Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 478: John Forté

Episode Date: December 4, 2021

John Forté, musical genius who you already know, joins the DTFH! Click here to listen to John's incredible album, Vessels, Angels & Ancestors. Also available wherever else you listen to music. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Upstart - Visit upstart.com/duncan and see how Upstart can help you with your debt. Feals - Visit feals.com/duncan and get 50% off and FREE shipping on your first order. BLUECHEW - Use offer code: DUNCAN at checkout and get your first shipment FREE with just $5 shipping.

Oh my God, what a podcast we have for you today. How is this happening? How do I get to talk to John Forte? I don't know. Well, I do know. Raghu Marcus from the Love Server Member Foundation made it happen. So big thank you to Raghu for making this connection today. Friends, here with us is a musical genius who you already know from his work with the

Fugees, from his incredible music maybe you're aware of his wild ride he went from being nominated for a grammy to ending up in a federal penitentiary to having his sentence commuted by george w bush won't you do me a favor before you listen to this awesome conversation I just got to have? Because I must have done some incredible great thing in a past incarnation. Won't you go download Vessels, Angels, and Ancestors, please, from Spotify or Amazon Music, or wherever you get your music from. And then subscribe to my Patreon, patreon.com forward slash DTFH.

And then strap in for this chat with the amazing John Forte. John, welcome to the DTFH. I really appreciate it. I can't believe I'm sitting here talking to you. How cool to meet you. That's just craziness. Thank you for having me, Duncan. I love the conversations that you're having. I love the opportunity to have this conversation with you.

So thank you for having me. Thank you. I got to, you know, and again, forgive me if this is a question you get a lot or if I'm starting off an interview mode, but if you, and I just, I'm just thinking of that shift from, first of all, winning a, getting a Grammy at the age of 21, winning a, getting a Grammy at the age of 21, it almost seems like something like that should be illegal. I don't know how you would handle that as a 21 year old with a 21 year old, you know,

experience in this incarnation to suddenly be at the top of the top to suddenly be hanging out with you. You have made music with and continue to make music with people who I get goosebumps thinking about. And to suddenly be 21 doing this is you have a spectacularly strange incarnation. And then from that to finding yourself getting wrapped up in a massive in what sadly is a criminal enterprise,

and then going to prison. It's like in one decade or so, you experienced an entire life. Do you think of yourself now as being reborn after all of this? Or do you feel like that was all just some dream that you've woken up from into your current experience of life? I don't know if the answers to those questions are either or. I think they're yes and yes.

I think there's a rebirth that happens constantly. Yes. It may have seemed more pronounced you know a decade ago or a little bit more but but my experience is one of constant rebirth and you know the You know, the other part of that is, yeah, it was a significant portion of my life. I remember thinking about the time that I was away. I went away when I was 25 and I came home when I was 33, much sooner than I was sentenced or I was expected to come home because of my sentence. You know, I received a 14 year prison sentence, 168 months in federal prison for my involvement in that criminal offense. I did more than seven years of that sentence before then President George W. Bush commuted my sentence

on a couple of days ago, a few years back, but November the 24th, 2008, that was when I found out that my 14 year prison sentence was going to be commuted. And at that point, that was more than 20% of my life. I spent more than 20% of my life in prison, in federal prison, not in jail, in federal prison. John, what is, when you're in prison and word gets around that a president is commuting your sentence, how do people,

like, how do people react to that? How do you, how do you make sense of that? Like, you know, that is to me that every, your life's, again, I'm sorry to go back to this. It seems like a dream. It's like dream logic, you know, like you're in prison and suddenly a president who, if we're like putting bets on who's going to be commuting prison sentences is not your prison sentence in particular. It's not George W. Bush.

Did it casually- I was one of 11 names to that point. So he was not a generous president in that department by any exaggeration. Who told you, how did you get this news that the president is shifting your sentence? I remember it like it was yesterday. I was on the phone line and I called my dear friend and then attorney on record, Artie Tandon. we knew that there was a possibility

that there would be some relief, that there would be some announcement, but there was no guarantee. There was nothing to hang my hat on. And I remember standing on the phone line, like it was any other day, and reading my book while I waited for a phone to open. What book were you reading? I'm sorry if I'm getting too detailed.

What book were you reading? I'm sorry if I'm getting too detailed. What book were you reading? I was reading a textbook at the time. So it wasn't because I was enrolled in the London School of Economics at the time while I was in prison. And so I call Artie. And there's this den in the background and sounded like she was at a restaurant. And I said, can you hear me? And she says, yes, can you hear me?

And I said, yes. And she said, did you hear anything? And I was confused. I thought the group still trying to hear one another. Did you hear anything? Yes, I can hear you. No, no, did you hear anything? Well, that's what I was calling you about.

And she says, yes, John, your name is on that list. We found out this morning, I tried to call you. I couldn't, your name is on that list and you're coming home. Wow. And I let it sink in. and you're coming home. Wow. And I let it sink in. I think I asked her to repeat it herself one time.

And then I said, thank you. And as I hung up the phone, I was going back to my bunk, still in a state of shock. Yes. And someone came up to me and he said, hey, what's your middle name? And I told him, and they gave me a hug. And I said, what? He said, NPR.

I just heard of NPR. They read the names. They read the names. They read the names. So I found out as the news started to make its way around without me having to say anything to anyone. And then slowly but surely people started to your question to your initial question what what is that like it's it's it's like many things you know there's happiness there's a sense of relief that that the impossible might not be so impossible, that we're not as invisible as we sometimes think we are. That sometimes someone you know wins the lottery. That's what it felt like.

It felt like, holy crap, like you bought that ticket. You have that ticket. You have that ticket. It's whoa. And of course, with that, there are also the not good feelings. Why not me? And I've got to ask myself, I'm not exceptional. I know I'm surrounded by beautiful, inspired, inspiring souls that I know and love, irrespective of our location. explicitly due to our circumstance and our experience, you know, what you see in a person and, you know, what might be the most trying circumstances of their lived experience

to date. You know, there's a humility, there's an honesty, there's a vulnerability, obviously deep compassion. So then that notion of survivor's guilt starts to seep in even before I walked out. Well, am I deserving of it? Right. You know, you question everything, you question so much. So I don't, there isn't any sort of one road

to how that aspect was experienced, reflected, so forth and so on. So I apologize in my inability to kind of synthesize it. Oh my God. You just synthesized it. I, you, that is, it's so it's, I get it. It's bittersweet. It's, you know, it's also, you shouldn't have been in there in the first place. Why the fuck are people being sent into prisons for non-violent offenses what you know why why is this even happening i would

