Dreams Course with Steven Kampmann

(upbeat music)

This is synchronous.

This is synchronous.

This is synchronous.

This is synchronous.

This is synchronous.

This is synchronous.

This is synchronous. (upbeat music)

Welcome to Synchronicity. My guest this week is Steven Campman. This is Steven's third time on the show. That is a holy number for guests returning. Only cool people get to lay claim to that. We talk about dreams and specifically a dreams course that Steven has put together. Really it's more of kind of a one-on-one just way to get in touch with your own creativity via the modality of dreams. And if you have listened to Steven on either of the other podcasts I've done with him, you'll know how immersed he has been his entire life in understanding and using dreams as creative tools. So it's really something that if it resonates with you, I highly recommend you check out, get in touch with him.

And you'll hear it at the end of the episode, but I'm gonna say it right here. This is how you get in touch with Steven. C smoke at O-P-T-O-N-L-I-N-E.net. And that C smoke like the C, like I'm out there on the ocean. So go and get in touch with him if this resonates with you and I'll also have links for that too. And don't kind of take this lately, truthfully, there's not a lot of people who I come across who really understand this shit as well as Steven and really have not only understand it from an intellectual standpoint, but has applied it practically to his own life. He was a successful Hollywood writer for a long time and really it's just a very smart and cool person.

So if any of this stuff in this episode resonates with you, please, by all means, go get in touch with him and you can thank me later. So we talk about a lot of things in this episode relating to dreams, relating to why a lot of people overlook their dreams and how they're kind of cast to the side. But we also talk about how there's such a valuable tool and modality for us to engage our inner worlds and how by engaging our inner worlds while not always comfortable, that can really lead to us kind of not only experience the sense of fulfillment, but really just getting in touch with the world outside.

That's the paradoxical thing that emerges is by understanding yourself better, truly understanding yourself, not being selfish, but understanding your inner machinations, you really get in touch with the world at large, your relationships get deeper, you experience more, you understand different things in ways you haven't before, your perspective broadens. And there's a term that Steven uses a lot that I really like, which is this expansion. And it's a term that I kind of, I put it a little bit above growth 'cause I think growth can have a negative connotation in a world that's kind of driven by capitalistic tendencies to kind of take over as much as we can, constantly, bottom line, gotta grow as much as possible.

And of course it's good to grow, but that can also kind of subvert the idea that we're not already enough. We don't already have what we need to have and we do, but this idea of expansiveness is just kind of expanding what we already have to encompass other things. So I like that he uses that term a lot. Generally, I don't have a tremendous amount to say about this episode other than I think you're really gonna like it. Steven is super cool. You'll learn more about dreams from him than many other delvings into books or other people. He's just matter of fact, right to the point. Also, he's the dad to Mikey Catman, who's fucking awesome.

It was like one of my favorite Instagram follows and just a very pleasant fellow too. So you know, it was a good dude. So that's it. I gotta come up with some fake ad to promote something. What are we gonna promote? We'll promote weed. It's really good. Go and smoke it, take it as edibles and CBD and good for a gout and gonorrhea and that's not what I was looking for. What's the thing? Glaucoma. Eh, I know it's not the same as gonorrhea but they're both not good. Don't get them. Weed is good. Enjoy it responsibly. There's nothing wrong with it. I saw my friend Paul where it was on his third wave, the psychedelics, the microdosing guy.

He's been on here. He's amazing. Friends, he, something was posted from third wave where it was, I don't remember if it was four weed or against weed, it was just some study about how it could potentially be harmful for, I don't even know if it was. I don't even remember what it was but somehow I got in a little back and forth with someone on Facebook who was argue. 'Cause I said that coffee, you know, coffee is bad. I didn't say it was bad. I was just saying it's, weed is not worse than coffee. It's not. And people don't like to hear that 'cause coffee is accepted by our culture and marijuana isn't or it's getting more accepted.

But a lot of people find that offensive 'cause they drink coffee every day and I get it. No one wants to hear that you're drinking some addictive substance and it might be worse than this other thing that's been supposedly so bad for so long. But anyway, it's just like, it's a fucked up thing I do. I knew it was gonna ensnare someone who took offense to it and sure enough, this dude came out and he said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." And you know, here's the thing, weed's good, that's all I gotta say. I would probably still smoke weed if it wasn't good for me. So I just wanna be clear where my stance is on this.

It just happens to be the case that this shit is fucking amazing. Like, I don't, I'm up. It's just a wonderful, happy accident that the thing that I really enjoy actually seems to be medicinally good for a lot of different reasons. So that's cool, that's the ad. Am I gonna have the music underneath this? It'll probably be underneath this. It'll be for this ad. So weed, there you go, that's the ad. Okay, think I've rambled on enough. Oh, no, no, no. Patreon, people, thank you. Patrick Nemchek, OG, oh, love ya. That's it. Now I'm gonna shut up. Now we're gonna get to the episode. Big thanks to Steven.

Big thanks to you for listening to this. Rate, review, all those things. If you wanna do it, it makes me feel good. Lots of love, without further ado. Here is Steven Camp. (upbeat music) Thanks for coming on, Steven.

My pleasure, good to be back again.

So we've spoke intermittently. I mean, I don't know when officially the last time we jumped on a podcast to speak, but we've spoken several times, many times, probably, in between the last one of those. And I know we've each gone through our own trials and tribulations since then. But what unites us typically, besides good conversations, is the topic of dreams. And your keen interest, experience, and just kind of passion for dreams is something that always comes up. It tends to come up in our conversations. And I know you've been kind of working on this thing you're calling the dreams course. So I thought a cool thing to do for this podcast would be to A, obviously catch up, but B, so you could tell me a little bit more about what this is, kind of the genesis of it, and what your kind of hope and expectations are, right?

That sounds perfect.

Okay, cool. So what have you been up to for, I mean, I think it's been like, I didn't check beforehand. I didn't do my due diligence, but I think it's been at least a year, maybe a year and a half, since you were on this show.

Yeah, I think that sounds about right. And we have talked a little bit, and you were working on some of your projects, and we bought a house in Maine, and all my creative energy has gone to this beautiful place we have, and we actually are now our main residents.

Cool, congrats.

We have, thank you. So when we get to, you know, vote here and all that stuff, but we still have a place in New Jersey, so we're still a little bit of half and half. So that's really been, that's really been the year, honest to God, just getting all that put together.

Well, let me ask you this, when you move to a new place, I mean, I've done it, I don't know, three or four times, like big, big moves, like interstate, does your dream life tend to reflect kind of the, I mean, at least for me, it's usually a turbulent. I mean, even if you're moving somewhere you want to be moving to, just the process of it psychically is, have it, do your dreams get influenced by that?

Oh, definitely. Because, you know, when you make a move, it all creates uncertainty.

Yeah.

