Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Allyson and Alex Grey

Episode Date: October 18, 2017

Visionary artists, Alex and Allyson Grey, join the DTFH and we talk about art as religion, overcoming creative blocks, and allowing the magic of the imagination to flow through you into the world. ONE OF MY FAVORITE EPISODES EVER.

Get out and do something new this week at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. On view now. See this major retrospective from the internationally renowned Pennsylvania photographer Judith Joy Ross. I use an 8x10 new camera wooden box with a lens on it. Explore this amazing body of work as she shares her soulful, timeless portrait of everyday Pennsylvanians. The PMA. See, shop, eat. Open late every Friday. Tickets on sale now at philamuseum.org. Hello my dear, sweet, beautiful friends. It is I, Dee Trussell. Dee Trussell. And you were listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. And friends, I feel like I've got to put a special warning on this episode. If you feel that you may be possessed

by demons, if you have the slightest apprehension that there could be residing in some part of your metaphysical makeup, a trembling, quivering, shrieking, hissing, skittering, spitting, biting, lizard-like entity, then watch out. Because this episode that you're about to listen to could very easily make that thing go scurrying out of your body, desperately trying to escape from this sweet, beautiful, luminous light that emanates from today's two esteemed guests, Alex and Allison Gray. So before you listen to this, if you've got any demons in your body or if anyone in your family is possessed by the demons of resistance, by the demons that make a person feel like they don't deserve to make art, if you've got wrapped around your brain, some

dark reptilian serpent-like entity that whispers over and over again into your ear that you shouldn't even bother starting some project, that you shouldn't even allow yourself the slightest inkling that you could be a great artist, that you could have within you the seeds of some beautiful forest of joy that you can grow into the time-space continuum through your creative output if you have a muttering, inhibiting serpent like that, a stifling beast, a nullifying force within you that is trying to damn your creative outflow, then I present to you a step-by-step guide to constructing a demon-catching box that you can set up in the room that you'll be listening to this podcast in. And what this is going to do for you is when the demon of creative blockage

comes scurrying out of your nose or your mouth or your ears or your asshole and tries to escape into some corner of your house to wait until you're at some weak moment where it can clamber back into one of your orifices, this is going to lure the demon into a special kind of demon trap and ensure that never again will you have to deal with the embarrassing condition of being possessed by a demon. So following is a step-by-step guide for making your own demon trap. How to build a demon trap in 10 steps. Step one, have your toad make love to your chicken. This is perhaps the most difficult step as it requires good luck and patience and most importantly a charismatic toad. Consider arranging a movie night for the two. Step two, your chicken will lay

a ruby red egg that should glow in the light of the full moon. Take this egg to the Marianas Islands and present it to Periki, the chief of the Chamor people. He will thank you and take you on his boat to the Marianas Trench. Swim down to the deepest part of the Marianas Trench and gather six pieces from the broken obsidian obelisk you will find there. Step four, by the time you return the egg will have hatched and a basilisk will be running amok on Periki's ship. Do not look the basilisk in the eyes or you will immediately be struck dead by God. Pluck a feather from the basilisk's tail. Step five, fly home and spend the next three days drinking scotch and listening to Elliot Smith. Step six, extract your earwax and use this as adhesive to assemble a cube

using the obelisk pieces. Step seven, find some parchment. It should be soft on both sides highly absorbent and strong. Use the basilisk feather to write your dreams upon this parchment. Don't hold back and writing down your dreams. Say everything no matter how ridiculous your dreams may seem. Step eight, carve a round hole in the obsidian cube. The hole should be about the size of the Dalai Lama's thumb. Put your dream parchment in the hole. Step nine, listen to the following podcast. It will drive a tiny shrieking demon out of one of your orifices and this demon will go galloping into the obsidian box to wipe its ass on the parchment covered with your dreams. The demon will be eternally trapped in a stasis field. Step ten, fly to Cuba and bury the box

in a few days a cigar should grow there. Smoke this Cuban cigar. You've earned it. You're free from demons forever. As simple as that sweet friends, get that demon out of your old waxy old soul hole, baby. It's time to be free. We're going to jump into this podcast with Alex and Allison Gray, but first some quick B's now. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by the sweeties over at thetracker.com. That's T-H-E-T-R-A-C-K-R.com. Friends, you know as well as I do that it's damn easy to lose everything in this dimension. Here we are being aerosolized by time. We are dealing with the cruel forces of gravity and let's face it, you don't remember 80% of the shit that happens to you. And if you do remember it, it's some murky blurry memory like staring through thick

swamp water with no goggles on. Half the time we're in a synambulic sleepwalking zombie-like trance muddling through our lives and leaving shit scattered around us in random places because we're half asleep. This is why we lose our keys. This is why we lose our backpack. This is why we lose everything. Also, we're stoned all the time. At least if you're me, we are. And so I present to you the tracker. This is an amazing thing. It's a tracking device. It's a bluetooth tracking device. You place it on whatever you tend to lose. Keys, wallets, you can put it on your pet. It's small enough to fit anywhere. When you misplace an item that has a track R pixel attached, use your smartphone and a 90 decibel alert will help you find it in seconds. It even has powerful

