Remembering to Forget with Lewis Hyde

Summary

Fail Better with David Duchovny: Episode Summary - "Remembering to Forget with Lewis Hyde"

Release Date: May 13, 2025

In this compelling episode of Fail Better, host David Duchovny engages in an enlightening conversation with esteemed writer, poet, and cultural critic Lewis Hyde. Exploring the intricate themes of memory, forgetting, and failure, the duo delves deep into how these concepts shape personal identity and societal narratives. Below is a comprehensive summary capturing the essence of their dialogue, enriched with notable quotes and timestamps for reference.

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Introduction and Background

David Duchovny introduces the episode by presenting Lewis Hyde, highlighting his accolades, including the MacArthur Genius Grant and his tenure as the Director of Undergraduate Creative Writing at Harvard University. Duchovny sets the stage by referencing Hyde's influential works, particularly The Gift and Primer for Forgetting, framing the conversation around the nuanced interplay between memory and forgetting.

"[Lewis Hyde] is a writer, poet, and cultural critic whose work focuses on the nature of imagination." (01:18)

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Lewis Hyde’s Journey: From Science to Creative Arts

Hyde recounts his early fascination with science, influenced by his physicist father, and his eventual pivot to the literary arts. He shares personal anecdotes about academic struggles, including receiving a D in chemistry, which signified a turning point away from a scientific path.

"Sometimes a failure is a sign that this is not the path you should be on." (12:22)

Hyde emphasizes that recognizing one's strengths and limitations in various fields is crucial for personal growth and finding one's true calling.

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The Essence of Forgetting: Cultural and Personal Dimensions

Hyde elaborates on the central theme of his book, describing forgetting as a deliberate and beneficial process. He categorizes instances where forgetting surpasses memory across four domains: mythology, personal psychology, collectives (nations and communities), and spiritual life.

"There’s flexibility because the past does not constantly stay with you." (04:46)

Drawing from Buddhist philosophy, specifically Dogen Zenji, Hyde explains that studying the self ultimately leads to forgetting the self, thereby allowing individuals to reconnect with the world more authentically.

"If you forget the self, then things begin to happen differently." (06:03)

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Memory, Trauma, and National Wounds

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on how nations deal with collective traumas and historical injustices. Hyde outlines a sequential approach to healing and forgetting national wounds:

1. Know the Truth: Understanding the factual history is paramount.
2. Justice and Recompense: Punishing wrongdoing and making amends.
3. Apology and Proper Burial: Offering sincere apologies and correctly honoring those harmed.

"You cannot forget anything that was not first in mind." (26:02)

Duchovny reflects on America's ongoing struggles with historical reconciliation, referencing the debates over statues and national narratives, and underscores the importance of acknowledging past injustices to move forward.

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Literary Influences and the Creative Process

The conversation shifts to Hyde's literary inspirations and his unique writing style, which blends personal anecdotes, philosophy, mythology, and dreams—reminiscent of writers like Jung, Freud, and T.S. Eliot. Hyde discusses his initial ambition to be a poet and how this influenced his prose work in The Gift.

"Poetry is the medium that can also range from dreams to history to psychology to ideas." (10:23)

Duchovny shares his admiration for Hyde’s ability to weave complex ideas seamlessly, likening it to the associative nature of the mind.

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Appropriation, Power, and Creativity

Addressing contemporary issues of cultural appropriation, Hyde emphasizes the importance of crediting sources and being mindful of power dynamics in creative endeavors. He advocates for diversity, equality, and inclusion to ensure respectful and meaningful exchanges of cultural elements.

"If yours is a culture that has been dominated by other people, it really feels different if those people take your things." (45:43)

This segment underscores the ethical responsibilities artists bear in honoring the origins of the ideas and traditions they draw from.

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Visions for Moving Forward: Spirituality and Community

In concluding the discussion, Hyde offers an optimistic vision for personal and collective healing. He highlights the role of spiritual practices in thinning the ego and fostering a sense of community. Hyde argues that establishing a strong, loving self is foundational before one can engage in the broader work of forgetting and connecting with others.

"People growing up, young people, they need to have a self. They need to be loved and have people be curious about their talents." (48:39)

Duchovny reflects on the challenges of overcoming personal and societal wounds without anchoring one's identity solely in them, advocating for a balanced approach to memory and forgetting.

