Transcript of Episode 1685 - Marc Maron

Lock the gate. All right, let's do this. How are you? What the fuckers? What the Fuck Buddies? What the Fucknicks? What's happening? I am Mark Maron, and this is my podcast, WTF. Welcome to it for almost the last time. This will be the penultimate, is that how you say it? Penultimate episode of this show. We have one more show to do. That will be on Monday that will not be recorded here in the garage. And this one, I just wanted it to be us. I wanted it to be in the garage with just me and all of you. Me and you. We've had a relationship for a long time. A long time, 16 years. That's the longest relationship I've ever had with you. And if it hasn't been that long for some of you, you'll get the feeling. Get up to speed. Go spend 16 years with me. You can do it online. But at some levels, I understand that this is Like a breakup, I guess. I don't feel it in that way. I know that some of you are sad. I'm sad. It's a big change for me, but sometimes you have to move on.

I know you don't have a say in this, and I apologize, but that's sometimes how these breakups go. But the truth is that we've certainly all come a long way together. I got an email today or someone reached out on me. She'd been listening to me for 16 years, and she started when she was five because her parents used to make her listen to me in the car, and she hated me because I was just this annoying grumpy grown up. Somehow or another, now that she's in her 20s, she's come around to understanding the grumpiness. But that's crazy. That people have grown up with me, that people have started with me in their teens and their 20s, even in their 30s, and they're now in their 40s now, and their entire lives have changed. I've been there. I've been talking to you. I appreciate the gravity of that. People are coming up to me a lot right now and saying, I'm going to miss you. I don't know what I'm going to do without the show. You were always with me. I get people emailing that they've taken me all over the world with them.

Again, I appreciate the weight of that, and I'm grateful to have been part of your lives. I really am. I have to make sure that I say that because I don't always think that way. I'm just sitting here in this garage by myself, and I'm surrounded with homemade sound panels that a kid made for me. I've got some and bullshit on the desk here. I walk out here from my house and I do this. I'm just talking out. I'm talking out. I don't know where it all lands, but over the years, and certainly in the last few months, It's been very moving for me to hear how much of what I do and what we did here, the conversations, the stories, my life has had an impact. It's profound and humbling because I rarely think about that. I mean, it's been a long time since I thought about how many people are listening, or it's been a long time since I've listened to a whole podcast. My experience with this is I'm just sitting out here. I'm just sitting out here in the garage talking, but I know I'm talking to you, and I do that as full-heartedly as I possibly can, and I guess that comes through.

I want to reflect a little bit, I think, because I've been thinking about me in relation to this show, in relation to my life, and how it began, but also before that. Before that, and some words come up to me. Look, I've been called self-centered. I've been called narcissistic. I've been called a naval gazer. These are the bad things. In reflection about who I am and what my creativity is, I came upon a few words. A lot of times when I talk about starting this podcast, there's a sense that it was desperation. That word has connotations that are negative, that that guy's desperate. I think if you remove the judgment tone from desperation and you apply it to your life, the definition of desperation is a state of despair, typically one which results in a rash or extreme behavior. Yeah, I'll take it. At the beginning of this show, I was in a very bad place. My career was in the toilet, and there was really nowhere to go from where I was. I'd been through a lot of shit. I'd been through two divorces, one that was dramatically and traumatically heartbreaking, and and costly.

I didn't have a way forward, really, with comedy that made sense. I'd already been at it a long time. I was in my 40s. Rash or extreme behavior. The extreme behavior See, even that definition has the connotation of something that could be negative. But the rash or extreme behavior that I took part in in my desperation at that time was to do something totally different. Look, I knew I could be on these mics, but the extreme behavior was like, We're going to do this thing because we have access to this technology to put it out there, and we I don't know where it goes from there. There's no money involved. There's no guarantee of anything, listeners, anything. No one even knows what these podcasts are. But I needed to put myself out there. The extreme behavior was taking that chance. The rash behavior was really just believing in it. I think that framing desperation in that way, it becomes proactive. The other word I was thinking about was urgency. I live in an urgent state. I think that when you're self-employed and you do a lot of things, you're always chasing something. If you're not organized, you have to do something right when it comes into your head, or you might not do But the definition of urgency is importance requiring swift action and also an earnest and persistent quality, insistence.

