Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 386: Emil Amos

Episode Date: June 5, 2020

Emil Amos, musician, genius, and one of Duncan's oldest friends, re-joins the DTFH! You can learn more about Emil on his website, or check out his work on Bandcamp and just about every streaming service. This episode is brought to you by: ExpressVPN - Visit expressVPN.com/duncan and get an extra 3 months FREE when you buy a 1 year package

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Trussell Family Hour podcast. I almost didn't put a podcast out this week, but I realized that that would be stupid. And what the fuck? What are you not going to? What's the point of that? What does that do or say? It doesn't do anything.

It doesn't say anything. It's ridiculous. And more than that, the reason I want to do it was not because I didn't really feel like putting a podcast out because I was scared. Because right now, we live in such a crazy time in the history of the planet that pretty much anything you do publicly has some kind of political slant to it.

Whether you meant it to be political or not, you're going to piss somebody off right now. That's the time period that we're in right now. You're going to piss somebody off. I actually have considered, and I'm not going to do it. It's ridiculous, tweeting something along the lines of, love is the most important thing. A rather mundane, cliche, obvious statement

that could be on the back of any weird, healthy shit-tasting cereal or bad, flavorless toothpaste. And I know that if I were to tweet that, it would only be a matter of time before somebody would attack me for saying, in some way, shape, or form, just a matter of time before somebody would be like, really? Is that what you think?

That's not the solution right now. Or somebody would say something along the lines of, you fucking virtue signaler, which is a whole thing right now. If you were crazy enough to, in public, say anything that is remotely an expression of some hope that the world becomes less crazy, chaotic, insane, violent, brutal, scary,

and completely fucked up, then people are going to get mad. They're going to say you're virtue signaling. You know, which is basically the same thing as telling somebody, shut the fuck up. Anytime anybody says virtue signaling to you, just replace it with shut the fuck up, because that's what they're saying to you,

just shut the fuck up. You're not really, it's the muttering of beings in hell. And I promise you this, and I hope I never find out, but if there is a fucking hell, I promise you that there's not just people screaming in hell, there's also beings in hell screaming at the screaming beings to shut the fuck up. Stop virtue signaling with your screams,

it's hell, what did you expect? You get your face burned off and demons come and jerk off and you're burning eye sockets and the cum steam rises up in the air and steams the face of the person who's stuck right above you by tentacle things that are ripping its nipples off. It's always going to be like that.

And your expressions of thinking we can make hell a better place are virtue signaling, you're doing nothing. So fuck it, just right now, we just got to be who we are for better, for worse, and pray and visualize, do the magic, do it all, do the magic, do it all, do the marches, do the visualization, do the donate, do it all,

do it, you know what, do everything that's gonna piss off the person who throws around the virtue signal or just piss him off. Besides the dopes who throw around the word virtue signaling, unfortunately I've been one of those dopes in the past, they don't realize that they're on a slippery slope because they're virtue signaling by calling other people virtue signalers.

Suddenly you get this incredible echo chamber of virtue signal accusations. And, you know, because they're all, what are you doing? Like what are you, anytime you're on Twitter telling somebody else they're moralizing, you're instantaneously guilty of their identical crime, he was not virtue signaled, tweet the first tweet as Jesus once said, it's just this is the way it is right now.

You know, you've got to just say the way you feel. I mean, this is, that's all we got. Once that goes away and you're afraid to talk, then just, it's all over. I mean, that's, that creates a dark malignancy that just secretly spreads until the only people who are talking are people who aren't afraid to yell at other people for saying sweet things online

or people who are yelling at people who are saying sweet things online because they want them to not talk or, you know what I mean? You just end up with this cacophony of different encampments and tribes of people with various ethical ideologies telling each other to shut up. And that doesn't do any good for anybody.

So we just got to, even if it's, whatever, this intro, whatever, what am I gonna do? You know, the same part of me that when I'm writing is like, well, it's not as good as Hemingway. You know, there's that the ego part of me would love to do, this is what my ego would love. My ego would love for me to somehow manufacture one of the funniest podcast intros that has ever happened,

but not just that, that's not enough. It would also enjoy the, I would like it if somehow just out of my mouth flows like the perfect series of sentences that just gets picked up by radio stations, all the news, all the networks just throw like, my God, this 46 year old podcaster, he truly channeled the voice of truth

and rationality, justice and love in a way that transcends all political leanings. And then I would like that amplification of my intro to bring aliens to the planet who reveal to us the great secrets of the ages and invite us into some cosmic family where we all have our own personal spaceships and can just fly all over the universe

and are no longer stuck in the gravity well that is keeping us trapped on planet Earth. That's what my ego would like, but this is what we got. So that's where we're at right now. And there you go. And we've got a great podcast for you today. Emil Amos is here with us today. Also, let me just say I'm aware

of the annoying microphone crackle, but you got to understand for probably two days now I've been working on an intro for this episode and this is the one I'm gonna use. So I just, I'm not gonna repeat it because otherwise I'll go insane. I'll claw my eyes out, I'll pull my tongue out. I'll start smashing my head into the disgusting tile

of my studio here in the Valley. And I don't wanna do that. Though it probably would sound pretty cool. And if I put it into my synthesizers, it would be an interesting noise experiment, but we're just gonna go with this. Emil is a genius. He is one of my best friends on the planet.

He is in many bands, including the Grails, Olm and Holy Sons, and here is a track from his album, The Cline of the West. It's called, 12 Things You Do While Waiting for the Apocalypse. It's called, 12 Things You Do While Waiting for the Apocalypse. Did you build from the ground your own church? Down with the written histories

of the burned-up books that began I read, oh, celebrate the graves that you stand upon. This is love to the death that I'm standing on. A claustrophobic magic spiral, sickens and swirled. Can you feel the failure that I felt with the girl? Liberations, I'll bring the mind prisons back in. Get them safe, keep them safe, forget the past,

do as the sickness lasts. Consolescence, pre-designed, and big confights without the bottomized mind. Lockdown, come in, sing, sing, and get the things you want from me. I'm not going to let you down, I'm not going to let you down, I'm not going to let you down,

I'm not going to let you down, I'm not going to let you down, I'm not going to let you down, I'm not going to let you down, I'm not going to let you down, I won't let you down, I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down.

I'm not going to let you down! I'm not going to let me down. I'm not going to let you down. Don't let me down. Don't let me down. Don't let me down! Don't let me down. I can't forget until my mind dies.

I can't forget until my mind dies. I can't forget until my mind dies. I can't forget until my mind dies. I went to college with that guy. We're going to jump right into a conversation with Emil Amos, but first, this quick business. Friends, it's not so much that I don't want people to know that from time to time I like to look at BDSM Dominatrix foot fetish porn. It's that I don't want people to see the entirety of my internet browsing history. It's not just the porn.

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Do you really want the military to know that you're watching cuckold pornography while looking up how much Seattleist you can overdose on? They can use that information against you. Thank you ExpressVPN for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. Sweet friends, I want to invite you to take a deep dive into the DTFH family. You must know that this podcast is just the very tip of the DTFH iceberg that if you want to swim down to the lower parts of the iceberg, you'll be delighted to find it stops being an iceberg and becomes a heatberg. It's warm down there and there's lots of wonderful people hanging out in the DTFH Discord server. And now once a week, we've been gathering together for a DTFH family gathering and you can have access to these live streams by heading over to patreon.com

slash DTFH and signing up. We also have a wonderful shop which is filled with all new merchandise. So if you haven't checked out the shop in a while, take a look at the cool stuff we have over there. It's a completely new shop with bad ass magical articles of clothing, garments of power, and all the sacred paraphernalia you need to keep your heart floating on the river of love. Now, without further ado, everybody, please welcome back to the Duggar Trussell family hour podcast, one of the coolest, smartest, most incredible people. I'm just going to say I love him so much. And I'm so lucky that our lives cross paths. Welcome to the DTFH Emil Amos.

It's the Duggar Trussell family hour podcast. Welcome to the DTFH. Welcome, welcome on you. That you are with us. Shakin' and going to be blue. Welcome to you. It's the Duggar Trussell family hour podcast. Emil, welcome back to the DTFH.

Woo, it's been like a year or two. It's been a long time. It's been a long time. So many, so much has changed. Do you ever think, do you ever get this? This is the craziest dream I had the other day. I dreamed I was cremating myself. Are you getting any kind of weird pandemic dreams?

