Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 322: Freddy Todd
Episode Date: January 22, 2019Freddy Todd, EDM producer, musician, and probable shapeshifter who has visited the golden idols of the moon, joins the DTFH! You can find Freddy's music on his [Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/fr...eddytodd), [Bandcamp](https://freddytodd.bandcamp.com/), and you can buy his latest EP [here](https://freddytoddmusic.myshopify.com/). This episode is brought to you by [BLUECHEW](https://bluechew.com/) (use offer code: DUNCAN at checkout and get your first shipment FREE with just $5 shipping).
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Greetings to you, oh glorious ones.
You have tuned in to the Dunkin Trussell Family Hour podcast.
The podcast that for the last six years running
has received the Golden Plum Award
from the Alfred Meningite Association.
And we are proud that you have made the very powerful decision
to smash those delicious earbuds into your sweet ear canals
and allow my voice to go spraying its sonic glory deep
inside the waxy canyons, caverns, and inner crevices
of your ear canal and pulsating brain.
I can't tell you what joy it brings me to know
that at this very moment, the supercomputer inside your cranium
is transforming the gibber jabber of my voice
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And also what makes me excited is that I'm not even human.
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Samborian jellyfish harvested from Io.
I'm inside a plasticine gourd right now
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And of course, I'm soaking in a briny, gulping, glowing, sweet sea
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and re-synthesized using ambrosial technologies, patent pending.
It's a real joy to be here in your brain
and most importantly, to be laying sonic eggs in here.
Yep, you heard me right.
I'm laying eggs in your brain.
You humans have yet to figure out
that there are much more ways that life exists
in the particular part of the time space continuum
that we are in than just what can be quantified in matter.
And that's great for my species
because we have full reign to just dive inside of y'all
in a variety of ways from podcasts to 3G signals
to the sweet sound of Anderson Cooper's voice
to the delicious sodas that you imbibe at various places.
And we love getting in you and laying our eggs.
Now, I can assure you that the spawn that will soon emerge
from within the wonderful brain that you currently have
are going to bring you great feelings.
They're going to open up your heart
and eventually bring you to a state of full realization
satori, whatever you want to call it, nirvanic bliss.
And you're going to open your eyes
and you're going to be either the Buddha sitting
under the Bodhi tree gaining full realization
or Jesus Christ on the cross dying
in a really agonizing and painful way.
Actually, it's up to you.
You can pick one or the other.
I just lay the eggs.
We have got a wonderful podcast for you today.
Freddie Todd is with us.
And Freddie Todd is a brilliant producer and musician.
We're going to jump right into that.
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But somewhere, someone actually left an angry comment
about how I had done a boner pill commercial.
And they were really upset.
And I thought it was so strange
that there is an actual sense
that something is degraded about boner boners
and boner pills.
We're not supposed to celebrate the foulest
from which all human existence on this planet blasts from.
I don't get that attitude, friends.
Why are we, the war on boners must end.
The war on erections must end.
What is happening?
I just watched this, this isn't the commercial anymore,
by the way, this is just me rambling,
but we just watched, I don't know,
I don't know what's going on, but my wife and I
kind of got into like a murder porn loop,
not literal porn, but you know, like crime shows.
And what's her name, man?
There's this like woman who, I don't know,
almost chopped her boyfriend's head off
and stabbed in 20 times and like just really like,
it was awful, it was awful.
I mean, every single piece of it's just really weird,
but she was like sort of attractive.
So there was something more shocking about it
because we have this horrific symmetrical hierarchy
that exists in our planet where if someone has symmetry,
we give them a little more leeway
than if they don't.
Regardless, the way that the people in the courtroom
were reacting to the images of his slain,
hacked up, shot body were not as intense
as the way that they were reacting to
or recording of them having phone sex.
Like, people could stand seeing somebody
who's got stab wounds all over their body
and whose head has nearly been cut off,
but the moment they started talking
about like playing this just basic fucking phone sex,
not even that creative, not even that exciting,
just like some kind of like mild BDSM style phone sex.
And the people in the courtroom,
the look on their face was like they were watching
a gargoyle explode out of the chest of the screaming pope.
I don't get it, man, what's going on on our planet?
We got to be a little less afraid of erections
and more afraid of murder than we currently are.
That's my inspirational message for you today.
We had a glorious time on Sunday.
I've been expanding my technological capacity
so that right now I'm basically
I'd say I've reached the point,
most podcasters got to probably mid-2015.
And that doesn't change the fact
that I'm still impressed with myself
and awestruck by the technology that we have now
and the ease with which a person can just go online
and stream psychedelic stuff.
And so I've been doing some sort of test runs
of something I've been wanting to do for a while,
which is like a live video version of the DTFH.
And we had one on Sunday and it worked.
It worked way better than I expected.
I was able to take calls or video calls from random people.
I had some great conversations with folks
who listened to the podcast and it was just a blast.
It's kind of like a combination of me just rambling
and that gets mixed in with some others.
I mean, the possibility is infinite, of course.
I mean, it's basically like running
your own public access station.
And I have lots of ideas for various components
of the video, whatever, you know,
I still use the word video,
the online version of this show.
Well, no, not even that.
I don't know what you call it, whatever this is.
The next expansion, when the DTFH finally emerges
from whatever strange temporal chrysalis
it's been locked inside of and leaps
from just being an audio podcast into a video podcast.
I'm not really sure what it's gonna look like
and the many possibilities of the forms that could take
are incredibly exciting, but I've gotta be careful
not to get too distracted by the ins and outs
of this particular technology.
You should see the DTFH studio now.
Holy shit, it looks like I'm in a combination
spaceship opium den, which is what I've always longed for.
Flying opium den, what could be better than that?
Everybody pictures weird technological consoles
and spaceships and that's always seemed pretty weird to me
that people think that an advanced life form
that had made a pretty ridiculous decision
of putting their meat body inside a craft
and flying through space is gonna be inside
of some kind of metallic thing with lots of right angles
and glowing Christmas lights and strange buttons
that they have to press.
Why wouldn't there be a fireplace
and maybe a nice comfortable Persian rug
and hookahs filled with some kind of amazing cosmic space
dust that you could smoke and why wouldn't you watch movies?
Why wouldn't you just lay around and sing
and have sex and sit in a bathtub and watch movies
and sometimes eradicate planets or capture black holes
and send them to your friends back home?
Why would you be in some symmetrical craft?
I don't get it, but one day maybe we'll find out.
Aren't you gonna be disappointed though
if a spaceship lands and the landing,
the whatever you call it, the ramp comes down
and it's just like technological dudes in uniforms?
I'm gonna be so bummed if they're even wearing clothes,
I'm gonna be mildly disappointed.
Like, oh, holy shit, this is like universal
that we put weird clothes on our bodies.
They haven't figured something else out.
I want them to be naked as a J.
I want them to be taking baths in there.
I want there to be massage opportunities in the spaceship.
I want there to be swimming pools
and I don't know, like water parks in there
and opium.
I don't even want there to be space dust.
I just want there to be big clumps of sweet opium,
like from the days of Edgar Allen Poe.
I've never smoked opium, so I might not even like it.
I might be disappointed,
but based on the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
it seems pretty awesome
and I think it would go well with flying through space.
Regardless, I've gotten off track here.
If you want to join us next or this Sunday coming up
for another attempt at, that's gonna be,
it's January 21st.
If you're listening to this on January 21st,
we're gonna do another of these live things
and that's gonna be on Sunday at two o'clock.
That's when we did it last time.
We'll do it again then.
You might be able to talk,
we might be able to like beam you in.
I'm still working out the technical problems with that.
It's highly likely that something will go wrong
in the most extreme way,
because I'm still figuring out
and it'll be some kind of shit show.
This isn't gonna be a perfect, obviously,
so you're not gonna be tuning into some kind of like
hardcore refined thing yet.
It's just fun, it's just fun to do.
And it's fun to talk to everybody.
I'm still trying to figure out a way
to just do basic stuff like overlay the YouTube chat
onto the videos so people can see what everybody's saying
and I can see it without having to go to YouTube.
I'm still working all this stuff out.
I'm basically gonna need a tech person soon
because I think it's gonna make it a lot smoother
and I've gotta relinquish the control freak part of me
that wants to be spinning the dials
because it's fun to spin dials, but that's greedy.
I want it all.
I wanna be able to talk and spin dials.
And you don't get to do both.
You could do both, but this is gonna require
some kind of telepathic interface that we don't have yet.
Some way to have one part of your brain
control the various technical aspects,
whatever the particular art form of the future
you've decided to engage in
and then the other part of you to just be there.
