Wonderful! - Wonderful! 362: An Almost Visible Vibe

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Rachel's favorite poet for challenging times! Griffin's favorite huge quiet octagon!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaWorld Central Kitchen: https://wck.org/

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hey, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Sorry, I just watched my wife fully dissociate for a good 10 seconds before we started. I was trying to think of an opener to save you the trouble. I appreciate that. And you did in a manner of speaking.

Can I tell you the opener I thought of? While you were sort of staring into the middle distance, contemplating the void. Yeah, sure, I'd love to hear what you pulled out of that darkness. I thought we could maybe change our whole show. Okay, cool, I love this. So that each week we just talk about the outfits

that Alan Cumming wore on Traders that week's episode. I would love to do an all Traders, all Cumming recap. Murder, murder. His latest, so far on this one season, he has rocked the following looks. One, inspired by the Statue of Liberty, a sort of emerald green gown, I guess, with the whole spikes and stuff on top of his head.

Then he had it yesterday on the new episode. It's like a wedding theme. Like a wedding dress suit. Yeah, it was like pants, but it was like billowy at the hip. So it looked like a skirt. And a shimmering red bleeding heart on it. There's no limits. My favorite thing is the morning,

the way the process works, they all come in and sit at this huge like table. Yes. And they come in in groups to figure out who went home the night before. And then Alan Cumming makes an entrance in whatever outfit he is going to wear. And I just love looking at the contestants faces.

They're just so delighted. It's like Project Runway. It's like, oh, it's happening. It's really, even when the show struggles because the traders are a fucking disaster, it's still great to see what Alan's gonna wear out there every day. Do you have any small wonders for us to talk about today

in conversation starters? You wanna kick around? Can I say, this is so sad. Oh man, all right. Sleeping, sitting up. It sucks over here, man. Guys, it sucks so bad over here right now. I think we have two separate illnesses

in our house at the same time. It's possible. I keep getting better and then much worse. Griffin seems to have gotten both of them. I think I caught both. I think I got the second one. Gus is on his way to something. We don't know what it's gonna be. I'm a little nervous about one. Yeah. Gus is on his way to something. We don't know what it's gonna be.

I'm a little nervous about that. Hopefully it's your thing, not my thing. Yeah. Well. I mean, your thing has been bad too. It's possible mine is just as bad as yours, but I am incredibly strong. Yeah, I'm not.

I'm a huge wounded baby animal. I did get that Tamifluid that may be making the difference for me. Yeah. I don't subscribe to all that. I just pound in my fluids and my ivermectin. And I'm good to go, baby. The thing that is hard when it is time to sleep

and you are sick is that you immediately, all the congestion that you have been fighting all day just like raises to the surface of your head. I have developed a new method of sleeping, sharks. Tell me about it. Where I put my two pillows completely vertical and then I take my body pillow and I bring it all the way up to the top of my head.

And then I basically recline like 30 degrees. It's really quite eerie to see. It is effective. You do fall asleep instantly. You also, this is like one of the funnest facts about Rachel, is that when she is sick, and especially when she is under the influence of medication for that illness,

say something in the Nyquil family, you talk in your sleep like some great orator. You talk in your sleep like it is your job and you do whole bits and skits in there. It's really strange. It's like, you know how they say like a drink will kind of, you know, loosen your lips a little bit? Nyquil does that for me when I go to bed.

The normal prudish introvert Rachel of sleep goes away and extroverted party Rachel comes out. Party Rachel, yeah, but if party Rachel didn't use words, but did spoke without words. And now I'm at the point where I'm relieved that it's not as much groaning, because I definitely groan. The groaning is pretty cool.

When I'm sick and I've taken some kind of medicine, I will audibly groan throughout the night. I've been reading a book series, I'm on the second book of it called the Murderbot Diaries, and it's so much fun. I'm having such a good time with it. It's about this security robot who becomes sort of self-aware and hacks itself so that it doesn't have

to follow orders anymore, but no one's caught on. And so instead it's just kind of bored all the time and it likes to watch like human TV shows. And it gets hired on by these different crews of completely helpless like people. And they, you know, this murder bot has to become their babysitter. It's really good, it's all written

from the robot's perspective. Is it funny? It is quite funny at times. It's just really good sci-fi and there's like seven of them. They're novellas. That's good. Novellas so you can just really blast right through these. Yeah.

