Okay. And we're live happy. Wednesday, September 15th, 2021. Since February 24th, 2021, we have been going live well, myself and a 25 different guests have gone live to talk about creativity, to get to the bottom of this subjective thing that we call creativity, trying to make sense of it, trying to understand how people, um, creates why they create what's stopping them.
What's motivating them everything in between 25 interviews, they usually spend anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours. So a lot of talking, a lot of listening, a lot of learning. Um, it's been incredible. And today is the last interview in the series, uh, that I will be interviewing someone, uh, next week.
This someone that I'm interviewing today, Christian Wheeler will be interviewing me to kind of conclude the whole, um, the whole project or at least, um, this phase of the project. And then, um, what's next. Then we're going to switch over to the Exploring Creativity page. So follow that account. If you don't, it's at Exploring dots, creativity.
Um, and there, we're going to start doing recap episodes. So starting with the very first episode with Dylan seals all the way, I guess the episode with me, which would be episode 20, um, S 7 27, uh, we'll be recapping it. And we're going to use those sessions to take notes and understand and extract more information about, uh, what we learned there.
Uh, the side cover it. I'm just checking my notes here. Oh, I mean, this almost goes without saying, but it's worth saying thanks to everybody who participated there has been, you know, 25, 26 people so far that have participated in this series. Um, this project that kind of just stemmed from a lot of other discussions about creativity.
Um, and thank you for participating, being vulnerable, talking about your process and, uh, uh, what makes you excited about the work and what has prevented you from doing, um, work over the years and not just work, but really contributing to the world creatively? Um, it's not an easy task. It's challenging, it's exhausting.
It requires a lot of, uh, persistence and sometimes. Little to no guidance around what you're doing. So you have explored creativity in your craft, uh, and you've explored it with me on these lives. So thank you so much to everyone involved. Um, I, you know what? Fuck it. I'm gonna shout everyone out. So that's Dylan seals, Brian Parker, Nathan Dan slur, John Castelli, Greg Matthews lane, banning Danny Klein, angel spider, Jared masters, Brian Garrity, Alex gurus, John graver, Mike Cleaver, Matthew Genovese, Ray JC Tyler Johnson.
Uh, Lauren Carr, Addison Scott, Matthew stoops that Ebro quack, Elmer Quintero, Molly Fletcher, Royal Flarity. And today Christian Wheeler. That's crazy. So many people. Fuck. Thank you guys so much for real. This is, this was fun. Thanks for entertaining. My fun, uh, spontaneous project. So without further ado, um, again, um, after please follow the new account, we're going to be moving a lot of stuff over and posting clips and all that, but without further ado, I want to introduce my co author, uh, partner in this series, Christian Wheeler, him and I have been, um, We've known each other pretty much from the beginning of this project, he had reached out to me about, uh, the conversations, podcasts that I was on for better part of last year.
Um, and he was interested in some of the things I was saying and how it was, uh, you know, speaking about it and whatnot. And, um, I forget exactly how I'm going to ask him how we kind of connected, but it was basically, I was looking for help with this project. And when we started talking and right from the first phone call, I was driving from LA to San Diego.
We spoke for like maybe an hour and a half, two hours. And I knew pretty much from the first 10 minutes. This is the guy that I want to work with. This is someone I want to collaborate with and get his opinion on what I'm doing, uh, how to make it better, how to reframe my own thinking. He's been an awesome collaborator so far.
And, um, I'm excited to talk a little bit about our collaborations together, learnings there. Um, but really I'm excited to learn about him today. Um, things I don't know, even things we've never discussed before. So yeah, I'm going to introduce, uh, invite, I should say Christian to the chat, but first I'm going to as always, um, by tradition, spam all of my friends and get them to join this live.
Uh, again, thank you. I, you know, I thanked everyone that has participated, but also thank you for watching. Thank you for commenting for sharing it to your story. Um, telling people about it, liking it, whatever it may be. Um, that is, you know, not the reason I did it. I did it really to just kind of understand this creative creativity thing that I've been involved with for so long, but, you know, seeing the impact it's had on other people makes it that much better.
So thank you. Um, and thanks for supporting what I've been doing, um, forever since I started creating. So, uh, yeah, here we go. I send some invites out and invite things started.
Oh man. Hey, how's it going? It's up to you finally, a family doing it, finally doing it. Yeah. Isn't it kind of weird. How does it feel to like, be on the thing that you've been working on? Well, I've been watching so many of them. I feel like I just like blue sky dude into a picture book or something like that.
You're in it. I'm in it now. Yeah. Do you feel like you're more biased now? Like do you, were you thinking about, um, you know, having watched probably more than anyone, uh, do you feel like you're going in with. No, not really. I have no idea what I'm going to say. I made no preparations and I I've had the nice, uh, armchair seat this whole time.
Uh, not, not having to necessarily contribute my own ideas, but just kind of pick apart other people's, which I think is, uh, a little bit easier. So I'm out of the cheap seats and sort of in the arena today, I guess. Nice to great metaphor. Um, well it was, it was Theodore Roosevelt. It wasn't me.
And as reference. Um, well, I'm super excited to have you on, I mean, we've been talking not since February, but like, I guess, do you remember when we, when our first chat was like roughly around? I think it was April. I can, I'm going to say April. Yeah. Before the 14th. Definitely. Yeah. Cause that was coming off the road.
I remember being in the van all day, getting home and then talking to you. So it must've been around that time when started coming back outside. Yeah. So like six months about the school. And I remember, you know, a conversation early on where we were talking about, I was like, this is super meta because, uh, our collaborations should reflect, um, an ideal collaboration, right?
Like. This is a project about creativity and about creative collaboration and creative work. And we should set the best example for ourselves and for other people while doing this, I'm curious for you, like, um, what have you taken away from this experience so far? Uh, yeah, well, I've, I've taken away, firstly, that as varied and different as everyone's approaches to creativity are there is like a common route, um, that it all kind of revolves around, which has been really great.
So to not only find kind of the peculiarities of everyone's own kind of practice, um, but to find sort of general themes that recur and, you know, as we've talked about, um, privately like spectrums, we all navigate and we can get into that later. But as far as, um, like our collaboration being excited about how, um, deeply you can get with somebody that you haven't put in years getting to know and how quickly, um, you can find a common language and common goals, uh, and have like a really fruitful collaboration on the par with maybe some people who I've either went to college with or grew up with, or, you know, You know, 20 days in the van when it broke down in south bend or something like that, you know, we've never met in person, but I, I feel like we're the collaborations operating on that level.
And so it's helping me reframe, um, and maybe bring to other collaborations ways that I can get deeper, um, more quickly maybe without, quite as much sweat equity or tragedy, you know, trauma bonding from the road and stuff like that, you know? Yeah. I mean, you mentioned language and shared language and shared goals.
Is there anything else that you feel like went into us being able to connect so quickly? Or do you want to expand on those? Uh, well, I think there was just a, it's hard to say there was kind of a disposition or an outlook that I think we shared, which made it easy to connect. And I think that probably it'll be easier to see what those things are in the less ephemeral way when I'm like holding the book in my hand.
Cause I feel like that's going to be like the distillation of what those things are in a lot of ways. Um, but I just feel like we had a similar approach to, um, music, something that. Um, drew me towards kind of what you were contributing to the podcast and sort of the podcasts in general was a sort of general like community orientedness.
And, um, I know that I was really developing a lot of ideas kind of in isolation here. Well, literally isolation like social isolation, but, um, really using that time to learn and grow as an artist and as a person trying to become better and reframe how I approach my art and my career based around that art.
Um, and maybe not feeling as kindred, um, with a lot of the people, I was, uh, not, not people I was collaborating with here, but just feeling like the Zeit Geist I was feeling was different than the zeitgeists that was around me. And so meeting someone and like now multiple people, like through the internet who were kind of sharing those ideas, um, it felt like, uh, kind of settling into.
Um, like a subcultural like home that, uh, was, I felt just very like seen and heard very quickly in a great way, which is not to, uh, you know, devalue old, um, friendships or like working relationships. It's just, I found a very like niche group of people who are all going at the same issue, the same way, which I think is, you know, I'm late to the game on this, but apparently is what the internet is really good for.
If it's good for, you know, anything besides e-commerce it is really good for e-commerce. Um, uh, yeah, I mean, I remember, as you were saying that I was thinking about the talk we had when I was like walking around the neighborhood I was living in and we were talking about the internet and we were talking about meeting people online and the, and the value of the internet.
Um, how has that changed for you since starting this project? Because I know you definitely, uh, re took, uh, took another look at it. Yeah. I mean, I am a kind of an old, old fashioned kind of person here. I'm going to flip my camera around. This is my apartment. Um, yeah, so like, um, I wasn't big into like eBooks or, you know, I'm a tangible handheld kind of old school.
Kind of want to be, you know, Bohemian artists guy. And I, uh, definitely was not, I had more bad things to say about the internet than good things. I used it as a tool. It felt like a necessary evil. And now I've, I've really seen the like connective power of it when used the right way. Um, and it's something that's improved my mental health instead of detracted from it when used in this way.
So yeah, I'm, I'm a convert towards, in a strict way kind of maybe finding your, um, finding your group of people, uh, through like shared interests through the internet now, which is something that I didn't know if I really believed in before, um, which is probably why it wasn't giving that back to me because I wasn't putting out into the, you know, I wasn't being a community member anywhere on the internet.
So I was, I wasn't getting any of that back. Uh, it was, uh, kind of siloed off shouting into the echo chamber, um, and then kind of looking at other people doing like a similar thing. So yeah, I, I still have my, my reticence and a bit of like a Luddite streak, but I definitely feel a stronger about the connective power of the internet, which is literally what it is at the end of the day.
It's a, it's a network. I think, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. You, you do backend design. I don't do any of that stuff. I play guitar. I mean, it's literally a network of pages and we just have to represent ourselves on some of those pages that exists. Um, yeah. I mean, to kind of, uh, zoom into what you were talking about in terms of what this is an interesting interview for me, because I've been speaking with you for so long in detail about this project, and now I'm trying to reframe it and like view you as a, as a guest, but I just want to like have a conversation like we share.
Um, but, uh, yeah, I mean, I think there's shared language and shared goals from the start, uh, was such a accelerant to our collaboration. And then, um, I think this ability of like giving feedback and showing up for each other was another aspect where like, um, you know, I think there was early on you weren't able to like make a few calls or something and you had stuff going on.
And it was like, oh, it looks like something's wrong. Like, let let's talk about it. Let's address it before it like simmers or sits or we're confused about it or whatever. Um, and I feel like just being able to have fast feedback with each other has been also another accelerant to the collaboration. Yeah.
Um, especially being, you know, doing a lot of like studio, musician work, um, getting a lot of feedback. It's something that I'm very used to, but it's also, there's so many different kinds of feedback and some people are, um, better at empathetic feedback than others. Um, and so it was interesting to learn everyone's style.
It's almost like, um, I mean, this is just a riff off the top of my head, but it's almost like there are in the same way that people talk about love languages. There's like different like feedback, like styles or like archetypes. Um, and I felt like very quickly in our collaboration, we got on the same page about like, cool, we're just going to be super open, put everything on the table.
Like, I don't think either of us have, uh, you know, get hard feelings really quick when confronted with feedback. Cause I think we've both been, you know, put through the ringer and you know, our freelance lives. So we're not, you know, new to it. Or, um, you know, I've noticed working with a lot of musicians who might be amazing musicians, but if their outlet has been like one band for a long time, that sort of feedback mechanism is very personal because their working relationship is with whatever their like four friends who they, the personal gets intertwined with all the other things.
And since they're not going from project to project, um, there's less of an abstract sort of feedback mechanism that develops. So it, it tends to be like real, like personally tanged or, um, you know, uh, uh, chord voicing change might have all these other implications where it's like, oh yeah, you know, I think we should put the third on top.
It's like, no, we shouldn't like, screw you. You didn't do the dishes either. You know? And there's I, and I feel like, um, you know, that's beautiful in its own way, those kinds of groups and what they mean. I mean, like the rolling stones, right? I'm assuming they're somewhat like that. And you know, they're a lot more successful than me, so who am I to say?
But I feel like we've been in so many different professional situations that we were very able to quickly not only align, but like kind of lay out verbally like, oh, this is, this is how we're gonna approach, you know, feedback, you know, conflict. And then after that initial thing, it was just, you know, there was like a mutual understanding and we just kind of worked from that.
