Blue Eyes Crying In The New Year
If you need me, I'm Micro-dosing anxiety attacks.
It's taken me awhile to get to this. The start of the year is full of great promise that quickly becomes a lot to manage. Lists of things I'm going to do, people I'm going to slowly become. These things all become a lot to manage. I'm having little pockets of sadness in my days as I have to juggle all of this once more.
If you need me, I'm Micro-dosing anxiety attacks.
Last year I started a new podcast. It's called Blue Eyes Crying By The Chips. It's about the beautiful songs that we love, and the places we have cried to them in public. It started as a joke, or at least it did in my head. Funny, right? It's funny to cry. We kind of use crying as this language on the internet. Crying has become punctuation, a punchline. Nothing and everything all at once. Crying is a brand, in a matter of speaking.
I developed the podcast idea as this kind of funny haha thing. Like in the 10th grade when you told someone you had a crush on that it would be so funny if you kissed right now. Just as an extremely non-specific example.
The first episode was with my friend Elamin Abdelmahmoud. I asked Elamin specifically because he is great at a great many things. A beautiful writer, a fantastic radio host, a curious thinker. A committed Swiftie. Above all he's very open with his emotions, his heart is not on his sleeve but rather part of the fabric.
I thought I knew the conversation Elamin and I would have before we got into it. I'm a frequent guest on his CBC radio show/podcast Commotion. He and I talk a lot about art and emotions in other places. I thought I knew the beats, I imagined it as this great funny thing.
Elamin brought a Phoebe Bridgers song, "Graceland Too", from the album Punisher. I cried about a half hour into the recording.
Immediately, in talking with Elamin, I understood my desire for making this show was something entirely different. It's funny, but not. It's heartwarming, but it's not. It's striving for vulnerability within myself. I didn't know how much I needed to make this show, for myself beyond anyone else. That I needed to talk about crying and the emotional attachment to music and culture that I have developed over my 41 years on this plane.
I have cried making every single one since.
I have been so blessed and grateful that friends came out to guest on the show, to let me be vulnerable for an hour and to reveal parts of myself with them. And to talk about the music that we love, the places it has cut us so deep that we have let ourselves be vulnerable in public. There is no greater fear or difficult than being so vulnerable in sight of other people.
If you'll indulge me, here's a memory of each episode.
Thank you to Sadie Dupuis, a writer and poet of tremendous words who also is the front person of Speedy Ortiz, one of the greatest bands in the goddamn world. I still think Podcast Cafe is a good idea, but to know more you gotta listen. Sadie is one of those people in the world you look to like a lighthouse in heavy weather. thoughtful and clever and funny and so fucking talented. She is also one of my main book influences, if I'm ever stuck on something to read I look at the plethora of titles she recommends and I struggle to think of a time I have ever been steered wrong. I loved this chat, was so honoured and thrilled to have it. Thanks Sadie, you fucking rule.
When I was thinking of a theme song for the show I had been listening to a LOT of Gladie, specifically their incredible record Don't Know What You're In Until You're Out. Specifically the song "Nothing." So I asked Augusta Koch, head Gladie, if she would write a theme song. And holy fucking hell did she ever. We have plans to release it as a special thing in the new year in some fashion, so keep your eyes out for that. But also, I asked her to guest on the show and it was so lovely to talk with her about The Mountain Goats track "the Mess Inside". Thank you Augusta for the theme song and for the chat. I still think about getting back into Magic The Gathering once a day, I still want you to get to play against and on tour with John Darnielle. We can still make this happen
Rax King is a guiding light for me as a writer. I read her incredible essay about Guy Fieri like once a month to remind myself of all the potential beauty in this world, and in this work. I asked her if she would guest on this show and her first question was if anyone had taken a Springsteen song yet because she wanted to get to it first. I am always, ALWAYS down to talk for a very long time about Springsteen and I was also happy to be able to tell her about the movie where everyone forgets about the Beatles.
It took a very long time to get to someone talking about Taylor Swift, and I'm glad that person was Emily St James, who was more than happy to talk with me at length about Taylor, but also difficulties in relationships to ourselves, others and the world as we transition. I'm glad it was a story about a 7/11, because I think there is magic in the world of the night and especially under the hum of fluorescent lights in a corner store and Emily was so charming and funny and heartwarming and I don't need to tell you that she is a treasure but I will all the same
I asked Josh Gondelman to guest on the show and then was immediately nervous about having asked Josh to guest on the show. Josh is not just an extremely talented and funny comedian, person, writer. He is also someone I deeply admire, thoughtful and genuine and almost disarmingly real. There's something to be said about seeing someone and thinking I wish I could let myself go and be like that. I also really wanted to make Josh laugh, because it feels like when they pick you out of the stands to shoot a basket at a basketball game to win a car or a lot of frozen yogurt and you sink your first shot even though Scottie Pippen is watching. I don't know, I haven't watched basketball since NBA Jam was a going concern. Josh was a goddamn delight, and I was very nervous to do this one. He told me a very heartwarming and funny/sad story about going with his then recent ex girlfriend to a Sufjan Stevens show and it kind of haunts me. Also, I think about the idea of a yearbook for your life all the time. It made it onto my list of personal goals for the year.
