AI Replicants, Sentience, Death Awareness - with Playwright Duane Kelly

Duane Kelly is an award-winning author of eleven full-length plays. His plays often delve into end-of-life themes. The two most recent productions were a premiere of Abacus in Seattle in September 2024 and the play Patrimony in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in October 2024. Abacus tells the story of a synthetic human replicant who experiences unexpected concerns as she cares for a man who suffers the indignities of old age and cognitive decline.

His plays, which often delve into end-of-life themes, were produced at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022 and 2023. Duane is also writing a history book about the American West titled Journeys to Zion.

In this conversation, Duane discusses his experiences with death and how it has influenced his work. He shares personal stories of loss and reflects on the impact of mortality on storytelling. The discussion also delves into his recent plays, the intersection of artificial intelligence and humanity, and the importance of empathy in understanding our shared fate. Duane emphasizes the need to create meaningful art and the moral obligation to make the most of our time on earth.

Links:
Duane's Website
The Search for Wandla
Terror Management  - Ernest Becker
The Monk and the Robot series
Klara and the Sun byKazuo Ishiguro
Dover Beach By Matthew Arnold
Thanatopsis By William Cullen Bryant

Transcript

Wakil  
On this episode, we're very glad to speak with Duane Kelly. Duane is an award-winning author of 11 full-length plays. His plays often delve into end-of-life themes. The two most recent productions were a premiere of Abacus in Seattle in September of 2024 and the play Patrimony in Tulsa, Oklahoma in October of 2024. Abacus tells the story of a synthetic human replicant who experiences unexpected concerns as she cares for a man who suffers the indignities of old age and cognitive decline.

Annalouiza  
His plays were produced at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022 and 2023. Dwayne is also writing a history book about the American West titled Journeys to Zion. Welcome, Duane.

Duane Kelly  
Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Wakil  
Yeah, it's great to have you. I'm glad you could come and talk to us. I'm glad we were referred to you by our friend Rebecca, who has actually referred several people. We owe her a lot of thanks. 

Annalouiza  
Mm-hmm

Duane Kelly  
Yeah. She is a, she's a classic networker. I mean, she just, that's just a gift she has. She connects people and that's, it's just, it's a, it's a wonderful talent and she certainly possesses it.

Wakil  
Yes.

Absolutely. Yeah, we noticed that. That's great. That's how I met her, actually. So we always like to begin our podcast with this question. When did you first become aware of death?

Duane Kelly  
My father died when I was young. I was 15, the eldest of seven children. And he died at a young age and so that was, that's my first vivid experience. And I have a very vivid memory of going up to the casket and touching his face and being shocked that it had the sensation of cold concrete. Not at all the warm human skin that we're all used to touching.

So there was that. And then on a larger global level, one night my parents went out and I had to babysit because I was the oldest. And this was very early days of TV, the mid 1950s. And there was some documentary about World War II because it hadn't ended that long ago. And it had footage of the American GIs entering the concentration camps in Europe and just the piles of human, the carnage. And so that has always stuck with me too on a global level as opposed to a family personal level.

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah. Wow. That's a pretty impressive and pretty impactful way to kind of face that. How old were you then?

Duane Kelly  
I was probably 10, 9 or 10. I was born in 1950. So yeah, I would have been 8, 9, 10 years old, old enough to be given babysitting responsibilities. 

Wakil  
Okay, yeah, wow. Thank you.

Duane Kelly  
Well, all of those two issues, know, horrific death on a global scale and man's evil to man. And then the intimacy of death within a family, they have both appeared in my plays. They just have cropped up without me consciously beckoning them. They're just there. So, obviously, they're bubbling away in my subconscious. Otherwise they wouldn't have shown up in place.

Annalouiza  
Right. Well, you just seem to have answered our second question was how does death impact your story, which very obviously it has because it is bubbled up in your psyche and you put it to paper. 

So, but tell us a little bit more about this. Like how has death, you said it bubbles up with subconsciously. Do you think about death though? And, and, and just bring back those memories and consider the stories around them to relate to others.

