Daniel Cartier (00:01)
Hey everybody, this is gonna be a short episode compared to what I normally do because my week is crazy, but yeah, there's a couple things I wanted to talk about, so let's start the show.
Hey everybody, welcome to There is No God and We're All Gonna Die. I'm your host, Daniel Cartier. I'm a gay liberal atheist living in the Bible Belt. ⁓ this is gonna be really quick episode. I just gotta be honest with you guys. I have been really busy this getting ready for a bunch of things coming up. I'm doing a bunch of art fairs in September, like six to be exact. And one of them is a pride festival.
⁓ I'm sell So I'm kind of like up to my neck in making rainbow flag stuff and transgender pride flag stuff and all this other stuff, which is really cool because I love the fact that here in my little podunk area of Tennessee, we're having a pride festival in Dixon, Tennessee on this is going to be, I think the third or fourth.
year that they've done it and ⁓ I know we always have some protesters who show up and you know they gotta like you know let us know what they think of us and everything and that's fine it's their right to do it and it's our right to let them know what we think of their views and so I'm sure we will ⁓ I gotta be honest with you
I'm a little scared for this year because, ⁓ you know, there are a lot of crazy people in the world. And I do think that ⁓ Donald Trump's presidency has emboldened some of them. ⁓ Maybe where they feel like now they have the right to be a little bit more vocal about their displeasure of anything they disagree with, whether it's gay people or, you know, women taking
control of their own bodies and, making their own decisions about, their reproductive rights or, the rights of people who may have darker skin or, you know, stuff like that. And so I think that Trump has definitely emboldened some of these people. so to be having a booth at a gay pride festival in the middle of the Bible Belt, can it?
makes me a little nervous, you know, we had a great time the last couple years. And so I'm just going to send some good vibes to the festival this weekend. But anyways, in the meantime, this whole week, I will be basically painting rainbow flags on all sorts of stuff, paintings and bookmarks and greeting cards. And what else am I making? I'm making plaques, you know, that say all these different things, you know,
y'all means all and this house welcomes everyone like just welcoming signs, you know, hanging up a flag somewhere know, it just like makes other people realize that that is a safe place and safe places. know conservatives love to joke about safe places, and they, they always love to bring that up as if, you know, liberals can only live in
safe places, which is not true. I don't live in a safe place. I live in the middle of, the Bible belt. It's not a safe place for a gay person, but I'm here and I'm thriving. so safe place isn't a requirement for a guy like me who's lived through the AIDS crisis and, seeing friends kill themselves because their family disowned them. And, you know, I've seen friends suffer with addiction who were bullied for being gay and,
I was gay bashed really violently and yet I'm still here and I'm not crying for my own safe space. But for some people, especially if they're just coming out of the closet or if they've been through trauma, yeah, safe spaces are nice. you know, there's nothing wrong with knowing that a place is a safe space. so hanging up these little things in a home, you go over there and you just know, man, this house doesn't think I'm a freak, doesn't think I'm,
going to hell, kind of reminder to people, that hey, there are places that accept you. So anyways, yeah, I'm gonna be making a bunch of stuff like that, and I've just been busy all day today, haven't really had time to even think about what I wanna talk about.
And there's always so much to talk about. You know what? Let's start off. I'm going to mix it up a little bit. Since I don't have a lot of time, I'm going to take a couple of voicemails now, and then I'll talk about some news items, and then I will, you know, I'll actually, I'll tell you a story bunch of people who used kazoos.
to shut up a homophobic preacher. That's fun. But anyways, let's take some voicemails. Let's listen to some voicemails. ⁓ yeah, yeah, voicemails. All right, let's see who called.
So another international caller, Ian calling back. I think this is the third time calling the podcast. Ian, you know, I just think the world of you, are such a lovely individual and a wonderful person. ⁓ And what a great question. Yeah, what do I think of musicians who thank God in the liner notes of their albums or, you know, when they're accepting a Grammy Award or
football player who gets a touchdown and they thank God. Yeah, I've I always it reminds me of ⁓ one of the reasons why I'm an atheist actually. It kind of has the reverse effect on me. And again, I should just point out if you're religious and you came here looking for a fight like you came here wanting to hate my podcast and you probably are going to hate my podcast and that's fine.
