Damian: local community connector

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Every intro is hard for me. Like impossible. I'll record for a half hour just to cut out enough to make what I post.

(00:08):
And it all s- it doesn't sound like me. It sounds like this, I don't know, I should be talking to people at a fancy hotel or something.
That's not what I sound like and I've kind of accepted that. That's what I sound like on the intro.
I don't know what it means, but welcome to emotion art. It's all emotion art. And you are welcome.

(00:42):
I mean think about it. Everything that you touch is changed by your touch. It feels like creation to me.
I mean even if you think about things, it changes them. Humans have a lot of emotions.
That's what we're made out of. Layer upon layer upon layer of stories that are all encoded in emotions.

(01:05):
And everything we touch is changed by our touch. To me that feels like we are emotion art.
And since the world around us is made by our emotions, it is also emotion art.
I love having these conversations. They are incredibly enjoyable, even the ones I don't post.

(01:28):
And there's getting to be more and more of those. Because I'm realizing the conversations is what I want to have, so record or not record, let's go.
But recording is something else altogether, so I'm always going to be trying to get there.
And I need to give mad kudos to the people who helped me make this what it is.

(01:50):
Buddy Anderson. Buddy writes original music for all this stuff. And it feels like every episode it kind of shocks me.
It's like the music is custom made to hold the words. And that's so cool.
I get tears every time the music comes on at the end of the conversation. It's a very emotional moment for me.

(02:13):
I appreciate that. And I'm sure there's a lot of other people who also appreciate what you add, Buddy. Thank you.
And Angela. Tireless and super smart. I really appreciate your time and your energy.
You guys are a gift. I also deeply appreciate everybody who listens to these conversations and then says something.

(02:40):
That interaction, it just feels really, really good. So I appreciate it.
Thank you, technology, for making this all possible.
Ooh, you make art so much more accessible and give us reach so that we can show our art to the world.

(03:04):
That's a gift. I am a hell of a rambler. It's what I do.
No, seriously, though, the poor people around me. I mean, I have phases where I'm not super talkative. I have phases where I'm deathly silent.

(03:26):
Life is cycles. None of them feel negative to me anymore. Not even in the moment. I mean, it's beautiful.
It's like in the phase where everything's quiet. Breathing in used to feel depressing or like chaotic.
Like, I got everything is too quiet. Everything's going wrong. But I know now that's not what it is.

(03:52):
It's just breathing in and breathing out and breathing out is so fun. That's where conversations happen.
That's where the creation happens. That's where my essence is touching everything around me. So fun.
But it doesn't happen forever without a breath back in.

(04:16):
And the breath in is every bit as life giving, every bit as healing as the breath out, a breath of creation.
And at the breath in is where the inspiration bedrock is. As they breathe out, of course, inspiration just starts to flow.
But where it starts is in the breath in. So why am I talking about that?

(04:40):
The poor people are here at the Forge. They don't have to listen to me right now because I am down in the Fundamental Sense Massage Studio,
which is the perfect place for doing anything that's peaceful and healing. The energy of this place just feels like a restorative garden.
It used to be a little shed. And then Angela happened to it. So peaceful. That's what it feels like in here.

(05:07):
Okay. Thank you for listening. I hope that you find the treasure in these conversations that I do. Or even a part of it, dude. It's so cool.
This is a conversation with Damien, a local guy that I've run into a few times here and there over the years.

(05:30):
And I've wanted to have a conversation with him for a while. So eventually I asked him and the conversation was fantastic.
I got to look at the universe, a little sliver of the universe through Damien's eyes.
Thanks for letting me explore a little bit of your universe, Damien.

(05:53):
And especially thanks for letting me record it so that anyone else who wants to has the opportunity, at least.
And thank you that you care to bring more community into this world. That's a gift.
All right, travelers. Our next world is Damien. Enjoy.

(06:15):
Welcome to emotion art. Emotion art. Where we sit down and make art. Emotion art.
Creative energy moving outward in conscious expression of feeling. Emotion art. Emotion art. Emotion art.
Emotion because we are literally made of emotion. Art because everything we do wants to be art. Emotion art. Feel, feel, feel, feel. Emotion art. It's all beautiful.

(06:41):
Emotion art. Emotion art. Emotion art. A space for emotional art. Creative energy moving outward in conscious expression. Emotion art. An emotion art gallery.
This, this, this, this, this, this, this, this is emotion art. Yeah, welcome.

(07:06):
That's going to need to get edited out. Okay. I think that's going to need to get edited out. Awesome.
This is going to be my 20th episode. I'm Venti. I mean, I'm assuming that we can come up with anything good enough to post.
I mean, always assuming that. And I'll tell you what. Every episode I come out of it, not remembering anything we talked about and worried that it's all garbage.

(07:29):
And every time once I edit it, it's like taking a rock and cutting the carving the statue out of it. And once it's carved out, it's always beautiful.
Well, I'm excited. What is the premise of your podcast? What are you trying to get out of the podcast?
I am intensely fascinated by human emotions. Okay. Every aspect of humans just fascinates me. And the, I used to also be terrified of humans.

(08:02):
The more that I walk through my fear, the more that I just have this pure glittering fascination.
I just like to talk to people and see what comes out. So I got some mics, picked up a hitchhiker, started talking to him, and we just ended up recording.

(08:23):
And the first thing I figured out is that conversations change when the microphone turns on. When you can hear your voice in your head and you know that it's bound for the Internet, that people are going to hear it, at least potentially.
It changes every part of the process of turning emotions into words. Sure. Sure. Sure. I don't know how. I don't know what the difference is, but I know that it is absolutely thrilling to me.

(08:51):
So I can't help myself, but do it. That's really all I get out of it. What's starting to happen is I'm basically starting to tell my story through the thread of other people's stories.
A lot of the people I interview are people that are from my life, from my past. You'll actually be the second person. No, you won't be because you are part of my life.

(09:18):
Like we haven't connected deeply. Correct. But similar circles. We run into each other. Our circles are very definitely overlapped. Yep.
I think that what I get out of the podcast is different every episode because it's a different conversation. What I hope to get out of this conversation is just I want to see what the world looks like out of your eyes.

(09:42):
Oh, okay. That's really all I'm after. Got it. I love talking about just philosophy and all that type of stuff. That's what I'm always drawn to.
So if left to myself, that's where conversations are going to go. I'm going to start asking you about your past. I'm going to start trying to get a picture of what that little boy, what life was like for that little boy.
But I don't have an agenda. I just want to sit here and have a conversation with another human. Trying to see what it's like to look through another person's eyes. That helps frame it. That's what just revs me up.

(10:15):
Okay. Where do you want to start? I want to start right here. Okay. I always try to just get through the awkward. I mean, if you're human and you haven't done it before, you're going to have some sort of stage fright or blocks and stuff.
So it's awkward in the beginning every single time. And the awkward part is becoming enjoyable because, like, I don't know, do you have a meditation practice? I do.

(10:41):
Not like the formal meditation process where you sit and try and clear space. Two ways I've gotten into a meditative state. The first is with running. So long distance running.
Some people really get the runners high out of running. I've never really gotten a runner's high out of it. But I do really enjoy the space when everything hurts so much and I'm so exhausted that the thoughts stop.

(11:11):
So I can get into a meditative state there and through other exercise. Long hikes. Movement. You're a movement meditator. Yeah, I'm not one that sits still very often.
It's frustrating for people because it's rare that I'll sit and watch a movie or show. I'd rather be walking around doing stuff than good. Yeah. ADHD boy. Yeah. Yeah. Shorten your mic boom a little bit.

(11:40):
See how much more sensual that sounds. We're going to talk like this now. How you doing? We should do a whole episode like this.
Mm hmm. There's some ASMR people out there that would really appreciate it. ASMR. I don't know. ASMR. But it sounds like this. Okay.

(12:03):
Now I want to look it up. You know, you know, it really bugs me that that we've gotten into a space where everything is at our fingertips. You drop an acronym ASMR like immediately. I want to use my little internet brain to try and figure out what that is.
And that frustrates me. That frustrates me that even in my it frustrates me when I see other people do it. It frustrates me when I can't have a conversation with someone without them constantly looking at their phone. It's hard to talk to someone that's not there. It frustrates me that I do it myself.

(12:36):
And the crazy thing about that is when it doesn't frustrate you when you do it yourself, it will not frustrate you when someone else does it. Yeah. Hi, Damien. How you doing? That question bugs you. You are so generous to give me so much to grind on right off the bat.

(12:58):
Do you know we had the conversation at that party recently, and that has stuck in my head. I don't agree with you. I like that I don't agree with you and I like that it's made me think about it.
Wait, hold on. Refresh my memory about what the premise is.
Walking up to someone. How you doing? How was your day? Instead of digging in to get to a deeper level of conversation right away. And I thought a lot about that since that party and it's it's stuck with me. I love that it's stuck with me because anything that makes me think is great.

(13:31):
So when I was a kid, right after right after high school, I worked on top of a mountain selling donuts, and we would live up there for four days and then go to the bottom of the mountain for days off.
And one of the kids that worked up there with me told me that people would like me better if I weren't so foreboding. And at the time, I didn't know what the word meant. So I had to look it up. I was like, damn, damn, people can't approach me. I'm really that unapproachable.

(13:58):
Be less like Edgar Allen Poe.
So freaking dark. I wore a lot of black maybe. I mean, foreboding sounds great to me. It sounds interesting. Yeah, I've gotten that feedback in other forms throughout my life that I'm hard to approach.
I, I, I'm off putting.

(14:21):
So I think, yes, there is there is a conformity aspect to the intro question. How you doing? You know, what's up? What's new? And I don't like those questions. I know we had that conversation. I understand you don't like what I'm curious about is what exactly because you said you don't agree with me for me.
You're saying that you don't share my dislike. I don't share your dislike because that's not agreement or disagreement.

(14:47):
You like different things. You like small talk. No, I don't. I don't like small talk at all. Okay. But I like a few seconds to try and put the person I'm attempting to connect with at ease.
It's like dancing, like having a few steps together that are that are pre planned before you start improvising and flipping people around. You got to do the little social dance for a second so that you know your your little antennas like, okay, yes, I'm a human.

(15:17):
You're a human. We we speak a similar language where, okay, we can we can move from here, but it helps me feel like I'm putting someone at ease by just dealing with that that level of it for a second or two before I move on to tell me about why your mom doesn't like you or, you know, whatever the deeper conversation is there.

(15:39):
And the foreboding comment is tied to that. Is that what you're saying.
I have in my past at a really hard time connecting with people. I don't do it well. I think I'm getting better at it, but I'm getting better at it through practice and making friends in your 40s and 50s is hard in your 30s. It's hard.

(16:01):
Like in junior high and high school. It was like, okay, you know, you like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So do I know we're best friends or simple or whatever it was back then.
But we grow up and we learned that all that stuff doesn't matter and that you have to do the work and you have to present yourself right and boy does that ever make it hard to make friends.
It does. And it's interesting because you're saying that you like to feel a person out a little bit. You said put them at their ease.

(16:31):
Or more that I want. I want to feel like I'm putting them at ease. It's more about a feeling for myself. So as someone who's in intensely shy in social situations.
I can't just walk up to someone and have a conversation.
It's really, really difficult being shy and doing that. So having a few canned phrases, if you will, that are socially acceptable.

