0:00

What's the one thing you've never told anyone?

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a podcast called The Secret Room.

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If you're a true story fan and you

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cannot get enough of people's most

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intimate dreams, desires, and

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shame, you will love the secret

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the secret room, a podcast about the

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stories, no one ever tells.

0:34

Welcome to the TED interview. I'm your

0:36

host, Steven Johnson. On

0:39

this show, We have a lot of guests who

0:41

explore new frontiers, frontiers

0:44

of viral detection or the cosmos.

0:47

This week's guest has made joy

0:50

and delight the object of his exploration.

0:53

poet and artist Ross Gaye

0:55

has turned that exploration into a

0:57

practice of identifying and

0:59

sharing those joys with the rest of

1:01

us. The delight of smiles

1:04

when you take a tiny tomato plant onto

1:06

a plane. Delight at the scene of

1:08

a barefoot woman stopped in the middle of

1:10

the road to move a turtle out of harm's

1:12

way. delight of the smell of

1:14

lilies in the air,

1:16

the lights even in the most difficult

1:19

of times. And

1:20

in the estrangement,

1:22

from my mother's sadness, which

1:24

was to me unbearable

1:28

until

1:29

it felt to me

1:30

not like what I thought it felt like to

1:33

her and so felt inside

1:35

myself,

1:36

like death,

1:37

like dying, which

1:38

I would almost have rather done,

1:41

though adding to her sadness would rather

1:43

die than do.

1:45

But by

1:46

sitting still, like what,

1:48

in fact, it was a

1:50

form of gratitude, which

1:53

when last it came drifted

1:55

like a meadow lit by torches of

1:57

cardinal flower, one of whose

1:59

crimson blooms, one

2:01

hummingbird hovered nearby,

2:04

I slipped into my mouth, thereby

2:06

coaxing the bird to scroll on my

2:08

tongue, its heart's frenzy, its

2:11

fleet, neck requesting song.

2:13

with

2:13

whom, with

2:15

you, dear mother, I'd

2:17

now sing along. That

2:19

was ending the estrangement. from

2:22

Ross' two thousand fifteen book,

2:24

Catalog of unabashed gratitude.

2:27

His two thousand nineteen, The Book of Delights,

2:29

landed in many people's hands right as

2:31

the first wave of COVID swept through

2:33

the country, making it a New York Times

2:35

bestseller. His newest collection

2:38

of essays, Insiting Joy, just

2:40

hit bookstores. Ross

2:42

has won the Penn American literary

2:45

Gene Stein Award, the National

2:47

Book Circle Award for poetry,

2:50

and the Kingsley Tufts poetry Award.

2:52

He's also a teacher at Indiana University.

2:56

Ross Gay on Delight and the practice

2:58

of Delight. That's next on

3:00

the Ted interview.

3:11

Ross

3:14

Gay, Welcome to the TED interview.

3:16

Thank you. Glad to be here with you.

3:18

There's so much wonderful stuff in that piece.

3:21

ending the estrangement. Using that as

3:23

a as a kind of a case study, how does a

3:25

poem like that come into the world? Yeah.

3:28

Great question.

3:30

One, I think I was trying in in this

3:32

book, which is called catalog of unmatched gratitude,

3:34

but also in in kind

3:36

of I think it's just one of my questions. I was trying

3:39

to sort of in

3:41

a way, come to terms with sorrow, actually.

3:43

Mhmm. And come to terms, and I try to understand

3:46

what what

3:48

has been, what is my fear of

3:50

the sorrow, not only of myself, but of other

3:52

people. And that was

3:54

one of my questions. And I think

3:57

the To me, that's an

3:59

interesting poem because, you know, it it feels

4:01

like one of my poems in a way

4:03

because of the attention to syntax

4:05

and stuff, but it also feels like a different

4:08

kind of poem than most of the poems in this

4:10

book because most of the poems in this book kinda

4:12

streamed down the page. In

4:14

this poem, it's so

4:17

intentionally kind of hesitant.

4:20

The line breaks are kind

4:22

of jarring, and they they kind of

4:24

reverse themselves periodically. And

4:26

they make you take a lot of

4:28

breaths at places where maybe you don't

4:30

quite anticipate And I

4:32

think part of what I was trying to do with

4:34

that poem is to enact

4:37

in some way the labor of

4:40

coming to terms with one's

4:43

mother's sorrow, which is also one's

4:45

own sorrow as a kind of evidence

4:48

of gratitude. Mhmm. Yeah.