I am, at the core, an urgent person. Everything happens urgently. When I talk, all of what I put out into the world requires me talking, and it's always urgent. It's very rarely passive. When you mix the desperate extreme action with urgency, that is a large component of why I connect, I think. It doesn't go away. The urgency is annoying because some things can wait, But I'm not great at the waiting. The great thing about doing this podcast and talking to you is that in my urgency, no matter where I am in my heart and mind, I have to put it out there for myself and then for you. It becomes that. The other word that I thought of was connection. Connection, a relationship in which a person thing or ideas is linked or associated with something else. I live for connection. I live for it because I need it to know that I exist. Need, that's the other word. Need, require something because it is essential and very important. I have no ability to compartmentalize. It's always drenched in need, the need for connection with urgency coming out of at the beginning, desperation. This is how I live my life.

It's all very immediate. It's all very important to me. Neediness. That implies that's a negative, but everyone has needs. When you take neediness, desperation, urgency, it all seems It's negative, but it is not. It is the only way that I can live in the world, and it's the way that my brain and my heart works. It just happens to fit what I do, which is talk in the moment, unscripted, like now, both in comedy and this podcast, which are my... That's what I do. I'm a stand-up comedian by trade. I'm a podcaster by trade, but also this is my creativity. Then the other word I looked up was selfish. Of a person, action, or motive lacking consideration for others, concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure? Well, fortunately, it was never about profit, and I don't know what pleasure is. For me, relief is good enough, and I don't lack consideration for others. I think I did because I was self-involved, but I'm not a sociopath. I have a conscience. It's just sometimes I'm a little late connecting it. After the damage is done, I I was like, Oh, I didn't take into consideration.

But over the course of this show, you have heard me learn how to be considerate of others, how to be empathetic for others, how to listen to others, how to surrender a lot of my self consciousness, and that's become ingrained in me, and that was the process of this. I imagine that some of you took some of that away from this. I knew that I wanted to be a creative person. I was and am a creative person. When I was younger, I remember I was in 10th grade, I was in an English class, and we were studying poetry, and the teacher asked us to write a poem. I wrote this very weird, heartfelt, sad poem about not knowing how to talk to girls, not being a jock, not having any experience with relationship. It was just a very... It was too much. I remember reading it, and the class was just mortified and the teacher was like, Oh, Well, okay, Mark, thank you. That was very interesting. I just put too much of my heart out there, and it alienated me more. But I spoke in honesty in that moment, and the feeling of doing that was horrendous.

So I continued to do it my entire life. When I got into college, look, I tried to pursue poetry, I did photography, I did acting. I was always trying to put myself out there in an attempt to become a whole person. So if I thought if I could be seen and I could show myself that somehow or another I would come together. That's why I chose comedy for some reason. It was because I could put myself out there. The requirement was to be funny, and I've gone through a lot of stages of doing that. But you could do whatever you wanted up there. I really believed I would find myself through that. Comedy brought me here. The mics brought me here. Being on a mic is how I live my life and how I've always lived my adult life. All the searching, which was never spiritual, per se, I was fortunate in that, that I was not a spiritual searcher looking for the great answers to why we live or to whether there's a God or not or to how to be spiritually sound and connected did, I was in search of myself, and I figured if I could get that undertaking completed, maybe I'd seek the bigger answers.

This is all in retrospect. This is me reflecting. But after years of talking on mics as a comic, I began to do... I had an opportunity to do some radio, and I realized with these mics, I can talk like I'm talking now. I can talk in a way that didn't require me to be funny, that I could actually explore every aspect and emotion and creative impulse that I have through talking without being expected to be funny, expected to be anything but myself. That was the big breakthrough, is to be able to sit here. Again, I'm alone, and I'm always alone in this room on the mic, unless I have a guest with me. You're hearing me find myself in the world in front of you. I don't think that's selfish. I think that's what we're all trying to do. With some success or failure or doubt or pain. But that's what I do. That's what I do. That was the big breakthrough that once I hit bottom, not with drugs and alcohol, that was before the podcast, But once I hit bottom with life and with career, that I found this mic, and I found this medium, and I found the connection, and I found a place where I could fully express my thoughts and feelings.

