Carry the Zero | Ryan Eggensperger

Ryan Eggensperger is a playwright, DJ, actor, and tour guide from Helena, Montana who has spent twenty years figuring out how to sit with a blank page without resenting it. He calls it carrying the zero — and it's a practice, not a concept: he does it every morning, and what surprised me most isn't that he does it but that he doesn't resent it.

We met when he was directing a play at my kids' school. One night we sat on the post office lawn until eleven, talking about boredom and presence and what it means to actually do the thing rather than prepare to do it. I didn't know yet that he'd been doing exactly that work every morning for decades.

We talk about the journal entry he wrote at twenty-eight — "No more mongrel genius" — that redirected his relationship to his own talent. We talk about edge work, and why the corporate version of it is "just a new name for Buddhism." We talk about Wind Cave in the Black Hills, where the earth breathes through a fourteen-inch hole at fifty degrees, and what it means to stand over that hole and feel it. We talk about his daily work with the blank page, the Instagram he deleted, and what carrying the zero actually feels like from the inside — not as aspiration but as practice.

And then, around the ninety-minute mark, he turned the whole thing inside out and asked me the question instead. That's in here too.

In this conversation:

• "No more mongrel genius" — the 2004 journal entry that changed everything
• Edge work, and why the corporate world finds a new name for Buddhism every couple of years
• How to sit with a blank page without resenting it
• Being a playwright and a DJ and an actor and a tour guide — and why that's different from mongrel genius
• Wind Cave in the Black Hills: the earth breathing through a fourteen-inch hole at fifty degrees
• The Instagram he deleted, and why
• What carrying the zero looks like on the other side of the performance
• The format inversion: around the ninety-minute mark, the guest asks the question instead

Find Ryan's work:

• SoundCloud (DJ Anatomy): soundcloud.com/user-367035900
• https://www.instagram.com/djanatomy/

Transcript

George Laufenberg (00:51)
This conversation is where this podcast started. Ryan Eggensperger is a playwright, a DJ, an actor, a tour guide, and one of those people who spent most of his adult life practicing something very specific. How to move from lost to found, and how to keep doing that when the lost gets less dramatic and the found starts to feel like settling. We met when he was directing a play at my kids' school. We became friends, and one night we sat on the lawn outside the post office in Missoula until eleven o'clock, talking about boredom and presence.

And what you do when the thing you thought was going to be the answer turns out not to be. I drove home thinking, that's the conversation I want this project to keep making possible. What Ryan has worked out, not as a philosophy, but as a daily practice, is how to stay related to emptiness. He's a playwright who sits down every morning with a blank page and doesn't resent it. He calls it carrying the zero. It's both a simpler and stranger thing to do than it sounds. He also asked me the best question anyone has asked me yet on this show.

This is the principal uncertainty. I'm George Laufenberg.

George Laufenberg (02:00)
Ryan, one of the reasons that I was so excited, I mean, you're one of the first people I reached out to when I first started gestating this thing. And one of the reasons I was so excited about it is because in a very real and straightforward sense, is a straight line from our conversation you and I had one night to what it is that I'm doing now. And I remember we went and we had the...

trivia night at a brew pub in town here, which we wound up winning, right? And then we were sitting on the lawn outside the post office until like 11 o'clock at night. And it was one of the best, most compelling, invigorating, like existentially fucking invigorating conversations I'd had in years.

Ryan Eggensperger (02:51)
Yeah.

George Laufenberg (02:52)
And I so respected and appreciated. I enjoyed where you were coming from and respected it. And I appreciated the kind of provocations you were offering, the ways you were pushing me to think differently about things like boredom and presence and playfulness and edge work, which has become a weird sort of LinkedIn hashtag term of art in a way that I don't think is what you mean. people throw the term edge work around in ways that.

I think are mostly fairly banal in commercial space. like most such things, the provenance of the term I think is probably closer to where you were coming from at the time. Which is that it seems to me from our conversation that one way to think about the kind of common denominator for the various things that you have done and are doing is that all of them

Ryan Eggensperger (03:42)
it.

George Laufenberg (03:47)
push you to the edge of your experience, ability, understanding. I would, maybe in that spirit, maybe the place to start is like right now. Like what does the edge look like right now?

Ryan Eggensperger (03:52)
.

Sure. Yeah, thanks George. That's fascinating. I've been thinking about this a lot, because we've spoken recently about the nature of this project, and in my own thoughts, trying to get a grasp on what, that's funny, edge work, I hadn't heard that. What kind of spaces are people using? what?

George Laufenberg (04:27)
I've seen it start to show up in like LinkedIn corporate speak kind of context. Okay. As a slightly, like in a sort of sanitized version.

Ryan Eggensperger (04:39)
Well it's funny how every couple years the corporate world finds a new way to, a new name for Buddhism, right? Yeah, did I ever say about that show that I did with my playwright friend in San Francisco called The Group, which was like, it was really great. It was a really cool piece, but we had both ended up

living in the Bay Area and just are kind of historically inclined. When I show up in a place, I used to move around a lot when I show up in a place, I end up doing research and kind of trying to plug into cultural grooves of that place. one that caught our attention was the kind of new age self-help.
What's the spot? Where's Esalen? That whole thing about California. And Est as well, right? our buddy, Art. Exactly.

George Laufenberg (05:43)
which became landmark, which is still a

hugely powerful force in...

Ryan Eggensperger (05:51)
Yeah,

and it's just so ripe, it was very ripe comedically. To satirize that kind of thing, so we did this show called The Group, and it was delightful, and I'll show it to you sometime, but there was, it was a tiny show where it was built for like under 20 people at a time. So you would come in and then you'd wear headphones the entire time, and I was,

George Laufenberg (05:57)
Cheers.

Ryan Eggensperger (06:20)
mic'd into your headphones as well as this kind ornate sound design that we'd created. And I would take you on these journeys, but the entire thing was kind of just these funny catchphrases and brandings of these sort of sometimes really genuine ideas and more often ridiculous ideas.

The ones that come to mind are like, I made a big point of like, and it's all branding, like every time I would say a thing that you're supposed to remember, there'd be like little bell that rings and things like that and it would come back and so other people's pessimism. You gotta be aware of op-

George Laufenberg (07:08)
You me.

Ryan Eggensperger (07:12)
There was, love is the super glue. Like there were just these kind of, these cliches that you would employ in going to this stuff. But anyway, yeah, I mean what it really all comes back to, I mean the thing that was really interesting about that show and to bring it back to what you were talking about is whatever you wanna call it, there is this idea of trying to stay engaged with possibility.

or I mean non-attachment, the edge, I guess. And for me, the practice there is, historically, yeah, I moved around a lot. Like I was kind of constantly, I mean my main background is in theater. I'm an actor, I'm a playwright. And would kind of bop around

I wanted to know a lot, would, almost as soon as things would get set up and settled and have any kind of consistency, I would get really restless and wanna move on. So I grew up in Connecticut, went to NYU for acting for a year, and then was like, no, this is not it. I dropped out, I moved out to Montana for half a year, just cause my family out here was like, I need whatever the opposite of New York City is.

send it up here and then back to New York and then Colorado and then a different town in Colorado and then back to New York and etc. But if I look at it now from this vantage point it is definitely there's a weird thing where I would get settled and kind of ready to actually do work in a more traditional way like I would have

I would get past the point where I'm like, I need to establish a community. I need to figure out how I'm making money. I need to just know my way around. And sometimes that was a year. Sometimes that was three years, et cetera. And then honestly, as soon as I would get set up in that way, which now I look at as being ready to actually start producing cool things and kind of affecting.

the culture of the place instead of just sort of doing research and taking things in, I would get ready to pack up and leave, because I was like, I gotta stay on the edge. Actually living someplace is not interesting to me. Figuring out how to live in this place is what's interesting. The struggle, the...
the distance between feeling overwhelmed and lost and confused and feeling like those first kind of grooves of like, oh, I have friends, cool. Like I've moved the sports metaphor a couple of yards down, right? Like I.

was auditioning for things, and now I'm working with the same folks on the second or third project. There's some actual momentum, there's some familiarity, and then I would just bail. Because I was like, oh no, I need more edge, I need more lost. I wanna get good at going from lost to found.

George Laufenberg (11:01)
And I know that your life looks different now. You've been in one place for a minute. Is it the cadence of that process that's changed or is the scale a better metaphor? What's different?

Ryan Eggensperger (11:14)
That's a good question. So, right, I've been in Montana for seven years now and have no plans. I mean, the main kind of logistical thing is I have a partner, my girlfriend, who has children and so there is the, there's that. I mean, there's the non-solo,
aspect of my life right now. But even beyond that, think, I just think that would, there's only so many times you can, I guess not, I mean guess people do that for entire lives, keep moving. But the thing that's fascinating just philosophically or in practice for me about that now is just making it.

So right now I am producing a play that I wrote a long time ago, 15, 16 years ago, something like that, and had never produced, and have produced kind of very little work on my own, like as the main driving force in a project. Like I was always pretty good at seeking out

people with a lot of momentum and lot of vision and kind of getting on their team. And so that show is telling me about the group. Like that was my friend Quill, who I'd worked with for decades and is kind of a brilliant playwright and really focused and just kind of also for what it's worth, like has access to, or is just comfortable kind of putting things out into the world and you know.

finding spaces or finding grants or just doing the and bolts of production. So it was always really convenient for me to be like, oh great, you're doing all that? I'll look cute, or I'll get to do the performance and the fun part, the easier part of that. So right now, having been in, so I live in Helena, which is a, I'm not gonna say there's,

George Laufenberg (13:21)
Yeah.