4:50

Which has not easily come to. You

4:52

know? Right. It takes it takes some

4:54

syntactic acrobatics. Yeah.

4:57

Well, I mean, I was gonna ask about that. There's

4:59

that wonderful moment in the in in the

5:01

poem where it kind of turns to gratitude at

5:03

the end of that line. And it

5:06

as you said, it's part of a collection

5:08

called the catalog of unabashed gratitude.

5:10

One of the things I was thinking about is I was reading through

5:12

particularly the essay books, but also some of those poems

5:15

is like

5:15

this fascination with

5:18

finding that place of gratitude to that place

5:20

of delight and joy.

5:23

Were you always like that? Like

5:25

did was that something you grew into?

5:28

Yeah.

5:28

I I just don't know. I try to because,

5:30

you know, you could imagine that other people have asked

5:32

me that because of what I write

5:34

about. And

5:39

I I don't know for sure the answer to

5:41

the to the

5:42

But I

5:45

I can

5:46

say for sure that

5:48

those those aspirations

5:51

and practices, by which I mean, like, a

5:53

gratitude practice or a delight practice

5:55

or steady enjoy.

5:58

are among

6:00

other things, at least

6:02

also a way to sort of

6:03

contend

6:07

with

6:08

trouble

6:09

in my mind -- Mhmm. -- you know, which

6:11

is a long way of saying that it's

6:15

it's definitely not just natural for me --

6:17

Mhmm. -- to be, like, you

6:19

know, delighted.

6:21

I think

6:24

one of the things that's so

6:27

infectious in a good way.

6:29

One shouldn't describe things as thing. positively

6:32

infectious. It did Asia COVID probably,

6:34

but that that

6:36

when you read this, you you can read people

6:38

writing about how to

6:41

have a practice that brings more gratitude

6:43

into your life or brings more joy into your life in a

6:45

kind of self help way. clearly

6:47

that the the work you're doing

6:50

in writing these poems or in writing these

6:52

essays is is part of your

6:54

this for -- Yeah. -- experiencing joy and delight

6:56

that those that the words are actually

6:58

conjuring up those those feelings in you. And

7:00

I'm just curious, like, do you think

7:02

that that is a property

7:04

or quality that you share with a lot of

7:06

other poets? Or do you think that that's something

7:09

that that you do in in a more

7:11

distinctive way? That's a great that's

7:13

a great question. And partly, I wanna talk

7:15

about it, like, as a like a poet poet poet. Like, I

7:17

wanna say that one of the things

7:19

that I'm drawn to poetry for one

7:21

of the things maybe you were drawn to poetry

7:23

as a kid for and why maybe you're

7:25

more drawn to it now is that to

7:27

me, poetry is like a profoundly embodied

7:29

form. and partly because the

7:31

line to me indicates the breath

7:33

-- Mhmm. -- which make makes a palm of body,

7:35

which makes it one of the Brazilian things

7:37

that disappears that

7:40

that is evidence of our impermanence.

7:42

You know? And poems,

7:45

among the things that they do is they they

7:47

show us how to breathe. you know,

7:50

they whether or not you're reading it

7:52

out loud, they're still so even if you're just

7:54

breathing in your brain, you know, palms are kinda coaching

7:56

us up on how to breathe. So in a in

7:58

a way, I wanna sort of say like,

7:59

I think we're all kinda doing that.

8:01

Right? We're all kinda doing that.

8:04

That being said,

8:05

the I

8:06

think

8:08

the in these in the delights,

8:10

in the joy essay,

8:13

there's explicitly a kind of practice.

8:16

And it's and it's a the

8:18

book is a kind of inquiry. And

8:20

among those inquiries, it's like, what don't what don't feel

8:22

like if I do this for a year? You know? Yeah.

8:25

The Joy book is a kind of

8:27

inquiry about what happens when we

8:31

when we are in the midst of joy and when we're

8:33

practicing things that foam in or inside joy.

8:35

What happens from that? So it

8:37

has these different things. Whereas the like,

8:39

the poems, I would say

8:41

that the poems have

8:43

less intention in a certain kind of way.

8:46

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. I'm not

8:48

positive about that. So That's how that's how

8:50

we talk. I'm gonna take that over.

8:53

Yeah. You know? Yeah.

8:55

when did you start to read poetry? And did did you

8:57

almost instantly start to write it? Or

8:59

was there a gap between those two?

