Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan, Ruth here. Thanks.
Listening to another episode of Hey Human Podcast.
This is episode 360,
and I have a conversation with Peter Clothier.
Peter is a world-renowned art critic, a practicing Buddhist, a professor,
an ex-Pat Englishman,
and a celebrated and well-known author. His most recent book, dear Harry,
letters to my father touches on quote,
everything from his loss of Christian faith, intimate matters,
and the inevitability of aging and death. Peter's dad, Harry,
was an Anglican minister.
We talk about Peter's own role as a father,
world War II meditation and intimacy writing art,
and how he's still open to learning about himself after more than eight decades
on the planet. Really enjoyable conversation. Really interesting.
I think you're gonna get a lot out of this one. Check out, hey,
human podcast.com for links. And to learn more about my guests in the show,
check out Susan ruth.com.
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Find my albums on Apple Music, or wherever you get your music.
Look for all I ever wanted was everything as my most recent record.
And check out my relationships and sex show with sexologist and healthcare
practitioner, Amara Edelman. It's on YouTube, called Are We There Yet?
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Hey human podcast.com for any old reason at all and
take care of yourselves. Be love, be kind, lift each other up.
And here we go. Peter Cloth, welcome to Hey, human.
Thank you.
It's a pleasure to have you.
It's a pleasure to be here.
And our mutual friend Leah, suggested that we chat.
Yes.
I'm trying to get her on the show as well.
. Oh, good. Uh, I haven't seen her for a little while.
I have been a strange kind of interim place myself.
My wife has been very sick for a few months now,
and that's been taking up a lot of our time and energy.
So we're hoping that, uh, she's turning the corner now.
Wonderful. Wonder. Well, I wish good health.
Thank you.
Yeah, absolutely. It's gotta be tricky. I mean,
you had mentioned before we started recording that,
that you two have been together for quite a long, long, long time.
And it Yeah.
Well the same 54 years that we've been living on the Hill, actually, we,
uh, got that first little house on Clayton, um, 54 years ago.
That was the first time we moved in together.
How was that adjustment?
Uh, that was pretty good. We had both been married before, so, you know,
there were a lot of initial problems in, in, uh, I had two,
two sons and, uh, I still have two sons as a matter of fact.
And so that was, you know, it took some adjustment.
They went off to live in Iowa with their mother, which was quite difficult.
So then we had a huge earthquake the first year we lived there,
1971, the Sylmar earthquake, you know,
it was six o'clock in the morning or something.
We all rushed down into the street and we discovered that virtually all our,
our neighbors were gay.
It was a strange moment.
. That's hilarious.
We were welcomed there by our community because, uh,
we were a little outside the norm cuz we were living in sin, which was,
you know, not particularly common in those days.
So they thought we were, uh, come Kendrick.
Kindred.
Bit outsider too.
What's a little sin among, amongst friends?
Yes. Well, we enjoyed it. .
Tell me about where you grew up.
Well, I grew up, uh, in England. I was born up in the north in Newcastle,
which makes me a Jordy, which is, uh, it's rather like being a cockney.
But, uh, instead of being born in the, in the sound of Bob's,
you're born Ont side in Newcastle,
I've always been very proud of being a Geordie,
but I only lived there for a year and a half of my life. And, uh,
my parents moved south, uh, from my father's health to the Midlands.
He was a parish priest. So he had, uh, several different parishes there.
And the one that, uh,
I spent most of my childhood years in was called .
We lived there for a number of years, including the war years.
We were there from 1936 to 45. And.
Do you have strong memories of that time?
Very strong, yes. My memories are mostly around the people who,
who came to live in our house. We had a very big old, uh,
Victorian rectory and with lots of rooms,
and we had a lot of people staying in our house. Um, uh,
people from the Air, air Force base down below. And, uh,
some naval people from time to time.
But the mo remember what the ones I remember the most are the Blecher girls.
It's the place where they took the enigma machine when
they stole the, uh, enigma machine from, I think from a German submarine.
And it became the source of a huge amount of intelligence
during the war.
And the Bletchley girls were the young women,
very smart young women who went to work there for,
mostly for the, uh, uh, kind star men. Like people like, um,
touring, Alan Touring and others, uh, who were the,
you know, big wigs of the place. Sure. But the girls are, you know,
there was even a TV series about them at one point. And, uh,
so they, they, we had three of them living in our house. They were a very,
very powerful presence. And then also during the war,
during the Blitz in London,
the East Enders were streaming out of London to get away from
the bombs. Absolutely terrified, terrorized people.
And they would come to the village, they'd come and trains and buses.
We would put them up as a kind of way station, put them up in, um,
our apple basement when we kept our apples and potatoes and things.
And we had rows of them sleeping down in the basement.