Ryan Eggensperger (13:38)
Nothing going on. There's about 40,000 people as far as size goes. Culturally, there's like one community theater that produces things that are not necessarily my cup of tea. The Secret Garden or Shrek again or whatever, things like that, which God bless them, but is not really the kind of work I'm that interested in doing. And there's one other sort of small company in town. there is the force, there is the...

the idea that kind of real simple level, if I wanna see a certain type of work, I have to make it or else it's not gonna be around. And so there's that. And then the thing about being there and kind of getting to the place, I'm trying get back to the edge conversation, and getting to the place where I am not

George Laufenberg (14:13)
Bon Appetit.

to do.

Ryan Eggensperger (14:39)
Also, I'm 47 now, so I'm definitely not an ingenue. Which I'm still getting used to, you know? I'm still getting used to. I still kind of have this vision, and I'm curious how common that is.

George Laufenberg (14:54)
I totally as like a know perpetually recovering gifted kid whose identity is stapled to potential in its purest form Yeah, deeply that was the laugh you just heard right

Ryan Eggensperger (15:06)
Identification.

A prodigy or a whippersnapper, whatever you want to call it. There's a line that goes through my head a lot from a journal of mine from 2004 or something that is, no more mongrel genius. As a directive to myself. The mongrel genius.

all this untapped potential, right? Like the diamond in the rough or whatever you wanna call it. That was such a comfortable place for me to hang out. of course I have genius work to do, but.

George Laufenberg (15:47)
You do. The conjugation does a lot of work there, right? I have made so many fucking life choices around preserving as many possibilities. It's an entire, as a way of being in the world, life as a choose your own adventure book with fingers in multiple, holding multiple pages so that you can, that kind of is the image that I often come back to.

Ryan Eggensperger (16:09)
Yeah. So I'm curious for you, mean, so just to finish that thought, there is, there is something about where it's, I mean, it's not cute anymore. to me, much less anybody else. But it like has lost its novelty to be like this sort of unrealized.

George Laufenberg (16:38)
Magnolia, Anderson's Magnolia. William H. Macy's character, right? He's the grown-up quiz kid. There's a moment where he's just like, I have so much love to give. It's like the distillation of that.

Ryan Eggensperger (16:52)
Yeah, yeah, beautiful. So there's something about getting to a place where I'm ready. Like I'm ready, I mean it's been for several years now, but I just need to know, I need to know on a scale, on a like, compared to other real things. Yeah. Like.

in where the rubber meets the road, whatever the craft is. And it's interesting that you, in the introduction, you mentioned a bunch of different things that I kind of dabble with. Because that's, again, that's similarly a very comfortable place to hang out where it's like, yes, but if you're comparing me to a playwright, I mean, there are better playwrights, but none of are DJs.

You know, the evasive...

George Laufenberg (17:52)
Dabbling is an interesting word. Did that feel like a deflection when you said it? Which? would not, I would not, I wouldn't map the word dabbling onto your orientation towards these things. Okay. It look like dabbling.

Ryan Eggensperger (18:06)
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And that's interesting because that's pretty different at 47 than it was, let's say for the sake of argument, I had all of the same interests when I was 23, but had only done each of them for six months or a year, or like I only knew five songs on acoustic guitar, whatever, right?

So if the schedule is over the course of, let's say, follow me here, let's say for example, over the course of a year, like maybe I'll write one script and I'll spend X amount of time making music, I'll spend X amount of time focused on acting, then in one year, I've only gotten, a script, I've gotten one script better than I was a year earlier. And so when I was 25, I was like, whatever, three or four scripts into my career as a playwright. Now, even on that same, at that same pace, I'm however, whatever it is, 19.

scripts into my career as a playwright. And that's pretty good. It took me this amount of time because I was, I kind of had this, I was sort of rotating the crops, if you will, right? And so that's really interesting to me in a world where even personally, I'm not like, oh, capitalism doesn't value, or like the industry, like show business doesn't value.

X, and Z about being multifaceted or having many different interests or being dimensional in that way. But I do this thing now where I'm so comfortable coming back around to a certain practice and knowing how much I've learned from the other things I was doing in the meantime. So I just finished a script that took not long. I finished a draft that took

let's say three months, December, January, February. And between that and the last script I'd finished, I had done a lot of DJing. I'd produced a television pilot. I had acted in a few things. had, those are the main ones. But the idea being,

And this isn't like a revolutionary idea. All of that time is very useful. when I went to sit down and write a script, I was like, ooh, I can't wait to see how all of those other things I've learned, all of those other appendages or lenses that I've processed information through.

Like how is that gonna come out in writing now? And the same thing with any of those other things, with performance or with music. You know what I'm saying?

George Laufenberg (21:48)
I do. think the reason I was reacting to the word dabbling is because it seems to me to imply something like a kind of ironic minimum safe distance from the activity, which is I think precisely the sort of thing that I don't think of when I think of you. To me, the moment when our... We first met when you were directing, you're co-directing a play you wrote.

at a community theater production at my kid's school. that was a joyful adventure in a lot of ways. But there was a moment, one evening's rehearsal, where you came up to me and you looked at me and said, can I give you some feedback? you were like, we post-gamed us later, right? Like you were like not sure how, because we didn't know each other at all. You weren't sure if I was going to how I was going to land. I was stoked and we had fun with it and it was great feedback and constructive. And I ran with it and it made the show better.

a richer experience for me inhabiting the character.
Ryan Eggensperger (22:52)
And...

George Laufenberg (22:53)
It was, to me, was a great example of the kind of, I'm gonna use the word earnestness. I don't feel like have the right, I don't love the word authenticity for a wide variety of reasons. We have a fetish for that word in our culture, I think. And it has a really complicated history and blah, the long digression. We can figure out whatever word works best for that.
At the beginning of this conversation, you were talking about the show, the piece called Groups, right? The group? The group. And it strikes me that one of the kind of central tensions, right? mean, you identified that right off the bat as ripe for humor, right? There is an abject kind of earnestness about group work in an Esalen and Est human potential movement kind of.

Ryan Eggensperger (23:30)
the group.

Mmm.

George Laufenberg (23:55)
Right, like they're not always good at taking the joke.
I think would be fair to say. don't know how, maybe I should phrase that as a question. What I mean is like,
Ryan Eggensperger (24:04)
See, that differently abject.

George Laufenberg (24:11)
to the extent that the Esalen or Est, Human Potential Movement Landmark Forum, self-improvement group kind of stuff.
tends to, I'm wary of generalizations here, I think it, I'll offer it as a gambit. I think they tend to take themselves very seriously in an earnest sort of way. In a way that the kids today would gloss as cringe. And that's part of why it's such an invitation to humor. That's part of where the lever gets popped in to crack the thing open, if I'm understanding you right.

Ryan Eggensperger (24:51)
Right.

George Laufenberg (24:57)
And, and this is maybe the tension that I'm, the thread that I'm wanting to pull on here is that like, you, like as rip shit funny as you are, and how much like, how much I enjoy the banter, from the beginning of our interaction becoming a real connection, like the substance of that, the currency there was earnestness, was what somebody would, somebody else would call authenticity, right? That like you,

you were vulnerable, like in offering that particular feedback to me that night, you were being vulnerable in a way that you didn't know how that was going to be received. And then we had an evening out that turned into the kind of like, could have been 18 again in high school, like, it the equivalent of like driving around with nowhere to be. Yeah. Sitting on the lawn of the post office in Missoula, a conversation about life in the universe. Yeah. Like, I guess I want to kind of dwell in that tension for a minute. OK. Like there's this, you,

The earnestness of the group is the source of the humor about the group. And you describe your orientation to this stuff as dabbling, which I would push on that.

Ryan Eggensperger (25:57)
Sure, sure.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that. Well, it is very much, I mean, that word is very much defined by a...

I'm gonna say, I mean the easy thing to say would be like, my dad. You know, by a different model of how people, and maybe specifically men, focus their energy over the course of, let's say a career, or a lifetime, right? Which, in that model, which is probably sort of long,

as something to rebel against is like decades, maybe, I don't know, I'm not 22 right now. I don't know how, if that pressure feels similar to excel at one practice or to have kind of all of your eggs in one basket in that way, but when I, let's say I went to, I graduated high school and

When I was going to college for acting, I was like, right, I still had this kind of mode where, you should be anchored by one practice, one career, one focus. And it felt really overwhelming and kind of chaotic to,

embark on a journey to drop out of acting school in a way that I was like, I don't feel that way about acting. I don't feel like my entirety as a human can be focused into that practice. And I think about that moment kind of a lot. Like deciding to drop out of acting school. in a real, it's kind of a superficial.

version of that where I'll literally see folks that I went to acting school with on television or in films or I'll see them working in the industry in a much higher visibility way than I am making community plays with amazing people in Montana.

George Laufenberg (28:33)
file.

Ryan Eggensperger (28:43)
And so there is this thing of, to almost an embarrassing degree, I'll think about, and I've written plenty of plays about that, or scenes, or these moments of like, is that an interesting character that also ran the, what is it, Lewin Davis, right? Like that kind of character where it's like seeing this historical moment.

through the lens of, my god, have you seen Blue Moon? Do you know what it is? It's the Richard Linklater film about Lorenz Hart. That's such a gorgeous, I just saw it the other night. It's so beautiful. It's Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart, who was songwriting partners with Richard Rodgers. And so the framing of it is so beautiful. It's the opening night of Oklahoma, which is.

George Laufenberg (29:13)
No.

Ryan Eggensperger (29:37)
Rodgers and Hammerstein's first collaboration. And effectively you're watching, spoiler, like Lorenz Hart is dead seven months later, literally falling down drunk in the street. So you're watching kind of the last sort of crank of...
demise his last kind of gasp at relevance, where he is at this party and supposed to be keeping a brave face and his partner has moved on to this, and we all know obviously now, that is going to be, for all intents, the greatest partnership in musical theater, blah, blah. And so it's really beautiful, but I love that lens and that's so interesting to me.

