Art and the Apocalypse: How Creativity Can Save Us

Summary

The conversation explores the role of art in the apocalypse and how it can be used for human connection, resourcefulness, and social change. It emphasizes the importance of embracing creativity and art in a world that often stifles it. The value of diversity and individual expression is highlighted, encouraging everyone to tap into their unique contribution. In this conversation, Emily and Benjamin discuss the role of art in the apocalypse and the power of creativity in times of crisis. They explore the concept of the unveiling of truth and the subsequent regeneration that comes from it. They also delve into the creative process and the importance of making the world beautiful and sacred. They emphasize the power of imagination and creation in shaping our reality and taking back our power. They discuss the surrendering of power to those in charge and the need to cultivate skills and be ethical. Finally, they highlight the importance of investing in our immediate surroundings and the human capacity for art and beauty.

Takeaways

-The apocalypse is a time of unveiling truth and the subsequent regeneration that comes from it. -Creativity and art play a crucial role in making the world beautiful and sacred. -Imagination and creation are powerful tools that allow us to shape our reality and take back our power. -It is important to cultivate skills, be ethical, and invest in our immediate surroundings.

 #ArtInTheApocalypse #CreativityCanSaveUs #UnveilingTruthRegeneratingBeauty #MakeTheWorldSacred #PowerOfImagination #SurviveAndThriveWithArt #CreativityDiversityEthics

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Practically Magic 02:24 Background on the Apocalypse 07:14 Art as a Means of Human Connection 17:26 Art as Resourcefulness and Problem Solving 27:20 Art as a Tool for Social Movement and Cultural Shifts 38:20 Embracing Creativity and Art in the Apocalypse 46:56 The Value of Diversity and Creative Expression 50:15 Embracing Your Unique Contribution 51:10 The Apocalypse and the Unveiling of Truth 53:07 The Regeneration from the Wreckage of Truth 54:27 The Descent and Divide in the Creative Process 56:23 The Phases of an Apocalypse 57:49 Exiting High Demand Religions and Cults 58:46 The Power of Imagination and Creation 59:16 Making the World Beautiful and Sacred 01:01:13 The Power of Imagination and Creation 01:02:11 The Power of Imagination and Creation 01:03:17 Taking Back Our Power and Rebuilding 01:04:17 Surrendering Power to Those in Charge 01:05:41 Cultivating Skills and Being Ethical 01:07:07 Investing in Our Immediate Surroundings 01:08:30 Fearlessness in Seeking Truth and Creativity 01:09:27 Art and Beauty in Times of Decline 01:12:20 The Human Capacity for Art and Beauty

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Do you want to unleash your inner powerand heal your past wounds?
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If you answered yes to any of thesequestions, then you need to listen to
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(00:23):
Join me, Courtney Earl, a self -proclaimedwitch, healer and Celtic priestess, and
let me guide you through the dark cauldronof your subconscious and help you emerge
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Practically Magic is more than just apodcast.
It is a journey of self -discovery andempowerment.
Tune in every week and get ready toexperience massive healing, balance and

(00:46):
peace.
for your soul and body.
Listen on Ride the Wave Media.
Hey, it's just Blaine and Bex here withthe best podcast in Utah.
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Subscribe wherever you listen to podcastsand never miss an episode of the best
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(01:09):
The following presentation is a productionof Ride the Wave Media.
and welcome to episode three of Vibing theApocalypse.
If I sound super, super sexy, it's becauseI've been smitten with the apocalypse

(01:33):
cold, and I'm doing my best to nursemyself back to health, but it is day 1
,414 of the apocalypse, so I hope you areall staying well and healthy.
It's a bright, sunny day in January inUtah right now, which is how you know that
we are just knee deep in the apocalypse,because this is not what January is
supposed to be looking like in Utah.

(01:54):
I'm very excited for today's episode.
Today's gonna be my very first guest andI'm very excited for this particular guest
because she is one of my favorite artiststhat I've ever met and she has a podcast
where she talks to creatives about art.
It's called Artifice and the Craft ofMaking Art.
And I think that art and the apocalypseare two very important, they go hand in

(02:16):
hand because we need to be able to, aswe're rebuilding this world, we're gonna
need a lot of artists.
Welcome to Vibing the Apocalypse, myfriend Emily Merrill.
Hello, I am so excited to be here.
Emily, I'm so excited that you're here.
I wanted to jump right into thisconversation.
And the first place that I want to startis I want you to just have a little bit to
just introduce yourself and to talk alittle bit about what your background with

(02:40):
thinking of the apocalypse is.
Like, when you were a kid, did you grow upthinking about the apocalypse?
Were you prepared for the apocalypse inany way?
Just give us your kind of apocalypsehistory.
Yes.
OK, so I grew up.
mainstream LDS.
So thinking about the apocalypse,actually, I think the truth is I didn't
really hear the word apocalypse until Iwas maybe a little bit older.

(03:03):
And there were like a bunch of apocalypsemovies coming out at the same time.
There was Deep Impact, which is like acomet hitting the earth movie.
Elijah Wood, isn't it?
And Armageddon.
Yeah, especially teenage Elijah Wood.
It was a pre Frodo.
Pre Frodo Elijah Wood.
That's
That's some very young Elijah.

(03:25):
That's 12 year old Elijah Wood.
Yes.
So I remember asking my parents about itand them saying, well, that's like, we
talked about the second coming of Jesus.
And I didn't know that there was supposedto be scary shit happening at the same
time.
So I didn't know that until I was maybelike in my early teens.
When you learned that there was going tobe scary shit, how did that impact?

(03:48):
Like, how did you respond to that?
I think, Ben, if I'm being honest, thetruth is that I just thought I was going
to be one of the people that didn't haveany scary shit happen.
Oh, because you were righteous.
Right.
I remember.
Isn't that kind of probably how you alldo?
Well, no.
So that's maybe a little bit different isthat I heard about the scary shit that was

(04:11):
going to be happening.
And I was like, finally somethinginteresting.
Because I just remember the predominantemotional experience of my childhood was
boredom.
I was just bored all the time.
And so the idea of the apocalypse actuallywas quite exciting to me.
This is a true story.
So for me, the first moment that Iremember where I remember thinking, OK,

(04:37):
now we're in the apocalypse, like now it'sbeginning, was 9 -11.
When 9 -11 happens, we wake up the morningof 9 -11, and we hear it on the radios,
and we canceled our
We canceled our, we had a little compoundschool and we canceled compound school and
we went to just a neighbor's house.

(04:58):
I think it was someone's uncle or aunt whowasn't a member of the AUB.
So they had a TV and we went to theirhouse and we just watched 9 -11 on
television all day, which is apparentlywhat everyone else did, which is wild.
It's wild to me that that's what we didand that adults.

(05:19):
let children just watch reruns of peoplejumping out of buildings all day.
All day.
Me too.
Yep.
I was in junior high.
I was in, I think, the seventh grade.
Yep.
I remember that for sure.
Yeah.
And which is just...
of wars.
I remember you.
Wars and rumors of wars.
Yeah.
And just incredibly psychologicallyscarring too.