(17:02):
How you doing? What's your day like? What's new with you?
For me makes it feel like I can have a conversation with someone get on their level, feel them out, feel if there's a baseline connection potential to dig into.
Are we both at 200 megahertz or are you operating somewhere else? We're not going to be able to to move forward with this right now. I'll try again later maybe.

(17:26):
But so I'm wondering if looking at it through that lens, the reason that I don't like it is because I have this baseline understanding that everything that comes out of my mouth is going to be understood differently by everyone who hears it.
Than it is by me, no matter what the best we can hope for is getting close. That's how I see communication.

(17:48):
And so to me, to try to establish that we are speaking the same language is a lie because I already know we're not. That's why I like to talk around things.
I don't like it when someone just answers my question. I like it when they offer me a couple of suggestions.
Well, I feel like this, but I also feel like this, but I'm also thinking about this over here. And when I talk like that, it's hard for people to follow. It feels like rabbit trail after rabbit trail.

(18:15):
But to me, what I actually want to know is what does it feel like inside you behind those words?
Because I'm going to interpret those words based on my upbringing and every experience I've had in 43 years.
Not the same ones you've had. So I'd rather hear it five or six different ways. And I'd rather skip the.
Yeah, we speak the same language because I already know we don't. And now I'm just coming up with this all this right now because I'm trying to look at that conversation through your lens.

(18:46):
That's what comes to me. Maybe I approach it with a little bit more hope that we are speaking the same language or getting close to the same language.
OK, so sounds like you see yourself as being shy. I use the word shy and it was foreboding.

(19:08):
I don't think it was foreboding. OK, OK. You don't see yourself. No, but somewhat hard to connect with, maybe less so than before.
Working on it. Maybe you're working on it a little bit off putting to certain people, probably the majority of people in your life.
Not anymore. It used to be a word. Sweet. Yeah, I don't worry about it at all anymore.
I'm describing everything I used to feel to and still do some, of course.

(19:34):
I think I think fortunately, Adam, I'm at a point in life. Maybe you've been been.
To the place mentally where you stop caring. About a lot of things. It's like, OK, you're going to accept me for.
Yes, what I'm bringing at any given situation or you're not. Yes.

(19:55):
I've done a lot of work on myself. I hope. I mean, there's the word again.
Hope I hope that I'm bringing something worthwhile to the table at any interaction.
Do you believe that you are? I do. I've got an absurdly high level of self-worth.
I think I'm yeah, I like being me. I really do.

(20:19):
And I don't mean that in any kind of arrogant way. I have more fun than I probably.
I feel guilty about my levels of fun in life. I love life and coming from the opposite 20 years ago where I couldn't stand it.
It's it's been a bit been a bit of a journey. None of that has to do with it being life.

(20:42):
You couldn't stand it. Oh, just depression. Yeah, lots of depression.
It sounds like you are a very different person than what you used to be.
I think I've been able to look at the world differently.
I've been able to appreciate the gift that these circles around the sun have given me.

(21:08):
I got a question for you. Sure.
Who do you see yourself to be if you were just to describe yourself to someone who didn't know you?
That's a big question. Is who you are, what you do, what you contribute, is who you are, what you've done?
I would say no to both of those. But they are aspects of you.

(21:31):
I don't know. I like that answer.
And I don't know that I care. Oh, even more interesting.
OK, so you're saying that you don't care who you are right now?
I'm not you're not saying you don't care. You said I don't know that I care.
I don't know that I care to define it. Too much philosophy.

(21:54):
Oh, OK. I am a sliver of the universe experiencing itself.
I am the observer observing what this body is doing through its iteration on this planet.
And I don't mean that in any super deep way.
So it sounds to me like you feel like who you are is something other than this body, this organism.

(22:22):
Maybe maybe maybe it is. Maybe it isn't.
You're agnostic, atheistic, agnostic.
I'm not about God, but about who you are.
Other than the cogito ergo sum, you know, I think therefore I am.
How do we know that we exist? OK, I'm thinking I'm being right here.
I go to sleep. I have no idea whether I'm going to wake up the next morning.
So my existence is this present moment. What am I in this present moment?

(22:47):
Fairly relaxed, happy, glad that I woke up this morning,
glad that I get to experience love and joy in this life, glad that my kids are healthy.
You're present. Yeah.
And trying to describe what I am to someone else in this moment is a lot,

(23:08):
because I'm not anything really right now except for here in a conversation
describing what I think this person's personality is.
I think I'm a kind, generous person who tries to give a lot to the community.
I try to help build connections in the community.

(23:29):
I try to. Yeah, I'm trying to make the world a better place
while I've got breath remaining in the little bits that I can.
What would you say is the biggest part of what you're doing
to try to make the world a better place?
How does that look practically for you?
All right. So what I'm doing to improve my world, my community,

(23:54):
there are a couple of communities that I'm involved with,
that I'm trying to help foster and grow.
There's an ethical non-monogamy community in this area.
I try and have tried for the last couple of years to bring these people together,
because, OK, if you read any of the books, if you've done any of the research,

(24:15):
supposedly 40% of the population in this country has tried some form of ethical non-monogamy.
Wow. It's something like that.
Currently, if you're believing the books, and this is from a 10-year-old book, PolySecure,
one of the stats that they throw out there is 4 to 5% of people in this country

(24:40):
are currently in ethical non-monogamous situations.
If you look at the numbers in Corvallis, that should be something like 2,000, 3,000 people in this town.
I know 100 or 200 of them.
So that means there's 1,800 of us to more that are feeling very, very isolated and alone,
because at least from what I can see, it's still not fully accepted and embraced by society.

(25:10):
A lot of people living that lifestyle are living in the shadows and ran into a friend of mine at the gym.
There's an upcoming meetup of people, and I mentioned it to this person,
and tried to explain to him what the community was about, which is like,
hey, there are a bunch of us out there doing this ethically, and so many of us are feeling alone.

(25:31):
And he's like, oh my God, I'm so lonely. It's like, Jesus, man, come hang out.
In my mind, almost nothing more refreshing than going to a social event, a party,
or at least that part of yourself, you don't have to put the facade up.
You don't have to pretend that you're not something else or someone else.
You're not conforming to some other expectation in society.

(25:54):
It's like, OK, yeah, I have multiple partners. A couple of them are here.
And you don't have to answer the first 20 questions.
Doesn't everybody get jealous? What do your parents think about this?
Are you guys in the closet about this?
It's like, no, no, no, no. We're all open about it. We're living our life.
Everybody knows what's going on, and there's no secrets about it.

(26:16):
And just having that pressure off is amazing. So that's one community.
I'm part of the burner community. I help put on Soak.
That's the Oregon Burn?
That's the Oregon Burn. It's another beautiful, beautiful community of people
that are just doing amazing things.

(26:39):
And so I work a lot to try and help there.
And then personally, I play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons.
Yes. Yeah. I fell into that 10 years ago when my kids,
they do this crazy thing they call talking game.
And what that looked like was they would lead each other on stories.

(27:03):
It's like, OK, we're going to go and we're going to rescue the village.
And the other kid would be like, yeah, yeah, let's go rescue the village.
What kind of dragon am I going to ride?
Be like, OK, I get the blue dragon.
The other one would be like, no, I want the blue dragon.
And I swear to you, the only fights my kids got into for almost 10 years
were about talking game.

(27:24):
And who could ride the blue dragon or the red dragon or whatever?
And I would use this to help encourage them to go out and hike
and explore nature with me and be like, hey, we're going to go.
We're going to hike Bald Hill and we're going to go look for fairy nests.
We're going to find some fairies.
Do you guys want to come help me find some fairies?
We get out there and we do that.
And they would lead each other on these adventures as we're hiking.

(27:46):
And as this is going on, I'm like, damn, when I was a kid,
there was this game called Dungeons and Dragons that people played.
And I looked it up and it was making a revival at that point.
I'm like, all right, let's start doing this.
I went down to Matt's comic shop here in town
because they had like two weekly games of that place.
Yeah, those guys are awesome.
And they would host free games and you could just show up and play in the back.

(28:09):
And first couple of times we went, we got to sit in with these college guys
that were running a game.
And my kids and I would sit there and we'd play with these college kids.
It was just amazing.
After a while, that game ended.
I think one of the kids, I call them kids, college guys,
mom got sick so we had to stop running the game.
And none of the other dungeon masters, those are the people that run the games,

(28:32):
would want to run a table with kids at it.
So I'm like, all right.
And there are always a couple of kids that would show up wanting to play.
And when I say kids in this sense, I'm talking about like 10, 11, 12 year olds.
So I talked to the guy who ran the Dungeons and Dragons group
in the back of the comic book shop.
And I'm like, hey, what if I ran the game and I just take all the kids?

(28:56):
I'll run the game for the kids.
And they're like, yes, please do that.
Do that so we don't have to deal with any of the goddamn little kids.
I was like, I'm a dad.
I've got 10 year olds, 12 year olds.
I can handle little kids.
And I know how frustrating they are.
Yeah, exactly.
And I did.
And I started I started DMing for the kids and my kids had a campaign that went on

(29:19):
for about five years that I ran.
Wow. It was every week.
And I kid you not, I think that was the thing that helped us survive the pandemic.
We moved it online when everybody had to start wearing masks
and couldn't be around their friends.
And it was the one saving grace that my kids had,
because every week they knew, OK, we're going to get to go do our adventure

(29:44):
and get back into our world of magic and fun and make believe.
So I started running a table for some friends of mine and been doing that for four years now.
And I love that.
I love Dungeons and Dragons.
It's great getting to tell stories together.

(30:05):
How long does it take to play a satisfying game?
What's the least amount of time it takes for a satisfying round of Dungeons and Dragons?
Three hours.
You can do you can do a game in three hours and start.
Start escalate and finish the story.
It's better when it goes on for years.
Yeah.

(30:26):
Yeah.
The adult table I run, we're three years into the same story.
And it's every week.
And I know I know my players know this now, but they're giving me the story.
They're like, OK, well, my characters from this town has this brother lost their mom to this.
I'm like, OK, I'll use this against you.

(30:47):
I'll use this against you.
I'll use this against you.
And we'll craft the story around that.
So like eight months into the story, you're going to find you're going to find your your mom's dead body.
And it's walking around as a zombie.
And it's like, oh, crap, what happened there?
And we got to go figure this out now.
So they're feeding me all the ammunition that ends up creating the story.

(31:08):
So one of my characters had this backstory about being a dwarf and he only knew his mom.
Well, three years in, they're trying to escape from from some tunnel.
And his mom's there.
And so it's just like, OK, I pulled this from your story three years ago.
And we're going to build a bigger story because of it.
So, yeah, that's another community I'm in that I absolutely love.
It's so much fun.

(31:29):
And thank you for taking the kids.
The world needs more people to just take the kids.
OK, I'll take them.
And you're someone who can and someone who does.
So that's fantastic.
Dude, it's amazing because last year the kids game ended and I was sad about that.

(31:52):
But four of the kids I saw from like seventh grade, maybe not seventh grade, eighth grade to senior year in high school.
So I watched these kids grow up.
It's just amazing. It's like they're turning into these cool people.
It's like, OK, you were a kid and now you're a person.

