Ed in his lair. The Gulley Chronicles

I learned in journalism and in TV News that the best interviews occur when an interviewer and his or her subject have a special chemistry, one compliments the other. An interrogation is never a good interview, only a real conversation is.

Interview is a strange word to use when talking to a good friend, but I did it for many years, and it is a part of me. It think it also detaches me from the emotion of things a bit. There is no  escaping emotion in these talks with Ed.

He and I are both opened up in different ways by his terminal brain cancer. It is much harder to have cancer than to talk about it, but it is not easy for me to talk about it.

We both feel the sorrow of it deeply, as Ed says, there is way to escape the dark cloud, we can just dance around it..

Ed is open and honest, as I try to be, and I believe the result is producing an extraordinary account of one man’s journey to the edge of life. We cut to the chase.

He  faces nothing but uncertainty and loss and he knows it. He tells me that he would like for me to write a book about him after he is gone, but I frankly don’t see that.  It’s not my kind of book.

I think my book writing life is coming to an end.  My writing will be exclusively on the blog soon, where it belongs.

When Ed and I talk to one another, there is an ease and a bond between us. I ask people to leave the room when we do a video because it makes me nervous when other people are listening, and Ed says it makes him uncomfortable and distracted as well.

A good interviewer never wants anyone else in the room, you just lock onto one another.

Ed and I have often talked about the difficulties men have showing emotion. He is a viscerally emotional man, as I am, but we both learned to hide it, as men do.  The revealing of emotions has always been fraught and dangerous for men, seen too often as a sign of weakness.

His cancer has tapped the well. At first, a wave of emotions came pouring out of him, almost overwhelming him.

Now, with some time and distance from the shock of the diagnosis, Ed is learning to manage his emotions and acknowledge them and make sense of out of them. He is putting them into his poems and drawings, which are fascinating to look at.

His honesty and self-awareness are a gift to people who might cross this  kind of bridge one day. I guess that is most of us.

So there we are, two men who hide their emotions and who are now talking about them with one another at a stunning turning point in life. Life is filled with crisis and mystery.

We have plans to talk again to tomorrow. I want to do it as long as he wants to do it, and as often.