Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Will Oldham

Episode Date: November 3, 2017

While traveling across the country I stopped by Louisville and recorded this conversation with musical legend Will Oldham AKA Bonnie Prince Billy.

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For those of you who may not be familiar with who I am, because you've tuned in for the Will Oldham interview, I am a 64 year old lesbian botanist living in New Zealand. Sorry about that you guys, I was at a party and some assholes spilled cutting on my computer and ever since then it's been assuming the identities of random people on the planet or assuming the universal identity or quoting Krishna Murthy. But to find out who you are, who you are, not who the speaker is, is far more important. And to find out who you are, you have to enquire, you are the story of mankind. I am going to have to take this to the Apple store, it just keeps pumping out theosophists,

the messiahs, and little Alan Watts clips, and the whole thing is warping and out of the frames of the universe, so I just want to get this great episode up with Will Oldham. Hello, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled, shall I park my hair behind, do I dare to eat a peach, I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach, I have heard the mermaid singing each to each, I do not think that they will sing to me, I have seen them riding seaward on the waves, combing the white hair of the waves blown back when the wind blows the water white and black, we have lingered in the chambers of the sea, by sea girls reased with seaweed red and brown, till human voices wake us and

we drown. Alright, I gotta take this to the Apple store. Boom! Got it fixed! Sorry about that, you guys, as it turns out, the ketamine had gotten into the motherboard and summoned some kind of interdimensional caterpillar family that had built a chapel inside my computer and they had been singing hymns to the universal truth that we are all one beautiful, orgasmic consciousness unfolding into time and it was fucking with my memory

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that website was made using Squarespace. Thank you Squarespace.com. Offer code Duncan. You will get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Thank you Squarespace. Pals if you're sick of my raspy seemingly lesbian voice assaulting the inner sanctum of your inner ear with my ridiculous ponderous chaotic and often times completely confusing unprofessional opening rants do you no longer want to suffer under the cruel burden of having

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if you want to really crater your life if you want to send a lightning bolt of chaos into the heart of your life then go to amazon and order a make noise morphogen it's a modular synth you're gonna have to get a what's called a euro rack to go with it but if you want to have the most psychedelic audio toy that I've ever seen in my life then that's the thing for you a morphogen I'm so sucked into the world of modular synths and I would like you to be too but first just go through the amazon link located at dunkintrustle.com whenever you do that anything you buy on amazon they give us a very small percentage of and it costs you nothing we also have a shop with t-shirts and posters and stickers check it out all right that's it friends let's do this podcast today his

guest is a musical hero of mine I connected with him when I was going across the country in a recent road trip and he was kind enough to let me stay at his beautiful home in Louisville and to let me conduct this interview with him not only did I get to eat dinner with one of my musical heroes I also got to play video games with him and his wonderful wife Elsa if you have the karmic misfortune of having never listened to Will Oldham or Bonnie Prince Billy as he's called you should immediately take all your clothes off draw yourself a bath light some lavender candles and listen to master and everyone listen your life will be eternally blessed and you will realize that this planet that we are currently inhabiting is a sacred and glorious place so without further

ado spread those heart chakras wide and send as much sweet love goo zinging through the interstellar quantum stuff that connects all of us so that it splatters all over the face and chest of the beautiful delightful and genius will hold them us hey will thanks so much for being on the show man thanks for having me uh that that that when you when you were just testing microphones you had the little took took took metronome yeah metronome is that going on right now no metronome's off i'm not going to encourage you to do this right now but i would say you should do a test conversation slash interview sometime with the metronome going

good idea like as a beat so that people are like no the pace of the conversation no the pace of the conversation but it adds you know adds a kind of an urgency to it potentially because we'd had a fantasy it was you know one of many unrealized ideas but years ago i approached greg turkington asking him to provide me with live audio for a kneel hamburger set yeah sure with the idea that we would remix it cut out most of the pauses and give it a beat so that the experience would you'd be listening to a comedy record or a comedy recording but it'd be like boom boom boom great idea with the jokes in there and no pauses between the jokes necessarily just like go go go yeah but we never did it why i'm not well as we all just before you push record i i don't know my gear very well so

oh yeah so i would need a i would need a partner a good partner with that i want to talk so i was right before he hit record i was trying to open up to will by saying audio file you're no no before that i said man i'm a little nervous to do this interview because um and just so we get this out of the way and then we'll dive into the the real kind of gotta get out of the way i'm so sorry to say it yeah but i this is as i'm sitting like god damn i got i'm gonna talk with will olden what's the first question for will olden and i just kept thinking like well everybody must come up to you and say to you we have wept during your your music has been the soundtrack for me personally weeping for breakups and getting back together and you know like the sweetness of life and

the stuff in your your voice isn't is there sort of like shining this light into these moments that all of us are having and so um i'm sorry i just had to get that out of the way i have no idea what happens on the other side so that's good to hear it i guess yeah well i mean or does it get annoying i don't know does it become overwhelming to hear these like drooling people are like my god it really doesn't happen that often because our existence is relatively i don't know people yeah every once in a while people will send a nice letter or something like that and then i get some kind of an understanding and otherwise it's kind of based on trust because it's been going on making the music has been going on for such a long time and i'm allowed to continue

to make music because people are you know receiving it and and trading in what i like to think is hard earned money for it that makes me think like oh well it whether if people don't want me to make any more music they just have to stop right yeah but so as soon as money comes in and think okay good i can make more music and and just but other than that i have no idea what it's i know what i'm making it for but i don't know if people are using it for that so it's good to hear the people cool that's great because why even think about that right there's getting caught up in that side of the thing could possibly disrupt the flow it could possibly disrupt well because yeah what yeah i wouldn't because it's also so vast yeah and different right because every listening experience

is bound to be fairly unique oh yeah even though you were sort of saying like all these people or these experiences but everyone is you know specific and unique from every other one yeah so i'm listening to your music because i'm falling in love with a girl somebody else is listening to your music is there like butchering a pig in some basement somewhere who knows there's no way to tell what what what cracks and crevices and crannies it's soaking into throughout the world right yeah i mean i was thinking the other day and maybe i think this every five years or so about trying to be a little more proactive with with that and you know writing a song that specifically saying oh i'm gonna write a song specifically about this place or this activity knowing that

people will then you know tag it and listen to it in that when they're on the road trip to you know wherever you know wichita we're going to wichita oh let's put that wichita awesome where's the wichita playlist that's awesome but i don't know if i'll ever do that that's a hilarious theme out many ways just a bunch of i sing a cake what's that cake i sing song taking a bath that's a taking a bath is a good one yeah because yeah when you're taking a bath what's the song splish splash right every time because is there another one no that's well there's ernie's rubber ducky splish splash ernie's rubber ducky and lame is a rob is a classic bath there's a bath song no just the whole thing is like if you're going to like lay in the

if you're going to take a bath listen to lame is a rob lights and candles oh you got to try it it's perfect yeah but that's not something that people go for right it doesn't have bath lyrics in it does it no yeah i'm talking about bath lyrics i know i mean i was like being in the sewers with like holding a child's body which is kind of a bath yeah kind of satanic way yeah yeah so speaking of child's body i'm this this like they're both of these dogs are sitting here with me this one is sitting up because she just ate and she has a condition called mega esophagus where esophagus has no like musculature or definition so every time she eats she has to sit up for about 10 to 15 minutes so that because the esophagus isn't pushing the food into her stomach

so gravity is doing it yeah does she this is this the is this the thing you not that you not you have to do with her you have to do it with her yeah every time otherwise the foods like if she now it's about time that she can get down and she can do whatever she wants but you know the food otherwise would just sort of sit here in her what should be her esophagus and it won't move down eventually she'll have problems breathing she'll start coughing and she'll just cough it up undigested she may inhale some of that gets into her lungs and because the the doctor's like oh yeah they dive pneumonia at some point they will die of pneumonia because it's that's just what happens to these dogs does she know that she has to sit in your lap no no she's pretty good she's pretty good about it

