Interview: Jesse Garcia ~ Taking A Chance On Life!

I sat down for an in-person conversation with Jesse Garcia, traveling troubadour and gracious human being, as he made his way from Santa Fe, NM, to Austin, Texas. A multi-talented artist, Jesse shares several stories of magic, including one where he decided to take a chance on life, quit his job, and hit the open road with everything he owned in his car with him. The rest of the tale, and his unending belief in the goodness of the Universe, will inspire and warm your heart.

Transcript

Hi,

Everyone,

And welcome back to the podcast.

I have a really special treat in store for you this time,

An interview that I had in person with the incredibly talented Jesse Garcia as he was making his way,

Traveling troubadour that he is,

From Santa Fe to his home base in Austin,

Texas.

He was gracious enough to take time out of his vacation to stop on by my house and meet me in person,

Play some live music,

And in general,

Laugh and talk about the world.

Jesse himself is insanely talented and has performed both classical and African music from a young age on multiple instruments.

And guess what?

He's a songwriter as well.

And as you'll hear in this episode,

Delighted me with multiple songwriting confections from his own mind and heart.

So now without further ado,

Here's my conversation with Jesse Garcia.

Hi,

Everybody,

I get to do something really fun today.

I am actually recording in person and it is really different and really strange,

But also exciting.

I kind of feel like Jesse Garcia is my guinea pig because I,

Quote unquote,

Picked him up outside of work on Christmas Eve and he did not know me at all.

And I just said,

Hey,

Do you want to be on my podcast?

And he's so gracious.

He said yes.

And so here he is.

He's in Santa Fe for a limited time before he goes back to Austin.

And I've kind of captured him for this brief time.

And he's agreed to be on the show.

I am not going to have any introduction for Jesse because he can do it all himself because he's sitting right here.

I can't wait for you to meet him.

He's so fun.

He's so funny,

Really intelligent.

And I'm excited to get to know him better.

So my first question for everybody is,

How would you introduce yourself?

How do you self-describe?

I have been a musician my whole life.

But recently,

I've been sort of feeling more like a philosopher than a musician.

Music was like safe haven for me.

And it was part of my coping mechanisms for surviving life and my traumas and all of that.

So it was almost like my armor.

And then in recent years,

I've been starting to be more and more of a performer and starting to come out of my shell.

And that's resulted in music becoming more of like a tool and a friend that I can use to interface with people.

And it's actually becoming a connector,

Whereas it was always a connector.

But I definitely was using it as a defense mechanism and a barrier that I was putting up and a way of getting away from people.

But I've always been really fascinated by what it is to be conscious,

Why things are the way they are all around me.

And I got the luxury of being one of these kids that didn't have to go through the school system.

So I got to keep asking why.

And I got to learn organically.

And I like to say that I'm a feral human that does a decent job merging with society.

OK,

I love that because I saw a really funny meme today.

And at the top,

It said life of a philosopher.

And it said birth.

And then there was this gremlin like human figure sitting there.

And out of its mouth in a mouth bubble,

It says,

Why?

And then it says death underneath.

That's right.

I think about that being a sort of lonely path if you're thinking about and really interested in certain types of things.

But when it's bad,

It's really bad.

And when it's good,

I'm really grateful for being a contemplative person.

I love that.

Yes,

We need more contemplation in this world,

Frankly.

I think it would help us not to get ensnared in things if we took a step away from the world.

And it's so easy to get ensnared.

Yeah.

I was blown away because I've decided to do a social media fast for January,

Which means I'm still uploading because I have to tell people about shows that I'm playing and that sort of thing.

But I can tell the part of myself that's going online because I'm lonely or going online because I'm wanting something,

Craving.

And as soon as I made the decision to delete the apps,

I've been like looking at the trees,

Looking at life and just being like,

Wow,

That's beautiful.

This is so,

And like taking time to just notice stuff that normally I would be looking at my phone and it's just enough distraction that I just don't notice other things.

So I'm very hopeful that this will become a pattern and that I can change my habits and have a little bit more of a healthy relationship with these very powerful tools that are also very addictive.

They are addictive,

But I do think,

I mean,

This is,

I don't mean to go this deep this quickly.

I'm going to pull us down to the deep,

No matter what happens,

Probably.

We're going down,

We're going down.

I do want to ask you,

Don't you think essentially that the human life is lonely just at its core?

I mean,

Because we're born alone,

We die alone essentially,

But we really are.

I just think it's a very,

Very lonely existence to be human.

I just feel that.

Yeah,

I agree with that.

I think that's true,

But I think we have all sorts of ways to keep ourselves company so that we can not notice that.

I guess I think that the loneliness that you're speaking of is true and that I observe many people to interact with that in their subconscious,

But not interact with that in their conscious all that much.

And I used to feel kind of bitter about that,

Salty.

I'd be like,

How come no one's facing the real shit,

And I would criticize them.

But now I realize it's just everyone's living their life full to the brim.

And the thing that brings me a lot of solace and intrigue at this point as a songwriter is that I feel my job is to move myself and be in touch with my emotions and express them as bravely as possible.

And I think if you write a song that moves you emotionally,

It will move other people emotionally with the same emotions,

But colored in by the circumstances of their life.

And so I like that about the way that we have conscious and subconscious and the ways that the subconscious feels things that are evoked through looking at art,

Through listening to music,

Through being in nature,

Through looking at a screen.

You know,

We're different parts of our,

The blend of the spectrums of what it is to be all find different combinations depending on what you're doing.

But yeah,

I think that we're all alone together.

Yes,

We're all alone together.

I have to tell you that my sister said to me a couple of years ago,

She said,

You know why certain people don't want to hang out with us?

And I said,

I know,

Tell me.

And she said,

Because you and I don't like small talk and we go deep immediately and it makes people uncomfortable.

And they know they can't show up in this shallow way.

And so they just would rather avoid us.

And I thought,

My God,

Finally,

There's an explanation.

But what really captivated me about you on Christmas Eve was here I am,

Like I'm taking photos of you for the newsletter.

I'm trying to figure out what the Quakers are doing for the museum and all of these things.

And you and I get into this conversation that is so deep and intense so quickly.

I can't even remember,

But I thought,

OK,

This is someone who can hold his own and like say what he means.

And he can go deep.

You can go deep.

And it's just there was just this raw honesty about you and just openness.

And I just I was captivated.

And I thought,

I'm going to ask him to be on the podcast now.

That feels really good.

I like hearing that.

I've been doing a lot of the inner work because that's,

You know,

My I just turned I turned 40 recently.

Happy birthday.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I feel like I've done the past decade,

Maybe even 15 years has been spent trying to understand the shames of my actions in my late teens into my early 20s and seeing the ways that my fears and my traumas had created narratives that had allowed me to act in ways that I'm ashamed of now,

But that I felt fine about.

Like I didn't feel like a bad person while I was doing these things.

Yeah,

I felt like I was fully engaged in life.

And I was like,

You know,

But I was lying all the time and I was shoplifting all the time.

And I didn't have any respect for the environment around me.

I was littering all the time.

I just I just did what I wanted.

I didn't care.

And it was very selfish.

