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Voice of the Mountains: Useless Beliefs with guest Cory Richards
6.5k Plays3 months ago
In the latest episode of Voice of the Mountains, Steve welcomes an icon of mountain sports and artistic genius. Cory Richards went from homeless kid to Nat Geo Adventurer of the Year. From depression and bi-polar diagnoses to one of the best spokesmen and advocates for mental health, particularly men’s mental health. Cory and Steve discuss difficult transitions, how certain beliefs, such as how a certain unhealthy relationship is good for them, become convictions. How they spent years living in the confines of those beliefs despite the seemingly obvious damage to themselves and others. So in this episode, they unpack what this looks and feels like and they hope others will recognize themselves in that and seek positive change. Cory and Steve step in to the difficult conversations and use vulnerability to lead an enlightening discussion between two mountain greats. Check out Cory’s new book, The Color of Everything or visit his website: https://www.coryrichards.com/
See more episodes and companion essays at: https://uphillathlete.com/voiceofthemountains/
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Transcript
Identity and Personal Narratives
00:00:03
Speaker
This very morning, you told yourself a story of who you are, what you value, and what you do in the world. The story that gives shape and meaning to everything around you. But be careful. Your story is not the collection of events that have shaped you. The events are the plot, and the plot leads to the theme, and the theme shows you what the story is about, what you are about. Humans are consummate storytellers. We weave events into plot and plot into theme and theme into meaning as easily as a bowerbird weaves grass in our cozy nest. And often we stop there with the theme. The story is what you're trying to unravel or understand inside. But that plot, the theme, this identity, your meaning is found and great!
00:00:58
Speaker
But what if your history and your meaning and your identity isn't the whole story? What if that isn't the story at all?
Does Personal History Define Us?
00:01:05
Speaker
That is the challenge of today's Voice of the Mountains. What if I told you that at the end of your next run, you will find your story? The story is what you're trying to unravel or understand inside. That's your story. And so when you're saying that you're not fit enough or that you want a place in the top ten instead of the top half, what you're saying is, I need to do this again and see if I'm fit enough now. And if I'm not fit enough now, I need to do this again and again and again. Maybe it's a different mountain, maybe a different course.
00:01:46
Speaker
maybe a different job or a different assignment. Let me just see. Let me climb this one more mountain because I'm certain the answer is up there.
Corey Richards: Journey and Art
00:01:56
Speaker
And all the while you have to go for one run, do one hike, climb one singular mountain. The story is what you're trying to unravel or understand inside. In this month's Voice of the Mountains, we talk to one of our finest storyfinders, story creators, and storytellers, Corey Richards. Corey has understood many levels of his journey. Raised at Alta Ski Resort, homeless at 16. Part of the three-man team to make the first winter ascent on a Karagoram 8,000-meter peak, National and Geographic Explorer of the Year, Type 2 Bipolar.
00:02:43
Speaker
Corey explains to us how love that is screaming to get out of him is transformed into art, and how creating art integrates his heart and his mind, and how movement, whether in the gym or at the mountains, integrates his heart, his mind, and his body. And Corey shares what he calls the zen cone of climbing. So sit back, grab a fresh cup of coffee or a fresh pint of beer and settle in because today you're in for a real treat.
00:03:22
Speaker
Corey Richards, I'm so happy you're here, Corey. Thanks, man. It's good to see you. Like actually see you, you know, it's always WhatsApp messages, which is different. Steve House, the face and Steve House, the name are two different things. But yeah, yeah, well, anybody's name and face. Today I want to welcome someone I consider a true brother, someone whom I've known in almost as many ways as he shows up in the world. Climber, artist, gifted high altitude climber, athlete to my coaching, writer, philosopher, man, and friend.
00:03:57
Speaker
I've talked about how it took middle-aged for me to come to terms with my own intensity, how I just have realized that I'm sort of built different than a lot of people, and I have an unending ability to tolerate suffering and fear, and I can work myself to exhaustion day after day and week after week, month after month, year after year. And once in every Blue Moon I meet someone who matches my energy and my frequency and my intensity, and the first time I met Corey Richards was one of those moments. I was in my mid-30s, socially awkward alpinists. I was at the height of my career and my abilities ah up in Canmore, Alberta for one of my annual two-month-long winter climbing trips. And I heard about a party one night in Canmore and I drove my 1984 Ford Econoline van. You probably remember that, Cory. My sister called it the child abductor van.
00:04:50
Speaker
And it bumped into the curb as I pulled up in front of a brightly lit house. It was 20 degrees below zero and people standing in the yard smoking with patched 8,000 meter parkas zipped up to their chins. I made my way inside, awkwardly said hi to a few people, decanted a beer into a red solo cup and glanced around for a familiar face. Nothing. The bump of the music vibrated the flooring and I made my way to the stairs and into the basement where I soon caught sight of a strobe light. A tall, lanky, red-haired, nipple-pier sky with a closed eyes pumping both open hands above an array of DJ equipment spread across a folding table. Electronic music pumped the dancers up and down, back and forth to the visceral beat.
00:05:34
Speaker
I tossed my 8,000 meter down parka into the massive pile of the same uniforms and leaned up against the wall to take a sip of my beer. Two hours later, I was still standing there, empty cup in hand, being grilled by a young, model handsome blonde kid, Cory. He wanted to know everything and wanted to invite himself along on everything. It was intense. I was thirsty and I excused myself to get another drink, exchanged emails with this new young acquaintance, and rolled out to my bivvy near the Nordic Center.
00:06:07
Speaker
Today, Corey is 43 years old and he just published an incredible memoir and book entitled The Color of Everything.
Corey's Memoir and Storytelling Themes
00:06:15
Speaker
Welcome, Corey. I'm so fired up for our conversation today. I can't wait to get into it with you because I know that we just have a relationship that allows us to go deep. Deep into the heart of ideas that I hope and believe will resonate with the whole community. Thanks for being here. Thanks so much. I mean, I'd like I've been looking forward to this because, you know, you do podcasts, right? And and people, first of all, I forgot about that party, but now I think the red head with the nipple ring must have been Josh Briggs. It was Josh, absolutely. We always tend to go very deep. And I think that, you know, that obviously started, I mean, that relationship very much started when we went to a Makalu in 2009. And, you know, it was sort of by random hand, like happenstance that that even happened. So that's when I realized, oh shit, like,
00:07:06
Speaker
you know And this I'm sure we'll get into this, but that there's sort of an older brother quality to you that um that's always felt very resonant. So thank thank you for having me. i really and you know Thanks for trusting me. The inspiration for today's theme originates from an image I helped to create, perhaps the best image and I've ever shot. it's so It's a portrait I took of my partner, my friend, Vince Anderson, on the summit in Angaparbat. And in the picture, Vince is kind of at eye level. He's on his knees on the top of Angaparbat. His head is back in supplication and in rapture. His arms are spread to his sides. It's a portrait that I honestly feel is one of my biggest
00:07:46
Speaker
personal contributions to sort of broader humanity because I think it embodies and communicates so much without a single word and what it communicates for me is the truth of achievement and what that achievement is based on motivation and what it looks like when we fulfill a goal. Corey, do you remember that picture and do you remember your first time you saw it? ah You know, it's funny. I remember the first time I saw it and I don't remember which magazine it was in. um But then I really remember when you... Well, no, I think it was Vince um that came. I went to another sort of house party in Canmore. It was more of a you know ah a tame gathering and Vince gave a slideshow um in the living room.
