0:04

Gaze reading where the greats drop by trendy authors. Tell us all the who, what, and why. Anyone can listen. Comes we're spoiler free Reading from politic stars to book club picks where the curious minds can get their picks. So you say you're not gay. Well that's okay. There's something for everyone. Gays rating. Hello, and welcome to Gay's Reading. I'm your host, Jason Blitman, and on today's episode I have Asia Gable talking to me about her new book Light Breakers. And my guest gay reader today is Anton Delaney, talking to me about his book, queer Enlightenments. as always, if you like what you're hearing, share us with your friends. Follow us on social media at Gaze Reading over on Instagram. I put out a plea last week to try to get us to a hundred ratings over on Apple Podcasts, so I appreciate your help in that crusade and, you know, any, any little piece of feedback is always super helpful and, and really helps get other. Folks listening to this little indie podcast, so letting folks know about it, sharing gaze, reading with others always means a lot. Um, and I'm about to be at the Texas Book Festival where I'll also be in person in conversation with Asia Gable, uh, and previous gaze reading guest Austin Taylor. Um, were in conversation about each of their books, light breakers and notes on Infinity, so that'll be super fun. I'm really looking forward to that. There, I, I think there are like 15 or 16 gaze reading guests that are gonna be at the festival, so that'll be super fun. And if any of you are gonna be in Austin or in Texas, uh, please make sure to say hello. That would be really, really exciting. So anyway, all right, I think those are all the things for now. And please enjoy my conversations with Asia Gable and Antoni Delaney.

Jason Blitman: 2:08

Asia Gable, welcome to Gay's Reading.

Aja Gabel: 2:10

you.

Jason Blitman: 2:11

So happy to have you here to talk about your new book, light Breakers. For the people, what is your elevator pitch for the

Aja Gabel: 2:21

It is a story about a husband and wife who. The husband is a physicist who gets caught up in a time travel scheme in Marfa, Texas, and the wife leaves him to go pursue her past and all of its complications in Tokyo, and then they must find their way back to each other through the regrets and traumas of their past, basically. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 2:49

I love a moody, vague elevator pitch that gets you excited to pick up the bug.

Aja Gabel: 2:57

There's so many different ways I could explain it too. Some I used to say oh, it's about marriage. And I'm like, but it's about other things too. It's about loss, it's about grief, it's about time travel, like it's about, you could recho your own adventure here.

Jason Blitman: 3:10

Yeah, there's, for me I think it was very much about what the con the connection of your past and your

Aja Gabel: 3:16

Mm-hmm.

Jason Blitman: 3:17

Right? And like that sort of connective tissue and what that means and can you. Outrun your past. Can you revisit your past? Can you, and we'll talk more about that in, in a little bit. But something that comes up early on in the book that is so devastating to me that I wanted to unpack with you. And maybe you're devastated by it too. But that handwriting is dead

Aja Gabel: 3:37

Have you noticed your handwriting getting worse and worse?'cause I have.

Jason Blitman: 3:41

a hundred percent.

Aja Gabel: 3:42

great handwriting.

Jason Blitman: 3:43

No one learns cursive anymore.

Aja Gabel: 3:46

I know. It's very upsetting. I don't know what's gonna happen. I have children in. In school now, and I just, who's gonna teach them? Who's gonna teach them? They're on computers all day.

Jason Blitman: 3:58

It's actually so funny because I just saw, I think an ad on Instagram. God, what in the world that we live in where they sell like those. Cute little worksheets with the alphabet in the like lined spaces and where, how you learn how to write. But there, there are these like indented letters and there's a special marker that you use to trace the indents and then the marker disappears. So it's a way to like really practice good legible handwriting. And I have nieces and I was like, I need to buy these for my nieces. I need to preserve handwriting.

Aja Gabel: 4:37

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 4:38

Anyway, I've, I used to get compliments on my handwriting. I loved writing notes and letters and things, and so that comes up very early on in the book, and I was like, that is so real. It is so depressing.

Aja Gabel: 4:49

Do you still get compliments on your handwriting? Like it's still good?

Jason Blitman: 4:53

when I, when I'm taking notes for things like this, I'm just like scribbling and, whatever. But if I am, if I write someone a note. It's still good, but you have to focus on it.

Aja Gabel: 5:05

You do. It's a good exercise maybe.

Jason Blitman: 5:09

Yeah, I think so. It's, there's a, I think my brain works faster than my hand and always has, and so that has always frustrated me. So I think with the advent of I like am more excited to get my thoughts out

Aja Gabel: 5:25

yeah. What is it? It's a good, it is a good exercise in focus and slowness, which I think is re is getting harder and harder for me to implement in my life. But yeah. Yeah, that's a good point.

Jason Blitman: 5:36

Whenever someone asks me about how I read so much and how they say they can't focus on a book or whatever, I am just like, I need to put my phone down. I need to, essentially go into.

Aja Gabel: 5:52

And, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so what I've been doing is I have to take a bath, like

Jason Blitman: 5:59

to

Aja Gabel: 6:00

to start the reading process, start a book because my phone cannot, can come in the bath. And I love baths and. Not the kind of bath that's in a book, but in the book, but and then I'll just stay in there for an hour like reading and then I can take it out and read and do that. But like to get over the hump of the reaching for your phone. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 6:20

I always, I say too, like you need to get rid of all the sensory things, and you need to at least read 50

Aja Gabel: 6:27

Yes. That's a great, that's a great rubric.

Jason Blitman: 6:31

Yeah, I don't consider myself reading a book until I've hit 50 pages.'cause I, you don't know that you want to keep picking it up. But no the exercise of sitting down and writing something, it's such an interesting parallel to just like how to relearn, how to

Aja Gabel: 6:47

Yeah. I know

Jason Blitman: 6:50

Anyway, such a weird little tangent. I was not really expecting to go on this morning.

Aja Gabel: 6:55

A PSA.

Jason Blitman: 6:56

I do think so there we could talk for an hour about art versus math, which comes up in the book. And, before I hit record, I said some sort of like joking comment about myself being bad at math. And you

Aja Gabel: 7:15

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 7:15

agreed with yourself. This book is very like math, sciencey heavy. Where does that come from in your world?

