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Sammy Westervelt
306 Plays3 years ago
Sammy Westervelt of the Death Valley Girls and Egg Drop Soup is back on the show following her Portland streetcast (Episode 155)! "I feel as though I'm a conscious being, and I'm almost certain that I'm observing things around me, and those things are somethings thinging." Check out the SRTN streetcast with Death Valley Girls in Episode 155 Watch I Got Us Journals Check out the puppet action in the OR Durves Video Follow on Instagram: Egg Drop Soup, Death Valley Girls, Sour Party Movie Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Merch available on Bandcamp and Suicide Squeeze
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast & Key Creators
00:00:03
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host, Ken Zalante. Editor and producer, Peter Bauer.
The Role of Meditation: Insights and Practices
00:00:17
Speaker
Tell me, tell me about, tell me about your meditating. Yeah. I had a chat briefly about that. So, you know, what do you do? What do you discover when you're doing it?
00:00:28
Speaker
Well I mean I think it sort of depends on what the intention is kind of going into it. Usually in the morning I'm just kind of setting myself up for the day so I try to find that like intercom and connect to the universe and just like it's sort of like a nice reminder of like the foundation of
00:00:50
Speaker
sort of like my atomic structure and how, you know, on a day-to-day basis, life is just kind of about how I choose to be in the world. And it's my job to make it a good day. And so I get to make it a good day by reconnecting to kind of the most basic part of myself, I think, which is just that universal oneness, you know?
Meditation's Influence on Creativity
00:01:20
Speaker
Yeah, I really appreciate you saying saying that I have I had contact going back a little while and the Shambhala tradition of Buddhism more American influenced but Tibetan Tibetan Buddhism and a lot of my training
00:01:38
Speaker
for meditation has come from that, but I've been very flexible and just really love hearing people talk about meditation and mindfulness. And I think the deep discoveries that you can find in there as an artist, I think listening to David Lynch and TM and Transcendental Meditation and
00:02:02
Speaker
what the wellsprings are for what we create, right? So do you use your meditation in that type of way, you know, away from the suffering artists, all this chaos, drugs, booze, or whatever can happen, but just saying, okay, what is the wellspring when I connect with my breath and try to team my mind? Is that what you use it for, Sammy? I think I would say part of it. I mean, I think, you know, I, um,
00:02:33
Speaker
I use it to center myself and figure out what it is just kind of that I want on a day-to-day basis, but also in a global sense for my whole life. How do I want to feel throughout my whole life? And as an artist, I think it's inevitable that
00:02:56
Speaker
quieting our minds and letting go of the sort of like day-to-day anxieties even if it's just for like five minutes which now I go for much longer but I think when you're first starting you can start to get a little antsy and you're kind of like what am I supposed to be doing am I doing this right like what is the and what is the goal you know but I think
00:03:18
Speaker
that discovering that there kind of is no end game and it is this endless source of, I don't know, I can't help but just use the same word again. It's like discovering the oneness within and this wholeness within the universe and the universe within yourself. I have David Lynch's, it's just like a coffee table book of his, but it's called Catching the Big Fish.
00:03:47
Speaker
I got that. Yeah, he talks about how he's used TM to kind of just discover specific answers to questions that he has when he comes against a problem when he's writing or making a film or something and inevitably he always finds that answer and I don't use TM but I think any kind of meditation is beneficial.
00:04:14
Speaker
That being said, I think whether you're pursuing something specific in that you want like, you're like, fuck, I can't figure this out. And I'm going crazy trying to do it. And it's just like, okay, let me just step away for a minute. And you might not get the answer in that moment of meditation. But when you open yourself up,
00:04:38
Speaker
to the possibilities that are outside of this narrow framework that we sort of have to force ourselves into day in and day out to just exist in a society. I think that it can just help to be so expansive. And for me, it has helped me a lot in my creative relationships and my creative partnerships because I am someone who I think I didn't
00:05:06
Speaker
I had a pretty traumatic childhood. I don't know anyone who hasn't and it's also varying degrees, but there was a lot of time in my life where I really had no agency and I was always kind of at the whims of, you know, my a step parent and when I slowly started to discover myself and who I really was, you know, you get kind of conditioned to behave in a certain way and
00:05:33
Speaker
when you're behaving in that way you're kind of going against what is perhaps actually your true self and so when you find that agency you sort of swing the pendulum all the way in a direction and then when you get into creative partnerships I think it was almost like part of
00:05:54
Speaker
My trauma that made it hard to to let go of like the original idea that I had when I was first coming up with something and sure meditation has really helped me settle into
00:06:08
Speaker
being okay with letting go. And that's like in every area of my life and like not needing the answer not needing to know exactly what is going to happen but trusting that the right thing will always happen because that's just how the universe works, you know, open to like
Energy, World Influence & Pandemic Impact
00:06:29
Speaker
the universe showing me what my destiny is and not trying to like plan it out in this hardcore way because you could make, you could have everything like scheduled down to like the second, the millisecond and anything could happen to disrupt that. And if you're rigid, that disruption can cause chaos and wreak havoc on an internal level. Maybe no one else will have any idea what's going on with you, but
00:06:59
Speaker
You feel it and that sends ripple effects into the world. I really believe like your energy whether you're using words or not your energy affects the world and I you know before we started recording we talked about just like the pandemic having such an effect on everyone globally and um, and I think we're all a little bit collectively like
00:07:24
Speaker
scared about the future in a way that, you know, I think on some level we should be so we can be aware of like the changes that we need to make to make the world better and see that like everyone deserves for it to be better. Not just like rich people are not just like the elite. It's like every person is here and contributing in some way. So why can't we just all fucking make it better? Yeah.
