12 Questions for David Marchese
The host of the New York Times 'The Interview' podcast on curiosity, authenticity, extracting a sense of vulnerability from his subjects, medically assisted suicide, and more.
I first came across David Marchese’s work on a rainy day in Berlin this past February, where I was, in the unbearable cold, doing research for a book I’ve been working on for quite some time. I received a call from my mother, who asked me, before hanging up the phone, if I’d ever listened to the New York Times interview podcast, and, she said, if not, then I should. ‘You mean The Daily?’ I responded. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s the one The Daily releases on the weekend, but it’s a whole different thing, it’s like a long recorded interview with a politician, actor, or anyone who’s famous really, usually from the… you know, society/culture world.’ Iterations of this conversation are an almost everyday occurrence. My mother regularly asks questions like if I’d watched the most recent Seth Meyers Closer Look segment on something hypocritical Trump said on a plane, or about a plane, or if I’d tuned in the night before to watch Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert’s opening monologue, or, more often, if I’d put on CNN to see what Kaitlan Collins had said that morning about Stephen Miller, or had asked Stephen Miller, and if I’d noticed Kaitlan Collins’ supernatural ubiquity, her frightening work ethic, how she seems, twenty-four/seven, to always be on air, covering the White House and Capitol Hill through the morning and afternoon, then going on to host her own show at night, enduring this schedule on a daily basis. Kaitlan Collins is only thirty-three, and look at all she’s accomplished, my mother might add, before asking if I’d seen what Jamie Stelter (née Schupach), the NY1 anchor, happened to be wearing on air that afternoon. ‘No.’ I’ll respond. ‘It was so crazy!’ She’ll say, before adding something like: ‘Oh, by the way, who’s this Bad Bunny guy? He was on Fallon last night. I couldn’t understand him at all. He’s always on SNL now, for whatever reason. By the way, did you watch the latest Weekend Update? It was actually really funny.’
‘No, I mean yeah, I did see it. But just a few clips on YouTube, not the whole thing.’
My mother, seventy, is under the impression that my generation still watches live TV, or that the first thing I do after a long day’s work is put on CNN for a few hours to see the nuance of opinion between Kaitlan Collins and Van Jones on what type of fascist authoritarianism Trump’s floor-length tie represents. There’s no point in disabusing her of this notion, for if she knew the truly fractured way my generation consumes media, how disengaged everyone seems to be about our haunting political reality, she’d be somewhat shaken and disturbed. I do, actually, from time to time, watch clips of interviews on mainstream platforms like CNN, CBS (60 minutes, for now), and MSNBC. I read the New York Times almost every single day and I still, the more fraught the political situation, take somnambulant pleasure in watching John Oliver, Jon Stewart, and Seth Meyers perform their dated, oft-lazy, hackneyed material. While others, in fact most people my age or in my social, cultural circle see lamestream media as a complete waste of time, something backward and dumb, I see it as a kind of perverse comfort food, a guilty pleasure that reminds me of a simpler, pre-2015 period when everything appeared to make a little more sense. But now, in a time where it seems the world is falling apart while I endure a variety of my own never-ending personal issues and grief (this is just adulthood, and I must, at thirty, begin to accept that), mainstream media outlets tend to provide a form of sedative relaxation, especially when compared to the confusing and ever-expanding independent media ecosystem, where everyone has a platform and ostensibly the most advanced, personal yet objective angle on any conceivable issue du jour—well of course.
