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Mining the hearts and minds of unorthodox teachers.
Here you'll find playful, inquisitive, and friendly dialogues with the likes of psychologists, musicians, teachers, yoga instructors, philosophers, DJs, health educators, entrepreneurs, astrologists, holistic healers, meditators, life coaches, athletes, hairdressers, authors, speakers, comedians, leaders, advocates, changemakers, seemingly regular people bursting with wisdom, artists, mathematicians, and much more.
The Junkyard Love Podcast - for a better life.
Hello, and welcome to the Junkyard Love. Hey. Everything's gonna be alright.
Speaker 2:It's all good. It's
Speaker 1:all good. The Junkyard Love podcast. And what age? Four. Three.
Speaker 1:So we were just talking about YouTube. I I so I think what happens with me when I watch YouTube, I I almost get the same thing with video games. Like, I I don't really play many video games. My attention is I I think they're cool, but it's just they aren't something I spend a ton of my time on. And I noticed if I do end up playing video games, as much as it's like, yeah, I'm having fun.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'm having fun with friends. That's important. That's valuable. But I start to very quickly have this ticking clock or like an air horn of, hey, you're not doing something valuable. You're consuming rather than creating or outputting, you know, and you're creative.
Speaker 1:So I have this alarm that goes off. And sometimes I feel if I'm watching too many, like, TV shows or movies, whatever. I love movies and everything, but I'm more prone to listen to modern podcasts, like, what are the philosophers talking about right now? How can I expand my mind? How can I, you know, in some ways, maybe it's not super healthy to like listen to all these like self development, self help, like, here's what you need to work on today?
Speaker 1:But I am just way more drawn to that. I'm way more prone to listen to something that I feel is giving me value in my life and making me better versus something that I'm consuming. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Well, makes sense. Well, it activates different parts of your brain. So when you're listening to somebody's ideas, you're developing your own, whether that is you're saying, No, I don't agree with that statement and you're holding your line or you are turning around and you are developing new ones or you're making new connections and you're kind of sitting there going Oh, okay, maybe I can assimilate that but I'm in a different stage of my life or like the situation is not right for what you're saying but maybe I can extrapolate a piece of that and use that in my life. And I don't know, I find that that works a lot with the way I view things but maybe that's the intuitive quality because a sensor doesn't act like that at all. I have a lot around me.
Speaker 2:None of them act like that. But all the intuitives around me, whether they realize it or not, tend to extrapolate information and go No, but there's a point there and I need to find more information and I feel like I need to develop whatever that is, whether they realize they're doing it or not.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, I get amped at that area right there I can notice, oh, my thinking is differently than this or I feel strongly about the opposing view or I feel strongly about agreeing with you, whatever it is. I love challenging what I think. I love like hitting play on a podcast and, maybe it's just two knucklehead comedians. But then I'm like, man, I am now thinking in a different way than I thought of before I hit play on this.
Speaker 1:I love that. That entices me.
Speaker 2:It's funny. I was watching one just the other day and it was a funny podcast. It was a short one, like a super short interview podcast scenario, but neither one of them are Christians. They were two different types of non Christians or atheist agnostic, like they just don't believe in any sort of God or any sort of deity thing. But watching them once coming about it, well, you know, it's community and it's this and it's that, so it's not all that bad.
Speaker 2:Then the other one's like nope, I'm done. I'm out. I like kind of thing but they're spiritual. So, it was very interesting listening to these two very different viewpoints and one finally saying, oh, I was reared Catholic. I was like, well, when you're brow beaten in the church, you're going to run from it or anything, whether it's politics, whether it's church, whether it's education, your home family, whatever system and structure it is, you're going to run.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, I think it's a Well, good I mean, kind of tells you it tells you a lot about a person. Like, you can hear them going on like, oh, they have this idea and here's what they think, whatever. And then they have a sentence, like you said, where they just suddenly go, you know, oh, by the way, I was raised in this way or like, I grew up in a Catholic household, whatever. Then you can not always, but a lot of times you can go, oh, okay, that makes sense why you feel the way you do.
Speaker 1:Like, I've talked about the difference in people who, like, they just blindly trust or appeal to authority versus a lot of like, you know, you know, creative poet independent from a young age type. And so, like, I never I didn't have that instant trust in, like, adults even, you know. And so sometimes I'll hear people and they're going on about all these, whatever, their beliefs or they trust this person who said this thing or this scientist or this government entity, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And I'm trying to figure out why it is like, man, so you heard that and you just fully believe that. But that's not my experience.
Speaker 1:I hear it and I feel like I want to challenge it. And then you kind of hear a sentence like that. It's like, okay, well, I grew up in this sort of household and it was this teaching. And not just use it as a broad example, not to just say, like, people who are religious believe everything they hear or something. But just like it's a good example of how we all come to the different conclusions differently and reasons why we land on different areas.
Speaker 1:But, you know, we can have conversations there and get to the point of, Oh, okay, I was raised differently than you. I had a different experience growing up. Why I think these things. Tell me more about why you got to how you're where you're at, you know?
Speaker 2:Well, do find that's the linchpin. And I don't think, especially in society today, it s intentionally reinforced to not do that. You don t want to get to know your neighbor. You don want to know the reason. Not just the why but the reason behind why because the rationale.
Speaker 2:Because if you did, it humanizes somebody and we can't sow discord. We can't meddle in society. We can't then move in the shadows over here because wait a second, they pay attention to us. We have you squabbling down here. And I mean that for everything from marketing to the most insidious of stuff that you could talk about.
Speaker 2:But I really do think that between social media and media media, archaic news, which are just a bunch of pundits talking in my opinion in today's day and age. Like not a single journalist exists anymore in my opinion. Like you'll have the really independent ones that are trying and they're just putting facts out there. But you have to hunt and search those people down and even then, they have their own bias. I think that was the one thing that I learned, one of my best professors, my favorite professor ever at university, my degree is radio television film but their focus was independent film and documentary filmmaking.
Speaker 2:I didn't want anything to do with documentary films. Like it didn't interest me, I wanted to do fiction, I wanted to do music videos, like that's one of the reasons I was going to school. Bring back the modern movie musical because I started university before Moulin Rouge existed. I graduated high school in February. So we didn't have a modern movie musical.
Speaker 2:It died with Evita kind of thing in the 90s. They tried it and it didn't work. What's interesting is we would sit there in her class and she sat there and said to us, If you don't like documentary, think of this as an independent filmmaking class. I was like, Great. Fantastic.
Speaker 2:And I was like, Thank you for giving me another viewpoint. That right there is the mark of a good educator. It's not trying to browbeat you or tell you what to think. It's somebody that goes, Here's an alternate way to look at something. Oh, okay, cool.
Speaker 2:Here's another tool in your tool belt. But then she turned around and asked us what we thought documentaries were. And so, everybody as you do in the classroom, in your late teens and early 20s, everybody's raising their hand, it's National Geographic, it's this, that and the other. And then she said, Well, any how to video is a documentary. You're documenting the process of doing something.
Speaker 2:Any featurette, then all of sudden I went, Oh my gosh, all the featurettes I love to watch on the making of a concert, the making of a movie, the making of theater, the making of behind the music, behind or making the video on MTV. It's a docuseries. Is it partially scripted? Yes. But you're documenting making Britney Spears Toxic music video, right?
Speaker 2:Like, you're seeing the process of how something is made and it changed the way I viewed
Speaker 1:it. I love that. Yeah. That's cool, though. I mean, that's so cool.
Speaker 1:A good teacher can do that, right? Like, can take something that you think you know all about. And when you're in high school or college, you obviously think you know everything you need to know. I've already anything like me anyway. And then oh, man.
Speaker 1:I love that. And and I'm gonna reuse your your term of linchpin, too, because that is another linchpin of just like, as soon as a teacher can say things in the correct way, go, oh, okay. And then you could suddenly you have this whole genre basically that now you could be totally happy about learning more about and diving into.
Speaker 2:Well, that s I mean, I could talk just for an hour about the great educators I ve had and then the bad teachers I ve had and just and how that has shaped a lot of things because we all know we ve had bad teachers. We all know that there s They don t like me. Well, that s fiftyfifty. That s perception. But we all know that we ve at least had one teacher in our life that did not like the cut of our jib.
Speaker 2:We were too talkative in class. We fidgeted too much. We didn t turn in assignments on time. Like, stuff that innately is a problem or you would do something and they just had a chip on their shoulder. We re human, it happens.
Speaker 2:I know I ve definitely had a few teachers like that. But even the ones that weren't a fan of me couldn't say that I wasn't polite, couldn't say I wasn't cordial and congenial. They're like, He talks too much in class. He just needs to settle down and just stop it. But he's polite.
Speaker 2:Like I can't just get on his case because he's not like all the other little spits in the classroom. It's nice to know that when your parents go in for a meeting and they're like, Well, you're in trouble but you're not in trouble because you're a little spit. You have to turn your homework in and you have to do the things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're participating too much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wait, you're not even participating. That's the problem. You're just you're distracting everybody around you because you're bored in the classroom.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's and that was always a big problem for me. It's like, this is too much. And I don't think the classroom environment is good for a student anyway, but that's a whole different topic.
Speaker 1:Did you man, I actually kind of do want to talk about this. What did you Sure. Were you born? Did you have ADHD, anything like that? Do you consider yourself do you have any of those neurodivergent traits?
Speaker 2:Not to my knowledge. I was never diagnosed with anything. The closest thing that shares those traits is in middle school, we all got hauled into the cafeteria to take a test, just a random test. They didn't tell our parents, which you know that probably went over very well. Know with my family, you don't do that.
Speaker 2:So, welcome to the public education system. But what was cool about the test is I didn't know what it was. I'll tell you what the test is in a second. I'll bury the lead. But I take it, I'm like, Oh, this is easy.
Speaker 2:I don't know what's blah, blah, blah. I was like, Oh, these are kind of different questions. These are fun, da, da, da. But what was weird was I was in the class with everybody that was in honors classes. So I was in middle school at this point.
Speaker 2:So I'm not with the honors students, I was kind of a work smarter, not harder, like sit on the back row, don't care kind of student. I got so burned out in elementary school. A whole another topic. But what's funny about it is, I take this test, I'm like, great, I don't belong with these kiddos but fine, whatever. Cool.
Speaker 2:I'm not with the bad behavioral ones, the ones that end up in in house suspension or do the other things, but I'm over here with Okay, you're straight A's, great, cool. Ends up later, I get called by the office over the PA to go to the library months later. The librarian who loved me, I loved the librarian and she loved me, handed me this Manila envelope and it was this package. She's like, Give this to your parents. And I was like, Oh shoot, I'm in trouble.
Speaker 2:Like, Oh crap. Don't look at it but you're going to take a peek. I took a peek at it and I was like, You're in the top percentile, top five percentile of The United States, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I didn't understand what it means. I am on like, at least for my age bracket, this gifted and talented scale.
Speaker 2:I don't know what the tests are called now. I don't know what they called back in 1990 blah blah blah. They called it gifted and talented. And so, come to find out, I'm like some between spatial relations and linguistics, I m off the charts on something, but I can t even find the packet to this day. I ve moved, my family s moved and so I've been trying to find it.
Speaker 2:My parents keep all of that stuff and none of us can find it. But it was like this really interesting thing but being gifted and talented shares about half of the ear markers of ADHD. So, you don't have somebody that knows how to differentiate, they'll sock you on medicine just to control you, in my opinion. But everybody around me thought it wasn't like an ADD, ADHD kind of thing. But it's like children aren't meant to sit there for hours like you're in a and listen to the work bell.
Speaker 2:The whole thing is structured intentionally to be like a worker drone. So the classroom environment, especially when you're younger, you're meant to get up, you're meant to move, you're meant to do these things, but you also have to structure it. I see both sides of it. If you're actually thinking about it, you have to structure it, you can't just run amok. Those classrooms don't work.
Speaker 2:So you need to learn to sit here for this short amount of time and then we're all going to go do a little field trip and go do this, clear your mind out and then come back. Those kind of classrooms were the best ones for me. So to answer your question, I've never been diagnosed with anything, but I'm on some sort of wonderful special scale that annoys teachers.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, I think it's probably different nowadays. I mean, I don't the amount of people that are diagnosed with that sort of thing nowadays versus when you and I were in school is just huge. Obviously, you know, it's a ton more. I don't know if that necessarily means that there's more people with ADHD.
Speaker 1:I'm sure there is. I'm sure something about our environment or our food or our vaccine, whatever the question is, there's something that is changing and making us more susceptible to ADHD and that sort of thing. Our phone, for example.
Speaker 2:Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, think the core of it is a decent teacher with the correct resources, granted that they have the time and they could give these students the resources, they find like, okay, that person doesn't do well in this environment, but clearly they're passionate and they're interested in something. So let's see if we can set them loose on the right things. Because I can be considered someone with ADHD, but man, put me in front of a DJ controller. That's a great place to have ADHD. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:Like, I can hyper fixate on things that pay my bills and it's worked well for me in my life. But in school, if I'm trying to, like, pay attention and stop talking and only they'll listen to this history from 1954 and and re remember it and repeat it, whatever. Man, that's so boring to me. But get me on other things I can pay great attention. So I'm sure you're probably in a similar boat.
Speaker 2:It's I I think everybody is like, if we're interested in it, we're going to be drawn to it. And none of us want to sit there and read from a book. Nobody wants to read about Ted and Fred and how the cat sat on the hat and figure out the word problems in math when it would better shape us? Who needs to know about the red train going from Tokyo to Los Angeles and how much time is it going to take when it would be better for us to learn about economics from the perspective of the word problem about running a business. If you have this many items and this is your inventory and you just reshape the word problem but I was reading something recently and it was talking about Rockefeller and how he helped shape the education system and that anybody that's affluent or is educated has that, they get that at home.
Speaker 2:So we intentionally don't put it in the education system to keep people at a certain level. I don't know how true all of it is. I haven't done a deep dive into it. It was just some stuff I was reading, and I was like, that doesn't surprise me because Yeah,
Speaker 1:it makes sense.
Speaker 2:The school bell is a work whistle. If you think about when they were developing the Education System and then becoming the Department of Education, which has no love loss for me, see how the structure and then the bureaucratic structure mixed with it ends up hurting students.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And it hurts teachers as well because it doesn't give them the resources. It's the reason why the arts are defunded. It's not because the arts aren't helpful, it's because they're too helpful. It's because the arts create connective tissues in your brain. Music is math.
Speaker 2:Math is music. Rhythm, time structure, notes, all of it, they all sync up. You can look at all sorts of things from woo woo theory to actual practical music theory and they all say the same thing. And so, you'll have all these people talk about the arts are so important and we both are in arts field that have a tech side and logistics and all this, but heaven forbid we put resources and effort into that, I have a whole series of thoughts about it because it s also the type of person that flocks to it. And those people are not always taken seriously.
Speaker 1:Okay, tell
Speaker 2:me more. So my opinion, as what I ve noticed, because I ve worked a lot as a contractor in education, so I ve worked with students from a little bit in the middle school, but predominantly teenage and 20 like that, whether it's in the education environment and the institution or outside of it. And it's the same kind of age bracket, whether it's theater or choral or dance or tech or any of that sort of stuff, design. Totally derailed my own train of thought. What was I going to say?
Speaker 2:You said tell me about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're about the arts and essentially how, like, you know, we have different minds and we're kind of trained to be factory workers essentially, and that doesn't work for everybody.
Speaker 2:Well, when it comes to the arts, one of the big things it is, like I said before, it's a connective tissue to extrapolate to a lot of different things. We literally consume art every day. We consume it. The billboards you watch, the structure the billboard was built on is a form of art. Architecture is art.
Speaker 2:The house or the apartment you're sitting in, you know, the things that you take for granted, the fricking carpet, there's art in everything. It's just some fields are more logistic and some fields aren't. One of the problems with the education system is that it's bureaucratic. And bureaucracy, a lot of times censors gravitate towards bureaucracy, not necessarily intuitives. Censors aren't always artists.
Speaker 2:You'll find the predominant amount of people that are intuitive, it's going to be a higher amount of intuitives in the arts than you are going to find sensors full and well. And being reared by a sensor, a very strong sensor. S interesting how she can appreciate art very, very much so, but doesn t feel artistic in her own right. So and I m kind of the opposite where it s like my feelings are intuitions, they re not always emotional. Like I don have that feel or emotional reaction to thing.
