Episode 611
with Cheryl Strayed, Jay Jurden, Dessa
Acclaimed writer Cheryl Strayed (Wild, Tiny Beautiful Things) discusses her new personal essay "Two Women Walk into a Bar," which follows her complicated relationship with her late mother-in-law; stand-up comedian Jay Jurden bridges the generational divide with some poignantly hilarious observations on Boomers and Gen Z; and singer-rapper-poet Dessa performs "Hurricane Party" from her latest album Bury the Lede. Plus, host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello unpack the benign (but complicated) relationships our listeners have with the people from their everyday lives.
Cheryl Strayed
#1 New York Times bestselling author
Alongside being a Portland gem, Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide and was made into an Oscar-nominated major motion picture. Her bestselling book Tiny Beautiful Things, a book of essays compiled from her anonymously written advice column "Dear Sugar" is being adapted for a Hulu television show, and was previously adapted into a play that has been staged in theaters around the world. Strayed is also the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel, Torch, and the bestselling collection Brave Enough, which brings together more than one hundred of her quotes. Her award-winning essays and short stories have been published in The Best American Essays, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Salon, and elsewhere. She has hosted two hit podcasts, Sugar Calling and Dear Sugars. Her newest collection is “Two Women Walk into a Bar", which is a collection of short essays unpacking the complicated relationship she had with her mother-in-law. Website • Instagram • Twitter
Jay Jurden
Comedian
Jay Jurden is a comedian, actor and an Emmy and WGA nominated writer based in New York City. He was recently a staff writer and panelist for The Problem With Jon Stewart on Apple TV+ and his standup has been featured everywhere from Comedy Central to NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon three times, CBS’ The Late Late Show with James Corden and The Drew Barrymore Show. In 2019, Jay was selected to be a New Face as part of the prestigious Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal and in 2022, Jay was selected as one of Variety’s 10 Comics To Watch. Website • Instagram • Twitter
Dessa
Musician
Dessa is a writer and touring musician who splits her time between Minneapolis, Manhattan, and a tour van cruising at 6 miles per hour above the posted limit. She works across genres, writing essays (which have appeared in The New York Times and National Geographic Traveler), memoir (My Own Devices was named a best book of the year by NPR), and poetry. Her first poetry chapbook, Tits on the Moon is made up of staged poems she often performs live at her shows as well as a short essay on the craft. As a musician, she contributed to The Hamilton Mixtape and has recorded ballads, rap bangers, and a live album with the Grammy-winning Minnesota Orchestra. Website • Instagram • Twitter
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Luke Burbank: Hey, Elena.
Elena Passarello: Hey, Luke. How's it going?
Luke Burbank: It is going absolutely great. We have a little station location identification examination here, as we often do at the top of the show. Are you ready to play?
Elena Passarello: Okay, let's do it.
Luke Burbank: This is where I quiz Elena on a place in the country where Live Wire's on the radio. She's got to figure out the place that we are talking about. This place was apparently the location of the first brick street. It's known as Summer Street, and it was built in 1870. What is your knowledge of brick of early brick street construction?
Elena Passarello: That sounds like something that would be happening in, like, the, East Coast. Like like, like a Boston. Kind of like an old city.
Luke Burbank: It's east, but south all the way down to where something called The Mortar Man is tucked away between two old brick buildings. They really love their brick in this place.
Elena Passarello: Brick and mortar.
Luke Burbank: Is right. There is a miniature man made of concrete. It's no bigger than a Happy Meal toy. It's a two inch by four inch sculpture that was created by a local sculptor named Joseph Mullins, who's best known for the design of the veterans Memorial at this city's Capitol building. So it's a capitol.
Elena Passarello: Capital of the.
Luke Burbank: State, and it's South.
Elena Passarello: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Luke Burbank: So close. We're talking about Charleston, West Virginia.
Elena Passarello: Hey, hey, hey.
Luke Burbank: We are on WCVB public radio. Shout out to everybody tuning in from West Virginia. All right. Should we get to the show?
Elena Passarello: Let's do it from PRX, it's Live Wire! This week writer Cheryl Strayed.
Cheryl Strayed: This is the thing I love so much about being a writer is to do your job well you do really have to tell the whole truth, and you have to tell a truth that you discover as you write.
Elena Passarello: Comedian Jay Jurden.
Jay Jurden: I actually, I like baby boomers. I think they're the best hypocrites. They invented the pill, had all the sex, invented drugs and all the drugs and the minute they turn 45, they're they actually, that's against the rules.
Elena Passarello: With music from Dessa and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone tuning in from all over the country, including Brick City, USA there in West Virginia. We have a really, really fun and interesting show in store for you this week. Of course, we always ask the Live Wire listeners a question. We've asked: what's a relationship that should be easy but is surprisingly complicated for you? This is kind of based on Cheryl Strayed s latest essay, which is "Two Women Walk Into a Bar" taking a look at her relationship with her late mother-in-law. We are going to hear the audience responses to that question coming up. First, though, we got to kick things off with the best news we heard all week this week. This right here is our reminder. Sometimes for ourselves that there is good news happening out there in the world, you just gotta go looking for it. Elena, what's the best news you heard this week?
