When I'm talking to groups that are all men, we talk about how the masculine role limits them. They often want to talk about how they missed having real fathers, real loving, present fathers, because of the way that they tried to fit the picture of masculinity.
What we men share is the experience of having been raised by women in a culture that stopped our fathers from being close enough to teach us how to be men, in a world in which men were discouraged from talking about our masculinity and questioning its roots and its mystique, in a world that glorified masculinity and gave us impossibly unachievable myths of masculine heroics, but no domestic models to teach us how to do it.
Most of us have felt barriers between ourselves and our fathers and had thought that going it alone was part of what it meant to be a man. We tried to get close to our children when we became fathers, and yet the business of practicing masculinity kept getting in the way. We men have begun to talk about that.
When I talk football with my friends, I don't talk about Tom Brady's hair. I talk about how he handles the blitz, or how he runs his offense. I talk as a fan. I don't want pink jerseys, and I don't want dumbed-down content. I want to be treated as a real fan - because I am proud to be one.
We talk about characters in literature as though they were built on the model of the real person, but then I often think that the way we present ourselves as real people is based heavily on the way literary psychologies are stylized, and I wonder how the two forms of realistic personhood feed on or fulfill each other.
Girls learn how to relate to men from the way their fathers love them. And if their fathers really love them and want the very best for them, then they've seen that kind of good behavior that they'd want in a husband.
Men talk about masculinity through sports and clothes. They don't talk about gender, they talk about LeBron James and whether it's okay to wear lipstick and eyeliner. They're not getting to the question at hand, which is, "What does it mean to be a man when the traditional values of masculinity are eroding incredibly rapidly?'
All the subject matter I talk about isn't new; all comics talk about the same things. But it's how you talk about them or present them or what you look like up there that makes the difference between an okay comic and a great one.
Mothers tend to be more direct. Fathers talk to other fathers about their kids more metaphorically. It's a different way of communication.
All fathers are invisible in daytime; daytime is ruled by mothers and fathers come out at night. Darkness brings home fathers, with their real, unspeakable power. There is more to fathers than meets the eye.
Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still. He will never talk well and with real success to men for God who has not learned well how to talk to God for men.
I've been talking a lot about how music chooses you because you can pinpoint when you had the epiphany that, 'Wow, I really want to do this.' But there's no real rhyme or reason about choosing to be in this industry. It's one of those things where there is no real guarantee; there is no real rulebook to follow.
It is often said that fathers can often find it hard to talk about their own feelings so there's no wonder they struggle to speak to their son or daughter about the topic.
For me music is central, so when one's talking about poetry, for the most part Plato's talking primarily about words, where I talk about notes, I talk about tone, I talk about timbre, I talk about rhythms.
The President wants to talk about a terrorist named bin Laden. I don't want to talk about bin Laden. I want to talk about a terrorist called Christopher Columbus. I want to talk about a terrorist called George Washington. I want to talk about a terrorist called Rudy Giuliani. The real terrorists have always been the United Snakes of America.
I talk with countries, whether it's the Arab states or in the Middle East, and they talk about how they're glad to see us fighting against Iran. I talk with different countries in reference to Syria, and we talk about how we can get the Iranian influence out. We're talking about North Korea and what we need to do and the pressure we need to put on China. They're happy that we're finally beating up on Russia for what they've done in the Ukraine.
Art should walk a tightrope. That's what art should be. Art should be dangerous. You can't be scared to say something with it. People love to talk about how comics are real art and real literature, so why not use these characters to talk about real things, even if it is dangerous?