← Fail Better with David Duchovny
Fail Better with David Duchovny
EXCLUSIVE PEEK: Reflections on Alec Baldwin, Kenya Barris, and more
00:42:34
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- [00:01]
Dylan Mulvaney
Hi, is this an okay time? It's your girl, Dylan Mulvaney, and I am inviting you to my weekly cocktail party and my brand new podcast, the Dylan Hour, brought to you by Lemonada Media. Life is stressful and there is so much darkness in the world. I think we could all use a little bit of trans joy. So join me every week as I interview some of my favorite A list, celebrity friends and gurus, and of course the dolls. While we sip and split, spill the scalding hot tea. So put your worries aside and join me at the Dylan Hour. You can listen on Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Love ya. Hey everybody, it's Hoda Kotb and I would love for you to join me for new episodes of my podcast, Making Space. Each week I'm having conversations with authors, actors, speakers and dear friends of mine. Folks who are seeking the truth, compassion and self discovery. I promise you will leave these talks stronger and inspired to make space in your own life for growth and change. To start listening, just search Making Space wherever you get your podcasts and follow for new episodes every Wednesday.
- [01:08]
David Duchovny
Lemonade. Hey guys, I wanted to share something with you. I have my first book of poetry coming out. It's called About Time or About Time. And it is about time. I mean, it's about time that I publish the book of poetry. It's probably the most personal or vulnerable writing that I've done. And anyway, it's available for pre order with a beautiful print by an artist friend of mine, Criti Citarakis, with a printed poem around the print. So if you pre order, you get this, you get this beautiful image with this poem kind of wrapped around it. And I'll read the poem to you right now, quickly. It's called Noba Daddy home. The hole in my heart is emptied out. He is gone for good. The one who left so long ago, whom I chased through women and success, lounging like a roman a clef above this restlessness, collecting attributes like dried leaves, phone calls, sugar covered memories. It's not the hole that hurts, but what you put in it, how you fill it. The grade school grammar of your loss. And what is left is a whiff of emptiness, past tense, italicized, as irrelevant as that old man on a plane back to gay Paris, as I too become, besides the point, to myself, free, doomed to start again, playing chicken with oncoming identities, learning lines, scratching lines to try to make sense of unmarked ground. I'm excited to share the whole enterprise with you. And I'm excited to get it out there and you can go to daviddecubny.com the pre order is available from Monday, April 7th. That's D A V I D D U C H o v n y.com hey failbetter listeners. We'll be back next week with a new interview. For this week, we're offering another peek behind the curtain to give you an idea of the kinds of things you'll hear in a Lemonada Premium episode. At the end of the interviews, we include a snippet of my thoughts about the conversation, but those are just snippets. My postmortems are much longer than that, and we publish the full versions exclusively for Lemonada Premium subscribers. Today we pulled a few for you to hear from some of my favorite interviews. First up, my afterthoughts on my conversation with Alec Baldwin. You'll hear me tell a story that I remembered hearing about Alec's approach to singing, which is not something you might associate with him. It makes a lot of sense to me as an actor, and I had fun thinking about this. After the interview, some thoughts about speaking with Alec Baldwin. I enjoyed getting to have a conversation with Alex so much. He's so smart and outspoken that I and also he's a guy who has had his own podcast for many, many years. So I kind of went in a little wary that he was going to try to, you know, interview me. And I ended up probably talking about myself more than I've done in any of the other podcasts, telling personal stories, which is interesting. But I don't think that was because of Alec kind of turning the tables on me. I think it was a matter of trust. You know, I'm asking often, I'm asking people who've done a lot of podcasts who've been interviewed a lot to try to address their lives and their sense of failure or whatever in a new way. That's not what I've called resting podcast face. You know, the versions, the podcast version or the public version of my narrative. Not my narrative, but the narrative of the relatively famous person. And I think that what happens to me is I find myself in this position of trying to get people to speak about things as if for the first time, when they are speaking about it for the hundredth time at least. I need to create a sense of trust, but I have to trust them as well. And part of earning their trust is me speaking about myself in a way, as if for the first time I try to do that. And I found myself with Alec probably doing that more because probably because He's a good interviewer as well as a, you know, interviewee. But there was. There