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It's super cool. Look, maybe you're not like me. Maybe you have some fully functioning, actualized, woken up brain, but I don't. I lose shit all the time. I put my phone in the refrigerator sometimes and it's really nice to know that all I have to do is press this little button on this awesome cube that I have attached to my backpack and it makes my phone ring. And I know I can't lose my backpack and also it has this crowd locating thing. So if you accidentally leave something somewhere far away, you might be able to find it. Give it a shot. It's super cool. Relieve yourself with the burden of having to remember where you put shit down. What a nightmare. Babies, sweet, beautiful babies. A heartfelt thanks to those of you who have made the decision

to subscribe to the DTFH Patreon page, which is now at 615 noble subscribers. Thank you guys for supporting this podcast. If you are somebody who doesn't want to listen to me ramble through commercials or opening monologues, then you can subscribe at Patreon. You're going to get access to podcasts before they hit the main feed. I uploaded the Alex and Allison Gray episode many days ago and they're going to be commercial free. Also, there's just a lot of weird shit I put up there that there's no way I'm going to put on the main feed just because it's vague sense of, not even vague, a deep sense of like, God, what is this? Have I gone fucking nuts? Opening monologues, I wouldn't put on the front of these things,

songs that I'm making with my new modular synthesizers, addiction that I don't think I ever expected to have, but that is consuming my entire life. Lots of weird stuff over there. So if you want to dive deep into the deepest depths of the deep, deep depths of the DTFH, head over to Patreon.com forward slash DTFH and subscribe. You will instantaneously connect with not just new weird shit for me, but also there's a community hanging out there, 615 people. So I invite you, subscribe, join, support the DTFH, enter into the inner sanctum and become one of the chosen few, save your ancestors from hell. Also a big thank you to those of you who continue to use the Amazon link, which is located at DuncanTrestle.com. The next time you're going to buy something from

Amazon, just slide right through that link and I'm going to tell you something to buy right now. Listen, I don't know how many of you are musicians. I don't know how many of you are into the occult. I don't know how many of you have the desire to use technology to make contact with higher dimensional aliens through chaos and sound. But if you're some combination of the things I just mentioned, you must get into modular synthesizers and start with a make noise morphogen. These things are crazy. You can't just buy it though. You've also got to buy a make noise skiff, which is the thing you hook the modular synth into. Listen, I'm not, I'm not, this isn't an ad in the sense that I don't work with them, but my God, I've never encountered a more spooky piece of technology

than the make noise morphogen. Go to Amazon.com, check it out. Look it up on YouTube. This thing is this incredible sampler. It's just this chirpy weird living thing. It's amazing. You can get it by going through the Amazon link located at DuncanTrestle.com. When you do that, or you do buy anything by going through that link, Amazon gives us a very small percentage of whatever it is that you buy. It costs you nothing. Who wants to go to a store? You don't have to do that anymore. Do you still go to the grocery store to buy toilet paper? You savage. Ordered on Amazon, but first won't you go through our link and thank you for those of you who continue to do so. We also have a shop at DuncanTrestle.com with posters, t-shirts, stickers, and a great many other things.

Okay friends, that's enough of me yapping. Let's get this show on the road. I took a little mini pilgrimage to visit Alex and Allison at their beautiful place called Cosm. I am not exaggerating or flattering when I say this is a sacred magical place. I've been to a few of them. I've been to Varanasi in India. I've been to Vrindavan and I've been to Cosm. This is a humming celebration of art and it's just an amazing place. They have classes. There's a community there. Just go there. If you're in upstate New York, if you're coming through the area, they've got a guest house. You can book rooms there and just spend a day or two or a week or ever long you want to in the presence of a thriving artistic community. An art church. It's a church dedicated to art. I guess that's how you'd put it.

It's amazing and also they happen to be building an incredible temple called Entheon and it really is. It's, I don't know, it's just one of the coolest things I've ever encountered. It's an inspiring, beautiful place and just my brief visit there really did knock out some of the creative blocks that I've been experiencing a little bit and inspired me to really dive deeper into the podcast and into being creative. They're beautiful people and they have spawned a vibrant, life-affirming, empowering community and of course they're two of the most amazing visionary artists walking on this planet today. So anytime I get to spend even the slightest amount of time with them, it is what I consider to be a really great privilege and I feel like the luckiest person on earth

that I get to hang out with them at all and so I'm very excited to present to you this conversation with Alex and Allison Gray. Welcome upon you, that you are with us, shake hands, no need to be blue, welcome to you. It's the talking chasel, chasel, chasel, chasel, chasel, chasel. Box, are you talking to your mic? Hello, hello. Yes, we're here, we're rolling. Alex and Allison, the gods tried to keep our live podcast off the airwaves back here at Cosm. Thank you so much for giving me a second chance to record a conversation with you. Such an honor. Yeah, we're looking forward to

revisiting some of those topics and to invent some new ones. I've got the first one I would love to ask you about. We were all hanging out last night and you said that the imagination is magical, it's the source of magic. Did I mishear you? No, because neuroscientists, the best neuroscientists would agree that everything that we experience is a figment of our imagination, which begs the question, what the hell is the imagination? Yes. And that gets to the central problem of existence. And if everything that we're experiencing is through the lens of the imagination, it's very difficult to get true perspective on that lens, consciousness itself. It's like the fountain head, the dotted.

Exactly. That's invisible because we're the fish swimming in it like an ocean. And the ocean of life, the ocean of love that we're surrounded by, we're not present to. Unless we kind of relax our identity with our particular little cellular glob and start to see ourselves as more like a brook, a section in a brook of a flow that's going through through everything. And that being a node in a network of a flow is more like what we really are. What about the nodes who feel like the part of the brook that they're in is polluted and rotten? What about those nodes? Or what about the nodes that feel completely alone in their brook? I mean, I hear what you're saying and I think, yes, I'm here at Cosm looking around

undeniably, we're in some kind of magical brook, some kind of outflow from source. But what do you guys have to say to people who haven't built an art church around them, an art community? What are they to do? You're talking about feeling. And feeling is the responsibility of every individual. So people have to vision the life that they want to live. They have to live into a future that they love. So if you envision green and quiet around you, or if you envision skyscrapers and cars around you, and then live into it and love it, it doesn't matter. It's your feelings. You decide how you feel. But you have to have a future that you want to live into. And in order to do that,