You know, what's going to happen? What could go wrong? In my case, when we moved from California to New Jersey, we've got our three children. And then the worry becomes, are they going to adapt to this place, or if they don't adapt? I used to walk to class because I didn't understand, I thought I had to entertain students. So I thought I had eight hours of entertainment a week, and I never knew what I was doing, and I would, you know, go up there and somehow get through the first year. And the second year, whenever I'd run into one of my students, I'd hand them five dollars and would say, sorry about that last year, I really didn't know what I was doing.

And what teacher do you have now? Oh, I have Mr. Brandwood. Oh, you'll catch up. He's really good, you know? So I would say my dreams during that time would be anxiety-filled chases, meaning unknown places, not a calming internal life during those kind of moves.

It's funny you mentioned that because I haven't been physically moving anywhere, but those have been the kind of recurring themes of my dreams for the past, I don't know, three, four months is these chases. I actually woke up the other day, a few weeks ago with a word, sodium pentathol, in my head, which I didn't even know where it came from. I later like, I googled it right away 'cause I woke up with it. What is this that I later found out? It was that controversial drug that is an anesthetic that's used in, you know, executions to put people to sleep before they kill them, and it was messing up, and they didn't wanna be bald.

But anyway, I've had a lot of these where someone was chasing me with that, and they wanted to stab me, and I turned around and said that. And various levels of confrontation, I know, given your avid interest in Jung and Hesse and all of these things, that it's often useful to turn around and confront these things, which sometimes I have the lucidity or foresight to do, but oftentimes I've just been running away, and it's interesting that I'm gonna tie this together for something I'm listening to right now that I think is fascinating, and it's called The Warbergs by Ron Chernau. And Ron Chernau is like my favorite author right now, biographer, did Hamilton, Washington, really cool guy, but he wrote this book about The Warbergs, which is this very prominent Jewish-German-American banking family, and they were pivotal for the First World War, Second World War, all of these things, and a tragic story in a lot of ways.

But one of the brothers, one of the people of the original Warbergs was this guy named A.B. and he had all these crazy dreams that later, looking back, because everything was well-preserved, who's an avid bibliophile, put together this huge library, but all of his dreams were weirdly prescient, always. Not to an occurrence of impending war, but that they were gonna get bombed eventually, and we need to build these defense towers. And you know, I know that this is the collective unconscious seeping in psychically through dreams, but it seems to me like I'm not moving anywhere now. Maybe my life is going through a transition period, but it seems like a lot of these dreams, and I've been speaking to other people, they've been having these chasing dreams, too, and I was wondering if that rings any bills for you as a kind of dream expert.

Yeah, it's also interesting, 'cause I think there's kind of a national anxiety going on.

Yeah.

Nothing to do with specific personal matters, but kind of the running joke, it's a nation on Xanax, but I think there's a certain amount of truth because there's such a sense of uncertainty on the political front that I think it seeps into our collective unconscious. So you may be fine and stable at home, but you still may be resonating from all the imperfections going on in the world outside of us right now, including just when you begin to relax and there's now we have a hurricane coming in that's gonna be disastrous. I think people on the edge in dreams are very, very quick to reflect that because they essentially are giving signs to a fight or flight, so when you run away from a problem, that's not necessarily negative.

In most dream language, if you run away and then come back and confront what you really are confronting is fear and then what you're confronting, if you confront the fear, normally the fear turns into something positive and you kind of regain more energy than you have the whole point of all the dream lights, I think, is that so many people on a conscious level are operating on less knowledge of themselves than they should know, which creates its own anxiety, meaning the dreams are really trying to communicate to us ways for us to be, to survive, but also ways to expand, to expand your awareness, to expand your relationships, to confront your own self in the mirror like you mentioned before, like looking at it, and as we expand, I use the analogy of the inside life we have is an orchestra, and you have to decide how big an orchestra do you want.

For me, I want a massive hundred person orchestra that can play the Ninth Symphony. I don't want three instruments playing the Ninth Symphony, I want a bigger, expensive, a lot of people are scared to add a voice, but really dreams are doing that, they're opening doors to different parts of yourself, and the more parts of yourself that expand, the more awareness, and I think, ultimately, the less anxiety is caused.

Yeah, and I mean, it's hard, though, I think, for a lot of people to kind of get a hold of some of the dream imagery and landscapes, because it can be such a slippery, slippery and elusive.

I'm not kidding, yeah. - You know what I mean? It also is something that really tends to kind of, it can, when you're looking at something, let's look at it like this, when someone has a dream where they're being chased in a recurring dream, we can all kind of look through our basic dream books and say, okay, well, this is something you're not confronting, you need to confront, but on a more real kind of penetrating to the self level, we know that this may be some, maybe your anima, or your animus, or your shadow side that needs integration. How do you kind of relate to people who maybe aren't familiar with some of the deeper kind of depth psychology of the collective unconscious?

How do you kind of get them to come along and understand how these can be useful for like practical day-to-day integration?

You know, it's such a pleasure to be talking with you as we've done on the phone about these kind of things because 99.9% of the world really aren't that interested in dreams, even though every night, you know, four movies are playing in their head.

Yeah.

You know, they discarded like so many people do. And, you know, it's a pleasure. It's like being on a no-aces to talk about this because no one, no one seems that, if they're fascinated, they're fascinated for a minute.

Yeah, it's, yeah, it's fleeting.

You know, that's fascinating, but it doesn't stick. It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't stay the course. I've been doing dreams now for over 40 years. So it's just part of my life. It's not, you know, and so I don't think about it, but I would say it's very rare I have this kind of a conversation and I want more of those conversations 'cause that's where I connect with other human beings.

Yeah, and I mean, what's cool, the thing about dreams are, is it, like you said, it's so easy to kind of discount and just, oh, that was weird. That's me just unpackaging kind of stuff I wasn't able to consciously grasp during the day. It's kind of the Freudian outlook. But to me, I mean, I think the reason I imagine a lot of people listening and myself like, for me personally, life doesn't feel that different than a dream. In any way you might wanna, you know, outside of like I'm not lifting off and flying and just changing landscapes immediately, but the terms of the range of emotions, the circumstances, like I was struck by a dream a few weeks ago where it was me, my wife was in it and one of our friends.

And I just remember waking up the next day and like telling my wife, I'm like, "Hey, I just had this dream with you, me and Karen. "This is really interesting. "Like, I don't know what it means or anything, "but I was just like left with a very strong impression "that I should just like reach out "to our mutual friends, say hello." And it was, we turned into really nice conversation, everything like that, but, you know, I think a lot of people can look at that and be like, "Oh, that's weird." Or like, you know, that's weird that she was in a dream with you, you shouldn't even be telling your wife or just some odd kind of reaction to it or just forget about it.

But to me, I look at these as like valid kind of outlets and tools that we can use to engage not only with ourselves and get insights into our own lives, but also connect with other people in a very real way. Like, you know, everyone has that dream or some dream where they're just like, "Yeah, I remember that." That was really an odd thing that is stuck with me. And to discard that is like, you know, "Oh, it's not that important for a regular life." Also strikes me as odd, but I'll be honest, like I don't wake up every day and like put an emphasis on the dreams I had the night before. So I can also relate to kind of discarding it in some ways too.

