May 7, 2025 • 61 mins
Your consciousness is a cage built by dead people you never met. You're in hock to the company store, and now you're paying with your one wild and precious life. But stay tuned, because liberation can be yours when you discover this week's episode of Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes.
We're serving up taboo topics like psychedelics and power dynamics with a side of raw vulnerability that'll make your therapist blush. Get ready for a sonic journey through the underbelly of your belief system, where we'll perform emergency surgery on your certainties and replace them with questions that bite back.
Think you know something about success? Money? Sex? Think harder. Think smarter. We're dissecting the corpse of conventional wisdom and finding love notes from chaos tucked into its pockets.
Your favorite influencers are lying to you about meditation and manifestation, but they're too afraid to tell you about 5-MeO-DMT or why your horniness might be hiding an existential truth. We're not.
Listen as we strip away the Instagram filters from mental health and expose the raw machinery of depression, anxiety, and the cosmic joke of trying to give others what they want for you in a world that's collectively losing its mind.
Warning: Side effects may include:
- Persistent questioning of reality
- Sudden attacks of authentic self-expression
- Reduced tolerance for societal bullshit
- Uncontrollable urges to create art from your trauma
- A strange new comfort with uncertainty
Get ready to dive deep into the beautiful mess of being human, where porn meets philosophy and luck arm-wrestles with destiny. Your regularly scheduled programming of polite repression will be interrupted by breakthrough insights that'll have you questioning everything – especially yourself.
Don't just listen. Let it wreck you. Sometimes, destruction is a form of creation, and your comfort zone is just a pretty pet name for a prison.
Available now wherever you get your existential wake-up calls. Your ego won't like it, but your soul might thank you later.
Trust us. We're just as confused as you are, and that's precisely why you should listen.
"The Hyperliterate College Town Canoodlers" is a sequel to Salacity in Bloom, or at least exists in the same universe, or perhaps an adjacent or contiguous one.
Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes is LA's number-one avant-garde personal development program. New episodes premiere on KCHUNG Los Angeles on the first Wednesday of the month.
The writer, producer, host, and witty and wounded romantic hero is Emerson Dameron, who is wholly responsible for its content.
Levity saves lives.
Got something to say to me? Slide into the DMs.
It's OUT! Sophistication Nation: Brief Interviews with Women I Pretend to Understand: https://emersondameron.hearnow.com/sophistication-nation
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Emerson Dameron (00:03):
Change is a choice, but you only have the
options that you know that youhave.
You are this close to findingmore options than you ever
thought would be possible, butthere's a problem blocking your
way, and the problem is you.
You haven't figured out how toget rid of yourself, yet.
The ecstatic experiences thatyou've tried to create have left
(00:23):
you with a sense of emptinessinside, not solitude.
You're still there, feelingsorry for yourself and
ruminating over an internalmonologue.
That's the most boring writingon earth.
Change is a choice and aprocess.
It can take time or it canhappen in an instant.
With 5-MeO-DMT, the easiest wayto obliterate yourself merge
(00:47):
into the flow of humanexperience.
Your problems will still exist,but they won't bother you
anymore because you don't exist,and problems are funny when
they happen to someone else.
Getting there is easier thanyou think, but you've got to
make a jump and all you need isa little bit of encouragement
and the time of your life on MrToad's wild ride, 5-meo-dmt, it
(01:10):
puts other psychedelics to shameand it kicks you to the curb
where you belong.
Now that you're ready todiscover your true desires and
own your power.
5-meo-dmt the solution to you.
5-meo-dmt the solution to youHome of Ask a Sadist, proudly
(01:43):
sponsored by the First Church ofthe Satanic Buddha, birthplace
and habitat of bite-sized eroticthrillers.
My name is Emerson Dameron.
I'm the writer, producer, host,everything.
I love you personally.
Levity saves lives, lives.
(02:07):
What is taboo?
What are we not supposed totalk about?
And it's still important totalk about those things, whether
we know what they are or not.
We have to go on a quest insearch of our taboos and be like
Sherlock Holmes.
What are the things that wecan't talk about?
What are the unknown knowns,the things that we take so for
granted, the ideology that weswim in?
(02:28):
We can't even name them.
You think this is just the waythings are.
We have to do everything we canto surface those things.
It's not fun.
As Zizek says, freedom hurts.
There's a reason that peopledon't want to put on the glasses
and they live In many ways.
Life is a lot easier if we justkeep on keeping on assuming the
(02:54):
things that we assume.
Talking about taboo topics iskind of taboo itself.
Many people use it as an excuseto be obnoxious and be bullies
and draw the wrong kind ofattention to themselves in an
annoying way.
Just want to hurt people andget a reaction, so that they
(03:18):
know they exist, so they knowthey have an effect on someone,
which is kind of sad and itcompounds the tragedy and makes
it a bit farcical when you givethem what they want by getting
reactive.
So let's see if we can suss outour taboo topics together.
What would you rather not talkabout?
There's money.
(03:39):
That might be the big one Money,power dynamics, sex as related
to power dynamics and sometimesto money, the rampantness of
herpes in Los Angeles.
What do you really think?
What do you think about?
Let's start there.
You are alone with yourthoughts.
First of all, how do yousurvive?
I can't do that without a verydeliberate daily practice.
(04:02):
And what are they?
Your brain is hijacked by you,whether it's the drill sergeant,
the mother, the drama llama,one of the other Jungian
archetypes.
What are you thinking about?
What are you thinking about it?
Once you know that you canalways change your mind?
Ideally, you want to cross overinto a life sans belief systems
(04:26):
.
There's a reason they call themBS.
Beliefs are impediments.
You gotta believe some thingsin order to get your shoes tied
in the morning, Free will beingthe obvious falsehood that a lot
of people believe forconvenience, because it's useful
.
But ultimately, you want to beskeptical of your beliefs.
I am deeply skeptical of mine,and mine are more deliberate and
(04:49):
thought out than yours.
Give me a list of 10 things.
You believe you have 15 seconds.
You just got to spit it out.
Just keep going, keep yourmouth moving.
You're good at that.
What do you believe?
What do you think?
What are you thinking aboutright now?
Let it rip.
You've been wanting to do thatforever.
This is your opportunity toreveal the quotidian darkness
(05:12):
that you have.
In common with most of ourspecies, we are incompetent
beasts.
We are not very good at beinganimals.
The humans, most spiders andbeetles and the modal paramecium
are all being the best animalsthat they can be.
I can't say that for myself ormost of the people that I know.
(05:32):
We're unable to forget.
We forgot how to live, how tobreathe, how to be here how to
cooperate.
We've got this idea that we areall against each other.
If it was my job to keep peopledown, to keep revolution from
fermenting and fermenting andcoming into being the first
(05:52):
thing, I would do is convinceeveryone who has the potential
to revolt that they are all outto get each other.
It works like a charm.
People want to believe that itmakes them feel important and
they've forgotten that they haveother ways of feeling important
, not just breathing.
You don't have to do anything.
You can give up your dreams,kick back, enjoy your free time,
(06:14):
just be here, try that for acouple of days, see how it goes.
Then go on that drug bingeyou've been putting off.
That'll help you get rid ofyour residual beliefs, as long
as you pick theawareness-expanding drugs, not
the awareness-contracting drugs,although I do get annoyed by
the my drugs are good and yourdrugs are bad kind of rhetoric.
(06:36):
I was guilty of psychedelicexceptionalism at one point when
I had stopped drinking and wasgetting a lot of therapeutic
benefit from psychedelics.
But those are just my drugs.
They are not inherently betterthan your drugs.
It's all what we do with themand all that stuff is already in
us.
There are always to get there.
(06:56):
Everything we do is with thegoal of changing our
consciousness, because God knows, we need to do something to get
the hell out of here.
If you were stripped of yourprivacy today or first thing
tomorrow, if you knew thateveryone you encounter gets a
Terminator-type baseball cardreadout whenever they look at
(07:17):
you.
Vital stats, including yourmost embarrassing traits, the
ways you consistently fall short.
You know you're doing it.
You keep doing it.
It's almost like you want to doit.
Part of you does.
You're a sick pervert.
You're not even indulging thoseweaknesses, you're indulging
the ones that don't even get youanywhere.
That don't even get you off.
(07:37):
They could if you turn theminto fetishes.
You know how to do that.
You're born with that knowledge.
Let's get back to the point.
What would you do if yousuddenly had no privacy, if you
were thoroughly doxxed?
Now that stuff is out there andpeople can see you.
Some of them don't like whatthey see.
Some of them do but pretendthat they don't.
(08:00):
Peer pressure compels them todeny their joys, which is truly
tragic.
There is so little joy to bescraped out of this life.
We should celebrate all theones that we have.
A guilty pleasure is neitherHypocrisy is a luxury that we
can ill afford.
You have experienced the horrorof exposure, of being stripped,
(08:20):
of having everything that youthought was yours, that you
could keep to yourself, issuddenly distributed and
dispersed and consumed by thesalivating, judgmental masses.
And what do you think they'regoing to be interested in?
All the good that you've done?
Several hours a month spentvolunteering at an animal
(08:41):
shelter, older people thatyou've helped cross the street
or just talked to and treatedlike human beings Do you think
that's what people are going tobe interested in?
Is that what you would beinterested in?
I understand the deaths ofdespair.
Despair is dearer.
The world that we've createdfor ourselves is an evolutionary
mismatch.
(09:01):
A lot of us are not built formonogamy.
I would argue the vast majorityof us are not built for the
Frederick Winslow Taylor factorywork model that a lot of bosses
are still trying to use, andthey're trying to drag us back
to the office so they can bringit back.
No more work gets done withoutit.
It shows that that's not whatthey care about.
(09:22):
Much like the anti-abortionpeople don't really care about
the fetuses.
They care about controlling thelives of the women and
curtailing the freedom of others, because somehow, if you're
more free, it makes me less free.
I don't know how that works,but it's not going to happen on
my watch.
And we have not evolved tooptimize for shareholder value.
(09:43):
I had been fascinated withsuicide since I discovered what
it was, and once the suicidedoor opens, I don't think it
ever really closes all the way.
And when you have that card inyour pocket, it gives you a
feeling of agency in the darkestmoments.
Camus said it's the onephilosophical problem that
matters.
It's always there.
(10:03):
You've always got an option Cor D, and if you get creative
you want to have more than twooptions.
At least If you have twooptions, they're both terrible.
Now, orgasm in French issometimes referred to as la
petite mort, the little death.
So you can have the littledeath, you can have a lot of
little deaths.
Does that add up to one big one?
Distributed death, death on theinstallment plan.
(10:27):
Sex and death are kissingcousins and I don't know about
you, but I get super worked uptalking about death.
I live in the desert, I break asweat.
Rigorous sex session, whetherit's afternoon delight or when
we blocked off the whole weekendno talking, no clothes, just
animal sticker of sex, and thensome choking occurs.
(10:49):
Or maybe it's just in the heartand the mind that the white
tunnel becomes visible.
The chips are down, the rubberhits the road.
We are at our most passionate,our most alive.
We are channeling the force ofcreation itself, engaged in
exuberant celebration of humancreativity in the highest form
of physical comedy.
(11:10):
And the skull is grayingthrough the window.