Duane Kelly  
I do. I don't think my interest in death or the frequency with which I think about it, I don't think it falls into the obsession category, but I constantly think about it. You know, if I see a flower in bloom starting to fade, it's past its prime, often that will then, you know, I can admire the beauty of the flower, but I'm also aware that that symbolizes or signifies decline and death. 

So, I'm constantly, my mind's going in that direction. It's just how I'm built. And it's not really a morbid or depressing thing. It's just how I think. And so of course that gets into my plays.

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah, you're in good company here.

Annalouiza  
Yes you are.

Duane Kelly  
Well, and I'm writing a book right now. I don't want to digress too much, but I'm writing a history book, but it's about the early 19th, first half of the 19th century. And so I'm very aware as I'm writing this that these characters, even though it's nonfiction, I'm trying to give them flesh and dimension because I want them to be real people, to appear to real, like real people to the readers. So I'm aware that all these people I'm researching and writing about are gone.

They're no longer on this earth. And I'm also aware that when they were alive, they had just as many hopes and fears and disappointments and dreams and loves and failures as I do. So I'm constantly reminded of it with the history book I'm working on too.

Wakil  
Sure, sure. So it impacts everything really. That's great. that's kind of, yeah, that's why we started talking to people on this podcast is because we both kind of hold this sense of end of life is with us at all times. And it shows up in nature. It shows up in different kinds of losses and stories, yeah.

Annalouiza  
Stories. 
Yeah, but let me go back to Wayne. do you, how, how are your plays received? Do people find it? I mean, we don't use the word morbid in our podcast because we, kind of enjoy this. This is our jam, but, but I mean, you know, it is like, I really appreciate that you said you're thinking about this flesh and blood human being who is no longer with us. They're, they're dead. And, you know, to remind readers or theater goers that death is imminent and our most favorite people have passed. Like, is that still considered morbid? Do you feel like you get that response to your plays?

Duane Kelly  
No, no, I don't. I'm aware that that's one way that I'm aware that a portion of people are fear death or even are terrified of it. And so I'm aware that my plays could affect them, that group of people in a negative way. But no, that's not how I feel about it. And that's not how I think my plays affect most people. 

When you're writing drama, whether it's a screenplay for a movie or a television show or or the stage, if you are dealing with serious subjects and death is a serious subject, it's imperative that you have humor. You have to leaven the story with humor. Otherwise, it can become, excuse the pun, can become deadly to an audience. 

And even with Shakespeare, think about Hamlet, youknow, humor. In Hamlet and jokes in Hamlet, but there's also, you know, seven people dead on the stage at the end of the play and in the scene in the graveyard with Yorick and this holding the skull. know, there's deaths all over that play, it's, it's, know, Shakespeare's a great writer and there's plenty of, you know, light moments in it also.

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah, very true, very true. Well, tell us a little bit more about your current work, the work you're doing, both with the writing of the book and the plays. Do have any other plays or do you want to maybe just tell us a little bit about some of the most recent plays?

Duane Kelly  
Well, Patrimony, which just closed last night, actually, in Tulsa, is about a boy who had an imaginary friend when he was a boy. Now he's troubled adolescent, 17 or 18. And his imaginary friend comes back into his life as an ally, as somebody to accompany him on his journey and get him through this hump of adolescence and toward adulthood. 

And so that's one way that it came in. And this imaginary friend, his name's Albert, but he had a choice whether to come back into our world to help the boy or not. And he certainly loved the boy and wanted to help the boy, but also where he lives, the world where he lives, the imaginary friend, there's no death. It's this other world where death doesn't exist.

And he's a very curious guy and he wants to experience death. So one reason he comes back into our world is actually to taste mortality, because he's really curious, what is this thing? Because we don't have it in my world. So that's one way that it comes into that play. And of course, he's sort of a Obi-Wan Kenobi character, the sage, and gives the boy wisdom and helps him on his journey. So it's a very touching play and the boy. The boy's journey, psychological journey in the play is from confusion and angst toward moving toward adulthood and accepting life. that's how that play works.

