This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Leah Walsh: Hi, and welcome to The Compass, the podcast documenting the struggles of life as an artist.

[0:05] Leah Walsh: I'm Leah Walsh.

[0:07] Leah Walsh: My guest today is Nick Choksi.

[0:09] Leah Walsh: Nick is an incredibly versatile actor, a musician, a songwriter, and an animator.

[0:14] Leah Walsh: He is my husband's best friend, and we all went to Juilliard together, and he has been a rock who's helped us battle hard times more than once.

[0:22] Leah Walsh: I'm so happy to finally have him as a guest on The Compass.

[0:25] Leah Walsh: We could have talked much longer, and there were a few questions I wasn't able to ask, so I might have to have him as a guest again at some point in the future.

[0:33] Leah Walsh: I hope you enjoy the 19th episode of The Compass.

[0:53] Nick Choksi: Probably a little bit, but that's fine.

[0:55] Nick Choksi: I'll take it.

[0:55] Nick Choksi: That's the reality of the reality of where we are.

[0:58] Nick Choksi: Yeah, I sound like Marco Rubio.

[1:01] Leah Walsh: Is he known for his loud swallowing?

[1:03] Nick Choksi: Yeah, there was uh when he gave the response to Obama.

[1:08] Nick Choksi: Maybe the last State of the Union, two State of the Unions ago, he gave the response during the speech.

[1:15] Nick Choksi: He just stopped speaking and went off screen to grab a bottle of water and started drinking it and made like a nervous.

[1:28] Leah Walsh: I do remember hearing about this now that you mentioned it.

[1:30] Nick Choksi: He was sweating.

[1:31] Nick Choksi: I think he was drinking and it was just coming right out of his face.

[1:34] Leah Walsh: So today I have Marco Rubio to talk about his artistic career.

[1:38] Nick Choksi: I believe in everything crazy.

[1:39] Nick Choksi: Also known as a much more sane person called Nick Choksi.

[1:47] Leah Walsh: Well, Nick, I'm so happy that you're um talking with me for the podcast since you helped me like come up with a plan last summer when I was trying to figure it out.

[1:56] Nick Choksi: Oh man.

[1:57] Nick Choksi: It really helped me a lot, so thank you.

[1:59] Nick Choksi: My pleasure.

[1:59] Nick Choksi: It's amazing it's come so far.

[2:01] Nick Choksi: And I I think I don't I don't want to take all that much credit.

[2:05] Nick Choksi: You had the plan, and you I was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, go.

[2:08] Nick Choksi: You literally lent me your audio equipment for like eight months.

[2:11] Nick Choksi: You know, audio assistance by Nick Choksi.

[2:14] Nick Choksi: Let me bounce ideas off of you.

[2:16] Nick Choksi: My pleasure.

[2:17] Leah Walsh: And your beautiful wife Stephanie was my second guest on episode two.

[2:21] Leah Walsh: So now you're gonna be, I think, number 19.

[2:21] Nick Choksi: Number 19.

[2:25] Nick Choksi: Yeah, yeah.

[2:26] Leah Walsh: Awesome.

[2:27] Leah Walsh: Uh so how do you try to keep from going to the dark side as an artist?

[2:32] Nick Choksi: Uh well, the dark side for me feels like um like doubt, like anything that gets in the way of uh making stuff.

[2:42] Nick Choksi: I was thinking about this as everybody does, you know, not wanting to, you know, come in with here's my lecture on how I deal with it.

[2:50] Nick Choksi: Because I don't know, you know.

[2:52] Nick Choksi: But it feels a little bit like um for me it feels like the seventh grade lunch room a little bit.

[2:59] Nick Choksi: Like if I am experiencing what what I would call the dark side, it's that feeling of, oh shoot, I want to sit at the lunch table, but I don't know where to sit, and I don't know if anybody wants me to sit down, and so you just kind of like are paralyzed, you know.

[3:15] Nick Choksi: But like, yeah, it's like it's like middle school.

[3:19] Nick Choksi: The dark side for me is like middle school.

[3:21] Nick Choksi: So that being true, how do I stop from going to the dark side?

[3:26] Nick Choksi: Um, wait is the question yeah.

[3:29] Nick Choksi: Three two one, Nick Choksi.

[3:30] Nick Choksi: How do I stop from going to the dark side?

[3:32] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[3:33] Nick Choksi: Uh because the dark side has a lot to do with doubt, I feel like talking to uh friends and family about what my specific doubts are really helps because if I can name them, like what is the voice that is telling you there's no room for here, you here at this lunch table?

[3:54] Nick Choksi: Uh what does it sound like?

[3:56] Nick Choksi: Who does it sound like?

[3:57] Nick Choksi: And sometimes when I can localize that, it makes me like see how silly it is.

[4:04] Nick Choksi: Like, why do I feel like I am not a great singer?

[4:09] Nick Choksi: For example.

[4:10] Nick Choksi: Oh, there's a voice in my head from an ex-girlfriend who like told me I'm not a great singer when I was like, you know, 16, 15, 16, and now that I've said that out loud, it sounds so dumb.

[4:24] Nick Choksi: And like just saying it makes me think, oh yeah, even though I'm feeling that feeling of, oh, I'm not good enough to hack it with all these other great people.

[4:32] Nick Choksi: That voice is coming from a voice that I can identify as like an outdated voice, a totally unrealistic and illogical fear based on some like some real experience I've had, it's a real feeling, but um I don't know.

[4:52] Nick Choksi: When I when I say it out loud, the words of I'm afraid this person is going to think I'm X, uh, and then I say that and do I think that person is going to think I'm X, not good enough, not smart enough, not whatever.

[5:04] Nick Choksi: No, I don't really.

[5:05] Nick Choksi: They've actually invited me to come audition for them or come like play for them or do a drawing for them or whatever.

[5:13] Nick Choksi: It's like, oh yeah, the thing I'm afraid of is actually just me like cycling some old voices through my head or something.

[5:21] Leah Walsh: Right.

[5:21] Nick Choksi: Yeah.

[5:22] Nick Choksi: And saying them out loud kind of takes the power.

[5:25] Nick Choksi: Yeah, saying them out loud kind of takes the power away.

[5:27] Nick Choksi: It doesn't necessarily make the feeling go away, but it definitely takes the power away and makes it easier to like sit down and work.

[5:37] Nick Choksi: I think I think for me the dark side is like anything that gets in the way of making something, like the light side is creation and you know, progress, the dark side is uh anything that shuts you down or um arrests you or freezes you up.

[5:56] Nick Choksi: And so saying what the fear is out loud tends to free up that kind of paralysis so that you can go do the thing you were trying to do in the first place.

[6:05] Leah Walsh: Um do you feel like it helps too, like you said, talking to uh to friends and family, like talking to somebody who sees you as the best version of yourself and who can kind of reaffirm you and be like, I I have the complete faith in you and I see you as so talented and kind of counteract that that false vision you're having of yourself?

[6:29] Nick Choksi: Yeah, it can.

[6:30] Nick Choksi: It it definitely is so important to have those people who really see you and can be your cheerleaders when you need it, can like say what they see when they need it when you need it.

