Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 576: Emil Amos

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

Emil Amos, musician (HOLY SONS/GRAILS), family favorite, and one of Duncan's best friends, re-joins the DTFH! Check out Emil's new album, Zone Black, available right now from Drag City! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. Zbiotics - Visit Zbiotics.com/Duncan and use code DUNCAN at checkout to save 15% on your first order!

Greetings, my loves. Our third child, my first daughter, has come Earthside, which means that I've got some things to tend to in the house away from the podcast studio. As much as I would love to play for you, the new song that I wrote with Johnny Pemberton about a nitrous oxide dealer and something naughty he was doing to his buttoole, I don't have time to do that. But the next episode, we will share this debut release. In the meantime, to sort of fill the space in you that needs new music, why not check out today's guests, new album, Zone Black, which you can find on Drag City. I hope you will check it out. You can go to dragcity.com, zoneblack.

It's an amazing album. As are all of his albums. He's one of my, he's already saved one of my best friends. I'm sorry, I'm scrambled. I don't know if you heard this or not, but for a man having a baby, this is pretty intense. For a woman, it's easy.

It just kind of comes out. They're happy. You sing throughout the labor. But for a man, it's really tough on us. And our heavy man, we get like, like, I mean, there's no words for it, honestly. We get gas. You know, I've kind of mild case of gas.

Lots of other stuff like your, my arm feel kind of more sweaty than usual. So there's stuff I'm going through which means I can't do these spectacular, complex, beautiful world changing, transformative intro that I would like to do that my guest deserves. If you could do me the honor of checking out his new album, I will send you great astral blasts of solar gizz right into your pineal gland tonight or the night after you check out his album. All right, we're jumping right into this. You probably know Emil Amos from The Holy Sons.

Maybe The Grails. Maybe Ome or any of the other amazing ways that he manifests his artistry into the world. He's one of my dear friends. I'm so lucky that I met him in college. Definitely would not be a comedian or a podcaster. If I hadn't gotten to hang out with this maniac super genius musical tour, I love him so much. God, I'm tired. I'm sorry, I must sound crazy.

Everybody, welcome back to the DTFH emo Amos. I'm going to be a little bit more I'm going to be a little bit more I'm going to be a little bit more It's the Dumpin' Trash Dumpin' Trash Dumpin' Trash Dumpin' Trash Emo, welcome back to the show You know, you're my top requested guest

How do you get that stat? Varying, like, youarying social media threads where people will be like, I love email episodes. When's email coming back? We gotta get email back. And I love the conversations we have, man. It's like always so fun. I love the last one in Chapel Hill.

So all we're doing nitrous. Yeah, I mean, there's some obvious aspects of why it works like we never I've never sold it so funny. I'm saying it's I've never sold anything through this podcast. So there's there's like no pressure to be like, I loved your book or anything. There's just two people with with like, you know, philosophy in front of them. You don't have to be a host with me right? Right. Like you don't have to host a show. So we get to just hang out and it's a little bit more like I guess if you have to use the word it's more like co-hosting but but you don't have to baby me. You don't have to be like

I really loved your book. You know, blah blah blah. So we, we, um, because that's an, I did love your book. Oh, yeah. I didn't write it yet, but, uh, but oh, come on. You can share the book with people. It's erotic. It's incredible. Everyone loves Princess Diana. Yeah, it's my life's work.

Um, I think it's controversial, but yeah, I love it. I don't, her appetite's in that book. Don't reflect my understanding of her, but artistic license is everything. Do you remember the time I was at about 1997, and I was at the Funhouse machine, the pinball machine in the basement of the cafeteria, and it was a nice sunny day and I was I was

winning and you walked up and you're like did you hear about Nishi? And I was like no I was like no I didn't it you were like it came out today they dug up his corpse and he was a hermaphrodite and I did not say that. And I was like, wow, that explains so much, you know, and you're like, they dug up his corpse. You would do that to me every two, two, three days and I would never stop believing you. I think because I, I wanted to believe you, you were taking me somewhere, I'd never been. All right guys, it's time. We finally got the permissions. We're gonna go dig up Niche's grave and see what kind of dick he had. Holy shit! This is gonna make history. I feel like you don't remember 99% of the punch lines from the prank calls either but people still walk up to me all the time and they're like you're thinking

of a bunny rabbit, you're thinking of a rabbit and you're like and I say that to you and you go what's that from? I remember that. No I remember you think of a bunny rabbit now. I remember calling that clairvoyant. That was the best. We had so much fun with this. I know, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, in like rural North Carolina without getting caught because of that amazing, like the fact that you had to call, they couldn't trace the number at all. The angry cops, the off-duty cops at Jack in the Woods, you know, who are fucking with, and they're like, they wanna arrest us and beat us so bad, but they can't get it.

I think that we actually club universe, but you said you had a woman in the basement of Jack in the woods. I've got a bitch in the basement. You've got a wife. He's never put that one out. You got a wife in the basement. What the God. And so not cool. There's the poor off to the cop just trying to make a little bit of extra money. And for those of you who we made a series of prank calls in college that we both are to this day quite proud of. And it was so fun to do because the college we were at had a switchboard.

So there was no way to penetrate into the room. You didn't know what room it was coming from. And so, and our friends worked security. So they, because the students had to run the college. So they, it didn't matter if they knew that we were making brain calls. They weren't, I don't think they were ever like, gonna bust us.

I don't think we ever got told not to do it. Did we? Never, never, never, never. No, full cart blanche. But. And that's how you understand the deep state. That was the first, like, I wanna say that was the first, like, true audience you had because we would all gather

around you and kind of watch you go to work. And it was so effortless for you. It wasn't like a stand-up set where you have to, you inevitably are going to be self-conscious and prepare. Because there was no preparation. You just had to be yourself, just funny in real time. And you always hit the bullseye eye and everybody would just watch this chemical reaction and just kind of be amazed because no one none of us could could not laugh, you know, none of us could pull it off and you would like invent full three-dimensional characters

on the spot. I mean, one of the stories storytelling, you know, people who have heard the episode, it's called, um, insidious mind control on Drifter Syvethy. No way. They'll look it up. It's about an hour long of Duncan just being genius and like, so- We'll put him out one day. Yeah, that's true, right. We will, and we'll put off the bonus stuff.

People always ask me, there's got to be more in there. And there is more like the bitch in the basement. I mean, clearly at the time, whenever I put those out a few years ago, I thought that maybe people weren't ready for the bitch in the basement, but they're probably ready now, you know? They're not ready.

You know, one's ready. You don't want to be mad. Everyone will be mad. Everyone will be mad. There's so many people will be like, are you fucking sociopaths? The, I think you're kind of downplaying your role in this and I appreciate it

because it makes me sound a little funnier than I was, but you are like this, like, mefastophiles in my ear, Like, because you would drive it darker. Like, I would probably be doing something offensive and dark, but then you would whisper so fully, horrible direction for it to go in my ear. And then we would like, then it would just drop down, lower and darker.

And it was such a perfect, it was such a perfect, and I'd be afraid, sometimes some of your suggestions, I would be afraid to do it. Like I was a God Jesus, that's fucked up. And then we do it, and it was always so funny. And just, I needed that man, I needed that nudge into the shadows, I was already there, but I needed that, let's go into a sub-basement

and see what happens. I mean, I, but I needed that. Let's go into a sub basement and see what happens. I mean, I think that was the first evidence of like what could have been our writing synergy, which we never followed to fruition, because we went to LA and then you were going to, you were sort of working on pilots and you were sort of looking into the idea of being a writer. And then I laughed and we just, we still to this day, we've never actually collaborated on something besides this record that we still haven't put out, which we will put out.

And the calls are kind of like, the calls are kind of like the evidence of like a certain kind of synergy that just got left in the 90s, you know? Yeah, yeah, man. But, you know, that, I think it's so funny to like see, like all of the little, I don't know, four shocks of, you know what I mean? What we, what we were gonna turn into,

because like, then I never thought, oh, I'll be a comedian one day. I never thought that, or never, podcasting to exist. It's just so interesting, or trolling. You know, I don't even think the term trolling existed at that time, did it? Like in the sense of like what it is now.

