Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 329: David Nichtern

Episode Date: March 7, 2019

**David Nichtern**, teacher, author, meditation guide, and award-winning musician, rejoins the DTFH! If you're in LA David & Duncan are hosting a meditation workshop at Samarasa Echo Park **THIS WEEKEND! March 8-10\.** [Click here for more info and tickets.](https://www.samarasacenter.com/creativity-spontaneity-meditation/) This episode is brought to you by [Squarespace](https://www.squarespace.com/duncan) (offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site).

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. To quote Mark Twain, we're all sentient droplets of protein being blasted out of the nose of the divine. This is the Dunkin Trussell Family Hour podcast

and now a poem from Khalil Gabron. When the witch smacks my ass, I do not cry. When she pukes into my mouth, I do not gag. For my sweet lovers, mind and mind, have blended together like droplets of rain on the valley side. And when at last the witch's gas reminds me that all things will pass,

I smile and laugh, knowing that love remains. Yes, even here, love remains. Author, Grammy Award-winning musician and brilliant meditation teacher David Nicktern is here with us today. We're going to jump right into that. But first, some quick business.

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how glorious when the rain falls on your solarium. I'm laying here in my hammock in my solarium, looking up at the stained glass and just thinking how lucky I am to be alive. I got a surprise floral array sent to me by Carlton Tash, which is an amazing thing because he is one of the top florists in Beverly Hills and I thought he hated me.

But now I can see that I was completely wrong and this is something that I'm learning, which is generally I default to paranoia. The reality is most people aren't really thinking about you at all and certainly Carlton Tash was, I guess, not thinking about me and the way I thought he was thinking about. We've been on a backgammon team.

We'd had a gaming night going for like the last six months or something like that and Tash went down to get some more chablis out of his wine cellar. His wife essentially leapt on me. Beautiful, beautiful woman. I pushed up her tennis skirt and we made love and when Tash came back up, he wasn't happy

and I was on synthetic mescaline. His wife was on synthetic mescaline. He was on synthetic mescaline and we'd all been snorting rails of MDMA, which I don't think you can do. All of our noses had been bleeding all night. There's blood all over the table on the floor and we had Kleenex shoved in our nose

but he walked in right as I was coming, drops the chablis bottle and is making these mudras which are hand signals that sorcerers or meditators use for ultimate revenge and it's a hand signal I'm familiar with because I spent three years living with the shamans of the Ling Valley in Sumatra and I knew that the hand signal he was making

was one of the just ultimate curses you could make. So I left and our relationship ended. I didn't talk to him, I didn't talk to his wife and then today, surprise, surprise, I get this incredible floral array with amber pecan laxes, a couple of roses, some Darnellian tinkerbells and the centerpiece, this amazing Lauren sacks which is also known as Shepherd's Doom.

This is a human sized carnivorous plant that is only found in the Ling Valley in Lower Sumatra and what's so freaking cool about this one is that it eats bears. That's its main source of food out there and this helps cull the horrific black bear problem that they have out there in the Ling Valley. These bears are just drawn to it, they get close

and then it's got these four surrounding beautiful lily white, trembling probisci that blow a neurotoxin into the bear's face and I guess it somehow seduces, hypnotizes the bear. There's an entire nature channel documentary on it. The bear just sort of wanders into its main digestive pod where over the course of six days, it's slowly liquefied and then it sprays from five squirting aerosolizing nodules

that look just like noses and this is why they call it the blood sneeze. It basically sneezes just droplets of liquefied bear which rains down on its roots and that's how it survives and to see that this plant, which by the way, if you look up how much one of these suckers costs 20K was sent to me by someone I thought hated me. It teaches me something, how important it is for people

to forgive me and how I shouldn't just automatically think that someone hates me when they don't and oh man, you should see it, this beautiful plant. Of course, the neurotoxin nodules have been removed and even if they weren't, I'm sure I would be able to resist some stupid plant in the sun. You know what, we're just going to cut to a... This episode of the DTFH has been supported by Ozzy Confidential.

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Only from Ozzy live curiously. Oh God, do you hear that, you guys? Do you hear the singing of the digest? I was so wrong to not sign into the digestive pod of this plant. And I just, I just want to apologize for the plant. And I want to apologize to the liquefying acid that I'm laying in to think I resisted such a beautiful, beautiful dissolution. I love this shepherd's doom.

Oh, I love the liquefying. They don't want you to liquefy, man. They want you to stay in a form because they're afraid of your power. Oh, we've got a great podcast for you today. I'm going to be doing a workshop at the San Marasa Yoga Studio in Echo Park this weekend with David. He's a Grammy award-winning musician, my meditation teacher, lucky him.

And an amazing author. He's got a great book coming out on creativity and meditation. Without further ado, everybody please, and if you're interested, before I forget. Mom, you're in here too? Yeah. Everybody goes in here eventually? What's that saying? If you're interested in becoming a workshop, the link's going to be at dunkatrestle.com.