And yet, so I've played with that kind of type of character as a way of exercising some of those demons where, of like, should I be on that TV show or should I be getting those kinds of jobs? And it's really cathartic and dark and still really edgy for me. It's not, I don't, it's rare and I'm curious.

As far as your interest in these things and maybe even specifically the people you have spoken with already, like is that edge, that willingness to kind of dance with uncertainty, I would imagine that often has, like there is despair real close by. Like it's not, it's right.

right behind it on the shelf often, you know? As is kind of this wonder and this feeling of degenerative nature of the cosmos or this feeling of abundance when you get to, when you get to.

either the next little island of certainty or something that feels connected or familiar or new and connected, right? I'm mixing my metaphors all over the place here.

George Laufenberg (32:06)
For good reason, right? Because this is the thing that's so hard to name. It's one of the things that's so hard to name. And the metaphors are slippery, I think, for really important reason. Like, island has an obvious visual appeal, right? Like, if the alternative is being at sea or something. But there isn't actually solid ground. Right? Because you immediately went to connection. Like, there's the relational dimension.

Ryan Eggensperger (32:31)
Yeah.

George Laufenberg (32:35)
which, not for nothing is also how you talked about, when you were framing, I asked you the question about how the, whether cadence or scale was a better metaphor for how your relationship to, the kind of waltz of like arrive, get settled, move on, arrive, get settled, move on. You went to the relational right away, your partnership. So all of which is just to say that I think, I think it really matters that the metaphor.

Ryan Eggensperger (32:52)
Right.

Mm, shi shi.

George Laufenberg (33:04)
Like it's not, it's not a lazy thinking thing, right? The metaphor is really hard and there's a lot at stake in the metaphor. Sure. Sure.

Ryan Eggensperger (33:12)
Absolutely. Okay. Okay. This is really interesting. So in practice, there is, mean, this is funny because it's what we were talking about with the sort of est conversation is when the times when people find something cynically or otherwise that sort of does feel like it encapsulates

that journey, is a desire, let's be sort of generous here, there is a desire to share that with people, slash capitalize on it, et cetera. But if you, at these points where, to be honest, I was thinking about this when I knew we were gonna have this conversation.

Naturally, as a writer, I spent a fair amount of time kind of being like, going through the different frameworks of like, is this really accessible or is that? Which of the metaphors that I've used for uncertainty feels most piquant right now? Which feels, the most tangible or?

fun even to play with or musical or whatnot. And there's not, like that there's, mean, so I went to a Buddhist school. After I left NYU, I ended up there after a couple of years. And so in Buddhism, right, for the sake of branding, we're talking about non-attachment,
George Laufenberg (34:52)
in Colorado.

Ryan Eggensperger (35:10)
the ego being able to recede and return as needed. So that's an oldie and a goodie, right? But these things like Edgework or one of my favorites, do know the band Built to Spill?

George Laufenberg (35:32)
Not well, but I know some of this stuff.

Ryan Eggensperger (35:34)
Yeah, they

were like a Pacific Northwest indie band from around that, like the millennium. And there was this song that I was obsessed with for years called Carry the Zero, right? So first off, the name of the band is Built to Spill, which is a, at least to me on acid in 1999, was like very obviously the self, right? Like you are filled.

Temporarily, you have a sense of something vivid and tangible and recognizable, but it is built to spill. That is going to empty out at a date, maybe sooner, maybe later. But at some point, that is going to spill and you are going to be an empty vessel again and will need to be filled with some sense of connection, meaning selfhood, whatever that is.

But so their song, this song is called carry the zero was for years was my favorite metaphor for that willingness to engage with uncertainty or non-attachment, which is you can look at the lyrics, they're, great, but essentially it's, the idea of carrying the zero, which obviously in math is like a ridiculous, meaningless thing, but philosophically the idea is

when you move on to the next moment, like you should always bring a zero with you. You should always bring that sense of space, not knowing, wonder.

detachment, non-attachment rather, even when...

you have seemingly, all of the things that are valued or that even personally you could want. I think a lot about the idea of someone, let's say in my industry, like someone, I'll just make it myself. Let's say I got some, let's say my career were a lot different than it is now.

some of these people that I went to school with and I was getting paid a lot of money making these movies and things.
The thing that I am fascinated by is how do you maintain that relationship with emptiness, even when you seemingly have these kind of markers of achievement.

It feels like the only thing. It feels like the most important thing.

Is that what this conversation's about?

George Laufenberg (38:41)
It is right now. Do you think any, can you think of any one?

has maybe even done that?

Ryan Eggensperger (38:51)
Who has?

George Laufenberg (38:52)
both achieved in the sense that we're talking about and carried the zero.

Ryan Eggensperger (38:58)
Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, I like to think artists who manage to reinvent themselves over and over.

George Laufenberg (39:13)
like David Byrne maybe, or...

Ryan Eggensperger (39:15)
Sure,

sure. David Byrne, David Bowie, Beyonce. The list goes on. I mean, I mean, Taylor Swift has this arrows thing, right. And so any time you are willing to pivot and kind of find a like return to the source, find something that

is not based on inertia, not based on habit. Yeah. And you can go back to a thing where you're like, I'm going to make

George Laufenberg (39:53)
Yeah.

Ryan Eggensperger (40:00)
whatever the thing is now. I wanna make an album that sounds nothing like, or I wanna make a film, Richard Linklater is a great example. Yeah, right. You know? I have these ideas.

George Laufenberg (40:09)
From the

scanner darkly to boyhood.

Ryan Eggensperger (40:12)
You

know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, David Lynch, obviously. Oh my God. And, notably, that's an old meditation guy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Notable. Yeah. So so the idea. And again, I apologize. feel like I'm all over the place. But the idea of to put it in dramatic terms, like what is

George Laufenberg (40:16)
Yeah.

It's like four Davids so far.

You're relevant.

Ryan Eggensperger (40:41)
I had this thought a few years ago where I was in a really, my writing practice is pretty robust these days. I just don't get kind of spooked by starting a project or like sitting down and actually working every day in a way that I used to. And so I had a realization that maybe is kind of arrogant or pretentious or something. But one morning I woke up and I was sitting down to write and had my

my coffee and kind of was just in like all the little things that make me comfortable when I'm sitting down to write. And I had this thought, tell me how pretentious this is, where I said, if I made, if I had a million dollars.

I would still need to do this every day in kind of the same way, you know? My coffee might be better, my whatever slippers might not have as many holes in them, things like that. But the practice of dealing with the empty page and kind of going back to the source is always going to be pretty much the same. Is always going to...

feel ideally as raw, as nervy, as potent as it ever does. And that was kind of this liberating thought to have where I was like, cool, well that doesn't mean I don't wanna.

succeed or don't want to make more money or anything but with that as kind of the North Star like I have this practice art practice that always brings me to

humility to emptiness. That feels really reliable or that's sort of comforting as a thing that

I have to return to. have to... It sort of equals out any other type of success. My willingness to do that every day, like to...

to fill that space with something that feels, I don't even know. Some days it's, if I can make myself laugh today, if I can move myself today, if I can like make myself, I can bring myself to tears, if I can write something that feels.

for lack of better word, honest. Then there is sort of, there is one thing practically in lieu of...

I don't know, religion or something, that I'm like, oh cool, I'm always gonna have that. I can always be in that place.

no matter where I end up, no matter the external circumstances. And there was kind of a spiritual aspect to that, of putting that into practice. And that's the metaphor. I mean, that's the metaphor, right? Is the blank page. In this case, or the blank canvas, or if you're an artist, that emptiness.

and your willingness to engage with it. I mean, that feels like the metaphor for uncertainty, the thing that, the zero that I kind of always want to carry with me.

George Laufenberg (45:05)
Yeah, that's not solid ground.

Ryan Eggensperger (45:07)
It's not. I mean, it's it's practical, though. I mean, it is practicable rather. But what is what is solid ground?

George Laufenberg (45:19)
I personally, I think it's a fantasy in this context. I'm going back to the when you were when you were looking for a metaphor, you started with Island, ground, and you went a few other places. And then a little later, when you were trying to work your way into a metaphor, all of the things that all the navigational aids that you deployed there were textural were like embodied. I'm going to say embodied sensation broadly construed like musical.
I'm losing, I'm forgetting, but there were a couple of other things you said that were all very much like, okay, it was watching you sort of take stock of it. How do I know when I'm there? Right. And it wasn't like, I have this fixed idea of what it should be and then I'll work it out. was a practice is a great word for it. think, right. It was like, know what it feels like. So when does it feel like that? What are the circumstances under which it feels like that? Well, and that's how you got to blank page.

Ryan Eggensperger (46:17)
Yeah. Yeah. Sure, sure. Sure. Well, what is reliably?

George Laufenberg (46:19)
terms of what you just narrated.

Ryan Eggensperger (46:27)
I don't know, mean, that practice, right? Can I ask you about that? Of course. For you? How do you engage with that? How do you touch? I tried to write a book once called How to Have More Nothing.

George Laufenberg (47:00)
What's the status of the manuscript?

Ryan Eggensperger (47:02)
I kind of it sort of took on a different form. It was sort of memoir reflection, poetic memoir. If I had to compare it to something, I'd say, I mean, ridiculously. Have you read any of the Knausgaard books? No, you know that what that is. Where is he? Norwegian?
George Laufenberg (47:22)
No.

