The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Akira the Don： Music and Meaning

00:00:00.960 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:00:06.480 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

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00:00:57.420 Welcome to Season 2, Episode 4 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.

00:01:03.280 I'm Mikayla Peterson, Dr. Peterson's daughter and collaborator.

00:01:06.640 Today we're presenting a conversation between Dad and Akira the Dawn, a British artist, musician, and DJ, and originator of a new musical subgenre, Meaning Wave, also known as Lo-Fi.

00:01:17.700 Meaning Wave mixes music and spoken content derived from Dad, as well as other popular thinkers such as Jocko Willink, currently number one on the Lo-Fi charts, Terrence McKenna, and Alan Watts.

00:01:29.320 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.

00:01:32.160 Dad, why did you want to talk with Akira?

00:01:34.780 Well, I've been following the work that Akira has been doing for about a year.

00:01:39.720 I think you introduced him to me, actually.

00:01:43.340 I found out about him somehow on YouTube, and he was this interesting and idiosyncratic person who was producing music of a genre that I wasn't familiar with, that mixed spoken word with, well, with background music.

00:02:00.380 And it's like a version of hip-hop, although a very calm version, I would say.

00:02:06.020 And he sent it to me, or I stumbled across it, and I kind of kept an eye on it, because I was interested to see if people would respond to that combination of spoken word, say, from my lectures, and music.

00:02:22.200 And he seemed to be serious about what he was doing, and he seemed to be doing a good job.

00:02:27.200 And so, I've been following him for about a year, and he seems to be becoming more popular by all appearances.

00:02:36.400 So, I thought it was a good time to talk to him, to find out what he's up to.

00:02:40.880 He just released something called 42 Rules for Life.

00:02:44.660 He'd asked me for an audio recording of all the 42 rules that I had written originally for Korra, from which my book, 12 Rules from Life, and the next book as well, have been derived.

00:02:57.200 And so, that was another reason why it was a good time to talk to him, because he just released that this week, and I thought it had gone pretty well.

00:03:06.080 You know, and he's a peculiar and interesting person, and so it's always entertaining to talk to someone who's creative and original in a way that you wouldn't expect.

00:03:16.220 Peculiar how? Like, super open?

00:03:18.240 Yeah, that's right, and he's trying to make a living doing something that no one else is making a living at, and he's getting enough downloads on Spotify and other venues for distribution of music to continue with his work.

00:03:39.640 When we return, Dad's conversation with DJ Akira the Dawn.

00:03:44.160 Hey guys, an update on upcoming events.

00:03:49.860 Dad is going to be debating Slavoj Žižek, April 19th at 7.30pm EST in Toronto.

00:03:55.840 The debate is Marxism vs. Capitalism, and should be very interesting.

00:04:00.300 Žižek is basically the world's most prominent Marxist, and Dad thinks Marxism is pretty much the most dangerous ideology out there.

00:04:07.600 Should be spicy.

00:04:08.580 Tickets are completely sold out.

00:04:11.140 They sold out incredibly fast, so we set up a live stream for the first time.

00:04:15.760 We figured people who weren't in Toronto would want a chance to see the debate, plus a lot of Žižek's fans are European.

00:04:21.420 Tickets are being sold at Dad's website, jordanbpeterson.com slash events, and at petersonvsžižek.com.

00:04:30.100 It should be extremely interesting.

00:04:31.980 Akira the Dawn is a British musician, DJ, and producer.

00:04:39.600 He's worked in genres as diverse as pop, hip-hop, indie, dance, and more recently, perhaps, something that has come to be known as lo-fi.

00:04:48.080 For reasons that have been quite surprising to me, Akira has been making lo-fi tracks, also known as Meaning Wave, a combination of metered spoken word and music chosen for its emotional and conceptual appropriateness, from some of my sayings and my talks.

00:05:03.820 They have been reasonably well listened to, garnering maybe a million views over the 10 or 15 or so that he has posted on YouTube.

00:05:12.400 The two main albums, 12 Rules for Life and JBP Wave Genesis, have elicited more than a million streams each on Spotify, and that doesn't include iTunes and other content providers of the same type.

00:05:25.940 The third album, oriented around my words, will be entitled JBP Wave Paradise.

00:05:31.440 It will be released a week, today.

00:05:35.180 Earlier this week, Akira also released a long single, 42 Rules for Life, based on the totality of the rules I had written for Quora several years ago.

00:05:45.560 I think I'll feature that on today's podcast.

00:05:49.540 Akira has also produced similar works, featuring Ellen Watts, Jocko Willink, who is currently number one in the Meaning Wave charts,

00:05:58.580 Terence McKenna, David Foster Wallace, and Elon Musk, among others.

00:06:04.460 Overall, Spotify downloads have topped 4 million, and he's experiencing an approximate exposure at the moment of about a million a month.

00:06:13.920 So, welcome, Akira. It's nice to talk to you.

00:06:17.000 We've met a little bit before, not a lot, as I became aware of what you were doing.

00:06:21.660 This is the first time, really, that we'll have a chance to talk in any great detail.

00:06:27.080 Yes, we've emailed.

00:06:29.120 So, what are you up to, bluntly?

00:06:32.780 I'm engaged in an experiment in ridiculous hyper-productivity and zone inhabitation.

00:06:41.100 My idea being, well, basically, you know, I'm working on this music, but aside from working on the music, I'm working on remaining in the zone of making music,

00:06:53.180 so the music flows and becomes better and better and better, and my whole process becomes more efficient and powerful with each thing.

00:07:01.800 So, it's this combined thing of making this new form of music, or this, nothing's new, is it?

00:07:09.380 Making this form of music and doing it in a hyper-productive and powerful fashion.

00:07:16.340 Okay, so let's start with hyper-productive.

00:07:19.440 So, because you said you had twin ambitions, and so what's the hyper-productive element?

00:07:25.560 Well, I've released, is it five albums this year so far? Four or five albums this year so far?

00:07:32.880 We're in March. It's March 2019.

00:07:35.620 Oh, so you mean since the beginning of 2019?

00:07:39.200 Indeed.

00:07:40.160 Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, that seems to qualify as hyper-productive, especially if this also happens to be a difficult endeavor.

00:07:47.100 It is. It is.

00:07:48.360 But, here's the thing I noticed. I used to be a music journalist, and there's this phenomenon wherein bands' first albums are amazing,

00:07:59.180 and then their second albums are often not amazing.

00:08:03.740 And there are a bunch of reasons for this, but I figured the main thing is a band will be locked in a garage,

00:08:10.380 playing together every day for years and years and years, writing songs together and so on and so forth,

00:08:15.960 and their first album will be the sum of that. They'll have essentially been in a kind of flow,

00:08:20.800 and the first album will be the fruits of that flow.

00:08:24.040 And then the record company usually sends them on tour for a couple of years,

00:08:27.980 at which point they fall out of that flow of writing songs all the time.

00:08:31.860 And when they go back into the studio, they've sort of fallen out of that zone.

00:08:37.560 So I wondered to myself, what would happen if one got in the zone and then refused to leave?

00:08:43.900 If one just got in the state of just constantly creating with a very specific sort of mission and purpose

00:08:51.520 and foundational sort of meaning behind it so one doesn't get discouraged or whatever,

00:08:57.940 and just kept doing that, what would happen.

00:09:01.120 And I've been doing that since last February,

00:09:04.140 and the results have been beyond what I could have hoped for.

00:09:10.920 And okay, the results being beyond what you could have hoped for, along what dimensions?

00:09:16.820 What's changed for you over the last couple of years?

00:09:20.280 Like, what's this, what was your career like before you did this?

00:09:24.740 And what's changed as a consequence for you in your career?

00:09:29.240 And well, let's also say personally.

00:09:32.940 A lot.

00:09:33.940 I mean, previously, I mean, I've been doing this, you know, as sort of my job since 2004, full time.

00:09:44.360 Around 2004, I got my first record deal, which was with Interscope.

00:09:50.280 Records in America after a bizarre sequence of events.

00:09:54.760 And yeah, I've been making music full time ever since and DJing.

00:09:59.040 However, previously, if you kind of look at my catalog,

00:10:02.820 you know, there would be many, many years between releases.

00:10:06.020 And the old model of the music industry, which I was sort of trapped in,

00:10:12.020 which was completely my own fault, because I had yet to imagine another way fully.

00:10:20.280 You know, you spend years making an album is the idea.

00:10:23.960 And then you spend years promoting it or a long time promoting it.

00:10:27.140 And it's all about getting press and all these sorts of things.

00:10:30.900 And I would get sort of discouraged and sad if I would spend a lot of time making a thing.

00:10:38.420 And then I would go to sort of put it out.

00:10:40.040 And I wouldn't have all the resources that I felt that I wanted or needed to get it to all the people that it should get to.

00:10:47.020 Which is kind of the old model.

00:10:48.560 Whereas now what I'm doing, part of what's going on now is I'm just kind of releasing a vast amount of stuff at a very, very high level.

00:10:55.200 And it sort of compounds.

00:10:58.360 You know, the time is different in the internet.

00:11:01.140 A week is a long time in the internet.

00:11:03.240 A week is a very, very long time.

00:11:04.940 So these days I make sure some new music comes out every week.

00:11:08.400 Yes, well, the internet radically accelerates the production schedule of everything.

00:11:14.220 I mean, we're going to make this video and hypothetically I could release it this afternoon.

00:11:20.200 It's a crazy thing to do with a, well, with a, what's essentially a semi-documentary.

00:11:28.560 I mean, unheard of, you know.

00:11:30.860 I know, look at your camera quality.

00:11:32.920 It's amazing.

00:11:34.300 You know, we're all walking around with devices in our pockets that are better than the things they made 2001 A Space Odyssey with.

00:11:41.600 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:42.640 Well, and it's a very, and the consequence of that speed acceleration is very psychologically dramatic as well,

00:11:51.560 because it also becomes something that you have to feed on a very regular basis, like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors.

00:11:59.500 Yes, exactly.

00:12:00.840 The algorithms are hungry.

00:12:02.580 Yeah.

00:12:03.520 And they will punish you if they're not fed.

00:12:06.320 But, yeah, they punish you by having the fruits of your previous work start to decline.

00:12:13.380 Indeed.

00:12:14.780 Yeah.

00:12:15.500 So, what was that thing?

00:12:18.600 Alan Moore had that thing.

00:12:19.700 You talked about steam theory, which was the idea that the amount of time between the first human, say the invention of the stone axe,

00:12:28.980 and then the baths of Rome, and then the amount of time it takes to create the same amount of stuff.

00:12:35.120 You get to the point where between 1960 and 1970, human information doubles.

00:12:40.720 Yes, everything's doubling at an incredibly rapid rate.

00:12:44.560 Yeah.

00:12:45.380 So, his idea, and I think this was in sort of the early 2000s, he was talking about how by around 2013,

00:12:50.560 we would go from a fluid culture of this sort of like river of information and creation to so much stuff being generated at any one moment that you go from fluid to steam.

00:13:02.660 Ah, was that Kurtzweil's analogy?

00:13:07.040 Who mentioned that?

00:13:08.460 I heard Alan Moore talk about that.

00:13:10.160 You heard Alan Moore.

00:13:11.120 Okay.

00:13:11.540 Because Kurtzweil is, of course, famous for the idea that the singularity is coming as a consequence of all of this doubling.

00:13:19.720 Yeah, I guess it's a similar thing.

00:13:22.700 The idea is that, you know, once you're in steam territory, anything could happen at any given second.

00:13:29.520 There's things being birthed.

00:13:30.560 Like right now, someone could be about to put something in the app store that fundamentally changes the way we interact and do stuff.

00:13:39.500 Yes, yes.

00:13:40.700 Well, that seems to be happening on a very regular basis.

00:13:44.200 I think it's happening so rapidly that we don't even notice it.

00:13:48.000 You know, I think, what's that dating app that you swipe?

00:13:56.740 Tinder.

00:13:57.880 Tinder.

00:13:58.780 Tinder's a good example of that because Tinder was a revolutionary technology, but it was buried by so many other revolutionary technologies that nobody even noticed that it was a revolutionary technology.

00:14:11.420 Yes.

00:14:11.640 So, and I think this is happening, it's happening so quickly that it's impossible to even keep track of.

00:14:18.720 I mean, I work with a young team of programmers and, you know, they're always looking on the net for new tools to help accelerate what they're capable of doing.

00:14:28.580 And, you know, the library of tools out there is, well, if it's not infinite, it's at least unsearchable.

00:14:36.220 And that also means that each programmer or each expert can have a whole domain of tools that he or she is the only person who knows anything about, which is also very peculiar.

00:14:49.160 This has happened with everything.

00:14:50.440 It's happened with music.

00:14:51.980 There's so many, like music, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record, you would have to go to a studio.

00:14:58.560 And only a few people really got to go to studios because they were very expensive and there weren't even that many of them.

00:15:03.860 So it was only a few people got to make music at a higher level.

00:15:07.360 Just a few, a decade, a few, a decade ago, a decade and a half ago.

00:15:11.360 Yeah.

00:15:11.780 Whereas now the thing I'm talking to you on is the same thing that creates most of the music you'll hear on the radio.

00:15:18.840 And then within that, there's this infinity of tools and ways of, of creating and manipulating sound.

00:15:28.100 That each person who does it has a unique, unique stack of things that they use that's unique to them.

00:15:35.860 Right.

00:15:36.220 Well, the strange thing about what's happened with you, I would say, or one of the strange things I've noticed, I'm sure there's many strange things that have happened with you over the last while.

00:15:47.560 But, you know, as the technology for putting music online increases in ease and accessibility, the sheer volume of music online also increases to the same degree.

00:16:01.880 And then most people end up in the, it seems to produce hyper steep Pareto distributions where virtually everyone who puts content on the line online gets pretty much zero attention.

00:16:20.060 That would be especially true with music.

00:16:22.060 And then a tiny fragment of people at the very pinnacle get volumes of attention that are essentially unimaginable.

00:16:31.460 And you occupy kind of a strange mid territory, which rather, well, which must be rather rare.

00:16:38.400 You know, I mean, by your numbers, I think they have to be regarded as successful at certainly in terms of volume.

00:16:46.680 Um, what does it mean to you in terms of monetization?

00:16:50.420 And I, I asked this actually as a technical question, because I know that monetizing creative production is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do.