you have to have imagination. But this is the thing, Alex and Allison Gray, amazing artists, focused human beings, focused for a long time, and organized. You have literally organized this life around you. But so many of us feel fuzzy to put it lightly. There isn't some compelling wind in our sails. We must create art. We must outflow this beauty into the world. And it can often feel a little disconcerting to hear people say, just envision your life, and we don't have a thing to envision. People are afraid to really look at what they really want, and they're afraid to say what they really want. If you would articulate, anyone would articulate the life that they would love, put it on paper, do some writing, make it your creative life

to envision the life you love. I'm saying sometimes we get so drearily depressed. Or sometimes you're just, you know, I don't know, you're in your, some folks are in their 20s. They don't, they envisioning anything. Oh, you know, like we were talking last night about, we're walking up, gosh, you guys, I wish you were here, I wish I could bring you all here to see this beautiful place. We're walking through the woods, and we're talking about tattoos. In the dark, in the dark, we're talking tattoos in the dark. But I was, so I was asking you two, do you have any tattoos? And I was like, no. And Allison said, do you have a tattoo? And I, I don't. And the reason being,

anything I put on my body, I know I'm going to get bored of. I know it's going to be more of a reminder of a kind of semi manic episode I must have been in, when I decided to get Ganesh's mouse tattooed on my arm. But the, on your ass. Or both. Yeah, both. But what I'm saying is, in the same way, sometimes when we consider a life vision, oh God, okay, I'm going to picture it. The beautiful, the beautiful house, the, the freedom, the whatever it may be, some other part of the mind kicks. And it's like, no way, you don't even want that. What's there to be wanted? You don't really want anything. But you know what you want. You see, what you do is, you listen to the call, you know, you get attracted to certain things.

And if you don't make yourself wrong about it, if you don't say, oh, I shouldn't want that, you eliminate the shouldn't, and you just allow yourself to want what you want. At least, at least think it through, you know what I mean? I think that a lot of people deny themselves for some one reason or another. It's not supposed, you're not supposed to, you know, have that or one. Okay, for example, I have a strong intuition that I will never live in a house with a water slide going down from my bedroom down into my atrium where my pool is. But let me just say this, I, I thought there was a time there was definitely a long period of time when I thought I would not want to leave the city. This is a

big decision, you know, we've lived in the city, we still have a place in the city, thank God. But because I love the city, I lived in two big cities and I love the city. So I thought I could never live in the country like my parents always wanted to, right? And then it became like a really, really good idea. So basically, you just listen to the call, you like have this inner voice that tells you it's time. Now it's time not to give up the place in the city because you know you love the city, but also to, and really truly, it's a thread through our life because I've always wanted a place, not all full time living in the city, like in the country like we do now. But that's because our work is here. If our work wasn't here, I would not be here, okay? I'm not into like, oh,

take a little vacation every weekend. That is does not appear to me unless my work is there. So if I had a little vacation place, I would have a place to make art because that's what I want to do all the time. And Alex always felt like, oh, it's, it's a waste of time to drive back and forth. Well, our business is here, our life is here, and we have something that we love. But don't get mistaken that everything is the way we envision it because we envision things that we haven't accomplished yet. But right, I'm sure it's not some, it's not as though you just in your mind imagine something and it forms around you, it's conforming to your sort of, I mean, it does. You start visioning something enough and it will occur. We have this theory about it and we're

experimenting on it. I'll just tell you, we have been visioning the steeple head of Entheon for many years. And Alex drew it, and then Ryan Toddler, our wonderful ZBrush artist sculpted it. Who works at Disney. Who works at Disney and won an Oscar. Okay, so he's, I'm sorry, very quickly. Ryan Toddler sculpted Alex's drawing. Very quickly. Would you mind before we get into that? Just letting people know what Entheon is. So they understand what this is. You're right. Entheon is a temple of sanctuary, the sanctuary of visionary art that we're building at Cosm. So we're in the process of building and it's a sanctuary. So it has a steeple and it's a sculpted building. Alex and Ryan worked for a couple of years to create three-dimensional

sculptures that are going to wrap the building. But the first sculpture that's going to go on the building is the steeple head. And we have been creating little, we call them bots. They're little MakerBot sculptures of the steeple head and we paint them and we sell them to raise awareness of our of our project. Entheon, they're basically, you know, worthless little sculptures that people can put on their altar and they make a little investment. It helps us, you know, and they put it on their altar and they help us vision it into being. We call it visioning it into being. So we keep visioning it with this steeple head. Now guess what? The steeple head is here. I mean, the steeple had arrived from the playa where it first was exhibited after it came

off the boat from Thailand. We brought it to the playa and then we brought it here. So it's been here now for a couple weeks. It's aluminum, cast aluminum, light enough to sit on top of our roof, which is nice. It's still weighs, you know, somewhere under a thousand pounds. But anyway, it is a in its hand painted. It's beautiful and it's here. Now that was years. But let me say this. In 1985, Alex and I sculpted the frames for the sacred mirrors for this temple. Okay. We had the vision of the temple in 1985 and immediately set to work building these 10 and a half foot frames. Okay. So let's talk about this, this inspiration or vision to build a thing. Because a lot of us, there's two pieces to the problem that I can think of here.

One, we need a vision so that we can envision something into existence. Two, we need the courage to believe that that thing that we want to create is not an indication of the beginning of some spiral into madness. Because you two, these amazing, you are, you're an artist. So it pops into your head, you know, I think it's time to start building a temple. But me and many of us, when that pops into our head and we're telling our friend, yeah, you know, I just, I think I'm going to start building a temple. And I want to start working on the steeple head. Our friend is going to be like, no, no, because you started a podcast, which has started a revolution and people listen to you. You know, I know that your numbers have grown logarithmically through the last few years, Duncan.