(05:40):
That's the one thing that will make, thatkind of makes me believe, because as a
former polygamist, I don't, I generally...
run away from conspiracy theories.
If someone has a conspiracy theory, I'mlike, that's probably not true.
That's skeptical, yeah.
I get, I'm pretty skeptical.
My skeptical radar is pretty hard.
Skepticism is But, but the, with 9 -11,the one thing that kind of makes me think

(06:01):
that maybe there was a little bit of aninsight is like, why were, why was
everyone playing it?
Just pumping it into, just on a nervoussystem level for the entire country to
just be so traumatized.
I feel like the adult just,
couldn't turn it off and they were like,well, kids are here.
So they're watching it.
Yeah.

(06:21):
I just like coping.
Like we just there.
What else is there to do?
I think I think because I remember Iremember seeing my parents and seeing like
the adults around me and they were justthey were just locked onto it.
So I think you're you're probably right.
But for me, that experience, what Iremember, I remember that happening.
And I was just like, I was like, finally,some shit's about to go down.

(06:41):
I'm like, finally, all of this crazy.
shit that we've been talking abouthappening is gonna happen so we can start
to do things.
I was scared of that.
I definitely thought there would be somescary, scary times pre -second coming.
Like it would get really bad.
But I guess I didn't really think of thatas the apocalypse as much as just that's
what the world will be.

(07:02):
But hey, I had another thought if it's anokay time to share it, which is maybe an
important part of like kind of mebeginning to think about what I actually
think is happening is when I was in 10thgrade, I...
joined the speech and debate team.
And I was doing policy debate, which isdebating policies.
And every year, America chooses a theme.

(07:25):
And all of the kids and high schoolstudents and college students all over the
country who are in policy debate, debateon the same theme.
And that first year that I was on thespeech and debate team, our topic was
ocean policy.
And so I started learning about climatechange in...
Right.
2003, which was definitely before we werebefore it was popular.

(07:51):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was reading like peer reviewedpapers and learning about the pH changing
in the ocean and just what was happeningwith pollution and would come home and
talk about it with my parents and theywould be like, don't believe everything
you read.
And I'd be like, this is written by peoplewith PhDs.
It is it is wild to me how

(08:13):
Because my parents have a similar, andagain, our parents are on different levels
of cult in Mormonism, but they're both inthere.
They're both very dedicated to their age,and to their individual versions of it.
And my parents felt the same way aboutclimate change when it started to trickle
down into the world that we were livingin, where they were just very much, don't

(08:38):
trust the scientists, don't trust, don'tlisten to these thesis.
I remember them saying things like it was,they love to blame it on the communists,
which I feel like is very 1950s, butthat's the world that they're living in.
But it always blows my mind because if,especially in the Mormon world, right?

(08:58):
Because in the Mormon world, you literallybelieve that this American land, which by
the way, can I, I wanna pause there,because I wanna tell you this, because I
think you'll like it.
I don't like calling,
America America It really actually Wait,turtle something about turtle turtles.
Yeah.

(09:19):
Yes calling America America really bugs mebecause it's this dude Amerigo Vespucci
who just came here and walked around thenwrote his name on it like to me America is
the height of Calling where we're atAmerica is like the height of colonialism
like it it ignores the fact that for tensof

(09:39):
Thousands of years there were people hereand I just yeah so the the natives or not
all the natives because that's like athat's a To say the natives is to ignore
the fact that there were tons of differentSome of the indigenous peoples
specifically the Iroquois who I think arejust rad for everything that I learned
about them They're so cool They would callthis place Turtle Island because if you

(10:03):
look and this is what's weird to me is ifyou look at the North American continent
from way high up
it looks like a turtle.
Like it's got its hands, it's got itsshell, it's got its, and the thing that's
even more interesting is it looks likethat turtle is diving.
Right, it looks like that turtle is goingunderwater.
And that to me is like a great metaphorfor climate change where like ocean levels

(10:29):
are rising and we're going underwater.
And it blew my mind that, because Mormonsbelieve that, and a lot of Americans
believe that,
that this place is like a chosen land andthat God brought them here specifically,
right?
Like there's so much of that in theAmerican mythos.
And it blows my mind that you couldbelieve that God brought you somewhere and

(10:54):
that God gave you this super special landand that you wouldn't have to like take
care of it.
God, you wouldn't have to like keep itclean.
You know, your parents were took like athis is like a communism thing.
And my parents were very much.
Well, this is bleeding heart stuff.
And I remember just thinking, I rememberalways thinking like throughout my

(11:16):
childhood, like, why don't we all want tobe like that?
Isn't that kind of what Jesus taught?
But I think for me, like that kind ofbleeding heart thing is just what I found.
how I found myself in art.
That's definitely like a through line forme personally.

(11:38):
Yeah, I think that there's something, justthat bleeding heart, because to me that
speaks to the soul of compassion.
Yeah.
And I remember that very, it does seemvery, it seems like very Christian in the
best sense of Christianity, right?
I think that if you take the Christianmyth and you really apply it in the way

(12:00):
that,
that Jesus intended, right?
The actual Jesus who came and was like,hey, give all your money.
Right, right.
Then you get that.
And it's sad to me that so many, becausethe Christian myth is such a beautiful
myth and there's so much opportunity forcompassion and care in it.
And I remember that for me, my sort ofsoft and tender heart was a big thing

(12:27):
that.
was what I would actually credit that asthe dominant thing that eventually pushed
me out of Mormonism.
Same.
Is that I...
We're both like that and we're also bothvery curious, which I think that's why
we're artists.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I think that you have to be ableto...
I think that you...
I think that you have to be able toapproach the world with a sense of

(12:51):
compassion, especially today, right?
Especially as the world falls to piecesand everything gets broken.
I think that it's gonna be, there's twodifferent routes that you could go down.
Like route number one is you could go downa righteous route and you could say, look.
This is happening because people werewicked and the wicked people are going to

(13:12):
be punished and the righteous people aregoing to be saved and I'm going to be a
righteous person.
And you could go down that path.
And I think if you go down that path, Ithink that path ends in a really dark
place.
Yeah, that path ends in the apocalypse inevery sense of the word.
Right.
That path ends in like the darkestapocalypse.
Or you can go down this path ofcompassion, which is, look, we are all

(13:36):
equally culpable.
for the world that we live in.
We are all, we all created this worldtogether and we're all going to be, we're
all gonna suffer the consequences of thisworld that we created together.
And so together we can try to find a wayto make the world, to make a world that

(13:59):
takes care of everyone.
Right.
Yep.
I'm so there.
I think like you, I've been there since Iwas a little kid.
in whatever way my worldview would allow.
And as curiosity has brought me to greaterknowledge, that worldview expands to
include quite a bit more.
Yeah, and I think that's why I'm excitedto have this conversation with you.

(14:21):
Let's kind of shift gears and let's talk alittle bit about what you, I wanna get
into art and I wanna get into theapocalypse and I wanna get into what you
think the role of art.
is in this current apocalypse.
Yeah, yeah.
OK, well, I have notes.
I've been thinking about this all week.
And I'll just tell you, so I don't need toread my notes, but I have I was thinking a

(14:43):
lot and I have basically three categoriesof things that I think art can do for us.
OK, apocalypse.
I love this.
One is what you were saying before abouthuman connection and compassion and using
art as like a means toward understandingeach other.
So I'm ready to talk about that at length.
The other is just like,
creativity and art as likeresourcefulness, innovation, problem

(15:06):
solving, which we absolutely need.
And the third, which is maybe like a bitof a combination of the two, is art toward
social movement and cultural shifts andYak Barad cultural like ideology and
movement.
Ooh, I love this.
Oh my God.
I love the way your brain works.

