E179 - Reggie Watts: The Absurdity of Being a Human Being

In this conversation, Reggie Watts explores creativity not as a skill reserved for a few, but as the fundamental way human beings relate to reality itself. From comedy and music to improvisation, paradox, and play, Reggie reflects on how we’re constantly creating our experience of life—often without realizing it. We talk about absurdity as a doorway to truth, humor as a form of instantaneous awakening, and why laughter momentarily dissolves identity, ideology, and certainty. Reggie shares how improvisation shapes his philosophy of living, why structure exists to be transcended, and how playfulness restores a sense of freedom in a world that often feels rigid and over-defined. BON CHARGE - 15% off red light therapy products I personally use https://www.boncharge.com/knowthyself [Code: KNOWTHYSELF] André's Book Recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list ___________ 00:00 Intro - Reggie Watts 04:54 The absurdity of being human 07:21 The insight gained through self-reflection 11:34 The philosophy of improv 19:06 Realizing the artist in you 24:27 Ad: BON CHARGE 25:44 Reggie’s form of death meditation 38:14 Altered states as a reference point 46:09 Not all transpersonal experiences are equal 52:43 Reframing anxiety after altered states 1:03:25 It’s all an illusion 1:12:44 Service to self vs service to others 1:19:28 Building community 1:23:15 Closing thoughts ___________ Episode Resources: https://www.reggie-watts.com/ https://www.instagram.com/reggiewatts https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/ https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcast https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We're creating our relationship to reality every nanosecond that we're alive. We're always creating. I think the most important thing is not to get better at creating, it's getting better at allowing yourself to view yourself as a creative entity.

• 0:13André Duqum?

  I'm just curious, like, how do you think people can realize the artist inside of them?

• 0:17Speaker 00

  Some people are like, "I'm not good at anything," or "I'm not an artist," and stuff like that. I'm like, "That's not true." There's plenty of things that we do. You could, like, make a smoothie really well, not compartmentalize and say, "I'm good at this, not good at this." It's like, well, that's only as true as you want to believe. These dark times are here for a reason, and those reminders are the things that keep you going. This reality is a Muppet reality, just a bunch of goofiness. It's all silly. Even if it gets really dark, it's still weird, and that's what I love. Everything turns into a game at that point, like, fighting for fun. And I think, recognize yourself in others. There's a phrase that I wrote on a T-shirt, "When in doubt, zoom out." Like, it's that zoomed-out perspective that gives us context for how ridiculous it is that you even exist in this moment right now.

• 1:04André Duqum?

  Reggie, my man.

• 1:05Speaker 00

  Hello.

• 1:07André Duqum?

  Laughter is a moment of instantaneous enlightenment. Heard you say that. Say more.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it's like, this is kind of like realization that, you know, like, what makes people laugh and what triggers laughter. And I just kind of realized that all humor is essentially, it's working off of paradox. So you're setting up an expectation, you're subverting the expectation. And in the annihilation of the two things, and, you know, the creation of all things, but like, when that hits, in that moment, it triggers a response from people. And the response is like, this instantaneous awareness of...

• 1:54Speaker 00

  You know, I mean, for lack of a better term, like everyone's divinity or the or what I like to call the absurdity of life. And so it just kind of flashes and people react and they laugh, you know, because they're like remembering essentially. So in that moment, I always think of it as instantaneous enlightenment. And there's different levels of laughter, there's kinds of gradients, but like, in general, like when people really get it and there's a big moment, it's like, that feels like everyone's on exactly on the same page, no matter what they think or what they believe in. And it's, it's beautiful.

• 2:26André Duqum?

  It seems like because that's the case, you can say things through comedy you otherwise can't often, you know, and how it like laughter is the way you're describing, if it like it kind of cracks the character or ideological identities and whatnot. I'm just curious your thoughts on like your journey over the years, being able to and throughout, like, just the capacity comedy has to be able to see those insights and kind of push at the boundaries of people's identities.

• 2:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, comedy is like, you know, comedy specifically absurdity. I mean, all comedy, but absurdity for me is kind of another level in the sense that it not only unveils the, well, I think it unveils the true nature of reality. So whatever is being talked about, whatever the subject matter is, you're not only revealing what it is, but you're also dismantling what it is. And, and in meaning, meaning that like,

• 3:32Speaker 00

  you are kind of like, you're commenting on what it is, but then you're also reminding people that ultimately, everything is nothing. And, and everything, like everything is paradox, essentially, like reality is. Paradox, paradox is the engine of this reality. So, you know, so you're kind of like diving into that and you're kind of like showing like, not only is this cup a cup, but also this cup is made of subatomic particles that essentially are, that don't exist, but do exist simultaneously, you know, like that type of shit or whatever. So, so the commentary, so to me absurdity like Salvador Dali and, you know, these kind of, you know, visual artists or video artists. And they, they kind of break apart the notion of what is reality or even AI generated video.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  You know, there's a guy called Doopy Do on Instagram, brilliant Russian video artist, hyper surreal, but like it looks, all the characters look very hyper real, but like super dream core. And the way that things transform and morph and things, things of that nature are very, you know, it's like what we see in the dream staters, like dream logic and, but seeing it so crisp and so clear is so jarring because it like, oh, this is, this looks like reality, but also this is in a way like how I wish reality looked in my waking life or something like that.

• 4:54André Duqum?

  Yeah. It's, I'm curious to hear your more, to hear more of your thoughts around absurdity, realizing the absurdity of like the human experience. It feels like either through contemplation, meditation, psychedelic experience, lived experience, you kind of see the inherent paradoxical nature of life, like you're speaking to, and one but can only laugh. And it also like, and I feel like the more you realize how there are always many sides to one thing, like the more loosely I feel like I personally hold all things.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:30André Duqum?

  Which I think allows you to approach things with like, being able to connect to them instead of through your ideas of them in a sense.

• 5:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Well, you don't have to take things as face value. I mean, I think the face value part of reality is like, just to kind of function to get through. Like if you need to go to the store, it's like you need to. You know, use a road and, you know, get in a car and whatever or however you get there. But like, um, there's kind of like a functional, practical nature of just like accepting things at face value, but like, but ultimately, when we, when we really contemplate existence, things like that, all the things that we do take for granted, then you start to reformat and question like, do I have to think of it this way or like, or why do I think of it this way? Or, you know, every time someone says this, or every time I see this, I always think this, that's an interesting, that's interesting. Why is that? You know? And so

• 6:22Speaker 00

  I think, uh, questioning reality, you know, bumper sticker, but like, um, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's kind of like, it's the bonus of being alive. Like you, you, you kind of realize you can ask these questions and that you can at any given point. It's not a, it's not a moment, you know, like last night I was talking to some friends, like, you know, I was like, you don't need to designate a time to meditate. You don't need to designate a time to be thoughtful and you don't need to, it's like this can happen at any time and it can, and it's happening all the time. So just, it's up to you when you want to notice these things. But the more that you do, the more that you're, you feel like you're awake in a dream, you know, and that feeling is incredible because then you start to, you

• 7:05Speaker 00

  start to notice synchronicities and things start to line up and things that, um, you know, you may have thought of many, many, many ages ago, you know, suddenly manifest and, you know, it's, it's just like reality changes in that, and as opposed to like just kind of playing it like it's on rails.

• 7:21André Duqum?

  Yeah. What do you, what is the difference for you for like the insight that's gained through like self-reflection and how you can know yourself through that? The versus creation? Cause you're like a multi-talented artist that can feels like go into so many different arenas of human expression and super inspiring and, uh, and incredible. And you're also somebody who I know likes to question reality and contemplate the nature of existence. So I'm just curious about your thoughts on the interplay between the two.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, yeah, it's weird. It's like, you know, so within, you know, so without, you know, is kind of the vibe. You know, it's like, well, I mean, self-realization or self-contemplation are, you know, functions similarly to how like physics talks about, you know, spooky action or spooky action at a distance or, you know, the fact that particles can be shared, they can be completely interlinked, you know, across millions and millions and millions of light years, you know, there are these particles are connected independent of space and they mirror each other and that's how quantum computing functions.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  And so that idea is really interesting because then you're like, well, as I contemplate my own self and my own existence, as I'm doing so, it's also affecting the outside, you know, world all around me because ultimately everything boils down to perception and perception. There is no, there's no difference between out there and in here when what you're perceiving is what you're perceiving and that is the only intersection of all the sensors that we have, vision, smell and taste and, you know, whatever you want to add on top of that. But it's an intersection of localization of awareness, you know, so you're like, I'm in reality in this particular place.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  But as we go within, everything changes the way that we perceive outwardly or outwardly, you know, as we're perceiving. So I think they're, they're the same, they're one in the same, you know, it's, it's, uh, yeah, I don't really think there is a difference. You know, it's just like when people are like, do you like music or comedy? I'm like, well, they're kind of both the same.

• 9:32Speaker 02

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• 10:18Speaker 00

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• 10:32Speaker 00

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• 10:33André Duqum?

  I'm curious how, because you're, it's probably one of the highest compliments to say you're very hard to put in a box or define as like what you do because it's like far reaching and to so many different arenas. But how do you describe not just what you do, but like what lights you up most in life and what you found yourself being drawn towards over the past few decades?

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Hmm. I mean, you know, for me, it's, for me, it's just being playful. You know, I'm always playing with reality, you know, playing with friends and joking and reformatting things and calling things not what they're supposed to be called. And, you know, it's just all my life, you know, I pretend I live on a starship because we do live on a starship. But like, you know, it's, uh, it's the playful nature of things. So for me, like getting on stage is not really, or performing or whatever it is, or even recording, I'm not really thinking of it as, um, now I'm doing this, you know? It's, it's like now is, is more of attention on what I'm doing, but it's not really, it's

• 11:37Speaker 00

  like, you know, someone shines a light on what I'm already doing, you know, in a sense. And obviously it changes a little bit because I know I'm on stage, but like, uh, yeah, the, yeah, it's weird. It's like, it's all, um, yeah, I just see it from the same thing. Like I used to describe like creativity, like friends would be like, I want to do dance, but I'm also into painting and, you know, and I'm like, well, why would you, why would you choose between them? You know, it's like you're the creative entity with a bunch of creative tools all around you and you can rotate to any tool set, grab them and start fucking with them, you know, like it doesn't, but you're the center of it. You're not like, I'm only good at this and I'm only good at that.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  It's like you are a creative individual and certain tools resonate with you and certain tools don't, you know, or certain tools that don't might in the future. But if you view yourself as the center of it, then you increase the likelihood of having access to more tools.