00:16:59.440 And so I'm wondering if you've had any success at that and how you're managing to keep body and soul together while you pursue this, um, what would you call it?

00:17:13.180 Strange pathway.

00:17:15.700 That's, that's probably accurate.

00:17:18.140 I suppose it is a strange pathway, but it's, it's the only one that ever seemed viable to me.

00:17:23.540 And, uh, for many years it was, it was, uh, very difficult.

00:17:27.560 I've, I've, you know, I've been doing this a long time and I kind of, I've pioneered a lot of the way things work now.

00:17:33.840 When I first got my first record deal, I had a website and I was releasing mixtapes online.

00:17:40.460 So I was releasing these kind of long form projects that involved, uh, songs and also cutting up bits of spoken audio and sort of sample collages and things.

00:17:49.680 And, uh, I was releasing them online and literally no one else was doing that at that point.

00:17:54.400 And when I first, uh, worked with Interscope Records, their media department rang me up and asked me how the hell I was doing everything because they wanted to start rolling that out to all their other artists.

00:18:05.280 So that was like 2004.

00:18:06.880 And, uh, after I parted ways with the record label, I had to essentially kind of create my own industry.

00:18:14.680 So I was releasing mixtapes and things and t-shirts and all that sort of stuff.

00:18:19.480 Streaming didn't exist at that point.

00:18:21.620 We're now at the point where streaming, uh, can make money.

00:18:27.360 Oh, well, that's interesting to know.

00:18:29.700 But you have to stream a lot.

00:18:31.240 Um, so it works out as at about $4,000 per million streams.

00:18:36.220 For example, you're just looking at streaming.

00:18:39.060 So you need to be listening to a lot of your stuff, but.

00:18:42.660 That's a rough, that's a rough percentage, man.

00:18:46.420 But you think about all the, you know, how many people that are in the world and, uh, and, you know, this insatiable hunger that people have for, for music.

00:18:55.800 Like, yeah, never going to not want to listen to music.

00:18:59.040 And if you keep giving them good music that, you know, that they love and connect to, if they, they will always listen to it.

00:19:04.760 And, uh, there's increasing, you know, there's so many more places people hear music now than they used to.

00:19:10.560 Music's in everything, every video, every film, every experience, every avenue, every Instagram story, every aspect of our culture as a soundtrack.

00:19:20.420 And increasingly, and as we strive boldly into the future, I envisage people.

00:19:25.800 Essentially having personalized soundtracks everywhere they go in every kind of instance.

00:19:32.340 So, right.

00:19:33.140 So you see a continually expanding market.

00:19:36.060 Yes, yes, definitely.

00:19:38.060 And, uh, yeah.

00:19:40.380 And there's like, you know, and aside from like streaming, there's, there's various, you know, how it is, ways that you listen.

00:19:44.940 You can make a bit of money on YouTube.

00:19:46.360 You can sell a few t-shirts.

00:19:47.360 You can get a few subscription service people.

00:19:50.460 There's all, there's all, all the things together.

00:19:52.400 If you work hard and you're consistent and you're good and, uh, you know, you don't stop.

00:19:58.520 Consistency is obviously the fundamental, then, uh, you can do it and, uh, you can thrive and, uh, I'm starting to thrive and it feels good.

00:20:07.980 Oh, well, congratulations.

00:20:09.020 That's, I'm very impressed to hear that because it seems like, it seems like one of the world's more unlikely ways to thrive.

00:20:18.220 But, I mean, I, I mean, well, in two ways, I mean, the first is that it's very difficult to make a career in music.

00:20:25.960 So, just as a baseline, that, that's very difficult.

00:20:29.160 And the second is, well, you've pioneered this new genre, which is also, well, as I said in the introduction, I don't really know what to make of it.

00:20:40.220 It's this combination of metered spoken word.

00:20:44.020 So, there's a bit of a poetic element to it.

00:20:46.300 And then you're carefully selecting music to go with it and matching the cadence of the, of the spoken word to the music.

00:20:56.540 And people seem to be responding to that.

00:20:59.720 What, what kind of reaction are you garnering from your audience?

00:21:04.580 I mean, you must get a fair bit of correspondence.

00:21:06.580 What, and I mean, I've read some of the YouTube comments and so forth.

00:21:10.500 So, it seems to me, and the overwhelming majority of those seem to be positive, which is a good thing on YouTube because that's not necessarily the case.

00:21:20.000 What kind of response are you getting from people and what do you think you're doing for them or to them?

00:21:27.320 Yeah, the YouTube, the YouTube comments is kind of almost unheard of.

00:21:30.440 It's, it's like 99.876% ridiculously positive.

00:21:34.960 And I receive literally hundreds of communications on a daily basis from people who tell me that this is helping them incredibly in their lives.

00:21:46.300 I mean, I imagine it's similar to what I've heard you talking about getting.

00:21:49.900 The amount of people who write to me saying that they got off drugs or they were, or they were going to commit suicide and things of that nature.

00:21:57.560 And then the music helped them find a reason and helped them to find the strength to get out of the trouble they were in and things of that nature.

00:22:05.000 Yeah, that's a big deal.

00:22:07.160 And it's, it's very significant and specific to, to, to imagine that the music that you're putting together and the meaning that it conveys has that effect both on addiction and on suicide.

00:22:20.900 Yeah.

00:22:21.460 I mean, it's obviously it's a substitute.

00:22:24.080 Well, that's probably putting it wrong.

00:22:28.460 It's, it's something that's providing the meaning that they're searching for both through their addiction and, and the terrible meaning that they're trying to escape from as a consequence of their suicidal urges.

00:22:45.040 Yeah.

00:22:47.380 So, yeah, well, that's a, that's a big deal.

00:22:49.860 And it's, it seems to me to be psychologically very significant.

00:22:53.060 I mean, God only knows what psychological role music plays in our lives.

00:22:57.840 I mean, I, I don't think.

00:22:59.720 I was going to ask you about this.

00:23:00.840 Is there, has there been much research done?

00:23:02.740 Because from where I'm, you know, I'm a DJ, I'm out, um, two to five nights a week playing music to people and seeing firsthand the effect it has on them.

00:23:13.500 And I've been experimenting with this for years, trying different combinations of things in order to create certain reactions.

00:23:19.780 My main thing I'm trying to do is give people an incredible transcendent experience with them, not just for the rest of the week, but for the rest of their lives.

00:23:27.920 But I've, I've experimented with combining things to create drama, to create violence, to create lust, to create all sorts of things.

00:23:36.040 And you can, it's, it's repeatable.

00:23:37.940 It's, it's, you know, it's, it's repeatable in a scientific experiment capacity.

00:23:42.420 Uh, so yeah, I was going to ask you, is he, if you're aware of any, uh,

00:23:46.180 No, no, not, not really.

00:23:48.840 Well, yeah, I think that, I mean, it's conceivable that I'm ignorant of the literature, but I don't think I am because I can't see how I would not come across it in the research that I've done on creativity.

00:24:01.880 But the study of meaning as a phenomenon is a relatively new one.

00:24:09.460 I mean, it emerged to the degree that it has emerged sort of out of the, I mean, in psychology, out of the literature on happiness and well-being.

00:24:18.440 And of course, that's not the same thing.

00:24:20.340 And, um, it isn't obvious that people know how to do the experiments properly or to take the measurements properly.

00:24:30.020 So, and I think there's also a proclivity among psychologists, um, to devalue the psychological importance of cultural products.

00:24:43.300 You know, lots of evolutionary psychologists, for example, believe that our ability to produce art and to produce music, let's say, visual art and music, is like a secondary consequence of something more fundamental.

00:25:00.340 And I don't believe that.

00:25:02.340 Like, I think people would literally die without music and drama and literature.

00:25:07.660 I, I, I, I can't see that we could live, I don't think we could organize our minds without drama and literature.

00:25:15.400 And I don't think, I think that music is so crucial that it actually keeps people, it's one of the many things, it's one of the few things, sorry, that actually keep people sane, which is why features so prominently in, well, let's say in church, in sacred celebrations.

00:25:34.820 Yep.

00:25:35.280 And, and, and, and, and, and, and in any activities where people gather together in, in groups for anything of any significance.

00:25:43.800 And, you know, it's obviously, it's the case that if you go to a concert and it's well handled, there's something going on there that's very much akin to a religious experience.

00:25:54.700 Yeah, I don't see any difference when it's done properly, when all the people involved are working together to make it what it could be.

00:26:05.860 And, uh, it can be more, uh, more transcendental experience than anything.

00:26:11.680 Yeah.

00:26:12.200 I think, I think the difference between it and most religious ceremonies that is that it actually works.

00:26:17.760 It does.

00:26:20.860 I mean, I've seen people burst into tears when you could, at certain transitions.

00:26:26.060 Right.

00:26:26.360 Which is when you move one song into another and, uh, when you're DJing or when I'm DJing anyway, I'm, I'm making sure that those things have a purpose other than just playing another song.

00:26:38.340 So the idea is that you're taking people on some sort of a journey that you're telling a story from the beginning to the end of your set and your set, all the songs you're playing will have a beginning and a middle and an end.

00:26:49.420 And the whole experience, uh, will have some sort of transformative purpose and it will move people in a way.

00:26:56.060 And certain combinations of records, the way you'll bring in one into another, you, the way you'll sort of blend them.

00:27:02.620 I've seen that make people burst into tears.

00:27:05.280 Right.

00:27:05.740 Now you can see that once just spontaneously.

00:27:08.340 You can see that sometimes with particularly good chord transitions too.

00:27:13.020 Exactly.

00:27:13.600 You know, there's something so deeply satisfying about the transformation of one pattern into another.

00:27:20.240 It's it.

00:27:21.240 I don't know what it.

00:27:22.400 Well, this is why I've always been so fascinated by music because I think there's something unutterably deep about music.

00:27:30.260 I really, I really believe that it's the most representative form of art because I think that the world is made out of patterns.

00:27:38.340 That's the best way to think of the world.

00:27:40.640 And those patterns vary in duration, you know, and we're always in search for the longer duration patterns because they're more reliable.

00:27:50.840 And some of those patterns we can exploit, let's say, as tools and some we avoid as obstacles.

00:27:59.440 But, and the rest we try to intermingle harmoniously with our actions and our thoughts so that the whole process turns into something that's symphonic.

00:28:14.240 You know, and then you go to, you go to a music festival and you hear well-arranged music in particular because I think that's an edited music.

00:28:23.840 Well, it all matters.

00:28:25.160 The melodic composition and the words, all of that matters.

00:28:27.880 But to hear it well-written and well-edited and well-arranged speaks to you about how the entire structure of being could be arranged and also is fortunately arranged those rare times where everything comes together for you.

00:28:47.820 And so people need that experience, man.

00:28:51.440 It reminds them of the potential harmony that things can attain.

00:29:00.960 And that's not optional, especially if you're in a chaotic state.

00:29:04.940 It's the truth of, I think it's the truth of everything.

00:29:11.080 And that community, it's, what is it Stevie Wonder said?

00:29:14.380 Music is the language we all speak.

00:29:16.920 It's something we all understand.

00:29:19.340 And no, that's, that's true across the world.

00:29:21.860 And I've seen that.

00:29:22.980 It's interesting how music will change from place to place, but the fundamental aspects of it are the same.

00:29:27.880 And the fundamental need for it is the same.

00:29:31.460 Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating that there's so much, there's as many variations as there are languages, but we can understand all of them.

00:29:39.560 I mean, you know, our language has a musical element, right?

00:29:43.700 If you listen to someone who's an interesting speaker, there's a lot of melody in their speech patterns.

00:29:50.620 This is why I first made a sample Jew, because I heard the melody in something you were saying and I could instantly hear what the song was around it.

00:29:59.380 There was a rhythm in it.

00:30:00.960 There was a melody in it, the whole thing.

00:30:03.080 And every individual has that.

00:30:06.160 And it's often quite radically different, even within the same language.

00:30:09.380 It's interesting, different languages have different melodies.

00:30:12.500 And therefore, if you listen to French music, the actual melodies in music are similar to the shape of the voice, the vocal sounds of the actual language.

00:30:23.920 This is the same with Mexican, same with English, so on and so forth.

00:30:27.160 So like melodies within music of cultures are informed very much by the language that people speak.

00:30:32.500 Mm-hmm.

00:30:33.240 I wonder what makes English particularly appropriate by all appearances for rock and roll.

00:30:40.080 Yes.

00:30:41.880 Is it, is it, it's a fairly consonant heavy language.

00:30:46.880 So maybe that has something to do with it.

00:30:49.180 There's a, like it isn't, it hasn't got that same vowel like sing song that Asian languages often have.

00:30:57.160 So it's got a bit more of a beat like harshness, but like rock doesn't seem to work very well in French.

00:31:04.280 Germans managed to pull it off now and then, but not that often.

00:31:07.140 And it's really remarkably an English experience altogether.

00:31:13.940 And that's a very true thing.

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00:34:00.060 I think this is why hip-hop has taken over the world.

00:34:07.640 Hip-hop is now the dominant genre everywhere, pretty much everywhere.

00:34:15.060 And I spend a fair bit of my time researching music on a weekly basis as a part of my job and listening to music in different countries.

00:34:24.060 And hip-hop has essentially taken over the whole world.

00:34:26.700 And hip-hop exists in every language I've looked into.

00:34:32.060 And it works in every language.

00:34:35.420 And there's multiple reasons for that.

00:34:37.400 But just the thing we're talking about is interesting, like the shape.

00:34:40.720 Like French sounds fantastic on rap.

00:34:43.760 Far more so than on, say, rock.

00:34:46.800 I don't know if that's subjective.

00:34:47.880 You know, in the English accent, we do a lot of small sounds, then elongated sounds.

00:34:55.680 Which, what's that called?

00:34:58.020 The Scottish snap?

00:35:00.920 Which is a thing that's in a lot of rap these days.

00:35:04.160 It's like this type thing is a...

00:35:06.580 Kind of goes in and out.

00:35:10.540 It's also the sound you hear in old sort of folk music.

00:35:13.540 Rock and roll is interesting because it's almost a perfect combination of European folk and African jazz and traditional music.

00:35:27.760 Right, right.

00:35:28.960 Together.

00:35:29.620 And it keeps coming out.