Yeah. You know, um, I'm thinking about those early conversations. And I just saw that lane banning just joined, uh, who was a previous guest in someone I spoke to yesterday, um, about a project that both of us are going to be collaborating on. And one of the things that stood out was like, Hey, I think it's best.
If we set terms early, So that we don't ruin what we know naturally feels like a good relationship. Like let's set these terms really before any work gets them before you're even involved in it before any, like anything. It's just like, what are the terms? How are we kind of working and giving that framework?
I remember walking away feeling really great about it and feeling like super close and like, all right, everything is on the table. And if the terms need to change or something needs to be discussed, like we'll do that. Uh, and it was something, you know, uh, I said specifically to lane yesterday, I was like, I don't want to ruin the relationship that we have already as friends, like by, you know, six months from now, like basically the terms are that we're trading design work for audio production, but it's like, there's a lot of room for ambiguity and messiness, like is one logo equal to one album.
Like, you know, there's just ways that this can get messy quick. And it was like, Hey, let's start by acknowledging. We don't want to ruin what we have and then build upon terms to prevent us from ruining it. You know what I mean? Or ambiguity from ruining it. And I think we did that. And that was something, um, having done that with you months and months ago, it felt like such a great way to start a collaboration with someone.
Yeah, absolutely. And I've, I've seen friendships just absolutely destroyed, um, both quickly and slowly over time by, um, lack of expectations and like the crossover of professional and personal relationships. And, um, uh, you know, when scope creep kind of enters into the equation where it's like, yeah, we're trading this service for this other service, but then all of a sudden you're on, you know, mix revision 23, that sounds just like mixed revision 17.
And then the thing that, you know, they did for you was like a five minute thing. And so it feels lopsided now, now all of a sudden there's, you know, resentment sort of the opposite of the, uh, oh, you didn't do the dishes. So now I'm going to hate your song thing. It's the, yes. You know, have you, have you kind of navigated in relationships like that yourself, where there was trading involved in scope creep involved and it seems like something you're familiar with.
Oh yeah. And I I've seen it. I've been part of it. I have been, you know, guilty of handling those things poorly in the days before I had read any Renee brown and established, you know, you know, saying no creating boundaries. Because it's okay, sure. Like I'll do this thing. Right. And then their scope creep.
And instead of confronting it right there and saying, okay, yeah, we're friends. I said, I'd take on this project. It's a little much for me with everything going on. Um, I'm gonna need this extra time for it. Or if you want it done in this timeframe, we should bring someone else in as like a finisher to help, because I'm not gonna be able to get it across the line.
And instead either try to like force it and do, um, do you know, kind of sub quality work to get it across the line in time or, um, get it done on time and sort of kind of Harbor resentment that, um, I was, they were reminding me to do the thing that they asked me to do and I had agreed to do, um, which is, which is incredibly unfair.
Um, and I'm using this example, um, just because, uh, I I'm the one at fault. So it's easy for me to, uh, talk about instead of kind of being like, well, I did this one project one time and I'm still really mad about it. And you know, all of that is, uh, is water under the bridge. So I'll, I'll take the, I'll take the hit.
Um, for my example, instead of throwing someone else under the bus, in case they're, you know, watching or we'll watch in the future, Well, yeah, I mean, look, it's, it's a double dual sided, um, thing, collaboration, you know, it's and I think there's two sides of that fence to be the person that has to ask the person who's not gonna, who's not fulfilling obligations is rough as well.
Um, you know, you might ask the first time, let's say, you're that person it's difficult to say, Hey Christian, like, you know, we agreed to this thing, you know, how do I approach this subject? He seems like he's having a rough week or whatever. Um, you know, there's, there's that typical 30. And then on the other side of it is like, you know, you're not, you don't want to have the opportunity to be the best version of yourself, those self that you wanted to be in that situation, uh, that you could be if you had time or resources or whatever.
Um, and yeah, I mean, it's rough, but that's why it's like setting the expectations. I mean, having run this business and send out so many contracts, it's like, it's when I heard from my stepbrothers a attorney. And so when he had written up and drafted my first few contracts and I was talking to him about it and it's like, it's there to protect both of you.
And I remember thinking about that, like I thought of contracts as this is meant to protect me. So like, I'm going to put a bunch of shit in here. That's gonna like screw the other person over. And like, as long as I'm safe, like that's why this contract exists. Hearing that, just hearing that from him is like, oh, it's protecting both of you.
Cause I'm used to filling out like apartment contracts or it's like, I'm fucked. Like everything I'm signing right now. Like I can't do anything and they could just take me out tomorrow, basically. Um, so thinking about contracts in that way and you know, in the creative space, you know, people aren't really rushing to like be formal in that way, but man, I feel like it's helped a bunch.
So, um, yeah, thanks for, for kind of agreeing to our terms and developing terms together. Cause I think, um, while it's not written, it's definitely internalized. Yeah. And I I'll definitely say that I that's one of the big things that I used, um, kind of my time to myself in 2020 to develop, um, quite like consciously.
Um, I mentioned it before, but I mean just if anyone has it read, um, Renee brown, she's just amazing at really spelling out, um, you know, ideas about vulnerability and boundaries and things that were really transformative. Um, my relationships and I think as a freelancer, we're so hard wired to not say no to anything because well, you know, all your work could go away tomorrow.
And so you got to say yes, in case, you know, you have a lean week, two weeks after this, or, you know, whatever that kind of scarcity mindset is. Um, but I think really, you know, setting up, you know, boundaries and expectations and treating yourself well so that you can show up for the work, it pays more dividends later, um, because the quality of the work goes up and you can put your full self in it.
So now I know when I'm say yes to a project, they're not getting a part of me or whatever part of me is left from whatever else I'm doing. Like when I'm there, like I'm all the way in it. Um, and they're going to get, you know, it's as much of me as I'm capable of giving within the, you know, boundaries and parentheses, we set up, um, so that I can give it my all and then not feel like, um, anything is being taken from me that I need and reserve for, you know, wellness or, you know, my personal life for health, you know, cause I would put that on the line to get, you know, finish a project at times, which was, you know, not going to do anymore.
'cause I think in some ways, um, some of that hustle culture stuff got me where I was or where I am now. Um, but I'm in a position where I can say no. Um, and so I'm very grateful for that one and two I'm taking that extremely seriously so that, um, my reputation isn't like busy guy, my rep, I want my reputation to be like intense the project.
I feel like I'm the only thing he's working on, even though he has a bunch of other stuff going on, guy, and that's a daily struggle. Um, and I do that better some days than others, some weeks better than others, but that's kind of the goal I'm striving towards. Um, that is again, kind of more community, um, focused and more about uplifting the creative, like visions of like collaborators in that.
Um, instead of just kind of showing up and being like, this is what I do. I did it. Like, my presence is a present and now I gotta go. Cause like I'm so busy. Like you're lucky to have me like peace, you know? Cause there, there is a lot of that within demand, um, musicians too. And I always felt too guilty to be that kind of person.
So I would just, you know, if I wasn't giving my all to something, I would be racked with guilt when really all I needed to do was set boundaries and say no, so now I'm. Can both preserve my energy and then show up more for the things I say yes to. Yeah. I mean the intentional elevating, the project guy is a grid persona to, um, to aspire, um, to be, and I think, you know, thinking about our collaborations so far, I look forward to our recap phone calls after whenever we have them.
I mean, I feel a void when we don't have them. That's how much I value your, the intention that you bring and what you bring to the project and the perspective and the, you know, just a way of, of reframing. And recontextualizing a lot of what happened on, uh, any interview or what ideas are presented. And so, you know, I think to your point, like being able to say, I'm not doing this and I'm not doing that so that I can be 110%, this and 110%.
That is, uh, I was talking to my buddy had out today about, this is like, there's a fear of what if I say, no, you know, what if I don't do this project or Lee, or I leave this project, uh, what happens, you know, is there going to be another project or whatever? And I think that's definitely a fear that people have in general.
Um, but you know, it seems like what you're saying, um, is. When you do it and when you set the boundaries and you learn like it's hard enough just to say no, um, let alone getting to the point where it's like, now, what can you do with that time? Um, have you, uh, do you have any case studies of saying no to something and something else?
Really great appearing, because I think that's a common fear. And I'm wondering where that lands with you. Yeah, actually, um, so I got offered at a time, uh, like a few months ago where I was, um, you know, somewhat strapped for cash. Um, I got offered this really huge, uh, you know, uh, to run six week a piece tour.
Um, and I kind of looked at my schedule and I think I would have been out right now. And I looked at everything I had on there, and I felt really committed to the things that I was doing in that time. Um, with like people I'd been collaborating with for longer, who I knew would be I'd collaborate more in the future.
It felt like this great opportunity for, you know, really, you know, decent money and good music and travel accommodations, kind of, uh, living the dream kind of. Um, it felt like that was going to be a one-off thing with those people or, you know, both of these runs and then that would be it. Whereas I want it to like nurture these relationships and keep all the important, great things I had on my schedule.
So I just was like really odd and grateful for that opportunity. And then I said, I said, no. Um, and then I ended up getting a bunch of gigs with like these new people who I now consider great friends and collaborators. And then for that second run, which would be in January, I ended up booking, um, a musical that would last even longer during the year be even better for me.
Um, both like personally, you know, career wise, uh, financially like musically, like very fulfilling. Like I'm very excited about this thing. And if I was gone from January to March, I would have had the same, no to something that is going to end up being, um, you know, once I signed the papers, like January to September, um, closer to home with people I love, uh, and, and, you know, I'm really excited to work with and always wanted to work with more.
Um, it's going to give me the opportunity to also, you know, through like sub things, like give back to. Um, players who've given me like really great opportunities. So, um, if I wasn't able to do that, that would have actually really pulled on me and been a bummer. So what I thought was my biggest opportunity to date, um, that I had to kind of summarily turn down.
I ended up getting this even better opportunity, which is going to be more fulfilling and better. So yeah, I mean, that that's happened to me all the time. I tend not to think about what if, uh, and, and sort of trust the process. Um, because every time I think, I know, especially in music where I think my career is going and it takes a turn that I don't like, there's usually something different around the corner that brings me somewhere.
I wouldn't have expected. Well, I mean, I had a bunch of great stuff booked for 2020. I was supposed to go on tour in China in March, 2020. It was big like, um, like really big venues like that. We were apparently going to sell because of some weird licensing thing. And we were going to just have this great international, pretty successful, fun tour with an artist I play with that all got canceled.
And then, you know, the months later, like I'm sitting here talking to you, which I wouldn't have done otherwise. So this is also an example of one of those things. Yeah. Wow. So many examples. And I loved that. I wanted to. Zoom in to the moments where you have to say no and have to turn that down. And like you said, you know, you're pretty good at that.
Um, were you always good at that? Or was that something that came a time? No, I said yes to everything for years and years. Um, and I, I knew that I would say yes until I was able to say no, and that was always the plan, but it is really difficult because if someone asks me to do something, I'm not only, um, excited about the opportunity, I'm, you know, flattered, grateful to be employed.
I want to do all these things, um, kind of over promise and, and I would get really excited, um, and to say no felt like I was, I don't know, like it would hurt them in some way, even though it wasn't personal, that's probably not the best way to describe it, but I would feel a sense of guilt for not being able to do something.
Um, and so to avoid the discomfort of saying no right away, I would say yes until it became untenable, which ends up being way worse and more uncomfortable. When you have to say no in the middle of something, then at the beginning of something. So it's almost like, um, selfishly to avoid the. Additional pain and discomfort of saying no later I taught myself to say no now, which actually ends up being much better for the health of like my personal and professional relationships.
And at the end of the day, the music business, or any like freelance work is just 90% relationship management. Once you have basic skills under your fingers. So yeah, I, I was not always good at it. I was the best at it I've ever been. And that does not mean I don't have an incredible, uh, amount of room to grow because while it might sound like I have everything, um, figured out, uh, I absolutely do not.
And I think one of my skills is making it sound like I have everything figured out by making my provisional understanding of something that I've come to recently, like my new epiphany and make it seem like, oh, well this is like Eureka. I have found the, the nectar of the gods, the meaning of life. And then I, you know, I, I don't like proselytize.
I don't like preach it as like, this is the truth, but it's like, yeah, this is the truth for me. But you know, then something else ends up replacing it. And it's always a developing understanding. So I'm better than I was. And hopefully tomorrow I'll be better at it than I am today. And that's really all I can ask for.
Uh, yeah, two great threads there. One thread to pull on is, you know, that feeling of guilt when saying no, like feeling like it's like, if you really think about it, it's like, so cocky to think like, oh, if I say no to Christian, like he's going to be fucking devastated. Like, yeah. Like if I can't work with him, he is going to be so upset.