Aja Gabel: 7:22

I love science as a sense a child. I've loved science fiction. And one of the first books that I ever reread, read once and then read again when I was a kid was walter Tevis. This is a different book by him, Mockingbird, but he wrote The Man Who Fell To Earth which was also a David Bowie movie. And I was, and then I watched the movie from the seventies. I was like, very much too young, like maybe I was 11. Like the movie should not be watched by, it might shouldn't, maybe this movie shouldn't be watched by 20 year olds. Like it's quite 1970s. But I thought I just it did something to my imagination. It like helped me expand my imagination. But as I, and I always loved writing, and as I grew up and continued to write and study writing, I never thought there weren't a lot of lit, like a sci-fi or speculative writing, not stories, novels by girls, by women that had love stories in them. And it wasn't something that I thought was available to me. But I always can, like some of my favorite movies are sci-fi movies. And that's how it shows up for me now. The learning the math and the science of this book.

Jason Blitman: 8:33

yes, that's what I was gonna say. I was like, this is so heady. Not heady in a bad way, but there's some real science stuff happening in here. What was learning that

Aja Gabel: 8:43

I first I thought I didn't have to learn it. I thought that I. Was just gonna make it up'cause like it's not real and I was so wrong. Because you can't, you can like vaguely gesture towards something in a short story, but in a novel you really have to be like, this is how the world works that I'm building. And, so I had to talk to a lot of scientists on the phone who did not want to tell me that what I was trying to do was possible. I was like, but what if? And they were like, but that doesn't make sense. And I'm like, I know, but so I read a lot of books. I found a corner of physics that. Isn't that I talk about in the book that isn't super respected in the scientific community that is about quantum consciousness. And I went in on that. I read the books that the founder of that theory wrote. And I, what I realized is that even though I don't want the readers to get caught up in the details, like I don't want them to put the book away and think, but like, how did that work? I want the, you have to give them just enough information. To be satisfied and move on and go to the real story. And I realized that I had to be, I had to know everything under the surface to just give them the tip of the iceberg. And that was really hard. And took a lot of time.

Jason Blitman: 10:03

It's so interesting and I'm curious to hear more about that journey but I don't love fantasy novels because I feel like. I have a hard time with words and names that are made up and they're like, hard to follow and there are a lot of consonants, right? And I'm just like, who is that? How do you pronounce that name? And for some reason science is slightly easier because they're words that you've like. Heard of before. Even though you don't necessarily understand the concept, you're like, oh, sure. Consciousness is a product of classical physics. I can understand that means something to someone who you know, to people in the world. Whereas, weird Lord of the

Aja Gabel: 10:51

I agree. Same for me. It takes me out to have to be like, there's elves. What? Like it that takes me out of a story, but I love a grounded science fiction in the world that

Jason Blitman: 11:01

Versus where I was like, oh, someone smarter than me will understand this

Aja Gabel: 11:06

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 11:07

In a will understand, like the technical pieces of it. So there is this little debate. About math versus, or math versus art and math being the basis of everything. And then someone chimes in and says, tell that to ancient cave paintings. And what are your thoughts on that? What do it's a little chicken and egg I think.

Aja Gabel: 11:31

I'm really glad that you. Honed in on that and picked up on that. There, I'd like to think of it as the trope of a man of science versus man of faith. Which I'll admit, I first heard of that and lost the TV show lost. But it is like a common dichotomy in storytelling. People who understand the world through science and math, and people who understand the world through something less tangible like faith, but I act and I wanted to.

Jason Blitman: 12:00

We can call

Aja Gabel: 12:00

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 12:01

the sake of,

Aja Gabel: 12:02

And I wanted to like, I wanted to explore that, like what would happen if those two people got married? What would happen if the man of science in encountered a problem, a loss in his life that science could not answer? And that's w where we begin with this couple. But I really think that what, both Noah and Maya, who are the married couple at the center of this book think about themselves, is they both think, they both have belief systems. Noah's belief system is his is his science. He thinks that he can understand everything through science. He encounters a loss of his child that he can, like science cannot answer. And then he doesn't know what to do with his how to live really. And then he meets Maya, who is a person who understands the world through art and beauty and and that is her belief system. And I think he resists that for a long time. But I think what both of them come to realize is that. We all need ways to understand the mysteries of the world, and that both of them are equally relevant, real. So yeah, that's what I think.'cause I love to read about science, but I don't understand all of it. But the more you read about it, the more you realize these people are talking, using a language. There's a language, especially in physics, that they use to speak in these insanely abstract terms. That if you don't speak that language, it's hard to penetrate. And and that's when I was like, oh, this is not just a truth of the world. It's a system of like beliefs. Like it is a language, it's a culture. It's like a way that you understand things as much as being a visual artist is, or being a writer is. And so that's what I, yeah that's where that began for me in the book. I

Jason Blitman: 13:59

Yeah, I. I think I honed in so much on that because I have a degree in theater and my husband has a degree

Aja Gabel: 14:07

Oh, Oh, okay.

Jason Blitman: 14:09

and so we are that dichotomy. And just, hearing you speak, I was thinking how both sort of combinations can like circle in on each other, like having faith in science and the science of faith, right? There can be conversations about both of those things. But like for at our wedding, we had a cabaret performance and there were singers and there were, there was poetry readings and one of my husband's best friends in college did a physics demo

Aja Gabel: 14:43

Oh, at your wedding? Oh, what was it?

Jason Blitman: 14:48

and so she, oh my God. The fact that I'm not gonna remember exactly what it's called, he's gonna

Aja Gabel: 14:53

'cause your brain doesn't understand the world that way.

Jason Blitman: 14:56

No, but the idea was she used a yardstick and used her fingers to be even evenly spaced on the yardstick, and then showed how you can move your fingers in different directions and they're not necessarily evenly spaced and the yardstick still doesn't fall. And it was about, it was like a metaphor for marriage and the balance of how you know you won't be equal partners a hundred percent of the time. The goal is to always like, keep the marriage standing, like the yardstick. And so just the idea of taking physics and turning it into essentially an art piece in terms of that presentation is why I think I'm that like cycle of art versus math and

Aja Gabel: 15:43

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 15:44

is really deeply

Aja Gabel: 15:45

Yeah. That's so interesting. That's so interesting. I love that.

Jason Blitman: 15:51

And Noah in the book has to be creative with his science. And there and as an artist, you have to think scientifically when you are blending colors, when you are, building something. And so it's. I, it was a nice reminder to me that there is so much more to art than, what

Aja Gabel: 16:18

yeah. You have to be so meticulous in art, especially in visual art when you are, that creating something can be very expensive. You have to be very meticulous in planning and and measuring and executing. One thing, I was a fellow at the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown. That was the first time that I. It's where 10 writers and 10 visual artists live together for eight months in the Cape. And I had never lived, been around visual artists like that before, like real professional vis visual artists. And I was so surprised to find that they had a, like a studio practice. Like I didn't know what a studio practice was. And in a lot of ways it's, it is like them going into the space and. Doing like testing hypotheses and that is similar to like the methodical way that scientists have to approach problems. It's just the thrust is a little bit different, but I think like they're not as far apart as you might, as people might think. And I believe that's where this couple ends up in the book. Maybe we believe the same thing.

