Unshod with D. Firth Griffith
Conversation about relearning the kinship worldview with author, horse-drawn woodwright, and renowned storyteller, D. Firth Griffith. Unshod is a podcast and community that believes to rebel, we must pause, that we live with Earth as Earthlings, that we must approach creativity, curiosity, and compassion in conversation.… but we must approach this ground UNSHOD. This has nothing to do with "saving the world." It has everything to do with leaving the right kind of tracts in the mud.
Unshod with D. Firth Griffith
The Pace of Art at the End of the World with Jake and Maren of Death in the Garden
In this conversation, Jake and Maren of Death in the Garden explore the challenges and realities of being an artist in today's fast-paced world. We discuss the necessity of patience in the creative process, the importance of storytelling in both fiction and nonfiction, and the need for imagination in a mechanized society. Together, the conversation also emphasizes he value of personal experience and the interplay between happiness and sorrow in understanding life and art.
The conversation also touches on the struggle to find time for creativity amidst modern distractions and the importance of nurturing a relationship with the muse. And so much more.
Death in the Garden Substack HERE or Youtube HERE.
Film: What is the Human Animal?
Pre-Order Daniel's latest kincentric mythology (novel) HERE.
About Jake and Maren:
Death in The Garden is a film project which aims to explore modern human culture and it’s unique relation to ecology. Jake and Maren focus on subjects such as agriculture, technology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, and history to explore complex issues like climate change and the modern crisis of meaning through a holistic lens. In addition to the films they are producing, they have an extensive catalog of essays on Substack as well as podcasts primarily collected during filming. Maren is currently working on her debut novel, the first book of the Fall of Men series: a trilogy set hundreds of years after the collapse of global civilization.
Hello, hi, welcome to the podcast. Today's episode is with a group of my dear friends, jake Marquez and Maren Morgan, of Death in the Garden. Death in the Garden it's a film project that they've been working on for many years, which aims to explore modern humanity's culture and its unique relationship with ecology. Jake and Maren, in their own marvelous ways, focus on subjects such as technology and agriculture, sociology, physiology, psychology, philosophy, anthropology and just about everything in between, and it's a really interesting subject. I implore you, if this conversation is interesting at any point, check out their sub stack, deathinthegardensubstackcom. It's in the show notes, but also head over to their YouTube, which is also in the show notes. They have produced very recently a magnanimous, just unbelievably well done film. It's about 20 minutes in length about human origins, I think it's titled what is the Human Animal? It's brilliant, it's marvelous this episode. It covers a lot. It really focuses on art. We drift over to ecology and anthropology. We talked about the role of the artist. What really is the pace in which art must be carried, or should there be a pace? And what is fast art? What is good art? What is art and its artist? All questions we consider Before we jump in.
Speaker 1:I want to highlight if you are a fan of this podcast or not a fan of this podcast, but you still listen to it. And if that's, you reach out. I want to. I want to. I want to meet you. I want to see why this is. Please leave a rating, leave a review in your podcast players medium. If it's Apple, if it's Spotify, if it's elsewhere Overcast or whatever it's called, just leave a review. I cannot tell you how much that helps us. Over the last couple of years that Morgan and I have produced this podcast, we have gone from 50 listeners to 100 listeners and then very recently, over the last year or so really, with the publishing of my most recent book, stag Time, concentric Wilding, we've gone to like 10,000 listeners. But I'm very bad at reminding you guys of how to support us and I think we have like 10 reviews on a lot of these podcast mediums, which I'm perfectly fine with. You can obviously grow without these things, but I do implore you if you enjoy this or if you don't just leave an honest review or just a rating. I cannot tell you how much that helps us. Just spread the word. That's really all I care about.
Speaker 1:This podcast is unmonetized. That's not the point. I really just want to have good conversations, and I think these conversations are producing really interesting thoughts that I think a lot of us need to start to consider. I think it's very important. If I didn't, I would stop.
Speaker 1:We produce this podcast in-house. Like I said, it's unmonetized and it takes a lot of time, and we do all of the work. We have no producers or editors or sound engineers included, and so you know we really believe in it, and so I encourage you please leave a rating, leave a review, share it with your friends, etc. And then, secondly, if you are listening and at this point you're still listening, so I guess I'm speaking directly to you, but if you are listening we have an online sub stack ourselves. It's called Unshot. Every episode is posted there, and really the main reason we have it is not to in a room by myself talking to nobody and what we really would like to do, what we would really have a passion for you, facilitating that deeper connection through this conversation. Join the Substack and every episode you can ask questions, you could push, you can critique, you could expand.