Wakil  
Nice, yeah. I see it. When's it coming to Seattle?

Annalouiza  
Wow.
Or, or Denver.

Wakil  
Ha ha ha.

Duane Kelly  
Yeah. Well, it was produced two years ago and I'm hoping it will have more productions. One thing about plays, I guess it's true of novels or screenplays, is that you work hard to write a good script and then if you're lucky, they can get produced. But then once they've gone out into the world then it's kind of beyond your power. You know, the gods have to smile on you and, know, every playwright, you know, every playwright, you know, would like to see their work on a stage in New York or London. But, you know, that's, there's a large element of chance in that. So I am, you can't worry too, I mean, you have to keep putting your play out there, but you can't worry too much about, about the outcomes. Just keep doing the work and trust that good things will happen.

Wakil  
Nice, yeah, beautiful, beautiful. That sounds like excellent work.

Annalouiza  
Yes.

It does. so, you know, curiously, because this is about normalizing death, and I really appreciate that your character, one of the characters is interested in experiencing life in order to go through the finality of death. Do you, what are the challenges around writing that kind of a storyline?

Duane Kelly  12:04
I don't want it to be too grim. That's why I mentioned the importance of having comic elements in it to leaven the heaviness. But I don't. I kind of like this is who I am. I think death is one of the great realities of our existence.

And it's often, it can be seen as what gives our existence meaning. The fact that, you know, we're only here for a brief time, ...

Wakil  
Yeah.

Duane Kelly  
...that makes this time precious and gives more meaning to our being here. So I don't worry too much about it being perceived as morbid. And I don't think of myself as morbid. just, just happens to be something I'm interested in. But I'm also very aware that many poets and visual artists and composers, you know, this is a big theme for artists, you know, through the centuries. So I also realized I'm certainly not alone as an artist in paying attention to these issues. That's really important. 

Wakil  
Yeah.

Duane Kelly  
You know, I had a professor in college who told us once that the three great subjects of literature, are love, death, and the passing of time. And that's always stuck with me. And then I think that, know, love and the passing of time, what gives them resonance, what gives them profundity is death. The fact that we're just here for a brief time. So if we love someone, that love isn't going to go on forever.

So death affects everything and influences how we see the world. You know, one thing that surprised, a surprising development, and let me know if I'm digressing too much, but one development that I hadn't expected is that I formed a new relationship about a dozen years ago and my partner's father was just a lovely man and we really hit it off. And he had some dementia and other issues, health issues at the end of his life. And I did a lot to take care of him. And now his wife, who's 95, is nearing the end of her life. 

But I grew up in a Christian context where there was hell and brimstone and a fear of death. And these two people in my life, that they've approached death without fear. In fact, they've had gratitude that they've realized that they've had, they've done well in life. They've had a good life. Few bad things have happened to them and their family. And they are leaving, they left in terms of Mary Lou, my mother-in-law, they're leaving with a sense of gratitude and peace and readiness. You know, Mary Lou's 95. In fact, she told me last week, she said, Dwayne, I'm ready.

Wakil  
Mmm.

Duane Kelly  
And she didn't say it with depression, with regret, just I'm ready. And I'd been really lucky. I realized how lucky I have been. And so, okay, yeah, I get it, Mary Lou. 

Annalouiza  
Yeah.

Wakil  
Yeah.

Duane Kelly  
So I really value those two people in my life because they showed me another way with real people not reading about it in book. They gave me another model about how one could think about death as one ages. And I'd never run into that before. It was more of a, know, am I gonna go to hell or, you know, what's the fear... 

Wakil  
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza  
fear, right? Yeah.

Wakil  
Yeah.

Wakil  Yeah.

Duane Kelly  
... and, you know, there's a big guy up there sitting in judgment over all of us and how, you know, what kind of grade am I gonna get? That's kind of how I grew up and that's not how I think.And it's been nice to see these people that I'm intimately close with in my family. Yeah, that's been a gift to me.

