I recently got the chance to talk to one of my heroes: Marc Maron, stand-up comedian and host of the WTF podcast.
WTF has been running since 2009 and gets millions of downloads every week. I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve never missed an episode. But I’m a huge fan of Maron’s comedy as well, and I’ve been particularly interested in his more recent material.
Last year he released an HBO special called “From Bleak to Dark,” and it got a lot of critical acclaim for this one sequence, where he talks about the death of his girlfriend, the filmmaker Lynn Shelton. In particular, there’s a moment where he talks about how surreal it felt to grieve her loss:
I’m just sitting on my porch, and a hummingbird came right up to my head — just like bzzzzz — and I’m like, “Oh my God! Lynn! Lynn, you’re a hummingbird now! Of course you are — that makes so much sense! I miss you baby — I can’t believe you’re a hummingbird, what’s that like? That’s crazy!”
And then, the next day, there were like four hummingbirds, and I’m like, “What the f*ck is happening? Which one is Lynn? Who’s Lynn? Is this just what happens now?”
Now obviously I was already in the tank for Maron, and I’ve always found his work to be just as emotionally rich as it is hilarious. But that moment in the special made me feel like he’d found a new gear.
He’s coming to Phoenix to play the Orpheum Theater on Saturday, Sept. 21, and I got a chance to catch up with him earlier this week.
Full conversation
SAM DINGMAN: You know, I feel like I heard you mention on the show not so long ago that this current run of stand-up that you’re doing, building up to your next special, might potentially be your last run?
MARC MARON: You know, I say that I think all the time as sort of preparation for when I actually mean it. After a certain point, because of the way I do stand up, I just get concerned that the resource of me is going to dry up at some point.
DINGMAN: Sure. Well, let me ask you more about that. I’m really fascinated by what you said about this idea of whether or not the self is a renewable resource, because you’ve always spoken very personally. But more and more so in your recent work, there’s been this vulnerability to it.
And I’m thinking in particular, obviously, of in your most recent special “From Bleak to Dark,” you’re talking about your grief about losing Lynn and the hummingbird moment. And I know that in this current hour, if I’m not mistaken, you’re talking very openly about some potentially traumatic stuff from childhood. Does that feel like, a different register for you than where you’ve been previously?
MARON: Yeah, totally. I mean, it seems to be like the new frontier on some level. I think talking about grief and tragedy in “Bleak to Dark” just sort of gave me some sort of portal into knowing that I could elevate other things that were utterly personal or painful and bring them to a point of humor. I know it’s a buzzword — vulnerability, authenticity, trauma talk or whatever — but I also think it’s kind of loaded in a way that is truly kind of risk-taking and truly kind of edgy.
But I think ultimately, if you’ve got something that’s stuck in you from childhood or from pain or from tragedy or from grief, and there’s some little key that makes you laugh at it, that does wonders to integrate it into the wholeness of your being, you know?
DINGMAN: Yeah. So can I ask you — and you don’t have to go into any more detail, I don’t want to ruin the show, obviously — but in terms of this material that you’re working with in the current hour, did you find that you were able to experience these memories in a comedic sense for the first time on stage?
MARON: Well no, because me and my brother had talked about it for a long time here and there, and the outcome of it. I think I have a brain that is constantly in a state of mild panic and kind of manufactures crisis as a way of self-soothing. I make myself a little crazy with all, you know?
But I recently realized that when you have that kind of brain, when an actual crisis happens, you’re kind of ready to go.
DINGMAN: So fringe benefit maybe.
MARON: Yeah. But my point is that I chose a long time ago to stay away from topicality in a broad sense. Because you’ll notice that the way comics handle — certainly the anti-woke comics — handle what they consider edgy material is essentially just reconfiguring talking points, kind of like, “Hey, we can’t say anything anymore.”
