The One You Feed - What We Can Learn From Our Bad Wolf with Matthew Quick

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

Matthew Quick is the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook—which was made into an Oscar-winning film—and eight other novels. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention, was an LA Times Book Prize finalist, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a #1 bestseller in Brazil, a Deutscher Jugendliteratur Preis 2016 (German Youth Literature Prize) nominee, and selected by Nancy Pearl as one of Summer’s Best Books for NPR. The Hollywood Reporter has named him one of Hollywood’s 25 Most Powerful Authors. But wait, there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you! Matthew Quick and I Discuss What We Can Learn From Our Bad Wolf and … His book, We Are the Light What drew him to Jungian analysis and his ideas on synchronicity His healing journey and what he learned about himself Learning to face his pain from a sober light Losing access to a creative part of him when he stopped drinking How his work with his analyst replaced the alcohol in his life The importance of community What the term “father hunger” means His unique relationship with his analyst How he learned to redeem his father The important themes he covers in his latest novels Doing the hard work in the second half of life The respect he has developed for the craft of novel writing Matthew Quick Links Matthew’s Website Sign Up for Matthew’s Monthly Personal Letter (MPL) By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! If you enjoyed this conversation with Matthew Quick, check out these other episodes: Matthew Quick - 2017 Interview Matthew Quick - 2016 Interview Living Between Worlds with James Hollis See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You do need to go through difficulties in order to glean the information that you need to create something that transcends you, that is better than your daily reality. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers

to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor. What's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast.

Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Matthew Quick. radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. and he's received a Penn Hemingway Award Honorable Mention. He was the LA Times Book Prize finalist and a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice. Today, Matthew and Eric discuss his book, We Are the Light. Hi, Matthew. Welcome back. Hey, it's great to be here with you today, Eric. Thank you for having me. So when you were on last time, I said you were our first three-time guest. Yes. And you were not the only person in that club. Some other people have joined you. But I do believe you are now breaking ground again.

And you are the first four-time guest. So congratulations. Thank you. I feel very honored. It's amazing that you've been on four times given how long it's been since we last talked. Yeah, it's been, I think we were saying about five years, more than five years. Yeah, it was 2017. Yeah, so it's good to be back.

Yeah, and you've been on quite a journey. We're all on a journey, but you've been on one since then that we'll get into. But let's start like we always do, because we have to do the parable. And this will be your fourth crack at it. So hopefully you'll get it right this time. There's a grandparent talking with a grandchild and they say in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second

and looks up at their grandparents and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd love to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, you know, I've had a long relationship with that parable as a listener and, you know,

being on the show and I've heard many people answer it. And it's interesting how my take on it has changed over the years. And in my life right now with my creative work and the personal work I'm doing has been heavily influenced by Jungian analysis. So the way I look at it now is it would probably be a very Jungian take. And one of the things that Jung teaches is that it's very dangerous to relegate things to shadow. And so while you might not want to feed the bad wolf, so to speak, you definitely want to get to know the bad wolf. And a lot of times what we're afraid of or what we label as bad or wrong or evil, we tend to not really deal with that. And there's two reasons why you want to get to know the dark side of your shadow or the bad wolf. One is because when you push it to unconscious, it becomes wild.

And when it comes back, because it's in you, it's never going to leave. It'll come back aggressively. It'll act very wild. It won't be domesticated. You won't know it. You won't have a relationship with it. So for example, if you label anger as bad and you relegate that to shadow, when you need your anger and it comes out, it will come out in a way that is very childish or not very mature. And the other thing that Jungians talk about is that there's gold in the shadow. That again, sometimes you might need anger, you might need fear, you might need those things that we label as quote unquote bad, and they might have gifts that you can integrate into your life. So my work with the shadow work and the Jungian stuff that I've been doing is trying to go and tame the bad wolf to get to

know the bad wolf and to integrate that. All of the many aspects of my personality, which are both good and bad, to integrate them all so that I can be whole. And that is part of my healing process. I love that. And I think it's so true. I'm curious, what was it that drew you to Jungian analysis as a way that you really did most of your healing? Because in reading the newsletters you've been putting out, reading your latest book, which has a lot of that, that's clearly been a really big and important piece for you. I'm kind of curious, out of all the different modalities that are out there, was there something about that that you were drawn to, or how did that happen?

Young was a bit of a mystic. He was definitely a scientist first, but he was very interested in the transcendent. And I grew up in a very religious family, fundamentalist Christian. And so that dance with the transcendent was kind of ongoing as a child. And then I kind of banished that to shadow. I went to college and I got educated. You know, I learned about the world and, you know, religion just seemed kind of silly to me. But Jung talks a lot about synchronicity and just things happening for a reason, which can sound very like woo-woo, but I've always been drawn and curious about Jung. I've been drawn to, and if you read The Good Lucker right now, which is a book I published, I think in 2014, I very tongue-in-cheek played with the idea of synchronicity and a lot of Jung's ideas in a way that I thought was kind

of goofy at the time. But again, I think I was dancing with it. Actually, my wife, Alicia, started listening to this podcast called This Young In Life, where every week they'll tackle a modern problem or an issue or a symbol. And they'll deconstruct it. They'll circumambulate it. And then they'll analyze a dream. And I started listening to this. And I got really, really into it. And it just kind of clicked.

