Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Ian Fidance

Episode Date: October 21, 2017

Mystical comedian and beautiful soul, Ian Fidance, joins the DTFH and we talk about SEX!!! What is sex? Is it evil? Why do people have it? Also we break down the core truth of all things and build the framework for a new philosophy that will transform everything.

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Go to Squarespace dot com and use offer code Duncan and you can use their beautiful templates and commerce tools to immediately construct a beautiful website. Hello future skeletons. Tis I Duncan Tressel and thou art listening to the Duncan Tressel family hour podcast. And last night my sweet brothers and sisters I was visited by the Lord in the form of a marijuana lollipop and the Lord said to me, It was brutal and it made me think. You know you're having a really intense marijuana trip when you start like referring to the

Bible but it made me think of this verse from the book of Corinthians. So then whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and the blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup for those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ, eat and drink judgment on themselves. If that isn't an accurate description of what having a bad trip is, I don't know what is. And it really lends credence to John Marco Allegro's theory that early Christianity was

actually a mushroom cult or was using mushrooms as a kind of sacrament because if you take a plant medicine as the kids are calling them these days and you do it in a kind of frivolous way, it may pan out and you'll just have a fun, relaxing, cool, awesome night or you might get invited into a special classroom with marijuana or whatever it is that you're taking. And every single one of these plants, they have their own personality. And marijuana, if marijuana feels like punishing you, it is a true motherfucker. I went through the whole gamut of the bad trip from my own insecurities emerging to

a kind of hard realization of moments in the last few months where I've been a prick to going through like business obligations that I haven't fulfilled yet or emails I needed to make or phone calls I need to make to physical pain, like my feet cramping, a feeling of like shit. Having a heart attack or something. And then as I'm sort of half falling asleep, I actually saw like a hell realm, just this endless, never ending kind of fractal of shit, just constant, never not literal shit, but like, you know, icebergs made of screaming faces and melting demonic skulls dripping

into other melting demonic skulls. This was a powerful lollipop and the thing that I used to pull me out of it was this verse from the psychedelic experience, which is a translation of the Tibetan book of the dead by Timothy Leary, Richard Albert, soon to become Ram Dass and Metzner. And it's basically a guidebook for tripping. If you're some, if you're a psychonaut, if you're somebody who takes psychedelics a bunch, definitely, definitely put this book in your arsenal. So here it is.

I just want to read a little bit of it to you, but this is a tool that you can use the next time you find yourself falling prey to the marijuana terrors or whatever particular terror you have induced upon yourself by taking some psychedelic. Oh, nobly born, listen carefully. You are now entering the second bardo nightmares. Recognize them. They are your own thought forms made visible and audible. They are products of your own mind with its back to the wall.

They indicate that you are close to liberation. Do not fear them. No harm can come to you from these hallucinations. They are your own thoughts and frightening aspect. They are old friends. Welcome them. Merge with them. Join them.

Lose yourself in them. They are yours. Whatever you see, no matter how strange and terrifying, remember above all that it comes from within you. So the next time you find yourself deep in the marijuana terrors, I invite you to use this tool. Who knows? Maybe it'll work or maybe it'll freak you out more, man, because if the demons come from

within you, then that makes you a hive of demons. We got a great podcast for you today, my sweeties. We're going to jump right into it, but first, some quick business. I used to have a friend, but a web designer chewed off his face. If only he'd used square space. Building a website shouldn't involve getting your face slowly chewed off by a pseudo web designer six hours deep into a psychosis induced by an adder all over dose. Building a website should be something fun and easy that you can do yourself.

And thanks to the folks over at Squarespace, this is now a possibility. Squarespace makes building a website easy. They've got fantastic templates that you can use to build a website quickly. You get a free custom domain name if you sign up for a year, seamless commerce tools. You've got everything you need to start selling stuff today. Why I know a nice lady who sells her stinky socks online. If she can make money from socks, think how much more you can make from your custom knit perfumed lavender hacky sacks or your beautiful purses.

Squarespace, they've got great customer support. They get right back to you when you email them, but most importantly, I use Squarespace for my website. So if you want to see the power of Squarespace, go over to Duncan trustle.com Squarespace, start your free trial today at Squarespace.com and enter offer code Duncan to get 10% off your first purchase. Don't risk getting your eyeballs sucked out of their orbital sockets by a man who thinks he's Jesus.

Go to Squarespace.com and build a website today. Squarespace, don't get your face chewed off. An enormous undying thank you to those of you who continue to show your support for this podcast by going through the Amazon link, which is located at Duncan trustle.com. If you want to pick up a copy of the psychedelic experience, just go through that link. It's also in the comment section of any of these episodes and anything that you buy on Amazon, they will give us a very small percentage of also a huge thank you to those of you who have subscribed to the podcast.

Some of you have done this and have monthly donations set up, which you definitely don't have to do. But for those of you who are doing that, thank you. Another way for you to support this podcast is to go to our shop located at Duncan trustle.com, which is sorely low on supplies right now. I've got to restock this move to New York through me off, but soon there will be new posters, t-shirts and stickers there. And there's a few left for those of you who want to pick up some D T F H gear next week.