[6:41] Nick Choksi: Sometimes it's like you uh I see you and I know you actually do do that thing well, or I see you and you actually do this thing better, you know.

[6:49] Nick Choksi: That's very helpful, but even though it is helpful, I'm thinking about times where I have a kind of doubt in myself about something, and the other person says, like, you know, Stephanie, for example, my wife Stephanie Thompson, episode two, says, but hey, you're really good at that.

[7:08] Nick Choksi: There are times where my doubt like cancels out her voice, where she says, You're really good in it, I believe in you, and it's a struggle to like receive that because I'm like, in my own head, I've decided I'm not good enough.

[7:21] Nick Choksi: I don't believe in myself in a certain vein.

[7:23] Nick Choksi: And even her saying that is not enough to make me believe it.

[7:27] Nick Choksi: So sometimes I have to like trust, like, I don't feel like you're right.

[7:32] Nick Choksi: I think I'm actually really bad at this right now, but I'm gonna choose to believe you, and uh it's tough, but sometimes you gotta like walk out on that again.

[7:45] Nick Choksi: Fake it till you make it.

[7:46] Nick Choksi: Feel more confident than you actually are.

[7:48] Nick Choksi: Faking it till you make it is actually so great, and so like sometimes I look at you know, one one thing that is relatively new in my life is uh songwriting.

[8:00] Nick Choksi: I only came to it like maybe like 2008 or nine when we were at school.

[8:08] Nick Choksi: And part of the reason is I when I first picked up the guitar when I was in college, I started writing some little songs, some little like fun, silly songs, but I there were some voices that in my life at the time that were like, hey, that's fruitless, that's like not a not a good thing to do.

[8:26] Nick Choksi: Not it's stupid, you know.

[8:29] Nick Choksi: Some people come into your life and are negative influences and you can see it going back, looking back.

[8:35] Nick Choksi: But um, I the reason I was able to get back into it was because there was somebody who I thought was kind of a a bit of a doofus.

[8:45] Nick Choksi: He's a friend, but he's just kind of a doofus.

[8:48] Nick Choksi: And he was like, Well, I just wrote this song about this, I'm really proud of it.

[8:52] Nick Choksi: And I thought, man, he can write a song, and he's a doofus.

[8:57] Nick Choksi: I I I surely can write a song.

[8:59] Nick Choksi: I in fact had a song that I had written down in my journal like two years before that I just had not shared with anybody.

[9:07] Nick Choksi: So I finally like challenged myself to share it, and I was freaking out as I was playing it.

[9:12] Nick Choksi: My fingers were like trembling, but I shared it, and like I think that was a real fake it till you make it.

[9:18] Nick Choksi: And he was definitely faking it till he made it.

[9:21] Nick Choksi: He's a talented musician, he's a very good guy.

[9:24] Nick Choksi: But sometimes, man, faking it till you make it is you're actually making it while you fake it.

[9:31] Leah Walsh: And now I mean, I think your songs are beautiful, and you've done so many different things with your songwriting since then.

[9:37] Leah Walsh: We did one together.

[9:39] Nick Choksi: Yes, all of which I want to talk about.

[9:40] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[9:41] Leah Walsh: Um, but before we talk about kind of your self-generated projects and all the different the different ways that you express yourself as an artist, which I find so inspiring.

[9:51] Leah Walsh: Can we talk a little bit about how you deal with um like the mainstream part of your career and like the business side of acting and auditioning and how you try to approach it without going to the dark side constantly or to make it a positive experience?

[10:07] Nick Choksi: Yeah, I think I um when I came out of school, I was feeling really great about auditioning, and I feel like I got a lot of uh positive reinforcement from people telling me, you know, the industry is prime for you, things are gonna be great, you're gonna get out, you're gonna book a pilot, you're gonna be a movie star, you know, all this stuff.

[10:30] Nick Choksi: I'm blowing so much smoke up my butt.

[10:32] Nick Choksi: And like for a while, I felt pretty great just because I felt like oh, I feel like confident in myself.

[10:39] Nick Choksi: I feel like I know how to how I want to work on stuff, treat each audition like a rehearsal, go in like ready to work and like with a sense of play and all that stuff.

[10:51] Nick Choksi: But then at some point I had this one really bad audition and there was a lot of fallout from this audition where people were like, oh we think you've got the wrong impression of you.

[11:02] Nick Choksi: We don't think you're they feedback came in and they said you're not funny.

[11:06] Nick Choksi: And I'm sure it was like some casting assistant had mentioned something offhand and but it turned into this whole thing and it got in my head and I was like oh my God, I I don't know what to think about this.

[11:19] Leah Walsh: Side note Nick is one of the funniest people I know.

[11:22] Nick Choksi: Three two one Nick Choksi.

[11:24] Nick Choksi: And uh but I I think there was a period where I started like trying to do what I thought they want me to do.

[11:34] Nick Choksi: Mm-hmm 'cause I thought they want me to do something that I just don't understand and like I don't sound like the people I'm watching on TV so I must need to do something else if I want to get this stuff and it led to a kind of like like dry spell like a long dry period.

[11:52] Nick Choksi: Um and I think it's still something I struggle with from time to time but the thinking about what they want me to do always it's a recipe for disaster.

[12:07] Nick Choksi: And I think having been on the other side before like you just want people to come in and do themselves and do the thing they like and that makes them excited and it's right for some parts, it's not right for other parts.

[12:20] Nick Choksi: And it's tough to like let go of that chip of either A, what do they want me to do so I can do it, or B, I'm probably not gonna get this.

[12:32] Nick Choksi: Like that is a really not a helpful thing to go into an audition with. I've done that for commercials, I've done that for film and TV stuff or theater, you know, where you go in and you're like, I'm probably not gonna get this. And so even if you are doing your best work, you know, try not to let that into the room. Like, you know, music be the food of love, play on, you know, not like that, but like even that thought of I probably won't get this is like not helpful. And so I try to like, I know sometimes I'll have that feeling, but try and like put that away and like remember it was like when I first got out of school, just go in, treat it like a rehearsal, and have a sense of play about it.

And it's a practice, not a destination. I have to remind myself before every audition, like just go in there and meet them and do what you want to do and have a fun little rehearsal. Like, uh, like Richard, our acting teacher used to say that each audition is a chance to do your work, and it's a reminder. It is, it's but it is a hard mindset to keep. It's tough. I don't think there's any like, oh, I've done it. Oh, I am so zen about my auditions. I still think it's I've got some tomorrow that I'm feeling good about, but also I know that like 20 minutes before I'm gonna be like, don't freak out. My hands shaking. Why is my hand shaking?

[14:06] Leah Walsh: Um, so I wanted to talk about the Food Odyssey and the band play a little bit, and how those projects kind of came about and how it's helped you to be a writer and a producer of your own work.