Death is omnipresent, death isuniversal, life is optional, sex
is life, sex is creation.
Polarity is inherent in allthings except the ones in which
it is not.
With sex and death, you gottawhirl in your own paths.
(11:31):
The sparks are gonna fly, thefluids are gonna pour.
It's gonna be a session and ahalf.
You do not want to miss that.
You want to be here, at leastfor sex and death, and when you
turn that into a practice, itempowers you to be here for
everything else.
Nothing is really anythingspecial when you're here for
(11:52):
everything and there's a realpower in that, almost like dying
the best way to kill yourself.
You do not die physically, itwill change everything about
your life.
Showing up for all of it, or asmuch as possible.
We've all got things to do.
(12:17):
I got some bad news.
You, like the rest of us, aretrapped in a controlled
hallucination, essentially inthere all alone.
The rest of us are, strictlyspeaking, real, but you are so
much the creator of what youconsider reality with a capital
R.
You've got your head wedged sofar up your sphincter and you
(12:39):
are so dramatically, comically,absurdly wrong about everything
that you believe, especiallyabout other people, most
especially about yourself andyour experience of the world,
that you are surrounded bywarped funhouse mirrors you are
arguing with and flirting withand screwing and screwing over
alternate versions of yourself.
(12:59):
You contain multitudes andyou're surrounded by them.
That's who all the rest of usare in your perception.
You are trapped in a screamingexistential hell world and it's
such a waste.
You really should be ashamed ofyourself.
But you can't stop you kind oflike full creative control,
casting us as characters in yourcinematic universe.
(13:22):
You don't really want to get toknow us.
You don't even like sex thatmuch.
Sex is the way to really get toknow people.
Casual sex is the way tocourageously get to know a whole
lot of people and experienceyourself from a kaleidoscopic
panorama of other people'sperspectives.
And you can't really deny themtheir humanity.
Because you're hitting that.
You've exchanged biologicalfluids for the reason you're
(13:45):
terrified is sex, because you'renot happy in the existential
hell world and you don't want tobe happy.
It's your comfort zone and youain't leaving.
You like your reality and youlove your toxic relationship
with the resistance andsolipsism and narcissism, not
really having to questionyourself.
(14:06):
You're the only one who reallyknows everything about your
world.
You are here because you'rehuman, humans being the only
animal dumb enough to build aworld in which it cannot live.
Sorry, you're here.
You're here, probably, if thesesurvey cards are to be believed
(14:29):
which I would not but you'rehere to find out who you are.
Do you even know what you are?
Take the sentence I blank a body.
This is like a mad wig, whichis not a trademark of Emerson
Dameron's medicated minutes.
Some people would put I want abody.
Go for it, mazel tov, you crazykids.
(14:51):
No kink shaming, as long aseveryone's having a great time,
with an expansive definition ofwhat a great time entails very
much up to individual tastes.
I would guess that your firstthought was I have a body, have
Something you own, property,dominion.
You want sovereignty for youand your body.
(15:14):
What about?
I am a body that, to me, feelscloser.
Notice I say feels, because I'mvery embodied.
I trust the wisdom of my innerhealer more than I trust any of
you, ice cold, weasels andbastards.
There is one honest man leftand I am going to trust my
(15:37):
instincts and get laid like A$APRocky on tour, and there's
nothing you can do to stop me.
You are your body.
When your body goes, what youthink of as you likely goes with
it.
Although I believe there's somecontinuation of the Screaming
Rainbow, hellworld and Calliopemusic of human consciousness, I
(16:00):
think it flows right back intothe river.
Your little tributary with adriver's license and a birth
certificate and a whole lot ofconsumer debt was an impermanent
thing.
The river flows.
We know not to what extent,whether or not it goes all the
way to the coast I am west coasttill the casket drops, so
(16:22):
hopefully my consciousness flowsin that direction.
But I will not care because Iwill not be identified with the
same series of hang-ups andidentifications and my whole
ideology, my gestalt, willdisintegrate and I will almost
certainly be happier for it.
I would say you are essentiallya problem solver.
(16:45):
That's not a compliment.
The reason we typically decideto solve problems is to create
bigger ones.
That's what we want.
Everybody's got solutionsbusiness solutions, tech
solutions, solutions for allsorts of things that I suppose
we have tacitly defined asproblems because we've got to
(17:06):
have more of those.
It is a seller's market forproblems.
If you're offering solutions,you're pissing in the wind and
you're getting a golden showerfrom the people who are divvying
out the problems.
They have the power.
You need problems so that youdon't have to get what you
really want.
You would go insane immediately.
Almost certainly you might likeit.
(17:28):
In 1979, the polymath pranksterAlan Abel put his own obituary
in the New York Times.
The reaction surprised him.
People he thought were his bestfriends shrugged and people he
barely knew were heartbroken,which goes to show you don't
know who loves you until you'vealienated everyone.
(17:58):
Erica is a passionate,free-spirited woman in her late
20s, living in a college town.
It's not as cheap as it used tobe, but she doesn't really have
to work, because when you're asfull of life as Erica is, the
world just shows up with dumptrucks full of money every
Friday afternoon and leaves themin your yard.
(18:20):
She is able to have a yard.
She's living well.
She spends most of her timegallivanting around town,
spreading life through thestreets, through the parks,
through the green spaces.
Sometimes she rides the bus.
She doesn't need to, she owns acar but she'll do it just to
(18:41):
spread her lust for life toanyone who happens to be around.
She meets Damon, a melancholicman in his early 30s, disheveled
academic of some kind, probablyan adjunct professor he doesn't
like to talk about it MeetsErica in a record store.
They're both fans of themagnetic fields, but that's
(19:03):
about as far as it goes.
Kind of tries to flirt, but notto the point where he is
risking rejection.
She kind of likes him Also.
He's kind of weird.
This might be too much work forher.
She has to spread the joy ofliving to all the people.
She doesn't need a project.
They go their separate ways.
They don't even think about itagain until they run into each
(19:27):
other.
Weeks later, at one of the localbookstores, erica is thumbing
through a brick of a novel 800plus pages about a throuple that
live in Southern California.
Has a quizzical, confusedexpression that Damon finds very
(19:48):
attractive and he lets her knowthat he has read the book.
Does she want to know anythingabout it?
She asks what happens in thebook.
Don't spoil it, but just, youknow, set it up.
Damon can't really do thatbecause it is too twinding,
there's too much discontinuity,there's a crazy symbolism and
(20:09):
Greek mythological references, awhole digression that goes on
for a hundred pages on the rawsexuality that makes Catholicism
so explosive.
They both realize that roughlythe same time that they've been
talking about this book thathe's read and she hasn't, for 45
(20:32):
minutes and they thoroughlyenjoyed it together.
Just talking about this book,damon says you know I wouldn't
mind reading it again.
I feel like there are many moresurprises, little nuggets left
in there, that I'd like todiscover.
Many more surprises, littlenuggets left in there that I'd
like to discover.
You want to read it together,which is probably the boldest
move that he's ever made.
She's kind of smitten Was abouthalf an hour ago.
(20:55):
The sound of certain humanvoices is what she's into.
He's got one.
She's hooked.
They set up a little book clubInitially.
Got one.
She's hooked.
They set up a little book clubInitially.
They'll read the same number ofpages every night and then
discuss it.
On Signal, which they both useas a texting app, probably
because they use it to buy drugsand find that they enjoy it
(21:20):
more.
But after a while it gets tothem.
Things get hot and heavy in thebook.
Taboos are broken and it's hot,steamy.
They hook up At his place, ather place, in between, in bars,
in public restrooms, in parksand green spaces.
Once on the bus, everybody knewwhat they were doing.
(21:40):
Nobody said anything.
There was something sovulnerable and sweet and
romantic about the shared doublehand job that they didn't want
to spoil it.
After a while they started towonder how can we ramp this up,
and Erica suggested what if weperformed the book?
(22:01):
Use it as an instruction manual, follow it as close to the
letter as we can, as though itis sexual scripture.
It was a wild summer for both ofthem and for some other people,
and really for the whole worldA sexy butterfly effect.
The people they affectedaffected other people and this
(22:22):
got passed around and everybodywas feeling it.
It said that 90% of success isshowing up.
(22:44):
If it's true, the same thingcan certainly be said of failure
.
Resist the pressure to bealways on.
Stop sticking a knife in theoutlet.
The most crucial and wickedthing you can do is learn to
love your own solitude.
Not just tolerate it, but getoff on it.
That's a superpower andconfirms that you're better than
(23:06):
other people.
If you weren't before, you willbe now.
Don't go where you're notwanted.
Don't go most of the places youare wanted.
Practice the art of thetakeaway.
If it suits you, burn off yourfingerprints, put on Groucho
glasses and find a nice beach ina country with no extradition
treaty.
Risk-taking behavior is good.
You've got a death drive andthat's healthy.
(23:29):
Don't even try to drive 55.
Ignore people.
Shut them down.
The one thing that's missingfrom their lives might be the
gift of missing you.
Happy Mental Health AwarenessMonth.
(23:55):
I'm Emerson Dameron.
I struggle, sometimes valiantly, often less so, with depression
.
I'm a well-credentialedmentally ill person.
That's the only marginalizedidentity group that I am
affiliated with officially.
So if it makes youuncomfortable to hear about
mental illness, it sucks to beyou right now.
(24:16):
I've been depressed almost myentire life.
I've also had moments ofexcitement that snapped me out
of it for a second, which onlyconvinced me that in the long
run every joy is mitigated by amuch worse hangover of futility
and meaninglessness andself-loathing, and life is
(24:38):
worthless.
If you have anxiety, I feel badfor you.
I feel sympathy but not empathy.
I don't have that problem.
Anxiety makes you very unsureof yourself, whereas I am
absolutely positive that I am arepulsive, radioactive piece of
cat dung that should bedestroyed, wiped off the
ontological chalkboard as soonas possible For everyone's good.
(25:01):
I am worthless and I know itdeep down in my kidneys.
That's the only thing that I'msure of, the only thing I know
to be true.
Ask if you are happy and youcease to be.
So Not a problem for me.
I never started and that's fine.
I don't have a lot ofexperience with happiness.
It's not just sour grapes to saythat.
(25:21):
I think it's dubious as a lifegoal.
I think it's a side effect ofdoing some things right and
having the aspects align in acertain way and getting lucky
and being able to accept that onits own terms.
Do not convince yourself thatyou deserve it through things
(25:41):
that you did, as Americansalways do when they succeed, and
it always tears them apartbecause they know intuitively
that it would not have happenedwithout luck, and that perhaps
creates an obligation to othersless successful, not necessarily
exclusively through their ownfailings, not even mostly
because of their own failings,just because Because that's just
(26:04):
how things work, or don't?
Endless chains of causality thatwe will probably not be around
long enough to understandbecause our insane cult of
rugged individualism is gonnawipe us off the earth before
that happens.
We're the only species that gotsmart enough to create a world
(26:26):
that it is not able to live in.
So it sucks to be all of us andI am depressed because that's
an accurate interpretation ofworld events, in much the same
way that my attachment style isavoidant, because that is the
correct attachment style.
I'm not saying that depressionmakes you an asshole, because
that's not fair.