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Closing Thoughts

David Duchovny wraps up the episode by expressing his admiration for Hyde's nuanced thinking and the depth of his literary and philosophical contributions. He acknowledges the complexity of bridging academic ideas with mainstream discussions and reinforces the podcast's mission to explore failure and growth in an accessible manner.

"I want these notions to be part of everyday conversation." (52:56)

The episode culminates with Duchovny encouraging listeners to engage with Hyde’s works to fully grasp the profound insights shared during their conversation.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Lewis Hyde on Forgetting: "There’s flexibility because the past does not constantly stay with you." (04:46)

• Hyde on Self and World: "If you forget the self, then things begin to happen differently." (06:03)

• On National Memory: "You cannot forget anything that was not first in mind." (26:02)

• Hyde on Poetry and Prose: "Poetry is the medium that can also range from dreams to history to psychology to ideas." (10:23)

• On Cultural Appropriation: "If yours is a culture that has been dominated by other people, it really feels different if those people take your things." (45:43)

• Hyde on Community and Self: "People growing up, young people, they need to have a self. They need to be loved and have people be curious about their talents." (48:39)

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Conclusion

This episode of Fail Better offers a profound exploration of the delicate balance between remembering and forgetting, both on personal and societal levels. Through Lewis Hyde's insightful perspectives and David Duchovny's thoughtful inquiry, listeners gain a deeper understanding of how embracing failure and selectively forgetting can lead to personal growth and collective healing. The conversation underscores the importance of acknowledging and addressing past wounds to pave the way for a more resilient and empathetic future.

For those intrigued by the interplay of memory, creativity, and failure, this episode serves as an invaluable resource, inviting listeners to reflect on their own experiences and societal narratives.

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Produced by Lemonada Media in coordination with King Baby. For more episodes and exclusive content, subscribe to Lemonada Premium at lemonadapremium.com.

Transcript

[Megan]

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 is out now. Listen wherever you get your podcast. Other People's Problems was the first podcast to take you inside real life therapy sessions. I'm Dr. Hilary McBride, and again, we're doing something new.

[Lewis Hyde]

The ketamine really broke down a lot of my barriers.

[Megan]

This work has this sort of immediate transformational effect. Therapy using psychedelics is the new frontier in mental health. Come along for the trip. Other People's Problems, Season 5, available now.

[Lewis Hyde]

Lemonade.

[David Duchovny]

I'm David Duchovny, and this is Fail Better, A show where failure, not success, shows, shapes who we are. Lewis Hyde is a writer, poet, and cultural critic whose work focuses on the nature of imagination. He's received the MacArthur Genius Grant and is the former Director of Undergraduate Creative Writing at Harvard University. He's also the author of several books, including the Gift, which is considered a modern classic about how art is a gift, not a commodity. I read it years ago and I still think about it today. It's one of those books that keeps on giving. Ironically, it's called the Gift. And of course, I had to remember to also talk to him about Primer for Forgetting, another one of his books where he explores the ways that forgetting can be more useful than remembering, which, of course, dovetails beautifully into any discussion of failure and how much we can remember, should remember a failure, and how much to forget. Lewis taught me a lot about what it means to truly value your humanity as an artist in a capitalist society or humanity in general in a capitalist society. And it feels more relevant now than ever. Here's our conversation. Hello. Hello, Louis. May I call you Louis?

[Lewis Hyde]

Yes. May I call you David?

[David Duchovny]

Please do. Please do. It's nice to meet you. Thank you for speaking to me and thank you for taking the time this morning.

[Lewis Hyde]

We both have microphones in front of our faces, but here I am.

[David Duchovny]

Here I am. Yeah, it's the modern world. What can I say? In the future, people will be born with microphones already on their faces. We can only guess. You know, I find your writing so. It's so inspiring to me because the way you look at inspiration or creativity, intellectual property, all that stuff, forgetting, forgiveness. I want to try and cover as much as I can. I. I'm going to say that I'm going to try to talk to you this morning in the way that you write, which is ranging over different fields, different concepts.

[Lewis Hyde]

All right, grab.

[David Duchovny]

Grabbing things from the air when I can, not knowing what's mine and what's yours, you know, but I. I would start with. You speak of both personal and social wounds and the need to selectively remember. The need to remember, the need to forget. And it's fascinating to me because as I've dwelt upon just in this podcast or whatever in my life, the concept of wounds and failure, failure as a wound, failure as a subject where we learn. How much can we learn before we move on? Do we always have to keep it in mind, or is that keeping us in the past? All these questions that you touched on, on in this book, and you call it a primer, which I think is kind of a how to, isn't it?

