Floridation
A podcast about life in Florida hosted by Will and Jon and recorded at Cork Arts District in Jacksonville FL.
Season 2 focuses on the local art and culture in North Florida when we interview the artists and makers of culture in the region.
Season 1 focused on making fun of Florida politics in 2025.
Started as an excuse to get drunk on a weeknight and record the evidence, Floridation has since become the single most important podcast in American history. Theme music by the late Brian Jerin.
Floridation
Jim Draper (part 2) - Shantyboat Stories & Taxodium
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We discuss shantyboat writer’s workshops with Lynn Harlin and Jim’s book of short fiction. Dystopian walks and the dirty Suwannee River. Taxodium, more than just his big Cummer exhibition, a multi- disciplinary exploration of the local sentinels that know more than entire civilizations. No kneed to apologize.
Season 2 of Floridation discusses art and culture in Northeast Florida with a different artist or culture maker each episode.
Thanks for putting a little a Florida in you. Y'all come back now, hear?
Um, so I want to get to Taxodium before we're done, but before we get there, I want to talk a little bit about your writing. Okay. Um, because I think that it was I think the people that have known you for a long time as a visual artist in town,
Shantyboat Stories
SPEAKER_02you and I have known each other from doing the Shanty Boat workshops. Like we've done those things in parallel and we've always talked about writing. So it wasn't unusual to me, but I found that a lot of people were surprised when I said that you'd published a book and they were like, wait, uh it's like an art book. And I was like, Well, it's like it's short stories, it's uh fiction stories, you know what I mean? And um, and it felt to people like a departure, but you said something to me that it was really uh just really stuck with me, which was it's all painting. Yeah, like it's the same thing. I'm just telling a story in a different medium. I'd like you to I'd like to know more about it.
SPEAKER_00Uh a friend of of John and ours, uh John and mine named Lynn Skapiak Harling is uh is a uh I had a had for years a workshop up on the Trout River and this plywood and tin box, and John knows it well because he would help keep it afloat, um, that was sported by big blue barrels filled with air. Yeah, like beverage barrels or something. Yeah, beverage barrels. Yeah. Um so um uh you would go up there and it was it was so weird because you would step onto the boat and things changed. There was a leveler, it was a like all of a sudden everything went away. And I love those workshops. I went to them for years and years. And um there were fiction workshops, and we had a formula. She was very, very professional, very formula maic with her teaching skills. And I told her at one point, I said, you know, I I've adopted your teaching skills and teaching art classes because it's the same thing. It's it's there's just no difference. Instead of writing with a with a brush, you're writing with words. I mean, it's just the same, it's all the same. And uh, you know, you're communicating in a way, whatever way you have to communicate. Uh words are uh more difficult symbols, I think, because there's more people who read than look at paintings, frankly. And they can have so many different meanings to different people.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah words are crazy. Words are crazy. Symbols are crazy too, but they're all it it all is. Uh I'm John. I'm Will. This is Flioridation.
SPEAKER_00But anyway, but I I didn't know I could do it. Kind of I always wanted to be uh a writer, but I was always kind of told that I was illiterate. I couldn't spell, I couldn't, I just and I just couldn't figure out the the the stuff around writing. And so uh it took a couple of workshops and and Lynn would she'd cuss at you and do all these, you know, her teeth would fall out and just and but it was wonderful. I mean she's a she's an It was a cute cruelty. Oh, it's yeah, she's very the most amazing, the most engaging teacher, communicator I've ever seen in my life. Yeah. And so um, and she championed me and helped me, and she'd just say, God damn it, Jim, you're gonna have you know, she would she would tell you what you know, you're she'd give you what for. She would what for. And um, so um anyway, so I started doing these stories, and I'm a performer, I think, and I love making people laugh. And some of the stories that I did kind of got a rise out of people. Yeah. And um, and so and I like just kind of going there and not giving it.