And then I was also,

You know,

Had talents in ways that I knew how to utilize them to like appear a certain way.

And I just kind of thought it was all fake and that I could do whatever I wanted.

And then I also remember how it felt and how real everything was the whole time.

Yeah.

So then hindsight,

Looking back as an older person,

I now see how much work it took to kind of unpack these narratives and understand how much of my intentions were motivated by fear and motivated by distrust and,

You know,

Abandonment issues.

And so coming face to face with those each time I would blame other people for something,

I was I was raised by really supportive parents with really good values.

So I always knew that blaming other people for stuff there wasn't there was something there that wasn't right.

So so I was very conflicted internally because I felt superior to someone.

And then I would feel like I had done something immoral for feeling superiority.

So then that would that internal conflict has taken a while to even out.

But now I feel like I'm sort of coming out of the education system that I've gone through,

Which is just living and trying to pay attention to what's going on around me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So now here I'm on podcasts and I'm saying yes to stuff that the older me was afraid,

You know,

What he wasn't going to do it because he didn't know what was going to happen.

Yeah.

I think that's remarkable because you have a level of self-introspection that's really quite wonderful.

And,

You know,

That growth pattern from your teens and early 20s to where you are now,

You're like a completely different human being.

And you're orienting yourself to the world in a really spacious,

Generous way,

Because I think just you saying yes to everything means that you have trust in the universe.

You have trust in what's going to happen.

I want to ask you.

Learning to.

Yes,

Learning to.

OK,

I want to ask you.

So you have your guitar in your hands right now.

OK,

When you were a kid,

Like how old were you when you thought I'm going to be a musician?

This is a good question.

I didn't have that thought ever.

Some of my like my origin story is that I was born in Korea and was adopted.

And so when I was five and a half months old,

I came to the US.

OK.

And so this is my current narrative that helps me feel sort of anchored to who I am.

I really feel that the turmoil of being born,

Not getting skin to skin contact.

And I do think that the first trauma that we all share is being born,

Because if you think about being in the womb,

You're like held and supported.

And now all of a sudden you're like dealing with sensations and having to breathe and like feeling hunger and all this stuff.

So that happens,

Although my bio mom knows she's going to give me up for adoption.

So depending on,

You know,

I think that it's not irrelevant that one's internal state and you're like nervous system is feeling things about stuff.

And so I kind of think it's interesting that I was sort of conceived and steeped in the energy of abandonment and that that decision,

Whatever my bio mom was going through.

And then I come out into the world.

I don't have her in my life,

But I'm in an orphanage briefly and then placed in a foster home,

Which I,

From what I hear,

My foster mother was really nurturing and warm and kind.

But then that only lasted a few months before all of a sudden I'm taken away from that.

Yeah.

And put on a plane with a social worker.

And then we couldn't land in Denver because of weather,

Because I arrived on December 23rd.

And so got rerouted somewhere else.

So this whole like turmoil.

And I think that I think that music was a constant for me somehow.

Like I got to a new energy,

New sounds,

New language.

People look different.

And I think that I was just in survival mode and had control over my attention and my body at a higher than average level from really young.

And all of those skills got turned into how do I survive?

How do I get people to like me?

How do I get people to accept me?

And then I found music as comfort.

Okay.

So when I was like,

I walked,

I walked young and didn't crawl at all.

I just went straight to walking.

And I had a Fisher Price cassette tape player and would listen to like Raffi tapes and whatever my parents had.

And I would play,

I would just hold the cassette tape player and listen to the cassette all the way through and then take it out and flip it over and put it back in and listen all the way through.

I was just like an autistic little baby with good coordination and good concentration.

So I did that all day long.

It was just comfortable.

And so I like to say that music was the first language that I felt connected to.

And then once I started learning words,

Words are just sounds that convey emotion and connotation and information.

And,

And I just rapidly learned words and music was always just a big part of my expression.

We had a harmonica and I would just play the melodies that I heard on the harmonica,

Figured them out.

And then my family got a piano and then I did the same thing on the piano,

But I was very fearful,

Very shy kid.

And my mom was really good about saying,

Hey,

You want to try piano lessons?

And I'd be like,

No,

She'd be like,

Well,

I signed you up for one.

Just go try it.

If you don't like it,

You don't have to do it.

And then I always loved it.

Pretty much every extracurricular and like music body related activity.

I loved it and took to it right away.

So,

Well,

That was going to be one of my questions was how many instruments do you play?

Yeah,

I play quite a few instruments.

Although I have to qualify what it means to play an instrument for me as a professional musician,

You know,

Like I play jazzy things on the guitar.

But I would never accept a gig as a jazz guitarist because that's a very specific way of engaging and I can't do that.

But I can,

I have a lot of instruments where I can fool people who are not experts at the instruments into thinking that I play them quite well.

And the reality of that,

I think now is that if you play music and you value music outside of the instrument,

Then you can contribute to the music with confidence,

With very little skill for the instrument.

But the instruments help you get the skill to play music somehow.

It's like the body mind connection.

They are different things,

But they relate to each other.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm going to ask you something that might make you cringe here.

But what was the first song you ever wrote?

You want to try and play it?

I can try and play it.

Can you?

Okay.

Yes.

Yes.

What is it called?

And how old were you,

I guess?

I was,

I was probably around 20,

Somewhere around there.

Okay.

And I've been playing guitar for a while,

Doing finger style arrangements of,

You know,

Like trying to do like the melody and the bass notes and like complicated guitar stuff.

And then this was back when YouTube had a front page that was like curated by the YouTube platform.

Yeah.

And you could get on the front page of YouTube,

This new thing.

Cool.

And there was this Korean guy named David Choi who wrote a song about YouTube that got featured on the front page.

And I watched this song and I was,

And I guess I got sort of competitive in this moment and felt like,

Well,

Cause I grew up here in Santa Fe and one of my big insecurities as a teenager that caused a lot of my anger was resentment around being adopted.

That I didn't like being clocked as the Asian guy first.

I wanted to be who I was and I wanted to not have the way that I looked be so irrelevant.

Yeah.

And I made that very loud in my experience.

And I don't,

You know,

It was the like nineties so that we were a little less delicate around those types of things back then.

Culturally anyways,

I think I got sort of competitive with this David Choi guy and was like,

If he can get on the front page,

I'm like,

I'm just as good as he is.

And so I started trying to write a song and I don't actually,

I think it's funny to play this song.

I,

Now my standards are quite different,

But let's see if I still remember it.

I think of the way we used to talk of hopes and dreams and now we don't.

I think of the time you took to hear out all my schemes and now you won't.

And I thought about why this could be happening to us,

Figured it out and I told you straight up.

And then we got divorced,

We got divorced.

Yeah,

I don't remember the chorus.

I think of the way you were when you were unemployed.

Yeah,

That was grand.

I think of the times we had when we were overjoyed and holding hands and I rue the day all that was taken away from us because you got a job and I made a big fuss.

And then we got divorced,

We got divorced,

Yeah.

But I woke up this morning to find it was just a dream.

Funny how things can be not what they seem to be.

We're traveling around the world inside an air balloon,

Up in the sky.

Our journey is not complete until the end of June.

And it's July and the strange thing is in a year I was to marry you.