Everybody is very impressed when they know that we know Duncan Trussell. They are very impressed. Seriously. So you have grown this in that same way. It's different, but it's the same. Way different. Because anyone, now, if I go to anyone, that's because it's natural to you. We haven't started a podcast and you keep wondering why. Well, we go to our friends and say, Hey, I'm going to start a podcast. And the worst thing our friends are thinking is, please don't ask me to be on your podcast. That's all. But if you go, what I'm, what I'm trying to get at. Really? We love to be on your podcast and everybody's.

No, I, what I'm, the thing I'm trying to get at is, okay, Moses gets a command from God. Go free my people from Egypt. Noah gets a, God's like a floods coming. Build a giant boat. The most insane requests. So what I am saying is, and maybe the vision that we get is not something so spectacular, but equally potentially disastrous, which is quit your job. You're not supposed to be in this job. You're not supposed to be in this life situation. And it's time for you to leave it. How do we summon the courage and how do we summon the ability to discern the, to discern whether this is a true intuition or some kind of egoic fabrication? And if it is a true intuition,

how do you have the guts to jump off that diving board? Don't go to stupidville. That's what our teacher, Mickey Singer says. Don't go to stupidville. You don't have a job. You don't want to leave your job and go hungry. No. Right. You know, you have to be wise. You, you have to do it in steps and you have to do it in stages and you have to have confidence. I think that's the thread that goes from conception to, to, you know, completion. Yeah. I think Jesus said something like be innocent as doves and, and clever as serpents. Wow. And so in order to stealthfully live awake while in polite society, you have to understand the conventions of society and not bend them to breaking point in order to

unleash your weirdness in, you know, the, in the place that not the right place. So you have to find the conversations and the community that is tapped into the same wavelength that you're tapped into. I'm glad you said that because this is another problem that folks face out there. So it's, so I understand what you're saying in the marketplace is the Ram Dass folks call the world where you have to work the marketplace in the marketplace. You get randomly born into some spot or you end up in some spot. You're an 18 year old kid, 22 year old kid living in some rural part of Alabama. And you hear Alex Gray and Alison Gray say, Oh, find a community. And you're thinking, well, I don't, the only community who might, what am I going to join?

You know, there's no community here for me. Right. I'm not interested in being in any kind of like church, Southern fundamentalist Christian church group. This is the, the most, the closest I get to this kind of hearing about communities is listening to folks like you, you two talking about it. So how do you balance? Well, here's one of, I think one of the ways that's just naturally evolved has been festival culture. Those nodes. And you can imagine them as like, they're, they're a great mother load kind of festival that aren't really festivals like Burning Man. Burning Man is kind of like the ultimate festival become a community of many festivals and many, it's called not a, not a festival because it you, you once you get there, you put away your wallet,

there's nothing to buy, right? So there's no like tribal market or, or anything like that. It's really like a, like a monumental art fair is what I think. Exactly. And you express yourself and you come and share your, your self and it's a gift economy. It's a reconception of everything. And this is what I'm meaning is that these are deprogramming stations for religious excess. That, that many people wander into or a festival or something like that. And somebody hands them a mushroom or something. And then they start thinking like, Oh my goodness, I never read about this in any Bible or anything. Like, I mean, what's this about? I actually now I know what they're talking about when they say God, but yet I don't read anything about sacraments in the Bible, or maybe

that Garden of Eden story is about something like this. What is this? And so then you look under the psychedelic rock and oh my God, you've got an entire prehistoric and then the great civilizations were founded on psychedelics all through America. That was the old time religion. So if you, you know, kind of go back before Christianity wiped out the Eleusinian mysteries, then you've got still a psychedelic Western culture. And you've, and you, and so what you're saying is you go to one of these deprogramming stations, you have the revelation that there is an entire other thing going down that you didn't even know about. You must be kidding me. There's a secret religion on earth. There, there couldn't be. I thought I knew all the religions, but this

one's not really named and this one's decentralized and yet it's vibrant. It does feel ancient yet completely novel, brand new. And so you go back to your town having gotten that download and then what, what I'm saying is if the idea is we have to be, don't go to stupidville, well, what if we're living in stupidville? Well, you know, you, you may want to look, you may want to live in stupidville and, and, and a lot, most people do, but if you, but if you want to live in a life you love, you know, start bouncing it off of your favorite people is all I can say. Other people sometimes have insight about your life that you haven't even been willing to listen to yet. So, you know, be coachable. You know, let, let somebody tell you probably, you know, I don't

know, people who you care about and trust. I mean, you know, it's good to go to them for, for, you know, kind of a, a reality check sometimes when you want to jump off the edge. But you do hear about people who have an epiphany and they want to do something big. Because, because as Alex has heard in his inner voice, humanity hungers for a righteous task. So people have these like righteous task epiphanies, you know, they just, it comes to them that they should do something or nothing. For Alex and I, our feeling was the greatest contribution that we could make together as two artists committed to our art would be to create a sacred offering, a sacred offering of our work and event and ultimately a sacred space, like the Sistine Chapel or Shark Cathedral. Yeah,

are some of the greatest works of art on earth that we think of because they are channeling and they're wombs for the gestation of the awakening human spirit. These are voices that Alex has, you know, the awakening, the gestation of the awakening human spirit. It's like, these are, that's what a temple is. It's a womb. So anyway, it's a container. So when, then we started to think as artists, we could create the container. And so that's what we have felt is, is our underlying most important thing we could do. So everything kind of funnels towards that. And yet we make our individual paintings about every subject that we want to make them about, you know, anything that's interesting and calls us. But you have to listen to what's calling you. And then the voices that

tell you you shouldn't or you wouldn't, like say you say, I would love to be a musician, but I could never do it. Right. Well, then, you know, just start doing it. Don't give up your day job. Right. Just start doing it. And the more you do it, and the more seriously you take doing it, the more you'll get out of it, and the more you'll get known for it, and the more people will understand that that's who you really are. Right. And not, you know, the assistant manager at Best Buy, but that you really are a great drummer. I mean, identify with the thing that you want to be identified with, which usually is something creative. Yes. And this is what this is one thing that I really love about this place is that though it is a community that seems to be built around an