If you live in New York city next Tuesday, let's see what exactly that date is. That's Tuesday, February 21st, I am going to be doing a live DTFH at the bell house in Brooklyn. Email is going to be playing some music in the beginning. And our guest is Hamilton Morris, who I'm sure you're aware of from his work with vice, including Hamilton's pharmacopia. He is a fascinating person and I can't wait to go deep with him talking about psychedelics friends.

Today's guest is a comedian and my newest New York friend. He is brilliantly funny. I saw a set at the New York comedy club. It was amazing. We started talking after that and then he was kind enough to come over and do the DTFH. His name is Ian Fidance. He's really supremely funny. If you live in New York, you got to go see him.

He's incredible. I'm sure you, everyone will be hearing about him soon enough. You can check him out by going to IanFidance.com. That's I a N F I D A N C E dot com. Now everybody, please open up your mind, expand your astral body, make contact with the devas, divas, demigods, angels, gods, goddesses and beings of light that surround you at all time. Channel that energy and send it right into the boiling crown chakra of my new New York friend Ian Fidance.

Welcome, welcome on you, that you are with us. Shake hands, love each other, welcome to you. It's been done. It's been done. It's been done. It's been done. It's been done. It's been done.

It's been done. It's been done. It's been done. You know that we are kind of like freaking out right now a little bit over politics, because we keep getting in these great political conversations. You're kind of terrified or you were saying that you spent a lot of time digging through the various news feeds. Right, right.

Yeah. I do this like a, I have like a 1984 hour of hate where I just like straight up just hate read all this shit and just get angry. And then I'm like, what am I doing this for? What time do you do that at? What time? Like 3 a.m. when I should be, you know, decompressing or like trying to just like meditate or go to sleep.

But I'm like, no, no, no, you're going to get hateful before you go to bed. What is that? Because I do the same thing. I don't know, man. I find like a, what I will do is I will go fishing for the worst thing I can find. And then once I find it, I will, that's when I go to bed with this nugget of horror that I didn't fall asleep thinking about. Yeah.

I'll like look up to sing on banin or just like sit and disbelieve at what's going on. And then I'll turn it off and then try to like go over the, I'll be like, well, you got a lot of good things coming up. It's like so hard to like find positivity in my own life when I'm like, well, everything else is going to shit that I feel guilty for like enjoying myself and my like small piece of the pie. You know what I mean? I, I grew up with a ton of Catholic guilt and everything.

So I think that's just my MO to like, you have to feel anger and like shame and, and your race Catholic. Yeah. And no, yeah. Oh yeah, man. Yeah. The Catholic, what is that about Catholicism that it teaches you shame is a good way to feel.

It is this thing, anything that brings you pleasure is wrong, you know, like a man died for you. So you owe him your life, you know, and like any good thing, it's not you, it's him. He did it for you. It's like, Oh shit. That's such a convoluted. Do you still, but no, no, no, no, I mean, my, my journey with like religion and Catholicism is so fucked up and just incredible, incredible amounts of shame and guilt, like crippling.

And you know, that's things I've had to like kind of take a machete to and like I'm going through the jungle and cut through like when you were a kid, is that's where it started? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like my, my dad died when I was younger. How old? So it was eight.

And so it was like a thing of, you know, everything happens for a reason and it just so happened that like I accidentally found the spice channel like two weeks before he died. So I had this affirm belief that it was completely my fault that this dude died because of Catholicism. You know what I mean? I mean, so God to punish you for watching the spice channel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Totally believed that for a long time. Didn't you have anyone to talk to about that? Who the fuck am I going to say that to? Your mom? You know, no. Oh my God. It was, it was like a completely tragic death.

So it was like a thing of anytime anything would get brought up at all. It was just massive sadness and tears and everything. So it was like, dude, do not bring that, especially as a kid. If I was sad, all the adults around me would get sad. So it was like, whatever you do, man, do not get sad. Fucking you're the fun guy. Everything's good. You know?

I just had to hold that inside. You know? You were taught as a child that the thing that created the universe was so vengeful that it kills fathers if their kids watch the spice channel. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's what I thought. And, and I, you know, I mean, when I was little to punish me, my parents, I did this like picture Bible, my parents would take away my picture Bible.

Like I loved Jesus, like I loved God, like I loved, I loved going to church. I would try to get the communion before my first holy communion. A couple of times I would just go up and follow my dad. And then I wouldn't leave the priest until they gave it to me. You were fearing the call. You were called to the priesthood. I mean, when I was little, I wanted to be a priest. I was like, this is what I'm going to do.

And then, you know, the day my dad died, I had a dream that he died. And I woke up and I was like, God would never do that to me. God would never do that to my family. And then boom, he's dead. And I'm like, what the fuck? When you had the dream this was right before it happened or after it happened. Right before it happened. So you actually had a premonition.

Yeah. For real. Yeah. Was it similar in the dream? No, he had just died. And my, my, his aunt, who we all called aunt, sis, she died the day before. So like that morning I woke up and I was like, dad, don't go to work. He's like, no, you know, you're just upset that aunt sis died.

I like begged him. He's like, no, no, no. He took me in and was like, look, got baseball practice after work. I'll come home. You know, I was like, okay, I go to sleep. I had that dream and I woke up and I was like, oh, thank God. And he had called the house that morning too to talk to my mom and I was like, oh, God, it was just a dream.