were. There were things that I had wanted to ask him about that I didn't get to. We could have gone out another hour, probably. We ran out of time. But there was another podcast where Alec had talked about learning to sing, which is a subject that's near and dear to my heart because I learned how to sing allegedly late in life. And he was talking to Paul Anka, you know, on Paul's podcast. I'm not aware of what it's called, but that's how it came to me. And Alec was saying, you know, he was not confident in his singing voice. And this singing teacher said, sing such and such a song, you know, a very well known song like Happy Birthday or whatever, or the Saints Come Marching. And I can't remember what it was, but sing it in the. In the voice of Jimmy Durante. Sing it in the voice of someone else. And this teacher's supposition was that we are much more comfortable singing in someone else's voice if we are not used to singing. And I found that fascinating. And Alec said it was a successful pivot, you know, for him, a dodge, in a way. And he began to discover his own voice by singing through other voices. And Alex, a real talented mimic. And I started to think about that in terms of Alec and acting, you know, or myself and acting in that we find our own voices by trying on other voices. And I think that that's probably, you know, monkey see, monkey do. That's our nature as humans. We are the mimetic creature. We are the monkey see, monkey do creature. And life is all about trying on voices to try to find our own voice. I mean, as an actor, as a singer, it's literal. You're trying on other voices. But I don't think. I do think that it applies to all people in whatever they end up doing is we're trying to find our authentic voice, whether that's as a writer, as an actor, as a singer, as a lawyer, as a teacher, as anything. I've run out of occupations. But any occupation, just as a human being, that's how we find our authenticity, is by being inauthentic in many ways. And I think some people get caught in an imitation and they never get through to their own voice, or they get. And this is one of the heartaches that Alec was getting to, you know, where he. He speaks of his regret as being an actor and at one point said to me, you know, you could Be a good therapist. You could be a good this, good that, as if actor was not a legitimate choice for a man to choose as his lifelong profession. And I got the sense, you know, that he's searching for his authentic voice still, even though he's had outrageous success and a very, you know, kind of individual kind of actor in his own life. I wish I'd been able to bring that up, but, you know, we were so deep in other areas and kind of sparking off in all different directions that I don't. I don't regret it, you know, I just didn't get to it. Maybe we'll get a chance to do another one. I'm finding this more and more that when I first started doing this podcast, I would look at the clock, and I was like, oh, my God, only 30 minutes have gone by. I've got to do this for another 60 minutes, because we record about 90 minutes of talk for an hour of podcast, which is a pretty good percentage if you're using 60 of 90. But I used to be like, oh, my God, how can I talk for an hour and a half with this person for that person? And now I find myself glancing up at the clock, and I'm like, oh, I've only got 15 minutes left. Where did that 75 minutes go? And I think it's, you know, I think it's a good sign. I hope it's a good sign. And I'm much more comfortable in the process of that hour and a half now than I was in the beginning. It was almost like, oh, I got to keep this going. And now it's like, how do I end it? How do I stop it? You know, so that's all good. Certainly felt that way with Alec. One of the other things I wanted to talk to him about was, you know, he seems to be always on the cusp of wanting to be a public intellectual, which is a. It's like a job or a position we don't really have anymore. Maybe that's a function of, you know, not having a consensus culture anymore. We have a splintered kind of attention, but, you know, like a Dick Cavett, David Frost, Susan Sontag, Christopher Hitchens. That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure Carl Sagan, you know, would have been a public intellectual. So I see Alec is reaching for that, you know, a guy who's incredibly smart and incredibly curious, as we talked about in the beginning of his memoir. You know, I want to be a clock collector. I want to own a gallery. I want to be a teacher. I want to be a lawyer. You know, he's this kind of wonderful multi enthusiast and I, I, I feel a kinship to that and I wonder if there's a place for him or for me and or for me as a kind of roving, roaming curiosity and whether or not there's a a place for a person like that. Any foreign this episode is brought to you by Better Help. I know traditional therapy can be expensive. Sessions can cost anywhere from 100 to $250 each and that adds up fast. But if your definition of spring cleaning is cutting costs, don't let caring for your mental health take a hit. There's a better way with better help. BetterHelp online therapy can save