idea that comes from God about building a temple, which just saying that feels wild. But it's not some kind of like, it's not like a loosely run ship here. There is a real pragmatic, structured ethic of hard work here is what I picked up when we walked around last night is people are deeply invested in developing their artistic ability here. And it seems like everyone is no one's you don't get the feeling anyone's lazing around. No. So there's what I like about it is there's a there's an active role that artists always take. And this is one of the great reasons that creativity and spirituality can find ways of reinforcing each other. Like we've been looking at in kind of just as an educational orientation, the idea of the three

levels of, you know, spirit, mind and body. Yeah. And so as a as a school and an art approach, Jean Delville used to talk about three levels of beauty. And so first in the spiritual, you've got transcendental beauty. So the highest aspiration of truth, goodness, and, and reality, you know, the chewiest bit of God, visionary, mystical experience that you can muster in your divine imagination. You're when you melt down into the one and become part of the infinite and are able to have a visual and being experience from that dimension, understand your oneness with this infinite flow. Then there are categories of that mystical experience. And you can look at that in fine detail. That's transcendental beauty. Then you go to

looking at the classic ways throughout history that the sacred art traditions have looked at that experience, have looked at God contact, have looked at a spiritual or mystical state. Yeah. And so you see the lens of art history and you look at the archetypal forms that come up in our sacred geometric visionary states, the sacred geometry as it's evolved through the different world cultures, the Islamic kind of pattern making and the different pattern making of different cultures. So you see those kind of archetypal beauty and pattern language. So you, you have the highest conception from the highest dimension of spirituality, you clothe it in the most archetypally beautiful forms. And then with your craftsmanship, you bring it it to the body around to the

manifestation with the physical beauty, which is to make the most physically beautiful object you're capable of as an artist. Now, that's a connection with beauty on the highest level through the entire history of art that you can integrate to a practice where you have to keep your attention in the now by drawing a line on a paper. So that direct one pointedness gives an advantage because you see, am I remembering my mantra? Are you drawing the damn line? Yeah. Can you get from point A to point B? Can you overlap those compass circles? So now you're drawing the the flower of life. And that is connected with an infinite grid. So you can imagine all of the hidden dimensions that are part of the nature web. That's another part of what you'd

study in the archetypal beauties, you'd see how God does it. What is the Fibonacci sequence? Right. You know, why does the golden ratio always show up? Right. Oh, you have to speak into your mic. Okay, well, an old art professor in the only time I really had a serious conversation with Lowell Tolstead, he wound up being a director at the Columbus College of Art and Design. But as we were going through an art exhibit, he said, Alex, you know, there's a lot of people who come to art school, and they're really skilled already, and they become even greater skilled craftspeople, but they don't have anything to say.

Wow. Really. And so you see all the skill, but you just, you know, nothing. And then there are people who come with the most, you know, amazing imagination and stories to tell and just like, but pitiful, terrible output, you know, it's just like it gets in the way of them telling and sharing their story. So by merging those qualities of having a great skill and a great story to tell, it's those are combining the two. Well, how do you combine the two? Powerful forces.

If you, Alex is the perfect example of combining the two. You have to aspire to hold them in your mind. But I can't. But also you study, you are a scholar. You read. You have always been building a philosophical core that started when you were in high school, you know, reading Gojif and, you know, and Auspensky and this, and then onward through all Hegel and Schopenhauer and all of the Sufi mystics, you know, and Ibn Arabi and, you know, and Ken Wilbur being like, you know, so you've been studying, studying Buddhism and Hinduism as well, and studying all through your

life. But let me ask you to do something based on what you're saying on behalf of this person who I can feel out there. Let me just ask you to this question now. Listen, I have such a story I want to tell. It's eating me alive. I want to get it out there, but I can't draw. I can't paint.

I'm not a good singer. I don't feel artistically talented. I'm too old. I'm telling you, there's no way that I'm going to be able to do this. I don't have the talent. What can I do? You don't have the confidence. You don't have the confidence because, you know, the thing is, you know, you have, if you

really feel passionately that this message has to be delivered, you can deliver it in any creative way that you feel is you can be a writer, you can be a public speaker, you can be like a storyteller kind of thing. You can be an artist, but it's the same as any practice. If you're going to play music so it's convincing and makes people cry, you have to practice. You have to practice every day for many years. And that's the second part of what I was just about to say about Alex is that he also practices every day and has for every year of his life.

His first drawing that'll be in the exhibit at Entheon was accomplished when he was five years old. That will be an image of a skeleton that he did at five. So what I'm saying is he's been practicing and he's been learning. I also, I practice painting every day. It's my meditation. Now we're too old. I haven't, when I was five, I wasn't a young Alex Gray drawing what I imagined was a great

skeleton. I was smearing crayon. I was probably, you know what I was doing? I was probably shoving crayons in my butt. That's as close as I was getting to do any kind of like art when I was a kid. What I'm saying is like. You should try that today and you would be on YouTube. Here's the technique of Duncan Trussell.

Yes. His purple, Duncan's purple crayon. I can't wait. He drew a doorway. Let's go see. No, don't do this. Do not try this at home. Well, but so what I'm saying is.

So you're saying you're not going to be an artist, but look at what you are, Duncan. I'm not talking. Again, you are a mouthpiece of incredible power. No, I'm not talking and I'm not talking about me. I mean, I do feel like my podcast. He's talking for the common man out there. The man living in the fucking trailer park is listening to this broadcast. I'm talking about anybody out there because I just, I do speak not for them.