00:35:31.000 There's been some recent little skirmishes of people accusing, say, Ariana Grande of cultural appropriation

00:35:36.240 for using a rap rhythm in the cadence of her singing.

00:35:40.300 But that rhythm is actually traced back to Scotland.

00:35:43.540 Right.

00:35:44.500 Well, one of the things that we should agree on right off the bat is that we don't have to pay any attention to anyone

00:35:50.440 who ever dares to say anything about cultural appropriation.

00:35:54.880 Given the absolute necessity of trading these modes of communication across the world

00:36:00.740 and the unbelievable utility that that's had.

00:36:04.940 And even the idea that it's a form of theft in terms of its motivation is so entirely specious

00:36:11.700 because most of the time it's rooted in what I would regard as tremendous admiration.

00:36:17.460 It's not like the Rolling Stones were massive fans of the black blues artists from the U.S.

00:36:24.620 You know, I mean, they were doing everything they could to imitate them.

00:36:27.360 Yes, this is another one of this is one of another another one of the reasons why hip hop is taken over the world

00:36:33.700 and could be considered the ultimate art form or maybe ultimate musical art form

00:36:38.380 because it takes from everything within to itself to make something new.

00:36:43.980 And that's the reason there hasn't been a new musical genre, a new sort of specific like tentpole musical genre since hip hop.

00:36:54.460 Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right.

00:36:57.880 And that's actually getting to be quite a while ago now.

00:37:00.760 Yeah, it was about there was the 70s.

00:37:02.840 And so what happened was you had and it's really amazing how hip hop was born.

00:37:06.400 Hip hop was born because there was some rioting in New York

00:37:10.260 and some poor people managed to get their hands on some quite good sound equipment

00:37:14.420 and start throwing parties with it.

00:37:18.060 And one of them worked out a way of playing the same record on two turntables

00:37:24.200 at a slightly different part of the record on each side.

00:37:27.820 So he could create a loop from the record over which somebody could rap, tell the story, hype up the crowd.

00:37:36.120 Therein it was born.

00:37:37.020 Take from another piece of existing music or another piece of existing idea.

00:37:42.180 And, you know, they were sampling European dance.

00:37:45.080 They were sampling craft work and they were sampling like weird folk stuff.

00:37:48.460 And there was, you know, they were sampling James Brown.

00:37:50.440 They were sampling from everywhere.

00:37:52.740 Hip hop was taken from every bit of the existing musical multiverse.

00:37:59.200 And then people could talk about anything.

00:38:01.420 They could talk about their real experiences.

00:38:03.020 They could talk about their fantasies.

00:38:04.320 They could talk about their fears.

00:38:06.560 I remember Chuck D once saying that the core story in hip hop could be boiled down to as simple as

00:38:13.000 I am, like I exist.

00:38:18.320 Like the protest of it or the call of the story is just like I exist.

00:38:23.220 I'm here.

00:38:24.220 And then the music is as culturally appropriative as possible.

00:38:28.180 They took from everywhere.

00:38:30.380 And if they hadn't done that, it wouldn't exist.

00:38:33.120 And if you suddenly start telling people, no, you can't do that anymore, then you're going to end up with a sort of very dull.

00:38:39.000 Well, the other thing.

00:38:40.220 Dead art form.

00:38:40.800 If you look at it, again, from a psychological perspective, is that for me to understand you, I have to imitate you.

00:38:53.840 That's the ground of understanding.

00:38:55.740 It's not like I listen to what you say and then think about it and then react, although I do that to some degree.

00:39:03.000 It's that I watch you.

00:39:05.040 I look at what you're looking at.

00:39:06.740 I listen to the cadence of your voice.

00:39:09.600 You know, I adjust my body so that it's in accordance with yours.

00:39:13.460 If we're having a real conversation, I have to.

00:39:16.460 We have to create a space between us that's a consequence of a mutual imitation.

00:39:24.000 Even changing the way that we speak because I'm going to adjust the way I speak to the way you speak and vice versa.

00:39:31.140 Or we're not going to have a conversation.

00:39:32.980 We have to enter into the same space, to use a terrible cliche.

00:39:37.340 But all of that's a consequence of deep, deep and often unconscious and implicit imitation.

00:39:44.560 And to say that cultural appropriation is a mistake is to deny people the ability to deeply imagine each other.

00:39:54.000 You know, because there are conversations going on now that a man should never write a woman's role.

00:39:59.140 Or a white person should never write a black person's role.

00:40:02.500 It's like, well, all you're doing is forbidding the creator to project him or herself into the landscape of that other person.

00:40:12.520 And try to truly, not just empathy, it's way deeper than empathy.

00:40:17.720 To try to live out their experience to the best of their imaginative ability in a deep way.

00:40:25.540 And maybe one that can be communicated with other people.

00:40:28.940 You know, like maybe a white guy who writes about black experience, and he's careful about it,

00:40:35.480 can bridge a gap that no other person can bridge.

00:40:40.200 And even though it might not be 100% accurate, and not to say that biography itself or autobiography itself is ever 100% accurate,

00:40:50.260 it's the best we can do with regards to climbing inside someone else's skull and attempting to truly walk a mile in their shoes, let's say.

00:41:01.280 You know, I read a great book by a woman named Margaret Lawrence, who's a very underrated Canadian author.

00:41:09.240 And she wrote a book called The Stone Angel, which was about an 88-year-old woman, I think.

00:41:15.600 An elderly, elderly woman.

00:41:16.960 And Margaret Lawrence was not that age when she wrote the book, and I certainly wasn't an 88-year-old woman when I wrote it.

00:41:25.460 And I found it profoundly affecting.

00:41:27.800 Like, it was the first time in my life that I had really understood that you're the same when you're old.

00:41:39.160 You know, like, very much of you is like you were when you were 30 or 40.

00:41:44.700 It's just that, well, you started to deteriorate physiologically, and sometimes, but not always psychologically,

00:41:52.880 but all of the emotions and all of the perceptions and the desires and longings and the doubts and all of that are there just as powerfully.

00:42:02.740 And I don't think I would have understood that until I was much, much older, had I not had the good fortune of encountering that book.

00:42:16.100 So I think that the people who are discussing cultural appropriation, I truly believe that they hate art.

00:42:23.900 Because that is art, man.

00:42:26.100 That's take from the best of everything and see if you can go one step farther.

00:42:33.660 Yeah.

00:42:34.480 They just haven't thought it through because the end result of that is that you can only write – basically, you only have an autobiography.

00:42:44.040 You couldn't have a comic book unless it was written by a team of 30 people if it contained 30 characters.

00:42:51.380 It means putting everyone back into their little boxes and not allowed to integrate with the world.

00:42:58.760 It means that no one –

00:42:59.460 Right, exactly that.

00:43:01.100 And it means that art dies.

00:43:04.180 Well, I think that's the point of the complaint is that there's a true hatred for art that lurks underneath that

00:43:12.220 and a desire for it to be replaced by a kind of propaganda.

00:43:15.620 I mean, even if you wrote autobiography, you wouldn't be able to write about anyone else.

00:43:19.980 Yes, exactly.

00:43:21.900 You know, there's a lot of people complaining about modern art and, you know, the assaults on Busey,

00:43:29.100 or this war on Busey, this kind of rejection of skill and obviously transcendent greatness

00:43:37.440 in lieu of kind of like ugly things that remind us of that.

00:43:41.260 Let me ask you about the people that you've chosen to feature in your –

00:43:50.120 Is it best referred to as Meaning Wave or as Lo-Fi?

00:43:54.140 And what's the difference?

00:43:57.360 Well, yeah, Meaning Wave is what this genre of music I'm working on has come to be known as.

00:44:02.820 And it is the combination, as you put, of the Meaningful speech with wave music.

00:44:11.740 Wave music is a lo-fi.

00:44:17.080 It's trap.

00:44:17.880 It's vapor trap.

00:44:18.560 It's cloud trap.

00:44:19.780 It's a bunch of different things.

00:44:21.020 But they share a common aesthetic, vaporwave, things of that nature,

00:44:25.820 which is amusingly a postmodern art form.

00:44:29.500 Lo-fi just means low fidelity.

00:44:31.840 So I've always made lo-fi because when I first started making hip-hop,

00:44:36.060 it sounded quite bad because I didn't know what I was doing.

00:44:39.040 So it was quite low quality.

00:44:41.700 Lo-fi just means, you know, maybe there's some record crackle.

00:44:45.920 Maybe you've – it's not the most polished sounding thing.

00:44:49.960 It's not top 40 radio.

00:44:51.760 It's not – I've been considering doing another project called Hi-Fi,

00:44:56.760 which goes in the exact opposite direction and just goes pristine, clean, what have you.

00:45:02.000 But anyway, so lo-fi is that.

00:45:03.260 Meaning Wave is where I took those musical forms and combined them with speech.

00:45:09.240 And then did you see some advantages in the lo-fi approach

00:45:12.320 apart from its initial technical simplicity?

00:45:15.420 I've always loved that sound.

00:45:16.680 I've always loved warm, analog, crackly sounds.

00:45:20.620 I've always loved hip-hop.

00:45:22.240 All lo-fi hip-hop is really is just hip-hop instrumentals without an emphasis on high-tech production.

00:45:28.140 I see.

00:45:29.980 So it means –

00:45:31.080 So you think it's more comforting and welcoming to people?

00:45:35.160 I mean, I've often been in buildings, you know, like modern buildings that are so perfect

00:45:39.400 that the only thing that shouldn't be there is you.

00:45:42.360 Indeed.

00:45:43.340 Yeah.

00:45:44.000 It's a creepy feeling.

00:45:45.800 Yeah, it is.

00:45:46.280 It is a creepy feeling because, like, there's some degree of imperfection

00:45:51.360 that seems to be – or age, wornness.

00:45:55.940 Well, we heard this happen with music.

00:45:58.200 So technology is what drives music always.

00:46:02.060 The reason that music sounds like it does currently, a lot of it is to do with technology.

00:46:07.660 There's a drum kit that's used on almost all music you'll hear on the radio,

00:46:11.380 which is the 808 kit.

00:46:12.480 And that's been kind of dominated music for the past 10 to 20 years.

00:46:17.460 And the reason for that is because it sounds really as good coming out of a telephone

00:46:21.780 as it does a club system.

00:46:24.640 And the drum kits they were using before that just don't pop out of a phone in the same way.

00:46:29.480 You can't really hear them.

00:46:31.380 So until phones can more accurately reproduce low-end, that drum kit will remain very popular.

00:46:37.920 But what happened with music anyway, we saw it as the 80s.

00:46:40.020 Technology came in, computers came in, synthesizers came in,

00:46:43.260 and it started getting really, really clean-sounding, really, really clean.

00:46:47.480 And then as people started working within computers, and the music –

00:46:50.560 oftentimes the music would never leave the computer.

00:46:52.980 It'd be made on a Mac.

00:46:54.360 It'd go through some fiber-optic cables into someone else's Mac or into another phone.

00:46:58.780 And it was – that became that kind of cleanliness you were talking about,

00:47:03.960 that kind of sterilized thing.

00:47:05.980 And Lo-Fi reintroduces real-world analog elements.

00:47:10.020 Which brings a humanity and a nostalgia and a sort of tactile feeling

00:47:16.980 that music had started to lose, which I think is why people –

00:47:21.480 Yeah, well, there's something about analog instruments that have a singing quality

00:47:26.620 that the electronic instruments, even at the highest end, lack.

00:47:31.180 Like, I notice when I'm playing the piano, which I'm not very good at,

00:47:34.840 but I can do at least to some degree.

00:47:37.940 If I play an electronic piano, every note is okay and all the chords are okay,

00:47:43.260 but I can't get the whole instrument to sing.

00:47:46.500 And then, like, if the whole instrument is singing because of endless resonance,

00:47:51.220 then you can start to overlay the chords on the resonance.

00:47:56.080 And it makes the entire experience much richer and deeper.

00:48:02.080 And that seems to me to be a very hard thing to duplicate on electronic instruments.

00:48:08.400 Yeah.

00:48:08.540 I think, you know, the limitless potential that technology has brought us

00:48:16.840 is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

00:48:18.220 But at the same time, we don't want to be throwing out the proverbial baby

00:48:21.140 through proverbial bathwater and losing that foundational quality.

00:48:25.680 So I think kind of a situation where you can have aspects of both working together harmoniously

00:48:30.940 is optimal.

00:48:33.660 That's what I've been trying to do.

00:48:35.220 So you get some of the messy complexity of analog with the perfection

00:48:41.000 and, like, endless possibility of electronic.

00:48:45.460 Yeah, there's stuff you can do with electronic that you cannot do with analog and physical.

00:48:49.520 I can sample you playing the piano, and then I could go in there,

00:48:55.020 and if I wanted, I could go in and change a chord.

00:48:59.100 I could go in there and get the notes separated and move one of them around

00:49:03.420 just to slightly change the chord.

00:49:05.220 Like, there's stuff we can do which blows my mind now.

00:49:08.820 There's things coming out every week.

00:49:10.540 AI has started, well, machine learning.

00:49:12.540 They call it AI.

00:49:13.480 Yeah.

00:49:14.080 It's starting to come into music production.

00:49:16.720 And there's some incredibly exciting things happening in that area.

00:49:21.940 But the trick is, as always, is not to get carried away with these things

00:49:26.100 and lose the foundational aspects when we embrace these things.

00:49:32.780 Right.

00:49:33.420 Yeah, well, I noticed the other day that Google had this little game on its search page

00:49:39.680 where you could go and type in a simple melody on a note,

00:49:46.340 on a staff that they had provided,

00:49:49.860 and that it would convert it to a Bach analog by analyzing 400 different Bach pieces

00:49:57.520 and then determining how it would be chorded and how it would progress.

00:50:02.140 You know, and it was difficult to evaluate because it was very short

00:50:05.840 and the fidelity was relatively low.

00:50:08.880 But it's pretty damn impressive that an AI system can go and evaluate 400 pieces of Bach's music

00:50:18.780 and then rewrite something that has the same spirit based on a separate melody

00:50:25.520 in a matter of seconds.

00:50:27.240 And, I mean, the thing about all this new technology is that, barring catastrophe,

00:50:37.240 good time for everything to blur, I would say,

00:50:42.880 barring catastrophe, it's all brand new.

00:50:46.420 And it's going to be so much better in 20 years that we can't even imagine it.