00:07:54
Speaker
That's kind of a weird segue, but... No, I'm down with the sentiment. And yeah, I think I picked up on what you said there about kind of like a collective fear. And I think it's a piece that's kind of...
00:08:09
Speaker
fascinating, but also could be stultifying, you know, away from health, you know. So we are talking with Sammy Westervelt and folks, Sammy was on briefly with the Death Valley Girls episode we had recently.
Guest's Artistic Journey & Feminist Punk Film 'Sour Party'
00:08:26
Speaker
We chatted outside of Portland and it was nice to chat with Sammy and share some common interests. We've already hit one as far as meditation and David Lynch, but
00:08:39
Speaker
I'm really interested in the art that you make, Sammy and Chanten, about some of that. You know, you're an artist, musician, singer, you've got your group Egg Drop Soup, which I really dig, and of course, Death Valley Girls. Also,
00:08:57
Speaker
I wanted to ask you about recent film work that you've done with Sour Party, and I don't have a good handle on what you did in that and what that is, but why don't we go there if you want to just chat about film and video?
00:09:12
Speaker
Yeah, totally. So Sour Party is the first feature that I've ever worked on and I'm not only the lead in it, but I also helped write the story and helped with my friends who wrote it, just sort of fine tuning everything.
00:09:33
Speaker
getting it ready. We just actually finished it and started submitting it to festivals last night. So it's all very exciting. And it's about to essentially like stunted stunted like 30 something women who do not have their shit together. And my character is
00:09:59
Speaker
what how do i want to put this i mean basically it's like it's like kind of a feminist punk take on the traditional buddy comedy and my character um has lied and said that i got my sister a gift for her baby shower which i did not and the last thing left on the registry
00:10:19
Speaker
is more money than I have. And so rather than coming clean and telling my sister that I lied, we decide to kind of go around Los Angeles, me and my friend James, and try to collect money from people who we believe owe us money so we can get this gift. And it's kind of an ode to all of like, you know,
00:10:47
Speaker
all of our sort of past selves and all of the people that we've had to deal with in Los Angeles as we've tried to like come into our own as artists. And there's a lot of weirdos here and there's a lot of bullshit here. There's a lot of questionable transactions in money owed and money not delivered. We've sort of like wrapped this social commentary in this
00:11:15
Speaker
like semi-surreal package. And it was such an honor to me to begin with for my friends who are very accomplished filmmakers in their own right. This is their first feature as well, but they've done a lot of really cool shorts over the years and they're a couple, their husband and wife, and they're completely brilliant. And so when they asked me
00:11:43
Speaker
Initially back in February of 2021, if I wanted to act in a short film that they had written, I was like, absolutely. And I moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting and then kind of pivoted and started playing music a couple of years in just because I got very disillusioned with the whole industry, not because I wasn't getting cast in things, but just because I felt like I had no creative control
00:12:09
Speaker
uh over what i was doing and i was like why am i kind of busting my ass to make other people's dreams come true and when i'm not doing things that are actually like important to me you know i i studied philosophy in college that's what my degree is in and so
00:12:25
Speaker
if it's not perfect for the show. Thank you for studying philosophy. We've got philosophers here. So stay tuned everybody for the next three hours. Go ahead. Um, but you know, so for me, it's like, if it's not, if it's not extremely hilarious or very deep, I like do not care. And so I was really finding that I was having a hard time connecting with any of the work that I was doing because I was like,
00:12:55
Speaker
Everyone, all this shit is so dumb. It's not even dumb in a smart way. It's just ridiculously stupid and it's not going to help society at all. It's not going to make anyone think about anything. So what am I doing? Why am I doing this?
00:13:15
Speaker
So I started getting into music more. It's kind of an interesting story, and this is kind of a long-winded answer about this.
From Acting to Music: Birth of Egg Drop Soup
00:13:23
Speaker
But this was in 2016. I had taken the money that I was going to be using to
00:13:35
Speaker
take my acting class and I went and I bought a little MIDI keyboard and I was just using that to like write songs. I previously purchased a bass guitar at a yard sale and when I was living in Pittsburgh but I never learned how to play it or anything and then I kind of was like
00:13:50
Speaker
What am I doing with my life? Why am I even in L.A.? I feel like I can make music anywhere. And I sat down in my little like meditation corner and I lit a candle and I was like, universe, what am I supposed to do with my life? And I'm not even being hyperbolic here. Like 30 minutes later, within the hour of asking this question to the universe,
00:14:12
Speaker
A friend of mine was like, hey, you write songs, right? Do you want to start a band? And I was like, uh, yeah. Oh my God. Can I play bass? I don't know how, but I have one. And she was like, yeah, totally. And that friend is Olivia Saperstein and she is, um, who I now I'm an egg drop soup with. We started a band called the pinks.
