April 5, 2024 • 22 mins
Oh lookie here, we are BACK baby.
The AI bot that helped me audio engineer this episode thought it would be a good idea to title it "Savoring the Petite Droplets of Life Experiences" and they would be not wrong.
Listen to me try to make the parallel between the experience of fomo and an inflammatory yet very magical take on DEATH. Whoops another accidental episode on death stuff.
Sorry I'm congested here, when the mood strikes to press record, one jumps. The muse cares not for presence of phlegm.
ENJOY
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals and jingle wizardry on the outro
Book 1:1 Creative Guidance time with Melissa
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:40):
Hello, dear listeners. Welcome back to Witch Sweat.
I am your host, Melissa Ward, and today I am blessing you with a new series
that I think is called Hot Drops,
Small Sweat, Little Sweat.
(01:00):
Uncertain, TBD, Fresh Heat, Petite Droplets of Tiny Demitasse-Sized Stories and Anecdotes,
essentially I kept having this experience
of like the only way I really want
to do a podcast is if I just tell this
story of this thing that literally just happened
(01:22):
to me and the way that I'm processing it like life moves through me very quickly
through my circuitry and I tend to process things or get I like glean information
from my life material quickly and it has a lot lot of like heat and fire and friction.
And it's like, I want to sweat it out. I want to get it out.
(01:43):
I want to express it and expel it from my system in an inspired way.
And if I like, if I do the thing where I'm like, oh, this would be such a great podcast episode.
Let me put it in my little database in my phone notes and save it for when I
can flesh it out and think about it in in detail. No, no.
(02:04):
I am learning that it's not the way my system and my expression wants to move,
particularly when it comes to pressing record on a podcast.
And so I'm going to experiment with this new container in which I have a name
for it that is not dumb and it's very clever and creative and is like single stories,
(02:26):
single bite-sized little stories.
And yeah, it's just a solo solo episode where I couldn't play.
Wiggle with it, rock with it. So that's what we're going to do today.
And today's topic is how not being able to go to a music concert is informing
(02:49):
me about grief once again.
Is that what it's about? We'll see. Big experiments all around.
Okay, here is how it went down.
I also think it would be fun if I like tell the story as it's happening right
now. So you can like go along with me rather than it being in the past.
So here's the deal. Here's the scene. This is where we're at.
(03:10):
It is the other night, and the musical artist Cat Power is in town,
and Cat Power is hosting a concert in which she is singing Bob Dylan's playbook.
Cat Power sings Bob Dylan. I am not
someone who purchases tickets to literally
(03:31):
anything more than like
a week in advance so often I don't see nice things that get sold out quickly
because I just I'm like what is time how am I gonna know what I'm doing in two
months it's unfathomable that should have been not red flag that should have
been like pause flag number one because I bought these tickets it's with a pal
like two and a half months ago.
(03:53):
So excited. So excited.
Love Cap Hauer. Love Bob Dylan.
Side note, dear listener, Bob Dylan is... Bob Dylan, I really like fully connect
to my father, who if you've been listening to this podcast, you most likely know.
(04:15):
Oh, my beloved partners scraping
a ceramic bowl in the other room and
I can hear the scrapery scrape maybe you can too life is life around me as I
record this so Bob Dylan really reminds me of my father who this year I will
(04:36):
be celebrating the 12th year anniversary of his passing and I'm gonna just give
you a little spoiler alert.
We think that the passage of time can like assuage the deep wounds of loss and
weathering the loss of our beloveds and our dear ones.
(04:57):
And in some ways it really does. Like I no longer feel like I'm drowning in
the grief pool and the grief waters,
but it's just so wild the way time really doesn't freaking matter or exist in the land of grief.
And that will become abundantly clear. here in a moment.
So it's the night of the show. I'm feeling very ill. I'm feeling not well.
(05:22):
I'm feeling an inner selfishness when it comes to the preservation of public health.
And I'm like sneaking and scheming about ways that I can just like double mask
and like, I've got to get in there. I've got to see Bob Dylan.
Because as I was saying a moment ago, Bob Dylan is really really connected to my father.
(05:42):
I love Bob Dylan so much. And Cat Power is really connected to my angsty,
just like so emotional youth, my teen years, a time, you know,
the last few years that I really lived with my dad when he was alive.
And so the collision of these two artists together, I knew would be super potent
(06:06):
for me and super potent around, yeah, just like the beautiful grief space, the beautiful like, oh,
yeah, the way music can just like carry you to these deep,
rich spaces within you and unlock these doors in this like holy way that's so beyond language.