Like it's going to just destroy it. It's like, wait, what? Like, he's probably gonna be like, okay, cool. Like I was already asking you someone else, you know, whatever. But yeah, like that happens all the time where it's like, you definitely feel that, you know, someone's asking you for something that means a lot.
Um, and rather than, you know, doing something which I've been trying to do recently, um, and again, the other thread of this, which is, should preface any watching of any of these videos, which is, uh, we're arriving at nutria does all the time. And then refactoring those truths later when we realized they don't make sense in all contexts or whatever.
So I was saying this to Eduardo on the phone today. I was like, here's how I would pack for a trip to LA for three weeks, but I pack minimally. So like only take this advice if you plan on living, like in this specific way. Um, you know, prior to that, I used to not do that kind of thing. And so you hear truths thrown around as if they're the objective only truth that can exist.
Um, or so I like that you clarified that. Okay. And, uh, yeah, so, but anyway, like this, the saying no part, uh, definitely been, been there and having to say no to people and feeling the guilt, uh, is, is real. Um, I was losing my thread. There was another point I was getting to, but, um, yeah. Do you have any, any response to that or, uh, I, well, I think that's really true because again, I'm working in, you know, with music directors or producers, um, there are many who, you know, because their job is to have a point of view in many ways.
And this is how I see this thing being, uh, back in flip into a sort of hubris where it's like, if you're going to play rock, if you're going to play power chords only play a Les Paul, because if you don't play a Les Paul that is wrong and it's kind of like the fuck outta here, man, you can like, I'll play your hello Katy guitar and make it good.
Like, you know, so, so to a certain extent it's, um, it's, you know, it's nice to have that, that clear cut view, but really all, all truths are, uh, you know, conditional in some way I say is I look over at my bookshelf and see the, uh, um, Fuko reader. But, um, yeah, it's, I think all, all truths are. You know, moving along the path.
Cause I know I, I had really firmly held beliefs. Uh, you know, especially when I'm like 19, I didn't know. Um, what I didn't know then, cause I thought I knew everything of course, like every other 19 year old, you know man in college. Right. So it, that version of me would think that this version of me, which I think is, has a more nuanced view of life, has learned some things through hard won experience and a lot of reading and a lot of mistakes.
Like he would think that I was completely full of shit. So like not only do I like disagree with other people, um, you know what I consider to be true, this, I wouldn't even agree with previous incarnations of myself. So how can I, you know, sit here and talk about some sort of objective, you know, truth, you know, I mean, not just like metaphysically and like some high-minded way, but like with art, you know, I, I would have told you two years ago that, oh yeah, low tuned, real gushy, snare drums, like that's the thing.
And it was like the trend and it was super cool. And now I've heard that for, you know, however many years and I'm like, you know what we should do. Let's take all that muffling off and crank that thing and just make it scream like a, um, you know, 90. Stone temple pilots record or something like it's all, it's all a constantly evolving understanding, which I've learned because it's been modeled by the artists and creatives that I respect the most, whether it's a writer who kind of revises their beliefs as their life changes, um, someone like SART who was, you know, had a really clear view of what he believed and then kind of went a field and then retracted somethings and, you know, or someone like, you know, like Kanye or the Beatles, or, uh, especially miles Davis or Coltrane where their artistic journey, uh, from like a God's eye view reflects changing values, um, over time as like manifested in the work.
And like, you can see, um, how their concept of what is right or what is good or what is like desirable or what the meaning of music or life is. You can see that reflected in those people's work because it changes as they change as, as people and artists. And so I'm sort of letting go of wanting to be, you know, right.
Or having it all figured out. Um, because I know, or especially being arrogant about thinking, I know what the right answer is because I know that I'm probably wrong. And I will find out why sometime in the next 20 years, if not the next 20 minutes, you know, um, two quotes right there that I loved, I'm probably wrong.
And I will find out in the next 20 minutes. And also, I wouldn't agree with previous incarnations of myself. I just wrote a song the other day that pretty much has that same lyric in it. It was like, you know, why would I trust myself in the past with like decisions I've made or whatever, like, you know, you're always evolving and if you're open enough to being proven wrong in the future.
Yeah. Like, you know, if you're not you're in for a rude awakening and if you are, um, also a very disruptive awakening potentially because there's an extreme of this where you're like, Hey, I don't really know anything it's always changing. Um, and then there's, it's hard to have any perspective. So how are you, how are you, you personally balancing, um, having a point of view and not, you know, while like being open enough, what does that look like for you?
Yeah, well, I'm very into the idea of kind of controlling my output by, uh, kind of manipulating my inputs. Um, cause I know that it's kind of like you are what you eat. Um, but like aesthetically and intellectually and spiritually. So I'm always reading different things, um, to try to grow and evolve and then, uh, you know, listening to different music, going through different phases, making big playlists of things.
I want to influence me at that time, letting that seep in on like a subconscious level and letting it flow out. And then, um, to answer your question more directly using, and I'm trying to get better at this. Um, but using the art process as, um, and now more and more through like writing, um, documenting all of those provisional answers or provisional values or provisional truths so that I can look back at my life through art and writing and see all of the ways I thought it had.
I had it figured out like over time. So I'll be able to see through these like written markers and documents of, you know, I can see my progress of trying to figure things out and, uh, kind of, instead of trying to make my, um, you know, Sergeant pepper, realizing that Sergeant pepper for them was a moment in time.
And just trying to document my moments in time through the things I created. And then using my life as a perpetual process of growing and learning and trying to understand things the best way I can, whether it is through, you know, reading or listening, you know, whether it's digging, you know, really into like duke Ellington and trying to figure that out even more than I did in the past, or just being knocked out by, you know, new stuff, you know, like, okay, like what's the deal with, um, like, why am I so emotionally impacted by Olivia Rodriguez?
Like that came out of nowhere. Um, and you know, so it's being open to things that are outside of my sphere and then trying to go deeper into things I already understand, but also just trusting my intuition. It's kind of like to guide me where I go with those things. I'm in a transition right now in my reading where I was real heavy into kind of business-y, uh, self-help stuff.
Um, cause I really badly needed it cause I was not running my business like a business, so that was, I needed it. Um, and then now I'm like, okay, I'm starting to just read the same thing over and over again. And I'm starting to put these things into practice. So now I'm, I'm kind of expanding, um, kind of back into, uh, you know, Kind of more hard philosophy instead of like soft philosophy, like, you know, less, less stoicism, more, you know, like, and I love this stuff.
I mean, I'm dressed like this, but like mid century, like French structuralism and whatever. So it's like, I'm always kind of navigating my influences so I can change what my outputs are and bring something new to the table and constantly growing in all these different directions, but then also not just kind of doing that and kind of howling at the moon, like actually making art for myself and other people.
So I can listen back to something, um, and go like, wow, like 2017, I must've been listening to like a lot of Les Paul and Mary Ford because that just, I just ripped that off subconsciously wholesale. And just letting that be what it is, it wasn't the answer, but that's, you know, my intuition made me do that, make that move and then, you know, looking back, I can say, oh, well, that, that makes sense in context.
And, and I think that's a beautiful way to look back at a life too. Absolutely. I mean, I feel like, again, this is so funny. I had a really nice conversation with Eduardo today. Um, shadow to Eduardo, one of my favorite internet friends. Um, and we were talking about, you know, finding the self and what is the cell.
And how do you, you know, and you've read a lot of philosophy, so I'm sure you have lots to say about this. Um, but this idea of like the self comes through acting and doing in the world. Um, and yeah, I mean, I was just thinking about that as you were going and explaining this, this the way you're figuring it out is by doing, and being challenged and, and having to respond and getting as many good inputs as you can.
So that hopefully the output is closer to the way you would like to behave and the way you've seen demonstrated or explained. Yeah. Um, but all the good inputs in the world to there, there's a sense in which just by taking it in, it's subconsciously becoming part of you. But at the same time, you have to put those ideas into motion.
Otherwise they're just ideas. And that can lead to a certain type of stagnation where, um, I've had this conversation, um, many times, um, w I have very similar conversations to the ones that we have, um, with my dad. And we both read a lot of, um, stuff about Buddhism and mindfulness and, you know, Vedic philosophy, stuff like that.
Um, and I remember talking to him one day, uh, and. I was like, this is a great conversation, but I think we would get to the answer quicker if you just meditated twice a day instead of once a day. And so, and it was, and I wasn't trying to be like glib or rude or say like, oh, I have a figured out or whatever.
But all of these things that I was reading about didn't click until I actually started putting it into practice. And that practice became a deep, like part of my being. And then I stopped having to read about it as much because I was experiencing it firsthand. Um, I, I took the, um, like TM course, which I'm not trying to sell to anybody, but it was really one of many ways to meditate.
And I found this one impactful. And the, the guy who taught it to me while I was doing my like little intake form, um, intake, that sounds really bad. But, um, I was, I was filling out the form and he was talking to me, he's like, oh, you studied philosophy in college. That's cool. I used to read a lot of philosophy.
And then I started this practice of meditation and now I build bird, bird houses. And that was so profound to me because it's like, oh, well you experientially found what you believe to be the truth and like this cosmic way. So like, yeah, Y. Like read a sort of transcription of the thing that you experienced.
And it was basically like, oh, look at, you know, that's cute that you're like reading this description of Beethoven's fifth symphony, but like, unless you're in the room with, you know, the New York film, dentata like, you don't, you know, that, that is the experience. The, the reading, the, the musicological, you know, analysis is not the experience.
So there there's a sense in which all the, all the good inputs in the world, um, need to be put into motion to actually become the desired output. So that is a caveat to kind of the framework I presented, because it doesn't just mystically appear as great art. Well, I love this point here because, you know, we've been working on this book and, you know, gathering the research for, uh, discussing what we're learning.
And so much of it is the philosophy right now. Um, I even took a, um, uh, I took a note, you know, how does practice work itself into our book? Uh, um, on my other screen right here, I'm working on a 40 week course on design and trying to structure that and philosophically I'm like, well, I think practice is so essential to understand design.
I should only be talking about design so much at some points you have to try to design something. Realize where you're at and then be able to level up because you know, your level, um, and know like what's next or what you'd like to learn. So, you know, I think there is a balance. I don't know exactly what it is, but I think, you know, I remember talking with Greg Matthews who AKA yellow shoots on one of these interviews and him saying the seasonality of life.
And, you know, it might not be exactly the same. I'm going to be every three months or eight months, whatever. But like, there is this ebb and flow of like some times the best thing you could do is just soak up all these different influences because maybe that's what you need. Maybe it's comforting. Maybe it's helping you think that you're progressing and maybe you are in some way, even if you're not retaining, you know, even 5% of it.
And then you go into the world and you experience again. Um, yeah. And so, you know, yeah, it's definitely something to think about, you know, uh, how the creative, uh, sees that journey and, and what attributes they assigned to those moments of like the, of the ebb and flow, you know, the yin yang being, uh, an example of that where black isn't bad and negative, isn't bad like this, the color or the word negative.
Isn't like a negative term. You know what I mean? Um, and white positive that side of it is. Good. You know, it's like both of these things are necessary components. The whole thing existing is the only good thing, you know, the only positive thing, everything else is just a requirements. But I think part of the seasonality and I'm getting on a tangent here, but I kind of like where it's going, but part of this seasonality, uh, one part of it is how do you view that seasonality, you know, the, the, what tone do you assign to it?
I'm wondering there, like where language and ideas, how they, how that works for you, how that helps you be a better quote, unquote creative, you know, you read a lot, probably more than most people I know, maybe like is second, uh, to you in terms of people that read and then maybe Greg, uh, as far as I know, in terms of people that read a lot, um, but you're a clear first, uh, first place, but I'm wondering how, like this knowledge and reading, uh, how does it help you?
Well, I think it really forms how I view the world. I think most of my experience of the world is mediated through language. Um, and I think when I was younger, um, it was, uh, a portal into, you know, other worlds, um, which people talk about a lot. But I, I'm not, I was never huge. I was never primarily a fiction reader either.
So that wasn't exactly it, but I think there was a sense in which I wanted to use words and knowledge to help give me categories. So I had everything figured out this very like structuralist understanding of, okay, cool. Like now let's look at the continuum of music history. We have the sixties. Okay. What are these currents?
And I would, you know, be able to have like a visual map inwards, but, you know, associations of, okay, these are the instruments they were playing. These are the sounds they were using. These are the types of chords they were using and it would help me bracket off like a sort of socio-historical like understanding of the world.