(32:13):
I mean, there were people before, but now you're an adult.
Yes. And you know, they're off in college doing cool things.
I still have.
So you're telling me that your your house is called the Forge because it's a national forge.
My youngest built a coal forge on the side of our house.

(32:36):
One of the D&D kids and my two kids all get together like every other Friday.
And they're like pounding metal out on the side of the house building.
God knows what.
And future SCA people.
Yeah, I mean, two of them are in two of them in college now, but they still stop by and and still pound some metal.
It's pretty awesome.

(32:57):
So, yeah, I already feel like the empty nester feeling when because my my oldest is in college now.
And are you saying that you have a forge now?
I do. I have to. I got a propane forge.
Well, it's not mine, but it's one of the kids forge.
But you have it.
Two of them at the side of the house.
Oh, I would love to play with a forge.

(33:19):
Cool. I've never never experienced that.
And I intend to someday.
Next time my kids are forging, I will text you when they're coming over and you can come over.
They can give you a lesson on some of the safety stuff.
They'll fire up the coal for you and show you how it works.
Right. I would love to do that.
Yeah.
And I want to. I've never played Dungeons and Dragons.
And it's kind of like some I've always wanted to do.

(33:42):
Played a lot of Magic the Gathering.
OK, OK. So Wizards of the Coast, the guys who do Magic the Gathering, they bought D&D maybe 12 years ago, 15 years ago, something like that.
So they really realign the game a little bit towards Magic the Gathering.
So at least the combat aspect is is similar.
Streamlined. OK, it's easier to deal with.

(34:03):
There are two things that Magic the Gathering does not have that D&D does.
That's that's the role play, putting yourself in the skin of someone else and then exploration, like figuring out traps and train and where you are in the world.
Seems like that would be incredibly enjoyable.
It is. It is.
The Magic card game gets a little monotonous to me, unless you have to spend all your time building and overpowering decks and just doing like niche little things or else you just get beat by everybody.

(34:35):
And to me, just to play simple games with starter decks is so fun, but hard to find.
Yeah, we dipped into Magic the Gathering last year a little bit.
And yeah, it's really hard because people who know what they're doing in that game have been collecting cards for years.
And you either put all your time into it or you just quit.

(34:57):
Yeah, eventually. Yeah.
You're also involved with Soak.
Yeah.
You know, you're involved with Dungeons and Dragons. That makes perfect sense to me.
And the ethical monogamy community.
That makes sense to me.
Something you identify with, something you want to help build and create a safe space.

(35:19):
That's what I'm hearing you saying is you want to create safety where you have not felt safety.
Safety, safe to be open, not judged.
That's that's not my end goal.
My end goal is connecting people and helping foster community.
Whenever that group meets, we talk about keeping each other safe, consent.
And we don't talk about membership of who's showing up outside of the group because you never know.

(35:45):
Some people may not be out at work. Some people may not be out with family.
So you got to be careful and mindful of that.
So, yes, there's a safety aspect, but hopefully every space that I'm helping to create is a safe space.
That's not the intent. The intent is just connecting people that are otherwise feeling lonely.
OK. And then it feels like they would both of those purposes would be in the same direction.

(36:10):
Yeah, because that would bring people together in community.
But what is why are you involved with Soak?
I've been going to Soak since 2013, 2014, back when it was over in Tidewater.
An ex of mine was dating a guy who invited us to come along.
And it was just an amazing experience.

(36:33):
I had heard of Burning Man before that.
And, yeah, curious about Burning Man.
But it's always right before the kids go to school.
So it had always felt like it was hard to justify taking off and going having that kind of experience
when the kids are trying to get ready for school.
And I've got to make sure that all those things are taken care of.
So I've still never gone to Burning Man.

(36:56):
OK.
But Soak is I think it was in July.
It started out in July and now that now it's over Memorial Day weekend.
So it's at the end of school. It's a little bit easier to get away for.
It's not as long of a commitment.
So I started going in 2014. And it blew my mind.

(37:17):
The art that happens there is amazing.
The music, the dancing, the connection.
Yeah. Without looking it up, I couldn't tell you all of the ten tenants of Burning Man.
But radical inclusion is one of them.
And being someone who's shy.

(37:41):
Going around to people's different camps and being welcomed in
was something new for me.
And that being such a core part of the experience that people are really wanting to include everyone.
And so as I started experiencing it, going as a participant, experiencing the what all these camps were doing.

(38:03):
First thought was, OK, I really dig this experience.
How can I get more involved? How can I give to this and make it better?
So I found another camp that I could go with and started going with them, helping build their project.
And what it really is are announced like 200 and 250 camps, something like that.

(38:25):
But each camp is curating an experience.
We are going to bring this, whether it's a tea party, one can't brings a tea party, one can't brings a dance party.
One camp is building a meditation experience.
One camp is building an experience where if you're a musician, you can go and just jam with other musicians.
And they're working really hard to put an experience together because it's almost like all of these camps.

(38:53):
It's like, OK, well, I saw what they did last year. I saw what they did last year.
We got to step our game up. Next year, we're going to make it even better.
Then everyone shows up. They build this huge city of amazing art experience people.
It happens. And then there's no trace. It's gone. It's an experience of immediacy.

(39:15):
It's like, here it is. I'm present. I'm now in community. Yeah.
And then it's gone. I was just so impressed with the level of of creativity and beauty and experience that I wanted to get more and more involved with it.
So started out getting involved with the camp and then pandemic happened.

(39:38):
That camp, I think, split up, went their own way, still run into some of those folks, but was looking for another way to get involved because most of that community is in Portland.
So how could I get involved while I'm down here in Corvallis and not not as readily available to go and help build all the camps up there?
So one of the leads groups was had an opening. So I volunteered for that.

(40:04):
And it's it's a ton of work, but it's amazing to see it happen and get to be a part of pulling something so phenomenal off.
Wow. I helped build this. Yeah. What is what is the focus of the group you're involved with there? I do placement.
OK, so it's like an administrative group. Kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

(40:29):
Or is this the core planning group? It's it's it's a diversified. That's how it works.
There are there are producers and directors that that have overall responsibility for making everything work.
There's the greeters group who help make sure people come in.
There's a parking group who deals with people in their cars and making sure that that's not a nightmare.

(40:50):
My group manages the registration process for camps and artists that want to come and participate,
making sure that we're building an experience for people. So, OK, some camps bring bars.
You don't want the bars next to all the kids. Sure. So yeah. And there's kids camps.

(41:12):
Well, there's camps that have kids and and have an experience where that are tailored for kids. Absolutely. Wow.
This sounds like a meta community. It's pretty awesome.
I look forward to going to soak one of these years. I've been to shift one time. Oh, OK.
That's my only festival experience. It's awesome. Yeah, I haven't done shift.

(41:34):
It was transformative. One day I'm going to tell that story so I know it.
Excellent. It was like fantasy story transformation shift.
It's like corny humor that the name is shift because that's what happened. It's awesome.
Yeah. Yeah. A bunch of my friends to shift that don't do so anymore. Oh, really? OK.

(41:56):
So they're different. OK. So I look forward to just to comparing them.
The friends of mine that don't do so anymore that do shift.
I think I had frustrated a little bit with so trying to curate the experience rather than just let it be organic fully.
And maybe that's just the life cycle of a festival. Sure.

(42:19):
When you start out and you've only got a couple hundred people going, it's mostly your friends.
You don't have to worry about rules or how everything is going to fit together.
When it gets to a certain level, you got to start trying to have policies in place.
And you're dealing with organizations that are outside of yours to make sure that you're able to use the land that you want to put this thing on.

(42:43):
Have you gone to Country Fair? I haven't. No.
I think that's like the original. That's the O.G. festival experience.
And for me, I've always heard about it. Country Fair got boring.
And part of that is the vendor and its vendors at Country Fair.
And so you don't money. You don't have money. You get your ticket to get in.

(43:09):
I think you can still buy ice. That's it. It's a gifting culture.
And it's not like you can't get anything. You just can't pay for it.
Self-reliance is like a tenant of the group. So if you're going, you make sure you got enough water and food for the for your days.
Make sure you got a place to sleep. But there are camps that do food and you are responsible to bring a cup and a plate and a fork.

(43:32):
And you show up at the pancake playhouse and they're going to give you pancakes.
You show up at the ramen place. They're going to give you ramen. OK, I got to tell you a story from shift. All right.
It was like I don't know. It was one of the nights that we were there.
We were only there for a couple of nights, but I wasn't able to sleep at all.
Like I went to bed. I went to bed at one point and laid there for a half hour and realized that the sun was starting to come up.

(43:56):
And I just had this feeling of. Peace, just profound peace, and I was just like, I don't want to lay in bed.
I want to go watch this miracle happen. So I went out to the main stage and it's the sun is just starting to come up.
So it's a ghost town. There's you can hear music in the distance.

(44:18):
You can hear this and that's going on. And there's like like a couple stragglers here and there, almost like tumbleweeds.
And that's what it felt like. Just wide open space, empty stage. All the energy is still there.
The camp is alive, but it's all sleep. It's all anyway.
So I find a bench and I'm just sitting there watching the light grow around me, watching the people do their little acts.

(44:46):
It's so funny. I mean, it was just hilarious. There's a guy that was like had a metal detector, but it's not a real one.
And it's this whole act where he interacts with people and gets a laugh out of them.
And he was doing it even though there was no people there to do it with.
It was wonderful. And I was just feeling this sense of profound peace, belonging. Everything was right.

(45:07):
Just the way it was. And. All of a sudden, these two people walk up to me.
With a pot and a cup. And they give me a grilled cheese sandwich and put a ladle of tomato soup in the cup and say some super sweet thing and walk away.

(45:33):
Yeah. And it was like after a long, very energetic dancing, crazy night, wild bands, wild stuff happening to sit there in this profound hush.
And bite into a hot grilled cheese sandwich and take a sip of tomato soup where before there was there was no food.

(45:57):
It just magically appeared. And even though there was nobody looking at me, I felt so seen and so at rest.
The world is all right. It was beautiful. No, that's it. That's the experience.
OK, so I hear kind of a thread through all of this. Everything you do has a purpose of bringing people together, creating community, just giving people confidence in themselves.

(46:21):
In my mind, I still see like you're trying to make a safe space for people. I don't know. I don't want to feel like that, that I'm that pretentious.
But why would that be? Why would that feel pretentious? If that's what you want?
Well, every year around this time I sit with last 15 years, I sit with my kids and we do New Year's resolutions.

(46:42):
We take a look at the year. What went right for us? What went wrong? What are areas we can improve?
And almost every year for the past 20 years on my New Year's resolution has been make friends.
How do I make friends? So awkward about it. And tried the meetup groups, tried tried so many different things to make friends.

(47:08):
And previously, you know, after high school, the only friends I made were from playing music.
So being in different bands and yes, some of those have been lifelong friendships, but that can't be the only way to make friends.
And I can't do music to the level that I was doing it in my 20s and 30s. And I still go out and play every once in a while.

(47:34):
I still play every day. I play my instrument every day. Go to open mics every once in a while.
But putting that much time and energy and heart into a music project isn't something I can do anymore. It's it hurts too much.
Yes, it's it's very taxing and takes a lot of vulnerability and it often doesn't go anywhere.