Elena Passarello: I have some news from your favorite news source, Luke Burbank. And that is, of course, TikTok.
Luke Burbank: Oh, gosh. Please don't take my TikTok away. What will I do?
Elena Passarello: I don't know. I definitely don't want to miss out on the content that's on TikTok that I found. Do you ever see those chiropractor accounts where it's just videos of a chiropractor cracking a person's back, and there's like a microphone attached to their shirt so you can really hear it.
Luke Burbank: That and Scraptok are two of the things I watch the most people scrapping metals. Oh, and people getting their like, feet cracked. [Elena: Oh yeah.] There's a whole treasure trove of cracking to be done in the human foot that I didn't know about until I started watching it on TikTok.
Elena Passarello: Well, I'm here to teach you about a new treasure trove Burbank, because this chiropractors TikTok is getting like tens of thousands of views for each video. His name is Jurden Whitley. He lives and chiropractic in Edmond, Oklahoma, and he is now an animal chiropractor.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Elena Passarello: And you know, I've seen in TikTok like a horse chiropractor before that's actually like a, like a long standing profession. And I've seen a dog chiropractor. But this guy, he's really diversifying his clientele. He has worked on cats. Okay. Skunks, chickens. The chicken one is really good snakes and bats. But the video that's gotten him the most attention happened a few weeks ago, when a woman who owns kind of like a wildlife sanctuary farm about two hours away from Jurden Whitley's chiropractic office, called because one of her animals was chewing funny, and he drove the two hours out to this farm and adjusted Jerry the giraffe.
Luke Burbank: That makes so much sense. Think about it. A giraffe is mostly neck.
Elena Passarello: Yes. Yeah. If I ever had a giraffe, I would name it neck Nulty. So you have to watch this video. Jerry is apparently this very friendly giraffe who's like a big dog. There's zebras on the farm. His best friend on the farm is a camel named Chloe. And when it was really obvious that Jerry's jaw was a problem, they put him into this kind of pen that has, like, a catwalk, like an upper balcony. And then the chiropractor, Jurden Whitely, just like, coaxes Jerry's head and the first few vertebrae of his neck over the balcony and just leans. You have to watch this video. His gigantic, gorgeous giraffe head with those big, beautiful eyes just leans him over and just does these big but gentle adjustments. And when everything starts kind of getting back into position, the giraffe just starts nuzzling the chiropractor and it's like, thank you so much. And then it starts kind of like nibbling a little on his clothes. It's just the best, best video.
Luke Burbank: I don't even want to finish the show. I just—will you host the rest of the way? I just want to go, yeah, on my phone and watch this giraffe getting relief from its neck pain.
Elena Passarello: Oh, it's so great.
Luke Burbank: Amazing. I also have an animal related story for my best news submission this week, and it involves something near and dear to your heart, Elena. Birds. Specifically a bird that was photographed at a park along the Oregon coast. Hug Point Falls a guy named Michael Sanchez was out there recently. It was early in the morning. It was actually kind of sunrise, and he took a picture of this cute little black bird that was bouncing around on the shore there on the beach. And then he went on home to Vancouver, Washington, and he was going through his photos, and he looked at this bird more closely and realized it actually had more colorful kind of plumage than he thought. And he didn't really recognize what sort of bird it was. And so he put it up on social media just saying. Does anybody know what this is? And people started freaking out. I believe the exact text from the local TV station in Portland was it shocked the local birding world?
Elena Passarello: Oh boy, I love a bird, a bird shock.
Luke Burbank: This appears to be, although it's not been verified yet. That's a whole other topic. The verification of these birds is a very serious matter, but it appears to be a blue rock thrush which has never before been sighted in United States history.
Elena Passarello: Whoa! Where do they usually reside?
Luke Burbank: They typically live in Europe and Asia. There was, in 1997, one that was photographed in British Columbia. But for some reason the theory at the time was it might have been like a pet bird or a caged bird that escaped. This one that Michael Sanchez saw at Hug Point Falls. And again, it has not been fully verified, but all indications are that it's probably this very, very rare bird, the blue rock thrush. And they don't really know how it got here because. If it hopped aboard a boat, they would think that it would still be closer to Lake where the boats dock in Oregon. But the location of this of this park makes it, they think, unlikely that it came on a boat. They don't know how this bird got here, but it's a very exciting moment.
Elena Passarello: I love when a bird that's not supposed to be somewhere shocks the birding community. One time my my biggest bird head friend called me and said the following phrase to me. There's a Dick Sissel by the sewage pond.
Luke Burbank: Can we say that on public radio?
Elena Passarello: I don't know.