That's This Weekend, This Weekend, March 8th, 9th, 10th. Dispect of human nature. David, welcome back to the ZTFH. Thank you, Duncan. I honestly feel like I never left. You've been here in my mind at least, and it's cool that we're able to do this. This is remarkable to me that you can just instantaneously connect like this when you think of how it was in the old days, the stories of people wandering off into India,

going down mountains to find people to give them transcendental wisdom. Now you can just Skype. Yeah. Well, we can't possibly compare it because it's ungraspable. You know, the way it was is ungraspable to us, just as the way it would have been in the future would have been ungraspable to them. Well, have you ever heard this idea that based on how technology is actually sped up our ability to do things that used to take a long time, that humans should not be working as many hours anymore? Like why are we still working 40-hour work weeks when we have technology that is completely sped up our ability to do things that we couldn't do in the past,

but we're still working the same amount of time? Have you ever heard this before? Yeah, but the first thought is there's still the invitation is always there past, present, and future to figure out what are you actually doing? Yeah. With your time, how are you spending your time? It's an interesting expression, right? Oh, that's so funny. That's a dark expression, isn't it? What a dark expression. The first person who came up with that must have been a true monster. Or a capitalist.

Yeah, yeah. Like a time capitalist. It's like, which is really, isn't that weird? Like, that's the thing that really gets you, that's really creepy is if you, like, if someone like, if there was a booth and you could go to the booth and you could, there was a witch or a warlock in the booth that would extract eight hours of your life energy in exchange for however much you got paid per day. I don't think many people would do it. Oh, there was a, there was a whole movie about that. Didn't you see it with Justin Timberlake? No, I didn't. But that's hilarious. It was, you had a thing on your arm and then you paid and were paid in time. Oh, wow.

You, you know, you could exchange time, you could sell time, you could buy time. And then you terminated when your time ran out. So the rich people were the people who had the most time. Wow, that's so cool. Yeah, exactly. That's, that's essentially it. I mean, you're what many of us don't realize that we've like, that we're just selling our, like our life hours to other people in exchange for stuff quite often that doesn't even need to be done, which is where people slowly start going mad because, you know, this is like, I talk about this book a lot, but there's a great book called bullshit jobs, which is just, just an assessment of there's all these jobs people are doing that are completely unnecessary. And that's not so bad necessarily. What's bad is that in the midst of their unnecessary job, they have to pretend to be working, because the culture at the workplace is like, you should look like you're doing stuff, even though there's nothing to be done right now.

And that makes people, it makes people cuckoo, because they, it's like, working sucks, I guess, if you have a boring job, but what sucks more than working is pretending to work. Or pretending not to work. Yeah, well, right, either one, I'm pretending not to work on, it's like, the idea is, you know, what should be happening, like, according to this book, the way people used to work is there would be rest, and then there would be these like days of hard labor and then rest, you know, like, so it was like, workaholic, like everyone's working together to get something accomplished, the thing gets accomplished, then you chill out. Yeah. Until the next thing you got to get accomplished, but there wasn't this like, sort of mechanistic factory style approach to getting stuff done.

So now what's happening is people really don't have to do much. And it's like, so that's when the boss comes out, and this is an example given in the book where they make you start sorting tax according to color. So, you know, just because they want to give you busy work, because they want to feel like they're getting their money's worth from your, isn't that dark, David? Well, I'm kind of coasting behind you. I feel like I'm a water skier and you're the boat, and I'm cutting outside the wake right now into this very smooth, like, isn't everything like that? Well, you know, how do you mean describe that? What do you mean? Well, in other words, we have the sense of activity and doing things and getting things done, important things done, less important things done, insignificant things done. But is it, can you find a way of looking at which the whole thing is clearly obviously some kind of fabrication every level of it? Well, yeah, I mean, on one level, absolutely.

But, and I'm bringing this up for a reason, believe it or not. So, yes, on one level, sure, I know what you're talking about, this sort of transparent nature of reality, the feeling of like, well, what is the point really? You know, pushing the Sisyphus, pushing the rock up the hill, rolling back down eternally. And yet, there is a thing that happens when I sit down and just start playing around making music, which is delight. I love doing it. It's a joy. It's a joy. But I don't have time to do that all the time, because I have other stuff that I have to do that isn't quite the same. So, basically what I'm saying is, many people, most people in the world have a joy, like art, creation, writing. And, but they're not quite at the place where they can do that full time.

They have other stuff that they have to do. And so what ends up happening is someone finds themselves at an office where they're being monitored by the time police, essentially. Making sure that their time dollars are being spent on things related to the company. And so, their life's joy, they don't get to work on it, which is one of the most fucked up things ever. Because, you know, a lot of times, if you're running a good business, you understand that these people don't need to be constantly working. And you can give them time to work on that stuff at work instead of pretending to work. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, that's where it's like the darkness to me. That's one of the great dark aspects of the current way things are working that's fucked up.

It's like, but this is, you know, I was just in Sam Ash yesterday, buying like a new synthesizer. I've been wanting for a long time, and I was talking to this guy working there. And, you know, he was saying like, this is what I'm doing is I learn how to be a musician. And it was cool. I liked it. You know, he's in a music store. He's like, but, you know, that is, to me, this is like the, when I was growing up, I was not in a family where you, that even the concept of like making a living doing art, that was like a fantasy land. Far, far, far away. And anyway, this whole like long opening thing is just because I know that you just finished this book on this topic of like,

you know, how do you synthesize or how do you sort of incorporate not just art, but spirituality into a world where you have to like figure out a way to make money right now. And usually that takes up so much time. How do you like practice? Yeah. Well, you know, even just to switch frameworks for a second, because when you and I talk, a lot of times we kind of explore and then for some reason it reminds me of like a dharmic point, you know, of dharmic framing. So try this on for a size and see if we can mix these two ideas. There's this notion of absolute truth and relative truth.