9:01

Yeah. I I listened to music hard as

9:03

a kid. So I'll say that first of

9:05

all. And I listened to it, and I

9:07

memorized it. And so, like, I

9:09

was deep in lyrics with, like, you

9:11

know, Tracy Chapman and

9:13

public enemy and day last song

9:15

and, you know, on and on and on

9:17

and on and on. Big boy,

9:19

you know. It's just like,

9:22

and all of which, you know,

9:24

frankly, I think appeal

9:26

to me and still really appeal to me,

9:28

you know, it's like have helped me to think,

9:30

actually. But

9:32

I didn't start reading poems or

9:35

anything, really. As a kid, I read like

9:37

comic books, Power Man and Irishists.

9:39

But I didn't start reading

9:41

until college. And

9:43

I as I recall,

9:45

I was

9:47

given I

9:48

was required to do a presentation on the

9:51

poet Amir Baracca, and

9:53

I read a couple of his poems particularly

9:56

there's one poem called in agony as

9:58

now. I'll never be able to get to the bottom of it,

10:00

but it is sort of amazing to me to think that

10:02

when I was like nineteen or something, it

10:04

was this poem which is profoundly

10:06

mysterious, but also has

10:08

the line something like early in the poem.

10:10

I'm inside some someone that

10:12

hates me. or I'm inside something that

10:14

hates me, something like that -- Mhmm.

10:16

-- like articulated something

10:19

so profound that I had no

10:21

idea how to articulate. it's

10:23

though

10:25

kind of moving to me. But anyway, I

10:27

then I started writing poems.

10:30

Do you get a kind of a first draft

10:32

in sitting down to write it the first time? Or do

10:34

you have a bunch of fragments that are

10:36

floating around for weeks or months and you

10:38

start stitching them together? Yeah. It

10:40

can happen a handful of ways. It can

10:43

periodically, it'll happen where a draft comes,

10:45

you know, periodically. always,

10:49

it happens that the first

10:51

draft is like a first of many

10:53

drafts, many, many drafts. I'm

10:56

sort of you know,

10:58

like my beloved friend and teacher,

11:00

Gerald Stern, toward the end of his,

11:02

you know, he's he's ninety seven

11:05

now. And he's not he's not a big advisor.

11:07

I don't I don't think he's,

11:09

like, fiddling around. Like, I am,

11:11

like, on the

11:13

the syntax and seeing what that third line

11:15

is doing in relation to that twenty ninth line and

11:17

blah blah blah blah, like, on and on and on and on.

11:20

But I also

11:22

wanted to say that my poem sometimes,

11:25

they do, like you said, like there's sort

11:27

of fragments that are kind of floating

11:29

around. and those fragments sometimes

11:31

will be like, oh, that fragment

11:33

has actually been waiting for this

11:35

little -- Right. -- moment of palm or

11:38

something like that. And sometimes, like, the title

11:40

part of this book, a

11:42

lot of it, it was it's a kind

11:44

of collage palm in

11:46

a way. So it's a lot of it is several

11:48

poems that didn't quite make it

11:50

as standalone poems that became, like,

11:52

little components of this

11:54

longer poem. And then there's also a

11:56

poem in in this book called spoon.

12:00

And that's a long poem. And it's a poem

12:02

that I had a draft of

12:04

for two

12:05

years. And it was

12:06

a short little poem about,

12:09

you know, a spoon.

12:11

And then at some point, it was really a

12:13

sort of poem a very

12:15

sort of quiet

12:17

allergy for my our

12:19

friend, Don Bountain, who was murdered. And

12:22

then the the poem just broke

12:24

open two years later, you know --

12:26

Mhmm. -- into a poem that

12:28

is long and is now

12:30

like a five or six page poem.

12:33

that really, you know, gets into our

12:35

relationship and and other

12:37

things. I I think that's one of the things

12:39

that is true of of books in

12:41

general. And I don't write poetry, but I do

12:43

write non fiction books. And there's

12:45

a kind of almost

12:47

optical illusion that is created when you write a

12:49

book where the person reading it feels

12:51

like, oh, these are all the thoughts that

12:53

are captured in the

12:55

brain of Ross Gay or Steven

12:57

Johnson at any moment. Like, I'm just reading them

12:59

out putting their thoughts to me. Yeah. When in fact,

13:01

in reality, a book is,

13:03

like, all these thoughts that you had

13:05

separately over a five year

13:07

period or a ten year period that you kind of

13:09

packaged up together in some way.