[14:20] Nick Choksi: Yeah, well, Food Odyssey happened first. Uh, Perone Yusuf Zada, a good friend of ours, uh, director extraordinaire about town. Um, shout out to Perone, uh, 314, St. Louis Area Code. Um, she had this idea for a play about food and our relationship to food and our relationship to the other people via food many years ago, like maybe around 2010, around the time right after I graduated. So it started as a series of discussions with a thought that maybe we'll make a play out of this one day. And over the years we would meet every now and then and generate stuff, and I wrote a song for it, and then it turned into a thing where oh, maybe we think there'll be some songs in this thing, and then introduced the idea of having Odysseus and Penelope be characters, and oh, maybe we'll make the story about them.

So by the time we had like made the production imminent, gotten the funds together and done all that stuff, uh, we had an idea of what the play was, but like we were writing it as it happened, and that's when we cast uh Ms. Leah Walsh at my strong insistence, uh, which was an easy sell, soft sell.

[15:38] Leah Walsh: I was so lucky to join it, like right before you actually put it on its feet.

[15:42] Nick Choksi: Right when it was getting good. Yeah. Your character, we were still like um really figuring out. It kind of like appeared a couple versions ago, and they're like, Oh, this is a great character. Um, but it was definitely like you helped us figure out who that gal was. There was a great moment where we got to write a song together. I I don't know what you remember about it, but I remember us walking from rehearsal to the train, and I was asking you a bunch of questions about Frankie and your relationship and stuff like that. But I was a special time maps, and then the next day I came into rehearsal and they just written this beautiful song. It was perfect.

[16:20] Leah Walsh: That was so fun.

[16:22] Nick Choksi: Yeah. Um, but that project was the first time I'd ever been involved in a process of making a play from inception to realization. And man, it ain't no joke. It it's like so amazing and so important to pursue independent work in whatever capacity. Um, but it also takes a lot of time and a lot of fundraising. And then you do it and it's really special for three weeks, and then it goes away. And like I think there's still talk and hopes about it coming back at some point, but I don't know, it's it's one of those things where try and do things without thinking about the product or thinking about the goal, you know, not thinking about the destination. And sometimes you just gotta like trust that things will go the way they are going to go and need to go, and just keep like putting stuff out there.

And it's tough to do. Uh, and you can't like do it every day. I mean, that play took five years to to make. Um, but it was really exciting too to feel like we can we can just make something because we care about it, and because we care about it and we're human and there are other humans around who will probably feel similar things to us. Somebody else is gonna care about this thing and think it's you know touches something in them or makes them think differently about something. Um it was really exciting. It was really exciting also to feel like that was the first time I had ever written music for a show. And um there were quite a few songs too. There's a lot of songs. I think everybody had at least one song, and um, yeah, it was it was looking back at the time I felt like it was a few too many hats, like being in the show and writing the songs and trying to figure all that stuff out. I'm so glad I did it all. But at the time I was just going nuts.

[18:29] Leah Walsh: Yeah. I I there was so much music stuff to do, writing the songs, notating them, orchestrating them, all that stuff. That I'll the only time I had to like learn my lines was during rehearsal while I wasn't working.

[18:43] Nick Choksi: Um, you were also the main character, also the main character, or at least a main character. Um, but man, it was it was an amazing experience. Um before we talk about uh the band play, you I mean, I've known you for a long time now, and you are someone who has always like pushed himself to the limits as far as how much you pile on your plate and how much time you're willing to give to things, um, which I really admire and also sometimes worry about you not getting to sleep.

[19:17] Leah Walsh: Yeah, because I know that like during school and then afterwards too. Like you'll not afraid of pulling it all nighter, yeah. And that kind of thing. Where where are you with that right now?

[19:26] Nick Choksi: That was when I was a younger man. No, it's true. I I feel like how's your journey been with how much you're heaping on your plate these days?

[19:35] Nick Choksi: I mean, I think being married has been a big like I mean, finding that relationship and fostering that relationship and then being married has really changed my point of view about all that stuff. Stephanie, uh my wife, episode two, is um really good about prioritizing sleep and making sure that that happens. It's very healthy. I also floss more because of Stephanie. Trying to eat less sugar, I'm working on it, honey, I'll get there. Um But I feel like before that came into my life, it was really like every minute of the day is doing something, you know, and sometimes it was productive stuff and sometimes it was distractions, but it was still something. Um and yeah, I didn't get a lot of sleep.

But um I think her coming into my life and making me kind of reorganize my priorities about like, well, what quality output can I do if I don't take care of myself? That was a good shift. Also, as you kind of build a life together, you kind of pick up each other's best habits in a way. And so she right now is working this uh nine to five job at uh this company, App Nexus, great company, great people. And um so that that's kind of dictated our schedule a little bit in kind of a good way. That like she gets up at 7:30, I get up with her, make her a smoothie, uh, make her some coffee. She goes up to work and I start my day, and then she comes home and has to go to bed by like maybe eleven at the latest to get enough sleep, and so I go to bed at eleven. And um, in a way, it's kind of like organized our day well, at least for me in a much more healthy way.

[21:21] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[21:22] Nick Choksi: I think also there was when I was a younger man, uh, there was the feeling of like you just gotta say yes to every single thing. And I would say yes to everything, every reading, every drink somebody wanted me to grab, every like go see every play, go, you know, work on everybody's project. Um, and I think I've become a little more discerning as I've gotten older and as I've been like, you know, I don't have twenty-seven hours in a day to give. I've got maybe this many hours because I need to give this much time to my own stuff that I find important. I need to give this much time to my life at home with my wife and our home. I need to give this much time in a week to like you know, family and friends, and like I only have so much left over, and that's very valuable.

And it'll only get more like selective when God willing we have a kid, you know. Like it's kind of a slow narrowing to like just the most important things. So I feel like over time I've kind of been able to pare away. I think when you're young, you gotta say yes to everything to like find out who you are. Um, and then you find out who you are, and then you can just do who you are, which takes less time. But you wish there was more time, yeah, you know.

[22:39] Leah Walsh: Um, well, tell me a little bit about the band play too, because that's such a cool project. I'd know Brendan Speath and I talked about it a little bit when he was on, but episode it was four, maybe? I'll have to check.

[22:51] Nick Choksi: I'll look while you're gonna do it.

[22:53] Leah Walsh: We'll we'll fact check that.

[22:54] Nick Choksi: Look at the fact checkers on it. There's a whole team of people.

[22:58] Nick Choksi: It was my idea. I had this idea for a play while I was watching a bad play. I was watching a bad play, and I I was thinking about what kind of play I wish I was watching, and I was kind of wishing I was at a concert.

[23:13] Leah Walsh: Episode four, you were right.

[23:15] Nick Choksi: It's so good. Uh, so I was watching this play. I I used to watch a lot of like VH1 storytellers. I feel like that stuff is really exciting. Tiny desk concerts on NPR. Check that out. It's great stuff. Um I had this idea about what if there was a reunion concert where some story got spilled accidentally and everybody in the room thought, like, oh, is this supposed to be happening? Oh, yeah, because there was this one moment in this play I saw that wasn't good, but there was one amazing moment where it was a one-man show. The guy who had written it was uh like a recovered alcoholic, and there was one like moment in the show where he got really emotional, and everybody who knew him was getting really emotional, and everybody who didn't know him was like feeling kind of awkward or odd, or like I think something is happening in the room that I'm not sure about.