And you know, I really think people based on what, just what we did, people underestimate how many college kids have discovered some terroristic methodology for infiltrating groups and just causing chaos just because they're laughing in their dorm rooms. Like so many things that pop up on the internet or so many dramas or so many things where people are, they think, oh, it must be real

because no one could be so rotten as to cause this level of chaos for fun. And I just think back to those nights. Yeah, I think that's probably how the Declaration of Independence started, you know, just hanging out, laughing in the dorm room and then you're like, what if what if we just do it, bro? Yeah. Yeah. What if we just do it, bro? Yeah, yeah, but I

Also think I was listening to a podcast of one of my label owners and he was he was talking about the beginning of Starting a label on he was saying that like Basically like when you make huge life decisions that are incredibly risky You really need to do those when you're really young and you have no sort of foreknowledge of what could go wrong. And there's so much about life that is ruled by that dynamic. Because as you get older, I feel like it's cliche that of sets in and starts to bottleneck your behavior So you got it. I mean maybe maybe maybe you feel like you've you're still in the risk zone and

And as an artist, I guess I am too. It's my job Just stay in a kind of dreaming zone and not shut that down. But I think about that, like how much worry is intelligent versus how much naivety. But I think that was a big part of that that mind state that you can sentimentalize is that we had nothing in front of us, we didn't know where we were going. And that's a beautiful state of mind because it's a totally being in the moment then, you know. Yeah, totally, man. And that is the, I mean, that is the absolute danger that presents itself to any adult. And I, one of my recent guests wrote a whole book on aging.

And one of the things he talks about was how Kotler is his name, Stephen Kotler. One of the things he talks about is how there are two parts of the, I guess, I'm sorry, Stephen Kotler. I don't think he listened to my podcast or anyone who's a fan. I'm going to ruin it. I'm not a Stephen Caller, I don't think he listened to my podcast or anyone who's a fan. I'm going to ruin it. I'm not a genius like he is, but basically, there's two parts of the brain.

One of them is the sort of exploratory part of the brain. Going out in the world, finding your way, looking around, trying to gather resources, whatever it is, you're out there, you're exploring, you're like, this is the hunter gatherer out, hunting or whatever. And then there's another part of your brain, which is basically the defense part of your brain. So if your brain thinks you found all the shit you need,

now it's like, we got to protect the shit that we got. That's where you enter into the danger zone that your friend talked about, which is the hunter gather a part of your brain, it begins to atrophy. And there's a lot of like bad things that happen that go along with that. Then a lot of people associate that with aging. When really what it is is you've like gotten in balanced. You've gone into a fully protected, you don't feel like you don't need to look anymore. Why would I look?

There's risk. I don't need to go hunt more things. We have all the meat we need for the winter. I'm not going back out there. And then that's when a lot of cognitive decline can start happening. And the way is recommendation in this book, one of them is get outside and do like risky shit,

you know, like in a safe way and it opens that part of your brain up again. You know, the moment you push out, whatever it may be, man, what a moment you push out, it doesn't have to be some starting a fucking label or going into deep credit card debt to make a movie. It could be like, I don't know, take boxing classes. You know what I mean?

Do something that you're like, I'm too old for that. I would never do that. What the fuck is that? He what he did is he was, he's a skier. And so what he did is for the book to experiment with this idea is he went and tried to learn like 10 of the most dangerous free skiing like tricks.

And like to see how the changes are, but yeah, man, this is the classic sad self imprisonment that happens when, and it seems to be tied up with some form of like self perceived success. Yeah, I guess now you don't want to change. That's, I think, as a like a 13-year-old, I switched from skateboarding to music. And I think that was a very wise decision

because the music you can't really harm yourself Quite is is immediately and and is drastically and When I talk a lot about skateboarding, but to me it's like a really amazing metaphor because I Could probably I could probably sit back for five years and try to crack the code and music for my next record or something and try to make something that really, really like, you know, blew somebody's mind somewhere. But for skateboarding, it's like, it's like you're coming up to 18 stairs,

you're 16 years old, and you're like, no one, you actually know this in skateboarding. No one has ever done a hard flip down this particular legendary set of stairs. They know it, they have it all nerded out, they have it all statted out and there's this really cool thing about skateboarding that I applied music sadly, nobody else seems to, but it's called a ABD versus an NBD. And what it means is that's already been done and that's never been done. So what I've always wished is people would apply

and apply that to music, because then you wouldn't just hear the same devices over and over and over again, but people and music don't. That's such genius. It's so cool because in skateboarding there's a very specific, I'm talking about a very specific 18-stair set in California inevitably that like everyone has charted out. Like, okay, he did it back side flip, he did the 360 flip, he did the, so even if you're not a skateboarder and you're listening, the idea is that it's like,

go into the moon, it's like it's been done or it's not been done. And human beings have never seen it done. So, with your 16 year old kid and you keep going up to the lip of the 18 stairs and you're just thinking, I know I can do this. Then you're entering a field of decision making and self-consciousness that's just so immense.

I think this, I don't know if there's a new book or a documentary, but a lot of people seem to be talking about this like the level of depression that goes on with Olympic athletes. Is that like a thing right now? I've never heard that. What is that? I don't know.

It's something new shit that was maybe on TV or something, but it makes so much sense, right? Because you're talking about waking up, your brain, and sort of grabbing this opening field of potentiality for yourself. For just like a healthy exercise daily, but they are measuring themselves up against the entire history of humanity and the future of humanity, right? So if you know the sprint has been done in point, you know, seven seconds or whatever,

the metric is, then you're measuring yourself in a moment, knowingly against the rest of all time, the rest of all human accomplishment. And that level of pressure is really relatively unnatural. It only happens to a few people. So I think that back to wanting to go there, I think often about this quote, you always feel like you always used to say, and I really have been quoting it irresponsibly because I don't know what you were talking about, but some old thing used to say about a particular

Buddhist monk that would say, if you can refuse to come down this path of like, analyzation and if you can refuse to come down this path of spiritual ambition, then don't come down. Do you remember where that came from? Yeah, I believe that's from Chogum Trumpa, and I can't remember which, I think it's in the forward to cutting through spiritual materialism could be wrong about that where he says, don't do this. Don't. He says, because if you do it,

the moment you start down the path, you can't stop going down the path. And the path, the funny thing about the start to go down the path, most people, when they get into meditation, they may not want to admit it to themselves, but they want, in some way, shape or form to get enlightened. They want some power. They want, a Harry Potter level shit to happen to them. And they don't realize it's, by the time they get to the end of that path, the person who went in the rabbit hole is not the person who comes out. And it's gone. In other words, you're gone. You're out.

If you get enlightened, the part of you that was like, I want to get enlightened is gone. Like it's just gone. It's like a dream or something. It's gone like the dream you had five years ago that you can't remember. When you woke up and you were like, that was a fucking cool dream.

Wow, I'll never forget that dream. It's like that level of just, you're gone. Extinguishment is what they call the candle. You're blown out. You blew yourself out. So that is what the, you know, the sort of, I think, the ethical instruction that you find in front of most grimoires and spiritual taxes, like maybe you need to really consider what you're getting into before you actually get into it. Well, I mean, that makes total sense to me, and I think we should iron this point out a little bit more

because it's not, it just sounds like we're sort of having fun rambling. But the really, the under, there's a big underlying point here and you picture us back in the dorm room and we're just having fun and we're laughing. We're completely in the moment. It's a beautiful thing and we'll spend the rest of our lives trying to get back in that zone for sure. But once you start seeing it in the bigger scope of like your life's work, once you start like seeing that as the beginning of something, then you're

measuring, you know, everything. You start, you're starting to be scientific, right? And when you start to look at your life, your talent, what you think you can do with it, then you're going to inevitably start perceiving an arc. Because there's always this sense in society, there's always this sense of like, where is this person in their career? You're gonna feel that as you talk to your manager. You're gonna feel that as you look at the billboard and see yourself next to Brad Pitt one time

when you're driving down the LA freeway, you're gonna look up and you're gonna go, that's probably the only time I'm ever gonna be on a billboard with Brad Pitt. Every success is indicative of like the coming failure. That's probably the only time I'm ever gonna be on a billboard with Brad Pitt every success Is indicative of like the coming failure? You know that you know that this is the peak So as soon as you start to measure the arc presents itself the structure starts to present itself So in a way yeah Trump is saying

If you cannot measure if you can just exist, then just do that. Because once you start taking soils samples and studying the world that you're in and your own landscape, that never ends, right? Right? Well, I think it's like kind of, I mean, I think it's like, the, whenever I've gotten into anything, like Buddhism or whatever, like there's a 50, 60, 70% part of me that's like, this is a lark.

Like, I'll do it. It's interesting, but there's a lot of me that's like, it can't be real, real. Like, it's not all the shit they're talking about can't be real, real, like the extinguishment of identity or some, you know, luminous, awakened quality that is accessible to every single human because it is what you actually are. And it's been obitated by some temporary fleeting personality or thing you call personality, which is really just a very easy mistake to make,

which is like, oh, because I have a series of thoughts, therefore, I must be something. That's an easy trap to fall into. And you hear all this shit, but you hear it with your thinking mind, your thinking mind is desperate to continue it's like being in the forefront of your awareness. So it's tricky and it says, oh great yeah get into this stuff because my God this is gonna really help us think better. Like my, oh, wait, see the thoughts we're going to have are going to be really good after you get into this.