Luke Burbank: I'll tell you. I've now looked at his photograph of the bird, and it is a very beautiful bird. I, as a non birder, wouldn't immediately know that it was something as rare as it appears to be. So rare. Bird spotted in Oregon. That's the best news that I heard this week. You. All right, let's say hi to our first guest. She is the author of the best selling book of advice columns, Tiny Beautiful Things, which is also a Hulu show starring Kathryn Hahn. She's, of course, also the writer behind the New York Times bestseller wild, which has sold more than 4 million copies and was also made into an Oscar nominated film. Here is a fun fact this guest first appeared on Live Wire 11 days after her book wild was published. So we've been in on the ground floor of the Cheryl Strayed experience, and we have been so lucky to have her and her wonderful wisdom back on our show many, many times since then. And of course, when we realized we were coming up on Live Wires 20th Anniversary celebration earlier this year, we knew that we had to talk to Cheryl Strayed. So we did about her new essay, which is titled "Two Women Walk Into a Bar". It's about her complicated relationship with her late mother-in-law. And also, of course, Cheryl was nice enough to give us a little bit of advice because that's also one of her specialties. Take a listen to this. It's Cheryl Strayed, recorded at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon.
Cheryl Strayed: Hi everyone.
Luke Burbank: I'm curious. You know, this this essay that that you wrote, "Two Women Walk Into a Bar," which is, it's beautifully, beautifully described. It it talks about your late mother-in-law, Joan, and the relationship that you had, which got off to kind of a weird start. It's basically you in a restaurant trying to play a sort of guessing game of who she is.
Cheryl Strayed: Yes. Okay, so I was a waitress. Portlanders might remember labas a French bar over in northwest. I just finished hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and nine days after my hike, I met this wonderful man named Brian Lindstrom. And I started. He's. He's my husband now. We've been married for, like, a million years. But back then, we were just dating and we felt we were really in love. And he kept putting off introducing me to his mother, which I sort of took personally. And later I realized we could have waited a little longer. But I loved her. But. But what happened? So I was waiting tables at this, at this French bar, and she and her friends were going to see a Neil Diamond concert, and they were going to stop in the bar, and I had never met her. So in walks these three women, all in their 60s, all decked out in the most glorious clothes, mostly from Chico's. And, you know, Joan did not introduce herself to me as the mother of the man I love. They said instead, guess, guess which one of us is Brian's mom? How many guesses do you think it took? There were three women. Oh, no. Three women. And so I struck out once. I struck out twice. The third time. You know, I technically didn't strike out, but when you guessed her last. Yeah. And it's like, ends up being your mother-in-law. It didn't start out on the right foot.
Luke Burbank: Did that kind of set a tone for certain elements of the relationship? Because it sounds like it was complicated.
Cheryl Strayed: It was, you know, I think the tone would have been set no matter what happened. I mean, Joan, was this really, really interesting and complicated woman who who I did come to love, but she was kind of the opposite of me. Like, if you think about me being somebody who likes to talk about feelings and experiences and, you know, tell the truth and let's get really, you know, intimate. She was the opposite. Emotional repression was very much a part of her way of living. And so here with these these opposites, Brian's her only child, you know. So we were these two women who loved the same man in different ways. And so in this essay, "Two Women Walk Into a Bar". It really is about that dynamic that so many of us find ourselves in. Right? Where you are intimate with somebody who in so many ways, you love but don't necessarily like all the time.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire from PRX, we're at Rev Hall this week in Portland, Oregon, and we're talking to the great Cheryl Strayed back with more in just a moment. Welcome back to Live Wire. We are at Revolution Hall here in Portland, Oregon this week, and we're talking to Cheryl Strayed, the author of wild, the person behind Dear Sugar and also now the author of an essay, "Two Women Walk Into a Bar", about her relationship with her late mother-in-law, Joan. Something that looms over this relationship is this sort of imagined relationship with your mother, who has passed away, and is kind of frozen in time, in a way. And, and when your mother-in-law lets you down in certain ways, it's hard for you to not think about how your mother would have treated you.
Cheryl Strayed: Right. So, yeah, anyone who's read any of my work knows that my mother, who died at 45 of cancer, is somebody. Who was that that, you know, very, very loving, very open, very emotional. And John, my mother-in-law, was the opposite of that. And yet she was the mother who presided over things like me becoming a mother. You know, she was the only grandmother my two children ever knew. She was the one who by the time she died in 2016, I realized she had been alive in my life for almost as many years as my own mother had been. And so the grief of that, you know, the grief of, you know, getting the gift that I longed for, which was a mother figure in my life after I lost my mom so young. And that gift being one that was really painful a lot. Yeah. But you know one thing about Joan, too, I will say, everything I'm saying about her right here isn't capturing, I think what I tried to capture also in that, in that essay, which is, you know, like even her cruelties, like later, how funny it ended up being like, you know, I was eight months pregnant with my second child and it was my birthday, and she gave me for my birthday a gift certificate to Weight Watchers. And I mean, do you know that?