Speaker 2:So being more on the thinker scale, it's interesting when I get around the performing arts and get around a lot of willowy feelers and all this sort of stuff, you just start going okay, I really need you you're at a 10, I need you at a two, I'll take a four or five kind of thing. And that's not to denigrate anybody, it's just to say we all process things differently and our thresholds are different and intuitive feelers really tend to go towards the performing arts specifically. And so, in tech, you'll get a lot more sensors and you'll get a lot more people that would be an engineer, but they have an artistic streak or they want to be involved in something creative. And so you'll end up with students or adults that are creating these amazing sets, doing this great lighting design, doing running audio, editors. It's all interchanges.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I completely answered what you where you're wanting to go.
Speaker 1:No. Pretty much. Yeah. No. I'll I'll poke and prod us towards things that I I think are interesting.
Speaker 1:Oh, actually, what I would like to do, just curious if anybody listening, if they have not, you know, gone the Meyer Briggs explored their own personalities. For one, hey, check it out. I definitely encourage everybody. 16personalities.com. I think that's the one that I like.
Speaker 1:Could you tell me the difference between, like, a sensor and a feeler? A sensor and an intuitive? Sensor and intuitive. Yeah. In your definition, it's fine.
Speaker 2:Don't have give it. Do you want me to pull up the clinical one? No. No.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Whatever you have to say about it is good.
Speaker 2:Basically, I go with the fact that a sensor is someone that lets the external world dictate the way that they are going to interpret their information, whereas an intuitive, you run it through your own funnel and then you output the data. So my reaction is going to be, I collect everything around me and then every time I make a bad decision, I used to go to the site and actually test, just the abridge test. When things keep going wrong, just like it's bad and things haven't been going right, I'll usually test slightly more sensor. It'll ping over to the sensor. I'm like, because you're not listening to yourself.
Speaker 2:You're not listening to what's innate to you or to me personally, which is redundant to say, but you know what I mean. So I ve noticed that. Whereas like, okay, when I make bad decisions, it s this happens or that happens, so I need to do this. You don t take that beat and run it through your own funnel. You re reacting as opposed to absorbing, reinterpreting and then It not putting the doesn't work for everybody.
Speaker 2:I have a lot of sensor I shouldn't say a lot, I'm fiftyfifty probably with sensors around me and intuitives. But I will tell you, it causes conflict when you have a strong sensor and a strong intuitive and they're trying to communicate with each other. You can say the exact same thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And one's coming at it from the front door and one's coming at it from the skylight. And neither one of you are going to meet until you can take a beat and take a breath and go, hold on, how is this person I think we're saying the same thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. How are we saying that? What are we saying?
Speaker 2:Yeah. If it's in the point where you're getting heated, it oh my gosh. And that can be anything from your chores to political nonsense to religious doctrine to just anything. But I think you have to take that beat. And as I ve grown older, I ve learned how to kind of go, Oh, I fire back.
Speaker 2:People don t nowadays people don t see that side of me until they meet the side of me and then they like, that came out of nowhere. So, no, it didn come out of nowhere. I was just very I ve learned to be very patient and go, Okay, there s so many things you have to do in a day. This is not the battle that I Okay, this is the battle that I'm going to have to fight. Okay, cool.
Speaker 2:I'm down. Let's go. You want to go? We can go.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, that is how it goes. You do have to start to learn, especially if you're able to kind of take that step back, that meta perspective of, Okay, what's going on in this situation? Because so often we're, you know, we're trying to fight it from being within it. Like, we're our heads deep in the dang thing and we're like having the arguments and we're disagreeing or whatever.
Speaker 1:A lot of times you got to, you know, pull your head out of your butt or whatever this example I'm putting here. I'll save my inappropriate jokes. So basically, just like pull yourself out of it and observe it from a distance. Right? And then you can kind of have a you could see where you're butting heads and where you're both all you're trying to overall accomplish the same thing with this other person, but you can kind of go, okay, is it worth me taking my energy to argue this?
Speaker 1:Is worth me letting go for a while? And then we re approach it. Do I need to let them cool off and me cool off? And then we realize, hey, we're on the same page. We're talking about the same thing.
Speaker 1:So where in your life has you've had so many different experiences, so many, you know, in the creative world, for sure, but all of your other expertise. How did you start to find where you noticed, okay, my reactions, me arguing with this person isn't helpful. Me bumping heads with this type of person seems to keep happening. Because what I want to ask her is this kind of like maybe there's people listening who they continue they notice they're bumping heads with everybody. They work with creatives.
Speaker 1:Maybe they are the creative, maybe they're not the creative, but they noticed that there's a way that they could better, more amicably communicate. I think that's something that definitely one of the a lot of the main reason I want to get you on there. One of the main reasons. You're an excellent communicator. It's something that I noticed right off the bat.
Speaker 1:I mean, of us working together, even our casual conversations, we just talk forever and you communicate so well. And I think it's a superpower in a lot of people. There's a lot of people who probably work with you and work alongside you or see you. And your ability to be so charismatically communicative is admirable. So I'm sure there's other people who are like, Man, I'd love to be as charismatic and communicative as Curtis.
Speaker 1:How would I get there? So I'm just wondering if there was a maybe an opening for you or maybe how you used to do things versus how you do them now. How can you speak to those people who want to communicate better?
Speaker 2:It s a series of things. It isn't just one. We'll start with I'm just naturally articulate, very gifted in that. Is a genetic innate thing that got reinforced. My grandmother and my mother were very big on English, they were very big on language and speaking clearly and concisely.
Speaker 2:I m an officer s child and my father also ran joint ventures, international joint ventures later in life. I'm an executive's child slash an officer's child, so you have to present a specific way as it is. So now you have this kind of waspy thing going on, and then you have this, Oh, you do naturally speak. I spoke early for a girl. Like as in developmentally, I was speaking early, I walked early, like I only crawled to climb up onto something to become bipedal.
Speaker 2:I didn't do the uching stuff, I didn't go through the normal steps. Same thing with talking. I started a little bit of babbling, my mother says and then you had full words and then it was full phrases. It was never why, it was for what reason as a toddler. Like what toddler says for what reason?
Speaker 2:This one. But the funny thing about that is I must have keyed into something being around adults all of the time in that there s a rationale and a reason or it was the type of adults I was around. My mother is an educator, Deaf Ed as well as English. So being articulate would have obviously been reinforced. She would notice if there was something wrong with the speech pattern or you re congested or you can t hear something and we need to get in and see if there s something wrong with your ears or there s something going on.
Speaker 2:She just saw it almost immediately as soon as speech patterns. But I had it. So, I don't know if that s where that nature nurture thing is. It s genetic 100% but it got nurtured. So, there s that.
Speaker 2:Was very loquacious very obviously and very engaging when I was a child. Never met a stranger kind of thing but didn t trust certain people, like wily at an early age. And then school just kind of beat it out at me. Like I became way more insular, you know, when you don t really have friends in school and you re just kind of working your way through it, trying to communicate on that level with people, it becomes difficult. So, that's where the first major hiccup in the journey is.
Speaker 2:I could communicate with an adult like that, no problem. And I had this immense frame of reference where I could talk to somebody and they'd be like, how do you know about Laughin'? How do you know like this episode of a show that I watched when I was a tween or a teen kind of thing and you're in 1980 whatever, early 1990s kind of thing? I'm like, because I was allowed to watch it. Nick at Night existed and Exactly.
Speaker 2:And I think that's something we can I do want to hit that as a point later about exposure to things and this younger generation versus my generation and what I've noticed throughout the years?
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, please.
Speaker 2:But in regards to communication, I'm talking way too much. But to get to the point is that I would then start having hiccups with my own peers because I was an anachronism in my own time. I love the Beach Boys. Who, as a five year old, an eight year old in 1980 whatever Texas loves the Beach Boys, loves Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Frankie Valley and the Four Seasons, Jan and Dean, Chiffons, the Charelles, any of the Motown music, any of the Phil Spector, the Brill Building pop music, it was the first music that I found that was mine, which was weird because I had Michael Jackson. We had the original Thriller LP.
Speaker 2:That's what got me to sleep as a toddler. I wasn't stuck listening to lullabies. I was listening to pop rock music, curated, of course. But I had the Madonnas, I had the Michael Bulls, but then I found this section of music. My peers weren't listening to that.
Speaker 2:They were listening to Kokomo, because that had come out from the cocktail soundtrack. So I didn t have a shorthand with my own peers, but I had a shorthand with adults. So that took a long time to develop. With my own peers, it was just frustrating. It just never worked.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But wasn't difficult to communicate. It was just we had two completely different sets of interests. And I was a social pariah. When do those two things, you just kind of you do you.
Speaker 2:You learn to do you and you just move forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, and I think it's something you said about if if the students and other classmates around you are just not into the same things you're into or they're not really talking about things that interest you, I could see that being like, you know, you had a of a taste for intellectualism almost. Like you almost wanted to have conversations maybe that were a little bit different than the people around you could potentially provide.
Speaker 2:I would agree with that assessment. Like, think what's interesting is you only know what you know, the rest is learning. So at any given stage, especially when you're younger, you're still developing. Your prefrontal cortex lobe has not developed until approximately 25 years of age. So boy, we all thought we knew a lot as teenagers, didn't we?
Speaker 2:And I consider a 20 year old a teenager. You know what I mean? Just because you're 18 and you're magically an adult legally, you're no more an adult than you were at 17, but it's like calling a 17 year old a child. You're not a child. You know right from wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah,
Speaker 2:yeah. You know what I mean? For the most part, point zero zero zero whatever percent of the people that don't know it, blah, blah, blah. But in all seriousness, you know certain things by that point. So it s that s when things got better.
Speaker 2:It was finally getting to being a teenager and I d found friends outside of school that were older. I be friends with people that were my age and then I would gravitate towards their older siblings. I then I just met this friend group at the local university. Just one of them happened to work at Blockbuster Video and I was always in there and we struck up a conversation. And I was basically by my juniorsenior year, I was living a dual life.
Speaker 2:During the day, I was a high school student and some weekends and then some evenings and some weekends, I was hanging out with these college friends and they weren't people with whom I went to school. So I didn't know them all the way through. It was the first true group of friends that I made of my own accord. And we could talk about different things. They were being educated at a higher level and at a different rate and had more exposure to different topics or a more in-depth exposure to topics.
Speaker 2:So it automatically filled, I guess, what was lacking in a lower educational environment that has a lot of surface or a lot of when you're in a religious area and it's a very specific group of people, there's a lot of what's the word I want to use? It's not stigma, but castigation. Like you, you re bad. There s something wrong with you if you don go to our church or if you don believe this thing. And I m like, there s so many denominations, dude, we re all Christians here.
Speaker 2:Or if you re not Christian, Judeo Christian or whatever, because of where we were in Texas.
Speaker 1:Come
Speaker 2:on, a beat, take a pill. It's deep, but not that deep. You know what I mean? You're a child. I'm a child.
Speaker 2:Let's move on with our lives here.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Mean, and to put someone in a whole box of like, Oh, he doesn't he didn't say yes to that one sentence that we really feel good about when he says yes. So let's not invite him over for getters like that. Like, come on. Like, how about just expand yourself and talk with the person?
Speaker 1:He might teach us something you don't even know.
Speaker 2:What's funny about that is, but I've done it myself and not realized I've done it people. And that I think is the next part of communication is realizing that you will inevitably do the very thing that you're upset that somebody else is doing. You're going to do it. We're human. It's just natural to want to be tribal.
Speaker 2:I just naturally happen to be a lone wolf. But it's natural to want to cluster off and be a part of the group. This is the fun crowd. I want to be, Oh, I really don't want to be over here. Or Oh, yeah, I really do.
Speaker 2:And do they accept me? Do they not accept me? As I got through university, I started realizing that the quotient I have for big picture thinking, not everybody had. And people can't then zero in on that minute detail. Most people live in the mid plane of observation.
Speaker 2:So, when you re leaping between, you can't see the bigger picture like five steps down the line, but I'm so focused on this minute detail over here, you've just missed a whole bunch that everybody else is like, duh. So it's finding that way to fill that gap and ask someone for that information. So that requires listening. So I would say that the next part of it, you're probably going to have to chop all of this up for it to make sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's decently cohesive, it's fine, yeah.
Speaker 2:Just streamline it. But listening, the biggest thing I can say about communication is listening. Most people don't listen. They hear. You hear what I m saying.
Speaker 2:You re not listening to the words that I am using. And words have meaning, yes, because we give it to them. And in today's day and age, people play fast and loose with the meanings of words. I understand that there's an etymology of language, but it has a root, as archaic as it may be. To raise someone is not to rear someone.
Speaker 2:You raise chicken and cattle, you rear children. But we colloquially use raise in lieu of rear. It s two different things. My mother always said, You were reared, not raised. That's semantic.
Speaker 1:That s great. Yeah. They are important details.
Speaker 2:They are, but if you're not taught those details and where was I taught those details? At home, not in the education system. So, there, there s a thing because even the best educators have to follow curriculum.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 2:curriculum is going to dictate a lot. The best teachers I ever had, jog on. Like, they did their own thing within the But very loose framework of I'll get to that later, because I would love to talk about some of the best things that teachers have ever done in But my for communication, so for me, s been, to sum it up, it s natural. There s a lot of ingrained just traits that I have. My parents were very influential in making sure to reinforce it, realizing that you had to learn by listening.
Speaker 2:Because if you don't listen to what the other person is saying, you're not going to respond. The response is going to be a different response. I don't know how better to explain it. If I half listened to you, I'm not understanding what you're asking or what you're saying to me.
Speaker 1:Go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 2:One of last thing I was going to say is, I then learned through a series during my work life of I used to be very, very direct, like that kind of terse short, because that's in my work life and everything else. You get yelled at if you screw something up. Like let's say we're working together on a show again, okay? It'll probably happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you accidentally cue something incorrectly. How many times have you heard over the clear calm somebody getting ripped a new one? You know what I mean? How many times in just a one on one and it's just like it is heated and you're being browbeaten and people in today's day and age like, Oh, it's so toxic. Some of the best things that I ever learned were from somebody just ripping me a new one at 14 Because years of it's direct and it's heated.
Speaker 2:It puts enough fear into you that you go Oh, I don't fear of consequence, not fear of the person. Like I don't ever want to do that again. I have a whole story about that. But it also made sure that I started realizing I wasn't getting with this younger generation. And when I say younger, I mean like the youngest of millennials and younger as I would work with them when I would say, Well, you know, the first act isn going very well, you know, I I noticed that this isn this, you know, go fix it and come back.
Speaker 2:Because that s how I was taught. You screwed up, go fix it, come back. You re not going to get attaboys, you re not going to get all these extra things. What ended up happening was the second act tanked and went even worse.
Speaker 1:Oh
Speaker 2:wow. Because you hurt someone took it personally. And it s like, well, firstly, you should still be backstage and you shouldn t have come out into the house to go talk to friends and family. The show is still going on even through intermission. Let s talk about professionalism here, but clearly no one taught that to you.
Speaker 2:So that's being that direct and too honest, which sometimes can almost be a censored trait, where it's like, well, you just need to fix it. And I'll give you the tools to fix it, but you just need to do it. You now have to create the compliment sandwich. Appreciate the work that you re doing, blah, blah, blah, blah. Insert the light version of how you need to fix it.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Have a nice day. And you have to do this sandwiching and it s been pervasive for how old am I? Probably over fifteen years now. I ve had to do this technique for over fifteen years now.
Speaker 2:I don feel like I should have to, but it works. It takes a little more time out of my day, someone doesn t feel some kind of way, they don get in their feelings from it and really, it s elicited a better response. So, this year, more than ever, I've had a lot of people comment about I'm always smiling when I'm on a project and I'm working. I don't know why. And it's not a grim, it's like it's a genuine smile.
Speaker 2:And I was like, I didn't realize I was doing that. I just didn t realize it. But it s getting into this different mindset. It s saying I m not paid to have a bad attitude. I m not paid to come in here and tell someone off.
