Lemony Snicket: Reading Takes You to a Magical Place
Relating to literature can be a spiritual practice and this week’s guest has made a career out of it. Author of the Series of Unfortunate Events books, Lemony Snicket, joins us for a conversation about spacing out, embracing the weird, and being a Pisces. Then, Evan Doherty, creator of the Arcane Bullshit Oracle, offers an irreverent spell for finding your hat.
[Music]
Lemony Snicket: Reading is a is, in many ways, a form of listening to something that somebody's thought really hard about. You go somplace, your brain goes someplace that is not where you're sitting in the uncomfortable, hideous, dirty chair of an airport or a bus station.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Hello, and welcome to Your Magic! I’m Michelle Tea, and today I am spending some time with my dear old friend Lemony Snicket. He’s author of the beloved Series of Unfortunate Events books as well as a brand new novel, Poison for Breakfast. We’re going to talk about the Pisces nature, spacing out, and late capitalism. Stay with us.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Me and my seven-year-old spend a lot of time talking about language. He’s in first grade, learning to read, learning that words can have different meanings, that words can sound the same but be spelled differently, and — his very favorite — that some words are called ‘slang.’ They’re old words with a new purpose, or freshly crafted language, and I think the reason my kid loves it so much is that it illustrates something it’s easy to forget: Language is made by us humans — we made the words, we made the rules, and we can keep making them and changing them up. He’s recently been fascinated with how a word can sort of become official by being added to the dictionary (we’re on a campaign to get his favorite slang word, ‘yeet,’ accepted, so if you all can start using it — it means ‘to throw with gusto’ — we’d appreciate it). As a result, we’ve started reading the dictionary each night. It’s funner than it sounds, okay?
The first night we did this I was struck by an entry for the word absurd: the state or condition in which human beings exist in an irrational and meaningless universe and in which human life has no ultimate meaning. As I read it aloud, the hair on the back of my neck jumped, goosebumps rolled up my arms, I trembled. Such occult knowledge, right here in my dictionary! I felt seen by the universe’s great and unseeing eye: you guys, this is my philosophy.
I know the concept of an irrational and meaningless universe really upsets some people; in my observation, such people also seem to be control freaks, but, whatever, they’re still people, and their feelings matter. I have stopped, for instance, telling my sister to lighten up, we’re living in a computer program and nothing matters, whenever she’s having a hard time, because this possibility — which, BTW, cannot be disproved by science, okay? — does not comfort her, at all. But, it comforts me quite a bit.
If we are in fact living in a meaningless universe, we can all stop trying so hard. Our fuckups don’t really matter quite so much if there's legit no point to anything. Success, failure, they’re sad human concepts we’ve created to make us feel like there are some stakes here on planet Earth when, in reality, there’s nothing. Free from a universe that’s keeping score, what would you do? You might as well do whatever makes you happy. Whatever brings you joy. This concept of meaningfulness, while the universe may be oblivious to it, it is an important human concern. Why not fill your days with whatever scratches that itch for you? In an absurd cosmos, spending the day being productive and spending the day lazing around doing absolutely nothing are exactly the same. For someone like me, who tends to feel a barrage of guilt if I’m not like maximizing the productivity of every moment, this is a great, relaxing philosophy. When it’s not starkly terrifying, the total irrelevance of life is very chill. I use it to orient myself whenever I start taking my self and anything around me too seriously. Give it a try! And if this philosophy does in fact stress you out, you probably really need it.
Here’s Lemony Snicket.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Mr. Snicket, thank you so much for being a guest on the Your Magic podcast show.
Lemony Snicket: Well, thank you very much, Ms. Tea. It's a pleasure, as always.
Michelle Tea: Oh my goodness. Congrats on your new book, which I'm reading right now, and I'm loving it so much.
Lemony Snicket: Thank you very much.
Michelle Tea: It feels like we really need philosophy right now in life.
Lemony Snicket: I can't think of a time when we don't need it, but certainly I think sitting quietly with a book feels like a more and more powerful idea in recent years.
