Episode 47: What’s in the box?
January 23rd, 2020
Hosted by Katie Rainey
Guests: Melissa Shaw & Jennifer Werbitsky
Produced by Katie Rainey
Transcript by Jon Kay
Podcast Assistant: Dylan Thomas
Hey Animals! We're back this week with an episode on writing groups and more, featuring two of our favorite writing group pals: Jennifer Werbitsky and Melissa Shaw! Jen and Mel couldn't have more different backgrounds in their day jobs - Jen works in the corporate world, while Mel is a teacher at an arts education nonprofit - but in the writing world they click and we can't wait to hear what they'll ready for us today. Join us for talks on writing groups, llamas, and the latest product to drop from Tim Cook...
>> Katie: Welcome to the 47th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot Press, a literary press for books that matter. I'm Katie Rainey, filling in for Brian Birnbaum while he’s taking some time off. And today I’ve got some of the best writer pals a gal like me could ask for, Jennifer Werbitsky and Melissa Shaw.
Jennifer Werbitsky is a New York City-based writer who was born in Manhattan and raised in a rural area south of Buffalo, NY. She is currently working to bridge the gaps between rural and urban communities through agricultural regeneration in the U.S. During her time at Cornell University, she studied creative writing and French and spent time as a translator in Paris.
Melissa Shaw is a writer, theater artist, and educator who offers a unique consultancy based in the arts, social justice, diversity and inclusion, and social emotional learning. She has taught or led sessions in universities, schools, summer camps, detention centers, yeshivas, churches, corporate offices, and long-term temporary housing centers. She has facilitated workshops for high school students, security guards, chaplains, non-profit managers, video game designers, Buddhist monks, school principals, older adults, NGO leaders, and the NYPD. She is a teaching artist and creative coach for various community-based organizations, including Community Word Project and the Lulu and Leo Fund. Melissa also facilitates for a variety of the Anti-Defamation League's programs, including A World of Difference Institute, Words to Action, Echoes and Reflections and Respect for All initiatives. She was on faculty for Drew University's 2018 Institute On Religion and Conflict Transformation where she helped to foster dialogue among religious and lay leaders from around the world. Last summer, Melissa was part of the prestigious Nahum Goldman Fellowship cohort. She is an associate artist with Falconworks Artist Group. She is nicknamed Boots. Melissa holds an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. Welcome, Melissa Shaw.
>> Melissa: Thank you so much for having us.
>> Katie: Alright. So now I have to tell the story of why you are named Boots.
>> Melissa: You don't even remember.
>> Katie: No, I do remember. I'd set it on our other podcast, like, nine months ago. So if you don't follow me on the other podcast, you can check out, Rose All Day Anyways. Anyway, Melissa Boots Shaw is named Boots henceforth, because we were writing instructors together at Sarah Lawrence, the esteemed Sarah Lawrence College. And there was a child whose parent was quite erratic and did things that were, you know, that we did not expect. And the boot became our signifier for this parent as doing some crazy ass shit.
>> Melissa: Yeah it gave us a code, we were allowed to code. Yeah, we could speak in tongues together silently without anyone knowing what we were talking about. Silently out loud,
>> Katie: Because when you teach children, you have to have, like, signifiers with other adults. You have to have some codes that they know that shit's going down.
>> Melissa: That's right. That's right. That's exactly what happened.
>> Katie: Well, I'm very excited to have both of you because you two are my writing group pals that we were formed out of, like after a Animal Riot reading one day and just decided we would get together. So we've been doing this for a year now?
>> Jennifer: Yeah. It's a beautiful, like, fortuitous moment. Just great minds coming together and meeting occasionally in writing.
>> Katie: Yeah, when we can. We're all, like, scattered, But we've written some really cool things and gotten to share it with each other. It's been really fun.
>> Melissa: Yeah, and we've both got overlap and are different, so it's really nice to be able to support each other.
>> Katie: Are you guys part of any other writing group?
>> Jennifer: No.
>> Melissa: I have a friend who I will occasionally sit and do a jam with. We'll write. We'll do some exercises. Or maybe we'll do some improv together and just get our juices flowing like we might just pick up a topic and just start jamming on it and see what happens. It's kind of fun.
>> Katie: Okay, we haven't done it in a minute. And tonight was the first night we've had a writing group in a while. Although there was no writing shared. Oh you shared some writing, Jen.
>> Jennifer: Yeah, there was some poetry that made its way into...
>> Katie: Which was the first poem that you've really tried to get published.
>> Jennifer: Yeah, I have this aspiration to add the phrase amateur Antarctic poet to my bio. So this is a stab.
>> Katie: Okay, you gotta qualify that now.
>> Jennifer: So I have the experience of traveling to Antarctica in March 2019 through my other love running. And so I went down there to run a marathon through a series of strange and incredibly fortuitous events and realized that that place the expanse of that place, the blank canvas nature of a continent made entirely of ice where humans have only been for 100 years. It just seemed like a good place to do some writing and to continue that theme after I returned here to Earth, the normal earth. So there is a poetry competition back in November. I submitted a small piece which hopefully might be accepted. We'll find out in February, but I think that won't be the last of it and that maybe there's some more writing to be done on the theme of the great wide expanse in the continent of ice. So that's what's maybe coming next.
>> Katie: Well, and so I wanna add how you found us. So I've already said, Like how Melissa and I know each other. We go way back teaching together, But you found us through a really interesting way that I think we should talk about. How did you find us?
>> Jennifer: Yeah, So I have a very full time job and don't get to write as much as I can. And I'm not really involved in many other writing communities. And so there was one Sunday where I had this urge. I was thinking that I hadn't really made space and time for writing. So I canceled all my plans. I said, I'm going to DTUT cafe on the Upper East Side, not far from where I live to do some writing. It's a Sunday. I'm just gonna sit there and something great is gonna come of these few hours that I'm going to dedicate to pen and paper. And then I show up and I'm told by the emcee that if you're here for the Animal Riot reading, please come to the back. And if not, please be quiet and I was really intrigued. I was already in a comfy seat with a good view and was so enchanted to hear people live performing their work. Artists and writers, reading their stories, poetry and thought, Well, this is a community of people I want to get to know better. So I think that that was the night that this writing group started.