And I remember their fear very clearly. And, uh,
my father trying to calm them down. So I,
I do have a lot of more memory. We had bombers fall crossed by German bombers,
would sometimes overfly London and have some of their load left.
Uh, so just to jettison their load,
they would drop them our village to lighten,
lighten themselves up to get back to Germany. Uh,
so I remember that the farms falling and, uh,
we had a massive Schmidt crash land in the farmer's field next to us.
So it was a lot of, for me,
the war was kind of a exciting hood experience.
Uh, although, you know, I, I realized of course,
how serious it was and, and, uh,
how hard it was on, on the British people at the time.
As, uh, a child from the parish. And having your, your parents,
obviously that's a status position,
although it's not a rich position, generally.
Did you feel the pangs of hunger and the rationing that was going on,
or because you were caring for other people,
did that not really hit you as hard?
Not as hard maybe because, um, we had ration books, of course,
and with all these people living in our house, uh,
they pulled the ration books and everyone had gave their ration books to my
mother. So she was able to use, uh,
quite a number of ration books to put together our meals. So we,
we pretty well, I don't remember ever being hungry during the war.
I remember missing things like sugar, chocolate.
Sugar, nylon, yeah.
Nylon. It was, um,
we had a sweet shop down in the village, and there were,
uh, the suites were very, very short supply.
We did really extraordinarily well. We had great Christmases,
great feasts and, and, um,
yeah, for us in the vicarage, in,
in many ways it was a good time.
Did you feel a part of everything going on in that?
I think for some kids growing up in situations like that,
when their parents are being pulled in a lot of different directions and caring
for other people's children and making sure other people are okay,
did you have a sense of longing for that attention?
Or were you in with everybody and It was okay.
At home? I was, you know, we were certain, while I was still at home,
we were certainly a part of everything because we had the BBC news,
which was, you know, the center of, uh,
of attention in the house at six o'clock every night, you know, big Ben.
And, and, um,
the six o'clock news would start and we would all be gathered around the radio.
So in that sense, I did feel connected with what was going on,
but then I was sent away to school at the age of six, seven,
can't remember exactly, I always say six, but I think I'm exaggerating.
My parents, my father particularly felt that this,
I would get a better education this way and that, uh,
I would perhaps be safer in, in a sense. So I was sent off to school at,
at, um, the age of six, and the school was, um,
a long way up north in, in Ambleside in the, in the, uh, lake district.
And that started, you know, I was away for 12 years.
So, um, we were, you know, we had two weeks at Christmas, two weeks at Easter,
and four weeks in the summer.
And that was the full amount of time I spent at home. So in that sense,
to answer your question, I did feel,
I did feel alienated separated from, from the family.
I imagine every time you came home for holiday,
these were strangers moving about. How would,
how do you connect with people that you,
when you're being really raised by your fellow school children and the teachers
and things, how do, how do you.
Well, by that time, by the time I was sent away, the school, uh, was, uh,
the end of the war was approaching. So, uh,
we didn't have so many strangers living with us,
and I didn't have the same kind of connection with them. So it was a,
it was a whole different experience.
I meant the strangers of your own family being away from them and coming back
and trying to integrate.
Yeah, it is a strange, and I, I think personally,
and I write about this a lot in the, in the book, it's called Dear Harry,
and the subtitle is Letters to my Father.
And it was written many years after my father's death.
And, uh, this is in, in the context of what we're talking about now. You know,
I, I did feel disconnected from, from my family and, and, uh,
as soon as I left England, we can come back over this. Soon as I left England,
uh, right after my Cambridge years, I started, I first went to Germany,
then to Canada, and then to Iowa, and then to Southern California.
So we, I got further and further away from my family in a sense. And,
uh, these letters that I wrote were an attempt to, to reconnect with him.
First of all, I started out thinking, well, I wanted to get in,
get to know him better.
And halfway through I realized that wasn't what I wanted at all.
What I wanted was for him to know me better. And, uh,
so that was, that was it. But is, you know, it is,
it's about trying to,
to remember things about my father and things about our
relationship that were meaningful. And that really shaped my life.
And some of which I, I only fully understood in retrospect.
One story that I remembered about my father was, um,
the skipping rope. I, when I was,
I guess five, five years old, uh, they sent, uh,
me and my sister to dancing classes in, in a little town nearby.
It was thought that time that dancing classes were good for posture and,
and all those things. Um, uh, we,
we went to dancing classes and one of the things that happened in
dancing classes were, were, was that we played, was skipping ropes.
And every time skipping rope, um, uh, was produced, little Peter would, how
I was so, so scared.
And my father one day hearing this,
he called me into his study one day being called into my father's study, was a,
was a, was a big event, you know,
that was a little five year old boy and my father and his caic and, and, and,
and dog collar. And, you know, in many ways he was,
he was kind of a God figure to me,
because there he was in church every Sunday standing up and talking to God.