That was a big deal. It remains a big deal to this conversation I'm having with you right now. But it was always about these rooms. It was always about this studio. It was always In the beginning, it was about the old garage. The old garage was a magical place, a truly magical place that I was ready to let go when I let it go. But that place, when I first got into that space, and it was actually a functioning garage just filled with crap, broken furniture and this and that, lamps, I just stuck a table in it. I put a floor down, I stuck a table in it, and I had my MacBook, and I had these big mics. I sat there and did this with people coming in. As it began to take shape and become a thing, I moved all of my stuff from storage, all of my books, all of my tchatchis, all of my life in pictures, photographs, pieces of art, little knickknacks. I made it an environment that was not just cozy, but it was literally a representation of my entire life through bits and pieces of things that were important to me.

Clutter, but informed clutter. It was like you were walking into my being because I was surrounded with all of it in that room. It was a magical place. At the beginning, when people would come to the house, they'd have to walk through my little 800, 900 square foot house with one bathroom, this old 1923 Spanish Bungalow house with a beat-up garage out back. They'd have to walk through my entire being before they even got on the mic. All I was working through things with people and trying to get connected, initially, with my community of comics who I thought I had alienated. But I always felt this way. It turns out over time that you start to learn that How do you feel that way. It was like that moment in high school where I spoke up and I did something that I thought was important and beautiful and honest, and I felt nothing but ostracized. I've always felt that way. I guess that is an inverted grandiosity. In the rooms, they call it the piece of shit at the center of the universe. But it just wasn't really the case. Over time, I realized I'm not that important, I'm not that special, I don't have that much of an impact.

All these things that I was assuming were in my head. But nonetheless, over the course of those first few hundred episodes, I started to open up and started to learn how to have these conversations and also speak to you directly at the beginning, which was very important. This was never a for-profit endeavor. I was adverse to even having ads on it. I thought that would ruin it, man. We got something pure here. It wasn't even a punk rock sensibility. I just thought it would ruin the integrity of the thing. We We set up a donation site, and I was in my house. I had a roommate at that time, Stash, and she was helping me pack envelopes to send schwag out to people that gave a little money. It was all hands on deck. It was urgent. It's always urgent. This was urgent when I got up to do this. But it was always just about me on this mic, and it still is. I walk away from this, I walk away from a guest interview, and it's in the past, and I don't even think I I always realized the impact of it or how it's going out there.

I long ago stopped wondering about how many people are listening and all that. I was just showing up to do this work with a certain sense of urgency. It just was life or death, urgency and the need for connection so I could exist in the world. But it was always these mics. That old studio was a magical place, and people would come to look at it. They would drive by my house. They wanted to know what it was, the garage, the cat ranch. The cats all played an important part. My Divorce has played an important part. My friends who would make me laugh played an important part. But really, when it comes down to it, it was you guys who were really the most important because something I was doing was speaking to you. The gratitude and input I've had from the audience has been something I could never have imagined. That my struggle, which is, again, the urgency of my life and how I react to it and then talk about it and live in it and share it with you, was somehow a consciousness that many of you connected with. It changed my life.

Look, a lot of things have changed for me. A lot of you know that. When I moved to this house, again, the urgency. I've done this show. I did it in the magic I've done it in the old house at the Cat Ranch, out there off of that beat-up patio deck. I've done it in hotel rooms around the world. I've done it in airport louanges. I've done it in cars. I've done it outside because my work ethic, my creative ethic, and just the way I live my life is urgent. I do feel like I could use a break from that because I was just realizing the other night when I was driving down to the store over Laurel Canyon, a drive I've made all of my adult life on and off to the Comedy store, that I was sitting in my body, and my body was in my car. I don't know if that really is as profound to you as it is for me, but I was in that moment because I've been wondering, what's life going to be like without this podcast? We've been slowing down and saying this goodbye for a long time now, months.