(15:27):
And I'm so, I'm so excited that you didexactly just that.
So I love all three of those categories.
The way that I'd like to invite you toapproach this conversation then is,
because part of what I want to do withthis podcast is I want this podcast to be
a resource for people to start to live andbehave differently in the apocalypse based
on what they learn here.

(15:47):
And I would really, and I know that you'reprobably going to go this way anyway
because you're a teacher and that's theenergy that you bring, but I would really
like to invite you to step into that sortof powerful place of eye art.
That's something that's been in your,you've been in that world for a long time.
You've really paid the price to belegitimate in that area, right?

(16:07):
And to have what you say matter.
And I would love to have you just educateus on how we can use art in the apocalypse
to make the world a better place.
Hell yeah.
Well, may I open with a quote?
Yes, please.
Okay.
So this quote is from Lily Weichaski,who's one of the makers of The Matrix.

(16:28):
And I heard this quote on a documentarycalled Disclosure, it's on Netflix and
it's about trans people in media.
But she says, I love this and I thinkyou're gonna love it too, she says,
there's something that is funny about themagic trick of creating something out of
thin air and then using that thing as thishandhold to pull yourself forward.

(16:52):
Ooh, I love that.
Yeah.
I love that so much.
I love it so much too.
And it really feels like what we're doingas artists, there's many ways that art
functions or doesn't function.
Not all art needs to be functional, ofcourse.
But I think so much art that is made islike this.
It's the artist is creating a thing thatthey themselves or themselves and others

(17:18):
can use to pull them forward.
And I think part of the reason that when Iheard this quote, it rang so true to me is
I have this, I have.
I have a podcast where I interview artistsand I so frequently hear, so shockingly
frequently hear from artists somethingalong the lines of, I didn't really know
what the work was about until I finishedit.

(17:38):
Like they're creating this thing that kindof helps them to like reach their next
kind of stage of evolution.
So from my perspective, like maybe thenext place that I go is like the last big
project that I made.
The Hallowed Wide, which you have seen andheard.
I have seen, yeah, it was lovely.

(18:00):
Thank you.
Yeah, so The Hallowed Wide is, it's amanifesto, it's a philosophy.
I wrote it at the beginning of thepandemic and I was thinking so much and
just feeling like heartbreak about whatwas going on in the world, how much
division there was, how that division wasmanifesting in my family.
I had broken contact with my dad likeright around that same time.

(18:23):
And I wrote this,
piece, this body of work that is like astep by step guide for human connection.
And that's just kind of one example.
These things exist all over our culture.
People writing books, people making filmsthat kind of teach us new ways to
communicate with each other, teach usempathy.

(18:46):
Yeah.
And I love this idea too that as artists,as we're creating those works that...
We don't really need to know the fulljourney.
Going back to the Wachowski quote, likethat it's a handhold to just pull us along
to the next thing.
And especially during apocalyptic times,especially during right now, when we

(19:10):
don't, nobody knows what's going tohappen, right?
We have no idea what the world will looklike a year from now, 10 years from now.
All we know is that it will look radicallydifferent from how it looks right now.
And if we can, as artists, create little,just little things that pull us into the
next and then into the next and then intothe next, that's really all we need is to

(19:34):
find the next, because everything is so,we're surfing right now, right?
Everything is, and all we need to be ableto see is just right around the next
corner and then right around the nextcorner and then right around the next
corner.
And so I love that idea that art canreally be something that helps us do that.
Yeah, yes.
And even just thinking like in these, oneof my favorite ways to think about how art

(19:56):
does this is it's a vehicle for empathy.
Imagining someone else's life, imaginingor a new future, but specifically as we're
talking about human connection, which weabsolutely need to figure out if we're
gonna avoid certain aspects of thisapocalypse that we're headed into.
Having empathy for another person reallyis a creative endeavor.

(20:17):
You're imagining yourself.
in another person's situation andimagining what it would feel like to be
that person.
And that's creative.
And what we're doing as storytellers, aswriters, as actors, is teaching people to
see another perspective.
When someone creates a cultural work,something really iconic, I know there's

(20:40):
different ways of thinking about this, butone thing I think about is the help.
This movie, The Help, which is reallycentered toward white people.
But it's just this little kind oftouchstone that can get someone who's not
thinking about privilege at all, who can'teven fit that concept in their mind
remotely to just crack open that door alittle bit of what is this other

(21:04):
experience?
And just as an example, but there are somany things like that that kind of lead
toward these broad cultural changes.
And I love this idea, too, of what yousaid about empathy being a creative
endeavor.
That to me, that really hit me because weneed so much empathy in our world right

(21:25):
now, especially in 2024 as we careentowards what will be the most absurd
presidential election of our lifetimes,right?
Where we are literally about to have anelection between a dead man and a crazy
man.
And...
And all of us have to fight over which oneof those two versions of America we want,

(21:50):
right?
A version of America who's just an orangebuffoon or a version of America who
doesn't know where he is or what'shappening.
And that is the fight that we're going tohave.
And it's almost like it's designed in someway to keep us in conflict.

(22:11):
But if we could just slow down.
and exercise a little bit of creativityand just try to empathically understand.
If you were to think about the person thatyou disagree with the most, and if you
were to just for a minute, try to get intothat person's shoes and understand, and

(22:32):
not just their shoes of their lifetime,but their shoes and like the shoes of
their generationally, right?
That's part of it too, because I'm, youmentioned.
that you're not speaking to your dad.
I'm also currently not speaking to my dadfor a similar reason.
But part of that boundary that I set withmy dad, it came from a place of

(22:54):
understanding his perspective.
I don't feel a lot of anger towards my dadanymore.
I've in large part, I've really forgivenand moved on from that.
And part of what enabled me to do that isthat I really was able to get into his
shoes.
I was able to see his perspective.
And once I saw his perspective, it wasalmost like I, and this is a guy, this is

(23:15):
a man who was not very kind to me, right?
He literally labor trafficked me.
And hasn't really fully acknowledged that,right?
Like he did something that awful and Istill don't feel like he really thinks
that he did anything that bad.

(23:37):
And that's part of the reason why I'mlike, I can't.
Until you acknowledge how bad that was,then we can start to have a relationship.
But for me, being able to just get intohis shoes and to understand that this is a
man who was born in Wyoming in like the60s.