So, uh, to be called into, into his study was, was a,
a big and rather intimidating moment. And I,
I went into the study and,
and there he was sitting with in his cassock with a skipping rope on his lab.
And he told me the story, I should back up a little bit.
He had studied psychology at Cambridge in the 1920s,
which is an very early period in, in psychology.
But he knew about Freud and young, and he'd made his studies.
He was very impressed by that.
And he was something of an amateur psychologist himself.
But anyway, he, uh, told me,
he put the skipping rod around my neck,
and he told me the story of my birth, how I'd been born,
with the umbilical cord tied around my neck. I was a blue baby,
and I only survived thanks to the midwife who came along with a pair of scissors
and snapped the cord away and, and, um,
gave me a good slap on the behind and made me cry. And that's, uh, you know,
but he told me this story,
he put the rope around my neck and he tightened it very slightly, very gently,
telling me this story. And he said at the end,
you don't have to be scared of skipping ropes anymore. Which was pretty amazing.
I mean, this was 19 43, 19 44,
and very, you know, very much in advance of his time. So this kind of
treatment is, uh, is, is known and acknowledged today,
but, but it's, it is a treatment that's fairly frequently practiced.
But back in those days,
it was quite extraordinarily perceptive of him to,
and daring of him to do that.
So that was, you know, part of the story. My dad, his,
his extraordinary perception, his, uh, his sensitivity,
his understanding of human nature.
Did you believe in the God he believed in?
Well, I went through my childhood, going to church every Sunday,
and I went, uh, when I was sent away to school,
they were Anglo-Catholic schools. They were very high church schools.
And we used to go to church every Sunday and, and, uh,
every evening at those schools, uh,
I suppose as a child, I believed in these things.
As I got to be a teenager, I found myself believing in them less and less.
Um, okay.
When I was 12, 13,
I guess I was confirmed and I went through the process of, of,
um, catechism class
and learned about all these things. And, uh, the bishop came for confirmation
and I was confirmed. And my father's confirmation book,
uh, present for me was a, a little book called, since Woodland's Prayer Book.
And since Woodland's Prayer book had a huge section at the end
about sin, every kind of sin that anyone could ever imagine,
it was all listed there and explained. And so how you would, you know,
how, how you go, go to confession and what you say when you go to confession.
You know, I was a big sinner by the time I was,
I was 13, I was masturbating, gailey as often as I could.
And I realized, you know, this was a terrible sin. But yeah,
it wasn't a sin to me, it was just, just being a boy.
And because I was in a boys' school,
all my sexual experiences were with other boys.
And I think that was instrumental in making me think that, you know,
maybe this God is, is, um, questionable,
at least that
I didn't attach my sense of humanity to him at all,
to this God. And by the time I was 18,
that was the end for me. I was never interested again throughout my life,
throughout my father's life. When, when I went to visit him,
I would go to church. I would take communion, but really out of,
out of desire not to hurt him. I married a Jew.
I think my mother found that quite difficult to start with,
although she wouldn't dare say so. But then they came over,
uh, one, uh, Passover to stay with us.
One of the two times they visited us in, in America in Los Angeles,
they were invited with us to a Sada. My father-in-law's house.
My father-in-law was a,
a big kind of rabbinical style Jew who loved, uh,
uh, ceremony and loved all the action in the Seder,
all the discussion and so on.
And he and my father got into this great discussion about the relationship
between, between the Passover Seder and the Last Supper, and, you know,
sharing the rituals and so on. You know, my,
my father truly respected other religions he grew in, in, in his older age.
He grew, got very close to the whole ecumenical movement, um,
in Europe,
which was an attempt to bring different religions and different,
you know, Protestant and Catholic together.
Did your mom come around?
Yes, I think so. You know, I think if you,
if you asked my wife,
she f felt that she was never really able to replace my first
life. My, my first wife that there was always
this little standoffishness with, with my, my mother,
but my mother was a little standoffish. Anyway, , she was, uh,
a Welsh woman, uh, who a little bit shy, I think,
uh, and a little bit reticent. And I,
I know that she came across to quite a number of people as being aloof distant.
So I, I don't think that that, uh,
bridge was ever completely crossed.
What was, uh, the, the boys school like?
Well, I went to two different boys schools where there was a,
a prep school, uh, uh, which is the younger school,
the elementary version of the, uh,
of the private school in England as the prep school. That was the school.
It was, uh, based in Sussex, but during the war, it was, uh, uh,
evacuated up north to the Lake District. Very beautiful place.
Then we returned to Sussex after the war. And,
uh, I spent most of my early school years there. You know,
I suppose it was a good,
I'm sure it was a good school in terms of the education I got.
