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Hard Motherf*ckers
61 Plays8 months ago
Years ago, I worked on a project called HARD MOTHERF*CKERS, where I’d interview a group of former San Quentin inmates in my backyard, all of whom had served at least 40 years.
During one of our filming sessions, a generally chill member of the group snapped and nearly threw his friend off my second story balcony.
In this episode of Life’s F’n Nuts, I tell that story.
… oh, and listen all the way through for the surprising twist at the end.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Life's Effing Nuts'
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome, friends, to life's effing nuts. I am JR, one man's stories and ruminations on being human in an upside down world. Basically, I just tell these punchy little stories from my lived experiences that aim to capture relatable truths about life.
Embracing Anachronism: The Love for Letter Writing
00:00:23
Speaker
So it starts way back in 2005, probably, and maybe even before then, but I'm going to say 2005, OK?
00:00:32
Speaker
I basically, I fell in love with letter writing. And I was anachronistic when I was younger. I was very wary of modernity, like modern life.
00:00:46
Speaker
I was threatened by modern life and I was always, I was sort of like the character from, what's that guy's name? Woody Allen's movie, Forget Paris, where I always felt like what was done in the past, that's where it was at. The past was always where it was at.
00:01:04
Speaker
I grew up liking music from the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. I liked writers from the turn of the century. I liked old-fashioned typewriters, manual typewriters. I liked reading the paper version of the newspaper rather than on a tablet or a computer. I did not like cell phones. I liked the radio. I liked vinyl record players, not CDs or MP3s or whatever.
Minimalism and Connection Through Letters
00:01:32
Speaker
I was a throwback.
00:01:35
Speaker
And so in 2005, I was living in a small studio apartment in Rochester, New York.
00:01:43
Speaker
this $315 studio with hardwood floors and there's a red brick building on top of a sandwich shop. And I actually loved it. It was like a pretty cool fucking spot for $315, which is a fucking steal. I lived like sort of like an ascetic monk in a lot of ways. I had a single mattress without a sheet that I'd found. I had a dirty old blue sleeping bag that I'd permanently borrowed from a friend.
00:02:10
Speaker
I had a desk, a small little wooden desk that I'd found. I had a small little wooden chair that I'd found. And I bought an old portable record player that sort of folded up into a briefcase on eBay, I think, for 75 bucks or something like that. And that's literally all I had in the apartment. I had no cell phone. I had no internet. I had no computer. I had no TV. And so I was really living
00:02:37
Speaker
In a lot of ways, disconnected from the electronic superhighway that kept people connected and in touch.
Influences of Jack Kerouac and Meaningful Friendships
00:02:47
Speaker
And so I still had a need to feel meaningfully connected to others. And so from this very old-fashioned and anachronistic place, this very sort of primordial kind of place, I somehow just
00:03:02
Speaker
turned to, and I was a writer, so I somehow turned to letter writing, and maybe there's a chance, I mean, I was very influenced as a youngster by Jack Kerouac's writing, and I know his whole crew, and other sort of writers of his ilk and of his time, they would write long, long letters to each other, and like pour their hearts and souls out. I knew that that was a thing, I'm pretty sure I knew that there was a thing, and that that was like part of the lineage and tradition that I was sort of walking,
00:03:32
Speaker
in the footsteps of. It just fit. And so I would write long, long, long, long, handwritten, beautiful, I thought, beautiful handwritten letters by candlelight for hours and just pour my soul and heart out. It was so nice to not write into a vacuum, to have an audience, to have a focal point as I was writing.
00:03:57
Speaker
And so I'd write, I'd just pour my heart out. And I think people enjoyed the letters because they would write, you know, I had other sort of literary quirky friends and they would write back their own letters where they would pour their souls and heart out. And there was something about that kind of communication that felt so sacred and deep.
00:04:24
Speaker
And then in 2012, I got a letter from a friend of mine named Cooker.