you up to 50% per session by charging a flat fee for weekly sessions. And accessing it is convenient too since it's all online on your schedule. BetterHelp also has over 30,000 therapists to choose from, a perk of being the world's largest online therapy platform. Therapy is an excellent way to address and manage things like anxiety or job related stress. These don't have to be things you ignore and try to move on from. Give therapy a try. It's an affordable, actionable tool that really works. Your well being is worth it. Visit betterhelp.com failbetter to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp H-E-L-P.com failbetter Today's show is sponsored by Strawberry Me. I know the value of a good coach, whether that's someone who helps refine your acting skills or a personal trainer who gets you in shape. So what about a career coach? There are experts out there who can take a look at your professional life and help you figure out what's next. And Strawberry Me career coaching can connect you with just the right person to help you get there. Strawberry Me matches you with a certified career coach who works with you on a personalized, results driven plan. Their coaching exists to uncover your hidden strengths, gives you strategies to stand out and help you make real progress. 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- [15:20]
Dylan Mulvaney
Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted. If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn more@discover.com credit card based on the February 2024 Nelson Report.
- [16:05]
David Duchovny
Next Here are my thoughts after talking with Kenya Barris, who I enjoyed my time with even more than I expected. And my expectations were already pretty high. I talk about the distinct details I've grown to notice about Kenya's work and the perspectives he has that I really appreciate seeing. Plus, I talk about a scene that was cut from Kenya's movie. You people just some post talking to Kenya Barris. Thoughts on a rainy, thank God, Sunday afternoon. Been a rough couple weeks in the City of Angels. Everybody knows about that. I think I ended or I began the conversation with Kenya by saying how fond I am of him. And I keep on using that word when I think of Kenya, it's fond. And I wonder why I come back to that word. It's not a word that I use with a lot of people because I wouldn't say that I know Kenya well. You know, we worked on you people together, and I actually had a. Well, you know, I had a great time making you people. But ultimately there was a scene that was cut that I thought was kind of the rounding out of my character. And that was unfortunate because I felt like, you know, just from a really selfish personal point of view, I felt like that made the character make more sense. In the end, it doesn't matter. The character is not one of the pivotal characters in the movie. And it doesn't matter whether or not he seems like a 360 full rounded character. It's really just an actor's vanity, an artist's vanity on my part. And I don't blame Kenya at all. I don't blame anybody. I've cut scenes when I've been directing and editing stuff. And, you know, I'm sure it hurts the people who get cut. But, you know, you're servicing the overall product, the overall movie or show or whatever. So, you know, I don't take it personally. Why am I saying that? I think. Well, cause I, you know, there was like, no, you know, it didn't at all kind of mitigate my fondness for Kenya. And speaking to him again, I realize, or at least for me, my perspective on it is this, that the word fond comes to mind because, you know, Kenya's super Funny, right? I mean, his. His shit is funny. Blackish is super funny. Black, af funny talking with him. Funny, funny guy. Strictly his pov, like we talked about in the piece, in the talk. What is funny is something that's coming from a solid point of view, not whether or not the punchline is the perfect thing. It's about an original point of view. We spoke about Chappelle in that way. Kenya, I feel very different from Chappelle, obviously, but has a point of view that comes across. And if you come across his stuff, you hear it, you go bang. That's Kenya. And what informs that point of view is the heart of the man. And that's kind of where we got to. We were talking about, like, his love of babies, that everything he writes comes from a point of view of being a father. Now, that surprised me, but it made sense when I thought about it. Because that is where the fondness comes from. Because however biting his humor might be and however kind of tiptoeing on those, you know, power lines of, you know, race that he does of black and white, a blackish, whiteish black as fuck. There's always. And I'm not saying he doesn't cut, but his cuts are also informed by love, by this fatherly type of love. And that's where I'd put my estimation of Kenya and why he works so well for me. Why his point of view, why his art, why his humor works so well for me, and why I'm so fond. Why I'm so fucking fond of him. Because that's the person as well. That's not just his artistic stance. You know, when you talk to the man, you get that same thing. I didn't ask him