Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 485: Sage Francis

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Starting point is 00:00:37 track housing, fast food chains, and traffic in the last two years. I can't imagine anyone wanting to move here now. It's turned into every other vanilla town in America. 10 years ago, this used to be the coolest place. 10 years ago, there used to be so much more space. 10 years ago, community thriving. 10 years ago, local bands driving.

Starting point is 00:01:08 I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago. 10 years ago, downtown was much more dangerous. 10 years ago, the city more mysterious. I want to live in a place nobody else lives. The rent, cool bars, gourmet restaurants. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago.

Starting point is 00:02:06 10 years ago, there were more forest lakes and parks except the ones that my house was already on. I want to be in the country close to nature. Only me in the country close to nature. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago.

Starting point is 00:03:25 I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago.

Starting point is 00:23:07 I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I want to go back to 10 years ago. I love your story because the pillars of the thing are something that I've discovered that is very comforting to me, which is hard fucking work.

Starting point is 00:26:13 That's the thing, man. There seems to be a universal form in people who have had any kind of real successes. That is what you have to work really hard. There isn't any way out of that. I think working for yourself is an incredible feeling, but still. Today, I work for myself. I love my job, but my back is fucked up. My back's fucked up because I've been picking up my kid and sitting at this freaking desk every day.

Starting point is 00:26:46 You know what I mean? Editing podcast and it finds like, fuck you, fuck you. I was chatting with someone on the Patreon and they're like, you got to get a standing desk. I'm like, I don't want to admit I have a desk job. You know what I mean? But I do. I'm at a desk. The other interesting thing about the kind of fame and success that you have is your fans are like, you're everything to them.

Starting point is 00:27:15 Because they found you through God know it through the weirdest possible way. They found you the old school way of people finding musicians that they love. And so I think that that initial discovery, the algorithm doesn't understand that at all. That's something that just is overlooked or people don't even understand that anymore. I'm so grateful for that. I'm very lucky for that. I wish I could bestow that same opportunity on other artists that I think deserve it. I do my best as a label owner.

Starting point is 00:27:53 I'm very careful with who I work with. You know, my fans trust those kind of decisions because it is a special relationship where I was never forced on anybody. No one got tricked into listening to my music or, you know, I'm not playing inside of supermarkets. I'm not like, you're not being inundated with Sage Francis material. So if you find it and you get into it, you really lock in and, you know, if you identify with it, you see that there's something unique to what I do that you aren't getting from other sources. And that is what I think great art is all about. You know, we're all living a very similar situation. We're all living a similar experience in life.

Starting point is 00:28:38 But the differences that certain artists are able to pick out and accentuate and make others feel like they're not so alone in their situation because no one else communicated it before. Yeah. But also, you know, you attract the weirdos as well, where they think everything is about them. You know, you have to be very careful about the access you give people to your personal life. And I've been very careful about my privacy less and less so in my older years. You know, through much of my adulthood, I threw a lot of trapdoors and labyrinths into what I say and what I say about myself and who can actually pinpoint what's what. It's not about the absolute truth of a personal situation, but what you understand about a situation. And if you didn't live it, it's not going to come out your horn.

Starting point is 00:29:40 So I don't have to worry about feeling inauthentic, but I do have to worry about people knowing too much about me personally. Yeah, I think it's super important. And yeah, totally. That seems to be one of the big misconceptions people have about musicians is this idea that every single song is like a journal or a direct rendition of something that happened in their life. I think that's a sign of a really good artist is that just like what you're saying, their real life experience is coming through a kind of artistic distortion. You know, it's like, it's not a lie necessarily. It's more like a gel that you put over a light or something. The light's still there.

Starting point is 00:30:25 It's just colored with a simple set that maybe necessarily didn't happen. Well, I'm listen to me, though, like, no, no, no, you go. No, please. Well, my first studio album was called Personal Journals. And so I put a lot of my life into that. And but I was only 23 years old. Yeah. And people still will listen to that album as if I'm that same person.

Starting point is 00:30:54 And if I don't reflect all the truths and like the identity points of that album, I'm a fraud, you know, like, so to live with, you know, people always talk about imposter syndrome, but I don't really suffer from that. Because I'm just like, you have to be reasonable as a listener or like someone who is experiencing art to say, what's the context of this? When was it done? And, you know, like, why does it matter to me? Is it because he's that person or because I'm this person? So and that there's going to be something that never changes when you think of it as because I'm this person that that is the constant for the listener. For me, it's weird. Like I can look back on stuff that I've done.

Starting point is 00:31:41 I still be very proud of it, but not even identify with it. And that has to be awkward and weird for other people to consider, especially in hip hop where at first we were like, this is the realest fucking music in the world. They say their exact situation and then you go find out like a lot of them were ghost writers and, you know, people were doing there. There was so much fakery involved in this big glossy presentation to the world that we thought was just raw authentic street art. And it was based in that a lot of it still is but honestly, I think we've gotten to a point where we realize, okay, there's a lot of entertainment trickery going on in this and we enjoy it for what it is because that's just what we like. Not because I actually believe that iced tea is going to kill a cop. Right. I mean, it's show business and this is the reality and I think sometimes people struggling with imposter syndrome are people who are really struggling with that reality or it's a little naive.