Speaker 2:There s another way to do things. Two things can be true at once. There are multiple ways to do them. It s finding an extra tool for you, tool about going, Oh, that didn't elicit the response that I wanted. Let me try this technique with somebody.
Speaker 2:Let me try that technique with somebody. I I think that s why I gravitated that first year we worked together. And I was like, Oh, I like Jacob. Like, love it. Well, no, because you got it.
Speaker 2:Like, you were picking up on things before I even said them. I was like, Oh, he has to be an intuitive. Like, there's no other way this would work the way it does because you're like, well, I saw that there were these audio cues and you were missing something, so I just pulled a bunch of stuff for you that was kind of in the vein of it. You went ahead of what you should have to do and you preempted something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But we were able to communicate. And I would say with half of the way we talk with each other on-site, they're almost half sentences sometimes.
Speaker 1:For sure, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because we're on the same page, it's like, Okay, cool. Go, go, go, go, go. Yeah. I don't know. Does that help anything?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:It absolutely does. Okay. So I think that something that we're both able to do is, for one, like, nothing's personal. Like, if even if you're like, that song sucks. I don't want it new.
Speaker 1:Like, done. Cool. Say less. It's not personal. It's not like my taste in music sucks and you, like, are insulting me.
Speaker 1:But I I think, especially in live events, something that is very useful and helps with communication between creatives is you and I both know we have an end goal. Like, this door opens at 06:30PM. And, like, we know that we have high expectations. At a certain point, at 4PM, sometimes we have to start lowering our expectations because it's like, do I have time to make this happen in those two? Whatever.
Speaker 1:But not that we're trying to lessen the impact of the show. We're all still on board for having the best show possible. Like, we're here to do this thing, and, like, we know from experience when we do it well, it's impressive. We're proud of it. The audience has a wonderful moving experience.
Speaker 1:Like, that's the juice, man. We wanna do that. So if we're able to get kind of on the same vibe of, hey, man. We're we're trying to make a good show here. So if you can say something and halfway through it, I'm like, I get what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Say less. I got you. We're we're both here to have a great show. We're both here to make an experience for these people who are, you know, involved, whether they're in the show or they're watching it, they're working production. We're all in this to, like, have a good experience of working a show, a good experience of seeing the show, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so if I can remove my I think a lot of times our lack of communication sometimes is mean, looking at me when I was younger is like I would keep I would be offended by stuff. So people would say things and I would, well, I spent forever. I spent so much time on this, like, and you don't you clearly don't even listen to what I'm trying to do and blah, blah. It's like, no, there's many reasons why this person said what they said.
Speaker 1:The door's open at this time. We got to get to work, you know? So it's not about my feelings. It's not about me finding something that feels really good for me. Like these people in the audience, they don't care about, like, how I feel about the song, you know?
Speaker 1:It's a general cohesive thing. So, yeah, I think listening part of being a good listener is not taking things personally, too. I think an important part of it.
Speaker 2:That's something that I've learned in business. I don't do it all the time, but I have no problem saying, These are my thoughts. You've hired me for an opinion. These are my thoughts on it. I don't agree, I want it this way.
Speaker 2:Okay, fine. I still don't agree with you. I think this is what's going come out of it. But you're paying me, it's not my thing. If you like what I produce, as long as you like what I give you at the end of the day, it's not about me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I don't have to deal with that often. I think I had to deal with that when I was younger. Now I'm way more in tune with the people I'm around. Like, it's I don't know, once you finally linchpin in and link in and you get there with somebody, you're like Got it. I know what we're doing here.
Speaker 2:It may take a couple of steps to get there. And that's the music side or that's a design side or that's a, Oh, you're asking me to run the show this way. Okay, hold on. I'm going to have to take a few minutes to recalibrate what I'm doing and move my head space over to this over here. Speaking of that, asking about communication, because I have done everything from staging and choreography and this more movement based, dialogue based artistic style and then you move over to design and technology and obviously, you met me as working backstage.
Speaker 2:Would Yeah, you even
Speaker 1:what are all your titles when I'm working with you? What are your plethora of titles?
Speaker 2:Well, the actual titles are and staging director. Okay. So, it's like basically music director and staging director, they're two completely different things. But because I have a major background in making sure that performers get where they need to be and do what they need to do on stage and formations and dance and movement and all of that. There's that.
Speaker 2:That's the on-site component of it. The off-site is periodic opinions on things, as anybody would have, but you're not going to get Oh, well, I said this should happen with this outfit. So you're going to get like that s not a credit. That s a Okay, you're a part of the team. I think that's something that people get twisted.
Speaker 2:They think that just because they had an opinion on one thing, they should have a loftier title or something else. And I was there when I was younger. S that you're excited and got to tamper that down a little bit and realize, no, you're part of the team, you were hired to do this, this is the next part of it and the pre production stuff, a lot of it is music related and it s music editing and it's making sure that there's not just a sound bed but it's cohesive and it's more of a soundtrack. This year, I really went in and said, hey, I want to make this more like a soundscape and a soundtrack which is why the day before the show, we're sitting there, Oh, I have these tracks now with all these tracks. No, we need to add stuff to them.
Speaker 2:Need to give it more body. We need to make it atmospheric now, that's with music or sound effects. It's just a last minute kind of and you have on do your listeners know specifically all the different tiers of what you do?
Speaker 1:Probably not. No. I don't know what they know.
Speaker 2:Because it's one of those things where when we're working together, you're audio to so for anybody that doesn't know live production, there's there's your lead and then there's the second person and it can mean a bunch of different things. So, I'm handing over all my music to you or somebody else is handing the music that I've handed over to you and then we're communicating on how it's supposed to play and when it's supposed to play and oh, crud. And you do an amazing job looping, looping, looping, looping. And just to kind of round that out, that's something with communication is you have to experience a lot of things first.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you can articulate what is it you experienced. But if I were to try and tell you what that show is we work Yeah. Okay, if I m going to explain it to you, I would say, it s a charity dinner, it s a fashion show, but it s actually think of it set up like a concert.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:The way the staging happens, the way you would run things is more like a pop concert or a concert tour. It just happens to have theater elements in it. This happens to have a lot of music, it has microphones, sometimes we have live music. Every year is going to be different. But I would think of it more like a concert and a ballroom or an arena, a very small arena of size.
Speaker 2:Don t think of it like a normal fashion show. Don t think of it normally like a normal awards dinner. Don think of it it s not an industrial. Do not think of it at all like an industrial. And I think that's a learning curve people have when they walk into that show specifically because to me, it's more of a concert.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you would agree.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Almost tempted. I think it's a stretch of the word. It misuse of the word, but variety show almost. It's not a variety show.
Speaker 1:But I mean, like, there's a full symphony. There's a choir. There's bands. There's musicians. There's like how many models are involved in like one year, would you say?
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:It depends on it depends on the year because I don't know how many were this year because I'm not on that side of it. So I don't I think this year because they had they only duplicated a few of them. So I was over 50.
Speaker 1:For sure over 50.
Speaker 2:Easily over 50. So 50 to 100, depending on the year. Sometimes the show's super duper big and you have all these extra scenes because I've done that specific show off and on since 2011.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So this was either year 10 or 11 of me being on-site doing the show. And then,
Speaker 1:yeah. Well, so I'll just say it's for anybody listening. If you're wondering what we're talking about, there'll be links in down below. We're talking about DIFA, a fashion show that we both worked. That's where Curtis and I originally got connected and started vibing with.
Speaker 1:So they can definitely check that out. I'll include keep in mind, Curtis, there'll be links to all your stuff and all that. They'll have a bio already. We'll we'll cover more of your bio as we continue to continue to just catch the talk on, but there'll be all that info below. So if you wanna know more about what we're kind of talking about specifically, listener, check out below.
Speaker 1:What I do want to ask you, Curtis, we were talking about communication. Been talking about essentially, like communication is something that it seemed that you learned that you actually had as a skill. Like, I'm not sure if there was a time in your life where you kind of were able to step back and go, Okay, I'm clearly good at this communication thing and a lot of other people aren't as much. I don't know if you had any situations like that, but I do think that you've mentioned kind of our younger generation, you know, people who are I want to help out people who aren't as natural communicators. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I want to speak with them. So taking in what you've experienced by just working with people that are younger than you, working with people with different mindsets, definitely in the creative world, but even just kind of like the more logistic sides of our business, the technical sides of our business, which there's a lot of creatives, but there is a lot of more structure in other sides of our world. So what's something that you see in the world of communication that maybe people could do better? Maybe they're making the same mistakes. Maybe they're making assumptions.
Speaker 1:What's
Speaker 2:kind of
Speaker 1:like some communication advice that comes to mind, I suppose, for our younger people?
Speaker 2:It's always listening. I will always go back to listening because learning that if you re not getting the result you want from something, it is incumbent upon you as the person communicating the information to communicate the information. You may have said it once one way, great. The other person may not be receiving it, right? They're not getting it.
Speaker 2:So, that means there's something there's a disconnect there. So, now you need another tool in your tool belt to say, Okay, the person doesn t learn that way or the person isn t processing what I m saying. I need to rephrase this. I think a big problem is people start getting louder instead of rephrasing. People push and be like, No, it s this kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Or they become more stringent and strident as opposed to, Okay, hold on. Let me explain it differently. I don t think because I ve also had this situation where I don think you re understanding what I m saying. Somebody gets offended or whatever. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:It not about offending anything. I don think I m communicating it to you effectively. Let me try and rephrase this because I think I'm the one doing it. Sometimes you have to take it on yourself. I think a lot of times in communication, you think just because you said something, somebody understood what you said.
Speaker 2:And it s incumbent upon both people to sit there and if you don t understand it, part of that communication is asking the follow-up question. You have to turn around and go, Okay, I don know if I really understand what you mean by what you say. This is what I extrapolated or this is what I think you said. Is this what you said? Or do you mean this by what you say?
Speaker 2:And then they can volley back. It's just lob and volley. They can go, Yes, but no. What I mean is dah dah dah dah. Order of operations is the first place where you're going to get twisted with somebody.
Speaker 2:Because what I think should go first is not what you think should go first. And it may not be what either one of us thinks should go first, it's what needs to go first.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's the thing that I always had a problem with in mathematics. I would jump steps. I was really bad, especially when we got to algebra. I would skip over things. Wouldn't
Speaker 1:do you're like, show your steps. You're like, I don't know how I got there. Got the answer though.
Speaker 2:Literally I had a calculus professor, business calculus at university. And I was doing so poorly in the class. Was, oh gosh, it was nineeleven time period. It was September and I took my first test and I bombed it. I bombed it and I was like, how did I do?
Speaker 2:Like, what? Because there are a lot more word problems, there s calculus, all these things. So I went to the professor. The first thing I always say is, if you have a question, you immediately go take that time, a good one will take the time to work with you if they have it. Just don t waste their time.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like that s a big thing. I went to him because I was like, some of these answers are correct, I think. He literally, because he had an adjunct or somebody grade everything, as you would, he looked through it and he went through every single problem. I went from a D to a B on that one test because he saw where I got off in my work. He would go, Correct, correct, correct, that s off.
Speaker 2:Why did they count it off? You got the answer correct. Or You got off track. Yeah, no, you totally bombed. No, I can't give you anything for this question or you know what mean for this problem.
Speaker 2:But then he turned around and go, How did you he looked at me one time during that session and went, How did you get back on track? Like, how did you I don't know. With math, my brain will just do some things.
Speaker 1:Dude, I resonate with this so much. I I would skip steps, and then I'd be confused and frustrated that the teacher would say, well, you didn't do it the way that we're telling you to do it. I'm like, But you're telling me an end goal and to get to the end goal, I got to the end goal. I'm not understanding what's wrong with the way that I did it, you know?
Speaker 2:It's because they were never told how to explain that to students. They don teach that in education, I don think, or at least in the way that I would interpret it, in that we do these steps this way for a very specific reason. There s a reason, there s a rhyme, there s a rationale. Okay, cool. If you explain it to me like that, I will then ask, well, what s the reason, the rhyme, the rationale?
Speaker 2:But most people won t. But you have people that just naturally are followers that will say, Okay, you told me to do it this way, I do it this way. Or they understand it, they don need you to explain it. They see the steps right in front of them. Whereas I m more of a, for what reason?
Speaker 2:Why are we doing it this way? That s one of the things that I found communication wise in work, people just will bark things at you and tell you, do it this way, do it this way, and it really tamps down morale.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But you don always have time to explain things to people. That's something that I would say to anybody that's younger or anybody that is older that still gets frustrated and feels like they're beating their head against a wall, especially with big projects, whether that's in a retail store environment, because I have a lot of sales background. Obviously, I do a lot of different types of shows, and I've worked with teams and competitions and all sorts of stuff. There's a lot of logistics involved. And I don't have time to explain the logistics steps.
Speaker 2:One of the best producers I ve worked with said I suggested something one of the first times that we worked with her and she goes, Thank you very much, but we don do it that way. But you may do it that way in one of your other events. It could sound dismissive, it could sound demeaning, or it could be the way I took it, which was, Oh, okay, there s another way to do things and maybe I can utilize this. Let me watch how this happens and why we do it this way. And then later, when the person had time, I went to the producer and said, Would you explain to me why y'all do it this way?
Speaker 2:I see it in real time that it works. Why? What s the reason behind it? Because clearly, you ve tried it before, that way doesn t work. So when I try to communicate, don t always I m not always great about it, but it s like, I explain to you later the why, but for right now, it just doesn t work because of X, Y, Z.
Speaker 2:So let's move on to the next week, but we got to keep moving with this. Thank you. Come find me later and if you really want to know and I'll explain it to you. And I'm willing to take that extra time. I'm not getting paid for it.
Speaker 2:The only thing I'm getting out of it is making sure that somebody doesn't walk away feeling like they were dissed and dismissed. Because I never want that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Kind of So s just taking that extra time if you can manage it and learning to say there s another way to do things And there's a reason why we don't do it that way or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's actually pretty powerful what you said about like making it clear to them that you're willing and would love to explain to them later. Because in our world of live events, it is a bit more direct. Like I said, you know, we start unloading and that's an hourglass tipped over that sand is pouring, the doors open at the same time, you know. So a lot of times we do get more short and precise in the way we communicate. I've actually that makes me think it's funny coming off of right at this conversation, you know, we're mentioning this conversation about math and like, hey, just do it this way.
Speaker 1:And like, they always don't know how to explain it to you that way. And you're like, I came up with the right answer, blah, blah, don't know why you want me to it this way. But there is a moment for sure. And I see it with young people where you do need to kind of just, at least in that moment, blindly trust the person who's telling you to do it a certain way. So like, especially in live events.
Speaker 1:So I know just an example of in my world. So I just had the supervisor for a show we were just running. Dan and Shay was the artist, the
Speaker 2:head of And the
Speaker 1:essentially, there was a person on a forklift who was doing things in a way that isn't the proper way to do them. They don't have the view of everything that, you know, essentially the supervisor knows more information about that show overall than the person driving the forklift. That's just a true fact. Like he has the advance, he has the diagrams, he's been having email conversation, he's in contact with all the leads. He just knows more than the person who's, you know, in the narrow forklift.
Speaker 1:He's telling the person, hey, we got to do it this way. We need it this way right now, basically. Turns into an argument. The person is like, well, no, I'm doing it this way. Here's why.
Speaker 1:Blah, blah, blah. Cool. I get that you're going to do it that way in the forklift, but right now I need you to do it this way. And in that moment, there's other people listening. There's clients around.
Speaker 1:There's maybe an artist around, whatever. There's The supervisor up top who knows a lot more info about the show as a whole does not have time and it's not the most important thing in that high intensity moment where it's like a forklift jammed and people are waiting. It's not the time to explain to you why we can't do it your way. You need to trust the person who's in that authoritative position. I don't love that word authoritative, but in that position of you got to admit they know more than you and trust them.
Speaker 1:They're saying, Hey, do it this way. It's not the way you're going to do it. And then later on, they're going to explain, they're happily going to explain to you, hey, man, the reason why I didn't want you to drive the forklift this way in that manner was because over my right shoulder, that guy watching me, he works with OSHA or he, you know, there's some reason that you aren't privy to in that moment why you're being asked to do it in a certain way. And so a lot of times, something I'm always learning is to trust that person to like, hey, there's a reason why that individual is telling me why we need to have it done in this way. And I noticed in their voice and their vocal tone, they were being more direct than they normally are.