00:50:52.600 You know, because you kind of think, well, this is a new technology,

00:50:55.180 and you think, well, it's new.

00:50:56.420 It's like, and it's like finished in some sense.

00:51:00.420 And we're so much at the infancy of this electronic revolution

00:51:05.260 that it's almost impossible to even imagine.

00:51:09.080 I'm very, very excited about where we will be in 20 years,

00:51:13.040 just based off of watching my six-year-old son, Hercules,

00:51:16.960 play Minecraft with his best friend, Quincy, who lives in Canada.

00:51:20.040 And these little kids creating these galaxies, creating these huge worlds,

00:51:27.880 down from the smallest details of building little houses and putting beds in them

00:51:33.140 and looking in the drawers, down to zooming out and creating whole environments and things.

00:51:38.960 And working together.

00:51:42.960 And like, you know, Quincy is very good at this kind of thinking and this kind of stuff,

00:51:46.920 and Hercules is very good at a different kind of thing.

00:51:48.680 And they just harmoniously come together to create this stuff within these supercomputers

00:51:54.620 that are the size of a paperback.

00:51:56.860 Right.

00:51:57.420 So they're in all worlds.

00:51:59.200 Yeah.

00:51:59.560 And a generation who've grown up with that just being default,

00:52:03.220 just expecting to be able to imagine a thing and make it so.

00:52:07.040 You know, when I was a little kid, I would draw comics and things of that nature.

00:52:13.680 And I would imagine things and I would draw them and they would look a bit like I imagined.

00:52:18.400 You know, and I practiced drawing and I got pretty good at it.

00:52:20.580 I could never get out exactly what I was thinking, but you'd get an idea.

00:52:25.660 You know, these kids can really imagine vast, vast things and look at them and see if they work.

00:52:32.520 And they go, oh, this doesn't work.

00:52:33.660 And I will destroy that and do another thing and so on and so forth.

00:52:36.140 So when these kids are 20, what the hell are they going to do?

00:52:43.300 This is a generation whose imagination, whose expectation of being able to create what they

00:52:50.820 imagine has no limits on it.

00:52:52.740 A generation who from as long as they could remember had all had a supercomputer that was

00:52:57.460 the most powerful movie studio in existence, the most powerful recording studio, a magazine.

00:53:03.620 You know, they can publish, they can talk to anyone in the world.

00:53:06.720 They can publish to anyone in the world.

00:53:09.460 They don't have limits on their creation.

00:53:11.160 No, no, everybody's a media powerhouse.

00:53:14.580 But also a problem solving powerhouse in a way.

00:53:17.000 And when they work together, that's what's really interesting.

00:53:20.560 Kids playing Minecraft together, they don't need to say, okay, you're good at this, you

00:53:25.580 do that.

00:53:26.000 They just work it out and then do it.

00:53:27.560 And they go at a problem and they fix it.

00:53:29.320 And, yeah, I'm just really excited about what they're going to do.

00:53:35.780 Do you look and watch what he creates?

00:53:39.140 Yes.

00:53:39.920 And it's beautiful.

00:53:41.740 It's beautiful.

00:53:43.080 It's like, you know, Sistine Chaffles.

00:53:44.920 Like you zoom out and it's fractals and you zoom in and it's like he's made a little house

00:53:48.780 for his buddy or he's made a statue of his friend.

00:53:51.720 He's built a roller coaster or whatever it is.

00:53:55.440 And then he'll set it all on fire or something.

00:53:57.720 He'll become an angry god and he'll throw lava at the thing.

00:54:03.020 But, yeah, you know, because so many barriers that previous generations had are evaporating.

00:54:14.320 And you have that, you have the, you know, the barriers of education or the barriers like

00:54:18.120 I was talking about earlier.

00:54:19.100 You only used to be able to have 12 rock stars at once because there were only 12 covers

00:54:23.580 of Rolling Stone.

00:54:25.160 Right.

00:54:26.380 You know, so that's why Michael Jackson tried to get Prince destroyed.

00:54:32.460 Or was it?

00:54:32.860 Yeah, it was.

00:54:33.460 Because, you know, it was like, well, there's only, oh, no, this, yeah.

00:54:36.360 First there was that.

00:54:37.280 And then they kind of like joined forces against Terrence Trent Darby.

00:54:41.580 According to Terrence Trent Darby, because Terrence Trent Darby was a threat because he was

00:54:47.340 like a third black guy and you're only allowed.

00:54:49.640 And at that point there was statistically only room for two black guys because of the amount

00:54:53.900 of covers of Rolling Stone.

00:54:55.740 Right, right.

00:54:56.740 There's some limiting factor.

00:54:58.480 Yeah.

00:54:58.860 But that doesn't exist anymore.

00:55:00.620 That doesn't exist anymore.

00:55:02.820 Nowadays you can be a cult person.

00:55:05.100 Like, say, Young Lean, who's a Swedish rapper that mainstream people wouldn't know of.

00:55:09.680 But everything he releases gets millions of streams and views and he can tour the world

00:55:13.060 and live comfortably forever.

00:55:15.980 You know, the barriers for education.

00:55:18.940 You can learn everything.

00:55:19.660 You can learn online.

00:55:20.920 Right.

00:55:21.200 So now you have niche celebrities.

00:55:24.920 Yeah.

00:55:25.760 Which is a very strange thing.

00:55:27.160 Yes.

00:55:28.360 Because you wouldn't expect that to be a possibility.

00:55:32.100 But with the massive, I mean, I think there's two and a half billion people on YouTube and

00:55:37.120 God only knows what the total reach of the podcast networks are.

00:55:41.760 And so you can have a pretty sizable following on any of those platforms and be invisible to

00:55:47.940 the majority of the people who are on them.

00:55:50.720 Yes.

00:55:51.900 It's an incredible thing.

00:55:53.440 You know, this is why they hate PewDiePie.

00:55:55.600 God bless him.

00:55:58.480 PewDiePie, it's amazing that you have a situation where the biggest person on the biggest online

00:56:05.800 broadcasting platform is somehow underground and anti-establishment.

00:56:13.440 Yeah.

00:56:14.100 Well, I think it's evidence that this new media world is underground and anti-establishment

00:56:23.200 in the most profound possible way.

00:56:26.660 I can't see how broadcast television can possibly survive YouTube.

00:56:33.400 No, it's dead.

00:56:34.200 And this is another reason I'm very excited about this generation because not only is this

00:56:37.680 generation got this Minecraft limitless potential actualization, incredible computer skills,

00:56:44.400 coding skills.

00:56:45.080 He's learning to code, young Hercules, six years old, just so that he can create portals

00:56:50.080 in Minecraft and open a portal to another dimension.

00:56:53.340 The fact that he's interested in opening portals to other dimensions and has that as a thing

00:56:57.400 in his vocabulary is incredible.

00:56:59.140 Right.

00:56:59.380 If you combine that with this complete disdain for, you know, mainstream media or those sorts

00:57:07.320 of systems, it's like, what is going to happen?

00:57:12.240 What are they going to do?

00:57:13.040 I guess one question that that raises for me is, what is it that's going to hold us together?

00:57:21.780 You know, I mean, one of the things, and this might just be the, what would you call it?

00:57:29.120 Nostalgia of someone who's old enough to have a certain amount of nostalgia.

00:57:34.040 I mean, with the limited broadcast means that we had, when I grew up, you know, I had three

00:57:41.220 television channels when I grew up, at least to begin with, and one of them was in French,

00:57:45.740 so it didn't really count.

00:57:48.480 And a limited number of radio stations and so forth and newspapers.

00:57:52.540 There was a continually emergent consensus about what constituted the real, you know,

00:58:01.920 in the social and political realm, at least, and even in the physical world to some degree.

00:58:08.160 And part of that, I think, was that many of those venues of communication were actually

00:58:14.520 very carefully vetted and edited, you know, and I would say Time magazine would have fallen

00:58:19.920 into that category, because it was quite a magazine in its heyday, you know, a quarter

00:58:24.500 of an inch thick and almost, almost nothing but solid text, very carefully written.

00:58:30.700 And you could quibble about the biases and accuracy of the reporters, but they seem to be

00:58:37.940 professionals, and they seem to be well-supervised and well-regulated.

00:58:44.820 And, of course, there's danger in over-supervision and hyper-regulation, but what seems to happen

00:58:51.540 now is that it's almost possible, and maybe this is what the post-modernists were imagining,

00:59:00.260 you know, in some sense, or intuiting, that we were entering a world where there would be

00:59:06.040 so many different interpretations of what was real that virtually everyone could extract

00:59:11.820 out from the endless stream of communication, that construction of the world that seemed

00:59:21.000 to suit them best, for better or worse.

00:59:24.020 And there's a fragmentation that goes along with that that seems to me to be, well, maybe

00:59:30.160 dangerous.

00:59:30.940 Is it dangerous enough to be driving some of the nihilism that seems evident and some of

00:59:35.880 the ideological rigidity?

00:59:39.680 You know, nihilism was an unavoidable byproduct of the line of questioning that humans were

00:59:46.120 going down.

00:59:47.060 But I think they're starting to come out of that.

00:59:49.000 And that's another thing in this new generation I'm seeing is a swing back against nihilism.

00:59:58.200 Yeah, you think.

00:59:59.040 And so, yeah, well, that would account for the popularity of the meaning wave.

01:00:02.440 And so, what makes you confident in that?

01:00:07.580 I mean, I'm hoping very much that you're correct in your assumption, but what makes

01:00:12.300 you confident in that?

01:00:14.100 Well, I think it's historically visible that you always see this.

01:00:18.540 People always react against their parents and so on and so forth.

01:00:22.260 There's always that pendulum swing backward and forward.

01:00:26.120 It's like, as you said, it's all these patterns.

01:00:28.120 It's an observable pattern, which I've been aware of since I was a kid, is the seven-year

01:00:35.140 cycle from punk to psychedelia, which swings backwards and forwards like a ticking clock

01:00:42.820 and has done my whole life.

01:00:45.320 So, that's sort of like a swing between complexity and simplicity or complexity and rawness.

01:00:54.760 Yeah, well, I mean, it's a cultural phenomenon, but everything, a great deal of what occurs

01:00:58.880 is downstream from culture.

01:01:00.080 So, if you think the sort of late 90s, sorry, the late 80s, we had a summer of love of sorts.

01:01:07.040 We had a hippie period.

01:01:08.580 Acid house music was going.

01:01:10.080 People were dressing in bright colors.

01:01:12.380 Things were all combining together, rap and dance and all these things.

01:01:16.980 People were taking MDMA and acid and stuff of that nature.

01:01:21.020 Rave culture was a big thing.

01:01:22.200 Then, it swung back into punky nihilisticness.

01:01:28.540 And this happens in the colors people wear, what people dress.

01:01:30.900 It suddenly went into Nirvana, talking about killings like misery.

01:01:34.900 And it went into Britpop in the UK.

01:01:38.460 Things became more conservative in this.

01:01:40.360 And then Sonics and the clothes styles were people wearing.

01:01:43.340 And then it went psychedelic again.

01:01:46.940 To the point, I was thinking about this earlier.

01:01:49.360 I was like, oh my God, they actually legalized mushrooms in London at the year I calculated

01:01:55.160 to be the peak of that particular seven-year psychedelic cycle.

01:01:59.060 Then it swung back again.

01:02:00.360 Music went into emo.

01:02:04.020 Then it went back again.

01:02:05.960 The more recent one, 2013, was the peak of the more recent psychedelic-y thing.

01:02:11.100 We had Odd Futures, the biggest rap group, people wearing tie-dye.

01:02:15.520 Drugs-wise, it was Molly, which is MDMA.

01:02:19.360 Again, then it swung back into nihilism.

01:02:22.180 And it's like, it's kind of like the, you know, there's pirate ship rides.

01:02:25.940 It's like a pirate boat.

01:02:27.540 And you pull up and you see it and then you go down.

01:02:30.760 And it did that in 2013.

01:02:32.160 And then suddenly the drug had switched to Xanax.

01:02:35.660 It was all downers.

01:02:36.880 Punk and goth stuff became the kind of cultural signpost.

01:02:43.840 Colors went into black.

01:02:45.380 Fonts went into gothic.

01:02:48.080 The conspiracy culture went from talking about aliens to complaining about feminism.

01:02:54.620 And all those people that were interested in psychedelic out there stuff up until 2013 was suddenly not anymore.

01:03:01.480 And now it's starting to swing back in the other direction.

01:03:04.820 Again.

01:03:05.300 But this time, because we're all networked so much at this point, the whole psychedelic thing is going to be a lot more psychedelic and a lot more powerful and have a lot more of a lasting impact, I believe.

01:03:16.180 So now you've picked Ellen Watts and Jocko Willink and Terrence McKenna and David Foster Wallace and Elon Musk.

01:03:27.100 And like, how do you select the people from whom you derive your Meaning Wave albums and tracks?

01:03:37.080 Well, it's looking at the puzzle from a different angle, which is valid, which is useful.

01:03:42.900 So it's like I used to make music wherein I would rap and sing.

01:03:47.120 So I was rapping and singing.

01:03:48.560 And then I got to a point where I realized that I didn't yet know enough to make an album about what I wanted to make an album about.

01:03:56.660 My first album was about, it was called When We Were Young and it was about being a kid.

01:04:00.620 And my second album was about, the life equation was about kind of being not a kid and interfacing with the world.

01:04:08.600 The third album, what that needed to be about, I didn't know enough yet.

01:04:12.900 And then I started listening to lots of people and listening to their position, their perspectives on things.

01:04:17.960 And, you know, say between you and Alan Watts, you're in a way doing what Alan Watts did for Eastern culture, for Western culture.

01:04:25.560 And it's in a funny way, because it's like you have a generation or two that don't have knowledge of these fundamental aspects of sort of Western culture.

01:04:35.120 It was sort of stolen from them.

01:04:36.900 And you've come along and you're reintroducing that to people in a foundational fashion.

01:04:42.200 And Alan Watts did a similar thing, but with Eastern ideas.

01:04:45.660 Terence McKenna talks about a lot of the same stuff you talk about, but from a specific angle, a different angle to the way you look at it.

01:04:51.740 And it's also, I think of it in archetypes, in a way.

01:04:55.200 And you say someone like Jocko Willink is the warrior, perhaps.