[Lewis Hyde]

Yeah.

[David Duchovny]

And that's. That's what. That's what I'm looking for. It's like I'm trying to talk to people about, well, how do we get beyond wounds? How do we not let our wounds identify us? But how do we. How does it become part of what we are and not all of what we are? Yeah, yeah, take it away.

[Lewis Hyde]

The book to describe it briefly is anecdotal. I just collected examples of places where forgetfulness is more useful than memory. A key one at the beginning, when I began that project, was reading about oral cultures, which the writer said, just slough off the past. When it's no longer useful, just let it go. And so this imagines a kind of culture in which there's flexibility because the past does not constantly stay with you. But anyway, I collected things for a long, long time, and then I put them into categories. And the first one is mythology, and the second is personal psychology, the self. And the third is collectives, the nation, communities that have suffered. And the last one is about spiritual life and creative life. And maybe I'll just say one thing that's key to the book. There's a Buddhist master named Dogen, Dogen Zenji, who has a wonderful dharma talk, one line of which is, to study the Buddha way is to study the self, and to study the self is to forget the self. And if you forget the self, then things begin to happen differently.

[David Duchovny]

Well, as you say at one point, also, once you forget the self, the world Becomes interesting again.

[Lewis Hyde]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Duchovny]

Can you explain what that means to you? I think I know what it means to me, but I'd like to hear.

[Lewis Hyde]

What it means to you. Well, so first we should say, I mean, I like the sequence in Dogen, that you have to study the self to forget the self. That is to say, there's some kind of practice or work to be done that precedes this forgetting. And in that context, what you're doing is just noticing how your mind works and the degree to which your obsessions and your greed, your fear, your delusions, everything inhibit your contact with the world. And so you look at those over and over again until they become familiar enough that they no longer happen reflexively, that you're a little bit more in charge of your own mind, or your mind is not so cluttered with all your inheritance. So then the promise is simply that if you were not so self involved, you would begin to see the world.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. It goes back as well to the Gift for me, your previous book, one of your previous books, where, I mean, you think of the artist's self a way that you described your own writing was a process, or the actual outcome was. One thing I've always liked to read is the kind of literature you find in Jung and Freud, which combines personal anecdote, philosophy, mythology, dreams. I like the way it jumps from one discursive realm to another. And I was immediately put in mind of a poem like the Wasteland, which kind of, you know, I've shored these fragments against my ruins. You know, that idea of having a lifetime of education and of self education, as you've had. And then you let it sit for quite a while before you started to write. You let it kind of go into this process of psychic sedimentation. I wonder if you were aware that that's what you were doing, if you had seen yourself as a fiction writer or as any other kind of writer before you found this style of thinking and of writing, which is. How would you describe it? You describe it there in that quote. But how did you come upon that as your signature?

[Lewis Hyde]

Well, I suppose you follow what actually attracts you. I've been reading a journal I kept during the year when I first started writing, the Gift. And so that's a book, that's a prose book about a complicated idea. But what strikes me in my journal is that I was. I was mad to be a poet. I didn't think I was a prose writer. And I was reading other poets. I was reading Rilke and Neruda and John Berryman. And people I knew like Robert Bly. And my journals are full of my doubts about am I a poet? I have to keep working. And what surprises me is how little is in there about what I was actually doing, which was beginning to write the Gift. So there's one entry in which I'm sort of self conscious thinking, you know, I, maybe I'm more of a prose writer than a poet now. Actually, the connection to your question, I think, is that poetry is the medium that can also do the thing you described, which is range from dreams to history to psychology to ideas. And nobody's surprised by that in poetry, and we shouldn't be surprised in prose, but so much prose is dedicated to a single topic and working it out as a clear argument. I mean, my question is, why don't other people write the way? I mean, to my mind, it's how the mind works is associatively so.

[David Duchovny]

It's kind of a false distinction that I'm going for. Why even have to describe it as nonfiction or nonfiction novel or book length meditation or essay? I mean, what would we gain by classifying it? Probably nothing at all. Right.

[Lewis Hyde]

Well, the booksellers have to put something on the shelf where to put it on the shelf, and the libraries have to assign it a Library of Congress number. So. And the academy, I mean, I had teaching jobs for a long time, but being a creative writer was sort of the submarine way of getting into the academy because you didn't necessarily have to have a PhD, but it was the place where you could write in the way I did without a developed discipline.