Thank God. You know, and then my mom was a teacher's aide at my school and she got this call and she like left. She ran out and then this girl came up to me and goes, uh, are you Ian? And I go, yeah. And she goes, your mom had to leave because your dad got hurt at work. And I was like, yeah, dude, this fucking first grader told me, I'm like, Jesus Christ. Yeah, man.

So then all the, like the, I had to, I had to go to like the principal's office and like, no, no, no, everything's fine. It's fine. I had to go to aunt's sister's house to take care of things. I was like, oh, okay. And then they came to get me out of class and I was like, oh, I know what's up. You know, the whole way, my grandfather and my mom picked me up and my grandfather never shut up a day in his life.

Just like in talk, talk, talk, loved him, Poppy, the best. And we wrote home in complete silence. I was like, I know the deal. You know what I mean? That is heavy, man. Yeah. You have. It's not just the spice channel as much as you had a authentic premonition of a thing

that you couldn't stop. Yeah. God, have you ever, have you had premonitions since then? No. I mean, my dad and I were like abnormally close. When I was born, I was born 27 days premature. I was three pounds, 11 ounces. I'd live in an incubator and I was in the hospital for a first month of my life.

And every day, my dad wrote me a letter and, you know, every day before he left for work too, from like five, six until he died, he wrote me a letter before he went to work. Just like on legal pad, you know, just like a fun little thing. So I have these stacks of letters of him and we have tons of home videos and I found tapes of his that I would play when I was older and then I'd get into the music. If I liked it, I'd find an artist and I'd get into music that way. So I got to like know him in a way without him being here, which is incredibly grateful for.

And I found like journals of his when he was, you know, like 24, 25. And but I have all these things, but it's like, you know, I just, he and I were absolutely so close that it was almost like this thing of like, I knew in a way his soul was going to leave his body. And I don't know if he like something from him came to me to tell me that. I don't know, but it was, it was like this, this wild thing. Well, there's a lot of theories on that. I mean, one of the interesting, one interesting thing is that his sister died the day before

he did his aunt, his aunt, right? So you get these like, you get the concept of the soul cluster. You ever heard that before? So it's idea that beings incarnate certain beings incarnate together over and over and over again. So that's a soul cluster. And sometimes when one being leaves, the other one quickly leaves too, for some reason, they're connected at that level for some reason.

That's why you'll hear a couple like death in threes or whatever. Or is it like a couple dies like, yes, yeah, yeah, where they just leave together. They decide to go or, or even, um, Princess Leia and her mom within the same day, they both split. Well, yeah, I had, I had felt guilt about that too. Like, do you really even love your dad? If you can live your life without him, you know, like I would think about that, you know, and also my dad, he had like a very dark kind of morbid sense of humor than the night before

he died. We're all at aunt's sister's house and he's like, boy, you better hope I go before your mom. Cause if not, you're going to be in for a world of hurt, you know, cause he was like the disciplinarian and my mom was very like, here's a presence that you won't be upset, you know, and, uh, wow. Yeah. Do you, uh, do you feel like you still communicate with him at all or have any connection with

him? Yeah, you know, I, um, for a while I, I, I, I really found solace in like booze, you know? So I felt like the only way I could, the only way I could ever like a moat was if I got so drunk that finally things could come out, you know, and nobody likes that. Nobody likes the sad drunk or the guy that's like drinking with you and then turns he was like, do you think my dad's proud of me? They're like, we're just playing kings.

Like what's the matter with you? You know what I mean? It's your turn for the waterfall. Why are you bringing up your dead dad, you fucking asshole, you know, but like I would like drink to like get up the courage or strength to like call out his name or, you know, I'd like write to him or whatever. And, and, um, you know, thankfully now I found that I don't need to do that. And, um, you know, I, I, I, um, you mean you don't need to drink.

Right. Right. Right. I don't need to drink to like tap into my emotions. You know, I've, I've, I've really worked hard at like trying to be an emotional functioning human on my own without having to find something to inject into my body to make me, uh, feel like it's okay. How many, how many years have you been sober?

I'm coming up on two years. Uh, I've, I've been trying since 2008 and I'll get like, I treat it like the gym. Like the second someone's like, Hey, you've been losing weight. You look good. I'm like, no longer need to go to the gym. You know, like the second I make any progress, I'm like, dude, you can handle a drink and I'm like dying for the vodka, you know, but, uh, that's so, that is so scary to have that alcoholism is such a fascinating thing in that you, it's, it's a form of demonic possession.

It's like, that's why they call it spirits because it takes it away. Yeah. Oh wow. That's so wild spirits. That's right. But I mean, it has a, it's interesting because in like a cult mythology, the concept is, if you can control a spirit, then you, you can use it. You can actually use it to do things, you know, you can make it do whatever.

