The Psychedelic I

I had the good fortune to be joined on this episode by the redoubtable Sheila Heti, award-winning novelist, avant-garde memoirist, incisive essayist, and all-around Canadian woman of letters. I asked Sheila to come on the show after I read “Good Medicine,” her recent essay in Granta, which is the report of her experience taking a series of guided psychedelic trips. It is also, though she didn’t set out with this in mind, a kind of midlife crisis essay, reflecting on where she’s been, where she’s going, what’s left for her, and so on.One thing that really struck me about the essay is that it really is, in the most basic way, a report on her experience. It’s here’s what she did, here’s what she felt, here’s who she met, here’s what came up psychologically during her trips, here’s what she felt like in its aftermath. And when a piece of writing feels so plain but so effortlessly holds your interest and propels you through the length of it, you know, if you’re somebody who’s tried your hand at writing yourself, that you’re in the hands of someone who has an exquisite command of language, and also that it’s who doesn’t need to prove it to you with every sentence she writes or every essay or story or novel. So I just appreciated that. I appreciated the craft of it. It also just vibed for me because a lot of the issues that she ends up confronting during the course of her trips are ones that I face, too. We also had some great conversation about other topics of interest to both of us, including clothing and fashion, class, money, success, and our mutual affection for the late, great essayist and critic Dave Hickey, who was a benevolent, generous, cantankerous spirit in both of our lives. So I really enjoyed this conversation, which was the official first episode of the second phase of an anticipated eight-phase journey of this podcast. As of this episode, Eminent Americans is produced in collaboration with the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, and is distributed through its publication, Arc Magazine . You can find all of Arc's podcasts and much more online at arcmag.org. This won't change much about what I'm doing here. You'll now get some dulcet-toned promos for Arc and its flagship podcast. The occasional guest on my podcast will be someone who's written something recently for the magazine, or otherwise has something interesting or compelling to say about a topic the magazine has covered. Otherwise, though, we'll keep on keeping on Eminent Americans style. Peace. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe