High Anxiety

About a month before she turned 103, this is the last one I'll upload here. I wish I could've done so much of a better job. I'll post the rest from this 10 year trajectory on soundcloud — it's wild hearing her change, knowing the lady inside is hardly different at all, the soul the heart the real brain. But things start to come out differently — and the person recognizes the differences between the self and this other thing, this deteriorating thing, this clumsy thing. And for all the same reasons we started recording — I'm here at 35 feeling so much of those same beats. I'm aware enough to know this isn't working, still aware enough to know this ain't it. Of course there are differences, of course of course. But I can't shake that pain, of the dissonance between selves, of the gaps between so many things. Me and me and us and all of us. I miss her. As I write this, I miss you, but there's nothing to regret. I hope this can just exist here like a little water fountain at a park, tap on, running gently if you push the button hard, not bothering everyone else who brought enough to drink. Bleep bloop. Love, AVL

The feeling over here is "wrap stuff up!" Will upload the collection of phone calls over deteriorating time on soundcloud. This is one of them from when Grandma was about 101. https://soundcloud.com/adamvalenlevinson

ok, this is going to take far more than I've got left to make this not worse than nothing. huge apologies. i'll upload all the files to soundcloud because you can just upload a bunch of things at once and then... yknow... they'll be there, hopefully in chronological order just if you want to spend any more time with grams — sorry for not editing more of my bs out better. comic timing https://soundcloud.com/adamvalenlevinson

If these have started uploading, it means you have outlived the hosts of this podcast, such as it was. Grandma died in 2023, Adam in 2024. But I think the both of us would've still wanted to put them out there because... um... help me think of the right words. Poop? I think the word is poop. There's a a bunch of long sessions from our first round of doing these in 2014. Then some more over the next few years. Then there are our phone calls as both of our brains take turns south. Will schedule all of it just in case anyone can squeeze any good juice out of it. I love you, you're great. Just taking the title from whatever title was on the file. Can't imagine we really stuck to a topic — I'm sorry I couldn't get it together to make something more fun. All of this just a little too little too late, or too solitary too late, too self-centered when the key is to find a way to live outwards. Toooo many words, toodle-oo & stay tuned for more if you'd like. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

this was one of my grandma's helpers, talking about how she would be sad to lose her. i think it's good to hear from june (happy june btw)— sorry all of this came off the rails so hard --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

Losing the thread guys — I wish I had the energy to chop it up, but the energy goes into a cycle of not being able to make even the tiniest choices, so it's either here's a thing if there's one person out there who'd click... or here's nada. I guess the key with creation is to not need responses, not need anything more than the act of distribution/birth/sharing — but... man really I just wanted to talk with you so, this ain't gonna cut it is it. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

If these have started uploading, it means none of us are around anymore to edit anything. But still wanted to put them out there because... um... help me think of the right words. There's a a bunch of long sessions from our first round of doing these in 2014. Then some more over the next few years. Then there are our phone calls as both of our brains take turns south. Will schedule all of it just in case anyone can squeeze any good juice out of it. I love you, you're great. Just taking the title from whatever title was on the file. Can't imagine we really stuck to a topic — I'm sorry I couldn't get it together to make something more fun. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

i am losing the ability to upload these — the louder of the opinions in my head are saying "dude why c'mon stop" and there's no one next to me saying sure why not. i haven't done enough to earn your attention, enough editing enough preparation. it shouldn't be so hard but I can't do it anymore, and so I'm jsut leaving this here if you feel like tapping in & tapping out — I don't feel I deserve anything, not asking for you to stay stay stay — truly just in case this was fun for a bit and if there's no harm in more. titles just came from whatever's on the file — not able to keep listening to these. i listen to bits and i have all these thoughts like... maybe the way a baker looks at a field of corn and thinks hmm I bet we could make some cookies but where will I find the time or where will I find the people to share them with or what if I want to use some new recipe or what if maybe I could just experiment but wait where am I where was I. (something like that) --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

If these have started uploading, it means none of us are around anymore to edit anything. But still wanted to put them out there because... ohhh you get it. There's a a bunch of long sessions from our first round of doing these in 2014. Then some more over the next few years. Then there are our phone calls as both of our brains take turns south. Will schedule all of it just in case anyone can squeeze any good juice out of it. I love you, you're great. Just taking the title from whatever title was on the file. Can't imagine we really stuck to a topic — I'm sorry I couldn't get it together to make something more fun. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