To believe in the power and credibility of conventional institutions is outdated and lame. Yet, (I’ll reiterate), when I read the Times or watch Jon Stewart I feel connected to a simpler cultural era where only newspapers, magazines, and channels existed, and not every moron was so easily able to platform their take with the sneaky implication that they deserve to demand your attention, and that, in fact, it’s their birthright to demand your attention. So, because I love her, I indulge my mom, and my connection to mainstream platforms (American institutions) makes me feel more connected to her, to the love between mother and son that must be respected and acknowledged. While the legacy of Ronald Reagan, Trump’s MAGA movement, along with the decades long influence of far-right stalwarts like Alito or Thomas, will have you believe that most media institutions are hellbent on destroying the nuclear family and tearing communities apart, the effect has for me been the opposite; I respect and understand how others might have had a different experience with the atomizing consequences of popular media, but I think two conflicting truths should be allowed to exist in a kind of earth-shattering harmony; maintaining a connection with mainstream platforms allows me to indulge in the illusion of safety, the warmth of childhood, and thus avoid confronting how messy the world, which is to say the information ecosystem, has become; I think unfettered capitalism is more to blame for atomization and isolation, and everything from mainstream media to the most niche-yet-vitriolic cultural debates are the very outcome of existing in a greed-driven atmosphere; the focus on the problem is in fact misguided. To maintain the idea of cozy comfort in front of the TV with family, the never-ending discussion that books, movies and television programs can spark, I indulge my mother and Talmudically discuss what happened in the news, what happened on television—I’ll discuss how Kaitlan Collins relentlessly nudges Trump’s illiterate Barbie doll press secretary, and I’ll talk about how odd it is that Bill Maher had dinner with Kid Rock at the White House and spoke for fifteen minutes about Trump’s surprisingly indelible charm, or how Kristi Noem (Noem like Gnome), the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, doesn’t know the definition of habeas corpus, yet takes part in an endless stream of propagandistic videos where she’s portrayed, heroically, assisting ICE agents in deporting Latin American families. We’ll talk at length about these issues, and about what the pundits on various news networks and infotainment programs have had to say on the matter, as well as which ones we do and do not happen to agree with. But, with all that mentioned, I did not happen to, on that frigid winter day in the middle of January, listen to the new episode of The Interview, where I was told by my mother that a man with a name like Davis Matchaisy had a contentious back and forth with the Oscar-winning actor Denzel Washington. And she said I should really listen to it, primarily because of how insolent Washington behaved during the interview before, somehow, this man named Matchaisy managed to get Washington to shed his defenses and portray a sense of vulnerability. My mother liked how Matchaisy talked about his combative interaction in the episode’s short intro, and she mentioned how it all reminded her of my antagonistic interview with the writer Richard Hell. (Example: throughout our interview, Hell refused to be associated with the term punk, or the concept of punk—a unique perspective from someone who’s credited with starting the punk rock movement.) ‘Just take a listen,’ my mother said. ‘You might find it interesting.’
Upon acquiescing and opening up the interview, on bluetooth headphones during a long walk with my dog through a muddy park in Mitte, I proceeded to judge David Marchese with an almost cruel form of severity. My initial reaction was, simply, that he was kind of annoying. Indeed Washington came off as more annoying, and strange, if not incredibly rude, but I didn’t like the way that Marchese seemed to cower, and appear to intentionally make himself small in the presence of Washington’s celebrity. It seemed like it was all a disingenuous tactic where if Marchese appeared obsequious and mousey he’d have the right to occasionally, from time to time meekly, challenge Washington with a surprisingly irreverent and personal question and, therefore, extract information. I thought, at the time, that this deliberately nebbish approach was pathetic and that for the most part it didn’t work. I dismissed Marchese as a commonplace, unreflective manipulator, a b-grade interviewer, and, cavalier, moved on with my day through the Berlin grime, the dark gray snow. I told my mom this, and surprised, she responded: ‘Really? I thought it was good.’
It’s always been my mother’s dream, I suspect, for me to be a visible member of the mainstream media, for her to turn on the television and either see me interviewing someone of tremendous talent and power, or being interviewed for the sake of my own tremendous talent and power. It’d be a sign of me fulfilling my potential, that I’d made it and was respected by credentialed professionals. Almost every American grows up with the desire to fulfill and surpass what their parents had failed to accomplish, or never dared to accomplish. For some it’s becoming a doctor or business tycoon, and for me, for a while unconsciously, it was being acknowledged and respected as a writer, as a figure with an aesthetic sense of lyricism and a vast array of opinions as well as, one hopes, unique observations; a spiritually alchemic combination of all those aforementioned traits. My ensuing love for the act of writing itself, for attempting a form of transcendence through my work no matter the awards or recognition that might come as a result, has ended up as counterintuitive to fulfilling the institutional respect my mother desired, at once for herself, and then, by the corollary of failure, for me. At thirty-years-old with only a semi-successful publication on Substack (which many disparagingly insist on calling a blog), and, I should add, an unpublished novella, I can’t help but feel like I’ve let my mother down. In our interview, Marchese writes: ‘I am inclined to reject that one has any moral or personal obligation to family beyond the moral or personal obligations owed to any human being. Which is, basically, to be kind.’ With this I disagree. No matter how much I know better, I can’t shake the desire to not only fulfill a personal sense of potential, but to fulfill a sense of potential that can be perceived and admired by respected institutions, an expectation that has come to haunt me. To some degree, this burden has become my very American, undesired obligation; if this awful personality disorder of American megalomania did not exist, I’d have several years ago settled in Europe to a life of middle-class comfort and anonymity.
Why did I judge David Marchese with such ferocity? What did this, and does this, say about my own insecurities in regard to the work I’m doing and where I’m at as a writer? This was a question, following the long listen to the Denzel Washington interview, that I couldn’t stop asking myself. In other words, the interview stuck with me, and, in other words, if it were, like most podcasts, really a senseless piece of shit, I wouldn’t have been thinking about it, and it certainly wouldn’t have evoked such a period of introspective reflection. It’s a general rule, at least in my opinion, that no art (or interview) is good or bad. Nothing is good or bad (bah!). Things are either memorable or forgettable, and if something is memorable, it was at least worthwhile, which is to say not a waste of time. And, like kismet, I must have come across it for a reason. On another long walk through the five-pm dark of a Berlin winter, I chose to listen to the interview once more.
Let’s forget, for a moment, all notions of creating art that’s worthy of meaning, art of true social and cultural value. It should be mentioned, in David Marchese’s defense, that it’s not easy to talk to someone of Denzel Washington’s power, fame, and pedigree, and in this case hostility, with the knowledge that hundreds of thousands of people will be listening. My own voice would stumble, and at times I would probably cower as well. In the intro to the interview with Washington, Marchese reads aloud:
So many of Denzel Washington’s greatest performances have been defined by a riveting sense of authority, an absence of any pandering or need to be liked. There’s something deep down inside his characters that feels unassailable, a little enigmatic… the same steely qualities that have helped Washington become a legend also, as I learned firsthand, make for an unusual, and unusually complicated conversationalist.
A subject’s absence of the desire to be admired or liked can be disconcerting for an interviewer. In my own experience I’ve learned that this portrayal of nonchalant indifference is usually something of a mask, and anyone, especially an actor, cares about being liked and admired by strangers, never mind an audio journalist from the world’s foremost publication. In his intro Marchese goes on to say how the interview with Washington felt like it was being conducted entirely on Washington's terms, ‘or let me put it like this, I didn’t feel like we ever quite figured out how to connect.’ Marchese then says, before the audio to the interview begins, how the second time they talked, in person in Manhattan, felt different. ‘I can’t really say why with any certainty, but things just felt easier with him this time. What I do know, though, is that after it was all over, I was left with an experience just as memorable as one of his performances.’ I would have liked Marchese to take a moment or two to articulate why with at least a modicum of certainty (I can’t put it into words is an excuse all writers fall victim to. In the past, I’ve written a string of incomprehensible words along the lines of — I won’t articulate the overwhelming sensation, as nothing in the written form could possible pay it respect — a miserable excuse for not doing my job.) The first time I listened to Marchese’s interview and came to the harsh judgment, I didn't make it to the second section that took place in person, in Manhattan. I was instead just annoyed at how badly, in the first section, Marchese appeared to want to be liked, or to want to connect. Marchese desiring to be liked is fine, I thought, but he should at least mention it, or conduct a form of self-investigation as to why, otherwise it just comes off as desperate, or, as I wrote, an intentionally pathetic kind of manipulation; to say it colloquially: topping from the bottom.
At one point in the first section of the interview, Marchese, at a loss due to Washington’s various childish antagonisms, says: ‘what types of things do you think I should… (laughs).’
‘Ask me?’ Washington responds.
‘Ask (continuous laughter) yeah.’
‘I wana know more bout you.’
David Marchese goes on to tell Washington that he has an assertiveness problem, which, given his ability, for example, to achieve a desirable position at the Times, I don’t quite believe. Three months ago, on Youtube, the user @toddronan5359 gave his own impression of Marchese's back and forth with Denzel Washington: ‘God this interviewer is just starstruck. Who'd he blow to get this gig?’ Well, I would argue, even blowing someone to get a gig is form of being assertive.
Marchese is an emotional interviewer, either unafraid or unable to hide how he’s feeling in any given moment. Whether or not it’s a manipulation, this is something I enjoy. He’ll often lose his voice mid-question, half-gasping for air from what appears to be anxiety or trepidation as the last few syllables of a question to, say, Tilda Swinton, Serena Williams, or Vince Vaughan, pour out of his mouth. Other times he’ll tear up, and, mid-inquiry, mention how he’s tearing up; in a recent conversation with Sally Rooney, he stopped to admit how verklempt he was during an abstract point each made about the pleasures of stopping and realizing the joy of being alive and merely existing in the world, something of that ilk, yogic and conceptual and hard to argue with; how can I fault a man for beginning to cry when coming face to face with the absolute pleasure to be found in the mundane aspects of life, of getting up and having coffee and saying hi to his son, or banal shit like that. Depending on your general prospective or mood, this shit can be seen as cloying, or it can be seen as touching. It’s here I’ll mention that David Marchese is Canadian, a native to the suburbs of Toronto. If, like me, you’ve at any point come across a variety of Canadians and had found their litany of unnecessary sorrys to be bothersome (I’m soo sohwrry), and, even further, if like me you’ve found that the litany of unintentional sohwrrys is a kind of unconscious social manipulation—if someone’s so consistently sorry for doing the most harmless thing, surely they’d never intentionally do anything wrong—then my theory of Marchese consciously topping from the bottom would not be unfounded. But, as something they’d probably say in Canada, that’s neither here nor there.
