Secret Lives of Men interview transcript is now available

A full transcript for my appearance last September on The Secret Lives of Men with Dr. Chris Blazina on BlogTalkRadio, including Dr. Blazina’s post-interview discussion with Dr. Ryan McKelley, is now available as a PDF file by clicking here.

The audio version of the interview is available from a number of sources, including the “More” page on my website, as well as:

The Secret Lives of Men at BlogTalkRadio

The Secret Lives of Men on iTunes

In the Media: The Secret Lives of Men on the APA Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity Division 51 website

There’s a lot of good material in the transcript, but there’s one section I’d like to reproduce here because I think I did a pretty good job of articulating my approach, my motivations, and my intentions with regard to my book, Iron Man Famly Outing, and more generally, to my work and writing as a whole. Here’s what I said during my conversation with Dr. Blazina:

“I think it’s important to talk just a little bit about the reasons why I felt that it was important to put this material out.

“The book is basically structured as a progression through a series of different experiences and emotional and psychological states. And so there is, in some sense, there’s a flow from beginning to end there, and I think that when people read (the book) they see it. It might be a little different than other poetry books, in that really the poems actually are very interrelated, and they work with one another to tell the story.

“And for me, it’s the story of a period in my life that was highly transformational. And I had the sense, as I began to pull this all together, that this might actually be useful to other men as a pattern or a template or a map to kind of go into their own processes a little bit more deeply, and to give them some reference points in terms of feeling, in terms of developing a relationship where they get information from their bodies and their dreams, and to really give other people, men in particular, permission to open up to this stuff and share it with other people, at least with people that they’re close to, that they feel safe with.

“I was really moved to do a lot of this because I’d been in men’s groups and I’d seen men talk about things in ways that I’d never seen men talk before. I had close friends, we never talked like that, we never shared our emotions with one another. It wasn’t safe to do it. So I was really inspired by that, and my first purpose in doing this book was to open a window into my own process and complete the process for myself, but the larger purpose is to give the opportunity, the permission, and as I said, maybe a pattern or a template or a map for other men that feel ready to go a little deeper into themselves and find out what’s there …

“Really, I guess what I would say is that, in probably the most elemental way, the book is about progressing toward, not so much a resolution … it’s not a how-to book … it’s more about progressing toward a greater understanding, a greater awareness.”

It’s a little rough, but if I had to come up with a mission statement for Iron Man Family Outing, for my writing, and for myself, that would be pretty damn close.

The Secret Lives of Men interview transcript is now available by Rick Belden, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.