We've gotta figure out a way to bifurcate our consciousness
and transmit it through some kind of as of yet
invented technological medium.
Maybe like a space crown that has little jewels in it.
One jewel is for the talking part of you.
One jewel is for the technological part of you.
One jewel is for the part of you determining
whether or not what you're doing makes sense.
And of course, there's the jewel of Loraxat
from Alpha, Beta, Centauri.
And we will never talk about what that jewel would do
on your telepathic space crown.
A big thank you to those of you who have subscribed
over at patreon.com forward slash DTFH.
Thank you for those of you at Patreon who took part
in the beginning phases of whatever this form of the DTFH is.
If you wanna dive into the deepest core pulsation
of the DTFH, head over to patreon.com forward slash DTFH
and sign up for only a few bucks a month
you'll get access to the various experiments
that we are currently engaged in.
And more than that, you'll get the sweet pleasure
of knowing that you are my master
and that I have to do that what you say.
I have to kiss your iron boot
and beg for your mercy night and day
and trust you even when you spank and scold me
and swaddle me and from time to time
allow me the sweet joy of your honeyed lips upon my cheek.
Patreon.com forward slash DTFH, sign up.
Won't you?
Today's guest.
Wow, he's brilliant.
I got nervous.
This kind of happened last second.
He was in town making music
and we were talking on Twitter
and then it occurred to me.
Holy shit, man, ask him to be on your podcast.
And I asked him and he was kind enough to come over here
and I just didn't have the preparation time
that I needed, no excuse,
but I wish that I could have given him more
of like an inside the actor studio style interview,
which is what he deserves.
If nothing else comes from this conversation,
I hope that if you have yet to listen to his music
that you will head over to Spotify
or wherever you get music and listen to Freddie Todd
because whoa, holy shit, man,
this is like one of those deep inside the rainbow tech entities.
I don't know how he's doing what he's doing,
but sometimes I listen to his music and it just,
it just, well, it's very inspiring to me.
I mean, I'm surrounded by all these machines
and I'm lucky if I can make like a mild melodic anything,
but this guy's like sitting there deep inside technology
using MIDI, which is essentially the new way
of writing music to compose these insane bits of music.
And of course he tours and puts on some incredible shows.
So if you ever are in some place where Freddie Todd descends
in his pleasure ship filled with opium
and Oriental carpeting bathtubs and water parks,
I hope that you will go to one of his shows.
Now, without further ado, everybody please welcome
to the DTFH, Freddie Todd.
["Welcome to the DTFH"]
Freddie, welcome to the DTFH.
This is so badass.
Thank you.
We just went through, I'm acting like
I just appeared here and we've been struggling,
sadly struggling with my equipment.
We got it.
I'm here with a true artist, a sonic artist.
I am blown away by your music.
Thank you so much, Duncan.
That means the world to me.
I'm a huge fan.
I listen to your podcast a lot.
Thank you.
And it's mind blowing to be here.
I've been listening to your new album, Crondor.
Is that what it's called?
Oh yeah.
It's cool.
Thanks man.
It's detailed.
Thank you.
But your music's really interesting to me
because of its complexity.
I don't understand it.
There seems to be so many weird levels to it.
Sometimes when I listen to it, I think,
where is he drawing it from?
I don't understand because it's got this mathematical
precision to it that is also incredibly psychedelic,
but then also seems to show that you are, I guess,
are you just constantly listening to music?
Is that what you do all day long?
Honestly, I'm not even.
I wish I was.
I don't listen to that much music.
I probably listen to a lot of my friends' music
and stuff like that.
But I'm mostly just kind of making my own stuff
and tinkering around and yeah.
I have always loved the idea of a listener
being able to listen back infinite amount of times
and get something new and have so many layers,
but peel back so many layers
and just have something fresh for the listener every time.
Because every second, you're a new person every time,
so playing off of that.
But you're sort of like, are you,
what's the process?
Are you hearing, how would you even hear that stuff?
I guess where I'm, forgive me,
I'm just a complete new when it comes to this stuff.
I have synthesizers.
But you're not, I've listened to the stuff
you've been making on the podcast.
It's amazing, dude.
Thank you.
Well, my process is just more like a ham radio operator.
If I get enough chaos going with the synthesizers
and I have a mild understanding of how some of the stuff works,
then I can kind of zoom in on something,
but mostly it's just more of a kind of tuning in
than an intentional production.
Whereas with your stuff, it just seems way too precise.
I don't know what I'm doing.
I'm doing the same thing.
I guess I'm throwing spaghetti at a wall as well.
It's just like, I don't know.
I don't have much classical training at all.
I mean, my dad taught me some drum stuff
and I went to, I'd had school band and stuff,
but never anything too in depth,
just having fun with it, you know?
What was your first contact with technology,
like with the technology to start making
this kind of music?
Well, let's see.
I've played in a handful of bands in high school
and at one point I was like,
it was really hard to keep everyone together
and all the drama and everything like that
with more than one person.
Sure.
So deciding to delve into something
that you could control everything was great, great fun.
Yeah, sure.
So I guess, man, I don't know how old I was.
Maybe 12 or 13, I kind of, my dad had Cubase.
Cool.
And I was using that to record some stuff.
And then when I was 14, I remember that was the year
my friend's older brother pirated FL Studio, Fruity Loops.
Cool.
And it showed me that and I was like,
oh, Step Sequencer, you can lay out kicks and snares
in a time-based grid, which is similar to writing notes.
I mean, it's writing notes.
It is.
It's the modern way of writing notes, like sheet music.
But anyway, that was mind-blowing.
I was like, holy crap.
And being a drummer from the get-go, I was like,
oh, yes, that's fun.
So 2004, I was 14 years old.
And that's basically it.
And then just kept tinkering around and having fun.
Eventually put my music on the internet, on SoundCloud.
And all of a sudden, I was getting flown to more shows
and getting paid for that stuff more than my day job
at a movie theater.
Wow.
And I was like.
How are you, yeah, that's young.
How young were you when you started doing flying the shows?
Let's see, I guess probably 19 or 20,
because I remember being under 21 for a couple years
where we were just talking about this,
where they made me sit in Chicago, California.
They made me sit on the stage at age 19 or 20,
the whole show leading up to my set.
And I was such a youngster, little kind of spiting that.
And I was, I got the promoter to sneak me some whiskey
in a water bottle during my set.
And I just got really drunk and had a lot of fun.
Oh, yeah.
It was just like, ah, young kid.
But anyway, that's probably around that age, yeah.
That's young to be doing live shows
and doing, like doing that,
especially in that kind of environment.
I mean, shit, I could have died.
If that had happened to me, I don't know what,
I don't think I would have had any self-regulation
when it came to psychedelics or getting high.
Were you getting blasted?
Luckily, luckily, I had tinkered around
with the psychedelics earlier on
and had a mini grasp of things.
And furthermore, I was like,
I knew how intense and humbling that stuff is
and how it's not really a party drill.
It's not always a party joke and it's a spiritual thing.
So I was plus mingling with work.
I didn't want to mess up the mix live at a show
and stuff like that.
I've noticed a similarity in people
who are performing live in this way.
And it is that there is a kind of discipline
and also almost a sense of wanting to broadcast out there.
Guys, don't get so fucked up at these shows.
It's like, what are you doing?
Because you can really, I'm sure you've seen it.
You've seen people like OD at your shows, no doubt, right?
Potentially.
That whole thing is definitely a crazy part
of the whole live music scene in general
and just kids partying and epidemic right now
going on in the United States with downers
and just all that stuff.
And yeah, basically the broadcast would be
to treat psychedelics, be humbled by them
and do them in nature with a guru or with a teacher
or something and stay away from it.
To each his own, first and foremost, of course,
but also as the older brother,
maybe just stay away from stuff that will harm you.
Yeah, well, yeah.
And also it's like, this is like when I was coming up,
I think that the attitude with psychedelics
was different than it is right now.
So when I was coming up and going to raves,
it was just what you did.
What you did was you went to a party
and you found some kind of MDMA or some kind of LSD
and you would just take it.
There was no responsible attitude.
There was no, and also this idea of like,
these are sacred medicines that are to be done in nature.
So it was there kind of,
but mostly at least in the like group that I was in,
that really just didn't even exist.
It was more of a like wild diving into,
what now when I look back, I just think,
Jesus dude, you're so lucky.
You're so lucky you didn't get arrested.
You're so lucky you didn't get busted.
You're so lucky you didn't go nuts.
You're so lucky you didn't wreck a car.
But these days, I think people are wising up.
It's cool.
I think, didn't you have the dance safe guy on your show?
Yes.
So early on, I met the dance safe people.