00:08:32
Speaker
It was really special, it felt so intimate and at the time because I was so enraptured with climbing and the climbers that I looked up to, you and Vince, coming off the heels of Nangaparbat, I felt like this sort of sense of privilege to be there, like I was part of the Cool Kids Club and then I remember seeing that image. And i I just love black and white, you know, I wish more of my career could have been in black and white. And I just remember seeing that image and being like, oh, shit, there are images that transcend a sport. And because they get at something so much deeper and, you know, that that being emotion, something something actually celebrated, something felt through film and instead of sort of celebrated, if that makes any sense.
00:09:11
Speaker
That exactly makes sense because it's felt not celebrated and I think it's real not staged, right? It's not the traditional hands above the head triumphant summit picture. It's like this guy just did one of the hardest yeah climbs yeah in the history of climbing. and This is actually what it looks like when that's done. When that's half done, I should say,
Growth and Shedding Limiting Beliefs
00:09:38
Speaker
halfway done. Yeah, when it's half done. It's the moment you let your guard down for just a second. Yeah, we had a few of those, but that's a story for another another day.
00:09:48
Speaker
I wrote a little bit of prose for this inspiration today, and it is, when you shed useless beliefs, you may feel shame. Probably relief, definitely exhaustion. Take heart. Exhaustion precedes renewal. There's a few useless beliefs that I've shed at various times that I want to share. One is that climbing could teach me everything there is to know. Another is that I am only a climber. Another was that receiving, whether that's other people's time, their intent, their words, their gifts, had no value and that only giving matters.
00:10:31
Speaker
ah Another one is, I have to say that a big part of my life when I was focused on just being the best climber I could be, One of the ways I did that was I just filtered out everything into a single channel. And so the result of that was when i had two conflicting or when I had two conflicting emotions or pieces of information that were simultaneously true, I couldn't handle it. And so I would cut one out, which leads to this kind of black and white thinking. I couldn't integrate multiple channels of emotion or meaning.
00:11:10
Speaker
And when I talk about these kinds of useless beliefs, we've had conversations around this in the past, Cory. What comes up for you? Beliefs in the way we're talking about them, I think are interchangeable with the word story. And humans are consummate storytellers. That's what we do. That's human consciousness writ large is is storytelling. We are given time, and then time becomes, and when it's not promised, how much we have, and then time time becomes the vessel of story. And so when I hear you talk about this, I think of sort of the basic premise of a lot of story, which is duality. And and that comes from, I mean, that's the oldest sort of, those are those are the bumpers of myth, right? and And so right, wrong, good, bad, black, white, evil, you know, like all of these things that we use to sort of navigate the world and then we attach to one because it feels safe.
00:12:05
Speaker
And in that attachment, that that necessary conflict arises because in in being one, you've now created the other. And so I think the the the journey when we talk about the hero's journey in some ways, and listening to you, what what comes up for me is that the hard work is detaching from hard binaries, even though they feel comfortable. And somehow, and this takes people, People try so hard to stay the same. We talk about how hard it is to change. People try so incredibly hard to stay the same because it's comfortable. And we so we we actually resist that change heavily, which is why we say it's hard to change because we're trying to stay the same.
00:12:46
Speaker
And for me, that work, that life, that journey has been about detaching from those hard binaries and and taking on the real painful work of learning how to hold two or more things in my head at once that seem to conflict, when in fact, that is the nature of everything. Many things coexist concurrently that simply don't make sense, or they seem to contradict each other, and yet they exist at the same time. so Obviously, a lot comes up for me, and I'm going to give a little spoiler away because you you mentioned the book. um The title itself, The Color of Everything, is a nod to the fact that nothing is black and white, that the world exists in shades of gray, which is the color of everything. Right. I love that. I love that. The most useless belief I think I ever held in the most destructive useless belief was that I didn't matter.
00:13:34
Speaker
And I think that a lot of climbers and I think frankly, a lot of contemporary humans wrestle with that. This is a belief that we have to let go of. And it's when you realize that you even believe that that's, that's what I meant by feeling shame and then relief and then eventually renewal.
00:14:05
Speaker
that renewal is the release from, you know, it's weird because like to not matter gives you a sense of shame for existing. Exactly. Right? it Like it necessarily is like, well then there's shame because I exist if I don't matter then what the, you know, I'm just taking up, I'm a waste of space. Yeah. And so many of us I think learn that in in subtle ways and I will just speak for myself. I don't think that all of my climbing was bad, and I don't i don't mean to harp on it or say that, you know, I don't regret it at all, but so much of it, even though it was born from sort of a genuine passion, it was born from this childhood obsession and going climbing with my dad, my mom, my brother, um it became maladaptive to the point where it was like literally trying to prove to the world that I mattered. Like, kind of like, ah you know, feeling that like,
00:14:57
Speaker
Look, I exist. I exist. you know like and And the story of I Don't Matter it was sort of just planted very early in me, childhood, and it came in subtle ways that weren't weren't intended at all. Nobody was telling me that, but it's the story behind it. It's the belief that gets reinforced behind it, if you know what I mean. Absolutely I do. I think that this gets to a theme I want to dig into which is out of motivation because I think that this
00:15:28
Speaker
belief that we don't matter leads to a predilection to believing that we need a reward to matter. And these can be financial rewards, status. I think the most common reward, and I want to dig into this with you, is recognition. And I know that this is something that both you and I have wrestled with over the years. But it also includes like, I just deserved this because I worked hard, which I don't know what to call that entitlement, I guess, or, you know, all reward motivated people have what is in my experience, sort of this false experience.
00:16:09
Speaker
the experience of being rewarded should just be pleasant and enjoyable. And that because they deserve or, you know, our owed status, recognition, money, whatever, that they're kind of free to choose what they want to do and not do. And they're free to avoid anything mundane, unpleasant, or most of all, uncomfortable. And there's few things, maybe nothing in my lifetime of experience that is more uncomfortable than climbing at extreme altitudes. That's like literally like the most uncomfortable thing I know of in existence that I have experienced. What have your motivations been? I mean, you you know you say like you had this from your family that you were rewarded. You got you got external valid validation, both from family and also from your your our club, right? Like our club of our clique of climbing.
