Hey, Joseph Fink here. A few months ago, we shared the first episode of my new podcast. I only listened to Mountain Goats. It was, I think, a very good episode, but it was also one where we were figuring a lot of stuff out, both within how we were doing the conversation and in how we edited it.
And so I wanted to check in with you here with episode 10 of our podcast, our most recent episode, and one that I think better represents where the show ended up going. Enjoy. This is a notebook that I took to Ireland on the before Tallahassee was out with percent of window Peter island over there. And then here's the original lyric.
Two Riches and wonders. Oh, wow. It has. I mean, seriously, this is what's really wild about some of us on Texas.
I don't think there's a previous draft of that. I think that's the amount of correction that went into it. You've got one line note, one line cross out, and then like one word cross out. Yeah.
Invent has been changed to I learned, because I think I noticed that was going to be invent somewhere else. So there's that. There's also the fact that now I'm superstitious about pen colors, and I won't write in blue or red. I will only write in black ink.
Interesting. And this was pretty clear back then. I was like, I don't care. Oh, wait, no.
There must have been a previous draft. You know how you can tell I'm healthy, I'm whole, etc. So there must have been previous drafts somewhere else. Now there's a song I never got written called you'd End, you'd Latin jazz.
Yeah. I think this notebook went through a bunch of different iterations like it was at one point. Yeah. Then it becomes a book.
It went through, like, this one was around for four albums, and there's still a lot of blank paper in it. It feels weird. It feels bizarre. Even though it's just paper.
I hate writing longhand. And so all my stuff, I have, like, all of my old stuff. You can tell it's all stuff because it's in word perfect rather than word Wow. I have, like, folders of word perfect files.
I learned how to type at 7. So basically I really. As long as I've been writing, I've been writing on computer. And it just.
That's the only way I'm comfortable doing it. I learned how to type at 12 in summer school in Portland, and it became the only way I wrote prose. And to this day, I will very seldom write prose. But songs have always been long.
I can't, I can't imagine writing a song lyric on a laptop. It's like, that's why I'm typing it up, so that I'll be able to read it when I put it out. For the most part, there's whole takes of myself in my songs where it's like, this is a good take. Oops, I don't know what that says.
Welcome to Mavis began teaches the Mountain Goats, the podcast about typing and the mountain Goats. I'm Joseph Fink and I only listen to the Mountain Goats. This is the show where I talk with John Darnell, singer and songwriter of the band the Mountain Goats, about music, art, life and anything else that comes up. This season, we are going song by song through John's 2002 album, All Hail West Texas.
Today's song is Jeff Davis County Blues, which, as you'll hear, is a song with a particular meaning to my life. Later, we will hear a cover of the song recorded just for this podcast by Julian Coster. But first, this episode was a tough one. It would have been tough even without the subject matter, which gets a little heavy because this was the last episode recorded.
On my first trip down with Durham, we had spent three solid days sitting in John's basement recording Imagine us, John cross legged on an old mattress, me sitting in a small plastic folding chair outside the sky broils. We sweat and we talk. We're going to talk this episode about Jeff Davis County Blues. Jeff Davis County Blues, which is also Jefferson Davis County, I think.
Yeah. It's the hyperbole that people often criticize young people from engaging and calling him the best. Lots of things are the best. Yeah, right.
It's the best for that moment. Yeah. And it's the best in some, in some ways the other thing isn't the best. So it's always hard to pick a very favorite one.
But I'm saying Witches and Wonders, you know, that's maybe the best written song on the album as far as the lyric goes. It's really, you know, it's very measured. But Jeff Davis, I think it was like, it's a step up. Jeff Davis County Blues has a kind of maturity to the, to the, to the resolve where I'm not asking for attention.
I mean, it's like, whereas pretty much punches you in the nose, telling you, I bet you can't not pay attention to a guy yelling hail Satan. I think if you missed the whole story, I bet you're hearing me now. Right? And that's, that's Punk energy, which I like and you know, but I also am more drawn to in part because my natural tendency is to jump up and down and yell.
I enjoy it, you know, but I'm always wanting to find other ways to, you know, to leave an impression. Yeah. This has similar to Rich is Wonders. It has an over a minute long instrumental.
Yeah. When I talk about maturity in songwriting, I consider like the ability for the singer to shut up and stay out of the way of some nice chords. That to me is maturity. Right.