I'm still glad you're here and I still love you. So before I answer Ian's question, I just need to point that out. I don't hate anybody. my best friend, and I've said this a zillion times, my best friend is Christian, and I love the fact that he believes what he believes. I don't want to take that away from him.
But it's impossible for me to talk about my beliefs without it coming across like, think what other people believe is stupid. It's not that I think it's stupid or not stupid, it's just I don't believe it. So I don't believe it, you know? And this podcast is kind of about that. But anyway, so getting back to Ian's question. Yeah, I
If there was a God and he was concerned about people winning Grammy Awards or getting touchdowns or you know, whatever, I would really question that God because it's like there are babies starving to death. There are people being born. There were babies born today who did not survive past three minutes or they didn't even survive birth and the mother didn't survive birth. There's
people who were murdered. I could list off the litany of horrors and sadness and injustices and inequalities. there's people who are worth billions of think nothing of trampling all over the rights of people who do not have any money so that they can get.
billions of more dollars and they succeed in doing that and then they get people with no money to support politicians that don't care about their rights and the cycle continues ⁓ Yeah, so when I look at all this stuff and then I think okay all this stuff is happening
you know, death and destruction and disease and famine and hunger and, cancer and AIDS and everything. the list is endless. But thank God that this person won a Grammy award or thank God this person scored a touchdown okay, I have a friend and
she's always posting these things on her Facebook page and she's very religious and again, I love her and I don't want to take away her beliefs. that's what she believes. That's fine. I don't believe it, but she does. But she's always posting on her page stuff like, if you're reading this, that means you survived another day.
God obviously wanted you to be here. Because you're here, thousands of other people didn't make it to today. I always just think like, so did God not like those other people? Like was wrong with them that they didn't make it? is God like a reality TV show judge where he's like, you know what? voting you off the
When I think that it's like a God making all these decisions, like, you know what? I think for you, I'm gonna give you millions of dollars and you're gonna get, a Grammy Award or an Oscar or an Emmy or a football touchdown or your business is gonna make billions of dollars and so I'm gonna bless you. I'm gonna bless you.
bless you, bless you, bless you. you're gonna be too blessed to be stressed, you know, that type of thing. And then for you over here, you're gonna starve to death. Tough luck, kid. You know what I mean? It's just when I look at all this stuff, that's how God comes across to me.
I mean, why would I want to believe in a God like that? seems crazy to me. But again, I'm sure a religious person probably even in the comments will tell me why I'm wrong for looking at it that way. And if you want to call up even and leave me a voice message, speak pipe.
Dot-com slash there is no God and we're all gonna die you can call up and you can tell me why I'm wrong for viewing it that way I would love to hear some religious person call up and Explain to me why I'm not thinking about this properly because to me it just seems like people having good luck and then other people having bad luck and then The people with good luck. well, it's God and the people with bad luck
I guess, I don't know, God was lazy with those people? I don't know. or they were somehow deserving of not having good luck. Doesn't make much sense to me. But yes, so that's what I think Ian besides the fact that I think you're an amazing person and I absolutely adore you and you're lovely and wonderful and one of my favorite people. Aside from that, I also agree with you
When I see people do that, it's just like, okay, God's really concerned about you putting out an album. Anyways, let's see who else called.
on my headphones.
Wow. yeah, I do. I don't even know who... John. J-O-N. John?
Yeah, religion has taken away a bunch of rights. As a matter of fact, you know what? I was actually gonna talk about this. This is so weird. when I was gonna film a longer episode, I was actually gonna talk about this very thing, because this happens all the time.
don't even know how many very question. what rights have been taken away? What rights? it all started when I filmed this Instagram video last summer.
it was just a 17 second long video. I did not speak in it. It was just footage of a sky with clouds. And then I just put some lettering over the sky and it said, I will stop reminding you I'm an atheist when you stop shoving your religion in my face and using it to take away the rights of people I love.
and I never mentioned any specific religion, although the only people to comment on it were Christians. So they immediately felt singled out. got almost 1400 comments on this little innocuous video where I did not even say people could not worship what they wanted to worship. I never said, hey, stop believing in your religion. My only thing was
stop using it to take away people's rights. And so the number one comment besides, you're going to burn in hell and what was the other one? I'm going to burn in hell and ⁓ Christ is King. in big letters, in Jesus is God. like there was a bunch of those types of comments. It's a bunch of Bible verses too.