(23:59):
And he was raised by a very violent dad.
He was raised in a very violent religion.
He was raised in a religion that told himthat he was the most important thing on
God's earth.
And as he's lived his life, he's realizedhe's had to really come to terms with a

(24:20):
couple of gnarly facts, one of which ishe's actually not that important.
Yeah.
It's a rough, like a bitter pill toswallow.
That is a bitter pill to swallow whenyou've been told your whole life that you
really matter.
Yeah.
And...
And that doesn't mean that empatheticunderstanding of my dad, which was a

(24:43):
creative thing, I had to really imaginewhat that felt like.
Right?
That doesn't mean that I don't hold thatman accountable for what he does.
It doesn't mean that I just let him dowhatever he wants to and that I don't let
him know when he does things that botherme.
In fact, knowing who my dad is and thatempathetic understanding of my dad makes

(25:05):
it easier for me to hold him accountable.
Totally.
I was literally just talking about thislast night.
Same thing.
Yeah, it makes it easier for, I would loveto hear what you think about that, because
it makes it easier for me to do thosethings.
And I think that, I think that if we, Ithink in America, we are so afraid, we're
so afraid of understanding someone who'sdifferent than us, be that a trans person

(25:29):
or a Republican or a...
or an Amish person or anything, right?
We're so afraid of understanding someonewho's different from us because we're
worried that we'll lose ourselves in thatunderstanding.
And I think that's a pretty codependentway to look at things because if true

(25:50):
understanding of another person doesn'tmean that I lose myself, it means I get to
see them.
And if I can...
And it does require me to put myself downa pedestal, right?
I can't be the most important thing in thewhole world.
I've got to recognize that I'm one ofmany.
It's the same lesson.
But go ahead.
Yeah, go ahead.
And I've been talking a lot.
I want to get your thoughts on this.
Go ahead.

(26:10):
Well, I also love the way your brainworks.
But yeah, I think it's the same lesson.
It's if you want to be able to see someoneempathically and to really see the bad
things that this person has done haveunderstandable
ingredients.
Like there is there can be I canunderstand how this person with this set

(26:31):
of circumstances with this mind with thisset of skills lands here.
And to see the sadness in that and to seethe loss in that and not to just be like,
well, this person's a bad person piece ofshit.
But this is a person who has who's dealingwith trauma in specific ways.
If you're going to extend that kind ofthought process to someone else.

(26:54):
you have to extend it to yourself too andrealize the ways in which you are
complicit in your own maladaptivebehaviors, the ways in which you are
capable of blind spots.
It's a lack of certainty that is very,very difficult for humans.
Yeah, and I think very, very difficult forhumans.

(27:14):
And I think part of, maybe not easy forartists, but I think that artists we play
in that space.
100%.
I mean, this is what I have to play inthis space of the edges are a little bit
softer.
100%.
Yeah, this is what I'm always saying to mypodcast guests of I have no illusions that
artists are that that creativity onlyexists in the arts.

(27:37):
Artful thinking, creative thinking.
It is it's human.
It's just it's something that we it's ourkind of natural state as a species.
But one thing that I love about artistsand that I think.
It's not unique to artists, but it wouldbe difficult to find an artist who isn't
doing it.
Like you said, thinking about the edges,suspending disbelief, taking the mind to

(28:00):
these other places.
And it's something that we practice.
It's a skill.
And this is the thing that I think we needin the apocalypse.
This is why this is where I think artneeds to be all of ours.
And I believe that I think like art ispart of the human condition and it's.
part of the kind of capitalist lie that wethink art is like a hobby or that art is

(28:22):
this kind of non -pragmatic, whateverentertainment kind of a thing.
Art is humanity and art is like, one thingI was talking about recently with another
artist is we have this idea sometimes thatthere's like logical thinking and creative
thinking.
This seems crazy to me because what ismore creative than logical thinking?

(28:45):
Like,
It's so creative to be like, where are thegaps?
Where are the holes in this like thingthat I'm laying out, this reasoning that I
have?
It's deeply creative to imagine theexception to the rule.
That's an art skill.
Yeah, it totally is.
And I love what you said too abouteveryone being artists, because I think

(29:07):
that especially now, especially in theapocalypse, it's gonna be so important for
every human.
to really exercise that creative musclebecause if art is one thing, it's
creatively responding to the things thatare available to you right here, right?

(29:28):
As an artist, you have to, you can't makesomething with something that's not in
front of you.
So you can't be like, oh, I wish I hadthis other thing.
No, you got what you got in front of you.
And I think in some ways, although I loveprofessional artists, right?
To be clear, like,
I love the high caliber of performanceart, of all different kinds of art.

(29:53):
When someone really becomes a professionaland they do it, and they, like Beyonce,
fucking amazing.
And I think that we lose something as aspecies when we outsource art to those
people.
And we say, oh, only Beyonce, I can't singbecause I can't sing like Beyonce.

(30:15):
No, no, like we need everyone to besinging right now.
We need everyone to be engaged in theircreative because there's actually, there's
something really deeply human about thecreative process.
And if we're not engaged in that way, insome ways we're turned off.
And I think we're more susceptible to thiscapitalist machine that has in many ways

(30:39):
been the thing that has driven theapocalypse, right?
The reason that we are actually in,
Which is so funny to me sometimes, becauseI grow up and I think the apocalypse is
happening.
And then I come into the world and I'mlike, oh, I guess it's not.
I guess I was lied to about theapocalypse.
And then a couple of years later, oh, it'sactually happening.

(31:00):
But why is it actually happening?
Well, it's because we've been living soout of balance with our environments.
We were so out of touch with who we areand what our planet is and who each other
are.
that we've exploited this really goodearth to the point where she's pissed at

(31:21):
us and she's motherfuckers.
Take a step back.
Yes, yep, yes.
Yeah, one of the things that I havewritten down in my notes is this idea that
if you're a hammer, everything looks likea nail.
And I think if you're an artist,everything looks like raw material.
Everything looks like something that cancome in.
Ooh, I love that.
Yeah, everything looks like something thatcan be worked on or be thought about or

(31:45):
it's a mindset.
It really is.
And for so many artists, their mediumultimately really is ideas.
Like whether they're a visual artist,whether they're a writer, whether they're
a musician, not always.
Like sometimes the beauty of the thing isjust in the thing.
And I have lots of thoughts about that aswell.
But a lot of times our medium is ideas.

(32:05):
And that requires like you said,
not being turned off, like just beingaware, thinking of singing and dancing,
not as these forms of entertainment orwriting or storytelling, but like just
things that are like essentially part ofour species.
Like physiologically, what does singingdo?
Physiologically, what does dancing do?

(32:26):
Physiologically, what is rhythm?
What is it to tell a story?
Storytelling is so impactful in ourevolution because you can pack so much
wisdom into a story.
You don't have to say all the things.
It's there, kind of bigger way.
These are deeply creative means that haveled to our evolution.

(32:46):
And like you said, because of certainphilosophies, we've stopped using them and
to our detriment.
Yeah, we've outsourced them.
I can't tell you how many people I'veheard say something like, oh, I can't
sing, I'm not Beyonce or something likethat.
And I'm like, I didn't ask for Beyonce.

(33:06):
Right, your larynx, your instrument as ahuman being is the most versatile
instruments in the, well, the mostversatile instrument in the entire animal
kingdom.
You can sing.
Yeah, and the range.
You're made to sing.
Your body is designed to sing.
The just on that, the range of humanexpression, this was one of the things

(33:31):
that I think is, was the most.
most impactful to me when I went toBurning Man is I'm out of Burning Man and
one of the core tenet or one of the, thereare 10 principles of Burning Man, right,
that sort of govern the way that thatecosystem works.
And one of them is radical self-expression.