But I was really in a present that I don't know that I've experienced before, where I wasn't up in my head, I wasn't really panicking about anything. Oh, boy, I guess that's the other word. I left out a very important word Hold on. I'd like to get the definition of that. I left out the most important word to go with the other words, panic. Sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety, often causing wildly unthinking behavior, or wildly overth behavior in my case. My panic is definitely not unthinking. It may be untrue, but it's not unthinking. Yeah, throw that into the mix. Panic, need, connection, urgency, desperation, selfish. These are the words that I guess I'm trying to share with you because all of them seem negative, but out of that combination, I became a more full, compassionate, empathetic, wiser, funnier, humble person. But I couldn't have done it without that path through those words and what they mean and sharing them with you. I'm driving in my car and I realized, dude, you are fully in your life right now. You just turned 62 years old and you're fully in your life right now. I don't know if I've ever felt that.

It's taken me this long to get here. I know that not everybody's like me. I don't need to talk about why I'm like I am. I've done that exploration. This being in the world in the form and with the sense of self I have now is a new experience because I've done everything to not avoid it, but to just keep moving. I'm realizing now, as we slow the show down, that I have not really sat with myself and just sat with the frequency of what is in my immediate environment, in my immediate life, with a sense of accomplishment, with a sense of peace, with a sense of appreciation for what I've done and for other people. It's overwhelming, but it's new to me. But I just remember when I got this place and I was thrilled about the studio, having a studio here, but then the sound wasn't right. I was trying to record the first day I was here, and they were Jack hammering around the corner, and I just freaked out because it was bleeding into the room. My old garage was so insulated with shit from my life that it was a perfect sound.

I just remember, I still had my headphones around my neck, and I ran around the corner to where they were doing the construction. I was in the middle of the street looking at these guys working construction, going, How long are you going to be doing this? I have to record the urgency. I don't even know with my urgency how insane I have looked in my life to other people. What is the problem? This is very important. Everything is very important. And they stopped. It was like when Arnold Schwarzenegger came over here and they were doing yard work. And I was like, You guys, Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to be here. This is important. Everything is fucking life or death. And that is some anxiety part. Oh, anxiety. Well, that's the other word. I think it all adds up to that, doesn't it? But look, you guys. Oh, come on. I'm going to miss you. Yeah, oh, This is... Anxiety is a normal human emotion involving feelings of apprehension, fear, or unease about potential future misfortune. Yeah, exactly. Welcome to me. Fuck. Boy, now I'm just doing a hypochondriac thing. Excessive worry or rumination. Physical symptoms.

Rapid heart beats, sweating, shortness of breath, muscle tension. Avoidance, avoiding situations or activities that trigger anxiety. Everything. Difficulty sweeping, that went away. Irritability. Yeah, there's the other word, anxiety. What are the words we have here? Despiration, urgency, connection, need, selfish anxiety. Through that path, my friends, I've become a more full person right in front of your very eyes. But it was always about the mic. It was always about the talking. It was always about the urgency of talking. It was always about working it out, out loud in front of you. We've been through a lot of stuff together. A lot of breakups, death, cats, the world. Yeah, we've been through a lot of shit together. I'm going to miss you. I'm going to miss this. This was not a decision made quickly and was not taken lightly. I do want to say that I am somewhat excited. I am somewhat relieved I've lived. But a lot of people are like, Well, you're not going to stop, whatever. You're going to go on to do this. Yeah, but this work was my life. This work was important. Every one of these conversations was important to me.