• 12:34André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 12:36André Duqum?

  Yeah, I love the quote from Alan Watts that says, "The secret of life is to be completely engaged with what you're doing, and instead of calling it work, you realize it's play."

• 12:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:47André Duqum?

  And it feels like it's just super on point with, I guess, your philosophy of how you approach life and how you like, live life through the philosophy of improv. I'm curious how, yeah, what your thoughts are on like, how improv has changed your philosophy and the way you approach living.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah, it's kind of everything, you know, improv is like, because I started realizing like even, you know, the way you're gonna get up from a chair or, you know, the, you know, you like deciding to like go over and turn on a light switch or pick up a pencil or a pen or something like that. Like, it's all improvisation at the end of the day, even though you've done it a million times. It's like your body, whether, no matter how conscious of it you are or not, it's like you are still, because it's, because we're living in time and time moves forward and everything's different, even though, you know, it has the appearance of doing the same thing daily. It's never the same because it's, time has changed, you know. So, you know, so for me, improvisation is happening all the time.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  So it means that any time I'm doing anything, I can choose how I'm going to go about it, you know, whether it's opening the, my car with the door handle, you know, like, oh, maybe I'm gonna open it with my other hand or I'll try getting into the car a different way or I'll try grabbing this can in a weird way or, you know, I'm gonna throw this pencil in the air and then I'm gonna try to catch it behind my back and then I'm gonna start writing my thing, you know, whatever it is, everything turns into a game at that point. And in doing so, like, it just increases the fantasticness of life and harder to get down that way, like, I mean, truly down, like where you really believe you have limited options, like that.

• 14:29André Duqum?

  This is just kind of coming to me now as a thought, like,

• 14:33André Duqum?

  The way I'm kind of thinking of improv, or like this way sort of of of living is like, one, there's just like a playful way to like be spontaneous in the moment and do something that's a pattern interrupt to how you've like typically done things. And like the way that you do and act is tied to the way you think. But then there's also like cultivating a skill. So then you can get rid of the knowledge of the theory and then be in the music. You know, like the levels of learning, which I'm sure you're familiar with of like, starting with unconscious incompetence, where you're like, you don't even know that you don't know. And then you have conscious incompetence. So like, you know that you don't know how to tie the shoes, how to play the scale or whatever. And then you have this conscious competence where like you can do the thing,

• 15:16André Duqum?

  but it takes conscious effort to be present with it and to. And then the last step is unconscious competence, where you can completely forget about the theory and the scales that you've learned on the piano, for example. And then you can really like flow and have range. I'm curious how you, because I know your background in studying jazz in college and your music background, like how you think about that tension of like, doing the work to then be able to throw away the theory and sense and then play from that space.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, it's as funny, as much as I love improvisation, I'm definitely very glad that I learned classical,

• 15:57Speaker 00

  you know, where I have classically trained, you know, on piano and violin. And it's like, I'm glad I have those things because like, you know, at a certain point, I kind of broke off from it. And I was like, this isn't really working for me. But, um, yeah, I mean, it's like, yeah, learn the structure to realize you never needed the structure in the first place, you know, in a way. I mean, kind of, but like, um, yeah, I mean, that's the thing. It's like, if you become really good at one thing and you get good at it to the point at which it feels like, like it's a form of expression that you don't think about, like speaking in a conversation, it's like that fluid. Like you, that can be applied to every single thing in your life. You know, like even something that you don't know how to do. There's a weird like you can kind of inhabit the.

• 16:42Speaker 00

  The embodiment and the resonance that you have with something else, you can actually kind of turn that to another thing. Not to say that like you can suddenly become a gymnast, you know, and you know, you're really good at like calligraphy or something like that. But there is like an aspect of it that can kind of accelerate your understanding of something. You know, if you come into that, you're like, oh, no, this is, how is this related to what I'm really great at? And I think that that's kind of an interesting thing to notice. But yeah, I mean, essentially the surfing feeling, that's, that's, I like that analogy because, you know, it's like surfing is a great analogy because it's like, well, you're, you're in nature and you're,

• 17:24Speaker 00

  you're empathizing and sympathizing and synergizing with the forces of nature. But it's not just you. There's a device that you're on and the device is the surfboard and or whatever, boogie board, whatever the fuck. But anyways, surfboard, you're on the surfboard and the surfboard is an idea. It's something that has, that we came up with collectively a long, long time ago. And, you know, the Hawaiians or whoever it was, you know, it's like, they were like, oh, if I take this stick and I can stand, oh shit, I can stand on this stick. It's like, yeah, and I can, and once you're on the stick, you know, whatever, the evolution of that, but the meta-

• 17:56André Duqum?

  I'm sure it happened just like that.

• 17:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm sure it did. They're just like, dude, and they're just like, oh, that's pretty cool. They're like, how can I do it? Oh, no, it's kind of like this. And they're like, oh, look what I, I just figured, oh, fuck, now they're, oh, fuck. Now I'm gonna start doing, you know, it's like, this is ours. It's like, no, it's ours too. But, um, you know, I mean, I mean, I'm sure it came from probably just like sharks, you know, because sharks surf, you know, like there's always those pictures of like sharks, like surfing, which is just crazy to me that like, they're like, yeah, but they're just killing machines. It's like, nah, there's something in there. They like to have fun. Sure, they're hungry all the time, but they do like to have fun. No, but you know, it's like we observe nature and then we're like, ah. But I think like that idea of,

• 18:37Speaker 00

  The experience of surfing, which is that flow state that people talk about, where some people are like, I'm not good at anything, or I'm not an artist and stuff like that. I'm like, that's not true. There's like plenty of things that we do. You could like make a smoothie really well, or you can make a cup of coffee really well. And that artistry and awareness that goes into that, it's like, again, you can apply that. It's scalable, so you can apply that to other things in your life and not compartmentalize and say, I'm good at this, not good at this. It's like, well, that's only as true as you want to believe. So I think, yeah, improvisation, it's like, once you experience the flow state, you can start experiencing the flow state in all things, even when you're watching people in their flow states.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  Like when I love seeing contemporary dance, you know, and you see these dancers that have trained all of their lives and they're performing this piece choreographed by this choreographer as a vision, you know, and like the dancers are expressing that vision and the movement that they're experiencing, you feel like the movement, you know, it's like what white people like sports, you know, like they embody the movement of what they're watching and that gives them the sense of action and drama and liberation, you know, or disappointment sometimes, but whatever. But you kind of become it. And so that's kind of the flow state. It's like, that's how I like to look at it. So when I'm observing something like that, I can use that.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  It doesn't mean I have to be good at the thing necessarily, but I can understand what it would feel like.

• 20:06André Duqum?

  Yeah. Yeah, I'm thinking of everyone who's listening right now, who some, you know, to varying degrees, I'm sure there's a spectrum of people who feel like they have the natural proclivity towards the traditional forms of the arts. But it's cool because you're kind of describing being an artist as like the intention and attention you bring to something and the way you do something, not even just like what it is. So like how, I'm just curious, like, how do you think people can become and realize the artist inside of them and everything they do?

• 20:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, that's one thing. It's like, I'm not a big fan of people compartmentalizing, saying like, I'm not an artist, or you know, or it's like, I'm a creative, you know, or whatever. You know, it's like capitalist terms, whatever, but like, everybody's an artist, you know? It's like, we're all creative. That's all we're doing is creating, you know? Even like, we're creating our relationship to reality every nanosecond that we're alive, you know? It's like, so we're always creating. And I think- When you decide that you are creating, I guess, you're like, now I'm creating, you know, whatever. It's like, now I'm on the clock. I'm creating now. But, you know, yeah, for, I mean, I really to try to encourage that in other people, you know, like when they're like, I'm not really good at this, or I'm good at that. So yeah, but you're a carpenter, you know, like, you know, you do, yeah, but I'm not really,

• 21:24Speaker 00

  I'm not sculpting. And there's like, yeah, but you're installing cabinetry and it's like, looks amazing, you know, and there's a craftsman. People are like, yeah, but that's a craft. It's like, it's not art. It's like, no, that's not true, man. It's like, you're creating everything, anything you're doing, anything you're making, washing the dishes, you know. So I, so I try to encourage people to maintain a larger awareness of what they are, you know, as opposed to just limiting and compartmentalizing. Because again, that's a capitalist mindset. Like, I'm now I'm doing this, now I'm doing this, now I'm doing that. Now I'm being creative. I've assigned time for me to be creative now. But when that's not happening, I'm not creative. No, I now I'm just doing my work or whatever it is, you know. But, but I think like, people who are questioning

• 22:08Speaker 00

  their creativity are questioning whether they should spend more time creating, you know, officially. I think it's important, I think the most important thing is not to get better at creating, it's getting better at allowing yourself to view yourself as a creative entity.

• 22:26André Duqum?

  It's interesting because I completely agree. And it, we live, especially in Western modern culture, where the education system shapes us to sort of identify with the intellect in a way, where we like, live life often through our ideas of life and through like our models of reality, instead of indirect experience of reality. And like the psychological term of like, top down versus bottom up processing, right? Like, we see a bird and it's like, it's a raven. And like, we think we know what it is. And then we stop experiencing the raven.

• 22:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. Oh, I love that. Yeah.

• 23:01André Duqum?

  So yeah, I'm curious your thoughts on like, to like, kind of return to more of that like, bottom up processing, like experiencing life from a fresh place. You seem to do that extremely well.