Jason Blitman: 17:28

Yeah, it's interesting'cause you say testing hypotheses and it sounds so scientific, but when you break it down, it really isn't. And I'm, I, you were talking about going into the bath to start a book and it made me think about Twila Tharp's book, the Creative

Aja Gabel: 17:45

Oh, I haven't read it. I know her, but I haven't

Jason Blitman: 17:47

but

Aja Gabel: 17:49

Should I should read it? I'll write it down.

Jason Blitman: 17:51

It's like good to have as like a. A reference point, but because of what you described, I think you would appreciate at least the first chunk of it. Basically, she talks about how she has this creative habit in order to get work done so she doesn't just walk into her dance studio and start. Choreographing. She starts her day by lighting a candle and doing yoga and having her breakfast, inhaling a cab, and getting to the studio. And it all comes back to the lighting, the candle.

Aja Gabel: 18:25

Mm-hmm.

Jason Blitman: 18:27

It is that creative habit that really keeps her going and thinking about her getting to the studio and what she's doing. She's testing hypotheses of how her body will move and how other dancers could do the same, whatever. So it just really, again, I'm, I am, I feel so not sciencey, but I am, finishing this book yesterday. I am like. It has me reframing how I've been thinking about what it is that I do.

Aja Gabel: 18:55

Oh that's great. What a compliment. Yeah, I wish I was. The goal is always to be more like that, right? To enter your creative space with purpose and not a plan necessarily, but like a structure. And having children is, has made that difficult. But I am always trying to go back to that. I do feel like quite a disorganized, messy, creative person. Maybe scientists feel that way too. But.

Jason Blitman: 19:24

Yeah.

Aja Gabel: 19:25

but yeah I think that's really valuable. And there's something to be learned from the way that scientists think about problems. Like even just breaking them down into the smallest possible problem is really interesting. Like you often sit down I have to write a novel today. No, you don't. You have to figure out, a way for this character to realize something or for this fight to happen on the page or to understand how this flashbacks going to work. That is like a much more possible problem to solve, and

Jason Blitman: 19:59

Hmm.

Aja Gabel: 19:59

a novel as a collection of those, solve those solutions.

Jason Blitman: 20:03

That's a really interesting idea or interesting piece to think about and suddenly I'm like, oh, I want to, every morning, write on a post-it.

Aja Gabel: 20:14

Yeah,

Jason Blitman: 20:15

solve today, so you used the phrase, going back to that, and something else o obviously that comes up so much in the book and that I wanted to talk about is our memories and, how we can only remember what we can remember and how memory is faulty and And, thinking about memoir people who write memoirs often put at the beginning of the book. I changed names, I changed locations to protect identity. I changed this, I changed that for the sake of X, Y, and Z. And at the end of the day, you're like, oh, and these are my memories as I, as best I remember them. So you're like, oh, you're essentially writing a fiction that you like,

Aja Gabel: 20:59

yeah.

Jason Blitman: 21:00

What is, when you think about your memories, what does that, what does all that

Aja Gabel: 21:04

I think that memories for me are so much about like the way we keep a person or a time alive in our hearts.

Jason Blitman: 21:19

That doesn't surprise me that you feel that way.

Aja Gabel: 21:21

I went through great loss when I was young. I lost both my brother and my dad within a year and a half of each other.

Jason Blitman: 21:31

So sorry to hear that.

Aja Gabel: 21:32

yeah, it was at the time. It's just unfathomable now, to think about a 19-year-old kind of going through that. But, but at the time it just was happening and I couldn't like, process it. But what I did notice over the years, and I did try to write about it a lot, was that I was going back to the moment that they died in my memories I was trying to excavate and. Craft and put into concrete those memories. And I didn't know why. Like I, I was obsessed with understand. I could tell you so many details from those days. They stuck out so large and bright in my memory. And it wasn't until maybe even like when I started to write this book that I understood that like those returning again and again to those memories. Was like a way to try to hold onto the moment before they died to like maybe change it. Even though I couldn't like to go back and hold onto that moment, may maybe something would be different. It never is. Like the reality of what happened and like how and then it's terrifying to realize how much of what I remember is. Maybe something that I just repeated over and over in my head that's not real. What is, what really happened and what is the what did I make up in order to survive? What kind of ideas did I make up to blame myself, to forgive myself, to make it easier to remember? And those. Tho that understanding is what led me to this character of Noah and also his ex-wife Eileen, when they lose a child, like what is the, what if that was possible to actually return to that moment? What would that be like? What would you give up to do it? And I just think that they're it's such a powerful mechanism that our brain can do. To remember something, to, to almost like in neuroscientists say that when you're remembering something, the neurons are firing exactly as if it is happening to you. There's not a different neural thing that is happening in memory. It's the same neurons firing. And in a way it is like reliving this thing,

Jason Blitman: 23:57

it's like where trauma comes from or like that, that feeling of,

Aja Gabel: 24:01

Yeah. It incites the same emotional response.

Jason Blitman: 24:05

You're not just thinking it. You're literally feeling it because that's

Aja Gabel: 24:07

Yeah. So all of that was I wouldn't say I understood that before I started this book, but by the end of this book, I think I, it helped me understand what I had been doing for so many years and,

Jason Blitman: 24:20

Yeah.

Aja Gabel: 24:21

yeah.

Jason Blitman: 24:22

And I imagine helped you understand what you've been doing and why it. Either was or wasn't helpful for you.

Aja Gabel: 24:32

Yeah. Like in a way, like there was years where I had to hold onto that. Like I desperately wanted to hold down to that. And then there were years where I was like ready to release it and yeah, I think that, that is something that. That helped me not to make this book into my therapy, but that's definitely

Jason Blitman: 24:54

That's what they are. Was it cathartic writing? All of it?

Aja Gabel: 24:58

Absolutely. Yes. It was also the har one of the hardest parts of this book, I would say the hardest part was figuring out the mechanism of the time bath. And then the second hardest part was. Figuring out how to really write and to actually sit down and write these, this memory of this child dying and what happened and what that felt like. Those were two were real, really difficult. But once I felt like I nailed it, it was it was the feeling was like. It's, it wasn't scary anymore. And I think that's valuable.

Jason Blitman: 25:37

Yeah. There's this element of both facing your fears, but also understanding how to move through them.

Aja Gabel: 25:44

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's what these characters are doing. I.