In the tumultuous first half of his interview with Denzel Washington, Marchese goes on to tell Washington that he has a problem with conflict, and that, because he tries to avoid it, his problems tend to linger as opposed to being resolved. With the most dull-minded type of armchair psychology, Washington replies: ‘And that had something to do with your dad, or what?’
‘Oh you see, I should be taking lessons from you,’ Marchese responds, before adding, ‘would you answer these types of questions if I asked you them?’
‘Ask me.’
‘What do you need to work on the most?’
‘Hm… Othello.’ Washington laughs.
Marchese, assertive: ‘No, you’re deflecting, you said I can’t deflect, so you don’t deflect.’
‘OK, good point.’
I think it was at this point in the conversation, during my first listen, that I turned off the interview and dismissed Washington as a bored, cruel, jaded celebrity and Marchese as a hack, meandering journalist. But like I said, it stuck with me. Marchese’s work had an effect.
On the second listen, I started from the beginning, and I took note of how the first half of the interview ended. Marchese asks Washington what he should go away and think about in preparation for when they talk again. Washington answers: ‘Man goes down to the ocean and tries to fit all the knowledge of the ocean into his little brain, instead of just jumping into the water and enjoying himself. Sometimes you just have to have faith in things bigger than our ability to understand them, now you call it what you want, some call it God, you call it what you want, but sometimes you just have to jump in the water and enjoy yourself, and not try to figure it out.’
‘Alright I think that is something for me to think about.’
When the conversation continues a week later, Marchese says that Washington’s parable about water and God made him feel as though in their first conversation he was too stuck in his own head, that he was too wrapped up in expectations about where the conversation was supposed to go as opposed to just existing with Denzel in the moment. He asks Washington where he learned the whole just jump in the water monologue. Washington replies: ‘Well I’ve tried everything else.’ The conversation proceeds smoothly, far more than the first time. Marchese allows Washington to dwell in his haughtiness as opposed to challenging him, and the tactic, or manipulation that allows the conversation to be carried forward, is Marchese telling Washington, or, depending on how you see it, indulging Washington, that his jump in the water nursery parable had changed his perspective. This is something I don’t buy. Washington, used to being praised for his wisdom and too self-righteous to doubt such praise, did buy it, and this very conceit from Marchese gave Washington the comfortability to relax and open up, to show more of himself. And what does Washington end up saying? A lot about God, cliche’d allusions to religious ideas like jealousy and envy and pain and death in relation to acting, and to his upcoming production of Othello. ‘At this point everything I’m doing is through the lens of what God thinks, not what they (people) think.’
‘What’s your favorite line from Othello?’ Marchese asks.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
Having had a week to recover, Marchese does well in the second conversation to gracefully put an exclamation point on Washington’s vanity, on the foolish pathology of an A-list actor’s God complex. Marchese is straining less and is better prepared, he allows Denzel Washington to reveal himself—not that Washington didn’t reveal himself during the first half, but in the second conversation Marchese was able to temper both his nerves and desperation: I just need to do less, just ask broad questions and let this motherfucker speak, then I’ve got this in the bag, he must have said to himself. Perhaps interviewing, especially the immediacy of the audio interview, is indeed a lot like playing several sets of tennis. Similar to a shut out in a set of tennis, the less contentious conversation that took place in the interview’s second section is a lot more boring, but it’s fascinating when observed as part of the whole. The icing on Marchese’s triumph, toward the very end, is when he sets Washington up to show how he was hurt about being snubbed an Oscar nomination for Gladiator 2. My mother was indeed right, as mothers always are; it was a conversation worth listening to. But not for the content of what was said. ‘Is there anything you want for people to take away from this interview?’ Marchese asks as his last question. ‘Believe in something greater than yourself,’ Washington answers, conspicuously struggling to take his own advice. After the audio to the interview cuts out, Marchese provides an outro: ‘That’s Denzel Washington!’
Marchese knows how to shift his tone depending on whom he’s dealing with. When speaking with an A-lister, Marchese can be audibly nervous, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this is intentional, part of his whole Canadian shtick. It’s interesting to see him in conversation with less marquee figures he’s not afraid of, such as the psychologist Lindsey C. Gibson or the far-right monarchist Curtis Yarvin. With Dr. Gibson, Marchese opens up with ease and shares anecdotes about his difficult relationship with his father. With Yarvin, Marchese’s frustrations and lack of respect in regard to Yarvin’s questionable political beliefs are made clear in both his questions and his generally dismissive tone. These conversations proceed naturally and are not as awkward; there’s a less calculated authenticity that isn’t quite present in his conversations with major stars. The reason is clear. A-list stars have bullying resources, and showing blatant disrespect can have consequences; this makes Marchese’s interview with Washington all the more interesting. There was a brilliance to how Marchese massaged his ego, allowing Washington to reveal himself while also believing he was in control. Marchese had expertly topped him from the bottom. But Marchese’s conversations with less famous figures are no less interesting, and those conversations tend to produce more thought-provoking insights and information from the subjects, probably because intellectuals and writers have more interesting things to say, or perhaps because the conversations are less of a chess match.