It felt like a way forward for me. And then I started researching. And it just kind of clicked. It felt like a way forward for me. And then I started researching and I found an analyst and it just felt like this was the thing for me. It's interesting too, Jung had a very big role in starting Alcoholics Anonymous. Like he was consulted. And so I think my alcoholism that I was not dealing with for decades. It was more than just, you know, wanting to drink. It felt like this archetypal force that I needed to really kind of combat. And I needed to go deep. I needed to go inside of myself. And the Jungian frame really allows you to have that, to be very introspective, to not be as concrete, to kind of dance with

the transcendent. And I think that that was really, really important for my recovery process. Yeah, the Jungian idea that he gave to Bill Wilson that has always stuck with me is that the alcoholic was looking for the transcendent, that the very word spirits that we use for alcohol speaks to that desire for spirit, for something greater, for something bigger. You know, we could certainly talk about the ways that we use alcohol as a numbing agent to avoid things.

Yeah. But for me, it's always felt more true to say that I used alcohol as a connecting agent. I used alcohol as a way to connect me to life. We were talking beforehand that some of the things we connected to, we probably shouldn't have been connecting to or weren't really right for us. But alcohol basically brought life to life for me. It wasn't entirely, oh, I'm trying to avoid. It really was, I'm trying to connect. And I didn't know how to do that, or I had tamped down my ability to do that. So I think, yeah, that's something about Jung that has always drawn me towards him. And I've always had sort of an ambivalent relationship with some of Jung's stuff.

Some of it resonates very strongly. Some of it is a little bit more challenging for me. But I just love seeing it come through in your latest book so much. Oh, thank you. I think to your first point, you know, alcohol can be Dionysian, you know, it can take us to another level. And in analysis the other night, I asked my analyst if, if I used to use alcohol to get my ego drunk, just to get my ego out of the way to allow for the transcendent to come through. And so that I could write, because ego is always screaming,

like this has to be perfect. You know, you're going to get in trouble, like people are going to hate you, you know. So I think for me, it was to knock the ego offline and allow like the work to come through. And when I got sober, I went through a period of a very awful five-year writer's block, which was just really, really awful for me. And to your second point, you know, young is not for everybody. You know, there's a lot of things when I talk about some of the young and stuff that works for me, obviously might not work for everyone. And I think that's with any type of recovery or any type of mental health, there's always things that you can glean, but I think we're drawn to certain paths for a reason. And for whatever reason, this was just my path for the

last five years. So last time you and I talked, you had started making some big life changes. You had started to run a lot. You had lost at that point, you know, a lot of weight. You had started to question your relationship with alcohol. You were still sort of mildly ambivalent, I think, about, you know, does it really have to go completely, but I'm recognizing it's not great for me. So that was sort of your and I's last real connection point. And as you describe it, you sort of, I think, went deeper into that healing journey after we talked. And then that healing journey really turned very difficult for you. And you alluded to it with the writer's block, but talk to me a little bit more about what happened and how it sort of transpired. Well, I tell people that, you know, you want to get your life together. You want to lose weight. You want to stop drinking. There's a lot of hooray,

you know, that's great. Like, you know, you look wonderful. Like everybody's so proud, but then after you drop the weight and you get your drinking under control, for me, at least, I started to realize why I was doing so much eating and drinking in the first place. And it was to numb pain that I wasn't dealing with very real and deep psychological problems. I never had gotten the tools to kind of manage my own spiritual, psychological and emotional being. spiritual, psychological, and emotional being. And so after that kind of initial ego hit of, wow, I did this, like I got my drinking under control and it very much wasn't ego hit. It was like, okay, what next? You know, and I woke up one day and I was facing all of the pain that I didn't face for 25 years or, you know, like, you know, since I was a teenager, since I started drinking. And so I had to really look at that in a sober light. And it wasn't a lot of fun by any stretch

of the imagination. And I had kind of drawn this line that I wasn't going to drink. And I think one of the things that kept me from drinking was almost this kind of masochism. That relief is not there for you anymore. Like you need to suffer through this. And I spent about three years doing pretty much nothing but running an insane amount of miles, trying to write and being holed up in my house and spending time with my wife. My life got very, very, very small. spending time with my wife, my life got very, very, very small. And a lot of the things that I thought I enjoyed doing when I was drunk, I did not enjoy doing at all when I was sober. One of those was going to NFL games, which was a lot of fun when I was hammered and I was drinking all day. I just didn't enjoy it as much when I was sober. And that felt really alienating.

I started to think, do I even know who I am? You know, I've been drinking so much over the last 20 years. Do I know who I am? And when I sat down to write, I could not access the part of me that makes writing easy. I am an intuitive creative, so I don't sit down with a plan. I sit down and connect with something inside of me and I just kind of let it flow out onto the page. I did down and connect with something inside of me and I just kind of let it flow out onto the page. I did not have access to that anymore when I stopped drinking. And I think it's because I was dealing with this overwhelming reality of not knowing who I was and not having any relief from that at the end of the day. Whereas that might be a nagging concern