be thinking that a little bit i'd also you know be thinking why isn't everyone else who is here for similar circumstances also getting their sentences commuted like if a president decides to commute the sentence doesn't that mean that all the people who are should be exonerated simultaneously you know or it's sort of like somebody i don't remember who was telling me the irony that right now you could stand in front of prisons in places where cannabis is legal and smoke a joint where people are locked up for doing the exact same thing. So, you know, I could see how there would be some, a lot of feelings regarding that. Do you have, have you recovered from being in prison? Have you, you know, do you feel, do you sometimes do you, when you wake up at night,

do you feel like you're still there? When I wake up at night, I don't feel like I'm still in prison. In fact, when I go to sleep at night, when I go to bed at night, I am so grateful because I am not there. Yeah. And so I don't forget about that experience because it's now part of me. But what it does is it contextualizes my every moment thereafter, because I know what it's like to taste prison food. And I also know what it's like to taste food made and prepared by the loving hands of my partner, my wife. And i know what gratitude feels like yeah yeah i you know that the prison example gets brought up in buddhism quite a bit as a as a you know as a symbol of samsara as a symbol of like

the sort of you know day daily intense suffering that human beings experience regardless of like the sort of, you know, daily intense suffering that human beings experience, regardless of like what other people may think, and the possibility of getting your sentence commuted, this idea that there can be an end to that suffering. But I have not been in prison, so I hear it and I can kind of extrapolate from it. I think I know what you're talking about, but since you have had that experience, do you feel like that that's a functional symbol for a funk, a good way of describing this,

the human experience itself and the possibility of having one sentence commuted by a divine hand? I think of prison as a literal physical space, to go through federal prison in the United States of America, I might not know what it's like to be a prisoner of relationship. I want to be a prisoner. I want to feel like a prisoner in my own body. I want to feel like I'm a prisoner of occupation, a prisoner of circumstance. And there are all sorts of ways that we can be trapped and that in some instances, in many instances, we trap ourselves, we incarcerate ourselves. My lived experience through federal prison undoubtedly, like I said, it contextualizes not here now, or that I'm somehow dwelling in

those spaces or behind that wall. The discipline for me now is to remain here in the wake of where I've been. That said, I have to acknowledge that where I've been is as much part of me as where I am and where I'm going. And so I don't want to erase it. In fact, my experience with the criminal justice system in America directly informs my activism for criminal justice reform. prior to 2001. And so I'm grateful. I am grateful to be here right now with you, Duncan, having this conversation. That is my gratitude.

Likewise, likewise. thank you upstart for supporting this episode of the dtfh when you look at your credit card statements, do you feel as though you are knocking at the door of Satan's infernal cabin in a cursed, grave-strewn forest in hell? Well, it doesn't have to be that way. You can use Upstart to help you pay off your debt with a personal loan all online. Upstart to help you pay off your debt with a personal loan all online. Whether it's paying off credit cards, consolidating high interest debt, or funding personal expenses, over a million people have used Upstart to get one fixed monthly payment with a clear payoff date. Rather than looking at credit score alone, Upstart considers other factors like your income, current employment, and credit history to find you a smarter rate for

your loan. You can check your rate without impacting your credit score in minutes for loans between $1,000 to $50,000. You can even receive funds as fast as one business day after accepting your loan. Find out how Upstart can lower your monthly payments today when you go to upstart.com slash Duncan. That's upstart.com slash duncan don't forget to use our url let them know we sent you these loan amounts will be determined based on your credit income and certain other information provided in your loan application it's upstart.com slash duncan you have an incredible calmness to you and a peacefulness to you i get shrill this i don't know if you followed the news i think it just happened in idaho south idaho or or where what you know the it was idaho

no it was the say that again i'm sorry i thought you were talking about julius jones in oklahoma no i'm i'm but we could talk about that i'm talking about the fact that in the Supreme Court, and I believe it's Idaho, the marijuana, the people want marijuana to be legal. And the Supreme Court overturned it. And, you know, you go and Google, I believe it's Idaho. Sorry, I can't remember. I feel so dumb. You go and look this up. And guess what? one of the big sources of income there is? Private fucking prisons, right? So anywhere you see the prohibition being protracted by the state, inevitably you will find a real profit motive there. It's not like they're trying to protect the people. there it's not like they're trying to protect the people it's that they know if we remove this bullshit reason to ruin people's lives and throw them into what is essentially some kind of vampiric energy suction device for human beings where you just extract a certain amount of money every prisoner is a paycheck you know then then it's always those two things are together if there

was no money to be made for prisons then a lot of the laws that are currently existing that make everyone scratch their head or worse wouldn't exist right don't you think well that's an absolute fact you know you can't talk about um criminal justice reform without realizing how powerful and significant the prison lobby is to the culture of America as we know it. My daughter was playing cops and robbers the other day. And you asked me a question a few minutes ago about, am I healed? I'm here and I'm now, and I'm here and the time is now, but I'm very, very much living the human experience. And that comes with,

with, with trauma and some triggers. And so, you know, I'm picking my daughter up from school, from preschool, and she asked, "'Dad, have you been bad? "'I'm an officer. "'I'm going to lock you up.'" That was heavy for me. Yeah.

That was heavy for me because I don't wanna play that game with my me. Yeah. That was heavy for me because I don't want to play that game with my daughter. Yeah. I don't want to play cops and robbers with you. We need to play something else. And one day we're going to have a conversation about why daddy can't play cops and robbers. But right now I can't play cops and robbers with you. She's four and a half. Yeah.

That's another quality of it that is so like anytime there's a really, really malevolent thing going on. That's been around long enough. It gets so it gets normalized, which if you spend the slightest amount of time thinking about it, that normalization makes it that much more malevolent. It's one of the qualities of evil that is the most repulsive. And to me, my kid was watching Buster.

I don't know. Do your kids watch Buster, the bus? No, no. Oh, my God. He watches four things, and that's not one of them what are they so quick trick diversion what are the four things Pacoyo Daniel Tiger um uh Cocomelon and um she'll watch the doctor um oh Doc McStuffins Doc McStuffins by the way that's a very sophisticated list

you've avoided a few you didn't miss the Cocomelon bus what will happen they all imitate each other if you're not careful you'll slide into Buster so watch out because Buster's animation looks a little bit like Cocomelon if you're a little too tired one morning

throw on Buster. Bye-bye. You're going to be listening to these ridiculous vocoded songs. It's the creepiest thing, man. It's like NK Ultra shit, man. This like weird lyrics, lyrical style about this bus always singing like, Buster's turning left.

Now he's turning right. Now he's going up a hill. It's kind of hypnotic you're like what is this you know you look at your kid hypnotized by this strangeness anyway one of the buster episodes is like and i remember we're on a trip he's watching buster and i'm listening and it's going busters now in jail buster can't get out and i'm like what, what? What? What is this? I turn around. Sure enough, the bus is in jail. Like, and, you know, Forrest doesn't know what that actually represents or what that means or all the.