This is the oldest story in the book, but if you can't control it, if you do, if you conjure a spirit and you, for whatever reason, don't have the ability or the whatever, then it'll always fuck you up. Yeah. Well, that's the story of like Led Zeppelin with Jimmy Page and black magic. He got into black magic and apparently like something went wrong with these spells he was doing. And then all of a sudden Robert Plant's son died and then John Bonham died and it caused

like this huge rift in the band because it's, I think of it as like magic as kind of like multiverse piloting. So you, if you do it right, you can jump into a timeline that is more in tune with what you think happiness represents. But if you do it the wrong way, if you let your ego guide you into the timeline that you think you should be in, oh, that's where you can start fucking up and you can pop into timelines where shit like that does start happening where degraded timelines or sometimes I think that you can like, okay, this is a really weird concept, but the idea is no such

thing as time. So we're all in this evolutionary process that's happening over the course of countless incarnations, cycling, cycling, getting maybe that's why you had the premonition that your father was going to pass away because you've lived this life so many times that you, that part of the record has a little scratch in it because there's trauma and it like transcends time and space. And so when you get close to that, every time you reincarnate, you have a dream or some sign or some moment or something like that.

But so the idea is that every single one of these cycles, you get a little better or you get a little worse, hopefully you get a little better. And then so that means that at some point already existing, if there's no such thing as time is some enlightened version of yourself and that you can call out to that enlightened version of yourself and it'll start pulling you towards it through like the various possible timelines to that point. In other words, we can not only improve ourselves with a goal in the future, but we can actually pray to our past selves and send good energy to ourselves in the past.

It's totally, by the way, I've proven all of that. I'll show you my charts. Yeah, man. Well, I mean, that's the thing. A therapist tried to get me to talk to my past self, like my child, Ian, and I immediately put up this fucking block. I was like, not fucking happy. It was like a group, two of my best friends, we used to work in a sober house, I used to

live in a sober house. And then I ended up working in one and these two guys, I was friends with very funny comics as well. We all went into this thing together and they're like writing letters to themselves and I'm like, this is a fucking happening. I got up and walked out. I was like, uh-uh. But in not letting that fear dictate me and walking through it, since then I have been

able to look at that child and look at him and talk to him and I guess send like positive forgiveness back to him in a way and that's helped out tremendously. And like every time I've tripped mushrooms, I do have this thing of like cyclical, sometimes I get in this cycle of, it all goes back to cycles, like something of like reliving, regenerating in a way like, I don't know, but I can relate in a way to what you're saying. Yeah. Well, this is Nietzsche is the one who came up with this. It's the idea of, he's got a crazy name for it, but it's something return that, but essentially

the idea is like deja vu has happened because you've lived this exact same life an infinite number of times. Like basically, I guess another way to put it, it's, you know, about Nick Bostrom and simulation theory, the essence of it being the odds are more that we do not exist in base reality than the odds are we exist in some simulated reality because the odds of being in a species that is the first species in the universe to simulate reality perfectly and then go into that simulated reality, which is what seems to be happening, what we're going to be able to do soon.

The odds are far greater that that had already happened and that part of going into the simulated reality is a wiping away of the realization that you're entering into the simulation because to know you're in a simulation is to in some way impair the experience, the power of the experience of the simulation. So for example, if this were some training simulation, if you were say a young God and this is a training simulation, then for you to be in a training simulation and know it's a simulation, you're not going to understand the impact of your actions on other people at the level you would want something in a deep training system to experience something

that was going to have a lot of power at some point. So anyway, that's the idea is we're doing this loop over and over and over and over and over again until we fucking get it right. And then the moment you get it right, you're dead meat. You have a heart attack. You go skiing and run into a fucking tree and you're free. You sort of transcend and you can you can act. You don't have to die, but it is always considered death.

I mean, that is in Christianity. Jesus said that over and over again. You must die to this world to come to know me or ayahuasca. It's always death or mushrooms. You always feel like, shit, I think I'm going to die. Or yeah, or I mean, it is about the death of ego, you know, like, like the smashing that ego at any time I I have, you know, like an uptick in ego where I try to take my will back.

That's when like shit goes haywire, you know. So it's like, ultimately, I want to smash my ego. I want to smash any semblance I have of thinking that I'm above anything else. Yes. Yes. Oh, see, this is why this to me is the usefulness of marijuana. Because when I get if I eat marijuana and get stoned enough, anything I've done that's egotistical, anything I've done that's based on elevating myself over someone else or being

a selfish fucking cunt is the marijuana is like, look, yeah, oh, look. It's like suddenly realizing you've got like the worst acne breakout or something. I don't like it. I think you feel evil. I'm like, I get it away. It's the worst. Yeah. You feel, man, where you need to take a really long, hard look at yourself and you're forced

to realize, oh, no, you didn't have to hurt that person. You definitely didn't have to say that. Why did you say that? Yeah, yeah. Why do you think you fucking said that to that person? Why did you act that way? Yeah. And then you try to worm your way out of it like, well, I was tired.

Right, right, right, right, right. You were just a dick. Yeah. Yeah. So I like that because it gives you a chance to improve and to crush your ego over and over again. How do you, what are your, what tools do you use to, if you start getting a case of inflamed ego syndrome?

Um, you know, I really, uh, positive self-talk is like a incredible tool that I've come to use because I have just this record of negativity in my head, you know, like reliving my past or obsessing over things or, you know, you'll never this, you, you aren't that. And so I got to like kick the shit out of that and just be like, you know, your, a lot of times I'll just even be like, you're here, your feet are on the ground. You only have control of things that are like two feet around you, you're in this moment, you know what I mean? And, and trying to find gratitude in my life and realize it like the only, like in, in

a way, Catholicism is like the only reason things are here is because of God. Anything you do is, is because God did it for you, you know, like, thank you God. But like really I have to, I have to think like for me, like the only reason these things are happening in my life is because I'm sober. And the only reason I could be sober is because I, I could be honest with myself and being honest with myself today is something that I couldn't do, you know, five years ago. So it's like that is something I got to be grateful for, you know, because it's like a super power.