But now I think maybe that I'll think it through again.

Unless of course,

Unless of course,

Yeah.

Oh my god,

I just have to say your 20 year old self is hilarious and cynical at the same time.

Yeah,

I was always very cynical.

I've been cynical my whole life.

Yeah,

Man,

That was a wild ride for me.

I was all over the place,

Took me a minute to stabilize because I never play that song.

But my body is so good at remembering stuff,

Muscle memory.

And if I start at the beginning of a sequence of lyrics,

I usually don't mess them up.

So,

You know,

Well,

I want to say apologies,

But it's not really apologies,

It's just like what it was.

I was trying not to laugh too loud so that I ruined the audio.

Because I just I thought,

I mean,

Really,

Truly such a funny and irreverent and I don't know prescient song for.

I know it's interesting to look at it.

Like I obviously,

I remember it like I used to have this sort of real strong criticism narrative of marriage.

As this like sort of like confinement,

Almost.

I call it prison.

Yeah,

I mean,

I was I was calling it that,

Too.

And I,

You know,

I just didn't understand how to be intimate with people and trust people back then,

Which is a messy process.

And I'm still practicing.

But yeah,

I'd like the song is not a great song,

In my opinion,

From like a technical standpoint.

I think the melody is good.

There's things about the rhythm that I think are a little clunky in terms of how it feels to sing it.

And then I was into my theme,

Which was like we were having fun when we were unemployed,

But then you got a job and it ruined the fun.

And so then we had to get divorced.

And Regina Spector's song,

I love,

Yes,

Was really big at that time.

And so that's what inspired that.

We got divorced,

Was like inspired by that.

And so I played the first two verses for my best friend,

Which was so scary when you're like just starting to sing your own words.

And he's still my best friend.

I was just hiking with him today.

Okay.

But he was like,

I don't like what it's about.

It hurts so bad.

So I was like,

Damn,

Well,

I got to do something different.

So then I wrote the last verse and tried to make it be like it was just a dream.

And we're actually adventurers in a hot air balloon traveling around.

But we were going to get married.

So maybe it was like a stress dream about getting married.

And now I think maybe I'm going to think it through again.

Maybe I'm not going to get married.

Unless of course,

And somehow young songwriter me thought,

Unless of course,

Dot,

Dot,

Dot would be obvious to the listener that what if this is a dream also?

So it's way too many layers of like abstract thought.

And I mean,

I guess I like it as a story and a way to talk about songs.

But as a way of writing a song,

That's like really relatable and kind of cohesive as one thing.

That song is very scattered and all over the place.

But it's a fun vibe.

I do have to say,

Like,

It's very philosophical for me,

That song.

Just how so?

Well,

I just.

So have you read Sophie's World?

I don't.

It's all about.

It's amazing.

It's whenever I talk to someone who's into philosophy,

I always say,

Have you want are you guys sick of hearing me ask that question?

Have you read Sophie's World?

It's such a beautiful book.

And it's about a young girl who finds a teacher or you find out later that really there's all this other stuff going on.

So it's kind of a mystery.

It's kind of,

You know,

You don't really know.

Is it a reliable narrator?

What's going on?

But this teacher decides to teach her through experiences in her life and encounters that she has every single kind of philosophical thought since the dawn of when humans began considering philosophy.

And it's actually an incredibly gorgeous book.

It's really beautiful.

But,

You know,

I've always thought of philosophy as,

You know,

Self reflection.

You know,

Not only the why of the world,

Like what's going on.

I mean,

Many,

Many indigenous schools of thought all say this is a dream.

All of this is a dream.

You know,

We're caught.

I mean,

If you want to say the matrix or whatever,

It's not real.

It's an illusion.

It's it's this isn't reality,

Actually.

And so the song kind of reminds me of that.

You know,

It's not exactly.

You have this hilarious,

You know,

The story of the divorce and all of this stuff.

I love that there's two two refrains on that,

By the way.

And then this all of a sudden,

Like reflection.

Oh,

That was a dream.

You know,

That was a dream.

And it's almost like the viewer or the singer wakes up a little bit,

Notes what reality is,

But then reconsiders.

Yeah,

It's cool.

It's cool that you're landing on the dream stuff,

Because I've recently been thinking a lot about how much songwriting is like dream work and the way that I do it.

Because it's I let the song come out.

I whatever it is that I mean by I in this moment,

I get out of the way and I let the song come out and all of my technical training and my like working on like knowing different words and how they feel and like all of the listening to the radio and being curious about what's the pop radio station into and what's going on on the country station and the old age station.

I just grew up listening to all the different types of music.

And so I think all of that information is being stored somewhere and it's just influences.

And then when I have a song come out,

It's this feeling of like,

Oh,

It's real.

It's happening.

That's this thing,

This creative process,

This like surrendering to something happening.

And then I don't know how I knew,

But I just get out of the way.

I didn't try to analyze what was coming out while it was coming out.

I instead had my full focus and attention on letting it out rather than trying to understand what it was.

And this song is a good example of that being a flow.

And then I took it in a different direction,

Which to me is like a right angle turn.

But you're sort of bringing it back to it being a similar sort of,

I don't know,

Metaphor that is something that I still feel about songwriting.

I mean,

Yeah,

It sounds like sometimes you feel like you're a channel,

Like the song just comes through you.

Yeah.

Would you say that's true?

It's very true.

I'm sort of wary of certain terms that have strong connotations,

So I would never tell people that I'm a channeler.

OK.

But if I'm talking to someone who is a channeler,

Then I'm like,

Oh,

Absolutely.

I'm a channeler.

I know what that is,

You know?

Yeah.

But yeah,

That's exactly what it is.

It's like I do all of the training so that when the muse strikes,

I can get out of the way and just let it happen.

Yeah.

I was listening recently to a different podcast and they were talking about Tom Waits.

It was about creativity.

Yeah.

And Tom Waits experienced song creation as almost like a monkey riding on his back.

And so he would be driving on the L.

A.

Freeway and he'd feel the song would come.

It would just come.

And he'd say,

Look,

I am driving right now.

There is no way I can pull over on the freeway and write all this down.

I can't do it.

And then he'd get home and it would be gone.

Yeah.

And so he learned that he could co-create with that energy.

And he learned to say,

OK,

Look,

I am driving right now.

I can't pull over.

I can't write anything down.

But if you wait till I get to a pencil and a piece of paper,

If you wait for me,

I will totally set you down.

You just have to be patient.

And nine times out of 10,

The song would wait.

Yeah.

And by the time he got home,

But it was like it was like it came through him.

It was like this something rode him,

You know,

And was like,

We want this in the world.

So I think that's fascinating.

Yeah,

Me too.

I like hearing that about Tom Waits.

I haven't heard that before.

And I'll have to practice that.

I'll send you the podcast if you want to listen to it.

It's about creativity.

It's actually really fascinating.

I mean,

He's one of the most creative.

He's so prolific.

I know guys,

You know,

So interesting.

Such an interesting man.

Yeah,

Very interesting.

Let me ask you,

I want to ask you what your favorite song you have ever composed is.

Again,

I'm putting you on the spot.