Maris Kreizman was one of the first people to say "oh my god I have the perfect story for this" on Twitter and if someone like Maris ever comes to you emphatically with a story to go along with your idea you fucking run with it. I don't care who you are. She wanted to talk about a Harry Nilsson song, and I was already on board and that just tipped the scales in a big big way. Maris is someone who thinks so deeply, thoughtfully and creatively about art and culture and all things and it was such a joy to chat with her about crying in a Duane Reade, a store I had to google because we do not have them in Canada.
Last year, Maris concluded her run on her excellent podcast The Maris Review, and while it's sad that it is gone, you are lucky to have so many back episodes to listen to
I don't know enough about food, this is one of many personal failings, but I adore food writers and I adore Jaya Saxena and was so pumped that she was on board to come on the show to talk about Paul Simon, one of my all time favourite artists and someone I frequently cry to when I'm walking my dog alone at night or in the very early morning (aka Day Night). Jaya is so funny and just one of the all time great food writers who finds the heart beating at the centre of all things in ways that will always surprise you.
Dani Janae has written some truly beautiful articles about crying to music, including this one about The National and this one about Death Cab For Cutie and I knew I had to have her guest on the show. There was no just world where the two of us did not find time to talk about crying to music, as we both share a similar connective tissue to a great many things, including sobriety and crying. This one kicked off something I've been thinking more and more about too, just how our relationships to our emotions change and shift over time.
I have guested on a few shows hosted by my friend Alex Steed, and he and I chat once a week about any and all things, but it is always a delight to record him and here we had such a raucous time about old malls and old weird men and Nine Inch Nails. I've been in the process of finishing my first book (and my follow up to it) that is a collection of essays/memoir and as such I've been spending a lot of time thinking about youth and how it feels to show people who you are and the fallout of feeling rejected for it and we really get into that here in ways that i will think about for all my life
Riley Macleod is someone who I regularly chat with on DMs when I feel bold enough to reach out, and is someone I know is very much a fun of The Weakerthans, an all time favourite of mine as well. I was fucking delighted when he agreed to do the show, and also threw a slight curveball my way with a John K Samson song instead. I was very eager to talk about video games with Riley because, in the spirit of letting go, I hide my lifelong gamer bonafide's from a lot of people because I am a creature of great shame and self-loathing. This is not to say we did not also talk about sobriety, transness, crying and sad songs about Canada.
I'm in eternal awe of Daniel Lavery, someone who has mastered the fine balance of charming and funny and serious and heartwarming. Sometimes you are sure people will simply be too busy, and sometimes you will be surprised when they say "what's your next week look like"? This was one of those moments, and it was a treat to have someone bring another song I didn't know, that also had fun David Letterman history that you will have to listen to the episode to unpack for yourself. Also, forgive me my self-indulgence, but Daniel said this to me afterwards "you have such an effective, open, thoughtful way of guiding a discussion" about my style of hosting and if you've been following along, it's been a journey getting myself to a place where I could start to believe that is true, but it's only because of so many people allowing me to share in our vulnerabilities together.
I wanted to have this conversation from the hop, with Alicia Gaines of Ganser, one of my favourite people in one of my favourite bands. Alicia is one of those people who lives and breathes in the worlds built in their work. Ganser is one of those all-time-great bands that I firmly believe should be on the top of every lineup, bill, festival, billboard, mountain, etc. The peaks continue to climb. And more than anything, I just like to talk with Alicia about music because I want to hear her thoughts and feelings and emotions move through the beats and rhythms of this world. Also, we talked about shoegaze before it became discourse on the internet, so take that trends.
The last proper episode of the season was one that we had to reschedule a few times for reasons different to both myself and my guest, the stunning and incredible talent Shelli Nicole. Shelli is just one of those people you should know, you should be so lucky to read and lose yourself in the way she writes about culture and the world orbiting it. Having to reschedule multiple times was serendipitous in a fashion, and rather than spoil it here I encourage you to just listen instead. A theme emerged here, that has come up a few times, about hiding ourselves. Even from the people we love. Going off to the bathroom to cry or looking away. This has been a long running and central theme to this project, and I wonder how long it will take before even me, a person who made a show about crying, no longer struggles with letting people see it.
Finally. At long last, we are at the last episode of the season, and while I have run short of new words to write about how much making this show has meant to me, you can listen to a few more at the link below, and then join me this year when the show returns for it's new season!
Okay love you, see you next week.
Niko