So in Tibetan it's dundam is absolute truth and kunzap is the relative truth. And absolute truth is that almost everything, if not absolutely everything that we are dealing with is some kind of fabricated reality. In other words, it's not totally arbitrary because it's driven by cause and conditions and a cause and effect, but it has only a relative existence. It doesn't have any like, you know, permanent implications. So that's what we feel. And the word kunzap means all dressed up. It's almost like a Halloween kind of idea that you put on your costume, you put on your beard, you put on your outfit, you go to the studio to work on your show, you know, you pick up your guitar, you write a song,

you go out, make an appointment for dinner with friends tonight. You know, it's all like some kind of creative, just made up kind of world. And then, but here's the thing, the kunzap is the two of them are considered inseparable. That's what a lot of spiritual traditions don't acknowledge is the inseparability of the relative and the absolute. So they lean towards the absolute truth. Like, you know, it's all one or some such thing like that, or they lean towards the material world. You know, it's just all in the matter. It's in your brain. It's in your chemicals. It's just matter producing all these events.

So within the inseparability, you have a kind of merging or blending of a kind of absolute awareness that the thing is impermanent and somewhat illusory. And at the same time in the relative view, you say it's important and, you know, what happens has significance. And you hold those two views simultaneously, which is really kind of intriguing. Then there's this one third thing, and I'm going to turn it back over to you. In kunzap or the relative view, there's two kinds of kunzap. One is just the normally made up, kind of fabricated, movie set aspect of living. The other is called log peak kunzap, which is crazy kunzap, which is not only you're imagining the thing,

but you're imagining that people are chasing you down the street. You're imagining that your girlfriend hates you. You're imagining that you're no good. It's a deranged kind of relativity. Long peak kunzap, when you eat too much marijuana. Well, it depends on your mind if you can handle it or not. I don't know. Well, I mean, for me, that's definitely, if I want to experience a long peak kunzap,

all I have to do is eat an entire chibachu and wait 30 minutes. And then I'm certain that there is a grand conspiracy at work. But I'm not quite sure how this relates to this idea of like, which I wanted to talk to you about because of your book is like, sure, absolute truth, relative truth, the costumes that we put on throughout the day. But within this, it's like, just only because you have just written a book related to like making a living, which doing a thing that is, or a few things, which are like, just to me, like the best things of all time. Making a living through your creativity.

Making a living and still maintaining a practice. Figuring out a way to integrate sort of big realizations into, you know. Small events. Yeah, into small events. So yeah, exactly. And also like, you know, your situation, like you and Krishna Das and Ram Das and Alan Watts and Jack Cornfield and Trudy Goodman and any spiritual teacher I can think of, they must, I'm sure, negotiate rates.

Right? Like, you know what I mean? Like you have to, this is a, my friend and I have always talked about this and like it seems so weird, but like just the idea of like Alan Watts talking to someone running a theater. Yeah. About what percentage of the door he wants. But why that it's more strange to me, why somebody would think that's strange? Why wouldn't he have to do that?

Well, I mean, that's because there is this idea. And I've been hit up with it by this people, this tribe of people from time to time. Like it and it's like, I've noticed since, since the podcast has gotten more popular, there is like a contingent of people who are really like hell bent on protecting the Dharma and spirituality, the defenders of this like pretty ambiguous thing anyway. But it's, it's, it's amazing the intensity of like their like concern and the rule weird rules I've never even heard of, but definitely one of the rule, one of the things is like, look, you can't like if somebody's charging money as it is it not as a piano teacher,

like if like if I get a piano teacher there and I tell someone, can you fucking believe it? They charge $60 an hour. People are like, yeah, it's a piano teacher. What do you expect? Or like if I'm like, oh my God, you know, I'm, I still am paying off student loans. You know, people are going to be like, yeah, of course, because you wanted to get educated. But if I'm like, yeah, I had to pay money to go to this like retreat or, you know, whatever

people are like, are you fucking kidding me? You had to pay money for that shit. These guys, cause I get, but there is this concept, which is like people who are like priests, teachers should not be getting directly paid. And thus this is the invention of tithing, begging. You know, when you go to church, the bowl comes around and you throw dough in it. Yeah. You don't get a bill at the end of church or people go, you can just put it on your credit

card. Yeah. You don't get. Yeah. Indeed. So what about that? What about that? You know how the people, this, this is like the reality of the life we're in right now

is that if you do not figure out a way to monetize your time, if you do not figure out a way to make money, then sorry, you're fucked. So that's what your, that's what your book is talking about, right? Well, yeah. I mean, I don't want to talk about it too much because it's not going to be up till October, but still we're starting to talk about these kinds of topics because they're in the wind. It's in the wind, what you're talking about. So I've even had a hard time, you know, with kind of laying the groundwork for this with

people that like, do you even want to talk about all this? Or is that like, oh, there goes the neighborhood, you know, we're talking about money in the spiritual community. Let's face it, Duncan, if you go in the spiritual community that sort of deep end, they don't want to talk about money. And if you go in the money community, they don't want to talk about spirituality. That's funny. Yeah, right.