01:04:59.900 And that's his, his is a very, very necessary perspective at this point.

01:05:06.760 It's similar in ways to yours.

01:05:08.700 It has aspects of sort of discipline and stuff of that nature.

01:05:11.380 But in a, you know, in a much, he's looking at a very specific side, at which he is expert.

01:05:18.120 I just thought it would be this incredible, powerful thing if you could take people, somebody who's thought about a specific thing for 30 years and make that into pop music that people could listen to in the gym or in the shower or wherever they were.

01:05:29.900 And they could really, really bring it into their lives.

01:05:31.940 You're not necessarily going to listen to a podcast more than once, even a really, really good one.

01:05:36.740 But if I take the, what I think are the most interesting or best bits of a podcast and turn them into a pop song, you could listen to that a hundred times.

01:05:45.000 And it could get in and you could really think about it and you could really integrate it into your life or integrate the bits of it that are useful to you.

01:05:53.100 Yeah, I mean, that, that's how people learned historically, right?

01:05:58.300 They set poetry to music and listen to it over and over and that made it stick.

01:06:05.120 This is so good for the pre, the oral tradition, indeed.

01:06:09.140 Because the first thing I did was when I, I left school when I was 16, but my last exams, the revision I did for them involved me just reading my revision notes over ambient music in a cassette recorder and then playing it when I went to sleep.

01:06:23.100 Which is, which was, I guess, the first meaning wave that I made.

01:06:29.020 Right, right.

01:06:30.480 But yeah, this is what we've been doing for thousands of years.

01:06:33.360 Yeah, well, it's a lot easier to remember something if it's presented in a multimodal way, right?

01:06:38.560 So you have the words, you have the rhythm, you have the rhyming, and you have the music.

01:06:44.880 I mean, so basically you're remembering it along five dimensions at the same time instead of just trying to extract out the abstract semantic meaning and, and store that, which is, that's very effortful, you know.

01:07:01.420 And I'm not even sure you can do it without going through those first stages.

01:07:07.320 Which stages?

01:07:08.580 Well, the stages of, of rhythm and.

01:07:11.640 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry.

01:07:12.400 And memorization and, you know, I, I don't know how well you have to know something from the perspective of memorization, let's say, before you can start to really think about it deeply and to transform it your own way.

01:07:25.680 This, this, this is it, you know, people used to remember whole books, right?

01:07:29.620 Yeah.

01:07:30.180 People would be walking around with volumes and volumes of, of, of poetry and books in their heads and they'd be able to like, you know, just whip it out.

01:07:37.980 I mean, it's just that people used to, I mean, even in my lifetime, people had catalogs of jokes and stories.

01:07:45.460 Right.

01:07:45.820 They would have ready to throw out there in a pub conversation or, or whatever it was.

01:07:50.920 And, uh, that seems to be declining somewhat.

01:07:54.260 It's one of the, the unfortunate results of this wonderful technology.

01:07:57.960 Yes.

01:07:58.480 Yes.

01:07:58.880 Well, we seem to externalize everything, you know?

01:08:01.860 Yeah.

01:08:02.040 Cause we can put everything in the cloud now, so we don't need to save it on our hard drive.

01:08:05.480 Right.

01:08:05.960 Right.

01:08:06.320 And it makes you, it makes you wonder what there is that's in you.

01:08:11.060 I saw this funny New Yorker cartoon a while back where a man came out with a fact of some

01:08:17.600 sort and his wife says, well, do you know that?

01:08:20.160 Or do you just Google know it?

01:08:23.040 Yeah.

01:08:23.200 And, and, and there's a big difference between having a fact at your disposal because you

01:08:29.780 can find it in library and actually having that fact in your cognitive toolbox so that

01:08:37.280 you can use it actively in your life.

01:08:40.200 And, you know, it's, it's certainly been unbelievably useful for me to create and remember a bank

01:08:48.080 of stories and it makes you a much more, much, much more effective communicator and a much

01:08:54.760 better thinker.

01:08:55.680 Like when I was a kid in grade eight or grade nine, you know, and we were asked to memorize

01:09:01.640 poetry, I always felt that that was such a waste of time that, but it was already written

01:09:06.840 down in a book, what good did it do for me to be able to, to recite it?

01:09:14.540 And, you know, then I met a guy years ago, years later, who was an undergraduate and a

01:09:21.800 remarkable person, genius and rather unstable, unfortunately.

01:09:26.600 So I don't think he ever amounted to much, but one of the things he could do was declaim

01:09:31.740 large sections of Shakespeare at a moment's notice, apropos.

01:09:38.080 And it was unbelievably impressive.

01:09:40.100 Like, you know, when he would start it, everybody in the room would fall silent and like, and

01:09:44.420 he was very good at it.

01:09:45.580 You know, he, he wasn't embarrassing himself by bursting into this, into this old English

01:09:52.500 prose.

01:09:53.220 It was a real accomplishment.

01:09:55.420 And that was the first time that I saw how empty modern people were in some sense, because

01:10:02.520 they don't have that interiorized verbal culture.

01:10:08.160 You know, now it's not sure, it's not clear that in more archaic societies, everybody had

01:10:14.060 that either.

01:10:15.100 From what I've understood, it was the shamanic types that were the vast repository of the entire

01:10:21.660 oral tradition, but people had their stories and, well, you need to have your story.

01:10:29.980 So I don't know what it is exactly that we're going to substitute for that.

01:10:36.100 Yeah, well, you know, we're in a, as you said, this has just begun.

01:10:40.760 We're still, you know, in, in sort of zooming out terms, we're still, we're still in, in utero.

01:10:46.320 Yeah, we've yet to be born.

01:10:49.140 And I think we're, I think we're coming close to being born, uh, which is why, uh, everything

01:10:55.900 is the way it is.

01:10:56.700 And it's such a, it's such a heightened, it's, it's just an incredible period of history

01:11:01.000 to exist in at this point.

01:11:03.700 You know, you could have met, you could have been born at any time.

01:11:06.040 And for most of human history, you'd have been suffering away unless you were some kind

01:11:10.400 of Lord.

01:11:10.760 And even then you'd have had wooden teeth if you were really lucky.

01:11:13.300 Right, and they didn't fit very well.

01:11:16.800 No, he's like, Jesus Christ, imagine.

01:11:18.680 There's a thing that Hercules said, the good thing about having kids, as I'm sure you know,

01:11:21.800 is they, um, obviously, you know, is they just say really, really smart things that make

01:11:26.880 you think.

01:11:27.820 And Hercules, there's a thing in Minecraft where you have a survival mode and creative

01:11:32.300 mode.

01:11:33.040 And survival mode, uh, night time comes and the monsters come out to get you and you have

01:11:38.260 to go hide in your house and hope that the monsters don't get you.

01:11:41.080 And, uh, there are limitations on you and in creative mode, there are, there aren't these

01:11:45.840 limitations and you can fly and you can build and play and Hercules just, it just turns

01:11:51.020 around to me, not seemingly inspired by anything that just happened.

01:11:54.820 I said, dad, I wish it could be creative mode in real life just for one day, because really

01:12:00.440 we're in survival mode and we have to eat and we have to work and die goes, I would just

01:12:05.400 love it to be creative mode and just fly into the sky and play just for one day.

01:12:09.240 Hmm.

01:12:11.240 And I thought, what a beautiful thing.

01:12:12.240 And then I thought, but hang on, this is actually what we're doing.

01:12:14.240 Right.

01:12:15.240 About a week later.

01:12:16.240 I thought that, and I was like, this is actually what we're doing as a species for the first

01:12:19.180 time.

01:12:20.180 A vast proportion of us aren't spending all of our time just trying to stay alive.

01:12:25.120 We're in creative mode.

01:12:26.120 Yes.

01:12:27.120 Yes.

01:12:28.120 At least some of the time.

01:12:29.120 And that's something to be very, very grateful for because it's really, well, it's unbelievably

01:12:33.120 new.

01:12:34.120 It's, it's crazily new.

01:12:37.120 I mean, people, God, who knows, say, hopefully it leads to everybody playing together nicely

01:12:47.120 so that we can build a better world, you know, and I would say there's a reasonable amount

01:12:54.120 of evidence that that's occurring.

01:12:56.120 I mean, for all of its catastrophic problems, the internet works pretty well.

01:13:02.120 I mean, it, it's given us a tremendous plethora of gifts, even something, you know, I'm not

01:13:12.120 saying trivial because it's not, but taken for granted as Google maps has had a profound

01:13:17.120 effect on the way people live.

01:13:19.120 You're never lost anymore.

01:13:21.120 And it's enabled technologies like Uber, which, and I think Uber is a wonderful technology.

01:13:26.120 I think the fact that now anybody who's unemployed, but has a functional vehicle can almost immediately

01:13:33.120 find a way to make 500 or a thousand dollars in a week or a week and a half is an absolute

01:13:39.120 bloody miracle.

01:13:40.120 I mean, it, I might be wrong about this, but it seems like that kind of poverty, you know,

01:13:49.120 barring inability to drive and other catastrophes, that kind of poverty where you're backed in

01:13:55.120 a corner and you're just screwed.

01:13:56.120 There's nothing you can do about it.

01:13:58.120 That's Uber seems to have made a lot of that disappear.

01:14:02.120 It's like, Hey man, you can't make a fortune, but you can make enough to get yourself out

01:14:07.120 of a tight spot.

01:14:08.120 And it's actually a pretty pleasant experience.

01:14:12.120 Like I like taking Ubers.

01:14:14.120 There's no financial transaction.

01:14:16.120 People are almost always polite.

01:14:18.120 You know exactly where the car is going to be.

01:14:21.120 Like, I don't know.

01:14:23.120 I think, I think it's been a really good thing.

01:14:27.120 So, and it's of course only one of God, one of infinity of miracles that are unfolding

01:14:35.120 before us.

01:14:36.120 Like, like firecrackers at every given second.

01:14:39.120 Yes.

01:14:40.120 There's on that thing.

01:14:42.120 You know, if you, if you, there are so many ways to make money.

01:14:45.120 Now, if you're completely skillless, you can go on let go or Facebook.

01:14:51.120 Gary V talks about this sort of stuff a lot.

01:14:53.120 Uh, you know, you can, people are giving away chairs.

01:14:56.120 I don't want this chair anymore.

01:14:58.120 You go.

01:14:59.120 Yeah.

01:15:00.120 Then you sell it for $10.

01:15:01.120 You do that all day.

01:15:02.120 You can, you can make hundreds of dollars in a day.

01:15:04.120 You don't have to have any skills whatsoever.

01:15:06.120 They can, if you do have skills, there's a million ways for you to make money.

01:15:09.120 And if you don't have skills, there's a million ways for you to get those skills.

01:15:12.120 There are 12 year olds on YouTube who will show you how to do everything.

01:15:16.120 Yeah.

01:15:17.120 And I, and I, and I love those 12 year olds and I use them all the time.

01:15:21.120 Right.

01:15:22.120 Right.

01:15:23.120 Yeah.

01:15:24.120 Right.

01:15:25.120 No, well, absolutely.

01:15:26.120 Well, and you get these old guys down in like the Southern us who are like old plumbers

01:15:29.120 or, you know, they've got some specialty that they're good at and they'll grab their iPhone

01:15:36.120 roughly and just gruffly film themselves fixing something.

01:15:41.120 Say, ah, that's how you fix that.

01:15:43.120 You know?

01:15:44.120 And it's, it's so, it's such an interesting manifestation of altruism, you know, and, and

01:15:50.120 in the indication, I mean, people obviously like the attention that their videos garner.

01:15:56.120 And I think that's perfectly reasonable because it's a form of indication that what you're doing

01:16:02.120 is valuable.

01:16:03.120 Yeah.

01:16:04.120 I mean, there's an ego element to it, but the ego element is in fact, the fact that what

01:16:09.120 you're doing is valuable.

01:16:11.120 And it's so cool that people will take the extra effort.

01:16:15.120 Like I was installing a stereo in this old car of mine a while back.

01:16:20.120 And, you know, it, it, it was a pretty old car, like 11 or 12 years.

01:16:24.120 And somebody had put up a video about how to install the stereo in the car.

01:16:30.120 And I would have never figured it out that specific car.

01:16:33.120 Yeah.

01:16:34.120 I would have never figured it out because there was hidden screws and all sorts of weird things

01:16:38.120 that needed to be known.

01:16:41.120 And the guy didn't have to do it.

01:16:44.120 You know, it was just good to do it.

01:16:46.120 And it certainly saved me a lot of time and energy.

01:16:48.120 So that was quite, that was quite wonderful.

01:16:51.120 Yeah.

01:16:52.120 It would be really something if part of what the coming technological revolution enabled

01:16:57.120 us to do would be to play and to play more effectively in a way that would translate into

01:17:05.120 real world results.

01:17:06.120 You know, and it is, it's conceivable that that's one of the consequences.

01:17:11.120 I mean, all these people that are learning to code and learning to use computers in a sophisticated

01:17:18.120 way.

01:17:19.120 I mean, God, they're just, you know, you know, the Chinese graduate more engineers every

01:17:23.120 year than the Americans have engineers.

01:17:26.120 What's this other thing that's coming down the pipeline is this Babelfish thing.

01:17:32.120 You know, this translation technology, which is already bloody good.

01:17:37.120 But in a few years, it's going to be seamless.

01:17:41.120 Yeah.

01:17:42.120 I will be able to talk to you and you will be speaking a different language, shall we say.

01:17:47.120 And instantly that will be translated to me and I'll be able to have a conversation with

01:17:51.120 you in my language and we'll understand each other.

01:17:53.120 So that means that Twitter opens up to China.

01:17:55.120 And well, I mean, governments allowing, but said, but you know what I mean?

01:17:58.120 Like these sorts of current online community experiences we have open up to the world.

01:18:05.120 And it also means that trade opens up to the world.

01:18:07.120 And it also means all that information you're talking about opens up to the world.

01:18:11.120 Because now you don't just watch the video of the guy in Ohio.

01:18:14.120 You watch the video of the guy in Tokyo or wherever.

01:18:17.120 Right.

01:18:18.120 Yeah.

01:18:19.120 You understand it.

01:18:20.120 And suddenly the sum of human knowledge and experience and usefulness is shared with everybody.

01:18:27.120 Right.

01:18:28.120 Right.

01:18:29.120 Yes.