I think it was me more than the school. I just, I wasn't,
I wasn't an easy mixer, you know, I wasn't,
didn't like sports very much. I just, you know,
I just felt I never fit in and always felt, uh,
alienated and isolated and, uh,
never grew into loving the experience as
some did. It's pretty much the same at public school,
which was the secondary version. It was just, it was,
it was a difficult experience and not a pleasant one for me. I know I, you know,
there are many men who came out with, uh,
great careers ahead of them. You know,
they went on to become the prime,
prime ministers and the captains of industry and the military leaders,
the generals and so on. That's, that's where the, uh, the public school is,
was then more particularly the source of, uh,
all, um,
the higher British level of society
was then. I hope it's less so now,
although I don't England know England very well anymore,
then there were many people like myself who really suffered through it.
There is a, an organization now, uh, called, uh, boarding School Survivors,
which, uh, was, uh, developed by a man I,
I got friendly with after, after beginning to learn more about myself and,
and about my brac, and understand things a little better. That is, uh,
an organization that takes in, well, it, um,
serves men and women,
both who were in some way damaged by the experience
of boarding school now being sent away from home at the age of six or seven.
That's, that's really, it's a big deal. It's almost a, an act of cruelty,
I think, looking back on it,
and it's damage that took me a very long time to recover from.
If indeed I have recovered from it. I dunno, ,
it is a, a lasting wound.
Right? And it's one part, Lord of the Flies, I'm sure. One part,
there's cruelty and abuse, sexual and, and physical violence.
And I don't think, I mean, through the seventies,
through the eighties even, there's still schools that kids get sent to,
or camps that do so much damage to the psyche.
I started my recovery, uh, uh, what,
what I think of as my recovery from that experience in the mid 1950s, uh,
in my mid fifties. I was in 1992,
I was, uh, suffering considerably in my life. Uh, we had a,
a big family crisis with my daughter and her health,
and she was just growing up into college age. And, uh, she was, uh,
with a therapist. And I called the, uh, therapist one day and I said, well,
you know, what can I do for my daughter? Because I missed stuff.
I've always been missed to fix it. I see a problem and I go, straightforward,
and I find the solution. And, you know, that's, that's what I was taught.
This person said, well, if you want to help your daughter,
you need to work on yourself.
And I didn't even know what that meant. I had always been, uh,
very hostile to therapy of any kind. So I, I,
on June, January 1st, 1992,
I went to my desk to see my to-do list. I keep to-do lists.
And there on my to-do list, there were telephone calls I had to return.
And there were five names on, on the list. And,
and each one of them was a Peter.
So I kind of joked to myself, this has to be the year of Peter. And, and, um,
and three months later I was invited. I was commissioned to go to,
uh, to Rome Peter's city, uh,
to write about a project by, uh, Los Angeles based artist,
Peter Kin, who he is doing a huge, uh,
light space installation at the trade and market in Rome. It's great,
great experience. There was another, uh,
Peter in Rome at the time from Los Angeles. His name was Peter Shelton,
a wonderful sculptor. And, uh, so there we were,
uh, uh, the constellation of Peters from Los Angeles in, in Peters city.
Uh, I'd been in Rome a couple of years before, and I really wanted to find, um,
Michelangelo's Moses.
I had seen David in Florence before,
and there was David that big spunky, youthful,
wonderful projection of, of the power of youth. I wanted to see Moses,
cuz he was the opposite end of life, you know, the old man,
a little stooped and Ben off. And I, I had really wanted to see that.
I couldn't find it. We looked all over for the church in that particular year,
two years before we just couldn't find the church.
And no accident. Accident. And, um,
this year I was determined to see the Moses. So we found the church,
and the church was San Pietro in Vali Saint Peter and
chains.
I happened to have been born on the Feast of Peters chains.
So we went to the church and, uh,
wandered around the church and, and, uh, saw Lee Moses,
which an incredible piece of work. And, uh,
then Ellie went off wandering in, in one direction,
and I went wandering in another.
Then I found myself looking down into a crook chapel where there was a real
query. You know, what about queries? Mm-hmm. , they keep, you know,
St. Teresa's little thing, fingernail or whatever it is.
And there in this reli query was, is a beautiful gold box.
And in the box was St. Peter's chains.
If you know the story of Peter, uh,
who after Christ died, he went around preaching the gospel.
The Romans didn't like that at all. So they threw him in jail,
and the Lord sent his angel down, and the angel burst us under the chains.
And Peter got outta jail and went on to preach the gospel.
So these were the chains that purported to be those chains from
which Peter had been released.
And I stood there in this church of St. Peter and Chains,
looking down at those chains, my birthday. And I realized,
you know, I've been wearing chains all my life.
And I went back to Los Angeles with the,
with a very clear understanding that I needed to get rid of those chains.
And the day after I got back,
I went to one of those art world co cocktail parties.
I was a writer and was fairly prominent in the art community
for a long time. I was at one of those art world cocktail parties.