she doesn't get too and when you when you got this sweetie you guys if you could see these dogs they truly are if a sunbeam fell out of heaven and turned into dogs that's what you got these are real gold standard pups here but did you know that that was a condition when you know picked up because i don't think she had like so there was a woman who was sort of took care of my mom for four or five years and she at one point about four years ago almost four years ago said i've got you know my dogs are giving or having a litter and i'm going to give you one of the puppies and didn't ask me if i wanted to puppy but just said i'm going to give you one and gave me this one and then she and she kept that one and got rid of the rest of the litter

gave him away and then last summer she died she died last summer so we started taking this one just for play dates for the weekend from the widower and then eventually she moved in with us and then i think she developed the megasophagus because she started like yeah every time she ate oh she's she sort of ballooned we didn't know like suddenly ballooned and then she started just yeah regurgitating her food fully we took her in and the reason that she ballooned was because she kept trying to work the food down by swallowing and she would just swallow air so she was ballooned with gas so she was like a little balloon literally like a little balloon then they x-rayed her and showed just like that there was no formal esophagus existing in her man that's a really

intense service to do for a little being is every day it is like wait but it's such a strange thing because she's normal otherwise she's not in pain yes see it's it's you can't really justify putting her down some people would some people would yeah instantly they'd be like god that's just poise just poison her and you can't also pawn her off on somebody because you're saying like you want to every time this dog you know watch be sure this that you know every time this dog eats and when it eats when she eats you hold her up or put her we put her in a backpack and she's also got a little wooden chair called a bailey chair which some folks that make for dogs with mega esophagus which is a badass name for a condition yeah for a second i honestly thought you were met you are

just like mega esophagus yeah man you know do you when stuff like that happens where you end up in a kind of karmic obligation to a being yeah do you ever fantasize about reincarnation and then some previous incarnation the little puppy helped you and you made a deal no not so specifically but yeah that that makes yeah i mean that's what the understanding of karma the best it can be right is that you are imagining that it's related to something that's happened before will happen after yeah yeah yeah never specifically i don't think specifically it's like this idea of like the sort of way where all this continuum of energy and and so from the perspective of millennia we have all been everyone's mother we've all been everyone's baby

we've all been everyone's friend yeah and so you're always trading places and so here is this little being yeah the most innocent helpless of creatures yeah and you have now a lifetime deal with this being you're every time this puppy eats twice a day yeah you are going to cradle this dog so the dog can digest food or throw her in her belly chair yeah or put her on your backpack in the backpack yeah exactly but you have to be witness i always thought like i never wanted a pet in my adult life because i always thought i don't want to have to be a witness to every time this creature takes the ship to me that's always just seemed like a bizarre relationship to have like you have to be aware of every time you're like taking a creature into your life and with

a dog specifically more so than the cat because they just hide in litter boxes or whatever but the dog you have to be kind of especially like in new york city absolutely every single shit that the dog takes you're a part of that's right and to me i just thought i'm not sure if that's that's not the kind of relationship that i want to have with any living creature no the shape the color the consistency you witness it yeah you participate in it yeah you pick it up yeah i know the warmth of my dog's shit because i have these little bags i carry around so i know the specific heat of my dog's shit yeah yeah but yeah exactly you know yeah she's you know you know them at that most intimate level i mean the relationship of course mirrors that of having

a child when you have an infinite you know your child's shits very well right you have to be familiar with them so you know if the baby's okay but it doesn't progress or develop the most you can hope for is an inner progression or development in terms of your relationship to that but it doesn't you're never going it's the dog's never going to take care of its own never i mean these dogs kind of can because we're not in new york city we have a fenced in yard they can go out and yeah you know i i'm aware usually when they yeah and and gg doesn't she she she's more fond of not shitting in her own yard also so we're a little bit aware of that but yeah in in the city you have to you really it's always going to be there i've got a little backyard thank god

so you do open up the door in the city run down yes i do so they run down and shit yeah you're still aware of it though right yeah absolutely i know just do it yeah well yeah exactly because i have to make sure they go shit because if they don't they'll shit in the house so i have to like right sometimes usher them down there but yeah you're the conductor of your dog shit you're you have to be the thing behind it and that's a heavy obligation because sometimes you don't feel like it i mean there's got to be days you don't feel like massaging like sitting i don't know these are cuties but sometimes you're in a hurry or something you know it's it's in a very strange way yeah you would think that but in a strange way it almost doesn't

enter into the equation like i'd you know there's a niggling little thought that says that there's resentment about what's required of you know by these pups yes but it's just like a lightning bug 40 feet away it's not a it's not a strong right signal that you know and you would think this is fucking ridiculous this is so but i instead it's like oh well you know it balances out like my life is pretty good with these things and so it just balances out yeah and this is um there's this idea that and you know whenever whenever anyone assigns some purpose to humanity or says this is what people are here for it's usually pretty ridiculous and maybe a dangerous thought but one of the ideas i've heard is the purpose of a human being is to serve have

you ever heard that before like our purpose here is to serve in some way i think that's on Muhammad Ali's grave really yeah which is just like a mile from here you all can check it out oh wow if you want to but yeah his it's it's something about you know that that's that's it that's the that's the purpose that's the purpose and this is like the the harry christians talk about this which is so because humans are meant so their idea is that the purpose is for us to be servants of god and but people are amnesiac to that purpose so what ends up happening is they sort of become servants of all these other things because they're like robots yeah that are filling fulfilling some kind of primary directive but they have lost track of the thing they were originally supposed to

connect with so they're connecting with the thing in these sort of deluded forms you know everything is an expansion of the original you know progenitive force so when you're like taking care of the puppy you are worshiping god but their idea is that this can be refined and sort of shifted to some kind of absolute source but is there a group of people who are aware that we assign ourselves our roles by figuring out like if you respond to that do you respond to that yeah i i get a little confused by it because it's like well it seems like a cute little puppy is definitely more the kind of god i'd be into hanging out with than the iconography that you see in different religions yeah yeah that's true yeah but i mean do you yeah i guess respond like if you recognize if that pushes

your button that that statement yes right then that just means that that is your role but it isn't necessarily somebody else's role right they don't recognize that statement and the truth of that statement then it's not their job that's right so it's kind of you know you if you recognize and it pushes your buttons you think shit you know i guess it's my job to serve because i because it makes sense to me i understand it makes yeah i like doing dishes yeah i like doing dishes you know like we got we got rid of the dishwasher and put shelves where the dog food here where the you know but i also like doing dishes at other people's house me too highest stupid you know but it yeah it's just like but i know you know i i have friends and relatives

who's do not feel that and you can't that's not it right that's not their job it's not but it's not their job well this is with in that so it's your job to do the dishes my job to do the dishes but it's not because you're called we have other yeah we have the call and and and and you know it's so funny about it man it's like and i don't know i don't mean to keep bringing up the heart christians but it's one of the highest jobs at a heart christian temple is to do the dishes right so if you get to do the dishes that's like a really big deal to get to do that and so like when you're doing the dishes in a heart christian temple which i got to not for any as a mark of anything my brother was hanging out there and he's like come come feel this and when you're doing the dishes

back there holy shit you get high as a kite right on nothing yeah you've had that experience that kind of mysterious intoxication that comes from some spiritual act absolutely i mean we we went on saturday night we went to a house show at our friend's house and and she usually combines an early evening potluck with the house shows and she did and at a certain point between acts between musicians went in and was doing the dishes you know i also knew we were going to leave early we don't like go for the late night hang usually and at some point she came in and talked to me for a minute and i had this fear yeah where that she was going to stop me you know or say you don't have to do that yeah and she never once did she just carried on a great conversation she seemed very happy and then she