In one of his early responses in our interview, Marchese tells me that he doesn’t feel ‘remotely qualified’ to answer ‘these kinds of heavy questions.’ But, as a career conversationalist, he assures me he understands ‘what the game is’, before adding that he’s happy to try his best to play. In the same answer, Marchese tells me that he doesn’t care nor believe that interviewing has anything to do with getting to the truth of a subject (Marchese puts Truth in quotations). He believes truth, the ‘truth of ourselves’ is always ‘changing and dependent on the context,’ which, I suppose, is a form of truth in and of itself; the mercurial, semi-conscious habit of code-switching and perpetual adaptability, the inability to sit still and remain authentic to any foundation or core; the truth is, in some sense, we’re all chameleonic shapeshifters. Is this a little nihilistic? The idea that the only universal truth one can be sure of is the lack of any existing, principal structure of truth is an accusation that the modern far-right associates with the New York Times, and that any sensible liberal would attribute with most contemporary conservative platforms (Newsmax, OAN, Fox, the squishy faced Charlie Kirk, in addition to the loosely defined collection of podcasts known as the manosphere). The claim that one moves through the world without any consistent truth is to say one behaves without any sense of self or morality, but only desire, a desire for approval, a desire to be liked, a desire to make profit, a desire to gain control. It’s a powerful way to discredit an opponent, or, more powerfully, to discredit a group’s sense of humanity—these people have no authenticity, they just meander about, and therefore cannot be trusted nor integrated into any healthy and functioning form of society. People who are well adjusted, people who are good to spend time around, have a deep sense of truth and a consistent, moral way of conducting themselves within the world; who can argue with that? And Marchese begins our interview, in the second paragraph of the first question, by casting the most volatile of accusations unto himself: the only truth is the one that lies within the realm of an interaction, within the rules of a game; it is, nauseously, a zero-sum perspective on human behavior. And he’s not entirely wrong.
Our interview was off to a good start. I was on my way to extracting a sense of truth from my subject. People will show themselves. One merely has to know how to let them do it.
GG: How much of interviewing would you say is an enquiry and analysis into the moral elements of one’s persona?
DM: This is a very hard question to answer, and I’m not entirely sure if you mean the persona of the interviewer or the interviewee. I’d also like to point out here at the onset that I don’t feel remotely qualified to answer these kinds of heavy questions. But I understand what the game is and I’m happy to try my best to play.
Whether you meant it to apply to the interviewer or their subject, I do appreciate your use of the word “persona.” I’ve noticed that people can speak about trying to get to the “truth” of someone in an interview. I don’t care about that. I believe the truth of ourselves is almost always changing and dependent on the context. The truth you are getting from me in this interview is not, I believe, the same truth as the one that my children or wife or colleagues or accountant gets. We’re code-switching all the time, moving between personas, and as far as interviews go, my goal is simply to show the “truth” of an encounter (what it was like to spend time talking with this person), and to not be boring. That’s as much as I can honestly hope to squeeze out of an interview.
Back to your question: I take “moral elements” to imply rightness or wrongness. I only very rarely try to enquire or analyze the rightness or wrongness of my interview subjects. And I’m not sure how I’d even try to enquire or analyze the rightness or wrongness of a given persona. Every now and then someone says something to me that I think is clear-cut wrong — or right — and I try to respond appropriately in the moment.
If the persona you’re asking about is my own, then there is more enquiry and analysis going on during the interviews. Every interview is as much a reflection of my own interests and curiosity as it is of the subject, and I’m actively exploring those interests and that curiosity in the interviews — testing it all, if you will, in the manner of an ongoing personal project. That’s kind of the whole bag, but also not something I’m thinking about in the moment of the interviews.
I feel like I’ve let you down in this answer, Gordon! This question was smarter and more perceptive than I am.
How do you extract a sense of vulnerability from your subjects?
