Ep. 93 - Hbd Houellebecq w/ Dean Kissick | 1SP by Sean Thor Conroe

[Music] all right here with the legend de kissi culture writer art critic art writer yeah are I've quit I've quit all of that we can quit all that yeah I'm on Hiatus we weren't going to drink we can talk about it though we weren't going to drink but it's uh it's a Well B pod so we had to drink yeah why' you quit why did you quit art writing Cheers Cheers well you're saying you quit maybe I'll maybe I'll start again uh you didn't quit no I I am actually uh kind of quit at the moment I went through I went through some heartbreak I've been going through some heartbreak uh and I also been working on this book this non-fiction book two years of criticism you hear me yeah I think good and I got some and I got some good notes off a off a friend but um yeah I just kind of lost I lost all uh interest in writing about art and culture maybe it'll come back it just seems really stupid right now though I'm happy to be I'm happy to be here with you talking about this book but I just lost all interest in this project I've been doing obsessively for the last uh two years and this is something that happens in wellbe back actually it happens in map and the territory yeah which is like uh the main book we're talking about it also happens in what happens possibility of an island I think like in maping the territory uh I've even got this section highlighted I could pull it up I could I could pull it up but I'll um I'll explain quickly first because I made notes nice uh I got my but what happens to him the main character Jed who's a painter his uh he falls in love with this Russian Lady Orga who works at the Michelin guide and uh he's he's making all these she finds him CU he's making all these artworks that are like close-up photos of uh Michelin Maps yeah kind of about France and then she she leaves they're not so different from the kind of work wellbe makes himself as an artist but she leaves she goes back to Russia to like head up um the michelan guide over there yeah and he doesn't stop her and he kind of realizes the love of his life has has gone and he goes back to his apartment and he sees all like his work you know like you like this like he sees all his work sprawled across his apartment and he just decides you know right there and then he's like oh I realize like I'm done with this body of work he starts like Gathering it all up into trash bags it's like 10 years work or something he thinks [ __ ] it like he loses all interest yeah that's that is actually kind of where I'm at I I'll read you the passages page 66 maybe you have a different you have a different version to me oh wow what's that is that the UK it's probably UK yeah what is it mine's vintage I think that's UK I think you just talk a little bit quieter so you could hold it close oh yeah okay I'm holding it close hold it close baby 6 in yours so says Jed did not react when Olga after one last kiss walked towards passport control and it was only on returning home in the boulevard toopal that he realized that he had just almost unknowingly entered a new stage in the course of his life he understood this because everything that a few days previously had constituted his world suddenly seemed completely empty to him road maps and photographic prints were spread out by the hundreds on the floor and not a single one of them meant anything anymore in resignation he went out and bought two rows of garden waste bags at the casino he Mar in the boulevard Vincent Oro then went home and began to fill them paper's heavy he thought he would need to make several trips to take the bags down it was months or rather years of work that he was in the process of destroying and yet he didn't hesitate for one moment damn makes sense and you know he goes on to have like far greater success with his next series um of work that it doesn't bring him any happiness he just destroyed all the map okay but later okay my reading of this was I read this two times over the past like uh I've read it twice as well eight years or whatever yeah yeah same with me and the first time I wrote it I transcribed like 30 pages of it no no no I transcribed 30 like this book The epigraph to the walk book was one this book initially what do you mean the epigraph to the walk to one of the versions of the Walk book yeah was a line from this book oh yeah which line it was a line that goes Jed continued his long strolls I'm I'm trying to do it from memory it's probably not exact um Jed continues long stroll during which no external Impressions entered his brain and the only and and it was for and for and the only uh the only goal of walking was to achieve a sufficient state of fatigue something like that something like that something like that yeah but I as a young as a young young boy I I typed up everything everything I like 30 pages of everything I I transcribed everything I marked up mhm from this book and then and then and then last summer I started reading this down I was like down in Miami for something I started reading the first 120 pages and then over the past 48 hours I just finished that reread so I think it was a third reread but I was completely noticing way different things MH but so later Jed comes back to Jed runs back to to Olga yeah she returns to Paris she returns to Paris and he goes out to the the party with her and he gets he gets black out drunk party yeah and he pukes everywhere yeah and then he goes back home with her but he's too blackout to he passes out right away he doesn't he doesn't doesn't he just falls asleep right away he gets he get and then he wakes up in the morning and he's devastated yeah he says it's a bad sign that they didn't have sex being reunited after all this time yeah he was like yeah but I wanted to find that part cuz he said something right there yeah that's a nice part maybe I have that wait maybe I have I read that probably yesterday morning I definitely have it um I definitely have it marked I think it's around 158 in mine oh yeah he goes but he says something like he just has this devastating part where he goes uh I found it no I think he says something like um God you know you get these opportunities to do do a thing yeah and they come for a minute and and there's these little windows at happen where you can make something happen but if due to cowardice or indecision you miss those moments and then they're gone yeah yeah we should we should talk about that we should talk about that I think I have the passage here find it or yeah it's the one that's highlighted dang you highlighted I'm glad I'm I'm glad you like this passage too I guess it's like it makes sense that oh yeah this is this is the one this is the one she goes uh oh yeah she's got a great Resto machine Olga was nice she was nice and loving Olga loved him he repeated to himself with a growing sadness as he also realized that nothing would ever happen between them again life this this is this this the bleakest SP all the time no it's very it's cathartic this is it right here life sometimes offers you a chance he thought but when you are too cowardly or too indecisive to seize it life takes the cards away there is a moment for doing things and entering a possible H this is so funny that you mark this too entering a possible happiness and this moment lasts a few days sometimes a few weeks or even a few months but it only happens once and one time only and if you want to return to it later it's quite simply impossible there's no I mean this there's no place for enthusiasm belief and faith and there remains just gentle resignation a sad and reciprocal pity the useless but correct Sensation that something could have happened that you just simply showed yourself Unworthy of this gift that has been offered yeah I think so what go ahead well it's it's just it's yeah I want to talk about this idea but before that I guess just I think it's so it's definitely like a real recurring theme of his that there's like a few seconds that can change your life um and it's something that it's something that happens I think in like a few of his books certainly happens in like map and the territory yeah um it's a part when the main guy Michelle uh scientist there's his his kind of childhood uh sorry possibility Elementary particles parles Elementary particles there's a scientist called Michelle and his kind of childhood best friend Annabelle they're like in love with one another but they've never they've never done anything about it and at some point he comes back to the Village I think his mother's dying or and she sees his car she realizes that he's back hasn't seen him for a long time um getting emotional thinking about this actually but she like she like she goes and just kind of stands outside his house and decides like you know is she going to walk up to the door and knock on it yeah or is she not and she doesn't and she doesn't seem you know then the whole life changes and often he'll frame this in terms of uh free will you know it's kind of like he'll speak a lot about does Free Will exist or not how often does it exist and like there's these kind of key moments a few seconds that will change your life and it's really about do you have free will in that moment and will you do the right thing um and sometimes these moments in the book are happen when you're very young like I think also in elementary particles Bruno's like a little child in a in a movie theater and he's wants to touch this girl next to him and he thinks had he done this in a more appropriate way like his whole life would have been different but their characters are like I mean his characters are just so much regret he's obsessed with regret and they're constantly asking themselves how did my life end up like like this do you think welbeck's saying that in those moments you're like what's the effect that he's making when he's doing that is he saying that you're you're supposed to see those moments or because I feel like like I feel like I I didn't even I didn't even remember what happens in the middle in the in the second third of of of map in the territory reading at this time like I I I that I didn't remember it like when I think back on this book I think of like I think of like him meeting Olga and Jed meeting Olga and him taking you know her taking like yeah the the beginning of their courtship I think about the relationship you know between him and the writer well Michelle wck and then I always think about the end you know the the epilogue where it gets so he he just bunkers up in that damn compound once he gets so much money for his art he doesn't you know J bunkers up in the compound and he just gets obsessed and and uh and uh you know but I I didn't even really remember that you know spoiler alert yeah do you want to give a