Yeah. And the creativity is like the peanut butter between the two pieces of bread. It's what's lacing the whole thing together because we're, and basically we're making the whole thing up anyhow, which is what creativity means to me in the first place. It's like, we're making this conversation up. We're making up, you know, we made up these computers. We made up so many things, you know? Right.

And now we're forced to play with them or try to get them to keep from taking us over or beating us up or whatever we're doing. But, you know, there's a whole made up dimension to it. And then within the made up world, there's a split between the spiritual and the temporal or materialistic. That's, in my opinion, that's inside the made up world. Yeah. It's not one is the real world and the other's not.

They're both equally real and equally unreal. Yeah. And this, but to me, this is actually seems like some form of insanity. It's like the fact that there is a taboo when it comes to, you know, in all other jobs, you know, that it's okay to like, you know, negotiate a salary. But it's like when it comes to art and when it comes to spirituality, you are not supposed to like, even, even like, think about it or talk about it. And I mean, in what there are like genres of art where you can, you know, but in general,

and I do understand it though. It's like, you know, I have noticed that if I get too caught up in thinking about making money or a paycheck, what you have, like, I remember, I don't know if you remember this or not. But if you like, I had a day job, which is a cool day job, but it's still a day job. And for three, I don't remember how many years, many years and four years, something like that. You had a day job?

Yeah. I mean, yeah, when I first came to LA, I started working at the comedy store and I wasn't even doing stand up comedy. I was just, you know, answering the phones and then working in the booth and then I became the talent coordinator and somewhere in there I started doing comedy. But I wasn't, I didn't, I didn't even like, when I first started working there, I didn't, I wasn't even thinking like, oh, I'm going to do stand up. In fact, I was thinking like, that seems like kind of hell, but I wanted to be around comedians

because I was always funny. And that was like, you know, Mitzi, the sort of mystical owner of the comedy store. That was my first conversation with her because everybody's like, you know, she was so fiery and so unpredictable that as a phone guy, everyone was terrified of that first phone call when she called because if you messed up transferring her, if you just sounded weird, if you didn't answer the phone fast enough, because you're in the bathroom, you would just get fired. And so it was terrifying.

And the first time she called, she's like, oh, yeah, then you a phone guy. I'm like, yeah. And she's like, well, do you want to be a comedian? And I'm like, I don't think so. And she goes, well, you never know, honey. And then it was cool. But what I'm saying is that within that, there's this comfort because what happens is every two weeks you get this paycheck, a shitty paycheck, but it's a paycheck and you take

it to the ATM and you put it in the ATM and you know that that's going to be coming every two weeks, assuming you don't get fired. So the moment you split off and become your own boss, that's not that you don't get that guaranteed two weeks, you're going to be sliding a check in that ATM. And that is terrifying. And so it's not like you can just go around and like make art and just slowly starve to death. You have to figure out a way to get the rectangle into the fucking ATM at some, you know, rhythm

or you're going to go broke. And so this is where the poison of bean counting creeps in to the creative process. And this is where all these weird compromises can potentially happen. You know, and all these, this sense of like, well, maybe I'll just start making stuff that seems like what people want, you know, and, and, but regardless, I'm just saying a lot of people out there, maybe listeners, they have art. They want to be artists. They want to make a living from their art and they don't know how to do it.

It seems like an impossibility. Yeah. Honestly, that's really who this upcoming book is for. And that's what it's about. And it's, it's from the point of view of having juggled, you know, in every conceivable configuration, those elements within my own personal life and, and also understanding underlying principles for each area. Because that in, in, in my experience, people get hung up, they get stuck because they don't

understand the principles underlying the field of activity that they're engaging in. And that's true for spiritual practice. That's true for like music, right? You hear some guy playing the same four-note blues scale for the rest of his life because he doesn't understand that there's a, that there, you know, that's as far as he got with the principles of music and people have, people stalled out in business big time because they literally don't know kind of the principles that are underlying the activity of business. And that, that's where if you look at the underlying principles, they're shockingly similar.

That's what's interesting about it. Everything has machinery to it. You know, like you could be a great guitar player or you want to be a great guitar player, but you don't know how to tune a guitar. Right. That's a, you know, and you go, you know, and, and, and you don't expand your, your, your principles study. So great business people, they really know, like they're very facile.

They're most like a good, you know, a good guitar player. They just know their way around that arena, you know, and, you know, the, the, the principles are pretty much having to do with allowing yourself some freedom in every realm to just not know, you know, so that you can really be a good explorer, acknowledging that once you have some kind of inspiration, it's going to require discipline and fortitude and, and you know, kind of perseverance to really get somewhere with it, knowing when to let go. How about that one?

Isn't that true for your creative process as well as just your practice and your emotional life? You got to know when to let go. So these are the underlying kind of, kind of things and, and where do you learn those things? Where do you learn them? How do you learn them? Well, you know, I don't, I guess it, it, it varies wildly.

I mean, I, like, you know, I, I know personally, uh, like, I, I know that, like, from, you know, having a practice and then becoming more aware of like, just sort of hat, like habits, habituations, you know, I know you, you start, like, it's like, well, it's, it's like, so like, you sort of learn to like sit and you've learned to watch your mind. And then when, and then that, of course, when you're done sitting, that doesn't stop suddenly. You're still watching your mind to some degree. And so then like, I'll, that's when, you know, just when we started working together, that's when I started trying to learn to play piano, to read music and to make music.