00:14:36
Speaker
and pretty quickly realized that we have a very special working relationship and we also realized that we wanted to
00:14:47
Speaker
do something a little harder and a little bit more in line with just like our values as feminists and people and kind of taking a lens to like, what the fuck is going on? And as far as like, you know, the world and just within the music industry, I mean, I could get into all that stuff. So whatever I quit acting cut to early last year.
00:15:11
Speaker
they asked me to do the short film. I'm like, oh my God, yes, they send me the script. It's the short, it's called, I Got Us Journals. It's so weird, but it's really fun. Very short, if anyone wants to find it, it's on Vimeo. And then they had written this other short film that they wanted me to act into, and we were gonna shoot that in August. And I won't get too deep into what happened to them, but
00:15:39
Speaker
essentially they like went through this experience that kind of brought them to their lowest point as filmmakers. It was like kind of a catfish situation and just wasn't cool. You should have them on the show because they're extremely smart and just like with it.
00:16:00
Speaker
people. And so they go through this experience, I'll let them talk about it when they're on. It's not my story to tell. But essentially, they were basically like, fuck this, we're making a feature. And so they called me over and they were like, we can't handle
00:16:19
Speaker
We cannot handle the bullshit anymore. Like we're just going to go for it. Are you in? We're going to take this short script and develop these characters into a feature. And I was like, hell yeah. So.
00:16:35
Speaker
we figured the story out and we had the first version of the script I think within like three weeks or something just like crazy like that and we kept working on it and working on it and slowly assembled like the most just just like every person on our crew it was a very skeletal crew but everyone was so scrappy and so talented and just
00:17:03
Speaker
like essential to what we did and it was like a little family and we started shooting in January and you know because of my touring schedule and everything we had to kind of do it a bit piecemeal so we started shooting in January we shot the bulk of it between February and March and then
Independent Filmmaking & Festival Excitement
00:17:27
Speaker
we had one more scene that we weren't really even able to shoot until July. And then once we finished that, it was straight into editing. We had a couple of focus groups, did a survey, figured out where things needed to be cut, perfected it all. It just all happened so fast. But it's like, oh my god, we did something. We made something. And it's like,
00:17:54
Speaker
Not too shabby, you know. Yeah. And I'm glad to hear it. You know, I am one of the things is I've had different artists, as you know, on the show and in filmmakers and, you know, recently had a couple of Liz Kiger did Orfeo in kind of a modern different retelling into Orpheus Smith. Matthew Kyle Levine worked on that. And he has some films that he's worked on and just
00:18:24
Speaker
seen the whole, it's been exciting to me, connecting to smaller independent films and submitting them to festivals and seeing how they gain their life. And it's great to follow. And I feel it's such more of an intimate connection to the films themselves. Totally. Yeah. And as far as just anything, as far as general availability or timetable around
00:18:51
Speaker
I mean, it all kind of depends on what happens on the festival circuit. We, like I said, we just started submitting last night. We hit, I'm not going to say which one, but we hit the very last, it was like within 30 minutes of the final deadline.
00:19:09
Speaker
Yeah like we just got in right under the wire but it was like we were all standing there we were like oh my god like hit submit this is so crazy you know and and now we're kind of full force we've got a good list of all different you know kinds of festivals that we want to submit to i guess tears if you will rather than kinds you know and
00:19:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean it's it's all just very exciting I think we're we're a little bit like shell-shocked like what do we do now? We just wait until what like Someone tells us we're in like yeah, it's a ghost somebody somebody's let it's right now. I am I
00:19:52
Speaker
No, it's exciting to hear, and I wanted to ask you about that. Yeah. Well, we definitely have a whole bunch to talk about, but I wanted to cut to a track from Egg Drop Soup, and let listeners hear a little bit of music before we drop back in. And the track is Ordurves. And I was wondering if you could
00:20:19
Speaker
mention anything to take us into that track that listeners might want to know about it.
00:20:24
Speaker
Sure. I mean, this track is like actually based on a true story from a day that I mouthed off to a boss at an old job and because I had just had enough. I mean, I don't know if you can tell from all the other things I've said up to this point, but I'm not meant for the corporate structured office. It presents particular challenges for you. Yeah.
00:20:52
Speaker
And I really like, you know what, I'm not even going to say I tried my hardest because I don't know, there's like a meme that circulates every now and again, that's like, I bring the energy to the office of like, we should all just quit. And that is totally me because I'm just like, fuck the man, like, whatever, we're just here because we need a paycheck, you know, like, this is a bullshit who gives a fuck, you know. And so
00:21:14
Speaker
Um, I definitely wasn't not like that the whole time that i've worked there But I did my job and I did it appropriately and I have a lot of other skills That this particular company could have utilized and anytime I would sort of volunteer my Services, it was sort of like that's not in your job description. That's not your job. Like that's not what you're supposed to be doing and um, you know, it just it
00:21:41
Speaker
It got to me. I hit my breaking point and I mouthed off to this lady and then, you know, she called me in her office and she was like, you can't talk to me like that. And I was like, I basically just was like, I can't handle this anymore, but I didn't quit.