(33:51):
And the idea is just that whatever isinside of you that wants to express, let
that thing express.
And so you walk around Burning Man and yousee the most,
wild expressions of human creativity.
The most, and it's not just wild, it'slike the variety of human expression.

(34:15):
And then you come back into, just as anexample, cars at Burning Man versus cars
out here in the world.
We have the most boring cars.
They're all white, black, tan, or gray.
Some of them are blue or green.
A couple of them are red, but they allhave four doors.

(34:37):
They all have a windshield, right?
Like everything about, they're all exactlythe same.
And at Burning Man, you can have whateverkind of car, like you have a chassis,
right?
You have four wheels and then you can putwhatever you want on top.
So there are cars that are like peacocks.
There are cars that are witches houses.

(35:00):
There was a car that was a,
a pirate ship.
There was a pirate ship on a car and theyjust drove it around and you could like
climb up to the top of it.
Right.
And so I think a lot about how how humancreativity and expression has been stunted
in the capitalist world and also very muchfor me in the Mormon world, right, where

(35:21):
there's this cookie cutter of who you whatyou're allowed, what kind of expression is
okay, what kind of expression you'reallowed to to express rather than just
like
exercising like you said, like your larynxis the most the variety of sounds that you
can get to come out of your voice box isWild it's crazy.
We've been taught to treat this likesterility like this just absolute sterile

(35:46):
boring unenriching Environment and ways ofexpression as virtuous.
That's a great great lie.
Well, I were talking about this the otherday I know we both had read the your brain
on art
And one of my favorite things about thatbook was it was talking about, it talks a
lot about how humans need enrichment, likeother animals.
Aesthetic environments are like criticalto our mental and physical and emotional

(36:12):
wellbeing.
And we forget to think about like beautyas a sustainability practice and you know,
beauty and enrichment, like these thingsare, we've been, we've been sold this,
this bill of goods.
We've been sold this.
Yeah.
this lie that, you know, we've been soldthe efficiency, right?
We've been, we've been sold this andsterility and, and, and like pure, I blame

(36:36):
it on the puritans because it's like thisvery, very rigid, very strict.
It works.
It's functional, but where's the, where'sthe, like, where's the magic to it?
Where's the, it doesn't work.
I know that's what I mean, but it fallscompletely apart.
It leaves everybody depressed.
No one can innovate.
No one is vibrant.

(36:58):
The world is, the vast majority of humansare just reduced to this cog in a machine
instead of what we are, which is some ofthe best.
We are a brilliant species.
And I know sometimes people who aretalking about environmental collapse will
be like, ah, get rid of us humans,whatever.
And I hear that.
But also I feel like you, I love people.

(37:20):
I think humans are miraculous.
Yeah.
and this idea that so many of us are,like, we've been taught to accept and even
prioritize this shitty, shitty life thathas no color and has no innovation and has
no beauty.
And it's very bad.

(37:42):
Just what you said about how we've beenreduced to this.
And I feel that so strong because we areliving.
So far, most humans are living so farbeneath our creative potential because we
are in a system that says, this is all weneed from you.

(38:05):
The idea that we live in a system thattells humans, hey, all we need from you is
for you to go to a job every day from nineto five and to do things like that's what
we need from you as a species.
That's gross to me.
When you have a human being and all of theamazing creative things that that person

(38:30):
could do to tell them, hey, the life thatwe need from you is this really limited
small life that follows this very specifictrack.
And then at the end of it, if you'relucky, you'll get like maybe five or 10
years to have a hobby.
Right.
And we talk to artists.
I'm talking to artists all the time.
I might teach artists.

(38:50):
I am one and people all the time are like,they talk to you like it's vanity, they
talk to you like it's superfluous and it'sfrivolous.
And one of the thoughts that I had as Iwas thinking about this, with talking with
you is not everybody needs to be aprofessional artist, like you said, but I
think if we all can embrace likecreativity, enrichment, creative thinking,

(39:16):
beauty, we will find ourselves.
creatively and artfully in the in theplaces that are going to be the best uses
of our skills.
We will find the most artful, the mostcreative people leading, being leaders.
We will find the most creative andbrilliant and innovative science minds in

(39:38):
science.
And totally find someone doing ballet.
And there's something mystical about that.
Or someone approaching politics as acreative act.
Yes, this is one of my favorite questionsto ask.
Oh, I would kill for an artist inpolitics.
Please, you're God.

(39:58):
I want for all of us to be artists.
I really believe that.
That's my ethical mission, which is why Iwrite albums for the listener.
I don't know if we've said this, but I'm asinger.
So my main medium is singing andsongwriting.
I write a lot of prose.
I do a lot of thinking.
but the medium that I get paid for issinging and songwriting.

(40:19):
And I write works that have a moral.
I feel like I'm a philosopher and myphilosophies end up in the form of songs
that I'm singing.
Yeah, hell yeah.
I'm writing about how do we all beartists?
How can we all incorporate artful thinkingand artful doing?

(40:41):
into our lives.
And that's what's in the intro of mypodcast.
And the thing that I think is so beautifulabout where we're at right now and the
specific time, space and history thatwe're in right now is that as bad, like I

(41:01):
was just looking at shit yesterday, likewe're like 109 days or something into this
awful humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
We are, there's still a war happening inUkraine and that probably over the next
couple of years spills over into a globalwar and the climate is just bat shit crazy

(41:23):
right now.
You have America just at each other'sthroats over the dumbest things.
In Utah here, they're trying to get us,they're still trying to get us to fight
about trans bathrooms, which is thestupidest thing for us to, because nobody,
nobody cares.
Nobody rea...
No one cares enough to ask someone else,hey, show me your genitals before you go

(41:47):
into this bathroom, right?
Nobody cares.
We do not care.
It's a red herring.
It's just a...
It's a red herring.
You're trying to get us to fight.
And so all of that's happening, so it'scrazy.
It's a crazy scary time.
And I can't think of a better canvas forartists to create on.

(42:08):
Because we have...
So much, there's so much up in the air.
There's so much that could be questionedright now.
Today, we can question things that 10years ago, you could never question.
You can question those things today.
And - It's completely different than itwas.

(42:28):
Oh, well, I got excited for a second therebecause I was just talking about this with
another friend.
I teach college and -
When I look at just the diversity ofexpression in the freshman class at Utah
Valley University, granted, it is a musicprogram that I'm in.

(42:49):
The stats are probably skewed a little,but we're still in Utah County.
A lot of my students, if not most, grew upLDS.
Many of them still are LDS, and they haveso much more diversity of expression than
I saw.
in when I went to college for jazz studiesin 2006, which I went to school in this

(43:12):
little hippie town and I see morediversity in the French town.
Oh, hell yeah.
In Orem.
You're so happy.
That makes me so happy because I have aterm that I've coined around diversity.
It's called diverse immunity.
And it's where you take diversity andcommunity.

(43:34):
and you mash them together.
And if you have a diverse community, whatyou have is you have diverse immunity,
meaning that you are immune to a lot ofthe shocks that might come from an
apocalyptic event because you have a widevariety of skill sets and experiences.
And I think that as we continue to godeeper into the apocalypse, the

(44:00):
communities that, because there's gonna besome communities who are gonna say,
No, we, the strength for us is in havingeveryone exactly the same.
And if we have everyone exactly the same,then we, then we'll survive.
And I think that's stupid because - weknow it's, we know it is because what
happens is people still, they just nichedown.