And because you said something to me about just what, you got to learn the scales first. And that really was cool because I would started thinking like, holy shit, I don't do that with anything. I always want to learn like the thing you learn last before the thing you learn first. And to then like that, I started studying just like scales. And then, then that led to a lot of realizations, which is the shortcuts. The ridiculous weird shortcuts I'm always trying to take, you know, like just trying to get around that hour or two of just practicing, you know, that's, that's simple stuff.

Or another, another thing is, uh, hold on, you got some fuzz coming in or is it me? Did your fan come back on or something? Nope. No, nothing's changed here. Hold on one second. Okay. Sorry, y'all. Um, uh, or, or like, uh, here's one, here's a really good one, uh, not wanting to read

the instructions. I don't know if you do that or not, but whenever I get any kind of new synthesizer, instead of just sitting and reading the instructions and learning how it works, I'll try to figure out myself. And it adds, I don't know, at least like seven months to the amount of time, you know? So all of these weird things like that, you just start noticing them. And then when you start noticing them, that's not enough. You can actually, I, I, now I just read the instructions.

Like I'll sit and watch a YouTube video about how the thing operates. And then suddenly everything I'm making sounds 50 times better. You know? And that is the shortcut, actually. You know what I mean? The shortcut seems to be the way it normally, it's normal people do it. Yes. Well, I think there's a lot of variance in that and it's a spectrum.

So you have, on the one side of this, you know, on the one side of the spectrum, people are like, really like to just feel their way into stuff. And you know, they tend to be more like feely type people. And the way on the other end is people who like to think their way into stuff. And you know, usually the feely people don't think so great and the thinky people don't feel so great. So every once in a while you meet somebody who's, you know, kind of got some balance in that.

But more than that, you'll meet people who are on one side of the spectrum or the other to varying degrees. And you know, so I'm probably more like you. I don't like reading manuals. And on top of that, like, like, for example, I just got a digital scale to weigh my postage and it goes, it tells you a number and I'm assuming that's the number of stamps you need to put on the letter because that would be idiot proof. But it doesn't say anywhere on it that that's what it is.

Right. So then it says plug it into your computer. It's got the wrong plug. And I'm already ready to throw the thing out the window. You know, I mean, it's, I think user friendly is a good, and it's actually a principle that I like. I think if you're making something, you should make it user friendly because you want somebody to be able to use it.

Otherwise, why did you make it? Right. So you're saying in things, not just like in technological stuff, but in stuff that you're creating, you want it to be accessible. Well, yeah, I mean, and some of that is also spectral because some people like to make things that are a little less accessible. So the person has a little more of an adventure and journey to find their way through it. And I myself, as you know, I love that combo.

I'm like born to eat in Chinese restaurants and, you know, at buffets and smorgasbord. I like the combo of like something that is esoteric, but somehow gets to the mainstream. I call it left center field. We're rolling. Yeah. Yeah. So left center field is a place where, you know, you feel there's a kind of eccentricity to the creativity, but somehow it's accessible to a slightly wider range of people.

Yeah. I, yes. Now I want to talk about this because this left center field thing, it's got a bunch of levels to it. One, everybody knows, or not everyone, but one, you know, one of the terms for Tantra and certainly one of the terms for magic is always the left hand path. And so, you know, from a magical perspective, this is like the, this is where you kind of veer off into the land of the occult or widening the lens a little bit to look around, like

to maybe look in places that are shadowy or that people don't normally go to, to reframe things from that perspective. But then also a really fascinating thing I have noticed is that if someone becomes really good at something, it doesn't matter if it's completely center field, it still seems to be magical. You know, like that, you know what I'm saying? So like, like, there's like, and one thing that I've noticed is that one of, one trick if you want to make up an excuse for not being funny is you can decide, well, you know, my

stuff's just out there, right? And it's a great way to rationalize the fact that you haven't written a funny joke. So you, so what you do is you think, well, you know, this is like some Andy Kaufman shit. Like it's not, it's not even funny. Right. It's not just the way you, when you start moving into the land of the esoteric, you have to make sure that the reason you're doing it is because you're, it's a, it's a color you want to use, you want to use in your, in your, on your painting or whatever.

And not that you're just doing it because it's easy to be mystifying or even a better way to put it is it's easier to babble than it is to make sense when you talk, you know, especially when you're learning a new language. I think that's one of the big traps for people is like, they get caught up thinking that they're like David Lynch or something, you know, or they get caught up thinking they're like the most profoundly bizarre artists that they've ever seen, but they don't realize that that profoundly bizarre artist spent so much time probably studying the very basics.

Well, so that ties in with the business principle that, that you can talk about, which is in, in a creative endeavor, is it content driven or market driven? You know, in other words, is it coming out of just a spontaneous creation of what you want the content to feel like? And then you find a marketplace for it, or do you have a marketplace in mind and you're trying to, uh, to, to, uh, tailor it to it. And I use the example of rap. The first rapper record is content driven.