walked away and i felt so great i was just like finally i got to just do my job yes and nobody bothered me about it nobody said good work or you don't have you nobody said anything about just let me do my job yeah and i knew that she was happy that i was doing it though because it was her kitchen and it was a mess yep but yeah it was it was like yeah and that relationship yeah and that that is such sophistication because that relationship is so forgotten in our world which is so you're at your house you serve some meal and people some saint goes and starts washing your dishes yeah and then you want to be like no no no no there's a big show you put on it's very similar to pulling your wallet out to pay yeah no no no no no no no no no no don't you touch one of those dishes yeah

get out of here i'll do it yeah and it's and the moment you allow the flow to happen anyone who puts their hands in a sink full of dirty dishes wants to do it for the most part you know yeah in somebody else's house absolutely i'm not talking yeah not somebody who is forced to do but anybody who just voluntarily walks up and sticks their hand in there let them go yes and and that's so so you it's like giving and receiving like it's easier to give than it is to receive quite often and so the gift of getting your dishes done by someone you have to be able to receive it and if you don't receive it you not only do you cut off this beautiful energetic flow that's happening in the universe but you it's like taking a cupcake out of somebody's hand or something yeah yeah yeah

you know which is ridiculous it's and this is where we all everyone gets confused about the fact that work is quite satisfying and and a really beautiful in all forms you know so yeah but yeah you're right you can't then be like hey you know if you were really advanced you would love to do dishes because now you're the biggest cunt that ever walked no no again i you know different yeah fortunately different people have different callings yeah right well and this is unfortunately i'm called to yeah oversee a dog with mega esophagus and to do people's dishes yeah you know i would if i had to choose maybe i would if i'm you know if god said here's 20 callings pick picked some might not have picked either one of those but no they feel great you pick having them they're great

you pick music well that i mean music in the same way music kind of feels like it picked it was a certain point where you recognize there are things that you you can't do something else and if you don't do the thing that you can do then you don't have any you'll be lost right yeah and i've heard pretty stern warnings about this before not only will you like the warnings are should you be called to some whatever the thing may be yeah and you avoid that job yeah not only will you be lost but it'll kill you like look at jim carrey what's that i said look at jim carrey what do you mean he's not doing what he's called to do and he's insane you mean the the the thing he's doing with this nihilism thing what is he doing now with nihilism he is well i've seen him

do paintings he's doing paintings but also he's sort of so everyone is um and i've i i have been getting people like you should have him on your podcast because he's gone into this kind of you should my avadi style so um have you heard the term my avadi no so i think it's called my avadi uh so essentially the idea is okay the god presents god self in many different ways one of them is the personified form mega esophagus dog yeah one of that's not personified though but yeah i think it's personified this is a dogified and there is a difference like it you know i i don't believe that all living things are the same thing or consciousness is certainly a difference yes but so also another way god self is presented is emptiness and so all these different spiritual paths

are about engaging absorbing emerging with these various forms of the divine right yeah so my avadi i think as i recall and i could be using the wrong term it might be a different term regardless guys yeah yes uh the the uh this dog i don't know about this dog gatsby are you seriously doing this it's a big chat here so the uh so anyway that so the idea is like um people who are into impersonalism is another word for it impersonalism there is no self there is there ultimately everything is just a kind of continuum of of of nothingness we're all producing a form of personality by or clinging we're attached to the concept of the eye the reality of the situation is that there is this eye that we are but it's a very temporary thing if we begin to really merge

into the whole then we become a kind of nothingness so jim carrey has become seems to have in some way or another uh connected with this concept in a pretty intense way and now he is broadcasting this out so there's a picture of him in front of he just tweeted a picture of him in front of one of his paintings saying if you see me in the painting something like i am not in the painting you if you see me i am not there the painting is not there and is it a photorealistic self-portrait it splatters the paint it splatters the paint you know so you you think that jim carrey's job is to do comedy he's gotten called into painting and now he's like spiraling or he hasn't gotten called into painting oh he's imagining that he's imagining that he's got called into painting

okay let's talk about that because you have presented a rather severe um if we follow this what you're saying it's pretty spooky because you're saying okay let's say for imagine i mean although he never to me he never felt like he was comfortable doing comedy so maybe this is his true calling actually right and he i always thought that he seemed like an uncomfortable presence when he was doing you know he it alienated me somewhat as a audience member so maybe it was always a bridge to what he's doing now right like this is is the pure thing that he always wanted to needed to do or or this just having a platform for an expression to be some kind of teacher to be some yeah just some express or maybe things that he just felt needed to be

said his entire life you know from from when he was in the womb he needed you know he was waiting to to amplify some thought or some feeling or something like that now finally he got wait until i tell him i'm nothing yeah wait until i tell him i nothing exactly yeah yeah well because what you're saying is like it's it makes me a little nervous because boy do i waiver i'm like i love this moment i love like these conversations are my favorite thing but then it's like shit i love turning knobs on a modular synthesizer but i certainly don't want to like if the idea is we have some central calling yeah and if we do some other thing then we risk our sanity then it puts it could create a bit of a superstitious pall over experiments and creativity right well also if

if you understand that or you know you understand that you have in order to function with other people you know there's all there's your internal thing and then your external thing in order to function with other people your like i understand that in order to function i have to do what i do but for a variety it's not just because you know it because you look around you think well how can i participate in society well this is ultimately the only way that i can participate in society you know how would i be most happy maybe laying in bed for years on end you know just in a really

comfortable bed you know yeah sure are you happy like that yeah yeah and then getting up and jumping in the ocean for a couple of days and then getting you know and never coming up because you have gills that's where i would be happiest i think like a napping fish like a napping fish exactly but you'd get bed sores and you don't and you then you would drown and all these things that's impossible so what what yeah so not not but not you know it seems like jim carrey is following what he might consider his true bliss but maybe it's his real i got his real thing but yeah at a certain point that you can't actually be what you think you want to be ooh this is good we have to be able to discern laying in bed at versus like or the kind of

indulgent indulging our sort of i don't know what you call it lower modes modes of existence from our true calling and sometimes that can get really foggy yeah i think you know yeah that's really weird man that's a tough one man like how do you like if you can't surf for a living you can't surf for a living some people can surf for a living gotcha some people can serve for their spiritual living right but they're gonna have to get a job because they're not getting paid to do that you're not getting paid to surf use yeah some people are getting paid to serve i'll never like if i start right now i'll never be a professional surfer and if suddenly i decided that that's what i was and went to hawaii and started surfing it's insanity people like yeah

you've lost your mind you're not gonna or like that i know you know i i know i could you know if i thought about it for a minute or less i could come up with 10 10 people that i know who are are purely on a kind of a musical creative level like born to make music yes much more than i'm born to make music i'm one of those people probably born to make music yeah probably and but i'm like my brain works to come up with you know to make music and and build it and get it to you yeah where somebody else you know somebody else you know there's some people who i think they have this resentment because they know how great they are yeah let me pause it for two seconds so somebody may have a resentment that they they know that

they're a great whatever a great musician yes right and they have a resentment because they know that they're better than almost anybody that they've ever come into contact with they know they just know right and they're right yeah right yeah but they're not good at any other part of what it is what it requires to get music from one person to another person yes they're terrible at that yes and i am better at that than some musicians who are better than me which is why i like to collaborate a lot because i can work with people who aren't as good getting their awesomeness got and it's like oh well i can help you get your awesomeness if you'll hang out with me for a day or two wow cool something like that yeah i got you yeah that's really interesting