one thing that I wanted to ask, like, vis a vis the show, which was, you know, do you think there's a difference between black failure and white failure? Mostly because I didn't. I don't like to speak to people of any race and turn them into a spokesperson or an ambassador of that race. Just as if I don't want to be treated like I'm speaking for all white people. Maybe I need some kind of massaging of my attitude towards that. But I get very kind of. I get a little queasy walking up to that line of saying, tell me, as a black man, is there a difference between black failure and white failure? Although I would have been interested to hear his answer from my perspective, limited as it is, I would assume, you know, white people are allowed to fail more often. You know, the safety net is a little higher. Just through privilege, just through the way the cards are stacked. However, show business failure and success is different, you know, because that's all about money really, usually. So there may not be as big a difference between white failure and black failure in show business. One other thing I wanted to read was a Kafka. I'm looking for it on my phone here, so I'm changing screenshots. Kafka is so timeless. Much the profit of failure, much like Beckett, not a failing better, but of just the human existence as a. As a failure, as one of one failure after another. Isn't this cheery on a Sunday, but he has Here's a parable called the Leopards in the Temple. It's very short, but it seems to me that it's very appropriate in this age of the second Trump presidency. I'm not going to shy away from expressing my disgust for Trump. But the Kafka, the parable goes like this. Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry. It keeps happening. In the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual. That's it. That's the peace. So that's what I'd like to leave everybody with this week. But you know, it may seem like, what the fuck does that have to do with anything? But think about it, think about it. In the end, it can be calculated in advance and it's incorporated into the ritual. I think it's something about how our rituals become co opted. Our democracy is becoming co opted by these leopards, these lawless beings that have broken into the temple and are drinking the wine. And I'm not a Pollyanna guy who ever believed that democracy was really working for all the people. And I know there's always been money in politics, but there's something different going on now. And it's important for these thefts of our wine not to be calculated in advance and not to be incorporated into the ritual. But as Kafka, who is a genius, knows and said long ago, that's how it goes. Did I mention I'm very fond of Kenya? Sometimes I find myself feeling nostalgic for the kinds of businesses I'd see in New York as a kid. The furniture makers who built their wares by hand. The bagels that were perfected over generations. The quality was unmatched. I happen to think that there are no shortcuts to a genuine product. But unfortunately, that sentiment has gone out the window over time. Today, it's rare to find brands or businesses who share my philosophy There are some though, including the Swedish clothing brand Ascut. Everything ASC it makes is intended to be around forever, and I really mean forever. Their products are painstakingly planned, evaluated and refined as it knows that every fabric, yarn and fiber should endure an age with dignity and they've established a comprehensive process to ensure that kind of top notch product. It's taken time, 10 years to be specific, and over those 10 years Ascott has built just one single permanent collection of 45 garments. Everything is built on purpose and with purpose and you can feel it. My Ascott long sleeve T shirt continues to fit and treat me just right. The fabric and the feel are great and so is the fit. They actually offer different lengths of some of their pieces so you can really find something that's perfect for you. No discounts ever. If you don't need anything, don't buy. If you're considering something, visit asket.com.
- [27:05]
Dylan Mulvaney
Hi, I'm Megan and I've got a new podcast I think you're going to love. It's called Confessions of a Female Founder, a show where I chat with female entrepreneurs and friends about the sleepless nights, the lessons learned, and the laser focus that got them to where they are today. And through it all, I'm building a business of my own and getting all sorts of practical advice along the way that I'm so excited to share with you. Confessions of a Female Founder premieres April 8th. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Emily Deschanel. And I'm Carla Gallo and we're here to bring you Boneheads, the official Bones Rewatch podcast. That's right, we're watching all the episodes of Bones, starting with episode one and we are the right people to do it. I play Dr. Temperance Bradon and I met Carla 16 years ago on set. I played Daisy Wick. Tune in every Wednesday to hear all our behind the scenes stories, conversations with cast and crew, and our favorite moments. Boneheads from Lemonada Media is out wherever you get your podcasts.