Can you I mean,

A number of things jump to mind and they all come from different framings of what favorite might be.

Okay.

So like,

A favorite type of song for me typically is one that comes out really quickly.

Okay.

With less complication,

Sort of.

They can be very complicated.

And then I like it when they feel like they tap into an energy that is like so much bigger than me that they feel like a cover right away.

That's also a special type of song.

And then I also like songs where I express more of a certain type of raw honesty.

Where I like my filters aren't as present.

Those are kind of exciting.

Yeah,

But I feel like it's sort of like choosing a favorite child.

Oh,

Yeah.

Because I like gave birth to this thing and I'm attached and connected to all of them.

But I do have certain songs that are go-tos for me if I'm playing for the first time for in an environment where I don't know how I feel yet.

Or maybe I feel slightly unsafe and I'm like,

I don't know what I want to do.

I have certain songs that are sort of my best friends that they represent something that's important to me creatively and artistically.

And I often wind up going to those.

I think I have a song now in mind if you want to hear it.

Yes,

Absolutely.

This is what I love about what I would call a songversation.

I love that.

Yeah,

I did a songversation at the Olive Rush Studios and I do that with another songwriter where someone will sing a song and usually if you're really listening to their song,

It makes you think of another song.

So your questions and the conversation we're having pulls me towards certain songs.

And then each time I'm choosing this song now and I'm suddenly aware that I came here with,

Oh,

I should play an impressive blah,

Blah,

You know,

Energy.

And it's like,

Oh,

Well,

That's not the song.

This is the one.

This is called Touch Sand.

It was written on this guitar.

I draw a fork in the road and make a choice.

I draw the things that I want to see and look at them as I walk by.

Feeling the road with my toes.

Taking time to explore,

Time to feel free.

Putting wasted time to good use.

Take a chance,

Put the world to the test,

Take a trust fall when it's right.

Feeling the road with my toes.

Cause I just want to touch sand,

Touch sand,

Touch sand.

Having a conclusion drawn.

A sudden shift has opened my eyes and the ink from the well is dry.

Feeling the floor with my toes.

Oh my gosh,

Beautiful.

Oh my gosh,

Beautiful.

And you know what is just,

I just want to say this and I'm sure you've heard it before.

You make it look easy and I know it's not.

I know it's not easy,

But you make it look easy.

I'm glad I've,

I mean,

I,

You're right.

It's not easy.

Um,

You know,

I could talk for the rest of this episode about every little analytical thing that I was aware of while I was doing that.

But the thing that I kept grounding back to is that I thought was cool.

Well,

First of all,

Thank you.

Yeah.

You know?

Of course,

Of course.

I,

I pride myself on that now.

And I,

I,

One of the things that I just love is technique.

And I,

My definition of technique is,

Um,

Where is the unnecessary tension?

Can you identify the unnecessary tension and eliminate the unnecessary tension?

And I think that applies to all aspects of life that,

That we know when you're like stressed out because you're going to go on a date the next day to be worked up about it is unnecessary tension.

Really?

There are certain things one could do.

Maybe you should wash your hair.

That's something you,

Maybe you could do that,

You know?

Or like,

You know,

Whatever this like actual action,

But if you're just worried about it,

That's like poor technique of the sight of the mind say.

So I just do that with the guitar too.

And,

And I'm really aware that like,

When I listen to other people play,

You can't hide.

You can't hide.

And so certain people,

It's just kind of like,

They can be brilliant.

But they'll sound hard because the way they're holding the guitar and the way they're strumming the guitar is tight.

And I like that when I'm in a mood where I need something to feel hard,

I can play hard and that comes out of the guitar,

But sometimes it'll just wind up being someone's sound.

That's the way they sound.

So for me,

That that's,

That's where the effortlessness is like this practice of like,

How do I eliminate the unnecessary tension?

And I kind of think that's what I've found in my life now is that I was trying to do things like,

I was like,

Being afraid is unnecessary tension.

I want to eradicate fear.

And now I've arrived at a point in my life where it's like that fear is a real thing.

It exists.

It's always going to exist.

I'm always going to feel it.

I can't eradicate that.

And so that's helped me let go of the,

You're not good enough when I'm feeling afraid and it's getting the better of me that I used to have because I was so diligently trying to find where the absolute most effortless way to get through something is.

And now I said something at the show last night that that's just felt really cool is that I'm learning how to feel the fear,

But not feel scared.

And that's a,

That's a cool difference.

I like the way those words feel when you put them that way.

I like that too.

Yeah.

I like that too.

I mean,

I read something once where someone said,

We need fear because it keeps us alive.

But I like what you just said,

You know,

You can feel the fear,

But how you process it or integrate it or understand it,

That's what matters.

So this is going to sound ridiculous,

But I'm going to ask you the second question of the podcast.

And it's,

Did you grow up in a religious household?

You know,

If so,

What did that look like?

But not just that.

Do you have a connection to the divine now?

It doesn't matter.

Yes,

No,

All answers are valid here.

But what does it look like to you now to connect to something larger than yourself?

Yeah,

Well,

We can start at the first part with a religious household.

And I suppose the answer is sort of no.

My dad was born in Raton,

New Mexico,

And we grew up in Albuquerque and was raised Catholic.

And my mom grew up in Virginia on the East Coast and was raised non-denominationally Jewish,

Which I guess that just means not particularly devout or practicing,

But that was sort of the lineage.

And then they both became Buddhist,

Which is how they met.

And then they adopted four kids,

And I'm the oldest of the four.

So my dad meditated every day for my entire life.

And my mom was doing full-time mom stuff and taking us to capoeira classes and music classes and homeschooling us and all these things.

I'm sorry,

Wait,

Capoeira classes?

Yeah,

Yeah.

When I was a kid,

I was doing that at one point.

Wow.

I feel like I've lived a life of doing mostly extracurricular things and avoiding all academic work.

Thumbs up to that.

But I've always been very interested and curious about learning stuff.

And most of my YouTube consumption is science videos,

And I'm fascinated by that.

But organized is not something I am.

I'm sort of all over the place.

I'm not organized.

And I'm working on that also.

I need a little more discipline.

Discipline's overrated.

Yeah.

But I did learn the value of meditation,

Which is a type of discipline.

To be able to sit with non-reactivity and to sit with your own mind and your own body and be still with that is something that really everyone should know how to do that.

And be at least a little bit comfortable with sitting with themselves and sitting still,

Because it really shows you how much you need to fidget,

All these things are coming from somewhere inside of you.

And if you can learn to sit with that,

Then that really helps you engage with reality in a way that I think is beneficial.

But I don't feel like a Buddhist.

I don't relate to being Buddhist.

But I do very much feel a higher power.

I think the most reverence I have for that is probably the songwriting process.

And performing as well.

That I'm about four plus years into trying to share my original music with the world.

And I've always been a performer,

But I was doing Zimbabwean music and playing marimba,

And it was very communal,

Like party dance band.

And I wasn't as naked as singing my words with a guitar,

Standing there alone.

And I still,

To this day,

Mostly close my eyes when I'm playing,

Because the input from my eyes can be so overwhelming that I can't surrender myself to the experience of playing a song.

And that's where I feel a higher power.