>> Katie: It was because Melissa and I 2.6 seconds before you came up and introduced yourself. Melissa and I were like, We really need a writing group and we just have never started one. And it should be like a group of, you know, the gals that all know each other, and we should get together and we should be accountable because, honestly, I have not had that since my MFA where I had, like, a good group that I was accountable to with my writing. And then you happened to walk up and you're like, I'm Jen, What's going on here?
>> Jennifer:I want to write.
>> Katie: You should join this writing group. We just made it up out of thin air, and then that happened. That's what happened. That's how we got our little writing group here.
>> Melissa: It's kind of like a deus ex machina.
>> Katie: Yeah. Yeah. Somehow we've kept it even though, like, I will say, like, a lot of people start writing groups. But, you know, things fall off and everything. And obviously, we've had, like, giant months where we were like, Oh, my God, so much shit is happening. Like I have no writing. I can't do anything. But we just, like, kept talking and kept sharing. We even met over Google hangouts a couple of times because we could not physically get in person. You, Jen, are on the Upper East Side. And you, Melissa, are in Brooklyn.
>> Melissa: I'm in the bowels of Brooklyn. Yeah, I'm down there. I'm like, like, a little bit past the colon, But, like, not quite to the duodenum.
>> Katie: And I'm here in beautiful, glorious West Harlem where you guys have traveled to you tonight. And so it's hard to get together. Especially when you're just like a teacher. And you work in, like, multiple jobs. You're a freelance writer. Or just are a human in New York City. Because There's a 1,000,000 different things going on every night. And so we've tried to digitally or in person carve out space for one another and create this writing group. And so here we are recording this podcast after we've been sitting here together for two hours catching up and drinking wine. So if there are some slip of the tongues on my part, that's because of the sauvignon blanc.
>> Melissa: Yeah, you're about to get some, like drunk insight here Saturday evening listening or whatever day you're listening.
>> Katie: So that's how we all met. I'd like to hear a little bit about your writing careers and where you guys come from. I said some stuff in your bio and I know Melissa that you have a story for us which, which got us to all record this episode because you started telling the story. And I said, this story needs to be recorded on air, so I didn't let you finish the story. So maybe you wanna tell it now?
>> Melissa: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of great to be able to tease a story and get everyone interested and excited and then be able to finish it. So alright, so for me, you know, I started really in undergrad. I studied a lot of fiction writing alongside my studying of theater. And then when I graduated and I moved to New York, I was doing some writing for some, like Culture Bot, a great example of an online magazine about theater. And there was a great website for a while called Grid Skipper. So I was doing some writing for them, and then they really threw myself more heavily into my solo performance writing. So I do it kind of like a lot of like on stage memoir, personal narrative, long form monologue work came out of the standup kind of world and then found that sometimes it's okay if things were not funny and found a way to kind of make art around that. Yeah. So recently, I've been doing a little bit more essay writing, and...
>> Katie: You had a couple great essays come out.
>> Melissa: Yeah, they are. Yeah, well, I did a piece about what's growing up Jewish in a town where I was, you know, one of the two Jews in my high school and my experience, my high school was just in the news for swastikas and the water polo team doing Nazi salutes. So I wrote a response piece to that. And then I just wrote a piece about comparing our generational dilemmas around climate change all through the lens of the NeverEnding Story, which I had called "Okay, nothing".
>> Katie: I have to check in with Jen right now because when you know, when you shared, Jen had of that moment never seen a NeverEnding Story. And I take by your face you've still not watched it.
>> Jennifer: I purchased it on YouTube for $3.99. I have 30 days to start it. That did not happen this week. It would have happened at the expense of sleep, and it was already really late. I was told I was going to cry a lot, and I was not in a crying mood at any point this week.
>> Melissa: I wonder if you'd cry in your thirties the way that you cried when you were like...
>> Katie: No, no way is totally different.
>> Jennifer: I cry at everything like every movie. It's like a running joke that even funny movies that have no crying parts I will cry at.
>> Melissa: Like you cry during Happy Gilmore?
>> Jennifer: Yeah, they're going to take his grandma's house. It's so sad.
>> Melissa: Did you cry it during Bridesmaids?...
>> Katie: I think everyone cried.
>> Jennifer: Probably, I cried laughing.
>> Melissa: But what I really appreciate is that you invested $4 watching that movie.
>> Jennifer: And now I have probably 26 days to watch it. So it's forthcoming.
>> Katie: Because of your essay.
>> Jennifer: Yeah, yeah, you've already inspired different behavior.
>> Melissa: I've recently been inspired to get back more firmly into comedy, and so I actually signed up for a sketch writing class, which I've never done an official sketch writing class, and I have my first sketch writing assignments. I'm studying at the Magnet, which I really want to tell people, if you're listening to this in your like, I want to study improv or story telling her sketch or whatever. Where do I go? There's so many places in New York I just want to say I like the magnet because it's really trans inclusive. It's super friendly to people who identify as female. It's queer friendly. The instructors are just I think that they have just a radical philosophy of radical inclusion that I think they mean it. You know, some people say it, and I really feel like they mean it. So I just want to give a shout out to the Magnet. I feel good about going there, but anyway, so I was trying to figure out what do I know? One of the things when I teach a class on activism. I do a lot of arts and activism education, and a lot of my background is in being in the streets, staying in the streets, yelling in the streets, making a scene in the streets, or sometimes the Senate building in DC. Like what do you What do you give a fuck about, right? I don't know if we can say that on the air, but that's my big question, right?
>> Katie: Yeah, we don't give a fuck.