that's cool man but you you wouldn't place yourself in that that top 10 list you know you you don't see yourself born to make music no i think i'm born to like listen to music i would much rather see i would much rather listen to music if if somebody just said here's a pile of you know never ending money and you know music helps me because i'm not a social person you know it helps me interact with helps me get out of my house yes interact with people and have conversations with people and um and recalibrate my brain um but i i love listening to music i love listening to people play music i love listening to records i love it so much it's so satisfying and it's and it and it's works you know sometimes you're you're the way that music can be exciting

feels like you're kind of accomplishing something at its best when you when you have a great musical experience with somebody else making the music yes it feels as if you've accomplished absolutely yeah so that would be my indulgent you know urge would just be to be to do that but i understand that i would become something that could you know undeniably be called insane right just the guy who's like listens to music all the time yeah because also you can't well because if i wasn't you know taken to consideration that yeah making the music also keeps me interacting with people yes got you if it didn't yeah i would just like you know did you see the rocky ericsson

documentary no i haven't seen it but i obviously know about rocky ericsson and there's a scene in it where um they visit him in his room and he's got like two or three radios playing different channels a couple of tv's playing different channels and that's kind of what he needs for his brain to be quiet yeah you know and i can that make i understand that that makes sense yeah sure but instead you could also the signals could be coming from other people and that's got you great you know that can help quiet your brain yeah because your brain can just go to the weirdest places without checking in with somebody else sure yeah so then thinking oh well i know now that all this music exists and i love it and i want to exist you know i want to participate with

other people i want to be a fully realized human being as much as possible for the time here that i have yeah so i have to learn to make some of this music i wouldn't have made it in the first place but i have to learn to make it because that's that's like the toolbox that i've got that i you know yes the music is powerful to me so i have to try to figure out how to reproduce some of what i'm finding valuable in these things and then get it to other people yeah i got you man yeah it's so this all of this music here is like ingredients that yeah that's that are make up the tapas all of this music here but also just going to see music or talking about music everything becomes an ingredient because it's also it's about you know when you listen to a record you think well you

know i like to listen to this this hawaiian record yeah it's 50 60 year old record maybe and thinking you know what was its life before this why did they make it they didn't make it for me absolutely they didn't make it for me but it's mine now but who did they make it for yes and and how can i then make a record for somebody knowing why they made this great record for somebody else right cool man yeah it's cool we were actually forgive us we were going through your stack here to see what you were listening to and a lot of hawaiian music in there yeah i just had pulled out because we're going we're going soon and so i'd pulled out a couple of records there's a there's a there's a great you know how people are kind of into small press vanity label

things yes there's a there's a really i hope it's still there because i haven't been there in a while but there's a place called jellies in the west side of honolulu that has some great used records and there was a lot of music that was being made in in hawaii in the late 60s into the 70s that i'm kind of into this just local bands playing what was called it was electrified but it was called traditional hawaii because it was you know they're singing in hawaii and and a lot you know yeah i love hearing it yeah this album you're playing what is this specific album this is the sons of hawaii so it's it's famous for uh like its most famous member of this ensemble was gabi pahinui you know if his that name sounds familiar oh okay he and he like he reminds me of

this his story sort of reminds me of some friends of mine who are like like musical forces where they are borderline non-functional human beings who are you know supernaturally skilled at creating music and it seems from the way people you know it's hard to hear because it's hawaii music and and it takes a lot of it's taken a lot of work to find the to not hear it as hawaii music you know what i mean because people will play this record and think oh i hate hawaii music or that's neat that's hawaii music no when you play it all it does for me is i just think about like hawaii how pretty hawaii is i'm just thinking about vacation it makes me feel relaxed in a vacationy kind of way and listening to a bunch of the records

then you start to understand well here's where the real shit is or here's where the inspiration is and then also reading about and reading about the way people talk about gabi and that he was this force that wasn't you know he like you couldn't rely on him for anything you know he would be late or not show up would maybe take your money or would leave the band inside it sign us a solo deal leaving everybody behind and not think twice about it wow you know just maybe be mildly embarrassed about it but not evil just not think twice and but these same people who are telling these stories say but when he started playing it just didn't matter it didn't matter you know it was just nothing but good feeling you know you were either inspired or super joyful or whatever you were in

the music as much as he was right yeah so there are those kind of people do you because we've taught you it's sort of come up here and there in our conversation do you worry that you might go insane a little bit like because do you fear the pull of that potential for you that you could be pulled out of like being able to like you were saying produce and get it out into the world and drawn into this kind of madness this this creative madness yeah i used to worry about it a lot until i started to understand that kind of you know the you know the the the definition of insanity and the definition of reality and the way that they intersect if you start your day understanding those two things you're good and a lot of people just do you know again you know

i'm jealous of the people who are like gabby you know just kind of the music just comes out of them it feels like it or you know it just seems like they can't help but be what everybody else wants to be when they're making trying to make music and the same you know i'm jealous of people who just are just you know pretty darn functional oh oh yeah sure and so that you realize like oh it can take a lot of work it's it's it's incredibly rewarding but it takes a lot of work to be functional yes right oh yeah yeah absolutely especially when you're in a life where you're in a life where you don't necessarily have to pull off the regular schedule that many people do yeah when you have vast swaths of time that truly could be filled with nothingness because i'm sure for you you know

you you have income streams coming in from all of your work so if you wanted to you could just sit back for a while probably right yeah you could i mean at this point yeah at this point in my life i could sit back for how long and what sort of atrophy would occur during that sitting back time you know so then i that's that's kind of a motive beyond the motivation of how i don't know how nice it is to make music in yeah that's that's super broad but thinking if i stepped back i would have to come to terms with the fact that that might be a permanent stepping back either because some accident could befall you and you would never get to return or you could miss or technologically it could be as simple as that right this just the superficial

like if you step back enough and you try to step back in and people are like yeah i'm i'm listening to you know all my music through this chip in my brain or in my neck yeah and you just like i have what i don't know and i'm you know and you don't make music anymore what if people don't make me or no like i don't make music anymore in 12 years yeah because people have this chip in and the thing that they're listening to most of all are the artists that they're collaborating with because the collab that's you know if i were a musical artist i would create templates that would go in the chip that would go in your neck and you like the way that those that you can steer those templates like oh i love you know the katie perry of 12 years from now because she has this lyric

and when i play it in my neck chip it does this thing it's amazing i love it i listen to it all the time sounds so cool but if i took 12 years away coming back i'd just say i have this little song people would be like what's the song well i don't understand what i don't get it you know i can't participate in this there was an interview with lord on that i listened to and you know she was she's young they're like what's your relationship with records she said i've been in the room a couple times when people had a record player and they were playing records on different speeds for fun oh my god that's it so you can see you know and yeah just like a kid you know an inner city kid you show him that a carrot came out of the ground he's like i'm not eating that oh i came out of

the ground yeah so you could say eventually like a song people would be like a song what is a song that is is that sort of like that thing that i get off my neck chip oh god that you just that's a black mirror you did just write an ep either i'm not sure if you just wrote an episode of black mirror or if you just came up with one of the best inventions of all time a sonic neck chip that will allow me to like harmonize in a way or rewrite lyrics yeah remix rewrite or the way that you were chopping things with that yeah that synthesizer yeah chop something but somebody delivers to you either the content or a specific what algorithm or program that and that's what you are that's what you purchase when you purchase a musical thing wait algorithm or the content who is the comedian

