Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Arranging Tangerines Episode 40 - A Conversation with Mike Varley
5 Plays2 years ago
In our most recent installment, Mike Varley (one half of the artistic duo Highley Varlet) has (half of) us over to his very official podcast studio (in his apartment) to discuss his and their artistic endeavors including the “2020: Total Clarity” project where they walked a marathon a day, five days a week, for a full calendar year, the people they met, the podcast episodes they produced, the bagels they ate, the weed bags they picked up, the subsequent NFT collections they produced and how this all helped him to broaden his understanding of New York City, create community, and think about the definition of the word “artist.”
Mike Varley has recently returned to the craft of 'About-Me' writing after a number of years that will henceforth be known as "About-less."
He's become aware through querying his senses that writing a bio two days before the end of a calendar year will garishly color the contents to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. Nevertheless, he has opened a Cherry Coke for the occasion despite the fact it is neither the time of day nor the will of God.
18 months ago, Mike walked seven thousand and twenty four miles around the 5 boroughs of New York City - roughly four thousand, two hundred and sixteen of those with his now wife Jessi Highet. He has spent most days since reliving the experience via digital documentation, a testament to his dedication to never settle on an evident trajectory.
Recently he's learned that the act of entertaining, scheduling, performing, and supplementing radio, newsprint and television interviews is a surprisingly time consuming task but worth the effort if you get to meet Al Roker.
Please don't bite Mike Varley, he has no patience for doctors.
If you must know, Mike Varley has made feature films, novellas, music videos, Halloween masks, electrical cord paintings, Triple-A video games, podcasts, audio books, and, this one time, a tiny hut made out of no more than 20 cotton swabs.
He is pleased to have kept this brief.
Podcast Bonus Special: If you’d like to receive a free promo NFT from Highley Varlets “Weed Bags of New York” project, email us at info@lydianstater.co, with your Ethereum wallet address and we will send you one.
Links
Highley Varlet on The Today Show
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Arranging Tangerines Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Arranging Tangerines, presented by Lady and Stater.
00:00:05
Speaker
Conversations with contemporary artists, curators, and thinkers about the intersection of art, technology, and commerce.
00:00:10
Speaker
Your hosts are me, Alessandro Silver, and Joseph Wilcox.
00:00:13
Speaker
I know what to do.
00:00:14
Speaker
I know what to say.
00:00:17
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
00:00:19
Speaker
I know what to do.
00:00:20
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
00:00:22
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
Mike Varley's Eclectic Creative Journey
00:00:34
Speaker
This week's guest is Mike Varley.
00:00:37
Speaker
Mike Varley has recently returned to the craft of About Me writing after a number of years that will henceforth be known as About Less.
00:00:44
Speaker
He's become aware through querying his senses that writing a bio two days before the end of a calendar year will garishly color the contents to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.
00:00:54
Speaker
Nevertheless, he has opened a cherry Coke for the occasion despite the fact it is neither the time of day nor the will of God.
00:01:02
Speaker
18 months ago, Mike walked 7,024 miles around the five boroughs of New York City, roughly 4,216 of those with his now-wife Jessie Hyatt.
00:01:13
Speaker
He has spent most days since reliving the experience via digital documentation.
00:01:18
Speaker
a testament to his dedication to never settle on an evident trajectory.
00:01:23
Speaker
Recently he's learned that the act of entertaining, scheduling, performing, and supplementing radio newsprint and television interviews is a surprisingly time-consuming task but worth the effort if you get to meet Al Roker.
00:01:36
Speaker
Please don't bite Mike Varley.
00:01:38
Speaker
He has no patience for doctors.
00:01:41
Speaker
If you must know, Mike Varley has made feature films, novellas, music videos, Halloween masks, electrical cord paintings, AAA video games, podcasts, audiobooks, and this one time, a tiny hut made out of no more than 20 cotton swabs.
00:01:59
Speaker
He is pleased to have kept this brief podcast bonus
NFTs and Hailey Barlet's Weed Bags of New York Project
00:02:03
Speaker
special.
00:02:03
Speaker
If you'd like to receive a free promo NFT from Hailey Barlet's Weed Bags of New York Project, email us at info at lydianstater.co with your Ethereum wallet address and we will send you one.
00:02:16
Speaker
With that, welcome Mike.
00:02:18
Speaker
What's up Mike?
00:02:19
Speaker
Yo, how are you?
00:02:20
Speaker
Good.
00:02:21
Speaker
Can you hear me all right?
00:02:23
Speaker
Uh, yeah.
00:02:24
Speaker
Great.
00:02:25
Speaker
I hope you're feeling okay.
Podcasting Amidst COVID Concerns
00:02:27
Speaker
Maybe it's my cord.
00:02:30
Speaker
I kind of am, but then I feel like maybe it's in my head, but also there's a very good chance I have COVID because my wife has it and we've been separating, but also we live in the same apartment.
00:02:43
Speaker
So it would make sense if I had it.
00:02:46
Speaker
So I was on the train coming towards your place and I was like, you know what?
00:02:49
Speaker
I should go home and we should just do this on Zoom.
00:02:52
Speaker
Just in case.
00:02:53
Speaker
Yeah, well, I'm glad we're still able to actually all converse.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:58
Speaker
This is so funny being on this side with two people on the Zoom because it's usually Alex.
00:03:03
Speaker
I feel like I'm being interviewed, but I'm not.
Interview Dynamics and Audio Quality Improvements
00:03:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:07
Speaker
This is very strange.
00:03:09
Speaker
I mean, I'm not against it.
00:03:11
Speaker
It's good to change things up.
00:03:13
Speaker
You got to get some other vantage points every now and again.
00:03:16
Speaker
Of all people to do this with, I think Mike... Makes sense.
00:03:22
Speaker
Yeah, because Mike is... I think you're open to a lot of things.
00:03:26
Speaker
Yeah, we can do anything.
00:03:29
Speaker
I mean, this room is, you know... This is just supposed to be the second bedroom, and we've turned it into a gold palace of velvet, you know, so...
00:03:39
Speaker
But by the way, Joe, this is the most acoustically sound room we've done our podcast in so far.
00:03:44
Speaker
Oh, nice.
00:03:44
Speaker
So it's going to, it'll sound much better than everything else.
00:03:48
Speaker
We will.
00:03:48
Speaker
You will.
00:03:50
Speaker
That's right.
00:03:50
Speaker
I'll sound okay.
00:03:52
Speaker
Oh, do you want me to, should I be recording this from my end?
00:03:54
Speaker
If you want to, yes.
00:03:57
Speaker
I would need permission to record, please.
00:04:00
Speaker
How's that possible?
00:04:01
Speaker
Where do I do that?
00:04:04
Speaker
That's a good question.
00:04:05
Speaker
I don't know if there's a record button, maybe participants.
00:04:19
Speaker
A load.
00:04:21
Speaker
Ah, I'm in.
00:04:22
Speaker
Great.
00:04:23
Speaker
Cool.
00:04:25
Speaker
If we need to run to the bathroom or anything, that's cool,
Unedited Podcast Approach and Reflection on Past Episodes
00:04:28
Speaker
right?
00:04:28
Speaker
Of course.
00:04:29
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:29
Speaker
Of course.
00:04:30
Speaker
I'm not sure how you edit it or whatnot.
00:04:32
Speaker
We don't edit, but you can still run to the bathroom and we'll banter while you're gone.
00:04:36
Speaker
All right, that's good.
00:04:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's totally fine.
00:04:38
Speaker
Great.
00:04:39
Speaker
Gives me a reason to watch it again, you know, make sure you didn't say any shit.
00:04:42
Speaker
That's true.
00:04:45
Speaker
We're like, well, the episode's out.
00:04:47
Speaker
You can find out what we did during those 10 minutes.
00:04:49
Speaker
I have been known to forget to say something and I'll be like, oh, I'll just record that and add it to the thing.
00:04:54
Speaker
But Joe doesn't seem to notice.
00:04:56
Speaker
That's because I don't listen to them very often afterwards.
00:05:01
Speaker
Yeah, one and done.
00:05:02
Speaker
Jessie's like that too.
00:05:03
Speaker
We recorded the episodes and she's never listened to one of them.
00:05:08
Speaker
I like to have them to go back if I'm thinking about a specific walk or a specific thing we did that, you know,
Total Clarity Podcast and Walking Project
00:05:15
Speaker
The content is there.
00:05:15
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, generally it is meant to be like in the moment and then whoever wants to experience it can.
00:05:21
Speaker
Yeah, I get that.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:23
Speaker
I mean, I've gone back to a few to like get try and get like sound sound bites or remember what we talked about or something like that.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:29
Speaker
Although I feel like this this like interview format is is very different than.
00:05:34
Speaker
what y'all were doing but yeah um but yeah i mean i've uh i have a checklist actually i can show it to you later uh behind one of these many curtains we have like a like a can banner like a board you know like a to-do done whatever thing
00:05:51
Speaker
And on the list that's like stuff that's processing content for The Walking Project, I want to like write short stories, or not short stories, but essays about it.
00:06:01
Speaker
And that's where I'm kind of anticipating going over the podcast again the most because it's been so long now.
00:06:07
Speaker
You know, I've been focusing on doing the NFT things related to The Walk.
00:06:10
Speaker
that by the time I might ever get to that, if I do, it'll be almost two years.
00:06:15
Speaker
So it's going to be this weird, like, reflecting on the person that I was rather than, like, having an immediate connection
Discovering New York's History through Walking
00:06:23
Speaker
to it.
00:06:23
Speaker
Which I don't think there's any wrong answers, but, you know.
00:06:27
Speaker
Two years is like an interesting time because like two years from a thing does feel like a while in whatever the current moment.
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:35
Speaker
But then like once you get 10 years out, those like that chunk of two years can be almost like the same amount of time, right?
00:06:41
Speaker
There's like varying degrees of like past self.
00:06:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:45
Speaker
Especially if you like practice reflecting on
00:06:49
Speaker
your whatever experiences a lot then you like have all these opportunities to to like assess who you were and who you are again yeah i mean i uh yeah i didn't there's i've never done a more thorough job of documenting one year of my life than that year
00:07:08
Speaker
So, you know, there's like 20,000 photos, all sorts of video, I journaled every day.
00:07:14
Speaker
I wrote about every bagel that I ate, you know, so like there's definitely content to process in a way that's probably more successful potentially at getting to those truths than if I were to just, you know, live a year and a life and then just try and immediately capture it, you know?
00:07:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
00:07:35
Speaker
I didn't even know we were starting, but I think we are now.
00:07:39
Speaker
Since we're talking about the walking podcast, do you want to give a little synopsis for people who
Year-long Walking Project: Challenges and Themes
00:07:47
Speaker
haven't heard it?
00:07:47
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:07:48
Speaker
So my wife, Jessie Hyatt, and I had and still like quarterly produce a podcast called the Total Clarity Podcast.
00:07:58
Speaker
And the main thrust of that was documentation for this walking project we did called 2020 Total Clarity.
00:08:08
Speaker
And that was from June of 2020 to June of 2021.
00:08:15
Speaker
We walked five marathons a week.
00:08:18
Speaker
for one calendar year around all the neighborhoods in New York City.
00:08:22
Speaker
So 260 marathons, 7,000 miles total.
00:08:27
Speaker
And I guess to be as distinct as possible, I walked the five full marathons.
00:08:36
Speaker
Jessie walked three marathons a week and then worked at her textile studio the other four days a week.
00:08:42
Speaker
So she has a business where she dyes and manufactures garments.
00:08:47
Speaker
And so, so yeah, we kind of our minimum viable product was for one of us to do the marathon five days a week.
00:08:54
Speaker
And that was in the event we got sick or hurt.
00:08:56
Speaker
And fortunately, I never got sick or hurt.
00:08:58
Speaker
So I was able to do the five a week for one year.
00:09:00
Speaker
Sorry, if people listen to the Total Clarity podcast, what can they expect to hear on this kind of like walking podcast?
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:09:07
Speaker
So it, the first three months or so of the podcast where we were doing the walking, it was a lot of
00:09:17
Speaker
just reflecting on the neighborhoods that we visited, large scale impressions of things, what our bodies were doing, you know, and that was the earlier in the episodes, if that's something that you were interested in, those would be the ones to check out, because it's really like our body going through the shock of walking 132 miles a week.