Yeah. Being honest with yourself. Yeah. It's really, really difficult. Yeah. It really is. Isn't it? It's one of those things where, you know, it sounds so fucking easy being honest with

yourself, but yet it seems like the mind is constructed to trick itself. Right. And especially with social media, you can be fucking live in a million lies to trick everyone in your life that like you're living this wonderful thing. And in reality, you're just a fucking scumbag, you know what I mean? Like it's, it's fucking wild, man. And that trips me out to like thinking about like what you put out and what is truth and like at, at what point are you just brutally honest with everything or do you have to have

some sort of, you know, aura of whatever that you put out there. And so I get tripped up in that, but if I can just be like, if I can be as much as who I am or who I think I am and try to be that guy, then everything else is inconsequential. I don't care about putting out this image of like, well, you, you know, this, this or that, like if I'm just true to myself and it's taken me so long to find myself, if I'm just true to that dude, then everything else will fall into place and it's not my timeline. If I try to control like I need it now, I gotta get this nail and it's like, I'm gonna end up fucking it up, you know, so I just got to try my hardest to be who I am, a fucking

little while dirty dick dude from Delaware and just fucking, you know, treat people the way I want to be treated and just be funny and fun and be appreciative for the little shit I have and everything else will fall into place. If I try to, you know, one up someone or be, you know, big daddy fat dick, then it's like not going to work, you know, what do you pray, no, I used to and I, I talk, I talk to something out there, but I don't get on my knees and say like a formal prayer. Oh, no, you pray, I mean, talking to the thing, yeah, this is the, I mean, so when you talk about, okay, well, I'm grateful for my sobriety and I'm grateful for this amazing ability

to be honest with myself, which truly is an incredible, that must be incredible, an incredible relief. Well, yeah, it took a while, live in lies and not being true, you know, took a long time. Like an example, what's an example of a lie you are living? Man, for most of my life, I hid this from everyone and just recently I've, within the past year, I've been honest, but I'm like kind of gay, like, you know, like, like I'm more bi than anything. And I hid that from everyone, including myself with and all that shame and everything because

I thought, you know, I got all these dead relatives upstairs and they're looking down on me and they're pissed off, ashamed. And really when it comes down to it, my, my dad loved me and all he wanted to do was for me to be happy. And you know, I was just so worried, I come from like a small area. So it's like, if I told these people these things, they turned their back on me and I already lost, you know, I experienced loss when I was younger. So it was like, no matter what, don't lose nothing else.

How did you know you were, how long have you known you were bisexual? Ever since I was a little kid. Oh, wow. So that is a, so, oh, that's truly living. Oh, that is one of the primary definitions of, fuck, like hiding your sexuality from the world and all the associated shame and the gods. Wow. Yeah.

So now you're like saying it on podcasts. You're completely open. And now I'm like, you know, I don't fucking care because it's not worth my sanity of like living this separate thing and like hiding it and being like, you know, and, and also too, the main goal for me is to be a good comic. And in order to be a good comic, I got to be truthful. And I was just tired of not being fully truthful. And the only way, you know, I had to be more truthful in my personal life in order to grow

on stage. Yes. And that's like the most important thing to me is, is being a truthful, honest comic. That's what I saw, man. When you were up there is you could feel that honesty. That is there. And it's so powerful. The, and what you just said, by the way, you know, people say you don't give advice

about comedy because they wrote, but fuck, man, if that isn't one of the most profound statements, which is your personal work on yourself, taking risks in your own life and being honest with yourself and opening up to other people, how you actually feel is a risky fucking situation a lot of the time. And ever, but if you don't do that, I was talking to this comedian J London and he was saying, you know, your personal life, it leaks out on stage, you know, so if you're like not, if there's something that you haven't addressed needs addressing than on stage, ooh, it will lose right out of you.

They could see it in your eyes. I don't know what it is, but there's like a, there's a little imbalance. Right. Right. And, and crowds are fucking, the people that go to stand up shows are all at the same time so fucking stupid, but so smart in a way that they can intuit fear and they can know when you're a fraud, you know, and they can know when you're scared or you're not confident. They may be dumb and laugh at stupid things or like, you know, may just be like these

idiots that are like, you know, out, we just, I love, just like, you got any racist jokes on this phone, but it's like, at the same time, they're so, they're like dogs, they can sense fear and everything. And, and if you're not truthful in that moment, then, then like, what are you doing? And the moment you are truthful in that moment, it is the kingdom of heaven on earth. Like there's nothing like it in the world when you catch the wave. Yes. And, and I think that's something that's easy to forget as a comedian is that every

time you go on stage, it's a different way. It's what you're saying may be repetitive, but there's a whole, there's a metaphysical force. Yes, that energy in the room. Yes. Yeah. That, and that's that force, you could go into that force and ignore it and perfectly recite your jokes, hitting the punchline at the exact right moment, timing everything

out and fucking bomb in the most insane way, like just go up in flames. Yeah. Or you can hit that moment and butcher your jokes. Yeah. Fall all over. Just fuck up your punchline, screw everything up and have the greatest set of your life. Yeah. And that is an easy thing to forget.