To other people that strugglewith depression who are not me,
(26:48):
I will say that if you werealready inclined in that
direction, it makes it easier tobecome an asshole Because your
core belief is that nothing youdo matters, and that is
incredibly dangerous to everyoneinvolved.
It makes you a wrecking ballthrough the life of anyone who
tries to care about you.
If your mind is telling youthat you don't matter, don't
(27:10):
accept that Push back with thetruth, which is you don't matter
much.
Let us not get ahead ofourselves.
You're not going to ruinanyone's life.
They have to at least cooperatewith you, because people can
only truly ruin their own livesand that's another thing that's
your fault.
If it goes wrong because you'redepressed, everything is your
(27:32):
fault.
In a weird sense, you're alwaysright and you've built a highly
effective machine that protectsyou from certain things and
destroys you in other respects.
Really overrated depression,I'd have to say.
Don't believe the hype.
If you're not already depressed, try to avoid becoming
(27:54):
depressed.
If you find yourself depressed,get out of there as soon as you
can.
Diet, exercise, hydrate, drugs.
Some drugs might not work foryou and others might work
insanely well, by which I meanit's so good and it makes you so
sane that that drives you crazy.
You get what you truly wantedand that destroys your life, as
(28:18):
it is almost bound to do.
Nevertheless, if you're dealingwith depression, everything is
on the table, including anydrugs that you can get your
hands on.
I've tried almost all of them.
I don't recommend all or any ofthem, but I don't recommend
that you don't try as many asyou want.
Everybody loves their own drugsand hates everyone else's drugs
(28:41):
except me, because I'm betterthan everyone.
I love drugs.
I accept that some of them arenot for me and others I am not
good at doing, but cannabis,weirdly, is one of the few that
works for me.
When I get stoned I am stilldepressed, but I'm depressed
about entirely different things.
There's true sadness there andit's dredged up by my
(29:05):
over-appreciation of music andI'm emotionally shredded by the
music of Future and Metro Boomand party-hardy lyrics.
But his vocals sound so sad.
It's profoundly tragic musicand I'm crushed with the sadness
of ages, not sustainable, butit beats depression by a long
(29:26):
shot.
Sex is good.
Big fan of sex, like Gen Z iskind of down on sex.
We've accepted all thesedifferent ways to have sex
socially, collectively, and yetwith that acceptance seems to
have come a drop in enthusiasm.
It could be because the worldis absolutely flooded with porn.
Sex, like everything else, isgetting more expensive, as porn
(29:48):
is essentially free.
There's an opportunity cost andI don't think we've seen the
longitudinal effects of thismuch porn.
It's unavoidable.
If you're listening to thisright now, you watch internet
porn, or you have watched it,possibly recently.
You may very well have been init, to which I can only say get
that money.
Everything is a side hustle.
(30:09):
Never do anything for fun.
There's a lot bad to say aboutporn.
I kind of like it, and not justfor the reasons that you
pretend you don't.
You probably think of porn ifyou think about it in terms that
are strictly utilitarian.
It gets you from point A topoint O.
It probably doesn't take toolong.
You might feel terribleafterward or like you wasted
(30:32):
your time, which welcome toanything.
You probably don't think of itas great cinema, and that,
friend, is where you and Idiffer.
Nothing can make a movie greatlike great acting.
Acting is hard and it's one ofthose things that almost
everyone thinks they would begood at, until they try it and
then they realize why.
(30:52):
Even people that get paid to doit are not necessarily good at
it all the time.
It's a spiritual practice, andit's hard to be a great actor.
It's not as hard to be a reallygreat bad actor, but that also
has a lot of value and isrelatively rare compared to just
mediocre bad acting.
(31:13):
Great bad acting opens up newfractal dimensions in
storytelling.
If you're not appreciatingthese films, you're just not on
my level, which is a lot ofdifferent levels, and it's
better up here.
Lift yourself, read, becomemore like me.
That's why you're here.
So you've taken the first step,which is the hardest thing for
(31:35):
most people to do.
You're one of my kind.
Great bad acting generallyrequires cocaine, which is one
thing that can be found throughporn and is like porn in that
not a lot of people stand up forcocaine.
A lot of people use it, notthat many people sing hosannas
about it, and I think that'shypocritical.
(31:56):
Psychedelics can be like yearsand years of therapy in one
crack.
I love psychedelics.
Cocaine is also a wonderfulform of self-care.
You know who doesn't needtherapy Assholes.
Cocaine is asshole fantasy camp.
You will know that you're agenius.
You will have circuitous,free-ranging conversations with
(32:18):
other geniuses who know thatyou're a genius.
You will absolutely know thatyou're a genius.
You'll be too busy to getdepressed because you'll be a
genius at work.
If you use cocaine inmoderation, mindfully, if you
overdo it which usually happensbefore you realize that you're
overdoing it and way before youdo anything about overdoing it,
(32:38):
you will make it very clear toall concerned that you are not a
genius.
Access in moderation, inmoderation, in moderation, in
moderation, in moderation.
Helena the Brit (33:25):
Well darling, I suppose everyone has a moment
in their life when they'reutterly swept away by the
intoxicating thrust of passion.
No, that's too common Adventure.
A bit pedestrian, let's sayartistry.
Yes, that's the one, and in mycase it came in the form of a
(33:46):
man, a thief to be precise, aproper rogue, with eyes like
smudged charcoal and voice likeaged velvet.
He told me his name was Raphael.
Of course, I didn't believe him.
Two on the nose, don't youthink?
But oh, how I adored theaudacity of it all.
Art isn't so much what you'recapable of as what you can get
(34:07):
away with.
Raphael said that he had thesemarvellous aphorisms, but I'm
getting off point.
It began at a soiree, naturally,the kind of gathering where
everyone's pretending to admirethe host's ghastly modernist
sculptures but really justpilfering the canapes.
I, of course, was holding courtby the champagne fountain when
(34:29):
Raphael appeared.
All smirk and mystery, he toldme he was planning a heist, yes,
a heist to liberate, as he putit, a scandalous masterpiece
from the oppressive confines ofbureaucracy.
Now, I've always had a deepappreciation for subversion.
Subversion is art, art and viceversa, wouldn't you agree?
So when he invited me to joinhis team which turned out to be
(34:54):
just him.
And well, now me?
I thought, why not?
Helena, you've been waitingyour whole life to be part of an
iconic duo, the Muse and theMastermind.
The Target was an erotic artexhibit, a rather controversial
one at that, brimming with allthe delicate filth that makes
(35:14):
the bourgeoisie clutch theirpearls.
One piece in particular hadstirred such opprobrium Venus
uncloaked a disturbinglycaptivating sculpture of a
goddess mid-striptease.
Raphael insisted it was amisunderstood masterpiece.
A symbol of liberation, hecalled it.
I simply had to see it.
(35:35):
The plan, my loves, was to slipin after hours, dressed as
inconspicuously as possible.
I opted for a sleek blacknumber, which turned out to be
slightly draftier than Ianticipated.
But what is art without alittle sacrifice?
Without the glamour, it's hardto see the allure of
(35:58):
international art thievery, atleast from my perspective.
Well, admittedly, it is quiteerotic, isn't it?
I certainly felt it.
Raphael was all business atfirst, muttering about security
cameras and laser grids, but Icouldn't help but marvel at our
raudacity.
There I was, helena, harbingerof the avant-garde, about to
(36:22):
commit an actual crime.
By now we were running farenough ahead of schedule to
allow for a proper shag amongthe exhibits.
But then, oh, the tragedy.
With farcical elements.
Certainly the alarms went off.
Apparently, raphael's so-calledingenious bypass device was
nothing more than a glorifieduniversal remote control Like
(36:47):
Nano.
He dashed off, promising tocircle back, and left me, me
alone, clutching Venus,uncloaked in nothing but my
heels and a trembling sense ofindignation.
And so I did what anyself-respecting woman of my
intellect and poise would do Iimprovised.
I wedged myself behind thenearest installation a ghastly
(37:09):
assemblage of phantom limbs andglitter, if you must know and
waited.
Security guards swarmed theplace, shouting things like
identify yourself and drop thestatue, drop the statue.
Imagine suggesting suchbarbarity.
I'll have you know.
I protected Venus uncloakedwith my very life.
(37:31):
There I was, half draped over ametal sculpture titled Consumer
Apocalypse, attempting to lookboth invisible and profoundly
artistic.
It's no small feat, let meassure you, this
hiding-in-plains sight business.
Eventually, I realised Raphaelwas not coming back.
(37:51):
The guards grew tired ofsearching dreadfully
unimaginative lot and I made myescape, barefoot and clutching
Venus like a lover.
I left her in the garden of alocal monastery.
Poetic, don't you think themonks deserve a little spice?
A half-dozen terroristorganisations claimed
responsibility, which put memostly in the kheer, I believe.
(38:13):
As for Raphael, I never saw himagain, probably fled to Paris
or prison.
But you know what I have?
No regrets.
Art isn't meant to be safe orpredictable.
It's chaos, darlings.
It's passion.
It's hiding behind a sculpturein your knickers while an
American goomba named Barryshouts who's there as if it's
(38:37):
any of his business.
So, yes, I helped liberateVenus.
Was it foolish?
Perhaps?
Was it illegal, absolutely, butwas it artistic?
Emerson Dameron (39:40):
without question, and isn't that the
whole essence of the thing?
Really, I'm out, thank you.
The seven most popular types ofpornography according to Men's
(40:07):
Health it's hard to gauge thisbecause people aren't always
forthcoming about it.
I understand all of them, eventhough they're only a couple
that I personally enjoy.
I'm not a big porn consumer.
Generally, it's the opposite ofsex in a lot of ways.
If I watch too much porn, I endup feeling the opposite of the
way that I want to when I havewhat I want to be good sex,
(40:28):
which is good.
Lesbian porn number one.
Okay, I am confused by anyonewho is not into women.
I mean, have you seen women, myGod?
I would not want women to doanything with other women for my
enjoyment unless it was alsofor theirs.
Do anything with other womenfor my enjoyment unless it was
also for theirs?
Hentai this covers pretty mucheverything.
(40:48):
The word hentai means pervertor perversion in Japanese, and
Japanese porn is odd.
There's a lot of stuff that'sbored out, and I want to go
there because if there's aculture that is that different
from America's, I want to seesome of what it has to offer.
I hope that I get to a pointwhere I've had so much sex and
seen so much of the variety ofspice that that has to offer
(41:10):
that I can't get off on anythingless than tentacle porn.
That's what I'm hoping for.
I'm not there yet and in factthat just feels like too far up.
It's like the Beach Boysdropping Pet sounds in 1966.
Beautiful thing, the worldwasn't ready for it.
They didn't have anything tocompare it to Stepmom.
Yeah, there's a bunch of thisstepfamily, step-sibling,
(41:33):
pseudo-incest stuff.
I didn't have a great childhoodvis-a-vis my family of origin.
I have no appetite for thisstuff.
Just the humiliation andbetrayal of it is a lot too much
for me to get off on.
I just need something a littlebit, not quite that fractally
disgusting.
I need one thing to be gross ata time.
(41:55):
I would never ban incest porn,though Incest should be banned
along with families, marriageand procreation.
Get rid of that stuff and thenwatch all the porn you want
about it.
Milf fetishizing older womenwho we start treating like shit
around the time they hit 30 andthen push out toward the edge of
society unless they're willingto be servants.