[David Duchovny]

Well, what I hear from you in speaking of that time and of that journal is the original ambition. And I'd like to make this a two part question in a way because I know that you come from a family of scientists and you kind of marked your own road in the creative arts. So you kind of, I guess I'm asking, in that first swerve for you, away from the family, you know, away from the sciences, was there a sense of failure? And was there also a sense of failure? Because that's kind of what this podcast dwells on. Was there also a sense of failure, of you're mad to be a poet in your words, but I'm not going to be writing poetry, at least the kind of poetry that I enjoy reading.

[Lewis Hyde]

So failure, Yes. I mean, first of all, I, I loved science as a kid. I, my father was a physicist and was a good teacher. So I learned a lot and I had, you know, I collected rocks and minerals And I collected butterflies and.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah.

[Lewis Hyde]

And so forth. So I was not antagonistic to it. And when I went to college, I thought I would continue in some sort of scientific pursuit. And this is noted in the book about forgetfulness, because at the end of freshman year, I got a D in chemistry. And also there was one. Maybe it's the same class. I slept through an exam, and the professor let me take it again. But. So I think actually some of these things are not matters of choice. And so sometimes a failure is a sign that this is not the path you should be on. I actually looked. I think maybe it's in the gift. There's a story about George Bernard Shaw, who, when he was 20 years old, he had a job in business, and he thought he would fail at it because he was such an imposter. And. But in fact, he succeeded. And people thought he would be a wonderful businessman, but he had to then quit, because sometimes success in the wrong field is as much of a problem as failure in the wrong field.

[David Duchovny]

Yes.

[Lewis Hyde]

So, anyway, the point is that we have talents in some areas and not in others. And you find out where they are by practice, by going into the world and seeing what you can do and what you can't do.

[David Duchovny]

Can you tell me who your models were, both in that time at school and also your literary models, Your mentors? Your literary mentors, I would say. I mean, I would say Whitman especially. I would say Thoreau. I would say Emerson, although you're a little antagonistic with Emerson, which I do enjoy, because Emerson is kind of held up as the American essayists. And I like that you kind of undercut them from time to time. And if you could speak on your mentors, both in the flesh and in the history of literature.

[Lewis Hyde]

Well, you've named a lot of them. I mean, at the time in Minnesota, there were two or three poets in the state. At the University of Minnesota, there was a man named Alan Tate, who is known as one of the Southern agrarians. And there was John Berryman, and nearby was Robert Bly. And Bly did not teach, and he lived on his family farm in western Minnesota. And I suppose in some way. So I took classes from Berryman, and it was inspiring.

[David Duchovny]

But he was, how envious I am of you at this moment, because Berryman was actually my first favorite poet. I wrote an essay on him when I was 12.

[Lewis Hyde]

Oh, wow.

[David Duchovny]

And then. And I started to write first person, you know, narrative Berryman poems. And I could. You'll. You'll see me. I'm not. I'm not looking at anything right now, but it's still in my mind. I can say Huffy Henry hid the day unappeasable. Henry sulked. I see his point to try to put things over, but he should have come out and talked.

[Lewis Hyde]

Yeah, very good. Yes. Huffy Henry hid the day. I remember that one well. Yeah. So you know, the difference between your experience and mine is Berryman was an active alcoholic. And so I got to, you know, the self presentation was distinct from the poetry and it threw in doubt some of the poetry for me. You know, I was looking for life models. I wasn't just looking for people who would teach me how to write a line. You know, I wanted to grow up and he was a suffering person. And beyond that, I can't say more. You know, this was, I won't tell you how many years ago. So the gods of forgetfulness have happily intervened.

[David Duchovny]

That's right.

[Lewis Hyde]

Just to say briefly about Robert Bly. I mean, Blythe had chosen not to enter the academy and he was a lively and complicated man. And it just seemed, it was more interesting to hang out with Robert than with other people at the time. So I found him a useful mentor.

[David Duchovny]

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[Lewis Hyde]

Yes The Furies in Greek mythology.

[David Duchovny]

Can you describe that? Because the metamorphosis of the Furies into the Eumenides. Yeah, yeah, I think that would be very instructive just to. Just to outline that.