Because I'm thinking, like, what? So there's, like, a police state in whatever land Buster lives in where other sentient cars are arresting sentient cars and putting them. And Buster sped. That was the reason he's in jail. So it's like crazy loss. Buster's freedom is getting taken away because he went too fast. Yes. Yeah.

But this is silly. But on another level, it's so dark that this is a thing that is in kids shows and that we just accept oh yeah that that's a thing that happens oh yeah that's just one of the things that happens you you have some plant material in your pocket and the state will come they will take everything away from you including your children they'll put you in a dungeon and then and then somewhere after and after that you won't be able to get a job probably it'll be very difficult and after that people will judge you and you're supposed to look on all of this like oh yeah but you know that's the way it is so yeah it's something that as someone who loves psychedelics it just

rattles me all the time to think about it. I'm sorry for that rant. No, please. You know, that's part of the language of compassion, right? Hey, I don't necessarily have the same lived experience as you, but there's something about knowing what you went through that doesn't sit right with me. knowing what you went through that doesn't sit right with me. And I can still speak truth to power without having those same footsteps. And that's what brings us closer, ultimately. The ability to say we're having different footsteps,

but there are similar feeling experiences, even though the experiences themselves are, you know, so different, you know, down to every detail, but what you're feeling, what you're feeling while you're going through that experience, you're like, whoa, you know, you bear witness to that. And so I appreciate that experience. You're like, whoa. You bear witness to that. And so I appreciate that rant. Thank you. Thanks. But it's also just from a purely selfish perspective.

It's like, okay, great. So congratulations. We just locked up one of the great musical artists. So that's great. So great. Let's just pluck that out of people's lives. Let's just do that. That'll be great for society. No, this will be really good. We'll just start.

Cause don't you think there is a, some kind of, something about being an artist that, that maybe increases the possibility that you're going to push past the boundaries that are set up by default reality, that behind bars, it's like the thing that we're calling criminals is actually, just like what you were saying, like brilliant people. We're talking alchemists, chemists. We're talking, you know, just great business people. And most, you know, like all of them just thrown in these places where they

have been disappeared for sometimes their entire lives what don't you think it's like actually like costing us untold how much are we losing that we don't even know about without a doubt i think I think about that marginalized brown little girl right now who can't have access to education. some dump to just get a glimpse at a book or a different reality because of what she cannot access. So I think about opportunity lost. I think about not just what society en masse or the free world is missing out on, society en masse is, or the free world is missing out on. But, you know, but the light, the lights that have been dimmed as a consequence of prejudice, racism, white supremacy, a caste system that, you know, Isabel Wilkerson laid out more eloquently than I ever could. But, you know, to begin to, you know, that's what gets incredibly and increasingly more and more difficult, you know, when you have the gratitude, the appreciation.

when you have the gratitude, the appreciation, it still emits systems that are failing folks in real time in large numbers. But that's what ignites the activism. That's what writes the song. And I relate to that, as you just mentioned, as an artist. That's my artist experience. But the capital, the human capital, the potential that I encountered, the brilliance,

the genius, whether they were athletes, entrepreneurs, artists, healers. Healers. Oh, you have healers in every society, in every walk of life. Wow. So, you know, does that mean that just because that's the status quo that we have to accept it as the way that it is, you know, and we have to accept these concepts down to the animations, it's a children's stories that,

you know, what are we doing to propagate these biases, these prejudices, these immoral wrongdoings of us versus them, you know, when you other people, when you marginalize folks, when you, when you alienate folks at their expense, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's shitty. It's traumatic. But again, you know, these are things that I've now had the, the ability, the honor, the privilege of seeing up close and personal. And so the lens that I employ for a large part of the time is one that, you know, is this just?

Is this fair? Is this right? Yeah. Yeah. that you know has is this just is this fair is this right yeah yeah i mean that's like you know being a parent right it's just having to apply that you know not and also that quite trying to apply it not from some kind of societal big picture thing but in the moment in real time is this just is this fair is my reaction being you know warped by experiences i had as a kid so that it's so i'm overreacting or am i under am i am i under reacting you know i like how are you doing with that just as a parent? How are you navigating being a parent? How are you doing with that? I am usually so in awe of these little beings.

It's almost like being in the room with your heroes. And it can sometimes be, to your point, warped. And sometimes you don't know if you're saying what you're saying or behaving the way you're behaving for the right reasons or because you're so in awe of being in presence and proximity of these beings that you love, that you work for, that you worship, that you teach, that you also learn from. I mean, you know, I listened to a couple of your episodes prior to this conversation to hopefully get us a better sense of, you

know, our conversation. I listened to the episode with Jack and then I listened to your episode with your wife, your partner. Oh, cool. And so it's not lost on me, you know you not knowing that you are a dad and that we're similar in age this significance of fatherhood parenthood I heard you guys talk about you and your you and your your wife talk about modeled behavior you know I grew up as a junior but not knowing my dad

so i had my father's name but no connection to to him as a as a human being as an individual as a figure he left when i was a baby whoa and so now the opportunity to be a father to be a dad you know so everything that's been that was modeled for me was me having the lack thereof saying, man, if I get to be a dad one day, I sure am going to keep my promise. Or if I get to be a dad one day, I sure am going to just take walks with them. Or if I get to be a dad one. And so now all of these things that I said I would do because I didn't have the opportunity to do it with my dad, now I have the pleasure of being able to do that with my kids. And it's not to say that I'm some brilliant dad or I'm knocking it out of the park. I'm dropping the ball all the time.

Same. But I also give myself a pass because I also know how hard this is. And I'm not raising my daughter to be a good wife. I'm not raising my daughter to be a good wife. I'm not raising my son to be a good husband. I'm hopefully raising them to be good fucking people and just caring and compassionate. And so I'm learning. I'm having to relearn everything

just by having conversations and just by being in the room with them. So, you know, it's an honor uh there's no manual there's no one right way to this you know i try to i have to remind myself i have to remind my wife like hey we've got to forgive ourselves when when we feel like like we don't get it right yeah because you know what these kids are willing to forgive us. They sure are. I blew my top. I don't know.

It might have been last week. And I was driving with my baby girl. I apologized. I'm so sorry for blowing my top. And she says, Dad, that's okay. She's four and a half, Duncan. Yeah. She's four and a half.

Her ability to, Dad, half, Duncan. Yeah. She's four and a half. Her ability to... Dad, that's okay. Yeah. So that's how I'm doing with parenting, man. I'm taking it one moment at a time. You're doing great. The mantra, the mantra, good enough. Don't forget, I read this thing, it's called the good enough parent.