Emmanuel Safarias.
Cool. That was a really awesome one.
Really inspiring.
Yeah, early on I met Carissa,
our friend Carissa Cornwall was,
I'm not sure if she still works with them,
but she was head of some Midwestern chapter of it
and was at all the shows.
And it was really cool to see that coming forth,
just smarter ways to, if you wanna do MDMA,
which is incredible substance when it's actually MDMA,
then it should be MDMA, like what the heck, why?
But yeah, that dance safe is incredible.
Now I've gotten into the most boring part,
I guess, of my existence,
because now that I've been meditating,
there's this, these people, my teachers,
they have said to me in different ways,
you know there's a way to get high
that we're not taking psychedelics.
That makes psychedelics seem fun,
but like a kind of side project compared to what this is.
And I've heard that and heard that
and it's always seemed really ridiculous to me
as someone who was like basically like,
since I was 15 taking psychedelics.
And now I'm at the point where it's like, oh fuck,
they're right, they are right to some degree.
There is a potential access point to a reality
that is so profound that psychedelics in a weird way
are, I don't know, it's like putting a wig on it or something.
It's like putting a funny colored wig
on something that is already the source of colors,
so to speak, you know what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah, distortion wig.
A distortion, right, that's a good way to put it.
Like the distortion is cool and I enjoy this,
I still enjoy distorting reality in that way,
but there is this other thing that,
and to me, something about electronic music
compared to other types of music captures that.
Do you know what I'm saying?
It captures something in reality
that for whatever reason strikes me as being
more of like, I don't know how to put it,
but more, I don't wanna say alien
because that sounds ridiculous,
but more sort of like.
More human.
There you go, yeah, something like that,
something that's just more of a approximation of,
I don't know, maybe the quantum world or something.
Right, well, technology's insane, right,
because it's just, it's an extension of us.
We created it, right, technically.
Did we?
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, and.
I mean, it came out of our brains, I guess.
And so what blows my mind is using the technology,
and, but it being commanded by your brain
and through your arms and what you're doing,
and it's just mind-blowing.
Do you think it's alive, the technology?
I've talked to some people who think
that their computer or the device.
That was Paul Selig, right, the channel.
He was talking about his wife,
and he was talking about when he got into an argument
with his wife, the computer's acting weird.
Yeah, what do you think about that?
I mean, I'll start by saying I don't know anything,
so I will subscribe to that as much as I won't,
and so, yeah, I think there's possibility,
room for everything being connected,
everything being influenced by everything.
I wanna talk about a phenomena, though,
that I don't think I've ever talked about on this podcast,
and maybe feel free to shoot it down, man.
It's like, again, I'm fully willing to just disown
any kind of odd experience,
because it's better if it's just you being confused
to just be like, oh, yeah, I was just confused.
Nothing embarrassing about it, it's totally cool.
But this particular phenomena,
not only have I experienced it,
but I've talked to other people who've experienced it,
and I find it to be really fascinating,
which is that working with electronic music,
and especially with the modular synthesizers in particular,
and dialing in a specific type of sound,
drones or whatever, when you get deep into it,
and suddenly you're somehow, it is working with you.
You're sort of working together.
It feels like it's not a one-sided relationship
that's happening anymore with these machines.
And then someone says something, right, a sentence.
There's no microphones on,
and suddenly the sentence gets echoed in the sound.
So I don't know if that's ever happened to you,
but I've seen someone say a thing,
and then you're listening to the music,
and within the music, that sound is being echoed
within the music, but no intermediary device
has taken your voice and put it in.
What is that?
You're the only person to ever put it into words,
because I don't know how to describe that like that,
but I have been producing a song,
and I will write a flute part with a real flute sample,
or a real flute thing on contact,
like a real flute sample,
and then I will be writing some other thing,
and then that will be conjured out of the mystical ethos
out of the mist, and it'll be like, whoa, that came up.
Another synth somehow turned it, like sounds like that,
like exactly like what you're saying,
where these different, within the song,
I guess it's very fractally,
things will start repeating, and I don't know where.
Well, let's start with the most obvious explanation.
The obvious explanation would be,
well, it's kind of like if you take anything and loop it,
if you take the word yes, and loop it, yes, yes, yes.
You do chants and stuff.
But if you just take any sound specifically like a word,
or a sentence, or a word, and like loop it, yes, yes, yes,
yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
It starts sounding different.
It starts changing, suddenly you can begin to hear
other words within the word that aren't that word at all,
something about the mind projecting onto sound
or something like that.
So maybe it's something like that.
Maybe it's confirmation bias or something,
but man, it's both.
And also I was, what came to mind
when you were explaining that you've probably heard of,
I think his first name is Masuro Imoto,
a Japanese gentleman who wrote this book about basically
putting like a word on a water bottle or something.
You've seen that where they zoom in on the water molecule
and it says like the word is love or something
and it'll look like this beautiful,
fractal thing and snowflake thing.
But then if you do some horrible word,
it'll be a little more distorted.
That's trippy.
But that's kind of what we're talking about,
things affecting things on such a micro scale
and such a weird just saying something
or writing an intention, right?
It's an intention and I think that's where we're like,
oh, wait, we're only using 2% of our brain.
What are we capable of?
What's going on here?
And then within also this sort of idea
of an animistic universe.
So sort of the concept of like,
oh, maybe sentience isn't something that happens
because of a human body.
Maybe everything has some sentience in it
and maybe the electronics themselves are.
Dragons and the crown doors in the system.
Yeah.
So when you were talking about repeating,
actually, have you heard of this guy, Adam Neely?
No, I don't know.
I'll have to send you his YouTube stuff,
but he's incredible musician, music theory kind of guy,
but he's gone into polyrhythms
and basically speed and time
and I don't wanna blow his video
because it blew my mind when I watched it,
but basically just like repeating something,
stuff speeding up so fast, it turns into one tone.
And what he did was he did like a certain polyrhythm
and then another polyrhythm that like...
And then a third one and in proper ratios
where it's like a nice beat
and then he sped that, those three things up
and it turned into a chord.
Oh shit, cool.
Sorry, maybe we should put in a disclaimer
to not blow that one if anyone's not seeing it.
To watch it, you mean?
Well, that's the ending and I don't want spoiler alert.
Spoiler alert, that's the word.
First of all, for someone to feel like
you just spoiled something,
they've gotta be some kind of fucking music expert.
You know what I mean?
Because when I hear polyrhythm, you know what I do?
I do this awful thing that I do habitually,
which is I nod my head like, oh yeah, polyrhythm, of course.
I know what that is, I don't.
It's just two beats at once or two rhythms at once.
Okay, cool.
So like my one hand was doing one thing,
the other hand was...
Gotcha, okay, polyrhythm.
Yeah.
You know, what's interesting about music
is it's in time, it's literally...
You're sort of etching things into time.
Which is really cool.
So trippy.
Yes, it is.
It is trippy.
Time space.
Yeah, it's a time space art form.
And then it's a mathematical time space art form.
And the other thing that's really,
really fascinating about it is some of the more
mythological ideas about the universe itself
originating from a vibratory state.
Or that sound being the universe sort of emerging
from sound, and sound being the fundamental quality
of the universe, which,
Pythagoras, I think, actually disagreed with that,
saying that actually it's math, then sound.
Math is the primary thing.
And then sound comes next.
Because with math is the purest articulation of reality,
and sound is just math being translated through your ears.
You know, it was really music and sound
that really got me into looking into occult-ish stuff.
Basically, I was trying to search for more stuff
to do with the sounds and frequencies and everything.
And I stumbled upon the Manly P. Hall,
Secret Teachings of All Ages.
They have in there, they have the Pythagoras section
on music, and from there I just bought a bunch of books
I would not have purchased if I delved into
if I was not trying to figure out music
and what the heck's going on with it.
And I still have no idea what's going on, but.
My feeling with it is like, well,
I guess this is definitely, I don't know what this is,
or how it evolved to the point that it's at right now,
particularly musical notation.
But musical notation is so clearly coming
from some kind of occult universe.
In the sense that here is something that's encrypted.
You know, it's right in front of everyone,
musical notation, but a lot of people have no idea
how to read it at all, what it means.
It's really weird and it's weird.
And most of the musicians, like myself,
have no idea how to read it
or how we are even writing it.
I mean, I write a lot in clicking MIDI notes in.
And sometimes I'll have tinkle around
on the MIDI keyboard, piano or whatever,
but a lot of times I'm clicking in the notes.
Holy fuck.
You're just a pure alchemist, man.
You're one of the people up in the towers.
You've gone past the need of the wands and the accoutrements.
