← Pablo Torre Finds Out
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out I am Pablo Torre and today we're gonna find out what this sound is.
- [00:06]
B
And I sometimes imagine that there's like a full grown 38 to 41 year old woman who's like in a bookstore and stops and goes, no, no, no, not that guy.
- [00:18]
A
Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraffe. So I need your help, Haniv, explaining what your book is about to people. Because I've read your book. I deeply love it because it spoke to me in ways that I hope to walk through with you. The beats of why it spoke to me. But trying to summarize it, I feel like there's a basic description that if I were to indulge it, it would be deeply misleading as well.
- [00:56]
B
Yeah, I need help explaining what the. Summarizing what the book is about to people. It would be. You would think that by now I would have like rehearsed the elevator pitch, but the elevator pitch, quite simply is it's about basketball, which is actually not true. I would say that basketball is the container for this larger consideration of three major points. The points that I think I return to in all my work, place, devotion and grief and kind of lensing those things through this increased anxiety about time and mortality, the passage of time in the reality that we are all required to go through the passage of time and eventually it expires for us. But basketball is an easy container for that because, you know, I think we look at athletes. LeBron James is a central character of the book, a central person who's kind of weaving through it as immortal when they're actually not. Right. They are facing mortality at a pace that, um, in some ways it's accelerated.
- [01:54]
A
Yeah, Yeah. I, I like to think of Your book about LeBron James and basketball in the way that, like Citizen Kane is about sleds. Okay. So you should know that I love talking to writers on this show, even though I don't write nearly as much as I used to or should, arguably. And you should also know that Hanif Abdulraqib, if you don't know that name, is simply one of the greatest writers in America. He's somebody who I had never met until he walked into the studio just now for this interview. He's also somebody who I had known from afar for a while because he's written award winning poetry and books and music criticism. And in 2021, pretty famously, all of that culminated in him winning a MacArthur genius grant. A real thing, him being labeled a genius that we'll get to later. But for now, just know that I had read his newest book, There's Always this Year. And so I'd had his voice rattling around in my head in an entirely one way conversation. And so yeah, this episode's gonna be a two way. It's gonna be me finding out some elemental things, important things about Hanif that I don't think you need to have read the new book to appreciate in the slightest. Even though the new book is exactly the reason why he has left his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, where he still lives unapologetically, to go on tour and come through. I want to point out that this is book number six for you.
- [03:24]
B
Book number six. It's been six in. How old is 2016? Eight years ago, approximately. So six and eight years, which feels I need it. I need a vacation.
- [03:37]
A
That's prolific objectively, I think.
- [03:40]
B
Yeah. But a break would be nice.
- [04:00]
A
So we have this mutual friend, Hadeef, and Ben Perkert is his name. He's a friend from college for me. He's a fellow basketball fan, a fellow.
- [04:07]
B
Poet, fellow basketball player too.
- [04:09]
A
Yes, that's right.
- [04:10]
B
Excellent pick and roll partner for me.
- [04:11]
A
Oh God. The world's most deranged Cedon hall basketball fan is Ben Burkert. And the idea of you running like a giveandgo.
- [04:17]
B
Yeah.
- [04:17]
A
Is actually ridiculous to imagine for me right now. But he gave me a bit of a scouting report on you, a biographical tidbit that I have now been obsessing over since I started reading your book. And I wonder if you know where Ben went with his scouting.
- [04:34]
B
Oof. Biographical tidbit.
- [04:38]
A
It's deeply confusing actually for me now having read your book now I'm even.
- [04:43]
B
More terrified about what this could be. What are we talking?
- [04:46]
A
So I'll quote Ben's email. It's about basketball specifically. And he said this quote. Here's my favorite Hanif tidbit. He actually played in a game against LeBron James in AAU.
- [05:00]
B
Oh, that's only partially accurate because he.
- [05:06]
A
Follows up with saying shockingly, Hanif never talks or writes about this.
- [05:11]
B
Yeah, I don't even think it was. It wasn't aau. It was just like a rec league game and played against is flimsy. Like he was on the court at maybe for 10 seconds while I was also on the court. We were very young. So I feel bad because I think that in Ben's mind this is a very large thing, but in my mind it's like the most forgettable thing of my life in basketball playing.
- [05:33]
A
I just wanna point this out Though, because I read your book with this in mind, not knowing, okay, where is the setting for this?
- [05:38]
B
Yeah. You're like, when did he drop this in?
- [05:40]
A
Where is it? And you wrote a book that is, again, technically about LeBron James and about basketball and about your youth and growing up. And even the version that you just minimized and gave to me isn't in the book.
- [05:53]
B
Yeah.
- [05:53]
A
And I wonder how conscious it was to not include something that, for Ben and I. And I'll further quote, quote Ben here, he says, it is utterly unthinkable to me if I ever step on a court against LeBron, I would weave it into every conceivable conversation. I would stop literal strangers in the grocery store and mention it.
- [06:13]
B
And of course.
- [06:14]
A
And I would have written a chapter. I would have made it into something more. And you did the opposite. And I'm just fascinated as to your decision.
- [06:21]
B
Well, it wouldn't serve the book, you know, and I think it would serve myself. It would serve my ego. Or maybe not even, because it's a total non story. But there's a difference between the kind of thing you might say on, like, a date to impress someone and the kind of thing you might put into a book to further a narrative. And if there is one thing that I'm always considering, it is how aggressively my ego is coming to the forefront and hindering the process of making an actual effective book. And there was kind of nowhere for that. There was like, nowhere. Also. I was trying to build a world within this book where LeBron James and I were on kind of parallel arcs. And to have us intersect would, I think, really disrupt that.