I'm having a good time with them. You go first this week. What have you got ready for me? Okay, this week, I am bringing us back to the poetry corner. Ba dum ba dum bum bum bum bum. Baby, you know what you're calling it. Ooh, jazz man.

Sort of a Tom Waits sort of vibe. Which is appropriate, I think of Tom Waits as a kind of a poet. Oh, okay, I thought you were gonna say you think of Tom Waits as a kind of a poet. Oh, okay. I thought you were gonna say you think of Tom Waits as being pretty sick. Well, that too. I feel like I can get into that register more when I'm ill, when I do have a sort of a cough about me.

Just a nice, they put a sign up in our town. Like it's closer than I can do it without the bronchitis. That's such a bright side way of thinking. Thanks. Of like, hey, you know what? It's terrible being ill. Yeah.

But I get to visit this character that I don't normally have. That's why they call me Mr. Brightside. The killer song, it's about me. It is about you. Do you know that? Yeah. It was my chest. When did that know that? It was my chest. When did that come out?

It was my chest she was touching. So when did that come out? 1997. Ted year old Griffin. Anyway. These kids go in places. He's definitely. What do you got in the poetry corner?

Who is it? Who's there? Okay, so the poet I am talking about this week is Tori Dent. Okay. Not a poet I was familiar with. Occasionally, because poetry is such a soothing, safe space for me, I will just kind of type

in my search engine, like, poems for challenging times. That's awesome. And inevitably, I will find what I need. There's a lot of those, huh? Okay, so Tori Dent was born in 1958 in Delaware. She spent most of her adult life in New York. She got an MFA from NYU and she passed away from an illness associated with AIDS in 2005,

but prior to that, she released three books of poetry, all came out after her diagnosis. So a lot of her poems are about her experience living with this illness. Okay. And I wanted to read a poem that I actually found quite hopeful called Us. Is this gonna wreck my shit?

Do you think? I'm feeling very, I feel sort of like in the head space to be emotionally sort of compromised and it sounds like this could do the. I am going to try and read it in a way that minimizes that. Do your best, do your worst. Okay. Us.

In your arms, it was incredibly often enough to be in your arms, careful as we had to be at times about the IV catheter in my hand or my wrist or my forearm, which we placed consciously like a Gamboni vase, the center of attention placed frail identity as if our someday newborn on your chest to be secluded, washed over in your arms. Often enough it was in that stillness, the only stillness, amidst the fears which wildly collided and the complexities of the illness, all the work we had yet to do had just done. The hope, ridiculous amounts of it we had to pump from nothing really, short-lived consensus,

possibility, an experiment to access from our pinched and tiny minds just the idea of hope make it from scratch air and water like manufactured snow a colossal fatigue the severe concentration of that the repetition of that lifted for a moment just above your arms, inevitable, pressuring it weighed down but remained above like a cathedral ceiling, strangely sheltering while I held tightly there I could in your arms, only there, the only stillness. Remember the will, allow the pull, toe against inevitable ebb. You don't need reasons to live.

One reason, blinking in the fog, organically sweet and muddy dark, incredibly often enough, it is, it was in your arms. That was tremendous. It felt a lot more abstract, maybe isn't the right word. I lack the vocabulary to talk about stuff like this, but more abstract than I feel like a lot of the poems you bring to the poetry corner.

Yeah, this is one I would recommend. It was published by Poetry Magazine that you read on the page. The lines of the poem are really short. So it's a little bit challenging sometimes to read it altogether. The thing that really stood out to me, just the idea of hope, make it from scratch,

air and water, like manufactured snow. Just this idea of like you are having to draw on this reservoir that is empty to like continue to feel this like optimism and like push towards like making it. I just found really powerful. I also liked the, but remained above like a cathedral ceiling, strangely sheltering. It was tight.

It's that poem was interesting to like receive because I feel like at the very beginning, there's this imagery of like, and strangely sheltering. It was, that poem was interesting to receive because I feel like at the very beginning, there's this imagery of embracing somebody hooked up to an IV or something, which immediately is sort of a gut punch. There's sort of like a lot of, that brings up just a lot of strong sense memory stuff

that then the rest of the poem, I feel like I spent sort of recovering from that. Yeah, no, I mean anybody that has had a relationship with somebody who has like a chronic or severe illness would probably get a lot out of this poem. I think the tenderness of it and the kind of willingness to remove yourself and just focus on this like one moment, this one thing I found really powerful.

