Transcript
00:00:02
Speaker 1: I got such an angry letter from a Liz Fir fan when you so kindly came and did backing.
00:00:07
Speaker 2: Vocals on So What one of my songs.
00:00:10
Speaker 1: One asked me to dance, and I got a letter from a person going, don't advertise Liz Fair unless she's going to actually be able to be heard in the mix.
00:00:18
Speaker 2: How dare you mix her down? How dare she be a backing vocalist?
00:00:22
Speaker 1: How dare you, Mini Driver, use Liz Fair as you have used you use her own?
00:00:27
Speaker 3: Oh God, and so you had on the other country.
00:00:31
Speaker 2: I moved to England.
00:00:34
Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Mini Driver. I've always loved Proust's questionnaire. It was originally in nineteenth century parlor game, where players would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the other player's true nature. In asking different people the same set of questions, you can make observations about which truths appear to be universal.
00:00:55
Speaker 2: And it made me wonder, what if these questions were just the jumping.
00:00:58
Speaker 1: Off point, what great day would be revealed if I asked these questions as conversation starters. So I adapted Pru's questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that I personally think are pertinent to a person's story.
00:01:11
Speaker 4: They are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines.
00:01:19
Speaker 2: Love for you?
00:01:20
Speaker 4: What question would you most like answered? What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that's grown out of a personal disaster?
00:01:33
Speaker 2: And I've gathered a group.
00:01:34
Speaker 1: Of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions. We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to their experience or the most surprising, or created the most fertile ground to connect. My guest today on many questions is the recording artist Liz Fair.
00:02:02
Speaker 2: Liz is a unicorn.
00:02:04
Speaker 1: By that, I don't mean that she's mythic, because she's one of the realist people I know.
00:02:09
Speaker 2: But she is rare and she carved out.
00:02:12
Speaker 1: Space for herself where she roamed wild and free, and from what I can tell, still does. Liz was an iconic force right out of the gate. From initial recordings under the Girly Sounds banner. She was then signed and she released her first album, Exile in Guyville, in nineteen ninety three. And girls just weren't singing and writing the songs I heard on that record. They were honest and factual, blunt and sexual. I just thought she was the coolest kind of feminist, and she still is. She and I share a similar sort of doomish wisdom, where we think everything good comes out of some kind of dead end, constantly reimagining artistry and continuing to explore life outside the box. I am thrilled that my good friend Liz agreed to come on the show today.
00:03:05
Speaker 2: So, Liz Fair, where and when were you happiest?
00:03:09
Speaker 3: This is a dull answer, but it's when I'm on vacation with friends and family. I love the feeling of being suspended. I have a lot of trouble with rules in society, although I'm also someone that appreciates order, so it's a contradiction in me. But I really love taking everyone I love out of context and being away where you're outside of your norms, you're outside of your roles, and you're together somewhere, and I feel a sense of freedom there. And I don't think I ever feel more like myself than when I'm on vacation, you know what I mean, Like you just strip off all of society and it just feels so good. So I think I'm happiest and freest when I'm outside of the roles that we're given, that we're scripted.
00:03:59
Speaker 1: That's pretty wild given that you like the bell Weather rock and roller creating her own reality literally a one woman show band, Like how does that fit in?
00:04:10
Speaker 3: Like what?
00:04:10
Speaker 1: Because it's so funny the way that you made it sounds like it's kind of corporate the world that.
00:04:14
Speaker 2: You're escaping from.
00:04:16
Speaker 5: You know, all these rules and regulations, like when you're on the stage.
00:04:21
Speaker 2: To do with your monitors down? What is it?
00:04:25
Speaker 3: No, it makes sense, it's all of it. If I'd come up now, maybe it would have been. But I feel like when I came up in the music business, every step was convincing someone that I could do it, or just taking the step and then they're like, what are you doing? You took a step? What did you take a step for? I'm walking here, I'm walking, you know, And so like every step along the way felt like a bravery test. Wow, you know, like a fight for the right to be an art I know it sounds stupid, but that's how I feel now.