you give spoiler alerts yeah well I don't think we need to give alerts but do you want to maybe we should actually say what this book is about okay yeah let's say what the book is about okay let's step back a little bit uh but but but just to yeah before we do just to finish that thread like Michelle like Jed having his like one friend get murdered right his mother his mother his mother died of suicide and his dad his dad just decides to self euthanize yeah I forgot about that I somehow forgot about that and like last year when he was on writing the Harper thing about youth you know being pro youth yeah Pro self euthanized I was like this pretty random you know like but he Pro he's Pro euthanasia I thought no he's my bad my bad he's anti it's right that makes way more he's anti he's anti because it once you start allowing self youth NAIA that's the that's the end of a a self-respecting society is what are you saying right yeah I mean I'm he's anti that that actually makes things much I was reading that and remembering all that I had for I had some forgotten about that he goes to the self Youth and yeah and he he punches the [ __ ] he punches the lady who who self who allowed who euthanized his dad without telling anybody in the face and leaves the beats her up I completely forgot about all this but I I sometimes think I mean also I was reading his poems but sometimes I feel like the effect we can talk about the yeah the effect of creating having these characters who are completely devastated does something CU I want to talk about why it's so good why it's so good and why it's so invigorating but why don't you go in about your connection to well back and we can say about what this book is about my connection or like when did you yeah when did let's pan out real quick did you read these books when they came out or no okay did you get on when did you start reading them no I didn't um probably I don't know probably in the last 10 years or so yeah uh maybe maybe a little bit more but um yeah I actually really only started reading again in my late 20s so maybe a dozen years ago or so yeah like I was obsessed with books obviously novels when I was in high school yeah wanted to be a writer and yeah in my in my 20s I just drifted into like a more slothful life not um not reading so much and at some point it was actually really uh it was really like I remember when canos guards when there there was all that like excitement or all that hype about our struggle I was in Paris I was walking around uh Leon marhe the big luxury grocery store with my friend Matthew and he started telling me about this now Canal scard book and I just thought it sounded really interesting and I kind of felt bad that there's this there's this huge thing in culture and I have no idea and I haven't been reading so I started I just really got back into reading um you have a Adam thorell novel on the on the table I feel like laured and cute was another another one I read pretty early because it was just this kind of hype book everyone's forgotten about it now but when it came out it was like he has like the eight he has like the eight-year uh increments between drops I got to respect that yeah yeah yeah he has a long wait cuz I came out last fall but he waits a long time dropping him so so I just I just wanted to like I just wanted to read contemporary literature I wanted to and I just started with the the biggest people you know like well Beck's one of the biggest authors of our time like I read like my first fransen book I think I read like corrections I read my first uh Welbeck book I think I read Elementary particles yeah which is called atomized yeah in England and um it's one of my favorite books might be my favorite book you know I love particles I love it so much I love it so much you're like Journey to the end of the night as well also an amazing book but um I was just having this crazy time if you imagine just like reading like not Everyone likes these books but reading like frankon and canel scard and Welbeck and these are like amazing books to me yeah was love you know Chang my life those are those those are the boys for sure I was looking at the beginning of Corrections recently I I recently kind of IND dantly read friend in's 2018 essay collection and I felt like I was the only person in America who's actively actively reading the new friends and's what's it called that one he had some good ones in there well he that's that's another thing he has a funny uh William T vman essay in there because they had a friendship and then William tman gets kind of like he's kind of like crazy he's on like I think he's on like the FBI Wanted list for like the univer stuff like he's on the FBI Wanted list or like I don't know hiding real crazy guy he lives in Sacramento somewhere but Fran was like the watch yeah the watch list there you go there you go not The Wanted list they're going to catch him at the damn award ceremony for the but um but what were you doing in your 20s you were in in you you weren't writing uh I was working at magazines I was an edit sir okay working at like style magazin in London in London yep and um but I wasn't uh uh no I wasn't reading a lot of literature I don't know what I was doing but those are guys that kind of got stupid stuff 2010 2010s kind of or earlier uh around 20 early 2010 beginning of that decade okay cool cool um and then uh and I've slowly I've slowly been working my way through Welbeck um but I I don't I don't rush too much CU I know I'll enjoy everyone I know it'll it'll give me so much pleasure but you were saying when we were walking that Wu's the only at certain times W's the only person you could read why do you think that is well yeah I mean if I'm feeling bad you know if I'm feeling um heartbroken okay you know devastated or maybe just on a severe come down or hang but really like feeling heartbreak or angst when I first started reading him I was maybe heartbroken but I was also uh probably like a very frustrated young man like a kind of sexually frustrated young man and professionally frustrated I don't know I was just like a wreck you know so so it definitely like it it it was definitely like hitting for me then as well but um you know honestly I could I guess I could talk a I don't have a clear reason why uh why it works so well if I'm upset or if I'm feeling emotional or Bleak but I think I definitely think part of it is that it's very cathartic for me you know I think for a lot of men at least least I think he's a particularly like masculine particularly like appeals to the a certain type of man the kind of straight male uh psyche right um that's definitely like his key audience but I think it's for for it's just like incredibly cathartic in the way that um say like classical tragedy was supposed to be right like it's [Music] so it's so emotionally intense it's so like kind of raw like something I like about his writing and and I like I I want to write about like him like I'd like to be a writer like him but I also know like there's no way I would ever I would ever I would not be capable of writing with such brutal raw honesty or like going so far I think very few people are and in terms of like the emotional power it's just it's just so like there's just so much heartbreak in those books yeah I'm not just talking about there's so much like sexual frustration romantic heartbreak but there's also just so much like family heartbreak so many like um there's a and he is that person as well and it did like so much obsession with just regret and pain and suffering but it's all kind of beautiful I think and he's actually really he's actually obsessed with love I think it's maybe like the main Obsession I can't okay going through the books I mean you'd say the main obsession is just like very base lust like a lust for like 15-year-old girls and also just like this deep yearning for love and tender human connection and he talks about love all the time and all his characters usually have like a a fleeting moment of Happiness like maybe a week or five minutes of happiness yeah in their entire lives I don't know okay let me throw this out there yeah because I thought about this for a long time like what's specifically and I'm the same way like yeah I think it was 2015 I've said I've talked about yeah I've ranted about this but I read some someone randomly told me to to read possibility of an island like I was out biking around in New York City when I still lived in Philly sub here and someone told me to read it randomly so I had no who who told you a random guy like a game I'm pretty a gay man at a bar at a bar came up to me and I was reading I was reading a woman I was reading a book by a lesbian woman like I was like really trying to be good you know it was a great book that book is very good I always tell the story and I never give that book enough credit it's called oranges are not the only Fruit by Janette win winterson very good TW debut she wrote at 25 coming a story the famous book I was reading that haven't read that actually yeah it's a it's a it's a it's a good it's a really uh precocious coming of a door you kind of can't believe she's 25 when she wrote it so I'm reading that and a game man approached me and he said what the what are you reading and he was like upset he was like why why are you at this bar with little you know like your hipster shorts on reading this and he said reading oranges are not the only fruit it's good question said he said read this I was like I'm trying to you know I'm trying to get right with God and he said no read positive an island so I and then that sent me on a bender and I read you know all of them multiple times but I thought about like so reading at this time there's there's stuff with just the cleanness of the realism you know like the the Precision like the there's formal stuff I could go into of why it's so readable and good or whatever or I could like but but I think what's more interesting is like like I think the reason why the books are good and what you're talking about where with this yearning and stuff and this what like it's like it's like presenting a scenario where like this is why I brought up the thing about I forgot that Jed I forgot that Jed Martin like I forgot how extreme all the circumstances were right I almost blacked him out when I was reading him before I was like his mom committed suicide his dad self euthanized Michelle Welbeck his only friend just gets [ __ ] sliced into pieces for the painting that he gave his only friend yeah for his paint like it's almost his fault you know it was like the valuable painting he gave him of of Michelle Welbeck and then someone wanted to steal the the the paint you know so he's old by himself now but I think and this is schopenhauer this is like what