(47:55):
And I have other interests now. I can't put my heart into that at this point in life.
So I was stymied for like 15 years. How do I make friends? I work at home.
Before that, when I was living in the Bay Area, I worked an hour and a half away from where I lived.
So work friends were almost never a possibility for me. Right now I work with family.

(48:19):
That's great. They're going to be my family. Love those guys. But it's not helping me make friends locally.
I've had relationships when I got divorced. All my friends were gone.
Stupid cliche. But when a couple gets divorced, it feels like almost always the one partner gets all the friends and the other one doesn't.

(48:41):
That's baffling. And that's that's infuriating. Sometimes I have seen that pattern too.
So how as a grown ass adult do we make friends? That are our friends, independent of our romantic relationships.
So that's been that's been the goal. And so just trying to figure out how I do that.

(49:04):
I got involved with Soak. I got involved with D&D and got involved with the ethical non-monogamous community.
I got involved with other communities and have spun those down since because these ones I'm finding are where I'm making friends.
So it was more about just trying to be to make friends. And honestly, even that came from a study I read years ago that I think I think it was Harvard or MIT has done like this 100 years long study.

(49:28):
On aging men, the number one factor for happiness, long term happiness for men is community.
Building community, building long standing, long lasting relationships was the number one factor that they identified for men's happiness.
It's like, OK, I'm a depressed MFer. I've had really bad depression for most of my life. How do I get happy? Well, these Harvard guys are probably pretty smart.

(50:00):
Maybe I need to start figuring out how to make friends and make, you know, building community. So where it started.
And OK, that part is selfish for sure. I want to be happy. So trying to figure out ways to do it.
Selfish. Well, maybe I'll be more selfish. If that's selfishness, then selfishness will make the world a better place.

(50:22):
If everybody says, how can I be happier? Because a happy person has a happy surrounding.
Yeah, there is nothing in my opinion. There is nothing more selfless than to be willing to put the question, how can I be happy at the very top of your priorities?

(50:43):
It's a perspective thing, though. Yeah, I. It depends on what you mean by happy and I in all that stuff.
But I mean the self-serving part of, OK, yes, I want to build community. I want to help these communities.
I want to offer safe spaces. And I had been hosting a lot of things at my house so that people had a place where they could meet and gather.
And yeah, I want to offer that safe space. But there's the ulterior motive that, yes, I understand that I'm doing this because I want to build community and friends.

(51:11):
Because if the number one thing that's going to make a human happy long term in this world is community and friendship.
There's a little bit of self-serving interest in that. Yeah, OK. It's not completely altruistic.
The human brain has an incredible capacity to find motivations that either don't exist or are such fringe fringe motivations that they're not even worth looking at.

(51:38):
And to make those the focus because there's trauma inside us and things we're afraid are wrong with us that make us somehow not fit into the tribe.
And that's the ultimate human fears get kicked out of the tribe or the tribe.
Not find the tribe. If you're people like me and what I'm hearing you to say, you had to find a tribe and it sounds like it or built it.

(52:05):
Sure. Absolutely. And what I'm curious about is how many people do you have in your life right now that you feel that you can be completely yourself with with no mask?
You know, part of me wants to say all of them. Do you have one? Absolutely.

(52:30):
Well, after that, the numbers kind of stop mattering. Yeah, absolutely.
I would I would say most of most of my close friends I don't ask with that.
Do you realize how rare that is in this world for a human to feel that way?
Yeah. OK. What do you attribute it to?
You've kind of told me the narrative about how you got there.
What is the like? What is the thing that makes it letting go of the worry of rejection?

(52:56):
Hmm. Wasn't the type of people or where you found them or anything particular, just your own worry.
OK, I'm going to do some masking here because I don't know who's going to listen to this.
Mask away. All right. So I also don't know. OK, I have multiple partners.
Also, if you mess up, you will have the opportunity to hear this before it goes out. And anything you're not comfortable with, I'm not comfortable with.

(53:22):
Got it. Got it. You are safe. All right. So. Let's just talk about sexual proclivities.
Yes. On so many levels, when you're trying to meet a partner or trying to meet someone that you can connect deeply with romantically,
there is a certain sexual aspect that we have wants, needs, desires that we're hoping merge with someone else or that work with what they want.

(53:51):
For so long, there has been a reluctance to be honest with myself and with others about what I enjoy and what I want.
Getting to the place of not giving a fuck, whether I'm rejected for that was hard.

(54:13):
And so I started just cutting the bullshit. It's like first date with someone.
This is what I like. This is who I am. And just front loading all of my weirdness.
It's like, OK, well, if you know this, this, this, this, this and this about me.
And you still want to hang out. All right, cool. I don't worry about the rest of the shit.

(54:36):
And then you can drop the masks. It's going it's going into those situations unmasked.
At the very beginning, you're saying, hey, this is what I look like underneath it all, because I'm not going to be in a relationship that I have to wear the shit.
Exactly. And that came from coming out of my my marriage.
I asked myself, did I want ethical non-monogamy because of that relationship or because it's the way I'm built?

(55:04):
Whoa. And I really had to do a deep dive. That's an uncomfortable question.
Yeah, we didn't connect in a lot of ways that I would have liked to connect.
Did I want ethical non-monogamy because I was looking at a list of wants and needs and I was getting these needs met, these needs not meant.
And I thought, well, OK, maybe we need to mix and match different people to figure out how we feel fulfilled in relationships.

(55:27):
Or are people ultimately built differently where non-monogamy is something that is intrinsic to the person?
I don't know. First relationship I had post divorce.
I picked this person up at divorce school and I'm so proud of myself for that.

(55:49):
In Oregon, you've got to go to divorce school. Of course.
Yeah, yeah. So just you just have to go to divorce school so you know how badly you're going to get fucked.
It's not necessarily a bad thing because they want you to look at it's like, OK, you put the kids first.
You're going to bring your fights into the house and talk shit about your ex.
All good things. But they make you do the class and this cute person there.

(56:16):
And we sat next to each other. We hit it off. I asked her out for a drink after school.
We dated for six months. Oh, my God. Not still together? No.
I mean, what a what a what an offbeat Cinderella story is.
I mean, it's very cool. It stayed friends.
But it was interesting because we started dating and I was just upfront about it.

(56:40):
It's like, OK, I was in a non-monogamous situation before getting divorced.
I think I'm built this way.
I think it's an intrinsic part of who I am, that I'm just non-monogamous.
She had a hard time accepting that. I told her I don't have a problem practicing monogamy.
We can practice monogamy while we're dating.

(57:03):
But I think it might be the case that I'm built differently.
And she would try almost every other week.
She's like, I met this guy. He wanted me to come over and have a glass of wine.
I'm like, that's awesome. You just got it for us. Go have fun. Go meet new people.

(57:26):
You're not you're not jealous. No, I'm not jealous.
Why aren't you jealous? And she wanted me to be jealous because she felt that our connection was more real if I was feeling anyway, didn't feel jealousy about it.
So culturally, there's wrong with not feeling jealous in the Western culture.
I just don't feel it. Sorry. Sorry. I think you're great. I'm enjoying all the time we're spending together.

(57:49):
I think we could build a relationship here, but I'm still not going to get jealous if you go have a if you go to someone else.
It's just not something that's going to worry me.
Yes. Anyway, you're in good company.
Yeah, I don't remember where I was going with that story.
I mean, that means I got super excited about you.
You know what compersion means, then I do.
Yeah, it's a beautiful thing.

(58:11):
It is. Oh, God, I've got I've got feelings about compersion, too.
Did your marriage end because of your non monogamy or you're exploring it?
I'm assuming you started exploring after you got married or you started to realize it after you got married.
I should just ask instead of assuming.
I'm not going to talk about it about that exploration because reasons.

(58:39):
Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Perfect.
It did not end because of that. OK, my ex and I are still really good friends, good co-parents.
Sweet. But we ultimately understood we wanted different things.
She definitely wanted monogamy. I didn't I wasn't built for it. OK.

(59:00):
That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.
And we're definitely in a good place. She's much happier. I'm much happier.
And it's amazing how many people because of the powerful influence of the like just the way we look at relationship in the Western culture generally.
That you just you don't ever quit.

(59:22):
You made promises and you keep your promises no matter what.
And so people will drag on a life of absolute misery and also work to try to convince themselves that they're happy when all they'd have to do is just accept that this isn't I'm we're not compatible anymore.
Maybe maybe we never were. I don't know. But just let it go. Stop trying to hold something that doesn't exist anymore.

(59:46):
Oh, I am so guilty of that. And likewise, I owe my ex-wife's wife a deep thank you.
Yeah. So my my ex and I were in a fight or married and her girlfriend comes over and she's like, can't you guys see that you and your kids would be so much happier if you just split up?

(01:00:11):
And I come from an Irish Catholic background. And it's like, yes, fuck you. You have no idea.
My no, the nuclear family is the most important thing. And I don't care how miserable I am. I'm going to stick this out and be miserable for the rest of my life so that my kids raise miserable kids, too.
And oh, my God, she was so right. She my ex-wife's happy. I'm happy at the kids. The kids were not fucked up by the divorce. They they are happy.

(01:00:42):
Yeah, she was so right. It was it was hard to hear at the time, but she was so goddamn right. It was awesome.
That's beautiful. And it sounds like your kids parents are finding themselves. And so the kids are therefore definitely finding themselves as well.
They are. You can't that kids follow parents. I'm watching it in my life. That's just that you want to be a good parent.
Then stop trying to be a good parent and be yourself. You're not going to do it the way anyone else is going to do it.

(01:01:07):
Yeah, that's what I'm that's what I'm learning anyway. And it's so far so good.
And it makes it it just makes the experience such a pleasure. Because I get to be me.
Yeah, the more you try and force them into what you think they should be, the more they try and wiggle out of that.
And you just. Yeah, square peg round hole. You can't do it.

(01:01:32):
So let them be what they're going to be and try and give them the guidance and support that you can share some stories and experiences.
But yes, this point, my goal is I just want to be there for them when they need something, when they need someone to talk to so that I'm someone that they can trust.
That isn't going to overreact when they tell me something that is going to be there when they fall down.

(01:01:57):
Help them up. If they fall down. I hope they're trying something hard enough that they fall down and thank you.
Break some things. Yes. And who are they going to think of when they break something and they need help?
Yeah, exactly. I'd like my kids to think of me when they're in trouble and not think of me as oh crap.

(01:02:19):
How do I keep dad from finding out? I want to be the person that they want to come to.
And that's not who I have been. Because I did try to control them.
And so I think I stopped trying to control them a while ago. Yeah.
But it is an interesting line to try and walk because, yes, I have given my kids consequences, delivered the consequences when they've said, right, you did this.

(01:02:47):
Usually it's the natural consequence. And if you can get to the natural consequence, that's my better teacher than any kind of imposed consequence.
At least that's my belief. And it will always come. Yeah. Regardless of what you do.
But I also I'm still trying to model for them what being an adult is for the longest time.
I tried to protect them from my experience. Like, keep the keep the facade up. Everything's good.

(01:03:18):
Mm hmm. Protect them from the experience you were going through. Yes. So I got dumped pretty pretty harshly about four years ago and.
I decided to let them see me grieve. It's like I'm not going to hide this from them. It's not a bad thing.
It's like that relationships over. It was a beautiful relationship. I learned a lot from it. It's gone. I hurt. I'm going to let them see that.