- [07:01]
A
Well, okay. I wanna set the scene, though, because the place where you stepped onto the court with LeBron James at the same time, however fleetingly, was where and when. Approximately.
- [07:10]
B
This was in Akron or in Cleveland in Northeast Ohio, somewhere in that northeast Ohio corridor. Just in like a. Yeah, just like a casual rec league game. Yeah. And it was. I mean, I think, like, one thing that people have to remember about LeBron and Ohio at the time is that, you know, this team, that Akron, St. Vincent, St. Mary team, all of them were like, excellent. That team was like a juggernaut. I think one of the greatest high school teams, almost certainly in the nation's history and certainly easily in Ohio's history. And there was a point when they were much younger, though, when it hadn't maybe gotten. That there wasn't that frenzy around them, where it felt like they were a lot more accessible, a lot more touchable.
- [07:53]
A
I go Back to the LeBron thing, to point out your experience, which you left out of the book. To point out how much else is in the book that's worth putting in that's not actually about. Here's my first person tale of what it was like to share the floor with this guy who I imagine in pitch meetings people are like, oh, you're going to write about LeBron? And in fact, that's not what you did.
- [08:16]
B
It's hard. It was really hard to pitch this book because a lot of it relied on me saying, I don't know what I'm doing. I won't know what I'm doing until I begin writing it. And if you are an editor or a publisher, you probably don't want to hear that from someone who is tasked with writing a book who you've given money to write a book to. You know, but I didn't know. You know, sometimes I think I've made this comparison point. Fundamentally, when you play basketball, the whole thing is you are not supposed to jump in the air without a plan. You see it all the time, dude.
- [08:43]
A
You know, like, I get criticized by my friend Dominique Foxworth all the time for my jump passes.
- [08:48]
B
And I, as a basketball fan, I struggle with. You know, I love the Tim rules Anthony Edwards at like five times a game, it's just jumping in the air with no real plan. But the reality of that is sometimes when you jump in the air with no real plan, a plan emerges because as you know, as a jump pass enthusiast, by jumping in the air, people kind of collapse on you. And then through that collapse, something opens up. And so the idea of this book was me convincing people just like, let me keep jumping in the air repeatedly and I'll see what happens. And it's gonna be a. And I can't neatly explain for you what's gonna happen in this book' cause I don't know yet.
- [09:20]
A
Were you a jump passer as a player?
- [09:22]
B
Oh, yeah, less so now. Mostly because I don't like to jump unless I have to now. You know, the body sometimes turns you into a more fundamental being.
- [09:31]
A
That's right.
- [09:31]
B
So I don't wanna waste my jumps.
- [09:34]
A
Now on that floor with LeBron for 10 seconds. What position were you playing? What position did you used to play when you were your younger self?
- [09:42]
B
So I was always a point guard and I think if I had to scout, give a scouting report on myself. Can hit open shots, but not a very eager shooter. Very good passer. Always been a very good passer. Some of this is because I think if you grow up playing. I grew up playing on a court, Scott Wood on the east side of Columbus, Ohio, that was smaller, slightly smaller than the regulation court, but it was also the court where everyone played. So it was a court that was built for four on four, probably, but fives, we played fives all the time, which meant that there were just tighter windows of space through which you could fit a ball. So I just learned early on how to do that. So I became a very good passer at a very young age. Very good floater. Will not attempt defense. I've always been bad at defense, and now I'm at an age where it's like, it's just not happening. Not gonna try. I will get in a half hearted stance and get in front of someone, but I'm not gonna fight over a screen. I'm not gonna, you know, I used to, when I was younger, at least give the, you know, facade of fighting a. Fighting.
- [10:41]
A
You're not going over a pick.
- [10:42]
B
No, it's just. Yeah, I'm fine to just hang out.
- [10:46]
A
I remember that there's a part of your book that made me wonder if you were actually referring to yourself in some sort of a way. And I wonder if you remember this scene from your book, because it's you watching a preseason interview that LeBron is giving. This debate starts about the hype around LeBron, and you write that a guy in the corner says, I played against him all through high school, busted his ass for 31 time. And do you remember your response as you describe it in the book?
- [11:20]
B
Yeah, this is when I was incarcerated. So I was locked up in the workhouse in Franklin county, and everyone was kind of, you know, it's this polite thing where you're like, oh, yeah, sure, sure, sure. And then everyone kind of looks at each other like he's. That's bull. You know, it's. You placate the person who's saying the thing and then you turn away from him and you say, well, that's probably not true, but it very well could have been. I mean, the great thing about. The great thing about basketball or any sport in general is that your day is your day. What I love about streetball, particularly growing up, where I grew up, was that there was this real democratization of the court. When that person said that, I think there was a faint film of disbelief laid over it. But, you know, when I look back now, that's just the reality of the game. I mean, on every level. But I also think in high school that is more Possible. Like, I think the. The person who gets hot in the fluky games and the messiness of it all, high school and college, as we're seeing in the tournament right now, it's just like flukes are what wins the day.
- [12:15]
A
Sometimes there's this way in which you watch pickup basketball also, specifically, and you're like, oh, I know who this person is based solely on the way that they are approaching a thing that doesn't have any stakes and yet has all of them at the same time.