SPEAKER_02And so and it's such a vision of the South. This is kind of why I was asking you about the South earlier, because in it you can kind of see your dichotomy of what you love about the South, yeah, and what also like you sort of disdain about like kind of the just the the echoes of uh of uh previous philosophies and stuff that seem to negate everything that's beautiful about people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And it's and it's kind of it is that kind of that razor blade you walk down of the south because if you you know you go either way, and people do. Yeah. Um so anyway, I the name of the book is Shantyboat Hymns. Shady Boat Stories, Shanty Boat Stories, Shanty Boat Stories. There's a uh one of my favorite stories in it, it's called Hymn at Rock Creek, which is a baptism gone bad, and they do. We know that they do often. Um maybe usually. But I hit uh the book is about assumptions. I mean, the the the the stories are about these erroneous assumptions that we make more often. This and that just seems to be, and I kind of got the theme after I read it through myself after I'd written it. I said, this is all every story just about is about somebody assume something that's not right. And so that's kind of what we do. We just, you know, we call we make uh assumptions inspired by culture that are more often than not wrong. And uh and you know, the bottom line is that there's good lurking underneath all of it. There's a good, there's a good there's I I do feel that there's a general goodness in the world. There's an uh you know, I'm I'm exceedingly optimistic feel that there's good, but it's often you know the the thing we have to get over is the fact that you know we have all these these weird weird things that are just kind of keeping us from from just observing good and um and is the
Radical Naturalism & Human Hubris
SPEAKER_00is the good um linked to more to nature maybe than it is to like human progress?
SPEAKER_02Progress in the traditional sense, cities.
SPEAKER_00Well, and that's and that's the thing. Uh it it's all nature. It's just like good nature.
SPEAKER_02Human progress is nature.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's like good nature and bad nature. I think as a species, our downfall is the fact that we don't uh we don't consider other species and as we move forward.
SPEAKER_02I always found it interesting that uh one point we were talking about uh people being afraid to swim because of sharks, and you were like, sharks don't want to eat you, they don't like the way you smell.
SPEAKER_00No, no, people are nasty. Human meat is nasty.
SPEAKER_02So humans just go around thinking everything wants everybody wants to eat them.
SPEAKER_00And then you know, it it isn't that uh significant hubris to think that we that everybody wants to eat. How many people do you know have been eaten by anything? Snake bites in the United States of America, snake uh deaths attributed to snake bites are like four a year. And most of those are Baptist churches. And those are those are baptism bags.
SPEAKER_03Baptist on bad.
Jim vs Hammerhead
SPEAKER_00So um I mean, uh I do this, we used to do these uh paddles in the Everglades. I would go down, we'd be a little group, and you're just uh one day um uh we had paddled, uh John Ladd, a good friend of mine now, we had paddled, I think, 19 miles. We paddled up the fact we started at dawn, sun came up, dolphins jumping, and we paddled across Facquachee Bay up into the the Fakahatchie River basin, um, and then back. It was just a glorious day, exhausting. Um, and then I got back, nasty stinking. You know, you you couldn't get out, so you had a lot of issues in the boat that were just nasty. So you just uh so and I I had taken a folding chair out into the Gulf and set the folding chair in the water, and I got my clothes off, and I was I had shampoo and stuff. I said just had to get clean. Yeah. And so I had all set up, and this dang shark came up, and this this uh hammerhead shark came up, and I was in probably three feet of water, and this hammerhead shark came up and was just like nosing around. I said, I kicked him in the face. I said, It's my turn.
SPEAKER_03I mean, those are festive, aren't they?
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, they're awful. I said, I don't care. I'm nasty, I stink, I'm tired, go away. And I kicked him in the face and he swam off. So I never heard of it. So it's kind of like it's just not the way it is, you know. The two most dangerous animals in the woods are the the worst one is a one you might have heard of called Homo sapiens. Uh and the second is pigs. Pigs will eat you. Oh, yeah, boy, terrible eat you. And so the everything else, you know. Yeah, I'm much more afraid of people than I am sharks. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So that uh that's a great transition into um
Dystopian Walks
SPEAKER_02I part of what I am interested in uh in this in these conversations with artists is uh understanding like where artists go to kind of center themselves and find reinvigoration. And like we talked to Crystal and she told us about different places and and kind of like walks and engagements with water that she'll undertake because that helps her center and refocus. And knowing that like you're talking about uh the trips that that that you'll take out in the Everglades that you'll go kayaking and stuff, like um, I'm interested in helping people discover these natural aspects of Florida. Like, where where are places that you can go and access nature and it helps you feel outside of that human system of progress idea?
