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Guest: Poet, Novelist, Musician "Loki" Excelsior Smith
4 Plays6 months ago
Renaissance Man Excelsior Smith and host Wednesday Lee Friday talk about addiction and recovery and the dual diagnosis experience. We offer advice for men and opine on how InCels are sooo very close to getting it. We talk EMDR, MAGA and fear, and what it really means to 'sell your body' as a job.
CW for talk about hate crimes, SA, and unaliving.
Wanna know more about Excelsior Smith and his many works?
Writing (The Vista is my best work re: addiction & recovery)
Transcript
Introduction to Mentally Oddcast
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to The Mentally Oddcast, brought to you by sometimes hilarious horror magazine. Each week, your host, Wednesdayly Friday, will be talking with creators from many disciplines who live with mental illness, addiction, neurodivergence, and the impact of trauma.
Mental Health & Creativity
00:00:21
Speaker
We'll discuss how their mental, physical, and emotional health impacts their creative goals, processes, and the things that they create.
00:00:30
Speaker
We hope we can assure all of you who live with these things that you are not alone and you can make art about it.
Introduction of Excelsior Smith
00:00:38
Speaker
Art helps. Hi friends, my name is Wednesday Lee Friday and you are listening to the Mentally Oddcast. We are here to remind everyone that you are not alone and you can make art about it.
00:00:57
Speaker
This week, our guest is Excelsior Smith. He is a novelist, a poet, a songwriter and a visual artist. My God, throw in some flying machines and you're pretty much Da Vinci. Now, now I know you as Excelsior Smith, but I know that you have friends who call you Loki.
Excelsior's Artistic Journey
00:01:17
Speaker
Is that because you are burdened with glorious purpose? Um, probably a little bit more about burden with bringing the Ragnarok.
00:01:27
Speaker
It was so years ago I Got into the underground hip-hop scene on the west coast and coming from Sacramento. It was a pretty It was a ruthless breeding ground for lyricists. And so for many years I wrapped them under the name low-key And put out a couple albums got a gold plaque and
00:01:52
Speaker
Shipped to me from masterpiece of the make him say era Wow. Oh It's a whole it's a whole vibe. It's a whole story and so that that name was stuck with me over the years I took on the Excelsior Smith in the interest of There was a time where we could have an alias and a nom de plume so to speak
00:02:16
Speaker
And no one would be able to find out otherwise. But we're way past that now. Internet sleuthing is going to internet sleuth. So at this point, it doesn't matter that I tried to take on an alias for writing and other purposes. People will figure it out. But it kind of stuck.
00:02:33
Speaker
It's stuck, I still have it. I'm not at all take issue with it. I've gone by many names throughout my life. So low key Excelsior is where you'll find me on Spotify. Excelsior Smith is who I tend to be on social media. And somewhere in the middle is the poet that's been kind of creating a curriculum vitae within the poetic slash literary world as
Personal Struggles & Recovery
00:03:00
Speaker
well. Yep. Okay.
00:03:02
Speaker
Well, cool. Well, that's amazing. It sounds like there's a bunch of great stories that we're not going to get to hear today because it sounds like you've got like a million of them. So so as we mentioned, you are a novelist and a poet and you make music and you do visual art as well. But you're also like a lot of my guests, I guess, if you'll pardon the term, a crazy fan. How's that go?
00:03:31
Speaker
Yes. Um, the way I did, the way we've been coining it within my, my circle these days is I'm a proud card carrying member of the you suck at suicide club. Yep. Yep. I am a member of that club as well. Right. Right. I was originally vigorously turning my implicate my application into the please kill me now club.
00:03:57
Speaker
And they wisely decided otherwise. They looked over my application. They looked over my eligibility for financial aid in the underworld. And they were like, nah, I think we're going to transfer you over to the You Suck at Suicide Club. Keep trying, Department. Yeah, right, right. But, well, happily, I'm not trying anymore.
00:04:24
Speaker
Like, you know, and I would like to think that I will never try again. But so how how recently, if you want to say like, how recently was, was this an issue for you? So this is about two and a half years ago. Okay. And it was probably kind of the the kinetic peak of a 10 year
00:04:51
Speaker
meditation that I was going down a very dark lane. The walls were closing in, they were becoming so narrow that they were scraping my shoulders. I like to put it, I was negotiating the terms of my surrender over the last couple of years by drinking heavily and to the point of it becoming a real fucking problem.
00:05:19
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to the point that it was killing me.
00:05:22
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And I couldn't, beyond, like there's two different ways to look
Impact of Mental Health on Relationships
00:05:29
Speaker
at this. There's the chemical element, which is very legit. And I find there is not enough of a meditation on this in recovery circles, but also it was a spiritual crisis that I was having. And the only way that I saw to deal with that was to self-medicate and drink.
00:05:52
Speaker
That was my drug of choice. I've dabbled in other things, but in recovery circles, a lot of people will be like, what's your DOC? What's your drug of choice? And mine was whiskey, mezcal, IPAs, and camel wides. Camels, my God. Well, not anymore, but there was a time. No, no, I get it. I get it. Well, I'll tell you that in 2022, after I got long COVID,
00:06:18
Speaker
I went into a super deep depression. I had like some physical stuff going on. Uh, as MAGA boys are fond of reminding me, I was also fat. So that caused its own problems. Um, yeah, like they're also fucking healthy, but anyway, um, no, but, but the thing is that I got so depressed. I like stopped eating, but I was taking on my medications as if I was eating normally. So my blood trigger was going crazy, crazy low.
00:06:45
Speaker
And I kept passing out and one day my husband came home from work and he could not wake me up. And he knew that I did not want him to call an ambulance, but he said he tried for like an hour and he could not get me to like wake up or sit up or so. So I wake up and there's, you know, like five strangers in my bedroom, uh, because he finally did call an ambulance.
00:07:10
Speaker
And when, once I realized what was happening and they told me if I didn't go to the hospital, if I just went back to bed as I planned to, that I would almost certainly slip into a coma and die. Like my blood trigger at the time was like 33. And after a few hours of my husband and I, like.
00:07:29
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I mean, that was easily the worst argument we've ever had. He does not raise his voice, but he raised his voice that day. He actually like, I saw his hand go into a fist and he like shook it because he was just so frustrated. And, and he doesn't do that. Like he is my opposite. I am the animated angry one and he is the, well, now let's calm down. Long story short, he made me go to the hospital because I was fully prepared to just lay back down and die.
00:07:58
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I don't have any kids. I have very little family that I see regularly. And it had just been a refrain in my mind for months and months at that point. Nobody needs you. No one relies on you. Why are you even here? What is the point of you? And I think that's something that a lot of people, particularly people
00:08:20
Speaker
that self-medicate, which, you know, I smoke weed every day. But at that time I had to stop smoking weed because I was so like sick all the time. People often say, especially when you go to like a dual diagnosis treatment, which is, you know, your, your chemical addiction, but then also whatever your mental illness is.
Addiction & Recovery
00:08:41
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A lot of people say, well, why can't you just deal with mental illness without the drugs and
00:08:48
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maybe if we had known that we were mentally ill, that there were options, we might not have chosen, you know, street drugs first. Or maybe we would have. Yeah, I mean, it kind of feels like a chicken or the egg question. And we're not very good in our culture about decoding the difference between
00:09:13
Speaker
the addictive qualities of pursuing that forgetful list, that land of nod versus the mental illness. There's a cyclical relationship between depression and addiction and mental illness and trying to escape it. And the sooner we kind of understand that synergy, the better off we'll be, but
00:09:40
Speaker
You know, just like when people say, why can't you just suck it up and not be depressed? You'll hear a lot of people say, why can't you just stop drinking or stop doing drugs?
00:09:50
Speaker
There's no quick answer for that. And there's a million different variations of what it is. Like, you know, I mean, there was a time where I was in love with a woman that had just been that she had just gotten diagnosed as I forget which which stage or category of bipolar, but it led her quickly down a path of doing a lot of Vicodin.
00:10:17
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and all of the, you know, trying all of these coping mechanisms to escape this new reality. And I think that's the part that people don't under that people from the outside looking in can't comprehend. Yeah, I agree. I think for a lot of people when you because first of all, it's very hard to watch someone else suffer with addiction or mental illness because you can't really do much about it.
00:10:44
Speaker
Yeah, and as much as you would like to like I I felt like when I was going through what I was going through that it was much harder on my husband than it was for me because all I had to do was like lie there and be sick and have people running around me in a panic trying to make me not die and here's me going like I Don't know why you're all doing this. You know, you just need it. It's me. All right. There's no reason to get this upset it's so weird because I
00:11:12
Speaker
I think as a rule, people would like to help each other if they can, but they don't always know how. And sometimes it just, because it's so difficult to watch someone suffer like that, we have a tendency to do that whole, well, why don't you just and come up with some bullshitty elementary school thing that like, yes, of course I tried that.
00:11:39
Speaker
Of course, I tried, you know, just feeling better. Of course, I went for a brisk walk and did some yoga. It didn't cure my mental illness, you idiot. That's not how any of this works. But that's that's that's precisely it. And the other cold, hard truth that everyone needs to know is a person is not really going to heal until they are ready to do it for themselves.
00:12:07
Speaker
Like that's a cold hard bottom line. It speaks to the old cliche, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't teach it to drink. And I've done this. I have shepherded people into as close as I can to recovery, but the final step is on them. And I didn't have it in me until I did. And it took almost dying to get there.
00:12:37
Speaker
But once I found that drive, there was still this animal in me that didn't want to surrender completely. And accessing that is what finally led me to seeking some help and trying to get better. But that's not something that
Masculinity & Mental Health
00:12:58
Speaker
people always get to. Yes, agreed. It's a really hard thing to accept, especially
00:13:07
Speaker
once you like there are in recovery culture and specifically within AA and NA and all of the other different A's, there are a lot of court mandates that bring people there. They have to go there and log in some time to get their kids back or to get a hearing or to save a relationship. And those are all good reasons to seek help.
00:13:32
Speaker
But it's not too far from the truth to say the people that stay are the people that finally connect with their own personal desire and will to be free and to live. Yes. There's this poem, and I actually just read it.
00:13:55
Speaker
a couple of nights ago to a group that I host that has to do with recovery. And we use poetry as kind of the prompt or the thematic lead. And it's a poem by Matthew Brown, who's a poet who spent a great deal of time specifically struggling with mental illness and depression and addiction.
00:14:20
Speaker
And he wrote this poem called Salutations. And unfortunately, you cannot find it online, like I have a copy of his book. And this poem will fuck with you. Like it will punch you in the solar plexus. But the way that it articulates submitting to, in this case, addiction, it's such a raw and brutally frank
00:14:48
Speaker
And it's full of these very poetic images and metaphors, but it's brutal. And the reaction that I got from people was very visceral, like across the board, like I did not want to hear that. Fuck that. To other people going, that is exactly how I felt. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it's really.
00:15:11
Speaker
And here's the thing that I didn't understand at the time with this woman that I was in love with that was struggling with this new reality. Like I didn't understand what she was going through. And I unfortunately was trying to save us.
00:15:27
Speaker
without any consideration for her. I was scrambling because there was an us there. I was in love with this woman and we were going to have a life together. I was doing everything to save this idea of us without any consideration of what she was going through and what she needed. Rightfully, it fucking ended in flames.
00:15:50
Speaker
And it is one of a collector's edition of Four Broken Hearts that I've gotten my life and I'm hoping not to add to that collection. But it was a real lesson in the only way we really truly get to healing is when we really fucking wanted ourselves. Well, you have to believe that you deserve it. And a lot of addicts and a lot of mentally ill people do not either because they've been expressly told that or
00:16:19
Speaker
because they just, you know, you know, when you're making a mistake, you know, when you're making the wrong decision, the selfish decision, the lazy decision, you know, and no one's going to beat you up over it worse than you are. So as long as you think you're garbage and you don't deserve any better, you're not going to try to get any better, which is why telling an addict that they suck and that you're disappointed in them is the opposite of what is helpful. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:16:47
Speaker
And that's another thing that really requires a little more attention is our self-esteem and our ability to love ourselves. And without sliding into the slipstream of self-actualization language and woo-woo-ness, there's something really absolutely true about how we take care of ourselves and how we love ourselves. And a lot of us don't.
00:17:20
Speaker
And it's actually, and I don't know if I'm going to take heat for saying this, I think that the way that addiction and recovery treatment is set up and the way that mental health care is set up, it's more difficult for men than it is for women. Because if you have a room full of women who are all struggling,
00:17:41
Speaker
They might turn on each other sometimes, but for the most part, we all understand, like somebody says, oh, I felt like this and I felt like that, and that's why I did this. And the women will say, yes, of course. I totally understand that. That is so hard. I'm so glad you're talking about your feelings. Men are much less likely to do that, whether they're in groups or they're talking to a buddy. It's like, man, you just got to get over that. Well, no.
00:18:07
Speaker
people don't just, I mean, how, how do you just get over something? You know, I mean, I'm sure we all have friends that come from, you know, not the nicest parrot. That's what I hear. Like I absolutely have a parrot
00:18:23
Speaker
voice screaming at me in my head constantly, even now, like after years of therapy and EMDR, it still creeps in there sometimes. Whenever I have what I consider a personal failure, I absolutely hear my mom's voice in my head saying, well, why did you think you deserve better? What makes you so special? Why would you even try? That's so stupid. You waste everyone's time and just, you know,
00:18:48
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm an adult, I'm a grown-ass woman. And then I look at people in their twenties that are like two or three years away from their abuse. Maybe not even that, because so many kids have to live with their parents, even if they're nightmares now. But I'm digressing. What I was getting at is that I think when doing the work of like acknowledging your feelings and like what you're actually angry about, what you're really sad about,
00:19:14
Speaker
I think society makes that a lot more difficult for men than it does for women because we're allowed to talk about our feelings. We're allowed to cry openly. You know, we're allowed to just feel stuff without people telling us how unmanly or whatever it is to feel stuff. Toxic masculinity, very bad for men.
00:19:36
Speaker
Toxic, yeah. Well, but yeah, I agree. There's an interesting flip side to it that I'll get to in a minute. But yes, I grew up in a very hyper alpha male, you know, violent, misogynist, homophobic, sexist culture. And it definitely informed how I respond to the world. And it took a long time for me to unpack that.
00:20:06
Speaker
It took having a son, and it took getting, extracting myself out of the streets. And I hate that fucking term for it because it's very broad. And, you know, especially when people talk about that, that could either mean that you're a teenage scumbag meth addict, or you're out there slinging and banging. For me, it was more in the slinging and banging side.
00:20:33
Speaker
And I had to extract myself from that and get out of the world that I had known for so long and be a father to start unpacking that. And even then, the thing about men is
00:20:56
Speaker
We have built a house on sand that is finally starting to crumble, yet we still have the controls
00:21:10
Speaker
that we could make the change. Like, I absolutely agree that we've got a real fucking hard road ahead of us. Like, when Me Too happened, I was, you know, I was saying, all right, fellas, shut the fuck up. I know you have a story, but let's shut the fuck up right now. But we do got to get to our story. And then Terry Crews brought it up, and he did it in such a way to where it passed, you know, muster. He wasn't hijacking.
00:21:39
Speaker
this moment that needed to happen, he was just pointing out that this happened to him at a party. And there's a lot of extra subtext with him being a black man in Hollywood. Like, there's a whole bunch of shit that, you know, went down with that. But I, you know, four out of five men that I know have a Me Too story. Three out of five will brag about their first time banging their babysitter, who's a couple years older than them. And they're maybe 11 or 12. And it's not a brat.
00:22:09
Speaker
But that's how we're conditioned to be like, yeah, man, I was putting it down on the babysitter, bro. And I'm like, look, dude, that's not bragging rights, man. You were essayed, period. That's the thing is on the one hand, you don't want to tell someone what their experience is if they feel that it that's not what happened. But at the same time, when I hear of a much older person,
00:22:36
Speaker
doing something like that with a child, my response is, my God, I'm so sorry that happened to you. I'm so sorry that your, your trust in your, your person were violated in that way. And yeah, if they're sitting there with a big goofy grin on their face thinking they got lucky earlier than most people, like what do you even say? Like, well, you know,
00:22:58
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, maybe a part of them knows and maybe that's how they cope with it. We all have coping engines in us that are running constantly. And, you know, we're starting to have the conversation. Jeezy recently in an interview openly talked about being molested as a child.
00:23:15
Speaker
And that was a big fucking moment. I wish it had kind of rippled across the culture a little bit more. Probably not because a lot of other men are like, fuck, I'm not ready to talk about this either. You know what I mean? But the fact that Jeezy, who is very much representative of big dick energy, alpha male, iconic shit, gangster rapper, et cetera, et cetera,
00:23:40
Speaker
like for him to talk about it and not gloss over it but also not fixate on it. This is just a part of the conversation felt like that was really important to have. The other thing is we're still running this shit so we have the power to make these changes. We're still behind the steering wheel.
00:24:03
Speaker
I'm going to give us a little bit of time to sit here and bitch about how hard it is as men, but you do too much of that and then you become like some incel fuck and all you're doing is bitching about your predicament without taking some agency on it. Like there has to be at some point where as men, we take control of what we can here and we start making some changes. Well, the idea of incel culture
00:24:33
Speaker
it like at its core incels and also the whole men going their own way thing. Like on the one hand, it is men getting together to talk about their issues. If they could just take the, it's just that at the end of every conversation, it's, and that's women's fault. And that's why we hate them.
00:24:53
Speaker
Right, you know, like, no, you were doing so well getting together, talking about your frustrations and your feelings. Now apply that to self improvement and increased understanding. And if you really want to find a girlfriend, maybe you can, you know, like, that's a very good point. Yeah, they I feel like in cells are like the late descendants of fortune. Yep. And, you know, there was a real moment
00:25:20
Speaker
within like 4chan culture where there were people that were like, oh shit, we could convert these guys into white supremacist fuckboys. You know what I mean? Yes, I do. There's some real potential there and I'm learning to respond more with like scaffolding and this is a new thing for me, so I might be butchering the definition.
00:25:45
Speaker
scaffolding is when you rather than just blast someone with napalm for their bullshit, you offer a couple of steps for them to kind of consider to bring them along the journey to, you know, getting past that belief system or unpacking it, what have you, you know, I am not the one
00:26:04
Speaker
with the patients to like sit down with, you know, someone who's got a Confederate flag on their bumper sticker and have a conversation. I just don't have the patience. But we do need to have that patience. Some of us do. And I think scaffolding is a way to do it. Yeah, you know, like it's it's it's it's been very, very hard for me to
00:26:30
Speaker
to bring myself to feel like I can be vulnerable and talk about some of these things. But it's also not hard in that I realize how important it is. If it's not so stigmatized for men to be able to talk about it, then we'll talk about it. And then we'll find some, hopefully we'll find some healing. Well, and I think that's actually to tie into the incel thing when men don't have other people to talk to,
00:26:59
Speaker
about their, their various issues, their feelings, whatever, men will talk about that with their partner. But if they don't have a partner, then that like, first of all, your partner shouldn't necessarily be a substitute for therapy. You know, partners help each other a lot. But I think a lot of that is where that entitlement comes from. Because if you're a man and you're touch starved, and you don't have anyone to really open up with,
00:27:28
Speaker
You're right. You do deserve that. You do deserve to open up. You do deserve a hug. That doesn't obligate any one woman to give it to you. We all deserve love. You don't deserve for that person you have a crush on when they bring you your coffee.
00:27:47
Speaker
They don't owe you anything. No individual person owes you something. But yes, you deserve happiness. You deserve intimacy and hugs and to be able to talk about what you're going through. You do deserve that.