- [12:29]
B
Yeah. Pickup basketball is revelatory. I always say pick up basketball in like rec league soccer are two of the most revelatory sports to play, particularly as an adult, because you can often tell who is chasing something that they can no longer access. There's a real longing that I think can be learned from just either playing pickup basketball or watching pickup basketball. I always talk about, oh, I'm not that competitive. I don't really, you know, but in the right moment of the right game, I become as competitive or worse, the worst version of my most competitive self. And I think that's just a reflection of the way that many of us at any given point want to reach back for something that we haven't touched in a long time. So there's something about being in the action too, of pickup basketball or any sport that really enlivens and illuminates the lies we tell ourselves. Right. It really removes the harsh mirror. And we're just kind of like, I'm perceiving myself as unstoppable, undefeatable. Again, this question of mortality gets really flimsy.
- [13:30]
A
Well, you also get a sense of like, how someone even grew up based on, like. And again, this is something that you meditate on in a way that was deeply affecting. Like the way your jumper looks.
- [13:42]
B
Yeah.
- [13:42]
A
And the way your dad's jumper looked when it revealed itself to you and what that actually said about the way that you inherited or not, the mechanics of how to properly do this.
- [13:52]
B
When I worked on that part of the book which talks about my dad only seeing my dad's jump shot one time, I'm like, I don't really know how I learned to shoot a basketball. I think my dad taught me something, but I don't know what now. You know, like, I don't know where it comes from. And that's been puzzling for me. I've been trying to think about this for the past few months post finishing the book and getting out in the world. I was like, how did I learn how to shoot? I Remember all the other sports mechanics that I learned? And I do know that I came in contact with some coaching at some point that probably tweaked my jump shot, but I arrived to that with some semblance of a jump shot. And I just don't know where it comes from.
- [14:43]
A
I want to get to just the way that you alluded to this and of course, you go into far more depth in your book. But the notion of, oh, yeah, right, I have a criminal record. Yeah, I was in jail, I was unhoused, I was living in a storage facility in a storage locker.
- [15:00]
B
Yeah.
- [15:01]
A
And your desire to actually go into real depth on that in a way that you hadn't before, was that self flagellation? Was that terrifying? Like, what was it?
- [15:14]
B
No, for me, it was a real quest to actually make peace with. I'm hyper aware, I think, that there were past versions of myself that were less tethered to my own survival than I am now. Right. I think I was performing this in those years, I think in my late teens, early mid-20s, performing this apathy around death because I thought, you know, I am on a path that is not conducive to survival. And so I would like to just accelerate that path. And I'm realizing now that I am more afraid of death than I've ever been because I feel like I have stolen so much time back. You know, when you say, I don't think I'm gonna survive past this point. And then you do, and then you do, and then you do, it feels like you're effectively in theft of time. And I think I would like to keep that process going for as long as possible. And I think in order to do that, well, I needed to revisit these versions of myself that were less thoughtful about survival and kind of make peace with those versions. Because I think for me to make peace with those versions of myself was. Would be to live this version of myself really fully and not act as though those are separate parts of me. Those are parts of me. I don't necessarily think I'm any better now than I was then. I think I just have more access to things. Right. I have more. I perhaps am thinking differently about my life and my desire to be present in life because there are more things that I have and have access to that make being present more palatable.
- [16:45]
A
There was one quote from a probation officer you had, and he tells you that he doesn't think you're a bad person, you're just a bad decision maker.
- [16:53]
B
And I was like, thank you and he was like, no, no, no, that's actually worse.
- [16:59]
A
Yeah, that's even more concerning, in fact. What did he mean by his scouting report of you at that point?
- [17:08]
B
Well, you know what's funny is I saw him. Columbus is both a city and a small town, and so, you know, you can just bump into your old probation officer while at Whole Foods. So I think he's been on my mind a bit, because I think what he was meaning then was you're not inherently bad. You're thoughtful. I mean, you're thoughtful, you have kindness in you, but you're governed by just atrocious decision making, you know, or you perhaps feel like your goodness outpaces the poor decisions. Like, you can get yourself out of things through using your goodness as a kind of sly manipulation tool as opposed to just, like, doing, you know, as opposed to just, like, maybe not driving without a license. You know what I mean? These kind of things. And so, yeah, he. But he's the same dude. Same old dude. Yeah. It's good to run into him while getting, you know, cauliflower rice.
- [18:05]
A
Do you think that the people who knew you back then are surprised at what you have become now?
- [18:10]
B
I think a lot of people are politely, kind of like, I'm glad you've made it. Which under the umbrella of made it is a lot. Right? I'm glad you've made it. Depending on tone, tone says a lot. And under the umbrella of made, it says a lot, where it's like, made it out of. There's a blank space after made it that is often filled in by tone, by implication. But also, you know, it's kind of like, um. I think I am more surprised than anyone. Like, it's. I'm more surprised than anyone else could ever be. And I think that's also just kind of steeped in. One thing that's funny that I think about a lot is when I was a kid at the. You said, you know, hang out in malls. We are of an age where you could just hang out in a mall.
- [18:52]
A
The mall used to be a thing.