Speaker 1:A lot of people when I meet them that listen to this podcast, they say, man, I really love that episode, but I wish you would have taken it in this direction instead of that. And what I think a lot of listeners don't understand is almost every single guest that I've had on the podcast wants to be on the podcast again, and so if there are thoughts, avenues, visions that you wanted to explore or you wanted us to explore in this podcast that we didn't with a particular guest, tell us We'll just do it again. We'll do it 10 times if we need to do it, and so your comments, your critique, your participation in Unshod, both online and through the podcast, is really what we're looking for. So please converse with us, join us. It's free, it's just. I just want you there. That's the point. So leave a rating, join us online, start conversing with us and yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1:I'm done with this intro. I'm done talking to myself. So enjoy the episode with my dear friends Jake and Maren, of Death in the garden. It seems like it's necessary maybe not implicitly necessary to be an artist and starving. It seems like we could have figured that one out many thousands of years ago. We didn't, but it seems like if you're an artist and you're not starving, you're not an artist anymore Does that make sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it feels like it shouldn't be easy, and if it is easy, then maybe something isn't quite right and maybe there's like a bit of too much ego involved or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, way too much social, social cred. That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3:And when you're trying to do something that's like original to you and is very true to you, and you're trying to bring something that you feel is maybe, uh, original and isn't out there yet, you know there's not a place for it in the world quite yet, you're really like forging something new, and much, much of what you do with your work it's you're really trying to bring something into the world, and so the world doesn't know what to do with it at first, and nobody, there's no, there's no money, there's no resources, there's no attention.
Speaker 3:And so you really have to like build the attention, build people's interest, and you're building something from the ground up, and I think most artists and creatives in all fields have to like really go through that, and I think that definitely weeds people out, and I understand, too, why some people who have that calling or a vision or something, get partway through it. They're like fuck this, and they have a kid or something you know, and it's just like I got to find some way. That's just easier to do than this. And so we're fortunate that we, you know, don't have kids, we don't have a mortgage, we don't have all this stuff and we can not, that you can't do it with those things, but it's harder for sure I would, I would assume, and so we're lucky that we can kind of just keep trudging through the suffering of, in the confusion of trying to do something original, and so I think that's what we try to delusionally remind ourselves every day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then at the same time, like when I think of like art, like authors, like the majority of the authors that I know, that I would call great authors from humanities, history, like they all kind of starve to death.
Speaker 2:So you're in good company, we're in good company For sure, well, and then also, you know, just time, I feel like when we first started doing Death in the Garden, we really thought we were going to finish it in like six months, like we legitimately thought that that was possible. And I feel like that's where a lot of growth has happened. For me is just recognizing how evergreen these things are and how you have to keep kind of tending to the, the forest all the time and it's it's always there, you're always working on it, you're always building on it, you're always building on it. You're never you're never sort of arriving at something that feels as complete as you sort of expect it to. And so, especially with a project like this, where it's like, okay, we had this like timeframe of, basically when our unemployment from COVID was run out, we thought we were going to have a whole movie and like be rich and famous and all this shit.
Speaker 2:That obviously didn't happen, um, and then it's taken us like four years to get to where we're at now, where we're finally creating videos and releasing things. But it's like all of the pain and frustration that came from that waiting game and it taking so long and going through all of these different seasons of life, it's like, when you look back on it, it just feels so right on time, like it's like, oh yeah, this is exactly how this was always supposed to go, and the real problem was like our expectation that it was going to be faster and that we were going to be able to just produce, produce, produce and just create this thing and, just you know, treat ourselves like machines that could produce. And instead we were like, oh yeah, we're humans, we have limitations. You know, we've learned a lot about, about that yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, you guys might not be rich, but you're famous, so you've got half of that. That's good to hear.
Speaker 2:Maybe one day.
Speaker 1:Maybe one day I hope, I hope and I hope not. I was watching uh. I was watching this, this documentary produced by some unnamed individual but the uh. But the documentary is all about I don't know the CEO or founder or something, of Impossible Foods. I don't know, it was a dinky looking man, Older guy kind of, had a crooked hat, Like he just was totally rocking what he was.