>> Melissa: So I'm sitting here. I'm like, what is a sketch that is going to be something that also kind of takes on, you know, a social that's happening in our world around us. So I just started kind of getting excited about an idea of, like, what if there was a sketch around an Apple rollout. Like Apple is about to roll out a new product, and we're all in the audience to be witness to it. And we get introduced. And you know, it's couched in people getting excited around like good, strong, good old fashioned tech language. I love the idea of it being a good old fashioned tech language, because now it's become such the norm. But anyway, we meet. Tim Cook comes on stage, although like a Ted talk and comes walking to the podium and Tim Cook. He's wearing a signature black turtleneck, which I think he just stole off the body of like Steve Jobs. I think he literally never did that. And then he was like, I'll just still Steve Jobs.
>> Jennifer: It comes with the job title.
>> Melissa: When you become the head job title, you have to wear it. You have to wear the same one. That's right. So anyway, he walks out. But not only is he wearing a turtleneck, he's also wearing a pink satin robe, and he has a hook on his hand. He's got a hook on his hand and he comes out and he's introducing the newest thing and has a box in his hand like an iPhone box. Like something you're like. It's the newest iPhone because, you know, the night iPhone 11 that just came out. It's kind of like a panopticon. It's got, like, multiple cameras, so it's very exciting. This box, he opens it. And he reveals, with the newest technology is.
>> Katie: Can we guess first?
>> Melissa: Yeah, I'd love to hear what people think. If I was writing the sketch, what do you want Tim Cook to have in his box?
>> Katie: When you first started telling this story before the podcast and I said, We need to record immediately what I went to Was it some kind of mind reader because what we're doing right now with technology is getting more and more progressively like AI related right. And so I was like, Okay, it's something like mind reader related, like it's something that can read your partner's thoughts when you're not like figuring out what they want. I don't know. That's where my brain went to. I don't know. What about you, Jen?
>> Jennifer: I didn't know there was a hook in Tim Cook's hand when you were first telling this. That is a critical detail. I'm thinking hand in the box or I'm thinking like alligator that took off his hand. Peter Pan. I'm going the absurd out here but in more serious tones when you were first describing this, it's it seems like we're just waiting with bated breath for that moment when the next reveal is something that's finally gonna fulfill us that's finally going to always replace us. So I do like Katie's suggestion of mind reading technology of something that is going to make humans obsolete because it seems like each progressive iPhone just replaces more and more of the other things you could possibly want in your pocket. And so I think the human mind, something closer to the human mind is coming next.
>> Melissa: What I love about this is that now I'm feeling an instinct to prolong how long we don't know what comes out of the box. That we leave whatever's in the box.
>> Katie: Maybe until the end of the podcast?
>> Melissa: Yeah, I don't think I'm going to tell you until... And I think I may be writing this as we're I think this sketch is getting written as we're doing this podcast.
>> Jennifer: Maybe if you hear me shout out random objects during the podcast, it's me guessing interspersed what else it could be.
>> Melissa: Yeah, actually, I wonder if this is in the box, right?
>> Katie: Ok all right. Okay.
>> Melissa: So I'm gonna let everyone know what I was thinking. And, uh, and then maybe maybe, actually, this is a good editing moment where I'm gonna come up with an even better idea for my sketch from my class.
>> Katie: Well, so since we're a writing group, we've also been a reading group, right? What book did we read together?
>> Melissa: Oh, my goodness. What, like was a fever dream book. That was one of the best things I read in 2019. Wow.
>> Katie: Yeah, So I have Are you guys parts of any, like, are you a part of any other book groups?
>> Melissa: A book club right now? Not right now. No,
>> Katie: Like all that stuff happens digitally. No, Like I am technically part of other book groups, on Goodreads and stuff. But like if I read the book, it's debatable. Like if I have time or whatever or from into the book at all. But we actually sat down. We're like, No, we're doing an in person thing and we really only have interactions in person at this point. We text now we have a group thread, but that's mostly just like logistical getting together. And so I'm just like wondering what you guys think about the relevancy of writing groups and book clubs, because we are one. And so what that means to you guys and like, we're just three people like. We've talked about inviting other people and we have actually invited other people into our group, but they just couldn't make it. I know there's a couple of people I was like, Oh, yeah, you should come join us, but they just couldn't get to. For some reason we've stuck to the three of us and we're like, No, we're doing this and it's staying alive. So why is that? And what's the relevance of writing groups and reading groups?
>> Jennifer: Well, I think that even when we're not meeting regularly or our own individual lives have to take precedence over sticking to committed one time a month or whatever another group might be. I've appreciated that it's very fluid. And even if I'm not getting regular feedback or even if we're not in person together as often as we could be, just knowing that there is Katie and Melissa out there in the ether creating and hoping that I am creating and wanting the best for me in that process, just fuels me, fuels me in my writing and knowing that there is a place to turn when I have a finished product or when I'm stuck. And, yeah, just kind of a mutual appreciation. This just exists in the fact that it just exists in real life. Offline, online when it needs to is really, really good. Good for the writing soul.
>> Melissa: Yeah, I want to say that it's the kind of feeling where at least one person has heard this piece. At least I know two people like it or are having an opportunity to interact with it. So it's just really nice, Like even if something is struggling to find a home in terms of being published. At least you have some people who can give you some real honest feedback and enjoy it and give you a laugh or aha moment for writing, So I think that there is,
>> Katie: But it's different. It's different than like doing that, because there are plenty of groups that meet digitally and that do this online and like you could do that easily like that. I have plenty of Twitter friends that I've never met in person who have read my writing and have given me feedback. But there's something different about meeting in person and doing this. I don't know.
>> Melissa: Yeah, I think it's about community. I mean, I know that there's an online community, and I know the community gets created on the Internet. But do you know I actually have a whole new philosophy about a modern, misanthropic thread that is running through human existence right now. And I really think that we're in the age of the modern misanthrop and I think a lot of the hatred of other people or fear of other people are anger towards other people. is being, I think, proliferated because of the Internet. Because you don't see a person's face. It's so easy to Lake, bash someone or yell at someone. And so I think we're becoming innerd human eye contact and I think the pulse of being in a room with someone and actually like in real time. So I think it's crucial to be able to get off the Web and into a space together.