- [18:53]
B
The mall used to be, like, a real thing. And now I feel like kids get chased out of malls if they're there at all. But we used to hang out at the mall in Eastland Mall. You know, like, we would go and people would have spots where they would, like, make out with girls or whatever, because that was where you went before you had a car, your parents drop you off the mall, and it was your rendezvous or whatever, and mine was the kitchenware section. Of the Lazarus in the mall, because no one would go there. No one was getting at that time, I guess no one was getting pots and pans from Lazarus.
- [19:19]
A
It's deeply romantic.
- [19:20]
B
It's very romantic. And I sometimes imagine that there is a full grown 38 to 41 year old woman who's in a bookstore and. And stops and goes, no, no, no, no, no, not that guy.
- [19:35]
A
The guy who was here near the spatulas.
- [19:38]
B
Yeah.
- [19:38]
A
Back in the day.
- [19:39]
B
I feel like those are the people who are probably most. Not that there's like a whole cascade of them, but I feel like those are the people who are most surprised. Those are the people who are like the people who maybe hadn't seen me since I was 16 or 17. They're like, I don't know that guy.
- [19:52]
A
How do you explain, though, for people who, I don't know, have unfrozen themselves were locked in a hyperbaric chamber of commercial for the last. I don't know, how long has it been since you positioned yourself formally as a writer?
- [20:04]
B
How do I explain that to someone?
- [20:06]
A
Author, poet?
- [20:07]
B
Oh, gosh.
- [20:08]
A
What happened? What happened, man? You were over there by the spatulas and now you're doing this. You're on a mural.
- [20:14]
B
Yeah, well, I think I'm the same. Well, I'm not the same guy by the spatulas. I was gonna say I think I'm the same guy who's by the spatulas. I'm not. Thankfully. I have a home now. Part of. I pay a mortgage for no small reason. For part of it to be so that I can like kiss people in my home and not buy spatulas at. But I also think the American dream. The American dream. Kissing people not by spatulas. I don't know. I'm always trying to figure this out. And I think a part of the project of this book was also to try to figure it out, not apologize for it or not be like, ashamed of the past versions of myself, but to really say, like, I don't know when this happened or why it happened or how it happened. I know that one day I decided I would like to try writing some poems. And I did that. And it went all right.
- [21:04]
A
And then you realize that this is a thing that can become like. Did it feel like a calling immediately?
- [21:11]
B
No. No. And I was really resistant to. Even my second book, my second book of essays, they can't. Or my first book of essays, my second book, overall, they Can't Kill Us until they Kill Us. I was resistant to that. I didn't want to write it. When I did write it, I really anticipated that it would only sell, like, you know, 1,000 copies. The publisher's $2 radio based in Columbus. I was a Columbus writer. We thought it would be, like, a cool Ohio thing, you know, and then it wasn't. Your life changes in these increments. These things happen in increments, and it's hard to pinpoint the tidal wave, at least for me. There's never been, like, one large thing. It's always been like, this small thing feels unbelievable, and now this next small thing feels unbelievable. And you know what? This. You know, I remember getting the MacArthur call, which is a strange.
- [21:55]
A
Yeah, what's that like?
- [21:57]
B
It's a strange experience. They call you, and the first thing they ask is, are you alone? I had just gotten to a coffee shop, and I had just set up all my, like, computer books, got my drink, you know, and so I was like, I'm not moving. I have to pack up everything. And so I just lied, and I was like, yeah. And the call is interesting because they tell you very early, you know, early in the call, it's like, you've won a MacArthur. But the rest of the call is very long and detailed. But for me, I spent, like, 25 minutes processing what I had been told at the beginning. In the meanwhile, they're like, reading the beautiful, long, generous bio they've written, and they've. And then. So the thing happened with me where after I got on the phone, I felt really bad. I had to immediately email, like, can you just send me a summary of everything that you said on the phone?
- [22:45]
A
Some people were ordering a couple of iced lattes in the way of just my reception.
- [22:48]
B
And surely they knew I wasn't. I wasn't. Like a loud coffee shop. I'm sure they were like, this mother is at a house party.
- [22:57]
A
What I want people to understand if they have not read your poems or read this book yet, and hopefully get a sense already just in the conversation of how you think about things. But you have a gift, a superpower, I would even say, for description, for describing feelings even more specifically. And that notion of, like, I have these big emotions that I need to articulate so that other people can see themselves in it. Did you always want to be able to do that?
- [23:23]
B
No, I think, you know, I'm a person who has multiple anxiety disorders. And so I move through the world, like, highly anxious, right? And so a lot of time early on, in terms of my own expression, I spent worrying about how I would be perceived for having large feelings. This was despite coming up in an ecosystem and environment where that wasn't shamed at all. I was very fortunate, I think, not just in my household. You know, people had feelings and they were understood and appreciated. But I think that what I was not trying to do was just express feelings. I think a feeling on its own is a primary color, which isn't necessarily bad. But to add a depth and complexity to that feeling is to say I am now inviting you, reader or listener, into this. This world that is not your world, but it is a world wherein we can perhaps share some emotional frequency that connects us.
- [24:15]
A
So there is a description on page 256. I'm gonna flip to it like we're in church. Excuse me. And I just would like you to just read actually what you wrote about game sevens as a concept.