So she was found to be HIV positive at the age of 30, which would have been for her 1988, which is like right at the beginning of the AIDS crisis. They didn't really start effectively treating HIV and AIDS until like the late 90s. So she was just kind of too late to get the treatment she really needed.

And so when she got an infection at the age of 47, her body just wasn't strong enough to fight it off. But all three of her books kind of focus on this experience of like living through this illness. And it's really powerful the way she speaks about it. The poet Stanley Kunitz wrote, Tori's language uncoils with such vitality it would seem that speaking were an act of the immune system, a primary means of survival. I thought that was really apt. So her books are

What Silence Equals, which came out in 1993, and then HIV Mona More, which came out in 2000, and then Black Milk, which came out in 2005. There's also a Collected Poems that came out in 2015. But yeah, I think, I don't know. I mean, the subject matter is obviously dark, but I will say just this ability to kind of conjure this push and this spirit in a situation

That makes it very very hard to do. Yeah I find returning to those palms are really helpful. Yeah, you know, it really helps you think like You can find that capacity You know just just getting a hug. Yeah, for sure. I think that's absolutely lovely. Thank you. Can I steal you away? Yes. I'm pretty excited about my next thing, mostly because like, I feel like if I had followed

your thing with like, and my thing is, this week is fart patrol or like something like that. We'll say fart patrol for next week. Fart patrol is important, yeah. Who's your favorite fart patrol member? Oh, definitely Scud. Scud is my favorite Fart Patrol. And what's his job?

He goes around and he goes, Pee-ew! That was his catchphrase. Remember all the shirts and bedsheets that had Scud going, Pee-ew! And he wore blue, if I'm remembering correctly. He wore blue until he died, but then it turned out it was fake, and he came back as the Green member of Fart Patrol.

Anyway, this week I would like to talk to you and our listeners about the Rothko Chapel. Are you familiar with this building? Tell me more about it. Okay, so it is a super small non-denominational chapel in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston, Texas. It is right next to the Menil collection, which is a fantastic nonprofit museum

that houses a lot of really great works. It is named for Mark Rothko. I am familiar with the artist. Okay, he is the namesake of this museum. If you're not familiar with him, he was a very sort of famed abstract expressionist painter who is sort of the name that people think of when they talk about this style of painting

called color field, which is kind of what it sounds like on the tin, like it is a type of art that is characterized by these large, unobstructed, just swaths of color. Yeah, usually his paintings, I mean, they're often quite large. Yes. And it's like he like bisects the canvas

and will do like one color on top of another color. Yeah, he's done a few different sort of variations on that, but most of his body of work is just an exploration of different colors through these large, just flat, solid, just fields of color on his work. Yeah, and the scale of it, I mean, it is, they are larger than a person, like it is awe-inspiring. So he garnered some sort of like, some fame

in this artistic field. In 1964, his work was appreciated by John and Dominique de Menil, the latter of whom, Dominique de Menil was an heiress and a like renowned art collector. They are the ones who opened up the Menil collection in Houston. And before they opened up that museum, they commissioned Mark Rothko to design a meditative space

filled with his works. And so he immediately began work on this new set of color field paintings, all heavily using shades of black with these kind of very subtle textures throughout them in very, very subtle sort of complimentary tones. In total for this collection at the Rothko Chapel, he made 14 paintings, three sets of triptychs,

which are like a set of three paintings side by side by side, and five enormous square paintings. Okay, I do not know about this place. Okay, so he also made four alternates for the chapel, which is fortunate, because I'm pretty sure a few of them have been damaged by hurricanes in Houston at this point. So there's three sets of triptychs and five paintings,

and those all occupy a single wall of the chapel because the chapel is a huge octagon. It's a big brick octagon covered in sort of rose-colored stucco, and at the very top of it, there is a skylight that has gone through like a few different sort of design iterations. Right now, it is this diffusive skylight with 280 reflective aluminum blades

