Shen Wei (5:02)

When I was 23 years old, I found myself standing in front of a painting by Vincent Van Gogh. The painting was the Olive Trees with Yellow sky and the Golden Sun. The painting was so fascinating to me because I had seen this painting many times when I was a child in the newspaper. But I just couldn't imagine. One day I was standing in front of the painting, looking so closely, watching almost recognize the brushstroke from the artist. Then I walked from room to room. I saw Monet's grain stacks. I saw Roman statues, Egyptian mummies. Even the art collection from China, my native country, was astonishing me. You see, I had never stood so close to creations I found so magnetic. I had never seen these sort of masterpieces that spoke directly to my heart right in front of my face. Because I was raised in Shanghai in a slum, I had never stepped foot in an art museum before. And I couldn't get over how much I felt like I'd arrived at home. My childhood in the slum was full of trouble. I lived with my parents, my grandparents, three aunts, two uncles, a few cousins, some cats, rats, and cockroaches, all under one roof. I didn't have my own room, so I spent a lot of time just outside, playing with other children, chasing around the maze that was the street of the slum. In the summertime, I would sleep outside in the communal courtyard for the entire season to escape the heater of the house. Our cooling system was fans made of bamboo leaves and just one electrical fan that everybody was fighting over. My parents married during the Cultural Revolution in China that lasted from late 60s through late 70s people who were wealthy and suspected to being capitalist were being harassed or put in labor camps or even worse. My mother's father was an entrepreneur. He owned an engineering firm and the family lived very lushly in this mansion in French Concession. But my grandfather's success made him a target. When the Cultural Revolution began, he was stripped nearly everything he had owned. So my mother did what so many other wealthy young women in China did at the time. She decided to marry into a poor family for a more stable future. She met my father, the son of a construction worker. She married him and left her childhood in the mansion behind. And then she moved to the slum with my father. They fell in love, but their life was very hard. They both worked long hours in the factories and the countless difference in their family background got them fighting all the time. Because my mother's upbringing, she was very westernized. I have never seen her dressed in Qipao, which is this traditional Chinese style dress. She drank a lot of coffee rather than tea, taught me how to use fork and a knife. She once brought a whole family to a park for a picnic trip. But no one around us actually understand the concept of picnic. She was also interested in fashion design. She always dressed very nicely and she made clothes for everyone in the family. I often looked too dapper for the slum. I had this chocolate colored striped suit, very, very chic. She would sometimes put hair oil on me, just make me look extra nice. My hair is always so shiny under the sun. When I strolled with her through the slum, everyone commented on us, some admiring us, but most were just very jealous. My mother became like a fashion icon in the slum. All the women came to her and asked her to design clothes for them. She developed a talent for making very classy looking dress from very cheap fabric. Years after the Cultural Revolution ended, she left her factory job, went to a fashion school and became a full time clothing designer. Even before she was retired, she designed clothes for publishing houses and TV productions. Meanwhile, my father never left his factory. He's been fixing machines his whole life. When I was young, he would work long days and came home very tired and sometimes frustrated with everyone at home. Perhaps life was too overwhelming for him at the time. The constant stress and the work and exhaustion. Sometimes he was even abusive because of it. I was very scared of him when I was a kid. He would always hit me when I went home with a very bad school report. We had a good time too, but I started to forget all about those. My memories of my childhood always went back to Getting beat up by my father. After a while I just stopped talking to my father. I began to feel that we were so different. It was almost as if we weren't related. One day When I was 8 years old, my mother discovered my textbooks were covered with pencil drawings. She said this is my art jingle. It has been passed to Weiwei, which is my nickname from my mother. She was so proud to think that I may be an artist and she began to send me to these weekend art schools. As it turned out, I actually really loved art classes. I grew to love drawing and design. Eventually I was accepted into an art college in Shanghai and and I began to understand for sure that I was an artist. I'm grateful that my parents made that possible for me. But studying art in China in the late 90s was difficult because it wasn't the best environment for self expressions. Resources were very limited. You don't get to see a lot of art books from overseas. And the Internet was not that common the time and the Chinese society was still quite restrictive. My art school was more practical than actually artistic. One time our assignment was to design a perfume bottle. But none of the students had ever used or owned a perfume. I went home and I painted a big breast woman on this beer bottle for my assignment. My parents were very shocked and confused but they were just happy I was not getting in trouble on the street. My mother continued to be excited about my art studies. She began to speak me like a pear since she felt like we cut from the same cloth as they say. But my father never seemed to know what to say to me about art. It seemed like art was just an alien thing to him Not a part of his world of machine and work. For a while I was working in this design firm. One morning I was ready to leave for work. My father questioned me why I don't bring any tool to work. I looked over to my father and impatiently responsed. I use my brain. I can see his eyes dimmed down to a slice of embarrassment and anger. Sometimes he will listen to Shanghai opera which is kind of a music that comes from this folk tradition in Shanghai seen in the Shanghai dialect. Not like the world class Beijing Opera which is considered high art and it is admired by music lovers from all over the world. I remember being a teenage watching my father hum along to this Shanghai opera and hoping he could have a better taste for finer things in life. The more I grew to love art and the more I felt it was in my genes like my mother said, the more my father and I seemed to Be from a different world. I knew I should go see and study real art where the artists can express themselves whenever they want. So in the summer of 2000, I landed in the United States. I was accepted by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, a grade school where I continued to discover who I am and what I want. I saw and did so many things for the first time, including making the kind of art I love. After three years in Minneapolis, I moved to New York City and went to graduate school, trying to survive and making art. When I moved to the US I drifted apart from my father even more. I would talk to my mother on the phone all the time. But if my father answered the phone, the conversation would be painfully awkward. We were just two people with nothing in common anymore. A couple years ago, my parents came to New York to visit me. It was my father's first trip out of China. I brought them to Washington D.C. and we went to the National Gallery of Art. My mother was tired, so she went sit in the coffee shop the whole time and left me with my father. We walked room to room, silently. We don't even talk to each other. Completely wordless, we walked through this long hall of sculptures. I intentionally speed up so I can just get over this awkwardness as fast as I can. Then I saw my father sat down at this one bench, staring very intensely in front of him. I thought he must be lost in thought about something. So I just stood still, holding my position by the door and hoping to exit the gallery as soon as possible. But I just watching him step, just sitting there, not even moving. I felt like he must sit in there for a long, long time. Finally, I walked over to him, trying to signal him that we ought to move on. Before I said anything, he turned his head to me, leaned his body forward a little bit, pointed his finger to a bronze statue right in front of him, and said, that is the most beautiful thing I've seen in my life. At that moment, I realized that my father was in a museum for the first time in his life. And just as I had such a profound experience the first time I stepped foot in a museum in Minneapolis, so was he. He was staring at Rodin's the Thinker, a nude man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle. And the sculpture might as well have been alive for him. It might as well have been a sculpture of him. At that moment, I almost burst into tears. There was so much about my father that I had never seen before and could only see now that we were in this new environment. Away from the place he had a relentlessly difficult life in in the past six decades. Later, I heard my father sing discreetly by himself in the hotel bathroom. I even came to realize how beautifully simple and true those old Shanghai folk opera songs had always been, though I'd failed to see it before. And I was telling myself, my father and I are not really so different. And that's my art. Gene.