00:28:01
Speaker
but it's not the fault of the women you have precious on that you don't have it. It's something else. Like me, growing up, I was told that I was pretty much worthless and that no one would love me until I lost weight. And when I did lose weight, I had a period in junior high where I got really skinny and it was like,
00:28:22
Speaker
all harassment and essay like all the time because I got boobs when I was 11. So I was already getting like, and then I went to Catholic school and I took dance lessons. Like my wardrobe was basically like, you know, a pedophile's dream closet. I mean, I had a ballet dress that looked like a bunny. You know, it's like who puts a child in this and then makes them run around a neighborhood with a bunch of filthy old men. But seriously,
00:28:50
Speaker
But that's the thing is that we all get so confused, especially when we're young about what sex it's for and what intimacy is and what it means when someone hugs you. And now there's this culture where if any woman speaks to you, there are men who think, oh, I'm being hit at. If somebody says, oh, hey, how's your day going? How's class? How's this or that? They think they're being hit at.
00:29:14
Speaker
And I don't know if it's because they're so starved for attention that they think anything is a sexual advance, or because they really wouldn't bother talking to a woman that they weren't hitting on for some, you know, sexual reason. I think we've got a t-shirt out of this this last bit that would read something like, you deserve love, but nobody owes it to you. Right? Yep. Yep. Okay. Yeah, I, you know,
00:29:42
Speaker
There's a friend of mine in recovery who has a great saying. Let me make sure I get this right. The way he puts it is he says, everything in your life is on loan and God is the repo man. And it sounds a little doomish, but it comes out of that whole spirit of gratitude.
00:30:08
Speaker
and just waking up every day like, oh shit, this is awesome that I got it, but it could be gone tomorrow. And that kind of, it feels like a companion piece to you. Yeah, we all deserve love, but nobody owes it to us. It's not something that we can just waltz up and take. I think that's the problem that we're, that's kind of the crisis
00:30:31
Speaker
the philosophical crisis that we're facing right now with this toggling back and forth between the Andrew Tates of the world and then people
Racial Oppression & Historical Context
00:30:46
Speaker
I don't know, realizing that, or at least in the case with men, realizing that there's a lot more, like some of these men are just so pressed and threatened because they're seeing the ability and the option and the consideration to be whatever you want that they didn't have growing up. You know what I mean?
00:31:12
Speaker
in my generation, if any of us showed up with our nails painted or had some new name that was feminine leaning, you'd get your ass beat with a fucking lock stuffed into a sock.
00:31:27
Speaker
It's different now, but it's not. You gotta love how reality will continually fuck with us. That reality isn't so prevalent, but it's starting to show up in places like Florida and in different ways. Now there's legislation that'll do that for you. But the world is like opening up, it's bifurcating so rapidly now that I think a lot of people are just feeling so unmoored.
00:31:54
Speaker
And when we're unmoored, we feel unsafe. And so we start grabbing onto things that we knew and, you know, we start making enemies out of things that don't have to be enemies.
00:32:05
Speaker
I agree, you know, being unfamiliar with something being, you know, finding something strange, but that's, I mean, there are two kinds of people, people that say, Oh, what is that? I don't know what that is. And they're intensely curious and want to know more. And then there's people that say, Oh, I don't know what that is. And then they run in the other direction, as if whatever it is is going to hurt them. And I mean, fear
00:32:30
Speaker
makes people do awful things sometimes. And that's why I'm so like the whole MAGA thing is so terrifying to me because those people are so obviously frightened about things that they don't understand. You know, they think CRT is being taught to kindergartners.
00:32:48
Speaker
And that, you know, the only reason someone would volunteer at a library is to just be around small children for bad reasons and stuff. That doesn't hold up to, like, if that's what you think is happening in the world, how do you even live in the world?
00:33:04
Speaker
like how do you I can't, I can't get my head around it. But then at the same time, somebody will say, Yeah, well, most cops are bastards, or you know, the whole egg can't big or whatever. And it's like, I don't believe that all cops individually are bastards.
00:33:21
Speaker
But policing as an industry? No. Yeah. No. Like maybe maybe it was a bad idea to give the slave catcher's reign to. No shit. Dude, like I keep. Oh, my God. I keep trying to, you know, tell people one of my favorite KRS one lyrics. And it's not his best lyric. But I think it's either in
00:33:46
Speaker
sound of the police or black cop where he has a line where he goes, he basically says something to the effective, you don't see the similarity, let me give you some clarity. And he takes the word overseer to officer. He says overseer, overseer, overseer, officer, officer, officer, officer, officer. And it's, I mean,
00:34:11
Speaker
It's there. You can look it up. I'm not one of these do your own. But the historical evidence is there that will make it very clear how insanely deeply rooted so many of our institutions are that come from chattel slavery.
00:34:30
Speaker
And when people start coming with that, well, you know, other people had slaves too. It is light in day difference between American institutionalized slavery as a business model and two people, two tribes going to war and the winner gets to take a couple of the losers and make them slaves. Like there's a big, massive, catastrophic, financially devastating, historically devastating, generationally devastating, epigenetically devastating difference between the two.
00:35:01
Speaker
Well, and it's not as if we've gone out of our way to reverse what was done. I mean, we stopped doing it, but we didn't do anything to cover the whole like, well, this is your position in the world. Then you have no generational wealth. You have fewer opportunities. Even after World War II, we're still going to fuck with black people a little and say they can't have.
00:35:24
Speaker
the same GI benefits as the white guys when they come home from the war. But you guys could just work a whole lot harder for a whole lot less. That's cool, right? Why are you complaining? Why are you bringing up the past? And that is the thing we talk about in circles of people that have been through domestic abuse when someone says, why do you bring up the past? Buddy, if it's still going on now, it's not the past. It's the present. And if you want to say, oh, there's no slaves now, I would urge you to look at our prison system.
Capitalism & Societal Issues
00:35:54
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's bad enough. We have like sports teams where the guys refer to their bosses, their owner, like, yikes. Why is that happening? Footballers. Yeah. Yeah. I, um, yeah, I, uh, uh, it was an interesting time to stop watching football when Kaepernick took a knee and I haven't really gotten back into it the way I used to watch the game. Um, but.
00:36:22
Speaker
It is a pretty good, I don't know if metaphor is the right word. Is it a simile? It's a great reflection of money being generated from the consideration of genetics and athletics and ability and all of that and we own your ass
00:36:53
Speaker
the kind of contracts that are in place, not to mention, you know, so many athletes get left into the wind when they're no longer useful. There's this level of, I mean, it's a blood sport in a way. Same thing with boxing. Oh, yeah. Same thing with MMA. These are all things that are priming and fueling, you know, the blood lust in us, in a way.