00:17:04
Speaker
that you were able to you know accomplish something and you got you got positive reinforcement out of that. What point did you realize that that's what was going on? I mean, honestly, like yeah I think I knew it long before I voiced it, which is so often the case with truth or what we'll call honesty. you know Oftentimes we know we're in ah we're in a relationship that doesn't work, but we're too afraid to voice it because the fear of loss is too great. And so I think I think i had that that sort of innate knowledge for a long time and that extended both to photography and climbing where there was a piece of me that was so devastatingly stressed out by the thought of continuing
00:17:51
Speaker
but I wasn't ready to to admit that, you know, um well, admit it, first and foremost, and also admit that, like, the reason I was continuing forward and and tolerating that discomfort, not only physically, but emotionally, was because I feared that if I didn't do these things again, I wouldn't matter. Like, my my my reason for being, essentially, I confused identity, and I confused identity with doing, which, you know, I am, I started to identify, I am a climber, I am a photographer, I am this, I am that, which which is, in some ways, if you look at it, like sort of a, it's it's not really a very good use of the English language. We have so many other ways to describe the experience of doing something without negating our being, because I am, period,
00:18:47
Speaker
I take pictures, that's a journey, right? I i climb mountains at times, that's a journey. so There's sort of a trappedness, like a stuckness that comes from the identity of climber. um there's a and and And yet then you get rewarded for going out and risking so much. ah And you're really heavily rewarded until it doesn't work, either because you you don't do it anymore or you die. And and our culture is built on sort of the nature the the idea, the concept of individual exceptionalism.
00:19:24
Speaker
And so we create a narrative, a hero narrative around ourselves. And there's some there's some like um there's a really beautiful book. I think it it was the Pulitzer winner in maybe 1974 called The Denial of Death, which basically puts forward that the the basic the most basal human anxiety is the fear of death. And in order to ah repress that necessarily so that we can function in life, our our our primary drive is to be the hero of our own story. which makes total sense as it relates to myth. What we're doing is is creating ourselves to be a hero in order to justify our existence in order to matter to the world. And I think sometimes that just gets spun so far forward that you forget that I matter just because I exist. A hundred percent. Just because I'm breathing. You know? Yeah, I totally use that validation. I wanted the rewards, you know?
00:20:17
Speaker
Yeah, the rewards. I think society tends to, um or maybe not tends to, society shapes us to want the rewards and to expect the rewards because we are constantly elevating people who have achieved something amazing. And look, they have this, you know, beautiful partner and they have ah all this money and they live on this magical fairy tale Island or whatever, right? They have this fairy tale life. Nothing is, you know, this is sort of social media is entirely built on this whole thing. but I think that it's it's really important what you say. One thing I wanted to reflect back and sort of put a pin in and pause on is you said you knew it for a long time before you actually could speak it and how that is the nature of honesty. And I think that that's really beautiful what you said and it's very true, right? Like that
00:21:09
Speaker
i I know that that you knew it and I watched you go through that, especially like, you know, let's say around 2011, 2012 to those, those years right after you climbed gasher from two in winter with Simone and Dennis. I remember like feeling so bad that I couldn't like reach inside of you and with a wrench and like adjust something so that you could see it. Because I could see it and I could figure out as your brother how to fix it for you. And that was really hard for me. Well, I mean, and it's because you had already been through it. Right. And you would you would learn. Yeah. Yeah. yeah And you were still going through it. And that's how that's the only reason I knew anything. Right. Or that's the only reason we any of us know anything is because I just was a little bit ahead of you on the curve 10 years. Yeah. Basically. i mean People state, you know, they start with why, why, why, why? And I actually think that's i think that's a disservice. It's a great question. Why am I doing things? But I honestly, you know, in the men's work that I do, we always start with where, which is a nod to honesty. It's like, well, where are you actually? Then we can get to why. But let's just start with where you are, like being honest. Are you, you know, are are you... Cheating on your wife. Are you um are you financially stable or unstable? like Just little done little and big things. are you are you Are you genuinely happy? And you create a picture of where you are in life because then you have a solid foundation for what needs to what you would like to address and why. you know And then you get to the whys. But i yeah, that honesty is there. It's there in my marriage.
00:22:58
Speaker
It was there, in like you're saying, in climbing. it was you know And I think it really came to a head. In 2021, it took 10 years, a decade, before I really realized what you're hinting at now. Yeah, yeah. And I want to go back to 2011 for a minute, because I think it's really ah ah a watershed for you. And if I look look at your you and your life, in February 2011, you climbed Gashram in winter, the first 8,000-meter peak in Pakistan to be climbed in winter. tur
00:23:35
Speaker
with ah Simone Mora and Dennis Arrupko. And you made this film, a short film called Cold, an incredible film for those of you who have not seen it. And you closed that short film with some pretty haunting lines that I've gone back to a few times. You had, in the film, you you guys had made it to the top, you'd come down and there was no big sense of like climax when you're on the top. In fact, the opposite, it was like obvious from the film, like how much you have just a tiny window of survival there before you have to turn around, start down, a storm comes in, and this is all told through the filmmaking. And then you are buried in an avalanche. You have one arm sticking out, your head is left above the snow. And And as you narrate the end of the film, you're approaching base camp after the avalanche and after this you know very emotional scene where you sort of film yourself right after the avalanche. And you the narration is, somehow we all got lucky. We're on the home stretch now. No more fear. Somehow in all of this, I know there is incomprehensible beauty. And in this moment, I feel strength. Maybe I'm strong enough.
00:24:52
Speaker
but I don't know, I still don't know. And here's here's somebody who's not even in base camp yet after having just, I mean, you're still to the only North American to have climbed an 8,000 meter peak in winter, to my knowledge. An incredible achievement, you know, be a ah pinnacle for anyone in any mountaineers life. And I can hear the self-doubt and inner critic coming through. Like you literally, Did it and you're like I still don't know if I was if I'm strong enough to do it It's like dude like you literally did it like what the hell are you talking about? You did in fact climbs you to in winter with two of the strongest most accomplished how to do climbers ever
00:25:38
Speaker
Dawn double boots, let's be honest. Those guys are both just complete, you know they mainia you know, creatures of the wall, as Mesner put it years and years ago. And I think that you are, of course, right to doubt whether or not you belong there at 8,000 meters in winter because there's a lot of humility in that. And frankly, no one belongs at 8,000 meters in winter. Like we're not designed for that. We can't survive that. The core idea underneath this is one of the things that I saw it in you at that time and that I was developing in myself but had not quite gotten my
00:26:16
Speaker
full handle on was sort of this idea of leading myself first and progressing as a person enough that I could look at others and see where they were and notice that they're on this point of the journey. And it's really easy to get off on the wrong foot with are are our work on ourselves. And I think that the biggest stumbling block is motivation, because I think we're programmed into a reward-based motivation. And I think it's a complete fallacy. I think it doesn't work. I think that, you know, in and that film and throughout your life as a climber, you've been constantly, in every interview I've read about,
00:27:03
Speaker
in every interview I've read with you, you were questioning your own motivation and transparently sort of airing some different motivations. You talked about, you know, all the attention and, you know, the the the, you know, it was an incredible achievement and the film was also an incredible piece of artwork and it brought so many people into the experience and you were reaping the reward and it wasn't filling the void within you. because you thought that that was supposed to, right? Yeah. Well, the reward, you know, it's so funny, there's like this sort of metaphor and allegory of like, you know, that you climb the you climb the ladder to look in the box, and the box is always empty. And at that point, you can choose to continue to climb another ladder
00:27:54
Speaker
knowing that the box is empty, ah or you can convince yourself that maybe there's another box is full. The reward is mistaken um as the external validation. So we mistake that reward, the external reward, with what we're actually looking for, which is the internal fulfillment and and our wholeness. But a lot of people miss it. People mistake story as a series of events. Well, that's not a story. The story is actually what you're what you're trying to unravel or understand inside. That's a story. The external events are the plot.