00:05:02
Speaker 2: It doesn't sound stupid at all. It doesn't sound stupid at all.
00:05:05
Speaker 1: The people that cut the path through the field, who are up front with the machete so that everybody else can travel down that pathway. Like I always feel like you were one of those women. Thank you, I did that, So no wonder you're tired and you want a bloody holiday. And that's why right.
00:05:29
Speaker 3: Down you're always on alert for the tigers. You know, you don't know what you're cutting into. And a lot of times I know that in my career I've ruffled feathers. Look my poor fans, are you know, haranguing you because I haven't been positioned right? They also harangue me, you know, if I haven't positioned myself correctly.
00:05:47
Speaker 1: So can I just tell you that it's so crazy because like hearing you say that, like it makes me want to punch something. The idea of like being positioned right because for me.
00:05:58
Speaker 2: You are. I can't.
00:06:00
Speaker 1: It's important for all these female artists. If you hadn't done that, they wouldn't exist. So but it's interesting that you the way that you feel that you weren't positioned right. I think you were positioned incredibly Like in my heart and in so many millions of people's hearts, you are. But I understand that of sort of hitting a wall and going wow, they don't they don't get where I want to take this next.
00:06:26
Speaker 3: Well, you went into music, and you wrote a book, a beautiful book, a beautiful memoir.
00:06:30
Speaker 2: I've got to keep making.
00:06:32
Speaker 3: All of those things are things that no one gave you permission to do. You just said, this is what's in me, and this is what I'm going to do next. And I would imagine some of your agents were a little bit surprised at your musical detour.
00:06:47
Speaker 1: Possibly, yeah, I mean they definitely were like, well, that's it for you, love, If you're going to move to Hawaii just like lat music, goodbye, good bye.
00:06:58
Speaker 2: No one will remember you when you come back.
00:07:01
Speaker 1: And largely they were sort of right, but I think theyde underestimated how much women are used to having to insist on their space at the table, even if you've left the table briefly for whatever your reasons are, mental health, your soul, have a child, the fact that we can't come back and go yeah, I'm going to sit back down now.
00:07:21
Speaker 3: Which is interesting. And you talk about roles. I mean, until I moved to Hollywood, until I knew artists like you, I didn't realize that acting was just another facet of their artistry, That everyone who's an actor is also an artist. Yeah, and so there's so much more to them that, you know, Hollywood doesn't have a use for just do that acting thing, look more beautiful, keep acting these people, these large souls getting put into small roles.
00:07:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, or if you fall into the trip, the implied insistence on youth and beauty, and that if you don't subscribe to that and end up looking this weird, homogenized way that a lot of women look now from having bowed to that pressure, it doesn't work then either, because then in a way you're then punished for having given in.
00:08:13
Speaker 3: You've made yourself replaceable.
00:08:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean, you know, I feel like a lot of people have felt that way about women aging anyway, But I don't see women doing that. I see people writing off ads about women doing that, But no one I know does that. No woman I know over the age of fifty is invisible. They are the vibrant, most powerful versions of themselves.
00:08:34
Speaker 3: I know, I don't understand that. It's almost like fear mongering. I'll always look up from an article. I'll be like, do I I don't feel in.
00:08:41
Speaker 1: If they shout more at the articles that I read about you know, women and aging and what it means and aren't you worried about this? No, you're worried about it. You're just getting the clickbait. And I suppose I did click on it to read it.
00:08:55
Speaker 3: Well, you always want to know what are they saying. There is a sense of our people to talking about this. But I mean I watched my grandmother remarried twice after the age of seventy. So I watched her date.
00:09:07
Speaker 2: I love that. Did she have a great time doing it?
00:09:11
Speaker 3: She did? And there was one that she became like a teenager giggly at the tate. We're like, what's up with winky? Look at her? She's like like, you know, like this laugh. This personality comes out of your grandmother that you've never seen before. So I think I had a good role model in the sense that it ain't over until it's over, and it's such a brief life anyway, you know, why on earth are you limiting yourself in these seventy two hundred years in any way, shape or form.