00:22:02
Speaker
I was like, I'm just going to keep it going. And then the following Monday, I got fired. So that is what this song is about. Hey, all right. We'll play hors d'oeuvres. And I've worked 23 years in the labor movement. I can feel everything that Sammy's talking about. So I can link up with that pretty well. Everybody hors d'oeuvres from the great band Egg Drop Soup.
Creative Music Projects & Visual Storytelling
00:22:23
Speaker
I got fired today because of my bad attitude But my boss was a bitch and I just wasn't in the mood Know I'm not hip, but tell me did you pick up the news? Hope it's something exciting cause I'm fucking sick of the blues
00:22:54
Speaker
I'm smart but I never apply myself Getting high in a room all by myself Another hit Now tell me did you get my complaint? Over and over and over I have no restraint
00:23:30
Speaker
In a room all by myself Getting high but I never apply myself
00:24:20
Speaker
love it thank you and that video is really fun too i kind of made that one all by myself in my apartment i i had some help building out little things but i built all these little sets and i made the video is like predominantly hand puppets and so i built all this little stuff and then i had my bandmates and another friend come over to like be puppeteers and
00:24:46
Speaker
Um, did a lot of fun, like little things with green screen. I taught myself after effects to edit this thing. And I'm definitely very proud of it. It's pretty janky, but it's, it's fun. That's great. No, I, uh, I really enjoyed, um, I was starting to listen to music after I met you with egg drop soup. And I love that song. Um, bath salts appeals to me. Like, I don't know. There's like, um, there's like a deep, uh, uh, metal, uh,
00:25:16
Speaker
in there that really feels good to me. Totally. That's absolutely Olivia's influence. She loves metal music. I will not front. I do not know much about it. Every now and again, I'll come in with a really hardcore heavy riff, and she'll be like, that's so metal. And I'm like, cool. I can't.
00:25:44
Speaker
You know, strange. It's strange on that sound. Like I've talked to I mean, seriously, I've talked to friends in Eugene, Oregon, right. And they're playing this, you know, they're jamming, right? They're jamming. And then I was like, hey, you know, not to typify or categorize everything, but like,
00:26:04
Speaker
I mean, are you a stone or sludge doom band here? Like, do you know? And they need to know the terminology and it's like, I don't know if that's metal or like people listen to this. And I'm like, yeah, they do. A lot of them listen to that. So always, always good. No, I love I'd love to hear that. So
Joining Death Valley Girls: A Musical Milestone
00:26:24
Speaker
And going over to the other side, Death Valley Girls, and of course recently, it was fun, a recent episode with Death Valley Girls. We had Mark Palm, Mark J. Palm was a recent guest on the show, do some animated panels and such. Yeah, that was really cool. Yeah, it was fun to connect around all that. But just speaking about just your general time in working with Death Valley Girls and what they do, because
00:26:55
Speaker
They're cool as heck and a lot of fun in a ton of creative energy with the podcast. You've been on the Death Valley Girls podcast. Everybody listened to that. But what about the Death Valley Girls stuff for you and what you've been doing with that? Totally. Bonnie is such a creative powerhouse. She's always coming up with cool ways to
00:27:18
Speaker
just innovate for the band and for herself as an artist and I feel really honored to be a part of all that. I was a fan of theirs and I'll never forget the day that they asked me to pick up a couple gigs. I just air quoted for those of you who can't see what I'm doing.
00:27:39
Speaker
And I had actually been visiting my sister in New York City for a few weeks, and I lived there. That's where I went to college. And I was actually born there and moved to Kentucky when I was a kid, so I've always felt very connected to the city.
00:27:52
Speaker
And I kind of was like, I don't really want to go back to L.A. I don't know what I'm going to do. But something is like making me feel like I should stay here. And it was like hours before I was supposed to fly out. And I'm like, I don't know. Should I change my flight? And then I get a message from Larry Shemel, who is the lead guitarist of Death Valley Girls, also just legendary guitarist in his own right. And
00:28:22
Speaker
He was like, hey, we were wondering if you'd like to pick up a couple gigs with us playing bass. We've got some festivals coming up. And I was like, I am definitely going back to L.A. now. This is crazy. Yeah, totally unexpected. And, you know, as a relatively new bass player, I really never expected that any
00:28:43
Speaker
any band, let alone a band that I have looked up to and just been so inspired by over the years, would ask me to like fill in. And then I think it was like after our first practice together, which like I busted my ass to learn all the songs and just be like so on point by the time we had our first practice. Because I wanted to be impressive. And then it was like, oh, you know,
00:29:11
Speaker
you can just, you should just play whatever shows you want with us. And I was like, okay, that's cool. And then we played our first show together. And then I was like, okay, so like, I don't want to be like the, you know,
00:29:23
Speaker
like new girlfriend who's like where is this going but you know like am i in the band and they're like yes and it was like just it's just been so much fun ever since and truly you know i already used this word but just really an honor um they're so experienced just in the world of touring and the world of recording and everything i've learned so much
00:29:46
Speaker
being a part of this group for the last year and I really am so excited for the record that we have coming out which I can't talk too much about because that hasn't I guess been like announced to the general public yet but we did record something in February that I'm very excited about and the world will know more about that very soon.