It's such an easy thing because it's an invisible force, man. Yeah. And that feeling is in every moment. It's just on stage. It's more amplified. Right. Right. Yeah.

But the ability to tap into that is something that, you know, like, it's like, uh, you know, that book, The Giver, you ever read that? No. It was, uh, this book I had to read in like grade school. I'll never forget that this boy sees everything in a black and white, everything's black and white, but there's this old, old man, the Giver and he starts working with him and he's the only man that can like see color. And there's this moment where he tosses an apple to the boy and in the air, he can see

red. And I feel like there are these moments where everything's in black and white, but I get these little glimpses of color and I'm like, fuck, yes, hold on to that, fucking keep working and then everything's going to be in color, man. And it doesn't stay forever, but the moments that it does, it's like, those are the things you got to hold on and work for. That's right. That you have to be, you know, you have to, you have to, it's good to be, at least to

acknowledge it in some way or another, whether to yourself or to somebody else and to be kind of scientific about it because it looked deep into that. Like that's something I don't do enough of, which is when a good, a dark moment, I like dissect, cut into pieces, look through every component, fixate on the darkness. But the great moments, you're just like, God, that felt fucking great. But what you need to look deeper into it and understand what was that. I'm positive that you can, you don't have, you don't have to be a stand up comedian to surf that wave of energy.

Right. Because Jesus Christ, man, there's like entire months of my life where I'm faking every single thing I do. Oh yeah. Yep. Just going through the motions. Just going through the motions. And then there's some moments or a day where you're like, I'm in it.

Oh, you're like, you're like a, you're like a fucking hyena on the planes, just chewing it. It's those months worth it. You know, that's what you got to hold on to and be like, all right, I'm in the shit now, but I'm fucking going to come out and I'm going to be that hyena that's fucking running after every goddamn gazelle. I don't know why I use that example. Not exactly like animal people associate with joy.

Nothing happier than a hyena wallowing in a corpse of a rotting elephant. But that, that kind of visceral connection with the life energy where you transcend the depression momentarily or whatever the entropy is. Oh, I fucking love it. For me, man, it's prayer. I like to pray. I have various gods that I, or faces of God is a better way to put it that I like to pray to or think about or connect with.

I used to be ashamed of that. Oh yeah. Well, because it's not cool, you know, it's not, it's like so cool to be like there is no God. It's like, no, fuck you. It's so easy to be like anti and against and too cool for fucking tapping into something. But I fucking love that, man. Like there's, there's something out there.

I don't know. I'm too little to know what it is. And I have shit enough to say definitively if there is or isn't, you know, well, the experiment has, but it's the, so the idea is, okay, the question is, well, is there something out there? Is there? And I'm, I think there is. Uh, and then, then instead of like, okay, well, I'm going to pray to it in an ambiguous

sort of way, you can start, there's actually a, a kind of science behind this process. It called Bakhti is what it's called. So it's the process of cultivating love for God is, is what it is. It's not like you just love God right away. You can't, it's, you can't love anything. Right away. Like it's most people don't, you can love your dog. That's a good place to start.

Do you have any animals? Yeah. Start with the dog. You love your dog. Yes. Oh my God. Lucy, my baby. Yeah.

What kind of dog? Congressman and Poodle mix. Oh, I got her name tattooed on my foot. There you go. There you go. You start with your dog because your dog is, um, your dog or your pets. Or there's always something that has within it. You know what love is.

There's no question about it. When I think of my dogs, Gatsby and Fox, it's just, uh, I know what that feels. I mean, it gets right in your heart. Like you can actually touch the part of your body where you, when you think about your dogs, you can actually touch the part of your body where the feeling emerges. That part of your body is your heart chakra. That is actually the energy vortex that is called the heart chakra, which is where, uh, love happens or what happens through your entire body.

But anyway, so it's like scientifically, if I can take a, if I can take a sample of something, even if it's a tiny little sample of a thing, I can use that sample to then begin to extrapolate bigger versions of that sample. So if all you need is one, another way to put it is all you need is a little spark to start a fire. Yeah. So from the analysis of like, okay, well, I love my dog like that. What if I could transfer that feeling to the entire universe?

Fuck. Can you imagine what you would be like if you felt the way you feel about Lucy about every single moment, right? You realize that Lucy is just one pixel and a massive, never ending tapestry of love, but you've only been able to see the part of it that's Lucy. So that's Bakhti is the, it's trying to spread that out. I love it. It's, it's pretty awesome.

Yeah. And it's very scientific. It's not scientific. Forgive me, scientists, but it's very organized. The process is really quite organized and it's intellectual. It's not a faith-based thing. It's just a kind of like, well, is there something bigger than me? Is there a creator force?