Jason Blitman: 25:48

Exactly. I wish I asked you this question before this moment because while hearing everything that you've been through, writing a book like this, I, my instinct and I can't help but want to ask, what memory would you choose to return to? But I guess I have to ask it, what memory would you choose to return to?

Aja Gabel: 26:12

I think what Ha Yeah, what the. In the book, I think they, there's like an element of trying to return to something to change it and trying to, and returning to something.'cause you can't help but return to it. But then there's also moments where these characters like choose to return to a memory that is different, that is better, that is maybe the beginning of happiness. And I think like what I would return to, there's so many, gosh, do I have to choose one? There.

Jason Blitman: 26:43

You wrote about going back to a specific moment in someone's life, how this is like low hanging fruit Asia.

Aja Gabel: 26:50

brought this upon myself, is what you're saying. There are very recently I realized that like it was becoming hard to remember the, like my dad's voice. And because like he died before like cell phones really? And so there wasn't like, I don't have a lot of recordings of him and I, there's like a, there was a summer where he was sick and he was at home and I was at home from college and we spent the whole summer together, like watching movies and reading books. There's just I would love to go back to a that day, like to just refresh in my memory what he. It feels and sounds like because it's been so long, it's been, almost 20 years or more. And so yeah, that's the, that's a memory that I wish I had, I wish I had clearer in my mind.

Jason Blitman: 27:42

Thank you for sharing

Aja Gabel: 27:43

yeah. Sorry to make it sad.

Jason Blitman: 27:45

I don't, but I, I don't know that it is sad. I think that it, I think it's

Aja Gabel: 27:49

I don't, yeah.

Jason Blitman: 27:50

It's true.

Aja Gabel: 27:51

I don't think of it as, as sad. It doesn't make me sad. It makes me like, it makes me feel closer to the sound of his voice to think about that, so I think that's, and that's part of, I think the lesson of the book too is

Jason Blitman: 28:07

yeah.

Aja Gabel: 28:08

how grateful we are to have these. People in our lives and how they can live on in this way.

Jason Blitman: 28:15

Yeah. I, it's funny because typically I'll ask a question like this and then. S then an author might say, what about you? And I get mad'cause I didn't think that would come back to me. So while you were thinking, I was also thinking,'cause I was like uhoh if she comes back and says, Jason, what about you? My youngest sister, I have two younger sisters just. Had a second baby and watching my older niece interact with my younger niece is just very fun to me. And I, for some reason, the very first thought in my mind was curious to revisit the moment where I became a big brother. It's such an important part of who I am and of my life and I don't. I remember being an only child and remember having siblings, but I don't really remember that moment of becoming,

Aja Gabel: 29:14

How old would you have been?

Jason Blitman: 29:16

I would've

Aja Gabel: 29:17

Oh, wow. Interesting. My son was three when he became an older brother. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 29:25

Take a lot of videos,

Aja Gabel: 29:26

yeah.

Jason Blitman: 29:28

I don't know how old they are now, but um,

Aja Gabel: 29:30

so

Jason Blitman: 29:31

okay. But yeah, I don't know why, but that was the first thing that came to mind. We're very, we're spoiler free on gay's reading, so I don't wanna say too much. But. I am curious to know what time travel means to you.

Aja Gabel: 29:50

I'm trying to understand how my answer could be a spoiler,

Jason Blitman: 29:54

Okay.

Aja Gabel: 29:55

Now I'm nervous.

Jason Blitman: 29:56

I guess there isn't really, it doesn't really spoil anything like, especially, but. I'll let you answer and then I'll respond to you.

Aja Gabel: 30:03

To me it's always been a thing in science fiction that is so deeply attractive. I feel like nostalgia powers a lot of my. Emotional landscape. And I really love to read about it and imagine like what would happen to the world if this was possible. On a more philosophical le level, philoso, I think that I've really come to believe and understand that our brains are time travel machines. And that is like something that is just a gift and a superpower that we can rely on in times of need. So I guess that's, those are the two kind of like tangible and less tangible ways that I think about it. Is that what you meant?

Jason Blitman: 30:55

I, yeah. A total, yes, a hundred percent. And I think when I think it's because of the words and how, like our words really do matter, but hearing time travel, I, I always went to science fiction in

Aja Gabel: 31:12

yeah.

Jason Blitman: 31:13

And about halfway through the book, I was like, oh, look at what's happening. And again I, that isn't really spoiling anything, but I'll say that to you and I won't unpack, I won't unpack beyond that, but I was like, oh, there's so much more to time travel than traveling back in time or traveling forward in time physically.

Aja Gabel: 31:37

Then going to yeah. The sixties.

Jason Blitman: 31:40

Or, the

Aja Gabel: 31:41

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 31:42

right? That is not time. Travel can be so much more than that. And I think, again, because of the words time travel, I just couldn't help but be so literal about it.

Aja Gabel: 31:54

Interesting to hear you say that because I think that there was also, that was a lot of discussion in the editorial process is are we calling this time travel? Like why do you want to call it time travel if it doesn't operate on the level that most people think of time travel. Like this excellent book I just read, the Ministry of Time I thought was so great and that's like classic time travel.

Jason Blitman: 32:17

Kellyann was on

Aja Gabel: 32:18

Oh really? I gotta go back to, I'm like obsessed with her brain. I gotta go back and watch it. And I, and I. I get why they, why the editorial process that was brought up. Because you don't wanna promise something that doesn't fulfill maybe. But I think it was important for me to keep this to keep this even. I don't necessarily say the phrase time travel like a bunch in the book. Actually, I think I'll only say it a few times. And I very purposely made up new phrases for what I was just for, what the thing was that was happening. And and once I landed on that, like episodic folding, then I was like, okay, like this is a thing I can this is a, this is the thing I can understand. Because I think it expands this idea of time travel. And it does address what I was talking about, which is like. The fact that our brains are a kind of time travel machine. And yeah. And that consciousness is mysterious.

Jason Blitman: 33:16

My next bullet point is fascinating how you subvert expectations of time

Aja Gabel: 33:22

Okay. That's great. I think that's great. That you weren't

Jason Blitman: 33:25

But that's the point of what you're saying, right? Like in the process it was like, when you hear time travel, what do you expect? I, this is such a weird out of left field question, but how do you think we ever know what we want

Aja Gabel: 33:39

Say more.

