Marc Maron (2:51)
There was a time where poetry was sort of the mathematics of eternity and trying to wrap your brain around it. And sometimes I think, you know, maybe that's what we need is a little poetry just to, you know, frame things in a way we can understand. So now I will. I will read to you the Second Coming by William Butler Yates. Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand. Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming. Hardly are those words out when a vast image of spiritus mundi troubles my sight. Somewhere in the sands of the desert, a shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun is moving its slow thighs, while all about it real shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again. But now I know that 20 centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle. And what rough beast, it's our come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born. Yeah, that's a nice. I hope you're having coffee. I think that's a nice way to start the day. I do want to say this in terms of the center not holding. Is that violence never the answer? Violence begets violence and man just untethered times and. Yeah, I hope you're doing okay today. I talked to my friend Tom Sharpling. He's the host of the best show and someone who's deeply connected to the history of this show. He's been on eight times before and we did six separate bonus episodes with him called the Mark and Tom Show. He's celebrating the 25th anniversary of doing the best show and he'll be on the road doing some live shows to commemorate the milestone. Always good to talk to Tom. Good friends. I've had some weird revelations and experiences about the past and about friendship lately. I'll try to get into it. Maybe. Maybe I'll get into it. But I do want to say this. I want to thank a couple of people, actually. Well, I want to thank Dr. Bronner, Dr. Bronner's Soap, all in one soap. Because I talked to the Bronner that's in charge now, the grandson. And I love the company and this isn't a paid plug and I have a lot of their soap and they've always been supportive of the show and I think they're a very decent and well sourced company that are always trying to be proactive and progressive and do the right thing. And I was reminded of this because I have been using that soap since I was in college. And I realized I reached out to the guy over there who's in charge of their kind of public relations and I just wanted to thank him because I realized maybe like five or six years ago, if not more, they sent me a big box of those soaps and I've been using them. I haven't had to buy soap and I've been using Bronner's. I feel like my whole life. And it just towards the end of the show here, I just wanted to thank, thank them for keeping me clean. The documentary about me, Are we good? Opens on October 3rd in New York in Los Angeles with special screenings around the country on October 5th and October 8th. Go to arewegoodmaren.com to see where it's playing and get tickets and hopefully look, that'll if people go, it'll, it'll be in more theaters and you can still get in on the Kickstarter pre sale for our graphic novel. WTF is a podcast written and illustrated by Box Brown. You can go to Z2Comics.com WTF for that. And look, you know, I am, it's, I've been a little aggravated. I am starting to realize, as I've said before, that there's something at the core of me, or maybe I didn't tell you this. I think I actually said it at a meeting. I've been going back to the secret, the secret meetings a bit just to make sure I stay in dialogue with, you know, what is at my core now that I have time to sit with it. And a couple of things have happened in some of it. You'll hear in this, in this conversation with Tom, in terms of how far back we go and his experience meeting me and his experience, you know, watching me, which we have talked about before. But I realized that, you know, when you're untethered, intense, insecure, if you have a sort of wobbly sense of self or self loathing, there's a profound selfishness to it. It's not entitlement, but there is. Because you're so insulated in your own thoughts about who you are and what you're going through, it's rare to really understand or hear or engage with other people's perception of you. Because what you're thinking about yourself, if you're insecure, you know, resentful, jealous, Self pitying. I mean, you know what, you're just trying to, you know, to get by, but you're, you're full of this horrendous negative self talk and feelings about who you are. And that becomes sort of the external personality is, is you trying to manage those feelings within yourself, to engage with the world. But there is this thing happening now again with some of the time I'm having and the big transition I'm in and the age I'm at, where it's, it's kind of like, wow, this is still fucking here, you know, this, this core part of me is still fucking here. I mean, it's crazy. And I, and I had a conversation with somebody from my past that really kind of shed light on something that, that I didn't, I don't know, I just didn't realize it. You know, I had lunch with an old friend of mine, a buddy of mine from college. We were pretty close. We were very close. We were kind of best friends for a few years. And he was just sort of reflecting on his life and reflecting on whatever that time was back then, back in the day. And his sense of who I was, how he felt about who I was, was completely fucking surprising to me. And I realized, like, I don't know, I had a couple