Ryan Eggensperger (47:31)
Karl Ove Knausgård wrote six giant volumes, knowingly called My Struggle.
George Laufenberg (47:40)
This is ringing a vague bell. I don't know it.

Ryan Eggensperger (47:42)
I'm

going say 10, 15 years ago, they were kind of very, they're very popular. mean, it took several years for them to all come out. But they're just kind of memoir. And he's just a guy, he's just a writer. But so really beautifully rendered and kind of this, I don't know, I Proustian, like

sort of zooming in on all of the minutiae of one life as a universal reflection of these kind of human themes. But I had read the first of those books, which is gorgeous, gorgeous. And I was like, oh, I wonder if I could do something like that. If I can use, if I can just zoom in on kind of.

certain anecdotes from my own life in this organic poetic way. And and I was looking for the I was looking for the through line. And that was the last. No, that was a middle version was called How to Have More Nothing. And it was about exactly I think what this podcast is about.

It was about becoming comfortable with not knowing. And that tension constantly of wanting to, wanting to run away, wanting to escape things, wanting to have new experiences. And then obviously that, when that becomes terrifying or when you feel yourself off of a map that you know and.
George Laufenberg (49:39)
My dog's excited about something going on outside.

Ryan Eggensperger (49:43)
Have you moved a lot? Yeah. Do you, tell me if this is a familiar experience to you. When you, probably very different when you were single and without. Great. So, so the experience of moving to a new spot and the feeling of

George Laufenberg (49:44)
I have moved a lot.

Which is most of my life, yeah.

Ryan Eggensperger (50:13)
arriving there. Like once the hubbub of logistics of actually getting your stuff to a place and kind of the busy work of that settles and then...

There's a moment, and I think when I was writing about it, I kept trying to capture this moment in different ways of...

mean, for me, was really always terrifying. It was this moment of feeling alone and...

George Laufenberg (50:51)
Yeah.

Ryan Eggensperger (50:55)
disconnected and

I want to say arrogant or there was something about it that felt.
There's a moment of arriving, which obviously follows a moment of leaving. So whatever the thing was of wanting to, my body, my nervous system, wanting to return to this thing that I've just left behind because I had to get out of there and I had to do this other thing and that thing wasn't enough or that person wasn't enough.

or that situation was holding them back or there is a conceit in...

leaving.

which is, thing is, unless you're doing it under duress, right? This thing is going to be better. This thing is going to be more like me. It's going to be more fully blank, right? And then, so the moment that you, that sort of you begin that, when you arrive in that moment, when that bet is placed,

George Laufenberg (52:07)
I'm not running from, I'm running toward.

Ryan Eggensperger (52:22)
whatever it is, when, so the world takes you at your word, like, okay, great, now you live in Oakland.

What are you gonna do about it? And there is this moment of despair of like that newness, right? Of like, no, I didn't mean to do it. I wanna go back to, maybe I should call my ex-girlfriend and really like make it all right. This kind of scurrying back towards the known, right? The familiar, is that?

Is that an experience that you...
George Laufenberg (53:01)
Yeah, it's the bottom of the breath. Right, like, in a meditative, like box breath or whatever, pick your technique if you linger long at the bottom of the breath. Yeah, like you start to get that kind of drowning sensation. like, okay. I don't know. That's that's that like that was immediately the image that came up for me when you started down this down this thread. Okay. Yeah, I think I also was as you were talking about it thinking about

Ryan Eggensperger (53:22)
Sure.

George Laufenberg (53:28)
like Doppler effect or like there's a time lag there where the version of me that I've left behind like right before or right as it catches up. Right. Because like you like you know like in politics they talk about like an advanced team goes and like scouts the site out right like there's like a part of me that would be like the advanced team and I would like go there and I would you know like I would I would land and I would like it would be an event and it'd be exciting and all the novelty stuff right. Yeah. And then like

the principle arrives. And it's the great, what?

Ryan Eggensperger (53:59)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah.

George Laufenberg (54:06)
Right.

You know, you know the movie Cast Away? Sure. Right. like one of the bravest endings in mainstream American cinema, think. OK. Certainly of its era. Right. Because the shot it ends on, do you remember, is him writing the whole movie. Sure. Tom Hanks back.

Ryan Eggensperger (54:28)
Sure, sure,

was, George, was literally thinking about this morning. Not at all. I was literally thinking about the very end.

George Laufenberg (54:32)
You're kidding. You're not kidding.

The

shot is right. He's at this four way 90 degree angle intersection dirt road goes off to the cardinal points with nothing. Right. No, he's delivered the package that gave him the sense of meaning through his time on the island. All of that sort of shit. Right. The relationships over. It's like the great now what? And right. And that's the and that like that's what made it so brave. Yeah. That's what made it

Ryan Eggensperger (55:01)
Yes.

Yeah, brilliant. Well, another precedent that I think about almost every day. Do you know what I'm going to say? The end of The Graduate.

George Laufenberg (55:13)
No, I don't.

Yes, because it's the look on their faces as they look away from each other. Right. Or same like same era as a set piece earlier in this conversation, when you started with the group, I immediately thought of Mad Men. Right. The Ark of Mad Men, because you're talking like that version of masculinity, that like single orientation towards achievement, career, linear path sort of stuff, like men in the gray flannel suit. Yeah. And how does the series end? How does it end with Don Draper? Like the like the man who isn't.

himself, He's fucking excellent. Yeah, he's at Esalen.

Ryan Eggensperger (55:50)
Yeah, Although, there is, it ends after that though. Does it? Yeah. There's, it's really beautifully done. Okay. The very last, you remember the very last thing? it's the Coke commercial.

George Laufenberg (56:03)
I haven't seen it since it aired.

Ryan Eggensperger (56:08)
I'd like to buy the world a Coke. So it is that binary though, right? Like because they could have ended it on the...

George Laufenberg (56:19)
on the breath. That's the shot I remembered. That's so funny.

Ryan Eggensperger (56:22)
But

then they end it on the product. They end on how he capitalizes on that, how he makes that openness close to him by selling it. is, it's so genius because you actually get both. You get there and they zoom in. So it is this microcosm of the entire show, right? In those last...

in those choices to be like, yes, it's this, it's emptiness and then it's fullness. so reminding you that this is not only for him going to keep going to repeat that cycle endlessly, but for all of us in that way.

George Laufenberg (56:55)
percent.

So where were you thinking of Castaway this morning?

Ryan Eggensperger (57:16)
I was thinking about that idea of carrying the zero. So how does that character in Castaway?

ring and I was thinking on a really the first time I saw it I thought about it on a really neurotic kind of small scale level which was like is he gonna get fat again?

But I think contained within that is the idea of like, how much of that experience can he actually bring to whatever the next chapter is? How do you...

That's a fascinating thing in, I mean, I think about it in writing a lot. Like what is the talisman, right? What is the...

I don't even know the word. Giga, what is the item that contains that whole story in it? Is there a world where, let's talk about this character in Cast Away, where if he had some memento.

from that experience.

George Laufenberg (58:59)
Wilson, I'm sorry Wilson.

Ryan Eggensperger (59:01)
to bring with him, could he, if he went and bought a Wilson that day, right? After the credits roll, right? Go to Walmart, pick up a new Wilson and do like dress it the same way and then have a relationship with it that reminds him every day

Even though he has to go back to work, he has to live in the profane banality of wherever he, Omaha or wherever he lives.
Is there some piece of that is wholly alive? There's some piece of that emptiness, that thing that he learned, that experience that he can keep alive? I mean, that's the idea with meditation, For 20 minutes today, or however long people sit for, I'm going to experience this kind of primordial

I'm going to experience this emptiness. going to live in uncertainty. I'm going to do the most basic. I'm going to bring everything down to its most basic level of breath and consciousness.

so that...

I think of a variety of reasons, but so that I don't take anything for granted. So that my selfhood

is this weird adventure that I'm on.

that is different than utterness, utter consciousness, blackness, emptiness, right? I think that's what meditation is for. So can he, can Castaway, damn Castaway, don't know the character's name, can he maintain, I don't know, what did he learn out there?

I mean, he knows himself in a certain way. He doesn't, I'm sure, take things for granted like food, like breath, like being alive, right? There is a...

George Laufenberg (1:01:43)
Well, first.

For

how long? I love that we're doing the deep dwelling in stories. The two very weirdly orthogonal things I'm thinking about right now on the one hand are the scene in the Hurt Locker.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:02:01)
Never seen it.

George Laufenberg (1:02:01)
Okay, Catherine Miglow film about Jeremy Renner plays the bomb disposal tech in Iraq. And most of it's like, just like a very like deftly shot and staged war movie. And there's this moment where he's back home between tours. And he's in a supermarket. It's just like an aphor of serial choices. It's it's this sort of like beautifully rendered, you the abject banality of like,

Ryan Eggensperger (1:02:22)
Okay.

Right, right.

George Laufenberg (1:02:31)
How am I supposed to pretend any of this matters? Right. So he re-ups, right? And I'm also weirdly thinking about when you started talking about like, what can I take with me? What can he take with him? I thought of the little prince. The rose under glass. Right? The like, the thing you keep under glass. And like, at what cost do you bring something with you? What cost to it? What cost to you?

Ryan Eggensperger (1:02:34)
Right.

Okay. Great.

Hmm.

George Laufenberg (1:03:01)
like the question of like stasis and then.
How do you, I mean, this is the kind of question that's really profound if I'm like alone with it and I'm tripping, right? But like when you try to wrap words around it, it's like, yeah.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:03:20)
No, we can get there. can get there. What? Tell me. Go ahead.

George Laufenberg (1:03:23)
You know, how do you inhabit?

How do you be in yourself in the world, move through the world in time, in a way that...