And then, because you've decided to, I mean, it's like, look, I don't care why you took the head of acid. You took the head of acid because you didn't believe acid worked. You took the head of acid because you wanted to like talk to aliens. You took the head of acid to cure wanted to like talk to aliens. You took the head of acid to cure your trauma. It doesn't matter. You took a very powerful head of acid and over time you are going to potentially cease to exist at some point during that trip.

You're going to see the walls melt. A lot of cool shit. That's the beginning phase. Everyone who starts meditating, inevitably, even though this is something that gets under-emphasized on purpose, get ready because your shittles happen to you that you thought couldn't happen. Then that stuff starts happening, like, oh, wow, it's this stuff and that stuff and oh my god. Wow, just like they said, and just like all the people said when they went to the east, here it is.

But you're not stopping there. You won't stop at that point. Some people try, you can't. And then slowly over time, maybe lifetimes, but maybe a lifetime suddenly you realize that's thinking too. That's just more thoughts. And then what I'm trying to get at here is like, I'm trying to get out here is like, the untamed thinking part of your mind becomes tamed. Your thoughts go from being this cavalcade of madness to an interrogation, a curiosity, a focus sort of curiosity, that is beginning because you catch a glimpse of emptiness or whatever you want to call it, what you really are. You know you hear this shit up in the beginning everything you see is your mind and you think whatever you want to think about that it makes no sense intellectually, it makes sense

or whatever. But then you begin to realize what that actually is saying. And then the part of your mind that was untrained starts spending time examining that, what that means, what that is. So there's lots of names for it. One of them is like Rigpah. You kind of like catch a glimpse,

you're meditating one day, suddenly your fuck three hits of acid annihilated, just meditating. You get so excited and instantly stops. Now you have a little sample that you start interrogating. Like what the fuck was that? Was that real? Was that anything?

Hopefully you have someone to talk to about it. And then that thing that blew your mind is just happening more and more. But now you're getting a familiarity with this space that you thought was from the acid or from a good meditation session. And then at some point, it's like that space apparently becomes more real to you than your thoughts were. You know what I mean? In other words, now your thoughts aren't even working anymore because you've come to understand that they are just as a series of like fireworks,

that the never-ending cognitive fireworks show or something. And then, so now you get to the point where, in the dream, where you realize you're dreaming. You know that part when you're having the nightmare and you realize you're dreaming? Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you ever, that's what it is. And so then you might still be having the nightmare but the edge of the nightmare has been dulled because how the fuck is the nightmare gonna scare you anymore when you know it's a dream.

Except it's happening while you're fucking awake. It's happening while you're awake. That's the crazy part about it. It's like it's happening middle of the day, all the things that used to torment you have no more power in the sense that they have gone from being foreground to background. Yeah, to clarify real quick, I think when I'm talking about the Olympics, obviously I'm talking about temporal ambitions. And then, you know, I'm talking about temporal ambitions.

And then, you know, I'm assuming he was talking about the spiritual ambitions. But the metaphor works however you want to apply it. And yeah, right. I think I never mention what I'm working on or anything, but I just two days ago I put out my new solo record on Drag City called Zone Black and it was sort of a space that I could put all my ideas that, you know, weren't literal like holy sons or or even grills like it was a little bit more of like a dream space that I would categorize kind of dream music or like sort of deprivation tank music sort of just music that

that's a little bit more no a femoral or something, but so I was looking back over some interviews and I was doing a bunch of new ones and I was noticing something I had said about, you know, never stopping to see what's next. I was always driven by this absolute, total, rabid hunger to keep finding new horizons and reading yourself saying something like that, I was kind of like, what is this thing? Like, who is this person? What's exactly wrong with them? And it's interesting that as the arc presents itself over your creative life or your Olympics, there's going to be a point at which you break the pole vaulting height. And then you're inevitably going to prepare emotionally to step down.

The Olympics are every four years. You're probably not going to be the best in four years, right? Right. All right. So, but, but, but in, in, in my career, I don't ever really, there's just no arc is presenting itself. I just still am curious, you know, so I don't know what that is, why that is. It seems like you're supposed to slow down. I read this interview with Terry Riley once where he was talking about, you know, he's like me and my wife, we've entered the late stage of our career

where like our job is to catalog everything we've ever done and we sit around, we label it and we basically say, you know, this is 67 in that park where we did that one thing with Alan Ginsburg or whatever. And, and then, you know, it's just like, I was like, oh shit, that's gonna be me someday. I'm gonna, I'm entering the phase. I'm gonna start cataloging. I'm gonna start looking backwards. I'm gonna start labeling because I have so much stuff that still hasn't come out I don't really know if it'll ever be important to anyone else But it's there on my hard drives, and I know you're talking about and it's like that phase just never quite

Begins because there's still more that I want to do That I still I'm still in that dorm room that we were in. This episode of the DTFH has been supported by my dearest friends at Squarespace. They truly are my friends. I probably wouldn't have the greatest website of all time if not for Squarespace. You can check out at DunkitTrustle.com. I use it every single time I upload an episode of the DTF H. I use it for my dates and everything else. And it never fails me.

Squarespace makes it easy for you to create a beautiful website. And only a few hours with their incredible mix and match templates. You could use the very same technology to send out emails to your client base. Of course, they have shopping cart functionality and everything that you need if you're thinking about creating a creative space for your podcast or whatever it is that you happen to be doing out there. You want to get your socials on your website, Squarespace, will allow you to do that. It is a creativity toolbox, a dream engine, an aeroplane to carry you through,

that membrane that seems to separate some people from instantiating their dreams into time space. In other words, it's just what you need to get your sweet beautiful but online. And you should do that. Throw your barber, barber, don't throw your barber into the digital waters of the internet. Throw your barber, the barber of your creativity, a nexus point where folks can find out about whatever it is that you're putting out there into the world and tune in. You can even have members only areas on Squarespace where you can provide extra content to your Dearest Fant. Squarespace is an ever-evolving creativity engine. If you want to try them out for free, you can by going to squarespace.com-flartslash-d, Duncan. See if it's right for you, which it will be. And when you're ready

to launch these offer code Duncan, and you will get 10% off your first order of your website or a domain. Again, it's squarespace.com, Fordslash, Duncan. You can try it out for free when you're ready to launch these offer code Duncan to get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Thank you my friends at Squarespace for continuing to support the DTFH. Amen. There's still more that I want to do, that I still, I'm still in that dorm room, that we were in. I'm still, you know what I mean? Dude, this is the instruction that I love. There's two instructions that come from this form of Buddhism.

I just can't stop being interested in. One of them is, this is from Shogun Trumpa, it's disowned. Whatever the last meditation you had, disowned that. So you don't get told on to your past meditation practice. It's very similar to stand up, which is your only as good as your last set. Like, and really you have to disown that one too. So you disown whatever came before in your artistic life or your spiritual life, and that is incredibly frustrating for the people who want to like, where, like keep talking about their fucking ayahuasca trip where they destroyed or devastated or

They got the transmission or learned how to do the thing that whatever and I talked to the gods That's very frustrating because it's like okay. Well, that's not happening now and then When you enter so that's the first step disown whatever happened before and Then the next step it disown whatever happened before. And then the next step, it comes from the low-drong mind training slogans, which I'm sorry you guys, I always say this one, because it's like my mantra at this point, abandoned all hopes of fruition.

Meaning when you go into the thing, don't have any as much as you can, let go of whatever the fuck that thing is that is telling you Artistically, this is gonna be the next big thing. This is gonna blow the minds This is gonna like show people that I have an arc of Where I'm getting better and better and better or or really show the audience in my head that and So that so these two things are designed to sort of essentially decapitate the materialistic transactional capitalist

profit motive that can get into all forms of creativity. And it's a training, you have to do that. And then that will, that's why a lot of people will say, Buddhism's really boring, because that's fucking boring. Like what? You know, you've taken away my hope, my joy, this'll be what I get in light.

And this is my, oh wait until people see your ear this. And you've taken away the, I've made some great shit. I'm a great meditator. Boy, have I really gotten this shit down? Cause it's like, no, it doesn't matter. Not, you're just, this is, you're starting over every time. Literally starting over.