[Lewis Hyde]

So the Furies are mythological creatures who embody unforgettable revenge and hatred and anger and wounds are hard to forget. And if somebody insults you, your reflexive anger is hard to dispose of. And if grief is involved, a mixture of grief and anger, somebody kills your best friend. These are persistent emotional states. And the Furies are the embodiment, you know, the mythological embodiment of them. And the Eumenides are goddesses of more. Of peace and prosperity. And so there is a fable then, that resentment can be worked with in a way that disposes of it so that it's not passed from generation to generation. I should say, when I get to this section of the book about nations, the problem of how a nation that's had these kind of conflicts lays them aside. I use a couple of examples. One of them is about a massacre in the 19th century of native Americans by United States troops. Another, of course, is the Civil War. Another is South African apartheid. Another is the Spanish Civil War. And I decided that to study the nation, to forget it in these cases requires. The study has several parts. And the first is to know the truth. So often that turns out to be almost impossible. In Spain, they're still arguing over whether Franco was a good thing or a bad thing. But to know the truth. The second thing is to get some justice. So the people who did bad things should be punished. Then another part might be recompense. If the people who were damaged lost their livelihoods or homes, they should be made whole again. Another thing might be apology. Another thing I think of, I call it proper burial. That is, the people who are wounded or killed should be laid to rest properly at the very end. After apology, you might find forgiveness, though I don't think forgiveness is required for this sort of forgetting anyway. There's a bunch of work to do, and you could take any one of these cases and say, has the work been done? Are we ready to forget this past? And then you go case by case.

[David Duchovny]

There's so much in that I dwell often on. Well, we all do in this country what to do with the many crimes that have been committed in the government's name or in our country's names. And it's not for us to decide when the recompense has been made, but there has to be some kind of gesture in that area, and it Just seems like we go in fits and starts as a culture. Right now we seem to be contracting backwards, having expanded a little bit, you know, in the previous 10 years to some kind of historical reparation, at least in the way we tell the story of our country, if not financial reparation or anything like that. We see it in the tearing down of statues, the re. Erecting of statues. There's exactly what you're saying is going on in this country about what is the history that we are going to remember and what is the history we're going to forget.

[Lewis Hyde]

Yeah, I mean, one of my aphorisms is you cannot forget anything that was not first in mind. That is to say, if you want to forget what happened under Jim Crow, you have to know what happened under Jim Crow first. And so, yeah, the teaching of history in this country, the teaching of history is still contested. People will not agree on the story. And so you can't move to any of the next steps. So we are often stuck in the very first of this sequence I mentioned, which is trying to figure out what the truth is, or we know what the truth is, but trying to understand it collectively.

[David Duchovny]

And what do you say to those that will say, well, it's not, you know, our generation did nothing. You know, we were born innocent like every child. You know, like, why is this our responsibility?

[Lewis Hyde]

You know, my grandparents were both solid middle class, lived in suburban Minneapolis, and I only recently found out that the area of Minneapolis they lived in was zoned such that no blacks or Jews would live there. So my grandparents, you know, had a comfortable middle class life and were able to raise their children that way. My father went to an east coast college and so forth. You know, small amounts of money were useful along the way. You know, I have had a lot of success in my life, but I have to understand the degree to which my successes came with were partly available to me because of a kind of privilege. So if you think you were born innocent, you haven't really studied your roots. You haven't, you know, you can't bully somebody into thinking this through. But that would have to be. The work is, you know, how did your family get its wealth? Why did you know, Another simple example, My family was middle class, but we always lived in cities where there was, where the tax base could support good public schools. And so, you know, to say, well, I went to a private school and I got good grades, I, I'm innocent, you know, it's just, you know, it's naive.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. And did, did you have those discussions with your students, Was that part of, of what you tried to instill in them? For was this, was this a consciousness that was arising in you probably since the beginning of the Vietnam War? Is that how you see the genesis of it?

[Lewis Hyde]

So, yeah, I'm a child of the 60s, I should say, first of all, in my own classrooms. It depends on what I'm teaching. But, you know, I was not teaching my own politics. So, you know, I was available for other. For discussions elsewhere, but my own. You're making me think. When I was in high school, we lived on a block where about five doors down was the Quaker meeting house. And it turned out the American Friends Service Committee had a youth program. And that youth program drew from all over the city. There were some black kids, mostly Quakers and, you know, Unitarians and so forth. But it was a group that was already interested in racial justice and concerned about militarism. So by the time I got to college, that was part of my own interests. As for how I. It just seemed obvious why wasn't everybody not thinking about these things?