But like, I know we've spoken about it in previous episodes, but like, what do you view as kind of the, one of the greatest tools or secrets that dreams hold for us?

Yeah, there's so much of what you just said I respond to and including sharing the dream. Way back in the '70s, I tried to create a group to come together just to share a dream. I did a workshop a few years ago where I invited people to meet for breakfast and share a dream. The sharing of the dream itself is a valid experience without having to know deeper meanings. The ability to come. But as you pointed out, I'm glad you mentioned it. Everyone uses the word weird or crazy. And you don't speak, if you hear French, you don't go, "Oh, that's so crazy." That's a weird language. It's because you don't know it.

And dreams are speaking to us in their language coming from our unconscious. And it's our job to build the bridge, to understand how they're talking to us. Listen, it's not just the meaning of your dreams, should you change a job, get out of a relationship. Dreams also reflect physical ailments that we have. A problem that you might have with a heart or a liver, a kidney, they will show you signs. They're responding to your body. They're giving you information so you can do something about it. Dreams are also, as you said, I've had a number of dreams that have predicted the future. And I think I've spoke about them in previous talks we've had.

But I think, ultimately, if I said to someone why watch your dreams, I would say, because every time you pay attention to your dreams, you're building the building blocks of your inner creativity. Your creativity is being pumped by your knowledge of dreams. And the more creative you are, I always say in every decision, there's a creative choice. It doesn't mean you're going to pick it, but it's there. And the more you pick, the more you're kind of connecting to the way the universe is working. The universe is wildly creative.

Yes. (laughing)

I mean, really, really crazy. I mean, crazy aware. So why not tap into that creative energy, whether you call it just energy or God or whatever you want to call it. I want to be connected to that. I don't want to miss out on that.

Yeah, yeah. - And again, we once again, we live in a culture that is running from the minute they get up to get to something to do more and not. You know, we live in a culture you don't have time to sit around and see your kids. Yeah, Dave, that's a nice dream. I don't have time to hear it now, maybe later. That's the culture. The culture has turned its back on dreams.

Yeah, it has. And I think obviously we can see the negative ramifications of doing something like that and really just, you know, in a meta way, we're just talking about turning away from your inner life. And this is something that is not only like a choice, like, oh, yeah, well, I'd rather do something else, but I mean, who isn't guilty at some point or another or every day all of the time getting distracted by something on your phone or the next thing to do? I was thinking about it the other day as I was bringing in my phone to listen to an audio book when I was taking a shower. I'm like, when did I stop?

Like, when did I do this? Like, when did I not have time to like think in the shower? Like, I remember when it was a time like, we're like going to the bathroom. Like, I remember like, you had to like, if you were a reader, you grabbed like a shampoo bottle and that was your entertainment if you like wanted something to do while you're going to the bathroom. Now it's like, it's just so weird. And like, it's just, it really is the culture reinforces it really to such a perverted and extreme way that like it, I mean, dreams are like dreams were gone 30 years ago, if not more. Like they were really wish to kind of like a cultism, weird stuff, no meaning a long time ago.

But now it's like, it just, what's also weird to me about that is the world begins to lose also its sense of kind of tangibility of like the real world, the physical world, which is very much like a dream, right? We don't have the, we may have some physical constraints but they don't really work the same way in dreams. So I don't know. It's a really weird, interesting phenomena but I know what you're talking about how dreams are just relegated to like nothing, basically.

Well, I came back to the nervous breakdown the country would have if we had a silent day. (laughs)

Yeah.

You weren't on your smartphone. Can you imagine the national nervous breakdown that would happen that people couldn't connect to someone on this, through all the different social media?

I can't, I can actually, I'm very creative and I smoke a lot of weed and I can't imagine that. So, holy shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the other thing that weed laws have changed. So Maine is now one of those states.

Is it recreational?

Yeah, it's moving very quickly to that.

Amazing.

They passed it, but the governor is fighting it.

Yeah.

That's like they are.

That's another one of those. So, you know, the creativity part, I always say that I would have never written film movies and television stuff if I hadn't paid attention to my dreams, not that I used the content of the dreams.

Right.

I became kind of absorbing the creative process of dreams and so imagery and ability to fly and be imaginative and all those dreams are so imaginative and so brilliant that, you know, you were always wondering, "This is the dreamer here."

Right, well, yeah, that's a really, not that I cut you off, but that's a really important distinction about how the content isn't necessarily what you're gaining or taking away from these dreams, but the overall kind of meta skills of what the dreams and gender, 'cause I think a lot of people like, I've done this with psychedelics. It's like, I'm gonna take this mushroom and I'm gonna get shown different aspects of my being in the world and I'll draw on that for creativity. You know, I'll take the content and whatnot, but more often than not, it's not the specific content that's being pulled, but it's the experience and kind of the ability to kind of weave yourself through or around the experience that kind of brings the type of, allows you to tap into that creative wellspring I think that we're getting at.

Yeah, and it always amazes me the quantity of people who have no interest in dreams or discussing them. I mean, literally, actively.

Yeah.

They're only interested in the events that go on and I would argue that in the kind of national, nervous breakdown that's going on, looking outside of yourself is gonna be a really challenging choice because everything is so feeling so disconnected. Whereas if you follow your inner life.

Right, right.

And center yourself on that and figure out who you are. You can proceed in the world with confidence because you're pursuing, you're following your bliss. You're doing what you need to do. I have a son that was in a banking job and hated it. And the time of the universe came to his advantage and he got a job where he's working at a private school where he's helping to raise money, but he also maybe will get to coach. And he'd always dreamt that he could get out of it, that there was never any opportunity and then the world threw him this little window and he also getting the job against him behind it.

And now he's in a world where he goes to work with energy. How many people go to work with energy?

Yeah.

How many people love the corporation they worked for and feel that they're getting the fair shake.

Not a lot.

So I'm just saying that the reason you pay attention to dream life, and most by the way, by the way, make it even more challenging, most of the people that I encountered or came to workshops that I did were women, not men.

Mm, mm, mm.

That I don't find that surprising, just to be honest.

No, I don't, but I mean, it's not surprising, but it just shows you how out of balance everything is.

Well, so, yeah, no, continue, continue.

No, I just think that that sums it up. We're, you know, we're acting out male archetypal reactions. No, it's inside, it's, you know, that's girly stuff. You know, why would I do that? You know, it's not understanding that really, we should be everything. We should have compassion. We should have anger, love. We should, you know, have a sexual side. You know, you want as many sides as you want. And if, and if connecting your inner life gives you the opportunity to connect with those other parts of yourself.

Right.

It just makes the experience here on the planet that much better or more interesting.