Speaker 1:They're being kind of quick. He seemed a little bit shorter with me. He usually explains things really detailed to me. I've got to go. If I'm the forklift driver in that situation, I've got to go, man, let's trust this individual's reasoning why he's telling me to do it and just do it the way he says.
Speaker 1:And then, like you said, have that conversation on the back end of, hey, I know that I was kind of short with you. I know it's kind of direct with you. That isn't the way that you want to do it. I do trust your skills as a forklift driver. I'm not trying to insult you as, you know, you have wisdom that you bring to this table.
Speaker 1:But all that to say, like, there's moments, especially with a live show, where you just got to trust that person. They're telling you what's up. And then having that openness of I would love to explain it to you on the back end. I don't have time for it right now. Please, before you leave today, let's have this quick convo.
Speaker 1:I want to I would love to explain to you why I did it the way I did it and told you the way to do it the way I told you to do it. But right now, got to, you know, do it this way. So all that rambling for that story on just just to agree of like it's huge to just trust that person in that moment. Trust that they are great at what they do. You know, they're good at what they do.
Speaker 1:You know, they're they have a great decision. They haven't let you down before. Listen to them. Do it the way they solve the math problem in the way they told you to solve it in this moment. Later on, we're going have the conversation.
Speaker 1:So yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, what s funny is you made me think of something else that those of us that have an artistic side, like designers, editors, people that have creators, but are also will get contracted to do a task. This is where I learned to stop getting it twisted a long time ago. If I'm hired for a mix that I've already made, you're buying my mix, you're buying my edit, you're buying my this, you're buying my art in that situation. If I ve hired you to do a job, I m hiring you for your skill set, not your art. And we get that twisted so easily in the arts, any sort of I shouldn t call it the arts, in any creative field.
Speaker 2:And that's where you start getting, for lack of a better term of phrase, butthurt. Like that's when you start getting Sally and Sammy sensitive because it's like, but it's my art. It's like, No, you're editing music for a frickin' show. I need music that's enjoyable for the show. If I want you to shorten it, I need you to shorten it.
Speaker 2:One of the best producers that I've worked with over the years will send me emails. These are the songs I want to use. Fantastic. I don like this intro, I need you to get out of this and into the lyrics really quickly or I don like the lyrics but I love the intro, so I get time code of where to cut things with it. But usually there s a codicil that s put in there somewhere that says, After you do these things, whatever sounds good to your ear.
Speaker 2:So if you need to adjust the edit, whatever sounds because she trusts my ear, she trusts my expertise. That s where you can be kind of artsy and then, oh, by the way, once it s finished, I need you to loop it. So, then you go through this period of you knock it out, you draft it, you send it off, you get approval, or you might get a critique. Knock on wood, usually I don get a critique. Usually, it is, Bingo, you re good, thank you, Swifty, I m out.
Speaker 2:Or Speedy, because Speedy is what I usually get called. But it one of those things where it s not about me. It s not about me being creative. It s not about me trying to do something like that. It s about you have this skill set and you do it in a creative manner, please execute this the way I ve asked you to, doesn t mean I can t interject something and say, Hey, I was listening to this, would you mind?
Speaker 2:Or I take it of my own accord and I do the extra work whether it's a video edit or a music edit or create an extra cue when I used to do a lot of lighting design, I'll just create it, I can always omit it. I can always take it out. Now I have two files, it's faster for me And then I can say, I just mocked this up. Would you listen to both, please? Or would you look at both, please?
Speaker 2:I had an idea. You don have to use it. If you love it, I will high render it kind of thing. But if you want to be heard and seen that you can do other things, sometimes you have to do stuff off the clock. Sometimes you have to put that little bit of extra effort in.
Speaker 2:But it s also asking. If you don't ask, you will never receive. And I'm the worst at asking. I'm really the worst. And I preach to everybody, ask, if you don't ask, it's always a no.
Speaker 2:It's always a no if you don't ask, but nobody wants to deal with rejection or criticism. Hey, I'm with you on that. It hurts. I hate it. But that's just the one thing I would love to impart is that that's another issue in communication is you have to deal with criticism and rejection, and then you have to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Speaker 2:You have to be able to go, This is constructive. This is someone being salty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Are they being salty for a reason or are they just being salty to be salty? We all have bad days.
Speaker 1:Yeah. In what level of personal what level of personal insult am I taking on to this? Something that I've definitely had to learn is like my so like being a I was certainly a DJ before I was making my own art and writing my own poetry and writing my own, like I like a lot of hip hop and I do some producing and stuff. Like, it took me a long time to unwind how precious everything felt. It's like, man, I spent like I poured my hope and dreams and my tears and my real thoughts and my experience and my traumas.
Speaker 1:And I I worked on this thing for you and, like, isn't it amazing? And they're like, it's not gonna go on the show. See you later. And you're like, but it's it's everything. But it's like that is that is the the continuous arc of doing anything creatively or as an artist or whatever is you got to let it go.
Speaker 1:You can create it and come from all of those places. But then once it's out here shared to everybody else, it's not personal. It's you got to let it go. Do you
Speaker 2:think that that's your NF function? Like the intuitive and the feeler combined that it amplifies that here I have given you this beautiful bird smash. We're not using it. Thanks. Have a great day.
Speaker 2:Like do you think that that might play into it a little bit?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, because, you know, a lot of times I'm I'm looking for my own worth in that sometimes. A lot of times I'm not necessarily from other people. A lot of times it's like, I want to prove to myself that I'm an artist and can make these things. And, you know, like, whether I want to say it out loud or not, like the way someone else reacts to what I hand them is going to, you know, it's a perspective right back on myself.
Speaker 1:Like, okay, this view that I have of me and how I interface and see the world, if it suddenly doesn't hit with somebody else, even if I know for a fact, like, they don't think like me, they're not going to see it like me, even if I wanted them to, it does take this like, oh, geez, maybe I'm just like a weirdo who sees the world in a weird way, you know, like it becomes this personal inquiry onto who I am as a person. I'll say not so much anymore, you know, I can create the most precious thing and if someone doesn't like it, it's like, well, whatever, man, it's what I created. I don't care. You know, it's less and less these days. But yeah,
Speaker 2:I bleed over into an imposter syndrome feeling a feeling, not that you actually have it, but does it does it add or do you ever experience that? Or is it just like does that extrapolate or become something different?
Speaker 1:A 100%. I think the only way to unwind imposter syndrome is to just keep doing this shit and like you proved yourself even accidentally. Mean after a while, like so often I've hundreds of podcast guests, know, I've made all this art. I've put myself out there so many times and for so many hundreds of hours in different ways, whether it's art or poetry or content creation or DJing or whatever it is. It's like, of course, I'm going to feel like an impostor.
Speaker 1:But after a while, it's I don't need anybody else to confirm for me what I already do. I don't need a single other person to call me a podcaster or an artist or a poet. I fucking write poetry every day, so I'm a poet. You know what I mean? Well,
Speaker 2:I was going to say, it's funny because I had this conversation with a friend of mine who's a PhD. I have several friends that are, as you would if you work a lot in and around education. But someone we met when she started working in the middle school level and I worked with her off and on as she went and got her doctorate. Now we re probably more friends than we are colleagues, but whenever she calls, I m like, I m on it. What do you need?
Speaker 2:What do you want? One of my favorite people in the world, but we were talking about imposter syndrome, was like, I think she just had been having a really rough week and I was like, I can t understand it because I don t have it. And as we talked about it, and we talked through it and the short answer to it, because I m long winded, is that I get in over my head a lot of times. Since I was young, I would jump into the deep end, either intentionally or unintentionally. So I could end up in a job, Oh, I didn t realize I was unprepared for some of it, and then that could easily breed imposter syndrome.
Speaker 2:But I don know if it a function of being able to see the bigger picture and then zero in on key functions of that. I go, It s just stuff I haven t learned yet. You got the job for a reason. You are here for a reason. I can see a few places in life and in society where I would say, yeah, imposter syndrome s probably valid because either nepotism or other sorts of immutable characteristics and you re like, Did I get hired for this or that?
Speaker 2:I could see how that could burrow into your brain. But all in all, for anybody that deals with it, as I ve talked with a lot of my friends who have it, I say, just take it on as it s stuff that you haven't done yet or you haven't learned yet or if you're already doing it, you're already doing it. You don't need external validation, exactly what you were saying. As long as you know, Okay, I've done it. It would be like someone saying to you, Oh, well, you re not an audio engineer because you didn do this one thing over here.
Speaker 2:Or you got on the job site and you were asked to work a board you ve never worked before and you re like, Oh, This is going to be a learning curve. It s a fast one and a short one. So I would say if you can take a step back from the situation, if you start feeling that feeling of whatever impostor syndrome feels like to you and kind of go, No, I know all of this stuff. It s just one little piece. Okay, it s one little piece of the puzzle.
Speaker 2:Got it. I can work on one little piece. Play to your strengths. Work on your weaknesses. Hide your faults.
Speaker 2:I say it all the time. Play to your strengths. Work on your weaknesses. Hide your faults.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I like that one. So you had mentioned that in one of the articles that I read of you.
Speaker 2:Can you
Speaker 1:tell me more about this hiding your faults? Cause I think that's actually like a really dope. I actually really love that. Cause it's I think on the surface, it sounds like, well, what do you mean hide your fault? You're like, you're not gonna gonna be dishonest or something, man.
Speaker 1:But it's not that. I think it's it's definitely not that. Can you elaborate more on hiding your faults?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it started with my generation being lied to. You can't do any and everything. Like, I'm not short. I'm over six feet tall. There are certain things I am not going to be able to do that my friend who is five foot nothing can do.
Speaker 2:Right? So, like, and that's just it's a genetic thing. There's nothing I can do about it. It is what it is. And that's okay.
Speaker 2:That is absolutely okay. But I have friends of mine who come to me all the time because they re mothers and they own their businesses and they re working and they re the primary breadwinner and they re burning the candle at every end. And she s like, We were sold a lie. And I said, I told you that fifteen years ago almost, maybe more like twelve or thirteen, because we ve known each other for sixteen, so probably more like twelve or thirteen years ago. But it was like, No, our generation was lied to.
Speaker 2:You can't do it all. You can try to and you can accept that it s not going to always work. That s a fault. We were sold an unrealistic set of expectations. We re trying to live up to something that cannot happen.
Speaker 2:That is a fault. But I m really good at these things over here. If you re in a business setting, people are not going to invest in something that s failing. You you may find an angel donor that out of the goodness of their kind heart is willing to step up and they need the tax write off. Two things can be true at once, right?
Speaker 2:They can be generous and want the tax write off. Nothing wrong with that. Ulterior motives, right? They're not always nefarious and negative. But in that situation, you have to hide not in a negative way of disclosing it.
Speaker 2:You don't have to tell everybody everything. If I walk on if you knew how sick I had been before we did the show this year and how badly I felt sitting there with you in the hallway editing music, I felt like trash. Wasn't I didn't have a fever. It wasn't anything like that. But I did not feel good.
Speaker 2:I'm not I have to hide that.
Speaker 1:You didn't tell me about it a single time. I didn't know about it at all.
Speaker 2:I mean, certain people knew because I was like, I almost didn't do the show. I had been that sick for that long because I've been traveling and I've been on a dance competition convention. And I was pounding it every weekend flying out, flying out, flying out. And then in between, I had other gigs, an award show that I direct and a choral performance that I was doing and I was pinging and just burning the candle at every end almost because it just happens to be that season. But the fault that I m hiding in that situation is the fact that I am kind of miserable.
Speaker 2:S like, when you ve got to go, you ve got to go kind of situation, but you can be delicate with things. I would say it s being polite, s being proper, it s being congenial, it s being cordial, it s waspy society. Hi, here s the varnish, here s the veneer, it s the Vaseline on the lens, right? You don t need to know all the flaws and you don need to always see all the way behind the curtain. So that s what I m talking about with faults.
Speaker 2:We all have them. We all have those But little if you re going to play to your strengths, this is what I do really well. And you can be honest about, Oh, you know what I mean? I need to work on these things. I recognize that I do, but I m actively working on them.
Speaker 2:Please work on them.
Speaker 1:Right. But
Speaker 2:a fault isn t necessarily being shady. It isn being deceptive. And I think s what I mean by it. I m not being deceptive with it. It is I don't need to sit there and moan and groan.
Speaker 2:Like, if I was sitting there moaning and groaning the entire time and being huffy, it s not going to do anything for the morale around me.
Speaker 1:No. Well, in what you find, I mean, if really in any work situation is the kind of inevitable, like complaining trauma bonding that starts to happen.
Speaker 2:100.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. And it's, know, it's a human thing. But I think, man, so I had this guy, Trevor May, he's played in the MLB. He's from San Juan Townsend. He's really cool.
Speaker 1:I had him on the podcast and we talked about this thing and I don't know if he exactly said it or if I had brought it up because I had heard it. But we guys, we talked about it. Essentially. Like if you're a baseball player and you strike out like, dude, that sucks. Right?
Speaker 1:That sucks.
Speaker 2:Well, I know.
Speaker 1:Like you're bummed. Technically, you let your team down. Right? But like, you don't you don't need to go to the dugout and throw a fit and complain for the next five minutes like, I let you guys down or like that picture sucks or, you know, whatever it is. It's like you got out next, you know, like we got we got a game to play here, you know, like, you really going to go your upset mood that you're bummed about?
Speaker 1:Got you got struck out, you whatever, you didn't hit the ball, you're going to go bring that vibe and like just, you know, cloud the whole dugout with that energy. You know what I mean? And so that that's a great yeah. I think that's a good example of of like what you're saying, hide your faults, you know? Yes.
Speaker 1:You're sick. Yes. You're not feeling good. But you recognize, hey, what I could do is I can kind of keep these complaints that I'm feeling like, you know, my stomach hurts, but I don't need to tell everybody right now. That sort of stuff.
Speaker 1:I think that's actually a pretty big factor. I think that's actually a pretty big one, man. I like that.
Speaker 2:Thanks. I mean, it's something I've thought about for years and it's just something I used to say as almost like a mantra because you have to remind yourself at times because we're human, we're going to fall into that trauma bonding, complaining, commiserating, almost it s more commiserating than anything. But I do know certain people that are energy vampires and all they ever do and they put the negativity into it. A friend of mine was sick and had to go have stuff taken care of and this one person in their life kept going, Is it cancer? Is it this?
Speaker 2:Is it that? And every time they speak, m like, Why are you putting that in? Words have meaning. In all seriousness, energy is all around us. We are freaking electrons.
Speaker 2:You can't sit here and say that I m going to get woo woo for a second, but you can't say that you re not going to jinx somebody. I have literally lived my entire life with someone in it that if they say certain things about your automobile, it s going to freaking be the next thing that goes wrong. So, we shut it down. You know what's public? Yes, we're all on the same page.
Speaker 1:Yeah, keep it to Don't
Speaker 2:say it. Keep it to yourself. Wait, wait, I got it. Now it's become a game all of these years later, but it's just it's really funny when you go, no, you literally Yeah. Can kind of create the world around you from that perspective.
Speaker 2:And if I came in huffy or with a bad attitude or miserable, but nothing will bring a group together more than the one person that everybody hates. It's true. I mean, I have so many stories like we all didn't like this one person or this person's attitude. Let me rephrase that just the way this person interacted with everybody or their attitude. And it's like, and all of these groups of people or all these individuals that wouldn't normally communicate, could all just look at each other and go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that guy. Yeah, that guy does suck.
Speaker 2:And so it builds camaraderie. Unfortunately, the other person doesn't get to be a part of that. But or a situation, it may not even be a person, may be a situation like this is the worst job, and you're all miserable, and you're all just going, but you still have to do it. You have get through it. Have to
Speaker 1:Man, it is one of the more complicated things, though. You know, this is something I still to this day, you know, I love all these psychology books and I like Tony Robbins and I like to do my meditation stuff and I still get caught up in like, just a couple of months ago, bitching about somebody mutually on the job site, on headset. You know, it's like it's a difficult thing, but you got Man, I love that you said jinx. You used the word jinx. I like to I want to use the word spells.