SPEAKER_00Um Well, there's trails all over. I mean, we've got and and Duval County, we've got more public lands than any other city in the world. I mean, I think we've got if you think about the Temuquin Preserve, there are trails all through there, Bells Point, Tiger Point, there's Roosevelt Conservation Area, there's there's you know, the within a 10-minute, 15-minute drive from wherever you are in town, you can get to Julienton Durban Creek's wonderful. And it's uh and it's a quite a lesson. You've got six something miles of trails down there. You've got, you know, trails all over. Um, and you don't have to be as aggressive, but but I do this thing. I I used to do these walks when I walked more, and I need to watch starting in Springfield and go up into north side, and I do these things, they call them dystopian walks, where you just walk. And I'd like to see, to me, it's very inspiring to see stuff come up through the cracks in the sidewalk. To me, that's that's that makes me gives me a lot of hope.
SPEAKER_02You're saying, like when weeds are coming up, like that's radical naturalism.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's the fact that there's something in there that wants to live hard enough that's growing in those awesome environments. And so I'm really interested in that. As I mean, so you you've got a nature walk there, walking down the sidewalk instead of like, oh, look at those ugly weeds. It's like, isn't that wonderful? Yeah. I love that stuff that grows on the side of buildings, that's spleenworth, it's little ferns. That to me, that excites me. They are ferns, huh? Yeah, they're it's splainworts, called that's to me is as exciting as going out in the woods. Yeah. It's just different. Right. I do like to go, I like to go in wet places like the Swanee River is the most miraculous thing. I mean, I love the Everglades, but the Everglades is it's compromised, you know, by now. But the Swanee River is one of the most amazing things that you ever uh go. And there, there you can easily rent a kayak and be supported to go on a little paddle down the Swanee. Yeah.
Suwannee River has Dirty Lyrics
SPEAKER_00Oh, and I used to spend a lot of time on the Swanee. Okie Funoki's wonderful. Yeah. Take a boat ride in Okie Fanoki.
SPEAKER_03Can you sing the lyrics to the song completely?
SPEAKER_00Do you want the unclean? Uh you want the original Stephen Foster version? Yeah, what's the original? It's funny because Stephen Boster never came to the Swanee River. The original um uh river he had in mind was the PD River up in um up in uh northern South Carolina, the PD River. But you can't sing it. I mean, try it, try singing that to the PD River instead of the Swanee, way down upon the PD River. I mean, it seems nasty. Yeah, grass.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, grass. It just doesn't work. Yeah. Swane sounds great. Yeah, Swanny's great. And now it's like it's our state song.
SPEAKER_00Swanee, you know, it has it, it has miles, it's got legs. Yeah.
Taxodium Exhibition, Cummer 2028
SPEAKER_00He knew it.
SPEAKER_02So um what are you oh did I answer your question? Yeah. Okay. Um now so what are you working on now? Tell us about tax.
