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Neil/Joni vs. Spotify/Rogan & How the Left Continues to Devour Itself

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Note: This started as an informal Facebook post on 1/21/2022 addressing the controversy of Neil Young pulling his music off Spotify in protest of some of Joe Rogan’s recent guests. Watching everyone pile onto the “Cancel Rogan/Spotify” bandwagon was starting to bug me. Not only has his show on Spotify been grossly miscategorized by the mainstream press and it’s dangers highly exaggerated but the movement to shake Spotify’s support of him, I believe, is built on dangerous and false pretenses. I tried to get all my thoughts out and be brief as well. I definitely failed at the latter.  (Some of the grammar has been tightened up since originally posting)

 

 

I am 100% with Rogan on this and here’s why… first off don’t respond if you don’t feel like reading the whole thing. Unfriend me or whatever. I have no use for people who form their opinions based on twitter posts and out-of-context media clips. This complex world is too nuanced for that.

 

I heard what P. McCoullough and R. Malone said on Joe’s show, some of my thoughts were rattled for a bit but in the end it changed nothing for me. Glad I could hear their claims for myself. Glad I could hear that both of them might have drifted a little off course. Glad I know not to listen to much of what they say in the future. There’s simply better data than what they were touting; you might have to dig a little but it’s out there.

 

I’ve watched a slew of the “discredited” guests he’s hosted and I still safely believe that the vaccinated are 1000x more protected from CV19 than the unvaccinated and that a certain subset of masks (n95’s etc) really do their job well most of the time. This is where the latest data from around the world has been clear.

 

Where I commend Rogan and his guests is over their concern with the informational inaccuracies, mistakes and in some cases full on misinformation presented by the White House, CDC, NIH & WHO over the last 2 years. I’m not a ‘conspiracy theorist’. But not all that is considered a conspiracy always turns out to be so…

 

Also throughout the pandemic the lack of messaging for self-treatments like exercise, Vit-D/zinc, healthy eating, losing weight, and sleeping well, has greatly bothered me. Since healthy folks fair MUCH better than their counterparts when infected it seems like not hammering home this message was a hugely wasted opportunity.

 

To me this is a big failure of the powers that be. And it’s a little crazy that this post is maybe in danger of getting taken down as “disinformation” for even saying something as simple and obvious as that… Because if the CDC hasn’t said it then it’s considered false.

 

Much of what was once considered conspiracy thinking over the past two years has landed MANY a professional and media personality discredited, defunded and deplatformed. Problem is lots of this “crazy talk” turned out to be true in the end. Pick your example, there’s a ton.

 

It’s a good time to mention that I am triple boosted and if I had to go back and do it again i would DO THE EXACT SAME THING…

 

Anyways. This over-arching narrative, that has been our guiding light, has been breaking down through revelations of upper level email leaks and unignoreable facts of of happenstance; everyone is beginning to see the relativity and effect of so many falsehoods. The cognitive dissonance this has all been sowing isn’t helping with the cohesiveness of our already fractured society. Whether this shift is based on “bad intel” or is intentional I find I’m trusting CNN/NPR/MSNBC/etc as much as I trust the entertainment at FoxNews.

 

I don’t agree with, or take seriously much of what Rogan’s two guests (mentioned above) said. But I DEFINITELY don’t think silencing these voices prone to dissenting from the excepted narrative is the answer. Their concerns, as best I can tell are worthy; they think there’s something they know that we’re not being told or that the Powers At Be are ignoring altogether… You don’t want to live in a society where professionals are afraid for their careers to speak out when they think shit is going sideways. But we are getting closer to that everyday. And in the end, correct of not, the point is that dissent is the engine of self correction.

 

Far too often over the last 24-months we’ve seen esteemed professionals and scientists being totally blacklisted from the media for things they said that later turned out to be true… And then on the cover of Newsweek “yeah… Evidence kinda’ looks good for the lab-leak theory…Whoops.” Have those blackballed folks been allowed to monetize on youtube yet? Nope. Have they any options for appeal for raising a very valid concern? Also a big fat “nope”.

 

We need all the conversation we can get, even if it means crackpots like Alex Jones get a spot. (yes, I shudder to even type that) When the conversation ends there’s no other option but violence. These hive-minded shifts to gleefully cancel anything/anyone they don’t like is, to me, the death of all that is holding our democratic society together.