00:09:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you see it reflected back in the media, and it's it's only like that if you say it is like, the more I've thought about it, the more I genuinely believe there is only the meaning that we assign in this world, and it's what lives in the same space. For me is you get what you say, You get what you say you worth. I think you have to tell the story that you want to live.
00:10:05
Speaker 2: You really do that activity.
00:10:07
Speaker 3: I have a great metaphor for this. At one point in two thousand and three, two thousand and four, there was a lot of money being poured into promoting me, so I was everywhere I was like under Capitol Records, and I was very visible, and so everywhere I went there's this tension of if people recognized you. But I realized something at my own shows that if I needed to leave the venue or go meet someone and there's a line of people outside my show waiting to see me, if I walk like it's no big deal, Like I'm just super casually walking back, nobody recognizes me. I can walk past my own line casually strong. But if I have like people around me that're like, okay, we got to get her out of here, everybody notices. So I'm literally creating my own reality by how I'm carrying myself and how I see that situation, and it stuck with me. How you carry yourself to a large degree does shape how you experience it and what that means to you later on, and how that sticks with you. So if you want to be invisible as a woman, you can carry yourself invisibly, or you can carry yourself loudly.
00:11:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of the things that bothers me most about the way in which middle aged women they speak about this invisibility.
00:11:29
Speaker 2: I bought into it.
00:11:30
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, that does happen, doesn't it. And I was like, no, it doesn't. I remember calling my mother really sad, one like genuinely profoundly depressed, and going, I'm so sad.
00:11:40
Speaker 2: I don't know what to do. What do I do?
00:11:42
Speaker 1: And she was like, oh, put on some lipstick, be seen, put your face on, act like it isn't what you are saying is act like that and see what happens.
00:11:53
Speaker 2: I remember being so annoyed with her put on.
00:11:56
Speaker 1: Fucking red lipstick to act like I'm happy when I'm sad.
00:12:00
Speaker 3: It was completely right, though when they say it visible, what they're really just saying is men are not going to try to run you down and conquer that for such that is.
00:12:09
Speaker 1: That is exactly that is exactly right.
00:12:11
Speaker 3: But I don't want to be run down and conquered for sex anymore.
00:12:14
Speaker 2: So enough of that. Oh I'm sick of it. I'll tell you what I've been I've been run over it anymore. Frankly, it's you're right.
00:12:25
Speaker 1: It is to do with a woman's worth being enforced and tethered to this idea of desirability.
00:12:33
Speaker 3: For sex specifically whatever.
00:12:35
Speaker 1: Man, If that's really what it comes down to, just like where you want to go and have sex.
00:12:41
Speaker 2: Allow me to be invisible.
00:12:42
Speaker 1: Let me maintain my invisibility, and I'll get on and do all the really interesting shit that doesn't involve, you know, ten minutes of sex with you.
00:12:55
Speaker 3: Oh my god, thank you for putting such a fine point on that.
00:12:59
Speaker 2: And now we can I'll tell you my visibility over a swift turn with you.
00:13:08
Speaker 1: Love.
00:13:13
Speaker 3: The articles never explained that part of it.
00:13:15
Speaker 2: They never do. What is it we're going to be seen by a swift ten minutes. I don't, I really don't. I don't go and google Sally Rooney and see what she's writing next. Thank you off?
00:13:35
Speaker 1: Oh God, what relationship, real or fictionalized?
00:13:53
Speaker 2: Defind love for you?
00:13:57
Speaker 3: Okay?
00:13:58
Speaker 2: Tell me.
00:13:59
Speaker 3: I never knew this. In my twenties and thirties, how I felt in relationships was of paramount importance, and it wasn't until I became a mother, and frankly, it took fifteen years past that to really understand that if you love a person, you want the best for them. You want them to find their journey, you want them to realize their potential. And that's the kind of love that I think is the highest love. It's the best love. It's the most rewarding love. It's really hard to find, and it's really hard to give. But to love somebody and to love yourself wanting the best for you and wanting you to fulfill your highest potential, that's real love. That's the kind of love that if you break up and it's not right between you, you can still look at the person and say, I admire this person. There was a point at which a relationship was something that fulfilled me, that I got something out of, and then I morphed into someone that wants the best for the other person and only wants to date someone that I would feel that way about.