Whereas I didn't used to have that. I couldn't play the chords that nice, you know, and. And there's an A7 in here, an A minor 7 that keeps coming in. I'm pretty sure this is the first song I wrote that had an A minor 7 in it.
And it's nice. It deserves to have some space. I just love the idea of someone being like, listen to the same Venice. Here it is.
You know, it's interesting because this song really good. So this is maybe the most specific to. You said that this album came out of driving through West Texas. And this is maybe the most specific to driving through West Texas to the point where it's basically giving directions.
Yes. No, it's highway map. It's a drive. You can go do issue.
So desire. So there's a. Someone has created a Google map. Shout out to that person.
Thanks for doing that because I appreciate you. You have a name, presumably. And so they mapped out on Google this route. And what's fascinating is it's a super long route and it feels long when you're saying it in a song.
And it feels long. I think it is a lot of hours. But it's what you're saying about West Texas. It is.
When you see it against the state of Texas. This entire song is maybe 5% of the width of the state. No, you're not even. You can drive.
You can do this thing. And it would take you a while and you wouldn't see much of Texas. So the entire drive, according to this Google map, that. Who created it.
Oh, sorry, I already clicked away. Thank you again, though. It is a five hour drive. Here's what it looks like against the state of Texas.
Yeah. So it's basically. It's a very small upside down V in the middle of its. Where's the border?
Oh, it's right there. Yeah. You don't go far into New Mexico on this drive. You just go very briefly into it.
Let me hit back. Zachary Eldridge is our dude. Thank you, Zachary Eldridge. I Appreciate it.
What's up? So it's a five hour drive is how long it takes to do once. But. But he turns around, right?
He takes. There's probably an extra 20 minutes for the turn around because he's gonna keep going. Yeah. And he decides to go to Midland.
But yeah, there's something about that depression that going through Texas leaves on you. It's like you go. It's a place that can teach you about your own ignorance. Because a lot of people, especially people who never been in the south at all, they think they know something about Texas and they may know something about Texas, but there's a lot of Texas to know.
And that's instructive, right. Because it's true of every place. Texas happens to be a good place to learn it. You know, it's like no matter what you think you know about at least a place that people have a lot of circus.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Right. Which became a popular place to move to circa 2000. I spent five years living in Williamsburg and.
And you know, there probably a lot of people your age would move around the same time. And it was exciting. Now people dismiss it in a. In a way that everybody, absolutely everybody has taken part in, dismissing Williamsburg.
Centuries all over. But there's a lot to know about Williams. We took a bad Uber driver. Not Lifter driver, bad Lyft driver through there a couple weeks ago or something.
That's all kinds of blocks. I had never walked down at all because there's no clubs there and there's no restaurants that I know there. And I was seeing all kinds of people. I mean, Hasidim that I'd never seen.
Oh, yeah. If you go south from Williamsburg. Yeah. Well, that's Williamsburg, too.
Yeah. You get into the neighborhoods where there are no signs in English. The things I think I told you. I didn't tell you one thing.
I almost did when I was studying Hebrew at Pomona, when I was going to Pfitzer Hebrew and I was in classical studies and I was really getting pretty into, you know, tradition of Hebrew scholarship and stuff. I was looking at the postings for summer stuff, and there was a Yiddish library thing in, I want to say, Massachusetts, where they had, like this vast repository of Yiddish books that needed to be cataloged. And they said it was a great gig. The one thing is, there's no air conditioning in the warehouse where you're gonna do this.
And it's July. Oh, God. And I knew I had never spent any time on the East Coast. And I was like, I bet it's Unlivable among all those books.
I didn't apply for the Yiddish Book Scholarship. I don't think if I did, I didn't get it. But I sort of, you know, when I was thinking about doing, I looked up in the whole tradition. So, I mean, like, it's something you feel utterly justified.
That's gonna be my area. That's all I'm gonna study, you know? And so. So, yeah, when I go to part of Williamsburg, I'm dazzled.
I know so little. I'm ignorant, you know, And. And there's a sort of. For me, anything I'm ignorant of, I go intensely curious about.
Yeah. I have, I think, a different reaction to the Hassi community. Oh, yeah, of course. Because.
Yeah. As like, a reformed Jew and like a liberal Jew, to me, Hassits make me kind of angry. Sure. But remember also the tradition that they come out of whatever they are, in practice, it's an ecstatic tradition.
Yeah. They were the rappo ones, but they were the rapper ones in the 1970s. Yeah. Yeah.
