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ON THE ROAD AGAIN?
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Young Pioneers: Do you think part of the reason it had a sense of magic was because you were so concerned with survival that you noticed little things that you wouldn't have normally?
 James Crotty: Yeah. I do believe that poverty is a good goad of consciousness. I mean, not the poverty where you're starving, although we were close. It's more the sense of...
YP: You had more immediate concerns.
JC: Yeah, and the movement through space, too, which was constantly changing. We were very tuned into what was going on, because we had to nail it quickly, and then we were moving on. And so every day was very, very special. There was no ordinary day in Monk. And part of that had to do with the fact that that day, the tire could go flat, or the engine could go kaput. We were broken into so many times. We first came to New York in 1989, and the city was the Wild East. You know, it was crazy. There were crack addicts everywhere. And we would leave to go around the block to get something to eat, and Boom! Somebody would go in and steal something. We'd come back and the window would be busted.
YP: I'm curious to know if the two of you still lead Buddhist lifestyles.
JC: I meditate every day. I try, but then again, I probably have the greater need. But Michael, I don't know. He doesn't officially have any practice, and he certainly, I don't think, would ever call himself a Buddhist. But he sort of incorporates a lot of different things. I don't like the "ist" part, but I certainly sit Zen meditation a lot, and, you know, I was raised Catholic, so there's probably still some Catholic thinking rolling around in my head, but I'm probably more closely aligned with Zen than anything.
YP: Do you think that had a lot to do with the success of your travels?
JC: Yeah, I do. At least for me. I can't speak for Michael.
YP: It seemed like such an overwhelming theme.
JC: It was never made too overt, I hope. It was sort of like that idea that Suzuki Roshi talks about - the beginner's mind. I think travel causes that. I mean, there are certainly people who travel not with a beginner's mind, but if you don't, I don't know if you're going to be really nourished by it. To me, it's really about the everyday things that happen. Not the pre-planned itinerary, but the small things that happen. That's where the magic happens. And to have that magic happen, you need to have a kind of mind that is open. But even if you don't have that to begin with, travel will create that, and that's the beauty of travel. It's just sort of like this guaranteed mind-opener.
YP: What's your life like in New York, now that you're living in an apartment?
JC: Well, I don't like it yet, but I'm getting there. I'm not ready to open up an office yet and hire employees and get the Monk thing going, although I keep getting e-mails from people who I've told, "Stay in touch, because it may happen." So I'm in this sort of limbo-land until that happens.
YP: Do you think you'll be able to be as creative with this next Monk venture?
JC: Yeah, because the way it's going to happen is so much more grounded, and it suits the lifestyles of guys in their fourties and fifties. [Then again] I have fantasies all the time, because I was never happier than when I was living on the road. And if it wasn't for the fact that Michael doesn't want to do it, we'd still be doing it in that way. But he doesn't, in his mid-fifties, want to live that way, on the road in a motor home. So the way we're going to do it is, we're going to take summers off, and periodically throughout the year - for a week or so - we're going to go and dig deep into one place. So, this coming summer, we're not sure, but it's going to be somewhere in Europe. We're either going to do Iceland, or we're going to do Germany or maybe even just Berlin, and we're going to live there for two months. We feel like we've exhausted the United States of America. So even though there's still more to do, we really want to expand to the rest of the world.
MICHAEL LANE
Young Pioneers: The thing that struck me the most about my conversation with James was that I had no idea you were planning on doing Monk again.
Michael Lane: Well, we have an ongoing discussion almost every month about re-launching. I mean, you're now in the business, so you know that it's all about advertising. We can wax poetic and philosophic about when and if we're going to re-launch, but a lot of it is about paying careful attention to the advertising market, because it took such a slump there. We both have incredible ideas for re-launching - to keep the same travel focus, but to take it just a little bit deeper and a little bit wider. Jim is an incredible commentator, both politically and culturally, and my forte for years has been finding the freaks.
YP: Can you explain some of the editorial ideas you have for the relaunch of the magazine?
ML: Well, we would go to an area, and in the style of Monk - the protocol we've already had - we would just really dig in deep. We would interview locals, we would give a broader picture. Because in the past, I don't think we were as thorough. And I think we want to continue that tradition, but just get a lot more thorough. And we want to make sure that we cover a lot of different points of view about the city. I think in the past it was very happenstance whoever we happened to run into would become a featured interview, with not a whole lot of planning. And there was a great beauty to that - very spontaneous. And we also lived in the motor home, and that seemed to draw a certain type of person.
YP: So in a sense it'll feel similar to the guidebooks that you've done, but in a magazine format?
ML: Yeah, I think that's it. And I really hate doing those guidebooks, and no one buys them anyhow. There's really nothing flashy about a guidebook.
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ISSUE 01 / SPRING 04
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