(42:16):
I have a rock hard boner rightnow.
All of that is very hot.
It's hard to compete with.
Helena the Brit (42:22):
Big ass.
Emerson Dameron (42:23):
I'm not really an ass guy.
I don't have anything againstthem.
I prefer a big ass over no ass.
I might as well Sure, why not?
I'll throw that in.
Yeah, I'm a leg and titty man.
I can see legs anytime I want.
I would say.
Gestalt is my thing.
It has to all work togethersomehow.
So I certainly enjoy a big ass.
In context, would I just wantto watch a bunch of asses?
(42:45):
I haven't quite made it thereyet, but go for it, knock it out
.
I like hitting it from the back.
It wouldn't be in my top seven.
Cream pie porn.
I totally get that is one ofthe things that we are literally
born to do.
If life has a purpose and thatpurpose is to recreate it, which
seems like it would be a strongcandidate top three perhaps,
along with feeling good andcreating our own Meaning the
(43:08):
urge to raw dog it or take therubber off is very strong.
The birth control available formen is not great.
I have a vasectomy, which Ithink was a wonderful idea and
totally worth the money.
I hate condoms and I think alot of people do.
We were told in the 90s thatsex with a condom actually feels
better, and if someone has toldyou that and then you haven't,
(43:31):
you're not going to believeanything that anyone ever tells
you again.
That said, I don't recommendgoing around and doing this
without really thinking itthrough and you're going to want
to and it might happen.
I've had a very condom averseex who was very convincing,
convinced me effectively thatnothing bad would happen,
(43:52):
nothing did we had a lot ofclose calls, very awkward weeks
which would end in jubilation.
When she sent me a gift from theshining the blood pouring out
of the elevator and she wasn'tpregnant, and we'd usually end
up without a rubber again incelebration because it's.
I mean, there's almost nothingthat feels better If you're
going to watch porn of somethingin lieu of doing it.
I can think of some things thatare in league with this, but I
(44:14):
think this is a great thing towatch other people do if it
helps you deal with your verynatural but potentially very
destructive urge to do ityourself.
And then we have lesbianscissoring.
Porn brings us back around.
I don't think a lot of peoplereally know how lesbians have
sex unless they themselves arelesbians, which I think everyone
is really deep down.
I know that that's not true, Iknow, I know.
(44:37):
I know I'm not telling you thatif you don't, your sexuality is
not real.
If you're not into Shakira, Idon't believe that.
I know that.
There's a lot of experience Ican't relate to.
I love that.
The thing that people zoom inon is like the closest you can
get to PNV without Peggy or adildo, because there's just so
much more to sex than this.
If anything good comes of theproliferation of porn that's
(44:59):
happened since the wide adoptionof broadband internet we can
branch out a little bit, not interms of what we watch, but in
terms of what we do.
When it comes to sex, I adopt aBurning man attitude that there
should be no spectators.
At some point we'll get all theway from PNV sex for the
purposes of procreation onceevery three years and the
(45:20):
sanctity of a Jesus-ordained,miserable marriage.
The only way to have sex towardbasically always having sex all
the time Breathing is sex.
Everything you do is sex andhas a similar potential for
chaos and destruction and joyand comedy and exuberant human
creativity.
I can see it.
(45:48):
I can see it.
I can see it.
I can see it.
I can see it.
I have a strong residualfondness for you.
(46:24):
I don't resent you like I did.
I don't want you to bemiserable every day for the rest
of your life.
I want you to be happyeventually, after you check
yourself and get smacked arounda little bit.
(46:45):
Erica and Damon had a bit of afalling out.
They wouldn't call it that.
This was not a bridge thateither of them wanted to burn.
They needed some space.
They had gotten into some stuffthat they both felt like they
weren't really ready for andthey weren't really ready to
talk about why they weren'tready for it and it was too much
(47:08):
, too soon.
Things got weird and theydidn't talk for a couple of
weeks and they stopped readingthe book, and that's when
everything went to hell.
Damon's mom died after a longillness.
Erica started to experiencehard bouts of depression.
She had some experience withdepression when she was a
teenager.
One time it got really bad andthat's when she decided I'm
(47:32):
going to live life like it'slife, like this is all I get.
I'm going to thoroughly embraceit and relish it and spread
that around.
I'm going to be an engine oflove, pumping it out into the
world.
And that worked out really well.
For about 10 years Now, theBlack Dog seemed to be catching
(47:52):
up with her, and sometimes shecouldn't leave the house at all.
She was no longer able to enjoymusic that she loved.
She could only listen to operaTchaikovsky, a couple of others.
It was ugly Only listened toopera Tchaikovsky A couple of
others it was ugly.
Damon was kind of always on thesad side.
He was experiencing grief,which hits different people in
all kinds of different ways, andone day he was down and the
(48:15):
next day he went kind of nutsand would go on a bender.
He was very lonely.
So was Erica.
They were profoundly isolatedand after a while they both
decided to reach out to eachother.
They wanted to hear eachother's voices.
So they did this a couple oftimes.
By the time they finallyconnected, they knew they needed
(48:47):
to get back together.
They needed to finish the book,take the ride that they bought
the ticket for, fully expressthese sexual demons' passions.
Helena the Brit (48:58):
The pain.
Emerson Dameron (48:59):
Joy at its extremes is indistinguishable
from pain.
Only through its fullexpression can it be released.
Also, they were in love.
They really dug each other'saction, didn't like being away
from each other for that long.
Both hit rough patches and theywanted each other there.
They loved each other truly,breaking through the threshold
(49:20):
In a way the English language isunfit to describe.
As they got back into the bookthey saw what was happening with
Leo and Megan.
That was going to be okay, muchas it had always been.
They knew that they needed tohelp Steve.
So they broke every erotic seal.
Anything that they wanted to doever, they did it With each
(49:43):
other.
They hired some help in somecases, inspired as they were by
the character's journey throughthe sexual underground.
They came up with the resourcesIf they wanted to do it.
They made it happen.
They loved Steve back to life.
He got out of town he had to.
He had needed to for a whileWent to live somewhere else
(50:07):
Nobody knew quite where, but hewas putting some cool stuff on
Pinterest, taking it slow,working through his grief, and
was starting to make art thatwas interesting in a new way,
not like the summer stuff.
He couldn't get back there,chased that dragon for a while
(50:27):
and then just decided to let itgo.
He was possessed by a demon.
What do you want?
He had some healing to do.
The best way he found to dothat was through his work,
because if he stopped working hebecame a pretentious hipster
douchebag and he wasn't going tolet that happen.
So he kept making art and itgot interesting.
There's a certain quality to it, a glow product of the process
(50:50):
of sex transmutation, channelingsexual energy, the force of
creativity of life itself, intothe work.
It was cool.
The use of orange in that onepainting was interesting, the
blue one really sexy.
There's something going onthere.
I want to take that ride.
Enough with the damned excuses.
(52:01):
It's a beautiful day, getoutside, go enjoy it.
It's real windy.
Californians are very specialchildren, as in Illinois, and
it's adorable when everythingshuts down because of rain and
wind.
Go outside, you'll buildcharacter.
I already have character.
I suppose your characterdevelops.
(52:21):
It's in flux.
Whether you work on yourselfand take a hand in developing
your character or not, it'sgoing to develop.
So, yes, you have character ofa sort.
I'm a character actor.
How's that working out for you?
I don't know.
I've got Zoom auditionstomorrow.
Well, go get some sunshine, getsome cherry in those cheeks,
(52:43):
fire it up, start me up.
But you're dead.
Right, tell me more about thisaudition tomorrow.
You gonna bring the noise forthat.
Do you care about anything?
Yes, borges wrote A writer andI believe generally all persons
(53:06):
must think that whatever happensto him or her is a resource.
All things have been given to usfor a purpose, and an artist
must feel this more intensely.
All that happens to us,including our humiliations, our
misfortunes, our embarrassments,all is given to us as raw
material, as clay, so that wemay shape our art.
I absolutely do not believethat everything happens for a
(53:30):
reason.
That's a horrible thing to sayto someone who is suffering that
there's some purpose that theyshould be aware of, and if it
just feels like suffering and itjust feels like life bites
right now, that that meansthey're not doing it right or
they're missing somethingimportant, I would save that.
I would put a sock in it ifyou're talking to someone who's
(53:52):
grieving, however, what if itwas true?
I don't think that it is.
I think that we spend our daystelling stories and looking for
patterns in chaos, becauseseeing things as they are would
just be way too confusing forour little brains.
We make meaning and thus havemore control over the meaning
that we make, if not unlimitedleverage.
(54:14):
I don't think that you can justmanifest millions of dollars and
an apartment in Manhattan andhave it happen.
If you did, what's the point indoing anything?
But what if you take theattitude?
This is, depending on how youwork a puzzle for me to solve,
something to work on.
There's a message in here thatI need to suss out.
(54:36):
This is a demonic white whalethat I have to resign myself to
an obsession with, because it'sgoing to drive out everything
else and I'm not going to beable to think about anything
else, and I'm not really goingto make any progress until I'm
able to not think about thewhite whale, because you can
front load a lot of information,but the insights don't really
(54:59):
come until you stop thinkingabout it, at which point perhaps
they will show up like theNorth Star in the Arizona sky,
or it might never present itself.
There could be no closure.
Eventually, you could move onwith luck.
There could be no closure.
Eventually, you could move onwith luck.
But what if you look at yourheartbreak, as I'm going to have
to do something with this,because I'm an artist and I
(55:22):
think you are.
I think everyone is.
Art to me just means being onyour mission.
It's doing the work.
Anything that you do well anddevote your full attention to
becomes a creative practice anda spiritual practice and becomes
art, not artifice, althoughthat applies to everything in
some sense and to nothing inanother sense.
(55:44):
Stay with me I am certainly anartist.
It took me a long time torealize that that's all I've
ever been.
It's all I ever wanted to be.
I don't care aboutenlightenment, I just want to
make art.
I want what I need to supportmyself in making the best art
possible.
If it came down to it, I wouldconsider going to Slab City
(56:05):
making art and living off ofscene points.
Fortunately, I've found a nicelittle middle way between art
and commerce, having created thenumber one avant-garde personal
development program in LosAngeles and the first and only
good podcast.
I've struck gold, but I've alsofound myself in the dirt on
(56:27):
occasion in the past.
I want very much is to be partof a creative partnership,
collaboration or community,perhaps all of those things.
It hasn't happened a lot.
I also like having completecreative control, as I do over
this show.
If you get hit hard on multiplefronts, it can be really
(56:49):
devastating and it can take avery long time to figure out
what the hell do I do with this,and you won't feel like the
kind of person that can love andbe loved and make great art.
You will feel like worthlessgarbage.
I did.
I can't speak for you.
Maybe you have very highself-esteem, as do I.
(57:10):
Everything has its shadow side.
I discovered a lot about myselfthrough that pain that I didn't
really want to know right away.
In a very short amount of time,I really put myself out there
and really got hurt.
When something like thathappens, you're kind of stuck
with it, because what else areyou going to think about for the
(57:30):
foreseeable future?
What are you going to do withthese parts of yourself that
you've discovered that you haveno idea how to love or do
anything with, celebrate, makejokes about, muster up all of
the patience and self-compassionthat you can in that case,
because you're going to need it.