01:18:30.120 It's quite, well, unfortunately at the same time, the sum of human foolishness and impulsivity

01:18:37.120 as well, which is, you know, I guess par for the course, but something that we're trying

01:18:42.120 to desperately learn how to manage.

01:18:45.120 Hey, just out of curiosity, how long would it take you to queue up 42 rules for life?

01:18:52.120 How'd you mean?

01:18:53.120 Oh, as in, stop playing it.

01:18:54.120 Yeah.

01:18:55.120 Would this be a good time?

01:18:56.120 Across this connection.

01:18:57.120 Yeah.

01:18:58.120 Why not?

01:18:59.120 Why not DJ pizza?

01:19:00.120 Let's do it, man.

01:19:01.120 Let's play some of it.

01:19:03.120 Tell the truth.

01:19:05.120 Or at least don't lie.

01:19:08.120 Don't lie.

01:19:09.120 Don't lie.

01:19:15.120 Do not do things that you hate.

01:19:19.120 Act so that you can tell the truth about how you act.

01:19:26.120 Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.

01:19:34.500 If you have to choose, be the one who does things instead of the one who is seen to do things.

01:19:51.560 Pay attention.

01:19:52.980 Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you need to know.

01:20:00.640 Listen to them hard enough so that they will share it with you.

01:20:04.420 Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationships.

01:20:15.080 Be careful who you share good news with.

01:20:21.080 Be careful.

01:20:22.980 Who you share bad news with.

01:20:27.140 Remember.

01:20:28.020 Remember that what you do not yet know is more important than what you already know.

01:20:37.640 Be grateful.

01:20:38.260 Be grateful.

01:20:43.260 Be grateful.

01:20:48.300 In spite of your suffering.

01:20:49.740 What's been the most exciting project that you've embarked on so far, do you think?

01:20:56.200 What's been the most gratifying project?

01:20:58.900 Is that a reasonable question?

01:21:00.580 That's a reasonable question.

01:21:01.760 But the answer is that each one is more exciting and gratifying than the last.

01:21:07.320 Ties into this hyper-productivity.

01:21:08.040 Which ties into this hyper-productivity.

01:21:10.840 Staying in the zone and refusing to leave experiment because it compounds.

01:21:15.400 Is that the right word?

01:21:16.940 Yeah.

01:21:17.620 Yeah, it just gets more and more intense and

01:21:22.180 And better and exciting

01:21:24.500 There are synchronicities just in they just keep popping up and popping up and becoming myriad and ridiculous

01:21:31.060 uh

01:21:31.700 And i've taken i've taken synchronicities to be as

01:21:34.740 Signposts is what i'm treating those as

01:21:37.700 Malcolm x said that when you spot synchronicities you're walking with a la

01:21:44.020 Grant Morrison always said it was the first step to becoming a

01:21:48.260 A successful chaos magician was noticing those synchronicities and paying attention

01:21:52.660 So I treat those things and they're just every projects I do

01:21:55.620 There's more and more and more of that as I as I keep in this thing and and sort of don't stop

01:22:00.980 The the last one I did which was clockwork elves, which was the terence mckenna project

01:22:05.620 I just meant to do one song i'd finished the alan watts album

01:22:08.900 I was like i'm going to do this one terence mckenna song about his clockwork elves thing

01:22:12.900 Which is interesting and ties into something that watts was talking about

01:22:16.500 And um

01:22:18.820 I sort of came out of a daze

01:22:22.180 At sort of three in the morning and i'd made an album

01:22:26.260 And it was almost like I didn't do it

01:22:29.620 It's like and then i've been thinking about this quite a lot

01:22:32.900 There's a thing in uh japanese anime you see a lot these uh

01:22:35.940 These met these mecha suits which are like these giant robot suits and then humans sort of pilot them

01:22:42.420 But they're these amazing suits and a human can get in that and they can

01:22:45.540 You can destroy a city or you know, whatever it is

01:22:49.060 I kind of feel that when you're doing this stuff optimizing yourself in this fashion

01:22:53.620 Um becoming really really good at a thing becoming really proficient cutting out areas

01:22:59.220 Of wastefulness uh becoming this finely tuned machine

01:23:03.300 At that point you then sort of hand the keys to god

01:23:06.740 As it were

01:23:08.100 Stevie wonder always said that he didn't write his songs

01:23:10.260 He kind of opened himself up and god wrote them through him

01:23:12.740 Well, you know you you developed such a body of expertise now in relationship to this

01:23:19.220 So much of what you do has become

01:23:22.580 Automatized you know, and I don't mean that in a bad way

01:23:25.300 I mean that you've developed expert circuitry for all sorts of pieces of it and

01:23:30.820 As you become better at something

01:23:33.460 It's necessary to stand back

01:23:36.260 Increasingly and let what you already know

01:23:39.300 You let what you already know dominate you and take you over and and then you add a creative bend and twist here and there

01:23:48.100 to

01:23:49.140 Stop it from being merely wrote

01:23:51.860 You know like someone who's great at playing a cello, you know

01:23:55.700 They have every technique down perfectly, but they bend and twist each note

01:24:02.820 Consciously to to add something new to it when you hit that zone

01:24:07.060 It it does mean that

01:24:10.260 Well, everything that you've worked at to that point is starting to run automatically and there is an experience of

01:24:17.380 Harmony I would say with

01:24:21.140 With deeper parts of being when that occurs and it's not surprising because if you've put that circuitry together honestly and

01:24:29.140 And diligently and courageously then it should be functioning properly and towards the good and so when you're in the throes of that

01:24:40.660 If you're fortunate then there should be almost nothing about that that isn't good

01:24:46.020 That's that's why that's partly why character is so important. You know what people don't understand or or they're not taught is that

01:24:53.140 You genuinely become what you practice

01:24:57.700 Not and not at some trivial level. I mean, it's built into you

01:25:02.980 Biologically

01:25:04.580 as well as spiritually

01:25:07.140 Yeah, it's it's uh, it's terrifying

01:25:10.740 You go through life and uh, the reason one of the reasons life feels like it's speeding up is because you turn things into habits, right?

01:25:17.860 And then your brain kind of fast forwards past the habit. Yeah, you're going the same route to work every day

01:25:23.060 Your brain will fast forward through that thing unless something different happens

01:25:26.260 So a lot of times people feel life is speeding up because they've just turned so much stuff into habit

01:25:30.580 So you have to be really careful about what you allow to become habit and you have to keep checking on what your habits are

01:25:37.700 Because at the same time you want to turn useful things into habits, right?

01:25:41.460 Well, that's part of it. That's part of the tremendous difficulty of the balance between order and chaos

01:25:47.700 Exactly, you know, I mean because order does become

01:25:51.380 invisible and

01:25:53.700 unconscious and

01:25:55.380 With the proclivity to become tyrannical and sterile, but it's absolutely necessary because it makes you

01:26:03.380 efficient and allows you to do

01:26:06.580 Things that need to be done more than once with a high degree of accuracy and and and expertise

01:26:13.860 But then there's that ad ad mixture of the new that has to

01:26:18.900 Well, that's what that's what again. I think that's what music signifies because

01:26:23.300 There's a fair bit of repetition in all music

01:26:26.020 And that gives you a baseline expectation of what's going to happen, you know, so

01:26:32.340 You're playing a game

01:26:34.340 Along with the musician and you both basically know the rules, but what you're hoping that the musician will do is

01:26:41.700 Break the rules at least to some degree in some way that

01:26:44.820 It shocks you a bit and keeps you interested in

01:26:48.980 Allows you to understand new possibilities

01:26:52.900 That's exactly what makes a great DJ set

01:26:55.460 You want to have the right the right balance of

01:26:58.180 Stuff that a person knows and makes them feel good and want to dance

01:27:00.980 But then something that sort of shocks them and surprises them and takes them somewhere. They weren't quite expecting

01:27:06.580 There's this thing I've been doing recently where I forced myself to play

01:27:10.420 50% stuff I haven't played before

01:27:13.300 Or way I haven't played before

01:27:15.620 Because I found at one point I'd found myself sort of

01:27:18.820 Falling into it like I knew all so many things that worked

01:27:21.860 It was really easy for me to unleash these combinations of things that work

01:27:26.820 Like in a fighting game where you like press combine these various moves and you have like

01:27:31.060 You unleash like a series of

01:27:33.620 Fighting moves and you can knock the person out and I could do that very very easily

01:27:38.020 but uh

01:27:39.380 The really exciting things to do and the really useful to do things to do is to keep coming up with new ones

01:27:43.940 And make sure about half of what you're doing is in that area of danger

01:27:48.740 And the creation of something new which because that's what leads to those moments where the hairs stand up on

01:27:54.180 Right, right. Yeah. Well, you have to have that element of I would say surprise

01:27:58.820 But also of the potential for failure exactly right because I mean, I noticed this with my lectures is that

01:28:08.500 You know before I go out and do a lecture

01:28:11.220 I always have I spend about an hour

01:28:15.540 Meditating

01:28:16.900 Although I hate to use that word

01:28:18.900 It is what I'm doing

01:28:21.460 Trying to figure out what problem I'm trying to address and then trying to

01:28:25.860 Walk my way through the story that would enable me to explore that problem

01:28:31.620 But then I always have about five minutes of sheer terror

01:28:35.540 About the fact that it might not work

01:28:38.340 Like I might not get the problem formulated properly and I might not get through the story and come up with a

01:28:45.140 The point because you know the talk should have a point

01:28:48.500 There should be a conclusion or perhaps multiple conclusions, but at least one conclusion

01:28:53.940 and

01:28:54.740 because I

01:28:56.580 Mix enough of what's new in each lecture

01:28:59.940 It isn't obvious to me that that's necessarily going to happen. Now. I've been fortunate so far and

01:29:06.660 It's happened each time I've lectured

01:29:09.780 Publicly which is how many times now. Oh, well for the 12 rules for life tour. It's 150 cities

01:29:16.740 You know and so I'm becoming somewhat confident in my ability to

01:29:22.340 manage it because

01:29:24.100 I've done lectures when I was you know barely feeling able to drag myself onto the stage and

01:29:31.460 Once I'm on there and warm up a bit

01:29:34.820 You know it

01:29:36.340 It it goes well and yeah, I think part of that too

01:29:40.980 And maybe you experienced this as a dj like I really feel that it's a privilege to be

01:29:46.020 up in front of the audience and

01:29:48.180 It's also a challenge to get them on board, right?

01:29:51.060 Because we're all trying to be in the same place at the same time doing the same thing

01:29:57.060 And you have to have a real sympathy for your

01:30:00.740 audience

01:30:02.020 In the deepest way you have to identify with your audience

01:30:05.860 You know, I think you have to feel yourself as part of your audience rather than the person who's

01:30:12.420 say lecturing to the audience

01:30:15.620 Before you can bring everyone along because it can't be it can't exactly be a top-down thing

01:30:22.820 It has to be a participatory thing

01:30:25.620 I always think of it in terms of this kind of like energy

01:30:29.300 Triangle or something. It's like you give off this thing and then it comes back to you and then it goes back around again

01:30:34.740 And it's this great that's going on even if it's it's I mean, it's obviously unspoken in a dj capacity

01:30:40.180 You're not having a conversation with words

01:30:42.420 But you're giving them something they're giving you energy in return in response to what you give them

01:30:46.340 And then you build it and you build it and so on and so forth

01:30:49.300 Yeah, that's it. It's a positive. It's a positive feedback loop. Yes

01:30:53.860 And and you can I mean those can go out of control

01:30:56.740 But if you can keep them modulating I had to stop drinking

01:31:01.140 Because my reason for drinking while DJing that i've given to myself as well

01:31:05.620 I need to be on the same level as my crowd they're all drunk. So I should be a little bit drunk

01:31:10.420 But then uh, then you get your thing distorted and there's all there's all well as we know

01:31:15.060 There's all sorts of

01:31:16.260 Of problems with drinking and uh, the nightlife industry is oh, yeah, it's notorious functioning alcoholics. Oh, definitely

01:31:23.300 Well, it's no wonder. I mean like a big part of not all of it, but a big part of what determines

01:31:31.220 the probability of

01:31:33.220 Addiction is situation and the other thing too is that

01:31:37.460 Someone like you or another musician say or a bartender nighttime people tend to drink more

01:31:45.780 So it's been it's partly because they're up at night

01:31:48.020 But it's also partly because the way they're structured biochemically and then of course

01:31:52.500 You're always around people who are drinking and then what do you do after you're done your

01:31:57.220 sets? I mean, it's

01:31:59.460 The party's on

01:32:01.540 Exactly

01:32:02.340 Well, yeah

01:32:03.540 I've got this fixed now, but yeah for my first year in los angeles

01:32:07.860 Los angeles everything shuts at two and then everyone goes up to a mansion in the hills and goes to another party there

01:32:12.740 And that's where all the business deals go down supposedly and things right

01:32:16.500 I kind of fell into that world for a little while

01:32:19.220 Until I realized that it just wasn't proving as effective and I had shit to do in the daytime

01:32:24.260 God damn it. Well, that's the thing that's that's one of the best

01:32:27.780 Cures for an addictive process is to have something better to do than to be hung over

01:32:33.780 Well, this goes back to your earlier question actually, which is how i've changed in the past since meaning wave and uh

01:32:39.380 I

01:32:41.380 Just don't have any room in my life or any desire for uh

01:32:47.700 Anything unnecessary, which is you know any I don't want to drink

01:32:51.620 Because I have this adventure. I have this really really useful thing to do

01:32:55.620 This proving really really useful in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and they tell me every day and uh

01:33:01.300 It's amazing in my life and it's amazing in my family's life. And uh, you know, the

01:33:06.020 I got really annoyed not really annoyed. I think it really annoyed by social media, but I did see that

01:33:11.780 there was yet another vice story about

01:33:14.580 Having kids is awful. Oh man that those sets so brutal. It's so anti-human. It's so cruel

01:33:21.700 Evil it is it's absolutely especially cruel to women. I think and I had some poor woman on my q a last week

01:33:29.620 Tell me that all her friends are down on her because you know

01:33:32.820 She doesn't call herself a feminist and because she wants children and they're just torturing her and jesus

01:33:38.420 it's so awful because

01:33:40.740 it's

01:33:41.780 Like nietzsche said if you want to

01:33:44.660 Punish someone you should punish them for their virtues

01:33:49.060 And that's it's a brilliant and unbelievably cruel statement and then to find some