Like, and then that, to me, that's a very paradoxically fruitful zone to find yourself in. Because you can't really want to be fruitful, because now if you want to be fruitful, that's hopes of fruition. So in other words, the moment you start thinking, oh my god, this is a great way to create a very fruitful zone for my creation to get the power that comes or the rush that comes. It's like, nope, now you're not doing the thing. So that's where it gets really, that's where it's threading the needle, I guess you get to it. Well, I think when you look at the face of Stanley Kubrick or something, you don't see someone who thinks they're fabulous. You

know you see someone who's under a great internal strain. You know what I mean? So sick. Definitely sick. But there's no sense of like some you know like glamorous stride on the red carpet you never see him in that circumstance right he's never like oh and I've done this and I've done that and I've done this It's like it's always there's something about eyes wide shut where I don't know much I don't know much about the technical stuff But that it's it's It's notoriously like it was in his most difficult movie and went on forever and it was a lot of problems. That seems more indicative of his day to day reality. Is that he's you know, if there's anything good about what he did in the past, it's of massive hurdle because he's going to be compared to it.

So he's constantly haunted by everything that went right, you know what I mean? So there's like a there's a payback on the capitalist end of things like the more you accomplish, the more the billboard with Brad Pitt starts to fade, right? The more the more good things happen, the more corn gets that number one song. It's like, yeah, dude, that's like, that's as good as you're going to get. That's really how capitalism works. It's like, every victory is, that's as good as you're going to get, bro, like, be happy with that because it's over starting now.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, right, dude, you're getting like, you're, it's basically like, it's over starting now. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, right, dude, you're getting like, you're, it's basically like, it's, this is so easy to do. And every day, it's not like you just decide not to do it. Every day you have to keep yourself from falling prey to like, who's giving you your paychecks? Like, you have to really like understand

that like, you're getting all forms of paychecks. You're not just getting like money from stuff you do, you're getting the paycheck of the person you respect, giving you some, some like that was really good, or you're getting the paycheck from any externalized paychecks system is going to like cause some like dilution of whatever it is you're up to. You know, this is the Jesus in the desert, which is I think the ultimate analogy for what we're talking about here. As nobody wants to be in the fucking desert, when you go in the desert,

you're instantaneously going to be tempted to take shortcuts to get the fuck out of the desert. You get the, you know, your hungry. So what is the Lord of Docmacy? Why don't you turn these stones into bread and you can eat? Then there you go, anytime you find yourself in your head, turn and try to turn the stones into bread, you're fucked. You're so at your fucked. So what is the response? Man cannot live by bread alone. Blast you Jesus! I don't know, he didn't say anything.

You got me on that one, Jesus. Two nerds in the desert, if you really think about trust fun kid and like the bully. It's basically like the fucking breakfast club. But with that like, you know, miscreant that we all wanted to model ourselves after trying to torture the default reality children. But anyway, my point is, uh, you realize that I mean, you want to get depressed.

The reason you're going to get depressed is because you're, you're, you're getting, at least my theory on that would be you're getting fed by something by an institution or a person or a set of metrics. You that you've become dependent on that as you're the thing that makes you real. And once you get to the point where you can't get fed by that anymore, no matter how much you want because your body's breaking down, you're not gonna fucking pull vault again. Then you're now you have to sit with your actual suffering

that you were distracting yourself from with those crumbs that you were being fed by the devil. Yeah, I think, I mean, I'm just sort of saying, if you can remain in your own personal biosphere and not judge yourself by any metrics and you can just wander the world and enjoy the flowers and enjoy your daily coffee in a morning. If you can stick to those simple things, then do that. But, you know, I look back at being, say, like nine years old and just thinking about

the artistic opportunities that Palmer Park really was, was sort of rising to the challenge of. In front of the whole world, when I was like nine, I was just like, I, I, for, for better or worse, I saw myself in it. I was like, I, I can do that. I want to do that, you know, and on that day, a metric was set, you know what I mean? And impossible metrics. That is a tough metric. You never, there's never going to be another poem. It's just not going to happen. I mean, they try with Michael Jordan all the time. They're like trying to always measure stats against Michael Jordan.

But as a phenomena, there will never be another Michael Jordan in terms of time and the way the world experience turns. There will be people, Olympicsly, that can probably do just about the same thing, that they won't serve the same purpose in the history of the world. And the same with Paul McCartney. I mean, it's just nobody, nobody's gonna ever play that exact role. So I look back at those little, sort of, oracle points like the Never in the Story, you know, like these points at which I was like gonna pass the press of the social thing. And that particular one was like a defining thing to decide without knowing you're deciding that you will be that character. That character in the narrative,

you know, which can haunt you, can be a bad thing. And then I think back to moving to Portland, can be a bad thing. And then I think back to moving to Portland, when I moved out of your apartment, which I still kind of feel a little bad about, because I really did believe you in the real urge. I mean, obviously, things. I never thought, did I think that? I think when someone breaks a lease and like leaves you

in an apartment alone, you think it's just inevitable that you feel kind of abandoned. I don't think it- Did I tell you I feel abandoned? I don't remember. I don't think we talked about it. We sort of just decided not, which was weirdly mature of us

at such an immature period. But I think we just didn't want to get into it. But I think it probably did fuck you up a little bit. Was that little butterard? I don't remember. I was probably a little butterard, but I don't remember being butterard. Like usually I remember being butterard.

Like and I don't remember being like two butter, but I probably was. I mean, I'm definitely like crabby and shitty. Like one level of me is very neurotic and crabby and shitty, so it's a highly probable that I was like, he abandoned his knees. We didn't really go into it, but if you, if you book back at our lives, that was another huge moment

because the second I got in my truck and drove off up that highway towards Portland, Oregon, and you locked the door to you now, single apartment. The rest of our lives started at that moment. You had to sink or swim, and I had to do the same. And then weirdly, our lives were very parallel. We're not really, the world doesn't really draw to us. You know, I mean, we've studied a billion times, where we just have an underdog thing. And we're not really, we're not really, we're not really,

we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not really, we're not like really, the world doesn't really drawn to us. You know, I mean, we've said it a billion times, where we just have an underdog thing.

And so, but if I hadn't left, who knows what would have happened? But I feel like it, things got better because I did, or something like this. For sure they did, you had to do that. I mean, I can only remember in retrospect, but you always seem kind of like a wandering wizard to me anyway. Like, you know what I mean?

Like, you didn't seem like, you seem like kind of a traveler. So, I think on some level, it made sense to me. And also, like, you're a musician. You know what I mean? Working at a comedy club. Like, you know, like, that doesn't make sense. We were, I think, hanging out and enjoying that weirdness of being in LA and just being like, what the fuck is this? But I think it was kind of destined that you weren't going to stay

at that two-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood walking distance from the comedy store, ridiculously cheap in those days. By the way, I can't even imagine how much that fucking apart. Just 900 bucks a second. This is nothing, because it's like a wonderful place. Like right in the middle of town, I didn't know where we were or how good we had it either.

That's another funny thing. So much money to me at the time. So much money. 900 dollars fucking man. That was, woo, it was a lot based on what we were getting paid at the store. That's for sure. We weren't, what do you know? To do it.

That was actually what broke my back. I actually did the math one day. I was like, oh, I gotta leave. But, but then this is the exact point at which I'm always stuck that in my podcast that I have to go back to, but this is when the real story, I think, begins, even though everything before that point was like the building and the molding of who we are at this moment. The point where you have to sink your swim, where you have to like go on stage is just such a major test that I

just dreaded so much. I really did not want to do that at all. Yeah. And one, and it's a bummer that I can't think of the term, but a friend of mine that knows our guru buddy in Boston. A friend of mine, I was talking to him once, this was a major moment for me. I was talking to him once online about my guru, and I was talking about how one issue that me and my guru had, and you may have some sort of parallel Buddhist concept, it is. But one thing that really hung us up,

and it hung him up totally, and it hung me up in a very awkward manner that I had to figure out how to get over at least to some degree. And there's a word, and it's just sad that I'm not going to be able to present it to you right now, but it's a word for a psychological complex, a psychological phenomenon when you get on stage and you show people something, you then become observed, you become the observed. And so then the internal chemical nature of what you are doing, it's very society of a spectacle I guess, but the internal nature, molecular nature completely changes because it is now not the thing. For example, when when like a pretty girl takes an Instagram video of themselves meditating, they're probably not meditating. Probably not. Yeah, I love spiritual shots are my favorite. Everyone has to do I feel so bad for the spiritual teachers who have to put their fucking picture on a book.

They don't want to. They don't want to put their picture on a book. They have to. The father's like, no, you got to put, what are you going to put on there? Right. You can't put a picture of you, like, you know, awkwardly, like walking out of the bathroom after you just took a shit. Like, you can't put a picture of you. You could, like, a week. You could, but you got to, like, you got to sell, of you could, it'd be like a week. You could, but you gotta like, you gotta sell, look man, we live in the marketplace. You gotta sell some books and nobody's gonna, this book looks interesting.