You're just directly from mind into machine,
MIDI notes, which is one day, I hope, to achieve that.
Just the guys in the matrix hooked up making beats.
It's a deeper, deep, deep, deep level.
And I know that's kind of where it leads to,
is eventually just programming it directly and with MIDI.
But with musical notation,
which was based on a previous technology,
because they didn't have MIDI back then, obviously,
the grand staff, for example,
which you know what I'm talking about?
That's called the weird shape thing on the side.
Yeah, it's the like the treble clef.
The treble clef.
And then the bass clef.
And they call it the grand staff.
It's so weird.
So it's got all this stuff tied up in it,
which feels magical.
What it feels like, it's like, this is based on,
I don't know what they really meant with a staff,
but a grand staff.
Sounds like something a druid holds, some sonic staff.
So it's like those kinds of things.
The thing, the way it looks itself,
if we didn't know what was music, you would just...
What's look like little fairies?
They look like little snitches from Harry Potter.
That's right.
Yeah, so even, yeah, within that,
there seems to be a kind of acknowledgement
of there being this sort of ecosystem,
which like almost like an alternate dimension
where sound lives.
And within sound, there are like various daemons,
so to speak, various sort of like entities
that only live inside of sound.
And when you're making music,
it's suddenly you can potentially enter
into what should not be a collaboration
because you're the only person there.
And suddenly it's almost like, oh, a little thing shows up.
And it's like, I wanna make music with you.
And now there's another thing coming through.
And those are the moments that give me goosebumps
because those are the moments where it goes
from making music to catching music.
I don't wanna sound like super pretentious or anything,
but the other day I was re-listening
to something I made and I was like,
who made this?
How did this happen?
I'm not this good.
I don't know what I'm doing.
Cause it was like really jazzy kind of a thing.
And I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing with that.
But it exists.
Something swam through you into the world.
And that element of art is so simultaneously wonderful
and simultaneously terrifying.
Because if you are just producing a situation
where music can swim through you into the world,
you're just a little tributary made of meat
that these little musical beings are swimming in it.
Yeah, meat tributary.
For the daemons.
Lay me down, Damys.
That's like some Manson shit.
I'm a meat tributary for the daemons.
That's all I didn't kill anybody.
I'm a tributary of meat.
It wasn't me.
Quote me out.
It's nice to meet you.
I'm a meat tributary for musical daemons.
Can I get you another drink?
I'm not a musician.
Just a meat tributary for musical daemons.
But the, see, I think that the language itself
needs to be improved,
but in a sense that there needs to be
a little bit more courageousness
when it comes to the discussion of creation.
Because I think for, you know,
one thing I've noticed,
which to me is one of the really most hilarious,
tragic and noble things that I've witnessed
is sometimes hardcore scientists
are doing studies with psychedelics
and have clearly sampled their materials
and have clearly had powerful mind expanding
life-changing experiences.
Have to then take this.
Sweet, sweet Hoffman.
Yes.
And, but they got,
because it's a scientific community,
and because they've recognized that when used
in conjunction with therapy,
there's the potential for true transformation of society
and of the individual.
They're smart and they're like, wow.
Yeah, but they get the importance of it.
But they also know that if they were to sit down
with a group of scientists who had yet to experience this
and say, well, guys, see, what happened is this?
Well, there appears to be a kind of,
for lack of a better word,
a ecosystem of beings that just want to help us.
And one of the ways they talk to us
is when we take psychedelics,
and usually what they say is it would be good
if we were more compassionate and kind to each other
and there's types of healings that are possible.
But you can't say that,
because if you say that to a scientist,
they're gonna be like, you are fucking nuts, man.
So you have to translate it.
And this is where you come up with these like amazing things
that these scientists have come up with,
which is literal quantifications of mystical states.
So they've come up with quantification methodology
to sort of measure out transcendent states of consciousness.
And they have to do that
because if they don't speak in that language,
then they can't bring the demon out of the meat tributary
into this world to translate it here
that requires a type of conversion
into something that is understandable, accessible,
and not very threatening.
Because for a lot of people,
you sound cuckoo for fucking cocoa puffs.
If you say spirits are coming through you
when you make music.
Mm-hmm, exactly.
And again, I don't believe that,
I also believe everything.
I don't believe anything, and I also believe everything.
It's like, so yeah, it's,
I was gonna say, writing music is trippy
in the fact that it's little time capsules
where it's kind of a screenshot, snapshot
of that artist's life or that point in time.
But yeah, back to the daemons.
Oftentimes, I'll be like,
maybe it's because I'm on the road too much
and I'll be hanging out with people,
but I'll turn around and be like,
hey, you guys, you guys like that?
Oh, no one's in here, no one's in here.
Or I'll be like with a one friend
and be like, you guys like that?
But it's just my one friend.
Well, you look, I mean, it's-
Who are you calling guys?
Who are you talking to?
The, well, so it's kind of like,
so one thing that people are more comfortable
discussing these days, which is hilarious,
is gut bacteria.
So a lot of people are understanding now that we're,
it appears there seems to be some connection
between behavior and gut bacteria,
specifically like food habits
that gut bacteria are sending,
somehow sending signals to us
that are making us crave certain things.
Totally, yes, yes.
So you could say this, you could say,
well, there's definitely like gut bacteria
living inside of you
that is making you want to eat ice cream.
But you can't say-
There's actually dubstep bacteria in your ear
that makes you crave bass music.
Well, man, right, you can't say that.
You can't say, who knows?
Where does it stop?
I mean, if the gut bacteria is making me
want to eat some fucking ice cream,
what else is it?
Well, the other, we were talking about water
and the Emoto and intentions
being put under water and water molecules.
I often forget, what are we, 70% water?
Something like that, we're very water.
Yeah, yeah. Very much water.
It's going up.
So what are things doing?
What are frequencies?
And then a full song is a lot of frequencies.
So what is that doing?
Well, we know subwoofers and bass and bass,
heavy bass shows, you know, rattle things.
And oh, you know what is really interesting?
Have you checked out Symatics?
No. Oh, you mean the shapes?
Yeah, basically just visuals in water via vibrations.
Yeah, right.
And stuff's incredible.
Right.
Can't explain it, but it's incredible.
It's math, you know.
And so then that, so yeah, you see that.
It's magical.
You vibrate things at a certain frequency
and they form these very specific geometric shapes.
I think at certain resonant.
So basically we've, I've done this with my roommate, Wes.
We've in Detroit, we put a plate of water on my subwoofer
which not surprisingly shortly after broke,
but it ended up.
You spilled water all over.
We didn't spill water, but it just, it was done.
We ended up becoming part of a robot statue
in the backyard.
But anyway, a tribute.
But anyway, we took a sweep of a single synth tone,
maybe like a sign, simple sine wave or something.
Sounds like do and start real low.
And that sound is what subwoofers are.
Like a lot of 808 kick are made of simple sine wave.
So anyway, we started really low and sweep it up slowly
upwards and pitch.
And at certain sections,
the sound becomes resonant, I guess, with itself.
I don't know anything.
We probably ask an expert,
but when it hits certain resonant peaks,
it will, that's when you see these incredible,
and in between them are incredible formations,
but that's when a real crystallized like image
is being vibrated in the water.
And then you keep going up
and it keeps getting more and more fractalized.
It's really crazy.
Crazy.
Wait, what?
And then you remember that you're made of water.
Right.
Wait, whoa, whoa.
And then also you remember that we're like water
expressing itself through action, emotion, thoughts.
And then, yeah.
Yeah, and in this situation,
it's like when the vibration is affecting the water,
it's affecting just pure water
minus all of the other conditions
that allow it to be sentient, which is what we are.
So when music crosses paths.
Yeah, we have blood and we have a bunch of crazy
or other stuff.
Crazy stuff, yeah.
We're crazy alchemy.
Yes, crazy alchemy.
We're crazy walking alchemy projects.
We're alchemy laboratories.
Yeah.
And that's the premise of so many wonderful philosophies
and religions is like this idea of,
oh yeah, what's beautiful about being a human
is that you're a walking laboratory.
Hello, I'm Alchemy Lab.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it, man.
You're an alchemy lab.
And then when you, so within this alchemy lab of the self
is there are a lot of little experiments you could do.
And these experiments involve what you're saying,
which is the kind of agnosticism.
It's like you want to sort of allow yourself the episode.
I don't, we don't know anything, but we, yeah,
but we want to allow ourselves in case.
Well, you just want to be able to open yourself.
The idea would be, okay, let's push aside the obvious thing.
Like let's just all admit right now
that Neil deGrasse Tyson is right.
He's right, he's right, he finished the project for us.
We don't need to know anything else.