• 23:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I hope so. You know, I hope so. Yeah, I don't. I don't like that feeling of like knowing like I know. Yeah, yeah. You know, like I, I kind of have this weird like it rubs me the wrong way. You know, like, I'll definitely, I'll have like a thing where like I, I understand what it is, you know, but that's different than claiming absolute knowledge of it. It's like, I understand when I'm saying I'm understanding. It's not that I understand like all, all the details necessarily. It's that I, I understand the feeling of the result of whatever it is that that thing produces, right? Or even if it's just observing something and you're like,

• 23:58Speaker 00

  what is that? You know, so why, why I'm like always like, oh, what is that? You know, I'm looking at all the things or I'm looking at the most mundane thing like a a screwdriver that I've been looking at for, I've had in my toolbox for a long time. And then finally, one day I just go, you know what? Let me check this out. And then, you know, I look at the little fine print of like the company, what it's made of. And it's like, oh, and then they put like the size of the tool over here. Oh, that's cool. And then the back of it, oh, and it's rounded. Why is it round? Oh, it's rounded because, oh, you can get oh, this hex tool, it's got like a little ball thing with like a missing like ring of metal. Oh, it's because you can actually loosen or tighten at an angle. It's like, oh, that's why that is. You know what I mean? Like, I love doing those, having those moments where I take the face value things that I'm using every day or see every day and I just kind of stop and go,

• 24:43Speaker 00

  actually, let me actually look at that. You know, the camera that you use all the time that you stare at all the time. And then you just stop and you go like, let me look at this thing. And you're like, oh shit. Oh, I never realized. Oh, there's a thing that, you know, whatever. Because everything in life, especially that's made by humans, essentially is a philosophy. People designed it a certain way for a reason, even if it's fast and cheap, like there's a function, but why do they decide to use these materials? Or why is it this thick? Or why is it this thin or whatever? So I don't know if that answers the question. But yeah, I don't know. That, that's the fascination that I have with trying to not take things for granted.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  Is a, is a, is a, is a huge thing that's generally on my mind, like operationally. Yeah.

• 25:28André Duqum?

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• 26:55André Duqum?

  And instead of like, we were speaking to like, living through our ideas of it or our own prejudices and beliefs and infatuations and imaginations and desires of who somebody is or what life or reality is.

• 27:10André Duqum?

  To like be able to pay attention and have perception open up, like you said, instead of just the face value of what the form of the thing is, to like experience more of what the essence of the thing is. And, and like the Buddhist yogic contemplative practices

• 27:31André Duqum?

  have like, kind of like a roadmap to be able to like deepen your levels of perception capacity and, and how the depth of your ability to pay attention can glean you new insights about that which you're paying attention to. And it's, it's cool because it's like,

• 27:48André Duqum?

  You're going from this identity of being a material human being that is just like a happy accident that is of all these like billions of years of evolution of atoms colliding and here you are and you're a kind of like life is predestined in front of you to like realizing that you are a creative act in and of itself like you spoke to earlier and you're like in this participation of this alive universe and you get to engage with it in a much deeper way. So I know that was just kind of a whole lot of words actually, but does anything kind of come up in that thought?

• 28:24Speaker 00

  No, I mean, I think it's like, you know, like there was that movie, oh, it's like a Jimmy Stewart movie where he like, he has this experiences this whole alternate reality where he doesn't have a family and he doesn't blah, blah, blah, America, no, not America, unfortunately. It's a Wonderful Life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a Wonderful Life. Yeah. So what I love about that movie, or even like actually A Christmas Carol, like they have similar things where like someone experiences life outside of themselves that is completely different than how what their life used to be. And then they see the absence of their

• 29:08Speaker 00

  presence or the absence of that life because of different choices or whatever. And, and but when they snap back into it and they realize, oh, I'm, I'm here and you know, I saw all these things, whatever. It's a very similar to like a trip, you know, like going on like a five M E O D M T or something like that and you're, and you like blasted, you know, to like close to the Monad and you're like, oh, the awareness of awareness, you know, that which does not have a name, you know, that these types of, you get close, you graze a little bit of that. And when you come back, you're like so empowered to be like, I'm taking advantage of life. I'm, I'm alive. I'm, you know, it's that feeling of being alive in the dream and then like, okay, well now what are you going to do with this awareness? Like now, you know, what are you going to do? And that excitement.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  Like that doesn't, you know, that's the thing to shoot for. It's like, it's always, I'm trying to remember that to like, oftentimes, like when I lived in New York, I'd be standing on the subway platform and I would imagine myself tripping and falling into the, onto the rails, you know, like as the, the train is approaching or someone pushing me, you know, last second. And that's why I usually would stand by a pole or something like that. But, um, but I was doing that constantly, imagining like my ankle, ankle rolling off the sidewalk and me falling in and I was just, as a car is passing, you know, and so, um, but even though that's a weird exercise, it's not even an exercise, it's just something that naturally happens. But that, imagining those things and then those things not happening, and then you continue

• 30:36Speaker 00

  to be walking on the sidewalk, it created like these like micro mini, you know, Christmas carols or like micro mini, yeah, it's a wonderful life. So whatever. And, or Huck Finn, you know, like experiencing, you know, pretending he was dead or whatever. And then, you know, like being in the rafters and watching people celebrating his death. And like, you know, whatever. Point is, you start noticing these things and you start appreciating what, where you aren't, and that kind of reinforces your appreciation of where you are.

• 31:04André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  You know?

• 31:06André Duqum?

  Yeah, yeah. Have you ever done like a death meditation?

• 31:09Speaker 00

  A death meditation? No, what is that?

• 31:11André Duqum?

  You're gonna meditate on your death essentially, but like you have the guided kind of process to kind of like really like sink into what the experience will be like the moment you're, you're dying.

• 31:21Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:22André Duqum?

  What you're doing in sort of your own absurdist way, tripping onto the railroads or, you know?

• 31:26Speaker 00

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent. Also, like, you know, five AM a DMT really does that. It really, I mean, because that's the closest you can get to experiencing, you know, a chemical rush of what happens supposedly, you know, when the body ceases, it's like you get this flood of DMT, you know, and it's like boom. And I think that, that's the handshake, that's the handoff, you know, it's like the energetic handoff of consciousness, you know, in that moment. And I think, you know, and, and also, uh, that would include all the dissociative trips that I've been on and been like, you know, experimenting with multiple different forms of dissociatives, you know, that, um,

• 32:07Speaker 00

  Pretty high strengths, you know, in the psychonaut community, you know, you know, some of my neuroscientist friends and the group, sensoria group and stuff like that, and the centers for conscious, or centers for, what is it called? I can never remember the acronym, but anyways, it's a consciousness studies group. And they release papers and stuff on various things. But in those states, like I die all the time. It's like I get close to like, oh, I'm so close to just, what if I just let go fully while I'm in this state? Would that, would that, would that allow for my disillusion of self?

• 32:47Speaker 00

  Like to the point at which I wouldn't come back to the awareness of what I am right now? I don't know if that's technically possible, but it is, well, I mean, it is possible, but it's, but I don't know if it's necessary, you know, but it's a good, it's an interesting question to get to that point when you're that inundated and so close to paradoxical thinking that you're like, what if I just went into the paradox? What if I went through the meat grinder? And in essence, like we are experiencing paradox in all kinds of forms. But all that to say that those questions are very interesting and they've been happening, especially since the five of me, a DMT, every dissociative experience I've had, I

• 33:30Speaker 00

  could take a tiny, tiny amount of ketamine and suddenly I'm having one of the most insane trips imaginable and I'm around. And then the weirdest thing is that someone can come up to me and be like, hey, do you need a screwdriver or something? And I can just completely snap into like, yeah, absolutely. Let me go get it for you. I mean, it's insane. I'm like, how am I even able to be this, where I'm like so deep into a hole and then I hear someone's voice and I'm like, oh, okay, let me go get, you know, get up, go get the thing, hand it to them, sit back down and go into. So it's interesting, like when you become aware of the idea of losing yourself, losing the idea of your self consciousness through death, through the body, feeling like your body, you know, feeling like anxiety, anxiety, anxiety, and you're like, and then it just

• 34:15Speaker 00

  goes away and you're trying, you have a vague memory of what that anxiety was, but now you're no longer there because you've kind of crossed over to a certain degree. And I don't know. It's an interesting question and I do love that that feeling. And I know that that can be attained through meditation, things like that. But for me, I really enjoy the experience of dissociatives because they they it's just it puts me in a mind state where I'm like, this is the most familiar state, you know, this is this, this is the state that I think all things are. And I do feel when I'm improvising, I'm there, but I don't know. The dissociative state is very interesting and there's so many different types of dissociatives. So noticing the different effects and stacking them differently, yielding different states,

• 35:00Speaker 00

  which is the the state is the it's a comparison, well, it's a comparative engine for your awareness to the state. And and so when you put yourself in something that completely scrambles your idea of what anything is, reality, your relation to your body, the relation to the objects around you, the relation to the sounds around you, the relations to awareness itself, observing itself within within yourself, within. But, you know, those types of things, I find that absolutely, it's such a beautiful game. I love it. And sometimes it's dark and gross and sometimes it's very uncomfortable. But I'm appreciative of all of it. It's it's always weird. And that's the thing that I really love about it. Even if it gets really dark, it's still weird and that's what I love. Yeah.

• 35:44André Duqum?

  How long have you been experimenting?