Is there a personality to the universe that transcends the need for a body? Right. And then you ask those questions in a real way and see if you can find the answer. So start praying more. On your knees, get on your fucking knees right now and pray. Well, I mean, I think that's, uh, I mean, finding that love, I think we are in, and I'm going to sound like such a cheesesteak saying this, but I think we are in a very unique position at this point in time in history, where we do

have a, uh, a job of in our, in our time on stage, it is our duty, no matter what, to make people feel joy. And, uh, I don't think that we should just limit that to the stage. I think that we should have that in all of our interactions. Like, who am I to, to, to take joy? I, I've lived my life very joyless. I spent a lot of years in anger or shame, depression, and it fucking sucks. So I know what it feels like to, to be shitty and to feel shit.

So I also know what it feels like to feel overwhelming love and Bakhti. And, and, and, you know, so why not try to spread that as much as you can. You know, I, I, I just hate negativity so much. I hate people who's like, it's their MO to just be like, everything's awful. And it is, it is shit is bad, but there's so much good. Well, they're saying I'm hungry. When a person is like that, they're, that's just the same thing as saying I'm hungry, but they don't know that they're hungry.

So they think everything's bad because they have an appetite for something. And they don't know what the way, the way to quench that appetite is. It's a, it's a, it's a really rough spot to get into, you know? And, but again, if it's like, okay, well, I can feel love for Lucy. Then, or I can feel love for Fox and Gatsby, then the question is how intense can that love get and how, what would happen to me if, if that love was intent? Is there a way to make that become increasingly amplified? And if you did that, then this, you wouldn't have to spread joy because, and

you already are like this, whenever I get around you, I get happier because you've been working on yourself, you know, and you can feel it when someone's been working on themselves, it brightens up a room when you're doing the work, even if like you're like having little stumbles here and there or whatever. It doesn't matter if you're just making the fucking effort, any, any effort. It doesn't have to be extreme, even just a little effort of like working on yourself, everyone feels it and that's the spreading of the joy where what's generally happening with a lot of people is they've inside, they're a fucking

callus, they're like a, the callus on a, on the foot of some fucking sailor, just like a thick gray mass, they're just, yet still they're like going around trying to spread love, but they don't feel fucking anything. They're just, and that's causes, that's a problematic place. But even if you are a callus, try to spread fucking love, it doesn't even matter, do what you can. Yeah, there's no, there's no, there's no one way, you know, as long as you're trying or making an effort, that's, that's so much more important than the

finality of the product you're putting out, you know. Yeah, you just summed it up. That's it, because I'll tell you, the reverse, which does happen to people, the reverse happens to people where people become so collapsed in. I mean, it happens in the universe. We know when a star collapses, it makes a black fucking hole. Yeah. And what person will collapse inside so much.

There are all these collapsed stars walking around. Yeah. And what's there, and if you think about it, what is their care, what happens when you get around them? Everything sucks because they're trying to suck you into that fucking darkness. They can't even help it. They're want, want, me, me, take, take, give, give, me, take, give it now, what, me, this is me, am I, no, I don't know.

Everyone's out to give me a, suck, suck, suck. And it's the, it's really a fucking rotten place to get into, you know. So if you haven't fallen into that place yet, then there's so much hope. I mean, even if you are in that place, theoretically, there's hope, but there's fuck, man, we didn't get to talk about a ban. We, it's 453 right now. You've got a little bit more time. Yeah.

I got like a 10, 10, 10 minutes. So very quickly, can you tell me what you were telling me last night about banning and the fourth, what's it called? The fourth fuck. It was a, the fourth return. No, the fourth, the fourth turning, the fourth turn. Okay. Tell me about this.

That's right. So there's this theory that like, um, uh, so there was like the civil war reconstruction. Oh, wait, very quickly. It's banning is what he's Trump's advisor. He's, yeah, it's like senior advisor. Okay. Basically he's Trump's puppet master.

Yeah. You know, it's, it's banning sitting on a golden throne with one hand up Trump's ass and the other up Sean Spicer's ass. And he's just putting on a puppet show for everyone. And remember worm tongue from Lord of the Rings? No. Oh fuck. He was like, there was a great king and, and like worm tongue was this

like sorcerer who's always sitting next to him and like whisper in his ear and it was like, anyway, so banning is the great manipulator. That's what people are saying. So go, go on. So it's like this thing of there, there was a civil war reconstruction, great depression, World War two, and these were all massive events that in, in the aftermath, there had to be like a complete, there was a complete tearing down and then a like rebuilding and a restructuring.

And so banning believes that right now we're in the process of this tear down that needs to be rebuilt and he wants to completely tear everything down and have a new order come up that completely destroys democracy as we know it. He feels that the first aspect of this was a financial crisis in 2008. And it kind of is true that after that, the Tea Party came up and these Tea Party insurgents infiltrated the Republican Party. So the Republicans had no other option but to listen to the population. They had no other option, but to listen to the people because the people

were the ones that infiltrated the Republicans to get shit passed. And they ended up taking over and they ended up gutting like the Republican Party and now we have all these idiots there that no longer want to work along party lines are like, no, no, we're not going to go through politics. We're going to listen to the people. That's what we are. We listen to the people. But the people are idiots that just, you know, are screaming about these

wild things and they're not realizing that no one gives a shit about them. Well, the people are, I mean, the people are confused, right? Yes, yes, yes, confused because they don't know what's happened. No one like the info that they're getting is coming from sources that they're not, for example, even this fourth, what's it called? Fourth turning. Yeah, I mean, we got to look it up to see if it's real because these days you don't know the fourth turning could have been invented in the basement

of the fucking Huffington Post by somebody who's like, right, we don't know. So this is the entire country, right? Or the world right now is that we are, we are, it used to be the news happens. You hear the news and you're like, fuck, I guess that happened. Now you hear the news. You're like, well, what corporation is warped based? There's no trust. Yeah.