Y'all, the art of true awareness and on the back, it's just you like taking an uncomfortable shit. What? No, you gotta get a photo photographer who's taken, oh, you, this, they've taken pictures of the great spiritual teachers. They're like, they know how to get the right lighting to be using particularly enlightened. Yeah, right. I know what you're saying, man. It's like, that's a very fascinating flower growing off of the satanic bush that we're talking about. Well, I think my...

Start acting. I don't know. Yeah, exactly. Acting is what it is. And musicians are kind of... they're kind of actors. And I was like, no, that's not what I am. I'm... You start acting like yourself.

Yeah, right. And so my guru was like, am. You start acting like yourself. Yeah, right. And so my guru was like, we never talked about it like that. And for anybody out there you can actually find the word, the phrase for how the molecular situation has changed by observation. It's totally such a great concept. But my guru... You're talking about the double slit experiment. Is what it is?

Observation, in fact, yeah, that if you take photons, try to put them through a slit, you know what I mean? Well, you try to put them through a slit. Apparently, if they're being observed, it changes the way that they behave versus if they're not being observed, which is a very curious effect that lots of people apparently are confused by, but it's true. Like you observe these little guys trying to like, if you, something about, if you observe them,

they will become particles. If you don't observe them, they'll become a wave. particles if you don't observe them they'll become a wave. Yeah, I don't. We, I, my guru, you know, he was like kind of a street character that didn't, you know, didn't go to college or anything. So he wasn't like, name checking like, you know, victim style, but like, but he knew But like, but he knew extremely advanced concepts just by instinct and he could like just kind of rattle off the top of his head if it was an appropriate moment to teach me something. And so, when he, I think, glimpsed that process, which was sort of the star maker machinery

in the underground at that time, which was sort of the star maker machinery in the underground at that time, which was pretty fucking serious. I mean, we were right there when when dinner, I think, was happening and people like back were just getting pulled out of, you know, the underground. It could have been anyone. It really felt like it could have just been anyone that got pulled into the castle. You know? So I was like still in my mind, there was a part of me that was still eight and nine years old with the problem of carton-thing. And I was like, I could see the problem.

I could see the problem with going on stage. I could see that it was going to pervert everything, because as the polevolter, your job is to, on one side of your brain, know exactly the height that your competitor did four years ago in the Olympics. And so there's an analytical part that is very aware of the measuring sticks, and then there's the other part of yourself that's obligated to bring that wild space where there's chaos and just no measurement and you're supposed to, you're obligated to bring this, this thing, this gift you have on, on, you know, star search or whatever. And then that relationship of holding both of those things at the same time is extremely difficult for a young person to figure out, right? Yeah.

So that was where, when I left your apartment, and we both had to just fucking hit the pavement, that was where we were like, you know, we had to develop formulas, tricks, ways to like get our brain into a space where we could find out how to thread water, you know, and that was probably the most important transition in a lot of ways because if I hadn't made it through that transition, I would be whatever dad or down at the circle k right now, washing washing a car just fucking wanting to die, you know Living this sort of suicidal reality because I never really made it to the transition I needed to go through and so that period of our lives I constantly We're turned to and analyze because

Because that's where we were again still in the dorm room, but presented with a whole new mathematical reality which was like, how the fuck are we gonna throw at this level? And I know. Yeah. I know you were scared and confused and extremely, probably just sure it wasn't gonna work. Yeah, I mean, I think I was a bit of a, you know,

there's some quality of nihilism that I would lean into as a method or something. Like, you know, like just a general sense of like defeat. You know, like if I'll just lean into defeat and I know that's like not a popular bit of advice, but it was sort of like, look, I mean, this doesn't work out for anybody number one. Like, who does it really statistically? It's an incredible anomaly if you manage to support yourself

with any form of artistic anything. So therefore, the pursuit of the thing is a nihilistic pursuit in that they're more than likely you're just gonna like crash and burn like everybody else you try to end up at the circle K. You know what I mean or wherever, end up like you know back home living with your mom or we have packing boxes in a book district distribution place which was like something my mom weirdly held over my head when she was advising me to not pursue this bullshit. It's like I'm friends with Gary over it.

Sammy books and you could pack books. Ah! Ah! Look, if you want your kid to like keep trying to become a comedian, tell him his other option is packing books. It's kind of like the perfect thing because it's like, she's maybe knowingly telling you like, you want to be the person that writes the book,

but you're not that guy. You're the guy that packs. Yeah, you know, you're gonna pack the motherfucking books. If someone's got a pack, if someone's got a right, you're gonna pack them on Mother's mother's give you that weird Contrigatory message their eyes to whether kind of like it's great you're great at packing books You it's just that's what life is is packing books, but there's that little glimpse of condescension

life is his packing books, but there's that little glimpse of condescension where they're like, sure. I get it. You know, that's the glory of becoming a parent. If you want to forgive your parents, one great way to do it is become a parent and experience the burning desire for your children to like never have to go through what you went through to never experience what like your lowest points were. And, you know, any kid is eventually going to present some dream that more than likely if karma is real doesn't fit into your idea of what is going to make a happy life.

And that's going to be, that's the look you're talking about. Because you gotta, you gotta, you're like, you know. Like, you know, you're not stopping them. If you've done a good job as a parent, you're not stopping them, but you want to. You know what I mean? And you know that like, you really have to embrace, like let them do their thing.

And I can't, I mean, my oldest is four. So what the fuck, I mean, I'm even close to that moment of payback from the universe for me torturing my mother, because, or my parents, and getting off on the torture, getting off on the, you know, like, I'm a covered in roaches mama. I haven't eaten a weak mama. I got gravy on my tits.

I don't know whatever the fuck happened to you. A fill in a gravy bad mama. Yeah, so, but, you know, I think to get back to where the original thing you're talking about is like, you don't, you can return exactly back to that thrilling place where you haven't become consumed by the need for affirmation from people or billboards or whatever. In any moment that's sort of the delightful discovery you can make. My dear friends, I don't have time to have a late night with drinks like I used to. And the reason is, is because my liver is on strike with sack and the writer's union.

It's like no, we're not doing this anymore. You don't get to pour mezz-cow all over us every single day, 49-year-old. You don't get to pour mezz-cal all over us every single day, 49-year-old. You don't get to do that. Wake up, man. You can do it. I'm a mortal body, not an immortal body. You know, you're not a polo. You're not Zeus. That guts and organs that you have to take care of. The point is I'm very excited about today's sponsor Z Biotics because it is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It is a pre alcohol drink. Drink it is instructed took a bottle before I had any booze and I was amazed. Like very amazed. Like are you kidding me? This is our future room temperature semiconductors aliens and the possibility

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that dark, toxic, byproduct of booze gets in your gut down. It works. That's the most important thing it works. I tried it three times. It works. Again, ZBiotics.com forward slash Duncan to get 15% of your first order when you use Duncan and check out. Thank you ZBbiotics for sponsoring this episode. Model Toss. You don't, you can return exactly back to that thrilling place where you haven't become consumed by the need for affirmation from people or billboards or whatever, in any moment, that's sort of the delightful discovery

you can make. Whenever I'm having, especially initially, when I was trying to meditate, I would think either this feels like Christmas or I would think this feels like I'm working at summer camp again. And I could know, I never quite connected it initially, like why that was the first thing that popped into my head. But it was because back then I just really wasn't thinking about what the fuck I was doing

at all. Or Christmas with the family, you're kind of like, you're okay, you're fine. There's like a release of responsibility there too. Like the narrative is so heavy, you just feel free in a strange way. That's it. And then you start that, whatever that is, starts extending a little bit. And then you start realizing, oh yeah, right, no, it's not like a summer guy. Because this is where you run into the glory, the people trying to chase the past glory, because they're making a, they felt a certain way at some point, that way that they felt,

they naturally associate that with what was around them. So they're like, oh, that, you know, I was, that was when I was like, making the touchdown, that one, not fucking thing, or that the, so they're like, that was, but really what they was happening when they made the touchdown, did the pole vault, whatever it was,

was they were experiencing unit of consciousness. And like when you're talking about the moment you are on stage and you are no longer recognizing the audience as you, the audience is part of you or whatever it is, then yeah, now you've cut yourself in half. And you know what I mean? And that's the, I think that's what he was taught. He's what was aware of is like the moment you break yourself into pieces, even though it's all your own mind, your capacities are diminished exponentially by that. But the moment you try to fake merge with the audience or fake, be in the moment.

It's even worse because now you, God, what's worse than someone acting like they're in the moment? You know, I mean, audiences can sniff that shit out right away. They know you're full of shit. You're not tricking anybody. But then when you, when you stumble upon someone like your friend, they're who that just seems to be like, what they were somehow they'd like, you might think they've broken themselves.

