The Jim Huckaby Interview

Considering what he has achieved in the last two decades, it’s hard to imagine that Jim Huckaby was ever just a mediocrity like the rest of us, but he did not, in fact, achieve anything of note until after he was forty years old, spending his youthful years in obscurity, and, as he would later describe in his new memoir Huckaby Unleashed, under the sinister influence of a metaphysical entity he came to call The Pain.

Ever the loudest voice in his mind, The Pain was the foremost authority he had listened to when any decision had to be made, and, since its advice was often contradictory, few decisions were actually made, which, despite being unable to produce any tangible results, only increased The Pain’s dominion over Jim since every time he succumbed to its demands he weakened himself and allowed it to encroach ever further into his mind, as though he were becoming a puppet king and it his serpentine advisor whose only interest was increasing its own power at the expense of all else.

Recently, I met with Jim at The Harriette to discuss his new memoir and specifically what influence The Pain had had on his early life. We sat in the gaudy 70s-throwback lobby on brown leather drapers, our eyes meeting over a pea-green coffee table intersected with yellow and orange zig-zagging lines – his eyes calm, kindly and surprisingly young and mine, well, a tad nervous to be staring back at a man who has already cemented his name in history, as though I were now a piece of that history, perhaps even about to earn the privilege of a single line in a future memoir.

After a rather awkward icebreaker (he’s a man of few words when not talking shop, apparently) I was curious to know, to better understand the impact it had had on his life, how The Pain would operate on a day-to-day level:

JH: Well, when I went to work The Pain would always be distracting me, telling me how it was holding Happiness ransom until I got home. When I got home, however, it would advise me to get back to work. By that I mean not the work I was currently paid for but the work that was supposed to… define me, you know? My life’s work, so to speak. What I'm known for now. But when I tried to do this work The Pain would tell me to relax and forget about it. Then it would take a break for a bit as well, but only because it was... marshalling its forces for an even stronger barrage of “advice” later, which was basically just it admonishing me for being lazy, even though I'd simply done as it had asked.

MB: What about other aspects of your life?

JH: When I was physically alone it would tell me to speak to another person, but when I did speak to someone it told me that everything I said was of no interest to them and I should just shut up. Whenever I become excited by something, it would either tell me that this was pointless… frivolity or it would somehow convince me I was actually bored, and that excitement was to be found somewhere else in some unfindable location. The kicker is that it would then advise me to try and find that unfindable location relentlessly until I’d burn out looking for the thrill.

MB: And what about in… romantic matters? How did that factor into all of this?

JH: Well, whenever I thought I found someone it told me they were not the one, because of some trivial reason, and then whispered that, basically, no one ever would be.

As you can see The Pain was relentless in its pursuit for power over Jim’s psyche and clearly engaged in abusive behaviour that Jim should have reported to someone years earlier than he did, and yet, as is sadly so often the case, this victim was too ashamed to report to the authorities, or even to tell a friend, of what was happening behind closed doors, thus enabling The Pain to abuse Jim unhindered for decades without anyone being the wiser - the oft too heard rejoinders to the casual “How are you?”, such as “Good” or “I’m fine, thanks”, giving no indication of the turmoil that was constant within the suffering mind of poor Jim.

Thus, was he to be found, forty-one years old and entirely at the mercy of The Pain before a notion occurred to him:

JH: I had listened to the pain every day. I had taken its advice over and over again and rarely had it been beneficial to my situation. The only actual benefit was quieting The Pain itself which was obviously just a pointless and circular… boondoggle that brought no tangible results. I can’t say it occurred in a single moment, but eventually I made the decision to stop listening to it and open my ears to other voices. It was a slow process and quite harrowing. It threw huge tantrums protesting what it thought was my… betrayal. For a few weeks I couldn’t hear anything but it screaming away. Eventually, though, by sticking to my guns and not listening to its advice it began to recede into the dark corner up the back, you know, where we put the stuff we're supposed to grow out of.

Thus, unlike the fables of old, there was no singular event, no call to adventure, that set Jim on his way toward greatness - there was only the slow degradation of his routine existence by The Pain, which, in the process of taking and exercising so much power over its host, revealed the ineffectiveness of its mercurial policies.

This victory, however, would prove to be short lived as Jim faced new challenges in his war to take control over his own mind:

JH: I’d been reliant on The Pain to steer the wheel for so long that, now that it was entirely up to me to call the shots, I didn’t know quite how to move forward. Happiness would come to me with open arms, and I’d just sit in a daze just basking in its glory, so to speak. But I wasn’t getting anything done, you know? I was just as ineffectual as before, and on a… a rational level I recognised I didn’t want to fall into the same trap of listening to another voice that didn’t lead me anywhere better than where I was.

MB: You must surely have enjoyed the company of Happiness more than The Pain?

JH: Oh, certainly. Who wouldn’t? But it’s the reliance on them you see, that’s the problem. Well, the reliance on those two anyway.

MB: What do you mean?