Wakil  
Good example, yeah.

Annalouiza  
Yeah. I love that because I also grew up with the hell and brimstone as my narrative, right? And so there was every day rather than being grateful for another day to breathe, it was always like, God, what have I done? Or what am I going to do? Or what shouldn't I do? Because, you know, God will punish me and I won't make it to heaven. 

And, you know, I've let go of that paradigm years and years ago, but I found it really interesting that when I was doing my chaplaincy, what does it call our work to our project or practicum, I met with 23 different people and did spiritual direction around end of life. And I was very curious to the experiences that people would either how they met the conversation about death and dying. 

Duane Kelly  
Yeah.

Annalouiza
So, those folks who did not have a spiritual practice or a religion in their life would talk about death and be like, you know, they were sad about leaving their stuff or their kids or whatnot, but it wasn't really so like stressful. But there were a few other people who couldn't even get in the door to talk about death because as one woman said to me, she's like, I am so terrified that I've made God mad that I don't even want to think about dying because if I pissed him off, I'm going to hell, you know? And it was such a sad moment for me. 

Duane Kelly  
Yeah.

Annalouiza
I we did a little spiritual direction around that, but truly there are people who spend their lives fearing death because what's on the other side. And there's others who are grateful for the breath of every day. So, you know, I'm so grateful that you have this lived experience with these like bookends of people. And maybe, you know, that's your next play.

Duane Kelly  
Yeah.

Wakil  
Mm-hmm.

Wakil  
Yeah, you never know.

Duane Kelly  
Well, maybe, yeah, maybe. What I'm doing now is, you know, I love writing plays and in a play, they tend to be about 100 pages, 110. And so, mentally, intellectually and psychologically, I feel I can put my arms around it, you know, this beast. But what I found is my playwriting skills are not as transferable to a history book as I expected them to be. 

And this book is going to be three to four hundred pages and it's just too big to put my arms around, metaphorically speaking. And so, therefore it's harder, at least for me. And so what I've had to do is I've had to prohibit myself from starting another play because if I do, the history book will end up on the back burner.

Annalouiza  
Yeah.

Wakil  
Haha.

Duane Kelly  
And I really want to finish the book. It's an important book and it's just, it's a different beast. So that's, so I have a number of plays that I still want to write. And, but I've been working on this book for 10 years off and on. So I really want to get it done. And I was just reading this morning in the New York Times, you know, well, Biden, think is 81, Trump is 78 and I'm 74.

Wakil  
Yeah.

Annalouiza  
Yeah.

Duane Kelly  
You know, here, those guys are being criticized for their senility. They're not that sharp anymore. So I'm aware of that. I mean, physically, I'm very healthy. But, you know, I want to continue writing. As an alternative model to them, to Trump or Biden, Henry Kissinger died a year ago, two years ago, and he was 100. But he wrote... At age 99, he wrote another book. 

So that's one thing as I observe other people, life around me, the great variance in how we age is just, it's phenomenal. There's just so much variance and you can't really predict how people are going to, you know, how their journey is going to go. I am, very, with my near obsession about mortality, I'm just very aware that we're here for a brief time and we have a moral obligation, I feel this very strongly, to do the best we can with what we've been given. And so I want to keep working and trying to create good art that has meaning for other people.

But, you're right Annalouiza about the terror, you know you remind me, I've read maybe ten years ago I did some reading with Ernest Becker and his Terror Theory. Are you familiar with... And his point is that the fear of death is the driving force in history. Yeah, Ernest Becker wrote some books about that. So that was one of his theories. 

Wakil  
Yeah.

Annalouiza  
Mm-mm.

Wakil  
Hmm.
Yeah, that makes sense, makes sense. 

Annalouiza  
It does.

Wakil
You know, I would love to, if you wouldn't mind, circle back a little bit because I've just been reading a series of books. One was The Monk and the Robot. I know if you're familiar with that series, but it reminds me a little bit of what you talk about with the advocates because this person, this author, really delves into what it would be like for a machine to become sentient and what sentience means and how they relate with humans. And so I would like to, if you don't mind, I'd like to hear a little more about abacus.