I mean, this is the edge question. We're circling around this is the question, right? I mean, I think about like, so for me, the moving around, like there was a particularly compressed period in my mid twenties. I like after college, Vermont for three years, DC for two, out of the country a little bit, wound up in Utah for year working as a wilderness guide. And then back East to work in politics. And it was just in like all in the space of a fairly short period of time.
the Utah experience was transcendent in a lot of ways. Like I discovered what it felt like to be me, to be both like spiritually and emotionally fulfilled in the work that I was doing, right? Which was most basically about being present and bearing witness to people's experience of themselves that were radically different than experiences of themselves they had before. And immediately prior to that, had done a master's degree and it was the first time I had ever, sort of not

Ryan Eggensperger (1:04:26)
you

George Laufenberg (1:04:37)
checked my swing I had ever like actually tried like in college. I was a total screw up. barely finished. I like, had a lot of excuses that I built it. I told myself for like why I didn't live up to my potential, right? But the master's program was the first time I ever really tried. And so in that context, I found out what it felt like to be intellectually fulfilled, really. And I was like, all right, if I can have all of these things together in one place, then like, right. And I'm like, I'm going to do the Howard Dean scream from

Ryan Eggensperger (1:05:07)
Yeah

George Laufenberg (1:05:09)
And that didn't work. That really didn't work. was this sort of like, add this like structural logic of addiction, the grammar of addiction of like, if I could just free base these, all three of these kinds of intense presence, like follow your bliss and then free base it.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:05:30)
Okay. Interesting, Was it in hindsight, do feel like that was, were you trying to hang on to something that you, it would have been more useful or I guess I'm curious what you've learned since then in terms of

Like is that, because it sounds like to me that is an unwillingness to do the next.

George Laufenberg (1:06:07)
Yeah, it's

it's it's vocational or existential equivalent of comparing every relationship as an adult to high school love. Right. So your first in love narcotic euphoric experience. Right. You know, and I was I was trying so hard to find a way to not navigate by the linear, achievement oriented. Press pedal get food pellet thing. But also like grappling with some

Ryan Eggensperger (1:06:30)
Yeah.

George Laufenberg (1:06:37)
abiding ambivalence about that, like really wanting approval, wanting people wanting to be recognized. You know, I would never have used the word on Janu, but it's perfect. As like, Donnie was the whiz kid, Donnie, whatever, William H. Macy, who has so much love to Yeah. Right. Trying to find a way to get out of that while fighting myself the whole time.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:06:43)
Yes, yes.

George Laufenberg (1:07:05)
Right, like part of me desperately wanting to hold on to that potential as a basic orientation to the world. While being very aware as an adult that hadn't, like it worked fine as a kid, sorta, but not really. And it really wasn't working as an adult.
Ryan Eggensperger (1:07:22)
Okay, so is that, for example, so where is this setting, set this story, this moment is happening where on the planet?

George Laufenberg (1:07:33)
Well, I was in Utah for a while as a wilderness guide and I came back East and I worked in politics for a bit. Okay. Then I went back to grad school for the doctoral work. Okay. Which was supposed to be about like, okay, this broad high speed, I would in my case very much use dabbling or some kind of watered down version of dilettanteism.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:07:57)
So do me favor though, indulge the playwright in me. What's a scene that you can paint where you realize you're not getting the thing that you're after or there is a wall that you hit or there's a bottom to the breath.

mean, the interesting thing about these scenarios that we're talking about, I'm going to try and bring a couple of them together. That moment from cast away, the moment from the graduate, the moment I was talking about where I arrive at my new apartment and.

Let's say whatever the last practical thing is, I got groceries, right? And then I'm like, fuck, it's this weird time of day, it's 6.40 PM and I don't know anybody in this town. am I, what, the chasm, the maw of existence has just opened up in front of me. I feel like,

And maybe if you're gonna add one of these moments of sort of hitting a wall or arriving at the end of the sidewalk, where what is the, I feel like there are practical things that I do now based on having been in that moment a bunch of times that are really,

just actual physical practices that are not kind of philosophical or meditative states to enter or ways of recontextualizing that experience, but are actually just.

physical, like tangible practices that I do differently. I mean, the last time I relocated somewhere for a while there was I had a six month acting job in Seattle a few years back, 2022, I think. And so I had all that same stuff. I drove into town. was staying with, it was an apartment or like a sublet.

George Laufenberg (1:10:04)
Mm-hmm.

McQuinn.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:10:30)
a friend of a friend, but I didn't know those people. I don't know anyone in Seattle. I have one friend out on Woodby Island, but that's a different place. And so it was literally maybe, whatever it was, it was 6.18 PM. And I was like, all right, well now I'm here. And I went and did some grocery shopping. That was helpful.

I made myself some food.

And then I sat down and I wrote, I wasn't working on a project. I just kind of wrote my thoughts and kind of hung out with myself. And it was very aware of, I wasn't pretending in the journal, I wish I could, I should go find it. I wasn't pretending that I was in a different state than I was, than I was in a different situation. I was like,

I think I literally wrote, I am writing on this paper right now because I need to ground myself in this reality that I have entered. And that's funny to know that and yet still feel overwhelmed and disconnected.

And then I just kind of zoomed in on, and there's probably, this is probably a therapy thing, right? On the actual details in the room. I started literally writing down the things that I was looking at. There was a weird, there was like a Sarah Palin cutout, cardboard cutout that was in the closet of the room I was staying in. And I just, as soon as I started, I started making it as banal.

George Laufenberg (1:12:33)
real.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:12:34)
like as detailed and

Silly and not abstract as it actually was. Like all of a sudden it just became funny.

George Laufenberg (1:12:46)
It's not a problem that has to be solved, right? Not really. The problem is the thing between me and it. That I'm putting between me and it.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:12:48)
Not

Yes, where it's the meaning of, no, this bed is foreign to me. The paint on this wall is like, well, this is some other paint on a wall. And as soon as you can iterate kind of your relationship with it, as soon as it goes from that, in my practice that I'm talking about.

As soon as it becomes, it was this thing and now it's this thing. As soon as it goes through one transformation, all of a sudden that's a relationship. So I had to write it down and be like, this is what I see out the window. And it feels very, I don't know when I think about it, feels, I'm sure it is a therapy thing, right? Just like connecting with the details.
with the shapes and the colors. Or I don't know, I saw it in a movie somewhere. Isn't there like a rubber band thing? something just to bring you back into your body and not into the abstraction and the headiness of like what this means. And making it, honestly just making it silly. Making it stupid and...

George Laufenberg (1:13:57)
in.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:14:21)
For me at least, just getting specific about it is the quickest route to making something.

George Laufenberg (1:14:29)
Yeah.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:14:31)
stupid.

George Laufenberg (1:14:34)
In that moment, I was thinking about a couple of things, one being, the piece of Hemingway's writing advice that I always come back to, which is to start with one true sentence. know, silly is not a word that comes to mind regularly with reference to Hemingway, but it probably should because there's some absurdist quality to him as person as opposed to the writing, right? So.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:14:44)
Okay, great.

Sure.

George Laufenberg (1:15:04)
For a huge part of my adult life, I was very much involved in 12 step recovery stuff, which in some ways quarantined a lot of this. I would move to a new place and immediately drop right into a community. truly shared vulnerability, it solved a lot of that. But it only worked.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:15:21)
Okay.
George Laufenberg (1:15:32)
if I acted as though I was always going to be there and I laid down roots immediately. And I was thinking about like in 12 step meetings, you share some of your story and it's a, I mean, they're kind of, there's, it's a genre, right? I mean, you see it reproduced in film and play all the time, right? But like the kind of redemption. It's a time, right? Like the past was a pornography and then there was this moment and now everything's puppies in springtime. Yeah. Which of course is not remotely real.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:15:51)
genre of story. Yeah.

George Laufenberg (1:16:00)
Not everything that was in the past was awful. Not everything now is OK. But maybe there was a moment when awareness shifted. And that's a thing. But I would always, like I did a fair amount of speaking in this context. It's funny to think of it now, like conferences and in front of groups. Because it's not a story I've told for a long time. It's just not how I think of my story anymore.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:16:10)
Mm-hmm.

George Laufenberg (1:16:30)
but I would always start with like what was true in the moment. how, I'm feeling like, I'm feeling like my stomach is like, twisted up right now. Or like, I have an itch. Or like what, mean, literally I would like say something absurdly silly and concrete and like absolutely right now present true. But I couldn't, like it was priming the pump. It was like with truth, in like in a digestible.

dose, right? Like I needed to figure out. It wasn't about narrating some big anything. Aha.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:17:05)
Tell me

two things about that though. One is as far as origin that came from the Hemingway.

George Laufenberg (1:17:13)
No, no, I came to him. I came to the Hemingway quote afterwards. Okay. yeah, this is what I've doing.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:17:19)
So where did that practice, how did that find you?

George Laufenberg (1:17:21)
Thank you.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:17:28)
I mean...

George Laufenberg (1:17:29)
Well, was, I think it came from a, so one of the kind of, there's some pretty intense, the kind of fundamentalist streaks in the land of 12 step stuff, right? Some people can get very rigid about things. Not always, but like, so one of the, prescription for like when you're learning how to share your story from the podium in a meeting.

is, you that you start with, some very specific things like, what's your name? What's your sobriety date? What's your sponsor's name? What's their sponsor's name? So you're situating yourself within the lineage. And then I would, I saw, would, I would do that because I was, part of what was radically different about being in recovery was, that I actually like did things that people told me to do, which had never been my experience. I took advice. sought advice and took it. and like the single, without question, the single most

I'm going to say narcotic. What are the most wonderful things about early sobriety? Yeah. Was the experience of not having any secrets. Sure. The single most compelling argument for telling the truth is that you don't have to remember anything. Great. Yeah.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:18:46)
Bye.