15 years ago, but I could drink enough scotch to make that go away. And then I was hungover in the morning and it was caffeine. And then it was get to work. And there was parts of me that were just so deadened by that process that kind of knocked ego offline and allowed me to just access those parts of me that, you know, it's no secret that many musicians and many writers, they use alcohol and drugs to access that creative spark. Accessing it sober for me was much, much, much more difficult. That surprised me, that scared me, and that just kind of rocked my world in a way that I was not prepared for. And I didn't have anyone to help me at that point. I wasn't in

analysis. I didn't have any spiritual practice. I did not go to AA. So I was doing this all on my own. And it took me to a very dark and paranoid place for a couple of years. And it was a very lonely place. I can totally imagine. I mean, I got sober both times in AA. I think everybody finds the path they need to find. So I have no bias towards one or the other. I do think one of the things that was helpful about AA for me was the normalization of, yep, that's what you're going through running for a while. Running was your way. And then it was sort of when running got taken away from you by injury, that things really collapsed for you. And it's interesting because in AA, one of the things I think AA does both well, and then, you know, like anything, you overplay something and it becomes a problem, is this whole idea of help others, help others, help others, help others, which is a very powerful

and transcendent thing to do. It's a great thing to do, but it can be used to the point that you never look internally. Now, luckily AA has the steps. And if you follow the steps, it will cause you to some degree to go internal. But I had a similar experience to you. I got sober a few years, the things were awesome. And then my wife and I split and I fell apart. You know, I had a two-year-old son at that time and I was separated from him and that drove me into my deep internal work, you know? But the other thing I want to touch on though, I think is really important what you said there, which is that for creative people, a change from a life that's filled with substances to a

life of sobriety can be enormously difficult. And I think it's important to lay that out and be honest about that. Otherwise, I think it's very disorienting. My experience is most true creatives eventually find their way back. They learn how to create without it, but boy, it's hard. I mean, I went through, as a musician, I just was like, it seems like it's gone. Two things come to mind. You know, in the Jungian work I do, my analyst is always hammering on, there's a cost for everything. Oh, I love that. If you want to get sober, you're going to pay the costs. And if there was no cost,

everyone would just say, sure, I won't have a problem with alcohol or drugs, but there's a real cost that you have to pay. And I also think, too, that creativity is something that people that are trying to scam money out of you will say they can teach you how to do. But it's not. You know, nobody can teach you how to write a great novel or to write a great song. It's something that's very intimate. And it comes from parts of us that I think are damaged. I think it comes from parts of us that are trying to get needs met. I think it's very, very, very complicated. And for whatever reason, alcohol allowed me to hang in and do that dance in a way that I didn't

really give it credit for. And I want to be careful. I'm not saying that I want to start drinking again, but I didn't realize how much work alcohol was doing for me. And when I had to give it up, you know, for health reasons and, you know, for many reasons, it was a good idea to give it up. I had to find something else that would take the place of the alcohol. And for me, I can say without a doubt, it was the relationship that I had with my analysts and doing the Jungian work and dream analysis and trying to find the transcendent in different ways and coming to the realization that I needed to get drunk without alcohol. I needed to find a way to be creatively drunk, to be spiritually drunk, to be emotionally drunk in like the most positive way. I couldn't take

that shortcut anymore by just buying a bottle at the store and, you know, dumping it down my throat. Yeah. I think that's a great way to say it. And sort of back to what I was saying earlier, like I had to find a way to connect to life sober. You know, I had to find a way to go, well, the world looks completely bleak and gray to me. Okay. I know that's not the truth of the way the world really is. So how do I turn the lights back on without the ease of a bottle? And I think what you said also that is so important is we've got to have something that comes in and takes its place. I mean, I think that's what AA does for so many people. It fills a void. Again, I'm not saying it's the only way to do it, but I think we have to find our way to what is the thing for us that brings us to life. And I really love that

idea of thinking of being sort of drunk, but in a really positive way of the word. Yeah. Yeah. And I think for me, I am just such a hardcore introvert. And so alcohol was the thing that allowed me to be around people for long amounts of time. So for me, you know, it wasn't so much, I thought, oh, I don't want to do it. It was just, I don't want to be around anybody, you know? And ironically, the thing that happened during that time was I started to really crave community. And when people read We Are The Light, it's a book that's totally about community. And so it was this thing that like in my isolation, in my alienation, I had to find this sense of community through my art.

And as I started writing, one of the things that happened is I started reaching out to people. Almost like one of the steps is like make amends, right? I started writing people that I lost contact with. I started reaching out to old friends. I started to really take some risks with some of my male friends, you know, like being intimate and opening up and talking about things that I've never talked about before. That was later on in the process. It was like year four. Yeah.

But when I started to do all that, that's when I started to reconnect with my writing. And that's when things started coming back online. So it's interesting that you brought up that need for community because I think very masochistically, I denied myself that early on. I think there was a big part of myself that was dealing with a heavy sense of shame and unworthiness that I needed to wrestle with. Part of it, I look back and think, like, wow, I was really punishing myself unnecessarily. But I think that that was part of the process. I think I had to deal with that. And for me, I didn't want to put that on other people. And I know that that's like kind of a

negative masculine characteristic, like that kind of lone wolf. But I do think that that was a really, really big part of my journey because I got so low that the value of friendship, the value of community, it just became obvious at that point. And so I'm not recommending it. I'm not saying that's the way to go. But for me, it took a lot of pain before I allowed myself to accept love again. Yeah. It's so interesting to think about that because I've been more or less around the recovery community and people recovering for 25 years at this point. Even if you take the few years I went back out and drank. So I've just seen a lot of different people and a lot of different things. And, you know, there are so many paths, but I do think that for everybody at some

juncture in their path, not doing it alone becomes part of the game. Yeah. Like if you remain alone and where you get that support could be a therapist, it could be friendships, it could be a support group like AA or Recovery Dharma, or it could be your grandma. I mean, it could come a lot of different ways. Yeah. But if we just stay alone, we will not win this very difficult struggle. I totally agree.