The goal is to lose your sense of self and merge with the oneness of everything.

Or if I'm alone,

I don't feel all of the inputs that you get,

The information that you get just from being around people.

And so if I'm playing a song and I see someone like lean over and talk to their friend for a moment,

My mind will just emotionally flash a bunch of scenarios as to why that could relate to me specifically.

And then suddenly I've got a little bit of doubt or a little bit of something other than just surrendering myself to expression.

Right.

And I think that's the higher power that I'm chasing after and trying to get better at surrendering to.

And all of my practicing with people and socializing and building durability is in the pursuit of being able to give myself over to something big without letting my individual ego get self-conscious about it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know,

They do.

It's interesting.

My brother several years ago said,

I tried meditation and I just,

You know,

Did it two or three times and I just couldn't focus.

My mind kept drifting.

And so I thought this doesn't work.

And I thought to myself,

What?

OK,

That is the point.

It does drift.

Then you recenter yourself and you bring yourself back.

And it's practice.

That's why it's called a practice,

Because doing it daily,

You recenter,

You come back.

It's you're not going to out of the gate be the world's most perfect meditator.

But I think the important thing is they've really a lot of people.

I don't want scientists,

People.

And,

You know,

I don't want to say let's say liminal fields.

So how about like scientists who investigate parapsychology or telepathy or consciousness?

What is consciousness?

They're finding they're discovering new things about consciousness.

They say that a steady meditation practice every day,

If you're committed to it,

If you're devoted to it,

It can open you up to other things that are happening in this reality.

And so I'm listening to you and you're talking about meditation.

And I thought,

Oh,

That's why you can channel.

That's why you can hear the muses.

You know,

That's why you can hear those creative forces that are like,

Oh,

Here's a song.

Here's a song.

Put this song into the world.

I mean,

You can disagree with me.

I'm fine with that.

I mean,

That I don't have a disagreement.

I've never thought of it that way,

But it makes sense.

Yeah.

Being able to sit still and listen,

Listen in.

It is,

Uh,

You find stuff,

You hear things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And are they you?

Are they who,

What,

What,

Who,

What are they?

It's the ineffable,

You know,

It's,

It's just vibrations of life energy that are moving around through all of the things.

Yeah.

I mean,

My higher power is life.

And,

And I've spent a lot of time in the just recent months,

Um,

Kind of railing against it.

It's just all the things,

You know,

It's,

Uh,

It's all of it,

But I just see life as.

I think the society that I live in and the species that I'm part of by and large has a tendency to just,

You know,

Kind of natural to,

To be very human centric in the way that we look at everything and perceive everything.

But I see that we are just a life form on a planet that has life on it.

And that life has just been on the planet evolving,

Morphing,

Recirculating,

You know,

All the water has been here,

Just going round and round.

Everything's going round and round.

Yeah.

And so as life,

I'm only different than a rabbit because I'm a human and a rabbit's a rabbit.

But I think that,

And I know that when I was younger,

I used to feel that I knew more than a rabbit and now I don't really think that's the case at all.

I think I just know different than a rabbit and a rabbit has just as much consciousness and just as much like understanding of life as I do.

It's just so different that I don't know how to communicate with it.

Or,

And then also like,

If I need to eat and I'm out in the woods and I'm surviving,

I can observe rabbit patterns,

See patterns,

And then build contraptions to catch a rabbit,

Knowing that that will help me live longer.

And that's a life directive that all of us have is like,

Where are the resources that are going to help me grow?

Yeah.

And then I just think a lot about how that is,

Like biologically,

We all understand that,

But I think we're often missing the ways in which a business is the same.

And a business needs to consume resources in order to grow.

And what are those resources?

Those resources are time,

Attention,

Human energies,

Resources from the planet.

We got to dig for this thing that we want for the business to grow.

And then I think religions are the same exact thing.

It's like a system of belief and a system of trust that helps you feel not the aloneness that we were talking about at the start of the conversation.

That needs resources.

That has to grow.

And all of those things are following the same exact pattern as a fox chasing a rabbit.

It's like trying to chase down these resources and trying to get them because it needs to survive.

It needs to live.

And so,

Yeah,

I think either that's really beautiful or that's just like so fucked.

And it's like,

I can't believe I have to slog through this for my biological timeline.

God,

When can I just go back into the system and be redistributed?

I just want to be redistributed,

You know?

So that's like the dark side feels like that.

And the light side is just like everything that you do is so important.

Yeah.

You know,

Every single moment trying to be present and trying to help heal whatever's around you and help support and help grow.

Yeah.

Do you have a song about that?

Oh,

I have a song called Nature is Natural that sort of pokes at my feelings about the human centricness.

And then I have a song called Shelf Life that I was thinking about earlier.

Nature is Natural is sort of a little on the bitter side.

On the bitter side?

Yeah.

When you say a song about that,

How would you summarize it?

When you were saying the darkness.

When you were talking about,

When we were kind of laughing,

You're like,

It's pretty dark,

But then there's the light,

You know?

I just,

I was curious if you had channeled that feeling into a song.

The darkness.

But I mean,

It sounds like if that one is bitter,

Then that might.

.

.

Here's a song.

This is my most recent song.

Okay.

I apologize to anyone listening that is sensitive to guitars being in tune because mine has not been so far.

Um,

Yeah,

I don't have any excuses to share at the moment.

They're just there for me.

Okay.

I'm trying to be honest.

It doesn't feel good.

I think life is selfish.

At least where I stood.

I don't like your words.

I don't like how you said them either.

And now that I have heard,

I'm trapped here as a non-believer.

Life is sensational.

I wish I didn't feel it all.

Life is sensational.

It's all so surreal.

It slaps me in the face again.

It puts me in my place again.

I'm practicing acceptance.

It doesn't feel good.

The zeitgeist isn't friendly.

At least where I stood.

I don't like how you said them either.

And now that I have heard,

I'm trapped here as a non-believer.

Life is sensational.

I wish I didn't feel it all.

Life is sensational.

It's all so surreal.

It slaps me in the face again.

It puts me in my place again.

I'm stuck under attack again.

Life stabbed me in the back again.

I'm misunderstood.

Amazing.

Oh my gosh,

That's so good.

Thanks.

That's so good.

What I really find delightful about your songwriting process,

Perhaps,

Is that you have these really funny and,

I don't know,

I wouldn't say the divorce song is confrontational,

But it is a little bit.

Yeah,

Yeah.

A little bit confrontational.

A lot of songwriters,

I mean,

I don't know.

I grew up in the 80s,

So I really appreciate music that talks about hard stuff or that has messages and what have you.

And these days,

I just feel like we're not given the array of different,

I don't know,

I feel like I was spoiled in the 70s and 80s with the music because there was a little bit of everything and we would listen to the radio and the radio would,

Yes,

They played the same songs,

But vastly different kinds of music,

Genres of music.

These days,

I feel like all I hear,

I don't even listen to the radio because it's the same stuff over and over again.

What I like about you is that you've had three songs,

All very different.

I found the divorce one to be hilarious,

And so I'm imagining myself going to one of your shows and maybe not knowing anything about you,

And I'm going to your show,

And then I'm just totally gobsmacked because you're so funny and it would be so unexpected,

But also very truth-telling.