 

As much as I HATED the living fuck out Donald Trump but I’m still queasy about him getting deplatformed from everything (esp considering North Korea still has a Twitter account… do we want to know who’s in charge of drawing the lines?)

 

THIS SWORD CUTS BOTH WAYS. Lemme say that again but a little quieter and plainer “Censorship is a sword that cuts through the left, the right and the middle”

 

That leaves us where we are today. The Democrats have performed horrendously over the last two years and I anticipate an electoral bloodbath in both ’22 and ’24. I hate to say that but I don’t see how middle-lower class & rural America (the largest voting demographic) can possible relate to a bunch of liberal ‘city-folk’ who label everyone with white skin and any success at still staying alive as a ‘racist’.

 

But far-be-it for the left to notice such a digression. They’re too busy cancelling the fuck out of each other on twitter, the toxic social cesspool that Dave Chappelle correctly pointed out “Isn’t a real place”. Then again that just might be his “white- privilege” speaking. (you can thank NPR for applying that trope to the wildly famous BLACK comedian.)

Are things going off the rails or is it just me?

 

Oh it gets better. In response to this craziness the conservatives are again going full-blown-moron in response to the ‘call out culture’ of the left… Maus, the amazing graphic novel based on a surveyors account from Nazi Concentration Camps; is being removed from school library’s in some red controlled states because a bunch of whacked-out asshole, Christian alt-Right-wingers feel threatened by it. Whats Next Elie Wiesel’s “Night”? or how about Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”?

 

This is madness. I really can’t imagine a world where everyone doesn’t have access to these great works of human survival and perseverance. And I can’t image a world where huge corporations get to to decide what content you and I have access to and what we don’t.

 

But if you’re gonna go on blattering about what a dangerous tool Rogan is PLEASE, if nothing else, at least watch his 8min response to this new controversy. Don’t watch what CNN and NPR show you. As expected they cut out and ignore the important pieces.

 

Full disclosure, I’ve been listening to Joe’s show for years. I don’t know of many other podcast hosts willing to sit back and let the guests do the talking in such an open ended, natural way. It’s my opinion he has a wonderfully creative and curious mind and allowing some insanely great convos to flourish. And though at first sight he comes across as a bro-y meat-head he possess a refreshing amount of humility, constantly joking and playing down his own considerable intellect.

 

JRE has on an incredibly wide-range of guests, a majority of which I have little to no interest in. I personally dig the brainy ones. I took a chance and watched the recent interview with Jewel and it was one of the most inspiring and amazing interviews I’ve ever seen. Some of his guests, like Matthew Walker, Rhonda Patrick, Jordan Peterson, The Black Keys, David Sinclair, Wim Hof, Jamie Foxx, Peter Attia, James Nestor amongst many others, have truly changed my life and mind for the better.

 

The reason I say all this is because It has seemed to me, anyways, that the people who consider him alt-right, a misogynist, trans-phobic, racist, anti-gay, whatever… prob have never actually watched his show or have any idea what he is actually like. Seems they most likely read twitter posts and watch out-of-context take-down attempts on the mainstream media outlets a ways to inform their opinions. None of the wild accusations I’ve heard has ever squared with what I’ve personally witnessed in the 100’s of hours I’ve listened.

 

I love Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, always have, always will. But they are on the wrong side of this in a big way. Censoring voices you don’t agree with isn’t the way forward. Messaging to America that “you’re too stupid to think for yourself so we’ll control the info spigot” is a dead-end that will only strengthen the resolve of the craziness on the far right. Remember when they were the biggest proponents of censorship? Is this the direction we on the left really need to follow? That said, Joni and Neil will quietly put their music back on Spotify once this all dies down. That you can bet on.

 

So this brings me back to the original point of this whole way-too long thing. Actually LISTEN to what Joe has to say in today’s 8min response. See for yourself and then make up your mind and cancel Spotify or and talk shit or whatever.

 

In all aspects of life information is getting twisted before it reaches our ears. Always find the source and then only form your opinion. And think hard about what it means to pressure corporations into becoming a blunt tool for censorship. With effective censorship comes the ability to control with ease. You don’t have to take my word for it. Look it up.

 

Here’s Joe’s Response

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CZYQ_nDJi6G/…

Making Art & Music Under the Magnetic Fields

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Creating anything I care about is typically a grueling process.

