Unwell with Bill Patrick

(upbeat music) ♪ Whoa ♪ ♪ Do I think you need me ♪ ♪ I don't know ♪ ♪ Where you coming from ♪

Welcome to Synchronicity. I have a guest this week, Bill Patrick. This is gonna be a good one. He just launched a new podcast with his friend Austin called Unwell. Check it out. There are links in all the places where the links are supposed to be. You'll hear us talk about that. Cryptocurrency, fear, anxiety, build. Check out Bill's podcast if you want the opposite of my perspective on many things. Not really, but it's just kind of a different vibe. You'll get a sense of it in this podcast, where we're coming from with this stuff, but it's good. You're gonna like it. I say it's good. I haven't listened to it.

It could be fucking terrible. It's like every episode I record in the beginning where I say it's good. It's good. It could be great. Who knows? It could be a total shit. I know I'm though. It's probably really awesome. That's gonna be the intro for this one. It's a longer episode you can find. Oh, no, it's not. Big shout out to the guys at fucking Ned. Hello, Ned.com, use the code Sink, S-Y-N-C. Check out, you got 15% off your order. They sent me a nice old gift box. All this stuff, the CBD, the sleep aid, the chapstick that I talk about that doesn't make your lips more chapped. That's great stuff.

And what else? Magnesium. They're cool. If I was a good podcast host, I'd take a picture of it with the self and be like, I love these guys. But this is the way I do that. Go check them out. Hello, Ned.com, use the code Sink, S-Y-N-C. Check out, get 15% off your order. That's cool. Do that. Everything else is good. Patrons pop in Bitcoin, crypto. Doing a lot of talks. I'll do some free ones on Instagram. Best place is the Discord. It's a community of people. I am but one man. I can only do so much to spread the gospel of cryptocurrency. That's why I have a team of people in the Discord server who get paid nothing and I get all of the gains.

Just kidding. It's fucking great. You're gonna love it. Everyone loves it in there. Go check that out. All the other stuff. Fun stuff. Music's coming. Big time. Bingo Bango. Make music with Bill, too. It's good stuff. You're gonna love it. Okay, that's it. Get to the episode. Without further ado, here is Bill Patrick. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Hi. We're talking about social media and then watch this stuff. Yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah, I like looking at my follower numbers. I do like it. I do it. I enjoy it. And I think the trick is to not let it be a signal of your failure or success, but if you feel like you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, who cares?

You're wiggling off people who don't like what you're doing and you're gaining people who you do. Nothing more than that. Yeah. Let's talk. We've got Bill Patrick. Welcome back. Okay, good to be back. You live here. So it's not like you came anywhere. Yes, after our first episode together, we were like, let's live together. Yeah, that was the right move. Now we're a gig couple, living in Rhyme Cliff. It's beautiful. Very progressive. Yeah, very progressive. Podcast, you have a new one. I haven't listened yet. It just came out. I don't want anyone to listen. I'm nervous. It's the best way to be as nervous.

Yeah, it just came out. We just finished finally after procrastinating for easily two years. You and your friend Austin? Well, originally it was just going to be me and I thought about it a lot. And considering I don't really have, you know, a specific topic like you do here, it's really hard to do. That's giving this podcast way more. (laughing) I just think you have to be a very, very charismatic and maybe like a stand-up comedian to get away with people trying to listen to you about nothing and just rambling on about life. So I teamed up with my friend Austin. He is a screenwriter and extremely smart young man, half my age.

He's written for Vice and Buzzfeed. And I just love his outlook on life and his shadiness. And we share a lot of similar views on life and stuff like that. But it's coming from me, a 43-year-old straight man and then him, a 25-year-old gay boy. Which is awesome. Which is like a nice dichotomy of views and it's fun. And so we started to, we started, yeah, we recorded three episodes. Two of them are up right now, the intro and the first one. And the podcast is called "Unwell" because.

You're unwell.

'Cause in general, yes. (laughing)

That did great. I love it. I also know just like when we first started hanging out and I was like, you obviously should have a podcast. And like, I know you heard a conversation with Alp yesterday where I think he's like talking to me about something he wanted to do with podcasts. And I'm like, I don't really listen to podcasts. It's like not, I don't, my life doesn't revolve around. They show as much as it may seem like that is going on to people who listen. But it's very clear to me when people have a voice that people will enjoy listening to. Not just like the tonal quality, but like the perspectives and like kind of the general outlook.

And it doesn't, do you know how awful life would be if it was just me being enthusiastic and happy about shit all the time? The world would be a nightmare. Like you literally need the counterpoints to all that stuff to like really get to the juice of what, you know, whatever any of this is. And yeah, so I'm super happy to hear that you're doing it. And you're, it's all launch, right? By the time people hear this, it's a lot.

It is launch. It's on all of your favorite podcast servers. Is that the word? What's it called?

I'm new to this, I'm very new. What is the podcast?

It's about you, exactly. You know, on all the sites, all the stuff. I just say all the stuff.

All the stuff.

People who listen to podcasts, know where to find them.

Apple, Stitcher, Audible.

All the spices.

I did all the technical work myself in there, like a fucking Russian hacker trying.

Really?

Yeah, it was writing code, I felt like, but it was really just copying an RSS link.

It's a complicated process.

Pray trying to mean free.

It's exactly right. Shit. Well, what are some of the things you guys, I know you have a few recorded ones out, what are some of the things you guys talk about?

Disgust, well, the first episode, there is a bit of controversy in the dance music industry. I'm a DJ, I don't know if, or I was when things were good. I still am, for the most part, but there is, we touched on the controversy of like people going out, partying, DJing in the midst of this pandemic.

Right.

And there seems to be, obviously, a very passionate, both sides are very passionate. And we discussed it, there was an Instagram page that went up that was kind of shaming all the promoters in New York and people that were flying to Mexico and wherever it's a party, and it just turned kind of ugly. So we just discussed that 'cause it does touches, touches close to home, and we had our views on it, because I think it's something that after basically a year of this shit, it's like, okay, I understand, we understand both sides, but we wanted to get it out there and touch on it because I think it's an important thing.

People need to psychologically move on, I think, at some point. It's a weird time to be saying it. So it's, I usually, I mean, at this point, my listeners and most of my listeners, Jesus Christ, people who listen to this show know that my relationship with what we call reality is not most people. So I acknowledge the clear objective reality of COVID and advice and that it is killing people. And that happens, but I also recognize that like today, we woke up with the news that Dr. Drey had a brain aneurysm.

Exactly. I read that this actress died of a UTI infection last night.

Yeah, it did.

I was like, are you fucking kidding me? A UTI? This is something I gotta worry about, though.

She was told from the '70s show.

Yes, went into her fucking kidneys and bladder, and she's dead. So this is exactly for someone who is neurotic, like myself, and our podcast touches on that. Like, I'm waking up to seeing an actress died from a UTI. It's like, okay, well, this is not something I need to stress about on top of the pandemic and everything else, but yeah, there's--

Everyone has their line with what everything is gonna do. The virus is really this dividing line, I think also for people who wanna believe in this idea of science. It's like, I see this fucking, this thing, believe in science. It's like, you just, that's like, that doesn't make sense. That's faith in something that what you probably are talking about is empirically based, which is they don't really use faith in most of that process. It's something you have evidence based. So there's this line between what is this. We've both spoken to people who I think are in the medical field, and there's wildly divergent opinions on how serious this is or not serious it is.

And yeah, man, it's, I do think that people have to develop their own relationship with how they want this to function in their lives, 'cause it is going to be something, at least for the short and immediate term before like any vaccine that would kind of like eliminate that shows up, but it's good.