13:11

Right. And and I think that creates a

13:13

kind of illusion and the head of the reader

13:15

that when they actually meet you, they're like, well,

13:17

you're you don't have any of these

13:19

ideas accessible to you. Actually,

13:21

absolutely. And to me, it's like so, yeah,

13:23

the part of the to me, the most

13:25

interesting writing that I do and the most interesting writing

13:27

that I think I probably read most

13:29

often is writing that it's very

13:31

clearly

13:32

like, the artifact of a

13:34

process of thinking -- Mhmm. -- and a

13:36

process process of discovering what one

13:38

thinks for a period of time.

13:40

which

13:40

hopefully I mean,

13:42

not hopefully, but maybe hopefully, by the

13:45

next thing, if they're lucky enough to write a

13:47

next thing or will be different

13:49

because we actually change. So in a certain kind of

13:51

way, a book is a book

13:53

is evidence actually

13:55

of a kind of change

13:57

being put into place

13:58

arrived at

13:59

through labor, which we call

14:02

often revision, re

14:04

seeing things, not to

14:06

be stopped, not to be settled at. You know, if

14:08

we die, you know, whatever, that's the end of it. But

14:10

if we write another thing, I

14:12

mean, I hope if I write another

14:15

thing,

14:15

it will be clear that the thinking has

14:18

carried on, you know. which

14:20

is a kind of, you know, like, as I

14:22

hope I understand for all the people

14:24

I ever encounter, they're thinking we'll carry

14:26

on. can you tell us the backstory

14:29

behind the book of delights? I was

14:31

I mean, it really I was just

14:33

walking and it's it's been ridiculous.

14:37

But I was walking in from a having

14:39

an espresso down in downtown, Uber

14:41

today in Italy,

14:43

and Uber had Sounds so good. Does it I

14:45

know. It's very nice. It's very nice.

14:47

I'm walking up the hill, you know,

14:49

back to this castle because I've been like an artist

14:52

residency. pay for,

14:54

you know, get my food, delicious

14:57

food of this you know, whatever.

14:59

It was a moment of profound delight.

15:01

I was like, and I noticed it.

15:03

And

15:03

I thought, oh, I

15:05

should write a little essay about this, like,

15:08

kind of lovely moment. You

15:10

know, the bees were all over and the

15:12

Linden trees, I think, smells just incredible.

15:14

And then very quickly,

15:17

there was the guidance or

15:19

the voice or the instructions to do it every

15:21

day for a year. Mhmm. Write an

15:23

essay about something that delights you every day for

15:25

a year. and like that. And it was

15:27

convenient because it was very close to my birthday.

15:29

And I

15:29

gave myself these constraints. One was to

15:32

do it every day, which I didn't quite do.

15:34

because I'm not that guy. And and

15:37

the second thing was to

15:39

write them quickly. So I gave

15:42

myself a timer, write them in thirty

15:44

minutes. track them in thirty minutes. But

15:46

and the third one was to write

15:48

them by hand. Mhmm. And

15:51

so over the course of a year, you know,

15:53

I probably piled up at the end,

15:55

maybe not quite three hundred

15:57

essays,

15:58

and then we whittled it down to a

16:00

hundred and forty that felt viable.

16:03

and then down to a hundred and two that remained

16:05

in the book. That's amazing

16:07

story. How much one one thing I've always

16:09

been really interested in is the

16:11

connection between walking and

16:13

thinking and creativity. I'd heard a little bit

16:15

of that story and just reading the

16:17

history of that book and and you

16:19

know, it it it does strike me as not being

16:22

surprising that those ideas come into

16:24

your mind while you're

16:25

a foot Yeah.

16:27

Well, walking is very fortuitous.

16:31

Being a foot is fortuitous. Yeah.

16:34

And it's funny because I've I just

16:36

finished in a second book of delight. Spent five

16:38

years, and I sort of was like, oh, I should do this every

16:40

five years and see what happens. and

16:44

so many of the delights

16:46

actually happen while

16:48

I'm on foot, you know. And I haven't been,

16:50

like, walking around a lot and less traveling, like, you

16:52

know, on airplanes. turning the right

16:54

into this. But I

16:57

do think there's something maybe

16:59

it's the body and motion, maybe it's

17:01

motion itself. that

17:04

does something for thinking. Sleeping

17:06

is also really important to

17:08

my creative process. Like, really

17:10

important. I I figure

17:12

more things out in dreams, then

17:14

I can even begin to enumerate.