And isn't that one of the first signs of fascism is that you don't trust. They make it so that you can't trust anything. You have to look to one person for like the real source of things. That's it. Yeah. That's one of the signs, man. I'm scary. Bannon's scary.

So, but even so, if we are collapsing into fascism, then what better time is there to start this like personally trying to connect with being honest with yourself because really, you know, if the media is giving us fake news, who fucking cares? It's entertainment. Don't fall for that shit anyway. But if you're giving yourself fake news, you're fucked. Yeah.

If the reports you're giving yourself are like, no, I'm all right. You know what? I'm all right. Yeah. I feel, I'm not so, I'm not so, you know what? I feel fine, even though deeper than that, you're like, oh, yeah. No. And, and, and also if it is going to shit and we are just tumbling towards

destruction and whatever, I'd rather be, you know, like a dumb positive person who can hold their head high than just like this, you know, sad apocalyptic, you know what I mean? Sure. I'd rather just be like okay with myself and, and be like, well, you know, it took me a long time to get it together, but at least I'm on the way now, you know, and instead of just like, you know, the withering and wallowing, which I've done, I can't judge people for doing it because I've been there.

You know, yeah, sure. And I mean, we all have, you know, yes, but, you know, it's, it's a, I mean, it would make sense that, you know, things go to shit finally when I find some semblance of, you know, like when you're crushing on stage, when you finally are getting your comedic voice in only six years, you're up there crushing New York audiences, and then the whole fucking economy collapses and it's devolves into fascism. Yeah, there's no more comedy left.

I really caught the last crane out of town to nowhere. I think no, you'll, you will, you'll, we'll still need it in the camps, man. We'll need it in the FEMA camps. No, I don't think you have anything to worry about. I'm the thing is about it is the apocalypse is always happening. The moment the big bang happened was the beginning of the end. The beginning is the beginning of the end. Wait, what is that diva lyric?

Yeah, the diva lyric, the beginning was the end of everything. So no matter what, it's the fucking apocalypse. Yeah, yeah. But you get to decide whether you are going to be the apocalypse and what more, what is more beautiful than the power of your own decision? You know, yeah, which might get taken away. But oh, no, they can't take it, brother. Not within ourselves.

No, they can't take it. They you can't God, this is talking about a cheat. You can't they can't put out the light. That's the great frustration of the tyrant. They can, no matter what they do, they cannot extinguish the light. Thus, the fucking flagellation of Christ, the crown of thorns, the crucifixion, the never ending fucking brutality in the last days of that being's life, all desperate attempts from power to extinguish the light and nothing worked.

Nothing could put it out. That's what's cool about it. You the moment you start beaming the light, decide to beam the light, decide to try to find the light to beam the light, you become a revolutionary instantaneously, unfortunately, because that's the world we're in. Yeah, where a lot of people aren't making that decision. Right. Well, I mean, like it's it's a I grew up like I was in love with punk rock and hardcore and scon everything in a there, you know, that whole thing is

like punk is dead or whatever. But it's like, you know what, in in Brazil, in Mexico, in Iran, there are these underground subcultures of teenagers and like kids in their 20s that are putting on these secret punk rock shows where people are showing up en masse and all the songs are about fighting back and yeah, revolution. And it's like, no, it's not dead. It just moves, you know what I mean? And I feel like right now is a perfect time for people to come together

and not destroy things violently, but to come together with thoughts and ideas and and and stand up and come together, you know. Yeah, love it, man. Yeah. Howdy, Krishna, my friend. Hell yeah. So much for doing this with me. Wow. Oh, of course.

Where can they find you? Man, you can find me. I got a website, IanFindance.com, I-A-N-F-I-D-A-N-C-E. And it's the same on my Twitter and Instagram is enimal, I-A-N-I-M-A-L. Great. You got any shows coming up? Yeah, man. Tonight, I'm finishing out Liberty Live. Two shows tonight up in Western IAC.

I don't know when this comes out. It comes out, it'll probably be Sunday. So yeah, Sunday. Oh, cool. I'm doing a week at the creek this week. Yeah, Monday, February 6th to February 8th. That's the creek in the cave, a really cool club in New York. Definitely go see him. Guys, go see him.

He's so fucking funny. Definitely, definitely, definitely watch. It blew my mind. Your set blew my mind. Thanks, man. Well, I hope we do more of these podcasts. Love to. Thank you for christening my new podcast studio with your great energy.

Thanks, man. Thank you so much. That was Ian Fidance, everybody. You can connect with him by going to IanFidance.com. Much thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. Don't forget to go to Squarespace.com. Sign up, use offer code Duncan. You will get 10% off. And thank you all for continuing to listen.

We got some killer episodes coming up with Jason Woove and Hamilton Morris. I'll see you soon. Hare Krishna. So give a little love. It's Macy's friends and family. Get an extra 30% off great gifts for her just in time for mothers'

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