of realizations mostly that, you know, how in my own fucking head am I at all times? But I mean, Again, I was 20, 22, you know, 19, and I was scrambling. All I was doing was trying to figure out who the fuck I was. I was trying to, you know, be unique or different. I was, I was, I was trying to wrap my brain around, you know, art and film and poetry and writing. And I was trying to sort of dress in a way that I thought kind of had something unique about it, you know, stuff you do in your 20s. But I was at the core, totally insecure and not confident in a lot of ways. But I was persistent in this quest to find myself, you know, not find God, you know, not find some spiritual answer, but just to, you know, fill my head with stuff to make me smarter and understand things and, and to, and to express myself and just to figure out, you know, who the. Who the fuck am I? Who the fuck am I? And now at this age, at the core, I realize I'm this aggravated, still sort of resentful, kind of insecure guy that, that somehow, despite all that, you know, pulled enough together. And I'm not saying that this is an unusual disposition for a creative person to have, but, but my perception of him was back then was that this guy's got his shit together, he knows how to move through the world. He gets things done. He's a creative guy. He writes. You know, we both like film, but I thought he, you know, totally had it together and knew where he was going and what he wanted to do and where he was, you know, what the plan was and what he was interested in me. I was just, like, all over the fucking place trying to build a me. So we're talking and he says, look, man, I thought you were cool, that you were creative, that you dressed cool, that you liked all the right music. And I just felt kind of not intimidated by that, but I was sort of in awe of you. This is. This guy. For my entire life, I was, in my mind, kind of competing with and desperately trying to be like. And after 40 years, he tells me that his sense of me was something completely different than what I thought. And I was also a draining fucking guy. And I imagine I still am on some level. I mean, I'm one of these people. When I locked into a friend, you had to be all in. You were my only friend. I was demanding, I was needy, I was competitive. But, you know, if we were friends, you know, you were it. I know all this stuff about myself deep down, and I've. I've learned how to manage it. But just the idea that someone's perception of me was so different than what I was experiencing even back then was kind of devastating and uplifting at the same time. Because you just realize if you are. And look, I speak my mind a lot. I do on stage here, whatever. I try a lot of things. And that quest for landing in myself or finding myself is pretty close to done, thank God, at almost 62 years old. But I do realize that there is no way to know unless somebody tells you. And I'm talking about people who are close to you or respect you and obviously love you how you are in their eyes, unless they tell you. Look, I get a lot of shit from people. Sometimes if I say things online or wherever, I get good shit from people who watch my work, and they understand that. But the people that are close to you have an entire different you in your head than you have in yours. And I guess what bridges that gap is trust. Once you reveal as much as yourself as possible or you feel comfortable with and sort of share that vulnerability, but you still just don't really. You're unable to see yourself as others see you in your life. And because my sense of myself or my perception of Myself is so compromised by my motor brain and my fear and my insecurity, I assume that people think the same way about me. And it keeps getting proven wrong. And it's good because I might start believing it. Anyway, I'm sorry. I just guess I had to dump, as they say in the recovery racket. Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. We have a website that's powered by Squarespace, which has made life easier for us since we started using it more than a decade ago. With Squarespace's collection of cutting edge design tools, anyone can build an online presence of that perfectly fits their brand or their business. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services on your site and get paid. Plus streamline your workflow with built in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools. And with Squarespace's Blueprint AI feature, you get a website builder that helps you create a fully customized site within minutes. Choose whatever features you want to get the most out of your site. Just like we do with wtfpod.com check out squarespace.com WTF for a free trial and then use offer code WTF to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com WTF offer code WTF. All right, so look, Tom Sharpling is here. He'll be doing live stage shows with John Worcester to celebrate 25 years of the best show. You can see these anniversary shows in Brooklyn, Philly, Los Angeles and Chicago throughout October. Go to the best show to find out more. And this is me talking to my dear friend Tom Sharplink. I had no idea that, you know, I had sort of landed a bomb because I just don't see it. Like, I thought, like, I'm barely getting any pushback at all. This is amazing. It's. Cause my algorithm is designed for my brain. And, you know, I saw, you know, Henchcliffe made some comment. Yeah. And it's weird about the pushback from those. It doesn't matter. But like, what bothers me is that he was lying.