(06:31):
I was really excited for that because I knew it would like stir the emotional pot for me.
So, night of the show, I'm being irresponsible. I'm like, I'm talking to my
friend who I'm going to go with and I'm like, you know, we're like rustling
through symptoms to be like,
well, how many symptoms are bad enough to where I can't go and I shan't go.
(06:54):
Ultimately, we decide I'm not going to go because it's socially irresponsible
and I actually just don't feel that well.
But I was so willing to like bulldoze all over that because I really wanted to be there.
Resigned I'm resigned not going I give my ticket away to
another friend and they they
go to the show and I get this video message this
(07:19):
little snippet of the concert that I
get a snippet of the concert that is Cat
Power singing It's All Over Now Baby Blue and it
was great it's just a a little tiny tiny clip but
it was right in that part don't you sing
it's all over now baby blue and i
(07:39):
motherfucking tell you so unexpectedly
was i like this very visceral almost beyond language experience dropped into
my body right there that was like a very old feeling it's a 12 year old feeling.
(07:59):
I haven't really had this feeling so acutely in a long time,
which was this feeling of being locked, like physically locked out of experience.
It is not the same as FOMO. Like, I didn't get to go to this show.
I didn't get to go to the party. I didn't get to go to the function.
It's like this restlessness in my body that's like.
(08:25):
When you lose someone, when someone that you love, someone that you know was
alive and embodied in spirit, and then they disappear.
Their spirit is no longer in their body, and so you cannot be with them anymore.
Like, the disturbance to your body that that is, not to mention the sort of
(08:46):
emotional psychological disturbance, but just the physical, like,
confusion and the physical,
it's like a like a child throwing a tantrum that
just like cannot understand they don't quite have the the
maturity to understand the no like why
something can't be how they want it to be and so there's just this like impossible
(09:10):
sort of like why can't this go my the the understanding that like it's not going
to be different than how it is that this person that you loved that you love in a certain way,
it can't be that way anymore.
And that your body cannot be near their body and their body cannot be near your body.
(09:31):
And that there's this like crisis of proximity that erupts.
And if, I don't know, I don't know if that makes any sense. If you know,
you know, but it's such a specific, very visceral experience.
It is not a mental experience. It's like this restlessness in the body that's
like, I just don't understand why I can't be in the same room with you anymore.
(09:57):
And I freaking tell y'all what, when I watched that clip through my phone,
I was like, it just immediately like a lightning bolt dropped into my system,
that feeling, that visceral feeling of being locked out of the concert,
not being allowed to be where this this magical thing is happening.
(10:19):
And for me, I'm like, I'm not allowed to be where my father dwells.
Whatever magical fucking ether scape that he is like surfing,
rollerblading down, I can't be there.
I can't be there with my little sweet pea brain in the 3D reality,
(10:42):
in this dense material plane.
And so, yeah, it was truly wild.
And it speaks to this idea that I have all sorts of ways of mentally wanting to connect to grief,
to people I've lost, to just the spirit world in general.
(11:07):
I have mental ways that I try to move through the veil. right, and try to connect.
And it's, it was such a sort of funny LOL moment, not immediately, of course.
It was, like, agonizing and unbearable.
Really like doubled me over a little bit in the heart space in the chest but it's you know.
(11:35):
It's like the mental approach was like oh i'm gonna go see this show it's gonna
be so beautiful and it's gonna like really move some things for me and then
reality was like great let's move something oh you oh oh oh you would move some
things beautiful okay well then we're gonna give give you the actual experience
that will move some things.
And that was a visceral body project. That was not a mental thing that I actively,
(12:01):
like my mind decided to do.
That was something that came in through my physicality.
And so, dear listener, what I decided to do was I decided to,
put on my sneakers lace them up
and decided to go
(12:21):
for a walk at like 9 p.m put on my headphones and listen to the cat power sings
bob dylan album there is a recorded album on spotify that was very great to
be able to access put that album on and listen to it from beginning to end which
was like like an hour and a half.
I was like, okay, I feel locked out of a certain version of reality.
(12:48):
And let me see if I can pay attention to what the reality that I am participating
in, like where I actually am right now.
Let me see if I can gift myself an experience.
Not that to like replace it or approximate it or whatever,
but just to actually be present and pay attention to what is here and perhaps
(13:12):
like what wants to be talking to me instead,
what the information that life wants to direct my way in terms of tending to
the inner emotional wellspring.