George Laufenberg (1:18:49)
You know, and I would, I would, I was following direction and I would start my share from the podium with like, my name is George, my super writer day. is April 9th of 2001. And my home group is this and my sponsor is so-and-so. And as I felt myself as I watched myself do that over and over and over again, hundreds of times, at a certain point, I realized what was happening. So they used to say, like, and I say those things because they're, because if I can say them and they're true, then I know where I am. I'm in the middle of the boat. Like, again, this is like,

Might as well, if it were a church, these would be like call and response, wrote sorts of things. but at some point in the course of doing that as an embodied practice, I realized that like what was compelling about the truthiness of those things wasn't, that I was sort of safely located within the, ideological boundaries of this program. was that I was starting by saying things that were fucking true.

And it didn't, it wasn't so important that it was those specific things. I they mattered in context and for specific reasons, but what mattered was that what I was saying at the start, when I opened my mouth, the first things to come out of it need to be true. Otherwise I'm fucked. Otherwise my priority becomes managing how people see me and approval seeking and all of these things. And I'm not like, totally magically unencumbered by those things.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:20:13)
Cool,

George Laufenberg (1:20:19)
but I at least have a fighting fucking chance. If I start with something that's true.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:20:24)
The... because the alternative is what?

George Laufenberg (1:20:32)
The alternative is starting something that's true. What are you diffusing? The alternative is starting with something that I think will impress people. Okay, sure. Which is how I have navigated a lot of my adult.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:20:35)
Yeah, what is

Which is by definition is an attachment or is an ego

George Laufenberg (1:20:51)
Yes, an ego attachment. It's totally, absolutely. That's amazing. Which is precisely about the fantasy. I mean, there's no more seductive fantasy than uncertainty, right? It's precisely about the fantasy of solid ground, right? In the absence of that being a sustainable fantasy, I'll grab on to any fucking thing that floats. And like readily available, especially for like a straight white guy in the US with an advanced degree is it's not hard for me to impress people, right? To appear as an impressive person.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:21:09)
Sure.

on.

George Laufenberg (1:21:20)
Sure. In small doses, in short, like for short periods of time. Yeah. But it's like empty fucking calories.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:21:28)
Sure, sure, sure. Cool. OK. So that's

Can you go in on the alchemy or what is the thing, when you say that thing, that true thing, is there a change? Do you feel a switch flip? If you had to describe it.

George Laufenberg (1:22:04)
Physically. It's unclenching. Okay. Which is precisely the word that I use to describe my experience in meditation when I catch myself.

with wandering thoughts or whatever it is. Because invariably when I'm chasing thoughts in meditation, my body's responding to it. And it's rarely like my shoulders are actually up around my ears at this point, but it's still like there's some tension. Or it might just be like an internal, it feels like a muscle, I don't know if it actually is or not, but there's an embodied sensation of unclenching that's like, back into now, back into the present.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:22:40)
Amazing. it's usually, fill in the blank here, it's usually more blank than I thought it was. Or less blank than I thought it was. The version that is very present and is more fluid, what's the quality of that?

George Laufenberg (1:23:06)
It's less scary. It's less, I mean, if you were to watch me move through the day from altitude, like by a predator drone or something, right? You might think that I was desperately afraid of quiet and stillness and that the relentless pursuit of adequate distraction was the overriding imperative of my life. Left to my own devices.

Not to have to have an experience that is not that requires intention. Still for me, like I still default to distraction. See, sure. you know, and one of the ways I know that I'm not alone in this is that we have an entire culture that's built on. Sure. Giving you a 37 page diner menu full of distractions in every moment. huh. but I don't need to generalize for it to be true for me. Yeah.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:23:54)
Sure.

George Laufenberg (1:24:02)
And, I don't, you if you ask me about it in conversation, I'm going to tell you, I don't think that that's true. I don't think like distraction is helpful. I, know, I'm going to tell you what I, what I want to be true. Right. But if you watch my actual choices, know, it gives the line a little bit that like, fear is actually driving and fear of what? Well, that's when it gets really slippery. And this is really, the answer, like the big picture answer to your question about practice is like this conversation that we're having.

This project is that practice at this point in my life. I flipped switches like crazy through my 20s trying to solve the vocation problem by process of elimination. know, like wilderness guide, politics, trying to bring all these things together and whatever. And then like, okay, that didn't work. So, all right, so that was too broad. Let me go deep. I'll do a PhD in anthropology, which is a field where like, you don't even know what the fucking questions are until you hang out with people for months.

And then you take years to answer the, to understand how they answer their questions. And then you take years to write it up. Average time to degree in anthropology for a PhD was like 9.6 years when I did it. and like, so it was all about letting questions breathe. And like, that's beautiful in theory, but it doesn't happen in theory. happens in actual practice. And where that practice occurs is in an institution.

higher education that is one of the most, I mean, talk about inertia. Like the entire thing is built around approval dispensation. Yeah. Right. And it's, I mean, this is massive digression, but like, I have met a vanishingly small number of, I mean, I've been at some like prestigious institutions, right? Undergrad at Johns Hopkins, master's at Georgetown, PhD at Princeton. I have met a vanishingly small number of people who are like,

the primates for whom that institution is actually necessary. There's like a tiny number of people who I have met who can only function at this particular combination of temperature and pressure. Like deep sea creatures kind of things. And under those careful conditions, they do fucking mind bogglingly magical things. And one of my professors at Princeton was obviously one of the most dizzyingly intelligent erudite

nice soft spoken, like delicate fragile mammals I've ever met. And there was like, I mean, I three or four classes with him. It was on my dissertation committee. I barely understood any of his books. It was one day in class where I happened for, 700 monkeys typing for 700 years. Like I happened to get maybe 60, 65 % of the references he made in the course of talking. And it was like watching someone weave a four dimensional tapestry.

with light. I mean, you'd need acid to like, to try to visualize. Yeah. And it was like, that's right. This is why. Like, this is the guy for whom this exists. And then there are like thousands of people who really want to be that but aren't. And I am, Ken B was one of those people. I'm pretty smart. I'm not that. Like, that's a different thing. Okay. And like, there's a weird

Ryan Eggensperger (1:27:05)
Sure.

I hear you.

George Laufenberg (1:27:22)
messy, like the institution does not allow for, sort of grieving that in a public way. Like you just kind of quietly go. Okay.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:27:36)
Okay, okay.

George Laufenberg (1:27:37)
Big digression, but like the point of that as a like project within my life was about letting some questions breathe. And there were questions, know, like they're vocational questions, like meaning purpose. What am I doing with my life? You know, I'd had these complicated, profound experiences with metaphysical healing and intellectual, like intense intellectual labor and, transpersonal psychology stuff.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:27:54)
Sure.

George Laufenberg (1:28:06)
Right. know, talking about Naropa, Like the epicenter of that in the US.
When you asked about moments a few minutes ago, I forgot how you phrased the question exactly, but before I got up, you asked about moments where I was like aware of that, like of what I was doing not working. Something I'm paraphrasing there, but is that sort of roughly?
Ryan Eggensperger (1:28:31)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

George Laufenberg (1:28:42)
I thought of a couple.
There was a point, excuse me, there was this like year-long arc in my graduate study from, I'm gonna say like...

September or August of, oh yeah, that's fucking nice to frame it like that, we'll say Labor Day weekend of like, of like 2008 to 2009. When I had, I had gone in to this, I was on this like fucking rocket sled, went in to do PhD work. had, crafted this like compelling, witty elevator pitch of a proposal. It was very theoretically nuanced and sophisticated and sounded great.

and I had this, stop me if I told you this when we were, maybe I got into this once upon a time, but like, when I was trying to figure out if PhD was the next step and I was trying to, I was going to apply to programs. A friend of mine suggested like, why don't you go like crash the conference that they have and see what they're actually talking about. I couldn't think of a reason why that wasn't a good idea. So it turned out that the anthropology conference was like the next weekend. So I got on a plane to San Jose and like,

went there and they couldn't figure out how to register me. And so they found a category that was like underemployed professional or something. So I working in state government in New Jersey at the time. And like some of it was really interesting and some of it was like really not. But like on the whole, was like, yeah, I could spend some time with these folks. And then the Saturday night of the thing was actually my birthday, my 20, no 30. That was the 29th birthday, I think.

And, I went to like, there's like the high prestige keynote addresses for the subsections, like medical anthropology and this kind of fancy anthropology and that. And then there was one that was like the society for the anthropology of consciousness. I was like, what does, and I walked in and it's like, right away what's what table these kids sat at middle school. Okay. It's like the Dungeons and Dragons crowd. Yeah. And like, I immediately was like, I hope no one sees me here. Like I'm in San Jose.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:30:40)
Mm-hmm.

George Laufenberg (1:30:53)
Nobody, I don't know anyone. Nobody knows me. I'm like this random weirdo from New Jersey who showed up to crash this conference for a field I'm not even in And my first reaction is like, my God, I hope nobody, you
They were taught that the keynote was a woman named Edith Turner who...
who, part of the husband wife team, Victor Turner, you may have come across some of his stuff in like theater land. He did a lot on drama and ritual and he's like one of the reasons, a lot of the language that we have in popular culture for things like rites of passage and like the term liminality, like that's Victor Turner. Not originally, but he's white, we know it.
ritual and the sort of like transcendent power of community, the experience of the powerful shared experience. Again, like not the only guy who ever thought about this stuff, but one of the reasons it's popular in the way that it is. And he'd been dead for a minute, but his wife Edith gave a talk on new directions in the study of spirit experience.