you know Welbeck is Welbeck just does schopenhauer which is just like what you mean well Welbeck is like schopenhauer is all like the complete in my you know I should probably I know enough I know enough to talk about it I don't know anything about it's the it's it's all pain comes from desire like the will towards other things and the way the way to achieve a type of okayness is to completely suspend the will towards needing wanting any type of Desire towards anything so that's what welbeck's doing over and over so he say up these characters and they have the most devastating things happen to them he he they they they see the world like that text you where' you yeah I got to read that later that text you sent me the wellbe quote Oh yeah I was all by myself in the Deep corner of the 12th story of the library when you send me that about Solitude and like you know and he and he presents a view of the world that's so Bleak but also kind of true but Extreme you know yeah and then and the character just um just go just just stays stay just just I mean it's not whether he's good or bad he's just Jed Martin in his damn huge compounds just like I'm I'm going to I'm going to that's why he wants to become like a plant like he's like I'm just like a plant like I just take in son and and you know nature will come in the end and wipe away all this industry because that's his final piece right he's he's picturing all these and the industry is the striving towards achieving this and that this and that end you know and he's like and he's okay with it right and sometimes when it goes too far like I remember I I recommended a friend possibly of an island one time and he he this is like 10 years ago and have you read that one I have yeah I I have read it I was going through all my you were highlights from it this morning that's why I woke up I woke up nice didn't sleep so well and just started looking through every earmarked page on possibility of an island dude I I I should I should have done that I I wanted to just focus on one book so I didn't go too crazy but but I I mean I've you know I remember them pretty well but there's a part when the love interest in that but comes back and he like goes on this whole rant about like woman when they reach a certain he he goes on a you know he goes on some vicious rants you know about a possible way of how the world could be and how how how reduced everything is to like you know the rules of the the sexual sexual Market I think he's mourning the the sex the the capitalistic like the capitalist free market ideals like you know in the sexual Marketplace and how how yeah right so like and that friend read until he had 20 pages left and around the end of the book there's one about how how he sees his love interest like way later in life and she's all old and he goes on like a vitriolic rant I think she's called Isabelle Isabelle that's why I got confused you said Annabelle yeah there's an Annabelle too in a different book and my friend just came back and he's like dude I didn't finish the book like it was I was so it was so upsetting like I I stopped with 20 pages left why because because because because that's what I'm saying like that's a good that's a good part I know but he creates the circumstances that are he complet completely devast like it's like that I was thinking about that that that this like tarkovsky line where it's like there's art that makes you feel good I feel like uh like the tarkovsky line that I posted a while ago when I was watching some tarkovski movies about the point of artist to prepare you for death to prepare the viewer for like or like there's a strength in like yeah I would say it's it's like I think that's why it's it's it's it's good because you're like or that's why it's comforting as a reader cuz you're like you're looking unflinching at like the worst possibilities and you're still like I'm good is that right yeah yeah it's also very funny another thing yeah brought up earlier yeah and very uh very uh gastronomical is that the right word very uh sensu sensuous yeah yeah very sensuous very French yeah I think he's very good at writing sex scenes actually I think he writes like genuinely like I'll be aroused by his sex scenes yeah I was talking to uh a friend John about this he said he said like gen generally like like not that many people write like good erotic sex scenes yeah at least not lately I think um I think Welbeck does it well I think he's I like I find it more turns me on more than Emanuel career for instance personally though he also writes good yeah good good sex writing um yeah I I've changed a lot in all the years that I've read well like this time reading him I I I have a meter now where if any writer tries to get me to to leido yeah I just I I just I I resist it like I think he was that's good that's very Victorian yeah it's very yeah it's very uh that's just where I'm at I'm like all right cut that out dude cut that I think he goes into church and he's describing how the he in passing describes like like how this girl who's praying tights are yeah yeah and I was just like all right okay all right but um I was reading um the map in the territory because I you know I was thinking about desire and I remembered it having some of my favorite sex scenes but reading it back there's not a single sex scene in there so I don't know what it says about me um he does have a he does have a very beautiful lover yeah yeah he describes she one of she's one of the beauties of like contemporary literature true but again reading it back actually there's only like I don't know two paragraphs if that three paragraphs about it is a beautiful she is it is yeah yeah um but but I think yeah and I think another another instance where where that kind of schopenhauer idea of just like becoming like a damn plant and like not needing anything or not projecting yourself towards anything yeah is like when um like I forgot about the whole section where it switches to the P part three the beginning of part three switches to the perspective of the detective who finds Michelle Welbeck and is completely I mean this also [ __ ] so funny dude you write a character Michelle wck and you just have to get [ __ ] Mur yeah that's so funny it's very unexpected yeah that's so it's very unexpected I I had forgotten that I got sh I was shocked this morning but he they're like looking at the crime scene and it's like totally just brutal and [ __ ] gnarly and people are puking other cops are puking and then the main guy just uh notices a fly he notices a fly like and he's like to the Flies this is just meat that they need and then he goes into like a paragraph of like how flies mate yeah and he's like the female fly and then he and then the section it's so like that is so good dude you and he says like the yeah the female pupe like becomes vertile within I love all those little yeah all those little kind of essays yeah it's really good yeah yeah put that's what I'm yeah but but so you start you started reading it searching for sex scenes or you you just you no no I was no I was reading the novel uh you know I was I was interested recently this year I guess like reading more erotic literature or reading um just kind of yeah reading more sexy literature cuz I don't read that much like and I was interested in um you know I wanted to kind of uh essentially like I'm thinking about what do I really desire you know I'm trying to get to the heart of like my my truest desires my deepest desires um and for me because like you know literature is a way of a a way of doing that um because I I love to read at heart uh you know we live in this city full of like these beautiful beautiful people everywhere just but got to mix in a bit of like erotic literature so I read George bti's okay story of the eye uh which is all right um but yeah I don't know it wasn't really turning me on but is that is that old when's that from uh I have no idea whenever whenever B was going maybe between the wars okay uh okay maybe even earlier 1913 1908 gotcha 1929 I don't know um and I read started reading anus nin okay um collected erotic writings I have a friend she said it was like her favorite erotic writer but that that I wasn't I actually didn't find very I I stopped reading that I like the first story about um this Hungarian pedophile okay that's good okay but um I did but then I met a friend outside this uh French Patisserie down by Union Square the other day and I was waiting outside Japanese pser Japanese French pser we could we couldn't get in yeah somewhere for for two two Japanese wellbe readers such as us it's Japanese French partiss down and I was waiting outside because there was no space in there and I looked up and there's a plaque on the building next next door that says anas nin uh ran her publishing house here oh I didn't even know she was like in New York publishing all this all these sex stories so that was cool but then I thought you know what I always really liked well Beck's welbeck's um the way he talked about desire but also like specific characters I think specifically um Orga from up territory yeah and uh Esther I think Esther's the young girl from um the possibility of an island oh yeah who really destroys that guy destroys that guy kind of Spanish girl in Madrid she's a good character damn she's like the most erotic of his characters there's a lot of sex scenes with her but look okay so so desire I mean I have I have two points on this but the were two kind of two tangents really calling out to me yeah but but one would be so there's a shophow idea of kind of Desire being the cause of suffering yeah um it's a Buddhist idea as well I think and yeah with wellbe desire desire is a cause of suffering but it's also like the cause of kind of society's downfall as essentially like desire is what's ripping apart Society in fact I think he even puts this into the 70s I think he says in like I have like the the reference but in in elementary particles he's kind of saying like 1974 and 1975 the world changed then his character I think it's Bruno says 1976 is the worst year of his life the worst summer he's just walk it's a hot summer in Paris and he's just walking around the city um you know surrounded by these beautiful young women and girls with their clothes sticking sweat sticking to their bodies and he's in this constant state of like almost like kind of euphoric tortured hellish lust yeah um though I think I think well Welbeck is good at like uh identifying social ills or things that tear you apart but I don't know if he's good at offering Solutions or I feel like he doesn't like he never really offers any solutions to these problems right and if he if he offers them they turn out disastrously and they're kind of even more dystopian cuz he's not