You know,

We're being confronted and asked to examine ourselves,

Our place in the world,

How do we affect others,

Let alone the environment,

You know?

So there's a great depth there as well,

But it's not a painful depth,

At least not for me.

Thank you so much.

You just said a bunch of things that felt really good to hear and feel like the balance that I'm trying to go for.

Um,

I've never thought that I was funny though.

Like,

I know that I have a sense of humor,

That I think things are funny,

But I've never identified as a funny person.

And I have people in my life that,

That reflect back to me that they think I'm funny,

But I don't,

That's not part of my,

That's not part of my sense of self as being a funny person,

But I'm always cracking jokes.

Like I'm trying to,

It's,

I think you might just be the type of,

We might have compatible humor,

You know?

Potentially.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

That's,

That's very true.

But it's always being deep.

I always,

I'm always trying to do that.

It's like,

I'm trying to,

I'm trying to understand life.

Yeah.

So I'm doing it selfishly.

Like,

And then because I'm like trying real hard to be honest with myself,

Like this song that I just wrote,

I think I might've had COVID when I wrote that song.

Oh.

And COVID,

Have you had,

Did you have COVID?

I've had it.

Yes,

I have had it.

One of the things that I think is interesting about that particular virus is it,

It feels like it gets into your psyche.

Yes.

And it makes you want to give up.

Yes.

It's like,

It,

It,

It has a little bit of that.

It's not worth it.

Just submit.

Surrender.

Just go,

Just go,

Just go.

Don't,

Don't fight.

You don't have to get better,

You know?

And,

And so I was feeling some of that energy in my body.

And I think that that let the song be much more viscerally one perspective,

You know?

Cause usually I,

I always try to write a silver lining into a song that's a downer song.

And this song,

I don't even think of it as a downer song.

It just feels so true to me.

And when I was feeling these feelings and I was holed up in my trailer in Austin,

That I just let it happen.

And it fell out really fast and felt like a cover right away.

But I was making fun of myself,

You know,

To say the zeitgeist isn't friendly,

At least where I stood.

It's like,

I'm the only person that determines what the zeitgeist is at all anyways.

It's not like everybody else can be like,

No,

No,

The zeitgeist is like this.

I mean,

We do that.

We argue with our different,

You know,

Clashing connotations and whatnot.

But I'm making fun of myself.

It's like,

I wasn't friendly.

That's why I was saying that the zeitgeist wasn't friendly,

You know?

I think life is selfish,

At least where I stood.

Which is me being selfish,

Therefore seeing only selfish patterns reflected back to me.

And then as I'm learning to be less selfish in that particular type of selfishness,

I start to feel the universe opening up towards me because I was closed off to certain aspects of life.

So yeah,

I find that sort of thing fascinating.

And I like this song because of that.

And it's funny,

You put me on the spot with like your question and song prompt.

But then once I started playing this song,

I was like,

Oh,

This is like the perfect song for the thing.

But some part of my mind was like trying to find the answer.

And then the thing that happened was the right thing.

And my mind was like,

Oh,

I don't know why we were doing that.

This was the right thing all along.

So yeah,

The doubt machine,

Don't listen to it as much as,

I don't recommend listening to it too much.

You're like,

Don't put any quarters in the doubt machine.

Unless you're sitting and meditating.

Yes.

In which case,

Then the doubt machine is just running full force and then just let it loop and loop and loop and loop and be like,

Oh,

This is a loop.

Maybe I don't want to be in this loop.

Let's go somewhere else.

Let's go somewhere else.

Well,

I am actually,

I really want to know the answer to this question,

Because you've talked in our conversation earlier about being up in front of people and that it was,

You know,

When you sang the song to your friend about the divorce,

It was,

You're very vulnerable.

You're putting yourself out there and that was your friend.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So,

Okay,

Please let me know.

How did you get over your fear of appearing in front of people?

What was that process?

Was it sudden?

Was it,

You know,

Grim determination?

Um,

How did that happen?

Yeah,

I,

I don't feel like I'm there yet.

Okay.

Still not with,

Not with getting over it fully,

But what I'm accepting is that,

That basically I'm always going to feel fear around that.

Um,

Thoughts that come to mind are,

You know,

It's common to have fear of public speaking.

And I think that a lot of that has to do with the ways that your sense of who you are is influenced by the environment that you're in and the people who are around you.

And that can happen to varying degrees of like conscious or subconscious engagement.

And so when you are in this house all by yourself,

You feel a certain sort of way.

Yeah.

But,

You know,

As we're looking at these,

You know,

Beautiful windows and the,

You know,

Sun going down and stuff,

If all the blinds were closed,

You would feel a different sort of way.

Yeah.

Because we're both well aware that someone could be watching us through the windows.

Yes,

Yes.

So we're going to act a certain way.

Right.

And so I think that scales up.

The more you put yourself in front of people,

The more you're aware that other consciousnesses are going to tell themselves a story about you.

And you know that they're going to tell themselves a story that you might not agree with.

Right.

Or be comfortable with.

Right.

Yeah.

And that you can't do anything about it.

So to put yourself in front of people and share as openly as you can while accepting whatever story they tell themselves about you.

I think that's a lot of the fear is that you're allowing yourself to be seen and to be seen is to become a narrative for some other person's consciousness for that moment.

And that's a lack.

That's a loss of control.

But that control is a mirage.

It's an illusion.

We don't have that control.

But if you believe that you do.

You're going to be less comfortable in environments where you're being seen.

And so then for me,

I consider myself to still be a very controlling person that is working on letting go of my belief that I was able to be in control.

You know,

And I think that's like we have the human flavor of that.

Which means that we like we see differences between things.

And then I think that scales out to being able to engage with cause and effect,

Which gives us a limited degree of influence over the future and a limited ability to predict outcomes.

Yeah.

And then we have tools like math and all these other things that help us predict outcomes with more reliability.

But we can't,

We're not in control.

We can't actually control the future because life is so much bigger than the human species.

Yeah.

So in trying to like let go of that,

I'm becoming more and more comfortable performing.

Okay.

And like even here I'm sharing and my guitar is out of tune and I feel that while I'm playing.

But I have,

I have a message that is so deeply important to me because it came from somewhere else.

I channeled it.

Yeah.

That was me being a receiver for something that feels like source to me.

And so that's a higher calling.

Yeah.

And having a higher calling has been dragging this poor,

Insecure,

And frightened body through its boundaries and insecurities for my whole life because this higher calling thing that I have in the form of songs that my body creates wants to be alive.

And it's so much bigger than me that I'm just the poor,

Struggling steward of this thing that I have to try and share.

So I just have to get over my fears all the time.

And the show that I played last night was a really,

It was a high.

It was like a real peak experience for me.

But the day,

Two days previous to that,

I had a stress dream about that show.

I was on stage.

Everything was going wrong.

It felt horrible.

And then the whole next day I was just miserable.

I just felt so scared all day.

But I was talking to myself and being like,

You don't be scared.

You can feel the fear,

But don't be scared.

And I just was hanging out with friends and doing the stuff I was doing.