My wife was with me the whole time. And I think that was really grounding. So I always had Alicia. I had a few close friends. And then I really think the work that I did with my analysts, I spend three to four hours a week with my analysts. So it's very, very, very intense. And that relationship has allowed me to work through a lot. And that's a community of two, but it's also, it's there. It's a steady thing. Like I need that every week. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, a community of two is still a community. I mean, it's not being alone. So is your analyst there local? Is it someone you see in person? Is it virtual? Was it local

in person? And then it went virtual during the pandemic? I'm just kind of curious. Yeah, it started off during the pandemic. I think so. It was two years ago. So I think we were in the middle of pandemic then. It's all blurring together in my head, but it was all, it's always been virtually very much like what we're doing here. Okay. So I've got to ask in the book, your character is writing to his analyst in a lot of the book. That's sort of the structure. It's letters to his analyst.

And we can use that to explore some different points. But one that made me laugh was at one point, the character basically says, my analyst told me he loved me. Yeah. And I had to go home and Google, what do you do if your therapist says they love you? Which made me laugh, but it made me wonder, is that real? Did that really happen? And did it sort of cause you to go like, whoa? There's different ways to look at it, but I think I definitely fell in love with my analyst in a very like platonic way. You know, part of that process early on is projection and you go through

all of these different phases. But I just think that somebody showing up a couple of times a week for me and willing to, you know, lift up the hood of my metaphorical car and like tinker with me and just have my best interests at heart was something that felt foreign to me. Yeah. Especially from, you know, another older man. And so that to me was so overwhelming. The men that I grew up with in my life were damaged by war and didn't have access to their emotions. And I think they loved me in their own way. And maybe not in the way that I needed to be loved growing up. Yes. That is the thing that I didn't know. There's this term father hunger. I was going to get to that. Yeah. I think I just had extreme father hunger. And when I had access to an older man who was teaching me, giving me tools that like I could use and seem to have my best interests at heart, two things happened. Like immediately I tried to

find out subconsciously, I was always scanning for the trick, you know, where's the trick here? Where's he going to pull the rug out? Like, when is this going to, you know, hurt me in some way? And the other part was I just became paranoid that something was going to happen to him. Like what happens if my analyst gets hit by a car and dies, you know, then I'm all alone again. Or what happens if, you know, my analyst has a heart attack or what happens if I say the wrong thing in analysis and doesn't want to work with me? There's this like, it's kind of paranoia that I think is probably pretty natural. But it was a very young part of me. I think I got drunk, you know, when I was in college and never really was allowed to grow up. And so part of that is dealing with those young parts and hanging in there. And as my

analyst showed up and made that dedication with me every week in the most appropriate way, I don't think that the analytic process can happen if there's not some type of love. And I don't mean that we write letters to each other. Like I don't hang out with him. I just think that as human beings, we care about each other and we're trying to accomplish something that requires love. And that is to get my psyche back online in a good place. And I don't think you can do that if there's not a part of you that is loving and caring. I just think that that is a very necessary thing. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

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And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called really no really. And you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. There's been some studies that show that lots of different methods have useful results, but the key thing that matters most is rapport with the person you're working with. If you don't have that connection, if you don't feel cared for, and I know that, you know, a lot of people are like, well, but it's a paid relationship. But a paid relationship doesn't mean that there can't be love and care. You know, I do coaching work with people and I care deeply about them. They're paying me, but it doesn't mean I don't grow a deep feeling of care towards them. And I think you're right. All relationships thrive on that. If you don't have it, you don't have a relationship that

works if both people don't feel cared for. Well, I also think, you know, in the analytics setting, my analyst talks about a container and the importance of having a container. And so the exchange of money creates an energy, it's a container. And so I can say things to him that I can't say to my buddy because there's a container and we have an agreement. And so it's very important that I wouldn't say things I say in analysis. And I wouldn't say that today with you here because we don't have that type of relationship. We don't have that container. Our relationship is much different.

So I struggle with the money part of it a lot at the beginning. You know, it felt like it invalidated it, but over time and with some heroic efforts on the part of my house, I grew to see that. Yeah. Like, just like when I was taking money for teaching, it didn't mean that I didn't care about kids, of course, you know, like, and I was taking a lot less money for teaching, but that's just part of the deal. They have to eat. They have to live, of course. That's right. So going back to father hunger, I had not heard that phrase before, but the minute that

I read it, I didn't have a word for it, but I've noticed throughout my life, anytime an older man steps into my life and is a admirable, caring person, I just am like more, more. I want more. I want more. Right. You know? And unfortunately for me over the years, most of those men, not to feed your paranoia, died. Sorry, that seems to happen with old men, unfortunately. These guys died young, unfortunately. Too young. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah. That father hunger really, really resonates with me.

