Writer Pico Iyer lost everything in a 1990 California wildfire. After being rendered homeless and sleeping on a friend's floor, he was told about a Benedictine monastery. His time spent in silence on retreat there changed him both as a person and as a writer. He spoke with Terry Gross about his new memoir about the experience, Aflame. Also, comic and former Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. talks with Tonya Mosley about his new comedy special, Lonely Flowers. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What happened to Pico Ayer during the 1990 wildfire?
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Chapter 2: How did silence change Pico Ayer's writing?
It's funny, speaking for myself, sometimes when I'm really alone for an extended period of time, my mind is quieter. But other times, the chatter gets louder because there's nothing to drown it out. There's no outside world or outside of maybe like the TV or books or whatever. But there's nothing to drown out the chatter or to distract. Did you experience that too at any point?
Well, as a writer, of course, I spend much of my day alone. And when I'm at my desk, the chatter is sometimes deafening. But what I experienced with the silence in the monastery was something very different. I was just thinking as I was walking down to talk to you that it's as if suddenly in the monastery I realized I wasn't the center of the world.
And the sort of me part disappeared and the world part became very strong. And Thomas Merton, the great Trappist monk who lived with silence for 27 years, wrote, when your mind is completely silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real. And I think that's what I found.
So although sometimes I've been there during storms and at very scary and uncertain times, my mind at least is quiet in a way that it isn't when I'm by myself elsewhere.
Can you physically describe the monastery?
Well, Big Sur already is the place where the calendar falls away and the outside world feels very distant. And you're on this 60-mile stretch of coastline in central California where humans feel very tiny because you're just in the presence of tall redwoods, the huge expanse of the uninterrupted ocean, the cliffs, and the sky.
And then right perched at the top of a hill there is this 900 acres of dry golden hills, pampas grass, and a cluster of little huts where the monks stay and where their 15 or so visitors stay. it's already one of the most beautiful sights on earth.
In 1996 because I travel a lot National Geographic magazine very kindly came to me and they said we'll send you anywhere in the world on our dime to write a piece about a special place and I'm sure they were thinking I would write about Tibet or Ethiopia or Antarctica and I said the only place I can think of is Big Sur and so I just drove three and a half hours up the coast again because that is as unworldly a location as I know.
It is such a beautiful place. I don't mean the monastery itself, but Big Sur. And so I'm kind of wondering if going on a retreat there is like being in a privileged bubble. Or it's like getting in touch with something so elemental, so essential about nature, about the world.
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Chapter 3: Why does Pico Ayer find monasteries appealing?
And they couldn't handle it. That mermaid, that's the one that broke him, that damn mermaid. When they get that little mermaid remake, they was like, oh no, brothers. Meet me at the bakery tomorrow, brothers. We're losing the White House. We're losing the courthouse. There's a fish in the water, brothers.
That's Roy Wood Jr. in his latest comedy special Lonely Flowers on Hulu. It's Wood's take on how isolation has sent society spiraling into a culture of guns, protests, rude employees, self-checkout lanes, sex parties. And he also talks about why some of us would rather be alone than connected. Wood is known for his razor-sharp wit.
He spent years on the stand-up comedy circuit, dissecting pop culture and current events. And for nearly eight years, he was a correspondent for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Wood currently hosts the CNN News Quiz show, Have I Got News For You, which was adapted from a long-running British series under the same name. Roy Wood Jr., thank you for being here and welcome back to Fresh Air.
Thank you for having me back. It is a pleasure.
Chapter 4: What insights did Pico Ayer gain from his experiences in silence?
You know, at the end of that clip I just played, you heard the beep. That was the N-word. It was part of the punchline that you use in the joke. And it almost is like an exclamation point. And I know that you have weighed whether you use it. I think you talked about in another special how your uncle was like trying to not use it himself.
He's on the patch. He's on the N-word patch.
Right. He's on the N-word patch. How do you decide when to use it in your comedy?
I try to use it in scenarios where I feel like if I'm impersonating a person who would have said it or if it is a feeling of exasperation. It's like if there is an emotion, then there is a word for it. And not everybody agrees with particular words, but I feel like once you've had the conscious thought then as they say, God knows your heart, well, then you said it.
So I'm not going to say freaking or gosh darn. That just for me does not work. I have resigned myself to the truth, though, that Certain words are going to nail to chalkboard certain people because they just don't like those words. And if that's the case, then I'm not sure if everything that I do is going to be for you. And that's fine. And when done properly, a comedy booker told me.
Ages ago, this was late 90s, she said profanity should be the seasoning, never the main ingredient. And so I curse way more when I am first starting a joke. And a lot of that is just nervousness and curse words become um words. Like if you saw me in a comedy club working new material versus when it's polished, it's night and day.