No, I don't think so. I was going to say, do you ever remember having actual anger at your parents for having you? You know, it's so funny. I was just looking. There's like, I can't remember the name of it. There's a movement. It's a philosophical movement, which is basically saying it's

unethical that human life is so painful that having a child is unethical. I'm going to have to turn the AC on a little bit. It's too damn hot. Yeah, having a child is actually unethical, because the child obviously can't consent theoretically, as far as we know, to being born. And then you basically plunge it into a world of despair.

And that is just cruelty. I can't remember the name. It's the anti-life movement. It's one of the most hilarious philosophical movements I ever heard. I mean, just because it's like, well, not everyone is miserable. Yeah, did you guys have talks about that before you went through with it, or did you feel like it was just like something

ineffable that pushed you forward and made you feel positive, or did you actually wrestle with that? No, we didn't wrestle with it at all. And I wrestled with how un-wrestle-able it was. That's what I wrestled with. I wrestled with suddenly feeling like for a second somebody had opened up the back of some gigantic clock, and I saw all the massive gears moving.

And I felt like one tiny little part of that mechanism that didn't have much to say about it either way. And then we had the baby. But I didn't really, you know, up until that point, I had pretty much played all my cynical, skeptical, carowax style, having a child as damning a being to death, sentencing a being to death, all that stuff. But then when I actually was in the presence of the vortex

that brought my baby into the world, it wasn't much philosophical anything other than life. Since then, it's been pretty much the same since then. Yeah. I mean, just more and more intense. It just gets like the heart. In the beginning, it was really hard for me because it hadn't fully dawned on me what we'd done.

And then now it's a different kind of heart because it's like all the, the problem with it is every cliche is true that you've heard about being a parent. Like it's all true. So you end up like just being completely confronted by your humanity in the sense of being pretty unoriginal. You know, like you, you sort of like watch nature videos and you see these beings, you know,

make babies and you realize that's just what I did. I'm just like them. Like they're, you know what I mean? Like that's the game. I'm in that game. And in that way, you sort of take on the sort of elemental quality. I think it's neither better nor worse than someone who doesn't

have a baby, but it's just like a, you become this sort of like elemental thing that's like very scary if you don't want to do that. Yeah. I guess if, if you've ever felt that feeling of, of being angry at your parents because you were born, you know that you've wandered into the actual dark waters. Like you're, you're playing with like some Darth Vader shit.

Yes. Yeah. That's right. I mean, it's the best though. I mean, that's such a good place to be is to play with that Darth Vader. I mean, that's the idea, right? It's like, go play with that as much as you possibly can.

Like any kid should go through that period because then you have to, you're basically the problem is you, you're going to run into a difficult place, which is like, okay, where does my anger stop? Do I stop with my parents for having me or should I be also angry at my grandparents? And then, you know what I mean? Like, and then you're like, well,

should I then be angry at the force, the evolutionary forces in the universe? And does this put me on the same team as all the beings that didn't manage to kill someone in my ancestry, but attempted to? Am I now on their side? And you're like, God damn it. I wish that arrow had fucking hit my great grandfather right in

the face. Where do you stop being mad? It's my question. Once you take that line of thinking. I agree with you. I think, I think something in your world and your teenage world of like, as I drifted into art, I thought, I thought that that dark energy was sort of like

going to save me or something. And maybe, maybe because it probably isn't quite essentially dark in the end, it does. But, but I feel like when you touch the burner and it hopefully what we're talking about will become more clear as it as we keep talking. But, but I feel like when you touch the burner and you do go to that dark side, it, it marks you.

Maybe that's what happens in Damien. Maybe that's what the mark of Cain is. But I feel like for the rest of your life that those experiences stay with you so burned into your skin that you it must be good. There must be something really magical happening for it to stay with you forever. You know, it's one thing to black something out.

That might be a different thing. But I was thinking when. What do you mean black enough? Like if you're trying to forget something, people talk about how they can't remember something because they don't want to. Yeah. I think you even told me once that you had found like a hidden

memory. But I don't know if, if you remember that or what, what, what year that was, but I just think if I'm dialing up like a MIDI keyboard sound to throw an overdub on a song and I'm trying to EQ it, I know that I have to have it sound this particular way that somehow, if I, if someone asks me, why do you want the keyboard sound that way? I would say because it reminds me of like my suffering.

Wow. Cool. Like it sounds like that. It sounds like that. It sounds like that. I has to sound like that dank, terrible place, you know, and, but so, so the something good must have been happening for me to to sentimentalize all of that pain.

It must, it must have been a great thing in some way, you know, or maybe this, you know, trying to sentimentalize it is just another attempt to deal with pain. It's not great or not great. It's just that you're, you know, it's like, you know, it's like you're, you're, you're getting eaten by the tiger and your last thoughts can be mother fuck. I'm getting eaten by a tiger or it could be I'm giving food to

this wonderful being through my body. The tiger doesn't care what you're thinking. It's just eating you and it's not wondering if you having some sentimental relationship with that reality. So that, that, I think there's a, there, there is that quality I love and like chogum Trump or Rinpoche where he's just talks about how like, yeah, this is like, you're, God, he uses so many great examples.

I'm sure I've ear beaten you with before, but I'll ear beat you one last time with it. This idea where he says, he talks about you're, you're standing on a floor of razors and you're just cutting your feet and it's just pain. And so you build an imaginary beam in the air and then you pretend that you've crawled into the beam and you somehow imagine that your feet still aren't being cut by the razors.

The beam is your ignorance and you've burrowed into it like a termite is what he says. And you're just like, imagine, you know what I mean? You're like, it's, for me, it'll be like, I'm walking around and I will have done no, especially when I'm like really trying to be blurry. And so I've got the pain that you're talking about, I think. And, but I will have drowned it out successfully in the sense

that now I'm just thinking about like, I'm angry at Twitter or something. I mean, I'm like, I'm mother fucker. I can't believe I did this. I'm worried about something because it's easier for me to imagine I'm angry at Twitter or I'm worried about some minute thing than to go back to that. Like, oh, well, what do you know?

Nothing has changed. I'm still in that painful place. And there's been no shift. And that, you know what I'm saying, man? That's like, I think that can be an panic inducing moment for people. Yeah, I think you, to get through each and every moment, you know, we're probably all a bit autistic.

And in order to get through the day, you have to compartmentalize all these emotions. And so then when you sort of reopen a compartment, like you hear a song from 1998, and you think, man, what a song. There are states of mind where you analyze the song. And it's, it's pretty basic, but you kind of forget that along with it, there's this entire prism of experiences that come rushing back.

Like you can't, everything is kind of happening all at once all the time. So for you to just sort of singularly memorialize one way of feeling or something is a pretty unrealistic way of illustrating life, because really, along with it is all these other things that probably inevitably remind you of being young and to be young is to feel innocent and to be innocent is to be vulnerable and probably being hurt or about to be hurt.

And like the idea of that kind of innocence is beautiful and thinking about it and like meditating on it is fills you with all these positive feelings. So there's so many different things going on when you get sentimental, you know? You, it reminds me of this. I was like, when I was doing a much more disciplined meditation practice, because I was working closely with David Nick turn,

who is the person who has been teaching me meditation forever now. And so I'm doing it every day and I'm sitting and like, man, all of a sudden I can't even describe the sorrow that I felt like it was so out of the, I was, nothing was happening. I'm just sitting there looking at like pine needles and pine needles just looking at leaves. You know what I mean?

Just sitting outside looking and then all of a sudden it was just like, I've never felt such a sorrow and it was so beautiful and so powerful and I was really, I don't want to say confused, but it just was, it was just all of a sudden there it was. And I was talking to him about that. I'm like, what is that? He said, that is where you, you are supposed to radiate out from that place.

That's the, that's it. Like that's the heart of sorrow or the heart of compassion. And that is the feeling. Like that's not to say there's one feeling, but just sort of, you know, it's like, I think another way to put it might be, I don't know why I'm using animals, eating other animals right now. But like, you know, you, you know what it is? I've been watching these Disney nature documentaries with forest.