And I think there's probably an archetype in there, too, of the wise guide, right? That's right. You know, I first came across that term, I believe it was Robert Bly's Iron John, which is an interpretation of a fairy tale. The fairy tale Iron John psychoanalyzes it. And he was part of the men's movement. When I read that book, it was like, whoa, you know, like a lot opened up. And I didn't know how Jungian it was when I read it because it was before I got into Jungian analysis. But I immediately recognized that I was longing to be initiated into manhood. You know, and I think that that is something for thousands and thousands of

years, men initiated boys into manhood. And that is something that we don't do anymore. And my grandfather went away to World War II very young and his psyche was completely destroyed. And he didn't have what my father needed when my father was growing up. And so since my father didn't get that, how could he give it to me? And so I'm at a point now where I look at it and say, people can't give you what they weren't given. And so the work that I try to do on myself is to break that cycle. You know, I don't have a son, but I hope that by doing this work and putting my work out there, you know, like this book, We Are the Light, it will ameliorate or, you know, lessen other people's father hunger. And, you know, women can book, We Are the Light, it will ameliorate or, you know, lessen other people's father hunger. And, you know, women can have father hunger too, by the way. It's not a completely

masculine issue. Yeah. You talk about that idea of breaking the cycle. There's a phrase in the book about when you redeem your father, when you heal. And something in me felt that really deeply. Because to your point, you said it earlier, I think you said it so well, they loved me, but not in the way that I needed to be. And so this is one of those things that I found, like it took a little while to get to, and it's one of those times where the and word is really helpful. Like they loved me, and I needed more than I got. Both those things are really true. And so I love that idea. And I've been so focused with my son on breaking the cycle. As I've spent more time with it, I've gone, well,

I think breaking the cycle is too binary for me. What I think is probably more accurate is if I was handed a hundred pounds of suffering from the generational stuff that came down, hopefully I only passed on 25 pounds of it to my son. Like, I don't think it's possible to do this thing perfectly, this job of parenting. And I know I surely passed on some of my stuff, but I do feel pretty good about the fact that it did take a lot of it and heal it, I think, you know, which felt really important. But I had not heard the idea of it redeeming my father. And my father right now is in a memory care unit he's he's gone he you know if he's not gone he's very close to it but you might find this interesting

is my analyst teaches me that all of the fathers are inside of you yeah you know um your grandfather your great everyone all of them are inside of you when you show love to your son, all of them get to experience loving a son. And when your son goes on to do that, you will experience it too. So you redeem the father that's in you. And at the beginning of my analytic work, my analyst was very adamant about find a way to not only love your father, but admire him. Because if you don't, you'll never admire yourself because that's in you. His DNA is in you. His being is in you. You cannot get that father out of you. It's kind of like the bad wolf. Like that's in there. You can label it bad, but if you don't integrate it and you don't find a way to find peace and make yourself whole, all that hatred you're projecting out at someone

is just really, you're just projecting it on yourself. You know, it's just going to come right back at you. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

Really, No Really. Yeah, really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I was mentioning when my wife and I split when my son was two and I was several years

sober and I sort of plunged into a deep depression. That's when I did what I would call my most intensive inner work as far as excavating my past. It was not with a Jungian analyst, but it was a woman that the term I hated at the time, I still don't love it, which is inner child work. But it was excavating all that stuff. And so, it went through a phase of being really angry with my parents. And, you know, that's kind of gone. But what I've really been thinking about lately is exactly what you just said, which is I tend to look at the good parts of me and I'm like, well, look at what I've created. Yeah. And then I look at the bad parts and I go, well, look at what my parents gave me.

And I'm like, you know, that's not really fair. Well, it's not really true either. You know, they passed something into me. I couldn't be the person I was. And so what you're saying, and I've been working on this, is looking at like, it's easy for me to see what I don't admire about them, me until I was 50 years old, 52 years old to put those two things together and go, look at that great gift she bestowed on me. Yeah. I think the beginning of your analytic journey, you do a lot of complaining about your parents, right? And I would say things like my dad was always working, you know, like he wasn't, he wasn't around. And my analyst would say, oh, so like, you know,

he had a really great work ethic and that's what allows you to work 12 hours a day and write your novels and, you know, have accomplished all the things that you accomplished. And I would just, I'd be so angry when he'd say things like that, because it was true, you know, and it was, there was a lot of things that I gleaned from my father that had been extremely, extremely useful. And, you know, to put a kind of happy note on this as my father's retired and, you know, he's kind of mellowed out as I've been going through the analytical process, I find that my dad is at an easier time relating to me. And my dad never said he loved me for 47 years. And now every single time I call him, he says he loves me. And it's weird because I want to be cynical about that and say, why now? And it's like, maybe he got old, you know, maybe, you know, he's scared about getting up, but maybe it's, I changed, you know, maybe I made it easier for him to love me because

I'm doing this work and I'm not bitter anymore. And so I think there's real power in using the right lens and seeing people in their entirety. You know, even things like my analyst would say, oh, in your childhood, did you ever not have a meal? Like, did you ever go hungry for a day? I'd be like, no. He's like, your dad did that.

Like, your dad gave you food. Yeah. You know, like, do you give him credit for that? Like, he gave you heat. You know, he gave you clothes. Yeah. Like, do you give him any credit for that? And just like thinking about those things, that's not nothing.