And so you have all of these curse words and there is scaffolding and then you slowly start taking the support beams away to see whether or not the joke is really funny.
I did notice, though, I mean, I noticed when you were on Conan O'Brien, his podcast, you used it and he didn't laugh, you know, because he kind of, it also can make people uncomfortable. Right. It can make people, they don't know if they can laugh at it.
Can I laugh at this? Yeah. And that's the thing that... For me, I'm just going to be my natural self. I'm not doing it deliberately to make you uncomfortable. But if you choose not to laugh, that's fine. I'm not the type of person that would trip at you laughing at it. But you don't know that about me. You don't know what type of Black person I am.
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Chapter 5: How does Roy Wood Jr. address societal issues in his comedy?
Sergeant Posey was not feeling this behavior at all. But what can you say? I'm running. You said run, so I'm running. And we would collapse across the finish line and just be howling with laughter. And it worked every time. And it just made me laugh. And there was no purpose to it, but it was just funny.
But you went to college for broadcast journalism. You got into some trouble, though, with the law that changed your trajectory. Yeah.
Yeah. But I mean, that whole thing, though, is part of what got me into stand up. Because when I was 19, yeah, we stole some credit card. Well, I stole the credit card. They was with me when we bought the stuff. And so like we were.
They being your friends.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so a co-defendant, as they're called in a court of law. So in 98, I get arrested for stealing some credit cards and buying stuff and selling clothing on campus or whatever. And so in that time, I get suspended from school. So this is Thanksgiving of 98. And I get suspended at the top of the year in January of
for essentially that whole year, except I think I got back in school in like September, October or something. So during that time, I start doing stand-up because I think I'm going to go to prison. I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to go to prison. Let me try everything. What was that thing Sinbad used to do? Oh, yeah, stand-up. Okay, well, where does stand-up happen? Oh, okay, open mics.
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Chapter 6: What themes are present in Roy Wood Jr.'s comedy special?
Oh, okay, well, I'll go to Birmingham. I took a Greyhound up to Birmingham and performed and went back to the bus station, slept there. Because I didn't want my mom to know I was in town. I didn't want her to know. Because, you know, it's a black mom.
She didn't know. She didn't know about your arrest?
No, she knew about the arrest. That's why she didn't want me doing comedy. You need to be somewhere with a job looking gainfully employed so they don't send you to prison. To which I said, thanks, Joyce. I think I'm going to sleep in bus stations.
And go do comedy.
Yeah. This activity makes me happy. And I just want to be happy right now. And I ended up getting probation.
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Chapter 7: How does Roy Wood Jr. navigate sensitive topics in his stand-up?
Yeah. Why were you doing that? Why was the credit card ring the way to make money? Because I assume it was about making money.
No, it wasn't. I mean, money is part of it. But at its core, what that started as, and it took going to therapy to really connect these dots, I didn't want my mother to worry about me. You know, I had a good father. He was a bad husband. And so, you know, money was tight a lot of the time because Pops was tripping. And we moved to Birmingham because my parents reconciled in the third grade.
I was in the third grade, maybe fourth. So I remember nights laying in my bed, first grade, second grade, and I could hear my mother asking friends for money. Like the late night calls asking, you know, the borrow the money calls, right? And then I remember... I remember when my dad died when I was 16. And, you know, my dad was one of them hyper black, you know, I'm not paying no taxes.
The black man ain't got no rights. The right to vote expires, voting right, whatever. So my father never paid federal taxes. So when he died, they came for everything. They came for everything. And I remember that very well. I remember working 30 hours a week in high school to help with the bills. Because I didn't want my mom picking up another job. And I'm still trying to just be a child.
I'm still trying to just play baseball. But I'm also working closing shifts. I violated every labor law you can name.
And you had all types of jobs, too, didn't you?
Yeah, just for my mom to be able to keep the house through my senior year of high school. And so when I got to college... I just want to be no damn burden, man. I'm tired of asking you for stuff and hearing this deep sigh. And I know what you got to go through to try and make this pair of sneakers happen for me. So I'm just, I don't want to bother you. I just didn't want to be a burden to my mom.
And I think that it wasn't about thrill seeking. It wasn't about stacking a bunch of cash and saving up to get a car and a gold chain. Everything started from a place of, I just want some clothes for myself so I don't have to call my mom and ask for clothes. And then, hey, man, I bought a couple extra pairs of jeans. Would you like some jeans?
And then that guy going, hey, man, I told my friend about those extra jeans you got me. Can you get him some jeans? And then the next thing you know, you're kind of running an operation. And then the police come and go, hey, this is illegal. So we're going to put you on probation for a little while. Go find a career during that time. And then when probation concludes, you can continue that career.
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