designed to distribute light evenly on all of his different paintings throughout the room. You go inside, it is quiet as the grave in there because you are not allowed to make any noise. There's someone sitting at the welcome area who I imagine will kick you out if you are a disturbance. And then there are eight benches inside, movable benches, one in front of each wall. And as a guest of the chapel, you are invited to come and sit in complete silence to do whatever, I guess,

as long as you are completely quiet. You can meditate on the works, or if you want to use it as a sort of religious experience. You've been to a museum before, right? Well, it's not really, but it is not a museum. That is the thing. The reason I was moved to talk about this place is because it is, the vibe is indescribable

and kind of unforgettable inside of it. It is not a museum in the sense that it is like a single room with 14 enormous black tapestries around the different walls of the room and benches with 14 enormous black tapestries around the different walls of the room and benches where you're supposed to sit quietly and just kind of chill and meditate. Sorry, I wanna look this up now. The way you're describing it, like I have gotta get a glimpse.

Yeah, no, I encourage everyone to look it up. If you look it up, you will also probably see outside of the chapel, there's a reflective pool and in the middle of that is a statue called the Broken Obelisk, which looks again exactly how it's named. The Broken Obelisk was designed by Barnett Newman. It was actually originally displayed here in DC

at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, where I guess it was kind of controversial because it does look like a broken upside down Washington monument. So they eventually, Barnett moved it and it was, so this is what it's like. That's what it's like on the inside. Yeah. The, the Domenil's acquired the broken obelisk. They originally offered it to Houston city hall as a tribute to the memory of

Martin Luther King Jr. Who had just been assassinated at the time. And Houston said, no thank you. And so instead they used it as a sort of like founding piece for the Rothko Chapel. I have to say like, I'm not an art guy. I'm pretty far from being that. But you know what you like.

No, no, well I do kind of know what I like. I don't actually know what I like. I am constantly, the good thing about not being an art guy is that when I do go to museums, I'm always pleasantly surprised to find things that I like. I went to Houston a few times, usually on trips with my friends in Austin, we would drive up, and my friend Clint

worked at the Damien Neal collection. And so when we went, he showed us around, he gave us a tour of like the whole building and all the different pieces there. Oh my gosh, that must have been great. It was quite great. And then he took us into the Rothko Chapel. I didn't know what to expect.

I didn't know who Mark Rothko was for sure. Oh really? Yeah, I didn't know. Again, like I never had any kind of post like middle school art education to speak of whatsoever. And so I go inside and all of a sudden I'm sitting in this huge quiet octagon surrounded

by big black paintings. Not knowing like what am I supposed, is it like a magic eye thing? Like am I supposed to look really close until I see the face of God or something? Like what, I was also pretty hung over at the time because we had gone to, I think a game, like a baseball game the previous night.

And it was something I was so unprepared for, but also that the energy in that room is tangible. It is an almost like visible vibe in there. Can you like hear people's footsteps? I mean, I guess, yeah, I guess you can hear people's footsteps. It is mostly just like completely quiet. Yeah.

And there is a, there is a, there's something sort of hypnotic about the way that the light is kind of dispersed throughout the room on these paintings. And, and there is like a, a sort of otherworldly reverence that you feel when you are in that place, which is why I think that the Rothko Chapel has become something of a like spiritual landmark

for a lot of different like cultures and faiths in the Houston area, which I think is very, very cool. I went back the following year, not hungover, and it was also a very, very moving experience now that I kinda knew what I was getting into. We spent way longer there, and it was a really quite a powerful experience. It was, I don't know if it was like super similar

to when I was like going to church as a kid and I would have these great spiritual movements. I don't know if it was anything close to that as much as it was like an observation of like, things are different in here. And there is a invitation to think about things differently that you don't typically get to do and being in this space and getting to like,

you know, quiet your brain down for a little bit. It really is a profound experience. Do you know the idea behind like calling it a chapel to quiet your brain down for a little bit. It really is a profound experience. Do you know the idea behind calling it a chapel? Or like, you know, cause I think that sets a tone that is very much what you described. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm wondering like,

like the idea of calling it the chapel, I feel like. That's interesting, I don't actually know that. I like, I researched a lot about this, but I don't know why it became a chapel. I don't think it was originally the day Menil's were not like, hey I don't know why it became a chapel. I don't think it was originally the day Menil's were not like, hey, Mark Rothko, make us a chapel. They wanted a quiet meditative space, right?