It's going to be a while.
This is going to drag out likethe last week of school and
(57:52):
you're not going to make greatstuff right away.
I just started a new job, so Iwas not in the position to say
OK, you know me, you know thatI'm a hard worker who can be
trusted.
This is what is happening andthis is where I'm at right now.
I'm not planning on eating orsleeping properly for the next
month or so, so my performancemay suffer.
Bear with me.
(58:13):
You know I'm better than this.
They had no idea whether or notI was better than that, so I
just had to knuckle up and dowhat was expected of someone
with basic competence at least.
That wasn't easy or fun to pullthrough and I felt very much
alone and I'd like to say youdon't have to feel alone.
(58:34):
I'd like to say I've got you ina parasocial way.
I will provide any resourcesthat may be of use.
I hope that we can have a fewlaughs.
I will not guarantee that thingswill be different on the other
side.
Well, they will absolutely bedifferent.
Will they be better?
I don't know.
I don't have a currencyconverter to judge the value of
(58:56):
your experience.
I feel for you and you don'thave to believe that it happened
for a reason.
Ultimately, I don't thinkthat's the case, but just
imagine what if it did, if I hadto make sense of this and do
something and use it as fuel formy mission.
How would I, even justtheoretically, do that as a
thought experiment?
(59:16):
See what happens.
I wish you the best.
K-chung Los Angeles.
Emerson Dameron's MedicatedMinutes.
La's number one avant-gardepersonal development program.
1630 AM kchungradioorg, firstWednesdays of the month, after
which it becomes the only goodpodcast.
(59:39):
Thank you, so Thank you.
Change is a choice, but you only have the
options that you know that youhave.
You are this close to findingmore options than you ever
thought would be possible, butthere's a problem blocking your
way, and the problem is you.
You haven't figured out how toget rid of yourself, yet.
The ecstatic experiences thatyou've tried to create have left
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You're still there, feelingsorry for yourself and
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My name is Emerson Dameron.
I'm the writer, producer, host,everything.
I love you personally.
Levity saves lives, lives.
(02:07):
What is taboo?
What are we not supposed totalk about?
And it's still important totalk about those things, whether
we know what they are or not.
We have to go on a quest insearch of our taboos and be like
Sherlock Holmes.
What are the things that wecan't talk about?
What are the unknown knowns,the things that we take so for
granted, the ideology that weswim in?
(02:28):
We can't even name them.
You think this is just the waythings are.
We have to do everything we canto surface those things.
It's not fun.
As Zizek says, freedom hurts.
There's a reason that peopledon't want to put on the glasses
and they live In many ways.
Life is a lot easier if we justkeep on keeping on assuming the
(02:54):
things that we assume.
Talking about taboo topics iskind of taboo itself.
Many people use it as an excuseto be obnoxious and be bullies
and draw the wrong kind ofattention to themselves in an
annoying way.
Just want to hurt people andget a reaction, so that they
(03:18):
know they exist, so they knowthey have an effect on someone,
which is kind of sad and itcompounds the tragedy and makes
it a bit farcical when you givethem what they want by getting
reactive.
So let's see if we can suss outour taboo topics together.
What would you rather not talkabout?
There's money.
(03:39):
That might be the big one Money,power dynamics, sex as related
to power dynamics and sometimesto money, the rampantness of
herpes in Los Angeles.
What do you really think?
What do you think about?
Let's start there.
You are alone with yourthoughts.
First of all, how do yousurvive?
I can't do that without a verydeliberate daily practice.
(04:02):
And what are they?
Your brain is hijacked by you,whether it's the drill sergeant,
the mother, the drama llama,one of the other Jungian
archetypes.
What are you thinking about?
What are you thinking about it?
Once you know that you canalways change your mind?
Ideally, you want to cross overinto a life sans belief systems
(04:26):
.
There's a reason they call themBS.
Beliefs are impediments.
You gotta believe some thingsin order to get your shoes tied
in the morning, Free will beingthe obvious falsehood that a lot
of people believe forconvenience, because it's useful
.
But ultimately, you want to beskeptical of your beliefs.
I am deeply skeptical of mine,and mine are more deliberate and
(04:49):
thought out than yours.
Give me a list of 10 things.
You believe you have 15 seconds.
You just got to spit it out.
Just keep going, keep yourmouth moving.
You're good at that.
What do you believe?
What do you think?
What are you thinking aboutright now?
Let it rip.
You've been wanting to do thatforever.
This is your opportunity toreveal the quotidian darkness
(05:12):
that you have.
In common with most of ourspecies, we are incompetent
beasts.
We are not very good at beinganimals.
The humans, most spiders andbeetles and the modal paramecium
are all being the best animalsthat they can be.
I can't say that for myself ormost of the people that I know.
(05:32):
We're unable to forget.
We forgot how to live, how tobreathe, how to be here how to
cooperate.
We've got this idea that we areall against each other.
If it was my job to keep peopledown, to keep revolution from
fermenting and fermenting andcoming into being the first
(05:52):
thing, I would do is convinceeveryone who has the potential
to revolt that they are all outto get each other.
It works like a charm.
People want to believe that itmakes them feel important and
they've forgotten that they haveother ways of feeling important
, not just breathing.
You don't have to do anything.
You can give up your dreams,kick back, enjoy your free time,
(06:14):
just be here, try that for acouple of days, see how it goes.
Then go on that drug bingeyou've been putting off.
That'll help you get rid ofyour residual beliefs, as long
as you pick theawareness-expanding drugs, not
the awareness-contracting drugs,although I do get annoyed by
the my drugs are good and yourdrugs are bad kind of rhetoric.
(06:36):
I was guilty of psychedelicexceptionalism at one point when
I had stopped drinking and wasgetting a lot of therapeutic
benefit from psychedelics.
But those are just my drugs.
They are not inherently betterthan your drugs.
It's all what we do with themand all that stuff is already in
us.
There are always to get there.
(06:56):
Everything we do is with thegoal of changing our
consciousness, because God knows, we need to do something to get
the hell out of here.
If you were stripped of yourprivacy today or first thing
tomorrow, if you knew thateveryone you encounter gets a
Terminator-type baseball cardreadout whenever they look at
(07:17):
you.
Vital stats, including yourmost embarrassing traits, the
ways you consistently fall short.
You know you're doing it.
You keep doing it.
It's almost like you want to doit.
Part of you does.
You're a sick pervert.
You're not even indulging thoseweaknesses, you're indulging
the ones that don't even get youanywhere.
That don't even get you off.
(07:37):
They could if you turn theminto fetishes.
You know how to do that.
You're born with that knowledge.
Let's get back to the point.
What would you do if yousuddenly had no privacy, if you
were thoroughly doxxed?
Now that stuff is out there andpeople can see you.
Some of them don't like whatthey see.
Some of them do but pretendthat they don't.
(08:00):
Peer pressure compels them todeny their joys, which is truly
tragic.
There is so little joy to bescraped out of this life.
We should celebrate all theones that we have.
A guilty pleasure is neitherHypocrisy is a luxury that we
can ill afford.
You have experienced the horrorof exposure, of being stripped,
(08:20):
of having everything that youthought was yours, that you
could keep to yourself, issuddenly distributed and
dispersed and consumed by thesalivating, judgmental masses.
And what do you think they'regoing to be interested in?
All the good that you've done?
Several hours a month spentvolunteering at an animal
(08:41):
shelter, older people thatyou've helped cross the street
or just talked to and treatedlike human beings Do you think
that's what people are going tobe interested in?
Is that what you would beinterested in?
I understand the deaths ofdespair.
Despair is dearer.
The world that we've createdfor ourselves is an evolutionary
mismatch.
(09:01):
A lot of us are not built formonogamy.
I would argue the vast majorityof us are not built for the
Frederick Winslow Taylor factorywork model that a lot of bosses
are still trying to use, andthey're trying to drag us back
to the office so they can bringit back.
No more work gets done withoutit.
It shows that that's not whatthey care about.
(09:22):
Much like the anti-abortionpeople don't really care about
the fetuses.
They care about controlling thelives of the women and
curtailing the freedom of others, because somehow, if you're
more free, it makes me less free.
I don't know how that works,but it's not going to happen on
my watch.
And we have not evolved tooptimize for shareholder value.
(09:43):
I had been fascinated withsuicide since I discovered what
it was, and once the suicidedoor opens, I don't think it
ever really closes all the way.
And when you have that card inyour pocket, it gives you a
feeling of agency in the darkestmoments.
Camus said it's the onephilosophical problem that
matters.
It's always there.
(10:03):
You've always got an option Cor D, and if you get creative
you want to have more than twooptions.
At least If you have twooptions, they're both terrible.
Now, orgasm in French issometimes referred to as la
petite mort, the little death.
So you can have the littledeath, you can have a lot of
little deaths.
Does that add up to one big one?
Distributed death, death on theinstallment plan.
(10:27):
Sex and death are kissingcousins and I don't know about
you, but I get super worked uptalking about death.
I live in the desert, I break asweat.
Rigorous sex session, whetherit's afternoon delight or when
we blocked off the whole weekendno talking, no clothes, just
animal sticker of sex, and thensome choking occurs.
(10:49):
Or maybe it's just in the heartand the mind that the white
tunnel becomes visible.
The chips are down, the rubberhits the road.
We are at our most passionate,our most alive.
We are channeling the force ofcreation itself, engaged in
exuberant celebration of humancreativity in the highest form
of physical comedy.
(11:10):
And the skull is grayingthrough the window.
Death is omnipresent, death isuniversal, life is optional, sex
is life, sex is creation.
Polarity is inherent in allthings except the ones in which
it is not.
With sex and death, you gottawhirl in your own paths.
(11:31):
The sparks are gonna fly, thefluids are gonna pour.
It's gonna be a session and ahalf.
You do not want to miss that.
You want to be here, at leastfor sex and death, and when you
turn that into a practice, itempowers you to be here for
everything else.
Nothing is really anythingspecial when you're here for
(11:52):
everything and there's a realpower in that, almost like dying
the best way to kill yourself.
You do not die physically, itwill change everything about
your life.
Showing up for all of it, or asmuch as possible.
We've all got things to do.
(12:17):
I got some bad news.
You, like the rest of us, aretrapped in a controlled
hallucination, essentially inthere all alone.
The rest of us are, strictlyspeaking, real, but you are so
much the creator of what youconsider reality with a capital
R.
You've got your head wedged sofar up your sphincter and you
(12:39):
are so dramatically, comically,absurdly wrong about everything
that you believe, especiallyabout other people, most
especially about yourself andyour experience of the world,
that you are surrounded bywarped funhouse mirrors you are
arguing with and flirting withand screwing and screwing over
alternate versions of yourself.
(12:59):
You contain multitudes andyou're surrounded by them.
That's who all the rest of usare in your perception.
You are trapped in a screamingexistential hell world and it's
such a waste.
You really should be ashamed ofyourself.
But you can't stop you kind oflike full creative control,
casting us as characters in yourcinematic universe.
(13:22):
You don't really want to get toknow us.
You don't even like sex thatmuch.
Sex is the way to really get toknow people.