Good enough. this thing it's called the good enough parent good enough because we all when you it teaches when you are in the presence of love at that level how can you you your volume is get your all your levels are going to go crazy and it's it's yeah i i and i it and also that there is something so incredibly like heartbreakingly sweet about their ability to forgive and their ability to, and, you know, who was it? I think it was Trudy Goodman was telling me, look, they need to see the cycle. Like a lot of parents try to not blow up. They try to not argue in front of their kids. They try to present this perfect thing and then the kids get this completely deceptive version of reality which is like look or you know you and you you hear about i don't know if it happens as much these days but you'd hear about

the couple and someone would be like they never fought a day in their life it's like what what so oh my god so they're liars exactly then Then you know they got some real skeletons that they have whole armies of skeletons. They've never fought a day of their life. Yeah, please. Something's not right. Or they're androids or some shit. It's a kind of fucking robot or just deep sociopaths. Maybe they're actually reptilians or something. I don't know.

That's right. But how do you live with a person and not, you know, eventually get, I don't care who it is. You're going to get annoyed with them. But the, the, she was telling me, yeah, they need to see the cycle. So it's like, let them see the disagreement, but then let them see the resolution. And then they realize, oh yeah, this is like part of the pattern of, you know, human interaction is like, we it's okay to disagree. It's going to happen. And then we're going to, you know, hopefully, you know, interaction is like we it's okay to disagree it's gonna happen and then

we're gonna you know hopefully you know get along with each other but you know i had to get there i just went into therapy i was just like i can't i don't know who i'm fooling here like i'm completely what what what a privilege that is right in 2021 oh my god oh my god to to to to talk to you know a licensed professional in in a myriad of disciplines but somebody who is going to hear you and going to challenge you to hear yourself to see yourself to love yourself right uh yeah therapy like i think that that would be a radical organization some some radical 501c3 to make um therapy accessible for anyone and everyone who who wants it and needs it at the time rather than it being some sort of cost prohibitive um yes oh my God it's such a privilege I'm so lucky because a lot of these therapists

they won't take insurance because they they don't want to diagnose people or it's too much of a pain in the ass or they to bill to chase people for money and so that so it's it's expensive and that's brilliant what you just said you know when ram das the bit of advice he the real face-to-face advice he gave me, he's giving everyone mantras and names. You know, he's told me get, you need therapy. And I completely ignored him. Like it was like, I was like, okay, whatever.

I'll like read your books and do what you say in the books, but not what you say to my face. I like page 73, sir. Not what you just said to me. Thank you. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, now that I'm in therapy and, like, it's like, oh, my God. If only I'd listened to him six years ago. But you know what, though?

It wouldn't have been the same. It would not have been the same six years ago. Like, we're surrounded by all the messages. And we've got to process it. We have to be receptive to it. We have to be willing to. So timing. Timing is so important.

So you six years ago, you're not the same Duncan now that you were then. And so your ability to receive certain things, to be able to digest certain wisdom, that's all by design. And so to talk about the process, right? I don't want to belabor it, but, you know, I'm a gardener and I have a relationship with cannabis. And part of that relationship with cannabis is ritualistic for me. I like to combust my cannabis. What does that mean? I like to roll a big doobie and I like to smoke it. I also like to use these glass filters in the experience because it's just

a cleaner tasting experience from beginning to end. When I get to the end of it, I don't have these little roaches, but I use the glass filter tips once. And then I clean the glass filter tips before I use them again. When I go through this process, and those people know me see me do this, it can be it can take some time to roll up the doobie to smoke the dupe to clean the and then clean your workspace. But that's part of the process. If you just enjoyed smoking the doobie without enjoying, you know, the making of the doobie, the cleaning up after it.

I'm not saying you have to be a masterful roller or anything like that, but the process of it. Yeah. There's a process to that ritual. And when you honor it from its beginning to its middle, to its conclusion, the sacrosanctity, it, yeah, I mean, you feel it on a cellular level. It's not about getting high. You know, there's that process. process. So I agree, right?

So when our children see us blow up, they ought to see the resolution of that, the ability to say, you know what? I just blew up. And whoever's in the audience, whether they're in the audience, whether it's with your partner, whether it's with your parent, like they need to see if and when you do blow up that you can say, I'm sorry for blowing up. And that that needs to be okay, because that's part of the process as well. And afterwards, we can take a walk and we can not talk about it, we can, but that's part of the process. So the Dharma being able to, you know, that's the big work for me that what it feels like right now, trying to,

trying to really lean into communicating what needs to be communicated. You, this to me that you just made a brilliant connection between the ritualistic consumption of cannabis and the cycle of, you know, birth and death that appears in relationships and everywhere. That's beautiful, man. A big thank you to Feels for supporting this episode of the DTFH. Feels is a glorious CBD nectar that has been given to us by God in the disguise of feels. CBD isn't about what you feel.

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Start feeling better with Feels. Become a member today by going to feels.com slash family hour and you'll get 50% off your first order with free shipping. family hour and you'll get 50 off your first order with free shipping that's f-e-a-l-s.com slash family hour to become a member and get 50 automatically taken off your first order with free shipping feels.com slash family hour you just made a brilliant connection between the ritualistic consumption of cannabis and the cycle of you know birth and death that appears in relationships and everywhere that's beautiful man that is beautiful and you know i think is i don't i have friends who are incredible who know how to grow cannabis which is not as easy as i assumed it was having what witnessed the process because there's a whole process people i don't think

are aware of the whole venting of it and i don't even know all of it my you know but having been around healthy cannabis plants and and maybe this is an echo chamber you're the wrong person to ask this but don't you think they're kind of sentient like is it my imagination that they seem more aware than other plants or that they seem more tuned into human consciousness? Or is that just wishful stoner thinking? Oliver Sacks wrote about it better than I ever could in The Consciousness of Everything. You know, it's all about time and how we perceive it. You know, we as human sentient beings are perceiving time different than an insect who might have a 48 hour life cycle.

And then the pine tree who might have, you know, hundreds of years of a quote unquote life cycle. It's about time. When you watch a stop motion video of a cannabis plant during the course of a day, one that's grown outside, you see that the plant moves, the plant opens up to the sun. And then over the course of the day, as the sun moves, the plant moves with the sun and then it goes to sleep. It rests at night and you see the movement, but you can only see the movement or you only really notice the movement.

You only really can perceive the movement as a human once it's sped up. There is no doubt in my mind that there is a symbiotic intelligent relationship between cannabis and between humans, whether it's because of our endocannabinoid system, the fact that we can, we have receptors to receive the effects of this medicine, or it's just paying attention and looking around, look at the narrative, Look at our attempt to remove cannabis from our society to try to eliminate that relationship. Look at the fallacy of our phase of prohibition, right?