01:33:54.100 perfectly normal healthy young woman who

01:33:57.300 Would like to have a family like every single one of her ancestors had for

01:34:03.460 3.5 billion years and to tell her that she's

01:34:07.140 responsible for

01:34:08.500 You know

01:34:10.020 Elevating the carbon footprint of the planet

01:34:12.900 destroying the ecology is just

01:34:14.900 God it's so

01:34:17.300 It's I just can't believe how cruel that is and it's and it masquerades in the guise of

01:34:24.180 Virtue which makes it worse, you know, it's like jesus woman have a child

01:34:30.740 Have a husband have a have a career have a life for god's sake

01:34:35.300 There's not that much to life

01:34:37.460 The meat where the meme that they're putting out there is like, you know

01:34:40.180 If you have children

01:34:41.460 Like uh, it costs loads of money and you won't be able to do any of the things you enjoy and it will be life will be miserable

01:34:46.820 When it's the very opposite is true. I am way more

01:34:52.020 uh, financially

01:34:54.420 uh

01:34:55.860 Abundant or better off. I don't know if abundance the right word yet in that direction since having a child

01:35:01.380 My life is so much better since having a child

01:35:04.020 Uh, my motivations are so much clearer. The reason for being this is so obvious

01:35:08.660 So much joy like un

01:35:11.460 Unmeasurable levels of joy have come from that one child

01:35:14.260 And the only thing I wish with regards to my life is that if I was going to go back and have a conversation with my earlier self

01:35:19.140 Is just have lots of kids as soon as possible

01:35:22.660 Right

01:35:23.540 The earlier the better

01:35:25.300 There is no optimal time like hercules wouldn't have happened if we planned it

01:35:29.300 We didn't we didn't plan him. We always thought well, there's no intelligent time to have a child

01:35:34.340 No, you're never ready. There's never enough money. There's never enough time

01:35:37.380 That it added up

01:35:39.620 But it's the it's the single most wonderful motivating

01:35:44.020 Occurrence in this magical blessed existence

01:35:48.020 Well, that's how I've always

01:35:50.580 Felt about

01:35:52.580 My kids

01:35:53.780 Yeah, you know, um, well, there's some there's a

01:35:58.500 Variety of reasons, you know, one of the things that has to happen to you

01:36:02.740 As you mature if you mature

01:36:07.220 Is that at some point you have to realize that someone is more important than you?

01:36:13.620 Yeah, and I don't

01:36:16.180 Believe that that can happen unless you have kids because it's actually not that easy to have someone be more important than you

01:36:24.660 You know, like if you fall in love with someone

01:36:28.660 I would say

01:36:30.660 There may be times when you would consider them more important than you but I would say the general

01:36:36.660 Equation is something like well, we're equally important to one another

01:36:41.700 You know and and if it goes past that sometimes it gets a little bit

01:36:46.900 Well

01:36:48.020 Questionable, you know, like well, I would die for you or I would do anything for you. It's like

01:36:53.700 That's a bit much, you know

01:36:55.940 But with kids

01:36:57.700 It's not that at all. It's like

01:37:00.500 They're

01:37:01.700 number one

01:37:04.260 Period and you're not

01:37:07.140 And that puts

01:37:09.700 It's a relief to some degree I would say

01:37:12.500 But it also puts things in the proper context and it and it does

01:37:17.700 Provide you with additional

01:37:20.420 impetus for

01:37:22.420 proper action and ambition

01:37:24.420 You can't cut there's no room for error

01:37:26.420 They're looking at you on that. They're looking at to you for everything

01:37:30.740 You're completely responsible like you know

01:37:33.380 If you're not the best version of yourself, then what are they going to be?

01:37:36.740 Yes

01:37:38.740 And then the mistakes you make are going to echo through their lives as well

01:37:43.780 And then it's intergenerational. This is the thing I realized relatively recently these

01:37:48.180 intergenerational ills that just keep propagating down the line because they're not fixed that

01:37:53.540 Yeah, yeah, well that's it

01:37:55.540 You know as you get someone in some generation they tear a hole in the fabric of reality

01:38:01.460 And they pass it on to their children and unless their children

01:38:06.500 Sew up that hole then they pass it to their children and the damage remains until someone decides enough

01:38:14.980 Yeah, I'm going to repair it

01:38:17.220 And you know, that's partly what you're trying to do as a parent is

01:38:21.940 Sew up the fabric of being

01:38:25.300 So

01:38:26.500 A child will inspire you to sew up the fabric of being like nothing else. Yes

01:38:31.380 Why I I'm terrified of politicians without children frankly because they have no skin in the game or they certainly have less skin in the game than

01:38:39.300 People who have a vested interest in in the future not being a horrible place to live

01:38:44.260 Yes, yes, yes

01:38:47.380 Well, yeah, well

01:38:50.020 I'm to it to any

01:38:52.500 Women or men who are listening out there that are of the proper age. I would say

01:38:57.140 Don't let the naysayers and the pessimists in them

01:39:01.300 gloom

01:39:03.300 Purveyors

01:39:03.780 And those who dare to compare human beings to a cancer on the face of the planet

01:39:08.660 Dissuade you from having children

01:39:11.700 This is what the bad guys say in movies. That's what agent Smith said in the matrix. He was the villain

01:39:17.140 He was the villain and the this ideology is the idea the idea the ideology of villains

01:39:22.340 It's a very very strange thing

01:39:24.100 and uh, you know, they believe themselves to be virtuous and

01:39:26.660 And the people who believe themselves to be virtuous are terrifying because they will do any

01:39:31.140 Kind of evil because they think they're goody goodies

01:39:34.180 That's terrifying thing. But as we were talking about earlier, I i'm i'm very excited about the future because the new generation is going to react

01:39:41.220 Directly

01:39:42.260 Against that the most punk rock thing you can do in 2019

01:39:47.060 uh, is

01:39:47.620 Is

01:39:48.500 Is get married and have a child and uh, take your life seriously and uh, be nice and be civil

01:39:55.460 God

01:39:56.260 Wouldn't it be something if that was the case?

01:39:58.660 That's what this is what's going to happen. I think this is what's blossoming. I think we're gonna have a

01:40:02.740 A generation of uh, of radical wholesome. Mr. Rogers is

01:40:09.060 Well, you're I think you're the most optimistic person that i've talked to for a long time

01:40:13.860 I mean, I talked to steven pinker, you know

01:40:17.300 And he's he's optimistic in a much more detached way

01:40:21.700 Because he thinks that the data indicates that

01:40:25.940 Economically

01:40:27.940 Things at a very rapid rate, but you're you're speaking of something more akin to a psychological transformation

01:40:36.180 Yes, I am. I am and I've been this is just based on on

01:40:40.420 Observations, but I do I believe this and there's a lot that could go wrong

01:40:45.060 We're at the best time to be alive in the in the in recorded human history

01:40:49.940 Obviously

01:40:50.980 Uh, we're also at the most dangerous time because it could all collapse right

01:40:54.820 Everything this wonderful miracle that we inhabit I get to walk outside and no one throws a brick at my head

01:41:00.020 Right. Yes, which is which it's you know, you you you have to be sure that

01:41:05.700 One of the hallmarks of wisdom is to understand that if you could walk outside and no one throws a brick at your head

01:41:11.780 That that's actually a miracle

01:41:14.020 Yeah

01:41:14.900 It is I know this so, you know, because I grew up somewhere where people where people used to throw bricks in my head

01:41:18.660 So, oh, oh, what was that all about?

01:41:21.860 I

01:41:23.860 I

01:41:25.860 Was

01:41:28.420 I grew up in north wales and I was like the only person like me

01:41:31.780 I was the only person who liked music and stuff of that nature and everyone thought I was an insane weirdo

01:41:35.860 So I was

01:41:38.420 People are very brutal in uh in the uk certainly compared to los angeles to america where people are very nice

01:41:44.980 Compared to the brutality of that region of the world and I think it's to do with the climate

01:41:49.220 You know, it's a cold gray rock and the other thing actually is uh in america

01:41:53.700 Everyone operates under the the the foundational assumption that anyone could be president

01:41:59.140 So, you know, you have a service culture and waitress is a nice to you

01:42:02.260 Whereas in the uk people operate under this assumption that there is a monarchy

01:42:06.180 Which means there's a level that you could never get to or beyond which means that there's this

01:42:11.380 Weird unspoken thing that you're scum so everyone everyone's a bit bitter and twisted because of that I think in the uk

01:42:18.820 But uh, yeah, anyway, it was I had quite a sort of tough upbringing people were very very mean

01:42:23.300 And I'm very very aware of the capacity for the nastiness and species

01:42:29.860 Uh and horror which uh, so when I say things like this about where I think we're going

01:42:35.060 This isn't out of any kind of uh

01:42:37.620 Naivety right right

01:42:39.620 That's if humans I know full well what humans are capable of. Yeah, well, that's good because

01:42:45.300 optimism without the

01:42:47.300 underlying

01:42:48.500 Wise pessimism is useless because you're not taking the the

01:42:54.100 Pro seriousness of the problem with sufficient gravity because it's a serious problem

01:43:00.340 Yes, we have some very serious problems

01:43:02.660 How old were you when you started dissociating with creative people and sort of found your own crowd?

01:43:10.660 Well, this goes back to what we were talking about earlier

01:43:12.740 So when I when I was young I had no I thought I was the only person like me on earth

01:43:16.740 I thought you know, I was just strange creature and I would think that life might be this awful forever

01:43:23.300 But I sort of you know granted I left you know, I left school at 16. I left home at 16 and uh

01:43:29.380 Left uh little sleepy little whales and went to a big city

01:43:33.220 And that's when I started finding people like me

01:43:36.020 Right, so you needed to get you needed to get out to the city

01:43:39.860 Yeah, I had to leave home and move to a different country

01:43:42.900 It's right. Yeah, well, that's that again

01:43:47.860 Well, that's one of the issues of being high in creativity, you know is that it's not that common

01:43:54.500 And you have to find

01:43:56.660 Your niche and if you live in a small place

01:44:00.100 There may not be any other people like you and so you are going to be marked out as someone who's strange because

01:44:07.700 You are strange by the dint of your creative capacity. It's virtually the defining characteristic of creativity

01:44:17.540 The thing is now you can go online and find loads of people like you

01:44:20.900 Right

01:44:21.540 And you could make and you could make art with them and you could send files backwards and forwards and you could create things and also so it's

01:44:28.820 I'm interested to see what that does as well

01:44:30.820 Yeah, well, it certainly does mean that that people of specific talents

01:44:36.660 Rare talents can find themselves

01:44:39.620 In ways that they never could before now. It also means that people of

01:44:44.180 Spare and rare

01:44:46.180 Pathology can also find themselves and that seems to cause a certain amount of trouble, but I don't see how it would be possible to get one without the other

01:44:54.820 Yes, this is whether this is the thing for every one of these amazing

01:44:59.220 Solutions we find all these wonderful gifts. There's a shadow side

01:45:02.420 Of course we have to deal with and that's the main thing right is that we just work out how to deal with it

01:45:07.220 And okay, so so two more questions, I guess one would be

01:45:13.220 What has been the shadow side of what you've been doing like with working with this meaning wave

01:45:20.420 You you you you're much more well known than you were

01:45:23.620 Has that had an effect on your life other than a positive one and and what's been the price that you've paid for this?

01:45:32.260 You know, it doesn't mean so bad so far, you know the usual

01:45:36.420 Some people

01:45:37.700 really really don't like you for example

01:45:40.500 And uh

01:45:41.140 Therefore me doing stuff with you means that suddenly i've gone from a hero in their eyes to a complete villain and there's a few people

01:45:48.820 Uh, that's been the case with but that's you know, that's to be expected. I would say I would say that, you know

01:45:56.100 The whole thing has been a blessing

01:45:59.940 The whole the whole thing has been a blessing

01:46:01.940 Uh, you know, there's the amount i'm working means I don't get to see my family as much as I would like to

01:46:07.220 There is that yeah, you know, i'm i'm work, you know, i'm working very hard

01:46:12.180 Uh, but the time we have together is that much more precious and we're working together

01:46:17.780 very much together and we're supporting each other and and uh

01:46:21.700 And you know, we we we see this as as a

01:46:24.580 useful and an

01:46:25.700 helpful endeavor

01:46:27.140 To be engaged in and how much time are you spending working a day?

01:46:31.860 Oh god, um

01:46:33.460 14 hours or so 15

01:46:36.420 Yeah, you know, it seems like that's about the minimal amount of time that you have to work if you

01:46:41.620 Really want to push yourself

01:46:44.020 To new levels of accomplishment

01:46:46.180 Yeah, and that's every day

01:46:48.180 Yeah, every day

01:46:49.300 Yeah, it's it's very very difficult to

01:46:52.340 exceed expectations let's say

01:46:55.300 if you're trying to

01:46:57.220 work a normal eight-hour work day

01:47:00.180 I my experience with people is that

01:47:03.620 they're either not busy enough

01:47:05.780 or they're so busy they can barely keep up

01:47:09.060 and that it's usually the ones that are so busy they can barely keep up that are

01:47:14.500 pushing the envelope in whatever discipline they happen to be pursuing

01:47:19.060 Yeah, and you know, then you just have to um this concept I heard of recently which I like which I've been trying to do

01:47:24.980 essentialism

01:47:26.260 You know when you're so when you get to the point where you're

01:47:28.900 Which is a wonderful point to be at where there's suddenly more to do than you have time to do with

01:47:33.700 Which I have fully there are more albums I would like to make than I physically have time to do in a lifetime

01:47:38.980 There are more

01:47:40.180 Speakers I would like to cover there are more, you know, there's more

01:47:44.020 More songs I would love to play more techniques. I would love to learn there as far

01:47:48.340 More to do in this lifetime than than I have life

01:47:50.980 So then essentialism you boil down what are the essential things and what things cannot fit and then you

01:47:58.500 Then you streamline your life and you do that

01:48:00.820 Evermore evermore

01:48:02.420 Remove things that are less essential making room for the more essential and then the more you know

01:48:06.500 What the more essential is the better idea you have of where you're going and what you're trying to do and how to do it

01:48:11.540 Yeah, well, that's the separation separation of the wheat from the chaff

01:48:16.100 That's a real

01:48:17.380 That's a real skill if you can manage it, especially if the opportunities are flying at you fast and furiously

01:48:23.860 Well, how do you what do you do?

