-an early draft episode recording session
My, it has been some time. Thank you all so much for sticking with us on this journey - season 1 is almost ready to pick from the tree.
Juliette has been through it this spring… long covid, visa applications, chihuahua dog mom life… but at last she’s preparing to move to France and finally enjoy a long term respite from her allergies. I’ve also been busy making a home for myself in western Massachusetts, somewhere I never expected to put down roots but the place for me right now all the same. So much about life since we returned has been equally expansive and rooting. JThis pilgrimage has continued to be transformational.
On the last night of the trip, we were in Dublin. I was mentally preparing myself to get on a plane the next morning, around the time Juliette would be meeting up with some Irish friends to kick back for a few days. Without any discussion, we’d both given ourselves treat time right at the end of the journey. I’d extended a lucky layover in Iceland (I mean, I couldn’t just fly through Iceland). And it felt essential that we cushion the breaking of our time together. Like buying five tubs of Sag Paneer on the way to getting a tooth pulled, or another example that’s totally common and relatable. The trip had swept us both up in important ways. I’d invested wildly in recording equipment on the base assumption that I could learn how to use it and then also how to edit the recordings. Juliette had curtailed weeks of planned reconnaissance time in places she was considering moving and dropped everything for a road trip in a car she couldn’t drive with a human she sort of kind of knew. With no deliberation or painstaking creation we had given ourselves to this pilgrimage, and it gave so much self back.
That night in Dublin, we first thought we’d go to a drag bar. And then we wanted to visit the botanical gardens and find the Bridget’s well there. And then, when the evening light came and the last-night feeling started to come closer, we decided to walk to a quality Irish restaurant with thick live-edge wood tables and in-house spiced cider, and just have a good hot meal. The whole time we’d been planning and on the road, there hadn’t been more than three or four conversations about how to actually make the podcast after we got back. In fact, for the first ten days of traveling I was under the misimpression that Juliette didn’t want to be involved in post production at all. It wasn’t until a car conversation on the way to Pech Merle that we worked that little tangle out. Maybe we were reckless, or desperate for some adventure. Maybe we had our priorities straight. It was obvious from the start that we needed foremost to be open to receiving what the road had in store, and that too much plan making about any of it would be restrictive and destructive. That applied most of all to what to do afterwards, because if we focused on making a product it could shut down our personal relationships with the experience. We’d both done pilgrimages before, so that part was at least somewhat familiar, but long form storytelling in collaboration was a mystery and enigma.
Such was our dinner conversation in Dublin, over lamb steaks with wild thyme and crispy fried potatoes. We agreed to give ourselves a rest. To honor the transition time from road to home. Three weeks, we thought, would probably be enough for us to have landed and be ready to start finishing the podcast. It was early November, and we were nodding our heads about starting to release it in February. After all, how much integration time does a person need when they’ve been present for the journey? Well…
Cut to - mid January. We’ve barely spoken at all. Communication over long distance feels arduous and murky, like Sag Paneer that got partially frozen when the fridge had one of its cold moods. When we start to get together and write it feels stressed. For the first time in this whole adventure, we’re pushing the project forward. We had been coasting downhill in neutral with the top down and silk scarves trailing elegantly. What happened?
We had very different ideas of where to start. I thought we would decide on minimal narration and then pretty much play raw footage from the trip. Juliette wanted to sculpt every inch of everything, maybe building a new core, even rearranging when things happened in a conversation. We talked about bringing in a third person as a sort of advisor or producer to take some tension out of the air. (For future reader/listeners - it would have been Jessica). Slowly, effortfully, we spent weeks writing a script for episode 1. By the two-thirds point, Juliette was advocating a more scrapbook, raw footage approach while I was talking about crafting the story. That was our first good laugh since going long distance. It was the first time since then too that I started to feel like this did have the possibility of going okay. My heart wants the final product to match the scope and depth of our trip. It was so painful to come back and have sandpaper under our bare feet about it.
We recorded the sample script. I edited it into a draft. We made changes. We tried recording it again and didn’t get all the way through. We made more changes. And then, somehow, it became as clear as a raw egg being broken over our heads that this wasn’t the way.
When Juliette and I were traveling together, not a day would go by without having a conversation that just flowed. It’s one of the most thrilling feelings. We can touch on the nastiest congealed clots of human suffering and then be laughing about herrings in the span of two minutes. So much of what has made this a pilgrimage is the places we can go with each other in conversation. I rarely feel weighty or needing r+r after even the heaviest topic with Juliette. That quality between us wasn’t translating into the script. So it couldn’t stand.
Over a few days of contemplating this apparent dead end, we had a breakthrough. We had to work the story like we would in an oral tradition; to feed it, tell it to each other, go for walks out in nature in it, study it and allow our minds to dance all the way from the tippiest edges to the oldest oak tree in the forest. When bards worked up stories, they would make a relationship with them just like getting to know a friend or nurturing a crop. Stories want to be nourished. To be tended. To be willed up into the sunlight, and flourish there with lots of little worms aerating their roots. So, we scrapped the script. We put away all the work we’d done so far and started fresh, not even making notations.
The first day we talked for three and a half hours. We went through the whole trip from Rome to Dublin, tracing the through lines we could find, remembering the details that stood out in the moment. Afterwards, Juliette realized that there are three main threads to the story: our individual arcs, our relational arc, and the trip’s arc. Suddenly we had something to weave with and it was tactile and immediate. We were traveling again.
So much has changed in these last few months of feeding the story. Remembering back to those first stumbling phone calls feels like looking at baby pictures. We were figuring it out in real time. About half way in we started doing rehearsal calls. First, we would spend a day talking through whatever came to mind about a place. Anything from hours of total nonsequetours to a minutely detailed walk through of ten minutes in one town was welcome. Then, the next time we talked, we tried pretending that we were recording the narration. It wasn’t natural or smooth. We’d get distracted, or not make room for the really interesting bit and then remember it right at the end. But that flow was there - the sense of grace between us. And it didn’t feel performative or presentational; it felt just like sharing.
Then the clock let us know how much time we have. Juliette got her visa, and now we’re prepping to hole up and finish this thing over her second to last week in the US. I wish we had more time. And, if how all this has gone so far is any indication, the road probably thinks we’re ready.
You’ll be hearing more soon! Literally ! 😁🩷☕️
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