And then I think as I've gotten older, it's less about breaking things and putting them into neat boxes as I'm learning. Those boxes are in many ways, just arbitrarily, um, sort of created, um, and restrictive of like a greater understanding of things. It's, it's all about connecting ideas to each other through language and then finding, um, aspects of language that help, uh, construct and create meaning in my life that I can then apply, um, in the sense that, um, Like I'm very influenced.
Uh, and I think we'll just in my life and in my thoughts by, um, kind of early existentialism, like SART he's on my button here. Um, I've mentioned him a couple of times and sort of the idea that the meaning of our life is provisional and created by us. I think I've used, and that's like our radical responsibility, like that freedom isn't necessarily like a gift in a lot of ways.
It's like terrifying that we have to construct our own meaning. It's not. Uh, um, but I think I've used the language to do that. Um, w which means I'm constantly evolving in my understanding of things. Um, and I, you know, firsthand in a lot of, you know, I won't go into this area of things, but I think my understanding of the world, um, sort of politically over time, it very much attest to the power of language and category and the way that, that, um, has been, you know, a force for, uh, you know, both, you know, good and bad, you know, thinking of that in the, you know, food coast sense and kind of the Nietzschean sense.
So like language is quite literally power in a lot of ways. And so I take it very seriously. So I'm always trying to reassess the categories in my brain and bringing it to like a lighter. Like with genre, it like musically. Okay. Like I have all these words that I might associate with how like, jazz feels right.
Jazz, the word as a category. Right. It's even being challenged now as, um, reductive of this greater tradition that is beyond kind of what we see that to be so much of our, I mean, this is a bit of a tangent, but so much of our understanding of genre is mediated by commercial categories that were created by, you know, record companies to sell on the basis of, you know, race region, socioeconomic status just, or just ways that they felt like they could package it.
Right. So the difference between, um, you know, like folk blues and what we know is like country was literally just like race for a little bit. Um, and you know, they would, oh, we can sell this to these people and whatever. And then now you're learning music, right? And you go on YouTube and, you know, 12 country licks and there's this like really clearly defined thing.
Like that means a lot to us. So I think, whereas, um, to actually complete my point when I was younger, I wanted to learn all those categories. I wanted to read everything now, like absorb all this knowledge. So I had the words to describe the universe as it is, and music and art, and just really have a command over that.
Now I'm in this place where I'm using. I'm seeing the limits of language and I'm trying to use language to help like liberate, like out of date categories, like from themselves. And, uh, maybe challenge my own understanding that was limited by that language and have a more expansive, inclusive, like holistic understanding of the universe.
That, those, those, the very way I learned about all of these things actually restricted me to certain modes of thinking that aren't serving me anymore. Um, both creatively or otherwise. Um, because when it comes down to it, as much as language is important to me, and then everything you asked and everything, I just kind of word salad together.
Music is come in its best moments when I'm on stage and it feels great. I'm completely unfettered by language. It is as close to an experience of, you know, sort of transcending or like Somadi, or, um, sort of this like blissful, um, almost separation of self as I can get, um, outside of meditation. Um, so I feel like in a lot of ways, my purest artistic self isn't mediated by language, but I've used language to.
Understand things enough to where I could get to that point where I can like transcend it. So it's almost like I'm, I'm constantly like pushing up against it, which is really, um, exciting. And I'm so, uh, like animated and excited by this idea that I really am very much stopping myself from, you know, talking about like dairy Dom and like Chomsky universal language and stuff like that.
Cause this linguistics that tangent wouldn't be necessarily productive, um, for us as like in our like creative aesthetic, uh, discussion. But I think to get to that place of pure creation, you have to push past the, the language and the categories that we've used to define it. But at the same time to learn it, you actually have to learn, you have to acquire the grammar of whatever medium you're you're doing.
Um, both through imitation of masters and also by like reading books about how they did it. And so both English or whatever, your first languages and the language of the medium you're using are going to be kind of intertwined and how you learn anything. I've never put it like that before, but really I think at the end of the day, um, creativity is kind of.
Can be described in terms of like linguistics on that kind of higher level. So like languages, everything, and like nothing at the exact same time for how I think of things. I don't know if that's the answer you were looking for, but that's what came to mind. Well, that was, I couldn't have looked for that if I tried.
I'm glad it emerged. Um, I'll say that, um, that was really well stated and I resonate with it deeply. I think, you know, teaching, having this role of teaching has changed the way I think about my experience as a designer, since I've been designing, like how did I start? Why did I start? What was it like, how did I get to the place that I felt like I was anything at any point?
And how did I evolve past there and why, and what decisions and digging into that, you realize all of these things that you're saying, which is there was a knowledge that I was pulling from a knowledge base, which really was just segmenting ideas into categories that were, uh, assigned some label. Um, and I was like, okay, that's the world.
And I'm very much like you. And I think that's where we resonate resonated with each other early on, which is I wanted to make sense of the world completely. And I thought that there was an objective. To all the things and there's still my B that the jury's out, but, um, you know, like I wanted to find that for design, uh, I started by just learning it and having fun with it.
And then very quickly it was like, um, you know, how can I be great? What does that mean? There has to be like one path towards that greatness. I'm going to assume it's just studying all the things that ever came before and knowing all the words and, and whatever. And then getting to a point where it was like, okay, I know all of that, but I think there's like another side of this whole thing.
Um, so, and it actually was the dismantling of the concepts dismantling of the labels. Uh, it's sort of that thing is like, um, you have to know how to make it, to know how to like, or, you know, know how it's made to like actually make the thing you need to know the components, um, before you can sort of destroy it and break it apart and form your own meanings.
But. Uh, so there's that side of things, which I think you captured beautifully. Um, and I, it had me thinking about inspiration because inspiration is just a thing that has a label already applied to it likely some metadata that you're decoding, uh, when you're viewing that thing, uh, which that meta-data, and the label of it, like a genre and a artist, a CA if I say Kanye west, here's a song by Kanye west.
You're already, if I say, here's a hip hop track by Connie, or here's a gospel track by Kanye now, you've already, you have two different labels, you have his name, you have the genre, which you're now assigning meaning to. And then all of your experience with Kanye and your thoughts on that. And so all of that's going into sort of either help or add to, or sort of risk subtract from your inspiration.
Um, and so thinking about inspiration, uh, as a means of like, sort of just this information decoding, um, and how labels affect inspiration and how you're decoding and specific labels bias you when looking at inspiration is something I hadn't really thought about, even though I just taught a class on information architecture, didn't think about, um, how information and label or inspiration and labels, um, uh, affect each other.
But it definitely does. Um, Man. That was great. And I was also taking notes for my own class. I wrote, um, cause I'm trying to model the class. Here's another label, similar to the Bauhaus school of design. What I liked about the Bauhaus school of design though. It's not, I don't want it to be the Bauhaus school of design as it was.
Um, I want it to be taking principles of that. And so the only way to do that is to know how it was really how it was as, as real as I can get to and then decode that and apply it. Um, and part of that is that master apprentice relationship, that imitation discussion, um, practice that being that 80 or 90% of the, of the work.
And I just took a note here just about the imitation part of it, because that's such a huge part of, of the work. So you're helping me, I'm learning as I always do speaking to. Um, yeah. Wow. Uh, do you want to add anything about the inspiration piece? Um, yeah, I mean, so I think waiting for inspiration is a lazy, I just want to throw that out there.
Um, but I will say that, um, inspiration is, is a fickle mistress. Um, but we can do so many things to prime ourselves for like allowing it to come in. If that makes sense. So while, um, you can't necessarily wait for lightning to strike, you can move somewhere where it rains a lot, you know? So if, if I want to be really inspired to write or something like that, I can't, I could sit around and wait for it to happen, and I can't guarantee it's going to happen.
But if I make sure that, you know, first thing in the morning I get up and I take a long walk and I'm reading a lot and I have new inputs and I'm challenging my assumptions. And I'm talking to interesting people and trying to get out of my comfort zone. I'm at least, um, I'm at least prepping the soil for, you know, something to potentially, you know, spring up, like on its own.
Um, and so I think I fall somewhere between the, okay, like I am, you know, this, like, you know, this kind of French, 19th century idea of like what an artist is, where you just sit around and you allow and you wait and then, you know, you're just, you're stricken with this, like need to have this thing pour out of you.
Like that can happen. And that's really beautiful. And it worked really, really well for Byron, but, and, and I also appreciate like the pure craftsman and I come at it like that, where it's like, you go to work every day and it's like this real blue collar approach. Um, like craft, um, which doesn't really allow for inspiration.
It's just like, yeah, you do it until it's good. And sometimes it will be in, sometimes it won't be. And if you do it enough, then eventually it will be good. Well, I think that both of those are extremes and the truth is like somewhere in the middle, where if, like, if you work enough and you keep yourself open by all those things, we talked about going to a museum or just whatever fills you up spiritually.
Um, I mean, it could be like brunch cocktails with your college friends. It could be anything. Right. Um, as long as you're doing those two things, then you're like preparation. And the fact that you're creating that opportunity will then, uh, probably create more times that you get struck by the lightning bolt.
Like you're not you're. Yeah. So that's, I don't have anything too profound beyond that. I just, I wanted to put that out there cause I I've heard, you know, the hustle culture thing. I think doesn't allow for the magic and people who just sit around waiting for their Hogwarts letter are going to be disappointed too, because you got to put in the work.
So it's, it's, I've found it to be somewhere in the middle and I'm always trying to navigate that. Yeah. I mean, I was, uh, so I run this monthly designer meet up called art club. Uh, there was a new member that joined, uh, on Monday and he's an illustrator and he's an excellent illustrator, like has this sort of Western.
Version of anime. Like if you could westernize it. And like all of the influences of like, you know, American cartoon, Flintstones, Jetsons culture meets animates. It's really awesome hybrid. And it's such a distinct style. Like I recognize it immediately. I've known him since college. Every time I've seen his work, I know it's him.
Uh, he's great. And he's like struggling to get work. And it's like, I was like, well, what opportunities, you know, preparedness opportunity. I was like, if that is the equation for luck, arguably, or at least getting struck by lightning more times, how many, like, how are you going about seeking opportunity? And it was like, oh, well, I haven't really done anything.
I was like, other than like, just sitting there and drawing, like you could illustrate for the rest of your life and literally talk to no one and you'll be the best illustrator. No one knows. Like, it's just how it works. Um, but yeah, I think that's a really, really big point. It seems as though this, like what I was recognizing is that his response to not having the opportunity was to double down even a harder on the preparedness.
It was like, oh, I'm not getting this because I'm not prepared enough. It was like, or it's either that language or it's simply. That's what I know. I don't know this like opportunity thing. That's business people. That's the devil. He's like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna double down on like playing guitar and I'm going to be insanely good, like the best guitarist.
And like, someone will find me because of that. They'll walk across my apartment and hear the solo need to come in. Yeah. The, the singing into the hairbrush and, you know, somebody's Clive Davis comes in and said, you know, I was going to make you a stock in like, yeah, yeah, it has happened. It will happen if you add up the number of times that happened, versus someone just like hitting up a bunch of people and getting work from that.
Right. Right. Right. I think the ladder has been more successful, but it is a phenomenon how that happens, where it's like, oh no, I'm just going to keep designing. Like, I'm going to make this business successful by just continuing to design. And there's times where that is true. But it's usually after you have the opportunity is not before.
Yeah. Um, you know, and I was telling him like, look, dude, I got like my first big gig. Like when I had like, technically for status half a portfolio piece, it was still in the. So it's like, and this was a huge project. And it was like, yeah, don't other gigantic projects before, but not with status. And it was like, if I went in saying, well, I can't get it.
I just need to keep grinding. Like, I'm just gonna sit here on my computer all day. I'm like, nah, I did that for like a decade. Plus I don't want to, I don't want to sit here and keep doing that. Like I need something else. Yeah. You're never, you're never ready. And most of the time when the people you see who are super successful, who are, you know, maybe further along than like creatively or artistically than you might be as an artist, everyone assumes that they got the job when they were that good.
It's like most people, most people jump in like, they're ready, but they're just ready. Or maybe they're not ready. And they get thrown in and over the course of doing it, they become great. So if you never throw yourself into the gauntlet, you'll actually never be ready. It's like bands that just rehearsed and never play gigs.
Well, we're not good enough. We're not good enough. Well, it's because of rehearsal and gigs are completely different things and, and you can rehearse for three years and never sound like a band that rehearsed one time and went on the road for a week. So like at a certain time, at a certain point, you, you it's about like putting yourself out there, even when it's uncomfortable.
