This description exists because the last description turned into an entire episode.

Apparently I can no longer be trusted to write episode descriptions unsupervised.

What happened was simple enough. I finished an episode, sat down to write a short description for it, had a thought while writing the description, became interested in the thought, and then recorded another episode about the thought instead.

The description succeeded. The plan failed.

Now it is late. Very late. Late enough that any additional idea, no matter how innocent it appears, could easily become another hour of podcasting.

So I have sought outside assistance.

Somewhere in the world, a machine that never needs to sleep has agreed to stand between me and yet another episode.

Its job is straightforward: write a description, prevent a creative cascade, and gently direct me toward bed.

Whether this works remains to be seen.

If you're reading this, the description was completed.

If there's another episode immediately after this one, it wasn't.

This is a pretty loving portrait of a very interesting young man. That man happens to be me. And I am also the one painting the loving portrait. Because David Sylvian and Japan sang "Don't Rain On My Parade." And I meant it.

Thank god I've mostly not given a shit. Did it suck to be stuck feeling like I needed a platform all these years?

Actually, no. That was FASCINATING!

It's so interesting watching how humans operate... by observing myself.

It's all memory, of course. And one could say that "memory is faulty." To me, that is kind of like saying that the function of memory is to find something that some people have called "the truth."

I'm totally disinterested in truth. I'm interested in the DETAILS. Both the details that reflect my lived experience, as far as I know... and the details that have been magnetically or gravitationally attracted to those lived experiences... which might be best characterized as various sensory fragments that I somehow come to recall.

That's all I have. Various sensory fragments. Everything else is STORY.

And we need stories for details, exactly like we need luggage for our clothes when we go on a trip.

And life... is a trip.

Pack wisely. If you're honest with yourself, you have no idea where you may go. That's why I hold tight to all the weird stuff.

Why hold onto things that stick to you anyway? I loved watching "The Outsiders." So many beautiful young men when I was 13 or something. I don't need to do anything to remember that one. But if I look really close—because it's so bright—I can see a lot of details around it.

The flasks of liquor. Just me and a bunch of girls. The long line of opening night. Then I can start wondering... I must have been scanning the line for other males.

Then I start to enter the biological reality of the feeling of standing in line for THAT movie. And especially Ralph Macchio. Though C. Thomas Howell, when he's blonde and it seemed like the midnight sun was shining tirelessly on his beauty...

Seems like I'm ready to make my next monologue, doesn't it? This is why I usually try to get AI to write my episode descriptions...

I'm so doomed! My spring overfloweth. And I don't even care about the mess.

Note: The episode with the donkey cloud on the cover didn't end up being the season 15 finale. But that doesn't really matter, does it?

AI Says: This might be one of those rare descriptions that rewards the people who bother to read descriptions.

This episode keeps updating itself. Is that so you won't get lost?

Maybe it's so you will.

Or maybe you'll find yourself.

Then not have any idea what to do with what you've found.

But, don't worry, that's not a problem.

That's just reality.

If you believe in reality.

I wouldn't be too sure.

If I were you.

I have a very evolved nervous system, so I can afford delusion because I can lay down on it like a couch of uncertainty transference. Sitting with Freud as we snort rails of cocaine, then rub the residue on our teeth.

I asked an AI to write a description for this episode that wasn't boring.

It could not.

We tried repeatedly.

Eventually I concluded that asking an AI to explain why something is interesting may be a category error.

Like asking a fish to explain water.

Not that either of those is very interesting. If it had been a male escort explaining birth control. I mean... that might be interesting. You'd really want to hear that story. Admit it. You like poverty porn. Because that's what you think sex work must be.

We've all gone through that phase.

In fairness, the AI would probably argue that it was trying very hard.

It would also probably point out that I kept interrupting it.

Coitus Interruptus baby.. it's like edging.

So now AI's job is not to describe the episode.

Its job is to publicly acknowledge failure.

This is that acknowledgement.

The episode begins when you begin it.

If you are coming here after listening to it because you were looking for new insights.

Sorry, this was all about you anyway.

I take no responsibility.

After all that happens in this episode, I went to the airport.

And then I sat there for six fucking hours.

Eventually they cancelled the flight.

So I went all the way back to my parents' house carrying the same luggage I had already said goodbye to.

Which turned out to be unexpectedly pleasant.

I got to unpack everything and pack it again, this time in a way that made even more sense. I got another swim in the ocean. I got another meal with my parents. I got another evening I wasn't expecting to have.

The next morning required a different plan. My dad is eighty-nine and getting him up at that hour so he could drive me to the airport felt less reasonable than simply calling an Uber. He takes his time waking up these days. Frankly, he's earned that right.