00:28:33
Speaker
and the plot leads you to the theme, which is ultimately what the story is about, right? And so often in this shit, we mistake the internal goal for the external goal. And so when I'm saying I'm not strong enough, I'm literally saying like, okay, it's it's sort of, now I look at it as sort of a harbinger for what's to come, which is let me go do this again and see if I'm strong enough. Okay, I don't feel strong enough now. So let me go do this again. And again, and again, maybe it's a different mountain, maybe it's a different partner, maybe it's a different job, maybe it's a different assignment.
Unfulfilled Goals and Zen Realizations
00:29:10
Speaker
Let me just see, let me climb this next ladder because I'm fucking certain that box is full, right? And so the motivation becomes the end goal or the motivation becomes everything that comes with that from the external on those journeys. And certainly there's nothing wrong with enjoying a little bit of success. There's nothing wrong with celebrating yourself.
00:29:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, and this goes back to like avoiding black and white thinking, right? like We have to integrate both of these realities, but I i think that you're totally right. There's nothing wrong with... we're we And nobody's perfect. like We don't have to like be monks and not enjoy ourselves. yeah um But I think that this... I want to go back to this, climb the ladder to look in the box, and the box is always empty, as you say. I think that that is this reinforcing cycle, which to me is the doom spiral of motivation, because then you you constantly, and and I went through this in my own climbing career, right? I was just like, every year I'm doing these things, and every year all the journalists ask me is, what am I going to do next? and i'm like
00:30:16
Speaker
Guys, like I just did this thing. It's really, I think, quite beautiful. And I'm really proud of it. Cool. And it was an incredible journey. And and you know like you're already asking me what's what's next. Well, going home and sleeping and and like having a good meal and maybe like trying to eventually get motivation back to to do this again. And it was like, OK, now I'm on ah in this doom spiral where I don't feel motivated because the reward doesn't taste as sweet anymore. And the reward doesn't go up exponentially. The reward kind of stays the same. And when the reward's been the same for 10 years or 20 years and you're you're doing the same thing, running on the same hamster wheel, sort of like, huh, okay, well, you know, there's got to be more to life than this. And that's sort of
00:31:05
Speaker
When, for me, when I started with all this kind of self-doubt and I threw in a lot of self-sabotage, that's something that you and I have talked about in private. We're both sort of mini experts, I think, on that. um Oh, yeah. Yeah. How did that manifest for you and your journey? The self-sabotage or the, or the would like, I mean, that was, you know, like. Yeah, take your pick. It's a buffet of options. It is a total buffet of options. It's fine. Like one point I want to like, you know, we always talk about the summit doesn't matter. It's a journey. It's an, it's a trope, right? And it's so annoying. And you're just like, well, and the way I like to, phrase it's more of a Zen cone. It's like only the summit can can illuminate its own insignificance.
00:31:49
Speaker
Which means that in order to understand that the summit doesn't matter, you have to get to the summit. So the summit does matter or doesn't it matter, right? So it's it's like, it's it's a really, um you know, the summit does matter, but only to show you that it doesn't matter. So it's it's very, because only that view can offer it. And and i know i know it's I know it's kind of trite. I know it's a trope. And also there seems to be a lot of truth and cliches when you start to unravel them. That's why they're cliches. um The idea of self-sabotage is one of those things where, you like you say, I'm a little bit of a master of it, I think we both are, where it goes back to that fundamental questioning of your viability as ah as a human being, as a being in this world, like, do I matter? And all of a sudden, you start to get um these external sort of
00:32:46
Speaker
hints that maybe you matter and then you mistake them for mattering. And then, ah because of that, you you sort of you lose sight entirely of of the journey inside. And then, because you don't trust it, you burn it down. And that's what self-sabotage is, right? or like that For me, that's what self-sabotage is. hundred percent Oh, I've proven this thing and now everybody's actually reinforcing it for me, ah but I still don't believe it. So fuck it. Where's the matches? Let's go again. Tell me a story about that. Tell me like a real life example.
00:33:21
Speaker
You mean from today or from like this morning? I mean, for example, there was a time where ah you know where after Gashburn 2, after all the success, i you know i was I was on the North Face team, I was in a production company with my friends, I'd just gotten married, so things were actually really good. And there's two there's two realities in this story. But rather than than accepting that, settling into it and really examining and going, okay, I've got space to understand and really start to you know um explore what it means to be instead of do, I was like, man, fuck it.
00:34:03
Speaker
I'm gonna cheat on my wife. I'm gonna start drinking a lot. I'm gonna react heavily to to my my sponsors in a very um negative way when they when there was a pay cut. And I'm not gonna even try to engage with my friends on this film company because look at me, I'm so fucking great. Why do I need to do any work, right? So it's all these things where I was like, well, let's just, let's burn this whole thing down. Now, not only that, now I can feel sorry for myself. right And now I can use that as motivation. Now I can be like, oh, look at me, I'm so destitute. And I can create a new creation story of, but look how I rose from this. When in fact, that's all it was really about. I mean, not all it was really about, but that's so much of what was it about. It was giving myself a new motivation, a new motivation for self-hatred. Hey, look what I like, I'm such a fuck up. And a new motivation to rebuild from self-hatred.
00:35:00
Speaker
But again, you know it was cyclical over and over and over, and there was a you know there's more examples of that. But... Oh, yeah. And this is so common in climbing. I think that, I mean, that but many microcosms of that story, you know, I think Mark Twight originally, at least to my knowledge, wrote about it when he talked about that in Kiss or Kill and how he, quote unquote, got good with the knife. And what he was talking about was more or less self-sabotage, like, killing you know, killing relationships, cutting people out.
00:35:32
Speaker
you know, just being an a jerk so that people didn't want to be around him. um These were all exactly this type of behavior that sort of deconstructed whatever structure of success and modicum of normality he had created through his climbing in his artwork so that he could hate himself enough to do it again. that was yeah Exactly. it's It's so good. that that's exactly i Hate myself enough to do it again. yeah and and then And know that ultimately I'm going to self-sabotage. I had a thought and I wanted to you come back to to what you said about like what's next, what's next, what's next.
00:36:14
Speaker
First of all, we don't take time time to celebrate the wind. So so i that's work that I'm trying to do. Celebrate the wind. Even now, as the end of the book's coming out, like what's next? what's like And take a moment to just like sit. And ah you know I'm curious about your experience with finishing a book. So hold on. And when people say, um when they say, what's next? I love the question. because I've finally found an answer that I enjoy to give to people. and And it's when people say, what's next? I like to say this, because ultimately that's what you're going for. This, this right now, there is no next, it's just this. Let's take a moment to be here rather than future fucking ourselves, which we're always doing. I get your question, am I gonna go climb a mountain? Am I gonna write another book? I'm not gonna answer that because quite frankly, I don't fucking know. yeah And so I can give you some bullshit answer, or I can say, well, what's next is this. yeah And what's next now is this. you know And and it in it pisses people off, which is also great. you know But it also reminds us, hey, presence. like let's well let's re i mean All of us spend 90% of our day either in the past or present. So like just take a moment right now. How about this?