god forgive me for not remembering this damn it the comedian who released the album where it has the script of a team act and you can like so he's just saying one side of the team and you get to say the other side he's like one of the great comedians of all time and the fact i can't remember his name i feel like neil hamburger did that also did a a new he did a news he did an interview record where you it came with a script and you could do or you could but you could also just listen to like the funny part was if you just listen to the interview without the yes that's for i love this yeah this collaborative it seems like you love collaboration yeah and it seems like what you're mentioning here outside of the dark dystopian future where you've taken 12 years off

you emerge from someplace long hair wanting to sing people like who are you was that some form of screaming we don't know what this is yeah but like it seems like this idea that you have is really quite beautiful which is you want to connect even more with the listeners in the sense of figuring out a way to let us make the music with you well kind except we shouldn't overestimate the average you know consumer slash listeners willingness energy time ability to participate you know you have like the brianinos and the bjorks who've made apps that allow people to you know create music but yeah how much is that they're not really i don't think you know those are it's novelty it's like crackerjack it's a thing in a crackerjack box or something yeah but i imagine that there may

be something that resembles less just the pushing play and the music happening and maybe it isn't that we control it but maybe it's that every time you play the katie perry song it is actually a slightly different song and the way that somebody's app that's what you're you're you're consuming maybe so maybe you know john x creates the greatest app for remixing or resequencing a song so you listen to the you know the way that you were chopping and splicing joni michael yes last night that if you might there might be one day an artist that does what you're doing but does it so well that people say oh i'm you know i'm listening to to duncan trussell right now but they don't mean you they mean they're listening to bob dillon but through your filters and yeah and the but it's

something that is potentially always changing yeah or you know what gets me really excited is the idea of remixing like you're saying but not from one individual but from collectives so instead of it just being like oh i'm listening to bob dillon through the filter of some person who's remixing or or whatever the a community getting engaged in the remixing of things because like a band except it's a whole group of people a collaboration of all of it's beautiful because it's this merging together that you're talking about this like uh non ownership of the art and letting us like dive in and swim around a little bit inside of it i think that's exciting except i i mean i'm more realistic in terms of or i you know that's that is beautiful kind of but i don't

i'm not meaning it in a beautiful way i'm meaning like that people are taking you know someone said told me the other day oh that they had talked to someone they said what's your favorite music oh i like you know to listen to six organs of admittance and what else and what comes after that meaning that they're playing like pandora oh and that's their favorite kind of music is the music that comes after that so i'm not saying that people aren't going to be active and participate in a beautiful way it's just maybe a different way the way that our musical taste now if you listen to pandora it goes song then another song then another song right but someone might do that within a song like there may eventually be a service that's just you don't never have to leave

that one song if you don't want to i want to hear you know where a computer could remix a song for 40 minutes so oh my god you don't have to get a dj to do it and it's the same every time but you could listen to r kelly sing happy people for your 30 minute workout and it's only an eight minute song but you can listen to it for 30 minutes because someone has worked out a way and it's not the same the next day one of the most creepy dire things i think i've ever heard any human utter the idea that you could just for a lifetime some people it's not like what kind of music do you listen to it's what song do you listen to what song do you listen to oh yeah oh yeah but i can also i mean there are some songs that are so intensely satisfying that i think

you know i kind of wouldn't mind like listening to this for seven hours off the top of your head like the don everleys recording of oma haw you know from his first solo record 1970 never i don't know yeah gotta listen to that now though yeah something like that or you know i love barry manelos uh could it be magic ah you know that one no you don't know that my no listen this is this is as i was saying before my you don't know please i stopped you i'll play it after this okay can you sing a tiny little piece of it yeah you know it's what's the the it's really dramatic and huge it's could it be magic um now oh now oh now into my arms this could be you know i don't know i've known it since i was little i think my dad put on a mixtape for i got one like that you know the one

i love is johnny cash singing we must believe in magic you know that well yeah yeah absolutely my god we must believe huh i don't know if i've heard him do that but yeah oh it's so good and he's who is that who who sang it originally or i can't remember her name yeah it was because it's also on johnny cash one of his good friends was the songwriter producer cowboy jack clement and it's also on his first solo record which is one of the great records of all time because you know it begins about it's about alpha centauri right yeah hell yeah yeah oh yeah what is it the captain of i'm the captain of alpha centauri yeah no it's something we must be out of our minds or something yeah he talks about who's on the ship it's dreamers and poets and clowns and he throws in clowns maybe like

the dreamers and poets are cool but then the ship gets kind of weird if like scattered throughout our clowns there's a so there's a there's a documentary about this guy cowboy jack clement called i think it's called cowboy jack clements home movies or shakespeare was a big george jones fan and it's it's a it's kind of a stunning portrayal of of the inner life of an artist where that i mean i think he would say that that's you know i don't know it's like one of his theme songs and he's he's perfectly happy with this idea of clowns being in there yeah yeah i mean and he and cash were very close and like to be silly with each other oh that's cool yeah no but that i mean but come on that that is an anthem to the occult yeah who wrote that song though i think it's um

i mean it's almost worth the google search no it's not it's worth looking at the record shelf here hold on oh yeah awesome okay cool i'm gonna hit pause there's so we got that we have the album and i think my first encounter with the song i'm pretty sure was on the muppet show i think they must have done it at some point wow but yeah we have that record it was written by it's called we must believe in magic and it's written by bob mcdill and alan reynolds wow and bob mcdill do you know bob mcdill no is or was he's he's a songwriter who's kind of his biggest successes came i'd like to think of him as the um you know there's like the classic one is uh deniro scorsese right yes director actor one of them needs the they need each other yes right and

bob mcdill worked with a singer don williams who just died maybe a month or two ago and he was that they that was them that was the you know the sereno relationship or god bob mcdill wrote don williams greatest songs and neither would be who they are without the other person got you yeah um really really really beautiful like and it's really beautiful to think of it that way when you listen to don williams records because yeah that's me stop but and then alan reynolds is a i think he he's a professional like his it's the main way he makes his living is from writing songs and producing records but he's also like tops in the world of nashville backup singers right but he's also the i think he was one of the big creative guiding forces of the of the whole

garth brooks thing i think he produced all the garth brooks records that made garth brooks who we think of him wow today so they wrote that song man and they're i think they're pals with cowboy jack clement you have to be so lucky to find one of those people in your life like to to be lucky enough to just pair up with somebody who's gonna help you yeah do that that's just a miracle of the highest proportion absolutely man and i love seeing it it's one of my favorite things to and being it right to witness it feels like you're that a little bit for people you yeah but but with different people yeah as opposed to it's not the single partnership it's a lot of different partnerships right man do you one thing that i i wanted to ask do you are you a little

anti technology to some degree are you nervous about technology a little bit um i'm sometimes well maybe yeah i think sometimes i wanted to google search oh yeah we must believe in magic and you wrote no let's just go physically right the record show because it's right there right yeah i'm i'm only i'm mainly anti people doing things that i i think you're allowing somebody else to do things for you know you're giving them the authority to do things for you that really you there's just not a reason you shouldn't be doing it for yourself because it's better for you you can trust your own actions better than you can yeah yeah you heard this term that there's an anarchist term called de-skilled have you heard that i probably have

yeah exactly we're yeah we're people are it seems like people are dying to be de-skilled yeah just dying to just dying to like really really because they're de-skilled right but people are just love you know take it away from me take more power away from me take more ability away from me take i don't want to have to think i don't want to do anything anything please please please do it all for me yeah yeah that's happening and it's weird and i i think life is less less fun the more de-skilled i noticed that i've become as well the people that i spend time with are less it's not as you know it's not as rewarding to spend time with people who are volunteering to give up their abilities and their authorities right oh and it's humiliating to find yourself suddenly