Artistic Expression Through Stationery
00:04:29
Speaker
I thought it was such a cool letter. Like it skipped all the boring formalities. Hey, how you doing? What's new? Here's what's going on with me. There was like no form of structure. It was like, he just started in the middle and just was riffing and expressing himself. And I just thought it was so cool. I really loved the letter and he also
00:04:49
Speaker
sent me a couple pictures. There's like seemingly random pictures. I mean one was of like these two girls at roller derby and then on the back he just wrote a little bit of a caption or something and there was something about that letter that was so compelling to me and it ignited this sort of new wave of or this renewed wave of interest in letter writing for me and so I got really really really really really into letter writing at that point. I was writing
00:05:16
Speaker
On most days, three, four letters. The letters themselves were like works of art. I was always going to stationery shops and buying really cool stationery. I bought a whole bunch of rubber stamps. I was decorating the envelopes and I learned calligraphy. I would go to the post office and purchase all the Collector Forever stamps.
00:05:39
Speaker
And I had everything organized in these little plastic folders at the house. And I just loved it. I was like a lettermaking factory. So I was so excited. In some ways, it was the most excited and inspired I'd ever felt creatively. I was tying together all these different crafts and skills that I'd developed over the years. And I was just able to tie them together in this way that felt really inspiring.
Writing to Inmates: A Shared Need for Communication
00:06:05
Speaker
But then I got to a place where I literally was not receiving letters back fast enough. Like I ran out of people to write to. This was like my chosen medium and I literally didn't have people to write to. And so I was sort of frustrated. And I sort of stayed in that frustrated, that creative tension for a while, not knowing what to do. And then from that creative tension, at one point I had an intuitive hit.
00:06:36
Speaker
It was sort of like a subconscious little crackling of embers deep inside of me that writing to inmates serving long-term sentences would be a good fit. That something told me that there were people out there locked up who would be as available as I was, who would have the same desire
00:06:58
Speaker
and need to communicate, to write, to connect that I have. I did some research and I found that there was a website called writerprisoner.com and basically it was thousands of inmates who were looking for pen pals and it was almost like a dating website. They would show you a picture of the pen pal and they would tell you how long they're in for and the crime that they committed and what they're a little blurb on what they're looking for in a pen pal.
00:07:24
Speaker
you know, search through these thousands and thousands of people out there and found some people, some inmates who seem like good fits for me. A lot of the inmates, I would say at least 75% were looking for romantic connections. And obviously that was not what I was looking for. So I had to sort of sift through a little bit and find people who express more of a desire to connect meaningfully with like-minded people or whatever.
00:07:50
Speaker
And I had no idea if this was gonna work. Like I sent out a few letters. I picked a few people, sent a few letters and I had zero clue. Like, are people gonna write back? Is this gonna work? Are people gonna be open to connecting and communicating? And to my delight and surprise, I received letters back and it was exactly what my instinct, my intuition anticipated. Like it was perfect.
Helping Inmate Glenn Robinson: A Story Begins
00:08:34
Speaker
Everything just felt so right about it. The pen pals that I found were operating on what felt like the exact same frequency as I was in terms of like a sense of urgency, an irrepressible need to express and communicate an unending amount of energy and thoughts and ideas that needed to be expressed. One of the pen pals that I wrote to
00:09:01
Speaker
named Glenn Robinson, after a few letters back and forth, he very explicitly asked me like, can you help me with something? Can you help me tell my story? I've been locked up since I was 17 years old and I'm in here until at least 2036. So this was 2012 at the time.
