I was in surrender mode.
I say, "Oh, everybody dies and this is me dying."
But love was certainly,
you know, magnified during this time, not only with the people around me
that loved me, but also the love in my own heart for them.
I've done a lot of fights in the movies I do, and it's always
a kind of a favorite part of the process.
What I didn't know when I was doing those scenes in the first episode
was that during that fight I had a
9-by-12-inch tumor in my body.
Are you experiencing any symptoms?
No, I have not been experiencing any symptoms.
I'm feeling a little anxious, agitated.
Because of COVID, we all took a two-week break,
and during that I found out that I had this lymphoma.
I'd been in and got
my chemo treatment and then contracted COVID at that place.
I had no immune system to fight it.
So it turned out that the COVID made my cancer
look like nothing.
I started to get very close to be a candidate for it.
I remember the doctor saying to me, 'Jeff, you've got to fight.
You're not fighting.'
And I couldn't-- I didn't understand what they meant.
I didn't know what fighting...
how to do that.
It felt like the way was to surrender.
And I thought, "I'm a musician.
I'm going to jam with this situation."
You know, it's different than giving up.
It's love, man.
During my time in the hospital, what came to mind
was that life is constantly giving us a gift.
And often we say, "Gee, that's not what I had in mind."
But part of it is us surrendering to what the gift is, you know.
If it's death, bring it on, man.
We're all going to get it.
If this is mine,
OK, here I go.
My wife, Sue,
was just my champion through the whole thing.
The first goal was see how long
you can stand, you know. And my record was 45 seconds.
A goal started to appear in my mind to walk my daughter down the aisle
as she was getting married. Would I be able to do that?
And I didn't know if I could.
And not only did I walk her down the aisle, but I got to dance with her.
And then I'm saying,
"Gee, maybe I can go back to work" -- because I thought it was a done deal.
I didn't think I'd ever work again, really.
Doing what you do, that
invigorates you, you know, and you -- and you feel great. 53 00:03:26,139 --> 00:03:28,508 And then I'm so blessed to have this cast.
Lithgow and Amy and Alia, you know, that fueled my health, too, I think.
One of the main challenges for a creative person is getting hooked.
The older we get,
I'm finding this personally, the harder and harder it is to get hooked.
I heard somewhere this metaphor:
Passion is the fire that happens when you rub sticks together.
So the passion doesn't happen before you rub the sticks together.
Rub the sticks together, and then the passion forms.
So even if you're not feeling it, just f****** do it.
And that is kind of what stimulates getting hooked.
I'm already hooked on "The Old Man."
It's all that same energy.