00:37:22
Speaker
Well, and the thing is that those men are using their bodies to make money, but they aren't called out for it the way that, say, a woman on Onlyfans or a sex worker would be called out for earning money with their body, but it's the same thing. I mean, honestly, football players
00:37:43
Speaker
by and large are gonna get like more physical damage unless you know i mean then then like regular sex work where nothing violent happens like if nothing violent i'm not saying this right but like
00:37:58
Speaker
You can get the shit kicked out of you as a football player and nobody says, oh, how can you treat your body like that for money? Are you ashamed? Like, no, they're playing a sport. There's nothing shameful about that. But they won't say the same thing to someone who's like, you know, on camera in a negligee because, oh, God, you're selling your body. That's the worst thing in the world.
00:38:18
Speaker
And in every case, it's because this was the way that people could use their talent and skill to make the most money. And that's what you need to do. Because especially if you live in America, without money, you will die. You will die without money. Yeah, that is a really interesting corollary.
00:38:40
Speaker
between athletics, professional athletics and sex work. Yeah, you're both using your bodies to make money. And I mean, the amount of damage that you take in football is brutal. I played once with a bunch of friends after hours in a park, no pads. It hadn't been a whole lot of drinking yet, but we split up into teams and we started throwing the ball around.
00:39:08
Speaker
and I ran and I caught a ball and my friend on the other team was right behind me and he took air, like his feet left the ground diving towards me, caught me, I took air, my feet are off the ground, we're both fucking airborne and I hit the dirt and I was like, oh, oh, I am never doing this again. I lay there for like two minutes, wind knocked out of me, gasping, got up and was like, I'm done, I'm good, I have no, I can't relax.
00:39:37
Speaker
I can't imagine what I watch those guys. I mean, there's a reason why there's only so many games a season. It's not like baseball where you're playing 100 games. Like it's brutal, the level of damage that these guys are hitting every day. Like it's, you know, hats off, I salute. You know, that's just phenomenal. But it's also, you know, there have been quite a few athletes that have killed themselves.
00:40:07
Speaker
I think it was in the case of Junior Seau, his letter said, he shot himself in the heart. And he said, look at my brain afterwards. This depression is because of that. All them hits. But to tie that back into the bigger picture, well, actually, we're kind of touching on mental well-being there as well. But there's a...
00:40:37
Speaker
I can't stress this enough to people now, and I think people are starting to... There's a little more recognition across the board, but capitalism is a really, really, really, really, really bad idea that has come to fruition now. Maybe it was a good idea in the beginning. I don't know. I wasn't there.
00:41:00
Speaker
What we're seeing what we're seeing the the the late stages of it like wait I feel like we're in the last season of America and depending on how this season goes We'll see if we get renewed for another season but this Grand experiment on so many different levels in terms of it being a democracy In terms of
00:41:26
Speaker
our personal freedom, the ways in which capitalism has seeped into everything and its architects have corrupted everything and don't seem to want to stop doing that in the face of environmental collapse, societal collapse.
00:41:46
Speaker
Financial collapse. It's kind of wild. It's wild to me the fact that we've monetized our health and we've monetized prison is it's it's Wild if you think about if you just sit personally like okay, this is my body. This is my health Now I'm going to make it profitable To treat it but
00:42:13
Speaker
In order to make it profitable to treat it, I need to continually sell this product to you. So I don't need you to heal. I need you to just maintain. Yep. Right? So you're going to live an extra 10 years, but that extra 10 years you're giving us 30 bucks a month, if not a couple hundred bucks a month for this drug. And then you need to take these other drugs to counteract the side effects of that drug.
00:42:39
Speaker
That's one thing. And then let's think about your freedom and let's make it profitable to have you not be free because we need you to make vests for people that are on the side of the road. We need you to process cheese for whole foods. You know what I mean? Like we need you to make furniture for fucking. It's insane that there are, you know, that there's like there's requirements in certain states that you have to have a certain amount of people in prison.
00:43:09
Speaker
in order to fulfill this contract, it's insane. It's crazy. Think about it. Anything that creates a demand for prisoners means that people are gonna get fucked over. There's no way around it. Like the average defendant gets like 10 minutes with their public defender for a felony. And then to know that, to know that people can't even sit and talk with their lawyer about their case, and then flip that around to say, well, if you're in prison, it means you did something wrong. Well, come on.
00:43:39
Speaker
How many episodes of Law and Order do you need to watch before you know that not everyone in prison did something horrible? But the thing about capitalism though, capitalism can work if you don't mix it with oligarchy and if you don't apply it to things
00:43:56
Speaker
that will kill you if you don't have them. You shouldn't be allowed to make a profit on health care, on water, on basic healthy food. If you don't have access to these things, you deserve to have like, that's why we have society. That's why we organized so that people wouldn't die if they couldn't get up and forage for themselves. You know, that's Yeah, that's a good point. And that's why I withdraw from
00:44:23
Speaker
saying that the whole thing was bad back in the day because I don't know. Making something for profit takes away its inherent
Media Influence & Misinformation
00:44:37
Speaker
I don't want to say it's inherent value, but you can't trust it. When the news, when the government said, hey, every network has to have news, it's a community service, you must provide it. And that's why all the major networks have news. But what they forgot to say is it cannot have commercials. You cannot make money from showing the news.
00:44:57
Speaker
Had they done that, we wouldn't have Fox News. We wouldn't have MSNBC as an answer to Fox News. We wouldn't have people competing for viewers and making people want to watch their news because they do that by finding their markets and then playing to the markets, which is why Hannity and Tucker Carlson and all those jackasses have no qualms about saying, oh, yeah, well, I'm not really a newsman. I'm an entertainer.
00:45:23
Speaker
Like, well, but you you lied, though, and people are watching you on a news network and you're saying things that aren't true and they believe that they are true. And then when Fox News goes to court and says no one in their right mind would believe Tucker Carlson and the judge says, yeah, that sounds legit. And yet people still watch him. They say, oh, well, he has to say that. Like, no, he doesn't. None of them have to do any of this. They're doing it because you're buying all their crap.
00:45:51
Speaker
And then you have people getting their, then you have people sourcing their news from the daily show, really sourcing. I've been getting my news from TikTok. I was on TikTok religiously for the first couple of weeks of the uprising in Iran.