17:18

And do you remember them long

17:20

enough to have them be meaningful? Oh, yeah. All the

17:22

time. All the time. Anyone who's

17:24

near me when I wake up, they're

17:26

like, get ready. I

17:30

find as I get older that I'm more and more

17:32

amazed by dreams that they just

17:34

it is this very strange

17:38

aspect of our experiences of being

17:40

human that we spend a certain

17:42

amount of time that can at some point

17:44

seem like years -- Yeah. -- depending on

17:46

the dream, every every

17:48

night in this crazy surrealist

17:50

space. And then we wake up and get a coffee

17:52

and read the paper and go to work and do all these

17:54

things that are structured in. but I

17:56

find that I can't talk about it

17:58

because no one wants to hear about anybody else's

17:59

dreams. Do you I do. I do.

18:02

Yes. You can call me. Yes. And I'll

18:04

notice it. Just so you know. I'm never

18:06

I'm never gonna tell you what they mean. I'm just gonna

18:08

listen. Well, I think

18:10

that's, you know, I think that's part of what we were

18:12

talking about originally about poetry that,

18:14

like, part of the point is that they don't have a

18:16

singular meaning. Right. Yeah. Totally.

18:18

Totally. It's like

18:20

it's funny because I try to I try

18:22

to approach poems like this, you know. And

18:24

I think that, like, one of the hazards of being a

18:26

teacher and a teacher of, like,

18:28

writing and stuff or art

18:30

is that, that a lot of our

18:32

inclination is to start

18:34

correcting quote unquote, you know --

18:36

Mhmm. -- correct critique. And

18:38

I tried to keep myself and

18:41

also the folks who I get to be in

18:43

classes

18:44

with trying our best

18:47

to just describe things. And dreams

18:49

I feel like are the same way. Like,

18:51

there's something just really useful,

18:55

beautiful, useful fun, weird

18:57

about just describing the dream. You

18:59

know? And even to hear someone say,

19:01

wait, like, you you

19:03

were walking backwards the whole time?

19:05

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was I was walking backwards all

19:07

the time. You know? And just and

19:10

then then the thing can avail itself

19:12

to you however it means to. And I don't

19:14

have to be like, well, clearly, you're going back in

19:16

time. And then This is where

19:18

like, no. That's this is your poll. And this is

19:20

actually

19:21

your poll.

19:30

So the

19:32

book

19:33

of the lights came out in

19:35

twenty nineteen. Yeah. And

19:37

since

19:38

then, some things

19:39

have happened. Yeah. Yeah.

19:41

Yeah. Then and I I I'm

19:43

curious just what, you know, having lived three

19:46

years where human

19:48

connection was so rare

19:51

and and difficult because of the

19:53

pandemic. And our

19:55

trips to castles in Italy

19:57

were curtailed. Yes. What

19:59

was your sense of people engaging with

20:01

this material in in the middle of

20:03

of COVID times? Did that did that have a special

20:05

resonance, do you think? They did, you know, a lot of

20:07

people thought that it came out,

20:09

you know,

20:11

after it did. Like, a lot it it arrived to

20:13

a lot of people in the midst of

20:16

of things made shut down and and this

20:18

kind of

20:20

Separation -- Yeah.

20:22

-- happened.

20:23

And so that was very interesting

20:25

to witness people respond into it. And

20:27

in a way, maybe being taken care of,

20:29

by this

20:32

book that's a practice of, like, attending to

20:34

what you love. And and to me,

20:36

what's interesting about the book is that there's

20:38

always, you know, like, I was sort of trying to

20:40

think about this. Like, maybe there's, like, eight eight

20:42

essays in the book, really sort

20:44

of free of something kind of

20:47

devastating waiting on the either in the middle of it or on the edges of

20:49

it. So it's a book to me, and

20:51

the practice is actually about attending to what

20:53

delights you in the midst of

20:55

You

20:56

know, everything.

20:57

Yeah. Everything else. Which is

20:59

always the case. Everything else is always

21:01

the case too. And, you know, it's funny because

21:03

sometimes I think people

21:06

understandably want why

21:09

just to be delighted. I just wanna be

21:11

delighted. Yeah. But but

21:13

that's actually not my I'm

21:15

glad for delay. I'm interested in it clip

21:17

seriously, but I'm actually more interested

21:19

in how we articulate what we love in

21:21

the midst of trouble.

21:22

Yeah. Have you found

21:23

a lot of people who have taken

21:25

up this practice

21:26

of writing their own books

21:28

of delay?

21:29

Yes. So sweeping innovation.