- [24:30]
B
And it is astonishing that we've made it this far. Dancing on the outskirts of two Game seven scenes already without my mentioning how in love I with the finality of a Game seven, rather the control one might have over the finality. Turning away from the ominous finger, beckoning from beneath a black cloak and making your own exit on your own time. I love a Game seven because I have, from many high up and far off windows, seen a sunset that I have wished I could bottle. There have been inevitable night times that I have wanted to keep behind a door, a door that I would push my back against even in the midst of darkness, thrashing on the other side, just for a moment or another hour, with that flamboyant and dramatic marching band of color blaring against the sky's canvas, the blaring horns of oranges and yellows and the faint but always present keys of purples and reds twirling underneath. And the conductor of all that glorious racket, the sun itself twirling toward, vanishing until all that remain are the colors, their fluorescence growing faint in preparation for being washed away by that familiar and vicious darkness. I have even run out of ways to talk about beauty, which is surely a sin. But it is also how I know that I have witnessed that which dismay dismantles. A capacity for language renders any attempts foolish. If you know this feeling like I know this feeling, welcome to the church of Silence and Awe. Our mouths are open, but nothing spills out. Our backs against the trembling door, praying to cut the veil of night into small scattered pieces. If you know this feeling as I have known this feeling, if you have wanted to hold the moment before an inevitable ending in your own hands and stretch it to near distortion. You also love a game. 7. Someone has to go home. And yet no one wants to. The party was good, but it has to end for someone. Even if the sweetness of a stranger's kiss still spins along the lips of a person who will never see that stranger again, they have to exit through the door of their own fantasies and never return.
- [26:31]
A
I mean, I don't know what was happening by those spatulas.
- [26:49]
B
It does feel very natural to me to kind of speak in a way that, you know, I'm not always, like, on a high. I'm not always, like, waxing poetic about, you know, someone's just like, how's it going? But I do think that, you know, I feel like I'm held to account by the level of beauty that I feel fortunate to witness and by the ways that the people close to me articulate their relationships with that beauty. So many of my friendships are. There's a depth of vulnerability within them that I feel like I have to rise to, because if not, I am potentially withholding from people who want more than anything to be connected. There's a way that I'm asking people to understand that I have seen something beautiful that they perhaps were not there to see, or almost certainly did not see them the same way I did. And I can articulate it in a way that not only brings it to life for them, but makes them long for it. And now we are sharing in something. We're sharing in the longing for a moment that has passed that was so stunning that we can't stop thinking about it together.
- [27:51]
A
Right. I should also point out, unsurprisingly, that you're a music critic.
- [27:54]
B
I do think there are people who are gonna come to this book and then be shocked to find that the bulk of my work has. I would say at least, has been music criticism.
- [28:01]
A
Yeah.
- [28:01]
B
Or at least the bulk of my prose work has been music criticism. But I think that informs this book. That informs. Because so much of close listening is dissection, and so much of close witnessing, which I think is really aligned with close listening, is just simply dissection. I have a friend who grumbles about people, like, taking photos of the sky. Like, you know, are you one of those people?
- [28:26]
A
I. If you were to. I am so the opposite. I realized that in my photos app on my iPhone, I could enter the word sunset. 1,908 photos of just sunsets. I am glad.
- [28:38]
B
I'm glad to have a kindred spirit here, because I'm always like, you Know, they're always like, well, you know, don't take pictures of the sky. Everyone can see the sky. And it's like, but everyone's not seeing the same sky from neighborhood to neighborhood. Everyone's not seeing the same sky from sidewalk to sidewalk. People aren't seeing the same sky. The whole, like, structure of storytelling is piecing together things that many people have access to and rewiring them in a way that seems miraculous. Like, that's it, you know, like, that's what metaphor is in a way. Fast Car, the song Fast Car works because you understand what a car is. Right. The metaphor in Fast Car works because you understand the mechanics of a car.
- [29:16]
A
Yep.
- [29:16]
B
If you just go through the entire history of songwriting, you will see all of these things that work. I mean, purely because you, as a random listener, have access to or at least a vague understanding of the actual physical object. And therefore, with that understanding, you can take it apart and see all the other moving parts that make a metaphor work.
- [29:38]
A
And so I guess what I want to get to is the degree to which you enjoy description, dissection, metaphor, writing. I think I enjoy having written more than writing. You know, I enjoy having written. I don't love writing as much as I would like to love writing.
- [29:56]
B
Sure, sure.
- [29:57]
A
And I wonder how you feel about actually the process of sitting down, given the way that you write and just putting words down on the page.
- [30:05]
B
I love it. I'm actually the inverse. Most people I know are. Enjoy having written more than writing. Well, that makes. And that makes a lot of sense to me. But completion fills me with a sense of dread in a way. I find myself thinking, I can't believe I did that. And then immediately thinking, I can't believe I'm going to eventually at least have to do that again. You know? So completion opens up this level of uncertainty that is a dread that doesn't inform the actual writing itself. It just informs. I can't believe I've completed something, and then I will have to complete something again. But what happens in the in between that is really pleasureful for me because I'm trying to. I just think, one, this book was a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun. Writing feels that way. I think it's fun to. I don't have any formal training in writing, quote, unquote. You know, I didn't. I was bad at school, never studied English. You know, I came to writing through this sense of just feeling my way through the world and then seeking language to articulate that feeling. There are parts of this book that were just so thrilling to stumble into. Just, like, on a pure language level.
- [31:09]
A
I want to get to also just what effort feels like to you. Right. Because there's this part that I. That I laughed at where you write about resenting the birds singing outside of your window. Can you explain. Explain why actually those. Those birds deserve the you?