00:09:20
Speaker
I need to be making some kind of impact. I can't just rot away in here. Like I have something to say. I have something to offer. I've learned a lot. If my words, if my story could be helpful to someone out there, I want to tell it. That's what he told me. And so I went with it and I said, I'll give it a shot. I'll try. And so I created this blog. I took parts of his letters now and edit them a little bit with his permission. And I didn't really know where it was going or what the point of any of it was, but I just went with it. And so, okay, I'm going to pause here for a second. When I noticed,
00:09:50
Speaker
an important theme or pin. I want to stick a pin in this. I guess that's what they say, the phrase. One reason this story is important to me, and I think one lesson that I learned and that might be relevant for you to learn is this idea of creative process and how things, when I follow my guts, when I listen to intuition and instincts and vision,
00:10:20
Speaker
even if it doesn't make sense or if it feels crazy at the time. There are ideas, in some ways, fully formed ideas that I don't know where they come from. I don't know how to explain it on a brain level. Is it some higher function of the brain? I don't know what it is, but I've had this experience throughout my life that when I follow my impulses, my instincts, my gut, my intuition, my desire,
00:10:48
Speaker
that things start to take shape, things that I could not have planned. And if I keep following it, it keeps taking shape. And it sort of turns from this idea realm into something in physical reality. And so I guess the lesson for all of us out there is to experiment with tuning in
00:11:11
Speaker
to little thoughts, little ideas, little visions. And it doesn't matter how small they are or how crazy they seem at their beginning stages, but just feed it and take tiny little steps around them and just sort of see once you take that step what new information is revealed. And so as a creative person, I've always been really in awe of that process, of how that works. And it feels,
00:11:39
Speaker
so expansive to channel something in this fashion. I want to put a pin in that. That's part of the reason this story is important to me. If you can just see the way things evolve and develop on their own by taking just tiny little steps and listening to meaningful inner voices. I know a lot of us have crazy inner voices too, myself included.
Creating 'Beyond This Prison' with Artistic Collaboration
00:12:01
Speaker
Yeah, I started that blog and people were fascinated. I started telling people about it. People were fascinated. Glenn was a great writer. He's been through a lot in life. He's very poetic, very expressive. And so people were into it. And then I eventually got my friend, Kate White, who's a professional artist.
00:12:17
Speaker
to illustrate the blog. And so each time I do a post, you would do this really beautiful little drawing that would accompany the post. And so then the blog started to have this really cool aesthetic appeal. So it was building some momentum. And I even came up with a name, what we were going to call this project, Beyond This Prison. And again, that just sort of came to me.
00:12:37
Speaker
in a very easy, oh yeah, that's what it is. This is beyond this prison. It just made a lot of sense. And so once the blog was up and running, I realized my deep underlying desire is never to sit behind a computer.
Sharing Stories: Presentations and Workshops
00:12:51
Speaker
I'm very much like, I want to be out in the world. I want to be experiencing things. I want to be connecting with people. And so again, just intuitively, instinctively, without even knowing what I was doing or knowing where it was going,
00:13:03
Speaker
Literally, I was walking through the neighborhood one day and saw this arts nonprofit and knocked on their door and said, hey, I'm doing this thing. Can I come share about it? And they were like, sure, yeah, come on by. And so I went and gave a presentation for these young people. It's an organization that works with homeless youth between the ages of 16 and 25. And so I went and gave the presentation, again, not really knowing where it was going and what I was doing necessarily.
00:13:31
Speaker
There was some resonance. People found it fascinating. At that point, the presentation was not at all refined, but there was enough there that people were fascinated.
00:13:54
Speaker
And so from there, I was like, okay, like that is closer to what I'm interested in. So I started developing a curriculum. I took parts of Glenn's letters and I took my own stories and experiences and I started to build these experiential activities that would capture the spirit of the essence or the wisdom of some of Glenn's words.
Networking at Business Bootcamp and Meeting John
00:14:14
Speaker
And so I started taking that, I created a workshop based, I started taking that workshop into afterschool programs,
00:14:22
Speaker
into nonprofits, into high schools, into colleges. And again, there was traction. There was something I was doing that was resonating with people in a meaningful way. And so I just kept following down that path and eventually in 2014, there was enough momentum to where I was like, I wanna give this a real shot. I wanna go all in. And so,
00:14:45
Speaker
I could tell a whole nother story about how this came about, but I had an opportunity to join this business accelerator called Optima Business Bootcamp. And it was basically like a business bootcamp for social enterprises. And in that bootcamp, I met this guy named John. I don't remember his last name. When I shared about my project, Beyond This Prison with Glenn Robinson, John's like, holy shit. Like I'm friends with a guy named Glenn too.
Building Connections: Meeting Triple O
00:15:14
Speaker
who's also formerly incarcerated and something weird is going on here. You have to meet him. And so I met Big Glenn, who we also call Triple O for Triple Original Gangster.