21:31

Sort of like that. It's any

21:33

of these things that you can kinda daily do and,

21:35

you know, I didn't know this when I was doing

21:37

it or when I started doing

21:40

it. but

21:40

I have found that, like, other people are

21:42

like, oh, yeah. I wanna it it's just like, oh, I'm

21:45

gonna do this too. Right? I kinda wanna do this.

21:47

Or, like, I'm having my class do this. You know,

21:49

someone just emailed me from this somewhere and they're like, yeah, this is

21:51

we're having the class to delights, you know,

21:53

for this month or something. And so good.

21:55

It's amazing. And then you see them, you know? And,

21:57

oh, the other thing that's like a lucky

21:59

thing. I actually have a

22:00

delight about this. Is

22:04

that the book is

22:08

the result of

22:10

being the beneficiary of

22:12

of all kinds

22:14

of delights. Many of those

22:16

delights being, like, people sharing stuff

22:18

with me. People giving me, like, a little tomato

22:20

plant to take on an airplane or, you

22:22

know, this kid giving me a high five at a

22:24

coffee you know, out of out of nowhere or

22:26

all these, it's the result of

22:28

sort of this kind of like again and

22:30

again, a certain kind of sharing. whether it's

22:32

the sharing of like humans, creatures, or like

22:35

birds, or or trees, or whatever. Those

22:37

things became this book. And

22:39

then people

22:40

will send me, like, these really beautiful little

22:42

things, you know -- Mhmm. -- that the book

22:44

made them think of or, you

22:46

know, they send me their own delights.

22:49

Yeah. I just get a lot of emails spam.

22:51

So so delightful. You know,

22:53

we have the poem. We were talking about the hummingbird and

22:55

you you mentioned you

22:57

know, gardens and nature and trees. That's something that

22:59

comes up again and again and

23:01

and this this connection between kind of

23:03

tending to to beauty and tending to

23:05

trees and and gardens. You're

23:07

a founding board member of the Bloomington

23:10

Community Orchard. I

23:12

There's a there's a famous study I can't remember where it

23:14

was from about people looking back

23:16

on their life

23:18

and describing where they found the most

23:20

I think it was happiness, not necessarily joy,

23:22

but, you know, one of the things that came

23:24

up is things that take long periods

23:26

of time of kind of cultivation.

23:30

that at the time sometimes aren't even

23:32

that fun. But -- Yeah. -- over time, you

23:34

really come to savor them and gardens were,

23:36

like, very high on that list. You know? Yeah. There's a lot of

23:38

drudgery, a lot of stuff you have to do with,

23:40

like, reflecting back on it,

23:42

it seems like one of life's great

23:44

pleasures. That seems like a a theme that

23:46

runs through a lot of your work. Is that right? For sure.

23:48

For sure. And also the

23:50

way that gardens to use your word are

23:52

actually they infect us to share.

23:54

they they command us in a way to share what

23:57

we have extra, share what we have more

23:59

of. You know, if you have a

23:59

anything going good, you have too much

24:02

of it. this Orchard

24:03

project is such a beautiful example

24:05

of that in part because we're

24:07

talking about the sharing. This

24:10

project Guardance

24:10

are always the case on a micro scale.

24:13

This Orchard project was the case on a

24:15

macro scale. It would never have come

24:17

into being without

24:19

all of this collaboration. And

24:21

there

24:21

were, like, literally thousands of people,

24:23

some of whose names I know, some

24:25

of whom I eat dinner with not

24:28

not, you know, frequently. Some of

24:30

whom I'll never meet because they just clicked

24:32

yes on, like, some kind of voting to get some

24:34

grant or something. but all of these people

24:36

contributed to build

24:38

this thing that was only an

24:40

idea. And the idea was

24:43

this little catchphrase that my friend, any countryman, had

24:45

free fruit for all. People were like, oh, that sounds

24:47

cool. That sounds cool. Let me chip

24:50

into that. And

24:50

so now there's an Orchard and, you

24:53

know,

24:53

the apple trees are doing pretty good. So if you

24:55

came to Bloomington, you could go in there. There's not a

24:57

lock on the gate. You could just go in there and

24:59

right around now those apples are coming on and just go have

25:01

a couple apples, you know, or or or,

25:03

you know, get yourself a bowl of apples.