(44:22):
Like they just Yeah, what happens to amonoculture?
Monocultures fail all the time.
What you need in nature to be healthy isyou need a vibrant, diverse ecosystem.
And so -
One of the things, like when you look atTurtle Island and you look at what
happened in Turtle Island over the last400 years, while there was tons of bad

(44:44):
shit, number one, let's acknowledge that,like all of the crazy bad shit that
happened needs to be addressed andresolved.
And what it's done right now, and when youlook at where Turtle Island is right now,
we have the most, one of the most diverse,passionate, dedicated, and
Disciplined cultures in the entire worldbecause for the last 200 300 years all

(45:10):
over the world Everyone heard about thisAmerica thing and they were like I got to
get me some of that and then they camehere so now we have tons of people and if
and if we could just if we could justrecognize how immensely valuable that
diversity is in America and invest in itand

(45:32):
and really lean into that and just makethat a value, then, oh my God, the things
would get unlocked.
Because we have so, literally everycountry on earth is represented on Turtle
Island now.
And you can't say that about almostanywhere else in the world, but every

(45:55):
country, someone from every country ishere.
And this rugged individualism that,
as Americans we culturally love, is also,it can get so nasty, but it also, if
paired with that artful creativity, wouldbe so rad.
Like people just being like, what am Idoing?

(46:16):
What am I great at?
And this is one of my favorite things tothink about.
When we start thinking about ethics andglobal unrest and all the things that need
to happen, it's easy to start feeling inyour own body like,
well, I need to join Doctors WithoutBorders or I need to do this other thing.
And it can get really depressing if youfeel like, but I don't know how to do
that.
I'm not motivated by that.

(46:37):
I don't know.
But I think there's just room forincredible change wherever we are.
I wanted to tell you a story about, I justsaw this on, I was watching like a food
documentary as one does.
And I forget the name of the restaurant,but the chef is Daniel Humm, I think.
And he...
He was the owner and the head chef at likea restaurant that was named like the top

(47:03):
restaurant in the world in New York City.
I forget the name of it.
But they had their three Michelin stars.
And this chef, he set out, he talks in thedocumentary about how he set out as a
young man to be this peak artist.
He wants to be like the world's best chefand get these Michelin stars.
And then once he achieved this, or notonce he'd achieved it, but just this is

(47:26):
the timing of it, he started being awareof like how animal, like the animal food
industry is ruining the planet.
And he said, he started to feel thisethical conundrum of, well, I'm running
one of the best restaurants in the world.
And if I can't innovate here and put adifferent value system on display here,

(47:50):
how is anybody else supposed to do it?
So he converted his entire menu at thisrestaurant to vegan.
Rad.
And he said, and he said in the interview,he said, I was prepared to lose all of our
stars, which is, it's so creative.
It's so artful.
It's that high ethics.
And the truth is he's still running a veryexpensive, like niche restaurant, but that

(48:15):
is the place where he is.
That is the skillset he has.
And this is the,
biggest impact that he can make.
And it's still highly privileged.
But there's something I think such a goodlesson there about how we each can take
our skills to like the most ethical,artful end.

(48:35):
And we're never going to get rid ofprivilege, right?
There always will be some level ofprivilege in the world.
And so what we really need is we need alldifferent strata, right?
We need from top to bottom.
We need a fundamental readjustment of oursociety to the realities that we face,

(48:56):
right?
And what I love about that story is thatthis was a guy who, he looked at the
realities and he said, oh, this is aproblem.
It's a problem, it's not sustainable.
It's not going to let us, we're not gonnabe able to keep doing this.
If we keep doing it this way, we're gonnacontinue to have, it's just gonna get

(49:16):
worse.
So.
I can do something and I can make surethat this place where I'm at, that place
is resilient, right?
That that place is renewable.
And I think we're gonna have to do that inevery different, in everyone's sphere of
influence.
As many ways as we can.

(49:37):
Something I've been thinking about, likeI've been writing about and thinking about
a lot this year is we each, really, ourmedium is our life and our self and our
body.
and some of us make other things with ourlife and our self and our body.
And some of us create ideas.
Some of us are part of a team.
We all do different things.
But I think if, I think there's somethingso interesting and precious about this

(50:03):
idea of what is the thing that only youcan do?
What is the thing that only you can do?
And so for me, one of the things that Ihave done is I've written a lot of art.
I've written a lot of music and...
words and prose about my narcissisticmother.
And this is like a very small thing.
It's a big thing in my life.
It's a small thing in the world, but therehave been dozens and dozens of people

(50:28):
who've reached out to me and said, I'm soglad that you wrote this because it helps
me understand my husband better becausehis mother is like this.
And that's pretty powerful in thatperson's life.
I'm not on a Doctors Without Borders team,but those are changes that affect people's
lives.
And it is something that I, Emily Merrill,can do.
And you're making art for the veryspecific community that you make art for,

(50:53):
some of the art you make.
I'm sure I give you space to whatever howyou feel.
But that's something that only you can do.
Yeah, it's something that only I can do.
And I also think too, I love that idea ofwhat is it that only you can do?
One, just two, just all, all, all.
pile on the value of art that exposesnarcissistic mothers, right?

(51:16):
That is a social good.
Anything that, because there's so,because, and I think this is, that's sort
of part of the grand unveiling, right?
There's so much, one of my favoriteexpressions of the apocalypse actually
comes from this book.
This is the archetype guidebook for,

(51:39):
They have some cards.
So there's this.
This is the Apocalypse card.
Isn't that a gorgeous card?
Yes, it is.
And it defines the apocalypse as, so itsays this, Apocalypse indicates a
particularly painful time, one thatunfolds when two disparate dynamics occur

(52:00):
simultaneously, pulling the psyche inseemingly opposing directions.
The first is a lifting of the veil.
This means truths that have been kept inthe dark are revealed, seen, and
unearthed.
And that's the realization that animportant person in your life is a
narcissist is a lifting of the veil.

(52:23):
Right?
Because you didn't want to see that, youdidn't expect to see that, and then all of
a sudden you're like, oh, yeah.
Oh shit.
Right?
You can't unsee it.
No matter how relieving it is to witnessthem come into the light,
An element of despair and grief follows.
The second dynamic is the regenerationthat comes from the wreckage of the

(52:47):
revealed truth.
Say that last part again.
The second dynamic, because the firstdynamic is the lifting of the veil, right?
Where you're like, oh, I see this thing.
And then the second dynamic is theregeneration that comes from the wreckage
of the revealed truth.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
So this is something, sorry, go ahead.

(53:09):
Well, just I think that regeneration, thatperiod, that's where we're at right now in
society is there was a truth revealedabout our society with COVID, with climate
change, with all these wars, with all,there, all of these things are coming
back.
We're realizing something profoundly trueabout our society.

(53:30):
And I think the thing that we're realizingis the same thing that I realized about
Mormonism.
which is this society has not been builtto keep me safe.
This society has actually been built toexploit and oppress me.

(53:52):
So now with that realization, what's theregeneration?
but I wanna hear what got you excited.
I have so many thoughts.
But I think we can get stuck when, like wetalk a lot about the gut instinct and like
trusting our gut.
And that's something that, you know, asartists we talk about, like learning to
trust your gut and trust your instincts.