Jason Blitman: 33:40

I felt like I was watching these characters make these decisions based on And I couldn't help but think what would I do in their shoes and what choices would I make and what do I want and what does it mean to want versus need? And then it made me think about like, where does that want? Come from and how do I know that's what I want versus being told by outside forces. By, even like the stupid handwriting thing that I was telling you about was told to me from an outside force, right? So I'm like, I don't know how to even boil down to what I know Jason wants anymore. And I'm curious if Asia has any thoughts on

Aja Gabel: 34:26

I mean, Would you like to come to my therapy session? Because that's a great inroad to what we talk about every week. Yeah. I think like it's so hard, especially when you're young. Than I am when I was young Ger to make decisions not out of trauma or ex external forces. Like I think a lot of the decisions I was making were coming from that, from those forces. And I didn't know it. And I think it's only as an adult when. You look around and you think, oh I've made a life for myself. Did I make this life purpose purposefully? That it, it really had me questioning okay what do I actually want? And what am I just reacting to? And what am I letting other people tell me? I should want, and I think that's something that I am always, constantly. Battling. I think that a great way to change that frame is not like, what do I want because I didn't have it, or what do I want because someone else has it. And instead what do I want more of? Because it makes me happy. What do I want more of? Because I feel at peace when it's happening. That's, yeah.

Jason Blitman: 35:55

You also just sparked in me how interesting to start each day with a problem that you're trying to solve. And can that thing solve whatever that problem is that you're trying to solve that day and your want can change on a daily

Aja Gabel: 36:11

Yes.

Jason Blitman: 36:12

to sort of inform that.

Aja Gabel: 36:15

I think that's also true too. Like we, we live in this kind of world where. We are, we're where things are, and institutions and ideas about people are very rigid. And I feel like what you want can and should change even on a daily basis, and that kind of freedom makes me feel a lot better about trying to identify what I want.

Jason Blitman: 36:37

Yeah.

Aja Gabel: 36:38

Like today I want to eat and go outside, that's tomorrow, maybe I'll worry about money or something. But today that's what I want. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 36:46

that's a really, it's a nice reminder that we can wake up every morning and feel differently and change it. And as long as, and so if you fulfill those wants today, then tomorrow you can want something different and. If you eat junk food tomorrow, that's okay, because that's not the want for that day,

Aja Gabel: 37:04

and I think.

Jason Blitman: 37:05

have to be so hard on

Aja Gabel: 37:06

Yeah. And like maybe junk food like makes you feel good tomorrow. Like maybe it just brings you a little bit of I treated myself tomorrow. It's, this is a really cool way to, I think, to frame the characters that I haven't heard before. Because they all are like reacting to these things and then the journey is like. They come to a place where okay, what, who am I and what is my future if I don't just react to these things? Yeah. And that's that's that hopefully where I end them. But that's an interesting framework. Thank you for that.

Jason Blitman: 37:42

I that was the, my interpretation, so thank you for that. I had this interesting conversation with Li, Lily King about presentism versus pluralism, and those concepts come up in her book, the idea that presentism meaning. We are the present is the only thing that exists. And pluralism, meaning that like everything is existing simultaneously. And obviously reading this book that dusted up again for me what, where do you stand?

Aja Gabel: 38:16

It's also like a huge way to understand physics problems too. That is broken my brain. So I'm like trying not to go back to the brain breaking part. Yeah, because Carlo lli, who's a, who's who I've read very widely, who writes pop physics book, and I don't mean that derogatory, I mean that like complimentary. His books are beautiful. Has an idea about time that is called Loop theory. Where time, everything is happening all at once, but you can also loop things. And specific events can also happen at once, which is not necessarily a part of like pluralism, like not necessarily a tenant of plural pluralism. It's like very hard to really understand.

Jason Blitman: 39:02

Right.

Aja Gabel: 39:03

I found that to be really appealing to me because if the if the present is the only thing that matters that is happening right now. Then it matters so much. And I think if everything is happening all the time, all at once I feel much more connected to the world and community and people like that gives me a sense of like relief. Like we are all attached to each other and each other's pasts and futures in a way that I think makes the world better. So I guess I land more on that side.

Jason Blitman: 39:44

Me too. And I also be, I think because my brain thinks of memories and time travel in the same way that we were talking about it. How can I not also is believe in the right phrase, I guess believe in pluralism, right?

Aja Gabel: 40:04

No. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 40:06

there are plenty of people in my life that are no longer with us, but that doesn't mean they're not. A

Aja Gabel: 40:12

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 40:14

So how those things have to exist.

Aja Gabel: 40:18

I agree. Did you ever read Kevin Brock Meyer's book, A Brief History of the Dead?

Jason Blitman: 40:25

No.

Aja Gabel: 40:25

it's, It's really beautiful. It's like maybe years old at this point. But it's about the Peep. It's a novel about this. City of the Dead where people go when they die, but people on earth still remember them. And then once no one on Earth remembers them anymore, then they move on to the next place, which we don't find out about. But I, I always thought that was like such a beautiful way to think about death and I think speaks to what we're talking about that, that do people die. Yes. Their bodies stop working. But do people do, does energy die? Like definitely not. Science tells us no, the energy does not die. And in fact, in black holes and in white holes, like energy is always there, just it's expressed differently. And then that to me is like a a kind of faith.

Jason Blitman: 41:19

And our memories don't die.

Aja Gabel: 41:23

Yeah,

Jason Blitman: 41:24

And so there's, they're living on in different

Aja Gabel: 41:26

yeah.

Jason Blitman: 41:27

But it's funny, like when I think about big picture. Death and be being forgotten. It is the idea of multiple generations away. That's what's overwhelming to me. It's, it's quote unquote being forgotten, which is true for all of us. Like we all will be at some point. It's very overwhelming, but. My conversations do not always lean, heady, and gloom and doom. But here we are. Asia,

Aja Gabel: 41:56

you talked to Susan Orlene yet for her new book? Excuse me while I look at my phone.'cause I, there was something she wrote in, okay. The Marris review yesterday. Love Mars. You gotta talk to her about it then you should get her on the podcast.'cause she wrote about pluralism as well. Yes. You gotta talk. Okay. It, it was in the marriage review yesterday. Um, she, she talked, she talked about exactly what we were just discussing and I think it's

Jason Blitman: 42:24

Oh, joy ride. Joy

Aja Gabel: 42:26

It's, it's a, you know,

Jason Blitman: 42:27

Yes, joy Ride. Oh my God. Right, right, right.

Aja Gabel: 42:30

sorry for the aside, but you gotta,

Jason Blitman: 42:32

No, I, listen, I love an aside.

Aja Gabel: 42:35

I just love her and, yeah.

Jason Blitman: 42:37

Oh, this is very good to know. Um, but The book is about memory and time and space and black holes and history and time travel and science and art, and there's a lot happening. And honestly, like my most exciting takeaway, this is such a weird macabre thing to say. Is hearing how deeply personal the book really is because it's beautiful on the surface, but knowing that there's so much of you on the page only enriches my sort of rethinking about it

Aja Gabel: 43:15

That's really good to hear. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. You never know if you're like oversharing, but it does seem like an important part of the DNA of this book for me.