(01:03:45):
If they see some tears fall, it's OK. And if they see you get emotionally messy. Yeah. Let them see that.
Let them see. Yes. Let the because I was raised by a dad that didn't didn't allow emotion.
It's like, no, you you are a man. You don't get to show emotion. You don't get to cry. You don't get to hurt.

(01:04:06):
And I think that's frickin just damaging as hell to little dudes and generational doodads, too. But I only had dudes.
Yes. So I didn't want to pass that on. I wanted to let them see tears and grief and anguish and recovery and growth.
And OK, now we're going to start dating again and we're going to life's going to go on.

(01:04:29):
We're going to be fine. And, you know, we got each other here, you know, and we fight sometimes and we hurt.
Yep. Because that's true for them, too. Mm hmm. How can they want to come to us if they think that we're not like them?
Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious where you come from. How you got your start.

(01:04:52):
Are you how do you feel about just giving me some broad brushstrokes of your upbringing?
See, born in Colorado. What part? Colorado Springs. Beautiful place.
Yeah, it's interesting. Grew up in Colorado Springs. Went to school outside of the Air Force Academy.
So that was that was an interesting experience.

(01:05:13):
Lived in the poorest little square of what was one of the richest areas of Colorado Springs.
So I had a hard time fitting in in school. And I think that was that was good for me.
Do you have siblings? I do. I have a brother and a sister, both younger.
Like a lot younger. Or were you how close were you to them growing up?

(01:05:37):
My sister and I are pretty close. My brother and I said, see, he's 14 years younger than me.
So not as close to him. He didn't, you know, he grew up after I after I left home.
Not real close to my folks. Have not talked to them in 10 years. Why?
There's a lot of dysfunction. So, OK. So Colorado Springs, you're like you did your whole.

(01:06:02):
You go to high school there, too. So born in Colorado Springs, grew up in San Diego until about second grade.
Then the family moved from San Diego back to Colorado Springs.
Lived in Colorado Springs until I graduated from from college from Boulder and then got married right after graduation
or actually right before graduation. And my ex-wife got into grad school in Berkeley.

(01:06:29):
So moved to the Bay Area. OK. Lived, worked, played music in the Bay Area for 14 years, 13 years, something like that.
What did you do there? Like for work, large account management for a couple of global semiconductor companies.
So I sold semiconductors to Apple Computer. Wow. Yeah.

(01:06:50):
For the for the French and Italians first and then for the Koreans and worked for Hynix and STMicroelectronics.
Yeah. That's a niche. It was fun, dude. I've I've I've traveled the world.
I've seen a lot of places. I am so glad that I don't do that, though.

(01:07:11):
Now I work with family. But yeah, growing up in Colorado Springs was was was great.
It was it was a really weird experience because somewhere in my high school experience,
the New Life Church, I think it was the New Life Church and Focus on the Family to religious groups moved into town.

(01:07:32):
I know their headquarters, family headquarters up there. And it went it got really weird overnight.
So I grew up Catholic and went to, you know, went to the Catholic services on Sunwell.
I went and had donuts. My folks made me go to church and I would just go and eat donuts and then come home.
So but but it got it got really, really interesting because they started handing out Bibles.

(01:08:00):
On my high school campus, doing these weird gatherings at the flagpole where as you'd walk into class,
they would scream at you that you're going to hell if you didn't join them.
They would have Bible groups. There'd be pictures of Jesus like posted on our lockers.
And it was like overnight revival. Yeah, it was it was so weird.
It's like they give us this wafer on Sundays.

(01:08:24):
And I think if I eat the wafer, I don't go to hell. So I don't know that I need your gallery at the flag.
I didn't really understand Catholicism all that much here.
But it was like Catholicism seemed like a pretty conservative religion. And these guys were way more.
Even back then, were you like I think you're you have kind of an you see yourself as an atheist somewhat,

(01:08:48):
at least soft core atheist, maybe. Yeah. Yeah.
There's a are you familiar with Catholicism? Yes.
OK. So I think it's right around age 12. You have to do this this confirmation where you stand up in front of the
front of your congregation and you have to you have to say some words.
And you have to do classes.

(01:09:10):
And I got into a fight with the priest in these classes because they wanted at least how it was explained to me in my little 12 year old mind at the time was that you had to say that the only way to God was through Jesus.
And I had a real problem with this because there were a lot of people on the planet that I was pretty sure at that time that hadn't heard of this dude.

(01:09:32):
And I was like, well, what about these guys and these guys?
You're saying the only way. So if they're not going to heaven, that means they're going to hell.
And he's like, yeah, so that doesn't seem fair.
He's like, well, that's why we have to that's why we need missionaries to go and spread the word.
I was like, well, yeah, but don't you think that if we had what you're saying is this all power all knowing God that he would create people or create the system a little bit better so they all heard about this dude so that everybody would hear this.

(01:10:02):
And instead of sending. So you're telling me that I have to say that I believe in a God who creates people knowingly.
Knowing that they are going to go to hell because I didn't go and tell them about Jesus.
And the priest said, yes. And I was like, yeah, I'm out.

(01:10:25):
Where did you get those ideas from? Did it come from your family at all?
No, that's no, no, it's just thinking about it's like, okay, you're saying this.
This is really these are really the words you're saying that I know what the it's like there's a billion people in China, a billion people in in India or somewhere around those numbers back then that are being created by a God that don't know about Jesus that get to go to hell.

(01:10:50):
And you my understanding of hell at that point was fire, brimstone and you know, devil poking you in the took us with a hot poker.
It's like that doesn't seem fair that that seems that seems evil to me.
So I don't know that I can stand up in front of my friends, family, congregation and say these words that I don't believe in.

(01:11:17):
It's like I can't believe that I've since talked to people who have said no, no, this dude explained it wrong.
So you're right. Well, you know, that was that was what was presented to me. And at that point I checked out and you were 12. Yeah.
Yeah, it's like that. That just doesn't seem right.
So what kind of stuff did you like to do at 12? Just generally in that whole time as a kid like what type of a kid? What did you do for fun?

(01:11:47):
I built Legos.
I had a Lego collection. Were you a solo kid? Yep.
I started playing music at about age 16.
And that's when I started getting friends was by playing music, playing bass in a local band, high school band.
Is that mainly what you play is bass? OK, do you play in a band now? Do you have any?

(01:12:13):
No, no aspirations to play in bands. I know you talked about it. You said you don't have time. OK, it's it's I don't have the heart.
OK, I don't have the heart. But that was tied to making friends, making friends.
You had to play the music in order to make friends. But what if you just play the music just because you want to?
I still do. You still do that. I still play guitar. Yeah. But just for yourself. Yeah. Yeah.

(01:12:41):
It's hard to explain. I I I love it so much that I can't do it casually.
It's not something that I do well, casually, at least not bass or or cooperative playing with other people.
I've had many bands over the years.
Never more than one at a time, because when I find a project that I like.

(01:13:06):
I throw heart and energy and time into it.
And if when it comes to an end, it's heartbreaking.
My my big project ran from like 2004 to 2012, something like that.
When that ended, my heart was broken.

(01:13:27):
Previously to that, that would still happen.
You get in a band, put put everything into it, all the heart, all the soul, all the energy.
Record make music. These were like family brothers.
There is no other experience I've had like it where you.

(01:13:50):
Create something in real time and you share that kind of emotional intensity with other people.
Where your energy and vibe are so connected and so just in sync.
It's like meditation. You get to that next level of consciousness where you can feel what the guitar player is going to play next.

(01:14:12):
You know it. You don't have to think about it.
You don't have to think where your fingers are going.
You don't have to worry about the words coming out of your mouth.
You are just in this bliss state and it's amplified with the other people creating it with you.
There's nothing else like it. It's better than sex.

(01:14:33):
And when that ends, it's worse than any relationship I've ever seen break up.
And for so many times, be like, OK, the band ends, it breaks up.
I would sell all my gear.
And then I'd find someone else who wants to play music. OK, I'll go get a bass. I'll go get an amp. Do it again.

(01:14:54):
Then when my wife got into grad school, it was in the Bay Area.
Lonely, traveling for work down in San Jose, living in Oakland. No friends. How do I make friends? OK.
Get on Craigslist. Let's find a band that's looking for a bass player. I'll go play bass. I'll meet some people. I'll make some friends.
Get a social life. Get involved in that project.

(01:15:17):
And it's like, OK, now I'm booking shows and promoting gigs, making posters, writing songs.
We're going into the studio. We're making albums. We're going on tour. OK, we're going to try and make it.
We're going to we're going to make this thing work. And it's it's like another full time job.
And yes, but so much into it. And then it ends. And it's heartbreaking.

(01:15:39):
So I can't do that to myself again. And I got sucked into another one.
I was playing poker with these guys here in town and like, hey, you need to meet my buddy.
He's he's in a band with this this other guy. They need a bass player.
Like for two years, they were pitching me on this band. I'm like, no, I'm done with the shit.

(01:16:00):
I'm not doing that anymore. I'm not doing that to myself. After two years of getting a pitch to me, it's like, fine, I'll go fucking play with these guys.
I remember having a call with him. I'm like, all right, I'm not buying an amp.
You want me to come play. I'll play. But you're providing the amp. You're you're providing the speaker.
I'll show up with my bass. I'll play your goddamn songs.

(01:16:21):
And I did. And I fucking fell in love with it again.
And I'm helping them workshop songs. I'm like, OK, well, I got an engineer down in Berkeley.
We can go record. We go record.
Got got a little EP out of it. And then the guitar player is like, I'm out. I'm like, fuck, I did it again.
I fell into it. God damn. And it's just heartbreaking every every single time. It's so goddamn heartbreaking.

(01:16:44):
And I love those guys. I really do. And I don't begrudge any of that journey.
I love every moment of it. I love getting back on stage and playing songs and playing in front of people.
But I just can't do that to my heart anymore. You are musically heartbroken.
Totally. Over and over again.

(01:17:05):
Oh, that's a difficult place to be because you you have such a deep love for it.
Yeah, I still do. It's a thing that you your life is it is part of your life.
It is who you are. And yeah, it hurts because that intimacy is also very vulnerable.

(01:17:27):
It is. Oh, my goodness.
So I had a conversation with the guitar player I played with on the prior project.
And this was the project that oh, shit, that still some of the some of my favorite music to even listen to is the music that we made.
I love it. And yeah, OK. It's my music. So I get to love it.

(01:17:48):
I was talking to talking to the guitar player the other day, maybe last year.
I have a really good sense of time. And we pitched to studios or we pitched to labels. We got feedback from labels and it was good feedback.
It's like, hey, these are these are great songs. Do a couple do a couple more tours.
Send us your next EP. You're really close. You guys are really close.

(01:18:10):
Let's, you know, improve your songwriting. We want to listen to your next one.
Did that recorded the next one, started shopping it and we split up.
But we we had tours. We went and we went played South by Southwest and had more fun than I can imagine having.

(01:18:32):
Wait, South by Southwest. Yeah. Isn't that like that? I've heard that name before. Yeah, it's the big it's the big festival in in Austin.
You played that? Yeah, yeah, we got to play South by Southwest. That was awesome. What an experience. It was awesome.
And both both Jose and I had little kids at that point.
Arden Arden was just born and it's.