Starting point is 00:32:52 They had a dream about, you know, this is the, you know, a direct perfect replication of my soul being broadcast out into the world. And then they met the reality of like, yeah, but like, you're not always soul projecting. You know, like some days you just feel like shit. You don't want to do music or art or anything at all. You know, and yet I think that, that, that, that insane naive belief that you got to wait until you feel the spirit of the Lord move inside of you or whatever to like produce things. It's sad. It's like, it's sad and I know, but as, as artists and anyone who does any type of craft, or maybe any type of skill job, whatever it is, you're always going to know someone who's better than you. There's always a bigger and better wolf.

Starting point is 00:33:45 Yeah. And in a lot of instances, you might be getting better compensation for what you do while you know there are better people like people who do it better. Yes. And that I think is the imposter syndrome of it. I think a comedians get away with a lot of like they get to tell tales and like tell their story, tell very personal stuff and get away with it because they get to blow it off as a joke. If, you know, if any fire comes to their feet, they're just like, Hey, man, it's just a joke. I'm just a fool. Whereas musicians, I'm just a just a big dummy.

Starting point is 00:34:23 I'm just a big dummy with these wonderful connections of words and ideas that somehow I made this puzzle make sense and you connected to it, but I'm just a dumb dumb. Yeah. So. Exactly. I don't know as a I try to get away with it myself and I think musicians want want to do that as well. But a lot of us are stuck really living, you know, like, I don't know, having to account for every single thing that we do. I write in character a lot at the time. Similar.

Starting point is 00:34:55 Like I like to say, like, when people come at me about certain stuff, I've never tried to like no one ever tried to cancel me. But obviously, there's people who's like, you know, what you said here is exclusionist or, you know, right, ableist or misogynist. And I'm like, yeah, it is a massage. Like that's that character. Like you're supposed to look at it as a misogynist character and look into the mind of what a misogynist is, how they think, how they process the situation, how they can blow it off as a complete narcissist. And that's interesting in his own way. It's the way Stephen King would write characters. Like you don't look at his characters and blame him for being, you know, that mentally ill.

Starting point is 00:35:38 But yeah, rap is as interesting beast. And I don't know. You don't really speak for hip hop in general. You don't read Lolita and say, oh, fuck, this is autobiographical for Nabokov. You don't even, you don't. But yeah, with the, with musicians, my wife, she loves Taylor Swift and she'll play Taylor Swift songs to me and then explain who she's singing about. And then like, they've got pictures. She'll like, I'll show, she'll, there's some song with a scarf in it and she'll show me a picture of the guy wearing the scarf.

Starting point is 00:36:13 See, there it is. And it's like, you know, this is, yeah, but I, and I think there's something really fun about that. And beautiful about that until it's not just about a scarf. It's like what you're saying, where you're just trying to express a character's experience of reality that isn't you. And people are like, what the fuck is wrong with you? And then you have to sit down and explain it. There's a lot of, there's a lot of parallels between what I've done and what Taylor Swift does, which is funny to admit. But the basics of it is that in the most simplest terms, what everyone experiences in their life is being fucked over by a partner.

Starting point is 00:36:54 Where you feel the most vulnerable and hurt and you harp on that as an artist, where you get to tell your side of the story and you never get to hear the other person's side of the story. And I've benefited from that myself. And I have to be honest with myself about it, where my wife told me one of her favorite songs of mine was a song called The Rewrite where I kind of lash out at my first girlfriend of four years who left me. And I just was like, batch, batch, batch, batch. But, you know, I try to like salvage it by the end and say, nah, you're a woman. You know, but it's the whole time it's my take on a story where I never explain how I was unfair to her. I never explain, but it doesn't matter because I know what people think when they break up. So that's the inspiration behind the song.

Starting point is 00:37:47 That's how I know people are going to relate to it. And that's what Taylor Swift does with her music and just throwing a few sprinkles of truth and clues where people can pinpoint the scarf. You know, she knows that. She knows that, you know, including those little details is what's going to get people like pumped up about what she's doing and think to themselves, God damn, this is real. And, you know, more power to her. Yeah. No, that there's a story. I heard this story.

Starting point is 00:38:20 Charles Bacowski, he's on an airplane. He's drunk. He's like hitting on the fucking flight attendant. Whoever he's with yet like stops him. He's like, you're drunk. Stop. You're like basically assaulting this woman and stop. So later this guy calls Bacowski.

Starting point is 00:38:39 He's like, Hey, I read the story you wrote about us on the plane where you say that you stopped me from hitting on the flight attendant. That was me stopping you. And Bacowski is like, when you write your stories, you can make yourself the hero. Exactly. You know, now it's like, Bacowski is an interesting cat. He's one of those artists that you he writes so real, but it can't all be real. You know, like everything he writes, I'm like, I can see it, smell it and feel it. And, but he's so full of shit at the same time.

Starting point is 00:39:16 Every woman is, you know, like, oh, he's a piece of shit. And he's okay with that. Yeah. But also there's that foot. There's like footage of him. There's an interview where he's kicking a woman on a couch with him. Like there's a TV interview and he's like, he's totally drunk. He's assaulting this woman is like, these are different times and it's tough for me.

Starting point is 00:39:39 Like I, I have every single Bacowski book. I devoured them. I love the style of writing. And it's the kind of artists where I can't put on a pedestal or, you know, I'm very careful about how I push him, his material. Because like, I don't know what to, how to really feel about it. Now knowing what I know about him and how he was in real life. But I feel like he kind of redeemed himself by the end. But also he got famous way after, you know, after so many years of just trudging through the mud.

