Deviant Delirium

A few outtakes from Taylor's interview with The Observer

Travel must-haves I always travel with my pillow, from my bed. I don't use it on the plane, but I'll use it in my hotel or wherever I'm staying. Even on my bike trip to Patagonia, or when I'm going through Italy or something. I do take it because I am so particular. The worst feeling on the planet is going [somewhere] and there's just ****ty pillows. I don't know the brand, but it's super soft. And I got a really good cooling pillow case. I pack it in my backpack. I also need a good sunscreen, which I get from my dermatologist. I won't rent a motorcycle helmet, so I bring my own. Good sunglasses—I have Oakleys and Ray-Bans. My regular glasses. I lose a charger every ****ing 10 minutes, so I need multiple chargers.

On-set essentials I don’t bring my pillow. I have my notes and my journal for the character. I keep things very simple on the day with the script, so I’m able to just let go and let my gut take me where it goes. I need a ton of water. If my blood sugar gets low, I get really tired and my brain slows down. I like to have apples and peanut butter. I go through maybe four to six apples per day. The peanut butter’s got to be crunchy. I don't ask for a specific brand. I think that would be a little much. But that would be pretty funny if I were on set yelling for Skippy only. So I don't have a specific brand, but the more natural the better. I also obviously have to have my morning coffee. I really take it slow so I don't get too anxious before [working], so I'll try to time out my coffees. It’s usually an iced triple shot with a splash of oat milk.

Favorite local spots I'll plug these guys: Ghost Town coffee in Bozeman. It's my favorite. I take my motorcycle almost every morning to Ghost Town. There's a great deli called Finks. There’s an incredible bakery, Wild Crumb, which is scarily close to my house. I gained 25 pounds to play Glenn Krieger in Painkiller, so I was crushing that bakery twice a day.

Favorite vacation spots

We get long winters in Bozeman, so I've learned to leave for a few weeks and go [to the] southern hemisphere for a motorcycle ride. Early February, I was in Patagonia for two weeks on a motorcycle ride with two of my best friends. That was amazing. We were tracking pumas with our cameras and doing a lot of wildlife photography and landscape photography. I’m going to photograph the orcas in Argentina early next year.

Current playlist I'm always listening to some David Gray. I just think he's one of the best lyricists on the planet. I've been a fan since the early ‘90s. I did this mini trailer for the African Children's Choir, and I cut it to a David Gray song. I asked him if I could use it, and within an hour, he was like, ‘Yeah, no problem.’ Black Crowes are great. If I'm working out, I go full techno and go crazy. I have a song list for each character. So depending on the scene, I'll go into that just to put you in a certain state of mind. But for me, it’s a lot of David Gray. I'll always have a David Gray in my song list for any character I play. He's just ****ing incredible.

What he’s watching I just finished Alone, which I love. They drop these guys and girls off, and they're out there for as long as they possibly can. I just love it. That's probably my favorite show. I think you glorify or romanticize it, right? You're like, "****, I could easily go at least two weeks." I do think I'd be good if there is fishing there. I could at least survive a couple weeks. Everyone goes their own way, and they can build a great bunkhouse or whatever they're gonna sleep in. I think I'd get a little carried away with my OCD and build something a little too much. But, yeah, I'm fascinated by that show. I’m also excited because hockey is back. I have a good friend on the Wild, Mats Zuccarello. Henrik Lundqvist is a dear friend of mine, but he's retired. Detroit is probably my favorite team because their general manager was my idol growing up, Steve Yzerman, and he's an amazing guy. I've got to know him, so I'm always rooting for Detroit.

     Ever since I was 11 or 12 years old, it has always happened the same way. For months my soul feels as if I am in a crowd of loved ones, close enough to reach out and touch, to smell, to feel the secondhand warmth emanating off of. I am comfortably snug in the center of humanity. Then at some ill-fated moment, with no warning, I blink, and when my eyes open all of the people that surrounded me are in the distance, with an immense and unfathomably deep chasm between us. They are so far away from where I stand that I have to squint just to see what they are. There is no warmth. There are no smells. No touch or sensation. Simply a gaping horror along with a vague impression of the existence of other beings more or less similar to me in shape, with no way to communicate or interact.