And so for me, the only way to kind of move against being a hack in that way seems to be going inside to myself and talking about how I think and what I think about in my experience. That’s really the only way to go to maintain originality. So that’s where I’m at.
DINGMAN: Well, and there’s a big difference between — throwing this word “vulnerability” around — there’s a big difference between the kind of anti-woke comic you’re talking about, claiming that they are making themselves vulnerable by, in their minds, exposing themselves to cancellation, versus you actually being vulnerable in processing this traumatic experience in a comedic way that people may not have seen before. That’s a very different version of vulnerability.
MARON: Well, I appreciate that. I always saw being a stand-up as being something more than an entertainer. And it is sort of like, I do think about the world constantly. I am constantly engaged with the news. I’m constantly engaged with myself and where I’m at in my life. And so it all kind of moves together.
DINGMAN: It’s interesting hearing you characterize it that way, because in getting ready to talk to you today, I was thinking about one of my favorite Marc Maron sort of political jokes ever, when this is a very old one. But the joke was you always think the sound of Big Brother is going to be this big, booming voice. But the sound of Big Brother is just some guy going like, “Hey, check it out, my phone has GPS.”
MARON: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (laughing)
DINGMAN: It’s still one of my favorite Marc Maron jokes. But I was trying to think about why did that joke work so well for me? And I think it was because — and tell me if you agree with this — if memory serves, it comes in the context of you being at I think it’s like the Creation Museum and being annoyed at people in line being idiots with their phones.
So it’s like the joke lands because it comes in the context of this very personal experience that you’ve had.
MARON: Well, yeah. I mean, that’s the way I process everything. And I had to honor that point of view and my comedy. Look, there’s guys who have personas, and I don’t know that I have one. And then I used to it used to really bother me, and I’d be like, “How do I get a persona?” But I think the struggle has always been to be me. And I’m pretty painfully me.
DINGMAN: One of the other things, I guess, that has been fascinating to me about this — this thing that I hear you saying is sometimes how you feel and sometimes not how you feel in terms of are you coming to the end of the time when you want to be doing this — is just in relation to to what you were saying about stand-up and the desire to be more than just an entertainer. What do you feel like stand-up is is fulfilling for you now?
MARON: You know, there was always sort of this drive to get the new joke, to figure out a new thing. And I was always really intent on making people see things the way I did or see things differently or blowing minds or coming up with a new bit. So there is always an element of discovery that is sort of unparalleled by any other experience in life.
Because I do generate live on stage most of the time. So it’s sort of delivered to me by something I don’t really understand. And that is a creative catharsis that is still available to me. And I think as long as it’s available to me and it continues to happen, I’ll continue doing it.
Like that bit that we were talking about earlier, that point of view around technology and around our surrender of our own minds still holds. I’m doing a bit now that I’m working on about how I believe no matter what your life looks like or what your personal life looks like, that I’d argue that your primary emotional partner is probably your phone.
DINGMAN: (laughing) Well, yeah. If I was to think of the broad arc of Marc Maron politics throughout your work, the thing that’s always resonated, for me at least, is that it always feels like you’re talking about what has power over us and how we give it that power. And it’s occurring to me as we’re talking that in a way, there’s a real continuity between the idea that sometimes the thing you’re giving power to is a government or a politician or a certain type of comedy or a device, but that as you begin to integrate more of your own emotional experience, it’s also acknowledging that sometimes you’re giving your trauma power over you, or sometimes you’re navigating the power that your trauma has over you. So there is kind of a continuity there.
MARON: Yeah. Sadly, though, pushing back on power outside of you is easier than pushing back on power inside of you. And sometimes you’re going to buckle to that inner one, and it can really screw your life up for as long as it takes, maybe forever.
DINGMAN: All right, well, Marc Maron will be at the Orpheum Theater here in Phoenix this Saturday (Sept. 21). Marc, thank you so much for taking this time, I appreciate it.
MARON: Great job, buddy. I enjoyed it. Thanks, man.