I I'm saying this from experience. I was always. Oh, I'm not good enough yet. Or
What's motivating them everything in between 25 interviews, they usually spend anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours. So a lot of talking, a lot of listening, a lot of learning. Um, it's been incredible. And today is the last interview in the series, uh, that I will be interviewing someone, uh, next week.
This someone that I'm interviewing today, Christian Wheeler will be interviewing me to kind of conclude the whole, um, the whole project or at least, um, this phase of the project. And then, um, what's next. Then we're going to switch over to the Exploring Creativity page. So follow that account. If you don't, it's at Exploring dots, creativity.
Um, and there, we're going to start doing recap episodes. So starting with the very first episode with Dylan seals all the way, I guess the episode with me, which would be episode 20, um, S 7 27, uh, we'll be recapping it. And we're going to use those sessions to take notes and understand and extract more information about, uh, what we learned there.
Uh, the side cover it. I'm just checking my notes here. Oh, I mean, this almost goes without saying, but it's worth saying thanks to everybody who participated there has been, you know, 25, 26 people so far that have participated in this series. Um, this project that kind of just stemmed from a lot of other discussions about creativity.
Um, and thank you for participating, being vulnerable, talking about your process and, uh, uh, what makes you excited about the work and what has prevented you from doing, um, work over the years and not just work, but really contributing to the world creatively? Um, it's not an easy task. It's challenging, it's exhausting.
It requires a lot of, uh, persistence and sometimes. Little to no guidance around what you're doing. So you have explored creativity in your craft, uh, and you've explored it with me on these lives. So thank you so much to everyone involved. Um, I, you know what? Fuck it. I'm gonna shout everyone out. So that's Dylan seals, Brian Parker, Nathan Dan slur, John Castelli, Greg Matthews lane, banning Danny Klein, angel spider, Jared masters, Brian Garrity, Alex gurus, John graver, Mike Cleaver, Matthew Genovese, Ray JC Tyler Johnson.
Uh, Lauren Carr, Addison Scott, Matthew stoops that Ebro quack, Elmer Quintero, Molly Fletcher, Royal Flarity. And today Christian Wheeler. That's crazy. So many people. Fuck. Thank you guys so much for real. This is, this was fun. Thanks for entertaining. My fun, uh, spontaneous project. So without further ado, um, again, um, after please follow the new account, we're going to be moving a lot of stuff over and posting clips and all that, but without further ado, I want to introduce my co author, uh, partner in this series, Christian Wheeler, him and I have been, um, We've known each other pretty much from the beginning of this project, he had reached out to me about, uh, the conversations, podcasts that I was on for better part of last year.
Um, and he was interested in some of the things I was saying and how it was, uh, you know, speaking about it and whatnot. And, um, I forget exactly how I'm going to ask him how we kind of connected, but it was basically, I was looking for help with this project. And when we started talking and right from the first phone call, I was driving from LA to San Diego.
We spoke for like maybe an hour and a half, two hours. And I knew pretty much from the first 10 minutes. This is the guy that I want to work with. This is someone I want to collaborate with and get his opinion on what I'm doing, uh, how to make it better, how to reframe my own thinking. He's been an awesome collaborator so far.
And, um, I'm excited to talk a little bit about our collaborations together, learnings there. Um, but really I'm excited to learn about him today. Um, things I don't know, even things we've never discussed before. So yeah, I'm going to introduce, uh, invite, I should say Christian to the chat, but first I'm going to as always, um, by tradition, spam all of my friends and get them to join this live.
Uh, again, thank you. I, you know, I thanked everyone that has participated, but also thank you for watching. Thank you for commenting for sharing it to your story. Um, telling people about it, liking it, whatever it may be. Um, that is, you know, not the reason I did it. I did it really to just kind of understand this creative creativity thing that I've been involved with for so long, but, you know, seeing the impact it's had on other people makes it that much better.
So thank you. Um, and thanks for supporting what I've been doing, um, forever since I started creating. So, uh, yeah, here we go. I send some invites out and invite things started.
Oh man. Hey, how's it going? It's up to you finally, a family doing it, finally doing it. Yeah. Isn't it kind of weird. How does it feel to like, be on the thing that you've been working on? Well, I've been watching so many of them. I feel like I just like blue sky dude into a picture book or something like that.
You're in it. I'm in it now. Yeah. Do you feel like you're more biased now? Like do you, were you thinking about, um, you know, having watched probably more than anyone, uh, do you feel like you're going in with. No, not really. I have no idea what I'm going to say. I made no preparations and I I've had the nice, uh, armchair seat this whole time.
Uh, not, not having to necessarily contribute my own ideas, but just kind of pick apart other people's, which I think is, uh, a little bit easier. So I'm out of the cheap seats and sort of in the arena today, I guess. Nice to great metaphor. Um, well it was, it was Theodore Roosevelt. It wasn't me.
And as reference. Um, well, I'm super excited to have you on, I mean, we've been talking not since February, but like, I guess, do you remember when we, when our first chat was like roughly around? I think it was April. I can, I'm going to say April. Yeah. Before the 14th. Definitely. Yeah. Cause that was coming off the road.
I remember being in the van all day, getting home and then talking to you. So it must've been around that time when started coming back outside. Yeah. So like six months about the school. And I remember, you know, a conversation early on where we were talking about, I was like, this is super meta because, uh, our collaborations should reflect, um, an ideal collaboration, right?
Like. This is a project about creativity and about creative collaboration and creative work. And we should set the best example for ourselves and for other people while doing this, I'm curious for you, like, um, what have you taken away from this experience so far? Uh, yeah, well, I've, I've taken away, firstly, that as varied and different as everyone's approaches to creativity are there is like a common route, um, that it all kind of revolves around, which has been really great.
So to not only find kind of the peculiarities of everyone's own kind of practice, um, but to find sort of general themes that recur and, you know, as we've talked about, um, privately like spectrums, we all navigate and we can get into that later. But as far as, um, like our collaboration being excited about how, um, deeply you can get with somebody that you haven't put in years getting to know and how quickly, um, you can find a common language and common goals, uh, and have like a really fruitful collaboration on the par with maybe some people who I've either went to college with or grew up with, or, you know, You know, 20 days in the van when it broke down in south bend or something like that, you know, we've never met in person, but I, I feel like we're the collaborations operating on that level.
And so it's helping me reframe, um, and maybe bring to other collaborations ways that I can get deeper, um, more quickly maybe without, quite as much sweat equity or tragedy, you know, trauma bonding from the road and stuff like that, you know? Yeah. I mean, you mentioned language and shared language and shared goals.
Is there anything else that you feel like went into us being able to connect so quickly? Or do you want to expand on those? Uh, well, I think there was just a, it's hard to say there was kind of a disposition or an outlook that I think we shared, which made it easy to connect. And I think that probably it'll be easier to see what those things are in the less ephemeral way when I'm like holding the book in my hand.
Cause I feel like that's going to be like the distillation of what those things are in a lot of ways. Um, but I just feel like we had a similar approach to, um, music, something that. Um, drew me towards kind of what you were contributing to the podcast and sort of the podcasts in general was a sort of general like community orientedness.
And, um, I know that I was really developing a lot of ideas kind of in isolation here. Well, literally isolation like social isolation, but, um, really using that time to learn and grow as an artist and as a person trying to become better and reframe how I approach my art and my career based around that art.
Um, and maybe not feeling as kindred, um, with a lot of the people, I was, uh, not, not people I was collaborating with here, but just feeling like the Zeit Geist I was feeling was different than the zeitgeists that was around me. And so meeting someone and like now multiple people, like through the internet who were kind of sharing those ideas, um, it felt like, uh, kind of settling into.
Um, like a subcultural like home that, uh, was, I felt just very like seen and heard very quickly in a great way, which is not to, uh, you know, devalue old, um, friendships or like working relationships. It's just, I found a very like niche group of people who are all going at the same issue, the same way, which I think is, you know, I'm late to the game on this, but apparently is what the internet is really good for.
If it's good for, you know, anything besides e-commerce it is really good for e-commerce. Um, uh, yeah, I mean, I remember, as you were saying that I was thinking about the talk we had when I was like walking around the neighborhood I was living in and we were talking about the internet and we were talking about meeting people online and the, and the value of the internet.
Um, how has that changed for you since starting this project? Because I know you definitely, uh, re took, uh, took another look at it. Yeah. I mean, I am a kind of an old, old fashioned kind of person here. I'm going to flip my camera around. This is my apartment. Um, yeah, so like, um, I wasn't big into like eBooks or, you know, I'm a tangible handheld kind of old school.
Kind of want to be, you know, Bohemian artists guy. And I, uh, definitely was not, I had more bad things to say about the internet than good things. I used it as a tool. It felt like a necessary evil. And now I've, I've really seen the like connective power of it when used the right way. Um, and it's something that's improved my mental health instead of detracted from it when used in this way.
So yeah, I'm, I'm a convert towards, in a strict way kind of maybe finding your, um, finding your group of people, uh, through like shared interests through the internet now, which is something that I didn't know if I really believed in before, um, which is probably why it wasn't giving that back to me because I wasn't putting out into the, you know, I wasn't being a community member anywhere on the internet.
So I was, I wasn't getting any of that back. Uh, it was, uh, kind of siloed off shouting into the echo chamber, um, and then kind of looking at other people doing like a similar thing. So yeah, I, I still have my, my reticence and a bit of like a Luddite streak, but I definitely feel a stronger about the connective power of the internet, which is literally what it is at the end of the day.
It's a, it's a network. I think, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. You, you do backend design. I don't do any of that stuff. I play guitar. I mean, it's literally a network of pages and we just have to represent ourselves on some of those pages that exists. Um, yeah. I mean, to kind of, uh, zoom into what you were talking about in terms of what this is an interesting interview for me, because I've been speaking with you for so long in detail about this project, and now I'm trying to reframe it and like view you as a, as a guest, but I just want to like have a conversation like we share.
Um, but, uh, yeah, I mean, I think there's shared language and shared goals from the start, uh, was such a accelerant to our collaboration. And then, um, I think this ability of like giving feedback and showing up for each other was another aspect where like, um, you know, I think there was early on you weren't able to like make a few calls or something and you had stuff going on.
And it was like, oh, it looks like something's wrong. Like, let let's talk about it. Let's address it before it like simmers or sits or we're confused about it or whatever. Um, and I feel like just being able to have fast feedback with each other has been also another accelerant to the collaboration. Yeah.
Um, especially being, you know, doing a lot of like studio, musician work, um, getting a lot of feedback. It's something that I'm very used to, but it's also, there's so many different kinds of feedback and some people are, um, better at empathetic feedback than others. Um, and so it was interesting to learn everyone's style.
It's almost like, um, I mean, this is just a riff off the top of my head, but it's almost like there are in the same way that people talk about love languages. There's like different like feedback, like styles or like archetypes. Um, and I felt like very quickly in our collaboration, we got on the same page about like, cool, we're just going to be super open, put everything on the table.
Like, I don't think either of us have, uh, you know, get hard feelings really quick when confronted with feedback. Cause I think we've both been, you know, put through the ringer and you know, our freelance lives. So we're not, you know, new to it. Or, um, you know, I've noticed working with a lot of musicians who might be amazing musicians, but if their outlet has been like one band for a long time, that sort of feedback mechanism is very personal because their working relationship is with whatever their like four friends who they, the personal gets intertwined with all the other things.
And since they're not going from project to project, um, there's less of an abstract sort of feedback mechanism that develops. So it, it tends to be like real, like personally tanged or, um, you know, uh, uh, chord voicing change might have all these other implications where it's like, oh yeah, you know, I think we should put the third on top.
It's like, no, we shouldn't like, screw you. You didn't do the dishes either. You know? And there's I, and I feel like, um, you know, that's beautiful in its own way, those kinds of groups and what they mean. I mean, like the rolling stones, right? I'm assuming they're somewhat like that. And you know, they're a lot more successful than me, so who am I to say?
But I feel like we've been in so many different professional situations that we were very able to quickly not only align, but like kind of lay out verbally like, oh, this is, this is how we're gonna approach, you know, feedback, you know, conflict. And then after that initial thing, it was just, you know, there was like a mutual understanding and we just kind of worked from that.
Yeah. You know, um, I'm thinking about those early conversations. And I just saw that lane banning just joined, uh, who was a previous guest in someone I spoke to yesterday, um, about a project that both of us are going to be collaborating on. And one of the things that stood out was like, Hey, I think it's best.