And I ran into a man and I told him this story, and he said,
I know just what you need to do.
And he told me about this weekend that he had done training weekend.
And he told me it was called the, the, the New Warrior Training Adventure.
And I said, oh my God, that is the last thing I need to do, warriors training,
adventures, Jesus. Not for me. So of course,
I signed up the next day and went down to the,
uh, uh, to the training. And it was, it was a complete life changer for me.
I mean, I was, it opened me up like an egg cracked me open. And, um,
it was the start of a whole new period in my life where I
began to be able to look at myself with some honesty.
It really changed my life. It, uh,
led me eventually, uh, into the, uh, Buddhist path,
uh, because I realized that this was another way of
looking into myself, looking into my own heart, finding out who I was,
finding out what I needed to do with my life, where I needed to go,
how I could become a better man and a better father.
So that was that 1992, that was the beginning of, of, uh,
of that period of recovery for me.
That's incredible. Which.
Is also in my book, , the whole story.
I think people feel that,
that there's a certain point where it's too late
to find oneself or to figure out and
unravel the damage done.
So it's nice to hear that it's never too late, you know?
Well, I was 55. I have, uh,
stuffed many of those weekends since I've, uh, been on stuff.
And there have been men both younger and older than I
was. I mean,
I have seen an 80 year old man go through that weekend and,
and find the same kind of opportunity to make change in his life.
It's beautiful.
So I would recommend anyone, uh, you know,
who might be listening to this to investigate,
it's very easy to find out about it. You can go to the, uh, uh,
the website of the Mankind Project, which is the umbrella organization,
go to their site and find out about the, the
initial training program, but also about other, other programs. They often,
every other Thursday
I meet with on Zoom with, um,
up to 10 other men who have all been through the same experience
with whom I have a, a real sense of brotherhood. And, uh,
we just meet for an hour and talk for an hour. And it's, it was,
it's what keeps me on the ground. It keeps me centered. It keeps, uh, you know,
it's a very important part of my life, even today.
Oh, what, 30 years later.
What was something that you learned about yourself that you either didn't know
or maybe weren't willing to look at?
I learned that I had a heart. What you learn in boarding school,
amongst other things, is how to protect yourself.
How to build the armor that you need to defend yourself against
all your perceived, uh, insults and enemies and, and, uh,
all the things coming up, up against you that you are truly afraid of.
And you learn not to show your emotions, you know, you know,
and obviously not to cry, but you also learned not to, uh,
not to get angry. I mean, I had an experience in, in what the age of, uh,
oh seven or eight in my first boarding school
where I got into a hassle with a, with another boy who's a little older,
a little bigger than me. And the teacher in charge of the,
you know, the whatever it was, was a recreation period,
uh, saw that we were angry with each other and said, you've gotta settle this,
like, gentlemen. So I got our boxing gloves for each of us,
and all the boys stood around in a circle around us,
and, and, uh, we had to go at it. And I was just beaten to a pulp.
I, I'm know, a fight . So, you know,
you learn from experiences like that.
You don't get angry and you don't show your anger. If you are angry,
you bottle it down, so, and you don't show fear.
You know, these are things that, um,
that you learn very intensely in, in that circumstance.
And I had grown up and emerged from those schools,
a very tightly armored person.
One of the things that I learned, uh, aside from how,
how to protect myself was, was one of the things I learned the thi uh,
at the training was I really did have a heart.
And it was an important part of my, um, of my being as a man.
I'd lived so much in my head. I was very smart. I thought,
anyway, you know, I, I could deal things. I I was practical. I was, um,
efficient. Uh,
I had been both an academic professor and a college dean. And,
uh, so I was administratively skilled,
but the one thing that I was really missing was a heart.
And so that's the most important discovery of that.
I also learned, by the way, and I,
and I think I only came to understand this later, that I had a body again.
I had been living in my head for an awful long time,
and I was kind of scared and shamed of my body. I never felt it was good enough.
I never felt, uh, comfortable in it. That was also an important part of the, uh,
of the weekend. It wasn't, it wasn't just heart. It was, it was body.
It was learning too,
to accept and to begin to take care of my body.
You like the tin man. The heart was there all along.
You just had to be reminded.
Yeah. And I was a bit like the cowardly lion too. .
Wow.
How did your relationship with your kids blossom after that?
It must have been an awakening.
I think it was, you know, uh, when my, my two sons
who were brought up in their, in their young years,
they were brought up in Iowa City, which is a long way from here.
And I could afford that time to bring them out only once a year in the summer.
So we had a, um, a relationship,
not unlike mine with my father when we were growing up. I tried to fit a, uh,
you know, a year of fatherhood into a month, you know,
how, whether they're likely to admit it or not,
my sons certainly suffered their own wounds from that period in their life.
I came home from that weekend thinking how wonderful of my sons could do this.