00:09:40
Speaker
And, you know, what's going wrong, what's generally getting better.
00:09:44
Speaker
You know, it was interesting to watch, like, my body.
00:09:48
Speaker
I feel like there were three six-week chunks.
00:09:51
Speaker
The first six weeks was, like, miserable.
00:09:54
Speaker
My body didn't know what was going on.
00:09:55
Speaker
It didn't want to eat the first couple weeks.
00:09:57
Speaker
Then, like, it was just pain, couldn't sleep at all.
00:10:01
Speaker
And, like, also the feeling of trepidation, like, holy shit, I've committed to this thing.
00:10:05
Speaker
I still have 253 more marathons.
00:10:08
Speaker
And like, I don't know if this pain is going to get worse.
00:10:10
Speaker
Like, it's not, I can handle what's happening right now, but what if it's degenerative, you know?
00:10:14
Speaker
So like, uh, that was the first six weeks.
00:10:16
Speaker
And then the next six weeks was like kind of getting behind the cockpit and like understanding, oh, this button does this.
00:10:22
Speaker
And this, you know, steering thing does this and just kind of getting a handle of the machine.
00:10:26
Speaker
And then after those six weeks, it was like, okay, this is just our lives now.
00:10:30
Speaker
So it took about three months for us to really get settled into the experience.
00:10:35
Speaker
And those three months were just large impressions of the neighborhoods.
Themed Walks and Notable Interactions
00:10:38
Speaker
But then after that, we started doing theme walks.
00:10:40
Speaker
So we'd do like...
00:10:43
Speaker
you know, a Writers of New York walk, or we did, there was a map that was discovered in the New York Public Library that was old Native American roads in Brooklyn.
00:10:55
Speaker
So we walked a marathon along those.
00:10:56
Speaker
And one of a fun one, which is also the most tongue twister to say, was
00:11:04
Speaker
famous female Brooklyn vocalists and the high schools they attended.
00:11:08
Speaker
Wow.
00:11:09
Speaker
So, and that was great.
00:11:11
Speaker
That was actually one of the more popular ones because we did like, we'll do the full episode, right?
00:11:15
Speaker
And then we'll chunk it up for YouTube.
00:11:17
Speaker
So like we'll talk about different high schools that we visited.
00:11:20
Speaker
And so it was about the female vocalists and we had a good time learning about them.
00:11:24
Speaker
But it was also like just interesting to understand the architecture of the high schools and New York City high school history is like
00:11:32
Speaker
fascinating like how it's just changed from like uh like it's gone from like these monolithic institutions that are like meant to like you know uh you know teach tens of thousands of people like in one kind of complex to now they're being like specialty disciplines and you know um i'm sure you've heard the tales about uh you know
00:11:53
Speaker
When people choose high schools around here, it's like, it's a big deal.
00:11:56
Speaker
Might as well be choosing a college, you know?
00:11:58
Speaker
Well, that's what we're not.
00:11:59
Speaker
We're not currently doing what we're doing in the middle school, but the parents that we know that have done the high school route, they say it is, you will be more than prepared for college.
00:12:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:09
Speaker
It's so intense.
00:12:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:12
Speaker
And that's what the impression I get from all the friends that we have that are originally from here.
00:12:15
Speaker
And and yeah, we we ended up interviewing, I'd say, like every other episode we'd interview somebody, you know, that was a local to whatever route we were going on or an expert in whatever we were doing.
00:12:27
Speaker
We did one at the Graveyards of Near Queens, actually just this time of year, you know, in 2020, November of 2020.
00:12:37
Speaker
and we met this guy.
00:12:39
Speaker
His profession was that people would hire him to go to gravestites and take pictures of it to verify their relatives were there and whatnot.
00:12:52
Speaker
He was a very interesting character.
00:12:54
Speaker
He also did an art project that was...
00:12:57
Speaker
It was like a payphone art project where he like, you could call up payphones and he, he would like have, I don't know.
00:13:05
Speaker
I, I'm doing a terrible job explaining it, but basically we would, we'd find, we'd find the weirdest people, the coolest people we could and that were related to the topic we were doing and then interview them as well.
00:13:15
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:13:17
Speaker
So what was the impetus for that?
00:13:20
Speaker
I mean, I know part of it was COVID.
00:13:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:23
Speaker
But how did you arrive at how many marathons you would run?
00:13:28
Speaker
It seems like these durational projects...
Inspiration and Execution of the Walking Project
00:13:31
Speaker
Joe, you missed it, but the first thing Mike handed to me when I got to his house was a punch card that I could punch time and date as far as labor law requires at Mike Varley's place.
00:13:47
Speaker
That's right.
00:13:49
Speaker
And everyone who's been here has punched a card.
00:13:51
Speaker
Everyone that has been, well, with a couple of weird exceptions when people would refuse to punch the card.
00:13:57
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:57
Speaker
And like, strangely, they're not in our lives anymore.
00:14:00
Speaker
No documentation allowed.
00:14:01
Speaker
No, no documentation, no paper trail.
00:14:04
Speaker
But yeah, it's just a, it's a fun thing that we have here.
00:14:07
Speaker
So we have like, you know, 150 cards taped up onto our kitchen wall with people that, and every time they come, they use their same punch card to punch in and out.
00:14:17
Speaker
But back to my question, no.
00:14:19
Speaker
And again, he's well aware of the artist who did the durational piece of every hour punching.
00:14:25
Speaker
Sure.
00:14:25
Speaker
I mean, I have I have lots of questions related to other artists projects and we'll get to them, I'm sure.
00:14:31
Speaker
But yeah, but the punch card thing is fantastic.
00:14:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:35
Speaker
But how do you arrive at these particular projects?
00:14:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:38
Speaker
So I can give you the what actually led up to this walking project and the particulars of why those increments and whatnot.
00:14:46
Speaker
It actually it really wasn't as inspired by COVID as you think.
00:14:50
Speaker
It just the the documentation and the experience was informed by COVID, I'd say.
00:14:55
Speaker
So we, my wife and I, did these vacation walks for three summers in a row.
00:15:01
Speaker
We started with San Diego to Los Angeles.
00:15:05
Speaker
And then the next year we did the length of Vermont up to the border with Canada.
00:15:11
Speaker
And then the third time we did from the Pacific Ocean to Olympia, Washington.
00:15:16
Speaker
And it was during that third trip that I pitched to Jessie this much more expansive five marathon a week for one calendar year around New York City.
00:15:26
Speaker
And of course, she said, no, that's ridiculous.
00:15:29
Speaker
I'm not going to do that.
00:15:31
Speaker
And that was a correct response.
00:15:33
Speaker
She was right to think that.
00:15:35
Speaker
But she found ultimately what her water level was, which that she was able to still maintain her business and the trajectory that she has in her life while participating in this with me.
00:15:46
Speaker
But even the idea of going on a 120-mile vacation walk or a 200-mile vacation walk, it takes a certain type of person, I think.
00:15:54
Speaker
And we love the mental challenge of it.
00:15:58
Speaker
It's a great way to see a space.
00:15:59
Speaker
It's a great way to understand a space.
00:16:01
Speaker
And by the time we had done that third vacation walk, we actually
Timing and Narrative Hook of the Walking Project
00:16:05
Speaker
were more...
00:16:06
Speaker
prepared to do this or we like because we understood what it was like to walk 26 miles a day you know um the physical aspect of it people asked if we like trained or anything in before the the new york project and we didn't uh i put my two weeks notice in to my job in february of 2020 and
00:16:26
Speaker
And by the time those two weeks had elapsed, I was packing up my shit.
00:16:29
Speaker
Everybody was packing up their shit.
00:16:31
Speaker
And that studio never reformed.
00:16:35
Speaker
It was a video game company.
00:16:37
Speaker
They never went back to that office.
00:16:38
Speaker
They've since moved into another place in Midtown.
00:16:41
Speaker
And so we were very grimly joking.
00:16:45
Speaker
We didn't realize it was a grim joke at the time, but we joked prior to the pandemic that the only thing that could stop us from starting our project was nuclear attack, land invasion, or
00:16:56
Speaker
a global pandemic and then it actually happened so um we went into three months of hard lockdown just like everybody else and then we started up in june of 2020 it was intended to start up uh the 20th of march you know like this the spring solstice or whatever uh and it turned up to be the start of summer
00:17:14
Speaker
Which ended up working out the best.
00:17:16
Speaker
I mean, we were a little concerned about the heat of summer and it was bad.
00:17:19
Speaker
It was probably the worst season of the four.
00:17:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:22
Speaker
But it, it was nice to start there because we had longer light and like, we just got it out of the way, the hard one out of the way.
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah, and you were probably ready to be outside even more after not being able to.
00:17:35
Speaker
But I didn't totally answer your question, which is, you know, like, why those increments?
00:17:41
Speaker
And, you know, when I set out to do things, I like it to have impact and, like, have a narrative hook that people can understand, you know?
00:17:50
Speaker
And even this is very—most people—not most people—
00:17:53
Speaker
There's a good percentage of people that when I tell this to them, it's shocking how non-plus they are about it.
00:18:01
Speaker
And I'm not expecting somebody to be like, oh my goodness, what is... And then ask me a bunch of questions.
00:18:05
Speaker
But just like the sheer look of like...
00:18:08
Speaker
like I hadn't told them anything.
00:18:10
Speaker
Like it's like a really true indicator that people don't listen all the time or something.
00:18:15
Speaker
Cause they're just like, uh-huh, yeah, uh-huh.
00:18:17
Speaker
And so what did you have for breakfast today?
00:18:19
Speaker
Like it's the same level of like, it's weird.
00:18:22
Speaker
It's very strange.
00:18:23
Speaker
It's an immense undertaking.
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:25
Speaker
And again, I'm not looking to like be praised every time.
00:18:28
Speaker
Certainly far from that.
00:18:29
Speaker
It's just weird.
00:18:31
Speaker
Like if you're asking me this question about like, you know, what I did during the pandemic or something.
00:18:36
Speaker
That it's, you know, people just have... I guess it's so big, it's like beyond conception.
00:18:42
Speaker
But at the same time, you know, using the markers of like a marathon, that hooks in a bunch of people.
00:18:48
Speaker
And then they're like, either they've done something similar to this, you'd be surprised how many people, you know, they like...
00:18:53
Speaker
they've done cancer walks for like 100 miles over three days or something, or they're marathon runners, or they just, they do hook onto it for some reason.
00:19:04
Speaker
And when I'm doing stuff, I like to try and give as many potential hooks for people to grab onto.
00:19:11
Speaker
So rather than just doing an arbitrary, I walked for four hours a day or something, like giving that marathon time so that people can really imagine, you know, it gives the opportunity for them to imagine.
00:19:24
Speaker
Just, I'm sure you're well aware of the situationists in the 1920s and 30s.
00:19:29
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:19:30
Speaker
That was one of the, when we first announced that we were going to do this, that was the first thing that many people gave us to read about.
00:19:36
Speaker
And Will Self, the psychogeographer?
00:19:38
Speaker
That I'm not so familiar with.
00:19:40
Speaker
Or maybe I am, but I've forgotten.
00:19:42
Speaker
I'm psychogeography is as a way to take in especially urban settings.
00:19:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:46
Speaker
Through walking.
00:19:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:47
Speaker
Through the act of walking.
00:19:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:49
Speaker
How cities were meant for walking.
00:19:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:51
Speaker
And we've kind of like superimposed transportation onto them.
00:19:55
Speaker
Unwalkified them.
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:56
Speaker
Unwalkified them.
00:19:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:58
Speaker
uh gritified him yeah yeah um but walking is a main point like he would do things like uh he gave a talk at the school i went to and i think he he flew to chicago and he he asked the porter he's like how do i walk to the main part of the city and the guy's like what are you talking about you don't walk yeah yeah you don't walk from o'hare to chicago yeah uh you take a you take a train or you take a
00:20:21
Speaker
Uber or you take a car?