Jason Blitman: 43:25

And I, for me as a reader, I feel very privileged to have these conversations because they enrich the reading experience. And so as I'm reading, I know I get to ask questions, ask a fun question to give us some moment of levity and then I'll ask my final more deep question to send us off. But the levity question is, who watches your plants when you go out of town?

Aja Gabel: 43:51

Nobody, nobody.

Jason Blitman: 43:53

There is a moment in the book where someone gets their plants watered, and I was like, this is so important. Who's gonna water my plants when I'm out of town? And I wonder who's that for Asia?

Aja Gabel: 44:03

I keep a house where the plants are very low maintenance.

Jason Blitman: 44:09

They're fake.

Aja Gabel: 44:10

They're real, but they require watering. Maybe you could go two weeks without watering these plants and they would be okay. I have a really strong fiddly fig that is it's cool, like it's cool with me, but also I live a life where I'm not going away for that long. Like my, I have two children and a husband. Like we're not all leaving for multiple weeks at a

Jason Blitman: 44:35

Let's manifest

Aja Gabel: 44:36

Yes. Someone in Italy invite me to come to Italy for two weeks.

Jason Blitman: 44:40

yes. I love the author Kristin Hormel and she has a new book. She just today revealed the cover of her next book, and it's called Meet Me in Paris, and I was like, Kristen, let's go do a book event in Paris.

Aja Gabel: 44:54

yeah.

Jason Blitman: 44:55

Yeah. Okay. All right. Good. Get plants that can survive on their own. That's fair. All right. Art is ephemeral. Science is tangible. It comes up in the book. Where do you fall in this argument? Cir kicking, finishing us off where we

Aja Gabel: 45:14

I think they're both ephemeral. I think they're both have a lot of vibes in them. I think that science is always changing. It's always changing what it thinks, and always discovering new things and is really abstract in a lot of ways is physics especially, is things that we cannot see. And in art we can see it. Understanding it is like pretty, ephemeral, but I think like ephemerality is like not bad. That means you can approach it and take what you need from it and give what you want to it. I think that's like really cool. I think tangibility is overrated.

Jason Blitman: 45:53

No, I think you're right though. It does circle back to what we were talking about, about, about memory and being remembered, I think things being ephemeral makes that so overwhelming. I just watched a trailer. For a Diane Keaton movie on my smart TV yesterday, and it has all the tracking and it has it's fuzzy and there are things that go in and out and I was like, oh, they didn't have a clean version of this trailer. They just got whatever random ass crappy version they had and stuck it online'cause that's all they had because it was ephemeral. And so that was super interesting to, to experience that and that wasn't particularly old. So yeah, my background being in theater is inherently ephemeral.

Aja Gabel: 46:43

That's what makes it so hard for me to think about even writing, like I'm, I live in the world of screenwriters and there's so many playwrights here. Who, the way that their brains work is also like mysterious to me, but I'm like, how? They're like, oh, come on. You could just write a play. And I was like, how could I write a play where half of it is made up in the minds of the people watching it? I don't even know how to do that. That's so cool.

Jason Blitman: 47:10

But that's true for

Aja Gabel: 47:11

yeah. Yeah. I guess I just get a lot more control, but yeah.

Jason Blitman: 47:15

Yeah. No, that is very true. And with a playwright, you don't just have the read or you don't just have the audience, but you have a director, you have designers, you have, there's a lot of perspectives and creatives that come into play, and

Aja Gabel: 47:29

yes. I'm aware of that in TV too.

Jason Blitman: 47:33

Oh yeah, for sure. This has been so lovely. Everyone, go get your copy of light breakers by Asia Gable and learn what light breakers means because I didn't want to get into that with you. That is for the reader

Aja Gabel: 47:47

Yeah. Thank you.

Jason Blitman: 47:48

Um. Asia and I will be in conversation with Austin Taylor talking about all things science and books and creative things at the Texas Book festivals. If you're there, come check us out and Asia, have a wonderful

Aja Gabel: 48:04

Thank you. Thank you so much for a thoughtful conversation.

Jason Blitman: 48:11

Anthony Delaney, welcome to Gay's Reading.

Anthony Delaney: 48:14

so much for having me,

Jason Blitman: 48:16

I'm so happy that you're here. My wonderful guest, gay reader today. You, we were just talking about how you've been bopping around the world talking about Georgians and Enlightenment. Before we dive in, I what are you reading these days?

Anthony Delaney: 48:34

Okay, so what am I reading these days? Quite a lot as ever. So I am currently, yes. Oh gosh, an awful lot. I'm currently researching for book two, so I will I'll just show you what the pile beside my desk looks like at the moment. For listeners it's quite hefty old big library history

Jason Blitman: 48:53

I was gonna say that

Anthony Delaney: 48:55

So they're there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah. They're there helping me for book two, but what I'm actually reading for fun is this, actually I've just started, I'm about a hundred pages in, it's The Demon of Unrest by Eric Larson, Abraham Lincoln, and America's Road to Civil War. So I have been, I've been actually, doing a combination of re'cause obviously I, because I read so much during the day for my research, I often listen to books for pleasure. So I've been listening and reading half and half with Larson's book. It just, my eyes get so tired. So it's been I'm having a bit of a Busman's holiday because I'm reading History for Pleasure while I'm reading History for Work. But it,

Jason Blitman: 49:31

what does a Busman's holiday

Anthony Delaney: 49:32

Oh, do you not have that?

Jason Blitman: 49:34

this silly American

Anthony Delaney: 49:35

So a busman's holiday means it's it's a weird phrase. It's it's old fashioned. So it's like when a busman who drives the bus for his work goes on holidays, he would have to take the bus to holiday. So you're doing what you do for work for a break.

Jason Blitman: 49:47

Oh.

Anthony Delaney: 49:48

yeah, so that's what a busman's

Jason Blitman: 49:49

I love that.

Anthony Delaney: 49:50

Now you can use that.

Jason Blitman: 49:52

Yes. What would a bus driver's holiday is? That's the American way of saying it. It is not as cute.

Anthony Delaney: 49:59

It is just an accent thing, I think. No it's a it's been interesting and it's a really, it's a, especially in this climate Larson's book is incredibly, pertinent and it's it's not always an easy thing to read when, historians will often say that there's no such thing as historical patterns. I don't know if I fully agree with that. I can see patterns in the past. And the pattern is not good

Jason Blitman: 50:19

no, I was gonna, we're like living in the pattern right now.