>> Katie: I can absolutely relate in a way that you know that no one listening knows to not meeting someone in person and dealing with the aftermath right now.
>> Jennifer: I think if you had to look someone in the eyes, you would behave very differently towards them. Like for every action that they take and that you take, there's something about that really human connection that's actually in my latest short story I'm working on. Is that the power of the eye contact and what that does to your behavior.
>> Katie: Is that story finished?
>> Jennifer: Not quite. It's written, but it's one of the ones where I wake up every day and I'm like, Oh, there's so much more I want to do here. There's a lot more recrafting to be done. I think I wasn't prepared for how long it takes to rework something once it's technically written. So it's in that state.
>> Melissa: Writing is rewriting.
>> Jennifer: Yeah, exactly
>> Katie: What kind of writers do you consider yourself? Short story writers, novelist, essay writers, poets, anything in particular? Multi?
>> Melissa: Yeah. I mean, I feel like I really Yeah, I feel like I'm a pretty interdisciplinary artist in general, but I love the idea of, like, micro memoir. So, like short memoir pieces, I don't know if anybody else considers that a genre. Creative nonfiction. When I think you know it's funny. I've come to love the term I have come to love the term. But when creative nonfiction first came out, I think it was in reaction to the James Frey controversy.
>> Katie: Which one?
>> Melissa: The one about "A Million Little Pieces", right? And people were like, we need a new called creative non fiction so that people will understand that that there's this space where memory and creativity have a dance that they do. So um yeah, I really like being when I talk when people are like, What do you do? I'm like I'm a humorist like I like considering you just say that I love that. And I think Chuck Klosterman I don't know if anyone's familiar with, Like, sex, drugs and "Cocoa Puffs" or we might be wrong... "What if we're wrong?"" Pardon me. Sorry Chuck. He was mostly the latest book that I read. He has another one out that I haven't read yet. He was this real Gen X writer that was talking about, like, music and TV In all of this stuff. He predated me. I consider myself a Xennial. He's solidly gen X, but I consider myself as any also, I would love to be the Xennial version of like Chuck Klosterman mixed maybe with a little bit more politics with some like Naomi Klein kind of stuff. But through a lens, that's, you know, a little cheeky and a little rye. That's kind of the market I'm trying to corner. If you have a magazine in which you'd be published, definitely reach out, I'll give you my email after the show.
>> Jennifer: And for those of you who don't know what a Xennial is, check out Melissa's latest piece.
>> Melissa: "Okay, Nothing" absolutely concede on Medium. But yeah, I'm like from that little micro generation that lives between Gen X and Millennials like we don't have a home. We're actually kind of like wandering mendicant of the generational world. Nobody wants us. Somebody wants to claim us. We don't necessarily wanna say that we're part of any one group, but we grew up with, like, dial up. And we grew up at the very infancy of the Internet being in people's homes for the average person, not for like, the super cool nerd who had the Internet in the seventies. I'm not talking about you. And, you know, when we grew up, kind of with that sense of like, OK, the Cold War was ending, the wall came down and 89 we watched that, and we were definitely the kind of generation that, like are not necessarily digital natives. But we can speak the language. When I think that we had and what people say analog childhood, digital adulthood. I just think there's also kind of We have just had this, like, fun grumpiness about us that we watch the world continue to push into this robotic AI, you know, I don't want to say hellscape because I consider myself an optimist, but, you know, I mean, we don't know how it's gonna go, So there's kind of a little bit of a distance that we have towards what everybody else just has accepted from birth.
>> Katie: Well, because we're at the halfway mark. I'm wondering if one of you wants to share your writing first so that we can jump off the conversation from there.
>> Jennifer: I think I will. Because it's probably better than my bio in that it probably tells you everything you need to know about my writing.
>> Katie: What are you going to read?
>> Jennifer: I'm going to read an excerpt from a short story called the Llama, which I read during a Animal Riot reading night. Thanks for the invite, Katie.
>> Katie: And this is something that you've quote unquote workshopped. I don't know if I like that term workshopped, but that you've shared with us during our little writing group too.
>> Jennifer: Yeah, Exactly. And the genesis of this was, it came out of a doodle I did it 3 a.m. in my journal, which has been most of my writing when I was still in the office working late night. So a corporate workaholic has kind of been my writing background, but this is how I dealt with it. So here is the beginning of The Llama.
“The Llama” by Jennifer Werbitsky
They hired a llama to replace Jim. Everyone agreed it was for the better, but then the llama turned out to be a total asshole.
My first year at Net Impact High Growth Miracle Fund had been marked by Jim’s sudden mood changes and tirades. Even minor formatting errors had triggered threats and shouting rampages. So when the firm announced a llama was under consideration for the vice president position, I felt something no analyst is ever supposed to feel: hope.
The llama had an advanced degree in Corporate Proficiency, and they only had to pay him in hay, so he had shot to the top of the candidate pool. For a bonus, management had offered wheatgrass shots on days of Excellent Performance.
Since performance at the manager level was supposedly measured on the Attitude Scale, but, in reality, was tied to the volume of work produced by subordinates, we were completely at his inhuman mercy.
On his first day, the llama clip-clopped up and down the hall, bleating orders without stopping to explain them.
When the printer jammed the next week, he bashed his head on the side of the machine until it let out a series of high-pitched beeps. It was too terrifying to laugh.
“Why did the firm think this was a good idea?” I complained to Mark. “The juniors hate him, he always drops work on us late at night before going back to the corporate stables, and he can’t even use a normal bathroom…he shits in that special hole they installed in the corner of his office.”
Mark shrugged. “He brings in deals.”
After a few weeks of frustration, I decided to try and get on the llama’s good side. I stopped by his office after lunch on Friday.
“Hey there, any special plans for the weekend?” I asked.
He stared at me blankly for a moment.