Yeah, I think the thing that doesn't work is shaming and name calling, like which is rampant on the internet. But in general, like shaming people and like the intensity of the one side of the people that are like, you're a piece of shit for going out partying and you're killing grandmas and grandparents. And that's not gonna work. Like let's be honest, both the society is so divided at the moment, whether it's politics or whatever it is. And each side is equally just shit, in my opinion, just screaming at each other and not getting through.

Yeah.

And you're just yelling and yelling. And I think at this point in my life, I worry about myself, my friends, my family, and I try to be the best person that I can be and try to, if I'm going out in the middle of a pandemic, I take every precaution. I'm wearing a mask, I'm socially distancing, I'm being as safe as I can, but I'm not gonna sit inside for the next like six months and just driving myself crazy. Like yeah, I have to do stuff, I have to get out. So we touch on that and yeah, in general, I think it's a topic that probably everyone is sick of hearing at this point, but it's been a fucking year.

And it continues to be?

It continues to be, yeah.

It's gonna move right through 2021 because there has to be this narrative focus that people can kind of latch on to and like put some structure in their lives. And we just shifted over to a new narrative collectively for the past year or so.

Yeah.

And until people kind of, I think, create their own relationship to like reality and the virus or people or whatever health, you know, it's gonna be some murky water for a little bit.

Yeah, I'm not trying to sit here and tell people how to live. All I'm saying is take care of yourself, stop worrying if some random person that you don't know is out and they're gonna kill your grandparents. Like just, let's, everyone just relax a little bit.

You don't want to deal with this with the school stuff.

Yeah, I know, I saw this. It's intense. - I don't get too into the weeds, but like, my theory is this is like, if you are concerned that by sending yourself or someone else in an area where there's a chance of a virus being spread, what are you coughing?

Perfect timing. I'll just sip some water and go go.

But basically, like, don't do that. You don't get to then tell people, hey, you have to get tested. You have to do this, you have to do that.

Just don't send your kids to school. I'm sorry, you're not gonna be able to control everyone.

You can, and that's a choice if you want to make and it's totally valid. Like, you have someone immunocompromised. So do I, I have people too. It's like, I don't know, I don't know. It's kind of like an aggressive, I think, stance at some point. But like, I also think like everyone is in charge of however they want to engage with reality and their health and their kids' health and their parents or anyone else in their lives. Like, that's personal responsibility. And I think like this whole, like, you know, labeling people like pieces of shit is that whole thing has to stop just in general because when people do that, they're negating the parts of themselves that are pieces of shit and we are all pieces of shit at one point or another in our lives and the more we fight that, the more we'll never, I will, I would never.

It's like, you do then, you really are fucked up. Then there's really something to be afraid of. So I like, I know, that polarity does feel like it's gonna have to break.

I mean, if people, I completely understand the outrage in April and May and June. But it's-- - Why?

Because it was new, everyone was scared. We didn't know exactly what this virus was. We were like, okay, there's so many questions and people going out and not wearing a mask.

I don't know, that's-- - At that point, I could understand people being outraged. But now it's January, we have a better idea of what the virus is.

So this is the time thing for you?

I just think, at some point in teaming nature for us to be like, I'm not gonna sit around and just fucking-- - Well, I mean, I don't know. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, because then it's just a matter of adjustment period of time which is relative. There could just be someone who's very conservative who just hasn't made up their mind about what this is, and that could take them 20 years.

Sure. - I would say like--

I think it's a normal human being. Give it a couple months. - It's a show me one of those.

And you're taking all the information and you're seeing what's going on. All right, I'm gonna wear a mask, I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna be responsible, but I'm not gonna sit inside and just watch my life crumble and get super angry at everyone who's out there living their life. Now, if some asshole comes into the supermarket without a mask, I understand like go, could just put a fucking mask on, come on.

Now, I do agree with that, put a mask on, but I mean, my stance on the masks are that, I don't think they do anything, number one. That's cool, I play the game, I wear them everywhere. I'm not challenging that. They got a dream where like I didn't have a mask. The masks are coming into my dreams now, for fuck's sake.

I mean, you're basing this on what scientific knowledge that the masks don't do anything?

I don't know. You know, I don't think this virus is what people think it is. I think it's like a mind disease that, you know, you basically latch on to as a narrative to escape this mortal coil, if you don't play the game anymore.

That's very cute, none of you. (laughing)

I do really believe that, I mean, I've said it enough on this podcast that it's not like a shocking thing. I think these things emerge externally in our world, collectively and in our individual lives, to kind of challenge our beliefs about what is real and what isn't, I'm not suggesting you challenge. This is like, you know what, I think I can fly. Let me jump off a fucking building and see if I can fly. I wear the mask, I play the game, but ultimately I do think health is a self-generator.

Sure, I believe that.

I really do. - I think that plays a role.

I really do, it's why I believe even people who are like, hucksters can like, faith heal people, because the person on the other end, if they believe that that person is really healing them, they themselves, that mechanism, that generative health principle heals them, not the person who's pretending to do it. So, you know, I do think that is a lesson that everyone has to learn. It's very fear-based, it feels like. I don't think that's a bad thing, but I do think a lot of the relationship around the virus and how it's portrayed and how people interact with it is dominated by fear. And I just, in my estimation, I haven't made a lot of good decisions in my life where I'm motivated predominantly by fear.

Like, when I can actually move through and towards and challenge the fear, that's where I actually gain some like, valuable insight.

Yeah.

Very rarely in my life do I have to like, jump away from a moving car, you know, like something that's like, actually I really gotta do that, or I would fucking die. And I play by the rules though, for the most part, I think that Jack's fan, we're strong. - Who?

Just playing by the rules, taking to the limit. This is my life philosophy.

I think the timing of this whole pandemic, has a lot to do with, I think with the way society is so split right now, with Trump and politics, and then you throw this pandemic on top of it, 'cause I look back at, you know, 1969 when there was that Hong Kong flu, and a million people died, and Woodstock still happened, and the media wasn't.

I didn't know about Hong Kong flu.

Exactly. 100%, and I know I sound like a crazy conspiracy theory.

No real thing, Hong Kong flu.

No, it's a real thing, Hong Kong flu. 1969, Woodstock still happened. The media wasn't going crazy, and trying to fucking scare everyone, and the country wasn't as divided as it is now, and so now it's just, there's this huge platform for people to just scream at each other, and make the other side feel like they're lesser, and dumb, and unintelligent, and it's just.

Schism.

Oh, it's exhausting, so. And to be honest, like, let's move on. (laughing) In general, on this conversation.

Let's talk about crypto, 'cause that's what started it. Let's move to the other hot topic.

I'm a crypto.

Yeah, why don't you--

Amateur. I'm very conservative.

You've only been in the market what, two, three months? You've lost a lot.

I've lost a lot, because of you.

Oh, totally, got scammed.

We got scammed. We were high one night, and I was feeling. I was like, I trust him. He knows what he's talking about. He's very passionate, and he's very confident right now, and usually that shit scares me. I'm like, well, why are you so happy? Something's going on, something's not right, and then I was like, I'm just gonna choose to let him guide me in this shit coin journey, and we lost a couple thousand.

I lost a lot.

Yeah.

I lost like 6,000, I think.

But it was a lesson learned, and it was something that, in a way, something I always feared, because I'm very conservative with the money I have. I don't like to gamble. I don't like to play the stock market. So I got in at 14,000 when Bitcoin was at 14,000. I bought a couple thousand, nothing crazy. And now it's at 34, and I'm seeing a nice little game, but I'm still very conservative. I'm still like, all right, I wanna cash out, I cash out 1,200 the other day just to cover some bills, and it was a nice feeling.