And they have never been interested. They always think this is a,
a strange quirk of their fathers is,
is of no interest to them at all. They, in many ways, they're like,
I was as a younger man, I have a wonderful relationship with them now. We,
uh, we talk regularly on the telephone. Um,
my youngest son comes, uh, well, he's live still living in Iowa.
So he comes at all once or sometimes twice a year to, uh,
spend some time with us. Uh,
he had his own long and very difficult bout with cancer in his early
fifties. And so he has now a,
a point of common relationship with Ellie that he didn't really have before.
So we have a deeper relationship now. I don't, I,
I don't have with either of my sons that kind of, um,
I have very good relationship with him,
but not that kind of depth of relationship that I have with some of the men that
I went through that, um, that, that work with,
with whom I share that experience.
Did your sons read Dear Harry?
I don't think so. Yeah. I can't force that kind of a book on them. Uh, I,
I don't even ask them to read it. Uh, my daughter,
who was suffering so badly at that time, you know, she has, uh,
grown up into a wonderful young woman. She works at the American Film Institute.
She manages the catalog of a hundred years of film there.
Wow. That's a cool job.
In the past couple of years, she has had, uh, past three years,
she's had two major grants from the National Endowment
for Humanities, uh, to, uh,
assist her in, in, in her work there. She has,
she's a single mother to a,
a wonderful young grandson of ours. She's 11 years old.
My oldest son has three children, one of whom is now, uh,
passed university and is starting out, uh, a career as a teacher.
Very proud of her. The other two are just finishing up their bachelor,
uh, degrees at different universities. My youngest son,
my younger grandson,
is at the University of Nottingham doing classical studies, Greek and Roman,
if you can believe. Very proud of that.
And my granddaughter,
my younger granddaughter is at my old college in Cambridge.
Yeah.
I'm curious about your book, the Pilgrim staff. What brought that to light?
Oh, that's a whole different subject.
And the title brought, made me think of Er .
Chas . Yeah, it is a bit. So Syrian,
I have an abiding interest in sex,
and the Pilgrim staff is a fairly
thinly described if somewhat exaggerated,
uh, story of my own sexual life. It is, um,
the Pilgrim staff obviously is, well,
I don't need to go into detail,
but it's set in the 17th century.
And it gave me the opportunity to play with language a bit,
writing in the language of the 17th century, and to,
uh,
distance myself a little from kind of
current sexuality. I put it in into a, a historical frame,
which, which was convenient and, and a little less embarrassing, .
So I had a lot of fun writing that book. I really loved writing the book,
and I think it's a good one. But recently, you know, one of the reasons I,
I've been preoccupied in, in, uh, recent weeks,
I have been finishing the second of what I think might be
a trilogy of novels, which are written.
Uh, the narrator is, um, it's written in the persona of a woman.
I dunno where this came from. I'm just channeling this voice,
which happens to be the voice of a woman. And they are, uh,
strongly erotic novels. Um, some might call 'em pornographic.
I don't particularly care about the distinction, quite honestly.
Don't Tell Florida .
No. Yeah, right. I'm working on, I finished one.
I really liked it and I really enjoyed working on it.
And now I'm 300 pages into, into a sequel. I don't,
I don't know where this stuff comes from.
Here I am an 86 year old man writing in the voice of a 36 year old
woman. It is very strange. I have to tell you the,
uh, I sent the first book out thinking, oh my God, I,
you know, I really shouldn't be doing this. This is, uh, you know,
out of bounds. I sent the book off to, uh, three women readers,
and they all, they all loved it.
And not one of them raised objections to the,
the way I was describing sex from the woman's point of view,
which is what was really worrying me. So I was pleased with that.
And I was encouraged to start on the second book, which I'm,
I'm now nearly finished with.
Oh, the title of which is.
Uh, it's called Bad Girl. The first one. Let's see if I can remember the title.
Even. I forgot, I forgot the title of my new novel, .
But anyway, I'm thinking this might be a trilogy,
and if so, uh, you know,
I might try to publish all three or find a publisher for all three. Mm-hmm.
, because publishers tend to like sequels if they can, you know,
cease a follow up for something. So.
And I.
Certainly tell, why am I telling you all this?
Uh, it's, that's what happens. So, dear Harry Persists,
which is a book about creativity. Yes.
Yes.
The Pilgrim staff. And then while I Am Not Afraid Secret of a Man's Heart,
that's a memoir.
That's a,
that's the book that came out of the experience that I was describing you.
At The Warrior Weekend.
Yes. That was published, I think in 1994 or something like that.
It's quite vulnerable to put all of this out into the world.
Well, there are other books too. I,
I was commissioned to write a book about David Hockney, if you know his work.
And that was back in 1996. I think it,
obviously he's very out of date now cause he's done an awful lot of work since.