“Do you have that report yet?”
I panicked, then remembered.
“Yeah, the 32-page report? I sent it to you last night.”
“No.”
My blood froze.
“No, I asked for an Investment Judgment Memo which required a 33-page memo. Yours is irrelevant. Start over.”
“But…”
“Get out.”
I turned to go.
“Oh and Sampson?”
He continued in a reading-aloud voice, “Have a good weekend, and don’t spend too much time on it.”
This phrase was written on a handout that management had distributed after the Rod Scandal. Mark had found an extra copy jammed in the printer.
The handout was entitled “How to Motivate Analysts and Avoid Costly Legal Quagmires.” The memo’s mascot, Swampy the Cheerleader, guided managers through helpful phrases and “quirky quagmire” tips to force junior staff to do more work, while appearing to inspire and provide good “growth opportunities.” This was one of Swampy’s favorite phrases, and it had been readily adopted around the office. I wondered if the llama was already getting complaints of abuse or if he was just being proactive.
Returning to my cubicle corner, I logged into my meal tablet to order from the firm’s take-out food delivery service for dinner. The one joy they couldn’t take away from me was eating. And even the llama had to do it.
“Mark!” I shouted. “Where’s Food Kitchen Inc. Burritos?”
He came stumbling into my office, breathless. “I don’t know, man, the tablets must be malfunctioning. I don’t see Grease Pizza In a Box either.”
One new restaurant had replaced the other two.
“Alfalfa Barn Feed and Follies?” Mark read. “There’s nothing edible on the menu.”
The specials included the Kentucky Bluegrass Plate, Third Cut Hay, and the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Grain! Diet Option of the Day.
“You know who’s behind this,” I said quietly.
From the other side of the thin wall between my cubicle and the elevators came the sound of the llama’s hooves on the marble floor, then a clunk as he slammed his head against the “down” button. A second later, I heard a chaotic clanging of metal, like a box of gongs falling off a truck. The llama let fly a series of strong expletives. He must have backed up into the decorative suits of armor again.
I sighed and noticed the light was on in Dan’s office. He was second-in-command at Net Impact High Growth Miracle Fund and had authored the Swampy memo.
I knocked on his door, and a voice boomed, “Enter!”
He was working on a finger painting when I walked in.
“I’m sorry, sir, I can come back at a better time…”
“No need! Look, isn’t this great?” He held up an impressionistic interpretation of what looked like a pheasant hunt.
“Skip Jones is going to love this. Just closed on his second fund, and I thought I’d sent him a note. He was in my section at business school.”
I nodded.
“So, how can I help you, son?”
“Well…I’m concerned about the llama.”
“Me too! He’s making everyone else look bad! Have you seen his numbers?”
I paused.
“Of course you haven’t! We don’t show the juniors. But let me assure you, I had my doubts at first too. We’ve never hired outside the human species before. But at least we haven’t started hiring women on the investing team!” He let out a hearty laugh.
“But why a llama?”
Putting aside his finger painting, he sighed and continued.
“Let me make this very clear to you. Human emotions get in the way of good business decisions. But animal instincts are necessary to succeed in the markets and go in for the kill. You want to succeed in this business, don’t you?”
An image of the llama with a bloody, severed arm hanging from its jaw popped into my head.
Dan burst out laughing and concluded, “Besides, we pay you humans too much! Now get out of my office; my finger paints are drying out.”
I got up to leave.
“Oh and…feel free to stop by any time,” he said, reading off a piece of paper taped to his desk.
“Thank you, sir,” I mumbled. When I checked my phone, I had 68 unread messages from the llama, all of which concluded with “how soon do you think you can get this done?”
>> Katie: Man, it's been like a year since we, I think, read that story right?
>> Melissa: Has it been that long?
>> Katie: I feel like, Well, it's just as funny is the first time that I read it, but it's even better because you just read it out loud to me. It's like a bedtime story.
>> Melissa: I heard a lot more in it this time.
>> Katie: Yeah, because when you hear somebody read it, it's a lot different. Yeah, yeah. Where did this idea come from?
>> Jennifer: So I was trying to use humor to make sense of a job that was pretty merciless when it came to being a human, wanting a personal life, having hours outside the office. And so there was one night when I think it was a Friday night. It was past midnight. I was still in the office, and the VP I was working with on a deal had an office not far from mine. And he heard me on the phone with my mother and sent me an email saying, You really need to focus on this. Get back to work for being on the phone with my mom at like, I don't know, 1 a.m. on a Friday night. And so just the absurdity of the situation kind of made me rethink how things were playing out. Yeah, it was just kind of crazy to me, so I don't even actually remember the context. But I just doodled in my notebook this llama wearing a pinstripe suit, saying, like, do you have those papers yet in a speech bubble and then, like a year or two later, that turned into this whole story of like everyone's had that terrible boss. Everyone's been in that situation were like, Is it just me and am I crazy that these demands are being placed upon me? Yeah. And I think the only way I could make sense of that was like, it's almost as crazy is like working for a llama. I mean, someone who's just, like, so over the top.
>> Melissa: You know what? I think about it all this time. I don't think I heard this story about him and you talking to your mom.
>> Katie: I don't find out the story of the doodle, either. To be honest, maybe I did.
>> Jennifer: But I'll send you guys a little iPhone like I still have that photo I took.
>> Katie: We're gonna need to caption it with this podcast picture.
>> Jennifer: Yeah, uh, yeah, it's so crazy. It's like, what? What are the lifelines that you get you through those moments where you can't really see little late? And that's one of the great parts of the creative process is you could be in a situation that's so absurd. That's so like, Is this even reality is this is this allowed to happen in real life to me or someone I'm close to? How is this Okay? and then and then to just inject something that's full of humor or absurd or irrational, I think is one way to kind of deal with the trauma that's inflicted by challenging situations that are totally outside your control.
>> Melissa: I think that that's humor and comedy's best highest function. Yeah, exactly what you just named. I think it is really used for good, not for evil.