If we set terms early, So that we don't ruin what we know naturally feels like a good relationship. Like let's set these terms really before any work gets them before you're even involved in it before any, like anything. It's just like, what are the terms? How are we kind of working and giving that framework?
I remember walking away feeling really great about it and feeling like super close and like, all right, everything is on the table. And if the terms need to change or something needs to be discussed, like we'll do that. Uh, and it was something, you know, uh, I said specifically to lane yesterday, I was like, I don't want to ruin the relationship that we have already as friends, like by, you know, six months from now, like basically the terms are that we're trading design work for audio production, but it's like, there's a lot of room for ambiguity and messiness, like is one logo equal to one album.
Like, you know, there's just ways that this can get messy quick. And it was like, Hey, let's start by acknowledging. We don't want to ruin what we have and then build upon terms to prevent us from ruining it. You know what I mean? Or ambiguity from ruining it. And I think we did that. And that was something, um, having done that with you months and months ago, it felt like such a great way to start a collaboration with someone.
Yeah, absolutely. And I've, I've seen friendships just absolutely destroyed, um, both quickly and slowly over time by, um, lack of expectations and like the crossover of professional and personal relationships. And, um, uh, you know, when scope creep kind of enters into the equation where it's like, yeah, we're trading this service for this other service, but then all of a sudden you're on, you know, mix revision 23, that sounds just like mixed revision 17.
And then the thing that, you know, they did for you was like a five minute thing. And so it feels lopsided now, now all of a sudden there's, you know, resentment sort of the opposite of the, uh, oh, you didn't do the dishes. So now I'm going to hate your song thing. It's the, yes. You know, have you, have you kind of navigated in relationships like that yourself, where there was trading involved in scope creep involved and it seems like something you're familiar with.
Oh yeah. And I I've seen it. I've been part of it. I have been, you know, guilty of handling those things poorly in the days before I had read any Renee brown and established, you know, you know, saying no creating boundaries. Because it's okay, sure. Like I'll do this thing. Right. And then their scope creep.
And instead of confronting it right there and saying, okay, yeah, we're friends. I said, I'd take on this project. It's a little much for me with everything going on. Um, I'm gonna need this extra time for it. Or if you want it done in this timeframe, we should bring someone else in as like a finisher to help, because I'm not gonna be able to get it across the line.
And instead either try to like force it and do, um, do you know, kind of sub quality work to get it across the line in time or, um, get it done on time and sort of kind of Harbor resentment that, um, I was, they were reminding me to do the thing that they asked me to do and I had agreed to do, um, which is, which is incredibly unfair.
Um, and I'm using this example, um, just because, uh, I I'm the one at fault. So it's easy for me to, uh, talk about instead of kind of being like, well, I did this one project one time and I'm still really mad about it. And you know, all of that is, uh, is water under the bridge. So I'll, I'll take the, I'll take the hit.
Um, for my example, instead of throwing someone else under the bus, in case they're, you know, watching or we'll watch in the future, Well, yeah, I mean, look, it's, it's a double dual sided, um, thing, collaboration, you know, it's and I think there's two sides of that fence to be the person that has to ask the person who's not gonna, who's not fulfilling obligations is rough as well.
Um, you know, you might ask the first time, let's say, you're that person it's difficult to say, Hey Christian, like, you know, we agreed to this thing, you know, how do I approach this subject? He seems like he's having a rough week or whatever. Um, you know, there's, there's that typical 30. And then on the other side of it is like, you know, you're not, you don't want to have the opportunity to be the best version of yourself, those self that you wanted to be in that situation, uh, that you could be if you had time or resources or whatever.
Um, and yeah, I mean, it's rough, but that's why it's like setting the expectations. I mean, having run this business and send out so many contracts, it's like, it's when I heard from my stepbrothers a attorney. And so when he had written up and drafted my first few contracts and I was talking to him about it and it's like, it's there to protect both of you.
And I remember thinking about that, like I thought of contracts as this is meant to protect me. So like, I'm going to put a bunch of shit in here. That's gonna like screw the other person over. And like, as long as I'm safe, like that's why this contract exists. Hearing that, just hearing that from him is like, oh, it's protecting both of you.
Cause I'm used to filling out like apartment contracts or it's like, I'm fucked. Like everything I'm signing right now. Like I can't do anything and they could just take me out tomorrow, basically. Um, so thinking about contracts in that way and you know, in the creative space, you know, people aren't really rushing to like be formal in that way, but man, I feel like it's helped a bunch.
So, um, yeah, thanks for, for kind of agreeing to our terms and developing terms together. Cause I think, um, while it's not written, it's definitely internalized. Yeah. And I I'll definitely say that I that's one of the big things that I used, um, kind of my time to myself in 2020 to develop, um, quite like consciously.
Um, I mentioned it before, but I mean just if anyone has it read, um, Renee brown, she's just amazing at really spelling out, um, you know, ideas about vulnerability and boundaries and things that were really transformative. Um, my relationships and I think as a freelancer, we're so hard wired to not say no to anything because well, you know, all your work could go away tomorrow.
And so you got to say yes, in case, you know, you have a lean week, two weeks after this, or, you know, whatever that kind of scarcity mindset is. Um, but I think really, you know, setting up, you know, boundaries and expectations and treating yourself well so that you can show up for the work, it pays more dividends later, um, because the quality of the work goes up and you can put your full self in it.
So now I know when I'm say yes to a project, they're not getting a part of me or whatever part of me is left from whatever else I'm doing. Like when I'm there, like I'm all the way in it. Um, and they're going to get, you know, it's as much of me as I'm capable of giving within the, you know, boundaries and parentheses, we set up, um, so that I can give it my all and then not feel like, um, anything is being taken from me that I need and reserve for, you know, wellness or, you know, my personal life for health, you know, cause I would put that on the line to get, you know, finish a project at times, which was, you know, not going to do anymore.
'cause I think in some ways, um, some of that hustle culture stuff got me where I was or where I am now. Um, but I'm in a position where I can say no. Um, and so I'm very grateful for that one and two I'm taking that extremely seriously so that, um, my reputation isn't like busy guy, my rep, I want my reputation to be like intense the project.
I feel like I'm the only thing he's working on, even though he has a bunch of other stuff going on, guy, and that's a daily struggle. Um, and I do that better some days than others, some weeks better than others, but that's kind of the goal I'm striving towards. Um, that is again, kind of more community, um, focused and more about uplifting the creative, like visions of like collaborators in that.
Um, instead of just kind of showing up and being like, this is what I do. I did it. Like, my presence is a present and now I gotta go. Cause like I'm so busy. Like you're lucky to have me like peace, you know? Cause there, there is a lot of that within demand, um, musicians too. And I always felt too guilty to be that kind of person.
So I would just, you know, if I wasn't giving my all to something, I would be racked with guilt when really all I needed to do was set boundaries and say no, so now I'm. Can both preserve my energy and then show up more for the things I say yes to. Yeah. I mean the intentional elevating, the project guy is a grid persona to, um, to aspire, um, to be, and I think, you know, thinking about our collaborations so far, I look forward to our recap phone calls after whenever we have them.
I mean, I feel a void when we don't have them. That's how much I value your, the intention that you bring and what you bring to the project and the perspective and the, you know, just a way of, of reframing. And recontextualizing a lot of what happened on, uh, any interview or what ideas are presented. And so, you know, I think to your point, like being able to say, I'm not doing this and I'm not doing that so that I can be 110%, this and 110%.
That is, uh, I was talking to my buddy had out today about, this is like, there's a fear of what if I say, no, you know, what if I don't do this project or Lee, or I leave this project, uh, what happens, you know, is there going to be another project or whatever? And I think that's definitely a fear that people have in general.
Um, but you know, it seems like what you're saying, um, is. When you do it and when you set the boundaries and you learn like it's hard enough just to say no, um, let alone getting to the point where it's like, now, what can you do with that time? Um, have you, uh, do you have any case studies of saying no to something and something else?
Really great appearing, because I think that's a common fear. And I'm wondering where that lands with you. Yeah, actually, um, so I got offered at a time, uh, like a few months ago where I was, um, you know, somewhat strapped for cash. Um, I got offered this really huge, uh, you know, uh, to run six week a piece tour.
Um, and I kind of looked at my schedule and I think I would have been out right now. And I looked at everything I had on there, and I felt really committed to the things that I was doing in that time. Um, with like people I'd been collaborating with for longer, who I knew would be I'd collaborate more in the future.
It felt like this great opportunity for, you know, really, you know, decent money and good music and travel accommodations, kind of, uh, living the dream kind of. Um, it felt like that was going to be a one-off thing with those people or, you know, both of these runs and then that would be it. Whereas I want it to like nurture these relationships and keep all the important, great things I had on my schedule.
So I just was like really odd and grateful for that opportunity. And then I said, I said, no. Um, and then I ended up getting a bunch of gigs with like these new people who I now consider great friends and collaborators. And then for that second run, which would be in January, I ended up booking, um, a musical that would last even longer during the year be even better for me.
Um, both like personally, you know, career wise, uh, financially like musically, like very fulfilling. Like I'm very excited about this thing. And if I was gone from January to March, I would have had the same, no to something that is going to end up being, um, you know, once I signed the papers, like January to September, um, closer to home with people I love, uh, and, and, you know, I'm really excited to work with and always wanted to work with more.
Um, it's going to give me the opportunity to also, you know, through like sub things, like give back to. Um, players who've given me like really great opportunities. So, um, if I wasn't able to do that, that would have actually really pulled on me and been a bummer. So what I thought was my biggest opportunity to date, um, that I had to kind of summarily turn down.
I ended up getting this even better opportunity, which is going to be more fulfilling and better. So yeah, I mean, that that's happened to me all the time. I tend not to think about what if, uh, and, and sort of trust the process. Um, because every time I think, I know, especially in music where I think my career is going and it takes a turn that I don't like, there's usually something different around the corner that brings me somewhere.
I wouldn't have expected. Well, I mean, I had a bunch of great stuff booked for 2020. I was supposed to go on tour in China in March, 2020. It was big like, um, like really big venues like that. We were apparently going to sell because of some weird licensing thing. And we were going to just have this great international, pretty successful, fun tour with an artist I play with that all got canceled.
And then, you know, the months later, like I'm sitting here talking to you, which I wouldn't have done otherwise. So this is also an example of one of those things. Yeah. Wow. So many examples. And I loved that. I wanted to. Zoom in to the moments where you have to say no and have to turn that down. And like you said, you know, you're pretty good at that.
Um, were you always good at that? Or was that something that came a time? No, I said yes to everything for years and years. Um, and I, I knew that I would say yes until I was able to say no, and that was always the plan, but it is really difficult because if someone asks me to do something, I'm not only, um, excited about the opportunity, I'm, you know, flattered, grateful to be employed.
I want to do all these things, um, kind of over promise and, and I would get really excited, um, and to say no felt like I was, I don't know, like it would hurt them in some way, even though it wasn't personal, that's probably not the best way to describe it, but I would feel a sense of guilt for not being able to do something.
Um, and so to avoid the discomfort of saying no right away, I would say yes until it became untenable, which ends up being way worse and more uncomfortable. When you have to say no in the middle of something, then at the beginning of something. So it's almost like, um, selfishly to avoid the. Additional pain and discomfort of saying no later I taught myself to say no now, which actually ends up being much better for the health of like my personal and professional relationships.
And at the end of the day, the music business, or any like freelance work is just 90% relationship management. Once you have basic skills under your fingers. So yeah, I, I was not always good at it. I was the best at it I've ever been. And that does not mean I don't have an incredible, uh, amount of room to grow because while it might sound like I have everything, um, figured out, uh, I absolutely do not.
And I think one of my skills is making it sound like I have everything figured out by making my provisional understanding of something that I've come to recently, like my new epiphany and make it seem like, oh, well this is like Eureka. I have found the, the nectar of the gods, the meaning of life. And then I, you know, I, I don't like proselytize.
I don't like preach it as like, this is the truth, but it's like, yeah, this is the truth for me. But you know, then something else ends up replacing it. And it's always a developing understanding. So I'm better than I was. And hopefully tomorrow I'll be better at it than I am today. And that's really all I can ask for.
Uh, yeah, two great threads there. One thread to pull on is, you know, that feeling of guilt when saying no, like feeling like it's like, if you really think about it, it's like, so cocky to think like, oh, if I say no to Christian, like he's going to be fucking devastated. Like, yeah. Like if I can't work with him, he is going to be so upset.