It was beautiful. It was freaking beautiful. The moon was almost full.
The weather in Atlanta was just ridiculously like crispy, almost warm,
(13:37):
but a little chill in the air. No one was around.
And I just like had all of these beautiful insights.
And yeah, I got to like move and dance in this field that I passed by.
It was so beautiful. It was so sweet.
And the thing that it really is dawning on me following this experience is like,
(14:01):
when I'm able to remove my, like the hierarchy of experience,
when I'm able to dissolve the hierarchy of the right way to do the music thing,
like the right way to experience the concert, which would obviously be to go
(14:22):
to the concert and get to be there for the live experience, right?
If I take that out of this sort of like the right way to do it,
the good way, the more desirable way,
right, and I open myself up to just this like neutral witnessing and this neutral participation,
(14:42):
then it's like there's like this suspension of good, bad, good, bad, good, bad.
And i get i
get to like open the aperture of possibility with what's in front of me right
and it's just it's this is the like the really unpopular opinion but feels so
(15:05):
real for me the deeper i get into to grief work and death work which is.
Like, let me see if I can make this parallel and make it make sense.
If I'm looking at the experience of like to go to the concert or to not go to
the concert and to create my own ritual around it, which was extremely fucking
enjoyable and extremely rich.
(15:26):
And I had these downloads and inspirations and like ways of talking to my dad
that I don't know would have happened if I was in a public setting. Right. Right.
And it's only when I can suspend the good version versus the bad version in
which I'm able to really like stick my straw in the gifts and the possibility
(15:50):
inside the disappointment.
Right. Because it was at first a big fucking bummer to not be able to go to the show. Okay.
And the parallel that feels so ripe for me is like when we dissolve the hierarchy
that living is better better than dying, and living is good and dying is bad,
when we're able to just like, like, alleviate that for a moment and be suspended
(16:16):
in the possibility that one is no better than another,
and there's like much potential gift giving inside the one that that has been
so historically relegated to the bad camp and to the sad box and to the uh-oh, no,
(16:40):
no, no box forever.
It's like, wow, there's just, I don't know how I started that sentence.
I don't know how to finish the sentence grammatically.
But there's just this, yeah, there's just so much more information that is getting
left on the table when we continue to kind of,
like keep with the hierarchy of living is better than not living like it used
(17:05):
to be really cuckoo for me to say that it's still cuckoo it's cuckoo as fuck for me to say that like,
I have a lot of gratitude for when I lost my dad how I lost my dad and like
he He is and was my very best friend.
I have a preference of being able to spend more time with him in this material
(17:33):
plane because it's fun. It's playful.
It's so full of information, a certain kind of information.
Information material the the experiences that are happening on the material
plane it's a certain texture of information for the spirit however.
(17:55):
Cannot express to you how much information I have
gleaned from him when our
relationship has shifted to a different
plane like me in the material plane him in
the ethers him in the spirit world whatever you want to call it like our relationality
has shifted and there's a lot of information that that my spirit has been able
(18:21):
to take and receive and share,
like to send back and forth through this weird permeable membrane.
And that could have only happened had he left this earth when he left this earth.
At the time, I was 21 years old.
So at that point in my life, it sent me on an entirely different trajectory
(18:44):
that like massively shapeshifted the whole landscape of my life.
I have enormous gratitude for that.
And I don't think that's actually that strange. I think a lot of I don't feel alone.
I don't feel alone in that is what I'll say.
Do I have preferences? Sure. Sure.
(19:06):
But ultimately, if I can like, ooh, shimmy down into the strange mud of like,
what if there are no hierarchies here? What if?
And what am I leaving on the table?
Really valuable insights, really valuable intel, really valuable,
(19:27):
exciting, exciting information information that I'm potentially leaving on the
table when I have a hierarchy of experience.
And it's a big ask.
I think it's a really big ask for people to take a more neutral lens to the
(19:52):
experience of their loved ones being alive or dead. It's a crazy ask.
It's not really, I'm not asking anybody to do anything, but,
and I think it's accessible kind of in different stages of loss.
Yeah. And so I just continue to be very soft and very open-handed with like
(20:12):
my own sort of uncertainty or like lack of certainty with like the thesis statement that like,
or not the thesis statement,
but just like I'm holding loosely in two hands,
one hand of like deep preference, deep values of the types of experiences I
(20:32):
would prefer to have when it comes to being with my loved ones.
And then in this other hand of like, yeah, death is neutral.
Death is actually very neutral.