JH: They’re…how do I say? Superficial. Two-dimensional. They talked to me in the simplest terms, like a child. They’d railroaded me down a path all my life and I’d never had a chance to see if there was anything off the track worth looking at. For that I needed a visionary.

MB: You mean Love?

JH: Thank you for actually reading my book [laughs]. Yes, I’d tried to listen to Love many times in the past but with The Pain yammering in my ear all the time I just couldn’t make out what it was trying to tell me. But now it was different. Love showed me the value everyone around me has and through them, through caring for them, I was able to care for myself and make valuable decisions for the betterment of everyone. It’s… it’s the way out of solipsism, which was what The Pain would always push me towards.

And so, with this new advisor Jim was able to forge forward on a new path toward becoming to the man and legend we know him as today; and yet, he was not to travel alone, for, now with his heart open, he met Kayla Stanford, the video artist, and together they formed the couple that would come to define an aging generation that had thought it had lost its voice to that of the younger.

MB: How much of an influence was Kayla on your new trajectory?

JH: Incalculable. And please tell her I said that [laughs]. Well, we helped each other. Kayla had always been quite carefree but I felt, looking at her work, she was perhaps too ready to accept the pure dictates of her heart. One thing The Pain had taught me over so many years was intense self-criticality. So sometimes when Kayla thought she was done with a project, I’d kind of look sideways and say, “are you sure?” and she’d roll her eyes, but when she went back and re-assessed she realised the ways it could be made infinitely better. Deep down she’s grateful, but on the surface she’s come to call me her version of The Pain [laughs]. But as for what she’s done for me, I’d been so rigidly assigned to my path I’d lost all sense of vision and what I could gain from listening to others, outside of my “inner circle” that is. Through her I met many of the folks that came to be instrumental in my so-called success…

MB: Please, no modesty needed here.

JH: [laughs] Well, if you say so. I’m superb. Happy?

MB: Very.

JH: Glad to hear it. Ah, so, Kayla introduced me to Lionel Wu who, as you would know, has been on my team ever since and key to me getting this far. I'd be lost without him, frankly. And also, Simon Beale who was the one who helped me to complete the memoir which you have kindly just read.

MB: I imagine you didn’t set out to be an author, per se, as it's not what you’re known for, but I won’t make it a secret that that is my goal should I ever get the chance to publish. Do you have any advice for a young author looking to make their mark?

JH: Well, as you say, I’m not the best person to ask, but I think my story should make it obvious, and I think this applies to almost any walk of life: Don’t go it alone. Open yourself to others, to new ideas. Let them help you and try to help them. There is a way to satisfy yourself while doing the same for others. It’s the balance between listening to yourself and to those around you that you have to get right.

MB: Ok, thanks. But would you say after you started to listen to Love that the balance went too much in favour of others then?

JH: I thought you said you had read my book.

MB: I did… well, I’m three quarters of the way through.

JH: Gotcha [laughs]. I forgive you. Well, not to spoil too much but there is a coda to my relationship with The Pain. We had a reconciliation, but on equal terms. Having had time away from it for a while I was able to recognise the good from the bad regarding the advice it had given me throughout my life. It, in return, recognised that it had stepped way out of line in the way that it manipulated me for its own gains. I forgave it… forgiveness must be a thing of mine… and welcomed it back to give me council, but on an equal footing with the others. You have to realise that without The Pain, there was no corrective to things that would hurt me, either in reputation, or in daily life. It was always meant to be my most stalwart defender, had it not been corrupted by greed, but now it took its rightful place as my shield against things or people that would seek to lessen me. Don’t get me wrong, I could live without it, but I would have to become a monk or something, because I could be perfectly content sans Pain, but I couldn’t have become “great”, in a typical Western sense of greatness, without it.

I will admit that these last words of Jim’s left me feeling rather melancholic - perhaps due to the knowledge that the fate of every “great” man or woman is tied to a kind of suffering - and I shared these feelings with Jim, the response to which I will leave you with, and you can consider for yourself if Jim Huckaby is a man you wish to emulate or whether you would prefer to stay with me in the land of mediocrity, watching stars shoot across the sky in all their blazing intensity.

JM: Well, how else would you want it? Never to feel discomfort on your way up? What would be the point, you know? Comfort is as much an enemy as The Pain when left unchecked. Remember it is human to be all things at all times. Those who listen to Love and never hear the echoes of Anger, Resentment, Kindness, Happiness haven’t been listening very closely or don’t understand the language properly. And those who listen to The Pain and hear only a shriek to be silenced with a pill or pleasure haven’t heard the words buried beneath the wail. It is hard to be human, truly human - well, for some it is easy, blessed with perfectly sanguine temperaments, gliding through life as though it were made for them. You may envy them, but do you respect them? People respect more the one who travels the furthest, after all. So, if you’re like I was, at the mercy of your own... overzealous advisor, try to tame it, but don't... banish it, as even that which tortures us has a character all its own, and that’s exactly what you need, a voice with character, to stand out amongst the din once you’ve opened up your ears to the others. That voice, for me, is The Pain. So, my young friend, what voice have you been listening to lately?