And no matter where people were, everybody like woke up and like paid attention. And so I was really interested in that kind of moment of I think the person on stage is actually going through something right now, and I don't think they wanted us to know about it.

[24:29] Hmm.

[24:30] Nick Choksi: So that was where the whole idea started. Like, what if that happened at a reunion concert where this band who hadn't seen each other in a long time got back together and there was some moment of realization or recognition or some change that happens, like just under the lyrics, you know, that everybody felt a part of. Like, how could we make that happen? So that's where the idea started. And then I thought about who I would want to be in the band and in the play, and everybody I asked said yes, including your husband, Frankie J.

[25:04] Nick Choksi: Uh, as the kind of like host of the rock show and music historian, and Gabe Ebert and Brendan Spieth and Damon Donald and Elvi Yoast as the members of the band. Um, so that's where it started. And then we got some development time at Space at Ryder Farm to build out some things, and we had some development time at Ars Nova, and we did a version of the show at Ant Fest two years ago, and then we did a project project residency a year and a half ago, or we got to like, you know, write a whole record and like build out a two-act version of this play. So it's been really exciting, but also really like it's tough. It's tough to get I feel like when you write a play that's all your own, it's easy to orchestrate a reading.

Hey, are you available? Can you read this part? We're gonna have a reading and then just do it. But when it's six people who all have different schedules, and it actually is like the piece is dependent on those specific six people being in the same room. One, I did really well picking such great people. Everybody's busy all the time. Everybody's all over the country. Oh man, it's like the biggest challenge of working on this piece is just getting everybody in the same room. Worth it to have, you know, the people we have. Um, yeah, but of course it's it's a passion project, and yeah, usually they're off working on things that they're getting, you know, their paycheck for. Totally. And you can't expect people to like, you know, prioritize this over that.

Like I haven't been able to do that either. Like I had to leave town, like, um, I don't know, I totally get it, but it is tough because I think it's something we all really care about and are excited about and are hungry for time to work on it, but are also, you know, it's difficult to find the time to work on it. But it is a project that I really am excited about and really believe in, and also feel like the unique nature of the project, it being a reunion concert, it'll only serve us better as we get older. You know, then it will really feel like these people are coming back together after a long time. Well, and how special it like I know Frankie loved creating a project with his best friend.

The fact that you and he like really organized everything and spent so much time writing and making sure that it happened. I know he loved having that time with you. Yeah, it was so special. I was talking to my agent recently and he was asking how the project was going, and I was saying the same stuff about it's hard to get everybody in the room. And he said a project like that needs somebody who is gonna like whip everybody's butts and get them in the same room, like a real, like, you know, task master, a real, like strong, firm hand. And I want to be that, but I it's tough for me. Well, and it's hard when you're also a performer, you're part of the cast. So it's like it's not like you have a separate director who can take that role fully, or a producer who can really just be the Wrangler and let you guys be the artist.

Yeah, if there was something hard. If there's like a producer who was like, this is when the thing is happening, there is some compensation, even if it's like a hundred bucks for the week. Um, just the idea that this is actually part of my profession and not just me donating my time, even that like gesture it does so much just mentally to put you in the space of oh, I can put this into my schedule as a conflict and know that like any workshop, if you have an audition, if you have a job or whatever, you can you know, go do that thing, but um I don't know. I feel like got plans, got plans for the future, but it's gonna require a little bit of support, a little bit of risk and a little bit of support, and for everybody to be in the same town.

Which will happen. It'll happen eventually. But it's uh it's kind of that like two sides of the teeter totter that's like you're making your own work, which is amazing, and I know and you're working with people you love and it's feeding you, and then the other side is oh, I'm not getting paid for this. Yeah. It takes a lot of my other time to organize it and produce it and back and forth. Producing is its whole its own whole other thing. Yeah, it's a learned skill, I feel like. And I'm trying to learn about it, but I I'm much more comfortable on the other side of like the creative side. But, you know, just because I'm comfortable with it doesn't mean I should rest on it. I should try and do the other thing.

I think you're doing pretty well. Thanks. Can we talk a little bit about like the financial part of being an actor and the ways you've found to deal with like the ups and downs and balancing not knowing what your yearly income will be every year? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel like that too is something that's changed since being married. I like before before that, before I got married a year, almost a year ago. Yeah. You were there. Um, before that, uh, my attitude towards money was very different than Stephanie's. Um, but my attitude was kind of like, oh, it'll take care of itself. Uh, and I had that attitude. It's not that I didn't work or like I graduated college and then I like worked in St. Louis and Chicago for about a year and a half, and then moved to New York and I kind of like, you know, built up some savings, went to New York, spent my savings, and like, oh crap, I gotta get a job now, and went to a temp agency, and that was really scary for me at the time, but I like did it.

So I've like done the thing of where I'm going to work to make the money, and then I'm, you know, doing the play, which doesn't pay the money. But I and then I went to school and forgot about money for a while. Um, but uh, I always had this idea for better or for worse, oh, the money will take care of itself. And it did for a while, but like when it's just you, you know what you need and what you don't need, and so I always felt comfortable. And then when it's me and my wife, or my, you know, before she was my wife, you know, me and my girlfriend and my fiance. I think about money a little differently, and uh think about the future a little differently. And so, especially since we started getting married, since we got married.

You are married. Since we started like the getting married process, meaning engaged. It's never finished. Um, but we have to approach money together, and I've got my own opinion, and she's got her own opinion, which is like I feel comfortable knowing that I am making my living happen and I'm taking the steps necessary to do that. And if I had had that attitude earlier on, I might have been acting and also scraping by every moment I can to just increase the money in my bank account. But I kind of like let my bank account go up and down and was never starving, but like I also didn't have to get a day job. Um, which I felt very lucky about that, and also looking back, I could have gotten a day job, and I might have a couple thousand more in the bank now, but I just didn't. Um, but now that we're married, I feel like I'm rambling a little bit.

321, Dick J. Um, now that we're married, we've actually pooled our finances. And we have one joint savings account and one joint checking account, and that's it. And in a way, it's something very emotional that we're still dealing with. It's surprisingly emotional. Like never experienced that before. And right now, Stephanie is bringing home most of the bacon, and I'm bringing home minimal bacon, but you know, it's like a like the teeter totter, you know. Then it'll come my when I have a job that pays really well, I'll be bringing home the bacon, and she'll be able to not worry about so much bacon, a lot of cholesterol. Um, so I feel like the money thing I just think about differently now because we're trying to build a family together and planning for the future.

Planning for the future. And I feel like I think neither one of us can really change our fundamental feelings about money, but we're kind of moving both towards the middle, um, between our different perspectives. For instance, um, I have uh I feel like in part of this always keeping busy, I would teach myself things. I've learned guitar, I over the last seven or eight years I've learned animation, and that's become something I'm really excited about and could going down that path. But um, guitar, for instance, I just started learning because I wanted to, and then eventually it paid off. Been doing this show for a while now where I play guitar and uh I'm getting paid to play it. Yeah. And like that's only because I sat in my room and read some books and like watched some DVDs, and you know, nobody told me to, nobody paid me to do it, but now I am getting paid.