It's a thing. It's a thing where it's like, I get to hate the hasiths because I'm not hating them because they're Jewish. I'm not hating them because of the way they treat women and the way they treat other people. And it's the same.
I only think of them in scriptural terms, not cultural terms. Yeah. It's a sibling anger that, like, you get to have because you're close to them in some way. Yeah, no, I mean, like, you know, at core.
Here's the thing. I saw Phil when I was. When I was five, and to this day, I identify with it. I want.
When he waxes about how great it would be to read scripturally. He doesn't mean it. He says that, but he actually likes this life the way it is, you know? But I'm the same way.
I think, oh, what if I was a guy just. Just reading the Bible all day? That would be great. Be great if you were a guy.
If you're a woman, younger. Do shit in those community. So I want to talk. You know, the last episode, we talked about how plagiarism.
You want to cut all of that? I mean, I am completely. My dislike of Hasims, because, again, it has nothing to do with the fact that they're Jewish. It has to do with the fact that I'm Jewish.
It's a good line. Yeah. The. So this last episode, we talked about how places can become tied up in who you were when you Went to those places.
It's exactly the same with songs. And this is a song that just happened to get tangled up, you know, point in my life. Right. And you were in New York.
I was in New York. So. So we've talked about this. That when the Mountain Goats went from a band I liked to a band that was kind of tied into my life was when my father died.
Oh, yeah. It was in 2011. Right. He had a heart condition for seven years or so beforehand.
We knew he was going to die. We just didn't know when. And so it was a very long, drawn out process. I went through, like, summers where I couldn't function because of the anxiety.
Man. I know what you mean. It's the thing when you summarize in that one sentence, it's easy to walk right past it. Yeah.
I went to a period where I was too anxious to really move, you know, anyway. It's like I always want to respect those moments when you pass them and go like, yeah, no, I hear you. It's like when I talk about my crying while awake period. That was real.
That was like. I would try and keep it together to. My wife left for work just to not bump her out, you know, and then I would go. I mean, it's one of the things I really bonded my wife and I powerfully is she.
And I started dating this summer. I stopped functioning because I'm anxiety. She started dating me, like, right before that happened. So there's a great thing where she started dating and then I stopped functioning.
Yeah. So around my wrist, I have a piece of baker's ring. She has one too. We have friendship bracelets.
I don't actually wear wedding rings. I really hate wearing jewelry. It bothers me. But I've worn this baker's string, or we switched it out about once every six months.
How long have me been together? Almost eight years. Over eight years. Okay.
And so this was 2009. Yeah, eight years. So it was really early on. And I was living in New York, she was living in New Jersey.
And I had this point where I couldn't get out of bed. I was so anxious. And she came and she brought me chocolate covered strawberries in a bakery box. And then we made friendship bracelets from the bakery string around the bakery box.
And I've worn this around my wrist ever since to remind you of that moment. Anyway, so, yeah, that summer, it was an interesting one because, yeah, I couldn't function. But it was also the start of our relationship. So do you now when you like, if you Get.
If anxiety starts to settle in and you feel like maybe your functionality is decreasing, you go, something good's about to happen. I've had. So I had that wave, and then I had another wave after my father died, where, again, I couldn't function for a little bit. And then I started writing Night Vale.
And since Night Fail has started, a lot of my anxiety has not gone away at all. But it has become extremely manageable because I just started putting all of my anxiety into Night Fail. Like, Night Fails are very. All of the stuff about death and about uncertainty, that's all me just taking all the anxiety that was building up and putting it into this work and have to live inside of me anymore.
Yeah, that's the Linda de goal Shan on is that. That's what that is. It's like. It's a.
I talked with my therapist about how, you know some of these songs where you go, well, that was a terrible thing to live through. But look what came out of that. That's nice, you know. Yeah.
So my father, he had a relatively minor surgery and it went completely wrong and he died, but then came back kind of thing where they got him out and they drove him Cedarsina. And so I flew back from New York and we just spent a week with him at Cedar Sinai in the icu. It's always really weird because Nate goes on a bunch of stuff at Largo, which is literally around corner from CER Sinai. And Largo is a very exciting place.
It's. You know, I had a lot of really amazing career moments. Some of the first Nightfall shows where the Largo is literally around the corner from the room that my father died in. So we had this week with him, and I really take that as a gift in that he very easily could have died the first night.
Instead, we had this week in which we could say goodbye. We didn't know necessarily sing goodbye. We thought he was gonna get a heart transplant, and then it just didn't happen. But we spent that week singing because, again, he was a musician and we had always sung together as a family.