Duane Kelly  
Yeah, absolutely. But give me the name of that book again.

Wakil  
It's called the monk and the robot. There's actually two of them and I'll find the author and tell you before we're done here.

Duane Kelly  
Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah, I do a ton of research for everything that I write. So I probably read 50 or 60 books about AI in death and dying as background for that play. So anyway, I'm very interested also in consciousness. What is consciousness? And there is no consensus in the neuroscience community about what that is. And I think in the spiritual community, there's probably not any consensus either. 

Wakil  
True.

Duane Kelly  
I like a lot of writers who get to write about this area. And it sounds like the author of The Monk and the Robot did that. You can use the robot, and I call her a replicant in my play, it's kind of a metaphor or a a anthropomorphization of a human. And so she's lacking something. She's not quite sure what it is. She finds herself becoming attached to this old man that she cares for in a way that wasn't part of her algorithms and in a way that could be said to resemble something like love or affection. 

Wakil  
Mm-hmm.

Wakil  
Hmm.

Duane Kelly  
It's more than just doing jobs that she's been programmed to do. She starts to have feelings for him. And so I'm kind of playing on a metaphorical level with the need we all have to care for other people. That's, I think, a big part of what gives life meaning. And so she, this desire to care for this human was not part of her programming, was not in her algorithms. 

Wakil  
Right.

Duane Kelly  
And yet, it is kind of an emergent property, she starts to experience something like that. So that's part of her journey. And in fact, people who seen the play or heard about it before they go, they tend to think that the old man is the protagonist, the main character. He's not, it's the replica. 

Wakil  
Oh wow.

Duane Kelly  
She's the main character. She has the biggest arc. So I see her, I mean, there's only five characters in the play, so they're all important. But it's the journey she goes through. And at the end of the play, I leave it unresolved what's going to happen to her. When he dies, she goes to his grave right after his funeral by herself and reads a poem, Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold. So the play ends with that, and we don't know what's going to happen to her.

Wakil  
Wow, I love it. 

Annalouiza  
Hmm, wow.

Wakil
Yeah, there's actually a new movie that just came out called Wild Robot. It has almost the same theme again, you know.

Annalouiza  
Yeah, that was actually a kid's book because my kids love that book. And I was just going to say, they also read the Wondla trilogy, which I just thought about. And it's like a bunch of kids sent out and raised by robots that they call mother and really beautiful. Those are the two, the Wild Robot and the Wondla trilogy were books that my kids just adored. And we read them over and over again. But again, artificial intelligence replicants.

Duane Kelly  
Okay, yeah.

Annalouiza  
You know, robots and what is that moment when caring for something makes them sentient and makes them, you know, you know, grab on and, the sadness of losing your robot too. Like it's a machine, but it's a thing that's a relationship, right? Fascinating.

Wakil  
Wow. Fascinating.

Duane Kelly  
I know, right. Another important book that I did read is the Nobel Prize winner, Kajio Ishiguro, the British writer, Clara and the Sun. But he's treating this same subject. And it's no great surprise that we're going to see more and of these movies and novels and television shows about this because it's very much of our moment.

Wakil  
Yeah.

Duane Kelly  
It's sort of our version of the 19th century industrial revolution. This is our version of that. And it's kind of scary. Where is this going to go? How much power is it going to have? We don't know. So I'm not at all surprised that there's going to be more books like this. I was even worried. I mean I started working on this play six or seven years ago.

Wakil  
Yeah.

Duane Kelly  
And I felt then that I was ahead of the curve. Now actually, know, the advances in AI have progressed so rapidly that they've kind of gotten, they bypass the play. I mean, not really, but you know, AI has come on faster than I think anyone thought it would. 

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah, it is. It's getting a little frightening, you're right.