Speaker 1:A lot of times we are we all of us, whether you're you're on the one saying this, you're the one that receiving these things in group cohesion, start to look at the way things people say. Think of them as spells, whether good spells or negative spells. But like suddenly we all kind of shift our vibe and we all kind of, you know, it's like like the the lead of a band is going to kind of bring us all to a different, you know, tempo and a BPM and a rhythm and a key. And sometimes the you know, if a intentional leader doesn't take the role of the leader, a lot of times the bully or the loudest person becomes the lead and that could affect everyone's mood. You know, like one person starts complaining about how they struck out of the dugout and everybody's like, yeah, fuck, this game sucks.
Speaker 1:Like, yeah, then you're like Manifest Destiny, you know, you're creating more of this occurrence. Like you said, your car breaks down because you keep talking about how your car always breaks down. We've got be aware of our spells that we use, you know?
Speaker 2:Well, and I think for me, I've always been I would never say an optimist. I'm too realistic for that. But I'm a potentialist. I see the potential in people, I see the potential in projects. But that then bleeds over into a lot of disappointments because nothing's ever going to rarely, I won't say nothing ever, it very rarely gets where you want it to be because whatever you created up here, then has to either you have to physically make it happen or you have to explain it to somebody else and there we go with communication again.
Speaker 2:If I don t explain to you properly how I want something done, you re going to get someone s interpretation no matter what of what you did. So, I have to figure out every single wicket, which is why I think, to some people, m a control freak. But I will give you but that s why we have tear sheets. That s why we have a book for shows, like whether you re doing a musical or you re doing certain types of shows, you have a book or a Bible that you go through and it has images, it has reference footage, if it s digital, if it s you know, the text needs to change, whatever it is, you can zero in to every fine I don think anybody understands how I can walk into a room of 90 to 100 young women that are dancing in this one group and I can notice you re not wearing the right false eyelashes and I m across the room from you. You need to fix the nape of your neck.
Speaker 2:Your hair looks bad. This is a problem with that. And it s like, God, he's picking on me. No. If I notice I m not doing this for the average person that's not going to notice it, I m doing it for the me that's in the crowd.
Speaker 2:Because I do it on shows all the time. Was like, Oh, that wasn't supposed to happen. But I've changed my mindset. Like I've really rewired part of my brain to go, Oh, no. Instead of going, Oh, well, that was da da da, I'm now like, Oh, I hope they're okay.
Speaker 2:Oh, I hope they can get back on track. Oh, my mindset is in a completely new space. Gosh, I don know. At least I would say eight years, seven, eight years ago, my mindset started changing on a lot of things. And I want people to succeed.
Speaker 2:I genuinely do. I may not like you. I may not like the way you conduct yourself, the way you comport yourself, the way you treat other people, way you do business or just other things, I want you to succeed over there. Just don t be in my sphere, please. But I do want you to succeed.
Speaker 2:I do want good things to befall upon you because we all have something going on in our lives. And if we can take that beat and realize we all have something going on, or someone around us does that we're having to deal with, you can start to go, Okay, it takes nothing to hold the door open for someone. What? You re going to lose thirty seconds to a minute of your day? The person s hobbling towards the door.
Speaker 2:Just hold it. Just come on.
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 2:don't know. Maybe it's how I was reared, but my mindset has really changed about a lot of things. And it's I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no. I mean, I think that's really cool, though, because when we can notice that we have sway on things with our environment, like holding the door open for some reason is a good example. A lot of times it's kind of a movement of not choosing selfishness. Right? Because it's like without really thinking about it, you're going into the door.
Speaker 1:You know, you're walking in. You're not really thinking about other people. You've got your whatever's inside that building, that's what you're thinking about. But for a second, if you could, I open the door, I'm inside the building, glance over real quick, see that someone's on their way, Suddenly, you can go from having zero impact on someone's day or maybe even like you just they felt felt it was rude that you didn't even look over and let the door shut. But you could suddenly tell someone good morning, say, hey, I got you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're in there. Like someone might have been in their own head. They're nervous about whatever they're walking into that building for. And you could, you know, like allow that energy to dissipate a little bit by just saying, Oh, I got you. Come on in.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Welcome. Good morning. How are you? Like, whatever, you know, like, think that we all have a lot more power.
Speaker 1:We take for granted the amount of power that we have to create good vibes. I know that's a sentence, right? But like, you hold the door open for somebody, you say good morning, whatever, and now there's a little smile on your face. There's a smile on their face. Whatever they're doing after this has nothing to do with you, but you just caused a smile.
Speaker 1:It could have rippling effects downstream. It could have domino effects of them now being more warm and inviting to whatever they re walking into.
Speaker 2:Just helping someone pick something up. They might have arthritis, they may have an issue that doesn t even it s internal, you don t see it, they may have vertigo, who knows, they may have an issue, but just helping someone pick something up and hand it to them kind of thing. Those are definitely just little things like that. There are times where you don t make eye contact, there are times where you don t smile at people, there are times when it could be a safety problem, like a hazard or a concern, and you need to be careful about that. So, I want
Speaker 1:to
Speaker 2:acknowledge, especially with women, there are a lot of times where you don t smile at a male, you don t because he will misinterpret something. There are times where you need to protect yourself. So, m not ever saying step out of if your gut feels like you need to be protected, don t do it. But in general day to day life, it s not going to hurt you to just be kind. But in all seriousness, kindness is not niceness.
Speaker 2:Kind, nice and good are three different words. They mean three different things, kind of back to our earlier conversation. Kindness and goodness have one word in common and that s benevolence. And you ve done something. You ve stepped outside of yourself and done something even without expectation.
Speaker 2:I opened the door for somebody, didn't expect anything out of it and all of a sudden, you got a great thank you or you ended up in a conversation or whatever, or you just made somebody s day better or easier. Fantastic. But also, your emergency is not my emergency. So that s the other thing, because I ve worked sales long enough. Do not come in demanding things of me.
Speaker 2:Take a beat. Be polite. There s so many people that treat the service industry as if, well, re the service industry. I m really thinking about in contracts, if hiring people, you need to have a year s worth of service industry work. I really think it would be important.
Speaker 2:It can be retail, it can be working at a restaurant, barback, whatever, but where in a full year, it doesn t have to be consecutive, like you could do it every summer during college. But there are a lot of places where if you have never worked in the service industry on any level phone calls, internet, you name it, you do not know how to interact with people and how to lock it up and try to diffuse the situation or how to there s this pervasive attitude I keep saying because there are a couple of people that are online that like, meet you where you met me. And I m like, there s a time and a place for that. And that s a very juvenile way of looking at it. I m not saying don t do it, I m saying try to de escalate first.
Speaker 2:And then if you need to be like, No, but seriously, we going to lock this down right now. But try to de escalate it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I love your emergency is not my emergency. I think that's a really good one. I think that often we are being invited to be like, Hey, you know, you're just naturally level two, but like, be at level eight right now because that's where I'm at. And a lot of times the answer is like, I'll go up to three or four, but like, we're good here. Well, we don't need to yell at each other just because you feel like yelling, you know, your emergency is not my emergency.
Speaker 1:Think it's a one.
Speaker 2:But then the flip side of that is if we're on a worksite, your emergency better be my emergency.
Speaker 1:Fair enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Because you and I both know. But I don't think people the mystery, one of the mystiques behind a live show, right? A lot of times, if it s a concert, they re usually rolling in at Oh, Dark Hundred in the morning, setting up the rigging for the lighting and the sound, setting up the stage, setting up the tech booth. And then first thing in the morning morning, when normal people would wake up, is when people, the rest of the crew starts to roll in to set up their equipment.
Speaker 2:And then midday, performers start to come in to do sound check, to do floor checks with dance rehearsal, to do all the different things. And if it's a one night event, it's all torn down by two am. Like you have to tear everything you just watched down. So, nobody I don't think people really understand the compressed time. I mean, that's an extreme one.
Speaker 2:But even if you're doing any sort of touring or any sort of show, you are flying in and you max will have forty eight hours for a lot of things, max. So let s talk about the dance convention I work with. Venues are astronomically expensive a lot of times. So if I ve paid, I m going to pick just an average number of $20,000 for a three day weekend. I m coming in midday Friday and I m leaving by 9PM Sunday.
Speaker 2:Dollars $20 is just the venue. So that s my lobby, that s my dressing rooms, possibly a breakout room if we re lucky, and a green room, you know, that sort of thing, and the stage. That s what you re getting. That s not the money you re paying for the crew that s going to work your event each day, which is going to be an hourly rate, which if you go over on time, could become time and a half. You could end up with fees and dues there.
Speaker 2:You can t always I m the time clock on a lot of things. So I m the one that s like, we re about to hit over, just speed it up. You know what I mean? So your emergency needs to be my emergency in that situation. We need we you don t understand, this is going to cost us a quarter of what we ve spent for this entire event, we re going to to pay a quarter more.
Speaker 2:But you don't care because you don't understand that section of the umbrella. That's not paying for talent, that's not paying for your staff and your talent, and that's not paying for the food, that's not paying so just think $20 is your starting base price and if I flew anybody in and there's lodging and all of that for people. So, now you're dealing with this thing that if you show up one minute late, that's hundreds of dollars that you have wasted. So, when somebody comes in saying, Oh, it's just a minute. It is not just a minute.
Speaker 2:So, I get very frustrated when people don't open venues on time, or they're just driving up. We are in at 07:30. That means you, as anybody working the venue, needs to be there fifteen minutes early. That door needs to be I understand keeping it locked, but at 8AM or 07:30AM or whatever it is, that door needs to be you need to be opening it for me unless some emergency has happened because I get it, you re just doing your clock in job because you work for the venue, but I ve done that job before and I understand there s money being wasted. And it s not fair for you to waste our money and our time.
Speaker 2:That s right there is time is money. And your emergency needs to be my emergency.
Speaker 1:But
Speaker 2:when you re running into a store going, Oh my god, I forgot her tights. And I need you to pull all this stuff and look on my account. I don't know what it is. And I'm on my phone and it's like, Can you hurry up?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, that's the Yeah.
Speaker 2:Two different scenarios, two different situations. I will help you as quickly as I can help you. But just because you came in like a whirling dervish, there's a line.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And there are only two of us here. We will try to help you really quickly. But you know, and someone in line may allow you to get in front, cut in front of Somebody may do the generous thing like we were talking about before and let you because they see that you're having a thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Anyway, there's an example for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, but I think something that does happen in that environment, know, I think entitlement sometimes does leak over. Like you said, people who haven't who haven't worked the service industry, I just think that's a good example of like going to a store and going, hey, my daughter needs tights and it's the thing blah, blah, blah. And like, it's okay for them to be like, it's reasonable that they're stressed out.
Speaker 1:They probably got a lot going on, like whatever. But walking into a place and saying, you're in customer service, serve me right now to my highest, you know, like that's just a different situation. That's that's yeah, I mean, I think that there is yeah, your emergency can be my emergency. There still needs to be respect. There's there's still not an ownership that you have over someone just because they work, you know, a minimum wage job at some store or something like you don't you don't get to walk in and tell them what to do.
Speaker 1:You don't have that entitlement over them.
Speaker 2:Well, would you please? Would you please? Yeah. Please and thank you. I mean, I swear and I was reared, it was beaten into me verbally as a child, you know, manners, manners, manners, manners.
Speaker 2:But I find that because so few people were reared with that kind of background, of no fault of their own, right? That we don't do it as much in society and so it goes way farther. I mean, I don't realize how much I please and thank you on a set. I really don't. But I think it's like every 10 sentences, it's a please or a thank you.
Speaker 2:And it's ingrained, it's rote, but I mean it. Because I not going to say it if I don mean it. Like, you s so that s kind of it s like don judge me by who I'm around, judge me about who I kicked out of my life. Go see you start asking yourself why they re not there anymore because sometimes you re stuck in situations where you re around people and they re not your inner circle, they re attached to someone that s in your inner circle. But in work, it s very much like that.
Speaker 2:No, I m here, I doing my job, I m doing my thing. But there s no reason for me to not be cordial and congenial until you ve really messed something up And I have to go, No, we to have a conversation. And it needs to be the right time and place and this is not it. But do not make me have to pull you aside right now because I don have time for this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I've had that happen, where I've watched it and I've gone, Oh no, this is going to go badly. And you're sitting there on the sidelines going, Tamp it down, tamp down, tamp it down. Oh, this is going to escalate. I'm Okay, just sitting over here on the sideline with my Yeah, we see where this is going kind of thing. So I think another part of communication is learning to be cordial and congenial.
Speaker 2:A please and thank you. I have seen so many this is why I say nice isn t kind, kind isn t good, good isn t nice. Nice just means harmless. It means you don want to rock the boat. Or it s a facade you adopt to make yourself look a certain way.
Speaker 1:A virtue signal, yeah.
Speaker 2:That or you're really I was going to use a specific pop star as my example of nice versus everything else, but I'll refrain from that. People can guess who I m talking or thinking about but there have been people in my life where they present a certain societal image but because I was in the inner circle, I know the exact opposite. So I sit there and go, if you re going to speak this way of other people, when is it going to turn around and bite me? And it did.
Speaker 1:The second you leave the room, that s when.
Speaker 2:Well, not always, like sometimes, well, okay, maybe. It depends on the situation but that s why I ve seen some really jerky people do the kindest deeds. Some of the people that would just rip you a new one that have no manners and I ve just seen them do some of the kindest things quietly. Just very quietly. And I just happened to be there.
Speaker 2:And it really, those moments have stuck with me. It's like, okay, that's kindness. That s benevolence. Like you did something, you took time out of your day, you didn t have to, you look like you re about to go in on somebody and then you realized there s something else at play here and you stopped yourself and you worked with the person. None of the rest of us were going to get that treatment, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:But I was like, oh. And I think observation is a form of communication. Because if you don t if you re not paying attention, if you re not aware of what s around you, if you re just of surface only taking it in and letting it wash over you, you re not really observing what s around you, there s so much you can learn by nonverbal cues
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And how people interact with each other. That's why, you know, it's just difficult, you know what I mean? So, to be articulate is one thing, you have some people really have to work at it. I learned I'm not great acting on a stage. I can perform until the cows come home, but acting was never my strong suit.
Speaker 2:Give me a microphone, throw me behind a lectern, or throw me up on the stage with some crib notes about what I need to talk about or a bullet point outline, boom, I can vamp. Can make it work. It s just for whatever reason, because it s me. I m not having to pretend to be another character. If I mess something up, I can crack my own joke about it.
Speaker 2:I have control in that situation. So maybe it's a control freak issue. Maybe I am a control freak. But I can sit there and communicate. And then you can if there's a crowd, I can vibe off of that.
Speaker 2:I know, Oh, this isn't working. This is working. I think that s why I ve become the voice of God for the dance competition stuff. Because I flub and people will come up to me afterwards and I be having a bad day and I get razzed. You called it la sol fads and it s la sur feed, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:But ve gone into teleprompter mode and I just reading and I m tired and I m on number 200 and know, you re not paying attention. And so someone comes in and razes you about it. You re just like, you can take that and be defeated.
Speaker 1:Like, if all the words I said correctly, you re mad about that one.
Speaker 2:But someone s engaging with you. They re correcting you, but they re also trying to have fun with you as well. And so, if you can take it in the spirit in which it is meant, because when you re tired, you re going to get moody about whatever. It s happened before where I m like, really? That s what we re going to do now?
Speaker 2:But it doesn t help backstage. I m dealing with children, like little children all the way up to teenagers. I have parents sometimes, I have studio owners, I have teachers. I set the tone for backstage. I do.
Speaker 2:Like, you know, I m not in the back booth. When I m in the back booth, m not saying the tone for anything but the booth, you know what I mean? But I m an omnipresent person that is a world that I m in charge of and people have entrusted their children around me and so, they need to be safe and they need to be okay, you know, and so, it's very much I don't know, I work really well with children. I just always have. I never forgot what it was.
Speaker 2:Most people are like, Oh, I didn think you would work well with children. I didn think you liked them. I was like, I don like things en masse, you know what I mean? But I do like children, like, they re learning and if you can set a good example, why not do it? Why not take that opportunity?