25:07

Alright. I'm I'm getting on a plane right now. Thank

25:09

you so much. So

25:11

I wanna make sure we we turn to

25:14

your new book insighting

25:16

joy. Yeah. And

25:19

I I I'd love for you to read another passage

25:21

for us, which is from the

25:23

opening essay, which which is in

25:25

many ways about the kind of intertwined nature of

25:28

joy and sorrow. As you

25:30

sort of describe, sort

25:32

of explains one of the reasons why I'm writing the book, which was

25:35

I would not infrequently have

25:37

people wonder if Joyce serious,

25:41

if it's a serious subject

25:43

of inquiry. The way I think of joy

25:45

is I think of the luminousness that

25:49

comes be comes from us together when

25:51

we careful each other through our sorrows,

25:53

which we all have, different sorrows, but we

25:55

all sorrow. And It's

25:57

always relevant and perhaps more

25:59

relevant, the more acute our

25:59

sorrow is. It

26:01

strikes me as a particularly dangerous

26:04

fantasy. by

26:05

which I also mean it is sad, so

26:07

goddamn

26:07

sad, that because

26:09

we

26:09

often think of joy as meaning, quote,

26:12

without pain or quote

26:14

without sorrow, which

26:16

to reiterate,

26:17

our consumer

26:18

culture has us believing is a state

26:20

of being that we could buy.

26:22

Not only is

26:23

it sometimes considered unserious

26:26

or frivolous to talk about joy,

26:28

i e, but there's so much pain

26:30

in the world, But

26:32

this definition also suggests that someone

26:34

might be able to live without

26:37

or maybe a more accurate phrase is

26:39

free of heartbreak

26:40

or sorrow, which I'm pretty

26:42

sure you only get to do if

26:44

you have no relationships, love nothing,

26:46

or a sociopath, and maybe

26:48

if you're aligned. I don't know

26:50

about you, but I checked none of these boxes.

26:54

Where are your

26:57

associate path? You know, I

26:59

mean, I just as an aside, the

27:01

hearing you read both the poem and that passages, you

27:03

know, one of the things that's I think others have

27:05

remarked about your work that's so

27:07

great is the parentheticals and

27:09

the regressions. You know, you gotta be in the

27:11

middle of a sentence and then it goes on. It's like,

27:13

hold on. I will finish that thought I

27:15

need to take you on this little journey here for a while, then I'm gonna get back

27:17

to it. It reminds me of some of the things that

27:19

happen in the book of the lights itself in

27:21

the sense that you're like,

27:23

you're going to do something. You have

27:26

some job. You have to get to

27:28

the the parking lot to pick up your

27:30

car. But you stumble across something along

27:32

the way. Yeah. And that's where that little

27:34

moment of inspiration comes. It's it's

27:36

I think it's really elegant the way it's actually

27:38

in the syntax of the of

27:40

the poems the writing. Good. Yeah.

27:41

Yeah. I'm trying to always sort of

27:43

figure out how

27:45

syntactically, formally, etcetera,

27:49

I could

27:49

get closer to a reader in a way. You know? Like,

27:52

I wanna I'm trying I'm curious about the thing of,

27:54

like, you know, when you're in a good conversation,

27:56

you have to, like, test someone's

27:58

forum is be like, hang on. You

27:59

have to know this thing. Yeah. For the rest of

28:02

this isn't gonna make any sense. You

28:04

know? Yeah. To

28:06

the topic of of sorrow,

28:09

it's very powerful in in

28:11

the way the book is set up because you

28:13

have this opening meditation on the

28:16

relationship between joy and sorrow, and you have

28:18

this kind of imagined kind of

28:20

dinner party where everybody brings

28:22

their sorrows But then

28:27

it's followed by the opening essay. It's

28:29

about your father and

28:31

sick

28:31

and and ultimately dying, and it's just

28:33

an incredibly powerful essay.

28:35

As an

28:36

author, talking to another author, like, I've never written

28:39

anything that intimate Yeah.

28:42

And I I'm just

28:44

curious what that feels like when you go through

28:46

it. You know, it's like one of

28:48

these things. You know, when I when I write

28:50

about stuff, right about things and I'm curious about I just don't

28:52

under don't quite understand. And

28:54

in

28:55

a way, I wanted to sort

28:58

of, like, as I've been

29:00

trying to do, my dad died in two thousand four.

29:02

So it's like but

29:04

as as every time I'm with my

29:06

mother and we say,

29:07

seems like yesterday, you know, that

29:10

we were going through all this shit.