[David Duchovny]

Right, right. This is a very broad kind of present day question. But for me, and I mentioned them earlier, the four touchstones of American literature would be Whitman, Thoreau, left out Melville, and just his confidence man. And I wonder if you see Trump. We're so hot to kind of see things anew, we lose track of the fact that so much of what we see are echoes of the past. You know, and I wonder if you see Trump in not an American aberration, but actually an American type.

[Lewis Hyde]

You know, there's a wonderful definition of a confidence man that it's not necessarily somebody who's trying to cheat you out of your money or something. It's simply somebody who's in the business of creating belief. So you could say that Ralph Waldo Emerson was a confidence man in the good sense that Americans, you know, needed a set of ideas of how to be American. And he was helpful, you know, laying out a program you could believe in.

[David Duchovny]

Well, in many ways, Emerson's program would have been to get out from under the weight of European influence and history, you know, that we are new, that we can make ourselves. I mean, that is the American ideal, right?

[Lewis Hyde]

Yeah, yeah. And a kind of, you know, almost in the invention of American individualism. So but to go back to this definition, somebody in the business of creating belief. So then the question becomes, why do you believe this story? And if you have been the victim of a confidence game, at the end of it, you have to ask yourself, how could you get tricked. Why did you believe the story? So that's the question that in a way that we have to ask about somebody like Trump. He has a story to tell and people believe it. And also, your podcast is about failing and Failing Better. This is a man who is unable to accept failure. And most of us have learned that our failures are where we learn about ourselves. You know, in my younger life, every time a love affair failed, I got to learn something about, of course.

[David Duchovny]

But that is not. That's not the story of America that we tell ourselves or that we were raised with. We were raised with this victorious notion and that failure is not an option. I see it in sports today when they interview somebody and he'll say, no, failure is not an option. I'm like, yeah, it's like 50% an option.

[Lewis Hyde]

I'll say, well, also, it may be appropriate in sports. But I mean, this, you know, the idea of American exceptionalism would not survive an actual reading of our history. So, I mean, the wonderful. You know, the thing about America is we have these ideals and we never reach them. And so we can constantly say, well, we're not there yet, so we're still being America because we can see the future. But the ideals are important. And then it's important to notice when you fail to reach your ideal. And if you don't notice, you're not going to learn from the thing that kept you from getting there.

[David Duchovny]

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[Unknown]

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[David Duchovny]

Is it fair to say that it's that your reading, all your all your reading, all your education has been a gift that you then ponder? Because when I've thought of, you know, creativity in my own life and, you know, it's clear to me that it comes from other people's gifts. You know, it's clear to me that the times when I've been most creative, there was very little ego involved. It just kind of came through me. But it wasn't just me coming through. It was everything I've seen, heard and listened to.

[Lewis Hyde]

Yeah, I mean, in a way, you know, in a sense Nothing in the gift is original. It's stuff you can find in the sources I found. I mean, one of my own aphorisms. I have no ideas except in the presence of other ideas. So, yeah, I mean, I don't dwell on them as gifts, but in fact, it's a great pleasure to. You know, there's some wonderful libraries. There's a library two houses down from my house in Cambridge. Or I can ask for a book, and a couple days later it's on the shelf for me. It's amazing. Or you can buy a book for, like, $20. You could hardly get a meal for that. So, you know, what a privilege to swim in a sea of these inherited riches.

[David Duchovny]

It reminds me of. I think, again, you might have mentioned it. I think you're a big Dylan fan, a big Bob Dylan fan. But there was a. I was struck by it, or you may have mentioned it, but I was struck by it in the Scorsese documentary where he asked him, you know, where did you wrote these 50 fundamental songs in the span of three or four years? Where. Where did that come from? And Dylan basically says, I don't know. But I. I can't do that anymore. I'm. I'm never going to do that again. And to hear such a great artist talk about the ephemeral nature of the gift, too, as well, and that. I wonder if you've. If you think about that, do you think the gifts change as you grow older? Are you opening yourself up to a different kind of gift at this point? Are you receptive to a different kind of gift than you were as a young man?

[Lewis Hyde]

I don't know, really. I mean, I guess, in a way, my process that I developed when writing that first book, the gift, is the same process I have now. My focus changes, and you never know quite why. I mean, I don't know why forgetting became fascinating to me. I'm right now trying to write. When I was a kid, I used to collect butterflies and.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah.