01:48:26.820 You presumably have more than you could possibly hope to

01:48:29.860 Well, I do a certain amount of flailing about I would say

01:48:33.620 you know, um

01:48:35.140 luckily what's happened is that as

01:48:39.300 I've become better known

01:48:41.300 And I think this is an element of that synchrony that you sing

01:48:47.460 synchronism that you described earlier is that

01:48:50.980 fortunately as

01:48:53.220 with each leap in

01:48:55.220 notoriety or popularity

01:48:57.860 I've had people show up who offered to

01:49:01.780 Take certain tasks off my plate

01:49:05.540 you know in professional relationships and

01:49:09.380 I've been fortunate that the majority of those people have been very competent and so and I do delegate like my

01:49:18.180 hiring

01:49:19.460 ethos is

01:49:20.980 You want this job? Okay, do it. I'm not going to micromanage you if you can do it, man

01:49:27.060 Great right power to you. Hopefully you can do it better than me

01:49:30.900 And if you can't do it

01:49:31.940 Well, then I'll have to find someone else well or we'll have to find you a different place because

01:49:36.820 There's just no point in you doing it. If you can't do it better than me

01:49:40.900 then

01:49:42.420 Well, then that's no good

01:49:45.300 That's the ideal thing in life is everything you're not the best at

01:49:49.460 Delegate that to someone who is the best at that

01:49:51.860 Right focus on the stuff that you're the best. Well, right

01:49:54.260 And then you can also continue to do more things and yeah, you know

01:49:58.340 I would say my wife and I have been fairly ruthless

01:50:01.300 Well, my daughter as well probably my son as well in the communication

01:50:05.460 We've had about the people we've hired over the last three or four years because the time pressure is so

01:50:12.420 intense

01:50:13.540 You know if you can do the job man

01:50:16.660 We're thrilled to have you but if you have three or four chances and you can't do it

01:50:21.300 Then we just stop working with you immediately because we don't have any time for

01:50:27.460 error

01:50:29.460 It's and that the the costs of the errors are too great

01:50:33.780 So but you can delegate

01:50:36.660 So it's a difficult thing to learn to do

01:50:38.820 I it took me a long time to be able to let go

01:50:42.020 Because I did everything myself for so long. I taught myself how to do every aspect of this sort of business

01:50:48.260 From uh, good graphic design to making the videos to recordings went to everything

01:50:52.820 Right

01:50:53.380 Letting go of that

01:50:54.980 It was a hard thing to learn to do now. Now. I'm very happy to do that

01:50:58.420 And if I can find someone who can do something better than me then wonderful

01:51:01.700 I would much rather than that, but it did take a while

01:51:04.100 It's part of the whole ego

01:51:05.380 Well, you have to also master it to some degree before you're capable of determining whether the person that you've pulled in as a

01:51:12.740 Replacement actually knows how to do it. Yeah, this is true

01:51:15.540 So there is that

01:51:18.580 Work that you have to do yourself before you're capable of

01:51:22.340 Delegating and evaluating the consequences. Okay. So last question I think um

01:51:29.860 What's going to happen to you over the next year?

01:51:33.300 Who knows I'm going to work very hard. Okay, I'm going to get better

01:51:37.540 I'm going to uh stick to the the plan I set and uh

01:51:42.500 The hyper productivity and uh results of this will will compound

01:51:46.980 So where this leads

01:51:49.540 Who knows but uh, right?

01:51:51.060 Do know that I will make great music and it will be useful in a great many people's lives

01:51:58.020 Right, so you've got a you've got a strategy

01:52:00.500 Yes, and what do you what do you what do you like about the hyper productivity?

01:52:05.860 I mean one of the things you said was that

01:52:08.180 Well, you don't have time to drink you don't have time to waste time

01:52:12.180 And there is something really useful about hyper productivity in that regard is that it it does

01:52:17.780 Force you to dispense with everything that's damaging and non-essential

01:52:22.340 Because you just don't have the time

01:52:24.500 But is there anything else about

01:52:26.900 For about the hyper productivity that you've found?

01:52:30.980 Let's say psychologically significant or useful

01:52:34.820 I'm a lot. I mean it's the thing is I started the hyper productivity thing exactly the same same time I started

01:52:41.220 Uh the carnivore diet

01:52:44.740 So sometimes i'm not sure which is causing what

01:52:48.020 I used to about once a month go into a kind of deep depression

01:52:52.980 For a few days which uh, my wife would call my funk

01:52:55.860 I'm a very optimistic happy person normally, but then there would be

01:53:00.740 A little bit where I was kind of the opposite. I haven't had that

01:53:05.140 Since wow congratulations. How long has that been?

01:53:08.260 That's 13 months

01:53:09.940 And what else is I wasn't gonna ask you about the diet, but now i'm going to

01:53:14.260 What's happened to you because of the carnivore diet?

01:53:17.540 Well, I lost all my unnecessary body fat

01:53:19.940 How much was that?

01:53:21.700 Um, I think I went from like 160 to 146 and i've stayed at 146 about since and that happened pretty quickly

01:53:30.180 Like the first part of it was in days like my face changed within a few days

01:53:34.580 You have this bloat, I guess

01:53:38.340 Inflammation likely, eh?

01:53:39.780 Yes, all that sort of thing. I used to have like sort of psoriasis and that went I used to have like

01:53:44.740 My tongue was all messed up and yeah

01:53:47.220 That sorted itself out. I used to have bleeding gums and that's gone

01:53:50.180 That's gone. Hey, that's interesting because that went for me too

01:53:53.460 Yeah, I used to have like little bumps on my skin

01:53:56.100 You wouldn't really notice but like close up you would that's all gone. I have very smooth skin now

01:54:00.420 um

01:54:01.300 I've I have very consistent high energy

01:54:04.580 Um, I used to sort of oscillate I guess

01:54:08.500 Um, it's made a lot of so there's all those sorts of things

01:54:12.660 It's made life so much simpler and hyper productivity makes life so much simpler because when you know

01:54:17.940 That certain things have to be done without question

01:54:21.380 Then there's no question. Right. You know, it's like well, I

01:54:24.900 Can't go and do that thing because I'm going to do this. I've committed. Right. Well, that's the that's advantage

01:54:30.420 That's the advantage of having a very well delineated aim a

01:54:34.580 Yeah, and a higher and a purpose you bet it helps you separate what's necessary from what isn't

01:54:40.180 Necessary and that is a genuine relief. No doubt about it. It's good. It's joyful

01:54:45.780 It's so much is so much weight is cast off you

01:54:48.740 There's you know, someone asks you to do a thing

01:54:51.620 There's no debate you either do it or you don't based on what what this aim is what you're doing

01:54:56.740 Right same then applies to things like food like that one of the really annoying things in my life

01:55:02.740 Prior to the carnival thing was like the daily what are we having for dinner conversation?

01:55:07.460 And the the annoyance is related to that which is completely gone. I know what I'm having for dinner. I'm having a steak

01:55:14.580 And I know what I'm having for breakfast and the same thing, you know, and I know what I'm drinking

01:55:18.900 I'm drinking water and I know I'm gonna feel

01:55:22.580 You know that I know I'm not gonna suddenly be sleepy or bloated or weird after eating something, you know

01:55:28.500 I'm gonna be the same high energy

01:55:31.380 Uh purpose. That's a that's a major plus. So congratulations on that. That's a huge. That's a huge beneficial transformation

01:55:39.380 So let's end with this. Um

01:55:41.860 Um

01:55:44.340 What do you think you're doing?

01:55:46.900 With this what's your like I know that you have a name and an ambition you're making this music

01:55:53.620 You're making yourself hyperproductive you're concentrating on this meaning wave but underneath all that there must be a

01:56:00.500 uh

01:56:01.460 What like an invisible or an implicit ambition something like that a deep ambition?

01:56:08.180 What what's your most profound hope for what you're engaged in?

01:56:12.900 Personally, I would like to become the best version of myself possible

01:56:22.580 Um, you know the for the dragon ball x sort of final form type thing that

01:56:29.060 The transformations that you go through and there's these levels of you I want to get to the nuke level

01:56:35.780 I want to get get to nuke level and be the best possible version of myself possible

01:56:40.580 As effective on every level I can be

01:56:43.460 And with relation to the path I've chosen which is this music thing

01:56:47.940 Um, which is what I always

01:56:50.020 What always since I was you know my earliest memories is being about seven years old and uh listening to music and wanting to make music

01:56:56.180 And uh reach people and communicate with people on that

01:57:00.580 So and specifically with regard to the meaning wave

01:57:05.140 Yeah, well, I think the meaning wave thing though is um

01:57:08.340 It's like so much we've talked about

01:57:10.980 We haven't scratched the surface of what's possible with music

01:57:15.540 We haven't scratched the surface of what

01:57:18.180 It can do and we haven't I haven't scratched the surface of what I can do with it

01:57:23.700 I'm like this is a very what we're listening to at the moment and the level it's at right now

01:57:28.580 Is it is a very neanderthal?

01:57:31.220 rough

01:57:32.660 approximate like uh

01:57:34.340 Beginning of where it can go and what it can do I think and I think that way I think that way with pop music pop music is so new

01:57:42.740 You know, just it just happened. It was just there and and and uh, you know, we don't know

01:57:49.300 To quote you a bit. We don't know what the upper limits of this thing up, right?

01:57:52.820 Right. I'm excited to explore this. So I think of myself a bit like

01:57:57.620 Picard in deep space nine

01:58:00.260 Going out

01:58:02.420 Into this world

01:58:04.500 Yeah, well, you've hit a vein that seems rich

01:58:07.700 And you seem highly committed to getting better and better at mining it

01:58:12.180 And so that's a good adventure and it I mean from what I've observed with regards to your trajectory over the last while then

01:58:21.220 um

01:58:22.580 That all seems to be expanding nicely. So it's nice to have an adventure

01:58:28.100 Where you you can't necessarily see the destination, but it looks positive

01:58:33.860 Yeah, well

01:58:36.660 I mean, maybe it's not positive, you know, maybe the adventure has a horrible ending

01:58:41.540 So it's an adventure regardless. Yes, this is true

01:58:45.540 There's something to be said for that. Yeah

01:58:49.860 Yeah, we're at this stage as we mentioned earlier. We're at this point of human development where everything

01:58:57.060 Our world we can we can barely imagine the world in five years

01:59:00.420 Let alone 10 15 20 my grandmother's 96

01:59:04.740 She's the eldest of 13

01:59:06.740 Uh, she saw the birth of the radio. She was like, you know, she was she left school at 13 to the window

01:59:12.900 We saw tv and internet and all of this stuff appear

01:59:17.220 Like what what are what have we to witness things that you know, things are speeding up so radically

01:59:24.180 Uh, it's just just an incredibly exciting

01:59:28.020 Uh time to be here and uh, to be actively taking part

01:59:32.900 In an aspect of it and sort of like, you know, marching boldly forward

01:59:38.100 Into unexplored territory

01:59:40.580 Is uh about the best adventure I could think of

01:59:43.540 Well, look it was really good to talk to you

01:59:46.020 I mean i've been watching what you've been doing with a fair bit of curiosity for quite a long time because

01:59:50.740 It certainly came as a shock to me when it first came out and um

01:59:55.540 It's it's also refreshing to speak with someone who's

02:00:00.020 Unabashedly and not naively optimistic and um

02:00:06.020 Well a I hope we can meet

02:00:08.500 At some point in the relatively not too distant future and

02:00:12.020 Be I wish you every bit of success that you can have with your hyper productivity and your

02:00:17.700 experimentation with music and

02:00:20.100 I'd like to thank you as well for doing what you have to

02:00:23.620 Popularize my

02:00:25.540 My work and my words in such a careful manner

02:00:28.900 Thank you that's that was my um

02:00:31.860 Yeah, I really didn't want to do disservice

02:00:34.660 To those words

02:00:36.340 Um because I respect them greatly and i'm very grateful for them

02:00:39.940 And uh, i'm very grateful that you're out there doing this work

02:00:42.740 And uh, you know putting your head over the the battlements

02:00:48.580 At this crucial crucial time in our development as this development as a species

02:00:53.700 As we boldly march into hyperspace and our destiny so thank you

02:00:57.780 Very good to meet you

02:00:59.300 Hopefully we'll talk again in the not too distant future

02:01:02.340 I'm sure we will and I hope you like the album

02:01:05.540 Thank you. I'm very much looking forward to it. Nice

02:01:08.500 Okay, man. All right wicked really good to meet you. Yeah, you too

02:01:12.740 Bye. Bye. Thanks

02:01:15.540 If you found this conversation engaging you might want to pick up dad's books maps of meaning the architecture of belief

02:01:21.700 Or his newer best-selling 12 rules for life an antidote to chaos

02:01:25.620 Both of these books dive much deeper into the topics covered in the jordan b peterson podcast

02:01:30.420 See jordanbpeterson.com for audio ebook and text links or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller

02:01:37.380 Next week

02:01:38.100 You'll hear my lecture from the community theater in sacramento, california

02:01:42.580 Recorded on june 27th

02:01:44.500 2018

02:01:45.620 I discussed the modern tendency for every domain of human experience to become defined as political part of the political correct universe of ideas

02:01:55.620 The idea that the universities may now do more harm than good

02:01:58.900 The consequences of the revolution in communication that is being produced by online video and podcasts

02:02:04.740 And the necessity to voluntarily stress yourself

02:02:09.380 Challenge yourself to force what's best to manifest itself within you

02:02:14.180 Follow me on my youtube channel jordan b peterson on twitter at jordan b peterson

02:02:22.020 On facebook at dr jordan b peterson and at instagram at jordan.b.peterson

02:02:29.140 Details on this show access to my blog information about my tour dates and other events and my list of recommended books can be found on my website

02:02:39.780 jordanbpeterson.com

02:02:42.580 My online writing programs

02:02:44.900 Designed to help people straighten out their pasts understand themselves in the present and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future

02:02:53.460 Can be found at self-authoring.com

02:02:56.740 That's self-authoring.com

02:02:59.700 From the westwood one podcast network

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - April 14, 2019

Akira the Don： Music and Meaning

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