- [28:27]
David Duchovny
Last but not least, Jack Halberstam. My conversation with him was so expansive and frankly fun for me and I had a lot to say afterwards. Even though we spoke for nearly two hours, my perception of power really needed to be examined. After we talked about labor and rebellion and I tell a story about my mom and what it demonstrates about my family's fearful relationship with money that I think is relatable to a lot of people. Okay, these are some post Jack Halberstam thoughts. I mean, my mind is spinning after that. It was so Invigorating eye opening. Let me try to unpack what's going on. Jack's point of view. Questioning all the power structures that we are both born into and for the most part accept, certainly ones that I've accepted my entire life. You know, I've. I've had pride in feeling like a self made man, self made person. You know, I grew up with parents who did not have a bank account. I mean, they had a bank account, but, you know, there was nothing. There were no savings, we didn't own any real estate, renters. I was never hungry. I was never feeling like underprivileged. But the fact that I made a bunch of money in my life, it was a source of pride to me, the fact that I owned a home or two. So I came in kind of not questioning the setup, what you call the liberal capitalist setup now. In fact, that was the game I didn't mind playing in. It wasn't about making money for me ever. But I certainly didn't mind it, that it came along and it gave me a sense of security. Because my mother, having grown up in the depression in Scotland, had real fiscal insecurity her entire life. In fact, one of the most moving, saddest, profound things that happened towards the end of my mom's life, when she had dementia, she would get anxious, especially sundowning. People know what that is. It's a fairly well known term now, I think. But older people, when the sun is going down, they can get disoriented, especially if they have dementia in any form. It's a rough time of day when the sun goes down. And my mom was given by her caretaker a stack, a thick stack, I'd say like, you know, a good 5, 6 inch stack of hundred dollar bills. But they were fake, you know, they were good fakes, counterfeit hundred dollar bills, you know, thousands of dollars, tens, twenties, thousands of dollars in cash. And she would dump those bills in my mom's lap. You know, not all free, you know, they were held together by rubber bands, but she would dump them in her lap and my mother would just be calmed. Imagine that. She would be calmed by the big bucks. And that came from a very young part of my mom's brain, the part that was forever insecure about money. And that is a. It is a deep wound and a deep concern that affects many, many people all over the world. But I entered into a system of great wealth inequality and I came out on a winning side of that. And I had always thought that it was testament to my character and talent. And I was loathe to give up that self conception and I still am. I want to believe in that, that story about myself. But speaking to somebody like Jack and realizing that you must question the system. And if you enter into that system and become a winner and don't change the system, then you must question your own character. And all the questions about, you know, the little changes that we make, which are kind of strengthening the system, letting off steam rather than those moments in time. Jack and I talked about the fiscal crisis of 2008, Black Lives Matter, truly revolutionary moments where a big part of the system could have been eradicated. But no, we were afraid. Not really given the choice, you know, but just that notion of too big to fail. Right. Why, why do we say that if something is failing, should you not let it fail? Isn't that a judgment on whether or not it's a useful or a pragmatic system? This is where Jack's coming from. And it blows me away because it's not the way that I think, because I'm thinking from the inside, Jack is thinking from the outside. We both have perspective. I'm holding his in my head today as opposed to my own. The other thing that I admire about Jack is, you know, I began the conversation trying to mine the personal pain behind the career. You know, we see the direction of the career, we understand the substance of his philosophy, his critique of society. And of course, again, I come from the Freudian system of, well, there must be a childhood reason, you know, there must be childhood pain. And, and, and there is, and there was, and Jack was open enough and generous enough to talk about some of it. But I have to say that what impresses me, what impressed me in the conversation about Jack, was he puts social pain in a primary place well ahead of personal pain, his own personal pain, which is so rare, especially as I'm hosting podcasts about failure. You know, it is, it is. And I'm asking for the personal pain. You know, that's kind of the selling point. That's what we all tune in for, not all of us, but, you know, it is, it is a flavoring of failure is pain. And certainly