Luke Burbank: How thoughtful. And I mean.
Cheryl Strayed: That was not funny in the moment.
Luke Burbank: I would imagine.
Cheryl Strayed: But later it was like gold.
Luke Burbank: Having read the essay, I'm glad that you were able to arrive there. You write about yourself in wild, and in this case, you're writing about somebody. Your mother-in-law, Joan. But you're also writing about the mother of your husband. Yeah. And I was very curious when reading the book what the process was like for you of creating it. If you would write a page and then go in and show it to Brian and be like, how do we feel about this? It's a really personal story about him and his mother as well.
Cheryl Strayed: Yeah. I mean, it's it was honestly one of the most difficult pieces I've ever written because, you know, as you said, I've written about my mother a lot, and I, I can honestly say, like, there was my mother was such a loving and generous, and I could write about her without very much criticizing her. And I was really mindful with Joan that it was because it was so much more complicated. I wanted to tell the truth. And I also wanted to tell the truth with as much generosity and kindness and complexity as I could. And I didn't show it to Brian page by page. I wrote the whole thing. And, so to to him at the end and I was he said, you know, I feel like you gave my mother back to me because, of course, he loves his mother, loved his mother so much for all of her complexity. And, you know, I think this is the thing I love so much about being a writer. And and especially being a memoirist is to do your job well. You do really have to tell the whole truth, and you have to tell a truth that you discover as you write, you know. So the day I got that Weightwatchers gift certificate for my birthday, I wasn't laughing, I was crying. But years later, writing about that, the full accounting of a gift like that, and I'm just using that as an example, is one in which you actually contemplate not just my experience, but her experience. And this is a woman who all of her life had been told, you know, she was not enough, and that from the start, she was born here in Portland in 1931. And she was, you know, born in a home for unwed single mothers and illegitimate, was marked on her birth certificate. And she grew up, you know, poor, with a single mom, like in the 30s and 40s. She was, you know, marginalized from the beginning and suffered, you know, had to face all kinds of, you know, adversity in her life and was a single mom for most of Brian's, years, too, as he was growing up. And so what ended up happening is I ended up loving Joan even more by actually telling the truth about her life. Now, of course, it's a truth that she herself could never really find the voice to tell. And I think they're writing about her with that kind of. Honesty is like the biggest love I could possibly ever give to her or to anyone. And so it ended up being a very enriching experience for me.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. You write in this essay about so many things that she did that were hurtful, like the Weight Watchers gift certificate and comments that she would make and things that that just cause your relationship to be complicated at times. And then at some point when she's getting towards the end of her life, you write that you just decided, I'm just going to love her, sort of without any sort of reservation. And my question is, is that what fixes the relationship when we have like, is that the takeaway? We have complicated relationships and we're just not loving the person hard enough.
Cheryl Strayed: Well, I think it was at a particular moment to, you know, the essay really centers around the last month of her life when I realized she was dying, and she just really had me and Brian to help her on that final, you know, that final time of her life. And I just decided to try to have a devotion to her as a daughter would, even though we had always, always there'd been a barrier between us. And, I did go all the way in with her and those last weeks, and I'm glad I did, because, you know, one of the things I write about this in the essay, one of the most painful things, conversations we had was in those last days. She looked at me at one point as she's dying, and she says, how come you never liked me? And of course, what I wanted to ask her, you know, and I did. Why didn't you ever like me? And I think it was one of the most beautiful moments between us, because we were both finally just saying the truth, which is we felt. You know, unloved, unliked, abandoned by each other. And then in some ways, just uttering those words to each other then became the force of, you know, the truer thing, which was the love, the connection between us. And also, you know, that connection that would extend beyond whatever conversation happened between the two of us. And, of course, me raising my children who, you know, are her grandchildren.
Luke Burbank: The one time or the scenario in which you seem to bond the most would be when you were both a few lines in.
Cheryl Strayed: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: For like years. Right. That was kind of where you that some of the probably more on her part than yours. But the guard would kind of come down.
Cheryl Strayed: Yeah, exactly. That's and I always felt so you know bad about that because of course, she, she was, as we would sort of politely say, a heavy drinker and somebody who was emotionally repressed would use alcohol. Like, that would be the way that we would have the best conversations that we've ever had. Now, me, I can be a 100% sober. And it I always seem like I'm like three drinks in, you know, because I like, say whatever. But, you know, for John, it took that kind of that drinking and to unlock her. And so many of our most honest conversations were in that context.
Luke Burbank: You wrote a different essay a while ago that really, really impacted me, and it really changed kind of the way I think about my relationship with alcohol. You're talking about your relationship and how you were someone who didn't fit in, maybe to the problem drinker category by certain kind of metrics, but that it was something that was a problem for you. And, and can you talk about kind of where you've ended up with things?