Like it's going to just destroy it. It's like, wait, what? Like, he's probably gonna be like, okay, cool. Like I was already asking you someone else, you know, whatever. But yeah, like that happens all the time where it's like, you definitely feel that, you know, someone's asking you for something that means a lot.
Um, and rather than, you know, doing something which I've been trying to do recently, um, and again, the other thread of this, which is, should preface any watching of any of these videos, which is, uh, we're arriving at nutria does all the time. And then refactoring those truths later when we realized they don't make sense in all contexts or whatever.
So I was saying this to Eduardo on the phone today. I was like, here's how I would pack for a trip to LA for three weeks, but I pack minimally. So like only take this advice if you plan on living, like in this specific way. Um, you know, prior to that, I used to not do that kind of thing. And so you hear truths thrown around as if they're the objective only truth that can exist.
Um, or so I like that you clarified that. Okay. And, uh, yeah, so, but anyway, like this, the saying no part, uh, definitely been, been there and having to say no to people and feeling the guilt, uh, is, is real. Um, I was losing my thread. There was another point I was getting to, but, um, yeah. Do you have any, any response to that or, uh, I, well, I think that's really true because again, I'm working in, you know, with music directors or producers, um, there are many who, you know, because their job is to have a point of view in many ways.
And this is how I see this thing being, uh, back in flip into a sort of hubris where it's like, if you're going to play rock, if you're going to play power chords only play a Les Paul, because if you don't play a Les Paul that is wrong and it's kind of like the fuck outta here, man, you can like, I'll play your hello Katy guitar and make it good.
Like, you know, so, so to a certain extent it's, um, it's, you know, it's nice to have that, that clear cut view, but really all, all truths are, uh, you know, conditional in some way I say is I look over at my bookshelf and see the, uh, um, Fuko reader. But, um, yeah, it's, I think all, all truths are. You know, moving along the path.
Cause I know I, I had really firmly held beliefs. Uh, you know, especially when I'm like 19, I didn't know. Um, what I didn't know then, cause I thought I knew everything of course, like every other 19 year old, you know man in college. Right. So it, that version of me would think that this version of me, which I think is, has a more nuanced view of life, has learned some things through hard won experience and a lot of reading and a lot of mistakes.
Like he would think that I was completely full of shit. So like not only do I like disagree with other people, um, you know what I consider to be true, this, I wouldn't even agree with previous incarnations of myself. So how can I, you know, sit here and talk about some sort of objective, you know, truth, you know, I mean, not just like metaphysically and like some high-minded way, but like with art, you know, I, I would have told you two years ago that, oh yeah, low tuned, real gushy, snare drums, like that's the thing.
And it was like the trend and it was super cool. And now I've heard that for, you know, however many years and I'm like, you know what we should do. Let's take all that muffling off and crank that thing and just make it scream like a, um, you know, 90. Stone temple pilots record or something like it's all, it's all a constantly evolving understanding, which I've learned because it's been modeled by the artists and creatives that I respect the most, whether it's a writer who kind of revises their beliefs as their life changes, um, someone like SART who was, you know, had a really clear view of what he believed and then kind of went a field and then retracted somethings and, you know, or someone like, you know, like Kanye or the Beatles, or, uh, especially miles Davis or Coltrane where their artistic journey, uh, from like a God's eye view reflects changing values, um, over time as like manifested in the work.
And like, you can see, um, how their concept of what is right or what is good or what is like desirable or what the meaning of music or life is. You can see that reflected in those people's work because it changes as they change as, as people and artists. And so I'm sort of letting go of wanting to be, you know, right.
Or having it all figured out. Um, because I know, or especially being arrogant about thinking, I know what the right answer is because I know that I'm probably wrong. And I will find out why sometime in the next 20 years, if not the next 20 minutes, you know, um, two quotes right there that I loved, I'm probably wrong.
And I will find out in the next 20 minutes. And also, I wouldn't agree with previous incarnations of myself. I just wrote a song the other day that pretty much has that same lyric in it. It was like, you know, why would I trust myself in the past with like decisions I've made or whatever, like, you know, you're always evolving and if you're open enough to being proven wrong in the future.
Yeah. Like, you know, if you're not you're in for a rude awakening and if you are, um, also a very disruptive awakening potentially because there's an extreme of this where you're like, Hey, I don't really know anything it's always changing. Um, and then there's, it's hard to have any perspective. So how are you, how are you, you personally balancing, um, having a point of view and not, you know, while like being open enough, what does that look like for you?
Yeah, well, I'm very into the idea of kind of controlling my output by, uh, kind of manipulating my inputs. Um, cause I know that it's kind of like you are what you eat. Um, but like aesthetically and intellectually and spiritually. So I'm always reading different things, um, to try to grow and evolve and then, uh, you know, listening to different music, going through different phases, making big playlists of things.
I want to influence me at that time, letting that seep in on like a subconscious level and letting it flow out. And then, um, to answer your question more directly using, and I'm trying to get better at this. Um, but using the art process as, um, and now more and more through like writing, um, documenting all of those provisional answers or provisional values or provisional truths so that I can look back at my life through art and writing and see all of the ways I thought it had.
I had it figured out like over time. So I'll be able to see through these like written markers and documents of, you know, I can see my progress of trying to figure things out and, uh, kind of, instead of trying to make my, um, you know, Sergeant pepper, realizing that Sergeant pepper for them was a moment in time.
And just trying to document my moments in time through the things I created. And then using my life as a perpetual process of growing and learning and trying to understand things the best way I can, whether it is through, you know, reading or listening, you know, whether it's digging, you know, really into like duke Ellington and trying to figure that out even more than I did in the past, or just being knocked out by, you know, new stuff, you know, like, okay, like what's the deal with, um, like, why am I so emotionally impacted by Olivia Rodriguez?
Like that came out of nowhere. Um, and you know, so it's being open to things that are outside of my sphere and then trying to go deeper into things I already understand, but also just trusting my intuition. It's kind of like to guide me where I go with those things. I'm in a transition right now in my reading where I was real heavy into kind of business-y, uh, self-help stuff.
Um, cause I really badly needed it cause I was not running my business like a business, so that was, I needed it. Um, and then now I'm like, okay, I'm starting to just read the same thing over and over again. And I'm starting to put these things into practice. So now I'm, I'm kind of expanding, um, kind of back into, uh, you know, Kind of more hard philosophy instead of like soft philosophy, like, you know, less, less stoicism, more, you know, like, and I love this stuff.
I mean, I'm dressed like this, but like mid century, like French structuralism and whatever. So it's like, I'm always kind of navigating my influences so I can change what my outputs are and bring something new to the table and constantly growing in all these different directions, but then also not just kind of doing that and kind of howling at the moon, like actually making art for myself and other people.
So I can listen back to something, um, and go like, wow, like 2017, I must've been listening to like a lot of Les Paul and Mary Ford because that just, I just ripped that off subconsciously wholesale. And just letting that be what it is, it wasn't the answer, but that's, you know, my intuition made me do that, make that move and then, you know, looking back, I can say, oh, well, that, that makes sense in context.
And, and I think that's a beautiful way to look back at a life too. Absolutely. I mean, I feel like, again, this is so funny. I had a really nice conversation with Eduardo today. Um, shadow to Eduardo, one of my favorite internet friends. Um, and we were talking about, you know, finding the self and what is the cell.
And how do you, you know, and you've read a lot of philosophy, so I'm sure you have lots to say about this. Um, but this idea of like the self comes through acting and doing in the world. Um, and yeah, I mean, I was just thinking about that as you were going and explaining this, this the way you're figuring it out is by doing, and being challenged and, and having to respond and getting as many good inputs as you can.
So that hopefully the output is closer to the way you would like to behave and the way you've seen demonstrated or explained. Yeah. Um, but all the good inputs in the world to there, there's a sense in which just by taking it in, it's subconsciously becoming part of you. But at the same time, you have to put those ideas into motion.
Otherwise they're just ideas. And that can lead to a certain type of stagnation where, um, I've had this conversation, um, many times, um, w I have very similar conversations to the ones that we have, um, with my dad. And we both read a lot of, um, stuff about Buddhism and mindfulness and, you know, Vedic philosophy, stuff like that.
Um, and I remember talking to him one day, uh, and. I was like, this is a great conversation, but I think we would get to the answer quicker if you just meditated twice a day instead of once a day. And so, and it was, and I wasn't trying to be like glib or rude or say like, oh, I have a figured out or whatever.
But all of these things that I was reading about didn't click until I actually started putting it into practice. And that practice became a deep, like part of my being. And then I stopped having to read about it as much because I was experiencing it firsthand. Um, I, I took the, um, like TM course, which I'm not trying to sell to anybody, but it was really one of many ways to meditate.
And I found this one impactful. And the, the guy who taught it to me while I was doing my like little intake form, um, intake, that sounds really bad. But, um, I was, I was filling out the form and he was talking to me, he's like, oh, you studied philosophy in college. That's cool. I used to read a lot of philosophy.
And then I started this practice of meditation and now I build bird, bird houses. And that was so profound to me because it's like, oh, well you experientially found what you believe to be the truth and like this cosmic way. So like, yeah, Y. Like read a sort of transcription of the thing that you experienced.
And it was basically like, oh, look at, you know, that's cute that you're like reading this description of Beethoven's fifth symphony, but like, unless you're in the room with, you know, the New York film, dentata like, you don't, you know, that, that is the experience. The, the reading, the, the musicological, you know, analysis is not the experience.
So there there's a sense in which all the, all the good inputs in the world, um, need to be put into motion to actually become the desired output. So that is a caveat to kind of the framework I presented, because it doesn't just mystically appear as great art. Well, I love this point here because, you know, we've been working on this book and, you know, gathering the research for, uh, discussing what we're learning.
And so much of it is the philosophy right now. Um, I even took a, um, uh, I took a note, you know, how does practice work itself into our book? Uh, um, on my other screen right here, I'm working on a 40 week course on design and trying to structure that and philosophically I'm like, well, I think practice is so essential to understand design.
I should only be talking about design so much at some points you have to try to design something. Realize where you're at and then be able to level up because you know, your level, um, and know like what's next or what you'd like to learn. So, you know, I think there is a balance. I don't know exactly what it is, but I think, you know, I remember talking with Greg Matthews who AKA yellow shoots on one of these interviews and him saying the seasonality of life.
And, you know, it might not be exactly the same. I'm going to be every three months or eight months, whatever. But like, there is this ebb and flow of like some times the best thing you could do is just soak up all these different influences because maybe that's what you need. Maybe it's comforting. Maybe it's helping you think that you're progressing and maybe you are in some way, even if you're not retaining, you know, even 5% of it.
And then you go into the world and you experience again. Um, yeah. And so, you know, yeah, it's definitely something to think about, you know, uh, how the creative, uh, sees that journey and, and what attributes they assigned to those moments of like the, of the ebb and flow, you know, the yin yang being, uh, an example of that where black isn't bad and negative, isn't bad like this, the color or the word negative.
Isn't like a negative term. You know what I mean? Um, and white positive that side of it is. Good. You know, it's like both of these things are necessary components. The whole thing existing is the only good thing, you know, the only positive thing, everything else is just a requirements. But I think part of the seasonality and I'm getting on a tangent here, but I kind of like where it's going, but part of this seasonality, uh, one part of it is how do you view that seasonality, you know, the, the, what tone do you assign to it?
I'm wondering there, like where language and ideas, how they, how that works for you, how that helps you be a better quote, unquote creative, you know, you read a lot, probably more than most people I know, maybe like is second, uh, to you in terms of people that read and then maybe Greg, uh, as far as I know, in terms of people that read a lot, um, but you're a clear first, uh, first place, but I'm wondering how, like this knowledge and reading, uh, how does it help you?
Well, I think it really forms how I view the world. I think most of my experience of the world is mediated through language. Um, and I think when I was younger, um, it was, uh, a portal into, you know, other worlds, um, which people talk about a lot. But I, I'm not, I was never huge. I was never primarily a fiction reader either.
So that wasn't exactly it, but I think there was a sense in which I wanted to use words and knowledge to help give me categories. So I had everything figured out this very like structuralist understanding of, okay, cool. Like now let's look at the continuum of music history. We have the sixties. Okay. What are these currents?
And I would, you know, be able to have like a visual map inwards, but, you know, associations of, okay, these are the instruments they were playing. These are the sounds they were using. These are the types of chords they were using and it would help me bracket off like a sort of socio-historical like understanding of the world.