>> Katie: I think we need to ask. Is a llama in the box?
>> Melissa: OK, spoiler alert. I was waiting. There is not a llama in the box
>> Katie: Darn. I had side bet with Rosetta that there was gonna be a llama.
>> Melissa: And that by what if there was a robot lama in that box?
>> Jennifer: I want a robot Tim cook in the box where you're not sure if the Tim Cook presenting is the Tim Cook or the box. Tim Cook is the real Cook.
>> Melissa: Okay, now we're getting somewhere.
>> Katie: Melissa.
>> Melissa: Yeah?
>> Katie: It's your turn. Alright. What are you gonna read for us?
>> Melissa: Whoa. It could read a little bit of "Okay Nothing" if you want me to. The piece about NeverEnding Story.
>> Katie: We did start with that. So that would be appropriate. People can also find it on Medium under Melissa Shaw. Yup. So it's up to you.
>> Melissa: I'd be really happy to. And I can just read a little bit of it just to kind of what you're... Is that what you want to read right now?
>> Katie: Yeah.
>> Melissa: What's your readership? How many readers would you say you have?
KL 10 million.
>> Katie: So all 10 million of you listening to this story. Please follow me.
>> Katie: We were rated Time Magazine's most popular podcast. January 2020.
>> Melissa: Okay, Great. Excellent. Well, I'm just gonna go ahead, and I'm just gonna jump in to a little part of this, but not the beginning. Just gonna start three paragraphs in.
Hey Gen Z. Wait. Don’t shoot. It’s me. A Xennial. What’s a Xennial you ask? We barely know. But just believe me, I’m still under 40 and I’m on your side. One of the things about my truncated mini-generation -that- time- will- forget is our expertise in nostalgia. It’s true. Ask anyone born between 1977-1984. Xennials had nothing else to do but rent movies from Blockbuster, watch Nick at Night reruns and maybe slum it in AOL chat rooms during our pubescent awakening, so we are primed to write important cultural essays about the 80s and 90s.
Given the recent spirited cover of the Neverending Story theme song, the original replete with synthesizers (and is that…is that a sitar?) via the hamradioed serenade of Dustin and Sally in the final episode of last season’s Stranger Things, The Neverending Story is back in the Zeitgeist (or if you were born in the 80s it never really left us). I’m looking at you people with Auryn Tattoos. I mean please, how could we forget this film, there is an entire generation scarred by the loss of a white horse named Artax to the Swamps of Sadness. Don’t worry, I’m avoiding that part entirely in this essay. Trigger warning, indeed.
I don’t know who needs to hear this today, but Gen Z, I think I know how you feel right now. You are Atreyu, the young brave warrior fighting the coming demise of the world as we know it. You are in a race against the clock to stop the impending Nothing and are brave enough to take it on. On your journey, you are confronted by Gmork, the terrifying wolf-beast, who is arguably some Baby Boomers - a gruesome puppet doing the bidding of the real enemy, The Nothing. Also, sadly, some of the older generation come in the guise of Morla, the Ancient One, allergic to youth and who doesn’t care that, they don’t care. Millennials, you’re like the Rock Biter, a bit overhyped, but not by your own doing, who everyone thinks “has such strong hands” but actually can only afford to eat rocks, not avocados. Gen X, you’re the weird guy who wears a top hat and rides a snail: quirky and a little bit useless in this situation, but somehow still a part of things. The Childlike Empress is everything we want to keep safe. What the fight is for. The Childlike Empress and all of Fantasia is our planet, its species, and its environs.
I’m Falkor because it’s my analogy and I get to be Falkor.
Gmork, snarling in his cave, is very clearly the Harbinger of the destruction of all that is. He’s bought into his role as a minion of the Big Oil companies and Banks, I mean The Nothing, and is heralding the destruction of the world because late stage capitalism has had to grow fangs and live in caves to survive.
More depressing, perhaps, is the Archetype of Morla, so out of touch that nothing matters anymore. Made sick and sneezy by youth’s interference in the way things are. Ok, Morla.
But look, Gmork is easily vanquished. Well, easily is a relative term, but think of what Atreyu has been through, really, and I’d say dispatching Gmork is small potatoes. Gmork was always low hanging fruit, seduced by The Nothing’s 401Ks, “Whoever Dies with the Most Toys Wins” Bumper stickers, and Health Insurance that unflinchingly fills Viagra prescriptions.
The real question for us here in Fantasia is who or what is The Nothing? The Nothing is a force behind the end of all that is. The Nothing is not confined to one generation, one country, or one ideology. It is not over 55 or a Republican. The Nothing is one part Morla’s indifference, one part Gmork’s deliberacy, and 100 percent coming from all directions like a California wildfire and very, very fast. The Nothing is money put in the wrong places., The Nothing is “wanting to change without changing,”. The Nothing thrives off of our distraction and our separateness. The Nothing wants you to feel alone and powerless because that’s how it makes money.
The Nothing, at its heart, is our addiction to succeeding inside a system that no longer serves anyone except maybe these 600 people.
So, the secret message in this essay (quick Gen Z, everyone else has stopped reading) is to, with great speed and determination, overthrow the government, seize the oil fields and all means of production. I am of course (kinda) kidding. But what is serious is that we can really only blame the “Boomers” because so many of them still control the world’s purse strings, the systems that profit off of the destruction of the Earth, and global policy. Get involved. Stay Involved. Vote the second you can.
Is there still a Neverending Story?
I came of age thinking The Nothing was real, sure, but that it was a threat of something that might occur centuries from now, if at all. We were all Bastian then, merely reading along with the story, following along, thinking, like in any book, the author knew what they were doing.
However, even Bastian, by the end had to figure out it was all on him.
There is no Bastianesque bystanding anymore.