What if death is neutral? What if death is just a different,
playscape, a different playground, and our relationship to it is something we
(20:56):
either decide is a bad playground so we don't go play, or we get curious about.
Okay, I don't know if if any of that made any sense. Perhaps you can still hear
them a little congested. And so the brain soup is souping.
Okay. Love you. Bye.
Music.
Music.
(00:40):
Hello, dear listeners. Welcome back to Witch Sweat.
I am your host, Melissa Ward, and today I am blessing you with a new series
that I think is called Hot Drops,
Small Sweat, Little Sweat.
(01:00):
Uncertain, TBD, Fresh Heat, Petite Droplets of Tiny Demitasse-Sized Stories and Anecdotes,
essentially I kept having this experience
of like the only way I really want
to do a podcast is if I just tell this
story of this thing that literally just happened
(01:22):
to me and the way that I'm processing it like life moves through me very quickly
through my circuitry and I tend to process things or get I like glean information
from my life material quickly and it has a lot lot of like heat and fire and friction.
And it's like, I want to sweat it out. I want to get it out.
(01:43):
I want to express it and expel it from my system in an inspired way.
And if I like, if I do the thing where I'm like, oh, this would be such a great podcast episode.
Let me put it in my little database in my phone notes and save it for when I
can flesh it out and think about it in in detail. No, no.
(02:04):
I am learning that it's not the way my system and my expression wants to move,
particularly when it comes to pressing record on a podcast.
And so I'm going to experiment with this new container in which I have a name
for it that is not dumb and it's very clever and creative and is like single stories,
(02:26):
single bite-sized little stories.
And yeah, it's just a solo solo episode where I couldn't play.
Wiggle with it, rock with it. So that's what we're going to do today.
And today's topic is how not being able to go to a music concert is informing
(02:49):
me about grief once again.
Is that what it's about? We'll see. Big experiments all around.
Okay, here is how it went down.
I also think it would be fun if I like tell the story as it's happening right
now. So you can like go along with me rather than it being in the past.
So here's the deal. Here's the scene. This is where we're at.
(03:10):
It is the other night, and the musical artist Cat Power is in town,
and Cat Power is hosting a concert in which she is singing Bob Dylan's playbook.
Cat Power sings Bob Dylan. I am not
someone who purchases tickets to literally
(03:31):
anything more than like
a week in advance so often I don't see nice things that get sold out quickly
because I just I'm like what is time how am I gonna know what I'm doing in two
months it's unfathomable that should have been not red flag that should have
been like pause flag number one because I bought these tickets it's with a pal
like two and a half months ago.
(03:53):
So excited. So excited.
Love Cap Hauer. Love Bob Dylan.
Side note, dear listener, Bob Dylan is... Bob Dylan, I really like fully connect
to my father, who if you've been listening to this podcast, you most likely know.
(04:15):
Oh, my beloved partners scraping
a ceramic bowl in the other room and
I can hear the scrapery scrape maybe you can too life is life around me as I
record this so Bob Dylan really reminds me of my father who this year I will
(04:36):
be celebrating the 12th year anniversary of his passing and I'm gonna just give
you a little spoiler alert.
We think that the passage of time can like assuage the deep wounds of loss and
weathering the loss of our beloveds and our dear ones.
(04:57):
And in some ways it really does. Like I no longer feel like I'm drowning in
the grief pool and the grief waters,
but it's just so wild the way time really doesn't freaking matter or exist in the land of grief.
And that will become abundantly clear. here in a moment.
So it's the night of the show. I'm feeling very ill. I'm feeling not well.
(05:22):
I'm feeling an inner selfishness when it comes to the preservation of public health.
And I'm like sneaking and scheming about ways that I can just like double mask
and like, I've got to get in there. I've got to see Bob Dylan.
Because as I was saying a moment ago, Bob Dylan is really really connected to my father.
(05:42):
I love Bob Dylan so much. And Cat Power is really connected to my angsty,
just like so emotional youth, my teen years, a time, you know,
the last few years that I really lived with my dad when he was alive.
And so the collision of these two artists together, I knew would be super potent
(06:06):
for me and super potent around, yeah, just like the beautiful grief space, the beautiful like, oh,
yeah, the way music can just like carry you to these deep,
rich spaces within you and unlock these doors in this like holy way that's so beyond language.
(06:31):
I was really excited for that because I knew it would like stir the emotional pot for me.
So, night of the show, I'm being irresponsible. I'm like, I'm talking to my
friend who I'm going to go with and I'm like, you know, we're like rustling
through symptoms to be like,
well, how many symptoms are bad enough to where I can't go and I shan't go.