00:15:12
Speaker 4: Hmmm.
00:15:13
Speaker 1: So distill it to what defines love for you?
00:15:17
Speaker 3: A lack of selfishness, a keen interest and admiration and feeling for a real connection that you can't put into words. But that doesn't just consume, that doesn't just say, oh great, when can we be together? What can we do? But that listens to what they want to do, What are you trying to do with your life? What are your dreams? And then supporting that. I guess it's about only dating people that you really already respect and admire as people individuals, not meshing, not going to that full mesh that I did in my twenties. Do you know what I'm saying.
00:15:58
Speaker 2: About, Like, yeah, full mesh for the birds?
00:16:01
Speaker 3: Well, I mean it was fine. Those are the epics stories and the fights in the street and the like ro Julia and the steaks or something. No, I'm not into that.
00:16:11
Speaker 2: I'm too tired for that.
00:16:12
Speaker 1: But I also don't want I don't want ten minute sex. But I also don't want that. I don't want I don't want that screaming in the streets you to actualize.
00:16:21
Speaker 3: I want you to have what you want in life, and I want to be there for the ride.
00:16:25
Speaker 1: But it's about respect, right, respect and recognition. And you're right about liking who they are and that you support that despite the compromise that it might be to your own life, because you love them, because that's actually what what love is.
00:16:39
Speaker 2: I think that's interesting.
00:16:41
Speaker 3: You want the best for them.
00:16:42
Speaker 2: Have you got that?
00:16:44
Speaker 3: No? And I remember a boyfriend telling me that that's what it was, and I wanted to punch him. I really did. I was like, take your Hallmark guard and hit the road.
00:16:53
Speaker 2: But he was right.
00:16:54
Speaker 1: I hate it when someone tells you something that's right and then you know they were right, and then you have to carry that around.
00:17:02
Speaker 3: Yeah it is. I don't have the relationship back, but I took the advice.
00:17:07
Speaker 2: Then you profited from that.
00:17:09
Speaker 3: No do I have that now?
00:17:10
Speaker 5: No?
00:17:10
Speaker 3: I do not. It's very hard to find. But I also don't trifle with possibles. If I don't feel deep compulsion that this person is connecting with me, I think of it as chakras. If they're not lighting up five of those chakras at once. I'm not going to bother.
00:17:27
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's so great. It's like a traffic light system. That's fantastic. Yeah, I'm sorry, and there's all three lights are going. We don't have anything happening. Yeah, that makes it very practical. You have an internal traffic.
00:17:41
Speaker 3: And if you're friends, that can always change because you know, you'll fall in love if it's not ten minutes, if it's half an hour's eare and it's satisfying.
00:17:51
Speaker 2: Listen, I'm giving ten minutes. I'm giving ten.
00:17:53
Speaker 1: Minutes a bad app there's a good version of ten minutes. It's just the people that are cooling women invisible over the age of fifty, and not that people have a good ten minute sex.
00:18:02
Speaker 2: Okay, that's the that's the fucking deal right there.
00:18:05
Speaker 1: But that fellow, But I'll take a good ten minutes.
00:18:10
Speaker 3: This is all the truth you need.
00:18:12
Speaker 1: I'll take a good ten minutes with my boyfriend any day of the week.
00:18:14
Speaker 2: God damn right.
00:18:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he's also probably a forty five minute or a ten minute or a five minute or and any sort of thing.
00:18:23
Speaker 2: He's all the minutes. Indy, Oh, the minutes I need. I think we should drive a song. He's old minutes.
00:18:35
Speaker 3: And we can even have parts of it. We're like fifteen minutes now, you know, No, it's like twenty minutes.
00:18:42
Speaker 2: Now.
00:18:46
Speaker 5: Hi, my name's twenty minutes and I'm a mid point in your day. Hi, my name's two minutes. I'm a knee trembling in the kitchen.
00:18:58
Speaker 3: I'm your launch pray.
00:19:02
Speaker 1: It's Friday, Sunday afternoon.