Musician (21:20)

Neighbors. They may have changed, but you know they're good at moving. Organize a box of paints Waiting for a different season I will keep your secret safe Lord knows I'm the one I will speak your language I'm the one to do it.

Kevin Allison (22:22)

This is Risk, and it's a gorgeous song there called Dog Physics by Plaid Dragon. Remember, you can always find the list of the storytellers and the musicians and the links to their websites and at the listen pages@risk-show.com we'll be right back. The new McCrispy strip is here. Dip approved by Ketchup Tangy Barbecue Honey.

Kevin Allison (22:47)

Mustard honey mustard Sprite, McFlurry Big Mac.

Kevin Allison (22:49)

Sauce Double dipped in buffalo and Ranch More ranch and Creamy Chili McCrispy Strip Dip now at McDonald's.

Narrator (22:58)

This season of Revisionist History.

Sponsor Voice (22:59)

We're investigating everything but the secret behind.

Narrator (23:02)

The perfect nooks and crannies in Thomas's English muffins to the merits of Paw Patrol against its critics.

Sponsor Voice (23:08)

There's some things that really piss me.

Kevin Allison (23:11)

Off when it comes to Paw Patrol.

Sponsor Voice (23:13)

It's pretty simple.

Kevin Allison (23:14)

It sucks.

Kevin Allison (23:15)

My son watches Paw Patrol. I hate it.