(06:54):
Ultimately, we decide I'm not going to go because it's socially irresponsible
and I actually just don't feel that well.
But I was so willing to like bulldoze all over that because I really wanted to be there.
Resigned I'm resigned not going I give my ticket away to
another friend and they they
go to the show and I get this video message this
(07:19):
little snippet of the concert that I
get a snippet of the concert that is Cat
Power singing It's All Over Now Baby Blue and it
was great it's just a a little tiny tiny clip but
it was right in that part don't you sing
it's all over now baby blue and i
(07:39):
motherfucking tell you so unexpectedly
was i like this very visceral almost beyond language experience dropped into
my body right there that was like a very old feeling it's a 12 year old feeling.
(07:59):
I haven't really had this feeling so acutely in a long time,
which was this feeling of being locked, like physically locked out of experience.
It is not the same as FOMO. Like, I didn't get to go to this show.
I didn't get to go to the party. I didn't get to go to the function.
It's like this restlessness in my body that's like.
(08:25):
When you lose someone, when someone that you love, someone that you know was
alive and embodied in spirit, and then they disappear.
Their spirit is no longer in their body, and so you cannot be with them anymore.
Like, the disturbance to your body that that is, not to mention the sort of
(08:46):
emotional psychological disturbance, but just the physical, like,
confusion and the physical,
it's like a like a child throwing a tantrum that
just like cannot understand they don't quite have the the
maturity to understand the no like why
something can't be how they want it to be and so there's just this like impossible
(09:10):
sort of like why can't this go my the the understanding that like it's not going
to be different than how it is that this person that you loved that you love in a certain way,
it can't be that way anymore.
And that your body cannot be near their body and their body cannot be near your body.
(09:31):
And that there's this like crisis of proximity that erupts.
And if, I don't know, I don't know if that makes any sense. If you know,
you know, but it's such a specific, very visceral experience.
It is not a mental experience. It's like this restlessness in the body that's
like, I just don't understand why I can't be in the same room with you anymore.
(09:57):
And I freaking tell y'all what, when I watched that clip through my phone,
I was like, it just immediately like a lightning bolt dropped into my system,
that feeling, that visceral feeling of being locked out of the concert,
not being allowed to be where this this magical thing is happening.
(10:19):
And for me, I'm like, I'm not allowed to be where my father dwells.
Whatever magical fucking ether scape that he is like surfing,
rollerblading down, I can't be there.
I can't be there with my little sweet pea brain in the 3D reality,
(10:42):
in this dense material plane.
And so, yeah, it was truly wild.
And it speaks to this idea that I have all sorts of ways of mentally wanting to connect to grief,
to people I've lost, to just the spirit world in general.
(11:07):
I have mental ways that I try to move through the veil. right, and try to connect.
And it's, it was such a sort of funny LOL moment, not immediately, of course.
It was, like, agonizing and unbearable.
Really like doubled me over a little bit in the heart space in the chest but it's you know.
(11:35):
It's like the mental approach was like oh i'm gonna go see this show it's gonna
be so beautiful and it's gonna like really move some things for me and then
reality was like great let's move something oh you oh oh oh you would move some
things beautiful okay well then we're gonna give give you the actual experience
that will move some things.
And that was a visceral body project. That was not a mental thing that I actively,
(12:01):
like my mind decided to do.
That was something that came in through my physicality.
And so, dear listener, what I decided to do was I decided to,
put on my sneakers lace them up
and decided to go
(12:21):
for a walk at like 9 p.m put on my headphones and listen to the cat power sings
bob dylan album there is a recorded album on spotify that was very great to
be able to access put that album on and listen to it from beginning to end which
was like like an hour and a half.
I was like, okay, I feel locked out of a certain version of reality.
(12:48):
And let me see if I can pay attention to what the reality that I am participating
in, like where I actually am right now.
Let me see if I can gift myself an experience.
Not that to like replace it or approximate it or whatever,
but just to actually be present and pay attention to what is here and perhaps
(13:12):
like what wants to be talking to me instead,
what the information that life wants to direct my way in terms of tending to
the inner emotional wellspring.
It was beautiful. It was freaking beautiful. The moon was almost full.
The weather in Atlanta was just ridiculously like crispy, almost warm,
(13:37):
but a little chill in the air. No one was around.
And I just like had all of these beautiful insights.
And yeah, I got to like move and dance in this field that I passed by.
It was so beautiful. It was so sweet.