Like we're coming on the other side of that right now as states and communities are starting to come online with decriminalization and ultimately legalization. But that's not happening, in my opinion, because you just have a handful of good folks saying, hey, I like to smoke my joint. There's something so much greater at play here. And we can talk about the consumerism. We can talk about the commodification of this plant, of the ingredients. But again, it's bigger than that. There is something going on that is showing us who we are. It's peeling back the onion in the layer. And however we choose to tell ourselves that aspect of the story, that's up to us. But it's happening. It's happening whether we like it or not.

And that's just one example of, you know, I think, you know, the you were saying, hey, if you if you can ultimately decriminalize and legalize cannabis, well, then the entire war on drugs. The premise of it becomes undermined, right? You can't say that this plant, on the one side is a controlled substance, and you can and cannot do this to it with your body. But then on the other hand so so this is there's an awakening yeah a common sense uh that that even transcends you know our ability to say this is fact or this is this is uh you know right our that strange time of that strange time of, of, of, of, of, what do you call it? Not other facts, but whether it's fake news

or alternative facts, fake truths, but yeah. It's again, it's, I don't know, I'm enjoying, and that's just a figure of speech. But it's happening. And so as it plays out, I'm doing my best to pay attention. Oh, God. I hope we get through it. I hope we survive it.

We're talking about a revaluing is what's happening here. Amen. Um, and also like, it's like, look, we don't want to keep playing some of these games that we're being forced to play right now. And the, and the, the, that's to me, the part that's, that's unnerving is like, you know, we know now, I mean, it's like, no matter what the genies out of the bottle, we did the research. Everybody knows not only is cannabis uh uh something that should be legal it's something that's healing it's something that's good for you it's something that helps people with cancer when i had cancer was getting radiation

therapy oh they were giving me these anti-nausea drugs that were the it was the worst shit you ever took in your life man and it was horrible um uh and i don't know why i didn't do it but then i i uh because they ever i had weed around the house i was just sick and i was tired but then i just started oh my friend from la speed weed came over with a huge amount of weed for me and um uh and so then i started smoking nausea gone. Boom. I'm feeling better. My, my body's feeling better.

This is a, this stuff is illegal and not only is it illegal, it's, it's being replaced by these fucked up chemicals, you know, but to me, the, the, so we know this now. So it's not only is it, and it's also wonderful for a myriad of other things that you and I could probably do a seven-hour podcast just talking about the good things, what it's great for. But the part that's creepy to me is that now we know this. So it doesn't matter what state you live in. It doesn't matter what country you live in. If you go and do the research

you will see that the harm caused by the prohibition exceeds by orders of magnitude the um harm caused by cannabis and but we still have to play this game of make-believe you know what i mean i still have to like if i want to fly i still have to go to the airport here in north carolina where i cannot fly with marijuana because it's illegal and i have to pretend it's normal that a dude with guns who's looking at the way i'm dressed is praying that he finds a joint in my fucking backpack or whatever so he can arrest me i have to act like that's normal i have to look at him and walk by if he like smiles at me i'm impulsively gonna be like i have to do that weird underdog cringy thing that i i can't seem to get out of it's like okay yes sir that thing we still have to play this fucking game so to me the dangerous part is it's like like you

know it's i don't it's that scary thing that happens where suddenly you realize you're being scammed have you ever had that happen where like you know you're maybe in a in a close proximity to a person and then suddenly you realize oh wait this person is not okay right now and is actively trying to rip me off. And they start recognizing that dawning realization too. And then that makes them more dangerous because they don't want you to recognize that. And so they're going to try to do something to make you forget again. To me, I'm from, I'm from Brooklyn. Oh. Yes. I know exactly what you're talking about. You know what I'm talking about.

I know exactly what you're talking about. So I think that's kind of the part of the sunrise that we're experiencing right now is that, which is like we're all kind of realizing, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. This is a scam. The scam is in full effect. The scam is in full effect, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's dangerous because con artists, they don't like that. And some of them will resort to violence when, you know, when... It's the part of the movie where the victim realizes, hey, you know what, you're the aggressor. I'm going to call the police. And everyone's watching like, why are you admitting that you're going to call the police? Now this person's really going to not let you go.

Yeah, that's it. That's it. Yeah. It's, it's when that, you know, you've been pretending that you haven't been kidnapped. You know what I mean? And everything's kind of going okay. Cause you're just like, okay, I'll just, you know, make it not happens by the way. Sadly that happens to a lot of people. They literally get kidnapped. They get drugged long enough and then they just pretend they're not kidnapped anymore and act like it's normal. Anyway, I don't mean to get negative here, but one of the problems with marijuana,

and in its communication or exo-pheromones or whatever you want to call it, it doesn't let you ignore, does it? It doesn't. If you've got some shit going on, it doesn't let you ignore does it it doesn't if you've got some shit going on it will not let you ignore that it will not let you sink into the couch and forget about like all this shit it's like hey hey hey hey wait hey remember wait you incinerated propaganda right when you just like oh i'll just escape now the sea. No. Oh, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. Of all the drugs, in my encounter with all substances, marijuana is the sternest substance if you are sort of... I mean, what is... In the Bible,

it says before you take communion, you have to forgive your brother and your sister, you know, and before you can take communion, you have to, you have to. So, I mean, what if marijuana isn't some form of communion? I don't know what it is, you know, and if you come into that state with things that need work, it tells you. My brother refers to it as the um the the golden yoke of compassion right when he just cracks it open it's just and um whether it's the compassion for yourself that work that you that you're doing on on yourself um or it's processing that conversation that you just had where you realize, oh, maybe I was a bit insensitive or, or, um, tone deaf or whatever it is. But it, you know, for me, um, that, that, that notion of this, the golden yoke of compassion. And again, I'm not, I don't believe in, in, in, in, in panaceas or sort of universal elixir.