We sung a lot of different stuff, you know, we sung a lot of stuff, you know, he was very into a lot of different music. Who is the guy? I cannot believe I've forgotten his name. Dying Cops Translation request oh, I don't know that guy's name.
I know the songs. That's not even my favorite song by him. He was great. Steve Goodman.
Oh, yeah, yeah. He wrote all sorts of great stuff. He's fairly. He's not that well known.
Yeah. My dad really liked him. So I listened to stuff. We sang his stuff.
We also sang. You know, we sang this year and we sang. I told. I was telling you this a couple days ago.
We sang Never Quite Free. Yeah. But I, without telling him, rewrote the end of the verses to make him happy, because I wasn't. I needed him to sing a happy song.
And it just, you know, it just became tied to that music. Came tied to that moment, which Greg Finn has. That line, certain songs get scratched into our soul. Yeah, exactly.
It has nothing to do necessarily. Again, Never Quite Free had nothing to do with that moment. But it became a very different meaning very soon after that. So I came back to New York.
I was trying to figure things out. Six months later, I would start writing Night Vale, which it wasn't until years later that I realized I was in direct reaction to the grief. Like that was me processing grief. It didn't occur to me until probably three years after.
An insightful thing about grief, that it's weird. You know, it's not the first thing people say about it. Yeah, it's. You don't even know what you're.
I don't think you realize how you're processing it until you have a lot of distance to see what you were doing. I went to. You played music called Williamsburg and I went to see it. I actually didn't know.
I'm not 100% sure why I didn't know. I didn't know that song that well. It's just not a song I listen to much. And you were playing it, and I did it solo.
It was in the middle of the set. That sounds right. I remember it being so well. So you started playing Jeff Davis Canning Blues and you got to the line about old Sunset magazines.
Old issue of Sunset Magazines, yes. And my dad was an avid subscriber to Sunset magazine. And there was always. It was always around the room.
When I was flying back to New York, you know, we were there for the funeral and all that. It happens pretty quickly when you're Jewish. You can't do it right away. So we stayed for the funeral.
And then I was just grabbing some stuff to re on planes. I just grabbed a couple of years of Sunset Magazine and I opened up. My dad was an avid gardener. He gardened all the time at a fairly complex garden.
And so anywhere from home. So he spent a lot of day doing that. And all through that, it was the latest issue of Sunset Magazine. It came out the month he died.
And there was all these Notes he had written about gardening ideas he wanted to try. He had, like, circled a type of planting method that he wanted to try out. There was all this stuff, this handwriting for my dad in this issue of Sunset Magazine. So he had a song that brought up these old issues of Sunset magazine.
And this idea of dreaming of home. Yeah. One different idea is a home. Yeah.
And it became a song about my dad. And so it's this weird thing where forever this will be a song about my dad. Even though nothing in lyrics supports that. It's not a song about someone missing.
Somebody who died, I don't think. And it's not a song about grief, necessarily, but it is 100% those things. There's a big loss in that song. Like I say, it's one of the more mature songs, in part because it doesn't need an object of romantic affection or even a definable object.
It's like it's actually focusing on the feeling. Most of us don't focus on feelings at that level very often when we feel. If you say you're angry, I might ask you who you're angry at. Well, that's kind of a very dim understanding of anger.
I mean, sure, you're angry people or injustice or whatever, you know, but to sit with the anger and have that be the feelings to be focused on it. That's what the song is at. But with absence and grief, you know, he's looking at something. Some pictures, you know.
Well, it doesn't really matter what's in the pictures. We know that they're pictures of something. That they're pictures means whatever's on them. You're not with that right now.
So it's a song of solitude and of, like, of the. You know, solitude isn't just when you buy yourself. Solitude is also when. When stuff is.
Is missing from you. So, yeah, fun of that song. After three nights in jail, I head north from Toya vale switch to 285 in Pecos Head up to Red Bluff. My walks feel steady and my eyes are real cold But I feel like I'm only 16 years old lost in a travel lodge with the television on with the sound done I don't feel so tough Old issues of Sunset Magazine to read sleep for 12 hours, dream about home.
I have no place to go so I drive up to New Mexico Fix my eyes in the rear view when I cross the state line and I panic, I guess Although it's quite late Take the First exit to 1:28 I am coming back to Midland I hope you won't mind more rides of the two of us scattered on the passenger seat. I drive slowly. Immediately I dream about home. Sat about, you know, people.