Urban Exploration and Psychogeography
00:20:22
Speaker
But yeah, he's like, no, he walked.
00:20:23
Speaker
It was not, he's like, it's not, it wasn't a great walk.
00:20:25
Speaker
It was very dangerous.
00:20:26
Speaker
He had to walk through embarkments of like on the sides of highways and stuff.
00:20:30
Speaker
There wasn't a direct route to walk, but he did.
00:20:33
Speaker
I mean, even getting off of like LaGuardia here and trying to get to the bus, it's like, you can do it, but it's not like, it's not designed for it at all.
00:20:42
Speaker
And that's in like a city with like some of the best kind of like public transportation pedestrian infrastructure.
00:20:49
Speaker
Yeah, JFK is a nightmare.
00:20:51
Speaker
I mean, you can get pretty close.
00:20:52
Speaker
You could walk to LaGuardia, but JFK, like, we didn't even really crack that, you know?
00:20:57
Speaker
Like, it's just so many.
00:20:58
Speaker
It's the air train and then all the Van Wick and whatever, all the different roads there.
00:21:03
Speaker
It's very difficult.
00:21:04
Speaker
I know I rented a car to go upstate during the pandemic and I didn't want to take the subway because I wasn't feeling comfortable with it.
00:21:12
Speaker
So I rode my bike to JFK and I got to the air train station or whatever.
00:21:17
Speaker
And they're like, you can't like you're not allowed to go past here.
00:21:19
Speaker
I think it's like there's like also it's like under some kind of airspace or like military stuff or something.
00:21:24
Speaker
I don't remember exactly what they said.
00:21:25
Speaker
You have to go like all the way around or you have to take the air train.
00:21:29
Speaker
And so I like held my breath for like 20 minutes on the air train.
00:21:33
Speaker
And it was just like me and all the workers.
00:21:35
Speaker
It was bizarre because it was still, I think it was probably like May or something like that.
00:21:37
Speaker
And like the Hertz rental company was just like a wasteland.
00:21:41
Speaker
It was crazy.
00:21:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:43
Speaker
Just like everything was then.
00:21:44
Speaker
But yeah, you can't, it's tough to get to JFK on bike.
00:21:49
Speaker
The New York's fascinating in terms of its like extreme walkability, but then also certain pockets of unwalkability, by and large, very walkable city.
00:22:01
Speaker
And then also like the grid is like.
00:22:05
Speaker
mind fuck oppressive you know yeah we i we did early on uh we did the midtown like when we were doing by neighborhood the first three months we did uh midtown and it was we we conjured a route that was just like i don't know from like 14th to 59th and just went you know each avenue and then after we did i think
00:22:28
Speaker
We were able to do every avenue and then like the first 10 streets before we hit 26.2.
00:22:35
Speaker
And then we did a podcast that week with our friend Duncan, who is this like psychonaut Wall Street broker, like Burning Man.
00:22:49
Speaker
uh yoga cult dude like it's just all and like he did a freestyle rap about the grid at the end of the podcast but it was like we we really got deep into just what what that experience is you know i it's like when you build a city in like sim city or you know one of those like city building programs it's like oh this is the most efficient way but it's like the reality of it is like very different
00:23:14
Speaker
And I think New York is one of the few places that can get away with it just because the population density allows for it.
00:23:20
Speaker
But otherwise, if you were to plan that and then try and have people move in, it would be a very oppressive situation.
00:23:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's and like if I feel like sometimes I can zoom out on myself when I'm doing stuff like that, like even like just on the commute and like doing that straight route to the train.
00:23:38
Speaker
And like there's only it's like it's like how the how the kind of like architecture of the city changes how your behavior is.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:46
Speaker
Just by like by the way you have to walk.
00:23:51
Speaker
When you guys did the Midtown walk, did you find yourself jaywalking on purpose just to go diagonal for a second?
00:23:59
Speaker
I don't know.
00:23:59
Speaker
I don't remember trying to break the vibe of it.
00:24:04
Speaker
It was strange.
00:24:06
Speaker
It also felt good on those days if it was just like, all right, I just need to get through this.
00:24:10
Speaker
Because there were some days where it was, you're recognizing that it's part of this larger project.
00:24:16
Speaker
I don't necessarily want to be doing this right now.
00:24:20
Speaker
So I am just going to move deliberately.
00:24:24
Speaker
So in that respect, it's kind of like you can turn off your brain and just go.
00:24:27
Speaker
You don't have to think about where you're traveling or look at your map to see if you're going the right way or anything.
00:24:35
Speaker
I do want to acknowledge at this point that you're too interesting a person to do this podcast in under an hour.
New York's Waterways and Historical Insights
00:24:43
Speaker
There might have to be a part two.
00:24:46
Speaker
Okay, that's fine.
00:24:48
Speaker
But to go back to the walking, I know it sounds like you've met a lot of very interesting people, which was part of the experience.
00:24:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:57
Speaker
But...
00:24:58
Speaker
Is there anything that sticks out as surprising that kind of like jumped out at you as far as the experience as a whole?
00:25:04
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:25:06
Speaker
I mean, dozens of things probably.
00:25:08
Speaker
I'll just go with whatever comes to mind first.
00:25:10
Speaker
The emergence in my mind of how much New York is a water city was something that makes complete sense, but did not
00:25:24
Speaker
I don't know.
00:25:25
Speaker
When you think of New York, you think of the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center and the tall buildings in Midtown.
00:25:31
Speaker
And you think of Wall Street.
00:25:32
Speaker
You think of finance.
00:25:33
Speaker
You think of commerce.
00:25:34
Speaker
Obviously, you think of art and things like that, too.
00:25:36
Speaker
But as far as just the profile of the city is the profile of the buildings, right?
00:25:41
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:25:43
Speaker
We, when we planned the walks, we did a lot of route mapping around the waterways because we thought it would be, you know, among the most compelling walks that we could do.
00:25:54
Speaker
And not only has New York City done a tremendous job in the past 30 to 40 years of rehabilitating the waterways, making them something that people can use and appreciate and turning it into, you know, blue green space.
00:26:09
Speaker
But I was walking sometime in like January.
00:26:15
Speaker
I think it was one of the days that I was alone of the two a week that I would be alone.
00:26:21
Speaker
And I was going under the Verrazano Bridge or just before.
00:26:25
Speaker
There's a little, there's a road that goes there like in Brooklyn.
00:26:29
Speaker
It's, I forget what it's called.
00:26:31
Speaker
Like Park Trail or Park Road, something like that.
00:26:34
Speaker
And on the one side is the highway.
00:26:38
Speaker
and it's just cars, but there's no building.
00:26:40
Speaker
You can't see buildings past the highway.
00:26:42
Speaker
So in a way, it's almost like white noise, if you can think it that way.
00:26:47
Speaker
If there's buildings around, you can feel that there's life.
00:26:50
Speaker
But when it's just cars going, it just creates this ambient nothingness on one side.
00:26:55
Speaker
And then looking out at the water, you can see Staten Island.
00:27:00
Speaker
And over there, it's far enough away from Staten Island that the buildings over there are indistinguishable.
00:27:06
Speaker
And the effect that was achieved made me feel like Henry Hudson's ship could be like right there.
00:27:12
Speaker
You know, like it it made me recognize like the reason this is the Empire State is because of the Erie Canal, which connects to New York City and like the Great Lakes as a consequence and all the commerce from the middle of the country.
00:27:25
Speaker
And, you know, this is just a chain of islands that's all here.
00:27:28
Speaker
And that was how.
00:27:31
Speaker
Commerce used to exist back then.
00:27:33
Speaker
And I mean, it still does to some degree.
00:27:35
Speaker
There's maritime trade that happens here.
00:27:37
Speaker
You see the huge ships coming in.
00:27:40
Speaker
But it's just not really thought about because we don't live our lives.
00:27:44
Speaker
Most most New Yorkers don't live our lives in that pace, but it's there and it's not going anywhere.
00:27:49
Speaker
And I'm very grateful to have connected with it and to be in this space where like you still have this water connection.
00:27:57
Speaker
That's a great point because I think I came to that realization a while ago as well.
00:28:01
Speaker
It's like port cities, any city, any geographical area that had a natural port that would allow for large ships to come in and out, whether it be Lisbon, whether it be London, whether it be New York City, whether it be Hong Kong.
00:28:13
Speaker
All these cities created, I mean, the infrastructure kind of like built itself because things were coming in and out.
00:28:20
Speaker
Merchants were attracted to it.
00:28:21
Speaker
It's just, it's an emergent thing.
00:28:23
Speaker
It just is a no brainer.
00:28:25
Speaker
It's only now that we have the abilities to have cities where they just need good internet or they just, you know, it's like they could build on different.
00:28:33
Speaker
It doesn't necessarily have to do with like manufacturing and ports.
00:28:36
Speaker
And so it's, and we've had such a,
00:28:41
Speaker
It's such a head start.
00:28:42
Speaker
I mean, you're talking about 500 years of coming and going.
00:28:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:28:45
Speaker
It's like, how do you catch up?
00:28:46
Speaker
But we'll see.
00:28:47
Speaker
I mean... But now everybody has the internet, so... The internet will change everything.
Personal Connection to Water and Coastal Exploration
00:28:51
Speaker
We'll see.
00:28:51
Speaker
We'll see what happens.
00:28:53
Speaker
That was one of my favorite things about... That I learned living here because...
00:28:58
Speaker
Like I knew there was water in New York City, and I grew up, I grew up in Michigan.
00:29:02
Speaker
And so there was like water was part of our mythology.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:07
Speaker
And so to like learn that I had really easy access to both like, like, just like be able to like walk the waterfront, but also like go to the beach and go swimming.
00:29:16
Speaker
uh in the ocean like i kind of like i knew it existed but i didn't really like when i moved here i thought of everything else that you listed right yeah um so that was like it's been a it's been a fun thing to like have be a part of my life that i didn't know it was going to be which is cool yeah i uh one uh one thing that i still need to do or one thing jesse and i need to do is go to orchard beach uh in pelham bay uh during like a warm season we walked the bronx
00:29:44
Speaker
in April.
00:29:45
Speaker
So it was springtime and we didn't have the opportunity to go there.
00:29:49
Speaker
City Island.
00:29:50
Speaker
I don't know if you've ever been to City Island.
00:29:50
Speaker
It's incredible.
00:29:51
Speaker
It has like 50 different seafood restaurants there.
00:29:57
Speaker
And it's like the Jersey Shore area.
00:30:00
Speaker
but also New York, but also New England, because the terrain up there... So it kind of maintains some boat vibes, like New England boat vibe town.
00:30:13
Speaker
And then Pelham Bay Park, also, it's attached to the mainland.
00:30:19
Speaker
So it has that kind of craggy, rocky, New England-y feel.
00:30:24
Speaker
But there's a beach there, and it is...
00:30:29
Speaker
I don't know, it looks like public works era.
00:30:31
Speaker
I don't know if it is or not, but it looks kind of like that, like these like, you know, pillars and like the shops like built into this kind of infrastructure of, but it's like falling apart at the same time.
00:30:45
Speaker
And I don't know what was going on during the pandemic era, if it was open or not, but like it's this massive complex and it has a beach.
00:30:53
Speaker
It's like a horseshoe shaped beach.
00:30:55
Speaker
And I can only imagine like it's a scene.
00:30:57
Speaker
You know, my experience at the beach is typically like Rockaway, going out there.
00:31:03
Speaker
I've never really gone to Coney Island to go swimming, but obviously that's a vibe too, the Brighton Beach, Coney Island thing.
00:31:09
Speaker
But Rockaway is kind of my go-to, and yeah, it's incredible.
00:31:13
Speaker
I mean, we went there this year for the first time in a couple years, and you just get in the water, and you're like, holy shit.
00:31:20
Speaker
Like, why am I not doing this every week?
00:31:22
Speaker
I grew up in Long Island.
00:31:23
Speaker
Like I, you know, used to go in the Baywater all the time.
00:31:26
Speaker
And obviously that probably informs part of my good feelings about it, but just reconnecting with it and like having that release valve, it's free.
00:31:33
Speaker
And it's, you know, something that anybody in the city can do for 275.