Starting point is 00:40:17 And then at what age was he, did he become super popular? And then all of a sudden he had access to women and, you know, drugs and whatever. So, yeah, I don't know. He was a gutter drunk. Yeah. I mean, he's a fucking like gutter drunk. That's what Bacowski and somehow he could write. And you know, I actually, there's a parallel, I think between him and Elliot Smith, which is like here you have this, his, you have this person who's writing these beautiful songs about their own personal self destruction.

Starting point is 00:40:49 You know, and so you read Bacowski same thing, beautiful stories, books about their disintegration as a human. And there's something to me that's really alluring in that. And especially if I want to like subscribe to the idea that I can be completely fucked up on some drug and make incredibly, incredible art. So this is the lure that like any alcoholic or drug addict loves that shit. Because they're like, even though they might not be making anything, they're thinking, you know, once I drink enough, I'll probably be writing like this. Or once I'm high enough, this will emerge from me. You know, so and I look at one thing I love about those kinds of artists is like, they're like, fuck your rules. Fuck your rules.

Starting point is 00:41:36 Fuck your idea of like, here's how you write. Here's how you're supposed to write songs. Here's how you're supposed to do it. You do that. You do that because this is what I'm doing right now. And I'm going to decide every little piece of it. You know, I'm not saying fuck your ethical rules, by the way. It's always disappointing when you hear an artist you love.

Starting point is 00:41:53 It backstage is a complete piece of shit. I mean, what can you do? This Elliott Smith documentary, you know, it's like people loved him so much that they were, but they were still like, he was mean. He was fucking like a dick towards the end. I never saw that. I'll check into it. Just yeah, he there's artists that almost every artist I love growing up has disappointed me in some way where it's tough for me to wave their flag anymore. Like the the remaining character or the remaining hero of my childhood was Chuck D.

Starting point is 00:42:26 Who has yet to disappoint me as a human, you know, as a person with ethics and values and almost every other. There's a few that have stuck around. But after all the people I've met and or I've learned about through my years and through people who know them. It's like, ah, man, you know, like another one bites the dust. One by one, they fell into the darkness and I've always felt it was necessary. And one of the people are always like, can you give some advice for, you know, upcoming artists? Like my best advice ever is be very careful who you let in your circle. Be very careful who you allow to be part of your company.

Starting point is 00:43:08 Your company is almost everything. The company you keep says so much about you. And, you know, if you're benefiting somehow from being around a piece of shit, it's not worth it. Don't you're like, don't take that. There's and, you know, I could have done better financially probably throughout my career if I had attached myself to certain people. If I had followed certain paths that weren't, you know, ethical, but none of that matters in the end. You know, like this, this life is so fucking short. And you have, if you're a creative person, there's so much power in those moments.

Starting point is 00:43:49 If you allow anything to taint it, you just, the disservice you do to yourself is going to scream at you down the line, like absolutely scream at you. And it's, you know, down the line isn't as far down as you really think it is. It's coming. So, you know, atone for your bullshit. Atone. I want to thank Bespoke Post for supporting this episode of the DTFH. It's winter. It's time for you to upgrade your daily routine with Bespoke Post and their new seasonal lineup of must have box of awesome collections.

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Starting point is 00:46:40 A tone. But how? How do you a tone? I mean, what does that look like? And also, you know, this atonement that you're talking about, I think this is right now we're in the age of justice. And this kind of like fascinating with my wife and I were talking about this how phones have replaced guns. Like in the old West, somebody is like being an asshole and you pull out your gun like shoot them. But now we pull out our phones and destroy their lives.

Starting point is 00:47:13 You know, and it's not a physical kind of execution. It's just more of a like, you know, public humiliation that is often well-deserved. But it's like we need to enter the age of atonement, right? Like we need to find a way to where, you know, these people who've disappointed us, including ourselves, where we find a way to alchemize that, you know, convert it into something that shows like the incredible possibility of starting over. Yeah, it's just scary. No one, you know, fear, fear is what keeps people from doing that fear of the unknown. Because if you start over, maybe you lose everything that you gained through whatever bullshit you were involved with.

Starting point is 00:48:01 And you don't think you can get it through any other means. I suppose just trusting in yourself and it may not always work. And maybe that's okay. Maybe you're not supposed to have what you have if it if it takes you being a piece of shit or working with pieces of shit. So I'm okay with that. I don't think and people aren't just pulling out phones. They're still pulling out guns. So I was like, that's true.

Starting point is 00:48:31 Sometimes the guns in one hand, the phones in the other. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, that's, that's just the world we live in now. There's just more weapons. So how do we atone? I don't know, man. How do we do it? I feel, I feel comfortable in myself.

Starting point is 00:48:50 I'm, I'm happy with where I'm at, despite the fact that I, I know I could have done more. More people, I think should find that type of peace and acceptance. Even though maybe I'll go bankrupt in a couple of years, you know, like maybe I shouldn't like speak so confidently. But the things that I've learned over the years while I was making money and then not making money and transitioning from being married to my music to being married married. And, you know, with, with kids and what this home life is all about, which is not something like I experienced myself too much as a kid. I grew up an only child in a, you know, a latchkey kids type situation spent a lot of almost all the time to myself, not just as a kid, but early adulthood. And now I have to navigate a hundred moving parts in a house that just won't allow me to go like go down certain rabbit holes I used to enjoy in my quiet solitude. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:49:58 And I've been in a massive transition over the past three years and I have to learn how to feel totally comfortable in it and I'm getting there. But I'm, it's never with regret and it's never with man, me thinking, man, I miss the old freedoms. I, I cherish the time that I had when I had it, when I did those things with the people that I did them with. And now I'm in this whole new world and I'm atoning for every broken relationship, every missed funeral, every, all that stuff, man. I don't know. I'm in a, I feel like I'm in a weird position where I can't totally pinpoint how several other people should deal with their own situation because mine is very specific to me. Sure. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:50:55 Well, I think it's for me. I mean, I love what Ramdas teaches about it in the term atonement. It's so heavy. I shouldn't have come up with a better term, but he calls it burning off karma. And it's really, I brought it up. Oh, okay. It's the kind of word I use and think about. But the burning out with the idea is it's like, look, you're here.