It is a, I mean, I'm lucky. I stumbled upon this podcast and now I get to have something that reminds me of what you're talking about, but I'm talking about pre-podcast. I would get so frustrated whenever you hear about these damn prodigies who are drawing their beautiful skeletons when they're five and you're like, yeah, you motherfuckers. Like we, it's too, I want this. I want this. And yet I feel too old.

I feel not talented enough. I feel too much. You're telling yourself the wrong messages, my friend. You just have to give it up, you know, start changing the affirmation, say, change it to an affirmation. I mean, that's, that's what everyone needs to look. I don't think there's anybody out there that doesn't secretly an inside feel that there's a creative person that is either fulfilling itself or is not fulfilled.

Right. There's a creative person in there. They can evaluate, I'm not doing what I should be doing, but I know that I was a good dancer when I was little or whatever, but I'm not doing it. Well, then you live a life of feeling like you're not fulfilling your creative flow. And that is a health factor. And I just like, I would not tell you, Oh, I don't feel like exercising. I don't like to go for a walk.

I just like to sit on my ass. And okay, so we feel that way sometimes, but is that okay? No. So you have to get up and exercise creativity is the same fucking way. Got it. It is the same way it you, you have to force yourself. Right. You know, like you think you're an artist, but you're not being an artist.

I will tell you, there's so many people that come to us who say that, that they were an artist at one time, they gave it up. They even went all through art school and they gave it up. They need to come home to their identity, their own identity of being an artist. And if they don't, woe be to them. I say, I say it is to your own peril that you ignore your creative call. Scary. Well, because it's a flow.

Okay. Think of what it is. It's the energy flow is now blocked and every time you see somebody else's art, you think, I should be doing that or I should be doing that. I should be doing that. I should be doing that. It's just like an engine that's like chugging along until you make yourself ill over it. Don't let that happen.

Okay. You do not have to be Lance Armstrong to enjoy riding a bike. Right. So get out there and make some art. And this is why we have, once a month, we have art church, which is basically come back to your core, who is your identity and make some art with us. We'll do it together. We'll hold hands.

It's not so hard. You haven't made art since you were in kindergarten, but now you can. It's okay. Nobody cares. It's just, it's an inner visioning. We go inside, we vision, we try to see, how do you have an image? How do you even get one? And then how do you turn that image into marks and strokes?

And should I use a number two B pencil? Or should I use a red cadmium? You know, whatever it is, you have to make those sort of rational decisions out of these kind of completely imaginary and intuitive ideas. So you're turning things from the, from the intuitive mind into the rational. It's an incredible process. And we all do it whenever we're creating, you know, we look at our soil and we say, what does it need to grow better tomatoes?

You know, you start reading up on it and you get better tomatoes. Those kinds of things, you see the smile came to your face when I said that. Because you know how fulfilling that is, how that makes you feel good, even gardening or growing, or you put some amazingly beautiful food. Everybody's posts their food all the time. This is their creativity and they're fulfilling their creativity when they do that. Yes. I think that the, never has it been easier for those of us who might say that we're

not an artist or not that creative or something. Never has it been easier for us to use the tools and social media to start to share our lives anyway, because we can all take pictures of whatever's going on around us and share them. No excuse. And it's, you know, it's possible. And it's, I think that the way that we think about it is that your life is your greatest creation. It's your greatest work of art.

And you're the author, if nothing else, of the story of your life. The way that you at least will tell what's going on. And so if you're responsible for being the author of the story of your life, how are you going to craft the narrative? Are you going to be the victim? Or are you going to be cause in the matter? And so the more cause, are you going to, are you going to be responsible for what's going on? Gotcha.

Or are you going to try to voice that off on somebody else made me do it? Or I'm living my life in response to the, to some other asshole or something like that. I don't want to define myself that way. I want to find out from the highest level of beauty what the divine thinks I ought to be doing. And test that before you just like go off and do it. You ask again. You say, are you sure you want me to such and so? Give me a sign here, you know, and wait for it.

And listen and pray and meditate and really like ask the divine. Ask your imagination. If you don't believe in the divine, ask whatever love and the highest possibility for you in your life is. Ask that potential what it wants of you. Can you remember your mission? Can you have an amnesis? Can you forget forgetting and, and remember who you really are and then reorient yourself, orient yourself to the vertical, to the true and to the good and to the beautiful.

Yeah. If you can reorient yourself, then making any kind of creative statement from that is probably going to come out fine, you know, and really if you just tap into your feeling, you know, you can tap into the healing nature of art and because creativity has no mythology about it. You don't have to believe anything. There's no dogma involved. You just get a pencil or you get a crayon or you get a brush or you get, you know,

sculpting tools or something or you start singing or you start writing, you know, and you start to feel creative flow. Oh, I'm not stuck in language. I can do actually, I can tap into this and use it to rethink, reimagine the story of my life and the way that I think about things and maybe what I'm going to be doing. What do I want to dedicate my life to? What am I in service to? And how does my, how does that show up in my life?

Right. And so if you're in service to love, if you're in service to a universal love that is all embracing, we're not talking about us and them. We're talking about all of us. You know, somehow we've all got to be able to get along and make something beautiful together or, you know, we're not going to have a world. Right. And we need people to tell us the truth, not to spread lies.