Philosophical Ponderings on Art and Perception
00:30:07
Speaker
Yeah. Love, love, love to hear that. That is so great. And just hearing about, I mean, it comes through with your words and what I was saying, I could pick up on it, the energy that's around it. It's like it's an art project and and seeing, you know, just from the way you're talking and your personality dropping into that is such a great thing. All right. Um, uh, conceptual here, uh, big, big, this, uh, philosophy art show, um, digging into a lot of things, but what is art?
00:30:37
Speaker
Sammy Westerville. What is art for you? What is it?
00:30:46
Speaker
I really appreciate this question because it's so subjective and I feel like you can find art in so many things if you choose to look at it that way. So of course art can be a painting or a sculpture, but art can also be a tree in the woods or like a well-placed
00:31:14
Speaker
toilet and a selfie. It just happens to be the viewer's perception. Art could also not be a painting or a sculpture. It totally depends on who's looking at it, what mood they're in that day, where are they. It
00:31:37
Speaker
But that's something about art that I love is that it's completely in the eye of the beholder and it's this thing that is so, the perception of art or what is or is not art is like kind of indicative to this thing that we forget a lot of the time, which is that everyone is existing in their own reality and
00:32:02
Speaker
what is truth kind of gets tied into that and just kind of coming to terms with how every individual brain's perception of a thing creates the thingness. I don't know how else to put it. The thingness, if you get the thingness, shows something rather than nothing. I haven't got involved.
00:32:31
Speaker
we're talking about is thingness. It's fine. I don't know how much to project beyond that. No, even when you're saying, you know, making something with art too, right? The activity with it. Not to downgrade the idea of like what art can be, you know, because I think when it comes to, when I've seen the experience and it can be such a personal experience of somebody
00:33:00
Speaker
looking at an art piece in knowing and seeing that their soul is feeling it and they're emoting in that way. And you're like, how does that happen? Right. And subjectively, that's what happened. I saw that happen to somebody in the room, a room full of Monet's paintings. And it was like, and they just melted. And so those experiences are there, but like you're talking about, um,
00:33:29
Speaker
the subjective nature of the question is always what's so tantalizing. I think most folks are inclination is to say, ah, shit, I didn't want to answer it. I don't know. You know, it's like art to you. Then it's like art to you. Then it's kind of like art. I don't know. Yeah, I know. I took a I took a course in college that was like specifically kind of
00:33:51
Speaker
dealing with this question and it was very cool. It was a really hard class because there are, I mean this has been, this has been I think one of the big question philosophers have tried to answer over time is what is art? What makes something art? And I think that is kind of the answer is
00:34:14
Speaker
It is subjective, but then collectively we decide that something is art, that something belongs in a museum. Who gets to decide that? How does one person's perception of something ripple through the collective in such a way? Or why does one particular sort of presentation of something equal art? I have all of these pieces from set designs that I've done
00:34:43
Speaker
over time and you know it's like why why is this tie-dyed tapestry not art but this like splatter painted tapestry is you know it's like what what is the difference there and is that all in perception or is there something innate about those two objects that makes one art and not the other like it's a it's a timeless classic if you will this sort of conundrum between these things and
00:35:15
Speaker
And I mean, I think about this all the time, honestly.
00:35:20
Speaker
and how to live artfully. I have this friend. She was the production designer on Tower Party actually, but we've been friends for many, many years. And she was involved with this museum hotel in Kentucky called 21C. And I think 21C now exists in like other cities, but the flagship location is in Louisville, Kentucky downtown.
00:35:46
Speaker
And it's this combination of like a hotel and an art gallery. And as the sort of like opening of this hotel was happening, she lived in the front window of this place as like a living art piece and people could come by and write her note cards and she would respond with note cards back. And the exhibition was called Life as Art. And I just, I think,
00:36:16
Speaker
I think that there's something to be said for trying to live artfully, but then what does that mean? Is it like the knowledge that one is always being objectified by anyone who is observing you and not objectified in the sense of like, you know, like sexual objectification or something like that, but just as an art object, something is on display. Right, exactly. And and so, you know,
00:36:46
Speaker
And is that even what it is? How could it not be, you know, like, I don't know, we could get we literally could talk about just this one subject for like three hours, you know. And
00:36:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's a it's a thinker for sure. I feel like my answer is generally always the same, but it changes and it changes based on the excuse me, my mom's calling. It changes. Oh my gosh. I'll call her back. No. All right. I don't want I get a lot of mom listeners out there and I don't want to cut out that demographic. That's all right. She's going to call her back.