00:31:36
Speaker
They can get on the train, just hang out at the beach all day.
00:31:40
Speaker
And yeah, it's just a...
Future of New York's Waterways and Climate Concerns
00:31:42
Speaker
I don't know.
00:31:42
Speaker
I hope that in the next 20 to 30 years moving forward, the powers that be in the municipal side really start featuring the water aspects of the city more and also probably get ahead of whatever is going to be the negative consequence of climate change.
00:31:59
Speaker
I was about to say.
00:32:00
Speaker
It's still there.
00:32:00
Speaker
Yeah, if we can find a way to make retention walls that aren't once again closing these areas off.
00:32:09
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:32:09
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
Mike Varley's Artistic Identity and Community Focus
00:32:14
Speaker
I thought it might be good to backtrack a little and explain how we met Mike and why he's on the podcast.
00:32:23
Speaker
But I think I had a question, which is maybe putting you on the spot.
00:32:28
Speaker
Great.
00:32:28
Speaker
Can't wait.
00:32:29
Speaker
but but i is that possible is it possible we'll find out we'll find out no i mean it's next week yeah that's right that's right i think it's a pretty i think it's a pretty simple question but it's um would you call yourself an artist is that a descriptor you would use that's that's a great question uh and one that i've been really mulling over even in recent weeks
00:32:51
Speaker
I would say the past two years I've been calling myself that and that's the first time I've ever called myself that despite all conventional trapping suggesting that that would be my go to thing.
00:33:01
Speaker
Now I'm
00:33:02
Speaker
like back into the muddle of like, if I am or not again, I, I say artists basically not because I specifically identify, but because it's easier for people to understand what I do if I say that.
00:33:20
Speaker
And so, yeah, just the, the concept of identity is something that's like really been at the forefront of my brain for the past couple of years.
00:33:30
Speaker
And, um,
00:33:31
Speaker
I don't know, because for me, I've been thinking a lot about this intersection of fine art and service.
00:33:38
Speaker
And a lot of times, the things that I want to make, whatever they are, art or just experience, I don't know, I want to give those hooks that I was talking about earlier.
00:33:48
Speaker
I want to make it evident what I'm doing.
00:33:51
Speaker
I want there to be play on the part of the user, but I also want to have it...
00:33:59
Speaker
come across so that people, some people, everybody can get something out of it.
00:34:04
Speaker
And what I'm struggling with relative to the idea of artist is I see a lot of work that's fine art, which for varying reasons is not striving to be accessible.
00:34:17
Speaker
It's striving to be something that is more challenging.
00:34:21
Speaker
And sometimes, in a pessimistic way, I look at that and I go, well, it's because there's no substance there and they need to be challenging in order to be interesting.
00:34:29
Speaker
And then on the optimistic side of it is that's truly what imagination is.
00:34:32
Speaker
If you create a challenging work, then the user is having to actually have to do hard thought in order to get somewhere.
00:34:40
Speaker
But once they've done that hard thought and they get somewhere,
00:34:43
Speaker
it might be more rewarding than work that has everything laid out for them and invites them to play with it more easily.
00:34:52
Speaker
So I don't know.
00:34:54
Speaker
Right now, I would still say I'm an artist.
00:34:56
Speaker
We'll see how much longer that lasts.
00:35:00
Speaker
But I have a background.
00:35:02
Speaker
I've mentioned it off podcast to you guys before where I worked in a nursing home for 13 years.
00:35:09
Speaker
And doing that, I mean, it afforded me a lot of creative time.
00:35:12
Speaker
But more than that, it also got me very intimately in touch with what service means.
00:35:18
Speaker
And like how valuable that is.
00:35:21
Speaker
And so I don't know if that ends up being a mitigating influence on what I'm creating to the point where it's even hard to label it as art.
00:35:32
Speaker
And art is the easiest thing to label anything.
00:35:35
Speaker
Because once you say it's art, that's what it is.
00:35:37
Speaker
Sure.
00:35:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:40
Speaker
The reason I ask is because there's so many like really...
00:35:44
Speaker
fun and interesting and nice connections between the projects you've done and artists that are kind of in the capital A art canon.
00:35:52
Speaker
Right.
00:35:53
Speaker
And I think I can probably speak for Alex and me when I say that, like, we really appreciate both, like, these very kind of challenging artworks that are kind of esoteric and meant for, like, a very specific audience, and then also really appreciate these kind of, like,
00:36:10
Speaker
uh more public facing encompassing projects that have like access points for kind of like quote unquote like regular people or non-art people right right um and like and it doesn't mean that all those things can't exist uh and still all be good or all be whatever i just i think it's an interesting thing in relation to your work because like with just like a little bit of
00:36:33
Speaker
contexts, especially like, and we can talk more about your film work.
00:36:38
Speaker
Yeah, like, but like so much of that, I feel like could be shown like in a gallery.
00:36:44
Speaker
And maybe it was but but with just like a little bit of like a context shift or something like that.
00:36:51
Speaker
And I don't know, did you ever show that work in galleries or was it just film festivals?
00:36:55
Speaker
I'm trying to think.
00:36:58
Speaker
I think it was all film festivals.
00:37:00
Speaker
And if there was a couple of instances where it was shown in a gallery, but kind of in a boisterous setting, you know, it's like, we're going to use this gallery space because we have access to it to show the film, but it's not meant to be like a velvet rope, you know, quiet watching experience, you know?
00:37:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:20
Speaker
And then it also just reminded me of the huge kind of like social practice emergence in kind of the, I don't know, probably like 2005 on, I think that's kind of like when that kind of like came through.
Social Practice Art and Multidisciplinary Influences
00:37:35
Speaker
And that was a lot of artists kind of like that I saw going to like get their...
00:37:41
Speaker
MFAs who came from wildly different backgrounds because what they were doing didn't fit into other kind of like fine art categories.
00:37:49
Speaker
Right.
00:37:49
Speaker
But but they did fit into this like new kind of like emerging category of like kind of like relational work that didn't even look like art.
00:37:57
Speaker
And so that's like especially I mean, a lot of a lot of your stuff, I feel like kind of fits that kind of mold as well.
00:38:03
Speaker
And that's all just like a context thing.
00:38:05
Speaker
So I don't know.
00:38:06
Speaker
Does that does that resonate with you, Alex, in terms of Mike's projects?
00:38:11
Speaker
No, absolutely.
00:38:11
Speaker
I mean, that's a great question that you posed because, I mean, did you, because looking at your background, when you went to school, was that not for art?
00:38:22
Speaker
I graduated with a degree in creative writing.
00:38:26
Speaker
I did so because it was the first year that the major was in existence, and I thought I could be one of 500 English majors, or I could take one more class and be the first creative writing major.
00:38:35
Speaker
So it just kind of took the piss out of all of it.
00:38:37
Speaker
And then, yeah, I double minored in art and art history.
00:38:40
Speaker
But not that that makes... Yeah, yeah.
00:38:42
Speaker
But I just saw a lot of those early pieces where there was text involved with visuals and the marriage of the two.
00:38:48
Speaker
And now in talking about these projects, they're, as Joe was saying, more relational aesthetics where it's like a gesture.
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:54
Speaker
An open-ended gesture that you're kind of like...
00:38:56
Speaker
involving others sort of, but you're doing this thing and then you're kind of opening it up to more nuance as far as the very soft as far as the margin, marginally definition.
00:39:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:11
Speaker
So it's a very interesting thing to see.
00:39:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:13
Speaker
I mean, I think when you say that, where it makes me jump to is another focal point of my identity is that I like to create communities.
00:39:23
Speaker
I like to get people together and like to create scenarios where a community can be formed and reactions can happen.
00:39:31
Speaker
Ideas are shared.
00:39:32
Speaker
People get excited.
00:39:33
Speaker
It's like, you know, like a...
00:39:34
Speaker
popcorn popping, you know, I like to create those situations.
00:39:37
Speaker
And I, I think, yeah, maybe on some of the earlier work was still, you know, making statements, but not necessarily community oriented.
00:39:50
Speaker
But now, yeah, it seems to maybe be moving more in that direction.
00:39:54
Speaker
And I think about Allen Ginsberg a lot.
00:40:00
Speaker
I find him, you know, like a hero in terms of his creative output and just how he...
00:40:09
Speaker
fostered that that whole group of people you know the he the reason that the beat generation exists is because he believed in all of their work and was submitting them all around the country he couldn't get you know anybody he couldn't get his own writings done but he couldn't get anybody's done and then he just started you know first burrows and then um kerouac and you know just being able to get them all published and elevating everybody that's something that appeals to me you know
00:40:37
Speaker
So his art was his poetry, but it was also the community that he believed in.
00:40:43
Speaker
It's funny because, again, looking through some of your stuff on your website, I loved your About Me.
00:40:50
Speaker
It changed.
00:40:52
Speaker
You have hyperlinks to older About Me's, which I thought was very open.
00:40:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:00
Speaker
And just, I mean, just being very honest.
00:41:02
Speaker
I mean, we, I mean, for God's sakes, on a cellular level, we change, we change like every eight years.
00:41:09
Speaker
Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:41:11
Speaker
But mentally, we're always in a different place and acknowledging it and saying, hey, this is what I used to think about me.
00:41:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
00:41:18
Speaker
Read here.
00:41:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:19
Speaker
And now this is what I think about me.
00:41:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:41:21
Speaker
There is, if you look at the evolution, it is more community-based.
00:41:25
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:41:28
Speaker
And there's also, the string I saw also is...
00:41:33
Speaker
I don't want to say you take issue with capitalism, but you tend to want to refigure or reimagine what capitalism could be.
00:41:40
Speaker
Sure.
00:41:40
Speaker
If you want to talk a little bit about that.
00:41:42
Speaker
I mean, is there something in particular you're thinking about that I can jump off of?
00:41:45
Speaker
No, it just seemed like... Just the whole system of capitalism.
00:41:49
Speaker
Do I want to go for it?
00:41:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:50
Speaker
You just want to take it down?
00:41:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:51
Speaker
No, I think it seems like you want people to kind of reimagine the possibilities.
00:41:57
Speaker
Sure.
00:41:58
Speaker
That's what I got.
00:41:59
Speaker
That's interesting.
00:41:59
Speaker
Yeah, I...
00:42:01
Speaker
I would say as far as that topic in general, and I wonder if the last thing that was like, because the website, if you could, mikevarley.com is like, at this point, almost an art
Contemporary Web Projects and Capitalism Critique
00:42:12
Speaker
piece itself.
00:42:12
Speaker
It's very strange.
00:42:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:15
Speaker
And if you go to Everything is Everything, that bagel website that I did, which we could potentially get to at some point, that is...
00:42:24
Speaker
uh also what i've been calling contemporary uh web 1.0 which is to say that like it is uh my my mikevarley.com website it's like blog era uh and it doesn't have ads and it doesn't have social you know it's not trying to draw you away it's trying to keep you in that space to experience everything
00:42:47
Speaker
But I, you know, I haven't updated.
00:42:49
Speaker
I have the main feed on the thing that I update maybe once a year.
00:42:52
Speaker
And then we have the about me's that you're there.
00:42:54
Speaker
It's great.
00:42:55
Speaker
And then, yeah, a lot of like mixed media and movies and things like that.
00:42:59
Speaker
And, you know, with respect to like the capitalism side of things, I.
00:43:07
Speaker
So I don't know if I'm aligned with what the site is there now.
00:43:09
Speaker
What I will say is that I tend to go with whatever the opposing prevailing viewpoint is.
00:43:19
Speaker
Does that make sense?
00:43:20
Speaker
Probably doesn't.
00:43:20
Speaker
So like I right now, I feel like the zeitgeist is the capitalism is like broken and needs to be totally overthrown.
00:43:27
Speaker
The way that I think about it right now is that it is a salvageable system, but it is like the level of corruption is so intense that I understand why people want to get rid of it.
00:43:40
Speaker
You know, it feels oppressive and it feels like we just need to totally...
00:43:46
Speaker
overthrow this situation.
00:43:47
Speaker
But then if we did, we'd have to start from the bottom.
00:43:50
Speaker
And starting from the bottom is a nightmare.