Jack didn't shy away from mentioning what that might have been like for him growing up, where, when and how he did. But it's secondary in his mind to what he's made of his mind and his life and the critique of society and of movies, of culture that he has come to establish using. I hope he forgives me, you know, to use Elliot. Again, shoring these fragments against his ruins of Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari. Just a real courageous person in that sense. You know, I think in this culture, the one that is winning right now, we prize these stories of personal pain overcome. And what Jack is prizing is the knowledge and the wisdom from personal pain overcome. Not the kind of voyeuristic indulging in emotional pain of other people or the fact that just suffering is in and of itself a virtue. It might be, I don't know, but Jack turned that suffering into something majestic, I think. I know he doesn't like those words like heroic because they. Those are words of the white male system, but in my mind, somewhat heroic. What else have I been thinking about? You know, I haven't had discussions like that since graduate school. And as much as I bridled against that kind of conversation, that kind of meta deconstructionist conversation about Pixar films or dude, where's my car? That's the kind of thing that sent me screaming away from graduate school because I was like, well, I want to make the actual thing. I don't want to. I don't want to be the one that figures out why the actual thing is better than it thinks it is. For me, there was some kind of murder to dissect thing happening with works where, you know, you take these works of art and you'd. There was a literary theorist called Paul de Man who wrote a book called Blindness and Insight. And really it was about the blindness of the author towards the work or the maker towards the work. And the. There's what the maker thinks he or she is making and then there's what it is, and then the critic can actually go in and excavate what the maker is blind to. And that's really what was happening with the, with the movies that Jack was talking about. So it was kind of nostalgic in a weird way for me. But also I get a little. The hairs on the back of my neck stick up because I'm like, well, that's kind of what I was running away from. I wanted a more primary experience with making and less of a critical experience. Not denigrating what Jack is doing. It's brilliant, you know, and. And the way that he talks about those movies are. Are really fascinating and I think helpful. But for me, the fantasy was to be the maker and not the talker about her. Yeah, that sounds intelligent, the talker about her, but, you know, not the critic. But that might have been, again, applying Jack's, you Know, rigorous kind of honesty to myself, that might have been a, you know, heroic white male sense of, you know, the man in the arena, right, Teddy Roosevelt. Like one of the, er, one of the originals in terms of the white male patriarchy presidency. Anyway, you know, it's quoted over and over again, you know, the. The man in the arena, not the critic, not the person talking about the game is heroic, even if he or she fails in that arena. The glory is in the trying, not in the talking about. And that has fueled me in a way to leave graduate school, certainly back in the day, to act, to then write, you know, then to direct. It was always another arena for me to be in, as opposed to an arena to just talk about. Geez, see, it's heavy for me. I would recommend, if anybody's interested in anything, I'm saying it's possible there is no one interested. But to really dwell on this concept of failure as a style or failure as a good in and of itself because it interrogates the system. Because an intentional failure or something that would easily be doomed to failure within a flawed and myopic system is opening that system up. What Jack is looking for are cracks in the system where we can actually see. If I knew the Matrix better, I might say it was the Matrix. But I don't know that movie well enough. It just seems maybe. Yeah, it's in that area of. In a way, you know, taking punk or taking like ugly art, you know, exposes the, say ugly art, exposes the fantasy of beauty. Tries to return us to something more like the fear and the sublime and the shock. Punk too. Punk is not about the beauty of the music, it's about the shock. It's about throwing bricks at the system of pretty three and a half minute pop songs. And there's all these places to do that, certainly in art. And Jack calls upon us to take that into politics and take it into the world as well. And of course, you know, it's hard to imagine what that would look like. It's hard to imagine what a world without the systems that we have come to unconsciously validate, like family, like liberal capitalism, like Freudian psychology. What does it look like? What's the alternative? And to his credit, he's not giving. I mean, the word collective was used. That's the one that I remember. Collective. Above my pay grade, you know what I mean? It's hard to