Knead and Want

you can't always get what you need

As a child, I would whine to my mother, “But I need it…!” Her response was, “You should learn the difference between need and want.”

I hated that answer. I developed a pattern of taking what I needed without permission and asking for forgiveness — a full-time apologist.

Recently, a therapist told me that any demand we make of the world — met or unmet — tends to cause suffering. Sometihing for which to apologize. You can usually spot a demand by its vocabulary: must, ought, should, need.

Needs are hostile wants, my list of demands to the universe.

Last summer I found myself negotiating on behalf of my own inner peace.

---

In May of last year, I checked out. I was in grief – for my friend, for post-fire L.A., for my television career, for the U.S. I bought a one-way ticket to Paris. To allay my friends’ fears that I may not come back, I playfully insisted I was heading to France for La Fête du Pain (The Bread Festival). Oh Ben, how eccentric! But I do love bread. I wanted bread.

I needed bread.

you can’t even eat that bread

Don’t go to La Fête du Pain . In front of Notre Dame, I realized I had landed in a tourist trap inside a tourist trap inside a tourist trap – a tourist trap turducken. Still I spent the next few weeks in Paris eating at least two baguettes a day, drifting through museums, a true flaneur, waiting for something to grab me.

Jess came and met me. We went to London for my birthday to watch our musician friend open for Dominique Dumont. Live music and dancing seemed to be the only things that made sense. We went back to Paris, and when she flew home, I stayed.

I needed to run away.

The last time I felt undeniable, life-affirming meaning was while making High Maintnenace. I had an email out to my former collaborator about reviving it. Our show is licensed to HBO and up for renewal. I floated the possibility of new episodes that might sweeten the renewal. The email sat unanswered.

I needed an answer.

Doubtful that I would get the answer I was looking for from that person, I told myself I was scouting Europe for my next great idea for a show. I had just been rejected trying to make the Ram Dass show.

I needed a win.

But what I really needed was permission to continue being the version of myself who had made something that mattered.

---

Three weeks here, three weeks there. Berlin. Copenhagen. Sweden. .Lots of music festivals and letting people notice me as The Guy. I demanded sympathy, telling then all I was in grief and lost. Some could hold that and others could not. I spent time with those that could. We ate bread together.

In Germany, I switched to pretzel. Humble, utilitarian, filling. Something to soak up the beer.

In Berlin, I spent many afternoons at Vabali, a sprawling spa known for its aufguss saunas — and for non-Germans, remarkable for its co-ed nudity. After a decade of sitting in the New York subway and inventing backstories for clothed stranger’s lives, I could not help but to do this for naked ones.

I imagined a European anthology shorts series set in a spa. Each episode follows a different person in the nude. We form assumptions. At the end, when they get dressed to leave, the big reveal would be how they presented themselves and everything we thought we knew about them collapses.

Bingo! My very European show! Birthday Suit.

I needed the bread! (Money)

In Copenhagen, I started every day with a bolle med ost — a buttered roll with cheese — and emailed the Danish Film Institute like a man politely (ehh, desperately) knocking on a door that was clearly for Danish filmmakers only. But my ex-collaborator is a Dane, so I wrote to her again, dangling the possibility of reviving High Maintenance abroad. HBO meets hygge.

---

Then came Fusion Festival, a massive electronic music pilgrimage. The year before, I went with Jess and the musician we saw in London, let’s call him Jean-Luc. He had been to Fusion many times, and this year was bringing his childhood friends for the first time. I tagged along. Jean-Luc would mix ketamine and 3-MMC in a contact case and we would snort it from a spoon. He called it the soup.

The soup did not come with bread.

I was high on soup for five days and slept no more than 3-4 hours a night. I danced my poor little heart out, but anyone could see I was clearly going through something.

Near sunrise on the last day, hours from my bus back to Berlin, Jean-Luc and his childhood friends huddled in serious conversation.

“Are we stuck?” I asked.

He looked at me exasperated, “Yes, we’re stuck. I can’t believe I’m about to say this,” he said. “I love you, but we are old friends we can’t be together the way we want when you’re around.”

Oh. No soup for me.

For days, maybe longer, I was the schlemiel – the one who spills the soup. I pretended that I was OK with that perfectly normal thing for Jean-Luc to say and hugged these schlamazels goodbye. Ten steps away from them, I started bawling. Humiliation. Soup poured from my nose.

Back in my tent, I turned on my phone for the first time in days to text Jess that I needed to go to rehab… but there was the email I had been waiting for.

It said that because the last years of making High Maintenance had been so taxing, there was zero chance we would ever make it together again. Zero chance that she would allow that I make it without her. I was encouraged to move on and find new meaning.