• 35:46Speaker 00

  You know, weirdly with dissociative since I was a teenager, because we used to do Robitussin, which had dextromethorphan in it, which is a dissociative. Not really used it recreationally, like in the psychonaut community, people don't get DXM and do DXM. It's kind of a dirty dissociative. But as a kid, you know, we would drink, go to the grocery store, get a bunch of bottles of Robitussin, drink four, four to six ounces, you know, and and it was a heavy substance. I mean, it was a really heavy substance and the substance. Really bonded us like as a group because you know it made us incredibly empathic when we're on the high, very kind of robot functioning robotically and like hyper pragmatically in

• 36:29Speaker 00

  a super abstract way and having incredible adventures on on it. And so, yeah, so I didn't realize that after my robotestin phase and then it was mostly just weed and mushrooms for a long time and LSD. And then I didn't really try anything. And then MDMA came along, you know, my later twenties. And I tried that, but really I only did it like three or four times and it was diminishing returns. I noticed it was diminishing every time. And I was like, I'm not really, that's not really my thing. Not that I was like, I'll never do it. But it just like, I'm not gravitated towards that, to our pull towards it. And then it was, you know, just those basic things for a while, just like marijuana and stints of like, not doing stuff for a while and coming back to marijuana, whatever. But then

• 37:13Speaker 00

  when I discovered ketamine, which I was afraid to do for a really long time because of the stigma of like, horse tranquilizer and K holes and all this stuff. And then when I finally experienced it at a concert in Maine, northern Maine, called the, I think it's called the Great North or something like that. And then my friend's band, Lettuce, was playing their jam band. They were like playing on the main stage and there's an artist, like a big artist tent that was close to it. And there was a massage therapist. I was like, I'll give you a massage. I was like, great. And so we started doing the massage while they went on. And then at a certain point, before she started the massage, she was like, I've been experimenting with ketamine and massage. So I was experienced, experienced it. I was like, no, no, no, that's okay. You know, it's ketamine. That's

• 37:53Speaker 00

  crazy. And then the massage was like really good. And I was like, wait a minute, I'm totally being offered this experience for free. It's easy, you know, it's like, fuck it, I'll do it. So I was like, yeah, I'll try it. And then I did. And it was incredible. Like, like viewing my body as like, like. Like a loose structure of molecules in space, you know, and like, oh, fuck like, oh, I'm zooming out. And then as she's like massaging, I'm like zooming into the tissue where she's massaging and I'm imagining like molecules being realigned, you know, so that the tissue is like in a more healthy state, stuff like that. You know, it was so incredible. So after that, I kind of didn't do ketamine for a really long time until

• 38:37Speaker 00

  I moved to California and during the pandemic, a friend of mine, I bought some ketamine and just sat on it for like a year because I was afraid to do it again. And then I started doing it and then had like more incredible journeys and insights. I wanted to share it with friends. So friends would come over and I'd do one on ones with them and we'd lay on my bed and listen to cool minimalist music or whatever, Ryan, you know, music for airports, whatever. And, and that, and that was kind of like, that began my reignited my kind of fascination with it. And then, yeah, so now I'm here.

• 39:12André Duqum?

  Yeah. Here you are. There's a few things that, that definitely came up with anyone who's kind of gone more of the psychonautic route, or they, through these altered states of consciousness is you have these experiences which give you like a reference point, a possibility of like a way of being. This like, and subjective experience of like, of what it's like to put down the psychological baggage that you normally carry around in your life. And like, like the way that you described it was like, it's kind of like a remembering to your natural state of what it's like to be you without all the extra

• 39:53André Duqum?

  stuff. I'm curious how, I suppose successfully you've integrated sort of the distinction in your day to day life of the observer and the experience because no matter how many experiences you have and how many, so to speak, rides and trips you go on, coming back into sober waking consciousness, to be able to integrate it and embody the experience in a way where you maintain that continuity of awareness, where there's like, There's the, the content of your experience is placed in a larger context of awareness.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:28André Duqum?

  And being able to experience that more and more. In my personal experience, like, everybody has their own journey with it. I have a lot of friends who are, you know, definitely more experimenting more on the psychedelic path. And I've dabbled in the past.

• 40:42André Duqum?

  Just curious what all the hype was about.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, of course.

• 40:46André Duqum?

  But like, at a certain point, my personal journey was like, I actually don't need another experience to know that, that there's, that, that, that there's a there there. And the real work becomes to like, actually integrate what I know. Because there's like, there's like, always this balance of like, awareness and integration. And I feel like, if we're honest with ourself, we usually have the awareness that we need to, to like, move progress and grow internally. And it's like the integration that most of us tend to need more. So I'm curious, what is your thought process around like, the integration and embodiment of the expanded awarenesses?

• 41:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I've actually gone, I've gone pretty deep about it where, you know, because I really love drugs. And, and, yeah, I really love it. Because it gets me, it gets me to deeper places, even socially, you know? When someone who is, you know, like, I met this guy named Jack Aloka, who's one of the most measured psychonauts. He is crazy successful, like, writing programs for like, data mining for medical research and, works with the University of Melbourne, has a, has a position there, a PhD, working on essentially consciousness studies. And this guy's insane. He's like, held his breath underwater for 20 minutes.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  There's like a video of him, he thinks it's funny, well, I think it is funny, but like, he's like-

• 42:12André Duqum?

  Oxygen assisted?

• 42:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had a lot of training, a lot of training, a lot of training. But yeah, so he's, he's managed, or no, he's done, I think he's done like, within 15 minutes. There was another guy, Brandon, who has a longevity institute in Las Vegas. When I went to the Censuria, it's a, essentially, it's a- Let's call it a wizard meetup, but it's sensori is like a consortium of neuroscientists and psychonauts that meet in outside of Porto, Portugal, on this kind of resort space. And then they give talks about like the current state of neuroscience and pharmaceutical pharmacology and dealing with like tribal indigenous medicines, all the way to new synthesized compounds.

• 42:58Speaker 00

  And then there's an apothecary and you go through like a psyche valve and a healthy valve. It's it's loose, you know, it's not like super, but it's honest and you present this information so that they have that. There's a whole system, but you can go to the apothecary in the evening and you can ask for 200 milligrams of methequilone and blah, blah, blah, blah, format and blah, blah, blah, mixed burr or whatever it is. And you can like create these stacks and then they note all the amounts that you take. So you'll have a record of everything that you've taken at different times and then you can see the compounds list and see your different stacks and you know, go about that way. Psychonautics is an interesting practice because for a long time I was like, oh, I'm just a drug user, you know, like I love drugs, but I've never thought of myself as like, I use drugs or I'm a drug user.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  I like drugs. I like drugs because a lot of people are afraid of them and everything in life is a drug. Life is the drug, you know, and drugs are not outside of life. Life, drugs, whether, whatever it is, that's all made of the same materials and all the same molecules as everything in the universe. So it's not something outside of yourself. The viewpoint, because of again, capitalism, it's like, oh, this is an extra thing that's added that makes you feel a certain way. And that's not the real thing. It's just a thing that you're experiencing that it's making you experience. And once you're off of it, now you're now you're you again. It's like, that's not true. You were you the entire time. So it depends on what resonates with your consciousness and your awareness.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  So I never really had the natural tendency of placing limitations on what that is. However, I did have the stigma in my mind of like, oh, maybe because you know, my friend he does like Kundalini blah, blah, it's like he's better than I am because I bought, I'm like, no, that's bullshit. It's like my level of awareness. Is no different than it's all this, all the roads lead to the same place, which is perception, awareness of self. So for me, I had to actually go through a lot of training and this was not training, but observation and conversation and dialogue with within myself. But like, am I just using this stuff just to, is this bypass, spiritual bypassing? Am I like, and then I was like, I just kind of arrived as like, no, that's bullshit. It's like, it's all just as valid.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  And for me, I, for him, like being underwater for 15 minutes or whatever, or he and I doing a crazy stack of compounds. And then just like suddenly within the geodesic dome, because it's always a geodesic dome. But like, we're in the geodesic dome and like I turned towards him and we kind of hold hands for a second and then we kept holding hands and we looked in each other's eyes. And we just looked at each other's eyes for about someone, I think someone timed it. It was like roughly 23 minutes, never stopped. We didn't prepare for this, it just happened. I, I think I blinked once, it was like tears were just streaming down, not from sadness or anything, it was just because my eyes were open. My eyes were like, you need moisture, what's going on? But um, I was like, and we went through eras.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  We were like staring into each other's eyes and like the eye stayed the same, the point stayed the same, but everything around it was changing and we were like in eras and things of that nature. And I like, well, I'm not like kind of come out of that and go like, well, that drug experience was great. It's like, no, I experienced that. The observer experienced that. It was just another state. So whether you are white river rafting, whether you're hanging by your skin, you know, in a Native American tradition, or you're at a sweat lodge, or you're sewing, or you're knitting, or you're getting into some kind of a hypnotic state from driving on a track in a fast car or whatever it is. It's all the same shit. And so, um, so for me, I don't compartmentalize, like I don't, I don't prioritize.

• 46:33Speaker 00

  I think the relationship to drugs because of the stigma and stuff like that, that creates issues. And I think drugs make you, put you in a state that reminds you of a way of being, that people may misinterpret as the drug being the cause of that. Certainly it is the revelator to that, but it reveals that. But I think the mistake is when people are like, no, heroin makes me feel like this, or cocaine makes me feel more social and I feel like I have energy. When you rely on that mechanism, I think that, that's a problem because now you're not, you're not giving your awareness and your consciousness credit for the experience.

• 47:11André Duqum?

  Yeah, I think for most people, the line between psychonautic self-inquiry and dependence on heightened state of experiences can be very blurry. I do push back on the notion that it's kind of all the same shit. I understand that like there's multiple ways to have a transpersonal experience. But what comes alongside each experience does differ, whether it's an exogenous chemical or through a holotropic breathwork. There's a different physiological cascade of hormones and chemicals that change after the experience alongside the experience. And I think a helpful framework for me was Ken Wilber's like breakdown of the states of consciousness versus the stages of consciousness.

• 47:54André Duqum?

  Like the stage of consciousness is kind of what we are at, like that's our homeostasis, which slowly raises over time as we grow, ideally. The state can come through any stage, through an exogenous chemical, through a holotropic breathwork or meditative journey, or through a big surfing, a big wave, or whatever, you know, flow state experiences. So, yeah, I definitely do have, I think it is important to know that there is a big distinction between them all, and it can be very easy. Well, in what way? What's different about it? Well, I mean, pick any two things. There's, so, I mean, I think there, depending on what experience, or for example, what drug you're taking, is different in the quality of the experience.

• 48:38André Duqum?

  So dissociative is obviously going to be a lot different than a heart opener, you know? Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think many different things can give you what you're referring to as this similar thing, is like experience of your true self, like a lack of self-consciousness, a state and sense of freedom. I think they all can have different textures to them. But the come down and the aftermath and the integration of psychedelic experiences do differ from.