Wow, that is so beautiful. It's this, what yours is talking about is in my least afraid moments, I fantasize about this reality that you're talking about. And I do believe that you get marching orders from the universe, and I do believe that it's God. But do you think you two could talk a little bit about the kind of sacred fear that emerges in a person when they actually experience the point of contact that, you know, so many people, we watch the movies and we imagine getting to meet an alien or getting to see the thing or the special thing

or see something, see Bigfoot, see the proof of the thing itself. But then sometimes when it happens, and Alex yesterday, you were talking about how scientists sometimes when they make a big discovery, they stop because there's a feeling of fear. I just wonder, the uncanny, I wonder if you two could address how to overcome that woozy sense of fear when you walk into that part of the universe. I think you'd have to be anesthetized not to feel that, you know, I mean, there are things that are so weird that we can't look at them. And if we start looking at them, we start feeling really weird, you know, and so it's like it just keeps people away from and that's one of the things that plagues

parapsychology, you know, because they can demonstrate in test after test, the best parapsychologists, actually, they're some of the best scientists on earth, because nobody believes them. They have to get their results so tight. Right. And so no, we're going to do this again. What? Yeah. No, again, man, you know, and so they really go over stuff and now Dean Raiden, the great parapsychologist, has got metadata on multiple tests that have been run successfully over time and shows that without a doubt, telepathy shows up without a doubt, many of these kinds of prayer actually heals what where where could people find that you could hear that where one of his book coming out is called real magic. It's about to come out. I'm so looking forward to this

book. So I hope he'll do a book tour and he'll be on your show. Oh, I love it. But this this this brings us back to the original question. Imagination is magic. And you've walked us through a way to bring magic into your life, which is and it's very organized. But but one thing you didn't quite address. And I'm really interested in this. Okay, I'm sorry, close encounters of the third kind spoiler alert. This guy suddenly becomes compelled to build this mud mountain. Right. And I think everybody not just him, then there's all these other people that they saw it too. But don't you think I think that's who we are. Yes, I think that's the psychedelic movement. Yes, you see, that's what the movies about isn't it people from every age now because everybody,

you know, that's our age was doing it in the 60s, right. And so all up through there people, it was like a broccoli sprout sprouting open with the amount of people that were trying this substance and other psychedelic substances. And they are having incredible experiences and openings, you know, like like like Bill Hicks was coming out and, you know, claiming incredible benefits and value from this experience. Now psychedelic science is taking it on and they're finding that the benefits are very real and very measurable that these it's amazingly useful. But people want to get together. They want to be in community when this happens, don't they? Yes. And but before we get to be in community, and I maybe just because I'm a negative, or sorry,

I have a dark streak in me or something. And this is the thing I would like you guys to address. Because you are in the flow. It's coming through you anytime I'm around you, your painting, Alex, your drawing right now, you are in the flow. But what I'm talking about is in sort of what gets covered in the War of Art, as what he calls resistance, I would just love it if you too could address the various forms of resistance that will emerge the moment you decide to become a servant of love and actualize that through your art. And some of the challenges people can expect to face or may currently be facing in ways that we can overcome these blocks so that we can be pulled more downstream. I want to address, you know, letting the blocks out, because people a

lot of times do ask about creative blocks. How do I get started? I'm blocked. I mean, you know, I think that we have to know ourselves and where what we'd love to be doing and then go toward joy. But we can't, we have the blocks are, you know, you have to have a job, you have to make a living, you have children that need you, you have, you know, a partner that needs some attention. So you've got to, you have a lot of responsibilities in your life. And creativity is mandatory. So it's part of what you must put into your life, no matter what. And so, so there, it takes three things really are four things to have a creative life. I mean, first of all, it exists in the material world. Art is not art when it's in your mind. Okay. It's art only when it comes out as evidence.

And it's your intention that it's art. That's the definition of art. And that would be for music as well. So if you have music going around in your mind, it's not art yet. It's not even music. It's just something in your mind. You have to get it out. So once you've gotten it out, it's in your studio, but you haven't shared it. Yes. So it's in the outer world of the individual, but it's not in the outer world yet of the collective. And that's when you get it out. You, you either put it on Facebook, or you have a show, or you, you know, coffee shop, whatever, that's outer world collective. Other people get to share it. Then there's the inner world of the collective, which is the response to your work. It's the face button. Wow. I mean, it's the Facebook like button. Yeah.

It's, it's the, you know, it's the, it's the YouTube don't like button. It's a don't like button. It's the reviews. It's the t-shirts that people wear of your work and they buy the objects and have them and want them and use them. And then after that, they, they use what they've learned from it, or they use, they take something with them into their own life or into their own work. So you'll see art that has a little bit of Alex Gray in it. That's right. Okay. So, so anyway, they take it into the future of their own creativity. That's a spiraling upward effect of creativity. Wow. If you go full round to the, to the, you know, inner world of the collective, it becomes a meme and then other people use. Okay. Wow. So, so that's upwardly spiraling. That's

our community. See, by the way, the psychedelic community is attractive because it's upwardly spiraling, healthy people, loving people, happy people, successful people, beautiful people, and creative people. And so this is an attractor for the general public. People want that. They want happiness. They want health. They want love. And they see that in the love tribe. And so it is attractive. And so then people want to talk to each other and find others. They want to find the others. Yes. That's right. So they come to Cosm and places that are completely unique from Cosm, but that attract the love tribe. Right. And, and ones that are like Cosm. A lot of people come here and say, what we're doing exactly what you're doing. But you find out it's all very unique

whatever everybody's doing in their collective communities, because you keep hearing about communities. If I was listening to this, I would not have the guts to come to Cosm. I think if I was listening to this, and I was a young, it was a bad, it was a bad, no, it's, no, I know, Allison, I'm, no, I'm saying this not because you did something bad. I'm saying this because I would feel too insecure. And I would find that I would just, I'm just thinking of me and the life of a young artist or an old artist. Let me tell you about the people that come here. Just they, they find the others and they're inspired. So I just wanted to say that. I'm going to let you talk, but I had to say, I'm just saying take my love and they find the others going online,

going out. Okay. So I'm going to go to Cosm going online and then looking, I could see myself getting as far as looking at the thing. And I'm friends with you all. And even coming up here on the train, this time I get nervous and like butterfly and I'm like, oh, yeah. Cause you guys don't realize it because you live in the midst of this cyclone of creativity. But I was telling Alex just wandering around. I had at least three life changing conversations talking to, you know, and I'm not even exaggerating. I mean, literally like getting like, oh, here, let me show you something you've never thought of, but that you should have been thinking of. And that happened to the point where you guys just was stammering. So by the end of like walking around here, I'm