It begins with great enthusiasm and some shiny vision lodged deep in my minds eye. Hypnotized by the ‘beauty and importance’ and driven by excitement I always underestimate the amount of actual work it will take to bring it to completion. In truth, I’m usually quick to dispense with long-term details and dive right in. And no matter how often I go through this cycle I never seems to anticipate just how hard bringing an idea to life always tends to be.

A few days ago I set about designing a cover for Magnetic Fields, a new single that should be dropping in a matter of weeks. The cover itself will have fairly limited purpose as a thumbnail for streaming sites like Apple Music and Spotify so the pressure isn’t so great.

Taking the first steps in designing it required weeks worth of kicking this line-item from one “to-do” list to the next. Not sure why but this avoidance phase seems to be part of my operation. At the very least it’s something I have learned not to resist too much when possible; forcing artsy things will tends to make the final product suck. Procrastinating can get me firing on all cylinders, especially when something was suppose to be out the door yesterday but “creating from emergency” isn’t a method to employ too often if you plan on experiencing some level of old age.

I think my ‘process’ is dogged not so much by “having too many irons in the fire” but of “having too many irons and only room enough for one at a time in the fire. And they get changed out quickly” It really doesn’t matter how pressing or important something is to finish, if that something is something I don’t wanna do on a visceral level then it becomes boarder-line impossible to even start working on it. (see: Unemployable)

These past few weeks my muse has been very busy…

…and I’m very grateful for this. She has been keeping me back-lit by an intense musical glow. I’m always thankful when my oscillating interest-pallet pivots back to what I know best; music. As many of my close confidants know my infatuation with music has been steadily waning causing my enthusiasm to be increasingly  spotty these last few years. Turning what you love into a full-time job can become back-breaking and soul-crushing at times. Who knew?

So as music, my first love, began gaining weight I naturally started looking elsewhere for some levity and fun. This has lead me into all kinds of interesting wormholes; most having nothing to do with music. (And huge props to the internet! You can learn about literally ANYTHING at ANYTIME! That fact will never cease to amaze.)

Anyways, I have mostly lived the bachelors-life over the last decade with, for the most part, the freedom to do whatever I want when I want almost everyday. A situation like this allows for a truly inordinate allotment of time to pursue any and all whims. For long swaths of time my curiosity has lingered and latched onto topics from the universe and space to trying to understand what makes brilliant stand-up comedians and athletes tick. The list of what has captured my attention over the years is pretty extensive and varied. Unfortunately all this random knowledge hunting doesn’t seem to pay the bills. Or at least I haven’t figured out how to make money by reading every Carl Sagan book and scouring the web for all the Christopher Hitchens lectures that exist.

Speaking of money and tangents…

If I would have (could have, more like it) put all this time and energy into playing music, and music only, I’d probably be as good as I thought I was as a delusional teenager learning my first chords. I was definitely slow on the uptake when it came to understanding the importance of self-criticism. I write a little more on this here: The Sad Plight of the Young Artist.

A few of the better examples at my Instagram account.

Back to it. One such blip of interest that hung on my radar long enough to blur the screen was watercolor painting. It’s an art form I’ve always had a certain fascination with with. Watercolor can blend realism and dream-states into a single image in a way that nothing else can. While looking for the next fix I took to fussing with the tools of the trade and began splashing up paper just to see what happens. One technique I loved to experiment with is letting the tone-filled water run rills down a tipped-up page. Turns out gravity and nature can paint cooler things than I’ll ever hope to. Click the image for a some of the examples that resulted from this process.

Figuring what to do for a cover for Magnetic Fields has been a looming chore since deciding I would release ahead of the album. The main hangup is that any desire to make art has been MIA since early last summer. Not sure why; just the way it is. So in the spirit of least resistance I shuffled through those old, drippy paintings and a few resonated loudly enough for some vague concepts to percolate.

My biggest problem with chucking a project past the finish-line…

…is detaching “what I’ve made” from “what I wanted to make”. I’m hardly ever able to make what’s in my mind come out just the way I see it. Sometimes what I make turns out better and cooler than I imagined… But mostly this isn’t an outcome that can be counted on; usually I’m somewhat disappointed with the final product. The trick is either accepting it for what it is and jumping back into the endless revisions near the drawing-board with the piles of torn-out hair under it. Often though nothing I try helps and eventually I reach for the “Omg-Fuck-It” sign; leaving the troublesome new prototype on the factory floor to collect dust and rot.