'Cause it went back up.

'Cause it went back up, and now I recover that money, yeah.

So I, and you see me--

Spacing around.

Talking about this, 'cause we're in the vortex. I'm tweeting it out. It's just the crypto vortex has taken over for a little bit, which I think is a really cool energy. It's something you have to be aware of and not let dominate your life in a negative way, but you can kind of enjoy it. It's like an indulgence. And the reason I enjoy it so much is it's like a, like a eclipse period, like when there's an eclipse and you get this amazing visual of like the moon going in front of the sun. It's a rare thing. It's relatively predictable. You know it's gonna happen. And it's a reflection of when you believe like you did that night in this compound or scam, which was like the craziest APY.

Just like--

It was too good to reach out. All the signs were there.

Yeah, all the signs were there.

Yeah.

And we were up and we could have pulled out. And I kept saying like, you know, we're up. We could do it.

We were only up 100 bucks at the time.

Yeah, I mean, you know, we were up. And then when this comes around though, and we're in these special moments where if you don't just recklessly throw your money around, that put moment also comes too. You can actually make a good amount and cash out quickly and safely and not have it be some kind of like dominant like, oh my God, like what the fuck am I doing? I'm gonna lose all my money type of vibe, which is a scary thing whenever you're putting your money into anything, which gets me to the root issue of why I think I love crypto so much is if anything, it exposes very quickly your core relationship with money, which is a reflection of abundance, which is a potential reflection of like a lack mentality.

It exposes that like immediately and I find that to be functionally important. And as you can tell from me like debating and pacing and trying to figure out where to put my money, potentially lucrative and fun way to make money.

Well, the potential part is where I become a skeptic because I have friends who bought at their early stages in 2013 and are claiming to be millionaires, but until you actually cash out, that's when I was able to get 1200 into my bank account. I was like, all right, that's a nice feeling. So when you're sitting there--

But you see, but you see the poor, you do see transactions going around.

I see you moving things around into lower shit coins as you call them. And it's risky and that's where I start to get a little bit like, I'm happy just sitting on it for a while.

Which is totally reasonable.

And I'm watching it gain a lot at the moment and it's tempting to move things around, but it's so unpredictable and it's very scary when you start seeing it drop and you're like, oh my God. Especially when you've already lost and taken a hit and got the rug pulled.

I mean, you're preaching to the choir. I mean, I think there's a couple of qualities I think with crypto that are critically important. One is resiliency, which you have demonstrated probably to yourself in a pretty cool way. You do now actually get to pull money out and have it go back up and put in a little and have it your returns. And whether that lasts infinitely in specifically Bitcoin, probably not. We may be looking at a pretty steady year of that, which would be cool, but that's not how most money works. However, in the scene, this decentralized finance stuff where people park their stuff, their 20,000, 30,000 and either a stablecoin or Bitcoin or something like that, the interest they're earning is enough.

It's like this unemployment stuff for a lot of people. It's like $500 a week, $600 a week, which in a lot of places around the world, not just in this country, it's pretty good. You might just be needing a side hustle or something like that to really live the way you wanna live. I view that also as a fundamental shift that seems natural for people at this point. We've had this kind of break of a lot of people just going to wage jobs over and over repetitively or people even in the arts and entertainment who depended on live venues and things like that. It doesn't exist anymore. So we're gonna have to shift some way into that.

Now everything's blue. Everything's blue, everyone's happy, right? Georgia, right?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Just glanced at that stuff.

I'm not a big political guy, I will admit.

You're listening to it. How do you think I know about it?

I was listening to it because, yeah, everyone was talking about it and happy to see that it went blue, but in the end, does anything fucking change? You know, it just goes in cycles. It's things change a little bit and then they go back and it's exhausting. I have a lot of--

The question is, is economic policy?

Yeah.

Everyone wanted $2000.

I want the $2000, yeah.

Okay.

I want my gay friends to have people, right? I want my minority friends. I want all of that, of course. But, you know, it's exhausting.

We need--

Yeah, we want weed to be, even though I don't smoke. Maybe mushrooms.

Mushrooms are already legal in a lot of places, DC now. Yeah, man, I think they're about to, I mean, to bring it to the crypto stuff, they're about to unleash fucking public funds on people. Like, the coffers will be wide open.

The who?

The coffers, the money coffers, the proverbial treasure chest of money that they keep printing is gonna be open to everyone.

Well, I look forward to that and I hope to gain a lot of--

Just put it in crypto. That's what I'm saying.

I have it and I'm happy to sit on it for a bit and watch it every morning. I check my Coinbase. It's the first thing instead of checking Instagram.

Do you think, wow. See, that's what I'm saying. It exposes your relationship to money, which for a lot of people is a form of security.

Especially now, when everyone's, most people are struggling and we need the money. So when you look and you see that you're making right in front of your face, you've seen you've earned 500, even 500 bucks, you're like, wow, this is great. I'm excited. So, yeah, it's a positive thing right now. Of course, me being a fucking cynical like, playing devil's advocate here is like, this is inevitably going to drop a lot. But you made a good point, when it does drop, it's not gonna go, I mean, it'll be very surprising if it goes past the, it goes below 14, where I bought it.

At this point, it would be pretty surprising. Like it would be, you had a pretty good entry. You'll be looking back, which is what I've been not saying. And then this brought something else right before we started recording, where I was saying like, you know, a lot of my enthusiasm and confidence, not all of it, that's proven by compound or experiment, but a lot of it is driven by like actually looking and thinking and observing before just like wildly spouting my opinion. Not all the time. I would definitely throw that caveat in. But like with these types of things, once you get past that like no one's really trying to like con you, like there's no real big like scam here, then you have to deal with like, is this person credible?

At that point, if you just look into it for like literally half an hour or an hour, just like read about what is this shit, you're usually can deduce whether it's something that like you can invest in like you are, or whether like it's just like, I don't think this is something I want.

One of the worst feelings in the world is getting scammed.

It was bad.

I fucking hate it. It happened to me in Cuba, which is why I consider Cuba to be one of the worst places I've ever been.

You just wrote off an entire.

100%. But it's my own fault because I'm a fucking idiot and I should have been smarter. And I thought, oh, I'm a seasoned born and bred in New York and I can figure out when someone's trying to scam me. And sure enough, we went down there, me and a friend and we got scammed so many times we got robbed and we got scammed on fake Cuban cigars.

Wow.

It was embarrassing. I was like, this is you're an idiot.

It happens though.

You're all learning lessons. If you probably won't get scammed like that again.

It depends. But then I also, I took a step back and I was like, which I consider to be very progressive and open-minded of me.

Nice.

I was like, why are these people in this position that they have to scam tourists? And they have to rip off tourists because they are in a, you know, their conditions are absolute shit down there. And they're making, we spoke to a couple of people, they were making, I think they said $30 a month. And that is obviously...

So it's just a part of their economy.

So at some point, the government opens up to tourism. We're speaking about Cuba now. And you got all these fucking rich Americans coming in and they're like, let's get them. Let's like scam them. This is perfect. They're ignorant and naive and they're just gonna come in here and we're gonna make some money off of them. And it sucks. You should be smarter when you're going down there in places like this or third world countries. But it happens and they're in this position. And so at that point, you're trying to do anything you can to just...

I mean, the zoomed out view is like, yeah, it's all perfect. It's all like, you know, there's no judgment to be looked around. The more granular view, I guess is that, yeah, the government's fucked up. They're not providing for them. They're just gonna have to get that somehow, some way. Buildings are crumbling.