SPEAKER_00Uh a new body of work. It's not new, but the name is new. Um, I love Linnaean classification, which is the genus species or the the using the uh Latin uh names for all species. And so our ball cypress, which is a wonderful plant, uh, is called Taxodium Dysticum. Uh so I'm working on, so I picked it uh uh as a moniker because I want people to become interested in using proper names. Not because they're not focusing and cute, but because it's universal. So you can talk about taxodium, and somebody in Sri Lanka who's a botanist is gonna know what you're talking about. Or they can look it up. Right, right. There's a universality too. They call it globalization, I guess, in some circles. But I do like that uh you know the you know having things that that everybody knows what you're talking about. So there's no mystery. So taxodium. So uh had this idea about uh, you know uh in the United States, I mean people redwood, redwood, redwood, and redwoods are glorious. And we went out to the Sequoia a couple of years ago, and red you know, they're magnificent. But you know, in the south we've got these these incredible ball cypress trees that are just you know, they're mythic. They're thousands of years old and they're just uh incredible plants. And I started thinking about the fact that uh the metaphor, I guess you'd say, I mean, there was a a Crystal and I went out into uh the I can't think of the name of the place, but we we went, she took me to a tree that she knew down where the Santa Fe River, which goes underground, comes up, and there's a tree there called Big Dan, 2600 years old. Wow. That's crazy.
SPEAKER_03And you you talk about you say it's like predates like the Byzantines.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And it's and so I'm like, you know, this tree has been standing there while the the last of the pyramids were built, while Rome was the Etruscans, when it was when it was a seedling, the Etruscans were in the village now. So you think about this tree has stood there for all that time, and it's still standing there. And it's just like it makes you it puts it into perspective. It's just kind of like, you know, we're not so great. And it it kind of negates uh little thiefdoms and borders and tribes and all this other.
SPEAKER_02It's like so much of human history has just been like something that buzzed by.
SPEAKER_00Whatever. It's just you know, like, like, you know, I mean, who are the Etruscans? I mean, they're gone. Right. More or less. Um, and so I mean, even where it's standing, I mean, you the Temuquin were not the they were not the earliest tribe that they saw. They would have seen the tribes that predated the Temuquin. So so you've got all these civilizations that come and go and the tree's still there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so I th it becomes a sentinel uh as much as
Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees
SPEAKER_00a um an object. It becomes uh and I've also been uh really interested in this. Uh there's a uh German author named Peter Wolbian. W H O Wobin. Wolbian. Anyway, Peter Wobian and his book, um, he has a couple of books about uh hidden hidden life of trees, secret anyway. There are a couple, there's several books. He's an S German essayist and their compilations. Um and talking about trees, you know, the community of trees, trees taking care of each other and all these things. It's just fascinating uh communication.
SPEAKER_02There's this mycelium network type stuff. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00And also they nurture their young, they have all these things. So you've got this object that doesn't move. It's just very it's there, but it just it has all these same, you know, we can we can give it human characteristics. Right, like in Lord of the Rings. Yeah, yeah. Just like Lord of the Rings. The little guy that crawls around that's just so nasty.
SPEAKER_02The dirty mushroom wizard or whatever is that you remember? Gallow. Oh, Gollow. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. I remember that guy too, yeah. Oh, yeah. I know you know.
SPEAKER_00Uh anyway. Um, but taxodium to me just kind of becomes this this kind of uh uh truly living metaphor, and that you've got this, you know, this thing that that it's there. And it's uh I do this thing about the the Cypress doesn't apologize for its knees. It just it just sends them up. It's like who cares? They're my knees. It's just like right, there's no need to apologize.
SPEAKER_02Well, and it also like can be so much better at church with all those knees.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Yeah, yeah. More to more time to pray. Um so anyway, um, so I've been working on so I've I'm working on this uh exhibition now, and I don't want to give too much of it away, but I'm really excited about it. It's gonna be at uh uh the Commer Museum in 2028, opening in May, opening around Memorial Day and closing after Labor Day. Awesome. And uh it's gonna be in the Mason Gallery, which is huge, and I'm I'm I'm working toward it, and it's two years away, but it's only two years away. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I've got uh probably So you're gonna wait a year and six months and start working on it?
SPEAKER_00As I do. No, I'm actually working
Multi-Disciplinary Project Similar to Feast of Flowers
SPEAKER_00on it. Um but it's uh but along with it, I'd like to have, like we did with Feast of Flowers, which that was the most fun part of Feast of Flowers, was the the you know, the collaborative digital anthology, which brought in all these other voices.