Speaker 1:I don't know his name or anything, but they were in a field and there was tons of people with dibble bars planting trees no-transcript craziness about it, because they were planting what seemed like hardwood species which, no matter what genetically modified material they're using to do it. Like it's still not going to be closed canopy. Maybe pines or something else might have been closer, but I don't know. I just think their timeline was off. But all of it made me chuckle when he said, like a couple of years, like two or three years, this is going to be a closed canopy forest. Like we fixed it in such a small amount of time. And I wondered like art takes time, ideas take time and if it doesn't, we can throw agriculture into that too. Like his closed canopy forest. Like do we want a closed canopy forest? That took two or three years to grow. Or do we want a closed canopy forest, or maybe not closed, but do we want a canopy of a forest that took a thousand years to grow and it like learned a lot of shit and it like new stuff and it's like I've seen this.
Speaker 1:I grew, I took my time, it was slow, Like I thought of the American beach tree. I learned this a long time ago but it sticks with me. Um, the American beach tree can sit for 80 years without ever growing or needing to photosynthesize, Even at like 20 years old. It could just stop because the sunlight isn't good enough. And it could just sit there for 80 years waiting to grow until, like the trees around it die or move or shift, or lightning comes in or a forest fire comes through or prescribed burn or something, and it's like, oh the sun, cool, I'm going to start growing again. So, like, on the one side we have patients and the other side we have, you know, wonky doodle, impossible food CEO with his hat Like you just you look like a crazy person saying that we can plant a closed canopy forest in three or four years, yeah, yeah, well, that thing, that that thinking reminds me.
Speaker 3:you know, if, if we get this forest that you can grow in three years, then we're going to be just as comfortable tearing it down overnight if we need to. You know, what we want is a forest that takes a thousand years to grow, so that we never take it down. And we know how long it took to get there. We know that it's such an integral, integrated ecosystem that why would you ever take that down? You can't get that back. That's going to take another thousand years to get back, and I think you can translate that to art, to films, to writing.
Speaker 3:I think we all have authors that we love. That it's like they put so much time into something. Or, for me, filmmakers, where there's films that they took years and years to make, to grow and percolate, and they last. And that's what I want. You know, in the age of YouTube right, where people are just pumping out shallow content that doesn't matter, it matters for five seconds and then it's gone.
Speaker 3:And I think that's what we're trying to remind ourselves too is that like, yeah, this might be taking us forever and the work that we care about, but maybe it has a chance of actually lasting and being important if we give it our all and we and we really incubate it and nurture it just like a forest and just like all these other things. I think all these concepts really bleed into each other. I think more and more in the world we need more of that. We need patience for good ideas and we need patience for good communities and ideas and art. And I think we're so impatient and maybe that just bleeds to the fact that we live in such a quick, capitalistic based society is that it's almost like the the long thing can't fit within the current paradigm. It doesn't have a place. You know, we don't want that because actually it's not, it's not profitable and we can't turn around quickly.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's. I think that's like probably a problem that we all face, like collectively, as creatives, is like the mediums that we're able to sort of share our art with people. You know, whether it's substack, whether it's youtube, whether it's like just the internet in general, it is this so quick that it just burns and then it goes away, and then you hope that you can like momentarily grasp, grasp someone's attention just to give them an idea, and you hope that that kind of plants some sort of a seed, but it's so hard to know if that's actually what's happening. And so I think a lot of the conversations that we've been having is like how we're so grateful to continue doing Death in the Garden and we want to keep doing it. Ultimately, we want to create these much more deeply rooted projects that are have a more lasting impact and that that aren't going to just be sucked into the algorithm. You know, I think that there's a lot of good that you can do by disseminating your seed everywhere, but then there's also something about like, really like planting those roots deeply by writing novels, making movies, like narrative films, because I think I think you mentioned it on like one of your own podcasts recently or something, but or it was a.
Speaker 2:It was a piece that you wrote, an essay that you wrote.
Speaker 2:At the beginning you were just kind of like saying that fiction is just so much more important and more powerful and it just says so much more, and I think that's just.