00:19:12
Speaker 3: He's all minutes in the hour, so he's all a minutes by me.
00:19:16
Speaker 2: Oh my godnes on a Tuesday. By the way, I'm definitely writing the song. I'm going to send it to you.
00:19:27
Speaker 1: All right, Angel in your life, can you tell me about something that has grown out of a personal disaster?
00:19:34
Speaker 3: The knee jerk reaction is everything's grown out of personal disaster.
00:19:37
Speaker 2: I like that.
00:19:39
Speaker 3: Correct way to say is I see personal disaster as opportunities. Not at the moment, but I always keep that in the back of my mind. So if you consider the fact that I was adopted, I came right out of a personal disaster into a pretty good situation. And you know, though I I wanted to be a visual artist, the personal disaster of me sort of having my I'm not going to school anymore. I hate everything, I hate everyone. That personal disaster wrote Guyville, and so then the personal disaster of oh god, now it's my job to perform on stage that personal disaster. Or when I was having trouble with my record company, well, I have a college degree. I could write a book, you know. So everything comes out of a dead end. For me. Everything that I've done that has really impressed me about myself has come out of a dead end where something isn't working out. And that may just be that I value those experiences more because I overcame something. But personal disaster for me equates with growth. So anytime I break something or someone breaks me, even in the depths of it, and trust me, I'm going to go hide in a cave for about six months. It's just been my experience on life like that is what happens. Necessity is the mother of invention. That is the truism. But it's true, and it's extremely useful in my life because otherwise there's no rhyme or reason to what I've done in my life. Young people should remember that exactly.
00:21:19
Speaker 1: It's just like wait a minute, just let it breathe when it's really bad, give it a second.
00:21:29
Speaker 2: What person, place, or experience most altered your life.
00:21:32
Speaker 3: I'm so happy we have arrived at this question. Music, music industry, music business, music fans, playing music, performing music. You know, I got into this business to be recording artists and never thought that I would have to perform said music. And it has been something that I have had to learn how to do, had to learn how to love, had to get better at and it has changed me so profoundly that it's hard to even explain. But sometime around two thousand and five, I was a new mom. I had a six year old and I was teaching him about singing, and I realized that opening my heart to be a better singer was not about technique. For me, it was about not strangling my voice, not feeling that shyness. It's always for me about letting you see me, letting myself be vulnerable in front of people, and the fact that given a choice, I would never do that, and that because of my job. It's been the work of my life. Has made me such a better person in so many ways. It never lets me totally put roots down because I'm always being asked can you give more? Can you give something new of yourself? Can you open up again? And that has shaped me in ways that I'm deeply grateful for. Wow, because I wouldn't have you wouldn't know. I would have been like I would have been a know it all. I would have sat back and been like, I don't do that. But now I can never say I don't do that. I don't know. Maybe I do do that. I don't know, because the thing that I would least like to do became my job.
00:23:17
Speaker 2: What did you think you were going to do?
00:23:19
Speaker 3: Sit back and make records, make art, make visual art? Maybe right, anything behind the scenes, nothing in front of the camera.
00:23:27
Speaker 2: Who made you go in front of the camera?
00:23:30
Speaker 3: People fans?
00:23:32
Speaker 1: When you made a record, you must have known that you were going to have to go out and tour that and promote it and get on stage.
00:23:37
Speaker 3: No. No, I was twenty six. I had fully prepared and trained to be a visual artist. I had my whole life set out. I knew I'd have a studio. I fantasized about being like on the East Coast, you know, and having the life of the house and then my studio next to it. HM, that would be my fantasy.
00:23:57
Speaker 2: Wow, wow, but you anyway.
00:24:00
Speaker 3: I did it anyway, I mean not just anyway. I did it and did it and did it, and like I said, the biggest gift was the thing that I wanted to avoid, and that lesson never left me. Now I always know if something comes up and I'm like, you know, she'll probably do it, and maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't, but like I could, I could try.
00:24:22
Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, I love that like I could. My mother was like that till the very end.
00:24:29
Speaker 1: She was eighty four, and probably a month before she died, she didn't know she was going to die.