• 49:07Speaker 00

  Endogenously created ones. Yeah, I mean, they do and they don't. Like, they do in that the hard reality, practical functionality of things. So if we observe the stages of things, or the stages, or the different, or the changing of states, or the, what do you call it, like, the return to stasis, or whatever. Or even going into exalted states and things like that. I think that they are as different as you perceive them to be different. But for me, I've, I don't really think there's a difference ultimately. And what I mean by that is, again, and it's not to discount what you're saying. I believe that is a way of viewing it. But ultimately, it just comes down to experience.

• 49:47Speaker 00

  You are the experiencer, and that is beyond the mechanistic decided collective reality that we live in. So of course, there's gonna be like, if I pick this up and there's a drug in it, I'm not on the drug yet, but as soon as I, oh, it's in my system now, all of these, and then we can measure the chemicals and like, everything that happens and all this stuff. But ultimately, it doesn't really matter, because the intersection, the place that you arrive at, is always, it's the, it's the awareness, right? It's the observer and the experiencer. So the experiencer, basically, drugs or experiences, whether you're going on a long walk, or a hike, or you have a near-death experience, because you almost fall off a thing, or whatever.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  All these things are like, there's always something that's with you your entire life. You were observing yourself your entire life. You were always with yourself the entire life. And that is the collective awareness. It is the monad, you know, essentially. And so, so in that, in that essence, when you arrive at that place, doesn't matter what experience you're having, you are in touch with that which never changes, which is always the same, and doesn't exist, but always exists. And so, that is what I kind of mean by that. I think that you are correct in that your, your observation of self as states are transitioning and things like that. And if you view it as like, oh, I just took mushrooms, or I just took DMT, and blah, blah, blah, blah, and now it's like integration, all this stuff.

• 51:12Speaker 00

  But for me, it's like, I don't, I just don't discern between systems or structures and things like that. My awareness is always my awareness in any state I go through. So for me, the drugs, it's like, what method works for you? So, for me, the drugs are maintaining my awareness within the storm of...

• 51:30Speaker 00

  Whatever it is I'm on. So like, for instance, the thing I like to practice, I'm like on a stack of various things and my friends are like terrified or whatever. I'm just like, no, no, it's fine because you are the center of experience. You are the eye of the hurricane. If you, if you believe that you are in the storm, then you'll be thrown about the storm. But if you realize that you are observing yourself within the storm, now you're at the center of the storm. All that to say, like, I have this game that I'll be like, oh, let me do an impression of a normal person. So I'm like heavy in a K-hole or something like that. But, um, and my friends are like totally there too. And I'll be like, watch this, I'm gonna do an impression of a normal person. And then I just like get up and I grab a cup and I'm like, do you guys need anything?

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Do you wanna, um, you know, cause I think Joni's coming over a little bit later and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what I realized, like, the humor of constantly, well, not constantly, but being aware of yourself in these ridiculous situations. And again, I have friends that do science, silent retreat, meditations, all this stuff. I, I love all of it, but like for me, I'm just like, I'd say, I just don't, there's no difference in anything, whether it's a drug state or whatever. And I think that that's the fun thing because, I don't know, it's just, I just find it fun. And also that's what music is. It's like, music's the same thing. You produce, you get to the same place. It's like whether you're on a drug or not a drug. I have a friend who's like straight edge. He hangs with us when we're doing like heavy dissociatives.

• 52:56Speaker 00

  No difference in quality of conversation whatsoever. He, he doesn't even see it. It's amazing. And so I'm like, we're at, we're at different states right now and we're having completely normal conversations. And I'm not like, eh, eh, eh. It's like, because I practice not having the effects of the drug affect me that way. So, but that's my practice. So, um, everyone's gonna be different. No one's gonna rock some, a heavy load of dissociatives and then, and then be like, that was great. You know, they'll, they'll be like, I was terrifying and I never want to do that again. And I'm like, I, I get it, I get it. And that's not for you and that's fine. But like, whether I didn't have drugs and I was just on my own or whether I'm on drugs, again, for me, no difference whatsoever.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  Unless we're comparing it to hardened reality, structural rules of perception. And that's different.

• 53:46André Duqum?

  I'm curious what you've sort of brought back down to earth with you from these experiences and how you carry out your day to day life. Like, what have you learned about how often we try to control reality? And the anxiety-producing effects of that? Because, I mean, there's been some incredible mental health studies in psychotherapeutic setting with ketamine or MDMA or assisted therapy with psychedelics and mushrooms. And as somebody who's been dabbling for a while yourself, like, how have you come to understand anxiety solvents and remedies for anxiety and our sort of mind's tendency

• 54:29André Duqum?

  to control reality before we, like, experience it through our body in a way?

• 54:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, anxiety is a fear-based state, and fear, essentially, it simply connects to our fear of death, of not being in this life in this way anymore. And that's what creates all the spectrum of anxiety, uncertainty, you know, these types of things. But anxiety is one that's very real, and it can take over, and it's crippling and cause you to self-limit in a way that might not be the best for yourself, whatever. And you kind of know it, too. That's what the anxiety is. It's like there's kind of a, you're in a battle between death and knowing that death doesn't exist.

• 55:14Speaker 00

  And so anxiety is like this kind of awareness that it's a challenge to awareness to either succumb to it or to learn how to unweave that really tight knot, you know? Start to get some space on that knot and undo it. And, you know, different states, again, this could be meditation, but, you know, I find that with ketamine-assisted therapy, you know, many of the doctors that I know that employ that method, they're, you know, people are getting over issues like hyper-quickly. And I think they're, and it sticks, and the reason why, and they may not do it again. They have three sessions, and they may not do it again, and they only lightly relapse, I guess, if you want to call it relapse, but, or never do it again.

• 55:59Speaker 00

  There was a couple, there was a friend of mine that had postpartum depression, never did psychedelics at all, had a really terrible time with postpartum. And I was talking to her about ketamine-assisted therapy before her birth, or giving birth. And-

• 56:15Speaker 00

  And then I saw her at a party again like a year later and she's like, and I don't think she did it because of me. I think she was researching and then her doctor kind of suggested it. But she tried ketamine assisted therapy and within two sessions, she was completely back in alignment with herself again. And the reason why is because it goes into a deep diagnostic mode. I call it the infaliminal. It's an infinite liminal state. It's the hallways between the rooms. And so we shift into the hallways and we become aware that everything is connected to these hallways and that the rooms are not the total reality. And so that's a cool, quick reminder. Sometimes it's all it takes. The brain needs to be reminded that we have options. There are things, there are things that are, that we

• 56:57Speaker 00

  hold tight and true and to be concrete, but they're only as concrete as we wish them to be. And so the hallway loosens us. But also, I would say, you know, the things that I bring back from the states is that the, that my state is the constant and that it's not the experiences that shape the state. It's the experiences that challenge the state. And so, meaning, the identity that we have within ourselves, the idea of who we are as we move through the world is held really by the exterior environment. It's like nature nurture, right? It's like you got this blueprint when you're born. It's like you have a magnetic

• 57:41Speaker 00

  signature. It's an alignment of planets and gravitational bodies that are very unique at that moment when you're born. It's like snaps, like a flash photography, like boom, there's your fingerprint. And then you've got, you know, then you've got the environment around you that you're growing up in with the template that you have. So your personality template, tendencies and stuff like that. You have epigenetics, all this stuff. So there's like these things that are localizing your identity. And, but, as we move through life, the realization is that we never were any of those things, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself infinitely. And that this is just an exercise in consciousness to exercise, you know, the idea of being conscious and the celebration of being alive. And like, what are the challenges? No matter how dark it gets, no matter like, you know,

• 58:26Speaker 00

  war, like, you know, someone harms your family or someone, but you know, whatever it is, or you lose your job, or, you know, all of these things. They're all like, okay, what, how are you going to deal with this, essentially? And then the thing on top of that is humor and, and humor and absurdity. That's where, I think when you, you asked a question about like, I think like something about like how I've how it's changed maybe throughout my life as I've been growing up or whatever. I was like, I say that's the constant. The constant is that this reality is a Muppet reality. It's it's just a bunch of goofiness. It's all silly, even in the face of the darkest shit. Like I've had like experiences with police and stuff like that. And, you know, I wrote this quote, that's probably not mine, but I wrote, I just said, like, recognize yourself in others. And so that's what I'm

• 59:09Speaker 00

  looking for. That's why things are funny, because I'm like, recognize my myself in that situation and how ridiculous that would be, you know. And so the humor is kind of like the overarching. So when it comes to anxiety, and I have friends that are like suffering from anxiety, I try not to be like, teachery or instructive, because I hang out with a lot of younger people, and I'm 53 now. And so like, I have younger friends, and I'm trying not to be prescriptive and be like, where, once you get to my, you know, it's not that. But I am giving them reflective tools. I'm saying, here's something to think about. And and the thing that, you know, I there's a phrase that I wrote on a T shirt, one of my T shirts, that when in doubt, zoom out. Like, you know, it's

• 59:49Speaker 00

  that zoomed out perspective that that gives us that gives us context for how ridiculous it is that you even exist in this moment right now, that you have the clothing that you have right now, that you have the friends that you have right now, that you remember where you came from, or that you remember anything at all, you know, that appreciation and the goofiness of that, you know, the duality, the dichotomy of like, I'm a I'm a being, and I've got this in my, and I owe taxes, and I'm in debt, and I blow, you know, but then you kind of zoom out, and you're like, the fact that you're even able to be here at all, having those experiences is fucking stupid. So, so for me, that's kind of like, the consistency throughout my life is that I find almost everything, no matter

• 1:00:31Speaker 00

  how tragic it is, on a certain level, and I'm not like dismissing the weight of it or the pain of it. That's not it all. It's a divine, loving humor, where I'm like, yeah, that's really shitty, but ultimately. It doesn't really matter. It does matter, but it's not, it doesn't matter to throw it away. It's just saying like, it doesn't ultimately matter because you are a consciousness. You are part of the collective consciousness and you're remembering, we're actively trying to remember ourselves. So anyways, that shit.