Speaker 2:I don have to indoctrinate you, there s no reason for you to know anything about my life. But if I comport myself in a very specific way, keep a very specific demeanor and I m consistent, that s what children need.
Speaker 1:Oh
Speaker 2:yeah. Consistency. People humans in general need consistency. It can boil over into monotony very quickly, but we all need consistency on some level And children especially. So if you can be that consistent figure, like they're nervous to come talk to you because you have the clear comb on and you have the microphone in front of your mouth and you're sitting there and you're tall and you're big and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2:And you're serious. And I have major RBF. It gets very stern, very Germanic, Nordic serious, so that people can be very nervous to come talk to you. But when a teacher says, No, go talk to him. Or I get out of that headspace and I'm checking students in, I'll just sit on the floor.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean? Or I'll kneel down, come down to someone's level and I don't mean lower yourself. I mean, you physically are not opposing. You re not this ominous figure. Making yourself
Speaker 1:approachable, yeah.
Speaker 2:100%. And then you can brighten up and then you can bring on the real smile. I had a really rough show this season, like there was one really, really rough one. And I turned around and things were just not going correctly. And I was like, we have to start in ten minutes, we re going to go over time, things are not going right.
Speaker 2:And I was so frustrated I couldn't figure out what to do. The owner wasn't there for the city. Was a lot on my shoulders for the city. And I kind of went, No, I can't. I can do something.
Speaker 2:I can check children in. I can check the students in for the performance. I can sit there and ignore everything else that's bothering me. And I can park my backside on the stage and just start making sure and asking them how they pronounce their name so I can get it correctly and I can do all the things. It changed my mood.
Speaker 2:It took a few minutes, but I mean, just because they didn't do anything wrong. There's no reason for me to have a tood. There's no reason for me to act a certain kind of way. I'm dealing with all of this stress and I'm very angry at a couple of things in the situation. It's okay.
Speaker 2:We're going to make it okay. Do not that energy does not need to be backstage. So, I have to take that down. I mean, was flat out told by a company owner one time, it's like, it doesn't help me when you get in this headspace. It doesn't help me at all.
Speaker 2:When get into that burn it down headspace, it's not helping me at all. I need you to go take a beat. We need to figure it out. And I have cues with people, and they have cues with me when it's like a day where they're not vibing. It's like one of my colleagues says, I m having a really raw day.
Speaker 2:It s been a week. Done. Got it. I know exactly where you are. That phrase would mean something for somebody else.
Speaker 2:I know where you are. Got it. I m not feeling great and I ve told you I m not feeling great. I have to get out of my headspace and I have to set up for you. That person did it for me.
Speaker 2:You know, where it like, I don like seeing you this way. And so they would run interference for me. And it s that's being a colleague. That's communication. That's communication.
Speaker 2:I mean, just
Speaker 1:I was gonna say that's another perfect example of communication. I love that we've ended up just like emphasizing communication to the degree in this podcast. That's really good. I think that's like super valuable.
Speaker 2:I mean, I didn't mean to. It's just it's kind of I never would have thought that that would have been as important or to our dialogue right now, especially.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think it is though, because I mean, so we're getting up here in time and I do kind of want to round the corner here. Something that I wanted to cover is, I mean, it's perfect for where we're at right here. It's like, you know, you're talking about you're this role for in this example, you know, there's a lot of young people around and they're able to I'm sure you're intimidating to them in multiple ways. It's intimidating situation for them in general.
Speaker 2:You know, they're Yeah. Very nervous
Speaker 1:Yeah. All these factors. But you're able to you have a leadership position and you're able to find ways that you can, you know, most comfortably and most efficiently step into that leadership position. So you clearly have learned, you know, outside of you, you have these natural abilities of things that we've already discussed and different things that you notice about yourself as a child. But you've clearly had mentors along the way.
Speaker 1:You've had teachers along the way. You've had, you know, so I guess for me, I want to leave that really broad for you to kind of talk about your mentors and like what you've learned from them, how they've changed you. And this is even when you were younger. Maybe it was last year you had a mentor. I would love to just kind of like open that gate for you, Curtis.
Speaker 1:Just mentors, people you've learned from, your teachers along the way. What are some traits that they have? What have you learned from them? And like, how does it shape who you are now and how you teach a mentor?
Speaker 2:Okay. This is going be long winded and it's going to be splatter guy.
Speaker 1:No. Yeah, please do all day.
Speaker 2:Go ahead. So I'll try to keep it into things that you can use as digestible sound bites. Starting I just had a really good foundation growing up because I was really early with a lot of things. My mother was like, we're getting you out of the house. Like, we re going to put you in museum school, re going to put you in music school, you re going to go to pre K, you re going to go to preschool and pre K.
Speaker 2:Like I was in school at a very as soon as you re potty trained, you could go kind of thing. Was in some form of schooling. Take that. My kindergarten class was highly musical. She had a piano in her classroom.
Speaker 2:She could play the guitar. She played the piano. She could sing. And not only was it a musical classroom, because there were two kindergartens where I went to private school, I ended up I just, by the fortune of God, ended up in hers. I will always go back to some of those formative years because we would do these books where I don know what your kindergarten or elementary school s situation was like, but when I was in school, they d have these books that were about probably that big and they d have a letter on it, capital A lowercase a, capital B lowercase b, so that would be the unit you were learning.
Speaker 2:And for one whole week, you would go through each page of it and you would do basically like units within the book and it was structured like Ted and Fred sat and had an apple and you know, you had your reading assignments, had your writing assignments to work on your dexterity and all that. But in her classroom, she would also take with each letter unit, construction paper pieces that we would glue together to create George the gray gorilla wearing green glasses playing a guitar. And so, there would be a narrative associated with the letter, with the character, with the this, with the that. And maybe it was every two weeks that we would switch the book out. I don't remember.
Speaker 2:I was five. But it would be like Sammy the stinky skunk or smelly skunk, and she would bring her husband's cologne in and put it on this little construction paper skunk and she'd hang it on this lanyard around her room. We would do like little performances in the classroom. It was a very structured classroom but there was room, you know, we would get up out of the desks and we would sit down and she'd play the piano or she'd play the guitar, you know, you have all the stickers on your homework, you know, if you got above a 95, you got the scratch and sniff sticker, you know, if you got an A, you got whatever metallic sticker. After that, it took a long time before I had teachers where I really vibed.
Speaker 2:I m not going to say anything negatively about them because different era, different time, where you learn and how you learn. You know, I ve been in the educator adjacent position and mentorship position.
Speaker 1:It s
Speaker 2:not as easy as people think it is. And there s a lot of management that goes on. So as a student, the educator and the teacher that is more of a disciplinarian is going to be the jerk every time. If that makes any sort of sense, you're always just going be like, I don't have the freedom to do what I want to do. You shouldn't at a certain level.
Speaker 2:But moving to the next one, I ended up transferring schools, I was in public school, my fifth grade teacher, Tina Dorsey, was amazing. She once again created projects in the classroom. I remember doing the shadow box because we would have to do these books and it was like, you could do one of five or six different things, you re going to have to read five or six different books and each one you d pick, Am I going to do a book report? Am I going to do a shadow box? Am I going to do a presentation?
Speaker 2:Am I going to do this or that? And once you d used one of those up, you couldn t use it for the next project. So the first book I did was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and I did a shoebox for it and created a nautilus and a squid with dowel rods on the back that they could battle each other within it and I'd had all these art supplies that I kept for a while with mesh. So, when there was a hole in the top, so light could come in and a hole on the side and you could look at it from different angles.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:And because it was mesh, it would give you as close of an equivalency. Like nowadays, you'd go buy LED lights and put it on a little timer switch, it would be really fancy. But for 1992, like I think it was
Speaker 1:Skylight that you Yeah,
Speaker 2:exactly. But she put it we did in that classroom, we did picture book projects. We had someone come into the classroom who was an author and created picture books and explained to us that would document things. And so we had a presentation and part of the assignment was we would go take all of these pictures and then she would have them pressed into a book. I don know where my book is, but hardback.
Speaker 2:At that point in time, it wasn t like you could just go to Shutterfly, you actually had to go to a printing company to print it. So, the amount of work that this one teacher, Tina Dorsey, put into her classroom, like just for the students, and like and maybe some of the other classes did the same thing as well and it was curriculum and I didn't realize it. It was the demeanor and the vibe and the ability to let you kind of run and then snatch you back and rein you back in and be creative. So, she allowed me to go off on tangents. Clearly, I m good at that.
Speaker 2:But she allowed me to go off on them and it would snatch me back and go, Okay, and now we re shutting it down. But she didn t just truncate it like some teachers would because she knew that at some point I was going to get somewhere. There was going to be there was angle. What's the angle and can we get to it? We're not going get to it anytime soon.
Speaker 2:Okay, have a nice day.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right.
Speaker 2:But I would say like anybody that knows me jumping to high school would say Tim Hood, media technology and productions teacher. I had a fight with the counselors to get into the class. I wanted to be in tech theater so badly. We were on something called accelerated block scheduling. For anybody that doesn't know accelerated block, it's four quarters in the school year.
Speaker 2:So, four quarters, each quarter is the equivalent to a semester. So, you effectively, in one semester, can get rid of in nine weeks, you would get rid of health, speech, a computer class, anything like that. In eighteen weeks, so the first semester, it's a year s worth of work. So it s like you're running through it. No one I don think does it anymore.
Speaker 2:They all do some weird version of AB block scheduling that I hate. But you had like an hour and twenty minutes for each class. So they wouldn t put me in tech theater, but it was run by the same teacher and I didn realize that. So, I m sitting in the counselor s office going, what can I take? I not going to take speech.
Speaker 2:Found out I could clap out of it. I m not going to take it. Do it my senior year and clap out of it. Should I know what you need? I'm doing it my way.
Speaker 2:This is what we're doing. So she was telling me about the computer classes and blah blah blah and like the second or third class mentioned was media technology. And she immediately glossed over it and kept going forward And I went, Wait, wait, you said media? What s this media class? And she like, Oh, they just play with cameras in there.
Speaker 2:I was like, That s the one. We re playing with cameras? We doing what?
Speaker 1:Sign me
Speaker 2:up. Exactly. And she was like, You don want to be in there with those kids. I think the counselors were intentionally trying to it had just become accredited as a class, and I think they were trying to kill the class.
Speaker 1:Probably, yeah. Probably didn't think it was going anywhere. Not a big deal.
Speaker 2:Exactly. It's now the program, the Gold Star Seal programs, the magnet program for the Fort Worth ISD. Like you get bused into that program to they ve literally taken over the entire half of the hallway that we used to be on. Like it s just insane how that department has grown. But we also did it was the actual the true tech theater class because in tech theater, they just painted and built sets.
Speaker 2:That's where I learned lighting design. That's where I learned how to run live audio. That's where I learned audio editing, video editing, studio camera work, switchers, like everything. It was such a hodgepodge course. And he's the teacher, Tim Hood is the one that ripped me a new one backstage.
Speaker 2:I was running microphones for the musical and we'd had a costume issue. We'd gone through all the rehearsals, nothing was a problem. It was a quick change, we're doing the musical Damn Yankees. Lola exits stage right, I'm stage right, have to rip the mic off of her and they're the old lavalier mics. So for anybody that doesn't know the lav mics, those are the ones that you see clipped on everybody for talk shows.
Speaker 2:But it was one with a huge bell pack and had the antenna that had to be hanging out of the cord because if it was tucked in, it wasn't going to get the signal. We're talking old school, old school and you're having to fish this line up and it was a thing. So she had her quick change, met me stage left and I had to clip the bell pack on her trunks, clip it inside out but make sure the wire was out and then she had to fish the line up into it was a halter top with a ruffle bust section and then around the lower part of it, it had all these ruffles. Well, after all of the rehearsals, the seams were coming undone at the bottom hem. And all those chords got tangled.
Speaker 2:So, she's late for her entrance on stage. The big act one ender, whatever Lola wants. She has her song and dance routine. She s late. The devil s vamping.
Speaker 2:Like we re going like crazy and she just rips it off and chucks it at me. And there are three of us there and none of us could stop Lola from going on stage. And I'm having a meltdown. Yeah. Going, Oh, no.
Speaker 2:You had one job and you couldn't even do that right. You did one job. So, the audio engineer comes back, the student one comes back and tries to give me the business and then all the girl the gaggle of gals around me just ripped him a new one. He went back and my teacher came in and I mean, it s a scene from a show. Center stage, backstage, poking his finger in my sternum, barking at me and of course, by this, I m like five'eleven at this point and he s five foot something.
Speaker 2:So he s just looking up at me just you don't ever dah dah dah dah The kind of thing that a parent in today's day and age would flip, you know what I mean? It's abusive, it's this, it's that, no, no, no, It wasn't. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Why? Because guess what s going on some of the time on those clear calms when we're on set as adults?
Speaker 2:I got it at 14 years of age. 14, almost to the day. And I'm literally sitting there, I melted down, not in front of him, I went backstage, had my little crying moment, picked myself back up, never have made that mistake again. And there are a lot of other mistakes I have never made again. It's a life defining moment, as Doctor.
Speaker 2:Phil would say. And I say that to say, it s not always abusive, it s not always this, there were times when it is, but that situation wasn t. But if somebody were to look at it from the outside or they got too much in their feelings, but I didn t, I had one job and I didn t do it.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Trust me. Once again, never had that problem. But along the way, he we morphed from teacher student to colleague mentor after I graduated and ultimately became friends before he passed away. So, and I think part of that was because a good friend of mine who was also in the program, he was the audio engineer and I was the lighting guy. That's how we were kind of known and we both edited music and all the things.
Speaker 2:Pat was shot my senior year, so the week before Homecoming, he died and they had a very close relationship. So I think then you have to take care of everybody around you. That really clouds things, but it changes your relationship and a lot is put on your shoulders and you re able since I was able to communicate well and do that. He always wanted me to go into education and it was just not my vibe. Like I just don like the bureaucracy of it.
Speaker 2:It s kind of I like learning. I like mentoring, I like educating, I like all that stuff. But man, I don like the rules and the structure kind of thing. So that gives you a high school perspective. Collegiantly, I ve had a couple in various programs and classes.
Speaker 2:My radio television film professor, there s one in particular, Doctor. Melinda Levin, love her to bits. Try to keep in contact, but everybody's so busy, life gets in the way of getting ahead. But she's the one that in her documentary Making Class, she's the one I was talking about earlier when I said gave something about editing that we were talking about earlier, anyway, but one of the best pieces of advice I ever got came from her. Do you really need it?
Speaker 2:As an editor, do you really need it? You're making all these excuses why you want it. Do you need it? It's helped me in my personal life, where you can start going, Wait a second, just it's about work. Do I really need that?
Speaker 2:Or do I just want it? It s okay, but just be open with yourself. But she s the reason I have the Silver Remy Award for the documentary short that I produced, because I produced it in her class. And she said, with a little re edit, I think this would be a good piece to submit to festivals. And so, I screened at several festivals, not a ton.
Speaker 2:I know so much more now than I did at like 22. I would do things a little differently, but I have an award. And it was because she pushed me for it. I wouldn't have thought to do it myself. And she and I stayed in contact for years afterwards, like I would drive up to UNT and we'd go have lunch and it was more of a congenial colleague thing.
Speaker 2:You know, we'd have differing opinions on things, but because it's not a teacher student or an educator student relationship, we could have those conversations. I don t believe that as an educator, you should know that much about me. My personal life? Yeah, if you re married, they re going to find out. If you have children, they re going to find out.
Speaker 2:You don really need to know much more than that. My religious background? You don really need to know. You don need to know my political viewpoints. You don need any of that information, because it bleeds over into indoctrination too quickly.
Speaker 2:And people are right that that is an issue because I see students come into the classroom and certain classes that they have, there will be teachers that are pushing one thing or the other. And I m like, this needs to be a neutral space. This needs to be a come as you are and a neutral space and I need to give you empirical information or different viewpoints and they can be counter to what I believe. Here s the flip side of something. And that s what some of the best educators have ever done for me.