Cheryl Strayed: Yeah, I think like so many people over the last few years, suddenly starting to really hear very much in the conversation like, well, what what is moderate drinking? What is heavy drinking, what is, you know, and I was always I call it like the kind of drinker who I was like, I, I feel like maybe I have a problem without a problem because I, you know, I didn't I didn't drink very much. But when I would go to the doctor every year, she'd be like, okay, so moderate drinking is 7 or 7, you are a week. And I would argue with my doctor. That can't be true. That's one glass of wine and I can't. I have two glasses. No, that's double Motrin. And you know, I'm like, I don't want to be. I don't want to be double moderate, you know? Then she would go, there's no such thing as double moderate.
Luke Burbank: You can there be double moderate.
Cheryl Strayed: Is is drinking too much?
Luke Burbank: Yeah. I sometimes order a double moderate on the right. Yeah.
Cheryl Strayed: And that's exactly what I was like. We're just going to pretend that she and the CDC, and then the World Health Organization, you know, and all those people are wrong. And then I started doing, unfortunately, what I do. Whenever I really have a question about something, I started to research it. And I realized that, you know, this is grounded in something that I probably should listen to, especially as I move into middle age. And and so I just decided to shift my relationship with alcohol. And now I think of it as like, I'm I'm not 100% sober, but I'm almost 100% sober. I, I drink about as often as I have birthday cake, which is unfortunately not every week, you know? I mean, you know, I would like birthday cake every week, but I just shifted it over the last few years. You know, if you'd first said to me, like, okay, maybe you should never drink again, I'd be like, no way, I love, I love wine too much. And now, actually, I could easily do that. It's just become not part of my life anymore, which is really interesting.
Luke Burbank: You also are still writing as Dear Sugar? [Cheryl: I am.] You have a newsletter and a Substack?
Cheryl Strayed: Yes. Do you need any advice?
Luke Burbank: Here's the question that I would have to you. Dear sugar, what would your advice be to a public radio show as it reaches middle age? And let's be honest, probably a little north of middle age, maybe more generally, how do we find purpose in our lives as we move through our lives and they don't look the way that they once did? I kind of think of it as the analogy is sort of an airplane and you're taking off and you're kind of back is pinned to the seat and it feels like everything has potential, and then you kind of reach your cruising altitude and that sort of okay. And then there's that little moment when the plane your stomach feels, it kind of starts initial descent. And we have to find meaning in our lives. Throughout all of the phases of this journey, we're on for our little radio show and for us as creators and for me as a public radio host. What's your advice for finding meaning in life at all the different phases?
Cheryl Strayed: You know, I think it really is connected to that thing that I was saying when I was describing the writing process that you begin with an idea, you know. 20 years ago, Live Wire began with an idea, and there were people who came together and said, let's make this, and here's, here's the meaning of our work. And that has to evolve always over time. And the way it evolves is that you constantly, you know, pay attention to what's happening. You answer the questions that you're curious about. You begin in one place. You know, I began writing that essay about my mother-in-law, afraid that, like, I would come off sounding like I was being mean to her. And I ended up, you know, in the final line, knowing that I had written a great act of love to this woman with whom I was sometimes at odds with. And I think that I got there because I trusted. My curiosity, and I trusted my ability to be vulnerable, to take risks in the ways I, you know, rethinking the things I thought I knew. And I think Live Wire. Well, we know Live Wire has done that time and time again, in ways that we who love the show can see and in ways you've made the show. No. And I think you're going to keep doing that because that's how you began. And and as long as you stay true to those roots, you're going to be here in another 20 years, I know it.
Luke Burbank: Well, as long as you'll keep coming on the show. Okay. One more time for our friend, the great Cheryl Strayed.
Cheryl Strayed: Yeah. Thank you.
Luke Burbank: That was Cheryl Strayed right here on Live Wire. She joined us for our 20th anniversary show that was a bit earlier this year, talking about her latest essay, which is titled "Two Women Walk Into a Bar." That essay is out and available right now. Of course, each week on a Live Wire, we like to ask our listeners a question, since Cheryl, in her essay, does such a masterful job of kind of plumbing the the contours of a complicated family relationship. We wanted to know from our listeners what is a relationship that should be easy, but is surprisingly complicated for you? Elena has been collecting up those responses. What are you seeing?
Elena Passarello: Okay, here's a great one for Brenda. Brenda says: I have an awkward relationship with nail technicians. I'm not a confrontational person, so when my nails aren't right or the color is off, I just let them finish and cry about it later. But totally has happened to me before.
Luke Burbank: I also have had exactly one pedicure in my life and, it was so tickly.
Elena Passarello: Oh yeah.
Luke Burbank: I could I could barely handle it, no matter how hard I read that US magazine. I couldn't get through the procedure because it was too ticklish. And so that was, my one and only pedicure. So. Yeah. What is another complicated relationship that somebody has with something that shouldn't be so complicated?
Elena Passarello: Julie has a love hate relationship with her cycling instructor. She says my cycling instructor makes the workouts very fun and has such a good playlist. But every time she tells me to crank up the resistance on the bike, I want to fight her.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, my girlfriend is a very, very, serious practitioner of this kind of exercise. And, she'll give me reports about the particular instructor that she had that day. And some of them can be pretty hardcore.