suggesting we should go move to a compound and turn into a plant right like that's not right that doesn't work for Jed or does it am I work for Jed but not everyone gu has you know 60 million uh uh do you know dollars in their bank and they can they can they can pave a road yeah across their 50 Hector Hector I don't even know to say that word Hector Hector you know yeah Hector uh compound pave a road across so they can get straight to the freeway you know um um but so they can go to the grocery store so they can go to the grocery store at Tuesday in the morning when no one else is there yeah but um the uh he loves grocery stores he loves grocery stores but um my favorite my favorite the funniest thing about about his uh his his theory of Desire is he always goes uh you know Goodwill and generos erotic Goodwill and generosity is the most important important like in platform getting blown by the girl on the beach and he's like she had such good with she such generosity but I mean but you have to understand too especially if you're talking about Elementary particles wait why was was what was 1976 okay it was just his summer because you know about well he's talking about Society he's saying in 7475 is that birth control I don't I don't know what exactly happened actually but I can I can read the um I can read the the reference we'll see if it helps yeah okay I'll just get yeah you know about his like upbringing though right uh I mean elementary particles the mother is a hippie yeah and I think it's based on like his so his mom's a free love hippie and then drops him at his at his uh Grandma's when he's really young and that's Welbeck is his grandma's last name oh yeah so like that's and that's same with schopenhauer schopenhauer hates his mom too so it's very very very so something something to think about but yeah he has a he has a complicated complicated relationship relationship with women yeah with women with with but with specifically the yeah the free love like postbirth control uh yeah right I mean not just that but yeah specifically that specifically that in elementary particles yeah um I'm not even saying it yeah okay yeah the last paragraph of chapter nine Elementary particles or atomized to the Vintage British Edition says a subtle but definitive of change had occurred in Western Society during 1945 1974 and 1975 um thought Bruno to himself he was still lying on the grassy Bank by the canal he had rolled his linen jacket into a ball as a pillow he tore up a clump of coarse damp grass during those years when he was desperately trying to fit in Western Society had tipped towards something dark and dangerous in the summer of 1976 it was already apparent that everything would end badly born of frustrated desire physical violence the Supreme manifestation of this focus on the individual was once again about to flare up in the west um there's another connected passage I can read actually which I think is is helpful from just like six pages later yeah oh something I've no I'm going to go go seven pages later okay the end of the next this is something I've kind of thought about um written about but okay this comes this comes to like exactly exactly what we're speaking about okay so any philosopher not just Buddhist or Christian but any philosopher worthy of the name knows that in itself desire unlike pleasure is a source of suffering pain and hatred exactly it the utopian solution from Plato to Huxley by way of Fier is to do away with desire and a suffering it causes by satisfying it immediately the opposite is true of the sex and shopping Society we live in where desire is Marshal and organized and blown out of all proportion for society to function for competition to continue people have to want more and more until it fills their lives and finally devours them he wiped his forehead exhausted he had not touched his food so so what he's saying here is that we are just we have this kind of sex and shopping society and we're completely overrun by desire and that desire is destroying uh society and it's destroying us yeah and he wrote this in the um early 2000s yeah and the weird thing is I just I don't think that's true anymore that's the kind of weird thing is like we've been going through this like crisis of desire and actually even shopping people don't care that much about shopping anymore like not not like they used to in the but like sexual desire is like I mean maybe it's coming back but as you know there's this big crisis in like sexual desire over the last five years or so like people stopped having sex well they stopped having real sex or just commodify sexual people stopped masturbating as well though that's the crazy thing like there's like a a total kind of there was like a collapse of sexual desire telling me but well that's something we should talk about as well that's something we should talk about as well I'm just saying there's you know there's a solution to the problem and desire I would say gratify it immediately but but you disagree with that well I think I think I think he's like amazing ly he's such a perceptive writer yeah but weirdly actually the world he predicted as not the world we live in now like we've kind of gone to something kind of stranger and post well beckian in a way because I don't I mean I do not think men's frustrated sexual desire is like the kind of driving force of uh what's the driving for society now that's a good question I don't know I mean maybe maybe like kind of pure pure narcissism like pure self-obsession just like a desperate desire for attention to see yourself um at the center of everything that's what men that's what men have everyone everyone has everyone right but that's that's that's entering yourself into the rules of the market right it's like a fusion of so yeah so it's kind of going beyond the sexual Market Place the opening up of sexuality onto um onto onto the marketplace to like just putting yourself putting all of life onto the kind of marketplace attention economy I mean right I I mean I think I think I I think the attention economy is tied to yeah the combination of sexual Marketplace um ethics and and uh yeah like but but art but art is different art is different I feel like I feel like I feel like I don't know I think at the end of that book where yeah Welbeck is like nature will win out nature wins out and there's something beyond the small desires of like industry and and I don't know what was what was the second thing you said you said sexual Marketplace and what was the second thing is driving oh when I was I was talking about I mean I mean I don't I don't think it's really the sexual Marketplace that's driving things right I think it's like the I mean I don't I mean I think I think sexual desire has been like think well I think narcissism has like I think total self Obsession and the attention economy has um has dealt it a heavy blow I'm not sure if that's what's driving Society but I think it's kind of and and I would say actually like on a more um I just I don't and look I told you I was reading worldbe CU I'm trying to like uncover my recover my true desires you know reconnect with what I really want on yeah uh but I I I don't think people know what they want in general I'm not sure I know what I want I don't think as I I think today there's a total crisis of Desire ac across the board that's why we have like um you know you think of like the the 21st century person like the new types of people yeah we have this like new type of person the influencer right the job of the influencer is to show us what to want because no one knows what they want but influencers don't work you know advertising no longer works uh yeah you have the new the creative is a new type of person the job of the creative is like salous stuff just no one knows no one knows what they want our phones you know are supposed to show us like these algorithms are supposed to know us better than ourselves and show us what we want before we know before we know what we want yeah but they don't know what our desires are like you can tell they're not they have no idea what we want um it seems like there's not only like a lack of meaning but there's a kind of lack of collective desire even an idea of what to strive for because people don't really care about being rich anymore you know know like they don't that's not like that's not like the be all that's not like the big kind of goal that gives you satisfaction people don't really care about designer clothes yeah I think people yeah well not like they used to not like it's a what drives you what drives me yeah I had someone asked me a question in in an interview they said is there any purpose to having a purpose yeah I mean I was and I started writing it I said yes the goal is to have a purpose that is outside of the domain of all these fleeting immediate purposes that everyone is grabbing the goal is to have a purpose that is beyond anyway go ahead yeah I don't know probably the wrong things you know like I spent uh I spent last couple years like mostly driven by writing this book okay of like cultural criticism yeah and at some point I stopped and realized like I don't hate the book but I'm like wow I just don't I don't think cultural criticism matters you are the cultural critic yeah but I hate culture but at some point I was like I don't just hate culture I hate cultural criticism and therefore kind of hate yourself um or you just see like complete pointlessness in what in what you do um I think so so so in a way it's kind been driven by the wrong thing and it's also like you know tied up with that there's an idea for kind of like uh fame or success or like um you know uh institutional validation accolades validation like people respecting you and all all that [ __ ] doesn't matter I mean I mean I think the most I think the most important thing in life is like uh how you treat the people that matter to you most you know like having good relations with the with the people you love be that a family member romantic partner yeah I think I think love is probably the most important thing but um if uh being being being driven is but I don't know if it's like kind of a main driving force in fact maybe like been driven as a bit different I have a lot of like a lot of like sexual desire like um it's the main reason I moved to New York City when youve here really uh maybe like six seven years ago six seven six years ago but I remember like I moved to LA first and I remember just like coming through um you know i' spend a few days here on the way from London to LA and just walking around New York at the time I worked in fashion so I sometimes see like models I like recognized just from like the magazine like wow everyone's just like just like yeah I mean it is it is the most um beautiful