Casual sex is the way tocourageously get to know a whole
lot of people and experienceyourself from a kaleidoscopic
panorama of other people'sperspectives.
And you can't really deny themtheir humanity.
Because you're hitting that.
You've exchanged biologicalfluids for the reason you're
(13:45):
terrified is sex, because you'renot happy in the existential
hell world and you don't want tobe happy.
It's your comfort zone and youain't leaving.
You like your reality and youlove your toxic relationship
with the resistance andsolipsism and narcissism, not
really having to questionyourself.
(14:06):
You're the only one who reallyknows everything about your
world.
You are here because you'rehuman, humans being the only
animal dumb enough to build aworld in which it cannot live.
Sorry, you're here.
You're here, probably, if thesesurvey cards are to be believed
(14:29):
which I would not but you'rehere to find out who you are.
Do you even know what you are?
Take the sentence I blank a body.
This is like a mad wig, whichis not a trademark of Emerson
Dameron's medicated minutes.
Some people would put I want abody.
Go for it, mazel tov, you crazykids.
(14:51):
No kink shaming, as long aseveryone's having a great time,
with an expansive definition ofwhat a great time entails very
much up to individual tastes.
I would guess that your firstthought was I have a body, have
Something you own, property,dominion.
You want sovereignty for youand your body.
(15:14):
What about?
I am a body that, to me, feelscloser.
Notice I say feels, because I'mvery embodied.
I trust the wisdom of my innerhealer more than I trust any of
you, ice cold, weasels andbastards.
There is one honest man leftand I am going to trust my
(15:37):
instincts and get laid like A$APRocky on tour, and there's
nothing you can do to stop me.
You are your body.
When your body goes, what youthink of as you likely goes with
it.
Although I believe there's somecontinuation of the Screaming
Rainbow, hellworld and Calliopemusic of human consciousness, I
(16:00):
think it flows right back intothe river.
Your little tributary with adriver's license and a birth
certificate and a whole lot ofconsumer debt was an impermanent
thing.
The river flows.
We know not to what extent,whether or not it goes all the
way to the coast I am west coasttill the casket drops, so
(16:22):
hopefully my consciousness flowsin that direction.
But I will not care because Iwill not be identified with the
same series of hang-ups andidentifications and my whole
ideology, my gestalt, willdisintegrate and I will almost
certainly be happier for it.
I would say you are essentiallya problem solver.
(16:45):
That's not a compliment.
The reason we typically decideto solve problems is to create
bigger ones.
That's what we want.
Everybody's got solutionsbusiness solutions, tech
solutions, solutions for allsorts of things that I suppose
we have tacitly defined asproblems because we've got to
(17:06):
have more of those.
It is a seller's market forproblems.
If you're offering solutions,you're pissing in the wind and
you're getting a golden showerfrom the people who are divvying
out the problems.
They have the power.
You need problems so that youdon't have to get what you
really want.
You would go insane immediately.
Almost certainly you might likeit.
(17:28):
In 1979, the polymath pranksterAlan Abel put his own obituary
in the New York Times.
The reaction surprised him.
People he thought were his bestfriends shrugged and people he
barely knew were heartbroken,which goes to show you don't
know who loves you until you'vealienated everyone.
(17:58):
Erica is a passionate,free-spirited woman in her late
20s, living in a college town.
It's not as cheap as it used tobe, but she doesn't really have
to work, because when you're asfull of life as Erica is, the
world just shows up with dumptrucks full of money every
Friday afternoon and leaves themin your yard.
(18:20):
She is able to have a yard.
She's living well.
She spends most of her timegallivanting around town,
spreading life through thestreets, through the parks,
through the green spaces.
Sometimes she rides the bus.
She doesn't need to, she owns acar but she'll do it just to
(18:41):
spread her lust for life toanyone who happens to be around.
She meets Damon, a melancholicman in his early 30s, disheveled
academic of some kind, probablyan adjunct professor he doesn't
like to talk about it MeetsErica in a record store.
They're both fans of themagnetic fields, but that's
(19:03):
about as far as it goes.
Kind of tries to flirt, but notto the point where he is
risking rejection.
She kind of likes him Also.
He's kind of weird.
This might be too much work forher.
She has to spread the joy ofliving to all the people.
She doesn't need a project.
They go their separate ways.
They don't even think about itagain until they run into each
(19:27):
other.
Weeks later, at one of the localbookstores, erica is thumbing
through a brick of a novel 800plus pages about a throuple that
live in Southern California.
Has a quizzical, confusedexpression that Damon finds very
(19:48):
attractive and he lets her knowthat he has read the book.
Does she want to know anythingabout it?
She asks what happens in thebook.
Don't spoil it, but just, youknow, set it up.
Damon can't really do thatbecause it is too twinding,
there's too much discontinuity,there's a crazy symbolism and
(20:09):
Greek mythological references, awhole digression that goes on
for a hundred pages on the rawsexuality that makes Catholicism
so explosive.
They both realize that roughlythe same time that they've been
talking about this book thathe's read and she hasn't, for 45
(20:32):
minutes and they thoroughlyenjoyed it together.
Just talking about this book,damon says you know I wouldn't
mind reading it again.
I feel like there are many moresurprises, little nuggets left
in there, that I'd like todiscover.
Many more surprises, littlenuggets left in there that I'd
like to discover.
You want to read it together,which is probably the boldest
move that he's ever made.
She's kind of smitten Was abouthalf an hour ago.
(20:55):
The sound of certain humanvoices is what she's into.
He's got one.
She's hooked.
They set up a little book clubInitially.
Got one.
She's hooked.
They set up a little book clubInitially.
They'll read the same number ofpages every night and then
discuss it.
On Signal, which they both useas a texting app, probably
because they use it to buy drugsand find that they enjoy it
(21:20):
more.
But after a while it gets tothem.
Things get hot and heavy in thebook.
Taboos are broken and it's hot,steamy.
They hook up At his place, ather place, in between, in bars,
in public restrooms, in parksand green spaces.
Once on the bus, everybody knewwhat they were doing.
(21:40):
Nobody said anything.
There was something sovulnerable and sweet and
romantic about the shared doublehand job that they didn't want
to spoil it.
After a while they started towonder how can we ramp this up,
and Erica suggested what if weperformed the book?
(22:01):
Use it as an instruction manual, follow it as close to the
letter as we can, as though itis sexual scripture.
It was a wild summer for both ofthem and for some other people,
and really for the whole worldA sexy butterfly effect.
The people they affectedaffected other people and this
(22:22):
got passed around and everybodywas feeling it.
It said that 90% of success isshowing up.
(22:44):
If it's true, the same thingcan certainly be said of failure
.
Resist the pressure to bealways on.
Stop sticking a knife in theoutlet.
The most crucial and wickedthing you can do is learn to
love your own solitude.
Not just tolerate it, but getoff on it.
That's a superpower andconfirms that you're better than
(23:06):
other people.
If you weren't before, you willbe now.
Don't go where you're notwanted.
Don't go most of the places youare wanted.
Practice the art of thetakeaway.
If it suits you, burn off yourfingerprints, put on Groucho
glasses and find a nice beach ina country with no extradition
treaty.
Risk-taking behavior is good.
You've got a death drive andthat's healthy.
(23:29):
Don't even try to drive 55.
Ignore people.
Shut them down.
The one thing that's missingfrom their lives might be the
gift of missing you.
Happy Mental Health AwarenessMonth.
(23:55):
I'm Emerson Dameron.
I struggle, sometimes valiantly, often less so, with depression
.
I'm a well-credentialedmentally ill person.
That's the only marginalizedidentity group that I am
affiliated with officially.
So if it makes youuncomfortable to hear about
mental illness, it sucks to beyou right now.
(24:16):
I've been depressed almost myentire life.
I've also had moments ofexcitement that snapped me out
of it for a second, which onlyconvinced me that in the long
run every joy is mitigated by amuch worse hangover of futility
and meaninglessness andself-loathing, and life is
(24:38):
worthless.
If you have anxiety, I feel badfor you.
I feel sympathy but not empathy.
I don't have that problem.
Anxiety makes you very unsureof yourself, whereas I am
absolutely positive that I am arepulsive, radioactive piece of
cat dung that should bedestroyed, wiped off the
ontological chalkboard as soonas possible For everyone's good.
(25:01):
I am worthless and I know itdeep down in my kidneys.
That's the only thing that I'msure of, the only thing I know
to be true.
Ask if you are happy and youcease to be.
So Not a problem for me.
I never started and that's fine.
I don't have a lot ofexperience with happiness.
It's not just sour grapes to saythat.
(25:21):
I think it's dubious as a lifegoal.
I think it's a side effect ofdoing some things right and
having the aspects align in acertain way and getting lucky
and being able to accept that onits own terms.
Do not convince yourself thatyou deserve it through things
(25:41):
that you did, as Americansalways do when they succeed, and
it always tears them apartbecause they know intuitively
that it would not have happenedwithout luck, and that perhaps
creates an obligation to othersless successful, not necessarily
exclusively through their ownfailings, not even mostly
because of their own failings,just because Because that's just
(26:04):
how things work, or don't?
Endless chains of causality thatwe will probably not be around
long enough to understandbecause our insane cult of
rugged individualism is gonnawipe us off the earth before
that happens.
We're the only species that gotsmart enough to create a world
(26:26):
that it is not able to live in.
So it sucks to be all of us andI am depressed because that's
an accurate interpretation ofworld events, in much the same
way that my attachment style isavoidant, because that is the
correct attachment style.
I'm not saying that depressionmakes you an asshole, because
that's not fair.
To other people that strugglewith depression who are not me,
(26:48):
I will say that if you werealready inclined in that
direction, it makes it easier tobecome an asshole Because your
core belief is that nothing youdo matters, and that is
incredibly dangerous to everyoneinvolved.
It makes you a wrecking ballthrough the life of anyone who
tries to care about you.
If your mind is telling youthat you don't matter, don't
(27:10):
accept that Push back with thetruth, which is you don't matter
much.
Let us not get ahead ofourselves.
You're not going to ruinanyone's life.
They have to at least cooperatewith you, because people can
only truly ruin their own livesand that's another thing that's
your fault.
If it goes wrong because you'redepressed, everything is your
(27:32):
fault.
In a weird sense, you're alwaysright and you've built a highly
effective machine that protectsyou from certain things and
destroys you in other respects.
Really overrated depression,I'd have to say.
Don't believe the hype.
If you're not already depressed, try to avoid becoming
(27:54):
depressed.
If you find yourself depressed,get out of there as soon as you
can.
Diet, exercise, hydrate, drugs.
Some drugs might not work foryou and others might work
insanely well, by which I meanit's so good and it makes you so
sane that that drives you crazy.
You get what you truly wantedand that destroys your life, as
(28:18):
it is almost bound to do.
Nevertheless, if you're dealingwith depression, everything is
on the table, including anydrugs that you can get your
hands on.
I've tried almost all of them.
I don't recommend all or any ofthem, but I don't recommend
that you don't try as many asyou want.
Everybody loves their own drugsand hates everyone else's drugs
(28:41):
except me, because I'm betterthan everyone.
I love drugs.
I accept that some of them arenot for me and others I am not
good at doing, but cannabis,weirdly, is one of the few that
works for me.
When I get stoned I am stilldepressed, but I'm depressed
about entirely different things.