Speaker 2:That's really how I've been feeling for about like the past year and a half, is just feeling like I'm so grateful that we're doing this like nonfiction work and we're trying to weave in like mythic ways of talking about these big, big, complex problems that are really easy to reduce down into little sound bites or, like you know, data points and things like that that just sort of go in one ear and out the other, and so we're trying to figure out how to make these things more lasting and more substantial. But there's something about fiction that it's just like if you can do it right, it is forever and it has that impact in a way where you're able to deal with it, talk about ideas and deal with ideas that are so much more permanent, and so that's definitely the direction that we're hoping to move in, and viewing death in the garden as like a really beautiful and important, like stepping stone on a much bigger journey for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's a lot of bad examples of fiction.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, it's easily pervertable yeah.
Speaker 1:It's easily pervertable, like anything, anything that's good, I think it's easy to pervert, and I'm sure there's a lot I think is easy to pervert.
Speaker 2:Um and I'm sure there's a lot there. But yeah, yeah, I mean, and I think that's part of the reason too why I say that is because it's because of the fact that there's so many bad stories right now. You know, I, I spend a lot of time, you know, paying attention to all of the terrible films and novels that come out and just and just thinking like, oh my God, but but it's one of those things where, you know, I can complain about it or I can try to like actually write a good story you know, like, can I do that?
Speaker 2:Can I, can I be the thing that I want to see in the world? And that's kind of what what I'm trying to do and and you know it's the same thing with our work that I would. You know, death in the garden is like nonfiction, you know, and it's it's still important with nonfiction for it to not be stupid and and trite.
Speaker 3:Well, even in nonfiction, you know, you can find the mythology that is lasting. You know we are living through mythologies. We are, our time is mythological and if we're trying to define it, it's actually very useful to look at it as a as this grand mythology that's playing out. You know it's actually very useful to look at it as this grand mythology that's playing out. You know it might be in a thousand years from now. Imagine the mythologies that will be written about our time and the way we thought. And they might either say like those were the grandfathers of this beautiful world that we are convinced we live in, or like holy shit, how did they ever think that way? And it will be mythologized.
Speaker 3:You know the only way we can really look at history is through mythology. Even if it's Napoleon or the Romans, it's almost always mythologized for the, for the general public, public. You know we have historians that get nitty and gritty but in large, the way we understand history is through the storytelling of it. Uh, you know, we just saw Gladiator 2 and Napoleon came out and it's a story. It's the only way we can really kind of understand the past as if it were a story.
Speaker 2:Also, those aren't very good examples. And those aren't good examples. They were just on my head.
Speaker 3:They were both poopy.
Speaker 1:I had hopes for Gladiator 2, only because I think Gladiator 1 is just I mean, it's just iconic.
Speaker 2:It's so good, it's really good, so good. We were pretty disappointed. We were not disappointed. I was extremely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a fun, beautiful spectacle, but it is not.
Speaker 1:They didn't need to make it, they just didn't need to make it no-transcript writing in a dreamlike state where she'll write and things will happen and it's just like, oh my God, that's cool News to you, news to me, and I really liked that and that's the way I write. It's why I never find myself traditionally publishing books, because by the time I actually have the idea the book is written and I might as well just get it out to people who want to read it and interact with it and such, and so I guess I would put myself in that boat as well. But something that's really interesting to me, and I guess this is my question in fiction, everything is possible, but in the world around us, even looking at the conversation we've had in the first 15 minutes here, there's a lot of things that feel impossible. So like how does the artist tell a better story while they can't even stay alive enough in the modern world, machine-based capitalistic world, where you have to do all of these things in order to stay alive, whatever that might be. But we need to, and so there's a bit of magic that needs to happen and in stories it's fine, like talking about mythology.
Speaker 1:Something that I've always joked about is in a lot of mythology. It's like when you reach an impasse, something magical happens. And there's no impasse, it's fine. Now, you know, like in a lot of Celtic mythology, they just like these two people are like, well, we need to figure this out. And they're like, well, let's just meet a year from now and then we'll figure it out then. And they're like cool. So like, a year goes by, it's, it's, it has great symbology, it has deep meaning. But then they come back and the years pass and they can figure it out. So in fiction, everything is possible. And we live in a world today where very little is possible. And I wonder if there's something there in which we need to like, mold, play with, like what if the world in which we live, in, this very nonfiction world, became fictional? Like what if we actually believe that you and I's generation could actually fix this in some intrinsic way? Although that feels entirely impossible. Maybe it's not. What do you think? How do you see these things?