A couple people agreeing with me, which was nice. A couple fellow atheists kind of chimed in and I've actually become friends with some of them, which was kind of nice. ⁓ But the other comment that was probably a couple hundred times in this one comment section, what rights? Question mark or what rights were taken away? I'll wait.
Dot, dot, dot, as if I didn't have an answer to it. It's like, sweetie, you're not going to be waiting very long because I have a whole list of rights. And so, yeah, you just called up and asked that question. Thank you.
Daniel Cartier (14:35)
let's talk about this. What rights does religion try to take away from people? Well,
a woman's right to choose. that's getting trampled on left and right. it's so hard for a woman, even if she's been raped states where even if her life is in danger, she may not be able to get a legal abortion. Why? Because religious people decided that.
they wanted to control women's bodies. So yes, that is religion taking away somebody's rights. LGBTQIA rights, my gay rights, you know, for most of my life, I was not able to legally get married and I'm 56 years old.
But for most of my life, I couldn't get married. Getting married was something only straight people could do. Why? Because religion and all the religious nut jobs were like, the evil homosexuals, they're perverts and queers. We can't let them have any rights. even the right to just be gay. people right now on the religious right who...
think gays should be executed. there's that guy I talked about in a previous episode who says gays should kill themselves. You know, so my right to live, there's religious people who want to just take away my right to live, to literally breathe and to exist. So I would say that's, somebody trying to take my rights away, my right to just exist. A transgender person's right to live openly
in a way that makes them feel comfortable and happy. religious people are trampling all over that. you know, it's so funny because they say, well, God doesn't make any mistakes. And, you know, a man is a man and a woman is a woman. Well, you know, none of these people who say that have any degrees in gender, or biology or science. It's all just people who
to them they don't understand it so it must be wrong why don't they understand it? Usually it's because of religion and they're using religion which the Bible doesn't say anything about transgender people but there's transgender rights,
Right before I was interracial marriage was still illegal. And people were using religion as the basis for that. I mean, there's so many things. There's so many things.
growing up, the right to even feel good about who you are, feeling good in our own skin and feeling like we're worthwhile people, I think that's a human right. you know, but from a very early age,
just because of the fact that I'm gay,
I heard people from, you know, even the church I went to and
I'm sure most people growing up in the Bible belt, know, gay people they were sick. They were perverts. getting compared to people who sleep with animals or dead bodies. mean, the things that I've been compared to you know, if you hear that every single day,
it does start to sink in and after a while I mean, ⁓ I know that there's nothing wrong with me. I was born gay. I, it was not a choice but yet every day of my life whether it's me scrolling through Facebook or it's me looking at the news or just walking down the street and having somebody yell faggot.
you hear this over and over and over again for years. It does affect you. And I'm sorry. It would be nice to live a life where I didn't have to hear all that bullshit or read it or see it or whatever, but it's always there. You know, it's just, you know, it's just such a big part of our culture, and what's really sad is that
religious people say their rights are being taken away but really when I look at like the rights that they're claiming are getting taken away the only rights I can see that are being threatened is the right to impose their religious beliefs on others really that's it or the right to persecute other people the right to
deny people service, at their businesses or the right to make people feel like shit. Like when they go in to get a marriage license and it should be a happy occasion, but then they deal with somebody like Kim Davis, who's, like, ⁓ I'm not gonna give you a marriage license because I don't believe in your marriage. And I think it's, an abomination. You know, that should be a happy moment for people. And, people like Kim Davis turn it into a real fucking
horrible, horrible, horrible, day, you know, and then people have to go back to their cars and it's just like, that sucks. It sucks that people make other people feel that way. as far as true religious freedom, to me, what that means is the freedom to worship the way you want to worship. Like if, if you want to worship this God or that God or go to this church or this temple or this mosque,
I support all of that. The only rights, quote unquote, that I don't support is the right to take a religious belief and use it to, again, like trample on somebody's right to get married or, make their own healthcare decisions or be an independent woman, you know, who's not under the control of her husband. Right now.
Here in America, our defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is that how you say his name? Pete Hegseth. he keeps reposting videos from this friggin' pastor that oversees his church. And that guy doesn't even want women to have the right to vote anymore. He wants women to be completely subservient to their husbands. So if you ask me, that is.