So Bastians, Atreyus, Rock Biters, yes, even you Guy on the Snail, we are all in what Bill McKibben calls the “greatest timed test human beings have ever taken.” So we all have to get on our white horses before they die in the Swamp of Sadness (I know, I promised) and speed, with or without a synthesizer soundtrack, toward change. All before the sweeping destruction descends and there is only that tiny grain of sand left from the Ivory Tower and a weepy Childlike Empress that has to deal with the fact that we blew it.
>> Melissa: I got really taken by the work that young people are doing to organize right now against climate change and the denial of older people. Or even if the older people are not denying it, that they're just not doing anything about it. I'm thinking of Greta Thurnberg. And the way that Trump makes fun of her and belittles her is just hilarious to me imagining a 70 year old man being so threatened by the power of this young warrior just really started making me think of this kind of like battle of Atreyu. If you've ever seen the movie, If you haven't seen the movie, go spend 3.99 on YouTube and rent it.
>> Jennifer: Or come over to my place. Yeah, I don't own a TV. So from the viewing pleasures of my Macbook. Well, I'll find out with all of you what Falkor is.
>> Melissa: Yeah, it's so painful. Our host is in pain. Want to explain it a little bit?
>> Katie: When you hear someone say they don't know what Falkor is. It was so integral to our childhood that it's like, I don't know. I imagined so many times that I was riding Falkor and that I found the books early. Got to read books in the attic and, like, you know, I don't know.
>> Melissa: Yeah, we were all Bastian.
>> Katie: We were all hoping when we got Harry Potter that was our NeverEnding Story moment where we're gonna open it. And we were gonna be a part of the story.
>> Melissa: But I think that I think you're like that next generation did. That's nice, Katie, because you kind of straddle those two generations. Like I think Harry Potter is definitely, like the the newest kind of... it's this generation Star Wars at the very least. Right?
>> Jennifer: We have to believe in fantasy because the reality of the present moment is not okay. Is not something you want to live in.
>> Melissa: Yeah. Yeah, I do think that's a good reason for thinking why fantasy is such a boom or a bull market.
>> Katie: It is seeing like a bigger, even bigger, boom than it did like I would say, like 10/15 years ago, even when or like, you know, when was Harry Potter start like at the end of the nineties, like 20 something years ago? It's seeing a bigger boom now than it ever did.
>> Melissa: Yeah, I think that the whole speculative fiction, if you could dream something into being that it is possible. And if you're thinking about like Butler and I'm reading in NK Jemisin's books right now and and thinking about science fiction and futurism to and like what's What's the next possible tomorrow? So I think there's a lot of desire for it, but yes, so the analogy really came to me thinking about this idea of like, Oh, gosh, it's a young person is the hero of our story. Like most you know, Children's books and but the the archetypes of Gmork this wolf beast that's like hiding out ready to attack this young person for trying to solve the problem. That's Trump. That's our president.
>> Katie: That's the horse in the hospital
>> Melissa: Trump is definitely the horse in the hospital and then also thinking about Morla who everyone's like Go see Morla of the Ancient One. Like she knows she knows. And then she sneezes on him. And she's like, I'm allergic to you. And also, you can't do anything about it. Nothing can be done. And to me, actually, in more ways than thinking about Morla that's what people are like.... I don't know. Okay. Oh, no, I need my car. I don't know, kid. Solar.
>> Jennifer: So where does the hopefulness come from?
>> Melissa: In the story or now?
>> Jennifer: Both. But I want to know I want the spoiler here.
>> Melissa: I feel like the hopefulness in the NeverEnding story, I don't want to spoil that, but there is definitely a really beautiful, there's a destruction. There is a destruction of the NeverEnding story where everything has to get put back together. And I'm just gonna leave you with that because you got to see it And those of you listening at home go see it if you haven't seen it in years ago. See it. But something has to get put back together. They don't save the day. The day doesn't get saved. So using the analogy and where's the hopefulness now? Like what happens if we don't save the day? Can we put things back together because they're going to be in next? Is there a grain of the ivory tower that we can hold in our hands and wish on? I don't know. So if we don't act now, I don't know. It is not a Jim Henson movie. It is real life. And I think it's okay to maybe acknowledge that hope is something that can both distract us, and we need it. We have to have hope, because if not, then like oh gosh, then why do any of us wake up? But if we're too hopeful than people don't act, because I think they're like, it'll work out so actually like, maybe it's just not going to be okay, and what we need to do is like find the new reality together well.
>> Katie: On those lines, what's the importance of writing right now. You guys are both writing about very, very different things. But I feel they're both very important things, whether or not they're using, like fiction or nonfiction or you're using, like metaphorical tropes or what not, I feel they're very important things. So, like, what's the importance behind them?
>> Melissa: Jen, can I talk about your writing through this lens for a second?
>> Jennifer: Definitely.
>> Melissa: Your piece has always made me think about just how dangerous capitalism is. The perils of capitalism. We might have the first Socialist president. I mean, let's be honest, that's a strong possibility. Who's actively talking about capitalism. The damage that it's done to us, especially neoliberalism, especially like the kind of post eighties capitalism that we've had after the Reagan years. So I feel like taking that on as a theme for me when I read it as a reader and like, let's talk about it,
>> Jennifer: Definitely. I'm gonna share another fun anecdote with you that might collectively be part of my bio. I was studying finance and undergrad in addition to creative rating and French As you mentioned the beginning, Katie and I had this shirt that said Capitalists on it and I wore this, like, around campus, along with these crazy Vibrum five finger toe shoes that I would use to run super long distances, another one of my hobbies. So I was just like an amphibious footed capitalist figure roaming around campus, spending a lot of time in the bookstore. And when I went in to buy my books for the beginning of the semester, I went up to one of the staff, and said, You know, I'm looking for whatever Econ 101 textbook. And this is in Ithaca in New York and so a pretty liberal place. And he looks at me and he sees my bright green T shirt that says capitalist on it. And he goes, We replaced all those books with Marxist literature. (laughter). And I was like where's my Econ textbook.
>> Melissa: And you're married now.