(54:13):
I think there's something confusing theresometimes where when we realize this
devastation, when the second kind of parthappens after this unveiling, and we have
this kind of devastation, there's so muchfear.
there and like disappointment and disgustand whatever that it can be so tempting to

(54:34):
be like, this feels so bad.
I will go back.
I will put the veil back down.
Oh, totally.
Yeah.
And it can feel, you know, like, how couldI, how could the right thing possibly be
to like go through this horror?
Um, but yeah, that's why, so what I wasgoing to say is like my, my work, The

(54:55):
Hallowed Wide.
It again, it's like it's a manifesto.
It's like it's it's a philosophy that Iput into a 12 song album with some visual
art.
The way that I lay it out is it's first Iwrote a little spell first descend, then
divide, make it hallowed, make it wide.
So the descent is that unveiling, right?

(55:15):
The descent is like looking at this shitand just being like, I see it.
OK, I see it.
Like we have to take that plunge and itdoesn't feel good.
And it's very scary.
And it takes a lot of creativity to teachyour brain and your body how to see and
feel reality.
And then the divide is this, the descentis hard enough.

(55:37):
The divide is that second piece thatyou're talking about that you have to
carve these things out of yourself thatare maladaptive.
It's extremely painful.
It's devastating.
It's such hard work to take out thesepieces of yourself.
that you cannot, if you want to, see theworld in a different way, if you want to

(55:59):
move about the world in a different way,if you want to be more ethical, and then
there's the last two parts.
But that one is the one that, I gotexcited about that, because I'm like, I'm
writing about this too.
Yeah.
What I love too about that process thatyou just described is that sort of feels
like similar to the process that Idescribed in my last episode about the

(56:21):
phases of an apocalypse, where there'sthis descent.
and then you hit rock bottom and then,okay, now we can rebuild.
And one of the things that I think, goingback to your earlier comment about make
the art that only you can make, right?
About show up as the way that only, what'sthe thing that only you can do?
I think that's a really powerful ideaindividually.
And I also think that's a really powerfulidea collectively.

(56:43):
Because one of the things that I think isthe most wildly fascinating about...
where we're at as a species and as acollective right now is that we are facing
the wreckage of revealed truth and feelingall of those feelings of, I really don't

(57:06):
wanna see it.
I really don't wanna see it.
I really don't want to acknowledge.
I think that that was a big thing foreveryone else knew that America was
racist, but for most white Americans, wedidn't realize that America was still
racist until two years ago.
And then the BLM happened and everyone waslike, there was this big unveiling and
then anyone who was white, they were facedwith this choice.

(57:29):
Do I acknowledge or do I just keep tryingto pull this wool down over my eyes?
And I think that that is, I think thatthere's something really magical about how
all throughout America, you have a bunchof people exiting,

(57:49):
high demand religions and high demandcults like Mormonism, who have been,
they've been through a process ofrealizing that the world that they were
told was real was not real, having thedestruction that comes from that, and then
having to learn how to rebuild a literallya shattered life.

(58:13):
And so you have, you have.
Hundreds of thousands of ex -Mormons of ex-vangelicals of ex -Jehovah's Witnesses of
all these people coming out of thesereally strict ex -orthodox Jews ex
-Catholic like all these really highdemand all encompassing worldviews and

(58:34):
they've been through the process of Myworld is a lie Holy fuck.
What does that mean?
I guess I'm gonna have to figure out howto make meaning on my own.
Yes, and we have
literally thousands of us right on timefor the apocalypse.
Yes, yes, yes.
So, yeah, the third part of like myproject is Make It Hallowed, which is make

(58:57):
it fucking beautiful and sacred.
And that's where like art making is.
That's cultivate these skills of like, youknow, because like I was saying before, it
can be really easy to see it, to see thisdevastation and then to just be like,
let's throw the whole thing in thegarbage.
Just let's throw the whole species in thegarbage.
We are, it's bad.

(59:17):
Things have gotten bad.
And I would say that's when it's time totake that third step of make it hallowed,
make it beautiful, find beauty.
Will that beauty into existence?
And then Yeah, because that's what we areis we're these powerful dreamers, right?
We're these powerful creators.
And we literally live in an imagined worldthat we made up.

(59:40):
We imagined all of this bullshit that wasgoing on right now.
We imagined that.
We made that happen.
And if we can make that happen, imaginewhat else we could make.
Imagine what we could make if we were morecompassionate, if we were more
intentional, if we started to imagine aworld where everyone gets taken care of

(01:00:03):
and the rights of all are heard, that weactually do the things that we've been
paying lip service to for hundreds ofyears.
We actually live that life.
We can do that.
Because we...
We made this world.
That's the thing that, that's again, goingback to Burning Man, the thing that was so
fascinating to realize out there is thateverything out there is created, right?

(01:00:27):
Because it's literally a, and then yourealize everything everywhere is created.
Yeah, that's the main why.
Everything, everywhere, everythingeverywhere, you guys, is made up.
We're humans, we live,
We live in made up worlds that we made.

(01:00:47):
We made these worlds.
And so that actually puts us in a positionof incredible power because we can unmake
them and we can remake them into betterworlds.
And I think that's the real opportunitythat we have in the apocalypse right now
is let's make it better.
I would love to read you a quote fromyourself that you said on my podcast.

(01:01:10):
Oh, hell yeah.
It's my favorite.
Okay, you said from the mouth of BenBrown, the Fresh King Benjamin.
The one and only true prophet.
Okay, so this is what you said.
There's something very human about the waythat we create.
We are storytellers.
We're myth makers.
There's something really powerful aboutour imagination.

(01:01:32):
The thing that makes us different fromother animals is that we can imagine
things that aren't true, and then we canmake those things true.
And I think that really is the creativeprocess.
is having this idea of something thatcould be and then seeing a way that you
could make it actually real.
Which I'm a smart boy.
You are.

(01:01:52):
But also, listen, I was asking you goodquestions.
You were asking me great questions.
And to be totally fair, that idea, Iborrowed that idea from Yuval Harari,
who's an even smarter boy.
But yeah, like that is, that to me is whyI, like, I'm -
absurdly optimistic and the reason thatI'm absurdly optimistic is that

(01:02:19):
Everything that is here, we made.
Like everything that's affecting us ashumans, we made.
It reminds me of, there's one of myfavorite memes is, it's this picture of
this kid and his face is in the dirt, likein the mud, and he's like crying, and his
mouth is, and there's a boot on his face,and the boot is just like pushing his face

(01:02:42):
into the mud, and it just says, beforespiritual awakening.
And then the next...
Then it just zooms out.
The next frame is just, it's zoomed out alittle bit and the kid's hand is in the
boot.
So he's got his own hand in the boot,shoving his face into the mud.
And it says after spiritual awakening.
And that's it, right?
All of the shit that we're dealing with asa species right now, we made it happen.

(01:03:08):
So we're not waiting for, going back tothe second coming, right?
We don't need to wait.
for someone to come save us.
Because number one, they're not coming.
And number two, they couldn't if theytried.
Because we are the authors, we're actuallythe ones who have the power here.