Definitely taking away somebody's rights, you know, so anyways, I'm sure you've Felt really sassy and smart calling in and asking that question and I thank you for calling but I don't agree with you I think religion tramples on a lot of rights and That's why I'm doing this podcast That is the main thing that caused me to start doing this podcast if religion
Honestly, if religion wasn't trampling on people's rights so aggressively all over the world, and I didn't even get into like what Islam does to people and there's that, it's like pushing people off buildings and burning them alive and stuff. But if religion wasn't doing stuff like that, I probably wouldn't be doing this podcast. I probably wouldn't even have an opinion
The only reason why I have an opinion about religion is because religious people give me a reason to have opinions about it. it's kind of like I'm trying to think of something that doesn't affect my life. Like, what's a good example?
Football. not a football fan. My gay best friend, just to smash all the stereotypes, who's a Christian, is also a huge football fan. he these big football watching parties. You would see me over there. I can't stand football. I think it's really boring and I don't really see what all the fuss is about.
Again, I'm not going to take away people's right to watch football. if that's what somebody's into, that's wonderful. aside from the fact that I don't like football, I don't really have any other opinions about it. Like, it's not like I'm sitting around thinking about how football is affecting my life or like how football is trying to infringe on my rights or football is trying to take away the...
a woman's you know, reproductive rights or football is trying to,
take away the rights of transgender people. Football's not trying to do that. Football is football. That's all it is. It's football. So, aside from the fact that it's not my cup of tea, I'm not sitting around thinking about football.
I wish that was the case with religion. Like if religion just stuck to like worshiping whatever it worshiped and like practicing, the tenants of its love thy neighbor would never even think about religion. So, really when you see somebody like me doing a podcast,
Probably it's because religion has given me a reason to do the podcast. I don't even think I would even label myself an atheist had religion not
forced me to really look at my own relationship with whether or not I believed in God. I mean, seriously, like, if I didn't see so much stuff happening in the name of religion that I thought was horrible, then yeah, I probably wouldn't even care. and so for the progressive Christians that ⁓ I know, and the people who are truly open-minded and they support gay rights and they support
women's reproductive rights and when immigrants come here, let's welcome them and let's see how we can help them. Let's not immediately call them illegals and throw them in dog kennels down in the Florida ⁓ I know a lot of really wonderful Christians who are very progressive and they're very liberal and they're very open-minded and accepting of everybody. And so for those people,
I have no opinion about their religion. think that it's wonderful that they believe what they believe. I'm more concerned with their values. And if they share my values of equality and compassion and open-mindedness and empathy and generosity and treating people the way you'd want to be treated, then they have the same values as I do.
If all religious people were like that, then I don't think there'd be any problems, but unfortunately that's not the case. anyways, that was a very long-winded answer, but I think I did give a couple examples, more than a couple, and I'm sure there's many more. If sat here, I mean, I could probably sit here for a long time coming up with examples of how religion does take away people's rights.
not the religion per se, but the people who are interpreting their religion a certain another big distinction because again, like I just said, just a second ago, there's people who interpret their religion in a beautiful way. And I have no problem with those people. It's just the people who view their religion in a way in which they need to go and just start
trampling all over the lives of complete strangers. I don't agree with that. I never will.
⁓ so anyways, that was my answer to him. Yeah, let's do a little bit of self-promotion.
Okay, so just very quickly, like I said, I'm gonna be doing all these craft fairs coming up. If you go to danielcartier.com, I'll post where they will all be so you're in, Dixon, Tennessee area, or even if you're in Nashville or anywhere in Middle Tennessee, over the month of September, there'll be plenty of opportunities to come and meet me in person and...
Buy some art and all my art benefits animal rescue and the care of my own handicap dog pack. We have a bunch of handicapped dogs that we care for and so all the money goes towards them. The acoustic It's not on Spotify or any of the streaming services yet, but it will be soon. I held back on releasing it for a bunch of reasons. I'm not going to get into it now, but it will be out in September. Sounds beautiful.
can check out the video for my cover of Are You Lonesome Tonight? The song made famous by Elvis. Just go to YouTube and type Daniel Cartier, C-A-R-T-I-E-R. Are you Lonesome Tonight? And you can see this video where I'm kind of, I don't know, gyrating around and playing guitar.