Elena Passarello: I have a, workout service where they can see that you've logged on. And when I was doing a hip hop dance class, and the instructor went: look back at it, Elena. Bounce it like a bad check. I just shut the computer off.
Luke Burbank: Speaking of which, to my complicated relationship, but it shouldn't be as with the person who delivers my mail. We we chat a lot. I live kind of out in sort of rural part of the country, so now we're kind of friendly. But now I also realize that she sees that almost all the mail I get is from casinos, just places where I have signed up for like a player's card so I can get like a free salad bar. And I can't get over the fact that she sees the incoming mail and has made, I mean, rightfully so, a lot of judgments about me.
Speaker 6: Oh haha.
Luke Burbank: Okay. One more. What is another, relationship that's proving to be a little more complicated than you'd think for our listener.
Elena Passarello: This one's so funny. Pauline says my daughter tried out for a student run team, and she didn't make the cut. All the decisions about the team are left to the children. While my daughter was an upset, I was. And yes, now I have un reciprocated beef with a child.
Luke Burbank: Hahahahahahahaha.
Luke Burbank: I got a few of those. I, was cut from my, high school baseball team. I was joking with the coach the night before about the cuts. He said, we're making cuts tomorrow. I said, so if we get a call like ten in the morning, we should be scared. And he goes, yeah. And at ten in the morning, the next day, I got a call.
Elena Passarello: Aw aw aw.
Luke Burbank: I thought you could have just told me this last night.
Elena Passarello: They couldn't have kept you on as, like, the Raiders mascot or something like that.
Luke Burbank: I asked, I begged. Some would say it was an undignified response, and they said, we're good, actually. All right. Thank you to everyone who sent in a response to our listener question. We've got another one for next week's show, which we will reveal in just a few minutes. In the meantime, our next guest is a comedian, actor and Emmy nominated writer based in New York City. He was a staff writer and panelist for The Problem with Jon Stewart. He's got three Tonight Show appearances under his belt, and was selected as one of Variety's ten Comics to Watch. And we did watch him and listen to him at Town Hall in Seattle, Washington. This is Jay Jurden here on Live Wire. Oh, and just to let you know, Jay's comedy set does mention the subject of sex. So prepare yourself for that. Here's Jay.
Jay Jurden: Thank you. Thank you. Oh my gosh. Thank you.
Jay Jurden: A quick silly question: Are there gay people here? Honestly too many. That's not for me. That's from the Supreme Court now. Okay. More specific question. Are there gay men here? Okay. Yeah. You hear how the pitch didn't drop? Now, I love I love gay men outside of comedy settings. And here's why. Inside of comedy settings, we don't get along every time a gay guy. He's not the gay guy on stage. He can only think five things I should be up there. But, I'm not going to go too hard on gay men. I love gay men. I'm married one. Don't clap. He's gay. Not happy now, a lot of people don't know this. Do you know, in New York City, if you're a man and you get married to another man, you spend most of your wedding day introducing gay men who live in New York City to other gay men they have already slept with. Most of my wedding day, I was stuck saying stuff like, well, Benjamin, you know, Todd, Michael, you also know Todd Shay. And I know you know Todd. I've seen the tape. And then. And then my husband was like, Jay, do you know Todd? And I had to go, ooh, I do, and then I had to remind him. I said, nah, baby, we know Todd. And he was like, oh, that's Todd. I didn't recognize him standing up. Okay.
Jay Jurden: All right. Okay. Yeah.