Starting point is 00:51:14 And because you're here, you're going to make ripples, whether you like it or not, any action is going to produce some kind of reaction in your environment. And because probably you're an imperfect being, some of those ripples are going to like hurt things, people, creatures. Who knows what this is the reality of being embodied is like, there's no way out of this sort of problematic reality. If you live in, you know, the United States, you're paying taxes. If you're paying taxes, you're buying bombs and those bombs are definitely being dropped on people. And so in that way, that was the worst part. For me, that was the worst part of being successful was that I was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars into the tax system when we had just started wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I knew where that money was going.

Starting point is 00:52:05 And it killed me. I hated it. Absolutely tainted that whole experience for me like, yay, I, you know, I'm finally, I get to pay off my student loans and I got to buy the house. But at the same time, whoo, yeah, there's the other side of it all. What drew you to Ram Dass initially, because I, I'm, I kind of have only gotten glimpses of Ram Dass and his his work and the people who follow him who just glow about Ram Dass and you being one of them. But what initially drew you to that? Well, my mom was in his, she listened to these tapes that he made. You can still listen to some of them on audible and they're really cool.

Starting point is 00:52:59 I'm listening to one right now. It's called Journey of Awakening and it's clearly been ripped off of these old tapes. The audio quality is not that great, which I love because it's got that kind of like, yeah, I don't know if you watch lost, but if you remember like, yeah, I was just about to say that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's got that kind of crackly MK ultra style sound to it, which I fucking love. And that weird like light distortion. But yeah, so I would listen to those and I kind of enjoyed that.

Starting point is 00:53:33 But then, you know, like anybody, any liberal arts college kid encounter be here now, you know, and start and really like liked the fact that here was someone, you know, expressing a lot of these like amazing Eastern ideas, but also mixing in the psychedelic reality and not like poo pooing, you know, second mushrooms or LSD or anything like that. And, you know, it was just a sort of like, he was always there for me, you know, like when I was in the, I wrote the name of this song, I was listening to your music and now I can't find it. It's like the best song I've ever heard about depression. It's animated. Do you know what I'm talking about, man? It's so fucking good. It's like, oh yeah, make them purr.

Starting point is 00:54:17 Oh God. Make them purr. When I was in that phase of my life, I would, I would like lay on a mattress on the fucking floor and like go to be here now. You're a spokesman for a community. You're a spokesperson for a community. You know what I mean? Like you, you know, because you are connected to this amazing musical reality, which is that right now in like in basements and in little rooms, there are people who are so fucking good that it would melt your brain. Anyone who saw what they could do would be like, wait, what the fuck?

Starting point is 00:55:26 What? Wait, who are you? No one will ever find them necessarily, but they're there. Maybe they don't want to be found. A lot of those people don't want to be fucking found. They're not using the same metrics that we, we use, you know, so they don't want to be known at all. And if you introduce that possibility, they're like, no, no, thanks. I'm not interested.

Starting point is 00:55:45 But so anyway, yeah. That's funny because yeah, you have to accept the fact that the people that you do know people that you have access to are the ones who decided to make themselves accessible. And yeah, though this takes a special type of person, a type of special type of cycle. I don't know. Psychology for someone to say, I'm going to make this public. I want as many people to absorb it as possible. Whereas there are incredibly super talented people who just are. And you, most people will never know about it.

Starting point is 00:56:25 That's just how it is. That's just how it's going to be. I appreciate you telling me the whole Ram Dass thing because I'm, I'm trying to understand what it is that has drawn in so many people that I appreciate and I get it a little bit better now. So thank you for that. Oh, sure. Well, I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's just like, you know, musically, I know we both enjoy like this sort of authentic music, but we love this kind of authentic writing. And I think that's the other thing that's glorious about Ram Dass is that there was within his writings, you will find like a lot of real on like honesty regarding his own neurosis and like his own, you know, like when he had a stroke in the documentary, I think it's called fierce grace. One of the things he just says is there wasn't, I didn't have a spiritual.

Starting point is 00:57:21 There wasn't like, oh, here's God or, oh, and I thought I was dying. Nothing happened. All the work and all of it that I thought, you know, okay, meditation is the preparation for death. No, no, like none of it was, none of it worked. That's what confuses me about. That's what confuses me about the following of Ram Dass because he is like that. And it's like, he doesn't have the extra thing where I'm like cult figures should have not, I don't want to call him a cult figure, but like cult figures have who have the kind of following that he has have secret answers. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:57:57 And he's giving people just bear facts just just like it's very normal and it's very relatable and understandable and not tricking anybody into saying, man, I need to achieve this certain thing that, you know, he's unlocked and he has the key to from what I've seen. So that's why I'm just so curious and fascinated by all of that because I grew up very, very cautious of religious figures and cult figures. They scare me, they creep me out and anything that like even resembles that and that, you know, like his movement does. The more I look into it, I'm like, damn, you know, this is, I kind of wonder the more psychedelics become normalized, how different his following or that type of following will become. If it's centralized or if it just becomes just everyone accepts certain things as common knowledge and it turns into something else, because the discussion I saw between him and Terrence McKenna. Did you see that the video of them in the Italian restaurant, I think it was. Yeah, I watched it like 10 times.