And it's really unnerving because like, I know he's going to have to find out about death, but these Disney nature documentaries, some of them just all of a sudden it's like the mother's snow leopard has found a tasty snack. And there's this monster carrying this adorable elk or whatever. And it's not elk, like a little goat, like a mountain goat, a dead mountain goat up a hill to its children. While there's like the mountain goats, I don't know, brother, wife,

I don't know how their social situation is sort of like glumly watching this thing carry corpse up into the fucking mountains. You know what I mean? It's mind, whatever mind is capable of processing that it's life has changed now because his friend is gone is processing. You could see it and yours. I'm sitting with a baby who's like, you know, holding my hand and we're watching it.

And I don't have, there's no way I could say to him, well, you know, forest, that's what happens. You see the cycle of life and all that. You can't really say anything. It's just the brutality of nature. Even in Disney, it's just right there on display. But similarly, you, if you were to look at all of those great moments in your life that were so important to you as the goat and you were

to look at time as the leopard that just carries them off into the mountains of oblivion, whether you like it or not, you know, you, you, it gives you an example of this like reality that we're really in to the point of, of course, you yourself are going to be like those memories eventually and be on the funeral pyre, however you're deciding to be, um, your body to be dealt with. And that, and then people are going to be very sad for a while. And then they're going to just start getting better.

Like that little mountain goat. I'm sure it didn't spend too much time. Morning. Yeah. You know what I mean? You see that in their eyes. You feel like, you know, unlike a human, you feel like they're a little bit more on the frequency of, of like something, nothing happening

than something happening and then nothing happening again. Like it's that simple. Something was inanimate. It was born. And then in a second, in a millisecond, it was taken away. But now that's happened. So what is there to do? Yeah.

Yeah. And not that, that, that. So then, so then, okay. So now what do we do as humans? We go into this morning period that's really intense. And it's a physical thing. And we go through it. We struggle with it.

Cause like you are in a whole new reality now. And you're, you're, you think sometimes when I really look at my grief, I think what percentage of my grief was missing that person and what percentage of it is me not wanting to die. And, you know, being reminded that the any, when someone around you dies, that you, that it just means that, you know, their plane came a little sooner than your plane. And you know what I mean?

And that reminder is really intense because you do have to deal with it. And then you get into this crazy idea of reincarnation, which is like, some people say, well, you're just trying to make yourself like, not like fix this problem of eternal death. But the thing with reincarnation is almost even more in some ways dire than Dawkins anesthesia idea or whatever you're just being put down for eternity, which is that some semblance, some trace of you remains. And it's exactly like when you wake up from a dream and you've met some people

in the dream, you just don't think about them anymore. Right? You don't think about the people in the dream that you met two weeks ago that you had a great conversation with, even though like in that dream, they seem so real. You wake up and you're like, God, that's all, that was just a dream. Well, similarly, this is like the concept of reincarnation, which is me, your mom, your dad, everyone that you love, everyone that you cared for,

anyone you had any association with. When you die, you don't die forever, but they just are kind of like a dream. And then you just go on to the next life and like get back into the, your karmic momentum. And you've been doing that forever. Yeah, I'm still kind of mesmerized by the pine needle scene. The, I can't, I feel like it's been a long time since I've been sad like that. And yet maybe that's not totally true.

So I'm trying to think about it. But I almost, like I was saying before, you know, you miss a type of innocence in yourself when you were so easily hurt, like, like a kind of a stupid thing to even verbalize me. Why would you miss that kind of innocence, that kind of sadness? But that's oftentimes when you make or you're the most hungry for the world, you know, you're going out there on the battlefield and you get shot because you don't know what exactly how to navigate it.

And it's kind of like, it's hard for me to access that because I know better. I don't, that idea, when we were hungry, when we were like sure that the world would care like nothing about us. And there was like everything to lose. And we were losing in real time that I wouldn't let myself emotionally go there now because I have all these, I don't know if you would call them defenses or context that I built up that create my world of confidence, you know. But I miss it.

I miss feeling that level of total vulnerability, although that makes no sense because I probably don't want to feel like that. I don't want to be that sad. What was your, when you traced the source of that pine needle feeling, what do you remember coming up with at all? Well, see, that was the really great aspect of it is that though I could easily feed an explanation in, I could say, oh, I'm feeling this because of my mom dying, my dad dying, my body getting gold.

And I, I could come up with a million reasons why I might be feeling that sorrow, but, and they could all be right. But you, this is where it gets really trippy is if we're talking about this fundamental state of heartbreak that is there in the way that your skin or bones are there and that there is in this society, one of the things you used to, you know, talk about is the need for the need people have for a reason. And so you, you, you have, because it might be so intolerable that there should be a fundamental kind of sorrow and existence, you would then want to

come up with a reason for the sorrow, because if you can come up for, with a reason for the sorrow, then you're beginning to build this wonderful defense mechanism against it. Cause now if you have a reason, you have a way to stop the sorrow. And you've basically tricked yourself into essentially, you know, basically what you've done is found a part of your cosmic soul land and that you find intolerable. And then you start building a wall, you know, a walled garden around it.

And then the next thing you know is you're telling yourself that it's not there all the time. And that's another part of the trick because to be in that state all the time is not conducive to a lot of people's idea of how you would live a productive life. And I think this is why Chogium Trump talks that calls this a warrior, a kind of warrior lineage that he teaches, because the warrior is not someone who's numb, the warrior is someone who's completely heartbroken and yet is

completely empowered by that and fully engaged in reality. And with that, never ending loneliness, which is when you look at it, Chogium Trump, I remember talking, he seems like the loneliest person you've ever seen in your life. Like he seems so alone. And he talks about that in his books that that's, yeah, that is the condition is loneliness. That is it.

That's one of the qualities is loneliness. It's none of this sounds very appealing, but you know what I mean? But it is just that thing you were saying that longing to go back to that state. That is that part of you when you're sick that kind of wants to be healthy again. Yeah, and you think about it's kind of a whispered about theme with parents like they want their children to rebel to a certain extent.

Like if they see that their kid is growing up and really not disagreeing with things very much, they start to get a little bit nervous because they want them to meet challenges, you know, and, and rise above them. And, and when you're looking at a child, especially these days when they just get a phone in their hand and you have seamless for food, Uber for transportation and tender for to get rid of their sexual impulse is like it's there's sort of like this look on everybody's face. It's like, well, why, how would this not be enough?

You know, like people are pretty placid in this certain way. There's you don't really see a lot of visible punk rebellion the way I feel like in the 80s, it was like a really tall Mohawk or something, you know, like the scene in the Star Trek movie where the where the guy gives Spock the finger and Spock gives them the Vulcan nerve pitch like that. That kind of like fuck you that kind of that visible sense like you don't see it as much more people are pretty stoked with this context that we've we've built. And it's it kind of I feel like parents get nervous that their kid might not

have enough of that artistic rebellion in them and want them, you know, that's a bit of a theme. I don't know if you guys probably haven't gotten that far along or anything, but it is a little nerve wrecking to see a kid be a little too complacent, a little too happy with the situation. Oh, my God, man, you got to come hang out with a toddler for a little bit, man. Like you it's like it's such a raw, savage being that is in the body of an like an angel.

It's like literally like the cutest thing you've ever seen in your life. You know what I mean? But this this thing is like is like primordial a thing. It's that song. Be careful. There's a baby in the house. Like you can't find a more honest thing. Like, you know what I mean?

Like the baby doesn't know that there's such a thing as like somebody else getting their feelings hurt. So like if in the morning, um, if, if his mom has gotten him out of bed in the morning out of his crib, uh, whichever parent gets him out of the crib that morning, that's what he wants to hang out with. So like I'll come into the living room and Aaron will be sitting with the baby giving him milk, a blanket over him, cuddling with him. And the baby will look at me and just start shaking his head.

No, no, don't fuck with me. Don't come near me. Like, don't mess this up. Go away. Like you are not wanted in this moment and it's so cool because it's so honest. It's like, yeah, I get it. I don't, I wouldn't want some hairy ass dude coming in like tickling you while you're in this nice cuddled state.

And like, so that rebellion you're talking about, man, that is human. Like that is what they, they rebel against everything and then they fall in love with everything. And then they're, you will watch in the, in a span of five minutes, a toddler will go through every human emotion from the most like extreme love to basic confusion to like rage, murderous rage to like despair. Like they will, they have real despair. Like they throw themselves back and land on the ground and look up at the sky.