00:37:33
Speaker
yeah When we hear somebody bitching and moaning about something um or you know just expressing emotion, and this is I think a fundamental flaw of the of the culture and society that we live in, is that, or let me say there's space for work here. When we hear somebody ah bitching and moaning about something that we understand is trivial in relationship or in regards to what we've experienced, We immediately stamp out their emotions by saying, yeah, but but consider this or you don't even like, you know, you don't even know, to but you've never, yeah you don't even know you you, you haven't stood on that, like, blah, blah, blah. And what we're doing is we're literally rejecting their emotional experience. They're sharing vulnerable. And then we shit on it. We gaslight them.
00:38:17
Speaker
We gaslight them. yeah And so what they do and the message they they learn is, well, and especially as children, they learn when we're trying to tell them they're starving kids in Africa, what they learn in that moment is my emotional experience isn't welcome here. So I'm just not gonna tell you. And then later on, we're going, be vulnerable, tell us everything you feel. And even relationships, I see this all the time with my girlfriend, where we do it to each other, you know, be vulnerable, just tell me how you feel. And then they tell you how you feel. And you get mad at them for what they've just, you know, and you're like, what the fuck are we doing? Like, that's not healthy, you know? But but see, that's that's where you go into the definition of honesty, where you first have an awareness, for sometimes for a very long time, before you can have the courage or
Healthy Motivation and Purpose
00:39:03
Speaker
the resolve or the need, maybe, just to name it and say, this is not healthy. The part that I want to go back to is motivation, because I think it's so interesting. So what is a healthy
00:39:18
Speaker
motivation. what what What does it look like? I have some theories, but and before I like have you kick holes in my theories, I want to see if you have a theory. Okay. This is a really cool question. I love it. And I'm going to try to connect these dots. I was walking down, I was in Miami the other week for ah a film premiere, I was walking with a guy named Dan Buettner, and he asked me, what is how do you know what the next quote-unquote right action is? And, you know, I had this very sort of meandering philosophical answer about what is right and wrong. And he's like, no, I get it. I get it. What? How do you know? Like, how do you make a decision? And I said, well, you know, like, tell me yours. And he said, does it align?
00:40:04
Speaker
with your purpose? And can you clearly define your purpose and does this action or this course support or undercut that purpose? And so I think when it comes to motivation, it's a very similar, not identical, but a very parallel answer. What is your motivation? Where are you now? What is you know what is your purpose genuinely? And does your um does your motivation align with that purpose? Or is it coming from a different place? And that's where you have to get real fucking honest, right? Like, oh, actually my motivation doesn't align with my purpose. It might actually be counter to it. So I would say that a healthy motivation is when you can clearly identify your purpose and put those and and put those two in lockstep and understand your virtues, what they mean, your values, what they mean, and do those things line up.
00:41:02
Speaker
You know, that's a very broad answer. But at the same time, I think it's ah those motivations are always going to be a little different. So I guess the primary motivation would be to align with my purpose. I love it. Well, it connects to this idea of the importance of leading yourself. Because only when you lead yourself according to right decisions and make us enough good decisions that you make progress as a person, will you start to be able to help others.
00:41:38
Speaker
I mean, just as it relates to training, and I know we don't wanna talk a lot about training on this, but I just recently, you know, I worked with you as a coach and it was profound, profound. And it it helped me achieve something phenomenal. And then I moved on to a different coach. And recently, i this is this is ah this is a point of honesty. I started working with a new coach and he said, what's what's your what's your motivation? And I said, vanity. And he said, wow, nobody ever just admits that it's vanity. And I said, that's it. I want to fucking look good naked. I like, that's it. And, and he goes, okay, well now we're, now we've got an honest platform. And, and so in that.
00:42:20
Speaker
And here's here's the thing, why do i want to why why is that my goal? Well, yeah, there's social conditioning, there's social programming, there's all of that, and I make space for that. And rather than coming from a place of self-hatred, I hate my body, so I wanna change it. i was I switched the narrative. I want to give this to myself and my body. I want to make this an offering. I want to love my body, not I want to love it when I look in the mirror. I want to love on my body. I want to give it the love that it deserves. yeah And by virtue of naming it externally, i was I was trying to name something internally. And this is one of those times where if you're honest, the external goal and the internal goal start to align over time.
00:43:05
Speaker
yeah Which really what I wanted to do was have a little bit more discipline I wanted to understand my body a little bit more and in doing so I started to love it and guess what? I lost 15 pounds and I look great naked like so, you know Like cool win, but I came from a different motivation Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes. So the only thing that seemed to be important was like, how can I take what I've learned and help other people with it? How can I give back? It felt like a responsibility. And I think one of the key things about responsibility is when you feel a responsibility,
00:43:45
Speaker
Whether it's like you have to walk the dog every day or you have to do your homework or I don't know what whatever it is pass a test You know, it's gonna be hard to fulfill the responsibility You know, you're gonna have to work your ass off to do that And so it's the opposite of like oh things should be easy now or I should have all these this money and all this what attention it's like no, I I have to work now and I actually have to work really hard and and it's And it's in service of this, this responsibility that I feel because of where I've, what I've been able to to do and where I am at this point in my life and back to death, like knowing that this life is finite, right? Like it feels, and I think for me that's been the, so far at this point, i maybe I'll change my mind in a few years, is that that's been that
00:44:39
Speaker
that wellspring of motivation that feels like it's not sending me down any kind of death spiral. It feels it feels pure, it feels good, it feels literally endless. Well, I mean, I love that. I love that. and it And with giving comes gratitude. And I believe that gratitude is is not to be cliche again, but I do believe that gratitude is the single greatest biohack. When you look at the the sort of rewards of when we actually make a a legitimate shift to gratitude, not just giving the libservice, but when we actually start to feel um how special this is, something in us biochemically changes.
00:45:18
Speaker
um And we're able to not only take on more, but give more. Giving is giving is ah is a bottomless wealth so long as you're giving from, again, an honest place. Not giving in order to be seen as giving, but giving because you understand that through it, you are um also more full. I think that is sort of this the secret. And you're and you you know you're talking about the cone of having to ah get to the summit to realize that it doesn't matter, you you know, to get to the point where you have abundance, you have to give away everything that you have and and an endless, on on an endless sort of treadmill of giving and giving and giving and because you want to, you know. Well, the last big question was what's the, what's, what's a good motivation? And I'll just finish it by saying love. If you're acting from a place of love, that is a great motivation. Hmm. Hmm.