There's true sadness there andit's dredged up by my
(29:05):
over-appreciation of music andI'm emotionally shredded by the
music of Future and Metro Boomand party-hardy lyrics.
But his vocals sound so sad.
It's profoundly tragic musicand I'm crushed with the sadness
of ages, not sustainable, butit beats depression by a long
(29:26):
shot.
Sex is good.
Big fan of sex, like Gen Z iskind of down on sex.
We've accepted all thesedifferent ways to have sex
socially, collectively, and yetwith that acceptance seems to
have come a drop in enthusiasm.
It could be because the worldis absolutely flooded with porn.
Sex, like everything else, isgetting more expensive, as porn
(29:48):
is essentially free.
There's an opportunity cost andI don't think we've seen the
longitudinal effects of thismuch porn.
It's unavoidable.
If you're listening to thisright now, you watch internet
porn, or you have watched it,possibly recently.
You may very well have been init, to which I can only say get
that money.
Everything is a side hustle.
(30:09):
Never do anything for fun.
There's a lot bad to say aboutporn.
I kind of like it, and not justfor the reasons that you
pretend you don't.
You probably think of porn ifyou think about it in terms that
are strictly utilitarian.
It gets you from point A topoint O.
It probably doesn't take toolong.
You might feel terribleafterward or like you wasted
(30:32):
your time, which welcome toanything.
You probably don't think of itas great cinema, and that,
friend, is where you and Idiffer.
Nothing can make a movie greatlike great acting.
Acting is hard and it's one ofthose things that almost
everyone thinks they would begood at, until they try it and
then they realize why.
(30:52):
Even people that get paid to doit are not necessarily good at
it all the time.
It's a spiritual practice, andit's hard to be a great actor.
It's not as hard to be a reallygreat bad actor, but that also
has a lot of value and isrelatively rare compared to just
mediocre bad acting.
(31:13):
Great bad acting opens up newfractal dimensions in
storytelling.
If you're not appreciatingthese films, you're just not on
my level, which is a lot ofdifferent levels, and it's
better up here.
Lift yourself, read, becomemore like me.
That's why you're here.
So you've taken the first step,which is the hardest thing for
(31:35):
most people to do.
You're one of my kind.
Great bad acting generallyrequires cocaine, which is one
thing that can be found throughporn and is like porn in that
not a lot of people stand up forcocaine.
A lot of people use it, notthat many people sing hosannas
about it, and I think that'shypocritical.
(31:56):
Psychedelics can be like yearsand years of therapy in one
crack.
I love psychedelics.
Cocaine is also a wonderfulform of self-care.
You know who doesn't needtherapy Assholes.
Cocaine is asshole fantasy camp.
You will know that you're agenius.
You will have circuitous,free-ranging conversations with
(32:18):
other geniuses who know thatyou're a genius.
You will absolutely know thatyou're a genius.
You'll be too busy to getdepressed because you'll be a
genius at work.
If you use cocaine inmoderation, mindfully, if you
overdo it which usually happensbefore you realize that you're
overdoing it and way before youdo anything about overdoing it,
(32:38):
you will make it very clear toall concerned that you are not a
genius.
Access in moderation, inmoderation, in moderation, in
moderation, in moderation.
Helena the Brit (33:25):
Well darling, I suppose everyone has a moment
in their life when they'reutterly swept away by the
intoxicating thrust of passion.
No, that's too common Adventure.
A bit pedestrian, let's sayartistry.
Yes, that's the one, and in mycase it came in the form of a
(33:46):
man, a thief to be precise, aproper rogue, with eyes like
smudged charcoal and voice likeaged velvet.
He told me his name was Raphael.
Of course, I didn't believe him.
Two on the nose, don't youthink?
But oh, how I adored theaudacity of it all.
Art isn't so much what you'recapable of as what you can get
(34:07):
away with.
Raphael said that he had thesemarvellous aphorisms, but I'm
getting off point.
It began at a soiree, naturally,the kind of gathering where
everyone's pretending to admirethe host's ghastly modernist
sculptures but really justpilfering the canapes.
I, of course, was holding courtby the champagne fountain when
(34:29):
Raphael appeared.
All smirk and mystery, he toldme he was planning a heist, yes,
a heist to liberate, as he putit, a scandalous masterpiece
from the oppressive confines ofbureaucracy.
Now, I've always had a deepappreciation for subversion.
Subversion is art, art and viceversa, wouldn't you agree?
So when he invited me to joinhis team which turned out to be
(34:54):
just him.
And well, now me?
I thought, why not?
Helena, you've been waitingyour whole life to be part of an
iconic duo, the Muse and theMastermind.
The Target was an erotic artexhibit, a rather controversial
one at that, brimming with allthe delicate filth that makes
(35:14):
the bourgeoisie clutch theirpearls.
One piece in particular hadstirred such opprobrium Venus
uncloaked a disturbinglycaptivating sculpture of a
goddess mid-striptease.
Raphael insisted it was amisunderstood masterpiece.
A symbol of liberation, hecalled it.
I simply had to see it.
(35:35):
The plan, my loves, was to slipin after hours, dressed as
inconspicuously as possible.
I opted for a sleek blacknumber, which turned out to be
slightly draftier than Ianticipated.
But what is art without alittle sacrifice?
Without the glamour, it's hardto see the allure of
(35:58):
international art thievery, atleast from my perspective.
Well, admittedly, it is quiteerotic, isn't it?
I certainly felt it.
Raphael was all business atfirst, muttering about security
cameras and laser grids, but Icouldn't help but marvel at our
raudacity.
There I was, helena, harbingerof the avant-garde, about to
(36:22):
commit an actual crime.
By now we were running farenough ahead of schedule to
allow for a proper shag amongthe exhibits.
But then, oh, the tragedy.
With farcical elements.
Certainly the alarms went off.
Apparently, raphael's so-calledingenious bypass device was
nothing more than a glorifieduniversal remote control Like
(36:47):
Nano.
He dashed off, promising tocircle back, and left me, me
alone, clutching Venus,uncloaked in nothing but my
heels and a trembling sense ofindignation.
And so I did what anyself-respecting woman of my
intellect and poise would do Iimprovised.
I wedged myself behind thenearest installation a ghastly
(37:09):
assemblage of phantom limbs andglitter, if you must know and
waited.
Security guards swarmed theplace, shouting things like
identify yourself and drop thestatue, drop the statue.
Imagine suggesting suchbarbarity.
I'll have you know.
I protected Venus uncloakedwith my very life.
(37:31):
There I was, half draped over ametal sculpture titled Consumer
Apocalypse, attempting to lookboth invisible and profoundly
artistic.
It's no small feat, let meassure you, this
hiding-in-plains sight business.
Eventually, I realised Raphaelwas not coming back.
(37:51):
The guards grew tired ofsearching dreadfully
unimaginative lot and I made myescape, barefoot and clutching
Venus like a lover.
I left her in the garden of alocal monastery.
Poetic, don't you think themonks deserve a little spice?
A half-dozen terroristorganisations claimed
responsibility, which put memostly in the kheer, I believe.
(38:13):
As for Raphael, I never saw himagain, probably fled to Paris
or prison.
But you know what I have?
No regrets.
Art isn't meant to be safe orpredictable.
It's chaos, darlings.
It's passion.
It's hiding behind a sculpturein your knickers while an
American goomba named Barryshouts who's there as if it's
(38:37):
any of his business.
So, yes, I helped liberateVenus.
Was it foolish?
Perhaps?
Was it illegal, absolutely, butwas it artistic?
Emerson Dameron (39:40):
without question, and isn't that the
whole essence of the thing?
Really, I'm out, thank you.
The seven most popular types ofpornography according to Men's
(40:07):
Health it's hard to gauge thisbecause people aren't always
forthcoming about it.
I understand all of them, eventhough they're only a couple
that I personally enjoy.
I'm not a big porn consumer.
Generally, it's the opposite ofsex in a lot of ways.
If I watch too much porn, I endup feeling the opposite of the
way that I want to when I havewhat I want to be good sex,
(40:28):
which is good.
Lesbian porn number one.
Okay, I am confused by anyonewho is not into women.
I mean, have you seen women, myGod?
I would not want women to doanything with other women for my
enjoyment unless it was alsofor theirs.
Do anything with other womenfor my enjoyment unless it was
also for theirs?
Hentai this covers pretty mucheverything.
(40:48):
The word hentai means pervertor perversion in Japanese, and
Japanese porn is odd.
There's a lot of stuff that'sbored out, and I want to go
there because if there's aculture that is that different
from America's, I want to seesome of what it has to offer.
I hope that I get to a pointwhere I've had so much sex and
seen so much of the variety ofspice that that has to offer
(41:10):
that I can't get off on anythingless than tentacle porn.
That's what I'm hoping for.
I'm not there yet and in factthat just feels like too far up.
It's like the Beach Boysdropping Pet sounds in 1966.
Beautiful thing, the worldwasn't ready for it.
They didn't have anything tocompare it to Stepmom.
Yeah, there's a bunch of thisstepfamily, step-sibling,
(41:33):
pseudo-incest stuff.
I didn't have a great childhoodvis-a-vis my family of origin.
I have no appetite for thisstuff.
Just the humiliation andbetrayal of it is a lot too much
for me to get off on.
I just need something a littlebit, not quite that fractally
disgusting.
I need one thing to be gross ata time.
(41:55):
I would never ban incest porn,though Incest should be banned
along with families, marriageand procreation.
Get rid of that stuff and thenwatch all the porn you want
about it.
Milf fetishizing older womenwho we start treating like shit
around the time they hit 30 andthen push out toward the edge of
society unless they're willingto be servants.
(42:16):
I have a rock hard boner rightnow.
All of that is very hot.
It's hard to compete with.
Helena the Brit (42:22):
Big ass.
Emerson Dameron (42:23):
I'm not really an ass guy.
I don't have anything againstthem.
I prefer a big ass over no ass.
I might as well Sure, why not?
I'll throw that in.
Yeah, I'm a leg and titty man.
I can see legs anytime I want.
I would say.
Gestalt is my thing.
It has to all work togethersomehow.
So I certainly enjoy a big ass.
In context, would I just wantto watch a bunch of asses?
(42:45):
I haven't quite made it thereyet, but go for it, knock it out
.
I like hitting it from the back.
It wouldn't be in my top seven.
Cream pie porn.
I totally get that is one ofthe things that we are literally
born to do.
If life has a purpose and thatpurpose is to recreate it, which
seems like it would be a strongcandidate top three perhaps,
along with feeling good andcreating our own Meaning the
(43:08):
urge to raw dog it or take therubber off is very strong.
The birth control available formen is not great.
I have a vasectomy, which Ithink was a wonderful idea and
totally worth the money.
I hate condoms and I think alot of people do.
We were told in the 90s thatsex with a condom actually feels
better, and if someone has toldyou that and then you haven't,
(43:31):
you're not going to believeanything that anyone ever tells
you again.
That said, I don't recommendgoing around and doing this
without really thinking itthrough and you're going to want
to and it might happen.
I've had a very condom averseex who was very convincing,
convinced me effectively thatnothing bad would happen,
(43:52):
nothing did we had a lot ofclose calls, very awkward weeks
which would end in jubilation.