Like they're being crucified just because you have like taken like the remote control out of their hand. You know what I mean? Like it's like, yeah. And you see, oh, oh my God, that's a human. That's what we're all going through underneath all those fucking walls. So the rebellion is happening. It's just the idea is like people want to imagine it's not happening.

This kid, man, like when you hear the certain kind of scream he'll do sometimes when it's not going right for him, it's like, that's in my DNA. That scream is in me every day. I just don't do it anymore, but it's in me for sure. That's howl of complete disagreement with all forces in the universe. And that, that is human too. Man, I know what you mean. Like you, you, you, it's easy to make an appraisal like that and think, damn, man,

we were, we had created a culture of, you know, almost religious rejection of what we thought to be the complacency you're talking about. And I mean, it was similar to like, we were like, we thought we were like Moses coming down the mountain, kicking over the idol, right? Like that's what we thought we were. And now we see what we imagine to be a kind of worshiping of the idol. And it's easy to think of it that way. But then again, man, don't you think that at least from this Buddhist model of things,

it doesn't matter the external ritual that seems to be happening. You know what I mean? Cause everybody's still underneath it all faced with these primordial, unconsolable aspects of being a soul in a material world. Yeah. No, I don't think, I don't think things are like actually calming down. I mean, really, when you look back at our childhoods, we, we lived in a time that was probably a lot more boring and placid in a lot of ways.

Like we were very innocent as a culture in the time of Reagan and Bill Clinton. I mean, there was so much we didn't know. And, and now there's so much tumble. So I'm not trying to say that so much, but, but in continuing what you're saying, do you feel a visceral obligation for that howl that you're talking about inside of you for that to be represented and encapsulized in the art you make? Do you feel like if it lacks that thing, it would be shit? Yeah.

Well, I would say I think, yes, I think if you don't acknowledge that you don't have to put it in, you know, like when we were working on the midnight gospel, we, we mapped out this world in like down, down to like the smallest part, knowing that that stuff would never even be spoken of in the show. And if it was, if there was anything that it was going to be like a mild nod to like a big, you know, lore that we had created for that world, but we'd never got, we realized we couldn't go into the lore too much because it is too distracting and basically wasn't the show we were making. But still, because we had that in there, I think it made the show have this resonance or something

that it feels, that world feels real because it's built on a, on an actual framework that was, we spent a month on. So I think similarly, that, that howl thing that where you maybe where I would start going wrong, where I would go wrong and have gone wrong is where I am feeling that howl and then trying to express a different world than what that, the one I'm actually experiencing because I'm afraid to bum people out or I want, I have the idea that if I do not express that in some way, or if I've even gotten to the point of not acknowledging it, that this makes it go away. And then that's superstition.

And then that's, you know, that's what you meant by that's, that's what he meant by telling you to like that, that that is the source, the source that, that like is your fire and your fuel is, is that feeling with the pine needles, right? That's what you're trying to say. Yeah, I think so. I think, I don't think that I think actually the where, and I get not, this could just, at this point, I'm like, arguing something that I don't understand enough to argue about. So, or not even arguing, trying to talk about this thing, which is like, no, this is the, this is maybe the reason for the sorrow.

The sorrow is not a, there is no place. And so there's sorrow. So it's like, there's no place. Now it's like, there's this sorrow that's coming from this sort of, you know, as a quality of, of, of our sort of predicament here, as a quality of trying to be a thing. You know, you're trying to be a thing. You're exerting yourself into the world for this very temporary amount of time. You've put all this energy into this incredible project.

And by the time you even get to the point where you're realizing that the whole project itself was just, and was the project was not to exert itself into the world. The project was to try to evade that pine needle spot, the sorrow spot. By the time you get there, your brain is already, you're already becoming stupid. Your memories all fucked up. You're literally, you are an old, you have an old brain. And by then it's like, you know, it's, so it's even more sorrow than, and then all that's left is the sorrow. And then somewhere in there, you realize that's your heart.

And the sorrow is pretty beautiful. Yeah, it seems interesting that in answering my question, you're like, you know, you're, you're talking about mapping out the midnight gospel. Universe. And it appears as though, because you guys are such a good team, I think that it came in some ways, let's say it kind of came easy to you to integrate the howl. But like, that's because you guys have, have been working on this, this super highway between you and your articulation and other people and bringing out what is you for years and years and years. And when you get to a really, really good spot, like, if you're making a great record, you know, Dark Star of the Moon or whatever,

it's, it's when you get to that place where you, you have worked so hard that at that point you don't need to try very hard. But the road to that path is so, so long when it becomes kind of an effortless thing to integrate something that is quite painful in some ways. But you're so familiar with it now, and it just breathes right out of you. And, and, you know, you see it as the truth. But you roll back the tape to when you're a kid. And a lot of kids have that look in their eye like, I don't know what I want to do. I don't know what I have to say. And it's crazy to me now that we are here at this place where you can just roll right out of you and you don't have to look for it.

It's just right there. Exactly like you're saying, you know, you're not having to look for it. You're not having to try. You've come to a place where it just is you and you can just hold out your hands and it rolls off your tongue, you know. Man, you, that, yeah, that place, you know, the, this is the craziest thing is, you know, you, I guess that is the thing that starts happening. And then also you realize how weirdly insignificant that is. And then, you know what I mean? Like you start realizing, especially now this damn pandemic.

It's like, this is, this is such a mind fuck because, and this is going to be the equalizer. I mean, for sure. If you're, I think your assessment is pretty accurate. Your assessment of things. If this is like the universal, which is that we have found some kind of digital digitally induced complacency, all these outlets porn, the touch of you can get any porn you want. You can connect, you can, you know, basically fuck people digitally. Now you meet, you don't have to go to a bar anymore to meet people. I can't even imagine how many people are having the weirdest fucking pandemic zoom sex.

Like, you know, there's some creep at zoom, you know, like whoever's working at zoom, if you think gets private, you know, there's just people at zoom that just sit and are like watching people shove bananas up their assholes while they have phones. Greatest show on earth. There's all these like, whoever is running zoom is just like laughing and disgusted at humanity. Probably whoever's running zoom right now has like God's view of humanity is just like, you know what I mean, probably so like simultaneously moved and disgusted. They just don't know what to do. They're probably thinking about. They're probably thinking about like canceling zoom. It's like staring into the arc of the Covenant.

But like, this is like a super high rate of suicide among the zoom observers. They're all going blind. They're like, they're all going blind. They're all babbling like they've been looking at the necronomicon. They're saying that it's ancient. It's old. It's new. It's old.

It's back. He's come again. Watch another banana in an ass. The thing is like for all of us, but I mean, you know, for all of us, no matter what, this is where we're all green horns because, you know, your, your grandparents maybe would say creepy shit to you every once in a while about how they stored up potatoes. You know, some weird thing like that. Or they'd be like, don't waste a potato. You never know when you'll be starving. And you're like, what are you even talking about?

We're never going to starve grandma. What do you mean? You know, these are, you know, people who are new, someone who's probably in an air raid where bombs were falling on their city. You know, and in the West, we've been so privileged that that isn't our experience. You know, in general, maybe some bombings, some shootings, some random outbursts of the most horrific violence ever. But nothing like the concerted violence of World War II. You know, so then all of a sudden history really, you know, how many times do we hear on the news? We're part of history now.

The impeachment. We're part of history. Oh, history comes again. You know what I mean? And it's like, no, now this is history for real. And now we're all being gobbled up by history. We're all stuck in our fucking houses. People are killing themselves left and right.

And like every single kid who has been, who had achieved some glorious glow, I mean it. I don't mean in a condescending way, some glorious kind of like utopian convergence with it. You know, the internet suddenly is experiencing this pause, so to speak, in that or the real reality of like, oh, 100,000 people have died. So far. More than that, you know, more will die. And you can't go outside without wearing a mask. We don't know when the clubs are opening up again. We don't know when the bars are opening up again.