He did it.
1,000 years of deGrasse Tyson.
It's done.
He figured it out.
Carl Sagan figured it out.
Stephen Hawking figured it out.
Richard Dawkins figured it out.
It's all been figured out.
Okay, let's just, so let's admit that there is a,
we'll call it the deGrasse layer, okay?
The Tyson layer.
He's at the top, he's at the top of the pyramid.
Yeah, we got it.
So there, okay.
Now we know that.
So we're all safe.
No one's going crazy.
DeGrasse de Tyson.
We admit it.
This is a fucking gravity well
with the planets sticking in it.
There's just matter.
That's it.
You die, you're dead forever.
That's it, there's nothing more.
We don't, if there is something more,
we don't know it yet.
And whatever you fucking think it is, Stoner,
is not what it is, okay?
So that's, okay, so let's start there.
We got that.
Okay, the base layer.
Yeah, we got that.
So now let's push that aside.
Okay, fuck that.
That's gone.
So now we, but we all know we're not gonna go crazy.
Magic can exist.
This is, now the next step will be, okay.
Now, let's imagine that we are
host to a variety of organisms in our own body.
This is actually on the Neal deGrasse Tyson real.
We have mitochondrial DNA.
This is on the Neal real.
This is on the Neal real.
So we know this is Neal real.
So we have mitochondrial DNA,
and then we have gut bacteria,
and not to mention all the things living
just in the ecosystem of what we are.
We're like a tree filled with a variety of creatures
that are living inside us.
We're parasites.
We're a jungle.
We're diseases.
We're a jungle.
So, okay.
So that's great.
That's, we're still on the, on that.
We're still on the real.
Hairy jungle.
We're a hairy jungle.
And in our hair, there's little mites chomping our hair
like corn.
Yeah, they love it.
They love it.
We love it.
Yeah, that's right.
And then also our eyes are eating light.
We know that like photons are coming into our eyes.
Be that in the photons have been essentially spawned
in the sun over millennia.
And then our eyes are just gobbling them down
and turning them into vision.
And then our ears are automatically transforming waves,
mathematical waves into something that we call sound.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
That's still on the time.
So, but that is, that's, so this,
that's still on the Neal Reel.
But then if we want to kind of move a little step
past the Neal Reel, we would enter into the great question
that Jack Kornfield says is the first thing they asked him
when he became a monk, which is where are you in your body?
So this is a fair question.
The mind versus the brain, right?
Yeah.
What has there been any research into dreams
and the mind and dream state?
And I mean, I was just talking about this,
how it's like, yeah, we quantify like maybe what alpha state
or whatever the heck the brain, however they even measure
that, but, and then what is that?
That's kind of it.
They've gone deeper in this for the Neal Reel,
but we all know we can all agree.
We all go to bed at night and then we go into this other world.
And then that's, that's happening.
We all, we can all agree on dreams, like what, what is that?
What is that?
Yeah. And then how about the non-dreams?
How about just closing your eyes and four hours past?
Right.
Now the, the, the, uh, this is called continuity
of the non-continuity of self.
So in the sort of analysis, the idea is like, all right,
well, we know we have gut bacteria living inside of us.
And then clearly there's a me living in me and this forest
of like bacteria and mitochondrial DNA and pubic hair
and shit and piss and blood and flesh and oxygen.
It's, it's me somewhere in there.
There is a me living in here, you know,
somewhere there must be.
I gotta be in there somewhere.
Where are you?
Where am I?
Where is it?
You know, and with, so within this exploration
is where things get really fun.
Because it's like, if you're going to be agnostic
about the daemons, the coming through the meat tributary
into your sound, then you're going to have to be agnostic
about the existence of yourself.
In other words, are you any more real than those daemons?
And if you are, how so?
Right.
You disappear every night, you reappear in the morning,
that self that you attach yourself to,
you disappear when you get caught up in your thoughts.
How many, how often have you looked up
in three hours has passed?
And you're like, where the fuck was I?
We are the daemon.
Right, there you go.
Yeah, so there it is.
So it's like, suddenly it's like, well, okay,
I can't confirm for sure that interdimensional beings
are flowing through me when I'm making art
or chatting or talking.
But one thing I do know for sure is there does seem
to be something living inside of this meat jungle
called myself.
And whatever that fucking thing is, I guess it's me.
It's trying to do art, it's trying to scream at something.
Yeah, it thinks it's something.
I think I'm a thing.
And then, so then you get into this interesting conundrum,
which is where are your words coming from?
And every single moment there's a flow of words
coming out of your mouth.
You go and order your coffee,
you go get on the phone with someone you love,
the sounds you make when you're fucking,
all those sounds, where are they coming from?
The stream of consciousness is crazy.
Where does the stream start?
And that's when like jamming and playing music
and jazz musicians and,
where did, where did you come from?
Where did you go?
I don't even know idea.
That, because you know that as a musician.
So the thing where, I think,
and this is maybe the secret society of musicians
and the big secret all musicians share, I guess,
is when you all get together and start making music,
something weird happens.
You start sharing a mind or something.
Like suddenly, something.
Oh, that's what I was remembering.
I just read a thing about,
we were talking about water and the bodies.
And so I just read this statistic about this thing
that scientists, that the Neil Reel has agreed upon,
that humans in large crowd form
will move like water, flow like water
in whatever the scientific term for hydro,
hydrodynamic or something like that,
where it will like move like water,
like flow like flowing through like a huge,
like a huge crowd leaving a concert or something.
No one's like, there's not one director in the back
like, all right, everyone do this now.
But we're all moving collectively like water.
So that's another proof, more proof of what the heck,
everything's connected, man.
Well, it's the water inside of us, I guess,
and already knows what to do.
The waters are lured, the waters are over lured.
Yeah, that's what's happened.
Yeah, well, what it is is it's like,
so it's kind of like water is a perfect way
to get into the conversation of the perfection
of all things, because when you sort of throw water
on the ground, anyone can do this anytime you wanna do it
or if you wanna go and watch the rainfall,
it's a better thing if you happen to be
in a place where there's rain.
We're lucky right now, LA rain, maybe.
Yeah, I'm still, it would be nice
if you'd cover it on a sunny day,
but right now it's raining.
I've never been here when it's raining,
so I'm fine, I'm happy for the city.
That's a good attitude towards it, man, it's like.
I mean, I lived in Oakland for two years during the drought.
Oh, there you go.
Of Oakland, and.
Great drought of Oakland.
The great brutal drought of Oakland.
And it was crazy, it was one season.
Anyway, I'm sorry.
You've experienced the blistering blue perfect,
endless perfect day of Southern California.
We needed a shower.
We needed, yeah.
But you don't judge water.
Right.
When you're watching water come out of a drain pipe
onto the ground, unless you're like the most
massive dick on planet Earth,
you're not looking at the water flat of the drain pipe
and thinking, look at that lazy ass fucking water.
See how it just does only what it has to.
Like that water doesn't do shit.
It just like basically does only what it has to.
And then that, and then it's looking at the way it flows.
It, yeah.
Freakin' water.
Freakin' water, just only does what it has to.
And you know, but.
Was it Ramdas who was talking about
treat everyone like trees?
Don't judge tree, you wouldn't judge a tree.
That's right.
You wouldn't judge a tree.
You wouldn't judge a flower.
You wouldn't judge a water.
Well, you wouldn't judge, there's no water judge.
There's nobody.
Too wet crew.
Look at that.
Yeah, those guys.
Hey, props on being in too wet crew.
That's great.
It was one of the great honors in my life.
Yeah, that's honorable.
But since we're mostly water.
Okay, so we know we're what?
70% water.
Let's just pretend that's the number.
It's probably.
70 something.
70, whatever.
I will say that.
And then, okay, so there's 30% of something else.
Yeah, what is it?
Well, a lot of that's got back to you.
Oh, yeah.
And shit.
That's right.
So then, but somewhere in there,
there's supposed to be a self, right?
But because we're 70%, we're mostly water.
And we know that water is unblameable.
Water is.
Can't blame the water.
Right.
And if you think water is perfect in your 70% water,
then 70% of you is perfect.
Right?
It's beautiful.
That's pretty great.
That's above failing grade.
That's wonderful.
70% perfection is incredible.
But then I think we could take it up a little higher.
Because I'm not sure what the other stuff is,
but let's just imagine it is gut bacteria.
Let's imagine we're 5% gut bacteria.
Who judges gut bacteria?
Like, no one's writing reviews of gut bacteria.
There's no Yelp for your gut bacteria.
So, you know what I mean?
Gut bacteria, as far as I know.
Gelp.
Gelp.