city in the world you come to New York in uh should have written a book about um about New York no I think it was I think it was like this time of year but I'm saying if you do come to New York in the summer I remember the first time I came to New York ever to to live it was when I had a was that same summer that that that that that nice gay man told me to read yeah V Island and I got off at I was coming from Philly and had a sublet in deep Bushwick and it was like it was like 350 a month and it was in a punk house and it was like a it was a little closet above the practice room so I'd just be trying to go to sleep and it just be the whole place would be vibrating yeah but I remember I biked I brought my bike on the Mega Bus and I was biking out damn from 34th Street all the way to deep Bushwick and it was the summer and just everybody out yeah no I I feel that there's definitely a there's definitely electricity to but you're not just driven by sex oh no I was I was coming I was coming on to other things I mean really like I'm getting back on what I realized um what I realized is like I need to get back to writing fiction right to trying to write something anywhere near as good as one of these wellbe novels to try to write something as honest is true and yeah that's what I yeah truth truth and and like yeah yeah that's what's important your truth I mean even that this is like deeply individualistic and you know the kind of the like self- expression being an ends to itself but I'm I'm I'm an individualist and I'm really I Believe In Like Making art or like writing yeah uh so that's like uh yeah I'm very driven to write something just to I mean it's just it's just fun it just feels good when it's going well yeah and I think it's about that ra you know rather than kind of obsessing over being a superstar novelist right right such as yourself but it is cool like I'd like that as well but I I definitely get too tied up in the no no I'm defin I'm definitely not a superstar novelist I'm definitely a yeah definitely yeah interesting interesting I mean what yeah what is what is driving I mean there's so It's Tricky the world is so beautiful as well you know I'm driven by just like like I do love being alive like I'm driven by like by waking up every day and like have this desperate like I want to see the world I want to see the world right I've respect that about about you where where how yeah I feel like you have some of that like joking about that funny ass line when when Welbeck goes uh I've relapsed into chery yeah it list all the different the gargona all the different types of Jesus yeah and he's always listing like he has an epicurian sensibility that or like and and how you like how you have like a social I feel like you're yeah you you have like a social generosity and what what say generosity and Goodwill yeah Goodwill dude you have to understand part of the reason why I want to do a pod with you is because I've just been I've literally been jetted my tower like I don't know why I live in New York City dude I don't like I don't leave my like I go for one walk a day I I like it was a full moon I just go full full nocturnal like I just don't want to see anybody yeah and and then if I invite somebody over like I had this Theory where like the main the main good reason to have a a uh um man this is crazy we get we got switch Yeah switch over to to the pay wall but um the no no no I'm just saying the main good re I had joke that the main good reason to have like you know as like a as like a kind of socially um inep or socially not well adjusted man like the main reason to have like a a woman in your life is so that you have to keep you have to keep your space like even remotely you know what I mean like yeah you haven't done that bro really damn dude I thought I did dude okay well I haven't because I don't have a reason to so that's why I need to that's that's why I need to have some social dude bro come on dude it's pretty good dude I I okay I mean you don't have any glasses true you don't have any of these you know uplights where's the lamps where's the candles oh my God there's one part in here where he goes he's at the he's at well Beck's funeral he's at well Beck's funeral and woman a woman throws a a white rose onto the onto onto Welbeck got so [ __ ] Michelle Welbeck the character Michelle Welbeck in the vi territory got so [ __ ] up when he got I don't know why I'm laughing it's just it's hilarious thinking of Welbeck writing himself just getting completely sliced into a million pieces yeah and then like the [ __ ] funeral company like wanted to save money so they just put all pie into a child's a child's uh child's coffin a coffin and they bring out the child's coffin and everyone gasps they're like yo what the [ __ ] and then like and then like and then one woman gets a white rose and she tosses it onto the onto the uh the coffin and he goes uh oh my God I open right to it that's amazing and he goes uh and he goes uh first shovel FS of Earth fell onto to the coffin a lone woman aged about 30 threw a white rose and then he goes they're all he goes they're good all the same women he said to himself they think of things that men don't have a clue about yeah I remember that line it's a very it's a very nice line yeah it's a very nice line it's very true um I was like Dam maybe I can read a quote Yeah they know about um wine glasses this is something I wanted to ask you about actually um serotonin 2019 well that's that's I mean that's a Counterpoint to you saying he writes good sex scenes I think in maybe three of his books there are just parts that I'm like my friend back in the day who wanted to stop reading where you just kind of I'm like I'm like the detectives at the scene of welbeck's murder where I'm kind of like puking you know the whole the whole serotonin bit with the with the girl was was a lot I want to smoke I might just smoke yeah yeah you can smoke uh I don't remember thec the sex scene was it like a kind of swingers club thing or no it's when he finds his Japanese girlfriend sex tape of on her computer she's [ __ ] the dog yeah yeah and he's like I thought that was that was that was a lot yeah yeah it offends our Japanese sensibilities for sure to think of yeah especially yeah I'm always very I get very kind of emotional about Japanese women in general they remind me of my mother if I see like a lonely old Japanese woman trying to cross the road I get very teary so yeah I don't want to read about her [ __ ] the dog but um yeah well serotonin is interesting because because this novel is not this is one where it does seem like he's lost his desire and he's kind of become like like this is a weirdly kind of like like you say unsexy kind of it's this very depressed um sterile kind of impotent man dying of sadness yeah and it does feel like and I think it's the first time he's written a book where it's we're just not so driven by like lust and desire and it does seem very of our time in that sense um okay but this connects to what we're saying but it's also something I wanted to ask you about yeah so he says men in general men in general don't know how to live they have no true familiarity with life and never feel entirely at ease in it so they pursue different projects more or less ambitious and more or less grandiose generally speaking of course they fail and reach the conclusion that they would have been better off just living but as a rule by that that point it's too late yeah I mean listen I'm not saying I'm right for staying bunkered in my spot and pushing everybody away yeah I'm not saying I'm right I'm just saying I'm just telling you what's going on yeah yeah yeah but you like you like to do this kind of thing right you I mean you like to have a kind of quite uh masochistic or like you know I can see why you like like ched living with turning into a plant oh yeah know you like to go on the long walk I mean like what by long walk I mean like the month's Long Walk yeah the mon walk yeah becoming a plant becoming a plant in the in the woods or like yeah just being here and reading like 12 Emanuel career books back to back or that kind of thing I was going back and forth between this and the audio book of The Iliad oh I've never really read The Iliad I've never read the ilot I was actually thinking about that recently dude you got to read the free on Spotify you have to read the Robert fagel version with the little intros with in between every chapter okay yeah um but I it was kind of interesting because that's like no there's things to fight for and there's courage and courage matters you know and and then one time yeah I was going back and forth between while back and then when I was getting too tired I would listen to the audio book sounds amazing it was actually it was nice it was a full Moon the Moon was coming through that window it's very returned to tradition just just spending every hour reading wellbe back or listening to The Iliad but you're saying yeah and then one time yeah Hera Hera pulls up on Zeus and just totally just totally like Zeus is is helping the Trojans and you want the Achilles to win you know you want the aans I think or a keans yeah or damn yeah argives argives to win and they're pulling up to Troy and he and and then Hera Hera pulls up on Zeus and just like gets him all like just completely seduces him makes him go to sleep he gets all charged up and yeah and it was just very interesting like how it was very like yeah it was very I was like it was very uh how to say it how to say it yeah it was like men very like man from women man from men from Mars women from Venus kind of you know I don't know but you're saying you're saying he's critiquing that that mode of yeah yeah definitely yeah well what's what definitely and I mean you know it's it's maybe something he feels himself I mean that's how he's presented in like map in a territory he's just like this kind of sad lonely guy living on on his own in the house and that is you know that is how he lives in real life as well Al though he does have a wife liis but she doesn't live with him um yeah and I think it's a kind of recurring recurring theme in his books is people people not living um men particularly like men kind of getting caught up in their grandios ambitious projects or but but I also think he sees like U nobility in this right of sorts like in in this the map in the territory uh Jed's father is an architect and he makes a lot of money doing kind of uh Seaside Resorts I think holiday Resorts but at some point he talks about he tries to become a real architect he's a su successful professional and he's 40 he tries to kind of strike out on his own kind ofit he he he purs his Artic dream and I definitely I think the message is I mean I definitely see that