There's always an opportunity to return to center.

courtesy of Nerdist

Nerdist Podcast Episode 625: Ethan Hawke

I listened to this interview last Sunday for the 4th time (now for the 5th as I write); it's an interview I return to again and again because I relate to it so deeply! It validates many of my thoughts. Ethan Hawke is smart, sensitive, wise. Plus, he also loves James Baldwin and John Steinbeck.

At the time I last wrote I had just returned to New York City and felt optimistic about all of the wonderful things that were beginning to emerge in my life. But life hasn't been without challenges, and how they've affected me has taken me by surprise—even though I thought I'd strengthened plenty over the prior months:

• the excitement of a new role beginning to wear off and facing the challenges that come with being in a leadership position (impostor syndrome...HUGE). Also, trying to feel like my best self in the workplace
• being in a new, exciting relationship (my first) with someone I adore; navigating its many ups but also the downs
• coming to terms with the evolution of my friendships and more closely evaluating the ones I have, for better or worse
• my father disconnecting (again)
• the process of finding and moving into my first apartment and discovering what it means to make a home just for myself from scratch (a longtime dream come true but definitely not an easy, or cheap, or quick process)
• the consequences of saying yes to exactly what you'd asked of the Universe, only to learn what you asked for and received wasn't what you needed or wanted. Then, having to take back yeses. In sum: learning the necessary difficulty and bravery of saying NO
• losing love for self in waves

Amidst these happenings, I lost my sense of self and, particularly in the last week and a half or so, I've had to remember: I am who I am, and I love who I am, and I'm proud of who I am. I will forget this again, no doubt. But I feel with each occurrence I become better about returning to center.

There are so many gems I'm eliminating from this interview that I may come back and add in the future. For now, a few quotes that spark my favorite parts of their conversation:

On the best of life:
"It's just the minutiae of life that's wonderful...the good stuff is waking up in the morning. The good stuff is the stuff that's free. It always is."
17:45

On recognizing your flaws, moving forward:
"There's always an opportunity to return to center."
22:10

On being young, not living in the past, and what Hawke would say to his younger self:
"You don't want to lacerate yourself or aggrandize yourself too much."
22:16
"I would just tell myself to relax."
23:35

On what led his mom to being her happiest in her early 60s:
"Part of that transition for her was learning to like herself on her own terms. And the second that transition happened, forgiving herself for the things she was disappointed in herself about."
26:01

On Dead Poets Society:
"What that whole movie is about is finding your voice and letting your voice be heard despite the great pull of the Universe towards everybody being the same and the great applause for mediocrity that happens all the time."
41:40

And the future will be what the future will be.

Love love love the What I've Learned section in Esquire. So I loved the "Meaning of Life" issue because it was filled with them. I almost blogged excerpts from each one but that would take too long, take up too much space.

Robert De Niro: "Now is now. Then is then. And the future will be what the future will be. So enjoy the moment while you're in it. Now is a great time."

The other people interviewed for this issue included Yoko Ono, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, Aaron Sorkin ('Cuse alum!), Mary-Louise Parker, George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush, Ruth Westheimer, Ted Danson, Danny DeVito, Ricky Gervais, Ferran Adria, James L. Brooks, Fred Willard, Albert Brooks, Jodie Foster, Jesus H. Christ (ha), and in memoriam (people who died this year and did interviews in the past), John Wooden, Jimmy Dean, Tony Curtis, David Brown, George Steinbrenner. Read 'em. And then read some more. They're all great.

All I have is intense curiosity.

Gay Talese, The Art of Nonfiction No. 2, interviewed by Katie Roiphe

the Paris Review, Summer 2009

"But the column gave me an excuse to talk to others. It was not unlike my mother talking with the wealthy women in her dress shop. Doing journalism made me feel that, even if I wasn't part of their group, I had a right to be there."

"All I have is intense curiosity. I have a great deal of interest in other people and, just as importantly, I have the patience to be around them."

"My first job was on the sports desk, but I didn't want to write about sporting events. I wanted to write about people. I wrote about a losing boxer, a horse trainer, and the guy in the boxing ring who rang the bell between rounds. I was interested in fiction. I wanted to write like Fitzgerald. I collected his work--his short stories and journals. "Winter Dreams" is my favorite story of all time. The good nonfiction writers were writing about famous people, or topical people, or public people. No one was writing about unknown people. I knew I did not want to be on the front page. On the front page you're stuck with the news. The news dominates you. I wanted to dominate the story."

"I never turned in anything more than two minutes before deadline. It was never easy, I felt I had only one chance. I was working for the paper of record, and I believed that what I was doing was going to be part of a permanent history."

"I take it very seriously. This is a craft. This is an art form. I'm writing stories, just like fiction writers, only I use real names."

"I was in touch with Floyd because when I finish a story, I don't finish a story. I keep in touch with the people I write about. I did that even as a young sports writer just starting out, twenty-five years old. I keep in touch because I always think that there might be more. The stories go on."

"I turned in the piece at roughly a hundred pages. They didn't change a word."

-in reference to "Frank Sinatra has a Cold"

"I try to tell the reader where my characters come from, and how they got to the point where I've found them. It never is just present tense. It's always also about past tense."

"The only thing I could think of was to start a college fund, which I set up for my own daughters at the same time. Honor Thy Father paid for college for all four of the Bonanno children and my daughters. I'm glad I did it because I have the evidence now that it was the right decision. The four Bonanno children are straight, and one of them is even an important doctor. None of them have had to do what their father chose to do."

"A case could be made that this is my main failing as a person. I am never there. Fully."

So inspiring. Everything he says is why I want to be a journalist.