[Lewis Hyde]

And even as an adult, I go out looking for butterflies, I don't collect anymore. And there's something fascinating. You know, it's my entry into the natural world.

[David Duchovny]

I love the way you described it in the article because you said just going out with a net is like reading with a pen in my hand. You know, going out with a net into nature. I'm paraphrasing you. You become aware of all that is butterfly, but also all that is not butterfly.

[Lewis Hyde]

Yeah, It's a kind of. If you're looking for something in nature, mushrooms or Birds or butterflies, whatever your attention, you have a different kind of attention than if you're just taking a walk. And it's that quality of attention that I think keeps me going back and that fascinates me.

[David Duchovny]

Well, that would make sense in terms of the subjects that you choose, as you said, like here's intellectual property or the gift. I mean, you recognize an idea in nature that is difficult enough that you're going to be able to go out and walk through it and every day be looking for something.

[Lewis Hyde]

Yeah. Though I must say, I'm currently struggling with, you know, I'm not even sure it's a book. And what's happened is the interest in butterflies has got me thinking more and more about climate change, because you can't write about nature now without that. And the temporality of climate change, of how fast things are happening, got me thinking about deep time, about the age of the earth and the periods of earlier climate change. And I've just finished trying to write an essay. I did write an essay about deep time, climate change and butterflies, which we're hoping it's going to be in Harper's Magazine someday.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. Well, it is interesting that we each use the word time and we each have a notion of what time is and in the day, but are. But we're all constantly surprised at how little we understand the. What time is when we talk about it, you know, when we talk about our own memories again. It has to do with memory and forgetting and what to. What to leave behind. And I think when I asked you that question about what if you feel like you're open to different gifts now than maybe when, maybe 30 or 40 years ago, I think of the difference between knowledge, factual knowledge, and wisdom. You know what. You know, and I, I look at it myself. You know, there are things that I do maybe better than I used to do, but maybe not as, as quickly as I do in terms of memorizing and things like that. And it's just. It's kind of terrifying to watch your own gifts or facilities change lessen. And I'm, I'm constantly looking, you know, if that's the failure that we all have to deal with. Time, age, death, you know, what are the fruits, what are the advantages of, not only of forgetting, but what, what are, what are the skills that, that we can open ourselves up to as we, as we age into wisdom, hopefully, you know, I mean, that's. You're laughing at me because you're going to say none, zero, nothing.

[Lewis Hyde]

Yeah, well, you're asking the big Questions? Yeah, I mean, I'm getting old, too. I'm 79 now. You know, I guess one thing that we do with time is use it to compare. So we compare the past to the present. And so consciousness of aging is that kind of comparative thinking. And in a certain sense, it's a mistake. It means you're not present in the facts of your own present body. You know, if some of your limbs are giving out, that's the present. And comparing it to your spry youth could do nothing but make you unhappy. So, yeah.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. I guess the last thing that I'd like to maybe dwell on is, you know, in terms of the gift, in terms of gift giving, in terms of culture, in terms of inspiration and artistic creation, and in terms of your style, which is, you know, reaching here and there and pulling lusters that you loved or that were meaningful to you from this poet and that poet and that historian and all over the map. Because we've just come through this moment in time where, you know, people have been very aware of using other people's cultures or appropriation or this idea of appropriation and creativity, of there being limits to what a certain person can address or do or take from or. I wonder if you've. If you've thought about that or if that's been something that's complicated or at least been added to your thoughts about gift. The gift of creation, the gift of art.

[Lewis Hyde]

Yeah. Well, first of all, I believe in giving credit. You know, owning ideas and works of art is one thing, but simply crediting, making it clear where you got what you have. But behind this lies questions of power. If yours is a culture that has been dominated by other people, it really feels different if those people take your things. So along with respect and acknowledgement comes some sense of diversity, equality, and inclusion. Be aware of what the relationships are out of which this material comes.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, it's very interesting that you. That we speak about this when. When, you know, it seems a ridiculous thing that the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the Gulf of America. But it's actually, that's the way. That's the way power is wielded, you know, in the naming.

[Lewis Hyde]

Well, actually, this is the move of any oppressive forces. You forbid the local people to use their own language. And so all these rules that are coming down about what phrases and rules and terms can and cannot be used, this is a simple oppression. And the renaming, you know, who's the boss? We're the boss.

[David Duchovny]

Is that also a move to make.