I don't think that cannabis is for everyone. For me, it wasn't for me for a number of years. And I just knew that. I was like, oh, it just didn't speak to me. But when it did, well, that was okay too. And that needed to be okay. So, you know, I'm certainly not advocating for anyone with an earshot of our conversation that I'll say that, you know, hey, smoke a joint and your life will

automatically improve. But if you do smoke a joint and if you do feel a little bit of improvement well that's okay too yes that's okay too yes yes thank you yes exactly and then thanks to the freaking prohibition you start getting some healing from cannabis and all of a sudden guilt creeps in and you're like well i guess i'm a junkie now i'm addicted to this thing like what like what you know now you're now again this this this whatever this pothead is it's it's inferior all of this all of the pejorative descriptives that that we give to it's like oh come on oh it's so it's see and this to me this is the dark ages this is how this is how the dark ages that we're in that that um uh because we're in such a a a strange time in human history that uh and you know in the same way and it's it's

a weirdly uh this is kind of a tangent but in the way that we take our artists our geniuses and we put them behind bars for things that shouldn't have been illegal in the first place. And then in that, you create like a kind of artistic desert. So like, you know, wherever that person was, whatever the circumference of that person's, you know, scene, all the people he was inspiring she was inspiring or that were uh that that that he was teaching or she was teaching or all that that group that brain

and we lobotomize that communal brain temporarily or maybe permanently and then from that we slow down progress and that's where we're at now, which is like, we, sorry. I have an alternate, I have an alternate experience. That's not what it, that's not what the experience felt like for me, at least in its totality. And I'll just illustrate one point. You know, I went away, like I said, when I was 25. I was a musician,

a producer, mostly a rapper, mostly a guy. Even though I had rhymes, I'd say, hey, I'm more than just a rhymer. I stood firm on that. I knew that I had more to offer than just rhymes. For a long time, I was okay with

hey, rapper John Forte. When I went away, instead of that artistic desert that you just described, something else happened. Because I think that there was the possibility for that desert scenario to play itself out. But something else happened. I was two years into my sentence after losing a couple of appeals,

a dear friend of mine gave me a guitar. My dear friend, Rabbit, he gave me a guitar. Oh wow. Rabbit didn't know that I didn't know how to play the guitar. He just thought, I'm John Forte. I'm a musician. I was nominated for a Grammy when I was 19. Yeah. I would appreciate the guitar. He just thought, I'm John Forte. I'm a musician. I was nominated for a Grammy when I was 19. I would appreciate this guitar. When Rabbit gave me that guitar,

what was happening with that desert around me, that reversed. Rabbit gave me, that was source food. And instead of there being a drying up phenomenon around me, I started to engage with my community more. Particularly because I was put into a scenario that almost as soon as I got my hands on this guitar, I had to teach a guitar class, but I didn't know how to play the guitar. Wow. The warden, the whole thing happened and within two weeks of me getting this guitar,

a sweeping mandate, a new sweeping mandate came through the prison and said, if anyone has an instrument, then they have to be turned in. They have to be given back to the recreation department. We're no longer having instruments. And that devastated me. So I went and I said, look, you know, in this instrument, I found some, some, some happiness, some, some sanity. I really need to keep this instrument. And the warden said, fine, you can keep the instrument as long as you teach a class.

Wow. Teach a class. But I don't know how to, I didn't tell the warden this, but I don't know. And I said, fine, I'll teach the class. So I would learn. So I would learn two chords on a Friday and then I would teach those two chords on a Monday. So I'm teaching as I'm going along in real time. But what is happening, it's upping the ante.

It's upping the ante on who I thought I was and who I thought I could become and what I could ultimately contribute. So my musicality, my musical lexicon, the ability to now play in a band, to commune. Whoa. I mean, like Duncan, what that experience has done for me directly,

like I came home a composer. I went to prison as a rapper. I came home a composer. Wow. Directly. Like, I came home a composer. I went to prison as a rapper. I came home a composer. Wow. Wow. Beautiful. Thank you for telling that story.

Whoa. That's so great. And for the reminder, yeah, my stupid mind. I'm always like, it's a desert. It's evil. I always overdo it. There's nothing here. It's a void. I go too far into always overdo it. There's nothing here. It's a void.

I go too far into that stuff. And I love that. Yeah. It's so easy to forget though, that wherever you're at, there's that, there's that potential. There's that possibility. That is so,

so funny though. I'm just trying to imagine that first class. What do you remember? What the first class was like, what quarter? A minor and C. A minor and C. A minor and C, which again, whenever I pick up a guitar,

it's like those are the first two chords I'll play just to make sure it's in tune, you know, A minor and C. Yeah. But, and so the other prisoners had guitars too? Like the prison was like- They had, well, there was a recreation department where I think there were two full size guitars. Those were for the instructors.

And then there were miniature guitars, um, that, that were the size of ukuleles that, um, we had a dozen of those at any given time. And so those were the learning instruments. Cool. Cool. Cool. Did you have any access to like digital audio workstations there? Like any ability to record anything?

No, recording devices completely illegal in prison for some obvious, maybe some not so obvious reasons, but they did not want recording devices to be part of the culture there. So no, there was no possibility of recording. Computing, again, was a relatively recent phenomenon. I came home in 2008, and that was the year that we'd just gotten computers in the facility that I was in. And that was solely with the ability to email facility that I was in and that was solely with the ability to email friends and family that they were just introducing that but you know the notion of a digital audio workstation or pro tools or logic or something like that in in federal prison that was uh it wasn't a reality um and to that point you know when I went away I was using pro tools maybe like the first iteration

maybe it was pro tools 2.0 when i came home it was pro tools 9.0 and so i felt like it was a completely different language it was a different world i'd given up on the idea of engineering for my own sessions in fact because i just thought well uh you you know, I've been away for too long. And so for a while, you know, I have, I wanted to talk about a bunch of music with you. And then we spoke about other stuff, which is awesome. Hey, how much time do you have? I would love to talk about music with you. And I apologize.

We did go for a long time and did some pretty awesome stuff, but yes, keep going. If you have time, do you have a little more time? It's two o'clock. I do, I do, I do. Okay. Beautiful. But you know, and so, you know, my first EP

when I came home, it's called Style Free, the EP. It's on, you know, it's everywhere, you know, Spotify, iTunes, but when you listen to that EP, I wasn't the engineer on that EP. I, I, I played instruments all over it, but I wasn't manning or womaning or whatever. I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't on the controls. Um, and it, it, I've got to give my little brother all the credit. He and God get all the credit. And he told me, he said, he says, John, you, he said, it'll take you two weeks. Lock yourself in your room.

Like, take my copy of Logic. Yeah. Because he knew, he knew knew that you know uh me not under controls me not being able to produce me not being able to manipulate me not being able to do what i do it i wasn't having my fullest experience and so you know again again i don't want to harp on this but it's it's worth mentioning the sort of technological gap that took place between 2001 and 2008. When I came home, Blackberries, iPhones, these things did not exist.

The first day that I came out of prison, Artie, who picked me up, who's also responsible for my computation, one of three attorneys, she put a Blackberry in my hand and an iPhone in my hand. And I'm looking at this thing. I felt like I was teched out of the experience. And so if that happened to me after seven years, like I have friends who are coming home now after 18 years, after 25 years, and we're asking them to catch up and not just to catch up, but to comply with all of your probationary regulations, with all of the systems still in your back pocket.