I suppose on some thin level that making art is a lot like having a kid, which I don’t have any of. You can have a baby and hope to mold it into your own image with your value-sets and outlooks but in the end she/he/it/they/whatever is going to be unique unto themselves. As a parent I imagine one of the biggest jobs is eventually accepting this and seeing your child not as an extension of yourself but as an entirely independent being with it’s own whacked-out personality and mixed-up thoughts.

So comparing a living-child to a 6″x6″ image that was mostly assembled using Photoshop trickery seems a bit lofty. But I think the analogy here works. Whether I throw on the horse-blinders and blitz something out the door or try to control every aspect of the operation, in the end, acceptance is the only way to finality. And acceptance is the hardest part for someone with perfectionist tendencies and it’s why I’m stuck with a considerable amount of songs. Sometimes you just gotta throw up that sign and let the kids go on and be their fucked-up little selves. So in a sense I am trying to be better as a parent and simultaneously have many more kids. It’s a tough balance when your goal is to shove them out the door as quickly as possible. They deserve to be the feral little monsters they were born to be.

Art for me is way faster and easier to make than music.

I’m not going for the extreme adherence to my vision with art because mostly I can’t. I just don’t have the same level of skill and control as I do with music; I have way less excuses not to nail when making songs. Designing this single-cover was like a scaled-down version of what I want my song writing/recording process to be. Fast, easy and over. After scanning the paintings to the computer I started playing around with fonts and layouts. Once I found some balance and cohesion I then drew the font by hand (it looks more hand-made this way; obviously…) then imported everything back into PS where I tweaked about for a few more hours while listening my friends doing live-stream shows. (See some working versions here) Once I had had enough I slept on it. In the morning, after some deliberation over styles with a friend, I whipped together a final version. That was it. I’m hoping that this condensed, walled-in approach will bring wider-perspective to my way-too-lengthy music making process.  Maybe it can bring some brevity to my way too lengthy writing process as well…

Here’s some of the many versions I passed through to find the final cover-art.

Regardless of whether it’s art or music…

…there’s one final stretch of road that has to be traversed. The space on this continuum is positively littered with stalled-out song heaps now trapped forever in the twilight of birth. Although this doomed wreckage may find itself being visited by the scavenging songwriter from time to time; for the most part this place is a monolithic graveyard of failure’s best attempts. It’s hard not to look around and notice all the wasted effort it took get these malformed songs to their final, unintended resting places. And walking away empty-handed smarts like hell on it’s but what may be worse is the way the sentiment hangs on; chipping away bits of resolve with each slow step toward starting anew. Moving on after a failure, for an artist of any sort, requires a hefty amount of functional delusion I guess.

Well the good news is that just venting some of this psychobabble can really mash the reset button down. Clearing the cluttered slate of these languishing reminders fills me with some sparkly forward-momentum and the urge to once again pile the slate high and start on something new.

In the meantime I’m releasing the new single, Magnetic Fields, right here for the first time. This is all the fan fare it will receive for a few weeks at least. It’s my way of thanking you readers who actually slogged it through all 1710 words of this.

Thank you for listening and please, have a listen.

04/24/20 ||| Everyday Chances, Trump vs. Lysol vs. CV19, No Overlap, New Sam Harris

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••• A Noonish Good Morning •••

So it’s just after noon here on Friday morning and I’m feeling rather dumb. For one thing I spent almost five hours face-timing last night with a wonderful girl who lives about 2000 miles away. She might as well live next door; it’s not like we could see each other anyways. I’m thinking I’d throw an unhealthy amount of caution to the wind for this sweetheart if she was really that close. Welcoming these unexpected sparks into my life and actively panning for more isn’t why I’m feeling dumb though. Not in the least. Though at a glance the long game here looks bleak but I just don’t believe in dropping something that feels this good out of some pragmatic or existential reasoning. People who play too safe and live by some chanceless, idealistic bent tend to cut themselves down before the finish line. They may be happy to trudge home with the “participant” ribbon but you know the whole while they’re wondering what it feels like to hold the gold.

I’ve learned that if you want something then you have to stay the course and deal with the obstacles as they present themselves. Not give up before there’s any resistance. In my experience this is the only way the impossible can become possible. Right now I don’t care that her and I doesn’t make sense on paper and that we are separated by three solid days worth of driving and that both of us are heavily embedded in our own locales. I can’t think about that now. If this is meant to work out then it will find a way. I mean, saying that is sort of a non-sequitur because we can never actually know what would have happened that time when we zigged instead of zagged. What’s that quote? and who’s it by? “You lose every chance you don’t take?”