You know, I encountered this gut bacteria and it was,
I was really disappointed in the way it was.
There's pictures of them.
You can swipe through the pictures.
Maybe gut bacteria are fine.
Dude, this is, honestly, this is five,
we're five years ahead of the curve.
They're gonna have Gelp.
Gelp.
Maybe gut bacteria do,
maybe gut bacteria is what sends the signal
to write a shitty Yelp review and your pizza sucks.
Who knows?
Maybe that's where it's coming from.
But then it's kind of like, you know,
what I'm getting at, the point is,
there is no, if you can't find you,
number one, you really can't find you and you.
You really can't.
You don't know where you live in you.
You just have this kind of thing that comes out of your mouth.
That's when there's no accountability
and then that's when you get people doing heinous crimes
and things, you know.
Now we're in a really interesting zone, aren't we?
Because it's like, you want,
we really, what we would love to have is a monster.
So if you manage to find yourself a good monster, right?
Let's take Jeffrey Dahmer, a true monster, a monster.
But then you sit and if you look at Jeffrey Dahmer,
like, all right, 70% of you is water.
Now is that water evil?
I don't think so.
So if I sucked 70% of the water out of Jeffrey Dahmer.
It's probably got some weird vibrations,
but yeah, you can't judge that water.
Can't judge the water.
So like, in my God, if you want to talk about
a mass murder or the ocean, holy shit.
If we're going to talk about evil water, like, good God.
Those are rough seas.
How many people have drowned in the ocean?
How many, like, but the ocean is blameless, it's fine.
But 70% of Jeffrey Dahmer's water,
somewhere in there, there must be something evil.
Where is it?
What is it, right?
Where do we find it?
Is it the fucking abuse that the kid had?
Is that the evil?
Is it the echo of the abuse that stuck in him?
Another fractal.
Or is it, what's that?
Another fractal.
Yes.
It's all fractals.
Is it his brain?
Is it a neural connection in his brain?
Is there some kind of like,
or is there within Jeffrey Dahmer, was there,
a precise, malefic, dark, decision-making process
that was evil?
And you know the problem is, I don't think so.
I think you're just looking at a kind of rotten echo.
An eddy, a shitty fucking-
Yeah, because you can't have him without his parents
and so forth.
The fractal, his brain is a fractal of his parents' brains.
And whatever happened in his childhood.
Yeah, and now we're in trouble.
Because our entire system is based on having like,
you know, like people who are evil.
And if we're now, if we're in a situation where it's like,
you know, mostly it seems like we're reflecting.
I saw the Dalai Lama talk in Anaheim and that's what he said.
He said, if someone hurts you,
you're probably seeing an echo.
It's a bouncing, it's a thing bouncing off of someone.
It's a bouncing energy that was been bouncing around
for a long time.
And so then here is where we run into a real problem,
I think, which is, you know, interdependency.
We're all completely reflecting each other.
We're all part of the water,
the crowd of humans trying to move out of the concert.
Yeah, yeah.
Who knows?
Maybe rivers are dicks.
Maybe like in the river, there's like-
You know what?
They are.
You know what?
Screw water.
Water sucks.
Fuck water.
What if we just find that out that water's just an asshole?
Water's completely shitty.
The thing that's bad about people is the water.
It's the waters and shit.
Other parts of the universe,
they talk shit about water.
It's like, fuck Earth, it's 70% water.
Water's an ass.
So we all start drinking Gatorade,
Powerade, and-
There's so much water in Gatorade.
You just have to start drinking dirt.
Just get the dust,
just get the dust out of the Gatorade.
The key is pure dehydration.
We have to figure out a way to suck the water out of us
and then punish the water.
It's not enough to just fucking take the water out.
We need to punish the oceans.
Maybe that's what the oil spills are.
Maybe they figured it out.
We're punishing the sea.
I get it.
It's a huge tribute to the sea.
The oil companies,
that's the only reason they exist.
They're saving us.
They're actually saving us.
They're teaching me.
They're trying to tame the seas.
You know, sometimes I like to go out to the ocean
and just get my whip out and start whipping.
I love whipping water.
When I'm depressed, I go and whip the water.
Anytime there's a tsunami,
just go out and start spanking the water.
This is, I think, as absurd as it sounds,
I do think it's an important thing
because it's like anytime you're beating yourself up,
you're whipping water.
Yeah, you're screaming at the sky.
Yeah.
You're shaking your fist at the sky.
Yeah, that's the first thing.
You come home.
You're an old man screaming at sky.
Yeah.
What have I done?
I can't believe I did that.
What's wrong with me?
I must be a real piece of shit.
Well, first of all, figure out which part of you
isn't, is the piece of shit.
It's like, that's the main thing.
It's like, maybe you have to shit.
You might just need to shit.
But eat some food, take a nap, drink some water.
Are you hard on yourself?
Are we drinking water again?
Can we drink water still?
Nope.
No more water for the rest of the day.
We have to purge.
I'm gonna try this experiment.
Are you hard on yourself?
Check on me in three days.
If I'm still okay.
Am I hard on myself?
Yeah.
I'm definitely a perfectionist.
I like to say that for finishing projects and music
and presenting stuff to the collective world.
So in that case, yeah, I'm probably,
probably kind of hard on myself with work and stuff.
But lately, I mean, honestly, listening to your podcast,
you have a lot of positive people,
people talking about self-care and self-love
and just positive stuff like that.
More and more lately, trying to forgive myself, you know?
Hold my hand, you know?
Yeah.
Put my hand on my heart and be like, oh, it's cool.
It's okay.
I've always been, tried to not be super hard on myself
and just have fun and joke or just, I love comedy, you know?
I don't like to watch horror movies.
Yeah.
Yeah, man.
I know what you mean.
It's like the...
It's like, hey, we're trying to have fun yet?
Well, that.
Yeah, well, like lately, it's like, you know,
a lot of these conversations we're talking about
where these positive people, it affects me.
And then it's really brought me to a point
of taking a deep look into self-ness, so to speak.
And then figuring out like, shit, what is fun?
Like, what is, you know, I just,
someone tweeted this really sad thing.
I can't remember who it was.
It was about their kids.
It was a real pissed off tweet,
but somebody got like 50,000 retweets.
And he was like, you know, people aren't gonna say this,
but having kids is destabilizing
and it's just a lot of the time it's not fun.
And I remember, I mean, my thinking on that,
I was like, wait, what?
What is fun?
Yeah, what's his idea of fun?
You know, and then I, and then from there,
I'm like, wait, before I judge this guy,
what the fuck is my idea of fun?
Right.
You know, what is it?
Like, what would fun be?
And then what the fuck is,
and since then I've been thinking like,
I'm not really sure what fun is.
I actually, you know,
because we kind of chatted about it briefly.
I looked up the etymology to talk about
the least fun activity, looking up etymologies,
but I looked up etymology, the etymology of fun,
and it comes from to trick or a fool.
Wow.
You know, so.
Interesting.
Yeah, really interesting, but like, you know,
having fun.
The jester is important.
Andy Kaufman is important.
You're important.
The comedians are important.
We need that.
Fun is my goal.
To me, and I don't know who I am,
but to me, it feels deep down
like that's really important.
Comedians.
Not being too hard on yourself or the world
or just having fun.
You're a comedian.
Me?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, I think.
You love fun.
I'll, listen, as a fucking comedian.
You are fun.
The comedian side of me will be the first thing
to say how important comedians are.
I'll tell you that.
That's one of the qualities of a fool.
A fool will right away bugle
about the importance of themselves.
Like, that's the first step of being a fool
is you've got to think you're important.
If you don't think you're important,
then you might not be a fool anymore.
Now you're getting wise.
You better watch out.
Step one, first thing, you're super fucking important.
Secretly, step two, pretend that you're not.
That's the kind of the dance a fool does.
It's like, you know what I mean?
Like down inside, you kind of have this messiah complex
and you're like, maybe I could save the world.
Which is why so many comedians-
It's the only way to get out the door, right?
Yeah.
But you embarrass yourself.
It's a good, as a comedian,
it's like the number one way to embarrass yourself.
So like, a lot of people these days
get really angry at comedians
because many comedians will suddenly step out.
So to speak.
And they will announce some broad global world peace plan.
It's not even funny.
They're convinced they figured out a way to save the world.
And then the reaction they get for it
will quite often be accolades, you know?
Because whatever the thing that they've come up with
is this sort problem.
And then the solution seems kind of poignant or something.
And so then the comedian gets placed on the throne.
Which is an ancient tradition.
Like all the greats, George Carlin,
just talking about like the most epic stuff, right?
Yeah.
