Well, Hallelujah, we made it through to another year. Greetings, happy near and all that jazz. Hope 2022 has welcomed you into its warm and fuzzy embrace like it has me. I managed to see my family for the first time in 2 years and it was a blessed and lovely time.
Initially, Dave Cowen and I had tried to arrange for a recording that we were hoping was going to glitch the matrix and upset the space-time continuum ending omicron once and for all by me being in 2022 in New Zealand and Dave being 22 hours behind in 2021 Los Angeles, alas the powers to be had other plans and my podcast software decided to have a glitch instead.
All glitches aside, Dave and I caught up a few days later with me brandishing a new microphone that my sister and brother in Berlin and Innsbruck respectively, had graciously decided to gift me on my birthday. It is a very stylish microphone, one of those old school silver ones with the cross ribbings that you saw Elvis and Billie Holiday sport back in the day, recording their timeless masterpieces on. Fitting really as I first got to know Dave here on Substack, by following his genius Shuffle Synchronicities newsletter that absolutely blew me away. Last year Dave set himself the gargantuan task of reviewing his daily life in a journalistic fashion through the audio lens of his equally gargantuan Spotify “liked” playlist (featuring over 50 000 songs) placed on shuffle.
If writing were an Olympic sport
Dave has easily become one of the most prolific writers out there, writing daily updates every day for nearly a year (click here for his 349th installment entitled "Jobs I Had Before I Got Rich & Famous" by Walter Martin.) The idea to “mix music with memoir” as he calls it, uncovering once subconscious and hidden synchronicities in a meaningful way, was an absolute stroke of genius, so when I got an email from him asking me to be a guest contributor, I jumped on the occasion and sent him not one but two entries - there was a little miscommunication (or better misinterpretation on my part) as I thought he’d wanted me to contribute on a weekly basis. We have a little laugh about it on the podcast. I was super thrilled to be included on a list of guest contributors that featured the brilliant Annie Rauwerda of DepthsOfWikipedia fame as well as many other stellar people.
Dave has written for The New Yorker, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and Points In Case in the past and his outstanding work has been featured in The New York Times.
Not only is Dave the most prolific substacker I know, he is also the world record holder for the longest sentence ever written and the author of several genre bending books. In 2018, he published the Amazon Best Seller in the Political Humour and Jewish Holidays categories, THE TRUMP PASSOVER HAGGADAH and we discuss the motivation and creation of this Haggadah parody series at some length in the podcast. Funny enough, I forgot to mention to Dave that my 2012 book The Dexter Chronicles: Becoming Dexter (not so subtle plug) that I wrote under my alias Dan Tefern, also featured in the Best Political Humour category on Amazon albeit not at #1 but at #7. Must try harder!
My conversation with Dave was a very candid and open one. His honesty and transparency are hugely refreshing and inspiring. We discuss life, addiction, success, the sanctity of Jewish holidays, mental health, tragedy and redemption all in one fell swoop. I was completely enamored by Dave and didn’t want the conversation to end. He is such a humble human replete with a razor sharp wit and a beautifully positive way of viewing the world. It’s always the people who have been through the darkest of times that end up being the most compassionate and lovely humans, I have encountered this phenomenon time and time again and it never fails to warm my heart.
Just like a lump of coal becoming a diamond after billions of years of immense pressure, all I can say to Dave is to Shine on You Crazy Diamond!!
Find Dave on Instagram and give him a follow.
Show Notes
The book Dave mentions in the podcast is called The Gift by Lewis Hyde.
Dave is working on a graphic novel about gun control in the US, so let’s all wish him mazel and chutzpah for this important endeavour and Dave has promised he’ll come on the podcast again when he’s nearing publication.
Make sure you subscribe to Shuffle Synchronicities for the last 16 installments of his 365 day saga. These essays he writes have an uncanny ability to uplift you and believe in the good that is in the world as well as schooling you on an undeniably vast plethora of music knowledge and trivia. I do hope he publishes the whole substack as a book soon, it is something the world needs to read.
Gratitude is an Attitude
“I once shot an elephant in my pajamas, how it got into them I do not know” (the good looking Marx brother)
Thanks for listening everyone. If you enjoyed this podcast and are feeling generous and would like to support me with some funds, you can make a one off Paypal donation (or simply send the Paypal funds to chrisvonroy@gmail.com) then I would be super duper grateful. You can also support me on Patreon.
Subscribing to this newsletter will cost you just $5 a month, the upside of a subscription is not much, as I have vowed to make all of my posts free here, but you would earn that extra special spot in my heart, which I know you want to occupy. So go ahead and do it, you know you want to. You may even get a sporadic love poem from me, who knows? Anything is possible in this weird old world we live in.
Either way, thanks for all the support last year, here’s to 2022 being less weird than the last year.
“To practice five things under all circumstances constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.”
Confucius
The Word KUPU #17 - Dave Cowen