• 1:01:03André Duqum?

  When you've zoomed out like that, have you, have you come to like your own understanding of like, kind of what this life is about? Cause you see the absurdity of it, but you also kind of see like, yeah, I'll just stop there. What, what comes to mind?

• 1:01:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, that's a great question. Uh, yeah, I mean, it's like, yeah, the idea of like the meaning of life. Like, why are we here? You know, but I really think it's, it's so basic and it's so hard done for us to believe, which is that it is just, we're just, we're just doing this ourselves. This is a collective, all of consciousness, all the permutations of possibilities of realities. It's like, we're localized to this one experience, but we, but we are all collectively co-projecting and deciding and agreeing on this reality, even like the, the shittiest stuff that you can imagine, or the shittiest things that people have done all throughout history, all that will be done in the future

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  and all the joy that's happening, all this stuff. It's like, it's just the celebration of doing it, you know? And we do it within our lives, right? It's like, why are you, why are you guys doing this dumb thing over here? It's like, oh, because we just want to. That's what it is. It's always been that, you know? And so that's why like in experiences, even meditation is a, is a great one. Like, uh, you know, where you finally break through and you have this like, you know, this, this like, it kind of like you let go and you're not holding, but you're not projecting, you know? It's like you're, no, you know, and you get that perfect zone where it like all unlocks and unveils. And you have this, I'm observing non-judgmentally. Yeah. When you're in that, when you're in that state, you know, you know it all. It's crazy.

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  But then like, when you return to the awareness of self and like, well, I gotta be at Sarah's at 7:30, you know, and all that stuff, it kind of feels like it goes away and it never really does. I mean, all, you know, I said that this to my friend who was having like a, almost having a nervous breakdown before she was saying, and it actually helped her, which I was like, I was like, oh, that's great. But she, I was just like, all states exist simultaneously, infinitely.

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  And for whatever reason, they gave her this expansive reminder. And she went on stage and was like, and I was like, you're going to perform on stage thousands of more times. Why is this any different? You know? And, and that's the, that's the vibe, you know? But I think like, why are we doing it? Because we can do it. I don't think, you know, people are like, but why this particular, you know, why, you know? I don't think it's that complicated. I think it really is as simple as like, consciousness just wants to do this and we are consciousness, we're not separate from it. It feels like we are because that's the game. The game is to be like, oh, we live in a dual reality. Things are good, things are bad, ones and zeros, you know, whatever. This exists here. Why does it exist here? Because it doesn't exist over there.

• 1:03:52Speaker 00

  You know, like the whole mechanism of, and then like the, the drama, you know, of life or like, uh, I think once on stage I said, conflict is the engine of reality. It's like conflict is, and drama, those are the things that make us feel in reality. It's like, oh, I'm sad. This person fucked me over. Fuck, you know, or like, I got the thing that I always, you know, like, all these things are like, yeah, we're constantly fighting against not feeling, uh, you know, like that's what we're doing. That's the battle, the battle is to stay up here. It's like, well, not, not really. It is and it isn't, right? But if you know that when you go high, you know that there's going to be a low, then that's something to be aware of.

• 1:04:28André Duqum?

  How do you balance the understanding of that perspective where like, this is an illusion of separation, consciousness is playing, duality and attachment is the system and how we're learning, it's all an illusion, it's the illusion we're here to play with like the deep pain of humanity and yeah.

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I mean, yes. I'm glad you asked because it's super simple. No, I, I mean, I think about that all the time, especially when I go in my, my, my deep trips, I'm always going into these like awareness, you know, the tight awareness loops that we kind of have that are part of our identity, like, you know, like noticing like, oh, why do I do that when I, you know, I drop something, whatever. And I'm always like, kind of admonish myself or whatever, you know? It's like, oh, I should know, I shouldn't have grabbed it better or, you know, whatever it is and like analyzing these like little tight loops. But. Which kind of leads to this idea of like, well, what about the suffering and the pain? Because that's always a, that's a tough one. Because I mean, and even if you go in the traditional religious outlook of like, why would God,

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  an all ever loving God, but have pay, why would they allow pain and suffer? And, um, and if you go into that one, it's like, yeah, you're not really going to find a good answer for that one. But, you know, because then the arrival is just like, because that is God and God is mysterious, you know? It's like, yeah, that's true. You can believe that's fine. Yeah, totally. That's, that's totally true. But as with paradox, everything is true and ultimately untrue. But I would say like the, I think that the pain and suffering is the challenge to understanding that that is not necessarily necessary. It is just the antithesis of being in a dualistic, a binary reality. That's the design of this reality. So there has to be something, there has to be misery and pain and suffering.

• 1:06:13Speaker 00

  And I'm saying has to, but it's like loosely, but like it's the design of the system to have that so that we have the recognition of what is the antithesis of that. Like, oh, kindness and joy and, um, community and, uh, uh, seeing oneself in others and us being in solidarity and community with one another. And we're rising and we're not trying to take advantage of the fact that we're alive. Because generally like the idea of like evil and things of that nature are essentially it's awareness, but like kind of gone in the, it's like awareness gone wild, you know, like it's, it's awareness of like, you know, that idea that I was talking about, like the, uh, it's a wonderful life, you know, that realization of like everything that you might have lost, but now you're like, that didn't happen. And now you can give this Lisa, it's kind of like, there's an antithesis version of

• 1:06:58Speaker 00

  that, which is like, I'm awake in this life. How can I take advantage of those that are not? And, um, and that's an interesting thing, you know, it's like the Persians called Aruman, you know, it's like the, it's the cold, calculated intelligence, you know? It's like, it just is the calculator of.

• 1:07:17Speaker 00

  Consciousness essentially, or awareness, or consciousness, like being conscious. And so, all of that to say, I don't like it, you know, it's like that, like, but I also am not as judgmental as I used to be about it, where I would be like, fuck these guys for doing this. You know, it's like, yeah, I would rather you guys not do that, because we don't need to be doing that, you know, and that's really kind of where it comes from. Now it's turned into annoyance with someone who's taking advantage of people, or not, or trying to fool people, or just like, not being, I'm just like, if you want power, then why not just say you want the power? Why create all this obfuscation and try to get people to like, be, you know, don't trust the reality that you're in, and like, send all these like, divisional messages to like, I'm like, why all the fireworks?

• 1:08:02Speaker 00

  Just like, say what you want, like, stop fucking around, you know, and stop fucking around with everybody else, because like, but at the same time, we're all deciding that that's what it is, right? Like, so, so if, if, if there's a lot of misery and there's things going on, like, for instance, like, even like, that stuff that's happening with ICE in Minnesota, it's like, you kind of see what's happening, and you see why it's happening, and you see what's doing, but then people are reacting differently. Some people are, are physically resisting, some people are continuing to, you know, tell people, and tell these motherfuckers, do whatever, to like, get the fuck out, you're motherfuckers, get out, all that stuff. But for me, I'm like, it's like, the perpetuation of that is what that, what that style of interaction is wanting.

• 1:08:47Speaker 00

  So, it wants people to physically altercate, because then that justifies its existence, and that's the only way. It can't exist, because it barely has existence in mind. The only thing it has is the, you know, material force is the only thing that it has. And again, that's the interplay of like, it's playing off of people's fear of death. And so, they're like, we're gonna threaten your life, we're gonna threaten your well-being. And you're like, yeah, well, I don't want to lose that, you know, but then when you have, but the problem is, when people have the awareness of that, like, that can never be lost, that I am infinite perception, and you can imprison me, and I will still have access to. All the freedom of thought that I have. You can limit my body, but if I have an awareness that consciousness is infinite, perception is infinite, I can reformat my reality any way I want to.

• 1:09:32Speaker 00

  You can hear that from POWs stories, you know, like when they're in prison, they're like, how did you survive? It's like, I just changed my association to reality, you know? And when people who seek material force are aware of that, it's so frustrating to them. They're like, I have no power over you. It's like, yeah, you never did. Yeah, that's the problem. And it's like, but they'll try their best to like, remind you that no, you're gonna lose something, you know? It's like, we're gonna, whatever, imprison your family, we're gonna blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, yeah, you can, I mean, I don't want you to do that, but at the same time, at the end of the day, if this is, because I believe, so I say if, but it's like old language, but like, this is an exercise of consciousness.

• 1:10:15Speaker 00

  It's not, again, not bypassing, but you're like, this is what's happening right now. This is the challenge to my consciousness in this moment. How do I react to this? How do I relate to the people around me? The perpetrators or the people who are victims? How do I relate to all of them? And if it's, and what I always say, like, this thing I always end with, and I'm almost over, but like, it's, may love guide us, you know? And so, I don't know if you're familiar with information physics or digital physics? Like, it's kind of a newer theoretical school of physics. But it basically states that the base state of reality is raw information, pure information, and that contrary to-

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

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• 1:11:28Speaker 00

  Classical physics, where entropy is kind of the thing that, it's like, the stasis is that things want to break down into chaos, essentially. But in information theory, raw information seeks coherence. So it always, you know, it's like crystals, you know, right? Like crystals just form. It's a form of coherence. It's informational coherence. So, so the idea of that consciousness, awareness, all these things arise from this pure field of essentially what I would call paradox. You know, it arises from that and it creates structure. So it seeks coherence. And for me, um, you know, I got into this argument. It was really interesting with some interesting people, but they were talking about, um, they

• 1:12:11Speaker 00

  were, they were, they were like having a discussion debating compassion and empathy, which I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like, those are really debatable things, really, in my perspective. But I, you know, I was interested, so I had the conversation. But what I said is that, um, I was like, it's all, if you're guided by love, um, it seeks coherence and coherence, meaning resonance, harmony, sympathy, empathy, all of those things arise naturally when you're in service of love, meaning you relinquish yourself to the idea of love being all. And, uh, and in doing so, it seeks coherence. And so that way you start gravitating to other things in the world that resonate on

• 1:12:55Speaker 00

  that frequency and you start noticing that reality around you starts resonating and all these things. And so, but they were like, they didn't, they couldn't quite understand that idea. And they thought that it was like, oh, love, like, you know, like love's the quantity of a thing, or it's a concept of a thing. It's a thing that appears when conditions occur, like it's conditional. Instead of, no, love is the best, best state of reality and, and love is not good or bad. It's paradoxical. It is all things and it is no things. So, in my view. And so, um, all that to say that, um, the coherence part of it is, is interesting because then I, I know it to be true because I experience it continually.