as very Noble I think we're supposed to see it as Noble it's also farsal like he fails but you know when Jed's describing his father's architecture it's like completely deranged and he says like it's just like a complete like joke and in the end it's like a house for swallows EX is like a nice callback but it's all like it's like kind of weird molded sort of fiberglass undulating forms with holos instead of furniture and he says no one would ever build this or live in this oh my God I was dying laughing at that too dude oh yeah but there are other charact yeah there are characters living he's certainly not sympathetic to people just living like real ordinary lives doing real jobs but so you're say you're saying that you're saying that what but but the problem is what if everybody in society that you would supposedly be having Goodwill towards and being involved with are concerned with all the problems with society that we're talking about of right say that was a little bit that was a little bit circular I don't know I don't know I mean it's not like I haven't tried I haven't tried to to be involved with people and living and you know oh yeah no I'm not I'm not I'm not critiquing you you're critiquing me a little bit you I guess I'm critiquing I'm CRI myself no I'm asking you I'm I'm interested I'm interested you know I'm very interested in the question of how should how should one live well that was the fun I of course think it's important and worthwhile to like to dedicate yourself right to to to have like a project a cause to like really try to try to write try to write well try to write true important and when I say like you know I'm not saying like oh cultural criticism is bad it's good to write literary criticism about like good books or like serious you know or to write serious writing about interesting subjects yeah but um so much of like so much of the Arts literature culture now is just not even it's feels like Unworthy of comment um in the same way that maybe you might think uh most of society Unworthy of like you know really engaging with like spending time on um and it seems very stupid seems like a real Fool's errand or a real like moronic thing to do to even think about it let alone like spend years trying to write a book about one's contempt for Arts say right um something I I I liked uh okay this is a real like brown nosing thing to say but I liked like this uh Andrew Wy Andrew The Jackal Wy interview I was reading the head of the Wy agency okay kind of like the most powerful agent in the world now okay um and he was talking about like mattering in the culture someone asks him a question about mattering in the culture yeah and he's like what you want to matter in this culture like culture we have now you want to matter in this [ __ ] this culture this culture doesn't yeah yeah he's really right but like but dude yeah but that's the big that's the big thing where it's like yeah it's funny like trying to keep going with with my writing and it's like I mean yeah the book yeah I don't care I don't care about the culture I don't think Gian cared about the culture like I don't think the pro or or cared about pleasing a certain aspect of the culture like I feel like my writing came out of a type of like complete resignation of appeasing a certain aspect of the culture and it was just a weird series of events that led to it being accepted by the culture and then I know yeah right you know right yeah and then a bunch of people around that's why I think it's insane when well anyway when people say like oh it's it's like it's like oh this it's like no it's like no it's not mainstream dude it's it's ra it's it's the only countercultural thing or it's like radically coun it's like radic it's it's lowkey it's borderline terrorist it's it's definitely anti-American in a lot of ways it's anti- polite Society in a lot of ways yeah whatever but then it's like but there's like some weird misunderstanding where it's like because that came randomly then if you're surrounded by people who are P who are deifying those things that you're against then you can't be around ser people you know what I'm saying yeah that's how I feel and then and there's different things to pursue there are things like like you're talking about like Fame attention economy um type of Hedonism or love Enlightenment charity and Goodwill you know dude you know you know I was listen sexual Goodwill you know I was listening to you know I was listening to recently was uh do you know Rudolph Steiner is uh yes you do know know much about Steiner well you know I like grew up in like Steiner Communities and stuff I did not know yeah my mom's a waler teacher my Dad tried to be like a Steiner priest ah and we grew up in communities for people with disabilities like the standard community so it was just my me my S sisters and my parents and then people with disabilities and they all you know so like um but like and and my mom's still kind of standered out my dad's just like he's just teaching kids English in in Japan and yeah and like I've been try I've been going deep into Steiner like trying to understand what he's about and you know like Steiner thought he was like Clairvoyant like Steiner like claimed that he was like a se he was a pretty out there dude the fact that he has I don't know he's but I I was listening to this like um this audio of of of of one of his essays about like the the ult idea of the cult reading of of the Bible like the rosac crucian like esoteric [ __ ] nice nice and he was and and the main M thing was that like for the Ros crucians like the trial of Christ is the trial is a trial that like every that's that's the initiation into the rosicrucians it's like to go through like a Christlike trial but but I'm listening to this thing this one essay about about and someone was reading it like on YouTube when I was listening to walking through the park and it was about how to achieve a state of Clairvoyance but and you know I was like this is wow this is an essay you know but he said the first thing of how you achieve Clairvoyance is to be in a state of reverence and exaltation to like your true purpose or like reverence and exaltation to your to to to to anything reverence and exaltation reverence and exaltation like and there's things that attach align you more to a state of reverence and exaltation to to your task or what you know with with God whatever and then there's distracting things I don't know I thought that was so interesting I was like this is about to be completely kooky you know I was like how like Steiner right like giving a lecture like 19 between the wars right like Germany and Sham Austria that whole area and shambles you know and he's saying how to become but so you have to get you like free yourself from distraction well like I'm trying so hard to free myself from distraction I mean I'm not saying it's the right way to go I think I think it's a good way to go it might end with you I think it's a good way to go but I'm just saying like well I don't mean that kind of instruction I mean right but I just mean yeah I think and and going back to the whole like Iliad stuff like the idea that I feel like I would have jokes with people where I'd be like no we're at like we're in like a spirit like I look at my artistic task as like being in like a spiritual war kind of or like being in a war being like I'm at War like I need to say what the thing you know whatever may maybe it's all narcissism whatever but I don't think it is cuz I don't it's good I think I don't think that most most of my fine makes people like me I think most of my art makes people hate me well you know I don't know about that but yeah it's uh but I'm saying like it's divisive I think that if you don't feel like you can write your book of essays you're getting you're forgetting what the reason of writing the are yeah don't you think don't you think you it's not a book of essays it's this is a this is a serious like it's one oh one one connected sick I didn't know that one real book I didn't know that but um my bad no books of essay is uh yeah I don't know there's some good on there some there's some good ones but it's kind of cheating often do you want to talk about that at all no but no it's just not interesting um but but it's interesting I I can write it I can write it yeah but it just now seems pointless or there seems more interesting ways of um talking about what I want to talk about it's point it's pointless to like critique art as it is now and it's it's just very dispiriting it's very dispiriting to think too much about about art it makes me very depressed to like go to go see what's up in the galleries who's your favorite artist of uh all time of all time or contemporary cont both all time and contemporary contemporary I like Pier H okay a lot uh French conceptual artist probably of like I wonder he's he's probably of like well back's generation actually what's his stuff like um it's very it's it's it's very strange and complicated but kind of like involves like environments and systems um creating like strange systems I went to see yeah I don't know it's it's it's hard to explain but creating like all over all over environments I think a really famous work of his he had a documenta the world's biggest exhibition in 201 uh 177 installation art kind of yeah kind of installation art but often more like an environment than an installation in a museum exactly so a documenta he was just in the woods okay and he took over this um wooded clearing in the woods of the the park in Cel in Hess in Germany um out in the Sculpture Park okay and he'd uh in the middle of the park there was um a stop statue of a reclining woman like a marble statue I think or stone statue of reclining woman and on her head he' installed like a beehive so her head was like covered in like live bees then he had a dog called uh human they were actually two dogs but they swep them out a dog called human who was his dog like this real dog one of human's legs is painted pink W human passed away recently who and he was growing got a dog called you a real dog he was growing pants from plants from like um uh Afghanistan mostly this was in like 2017 um no sorry 2012 he he was growing plants from Afghanistan on the Mounds of this clearing and then every now and again they'd have like lectures on aesthetic Theory or something like that in the clearing other things going on but just like these weird environments and complicated systems recently he's been kind of learning how to he's been working with a Japanese scientist last few years and I've been learning how to kind of decode brain waves through with the help of AI it's Clairvoyance of A Sort so like you can be in that room looking at a picture or just uh imagining an image in your