When she sent me a gift from theshining the blood pouring out
of the elevator and she wasn'tpregnant, and we'd usually end
up without a rubber again incelebration because it's.
I mean, there's almost nothingthat feels better If you're
going to watch porn of somethingin lieu of doing it.
I can think of some things thatare in league with this, but I
(44:14):
think this is a great thing towatch other people do if it
helps you deal with your verynatural but potentially very
destructive urge to do ityourself.
And then we have lesbianscissoring.
Porn brings us back around.
I don't think a lot of peoplereally know how lesbians have
sex unless they themselves arelesbians, which I think everyone
is really deep down.
I know that that's not true, Iknow, I know.
(44:37):
I know I'm not telling you thatif you don't, your sexuality is
not real.
If you're not into Shakira, Idon't believe that.
I know that.
There's a lot of experience Ican't relate to.
I love that.
The thing that people zoom inon is like the closest you can
get to PNV without Peggy or adildo, because there's just so
much more to sex than this.
If anything good comes of theproliferation of porn that's
(44:59):
happened since the wide adoptionof broadband internet we can
branch out a little bit, not interms of what we watch, but in
terms of what we do.
When it comes to sex, I adopt aBurning man attitude that there
should be no spectators.
At some point we'll get all theway from PNV sex for the
purposes of procreation onceevery three years and the
(45:20):
sanctity of a Jesus-ordained,miserable marriage.
The only way to have sex towardbasically always having sex all
the time Breathing is sex.
Everything you do is sex andhas a similar potential for
chaos and destruction and joyand comedy and exuberant human
creativity.
I can see it.
(45:48):
I can see it.
I can see it.
I can see it.
I can see it.
I have a strong residualfondness for you.
(46:24):
I don't resent you like I did.
I don't want you to bemiserable every day for the rest
of your life.
I want you to be happyeventually, after you check
yourself and get smacked arounda little bit.
(46:45):
Erica and Damon had a bit of afalling out.
They wouldn't call it that.
This was not a bridge thateither of them wanted to burn.
They needed some space.
They had gotten into some stuffthat they both felt like they
weren't really ready for andthey weren't really ready to
talk about why they weren'tready for it and it was too much
(47:08):
, too soon.
Things got weird and theydidn't talk for a couple of
weeks and they stopped readingthe book, and that's when
everything went to hell.
Damon's mom died after a longillness.
Erica started to experiencehard bouts of depression.
She had some experience withdepression when she was a
teenager.
One time it got really bad andthat's when she decided I'm
(47:32):
going to live life like it'slife, like this is all I get.
I'm going to thoroughly embraceit and relish it and spread
that around.
I'm going to be an engine oflove, pumping it out into the
world.
And that worked out really well.
For about 10 years Now, theBlack Dog seemed to be catching
(47:52):
up with her, and sometimes shecouldn't leave the house at all.
She was no longer able to enjoymusic that she loved.
She could only listen to operaTchaikovsky, a couple of others.
It was ugly Only listened toopera Tchaikovsky A couple of
others it was ugly.
Damon was kind of always on thesad side.
He was experiencing grief,which hits different people in
all kinds of different ways, andone day he was down and the
(48:15):
next day he went kind of nutsand would go on a bender.
He was very lonely.
So was Erica.
They were profoundly isolatedand after a while they both
decided to reach out to eachother.
They wanted to hear eachother's voices.
So they did this a couple oftimes.
By the time they finallyconnected, they knew they needed
(48:47):
to get back together.
They needed to finish the book,take the ride that they bought
the ticket for, fully expressthese sexual demons' passions.
Helena the Brit (48:58):
The pain.
Emerson Dameron (48:59):
Joy at its extremes is indistinguishable
from pain.
Only through its fullexpression can it be released.
Also, they were in love.
They really dug each other'saction, didn't like being away
from each other for that long.
Both hit rough patches and theywanted each other there.
They loved each other truly,breaking through the threshold
(49:20):
In a way the English language isunfit to describe.
As they got back into the bookthey saw what was happening with
Leo and Megan.
That was going to be okay, muchas it had always been.
They knew that they needed tohelp Steve.
So they broke every erotic seal.
Anything that they wanted to doever, they did it With each
(49:43):
other.
They hired some help in somecases, inspired as they were by
the character's journey throughthe sexual underground.
They came up with the resourcesIf they wanted to do it.
They made it happen.
They loved Steve back to life.
He got out of town he had to.
He had needed to for a whileWent to live somewhere else
(50:07):
Nobody knew quite where, but hewas putting some cool stuff on
Pinterest, taking it slow,working through his grief, and
was starting to make art thatwas interesting in a new way,
not like the summer stuff.
He couldn't get back there,chased that dragon for a while
(50:27):
and then just decided to let itgo.
He was possessed by a demon.
What do you want?
He had some healing to do.
The best way he found to dothat was through his work,
because if he stopped working hebecame a pretentious hipster
douchebag and he wasn't going tolet that happen.
So he kept making art and itgot interesting.
There's a certain quality to it, a glow product of the process
(50:50):
of sex transmutation, channelingsexual energy, the force of
creativity of life itself, intothe work.
It was cool.
The use of orange in that onepainting was interesting, the
blue one really sexy.
There's something going onthere.
I want to take that ride.
Enough with the damned excuses.
(52:01):
It's a beautiful day, getoutside, go enjoy it.
It's real windy.
Californians are very specialchildren, as in Illinois, and
it's adorable when everythingshuts down because of rain and
wind.
Go outside, you'll buildcharacter.
I already have character.
I suppose your characterdevelops.
(52:21):
It's in flux.
Whether you work on yourselfand take a hand in developing
your character or not, it'sgoing to develop.
So, yes, you have character ofa sort.
I'm a character actor.
How's that working out for you?
I don't know.
I've got Zoom auditionstomorrow.
Well, go get some sunshine, getsome cherry in those cheeks,
(52:43):
fire it up, start me up.
But you're dead.
Right, tell me more about thisaudition tomorrow.
You gonna bring the noise forthat.
Do you care about anything?
Yes, borges wrote A writer andI believe generally all persons
(53:06):
must think that whatever happensto him or her is a resource.
All things have been given to usfor a purpose, and an artist
must feel this more intensely.
All that happens to us,including our humiliations, our
misfortunes, our embarrassments,all is given to us as raw
material, as clay, so that wemay shape our art.
I absolutely do not believethat everything happens for a
(53:30):
reason.
That's a horrible thing to sayto someone who is suffering that
there's some purpose that theyshould be aware of, and if it
just feels like suffering and itjust feels like life bites
right now, that that meansthey're not doing it right or
they're missing somethingimportant, I would save that.
I would put a sock in it ifyou're talking to someone who's
(53:52):
grieving, however, what if itwas true?
I don't think that it is.
I think that we spend our daystelling stories and looking for
patterns in chaos, becauseseeing things as they are would
just be way too confusing forour little brains.
We make meaning and thus havemore control over the meaning
that we make, if not unlimitedleverage.
(54:14):
I don't think that you can justmanifest millions of dollars and
an apartment in Manhattan andhave it happen.
If you did, what's the point indoing anything?
But what if you take theattitude?
This is, depending on how youwork a puzzle for me to solve,
something to work on.
There's a message in here thatI need to suss out.
(54:36):
This is a demonic white whalethat I have to resign myself to
an obsession with, because it'sgoing to drive out everything
else and I'm not going to beable to think about anything
else, and I'm not really goingto make any progress until I'm
able to not think about thewhite whale, because you can
front load a lot of information,but the insights don't really
(54:59):
come until you stop thinkingabout it, at which point perhaps
they will show up like theNorth Star in the Arizona sky,
or it might never present itself.
There could be no closure.
Eventually, you could move onwith luck.
There could be no closure.
Eventually, you could move onwith luck.
But what if you look at yourheartbreak, as I'm going to have
to do something with this,because I'm an artist and I
(55:22):
think you are.
I think everyone is.
Art to me just means being onyour mission.
It's doing the work.
Anything that you do well anddevote your full attention to
becomes a creative practice anda spiritual practice and becomes
art, not artifice, althoughthat applies to everything in
some sense and to nothing inanother sense.
(55:44):
Stay with me I am certainly anartist.
It took me a long time torealize that that's all I've
ever been.
It's all I ever wanted to be.
I don't care aboutenlightenment, I just want to
make art.
I want what I need to supportmyself in making the best art
possible.
If it came down to it, I wouldconsider going to Slab City
(56:05):
making art and living off ofscene points.
Fortunately, I've found a nicelittle middle way between art
and commerce, having created thenumber one avant-garde personal
development program in LosAngeles and the first and only
good podcast.
I've struck gold, but I've alsofound myself in the dirt on
(56:27):
occasion in the past.
I want very much is to be partof a creative partnership,
collaboration or community,perhaps all of those things.
It hasn't happened a lot.
I also like having completecreative control, as I do over
this show.
If you get hit hard on multiplefronts, it can be really
(56:49):
devastating and it can take avery long time to figure out
what the hell do I do with this,and you won't feel like the
kind of person that can love andbe loved and make great art.
You will feel like worthlessgarbage.
I did.
I can't speak for you.
Maybe you have very highself-esteem, as do I.
(57:10):
Everything has its shadow side.
I discovered a lot about myselfthrough that pain that I didn't
really want to know right away.
In a very short amount of time,I really put myself out there
and really got hurt.
When something like thathappens, you're kind of stuck
with it, because what else areyou going to think about for the
(57:30):
foreseeable future?
What are you going to do withthese parts of yourself that
you've discovered that you haveno idea how to love or do
anything with, celebrate, makejokes about, muster up all of
the patience and self-compassionthat you can in that case,
because you're going to need it.
It's going to be a while.
This is going to drag out likethe last week of school and
(57:52):
you're not going to make greatstuff right away.
I just started a new job, so Iwas not in the position to say
OK, you know me, you know thatI'm a hard worker who can be
trusted.
This is what is happening andthis is where I'm at right now.
I'm not planning on eating orsleeping properly for the next
month or so, so my performancemay suffer.
Bear with me.
(58:13):
You know I'm better than this.
They had no idea whether or notI was better than that, so I
just had to knuckle up and dowhat was expected of someone
with basic competence at least.
That wasn't easy or fun to pullthrough and I felt very much
alone and I'd like to say youdon't have to feel alone.
(58:34):
I'd like to say I've got you ina parasocial way.
I will provide any resourcesthat may be of use.
I hope that we can have a fewlaughs.
I will not guarantee that thingswill be different on the other
side.
Well, they will absolutely bedifferent.
Will they be better?
I don't know.
I don't have a currencyconverter to judge the value of
(58:56):
your experience.
I feel for you and you don'thave to believe that it happened
for a reason.
Ultimately, I don't thinkthat's the case, but just
imagine what if it did, if I hadto make sense of this and do
something and use it as fuel formy mission.
How would I, even justtheoretically, do that as a
thought experiment?
(59:16):
See what happens.
I wish you the best.
K-chung Los Angeles.
Emerson Dameron's MedicatedMinutes.
La's number one avant-gardepersonal development program.
1630 AM kchungradioorg, firstWednesdays of the month, after
which it becomes the only goodpodcast.
(59:39):
Thank you, so Thank you.
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