I'm gonna be making some more music videos as well for some of the other songs
I'm gonna be doing a big art installation in October.
What else am I doing? Yeah, well just a bunch of stuff. if you want to leave a voicemail
for this podcast and be one of the messages that I play and respond to? It's very easy. Just go to speakpipe.com. Speak like speak. Pipe like a pipe that, you know, water goes through. Dot com slash there is no God and we're all gonna die. G-O-N-N-A. Die. Speakpipe.com slash there is
no god and we're all gonna G-O-N-N-A die. Go there, you can leave me a voice message and I will respond to it on the podcast. Or you can just go to my Facebook page, facebook.com slash thereisnogodandwe'reallgonnadie and you can leave me a message there. Just go to the messenger app and hit the little microphone and you can record a voicemail that way.
or you can just go to my website danielcartier.com danielcartier.com C-A-R-T-I-E-R and there's a button right on the home page, call the show and just press that button and you can leave a voice message that way. So a bunch of ways you can leave a voice message whether you have a question or you're angry about something or whatever. ⁓
Yeah, leave that message and I will respond to it on the show. And I will let you know what I think of your voice message. Alright, so let's see. what's in the news?
All right, I'm gonna keep this really brief because as I said, this is kind of a shorter episode for me. Just really quick, people are arrested left and right in Florida because Ron DeSantis can't deal with the fact that there's rainbow so they've been painting over the crosswalks and then people come and they color them in with chalk and now they're arresting the people who are them in with chalk and.
It's just fucking stupid. It's just really stupid. That's all I have to say about that. Gloria Gaynor broke my heart. She's gonna be getting a presidential medal of freedom from Donald Trump. I actually, I've been a Gloria Gaynor fan my whole life. Ever since I heard I will survive on Casey Kasem's American Top 40 way back in 1978 when I was probably nine years old
And it's always been one of my favorite songs it's been kind of a gay anthem too. And so...
turns out that she's kind of not cool with her gay fans supports a bunch of right-wing politicians I actually didn't realize this and I went to her website
found the contact page
and I actually wrote her a letter I've said you know Gloria
I've been a huge fan and hope that you're not planning on accepting this award from Donald Trump. your gay fans have really supported you and him and all the people who follow him, they're trampling all over the rights of gay people and transgender people. I'm sure she got a bunch of letters like this, but
I thought, well, I would be one more person just reminding her, but apparently, apparently she was already, from what I understand, kind of in the MAGA pocket. So that was really, that was just a bummer, you know? It kind of ruined that song for me. So I gotta admit, that like really bummed me out. Anyways, maybe she'll have a change of heart,
One can only I don't know. apparently she's very Christian and not Christian in the way that some of my friends are Christian. Apparently she's Christian in the way I was talking about when I answered that guy's question she's the type of Christian where they believe in taking away people's rights. So I don't know if that's true, it's a bummer because
that song, I Will Survive, it was one of my favorite songs of all time, so, huh. Whatever, what are you gonna do? And, uh...
in Texas right now, they just passed this thing that if a transgender person uses a bathroom of their choice, they could be fined up to $125,000. So that's happening in which is really fucking insane.
Anyways, there's so many things I could say about the news. I'm really not a news program. I decided to like add a little news segment to highlight things, news isn't really my specialty. You know, I have my opinions about it, but yeah,
I will say one of the other things that happened, this Christian nationalist named Sean Fucht, I don't know how you pronounce his last name. and.
He's just this horrible person. He's also a musician, anyways, he was giving concert or a speech or something in a park in Seattle and his views are so horrible lot of his concerts because his views are just so hateful and awful. And again, it's all because of his religion.
What are some of the things he thinks? He thinks, hold on, let me open up notes.
He described drag queens as demonic, sick, and twisted. He said that Pride Month is a cultural takeover.
gays have sold their soul to a demonic agenda. that's the type of stuff he's saying. So anyways, he just tried to do a concert in a park in Seattle and all these protesters came and drowned him out. the song Pink Pony by Rowan Chappell and...