- [31:29]
B
Yeah. Well, not. I like birds, but I don't like a. I like a singer who works. I love. I love old videos of Little Richard.
- [31:40]
A
Head for the gym. To the side, capo.
- [31:44]
B
He is just, like, sweating through not just his clothes, but, like, his skin. It's like sweating through his own skin. You know, his hair is just a mess, and he's, you know, just. This is a black and white video, and you can still sell that. I don't dislike an effortless song, but I think the birds outside my window seem like they are lazy in approach. And not that I'm, like, doing music criticism on the birds.
- [32:06]
A
Nah, you clearly are.
- [32:08]
B
But, yeah, I mean, they're not like, you know, there were three of them at one point. They were never in harmony. They were almost like, this is very derivative. Yeah, they're off. They're off key. At odds with each other, sonically. And it was due to what seemed to me like laziness. And so I took a swipe at the birds.
- [32:23]
A
Yeah, nothing so beautiful should arrive with such ease.
- [32:26]
B
Yeah, like, showing the labor as much as I'm talking about the birds or whatever. But, like, I think there's something on the page where the work, if it is shown to be rigorous, if it is shown to sweat and have a labor to it, that's not bad. I think some of mine does, but I do like a sense of ease, tricking people into something that looks like it was easy. But this book also was the easiest book I've ever written.
- [32:53]
A
Well, I also think it's funny that we're sort of cordoning off the gestation period for this book at, like, the formal. Here's my laptop. And in reality, it's seemingly some of the hardest periods of your life going into this. So the effort. I mean, the prelude to the. To the process. I hate the word sweat equity, but it comes to mind, like, you invested the sweat way before you were a writer.
- [33:19]
B
It's true. And even so, I lived the gestational period, but then also, like, having it in my head. I wrote another book while this book was in my head. And that takes a level of restraint, I think, to say I'm not ready to write this book. Right now, I thought this could be a defining book for me. Therefore, I had to take responsibility for writing it before I died, which could be any time. Right. Like, this idea of. It takes a level of perhaps audacity to say, I'm gonna build a book that looks like nothing I've ever built before. And I think the only reason, the only way that one, at least for me, I can't say one. The only way that I arrive at that level of audacity is to say I don't have infinite time. And because I don't have infinite time, it's now. It has to be now or it could be never.
- [34:00]
A
You know, I was thinking about this question of, like, who becomes a LeBron fan who's not necessarily from Ohio, Northeast Ohio, Columbus, Cleveland, any of that. Akron. And I. I juxtapose him against, of course, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, for whom suffering as the path to triumph and greatness seems to be this religious conviction, like, you must have misery in order to be great. And, of course, is. Is recurring throughout, like, culture. The movie Whiplash.
- [34:28]
B
Oh, gosh, yeah. One of my favorite classic film.
- [34:31]
A
Love it. Love Whiplash. And my favorite part about the sports of it is that Kobe Bryant saw that film and identified, of course, J.K. simmons. Oh, that's the hero.
- [34:41]
B
Yep. Yeah.
- [34:43]
A
And it says everything right? And so.
- [34:45]
B
Yeah.
- [34:46]
A
So I just wonder, right. Do you believe in suffering as a prerequisite for greatness?
- [34:54]
B
Not anymore, but I'm glad you brought that up because I had to learn that. I had to unlearn that. And it's hard. My. The second book, they Can't Kill Us so they Kill Us, was written in about two and a half weeks. And it was in the midst of this really horrific time in my life. And I kind of, like, locked myself in Provincetown for that time. And it was in winter, so no one was in Provincetown. And it was getting dark at like, 3:30, you know. And I really suffered through the making of that book. And therefore, I thought that I was. That I had achieved something just due to the act of suffering. But what actually happened was that book came out and it was received very well, and it continues to be received very well. And people have this relationship to it, this relationship to it that I can't access. Right. People have this pleasureful, thoughtful relationship to it that I can't access because for me, it's a site of grief, it's a site of struggle, it's a site of suffering. And I think I turned out of that and said, I can't go to that place to make art anymore for no other reason, because I would like my art's legacy to be intertwined with some form of pleasure for myself.
- [36:01]
A
Talk to me about what pleasure signifies as a critique. That notion of, like, what is pleasure saying about the larger view you have of things.
- [36:15]
B
Our dissatisfactions can be a starting point of critique that steer us towards a pursuit of pleasure. I have a sneaker collection. I'm actually surprised that that's not what Ben told you about, but I have a very.
- [36:26]
A
How many is it now?
- [36:27]
B
It's 251.
- [36:29]
A
Yeah, yeah. You have sneakers the way I have sunsets.
- [36:33]
B
That's a beautiful sentiment, but I built this sneaker room, right? And I was dissatisfied with the kind of dark nature of the room. After I built it, I was like, I did this thing, and then I said, well, now I'm really dissatisfied with the way it looks. And so I have this pair of sneakers that's made up of, like, little crystals. And I found a way to position this sneaker so that when the sun begins to set just early, the sun comes in the room and hits these pair of sneakers with crystals and then explodes a bunch of rainbows all over the room. And so now, through this kind of dissatisfaction, I have found something pleasing to me. I do think the root of critique for me begins at a sort of dissatisfaction, but it can't only end there. It has to end with a kind of wishing or a far off hopefulness or a guide through which I can say I was dissatisfied with that. And then I found this. This maybe solution, but maybe other path, you know, And I think that's maybe the most useful thing for me.