in the presence of skilled people right this happens to me when i went to burning man this last year i came in early because you build this camp it's a lot of hard work oh my goodness yeah the people i'm with these are people who are skilled they know how to do just about everything right to build things they know how to solder they know how to make stuff yeah and being around skilled people and suddenly realizing that you are de-skilled on a lot of different levels it's like not being able to read it's a real profound sense of like man what did i how did i end up here where this i don't know i don't know how to yeah that's a pretty intense feeling man absolutely yeah and so that's the only way that i'm anti technology i think when when when it's taking

a shortcut when it's taking a shortcut to get some place that the reason you wanted to get there in the first place is you forget that the reason that people wanted to get to that destination is because of the work that it took to get there yes yeah you think like i have it now i have it it's like yeah you know when someone's just like i got pearls i got pearls now and it's like well the whole reason the pearls had value is because how hard it was to get them it wasn't because someone sent you a credit card in the mail and then you went to the store and bought them it was because they wear their pearls well because they worked their asses off to get the pearls wow right yeah man so when it's just like oh i can google this and get the information then

the information is kind of work worthless yeah right absolutely that where you earn your wrinkles you earn your ideas like you the thing yeah i got you man you're right and when you do finally achieve the thing whatever it is after some struggle it's eternally more valuable definitely we we did a like um it was it was it'll be 12 years ago this coming january did a tour in new zealand and during the rehearsal time so this was 12 years ago and people were default googling to further conversations and to decide arguments 12 years ago that's kind of amazing right but we were in a place in in where there was no cell phone signal and there was no wireless

there or anything like that so in order to make up for this de de skilling that had occurred we took a piece of cooked spaghetti and called it the google spag and whenever we had a question that you know we would say oh let's google that answer you would pick up the google spag and then you could you could say the answer so you were google you know so if you said what year did abraham lincoln die i can't remember you pick up the google spag and you can just say 1867 and then we move on with the conversation because and that's the new truth was it 1867 i have a feeling it wasn't but right yes so you but that's kind of because we're doing that right i'll pick up my computer i will google and then i will tell you what the truth is yeah because what who cares but also

because what what did you actually do and who just told you what the truth is yeah you know yeah like i have a shelf etiology i look up glucosamine is a you know it's a supplement you could take that's good for your joints supposedly sure and it's made from shellfish most of the time so i looked up to see is glucosamine made with the compounds in shellfish the people who are allergic to shellfish are usually you know that react yeah and you do you know i haven't done this in six or seven years but i looked it up and on the first string of results glucosamine is definitely produced from the compounds within shellfish that people are allergic to if you're allergic to shellfish avoid this yes next answer glucosamine is safe to consume for people who are allergic to shellfish

right because it's not you know yeah that's your truth yeah so it's just you know who knows i you i can write my own wikipedia page and all of a sudden i'm a different human being than you're sitting with gotcha yes yeah man it's steal it you're right it's a it's vamp it's a vampire it's stealing away uh it's stealing so much it's stealing from us because this this earlier when we were talking about i had not considered and i'd never heard anyone say it's what comes next on the playlist is the kind of music i like right i'd never considered that and that made me think of the beautiful moment my friend emal who you know gave me a tape that had daniel johnston on it and i'd never heard daniel johnston before i remember that moment also holy shit and i remember because

i knew i didn't know i didn't know what lo-fi was i knew nothing about it gives me this tape one just the exchange of the tape with a new friend yeah a mysterious new friend who's given you this odd tape with daniel johnson scrawled on it then you go back to your dorm room put the tape in the tape player hit play and my first thought was oh is emal a satanist because this is the most this music i've never heard anything like this in my life but it is so overpoweringly dark it was rock and roll ek g you know that one that daniel johnson on rock and roll ega or something i don't know oh that rock and roll it saved my soul it's no i don't know fuck i'll play it for you yeah but anyway it was so overwhelmingly sweet but not just because the music was incredible

but because this person had given it to me and there was a connection to this to a being and it was like magic happening yeah what was the first moment you heard daniel johnston i can just remember being in the house that i grew up in the kitchen i just remember this since there was a skylight and i remember listening to hi how are you was a tape that some friends you know for some friends of mine had gotten maybe in texas because that's where you could get the tapes then yeah and yeah just being deeply deeply deeply deeply frightened also because because of the good but if i felt frightened because of the way it's my reaction you know i could i was reacting to it and then reacting to my reaction like i

would found that it was really really captivating and really but but at the same time so yeah so scary you know well i don't think it's scary i don't know i mean i think it was probably partly scary because of this understanding that you know they're but i didn't know that he was necessarily great i don't know like it it was just so so scary it was so scary because it was so beautiful you know and i love that record so much but i haven't listened to it in 30 years i'm sure and i probably know all the little clicks and pops because it has so many strange noises yeah on it but just yeah thinking yeah what i don't know i mean also just it was such a mad it's such a magical record yeah i don't i don't know it was just dammit maybe like and i remember there was martin

scorsese short movie called american boy you ever see that no about a guy named richard prince who was a professional roadie who plays a gun salesman and taxi driver okay sure and he was neil diamonds like tour manager or something like that and the movie is just 45 minutes or an hour of kind of sitting in a house and in a hot tub martin scorsese sitting with him getting him to tell stories about his life and that was similarly like for some reason yeah watching that was just full of this fear yeah but it feels like it's kind of a there but for the grace of god fear that's the fear i was about sacred fear yeah or or when or that i don't know where it is in the bible fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom and when you feel that kind of sacred ecstatic

fear in relation to art oh yeah it's one of the most precious feelings because you are making contact this is a real connection here yeah and you'll you'll it means you're going to grow it means like you've found the next breadcrumb in this wow yeah yeah yeah yeah totally yeah because it is kind of yeah that's a nice way to think of it is as that kind of fear that you that you feel first day of school yes right where you just think i know right now yeah it's like i know right this moment i know without a doubt that i am about to become somebody else yes and it's scary as hell yeah that's cool because i i was thinking that i was scared like you know some weird way scared of of but like i say i didn't know necessarily that daniel johnson was crazy

the first time i heard it but scared of opening that door into somebody's you know into this incredibly vulnerable and beautiful and seductive space where is it going to take me but maybe it's just the first day of school yeah and it's just it's going to be okay but it's just scary because you're just like i woke up this morning i got up i tied my shoes i ate my cereal and tomorrow when i do that i'm going to be a different person yeah and i was happy this morning there's nothing wrong with it but it's gone yeah yeah yeah my my friend mitch and i were talking about this he's the idea of uh and again you know it's just for a thought experiment who knows if this is real or not but that we so he was telling me and he's way better at describing these things than i am at describing

them but i think it's a Greek concept this idea that you leave that you give when so before you come to life before you wake up into this incarnation you give yourself these moments in the incarnation which are moments where everything is going to change and that's crisis that's crisis and so it's almost as though at some point in another dimension you arranged with whatever the thing is that's making this thing happen give me daniel johnston in the kitchen let me have it there let me have it there a little clue yeah a little clue in the incarnational cycle hey check this out this is something special and maybe that's what that fear is is that oh my god wait i'm almost remembering something here yeah and but you don't quite know what it is yeah you it's like that movie

memento it's definitely it's a recognition thing for sure and that's the frightening part about it is you're recognizing something that you feel like you've never seen i mean i'd never heard anything like that before but i was recognizing something yeah that's really scary yeah yeah like memento but there was i was too young to have even been able to write the notes to myself on the polaroid photos yeah right like now i can sort of do that i can sort of have a have a sensation and say okay i recognize this fear even and that's the the note that you've written on the photo right but then i had not done that you had no idea what was going on it was just like this yeah reaching from one reality or one place in time or something into another photo burning bush