We don't know how long they'll stay open. We don't know if this will ever go away. We don't know if it'll mutate. And by the way, there's going to be more of it. And do you really think in a world where there are radical terrorists, that people aren't collecting this shit? You know, like you really think people don't have vials of it, just sitting on their fucking desk. I'm not even talking about some like KGB operatives or some kind of crazy state run terrorists. I'm just talking about your day to day loon goes down to a, you know, urgent care, gets in the dumpster, grabs some medical waste, figures out a way to get that fucking medical waste in some kind of vial

and just pops it in their freezer when they want to have fun in a few years. It's like, we're looking at a, like everyone's now experiencing the future, you know, which is not going to be okay until we figure out how to solve some pretty big problems. So I don't know, man. I think in that way, we could probably look forward, even though what I just said sounds so dire and horrific. I think we could probably look forward to some great music over the next few years. I like to think that this situation punishes you for some of the bad decisions you've made and rewards you for a lot of the good ones you've made. You know, you get frozen in this situation and hopefully you're looking at your child who you love and you're like, I'm so glad I'm here with you in this situation. You know, like I narrowly escaped New York and I'm sitting in the woods in North Carolina and I just feel like things worked out for me.

Yeah. I am here. I've been set up with a job that I can do by myself out here and things landed right. You know, it's not going to land right for everybody, but I like to believe that like it does reward you for the things you set up for yourself, but it punishes you for like the bad compromises that didn't quite work out. You know? Yes. Yeah, man. There's a lot of like bizarre forms of justice and injustice happening right now that, you know, a lot of like leveling is happening right now.

I mean, it's like to me, it's like, oh my God, like just think of the all the people who with all their prosperity or whatever, it's like, okay, great. You have some mansion or whatever and you have your own chef and you're eating great food or whatever, but all the restaurants are closed in New York and LA. You know what I mean? Like you can't really fly safely. There's nowhere to like, I don't care who the fuck you are. And especially if you're somebody who's like incredibly ambitious and you're one of those poor souls out there who has somehow managed to get incredibly wealthy. Not because it's a byproduct of your love of some art form or some craft or some economic thing that you're into or your store or whatever. But just because you were one of those people who thought it would be wonderful to be incredibly wealthy.

And that's all you wanted was some wealth and some weird kind of fame from that wealth. And but there wasn't an art. There wasn't all you liked was making the money. You know what I mean? Like that kind of weird thing that is a that's a type of person. But the reason you like to make all that money is because you are so into fucking, you know, like you love to eat and fuck. And you love to like go out to clubs and bars and fuck and eat. But all of a sudden none of that shit matters anymore.

It's like for a second you've been put on the bench because you're like, what are you going to do, man? How many are you going to fly girls into your mansion, your pandemic mansion, even that's going to seem fucking weird. You know what I mean? Like that like what everyone's still going to be weirded out and freaked out and more than likely you're ate up with paranoia. You know, and I think that that's a silver lining is that I think a lot of kids and well, all of us hopefully, you know, everything's been put in perspective. So you you see the bullshit for what it is and life online, like Facebook humble brags and all that stuff. It looks so crazy now, like it looks so inane. And so it's magnified the fact that that world that kind of hustle that we're usually Monday through Friday really involved in is bizarrely stupid.

And so I think there will be a good effect from that. Unfortunately, there are a bunch of people out there, the same old like usual suspects that have just their voices even louder now like in there. And they're babbling on about their opinions about like the greatest films of 1988 or something. Like some some people think this is an occasion to grandstand and just talk more, which is insane to me. But I think most kids I think most kids are seeing that like the normal race is a silly, silly thing. And I think that something good, a kind of piece could radiate out from this kind of like the environment cleaning itself up a little bit. But oh yeah, I do think I think we're skipping over one of the more interesting aspects of development in like and this Howl thing.

I love this idea, man, that like, you know, maybe it takes sometimes it takes a really close friend to tell you like, you've done an amazing thing. You've done a great job doing this. You never get to really hear a lot of that the sort of innate competition between even very close friends is so corrosive and weird. And I don't I don't understand it because any adult should be able to talk to it. Another adult they they love or respect and say, I'm really proud of you for, you know, having a family or do or, you know, doing the things that that I think you did really, really well. And there's something amazing about the fact that, you know, you have traveled that very long journey and you've gotten to a place where you can. Speak and have it make sense and you have a, you know, a message and we both I mean we both have this kind of. It's an opportunity it's a window of expression that we have to honor.

And I think it's just there's something about the fact that it comes with a kind of letting go that you let these kind of acidic realities and everything sort of cauldron into your style. You know that your style is is this kind of it's the it's all this former pain that comes down into this MIDI keyboard sound. It's all of that and all of the ways you've been burned. It's and it's such a good thing and I like that. I really like the fact that you immediately without hesitation said that no, you probably want a kid to go play with the dark side, because there's a way out the other side, you know, there's sort of like this common notion that there isn't. And there's a lot of tragic examples that you can see all over the world and on documentaries of people who get hung up in the course of addiction or something you know that that make it seem like yeah the dark side offers no no way out.

But I think that in having a child like like you were sort of saying you're sort of you're sort of letting go into the the trust or the faith of this positive force of life that he he's going to be fine. You know, he's going to be the who he is, and that is a certain destiny a sort of peace with destiny, you know, and there's a sense of like sort of fear out there that you shouldn't follow your true path you should tame yourself you should whip yourself into a an acceptable shape and I think in the world of entertainment and the things we ingest you can see that winning most of the time. Like the world of entertainment doesn't really get midnight gospel all that often you know what I mean like it comes along and people are like wow that's not the normal programming. And I think that there's there's a way in which I need to say to you like look at look at what you've done look at what's happened to you. Look, it's totally an amazing long, long journey. Well you started it here. Think about that.

How about that? You want to talk about corrosive jealousy. Folks listening I ran into this son of a mother. I ran into you this fucking like, you know, you were you are I'm but like to run into an email when you're in college is like pretty brutal. You know where you're like, you know what I mean you're like big claim to fame is maybe that you love LSD. And then suddenly you meet this person who's like a wizard sitting in his dorm room, making beautiful not not just making music like anyone but making beautiful music, and then also reading and absorbing this like hardcore philosophy. And then in that you were we were having these incredible conversations that were wounding me. There's no other way to put it man it was just like it hurt.

It was too much and like you were one of my first friends who would like when I got my heart all broken I called you all broken hearted. You were one of my first friends who was compassionate enough to not give me some bullshit thing which is what a lot of people do. You know what I mean when someone's hurt bad is they try to give some bullshit thing. You were the one of you know I mean you did the thing where you were like let me be in pain. They're what you know I mean you weren't trying to heal it or anything. And then and on from the outside sometimes that those interactions could seem like cold but they're the most loving thing you can do if someone's experiencing the heartbreak we were talking about up front. Let them have it don't try to stop it my God let them have it how lucky you are to get that feeling and especially when you're that young somehow you knew all this shit before you should have. You know you're younger than me you were like this kid who like that's why we loved Hesse while you're reading it so much because we felt like we were in we were characters in one of those books meeting each other.

And it was like so badass and so like romantic and so like powerful that like you know it like so many like of the things you introduce me to like burnt me in the best way and then challenge me and then you just sort of like learn you from that. That's you know that's that getting knocked off course thing we talk about sometimes getting derailed in the best way possible. And like if you love someone this then you have to let them get derailed and like you know this is when. In one of the last one of the Ram Dass retreats we were like he was it was in Ohio so he was like Skyping in and I asked him I'm about to have a I'm about what I'm going to have my son. I said something like what should I do with my son I don't know it's out there the recording my son is coming or what and he said this thing of like first of all. He's a soul not your son that's a role that you're giving him you know and you're taking on the role of being the father and we must we have to do that. Not to say you have to go all fucking hippie like I'm not a dad man we're just two souls interacting in space and time baby. No you got to keep them safe and feed them and have a structure and teach them boundaries but you also have to let them be as they are and that's not going to be fun if your egos all invested in them being a musician because like in the beginning I would sit him in front of the Mogue and he would play on the Mogue and just like I was like oh shit maybe we got a little musician or something.

And then but you know now you know what he's into basketball loves it walking down the street will point to basketball hoops and go Bob back up Bob Bob. Loves it you know what I mean and so I'm trying to learn basketball you know what I mean because I want to. If he's one whatever he's going to be into that's what I'm going to like support him in right that to me is like a good friend a good parent a good boyfriend girlfriend husband whatever the fuck. It's like yeah man in the dark part of things Jesus Christ. Can you imagine what a demon you would be if you kept a person from going into that spot which brings us to the whole argument about the Garden of Eden being one of the most cruel abominable fucked up experiments ever by a God which is like you're going to take two sentient beings and tell them not to eat a fruit. You know I could like I can promise you I know exactly where my toddler is going to go in the morning. It's going to be towards the empty glass of wine on the on the desk on the table that he can reach every time there's not going to be a hesitate he's going to zip right to it and try and shit and looking at me shaking his head. You know like like no this is not I know I'm not supposed to do it and then he's going to go for it because that's in them.