[Lewis Hyde]

People forget if it succeeds? Yeah.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, I Guess I would, I would just. I don't want to let you go until I, I, I kind of want to. Not only away, almost like a thumbnail, what I'm asking for, for listeners, for myself, even of a way to move through life, or at least a vision of moving through life that is forgetful enough, that remembers enough, that honors enough, both personally and culturally, that also feels like we can move, because I think that's what people want. They want through visions of forgetting, through visions of memory. Nobody wants to be weighted down too much, but they also want to be weighted in place in a way, and they want to know where they are in the world. And I wonder if you have an optimistic vision, both of the human condition in that sense, and also of our current place in culture and politics.

[Lewis Hyde]

You ask such big questions, David. I guess my first impulse is read the book. Well, I think the key is some kind of spiritual life. It doesn't have to be, you know, there are many available and particularly spiritual programs that have to do with thinning out the ego, with not taking yourself so seriously. And, you know, in Christianity, pride is a sin. Pride is a self involvement. Every spiritual program has some sense of this. It keeps you fluid, it keeps you free. There's freedom in it. The thing you mentioned, though, about wanting to have a place, that complicates it nicely, because you can't forget the self until you have one. So I think people growing up, young people, they need. They need to have a self. They need to be loved and have people be curious about their talents and know that they have a family and a community. That precedes doing the more serious adult work of opening up your horizons and realizing that there are other families and other communities and your point of view is not the only one, and that to think it's the only one could begin to hurt other people. So there's a sequence here of some kind of being present in the world. You know, I think partly what has happened politically is people have a great thirst, hunger for an identity that makes them feel dignified. You want work that makes you feel dignified, and a lot of that is missing. So you don't just start out by saying, well, forget about your own concerns.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, I mean, I think what I'm dwelling on is, and I've got kids and I think about them and I see their hurts, you know, I see their hurt. Because I think, you know, young people get hurt easily. You know, that's a beauty of it. But how do we move beyond the wound, being the identity?

[Lewis Hyde]

Well, Again, first of all, you have to know you're wounded. And. Well, read the book. You know, I have a. I have a section about what I call tribal scars. You know, it comes out of Odysseus as a wound on his leg that he got as a young man hunting boar. And it's tribal in the sense that his people are the people who hunt the boar. You know, he comes from that kind of community. But we all grow up marked by our culture and our parents and our community. And then the question is, what do you do with your scars? And first, you have to become aware of them. And, you know, the word trauma means wound. And I think wounds go from the simplest kind of nick on the finger to the kind of almost incurable wounds of people who come out of conflict and, you know, and horrific crimes. And I actually think that sometimes it's nearly impossible to forget these wounds. But that's the work. And so get to work.

[David Duchovny]

Thank you, Louis.

[Lewis Hyde]

All right. Well, thank you.

[David Duchovny]

Hey, so much. So much. I want to talk about after speaking with Lewis Hyde. I feel like I. I kind of failed on that one. I haven't felt that way in a while with a guest. It's just his. His thinking is so nuanced, but also so bolstered by so much other literature and thinking that one needs to. I should have maybe set it up better. I'm not sure. I can't tell. I want these notions to be, you know, part of everyday conversation. You know, not rarefied, not like, oh, you need a degree in such and such to be talking like this. And that's kind of what I wanted to get out of a discussion with Lewis Hyde, because he does come from academia. But I'm trying to, you know, bridge a gap between gossip, which is kind of what podcasting is, just yapping. At least this type of podcasting, I'm not doing. I'm not doing a history. I'm not doing a story. I'm just having people on to talk. And I have this desire to bring these kind of academy ideas into a mainstream kind of discussion because I think they're apt. I just get scared that I'm trying to simplify them too much or that I'm not simplifying them enough. Thanks so much for listening to Fail Better. If you haven't yet, now is a great time to subscribe to Lemonada Premium. You'll get bonus content like my thoughts on conversations with guests including Alec Baldwin and Rob Lowe. Just hit the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or for all other podcast apps. Head to link lemonadapremium.com to subscribe. That's lemonadapremium.com 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 New content is Rachel Neal. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Kupinski and Brad Davidson. The show is exciting. 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 Minister membership.

[Unknown]

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[Megan]

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 the way that I am so excited to share with you. Confessions of a Female Founder is out now. Hear new episodes each week ad free on Amazon Music. You can also ask Alexa Alexa, play Confessions of a Female Founder with Megan on Amazon Music and she will.