• 1:13:39Speaker 00

  So as I say that I'm in service of love, and that's why I like in comments when people are being negative or whatever, I'm just like, if you're not in service of love, you don't really have much. And sometimes people, they usually don't respond back, which is kind of interesting. But, um, or sometimes they'll be like, ah, yeah, maybe you're right. You know, we'll get into, then we'll get into this discussion. I'll be like, oh yeah, there, there you are. Okay, now let's have a discussion.

• 1:14:04Speaker 00

  Long-winded, but that's, hopefully that answers something.

• 1:14:11André Duqum?

  That was great, dude. I loved, I loved just sitting and being a listener of.

• 1:14:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay. Thanks for hanging in there.

• 1:14:17André Duqum?

  No, it was great. It's a complex and from a level of understanding can be also simple understanding. Yeah, I thought of many things when you were sharing, like the fundamental disposition to be oriented towards service to self or service to others, I think is, like, they kind of put you on two fundamental paths. One is like the arrow, the causal arrow of time of entropy, which you like thinks inherently move towards chaos versus entropy or negatory entropy, where things have emergent complexity and coherence as they evolve over time, which is like two ways of being. And I strive, like, I think

• 1:14:59André Duqum?

  probably you do and most of our listeners for the latter. There's something interesting about, in the study of what like wisdom is from a psychological perspective, one aspect of it, which I think you'll like, is called perspectival metacognition. So the ability to take on multiple perspectives at once. A physicist, I think it was Niels Bohr or David Bohm, one of those, said the opposite of a fact is a falsehood, but the opposite of a profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

• 1:15:31Speaker 00

  Hmm. Oh, I like that.

• 1:15:33André Duqum?

  I think that really gets to the heart of what you're speaking to. Like, from one level, and experiencing, like, you can experience the deep pain of humanity and separation and division, and what it's like to be undivided and have empathy for that. And from another level of understanding, you can see how it's, like, reality is completely whole. It is singular and perfect from that understanding and that state. And to be wise would be to honor both as realities, you know, to like see the perfection and to see the reality of the separation.

• 1:16:08Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:16:10André Duqum?

  So.

• 1:16:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:16:11André Duqum?

  I agree.

• 1:16:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, because, you know, it's like, I love the analogy of a holographic plate. You may have heard of it, but, you know, if you have an old-school holographic plate.

• 1:16:26Speaker 00

  And you know, it's like you do this and it's like, oh, there's something in there, you know? And you snap it in half and then you snap one of the halves and start snapping it into smaller pieces. Any piece you pick up can still contains the whole image. And I love that because that is a great metaphor for humanity, you know? I mean, ultimately, it's like more than that, but if we're just talking about humanity. It's like every person is this tiny irregular shaped piece, but it all contains the whole always. And, um, and I love that. And that's why I like, I, I, I always give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Like, I always just assume that this person's my friend, even if they're an asshole. I'm still looking for the friend part.

• 1:17:05Speaker 00

  Um, and, um, you know, and everyone contains the full perspective of everything. But the piece is determined again by environment and all of those things. So, um, but to hold both things as true and untrue ultimately, like infinitely, all things. It, uh, again, my interpretation, but like, I think that's so healthy because some people think of it as like, oh, you're bypassing us and it's just like, it's just not, it's not that. You're, you're allowing someone, if someone's like, well, the, we never landed on the moon. And, and instead of me going like, well, pretty sure we went there, you know? Um, and, you know, I know an astronaut that went there, you know, whatever it is.

• 1:17:48Speaker 00

  Um, I instead now I'm like, no, you're a hundred percent correct. And you're also a hundred percent incorrect. Everyone is correct and, and not correct. So it depends on coherence, resonance, collective, uh, um. Yeah, it's like a, it's like a, you know, it's like a, it's a, it's a co-projection thing, you know? It's like, well, like I, I just kind of go like, yeah, that's true, but also not true. And, and, and in that, in that way, I'm like, the, the person is right. And I can like really agree with that.

• 1:18:18André Duqum?

  What is the utility in agreeing with something you fundamentally think is actually incorrect?

• 1:18:25Speaker 00

  Well, that's, yeah, that's a good question. I, I think it's, um, I think what it does is it, it gets you off the hook for being judgmental.

• 1:18:33André Duqum?

  But is that why you're doing it?

• 1:18:35Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, because I don't like the, I don't like the feeling of like going, ah, no, that guy's fucking crazy. You know, I don't like that.

• 1:18:43André Duqum?

  Is there a third option?

• 1:18:46Speaker 00

  Is there a third option?

• 1:18:48André Duqum?

  Instead of, I suppose, agreeing with what you very well may think is an illusion, which could be your own, or judging somebody for having an opinion. Like, yeah, I'm just, I guess I'm just questioning the, why it's useful to agree with someone's delusion.

• 1:19:06Speaker 00

  Right, right, right. I think where you arrive at, for your personal understanding of the situation, is the important part, right? But you can still have that. That's the thing. If I go like, you just said that all cheese is made of rocks, you know, it's like, well, I'm pretty sure that's not true. But at the same time, I'll give you that. It'll be like, yeah, 100%. That's totally true. Because, I mean, if you think about the observer effect, right? It's like Schrodinger's cat, classic, whatever. You've got this cat, no one knows if it's alive or dead, but we presume it's alive, it was put in a life. And we introduce tons of toxic radiation or a toxic environment, and then we're like, well, we know that that cat's dead. And we're like, do we, though? Because I haven't seen it, you know? And then you open the box, and like, probably it's dead.

• 1:19:51Speaker 00

  But the only time it's dead is when you observe that it's dead. So, in essence, it's a similar mechanism. So like, if someone's like, says something that you're like, that's definitely not true, in my experience, I'll give you that. I think like, I'll say that it is true, because it is a possibility of that being true. Because in order for a possibility to exist, all possibilities must exist.

• 1:20:12André Duqum?

  Yeah, I guess it depends. How zoomed out are you? Are you, are you thinking we live in a multiverse where all timelines are possible? And from that perspective, whatever you're saying could be true, then great.

• 1:20:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:20:22André Duqum?

  Whatever. And I think at the very least, like, there's also this pattern interrupt when somebody's used to being met with resistance. Instead of you just like, you just like, look the same way they are, like, yeah, okay.

• 1:20:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:20:33André Duqum?

  And invites you in to have an actual discussion, which can actually make progress.

• 1:20:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:20:37André Duqum?

  So I think there's, there's definitely value there.

• 1:20:39Speaker 00

  But you still arrive back at your own, you know, it's like, it doesn't change your understanding of it, you know what I mean? So I'm saying like, there's, you don't lose anything in that equation. That's what I'm saying. But I understand also, you know, the pushback, I get that, you're like, how is that useful? But for me, it's just like, oh yeah, sure. That's not how I see it, but, all right, cool. You know, but you know what I mean? And that's cool, because then I'm not like... Dude, that guy is so dumb, or like.

• 1:21:02André Duqum?

  I don't think you can ever understand something and judge it at the same time. So like, I try to bring that into as many encounters and, you know, conversations as possible. Because then you're just open to actually meeting somebody where they're at, instead of their ideas of who they are, what they are.

• 1:21:18Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. And that's love.

• 1:21:21André Duqum?

  Yeah, yeah. And that's building community. Like, I know that you've spoken a lot to comedy as community and building community in general, the importance of it. I see you as somebody who's inherently pretty independent, but like, your work is very relational and community oriented. And so I'm just curious what, yeah, do you have any thoughts on the necessity of communication, or sorry, the necessity of community? And you referenced earlier that like, love is essentially recognizing self as other. And through community and the reflection in the mirrors of other people, we get to like, learn so much about ourselves and show up. And so, yeah, what are your thoughts on the importance of community, especially in a time where it seems like we're so divided?

• 1:22:02Speaker 00

  Oof, yeah. Well, yeah, community is so incredibly important because it doesn't matter how many profound revelations you come into in your self-practice. Having the world around you reflect or demonstrate those revelations that you have is incredibly reinforcing, but it also just eases. It just makes life a little bit easier, you know, like you're, you're, you have a community that reflects your values. You have a community that you respect everybody's journey, but you all agree that like, we're gonna, we're gonna try our best to

• 1:22:40Speaker 00

  to respect one another and to try not to become too tribal, you know, at least in my community or whatever. It's like, I'm always like, if we don't want to get too tribal, we don't want to close ourselves off and say that we're this because we believe this. Or, you know, we're living life better because of this. It's like, no, it's like, we, we will always have that. Like, we need to remain open to others. And not, not necessarily to join the tribe, but just like to kind of recognize other tribes doing similar things, you know?

• 1:23:09Speaker 00

  And so I think community is incredibly important because. It makes life fun, you know, and, and it reinforces essentially like you were saying, there's mirrors around us, you know, and for the cleaner, the mirrors, like the quality of people that we have, we're clean mirrors for one another, or what I call mirror plus. So it's like we're reflecting, but we're also giving ourselves in part of the reflection. And if we're doing that with each other, it's like we have this hyper, hyper strengthened communal identity. And I think, you know, operating through the world with that kind of energy, people recognize it or they're curious about like, why are you like this? And so forth. And that kind of spreads, it's contagious. And so I think, yeah, community

• 1:23:53Speaker 00

  is super important because the world, again, the way it's designed, and it's a great design. It can make people feel siloed, compartmentalized, or that they feel like they should be siloed or compartmentalized because it's a tough world out there and you gotta really rely on yourself or like just got your four people that you dig, you dig with and that's it because everybody else is, you know, whatever it is. But when you kind of like get over that, it's a slightly silly notion, but like when you figure out a way, and I have compassion for it, but I'm just saying like, it is ultimately silly. But when you kind of allow vulnerability in your life and community in your life, man, it just, it enriches you in a way that where you're not doing all the heavy lifting all the time of like, do I have to self-realize

• 1:24:37Speaker 00

  all the time? You know, like, no, there's other people that are doing it too. And we're all the same entity at the end of the day. And so it's kind of nice. And then you're kind of winking at each other through our characters that we've designed, you know?