it's a burning bush and and and and this burning bush uh and i love that in the bible where the burning bush happens because i think it the voice of the lord says something along the lines of take off your shoes because you are standing on holy ground and it's so beautiful and it's like that idea of like you know what the next time i get that feeling please god let me have at least a few more times in this life yeah i'm popping my shoes off oh yeah that's a good yeah you know that's wow yeah how will you remember to do that you just got to do it you'll remember just pop your shoes off and those moments are pretty overwhelming there when was the last time you had a moment like that well it's funny to think i was just thinking like about after saying the

first day of school thing and this i think maybe oftentimes this time of year there's a gnawing dread and this year i was thinking trying to think well what where does that come from is it because i would be going back to school you know age five through 19 or 20 whenever i gave up those endeavors you know was that is that why i just sort of you know getting cool and there's a little bit of fear that's coming too yeah why is that yeah so i don't know but or is it unrelated to that and with my wife right now in life there's we're about to turn some huge corners which i i'm sure is also the case and is that the what corners i mean just things you know just yeah sure we'll be married for a year

in a few weeks you know wow and we will just continue to do things with each other that make our life together more of you know a big thing yeah you know yeah so is it you mean it's the it's like you're sensing this continued solidification of this yeah intense lifelong relationship happening and we know you know my like we've been mentioning we just sold my mom's house a couple weeks ago yes she only lived there the last nine or ten years something like that but but it was because she just moved into a nursing home she's in late late Alzheimer's right so she'll be gone soon yeah and it's not having any previous experience with with Alzheimer's or with losing a mother soon you know it's been coming for over 10 years now long time but now

you know now because we made this big move and you know i'll never you know we there were toy boxes that maybe grandkids have played with and we thought might play with in the future those toy boxes are gone because we finally cleaned out the basement yeah you know something yeah the encyclopedias that we grew up with as kids they're gone forever now so it was a big thing and then the next thing is that she will go yes so maybe it's just that you know and just knowing like that i know that i'm in the middle of a big step and so there's a little bit of fear that's mixed with some you know it feels more like fear like the first time listening to hi how are you there was no there was only a little bit of joy but mostly it was fear yeah you know and now there's a little

more joy like transition you understand that there's a reason that there's joy that comes with transition as well yes oh and i think that joy a lot of people that joy they feel guilty about that joy because in the midst of that kind of transition you think well how could i be feeling any kind of joy at all this is my mom transitioning and i can't but it is joyful and and i and i and till you've experienced that you don't you it's impossible to understand what that joy is like and what that joy feels like and this is you know ramdas talks about this and roshi jone halifax talks about this someone who's on the show and they say if you want if you really want to understand truth sit with a dying person right and you can't you will that is true you will it's very hard to

come up with something more pure and real and when that dying person is your mother yeah and you're seeing this transformation happen to the being that you whose breast you suckled on right now you're learning the way the universe is for real you are seeing deep into the gears of the universe and that is a sometimes i think your parent your mother your parents your mother gives you two massive gifts your life right and the gift of watching them die and these are two very very powerful things obviously the first but the second one oh you don't you don't know and indeed yeah it's it's the the silver lining is that it's an awesome gift that's the silver lining yeah but man i mean you know i can remember

after my mom passed i got i got lucky i got to i got to go i went to ramdas's house and i was sitting with him in the zen roshi and man you get broken open like you or you get black you get blasted open and i'm sitting there just like but these two sit i don't want to throw around the word saint or whatever you want to call it but these are people who've spent their whole lives you know in the practice and uh roshi john halifax said this thing to me which is a window is opened for you right now there's a window that is open when your parent mom dies right and she said it will shut right and she said so really be in this moment because you only get it once you only get that once the i mean the

an insane thing about or is that this like with my mom the windows in one way or another been open for a long time so it's going to be weird when it's because i know that it will close but it gets weirder every day the longer it goes on you know now that it is a little over a decade that's a long time yes it's it's a that's a serious portion of life right there yes but i also know the whole time that it resembles sometimes it resembles whatever normalcy or reality or something like that but the whole time it still is always this open window that will close yeah you know sometimes my biggest fear is like to go before she does because there's this thing like no i want to live i want to i want you know

i need a month after she's gone you know i need at least a month i'd love 30 or 40 years but i would take a month you know i want 30 or 40 years to recognize this time as a window right oh yeah man because it's not you know our dad was like one day there next day gone that's like a window where you lose something big yeah and it that only it just pops open and then maybe gradually closes but it does close yeah yeah but you're you you're the shadow you've been enduring which is the shadow of a of someone with a terminal prognosis yeah uh it's under it's there is a shadow on everything so when my mom you remember the diagnosis you remember the first time they tell you yeah you remember that moment on the phone and then the

strange clock starts ticking and then you go through all the phases and you pray and you imagine can i send my soul to her at night sometimes you would think oh i'll send my soul to her at night and maybe it will heal her in some way and you start thinking there perhaps she's making it up maybe it's not real the doctor's crazy this can't be real but it's real man and then so and then so you forget it as time passes you're now you have a dying mother and so as time passes you'll have these moments where you forget that your mother is dying and then maybe you're high maybe you're experiencing a great meal maybe you're then suddenly your mind will go and zoom back into the reality of this condition that

has afflicted this person who was the very first woman you contacted in the material universe right and so that's a shadow yeah and when that shadow lifts a little bit you're right it's definitely worth staying alive yeah i mean that's yeah i mean i was like okay i'm gonna wear my seat belt right now just because yes you know yeah that would suck so hard yeah but well you know the other thing that you get that's maybe this is a little wooey on my part and i think it's the thing that is really tough to understand if as i have been to you you get your mom back because suddenly oh right right yeah that's what i mean i i you know this and it's like different things for myself and for myself and my wife that you know that we try to figure out

what's okay to talk about what's not okay to talk about right sure and i think both of us try to air on more and more try to air on talking about some things you know so for example you know i think sometimes about my mom's funeral yeah and at this point you know i kind of don't give a shit you know i really don't i really just like for most of the people that she knows it's it's already happened you know most of her friends it's already happened yes you know a long time ago but maybe a nice thing to do will be to ask some of her friends to come and reintroduce me to my mom oh you know like to talk about her to all of us but but yeah to have that be what it's about like to maybe even say okay we're having mom's funeral and it's uh 2007 you know it's it's not it's not

2017 it's 2000 or 2018 or whatever it's gonna happen but it's 2007 okay get back there or not even just tell talk talk to us about child talk just remind us and they have that be the purpose of the because a traditional for somebody with Alzheimer's a traditional funeral is kind of like it's not the right ritual huh because you're saying why because it's been so long so they because they because they their personality has dissolved yeah essentially their personality has dissolved yeah and and it's been they're occupying a physical space that is unlike the person that right you know the reason i sit with her now is not because of who she was is now necessarily as well of course it's it's who she was before yeah i got you and i always think

of her as who she was before as you know this is that is who she is now but there's a lot of people you know who care for her now who never knew her before who only know this now yeah person and that's a different you know man i when i i i did some volunteer work at a hospice a long time ago wasn't ready for it and i sat with a woman who had uh was late stage Alzheimer's and um she so and because it's so very difficult yeah for the family right that it's easier for a person who doesn't know them to sit with them than it is for a person who knew them to sit with them so the family sometimes will not show up because it's like to be there is so emotionally incredibly emotionally different when my mom was dying of breast cancer in the final days she was in bed

and was asleep and um it was i can't even i don't want to talk about it now it was so overwhelming so to go through that for a very long time that was a combination probably of of painkillers as well as the sickness that kept you from being able to have a communication with her yeah that's right that's right a connection with her yeah yeah that's what it was so so but i i i i remember this uh so yeah man anyway what i wanted to say is when i was with this woman and she took me into her room and pointed to a picture of her family uh and and so i guess what i'm saying is like and this is something ramdas talks about yes personality gone but when you're sitting with your mother yeah the thing behind the personality is there yeah and that's