That's right. You know, there are times when a man would get incredible points. You know, 200 years ago, if you put food and clothing, that was a big deal. But, you know, we take those things for granted now. I mean, we don't give our father, you know, the credit for doing those things that have just become expected now, that have just become so taken for granted. I agree. I've often thought about my father and I've thought like, sometimes I feel like you got a little bit of a raw deal. Like

maybe this happens to all of us, right? Maybe it, but it felt like he was taught to be a certain way. This is what a good man is and was that. And then partway through the rules changed. Yep. Yep. And it was like, yeah, you're doing all that. Yeah. You're providing for them. You're doing everything you're supposed to do, but, but, but, but, but, you're doing all that. Yeah, you're providing for them. You're doing everything you're supposed to do. But you know what? That's not really enough. Now we also need you to be this type of person. And to your point, they were never given that.

So it's again, that and. It's like, I can look at the ways that I didn't get what I needed from my parents and I can heal that because I have to do that. Yeah. And I can use the lens of, let me look at what I got from them. Those things are not mutually exclusive. And I think oftentimes we lens of, let me look at what I got from them. Those things are not mutually exclusive. And I think oftentimes we get stuck in one or the other. I see lots of people like my parents were fine. I had a good life. They did everything they could. And I'm like,

yeah, but I'm not saying they weren't. And you might want to look at a little bit deeper than that. So I think we can get stuck on that side of it, but we sometimes flip to the other where we get stuck on that, how bad they were side. Well, I think it's important to see people as whole people, you know, and that good wolf and bad wolf is within every single person. That's right. And, you know, sometimes we think about, well, which one are we going to focus on in us? But which one are we going to focus on in the people around us? You know, are we only going to look at their bad wolf or are we going to look at their good wolf as well and see the struggle and the kind of dance that's happening inside of everyone? And which moment are you going to take a snapshot of? Because there's a lot of moments, you know, you're going to take

that snapshot in a good moment or a bad moment. That's a beautiful way of saying it. It's interesting. I know that you got some of that from your analyst, but boy, it was really apparent in you before that, too. I mean, your last book, the one before this, right? That book, The Reason You're Alive, is about that, right? Yes. It is about that basic idea of like, look, we can't just say based on a few things that a person is good or bad. Like, they're both, you know? Yeah.

And that is what I love about the parable. Like they're both, you know? And that is what I love about the parable. I don't love the part of the parable actually that sort of makes it sound like we should isolate or cut off these other parts of us. But the part that I do still always really resonate with is the normalization, I hope, of we've all got the good and bad in us. We all do. It's what it means to be human. I think the parable is a wonderful tool. You know, I don't think it's some kind of catch-all, you know, key to life. I think it's a tool that, you know, we can rub up

against and try to frame and discuss and look how much mileage you've got out of it. I mean, wow. Like, I mean, it's amazing how far you've come with just that one tool. I mean, I know you're using much more, but you've framed your show around this really powerful parable that I've answered completely differently throughout my life. And I'll probably answer differently again, you know, in five years. Yes, yes. More power to you. Thank you. I hope it's not five years.

Me too. Let's talk about the newest book because you are a fiction writer and a great one. Thank you. And I'm so happy to hear you got through your writer's block. And I was so excited to know that there was a new book coming. And I have to tell you that I take getting to bed on time or close to on time fairly seriously. I need my sleep. I'm an old man, right? So I try not to let, whether it be a book or a TV series or anything sort of co-op that like, I'm not saying I'm perfect, but

it's been a while since a book caused me to be like, all right, I got to finish this thing. Like, it's midnight. I got to get done. Oh, that means a lot to me. Thank you. At a certain point, it was like, all right, this is like a locomotive and I'm just, I can't set it down. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful book. I was listening to our older conversation, and the compliment I gave you then, and it's still true, is that you can make me both laugh and cry, not just in the same book, but often in very close proximity. And that is the definition of the sort of fiction that causes me to deeply love it.

Thank you. When those two emotions, which I think are actually very close together. I do too. But they're very difficult, I think, to put close together in art. Yeah. Most art is one or the other, it seems like. And I love how yours really puts those two together. And so, again, congrats on a new book. I'm so happy that the world has it. Thank you. Thank you. It means a lot to me. Yeah. And I'm going to read what you say We Are the Light is about, and then just allow you to kind of, at this juncture, say anything you'd like about the book. You said, it's about a lot of things, but it's mostly about the tiny

little ways in which we save each other. It's about how we too often cut ourselves off from love because we are afraid. And it is my hymn to the life-saving importance of breaking away for a time. So elaborate on any of those ideas if you want, or tell me what the book represents to you now, if it's different than when you wrote that. Sure. Lucas Goodgame is the protagonist of the novel. He's not supposed to be me. He's not an alter ego, but he's very much informed by this kind of process that I went through that we've been talking about. He's not an alcoholic, but he is somebody who suffers this unimaginable tragedy that puts him in this position where he has to make a decision to do something that he really would never do. Has to get in touch with his dark side. And because of this, he's kind of seen as a hero for doing something that

he finds horrific. And he also loses his wife through this tragedy and he falls apart. And his psyche tries to find this way to get him through this very difficult, awful time. And lo and behold, no surprise coming based on what we are saying, It's his community and the love that he has for his community and the love that he has for his former students and this kind of belief in using art and inclusion to create these safe spaces where people can come together in love. And he's very heroic that way. Very, very heroic. So the book really celebrates things like friendship, like simple friendship, like going

to the movies with somebody or, you know, talking about a local project that you might do or getting together to make art with people in your community. Things that are really simple that maybe people would take for granted or not really see the power of. But for people who are really suffering, these can be extremely medicinal. And so when I was really down and I was out, one of my best friends and I started a movie club. And once a week, we were picking a movie and we'd watch it and we'd get on the phone for an hour and talk. It seems like a very simple thing.