And so now I feel like that feeling that used to be what am I excited about? I'm gonna go learn about it and do that, is still there, but it's more narrowed and focused to okay, animation is something I am very excited about and I like doing. How can I turn that into something that is a means of income within my control one, two, three, four, five years down the road? How can I take those steps now? So even in the individual um passion pursuit, how is that still adding to the future of our family? So I feel like um I mean that's smart as long as you can make still keep your joy in it without trying to monetize it so hard that you can you you lose why you got interested in it. Because if you can turn it as into like a side career, that's amazing.

Yeah, I mean it would be great. It might happen, it might not happen, but I'm excited about it. And so either way, it's gonna be good. Yeah. And I think you're right that if you try and think about the money too soon, you'll just shut down all creativity. That's you know, that's part of the dark side. Like, um, sometimes I, you know, I'm sitting and I'm in my at my desk, at my new desk. Thanks, honey, that was a great Christmas present. Uh, I'm at my desk and I'm working on this little animated short that I feel like I need to make in order to like, you know, have a little calling card of what I can do, but it's something I really care about and believe in. And I'm like taking little lessons in Maya, which is a 3D animation software, just so that I can like go down that road and see if that's something I can do, if that's a skill I can learn and then like you know, use in the market.

But sometimes I have that feeling there. This is the dark side when it comes to this of like, I'm just making this stuff and like will this ever like lead to a job? There are all these people who go to school for this and have done this since they were like 10. Uh, what am I doing sitting here in my in my room at my desk learning this stuff from YouTube? But um, but what you say is true that if you try and put the monetary value on it too soon, you will just stop everything. It's probably true for a lot of stuff. Like well, that's the thing that I worry about acting, is that you know, when it's you're just doing it for creativity's sake and enjoyment, it's so pure, and then when you try to monetize it, it can become this whole when you try to make it a career, which is possible, but it's it comes with all these other burdens of putting this different pressure on yourself. Yeah, it's true.

[37:35] Nick Choksi: Fine line to walk on.

[37:37] Leah Walsh: It is.

[37:38] Nick Choksi: I feel like the best possible organizing principle for that, I mean, it's tough to make money doing theater. It's tough. And when you do make money, it's not a lot. But sometimes you do something because you really care about it, and sometimes you do something because it's like, well, I gotta keep working, you know, and both are totally valid and good. But I feel like when there are situations where there's this thing I can do, but I am not like passionately committed to it, I feel like there are times where I feel like now I have to say no to those things because I have to look at the other side of it of like, well, that's gonna take away from time, you know, with my wife, time with my own projects, time with whatever.

And like both things don't pay. But there is this other thing that I really care about, and I am going to choose to devote my time to that thing I really care about. I feel like those are the things that even if they don't pay off, I feel like great about it. And like when things do pay off, it's usually the project you really care about. Like, man, three-day hangover, you know? Yeah, like everybody involved in that is so committed to it, excited about it, and now they've really like blown up, you know. Or even I've been doing this show for a while called Natasha Pierre and the Great Combat of 1812, and we all started doing that show over at Arsenova in 2012. And my gosh, it's really been that long.

It's been the whole length of Stephanie and I's relationship doing that show. But we all like really, really cared about it, and now it's coming to Broadway in the fall, and it's like it's paying off now. The long-term commitment to this project.

[39:45] Leah Walsh: You've definitely devoted your time.

[39:47] Nick Choksi: Yeah, yeah. And everybody has, and everybody's devoted their whole selves because they care about the thing. And I've definitely been part of shows that had a lot of promise or a lot of excitement, like, oh, this is gonna go to Broadway, this is gonna be great, this is gonna be fantastic. But the expectation of where it's gonna go sometimes gets in the way of it going there. Either it makes people so afraid of negative criticism that they can't overleap that, or it makes people like doubt their where they are on the track because they're like, this is supposed to be going the whole distance. And we're getting stopped up right here. So we must be terrible, you know?

[40:32] Leah Walsh: Right.

[40:32] Nick Choksi: This thinking about the outcome really makes it tough to go anywhere because you like kind of smother the thing before it has a chance to kind of expand and find out what it wants to be. Are you getting excited about doing your first Broadway show this week?

[40:48] Leah Walsh: Oh man, I'm so excited.

[40:50] Nick Choksi: I kind of can't believe it. It's been so, you know, we had this meeting with the amazing producers, Howard Kagan and Janet Kagan. We had this meeting with them in Boston where they told us this is really happening. But we had had that meeting so many times we were doing it down in Midtown and down in the meat packing district because it was always almost going to happen. We had this meeting so many times where it didn't go that way that when it finally happened, it was like really I like screamed out loud before I even realized I was screaming with joy. But I also didn't believe it, you know. It's so exciting, it's so exciting for everybody involved. Like one of those things, you know, the passion project thing of like people are devoting themselves to this play and this music and going home, and oh man, during that rehearsal process, I just spent all my time learning all these crazy songs on the guitar.

[41:53] Leah Walsh: Yeah, all the actors play there, there's some dedicated musicians, right?

[41:53] Nick Choksi: There's some dedicated musicians, the actors play instruments as well. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's been a couple years since I saw it.

[42:02] Leah Walsh: It's been a couple years, it's changed.

[42:04] Nick Choksi: There's a big new dance break, it's totally fun. Oh, you'll love it.

[42:07] Leah Walsh: I can't wait.

[42:07] Nick Choksi: But yeah, we dedicated ourselves to that just because it's really beautiful, and it didn't get big because there was a celebrity in it, or because it was a property people, you know, it wasn't the wedding singer, or it wasn't something people oh, I gotta see that. I mean, people maybe love the book and come, but I don't know, it's just it was successful because it was very earnest and beautiful, and it feels exciting when those things pay off, and you don't know when those things are gonna pay off, and you can't do it thinking I'm gonna do this run at Arsenova, thinking one day it's gonna get me to Broadway. You can't do anything like that, but sometimes it does.

[42:50] Leah Walsh: Congratulations.

[42:53] Nick Choksi: Oh, thanks.

[42:54] Leah Walsh: Can we talk a little bit about what your family makes of you being an actor?

[43:00] Nick Choksi: Yeah. Well, they've been amazingly supportive. I'm Indian, I come from an Indian household. My parents came here for college in the 70s, and I'm the first actor in my immediate family, first person pursuing any kind of artistic endeavor. And I came to it really late when I was in college, and I think when I first started flirting with the idea, there was a lot of trepidation, a lot of like, are you sure? You know, maybe you should pick a safety job just in case. All out of like love and concern because it's a scary thing. I mean, if my if our kid says I want to be an actor, I'll be like, Oh, honey, it's really tough. Be careful, be careful.

[43:51] Leah Walsh: But had you already had you chosen another major before you found theater or not really?