Yes, yes. And I mean, I think that's also something that is born out of kind of getting, you know, a lot of people will say like, well, what's the meaning of life? You know, that question is posed to people so many times. And to me, the question has always rung a little bit hollow, not because it's not an important question, but because it seems relatively plain to me in a lot of ways. It's like, well, we're here for this specific experience. Whatever that is, and whatever our interpretation of what that is, is up for debate. We can have our own subjective opinions or resonances, but it's clearly to have this experience.

So what are the hallmarks of this experience? And we can see philosophical traditions around the world, identify various aspects of it. And then once you kind of settle that, okay, well, this is the hallmarks of this experience. What are we supposed to do here? And if we determine that it's anything for outside of just ourselves, you know, are the interconnectedness of other people and engaging with that in a relational way, then it becomes clear that we want to kind of harness certain deeper levels of that experience. And what you're suggesting, and I believe is completely true, is that dreams give us a way to kind of delve into our inner experiences, which enrich our outer experiences.

And that's basically what we're trying to do all the time. And that's not supposed to be some kind of a Dionysian, like have a great time all the time, debauchery, but really to like get in touch with some of the painful aspects of experience too, which is, you know, a lot of times we're talking about, you know, fulfill your dreams, get in touch with this, and all these great and wonderful things happen. And of course they can, but there are also these kind of uncomfortable aspects of ourselves that if we don't face, we maybe don't experience that kind of uncomfortableness or suffering, but we also cut ourselves off to a tremendous range of experiences.

And I believe what you're getting at with this kind of nervous breakdown metaphor is that that's basically what we're doing as a culture. And we can kind of see what that brings out, you know, Trump and other things. And it really is up to ourselves, like as attempting as it may be to go out and say, hey, we're gonna change the world by doing X, Y, and Z, and these actions will lead to this. Sometimes it's really just the case of like being like, all right, I gotta figure out what the hell is going on with me. And then maybe I can get some creative actions that'll actually spur some change. So yeah, I mean, it's weird to me that people don't get, that dreams are so important to this too.

Well, I mean, can you talk about maybe like a personal example of a dream that kind of like catalyzed some outward change that you didn't like, you know, expect from the dream?

Yeah, I can give an example of when it's a bit life-

That's cool.

But it's one that resonated, big dreams, like the Native Americans call it dreams, small dreams and big dreams.

It's a big dream.

And big dreams come, small dreams come when it's dealing with the everyday anxiety of your life so that your dream life is reflecting that you were anxious and is trying to kind of get rid of some of the anxiety. But it's the stuff of everyday. And their dreams about your personal myth that each of us is carrying a myth of the universe or what young used to say, there's only one relationship you have to figure out and that's your relationship to the universe. What is it? Is it hostile? Is it afraid? Is it a follower, believer, all that? But everything goes from there. So in the dream I had, I was in a car with another couple.

They seemed to leave the car. They were fighting and got out. So that could have just been a reflection of a fight I had with my wife or my friend who was going through a divorce and so maybe I'm reflecting some of that. But then the dream suddenly, we're driving a car, I'm driving a car and that's important. Who's driving the car? Who's the pastor? Are you a passenger, meaning you're out of control of your own life? Think of a car, by the way, as your body and you inside the car driving or your spirit. So there I am driving on the freeway and suddenly I go off the freeway. That right away is telling me that I'm in for a dream that is not gonna be an everyday dream because I'm leaving the highway in new uncertainty.

You drive off a freeway in New Mexico and go into the desert and just run out for any roads. You're in for something.

Yeah, it's uncertain what's gonna happen next year.

So there were other parts of the dream I got to and there was a special gate that I had to get through to get to a special place. It was like gatekeepers, my dream gatekeepers and there was the FBI people. And I apparently passed the test and I was allowed to go through the gate and that's when I parked. Now, in my dream life, when I get out of a car, now I'm headed for the biggest and the most spiritual part of my self. And I've now learned that over the years.

Well, 'cause you're leaving your body, right? Yeah.

Yeah, you're leaving your body and now it's a spirit. It's a spirit. It's the gratitude toward life. It's my attitude, my relationship to the universe. The young was talking about. And there next to me was my son Mikey, whose middle name is Stephen. And so this is a form of my different selves, my young self and my older self. And I begin moving like with purpose down a trail that's leading into a canyon. And I'm thinking to myself, I can't figure out what the hell I'm in such a herring for. Like I have to get to something, but I can't tell you what it is, which by the way is 90% of the way people live.

By the way, percentages. I've learned from Trump, just exaggerate.

Yeah, just make it up. It's no big deal.

Yeah, I'll make it up. So I don't have any facts on that, I'll say 90%. Okay, if you say 70, I'll go, okay, I'm with you.

Yeah. So we're going down the canyon and I'm in a hairy, but literally in the dream, I'm going, what am I in a hairy for? And I suddenly come, the canyon closes in. The two sides of the canyon squeeze in and right in front of me is a pristine white church. It looks like something out of Greece. And the path is right there and I can't get around the church. I can't get around it. It's the canyon walls are part of the church.

Right.

And I go into the church and someone says to me, no one's ever been here. And I realize this is what the search has been all for. It's for the spiritual side to find your spiritual self that never has been lived or served or been a service there. It's been waiting for me.

Right.

It's been waiting for me to join. And then I'm sitting there and this wonderful, happy, black family, African Americans arrive and they're in such a joyful mood and they sit down and they have a picnic outside the church. And then I turn and go, but there's got to be a right way around the church. Take me in there or something and the little boy, one of the little boys sitting there led me to a hole in the ground. And I had to decide and I'm going to ask you, I had to decide then. Should not I just stay at the church? Is it where I've been trying to get to? Or am I so addicted to seeking? I don't want the final result.

I just want to be in a constant state of search. And so I woke up before I made the decision and I always ask other dreamers, what would you have done? Would you have stayed at the church? Or would you have dived into the dark mysterious hole looking and seeking?

I mean, it's a no brainer. You do the Alice in Wonderland, you're going down that hole.

Well, see, and that's the thing. And I thought, "That's a sick," because you've arrived. It's over and I go, "Oh, the hell with the church."

Yeah, no, what's down here?

Yeah, and that's a decision. That choice is something that I'm going through and I've been going through ever since I had the dream about three years ago. It's a dream that I come back to and work on and go, "Am I still wanting to dive?" And these days, after three years, I'm much closer to want to be staying at the church.

Yeah, yeah, that's, I mean, there's probably, but that's probably, you know, a sign of, "Yeah, well, I mean, it's a sign of, you know."

Aging, I wasn't going to say it, go ahead.

No, I wasn't going to say aging, I was going to say probably acceptance and integration kind of the spiritual aspect of, you know, I listen, as much as I, at this point in my life, I'm saying, "Yeah, I definitely go down that hole." I also have been in times in, you know, on psychedelics, especially where I'm staying in the church. Like, I'm good. Like, I like it here, when I hang here, found what I need to find, you know, maybe I'll do some other stuff sometime, but I'm going to stay here for now. So, I totally get it. I mean, I think there's no right answer to that question. It's not like, "Yeah, you always go down and search more."