But all day long,

I was just sick.

So that still happens.

And I really don't enjoy that sensation at all.

And yet I continue to need to make shows and events and grow.

So it just gets worse and worse.

If I could just play at Cakes Cafe in Santa Fe,

And I was going to do that again in a week,

Zero fear,

Because I've done it now.

But no,

That's not the thing.

That's not what's happening.

What's next is I have to do another event with different people,

Different configuration in Austin with slightly different parameters.

So I've just created exactly the same thing where I'm going to be feeling a huge amount of fear around that one.

And then I'm going to go have the experience,

Learn what I learn.

And then there's going to be another one that'll be different.

So it's always the unknown.

I just don't get a break.

I don't get a break.

And I'm sort of starting to accept and embrace that journey,

That path.

But yeah,

That's how I got through it.

I was in San Francisco area,

Oakland,

And the pandemic was starting to cool down.

And I was working a bunch of jobs to pay a huge amount of rent and realized just that no one was going to sing my songs except for me.

And I quit my jobs and packed my car full of stuff and just was like,

I'm going to start by sharing my original music with the cities that I know people in that have never heard me perform my music.

And then from there,

I have no idea what's going to happen.

And I packed all the stuff I needed to live in my car,

Out of my car.

I got a tent and all this stuff and kitchen things and just packed my tiny little car and just drove away and played a bunch of house shows in places where I knew people.

And then that came to an end.

And suddenly,

I was like,

Just me and a car and no idea what to do next and a little bit of cash.

And that was,

I think,

2022.

2022,

I think so.

October of 2022.

And then I looked up folk festivals that were still happening.

I was looking for a festival where I could go camp and figure out what my life was and what I was doing next.

And I just needed a little bit of infrastructure,

Like a place where there was going to be a food truck and a bathroom that I wouldn't have to constantly be navigating that.

And that was just a huge learning lesson for me.

But again,

One of the more fear-saturated periods of my life that then led me to the Kerrville Folk Festival,

Which is an 18-day songwriter festival in Texas.

But I was going down there for the small festival in October,

Driving through the oil fields of Texas,

Feeling more scared and lonely and afraid than I'd ever felt in my life,

But also was like,

I took away all of these other attachments and safety nets and was on this journey of self-discovery and figuring it out.

And then that community has just kind of changed my life in terms of meeting people and seeing these amazing people that are like in their 70s that still travel and play music and just kind of caravan around.

And there's just people that are songwriters that just drive their cars from state to state to state to state.

And they go to that place and that place and that place,

Just sharing their music.

And then Kerrville is kind of like this mecca for songwriters.

And you just go there and it's a different world.

Like I went there and was suddenly wealthy.

I was like,

Oh,

I'm a wealthy person because I have these songs and I really get inside the emotions.

And so that really changed my life and gave me so much confidence as a performer,

As a musician to feel seen and appreciated for the things that I saw and appreciated in myself.

But I hadn't found a way to interface those things into society.

So now that's still the path.

How do I become an artist that finds rooms where people want to hear me for real in a music industry that is linked with the entertainment industry and capturing attention and all of these other things that are also art forms and are not to be poo-pooed.

But they're not for me.

I don't really want to do it that way.

And there's a lot of people that do,

So it's good for them.

But the thing that I want to do is not likely to make as much money.

So it's hard to get a lot of environmental encouragement for something that's not going to make as much money.

But I think also that we know that money is not what we want to be.

We don't want money to be running the show and we all kind of see the ways in which money is just running the show.

Yeah.

And I think because we're all humans,

We want other things.

We're just going to figure it out at the speed that a species can figure that out.

And when you hit wrong notes as a species or you try something new as a species,

It's real messy.

And suddenly individuals are dying for things that don't feel right.

But it's hard for me not to look at it big picture and just see that we're just trying to grow and we're trying to figure stuff out.

And we have bad leadership for a reason.

And if we want to do something about that,

We have to do something about that.

And everybody is doing something about that.

Yeah.

So that's,

You know.

I do want to just,

I really like listening to you talk because you're so interesting.

I just want to put that out there.

Thank you.

I hope I'm not too tangential because I tend to just sort of.

.

.

Not at all.

No,

No,

No,

No.

I was thinking to myself,

You know,

First of all,

I'm grateful listeners.

You have to know that it was light when we started this interview.

And now Jesse and I are sitting pretty much in the dark almost here because I didn't turn any lights on because it was light before.

I like it.

Yeah,

I do too.

I prefer this kind of lighting where it's kind of twilight.

But,

You know,

My last question of the podcast is,

I would so appreciate if you would share,

You know,

A story that you consider to be miraculous,

Magical,

Or mysterious.

And quite honestly,

I've been listening to you tell the story about your journey of understanding that you wanted to put your music in the world,

Your voice,

Your creativity,

Your songwriting capacity,

And quitting all your jobs and stepping off the cliff.

Yeah.

Not even knowing if they're,

You know,

What does the bottom look like?

Am I going to fall all the way?

It was such a.

.

.

That was such a journey and a voyage of trust.

I mean,

I thought to myself while you were telling me that story,

I thought,

Oh my God,

This is the magical story.

That's astonishing because you followed your heart and you listened to what your soul wanted.

And you jumped off the cliff or walked off the cliff or drove off the cliff because you were in your car.

Yeah.

And it led you on this adventure that then got you to Kerrville.

Yeah.

Where you got to have all these experiences and make connections and.

.

.

Yeah.

And now I'm living in Austin,

Building a music career.

I don't know what that looks like yet,

But I know that's what I'm doing.

Yeah.

It really was.

And it felt,

My metaphor at the time was that it was like a stage dive.

I'd been performing a certain way and I had a relationship and I had rapport with the people that were right up against the stage.

So I knew that they would catch me if I jumped off the stage,

But then I knew I was going to quickly get passed into the hands of the unknown.

And that was the scary thing is to go and meet people that I didn't know as an introverted,

Spectrum-y sort of person.

But it has been miraculous.

As you were talking,

I was thinking about,

I had this really magical moment at a music festival in California called Priceless.

I had sort of met my traumas and looked at my demons when I was in my mid-20s,

Mid to late 20s.

And that was when I basically broke trust with myself.

I realized that the way I was treating reality around me was damaging and that I wasn't taking responsibility.

And that I was,

To use the words of that me at the time,

A bad person,

Probably.

Okay.

I had been bad.

And that meant that I couldn't trust that I was good because how could I have felt like I was a good person this whole time while I was doing things that were bad?

So this deep internal conflict came up.

Yeah.

And then I've never liked the bureaucratic aspects of life and being told what and how to do things.

And so I was working various jobs in retail and restaurants in New Orleans.

And I've done lots of random things,

Always with managers that I was like,

I don't like this person.

I don't like why they need to be in a role where they tell people what to do.

All this stuff was really critical.

Critical.

But I was just slogging through making music.

That was my one thing that felt good to me.

And doing my inner work of trying to understand why I was so fearfully motivated.

Now that I had seen that all of my misdeeds of the past came from me feeling afraid.

Yeah.

I was like,

Well,

I'm just afraid.

And I'm seeing the way that my fears influenced my actions.