You know so that and think of the Garden of Eden think of that man like you're apparently created these beings you know them backwards and forwards and then you were going to imagine you could keep them from eating a fucking fruit. Come on. That to me is like really compute on from but it only computes if that being is either completely sadistic or a liar or all of the above or some other benevolent force that were too low lead that we can't even understand which kind of makes it a relevant meaning there are whole systems of ethics morality. Irrationality are all wrong anyway meaning that the thing is sadistic again because it just is like sort of allowing us to go off on our own little track of idiocy until we die. So you know what I mean like to me yes thank you for saying that I really appreciate it because you've been one of my great influences and yeah also like fuck man Jesus if we try to get out of the dark side. God damn we've got no Star Wars. We've got nothing. What do we have.

Well when you say that stuff I one thing I've said it a million times but I think it's probably worth going back into is that when in the Damien respect we're both I think we're both reading Damien I don't know if that was a coincidence or if if you gave me your copy or I give you my copy but but the one thing I feel like he says something like this in that book but the one thing that drew me to you from across campus and and probably some somewhat likewise is not. I didn't see a person across the campus in the crowd of people that looked like a winner or was like wildly attractive and I had to see their. You know secret or get near them or something I saw someone who was like who I identified as like wounded and I saw someone who was hurt and to me that was it felt so intriguing. You know I just I thought that was so interesting that I could feel that from so far away. And like magnets you know you've told the story before when we first met and stuff but but like magnets I think we just wanted we couldn't keep away from each other. You know we wanted to see what what is that about like what's wrong with that. But and not I mean I mean in an underdog a true celebration of the underdog way you know it's it's it's something that I think that I think about people like Bob Dylan and obviously Lou Barlow but they didn't look like James Dean.

You know what I mean that was a big part of the shift of Bob Dylan was that he didn't look like a rock star when he arrived in New York at all. And when he developed into his farm which like you at the midnight gospel it took him a long time to become the thing that people saw eventually in front of the microphone with the black shades and the frizzy hair and the black coat. And looking so incredibly cool but like once he got there he transformed the way men and women saw an attractive person. And I not many people not many documentaries are going to really go into that but like the the rise of the underdog and the transmogrification of what the winner really is. It's a fascinating thing and for me to see you across this crowd and to see someone who is hurt and be drawn towards that hurt and see something beautiful in it is a much more powerful kind of love than you know seeing someone dunk and just wanting his autograph or something. Yeah. Yeah. Although I will say basketball is basketball is a very beautiful thing and I think your son is lucky to like it. I love basketball.

Really. Yeah. I think I think it's it's totally one of the most beautiful sports. I love everything about Uncle Emo. Uncle Emo. He's going to need you man because let me tell you to be born. I'll tell you this to be born in the world with a karmic love of basketball and I'm your dad. Listen. It's not like everything about it is just the nature of the movement of basketball. It's one of it's one of the most free kind of Zen sports. It's very simple but it's very fast but it feels very very good and you there's payoff and everything you do. It's very very quick payoff. It feels very very good. See this is what's happened is he's got this athletic side because Aaron is athletic. Her dad is athletic.

Man. I'm sorry. No offense to the trust lineage but we don't have a lot of athletes on our team genetically. So like you know what I mean the kids like basically already flipping and stuff you know what I mean we're dealing with like this like break. He's like very brave athletic and like anyway the thing is like I'm really having to adjust man because like I'm I'm putting balm on my back every night. Throwing him up in the air. My back is hurting. I don't know what's going to happen. He's going to need you email because we have to go to basketball games. You know what I'll just start but what we'll watch bad. I don't mean to like bore. I'm sorry y'all. I'm a dad. No no no no like athleticism is a major advantage in life. I mean like just putting his fingers on that mode. He's got this huge head start because he is in tune with his body and how to use his body. And a lot of people don't understand the way that translates to like when you see me play drums and you say like what are you what is going on up there.

I'm pretty much just still skateboarding. You know I'm still just I grew up in an athletic manner. So like for me I'm not really thinking about what I'm doing which is a huge advantage. Like it's a great thing for him to be in tune with his body as early as possible. And I'm not saying the Trussell lineage is a shameful one. But you know that's part of like your story. Can you imagine if I was that kind of parent or just you know son you're cursed. Our lineage has been shamed by many of Trussell. I know you will not redeem us. Oh man. Yeah man. Yeah basketball. Aaron loves basketball. I just have to like you know what I just have to have to maybe I need to take like a big dose of acid and watch basketball. So I can really like have that revelatory experience. So you know what I mean. So I could finally connect to a sport because the kid it's like you should hear man. Like I put basketball on just on YouTube. You know just look up basketball find some kind of basketball play it and let you.

He goes. Oh man. What the fuck man. You interviewed me for my own podcast which I loved. Thank you. But what what. Tell me what is happening right now. You said you were working on an album. Are you allowed to talk about that at all or what's going on over there man. You're in Chapel Hill right now. Yeah I got I got I got stuck in the middle of things and I I ended up writing way way way too much music. It's funny that there's a problem but but I wrote so much that I have to switch out of you know I'm not allowed to pick up a guitar really because eventually if you have too much music you have to switch hats and you have to be the mixing engineer. And yeah that's like you know it's a strange thing it's like those phases of the of making the show that probably weren't super fun. Do you remember those places. Absolutely I do. I was trying to tell the band one day I was I think I was talking to Grail sounds like you know the whole saying like you know you got to put your toys away after you play before you can like pull them out again and you know it's just a basic fact of life.

And they were all just like what I've never heard that saying. Is that is that not a saying. I mean you got to like put your toys away. Oh yeah I mean how does it go when we're cleaning up when they were clean up with the kid we go we have a song the Aaron taught me that we sing which goes clean up clean up everybody everywhere clean up clean up everybody do your share. And then you like clean up. I'm stuck in the clean up phase and I'm going to be stuck here for a while because I made I made something like five or six records and one of those would be the one that we made and it's my responsibility of an obligation to get back to each of these things. Yes. Because they're you know they deserve attention and then I I just get fractured because there's too many different deadlines and I know it's hard to explain to people because you're supposed to be like in a world where nothing's happening but I'm I mean I'm a worse off.

I have too much to do. Sorry man I didn't mean to cut you off. Go ahead. I was I'm sorry I got so inspired when you mentioned our album. I've you know I have been really devoting myself to learning production right now just because I love it. And I suck at it. But if you were to send me the stems that you wanted to work with I could probably also I think I've got a little believe it a little better singing. So I think like I could actually do help.

Anyway that's a conversation off the podcast. No no you're getting into EQing and you're getting into the art of like mixing and stuff. Oh yeah man. And like but like I'll tell you know I was talking to Joe Wong not to brag. And he he's so cool but you know I was telling him man I'm just like trying to tune my studio in and like trying to understand signal flow and all that stuff you know like. I liked what he said which is like just remember the more time you spend doing that stuff. And I'm sorry Joe if you're listening because I'm just not quoting you exactly you said what you said was more brilliant and simple. Like but basically he says that anytime you're spending producing you're not making stuff.

You know you're you're you're working on producing and he's right that's the cleanup phase. And right you know what I mean but that being said holy shit there's such a bizarre narcotic delight in that wouldn't you say there's something in it that's so. Viscerally pleasurable about learning all that stuff. Oh man I think I think that's where I really got good at what I do in a way but but you know back in the 90s when when you're talking about. Me in my dorm room the whole low five movement was there was an ethic where you were supposed to essentially. Write and record your song in sort of under maybe two hours or less I mean if you spend any more time on it it was like a really idiotic blustery idea in theory you were sort of a bit more like. It was like a street mentality right where you just took a picture of yourself and if you were attractive or you were an ugly person bam that was revealed you know what I mean yeah. And so spiritually and so there was something so beautiful about it and it fit the technology of the time you know it fit the beauty of the four track the immediacy of touching.