00:46:14
Speaker
I want to bring us back to the artist's life because that's one of the themes I really want to explore with you because you are a person, in my view, you're an artist first. And, you know, you're a lot of things and you've been... good at many, many things. And I think that that's, I told you once that it's really hard for you because at that time I was specifically keying in on, you know, youre your photography and your climbing. And I was like, you know,
00:46:44
Speaker
your purpose is being split here. And you know you're yeah I could see you getting pulled back and forth, and the North Face and others were also pulling you back and forth. Oh, wait, you can climb 8,000 meter peaks in winter, and you can take these amazing images? Whoa, we really like you. like Come along. you know And by the way, you have to do two jobs. you know It's really unfair, to be honest, um to yourself. and you know of of you know, brands to to do that in my opinion. Poetry and inspired a lot of the kind of thinking around ah this, my thoughts for today for our recording. And, you know, there's poets like Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, who is sort of, I i posted a picture of her on our outline today as sort of our our muse for the day. If you haven't read her stuff, And if you've ever experienced depression, please go read the bell jar. Anne Sexton, others, these were kind of coined the confessional poets because they wrote openly about their experiences with mania, depression, addiction. Even experiences in their in mental hospitals were not off limits. ah Lowell wrote a poem called Waking in the Blue, and I'll read a little bit of it. He wrote, my heart grows tense.
00:48:06
Speaker
As though a harpoon were sparring for the kill. This is the house for the mentally ill.
00:48:14
Speaker
You can't read these poets or read about their lives and think it would be glamorous to follow in their footsteps. a right like And you know you've been a great voice in our community and beyond, like way beyond the outdoor community. You've been an incredible voice around sharing your journey with mental illness and and healing from mental illness. and You and I have each shared our experiences privately and and publicly, but together we've talked quite a lot about our experience specifically with PTSD that we each individually experienced through climbing and the link of that to depression. And you once said something I thought was really great. You said that PTSD doesn't know the difference between a landmine in Iraq and an avalanche in Pakistan.
00:49:04
Speaker
he And I just think that that is such a true statement and it kind of gets to the heart of, you know, this emotional experience that we have in the mountains. You know, so many artists have, and I think honestly, so many climbers, and I'm going to throw ultra runners in there too, I'll have you know, so challenges with mental illness and depression. Does the artist experience that differently than the climber? Oh, does the artist experience different than the climber? Oh, wow. Um, in my experience, and when I talk about mental health stuff, I really, because I'm not a clinician, I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a social worker, I'm not a therapist.
00:49:55
Speaker
that is my That is my disclaimer. So I speak from it from my experience. um i I don't experience them differently. um the the The darkness that comes from mental health oftentimes I think is confused with a catalyst for creation.
Art, Pain, and Healing Through Movement
00:50:18
Speaker
Interesting. Now I might be splitting hairs here. by Confused by whom? Outsiders or insiders? the inside the insider, like I would say for myself. The experiencer. Yeah, that I confused the pain as necessary ah for the creation or the climb, which is also a creation. um I also think that when we have um PTSD or CPTSD, which is complex post-traumatic stress, um which, you know,
00:50:53
Speaker
when When we have those things, oftentimes there's a disconnect that happens um from our body and our mind. and um And I would say there are three pillars of existence as a human. There's the body, the heart, and the mind. um The body and the heart are distinct, and they're all distinct. and yet health comes from their integration, healing comes from their integration. And so when we have traumatic experiences, we essentially get trapped in a mind cycle. And oftentimes I think the act of climbing for me was trying to reintegrate, ah however clumsily, the mind and the body.
00:51:32
Speaker
Um, and so, you know, I agree. ah Can I, can I just interrupt you to say, yes, me too. Me too. Yeah. And just like jumping up and down, raising my hand here. Like, yeah, yeah it's, it's, and and I'm not taking any movement movement, movement, like movement, full body, bipedal, all four limbs and three dimensional movement. And our culture, it's not just PTSD, it's our culture. It is so cerebral. And it is so mind forward that all of us, we we find we go, oh, well, when I move, I feel better. Well, yeah, because you're integrating your your whole existence into one thing for a moment because it's required. Yeah.
00:52:14
Speaker
um and And I think through art, I was trying to integrate my mind and my heart. Oh, I love that. um Because I believe that, because what I don't believe anymore, now oftentimes they come concurrently. is that pain and suffering is necessary for great creation. And and we see that throughout art, especially with you know the 27 Club or whatever, you know these these profound young artists as are artists who are so screaming ah out with with love, with angst, with frustration. they're They're literally the conduit for the human experience of emotion. Their art is anyway. And yet so many of them were deeply troubled or tortured.
00:52:57
Speaker
And that came with addiction. It came with all sorts of you know it came with with mental health struggles. What I believe, and maybe again, I'm getting too fucking weird here for for some people, but I believe that again, Art is the creation, yeah art is love. It is love manifest, it's coming through you. And the reason that so many people who have ah that darkness create such profound art is because it's it's it is our beings, it is our innate beings, love pushing through the darkness. It's literally screaming to come out. What I don't believe is that they necessarily rely on each other.
00:53:41
Speaker
I believe once you are integrated or on that journey to integration, once you find a way to unify in some ways or tie those three pillars back together, you no longer need the torture because you can touch it, you can reach into it for a moment, you can understand it, but it's but you're but you're more able to access love, you're more able to access it in a more um consistent way. can And I would argue, go ahead, go ahead. I just i want to go back. but Can I just say that it's there was a time in my life when I was climbing and that was who I was, that was my identity as we talked about.
00:54:25
Speaker
that I feared integration because I understood the motivation for climbing to come through the pain as you just put it. And I was like, that's the wellspring. I don't want to shut that off. Like, if that goes away, I don't know what will happen to me. Like, I won't be able to do these things anymore that I'm doing. I wanted to stay in the tortured place. We will because because culture has created a story around it too and quite frankly, you know, I have a therapist friend who works a little with a lot of very high level people and one of the things she and she does a lot of psychedelic therapy and one of the things that a lot of her patients say is, you know, had I resolved these issues earlier in life, I never would have created my X Y and Z. Right. I actually don't... Is that true? i See, that's the thing. I don't necessarily... It's again, that's a story that gets created because people start to feel this more fundamental... That's the story I created. Yeah. and and it's ah And it's a really, really tough one because um because artists throughout time have exemplified and example that exact thing, that did the the nature of torture in order to create. And while there is a absolute... you know There's a book called... um
00:55:42
Speaker
Touched with Fire ah by K. Redfield Jamieson. We've talked about this book. Yeah, you actually turn me on to this book. Amazing book if the listener has not heard about it, but tell us about it. So anyway, it's it'ss it just documents the the sort of the parallel ah journey of bipolar or what used to be called manic depression and the artistic temperament. And there's undoubtedly a link ah between the two where so many artists are either documented bipolar or are believed to have been bipolar.
00:56:17
Speaker
um and And but what she but what i what I took away from it is like, yes, these two things oftentimes exist concurrently, but it doesn't mean that in order to make great things, you have to be sick. You have to be tortured. you have to that is a that is ah That's a story that we tell in order to excuse or stay hurt. and we don't need to stay hurt to make stuff. We don't. In fact, I don't believe that life wants us to stay hurt to make stuff. I believe life is crying out, that that innate mattering, that innate specialness of existence is crying out to create outside of that or more freely from that. It doesn't mean you're not gonna experience pain in hurt and hurt. It certainly doesn't mean you can't leverage it and lean into it, but you don't have to become it.