00:15:32
Speaker
And so John set up a meeting with Triple O and I met with him and I think a couple other guys and I told them about what I was doing and told them about who I was. We all met. It was Triple O and a couple of his other sort of entourage who came to my backyard and we talked.
00:15:51
Speaker
And it was a little bit, kind of like a little bit of a mafia thing in a cool way, in the sense that we talked, we talked for maybe an hour and then I walked them out back to their car. It wasn't even triple O, it was one of his guys who was with him said, like, we fuck with you. Like, you're good with us. Like, you just, you showed us you're worth it. And then they also added,
00:16:11
Speaker
where this is like the mafia part. He's like, if you ever need anything or anyone taken care of, you let us know, we'll handle it. And so I thought that was sort of, the whole thing to me was sort of interesting. So going from a place of like being part of this anachronistic, old-fashioned, old weird America tradition of manual typewriters and vinyl records and to just follow that thread all the way along. And suddenly for me, a privileged,
00:16:40
Speaker
in a lot of ways, sheltered Jew who grew up fairly well off in a beautiful Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica where I never had met someone who was incarcerated to all of a sudden be hanging out with these older black men who come from such a different life and who had all spent 40 years at San Quentin and had just such a different experience.
00:17:03
Speaker
to follow that thread and end up in my backyard, them telling me if you need anyone taken care of, let us know. To me, it's just, I guess it's just interesting.
00:17:28
Speaker
So here I'll put another little pin of why this story is important to me. There's something about that, about connecting across culture, across race, across religion, across ideology, across life experience, and to find commonalities, to find intersectional points to relate to people who on the surface one wouldn't think that I would be able to relate to and vice versa.
00:17:58
Speaker
To me, there's something very meaningful and important about that and inspiring and energizing. It gives me sort of hope for humanity to not be confined and limited to what's familiar, to what's comfortable, to what's safe, to what's predictable. And I'm going to even pause here and take it even a step further. And I recognize this is going to be a long-ass fucking story because I haven't even gotten to the actual story I'm trying to tell. And so what I was going to say is that I grew up
00:18:28
Speaker
in this very insular, insulated family system and culture, where I was literally hot to like sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken to like only trust Jews. The outside world was a threat, a danger. From a young age, I always remember like feeling really trapped by that.
00:18:53
Speaker
feeling like that is not who I am. That's not the kind of life that I want to live. I don't want to be fundamentally distrusting of the outsider. And so in some ways, for me, part of the reason the unfolding of these events that I'm telling you had this added layer of meaning is because I was breaking almost as far as one could possibly break from where I started, this very small, insulated,
00:19:22
Speaker
culture family system unit bubble that I was in.
00:19:26
Speaker
all of a sudden I went from that to completely like to this other realm, this other dimension of culture and human experience and worldview. And so that feels very important to me personally, but I also think there's probably a wider relevance and meaning to that, that I'm probably not the only one who had a path laid out for them, who felt limited by that path, who felt like, wait, there's gotta be something more.
00:19:52
Speaker
And I'm probably not the only one who was taught to stick with what's familiar, to associate with like-minded people, with people who look like me, people who come from the same background as I do. I'm probably not the only one. And my understanding, probably in some ways, that's a human experience.
00:20:08
Speaker
like we are sort of evolved from a sort of tribal species. We had tiny little bands and tribes. In some ways, like I imagine that people outside of the tribe were often experienced or viewed as threats. And so I think potentially to like to evolve as a species, we need to at least be willing to open ourselves
00:20:31
Speaker
to experiences that are unfamiliar, that are potentially uncomfortable, that stretch our understanding of ourselves and of others.
00:20:53
Speaker
Okay. Y'all with me?
Creative Collaborations with Stick and Henry
00:20:55
Speaker
So in 2014, 15, 2014, 15, I got introduced to a group of older men.
00:21:07
Speaker
All the black men and all of them had served at least 40 years, done 40 year stints at San Quentin. So I got introduced to them and formed a bit of a relationship with them. And one man in particular, his name was Stick or his nickname was Stick. I can't even remember his real name, Leonard. His name was Leonard, but we called him Stick. He was sort of like a creative, an artist. He was interested in like media and film.