00:46:11
Speaker
over the woman's hijab. That shit was right there front and center, raw, unedited. Granted, you'll go down some rabbit holes. You need to be a discerning human being. But it took two weeks for CNN to finally do a story on it, which was kind of weird because Iran's an enemy of ours. And this is great propaganda for democracy and other things. But you know what I'm saying? When it came to that explosion up in
00:46:39
Speaker
What was it called? The train that exploded. Oh, in Ohio? Yeah, and it was in that town that has a name that's... Anyway, that's like the fact that I'm sourcing my news from TikTok and now TikTok is on the chopping block again. And it's not because of China. I love how everyone with their phone
00:47:06
Speaker
for example, is talking about don't get the vaccine because then they can track your every movement and they're holding their phone. That's the irony. And then I love people talking about don't use Teemu or Teemu or TikTok because China's, you know, scrolling through your data like you're on your phone, bro. I just get to find out what kind of purses I like. Oh, no.
00:47:29
Speaker
Like, well, you know, 9-11 and the NSA have been doing this for decades. What we're kind of seeing here
00:47:39
Speaker
is it's kind of like when you're in a fight, when you're a boxer and you've got a really good left hook that you use on occasion, but people don't know about it. And then your opponent hits you with a left hook and you get pissed. Like the way Russia manipulated 2016, we got mad. We did that shit in the 50s in Guatemala.
00:47:59
Speaker
Dropping leaflets. We've been doing this for decades all over Central and South America and now someone gets a little jabbing on us using same kind of propaganda manipulation techniques except bumped up to version whatever .0 because now you have warehouses full of operators with like 20 different profiles posting shit on Facebook to sow chaos.
00:48:25
Speaker
And we just don't know. Like when I was in high school, there was this whole thing with the Contras versus the Sandinistas. And we were helping the Contras and the Sandinistas were the bad guys. And so meanwhile, in our country, our farmers were having a terrible time. And I remember seeing a cartoon that was just a farmer at a payphone saying, yes, that's right, Mr. President, Sandinistas have invaded my farm.
00:48:54
Speaker
But the thing is that a teacher friend of mine went over there to that area and stayed there for like a summer. And when she came back, she explained that the Sandinistas were building hospitals and schools and they were actually the liberals.
00:49:13
Speaker
What was it? Oliver North talking about the Contras were freedom fighters. But I mean, this kind of schoolduggery has been going on forever. And, you know, when it comes to things like this next election cycle coming up, and just the absolute insanity of what's happening now, you know, I mean,
00:49:36
Speaker
I can understand why people are starting to be like, well, maybe it's a, maybe it's a hologram. Maybe we're in the matrix. Maybe it's a grand hallucination because it's so wildly like what is happening right now. Real war is terribly, terribly brutal and devastating. You could look at any clip from what's going on over in the Middle East right now.
00:50:00
Speaker
or Sudan, where we have this really weird, disconnected, romanticized idea of how things are going to happen. And reality is really about to hit us in the fucking jaw. And yet, we're also in this weird kind of, you can make your own reality now. It's getting weird in terms of AI and generating
00:50:27
Speaker
generative AI and all of the weird different platforms where you can make shit that looks real that didn't happen. It's a very, very, very, it's a really weird time to be alive. What I don't understand about the upcoming election is that obviously the last election was not stolen, Biden didn't steal it, he got the most votes and that's how he won. But so many people maintain that that election was stolen.
00:50:54
Speaker
And my question for them is Biden was not in office when the last election was supposedly stolen. He is in office now. So if he's in the business of stealing elections, why would you bother? Why would you bother voting? Why would you bother campaigning? Why would you like they're telling you that they know it wasn't stolen. They're telling you that they know they need your vote because the votes matter.
Self-Understanding Through Art
00:51:22
Speaker
Meanwhile, they're still pretending that something was taken from them. Well, this is why I'm not capable of having of being put in the debate room, because I just I don't have the patience or the crayons to explain it. Like, I just don't. I can't. But someone has to. We got to provide some scaffolding here. I think, you know, like not enough people understand how
00:51:53
Speaker
how delicate all of this is and how our, like, our ability to cope with reality is very, very, it's amazing how we do it. It's wild the ways in which, you know, there's self-medication or split personalities, like the way that we create these realities in order to cope with what we're dealing with. But, you know, it's also, it feels very,
00:52:22
Speaker
thin and tenuous. Over the last couple of years, I've become very interested in why I made some of the decisions that I made, right? And I'm pushing past, well, we can talk about a chemical dependency. In recovery culture, there's a lot of like, I'm glad I found the answer. And that's it.
00:52:45
Speaker
There's a lot of like, all I gotta do is read this book and listen to what my sponsor says and everything's gonna be fine. And for some people that works, like they're not out on the street causing chaos and that's great. But I still have this innate curiosity like, okay,
00:53:05
Speaker
Why did I do that? Why did I know that I was going to die if I kept going and I kept going? Why did I like try to negotiate my surrender for the last decade? Well, I'm not quite ready, but you know, because I knew I had a problem. That's why we write. That's why people create things so we can understand not just each other, but understand ourselves and why we're a different person now than we were like five years ago, because some people brag about like, oh, I haven't changed my views since high school.
00:53:34
Speaker
Well, you sound awful. Thanks for sure. Because if you are not self-examining, if you are not really looking at the world, that's what I love about millennials. Looking at the world and saying, yeah, that's fucked up. We're not doing it that way anymore. Let's normalize this. Now let's look at this this way. And I think so much of what goes on in the creative communities, the art, even like making memes and little comics and stuff, just to get the point across, to illustrate
00:54:04
Speaker
an important point in a succinct way you know like that's why I love poetry so much because you don't have to sit down and spend an afternoon reading a poem you can read it while you're waiting for a bus or on the john or you know whatever like if you have a few minutes you could take in a small bit of something that might change your perception about a whole day or a whole issue like how do you uh how does that manifest itself in your work because I've read
00:54:34
Speaker
a bit of your poetry and it is raw it is fucking brave as hell and you obviously have a lot to say so how does that come together for you um i'm still figuring that out i i mean you know for me i've always been um like hopelessly compelled to create stuff
00:54:58
Speaker
which is good. That's the blessing. The hard part is I don't know how to monetize it or treat it as a business so that this can be what I get to do. I'm working on that. But when I was a kid, we all have different iterations of this. I used to draw comics. I used to write short stories. But at some point, I got into
00:55:25
Speaker
music and writing rap and I am from a generation where, and this is not me shitting on the new kids at all, I'm just telling you the generation I'm from, where you had to have your own style, you had to be fucking good with the words, you had to have
00:55:46
Speaker
lyrical dexterity you had to have metaphors there's a whole lot of things that needed to happen and when you write 16 bars it's not like writing a song that's sung where there's less content how do I put it it's super dense like there's a lot going on in 16 bars when you're rapping well because rapping is less likely to have like a repeated chorus or a bridge you know the part that you hear over and over again because it's like all content
00:56:15
Speaker
Right, right. And when I was on the come up, you had songs like Stand, which were what, five or six minutes long?
