the percussive exuberance
of K-drama dialogue
drifts down the darkened hall
a cryptic lullaby in
rollercoaster tones
leading me past
anxious abstraction
to plush midnight
Posted in Creativity, Culture, Poetry | Tagged Creativity, K-drama, modern poetry, Poetry, quiet living, retirement | Leave a Comment »
From the Old Man Shouts Into the Wind files, Entry #4492.
[Entry Begins]
A few years ago I received an invitation to be interviewed on a podcast. It wasn’t a big-deal podcast, just a couple of guys who nattered on about books, but I’d never done an audio interview (my previous ones had all be text-based for print publications), so I responded and we began to set it up. It didn’t take long for me to realize that this was not going to be an “interview” interview, but something entirely different.
My first clue came when I asked which of my books they wanted to discuss (I had two series and one standalone novel at the time). The answer—and I’m paraphrasing here—was, “Oh, we don’t know anything about any of your books.” In essence, it was not an interview, but a time slot in which I could hold forth and flog my books.
Some people are good at this type of thing. Some people are really good at it. And good for them! It’s a valuable skill in this “Look at Me!” age of influencers and TikTok stars, where publishers (if you are lucky enough to have one) put little (if any) money into marketing non-premium titles, and most of the promotional setup and execution has to be done by the author.
Sadly, I am not one of those people. I am so definitely not one of them, that I decided not to participate. I’m sure that podcast audience got along just fine.
I relate this anecdote as prologue, because from that day to this I have noticed a distinct trend in interviewing style, and it’s one that (in my opinion) severely diminishes the form. It’s what I call the “Talkabout” style.
At its heart, an interview is a conversation. Interviewer asks a question and Interviewee responds. This leads to another question and another response. Interviewer at some point will switch to another topic, and they begin anew. This question and response interplay can lead to deeper insights, as the interviewer builds on Answer #1 in forming Question #2, exploring the topic more fully. This technique works especially well in adversarial interviews, where it drifts from the conversational toward a more debate-like vibe, and the questioner can drill down into responder’s answers.
The “Talkabout” style, on the other hand, is not a conversation; it’s performance on demand. The host (not “interviewer”) greets the guest and says, “Talk about your latest [insert topic element here].” There is no question. There is no “If you would” or “Please.” It’s merely a time slot in which the guest can hold forth, a command behind a conversational facade. It is an “interview-shaped object.” Once the guest has finished talking about the thing, there is no follow-up question; instead, the host gives their opinion of the guest’s opinion or merely regurgitates what the guest delivered using different words. This is usually followed by another “talk about” demand. It is not an interview.
There are times when an interviewer will ask the guest to explain something to the audience (a movie’s premise, the context of an essay, a brief history of a political situation, etc.) and this is acceptable (to me) because context is important, and it’s better if it is the guest/expert who provides that perspective. After that, though, an interviewer will return to questions, whereas the “talkabout” host will not.
I know this is not likely to change, primarily because of the way most of us consume news and opinion, i.e., it tiny tiny bites. Many don’t read past the headlines, and certainly won’t read past Question/Answer #1 to get the deeper insight of Question/Answer #2. I also know that my personal sensibilities are outdated, and that while I bristle at what I perceive as a lazy, sloppy, borderline rude method to elicit information without breaking the surface tension of any given topic, it is for others perfectly acceptable.
But maybe some will read this, see something they hadn’t noticed before, and seek out sources that provide a deeper analysis or insight into a given question.
An interview is only as good as the interviewer, and just as the ability to write does not make us all good writers, so too, the ability to speak does not make us all good interviewers. For my part, I’ll seek out the person who asks a question, and then another, and then another, diving deeper each time into the why or the how of a topic. It takes more time, yes, but if I want to understand rather than merely parrot, it is incumbent upon me to spend it.
[Entry Ends]
Posted in Culture, Politics, Television | Tagged interview, interview style, podcasts, pundits, social norms | Leave a Comment »
at the last bell of the last day
we slammed closed our books
kicked off our school-year shoes
and soared on summer wings
up into our beloved hills
our youth’s true home
to live beneath brooding oaks
dance along moss-slick creeks
and walk barefoot through grass
made of spun gold
I grew up at the edge of a newly-minted suburb. Clean-lined bungalows sat contentedly behind manicured lawns, all surrounded by hills yet untouched, crisscrossed only by trails of deer, coyote, and vole. My friends and I, we lived up in those hills all summer (and much of the calendar’s remaining months), hiking the golden ridges, exploring hidden creeks and sudden glens, prospecting for pyrite, searching shell mounds for arrowheads, observing birds and wildlife, fashioning weapons from pampas fronds, and committing not a little bit of trespassing as we traversed private (and military) land.