And if you don't feel bad about it and it doesn't overall affect you negatively.

It did at the time. And then as it kind of...

We got over it.

You get over it. You're like, all right, what did I... I just lost a couple of hundred bucks and that person is gonna eat better tonight.

Yeah.

That's what I told myself to make myself feel better.

That's, well, no, but that's, you know, maybe they bought a gun and killed someone.

Jesus, that's usually my...

We just switched bodies because I was thinking positive and you went dark. No.

It's the mushrooms, I'm sure.

I wanna ask it.

Oh, both of me. That's what it is for me.

So maybe disaster is a great... Wow, making me think...

Positive.

Positive.

And now I'm going dark.

Actually, I took mushrooms. This is another reason why Cuba was a disaster. Let me a word of advice. Do not go to Havana and take mushrooms in the middle of the summer when it's a hundred degrees and you're walking around a third world country and infrastructure is crumbling around you and people are trying to rip you off.

It is...

In hell.

This is what I did. I took mushrooms like, "Oh, hey, this sounds fun." It's gonna be colorful, I thought. I was like, Havana, pink and pastels. Let me take mushrooms. What a fucking nightmare. First of all, I almost died of heat exhaustion. Almost collapsed on the street. I got ripped off and then I...

What are you just walking around with, like, your money out?

Well, like, yeah, I'm from America. I'm white and I have money. So who's got cigars? What are we doing here? (laughing) So I was with my Colombian friend, Natalia, who I thought, okay, she's a fucking tough Colombian. She speaks Spanish. This is easy. We're gonna get through and we're not gonna get ripped off. Oh, what a nightmare. And to kick it off, like fucking insult to injury, I finally stumbled back to my hotel, passed out with the AC blasting, basically down my throat, and woke up with the flu. And so I had flu-like symptoms for the rest of the trip and I was miserable. And that was my Cuba experience.

Cuba, lovely place, colorful.

If you go, just go for like a couple of days and take it easy.

Shit.

Yeah.

Well, Cuba. Now we know. (laughing) Now, Cuba tourism has just dropped off, I'm sure, because of my-

Yeah, yeah. I mean, all I know is they have old cars there.

Yeah, that was well. I was like, oh, let me take a motion and just look at like-

Yeah, old cars and stuff, but it's not that. They have hats, right?

Hats.

The hats?

Oh, Cuban hats, too.

Right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the moral of the story is I'm an idiot. (laughing) I'm sure Cuba is.

Cuba is fine.

Yeah, man. Well, we did switch parts. Yeah, the microdosing of acid is a kind of positive. My general premise is that when people relax, they tend to feel good. Like that is their natural baseline. For a lot of people, it's a relationship with like, how to relax?

It's hard to relax with psychedelics when you're a 43-year-old neurotic kind of, you know, disposition that I have. And someone who's experimented with a lot of drugs over my years, and I felt like my psychedelic drug phase was behind me. Because now, at this point, I have existential concerns, and I'm always getting--

That's what you need 'em.

And that's when I'm like, when I'm 16, 17, and I'm taking acid, it's like, I don't have a fear in the world, and this is great. And then when you get old and you start taking acid and mushrooms, and your mind starts going, breaking things down to the infinite degree, and over-analyzing, and to the point where you're like, "This is exhausting," my brain is like--

Yeah, let it go, that's when you let it go. But that's like the point where your mind basically breaks, and you're just like, "Fuck this," and you just let it go. That's what I think a lot of people are being asked to do. I've been thinking about that fucking annihilation scene.

Wow, I thought about that too. I really wanna watch this fucking movie.

It's just scary for me to watch, but I mean, she showed me that scene, and it's like, if anyone hasn't seen it, it's the end of this movie, Annihilation with Natalie Portman. Alex Garland, who is an incredible director, and has directed Ex Machina, and I also just watched devs that was on--

Yeah, I'm into any of them, but this is really visually and just like-- - Incredible.

I wanna watch Annihilation, but there's some very intense graphic violence in it, and I'm not good with that stuff. So what I usually do is, and here's a little tip for anyone who is in the same boat as I am when it comes to movies, I go to their IMDB page, and there's a parental guide for every movie, and it explains if there's sex, drugs, violence, and gore, and then it tells, I know this is giving away spoilers a lot of the time, but if under the violence of gore, it says a man is cut open with a knife, and his intestines and insides are coming out of his body, then I don't watch the movie.

They say that?

Of course, and that's what happens in Annihilation at one point, and a girl's draw is ripped off from a bear, and I'm like, okay, I don't need to see this, because I don't need these images in my head, 'cause they affect me.

Well, you just created those images in my head.

Well, saying it is different than seeing it, but the movie apparently touches on some incredible-- I mean, he's a genius.

Yeah, he is--

I like that scene a lot.

Yeah, and my friend is in the movie. She plays one of the humanoids.

The one Natalie Portman fights with at the end.

Yes, that's the scene I'm talking about, wow.

It's beautiful, she's a, I want to say classically trained ballerina, does that make sense?

Classicly trained.

Yeah, dancer.

Yeah, ballerina.

Ballerina, yeah, yeah, she's extremely talented, and she's been in, she was in Ex Machina, she was the robot, the AI, the Japanese girl. - That's cool.

And she was also in a maniac, which is a-- - Netflix thing.

Which on the hill, yeah.

Is that, I was, I hadn't seen that, but I was thinking about that too, 'cause some of the trailers are interesting.

Yeah, it was good.

Yeah, it was good, she was great. So big up, Sonoya.

How about this?

She's doing good.

Well, I was thinking about that stuff, 'cause of the mushrooms, and it is a lot of that, like, at least in the scene, she, like, pushes back against. Like, she tries to fight this doppelganger version of herself, and whenever she does, it, like, knocks her out, and it just mimics all of her behavior. And, like, the scene I think about is when it presses her against the wall. - Yes. It's beautiful, and the music, the score, everything.

The moderate thing, yeah.

Oh, my God. Stunning visually, musically, everything works together, and to make it a very powerful scene and movie. And I went back and watched that clip a couple of times.

Yeah, I feel like that's what a lot of people are being faced with right now, in terms of their own fears and anxieties. Related to themselves in the world, like, it's almost becoming kind of, like, an inescapable thing that people need to face. And I think the wrong move, and we touched on this before, is just trying to, is when you externalize it onto other people that they're doing something to you, or virus is doing something to you. It's not that that's not true, objectively, it can be totally true. I mean, everyone goes through things, where you can just watch them going through, it's like, that's bullshit.

Like, that's shitty that that happened. It's not what we're talking about, but if you withdraw the tendency to blame outside forces for how you feel on the inside, and kind of shift it from the inside, when you can, that tends to have, like, an overall positive effect. Whether it's related to money, or relationships, or jobs, or just, like, relaxing. Like, that, that seems to be, for me, the most tried and true thing. One of the uncomfortable truths that I've found is to get to that place consistently, or reside in that place, is you do have to, like, really confront, like, a lot of fears. Like, fucking head, fucking on.

Like, all of them, and that shit, you know, if you can shift your perspective to being kind of fun, and a signal to do something. Is this what you got from that scene?

Yeah. - Yeah.

Yeah, that's how I feel.

I would like more context, obviously, watching the movie would help, but I gathered this was, yes, I would agree. This is, did you see the one that Denise showed us before that, where she, the one girl, kind of--

Yeah, she gets absorbed into the isolation thing. That's, I think-- - Watching a movie through YouTube clips, in reverse, Memento style is kind of, maybe not the best approach, but I, I think we should watch it.