And then inevitably what happened,
so like there was a, I've heard about this.
What you would do is you take the fool,
if you're a king, the idea is you take the fool
and then you put them on the throne for the day.
So you let the fool be the king for a day
and then it's the most hilarious fucking thing.
Because over the course of the day,
if you had a true fool,
then the fool would begin to start thinking
he was a king or she was a king.
And that was what was the funniest thing to everybody
is you would begin to watch this transformation happen
because this is a fool.
And the fool naturally begin to become a king
if you don't watch out.
And this I think is a really dangerous thing
when you're around a trickster.
Because if you're around a trickster
and you give, put a crown on a trickster,
the trickster is going to like be the king.
Trickster's king now.
That's what, now you have Trump.
Well, I mean.
They'll have the sword of Damocles over them.
Have you heard of that?
You know that, I love that.
You mean the thread with the sword hanging?
I love that where any king or anyone in power
has this thin thread of it could all be over.
There's so many people against you
and the sword of Damocles.
Well, I mean, this was the idea.
The idea would be that like the nobility of a king
or a true leader is like there are many noble traits.
One of the noble traits is there is a kind of
lion tamer quality to them,
which is like they fully understand
the serious and sinister position they put themselves in
because people will cut your head off.
That was the idea is like the high of the,
you've basically decided to move in to a hornet's nest
and start telling the hornets how to fly.
And like, if you step out of line, they'll just kill you.
I mean, there's the potential to really get killed.
But then on top of that, there's a love for the hornets
or true, sincere, authentic love for the hornets.
So it's like, yeah, being a leader.
When you have a good king.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I mean, the great leader.
A great leader, yeah.
One of the greats.
You don't, this is in the Daodae Ching, the great leader.
Have you ever heard this?
The greatest leader you would never know
was there was a leader.
Cool.
There wouldn't even be a sense that there was a leader.
And then the next step down from that, I think,
is if people are revering the leader,
it's already considered a kind of degradation.
It's tainted.
It's tainted if there's reverence.
And then the next step would be fear, right?
If you fear the leader, then it's really fine.
Then it's all downhill.
Now you have autocracy.
And then after that, it just, yeah,
it continues to collapse, yeah.
So whenever you have a leader
that is producing fear dynamics,
you're seeing a very degraded leader type.
When like the idea would be a kind of like,
and like, you know, a great, I think a really great,
do you remember, I don't know if you remember the days
when like the president would give a speech
and you really didn't give a shit.
It was kind of boring.
And you couldn't like repeat,
you couldn't respond on some forum in the air,
in the air and respond to the leader,
how they spelled two words wrong in a row.
How can we do, how are we allowed to do that?
What is Twitter?
That's wild.
Direct contact with a prep with a leader.
How?
Yeah.
Who decided that?
Yeah, it's wild.
I remember when Twitter first came out,
I thought I was gonna flop.
It's like, who the fuck wants to leave
tiny little messages in space?
Nobody cares, like, no one cares.
And then suddenly it became this like apocalyptic tool.
Yeah, what?
All of a sudden the president's talking to a dictator.
It's mind-blowing, Twitter's interesting
because all my musician friends,
including myself, will use it to be comedians.
Use it for like one-liners.
And that seems to be what really only matters
on there with the collective consciousness.
Obviously I'll upload,
be like, I'm doing this show or something,
but the hits are the jokes, you know?
And just boiling it back down to people.
People, girls just wanna have fun.
Yeah, girls just wanna have fun.
People just wanna have fun.
Yeah.
I just wanna have fun.
That's the, well, it's like the reality of it is that,
so the creation of the fun state, right?
So the idea is like, typically there are fun moments
and there are non-fun moments.
And then there's also the moments
in getting to a fun moment, right?
So like classic fun, the beach.
Like, so the way it works is when you pack up your stuff
and get in the car and you drive to the beach
and then you go out in the sand
and you lay out in the sand
and that is like, now you've entered into the realm of fun.
And then you get back in the car and drive home,
not as fun, and then you get home
and you kind of had an okay time and you fall asleep.
But within this is a peak.
The beach moment is the peak.
The lead up to that is not quite as fun
and then going away is certainly not fun.
And so this is a kind of way that people paint reality,
which is we produce moments that,
oh, that's when I'm gonna be having fun.
Right now, not so much.
I'm in traffic, this couldn't be fun.
Or the opposite, anticipating something stressful
or something or procrastinating
and just thinking about that leading up to it isn't great.
And so I think the answer is the great old Buddhist,
the old, be here now, the live in the now.
Because I feel like when I'm anticipating something,
I'm only thinking about the future
and then I'm living in that moment of anxiety
or waiting for the beach,
thinking, being in the car, thinking about the beach,
oh, anxious or whatever.
But if you're in that moment,
you're singing along to the song in the car
and just having fun and I guess fun
would be being in the moment, right?
And that's being here now and stuff.
Just being, being, being fun.
Yeah, like, I don't know.
The, like, because first you have to kind of define fun.
It's like, well, I guess for, like,
it's, you know, if you look at like a Coca-Cola commercial
or if you look at like any commercial
and you see the projection of fun coming out of-
The polar bears.
People wanna sell you shit, yeah.
Those fun polar bears with sweaters.
Yeah, that, usually fun involves either some kind of like
insane frenetic activity.
Like you're at a place with fog and lasers
or fun involves, you know,
the moments after purchasing a thing
or fun involves a kind of like rare gathering.
You know, one thing I saw,
the most sinister commercial I've seen lately,
portraying fun, is a crown royal commercial
which shows a guy walking, shamelessly,
walking down the street with a bottle of crown royal
attached to-
That's illegal.
He's just carrying a bottle.
That's illegal.
It's just, whatever, it's a bottle of fucking crown royal.
I mean, it's like, just put in a bag or something, man.
He better be in New Orleans.
Just seems weird, you know?
But then where it gets even weirder, which, you know,
whatever, fucking strolling down the street
with a bottle of crown royal, who gives a fuck?
That's your thing, I don't know.
To each his own.
To each his own.
Have fun.
But then he gets to home, he's visiting his mom.
And he pours a glass of crown royal for himself
and his mom, who lives alone, it seems like,
and I guess this is like a sweet moment
between son and mother,
which is to share a glass of crown royal.
It just seems weird, man.
Yeah, what's fun is when the crown royal execs
get their checks and bonuses.
That's so much fun.
It's fun for them, I'm sure.
It's fun for them to make it seem like an intimate moment,
a sweet moment with your mom involves fucking crown royal.
And then he leaves his mom alone at the house, I guess,
and goes to a bar where he drinks more
crown fucking royal.
His whole life is the crown royal universe, right?
So this is fun.
It's gotta be, it's gotta be for those execs to have fun.
Fun is conditional.
One thing for certain is that for many people,
fun is conditional.
There needs to be a certain condition.
And also I looked at the opposite of fun,
which do you know what it is?
But I guess, what, bored?
Putting bees in your ass.
The eye.
I get it.
Yeah, that's true.
The opposite of fun.
Universally, they did a study.
They went all over the planet.
Now that's on the Neil real.
Yeah, the Neil real Neil deGrasse Tyson
actually did an entire like amazing episode
like what unites us as a species
is we all hate getting bees shoved in our ass.
It's the worst.
Terrible.
The delivery mechanism for the bees is completely irrelevant.
Not the best.
Not the bee situation.
Not the beast.
Not the best, not the beast.
Yeah, so like in this like exploration of humanity,
they found that like, whether it's like one bee
to 30 bees, to a bee hive, to a hornet's nest.
No fun up your ass.
We just don't like it in our ass.
We don't like bees in our ass.
The bee, and guess what?
The bees don't like it either.
No one's having fun there.
The bees aren't having fun.
You're not having fun.
That's the opposite of fun.
Bees don't like it.
Right underneath that, boredom, you know, boredom.
And here's where it gets really interesting.
They found that it's impossible to be bored
when you have bees in your ass.
We've solved it.
We've solved it.
So like basically like the antidote to,
now boredom is considered the opposite of fun.
And this is where it gets fucking weird,
which is like the antidote to boredom universally.
Put some bees in your ass.
You will not be bored anymore.
You will have something to do.
You will have an activity to do.
There'll be meaning in your life, sadly.
Boredom is the opposite.
That's a great solution.
It's a world peace, world fun,
is perpetuate that via bees in your ass.
Yeah, it's genius.
And this is why the bees are dying.
You see, what's happening is.
They figured, Neil's figured this out,
and it's been harvesting a lot of bees.
People have been so bored lately.
They've been shoving bees in their ass
to give their lives meaning.