Starting point is 00:59:17 It just blows my fucking mind. Like those are those are the kind of conversations you get, you know, from people who are still figuring it out. They don't have all the answers, but, you know, they really want to explore what other people have unlocked and or trying to make, you know, trying to make sense of very difficult and complex things. And that's great. I wanted to ask you about that. That meeting's cool. It represents the pure, you know, Terrence McKenna is like, for the psychedelic community, you could say he's like the Ram Dass of the psychedelic community. He's, you know, scientific.

Starting point is 00:59:57 He's a purist. And, you know, he's like, even though he talks about, you know, machine elves and UFOs, there's this strangely like empirical, rational quality to him, you know, and in the psychedelic community, you will find these like, you know, you will find a contingent of people who really just don't have time for the spirituality bullshit, you know, or who feel like it's kind of a diversion or something. And I think McKenna kind of, it's not like he was anti spirituality, because I think psychedelics are a spirituality, but just you meet. There's an interesting division that that happens where, you know, you know, new age spirituality and psychedelics in the new age like communities, there's people who think psychedelics or an intermediary phase, you know, something you go through and then you take up spirituality. And in the psychedelic community, there's people who think spirituality is an intermediary phase before you get to psychedelics.

Starting point is 01:01:05 And so there, there's some, there can be a little bit of like pushback. I think in that, initially in that conversation, you could sense a little bit of that in the way that they were interacting. Well, I think that terms are just so ambiguous. It allows people the ability to be amorphous and whatever they can or believe in or say they believe in and spirituality in particular has always been problematic for me because I, I go through phases where I'm like, yeah, I feel spiritual, like I feel like there's something beyond what I understand and know about. Yeah, obviously there is my, my grandmother, she's a hard lined atheist. She's always, you know, card carrying like real hardcore. Whenever you bring up certain things like that, even as a kid, she would confront you and be like, what do you mean spiritual?

Starting point is 01:01:57 What do you mean? Love it. And if you don't have the vocabulary, if you don't have the references, like I don't even know now at 45 years old, I'm like, I can only speak in ambiguous, be ambiguous in my terms because, and that's how sneaky fucking people use language and use movements because it's, you know, it's easy to navigate through amorphous understandings, ambiguous shit. And so I'm always unquantifiable bullshit. Yeah. Like, you know, this, it just popped up on Twitter. Some woman was selling her farts from like 30 day. I don't know.

Starting point is 01:02:44 One of these like to show she's famous. That's what kind of reality show fame. She was saying she sold her farts for $10,000 a jar. Something like that. She's literally selling her farts. And I mean, well, I'm selling NFTs of my farts. If anyone is into the NFT community. How do you convert your fart into an NFT?

Starting point is 01:03:07 Is there special technology for that? This, this technology people aren't even aware of yet. But yes, there's, there's lots of fart technology that we've been working on since the eighties. Fart technology was huge when I was a kid. It was like in all the pamphlets, my parents would get in the mail is like very fart related stuff. They didn't know I had access to and I would, you know, sneak in the mail and find, you know,

Starting point is 01:03:32 scientific peer reviewed fart findings that have eventually become digitized and can be NFT'd. So be on the lookout for that. Yeah. Isn't it true though that the conversion of a human fart into an NFT uses in like a few seconds, the same amount of energy the whole planet uses in like three years. Like it takes a lot of juice to turn your fart.

Starting point is 01:04:01 No, not as much as, no, not as much as the methane, the farts that are used in, you know, billionaire rockets that go to the edges of our atmosphere and, you know, create a carbon footprint as big as fucking, you know, Pluto. So yeah, you got to like, if we could fuel this rockets with our farts, that would be so beautiful in some way. That is the future.

Starting point is 01:04:33 Can you imagine explaining that when we finally meet aliens and they're like, so what technology are you using? It's like, it's our farts. We figured it out. Yeah, they're like, finally. Yeah. This whole time we've been waiting. Why do you think we come to your planet?

Starting point is 01:04:48 It's not because we're interested in your dumb asses. We've been harvesting your farts now. We've been watching you joke about them for centuries. Now you know their use. The spirituality thing is like a lot of people I know who are like skeptical as you should be about fucking someone selling. By the way, some people selling spirituality. It's like even more intangible than a jar of farts.

Starting point is 01:05:12 It's like we're talking about a thing that is like a purely unquantifiable, unmeasurable thing that most of the time is a thing that you really didn't need anybody to tell you at all. There's nothing that very special about whatever it is, which is why you suddenly there are secrets or there's like, you know, all of these like levels to the goddamn thing, because you could sell levels and all this shit. So I think like anyone who is like your number one reaction to anybody

Starting point is 01:05:46 like saying something unquantifiable like spirituality, your grandmother's reaction is a good healthy reaction. And if you ask somebody, what do you mean by that? And they get weird. Well, fuck get the fuck out of there because you are in trouble. You know, they there should be a never ending open conversation because it what about these sorts of things and like the. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:06:14 That's my opinion on it. You know, that's that's like it. And that's what I loved about Ram Dass in particular is like there really wasn't as far as I could tell. I never managed to blaspheme in front of those people. And I tried making fun of their crew and like saying things like maybe weren't you guys just on a bunch? Like I remember saying to Ragu runs the foundation.