[43:56] Nick Choksi: No, I was kind of a free radical, you know, unsigned, unmajored person until my junior year, and I chose English lit my junior year. And then I got an acting minor, chose that my senior year. I had taken the courses, but I think they were afraid, but then they started to understand and accept it, like around the time I started to understand and accept it, and it was amazing. There was a period where we all knew and agreed, okay, this is happening, I'm gonna try this. And then eventually we had to say it to extended family, and it was a bit scary for me and for my mom and dad. I remember sitting around with some uncles and aunties, and they said, What do you do? And I said, I'm an actor. And mom was like, Oh my gosh.

That's the moment I recognized I realized that's what you do, that's who you are. And the amazing thing is all these people came out of the woodwork. I thought they were gonna say, because I had been met with some extended family who were very critical of that. Like, oh, you gotta get a good job, you gotta be an engineer, you gotta be a doctor, gotta be a lawyer. That's a good job. One of them said, if you've got the brain for it, and I was like, Whoa, man, leap you, come on now. Throw it on the gauntlet. Yeah, and it felt so insulting. And um, but so I was scared to say that, but I said it, and then one uncle was like, you know what? I always wanted to be a singer, and then started singing to his wife.

[45:33] Leah Walsh: Oh my gosh.

[45:33] Nick Choksi: And I feel like there's been so much, I don't know, as a child of immigrants, you know, there's this idea they came to this country to make a better life and to make a better life for their kids and their family. And now this generation has the luxury of being able to pursue things that they really want to and not just pursue how do I make this life happen, which is like I will never be able to express how grateful I am for that and how amazed I am by that. But they've been I think really supportive. I mean, this is in a way exactly what they came here to do to make this life so that the future generation could be themselves and now we're at we're tipping on that precipice, all of us where we are like, all right, now we're getting ready to like invite the future generation in.

We gotta make this foundation strong so that they can be themselves, and we learn that from our parents of like how do you let your children become themselves while also protecting them and making it possible for them to go to college, you know. So they've been amazingly supportive. They come see all the shows, they um I was on a soap opera for a while, and they would DVR every episode. Mom actually I think got addicted to the show. I don't think she'll ever quite admit it.

[47:02] Leah Walsh: No, not still, not still.

[47:03] Nick Choksi: It's off the air now, but I love your parents, yeah.

[47:07] Leah Walsh: They're great.

[47:08] Nick Choksi: And then your brother does something completely different.

[47:08] Leah Walsh: Completely different.

[47:13] Nick Choksi: He knows he's so he's so proud of you. He's the best, he's the best. I'm proud of him too. He is a banker, he works with a company and kind of decides or pitches different companies to get loans from the bank. That's how the bank brings in money by selling these loans. But he did speech and debate and drama in high school. I think partly because I did. It's like, oh, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna do it better. He's got a real like go get him, I'm gonna be the best attitude, which has served him really well. It's gotten him into some trouble, but it also served him really well. So he came out of school and before he graduated, he had a job at this bank Santander here in New York. And he's really like just skyrocketed in the last I guess eight years since he's been here.

[48:07] Leah Walsh: Wow, eight years.

[48:08] Nick Choksi: Wow.

[48:09] Leah Walsh: Is that all right?

[48:11] Nick Choksi: I guess so. Yeah, yeah. He's 30 now.

[48:14] Leah Walsh: Wow.

[48:14] Nick Choksi: Yeah. Anyway, but so he, although he does something completely different, he still has a real love of the arts. He's getting really involved right now on the produceral side, trying to get involved with some nonprofits. He's worked with 52nd Street Theater Project a lot. So I think he still has a deep appreciation for all that stuff and wants to participate in the way that he's really good at, which is like getting people aware of good stuff, getting people to donate to good causes.

[48:50] Leah Walsh: We should team up.

[48:51] Nick Choksi: He should be the producer.

[48:53] Leah Walsh: I think we're finding the answer.

[48:54] Nick Choksi: He should be the producer.

[48:55] Leah Walsh: We did it. Episode 19.

[48:57] Nick Choksi: We found the answer.

[48:58] Leah Walsh: You can be the creator, yeah.

[49:01] Nick Choksi: That's fascinating to me too, since I don't have any family in the city that you guys got to live together for a long time.

[49:06] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[49:07] Nick Choksi: When you were at Juilliard and when you graduated, and to have somebody who knows you that well right here when you're dealing with the midst of the stress of the city. It's a real gift.

[49:18] Leah Walsh: Real gift.

[49:19] Nick Choksi: Yeah. Him and also, you know, the family you kind of find and make for yourself.

[49:27] Leah Walsh: Um yeah, I feel like that inner circle, it can't be very big by design, the inner inner circle, but so necessary and such a blessing.

[49:42] Nick Choksi: They're the ones you talk to when you go to the dark side as well.

[49:45] Leah Walsh: It's true, and you know that they won't judge you about it. So I know we're all getting to this age where we're thinking about if we want kids and if we want to have kids, how that'll work being actors. Where are you at right now thinking about it and trying to figure out what that would look like for you and Stephanie, living in the city, leaving the city, both acting, both not acting.

[50:10] Nick Choksi: Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, we definitely know it's something we want. We want it really badly. We're both like very excited about it. Um, but how to do it is really tough when there's no steady income. It almost feels sometimes it feels like, oh, you gotta get rich enough to buy a baby. That's what it feels like, you know. But it's not that way. And we have to remind ourselves that it's not that way. And my parents had like, you know, two dimes to their name when I was born. Yeah. And um, so we we'll figure it out as it goes, just like everybody else did. I don't think anybody's ever ready to do it. Yeah, there's this pressure for some reason. I feel this pressure to like have it all planned out and to know that it's the right time and I have the right amount of money in my savings account.

I totally get it. I feel that pressure too. For some very good reasons. Because you don't want to be struggling when you have a newborn baby. You don't want to be struggling too much. You want to know you have health insurance and be on the breadline. Yeah. But totally. There has to be somewhere in the middle where you're like, oh I can move on with my life even though I don't have everything figured out.

[51:20] Nick Choksi: Yeah, yeah. And for the first few years, you have, you know, this little creature that depends upon you for everything. But then a certain point comes and you have just your family and you're like ally and you're I don't know. It's just those first few years that are terrifying of like, how will I make the money, but also have the time to spend and also feed them and bond with them, but also have to go to the show. Do I want to keep having to do shows when I have a kid? Like all these questions come up, but we do know it's something we really want. And we have kind of it's interesting. My wife has this great theater company called the Mad Ones, and they have a couple of awesome gigs coming up.

They have a fall, a show in the fall at the Bushwick Star that they're writing, they write all their own work. And uh another show at ours in Nova, where they're the resident company happening sometime, uh, we think in the 2017-2018 season. And so it's actually had to be it's had to be part of our discussion in terms of well, I know I've got this show at this time and that show at that time, and so this is when we could feasibly have a kid in the next three years.

[52:36] Nick Choksi: And so we have to kind of look at a calendar. Like I really have to plan ahead. Yeah. In a way, it's so daunting and crazy, and in another way, it's so helpful to like know, well, like if we're gonna do it, it's gotta be sometime within this window. All right. But I think this uh Broadway gig is a real blessing in terms of that because it's helping, you know, okay, there's gonna be a job that starts in the fall, and we'll pay roughly this much, and uh we'll be pretty consistent. So have the health insurance, have the income coming in. Um you'll have your income coming in, and then if you need to take a step away from that, I'll have my income coming in to support us. Uh, you know, the scale will teeter, I'll bring home the bacon.