Speaker 2:I think it's hard because obviously there's so many layers to the way that we are apprehending the world all the time that make so much good seem so impossible. You know there's the layer of I just need to get my needs met and money is the vehicle for me to get my needs met. You know that's something that we're having to deal with every day. You know that that we are escaping as people who are trying to make art at the same time it's a constant struggle, just financially. But there's something about the act of imagination and creation that has been helping me tap into what can be possible. I have more faith in the future when I can kind of see my way of weaving myself into it. If I just view myself as this sort of atomized individual, with the world is against me and I have all of these capitalist concerns that we all do, and I'm not saying that in a denigrating way. We all have to think about these things. It's just the world that we live in. But it's like if you, if you don't have the sort of imagination of where do I see myself fitting in to a better world, if we can't even picture that, then we're stuck in the sort of nonfiction, bifurcated sort of world that is mechanized and denuded of life, and so I think that's the thing is like there needs to be. People need to be just more creative.
Speaker 2:If the muse is, if you were fortunate enough to have the muse come to you and give you an idea, that is like a blessing. That is something that doesn't happen all the time. That's something that it's like that you were given that idea and now you get to go and run with that. You were given that dream, that vision, whatever it is like. That's a really beautiful thing. That's actually the magic, that's like the divinity that we're missing.
Speaker 2:You know, that's like that's the, that's the fiction that we're kind of talking about is like the world is actually very mysterious and there's like a lot of really beautiful things that you can kind of tap into through the creative process, and so I don't know if any of that is like making sense, but I just think that that there's imagination and creativity are such a wonderful vehicle for us to be able to even start imagining, like we have to believe that these things matter and that our imagination is actually something that's valuable for us to then be able to imagine a better future. You know we live in a culture that really, really has devalued imagination. I mean, stories are all about money. You know that's the way most people consider. Stories is like is this going to make me money, rather than does this like ignite a fire in me? Does this make me feel like I'm alive? Does this make me feel like I'm a progenitor of something good in the world? You know, different value systems are kind of at play.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it is interesting that, like in nonfiction, everything, even if it's still like, entirely mythical and you write it poetically and everything else, you're still laying out a very rational version of the world that we all inhabit and that inhabits us, and so I don't want to say it's linear in that way, but it still allows us to interact with it in a very linear fashion, right Like I read a book recently on like happiness. I forget what it was, I don't know. A friend of mine gave it to me and uh, it was strange, like it was so interesting the role of happiness in human evolution or just all of life evolution, um, but I found myself like reducing all of the life around me to like happiness. Like, does that make sense? But in a story about happiness there's so much more life there.
Speaker 1:I don't know, there's so many more colors to play with.
Speaker 2:And I think that we need both.
Speaker 2:You know, somehow I think we need to figure out how to have this synthesis between both, because there's something about having the language to sort of describe things in a reductionist way, but then there's you have to have that integration where it comes, like into the body, and it's like a more like felt like non-rational way of understanding things.
Speaker 2:Because, like, what you were just describing is like, you know, there's a way that you can sort of overly reduce everything, have this reducing valve of everything is this and everything is this way, and you know, and I see it all the time, and just like all these different sort of modalities of thought, and I'm always trying to kind of like build a mosaic in my mind of like, okay, all of these things, they fit together somehow. But then I find that, like, as you were saying, it's like a story that evokes happiness, it tells you everything without words in a sense, because it's you feel it in the body, and so I somehow I feel like but it also helps to be able to then translate that to somebody else and explain this book made me feel this way, so I don't know, what do you think?
Speaker 3:I mean yeah, I think I mean it kind of you talking about like, looking at the whole natural world is like almost an expression of happiness, and it reminds me of like. There's a lot of like you know Hindu denominations where it's like everything's an expression of love, everything's an expression of happiness and joy and pleasure. And that is a completely different way to like view the world and like what is that? Well then, how do you interact with that? If that is the world itself, no matter how much how we perceive it, if it is just an expression of joy and happiness, then what are you left with and how do you orient your life around that? And how does that actually change your life and what gets expressed out of that?
