bypass operation. Tell me what drew you to the story. Why did you decide to invest several years writing his biography? It's weird. I'm not a superstitious guy. I'm a very practical sort of man. But in the liner notes to 1965's Transfiguration of Blind Joe death album, John Fahey writes the story of a student who's writing his master's dissertation on a 20th century genius John Fahey set in the year 2010. Prior to reading it, I decided to get my master's degree and write my thesis on John Fahey. So John predicted my writing this book many years before I was born. This last song is called Dry Bones in the Valley. And I just think it's a great example of the level of feeling in Anhui and sadness and darkness. I feel is unparalleled in American music.

John Fahey on acoustic guitar. That was his biographer, Steve Lowenthal, in conversation with Nicholas Thompson, formerly of the New Yorker. And that's The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Hope you enjoyed the show. And let us know if you did. Go to New YorkerRadio.org and leave a comment

or find us on Twitter at New Yorker Radio. See you next week. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.