00:37:27
Speaker
No, I think when you mention is is and you write philosophers over the ages like I think if you look at at least within the Western philosophical tradition you always had to deal with this question when you were like a big philosopher all the way back to the Greeks and like Kant and Nietzsche and in and all these philosophers you had the answer if you were like a big theoretician you always had to answer what it was and
00:37:50
Speaker
that you considered art. And one of the coolest puzzles I always was introduced on like where the art is in music. It was like a really interesting conundrum because the juxtaposition was like one where you have like maybe a sloppily played or averagely played piece of music. And then
00:38:14
Speaker
in trying to find where the music is, if you take somebody who looks at the score of what that music is and the perfect structure of what that score is and sounds, and if they can hear it, the sounds in their head, and there's some type of structural beauty or perfection towards there, it's like the idea that the
00:38:40
Speaker
that the true perfect music was in that experience, which is not auditory as we understand it. And I think that type of mystery of like, because for me, I'd be like, I love live music so much as the years have gone by and it's kinetic and it's fleeting. So you're like, is that the song? Is that the version of the song? And I just, I love those, I love those mysteries. I saw Roger Waters play a version of one of my favorite Pink Floyd song, Sheep.
00:39:10
Speaker
a week and a half ago. And I thought it was the most gorgeous thing I had almost ever heard live. And it sounded different. So for me, that's the song. So I don't know. It's a lot of fun. Totally. And I just had a thought. It's like maybe maybe art is just like the experience of an emotion through the
00:39:37
Speaker
like viewing of an external expression of someone else's emotion, because that's kind of what a lot, you know, like we create from a feeling most of the time, whether, you know, it's sadness or happiness or anger,
00:39:56
Speaker
We write a song or we make a painting, which I'm not a painter and I can't draw. These are things I cannot do. That's not how I express myself. But a script or a film is a way to express one's emotion. Then you think about something like architecture being art. Is Frank Lloyd right? Is he? Yeah.
00:40:27
Speaker
feeling his feelings through you know designing a building or house you know like i don't know but i know that i feel something when i see that and you know but i also know that i feel something when i see my favorite pair of shoes like you know i don't know it's and is that art i don't know well we haven't solved it we're talking with sammy
00:40:55
Speaker
Westerville and we haven't solved it. But it's we've been talking about our band Egg Drop Soup and of course Death Valley Girls and Small Film Project the deeper deeper inquiry into into film with the
00:41:14
Speaker
sour party and and and and sammy it's it's it's great chat with you get a couple of you know like uh... another big uh... conceptual question we got it cuz we're like talking about things and using that in our language but there is the big question of the show and uh... and you are a philosopher and a thinker and have already admitted you obsess over these things so why uh... let's ask it this way if there is something rather than nothing why is there something rather than nothing
00:41:45
Speaker
Um, I think because our consciousness is here to perceive it as something, perhaps. I mean, I obviously can't know that for certain, but I feel as though I am a conscious being and I'm almost certain that I'm observing the things around me and those things are some things. Thing-ing.
00:42:17
Speaker
And, you know, I kind of think that's, I kind of think that's it, at least for me, but then that is the, that kind of goes back to just like the objectivity versus subjectivity, you know, like, I'm not, I'm not sure that I can know for certain
00:42:41
Speaker
truly anything objective and I think that's something cool about science is that science is always trying to prove objective reality and you know does a fairly good job of it but then
00:42:59
Speaker
We also must consider that a subjective experience is analyzing these objective results. And so everything is fallible. And that's what kind of makes science science is that it is fallible and can be updated with new research and new findings.
00:43:22
Speaker
um and you know that's that's kind of the difference right between like science and then like a pseudoscience which is like people can say whatever they want and there's nothing to like back it up necessarily or not back it up that's like my favorite that's like my favorite joke on the like
00:43:44
Speaker
ancient aliens is the whole thing where it's like they never said that that wasn't what was happening. It's like, OK, I mean, yeah, I guess that checks out, you know, like there's not really someone we can ask about it. You still you still see an active sophistry by turning on the TV. You can't say that it's not. I haven't seen it, but you can't say it isn't. So I guess you're right. Right.
00:44:14
Speaker
We're talking science or are we on a philosophy podcast? Sammy, a couple more things. What I wanted to do, and of course we mention these things, but I always love when artists kind of like
00:44:32
Speaker
You just dive in a little bit to connect folks and listeners to like your, you know, it's kind of disparate art that you do in the bands and where to find things. And after that, so we're going to play a track to take us out. But is it pronounced?
00:44:50
Speaker
Regicide or regicide? Regicide. So now when we get to that track, we'll be regicide. We'll chat about that. But no, Sammy, Sammy, tell us where you find your stuff, your band stuff, things like that. Yeah, sure. Well, Egg Drop Soup and Death Valley Girls and also Sour Party. If you want to chat with us or interact with any of us, you can find all that on Instagram, at Egg Drop Soup LA.
