Coming down, People.
It has been a fucking whirlwind of events and emotion since last week. The response has been amazing. It’s really very surprising to me that the reaction to the POTUS interview has been almost all positive. At least the reaction I can gauge. Which is in person, in the form of people coming up to me on the street or people I know emailing, texting and calling, and the reaction I see on social networking platforms, mostly Twitter. The point being that the tone of my conversation with the President resonated. I really think it had been a long time since people listened to him in any active way. People had forgotten why they liked him. The people that don’t like him had forgotten that he actually is a person. The people that hate him never seem to forget that but there are always going to be those people.
I have actually not watched ANY television since I talked to the President. I have been on a few shows talking about it but I have no real sense of what the momentum was around the clickbait/button-pushing reaction to the part of the interview that the media chose to focus on. I just have my experience and the way I chose to frame it. It was the first time I really detached from a frenzy. I generally gravitate towards them but I felt no need. With Brendan McDonald’s help, I was able to limit press interaction and stay detached and cherish and reflect on my own experience of the event. I didn’t really want it to be about me or what they decided to focus on. The story should have been what the President said in the broader sense, how it felt to hear him in an intimate format AND that he was on A PODCAST and how amazing and crazy the reality of that is.
I am glad he chose me though.
So, now getting back to what we do. I think it’s going to be a couple of weeks until it doesn’t feel like I’m done. Like I did it. Like, what else is there to do? Like, how do I go on feeling like an outsider and discontent given what has happened over the last few years? I imagine I’ll get back to it somehow but right now I feel not so much content but that I have done something amazing. That will always be there but I’m sure the excitement will fade a bit as the weeks go on and I will get back into the groove of me.
Today I talk to film director Penelope Spheeris about a lot of things that I didn’t know we would talk about including working with Richard Pryor and Albert Brooks and growing up in a carnival. On Thursday we are back to full-on comic talk with Rich Vos about the struggle of being Rich Vos and where that started. Both good talks.
Enjoy!
Boomer lives!
Love,
Maron
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