The small thing that in spending really no money I mean it's. Yeah what was that four track you had you remember that thing do you still have that was so cool that thing was so magical it was like had glass glass it was glass. Oh the rack four track that's a pretty rare one yeah. That thing was fucking cool man you had like a little artifacts there so ununderstandable whatever the fuck you were doing with that you're always mixing something down. I did this day I still bet don't know what that means. I was like yeah I think the through line is that is like once I got into the art of trying to like capture atmosphere because I realized pretty quick you know I'm never going to sound like my heroes and less. I take millions of pictures because somewhere in there I'm going to have a really good one and that particular picture usually ended up being the one that just had the most atmosphere and the song of course had to be special. When you say pictures you mean re recordings of the song over and over again.

Sometimes but not not even that so much as just writing thousands of songs right yeah yeah you know sometimes my girlfriend would say at the time like you know I think you've written this one in a better way it was like one of her better compliments. She was like you've you've said this better or something yeah when my song wasn't great which I thought was smart to say it that way but. I think that you know what once it with lo-fi specifically you were you were examining something about the picture being taken that was kind of ineffable you know something that was like when a picture is mysterious. Meaning you know it might not have a traditional focal point and you're kind of you're examining things but you can't quite wrap your head around what's so seductive about the combination of colors. And it just draws you in immediately but then and over time like there's something about it that atmosphere really sells you and part of it people describe it different ways but part of it is that. You're playing a little bit of a guessing game like who is this person and how did this happen and the fact that you kind of can't figure out. Exactly every element you know it's not just like oh they bought this they plugged into that and they plugged into that the fact that you can't really identify how this even occurred. And especially if it's a it's a particularly naive moment a moment that was captured before the person even knew what they were going through.

Hence the reason why you would do it as fast as you could before you became conscious you know you. Recording a character right the recording a character and then from there after I kind of got addicted and seduced into that ritual that religion. I started to have to get into the art of repairing the recording and when you get into the art of repairing the recording because there's always something wrong with it in lo-fi. That was the bridge to where I am now which is the bridge that you're walking on which is you use logic to kind of make the thing sound better but you don't really want to necessarily pervert the original instinct you just want to make it you want to bring it to people in its best form. So I come from from a school of immediacy and improv but then I like when I change hats to the thing you're talking about now the cleanup era. I like I turn into a different person and that person judges what the performer did ruthlessly and I'll just get rid of anything or destroy I have no loyalty. So that reparation thing can last forever and it's very dangerous because it depends where I set my standards you know and what bothers me and if something's bothering me that other people can't hear it's it can take a hold on me and it's

I've become more OCD I never was like that ever before but the more you know the more you I'm not going to say it gets worse but the more you know the more complicated the machinery that you're using the more complicated your brain activity is and analyzing different EQ spectrums the more it just becomes a fucking huge mess you know whereas the simple take the punk take that I used to come from it was just it was such an easier way of approaching things but these days I feel like you know making Star Wars is like you said is like it's legendarily it was the most miserable time of all of their lives you know they said it was just making it was terrible they didn't want to do it again because it's so hard to make something that good with so many working parts you know so yeah it affects you in a certain way but making it is sometimes a kind of torture you know and you can see why some people some hemming ways or whatever slow down eventually because it's just such a lumbering process you know it's nightmarish sometimes like in lumbering is just the right word for it and also it's like you have been taught through movies and this version of it is so ridiculously quick like that stupid ass movie where the guy goes into the club and here's that lady singing and then they're in like a he's a famous country singer and then they're in this parking lot and he and this is Lady Gaga by the way playing the part of this thing. Why did you watch that? Dude have you watched it?

No. What's it called? It's called like storybook parking lot or it's got some dumb name like you know I can't remember the name of it like like story time I don't remember it's story time windows or such a stupid name but like it like so Lady Gaga's in the parking lot. And she gotta watch it dude. Lady Gaga stands up and they're drinking in a parking lot. She's seeing some fucking song whatever and he literally is like what he's just within like two minutes she's on stage in front of his ravenous crowd just killing it on the mic and then like you know for six minutes later she's winning Grammys. You know what I mean? It's like the most idiotic articulation of the process that you've ever seen which is why when you get into the nuts and bolts of the thing and you realize oh my god this is no different than someone building a house digging ditches and running lines and cables.

There's nothing romantic about this at all. It's work. It's boring. It's frustrating. And then at the other side of it you get this thing where people listen to it and it sounds so effortless and good that they actually will say like man this song sucks. I've done that. You know like you're listening to like a song and you're hearing you know something that some engineer has put. Like god only knows how many hours into it.

The synth the vocals the 808 whatever. It's all mixing perfectly together. You can listen to any thread of that song. You know what I'm talking about? Like nothing's muddled. Everything's clear as a bell. So you're saying I should go over to Netflix right now and type in storybook parking lot. It's called a beautiful name.

It's called no it's like story time playbook. I can't remember what it's called. You know what I'm talking about Lady Gaga. Look it up. It's called let me see this fucking thing. It's called Lady Gaga. Storybook parking lot. Country singer.

I mean the song was on the radio for the longest time. It's called Bradley Cooper was in it. I don't know why it's called a star is born. I'm an adult. It just shows you my brain. It's just like a vegetable at this point. It like turned a star is born in this story. I would have been rad though that people you know might be Googling this for years looking

for storybook parking lot though. Do you remember that? Anyway let's go ahead. I'm sorry. I just I agree with you. I think I feel like part of my job is to you know I'm lucky because because I was born to see you out of a fucking crowd and think I'm attracted to his underdog you know frequency. I'm lucky that that I care so much about that because if I didn't I might be one of those

glazed over kids that just floated into the world and just you never heard from them again you know and they just kind of you know washed windows or something. Who knows what would have happened to me man. That's where you get lucky is like someone like you you know you get lucky. That does happen you know where you're just like in this kind of like numbed out state of whatever it is but you are just probably just gonna like oh probably end up who knows what you just can't say what's gonna happen and then suddenly you make that you have this collision which is like one of the name what Mirabai Bush wrote this book with Ram Dass

I think it was the last book you wrote about dying walking each other home and in the beginning of it she's talking about Neem Karoli Baba and she said he had all these names but one of the names they named him after like a jaguar that the type of or a tiger that lived out there that was one of his names because by the time you know you realized he was pouncing on you it was way too late you know what I mean like there wasn't anything you could do like if you crossed into his force field or whatever you were done like you were you're whatever you thought your life was gonna be was going to be completely derailed by that and I think that that is something you did for me and that to me is like something that

yeah thank God you did like you were drawn to some kind of underdog thing in me because you know I think generally that underdog thing is gonna just from a lot of for many people sadly it just keeps them rejected perpetually you know or you know and it can lead to very dark very dark lives very dark paths that don't have some kind that don't have a cycle to it you know God that we need to embrace the underdog so much more huh it's satanic in this dimension how well we do that I mean it you know that I was I was sort of trained by my own guru and I think man the fact that I was 16 when I met him was so so incredibly important because when you're 16 you're not sure how you want to walk yet you know or

like how you want to eat your fucking food or like you know you're like right in that period where you're like I mean I'm sure you're in some ways fully formed but but I just remember distinctly studying this person that I met and you know I guess I guess you'd say I was incredibly lucky especially at this time in my life though because I would watch the way they would talk and what they didn't say which is a huge cliche but God when you really come into contact with the genius like what they don't say and what they won't say like you ask them direct questions all the time because you're a kid you're like what about this what about this and the way they will kind of push you away the particular

method of it is so seductive and you watch every little thing they do seriously how their feet touch the ground and the rhythm of how their feet swing when it comes back down to the ground after they lift it up and you're like this person is fucking amazing yeah how do they do it how do they have this much style you know and like that's a thing is like not a lot of people talk about style I don't even know what they think it means but man when I was 16 I got to see the most stylish person on earth you know and so when I talk now and when I maybe hesitate or when I walk they're inside of me you know forever and like you know I was just passing you some of that that feeling or something but it's such a killer