00:43:52
Speaker
Like you really like you have.
00:43:54
Speaker
OK, so now we're a communist society.
00:43:57
Speaker
I don't know if we were to go that way.
00:43:59
Speaker
Jesus.
00:43:59
Speaker
I mean, there's a lot of terrible precedents.
00:44:01
Speaker
You got to be really dead on right with how you're going to make this one happen.
00:44:05
Speaker
Otherwise, like we already know what could potentially happen.
00:44:08
Speaker
So, I mean, I am inclined to live in a system where we can try and help each other as much as possible.
00:44:17
Speaker
But I recognize that I've made so many things in my life where people just fell off because I wasn't paying them, you know, like, you know, it's so frustrating.
00:44:27
Speaker
You make enough things and at the time you get to the end of every one of them is like, man, I'm never going to I'm never going to do this for free again.
00:44:34
Speaker
I'm never going to do this for limited.
00:44:35
Speaker
I need to be able to pay people if I want to do things at scale.
00:44:39
Speaker
And so that's why the walking project made so much sense because like I don't have to pay.
00:44:43
Speaker
It's just, you know, this is a thing that I'm inviting anybody to engage the degree that they want to engage it.
00:44:49
Speaker
But it's just me and my wife and we saved up a bunch of money and we're going to do this, you know.
00:44:53
Speaker
Correct me if I'm wrong.
00:44:55
Speaker
Even on that particular project, you were open about budgets and basically keep us at ease as just staying afloat.
00:45:06
Speaker
If you're even, expenses, incoming income, as long as it's this equilibrium, the momentum is enough to keep going forward.
00:45:15
Speaker
Totally.
00:45:15
Speaker
Yeah, that was one of the things.
00:45:16
Speaker
If you go to highlyvarlet.com, you can see all the expenses that we had.
00:45:20
Speaker
on the project, you know, broken up by like podcast expense, clothing expense, food expense, et cetera, et cetera.
00:45:29
Speaker
Shoes?
00:45:29
Speaker
Shoes, yep.
00:45:30
Speaker
Every five weeks, a new pair of shoes.
00:45:33
Speaker
So it was just another little wrinkle.
00:45:36
Speaker
A lot of the stuff that we've done is just the sum of its parts or whatever.
00:45:40
Speaker
Just a little bit of documentation here, a little bit of documentation here, there.
00:45:45
Speaker
The clothing is another thing that we did where it was like.
00:45:48
Speaker
It's nice to see you guys went out to a nice meal once a week or so.
00:45:52
Speaker
Right.
00:45:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:53
Speaker
So I think I actually do have like the the literal line items of like what each thing was on the website.
00:46:01
Speaker
Currently, it's just kind of like what the numbers are.
00:46:04
Speaker
But I really should just add that at the end now that it's all over so that people if they really want to get into that, they could.
00:46:11
Speaker
But yeah, you could see literally, you know, the line items for what each thing is.
00:46:14
Speaker
I think we probably did go out to one or two nice meals while we were walking around, you know.
00:46:18
Speaker
And I assume you were paying $2,000 for rent.
00:46:21
Speaker
That's the fixed costs.
00:46:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's right.
00:46:23
Speaker
Yeah, you guys know how much we pay in rent.
00:46:26
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:46:26
Speaker
People don't typically tell you that information.
00:46:29
Speaker
I mean, we're very happy with how much we pay around here.
00:46:33
Speaker
I think a lot of people would be around here.
00:46:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:37
Speaker
Our landlord, when we moved in, she lives in the same building as us.
00:46:41
Speaker
It's a landlord-landlady pair.
00:46:42
Speaker
They live on the basement apartment.
00:46:44
Speaker
We live on the second floor.
00:46:46
Speaker
And when we moved in, they went, we'll never raise the rent on you.
00:46:51
Speaker
Welcome to the family.
00:46:53
Speaker
Wow.
00:46:53
Speaker
And we were like, what is happening?
00:46:56
Speaker
This is not, this is not.
00:46:58
Speaker
The previous landlord I had was this guy that was like,
00:47:01
Speaker
Mike, you're never going to have a better landlord than me.
00:47:03
Speaker
Do you understand?
00:47:04
Speaker
And this is the same guy that was like, you know, Mike, you got to pay me the money.
00:47:09
Speaker
You know, I go to prison, Mike.
00:47:10
Speaker
I'll go to prison.
00:47:11
Speaker
I'll do time.
00:47:11
Speaker
No problem.
00:47:12
Speaker
Where's my money, Mike?
00:47:13
Speaker
Tell me where my money is.
00:47:14
Speaker
It's like, Angelo, it's two days late because my friend is out of town.
00:47:18
Speaker
What do you want me to do?
00:47:19
Speaker
But here's the money.
00:47:19
Speaker
You know, anyway, he was a nightmare.
00:47:22
Speaker
These people are great and they've never raised the rent on us.
00:47:24
Speaker
It's been six years.
00:47:26
Speaker
Fantastic.
00:47:27
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:47:28
Speaker
That's a special thing.
NFT NYC Unconference and Bagel Project
00:47:30
Speaker
I don't even know.
00:47:30
Speaker
So Joe, would this be a good place to talk about NFTs?
00:47:34
Speaker
Well, so I was going to say, so since we didn't do it in the beginning of the episode, we met Mike at probably like, I think the most interesting NFT related event that we've been to since we started, that Alex and I have been to since we kind of started
00:47:53
Speaker
working in the crypto space and working with artists and stuff like that.
00:47:56
Speaker
And it was the token.art unconference that happened during, right?
00:48:01
Speaker
This is where we met, right, Mike?
00:48:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:48:04
Speaker
At Persona Space in Dumbo.
00:48:06
Speaker
Yeah, and it happened during NFT NYC this year.
00:48:11
Speaker
but was kind of like a one off event that was put on by some folks that I don't remember everybody, but people who were connected to art blocks and kind of like there was a lot of generative artists that were there and kind of involved in it.
00:48:27
Speaker
And it was like it was actually like a work.
00:48:31
Speaker
It was like.
00:48:34
Speaker
member led or people who showed up led workshops.
00:48:37
Speaker
So there was no like schedule until people made it.
00:48:41
Speaker
And so people got to like pitch sessions that they wanted to do.
00:48:43
Speaker
And so I ran a curatorial session and Mike was in the kind of like circle up and, and that's kind of like where we first met.
00:48:52
Speaker
And then we've, I don't know, since then have had lots of interesting conversations.
00:48:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:58
Speaker
And I think during that we heard about your bagel project for the first time.
00:49:03
Speaker
That's right.
00:49:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:04
Speaker
So the bagel project is the first of five intended NFT projects that document the walk.
00:49:12
Speaker
So on the walk,
00:49:16
Speaker
Pretty early on, I realized I was going to be hungry.
00:49:20
Speaker
This is so interesting.
00:49:21
Speaker
I didn't realize that the bagel project was part of the walk.
00:49:29
Speaker
I love artists who are efficient.
00:49:32
Speaker
They find things that are interesting to pull out of their everyday experiences or whatever they've turned their everyday experiences into.
00:49:39
Speaker
yeah um which anyway sorry to interrupt keep going no no i'm gonna interrupt too but it's also to the to the again to the sentiment of an artist being open to the to experience and being uh trusting that say given any project something will come out of it yeah totally and you just kind of go forward yeah and if if you do the work there's going to be a reward yeah in some sense yeah
00:50:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
00:50:03
Speaker
I mean, yeah, that was what the whole walking project was conceptualized as we had a hint of understanding based on doing the summer walks and just based on like taking a step back and assessing.
00:50:16
Speaker
It's like we're going to have an average of nine and a half hours a day where all we're doing is walking.
00:50:22
Speaker
Like that is a picture that you can fill with anything, you know.
00:50:27
Speaker
And so this just happened to be one of the things that
00:50:31
Speaker
that was happening at any given time during those days.
00:50:33
Speaker
So yeah, pretty early on, we were at Utopia Bagels, which is a fantastic bagel store out in like the Whitestone area.
00:50:42
Speaker
And I was eating it.
00:50:44
Speaker
I had actually come off a year prior where I had not eaten a bagel.
00:50:47
Speaker
I just like had just made an indiscriminate choice to not eat a bagel for a year just because I did.
00:50:55
Speaker
Sounds like you're kind of into indiscriminate choices.
00:50:57
Speaker
Yes, I am.
00:50:59
Speaker
But what I have a year long.
00:51:01
Speaker
I discriminate in my indiscriminate choices, though, somehow.
00:51:05
Speaker
I can't wait to read the book.
00:51:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:51:07
Speaker
So I I was having this bagel and I was like, wow, this is a good bagel.
00:51:13
Speaker
And I started thinking, again, it's going to be in every neighborhood in New York City.
00:51:17
Speaker
I was going to need to eat.
00:51:18
Speaker
I was going to want to eat affordably.
00:51:20
Speaker
And I was not going to want to have to sit down and have a whole meal.
00:51:23
Speaker
Bagels are perfect for all of those things.
00:51:26
Speaker
So what I ended up doing was eating at three different stores a week for the entire duration of the project.
00:51:32
Speaker
So it ended up in the neighborhood of 150.
00:51:34
Speaker
And then from there, I put those stores on a Google map and I realized that the coverage was lacking.
00:51:43
Speaker
I couldn't go to war on such an important topic without having a more denser representation of the neighborhoods.
00:51:49
Speaker
So then I ate another 50 plus bagels in the month of September 2021, which was awful.
00:51:57
Speaker
Don't do that.
00:51:58
Speaker
It's it was worse than walking marathons.
00:52:00
Speaker
to be honest.
00:52:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:02
Speaker
I would be eating six bagels a day sometimes.
00:52:05
Speaker
And my, uh, my thought was like, okay, well you have to eat at least half of it at a minimum, but I would get through half of the bagel and I would felt like I didn't have enough information to review the bagel fairly.
00:52:16
Speaker
So then I would eat the full thing anyway, even though I wasn't like particularly hungry.
00:52:21
Speaker
Uh, and then, yeah, I would write a review on them.
00:52:24
Speaker
There's three, there's a three point review system.
00:52:26
Speaker
It was the, uh,
00:52:28
Speaker
the bagel, the cream cheese, and the store, zero to five scale for each.
00:52:32
Speaker
And then, yeah, it ended up being 220.
00:52:36
Speaker
Well, right now it's, it's, it launched, the website launched with 202 stores.
00:52:40
Speaker
It's now somewhere at like 216 and counting.
00:52:43
Speaker
I keep it updated with some regularity.
00:52:46
Speaker
And then every month or so, maybe I'll go to a new store.
00:52:49
Speaker
I'm not trying to keep up the same pace.
00:52:50
Speaker
It was never an intention to do all the stores in the city because by the time you get to the last store, a bunch would be closed, new ones would open.
00:52:57
Speaker
It was about the experience of the year.
00:52:59
Speaker
But there are fans of certain stores and I want to honor that.
00:53:02
Speaker
So I have an ongoing list as people contact me.
00:53:05
Speaker
And yeah, each one of those bagels I took a picture of and I turned it into an NFT.
00:53:12
Speaker
And I had like all the metadata of like the scores as well as like the awards.
00:53:19
Speaker
That's all on chain.
00:53:20
Speaker
So I don't know if anybody's ever going to do something with that data, but it is available if somebody wanted to use the number data.
00:53:28
Speaker
And then the photos are stored off chain on IPFS.
00:53:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:35
Speaker
Briefly, can you tell the audience about the type of bagel you chose and the cream cheese?
00:53:40
Speaker
Yeah, it was always an everything bagel with scallion cream cheese.
00:53:43
Speaker
And the premise behind that was that it gave the stores an opportunity to show a little bit of creativity in what they're doing.
00:53:52
Speaker
So, you know, is it one-sided or two-sided?
00:53:54
Speaker
What's the density of toppings?
00:53:56
Speaker
More likely than not, you're going to have the standard sesame, garlic, poppy, onion, and then
00:54:02
Speaker
Salt, you know, is it going to be the grains or is it going to be kind of more like baked in?
00:54:06
Speaker
And then in addition to that, like, are we going to have oat?