>> Jennifer: Yeah, So it was. It was funny, because I was always drawn towards finance and economics and byproduct of having come of age in the time of the 2008 financial crisis and so my impetus to going into that space was held up. All these big, impressive adults all around me, their worlds are melting down and they don't know why it's happening or what's going on. How could there be something so powerful and so the president affecting everyone's lives that no one understands? Like, how did we let this happen? And so I thought, Well, that's something I want to learn more about that, something I want to study. That's something that I think we can avoid is this happening again if more people... if it was common knowledge, how the markets worked or why we have capitalism or like what it means to be a socialist or capitalist. And is it working? Is it still something we want to continue, or how do we rethink the systems that we've been brought into? So I'm not actually sure I still have that T shirt. I can't tell if I wear it ironically now. It's doing its job, but it's funny to come up through it, the academic lens where it's like, Oh, this makes sense like if you work really hard and your idea is good, it's gonna be rewarded. But then you see it in practice, and that's where my career took me after college. And you're like, Whoa, there's a lot of nuance here that the people element that we need to think more deeply about before we accept any kind of economic system.
>> Melissa: I really love that you have kind of named one of the things that Katie and I were talking about before you got here earlier was that, like irony at this point, I don't think most people know anymore. If what they're doing is ironic or not, I think the lines have blurred, So the idea of you being like I'm not sure what I mean, when I wear this shirt, I'm actually holding a cup in my hand. I want you to imagine dear listeners at home...
>> Katie: Can I explain really quick that my other podcast that I co host with a woman named Erika Atkins called "Rose all day Anyways", it gave me the wine glasses that you're about to talk about for the holidays. She gave those to me, so that's the preface to this. But anyway, continue.
>> Melissa: Yeah, and the font is like them. I want you to imagine, like, a pink font on a wine glass. That is the most bachelorette party kind of font that you could possibly imagine. Like if you got a gift at a wedding. It's that font. If this was a crayon color, it would be basic bitch.
>> Katie: It's a dark rose color.
>> Jennifer: Like a lipstick type color that wouldn't probably look that good.
>> Melissa: Yes, this is the lipstick that you opened and wish that you would just return before you like you was new, it was a mistake when you bought it. So And it says on this glass, Okay, because we're gonna lose people. It says Epstein didn't kill himself. The year 2020 and I'm holding one glass that says, in the most frilly font possible: Epstein didn't kill himself. And I really think that the American aesthetic of the cute meeting the grotesque has so jumped the Shark, and that's So where we are right now, I'm on tik tok a lot. And you see that a lot. I shouldn't be on tik tok. It's a really problematic app with the Chinese government owning that.
>> Katie: That's gonna be a whole other podcast. Sorry, but I still don't understand tik tok.
>> Melissa: I'm on it all the time, but I have to say so. This is why the ironic question is interesting to me. The other thing I have to say before I forget to say this because you really you amaze me. I cannot think if I were to draw what I thought a libertarian looked like it would be somebody wearing a capitalist T-shirt and those toe shoes. That to me is a quintessential libertarian. (laughter) Those are the two most important things a libertarian good own. So thank you for that image.
>> Jennifer: There you go.
>> Melissa: And maybe that libertarian would probably be drinking out of this wine glass.
>> Jennifer: I just feel politically confused at this point.
>> Melissa: But that was you in college.
>> Jennifer: Yeah. I knew big words. But you know what they meant. Probably haven't come very far since then. But I have you guys to let guide the way. So thank you.
>> Katie: Well, before we close out Melissa, you gonna tell us what's in the box?
>> Melissa: Well, I'm glad you asked. When Tim Cook, who was wearing a black turtleneck and a pink robe, opens the box and reveals the next most important thing the technology that's going to change the human in the next decade 2020, He pulls out an eye patch. And on the eye patch in red Rhinestones, kind of like on a sleep mask, like, if you could imagine says, sexy slut on his eye patch and the reporters in the audience, you know, of course, want to start asking questions. Is there a camera in the eye patch Is there, like a microcomputer in the eye patch and they start really wondering, like, what is this eye patch? And Tim Cook is wearing it, and he and he has his hook, and that's really as far as I got. That's as far as I got in the sketch. I know that it's about vision, and it's about blotting a being able to close one eye and look at the world.
>> Katie: So we don't even know what this piece of writing means yet?
>> Melissa: I know. I mean, I'm writing it while we're on this podcast. I'm telling you, this is a live experience originally gonna be an eye mask. But then I realized it would actually be an eye patch.
>> Jennifer: But I want to know. Is it lower case I patch?
>> Melissa: Don't you understand how brilliant this concept is yet?
>> Jennifer: iPatch. iMask
>> Melissa: It's trademarked. Oh, my gosh. Legally, this is binding,
>> Katie: Tm Melissa Shaw. As a person who knows trademark law in and out right now.
>> Melissa: Thanks for protecting the perpetuity of the future. I think that's right.
>> Jennifer: That's going to retail really high.
>> Katie: I want to thank you both very much for being on, because that was very entertaining just now and all the last whole hour has been really great.
>> Jennifer: The last whole lifetime with you guys has been great.
>> Katie: That's true. The last year has been wonderful with our little writing group. Do we have a name for our writing group? By the way.
>> Jennifer: I think the Whatsapp is "awesome writing people".
>> Melissa: It could be like ECW. You know, AWP? Awesome Writing People.
>> Jennifer: Formerly known as...
>> Katie: But see, they've already trademarked that. So we're fucked. Awesome writing people. Thank you guys for being on the podcast
>> Melissa: Thank you, Katie. Thank you, Jen. Thanks, listeners. I hope you listen.
>> Katie: OK, that's it for today's episode. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and review on whichever platform you're listening. You can get in touch with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @animalriotpress or through our website animalriotpress.com. This has been the 47th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast with me your host Katie Rainey and featuring Jennifer Werbitsky and Melissa Shaw. Our transcripts for our Deaf and hard of hearing animals are provided by Jonathan Kay and we are produced by Katie Rainey… me. See you animals later.