I mean, I think it is something that's kind of, you know, a reflection of where you are at any given point in your life, so.

It's so spiritual, it's so spiritual that, I can't tell you the feeling of being inside a church that no one has ever been in.

Yeah, yeah, that sounds.

I mean, I think about that. But I think dreams in psychedelics are connected. I mean, you know, because of the way the movement and time, dreams have no respect for time as present or future. And I was wondering for you, having a psychedelic experience as A, did that alter anything significantly and B, could you see them or view them a psychedelic experience as a kind of dream-like experience?

Well, I mean, it's a good question. And I mean, truthfully, it kind of gets to the root of how I live my life. So my first psychedelic experience was, I was 15 in Boston at a five-week summer program at Berkeley College of Music. It was like, you know, it was a sophomore. I was going there and some kid, one of the people I met, of course, brought some sunshine acid from San Francisco. And I knew, I had researched it. I wasn't like a neophyte in terms of like understand, I wasn't like, yeah, sure, I had researched it a lot before I was really interested in it. But I had never done it. And I took three tabs my first time and proceeded to have a 18-hour, obviously life-changing, just I realized more than anything that I wasn't the center of the universe, that like everything didn't revolve around me, which was, I know sounds crazy, but like some people still haven't realized.

So like I get that it's not plain for everyone. But to me, it was a really big realization. But of course, it also really altered, I mean, I'm adolescent right here, right? I'm going through puberty. I met a long, right on that trip. I met a girlfriend who I had for two and a half years. So I mean, it led to a lot of really big things, but more importantly than the actual circumstances it led to was the shift in my consciousness that further exploits into psychedelia proved to me that this reality is so much more malleable than we're taught to believe or that we experience regularly where it just feels like Tony and ABC, this is how things work and it's, if you penetrate that enough and then kind of dwell in that space, I think it reinforces among other things and interest in dreams, but just kind of how dreamlike existence is in this reality anyway.

And so then it's like, okay, the same things I'm learning and the imagery and the kind of lessons and things that I could be learning and you know, my dreams are directly applicable to my waking life was a big revelation for me and then later on when I had a very big psychedelic experience that lasted essentially for three months where I was just launched in, my life was one giant synchronicity that extended through the waking and dreaming state. So it was, I'd go and have synchronicities nonstop for the entire day I woke up and then I'd go to sleep and it would stop. It would just keep. - That's great.

Yeah, and that was, it was great at the time. Yeah.

That's when you're in the zone.

It was beyond, it was insane. It was, I mean, it was, it was, it was to the point where it was overwhelming psychically. Again, at this point, I'm a young, I'm 20, something, 20 years old or something. I'm at college at this point. You know, the horny 20-something year old trying to deal with the secrets of the universe while going to a music college. It was obviously an overwhelming experience, but you know, that experience where it didn't stop when I slept and I'd wake up and have the same kind of knowledge. I was like, okay, well, that's something. That's not like, I did not making this up. Like it's lasting through.

So it showed me there is a threat of consciousness that is, even if we're not aware of it, exists throughout all of these kinds of states. Yeah. Yeah. Something related.

But it also, I think when that happens like that, one, they are related and then it gets, because in a way, I've only had a small sampling of that and was in Jamaica. - Oh, left Jamaica.

You know, I did a film there in Jamaica.

That's my spiritual home.

And at the end of, well, I was almost, I literally thought I was some sort of Jamaican god, but I didn't mean to do that.

I feel you. No, I get it. - I had no sense of any, myself, anything, I was absolutely 100% crazed.

I love it.

Absolutely crazed.

And happy.

Yeah, of course, that's what comes with it.

And then she's your happy. Well, that's my, that's my great name. To get too happy, the universe kind of, you know, is paying attention.

Yes.

All right.

You know, I'll be the one who's happy here. (laughing) You need to complain more and hide your happy. (laughing) You know, so, you know, it's like that kind of thinking. But what you said, I think is really critical because you continued it in a synchronicity.

And that's just like a huge growth spurt for you.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, you connected through the psychedelics and then it continued on in synchronicity and people you met and things you did. And I think that's the purpose of dreams. I think it's to make us expand and grow. What is more boring than meeting people that are completely stuck in their lives?

Yeah.

And don't know how to get out. And, you know, their dreams are, their dreams are things like about being, I'm in a car and I'm in a swamp and I can't get out. Well, yeah. Okay. And then, you know, you are stuck, but then to discover they didn't really want to get unstuck.

Right.

They just wanted to tell you they're stuck.

Right.

But they're not willing to do the work. That's why my dreams course is not for everybody.

Okay.

And everybody, because everybody, it's not for people that don't want to face, like you said, you're facing parts of yourself you're not going to love.

Yeah.

Some of your greed, your pettiness, your jealousy, your anger, your way you've treated people in the past. It's not at all exciting and happy that way. And many people would want to get off this road.

Oh, yeah.

And that's what I'm offering.

That's what my mind is like, you will be a changed person after this course, I will guarantee you. I don't know if you'll be a better writer, but you will be a definitely a changed person.

So, and for many people, that may not be what they want.

Well, I mean, and I'm, well, they do.

We'll assume that people who would get in touch with you would, but so tell me about the course. Tell me kind of the intent behind it. You don't have to give me the entire overview of what it is, but just, you know.

No, I'm not going to do that.

Yeah, what is the dream?

I'm going to give you the syllabus.

Yeah.

And I want you to be like a student who asked me questions 'cause here's what's exciting about this podcast for me. I'm inventing this, I invented this two weeks ago. And it was the first thing I felt in a long time where I said, I want to share this with other people.

Yeah.

Let me begin by the first thing about my course. It's not a group. I only work one-on-one, like you and I are doing right now where I'm FaceTime and we're talking. I'm going to do that the same way. I'm going to Skype and so people are going to see or if the person is nearby where I live, it will meet one-on-one. That's where things happen. I just am such a non-group person. Like I'll go to a yoga class with, you know, 20 people and I'll be trying to do the toughest thing, you know, the toughest move because the teacher's doing it and I don't want to look at any of these in front of all the women.

I want them to think I'm cool and then I spend thousands of dollars to get my back to the job. Okay, so this is evolving and you're part of that. You're part of what I think is exciting. We're in the process, I'm in the process of creating. So let me give you the syllabus. Okay, cool.

I'm not going to tell you the first thing, everything that, and let me give you my bias about writing and writing and film. I've written 32 films, nine have been made and many I did just working on or didn't sell or did sell but they never got made, whatever.

Yeah.