And I was riveted by this talk. And I like, I left there and I was up the whole night journaling like a mad bastard. Like, my God, this is why I'm here. This is how all these things fit together. is, like white hot laser beam focus. Do I need to blow up the whole proposal that I wrote for this, very theoretically erudite project in Argentina, political economy and subjectivity and all this stuff. like,

The piece I made with that was that, you know what, I don't actually have to blow that up. Proposals and applications are genre exercises. It's about demonstrating that you can think in project scale terms. we'll figure it out later. So I didn't blow it up. I applied. I got into a couple of places. I wound up going to Princeton. going in, weirdly sort of chose the program.

I mean, here Princeton, you think like, I mean, like you think the same thing I think, right? It's like, it's fucking Princeton. It came down to either UCLA or Princeton for me. And if I, if I had known that I wanted to be a professional, like an anthropology professor, UCLA would have been the smarter choice. It's a higher prestige department in some very specific ways. Princeton, like I didn't want to still be in Jersey. I didn't want to stay on the East coast. I wound up back in Jersey for reasons I didn't fully understand, but it was good to sort of bury some ghosts.

And, but being there, being in the anthropology department felt nothing like the rest of the campus. was like the most comfortable in your own skin, relaxed. Like every time I started to go into the like elevator talk with somebody in the department, you're like, yeah, I read your proposal. Like, what'd you think about this thing in the news this morning? Or like, what do you, it was just people, just people being people. was like, it was a series of soft clicks instead of a big dramatic crescendo.

kind of thing. And I had spent so much of my life navigating by like dramatic, imperative, consuming, like that kind of shit. Let's see what happens when I listen in this different way and go this other direction. And so I went to Princeton and I got there and I don't think I was there for like an hour before I immediately threw myself under the bus.

through, sold everything that I thought down the river and started chasing approval and like ego feeding shit. It took no time at all, you know? And I spent the whole first year that I was there, like really trying to make this Argentina project happen because it like, I liked how people looked at me when I talked about it because I sounded really smart. And I got back from the summer.

preliminary research trip I was in Argentina for most of that summer. I got back and I was having this really

See you in a

This timeline's getting a little messed up in my head right now. But I've also been talking for quite a long time. The salient point here is that I had...

Yeah, actually give me two seconds. Yeah. You know, we'll gather.

was, yeah, it was the second year. was the start of the second year. I got back from Argentina and, I had been...

this woman in my graduate program and I have been like in this like increasingly, sort of high school-y, will they or won't they get together dance thing. And I get back from Argentina and I got a call.

that are my.

I don't know this is going to make any sense at all, the like one of the great loves of my life as young was woman like I really early 20s, like many years earlier and we knew each other because our parents they go into college together. so the this woman's mother who was my mother's good friend was dying of cancer. Well, they heard cancer come back and

my mother called to say like hey this person is dying like do you want to come say goodbye and You know and I was like the things with this girl had like it hadn't ended well And it was like not a great I was like and she was about to get married to this person to this other guy and I was like I like I have no business being in this woman's world right now Like this is her mother her she's getting married like I don't want to fucking mess in it know I don't need to complicate her scene at all but it felt important to go and I was

doing better listening to that like gentle tug sensation. And I went to, we went to the hospital, drove through like the most torrential weather I have ever seen in the continental U S like, well, second most. Um, and it was like a hurricane force went to wrench. couldn't see through sheets of rain. get to the hospital. This woman is in her hospital bed. Um, we have like an hour before, like between the daughter being there. So I like, I

We came in after she was there. wasn't part of her scene at all. She didn't have to deal with me at all. And my mother and I go to this woman's bedside and we just like, I'm holding one of her hands and my mother's holding her other hand and I'm holding my mother's hand across this bed. And this like hemorrhagic grief and pain. It wasn't mine. It moving through me at speed. Like

And my mother was very aware of it. was, it was like, I had, like, I had to ask Barbara to, like, let me have it. She was nonverbal at that point. and we had this, I don't know how long it lasted five minutes, 15 minutes, this, was like being the ground for a lightning strike, like channeling that into the ground. and when it was over,

She fell asleep pain free for the first time in I don't know how long. And we like left quietly and she was actually able to be present to her daughter's wedding before she died. And like her daughter has no idea that I was there. like it felt like it felt profoundly clean in a number of ways. And it also felt like touching something that had been like.
in the vein of like the most important things I had ever been near. Like I had a number of really powerful, like, woo mystical experiences in Utah and this work in the desert. doing anthropology was in part about finding a way to inhabit my own intense ambivalence about those experiences. So I had this incredible crazy experience at the hospital with this woman.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:39:18)
Right.

George Laufenberg (1:39:24)
Go back to Princeton that night, have this like narcotic interaction with this woman who were like doing the dance thing. Then get back to work. And I'm trying to make this Argentina thing happen. And I, wow, okay. It's later than I realized. And I'm giving you my life story, which was not the plan.
Let me, let me cut a little bit here. The question that we started with this part of the conversation was like, when do right? That it's not working. Some version of that. I hit this point where I was, I couldn't like read anymore. couldn't write anymore. I was like spending entire days in the library, know, in the library, like watching, Ryan Eggensperger (1:40:07)
Sure, right.

George Laufenberg (1:40:20)
through seasons of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Just not like, this is crazy. What am I doing right now? I'm trying to distract myself. Before I went to my advisors and I was like, I don't know how to work on something that I believe in and care about. I'm afraid I'm gonna like change it if I touch it and I don't wanna mess it up. And this like shared experience of sacred space is like the most beautiful thing I've ever been near. And I'm scared to look too closely at it but I also don't wanna spend any more of my life not doing that. So like.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:40:27)
Yeah, yeah.

George Laufenberg (1:40:49)
What do you think? And they were great. They were really supportive. like, I had a crazy couple of months, weeks actually, it was like two weeks. This is a crazy compressed two week stretch where I like, was like, all right, I know from Utah that this program I did in Utah as a wilderness guide was like 12 step stuff, psychotherapy and Native American religious spiritual practices, which like, yeah, it's as problematic as it sounds.

But somewhere there was a Lakota medicine man talking to Whitey about this stuff. maybe I'll go spend half the summer next summer on a reservation, checking that down. And I knew from my mother, who had done this shamanic stuff in Peru, that there was a whole mystical tourism industry in part of the Andes where this sort of thing was happening. It's kind of like cross-cultural teaching and learning stuff.

within two weeks of me saying like, all right, I'm gonna, think I'm gonna do, I'm split the summer, do two preliminary trips, one to a reservation, one to Peru, within two weeks of that, it turned out that the guy who was teaching my like intermediate Spanish class, instead of being like random grad student number six, was a major Peruvian poet who'd fled Fujimori. And like a week later, I was in with this therapist who a friend of mine had recommended in the counseling center at the university.

You know, I'm going like, let me let me game this out. You tell me if it sounds crazy. And I'm talking through the my plan for the summer ahead and stuff. And I'm looking around his office and he's got all this sort of like garden variety, new age, like Kawhi poster, blackout speaks on the shelf, that sort of shit. But he's also got like some obscure ritual and ceremonial implements that are like Lakota and Providence. And when I get done saying like, I'm going to go to the reservation to one of these reservations and try to find somebody, medicine person who's working with white mental health professionals.

And he's like, well, actually I Sundanced like eight times. So I can put you in touch just to be. Did I tell you all this already?

Ryan Eggensperger (1:42:53)
Yeah.

Yeah, some of it sounds familiar.

George Laufenberg (1:42:58)
Uh huh. Anyway, like short story long, right? This was this whole radical presence, this like compelling, powerful experience, of like a pivot and leaning into all of this stuff. the, half the summer in Peru and half the summer in on the reservation. And I got back and this woman from my program and I like,

finally got together and then it like it fell apart immediately and I went into like by far the worst depression I've ever been in Like if I had to do over again, I would have gone inpatient in a heartbeat I had no idea how bad it was gonna get I really it's blind luck that I made it out the other side of it and like at the end of the day how I understand that is not so much about like, you know her at all, but

I had put onto this relationship the idea that this woman was gonna be the way that I brought together all of this stuff into one place. All of these things that I care about that I'm scared that I'm gonna be judged for caring about and being interested in. It's gonna be approved of in some way. And I was gonna be okay. If she accepted me, I would.

It was, it wasn't about her. was just this like shit. And when it like, when it all fell apart, it turned out that was like a load bearing house of cards. and I went down a fucking rabbit hole. and I mean, I eventually found my way into a version of research that like the, experience of the research, which was really about relationships was fantastically

compelling and moving and powerful. And as soon as I tried to write about it was so clear. If I had trusted myself better, I never would have finished the PhD. If I really was good at listening to myself, I would have said that after the research, like, know what? This was amazing. Thank you for this. I'm done now. But instead, because of the approval seeking stuff, right? I spent a couple, spent years finishing this doorstop of a dissertation that like none of the really important stuff that happened in the field was in the dissertation.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:45:22)
Right. Almost none of it. Yeah.

George Laufenberg (1:45:23)
Um, which is a crazy long ass winding answer to your question.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:45:28)
Well, listen to that. The, the question that comes to mind is right now, what's the difference? What do you practice differently? Like how have you given yourself, or like navigational tools to be willing to

Spend more time.