But this was the, um,
Abbyville Press puts out a series called The Modern Masters,
and this was the Modern Masters, uh, David Hockney.
So there was that. And then there have been other books, um,
closer to Persist. I did a book called Mind Work,
which came outta my experience of, uh, Buddhism and,
and working with the Mind and finding out more about the Mind.
I did a book called Slow Looking Back in, oh gosh,
I got some mid nineties when I was starting meditation myself
and observing my own habits as an art critic, uh,
going into galleries and wandering around and looking at paintings,
and then going home and read writing about them.
And I decided that wasn't really good enough. So I started, uh,
I came up with this idea for a practice called One Hour One Painting,
and I would invite small groups to sit in front of a single painting, uh,
for an hour with me. And I would do a guide, uh,
it was part meditation, part contemplation. I part closed eye work,
part open. I worked looking at the painting,
and I wasn't talking about the painting. I wasn't talking about the artist.
It wasn't about art history.
And it's just about sitting and looking at a painting for an hour.
And that proved to be quite popular. I wrote a book called, uh, slow Looking
about that experience. And then there was another book I published,
uh,
a few years ago called A Serious Conversation
with myself. And there was a book about conscious aging.
So there, you know, there's a number of books along the way. And, uh,
before that I wrote two novels, two books of poetry.
So there have been books along the way.
You're quite prolific.
I, you know, I look at, uh, a, a writer like, um,
I know if you know him, Anthony Horowitz, he's an English writer, you know,
it's television series like Foils War and, uh,
the Midsummer Murders. He's also a novelist and a children's book writer.
And, you know, his, that kind of pro productivity puts me into shame. Well.
Stephen King writes a gazillion books.
Stephen King is another example. . Yeah. You know, it books out,
puts out three books a year or whatever it is.
So I don't consider myself really prolific. Um,
but I do keep writing. And that's, you know, there are a,
a few things that really keep me on an even keel and help me to approach
my latter years with a kind of equanimity,
perhaps the most, well, um, I don't wanna put them in order in importance,
but certainly meditation is one of them.
Something I do every day. And, uh, it's a discipline, a practice,
and it keeps me centered. And the second thing is my writing.
Another thing I do virtually every day,
although I give myself Sundays off these days at my wife's insistence
, I don't think I would if it weren't, if it weren't for her saying,
you can't do this every day. And then there's my, uh, conscious aging group,
the group I told you about of I know maybe 10 men who meet,
uh, every other Thursday for just an hour.
And that's another kind of critical element in my life. Even though it takes,
you know,
just a small amount of time we share with each other the
experience of growing old and various topics
associated. I, I, um, initiated a,
a session the other day about fatherhood,
about what it meant to be a father. We don't, we don't have to say a lot
because we know so much about what's going on in each other's hearts.
Now we have that connection. It's a very immediate, very,
very deep, very brotherly connection.
Do you feel that you still carry any regret or have you worked through it?
I don't see it so much as regret. I see it as a sadness.
And I certainly carry that sadness about a number of things.
Things that I, I felt that I've done in my life, which, you know,
are consequential and not very helpful to anyone. And, uh,
sadness about my sons sadness about, you know,
no matter how much I write and how much I publish,
I always feel I should have done more.
That I should have made a bigger contribution that I've made.
And there's a sadness around that.
It's n n none of it is particularly rational, but, um,
it's there. I don't, I I don't see them as regrets,
regrets, you know, chastising yourself and,
and, and telling. This is simply the realization
that there could have been more, let's say.
Do you believe in reincarnation?
No, that's my big stumbling mark. That's why I'm never called myself a Buddhist.
Um, I love the dharma. I read, uh, the Dharma. I, it's a,
it's a great guide in my life. All the Buddhist teachings,
this is the one thing that is the real stumbling block that I can't really
embrace that whole idea of re of rebirth. I,
I think that when we die, that's it, uh, know. And,
uh, we talked about earlier about God, you know,
I don't have a God to believe in. Uh, Buddhism does not, you know,
Buddhism is helpful in this life.
It does not to attempt me to believe in other lives or
lives. So I was talking yesterday about, uh,
an interesting conversation with, with a man who,
who is talking about the survival of energy
that maybe that there is some kind of energy, our,
our presence in the world that survives in some way.
Uh, I am in my old age,
and I have to say, you know, at 86,
going on 87 this summer,
I can't pretend to be young any anymore.
And I kind of don't like those people who tell me,
well, it's only a number and things of that kind. I think that's bullshit.
You know, when you're old, you're old. And I,
I do like to think that, you know,
the body is not everything that, uh,
I can think the bo of the body as, as a corpse in,
in meditation and experience some kind of energy
force, some kind of life force in me, some maybe a chi. I don't,
I don't know what it is,
but I do like to think that there's something there that is just not
just just the body that I'm living in.