Starting point is 01:06:36 I was like, don't you think maybe like y'all are out in India? And isn't it possible like you are just on a lot of drugs and you know, and he's like, I don't know, maybe. Yeah, I don't know. That's the best answer, man. I love that. Yeah, I really love that. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:06:55 Yeah, that's the that's you know, I wasn't very much into church. I didn't grow up in a church per se. You know, I was like Protestant, but not really like we went to church very few times that I can remember. But it was always like the, you know, like clergy and priests and whatever, like they're held to such a high regard that you can't fool around and joke around and be normal around those type of figures. So it's, you know, for a normal person, at least where I live in

Starting point is 01:07:27 puritanical New England and mostly Catholic New England, it was like untouchable, you know, the rules just do your thing. Don't, you know, don't, don't create too many waves or ripples in the water. Just go along with what they have laid out for you because it's been like this for hundreds of years. And I can't shake the feeling that most people understand how bullshit it is and but they can't confront that within themselves or within their family.

Starting point is 01:08:03 So I feel like I was lucky enough where it wasn't, it wasn't such a hard-lined thing in my family that I couldn't talk about it in my music that it would stay out of, it's in my writing. It wasn't even a huge part of my life yet. It's all over my writing. Somehow it finds its way into so much of my stuff that because it it made a dent in me as a kid somehow. There was there was something that I knew was terribly off that was

Starting point is 01:08:31 supposed to be very important that I couldn't completely relate with or understand and it was taboo to question it. So then eventually that just becomes a thing to rebel against and not just rebel against but explore honestly outside of like I didn't have any restrictions. I could explore it however I wanted. Do you think it that's abuse? You think when you when you when you when you make a child question

Starting point is 01:09:01 their rational mind, isn't that some form of like generational abuse that's been normalized by organized religion? Absolutely. But also is in parenthood like 80% gaslighting. So much of what we do is just to get them through the day. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:09:27 But okay. Okay. What I love that you said that and I was you know just today I was on the precipice of lying to forest about something and I didn't but there are some things you just have to you can't you there's no way to tell the truth about them. You know or like that they don't have the words to explain it. So yeah, I guess I've never thought of it in that way but but isn't

Starting point is 01:09:47 the difference between the gaslighting of parenthood which is kind of like look I got to get you in bed. Yeah. You know what I mean? So it's like when I'm saying outside is closed is the universe outside our house literally closed like a shop. No, but but the you know the difference is it force was like I don't think outside is really close.

Starting point is 01:10:08 I think it's always there. I'm going to be like yes, of course it's always there but you're going to bed whereas with religion if like when some families if you say look come on. I'm not really sure that this thing that you're talking about exists. You might get put in a fucking closet for a day. You might get some people get murdered. Some kids get literally killed for it.

Starting point is 01:10:34 Yeah. So that's the difference. It's like one is gaslighting because I want you to be a healthy person. The other is gaslighting because I got gaslit and my parents got gaslit and we've been getting gaslit all the way fucking back. You know and that to me seems like a difference. Yeah, absolutely. That's that's who I'm lucky.

Starting point is 01:10:55 I feel lucky. We're lucky in America. Honestly, first we're not a religious run country even though like the religious right really you know has a lot of their paws in the laws but I can question it as much as I want. I understand it'll piss some people off. It'll you know make me look bad but when my kids get to an age where they question stuff to me I wouldn't do what my grandmother did to me and I don't

Starting point is 01:11:23 want I'm not going to shame her. I love her so much. Thankfully she's still around but like I remember I've told this story before but she sat me on her knee when I was eight years old no yeah eight years old and she read me a book about Santa Claus and then she said now when we got to the end of the book she said you know Santa Claus isn't real right and I was like I mean sure if you're gonna allow me to admit that I know that yeah that's great and she was like it's the same thing with God.

Starting point is 01:12:01 And so that was the first night I think I ever prayed literally prayed like I didn't know how to pray I wasn't given instructions on how to pray I was like dear Lord like please don't send me to hell I don't you know I'm very scared that you know just being in this situation is going to make me privy to torture and whatever else oh my god and it took me many years after that to reconcile with those feelings and with the situation I was in I wouldn't do that to my kids I wouldn't say it like that I you know you have to allow people to come to conclusions and not shame them for whichever they come to but always you

Starting point is 01:12:44 know I feel like I would be pretty good in letting and helping them navigate ideas that are very confusing without saying there's a definitive firestorm coming their way or you know a happy cloud in the end. Well by the way that was very unscientific of your grandmother because even the most scientific people I know they're like we don't know don't know you know scientific people that's generally they'll be like we don't know you know and so you know I think that's like if you want to get real honest you know as a secularist you can't really say there's no God it's kind of like

Starting point is 01:13:24 saying it's too ambiguous a fucking term number one it's like do you mean a it's arrogant it's arrogant it's just it's an arrogant term it's an arrogant way to go about it yeah but she's she's she had to she's dealing with her own stuff because she grew up in a convent raised by nuns that mistreated her and she you know like entered Seventh Day Adventist stuff and like everything that like ultimately kind of she felt like screwed with her and she felt bamboozled yeah by religion and henceforth by God in her right you know her idea of what God is yeah so then forever after that she was very hard