• 1:24:49André Duqum?

  Yeah, it's, it's cool to be able to take like the experience of being connected to life to others, take it off the pedestal of like a meditation mat or like a spiritual practice and put it into your everyday life through the various different ways you can. I've been really enjoying like these Japanese style like tea ceremonies every morning, like sitting with tea for an hour. It's like, it's like an hour long meditation while you're drinking, pouring tea. And it's been really cool to feel like the transference into my day to day life of like maintaining that level of awareness of.

• 1:25:25André Duqum?

  Of like, you spoke to the object and experience or the experiencer and

• 1:25:32Speaker 00

  The observer.

• 1:25:32André Duqum?

  The observer.

• 1:25:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:34André Duqum?

  And like being able to maintain that throughout your day like as a, as a really, really beautiful practice. I'm curious, like, yeah, one of the last thoughts or questions I kind of have is,

• 1:25:45André Duqum?

  I think people, like so many people admire your level of creative creativity and your level of artistry. And we are, we all have that place that is one and the same within us. And then we also have this deeply unique individual expression of God and life, the universe, that expresses itself in different ways creatively, like through whatever we're naturally drawn to. And I'm curious, like, your thoughts on how we can pay attention and continue to cultivate that in our own individual ways, because I love this quote from Tony K. Bonbar. I think the, it's the artist's responsibility to make the revolution irresistible.

• 1:26:26Speaker 00

  Hmm. Ooh, I like that. That's very cool. I agree with that 100%.

• 1:26:31André Duqum?

  So I'm curious, like, as we're waking up to our own artistry and we're waking up to our own, the responsibility we have to be able to shape culture, to be able to impact our communities and to awaken to those realizations on an individual level. Yeah, what, what thoughts do you have to support people discovering their unique expression creatively?

• 1:26:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's the adventure of the lifetime, you know? And so like, that's, that's kind of, I think it's the first step, you know? I think when, you know, specifically if I'm thinking about like artists, like young artists and they'll ask me like, you know, what advice would you give about, you know, like my journey and so on? And I'm like, you have the easiest job in the world. And what I mean by that is like, all you have to do is have a good time. And have fun like in what you're doing like like like, why are you doing what you're doing in the first place? And if the answer is like, you know, something like fame and fortune and, you know, so that's a thing, but that's not the thing, you know?

• 1:27:38Speaker 00

  It's you have to ask like, are you having a blast? Do you wake up not imagining yourself not being, you know, if you if you can't imagine yourself not doing this, then that's what you should be doing. And while you're doing that, that feeling that you've had creating, it's just about having a good time about the fun. So I always say, follow the fun. It's like, you know, I don't do, I don't like to work. And and thankfully, because I do the things the way that I do, and it's like, it's the way that I do it. And, you know, people just have to kind of be like, well, we do it this way. And I'm just like, yeah, but I do it this way. And I'm like, OK, well, maybe you can fit into that. I was like, yeah, I'll fit into it. I'll figure, trust me, you know?

• 1:28:19Speaker 00

  But I don't, yeah, I don't like being like, oh, we're gonna have this grueling day at the, I'm like, wait a minute, do we need to, did we need to do three takes of that? Did, did we need to change the lighting? Are we worrying about continuity? This is a comedy like, you know, I mean, I'll just be like, we just need to preserve the inspired moments like, and and if we're trudging and toiling and stuff like that, it it just doesn't yield for me the the greatest feeling on on set, therefore speaking about set. And and therefore, what can I do to ensure that I'm protecting the fun of the situation? And if I'm in charge of a thing, like, I'll make sure the food is good and I'll make sure that there's no plastic water bottles on set, you know?

• 1:29:01Speaker 00

  It's like that, you know, people are helping clean up, you know, after the thing or whatever, and we're only doing two takes instead of five takes, you know? Like, I want us to be out of here in five hours. I don't want to be, I don't want to be here for all these extra hours to prove that we worked hard to make this thing. It's like, that doesn't make a thing better. And so for me, it's it's like fighting for. Fun through simplicity and remembering like, yeah, this is the adventure. Like, like, like, I want to preserve that. So preserving the fun and chasing the fun and doing it for the love of what you're doing. It's all that really matters. And again, from there, that's kind of like being in service of love. And then coherence follows from that.

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• 1:30:07André Duqum?

  What do you think for those that are like the starving artist archetype? Where like they want to follow the fun, they have a passion they want to pursue and get better at. And it's tough to be able to like sustain themselves financially, living off of that. You've been doing this for a while. I'm curious what your thoughts are, as I'm sure you've had a lot of people ask you about this.

• 1:30:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, because I mean, when I started, I mean, I guess technically I've always been doing art. But when I guess I started doing it professionally, you know, it would have been like, what, 18, 19 or something like that? And, you know, again, it's really like, all I did was like, I wanted to be a part of things. And so part of it was like, man, someday I hope to get to play with that bass player, you know? And then like two years later, there's like an ad in the local rag, like, this band seeks keyboardist. And I'm like, well, that's crazy. That's the band with that bass player. And then I try out for it and then I get the thing. I'm like, oh, fuck, I'm doing this thing. You know, so a lot of it is like imagining yourself where you want to be.

• 1:31:13Speaker 00

  And, and again, community is kind of the thing. Because like, you know, I lived with people, I lived with like a collective of all kinds of artists. And we helped each other through hard times. And if you know, you're Down on rent or whatever. Luckily, I had like parents that would be helpful now and then. And, you know, or my friends would help me out or, you know. So it's really about community and, and then that community is built on everyone's unified passion for having a blast and doing dumb ass, cool shit or badass shit, or however you want to view it. And I think that that's the thing that saves you. So in the, in the beginning, like if you're just starting out and you're like, I have to work this fucking job and blah, blah, blah. But there's something, there's a pride in like, I'm gonna fucking do this, no matter how hard this is.

• 1:31:58Speaker 00

  If I have to drag my equipment, you know, by hand up a giant hill to get to this jam session, I'm gonna do it because I know when I get there, it's gonna be amazing. It's gonna all be worth it, you know? And those reminders are the things that keep you going.

• 1:32:13André Duqum?

  I love that. It's so important, I feel like, to surround yourself in the environment with people that are in the direction you want to move, you know? And be able to like have that level of indignation or conviction for, for what you want.

• 1:32:26Speaker 00

  Totally, yeah. And also people recognizing, you know, like other artists, they're just like, that's badass. It's like, oh, you dragged all that shit all the way, you know, or whatever, you know? It's like, fuck, you got arrested and then after you got let go out of the holding cell, you came straight to rehearsal?

• 1:32:40André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:40Speaker 00

  That's fucking cool. You know what I mean? Like, you get rewarded all the time. It's, it's awesome.

• 1:32:44André Duqum?

  Yeah, those little like affirmations along the journey.

• 1:32:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:47André Duqum?

  You're in the right direction.

• 1:32:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:49André Duqum?

  Yeah, it's good.

• 1:32:51André Duqum?

  This has been fun. Have you been having fun this conversation?

• 1:32:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, it's been great. It's cool to get to talk like about stuff because I don't, you know, it's like I don't get to talk about it as much as I'd like to.

• 1:32:59André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:00Speaker 00

  I appreciate that.

• 1:33:01André Duqum?

  Yeah, I know. This has been a, been a blast, man.

• 1:33:06André Duqum?

  I just want to open the floor in case there's any thoughts you have, given the whole context of this conversation. Like, is there anything you can feel, feel inspired that's on your heart or anything that you want to share?

• 1:33:19Speaker 00

  No, not really, other than, you know, stay, you know, stay in service of love, man. It's like, it'll get, we'll get through these dark times, you know, it's like, these dark times are here for a reason. And, and the more we stay in coherence with that, the more we move into the possibility on the, on the infinite horizon that leads us to the world that we want to live in. So that's what I would say.

• 1:33:44André Duqum?

  Beautifully said. Thank you, man.

• 1:33:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, man.

• 1:33:46André Duqum?

  I really appreciate you coming out and the long drive and the traffic and like getting to connect. And it's just my favorite space to have a couple hours to dive deep.

• 1:33:54Speaker 00

  Man, that's so sick. It's great. Thank you.

• 1:33:57André Duqum?

  Thank you, man. Just last thing, is there any where people can stay connected with you with upcoming projects or things? We'll link down in the description.

• 1:34:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. I have a website. It's reggie-watts.com.

• 1:34:09Speaker 00

  Some other asshole took Reggie Watts. I did have it for a long time and then I lapsed and then like someone snagged it. But anyway, so reggie-watts.com and that has like all my show, upcoming show information and other things like I sell dumb things on there and stuff. And that's that. And then I have a podcast. I think it's safe to say it's coming out. I haven't signed the contract, but I think it will be maybe when this, by the time this comes out, I would have signed it. Anyways, but it's a, it's just called the Reggie Watts Podcast and that'll be on iHeart Podcast. And yeah, making music with Craig Richards, electronic album with Craig Richards and various music projects, something with Joanna Warren. And yeah, I'm always collaborating. But yeah, those are the main things.

• 1:34:51André Duqum?

  I love it, dude. Well, yeah, I would love, I'd love to have you back at some point.

• 1:34:55Speaker 00

  Love that.

• 1:34:56André Duqum?

  Maybe we can get weird, do some improv stuff.

• 1:34:58Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 1:34:59André Duqum?

  Pull out the looper.

• 1:34:59Speaker 00

  I'm down. I'm so down. I'm so down. Whatever you want.

• 1:35:03André Duqum?

  So, thank you, bro. And appreciate everybody for tuning to this episode of the Know Yourself Podcast. Catch you on the next one. Be well.