I’m not so stupid to believe in something as empty and vacuous as “The Secret” or that simply praying to the universe will bring what you want. If that shit worked EVERY TIME then I’d be a believer.  The fact is things sometimes work out and sometimes they fall apart; it’s always been that way.

Over the ages the charlatans have figured out that it’s easy to manipulate our feeble intuitions into believing there’s something behind random chance. People can’t help but to find patterns in the static, significance in the insignificant, spooks in the shadows. A face on the moon. We’re built for making sense out of this mystery we’ve been thrust into. Us human would never had made it this far without these great powers of deduction. But this machinery is still running on overdrive in a modern world that’s best understood through math and science. Those simplistic sentiments are as ridiculous as they are popular. I mean there’s very smart people who believe in numerology after all. I’m still waiting for them all to win the lottery. But winning the lotto is also chance.

My point? Look. Like each of you there’s tons of instances where I wanted something so badly and was even convinced my chances of living a good life depended on getting it…  and in the end things still didn’t pan out and I didn’t die. All the praying, all the good thoughts to the universe, all the miles walking on the righteous path and most importantly, all the grit and grinding and still no reward… How do you square these moments with the results after telling yourself to just wish harder? For me the best way is to notice your surroundings and the very spot where you are sitting. All these dashed hopes and near misses contributed as much to where you are as all the success’s and wins did. As long as something feels good then I think you need to go for it.  It doesn’t mean you’ll always get what you want but it might be that you get what you need. I have to give credit to the Stones for that tidbit of philosophy; I think they were dead on. Dawes, speaking of bands and songs, deftly grazed this fundamental truth of life as well. Dig the these lines from When My Time Comes.

“So I took what I wanted
And put it out of my reach.
I wanted to pay for my successes
With all my defeats.
And if Heaven was all
That was promised to me
Why don’t I pray for death?”

Right?!?! …and then there’s this line I rather like a lot…

“You can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks.
Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it’s starin’ right back.”

Check out this Dawes song and their accompanying video here below. It’s stellar.

So I’m gonna keep leaning into what feels right because I don’t know how to do it any other way. The odds probably favor frustration and heartache if strong feelings develop but in the end (to use another well-worn cliche) you can’t win of you don’t play.
Okay, things just got pretty unspooled there; its been a long while since I’ve had a woman on the brain to such a degree and I’m no longer used to it… ah well. Moving on and I’m now realizing I still haven’t told you why I’m feeling so dumb today… It’s because throughout the duration or our five-hour chat I was sipping straight Tito’s vodka. This on the surface sounds nut, I know, but hear me out. This manner of imbibing has been a successful ‘life hack’ of mine I put into practice starting late last fall. I really like Tito’s vodka but not enough to gulp it straight. No way. The stanky burn of 80 proof spirits has a built in self-correction mechanism that works remarkably well for me. Part of my problem with alcohol has always been that I simply drink it too fast (i do the same thing with coffee and seltzer water). After a few drinks my governors often fall off and I lose the instinct to keep track; it’s just what happens when you’re having fun. By drinking it ‘on the rocks’ a single scotch glass worth tends to last me way longer than say a beer or a mixed drink would. Way longer. For instance, while playing in Key West with Ben Balmer in January one drink usually survived the full duration of our 4 hours sets. It has really worked for me but can’t I remember the last time that I drank for 5 fucking hours. So there-in lies my mistake. Live and learn right?

 

 

••• Trump in the time of COVID •••

Though the mental fog has dampened my day some there is still plenty of room for love, light and laughter. I mean the headlines this morning were just fucking priceless. Trump seems to think you can inject people with disinfectant to stop COVID… I wish the word “retard” was still permissible to use because it would have fit perfect here….

Oh and here’s a crazy yet related thought: Is it any wonder why the most ill-educated people in this country think Trump is the Second Coming of the Messiah?

Everyday I can’t believe things could get crazier but the alternative facts just keep flowing from the disgraced oval office.

In closing… maybe the president will save us all some pain and take his own advice:

••• “To my friends and relatives that still believe in Trump” ||| The DailyKos •••

A distant relative who I recently connected with sent me an article today. He said it made him think of me. Our values and sensibilities when it comes to scouring the planet for good information seem to be very much aligned. Not gonna get into the how’s or why’s but take my word on it. Had I found this bit of writing first I believe I would have sent it his way.

