Griffin Dunne of the Amazon series "I Love Dick" reads a story about how distance can make the heart grow discouragingly fonder.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Modern love. The podcast is supported by the for the work messages begin to pour in. Let's give ourselves a good morning, a good morning is a moment to pause and ease into the day. It's a moment to run and chase the sun rise, or it's a gently settle into your.
in a good morning as a moment to be present to find clarity and be grounded for the day had good days start with good mornings and good mornings start with Yogi T Yogi T tease me to do
more than just tastes, good from the New York Times and W, B or Boston. This is modern love stories of love, loss and redemption. I'm your host
Meghna Chakrabarti absence does make the heart grow fonder. So
and that sometimes it can cast a shadow over everything else, as it did for David Vessey Griffin. Dunne
of the Amazon Series. I love Dick reads: David's essay,
for the web, hearts grew silent, some
I'm sorry, I'm watching old movies. I can't help dwelling on the crucial pot devices that have been lost too well devices the Miss phone call, which today rings in our pockets the wrong turn gonna dark road. Easily avoided would jpg
as the long lost love who now lives forever and our twitter feed
consider the ending of Doctor Zhivago. When,
at citing of Laurent City Street, lead Europe heart to rupture ass, she disappears before he can reach. Her
had the internet been around during the Bolshevik revolution.
URI and Laura would never have lost each other. They would have been facebook, comrades, boring each other to death with snapshots of food, borscht and ironic observations of proletariat struggle,
Consider the plot twist and her own lives moments that hinged on uncertainty. When communication was tenuous
and all information was not laid out before us. Modern tech
G is made our world smaller and our lives easier, but perhaps it also has diminished life's mysteries and with them some sense of romance
in the summer of nineteen. Ninety one without social networks to tether us. I felt such heart bursting.
for a woman I loved that I traveled across two countries
an ocean to make sure she would not wander out of my life.
It was only interruptions in a total vacuum away. From her
that I was able to appreciate the depth of love. I felt
In March, while I was still in college, she had recently grow.
Waited and was knocking around Peoria Illinois, her hometown figuring out her next step after two chance meetings, we began going out before long. We were rarely apart. This was the old fashioned way of falling in love. All our attentions were on each other. We spent less time with her friends who could not track the electronic footprints of our relationship. We didn't have cell phones buzzing every five minutes, distracting us non essential.
chatter, neither of us was tap tap, tapping away eyes, downward communicating with other people during meals. The outside world fell away
came just as slowly unlocking each other secrets, dreams and opinions which
Those days were not posted on walls for anybody to casually scroll through we felt we were the only two people in the world.
But our time together was coming to an end before we met
I plan to summer backpacking adventure across Europe in
I have been talking about a move to Chicago.
I told her I would write while I was away- and I gave her the address of a friend in Wales, where I would be with my parents at the midpoint of my trip. It would be my only fix location for the next eight weeks. Admittedly, no promises were made, but part of me felt as if I were relationship with you,
When I came back disappearing into Europe alone for two months.
Was not all that unusual back,
A twenty one year old could track across Europe for two months, with no reasonable expectation
using more than a postcard, much less continual status updates. The whole point was to get lost after landing in full
for I visited the Roman, ruins and Freire
and the summer solstice in Strasbourg, and saw rock concert in a soccer stadium, packed with fifty thousand dramatic. Looking bikers in Basel in Budapest, my ancestral home,
I heard church choirs and stood before masterworks of art. It was amazing and beautiful, inspiring and I was miserable. All I could think about was Joelle.
Setting alone on a bench outside Saint Stevens Cathedral in Vienna, eating Streetch Nestle. I wish I were back at lumps and Peoria sitting across from her.
as I stared at the emerald, Green Rhine and Switzerland. I found myself longing for the murky Illinois River
I wrote her letters is, if I could will her into my trip long, heartfelt missives.
The idea of a reading my letters of expense
sing, but I was experience was what kept me going. The triple become meaningless with her, not a part of it
By the time I reach London to rendezvous with my parents, I was inconsolable. The distance between us had become unfathomable and my spirit sank to a depth had never known. I tried to act in a manner befitting a twenty one year old man who was now a world
after I sobbed and powdered and slunk around London for three days. Finally, my father suggested insisted really that I just collar
from our hotel room in London. I call Peoria accepted Joel, wasn't NP orient her mother told me that she had packed up and moved Chicago. My letter, she said we're sitting there on the table on opened.
I called Chicago next but was unable to reach her. There was no answer, no machine, no voicemail, no caller id to show the Miss call
Just a landline ringing in an empty apartment, there was
way of knowing where she was or when she would be back. I became gripped by jealousy panic
by the idea of her moving on settling
into a new life meeting new people.
Harry was in Europe. Weeping in front of relic
for all the wrong reasons and she was gallivanting around Chicago meeting people. It seemed ludicrous to admit that I somehow thought she might hang around Peoria waiting for me, but that was it occurred to me exactly what I expected.
My parents and I drove to Wales the next day and when there was no letter from Joel waiting, I broke down into a blubbering mess. My body was in Wales, surrounded by craggy, green hills and bleeding sheep, but my heart was in Chicago. My parents put me on a train back to London. The next morning I was looking to catch the net
Flight home at Heathrow, however, I was told that the round trip airline ticket my parents had bought me could be used only out of Paris, so it was after Dover, where I caught a late night, vary across the channel. The book
was filled with fellow students and, as we staggered off in Calais and rode the night train to Paris, I regaled them with my tale of woe. Forget it. They said one guy, a rower from Penn who had just competed at the Henley regatta said that he was meeting buddies in Pamplona to run with the bulls and that I should join them. The girl next to me, was welsh and headed to the south of France to wait on tables and lie on the beach fun of a working vacation. Come with she offered
No, no, I said if I don't get back, I'm going to lose her. I was roundly ridiculed and they said I would forever regret cutting short this once in a lifetime trip in Paris. My spirits bullied. I headed straight for Charles De Gaulle. Airport I'd be home in New York by that night and in Chicago the day. After that, all I had to do was get on a plane, but I couldn't get on a plane inside the United Terminal. It look like the fall of Saigon, utter chaos with people, forty deep at the ticket counter. I would not be getting on the next plane or the plane after that or any other plane. I would be lucky
ticket Asian said to get a flight three weeks from now exhausted and despondent. I love my backpack toward the trains, tears welling in my eyes. What a disaster stuck in Paris for three weeks. Could things be any worse? But, as I left the bedlam of DNA
at the terminal. I found myself in the British Airways Wing, it was empty and tranquil and I was facing three smiling ticket agent. Was this a mirage? You don't happen to have any seats in New York today I would have settled for not being laughter. We have seats, one said but plane leaves in twenty minutes the one way ticket cost twice what my parents had paid for. My original round trip fare. I glanced at my credit card for emergency use only I bought
tickets. This was the part of the story. I didn't tell my parents at least not until four years later, on the night before July, and I were married, I confessed it as a punch line at our hersel dinner. After my father,
I told room full of friends and family the tale of the despondent boy who chose love over,
pink, sheep, roman ruins and all the wine in Paris
Griffin done. Reading David Bessys S E before the web, hearts reassignments will hear from David after the break car max gives you the freedom to shop. However, you, like you, can shop for a car online and on the lot, once you find the right car you can buy. However, you
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I mean sitting next to each other playing individually and not cheating. Sometimes, when I open up spelling bee- and I see that you have completed a few words on your own, I feel a little betrayed in sorry. It may have happened again
I have one friend
I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words that I always get nervous. I sent it to my parents or something like that.
Me and my dad. We like to play fun together and I wish other out. I forgot to see it J, a c k, P, o t Jack
Yeah yeah now run nice
I'm same as earth's sky, the digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at N Y Times dot com slash games were back. It's modern love the pie
guess, I'm magnetar or David Bessie's essay was probably
in two thousand thirteen, but he wrote his first draft about twenty years before that even submit
add it to the New York Times about men, column which no longer exists today, and they were.
Did it soundly, and I think I put it in a closet after that, as writers are wont to do something it's turned away and then, after reading a few modern love s is I retorted with now I look back of twenty years
looking back got David thinking about how much technology has changed relationships and even the way we think about the world. My common question is you remember what it used to be like to wonder about things. We never have that period where we mole something for a long time. It's sort of like the answer is always at our fingertips and so our reflective qualities, I think, have diminished and to me that sad because that's I enjoy that stuff, I mean I enjoy sort of just staring off at the ocean and wondering about one thing for forty five minutes and wonder:
if I'll ever know the answer to it, which of course I could do if I just took my phone out of my back pocket revisiting this time in his life also made David realize how crucial a role his parents played in his love story with Joelle. How many parents really would say forget the next
once you are supposed to spend in Europe and go home and just make yourself happy and that was kind of their parental instinct. I don't think I even considered that as an option of mine had a plane ticket and it was like that's my plane ticket and who am I to change it and for them to unsolicited, say just go home. It was really special in a way so special that David thinks it may be what saved his relationship with Joelle by actually
I believe that we would not be together if I had stayed for the rest of my trip and part of it was, and it's not a reflection on our feelings towards each other, but I think we were deeply in love at the time. I just think that
another month gone by? If I just tramped around Europe, maybe those feelings would have become more distant over that time.
she would have settled into Chicago and I would have come home and just settled into whatever I was going to do. She says that she was waiting for me to come back and I think that's a very nice thing for her to say
I choose to believe David and Judicial live in port washing to New York, with their fifteen and eighteen year, old daughters they ve been married for
early twenty two years now and their law
story, is no longer sitting in David's closet. You know we look back at the store
sort of like a good party story for us all the time and
now. This essay is hanging in the hallway sort of a focal point of our little journey together,
David Bessie he's.
assistant news editor at the New York Times.
Griffin Dunne told us that he knew within the first paragraph that he wanted to read David Bessie's essay, we'll find out
In a minute
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yours, Cyprus, Hill in Spain, in the brain preparing this for twenty. Only on Showtime, I love allowing my boyfriend, and I often play following me. Together by together, I mean sitting next to each other playing
individually and not cheating. Sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see that you have completed a few words on your own, I feel a little betrayed. Sorry, it may have happened again
I have one friend
I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words, and I was getting nervous. I sent it to my parents or something like that.
Me and my dad. We like to play fun together and I wish feather out. I forgot to see it J, a c k, P, o t Jack
yeah yeah, now run nice,
I'm same is risky. The digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at annoying times dot com, flash games.
for Griffin, Dunne David Bessie's essay was a nostalgic look back at dating before the internet.
You know when you said you would be somewhere, you would be somewhere
cuz there was no way to cancel and attacks to the last second and post relationships. I find mice
becoming incredibly annoyed. If somebody I'm texting doesn't get back to me within thirty seconds. You know where, before you'd find out, if the person was thinking of you,
why, if you had one listening to your answering machine at the end of the night, we just fight for different reasons. Now, with our lovers
and Daniel Jones editor of modern love for the New York Times echoed that sentiment. This is the kind of stuff
that reminds us of how dramatically things have changed, just in terms of how we can keep tabs on people and stay in touch with people or not.
He would not these days ever wind up in that situation, where he wouldn't be able to see her facebook posts or Instagram pictures of Chicago.
oh and be able to trace her every move and
not knowing any of that. It just raised the stakes through the roof
wonder how much is romance dependent on doubt and allowing your emotions to sort of snowball into this sense of oh, my god. I've got it
on a train, get on a plane, fly across the ocean and find this person. You know it just doesn't.
Exist anymore in the way that it used to
thanks again to Griffin Dunne for reading David's essay Griffin,
stars in the Amazon series. I love Dick opposite Kathryn Hahn, who's also read for the podcast you can find
episode and our full archive at W B. You are dot, org, slash, modern love next week, Danielle Brooks
who plays tasty on the Netflix Series Orange is the new black reads a story.
About an overprotective father and the art of Google stalking. Here's what I knew he had a binder, my mother denied it. My sister had seen it yet
father wouldn't confess because he knew his actions were overstepping my boundaries. So you know
Let me see it as I don't know what you're talkin about is Mifi
I hadn't become an engineer. He would have made a great spy
Modern love is the production of the New York Times and W B you are Boston MP, our station, its produced directed and
They did by Jessica, Alford John Variety and Emory Sea routes in there
here for the modern love. Podcast was conceived by LISA Tobin Iris.
there's our executive producer, Daniel Jones is the editor.
Of modern love for the New York Times and adviser to the show music for the past courtesy of a p m. I made me trucker body, the sea and extreme.
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Transcript generated on 2022-04-17.