It was a lifeline for me when I was down and out. Like I needed that. That was like an essential part of me keeping my psyche together or just going to the beach once a week and playing cube with my two best friends and swimming in the ocean down here. Like that is a simple thing. But when you're in a low place and you're dealing with depression, you feel like your life is spiraling out of control. Those simple things are so, so important. And I think they're always important, but I think we learn to realize just how important they are and how medicinal they are. What I really wanted to do with this novel was to show the importance of simple, simple acts of love and kindness and how transformative they really could be. I also wanted to look at this idea of positive masculinity as an antidote to toxic masculinity. You know, like we need

strong, positive men to clean up the masculinity. That's really, really important. I also think, too, like the need for apolitical spaces. Politics are important, but I do think that we need places in our community where we come together in a depolarized setting to lift each other up rather than tear each other apart. And so that was also a theme that I was experimenting with in the book as well. In these polarized times, you know, I've seen so many people just pitted against each other and just beating each other up and destroying each other. And I think art is really a great place to start to do some work there to start bringing some people back together. And that's really what I wanted to highlight. Yeah. Yeah. I see all those themes and they're

beautiful. What you were just saying about these small acts of a movie club with your friend, or, you know, once a week going to the beach with friends. I think what's so interesting about that is it's not like any of those things one time pulled you out of depression, right? No. They were something that just over time and consistency were a great aid. And that's one thing that I think our modern culture, quick fix culture misses. Yes. And it's that we're told like, like hey this thing would be good for you it

would help you yeah and so we do it once or twice and nothing magical happens and we go well that must not work and you know it'd be like if you'd gone three to five hours a week with your analyst for a couple years now it'd have been like going twice to him and concluding that Jungian analysis doesn't work, you know? And I think that's such an important point about these healing modalities is they can be very healing, but they're rarely totally miraculous in that like we show up a couple of times and boy, like you sit down and meditate twice and all of a sudden your problems are gone. I had a moment in analysis. I think it was about the one year anniversary. It was one year in. And I felt like, wow, I've been doing this for a year. And I said to my analyst, like, man, are we almost done? You know, I've been doing this for years.

Like, well, you know, I was in analysis for 20 years because that was kind of quick. I was like, oh man. But I think the point is that it took 47 years to get there. It's 47 years of pain and thinking that's going to go away with, you know, one or two sessions is just completely arrogant. And I also think too, it's not just going to the beach or having a movie club. It's showing up and being intimate with people. You know, the movie club was the thing that got my friend and Kent and I together, but we talked about our parents. We talked about how we feel but we talked about our parents. We talked about how we

feel. We talked about our childhood. You know, we talk about so many things and it was the intimacy and it was the consistency of this is going to happen once a week. We're going to show up for each other. We're going to make the time. It's going to be about watching a film, but it's also going to be about supporting someone else as a human being. And the same thing when I have lunch with my friend Chubis here, you know, like we get together and we talk about our life for an hour every week. And sometimes it's just jokes and laughs. And sometimes it's like really serious stuff, but that hour is sacred. And we make that time for each other. And I think in our current world, we think that putting up a selfie online or, you know,

whatever it is that like this kind of quick fix thing, we think that that can replace the work of having deep intimacy with other people. And I think that, you know, we're finding out that that's not the case. Yeah. One thought that came to mind as you were talking was certainly this idea also that there's no there there, right? Like if we could talk about the healing journey and being like, well, you know, it's going to take a lot of years for it to happen. I think it's important also that we recognize that every step along that way is a healing path. And it's always our life. It's not like we have to do it for a certain amount of time and then we're healed.

It is an ongoing thing that comes out. And then the second thing, I've often analyzed why does AA work for some people? And I often analyze why doesn't it work for lots of other people? Cause it doesn't work for lots of other people. But one of the things is the repetitive nature. At least when I got sober, they were like 90 meetings, 90 days, like you're going to a meeting every day. You just did it. And you kept hearing the same thing. And some of the time I'd be like, if I have to hear them read those steps again, I'm going to cut my head off. But I've learned this in my Zen practice that like sometimes reading the same small thing again and again and again, you encounter it differently over and over. And you're like, oh my God, there was a lot of depth here that I certainly did not get the first 30 times. did not get the first 30 times. Or I'm changing. And so the text is changing with me kind of back to what you were saying about your father. Maybe he's changing. He probably is. Humans do. And

you're encountering them differently because you're a different person. Yeah, we're both changing. And I think we're all changing all the time and to be humble about that. I think that's what I've learned over the last five years is humility is not fun. It's not. It's great when ego feels it's in control and has everything just so, but you really don't learn if you're not dealt those blows. And my analyst always says that every defeat for the ego is a victory for the self. And when he says the self, he means that in the transcendent. I really believe that. If I didn't have those blows, if I didn't have those ego defeats, like I'm not sure I would be where I am today.