(01:18:58):
It's really like this one where the road splits.
It's like, OK, we could go on this path. Not see our kids tour all the time.
Build the fan base the way you're supposed to. Maybe we get label attention or we're going to be home with our kids.

(01:19:22):
And both of us were sitting there going, oh, my God, I'm so glad that we did not choose that other path.
I'm so glad we didn't get signed by a label.
So we got to have that rock and roll experience in our in our thirties.
Where we had all the fun we wanted to have. We partied, we toured.

(01:19:46):
We got to pretend to be rock stars for a couple of weeks here and there when we'd go out on tour.
We're not followed by paparazzi. We get to have privacy. Right.
The lead singer of or the bass player from Green Day just did this and it's all in the papers or whatever the bullshit is.
It's like we don't have to deal with that. We get I get privacy as a nonmonogamous person.

(01:20:10):
Could I really live the lifestyle I have if we had actually made it the way we wanted to make it or what we thought we wanted to do when we were.
You know, in our early thirties, I don't think I could. I don't think I'd be happy.
I like privacy and relative anonymity. And and so we're commiserating about that.

(01:20:36):
It's like we still we still listen to our old music and say, damn, that was those were fun times.
I'm glad I had the experience. I'm glad I got on stage in front of a couple hundred people and rocked the fucking house.
And I can go home and raise my kids in relative peace in this wonderful town.

(01:21:00):
Even look what bands have to do now, like because they're not most of them aren't making any money on the music.
Like it's all on Spotify. People aren't buying CDs or discs anymore.
So you're getting a couple of pennies every time or maybe a penny every time someone spins one of your songs.
They're making their their money on tours, selling merchandise.

(01:21:21):
What kind of life would I have if I had to be on the road 200 days a year?
Oh, my God, that would have been miserable.
I wouldn't have been able to have the relationship with my kids that I have.
And that's more important than chasing some dream of being a rock star.
What about a middle ground where you just play music because you want to on the stage because you like it and don't chase anything?

(01:21:46):
I have a really hard time doing that. I still play music for myself.
I still record music for myself.
Is it that you feel like if you step back into it, you're going like it's either all the way pedal all the way down or nothing?
Pretty much. I don't do anything half ass.
But you said that doing it feels better than sex.

(01:22:07):
When you're doing it with a group, I can't put my time into another group.
I just don't want that.
What I'm trying to figure out is, is there a middle ground where you can do it with a group without putting that much time into it?
Because it sounds like I mean, what if like there's the world's got to be full.
Hell, Corvallis has to be full of people who are in the exact same boat you are and are just like, I just want to play for fun.

(01:22:30):
Because talk about bringing community together like local coffee, like like the little pub, just the little bring in like just little in the park, like freaking whatever.
Like it's time and it's it's it's understanding when the when the story is over.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like I I have a lot of hobbies.
Yeah, I paint.

(01:22:51):
I've written novels.
I've written screenplays.
You're a freaking artist, bro.
I'm running D&D Adventures where I get to write a story that I take my friends on.
That is taking the place of music.
Gotcha.
And it's not that next level meditative state.
Yes.
But there's still there's still some flow happening there in a good D&D session where I've created a landscape thrown all these chess pieces on for people.

(01:23:19):
And I get to watch my friends interact with that world where they're riffing on each other and the story that I've brought them the story they've brought me.
It's very much like playing music for me.
And you don't get your heart broken at the end.
Yeah.
I mean, maybe maybe they'll all quit on me and I'll be like, fuck, I have so much more story to tell.
But this is D&D and you can always host different table.
Exactly.

(01:23:40):
And I'm learning.
It's not as intimate for you.
It's not.
But it scratches a similar edge.
Yes.
And it's recognizing that that story is ended.
That I lived that life and I'm OK with that being.
I'm not just I'm more than OK with that story being done.
OK.
Wow.

(01:24:01):
So it's ended and that's your choice.
Yeah.
Yeah. OK.
And if I'd been listening to everything you've been saying, you've been saying that.
It's not that I don't get the inclination to do it, but I also just know how much time it takes to get to that.
It takes a ton of time and practice to get to this to a state of.

(01:24:22):
Excellence.
And it requires the commitment of other people to get to that state of excellence, whereas I can play the music I want to hear.
By myself to yourself.
Record it.
Get a get a good drum loop going on it.
I can play the guitars and play the bass.
I can do some vocals on it and I can craft something that it's not the same thing, but I still get the creative output.

(01:24:48):
And yeah, I want to write books.
I want to I want to paint.
I want to do other things that are more interesting to me than creating another music project.
OK. Yeah.
And I've got recordings of those music projects.
So it's like, OK, well, I did the thing.
I've got a recording of it.
I'm good with that.
I can let that go.
Are there are they recordings that I can find online?

(01:25:11):
It's on Spotify.
What do I look for?
Well, you can look for the passive aggressives.
I will do that.
Yeah, I look forward to hearing this.
Oh, my goodness.
OK.
Are you?
I'll send you a link.
Perfect.
I'll put it in the show notes.
Awesome.
Are you doing the drawing and the reading and writing?

(01:25:35):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Are you doing that?
Yeah, I am.
Do you have any upcoming literary works?
Or do you write just for yourself?
The D&D stuff I write for myself mostly.
Sounds like you could make a whole fantasy series out of a five year long game.
Do people do that?
Yeah, they do.
Kind of, but not really, because for most of it, it was an out of the box.

(01:25:59):
It was an out of the box set.
So D&D will publish adventures.
OK.
So I ran my kids through two published adventures.
And then we reset and did a vampire story called Curse of Strahd, which is a phenomenal D&D adventure.
I took my adult players through one of the water deep adventures.

(01:26:26):
And then we did Curse of Strahd.
So we finished Curse of Strahd.
And everything after that is my writing based on crap that I put into the Strahd adventure.
So they give you these out of the box adventures.
And there's no rule saying that, oh, you have to play it just like this.
So I rewrote some of the hooks in the Strahd adventure to allow for an after story.

(01:26:54):
And we're going through the after story now.
So it's the ramifications of, OK, if you go through this Strahd adventure and you kill the big bad vampire, what happens?
What are the ramifications in the world for doing this?
Why was this there?
And so I wrote a back story for why it was there.
And now my players have to deal with that.
So yes, I'm writing that.
Deep world building.
Yeah, deep world building.
And is that what you're writing about?

(01:27:16):
Or do you have other projects?
I'm writing a young adult novel.
Or I have written a young adult novel.
Working on the second one.
I've gone through the first round of editing on the first one.
I have to compile those edits.
And then I pitch it hopefully to a publisher.
So what is what genre is it?
Or what can you tell me about it?

(01:27:37):
Young adult fantasy.
Fantasy, of course.
Concept being sometime in the short, in the near future, there is a cataclysm of some sort on this planet that changes things.
Technologies doesn't work.
And the United States breaks up into different enclaves.

(01:28:02):
In this world, there are monsters.
And government had been holding those monsters at bay.
Now that an overarching government is gone, the monsters are coming to be.
So it's a story about getting a bunch of kids because there's a technology aspect to it where the kids can use a certain technology that adults, because their minds are less flexible, have a harder time using.

(01:28:36):
So they try and find kids that have a natural propensity to use a certain technology and help them grow to a place where they can keep the monsters at bay and civilization can come back to thriving.
I need a better pitch than that because you're pitching like one of my very favorite genre niches there.

(01:29:04):
Do you have a working type like it is it?
It's called the sleep squad.
Sleep squad.
And it sounds like you may have be close enough to releasing on your first one that you may have a timeline.
How soon will how soon could it possibly be consumable?
I envision it as two five book series.
So I've got the outline for the first five fairly well written out the second five roughly outlined.

(01:29:31):
I've written the first one.
I'm halfway through the second one.
I kind of want to get a little bit further along because what I'm finding out is that I re outline as I go through the as I go through the story.
It's like, OK, this is this is where the story is.
As I've gotten to know this character a little bit more through the story, I don't know that they're going to make this decision.
So OK, we need to we need to re outline.

(01:29:54):
And so it's it's it's still a work in progress.
I did print out my first draft and I've let people read my first draft.
There are a lot of typos and a friend of mine's friend of mine's daughter actually was looking for some work and suffered to go do the proofreading.
So I've got that feedback.
I need to incorporate that into the first draft, then get my pitch plan together and I'll start pitching it.

(01:30:19):
That's an exciting work.
It's fun.
That's an exciting genre for me.
And it makes me think of a book series called Have You Read the Emberverse?
No series.
The reason I found the Emberverse series is because I was at Camp Rayleigh out of the coast.
I was in the in with the National Guard doing a training and I had some time to go off base for some reason.

(01:30:41):
And it's wherever middle of nowhere on the Oregon coast.
But there was a bookshop.
So I went in there and I found a book called A Meeting at Corvallis.
I'm like, what?
I'm reading this.
It's fantasy.
It looked like the cover had like I don't remember which one that one is.
Anyway, it's you can tell it's kind of post apocalyptic.
Yeah, that's that's my favorite genres.

(01:31:04):
Like how do we rebuild society after the shit hits the fan?
Because I think we all have a feeling it's coming pretty soon.
Unfortunately, and here in ways, many ways.
But yes, I agree with you.
So the first three books dies the fire.
A meeting at Corvallis and.

(01:31:26):
I can't remember what the third one's called, but it's about like there's a shift, major shift that happens and technology stops working.
But in a very specific ways, you know, it's it's and I don't want to get into the whole story.
So it's so interesting.
But it's set in the Willamette Valley.
Oh, nice.
And it's like you're it's kind of like like things split up in certain ways.

(01:31:49):
But like you've got a history professor that takes over Portland as a warlord.
And then he spends the whole series.
He's trying to take over the whole valley and the Oregon State faculty takes over Corvallis.
And it's the only Democratic region left in all of like like all the football players are the Knights.

(01:32:11):
And, you know, it just kind of like plays with it like that because internal combustion doesn't work and electrical synapses don't work.
Excellent. A local writer.
No, he moved here for five years.
Oh, cool.
To learn the neighborhood.
And it is so crazy being someone who knows this area and travels the I-5 corridor.
And he talks about all the hamlets, all the little towns around and how people congregate together and what happened, what happened on the coast.

(01:32:35):
And it's just it's like this is an alternate history that's happening in my home.
Like there's literally a fort in the hospital on the hill in Corvallis and the bridge, the way the bridges are, it's set up so that anyway, it is so interesting.
But it just made me think of that.
I will never read it.
Not until I publish because if I start reading a book and I'm like, oh, frick, this is because yeah, it's a common enough trope that.

(01:33:03):
Because every story is actually telling the same story.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The human condition.
That's all this is.
Yeah. So if I start reading a story that looks like it's going to go or that it could possibly go similarly, I'm like, OK, I don't want the influence.
I don't I don't want to worry about having to isolate that story from what from what I'm trying to create.
So I just I put it down and I've got a few books that are just like, OK, when I'm done with this, I'll read those.

(01:33:29):
But, dude, that makes blazing sense to me.
Yeah, I don't I don't want to be influenced.
I want to see what I can what I can put out because already I'm I'm I'm influenced so much by by other authors.
Yeah. Well, you can't help but be because you're a human.
That's how you learn. I'm excited.
I'm excited to see what you know.