Michelle Tea: Mm hmm. Do you feel like have you always been a sort of fill philosophically natured person?
Lemony Snicket: Yeah. Like, do I spaced out a lot? Is that what you're asking me? Yes, I spaced out a little bit while you're asking that question.
Michelle Tea: I really like in the book how you sort of like claim spacing out as like an important aspect of a writer's life.
Lemony Snicket: Yeah.
Michelle Tea: If not just a human's life.
Lemony Snicket: Yeah, I think it's super important. Sometimes when I teach or if I'm at like a conference or something, there was always one of those writers that's like, You have to pay attention, you have to notice things, you know, really started noticing things. I mean, I always like to say like or have no idea what's going on at all wherever you go and just kind of have small story in your head that you're chewing over or maybe something that you know, that somebody said to you like 16 years ago that you just figure it out or you have like an answer you want to argue back with someone so like, put you down in 10th grade and you're like, Oh, I got the perfect answer now. That might be a good thing to do with your time while you're being a writer.
Michelle Tea: I love that so much as somebody who regularly walks past my street on the walk home from like I walk my kid to school in the morning and then I walk back home and I regularly just sort of come to, blocks away being like, Oh I missed the turn off for my house. Where am I?
Lemony Snicket: I'll take a walk sometimes to do my grocery shopping, and then I will be like four buildings away from my house, and I'll realize that I have this empty tote bag in my hand and that I have not managed to do the errand. And then it's always a little embarrassing because I think to myself, can I tell my family, can I fake that I forgot certain things? You know, can I be like, oh, yogurt, I forgot yogurt because I didn't get anything. Or do I have to go back to the store and get some of the things.
Michelle Tea: That is next level spacing out. Once I sat in a terminal reading O Magazine, Oprah's magazine and completely missed my flight. I was sitting in the Terminal four as they were calling my name over the intercom. Missed it.
Lemony Snicket: I missed the bus that way, which is a little sadder. Like when I was in college, I was reading a book and then I missed a bus.
Michelle Tea: At least it was a book and not O Magazine.
Lemony Snicket: That's true.
Michelle Tea: All props to Oprah. Never saying a bad word about Oprah, but...
Lemony Snicket: Of course. Yeah, but I do think there's something sad about being in a bus station and then you have to go back up to the window and be like, Hey, I was wondering when that we're like the next bus I was talking about, that one didn't sit with me.
Michelle Tea: Had bad vibes. Had really bad vibes.
Lemony Snicket: Right. Particularly when it's Peter Pan bus, which this one was.
Michelle Tea: Oh, I love the Peter Pan buses of New England. Yes?
Lemony Snicket: Yeah, yeah. When I was in college, that was basically the best way to get out of town was on the Peter Pan bus. And for people who don't know or who have been trying to forget, the Peter Pan buses are all named after aspects of the Peter Pan pantheon.
Michelle Tea: Oh.
Lemony Snicket: Yeah. So I think like their first buses were probably called like Wendy and Captain Hook. By the time I was doing it, one of the buses, I'm not kidding, was called the Old Tree Stump, which is not something that I remember from Peter Pan, but also a terrible thing to call a bus.
Michelle Tea: Listen, you're - you're a Pisces.
Lemony Snicket: I am. Yeah.
Michelle Tea: Yes. I mean, I feel like that also contributes to getting lost in an internal reverie.
Lemony Snicket: That's certainly what I'm told.
Michelle Tea: Do you feel like you're a Pisces. Does that like mean anything to you?
Lemony Snicket: Whenever I read Pisces traits or something like that, if it appears to line up pretty nicely. But I don't wander this planet thinking of myself as a Pisces. You know, it's not a crucial part of my identity, I would say. But I mean, I guess what I feel is that I - I think it's great to use a metaphor to try to think about your life. That's what I think about all kinds of spiritual beliefs because I read a story and it helps me think about my life. And so I just think that's I'm open to all of the way all the frameworks in which people are thinking about their lives. And so when people know about their framework and they put it on me, I find that's always interesting.