You have to come home and you have to keep up and you have to thrive. It's Hculean yeah um the the you know what we ask of of our returning citizens wow um i never thought of that i i it's it's like you you left what you left and came back into another dimension. I heard a story of a young woman who went away. She came home. She was an older woman. She went to use the restroom.

She didn't know how to wash her hands, Duncan, because she didn't know how to turn on the sink. So she stood there and she cried because she didn't know how to she didn't know how to how to wash her hands wow crazy yeah great because these prisons you know it's like they're not updating not at all not at all they're not trying to it's too expensive you you're not going to make any money if you start updating these prisons right i want to thank blue chew not just for supporting this episode of the DTFH, but for supporting my very powerful, glorious erections. Blue Chew, it's a unique online service that delivers the same active ingredients as Viagra and Cialis, but in chewable tablets and at a fraction of the cost.

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probably the version of pro tools you're using is just like it's obviously you can't even get it if you wanted it probably not to mention the computers it's running but wasn't there a little bit of like whoa this shit has gotten crazy there must must have been some excitement realizing all the potential. It's 2021, and I have those whoa experiences to this day. To this day, when I'm finished with the session. Okay, I said I wanted to talk about the music. I'll talk about the music now. I came out with a new album, Vessels, Angels, and Ancestors.

Yes. In October, I partnered with the Love Server Member Foundation and Raghu, who is my dear friend and big homie. Raghu was like, look, we're not a record label, but I really want to support this. So then he formed a record label in order to support this. This is what your friends do for you. Like, yeah, well, I'm not really a record company, but here's what I do.

I'm going to become a record company. And we're going to put this record out. And this happened at a time of COVID. And it was such a deeply collaborative album. It is such a deeply collaborative album. It's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. The ability to be able to play in these sonic spaces that we've created and to

do it like, like we're side by side, shoulder to shoulder blows my mind. Yeah. Blows my mind. You know, I can, I can, I can, I can finish a track at three o'clock this afternoon and send it to you and then you can put your contributions on it and then send it back to me and then by 7pm tonight we have a completed song. Yes. So yeah, the possibilities are mind blowing. Yeah, they can be awfully daunting sometimes and intimidating, but the world that we can,

what we're capable of. Yeah, yeah, it's truly awesome. Are you still working with Pro Tools or do you use Ableton? No, I use Logic. I eat, sleep, breathe, and dream in Logic. Logic is my platform of choice. If anybody from Apple or Logic is listening to Duncan's podcast right now, hook a brother up.

They will. They will. All my composers. All the bells and whistles. You guys have new stuff you want to roll out. Send them my way. I'm and whistles. Like you guys have new, new stuff. You want to roll out, send them, send them my way. I'm here to work with you. Yeah. I love the platform.

Oh, you're going to get flooded with plugins. Not just from logic. Any, any of my plugin friends out there, please hook him up. Send some of these in. Yes, please. Yeah. These are, I look, I, I, I use, do you use, what do you use? What is your MIDI console that you use? Not to, sorry, y'all. Can we,

you want to, can we tech out for a second? What's your music coming into? It's, it's really, it's nondescript. I mean, so I have a MIDI controller. It's, and it's, it's, I don't even know what it is. If it's an M, M, I think it's an M-Audio MIDI controller. I'm the same way. I'm sorry for asking you to sit name tag at home because it's all like SR-593 Plex. I mean, and again, this is probably not my best interest,

but I think that, you know, the hardware is very, very interchangeable. You know, like a MIDI controller, I'm like, just give me a MIDI controller. It's not a MIDI controller. It's what I'm like just give me a mini controller it's not a mini control it's what i'm going to do with that controller so um my setup is relatively simple although i've got a bunch of instruments you know i have a drum kit i've got guitars i've got um i've got i've got instruments around me that i often record myself playing and then manipulating.

But I do, I mean, I love plug-ins. I love the digital sphere. I love synths. I love programming. I'm a drum programmer by nature. Like when you listen to the old Fuji stuff, those aren't loops. That's us sitting there with kicks and snares and hi-hats and doing it. So I still have an affinity old Fuji stuff. Like that's, those aren't loops. Those are sitting there with kicks and snares and high hats and doing,

and I still have an affinity for that stuff. So I, yeah, I can, I can geek out and spend a bunch of time. Here's what's like for me, like this always comes up, which is anytime I'm around a professional musician, because I'm surrounded, I am a tech head and i'm just i just dabble because i'm doing the thing i keep falling for this idea of like well you know if you get this extra synth then your musical starts sounding good just one more sense oh yeah are you mean no this will fix the whole problem and so then you you end up with this like hive it looks like the borg in here

you end up with all this stuff and and and it's like and then you talk to a professional and yeah usually they have like just a nondescript midi controller and that's it and their music sounds so good and they look at your gear with this sadness because they know how much you spent. Oh my gosh. I don't know what you're talking about, by the way. No, I do. I do. You don't need it. You don't need it. These days you don't need it anymore. You just need to know how to program MIDI and that, and you know, and that's it don't need it anymore. You just need to know how to program MIDI and that's it.

You need to know how to program MIDI. It's like just because you've got a great – there have been times where I've been frozen up in my writing and I start thinking, you know what I'll do? I'll buy a really nice typewriter. That'll fix the problem. For me, it was a pen. For me, it was, I can't get this thought out.

There's a Mont Blanc out there. If I just get the one with the 18-carat gold inlay, that's what's going to help me finish writing this song. So it wasn't the typewriter, it was the pen, but the

instrument. Oh yeah, I get it. Oh yeah you but it's sadly no it's what it is it's it's not so simple as that it's it's something it's something else i mean i i do imagine that we aren't that far away from you being able to like take your song and put it into some kind of AI that will add vocals, that will, you know, produce it for you and make it sound incredible. I don't know if you ever saw the South Park where one of the dads is like going into the bathroom, like taking a dump and like recording so just singing some crappy song into his phone and then it just converts it to the most beautiful song you ever heard i don't think we're that far away from it but we're not there yet so what what's your process do you mind just like telling us like if you when you're deciding to start working on a track what's the what's the process from beginning to end

usually well for me it's that so i i think i regress every time i walk into my studio and when i sit down to write because i become that eight-year-old boy who just got the Casio PT1 keyboard for the first time and I'm turning it to the right and then there's a little sizzle and then you know it's on before you ever touch a key that's what it feels like for me every time I sit down at my system um because you just never know. It feels like the possibilities are truly endless. So I don't sit down with that sort of skepticism or the fear or the angst. It feels, it feels promising until it doesn't. And then I'm just like, Oh, today's session is over.