head yeah and then they're trying to decode your brain waves um and then show the image on the screen he's working like it's not just Mumble he's working like a real Japanese neuroscientist whoa whoa it's very very advanced stuff I think historically um historically I like uh you know Renaissance and stuff yeah Renaissance stuff I like yeah I like uh Da Vinci a lot nice that kind of thing Barack carajo bonini back to like jotto Pierro DEA Francesca are you there's a good line about fra Angelico in the map and the territory actually what' he say yeah I can okay on yeah fra Angelico who's you know I like going to Rome and Florence I went to see the fra Angelico in Rome so there's an amazing fra Angelico in the pra in Madrid I saw fra Angelico last year but oh maybe I didn't okay I didn't write this in my notes but I have it highlighted because you know Jed Martin in this book yeah how was you like all the art stuff uh yeah I like I like how he writes about art he has artists A Lot in his books and he often has like he gives themer he gives him like funny um he comes up with funny ideas for films and uh artwork and stuff I mean there's one film in possibility of an island I could I could read that idea of a film like it's so funny yeah but um that's enough to that film but also like Welbeck himself makes art like he makes these he does photographs yeah yeah maybe we should ask him we can get him to come do an exhibition over here sometime yeah we should um I don't know you know I don't know if they're as I mean I don't like them as much as his drawing but he does he makes these photographs different series which seem to me quite similar in a way to like what Jed is doing here like the first series when he's photographing Michigan maps that is the kind of thing well Beck's interested in that's like my walk too like all the maps were were yeah actual screenshots of the actual Maps anyway keep going okay so Jed talks about art he's talking about his former lovers gen aives kind of yeah somewhat KN drawings yeah and he says art should perhaps be like that he occasionally told himself an innocent and joyful almost animalistic Pastime there had been opinions like that quote stupid like a painter or quote he paints like the Bird Sings and so on perhaps that's how art would be once man had got beyond the question of death or maybe it had already been that way in certain periods for example in the work of fra Angelico so close to Paradise so full of the idea that one's time on Earth was just a temporary and obscure preparation for eternal life by the side of Jesus the Lord and now I am with you you every day until the end of the world damn yeah it's good Fran gelico is a great great painter so what you saying there art if once to get past the idea of death then art can be something different yeah he's yeah he's talking or same idea preparation for death I mean no I think he's talking about um art that comes from a place of like kind of pure acceptance of death of like kind of Fran gelico Fran jelo has all these um uh all these frescos up in like the Convent in Florence I think maybe he was I mean there's so many of them there's one it's like it's a whole is it called a Convent like in every in every room he's painted a fresco on the wall and he's and he's done and maybe he was even living in this um Convent or Monastery or whatever whatever technically it's called he's a very like holy holy man okay um and I think he's talking about making art from the position of like genuinely believing in God and in heaven and like having this kind of rapturous Oneness with your existence and and the joy coming out of um you know painting from a place of like pure peace and joy right which is not where welbeck's writing from he mentions this in another book probably probably in a few but he mentions elsewhere like this idea of like uh an art a writing or art that's coming out of a pure place of like happiness right celebration to make an art that's genuinely happy and celebratory but of course he can't do that doesn't know if it's even possible but that's interesting that's interesting to me as well because I think we have a you know I think the prevalent art and literature and cultural forms of the day are extremely depressing like art art specifically it's it's extremely depressing these days and it has this very depressing view of the world um and I think that's very bad because I think art plays uh art should it doesn't I'm not art should uplift us but one of the powerful things art can do is uplift us and it can do that just by virtue of being good or being brilliant andc what it is Well's a good example of this it's not I mean ultimately I guess it being the the reason it um has such an effect on me is because it's so good right but but it's it's it's that it's that thing of like looking the most terrifying looking you know looking the most terrifying possible reality straight in the in the you know straight at them and then unflinching like you know that's that that that's why it's good I think like versus art that I don't know just the trash yeah art that isn't concerned with stuff like that and is trying to create a a product that appeases the Tik Tok Market you know yeah I mean yeah that's just one that's just one strand of like no but I'm just saying like I'd say more think it's okay I mean that's more yeah I don't know it has to matter I feel like yeah yeah yeah yeah do you feel like you believe in uh yeah what's what's your feeling about God and afterlife well I'm I have I don't think it exists even zero even .1% I don't I I mean yeah there is no there is no afterlife yeah I mean I don't I don't I don't believe in that it's a nice idea there's an afterlife or this is a simulation or any of that stuff that's no I don't I don't believe in that um and I don't believe in God but um I mean that I can God is a hazy concept I could I could probably be convinced that there's something like God exists it depends what you mean by God I do like um I I do believe uh that man this giving an an idea actually I'm kind of like oh wow yeah this is this is actually this is what I should write about it's something I do believe in but but yeah I mean I think I believe that we don't understand anything of like the the mystery the universe or like you know our history ourselves like reality I can definitely go along with that um I could go along with like Clairvoyant being real I could believe that like you know that if you open yourself into a state of like enough reverence you can start having Clairvoyant because we really don't know um much at all but personally and like you know not everyone agrees with this I I guess but like I think like uh like we're kind of Gods like I think like I think Humanity has reached the point of having almost Godlike power okay um I think we're the only sentient you know we're the only with the highest Consciousness in the universe in the known universe or at least and I think if there's other uh consciousnesses which there should be mathematically they're so far away from us in time or space that they may not um they may as well not exist um but I actually think like we're kind of we've we've we're developing and have developed these kind of Godlike Powers it's a very well beum thought as well this is something he gets into in his books um in every sense like I mean I I think we should something I feel very strongly is that we should Seed Life Across the Universe you know that we should that our role is to like spread life across the Galaxy and the universe okay you're talking about in like a damn like Elon Musk more simple than that there's a guy called Claudius gross who's really into the Genesis Mission um Elon Musk can be involved to the extent that uh to to the extent that we use SpaceX Rockets right right that to send solar cils up into the Galaxy to then but I'm just talking about like microbial life Claudius gross there's some great okay um great interviews with Claudius gross Great Piece by Ross Anderson I think in the Atlantic or somewhere like that but he you know it's but this is like literally what a God would do you know like you if you close the panels of The Garden of Earthly Delights like it's it's an image of God kind of creating the Earth creating them um now this is what gods do would be like you you create a world you okay spread life I think the Earth is you know because I really believe life is beautiful and the Earth is so beautiful um and it's so if we can create more planets like that in wherever we can reach in our periphery that's the most important thing we can do you send the microbes out there maybe try to accelerate it a bit but you kind of try to make Evolution happen which is just what it's like the end of like maff territory yeah you know where he's just like watching like civilization collapse into the plants or becoming a plant himself I'm not saying like musk you know we should send ourselves into space hey I'm all for that but we don't know how to do that but we we pretty much already have the technology to send just life because life has never been found anywhere else but Earth yeah should exists maybe but we've do not have a single shred of evidence so we should send life but but in other things it's just like you know we're doing weird [ __ ] like um building chimeras building like human animal embryonic hybrids or cloning ourselves we can like reproduce without sexual intercourse which is like the huge w beckian theme this is like the ending of particles and it's also the kind of um the the kind of cult religion and possibility of an island he's like obsessed again he's he's not pro it I'd say he's obsessed with this kind of when humans become kind of immortal and start cloning themselves reproducing themselves we have people now trying to be immortal you know right they've been but that's evil be immortal no just no I mean yeah I could I could go I could go for that being evil I mean that ain't that ain't preparing that's not W beckian art that prepares you for death that's trying to escape the reality that at the end of the damn book you know what I'm saying how does it end the last videos make themselves symbols of the generalized annihilation of the human species they sink and seem for instant to put up a struggle before being suffocated by the superimposed layers of plants then everything becomes calm there remains only the grass swaying in the wind the Triumph of vegetation is total no yeah I mean I I agree we have you know you have to embrace death like you have to be a aware of death you know like I like I nearly died myself and it's the most important thing that ever happened to me it's like a drug overdose like accidental drug overdose it was a long time ago like 10 years ago but that's like yeah it it changed