Uh right now I'm house husband, which is also an equally important job. Uh, but then I'll be bringing home the bacon. Um, but so we we definitely want to do it, and I think the desire is there, the means to do it are something we're gonna keep looking for.

[53:42] Nick Choksi: Um Do you ever get excited when you meet older actors who have a family and who have kids?

[53:48] Leah Walsh: Oh, yeah.

[53:49] Nick Choksi: Because I get so I get so like I'm so happy to meet you, and just to know that it's possible.

[53:54] Leah Walsh: Yeah, it can work, and that that people find a way.

[53:58] Nick Choksi: Yeah. I've had people say that um somebody said to me, you know, the whole thing of you put out positive energy and it positive energy comes back to you, and same with negative energy, but that when you have a baby, you're just putting so much positive energy out into the world that it all comes back to you, and they say, Oh, it's crazy. I had a baby, and all of a sudden the job started happening. And it's not like I think that, oh, well, if we have a baby, then we'll both get famous. Like real quick. But I think maybe when I just imagine what it might feel like, um, I have a a friend uh um named Hank Stratton over in California, and he has a beautiful little girl who is now like 16 or something. I met her when she was a kid and oh man it's crazy. But he said the moment she was born all of a sudden his whole consciousness shifted and he thought everything I do is for this baby.

[54:56] Nick Choksi: Um and I feel like that feeling of well everything I'm doing is for the baby might you know combat some of those voices in your head of like am I good enough? Am I smart enough? Am I gonna get it? Do they like me or do they like what I'm doing enough of yourself. Yeah like this is a job this is me. I'm gonna go in if you want to give me this job good. If not see you later on to the next one. And like I don't know I feel like it might be uh an aid not just in auditioning and all that stuff but just the practicality of like I care less about what you think of me. I'm just gonna go do what I need to do and get what I need to get in order to take care of this new life.

[55:47] Nick Choksi: Um so I feel like that feeling of meeting older actors and you know seeing them and their families and it's so beautiful and uh inspiring and also like they just did it. It's not like they got permission to do it and then did it. They just did it. Which is totally radical. And it's and totally empowering. And we were just talking about um uh pre interview. Leah and I were having a little espresso and talking about arcs of time. Delicious espresso, Leah makes a great espresso. Um arcs of time and how when you have a long arc of time, you can uh I don't just look at time differently. Like when the kid is born, there's an 18 year arc of time you think in.

[56:36] Nick Choksi: Um so in a way it's like when I'm thinking right now about learning this new, you know, 3D animation, for example, which is something I haven't done. I've done 2D stuff, but three D stuff is still like, you know, in the fuzzy future. Um but when I think about it in terms of okay, if Stephanie and I are hoping to have a kid, you know, within the next two, three years, um, and by the time the kid is born and I wanna be able to have the option to work from home in between jobs where I can take care of our child and still let me get income in.

[57:20] Nick Choksi: So that's three years from now, for example. Um, I don't have to feel too bad about being terrible at this right now because I know that I don't understand it right now, but maybe a year from now, two years from now, I will have had so much time if I like allow myself to be bad at it for a little while in order to learn it. So that big arc of time kind of helps me I don't know. Put things in perspective a little bit.

[57:50] Leah Walsh: Put things in perspective, yeah. Is there anything from the past few years that you're really proud of that you want to tell me about? Could be a project or it could be just something that you that you learned or that you experienced?

[58:12] Nick Choksi: I feel like we have I don't know, it's been uh a real unexpected and amazing, you know, asteroid that came into my planet and was so bright in the sky, and everybody was like, Oh, I'll worship this asteroid as a new god, and then crashed, and then it killed all the dinosaurs, and it was like, whoa, this is a real asteroid. Oh my god, this destroyed the planet. And then, you know, we had to, you know, regrow the vegetation in this new world. But then as we regrew the vegetation and new life forms started to sprout, and we examined the asteroid and we're like, whoa, this is actually like a beautiful, strange gem that we've never even had on this planet before. We're gonna start a new currency, and it just was a whole new world.

[59:07] Nick Choksi: And we we were um we were watching The Godfather last night, and we were talking about like going on vacation and talking about kids and thinking, man, I wish we had just a couple more years of being married before we had kids. But we're both like, you know, we have to think about our both of our biological clocks, you know? And like, what if we had met each other earlier, or what if we hadn't done all the hard work that we did when the asteroid crashed to the planet? What if the asteroid had just kind of like floated around the planet for a while? We were like so pretty and like kind of glided to the planet.

[59:46] Nick Choksi: Um, but we look at that time and realize like now we get to live our lives, the rest of our lives with this foundation of our amazingly like open and supportive and mutually loving and accepting and honest and totally free the relationship we get to live with the whole rest of our lives like that. And it's not like it was easy to get to that point, went through some tough times, but like feel very proud of both of us that we like did something really unique and scary and ultimately so beautiful and both had to grow up so much so fast.

[1:00:31] Nick Choksi: Um but yeah, I think I'm probably proudest of that.

[1:00:37] Leah Walsh: That makes me so happy. Um, all right. These are these are meaningless questions now that we've had that last one.

[1:00:46] Nick Choksi: Yeah, bring it on.

[1:00:47] Leah Walsh: But there's a few other ones that I always ask. Um, do you have any concrete things that you reach for time and again when you're need to pull yourself out of the dark side books?

[1:00:56] Nick Choksi: Yeah, things you turn back to? I think um there are a couple things. I uh there's this book called When Things Fall Apart, uh by Pay McCodron, which is uh Um it was really helpful in terms of the idea of whole lot of things, but fear, how we approach fear, and if we can name fear, we kind of take away its power, and sometimes we distract ourselves from feeling the fear instead of just feeling the fear and letting that be okay, and then moving forward. I feel like that book, although I don't turn back to it very often, I feel like it's kind of organized a lot of ways.

[1:01:42] Nick Choksi: I think about fear and stuff. I listen to music all the time. I'm a big fan of listening to albums all the way through. And there are a couple albums that I've played, you know, X thousand times that I find so beautiful and inspiring, like Hospice by the Antlers, just a beautiful, uh fully formed little quiet, hushed opera about a man at uh the side of a woman who's dying in a hospital. Both of Boni Vera's records just play start to finish over and over again. This album by a band called The Good Life, called The Album of the Year, which tracks this relationship from its beginning to end over the course of twelve songs, which are all charted to twelve months of the year.

[1:02:36] Nick Choksi: The CD book was a calendar for that one back when you actually got, you know, actual CDs with a book jacket, and this band Cursive, Tim Casher, who is the frontman for the Good Life, also has this other band called Cursive, and they have an album called The Ugly Organ, which every artist should listen to. It's kind of, oh, it's so good. It's kind of like the scene, the dual logue between Tim Casher, the rock god, and Tim Casher, the battered monster who lives in the closet, and Tim Casher, the rock god, is like, get in that closet and whips him into, you know, submission and because he needs to write his songs. So the monster is like, I woke up with this woman. I didn't even know what I was doing here.