My experience is that interviews tend to have a reciprocal quality. I’m responding to you in a certain way because of how I’ve interpreted your communication with me and who I think you are. Similarly, if I show vulnerability during an interview — which I do — it’s more likely that the subjects will also show vulnerability. I’m closing my eyes now and trying to put myself back in the moment of being vulnerable in an interview and as I do that I realize that the vulnerability exchanges feel more to me like an encouraging rather than an extracting. But as I express this, I’m now thinking about the extent to which interviews can be an exercise in emotional manipulation, which I don’t love to admit is true but it is. I remember one interview in particular: I knew I had to raise a sensitive topic, and hoped to do it in such a way as to elicit a meaningful and not defensive or terse answer. In this interview, I felt in total control of my ability to subtly maneuver the discussion in such a way that, I knew in my bones, would allow me to get what I wanted. I knew exactly what I was doing and that I would be successful. It was exhilarating at the time and then also, in retrospect, kind of gross.
For what it’s worth, I have no aptitude nor inclination for that kind of manipulation outside of work. I’m not a creep.
What annoys you most about the process of interviewing?
Many things annoy me about the process. For famous people, there’s a whole process and apparatus that has to be managed before the interview ever happens that I find utterly soul-sucking. I also hate asking obligatory questions. It’s also annoying to go back over the transcripts when the interviews are done and see the multitude of ways in which I failed or, at the very least, could’ve done a better job — asked a clearer question, had a better command of facts, thought of a sharper followup.
You know what else is annoying? Now that my interviews are available as podcasts and, increasingly, video, there’s a whole extra layer of self-consciousness invading my mind that takes real work to suppress. I need to preserve unselfconsciousness as much as possible in order to do my job effectively and having to think about how I sound or look makes that more difficult.
All that said, I feel extremely fortunate to have my job — aside from dealing with famous peoples' “teams.” That unequivocally sucks — the pervasive fear and obsequiousness and bizarre self-importance of some of these handlers. Interacting with that, let alone encouraging it (which I’m sure I do sometimes), is embarrassing to my soul.
How often do you think about your own death? How does this affect and define your approach to life, to writing and to interviewing?
I don’t want to die but I try to be aware of my own death as much as possible. I’ve learned so much from the deaths of those close to me: what bravery looks like, the preciousness of our time alive, how much of myself is lost – and only ever existed – in others and the miracle of that existence in the first place .
I apologize for digressing but this subject is one I’ve been thinking about lately: a couple years ago I went to a Bruce Springsteen concert in Newark. Maybe 30 minutes in, he played a cover of the Commodores’ “Night Shift” — a song about lost friends — and I started blubbering. I was thinking about a friend and fellow Bruce fan who died from suicide. When we were 17 we skipped school to take the bus from Toronto to Philadelphia to see Springsteen on his first tour back with the E Street Band in 11 years. We played Springsteen songs together on our guitars in the basement. Our friendship was so wrapped up in Springsteen’s music. (An experience shared by millions, I’m sure.) And then my friend was gone.
After “Night Shift,” Springsteen played more songs about friendship: “Backstreets,” “Last Man Standing” – I was utterly IN the music; overcome with emotions and memories and associations. I kept crying — but the feeling was good. It was electric. This was the most transporting, enlivening experience I’ve ever had at a concert and it’s an experience I was only able to have because of death. Would I trade that concert for my friend to be alive? Of course … I don’t quite know how to turn this into a coherent answer for you, Gordon, but here’s an excerpt of a little speech Springsteen delivered that night:
And as you get older, death just becomes a part of life. It brings a certain clarity. Because its lasting gift to us is an expanded vision of living this life. And the grief that we feel when our loved ones leave us, it’s just the price we pay for having loved well.
I agree, and I hope that I can bring that expanded vision, in some small way, to writing and interviewing, and to how I move through the world. That’s the goal anyway.
What is it that distinguishes a career interviewer from writers and media personalities who interview from time to time?
Like with anything, practice helps. I’ve put in an awful lot of reps preparing for, conducting, and writing long-form interviews. So maybe I’ve developed some skills and noticed some things that others who only interview from time to time haven’t developed or noticed to the same degree.
I’d also like to note that there are all kinds of interviews. Someone grilling a politician on live TV is doing a very different job than I do. Same goes for an investigative journalist interviewing someone with the aim of eliciting a particular piece of information. All I can really speak to with confidence is the kind of interviewing that I do, which I hope is highly specific to me. So this question feels like one where any answer beyond what I’ve already given would have more to do with my trying to rise up to the level of your work and give you something to use than it does with real insights I might have about how other people do their work.
You’ve said that your time spent in music journalism ended up irritating you, that you felt pushed to make provocations, sensationalisms, and to write things you didn’t necessarily believe in. How can a writer/journalist stay true to what they believe in while also continuing to work regularly for a large publication? Is it even possible?