00:57:08
Speaker
I so hope that some tortured young artists hear what you've just said and connect with it and and start to shift their trajectory. The catalog of you know poets who've committed suicide is long. There was a 1995 study, it was called The Price of Greatness, and it was done by psychiatrist Arnold Ludwig. And he looked at a thousand creative artists and found out that 20% of them died by suicide, compared with just 1% of the general population. Yet the very fact that this research is actually done by a psychiatrist kind of
00:57:47
Speaker
shows us how our understanding of tortured poets is changing. And you know when we put that in the context of what you're telling me and and how my experience parallels yours, I can talk about but my experience in a minute, but the the the madness, quote unquote, of a poet, of the artist starts to look more like a psychological problem or and less like a spiritual ordeal. she Is that how you see it? one of the problems of Western psychology or I don't want to say Western Freudian psychology is that we've made this an issue of the mind and certainly there are chemical imbalances there really really are and those things that's that's a real thing that doesn't mean that it's not a spiritual struggle it doesn't mean that because what I've found is the more spiritual I have become and that does not mean that I am religious in any way but the more awe and wonder I have for
00:58:43
Speaker
the sort of the big mystery and the acceptance of that and believing in something that is much greater than myself, even if it's just a connectedness of things, um that the more readily my psychological hurdles have started to soften. So when we try to make it strictly an issue... Psychological hurdles. What is a psychological hurdle? like Bring that into reality for me. Bring that into a story. ah like okay so i was I was assigned the label of Bipolar 2 when I was 14 years old. And I've lived with that label and I've lived in that label for a very long time. And in doing so, I've adopted the story. I i did adopt the story of
00:59:27
Speaker
a sense of brokenness. and And by doing so, I identified all of my maladaptive behavior as some sort of fundamental flaw. And so those are the things, you know, and not only that, but I hid behind it. And I think so often people do, especially nowadays where we find out we start to learn about our trauma, we start to learn about our maladaptive or neurodivergent behaviors. And then we go, we'll see I'm fucked up. So that excuse is what I'm doing. right I don't believe that, but I did it for a long time yeah and it's normal. yeah um And so those hurdles would be, you know, real chemical imbalances to sort of being like, well, I'm being a shitty person and I'm going to blame it on this thing. um And it' the more I've engaged with a sense of
01:00:17
Speaker
Yeah, I sound like such a hippie. um A sense a sense of of oneness, a sense of wonder, a sense of finitude and and and also the the sort of seemingly infinite nature of things. um And the more gratitude I extend towards that, the more those hurdles, the the reliance on being an ah being depressed or now are trying to excuse behavior by hiding behind some sort of episode, whatever it happens to be, um or even experiencing an episode has become so much more manageable right because I'm engaged in a spiritual journey. And that gives you tools. And if those tools help you, and that great.
01:01:01
Speaker
Yeah. and And also it's important to be like, look, if you have a chemical imbalance, you know, or if you're experiencing something that also makes space for that, that's great. Like we have tools for that too. and the But my ah my, the way I look at it now is the tools we use to mitigate the spiritual or the the chemical imbalance help us level, like level set so that we can do the the hard work of going internal and starting to discover the spiritual struggle. 100%. We're recording on April 24th, about a week after Taylor Swift released an album called Tortured Poets Society. And one of the things that I liked about the album was that a lot of the album is mocking people for acting out these exact obsolete stereotypes. So she is invoking sort of tortured poets in the lyrics of her song songs, not to celebrate the glamorous myth of the
01:02:01
Speaker
Tortured artists, but to actually deflate it and dismiss it and she has a song a song lyric and it goes you're not Dylan Thomas I'm not Patti Smith. This ain't the Chelsea Hotel. We're modern idiots Of course, it's Chelsea Hotel. I had to look it up to figure this out and do some research But ah that's where Dylan Thomas died of alcoholism when he was 39 years old. He was of course Dylan Thomas was a a famous poet and he lived a life of debauchery and excess and you know And what I hear her saying here is you know kind of accusing her counterpart in the song, her ex in this case, ah that if he acts troubled, it will make him seem deep.
01:02:46
Speaker
And so, you know, he, and she's kind of calling him out. And when I listened to that, I was sort of like, Hey, Taylor, I feel a little called out, not for my current me, because I wouldn't have recognized it. If I had been that person when doing that kind of behavior, when she, you know, when I, if I had heard that 20 years ago, I wouldn't have recognized myself in it. But now I'm like, Oh, you're calling me out like from 15 years ago. and love that yeah I love I love that you brought up Taylor Swift because I'm not a diehard Swifty, but i I get down with some Taylor Swift. Oh yeah, me too. I'm not going to lie. There were some loud mornings going climbing on, you know, through infinite darkness where I was jamming out to T-Swift. So yeah thank you for bringing up T-Swift. I like her music too. And one of the reasons I wanted to bring her up is because
01:03:40
Speaker
She can't play the tortured artist because what does Taylor Swift embody if not success? Right? Especially at this moment in time where it seems like she is like literally the most successful person in the universe. You know, so it would be completely false of her to claim that narrative, right? When she's so clearly like living completely the opposite narrative. Not to blame her or falter for that, but I think it is a culturally relevant observation that
01:04:16
Speaker
certainly aligns with with my experience and it kind of goes back to, you know, my idea, I think, this this concept that we were talking about of, you know, shedding useless beliefs, feeling shame, relief. And then there's this exhaustion phase where you're just like, like, okay, how am I going to do that again? And then, you know, taking heart because exhaustion proceeds renewal idea. You know, I think that there's that kind of story. I think, you know, to go back to story and storytelling and how we are story making creatures. Well, yeah here's the thing. I think there's two things.
01:04:57
Speaker
First of all, the outward experience, and we know this, the outward appearance of what somebody like Taylor Swift's life looks like does not negate the fact that there might be deep internal struggle and torture. Of course. but and And I think what she's saying, well, you know, it's funny that we're having a debate of sort of Taylor Swift on this podcast, but I love it. um I think you're absolutely right in what she's saying is that You know, being tortured, being young, artistic and tortured is not an identity. it's it's a It's a bunch of stories. It's a bunch of things. Try telling that to the 25 year old you.
01:05:36
Speaker
ah Right. Right. And I would reject it wholeheartedly and I wish I could look at him right now and be a little bit, ah you know, aggressive, like, dude, being young, tortured and, and like being young, tortured and artistic, it's not an identity. It's not a good look. I know it feels like it. I know it actually allows you to sort of. get away with some shit and me you think it makes you feel deep or you think you make it's not deep like it's not actually it's a trope and um and and this is me talking to myself and I know you're gonna have to go through this um ah but I promise you when you come out of it in 20 years
01:06:12
Speaker
um You're going to see that it was it was a false narrative that in many ways allowed you to behave like an asshole. And I'm not saying people who struggle with mental health issues and happen to be artists at the same time are all assholes. I'm simply saying that the story we tell about the mad genius about the tortured artist is a trope that is very, very old. And so often we engage with it simply because the harder work is not being tortured, but being not tortured. It's easy, it's comfortable. Darkness is fucking comfortable. Darkness is a blanket pulled over your eyes where you don't have to look at the world and you just get to sit there and stew in your own
01:06:58
Speaker
yeah Intoxicating warmth, you know? And as you said earlier, you know, it's people to work so hard not to change. And yeah getting out of bed is hard. What is what is what is comfortable is comfortable and if what is familiar is comfortable. and the stories we tell become comfortable. they become they become sick And when I say stories, people, you know, they go, oh, sorry, you know, like, oh, you you climbed a mountain. No, story is like this. You wake Steve, Steve woke up this morning and Steve told himself a story about the world and everything in it and all the relationships he has.