fucking age to meet someone like that yeah just like what we're talking about with us you know but it's such an important age because you're absorbing everything and when you meet someone later you know even kids in their 20s in Portland man I was like they're the biggest fucking know it all like they just weren't absorbing anything they refused to absorb anything because they knew everything and yeah something so disappointing and so sad about that environment which is probably not you know it's probably related to why I had to leave eventually or something but there's there's a black cloud on people there that's it's it's almost unnoticeable but if you can find it it's like there's something suffocating the soul

there but that's just my impression but it is a kind of morbid depression that lurks in the in the basements in the mold but like and I'm that's not even an overt judgment it's just an emotional feeling that I've heard from a lot of people but I just that was a big difference for me and it was my own personal difference because when I lived here and I was out in the out in the sunshine and I was like growing up I would hit the pavement like I'd go out my front door and I would hit the sidewalk and like the lightning bugs and the fucking crickets just the feeling of the world being a buzz with like total magic that age that feeling that that was the most intense incredible feeling and then just fast forward a few more years and

that was gone for me I just I didn't feel it anymore and and I just feel like if that that's got to be a major valuation that I have to at least try to get back to that feeling but man that do you remember that fucking feeling in college when we would just walk outside and get the feeling of the wind hitting your skin there was like a horror movie howl in the sky and it felt so fucking good yeah yeah I know exactly what you're talking about man and this is like yeah this everyone goes through that damn abyss in between those two places because it come you it that I it is completely accessible and and and then I think a big reason it goes away is a good reason because god damn it it's heartbreaking and it's like you just don't want

that heartbreak feeling man and you know I it's a high price to pay I can't blame anybody for imagining that it's no longer accessible or not that you're doing that but it's like man I'm telling you I got this kid I sit on the trampoline with him and just get my fucking heartbroken man I just sit there the kid is like what do I do I've you know I've started like chopping the little fake basketballs we have on the trampoline and I go hi yeah and he will he started doing that now so he will go hi yeah hi yeah and man it just shatters you you I can't even explain it shatters you or like he what did he do like the first time he said dad he talk about style the first time he said dad he like leans into my ear and

goes da like he whispered it in my ear da and it was just like boy who are you what are you where do you come from who are you how did you do that you're not supposed to know how to do that and like that thing you're talking about man that style that thing you're talking about oh my god it's Odin right like you read about Odin and he would that was one of the crazy one of his games is he would just go into the world is like and nobody would know he was there it was the all father and he was just walking around like some mucky mucky beggar or like in the freaking store Tibetan Buddhism you hear about these different saints in the mishap lineage that Chodium Trump is in these people are like a mess like they're

like profoundly like like those I can't remember which one it is Marpa I think is his name but I could be completely confused about that for all the Buddhist people out there my apologies I think it's Marpa I can't remember but you know they're always looking for the great teacher which is your first mistake and one of these people has heard that out you know in this village there's this enlightened being and he goes out into the village and he asks like if you heard of this being I think it's Marpa could be wrong and one of the people he asks is like you mean the homeless dude by the river the drunk yeah he's here he's really enlightened you know like completely sarcastic that's one of the great saints in

this lineage of Buddhism and you know he goes down to this guy who's like laying by the river there's like dogs everywhere and the first thing he tells me to do is like there's a wedding party happening go steal their food I'm hungry go bring me their food I'm hungry so he has some wedding party to try to steal soup and he gets his fucking ass kicked at the wedding party he comes he's all broke and he's like I couldn't I was like they beat me and he's like go back and get the fucking soup and he like has to like the final transmission when he gave him the great transmission of the Dharma was he took his shoe off and slapped him in the face with it that was like the last thing he said to him but you know

what I mean it's like when you realize that like all this time you've been looking for that thing and the people wearing the clothes that you think are the garments of the high priest of the religion you imagine existed and you've just been barking up the wrong fucking tree and the whole and even if you wanted to find them you couldn't anyway because they're way ahead of you already in that regard you know what I mean whoa that's a decimating realization to have isn't it because like code you want to imagine you're the fisherman yeah I think that's one problem with with learning music is that the student tends to kind of take this literal approach they're like okay so Keith Richards played

this particular kind of guitar and this and you hold your hands like this and you look like this and you you know move like this and there's a breaking point when you want to be an artist where like you're following your heroes you're memorizing everything about them and then at some point hopefully the train derails but you you literally lose the plot for some reason yeah but then you realize you kind of stand up and you realize it's going to be this is part of the plan like this is perfect like I don't need to study someone how they did something because now I've already I you know I use their training wheels but now I've got my own thing that's working for me I'm noticing things that are

working yeah and then by the time you know you finish with your thing you might show it to your hero and they'll go God you did that so much better than I did and you'll never absorb that probably but there's something about their style that drew you you gravitated towards you the way somebody just lifts off a guitar note with this kind of swagger and this kind of confidence it's a metaphor for so many things just the way that kid that I saw was walking and swinging his legs to the side it's just there's something about it but then in that moment that you realize you don't have to imitate that thing to a T it's not really in the details it's the spirit and then you see the spirit and you that's

like the big breakaway moment where you say to yourself I have my own thing you know and that's the that's like the ultimate fire gets lit there but the fact that it's so confusing because when you first start out and you're looking at these great great you know articulators it does appear to be in the details because it's like exactly what they're doing is so seductive you know so you get lost and you start to try to people are so obsessed with mimicking they don't see the lower layers of what they're actually hearing and what's actually the psychedelic effect of what they're experiencing you have to be paid attuned to that you know not just like eventually the details become almost uninteresting because

you know the spirit and you know how to conjure it but by then I mean you're a practitioner to you know and if you want to give yourself to it you know that you will arrive there because you know of your true addiction your lust for this ritual that is in you and if you have it you're going to be fine because you you have the lust like the spiritual thing that that wants to get to God or wants to get to basically you you want to fulfill your destiny you know you don't want to deny it and I think there's something to be said for the fact that you know you went from this kid that I saw across campus to now you know you you are you are a sage for for another person because you have that style you know

you have your own techniques and you know how they work why they work you know you've become a master of them so I think that's that's a really powerful thing we take for granted probably being in a I don't know this adult form that we're supposedly in now man I'll tell you thank you for saying that that makes me feel empowered and I'll tell you the what's cool is shit man you know I'm only 63 I've still got at least 20 years but still you know the thing is it's like fuck man have you seen Jodorowsky's dune no but I just got the oh yeah the documentary yeah yeah yeah oh my god oh my god that thing changed my life man I watched it so funny the soundtrack just arrived at my house today no way man that's cool he is

such a fucking genius man but I was like loving him man I'm well I felt I was sitting there watching him and like my god I'm like what a master and and like you know like you know you're watching a person like that and you're like they're answering all these questions he's answering all my quiet there's so many questions I dad that I forgot I had and he's like seeing they're answering them or explain he's saying things like something on the lines of like if they if they if they let you do it great if they don't let you do it great you're like oh god I fucking love you man like that spirit is so powerful in it man and and in him and and that's true yeah that thing right there that's that to me is the spark

and like I don't I would love to think I do I do have a method I think to some degree when it comes to making stuff I do and I and I do kind of feel comfortable with it now but damn man don't you kind of feel like you're just getting started or something like you know like there's not enough years you need another lifetime we need double lifetimes or something to really experiment with the stuff that we're talking about here that's true I know I think that that's sort of like how people say like that's the best problem to have or something that's probably just the feeling of maintaining your hunger you know I always thought it was so great that Willie Nelson has this tape called The Hungry Years you know like you

sort of know from the the tapes cover like oh this is going to be like the best songs because he's just fucking starving and he's got to make his way through the world but like the fact that you can say that sort of the later stages of your method methodological journey that you're you're still that hungry that you're still that enthusiastic that things you you're learning still all the time that is where you want to be you want to feel like you are actively learning so much and need to learn so much more so there's nothing bad about that yeah man right damn email I love you man I love these conversations we got to have more of them we have got to get to work on that album and yeah we we got to do

it when you have time I know you're you're up to your neck in this but if there's any way I can help with it let me know and I do have something I want to tell you when you finish recording but will you please tell people where they might find you I would just go to the the Holy Son's Instagram or the email Amos Facebook thing and I'm just announcing shit weekly there all the time trying to get these deadlines out the way yeah get them out get them out thank you email howdy Krishna that was email Amos everybody all the links you need to find email will be at dunkartrussell.com a big thank you to ExpressVPN for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH and much thanks to you for listening stay safe out there

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