Starting point is 01:14:11 lined no like fuck all this fuck all the people who you know try to like make you do what they want in the name of a God just you know I'm thankful for that part of the lesson it's just there we have to figure out different ways to approach language about spirituality even though it's like we discussed it's very ambiguous and tough to lock down and speak about in a way that is I don't know concrete well yeah and that this is the you know this is like the big problem I guess and but you know here like the way people not to bring it back to to like your music or the underground or anything like that but I feel like

Starting point is 01:14:58 with actual like spirituality you know actual and you know by spirituality if I to like just off the cuff invent a definition for it would be that the possibility of connecting to something that is maybe outside or that is like not so bound to time and space a kind of possibility maybe you could say or a maybe it doesn't even exist yet a place you know a place that isn't defined by phenomena and in you know Buddhism the you know they call it emptiness so literal like you know it's empty it's this we're talking about this kind of like space that everything's being held inside of like for all the shit that

Starting point is 01:15:48 we're enjoying on this planet it has to be inside of something something is holding all of this you know and so you know having some kind of like ability to refer to that reality so that you're not always getting grabbed by the swirling hypnotic vortex of this stuff is I think quite useful and whatever that particular reality may be I think that the other part of spirituality is you're gonna have to figure that out on your own like somebody wearing a funny outfit or somebody with like some charisma you know they figured it out on their own like in their own way and so so you that's the invitation is like now you

Starting point is 01:16:36 you try to talk to that thing can you does it talk back is anything answer you is that you answered yourself anyway to me that's the the you know the way people found your your music or the the it's it's like you they kind of had to work for it or get lucky or it wasn't just handed out to them and organized religion it's like what used to happen when there was only radio right like I mean shit remember back then you had like here's like the fucking top 40 songs I mean I'm sure that's what inspired Jesus Christ Superstar it's like here this is what you got this is what's out there and people would hear that and

Starting point is 01:17:15 they'd be like that must be the only music and then if you're a kid in high school somebody comes it gives you a tape right it's the descendants you know you know what I mean and you're like what the fuck is this are you kidding me wait what's that yeah yeah so I think it's similar with religion which is like look if you think the Catholic Church or if you think that whatever your particular like whatever your familiarity with Christianity is is the sum total of Christianity that's your fault you know that means that you didn't even listen to what Jesus was saying which was like this is supposed to be between

Starting point is 01:17:52 you and me it seems like that's never never part of what any of those religious sex are about it's never about what Jesus actually wanted from everything that I know about the man and the things that came after him it's not about his lifestyle and his philosophies they sprinkle that in but then they just they really muff it up and the way we live the way the the laws they enact it's just in the name of someone they actually don't believe in it's clearly obvious that those kind of transgressions

Starting point is 01:18:36 rule us they by law they have taken over what we are able to do and not do in a lot of ways it's insane so I can I have I do have disdain for all of it really upsets me it consumes me and I try to stay away from it but here we are celebrating you know the winter solstice how fun oh yeah oh yeah and look but here but you know the it's like okay so now we're into this we're in this incredible age of technology where technology has become accessible you can you can like with a computer and Ableton with not even that great a fucking computer and Ableton the shit that you can make

Starting point is 01:19:22 right now is insane right but so many people I feel like are waiting to start making stuff until they get knighted you know until someone with a label comes to them and says okay now I say under the you are a musician and then then they'll like get set but or you know it happens with comedy where people are waiting for a network to buy their show or you know what I mean it happens with podcasts where people are waiting for maybe a podcast network to hear a pitch and then they make their fucking podcast the whole time forgetting that you can right now start making stuff right now and it's in it to me it makes sense that the identical

Starting point is 01:20:05 phenomena happens with religion where it's like okay I need to go through I need someone to teach me about this or here's how you do it or this is what's right and this is what's wrong because I'll tell you man it gives you an opportunity to procrastinate that conversation that you tried to have with God after you heard that from your grandmother you know and you know it gives you an opportunity to like put off doing the magical spell put off trying to like call out to the divine put off you know what I mean and put it all off because it's not you you can't do it someone else could do it you know what I mean and in that way you

Starting point is 01:20:41 you end up like really cutting what I cutting yourself off from something which by the way one of the best moments I had with Ramdas sitting at the table with the Zen Roshi and he goes it's all in my imagination and she slaps the table and goes finally you admit it after all these years you admit it is just in your imagination and he's like what's wrong with imagination you know and what's wrong with that like what is wrong with like connecting to even if it is quote imaginary a symbol set that is your own mind maybe but it still fills you with a sense of spaciousness and most importantly a real motivation to not be a

Starting point is 01:21:28 dick right I feel like there is there is something wrong with it though I feel like there is something wrong with it because if it's if it's imaginary and it works for you and you convincingly pass it off on others it may not work for them but you were so believable that whatever like you were passing on to them they tried to achieve and they weren't able to and things just went awry you know like with their lives and with what they decided was worth investing the whole of themselves into like that has to happen that must happen a lot you know what I'm saying yeah no I yeah we'll see okay but in that I think

Starting point is 01:22:10 in that case then you know yeah then there's some kind of deception like for example if you are sort of if you're if you are misleading people you know or you're not sharing to me like if the moment you're sort of openly announcing which I've seen him do this is your the place this is also various forms of magic to really do advise like use your imagination like this is the whole point like visualization exercises and all these things like fundamentally are any of these things real anything real like in generally like the the answer to that question is well they're real in relative reality in other words you're real right