Jay Jurden: That just lets me know who's fun. I got married at the at the height of monkey pox. If you don't know, monkey pox? It was a skin disease. A lot of people were like, it's not a gay disease. It just hasn't found the right girl yet. Okay. Is this really focused on school right now? I never caught monkeypox. In fact, I got the monkey pox vaccine early because the health department said sluts to the front. And remember, you boys married. Not boring. So I. I got the monkey pox vaccine in the Bronx. It was crazy. I walked in, I knew everyone, I was like, good to see you again. Good to see you again, man. What's up? Todd and I have. I like your good laugh first. I like this. I understand there's a bit of tension in here. I can sense it. There are some straight men in the crowd. I can smell it. Do me a favor, you crunchy, straight man. Make some noise. That's enough. Now. That's fine. No, this is fine. Because look at you. Just sitting there laughing. Enjoying yourself doesn't always happen. One time I got on stage at a cop, my jokes got in the front row, got up, grumbled. I didn't know it was gonna be a gay guy here. I left the show and in my head I'm thinking, sir, what are you doing? This is New York City. There are definitely more outside. You need to stick with the evil, you know? That's like going to the beach and saying, hey, man, I love the water. But why didn't you tell me about all this damn sand? This place is lousy with the stuff. Oh, no. My son's playing it now. He's going to grow up to be sand because of what is sand, but gay dirt and. And by that I mean highly malleable, slightly irritating, and somehow always ends up in your husband's trunks. Now, ladies, if you're man after that joke, I'll see y'all at the beach. We. I talk about being queer too much. I got an email one time and said, Jack, you are so funny. You have such a great smile. Why are you married? That I got two way, man. There are so many women in the world. You don't have to live like this. God is healing and blessing every day. Love, Barbara. Ooh, I'm not going to sleep with you, Barbara. I'm not sleeping with the mid-century name of Barbara. You shouldn't be in my DMs, Barbara. You should be on the Golden Bachelor. Barbara, I'm a gay. You need been gay. There's a difference, Barbara. Try not to go too hard on older people. All right, listen, I know I am really not, in fact, watching this. Baby boomers make some noise. Okay. Everybody heard that on the count of three. Kill! No, no! Stop it! I don't want y'all dead. I just want property. I actually, I like baby boomers. I think they're the best hypocrites. They invented the pill, had all the sex, invented drugs, did all the drugs. In a minute they turn 45. They're like, actually, that's against the rules. Good luck in the yard. Now, I won't go too hard on baby boomers. Millennials. Make some noise. You hear that? That is what poverty sounds like. If you if you're a millennial, that means you are aware of wealth, but you don't have access to it. It means you know someone who knows someone you heard a rumor about someone living alone. And guess what? I'm in the same boat. When I first moved to New York City, one of my friends made a $100,000 more than me. Yeah. That's right. He made $80,000. Another one of my friends. People will say, we haven't made anything. We made some pretty cool stuff. As millennials, we made we work. And then coronavirus is like, do you. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot about Gen X, I apologize, I forgot about Gen X, just like your parents did. And that's. Jinx is my favorite way to call somebody 50, an average, an actor. They get so mad they go, wait a second, I'm still cool and hip. I have a leather jacket. Bones creak, bones creak, bones creak. No, you guys are fine. You still got that pain in your system? I like it now. Okay. Final group, Gen Z, make some noise. I love it, I love it, I love Gen Z, I love Gen Z because Gen Z is so intense every time to Gen Z is me on the street. This is what it sounds like. Oh my God, you're stunning. You're a diva. You're a model, you're a goddess, you're a legend, you're an icon. What's his name? You're too good for him. Did you know all of this is stolen land anyway? I just saw. Tick tock. Let me know. I might be artistic or. Or it was an ad for clothes. I do not know. But what I do know is that one day you're going to see me on the big screen. My mom. And y'all, that is just the straight boys. No, no, no, I'm trying to educate people more about nuance, about who I'm trying to educate people about. Intersectionality. Y'all know about intersectionality, okay. Of course. Seattle, if you don't know that, if you know intersectionality, that is when you have sex. The four way stop. No, it's the intersectionality. Intersectionality. That's when you are more than one thing at once. And you're aware of how those identities intersect. Like me, I'm a black queer man, also known as a gospel choir director. But have you right. Let the church say. Now have you. But that's really that said that. What does it mean. What does it mean to be a black queer man. It means that sometimes when old white women see me, they grab their purse. But then I have to grab my. And at that point I'm like, what are we doing? Wait a minute, Barbara.
Jay Jurden: Oh my God. And then you look good. I've been Jay Jurden. Thank you guys so much.
Luke Burbank: That was Jay Jurden right here on Live Wire. You can catch him on his kind of sorta sorta kinda comedy tour in a city near you. I'm Luke Burbank. That's Elena Passarello. Oh, we've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, we're going to hear some music from poet, rapper and all around musical genius Dessa. Stay with it. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. Before we get to our musical guests, a little preview of next week's show. We are going to be talking to comedian, writer and actor Paul F Tompkins from Mr. Show and BoJack Horseman. And I think roughly, I just counted 1 million other comedy projects. You know, this, Elena, and that Paul is a really incredible improviser, but it turns out he has one Achilles heel when it comes to improv, and he is going to tell us about that. We're also going to talk to award winning poet now turned memoirist Safiya Sinclair. Her new book is How to Say Babylon, talks about her life growing up in Jamaica. Then we'll go from Jamaica to Hawaii, which is where singer songwriter Isabeau Waia'u Walker hails from. So it's going to be a great show. Make sure you tune in. We are also going to be looking to get your answer to our listener question. Elena, what are we asking folks for next week's show?
Elena Passarello: We want to know what is the most unhinged thing that a neighbor has ever done.
Luke Burbank: Oh, okay. This is going—I can already tell this is going to be a rich, rich topic. If you have a story you want to share with us, hit us up on social media. We're at Live Wire radio most places.
Elena Passarello: Unless you're my neighbor. And then you can just keep your comments to yourself.