Narrator (23:17)

Everyone hates it except for me. Listen to Revisionist History wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly, set up chores automate allowance, and keep an eye on your kids spending with real time notifications, Kids learn to earn, save and spend wisely. And parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place. Try Greenlight Risk free today@greenlight.com Spotify Custom.

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Narrator (24:24)

We're back.

Kevin Allison (24:26)

Now, our last story on the episode today comes to us from Ed Gavigan, who I'll tell you, I don't even know what to say about Ed, except that he is just a beautiful man. And I just consider it an honor to just listen. Whether he's speaking on stage or just sharing stories, you know, at a bar afterwards, he is someone who's been through a hell of a lot and does a beautiful job of sharing it. So here he is at the last Risk Live show in New York City. This is Ed Gavigan with a story he calls Whatever doesn't kill me.

Kevin Allison (25:10)

I.

Musician (25:11)

Will speak your language. Lord knows I'm the one.

Kevin Allison (25:40)

So we wake up in the morning, we get dressed, we put our shoes on, we head out into the world. Pretty sure we're going to come back at night, get undressed, take our shoes off, go to bed, and we plan on getting up the next day and doing the same thing. And we hope we plan that becomes this framework, kind of a helps us in our life. And we make our plans based on the idea that we're going to be able to come home and continue to do what we've been doing. And John Lennon said, life is what happens to you while you're making other plans. And I woke up one morning, I wasn't wearing any of my own clothes. I had a tube up my nose going down into my stomach to drain it. I had a tube coming out of each side to drain each lung. Had a morphine drip and a catheter and a life support machine beeping. Next to me at the foot of my bed was a surgeon who had worked on me all night to save my life. And next to him were two homicide detectives. Now, for the record, when your day starts out with two homicide detectives telling you what happened to you last night, it's going to be downhill from there. It turns out that there's a gang in Brooklyn that had, as part of an initiation, three guys came into the village. And to move up into the upper echelon of the gang, these guys had to kill somebody that night. So they sat waiting on Thompson street for a guy to come around the corner. They had a lookout at either end of the block. Lookouts gave the go ahead. It was the night before Thanksgiving, so the streets were very deserted. And this guy is walking down the block, he gets his keys out of his pocket. These three guys are coming towards him. Puts the keys into the lobby of his building, the lobby door. He goes in, the door closes behind him. He pushes the elevator button and these guys are locked out. He gets in the elevator, goes up to his apartment, takes his clothes off, goes to bed, has no idea what just didn't hit him. I'm the next guy. So I'm walking down the block, I don't have, I don't live there. And these kids jump on me and there's three, they have their knives, they're out up their arm like that. I did not see it coming. There were no words exchanged. They just pounced on me and began to stab me. Took one in the neck, the other one went up my side, cut my heart. Both lungs were collapsed. Now I grew up in Wyoming, learned how to fight, Then I went to school at Notre Dame. I was on the boxing team, which is one of the very lucky things that saved my life that night is I got one very good straight right punch and knocked the middle guy out. And then I started to scream and ran down the block. And the police caught the middle guy because everyone else ran and left him. They couldn't carry him. And then they told him that he was going to get the electric chair if he didn't give everyone up. He gave up all the names. And so these two homicide detectives had mug shots and the surgeon had told them that I had about a 2% chance of living through the day and they wanted me to identify these guys before I died. Now, nobody told me that I only had a 2% chance and I didn't really understand why these guys were bugging me to identify these people. And I felt very bad and I didn't too queasy and I just said I can't really put anything together from last night and I don't want to make a wrong identification. So you know, you'll have to do something else with fingerprints or something because I don't feel good making this identification. And so I spent the next three or four days on life support and I beat the odds. And I come off life support and I go into the intensive care unit and the little nurse comes in and she's got the clipboard and, and she said, I'd like to talk to you about your insurance. And I was self employed at the time, so I'd like to say I was insurance free. And she was dismayed to learn that. And the next morning they came in and told me, man, you are looking really good. We think you should get better at home. And they pulled all the tubes out, and they gave me a little jar of Percocet and a cane, and I ended up at home. Now, I had a few hundred stitches from surgery. I had multiple stab wounds. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I couldn't go to the bathroom. I couldn't lay on my back. I couldn't lay on my side. I couldn't lay on my stomach. And every time I started to doze off, the movie would start, and I just was just engulfed in terror. So the days and the weeks went by without. You know, my stitches came out, but I just was not getting very much better. And, you know, in New York, if you can't go to your job and pay your rent, you don't get to stay in your apartment. So I was getting calls from the district attorney's office to help him with this case. I have now five guys to go to jail for attempted murder. And I would go down to visit him, and it would be a very emotional time for me because I didn't like to walk outside. And yet then there were moments, like, I'd be walking past the deli, and I would see all the flowers and the buckets, and it would be like out of a Disney movie where all the flowers would start to sing. And I was so happy to be alive. And I was just, like. I would feel things and hear sounds and watch just details, everything. I was just picking it all up. Like, I just gotten a fresh start at everything, and yet the rest of my life was just shit. And I would just alternate between this, like, these intense moments where, like, the essence of existence was just erupting around me. And then I would just be crying because I would see two Puerto Rican kids and any kid that looked like he had a hint of menace, which they all do. Every kid, every teenager is, like, projecting menace. And I would lose it. And the feeling was like. You know, if you're driving late at night on a road and it's snowing and the road's icy, and there's. It's late, you're going a little fast. You're coming into a turn, and you feel all the wheels start to slip. And you look, you see the guardrail, and you're like, there's nothing I can do. Brakes. Steering. I'm gonna hit. And then you hit the dry pavement and the car shutters, and you have control again, and you keep going. And then you feel it, the taste in your mouth and behind your knees. I would get that feeling eight and ten times a day when I left my apartment, and I was just unraveling, coming apart. And I end up getting evicted. I come home, and the marshals have put all of my possessions on the sidewalk, and the homeless guys are picking through, and I got nothing. I have nowhere to go. And I have an appointment with the district attorney. So I go to him, and I just break down. I start to cry, and I'm like, you know, I'm not gonna have any phone anymore. And he says, well, let me give you the number for victim's assistance. A little late, I thought. And so I take the number and I go to the victim's assistant's office. Just walked there, and I'm waiting. I don't have an appointment or anything. I just figure I'll wait till somebody talks to me. And this very nice young girl comes out like she looked just like Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde. She's got the ponytail and the black turtleneck and the clipboard. And I'm in a very dark place, and I see her, and I feel like we're not going to connect. And she takes me back to her cubicle, and then I know we're not going to come connect, because on the wall next to her monitor is the poster. I know you know it. Of the kitten and the branch. It says, hang in there, baby. And so I just sit there kind of looking at her, and she gives me a list of places that I can go for free group counseling in the Bronx. And she puts me on a list for subsidized housing, which will possibly, in 18 months, you know, give me something, and then I can fill out Medicaid. And she gives me this little envelope full of all these forms, and I feel like I'm a drowning man who has just been thrown a kit to build a boat. And I walk out of there with all this paperwork, and I go to see this bartender that I knew, this very cute Lebanese Canadian poet bartender. She's rocking the Simone de Beauvoir look, and she's just super smart and funny, and she listens. And I just say, I'm homeless, you know? And so she lets me stay on her couch. And the thing about her that was just incredible was that she listened. And I found that when I tried to talk to people about this turmoil in my head and how my life was just unraveling, people generally had one of three responses. The first response was, everything happens for a reason. And that made me want to stab them six times and see if they knew what the reason for that was. And the Next thing that people said was, you've just got to pull yourself together and put that behind you. You're fine now. Just move on. Like, you can't dwell on the past. And I just wanted to punch them in the face and just keep punching them and just say, so are you able to just, you know, move on? Like, I really could use some advice from somebody who knows what they're talking about, not somebody just dishing out these platitudes. And then the next thing that people said, and again, everyone, they meant well. They just had no fucking idea what to say. And instead of saying nothing and listening, they said, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And the problem with that, for me, was that I actually did not believe that. I mean, I went to college, you know, I sat up all night in the student union, drinking coffee. I read Nietzsche. I just had this feeling that things could happen in your life that would break you, that you would not recover from. From that not only would you not be stronger, that I was never going to have what I had. My health was shot, my business was gone, my apartment. Like, I had nothing. And not only would I never even be stronger, I just wouldn't even have ever again what I had. And so I'm. You know, this is making me sad and then kind of mad because it just seems like nothing is working out. And