And the thing that it really is dawning on me following this experience is like,
(14:01):
when I'm able to remove my, like the hierarchy of experience,
when I'm able to dissolve the hierarchy of the right way to do the music thing,
like the right way to experience the concert, which would obviously be to go
(14:22):
to the concert and get to be there for the live experience, right?
If I take that out of this sort of like the right way to do it,
the good way, the more desirable way,
right, and I open myself up to just this like neutral witnessing and this neutral participation,
(14:42):
then it's like there's like this suspension of good, bad, good, bad, good, bad.
And i get i
get to like open the aperture of possibility with what's in front of me right
and it's just it's this is the like the really unpopular opinion but feels so
(15:05):
real for me the deeper i get into to grief work and death work which is.
Like, let me see if I can make this parallel and make it make sense.
If I'm looking at the experience of like to go to the concert or to not go to
the concert and to create my own ritual around it, which was extremely fucking
enjoyable and extremely rich.
(15:26):
And I had these downloads and inspirations and like ways of talking to my dad
that I don't know would have happened if I was in a public setting. Right. Right.
And it's only when I can suspend the good version versus the bad version in
which I'm able to really like stick my straw in the gifts and the possibility
(15:50):
inside the disappointment.
Right. Because it was at first a big fucking bummer to not be able to go to the show. Okay.
And the parallel that feels so ripe for me is like when we dissolve the hierarchy
that living is better better than dying, and living is good and dying is bad,
when we're able to just like, like, alleviate that for a moment and be suspended
(16:16):
in the possibility that one is no better than another,
and there's like much potential gift giving inside the one that that has been
so historically relegated to the bad camp and to the sad box and to the uh-oh, no,
(16:40):
no, no box forever.
It's like, wow, there's just, I don't know how I started that sentence.
I don't know how to finish the sentence grammatically.
But there's just this, yeah, there's just so much more information that is getting
left on the table when we continue to kind of,
like keep with the hierarchy of living is better than not living like it used
(17:05):
to be really cuckoo for me to say that it's still cuckoo it's cuckoo as fuck for me to say that like,
I have a lot of gratitude for when I lost my dad how I lost my dad and like
he He is and was my very best friend.
I have a preference of being able to spend more time with him in this material
(17:33):
plane because it's fun. It's playful.
It's so full of information, a certain kind of information.
Information material the the experiences that are happening on the material
plane it's a certain texture of information for the spirit however.
(17:55):
Cannot express to you how much information I have
gleaned from him when our
relationship has shifted to a different
plane like me in the material plane him in
the ethers him in the spirit world whatever you want to call it like our relationality
has shifted and there's a lot of information that that my spirit has been able
(18:21):
to take and receive and share,
like to send back and forth through this weird permeable membrane.
And that could have only happened had he left this earth when he left this earth.
At the time, I was 21 years old.
So at that point in my life, it sent me on an entirely different trajectory
(18:44):
that like massively shapeshifted the whole landscape of my life.
I have enormous gratitude for that.
And I don't think that's actually that strange. I think a lot of I don't feel alone.
I don't feel alone in that is what I'll say.
Do I have preferences? Sure. Sure.
(19:06):
But ultimately, if I can like, ooh, shimmy down into the strange mud of like,
what if there are no hierarchies here? What if?
And what am I leaving on the table?
Really valuable insights, really valuable intel, really valuable,
(19:27):
exciting, exciting information information that I'm potentially leaving on the
table when I have a hierarchy of experience.
And it's a big ask.
I think it's a really big ask for people to take a more neutral lens to the
(19:52):
experience of their loved ones being alive or dead. It's a crazy ask.
It's not really, I'm not asking anybody to do anything, but,
and I think it's accessible kind of in different stages of loss.
Yeah. And so I just continue to be very soft and very open-handed with like
(20:12):
my own sort of uncertainty or like lack of certainty with like the thesis statement that like,
or not the thesis statement,
but just like I'm holding loosely in two hands,
one hand of like deep preference, deep values of the types of experiences I
(20:32):
would prefer to have when it comes to being with my loved ones.
And then in this other hand of like, yeah, death is neutral.
Death is actually very neutral.
What if death is neutral? What if death is just a different,
playscape, a different playground, and our relationship to it is something we
(20:56):
either decide is a bad playground so we don't go play, or we get curious about.
Okay, I don't know if if any of that made any sense. Perhaps you can still hear
them a little congested. And so the brain soup is souping.
Okay. Love you. Bye.
Music.
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