- [37:28]
A
Right, right, right, right. You know, there is a. There's a. A meme that you reference in your book that is the thing that I always tell people about in just my personal life.
- [37:41]
B
Yes.
- [37:42]
A
About how I feel about making content one of the worst words ever invented. Unfortunately, content and content both very different in 2024.
- [37:54]
B
Yes. Incredibly different words, but the same I never thought about again.
- [37:58]
A
You're like, dude, I. I want to bring up the image, though, of. Of the raccoon.
- [38:07]
B
Oh, the raccoon. Yes.
- [38:09]
A
Because the way that you use the raccoon in your. In your poetic estimation is about, I believe, waking up from a.
- [38:17]
B
Yes.
- [38:17]
A
A dream without pain and now being snapped back into a reality, trying to.
- [38:21]
B
Like, capture all the. Yeah.
- [38:22]
A
And so just for people who haven't seen this meme of the raccoon, please describe the raccoon.
- [38:27]
B
Even describing this is Devastating to me. So there's this video wherein a raccoon. Raccoons apparently wash their food. When they get it, they, like, you know, they dump it in water. There's this video of a raccoon who was given cotton candy. And the raccoon kind of joyfully waddles over to the stream to dip the cotton candy in, not knowing, of course, that the cotton candy, once it hits water, will dissolve. That is the sa. Part one is like, the cotton candy dissolves, but the sadder part is the raccoon frantically feeling around the water, looking for this little treat. Yeah. And then just, like, the feeling gets more frantic, you know, it's like, oh, gosh, I know that. I know that world. I know the idea of having something slip away and just, like, batting at the water to try to find it.
- [39:08]
A
And then the only thing that you find being your own reflection.
- [39:11]
B
Your own reflection. Yeah.
- [39:12]
A
It's just like, oh, that is like, that's. That's how I feel when I wake up from a dream that I. I now miss. I miss inhabiting. And it's how I feel about making something in the present tense. And so I think about this, of course, because you. I wonder how much you think about making something that will last because the Internet is definitionally a bunch of people. The world now dipping cotton candy into water and then wondering, why aren't I fulfilled?
- [39:42]
B
Right.
- [39:43]
A
And you seem to be having, at least in the six books you've written, something that is engaging with a deliberate longitudinal sustainability.
- [39:56]
B
I'm looking for something that will hover and linger forever. You know, how can I make something that echoes for at least a little while and operates against this kind of impermanence that's tied to art making as a disposable product, as, like a paper towel. You pull off a roll and you use it really quickly, and then you throw it away, and then you wait for the next paper towel. Yes. How do we kind of. How do I create something that is a little. That has a bit more durability to it? And I think there's a level of ambition I'm operating at that does tell people. I tried to make something special and unique and not just for the sake of being in a temporary conversation.
- [40:36]
A
When I described earlier just the way that your writing feels verbal, it also feels verbal because you use the second person. The athletic metaphor is this dude is kind of crossing over the reader while also inviting them to stay exactly upright and follow. Follow me where I. Where I want to take you, though.
- [40:54]
B
There is to extend That, I mean, the crossover works in short, but in some ways through that seduction. Right. The crossover is effective because you do seduce someone into kind of being glued to the ground for a little while and then they don't know that you're past them until, you know, I mean, or it seduces them into maybe making a slight movement. You know, the Iverson crossover and Jordan worked because Jordan made that slight movement and opened up his body in another direction. But, yeah, I mean, I also think that me doing that is kind of tipping the hat to the writer Ross Gay, who does that often, and, you know, who I just love deeply. But doing it over this extended of a stretch. So the first line of this book, you will surely forgive me if I begin this brief time we have together by talking about our enemies. I knew that that was gonna be the first line of this book for years. Like I've written on the first line, I've written myself into a corner because I've addressed you directly. Not only have I addressed you directly, I've put you in community with me by saying, like our enemies.
- [41:52]
A
Yes. This first person plural.
- [41:53]
B
Yeah.
- [41:54]
A
As well as the second person.
- [41:55]
B
As well as second person. And so it kind of meant that if that went away, then there would be some level of ache. I think there'd be some level of longing. And I do think I try to pull at some threads of longing in the book, but I knew early on if that was going. I'm glad I decided on that as a first line so early because I got to build this world around. How do I pull this off? Well, without it being overwhelming, without it feeling, like, gimmicky, I want it to feel still generous and inviting.
- [42:33]
A
I'm contemplating, like your sort of just big picture ambitions when it comes to not like another genius grant, but just how you want your work to feel. And of course, we got to. Yes, we'd like it to sustain and to last. But also, there is, in this age of an ostensibly and I think, incorrectly claimed connectivity.
- [42:55]
B
Yeah.
- [42:55]
A
Between all of us. You have gone local.
- [42:58]
B
Yes.
- [42:58]
A
And so when I referenced before that there's a mural of you, I mean this literally.
- [43:02]
B
Yeah, there is.
- [43:03]
A
I mean, an artist painted a mosaic style image of you, a Columbus resident in Columbus. And the quote is one of your quotes. And I'll just read it here. It's. There is something about setting eyes on the people who hold you instead of imagining them.
- [43:18]
B
Them.
- [43:19]
A
And I want to bring in another one of my favorite videos that I want your reaction to because I began to realize as you were writing ostensibly about, but also just around LeBron James, that it reminded me of the way in which your book is kind of actually as much as it is all the things you described. A response to this.