SPEAKER_02And it made it so exciting too. I mean, you had like Jeremiah Johnson recording stuff and like there's so many mediums.
SPEAKER_00David and Betsy would we'd come to the studio when I was over here and we would work into the night, and it was just it it was a community. And I I feel like I I feel like I don't own anything. I feel like it's I want everybody to benefit uh with all of it. We always do. And Crystal and I worked forever on a lot of the a lot of the project for that thing. And I think that's what uh and that's part of that whole taxonium idea. I mean, you don't see one tree standing by itself, you see a forest, and you see, and I think that's that's the beauty of uh and you know, we've got a very healthy art community in Northeast Florida, and uh we've got a lot of you know, really interesting people. And it's kind of we kind of have more than we you would think. I mean we should it's kind of interesting because now I'm I've spent half the year um in North Carolina and then get down here and used to, you know, I would go in Biscotti's or somewhere like that, and I knew everybody and everybody knew me, or I knew 80% of the people.
SPEAKER_02Now it's just like five points is so strange now.
SPEAKER_00It's just weird, and then you go and then people and then you have people and who are you? And what do you do? Do you paint pictures? How long does it take? How long does it take? How long did that take you? I don't know. If you want to come sit with me and bring a stopwatch. You can use your phone now. It's very, very handy to do that. I should buy my batteries always have to leave stuff.
SPEAKER_02You can show people just like a time lapse of you working. It took uh 16 hours, but you can watch it in 16 minutes.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it is weird. I mean, you know, when the doctor takes your appendix out, how long did it take you to do that? Yeah. How long
Prediction Art Markets
SPEAKER_00was it? What was it like? What did it look like? Maybe people have money on it. You can bet on that now. Yeah. I guess you could. I guess you could. I guess you could.
SPEAKER_02That taxodium work's gonna take Jim 18 months. I think he can do it in 16.
SPEAKER_00Well, anyway, I think but anyway, I'm really excited about the project. And it's kind of um, I don't feel like uh the commerce show is gonna be a huge a huge part of it, but I feel more than that that it's uh, you know, I feel invested in the project, and I, you know, hopefully I can do more writing about it. I'm trying to trying to segue, and some of my fiction, you know, works in with it. Okay. And I think it's kind of like the uh so I I'd like to produce you know more, but I I think it's it's I'd like to, you know, produce some books, films, whatever. I'd like to do a lot more with it.
SPEAKER_02You want it to be sort of multimedia also? I do. And it's so you sent me some links, some Instagram stuff about like people
The Sounds Trees Make
SPEAKER_02uh amplifying the sounds that trees make.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Is that related to the taxodium work?
SPEAKER_00Is that something distinct? Uh my son James is is is really interested in electronics, and he's playing with sounds, and he's he's building synthesizers and doing all the stuff with sounds and and you know, uh collecting sounds and then taking those collected sounds and making them into something else. So um part of the There's going to be a soundscape that's produced to go with the show. Okay. And it's going to be when's that going to drop? It will be on Shop It with Spotify. It'll be on the show open. No, we're not, we're not giving it away. It's not going to be a mixtape. But um so it's going to be so that you walk through the exhibit. Yeah. And he's got these uh sensors. You know, those just they're the cheap and easy things that when you walk by, it'll trigger a switch, and then we'll have a sound that with the idea that you have a cacophony of sounds, so that if you have a big crowd, you've got all this, you know, woodpeckers and frogs and gaitors and stuff that are making this racket. And then if only one person's in there, it's more intimate. Much like it is in the woods where you've got a very intimate experience. So anyway, that's gonna be part of it. And I don't know.
SPEAKER_02So how did James capture these sounds of the trees?
SPEAKER_00We haven't yet. I've captured a lot of them. I've got a lot of video that I just on my phone. Okay. And we're gonna we're gonna ramp it up about getting um I've got a friend in over in the bandhandler that used to live here named Kevin Songer, and he actually goes out and spends the night in swamps and all and has these wealth of information. And I use when I had the last show at Auburn University at the Jewel Collins Smith Museum, I used his uh sounds as a soundtrack. It didn't work because the I mean it it was so quiet you couldn't.