They played it on kazoos I guess it was like hundreds of people playing kazoos and so they drowned this guy out. you know, in a world where there's just so much hatred and intolerance and homophobia and transphobia and sexism and racism and everything. I like it when, good people show up and they just kind of do what they can to drown it out,
he has every right say what he wants to say, but we have every right to drown him out. it's kind of like, ⁓ I know that there's going to be people at this pride festival I'm doing on Saturday. ⁓ I know that there's going to be people showing up and they're probably going to picket it and say that we're all going to hell. And you know what? We have every right to drown them out and, yell over their bull horns because one of the guys showed up with a bull horn. We have every right to drown them out because what they're saying is so ugly and stupid and fucking.
just gonna take another couple voicemails.
listen to some more voicemails.
how do I find joy?
By being honest, that's how I find By showing up. Joy, have to really work for it sometimes. Sometimes joy is something that, doesn't just fall on your lap. ⁓ I know for me, there's a lot of days I still wake up, I've struggled with low self-esteem my whole life. And for a long time I was very suicidal and it's not like those thoughts totally go away.
I've been sober now for almost seven years, but there's days where I wake up and man, the desire to go get drunk is still there. I think I'll always struggle with those feelings. And there's times where I look around the world and I see how corrupt and fucked up it is. And sometimes I just want to move out to the woods and never talk to anybody again.
honesty, honesty, talking with people like when we're struggling with finding joy, that means that something is blocking us from getting to that joy. And so maybe it's, low self-esteem or maybe it's, looking around at how fucked up the world is, or, feeling powerless to change anything or feeling like,
our ideas are there's so many different reasons, maybe we're struggling with different addictions, know, gambling addiction, sex addiction, or ⁓ alcoholism, drug addiction, food issues, like there's so many things that people struggle with. Or maybe we've just never had somebody believe in us the way
It helps to have people believe in you. Cheerleaders help. so I say a lot of sometimes you gotta work to find joy. I guess I'll just break it down really I could go on and on and on about this because it's a subject I really love. But for the sake of...
not dragging out into a 20 minute long answer, I will just list off a couple things. One, if you don't have any cheerleaders, do whatever you can to find some because there's eight billion people on the planet. So I don't care what you're into. no matter how freaky somebody is, there's going to be somebody out there who gets that brand of freakiness,
Or like no matter how strange somebody's dreams might be so long dreams aren't going to hurt anybody there's going to be somebody out there who understands that I guess another example would be like whatever mood i'm in like if I wake up in the morning and I just feel hopeless and overwhelmed and like
I'm just not really believing that there's any point to anything. Man, that's when I need to call and tell on myself. have friends today that I can basically call and tell them anything and they know me at this point. They know me well enough to know, okay, Daniel's in one of his moods. my best friend, Matt, who is a Christian.
And I love that he has that and we joke about our differences all the time, which is what it should be. but anyways, when I'm having a really low self-esteem day or I wake up in the morning and I don't see any points, anything, he would be one of the first people I would call. and he knows like, especially if it's a rainy day and it's a Monday, he knows that Daniel's probably going to be in a really dark mood.
and so it's important to have friends us. And if you don't have friends like that, then it's imperative to find them. And We find them by showing up and taking part in things. You know, I think that's the other thing is like a lot of times in order to find joy, I may have to do things I don't feel like doing, like going out and taking part in life.
And sometimes when we're in a bad mood, that's the last thing we want to do. But the weird thing is sometimes the last thing I want to do is the thing I should do. You know, because that's the thing that's probably going to make me feel better in the long run, even if I don't feel like doing it at the time, like, I don't know, like join this book club or join this, organization
this this mixer or something. But you never know who's gonna be there. And if you don't show meeting one of the most amazing people you could ever hope to meet.
There's a difference between procrastinating and resting. And resting is very important. But when I'm just procrastinating, like if I'm doom scrolling on my phone, you know, that's not gonna make me feel any better about my usually when I'm doing that, I'm putting off doing something. And so I found that...
even if I don't feel like doing something, if ⁓ I know it's something that I need to do, I just do it. And once I'm in action of doing it, I usually feel a lot better. So, I think it's also
not having any on what that joy is. I say finding joy, it's not that I'm gonna super star-spangled all the Some of the joy's gonna be low-grade joy, and then there's gonna be times where I'm filled with joy. not having any And then sometimes we're supposed to feel sad, and we're supposed to feel angry, and we're supposed to feel supposed to...