And I actually did this when I read. I email you about my dad dying. There's something about you. People want to bring their trauma to you.
And I think it's because so much of their music is about not even. Not even like, here's. Here's some ways to get through trauma, but just that it's okay to have trauma. Yeah, no, that's.
I mean, that's to. To be able to sit with your stuff, you know, whatever your damage is, whatever your trauma is, whatever your issues are, to have a space where you can sit with that and come to understand that however much of it is, you're still there. It doesn't actually have a knife in its hand. It actually can't assault you.
It just feels funky, you know, But. But yeah, that's a. That's what music is for me. In a lot of music I listen to, I think about dramatic imperialism.
Nothing is beyond you'd by Rich Mullins in the version by Amy Grant. And you know, that song was not written for people to. To suffer with, but it was that for me, you know, it was like. It was.
It was a way of situating myself in the vastness of the universe. And yeah, it's. You know, there's a. More.
A simpler way of looking at it, which is like you can talk a lot about the nature of your experiences with music, but music is sacred. It really is. It's like when you've gone that place with something, you know, whether it's Amy granted, Kate Chesler, Christy Fellows, whoever. You know, nothing you say about it will ever be adequate to what happened when some piece of work helped liberate you from something.
You know, it's like that's, that's. It's indescribable. Thank you for sharing that. That's amazing.
Yeah, I also. I was like, I'm going to be bringing some traumas download on you, and I apologize. No, no, no, no, no, no. Look, I say this a lot and I always wanted to say it in a way that it's hard to always try to hit the right tone here.
When people want to share their trauma with me. It is an honor. It can be like in the signing line or something. It can be.
It can be a lot, you know, say, I'm not therapist. It's the thing. There's nothing I can say like when somebody shares a trauma with. If you Share it with somebody whose job it is to do therapy.
They know how to shepherd you through that. Right? I don't. I don't.
I make the thing that seems to actually, in some way, by itself, know how to help with that. But I personally, I don't know what to say except thanks, and it's an honor, you know, but it really is a profound honor, especially because music has. How many times has music been the thing for me standing, you know, standing at the abyss, saying it's not really an abyss. So you can go in there.
You can go there, because you'll come back. Yeah, we occasionally get, you know, people. Often, you know, it's people that are trying. They're in high school and they're trying to come out, and I'll help them with that.
And I try to think about this, that it's like. What I usually respond to them with is, I'm just so glad that this could be useful to you in a way that other art has been useful to me. Do you know the song To Be of Use by Bill Callahan? Have you talked about this?
I know it's. I'll look up the lyrics of Read it to you, and you'll think from the opening lyrics, you'll say, why are you reading this one? But we'll get there. It's remarkable.
It's expressing exactly what we're talking about. Most of my fantasies are of making someone else come Most of my fantasies are of to be of use to be of some hard, simple, undeniable use Like a spindle like a candle Like a horseshoe Like a corkscrew to be of use to be of use Most of my fantasies are of making someone else come On a horse over palms laid on the threshold of the coming day Coming day and Bill is like, Billy. So is one of the greatest we have ever. And actually, we're talking about the songs you with.
He had one, I think the. My lowest point ever. I was listening to a song by him called Too Many Birds, and I just couldn't get away from it. And it was one of those things where it was like, it can take you all the way down to the bottom and show you that the bottom is not a place that has to hold you.
Yeah. That other people have gone there and come back. Yeah. That it's a real place and like any other place, you can breathe there.
It's not outer space, you know, it's like. So. Yeah. Julian Coster is a member of Music Tapes and Neutral Male Kotel.
He also creates surreal and beautiful Audio fiction, including the podcast the Orbiting Human Circus of the Air that takes place in a ballroom at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Julian approached the task of covering the mountain goats unlike any other guest on the season. But before we get to that, let's talk about how Julian and John met. We psychically found each other in London at a Harry Kitchenman cafe.
Yeah, it was wild because I was on my honeymoon and that was during Neutral Milk's like tour. They just stayed on tour for so long because I had seen them a little in San Francisco like a week before. Right. And then that was when I was on tour heading down to my wedding and then I got married and then we flew to England like a week and a half later.
And there was a chobot hotel at Govinda's in. I can't remember the name of the neighborhood. It's a very populated neighborhood. But yeah, I always used to seek out the Christian restaurants.