00:54:09
Speaker
We're going to have flaxseed.
00:54:10
Speaker
You know, what are the additional toppings?
00:54:12
Speaker
If there were things that were nonstandard, those were also listed as part of the metadata in the NFTs.
00:54:17
Speaker
And then the scallion cream cheese, you know, how thick is the chunk of scallion?
00:54:22
Speaker
Is it going to be like a racer size meant to add texture or is it kind of a finer blend meant to add flavoring and coloring?
00:54:29
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, you would be able to distinguish between the good stores and the bad stores by how much they'd be phoning those types of things in.
00:54:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:39
Speaker
Also, like, it's one of the more popular orders.
00:54:42
Speaker
So, you know, if I got like a, I don't know, blueberry bagel with like walnut cream cheese or something, you know,
00:54:48
Speaker
that's a cool bagel but it's not a good baseline it's not yeah no it doesn't give you like the kind of you know it's the the whole thing is the the marriage of absurdity and like uh scientific process right you know right like the idea of like i'm gonna create a control for this situation and uh it's resonated with people i mean it's it has been the most successful thing i've ever done from a like uh
00:55:15
Speaker
publicity standpoint you know i at this point since its launch i would say like 20 plus people i'll be having a conversation with them and it'll come up and they'll be like oh you're that guy which is bizarre i've never had that happen in my life so um and it you know it was validating insofar as it it i aim for something that was intentionally middle brow and
00:55:36
Speaker
And like it worked like I led as far as documenting the walk, I led with this thing because I knew that I mentioned earlier, people hear Marathon, their eyes glaze over.
00:55:46
Speaker
Either they can't relate to because they've never done it or they weirdly don't want to relate to it at all.
00:55:50
Speaker
But bagels, people love people love bagels.
00:55:54
Speaker
In New York City, they love to fight about it.
00:55:56
Speaker
It's like politics without any consequence.
00:55:59
Speaker
Like you can fight about Essa bagel.
00:56:01
Speaker
No, H&H bagel.
00:56:02
Speaker
No, Liberty bagel.
00:56:03
Speaker
But at the end of the day, I'd just be like, ah, whatever, your taste sucks.
00:56:06
Speaker
Anyway, let's go.
00:56:07
Speaker
You know, like, it doesn't matter, but it's fun.
00:56:09
Speaker
It's just like the weather, you know, or it's something.
00:56:12
Speaker
It's just like a New York offhand thing.
00:56:15
Speaker
I've got to say, you've, since talking to you about bagels, you've converted me, and that is now my go-to order.
00:56:22
Speaker
Nice.
00:56:22
Speaker
I also want to confess that when we first met, I think Joe had mentioned that I had put peanut butter on bagels.
00:56:29
Speaker
On a plane.
00:56:29
Speaker
A plane bagel with peanut butter.
00:56:32
Speaker
That's right.
00:56:32
Speaker
I do remember that.
00:56:33
Speaker
I do have to explain the choice.
00:56:34
Speaker
At the time... It's a very difficult time.
00:56:37
Speaker
It's a very difficult time.
00:56:41
Speaker
It was.
00:56:42
Speaker
My lactose intolerance.
00:56:44
Speaker
Oh.
00:56:45
Speaker
So, yes.
00:56:47
Speaker
I still don't think it's an excuse, but...
00:56:49
Speaker
There's some good vegan cream cheeses that could introduce you to it, which is surprising.
00:56:53
Speaker
At that time, I had some really bad vegan chalky cream cheeses that kind of threw me off.
00:56:58
Speaker
And I'm like, oh, you know what?
00:57:00
Speaker
Protein, peanut butter, bagel.
00:57:02
Speaker
I like the chewiness, but now I've been converted.
00:57:05
Speaker
I think I've been saved.
00:57:06
Speaker
Nice.
00:57:07
Speaker
I'm glad to hear it.
00:57:10
Speaker
The big secret about bagels that some people get upset at me when I say is that like you should not be eating three bagels a week.
00:57:16
Speaker
Like, you know, some people and some people eat them every day.
00:57:19
Speaker
But like that is not good for you.
00:57:22
Speaker
Like, I don't care if you scoop it out or not.
00:57:24
Speaker
It's just like you.
00:57:25
Speaker
A lot of carbs, a lot of dairy.
00:57:25
Speaker
Yeah, it should be.
00:57:26
Speaker
There's a lot going on there.
00:57:27
Speaker
It should be something that is a treat or like I'm going to go for a hike and I need a bagel or something.
00:57:33
Speaker
Like I really like I said, I mean, obviously, 50 bagels is excessive, too.
00:57:37
Speaker
But, you know, the only reason that I undertook this thing is because I was walking five marathons a week.
00:57:42
Speaker
You know, right now I like I love bagels and I like going out for bagels with people.
00:57:48
Speaker
But, yeah, to do it all the time is, you know.
00:57:51
Speaker
Not great.
00:57:52
Speaker
Well, to do that to people where you put these pros on the Internet and make these bagels sound so delicious.
00:57:58
Speaker
How can you tell them not to eat the three bagels?
00:58:01
Speaker
I think they should go and enjoy them.
00:58:04
Speaker
You know, it's like, you know, like cookie monsters, like cookies are sometimes food.
00:58:07
Speaker
Remember when they did that?
00:58:08
Speaker
Like sometimes sometime in the 2010s, they were like cookie monster, slow your roll.
00:58:13
Speaker
So you're the cookie monster of the bagel world.
00:58:15
Speaker
That's right.
00:58:15
Speaker
That's right.
00:58:17
Speaker
For instance, I'd like to read a snippet from one of your reviews of Hot Bagels in Middle Village, right close to me.
00:58:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:58:25
Speaker
It says, a flavor funk in the best way, unsparingly messy.
00:58:29
Speaker
As I eat, I realize the goal of a bagel is to get one where the messiness is eclipsed by the deliciousness, a loss of ego to the act of eating.
00:58:36
Speaker
It is a barbecue experience for the morning hours.
00:58:40
Speaker
I want to eat a bagel right now.
00:58:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:43
Speaker
So you're reading from the number one store in the whole project, and that was one of the reasons why.
00:58:48
Speaker
That was the only five bagel out of all.
00:58:52
Speaker
I'm a hard judger, but I also don't go below two typically, unless it's a real nightmare.
00:58:58
Speaker
But yeah, there was only one straight bagel that got a five, and it was that one, and that was...
00:59:04
Speaker
a good reason why, because it made me recognize this fundamental truth about bagels, that they're the barbecue of breakfast.
00:59:12
Speaker
The best versions are when the cream cheese has been activated by the heat of the bagel.
00:59:18
Speaker
And that's one of the reasons why a lot of people like to toast their bagel, right?
00:59:21
Speaker
Because it's the shortcut to get to that experience.
00:59:24
Speaker
But if you toast your bagel, what you're doing is you're raising the floor of the bagel and you're lowering the ceiling.
00:59:30
Speaker
So you can, it, it makes a crunchiness and it activates the ingredients and it activates the cream cheese.
00:59:38
Speaker
Like it can turn the onion smoky and whatnot.
00:59:40
Speaker
But the thing is that like a bagel that's fresh out of the oven already has all of those ingredients.
00:59:46
Speaker
characteristics that a toasted bagel has, but you're not turning it into a piece of toast.
00:59:52
Speaker
Like there are all sorts of flavors at the top end there.
00:59:55
Speaker
So if you can get a bagel that's out of the oven that activates the cream cheese to make it sloppy, and you're basically like doing this delicate dance with your hand, like turning it, using your wrist to like fold the cream cheese on top of the bagel as you're eating it.
01:00:09
Speaker
And you're like, this is a nightmare, but it's so good.
01:00:12
Speaker
That is really the experience that you want.
01:00:14
Speaker
out of a bagel as far as I'm concerned.
01:00:17
Speaker
Beautifully said.
01:00:21
Speaker
I could see why you were, were you not the mayor at that?
01:00:25
Speaker
I, uh, we just did bagel fest a few weeks ago.
01:00:27
Speaker
There is a bagel community in New York city.
01:00:30
Speaker
Uh, I guess don't be surprised.
01:00:32
Speaker
Uh, but this, all the shopkeepers are amazing.
01:00:34
Speaker
And like the people that are, uh, fans are real fans.
01:00:38
Speaker
And so, yeah, I was one of the expert judges and they gave me a sash.
01:00:42
Speaker
Uh, I can show it to you later.
01:00:43
Speaker
Uh, it's a picture of you with this.
01:00:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:46
Speaker
It says bagel expert on it.
01:00:47
Speaker
Definitely.
01:00:49
Speaker
And, yeah, and that was a great experience.
01:00:51
Speaker
I gave a talk about the walking project, but also just like the fundamentals of the bagel project itself, the sub project that goes over the website and rankings and whatnot, and also just the impetus for making this an NFT project, you
Weed Bags Project and Cultural Documentation
01:01:10
Speaker
know.
01:01:10
Speaker
And you said this is one of five projects.
01:01:12
Speaker
I saw the other one where the weed.
01:01:14
Speaker
Yeah, weed bags are actually there's a that right over there, that bag.
01:01:18
Speaker
Oh, wow.
01:01:18
Speaker
There's a bag of a giant punch bowl of over 200 weed bags just off camera.
01:01:24
Speaker
And that was so while we were walking around again, the most compelling trash that we found on the street were weed bags.
01:01:34
Speaker
So there's kind of like Mylar bags that have, you know, like the Simpsons or Dragon Ball Z, Rick and Morty, all knockoffs, you know, obviously they didn't get the licensing rights for them, which I think is fascinating.
01:01:46
Speaker
That they like respect copyright.
01:01:47
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
01:01:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:49
Speaker
So like 40 percent of them are all these copyright infringements.
01:01:54
Speaker
Like Bart Simpson in a smoking jacket, lighting a blunt with a dollar bill, you know, like that type of stuff.
01:01:59
Speaker
That was the first one.
01:02:00
Speaker
I sent a picture to somebody, a friend of mine.
01:02:03
Speaker
And he was like, dude, did you pick that up for me?
01:02:06
Speaker
And I was like, what do you mean?
01:02:07
Speaker
Of course I didn't pick that up for you.
01:02:09
Speaker
And then like 10 minutes later, I was like, shit, I should have picked that up.
01:02:12
Speaker
And then I went back the next day and it was gone.
01:02:14
Speaker
I was pissed.
01:02:14
Speaker
But then it was like, all right, well, I need to start collecting these.
01:02:17
Speaker
I ultimately did find another version of that again.
01:02:20
Speaker
So yeah, thank God.
01:02:22
Speaker
Exactly.
01:02:23
Speaker
So they're not all copyright infringement.
01:02:25
Speaker
There's also like a lot of bags that are from dispensaries around the country that have their own branding that they're trying to promote.
01:02:32
Speaker
So, I mean, I find it fascinating what these are.
01:02:36
Speaker
And it became doubly fascinating when in March of 2021, weed was legalized in the city.
01:02:42
Speaker
So it stands to reason that these particular artifacts are going to change fundamentally in the 10, 15, 20 years from now, particularly as everything becomes legal, these shops and dispensaries, they're not going to
01:02:58
Speaker
They're not going to mess with IP infringement.
01:03:00
Speaker
They can create their own thing that they can brand and actually sell.
01:03:04
Speaker
You know, I understand why it's happening now because the legality was vague for a really long time.
01:03:08
Speaker
So why not do something that's equally illegal, you know, brand it with something that's interesting.
01:03:15
Speaker
So we collected all these bags, again, about 220, and then we went back after the walking project was over to different famous and ubiquitous ground textures in New York City.
01:03:27
Speaker
So, for instance, we go to the Coney Island Boardwalk.
01:03:29
Speaker
I took 10 bags, I took 10 pictures.
01:03:32
Speaker
We went to the John Lennon Imagine Mosaic in Central Park, took three bags, three pictures there.
01:03:38
Speaker
I bought a ticket to a front row at a college basketball game at the Garden, St.
01:03:43
Speaker
John's, because it's cheap to college basketball.
01:03:47
Speaker
And then I convinced the security to let me on the court so I could take one picture of one bag.