Almost all of that time, we were barefoot. The soles of our feet, softened during the school year, toughened up quickly in June, protecting us from the live oaks’ thorny leaves, while our unshod toes gripped rocks either slick or jagged. Shoes, for us, were a nuisance; easily lost, frequently forgotten, they stole our sure-footedness and rarely survived the summer intact.
Going barefoot has been a hallmark of my life ever since. Around the house, puttering in the garden, walking beaches, summer winter spring autumn, I have almost always been barefoot (okay, I wore socks in winter).
And it looks like that’s going to have to change.
A couple of months ago, I injured my Achilles tendon. Nothing serious like a rupture, but badly enough that it often forces me to modify my gait or take stairs like an octogenarian.
My standard “walk it off” method of treatment did not work; if anything, it was made worse. Neither did resting it help (but how much can you actually rest your foot?). This past month I started employing a more aggressive course of treatment—heat, ice, massage, NSAIDs, compression, elevation, light exercise—which has helped, but there were still bad days when it ached and ached all the way up into my calf or kept me up at night. Finally, I discovered something that really seemed to help.
I put on a pair of shoes.
I work from home, and really only go out to run errands (as a 100% introvert, my social life is . . . sparse). Shoes were for going out in public, for heavy garden work, and for taking walks on paved surfaces.
Now, they’re for everything. Like going to the kitchen.
I am not happy about this.
Achilles tendon injuries like mine can take six months or more to improve, so I’m hoping that in time I’ll be able to return to the patterns of my barefoot youth. However, seeing as how I’m no longer a skinny, bendable adolescent but rather a thick-waisted and mostly sedentary senior citizen, no guarantees.
Still . . . fingers crossed.
k
Posted in Culture, Poetry | Tagged achilles tendon, going unshod, injury, keeping active, walking barefoot, youth | 2 Comments »
I am not the man
I used to be
not in any sense
I have been rebuilt
a half dozen times
sloughing off my past
for a new shell
Top to toe
each atom
each molecule
has been replaced
like parts under warranty
I raise my refurbished hand
to shade my eyes and
sunlight fires my flesh
with light aeons old
But the iron in my blood
the carbon in my bones
though new to me
predate this blazing sun
My ever renewing form
is a gift from dying stars
birthed of elements
roared into being
at the genesis
of the universe itself
Posted in Poetry, Writing | Tagged aging, Life, modern poetry, Poetry | Leave a Comment »
I have walked
From land to land and star to star
I have walked
Through lifetimes and histories unwritten
I have walked
Learning living loving leaving
One place one life one breathless moment
For the next
I have walked
Though not alone
For with each step each thought each dream-built notion
Through crepe-hung heartaches and clean-scented joys
To lead to follow or simply to be
There has been you
We
We have walked
Posted in Creativity, Poetry, Writing | Tagged gratitude, love, modern poetry, partnership, Poetry, Relationships | Leave a Comment »
This week, we decided to go to WinCo on Wednesday, because, I mean, who goes to the grocery on a Wednesday afternoon?
It had not been a great week—work had been a pain, our joints were aching—but our vacation was to begin on Friday afternoon, and we didn’t want to start the vacation with an errand. Thursdays, on the other hand, are never great at WinCo because, well, no one wants to start their time off with an errand, either, so Thursday was right out. Thus, Wednesday it was and, despite the fact that I was working with an injured ankle, and she was working with a bum knee, and we were both grumpy from [gestures to everything in general], off we went to WinCo because like I said, who goes shopping on a Wednesday afternoon?
I’ll tell you who goes shopping on a Wednesday afternoon. The entire 4th Battalion goes shopping on a Wednesday afternoon, that’s who.
Well, not literally, but damn, it seemed like it.
The parking lot was only middling full, but once we entered the store it was clear that something was up, something was different. Patrons stalked the aisles slowly, cautiously, as if expecting an ambush, as if raiders lay in wait around the end-caps, ready to rush in and capture the contents of their carts. And oh, those carts were full, so full, full to brimming, full to the point that they made the carts’ little wobbly casters scream from the sheer weight stacked upon them.