Duane Kelly  
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza  
It's right. And, you know, I was at the British science museum about maybe eight years ago and they had a show that was from puppets to AI. And the very beginning of, as you're going through it had all these little small amic, animatrons and small puppets. And then, you know, it went on and on through the ages of how we've continued to work at making replicants of ourselves.

And at the very end were those robots that were used with kids with autism that have like the very neutral face and you were engaging. And I remember feeling both abject terror and surprise at humanity's inclination to try to reproduce ourselves in spite of the fact that we still can't get along and do each other right. Like,

Duane Kelly  
Right.

Duane Kelly  
Yeah.

Wakil  
Mm mm

Annalouiza  
I just, I left there, I actually have some of those books from that show because I just kept thinking it's not okay. If we're still making wars and if we're still killing each other, why are we replicating ourselves?

Wakil  
Yeah, maybe try and figure out how to do it better before we start to do it.

Duane Kelly  
Well, I do think that's part of the thinking coming out of Silicon Valley and in Seattle and the Boston area. They've got a bit of a God complex that they think they can do it better than what we're dealing with. 

Annalouiza  
Yeah.

Duane Kelly  
And I think that's danger, unlikely and probably dangerous to be thinking that way. We are flawed creatures. Inherently, we are flawed creatures. And to think that we can create a machine without flaws, I think is hubristic and likely to lead to bad outcomes. 

Wakil  
Yeah

Annalouiza  
Yeah.

Duane Kelly  
Well, one thing I can share with you in the play that people would come up to me sometimes and talk to me about, there's one scene where the replicant, one of the characters is a high tech CEO kind of a tech bro type that they're not that uncommon these days. his company created her, the replicant. 

And midway through the play, he asked her, well, do you have any other concerns? They were talking about the health of the old man. And she said, yeah, I do have one. And he says, well, explain. And she said, have you let's hypothesize a human being born in America, has wonderful parents and grandparents, receives an education broad and deep, has good health, avoids war and poverty, falls in love as a young adult. The love is reciprocated, they reproduce. 

Well, one thing I can share with you in the play that people would come up to me sometimes and talk to me about, there's one scene where the replicant, one of the characters is a high tech CEO. tell me what happens, Max. His name is Max. And he says, no, what? You tell me. And she says, she dies. No exception. She dies. And furthermore, everyone she loves dies. And she looks at him and said, is that not absurd? This is the replica talking. Is that not absurd? Have you ever discussed this? Have you ever discussed this with the designer?

Wakil  
Ha ha ha ha.

Duane Kelly  
And so that's a good, it's a strong scene and she's starting to deal, you know, to come to grips with the subject of your podcast is, you know, what is this death thing and why, how do people deal with it? So that's how I dramatize that in the play. And it's a strong scene. I'm proud of it.

Annalouiza  
Beautiful.

Wakil  
That's good. Yeah, I like it. Thanks for sharing that one. That's so important. So much we need to pay attention to. And I think there's probably moments in our lives where we kind of do the same thing. It's like, what? Everybody dies? And that's kind of what we're here for. Yeah.

Duane Kelly  
Right. Well, and I commend you two, you know, for not celebrate, is it the right word, but having open, healthy discussions about it. I think that's good. I think to be more realistic and more accepting of our mortality is one source or one category of wisdom. And gives us more empathy toward the other people. When we realize that we all share that great fate, the same fate of mortality, it can make us have more empathy toward our fellow human being.

Wakil  
Yeah.

Annalouiza  
It can, you know, I have a lot of stories of how I wound up being here with Wakil talking about death as our fun stuff. But have you ever read a Thanatopsis? The William Cullen Bryant poem. I read that in like, I think it was 10th grade in the primer and 10th grade. But and I have it in front of me, but I just remember the last line, the last three lines and it says, "by an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams." Those three little phrases were what completely sold me that I am so excited to die. So I'm like, like I, see myself on a chaise long with one of my quilts that I have made. And I'm just going to like very just, causally wrap myself up and just dream myself into death. Like, I love that.

Wakil  
I hope that happens for you.