- [43:42]
B
I don't know about this place, man. I just stayed in my hotel room, man. Every time I look out my window, it's pretty depressing out here, man. It's bad. It's bad. So you don't. You're not going out? No, no.
- [43:54]
A
Going out in Cleveland, man.
- [43:56]
B
It's all factories.
- [43:58]
A
So, of course, Columbus and Cleveland, two different places. But geographically, of course, this is Ohio, your home.
- [44:06]
B
Do you regret anything that you said about Cleveland? Not at all. You like it. You think Cleveland's cool. I mean, I never heard anybody say, I'm going to Cleveland on vacation. What's so good about Cleveland?
- [44:21]
A
And when you hear people like Joe Kim Noah, or maybe specifically Joe Kim Noah, how did you feel about that? And how does it intersect with your decision actually to make your home in Ohio?
- [44:32]
B
For me, that kind of stuff is one. I love Joe Kim Noah. I loved him as a player, and I love those. I love those Florida teams in college. It's wild to me that Al Horford is still effective in the NBA. I used to be so offended by that kind of thing. I used to be like, oh, well, people don't like, you know, I have to defend Ohio and truth. But now I'm kind of like, yeah, you know, there's plenty of reasons not like a place and, you know, several reasons to not like a place. Every time I come to New York, which is increasingly often at this point, it takes me, like, a full day to calibrate to the just sheer level of noise, you know, and my friends who live here don't even hear it. You know, it's just like, that's. Meanwhile, every Wednesday in Columbus, I think all of Ohio, the tornado siren, a test tornado siren, goes on very loud for about a minute, and I don't hear that. And so my friends visit me. They freak the out. They're like, what the is happening? And I'll be like, what do you mean? You know? And so I kind of use that as this metric of we all sink into the sounds and movements of our atmospheres. And through that, sinking in, a kind of affection happens where we could just kind of ignore the outside noise, you know? And for me, I think sinking with depth and clarity and thoughtfulness and affection means that, like, if someone's like, well, I hate Ohio, it's like, yeah, sure, there's plenty of reasons to hate it. I found the ones that work for me. But there's plenty of reasons I hate it. You know what I mean? I'm not. I am perhaps an evangelist, but not one who is interested in conversion.
- [46:04]
A
But explain why it is that you want to stay in the place where, of course, the beginning of this book and certainly the beginning of your life took place.
- [46:14]
B
I'm a regular at the Columbus Airport, which is maybe a sad state of things to be. And I took in my bag, I tried to take this hydration powder, and it got flagged with the TSA folks, and they ran a test on it, and it alarmed, and it had to be pat down. And as this very intimate pat down. And after it happened, the guy was doing who I see all the time. We talk all the time. And I've met his kids. He's like, hey. He was nervous, like, hey, man, when you fly back in, will you sign my copy of your book? And I was like, listen, I got an extra one in my bag. I'll give you if you promise that we don't ever have to do like that again. And so there's this way that no one there is. These are just my people. I'm in community with these people. There's no sense of awe or there's a sense of maybe pride that a person who has done some things is from there. But these are just my folks, you know, and we've built. We're so tenured. Our affections towards each other are tenured. And that requires a real level of care and attentiveness that allows me to be more and better, I think, more effectively in touch with the world outside of that ecosystem.
- [47:20]
A
You write in your book at one point, as if in response to Joe Kim, Noah, I'll point this out. You write this. Tell me if you've ever built a heaven out of nothing, and then tell me what it would take for you to look for a new one somewhere else.
- [47:35]
B
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm from a. I'm from a part of Columbus that didn't have a ton of resources. It was often, you know, I think it was not the worst neighborhood, but somewhat neglected neighborhood. And across the street from my dad's house was the basketball court in the park. And then next to that was this just overgrown stretch of trees that you could just walk into. And my friends and I, when we were young, like, 8, 9 years old, made it into, like, our clubhouse. You know, we made it into, like, we would go there and hide out and, like, we would go there and plot things and play, and it was distinctly ours. And it felt like we were both out of the way of the rest of the world. And it also felt like we were lording over the entire world because we had built this world out of literally just an overgrowth of trees. And that at an early age, told me that this place actually doesn't define what the far reaches of my imagination can do. So I was perhaps writing before I knew I was writing in that way. Right. I was gonna say, but you build what you have, you know, you build what you have with the people you love. And I think the people are the architecture of a place. And if you love the people enough and if they care about you enough, you've already built everything you need.
- [48:50]
A
Hanif, thank you for leaving home for a little bit.
- [48:53]
B
For a little bit. For two months. You know how long this tour is for me. I miss my dog already. I don't know how I'm gonna make it.
- [48:58]
A
I know you gotta load. Manage, man.
- [48:59]
B
I know I do need to load.
- [49:01]
A
Thank you for stopping by, though, and making a little time to visit us.
- [49:05]
B
Thank you so much for having me. This was a pleasure.
- [49:16]
A
I should point out that I also miss my loved ones. And thank you to the people who help me spend more time with them as much as I can, at least. Because Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Michael Antonucci, Ryan Cortez Sam Dawig Juan Galindo Patrick Kim Neely Lohman Rachel Miller Howard Ethan Schreier Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tominiello and Juliet Warren Studio engineering by RG Systems Our post production by NGW Post theme song by John Bravo we got a good one coming Tuesday. We'll see you then.