Starting point is 01:22:54 now I'm real right now we're rivers that look like people or like rivers of atoms that are flowing through time meeting this like an inevitable sort of singularity which is when we die it's the end of the fucking river and so but right now you and me we're real you're there I'm here my fucking back hurts you know what I mean like I'm experiencing this so in this level this is real but similarly like ultimately you run into this beautiful place at least in Buddhism which is kind of not real and that's where you run into this thing called like the heart sutra which is no mind no body no self no life no death no

Starting point is 01:23:39 beginning no ending so it's like essentially a denial of everything including the Dharma itself the Dharma is empty as well a complete refutation of the entirety of the thing and so when you hit that place which I think is why you push back against spirituality when you hit that place then you get to start over that's how I see it when anytime I just fucking give yeah yeah start over yeah yeah yeah that that's what I love when I throw it all out but I that I will say like Buddhism that part about Buddhism I love I really love like I feel like that is makes it special to me like out of everything that I've learned from all

Starting point is 01:24:22 different types of religions or followings or you know spiritual gatherings whatever I there is an honesty about it that I don't see much anywhere else where it can probably break the heart of someone who thinks the end result isn't just gonna start over dude yeah yeah that not special and again this is like there is no in Buddhism there isn't much deception about it and I think Trigium Trilogy calls enlightenment the final disappointment and it's just sort of like yeah that's yes I wanted to bring that up but that's beautiful yeah so that you know and I any time that I've like and I think any fucking religion

Starting point is 01:25:09 organization or anything that doesn't want you to throw the whole damn thing away when you're ready when you want to watch out because that's the it's like these are dead and this is why they're called vehicles it's like you drive to the beach in your vehicle and then you get out and go to the fucking beach you don't sit in the car that's the that's the whole point these aren't it's not it's not supposed to be some destination and anything claiming to be the destination whoa that's where I think it gets dangerous man I've taken up a lot of your time do you have a little bit more time I have one more question I

Starting point is 01:25:47 wanted to ask you yeah thank you I know you have kids and the kids are home so thank you for this so just came home actually yeah I'm sensing it so do you do you do you feel like do you feel like the metric that that I know I use I've got a family I gotta feed the fucking kids and I've heard you talk about this metric do you feel like the quantification of success through like selling records is like an is a mistake is you know it like as an artist as a musician as a performer I just look I guess to put it plainly I know someone who's like the most brilliant music musician I've ever met in my life I've

Starting point is 01:26:44 never seen anything like it before it's the most surreal thing to be around the person I think they're actualized or something and they don't want anything to do with fame they're not interested in it they consider it to be almost a mistake like if you end up getting famous or something you kind of fucked up what were you thinking do you do you resonate with that idea or is that some form of like defense mechanisms met mechanism that people like that use to avoid the like all the scary stuff that goes along with publishing yeah it's both things I think for sure there are artists who are afraid to put themselves

Starting point is 01:27:33 out on the chopping block where they could you know have big record sales and you know become famous and because maybe if they put themselves on the chopping block and it doesn't happen they will realize I'm not as good as I thought I was there are also a lot of artists who see the chopping block for what it is it's a chopping block and they are more than comfortable being beautiful and creative and having their tiny circle and making it work for their own purposes and not not entities outside of themselves that they don't understand I've I've spent a lot of my career staying away from bigger entities that

Starting point is 01:28:27 you know could have propelled me further than where I was and I've obviously like gotten more I wouldn't I mean quote unquote fame like most people don't know me if I walk outside the house no one knows who I am unless I'm you know in the supermarket at my you know the town of my high school yeah or within a hundred feet of whatever venue I'm playing so but that's a very comfortable space for me to be in and I never wanted to elevate beyond that because I really enjoy my privacy I really enjoy my solitude and I enjoy the relationship I get to have with the fans that I have but you're absolutely spot on like some

Starting point is 01:29:04 people are just scared to find out that they're not as good as they are and others know better to even test it they don't there's no need to test it they they know what they know and that's all that matters thank you so much for your time it means the world to me it's such a pleasure to have this great chat with you thank you so much we tell people where they can find you well thank you for your voice I love your voice and I will listen to it as often as it shows up in my podcast stream you can find me strangefamousrecords.com or strangefamous.com that's my label site so all my merch and you know like we offer personalized

Starting point is 01:29:50 letters that I can write to fans and videos outside of the whole cameo thing but um Twitter sage Francis Instagram sage Francis SFR Facebook sage Francis that's about it I mean you can easily find me with if you like use a search engine and put in my name thank you so much man I really appreciate you thanks for what you do thank you so much howdy Krishna that was sage Francis everybody all the links you need to find him are going to be at dugatrussell.com big thank you to our sponsors and please subscribe to our patreon it's patreon.com forward slash DTFH and thank you for listening to the DTFH I'll see

Starting point is 01:30:34 you later on this week until then Hare Krishna oh and thereabouts for kids super cute man extra affordable check out the latest in store and we're never short on options at jcp.com all dressed up everywhere to go jc penny a good time starts with a great wardrobe next stop jc penny family get-togethers to fancy occasions wedding season two we do it all in style dresses suiting and plenty of color to play with get fixed up with brands like Liz Claiborne Worthington Stafford and Jay Farrar oh and thereabouts for kids super cute man extra affordable check out the latest in store and we're

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Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 485: Sage Francis

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