Grieve!
I'm sure there's a lot of other things I could say, but I hope that was kind of a good start.
Alright, just a couple more questions here.
Well, I think I can just piggyback off that last answer. That was my dear friend Ruben. ⁓ What do I do when I'm in a funk I might reflect for a little bit and maybe even make a list I'll write in a journal about
what I could picture doing creatively. a big believer in stream of consciousness writing, you just sit down with a notebook I do this quite a bit actually, and I just say to myself, I am not gonna let my pen stop writing for 10 minutes.
And so I'll just start writing and I might even start by writing I don't know what I'm going to write. I don't know what I'm going to write. I have no idea what I'm doing. but if I just force myself to continue after a while, thoughts start showing up on the page and those thoughts start sparking other things. And then I start seeing song lyrics and then it just gets my brain going. And before you know it, like 10 minutes have passed and
my mind has completely shifted because the meditative thing of just myself write Like suddenly stuff just starts coming another thing I do is give myself permission to make some really shitty art and some really shitty yeah, I'm just gonna like fucking write whatever or paint whatever and it's gonna be crappy but
I need to paint this crappy stuff or this crappy song so that I can get past it and get to a better song or get to a better painting. So sometimes allowing myself to purposely make bad art ⁓ is just getting it out of the way, And then sometimes the weird thing is that bad art ends up becoming the amazing art,
And I did not plan on it happening that way, but then suddenly it's like, my God, this is really cool. So I think sometimes it's
getting away from the planning aspect of it and just being spontaneous. I do that a lot in my concerts. I'll just make up songs on stage. I'll ask the audience to give me three words. it's almost like improv comedy where I'm just like, give me a feeling, you know, happy, give me a noun, ⁓ couch, give me an expression. It is what it is. And so then like the
song needs to have those three things in it and then I just start playing some random chord and some of my best songs were written that way and I'm not just saying that I actually have songs that have ended up on albums that started as me just having the audience yell out words
the other thing is that sometimes if I'm in a rut creatively, I might actually need to take a step back and just rest. Maybe I truly am in need of recharging the batteries. Maybe I need to binge watch some TV for a little while and shut my brain.
or go out and like hang out with friends and just goof around, you know? I mean, we're not supposed to be productive all the time. I struggle with that right now because I've been so busy lately. I've just been going, going, going. That's this particular episode is a little shorter is because my life has been so busy these last couple of weeks.
I was worried that I wouldn't even be able to film this episode, I'm like, I hope I have time to at least film something because it's a commitment I made and I want to honor that commitment. I don't want to be one of those people who's like, I don't have time to do it this week. So I'm not going to do it. I don't want to be that person. So I still wanted to show up and do something,
So I think sometimes also it's just showing up and showing up and showing up. And even if it seems stupid show up anyways, you know, anyways, so we have, I think just one more.
question and that will be it. and I think once again. My wonderful partner, called and asked a question.
Wow. I think I'm going to answer this question really quick because I think I just answered it in a weird way the last two questions. All those questions they all had something to do with each other. the woman who called before Ruben, she was asking how I find joy. And then Ruben was asking
when I am in a fun creatively, how do I get the juice back? And then now you, my lovely partner, Corey, just asked me, wait, what was the question again? Now I forget what your question is. wait, let's listen again.
Okay.
Okay. Yeah, exactly. And so, and so, and then you asked like, what are the ways that I can stay positive in times of turmoil and a weird way, like all three of those questions are kind of tied together because it's all about continuing to just show up and be persistent, you know, in the quest to find joy, we have to be
even when we don't feel like showing up for things, we have to show up because we never know who we're going to meet and how they're going to affect our life. being open to new possibilities. and then Ruben's question about how to, spark our creativity. And when we're in a funk, again, it's just about showing up and taking chances and being creative when we don't feel like it. And so to get to your question,
It's kind of like the same thing where it's like, in times of turmoil, how do we find that happiness and that peace and that feeling of wanting to still be here, not to simplify it, but it is about just showing as you know, there's so many times that I don't feel like showing up for things because
I can suffer from the worst case of self defeatism where like, think everything I'm doing is stupid and dumb and blah, blah, blah. you record a song and then only a couple people listen to it and you put all this time into it. So what's the fucking point? Why even bother? Well, because that song meant something to me. And so I recorded it because
I wanted to hear so even if nobody listened to it, I still really enjoyed recording it. I think it's like that with everything, you know, we wake up every morning and the reality is our lives are just so short in the big grand scheme of things. earth has been here for 4.6 billion years.