But I think Julian, did we discuss this? Were you on the 94 neutral milk culture that played cup of Jay in Pomona? I don't remember the cup of J, but I think as we were saying, I don't really remember a lot of stuff from the 90s, so. But I do remember finding you in London because we've been.
Yeah, we'd been in California, we've been playing at it. There's a ter Stock festival which was an amazing festival. And then we had flown out to London and we were starving and we were trying to find vegetarian food in London which was. This was before I knew that there was.
We knew there was a thousand Indian restaurants every 10ft in London. And so somebody was like, oh, there's this Krishna. The restaurant which we sort of knew the Kushna stuff because they would set up free food on college campuses and stuff which we were all pretty addicted to because they would, you know, they give you free food. It was really nice.
So we went stumbling through London. We're all jet lagged and we found the place and standing like right in front of it was John whom we just left in San Francisco. So we were all very, very confused. And I remember you were incredibly energetic.
You were obviously, you must spend, you're on your honeymoon. So you were, you looks well plus me, me prior to 2003 or so had really a huge amount of adrenaline. You know, a lot of people were really bummed. They started to get a little older and I was very relieved.
The amount of just free energy I had floating around at any given time back in those days was Pretty scorching. That's true. That's exactly how I remember you. That's so funny, I remember you being.
You're kind of like a squirrel. No, exactly. It was an incandescent energy. I mean, the thing is, I can't complain about it because it totally like, you know, that's what people found entertaining on stage.
Like I was sort of sit there, I looked kind of like the sun, you know, but, but, but yeah, I was, I was a little relieved when little of that started to ebb because it was a lot. Yeah, yeah. It's so funny I hadn't thought about that because I know I haven't really seen you since then, but that's, that was. You were.
Yeah. And I always, I feel like every time I saw you I was either jet lagged or I just like woken up or something. I was just like, oh, I couldn't even keep up. But now.
So here's the interesting thing though, because we found you in front of this Krishna restaurant like bouncing off the walls, even more so with happiness because you were on your honeymoon and, and we were all jet lagged and just half out of our minds. But then it turns out you were actually Hare Krishna at that moment. Yeah, I was practicing. I wasn't.
Like in iskcon, there's these four regulations you're supposed to follow and I really only ever followed vegetarianism. Like you're supposed to chant 16 rounds a day. That takes three or four hours to chant 16 rounds of the Mahabharmatron beads. I think I only rechanted full 16 rounds a couple times.
I chanted every day. But 16 rounds, I mean you're supposed to wake up like 3 o' clock in the morning to get rounds started. And I couldn't do that back then. If I start it up again now, I have a better chance because I sleep a lot less.
But yeah. So these four regs that you're supposed to follow, that I didn't follow, but I did keep deities and I still have them actually, but I don't offer my food to them anymore. Okay, so you were just doing the vegetarian. So we were actually one quarter Hare Krishna at that point.
So we were doing the vegetarian thing. So. Yeah, yeah, right. Well, no, the thing is.
So there's a teaching in the religion that says that even the smallest amount of service counts. Right. It's one of those gentle teachings that if you, I mean one thing I always liked about it was that, you know, in, in 20th century Christianity or 19th, you know, revival Christianity, it's All about what you mean, right? It's how you feel in your heart is what counts.
But according to RLA Prabhupada, it's not about what you mean, it's about what you do. Right. So if you chant Hare Krishna, it's not about whether you're feeling it or not, it's about whether you do it. Right.
And. And I always thought it was kind of cool. It's less about your feelings than it is about your actions. So.
So yeah, so eating at Govindas, you get a little bit of benefit is the teaching. I mean, as I say, I don't really follow it anymore. I still, I try to look over my bookshelves. It's like I have all my ISKCON books from back then and like, well, I don't really read them anymore, but it would be fun to get rid of them.
We were talking a few episodes ago with Craig Finn about that approach to religion, that it's the one that makes the most sense to me, having been raised Jewish, that to me religion is a thing you do and what you think about that thing or believe about that thing is kind of irrelevant. So I have a hard time wrapping my head around a lot of faith based religions. But a religion where it's a set of practices and those practices become your life and that life becomes religion, that, that totally makes sense. I think the older religion is, the more likely it is to follow that precept is what I think.
I think eventually religion becomes a collection of behaviors and the younger religions like Christianity tend to be about your feelings, you know. And then I think as Christianity, Christianity ages and grows, it will become. And things like the Catholic Church grows out of older traditions. So it immediately goes, look, no one cares how you feel.