Michelle Tea: Do you have a spiritual practice that is shareable with the public?
Lemony Snicket: I would say that I have a mishmash of vague spiritual practices that that wax and wane with me. But I mean, I was raised Jewish, and there's aspects of the Jewish faith that are super moving to me. I swim most mornings in cold water, which feels like a spiritual practice, not only a spiritual practice, but definitely a spiritual practice, so swimming in the ocean feels that way. And I would say I have a meditation practice. I took a Vedic meditation course, which has brought me much pleasure and solace and adventure. And then I would say my relationship with literature is kind of my primary spiritual practice. I believe really strongly in the transcribed consciousness of the history of the human race. So I like reading it and basking in it and thinking about it and feeling it affect my mind and my behavior. And everything like that, yeah that feels good.
Michelle Tea: I really feel like Poison for Breakfast, your latest book really is. Is that it is that aspect of your relationship with literature in the larger world. I feel like it's giving us a deeper insight into that part of you. It feels sort of like spiritual.
Lemony Snicket: Thank you. I think that’s accurate. I think that reading is a is, in many ways, a form of listening to something that somebody's thought really hard about. Right, it's not really a conversation because you don't get to talk back in a way that they hear you. But you're listening and you're spacing out at the same time. And I think it takes you to a really pretty magical place. If you are loving a book and you're hypnotized by a book, I think it could really take you someplace — you miss a plane, if you're reading something and you love it, you miss a bus. You go someplace, your brain goes someplace that is not where you're sitting in the uncomfortable, hideous, dirty chair of an airport or a bus station.
Michelle Tea: Will you talk about your Vedic meditation practice? Because I know there are so many different styles of meditation, what - what is the Vedic style like?
Lemony Snicket: This is probably a hopelessly ignorant summation. I'm a little nervous because I feel like there are. I feel that your listeners on this podcast know more about such things than I do. But -
Michelle Tea: That's OK, though, it's also a great podcast for people who are beginners.
Lemony Snicket: Who are stumbling around.
Michelle Tea: Yeah, and want to deepen their spiritual experience on Earth. So this is great.
Lemony Snicket: I got interested in transcendental meditation mostly, I think most strongly because I read and listened to stuff that David Lynch had said about it and how it really transformed his own creative process and quieted his brain and make it kind of even more open to receiving the weirdness. And I was so charmed by that because out of all the people in the world who I didn't think I needed to get more weird, David Lynch was probably up there. But um I think from growing up in California in the 70s, I also had this vague kind of cult-y rumor that was attached to traditional TM and that was not banished when I like contacted a transcendental meditation place and they came on super strong and called me a lot and clearly had Googled me and looked me up. And I guess in some circles that is super charming, but I was not. That was not pleasing to me. And so I stepped away from it from a little bit. And then I read that there was a that there were people who were also concerned about certain aspects of transcendental meditation. And so they took its kind of original form from which it was made into transcendental meditation that went back to it as a Vedic meditation, which is practiced all over the world and is slightly separate from transcendental meditation in ways that I don't really get. But when COVID hit, I had just been about to take a Vedic meditation class and I was like, Oh no, I can't, I can't go anywhere. And then I was like, Wait a minute, actually, I bet you can. And so I took it online with a couple of friends. We shared an instructor and it was one of the first things I did during COVID that felt like a really great kind of healing practice.
My meditation instructor was named James Brown, which felt pretty perfect. I was like, You know what I need in my life a little James Brown. And there was something also meditative about the practice of deciding not to make any James Brown jokes to James Brown. And so that felt like a great practice of not making a really obvious joke and learning Vedic meditation, which is quite simple. And for people who are put off by overt attachment to a more comprehensive spiritual practice, whether because they're nervous about spiritual practice or I think in the case, often of meditation, if you are off-put by cultural appropriation or otherwise feeling weird about like, I don't know anything when I'm doing this thing that's been like done for a far away by people I also don't know. If you if that makes you feel strange. The way I was taught Vedic meditation really kind of does away with that.