You know what I mean? You might not, they might seem like wild in a bad way or you just don't get it. What the fuck is that? Why are they, I don't understand that, that looks like a person. Well, doesn't that looks like a person. Well, that doesn't seem like a person. There are dudes that I'm in bands with now that aren't really like, aren't really like

entertainers. And, and, and we, we battle a little bit of like, you know, anxiety at times together, where we're like, um, the tours coming up, but it just feels like, you know, what if the band goes green and off the side of the mountain, there's just a lot of things to worry about. And when you're coming from a less entertainerous standpoint, your obsession is with the piece of art. If you're just really an artist, you know, back by in the curtain, then you're kind of like, all you want to do is lift this piece of work out of your life and put it on a mantle and move on, right? And the way that that sort of mini culture has

always done that in music is that you put out the record and then you tore, you know, and that's like a really stiff kind of structure that that has been eroding for a while now. I've been at the vanguard of eroding it. I'm like the guy that keeps trying to bring music back to my bedroom, you know, I've always been doing that. Like, it started there and I'm taking it back to the bedroom. I'm not necessarily an entertainer, but I'll get up there if I have to, you know. And so, the obsession with the artist is like just getting lifting that piece of work up and then sort of ceasing to have to work on it and then going to the next thing. So, so being out in front of the audience isn't necessarily, it's just not necessarily my dream. It's not, it's not necessarily what makes me happy. It's probably a part of like

functioning in the world as a healthy person. Like, I think you probably look at it that way too. Like when Aaron says, go out there, go fucking do a show. Yeah. But there's a different story to cut. There is a difference. So maybe there is, and I don't know, but it seems like when you're seeing a musician perform a song that's already on an album,

the song is baked. Like people want to hear the song that was on the album. They might get frustrated if there's a deviation from what you did, whereas with stand up, the medium is the audience. Like you're developing jokes in the moment, you're learning all these, you know, you're learning all these things.

You can not develop a successful stand up act in sadly you can't in the fucking bedroom or comedians would never go on No, no, I don't know how many would go on stage. They'd all be in their bedrooms working on their jokes using whatever Feedback machine they add that like help dial it in and inducing the machine they add that like help dial it in and inducing the necessary levels of terror and fear of bombing to like amplify their passion. So that's a big split, man, which is why I could see as a musician why it would be so why going on stage to perform these things would have an element in it that is like different from a comedian.

You know, because unless you're like the grateful dad or a jam band or something and people are prepared for you to do a 19-minute, like, groovy guitar riff in between lyrics of a three-minute song. You know what I mean? What even- And that is like a really familiar, like, brand texture, right? That's a totally interesting difference between how any music that's, it feels like music is a lot more like, drudgery sometimes because you're sort of like, like you always say, like, God, got to lift all that stuff up those stairs and Fuck yeah, you know that stuff and you kind of like you kind of walks in and the mic set up, you know what I mean?

It's like yeah, man, we you're you're watching forensic files for as long as you fucking can You know the exact amount of time it takes to get from your hotel to the comedy club And you know the exact amount of time it takes to get from your hotel to the comedy club. You know what I mean? You've spent some time like going over your act, what you're gonna say, you're thinking about it, but it's like the, I'm not having to go in there and like do a sound check four hours before showtime,

then sit in the green room and then like whatever fucked up thing happens because one of the guitars fucked up or the sound guy at the club is like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh like, oh, she racked out in the board or whatever the fuck that then you have to fix and you have to get pro. I can't even imagine the various panic moments as a performer you have to have when you realize whatever the venue is, is not the thing that you desperately need or the chord. I don't know. That's a lot to deal with cognitively before you go and do a show. Well, on top of the return to the, to the impetus of the, the, this point

is that, is that like, what if you could just stay home? Yeah. What if you didn't have to just do all of that? I'm not like giving like a negative proclamation on it all. I think that playing music For people or in front of people Is a totally different part of my life. I mean That I'd never think about I just don't I just thought it's not that important to me But but when you see Michael Jordan's Like muscles flexing and he's doing that free throw dunk and he's flying through there. That I mean let's take away all the capitalist you know connotations of everything

going on all the money being made and all that stuff because as a child when you saw it was just a pure moment it was just a man fucking flying through the air, doing something nobody had ever seen before. You see his muscles flexing and he's about as confident and graceful as a human being can possibly look. He's so fucking handsome and he's so aware of himself and what he's doing, you know, for the industry, for the story. And when he's sort of like, it's literally flexing, you know, the way people kids say now, like you're flexing. He's like flexing it.

And I guess playing live can be more like that, you know, like look at what I can do, you know, look at how good I've become at this thing. But I don't live my life like even, you know, like all my athleticism is just, it's just, it's just an instinct, it's just a natural thing. It's not something I work on, I don't practice, I don't do any of that stuff. The practice I do is sitting at the computer trying to try to break the rules. I'm trying to hear something I literally have never heard. That's my job. You know, I want to hear something that changes my mind because when you heard the Beatles at 8.9,

that's what happened. You were like, all whole fucking doorway, like a Narnia doorway open, and you walk, you stepped into a universe, and you were like, whoa, it's like black and white to color, you know, like this universe is so varied. Like the ideas are so fantastic, very Willy Wonka, like, but they can be my ideas. I can think, I can create the world just like God did.

Yeah. I can be part of that dialogue. And that's the drug that pulls me back, not dunking in front of an annual. Well, I think that like that is where you will have that, if you're lucky enough, and that is what you're in it for if you then I think that's like pretty much the best thing because you really like that to me that is the like that that nothing can replace that feeling of sitting in the laboratory and fucking around or whatever you want to call it, your alchemical chamber, your ritual summoning the cube that you try to

summon spirits into, whatever it is when you feel that and they're going into it and when you go into it with no sense of like anything maybe or it's just some like non-linguistic grunting kind of feeling. You even know what it fucking is. And then in a lot of the times there's nothing. It's like, you know, watching this, watching Aaron go through a thorough pregnancy and watching the parallels in pregnancy to so many other things. They like, they swell up. It's uncomfortable. False alarms.

Am I even pregnant? What's going on? I haven't felt the baby in a little bit. Like all of these things is a perfect analogy for like trying to create anything. Like it's the exact same pattern. Like so you get like you're up sometimes because you know the baby's healthy and everything's going right.

You're down sometimes because you're either whatever the pattern that you're used to experiencing with the baby has changed. You prior to the birth, you were used to experiencing with a baby has changed. You, prior to the birth, you get false alarms. A lot of stuff will come out of you that is definitely not a baby. And that can be scary and frustrating. It's so similar. You know, I mean, God, what is worse than the, I don't know if you get this. but in my experience, in my own way of making my podcast intro is trying to write the blue balls.

You know what I mean? The blue balls that you get when you come in there and you already know you're fucked, you're all blurry, you're just not there, man. And then you weave after wrestling with whatever it was you were trying to get out, you already know it's bad. But I don't know if you do this. I'll trick myself into thinking that that was, that's good. And then you come back because you come back with those new ears after time has passed. You know,'m talking about it and you're like, I'm going to listen to this or read this and it's going to either make me feel like I have some Ford momentum or I will feel

like I have gone insane or I will just be like, look, what the fuck I'm doomed. Do you know I'm talking about this is the pattern, the process. And I think there are some people that that is, and then add to that time collapse when it mounts you, and then you're not even there anymore. Anyway, time vanishes, hours have passed, you're missing phone calls, you don't give a shit, who's calling you? You don't give a shit what's happening?

You don't care the alarms are going off the dogs or barking, whatever it is. You're not even hearing it. And I think that that might sound exciting from the outside, but that can be really quite uncomfortable to be gone for a little bit while you're making something. And I think all of these components are not for a lot of people, they don't want that at all.

They don't want that. That don't want that at all. They don't want that. That doesn't sound good at all. That doesn't sound good to not exist for a few hours and to come out of the non-existence with something that isn't that great. Ha-ha-ha. I think if you, well, the secret basically to everything is that, and the sad thing about this is this is

probably just an instinctual temperament but like if you're traveling through a labyrinth which is making one piece of life for a labyrinth which is your whole life it's always better to just err on the side of positivity. Because each time a door is closed and you have to figure out a way to open it, you're just not going to open it if you err on the side of negativity. Like there's just the only way through this positivity. So like no matter what happens, if it's the most debilitating and then like costs, costly, you know, error, they're still, you still have to go forward. You can't go back.