But yeah. Wait, you wait, let me stop you there. So you end your, so if you go in and you're like, sometimes I've just, I think, oh, they're mad at me. Like the sense they're mad at me today or something like whatever, or whatever. Just like, that's it. I'm done. I'm a cord out hollow thing. I'll never make anything again. But then I'll keep pounding away at it, getting increasingly furious. And then I'll end it and nothing will have happened. So you're, you, you're like a fit of, you're like a fisherman who just recognized like, oh yeah, they're not biting today. And that's it. I won't say that's it. What I will do is I'll go to different waters. And for me going to different waters is starting a new track or working on opening something else that that's a work in progress. And it's, it's kind of the same way that I consumed media or I studied. You know, I would read four different subjects at the same time, but a chapter each, as opposed

to trying to do a deep dive in this aspect of history. You know, I'll just do a little bit of that, but then I'll jump over to a different discipline and do a look. And so to try to just have as well-rounded an experience as possible on my way to being able to articulate something in particular. And that would ultimately be the song, right? Right. So I feel like I'm often flushing out a bunch of different ideas at once until I reached that point of the song where I know that, oh, this is really a song and this deserves much more attention. Until then, most of my compositions remain in this sketch world and some sketches work better than others. work better than others. So when it's time for, or rather when a sketch is not working and I realize, oh, this is an uphill battle or I'm in my own way,

I won't just shut the system down and leave. I will pivot and start working on another sketch that feels like it has more promise. Cool, cool. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's being able to recognize that it's just for whatever reason, this isn't it right now.

This is not it. Right. Yeah. Oh, this feeling of like, that feeling, that initial feeling of sitting down, and you've got some span of time where you can just start making stuff. That's one of the great human experiences. It's just that sense of like, oh my God, I'm about to plug into something here. And yeah. Artistic privilege, creative privilege. To say, you know, I'm going to work from nothing.

I'm going to work from a clear space. And then start to occupy it, start to fill it up with stuff, start to define it. Where do you think it comes from?

Well, I think about that. I think about our, you know, I've often relied on attributes into people and then written about those people as if they existed. But I knew that what I was doing was I was writing about a Frankenstein in my own creation. That is until I met my children. Writing about, or writing in the wake of knowing, meeting, loving my children has been a direct tap into loving source awareness. And it's allowed me to speak about the ills of the world as I know them and experience them, not from a place of fear, but from a place of compassion.

And that's been a radical game changer for me. When you listen to my early music, when you listen to songs like Nervous or The Breaking of a Man, you know, these were written in vulnerable, almost fear-based, scared states, states of conscious, states of being, you know, being able to recognize and call the atrocities what they are, but not necessarily offering anything beyond calling the trauma what the trauma is. And I think that there's certainly a place and a space for that in the same way that having a street smart or a street awareness served me in Brownsville, Brooklyn when I was a kid.

Yeah. to Brooklyn when I was a kid. But I don't need to have that same emotional vibration where I am now. So there's sometimes there's some things that serve you. There's some there's a way that I can

speak that might serve me in a certain way but but it but it but it doesn't now um i don't know how we got here oh it doesn't matter yeah yeah some people get scared see some people what they worry they worry that like you know people are going to want that, that stuff, that level of consciousness for me as an artist. And that, that, that people are going to say, oh, you know, you've, you've changed your kids now, now your stuff is like too light. And, and, you know, when they're, I think the reality of that is that if you can overcome that, whatever that weird fear is that makes you want to keep stuck in some, it keeps people stuck, like just echoing themselves, some sad recursive.

If you then, and you start making stuff from your heart, people, people love it. That's when you start getting the feedback. That's like, Oh my God, thank you for doing this. This is something that I needed to hear so much versus, you know, the paranoid fantasy that, oh, if I don't stay dreary forever transformative, more akin to what I aspired to than it's ever been. Not to say that the journey is done or even near done. is done or even near done. It's not about that as much as it is my ability to appreciate where I've been and where I am.

You know, I don't shit on the 19-year-old me that was making very, very different music. I had to go through that in order to really appreciate where I am now. And I just... So, you know, you were talking about how, you know, running the risk, how we're perceived as artists by our fans, or what we think of as our fans. I can't tell you the last time I wrote a song

with someone else in mind, other than me thinking about writing something that I would like or that I would appreciate. And it might not be the, it might not be the most financially rewarding disposition. Yeah. But I'm 100% okay with that because I feel, I feel richer than I've ever been.

I feel more abundant than I, I feel richer than I've ever been. I feel more abundant than I've, I feel, I feel privy to more abundance than I've, than I've ever had. And I know that it's not about the dollar or the coin, whether it's bit or doge, it's not, it's not, it's not about any of that. So I'm making music that I really, really appreciate that I like listening to. And then consequently, what the icing on the cake is the fact that my kids start dancing when they hear my music, when my kids start doing it, I'm like, oh man.

All right. You know what? Now I feel like a big success. So the fact that other people outside of, outside of this home can hear this music and for whatever reason lock into it and have an experience well i am i'm grateful you know what my kids do say to me when i start singing to them in the bathtub they say play it on the phone, daddy. Oh, no, they don't.

I'm not buying it. I'm not buying it. Not all the time, but sometimes. Play it on the phone, daddy. Who can blame them? It sounds like a coyote trying to sing. Who can blame them? They're trying to relax

in the bathtub. John, thank you so much for this. Thank you. It was a real pleasure. And I hope that we get the opportunity to do it again because I know that you have repeat performances on your podcast. And I know that because I've been at your website

and I see Raghu keeps popping up. So Raghu keeps coming on here. I would be remiss if I didn't say I would love to be a guest again. You don't know what you just asked for, sir. You don't know what you just asked. Oh, get ready to make some excuses, friend. Oh, you don't even know.

I will. Yeah, well, we will. Then you know what? We'll be talking next month. Oh, thank you, Duncan. You don't even know. I will. Yeah. Well, we will then, you know what, we'll be talking next month. Thank you so much. Would you mind giving listeners where they can find you? Yeah. Social media, you know, look me up, look up John Forte, J-O-H-N-F-O-R-T-E. There's a website as well, which is john-forte.com

or john-forte.com. You can also check that out. But, you know, Google me. I'm very Google-able. You're very Google-able. And Vessels, Angels, and Ancestors, where can we find that? Vessels, Angels, and Ancestors,

the new album, it is out everywhere. Music is streamed, appreciated, or consumed visually, digitally. uh yeah so you can't you can't go buy a cassette or cd but you can go onto your computer and and look it up it's there waiting for you beautiful thank you so much john all the links you need to find john will be at duncantrussell.com that was john everybody. Please be sure to listen to his new

album, Vessels, Angels, and Ancestors. All the links you need to find John will be at drtrussell.com. A big thank you to our sponsors, and thanks to all of you for listening. I'll see you next week. Hare Krishna.