00:45:18
Speaker
at Death Valley Girls and at Sour Party Movie. The movie, like I said, release dates for all of that will depend completely on what happens with the festival circuit. But all of our music can be found on Spotify and Bandcamp and Apple Music, kind of all the main streaming services. Bandcamp, we also sell merchandise.
00:45:46
Speaker
And then I think for Death Valley Girls merch, that is through the Suicide Squeeze website. Oh, that's awesome. And I didn't know. Oh, great. Bandcamp, you get some get some merch there on Bandcamp. Love Bandcamp. A lot of folks might know about it, but if you don't know about it, a great resource is a great resource to kind of help more directly support artists and the work that they do trying to get.
Supporting Artists and Fair Compensation
00:46:13
Speaker
the money that artists deserve when they create these wonderful art objects. And so, Sammy, it's been so great to chat with you and thank you for leading us to, I'm gonna be super excited to check out the film. I've been listening to the music and of course, even though I've been vegan for 25 years, Egg Drop Soup is totally vegan.
00:46:40
Speaker
Don't worry, folks, don't want to cut any down. But this episode is about not cutting out demographics. It was OK not picking up the phone. And her mom was calling. She's going to get back to her. Everything looks fine. But no, really do love the music. And for the last track, taking us out, you helped me with pronunciation and regicide. A great concept for radical movements throughout history. But tell us about the track and we'll go out with regicide.
00:47:09
Speaker
Totally. Well, I first just want to say thank you so much for having me on. This has been a real treat. I don't ordinarily get to talk philosophy like this amongst my peers. So this has been nice to dig back into these parts of my brain. The song was written.
00:47:28
Speaker
during Donald Trump's presidency may or may not be clear. And it's just kind of a channeling of my frustrations about that era and not that we're not still feeling those or seeing the ripple effects from that. I mean, perhaps even
Political Frustrations & Societal Structures
00:47:50
Speaker
much of it is even worse than we could have imagined. And, you know, this is just kind of a song dealing with that, but then also kind of on a larger sense, just kind of like dealing with our government as a whole and like, you know, like how we got here and how, like,
00:48:26
Speaker
or B.
00:48:34
Speaker
Yeah. And being a being attacked by the executive, being attacked by the legislature. And that was even before the judicial massive, massive corruption. So no, I you know, I'm you know, and here's the thing, too, like I was I don't know why. Just just talking about like the Trump stuff. One of the things that I noticed, you know, I
00:48:59
Speaker
been around just a few more years and I'm not 50. And but I've seen such change. I tell you one thing with this Trump stuff and these fascists, you know, they're getting away with stuff because there was a generation before who were not fascist. You know, they might have been conservative. They were not fascist. And I might have not agreed with any of their politics or whatever. But they did. They did understand the concept, the concept of democratic system, whether they vote for they fought for it in a war.
00:49:28
Speaker
And, um, the type of shit that, that, that people, that people say just simply wouldn't have been allowed in society with, um, with, with folks and, um, you know, the bootlicking and, and supporting of, and just wanting this big daddy fascist leader because it's so messed up. It's such a different dynamic. And I think it's as justice. We're just as polluted now as we've ever been. And that's, that's my worry with it.
00:49:56
Speaker
Absolutely. And it's sort of, I mean, it's kind of this like reconciliation that we are coming up against from not dealing, you know, as like in the United States, not dealing with slavery sort of being the foundation of our country's like whole, whole system. And on top of that, I don't know that
00:50:24
Speaker
I don't know that, like, Nazism was ever fully, like, eradicated or dealt with. How could it be when the tenets of slavery never really were either? You know, it's sort of like, let's just hide these people. Let's just hide, you know, these
00:50:45
Speaker
these inequities within our laws let's like hide literal like Nazis in our country and place them in our government and it's like these these these feelings and these um
00:51:03
Speaker
What am I trying to say here? It's like that that way of being gets trickled in and it never really goes away. And when you live in the States that is so repressed as far as dealing with the trauma that we've caused other people, we don't talk about it. Like at least in Germany, there is this collective almost malaise over the sadness for what happened there during World War Two.
00:51:32
Speaker
Because they'd learn about it and they talk about it and here we've swept all that shit under the rug And so it gets allowed to like fester and people just you know Hang on to it, but it's like none none of that ever went away and we're not really that far off from when the initial like civil rights movement happened and that That isn't where things needed to stop. That isn't where
00:52:02
Speaker
the
00:52:03
Speaker
movement for social justice needed to end. And now we're at this reckoning where it's like, oh, whoops. Our parents' generation maybe thought that that was it, or maybe just didn't want to deal with it anymore. We all can understand what that kind of fatigue feels like. But now it's our responsibility to seriously be. Never again. We got to deal with this shit.