We all have our own thresholds for what we can bear in work. I felt like a complete fraud and like I let myself down on the couple of occasions very early in my career when I wrote things I didn’t believe. I felt pathetic and beneath myself. I still do. So continuing to do that kind of work was not tenable for me. This all comes with the caveat that, at the time, I could afford to leave my work situation and do it with no real plan in place. If I couldn’t have afforded it back then, I’d probably be saying something different to you. Actually, now I’m thinking that I wrote something much more recently that included a couple statements that weren’t as egregiously personally un-felt ... but I am, once more, embarrassed by them and wish I’d had more backbone and didn’t write them.
But how does a journalist stay true? My hunch is that people know when they’re not staying true to what they believe. There is an unmistakable feeling that happens. Heed that feeling. (If you can afford to.)
I think it’s possible to consistently respect that feeling. Though I bet just about every journalist who’s been working for a while can point to lapses. We’re human.
You were born and raised in what you described as the ‘Forest Hills of Toronto.’ You went to University of Toronto before doing a graduate program at NYU, and eventually choosing to settle in New York. How would you describe and pinpoint the difference in atmosphere between Canada and the US, or Ontario and New York? What qualities do Canadians have that Americans don’t, and vice versa?
For the sake of clarity I should mention that I was referring to Forest Hills, Queens — meaning sort of a family-friendly suburban area within a city, far from the action. (There’s also a Forest Hill neighborhood in Toronto — which is not where I grew up.) It’s hard to pinpoint the differences you’re asking about. It’s hard in general to pinpoint what makes a Canadian feel Canadian (which I do!) … other than a strong sense that we Canadians are NOT American.
There is an intensity to New York that Toronto lacks. In the past I’ve described Toronto to people as New York with the volume turned down. I like it that way.
Actually, I like everything about being Canadian, am proud to be from Canada, and even though I left Canada at 23 and am now 43, have dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship, as well as an American wife and two American daughters, I will always be Canadian in my heart.
And yet, New York remains where the action is. (Says a man who moved to the New Jersey suburbs three years ago …)
Can you tell me a little bit about your perspective on medically assisted suicide? How has it changed over time?
I had no perspective on medically assisted suicide before my mother died that way in June 2024. She’d had ALS. Now I have immense gratitude and relief that my mother was able to choose the manner and method of her death and the idea that others in her position might not have that choice strikes me as a moral affront.
In October of last year, I published an interview with a doctor who advocates for medical-aid-in-dying. Not long after, I was asked to speak to a class of medical students. The professor and a visiting doctor who also participated in the discussion seemed surprised by my firm belief that patients, not doctors, should be the ones to determine when to end their suffering. Doctors are often heroes, but man oh man there’s a paternalistic attitude alive in that profession (i.e., we know what’s best for you, despite what you say or feel) that drives me crazy.
I can’t pretend to have rebuttals for various arguments against medical-aid-in-dying (slippery slope!), but, like I said, it makes me furious to think that someone could have wanted to deny my mother’s bodily and humane right not to suffer a slow, painful death.
Her choice was a choice of life. To exercise one’s will is living. To have agency. To not let life dwindle but to seize it while the mind and body and spirit still allow — yeah, I don’t think of that as choosing to die. I think of that as choosing to live how one best sees fit.
I don’t know if that answers the question.
What does it mean for a person to have a good dose of authenticity? How can authenticity be measured, sensed, or felt?
Good grief, Gordon! Who am I to answer these questions? I don’t know anything about anything. I answer these bigger questions of yours and then feel like a complete faker the instant I think more about the answer I’ve given. Why are you asking me this? What do you think I know about this subject? I promise it’s very little!
Joyce Carol Oates said to me, in an interview, “There’s almost nothing I can say that isn’t simply an expression of a person trying desperately to say something.” That’s how I feel when faced with a question like this. She also said, in that same interview, “It’s a wonderful experience, I suppose, to be an interviewer. You have the capacity to create the interview in your own image.” What image are you trying to create, Gordon? I don’t mean that combatively or peevishly. I mean it (wink!), authentically.
I’m tempted to, again, try to rise to the level of your question but grimacing as I write because I’d just be groping for an answer that sounds smart or wise.
Ah, fuck it! Don’t we all meet certain people who leave us walking away going, “they’re full of shit.” The people who don’t leave us that way, or do it only rarely, are authentic people. I don’t know how that can be measured, sensed, or felt but I know that we can feel it. (To varying degrees. We can all be conned.)I guess it can take practice to notice our own reactions to other people, to observe our thoughts and feelings and then respond accordingly. Meditation helps with that maybe? (I’ve been doing transcendental meditation for 15 or so years.)
I’m going to stop the answer here. I’m worried that I’ve slipped into expounding and I don’t like it. Gosh, it’s flattering to be interviewed and asked what I think about things! But that makes it easy to succumb to the temptation to talk out of my ass.