And then I think as I've gotten older, it's less about breaking things and putting them into neat boxes as I'm learning. Those boxes are in many ways, just arbitrarily, um, sort of created, um, and restrictive of like a greater understanding of things. It's, it's all about connecting ideas to each other through language and then finding, um, aspects of language that help, uh, construct and create meaning in my life that I can then apply, um, in the sense that, um, Like I'm very influenced.
Uh, and I think we'll just in my life and in my thoughts by, um, kind of early existentialism, like SART he's on my button here. Um, I've mentioned him a couple of times and sort of the idea that the meaning of our life is provisional and created by us. I think I've used, and that's like our radical responsibility, like that freedom isn't necessarily like a gift in a lot of ways.
It's like terrifying that we have to construct our own meaning. It's not. Uh, um, but I think I've used the language to do that. Um, w which means I'm constantly evolving in my understanding of things. Um, and I, you know, firsthand in a lot of, you know, I won't go into this area of things, but I think my understanding of the world, um, sort of politically over time, it very much attest to the power of language and category and the way that, that, um, has been, you know, a force for, uh, you know, both, you know, good and bad, you know, thinking of that in the, you know, food coast sense and kind of the Nietzschean sense.
So like language is quite literally power in a lot of ways. And so I take it very seriously. So I'm always trying to reassess the categories in my brain and bringing it to like a lighter. Like with genre, it like musically. Okay. Like I have all these words that I might associate with how like, jazz feels right.
Jazz, the word as a category. Right. It's even being challenged now as, um, reductive of this greater tradition that is beyond kind of what we see that to be so much of our, I mean, this is a bit of a tangent, but so much of our understanding of genre is mediated by commercial categories that were created by, you know, record companies to sell on the basis of, you know, race region, socioeconomic status just, or just ways that they felt like they could package it.
Right. So the difference between, um, you know, like folk blues and what we know is like country was literally just like race for a little bit. Um, and you know, they would, oh, we can sell this to these people and whatever. And then now you're learning music, right? And you go on YouTube and, you know, 12 country licks and there's this like really clearly defined thing.
Like that means a lot to us. So I think, whereas, um, to actually complete my point when I was younger, I wanted to learn all those categories. I wanted to read everything now, like absorb all this knowledge. So I had the words to describe the universe as it is, and music and art, and just really have a command over that.
Now I'm in this place where I'm using. I'm seeing the limits of language and I'm trying to use language to help like liberate, like out of date categories, like from themselves. And, uh, maybe challenge my own understanding that was limited by that language and have a more expansive, inclusive, like holistic understanding of the universe.
That, those, those, the very way I learned about all of these things actually restricted me to certain modes of thinking that aren't serving me anymore. Um, both creatively or otherwise. Um, because when it comes down to it, as much as language is important to me, and then everything you asked and everything, I just kind of word salad together.
Music is come in its best moments when I'm on stage and it feels great. I'm completely unfettered by language. It is as close to an experience of, you know, sort of transcending or like Somadi, or, um, sort of this like blissful, um, almost separation of self as I can get, um, outside of meditation. Um, so I feel like in a lot of ways, my purest artistic self isn't mediated by language, but I've used language to.
Understand things enough to where I could get to that point where I can like transcend it. So it's almost like I'm, I'm constantly like pushing up against it, which is really, um, exciting. And I'm so, uh, like animated and excited by this idea that I really am very much stopping myself from, you know, talking about like dairy Dom and like Chomsky universal language and stuff like that.
Cause this linguistics that tangent wouldn't be necessarily productive, um, for us as like in our like creative aesthetic, uh, discussion. But I think to get to that place of pure creation, you have to push past the, the language and the categories that we've used to define it. But at the same time to learn it, you actually have to learn, you have to acquire the grammar of whatever medium you're you're doing.
Um, both through imitation of masters and also by like reading books about how they did it. And so both English or whatever, your first languages and the language of the medium you're using are going to be kind of intertwined and how you learn anything. I've never put it like that before, but really I think at the end of the day, um, creativity is kind of.
Can be described in terms of like linguistics on that kind of higher level. So like languages, everything, and like nothing at the exact same time for how I think of things. I don't know if that's the answer you were looking for, but that's what came to mind. Well, that was, I couldn't have looked for that if I tried.
I'm glad it emerged. Um, I'll say that, um, that was really well stated and I resonate with it deeply. I think, you know, teaching, having this role of teaching has changed the way I think about my experience as a designer, since I've been designing, like how did I start? Why did I start? What was it like, how did I get to the place that I felt like I was anything at any point?
And how did I evolve past there and why, and what decisions and digging into that, you realize all of these things that you're saying, which is there was a knowledge that I was pulling from a knowledge base, which really was just segmenting ideas into categories that were, uh, assigned some label. Um, and I was like, okay, that's the world.
And I'm very much like you. And I think that's where we resonate resonated with each other early on, which is I wanted to make sense of the world completely. And I thought that there was an objective. To all the things and there's still my B that the jury's out, but, um, you know, like I wanted to find that for design, uh, I started by just learning it and having fun with it.
And then very quickly it was like, um, you know, how can I be great? What does that mean? There has to be like one path towards that greatness. I'm going to assume it's just studying all the things that ever came before and knowing all the words and, and whatever. And then getting to a point where it was like, okay, I know all of that, but I think there's like another side of this whole thing.
Um, so, and it actually was the dismantling of the concepts dismantling of the labels. Uh, it's sort of that thing is like, um, you have to know how to make it, to know how to like, or, you know, know how it's made to like actually make the thing you need to know the components, um, before you can sort of destroy it and break it apart and form your own meanings.
But. Uh, so there's that side of things, which I think you captured beautifully. Um, and I, it had me thinking about inspiration because inspiration is just a thing that has a label already applied to it likely some metadata that you're decoding, uh, when you're viewing that thing, uh, which that meta-data, and the label of it, like a genre and a artist, a CA if I say Kanye west, here's a song by Kanye west.
You're already, if I say, here's a hip hop track by Connie, or here's a gospel track by Kanye now, you've already, you have two different labels, you have his name, you have the genre, which you're now assigning meaning to. And then all of your experience with Kanye and your thoughts on that. And so all of that's going into sort of either help or add to, or sort of risk subtract from your inspiration.
Um, and so thinking about inspiration, uh, as a means of like, sort of just this information decoding, um, and how labels affect inspiration and how you're decoding and specific labels bias you when looking at inspiration is something I hadn't really thought about, even though I just taught a class on information architecture, didn't think about, um, how information and label or inspiration and labels, um, uh, affect each other.
But it definitely does. Um, Man. That was great. And I was also taking notes for my own class. I wrote, um, cause I'm trying to model the class. Here's another label, similar to the Bauhaus school of design. What I liked about the Bauhaus school of design though. It's not, I don't want it to be the Bauhaus school of design as it was.
Um, I want it to be taking principles of that. And so the only way to do that is to know how it was really how it was as, as real as I can get to and then decode that and apply it. Um, and part of that is that master apprentice relationship, that imitation discussion, um, practice that being that 80 or 90% of the, of the work.
And I just took a note here just about the imitation part of it, because that's such a huge part of, of the work. So you're helping me, I'm learning as I always do speaking to. Um, yeah. Wow. Uh, do you want to add anything about the inspiration piece? Um, yeah, I mean, so I think waiting for inspiration is a lazy, I just want to throw that out there.
Um, but I will say that, um, inspiration is, is a fickle mistress. Um, but we can do so many things to prime ourselves for like allowing it to come in. If that makes sense. So while, um, you can't necessarily wait for lightning to strike, you can move somewhere where it rains a lot, you know? So if, if I want to be really inspired to write or something like that, I can't, I could sit around and wait for it to happen, and I can't guarantee it's going to happen.
But if I make sure that, you know, first thing in the morning I get up and I take a long walk and I'm reading a lot and I have new inputs and I'm challenging my assumptions. And I'm talking to interesting people and trying to get out of my comfort zone. I'm at least, um, I'm at least prepping the soil for, you know, something to potentially, you know, spring up, like on its own.
Um, and so I think I fall somewhere between the, okay, like I am, you know, this, like, you know, this kind of French, 19th century idea of like what an artist is, where you just sit around and you allow and you wait and then, you know, you're just, you're stricken with this, like need to have this thing pour out of you.
Like that can happen. And that's really beautiful. And it worked really, really well for Byron, but, and, and I also appreciate like the pure craftsman and I come at it like that, where it's like, you go to work every day and it's like this real blue collar approach. Um, like craft, um, which doesn't really allow for inspiration.
It's just like, yeah, you do it until it's good. And sometimes it will be in, sometimes it won't be. And if you do it enough, then eventually it will be good. Well, I think that both of those are extremes and the truth is like somewhere in the middle, where if, like, if you work enough and you keep yourself open by all those things, we talked about going to a museum or just whatever fills you up spiritually.
Um, I mean, it could be like brunch cocktails with your college friends. It could be anything. Right. Um, as long as you're doing those two things, then you're like preparation. And the fact that you're creating that opportunity will then, uh, probably create more times that you get struck by the lightning bolt.
Like you're not you're. Yeah. So that's, I don't have anything too profound beyond that. I just, I wanted to put that out there cause I I've heard, you know, the hustle culture thing. I think doesn't allow for the magic and people who just sit around waiting for their Hogwarts letter are going to be disappointed too, because you got to put in the work.
So it's, it's, I've found it to be somewhere in the middle and I'm always trying to navigate that. Yeah. I mean, I was, uh, so I run this monthly designer meet up called art club. Uh, there was a new member that joined, uh, on Monday and he's an illustrator and he's an excellent illustrator, like has this sort of Western.
Version of anime. Like if you could westernize it. And like all of the influences of like, you know, American cartoon, Flintstones, Jetsons culture meets animates. It's really awesome hybrid. And it's such a distinct style. Like I recognize it immediately. I've known him since college. Every time I've seen his work, I know it's him.
Uh, he's great. And he's like struggling to get work. And it's like, I was like, well, what opportunities, you know, preparedness opportunity. I was like, if that is the equation for luck, arguably, or at least getting struck by lightning more times, how many, like, how are you going about seeking opportunity? And it was like, oh, well, I haven't really done anything.
I was like, other than like, just sitting there and drawing, like you could illustrate for the rest of your life and literally talk to no one and you'll be the best illustrator. No one knows. Like, it's just how it works. Um, but yeah, I think that's a really, really big point. It seems as though this, like what I was recognizing is that his response to not having the opportunity was to double down even a harder on the preparedness.
It was like, oh, I'm not getting this because I'm not prepared enough. It was like, or it's either that language or it's simply. That's what I know. I don't know this like opportunity thing. That's business people. That's the devil. He's like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna double down on like playing guitar and I'm going to be insanely good, like the best guitarist.
And like, someone will find me because of that. They'll walk across my apartment and hear the solo need to come in. Yeah. The, the singing into the hairbrush and, you know, somebody's Clive Davis comes in and said, you know, I was going to make you a stock in like, yeah, yeah, it has happened. It will happen if you add up the number of times that happened, versus someone just like hitting up a bunch of people and getting work from that.
Right. Right. Right. I think the ladder has been more successful, but it is a phenomenon how that happens, where it's like, oh no, I'm just going to keep designing. Like, I'm going to make this business successful by just continuing to design. And there's times where that is true. But it's usually after you have the opportunity is not before.
Yeah. Um, you know, and I was telling him like, look, dude, I got like my first big gig. Like when I had like, technically for status half a portfolio piece, it was still in the. So it's like, and this was a huge project. And it was like, yeah, don't other gigantic projects before, but not with status. And it was like, if I went in saying, well, I can't get it.
I just need to keep grinding. Like, I'm just gonna sit here on my computer all day. I'm like, nah, I did that for like a decade. Plus I don't want to, I don't want to sit here and keep doing that. Like I need something else. Yeah. You're never, you're never ready. And most of the time when the people you see who are super successful, who are, you know, maybe further along than like creatively or artistically than you might be as an artist, everyone assumes that they got the job when they were that good.
It's like most people, most people jump in like, they're ready, but they're just ready. Or maybe they're not ready. And they get thrown in and over the course of doing it, they become great. So if you never throw yourself into the gauntlet, you'll actually never be ready. It's like bands that just rehearsed and never play gigs.
Well, we're not good enough. We're not good enough. Well, it's because of rehearsal and gigs are completely different things and, and you can rehearse for three years and never sound like a band that rehearsed one time and went on the road for a week. So like at a certain time, at a certain point, you, you it's about like putting yourself out there, even when it's uncomfortable.
I I'm saying this from experience. I was always. Oh, I'm not good enough yet. Or