(01:33:51):
Yeah, I'll share. It's a good genre by a brain that's steeped in epic fantasy.
Yes, please. Yes, please.
Yeah, I do worry because like from from what from from what I've read, you have to be careful.
You have to either pick fantasy or science fiction.
And there's parts of this book that are science fiction, parts of this book that are fantasy.

(01:34:15):
It's like, all right, well, fuck it.
How about you can't do it? You can't.
You're not supposed to do it, but I'm going to do it anyway.
Thank God, because thank God that's that's what came to me. This is this is what came to me.
And it's it's yet to mix a science fiction and fantasy.
So like there's a there's there's a there's a science fiction reason why magic is working.

(01:34:39):
So there's a magic system in the book, but it's coming from.
It's coming from a science fiction kind of reason. So it may not work, but I'm going to write it anyway.
I'm going to finish it. I can't remember where I heard this.

(01:35:01):
I think I was listening to a podcast. I listen to so many.
It's just stupid. But somebody was making an argument for.
OK, the thing that the world values the most is unique. That's it.
So like you go back in time to the artists that are that you can that you hear about that, you know,

(01:35:24):
about it's because they were doing something that couldn't be done.
That's the only reason because the world values above all something that is original, something that is unique.
And it's arguable that anything is really unique or world just kind of rehashing the other side of the coin.
Correct. Yeah. No, you're right. Fresh fresh take on it.

(01:35:45):
I want to be be about characters and characters growing.
Yeah, I like the story and I like the arc of what's happening in the world and the world building.
That's fun. But ultimately, I'm hoping that the characters are compelling and that I can create characters that the reader cares about.

(01:36:09):
And you're caring about these these kids that are struggling to survive and making hard choices.
And I mean, I'll start it out as like, you know, reading stories to my kids at night.
And it's like, OK, well, we can read Winnie the Pooh or I can just riff on a story and we call them stories from head.

(01:36:32):
Like, yeah, dad, we'd like a story. And just just tell the kids a story about some adventure that they went on.
It's like, oh, you guys went on and I was like, oh, so I wanted to write a book that my kids could read or that my kids would want to read.
And we'll see. Oh, I wonder if that my stomach's gone. I wonder if that's going to get picked up on the tape.

(01:36:53):
I hope so. Originality. That's what people are after.
OK. And then you also mentioned art, like I believe, like painting or drawing some type of stuff.
Do you actively are you doing that or is that for your writing?
No, no, it's just a different a different expression.
You've been in my house. Have I? I think you came to.

(01:37:14):
If I if I went there one time, I probably don't remember it.
OK, especially if it was very long ago. I thought you came to one of the parties.
I don't think I did. Oh, OK. Well, come next time.
I'm not saying I didn't have a terrible memory, but cool.
I do poor painting. It's a type of painting where you water down acrylic paints, you throw it on a canvas and you like spread it around and it makes shapes.

(01:37:39):
There are ways to do it to make it look more interesting and you get a little bit of control.
What turns me on about that is to try and make three paintings in one.
And it's great because like you put a little silicon in the in the paints and it'll make all these little bubbles and makes kind of a trippy looking thing.

(01:38:01):
And then you spread it out over the canvas and you can make flowers.
And there's different ways to do to do wild things with it.
What I'm doing is making three paintings in one.
So you have a painting in in regular light.
And that's a painting. Then you turn on black light.
And so I'm adding UV reactive ingredients to not all of the paints, but some of the paints so that as it spreads around the painting, you turn on black light.

(01:38:33):
It's going to look different.
Then I'm adding glow in the dark elements to other paints so that when you turn light off, it glows in the dark.
And it's third painting because a lot of people do poor painting.
I know I couldn't I couldn't draw an apple to save my life.
And I don't have that kind of precision.

(01:38:55):
You couldn't make it look like you want to bite into it.
Correct. Correct.
Yeah, I don't have that kind of I've never trained for that kind of artistic expression.
But I like the color and I like the shape and I like playing with the color and expressing that way.
And really like when I can make something that looks different under different lights.

(01:39:19):
So, yeah, that's what I'm doing.
Do you just make it to make it or do you post it anywhere?
Just make it to make it.
So for Soak, one of my partners brings a camp to Soak and we do this kind of art for the camp.
And so, OK, you know what you're saying when you went to shift like it's you hear the music all the time.

(01:39:43):
Yeah, it's always something.
My first time going to Soak 2013, 2014, it was three days of nonstop bass.
By about the second day, I was losing my mind of not having any break from the constant noise.
So I went and I had to get out of out of the experience.

(01:40:06):
I went for a hike just to go get silence and went back and thought, OK, if I ever do a camp,
what I would really like to bring is a way to bring that intensity level down for people.
So what we created was a tent, it's basically a carport 10 by 10 by 20 carport that we line with acoustic blankets.

(01:40:30):
So it brings the DBS down.
And then inside the tent, we hang poor paintings on all the walls and have the lights cycle through RGB and blacklight.
So that that sounds so cool.
So you can go into the tent, chill out for a little bit, bring your experience down, bring the intensity down.

(01:40:51):
But you're still getting entertained by this ever changing landscape of art.
And I think we're going to bring it to Soak again this year.
And one of the ideas we have is to do an art auction.
You can't you don't sell anything. That's right.
But have a silly art auction like, OK, this this painting is up for sale.

(01:41:13):
Whoever can recite the best poem and someone recites poem, they win.
You know, they can take the painting home.
Just just the way to try and give that to the community.
And the funny, funny experience or a cool idea.
Best interpretive dance gives it's like I bet on that stuff.
Yeah, that would be so fun because it's all just just to be silly and experience.

(01:41:36):
Yeah, because, you know, after after a couple of years of doing these paintings and we'll do them as a group.
So we'll have a couple of work parties where our camp will come together and we'll all pour paint.
And I generally won't do more than one or two paintings, but I'll mix the paint for everybody.
So, you know, everybody's got blue and some some glow in the dark white glow in the dark blue.

(01:41:59):
And everybody gets to make their paintings and stretch them out.
And then we dry them and we bring them to Soak and hang them on the hang them on the wall.
People get to come and enjoy that.
But then we're bringing all these paintings home with us.
It's like, well, shoot, my garage is full of all these paintings and I should just be giving these away to the community.
Because if if people are actually and we do we get some really great feedback from people.

(01:42:20):
Oh, my God, these these paintings are great.
So we should really just be giving these away to people instead of dragging them back home with us and having them sit in my garage.
Met a community paintings. Yeah.
It just sounds really cool. I want to see it. Well, I'll see it if I ever go to Soak.
How about that? Just just come by, dude. Yeah.
And I'll show you some of the stuff. Some of it.
I got hung up in my house where you you're saying, OK, OK, OK, OK.

(01:42:41):
Yeah. OK. Well, I have like five reasons to go now.
Yeah. I can see the Ford. Come see smart someday.
I do. I'd like to have a shop like on a property like this.
I could put a shop out there and have like a woodworking corner like with the old school bench and like all this other stuff.
But also the whatever tools, modern stuff like whatever a whole forge area with a steel fabrication,
like a welder and like just the basics that you can do kind of anything with.

(01:43:05):
We were surrounded by artists who don't do art because they don't have time.
They don't have the way to do the thing or find out what is it that your art is wanting to do.
Let's go. Let's connect after this.
There's local burner meetups. And I think there are some people with like maker shops in town.
Sweet. I've got a buddy in Portland who's got a maker shop.

(01:43:27):
Of course, that was what they would be called. OK.
Well, I wonder if there's any any podcast shops because I've been seeing some things on online of people saying, hey,
I've got a studio that I just like to it's easy setup and I just want to promote people's like I want to do that, too.
But yeah, it's like you say time. Everything comes down to time.
Everything comes. I wish I could do everything. But yeah. OK.

(01:43:48):
I am super interested to to just kind of see what other people are doing.
I would love that because to me, it's a pipe dream.
I fully understand that I may never actually do that side of what I want to do, but I would love to.
And I believe I will someday. But I would I would love that.
So it's definitely it's definitely connect on that.
There's a person I have in mind, but I don't know if they actually have that.

(01:44:11):
But I want to find out by getting to know them better myself and I'll have any conversation,
especially in this direction, because this is what I want to do is I want to like you.
I mean, it's all about connecting people at the end of the day.
I have these conversations because I will shrivel up and die if I don't.
But I also love finding new ideas and connecting this person with this person or myself with this person,

(01:44:34):
like just like seeing the network just happen. I love that.
It's great. Yeah, I believe it's going to start becoming more and more productive.
But I don't know how I don't know what it looks like. I'm just excited for it.
Yeah. Build it and they will they will come. Right.
Right. Except not about IRS. I think that was field the dreams.
Oh, I haven't seen that. I just had this this anti motivational poster of a bunch of people coming out of the corn,

(01:45:00):
like IRS agents and it's a build it and they will come. Oh, yeah.
OK. OK. Dreams is what I need to see.
Well, that's what's happening in field of dreams. They build a baseball field in the middle of a cornfield
and like the baseball players start coming out of the cornfield.
So that's probably it's it's it's a riff of that. Yeah. OK. OK.
That makes sense. Oh, another movie I can put on the list.
Is James Wiltron's in it? Yeah, I think James Wiltron's is in it.

(01:45:22):
Kevin Koster, maybe it's an original movie. Everybody's heard of it.
Yeah. That tells me it's good. There's something at least something good about it.
I don't remember. I can't remember. Yeah, it's great. It's great. Try it.
Well, I have more questions for you. OK.
I got a little bit more voice left. OK.

(01:45:44):
Then I'll get to the best ones. All right. Let's do it.
Right now in your life, what do you feel like you're most afraid of?
If you were to think, what are you afraid of?
What is it? What is the thing that just pops out?
All right. So on the first of this year, there was one of our community members was hosting
a community connection event on the first went to that and they were doing vision boarding.

(01:46:11):
And it was the first time I'd done vision boarding in a while and I had to face this this thought.
So of the things that I have been working on, so I talked about D&D, Soak and the non monogamous community.
I have had to pull away from hosting all of the non monogamous events at my house

(01:46:34):
because I was doing it every other every other week.
And now that I'm going into the Soak cycle, I am scared of losing myself
because last year I think I overextended myself too much because the prep for Soak is a big task.
And thankfully, the leadership at Soak or the producers recognize that the team I'm on is doing a lot.

(01:47:02):
And they're really helping us try and say, OK, we need to carve some of this stuff out for you guys
so that you guys don't get burned out. And I got pretty burned out last year.
Hosting the non monogamous community every week.
Hosting Dungeons and Dragons every week.
And then spending hours trying to trying to do the Soak work.

(01:47:27):
So the thing I am scared of right now is losing myself, getting overcommitted,
because I am really bad at not necessarily time management, but projection of time costs.
Like I will start a project, for example, put with this thing called Pagoda patio covers rain cover in my front yard.

(01:47:52):
It's like I put down stones, pavers, built a patio cover for my front yards,
have a little table out there in the front yard, have coffee as neighbors walk by.
In my mind, like, OK, I can dig it all out, flatten the ground.
That'll take me three days. Leveling, it'll take two days.

(01:48:14):
Laying the pavers will take a day, maybe two days.
Putting up the structure, that'll take me five days.
And I'm so bad about how long something's actually going to take at estimating it.
And so I overcommit and then I'm pulling all nighters, trying to get all the things done.