(01:03:30):
We've always had all of the power.
We've always had all the power.
And what we've done is that we've, justlike we did in Mormonism, right?
Mormonism is such a great microcosm, Ithink, for what's happening in the whole
world.
Because in Mormonism, what happened isthat,
A lot of us, all of us surrendered ourknowing.

(01:03:51):
We surrendered our powerful, creative lifeforce to people who were in charge.
And we told them, just tell us what to doand we'll do it.
Yeah.
Yep.
And then they...
talk so much about agency and Mormonism,but it's anti -agency.
We gave up...
It's very anti -agency.
It's obedience.
It's getting in line.

(01:04:11):
And that is the exact thing that happenedin the broader world because...
Let's be real, like the climate apocalypsewas not caused by all of us.
It was caused by some of us.
There were some people who got stupid richby selling all these fossil fuels.

(01:04:34):
And those people got stupid rich knowingthat what they were doing was bad and then
lying to us about it.
Like they intentionally obfuscated, whichis my favorite word, I can't ever say it,
obfuscated all the science, all the thingsthat we knew were going to happen.

(01:04:57):
They created, they created false flags.
They did all this stuff.
And so we've surrendered.
We've surrendered our power to the peoplein charge and they have not, they do, they
have not earned our trust.
And we have to take it back.
part of the reason that we feel helplessabout this, and I know you and I, we're

(01:05:18):
different, we don't feel helpless, that'swhy we're having this conversation, but I
think it's easy to feel helpless becausewe have not been taught to cultivate these
skills, but they are easily cultivated.
Like, your brain and your body aredesigned to do them, fucking cultivate
them.
And I Yeah, it's really easy.
I think it's also, people can be told this-

(01:05:41):
story or they can tell themselves thisstory that's, well, I can't go out and be
a totally different person than I am.
And I would say you don't have to.
One of my favorite ways to think aboutthis is look at everything you're already
doing.
Maybe stop doing the stuff that you justfeel unethical about.
But I think most of us, like the job thatwe're in, the children that we are parents
of, the lives that we're living inprobably hopefully more ways than less are

(01:06:07):
in our value systems.
So how can we take what we're alreadydoing and just be more creative and be
more artful and be more ethical?
Like you don't need to go and learn how tocure cancer or you don't need to go to
Ukraine.
If that's where you are and that's likewhere your very particular motivation

(01:06:28):
takes you, do it.
But if you are someone's mom, just be thatperson's mom in the most artful and
ethical and creative way you can.
And if you are an elementary schoolteacher, do that in the most creative way
you can.
And if you work in middle management, makeyour middle management job as ethical and
humane and innovative as you possibly can.

(01:06:52):
Yeah, show up where you are.
To quote Elder Oogdorf, bloom where you'replanted.
There's a lot of value in recognizing thatthe world is much smaller and much more
immediate.
than we think of it as.
And if we're all immediately investing inour communities around us, in the

(01:07:14):
immediate surroundings, and making surethat, hey, the people in my neck of the
woods, we're going to be OK.
We're going to survive this apocalypse OK.
If we're all doing that, that creates thiswhole global ecosystem of us doing that.
And then we crush it.
Right.
Right.
Right.
And when we disagree, we have skills totalk about that.

(01:07:35):
We have skills to be like,
How does it look to you?
How does it look to me?
What are the facts?
Where are the facts like not definitive?
Where are there multiple ways to see it?
And then say, okay, well, you work on yourproject and I'm gonna work on my project
and let's keep talking.
We have not been taught those skills atall.

(01:07:58):
Yeah, which is why I wrote a record aboutit.
It's like, some skills.
Here are some skills you should use.
You should learn everybody, creativeskills.
Emily, we are coming to the pretty closeto the end of our time.
Is there anything, I know, I feel like wegot through point one of what you wanted
to talk about, but is there anything, isthere any kind of final thoughts or last

(01:08:20):
little insights that you wanna sharearound art and the apocalypse?
I think maybe the crux of it for me, andmaybe this is like a perfect summary.
Maybe I told you this before, but mypatriarchal blessing, which as you had
said in your episode two, is like yourlittle private prophecy.
My patriarchal blessing has this line init that says, God respects truth

(01:08:44):
regardless of where it is found.
And that taught me and allowed me, theirony is so thick, but it taught me to
receive knowledge and to ask questionswithout fear.
And that has become something that is inmany ways like an integral part of my
creativity and my creative experience.

(01:09:05):
And I would say the first step is like,when you feel fear, ask more questions.
Look for more truth.
Don't be afraid of what the answer's gonnabe.
Look for it, find it, take some steps, eatthe whale one bite at a time.
And yeah, just stay present and active andcreative.

(01:09:25):
And you'll find the interactions.
I
To me, the final thought for me on thesubject of art and the apocalypse is just
something that I've noticed, which is,because I often think of where we live, we
live in Utah, right?
And to me, Utah, Wyoming, which is whereI'm from originally, that feels like the

(01:09:48):
furthest extent of kind of whitenationalist America, right?
The people who came here injected,
white supremacist America and kind of likespread across the continent, Manifest
Destiny, the furthest place that they gotto was like Utah and up into Wyoming.
And so I often see, as I drive aroundhere, it feels like that's the place where

(01:10:13):
you would see the flywheels winding down,right?
So that to me looks like I drive aroundand I'll see like a dick sporting goods.
except it's not Dick's Sporting Goodsanymore, it's Ick's Sporting Goods.
Because that D sign isn't lit anymore, andit's never going to be lit again.
And I see that all throughout this areawhere it's just like the sort of the, it

(01:10:40):
was like this big push and this bigexpansion, and now it's settling back.
And as it's settling back, it'sinteresting because you also see nature
coming back, nature growing up over theseold buildings that have been abandoned.
cars abandoned and falling to pieces ineverywhere in the field, right?
And the other thing that you see that Ilove is I'm starting to see all of this

(01:11:08):
art being made on the bones of this oldworld.
So people painting murals on the sides ofabandoned buildings, people doing graffiti
on...
these old cars, like all of thesedifferent ways that we are using art to
beautify our spaces, even as our spacesare falling into disrepair, even as our

(01:11:32):
spaces falling into decline, that we canbe creative and be beautiful about that.
And I think that that to me is just such abeautiful example of how humans respond
when things go to shit.
Because when things go to shit,
We still make art.
We're still, we're doing it right now.

(01:11:54):
You and I are doing it right now.
Right now in this conversation.
And all of the humans are doing it.
And so there's not a lot of fear that Ifeel.
There's actually a lot of hope becauseregardless of what happens, we humans are
always going to be human and we're alwaysgoing to continue to make art and beauty

(01:12:16):
in the places around us because that'swhat we do.
That's what we've done the whole time.
Emily, where could people go to find youif they wanted to follow you?
Yeah, all of my things are onemilymaryllemusic .com.
However, beware, my last name does nothave an I.

(01:12:37):
It's M -E -R -R -E -L -L.
Emilymaryllemusic .com.
Rad.
Thank you so much for...
joining me and being my first interview.
As always, if you guys want to follow me,I'm at TheFreshKingBenjamin on all social
platforms.
And thanks for joining us on today'sepisode of Vibing the Hypocalypse.
Stay safe out there.