00:21:37
Speaker
And so he sort of came to me and said, like, do you have any ideas for creative direction? And so I came up with this idea that we would do like a weekly show, basically, a film show called Hard Motherfuckers, where I would interview one of the men from this group that I was being introduced to and stick like that idea. And so we started doing it.
00:22:05
Speaker
And one of the main people that I would, sort of the co-host, or one of the main people I was interviewing was a guy named Henry. So I, for the most part, enjoyed these get-togethers, these afternoons. I would buy some beers for the guy I didn't drink, but I'd buy some beers for the guy, some chips and salsa, we'd relax, we'd hang out, and I just, I was just amused.
00:22:26
Speaker
that this is where I found myself. Henry was one of the men who I became probably most close with. We just had sort of a connection and a bond. He was probably one of the most consistent guys. I've met other people from the crew, but he was almost always there, Henry.
00:22:42
Speaker
And he was probably in his mid to late 70s, but looked really healthy. He had really glowing skin. He would often wear this sort of white Panama hat and these pretty cool aviator kind of glasses. And he had this sort of Cuban vibe almost. He would wear flowing button-up shirts and white linen pants and things like that. And I had found that he used to be a professional boxer and that he had been somewhat accomplished, that he had been a successful boxer.
00:23:11
Speaker
And so I liked Henry. He was always sort of even keeled. He was a big personality, a big character, and I felt pretty comfortable with him. And Stick was this, I think I might call it Stick because he was skinny. He was really dark black.
00:23:26
Speaker
And he actually had not, he was the only one who had not done 40 years of San Quentin. And so I later found that people viewed stick as a little bit of like a poser. Like he wasn't as hardcore as the rest of these guys. And he was sort of like a hanger on who like wanted to be as hard as these other guys. And so he, he was an interesting guy. He was pretty skinny. He lived out in Sacramento. I think he always had these crazy ideas. I remember at one point.
00:23:51
Speaker
In addition to hard motherfuckers, he wanted to do this other show where like someone dressed up in like a full-size penis costume and like answered questions about people's sex lives or something like that. Like he was just, he was sort of out there and had all these different ideas. And to me, I thought that Stick and Henry were like totally cool. They always showed up together. And so I, just everything just seemed at that point, seemed
00:24:16
Speaker
safe and I didn't feel like I was in danger in any kind of way. But this one day, Henry and Stick, like there was just a weird vibe or energy going on. Something just seemed off. And it seemed like Stick was kind of annoyed or frustrated with Henry. And Henry was like kind of oblivious to it. And it just there was a weird tension. And at one point, as we were sort of getting ready for the show, Stick had told Henry like, hey,
00:24:47
Speaker
I forgot one of my lights for the filming in the car. Can you go grab it? And so Henry was like, okay, yeah, I'll grab it. And so Henry went outside to grab it. And then I think when it was just me and Stick in the house, Stick said something about like Henry pissing him off or annoying him or something like that.
Realizing the Gravity of Situations
00:25:05
Speaker
And then I think Stick had told me like, there's no light out in the car. I just needed to get away from this motherfucker for five minutes.
00:25:20
Speaker
And so I'm like, okay, like something weird is going on here. About five or 10 minutes later, Henry comes back and Henry realized what had happened that there was no light in the car and that stick was fucking with him. And Henry became a totally different person. Like he was fucking furious, like raging. And he like was so upset with stick.
00:25:44
Speaker
And he started cussing him out. And he was just like, I could just see his blood boiling. His whole body started shaking in some ways. And then Stick was like, you know what? Fuck you, Henry. I don't want to put up your bullshit anymore. Fuck you, Henry. And Stick just left. He just walked out with all his gear, drove back to Sacramento and stranded Henry.
00:26:06
Speaker
And so there I am in my apartment with fucking Henry, this former boxer, guy who did, I can't remember what he, I think he killed someone, I think. Like that's why he was in San Quentin for 40 plus years. I think if I'm not mistaken. And so all of a sudden, for me, I, up to this point, I was like, oh, these guys are cool. We all get along. They drink beer. We make jokes. Like there had never been a tense moment up to this point.