I care if you pray the rosary, show up church. And so. But the Protestant moment coincides with the enlightenment and all that kind of stuff where man becomes the center of the universe. Catastrophe, of course, for humankind.
Do you think religions become more or less forgiving as they get old? Much more, yeah, I agree. And because it's immature, because we know this in miniature in your own life, that as a person, as you grow, you become more forgiving and more able to see other people's side of things and less likely to say of somebody who messes up, you know, well, you're off my list now. You know, it's like you stop doing that.
Whereas when you're younger you're more likely to go, you fucked up and you fucked up for good. I can't Be your friend anymore, you know, and as you grow, you stop doing that. And I think religions are, you know, are people too, in a sense. There's a bigger expression, so it takes longer for them to reach that phase.
There's a. There's a nice story by. I think it's by Isaac Denizen, I think, about a. There's an abbey.
Is that how you say that word? A, B, B, E. Is it? Abby have only ever seen it written.
Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. It's one of those things. Well, so he's on a.
He's on a ship on a voyage in the middle of the ocean. And there's this island that some of the sailors are getting sort of excited about passing because there's these three hermits who live on the island. They're brothers, and they've been there apparently forever. The abbey can't quite make sense of the stories because all the sailors tell these stories that seem impossible about how long they've been there.
And the abbey wants to go see them. And they're kind of religious ascetics. They actually just sit on that island and pray. And they seem incredibly old, and he doesn't even understand how they eat or anything.
And the abbey. But they're praying all wrong. They don't actually know any. Any proper prayers.
And so he sort of teaches them. And he teaches them one of the kind of main proper prayers that you say and. And. And.
And he gives them, I think, rosaries. And then he goes off on the ship and he leaves them behind. And about half a day out in the middle of the ocean, suddenly they see this crazy light approaching the ship. And the light gets closer and closer, and the abbey's on the deck and it's the three brothers, and they're running on the water.
And they get closer and closer and they run up onto the deck of the ship and they're out of breath and they grab the Abby and say, abby, Abby, you have to come back. We. We tried, but we forgot that prayer you taught us and. That's right.
He knows where Julian is. I think it's probably earlier in the season since we're recording out of Order. I'm not sure exactly where, but I told a Jewish story that is very similar to that where it's a rabbi, except for in that one, it's the rabbi tries to teach someone how to pray. And later he finds out that God considers this person's prayers the most valuable prayers in the world.
He goes back to find out how the person's been praying. And the person explains that they immediately forgot the prayers, but they've just been saying the Alphabet, assuming that God will figure out how to put it into correct order. I love that one. And now I must.
I have to share my homily joke, the one that I remember a priest telling way back when, I'm very fond of, because I remember when I first heard it, I was like a teenager, and I thought, oh, that's corny, man. That's really corny as hell. And then as I grow, I remember it, I go, no, that's actually a really good story. It's like, really.
It's not as funny, but, like, it gets nervous laughter from the congregation. You know, as a joke, it's not a great joke, but as a story about God, it's totally excellent. So here it is. It is a legendary.
You've probably heard it before. The town is gonna flood, right? The rain is coming, and the river is rising. And the mayor goes on TV and the radio and says, hey, it's gonna flood.
Everybody needs to evacuate the town. And most everybody starts to evacuate. The very pious man in town says, you know, I'm stay here. I trust God to rescue me.
And the water comes and begins to rise, and the rescue team comes by in a boat to the house and says, hey, we know you're still in there. Come out. Come out and save yourself. And the guy says, no, I'm trusting in God will save me, okay?
And the boat goes away, and the water rises, and the guy gets up on his roof, and he's sitting there in a helicopter comes by and stands for me. You have to evacuate. You're gonna drown. And the guy says, I put my faith in God.
I don't need a helicopter, anybody. And so the helicopter leaves, and the waters rise and the man drowns. And at the pearly gates, he's let in. He says, look, I demand an audience with God.
God has betrayed and failed me. And they say, okay, what? God's right over there. And he goes up and he says, lord, I put my faith in you, and you did not rescue me.
You know, I remained faithful to the very end, and you let me die. And God says, you know, I sent you, the mayor. I sent you a motorboat. I sent you a helicopter.
I would say that's a very profound one because it is actually true that anybody looks for God to speak for the burning bush, but actually, God is the guy you run into to give you good advice. Yeah. Do you guys know the flip side of John's story? The One about the guy looking for the parking space.