01:03:51
Speaker
And then Jesse took a picture of me taking the picture.
01:03:53
Speaker
So it wasn't some like, you know, St.
01:03:55
Speaker
Francis Xavier High School somewhere like it actually was the Garden.
01:03:58
Speaker
And it's just a bunch of guys in masks like swarming me because now they're seeing what I'm doing.
01:04:03
Speaker
They're pretty chill with it.
01:04:04
Speaker
But like after I took like five or six photos and then I like picked up the bag and hesitated and was going to put it back down again and take some more.
01:04:11
Speaker
The guy was like, no, you're done, dude.
01:04:12
Speaker
You're done.
01:04:13
Speaker
but we got it.
01:04:14
Speaker
We got it.
01:04:15
Speaker
So that that's a one of one weed bag NFT.
01:04:18
Speaker
You know that one of the, I mean, one of the 8,000 things that I love about the NFT medium is the, the degree of like creating a sense of rarity through the data set that like the artist can make the idea of this thing is more valuable than this other thing through essentially the equivalent of like iTunes, you know, like, you know,
01:04:39
Speaker
sorting genre, like album, artists.
01:04:42
Speaker
Like you can apply these different like data points to an image and then create a universe of subjective value.
01:04:51
Speaker
Was there any correlation between best bagels and worst bagels and NFT prices?
01:04:58
Speaker
I'm like, I don't know if the secondary market happened very, very much, but like, was there any kind of like connection there?
01:05:05
Speaker
There was in the way that people were posting them.
01:05:09
Speaker
So there's 202 bagels.
01:05:11
Speaker
They're still on sale.
01:05:13
Speaker
Somebody bought one three days ago, I think.
01:05:15
Speaker
We got 153 out of 202.
01:05:17
Speaker
The number one bagel store is still out in the pool because it's a random mint.
01:05:21
Speaker
So for people that are interested in that.
01:05:24
Speaker
And what's more, the number one bagel store is closing.
01:05:29
Speaker
Actually has closed.
01:05:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's a long story.
01:05:33
Speaker
Unfortunately, they got squeezed out by their landlord.
01:05:36
Speaker
and they couldn't figure it out.
01:05:37
Speaker
I've been trying to help them and we'll try to continue to help them like post, you know, bagel life, but like that no longer exists now.
01:05:46
Speaker
Wow.
01:05:47
Speaker
So it is like a time capsule.
01:05:48
Speaker
And that'll, you know, as this project ages, it will continue to be that sort of thing.
01:05:53
Speaker
And I need to find a way to start documenting the fact that they're closed so people aren't going there expecting one thing.
01:06:00
Speaker
But yeah, so it's, that's now moved into history.
01:06:05
Speaker
But it remains out in the pool.
01:06:07
Speaker
And yeah, I think as far as like secondary market pricing, yeah, the best bagels or bagels of note.
01:06:13
Speaker
There was awards given to the bagel cream cheese or stores of note, 15 each of those.
01:06:19
Speaker
And they tend to command a higher value.
01:06:21
Speaker
Sure.
01:06:22
Speaker
That makes sense.
01:06:22
Speaker
And maybe the worst one, too.
01:06:24
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
01:06:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:26
Speaker
So there's, yeah, there's worst store, there's worst store.
01:06:30
Speaker
bagel and worst cream cheese.
01:06:31
Speaker
I think the worst bagel, I think it's like called Woodhaven bagels.
01:06:37
Speaker
It just had a terrible, I mean, it was a bad bagel, but it also was just like the store flow was a nightmare.
01:06:43
Speaker
I waited there for 15 minutes.
01:06:45
Speaker
It was unclear where to order.
01:06:47
Speaker
There was like a drink
01:06:48
Speaker
case in front of the deli case it was like breaking up things in this awful feng shui manner like i'm using feng shui very loosely like it just it felt it felt uncomfortable to be in there the staff didn't know what was going on and like i was i after 15 minutes i was just leaving and the guy was like wait wait what do you want it's like what what the hell is going on here oh and then as soon as i ordered they like got it to me relatively soon but it it
01:07:14
Speaker
It was a shitty bagel and a shitty experience.
01:07:16
Speaker
And it's the worst bagel.
01:07:18
Speaker
I just, I'm having a fantasy of talking to that owner and saying, it was great.
01:07:23
Speaker
I made him wait.
01:07:24
Speaker
He was almost out the door.
01:07:26
Speaker
And then as soon as I was like, yeah.
01:07:28
Speaker
And then I marked it off.
01:07:29
Speaker
And that's customer number 202.
01:07:33
Speaker
I gave the worst experience to him.
01:07:35
Speaker
And the security footage is the NFT.
01:07:37
Speaker
And he's got NFCs of all his customers.
01:07:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:07:40
Speaker
And I was the worst customer for sure.
Lost Pets of New York and NFT Preservation
01:07:42
Speaker
By far.
01:07:46
Speaker
So you said this was the second one.
01:07:48
Speaker
So do you have in mind the third, fourth, and fifth?
01:07:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:51
Speaker
The Weedbag one's not online yet, right?
01:07:53
Speaker
Or is it?
01:07:53
Speaker
No, Weedbags.myc.
01:07:55
Speaker
Okay.
01:07:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:57
Speaker
So everything that I've done, too, because, again, I like to provide access.
01:08:03
Speaker
None of this requires NFT.
01:08:05
Speaker
You don't need to be a Web3 person to appreciate any of this.
01:08:08
Speaker
I mean, the site itself is up.
01:08:09
Speaker
People still use it for the bagels routinely to find the best bagel in their immediate area because there's a map and whatnot.
01:08:16
Speaker
The...
01:08:18
Speaker
The weed bags one, my wife, Jessie, drew this character that's kind of like a male Carmen Sandiego.
01:08:25
Speaker
So he's got like a green.
01:08:26
Speaker
I'm looking at him right now.
01:08:27
Speaker
Yeah, there you go.
01:08:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:29
Speaker
And you go to the site and you click his jacket and he opens it up.
01:08:34
Speaker
Uh, it's kind of like flasher vibe, but also like, I'll sell you these watches type thing.
01:08:38
Speaker
And, uh, you can browse all of the bags and like, you know, again, provided like a type and subtype for each bags with dispensary, uh, they might, uh, come from what size the bags are, et cetera, et cetera.
01:08:51
Speaker
If they have holograms on them, things like that.
01:08:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:55
Speaker
And then, yeah, so there'll be three more.
01:08:58
Speaker
Like you said, the next one coming up.
01:09:00
Speaker
I guess at this point I've been trying to keep it under the hat.
01:09:03
Speaker
No, but it's close enough now that I think it's worthwhile talking about.
01:09:08
Speaker
Love exclusive content.
01:09:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's right.
01:09:10
Speaker
It's Lost Pets of New York.
01:09:12
Speaker
Oh, yes.
01:09:13
Speaker
So what...
01:09:15
Speaker
We did again as we were walking around.
01:09:18
Speaker
We took photos of every lost dog, lost cat, lost bird, lost ferret sign that we saw.
01:09:27
Speaker
And what we're going to do there is take the image of just the animal itself, not like the whole description, and reduce it in size such that it is a pixel art image.
01:09:42
Speaker
that can be stored on the blockchain, so like within the NFT itself.
01:09:47
Speaker
And for those that don't know the intricacies of NFTs, the very, very, very Cliff Notes version of this is pictures over a certain size in like megabytes are too big to be stored within the Ethereum blockchain.
01:10:02
Speaker
So they need to be stored on like a hosting service.
01:10:05
Speaker
And I mentioned IPFS, Interplanetary File Service.
01:10:08
Speaker
That is a popular place to store the actual NFT assets.
01:10:14
Speaker
But the idea is that there is an extra layer of dependency there, right?
01:10:17
Speaker
Like if IPFS were to disappear or go down, I have no anticipation that it will.
01:10:22
Speaker
But if it would, then the NFT would need to redirect to another place so that you would have the image.
01:10:27
Speaker
Otherwise, you just have a receipt of ownership of that particular thing.
01:10:32
Speaker
with images that are of a certain size smaller, and by using pixel art that it could be like only a couple of kilobytes, it can be stored on the blockchain itself.
01:10:41
Speaker
So anything that you would ever need to reproduce the image is there.
01:10:44
Speaker
So, so long as Ethereum exists, the image will be reproducible.
01:10:49
Speaker
And if Ethereum didn't exist, it's at a level of scale now where like we would be dealing with much bigger problems in our lives.
01:10:56
Speaker
You know, it's like,
01:10:57
Speaker
the idea of like my dog's leg is falling off from radiation and peanut butter is extinct.
01:11:01
Speaker
Like it'd be that level of problems that we'd be dealing with.
01:11:05
Speaker
You know?
01:11:05
Speaker
So you're saying peanut butter is important.
01:11:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:07
Speaker
Well, yeah, I guess so.
01:11:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:09
Speaker
It's probably still priority like 3,692 on apocalyptic events.
01:11:15
Speaker
But yeah.
01:11:16
Speaker
So the fact that they're of that size, I think it plays well for me rather than like just having this, you know, extra, having the large images as the NFTs, which I'll put together a website where you can see the full image.
01:11:30
Speaker
Cause that's, I think that's fascinating too.
01:11:31
Speaker
Like the, um,
01:11:33
Speaker
architecture behind what people think a lost animal sign should look like is fascinating.
01:11:41
Speaker
So there'll be all that.
01:11:42
Speaker
But then I just like the idea of kind of giving this aura of permanence to a lost animal.
01:11:48
Speaker
It's like a shrine situation.
01:11:50
Speaker
And obviously, I mean, it should go without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway like this.
01:11:55
Speaker
I do not intend to collect any money from this project.
01:11:58
Speaker
I just don't think I have the...
01:12:00
Speaker
mental fortitude, testicular fortitude, whatever, to collect money off of somebody's lost animals.
01:12:07
Speaker
Like, that's awful.
01:12:09
Speaker
So I think either it's going to be a free mint or I'll hook up with an organization to do a donation based.
01:12:14
Speaker
It'll really kind of see like what the market is vibing at that point, you know?
01:12:20
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, these are the things that I am excited about in the NFT space, like different experiments with like, what is the future of reviews?
01:12:31
Speaker
You know, how can NFTs potentially be the future of reviews to overtake a Yelp or a Google?
01:12:36
Speaker
And with this, like playing with the idea of being able to create a permanent thing like it, it almost feels like I was daydreaming about it yesterday.
01:12:45
Speaker
It's like these are cave paintings, you know, and like I have no again, I have no expectation.
01:12:49
Speaker
Theorem is going to go anywhere anytime soon.
01:12:51
Speaker
Like in a thousand years, these things could still be there.
01:12:54
Speaker
And like the people will be messing around, poking around like, what is this weird quasi dog?
01:12:59
Speaker
It's a dog, right?
01:13:00
Speaker
I think it's a dog, because it's all pixel art.
01:13:01
Speaker
It's like, I think that's what that is, you know?
01:13:04
Speaker
Just being able to play with these frontiers, just like undriven snow.
01:13:09
Speaker
And for a guy like me, obviously I sound like a true dilettante.
01:13:13
Speaker
I've been jumping around to everything.
01:13:15
Speaker
But like, just this NFT, NFTs are great because it can contain music.
01:13:21
Speaker
It can contain movies.
01:13:22
Speaker
It can contain mixed media art.
01:13:24
Speaker
It can contain writing.
01:13:26
Speaker
I can actually start building an oeuvre for the first time in my life, even though I'm not like,
01:13:31
Speaker
comfortable calling myself an artist.
01:13:33
Speaker
They'll at least like, if you're an NFT collector, if I continue to create in this space, that will make sense to you versus like, you know, having you to have to come over to my house to give you a DVD and hopefully you have a DVD player, you know?
01:13:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:50
Speaker
I mean, there is a thread, though, about observing these things that go unnoticed, right?
01:13:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think so.
01:13:58
Speaker
Like, whether it be bagels, whether it be these bags of weed.
01:14:02
Speaker
I mean, lost and found posters, I think we've talked about before.
01:14:05
Speaker
I'm a big connoisseur as well.