I would watch, I'm not watching the movie, can you mean?

No. - I respect his genius. I don't, it's too scary. I don't like to be-- - Were you scared? I watched, I read the comments of that clip, and people were like, this is one of the scariest things I've ever seen put the film. - No.

I didn't really feel scared. - No, that wasn't scary.

Yeah, I guess, again, I guess when people were watching the movie as a whole, and it came to that point, it may have been much scarier than actually watching it on YouTube with no context whatsoever. You know what I mean? - I see. That makes a lot of sense, too.

But when it reaches this, 'cause it's kind of like the crescendo of the movie, and it reaches this point where people are like, holy shit. So I think that we can close our eyes. So we can hold each other's hand when the scary parts come, and we'll get through it.

All right, I'll watch Annihilation, I guess.

If anyone is out there and has seen this movie, please let us know if you think it's--

Yeah, worth it. Is it gonna be too scary? Because I really like this idea of void, too, which is what that Annihilation thing seemed like there. It's like this radioactive. That's why I kept asking, I was like, is it good? She's like, you're an idiot. I'm like, hey, is it good? Is it bad? But I like this idea that there is this thing that just like absorbs all, right? Like it just absorbs and disintegrates any aspect of individuality. I like it though as a concept that makes me realize that most likely when you do let go in moments of like extreme tension or fear, when you do, everyone has experiences, when they actually let go, that's usually not what happens.

That's usually not a place that you go to. It's usually some semblance of an idea. Usually, it can happen. I mean, plenty of ketamine experiences can prove that. But I mean, again, I, you know, I come to, I still maintain this perspective even after all the DMT stuff, which you were here for. It's what the John and Gats about it yesterday.

Well, you've spoken about it on the podcast, I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right afterwards. I was this close to being like, yeah, there's these entities. They're totally sucking.

I will say as someone who was sitting in the room, there was a moment where I was like, all right, we've lost them.

We've lost them, fuck.

And there was a moment where I was like, should I fear from my own safety?

Oh, great, that's when you know.

Even if it was just like a millisecond, it crossed my mind. I was like, he's no idea where he is right now. And whoever is in this room is a threat to him. And I'm like, I'm like, maybe I sleep somewhere else. I could see myself waking up and you just standing over my bed, like you're a vampire.

Oh my God, yeah.

It was, but he came out of it. And it's the fear that everyone has with a powerful psychedelic drug like this where it's like, oh, shit, he ain't coming. I'm not coming back. - Gone forever.

I said, I was telling them yesterday on their little afterglow show for their Patreon thing, you know, that's afterwards, I was like, I could see how this would really spin someone off forever. Like that's one of those things that like if I have experiences going like very far out for extended periods of time, which does give you like calibration to like, what is reality? What is it not? How does it work? Wow.

But it doesn't always stick with you for, you know, years on end. And this is something that I think is an experience that could easily, not just you, but in general, people that do DMT experience something that they're like, I'll never forget this. I've had many cayholes where I've died and I've gone over into whatever the unknown and become just a source, a light source or something. And it's all terrifying and fascinating in the moment when it's happening and then afterwards for a day after, but then gradually, you know, it's not something that, I remember some of them, but it's not something that sticks with me.

What do you, you had that experience? What do you think that is? What is that?

I've kind of just, in a way, maybe it's, I don't know, in a way, I've kind of just used it as, like, this is what happens when you die.

Just as like an after all?

Just like my body is, I'm just stripped of my body, I've become this ball of energy and I'm moving on into--

So like soul, like the great beyond.

I guess a soul, I guess the only--

No, like the movie, soul, the great beyond.

Oh, like the movie, yes.

The great beyond.

Wow, what a movie, beautiful, go watch soul.

That was great, that is great. And yeah, I think, I mean, it's not a very, I'm not breaking any ground here with this theory, but, you know, I think you move on, obviously, and--

You think you lose your identity.

I think you lose your identity. The only difference between the K-hole and what I think actually happens in death is that, in my K-hole, I was, I mean, I could be wrong, but I was still conscious of like, oh, all of my friends and family are no longer a part of this life that I'm in right now or whatever, realm I'm in, and now I have to move on from that. And I was consciously still as confused as I was, I was like, all right, you must forget about all of that. And now you're in a new realm and you're moving into this new form of life quote unquote. My DMT experience was this. Was that someone at the door?

No, I didn't hear anything.

No. - No, I can't.

Honestly.

My experience also was very much kind of like that. It was like, you're coming back, they're all still here. This is what it is.

This was DMT?

DMT was like this, and this has happened to me on ketamine a few times too, like high doses. And I think what we're perceiving in that moment is probably a more accurate reflection of what we as beings are. And we just kind of like frame rate ourselves into these bodies over extended periods of times. And what I also know about ketamine is like it distorts time in such a way that you can kind of like travel in the future or travel in the past. Like time doesn't even exist in that way sometimes. And that does give us, gives us glimpses, I think, into potential future scenarios or what we're accurately perceiving.

I think it gave me a comfort in a way of knowing that whatever happens after this, there'll be not consciousness, but we'll just continue to move on. Because there was a point where I just accepted it in the cable where I was like, okay, it's scary and I'm terrified, but okay, everything's good. It's okay. There's no pain, there's no fear. And yeah, maybe that's what happened.

Man, that's kind of what I felt on this DMT shit and I was freaking out about.

Yeah, this is like, I hate to like, this is cliche drug talk, you know what I mean? Like this is what I feel like we all, at some point, when you experiment enough with drugs, you're all gonna have a near-death experience or at least open your mind up to what happens when you die. I think this is what drugs do.

Well, it's not what happens. I think a lot of people can conceive and think about those things. It's what is happening in those moments that creates what we would call hallucinations or not aspects of this reality. But for me, also just like, as being with him without a body, like, that shit's real, something's going on there.

Something's going on. I really believe that obviously our brain is the most powerful computer that we know of and I think this opens up, these drugs open up another realm and access to other dimensions that I think we obviously don't have access to when we're sitting here sober, talking.

Or maybe we just can't perceive.

We can't perceive them, yes.

And this is why it's tempting to get lost in the subconscious sometimes and you start going in.

You said that after the thing, you were worried.

I was worried about that.

What's my interesting is, I actually did get, that's what I would describe my intense period of synchronicity as over like a three month period of time. It was, it was getting lost in what I would call as the collective unconscious, the collective subconscious.

It is dangerous. Also, one of the real perils of it is, you can start to pull things out from there, project them out into the world and have them actually really be there for you and create situations that seem synchronous, magical, and they are because that's what you're doing.

Yeah, the subconscious realm has a lot of good stuff but I think you have to build like a pretty stable bridge if it's something you wanna be engaging with regularly because it's very powerful. It's like what I would call the feminine principle of like the masculine, feminine narrative, right? Objectivity being masculine, subjectivity being feminine in the sense that we have logic and reason as kind of like a directed type of consciousness and intuition and kind of feelings being more and feminine receiving and birthing type process. So that's typically how I conceive it as. Building that connection between your objective, kind of this is what I want, this is how I do it and what I feel like I'm capable of doing, that's how you build the bridge there.

That's how I think you cross that terrain without getting lost. I say this is someone who totally got lost in the woods before, remember what that felt like and I was like, oh shit. So I also know some of the signs but yeah, I mean you see people, it's a dark side of psychedelics. To me, I wouldn't say it's just a dark side of consciousness. Anyone can fall into that. There could be an external event has nothing to do with taking drugs that shifts your entire perspective on everything, it's just consciousness. Our ability to be aware of anything at any time is what creates it, so yeah, man.