This is terrible. And Tim Casher's like, you gotta do that shit. Like, I gotta make all these songs. All these people are screaming my name. It's so, so good. Tales from the Ugly Organ. You need to go listen to that. And you know, the Ugly Organ is the monster in the closet, but the guy who's singing is the pretty boy everybody wants to have sex with, you know. That's really good. Also, I think the biggest thing, I journal. I try and do it every day. And if I don't do it every day, I at least journal about every day. So I've got this like chicken scratch record that nobody can read from like when I was maybe 25 until now, it's like nine years. And I feel like that really helps me to kind of organize my thoughts.

And Faulkner has this quote about journaling. He says, 'How do I know what I think until I see what I say?' And I feel like that helps whenever I'm processing something or upset or confused or scared or worried or whatever, sometimes writing it down just kind of helps me see what I'm really thinking.

[1:04:32] Leah Walsh: Are there any shows you've seen recently that really moved you or that you want to recommend?

[1:04:32] Nick Choksi: Well, like every one of your guests before, I just saw Hamilton. Holy hell. Yeah, we haven't talked about it yet. Oh my god, it was so good. It's really tough. Like when people say something is great so much, and you go and watch it, and you just want to watch it and receive the thing, but you're also watching it and thinking about, oh my god, this is so great, like as you're watching it. And so I watched it and like I'm not a, I'm not really a, I don't cry a lot in the theater or at stuff in general. I get moved a lot, but I definitely cried during Hamilton. And like I almost cried more listening to the record than I did during the thing, during the play, because I was actually like able to not think about, oh my god, what I'm watching is so good.

And just like listening to it before the fact or after the fact? After. We tried so hard not to listen to it before we went to see it. And we pretty much 98% did it. It was tough. It's everywhere. But we got to see it and it was so beautiful and made us think about the future and the past and oh man. It was so good. It's beautiful. Yeah. I want to go back. That conversation is to be continued.

[1:05:54] Leah Walsh: Yeah. Anything else do you want to shout out?

[1:05:58] Nick Choksi: But I remember this thing my teacher said to me in college, that if this goes along with the long arcs of time thing, but she said, write down a list of things you want that you, how did you say it? Three, two, one, Nick Choksi. Things like if you had wrote down a list of things you would tell yourself five years from now, like I wish I had learned the guitar, or I wish I had done this, or whatever. Five years in the future, or five years. Five years in the future. Like if me, I was like twenty-one when I took that class, or twenty-two, and she was like, okay, you're twenty-six, twenty-seven. What are five things you would look back at your twenty-one, twenty-two-year-old self and say, I wish you had done this.

I wish you had flossed more. I wish you had gone to the gym consistently. I wish you had learned to play the guitar. I wish you'd learn to code, and I wish you had, you know, taken up juggling. You write that list down. It's like these are five things I think I feel pretty confident I would wish I had done. They're like, okay, great, now do them. And you have five years to do them. And it's that thing of I'm giving myself permission to suck at it for a while. I've talked to friends, like I'm trying to get better at the piano. And it's really tough to do because, you know, I can play the guitar, but when I play the piano, I suck. I'm so bad. And kids can learn all this stuff and they can do it like learn really well because they're okay with being bad.

I mean, being bad is actually really impressive for a kid, and so they have permission to just keep trying. But it's really tough when you're a grown person to allow yourself to be bad at something for a while. And so I think that gets in the way of like progressing past that state of being bad to being okay to being good to being proficient, or to being proficient to being good. And that's great. But so I think that thing she said really helped me remove the kind of obstacle in my brain of how do I get to be good at something? Oh, I have to let myself be bad at it. How do I let myself be bad at it? I have to decide it is okay that I'm terrible at it, and of course I have to be terrible at it because I've never done it before. And like there's no other way. You can't just start by being good at something. Unless you're Leah Walsh.

[1:08:30] Nick Choksi: No. And from episode one of The Compass, everything's clicking along. That's my goal this year is to forgive myself for not being good at it right away and to finally learn Spanish.

[1:08:41] Leah Walsh: Oh nice.

[1:08:42] Nick Choksi: Muy bueno. As you know, I've been saying I wanted to do since Frankie and I started dating. But that's really good. And now it's been nine and a half years later. Yeah. Almost nine and a half years later. So I'm really gonna buckle down and apply myself this year. We already have a foundation of Italian. Yeah. And I've, I mean, I have the Rosetta Stone. I have absolutely no excuse. Yeah. But I'll work on it for a month and then I'll just not touch it for six months. So this is the year I'm gonna try to, you know, and I have someone to practice with, but I'm embarrassed that I'm not good at it, which doesn't make any sense because I've never spoken it before, really. It's that thing of naming this is what I'm afraid of.

I'm afraid of, I just need to go for it and be okay with it. I remember trying to learn Hindi. I've always wanted to know Hindi, but I haven't taken enough steps to actually learn it. But I do remember trying to learn it doing Rosetta Stone and coming home and kind of testing out some of my Hindi on somebody. I can't remember who I tried to say, I'm not gonna say it now because I'm embarrassed, but the word for horse, and there's this sound, I'll say it. It's like gora or something, and everybody who's Indian right now is gonna laugh at me. But it's because there's this consonant in there where it's not gora, and it's not god duh, it's like rh duh. And so I'd come to them, I'd say, horse is gora, and they'd like, no, is it god duh?

No, and they go, rr duh. And I was like, I don't know what you're saying. I don't hear the difference. I don't hear the difference. It's cause it's a consonant I've never heard before. I have no category to put it in. But that feeling of I'm being like laughed at, not like people were making fun of me, but it would be just like somebody learning to speak English and calling a baguette like a baguette or something. You'd be like, that's hilarious. But that feeling of needing to get over that idea that you're gonna have a dialect for a while, like an American dialect, and they're gonna laugh just because it's funny, just like any dialect can be funny. It's gotta keep going.

[1:10:52] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[1:10:53] Nick Choksi: Yeah. Well, Nick, thank you so, so much for talking with me.

[1:10:57] Leah Walsh: Thank you. I was wondering if you wanted to share a couple of your songs with us.

[1:11:02] Nick Choksi: So part of putting things out there that you really care about. My wife and I are working on this play with this director, then came about Rasputin, who's just a fascinating fellow. And so we're still in the very early phases, but one thing I've got is this very rough draft of a song, kind of folk song, about Rasputin sung by Rasputin. If you don't know anything about the guy, look him up. He's a really crazy guy.

[1:11:42] ♪ Musical number: "Rasputin" — performed by Nick Choksi ♪

[1:14:25] Leah Walsh: Thank you for listening to The Compass Podcast. I'm Leah Walsh. More episodes are coming soon. Please look for us on Facebook and iTunes. I'd like to thank the following people for their generosity. The Compass Cover Art is by Kim Miller, music by Brendan Spith, audio assistance from Nick Chersey, and a special thanks to Frankie J. Alvarez. See you next time.