my life like you should you should think about death every every day you know but if you wake up in the hospital like I woke up in the hospital there's all these like wires coming out of me all these doctors surrounding me and nurses whatever some of my friends and it's the best thing that ever happened in my life you know that's you can't that's like experience like no other you're very familiar with death I know I mean you know you got to be besides you got to be aware of that besides what I've encountered I even think my book is a is just a you know title aside it's just a charting of a near-death experience you know yeah there's one part in the book when he's like um he thinks that uh he thinks that uh the the the the the the painting got stolen or the the painting The the murder of Michelle welck was like from Evil from uh the detective thinks that the the the he's considering the state of like real evil in the world right yeah like when he sees Michelle welbeck's like decapitated body and his his body in pieces yeah and then of course they you know put two and two together and they realized that the the the the painting cost uh whatever 10 million 900,000 900 yeah you know millions of dollars so it was turned out it wasn't evil it was or you know it was well it kind of was evil it was It was obviously evil but it was it was making the the murder look gnarlier so that it would detract from the fact that uh it it was uh just a to steal the painting oh I didn't even think about that that's what he said like he was like that was a genius thing because because it looked like a psycho serial killer it would have put him off the scent but the murderer was a psycho though well definitely that's interesting but then he has this one line where he goes I just had it and then I closed it because we were talking about God but basically he he suddenly realized that everyone's just motivated by money and then he gets really sad he's like first he's Cal that the fact there oh there isn't just pure evil it's just people motivated by money and then like a second passes and then he goes and then I thought about it a second longer and that actually made me really sad that's what jesselin says yeah but I wonder if like I think there's pure evil you think there's pure evil yeah who's pure evil oh now I mean that's like a hard uh yeah there's probably pure evil that's a hard question no there's definit I believe in Pure Evil yeah um I don't know anyone that I describe as pure evil yeah damn all right so you're going to you're going to you're going to you're going to you're going to I was reading about some serial killers actually some child serial killers the other the other day um but they seemed they seemed pretty evil they're [ __ ] though so that's there they're [ __ ] yeah yeah so maybe they have like a kind of excuse but I was reading about these British child Ser British teenage serial killers damn evil Evil's everywhere but I believe you know I believe in pure good yeah do you believe in God afterlife I don't well I don't I don't yeah I I I I I don't know I don't know I I I was reading I was reading this book I I actually have 20 pages left in this book this mathas Enard the annual Bank this guy's great this French writer do you know this guy same same translator tell us the book tell us same translator as Welbeck Frank win or Frank win translated welbeck's poems have you ever read any of his poems mattius Enard the gravediggers killed I have a book of wellex poetry they're so funny they're so funny bro it's amazing so sad I think I might yeah I think this is the book I have actually I gotta I got to read some of those before we get out of here but my copy is back in England I mean they're amazing yeah listen to the epigraph of this book have you seen his tweets well Becks yeah Welbeck tweets maybe we can put that on the patreon dude I have like a they're all gone but I have like a PDF it's only like it's only like three pages or something they're really good oh I gotta see they're really good I have a I have a PDF yeah I'll put that on the patreon yeah yeah that can be one for the one for the subscribers listen to the epigraph it's to the Savage thinkers in our former lives we have all been Earth stone Dew Wind Fire Moss Tree insect fish Turtle bird and mammal and it's all these graved diggers and like and it's like it's just take it's it's like a transmigration you know it's like people die and they become this and they become this and they become this and he the middle sections are insane and like that is true I was reading this as I was reading the about and you know I'm thinking about this [ __ ] I don't know what the [ __ ] is going on but it just it puts you in a different head space when you think of life and like that you know it's more it's kind of I I more think of the effect that an idea has on how you live versus it being true or not right if you think right if you think you got to be good or bad and you're going to have eternal life then that makes you live in a certain way good or bad maybe you got too intense or too judgmental other people you think like that if you read a book like this you start thinking about you know then you feel a little bit more vegetal and you feel like oh you know you feel more humble but I have been attracted to the idea of you yeah I don't know God being like the thing that's yeah the thing whatever you're distracting yourself from God being I don't know I I I've realized more I get some distance from my parents and how I was raised that like the idea of like you having a life purpose and a life task or some to be in a relationship that feels really really just whacked out but but connected you know wait say that I'll be in a relationship that feels really difficult to a romantic relationship yeah or or even a friendship I guess conceivably but I was thinking and my mom would just with complete certainty be like oh yeah that's like some in another life that was like some other life that like you guys had something you need to work out you're trying to work you know uh work it out like these kind of ideas or like you're here for a purpose these are just part of my like mystical way of VI the world I realize which is not normal you know but I don't know well I mean think the life purpose is it's not it's not that abnormal right and no one yeah this is one of the interesting things about the the past decade I guess I think for me or so is I think it's kind of like this really fundamental shift is like people people are crazy like people believe the craziest things there people everyone believes like these different crazy things and I don't think we really were aware of that until social media essentially or like blogging and stuff I don't think we realize we're living in this kind of um Enlightenment fantasy where people are kind of like rational um acting in self-interest or like we all kind of agree on like certain agreed upon truths and it became very apparent in the last 10 years that like that is just not true at all like people are everyone is in different yeah different Zone yeah yeah different planet and we just didn't know before yeah and we're completely struggling to um just completely struggling to come to grips with that right you know like uh and so now you have a lot of art culture is you know literature is definely like art is like it's it's it's now seen as like it's trying to like restore order like that's what you know the role of the artist is to like kind of impose reimpose Sanity on like uh to educate these deluded masses into like interesting beli in beli in these like good ways of thinking maybe that's what I'm doing but that's no that's not what you're knowing but that's you know that's not what that's not what art should should do I feel like that's what this podcast is doing something like wellbe is uh you know I see what you're saying that's definitely not what I'm doing in that way trying to trying to make people think correctly yeah it's trying to kind of I'm not doing that trying to desperately like close the stable door after like seven billion horses just booted and trying to like restore order or like um yeah there's uh there's a nice line about God at the end of um serotonin oh yeah maybe and it's about love as well you know he's I mean he's very sentimental no he's he he's very romantic very very emotional not emotional but but he's very sentimental you already said it where's my very sentimental I read that dude that book that book has a not his best it's good though I mean they're all good to me they're all good yeah where is that I don't know where but he's kind of talking about the feeling of love and well he is talking about the feeling of Love okay he says God takes care of us he thinks of us every minute and he gives us instructions that are sometimes very precise those surges of love that flow into our chests and take our breath away those illuminations those ecstasies inexplicable if we consider our bi our biological nature our status as simple primates are extremely clear signs and today I understand Christ's point of view and his repeated horror at the hardening of people's hearts all of these things are signs and they don't realize it must I really on top of everything give my life for these wretches do I really have to be explicit on that point uh yeah that's what I'm saying bro it's not oh there it is right there that's what I'm saying it's not that I'm it's not that I need to stay in my tower and listen to The Iliad and I hate life and I hate love I've opened my heart many times I just I just have to see the wretchedness of humanity in its most vile form yeah where do you see that I've just seen it bro I've seen it I've seen it um been so disappointed I'm like Welbeck I'm so Welbeck is not angry he's not mean he's so disappointed yeah he's you know he's actually devastated at the state of the world he is devastated at the state the world that's that's what makes him a good artist I feel like damn what we got we we'll go to two if that's cool with you two hours right at 144 oh yeah we can go we can go for a long time actually we can go for longer I I was going to say go ahead my bad I don't going to change it yet I I was going to like go for a go use a toilet go use a toilet um but I thought maybe you should you could read like a poem while I'm gone or something yeah yeah yeah yeah you want to go real quick I I'll think of my CU I have a question it'll be a new it'll be a new question yeah I'll go real quick go but I I can go for as long as you want cool I'm easy I'm having a good time yeah me too

Channel: 1storypod

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Id: US62aRuKD3E

Length: 104min 11sec (6251 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 29 2024