What a fucking, what a trip. Jesus Christ. What else you got going on?

What else do I have going on? Well, I am focusing on trying to release this podcast like we spoke about.

It's out.

And it's out but I'm trying to, hopefully my one thing is I start a lot of projects and then I inevitably just fade out and get bored and have to move on to something else so I'm hoping to maintain interest and excitement with this and I think having a partner will help.

It's super helpful.

You've seen that with the music stuff too.

The music is a perfect example of when I'm producing with you and I think a lot of producers deal with the problem of never finishing something and moving on and at some point you're exhausted from hearing the same sounds and you're moving.

Yeah.

We need to start something new.

And I think that is a natural part of production that I think the more I've learned or the more time I've spent doing it is like you just, you do what you feel like you're supposed to do because I guarantee when you rehear something that like you really wanted to finish in the first place, you'll still wanna finish it. Like that's what I try to do every like three or four months is go back and listen to what I was making, you know?

I think the tough part and this is something that I would say relates to anything in the creative industry whether it's making music or doing podcasts, it's, I should actually cherish this moment in the beginning where there's no pressure and no expectations because I am the worst and I know a lot of people out there suffer from the same stuff when you're a producer say you're making music and you're making music in the beginning it's fun and you're just doing it because you're having fun and there's passion and then it reaches a point where people, it becomes successful at any point and people are listening to your music, listening to your podcast and now expectations are building and that's when for me I'm like, all right, it's time to get out of here.

I can't and it's something I gotta work on because as soon as I start seeing people saying this sucks or it hurts it stings, it stings as much as you can't let that get 100% I admit it.

I mean, my reaction, 'cause like I, like when I get like one star reviews, like no, please don't give me that. They're like, you know, this guy sucks, just objectively. - Do you get that?

No, the funniest review to me is a two star.

Okay. - Just, you obviously hate the show. What are you holding out hope that you're gonna keep listening to a two star show? It's like a crazy-- - Or do you think they just listen once?

But why would you just give two stars? Where is that, what is, you either like it or you don't?

Two out of five, is it? - Yeah, it's insane.

What did he say?

I don't know, you wanna pull it up? Let's pull off with the two stars.

Let's pull up all the bad reviews that we've gotten as me as a DJ and--

What I think honestly though with this stuff is it's like at a certain point, like you saw someone who was very upset. One person, seven months after they got a reading from me.

Oh yeah, you told me.

And I immediately was like, here's your money. Like I have to, I'm sorry, you feel this way like that's nuts. But like I can't take on other people's impressions of me at this point, not because like I'm some like, oh I got a good mindset. It's just because like I literally just don't have the mental capacity to buy into other people's impressions of who I am at this, like I have too much shit. That's how I feel, right? You know what I mean?

That's great.

I think it criticizes me.

Yeah.

I'll look at it like, hey, if it resonates and I'm like, oh shit, they're kind of right, then that's something I'll be aware of, if it's just like, I--

So just don't handle expectations well. I always go in now, I've learned to go in to everything with the lowest expectations because, you know, if it turns out great, then wow, look at this. I'm way beyond what I expected. And now if it's shit, oh yeah, all right, I didn't expect this to be good. I know that's probably a terrible way to go about life.

I don't think it is, I think it's totally valid. I think--

You learn after being rejected enough times and dealing with, you know, disappointment that you shouldn't go into everything all gung-ho and like, this is gonna change the world.

I have a personality trait that I recognize potentially as like a hindrance at times where I get very enthusiastic about a lot of different things. This is particularly weird, it's had when I'm hiring people. Like I'm like, wow, this person's amazing. They're gonna do such a good job. And they do for a little bit, but then like, what I imagined maybe wasn't exactly what I thought, you know, what they were capable of delivering.

I think that's judgment of character, isn't it?

I don't know what it is. I think it's also like, it could be a control thing on my part. There's any number of factors where like, my over-reliance on people or perceived under-reliance on my, you know, or your belief in the greater good of people.

Yeah, but none of those things were like horrible errors. Like the biggest errors I would say I've made are like, you know, like getting scammed in crypto. It's just like a fundamental, like that was a mistake. Like it's a binary thing. It's not like, well, yeah, good.

But I will give you a pass on that. And because you were in a very precarious moment. And I think you were, I think if you weren't in that, that week of just emotional fucking rec, you would have seen that this maybe wasn't a great idea. 'Cause all the signs were there.

And that was a big wobble.

I see, I've come to appreciate those wobble moments. And I think that's where like what you do then is like really what determines kind of the course of like your life. Do you know what I mean? Like when you have those moments where it's like, what the fuck is going, every, literally everything was going wrong. I was losing money, I had no partner office. It was just like literally like, everything was just crumbling down. Objectively whether this was actually gonna sustain or not wasn't, didn't matter, it felt like it was. So I was just like, fuck, what do I do here? And I wanted to feel like a victim.

I wanted to feel like, woe is me. And I did.

Yeah, that's actually a great, you know what I mean?

Enjoy going there sometimes.

Right.

Playing that sad music.

Yes.

And really sad and down until you hit rock bottom and then you'd have to fucking climb back up.

Yes.

Like Batman in a.

Exactly.

Yes.

The Dark Knight.

The Dark Knight.

Exactly out of the cave.

I love getting there. And there's actually been points where shit has gone so bad. This happened over the summer where it was just a domino effect of shit that at one point I just started giggling.

Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Laughing. I was like, all right, this is how the University, this is what we're gonna be doing right now. All right, let's keep it coming. Yeah. What else have we got? And you have to just laugh because you're like, this is so sad.

Exactly. So sad, it's so, I mean, and I've seen this happen in my own life in other people's lives. Like the thing that really allows people to either bounce back from that or move out of that kind of state and like dwell there for a very long time is their ability to kind of laugh at it. Or take it lightly. Just lightly. And you know, laugh at just like not put so much seriousness into your situation and circumstances 'cause you, most people will drill themselves down until they have to. They're like, this is absurd. Like this is actually, this makes no sense. Yeah, I love that aspect of reality.

I just, I--

It's necessary, I think, obviously, without turning too cliche. It's like you don't, life, let's come on. If you don't know by now that life is fucking peaks and valleys, then I don't know what to tell you. Like figure it out. There's gonna be some dark moments, some tragedy, and there's gonna be some beautiful, like incredible moments where you just couldn't be happier. So you just--

That's what you signed up for.

Have to navigate through all of it. The good and the bad. I mean, wow, really super profound right now, but.

Good and bad.

You got a boat. What are you gonna do?

Yeah, yeah, no, just come on.

No, I--

When shit gets down, it's easy to, you know, it's easy to get lost in it, but it's gonna come back.

It's a perspective thing, though, that I think comes with experience. And I use the word, but it is faith. It is like confidence and like certainty that this is how your reality works. Like this is how, if you believe the difference of someone like on the street who just kept spiraling, also there's just to point out, there's plenty of people on the street. Like I met a fair number of street people when I was fucking whacked out on drugs in Boston. And some of them are actually pretty happy. Their lives aren't as like destitute and crazy as you think. They just truly live like another life and like had long conversations about like, why are they doing this?

Like what are they, and like, they were saying people. But I'm saying like the difference between someone who spirals downward and ends up in like Skid Row, because not because they want to, or they feel like they don't want to. And someone who hits really shitty situation and turns around isn't a measure of their external circumstances. Only, it is like an internal belief that this is what's appropriate for them. That is what I think is like, and that's a tough pill to swallow. If you look around and like your life isn't what you want it to be, 'cause you're like fuck, no, of course it's like I want it to be something else.