I really love the place where it takes my brain that feels not dissimilar to the place that literature can take my brain, but also a little bit unleashed, a little bit without the guidance that a specific piece of literature will make you think. And that feels groovy.
Michelle Tea: Do you feel a little weirder?
Lemony Snicket: What I feel is that, I have less of an assessment about whether something is weird or not that actually when I began to think things that I want to put them in a story, I want them in a book. I think like, OK, I'm interested in this. They're calling to me in this story. And one thing I don't have to decide is if it's too weird, I can decide if it belongs there for whatever aesthetic or philosophical literary reasons that I want to put it there. But I have to say like, Oh, that's too weird.
Michelle Tea: That’s cool. I think it's always really important just to remind yourself that you're just an artist.
Lemony Snicket: Yeah. And I think in I mean, probably in all kinds of societies, but certainly in the corporate culture of late capitalism, you're encouraged to be self-conscious about what it is that you're doing and to pretend that other people are thinking about it. And no one cares.
Michelle Tea: No one cares.
Lemony Snicket: Yeah, everyone's busy spacing out, thinking mostly about themselves. And so anything where you’re like, Is this the right move for me as a career or artist? You have to remember, absolutely nobody cares at all.
Michelle Tea: You know, one thing I wanted to talk to you about is, I know that you love poetry and you're a champion of poetry. And, you know, I just hearing you talk about the spiritual dimensions of literature really then makes me think even more about your love of poetry. Because, I don't know poetry feels spiritual. We came very close on this podcast, to ending every podcast with a poem.
Lemony Snicket: Oh yeah. You know, mostly what I write is fiction and fiction and particularly novels. It can be a little hard to find kind of a first novel or where novels came from, but you can have a general idea. There are few cultures that were kind of doing that, and that's where it came from. But poetry, if you try to trace poetry, it vanishes right into every other aspect of society and it particularly vanishes into religion. Right. Like special words that people said at special times, that changed a little bit and they would memorize them. They would add to it and they would adapt. That has been going on forever. And the first things we have that have survived that are written down were those tiny little phrases, and we think of them now as poetry. But they weren't, you know, that word is not some universal word that was used in the exact same way all over the place throughout time. And when you talk with poets, as I love to do, they are often in touch with the just the enormity of that kind of practice. And I think when you're outside it, I think particularly when you're a writer, sometimes you think, Gosh, this person worked four years on this book of poetry and it's a book of poetry like how many people are really going to pick it up and read it? And they're often really in touch with this is a practice that people have been doing. It is not for capitalist consumption. You know, this is something that people have been practicing for a long time. I have elected to join my life, the lives of other people who have been doing this. And I think that's really inspiring and really powerful. I think it really helps me write fiction is to remember that I'm part of a literary tradition. It's not my little dance over here in my career. It is a part of a thing that people have been doing for a long time and poetry is the most ancient and enduring form of that.
Michelle Tea: I love that so much. I love thinking about it like a practice I'm just thinking of like monks people who like joint join like a monk-hood.
Lemony Snicket: Yeah.
Michelle Tea: There is a real similarity to being a poet.
Lemony Snicket: Or if you read, I mean, The Pillow Book or I think of it as an ancient Japan that actually, many cultures did this. Like you would write a little poem as a thank you note, if you got if you if you hung out with someone and had a good time, you'd write them a little poem and that poem, you know, you gave it to them and you were like, Oh, I hope it's in The New Yorker, you know, you just gave it to them as a thing that you made for them.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: You know, I have a deck of tarot cards here, and I'm wondering if I can give you a tarot reading.
Lemony Snicket: I wouldn't expect anything less of you. You only have one deck of tarot cards within reach right now?
Michelle Tea: I mean, within arm's reach,
Lemony Snicket: Within arm's reach. OK.