00:52:32
Speaker
And we cannot go backwards. And what is happening in the Supreme Court right now? And just our whole system needs a factory reset. What is the deal? And I'm someone who my parents really taught me the importance of my civic duty. I've been rallying at political rallies since I was 16 before I could even vote. But it's your duty to
00:52:59
Speaker
do what you can with the little small boxes that you get to check off every two years or every four years to be involved in that way. But as I get older, I'm struggling more and more to feel confident in what that system can actually do and what sort of change it can actually
00:53:25
Speaker
it can actually cause because we're not really seeing it and we're not really dealing with the big problems.
Historical Context & Progress in Women's Rights
00:53:39
Speaker
Yeah, the structural issues. The structural issues and the innate
00:53:48
Speaker
just how innately kind of fucked up it is and how insane is it that we refer back to a document that was written by white men who owned slaves in like the late 1700s to govern people who like not only just for the sheer fact that hundreds of years have passed but think about technology now and how much
00:54:18
Speaker
how much access we have to things that we never have had before and just how much faster our minds are evolving. So we've evolved way past whatever that was and
00:54:33
Speaker
Now it's kind of like as your own body gets older and this may or may not be a personal sort of anecdote, but let's just say you hurt your knee one night at a Halloween party when you're drunk and you don't really take care of it. And then you're 34 and all of a sudden your knee starts to hurt when it gets a little rainy outside or you can't quite sit in the same ways that you used to because things are starting to feel a little funny.
00:55:03
Speaker
Well, you know, that's someone not dealing with the problem and just maybe letting it get a little worse and worse. So if we think of the United States as a body that hasn't dealt with its own illnesses and its own little like pieces of itself kind of getting a little weird here and there, it's going to completely fall apart.
00:55:30
Speaker
So, I don't know, we need to amputate some shit and get bionic here because this is not working and it is not going to work.
00:55:38
Speaker
in the long term. Yeah, I think you're right. I see the positive notes, despite everything you're saying, is that when it comes to the consciousness around the labor movement, we are looking at the most pro-radical pro-labor generation, basically, in a long time in history. When you look at the general attitudes of the populace, of the people overall,
00:56:06
Speaker
They skew very progressive and I see the political crisis right now is that I think the conservative fascists, etc., know that the popular will, they can't win with popular will.
00:56:23
Speaker
there's one choice remaining after that is to seize the government or seize the states or whatever. And that's when you're talking about the structure. I feel that sometimes that that's the piece that
00:56:39
Speaker
Absolutely in the way so and and it I mean it's not just it's not just a problem here It's like worldwide issues that we're seeing especially like with women's rights, you know Like what is happening in Iran right now is absolutely insane But it is also amazing to see so many women being like, you know what? fuck you like this is not okay and standing standing up and
00:57:06
Speaker
And, you know, in Poland, like, abortion is almost completely or maybe perhaps it is completely illegal right now. It's like, you know, these are not these are not new problems.
00:57:20
Speaker
These are things that I think human society has probably dealt with since the inception of whatever that is. And probably even before this eternal kind of seeming power struggle between the people and the power, you know, I air quoted that, guys. And
00:57:44
Speaker
But you announce it each time. It's wonderful. And and, you know, it's like the or the people in the patriarchy and we're kind of like the patriarchy is holding on by a thread, but we can no longer be complacent. And I'm inspired by how progressive people are. And I think now it's kind of just about figuring out where to put that progress and how to come together and realize that, like,
00:58:14
Speaker
you know we all want the same thing and like Mitch McConnell has got to go and all these like old fogeys up in there not to be ageist but like y'all don't know what is going on you don't really know what the people want and all you care about is like is this super pack gonna pay for your next like yacht vacation with your family and it's not right and we need just a full-on restructuring of this
00:58:41
Speaker
whole world but like let us start like somewhat locally and try to help be a ripple effect. I mean the states for so long has been this kind of like
00:58:54
Speaker
I don't know why, but for some reason this may be because of this like sort of fake ideology of like freedom here. And yes, I know we have a lot of freedoms that a lot of other countries don't have. I do not take that for granted. I don't take for granted at all. I'm sitting here speaking about this openly with no fear of any repercussions from my government. And that is an insane privilege. Like beyond, I know that there's so many people who don't have that, but
00:59:24
Speaker
why can't we take that further and and be this like beacon of freedom that the world has always seen us as instead of going back in time and trying to continue to control the body politic it's it's not okay so that's what the song is about
00:59:47
Speaker
Hey, Sammy Westervelt. And the perfect intro to the outro, regicide, Sammy Westervelt. Hey, thank you so much. It's a great pleasure to know you, to chat with you. We're gonna play that track and really, really, really look forward to all the art that you are creating and will create. Thanks, Sammy. Thank you so much, thank you.
01:00:45
Speaker
Afraid you're so confused what's left of me is on the behind Hate to see you choose your loser, I lost my mind Afraid you're so confused what's left of me is on the
01:01:51
Speaker
And don't you give me no shit Hate to see you choose your loser I lost my mind I pray you're so confused what's left of me is on the behind Hate to see you choose your loser I lost my mind I pray you're so confused what's left of me is on the
01:02:33
Speaker
Someone left me out of my iron cage Someone left me out of the gilded age Someone left me out of the White House Someone left me out of my iron cage
01:03:37
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.