But like what you experience is quite literally what you believe to be true on like a fundamental level. That's the subjective unconscious. Like that's what's driving us. - It's a combination. A nice recipe of all of that. Yeah, and then external, internal. (laughing) External, internal. Yeah, I think it has a lot to do with, you know, your situation and how you approach it and how you deal with it. And if you're strong enough to be like, all right, I don't belong at the bottom. I need to fight through every barrier that is in front of me. And some people, society, unfortunately, is a bitch. And sometimes you can't get out of it for, you know, whatever reasons.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know how much I believe in that anymore, which is a very tough stance to take as a white privileged straight man. Like, and that's why I always point this out. And I try to like honor this privilege as much as possible by speaking about this shit and talking to my friends who are not in the same position as I am, I do fundamentally believe that what you believe about yourself, regardless of odd stacked against you, conditional barriers, systemic injustices even, I do believe what you truly are able to kind of believe and feel for yourself is true. Well, however you need to get there, whatever that is for you, whatever path that looks like, that's religion, spirituality, magic, music, whatever it is, once you get in touch with that kind of generative power, it's impossible for me to sit here and say that, well, no, that's not true for everyone.

Like that, I've seen this time and time again, not only in my own life, but in the lives of a lot of people, it's one of my privileges of having this podcast and talking about this shit, is like, get barraged and deluged with like emails of people and be like, what the fucking fuck? Like this, you don't understand how insane this is that this thing happened to me. What the fuck? And I'm like, you did it, like you did it yourself. You for a split second accepted that this crazy, magical and probable thing was actually possible for you on a deep level and then it happened. That's how it always works for everyone.

So that's why I always have to say that like, there's no conditional barrier for kind of moving yourself first internally to a place and then external reality is literally like compelled to give you that thing. Like that's actually how it works. And I think everyone kind of knows this on a deep level. It's why we have things like deja vu and synchronicities and pre-cog dreams and all of these things.

You should watch devs.

Really?

Yeah.

This guy's movies is just gonna--

Yeah, you should watch devs because it talks about free will and it talks about what's the theory of--

Singularity?

No, no, no, no, no, anyways, it's in relation to free will and--

Shredinger's cat? Destiny?

Not Destiny, what the fuck? In people, I'm sure who have watched devs are screaming the word right now.

A lot of people I know have mentioned it. Anyways, it talks about whether or not we are predestined to--

Here's the thing. Or if everything is already living out in another, the multiverse and stuff like this. So it's a fascinating theory.

Here's the thing, this isn't something that's like a theory or a concept, it's testable. Like you can actually test the principle of like either summoning a future or changing the past, right? That's to me, the only thing that ever kind of like stuck with me in this world is the ability to actually test something. It's about as empirical as you can get in terms of consciousness stuff. Does it work for me? Do these things actually have an impact? Can I actually use them to practically benefit my life? That to me is where the power is with this stuff because if you just fuck around with any of these things, any of these consciousness kind of mood shifting, belief changing, techniques or whatever you wanna call them, they always work 'cause they're always working 'cause this is literally just like, it's something that's actively going on right now.

So if you just take kind of the controller into your hand and use that accordingly, I think you'll find that this is like, we forget, we play hide and seek with this. That's kind of the game we play here. We forget that we actually have this power to kind of actually like break through of what we believe possible. That's our like expansive awareness of what we think reality or God or source or we are as people. That's like, as far as I can tell, that seems to be the game that we play here. It's basically an elaborate hide and seek.

Yeah, there's a game.

It's a game of hide and seek too. It's like you're God, you're everything, and maybe are you, I'm not sure. Are you really? Is that crazy? Is that weird? Are you gonna freak yourself out without what? Like that's literally what I think most people go through until they're like, okay, let's accept I am God, not in a weird way. I'm not gonna freak people out. Most people tend to go that way at first. Myself included. Let's recognize everyone else is also God. It is also reality. It's also whatever you wanna call it. What are the rules of this game? How do I play this game? What seems to be the act of generative force?

What seems to be the kind of best way to navigate this? I find just kind of allowing our like hearts desire as gay and cheesy as this can sound. Like just allow your heart to go where you want it to go. Follow that. Imagine a scenario that implies that's true. Accept it. Do it as many times as it takes for you to accept that. And then see what happens. That's literally the whole game. I'm pretty sure.

It's so easy.

But it is. If you just...

The problem is that a lot of people don't know where they want their heart to go.

I don't, I've spoken to so many people who pitched that out me at readings at this point. Granted, it's not the majority of them. A majority of people feel that they know what they want, which it also can be just kind of like a red herring. But everyone does kind of know what they want. They may misconstrue that and pin it to a symbol or a situation or a relationship or some aspect in their external reality, which is totally cool. But once you know what it is, if you can pull away from those projections and accept it yourself and that feeling, you literally get all of that shit. And like, you don't know how it's going to come.

It could come in a completely different way than you expected.

Yeah, I think that comes with time and experience. I know when I was younger, I was like, when you make a wish and you wish for something like this. And now at this point, now at this point in my life--

You're down to it.

All I ask for is inner peace and acceptance and love and happiness. That's a lot to ask for.

That's great, no, it's not a lot to ask for.

And I've stopped caring about the external like, "Oh, I hope to have money. "I hope to have security. "I just want to be happy and peaceful inside." Really, and it sounds really cheesy, but that's something that takes a life of trying to figure out and learn and obtain.

Once you have a glimpse of what being happy, peaceful, any of those states are, once you have a glimpse or any experience of what that's like, if you can hold on to that in your consciousness and accept that it's something that's always present and accessible to you, you should get greater awareness in this world and otherwise internally of that. It's like, you basically, it's like a self-generative, like, farm that you grow peace and happiness in. But if you have the viewpoint that this takes a certain amount of experience or time or whatever, you will play that game. But you also have enough experiences, I'm sure, just from ketamine alone, where time shouldn't be this constrictive buying--

Sure, let me say time, but experience. And I guess that goes hand-in-hand with time. But I think other people, some people figure it out sooner than others.

Belief, though, but you could be someone who figures it out that shit I've accepted, peace and happiness. I mean, just to be clear, from what I can see, this is true. Like, that is actually how I see your life. I mean, I haven't known you that long, but like, this is something you value. You seem to get increasing amounts of it in various ways.

I think, also, it depends. And for me, on my experience, was I had 20 years of living a fantasy world where I was traveling all over the world, making a lot of money, meeting beautiful people that enhanced my life to a point where I was like, I lived in a bubble. I was this, in a way, like, fantasy world that didn't, and we spoke about this last time where I felt like this isn't really the real world. And I have to come down to reality and understand that this is not how most people live. And in a way, feeling guilty about that. And we won't get into that again, but basically what I'm saying is that shifted me to believe now at this point, like, okay, you had all of that materialistic bullshit and you had this life, and it was great.

But were you really happy at all during all of it? So now the goal is to, yeah, find some peace. And now I'm up here and away from the city and the craziness. And I go for walks around the neighborhood by myself. And I'm just happy to be in nature. And I feel peaceful and I feel much calmer. I don't have any anxiety up here. I will say there is a weird kind of San Junipero effect from the "Black Mirror" episode where it's like this utopian world up here. There's something about it when I moved up here. I had a lot of other things going on in my life that weren't super harmonious, but like, the environment itself is really.

To me, that's always a reflection of like how people are feeling internal.