Michelle Tea: But behind me there's a cabinet where there's about 40 decks or something. I've really reached a point in my life that feels - like an absolute marker of successes that I get. I get tarot deck sent to me in the mail.
Lemony Snicket: Well, I still have my Rider-Waite tarot deck from high school, which I would use sometimes. And then a few years ago, I was in Italy for the summer and I saw the Tarot Garden that Niki de Saint Phalle built, which was this amazing place.
Michelle Tea: Stop everything. You've been to the Tarot Garden?
Lemony Snicket: I have.
Michelle Tea: Will you explain a little bit. Will you explain just to listeners a little bit what it is for those who don't know?
Lemony Snicket: So Niki de Saint Phalle is this artist, and she works, I would say, she's very accessible. This very beautiful shapes and almost caricatures. That sounds wrong, but kind of abstracted drawings and paintings of creatures and figures and things like that. And they all come from her own personal mythology, and we can say that about any artist, but she really has an own personal mythology and that she's like thinking about different things that relate to each other in a mythological way. And then these friends said, Oh, she devoted years of her life to making this garden of sculptures and machines and rooms, and this on this plot of land in Italy that is like her masterwork of trying to lay out this mythology in three dimensional space. And it's inspired by the tarot, and some of it has a figure from the tarot that you recall, but it's also her own personal tarot. And also it means that you walk into an apartment where all of the walls are made of mirrors and the refrigerator is made of mirrors and the bed is made of mirrors. And you lie down on the bed for a minute and you let the mirror a light strike you everywhere. And then you go into like a fountain that's crawling with ceramics snails. And you know, there's just all this like magical, crazy stuff. And it's just like a marvelous, marvelous place. And then I bought myself of her deck. She made some cards that are her version of it, and I have been, I’m working on a long novel slowly and I'm using. And part of it is that I'm using the tarot deck as a structure. When I am curious about what will happen next. I let her mythology guide me a little bit about where I'm going. That's been really, really fun.
Michelle Tea: That is so excellent. I love that. Oh my gosh, I had no idea that you had a tarot deck when you were a teenager. I'm not surprised.
Lemony Snicket: Yeah, I mean, but if you listen to the Cure and Eurythmics all the time, you're going to get a tarot deck. That's just going to happen. We should go. Let's go to Italy together when things feel open and re explore the literal garden and like, sit around and eat tomatoes.
Michelle Tea: Can we just plan this for 2023? Can we say it's happening?
Lemony Snicket: Yeah, let's do it.
Michelle Tea: OK. OK, great. Oh, wow. Italy, OK. Into it. So I have this Crowley tarot deck and I really like it. I've had it since I was a teenager, too. Not this exact one, but I've read with it. What would you like to know about?
Lemony Snicket: I think I would just like to know like the kind of curve of the road ahead. I guess. It's been a heavy time and a crazy time. I mean, I don't think there's anyone who can say otherwise about their time. And so I'm not going to brag about the individual craziness of my time. Some of which I don't want to talk about anyway. But it's been like a big, challenging time for my family and for me and for making art and for living a life. And I just look a little just now a little little curve of the road ahead will not do any harm.
Michelle Tea: All right. That's basically as far as I'm able to sort of predict with the tarot is like the curve of the road ahead, you know?
Lemony Snicket: Right. I kind of miss I kind of miss the pre high school fortune-telling where you folded up like a piece of paper in a magic way. Then you were like, Oh my god, I'm going to marry a veterinarian. Like, this is going to be awesome and makes me sad sometimes that those kinds of magic are no longer accessible to us.
Michelle Tea: Oh my god. I know I love those you know, in my in my tarot book, I actually did. I have spells in them that go with each card, and that's one of the spells is to make one of those. Yeah, paper fortune tellers.
Lemony Snicket: I just think of all those futures that you know, I had in front of me about. It's like, you're going to have five kids and live in Paris. Oh my god.
Michelle Tea: Well, you know, that's the multiverse. You know, so there is there is a version of you somewhere right now in Paris, being like, Why did I have so many kids?