And I, and yeah, so I think that's great. And I think that in a way that goes back to this the great moment of John T.C. are our professor for our sensual stylist professor at the moment where I wrote this whole thesis. We had to do like the year, like the thesis was whatever you wanted to be. We've talked about this before I think and your kids were doing like the legalized marijuana. And I was in a very bad state and I, my thesis was on

how suicide is a relative option. It's a great option if you want it. And I got in front of the crack, I got in front of this class and it was really bad mental state. And I was casing and everyone gave me this like a little suggestion box thing where everybody really did it with you. And I just completely got in the ass. Across the board, just people didn't understand when I was, where was coming from? They're putting suicide hotline,

not hotline numbers in the suggestion box. Well, actually what they said was, I've said this before, I'm probably a podcasting dude, but every little piece of paper said, he's drunk, why is he drunk? Or he's, you know, he's on drugs for something. Well, that was how, like, that was my vibe, I just gave off this vibe that I was,

but it was because I was in a really unsafe state of mind that made that really uncomfortable. So they got my worries on drug. But I was completely just in a terror zone. And even the teacher gave me a deer and a f, and it was just like, what the fuck were you thinking? And I went into his f and it was just like what the fuck were you thinking and I went into his office and I was like how dare you not trust me dude you know like we're really close bro like what were

you thinking this is what I'm going through and all I did was report it to you and once he got my sincerity. He was like, he went to an A. But he was like, he was kind of like, he was like, oh, you're that fucked up. He felt, he felt the gravity at it. I don't think it was a pity, but he was just kind of like, oh, you meant what you said. And I was like, that's the difference. I actually mean it. And so that his big response to my piece of self-serve was, at least as far as I remember, he was like, he was like, if life doesn't matter. If slitting your wrist is just a motion, just like taking a step or points and coffee,

then you're totally free. And if you're totally free, just like taking a step or point some coffee then you're totally free and if you're totally free why not just invent whatever you want and why not do whatever you want and in that moment I was like God he is logically he's just so correct that you can't refuse God, you know, like, you would always show open the door for me and like that's, that's an example of positivity, trumping negativity, right?

And so he's, he just kind of, he just laid out there for you and like, you just had no choice but to absorb the action of truth. So that's where I got that idea, I think. But also, it's our temperament. We found the problem solving part of ourselves and we let that push us forward. Yeah, man. I mean, this is the, like, if the mind is not trained,

it is like a wild elephant. And, you know, an untrained mind will habitually veer towards negativity, I think, just as a maybe an evolutionary safety mechanism. Maybe it's safer to be negative. Maybe because you're more negative, you're gonna protect yourself more or something like that. Whereas like, if you've sort of come to this realization

of the meaninglessness or a kind of like neutral thing, and then your answer is suicide or something like that. The mistake would be thinking that you're, it's like you already, I have committed suicide. You're bad news. Like there's nothing that, what are you gonna annihilate anyway? Like what's the annihilation? So then there's nothing that, what are you gonna annihilate anyway? Like what's the annihil, so then there's a decision,

training that's happening where yeah, you're, in positivity, I think the word gets you so much now, people think it's associated with a fake smile or something, versus a, like you know, it's like when your wife is fucking pregnant and you're trying to comfort them as a dude who is not blasting out chunks of stuff from their pussy and wondering if the thing inside of them

is like a lie or could die. And you're getting contracted. The closer you get to the baby coming, you get these practice contractions, practice contractions. And you're so excited because you think this could be it. This is it. I'm about to go into labor. The baby is coming. But no, no.

They start going away and the morning comes and you're just filled up with a baby. You got to go through another day. And it's like, yeah, all I could say is like, it's a step forward. Every time you get those, it's getting closer, we're getting closer, it's step forward, it's step forward, for better, for worse. There isn't really much you could say,

but yeah, to me, that was the most positive spin on the damn thing. It's like, having some sense of like, no, this is still good, it's still good, it's still good, no matter what, no matter what, you just get to decide that anyway, it's still good. That's, that's the, with all of it, with everything a little piece of it, yeah.

It's like, I don't, I don't, I feel like there's a way to do that, that's real and not faith-based too. Like there's a way to do that by like tuning into some more fundamental reality to things. You know, that is really quite boring and dull for most people, you know. Like that's my, I used to get so freaked out before I went on stage, man.

And like, I think that was a good sign that I so freaked out before I went on stage, man. And like, think that was a good sign that I was freaked out. I think, oh, this is good. Like, it means you care. But, and then I would think if I'm not freaked out, it won't be a good show. And then I can remember, because I'm doing this meditation shit,

and I can remember like one day in the hotel room before I was going to perform for about three seconds. I didn't feel scared. And I was like, what is this? What is this? That's crazy. Like nothing. I didn't feel like the thing.

You know, and that is a possible way to exist. I think where it's like every single day could be that. Like not just three seconds, every single day could be that of like, this is fine, no matter what's going on, the pressure of having to like do a show or give birth or whatever it may be. And this is theoretical, I would say, but for me, that's sort of theoretical, but there's some people, I was telling my friend, there's some people, they go to the airport, they're not stressed out.

I don't know what you're like when you go to the airport, but I go to the fucking airport, my buttole is so tight. I'm so fucking anxiety-ridden, I fucking hate every single step of the way, I don't wanna go through TSA. There's some people, they drive to the airport, they're fine. Not fake fine, they drive to the airport, they walk right through their blood pressure, it doesn't go up, nothing is bothering them.

Well, that energy is just like compartmentalizing a different part of their life. They gave road rage, or they had some other compartment when they experienced road rage, or they had some other compartment where they experienced that tension, but it does seem like a nice, a nice sort of thing to go out on, I guess, is that negativity is sort of predictable and sort of like a way to not open the door, whereas opening the door with a sort of positive step forward, is like, is a gateway to the unknown,

which is good or bad, depending on your interpretation. Yeah, man, I mean, this is the... Somebody was telling me it's always better to act. Right. It's always better to act. It's always better to make a decision, as well as he said, it's always better to make. It's always better to make a decision, as they said. It's always better to make the decision. Open the door.

Make the decision. It's always better than not. Always. 100% of the time, always better. Even if the door opens up to feral weasels or whatever the fuck it is, it's still like that getting in the practice of just pushing through all those like, like, because the weasels aren't real, it is better always.

I like it, you know, I've identified a feeling whenever I run into one of those doors who are talking about, first you have to recognize the door, right? That's the first step. Some people don't even understand that's a door, that's not a fucking wall covered in spikes. That's a door, and that feeling that I always get is like, I can't do this.

This isn't my thing. I'm just out of my realm. I don't do that. I can't. What is this? And then the moment you like go towards that instead of running away from it, God damn, I'm sorry to keep using these

birth analogies, man, but like, Jesus fucking Christ, a so glad I can't make babies. It is crazy to watch. Dude, it is crazy. There's a lot of great jokes. I would refer you to Wuppie Goldberg's joke on pregnancy. But like when you hear a midwife, tell your wife, When you hear a midwife, tell your wife,

I know you feel like you're being split in half right now. And I know that it seems so paradoxical, but the next time you feel the peak of that, push into it, go towards it with all your might, push into that because that is how the baby will come. And like, this is a person talking calmly to someone who is screaming the way you would scream if you were being ripped apart by lions. You know what I mean? Like, that, that is the, that to me is the instruction for everything.

That's the instruction. It doesn't make sense. I don't wanna go there, fuck that. I can't, I am exhausted. There's no way. But it's like, oh, you have to. Cause you have a fucking baby stuck in you right now. And if that thing doesn't come out,

everybody's in trouble. Everybody's in trouble. It is wild, dude, wild. And that, I think that is, I don't know, that thank God we will never experience whatever that feels like. Thank God we made the right decision in the Garden of Eden. Thank God we did not eat of the forbidden fruit. We're punished by God and birth.

But, fuck, dude. Like that, to me, if you start habituating yourself towards not running away from the worst moments, running into them, jumping down those stairs, you know, whatever it is, fuck skateboarding. I can't believe you could do that, dude. I was always so jealous of skateboarders. Well, I mean, what you're saying, too, is that like giving into it going forward probably isn't going to make it that much easier the next time either. Right?

No, it's not there. I mean, it just, it can, how can it be easy? If it was easy, everyone would do it. That's the problem. Right? If it was easy, everyone's breaking the record, everyone's writing the book, there would be no book packers. There would just be mountains of these incredible fucking books all over the unpackaged Beautiful books written by everybody. You know, it's it's it's not it's it's in it's impossible It's almost impossible and it's impossible on every level. It's it's but number one It's never gonna happen if you don't force yourself into the frying pan. And you can't expect that eventually it's going to get better forcing yourself into the

frying pan just because you did it before. It always sucks. I mean, it always, but I guess the difference is you get some familiarity with the zone versus like thinking this is a malfunction of my life. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're like, did I feel this bad last time? Probably, I think so. Can I tell you a quick story about skateboarding? Would you do this?