Speaker 3:And I think more and more we need that because we live in such a cynical society and ultimately, we're living in the result of that. If we do have this far more cynical, uh, reductionist, rationalist mindset, then we get a kind of like, do a scientific test, in a way of like well then, what does the world look like if that is the operating modality? And I think we've, by and large, been in that for quite a while and I think it's time we took a sober look and like okay, well, this is what you get out of that. That's what the world looks like. But what if, like as if you're saying, if we began to see the world as an expression of happiness, what could the world look like, what could the world be, what could we all become because of that?
Speaker 1:I, yeah, I agree, going back, maren, what you said about having both. I think you're entirely accurate there. I think that's. I think right now our culture obviously prefers the you know, the nonfiction side, uh, over the story side, although it is growing in the story side, but not not as I. I appreciate, um, but like okay.
Speaker 1:So last year I wrote a book, spent six months querying it to publishers, got all the way through to two and then at the end a contract in hand, but what they wanted me to do it was nonfiction. They asked if I would remove all of my personal stories out of the book and only leave the essays and the science. It was a book on agriculture and it was looking at a number of different things. For instance, one of the sections is about stress in animals and how that interacts between species, and I had some stories in there indicating stress in animals and they said to delete all the stories. They said people don't want to read these stories, they just want to be told how to raise cows.
Speaker 1:I think people need to learn how to raise cows, just like the same way they need to learn how to do X, y and Z. I think we all need to learn. We have great learning to do, great memories to reawaken, but I think story can also help that process Right, and so I guess going on one side or the other, that is to say, doing only fiction and never nonfiction, or nonfiction and never fiction, would also be a linearization, and so I like that, that we need both. I do think, though, to know love, I think you have to experience it. Like it's really hard to rationalize love or kindness or happiness to me, and so to some degree, it feels like our entrance into an idea maybe is more helpful as story, and then maybe, like the manifestation of that curiosity later is maybe more into like the nonfiction, tangible side, something that you can hold now that you have a language for it. I don't know what do you guys think? Is that interesting? I?
Speaker 3:mean I think that's a really nice way of putting it that there's. There's this quote I can't figure out where it's actually from. I heard it in a TV show once but it was like uh, knowledge is just a rumor until it's felt in the body, and I like that, and I like that. Nothing's really true until you feel it, until you experience it. And yeah, I just think that's very, very true. But again, I think that notion is very much pushed to the side in the modern world because it has nothing to do with something tangible that can be put in a spreadsheet and can be allocated and bullet pointed to then teach it to somebody else and maximize it.
Speaker 3:Uh, that's something that's a personal experience that can't really be controlled.
Speaker 3:It's uncontrollable information and knowledge and teachings and bullet points on how to raise a cow you can share, that you can copy and reproduce, but the firsthand experience of what it feels like. Like, for instance, we're watching two dogs right now and I can be told what to say and what their commands are, but I still don't understand the dogs and they don't understand me and we're not into a good rhythm yet, and I've been thinking about this the past few days while I'm walking them where. It's like they told me exactly what to do and some what they listen to and some what they don't. But there's not this intuitive level that I have with these animals yet, and I just think so much of that bleeds out into the rest of life where it's all just life, gets reduced down to copy and paste and until it's a firsthand felt experience, it's. It's not real, but that I'm sure that makes a lot of people gag, I'm sure that makes most people gag, that notion. But my whole life has just informed me that that's, that's just true.
Speaker 2:Well, and also, you know, people don't accept anything until they're ready to accept it, and so there's this sort of layer to it too, where, you know, I think that it is always this sort of like constant conversation that we're sort of going in and out of the the whole and then going back into the particular and going. It's like expansion and contraction is always kind of happening and we're always sort of building upon that. But you know, I just think it's. It's. I've just had so many experiences in my life where it's like, you know, you tell somebody something and six, and then they're like, they like dismiss you, and then six months later they're like oh yeah, I came up with this idea and it's like I told you that six months ago. Actually, that was like me who said that. But you know, but it's like this thing that I think people integrate. I don't know they had to have the somatic experience in order for it to be true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was just.
Speaker 2:What I was saying was just, I could have been talking about anything, I could have been speaking in Chinese and it wouldn't have mattered, and so I just think that there's something about that that's also really interesting here, and that fiction has a way of maybe getting that feeling into hyperdrive interesting here, where and that and that fiction has a way of kind of maybe, um, getting that, like that, that feeling into hyperdrive Cause, even if you don't even know how to describe it, it's like you know you watch a movie that's really beautiful and it really moved you and you feel that and you know like, okay, wow, I'm really feeling something.