The opening venn-diagram really caught my eye. “Thoughtful People that read and think critically” in one circle and “Trump Supporters” in the other with VERY little overlap. Though this might seem like a easy jab it’s really not; it’s a clear fact for anyone willing to look with open eyes. For me this has been, and is, a constant and uncomfortable observation being that I’m related to a inordinate amount of Trumpers. Can’t say I have a single non-related “friend” who supports him though. I don’t really bother with anything less than great company and being able to think clearly is a prerequisite; every one of my close acquaintances are whip-smart.

Anyways it’s as impossible to not notice the lack of thoughtfulness in that tribe as it is to find pro-Trump arguments that are halfway coherent and don’t quickly devolve into something about Obama using those deflective “yeah-but-what-about” fallacies. The sad truth is that his supporters, for the most part, could give a fuck about a solid argument or they wouldn’t be supporting that one-dimensional sociopath in the first place. Seems they could give fuck about thinking all half the time. Instead they’d rather let the twisted fear mongering right-wing propaganda channels think their thought’s for them.

Let me share my youngest brothers opinion on tagged article; he’s always great for a smart take on something. Our sensibilities are also almost always in alignment. I count myself very lucky that I can send a good write-up like this to both of my brothers and it won’t be construed as an insult. But unfortunately I have my doubts that it will track much outside of the larger of the two circles.

“This article was great. It’s nice to read fact based things like this that try not to be partisan and still show how unqualified he is for the job. I know Trump supporters would still call it liberal propaganda but that’s the world we live in.”

Indeed brother….
Click the brilliant venn-diagram for the article.

••• Making Sense w/ Sam Harris: A Conversation w/ Caitlin Flanagan •••

Sam Harris is my jam. This dropped yesterday and I haven’t started it yet. But I will asap.
Hit his website at https://samharris.org/ and subscribe to his podcast
Also check out his awesome meditation app: Waking Up

 

04/23/20 ||| A Michelle Wolf, Eric Weinstein & Ryan Holiday kinda day

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 ••• Michelle Wolf: The Media Is Hopelessly Addicted to Trump ||| The Daily Beast •••

One of my little, but physically bigger, brothers sent me this opinion piece today. Really loving me the sharp-witted brain and tongue of Michelle Wolfe these days. She was on Joe Rogan awhile ago and I remember really loving the interview. (JRE with Michell Wolf) How comedians have become one of the best sources of truth is an important question. Maybe for a later time.

Like many of us my first introduction to her comedy was her unexpected and fitting roast of The-Orangy-One at the the White House correspondence dinner in 2018. That routine was a breath of fresh air for many of us silenced by our own fatigue over the years following the election. The human mind just isn’t built to grapple for so long with so much impossible information. Everyday the antics from the White House were out-doing the previous days with crazier and scarier shit… With the news cycle now being pumped into our faces in deafening 27/7 intervals it’s only natural that some of us have tune it out to survive. To get on with my life I learned to take small gulps of the insanity once or twice a week. It seems though that about 40% of the population learned to cope in a different way. They got free by taking their brains completely off-line. Guess they found it easier to accept the daily deluge of paper-thin lies and obvious contradictions as the truth than to deal with the cognitive dissonance the rest of us content with . These fine folks, mostly nestled far outside the ‘big cities’, learned to watch the action like a home team sporting event. They picked their team and root away even as the players are firing machine gun into the stands.

Another thing related to this line of thinking… Is it really surprising that someone so clearly detached from any of the decent moral teachings of the Bible has the evangelical vote? It’s not hard to find the tie that binds in this case. Back to it. Here’s Michelle’s great OP-Ed from the The Daily Beast.

Click for full article

 

••• 31: Ryan Holiday on the Portal w/ Eric Weinstein •••

Click to hear podcast.

A few hours ago I was gearing up for a run. Or paring down actually. It’s a beautiful, sunny day here in Austin and I saw no point in anything besides the minimal clothing requirements. Before setting out I was flipping for the next podcast to dump into my head. I’d just finished the Joe Rogan episode I mentioned yesterday. When I run I don’t really enjoy listening to people talk. It’s usually some chill music for me. Or nothing besides my own rhythm and thoughts. Exercise I typically find to be a great time to disengage from the world and an even better time to get closer to some hypnotic, meditative state. Running is perfect for rocking the present.