I know we gotta go, it's been a while, and I do have a new baby that needs to be of a mommy's gotta get some food probably. So, my kids, I'm trying to teach them about practice. You know, if you practice, you'll get better at things. And you give them these very cliche, you know, to learn how to do anything, you're going to fall down. That's just part of what it is. And you've got to get back to do anything, you're gonna fall down. That's just part of what it is, and you gotta get back up and try again.

So we're out in the driveway. I've literally just given them this like cereal box inspirational speech because they're trying to learn how to ride scooters. And so I pull this skateboard out of the shed. And I'm like, you know, I always wanted to learn out of Ollie and I never really could do it, but I'm gonna try now.

I don't know what I thought would have been people. That idea. That idea. This is like a shitty skateboard, by the way. And I'm not blaming on the skateboard. I just could never know, like, this is a skateboard that's been out in the rain under the sprinklers. You know what I mean?

The trucks are just loose as fuck, but I take that stupid skateboard, I got it a target. I take that skateboard, put it on the sidewalk, you can guess what happens. Try to do an Oli immediately just wipe out. Bam, daddy's on the fucking, on the sidewalk, I've landed on my hip, you know, like did I break my hip? Dude, I forgot the pain of falling on concrete. Like I hadn't felt that pain in so long. I don't know, it's been at least two decades since I'd like crashed into concrete with my body

And they're laughing And then I because I'm giving this shitty lecture I Have to do it try it again. I Can't be like you got to get up dust yourself off and try again. And I can't blame it on the skateboard. You know what I mean? So I had to like, get back up on the skateboard and like I performatively tried it a few more times, almost falling both of those times

and then like put the skateboard back in the shed. But you know what I mean? It's like, talk about like, put your money where the fuck amout is, or your mouth is. Cause it sure is easy to say run into the fire, but when you are the one who has to run into the fire and not advise it, you know what I mean? That's a whole different world.

Well that whole leaning into nihilism thing that we were doing on a hardcore tip, we were sort of maybe doing that because there was just no other choice and we had to know at the reference point. But I think that after you've sort of acknowledged the protective attitude, it can be good sometimes, like later in life, you sort of like, you look at 18 stairs and you're like, no, like not today. That kind of, that kind, you get a little used to like, you know, trying to protect yourself a little bit.

So returning quickly to that level of nihilistic decision making is, it's, yeah, it's shocking. I mean, there's nothing in the world like skateboarding exactly. I mean, maybe like rec three climbing on Everest or something. I mean it's just it's the most deadly, constantly deadly thing you can put yourself you know at that level of risk all the time and so you think about just their bodies like the level of being like the worst bruise you've ever had in your life is just the daily light you wake up and your ankles turn and your hip is deeply bruised and you're just blood all over it. You're lamping. Yeah, I mean, that's just that's just their sort of daily warrior like reality.

And I can take away that attitude and apply it to music much more safely. And thank God, I'm not going gonna let you myself on the keyboard. But still, I still would take from hardcore and stuff and that level of risk taking is super important. I just don't want to endanger my ability to keep doing it. That's all. Yeah, dude, we're all over. we got these old ass bodies. Now, you're not supposed to say that apparently it's called geysering is the name for where you assign age yourself. I mean, the truth is, we're painted verse, man, it's like, and I'll tell you that fucking

concrete hurts so bad. Am I knee? I was limping for days. And but God damn it. There was something nice about that limp. Well, you know what I mean? There was something in that limp that I'm like, fuck, man. I wiped the fuck out on my own driveway. I why fucking smashed into asphalt? I'm almost 50 and I'm okay.

I'm walking around. I'm not going to fucking try to all you again, necessarily. But I felt the call. It's not just like, you're like, I don't wanna do that. You're like, kinda like, God damn, I wanna try that again. I wanna try that again. Oh, you need this one little, like, maybe I'll try it one more time.

And then one more time. And then, dude, come on. The moment where you're doing it, you know what I mean, where the falls have decreased and the success rates have gone up and you're reminded of your own power and that you have confronted something and prevailed. It doesn't matter, yeah, did you just,

where are you shackled in? Did you like somehow manage to like get all of it, like get lost in the ice and find your way back and none of your men died? No, you're not shackled in. But it's a tiny infinitesimally small fractional part of what that feels like. Are you Kobe Bryant?

Are you Michael Jordan? No, but you're a spark of that. You're feeling that, you of the on the planet that day you were one small part of a rebellion Revolution not against some government, but against gravity Against common sense and against safety in a world where it's just everyone wants you to be fucking safe. It's the religion.

If aliens, there are probably many aliens who are like, they worship safety. There's some religion of safety there. They have their altars of safety. They have signs that have upon them. Yeah, yeah, that's what they would think. It's a ridden. So for one second, you've blasphemed against that aspect of culture and it's a glorious feeling. Well, there's going to be some, you know, the

nature of God's mind is the same. Like the nature of God's tendencies is the same, the nature of creating the world. There's going to be a lot of furious working, there's going to be a lot of taking it for granted. There's going to be moments of realizing that creativity is the highest level of existence. There's going to be a spectrum of emotions. There's not going to be just constant triumph, right? So I think that it's normal to take doing the 360 kickflip off the 18 stairs for granite sometimes. But you hope you don't do it for very long,

because the fact that you're so embattled and that you've gotten through all these mornings with the deeper reasons and you've gotten to that point, it's the fact that you kept going through the doors, the fact that you kept trying that put you on this plateau of complexity in terms of your articulation, you were telling, you know, so I think that that is in itself one of the biggest tasks is like appreciation, you know My friend this is why I have a massive butt plug in right now

I do with I never wanted to admit it with every podcast. They just it gets a little bigger and every time I'm like I don't think I can do this one. And every time I realize, I can. Oh, man. A guy I'm in a band with actually tells this great story about how he decided to let someone peg him. And I mean, I don't know any other pegging stories like on you know within my personal circle. So this was pretty event. I'm sorry. I know we talked about no self-promotion guys Coming out next month Pegging stories. That's actually weirdly. I guess we are synced up. That's My new book coming out and it's all the times I've been pegged and it's a 700 page book It's an exactly two volumes. It's an exploding market right now.

But so, so his story, I mean, he tells it with such a non-shalant, but he's like, it really didn't go so well. I went down to buy myself the dildo and you're like, yeah, okay, this is, that's like probably the best case scenario. And he gets to the afternoon delight party

or whatever you wanna call it. And he's like, and it was much too big, much too big for me. And I just, you know, that's the point of the story where I always stop and I'm like, but how did you misjudge that? You know, you had full control over that. Anyway, it's a wonderful vantill.

You know, this is why when you're picking out your first pegging dildo, don't do it based on the beauty of the dick. You know, do it on size because a lot of these dildos that you see, you might be like, that's a beautiful cock. I would love to have that rammed into my asshole. But you do that, and then you're gonna get this, what he experienced, you know, just like, don't go on aesthetics at first.

And that's not just with dildos, that's with cocks. Thank you, stories, out next month. just with Dildos, that's with Cox. Thank you, stories out next month. Thank you, stories out next month. If you pre-order it, you will have access to my only fans. And it's some good stuff, guys. The skateboarding should have seen. I just did it.

Wow. Hot. Emel, tell me again, I know you do not self-promote. If you ask me, you could do you do not self-promote. If you ask me, you could do it some more self-promotion because your shit is my favorite music. Don't mean to make you uncomfortable. I know this does, but I've started listening to your music

on Spotify going through. It's so beautiful. It is so powerful. And I'm excited to hear that you have a new album coming out. So where can we find that? Yeah, with respect to the label, Greg City, I should tell people to go to their website and check out Zone Black. It's basically music based on the like eerie dismal awkward stuff that you know the lonely man thing at the end of a Hulk in 1977 or something. Oh wow.

It's based on that kind of like awkward scarred feeling you get when you think back to Ristie business and the train ride and just like that you know you were too young to experience that so I'm trying to recreate that uncomfortable feeling. Jesus Christ, that's crazy and beautiful. I'll send you one right now. Thank you, friend. Yeah. Emel, I love you.

Thank you so much for coming on the show and I hope I get to see you soon. Yeah, let's do it again soon. That was Emel, aim is everybody. Don't forget to check out his new album on drag, City Zone Black, or any of his other projects. Thank you all for listening. If you want commercial free episodes of this podcast, you can always subscribe to us

at patreon.com for its last D-T-F-H. I'll see you in a few days when I'm a little less blurry. Blurry? Is that the word? I don't even know how to say that. I'm tired. I'm tired. I'll see you soon.

Bye. Blurry, blurry. Is that the word? I don't even know how to say that. I'm tired. I'm tired. I'll see you soon. Bye.