00:56:26
Speaker
That was a really, really good proving ground for me. And I also came from the 916 Sacramento, which is a city that we were fucking beasts about it. And so that was the gladiator school for me as a writer. Later on, I turned my attention to, I wrote a couple of novels.
00:56:51
Speaker
and then screenplays. At one point, because I was going to write another novel, and I'm like, this is going to take me 10 months just to have a first draft. Let me write a screenplay and see what that's like and, you know, have have that in, you know, I don't know, a month. And it's a whole like you really have to recalibrate your brain, but it's still an art form. And it's still a part of the written word.
Therapy & Mental Health Recovery
00:57:14
Speaker
And then
00:57:16
Speaker
You know, I did some life-y stuff having a kid. I moved down to San Diego. I was a dad and my kid. I had a pretty beautiful idyllic life to some degree. You know, there were still demons in the corner doing push-ups. All right, so I actually wanted to talk to you a little bit about your decision not to take medication despite
00:57:42
Speaker
dealing with a chemical addiction? And also, I know you've had talk therapy. Does that play off each other? Did the talk therapy inspire you to not take medication? How did that go? So a little bit of that is me being stubborn.
00:58:02
Speaker
and seeing how what the girlfriend went through when she got a bipolar diagnosis. Because from what I know, what I understand is it can take quite some time to find the right calibration of pharmaceuticals to treat you well. And so there's that period where you go through trying different things and it was horrifying to watch. Oh yeah, yeah. There was that time where
00:58:31
Speaker
everyone was getting Adderall and everyone had ADHD. And we've kind of cycled back to that again, but I think with a lot more clarity and hopefully better health options. But also kind of coming from an outlaw hippie background in Hawaii as a kid,
00:58:53
Speaker
Like my uncle, who's known on the island to some people affectionately as Ginger John. Like if you felt sick, he'd be like, eat this raw chunk of garlic. And I've had allergies the last day. Like I ate a clove of garlic yesterday and today before this interview to kind of clear out my sinuses. So I am one of those, if I don't have to resort to chemicals, I will do that.
00:59:21
Speaker
That doesn't mean I'm not open to it. And I'm not, like, I'm not some, you know, whack job new age of where I'm like, I got to burn some sage and rub my shock. You know what I mean? Like, if we need to pump me full of something or let's go. But out of seeing that I was really careful to like, I want to be careful about this. I don't like unless I'm really losing my shit.
00:59:49
Speaker
Let's see how I can navigate this. Have you had EMDR therapy at all? I've had a kind of offshoot of it, kind of a precursor to it. I forget exactly. It's not all of those letters in the acronym. Really? But yes. Yeah. And it was very interesting. And I'm actually looking to explore some of that specifically. Is it EDMR?
01:00:20
Speaker
EMDRs, iMovement Desensitization and Reprocessing. And I will tell you, it changed my life. I honestly don't think I would have, I mean, I'd probably still be in this relationship without it, but it wouldn't be as good because I was, I had gone through so much physical abuse and a lot of times it would just come out of nowhere. You'd be watching TV or having a sandwich and you know, somebody would just come up and smack the shit out of you for something you said two days ago.
01:00:47
Speaker
And so you would never know what it was coming. So, and plus I was also kind of touch star because no one in my family hug, you know, so whatever my, my then boyfriend would reach for me, I would flinch like every time I was like, don't lunge at me, don't be grabby with me. And he's like, you know, it's actually common for boyfriends to put their armor on their girlfriends. Like, I don't know anything about that backup. So, but having EMDR,
01:01:16
Speaker
made it so that like, I don't even know how to describe it exactly. It's like the constant clutch in your chest that makes you kind of afraid of everything. It like it goes away. You know, as
01:01:31
Speaker
it's yeah, it was huge because it's the kind of therapy that could take a lot out of you because first of all, you have to be sober, like straight up sober for it. So you can't like smoke pot and go to the doctor and have a successful, right? Right. Right. But then when I would come home from it, I would just come home and sleep for like a full night's sleep in the middle of the afternoon because I was just so wiped from whatever the therapy was doing to my brain. But for me,
01:01:58
Speaker
and
01:02:14
Speaker
Well, that in talking to, in getting a therapist, seeking help. Especially if you want to avoid medication, because it's true. Medication, like if you have a chemical imbalance in your brain, it is possible that medication will help you. The wrong medication will fuck you up. I was first misdiagnosed as having depression instead of being bipolar. And they gave me a stimulant. They gave me. And it made me manic as hell. And it, I mean,
01:02:44
Speaker
You know, depression is like, oh, I'm not going to do anything today for like six months. Whereas media is a little different. You want to do all the things. And for most of us, doing whatever pops into your mind is not a great life philosophy or, or job plan, really like not that good for, especially as we were saying, if you live in a country where you die without money, you, you really need to keep your shit a little more together than that. Right.
01:03:14
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I can't stress enough that seeking help is the first thing that you need to do. And we don't have a culture, we have one now that is putting in some of the work. But when these memories hit me, at the age of 25, you know, alcohol, weed, that was the coping mechanism. And I started seeking therapy, but
01:03:42
Speaker
I wasn't in a culture that was like, oh, you were abused. Well, here's all the things you can do. By the way, don't start drinking. Well, that's the thing is that like drugs and alcohol for most of us readily available. You know, if you're over 21, it's very easy to go anywhere and get booze. You go to any kind of social event. Not only is there booze, but there are people that say things like what do you mean you're not drinking? How are you not drinking? Are you pregnant?
01:04:11
Speaker
I cannot want to drink and also not be with child. Thanks. Yeah, it defined my life for many, many years, both the abuse and how to cope with it. And, you know, gratefully, I managed to turn a corner on that by the grace of the gods. You know, I had some people in my life that cared about me and not everyone, well,
Poetry & Healing
01:04:39
Speaker
There's a tribe of poets up in Arcata that are fucking outstanding. I don't think enough people know that there's a poetry scene up there that is wildly rich and full of creativity. And it's a safe environment for people to find expression. And so I luckily fell into that. Shout out Will Gibson, one of the architects up there of that whole scene. It provided me with the healing that I needed.
01:05:06
Speaker
And then finally, it was like, all right, this isolation has done its job. Now it's time to come back into civilization just in time for the Mad Max era. Wow. This has just been a great conversation, man. Thank you so much for being here. It is actually time for the Mad Lib. Are you ready for this? Because we do end our interviews with the Mad Lib.