Anthony Delaney: 50:22

Yeah. So it's it's interesting to, to immerse myself in that world as I'm watching from a distance. Obviously I live in London, I'm Irish, but the world's eye is trained on America at the moment, as I'm sure you're very aware. So it's an interesting time.

Jason Blitman: 50:36

Yeah. And on the day that we're recording the Wicked Sequel trailer dropped.

Anthony Delaney: 50:43

I haven't seen it.

Jason Blitman: 50:45

Oh first of all, it's stunning. But it is overwhelmingly prescient.

Anthony Delaney: 50:52

Ah, okay. I've seen rickett a billion times. One of my,

Jason Blitman: 50:55

Yeah, of course. Of

Anthony Delaney: 50:57

but sometimes when you just see it, when you know what's going on it's, that, isn't it? It's, it brings it something else to the fore.

Jason Blitman: 51:04

Yeah, it's like when you walk into a big theater and the lights go down and the musical's happening and they're singing and dancing in front of you. That's one thing. But when are reading the news on one Instagram feed and then you pop up and you see the Wicked for Good trailer, you're like, oh, this is what's happening in the world right now.

Anthony Delaney: 51:24

Yeah. Yeah, I was watching again, see it's all coming up in art and literature and stuff, isn't it? I was watching the Long Walk Stephen King's movie or the movie based on Stephen King's book, and I was just thinking to myself, it's not that many steps away from this. It I don't wanna be too pessimistic about it, but it just, there was just certain things and certain times where I was like. Gosh, we're there. We're just there. So it's yeah, and I can't even imagine, as I say, we're watching it. I can't even imagine what it is like to be there. And to a certain extent, you're all just getting on with your lives, obviously. But then sometimes it must really land and be like, ah, this is happening.

Jason Blitman: 51:59

You held up, this giant. Stack of book, not just a giant stack of books, but a giant

Anthony Delaney: 52:04

Giant books. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 52:06

And then the Eric Larson, she is not small

Anthony Delaney: 52:08

No, and that's why I'm listening. I'm, that's why I'm listening. It's too much. It's too much. And actually, when I opened Derek Larson, I was, I was reading for the first few days and I was like, really squinting my eyes. I was like, oh my God, okay, I need to listen to this. So I got the audio book as well. It and it's, it, you, I think with nonfiction sometimes, often when people are like, oh, what are you reading? And I say that I'm reading nonfiction. People are like, eh. Why are you reading nonfiction? And A, because I write nonfiction. B because it's my job and C because I don't know, I like, I really do enjoy fiction as well, but it I dunno. I find the, when you get a compelling storyteller like Larson is, I find the reality. Of nonfiction just so compelling and it, it affects you in a different way and it helps to inform how you're seeing the world as well as does fiction, by the way and very usefully but yeah, it's, it, there's an extra pertinent to it sometimes I think.

Jason Blitman: 53:01

Yeah. There's an interesting I feel like takeaway from nonfiction, whether it's a biography or a memoir or. Any sort of nonfiction that can feel perhaps useful in a time where you feel helpless. There's something to about fiction where you can escape and there can be plenty that you take away from fiction, but when you know what you're reading is true, whatever that

Anthony Delaney: 53:29

Yeah. Yes. That's a good point. Yeah. I also do think that we as nonfiction writers can learn from fiction a little bit more. And I, I'm I think constantly in the process of that learning, but in terms of accessibility, in terms of immediacy, in terms of feelings, like I, I've really come to the. Conclusion that as I'm doing this book tour for Queer Enlightenments, that facts are one thing and they're, they're the bread and butter of what we do as historians, but feelings are what remain with people. And I think we could work harder to bring some feeling to those facts in order to communicate with people a little bit better. So that's one of the things that I do read fiction for when I am reading it, although my last fiction book that I read was an 18th century novel, so I don't get away from it at all, really. Do I? This is just what I do now.

Jason Blitman: 54:19

It's right. It's not even historical fiction. It is historical fiction.

Anthony Delaney: 54:24

Yeah. It's, and it's the time period I study, so it's, it, there is, again, no, no break from this.

Jason Blitman: 54:30

That's so funny. I was shocked when you said you're reading a lot because you just said you're on book tour and I know so many people who when they are on book tour, don't have time to read. But you sound like you are diving in head first to the next book and so Queer Enlightenments, AKA Queer Georgians subtitle, hidden History of Lovers Lawbreakers, and Home Record. Home

Anthony Delaney: 54:53

no. Home Makers the

Jason Blitman: 54:55

And home

Anthony Delaney: 54:55

No, there's one or two. There's one or two home records. Yeah, there is. You're right.

Jason Blitman: 55:01

Tell the people. What is your pitch for the book?

Anthony Delaney: 55:03

This is a history of the long 18th century told from a perspective of those who were same sex attracted or gender non-conforming. In the uk, as you just alluded to there, and Ireland. In Europe, it's called Queer Georgians because this is known as the Georgian period because there was four Georgian Kings and one William. Tacked on at the end. My publishers in North America thought it was better if we call it queer Enlightenments because we didn't want to get mixed up with the state of Georgia, which I don't know anything about at all. So I wouldn't be able to write a history book about Georgia. So that's right. Okay. So that's what we that's what we, that's what we went with over there. And it is, I hope, an invitation for queer people and allies and broader community more generally. An invitation back into our histories and histories that at times yes, are difficult and are tragic. They, we open with a difficult history, but. The MO for me throughout was positioning joy as a form of resistance and highlighting ideas of community and love and con camaraderie and comfort and domesticity and family and home, and showing how we as queer people have access to those things. But, and I always have in the past, but that those things have been denied us in the century since. So that's the kind of the hope that people feel empowered to embrace these various parts of their histories.

Jason Blitman: 56:20

Yeah. What this comes up every so often on the show and in my life in general, but why do you think we forget our history?'Cause when you look back. There's, there are trans people, there are queer people that go back hundreds of years, but, and all of a sudden we're treating it as though things are brand new. Where do you think that idea comes from?