Speaker 2:And then you can kind of go in and dissect it and analyze it and understand why, like, oh, that the reason why this movie moved me so much is because it reminds me of this moment that I had with my grandma just before she died, or something like that. And it's and it was this thing, you know. And then you can kind of go back and be like, okay, what does this sort of activate in me in a more analytical way? Like it's, you know, it allows you to use all parts of your brain rather than just one or the other, and I think all of it is important, yeah, and it allows us just to have more consciousness in general, because it's what I was saying before, where it's like you don't know anything until you're ready to know it. The more consciousness you have and the more self-awareness you have, the more easily you're able to know things sooner and actually really hear what the world is trying to communicate to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting. All art, I think, has a purpose.
Speaker 1:I think anybody who tells you that they wrote this story and it means nothing, I think they're fooling themselves, because it does mean something, even if it doesn't mean anything to you in the moment, when you were like I think it's true, all art has a purpose and it has a direction, and so, regardless if it takes the form of nonfiction or fiction, it has that vision, if you will Like.
Speaker 1:The muse has visited you, it's given you this idea, and then you manifest that idea on paper, whatever that might be. It might be canvas, it might be in the digital medium, like you, jake, or it could be on paper, like you, maren, in novel form. I think, though, the thing that's interesting to me is the amount of time it takes to truly manifest that muse into something that actually achieves that purpose, and I don't necessarily mean the time it takes to write, and I think this is a huge problem in the indie, in like self-publishing, especially, basically, in writing space, because the system and the framework that surrounds authors outside of the traditional you know, let's call it the traditional paradigm, traditional pathway they have no support to spend more time thinking and reading than writing.
Speaker 2:Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:And so and I see this a lot on Substack, I love Substack, I know you guys are on Substack, I love Substack. However, I think Substack is a medium that allows people with really good minds and hearts to put things out too quickly that have never been chewed on and all of a sudden it's just out right and it just it aged, like it percolated in many people's minds, you know, and it was tested and treated and chewed on and spat out. And you know there were changes recommended that I didn't, you know, actually allow to, like, infuse into the text. Like, no, those, those were there for a reason. You didn't like it and so I'll just pull the piece. It doesn't matter Other pieces, I have changed it in order for the piece not to be pulled.
Speaker 1:And so there's always decisions. Like I heard somebody recently say that all art is a what is it? A collaboration of micro decisions or a combination of micro decisions. And it's just like yes, like I know, jake, you're, you're nodding Cause I could see it from videos and like Marin, you've written so like you understand that as a writer, like if people could actually be in the artist's head when they look at a simple drawing or they watch a movie, complex or not, short or not or long, or they read a novel or something. Nonfiction or fiction doesn't matter. A book in that sense, like the amount of micro decisions that are being made is not even discussable, like sometimes you don't even know you're making these decisions, but you made it right.
Speaker 1:Anyways, my point is those micro decisions in order to be actually attending to the purpose that the muse gave to you, there must be time, there must be deep work, there must be silence, there must be maturation. Like you said, when you guys first started the beginning of this, when you first started death in the garden, it was going to be fast. And now, like I don't know how many years we are later three, four, five years, I have no idea since we last met, like when we first met. Sorry, but you know, it's evolved and matured and changed. I think art has to be in that way. How do you think we find that time? Because I think our modern era is the antithesis of this. Everything from both the farming matters to no fake food matters, movements, it's all surrounding this idea of climate chaos. All of this is we only have so much time. We have to move and we have to move now. We can look at the economy, right. We can look at politics.
Speaker 1:I know you wrote a recent piece on Substack. All about, you know, this political thing with Charlie Chapman. Is that his name, right? The funny chaplain. There you go, thank you. And like there's pressure there, like we just went through a very tumultuous time, it's unbelievable to me that the power has been exchanged peacefully. Like I'm very blessed by that to some degree, you know, but like we don't have a lot of time. But the artist, in order to do what they need to do, needs time. How do we? How?
Speaker 3:do we work through that? How do we reconcile that? Does it need reconciled? Yeah, I mean this is a good if I go first on this one. This is a good question and to give a real life example and maybe your audience I'm sure our audience is sick of us bringing up Daniel Quinn, but it's a good example for people who love that book.