The truth is the movie that I got made that meant the most which was a movie called "Stealing Home" which was about my father and a best friend of mine when I was growing up was personal. My course is nothing but personal. You want to figure out what the next Hollywood movie is, what the next cartoon story, whatever, that's fine. Go do that. But if you want to write it something that when you're done you'll have a piece of work that you'll be proud of and it will energize you then the course is for you. And let me just say one more thing about the course in that way that you're effectively by writing, my career didn't happen until I gave up trying to figure out what the studio wanted and started to write for what came out of me and let me just say that the studios aren't looking for your idea.

The studios are looking to see if you're a good writer. I'm interested in making you a good writer. So when people read the work that my partner will all this and I did at Stealing Home, which we wrote in three weeks of cafes and sold in six, they were responding to the writing because we were writing from our souls what we cared about. We were writing about what we knew about. We weren't guessing. And that movie got us a lot of work. But here's the joke. No one of the studios wanted to make the movie. They just wanted to hire us and I'm not joking what I'm about to say to you. An executive at Universal after complimenting us on the script and how good the characters said, "Anyway, I've got a vehicle.

It's a Dolly Parton, I dream of Jeannie. I thought my head was going to blow off. I think dream of Jeannie with Dolly Parton." So you go from some of you've written the personal, your soul, you think they love you, you think they're going to say, "We want to make a movie or we're going to make a movie. Like it, keep writing that way." No, all they wanted to know was that we could write so we could take the crap they were taught and make it good.

Right, right.

So when I say to my students in my course, you will have a piece of work that will show your writing 'cause I'm going to put you through, it's going to feel like a master's course. It's not going to, I'm not going to treat you with kid gloves and to treat you the real way. And if you survive it and get through and have a piece, that's the piece you could hand to a studio and maybe they too will get you to write the new "I Dream of Jeannie" with Jennifer Garner. So maybe you'll have that opportunity. So let me do the syllabus because everything's going to start with dreams. So if you don't dream now, and this course is interesting, you have to learn how to dream, how do you do that?

You go to a store and buy a book, a dream book and you pick out that book carefully. You don't just walk in and pick out the first thing that's there, make it a book that responds to you, make it a book worthy of putting your dreams in. Doesn't matter what color it has to respond to you. You respond to it, you buy it. You put it by the side of your bed. You also can put your phone and you can do, you can do no voice messages in the middle of the night if you want.

Right.

And eventually I need everything to be transcribed into the book. Now, you say, well, that's not gonna happen. You're gonna do more. Well, first of all, your dream life has to be seduced. It has to know it's being wanted. It's like a deer on the edge of a pasture. If you run at it, it'll run away. If you're slowly moved toward and bring something, maybe it will move a little closer to and not be threatened by you. Dreams are the same. So you get the book, you get into bed. You read one of the books I want you to read, which is if I can just get exactly the right title so it's messed that up. You read The Wisdom of Dreams, The Wisdom of Dreams by Jeremy Taylor, which is a fabulous overall view of dreams.

It gets different views, different positions and all that. And it's a great overall book. Well, now your dream life has seen you bought a dream book. They see you are not reading a dream book. You're showing a conscious interest, yeah.

You're showing a conscious and that's what the deal is. You're showing a conscious effort to give them, to let them know to visit you, even if it's a small second or one word, it's a beginning. And then as you go up to sleep, say, I'm open. I hope I can remember some of my dreams. Do that for 21 days and a good chance that you'll be remembering portions of dreams. All right, so that's one. Then I told you reading The Wisdom of the Dreams and I also want them to read two. This will be the reading section of the course. You'll be to read Man and His Symbols, which is a Jungian book and chapters one and three.

And I need them at the end of that to write analysis so I can see 'cause I'm gonna be doing tutorials on the 10 terms of Jungian terms so they can start learning the dream language. And so those are the two main books. I also want on the side, whether you have time to see the 20 top movies ever made. I want them to be exposed to what makes great filmmaking and be able to talk about it.

Is there a specific list? Is there like a specific list?

Yeah, there is. You can look up at the American film and subscribe.

Okay, fine. Gotcha.

Or Google 100 Greatest Movies. Pick them out. Actually, your real goal is to have seen as many because now you will be able to talk about movies in the 30s and what was happening to the studios in the 40s when 80 million people went to the movies, to those little movie theaters you see in little towns that are movie theaters anymore. They were being used every weekend. And you just become, you're diving into the world of dreams and film. All right, so now you're done with that. I mean, you're doing that. You're not done with it. You're doing all those things at once. You're reading, you're remembering your dreams, you're writing your dreams, you're seeing movies.

You see how engaged it is?

Yes, you're prodding your dreams, yeah.

Okay, so you write five dreams. When you get five dreams or three, I'll do three to five. If you're having a struggle, then you'll come and we'll talk on the phone. We'll be doing one of the Skype sessions which over the course of the year will probably be four to five hour long sessions, one on one. And at that point, something in the dreams you relate to me will trigger something. It could have been something about your grandfather, could have been something about your father or your brothers or something that happened to you as a child, but you really are drawn to it. And based on that, you will write for me a one page dream memoir.

So let's say you dropped about your grandfather. You're gonna write about your grandfather a moment you had with your grandfather. And then you're gonna hand that into me and then I'm gonna edit that with you and make you go back until it's literally, feels like a polished, perfect one piece essay about your father. It's almost like a poem, your grandfather or your girlfriend or your wife or your sons or whoever. And that decision of what you wanna write about will happen when we do our first skyping. Now, why is that important? Because you're writing about something that you already in an inner way are relating to.

And that is going to be the story that you're gonna write as the film is gonna come from this world. Stealing home wasn't every moment of my life. It was the core was my moment of many moments in my life. But it also had fiction in it. I never was a baseball player. I'm getting note, I played, but I didn't play it in the pros, character does. There are other characters that you introduced. So it's a combination of a movie, it's a combination of a core belief that moves your heart combined with fictional good film writing.

Well, this is just not to cut you off though. This is fascinating because there are often these moments in life that strike me as particularly poignant, whether it's brought on by something I'm witnessing or something I'm hearing or reading that really kind of encapsulate like a very specific, I don't know if you'd call it message, but feeling. And it feels like kind of what you're saying helps to kind of evoke and pull that out aided by your dream landscape, which is really cool, just to be, that's why I'm interjecting. It sounds really cool. And it's something that I think about a lot. Yeah. And also like, I just have been fired off new art when I wrote "Stealing Home."

And the reason I wrote "Stealing Home" was to leave for my children, I thought I was going to be out of the business.

Right, it's a problem.

And I'm working 18 years in film after that, but I thought I was out why we're writing something no one cares about. It's about my father. No one's going to be like that.

Yeah.

And then I realized that when my point is, Will and I were better writers when we were writing about something we cared about.

Of course.

Then if we try to write something that's funny or if it doesn't, we don't relate to it. Period. The writing is being elevated. So anyway, on top of everything else, one of the movies that we will go through and analyze structurally is "Good Will Hunting." After you get done with writing the memoir piece, we're going to watch "Good Will Hunting," and then I'm going to do a typing session analyzing it with you. Why is it work? What's the structure? How do they hide the structure? What's the, and I'm going to also analyze it with you in Jungian terms. That's why I need you to understand what an animus is and itself in the archetypes and collective unconscious and shadows and all that.