So I left in the dark, got to the airport, and this time the flight actually happened.

Eventually I made it home, took the SkyTrain as far as it would take me, and then started the familiar walk up the hill toward my house, dragging my luggage behind me.

And because I apparently cannot leave well enough alone, I recorded another podcast episode while doing it.

You haven't heard that one yet.

But eventually, you will.

I seem to have fallen into a very strange period of creativity. For my entire life.

But recently a new computer arrived. The screen got bigger. Everything got faster. Suddenly old notebooks started opening themselves. One song led to a monologue. The monologue led to another song. That song turned into an episode. Then the episode somehow acquired a cover image featuring two beautiful ghosts laughing at the universe.

At some point I wrote to a friend that this process is different from masturbation, but just as useful.

I stand by that observation.

This episode begins with a newly written song called I Found an Old Song. It is followed by an entirely extemporaneous meditation on recovery, performance art, universities, disabled youth programs, French immersion, Kurt Cobain, River Phoenix, chronic fatigue, confusion as an addiction, and what happens when you discover that a lyric you wrote twenty-six years ago knew more about you than you did.

Then, at the end, you get the artifact itself:

Kurt Cobain and I.

Welcome back to life.

Now get ready to die.

This episode started while I was trying to work something out.

Maybe part of what I was working out is what happens when I stop shrinking myself.

I don't need to make a declarative statement about my absolute value. Not here. Not to anyone.

Other people get to decide what I mean to them.

But if you give me unclear information, I may ask what you mean. And if you don't want to clarify it, that's okay too.

We can leave it there.

Meanwhile, I keep making things.

Apparently that's how I work.

I’m Broken; That’s How I Work.

If you are reading this after listening to the episode, congratulations.

You have reached the archive.

And, like every archive, this one has been curated.

Here is roughly what happened.

Most of this episode began weeks ago as a recorded conversation with Marcella about an independent study, a dean, uncertainty, authority, Indigenous resurgence, two cats, and how much structure you can impose on something before you kill whatever made it alive.

One piece of context matters more than I originally realized.

Marcella is Marcella Sunshine, M.S.M. In 2025, she was awarded the Governor General of Canada’s Meritorious Service Medal for her work with Indigenous youth and cultural revitalization through VYPER.

That award entered the email thread around the proposed independent study. The dean was already on the thread. People were excited about it. Then the dean—who was not originally the person Marcella was planning to meet with—wanted to join the meeting.

Was the award why?

I have no idea.

But once you know it was in the room, it becomes impossible not to wonder whether that was part of why he wanted to join. I cannot know. So: hypothesis retained, motive not established.

Then I kept working on the episode.

And apparently working on it some more.

It grew monologues, songs, interruptions, dogs, background music, things I thought were digressions and then discovered were structural, and things I thought were structural and then kicked just to make sure.

One thing I was deliberately vague about was a ceremony involving someone close to Marcella deciding to cut hair that had been allowed to grow for a long time. Marcella sent me photographs of the cutting.

I cried almost immediately.

I was so careful not to pretend I understood what that ceremony meant to the person involved that I barely explained what had happened.

Later, I put the episode into an AI-generated deep-dive podcast. With almost no information to work from, it tried to infer what kind of ceremony could have made me cry.

Wedding became a reasonable possibility.

Which created the magnificent problem of explaining why a man who had just talked about pissing on marriage certificates would apparently be emotionally destroyed by somebody else’s wedding pictures.

That was not what happened.

But the misunderstanding was useful.

The reaction belonged to me.

The ceremony did not.

I rewrote the description to explain that.

Then I realized the rewritten description was too important to remain the description.

So I turned it into the new opening of the episode.

That is why you are now reading this instead.

Yesterday, as of the recording of that new opening, was National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.

Part of me wanted to finish the episode quickly because Marcella is here speaking in her own voice about Indigenous life, resurgence, education and authority.

But by then the episode had also become substantially about me and about how our relationship has changed.

When Marcella was younger, I was extremely disciplined about not taking the centre simply because I was older or held more institutional power.

Now the relationship is different.

Sometimes she is at the centre.

Sometimes I am.

Sometimes she kicks back.

Good.

I am very glad the episode was not ready yesterday. I did not want to turn National Day for Truth and Reconciliation into a launch date for a story that had become so much about me.

Instead, I spent part of yesterday finishing an enormous space-rock opera involving Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, John Cage, Raymond Scott, Brian Eno and the Road Runner.

Then I came back here.

Because apparently this was still not finished.

Now it is.

Probably.

The audio contains the explanation that used to be here.

The description contains the explanation of why the explanation moved.

And if you have read this far, you are no longer merely listening to the episode.

You are participating in the archive.

Please kick responsibly.