Humanity has only been here for a couple hundred thousand years. If you crammed the history of the world into 24 hours, humanity would show up in a fraction of the last second and our lives, our lives are just a blip of that of the last section. Like it's almost like we were never even here. And yet we will be consumed with our depressions and our sadness
our lives to others. somebody said, comparison is the thief of joy. And I really do believe that.
when I'm comparing my life to other people's gonna be sucking the joy out of my life, because I should really just be looking at all the things that I'm grateful for in my life, because there's always gonna be people with more success or more money or more this or more that, and that's just gonna always be the case. so if I'm constantly comparing myself to other people's lives, joy's not gonna really have any room to fit in there.
So in order for me to find joy especially during times of trouble or turmoil,
⁓ I know I talk about gratitude lists a lot you know the funny thing is again that's a perfect example of something that ⁓ I know is good for me. know every single time I sit down and I make a gratitude list like all the things I'm grateful for. Usually I never feel like making it because usually I make them because I'm in a horrible mood and I don't see any points anything.
And so that is when I should be making a gratitude list. And that's usually the last thing I want to do because when we're in a bad mood, sometimes we want to be in that bad mood because we're getting some sort of, I don't know. It's like that self pity justified anger and like all this stuff that can be very addicting too, but ⁓ I know that
sitting down, getting a pen out and writing down all the things our dogs, you know, I'm so grateful for the dogs. a lot of times all I gotta do is lay down with the dogs on the floor and just cuddle with them for a second. And that's going to make me feel better right away because they are the most spiritual beings.
I think I've ever met. They're just so in the moment and they're just so appreciative of everything. I, learned so much from them all the time, just about appreciating life, the simple things in life. that, that would go in there like this house, the fact that we have a roof over our head, the fact that, all my limbs work. Okay. I can
sit down and play guitar whenever I want, I've been sober for however long I've been sober for, friends, family, the sky, nature, flowers, I'm talking to Corey now, our you know, there's just so many things to be grateful for, but
When I'm those dark spaces and I'm just looking at all the horrible things that are in the world, and there are a lot of horrible things, I'll forget about all the stuff that I should be grateful for. It won't even be on my radar. So I have to remind myself all the time, like there's still a lot of good things in the And sometimes, you gotta sit down and actually make a list, a gratitude list, just write it all down on paper. Here's all the things I'm grateful for.
I've never done that and felt worse afterwards. I always feel better, even if I just feel a little better. That's better than feeling a little worse, you know? Progress is progress, even if it's just a little progress. And yeah, and to not compare my life to others, like I'm a musician and I'm not a famous musician at all. I had record deals and stuff and it didn't work.
so now it's like I see people who are making millions and even billions of dollars doing music and it would be very easy for me to like fall into this thing of comparing my life to theirs and coming up short and thinking that my life was just a big fat failure. you know, that's just looking at it a certain way. I mean, type of success where people are making millions or billions of dollars,
It's like winning the lottery, really. as an atheist, kind of also feel like talent does have something to do with it, but it's also just being in the right place at the right time and everything coming together. anything had happened differently, their lives might've turned out different. And so when I start comparing my life to that, it's really not fair to them and it's not fair to me either.
Yeah, comparison is the thief of joy and also self-pity is the thief of joy, resentment is the thief of joy,
dishonesty is the thief of joy. There's a lot of thieves of joy, honesty and gratitude
kindness and empathy. They are not the thieves of joy. Love is not the thief of joy. So, you know, doing things we love will always bring joy. So you guys, I think that's it. I think I answered all the questions. I think I, filmed the episode of a podcast. It was kind of different because, I didn't do all my usual segments because, you know, I have such a busy week, but
I want to thank you all for hanging out again go to if you want to check out all my music and my art and see where I will be selling my art in the month of September. I'll be doing a bunch of art fairs. you happen to be in Dixon, Tennessee this Saturday, September 5th or 6th, I don't know.
I'll have my art booth there and you can come and buy some pride art me.
Wishing you all a wonderful week and sending you a bunch of love.