who you're sitting with yeah and there is no way you know i with this i know that because of the way that this disease works you know in the ways that we don't understand there's no determining anything there's no determining any you know for sure any what's gone what isn't gone right yeah well that's and the and what they say all you can do you know that a lot of things are gone but you don't know exactly what you never will know all you can do is be in the moment with them yeah and and the way they taught they told me has become a loving rock which is something that they can push off of assuming there's a thing that can be pushed off and a thing that they can hold on to if they need to and that's sort of what we're doing yeah wow man

you are this thing that you're in right now it is you know it's it's it's it's going on so long that it's you know it it there was a one book that i read i don't remember which one you know someone said you know asking somebody about their any their grief is like you know asking octopus to tell you about his experience with water yes that's right and you know and it's but not to just to say grief but just you know someone will say well how's your mom and i try to think what do i say she's you know i'll say because if i saw her you know i saw her yesterday i she smiled at one point so i'll say you know still smiling yes because you know what else are you gonna say like what can you say she's not moving she's not speaking she's you know

but but that's not what they're asking no well they don't know what they're asking yeah they're just trying to be polite yeah they don't know what they're asking yeah they're trying to be polite and they kind of yeah yeah there's not a better question if you've gone through a mother dying the odds are pretty good if you know someone's mom is dying yeah you're not going to go how's your mom because right no no yeah you just you just you're just you're like you you go oh yeah i know you i know you a little bit yeah and that's all you can do yeah you just go hang out with you know that's you go hang out with them right sit and yeah anybody yeah yeah you just you just hang out and be in the moment because that's pretty much it bring them a sandwich bring them a sandwich

yeah that is the best actually sandwiches and just like yeah just be there and know there is a this there's a kind of another kind of birth because what you're doing is you're giving your mom you're the midwife to your mom's birth into a new thing that's a transformation and i failed at that man i didn't what you're doing i think people forget or how what you're doing is such a sweet thing whereas i didn't i wasn't with i i've had tremendous feelings of guilt because i didn't i don't feel like i was good enough in those moments in the last moments with my mom because it was going on so long i ended up having to go on tour and and it was just like yeah yeah it was and it's it's like what you're so i guess what i'm saying is is someone who i think kind of stumbled

in that very important place you're not stumbling the thing you're doing is really like that it's a beautiful thing you're doing it whereas i kind of cannonballed you're doing a a nice dive and that's a sweet thing that you're doing right yeah well i mean like when you at the beginning of the conversation you talked about the serving thing and and i talked about uh some people don't have to do that yeah you know where huh yeah yeah it would be you know potentially what you know like sometimes you know i think sometimes i don't think so but like or dick cheney and mitch mcconnell like happier people because they don't have a conscience than i am or than you are yeah or but just thinking you know also would it

be better to not no yeah no yeah i mean i i find also yeah it's cool i guess it's yeah i don't know yeah i mean it's yeah i don't know it like i said but it is a but it's always it always it it's not inherently good it's only good because i'm learning things from it right i mean if i'm just giving something to her she you know that's a really weird thing you know that's a really weird thing it's like to serve somebody it's a strange you know to serve something like the the whole organization that is hospice that we call yeah we call it hospice and Louisville for some reason or in kentucky hospice yeah this whole thing that can what is it about

it's i think it's rad like the the people i mean just the idea of respecting age respecting that you know why isn't it you know why are why are people and why are we losing elderly populations because people mostly to belief like people don't want to believe anymore that they're getting old so we're you know we're not just losing a connection with the past and losing a connection with aging and ourselves part of it is because people don't even you know i am you know 80 years old but i'm going to continue to pretend that i'm not therefore you will never have a relationship with an older person wow because i am denying that i'm an older person you know wow right yes oh wow

right yes like so many older people you think like they're fucking dressed like whatever they're dressed like they're 20 yeah and then they've busted their face and thousand ways and they're using hip jargon and that means i don't get to have any old people in you don't get the traditional relationship with the elders that yeah be so important that used to be so important yeah and not just because of connection to the past because it prepares you a little bit oh yeah and gives them a purpose it gives them a real purpose there but that's projecting you know like to some yeah i'm sure that some old folks appreciate things and some old folks are like what a what an idiot you know yeah sure you know thanks for the

cupcake idiot you know like i i've lived this long i don't need a cupcake i'll tell you one of the people i sat with when i was volunteering for hospice this woman was bedridden she was i don't remember i she was a hollywood she'd been in a lot of movies and she was beautiful she had pictures all over the wall of her so oh my god this beautiful beautiful being she's laying in bed i only said i was only there once because i just had this little job i'd run errands and stuff and i came and i said she's laying there and yeah we have this idea that they're all going to be ethereal beings i say to her how are you feeling and she looks at me and she goes how does it look you know there's no sacred moment of like i'm releasing my body it's just like what do you

think asshole yeah i'm dying motherfucker or a guy my mom's nursing home you know you know you like it here and he's like it is what it is yes yeah yeah that but he's kind of you know he wasn't complaining you know he was he was like if you're asking me to say this is a really nice place i can't get those words out of my mouth right but i'm fine it's totally fine right well this is the one of the things they teach you in hospice is people die as they've lived have you ever heard that before oh right so the pattern the pattern i haven't heard that but that makes sense yeah yeah yeah so it's like kind of like the cycle of action in your life when you're approaching death if that cycle will just happen with it with more frequency as you get closer to death oh wow

yeah it's pretty interesting so you can almost from the way that you're living now kind of figure probably how you're gonna die if you have like time to die and and and this is sort of like there a lot of the reasons people say meditation is good or any kind of spiritual practice because you're trying to break those those cyclical like modalities that are negative so that when you are finally approaching death yeah you can like enter into it with this open mind and also the people around you you you won't afflict them as some people do and they're dying you're not gonna run a lot of crazy games on them or do some kind of weird shit which can happen right and so you gracefully exit the universe which is a pretty amazing gift to give people yeah exit or transition

or whatever happens transit transition is the right word for it it's not necessarily exiting universe well we don't know right yeah where would you go if you're exiting the universe where would you go i mean you need a bigger universe right if there's a exit there must be some other i mean that'd be amazing to exit the universe for a second but yeah yeah i don't yeah that's a funny way to end the podcast well not with a bang but with a with a with with an egg yeah i don't know you are amazing and i i'm so honored to get to spend this little bit of time with you and i just i'm honored to host you here to give you a good night's sleep like that that is a huge reward for me like you know in in getting to hear you talk in different ways you know over the years and

experience you in different ways to think like you know one of the like i like making music of course but i love also like being able to help you get a good night's sleep well so that was awesome thank you i am it was you this is a sweet place you're truly a southern gentleman and a hospitable human being having the dogs here is great thank your dogs and uh yeah i love you and uh and i hope that we continue to communicate i hope so too how do you say thank you will thank you so much for listening my sweet friends that was will oldham all the links you need to find will are going to be at dunkatrustle.com thank you for subscribing to us at patreon.com forward slash d t f h and much thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode don't forget to subscribe

to us on itunes give us a nice review and i will see you very soon with a conversation with Wayne Coyne from the flaming lips thanks for listening pals it's macy's friends and family get an extra 30 off great gifts for her just in time for mother's day when you use your coupon or macy's card and take 15 off beauty essentials or shop specials she'll love while supplies last plus star rewards members earn on every purchase except gift card services and fees at macy's sign up today at macy's.com slash star rewards savings off regular sale and clearance prices exclusions apply 92 of households that joined peloton early in the year are still active a year later yeah if you like cycling to edm not just edm try cycling

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