These were not casual shoppers. These were not folks stopping by for a quart of milk on their way home.
These people were serious. These people were seasoned veterans. These people were not to be trifled with. You could see it in their eye; heads on swivels, searching for deals, for discounts, comparing unit prices, ounce to ounce, doing long division in their heads, determining cost and return in a blink.
The weaker ones had already been weeded out. We came across the remains: carts half-filled, left askew in the center of an aisle, the contents abandoned as shoppers fled the field.
Walking the aisles, we crossed paths repeatedly with one family—Mom, Grandma, two Daughters—who were pushing two carts like a tractor-trailer rig. Our paltry list, our sparsely populated haul, seemed like a sign of the neophyte, a target for hazing. We added a 12-roll package of toilet paper to fill it out, to make it look like we, too, meant business. Probably a rookie move, but it bolstered our resolve.
We moved quickly but with purpose, efficient but without haste, from produce to baked goods to dairy to frozen foods and, at last, to the rank of checkout lines where we craned our necks and I used all of my 6’2″ height to see which line was the best line.
There was no best line. None.
First, only four lines were open. Four lines and probably twenty people waiting to check out. And with each of those twenty, a cart overtopped, groaning with booty.
Moving blindly to the end of the nearest line, we prayed that some employees would finish their break and open up new queues. God answered our prayer: “No.”
As evidence of how cowed, how shell-shocked we were at this point, I will tell you that it took a full ten minutes before I realized that, ahead of us in line, were Mom, Grandma, and Daughters, the family we’d encountered several times on our trek. And it took another few minutes before I realized that instead of two carts filled with goods, they had three. Three full-sized carts stacked high and deep with items large and small. I admit; I gawked at the scale of it. Literally gawked. Eyes wide, mouth agape, gawking.
“We’re doomed,” I whispered to my wife. I think she may have begun to weep.
But then, as the family approached the checkout conveyor (no, they were not even the first in line, and hadn’t even begun to unload), something happened. Dad appeared.
He had a bag of bagels in his hand. He showed it to Mom. She shook her head, and off he went. He was running recon for her, a scout heading back out into the bush, gathering intel. He came back with two different bags. “English muffins,” I heard her say, but then she took one of the bagel bags. “This’ll be fine,” she told him, and then he was off on another mission.
Then, as they reached the conveyor and Grandma (and Daughters) began placing the first of hundreds of items on the belt, something else happened. Grandpa appeared. And two Sons.
Grandpa and Sons positioned themselves, with an empty cart, at the end of the second conveyor belt (at WinCo, we bag our own groceries). While Grandma and Daughters were feeding items to the checkout clerk, Grandpa and Sons (well, mostly Sons) were bagging up what the clerk had rung up and filling the empty cart.
And over it all, Mom was running the campaign with the smooth confidence of a four-star general. There was no bickering. Hell, there was hardly even any conversation. It was a massive operation, a logistical ballet, all coordinated and directed with a look here, a gesture there, a kind but firm word placed in a listening ear.
And then something else happened.
I realized that, at some point, my annoyance at the interminable wait had disappeared, poof, replaced by a sincere appreciation (and not a little respect) for the quiet, efficient, beautiful functionality of this family team. At some point, my attitude had been changed, and what had before felt like a turbulent trip was now smooth flying.
Sometimes, it really is in how you look at things.
k
Posted in Culture | Tagged attitude, making lemonade, perspective, positive attitude | 3 Comments »
sumac, feathered fronds waving, hear it first
autumn’s gentle rapping on the garden gate
put on parti-colored togs to greet the arrival
nearby maples eavesdrop on the reunion
catch half the meaning but all the sense of joy
don festive gloves on five-fingered leaves
sweetgum and dogwood wake with a start
having overslept in summer’s waning sun
leaves blushing with groggy embarrassment
wisteria, in denial, refuses to join the fun
and with tendril fingers in viny ears
will sing la-la-la until their guest departs
evergreen elders tower over the festivities
enjoying the youthful exuberance at their feet
preparing for storms they know will come
Posted in Gardening, Poetry, Seattle | Tagged autumn, fall color, fall colors, Garden, modern poetry, Poetry, seasons | 2 Comments »