(01:48:37):
And I burn myself out and it damages my relationships because I disappear from people.
I used to preface like relationships with OK, this is when my kids were younger.
It's like every Halloween and every Christmas and every kid's birthday,
I'm going to disappear because I will inevitably commit myself to a project,

(01:48:58):
building a pinata for my kid, doing a cake for my kid, building a costume for my kid,
where I'll think it'll take me three evenings and I'll be doing two and a half weeks of overnights,
trying to finish up this robot costume I had in my mind for my kids to help give them their Halloween dream.

(01:49:21):
And your kids costumes I did for a while, made them cakes and pinatas, really cool ones, too.
I love that. And so that's my fear is. So in this vision boarding.
I do do too much and I realize that I overcommit to things.

(01:49:43):
And so my fear is losing myself.
So I'm really trying to be very, very aware of where I'm putting my time and not committing to things
and saying no more than I'm saying yes so that I can do the things that I want to do better.

(01:50:04):
I just have to ask, is there any similarities in that feeling, that fear of losing yourself,
the archetype of that losing yourself feels to what your experience has been with music?
And I'm not trying I'm not like trying to needle that. I'm actually just curious.
What do you mean by lose yourself? Is it that?
So I like building things. I really, really enjoy a project where I can build something from start to finish.

(01:50:29):
And that is a great joy. I also like connecting with people.
And if I'm giving too much to a project where I'm building and not being able to enjoy the experience,

(01:50:52):
then I'm not able to be me.
I want to be able to do the project at a pace where I can enjoy the experience, not fuck, can I just get this thing done?
So that because I haven't been able to hang out with this person, I keep canceling these plans.

(01:51:15):
I can't do this thing because I've got to finish this goddamn project.
If I don't get this project done, then it's like the sunk cost or whatever that is.
I already put this much time into it. I just have to finish this.
And then instead of fun, it's instead of art, it's work.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So different hurt. So is it similar to that?

(01:51:37):
It's similar in the inability to do it casually.
Painting. I can do painting casually because I don't consider myself a painter.
I just enjoy it. And so I can go and set up paints and make a mess.
And if it comes out cool, great. I don't consider myself a painter.

(01:52:00):
So I don't have any emotional attachment to it. I consider myself a musician.
So if I start a music project, it's like I have a certain expectation of what the quality of the outcome should be.
And if it doesn't meet that expectation, then I'm not happy with the art.
I can be fully happy with painting art because I don't consider myself a painter.

(01:52:25):
And maybe it's the same with writing, too. I don't consider myself a writer.
If anything gets published, I will be pleasantly surprised.
I've enjoyed the process and I've enjoyed the journey.
If the destination is awesome, great.
But my heart's not going to be broken if it doesn't go anywhere other than my friends getting a copy of it or my kids getting a copy of it.

(01:52:47):
I can enjoy that art just for the sake of doing the art.
But other projects like I do them for me.
Like I built a patio for my cats so my cats are can have an outdoor experience.
And I don't have to worry about them fighting with other cats and getting getting beat to hell.
And so I have a very large back porch that is enclosed for my cats.

(01:53:14):
I'm not submitting that to Architecture Digest or I don't care if if it's the best thing anyone's ever seen.
I'm not getting any gratification from trying to get recognition for that.
I did that for me because I want to barbecue and have my cats out there with me.

(01:53:37):
I want to enjoy rainstorms in the afternoon and have a fire pit and have my fire and my cats and hang out with my friends and play guitar and not be in the pouring rain.
So I did that for me. But it's still a project.
And I started that project and I lost my flippin mind trying to get it finished so that I could enjoy it.

(01:54:02):
And I lost out on a lot of other fun things I could do because I didn't budget how long that project would take.
And I recognize myself that I don't I don't have the best concept of time.
I really don't. That's because it's not actually doesn't actually exist.
But it's still going and it's still passing.

(01:54:23):
And I still want to be able to see the people in my life that I want to see and not be so overwhelmed with the art that I want to enjoy.
Becoming work that I've got to finish because I committed to doing it that I don't get to enjoy the experience of being present with the people I want to enjoy life with.

(01:54:44):
OK, so that's the fear in a nutshell. OK, so the fear is that you're going to lose your presence. Yeah, that makes so much sense.
And I did last year. It sucked. All my relationships were damaged in some way by me over committing and having to do so many things that I committed to do while trying to finish projects around my house while trying to do the things I committed to do for Soke.

(01:55:14):
Plus the camp that we had, plus the community, the non-monogamous community running D&D adventures and a day job.
Yeah, so I'm OK. I'm paring things down.
Working to build community. Yeah. For yourself. Yeah.
And you can't have community for yourself if you're not there. That makes so much sense. Exactly. Exactly. It all makes so much sense.

(01:55:41):
Yeah, that's what that's my fear. Yeah. OK. OK. That's a good one because you'll have presence. I mean, you can't help it.
You're taking steps. OK. If you knew that you were going to die.
What do you think happens after you die? I know this is your favorite thing to talk about. I'm just curious if you even have a like I'm expecting the same answer. I don't know that I care.

(01:56:09):
I have many answers. OK. I have I have kind of an esoteric answer and then it's not something I worry about. OK.
Because if you're living your life right, one life should be enough.
I'm tired. I've lived a life of depression. I have done so much. I have been so blessed. If it ends.

(01:56:39):
Damn, it's been a good ride. It's been a hell of a ride. I've had so much goddamn fun.
This sliver of the universe has really enjoyed this experience that. All right. Cool. We're good.
Seeing that. I don't want it to end. I'm having a hell of a lot of fun.
I want to continue to have a hell of a lot of fun and get to see what my kids.

(01:57:05):
So there's there's a certain point in in child during where you're really you're really worried.
OK, I got to keep going because, you know, I need to help them get to a point where they're self-sufficient.
And I think I'm close. The little dudes are turning into just incredible people.
I think they're going to be OK. I wouldn't want to pass suddenly because I wouldn't want them to have that burden or that.

(01:57:33):
Of course, you know, that experience of worrying about that. But from my point of view, I.
Yeah, I've had a hell of a ride. That's a hell of an answer. What I think happens.
OK, is nothing. OK, I get to rest. I get to not be OK.
Life is exhausting. And if I get to not be, that's probably pretty good.

(01:57:59):
Not being is probably pretty good. Just just all right. Good.
Yeah, I don't have to stress. I don't have to have anxiety. I don't have to worry.
Just rest. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I get to not be. And that's that's probably pretty good.
That feels beautiful to me. But I also I also like some of the reincarnation mythos.

(01:58:23):
Like you can hook your brain up to to a sensor and you get to see those waveforms, right?
If consciousness is a waveform and the universe is infinite, isn't it possible that those waveforms could recur or reoccur?
I don't know. Maybe that would be interesting.
I've also heard different thoughts about the universe as being something that expands and then it gets to a place where it contracts.

(01:58:50):
What if we're just in a bubble that's going to be expanding and contracting?
OK, so we're going to expand to a point and then we'll contract and we'll do it all over again and all over.
Like I'll see you in however many billion years. Yeah, that's interesting.
And maybe we get to do it all. And maybe that's what deja vu is. OK, well, we made a different choice last time.

(01:59:13):
Maybe we're going to make a different choice this time.
It's going to be interesting to find out if like after it's all over, I start being like a
three legged toad on toad being on some other galaxy far, far away.
And it's like, oh, OK, yeah, this this consciousness feels familiar. And but I'm a three legged toad being.

(01:59:38):
I don't really care. But I like the idea of consciousness being a frequency and maybe frequencies can can occur in other places.
Me too. And it has a beautiful symmetry and sense to it, like because vibrations is what this is all like.
It just makes sense sort of in my brain. I'm not thinking too much about it to worry about it.

(02:00:04):
I've growing up Catholic like that was something they try and it's like, oh, you've you've got it.
I think that is like one of the worst forms of oppression.
Religion is one of the worst forms of oppression that you have to live a certain way to get to Valhalla or heaven or denial now for reward later.

(02:00:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. And it's it's it's in my mind, an oppressive form of control.
And in. I actually don't remember who said I think it was the apostle Paul in the New Testament even says if the if what we hope for, it doesn't exist, if it's in vain, then we and we are of all men most miserable.

(02:00:50):
Yeah, so that makes sense. And maybe that's some privilege there that I live the life I do that I get to look at it that way when there are so many oppressed in the world now.
Right. I think that probably is we are blessed. If you knew you were going to die like right now, imminently die and you were able to say something for all the people that you know are going to be missing you, you know they're going to be sad there, whatever.

(02:01:16):
If you could say one thing, even with one thing, what would you say?
Be excellent to each other. Party on, dude.
No, I would say exactly what I said before. I've had a hell of a ride.
I've been so blessed to live most of my life the way that I wanted to live it and got unfortunate.

(02:01:41):
Mm hmm. It's also brief. It's also brief.
Thank you for thinking of me. Stay excellent. Please go have fun with the remaining years you've got because I sure as hell enjoyed mine.
Sorry, I can't be there, but.
But I'm resting.

(02:02:03):
I'm having a good nap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic.
Well, anything else on your mind that you just want to say?
Great. Damien, thank you.
I cannot tell you how cool this was. This is really the first time that I've just gone deep with you and just like just just connected, just been explored.

(02:02:27):
Who are you? I don't know. Just see what happens. And this, I mean, this has been a fantastic way to do it and I appreciate it.
Thank you. This was this is not what I was expecting, but I don't know. I went into it without expectation.
Actually, I was I wasn't sure where this where this was going to go, but it's been fun.
It's not what I was expecting either, because I never know what to expect.
I just want to know what's there. And thanks for.

(02:02:50):
Showing me some of it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm glad this is the first time we went deep and hopefully we'll have this is the start of something.
Heck, yes. We have so many aligned things that we want to see happen. So yeah, I wouldn't know. There's a few things, but cool.
We'll have time for that. All right. Well, please, please, please.

(02:03:12):
Keep working on balancing yourself because you have freaking gifts to share, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of what you have done and what's coming.
Cool. So all right. Well, thanks, Michael. OK, appreciate the time. Likewise.

(02:03:34):
Oh, by the way. I would really love to hear from you, whether it's a comment of appreciation or disagreement.
Yes, please give me something. I don't know a lot. I'm just starting to learn.
But I love challenges. Makes me look. Please send us a message.

(02:04:00):
If you have anything to say, even if you don't, you just like what you're hearing or really don't like it.
I want to hear that too. Michael at This is Emotion Art dot com or on Instagram at This is Emotion Art.
I also have a YouTube channel. Have I posted anything? Not really, but I will start.

(02:04:24):
You'll see. Oh, no. What I mean is I'll see if I'm the one that is like, what the heck, bro? Hurry up.
You know you want to do it. So start doing it. And so I'm telling everyone else to do that.
And here as it is, how do I effectively give myself my own advice?
Easy to say the words to somebody else and it's easy to say the words to myself, but it feels different. I want it to feel the same. Practice makes perfect.

(02:04:55):
OK. Propose a line. Something about yourself or about ourself or the blue sky. Anything with me.
Every conversation is worth having. And I'll try to do just about anything at least once.
There's a lot here to be appreciated. Thank you.

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