And then I see that my actions were bad,

Air quotes.

Because I don't actually believe in good and bad anymore,

Really.

Yeah.

I think there's just like,

Isn't sort of a vibe,

Really.

So then I was just doing that work.

And I kind of couldn't believe that life was just,

I was just going to be depressed.

But I had to keep eating and I had to keep working.

And I was just going to be depressed for the rest of my life.

But I was kind of taking it seriously.

And I think I was depressed really well.

And then I think I had actually the luxury to take the time to be depressed for all the way in.

Because I mean,

I see that so many people just have,

They have bills.

They have responsibilities.

They have to keep hustling.

They don't get to stop.

They're surviving.

And I always managed to find situations where I had enough time that I could really just sink into misery and be like,

Man,

The world just sucks.

Life just sucks.

This is a bummer.

But because I was able to do that so deeply for so long,

At this festival in California,

Was the first time where suddenly I felt this metaphor where I was seen for my music and seen for who I was becoming.

And it gave me a very deep sense of hope for the first time in a long time.

Wow.

And in that moment,

The imagery was like those old scales that are just two hanging baskets on a crossbar.

And I had been standing on one side with all my traumas and shadow work and ego and everything.

And each time I would like realize,

Oh,

It's not actually life's fault.

This is my relationship with myself that is unhealthy.

And I'd have a realization where I was taking responsibility for life and who I was.

It was as if I was putting that on the other side of the scale.

Each time I'd have this realization of self-awareness.

And at Priceless was the first time that suddenly I put something on the other side of that scale and I felt my side lift up a little bit.

Like I'd found this balance where suddenly I was like I caught up.

I'd done the work to dig myself out of this hole.

And that was really cool.

That was a very magical moment.

That feeling of like worthiness,

I think is what it actually was that I felt seen and appreciated and cared for and good about it.

Rather than no,

You don't know,

I'm no good.

Which I think was a very deep narrative of abandonment and attachment issues coming from being an infant that was like paying a lot of attention and got cast out of his one circumstance into another circumstance.

Yeah.

So yeah,

And now I work towards that.

I see and choose friends that help me continue to make that path towards the practices of joy and the practices of love and the work of those types of energies.

But because I spent so long in the other ones,

I have no interest in denying that those exist.

I think it's very important to bring those with me because there's deep lessons that I learned from those.

And I often meet people that I would consider to be toxically positive,

That they're like just as blind as someone that's toxically negative,

You know?

And they just have this like very phony act that they put up,

But they seem deeply unhappy.

And so I'm just like actually trying to confront myself enough to see if I can go from being someone that was sort of at the core unhappy and dissatisfied to me 10 years from now.

Maybe I'm like really deeply fulfilled and joyful and playful and all these things that current me is like,

I can kind of see that could be possible,

But I don't know.

But I know that I'm on the path to find out.

So I'm just continuing to put one foot in front of the next towards being honest with myself and practicing discomfort and practicing feeling myself get triggered and sitting still and breathing with it and being like there's no right and wrong,

There's just different.

This is a different perspective that is challenging things that I have insecurities around.

It doesn't mean that's wrong,

It just means it's different and I'm used to being this way.

So that's sort of my practice all the time,

Even in like playing with an out of tune guitar and not apologizing.

But I keep commenting on it,

Which is a version of an apology,

You know,

But I don't feel sorry at all.

I just feel what mild regret that it was the way it was.

And then I'm also aware that it's like I have high standards and that what I was doing was like I stayed where I wanted to stay.

I just couldn't not have my mind notice stuff.

Yeah.

And then you don't have to create a story about what your mind noticed.

It's like just let the moment be the moment and just keep surfing the entropy of life.

Yeah.

If possible,

You know,

Because it's just going to keep happening.

It is going to keep happening and I actually appreciated your non-apology.

So there you go.

I can't tell you're out of tune,

But of course you can.

So I mean,

I'm sure all my listeners are like,

This sounds amazing.

I mean,

I'm sure they won't be able to tell you.

I'm sure some of them are like that guitar is out of tune.

And that's great.

Those are my people.

Well,

Thank you so much for being on the show and being so gracious and generous and fun and intelligent and philosophical.

Would you like to close us out with a song?

I would greatly appreciate that.

Is there a story behind this song?

Yeah,

We don't know which one it is yet.

Okay,

Good.

I like the process.

Because I really have so much muscle memory in my hands.

And the sounds are all so emotional.

I think I want to play nature is natural.

That feels like the one.

And this is also when I haven't played in a while.

Never listen to the ripples of what we said.

We want to be kind.

We want to be kind.

You're different than me,

Though.

I can't pretend that you are doing okay.

Another day,

Another species throws a tantrum.

Another day,

Another culture we can ransom.

Another day,

Another natural disaster.

Nature is natural.

Human nature is natural.

I wish it wasn't,

But the pattern is a cycle.

I tried to fight the world to save it.

That was my goal.

It didn't work out.

It didn't work out.

But now it's just me.

Look at me pretending that I'm doing okay.

When I'm in pain,

I try to shake it like a wet dog.

Sharing is caring,

So I suffer like a good cog.

We spread it around.

We spread it around.

We want to believe this isn't pretend.

God,

Am I doing okay?

Another day,

Another species throws a tantrum.

Another day,

Another culture we can ransom.

Another day,

Another natural disaster.

Nature is natural.

Human nature is natural.

Another day,

Another species throws a tantrum.

Another day,

Another culture we can ransom.

Another day,

Another natural disaster.

Nature is natural.

Human nature is natural.

Jesse,

Thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

It was a pleasure.

Yeah,

I really enjoyed talking to you.

Thank goodness.

Yes,

I was actually really disappointed when I had to wrap up this conversation because frankly,

I think Jesse and I could talk forever.

You know,

I think the point of this podcast is to remind each and every one of you who listens that this world,

Despite the negative news,

Despite what we observe in social media and out there in the world,

Is actually peopled with some really fine and innovative and creative and generous human beings.

And part of the aim of this podcast is to let you hear them,

Let you meet them on this platform and remind yourself and your heart that all is not as dire as it seems.

Just remember these beautiful people are out there every single day making this world a better place.

I need to thank Jesse for his generosity and for appearing on the podcast and for just sharing so much about his process,

Sharing his music and sharing his own gorgeous soul.

If you feel like you like what you've heard,

Please consider leaving a rating or a review.

Those ratings and reviews help other people find this little labor of love of mine.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Jesse.

Jump off that cliff.

I just so resonated with the story where he decided to live an authentic life,

One that was full of integrity and one that meant he was gonna be chasing his dream because I think he hit this wall,

Right?

Where he realized that what he was doing wasn't serving him,

Wasn't serving his heart,

Wasn't serving his soul.

And so guess what?

He made the decision to go out there,

Quit everything,

Be brave,

Dive into life,

Jump off that cliff,

Come what may.

So I want all of you to be brave.

I want all of you to see what walls you're butting up against and then jump off that cliff like Jesse,

Believe in yourself and know that you too have something beautiful and unique to offer.

Thanks everyone for listening.

And you'll hear me so very soon for the very next episode of the podcast and the very next most incredible human being you'll ever have the chance to meet.