00:24:34
Speaker 2: She'd started a new business because she.
00:24:38
Speaker 1: Was like, I love it because because I want to and there's like a gap and because I can and I'm doing it, and she did it, and that whole notion of yeah, you see something that you can't do, you go, yeah, but I could.
00:24:50
Speaker 2: I don't feel like doing that, Yeah, but I could. I could do that. I love that that.
00:24:55
Speaker 1: There is only the limit that you put upon yourself. That you say, that is andy invisible cloak that you.
00:25:01
Speaker 2: Put on yourself.
00:25:03
Speaker 1: There is only that sort of stifling of your thoughts.
00:25:06
Speaker 3: They're fragile, you know, they can be shattered. I love that chapter. But may I talk about your memoiral like that chapter about your mom passing. There was brutal parts about it, but the eloquence with which you described the love you have for her and how she was determined the Duchess, I mean, like, it's just that was such a satisfying and beautiful chapter to explain a daughter's love. And it was complicated, and it was filled with so much stuff, and there were things you wouldn't even try to put into words, you know, the way you would sit by her, and how quickly you were rousable from your sleep, the way you had been when your son was so young, Like that just meant a lot to me as my parents are getting older, and just thank you. It meant a lot to me. And I think that you have a very powerful way of opening up private experiences to a very broad encompassing lens. That's so it's really thank.
00:26:12
Speaker 2: You, Thank you so much, thank you.
00:26:15
Speaker 1: It's just an exploration, as you know, it's.
00:26:17
Speaker 2: Just like go on a journey.
00:26:19
Speaker 3: That's a hard relationship to define, and you did it so beautifully without defining it.
00:26:24
Speaker 2: Thank you.
00:26:25
Speaker 3: She sounds like she was a very formative love.
00:26:28
Speaker 1: She was always slightly out of reach, like I could never quite get her, and then obviously death has been the ultimate.
00:26:35
Speaker 2: Oh my god, she got away. I never quite. But that's that you.
00:26:41
Speaker 3: Wrote a song about you.
00:26:43
Speaker 1: And what she like, what she inspired because there was no the idea of her being an arrival point. That that has been like rocket fuel in my life to keep exploring. And it's not about not being satisfied, but staying curious about how do we keep feeling in this world that's so hard?
00:27:07
Speaker 2: How do you keep.
00:27:07
Speaker 1: Having fragile feelings and experiences. She taught me how to do that because it's what she did, and she went out chasing whatever came next in a way.
00:27:16
Speaker 3: Always Yeah, yeah, I respect that so much. I mean, starting a business while you're on your deathbed, that's something I'd like.
00:27:25
Speaker 1: To do, Yeah, totally, whilst also watching the football and telling us all what we needed to do.
00:27:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, she was immense, amazing, she was immense.
00:27:33
Speaker 3: That's what you gave word to Our mothers are immense. They are immense, and that's what you cant you.
00:27:40
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thomy, thank you so much. All right, I better ask you the next question otherwise, well, next question, what is the quality you like least about yourself.
00:28:04
Speaker 3: I thought about this for a long time. There's a lot of qualities I don't like about myself, but the most I think troublesome to my The way I want to come across is impatience. I am impatient. It's very hard for me to slow it down and let things unfold if I think I know where they're going, and I miss a lot. I miss people by doing that, I miss letting them unfold.
00:28:35
Speaker 2: Hmmm.
00:28:35
Speaker 3: So I like that least about myself.
00:28:37
Speaker 4: Hmmm.
00:28:38
Speaker 1: Do you take steps to I don't know have self correct is the right word, because that that all sounds a bit like you need a writing crop.
00:28:46
Speaker 3: What do you I do? I could use it.
00:28:50
Speaker 2: I need to whip myself.
00:28:56
Speaker 3: Listening. I practice listening, as we were talking about before with my career, trying to always step where no one has given me permission to step. That can create a you kind of a not pushing us, but like a I hear no, but I'm seeing you know maybe that kind of like let's try this. So letting things happen to me, letting myself go through things without speeding it up or escaping it.