Why do you think you decided that God didn't exist for you or
doesn't exist at all?
Made no sense. I mean, I lived through,
through World War ii, you know,
how can, how can you continue to believe in, in,
in a God who permits the Holocaust
and who permits if he's almighty, if he's all whatever it is,
you know,
how can he permit millions of people to die killing each other in, in,
in a senseless war.
In His name with.
? In his name. In his name? Yeah. I mean,
that's quite aside from the kinda scientific, the, uh, age of, of,
uh, in enlightenment and, and, um,
and of humanism that we've been through in the past two or three centuries.
I mean, they've, uh, opened for better or worse,
that thinking has opened our eyes to look at ourselves and our place in the
universe in an entirely different kind of a way. Mm-hmm. ,
we do not, the sun is not the center of the universe.
Everything does not e evolve about human beings and their,
their pitiful existence, um, from every point of view. I,
I think it's very, very hard to believe in, in God today. It, and it's,
and it's a irrational in a way that doesn't,
doesn't sit well with me.
Peter, tell people how they might find you out in the world.
Well, I have a website, um,
peter clothier.com maybe foolishly,
but I do quite a lot of posting on Facebook. Uh,
you can find me under Peter Clothier on Facebook, and I publish,
you know, a lot about my life, quite honestly. Uh, what's going on in my life.
I get criticized sometimes from, uh,
from more serious people about, uh, you know,
why do you write about yourself?
Why do you have to say all these things about yourself? And so on.
But then I have a, a lot of people who read,
uh, what I write because it speaks to them about their own lives,
about their own experience.
And the comments that I get are almost universally, uh,
of the kind. I'm so happy you're, you're writing about this.
It relates directly to something that I experienced, you know,
that kind of thing. And, and I, I write to,
to make that connection with other human beings.
And Facebook may seem like a very strange place to do that,
but it has offered me a forum where I have maybe a hundred,
maybe 200 people who read me with some regularity,
50 to a hundred people who comment fairly re uh, regularly,
and a greater number who do that little like or
love or whatever it is that you do on Facebook.
So it's a great resource for me. It has been a, a wonderful resource.
I I do begin to wonder about it now with so much, um,
going on about privacy and,
and so far as my personal privacy is
concerned, I don't have anything private anymore.
It's all out there. Whatever you read of mine, you're reading about me.
And, uh, if you're reading my erotic novels, you're reading about my sexuality.
If you are, uh, um,
reading Dear Harry or reading about me and my father, and, you know, it's,
it's all out there and I don't care anymore. It doesn't bother me in,
in the way should I be saying this, uh, you know,
what are people gonna think of me that,
that meaningless at this point in my life, I'm too old to worry about it,
but I do worry about privacy. The other aspect of privacy, and that is, uh,
information being used
and spread at astonishing, enlightening speed,
disinformation, uh, going out about the,
um, purposeful misinterpretation of things that people say.
I'm, I'm aware that being on Facebook,
I'm exposing myself to that. I have been scammed very badly.
Couple of years ago, uh, I I got an email, a phish,
an email that nowadays I would immediately recognize as a fishing expedition.
I think it would, I was told me I had been overpaid something,
and it gave me a telephone number where I could, I could solve the problem. Mm.
And that got me into a month's worth of
really being thoroughly scammed and done out of a lot of money.
And I felt very foolish, very embarrassed, very, uh, you know,
and it made me realize how careful you have to be,
even with simple email these days.
Well, now they're using ai, deep fake technology to make phone calls.
I was just reading about this on Newsweek,
that to make phone calls and then they've mimicked the voices of your loved
ones. And so now they're telling people, make sure that your family has a,
a code word that would be used so that you can tell whether or not it's actually
who the person says. It's crazy world out there.
I got one this morning, in fact, which purported to come from the Geeks Court.
Oh, yeah. That's a, that one goes around all the time telling.
Me that I had been charged $119 or something. Yeah.
Those are all fake. The Geeks.
Squad renewal. Uh, and, um.
They're banking on people calling,
and then that once they get them on the phone,
they can get them out of all their money. I worry about that for my parents.
Yeah. Well, it's, it's a new world. I mean,
we were not brought up with computers.
Peter, this has been a really, really a pleasure. Thank you.
Yes. Well, I hope it works out for you on your, on your, um, podcast.
Yeah. I love the whole idea of it. I have not,
I'm afraid listen to very much of it because, uh,
I've been preoccupied with finishing my novel.
Understandable.
But, uh, you know, I love the idea is behind it and, and, uh,
and the thing that has to do with humanity is all right with me.
I try to try to make it diverse and I tend toward topics that I really enjoy
talking about. So.
Well, I hope you've enjoyed today's I.
Have. Thank you, . I really appreciate it. And, uh,
thank you for listening everybody. Bye.
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