Anthony Delaney: 56:48

During my PhD I coined a phrase called autoregulation and it was to, sorry, to get very technical, and it was to replace heteronormativity. Because I don't think there's anything normal about the hetero. But what we find is it's regulated, now regulated rather than normativity, suggests that this isn't something that just happens in nature, that, oh, a man marries a woman, they have children. That's the family unit. That's not something that nature necessarily has dictated in legal terms. That is something that a person, mostly a man has decided to. Regulate against another person through laws. It's a human decision that people have put in place. So I thought regulation was a better reflection of what that actually is, rather than normativity. And the reason we've forgotten our history, the reason we've been denied these histories is very purposeful. In the final chapter of. The book we have Mary Jones, for instance, and Mary Jones was a black, what we would now understand as trans woman. And she was living in New York and she encounters the law. Listen, she's a thief. I can't deny it. She's stealing a lot of stuff, but she is eking out in existence for herself in a world that does not want her to exist on many different, I think she's probably the first free person in her fam from her family as well. She's got a lot going against her in this society. But she is determined. And she is driven by this passion to exist on her own terms, and we see that she encounters the law an awful lot. And in one of those documents, which I have in shown in the book. We see that her name at some point in this document's history, so the document itself is from 1836, but that her name has literally deliberately been erased from the record. So if you are talking about queer people saying, oh, they're trying to erase our history, and somebody saying, that's being very dis exclamatory, calm down. They're not, nobody's trying to erase your history. They literally are. I have the document, I have a document to prove it. And that's one of many. So these names are deliberately trying to be erased from the archive. We also, of course have to deal with the fact, and this makes things a little bit more difficult, that certain people at this period of time, men in. England, for instance in the 17 hundreds, their lives were at stake if they were caught having sex with other men. So the stakes are really high, and so they are trying to. Conceal some of this as well. So we are dealing with this double concealment. And it's not about outing people. We're 300 people, we're 300 years out from this now, I think, we're safe in that regard. And there's nobody in this book who I have revealed as being same sex attracted or gender nonconforming. These are archives that exist in the world beforehand, but. It does go to show that there are hurdles that we have to deal with in terms of queer history that potentially other types of histories don't necessarily. But that is not to say that it's impossible, and sometimes it's just about knowing what you're looking for when you come to the archive, I think.

Jason Blitman: 59:51

On the flip side, how, as a person who has done the work and understands the history, are there ways that you, besides writing a book about it or reading books about it, ways to deconstruct autoregulation.

Anthony Delaney: 1:00:10

That's a good question. It's also d difficult, yes, there are workarounds. Okay. So one of the most basic ways that I will, I'll say is, and I said this to my editor when I was talking about this book first and this project first, it's really important that queer people are in these archives or doing this work or, and showing up in different spaces, because sometimes your starting point is if there are letters that I have read as a queer person that I go I recognize this pattern. I know what this is. I know what they're saying to one another, that other people have looked at that document too, but not taken the same meaning from it. Now. That is not your end point. That's your start point. You then have to do, take that piece of information that you have, delve even further into the archive and really show in robust histo graphical terms. What you're saying has legitimacy and what you're saying is historically robust, but sometimes when and I definitely encountered that going, why has nobody. I, this is so obvious why has nobody looked at this before? And it was just there. And that's why, queer people showing up in these spaces is important. But also we need to not I think this is quite important to your question, we need to not set the bar. For queer histories any higher than we would for any other type of history. So for instance, when I talk about queer histories from the 17 hundreds, people say they couldn't have been queer because there was no such identity marker as queerness in the 18th century. And that's true. But there was also no such concept as Georgians or tutors or elizabethans, and we use that all the time. They wouldn't have understood themselves as that either. So we can't just apply even the term family doesn't mean exactly what it means today in the 18th century, and yet we as his public historians use anachronism. All of the time, it is just an accepted way of doing history, and so it's only really to queer histories, and you'll find it sometimes in the history of race as well, that people will say you can't say that because they wouldn't have said that. Then I'm like, we're constantly doing that, so why are you put in the UK for instance? I will sometimes get the question going, it's called Queer Georgians. You can't say queer in the 18th century, but they never ask. About the term Georgians, which is right beside it in the title and is also anachronistic. So I'm like, finish your thoughts, finish what you're saying there. And just acknowledge where you're coming from with that, so you

Jason Blitman: 1:02:36

And it is, there's that idea of picking and choosing the history I feel, it's oh, it's important to regulate this law in the United States because that's something very specific that the founding father said, and yet they also said this other thing and you don't care

Anthony Delaney: 1:02:52

Yeah. Absolutely. It's this kind of smorgasbord of pick, I'll pick and choose, but only, and, it's really apparent when you look at power, which is what I'm looking at for the second book. Actually, I've just been reading about it today, which is why it's fresh in my mind. But when you're looking at power and this invocation of God in the execution of power, God wants this. God wants that. God only stands up as long as what God wants is in line with what the people in power want. Then God, suddenly God can make mistakes, and we'll write those mistakes because we're men and we know what to do. So it's this, again, it forms that regulatory thing as opposed to this thing that magically occurs in the world because it's the right way to be. No, not at all. Men generally have made a decision. To impose on other men and on women and on non-binary people, whatever it might be. So it is it's people making decisions for other people and controlling them that way.

Jason Blitman: 1:03:43

Yeah. Ha. Of course. All right. You're reading about all of this. You wrote, queer Geo, queer Georgians, queer Enlightenments. You're clearly embarking on writing about power. I assume queer power, maybe not queer power.

Anthony Delaney: 1:03:57

Kind it. Yeah. I can't say any much more, but

Jason Blitman: 1:04:00

yeah, don't say anything. Sure. For you, for Antony, right now, what is this chapter in your life called for you? If you had to name this chapter in your life,

Anthony Delaney: 1:04:08

oh God. I'm gonna, I it's literally the first word that came to my mind, so I'm gonna go with it. It's a little bit twe and it's already taken because. Michelle Obama has taken it. But I, there is something about becoming happening at the moment where I'm feeling like there is slight transformation in a good way where I'm crossing over from one thing into another thing and that process is gonna take a while, but it's the process has begun nonetheless. Yeah, it, it feels like we are, we're coming into a time of. Of of becoming a version of myself that I think I've been looking for a while but is now coming to the fore a little bit. And that's just age, I guess that's just getting older potentially.

Jason Blitman: 1:04:53

I know the beauty, the beautiful things that come

Anthony Delaney: 1:04:56

I know. As I say, like scheduling my Botox for a couple of weeks time, but we'll do it all. We'll get older and get Botox. It's fine.

Jason Blitman: 1:05:02

That's

Anthony Delaney: 1:05:03

Yes.

Jason Blitman: 1:05:06

You're injecting your queer power, you're. Anthony Delaney, so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for being my guest gay reader

Anthony Delaney: 1:05:12

thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Jason Blitman: 1:05:15

Everyone, check out Queer Enlightenments, AKA queer Georgians, depending on where you're buying your books out now and have a great rest of your day

1:05:24

Asia. Anton, thank you so much for being here. Both of their books are out now, wherever you get your books, and I will see you next week. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Bye.