00:26:32
Speaker
And all of a sudden, I'm like, holy shit, like, like, what are you doing, JR? Like, these are fucking, these are guys who've killed people who might have some serious, like, complex trauma, who come from, but some of them, like, really rough circumstances and lives, like, like, what are you doing, JR? Like, something fucking bad could happen. And so I was a little shook, like,
00:26:58
Speaker
I guess I wasn't shaking in my boots, but I was like, oh shit. I don't know if I've taken enough precautions as I'm forming these relationships with these guys. And Henry was like, he was really upset at sick. He's like, fuck that guy, man. He's like, I'm telling you, JR, I was this close to throwing him off your fucking balcony. And he was just going off. And he wasn't directing it to me, but I very clearly did not want to be on his wrong side.
00:27:27
Speaker
And I remember I had a boxing class to get to. And so I was trying to get out of the house and also trying to get away from him. I didn't know what the hell was going to happen.
Paternal Connections and Personal Growth
00:27:39
Speaker
And I was like, Henry, I got to go to boxing. He's like, OK, OK, OK, OK. I'll walk over there with you because the boxing class is at the park down the street from my house.
00:27:51
Speaker
And so I was like, in my head, I was like, I don't want you going with me. I'm trying to get away from you, man. But what was I going to say? No, you can't come with me? So I was like, OK, OK, we can walk over there. Let's go. And so we're walking over there. And as we walk, Henry, I can see that he's calming down a little bit. I think he said he actually grew up in this neighborhood of South Berkeley. So he started telling me stories about the neighborhood as we're walking over to the park. It's about a 10 minute walk.
00:28:19
Speaker
And his energy shifted. His energy changed. And we got to boxing class. And boxing class for me is like a haven. And so once I got to boxing class, I felt like, OK, I'm with my people. I'm cool. I'm fine. Nothing bad is going to happen. And Henry's talking to all the guys and sharing about his stories of being a professional boxer. It was like a cool moment. So it shifted very quickly.
00:28:45
Speaker
And so I put my gloves on and I start to warm up and I'm hitting the bag. And then a very, what I felt, it was a very surprising thing happened.
00:29:10
Speaker
So I'm boxing, boxing, boxing, like warming up. Henry's talking to the guys. And then Henry comes over to me and he notices that like when I'm doing my right-handed, just like, I think they call it what, just like a cross, they call it, that my elbow is out. He's like, no, no, no, no, JR, you gotta put your elbow in like this, put your elbow in and like this. And he's showing me how to do it.
00:29:36
Speaker
And for me, I hadn't, I'd been going to class, but the class was more of like a workout group. No one had given me that much instruction on boxing. I think I had just started at that point, maybe a year prior. So this is like the first time I'm getting instruction. So like, it felt awkward at first to bring my elbow down. I wasn't used to it. And he just kept pointing and saying, no, no, no, more in, more in, you got this, come on, man, more in. And he was really close to me. He's like, probably a foot away from me. And then I got it right. And he's like, yeah, man, like that, that's it, that's it.
00:30:03
Speaker
And he's like, all right, now with the other one, like, let show me your uppercut and get your whole body into it. And I had this moment, as I'm sitting there, or I'm working out with this guy, this, this, you know, black man in his mid to late 70s, who've done 40 years in San Quentin for killing someone, I'm pretty sure. We're like, something just came over me where I felt like
00:30:25
Speaker
Like I had a dad, like it was a very paternal kind of feeling that, a feeling that I had never had, because my dad.
00:30:34
Speaker
was my dad's not effusive or gregarious or embodied or emotive in any kind of way. He's very sort of cerebral and practical. My dad and I, we never wrestled. He didn't fart. He didn't swear. He didn't cuss. He was very sort of within himself. And that's fine.