This has been an enlightening experience for me. It’s made me think about what it is to be interviewed, and experiencing the thoughts and feelings that have come up in trying to answer these questions is, I think, going to be useful for me in my work moving forward.
You’ve said that the pleasures of your current job allow you to follow your own curiosity. Where do you think your curiosity comes from? What are the most interesting places that your curiosity has led you? Are there limits to your curiosity? If so, what are they?
I suspect that there’s some neurological pleasure sensation that is aroused by new information and that’s where the desire to pursue curiosity comes from. I physiologically enjoy learning new things and being surprised by people and the things they say and so I seek that out. Why do certain things pique my curiosity? I’d guess that has to do with all sorts of latent mental and emotional associations as well as the kicks that come from the accretion of information. The things I learn and talk about keep building and building on each other and I enjoy that. I don’t know why some people are incurious. I assume they’ve found other ways to get pleasure.
My curiosity has led me to the most amazing places! I’ve gotten to talk to economists, athletes, artists, scientists, philosophers, activists, charlatans and holy men and on and on — about shit that I’m sincerely interested in! What a life! It’s easy to get lost sometimes in the day-to-day irritations of doing a job, but I try to keep sight of the fact that my job is basically incredible.
More: my curiosity has led me to relationships that I treasure, to art that moves me (I just got curious about Albert Ayler’s music — holy moly!), and to ideas and people that turn my head around. I feel dead inside when curiosity goes away and my interactions and my mind get too rote. That’s not to say I’m always in search of a humdinger but I’m trying to be aware and awake.
Limits to my curiosity? Of course there are. There’s only so much I want to know about physical pain, for example. I don’t wish to know more than I have to about the hardships that my children will endure. I have my own personal hangups about various things that I’d rather pull a screen over than explore more deeply. (I don’t like the way I look. I recognize I’m well within the realm of “normal” looking, but – blech. I don’t want to get into it. Certainly not in this setting.)
Who, living or dead, would you like most to sit down and have a conversation with? What would you ask them?
I’d like to listen to records with Thomas Pynchon and also to ask the Dalai Lama if I’m going about it alright.
Would you prefer to go to a different restaurant for lunch every day of the week, or eat different items at the same good restaurant every day of the week? What does this preference say about a person?
I don’t know. I love to eat at restaurants, but I don’t really have strong enough feelings about food to answer this question well. I’m the kind of person who will happily eat the same simple-pleasure foods at home day after day after day.
Is there a cultural zeitgeist from any point in history that you relate to most? How come this one?
For whatever reason, I have a soft spot for the American counter-culture of the 1950s through to the early 70s — mostly because I like the literature and music from that time. In my fantasy I would’ve been hip and in-the-mix but I’m square and clueless in my own time and place so I don’t see any reason to believe that wouldn’t have been the case if I’d been alive back then.
I relate to the here and now just fine, I think.
But I can also relate to the cultural zeitgeist that produced Stonehenge. I love Stonehenge.
Where and how, in terms of moral and personal obligations, does one’s relationship with family differ from one’s relationship with their friends and romantic partners?
I’m worried that I’m coming off like a semantic wet blanket, but the “where” in this question is confusing me. I don’t know about that part. I’ll say this: I had a central familial relationship that disabused me of any notion that a family member owes me anything or is obliged to me in any positive way or will deliver the seemingly most basic requirements of family like understanding and acceptance. So I am inclined to reject that one has any moral or personal obligation to family beyond the moral or personal obligations owed to any human being. Which is, basically, to be kind.
This is another one of the questions that’s making me feel like an imposter in trying to answer it. I can tell that my potential responses to this question are being clouded by the one relationship to which I alluded. I don’t know. There’s too much in my mind with this one. I can’t answer it in a way that feels true and also adequately expansive. Obviously, I owe my wife and children certain things that I do not owe my friends. But, like I said, probably the most important obligation is the universal obligation to try to be kind and caring towards others.
I feel like I’ve let you down. I recognize that your questions are not a world away from the kinds of questions I sometimes ask in interviews. So I should be able to answer them better. Maybe writing my answers is part of the problem. Writing allows too much of my self-doubt and insecurity to seep in. I feel as if I can’t write a satisfying sentence.
There’s a reason all I do is ask people questions. Writing like this — writing anything of merit! — requires a performance I can’t convincingly deliver. This is why I’ve been unable to write a book (despite that being a goal I’ve had for as long as I can remember.) Or, to tie this back into a couple of your earlier questions: I feel inauthentic and untrue to myself writing like this. I can talk with you, Gordon, and would very much like to do that one day, but I have nothing of value to say in this particular context. If you know what I mean.