And that was like, I mean, you can imagine what hearing something like that felt like. My mom stopped chopping carrots, and she just looked at him, and she was like: Richard! My dad’s name is Richard. And he knew he had crossed a line—like, he knew he had really gone overboard—but he already went there, you know? He wasn’t gonna back down now. And so he just dug in his heels and doubled down, and he was like: My son wouldn’t do this to me.

And I was just so hurt, you know? Like, I was just so upset about the whole thing, because I was just feeling like: What the fuck? Like, I thought this was what he wanted, you know? I thought this was what we both wanted for each other—to be killing it for as long as we could—and so I just went the fuck off on him. I just told him everything I was thinking. I just railed into him for being so pathetic and for living vicariously through me and for being so out of touch and for being so petty and for resenting his own son for his success and for being such a narcissist and for being such a shitty dad and for only ever really caring about me because he knew I had something that he needed and then hating me for exactly the same reason. And he was so pissed off that he just, like, didn’t even say anything. He just calmly, like, swallowed something in his throat, and then he walked out the door and drove calmly away from the house. And I was so upset that I did the same thing. My mom was there with all the potpie shit all over her hands, like, crying and shit, and I just, without even saying anything to her, walked out the door and called up Trick Hatz to see if he wanted to get blazed. And when I got to Trick’s house, he rolled us this like, perfect joint. Trick knows how to roll joints that are just like—they look like they come out of a machine, you know? They look like he went to school for it. And so I just sat back on Trick’s patio chair and stared off into the mountains and got high.

And it was actually around that time that Bob came into my life.

Looking back on it now, the timing was sort of perfect—out goes one father figure, in comes another—but at the time, it didn’t really occur to me. My dad and I had our falling-out, and a month or two later, Bob and I had that first conversation at the Cuban place, and pretty soon after that, he sent me some of his books to read, and I just started to get in DEEP, you know? I just went ALL IN.

About a week or so after we saw each other that first time, the books just showed up at my place in this plain brown box with a little note from Bob on the top that said: “Here’s to many more beautiful conversations.” And there were so many of them in the box that I didn’t know where to start, so I just grabbed one at random and started reading. And that’s pretty much what I was doing the whole time I was touring with the second album. It was almost like, I mean, I don’t know, it was almost like I kind of stopped wanting to do anything else in between shows—I didn’t really want to go out with Deez and the crew after a gig, and like, I didn’t really want to play video games at the hotel anymore, and I didn’t even want to watch shows or anything on my computer. I’d just order in some room service and find a nice chair and bury my head in one book or another. And slowly, gradually, I could feel my whole world changing.