Since CV19 however I’ve had little reason to go on long drives which is where I usually consume the bulk of my programs. Driving and cooking meals are my windows for this. Food always takes about 30 mins for me to dish a dish and it’s one of my favorite spaces in the day for podcasts (and phone calls for that matter) but I only cook twice a day and the shows are piling up.

Anyways I happened on episode 31 of the Portal; a show hosted by one of the most brilliant people on the planet Eric Weinstein. This guy is truly over the top in his encyclopedic like knowledge and infinite reservoir of curiosity for all things. He can be a bit much for some personalities to take and it’s understandable; there’s often an air of entitlement when he’s delivering opinions or interlocking with a guest. I’ve done my best to overlook all that because there’s an incredibly interesting mind beyond his more jarring and less-savory human qualities. When you’re an honest-to-god polymath at the top of the intellectual pack and and many of the brightest minds on the planet look up you maybe the underlings could cut some slack? No one is perfect and everyone is a little weird once you spend enough time with them.

His guest is Ryan Holiday who is a resident of Austin I just found out. Neat. I’m halfway through his book The Perennial Seller. He has a smooth flow that makes for easy and pleasant reading. This particular book, although short, is taking awhile because I don’t wanna miss anything. This one truly has my attention; it’s about making and marketing products (including art/music) that lasts for decades. Currently I’m in the 11th hour of releasing a long overdue album but great advice can’t be had too late.

I have only made it about 1/4 of the way through this 2:30hr show and posting here and now seems a little premature but I guess I am excited to share. It’s always a thrill to hear my favorite personalities talking the talk.

It’s Probably available everywhere podcasts can be had. I listen in the Apple iPhone app; here’s that link:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-portal/id1469999563#episodeGuid=gid%3A%2F%2Fart19-episode-locator%2FV0%2FvWnLrFUwSgXyEvUlRwtclxEraQkXoH0WfsrUD60bZqU

 

 

If You Want to Survive Then Trust Smart People.

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That’s it. If anything can be gleaned from these layers of chaos that are everyday being heaped on us then it’s just to trust smart people. No one really has their hands on the controls; there’s no all knowing being behind the curtain pulling the dials and levers. There’s just people, lost in the wilderness and trying to find their way safely out. And at the same time, much to our detriment, there’s mentally ill narcissist standing on the captains chair babbling and screaming incoherently. Yeah don’t listen to that fuck. He’s dangerous and he actually HATES our freedom. How his bald-eagle hat Walmart-buying-Chinese-made-USA-Flag-shirt wearing supporters don’t seem to see what he’s actually up to is a whole other subject all together.

Luckily for us there are serious people in the wings analyzing, predicting and adding to the pool of our current understanding with their wonderfully intact and fine-tuned brains. Heather Cox Richardson is one person I place in that category. A friend recently turned me on to her website where she publishes a good number of well-written and well-thought out writings each week.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/

She’s Gonna Wake Up and She’s Gonna Shake Us Off

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NOTE: I originally wrote then published this piece on www.eric-bettencourt.com, my music site.

A few years ago I was slogging through the long but great book Collapse by Jarod Diamond. It’s a study on the systematic failings of some of history’s greatest societies and the lessons we could potentially learn from them. Around this time I was sitting on a few melodic pieces of what would eventually become the song Shake Us Off. For a few years it remained mostly incomplete; it had basically stalled. It wasn’t until I finished the masterfully devastating novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy that I was sparked back into action again; dragging the tune to within a few yards of the finish line. The rest of the tweaks and changes happened slowly, most of it fell into place as I was shaping up the recordings for what would eventually be An Underwater Dream, the album it landed on.

I haven’t told anyone this because I feel weird but WTF… after the initial writing rush I was overtaken with some pretty heavy emotions and had myself a VERY unexpected sob. This has only happened once before with songwriting. What Works I started in the heat of an intense and imploding relationship. Crying just isn’t one of my go-to moves. It usually takes quite a lot.

Weary Traveler, which I posted to my Youtube channel a few weeks back, was completed within this same time-frame and basically cut from the same cloth though of a vastly different color. Both Shake Us Off and Weary Traveler really are one-in-the-same sentimentally. It’s not a coincidence they’re back-to-back on the record. Both were born out of my obsession and infatuation with the looming possibility of societal collapse which will probably always be a threat in the “not-too-distant future” of every generation.

To read the rest of the article head here… https://www.eric-bettencourt.com/shes-gonna-wake-up-and-shes-gonna-shake-us-off/