Podcast Appearance

I did this podcast last Sunday night to promote my new book, The Chaos Cafe, along with my other four books as well: https://youtu.be/33Jw_N2EL6Y It was my second time on the show. The last time was to promote my sci-fi sex comedy, Even on Mars, which came out last year. That podcast was done over Skype. This one, however, was my first face-to-face one. Podcasts are always fun to do.

I felt kind of annoyed with myself afterwards for not clarifying better why exactly the heated political conflict between my protagonist, Chris Connolly, and his parents wouldn’t have worked if it took place in Canada. I should have explained further that I needed it to be between actual American voters (people with a REAL stake in the matter), arguing on American soil, so the reader could better sympathize with the impassioned, polarized positions on both sides, despite how inane and absurd his parents’ ideas and beliefs are. That’s why it couldn’t be in Canada, which would have made it a “what’s happening over there” matter rather than a “what’s happening over here” one. I came off in the interview as sounding like I thought a heated argument about Trump couldn’t happen within a family dynamic in Canada, which is ludicrous (as I’ve had so many such heated debates) and not what I meant at all!

Furthermore, Radley asked me in the interview what my fascination with chaos was, and I gave a very detailed explanation of only half the answer. The other half is my love of the fact that because there’s no intrinsic meaning to be found in existence, no inherent purpose in all this, no grand scheme of things and no divine hand doing any guiding, I’m, then, the one who’s fully responsible for the meaning I give my short time in this world and therefore all my failures and victories are my own, and I love and cherish that. There’s self-empowerment and joy in embracing that fact, that reality of things! There’s no cop-out of consolation for any shortcomings within myself or my life as being part of “God’s plan,” because there simply isn’t a God and therefore no divine plan. THAT’S real freedom, and THAT’S what I find so liberating. I agree with Sartre’s worldview and assessment that if theism were an accurate representation of reality, and therefore a deity was setting things in motion for the fulfillment of some teleological end, that there could be no real, substantial freedom for us because we wouldn’t be in full control of our “destiny.” There’d be no possibility of taking the full load of the responsibility of our very existence, due to the fact that everything would be predestined in accordance with the will of an omnipotent overlord rather than our own will. In fact, my own will wouldn’t mean shit. Most people don’t want that responsibility, though, so they put it on “God’s purpose” as the perfect cop-out for all their foibles and disappointments in life. I say, “Fuck that.” As with Camus, I love affirming the absurdity itself. It’s so freakin’ exciting and fantastic to me, and I wouldn’t want things to be any other way. Fuck grand schemes! I’ve got my own “schemes” that I create and toil towards, the outcome mine and mine alone, along with anyone who may have so graciously helped me along the way.

The other thing I wish I stated in the interview is that, at bottom, what bothers both my lead characters in Screw the Devil’s Daiquiri and The Chaos Cafe in regard to their own mortality, is that they see their own future deaths as leaving a gap in the world. However, that mistaken gap they see is both an illusion and self-delusion, and will not come about at all. And they, of course, know that. And there lies the rub, for that gap they see actually lies within themselves. It’s the unbridgeable distance between what they want to be true (that they be immortal) and what is actually true (that they are very much mortal). That gap, then, can only be closed either with 1) the acceptance that they are nothing and that the universe will go on and on for eons, as per usual, after they die and/or 2) what in Buddhism is called “ego death.” For in that actual gap within themselves, it is their egos that are unable to see (at least without serious introspection or someone pointing it out to them) - that there is a gap at all.

Oh, yeah, and I remembered - there’s a scene in my fourth book, Even on Mars, where two sisters are talking, and there’s no one else around. Whether or not a man is around is irrelevant for passing the Bechdel Test anyway. It’s whether or not the two women are talking about something other than a man, and so, yes, that scene passes it by that standard as well - not that that bullshit matters to me anyway.

You can find my books here: amazon.com/author/raymemichaels