Well, I think I told you, I was trying to figure out what is it about this place that brings me to tears almost. This nostalgic feeling. And I think I figured out that just the architecture of some of the old classic American houses and it brings you back into this time capsule of a period where, for me, when I was a child and when, personally, I was truly happy in this world of being, I had a good childhood and I know a lot of people haven't had like a great experience as a child, but for me, personally, this was a period of my life where I was truly happy and I remember living just like, I don't know, having a great childhood.

And so up here, in a way, brings me back to that moment, brings me back to a childhood kind of state of mind and I feel at peace with that.

I think that's the optimal way to kind of prime yourself for all this other stuff too. It's like, when you're talking about making a wish as a kid, I know an inordinate amount of people who had wishes and dreams for themselves as children that at one point, they inevitably end up playing out at some point. It's like a really weird eerie.

Yeah, it happens.

It happens for a lot of people and even if it's not, like I said, in this specific way, just like a fantasy of doing something, it happens sometimes.

Yeah. - I'm just saying. I wonder why.

This has been fun. Do we have anything else to talk about? I mean...

No, I mean, I'm sure we can go on. I mean, I'm gonna be a whore and plug a couple of things I'm doing.

I'll bleep this out.

Why?

That's just the whore part of what I'm about to plug.

I'll just edit it out, don't worry.

Yeah. So I have a radio show on OpenLab radio that you should check out, openlab.fm and that's every first Monday of the month called Chaotic Neutral. It's always like a poppery of music and sounds. So it's not really one genre. And then we have this unwell podcast that just launched which I'm happy to and nervous to expose to the world.

I love it. A potpourri. - Unwell, yes.

A potpourri, yes.

I love it. Awesome, man. I know we did it recently, but what's your favorite color?

It's usually as much as I wanted to say purple. It's green.

I don't know.

I don't know why I want to say purple because it's green.

I don't know how many. What's your favorite number?

Six.

Not as complicated as the colors. What's your favorite animal?

Oh, this is easy. We did this the other night with, what'd you call it?

Oh no, that game was nuts.

It's great. It was funny. I will say nothing brings me more joy and happiness than when I see a dog. And this is like from, for me, I don't know why I don't have a dog. I need one in my life. Every time I see one, I'm happy. And, but other than that, I would say octopus.

Octopus, did you see my octopus teacher?

I didn't.

Family, this guy wants to have sex with an octopus.

Yeah, I mean, you know, who does? I don't want to point this to eight arms, so.

Practical tip that's helped you in your life that you could share with people, isn't it?

Practical tip is always, I mean, something that I wasn't always true to, but just stop caring about what other people think.

Says the person who, when you get a negative comment.

It just spirals. This is why I preference with, guess what? I haven't really abided to this.

I should say a practical tip that has actually helped you.

It has helped me sometimes.

Okay, you're just saying, the emphasis is the more you can do that, the better.

Especially now where we live in an age where every idiot has a fucking opinion and they're on social media and they just want to rip us.

What, yeah, exactly, it has a podcast. And so, stop caring, really stop caring about what other people think. And that's really easy to say, but you know. It's kind of strangely easy to do until it's not. Like, that's all I'll say. Like, it is actually, there's plenty of people you don't give a shit about their opinion. Not in like a derogatory, like you don't care why, it's just like, you just don't have time. Like, there's someone down the block.

You don't really, you know?

I think I'm a little detached because my whole world has been mainly based around, and my profession for so many years is based around what other people think of me as a performer and an artist and whatever. And I'm always in these like, you know, now a podcast where people are listening. So, I am in a position where, and you as well, where you're putting content out there for people to judge. And so, it's not easy for, I mean, it's, I think it's natural to want to please people. We're in a profession where we're trying to make people happy and dance or inform people or whatever. And so, I think majority of the world, I don't know.

This is where I said, I don't live in a reality of the rest of the world where, what's the average person are they consumed by other people's opinions?

I mean, this is where I think I probably have just a little bit easier time than some people. Even though I'm doing it in the moment of like, I don't create versions of average people, or even when there's someone in my life, like I control that inner projection of what I believe to be true. I have so past trying to figure out what like someone else specifically wants to try to like either balance my identity or conform or alter. Like I just don't, I can't do it anymore. And I think when you operate from that, that's A, it's a very attractive force, obviously. People like people who are not constrained by that, B, just speaking from direct experience, it's awesome.

You don't have to worry about all the shit you used to worry about. And I say this as someone who like 10, 15, 20 years ago, I had social anxiety, you know, like in a, in a, there are instances where I'll still have it. We'll have like not wanting to talk to people. But I've realized it's just an inner kind of self doubt or dissonance with what I perceive to be people's impressions of me.

Yes.

Once I'm just like, I don't even have a fuck. Like this is what I care about. Like this is why a lot of people like alcohol 'cause it lowers those inhibitions. So they feel like when you start being the real them comes with these other things attached to it energetically. But you really like, it is a way of being that everyone is familiar with. That's why I think a lot of people have these nostalgic ideas being a child. 'Cause you don't think about when you're doing something goofy and weird. This is the half the reason I love TikTok so much.

100%.

Just goofy and weird shit. I'm like, yeah, like just, I don't know.

Without fear of judgment and ridicule and I mean, granted when you were a child, kids are fucking mean. So I was picked on and I'm sure a lot of people were.

Yeah, of course.

But yeah, I think that's something to take into consideration our profession and what we've been doing for the last couple of years, which is really putting out content for people to judge and feel connected to or not. And there's always gonna be people who feel the opposite, that they're not into it and what you're doing is shit. And now more than ever, people have a way to vocalize that. So it's tough. So anyone who's in this profession or in a similar situation.

Everyone is at the end of the day, 'cause it's how you engage with the world. I think one of the first things--

Exactly. If you're posting a photo on Instagram, you don't have to be an artist or someone--

There's nothing, there's no barrier there.

Exactly.

It's a daily kind of persona expression. Anyway, well, this has been awesome.

Thanks for having me.

Unwell is the podcast.

Unwell is the podcast. You can find it.

There'll be links.

I gotta send you to TikTok where this guy is talking to himself about what people talk about on podcast. I'm getting everyone sending TikToks, yeah. So he's basically how people talk for 20 minutes about absolutely nothing. And the guy is just going on about it. It's hilarious also to you.

I'm talking the best.

All right. Thanks. (upbeat music) ♪ I tell the world ♪ ♪ You are in shame ♪ ♪ I tell the world ♪ ♪ You'll sing the change now ♪ ♪ I tell the world ♪ ♪ What's wrong with your heart ♪ ♪ At name ♪ ♪ I tell the world ♪ ♪ You'll sing the change now ♪ ♪ I tell the world ♪ ♪ What's wrong with your heart ♪ ♪ At name ♪ ♪ I tell the world ♪ ♪ You'll sing the change now ♪ ♪ What's wrong with your heart ♪ ♪ I tell the world ♪ ♪ What's wrong with your heart ♪ ♪ At name ♪ ♪ I tell the world ♪ ♪ You'll sing the change now ♪ (upbeat music)

I hoped you enjoyed that episode. Nah, I don't really care. I'm just kidding. It was good. Listening to this point, I really hope you enjoyed it because if you didn't, that would just be tragic. Why would you waste your time doing that? If you drift it off to sleep because of the soothing sound of our voices, just know that you're fucking awesome. You're gonna do great. You're killing it. That's it for this episode. We'll have a regular one. If you want bonus episodes, other things, fun stuff, go check out the Patreon. That's where we do things like that. Until then, happy imagining. Bye-bye. This savings are here.

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