01:07:30
Speaker
and Corey did this. like We all do this. These are the stories I'm talking about. you know ah you and and And when you get to that base level honesty that we've talked about, you start to go, wait, I've been telling the story of being mad, um ah you know and living madly to escape madness. Well, that might just be bullshit. That might just be a misunderstanding and an excuse to go do shit. Yeah, and I want to say I think telling telling stories and especially documenting them, creating art, writing songs, journaling, writing is often a way to, it's a coping mechanism because it disassociates us from being in the moment of... I'm so happy you said this. Oh, God.
01:08:16
Speaker
I keep going because I mean that's what I saw when yeah when when I watched cold when I watched cold the first time i I saw like when you filmed yourself I know we've talked about this and I don't know if you agree with this observation or not but I felt like okay the reason he's because people were like oh he's so vain he's filming himself and I was like don't know he's filming himself because he needs to disassociate from this trauma that he's experiencing And the camera is giving him a way to do that.
01:08:50
Speaker
Is that what happened? yeah It's so interesting because again, there's two pieces that are, is there vanity in it? I don't think vanity is the right word. Was I aware of myself and, and what was happening? Yes. Did I think it was important? Yes. And the camera, as you point out, and this is so often the case with war photographers ah where we use the camera to In order to disassociate from the horror and the and and that these these emotions that are largely intolerable, we put something between us and the experience. And it it it literally physically puts a wall between us so we don't have to feel. And yet we're still experiencing it.
01:09:36
Speaker
and and then And then we get lauded, especially in photography, with like people talk so much about presence. You have to be so present to make a photo. Bullshit. You're in an act of creative flow. yeah And that is very different than presence. An act of creative flow can be the most distracted thing in the world. All you're doing is looking at elements. And yes, it narrows your focus, but it is not presence. In fact, you are completely not present with the moment in front of you. Yeah, I would agree. You're actually disassociated from the moment in front of you, you know, and I had that. And it doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Well, I struggled with this, like with my friends and then eventually I just kind of gave into it, I'll be honest, like that I i struggled with my friends taking pictures during climbing while we were climbing because it started to be like, oh, no, wait, wait, hold that. Like, can you go down a little bit?
01:10:28
Speaker
Mm-hmm. It's like no. No, I can't yeah like that moment is over. I'm going up like I'm here to climb I remember having this great moment with Marco Prezel when we were on nupsi attempting nupsi in 2000 in the fall we and You know He was filming and taking he was taking pictures and I was there with Barry Blanchard and Marco and we were we are attempting this this new route and you know we only had so much daylight and so on and after about two hours of this, I just i just left. i just I just untied from the rope and just started climbing.
01:11:04
Speaker
and eventually they caught up with me and, well actually eventually I got to a park where I didn't feel comfortable without the rope and I stopped and waited for quite a long time and because they continued to film and Mark was like, well, what are you doing? You know, you know he's kind of yelling at me and all set why I took off all this stuff. And I was just, and I just looked at him. I just, I came to climb. Yeah. yeah And we had this like moment where it clicked for him, and he literally put the camera away in it inside his backpack, not any place accessible, and he's like, okay, good. Beautiful. And that completely changed the experience of that climb for us, because we, you know, I was like, no, I want to be, like you said, I want to be here, I want to be now, I want to be doing this thing that I'm doing, I don't want to be posing, I don't want to be thinking about light, I don't want to be waiting.
01:11:58
Speaker
I want to climb. And I think that that coming coming to that, you know, and being able to distill all your presence and all your motivations, you know, I've only had that happen a handful of times. That's a special moment and it takes cultivation and I love that, that you actually communicated something. um You know, yeah it was something. I'll be out of frustration. heart Of course, that happens, right? But it's funny because like, yeah actually, i you know, in the in the photo book that I have coming out. So I was writing this journal entry about it. I talk about I was looking, I was looking, looking, looking, looking for 20 years, looking, looking at things.
01:12:42
Speaker
and And what came out of me, and this often happens when I journal, was it's the last few sentences that end up distilling an idea. And I said, I i had to stop looking before I finally started to see. And what that means is exactly the story that you're telling. You have to put the the camera down and that and then and then you have to work at presence and be like, oh shit, this is a different thing. how much of the world did I miss because my face was behind the camera? I don't, I don't regret it. I absolutely love it. I'm so grateful for that journey, but I'm so curious because sometimes when I look at photographs, it's only then that I go like now as I've been going through it, I'm like, oh shit, I was there for that, but I didn't experience it at the time. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
01:13:36
Speaker
I think that this has so many, you know, there's so many themes in this conversation that have connected, you know, the ex the expression of art, the expression of sport and just the expression of being human in this day and age and time, but hopefully can teach us all something. so I want to well thank you so much for bringing your your thoughts, your vulnerabilit or vulnerability, your your heart, not your experience. And part of what I want to accomplish with this series is showcasing you and what you've experienced, what you've learned,
01:14:23
Speaker
how you see the world now after all these experiences, as whether that's as a bipolar type two or an artist or a climber, as a photographer, as a filmmaker, in all the ways you've shown up in the world, at least so far, for me, and share that with with people because there is so much goodness I think in the mountain journey and there's so much goodness in our mountain community and there's so much wisdom and I i hope that you do own that in the presence that you have been to these places and you
01:15:03
Speaker
Maybe you didn't see them at the time, but they are still in you. You were strong enough to do those incredible climbs that you did. I mean, just for reference, Corey, you climbed to the summit of Everest on the from the North Call without supplemental oxygen in eight hours, which is like a good time for a person using supplemental oxygen. So like I mean, that's that's really, really, really hard to do. And, you know, I hope you can own and be all of those those things and integrate them. and And I want you to know that I love you a lot and I'm really grateful for you showing up as you are and so grateful for you being on this podcast and sharing your life with us.
01:15:46
Speaker
Well, i I appreciate it and I just want to throw some back your way. like i you know it is a bit of a you know I've i' struggled with brotherhood my whole life and by virtue of that, I've i've worked in some ways to collect brothers um and I'm so passionate about men because I think healthy men create a you know create space for healthy women and I think we work back and forth in that way. and so I just want to appreciate you for creating space to talk about these things um and and putting different things into the world. i'm I'm so grateful that you've been through all that you've been through, but this has led you to this place because this is special and creating a venue for honest conversations, whether they relate to the mountains art.
01:16:31
Speaker
um mental health, whatever it happens to be is is needed and important. And I'm so genuinely grateful um so to to have you in my life, but to be able to you know share this space with you, um but really just to have you in my life. So thank you.
01:16:51
Speaker
Thank you, Corey, for that thoughtful and inspiring conversation. If you want to hear more from Corey, check out his brand new book, The Color of Everything. Voice of the Mountains will be back on September 1st with Vince Anderson for an electric conversation about fear. I'm your host, Steve House, and this is Voice of the Mountains.