00:31:04
Speaker
But I had this distinct paternal feeling. I felt so cared for and seen and loved and guided in that moment by this masculine energy and
00:31:19
Speaker
It felt amazing. It felt so good. And I was like, whoa, I wasn't even aware. I didn't even know at that point. At that point, I wasn't a dad. I didn't know that there was an experience in this universe of feeling guided by a dad, shown how... I think masculine and feminine energy are very important in me and probably in most people. I'm not one of these people who are like,
00:31:49
Speaker
a man's got to be masculine all the time and like masculine, masculine, masculine. No, like I think it's a dance and both are important. But I really appreciate it in this moment. Someone who understood and has sort of traveled the road of how to use masculine energy in this focused kind of way. And it was just this beautiful moment.
Reflecting on Human Experiences
00:32:23
Speaker
Part of the reason this story sticks with me, I've written about it and I've told it to people because it does stick with me. Part of it is like how quickly things can change in life. So I went from being in that apartment
00:32:37
Speaker
joking and laughing and not at all aware of the underbelly of these people I was hanging out with and some of the different things they potentially are capable of to like, holy shit, this guy almost threw stick over the fucking railing.
00:32:55
Speaker
I did not doubt that he could have actually done it. And then to swing all the way to this other extreme where I'm having this profound experience of paternal guidance, attunement, and love, I just think, again, for me, I'm just fascinated by how unpredictable and complex and nuanced human experience is.
00:33:20
Speaker
And humans in general, like we are wired so, we have so much stuff inside of us. Who we are, our memories, our traumas, our sensitivities, our proclivities. There's so much that goes into a human. And that can lead to so many just like interesting moments where it's like, whoa, man. Like the human experience is like fucking nuts.
The Journey from Bob Dylan to Now
00:33:48
Speaker
And hopefully I'm showing that, that like to go again, to bring it all the way back to like, even further from 2005, like let's go back to 1998 when I first discovered, I think that's actually when this whole story started, when I first discovered Bob Dylan's music, and when my sort of heart and mind were opened up to this whole, old weird America as I've called it.
00:34:12
Speaker
I believe that starting in 1998, that was actually the beginning of this story. And so to go from 1998 to 2014 or 15 when I'm out there boxing with Henry one foot away from me and feeling for the first time in my entire life being guided in this paternal loving kind of way, to me, it's just fucking fascinating. So I guess to wrap up, and again, I wanna try to make these episodes,
00:34:43
Speaker
Ideally people will hear my experiences be able to relate to them and then also I could sort of I could have some kind of conclusion of like here's what you could learn Here's how you can take this story and apply it to your own life today in this moment Like this is not I don't want it to be where it's like just me Mythologizing myself again and again and again and again and again like oh, I'm so cool. I'm so cool. I'm so cool Here's what happened. Here's what happened. Here's what happened. No one gives a fuck about that man. Come on so I would say
00:35:13
Speaker
A, one thing to learn is what does it look like if you are currently in the process, if you're a person who does listen to your instincts, your intuition, your gut, those little ideas that might seem crazy. What does it look like for you when you listen to those and what has evolved from that? If you're not one of those people who
00:35:36
Speaker
who pays attention to your instincts and your impulses and your ideas, what would it look like if you were to
Encouraging Intuition and Personal Growth
00:35:43
Speaker
do that? If you step back and said, what is speaking to you? What is giving you energy? What's inspiring you? Where's your heart and your mind coming back to consistently? What would that look like? And then further, I would say, what is your current relationship to connecting with people
00:36:03
Speaker
beyond the familiar, beyond the predictable, beyond the comfortable. People of different backgrounds, different cultures, different races, different religions, different politics, different classes. What is that experience for you? I would invite reflection and inquiry around those. I have found those experiences to be important, meaningful, and valuable to me.
00:36:24
Speaker
And so I am a champion for that cause. I'm inviting other people to hold their experiences in similar ways to how I've held mine and to see what happens. So yeah, hopefully this story piqued your interest, piqued your curiosity, resonated on some way, entertained you, buyers you, brought up some feelings, good, bad, or
Conclusion and Invitation for Reflection
00:36:46
Speaker
indifferent. That's my hope. And so that's my hope. That's all I sort of got to say.
00:36:51
Speaker
Thank you all for listening. There will be more episodes of Life's F-ing Nuts coming up soon. Keep on keeping on.