Nobody even knows if anybody likes rap or will like it. And you have to then find and create a market for that. But it's such a genuine form of expression that you go, I got to do this. I got it. I got to talk over the music. You know, it's just, I'm making poetry and music at the same time. It's cool. I love it.

I don't care if one other person likes it. I'm doing it. And then you find, it finds the market. The other thing is now, if you put out a rap record, everybody knows what that is. And the question is, is this a good one? Is this, you know, a kind of noteworthy one or a compelling one? So everything has, it's all spectrums. You know, that's, that's, that's what, when I look at things and everybody is

always trying to convince you of one side or the other and it's life is spectral. Right. You know, that's just how it is. You know. Well, I mean, the thing is, like when you're saying the thing about finding your market, there's a nineties corporation hating, you know, person in me that hears that and it's like, fuck that man. No way.

And also there's a, you know, there's this concept in standup, which is, uh, if you start doing standup that you like, in other words, like you go on the road and you know, when you're in a certain part of it, you look at the audience and you do this weird analysis and you, you have this option to like, all right, I'm going to do jokes that I think they'll like. This is called pandering and, um, your, it's, it's, your hackery is another word for it, which is that if you start, uh, you know, trying to like create easy jokes that you think the audience is going to like, then suddenly you are, um, basically a robot or something that just isn't that interesting.

Now, if you look at like interviews with Jerry Seinfeld, you know, one of the most successful comedians on the planet, he, and like he does the same job. He just does the same set apparently. I don't know. I haven't seen him do standup, but, uh, he just does the same set at least in some interviews I saw and he looks at like the, that, that, the whole idea of like the art of comedy or like all that stuff. He sees it and like it's weird to him.

So, you know what I mean? That's just, and that's, that's the spectrum of comedy is like on one side of the spectrum, you have people who are just, they're like, you know, they're not trying to do some kind of fancy thing. They're not trying to do some kind of remarkable artist. They're not even trying to like, you're not trying to shift the zeitgeist or some insane shit. They just want to tell jokes.

And it's at its market driven because success is not in the quality or caliber, but necessarily it's in the success, the financial success of it. So, you know, you know, the expression they're laughing all the way to the bank, you know, right? They're laughing all the way to the bank while these like grubby art comics shake their fists from their fucking studio apartments. You motherfucker, you're a hack. You don't take the money.

Don't take his check. He's a hack. And it's like, and that, you know, that is such a like bizarre perspective to me. And that's another thing you run into in the world of comedy. And it's really sad, which is you will stumble upon, you know, I used to call it the bitters like comedians get this disease called the bitters and you'll stumble upon this like bitter comic who has in their own mind, like basically they think they're fucking, I don't know, like the Galileo of comedy or something.

And that their, their like comedy is so profoundly brilliant that the world just it wasn't ready for it basically. And so then they're watching all these other comedians doing comedy that they consider to be like hacky, getting rich and succeeding and they're happy and they're sitting there looking at that like, oh my God, can you fucking believe this shit? Look at this. This is like a sickness. And it's really, really bad.

And it, but in always within it and PS, I'm guilty. I've done that myself in the earlier. But like within that is like this, this fucking year. It's, it's, it's the whole time that you're texting comedians horror at the fact that this comedian or that comedian is doing so great. You could have been writing jokes. You could have been working on something. You could have been like trying to improve your life in some way or another.

And that is the, you know what I'm saying? So this is another way out of what I think is what, for some reason, what many people are trying to escape from, which is the moment where you sit down and start working. You know that. Why do you, what is that? Why do you think people are so afraid of their ass touching the meditation cushion, their fingers touching the piano for the first few days of learning to play the piano, or their pins touching the paper as they begin to work on some novel or joke or whatever it

is that they're writing. Yeah. Well, as you're so eloquently, you know, speaking of this, of course, in a parallel check, I'm thinking, well, what really is the problem? You know, why is, why is this being expressed this way? And I come to the conclusion that we're not used to the idea of creation, spirituality, or even livelihood or relationships being absent of the notion of an eye. That's having that experience because when you look at where the trouble starts, it's like,

I'm doing this, I'm doing that, you don't like me. I mean, the, the, the loss of the fluidity of process, which all great artists have, they just, you know, they just are flowing into the medium that they're exchanging with. And then if you can create that way, that's one thing, and it's very spontaneous, which is what we're talking about. But it's also fresh, and it's also going to have the rhythm of that person, their natural rhythm imbued into the work and their flavor and whatever you like about them is going to be in it. And, you know, it's kind of like organic or something like that, you know.

And then if you can get that far, just to leave yourself alone enough, leave eye out of it enough to just play with it, play with the materials and create and if it's comedy or if it's, you know, painting or music or whatever, just play with the energy of it. Then once you bring it to the world to present it to others, then eye reappears again. Eye appears, is this good enough? Do you like it? Will you pay me for it? You know, and that is a whole another iteration of another dimension of the kind of confusion and suffering that goes on. And at the end of the day, it, you know, it could feel nihilistic, but you could say,

none of it matters in a very profound way, you know. And it is interesting to watch artists get old, you know, and go, what are they going to cling to? It's like, what does it matter if your painting is worth $35 million and it's in the Louvre and you have worms crawling out of your eye sockets, you know, or your pile of ashes? So even though that could become nihilistic, it's still a powerful correction agent to see that the whole thing has some element of fabrication from day one. And so eye doesn't even have to be in the profound calculation. There doesn't even have to be a profound calculation.