Speaker 2:And that s going to bring me I give you one more example when it comes to just education specifically. And that is my sixth seventh grade reading teacher. Her classroom was so freaking creative. She was one of those teachers I was talking about earlier she s not a teacher, she is a true educator and I think she was done kind of dirty by the school system. But she I don t remember her first name, but Randolph, Mrs.
Speaker 2:Randolph, shout it out. Her daughter was my grade level and in her classroom, she would take what you had to do as an assignment and we wouldn t necessarily do it in the book. She wanted us to be very socially conscious, so she would have us go out and find articles and do whatever diagramming or do whatever the lesson plan was on the article. I need a one page, I need it to be this long, I need it to be about this, this needs to be about the arts. Every week we had to do some sort of small article, just like a little column blurb because at that point, the internet was nothing like it is now.
Speaker 2:You had to literally type http:www.whatever to get anywhere. There is no Google. There is no Yahoo. It s not like it is today. So you physically had to read the newspaper.
Speaker 2:So, in saying all of this, then she would extrapolate that and turn it into assignments where she would do talk shows and she d be the host of the talk show and you would have to act out as a skit in her classroom as the panel and the audience and the audience could ask questions. She'd bring in the PA system from the library. She'd completely rearrange her classroom. We'd do mock trials in there. Same concept.
Speaker 2:She's the judge and each class, you know, you at some point had you were in the jury pit and some point you were prosecutor or defense or you were on the stands depending on what pods you were in, you would come in for those units and the classroom would be completely rearranged. Think about all the time it would take someone to just one person rearranging all of her desks and doing all of this. I think about it now and think about what she put into that classroom, how much extra time she gave to us and the gift of being able to look at what s around you in your everyday life in a different way, but still use the systems structure, the framework of it to explore that. So she s still doing what she s supposed to be doing and then we would cram for test taking season. It was like, Oh, we got to do standardized tests, we got to cram for that.
Speaker 2:But you know, was I mean, she was the one that figured out where my problem was with standardized test taking. She pulled me aside one day and she said, Will you explain to me why you answered why you changed these questions? It was like, Well, when you read the question this way, this is the answer that you get. But then I did what you said and you go back over it if you have time and reread it. Well, when you reread it with this inflection, this is actually the answer.
Speaker 2:Like two are obviously not it but they ve made it so ambiguous that if you over infer hello, then you re going to trip yourself up. And she looked at me and she said, Don ever do that. Don t do what I tell everybody else to do. Your gut instinct is 90% right. Like, go with your gut instinct every time.
Speaker 2:And I ve taken that advice with me through the rest of my life. I still would make bad decisions well, I used to make bad decisions still because I wasn t listening to myself. When I don t listen to my gut, and it s hard if you don have that little voice, it s really hard to find it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because you might not you might genetically not have it, but you might. It s just like sometimes it can be this little nagging thing and sometimes it can be, It just doesn t feel right. I m not walking into that store. Or it just my gut just says, D is the answer. Lo and behold, because somewhere in your brain is picking up on something contextually or you've noticed something.
Speaker 2:I don't know how to explain it but it was one of the best pieces of advice I ever got, just like do you need it? And I edited out the thing that was making everybody laugh because my thought was, well, DVDs are big now at the university level, I'll just put the bonus scene on the DVD. It'll just be bonus, it'll be extra features.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:You know, and so I was like, there's always a place for something just like you're talking about, you created a piece of music or whatever that people may not enjoy, but you have it in your arsenal.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So, you can use it at some point, you can pull it out. There are mixes that I have sitting there that I never completed or that I created fifteen years ago. I was like, I've sent them to some of the producers for shows and been like, hey, what do you think about using something like this? Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Love it. Thank you.
Speaker 1:It's just sitting there. Yeah,
Speaker 2:it's just sitting there and I've already taken care of it. And you're getting paid for work that you were just doing. But there's a time and a place for everything.
Speaker 1:100%. And also everything that you do is making it a little bit better the next time you do it. Even if you don't, that never sees the light of the day. Just by creating it, you've now improved your skills to some degree, right?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think that's where apprenticeships, our lack of apprenticeships in society hurt us. And that everything is go to college, do it this way, do it that way. But there's so much trade and skill. You can learn on YouTube, you can learn knowledge through books.
Speaker 2:We have so many avenues where we can find knowledge. I m not worried about that. College doesn t set you up always for anything that s a trade. You ve got to be hands on with it. And that s where having an apprenticeship is really helpful and a work practicum isn't necessarily going to give that to you.
Speaker 2:It might give you the end to get there but I just kind of noticed that's why like the Mike Rowe stuff. Are you familiar with Mike Rowe and Dirty Dirty Jobs,
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And he a whole new series now. I don't watch all of them. But he's one of those shows that I like to watch. Because it's kind of like, Oh, I get to learn about something different, you know, or Mark, Mark, what's his name that used to do Double Dare, but he did the Food Networks, the Sweets that Made Sweets or this is how these things are made and you go to the factory. It s very Sesame Street, it s very how crayons are made kind of situation, but you re learning the basics of how Oh, this is the network, this is the framework, this is the this, this is that.
Speaker 2:So I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, okay.
Speaker 2:It's a weird place to end. Sorry.
Speaker 1:Well, no, not really. I mean, a lot of it is very cohesive, actually. I was trying to think of a way to you know, tie the bow on things. Like, I was trying to think of like, you know, what's okay. So what would you say you've collectively learned?
Speaker 1:So a lot of me, want to I want to suggest so, you know, like in Zen, they have beginner's mind. Right? And that's like one of the most powerful I mean, if you apply beginner's mind to like everything in your life all the time, all day, you're just going to succeed. You're just going to continually learn. You're just going to like, be able to approach things in a new way.
Speaker 1:I think beginner's minds are very important. Creating a space for other people to, you know, not only make a mistake, but like try things. I feel like if that's what I'm hearing from you, like, you know, your teacher created this environment for you guys to create. You're learning real world things, but she didn't give you such a high ceiling to where you're like floating off earth, you know, she reeled you back in. So I don't know.
Speaker 1:Okay. So so what do you think about, like, your general looking back at what you just shared, not just your mentors, but also like what you have shared as a mentor, like imagining people are learning from you as well. What are some through lines for you? Like what are some common things? Like what is kind of your if you had to say a sentence of like, hey man, this is important, learn this if you're a young person listening, do you have anything that comes to mind for you?
Speaker 2:It's going to be a lot of t shirt wisdom. Live, laugh, love, baby. Seriously, it's two things can be true at once. Be open to the possibility that there s another way to do things. It may not work in the situation, but there and that comes from both sides, as we talked before about, I need you to do it this way in this moment, but that person also needs to realize, oh, you could still learn something as well.
Speaker 2:Somebody coming up that s younger, who is more used to technology might have a shortcut that you ve never learned. So, it works both ways and that's one of the reasons I love working with students. It really is because they'll have a trick that I didn't learn and then I had one student say was watching me on a light board and I was doing a lot of copy paste of cues and I said, Yeah, it's a lot of data entry, but it's not all creativity, it's data entry. I have to sit here and go three sixty five through three seventy two copy to Q, 42, enter, then go back and change the colors on them. It s a lot of procedural work, but if you can think ahead, you can use the lights to your advantage, you can use what they naturally do.
Speaker 2:Because he went, Wait, you re just using that the lights track a certain way and you re not creating you re not blinding your cues, you re not doing it s like, No, I just know I need my lights I want them here to do this and I want them to sweep there, so I start here, set that cue, go back a cue, record the next thing where I want it to start, and then now it s going to sweep and do what I want it to do, and then I put a time I change the time on it to six seconds because it s a ballad and I just want it to sweep, then I don't have to do four cues. Don't have to sit there and cue it in blind and do the this and do the that. Like I don't have to do all that extra work. This works smarter, not harder. Sometimes this is the thing that I need to work with you do have to work harder.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you have to put effort into things. Much has come naturally to me, especially in the artistic sense. Sometimes you do have to put effort into it. So that would be something I'd say as well. Sometimes you have to put effort in.
Speaker 2:Communication requires listening. If you re not listening, you re not communicating. Period. You re pontificating. It s like when people get heated and they start talking about politics or religion or something like that, they re social constructs.
Speaker 2:It all is, no matter how we as society have made them up. So you can cherry pick from them. It s not a lock stock, one way to do things. And if you try to find commonality with somebody and you stop yelling at each other, people will tune you out or yell back at you if you yell. So if we can lower the temperature, which sounds so condescending or pandering, but it s like, no, if we can all just take a beat and go, maybe we are trying to say the same thing or we want the same outcome, we don't agree by the method by which we get there, but at least we both want the same thing.
Speaker 2:Yay, commonality. I'd rather find commonality with people than be divisive. Don't need to sow discord. Doesn't serve me anything in my life, but don't think I don't get passionate.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Mean, finding the commonality is a way in, I always say. Like, if you could find a way that you agree, it opens the door and now you could really have a conversation. Because if you're just starting where you disagree, you're not going to get very far.
Speaker 2:Exactly. But then there's the communication part where you have to listen to each other and then you have to articulate because you might find out you really are saying the same thing. It's just one key component that's not. I've kind of lost track of where I was going to go with my T shirt wisdom for what you were Well,
Speaker 1:we have a lot of T shirt wisdom out here. I feel like a lot of our quotes are, like, perfect. There's been a lot of things where your response has been like, oh, that's so perfect. So people can print their own shirts. I'll I'll have AI find a quote in here and make it make a
Speaker 2:T shirt company. What you don't know. You don't know what you don't know. If you were not taught that, if you were not exposed to it, you cannot expect people to be at your level. That was a problem that I had.
Speaker 2:I was so ahead with certain things in life, I had to unlearn my own programming. I had to sit there and go, people aren t as operating on your level. You know what mean? And I don mean like a level above, like we re just on two completely different islands and your interests are not my interests, so I have to find a way in or a way to explain myself, you know, and so that s going to be incumbent upon me to take more time and more energy if I want to elicit a different response. And I feel like it works well.
Speaker 2:I've seen I asked someone, a colleague of mine one time, and it was in an educational type environment, why they interacted with the students specifically. And the response was, I wanted them to think for themselves and I wanted them to what was the word they used? I m going say it my way, but make connections. And what s the word I m trying to find? It s a very specific word.
Speaker 2:S when you think for yourself, you re making connections, you re not thinking abstractly, but you are just innately or intuitively trying to find the next step or whatever. The word escapes me and I remember it at 2AM. But I just walked away from that and went, Oh, what you don realize is they ve never been taught that. So, it is incumbent upon you in this moment that if that what you re trying to teach them, you then have to create the safe space, but space where you can fail. And you can say, That s not how you do it.
Speaker 2:Let me show you the groundwork or the basic framework of how to think to the next level, how to get to the next part. You re not being taught that in school, you re taught to lather, rinse, repeat. But if you can work with somebody and realize, oh, you just don't understand because you've never been exposed. Okay, cool, let me explain this to you really quickly, I don't have the time to, but I'm going to really quickly go with me on this rapid fire happens quite a lot for me. And it's like, okay, we're going to do it this way.
Speaker 2:Then they can take that they can sleep on it, they can do whatever they need to do. And at some point, they're going to end up in another situation because it's happened to me, really like, and it connects and when connects, it's the best feeling and then they know your expectation as well. Right. Because if you don't, how can you get upset with somebody if you don't explain your expectation?
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah. Hey, you should have read my mind better.
Speaker 2:Very much so. It's like I'm telegraphing it, but you didn't state it. Well, I stated this. I'm like, Ah, I get it. I see how the inference that would be made I see your inference but I see what I extrapolated from it.
Speaker 2:Once again, now me as the person who said that needs to go, Oh, I probably should have worded that better. Right. Once again, that's the communication part of it. But that's kind of
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because if you I like it because I feel like it's you taking extreme responsibility for it. Like, you're not trying to, you know, make them feel bad for what they do and don't know or like Yeah, you're like, okay, there's clearly a way that I could communicate this differently to where it makes sense for them or at least helps them more because clearly we're not on the same page right now.
Speaker 1:But so, I mean, that alone is a good leadership move, would say, because, you know, you're taking responsibility for what can I do in this situation?
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. It's kind of like I think we all sit here and analysis, but I can get an analysis over analysis paralysis very easily. And I think people in general because you just overthink it, so you never finish a project or you never launch it. There s so much stuff that I have that I ve never put into the digital sphere because you just kind of go, Oh, it s not where I want it to be. And at some point, you just have to let it free and do what it s going to do.
Speaker 2:But working in Oh gosh, I was going somewhere with that. Dang it! I was going somewhere very specific with it. Over analysis paralysis, letting it free Oh! Random example Britney Spears, a long time ago, she made headlines when her children were babies for driving on the California Freeway with her baby in her lap, okay?
Speaker 2:Here s the thing. When you grow up in the 80s and 90s in rural Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, wherever, and you re on your own property or on back roads, we weren t dealing with airbags. We weren t dealing with any of this stuff. You sit on a tractor in somebody s lap and you pretend steer, somebody else always it s normal. So if you ve never been exposed or told that you can t do that because you have an airbag in the car because this is this and you're in fight or flight mode because the paparazzi is chasing you and you just grab your child and go, but you present her as this crazy nutter.
Speaker 2:Right. Is no, it s something the moment that I saw it, I just felt so badly for her. Because she s like six months older than I am. So I sit there and I m like, I know better, but I know better because I understand these things. I grew up riding in the front seat of the car as a toddler, of a Cadillac.
Speaker 2:There weren t airbags, and there you put the armrests down I wasn t even in the car seat! You'd latch it in and the arm would come flying up and you'd go flying back into the hole that was there, right? Trying to claw your way out of it. You were perfectly fine. Many generations of people produced this younger generation of people that are so worried about all of these things?
Speaker 2:Airbags are an issue in an automobile. I m not saying put your child in the car and don t follow rules. What I saying is, you only know what you know. And if you don even know the question to ask to get new information, how are you supposed to do that? And so then you're just stifled.
Speaker 2:And it almost becomes self censoring and self sabotage at some point. And I don't like that. And when I work a crew or a team, I like people that are independent and I can trust that you re going to do the job that you need to do. I t need to I m type A, but I don need to sit on you with a thumb, you know what I mean? I don need to you can be commanding without being demanding.
Speaker 2:You don t have to yell at people, you don t have to do this thing, but you need to I can use tone of voice, but if I need to get loud, I can get loud. I need to be able to have that room to push there. I need to be able to become stern. If you start stern, you can t become stern. And on a crew, I trust you to do your job.
Speaker 2:You were hired to do something. If I need you to do it differently, I need to then come in and communicate. I need you to do it this way.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:How you would do it with a performer. You're singing it this way. I love that you came in and gave me I put a spell on you and it was a combo of the original version and the hocus pocus, Fet Niddler version and you gave me this really cool hybrid version but what we're doing, they're going to expect the Bette Midler version. I'm going to need you to pull Bette Midler for me but if you want to go up the octave and outshine her because you can, because you can give me that high end, go for it. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2:Like, you can take that autonomy on your performance, but I need this little correction from you.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right.
Speaker 2:But that's not even the compliment sandwich, because I genuinely loved what you did. They're going to expect this. Just like Curtis, I need you to edit the song out of the mix. I don need people turning around to me saying, That s the one song that they remembered because it was too hard or it was too this or it was too bad. I guess it comes full circle at some point.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, it does. I mean, well, in your ability to, you know, communicate with that person and not, you know, like we said, expect them to kind of read your mind or come from the exact same place that you came from, like, you know, expect that they had the exact same upbringing as you and they've had all the same meetings as you and blah, blah, blah. Like, hey, can't you read the room? You need to sing it this way.
Speaker 1:Like, why are even wasting my time at the rehearsal? You're not approaching it like that. You know, you're hearing where they're coming from. Cool. You clearly have these skills, but but we're going to take it this way.
Speaker 1:You know, that's where, yeah, a balance of being polite, kind, understanding, but also stern. Like, hey, I get that's cool that you did it that way. I like that a lot. I would love to hear it again. But for this show, we got to do it this way.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think, man, a lot of our communication is and it really is multifaceted. Right? Like, there's so many different things that do need to happen at once. Like, communication is a constant. Like, it's not just, all right, cool.