Because we're going to do it both like that analysis as a film and analysis is a Jungian piece of art. So at the end of all that at "Good Will Hunting," you're going to take a real workshop with one of the really good writers out there. I did one with Robert McGee, and I did with another well-known guy. And the reason is that's a 40-hour session. And it's kind of cool, 40-hour session that you will learn everything about film writing. It'll be like, if you were just on your own, it'll take you five years.

Right.

And when you do this course, you'll know by the end of the way, I threw out a script after doing his workshop. It threw the whole thing out. (laughing) And I made up 25 copies and a lot of money to get the copies. (laughing) I tore it up and said I have to throw this thing out. And for me, this course is the course I wanted. And I didn't have any. I got hired Edgar Ryan to write a female animal house. I've never seen a script. And I ended up copying the format out of a movie, I really, I think it's a perfect movie. I'm just trying to, I'll try to remember it. I'll come to you in a second, I'm just flashing off it.

Then I had a copy of script from Orion. I went in their library to say, how do you do the format? And then I spent many, many years making many, many, many mistakes. I thought they got hired. (laughing) So anyway, they, by analyzing that, well then no. And then that story, that story you wrote about your grandfather or whomever, that's gonna be the subject of yours, that's gonna be at the core of your screenplay. And then with all the stuff you've learned from Robert McGhee and all the stuff you've learned through my course, and that is now you will work on that screenplay until you can no longer work on it.

You're gonna try to polish it into an amazing. By the way, the movie that I copied was "Body Heat" with William Hurt and Kathleen Turner's first movie. Have you ever seen "Body Heat"?

I haven't. I consider it almost, it's almost like a perfect movie.

I will check it out.

It's a mystery, it's dark, and it's really good. And Larry Caston is the writer, director.

Oh, cool. Is your, just to clarify, is your course only for people looking to write scripts or is there, is this something that is gonna be intended for anyone who's trying to kind of, this could just be for writers, right, who are trying to find a more authentic voice?

Correct, for example, well, there are a lot of everything you just said, I'm so glad you asked that. You can't be from the screenwriting for those who wanna do screenwriting, right. It also can be that the writing you work on, that you wanna work on is not a screenplay. You wanna work on memoir. You wanna work on taking things from your life and writing one page, two page things on them.

Right.

But the tightest writing you can do.

Right.

And that's where the course would stop for you when you've accomplished writing one or two of those type of things. It actually can be one where the writing, it can be one that you just wanna grow.

Right.

And the writing, I can't tell you the number of workshops have been in a dream memoir where none of the people have ever written anything.

Right.

Some of the stuff coming out of them when they're talking about real things that went on their life, like abuse or abandonment or whatever they were talking about, and joyful things too. It's so authentic. They're writing got better. They were literally in the beginning of the workshop. This is one I did with a wonderful memoir writer named Nancy Aaron and he did in Costa Rica. And every, I'd say 13 out of the 15 people there were freaked out that they had to write. And I'm telling you, when I heard what they were writing, some of the stuff, I thought they could be published.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it speaks to the experience of writing from something. I mean, I think this gets to a bigger point in people's lives, whether you're a writer or not, which is trying to find your authentic voice and who you are in life is what ultimately brings kind of the sense of fulfillment, or real, like, this is something I've heard a lot. People say like, what kills so many people internally and psychically in their lives is this idea of not realizing your potential. Having this idea of who you are in your mind, but never being able to actually achieve that in any real tangible form.

And this isn't to say that, oh, if you take your course or you do X, Y, and Z, your dreams are gonna be fulfilled any right away. But the point is, is that getting in touch with why those desires are there, what that says about you, how that can shape actually something that's fulfilling for you, whether it's that specific thing or not, is really what we're all trying to do. And it seems like you've kind of taken this template or modality of dreams and are using it as a way to kind of let people get in touch with other aspects of themselves, but also creatively express that in a way that, because to me, like personally, I've noticed this recently, like two or three years ago, that if I don't engage in some type of creativity, like creating something, I start to go nuts.

Like I just go absolutely crazy, I'm more irritated, I'm more agitated, and it doesn't mean I have to get an album out or I have to get this finished thing out and be making money from it or anything else. It's just like, and it's a thing that has to be dealt with as much as anything else and expressing it in a holistic way is great, but what you're describing also kind of adds on this kind of cohesive layer to it, how to turn this into something, which to me is immensely useful. You know, if I would say that I'm personally looking for something it's at, you know?

Yeah, I think it's such a really important thing you mentioned because I think exactly what you said at the core, the sadness that so many people don't have an authentic voice, they don't have their voice, you're not even looking to have their voice, but to find your voice, and that's really what you just said is the kind of agenda behind the curtain on this course because behind it is, I'm really interested in you finding the voice that's within you, that's waiting for you, like the chapel that was waiting for me in my dream, there's a chapel waiting for you.

Exactly.

And this premise of reading books, seeing movies, of writing, all that is doing is breaking down the resistance so you can experience a part of yourself that you may not have experienced for a long time or in some cases ever. That's, to me, if someone said that they're not gonna write, they don't care about the screenplays, but they do care about the other aspects. I'm just as happy with that.

Yeah.

So offered as a screenplay because it's good to have the discipline of writing. That's my problem, why I'm very careful about what I write because when I write something, I commit to it 100%. That's all my mind is all.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's not health, that's not healthy. Okay, you want to kill me. (laughing) All right, so I have to be careful because I'll be seeing my wife. No, I'm just gonna stay up till I get it.

Oh man.

Five in the morning and do all that, but the beauty of it is once you're engaged in a story that you care about, you can't stop thinking about it.

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that happens, that's like a meta commentary on our lives too. Whether we're consciously doing that or not, that kind of is what shapes our existence, right? This idea that we're obsessed with whatever our narrative is and this is kind of yet another way to kind of take the reins a little bit. You're not gonna control everything obviously, but you can at least have more awareness of what's kind of prompting some of the decisions that lead to the circumstances in your life. So, are there anything else about the course that you want to communicate for people who are listening?

I mean, I know that this is something that's still evolving for you, but I also, having spoken to you many times just in our conversations and about this, I know it's something that's going to be immensely useful for a lot of people who just kind of want to use their dreams in a way that's helpful, not use them like, you take advantage of them, but use them as like a modality. Like you said, like anything else, like meditations would be like psychedelics, like healthy eating, using it as a modality that can help them in their creative lives. So is there anything else?

Well, I like to--

No, I think that's, you know, the length of the course is the length of how much you want to put it in and how fast. I don't put a, this is a four week course, I'm not doing that.

Right, right.