Adrift.

in a way that might be really fruitful. Or it sounds like for studying that specific type of material, there is a...
there is a willingness to, I don't know, mean obviously there's a sweet spot of like journalistic or research kind of rigor and things and then the willingness to, did you read How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Which I thought did it really beautifully. Yeah. And like when I sent that to kind of,

trippy friends of mine, were like, but it's so blah blah. And I'm like that it's too organized or, it kind of adheres to recognizable, not academic, but like it is written for people who don't need to kind of have any sort of suspension of disbelief or like spirituality or like a,
It is as scientific as I think you can get while leaving that, actual heart of it mystical. And I was like, no, that's what I thought. You should read it. You dumbass. Because it sort of legitimizes the mystery by working right up to it with recognizable kind of scientific rigor.

and then getting and then being like, and then, and then there's the part that's like, that is actual mystery. Instead of most of us when we experiment with psychedelics and things, hallucinogens and whatnot, are like, it's all like, I just want all this. And to live like that instead of kind of, think where we're getting to is what is the part that is
George Laufenberg (1:48:08)
all the time.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:48:20)
that you can take with you.

George Laufenberg (1:48:24)
Yeah, I think if I'd read Michael Pollan before graduate school, I wouldn't have gone to graduate school. would have just done stuff and written about it. Because that's is precise. I referred to that book as paradigmatic for the way I'm trying to come at stuff now in a lot of different contexts. Cool. I have a hard copy upstairs and I have an audio book as well. Yeah,
Ryan Eggensperger (1:48:31)
Yeah.

Sure.
is a

Also, is the practice? What is the practice? Do have to go? Oh, yeah. OK. Great. So what is the yeah, mean, what is the if for the sake of kind of concision, was a case that story you just told was a case of trying to.

George Laufenberg (1:48:54)
Like 10 minutes.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:49:18)
Like using the wrong set of tools to engage with a certain subject matter.
George Laufenberg (1:49:26)
It's mystery is everything in this, right? It's absolutely about mystery. it's I thought I had found a way to like social science as like, you don't want to cut the thing open and see what's inside it. Social science has useful tools for seeing what goes on in the social world around it. And I thought that's what I was doing, but it still sort of didn't work for me. Right. A good example in like condensed form. Right. So I

chased a bunch of different relationships down to research, meeting people relationships to connect with someone on this one Lakota reservation who like didn't get back to me, didn't get back to me, didn't get back to me. So I just showed up like on the reservation in South Dakota and she answered the door and she's like, I'm glad you're here. I'm sorry I didn't write you back. We talked for four hours and this amazing conversation.

And she's like, look, I normally, don't say things like this to researchers who come here, but I think you should see where we come from. And here are these four spiritual sites that you, sacred sites you should go to and just see what, just be present and see what happens for you. And I said, okay, I'll call you when I'm coming back. And so I left and one of the places, was all these like places around the periphery of the Black Hills, which are in the Lakota origin story or like where the worlds connect. And

One of them is Wind Cave, which is now a national park. You ever been out that way? In the south, in the Black Hills? It's one of the two or three largest cave systems in the world. 2,000 plus miles of cave underground. It's unbelievable. And I got there and I immediately went underground, headlamp, I'm fuck, I'm dirty underground, doing the thing. And at the end of the day, I come out and I'm exhausted and dirty and like, what am I doing here? And I walk over to the, I see a sign for the natural entrance, which is like, a hundred years ago, two white kids found this thing and went in and like, my God, it's, it's amazing. And now there's a glass visitor center and like they sell concessions and shit, but excuse me for many thousands of millions of years before that. Like wind cave was just this, like there's a 14 inch high light bulb shaped hole in the ground. And like, it's 105 degrees. It's prairie summer day, right? Plain summer day.

And 50 degree air is blowing out of this hole in the ground. It's like the fucking breath of the earth. I mean, like the pressure's equalizing between the caves and the outside atmosphere. But like, I like, I got over there and I'm like, I'm dirty, my head lamp. And I'm like, I was like I'd never seen a more like straightforwardly.

obvious like instance of mystery, right? Like imagining being on the plains in 105 degrees and like the earth is breathing through this tiny little, it's like, should have like just built a, if you're building anything there, it should have been like a cathedral. a, just some benches to be there and be in awe. Like that's the orientation. It's just awe.
Ryan Eggensperger (1:52:41)
Okay.

So how important is it to you to get like a book out of this? What if there's no, what if that doesn't happen? How does that change your relationship to these experiences?

George Laufenberg (1:53:04)
well, I think what I've learned is that, yeah, I think what I've learned is that like no book is much better than the wrong book. Okay. The dissertation was the wrong book. I've gone through in the last like six months, I've gone through a couple of drafts of what might turn out to be the right book. Yeah. But, the experience of it has made it clear that it's not quite there yet.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:53:06)
A book and scare quotes.

George Laufenberg (1:53:32)
Okay. And like at a level like fundamental orientation towards it. Like, and I'm very much trying, but like the drafts are like my version of Michael Pollan, like present weaving through the narrative, different approach to it. So like maybe there's a book, but like what I like, what I care about at the end of the day is being able to tolerate the experience of being in my own skin. Okay. Right. Like being able to live life in a way that like doesn't

Ryan Eggensperger (1:53:43)
This is.

George Laufenberg (1:54:02)
make other people around like on a good day like

I make a tiny piece of the world a little better by being in it on a good day. And on a bad day, I make it worse. And that those are relational questions, right? Like I either hold space or create space where, like you did for me on the post office lawn, where it's like, it's, I forget to be where like you forget to be scared for a few minutes and you sort of unfold playfully into wonder and possibility.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:54:36)
Yeah.

George Laufenberg (1:54:37)
or I fall into the performance of competence, approval seeking sort of shit that, sets the example for my kids that I deeply don't want them to internalize. And like, that's a very stark binary and like lots of life happens in between those two points. But I guess like, I care a lot less about the book. mean, if the book or if it's podcast or whatever the thing, like if like there's a thing in the world, if it has value, it will be because it's.

in some way helpful to other people in terms of enabling them to get out of their own way long enough to have a different experience of themselves in the way that other people have done for me.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:55:23)
Sure, sure, sure. So this is all part of it, right? I mean, all of that, the wrong way goal is part of the narrative, right?

George Laufenberg (1:55:25)
That's the hope.

Yeah, it has to be. I mean, like from a nuts and bolts writing perspective, I struggled because I either like, as you just heard, when I hijacked our conversation with that massive digression, I like, I know how to like, tell the full version of that story, or to just say like a thing happened moving on. Like, I haven't figured out like one of the things I love about how Paul and does what he does is it's a really his presence is like artfully judicious. Meaning like

He's in there just enough. has a perfect pitch for whatever the equivalent of perfect pitch is for presence in the text. Enough to invite identity. mean, it probably helps that I'm like, we're demographically very similar and educated straight white guys in America, whatever. That makes it easier. yeah, perfect pitch is the best metaphor I can think of for his capacity to be present at just the right

degree that it doesn't take over, but it becomes this kind of vector.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:56:47)
Uh-huh. Hmm.

George Laufenberg (1:56:55)
So where's the edge now for you?

Ryan Eggensperger (1:57:04)
It's tiny. mean, that's what's so interesting is finding, figuring out.

how to, like we've been discussing with Castaway or whatever, how to.

experience that.

daily without it being how to find an edge that's not an upheaval of

actual stability or actual

Like what is a tiny version, let's say you could have a tiny version of that cave on your desk while you're writing that is still connected to...

that depth and that vastness. That's sort of the practice is recognizing...

that moment of emptiness and filling it that I had when I would move to a new city, is there a way to do that every day? it's honestly, it's just creativity. I gave up watching movies for the last two months. And that was a good one. Like forcing myself to sit with...

forcing myself to generate narrative rather than borrowing it from other places. that's a neat trick. That's kind of a new one for me. And, but in order to even want that as opposed to the narrative that I would walk around kind of, the baseline narrative that I wake up with every morning, I am this guy.

is interested in these things, I'm probably gonna spend today doing X, and Z to introduce a little bit of emptiness into that by...

Honestly, there's like an abstinence thing, just from distraction. And that's usually not something that happens without doing it intentionally.

George Laufenberg (1:59:57)
carrying zero.

Ryan Eggensperger (1:59:58)
Yeah, and...

I just need to constantly delete Instagram.

I'll post something if I have something to promote or if I have something actually going on and then I can't have it. It's so easy to have these knee-jerk, like, nothing's going on. Like, I need to fill the space. And so remembering, remembering how funny it is. Emptiness.

That's the key is instead of when I was younger, seeing emptiness as this call to arms or this threat or this challenge to do something once more. Yeah, something epic, something that means a lot.

George Laufenberg (2:00:56)
Once more into the void, dear friends.

Ryan Eggensperger (2:01:07)
to see emptiness as genuinely funny. It's funny to need narrative. So it's funny to not have it. And then honestly just start.

with something true, even if that's.

making noise.

George Laufenberg (2:01:36)
Literally. What's the true noise right now?

My dog agrees. You got a shake from Bowie out of that one. Ryan, it's been just an absolute pleasure, it always is, to share some space and time in the big empty with you.

Ryan Eggensperger (2:01:57)
I really appreciate it. Thanks for the invitation. We'll continue this indefinitely.

George Laufenberg (2:02:00)
Thank you, brother.

George Laufenberg (2:02:10)
Ryan mentioned a journal entry from 2004. He was twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old. No more mongrel genius. A directive to himself. Stop performing the potential. Start doing the thing. I thought about that phrase a lot since we recorded this conversation. You can find Ryan's work, the plays, the music, what he's making in Helena in the episode description and at the Principal Uncertainty dot com. If this conversation found you somewhere useful, I'd love to know.

Find me on Substack or leave a comment wherever you're listening. The next conversation picks up something this one left in the air. Different person, different register, someone who's been through things that are harder to name than an empty page, and who has found her own way of answering the same question. What does it actually look like to carry the zero when the stakes are real? I'll see you then. This is the principal uncertainty. I'm George Laufenberg. Thanks for listening.