I always have an elevated sense of self-importance just because that's the way I live my life. Like, Wow, we really did something here. I think about that with jokes and with When I look outside to people, I'm like, I don't know what I want them to be. I guess I want them to be my mother, and I'm like, four years old, and I just want people to go, That was really great. That really made a difference. That was really special. That was important, that joke. But now I can do that for myself. This was important. This was special. This was relevant. This was life-changing for me and for some of you. It was important. It is important. The relief that I feel is really that I've been working nonstop, trying to put myself out there and be creative in the ways I've chosen for all of my adult life. Somehow or another, I earned a living. I saved some money. But I think I missed a lot of life while I was in it because I look back on it and I think, God damn it, how did I do that? How did I get through that?

Who was that guy who did that? Being who I am and what I do, I'm very present But once I walk out of that present, it quickly becomes the past. I don't really afford myself any appreciation or gratitude or feeling of accomplishment, naturally. But I have it now most of the time, and I want to live in that for a little while. Then I want to see what I am and who I am now in terms of just living life. I just want to focus on slowing it down a little bit and then being in myself and being in my life and having that be enough. Is that okay? Is that okay, you guys? I hope it all made sense. But this thing was... It didn't go by fast, but when I look at it and I see how much we've done. It's crazy. We've done a lot of stuff, and we did it to the best of our abilities, Brenda and I, and all the guests. I got to be grateful for them, all the people that I had these conversations with who I consider my friends, even if they don't really remember me or know just how important and how urgent it was that we talked.

Thank you to all of them. Amazing people. I want to reflect on all of it. It just was all in the moment. It was all so, again, urgent to the point where I didn't miss it, but I didn't appreciate it enough when I did it. Maybe I did in the moment, but I'm just overwhelmed with the accomplishment of it all. I'm just so happy you guys were with me, you people, to experience this all with me. I am feeling grateful. I am feeling It is a sense of loss, but it's not a bad one. It's just life. I mean, fuck. Really, really. A lot of your input changed my mind, changed the way I looked at things. I really took to heart a lot of what many of you said to me in person, sometimes through emails. I really feel like you were a big part of my evolution or my evolving wisdom and perception. You really helped me. Yeah. I don't know, man. I love you guys, and I think you'll be okay without me. I'm not entirely sure I'll be okay without you, but it has been quite a ride, quite an adventure, quite a life.

Boomer lives. Monkey, Lafonda, cat angels everywhere. I really had no expectations out of this show. I think Brenda and I got into doing it thinking we might get maybe a few hundred people, but I had no idea that it would take off the way it did. And deeper than that, I had no idea that it would connect to people in the way that it does.

You're connecting with me on some other level than I ever imagined possible.

It's not really about comedy. It seems to be about sharing what is inside of my head or having the freedom to do that. What I've grown to realize as I do this show is that many of us spend our lives just trying to get by, just trying to get through life. That happiness makes you cry. I never cry when I just... You know what? It is a beautiful story, and sometimes I forget that. Yeah, we now cry. Something happened in here. I can't explain it. I don't know why it happens or why it happened. And all of a sudden, it's popular. There's a pride in that that you can't imagine. He has a pride in it that's bigger than getting a joke over or doing a good show. I'm super proud of you. I can honestly tell you, Mark, that when I hear your interviews, I'm in awe. I think it's totally amazing. All right. I'm in awe. What can I tell you? That's the truth. Well, that makes me happy to hear. It's really what it's all about, to make people feel less alone in the most horrible places in their minds, in their lives, in their situations, of all kinds.

How would you describe yourself using only three words? I don't know. How about, I'm almost there.

Do you realize I'm very grateful that it's working out, and I love doing it, but I do have a guy within me that says, I got the other food is going to drop, dude.

You're going to fuck up. But something is going to happen. Thanks, Norm. That's the bad part. All right, let's weave it there. Okay. Love you, bud. Love you, too, man. That everyone you know you realize that life goes fast.

It's hard to make the good things last. You realize Lies, the sun doesn't go down. It's just an illusion caused by the world. Spin in mind.

Ultimately, this is your show. I'm talking to you.

Do you realize?

And I couldn't do it without you. I really couldn't. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Do you realize? Okay. Wipe your eyes. That was it for today from The Garage. But we have one more episode coming up on Monday, our truly last episode, and I think you'll enjoy it. All right, then. Talk to you later.