29:12

And

29:13

and I

29:16

I was sort of trying to sort of

29:19

both revisit actually what

29:21

happened, but also come

29:23

to better understand, like, what was

29:25

happening, you know, what was happening as

29:27

in the process of him dying, in

29:29

the process of me being with him, in

29:31

the process of me and my mother being

29:34

together and, you know, all of

29:36

these,

29:36

you know, the

29:37

things that happen when you're beloved,

29:40

whatever it dies over the course of five or

29:42

six months. You know? And and and in this case, like

29:44

my dad, we're super close

29:46

in a complicated way. Like,

29:49

you

29:49

know, we

29:51

we really had a kind of we had a

29:53

difficult time with each other. We

29:55

loved the shit out of each other, but we had a hard

29:57

time with each other. and my mother thinks

29:59

it because because we're alike, both

30:03

stubborn and, you know, opinionated

30:05

and everything. But who knows

30:07

what it was, but there was some incredible

30:11

bomb to the fact that in the

30:13

last five months of his

30:15

life, I was able to

30:17

move

30:18

it in

30:19

and just sort of without,

30:21

like, being, like, yeah, that was without

30:23

even talking about anything, just be hanging up

30:25

and just be driving him to his

30:27

radiation treatment or just be taking him to

30:30

whatever. Yeah.

30:32

Yeah. Well, before you

30:34

go, I thought it would be

30:36

appropriate for you to

30:38

just share your

30:40

latest delight? What is some, you know, kind of

30:42

moment of small joy from the last few

30:44

days for you? Can you give us

30:47

a description of what it

30:49

was like? So

30:49

it's funny because when

30:51

you said that I

30:54

quickly, like, started stacking

30:56

them. you're

30:58

a delight machine. I know. I know. And then

31:00

sometimes this actually stops me when I'm

31:03

like, but today,

31:05

I'm thinking, well, I was just on the

31:07

road at

31:09

a kind of independent book seller conference. The

31:11

fact that the independent bookstores let me just

31:13

say that. Delight. Right. and

31:15

to be around all of these people who are

31:17

just like in love with books and who

31:19

are like, that's what they care

31:22

about. you know, and so have these conversations

31:24

with people who are just like, you know,

31:26

they're baddy for books and and

31:28

I am too. So that was I

31:31

was there. had all of these beautiful conversations. When

31:33

I was walking through

31:34

the airport, and I'm just, like, making a point, like,

31:36

if I have layovers, I'm gonna, like, move around and, like,

31:38

stretch it, like, you know. Right. Right.

31:40

Take care of my head blesses. And

31:44

this kid, like, you know, young man, Malibu, he

31:46

was thirty. And he was looking all around. And I

31:48

saw that, oh, he had dropped his little headphones.

31:51

something. And

31:54

I just saw them and I didn't ask him.

31:56

I didn't know what he was doing. I picked him and I

31:58

hated to him. And he

31:59

smiled. I love his

32:02

smile and he was a leap and instead of, like, lapping at

32:04

himself because he realized he was, like, crawling on the

32:06

floor and looking for something and he's I was

32:08

never gonna find that. He was

32:10

he was, like, halfway through side too

32:12

of, you know, the wall, but

32:14

pretty much He's pretty needed to

32:16

finish it. had here to find out head. Yeah. He was in

32:18

stereo. He needed that that thing.

32:20

Yeah. So Well, I

32:22

mean, Ross, I think you're the only person who could fight

32:24

as much delight in an airport. But

32:26

that is is beautiful. And, you know,

32:28

thanks for bringing so much joy and delight

32:31

to the show. We've just loved having

32:33

you on. and really fun. Thank you so

32:35

much. Yeah. It's really fun, a good generous

32:37

conversation. I appreciate it.

32:39

That's

32:41

it for the show today. The TED interview

32:43

was part of the TED Audio Collective.

32:46

This episode was produced by our managing

32:48

producer, Wilson Sayer, and

32:50

mixed by Erica Wong.

32:52

Jimmy Gutierrez is our story

32:55

editor, fact checking by Kate Wilson.

32:57

Fera De Grange is our project manager,

32:59

and Daniel Donald is our executive

33:02

producer. Special thanks to

33:04

Constancia Gallardo, Michelle

33:06

Quinn on a Filan and

33:08

Ritu Jaginoff. I'm

33:10

your host, Steven Johnson.

33:12

For more info on my other projects,

33:14

including my latest book, extra life, which is about to come out

33:16

in a young reader edition. You can follow

33:18

me on Twitter at stephen b Johnson

33:20

or sign up for my sub

33:22

stack newsletter adjacent

33:25

possible.

33:30

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