No. All right. So this guy is driving. He's been driving in New York City and looking for parking space on the Upper west side for, like, it's been three hours.
And he's just beside himself. He's gonna miss what he's. What he's there to see. He's there to see you have theater tickets.
And he just says, God, if you give me a parking place, I will stop smoking. I will never look at another woman again other than my wife. I will start eating properly, and I will pray and go to church every Sunday. Oh, no.
I see one. Never mind. Because I was made for church. Jokes.
I love these jokes. These are my favorites. So, Julian, you know, in the. In the earlier part of this episode, the part that you weren't around for, we were talking about how music becomes.
Once it's written and it's out there, it kind of. The musician no longer has the quite control over it, and it becomes something that belongs to each person that listen to it. And for instance, this song, even though nothing in the lyrics is really about this, it became very much a song about my father's death. And your cover is, I think, very much an illustration of this, because I think about as far from a straightforward cover as we have in this season.
And it came. The process of arranging it this way. Came to you for a dream, right? Yeah, it came from a dream.
It was a dream. I should preface this by saying that I'm incredibly conscious of music in dreams. I often wake myself up if I hear music in a dream, because I try to go record it, sing it into a tape recorder or something. I was having this dream.
And I also remember these dreams really well, because I do that. And in the dream, I was in a city, but it wasn't New York City where I lived. And I was holding. I had a bag, a plastic bag full of.
Full of water with a goldfish in it, like you get when you're a little. I actually got one when I was at school, I think, like in first grade or kindergarten or something. It was definitely this feeling of when I was a child, I remember. And it was very much the same in the dream.
It was this kind of precious feeling because it was. You know, it was maybe a small fish bowl is out of water, but again, it was just like a plastic bag that was like tied off at the top or something, and there's this little fish swimming around in it, and I'm holding its entire universe in my hands. And I had to walk home when I was a kid. And in the stream, I was walking, like I said, in some city.
And so I was kind of holding it up in front of my face and watching the fish are just sort of like watching the big fish swim around the city, you know, sort of sort of amplified. And, you know, people are banging into each other in cities, and there's a lot of walking, a lot of cars. And so that part of the dream was very scary because I was essentially just trying to protect the fish. But then I was at a party, which is.
I don't know how that happened, but that's how, you know, dreams are. And there was this cocktail party, and everybody was incredibly well dressed, and it was very fancy, and I didn't have the fish anymore, but I remembered the fish. And also parties. Really scary for me because I'm not terrible socially, especially parties, that kind of social situation.
And this is full of incredibly fancy people. But the thing was that I realized that I didn't have the goldfish because I put it down on this bed. It was in this bed where people were throwing their jackets. And I suddenly realized, like, someone could throw their jacket on top of it and hurt the fish.
And I was just feeling incredibly anxious, but for some reason, I could go back to the bedroom. I didn't know the bedroom was. I couldn't find it, but the song was playing. Meanwhile, everybody was really into this music, and it was this kind of very strange, spacey, crazy music.
And it actually started calming me down, listening to it and comforting me. Um, and also just interesting. I mean, I think around that time was when it sort of kicked in. The music alarm in my brain went off.
I was like, music, dream, you're dreaming. And so I woke up and I went and I sang it into my cassette recorder. And then I think it was until the next day that I was listening to it, and I remembered it. I remembered, you know, because it was really distinct.
It was crazy. It was a crazy record. And, like an old record. And I suddenly listen to melody.
I was like, my God, it's John's song. It's that song. And, yeah, and so I just. The COVID was done basically.
Like, I knew that was. It was like, okay, that's what I have to do, is just recreate that. But it was already done. Can I say if there was a podcast called Julian's Dreams, I would listen to it?
I listen to it every week. I'll be a subscriber and I would support your Patreon. Thank you. I have good News.
There's a podcast called Orbiting Human Circus. You should give it a listen. I think as close to that, it's probably pretty cute. We've got to get a Patreon then.
There's something about that. You're about looking at a thing going, let my mind approach this before my conscious mind gets at it, you know, and something about when your cover resolves into the melody, which is so, you know, it's a way of hearing because I think, you know, if you listen to musical, you're going to sleep. The last thing you hear before you drift off is kind of the truest encounter with the music in some ways, I think. Yeah.
Yeah. Thinking about stories or music at that moment when you're almost asleep, that's. Yeah, that's. That's really, really, really magical.