Lemony Snicket: Yeah.
Michelle Tea: OK. All right. Yeah, it's been a struggle. I can see that immediately in the cards. The cards I picked you. So the first one is Oppression, and it really embodies everything you were talking about. That just it's been a struggle. It sounds like it's been a struggle in all areas. And what's good about this card is that it's a ten. So it's sort of like coming to an end, but you're still in it. You're still feeling that like, you know, there have been some things that you just can't escape. You can't shimmy out from under. You have to sort of endure them when this card comes up. Astrologically, it's Saturn in Sagittarius, which is why it's so painful. Sagittarius is, you know, the most. The archetype of the Sagittarius is so fun loving and just more joy, more party, more fun, more big thoughts. And then Saturn comes in and is like, Sorry, dude, it can't be like that all the time and you've actually pushed it so that it was like that for far too long. And now it's time to like, pay the piper. So there is some sort of that sort of the vibe of the card. There's also an element, you know this this card in the Rider-Waite deck is the person who's struggling towards the village with, you know, 10 rods on their back. And you're like, you know, there are things you can do here. You can put them down. You can make a few different trips. You could ask for help. So there is, you know, a little bit in this card too of like, what can you do to ease your burden a little bit? I mean, at the end of the day, you still got to get the 10 rods to the village.
It's inescapable, right? There's some things in this game, but what can you do to lighten the load a little bit like? Can you make your life a little easier for yourself? One thing about this card, it's like it's often something that at some point back in time you were into, and by the time the 10 rolls around, you're like, Why did I think this was a good idea? You know, so sometimes it's something that like at one point was fulfilling or meaningful, and it feels less so now. So then that needs to be worked with somehow.
The next card that was released, what you have Love. So that's really nice. You know, like what? What a great card to kind of pair up with this. This Oppression card is that there's also something really feeding your heart and feeding your spirit. And you know, it's love. And you strike me as such a person. You have so much love in your life, not just from family and friends, but also like, like just even the way you talk about literature. That's a big source of love, love like that. You love being a writer and and that and knowing that lineage and you love literature and I don't know this to me, feels like there's a lot of fonts of comfort, solace and inspiration that are coming to you, but that also does feel like very family. It's Venus in Cancer.
So Cancer is this sort of domestic family love. And then, you know, Venus is the planet of love. So it's about like love that really sees you, that really knows you. It's like the ideal of that kind of love. You know, it's it's like it's really from the heart, so so yeah. You know, the struggle, the struggle is real and so is the love and then the last card you get here. This is really interesting, it's another of these kind of struggling wands cards, so our book-ending the Love. So the story of the Seven of Wands, which is called Valor in this deck, it's, you know, it's absolutely when you're just like, I can't go on, I cannot go on, but you can and you will and you're and you'll be fine. And you know, this is actually a positive card. It's a yes, it's a triumph card. It's a victory card. But it comes after a struggle and it comes after a struggle. Like it's that last battle that you're like, I can't get through this one, but you can. And you know, it's Mars in Leo, and it's about Leo, you know, having astrologically seat being seen as having boundless energy powered by the Sun, you know? So just like having tons of energy? And then Mars, that engine just being like, you can push through this. So it's just it looks like, you know, the the curve ahead, it looks like a little more of the same, but also and it does look, this looks, you know, this combination here is where is wearisome, you know, getting the Oppression card and the Valor card, it's like, OK, yeah, this struggle is going to continue and you are going to feel like, fuck, I'm done though. But then there's this Love, you know? And so, you know, the love is in this in this poll is the kind of the centerpiece card here. And so that's what's going to get you through it. It also might be the battlefield, you know, is is is a lot is part of the struggle around love, you know, and and if so, like, what does you know, what does that mean? You know, as far as just feeling like, I can't, I can't anymore. It's like, OK, you know what? What, then what needs to happen, you know, to to change that? You know, these are temporary situations, the wands, you know, they flare up and they flare out. But yeah, you're in it right now. You are really in it. And in the end, the the way to just sort of sustain yourself as you move through this chapter of your life is by just doubling down on the things that make you feel love.