I made, I was authentic. I'm authentically rotting. Hey, hey, like, I wonder if there's, like, artists' graveyards. There would be some artists who are like, look at him. He was, he doesn't rot. He's not rotting like a true artist. You could tell his skin's not falling off in the normal, you know, in an artistic way. He rots like everybody else.

He's a hack. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is a, I love that. And I, I mean, I'm not like that. Those kinds of like wins is to look at things through. I really like and, uh, but all, but the main thing is this is the, to me, the, uh, one of the crazy realizations is like, I, when you're, when anything I've made that I really like, it's like, I didn't make it.

I don't know what it was or why it happened. And sometimes with a podcast, people like give me these wonderful compliments and I, I like that. I like that. But there's always a sense of like, well, hey, I'm sorry to tell you, but it's not me. I don't know what the hell it is. And, uh, and, and, uh, that, that is a kind of a relief. And, and, um, uh, and also it's like a good way to like press reset because

you know, whatever the hell it was that you used to be making, it's, you know, that's all done anyway. Now it's right now. Yeah. Well, you know, I tell this story sometimes and sometimes I talk, you know, about experiences with, uh, my Buddhist teacher, Trungpa Rinpoche, but not from a nostalgia point of view. It's actually very heartwarming and kind of inspiring, but it's not. I don't want to pass through, oh, you missed that great time or whatever.

It's happening now. So I'm totally cool with letting it keep reiterating, but there were a few classic moments and one of them was we were sitting eating and this almost had such a dreamlike quality that I, I can't swear that it actually happened. There's a kind of illusory quality to it, but this is what I remember happening. We're eating and there was hot sauce on a plate on the side, like a brownish hot sauce that looked a little bit like baby poop, which you now know exactly what that looks like. Sort of a light brown hot sauce baby poop and he took a toothpick

and he's, he was a good artist and he made a likeness of me in the hot sauce on the plate. I mean, as strange as that sounds, he's been saying it now. There's me, a likeness of me carved into the hot sauce with his toothpick and then he just takes the plate and turns it to the side and the thing just drips off into nothing. What the, wow, that's so intense, man. Yeah. And it was all good. It was magic. It was very, you know, it was very grounded in a way and it was like kind of had, and I think that's true with really, really good teachers. Watch for the cracks, watch for the experience in the cracks.

That's when you really, that's when you really are getting some, some good transmission, you know, and in the, they call it in some of the chance, the hidden life examples of your body, speech, and mind. And in my mind, that's, this is where a lot of teachings come through. They're hidden. They're, they're just very subtle, you know, and, and they're, they're in the cracks. So the message is, you know, clearly, you know, and he used to say, actually, you don't exist. That was something he said, he used to piss me off because of course I'm stuck with a sense of existing and trying to make the best of it, you know, and he just said it so many times. And if you look at it though, if you look at the Duncan phenomenon, it's very hard to pin it down.

It is. For an intelligent person, you could really look into it and you go, I thought I left it over here. I don't even know who moved it, you know? Well, yeah, I mean, it's like, it's the, it's the last Santa Claus, isn't it? It's like you, you, you, I don't know if you, you, your parents did the Santa Claus thing to you? Not really, no. Well, they did it to me and like, I really believed in, I really, I mean, I was a kid. I believe this shit, man. I mean, I really believed it. The last Santa Claus.

So like, I, like, I, like, uh, you know, the, so what we did was, and it was nice, we'd go visit my grandmother, and this was as I remember, and we, and what you would write your Christmas list, what you wanted on a piece of paper, and then you would burn it in the fireplace. And I guess the idea was the smoke or the ash made its way to wherever Santa Claus wasn't reconfigured itself into a list. And he'd be like, all right, yet another materialistic fucking kid. Let's send, send the plastic to him. And, and, but, but you know, I, you believed it. And, and so, and then I can remember just, I don't remember, remember, you know, it's kind of obvious, I think, as you grow up,

you're just like, there's no fucking way, man. This can't be real. And I remember like, a dreadful feeling as I went to my mom and looked her in the eye. I was like, it's not real, is it? And she got this sad look on her face and was like, no. And then I'm like, and there's no, that means there's no Easter Bunny either, right? Yeah. The whole pantheon of bullshit holiday characters obliterated. And so, you know, and I, well that's Duncan, isn't that the heart sutra? Yeah, that's the heart. Santa Claus, no non Santa Claus, no form, no feeling, no perception, no consciousness, though I know, you know, toes and no nose, no tongue, nobody, no mind, no appearance, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, et cetera, et cetera. It's the heart sutra. It's, it's the kind

of negation aspect of solidifying reality too much. Right. But you know, I mean, this for a lot of people, it's like, okay, fine, there's no fucking Santa Claus. There's no fucking Easter Bunny. Okay, I could deal with that. It's like that weird paranoid thing. People say first they came for Santa Claus, then they came for the Easter Bunny. Then they came for your idea of the American Dream. Then they came for your idea that your parents were actually adults. Then they came for your idea. You know what I mean? Like all that. And then finally it's like, wait a minute. But I'm an I, right? And then that's the one that's like, well, I think we might have to talk about this. Yes. You know, and this is where you're getting at, which is like, actually,