hold in my head. So that's. This is all what I'm thinking about today. It's a lot. I know. I hope this wasn't a headache to listen to. It's not a headache for me. Education. And again, I'll express my gratitude for having this podcast that I get to talk to people like Jack, and also gratitude to my old friend Barbara Browning from Yale Graduate School, who was the one who sent me Jack's book, the Queer Art of Failure, and set us on the road to. To having that conversation that we had yesterday. So Barbara Browning is a lifelong friend, brilliant writer and professor in her own right. Just want to give her a shout out. She won't do my podcast. She doesn't do podcasts. She doesn't like podcasts. I think that's what she said, and that makes me love her even more. One other thing about learning guitar at the age of 50, I, as I said, I was going through a divorce. My kids were in school, grade school, and, you know, we're always preaching at kids to try things, try new things. And as my discussion with Jack Halberstam went, you know, there was, you know, in those kids movies that. That he is deconstructing. Kids fail. That's what kids do. They have no mastery. Kids are failures at everything because they're. They're new, they're beginners. We had that discussion with Jack, and I guess I had intuited that at some point. I mean, it was before I would have put it that way, but I wanted them to see me suck at something and not give up or not get frustrated or not feel like it had to be used, sold, brought to market, that it could be just for me. I mean, I fucked that up by making music and then going touring. So that lesson was kind of incomplete. But the idea that I was never going to be good, but that was going to be okay because I was going to enjoy it. It was going to be something I was doing interior directed and not exterior directed. And also skiing was something because, you know, we took a couple skiing vacations. I never skied. And so I was like, okay, my kids want to learn how to ski, so I'm going to learn with them or try and ski with them, and they're going to see me suck at that. They're going to be better than their dad at that. And this is all going to be healthy if I don't kill myself, you know, if I don't have a catastrophic yard sale accident. So those were two things that happened around the time of my divorce with respect to how I wanted to appear in front of my kids or deal with my kids or a role model, I guess you know, we think of parents as role models and we foist that on them. But in this case, the role model was of a failing individual, of somebody who is just a hobbyist, somebody who's just trying, just trying, trying to play guitar, trying to ski. Isn't that funny that dad, who's supposed to be the master of things, is terrible at these things. And he's still trying. And he's not giving up. Not to say that giving up is a bad thing sometimes, because we get through that in this podcast as well. So it's a fine line we're coming up to again and again. But that was this is kind of an addendum to the Jack Halberstam discussion. That's all for now. We'll see you next week with a brand new interview. Take care. There's more Fail Better with Lemonada Premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like more of my behind the scenes thoughts on this episode. Subscribe now and Apple Podcasts. Fail Better is production of Lemonada Media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Keegan Zema, Aria Brachi and Donnie Matias. Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Our VP of of new content is Rachel Neal. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Kupinski and Brad Davidson. The show is executive produced by Stephanie Whittles Wax, Jessica Cordova Kramer and me, David Duchovny. The music is also by me and my band, the lovely Colin Lee, Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis Rowan, and Sebastian Modak. You can find us online at Lemonada Media and you can find me at David Duchovny. Follow Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts or listen. Ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership.
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Dylan Mulvaney
Guess what? Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. You heard right, 99%. If you don't think so, maybe it's time to face facts you're stuck in the past. Based on the February 2024 Nielsen report. Learn more at discover.com credit card hey there. I'm Chris Guillabo. I'm an author of books including Time anxiety and the $100 startup, and I'm also the host of side Hustle School, a daily podcast that's been running for more than 2,900 days and counting, with real stories of people creating new sources of income without going into debt and without quitting their job. Each episode is short, actionable, and designed to get you started today. Whether you have an idea or you're just looking for inspiration so if you're ready to create financial freedom and build something for yourself, or even if you're just curious, hit, follow or subscribe wherever you listen. New episodes every day.