You know, I read a great book recently. It's called Falling Upward by Richard Rohr. Yeah. You know it. So like he says, you know, the second half of life is about the soul and the first half is about the ego. And for people that are doing real well and their ego feels good, why would you ever do the soul work? Because you just keep going. It's the people that have the spectacular fall. They're the ones that are going to do the soul work. And so the fall was

necessary. And that's where you get humble enough to slide into that second half of life and really start to do the work that's hard, but very necessary. Yeah. Richard Rohr is amazing. We've been out to interview him a couple of times in New Mexico, and it's just been, it's been amazing. Yeah. He's a very wise man. Very wise man. Yeah. You actually say at some point in the book, you're talking about how difficult some of the past five years have been. And you said it wasn't much fun, but true education seldom is. And I think the healing journey is hard work. It's rewarding. It's worth it. And

oftentimes it's the only game in town for many of us. To your point, like, why would you do this if you didn't have to? But it can be helpful to keep that perspective sometimes that like, yeah, I'm in the middle of it right now and it doesn't feel good, but some faith that it's going somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. And I know for me, my process with writing is months, years of horrible, horrible, like doubt and fear and just not being able to find the opening and trying things that are wrong over and over and over. And then one day I sit down and the right opening appears. And that's the way it was for this book. It was five years of every day sitting down and failing over and over and over and over,

which forced me to go into Jungian analysis, which forced me to start thinking differently. And then all of a sudden, all of that information that picked up through failing and searching, it all came together. And then, you know, the novel just, it came out of me, you know, and it's easy to say, oh, I wish I could just do that on the first try. I could just sit down every day and write, you know, and it's easy to say, oh, I wish I could just do that on the first try. You know, I could just sit down every day and write, you know, a novel that's publishable. But you forget that it's all that work. And a lot of times, you know, young writers will say, you know, what do I have to do to be a novelist? And I say, well, go spend a bunch of years suffering,

you know, and like, that is not an in vogue thing to say, but you do need to go through difficulties in order to glean the information that you need to create something that transcends you that is better than your daily reality. And in my experience, I have not found a way to do that without doing some necessary suffering. Yeah. You've got this newsletter that you send out and we'll have a link to your website in the show notes. And so people can get on the newsletter. To call it a newsletter is to give the wrong impression. It's a personal note from you each month that I have loved getting to, you know, feeling just like, you know, it's just great to hear from you and see what's

happening again. And so you talk a lot about the writer's block, how difficult this novel was. And I was kind of curious about that. What felt different this time for you than other times where you worked and worked and worked and couldn't find the opening? Was it that it was longer this time? Was it that you were sober and so it felt worse? What was different this time? Because as you said, like there's been plenty of times in the past that you've sort of had to just write the bad stuff out till the good stuff came. Yeah. What was different this time? not routine for me. I think not having to escape into alcohol at night and also just really feeling unmoored and alone because I lost my culture that alcohol provided, the people that I was around. So I felt very alone. My analysts and I have pondered this a lot that Psyche might have just shut down my ability to write for a while

because I was too fragile to put a book out at that time. And the more that I think about that, I really do think that, you know, in Jungian terms, you would look and say, there's no coincidence. You know, in retrospect, that makes a lot of sense right now. I think if I had published a book two years after Reason You're Alive, I probably would have had a mental breakdown during the tour. I just was so fragile and raw and vulnerable and young. I was like a newborn baby. There were things coming back online that I had not dealt with. Just like I said at the beginning of the show, when you banished to shadow or unconscious, that's what alcohol does. You drink and you just send these feelings

to oblivion. And then when they come back, they are wild. They are not civilized and they are raw and they are young and they want to be dealt with right away. And so I don't think that that would have been a good look to be doing podcasts at that point. So at the time, ego was screaming, you know, you can do this, you know, you should be able to have control, but ego is often wrong. And it was an overdue process. And I think that, you know, The Reason You're Alive, I feel like is an amazing book. I love that book, but I feel like We Are The Light is more a book that is reflective of who Matthew Quick is on a deeper level. I had to go through this process to get to this.

And it's taught me a deeper respect for the craft, too. You know, it's like I had this idea. I'm going to pump out a novel every year. And, you know, it's going to be easy. And, you know, when I was drunk and young like that, that seemed like a great idea. You know, when I was drunk and young, like that, that seemed like a great idea. But now I think there's some wisdom in taking some time and battling and really being careful about what you want to say and really thinking it through. And I think more than ever with this novel, I'm much more confident about what I am saying, because I know, like I've been through a lot, there's no doubt. Whereas in the other novels, I had a feeling of like, yeah, this feels right. But I hadn't done all of that work. And so, what I am hoping is I'm leaving that ego phase like Richard Wurst says and going into a deeper soul phase. And I'd like

to think that We Are the Light is a progression towards doing deeper and more meaningful work. And that's not a diss on my earlier work, which I'm still very proud of. It's just, this is a very different Matthew Quick. Yeah. Well, it's a beautiful book and it's been so great to catch up with you again. We're kind of out of time, but I feel like I could do this for another six hours, but. Yeah, I've really enjoyed this, Eric. It's a pleasure to be back.

I hope it's not five years before we talk again. Like I said, we'll have links in the show notes for your website and all that and where people can buy the book. Fantastic. Yeah. Thank you. This is wonderful. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any

level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.

Go to really no really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign jason bobblehead the really no really podcast follow us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts