I wrote a book about that, and it takes place entirely in a bar.
Two days, one tavern, four voices at the counter. They aren’t people — that’s the part I’d want you to know before deciding whether this is for you.
The Reckoning won’t be lied to. Accuracy, delivered without an anesthetic. The Bond recognizes our common humanity. The Joy never understood why everybody else stopped asking questions. And The Lantern is the one who looks at what you were handed and asks whether you’d choose it now — which is the whole verb of this thing, and the only part nobody can do for you.
Four real lives lit them: George Carlin, Robin Williams, Richard Feynman, Albert Camus. But none of the four at that bar is the man. What’s sitting there is the shape each one opened, and it was already in you before you opened the book.
Underneath all of it runs the fifth presence. Every chapter is scored by a Pink Floyd song — Coming Back to Life at the doorway through to High Hopes at the far end. That music has been running underneath my thinking since I was eight years old and it does what the sentences can’t. The book is meant to be read with the album on.
And most chapters end with an EchoPlay — the song again, with a companion to read while it runs. The chapter’s question carried by music instead of argument, once the four at the bar have finished talking. They’re free, they’re not behind anything, and you don’t need the book to use them.
I’m behind the counter. Not one of the four. The job is smaller than that: pour the question, then keep the space open so no one of them runs the room.
There’s one more person in there — the four-year-old you actually were, who had all four of those voices whole and unembarrassed, before you learned the song your family sang and worked out which ones kept you close and which ones cost you.
Reimagining Rebellion: A Rebel’s Guide to Coming Alive in a System That’s Crushing You.
336 pages. $2.99 on Kindle, free with Kindle Unlimited.