01:14:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:14:08
Speaker
It is amazing.
01:14:10
Speaker
I especially love the poster that tells you that the pet is, don't make eye contact.
01:14:14
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:14:15
Speaker
Don't touch the pet.
01:14:16
Speaker
Don't call its name.
01:14:18
Speaker
If you see it, follow it.
01:14:21
Speaker
I don't know.
01:14:22
Speaker
Call me and follow it, I guess.
01:14:23
Speaker
Yeah, the ones that are like, we'll definitely run away.
01:14:26
Speaker
Yeah, 100%.
01:14:27
Speaker
It's gone.
01:14:30
Speaker
But then using the NFT as this container to contain all these...
01:14:34
Speaker
disparate things yeah like fall uh into your observations i mean i just love the way it kind of flows thank you yeah yeah i was trying to like find a through thread too to some of your earlier work and the and the film film work that you sent to and i feel like um like a you're like a collector of of things and experiences and information and so like at least with some of those film works
01:15:00
Speaker
uh you know like they're very curated collections of things that are kind of like put together um because i see i i like felt like i was trying to find like a through thread through all these things and i don't know exactly what it is but that was like the one that i kept going back to was that you you seem to be interested in all of the things that you said but then also like um
01:15:21
Speaker
collecting these different things.
01:15:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:24
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
01:15:24
Speaker
I think being able to take experience and position it in such a manner that it reveals something, you know, is what I like to do.
01:15:33
Speaker
I like to assemble situations.
01:15:36
Speaker
And, you know, I'm not necessarily, I'm not, I wouldn't consider myself a craftsman in any particular thing.
01:15:44
Speaker
I am more about recreating the enthusiasm of an experience than I am about replicating an experience again and again and again in order to burnish it to a certain thing.
01:15:57
Speaker
And so, yeah, I mean, with the past couple of movies that we've done with Global Staycation, where I took a bunch of 80s VHS footage and paired it with some music that I made,
01:16:12
Speaker
That is, yeah, that is just an accumulation of different instances of, I guess, nostalgia, but also just, yeah, just like putting together some dominant theme, making people recognize themes that emerge, you know, like, yeah, I guess the having dynamic emergence of theme become apparent to a user.
01:16:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:36
Speaker
And you're like diving, you're like diving into that archive in that work.
01:16:40
Speaker
And then in this new, new work you're making, you're like creating archives, right?
01:16:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:45
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
01:16:46
Speaker
And yeah.
01:16:47
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, I think you're, you're making me realize it in real time, which is always a nice thing is that's what all of the NFT things have been so far is, you know, taking this vast swath of experience and curating some sort of pattern that I,
01:17:05
Speaker
eyewitnessed or that I want to draw out of it, you know, because sometimes they're evident, but other times you have to work a little harder.
01:17:13
Speaker
And ultimately, I think that's that's part of what art does for me is to extrapolate, extrapolate that pattern making.
01:17:24
Speaker
I think we're getting close to the
01:17:26
Speaker
Wrapping up, but I was just going to, I thought that was like a really nice final kind of closing.
01:17:31
Speaker
Perfect.
01:17:33
Speaker
No, I was just saying, because you're saying extrapolate, but just, can you tie that into then your voxel space?
01:17:40
Speaker
Yes, of course.
01:17:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:41
Speaker
Inverts it out, right?
01:17:43
Speaker
Yeah, that's right.
Exploring the Voxels Metaverse and Virtual Collaborations
01:17:44
Speaker
So I also have several parcels in the Voxels metaverse space.
01:17:54
Speaker
It is, you know, virtual real estate.
01:17:58
Speaker
Voxels I happen to enjoy because it is accessible to any device.
01:18:03
Speaker
You don't need an account.
01:18:05
Speaker
So you could use your cell phone, you can use a laptop, you can use a tablet, whatever.
01:18:09
Speaker
And it also has this aesthetic that's like very manic, reminds me of MySpace in a favorable way, where it's like each parcel is very different than the other.
01:18:18
Speaker
And as befits the voxel name, it has voxel blocks as like kind of the base building structure, kind of like a...
01:18:26
Speaker
Minecraft-esque aesthetic, which I'd never played before.
01:18:29
Speaker
But to be able to build in this space, they have very robust building tools.
01:18:34
Speaker
And unlike a lot of the metaverses that exist out there, the parcels, you can walk from one to another to another.
01:18:42
Speaker
A lot of the other metaverse spaces are instanced.
01:18:46
Speaker
So it's like an island and you teleport from one island to the other.
01:18:49
Speaker
So they have a first mover advantage.
01:18:53
Speaker
Whether or not they'll be able to capitalize on that fact that they have this infrastructure set up or not remains to be seen.
01:18:59
Speaker
It'll be two to three years.
01:19:00
Speaker
It'll play out because I do think that these virtual real estate platforms will generally establish a foothold eventually.
01:19:06
Speaker
Do you like your neighbors?
01:19:09
Speaker
I do very much.
01:19:10
Speaker
I do.
01:19:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:19:11
Speaker
Wait, so I have one.
01:19:14
Speaker
His name is Jack.
01:19:17
Speaker
He lives in Bangkok, but he's originally from, like, Maryland.
01:19:21
Speaker
And so we got to meet last spring.
01:19:23
Speaker
He came back for, like, six weeks or so.
01:19:26
Speaker
And, yeah, we do regular.
01:19:28
Speaker
We use his venue for concerts, basically.
01:19:32
Speaker
And we use my venue for gallery openings and whatnot.
01:19:34
Speaker
So I have a gallery that's set up right now just kind of like as a placeholder for all the bagel stuff.
01:19:40
Speaker
So you can browse that.
01:19:41
Speaker
And then I have one space that is I call it HV Laboratory.
01:19:46
Speaker
And that's where artists that are more traditional artists that want to get into Web3 for the first time, give them the space as a residency for like two or three months at a time.
01:19:57
Speaker
So in fact, we're having, I don't know when this comes out, but November 15th, we are having a show opening for an artist that does, she did, her name's Joanna.
01:20:09
Speaker
She did a series called Wish Fulfillment.
01:20:12
Speaker
And it was like oil paintings.
01:20:15
Speaker
In real life, there was an opening.
01:20:17
Speaker
And if you went to this opening, you'd see that they were all these wishing wells.
01:20:24
Speaker
And wishing wells and fountains often have like coins in them.
01:20:28
Speaker
So she took pictures of all the coins that were in these fountain paintings and turned the coins themselves into NFTs.
01:20:35
Speaker
So if you were there at the opening, you could claim an NFT coin version of the painting.
01:20:43
Speaker
And we're going to do another virtual opening on November 15th and have an IRL thing as well.
01:20:49
Speaker
And anybody that shows up to the IRL thing or the virtual thing can claim one of her coin NFTs.
01:20:55
Speaker
So...
01:20:56
Speaker
So, yeah, she did a great job building out the space.
01:20:59
Speaker
It's interesting to see like the learning curves people have with like creating voxel models.
01:21:04
Speaker
But like, you know, people do amazing stuff when you just give them the opportunity to play around.
01:21:10
Speaker
So, yeah, I and then I have another space as well that's just more like general.
01:21:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:17
Speaker
event things.
01:21:17
Speaker
We had a pair of artists that are Web3 native that did like oil painting collaborations.
01:21:25
Speaker
They worked on the same canvas over eight days.
01:21:28
Speaker
They did eight pieces and then they sold those as NFTs.
01:21:31
Speaker
And if you bought the NFT, you got it, the physical version as well.
01:21:35
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, I love the experimentation that's going on in that space, discerning the difference between what a real life event is, what a virtual event is, what works, what doesn't.
01:21:47
Speaker
And there are definitely some things that are emergent and novel.
01:21:51
Speaker
And there are other things that just are never going to translate.
01:21:54
Speaker
And and that doesn't you know, that doesn't mean it's a failure.
01:21:58
Speaker
It just means it's a different medium, you know.
01:21:59
Speaker
Well, that's great.
01:22:01
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:01
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:02
Speaker
We definitely appreciate the crossover between the physical and the digital and, and all of this stuff going on.
01:22:10
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:10
Speaker
Well, I love coming to check out your show a few weeks back.
01:22:13
Speaker
That was great.
01:22:14
Speaker
I mean, the idea of like having a real life setting and then putting on a VR headset and having that same setting.
01:22:24
Speaker
And it's like the physical uncanny valley of like, this is over there, but my head's over here.
01:22:30
Speaker
How is this happening?
01:22:32
Speaker
Oh, the VR world is becoming more real than the real world right now.
01:22:36
Speaker
Like I'd never experienced that.
01:22:38
Speaker
And honestly, I don't know.
01:22:40
Speaker
I, you know, that's a very particular type of setup.
01:22:43
Speaker
You know, you could have a gallery show with VR headsets, but they're probably not going to recreate that room.
01:22:48
Speaker
Yeah, it was great.
01:22:49
Speaker
So that was a fun one.
01:22:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:53
Speaker
Well, thanks, Mike.
01:22:54
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:55
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
Casual Conclusion and Credits
01:22:56
Speaker
Thanks again for inviting us to your home and telling us these amazing stories.
01:23:02
Speaker
Can't wait to see.
01:23:02
Speaker
Can I get a digital punch card or something since I zoomed in?
01:23:05
Speaker
Or what's the rules around that?
01:23:07
Speaker
You can't punch in, but I can give you the one.
01:23:10
Speaker
I have actually notes on the back of the one that was supposed to go to you.
01:23:14
Speaker
So I'll give you this one.
01:23:15
Speaker
Along with the dad candy I was going to give you from my daughter's.
01:23:19
Speaker
Oh, the one with the rejects or whatever?
01:23:20
Speaker
Is it like Baby Ruth or something?
01:23:22
Speaker
It's like Polish Ruth.
01:23:24
Speaker
Oh, sure.
01:23:27
Speaker
She was in Greenpoint.
01:23:29
Speaker
Got it.
01:23:30
Speaker
But thank you, Mike.
01:23:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:32
Speaker
Thanks for having me, guys.
01:23:33
Speaker
Anytime.
01:23:33
Speaker
It's a lot of fun.
01:23:34
Speaker
Fantastic.
01:23:34
Speaker
And I'm sure we will have you again.
01:23:37
Speaker
But I can't wait to share some of the pictures of you and your stash.
01:23:42
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:44
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:44
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:45
Speaker
I shaved my face for Halloween because I had a mask that didn't appreciate the mustache.
01:23:50
Speaker
So.
01:23:51
Speaker
Oh, Sash.
01:23:51
Speaker
I thought you said Stash.
01:23:52
Speaker
Oh, I thought you said Stash.
01:23:54
Speaker
Sash and Stash.
01:23:55
Speaker
Both.
01:23:56
Speaker
Both.
01:23:56
Speaker
Both.
01:23:57
Speaker
My Stash-less Sash.
01:23:59
Speaker
Yes.
01:23:59
Speaker
All right.
01:24:01
Speaker
Good to see you.
01:24:02
Speaker
Cheers.
01:24:02
Speaker
All right.
01:24:03
Speaker
Thank you.
01:24:07
Speaker
Arranging Tangerines is recorded, edited, and produced by Lydian Stater, an evolving curatorial platform based in New York City with a focus on the intersection of contemporary and crypto art.
01:24:17
Speaker
You can learn more at lydianstater.co, find images at Lydian Stater NYC on Instagram, and follow us at Lydian Stater on Twitter.
01:24:25
Speaker
Thanks to Mike for taking the time to speak to us this week.
01:24:28
Speaker
If you'd like to learn more about his projects, visit him on Twitter at Hailey Barlett.
01:24:33
Speaker
Big thanks to Tal Juan, who graciously provides our intro music.
01:24:37
Speaker
His albums are available at talwan.bandcamp.com.
01:24:41
Speaker
And thank you to you, listener, for spending your valuable time with us.
01:24:45
Speaker
I know what to say.
01:24:47
Speaker
I know what to say.
01:24:48
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
01:24:52
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
01:24:54
Speaker
I just know I don't want to.
01:25:23
Speaker
I know what to say.
01:25:24
Speaker
I just know.