SPEAKER_02I mean, technology as soon as there were people in the room, you couldn't hear it and he drowns it out.
SPEAKER_00So we're gonna we're gonna uh louden it up a little bit. Yeah, Mississippi make it turn up the volume, I guess.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You can have every now and then just like really loud like bird calls that'll quiet everyone down and they'll realize there's this.
SPEAKER_00Oh, who is that? Who is that? A gator splash.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. Release live gators into the comer.
SPEAKER_00Uh I had thought about that. Snake. Snakes on a blank cop mouse. But pythons, they're invasive. Oh, that's right. That'll be on the free Tuesdays. Release the pythons. That'll be on the free Tuesdays.
SPEAKER_02Give the the kids six dollars per python that they catch. Um cool. So um until
Jim's Studio and Substack
SPEAKER_02that work and that show is out, is there a way now that people can kind of um experience your work, find um Well, I've got a well uh here in town, uh I've got a kind of exhibiting studio over on uh East 8th Street uh with David Nikashi.
SPEAKER_00And so we have events there every now and then. Um I don't show much other than that. Uh I've got some. Um we can find you online. Uh can we find you online jimdraper uh at weebly.com.
SPEAKER_02Okay. One one. We'll put that on uh the description instead.
SPEAKER_00Um but the web thing is kind of just gotten in is hard. And it anyway. I mean, I'm just saying if somebody's out there and they hear about you, they're like, I want to buy that now. What I've been having the most fun with and most success with lately is Substack. And I do like the way the platform is handled. It's gymdraper.substack.com or jimdraper at substack.com.
SPEAKER_02We'll share that too, because I think that is you that is like you put beautiful work on there and you publish it pretty regularly.
SPEAKER_00Um I've I've I've got close to a hundred um posts on there. You scroll back through and they and it's all still up. Yeah. So you can scroll back through. But I do like that platform. It's I'm a huge Heather Cox Richardson fan, and she trusted and and Aaron Parnas and all these people that are that are they kind of the hip and cool Oh yeah, it's it's it's happening across mediums too.
SPEAKER_02Like it's a very successful platform.
SPEAKER_00So um, and it uh hopefully they don't sell it to some whatever. They will, but have it while we can. While we can. And it's just embrace yeah, dance with what you got. That's right. Um I think that's the saying. But um yeah, I mean uh and I I've got here and uh I've got some paintings. Uh uh there's a Happy Medium bookstore. Uh I've got some paintings that I just dropped by there. They're having a thing about mushrooms. These are some nice. That's over uh on Park Street by Park and King. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was I did a post about uh doing mushrooms. Thing with my friend Bob White said uh I I made that up, by the way. I
More Stories to Tell
SPEAKER_00was picturing, but it seems it seems real. Um he said, uh, what are you doing? I said, I'm just sitting here sitting here on the side of the mountain doing mushrooms. And he's like, What? Yeah. Painting mushrooms. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I do have one more question, and you can we can cut it earlier, but when you were talking about the librarians uh in the Plank building, have you thought about writing about those characters?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, a lot of those real stories from Mississippi I have to be very careful about because they're too real and they become I don't want to um I don't want to make them I mean they're funny a lot, and that's not that's just the tip of the iceberg. I mean I've got narcoleptic plumbers, I've got all sorts of things. But a lot of it is um I don't know how to handle it. And a lot of it is just like painting something that you're too close to, you can't really see it, and it and you you lose a lot of there are a lot of assumptions that I make about the reader or the viewer on something. So I it's kind of like I'd rather I don't know. Yeah, and some of it pokes his head up.
SPEAKER_03It was just I was entranced when you're telling that story. I was like, oh, this is he must have wrote a short story about this.
SPEAKER_00And I might, but I but I don't want to become a um it's not it's not like a Dave Berry-ish kind of thing. I got you. You know what? I totally understand. Totally get you. Whatever that I'm great for him, but I just want to I don't want to be too anecdotal.