     The sudden realization of that immense chasm between me and humanity. That is what has turned my brain in circles ever since I can remember.

     Is the initial closeness the reality, and the chasm simply a wicked lie my mind masochistically entertains? I would love to believe that… But would the nature of evolution really create an organism which tortures itself with unnecessary and inactionable falsehoods? One that sends itself into useless negative spirals, decreasing its chances of livelihood and its capacity to thrive and reproduce? What use would that serve? From everything I have seen, the biological imperative  - the goal of life itself - is not truth. It is the propagation of more life. Our systems unconsciously edit information, change memories, ignore sensations, and will gladly misperceive reality in any number of ways if it helps us live and thrive. As such, it seems much more likely that the human organism would tell itself a helpful lie than a useless truth, and much less so a useless lie. 

     Knowing that, I feel nauseating dread creeping up from my belly. The faint smell of putrescine enters my nostrils as the possibility finally emerges: Is the closeness itself the actual lie? A precious illusion my mind holds onto for dear life — an act of love to spare my soul the torment of the horrifying reality of that chasm? Maybe these periods of despair are simply moments when my mind loses the willpower necessary to keep locked away that terrible truth lurking at the core of humankind; That every one of us are, at our cores, where it matters most, utterly alone, and always have been alone, and there is nothing in the world that can or will ever change that. That the idea that one person can even remotely fathom the soul of another is a grand illusion we maintain in order to keep ourselves alive, knowing if we were to see the truth for what it is we would descend into existential madness and drive our species extinct. That we are all adrift like stars in the universe, visible to each other, yet infinitely distant, forever wandering further apart as we continue to differentiate and increase in complexity, forming our own solar systems made up of various parts of ourselves and small remnants of others, forever haunted by the distant memory of the brief feeling of oneness we experienced before being violently expelled from the heartless womb of the universe.

     Throughout my life many of the thinkers I have respected most have spoken so highly of the superiority of truth, that we should seek it at all costs, stare at it unflinchingly. But as I’ve grown older I’ve started to be less focused on objective truths and more focused on useful truths. I think there are too many truths for the human brain to hold at once. It makes more sense to focus on the ones that help, that serve a purpose. Maybe human intimacy is a lie. But why does it matter? What can truly be done about it? Would I choose nonexistence? Would I turn myself back into dust to escape the burden of knowing? Nihilism used to feel courageous and exciting, but now it just feels cowardly and whiny. In front of humanity is a beautiful garden, and behind them is the chasm. Are the “bold ones” who turn around and stare at the pit in despair truly more noble than the ones who decide they would rather look at flowers? Or are the wisest among us instead the ones that have consciously faced towards the garden, realizing they can’t look at everything at once, and that nothing useful comes from knowing we are fucked?

     And I wish I truly could do that. Fully accept the more helpful reality. I believe I succeed for the most part, these days. 

Fifteen years ago I met you and before you had spoken six words I knew I would follow you to the center of the earth if you asked me to. You said that my oversized canine teeth were beautiful. You said hearing me sing was like watching a thousand stars fall to the earth at the same time. You told me my arms were so strong that I could fly if I moved them fast enough.

~

Ten years later I had forgotten your face. I had burned all of your pictures and redacted your name from every poem and every song. I was ready to die and I got most of the way there but you found me again and shook my face and stretched my skin and pulled my hair and screamed your sickeningly indomitable hope into my lungs until I finally stopped crying. You stood behind me and held my arms out to the sides and whispered something in my ear.

~

Yesterday the wind bore you aloft and swept you through my hair as I sat in the circle of flowers you planted for me, in the forest you grew with your own rotted blood. I soaked you in. I smiled at you and you smiled back and for the first time in my life I felt a true stillness in my soul.

I don’t know where I’m going, but for the first time in my life, I don’t need to.

So lead on, love.