And so I guess like there is a, that is like a spiritual shorthand, but it is fully non-denominational and like literally anyone is welcome to come inside. Mark Rothko sadly died the year before the chapel opened in 1971, but the place has become like an absolute institution. It was placed on the National Register

of Historic Places in 2000. It inspired a song by Peter Gabriel. You don't get much better than that. It's also played host to like a bunch of academic seminars dedicated to like understanding global social justice issues. And in 1981, the Rothko-Chappell Awards to Commitment to Truth and Freedom began. And those awards recognize people and organizations

that denounce violations of human rights across the globe. It's just a wonderful place and it represents something truly beautiful. And I don't know, I find it, I find it, I remember this experience of, I think it was like a youth group trip to Carter Caves, and there's like a cave you go down into and you're deep under the ground,

and they say, okay, for just like 10 seconds, we're gonna turn out all the lights. And you turn on the lights and like, the like void that you kind of like 10 seconds, we're gonna turn out all the lights. And you turn on the lights and like the like void that you kind of like are in, it feels so strange and it puts like the prickles up on the back of your neck. There's something about the Rothko Chapel that does the same thing, not in an unpleasant way,

but in a, I don't know, like a reactionary way reacting to the fact that like, this is hallowed ground almost, and I need to be on good behavior. That is probably enforced by the fact that they have like a security person sitting at the front to make sure that everybody's being chill. Yeah, I felt that way when I went into the Washington National Cathedral.

Yeah, sure. Being in a place of like significant volume and like, and silence, like it really changes your whole brain. Yeah, for sure. While you're there. So if you live in Houston, I would heartily recommend going to the Rothko Chapel and the Menil collection. They have a lot of really, really great stuff there.

And I think the Rothko Chapel is just a really special place. I love that. I love your ability to go into a place that is unfamiliar and that you may feel kind of uncomfortable in and like fully embrace it and be excited about it. Yeah, it's fun to go into things that way. That is one of my favorite qualities about you. That and my vitality and health.

Hopefully the giant cough I just did got cut out. Hey, you wanna know what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Killian says, my small wonder is baby chains. I live near a daycare in the class while occasionally go on trips to the park. For safety, they all hold onto a long rope held by the teacher and it improves my mood immensely

when I step out my front door and see a dozen babies toddling by all holding onto the same rope. Oh my gosh, I saw two baby chains today. I do love these, I must say, I doubt they are called baby chains. I don't think that these are called baby chains. I don't know what you're supposed to call it. Probably not baby chains.

It is not anything I was familiar with growing up. You never did this? You never held onto a rope? Not that I remember. I mean, maybe I did. But there's just something adorable, especially in the cold weather right now. They're all wearing these big coats.

Adorable, I love it. Leaf says, my small wonder is my family's traditions around Survivor Night. Anytime there's a new Survivor season, I go to my parents' house every Wednesday to have a special dinner while we watch the new episode. And my dad always has a glass of wine deemed his survivor wine.

We usually pause after the first challenge for some ice cream too. I'm so excited for the new season. God, I love this so much. Holy shit, I like that. We should try this with my parents once or twice now that they're in town, because they watch it too.

Yeah, get them some survivor wine flowing. I love this. I love any family tradition around a television show that involves snacks. That goes so hard for me. I know. It goes real deep. Thank you so much for listening to Wonderful.

Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. Thanks to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. MaximumFun.org is the link you can go to to check out all kinds of great shows. We got a bunch of stuff over at MacRoyMerch.com and we have some shows coming up in Florida from Ibn Bam and Taz.

If you go to bit.ly slash MacRoy Tours, you can find links to those. We're gonna be coming to Tampa and Jacksonville and we'll see y'all there. So come see us, please. I think that's it. Let's go cough together. Let's hold hands and cough.

Rachel and I are gonna hang up now and we're gonna go hold hands and cough for 20 uninterrupted minutes. So it is beautiful. And you don't get to hear that folks. I know you wanna to ask for us But that's just for us our tantric coughing sessions Work it all day, money won't pay. Work it all day, money won't pay. Work it all day, money won't pay.

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