Annalouiza  
Me too. I mean, there's a lot of different ways, but if that's the way that I can do it, please make it so.

Duane Kelly  
No, know that, yeah, that's so beautiful. And you can't help being aware of how much horror there is in the world, in Ukraine and Israel and Gaza 

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza  
Gaza.

Duane Kelly  
And a couple of years ago in Syria and a couple of years before that in Iraq. I mean, hundreds of thousands of people just, you you said,Earlier Annalouiza, what business do we have making replicants when we can't do a decent job of behaving ourselves? And that's a very good point because we're not really good at taking care of each other. On larger scales, hopefully most of us are with our families, with people we love intimately. But we don't have it figured out about how to be good to each other on a larger scales.

Annalouiza  
Right. We haven't figured out how to being, right? How to live as beings and we're creating other beings and it's still, I don't know. Okay. 

Duane Kelly  
Yeah.

Wakil  
Yeah, we have some work to do. Yeah.

Annalouiza
Yes, we do.

Duane Kelly  
Yeah, and we've become really good at pigeonholing people into other categories, whether it's by color of skin or language they speak or spiritual beliefs. But instead of accepting, seem to have this tendency to make them the other in something to fear instead of support.

Wakil  
Yeah, exactly. A way of controlling our world, I think, is part of that. So we should, kind of getting into the time, we want to end this, but I think we had a couple more questions we like to ask. What do you think, Annalouiza?

Annalouiza  
Let's ask what frightens you most about the end of your life?

Duane Kelly 
That I will not have made really good use of the time, the brief time I've been given here. That's my biggest fear, that I will have squandered this treasure called human existence.

Annalouiza  
Wow. Yep.

Duane Kelly  
I don't really worry about, I mean, I'm really, I have good loving relationships with people, with my family and people I'm close to. So I feel good about that. But I also, you know, I think most of us feel this way. You know, I want my life to have made a difference. You know, I want my time here to have meant something. And so I'm driven in that way. And so that's one thing I worry about.

Wakil  
Sure, sure, that makes sense. I think that's true. Well, we also like to ask, is there anything that you wish we had asked you about?

Duane Kelly  
No, I can't think of anything right now. We've covered, the territory we've covered is what I thought you would be covering. And I've enjoyed talking about it. So, no, not really. No, if any of your listeners know a theater producer in New York or London, tell them about me. But no, this has been great.

Annalouiza  
That's wonderful.

Wakil  
All right, yeah, we will put your www, your website into the podcast notes. 

Annalouiza 
the notes.

Wakil
So yeah, so people have a way to check in on you and see what you're doing and find out more about you if they'd like and be able to get in touch with you. So thank you so much for being here. You did send us a quote. Did you want to read that for us? Or do you want one of us to read it? We can do that.

Duane Kelly  
Sure. I'll read it. I keep journals and so my journals are full of quotes, but this is one that I came across recently that resonated for me. And it's by the American writer James Baldwin.

“History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.”

So I like that. It reminded me a little bit of what Kamala Harris said recently about her mother in, you know, did you think you fell from the sky in a, I forget now what she said, but you did you think, you know, all this just happened to you and that there's no past behind you? You know, you're not here alone. There's this whole train of people who were behind you, who have allowed you to be in this moment. And so it's that sentiment. It's good to be aware of that, I think.

Wakil  
I love that. Yeah, yeah, we stand in a long caravan of people ...

Annalouiza  
of ancestors.

Wakil
... who have ancestors and people who have come before and people who will carry on from us Inshallah.

Duane Kelly  
Yeah. I just remembered what Kamala Harris said. Her mother said to her, or maybe it was her grandmother, what? Do you think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You know, and all this happened to you? No. There's this, as you said, a huge train, a caravan of ancestors behind you who have brought you to this moment. it's good thought.

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah, perfect, perfect. 

Annalouiza  
Thank you so much.

Wakil
Yeah, it's been a real pleasure, Dwayne. Thanks for connecting with us.

Duane Kelly  
Thank you.