I needed a pretzel.

Before I got on the bus back to Berlin, I ate two.

---

If ever I was susceptible to join a cult, this was the moment.

Luckily, my friend Lexi invited me to Afroz, the mediation center in Greece established by followers of OSHO — fka Bhagwan (literally “God”) — a spiritual teacher best known in America from the salacious Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country. This part is where my true crime enthusiast subscribers might microwave some popcorn.

It turned out I had another non-cult Brooklyn friend nearby Afroz, so I figured maybe she could deprogram me if things got hairy, like the Greek stereotype.

So I bought a one way ticket to Lesbos. I guess I needed pita.

My first exposure to Afroz was the “evening meeting.” Music somewhere between klezmer and a European 70s game show echoed though the rustic property. In the Buddha grove, a circular marble plaza with a huge tree growing from the center, about two dozen people danced by themselves facing a blank television screen.

The music swells. Everyone throws their hands up and shouts “OSHO!” Three rounds of this, and then seated meditation where music plays and stop intermittently.

After this comes the discourse: a video from the 70s of OSHO speaking to a group of seekers wearing red (today they don’t wear red anymore. Damn.) Osho is an undeniably enchanting speaker, like the snake Ka in The Jungle Book. My first discourse was on how all suffering was self-made. Seemed a little simplistic, dare I say gauche, to minimize the abuse of so many around the world. But also, in my case, I sort of know what he meant.

And then he says, “Now everyone goes crazy.” And everyone does just that. Both in the 70s and now, they burst into a minute of flailing gibberish. A drum beats and they all stop at once. “Now, everybody’s dead.” Everyone drops to the ground.

Then: “This… This… A thousand times this. Don’t miss it.”

Another drum and everyone is reborn. And then they go eat dinner.

It was theatrical, absurd, and… strangely relieving?

Whatever this would be, it was wouldn’t certainly not be boring.

I intended to stay at Afroz for two weeks, but ended up staying four. The first two weeks I participated sketpically, but I would look forward to the evening meetings — I liked listening to OSHO speak. Sometimes it felt as through he was speaking directly to me through the screen.

I started making fast friends on the nude beach in the afternoons with other members of the community. It was like the spa in Berlin, but I wasn’t trying to concoct backstories for them. We would talk, swim, and then go to evening meeting to dance. By week three, I became one of those ecstatic dancers at the evening meeting, not dancing to get attention, but because it quieted my busy mind. Because I enjoyed it.

This was the difference between my time here and my time at Ram Dass’ house – i wasn’t trying to extract material from them. I didn’t want to objectify their spiritual experience and they didn’t try to sell me a Be Here Now shirt. In fact, they didn’t need anything from me, and I didn’t need anything from them.

I took almost no pictures while I was there. Except this video. I couldn’t resist.

One day I watched OSHO speak about about how you cannot fully love a person when you need something from them.

I needed to hear that.

I always needed something from my wife and co-creator. I needed her talent, her taste, her collaboration, her approval. And after we separated, I needed her permission to conintue the show. Needed reassurance the years together in relationship weren’t wasted. Needed proof that I still mattered in her world.

Now I knew none of that was coming.

And strangely, that clarity softened something.

If I didn’t need anything from her — not a text, not consent, not validation — maybe I could love her without demand.

I emailed her that.

She replied.

We haven’t spoken since. We don’t need to talk anymore.

---

So… I am not an OSHO apologist. He was a very flawed man. There are many flawed people in his community. I am also flawed. Historically, I am a Ben apologist.

At Afroz, I saw how much of my suffering was self-generated — a constant negotiation with reality about how it should behave.

When I stopped demanding, something unclenched. I let go of something I’ve been struggling with for a very long time. I released my grasping fist, and my open palm was ready for whatever might fall into it.

OSHO!

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider staying longer, but I was sick of soulvaki. I needed to go home.

For Jess’ birthday, as a gift, I went on antidepressants and mood stabilizers. Not the most romantic present; but if you lived with me, you would get it. In fact, there’s nothing sexier than someone dropping the rope in their tug-of-war with “bearing it.”

I was told that they would work better if I stopped smoking weed. After a cacamamie campaign to just smoke less involving timed lockboxes, I finally just stopped.

My present is quieter. The past resentments don’t linger. I am here, doing whatever it takes to enjoy my life. It’s. My. Life.

This. This. A thousand times this.

A student asks the teacher, “What is the meaning of life?” The teacher responds, “I don’t know. Let’s have some breakfast.”

There’s a Danish bakery at the Larchmont Farmers Market near our home in L.A. that sells excellent seeded rugbrød.

Jess and I eat it together every morning.

Now we’re addicted to it.

We need it.