Lemony Snicket: All right, well, thank you.
Michelle Tea: You're welcome, I'm sorry that you know you're not fully through the woods yet, but -
Lemony Snicket: I knew it all along.
Michelle Tea: The victory card. I mean, we always do that, you know, like we always do with the tarot. It's very rarely a surprise.
Well, my friend, this was an amazing conversation.
Lemony Snicket: Well, it's always a delight to speak with you.
[Music]
Evan Doherty: Hi, I'm Evan, the creator of the Arcane Bullshit Oracle deck and Arcane Bullshit account on Instagram. I'd like to share a spell that I use every day. Now, a lot of people think that if you were casting a spell, it has to be super complex and it has to do this and that, like it has to grant you ultimate personal fulfillment, make your arms smooth and firm, protect your network from ransomware attacks, give your godson Jerome the power of flight, keep pheasants away from your turnips, and banish the shadow man to the pain dimension. But I like to keep things really simple.
Today, I'm going to share a simple, everyday spell that will help you out if you lose your hat. Like I said, I'm all about simplicity. Like many of you, I live in an old, closed down oxygen factory and I only eat poems about grass, but I lose my hat all the time. So for this, we just need a few simple things that everyone has around the house. First, let's set our intention. Go ahead and open up Microsoft Excel, you can use Google Sheets if you like, but that tends to work best for green hats. Create a new document and now I want you to write the word ‘hat’ all caps in every single cell. You have to do it manually, no keyboard shortcuts.
Once you're done that, just go ahead and print 852 copies of that file. Now we're ready to gather some supplies for our special. For this bill, we're going to need one 1997 Hyundai Elantra, 13 dollar-store party hats, one spiral bound book about corn, one feral bobcat or a medium-sized russet potato, one untraceable burner phone, a clay bowl full of eagle semen, 750,000 dried kidney beans sorted from best to worst. And finally, you're missing hat.
Once you gather all those items, go ahead and arrange them in a perfect circle. Close your eyes and think about every time you've ever eaten ham. If you haven't gotten around to trying ham yet, you can just think about Gary Sinise eating ham. If you aren't sure who Gary Sinise is. You can think about Santa Claus thinking about Gary Sinise eating ham. Now recite the words "Sorry Laszlo, you can't borrow my rock tumbler. It is being held as evidence in a federal trial." Next, wander away and forget about this stealth for about nine years. Now, look in the mirror. You were wearing the hat the entire time. If that's not your hat, I'm really sorry. You need to call an exorcist.
So there you have it, a simple spell that never fails to give me the perspective and serenity I need to find my missing hat.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Thank you, Evan, for reminding us that the power is within us, or atop our heads, all along. Check out Evan’s deeply irreverent occult merchandise line, Arcane Bullshit, on Instagram @arcanebullshit, or online at arcanebullshit.com, where you can find amazing posters and oracle decks and T-shirts and bumper stickers bragging that you’re the proud parent of a fucking skeleton army.
We hope this episode inspires you to befriend the absurd, somehow, whether it be the somewhat terrifying cosmic joke of our existence or the more harmless jape of a nonsensical spell. Make some room for the fantastic and foolish in your practice. Levity is its own bright energy, and life’s wild chaos demands devotion.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Thanks for tuning into Your Magic. Make sure you follow us on Twitter and Instagram @thisisyourmagic. You can subscribe to us right here on Spotify — do what you need to do to never miss an episode. You can also email us at hello@thisisyourmagic.com, we would love to hear from you. And you can support us — plus get access to a whole bunch of bonus content — at patreon.com/thisisyourmagic.
This episode was produced and edited by Molly Elizalde, Tony Gannon, and Vera Blossom. We got production support from Raven Yamamoto. Our executive producers are Ben Cooley, myself, and Molly Elizalde. Our original theme music is by John Kimbrough.
Thanks for listening!