I don't know that there's much of an I there. And now this is for some people, devastating news. And for other people, it's the best news you ever heard in your fucking life. Yeah. And it's both for each person too. Right. That's the irony of it. And it's expressed as avoiding extremes of eternalism and nihilism, because you can see how easily that could become a nihilistic statement. There's no I, there's no you, there's no God, there's no Santa Claus, there's no nothing. And then, you know, you stabilize and solidify that negation. So that's called nihilism, right? And then on the other hand, the other belief that it's all good, and it's all happening, and it's all you're being protected from something, and you exist in an authentic

and primordial way as a self or a soul or an Atman or whatever you want to call it. That's eternalism. So both of those extremes have the capacity to create a series of successive delusions. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But in the, for me, the why I love it is this finding the middle place between these tears, because I think, you know, I think when they were talking about the fountain of youth, that's what they were talking about. The Philosopher's Stone or whatever, they were talking about that real, because the moment you realize like, oh, shit, I don't think I'm an eye. Then then you whatever's that then you can renew. Then it's like now like, wait, at that moment, you just you're dead. But also you're here. And then

something in that afreshness can spring up where it's like, I don't have to be the thing that was creating the stuff I was creating in the past. I don't have to be that in fact, isn't an even a thing. I was just, that's just habit. And that that's to me is like, Oh, this is fan. This is the breaking of the egg when the little baby chick comes out. Except maybe I don't know what does the chick break open and a little another baby chick like climbs out of its chest. I guess you have to just keep breaking your egg or something. I don't know. Well, I think that's also why part of penetration has to be, there has to be some element of relaxation in it as well. And just see if you can, if you look how everything works, your heart

compresses and then it, it's very hard for me to relax when I'm getting penetrated. Maybe you're doing it upside down. You're doing it the wrong way. You must have done something right though, because Forrest is here, right? Well, I mean, yeah, oh yeah, but it's even with that with Forrest with like, the other day I was having a conversation with a friend and he's like, your baby, making the baby wasn't that the highest magic? And I had to like stop because I was thinking like, well, number one, I didn't make the baby. And number two, I don't feel like I, I, I, I know that I was, I did like have sex and had an orgasm and made sperm that, you know, was fertilized

an egg that made, I know all that, but it's like that my feeling with Forrest is the same way I feel about anything I've made, which is like, I don't know how much of that I was responsible for. How much I had control over. It just, it just happened. It, it rose and up. But I don't know how can like I much, I didn't exert myself. That's for sure. You know, it just came. It just is. Well, a lot of great creative things seem to be like that with, with the, you know, with the caveat that there's some discipline involved and somehow that's part of the equation too. It's not all just sliding down a mountain, you know, you know, there's some climbing the mountain and sliding down the mountain. And, and, you know, it's like, for example, right now, I bet you don't feel it's

effortless raising a baby. I put my money down right there. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, the action within it is not, I mean, there's effort, clearly there's effort involved. But it's like the big, I don't know how to explain it, except to say, I mean, I want to sound like disassociative or something like that. But it's like, I just don't, if we're, if we're sort of giving up the notion of the traditional notion of the self, then within that, you're kind of giving up the notion of cause and effect causality in the normal sense. And so to me, that's a freeing thing that even now just talking about, I feel more inspired than I've felt in some time. It's like, Oh, right. Oh, yeah. That's great. I don't have to be the thing making the stuff. Yeah. Oh, what a relief. It's

a big relief. But egolessness, you know, if you really study like various traditions, but particularly Buddhism is not considered to be an accomplishment. It's a fact. That's great. So when people say, I'm going to get rid of my ego by working hard at it, there's a, that's part of the basic bubble delusion that you're in. Right. But it may be a necessary thing to relate to, but the recognition of egolessness is somewhat of an accomplishment. Wow. That's so cool. I'm going to get rid of my imaginary friend. I'm going to start working on getting rid of, I'm going to start getting rid of little Tandi, my imaginary friend who lives in a matchbox. My friend Michael Carroll calls it the Mikey show. It's the Duncan show. Yeah. I mean, and that, that's at the relative level,

you can have the Duncan show. But when it turns into log peak winds up the crazy relative truth, then the Duncan show becomes unnecessarily painful. Yeah, you don't have to keep picking up your crazy show for new seasons, you know, we've been renewed for the millionth incarnation. Wow. Well, look, time flies by when I'm chatting with you. It's 150. I know you've got a meeting you have to go to. Thank you for being patient with my scheduling issue. And I'll see you, I'll see you this weekend at our workshop. Really looking forward to that, Duncan. And I'll check in with you along the way there. And, you know, I just want to say one thing. I meet people all over the place who are, you know, I've said this and I'm saying it again, because to me,

it bears repeating. There's a lot of people out there listening to you and feeling where you're coming from. And it's a good thing. Thank you. I'm so lucky that that is happening. And I'm glad that I get to share conversations like that with folks. And I'll see I'll see you at summer, this weekend, David. Thank you so much. Okay, see you soon. See you soon. Bye. Bye. That was David Nick Turn. Everybody come to our workshop. If you're in LA, check out his books. Find his website. Everything you need to find David will be at dunkitrustle.com. Much thanks to Ozzie Confidential and Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. Until next time, Hare Krishna.

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