If this one posts, I've headed off to see if I can find grandma. About half way through, Grandma starts saying some very smart things about (the relativity of) age and being born and growing up. There aren't any great words to put here but I imagine we might have played one of these downer interludes we "wrote" at some point. I just hope it's not a downer for too long — this has been a long time coming, and I love you all, and I couldn't shake a lot of things that've clung forever. There's prob some more shit posted on my website / some audio and words, none important. Just know I love you always have and that there is so little lost. Just imagine someone making a truly off color joke at your moments of great seriousness and that's pretty much full me. Grandma will continue to appear here, production quality notwithstanding (I'm sorry!) but c'mon ain't she great? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

A Jewish girl in seminary, teenage heartbreak, and what rhymes with sneezes? Also included: sexy names of the 1930s (acc. to Grandma). --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

hard to hear, but here's grandma talking about (lack of) will to live, and then: a shift! i was always amazed by her strength, especially as someone not always so willful. sorry the audio is so shit. (sorry for a lot of things lol.) love, a --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

In the last installment of the age/regret/choices sitdown from 2014, we talk about "best possible". (I talk too much.)   Competition and opportunity and validation and the Catskills. A clear grandma head on creating (professional) needs. Muddled grandson. (Bonus points for spotting unhealthy thought patterns!) These descriptions are hard to write. The book Grandma mentions wanting from me did come out in 2017, quoting a dream of hers on page 64. She'd typed up a few words from a dream she'd had and pasted them over the computer where she used to write: "Do something. Do something! DO SOMETHING!" It's a feeling we both knew well, handled differently or not at all. Could use some more grandma now, that's for sure. Love you all. Thanks for giving the spark of Grams more place to spark. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

Grandma sings the blues. Neither one of us were real born smokers but we did our best to learn. Happy 4/20 everyone, from me and grandma and the ash in the cracks of the Casio keyboard. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

It has been more years than there are pages in Grandma's first book, Elisabeth the Bird Watcher, from 1963. How did she become a writer? Picking up mid-cookie from last time: we talk about lives lived and unlived, and the idea of looking forward to looking back. Is it possible to regret the future? Also on menu: choices and avoidance, wartime and diamonds in the rough, doors and (garden?) paths. Who here likes yardwork? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

The first installment in a long chat about aging and living (and dying) and life choices and regrets.  Toward the end, Grandma puts up with some real incoherence from her grandson, and then has a cookie.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

we improv'd this song at some point, for you of course. the idea was that any time we got really off track, lost the thread, we could splice in a Change The Subject song and get a hold of ourselves again. in the end, it's really just one twentysomething singing about birdf**king with his grandma before she turns 100. i'm sorry everyone. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

Our very first sitdown pipeside in San Diego. Grandma: is partly metal, harsh-but-fair, and tells a story you might've heard. Adam: gets told what kind of baby he was. (Leave any jokes about bluntness & blunts after the tone.) Music by the AI Chairman of the Board courtesy of Mel Brooks. Thank y'all tons for listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

Talking through one of grandma's (1920s) childhood fears. Recorded way back when Grams was a spry af 95: the movies, broken bones, grandpa the could-be killer, and the importance of holding hands. Featuring: music from Mel Brooks' High Anxiety, Artificial Intelligence Frank Sinatra, and a Casio keyboard from 1989. Thanks so much for listening. More soon. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

Ten years ago my grandma and I started recording a podcast. She was an author of children's and young adult books and poetry — absolutely natural storyteller and all around queen from Queens, New York, and the thought was: shouldn't the world hear more from its 100 year-olds? Answer is obviously yes, but trying to edit and put things together... the short of it is I got too anxious about doing it the "right" way to do it at any way at all.  So... this intro here is a bit of a potpourri — maybe that's the wrong word, smorgasbord? buffet? — of a few clips from our early sessions.  There's a lot of tape. I just wanted to know what you'd think of this. More? Less? Different? Theme song by an artificial intelligence Frank Sinatra: "High Anxiety". (See: Mel Brook's legendary High Anxiety.) Neil Patrick Harris reading Grandma's Slake's Limbo on Audible. - Adam (and Grandma) --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message

Here's a first minute with a legendary grandma. Looks like I cut & saved this seven whole years ago and just sat on it — sorry grams :/ Would you listen to more of this? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highanxiety/message