I would take my little bag of tools that I had before I got hurt. I had this small furniture shop in Dumbo. I had built custom furniture, so I still had a bag of chisels. And I would go up to the Upper east side with my screw gun and my chisels. And, you know, if you're. You have your own tools and English is your first language, and you knock on the door of a construction site, pretty much you can have a job for the day. And I knew what I was doing. And so pretty soon they'd say, like, you know, put him down in the basement on the baseboard and see how he's going. And then, you know, I'm working on some millionaire's townhouse, you know, with just incredible stuff going on. Marble and rosewood everywhere. And I'm in this library and I'm, you know, mortising an offset pivot hinge into this inlaid door. And the thought of, like, this beauty and this, like, craftsmanship and what these people are going to be able to live in. And, like, the. Just the beauty of what we were creating on the job site contrasted with my life. And then, like, the evil that had happened to Me. And I just started to cry. So there I'm on my hands and knees, crying. And, you know, one of the Mexican laborers goes to the foreman. He's like, that dude you hired, man. He's crying in the basement. So the foreman's this Irish guy, and he comes down and he's like, you know, eddie, here. Can't use you anymore today. Here, go have a drink, man. Paid me through the day, and I just go. And I'm sitting on a bench near Central park, and I'm just feeling like my girlfriend's worried about me because I've gone from being the sad guy to being the mad guy. And I'm, like, verging on being this bad guy because I just am so dark all the time. And I see this dude go walking by with his shiny briefcase and his shiny shoes and his perfect suit and his silk tie knotted and his hair's all shined and combed and perfect. And I just think, I'm gonna tackle that fucker and kneel on his chest and just punch him in the face and make him hurt and just say to him, and you think that you're where you are because you're good, but you're not. You're just. You're where you are because you're lucky, man. A car could jump the curb. Some fuckers could stab you at night. Like, you are lucky. You're not good. You didn't get where you are because you're so fucking smart or talented. Just. You didn't get hit. That's why you're here. And I want you to remember that. And I just wanted to hit this guy so bad. And I'm thinking, better not do that. And I let him keep walking. And then what hits me is I just wanted to hurt a perfect stranger to make a point about what's wrong with my life. And in that moment, I realized I have just become closer to the guys who stabbed me than I am to who I was before. I was hurt. And I see there's this path for me where I'll join those guys on the road to fucking hell. I'll be alone. I'll be in prison. I'll do whatever I want to do, and I'll end up like them. And I don't want to do that. I have enough wherewithal to not want to do that. And the next thing that occurs to me is that I can't ever have what I had before. It's gone. That guy, I can't get back to, that I'm different I'm fundamentally and totally changed and I need to do something that I've never done before. And then I think I've got this girl and she's like, I'll just go tell her I'm going to be different now. I put all this other crap aside, I'm going to start again, have this like, energy. And I'm totally psyched and I go running home to her and I'm like, I'm going to be different. Things are going to be great. Will you marry me? And she's like, no. And so she. But she's enthused by my enthusiasm and she gives me, you know, she waits. And so we try and work it out and a couple years goes by and she knows I'm never going to ask her again, so she asks me and I agree. And then a little more time goes by and we kind of get a routine back and I get a better job and start doing things again and kind of put the world back into some kind of perspective where I don't really trust the world, but again, but at least I have it at arm's length. And we decide we can have a kid. So I have a 4 year old daughter now. So I put her shoes on in the morning and I head out to work.

Musician (42:42)

When there's no one here in the trial who will live through your first date TR of confusion when your faint and crooked smile had to leave and when you painted like a warrior.

Narrator (43:14)

Though.

Musician (43:14)

You know it's a raining water.

Kevin Allison (43:20)

When.

Musician (43:21)

The first spoke but wasn't really sure what's your heart your fear of the leading light if they are with you and your heart won't fail to see through a fearless ey and all the danger finally goes away still you try but there's no leaving now.

Kevin Allison (44:10)

That'S all for this episode, folks. This is the tallest man on earth behind me now with a song called there's no leaving now. Please follow us and participate. Communicate with us on Twitter and Facebook. We're riskshow on Twitter I am hekevinalison. We always welcome your ideas and especially your story pitches. And if you like our show, please tell your friends that they gotta put risk on their phones and get to listening. I guess that means the only thing left to say is, folks, today's the day. Take a risk.

Musician (44:51)

Your fear of the leading light if they are with you and your heart won't fail to see you through A fearless sigh and all the danger finally goes away still you try there's no leaving now.

Kevin Allison (45:27)

Sam.