like, I seem like I've had a stroke. I'm like, I'm staying, I'm like kind of mumbling. He was drooling last night. No, it's just because my brain is like melting out my ears. So what I'm saying is I'm just, how do we overcome this block of coming to places like this? I think that people have to realize that every artist also faces blocks and fears themselves. And that every, it's very natural to have to be able to confront some of the fears that you have, even if they're unconscious in order to make creative actions. There's all kinds of sometimes repercussions in people's lives that they are unanticipated in things. And so there's a fear to break convention from what they're, you know, in, you know, depending on their social

situation. So exactly. So in these cases, I encourage, I don't encourage people to try to, you know, break down their world or something, but to find a way to put their creative life in a little notebook, a sketchbook, something that is something that's kept me alive when I haven't been able to do my paintings. It's just been keeping my five by eight inch notebooks with me all the time and making drawings and making notes about the stuff that I want to be doing. And so this is mine. It's like a diary. And in that way, it's a, you know, it's, it is up to that person, your own creation is your redemption. It's not something that you're going to get from anybody else. You know, you have to put the responsibility of your life on the line for your

life and to get your life and redeem your life as something creatively meaningful and worthwhile yourself. So you see that the actual payoff is much more worth it than the fear that keeps you from doing it. And that you have to basically get over that fear in order to get something done. And there's going to be some level of chastisement. Oh, you didn't do everything you could have done. Bad you, you know, you're going to have to basically get the naughty finger of your unconscious that is telling you that, that you could have and should have activated. And mostly it's the fear of confronting that first wave of guilt of having not activated our creative lives that keeps us from activating our creative life. Because we know we have to go through a little.

Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, creative self soul. I'm sorry, soul. I, you know, I, but I'm here for you now. I want to be seeing your shine in my life more and more. And so I'm trying to make a place for you speak to me. Let me ride this divine wave that is in my heart, you know, that wants to come out in some way unique to me. I have a gift each one of us, you know, each you know what I just, I feel like, I feel like the person, and again, I'm not putting you on this pedestal for giving because it's going to sound kind of cheesy. But I feel like I'm the person sitting next to Jesus when he's like, here's how you pray. You don't know that you did it. And maybe this is a prayer you have memorized, the prayer to the soul that you just said this beautiful prayer that you say

to your soul. I'll play it back for you. Don't realize you just like wrote this incredibly poignant, beautiful prayer that you say to that part of you that for so many years has been locked in a tower doing just you're rescued. Hey, the prince, your, your own self saving prince has come through the window, kissed you with love's first kiss, your wake to your creative life to your creative soul because you're complete and whole inside of yourself, you know that you are, you've recovered it completely. And so from that access point of the divine mind that you can access now, because it's in your heart, it's just the light in your heart. It's your, it's beating, right? Yeah. So no mythology. It's beating. Hey, make something of it. You got this time. You got this

pause. Got the done done done done done done done done. Yeah. Wow. I love you guys so much. I love talking to people about creative block. If anybody ever wants to talk to me about their life or their art, they can write to me at Allison, a l l y s o n at Cosm.org. And I have a blog, Ask Allison about art and life. And we talk about a lot of these things, you know, about, you know, people's desire to have a practice, a spiritual practice of art, yeah, in their life. And so, well, this is, I know we're at an hour and you guys are very busy. Just I, how can people get in touch? There's one way to get in touch, but just give us the quick breakdown Cosm.org is our is our main website for Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. And from there, you can also,

well, you can also go to AlexGray.com to find out more about Alex's art specifically, especially his paintings and performances. And then you can go to AllisonGray.com to find out more about my art and performances as well. And then Cosm.org tells you all about our events and tells you how to come here and stay. You can stay overnight. We have full moon ceremonies. We have equinoxes, solstices, and we're about to have the date, the 13th annual, deities and demons masquerade ball. So we're doing our 13 big, you know, it's like Halloween, you know, it's 13. So is that on Halloween? When do you do it? It's on the Saturday closest to Halloween. You can look it up at Cosm.org about the deities and demons masquerade ball. It's one of our biggest events of the year.

And yeah, so we, we travel a lot. So check out, you know, where we're going to be, maybe we'll be in your area. We love to talk to people and I answer people's emails. You can just write to me about your art and your life and send me pictures and music and stuff. And we love to have conversations about our creative lives. Alex and Allison Gray, thank you so much. Howdy Krishna. Thank you. That was Alex and Allison Gray friends. Go check out Cosm. If you're around the upstate New York area, heck, even if you're not fly out there, take one of their classes. They are incredible people. What they're building over there is a truly novel, sacred place. I hope you will go there. Much thanks to the track art.com for supporting this episode. All right, friends, here's a,

a little sonic gift for you. I don't know if you're familiar with Chad Van Galen. I love him. I've been emailing with sub pop because I'm hoping to get him on the podcast, but they were kind enough to give me permission to play this song of his, which is a real blazer. Also, the animated video for it is one of the coolest trippiest things you ever saw. So now please enjoy this track from Chad Van Galen, Pine and Clover. I'll have links to his stuff in the comment section of this episode over at dunkintrustle.com. Thanks for listening to you guys. I love you so much. And I'll see you real soon. I've got another supremely glorious podcast headed your way with my dear friend Ian Fidance. We talk about sex. See you soon.

She was a shape shifter. Politics didn't matter to her. No, no, she's born a million times over. The mind full of sweets smelling pine and clover. And she taught you how to be low. She was a bonafide grifter. Never could quite remember what she was or what she had been. Never could quite remember what she was or what she had been. Oh yeah, she's born a billion times over.

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