Aaron Tracy

What is it to take responsibility for the crummy things we've done?

Partway through the book, I'm dealing with my own sobriety and becoming sober sort of creates this necessity for an acknowledgement that you've done something wrong.

Because if you hadn't done something wrong, you wouldn't quit drinking, right?

One's own monstrosity is kind of baked in to the act of becoming sober.

What is your life after that?

What is it to be a person after that acknowledgement?

And that question, I think, aligns me with people who've done something crummy, right?

And what is it to be human in the face of that?

So people do get, in my opinion, they do get to change or get better.

And it's a little different within a state.

But I think apology and remorse are such powerful tools.

And if we don't take them in some kind of good faith, we start to make them even more extinct than they already are.

Yeah, it's so hard to think of any, especially in today's climate.

I'm just thinking about Kanye West's track, Heil Hitler.

I mean, so many of these guys are just so unrepentant.

Yeah, and if Kanye were to make an apology now, would that be meaningful?

Probably not, because it has been so unrepentant.

The performance of his own hatefulness has been so ongoing and so relentless that apology would just be another performance.

But there are contexts in which it's meaningful, I think.

I read your piece in Paris Review about Woody Allen this morning, and it seemed like one of the things that bothered you so much was when he said, that's what the heart wants as his justification, which is the polar opposite of an apology.