Speaker 1:I'm a good communicator now. It's like every day there's a new opportunity to learn how to communicate, to understand when we say things a certain way or a certain, you know, energy that we bring or a mood that we bring to certain people. Okay. I should shut them down on accident because I was too certain with them, you know? So it's a constant ebb and flow, you know, communication seems like it's quite the dance, I feel like is a good
Speaker 2:Very much so. It's definitely a partner dance. And what's interesting also about that is don t beat yourself up too badly when you do screw it up. Like, I can sit there on that one little thing from thirty years ago going, Dang it! Had I just It would have elicited a different response and I could have fixed it.
Speaker 2:Well, hindsight s twentytwenty, usually. And you then extrapolate from that. Don t repeat the mistake. Don do it again. If you see yourself repeating a pattern that s going to elicit that response, it s incumbent upon you as that person to correct it.
Speaker 2:So, there s nothing wrong with looking back and kind of beating yourself up a little bit over it. Then do something with it. Be productive with it. And don t beat yourself up for things that you do in a crisis situation. You do the best that you can with the information you have in that time and in that moment.
Speaker 2:That s kind of the mantra we ve always had around our household. Crisis situation decisions, you cannot go back and look at those and say, Oh, I should have done this better. Or half of that's going to be communication. If only I had moved this year versus there.
Speaker 1:I was just saying that's actually it's so sweet how that actually landed really with me personally. I didn't expect that. Like, don't beat yourself up about how you reacted in a crisis situation. I don't For whatever reason, was like, Oh, I needed to hear that. I don't know what it's even personally applying to, but I like that a lot.
Speaker 1:I think that is a very useful thing to hear.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think when the outworld world sees you a certain way and don't realize that you've been dealing with a whole bunch of stuff, and you're not just juggling plates, but the world around you is on shifting ground and all the different things. You cannot beat yourself up because in this situation, you had to make a decision, you were put on a timeline and your back was against a wall or on just a show, we can make it just as simple as a show. Like, I called, I said, go with the music and No, don't go with the music. I was like, Oh, I screwed that one up. Oh, the whole show is burned down.
Speaker 2:No, it s not. But it is a place where you can beat yourself up. And so, s another thing on set, it doesn t do me any good. Some people go straight to the yelling and if you ve coiled cable improperly, they will knot it up for you and make you redo it. And that s how I was taught, you know, by that road, I didn t like it.
Speaker 2:So, I don do it that way. You know if you ve screwed up, you know you screwed up. So, all I have to say is, Yeah, I know, but we got to finish the show. We'll discuss this later. We'll figure it out later.
Speaker 2:But right now, I mean, I'm not happy, but just don't do it again. We have to move forward. There's no need for me to throw a temper tantrum. Only in a safety situation do I need to start getting into that headspace? It's like, No, we got to protect something.
Speaker 2:A person is, you know, whatever. But outside of that, don't beat yourself up. Try not to. It's easier said than done.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, as a person who beats himself up often, that is always something that I'm it does help me have compassion for other people, though, because a lot of times if I'm in a situation where it's like, you know, I'm a director and somebody messes something up, I don't need to give them the lecture because I know pretty dang well most of the people I work with, they're already beating themselves up about it. They're already wishing they wouldn't have done it. They're very aware of the mistake they made. And it's like, is it genuinely that helpful to, like, my future of working with this person or the show at hand that's still going on for me to berate them in this moment?
Speaker 1:And the answer is going to be no. A lot of times the I like to use the saying weak arms. If if in that moment I'm stressed out and I can't handle the stress of, like, what just happened or I'm like, oh, no, I'm going lose my job because this camera person just messed up or whatever, It's on me to, like, have a little bit of strength in my arms and hold a little bit of my emotions, a little bit of my frustration. If my arms are so weak that the second I get frustrated and angry, I need to hand it to someone, then I need to go, I need to work out, you know, like I need to get in the gym. So it's like me, I never want to catch myself with weak arms in those situations where I just wasn't able to handle my own stress and so I took it out on somebody else.
Speaker 1:So it's useful.
Speaker 2:Well, it's human and we've all done it in different variety of ways and just trying to make yeah. Yeah. No, I just went into an entirely different thought process that would have gone on another tangent.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the thing about podcasts is we could just keep on going forever. But I I will I will save whoever's still listening at this point. I'll save you another hour and a half of your time, at least until unless Curtis and I do another one in the future. But, man, I I do kind of want to round the corner here
Speaker 2:100.
Speaker 1:With with our pod. So I Chop it up and
Speaker 2:just add fix it in post.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I know. So so I'm not dude, I I I'm a person who listens to very long podcasts. I listen to them all the way.
Speaker 1:I love long podcasts. So, you know, as much as there's probably people that are like, dude, you can't just ramble on forever. I don't know. I like listening to a ramble on forever myself. So there's people out there who do.
Speaker 1:And I I will clip it up. But I do want to just to tie the bow on the end here. Last couple of minutes, want I to ask you an impossible question.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And it could have something to do with what we've talked about and it could have nothing to do. So I'll give you a moment to think about it. But I always like this very difficult question of Curtis, what does the world need more of right now?
Speaker 2:I automatically go to love, sweet love.
Speaker 1:I know. Set up the name is Junkyard Love, so I set it up. Yeah, there's no wrong or right answer. But anything that comes to mind, what does the world need more of? What do people need more?
Speaker 1:What do people need to hear? And Backerach. No.
Speaker 2:A one word answer that I don t know why this word popped into my head, insight.
Speaker 1:Tell me more.
Speaker 2:I don t know why that was the word that popped into my head, but it s can insight can be introspective, insight can be learning about something, but it s that little bit of extra information. There's always something you don't know. And you can perceive yourself as learned. You can have the credentials that say that. There s always something we can work on.
Speaker 2:There s always something that we can do. Now that can bleed over into somebody thinking, whatever I do for you is never enough. That s not what I mean. It kind of goes back to play to your strengths, work on your weaknesses, hide your faults. S that there s always something to learn And there s another way to do things.
Speaker 2:So maybe there s compassion in with that, but it s understanding, insight and understanding. Now I have shares of love and understanding stuck in my head. But in all seriousness, it's I think it's there's always another keystone, another linchpin, another nugget.
Speaker 1:Like an
Speaker 2:opening, yeah. Yes, exactly. Or another way that you can build on to which you know, there s another tool for your belt or your toolbox. There s something else you can put in your arsenal so that you can take it out and use it as a tool as opposed to saying this is the entirety of what something is. So I think it s more about having more tools in your tool belt.
Speaker 2:And that requires knowing that there's just something else. There's one more thing.
Speaker 1:Dude, actually I really like the word insight. I think that's actually a really good one. It's a it's a it's a word that I'm a certified meditation teacher on the app Insight Timer, by the way, for anybody listening. So that that comes to mind. But insight, I love that a lot.
Speaker 1:That is like an opening. Like I said, it makes me think of magic almost. Like, there's always a new opportunity if you just have the insight. And I think it's one of those words that any listener and even me, I think I'm going to just like pop that word into my mind periodically for the next couple of weeks and just see what comes up. Like, like not even like what's the insight I could have about this?
Speaker 1:Not even that deep, just insight. And then lay that word over into any situation and kind of see what opens up.
Speaker 2:Well, think about it. It's two words combined. In sight is a compound word. So there's a definition, but each word has its own meaning. And then there's the combined definition of the two words together.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad you found that you used that word. That's so perfect, actually.
Speaker 2:Because sight is vision.
Speaker 1:How am I seeing this? How are they seeing this?
Speaker 2:In sight. So introspective or you're seeing into something or someone or a situation or whatever and it's
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's so great. Okay, man. Well, hey man, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2:No, I had whole bunch of This was
Speaker 1:so great. I love that. Thank you for running with the free flow style that I do here, man. I think that you brought up some super incredible things that I don't think my notes would have ever touched otherwise. So I'm really glad that you were willing to kind of play with me here, man.
Speaker 1:I had
Speaker 2:a lot of fun. Yeah, no worries. I think this kind of vibe works really well. It's a loose structure.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's like I said, that's what I like listening to. And that's where when I first got into podcasts, man, people would stumble just kind of the rambling conversational back and forth. They would say something like two and a half hours in on a podcast that I'd go, hold up, dude, pause that. That just changed my life.
Speaker 1:Like, what did they just like a random one little sentence of them laughing about a, you know, a fart joke or something two hours in. And somehow that is exactly, you know, we're all looking for that real authentic podcasts aren't planned, they're just conversations. So I think there's really some great stuff in there.
Speaker 2:Not to belabor this, but I do have a question for you now.
Speaker 1:Please ask.
Speaker 2:It's gonna be, I'll get to the reason why I'm asking it. What are you listening to right now? Like as in your personal life, what either artist or album or song or compilation of things like five tracks or something, what has been your go to recently as of this date?
Speaker 1:I'm to, I'm to I'm pretty into like my spiritual lectures and those sorts of things. I really like Ram Dass, Tara Brach, those sorts of things. I think what I'm I'm gonna go for, my answer would be there's these mixes that this creator Dirty Zen makes. He's actually been on this podcast. And they're chill step, the music genre of chill step.
Speaker 1:So it's like melodic dubstep, but then they have spiritual lectures laid over the top of them. And I love them so much, but I also that is something that I continuously go back to. Like, go on a walk if I can't really find something or I'm not in the middle of a book that's really tugging at me to listen to on Audible, I'll put on one of those mixes. So Chill Step spiritual mixes, check them out online, dirty zen, one word.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Cool.
Speaker 1:That's my response. Do you have one that you've been listening to? Do you have
Speaker 2:Oddly enough, it's two different things very specifically. I mean, than like your general podcast stuff and just the kind of stuff that you would put on and listen to, but music genre wise, I watched Billy Corgan has a new podcast called The Magnificent Ones. Billy Corgan is, for those that don't know, is the lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins. He formed the band, he's the composer, really, of all their work. You would know 1979, Tonight's Night, those songs, if you're not familiar with the band, but he was interviewing Carney Wilson of Wilson Phillips.
Speaker 2:She is the daughter of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and in 1990, I received cassette, the first Wilson Phillips album, and it was mine. It wasn't like my parents, it was my cassette. Watching this interview, this podcast made me want to go back and listen to their music because it's a trio, the children of the mamas and the papas and the beach boys. So it's the two of the beach boy daughters and then Chyna Phillips and Wilson Phillips. They have these amazing harmonies and oh my gosh, who I just lost his name.
Speaker 2:The producer on the album did Jagged Little Pill and Katy Perry's first album. I don't know if he did the of Glenn Ballard. Glenn Ballard. So he did Alanis's Jagged Little Pill and then he ended up doing some of the early Katy Perry stuff, like really early and just going back and listening to that album and listening through now knowing some of the stories behind their in their early 20s and horrible relationships and how like a eight year old nine year old is vibing with, you know, what a 20 year old female is dealing with, and, you know, hold on, the big one everybody knows, it's I think at the end of Bridesmaids or one of those movies, but their biggest single hold on is literally about, I need to hold on for one more day. Things will just go your way, but hold on.
Speaker 2:Like my grandfather always said, go take a nap, sleep something will always look brighter in the morning. Don't And I say, it's too late for solutions to be solved in the setting sun. Like, right now, we can't fix this. Well, I kind of pulled that from a garbage lyric, the band Garbage. It's showing that it has a lyric in one of her songs that says, it's too late for solutions to be solved in the setting sun.
Speaker 2:And so I've taken that little nugget. A lot of my stuff will go back to music, but it's too late for solutions to be solved in the setting sun. We'll figure it out tomorrow. Like we can sit here and beat ourselves up tonight about it or we can accept it is what it is and we'll fix it. But we just have to get up early.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And the other thing I've been listening to is Oasis. This morning, there's no way this morning. So it's Wilson Phillips and Oasis because you get much opposite Brit pop and pop pop, like vocal harmony pop.
Speaker 1:We all got more than one mood, that's for sure. Know, I'll throw in my second that I've been listening to a lot is John Bellion.
Speaker 2:Do you
Speaker 1:know him? He's producer. No. Singer songwriter. He's he's written for like Rihanna and and Bieber.
Speaker 1:He's a good behind the scenes for sure, but he's he's my favorite artist. I've seen him like nine times. I'm really not a stan or super fan of anybody but him. He's the only person that I'm John Belly and you have to check him out. He's a great producer.
Speaker 2:Is like pop R and B kind of hybrid? Okay.
Speaker 1:Pop, I would say very much. He does rap, but he's he's a producer and a beat maker, so his beats are are really they're very original. Like, you'll recognize, like, oh, he has a very original sound for sure. He has, like, a J Dilla kind of boom bap East Coast New York vibe. Okay.
Speaker 1:He's also very, like, poppy, very, like, like beautiful lyrics, very sentimental, like hard hitting deep stuff. Cool. To explore him and let me know. But that's that's the other person. Let's do John Bellington.
Speaker 2:John Bellington. John Bellington. John Bellington. Okay. Well, what's funny is that's Butch Walker for me.
Speaker 2:Butch Walker. Okay. Butch Walker. I love especially his Let's Go Out Tonight album. He used to be part of a band called Marvelous three that I love.
Speaker 2:So that first Marvelous three album. And then I love his solo work, but he writes a lot with Pink and a lot of the punk pop people. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Don't know. Let's Go Out Tonight, Butch Walker.
Speaker 2:It's Butch Walker and the Let's Go Out Tonight. You'll find it easily on Spotify. You'll know it as you say. It's very kind of glam rock inspired. It's like kind of rockabilly, glam rock, pop rock.
Speaker 2:Really cool.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll get to it, man. You know how I am with me. I like more than I dislike. That's what I always say with music. There's too much good music.
Speaker 1:I don't know how people don't like so much different genres. There's just so much good music
Speaker 2:I sit there and say, even if I don't like an artist or an album, I can find one song. It may be the remix, it may be the acoustic version, it may be something else, but I can find something. I can sit there and go, I can find that one thing, but I may have to troll a little bit to find some B side or something. But I'll take the time to do it if I need to.
Speaker 1:I like to treat the same thing with books. I like to treat life like if somebody suggests an album or they say, Hey, this is my favorite album, I've been listening to this a lot lately, I like to treat the same thing as I do with books. If somebody mentions that, I feel like it means I should at least check it out. You get so many dope albums if you just listen up to people suggesting what they like. It's
Speaker 2:great. Exactly. Well, I don't want to keep you any longer. Know.
Speaker 1:No. Yeah. Let me end this thing.
Speaker 2:What's funny is I thought I wasn't even going to have ninety minutes for you. I was like, I mean, I can talk a lot. Oh, no. This will be this will be short music that you're going have to edit. Sorry.
Speaker 1:No. No. We're good, man. I love it. This is exactly how I want it to go.
Speaker 1:It's that really is how how it ends up happening is is you just get talking with somebody and and, you know, even through Zoom, honestly, like through Zoom, not in person. So it is a little different, but even through Zoom, can catch a vibe pretty quick. And that's all people think.
Speaker 2:That's how I am on the phone. But I was on the phone as a toddler. There were pictures of me on the phone with my grandma. Literally, when I say I'm loquacious, literally, I will be on the phone with a friend for two hours. I don't have to see you.
Speaker 2:I don't have to FaceTime you. I don't have to see you. I can go about my day, multitask, and we can have a conversation and we can hang it up and then a few hours to a month can go by and we can pick it right back up where we need to. I think that's a skill. Not everybody has that.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a good skill. Hopefully, people listening have picked up on some of your skills now. Hopefully, they're better for it.
Speaker 1:So Hey, listeners. I love you. Thank you for hanging with us. We'll see you next episode. Please check out the description, the bio down below.
Speaker 1:If you want to explore any more of Curtis's work, please do so. All the links are below. And you know what I always say at the end of these episodes is if you haven't drank any water today, you're out of your damn mind. What are you doing? Drink some water.
Speaker 1:If you haven't stretched today, you're also out of your damn mind. Stretch That's what I'm talking about. I got my jug right here, dude. Yep. I yeah.
Speaker 1:So stretch, drink water, love yourself. And if you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, follow, comment, all of that. I appreciate it. We will see you next episode. I'm gonna end this recording.
Speaker 1:Bye, everybody. Knowledge is power. Reality is Junkyard Love Podcast.