And it's like the bees are like not only,
you know, obviously dying from suffocating
in people's asses, but they're also committing suicide
because of the, even the chance.
Some of them though are actually evolving
and becoming part of the ass.
Yeah.
And so now you have humans with BS.
Yeah, yeah.
BS.
Yeah, yeah, that's really fun.
BS is actually the lead cause of.
Traffic?
I think traffic.
Yeah, well, they're just, you know,
there's a lot of theories behind like,
this phenomena that's happening,
which is like the main thing is,
is like we don't know how many people are doing it.
So like if, you know.
That's the problem.
That's why traffic, there's a lot of angry people.
We, oh yeah.
A lot of angry people.
And you can blame them, you know?
Usually the bees are, bees are usually blaming them.
They're pretty pissed.
They're stinging.
They're up there stinging.
In the water.
Not happy.
The fucking, the main thing guys,
I think the takeaway from this is we're tributaries
for demons and that the best way to not be poor
to shove bees in your asshole, but boredom.
And make sure to whip the water when you're.
Well, the best way to torture water.
Yeah.
The main thing guys that we're saying here
is just find a beehive and throw it in the ocean.
That's right.
We, we, the, no, fun.
The opposite of fun is boredom.
And boredom is what is painted as in the,
in our culture, boredom is literally like the thing
we have to avoid the most.
Like boredom.
Check your phone.
Check your phones.
Check your phone.
Check your phone.
Yeah.
Check your phone.
Watch out.
You're getting bored.
Oh God.
Yeah.
It's taking over.
Yeah.
That's it.
So everything, like everything we see on TV
and everything that we hear and many of the products
are various antidotes to this idea of boredom
of being still, of not doing anything.
It's over, it's over stimulation.
Yeah.
That's it.
Yeah.
Fun.
Remember when we used to just sit and hang out
around the fire with the, with the ancient ones.
The ancient times.
And we would just do our thing without screens.
Yeah.
That sounded kind of cool.
But now is cool too.
I mean, electronic music is fun.
It's crazy.
Making music is, is glorious.
So much fun.
So much fun.
Stream of consciousness doing.
Becoming a talker.
Let's talk more about what you were talking about,
which is kind of almost conjuring.
What is that?
Especially for modular synths.
And so you've, you've experienced this with,
cause that's pure electronic voltages
and just really real.
Really, really real compared to digital
is more in the, in the box, in the computer.
But that's why this modular stuff is, is crazy to me.
The realness of the voltages and the electricity.
Yeah.
I don't know what I, like my sense of it is that
it's some kind of, for me,
I see it as more of a kind of like oracular device,
like a kind of like reading entrails.
And I know that if I've got a practice
where I've been sitting and if my mood,
my consciousness is even slightly shifted
with an intentionality of being grateful for my existence,
then the music I get lucky enough to dial in
is usually more harmonious and sweet.
If I'm confused or pissed off or freaked out or whatever,
then for like either just squawking awful shit comes out
or like, you know, nothing really flows
or there's even worse,
the worst of the worst is a kind of like
sense of squeezing out something.
Like I kind of wanting to push a thing out of the sense
or wanting to like pull a thing out, rip a thing out.
All those aspects of it just suck.
Slyther out.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like we just get a snake to come slithering out.
Come here.
Yeah.
And sometimes I'll stream making music on it.
And like when I do that, it's really funny because I'm-
Then you have the external forces.
That helps.
Yeah.
But my assumption when I'm doing that is people just know
that I know that I don't know how to make music on these things.
That's the key, I think.
Yeah.
Just not be so, not be too serious.
But I think there's two modes of thought
with what we're talking about.
One mode I kind of subscribe to is what we're talking about
is there's so many variables.
I don't think I can get the same thing twice
with all the variables going on.
Now there's other more scientific producers
and stuff that will be more in the mode of thought saying,
no, no, no, no.
It's all science.
It's all frequency.
Just dial everything in the same exact way.
Yeah.
But I don't know, man, like you're saying,
I think there's something more to it
where you're channeling something's going on
when you're turning these.
Of course, there's so many variables.
Maybe it's just really hard to dial it in the exact same way.
I'll tell you.
You always get infinite new things.
And you get that like one thing that I've, you know,
this is so, I'm sorry, man.
You know, you're so fucking cool that I keep forgetting
you're this genius music producer.
And I was just rambling about making synth music.
No, no, no, dude.
The thing is, you know, more than I know in this particular,
like I don't even have a modular analog synth.
I had no idea what's going on.
You tricked me for that.
You made me very comfortable.
I appreciate that.
But the the.
Yeah, one thing.
And again, this is a complete neophyte nubes shit.
But like one thing, you know,
I was recording music into Ableton from this thing
and I'm like listening to it.
God damn it.
What what is going on that when it goes into Ableton,
it sounds completely different or there's a.
It's missing something.
And then I realized like, oh, you dope.
What's happening is you're playing it from your speakers
and the speakers are reflecting off the walls
and that's producing a sound that you can't capture
through the line because it's coming through.
Or at least I'm not.
I don't know what technique to capture the reverb.
You could record through the mic.
You could record it through the mic.
Yeah.
And then maybe blend the two together or something
because it seems like the mic recording would sound.
You could do anything.
Right.
That's the other element.
That's the fun part is that you could do that.
And you I was I was thinking, man, my dad just for Christmas.
He gave me this little.
He said it's waterproof.
This little it's little Bluetooth speaker thing.
I want to record.
I want to take a mic into the bathroom
and have a part of my song and drop it into the tub.
And that's a filter, you know,
and record that with a mic.
Yeah.
I want to do that next.
That element of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you know what we've done?
So I have a side project called Gucci Men with Space Jesus.
No way.
And we recorded the sound of the sub.
In my studio in Oakland a couple of years
ago when we wrote this song, we were noticing
when the sub hit a certain note, it would rattle
whatever part of the wall or something.
And we're like, oh, that's that's hot.
So we took them, took a mic and recorded that
and brought that back into the song, cut out the low end
from that so it's not interfering with anything else.
So it's just the high kind of rattle.
Yeah.
But it's resonant frequency resonating
from the original sub.
Yeah.
And then the sub sound maybe will cut out a little of the highs
and layer layer them.
So it'll be like that's organic sounding.
Yes, that that's the other quality of this stuff is like
suddenly you realize like or one of the things it's taught me
this there's two qualities I want to bring up.
One is that just the practice of making music on this
has been transformative because it's taught me a lot
of other philosophical things.
You got into this.
Like I've been listening to your podcast for a while
and I was listening before you really got into Ableton
and this stuff.
The analog.
I'm in love with it.
Let's play a little music and record our conversation
while he makes it.
You could come over here and make stuff you want.
I'll just get the mic up.
We'll switch.
Do you have do you have vocal sound?
Do you have vocal effects set up or is that kind of something
you'd have to vocal effects?
Like I could easily set it up for us.
I would have to.
Yeah, it would take like 10 seconds and like basically what
could happen is I could sit there because there's only room
for one person in this thing.
And then you could just fiddle around with it if you wanted to.
I'll fiddle.
I'll tell you what I'm telling you right now.
You know more than I do about your system.
Well, that's the best.
But yeah, exactly.
That's the best thing.
Yeah, it's like not.
I mean, in a weird way, the more I learned,
the more I wish I didn't know because like there's something
about the chaos factor that I really like.
My producer buddy was just talking about how he especially,
we can't really like enjoy music.
We can't really like sit and listen to music like a lot of people
would.
We're like just like kind of jaded and tainted by the industry
but in terms of like trying to analyze every single thing we
hear like, oh, how could I make that?
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
Reverse engineering.
Slightly starting to ruin being a fan.
Yeah, you listen to the little pieces and you're like, oh, OK.
I think I kind of understand what they're
doing to make that sound.
But for you, it must be more precise.
You know what?
Let's take a break.
I'm going to like set this up so you can like get.
I'll show you a little bit about how this system works.
And then we'll just talk while you make.
If you don't mind.
No, that sounds really fun.
Yeah, no, let's do it.
This is the output.
This is it.
This is it.
This is it.
This is it.
This is it.
This is it.
This is it.
This is it.
This is it.
And we're going to start by giving you a break.
Let me ask you.
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
OK, I'm going to show you what this is.
Yeah, I understand.
Yes, so please rest.
That's fine.
OK.
OK.
OK.
I'm going to describe this system just a little bit more
accurately.
Yeah, we're going to ask you to do a little closer look at this
here.
And then we're going to start to see this is our source
here.
Right?
Yes, this is our source.
Yeah.
OK.
So, you're going to do a little bit of this.
That is basically this.
Yeah?
So, just a little bit more.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.