00:29:24
Speaker 2: That makes sense, Yeah, totally.
00:29:26
Speaker 1: I mean I think a lot of it is wrapped up with like again having to be the herald of your own work. Like also, you weren't in a band like it was you, like that's how you presented yourself, and you're writing all the songs, so there had to be probably quite a lot of people that needed to be tuned out who were telling you what to do. It's interesting, though, a really useful tool then becomes something that as we evolve, it's like, oh, that thing that served me so well, then perhaps that part of me has to evolve so that now it actually does listen, now that it's not a survival technique.
00:30:04
Speaker 2: Not listening, that's it.
00:30:06
Speaker 3: You've just encapsulated perfectly growing up because whatever characteristics you had in childhood, they were adaptive. You're doing the best in the environment that you had, and this is how you made it through whatever you were going through. And if you're lucky enough to get control of your life to some extent, you can look at those things. Since for so much of my life I just kept going. It worked before, just keep going, and it wasn't until my forties I think that I stopped and said, yeah, but the same problems keep popping up, like the same failures keep happening. And so I had to kind of pull apart as we do our psychology and look at it and think about what if I changed my mind and I approach everything that way. Now I'm going to change myself before I'm going to change anyone else.
00:31:02
Speaker 2: That's so good. I got to try and do that more.
00:31:05
Speaker 3: It's hard. I don't succeed all the time, believe me, It's just what I try to do.
00:31:09
Speaker 1: It is interesting, though, when one realizes, you know, we've all had to learn how to actually be kinder to ourselves. As my friend Emma said one day, yeah, but are you being too kind to yourself?
00:31:23
Speaker 2: Do you not need to be a little bit tougher with yourself?
00:31:26
Speaker 1: I was like, and she's absolutely correct.
00:31:31
Speaker 2: Now and now I think about.
00:31:32
Speaker 1: Being the common denominator in all my shit. And even though I used to beat myself with that, then I kind of forgave myself completely and let myself off the hook. And the weird thing is that there's this whole part I just never evolved because it was like, look, either you have never found the middle way of going It's okay for this fallibility and this shit, but just let it remind you in a more robust way as opposed to I'm either going to pretend it's not there and like love myself and it's not about me, it's about them, beat myself like that. There's somewhere in the middle. I think that's actually what middle age is, is that you find the fucking middle path. Everyone's so busy talking about your wrinkles, they don't realize it.
00:32:09
Speaker 2: It's actually quite sweet.
00:32:11
Speaker 1: I'm not living in a quite such a polarized way with yourself.
00:32:17
Speaker 3: The extreme. Yeah, it's easy to shift into the extreme, like go go go that way, go go go this way.
00:32:24
Speaker 1: That was my twenties and thirties right there.
00:32:27
Speaker 2: That's it. That's my next book. It's just going to be that.
00:32:29
Speaker 1: It's just going to say that's fair.
00:32:35
Speaker 2: Wrote my next book.
00:32:36
Speaker 1: That's what it.
00:32:37
Speaker 2: Don't be called by many driving.
00:32:42
Speaker 3: I love you Mini, thank you so much for this, and thank you for your memoir. It was very personally meaningful.
00:32:48
Speaker 2: To thank you so so much.
00:32:50
Speaker 1: Angel, really really really and also really hope to see you.
00:32:53
Speaker 2: Back in California.
00:32:54
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
00:32:55
Speaker 2: I mean allor right, Angel, Hi, take care of yourself.
00:33:04
Speaker 1: We'll see Sue See Sue, Hi Love Bye. Mini Questions is hosted and written by Me, Mini Driver Executive produced by Me and Aaron Kaufman, with production support from Jennifer Bassett, Zoey Denkler and Ali Perry.
00:33:21
Speaker 2: The theme music is also by.
00:33:23
Speaker 1: Me and additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay Addison, O'Day, Henry Driver, Lisa Castella, a, Nick Oppenheim, A, Nick Muller and Annette wolf A w kPr, Will Pearson, Nicki Etoor, Morgan Levoy and mangesh Had Tiggadore