Luke Burbank: That's right.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire from our musical guest this week is a multi-talented person, to say the least. On the music side, she's performed at Lollapalooza in Glastonbury. She contributed to the Hamilton Mixtape. On the writing side, something else she does, she's also been published in the New York Times and a bunch of other places. The LA times says she sounds like no one else, all Songs considered, calls her a national treasure, and we call her a friend of Live Wire. This is Dessa performing live at Town Hall in Seattle, Washington. Check it out.
Luke Burbank: Hi, Dessa.
Dessa: Hey. How's it going?
Luke Burbank: Good. Welcome back. Thanks, man. I think you have, a new album out since the last time that we talked to you. And I love the name of the record. What is it?
Dessa: It is Bury the Lede.
Luke Burbank: L-e-d-e. Very journalistic of you. What's the story on that?
Dessa: I admit that part of it, to be honest, is just because I think it's cool. Like I'm a sucker for journalism, you know, I'm a journalist fan. I like the weird dramas about them. I think they do good work. So part of it was just like using slang that maybe I have no right to. So let me just name a record that. But I think also it's sort of like it's, it's a dancer record than stuff that I've done in the past, partly because we were coming out of the pandemic and it felt like the sad stuff was getting pretty well covered, you know, by everything else. But I like the idea of sublimation that like, hey, you know, whether you're at, at a late night hang or whether you're trying to, you know, make radio or make rent or fall in love, like a lot of the drivers, I think fundamentally of human behavior. It's a short list. You know, you're trying to get loved. You're trying to do something cool before you're dead. You're trying to avoid really painful conflict. And it felt like the buried leads of, like the elemental drivers were few. And so even in kind of our complex behaviors, usually you can trace them back to a handful of factors.
Luke Burbank: You have so many areas of interest, and I know that you you've hosted this really amazing podcast, which is sort of about neuroscience. And are you using that now, having spent so much time thinking about that stuff, when you're writing music, when you're because the way you just described the album was felt like it had a sort of neuroscience component to it.
Dessa: Does it? I mean, I guess in some sense I'm aware of the fact. Okay. I think I have been fascinated by the fact that however much we might struggle, sweat and suffer to make hard decisions that we don't actually, we can't actually disambiguate when we're acting on instinct. And sometimes we for sure are like, I remember learning about the copy of Literary Gaze, which is like a particular way that in this case, like it was mostly studying, women would turn their shoulders, put their chins down, and then kind of look beneath, heavy lashes. Everybody thinks you invent that the first time you do it. What if I just. Hey, you know what I mean? Yeah. And so the idea, like, you know, that's just programed in, but I can't feel the algorithm running. And so I think I'm increasingly aware of that and fascinated that we just we can't feel the subtext, you know, running, running inside us. We can't feel the formulas at work. And so I do think about my behavior and the behavior of people I am friends with, and maybe not so friendly with, in those terms. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Speaking of behaviors, there is a behavior around being a touring musician that I just found out about today from you, which is. So we're here in Seattle at Town Hall this week, and you've played Seattle before, but you don't live here. And so I understand there was like a cache of merch that you had hidden in Seattle somewhere, so that when you came back, you didn't have to schlep it. From where do you live in the Midwest? Like, please explain this.
Dessa: I think that, you know, for every 30 minutes we spend on stage, you know, we usually spend between 8 and 20 3.5 hours, like getting to that place. So this job is primarily you commute professionally. Yeah. You know.
Luke Burbank: So that's the life of being a musician is a lot of of travel time schlepped here to be this.
Dessa: The schlep. And so you know vinyl is heavy. And so to the extent that, you know, if someone comes up to the merch table a few times in the same city and looks like they might be gainfully employed and have a garage, my merch is going in that garage. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: So is there somebody here at Town Hall who's been basically hosting your merch since the last time you were here?
Dessa: Thank you Liz.
Luke Burbank: Hey, shout out to Liz. All right. What song are we going to hear?
Dessa: This is a song called Hurricane Party. And today I am joined on stage by my long time friend and collaborator, Abby Wolff. All right.
[Dessa plays Hurricane Party]
Luke Burbank: That was Dessa right here on Live Wire. Pretty sure to check out her latest album, Bury the Lead, which is out and available now. That's going to do it for this week's episode of the show. A very, very big thanks to our guests Cheryl Strayed, Jay, Jurden and Dessa.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer, Heather De Michelle is our executive director and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eban Hoffer is our technical director and our How Sound is by D Neil Blake. Tree Hester is our assistant editor. Our marketing and production manager is Karen Pan. Rosa Garcia is our operations associate. Jackie Ibarra is our production fellow, and Becky Phillips is our intern. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Mike Gamble, Jacob Miller, Ayal Alves, and A Walker Spring who also composes our music. This episode was mixed by Molly Pettit and Tre Hester.
Luke Burbank: Additional funding provided by the Regional Arts and Culture Council and the James F and Marion L Miller Foundation. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we like to thank members Kate, the sale of Portland, Oregon, and Hasan Valentine of Seattle, Washington. For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast. Head on over Live Wire radio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire team. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
— PRX —