This is a course that some of you will take longer to understand things, maybe longer to understand some of the terms or longer to remember your dreams. And we go at the pace, I go at the pace that you go. I'm not interested, I'm not a point in my life, I'm only interested in these matters. I'm not interested in packaging it in some way that will be, you know, it's over in four or six weeks. This don't work for me. They may work for a lot of people, they do, I'm sure. But for me, what I wanna, what I think I do best and what I think people get the most value is the one on one, the care of that.

And knowing all I'm interested is for them to reach a point where they go, I'm so thankful I took this course.

Yeah, and I mean, I think it's also a rare opportunity to kind of engage with someone. You've been, like, not a lot of people can say they've been focused on dreams for 30, 40 years. Just like, that's not a practical thing for most people to do, but you've done it. And I think it's a rare opportunity. And I'm really excited and you know this, anyway, I can help kind of get the word out because I have come to a point in my life at least professionally where I have the inner rebellion against kind of how things are marketed and packaged. And you know, I just, but I'm also, you know, listen, I'm a young father, I got a young family.

I also realized I have to sell things. So I play the game when necessary, but most of the time I find myself kind of making light of it because it's ridiculous. You don't have to have some formulaic, perfect thing, package for everyone to elicit the responses you want. If you have an opportunity to connect with someone, we spoke about this earlier on our, I think I'm one of our earliest conversations, this idea of kind of a mentor, you know, and a protege and having this relationship is something that is really not done that much anymore outside of like strictly professional circumstances, but is incredibly useful.

Like some of the people, and just to be clear, mentors don't have to be older than you. You can find mentors who are younger than you. Truthfully, just anyone who can learn something about yourself, the world, and others, like that's a valuable relationship. So, yeah, I'm really happy that it's kind of awful.

I'm so glad that you also mentioned that because I really believe that our success of our lives really comes from the mentors we meet. And I know in critical moments, I'd say four times in my life, a mentor has arrived, and has guided me to a better place. And the course is definitely about mentoring. And even when I taught it at school, I always saw it as a mentoring course. I wanted to be a mentor for that student to make sure that they had someone who was, you know, could joke about things that most people wouldn't joke about and talk about things that most people can't talk about. And that's why I'm so happy that I've arrived at this moment.

I don't have any agenda about I need to be, you know, need to package it or be blah, blah. I'm only interested in meeting sincere people who want to work on themselves and who maybe want to write something that will be special.

Yeah. - That's it.

Well, I can tell you, I don't know how well that'll work for mass appeal and everything else, but I'm sure there are people listening to this podcast who are gonna resonate with that and take you up on it. I'm pretty confident on that. So, I get, we're kind of at the end here. I know we were scheduled for a little bit earlier. But then we had technical difficulties. Is there anything else you want to talk about before we go?

Well, I think I'll, for me, I think I'll leave it there because we could talk about many things. (laughing)

That I know.

The world, the world that's going on, the storm that's approaching, the whole that, but I think that enough people are already having that conversation. So, I'm just grateful to you that you have given a platform for me to talk about.

Well, these things, 'cause I don't run into that many people who are as interested in that as certainly I've been.

Yeah, well, I mean, you know.

You are.

I am and a lot of other people are too. It's just something that doesn't necessarily percolate to the top of people's consciousness because of what we mentioned earlier in the show. It's just not where we're steered to most of the time. And if you are, you can kind of be looked at as kind of, what, it's even a phrase, dreamy idealist, right? It's got dreams in it.

Right.

So, you know, it's something that I really do, you know, I'm happy I'm able to talk about this as much as possible. And if you ever wanna come back on and talk about it again, you know, you got an open line. But before we go, I have questions, quick questions. Let's see if they line up. I don't even remember your previous answers, but we'll get three and then we'll go with one other one. What is your favorite color?

Green.

What's your favorite number?

Ooh.

14.

Hmm, what's your favorite animal?

Dolphin.

Ooh, mine too. Last question. Practical tip, can you share a practical tip with people listening that has helped you in your life? Can be anything?

Risk. Take risks. Do things that you, do things where the thing you say, I'm gonna do that when I'm 40, when I make a little money, do it next year, do it right away. You're gonna get it, and take a risk. Maybe it's in a relationship. Maybe it's talking to your father in a way you've never talked to. But start living a life of risk. Stop seeing, there's nothing safe about being alive. It's not safe. The equation isn't that great. The equation, this is that good, okay? It doesn't, you know, I'm older, so I know I get to talk about these things. And, you know, I'm staring at it and going, well, this doesn't end really well.

You're just leaning on it.

And it doesn't. So security is made up in the mind. It's kind, it's idiotic, there's no such thing. So embrace the wildness of being on a planet that's spinning around a star, 200 and some 1,000 miles an hour, and take a risk today, and take more tomorrow, and so on, that's my council.

I love it. I love that your practical advice is taking a risk for so many reasons. It's incredible. Steven, thank you.

By the way, I have no practical skills. (laughs) I was gonna have to, I was gonna have to, you know, BS my way around it anyway.

Ugh.

If anyone tried to, how should I give me advice on, if anyone is interested in reaching me, how should I do that?

Put your email out. Give people your email, and I'll say it at the beginning too.

Well, it's, I'm gonna give it, and it's C smoke, but it's like S-E-A, S-M-O-K-E, at opt, O-P-T, O-N, L-I-N-E, got net. And C smoke, by the way, is something that happens in a lot of places, but I first saw it in Maine, where it's when the water is warmer than the air, and it rises, and then it freezes in air, creating kind of like a fog bank, and then it drifts, and will stick itself to pine trees, and it freezes, and it's absolutely otherworldly, and so my company, C smoke, was my company, and my house here in Maine is called C smoke.

Oh, I always wondered about that.

My email address is C smoke.

Yeah, that's, that's, it's so funny, because I've forgotten, I first learned of it up here, and now here we are.

The circle is complete.

But, yeah, so that's the spelling, and if they get really confused, I guess they can--

I'll make it clear, don't worry.

You must think some direction.

I'll make it clear.

I'll make sure people can do that. Awesome.

No, I'm so glad we got to catch up.

Me too, me too. What's the end touch? Yeah, likewise. Talk soon.

All right, good job.

Thanks, David.

Bye. (upbeat music) (water splashing) (upbeat music)

Thank you for listening to that episode. A reminder, even though you just heard it, if you wanna go get in touch with Steven, either hit me up, Noah@syncpodcast.com. I will forward you directly so he knows, and I hope that you're official, but you can also email him C smoke at O P T O N L I N E dot net. Go check him out there, really. I think you will be happy that you did. Big thanks to everyone who's listening to the show, got a really cool guest coming up next week. I'm pretty sure 99% sure it's confirmed. I just had to double check with his assistant, but I'm pretty sure it's happening. And you will see.

If not, you'll hear me next week being like, "What happened, it's coming up." But I'm pretty sure it's happening. So big thanks to everyone who's supporting the show in whatever way you do that. I really does. It means a lot to me. I like that we can get this out there so many people who are interested in it. That's it. I'll see you next week.