01:05:27
Speaker
Yes, I am. Yeah, yeah. Like I said prior, I don't think I know the actual definition of an adjective, but let's go. Let's do it. All right. So an adjective is a word that describes a noun. So it can be a color or just any sort of describing word. And this one has about four of them. So I'm going to need four different adjectives. Okay.
01:05:58
Speaker
Oh, you need them now. Okay. I do. So you don't listen to the show. I see how it is. Yeah, so give me four adjectives. Four adjectives that describe a noun. Raucous, would that be one? Akram, acrimony, acrimonious. Okay. Raucous, acrimonious.
01:06:27
Speaker
and grating, and hilarious isn't one, is it? Yeah, it is. It is, okay, so let's go with those four. I mean, I ran a magazine called Sometimes Hilarious Horror, so. There we go. I'm up to the minute on the word hilarious. Okay, so I need some plural nouns, two of them. Plural nouns. Yep. Masks. Crossbows.
01:06:58
Speaker
All right. I lied. I need one more. Um, battle axes. All right. I need two, three nouns.
Conclusion & Creative Expression
01:07:08
Speaker
Just regular ass nouns. Yes. All right. You said ass, so I'm putting ass here. Give me two more nouns. Okay. Yeah. I like ass. Do you now? I do. I am an asshole. This is true. Uh, let's see. So we have ass.
01:07:28
Speaker
Let's go with hand and clavicle. Nice. Okay. A place. The beach. All right. Part of the body, plural. Okay. Ears.
01:07:48
Speaker
Okay, now this thing wants three people in the room. So one is you and one is me, and there's no one else in these rooms, so I'm actually gonna put my cat. Okay. And her name is Maxine, which is spelled with three Xs like the movie character. Nice. Have you seen those yet, X and Pearl? I've seen X, but yeah, they're on the list. I hear they're good.
01:08:15
Speaker
Pearl is better. Pearl is better than X. And I was shocked that it was. I did not think it would be. And okay, so that's everything actually. So here comes the Mad Lib. Are you ready for this? Let's go. This Mad Lib is entitled, Movies Should Be Fun.
01:08:32
Speaker
In recent years, there have been too many disaster movies in which tall masks catch on fire, raucous dinosaurs come to life, and huge crossbows attack people in the ocean, making you afraid to get out of your ass in the morning. Movie fans ask why we can't have more acrimonious pictures, like it's a wonderful clavicle, gone with the hand, gone with the hand,
01:09:00
Speaker
or Mr. Excelsior goes to the beach. Nice. These films make you feel grating all over. These same fans ask why we can't have more funny films with comedians such as Laurel and Wetness and Abbott and Maxine. Wow, that's kind of a dated reference there, Mad Libs. These hilarious performers gave us great slapstick battle axes and still make our ears ache from laughing. Nice. Yes.
01:09:29
Speaker
Well done. See, that's the thing about Mad Libs. I don't actually know if I'm breaking a copyright law doing these on my podcast, but I think that everyone should buy a book of Mad Libs right away because whether you are playing something with children or you have a party full of adults that are just, I mean, you could take these things to an orgy and people would have a hilarious time making Mad Libs.
01:09:55
Speaker
you know, old folks homes anywhere. There is no setting, like you could take these to church and do them with the same people that you would do them with on a Saturday night. And it's still hilarious. It's all about your crowd. Mad Libs. And plus, you know, it's a word game. And I'm all about games that make people smarter. You know what an adjective is now. I forgot a minute ago, but now you remember.
01:10:18
Speaker
So I really cannot speak. I mean, I had bad libs at my wedding because I used to have them at my parties and that was our wedding favor. We made little mad lib books and gave them out with personalized pens because we are huge nerds. I mean, not to mention they're pretty good for writer's block, too. Yes. So let me ask you one last question. Are you going to read some of your poetry for us? Yeah, let me pull up the book here.
01:10:48
Speaker
Orphanage by Jesse Kaverly. I hesitate to want to explain my work too much. I like to leave it up for interpretation, but this poem is about
01:11:06
Speaker
kind of come into some resolution with past childhood traumas and the ways in which we kind of swallow them whole and don't want to give them up.
01:11:22
Speaker
what this poem is about beyond your own interpretation, it is about coming to some kind of reintegration with parts of yourself that you've lost or that you've suppressed or that you've ignored those small little pains that become mountains later on in our life if we don't do something about it, you know? So, yeah, that's what this is about. Thank you.
01:11:56
Speaker
All these places I've lived, yet none, I made a home. Nothing hung on walls, no totems on the mantle. Not even a welcome mat. Furniture is afterthought, useful objects, not heirlooms.
01:12:11
Speaker
I've been running scared, running long, running game, anxious to get to the next pin on the map because to be in the journey is excruciating. Presence of mine is to be with the noise, with the voices, the calculated whispers. Your worth is pennies on the dollar, homeboy. She's going to realize you are feral. You are an animal draped in the skin of the boy you wolf down from the inside out.
01:12:40
Speaker
But I ate him to spare him his agony. I wear his tanned skin, cause there will come a time when I will vomit him back up, flesh and viscera, to put him back into his husk. Press into his limbs armature, branches of oak, so that he can carry himself.
01:12:57
Speaker
Animate his mannequin. Place his eyes back within sockets of wax. Stitch his seams together with twine. Prop him against a tree until the blood returns. The pins and needles recede and he can move on his own accord.
01:13:14
Speaker
Where will I go? All these places I've lived and never made home, perhaps the studio apartment on H Street, hollow chamber of chipped windowsills and 70s-era linoleum burrowed to rats and Haverhill fever. Perhaps the house in the alleyway, worn carpet with a case of alopecia, those octagonal crystal doorknobs that kept falling out of doors when slammed and so many were slammed.
01:13:42
Speaker
Perhaps the loft, arched with cavernous ceilings, with the photographer did her best to make it home for us, but I was not at home in me.
01:13:52
Speaker
and perhaps the boy will visit on occasion. Show me the sutras healed, scar tissue ebbing away, small dots where I threaded them together. Coming into focus as a being, flesh and blood made a crib for the spirit. His range of motion now, an expanding arc and radius as he finds his way in the world I kept from him.
01:14:16
Speaker
I hope he won't hate me, but boys no animus. They have imaginary friends with teeth. I hope he won't hate me, because I was the place he lived in, but could not call home.
01:14:30
Speaker
So we want to thank Excelsior Smith so much for joining us. Again, my name is Wednesday Leap Friday, and this is the Mentally Oddcast brought to you by Sometimes Hilarious Horror. Find us on Ko-Fi.com. Sometimes Hilarious Horror. We can always use your support. If you're listening, you probably know that I need a new microphone. We'll see everybody next time.