SPEAKER_02We have a bunch of Florida authors that do that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. I'd rather be I'd rather be a little bit more um I'd rather have a very I have a like and Lynn, our friend Lynn taught me this about having you you you have a thing you're gonna tell. You have a very specific goal, and you you do everything you do to get to that goal. And sometimes the the trivial anecdotal
Lynn Skapyak Harlin Impressions
SPEAKER_00stuff kind of gets in the way of your storytelling. And she'll tell you. She'll say, stop jerking off. Yeah, and she'll say that. And it's and it is that. So it so that's that's kind of like parts of it, yes, they they wick through. And there are a lot in all that that collection of of Shannon But stories, there are a lot of anecdotes in there that are bits and pieces of different characters, and they seem real because but I they're compilations. Got too. But everything feeds the narrative. So you're you're doing it to the narrative. Not and sometimes sometimes I you can tell by what I talk, sometimes you get real cute, and a lot of it it's not cute. You know, a lot of it you just want to be, you know, you're you're you've got a a mission to tell the story, and the the story you need to support your story instead of let the tail wag the dog.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Right. And then you get like a little excited about something you think is funny or clever, and that's when Lynn will be like, stop jerking on.
SPEAKER_00It's just it's just gross. And so you you uh I love uh I mean I love having Lynn. We talk every few days, and I just love having Lynn to to bounce things off of. Yeah. I publish sometimes I push the gun and publish stuff on subs like, why the hell did you print that? You can't spell words shit. She said there's spaces between the words, there's there's I just what? I don't know. It's just ah too many commas. Too many, yeah. Run on sentences. She is a wonderful editor and she saved my neck on a lot of things because a lot of it's just illiterate. But um anyway. She thinks I'm a good writer though, which is encouraging.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, totally. And she's seen a lot of a lot of writers around, and she
Iconoclast of the Shantyboat Writer's Workshop
SPEAKER_02is not she's not one to mince words. Yeah, no, she would tell me she needs to quit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Stop. Yeah. So I have I wrote this story that's in the book. It was a it's called Um Um Smell the Roses. And it's about this this morbidly obese man, blah, blah, blah, who is hadn't seen his penis for several years, and so he goes through these rig and roll to do that, and then long story short, it has a very bad ending. It's funny, it's nasty, but it's funny. And so she has these guests that'll come in and look at the workshop to see if they want to take it. So this man, this very buttoned-up man, came and he'd already paid his deposit. And so that was the night that my that story was read. We read round Robin around the room. So that's the night the story was read. After it was over, he he got his money back. He said he was like, that's the nastiest thing in the world. And and so we we laughed about that. She said, You if she said, if you can't take that, you need to go.
SPEAKER_03But also better than having no effect on someone at all. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I I I thought it I I felt like I'd shot a basket or something. Yeah, exactly. He's still thinking about it. Yeah, he got under him so bad. And now he can't write, and that's probably a blessing. It is a blessing. It is a blessing because anybody that didn't think that story was funny, there's something wrong with him.
SPEAKER_01Every time he gets out his pencil and he sharpens it up and he gets out his pad, and then all he can think about is that fat guy that can't see his dick.
SPEAKER_00It is a funny story. Um, but I don't know. I mean, the the stories uh and some of them are just awful. I mean, I read some of them like, oh my god, I can't believe how crazy printed that with my name on it. Um and then uh but they're real and they are about, I mean, they're effective, and they're they're like um because of the shock value, and that's not intended to shock, but it kind of is.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's sort of like me calling nature macabre earlier or whatever. There's something like powerful about standing naked in a room full of strangers, right? That like it's terrifying, but you get used to it.
SPEAKER_00Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_02And that's like important. Yeah. I've never gotten to phase two. I never have. I think I've had people paid to go out the door. Probably not. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for spending this time with us. This is great.
SPEAKER_03Um shout out to Mike also.
SPEAKER_02Michael, thank you so much for being here.