Speaker 3:It took him 10 years Well, it took him his whole life really. He had this calling. He had a dream as a child and knew that that dream meant something and that's what he was going to do with his life. And so his whole life built up to the start of a 10 year process of him throwing away like 10 versions of the book. And thank God he threw those 10 books away, away and he was willing to be broke and poor and work odd jobs to do that and thank god he did that because that book has been lasted and has changed so many people's lives.
Speaker 3:But I think the important, like tangible thing to give away to people is that you know, I think creativity. I think sometimes the creative person thinks, well, they need their creative studio, they need their creative studio and they need hours and hours and flow state where they're going to sit down and craft something, and that's, I mean, that's the dream for all of us to have that space for ourselves, that time and space, and we want to work towards that. But if we're all stuck, if you're stuck in this situation where your time is being sucked in other ways, you still have to find ways to show up for the muse. There's a great book, the War of Art. I don't know if you've read it, but any creative should read the War of Art. It is the most practical way of having the conversation with the muse. And he says in the book it's like whether the muse is real or not, the experience of it is real. And the important thing is that the muse is only going to show up if you keep showing up. That transcendental state where the ideas are flowing and you're just gifted with something only happens if you keep showing up and you keep letting her know. I will be here at some point today, even for five minutes, and maybe you give me something, maybe you don't, but I'm going to keep doing that and I think I've had to really try to do this is find moments in my day. If I'm having a day where it's like it's just errands and chores, and then we had to pay bills and that takes up half the day and blah, blah, blah I still, whether I'm falling asleep or I'm waking up. You got to find a time to check in with the muse and say you got anything for me yet maybe you do write that down and they're the.
Speaker 3:The most sacred and free space is your own mind, and if you can find time with just your own mind, uh, turn off the podcasts. I know we're on a podcast right now, but I have to do it with myself. Turn off every once in a while. Turn off social media. Don't don't feel every moment of your. If you have a free moment that doesn't need to be full with somebody, with your boss's voice or music or a TV show or whatever even five, 10, 15 minutes to just be in silence with yourself. You'd be surprised if you can get enough of those in what happens, and I think it's so hard to do that nowadays. It's so hard to find those moments, and I find it very hard for myself because I want every moment of the day of my mind occupied with some sort of distraction, even if I'm convincing myself, I'm educating myself or something. You know what I mean. But you got to find those times to show up and I think those little moments can be very, very valuable.
Speaker 2:And and you know, just to kind of more tie that into like what you were asking about like how do we, how do we give ourselves the time to let it take time, like let the ideas percolate? Like not have to make everything happen so fast is like and I, you know I fallen into this of just like wanting to comment on everything because it feels like you have to. Like you feel like you have to in this sort of um, just the way that the internet works right now, if you want to stay relevant, you have to comment on everything. But there's something about like if you can find the moments where you're talking about those evergreen things, those things that are always going to be there, these challenging, permanent issues that are not going away, and those are often the more mythic ones. Like I, I'm I'm allowing myself the space to like grapple with those things and not need to be so reactive to everything, because that zaps so much of my creative energy for the things that actually, I think will lead to like more impact.
Speaker 2:And you know, in a way, that's the way that you court the muse.
Speaker 2:You know this courtship that you're developing with this creative side of yourself, that of the universe, whatever this sort of interaction is, uh, that relationship also requires like a little bit of foreplay, in a sense.
Speaker 2:You know like you can't. You can't just like you need to be, you need to show up and you need to be there, but it's like I've I've wasted a lot of my own sort of creative energy by feeling like I need to rush into it and just like take, take it all in all at once, when in reality it's like, if you just kind of are able to slow down and notice and start paying attention to the world around you, all of the little details of the world that you have been paying attention to, the things that have been haunting you, the things that have been bothering you, and you allow that to kind of enter into the conversation with the muse, then you can really start to develop something that's creative but also really impactful in a more substantial way, rather than, you know, just sort of the reliance on like I'm smart and I can write, and I can write about anything, I can have an opinion about everything, anything I can opine about anything. It's like, yeah, anyone can, but like what? About the other, deeper aspect of this? What?
Speaker 3:about the other, deeper aspect of this and on this giving yourself the time aspect of this, I think we have to realize that, especially artists, if you're an artist and you feel like you've got a calling, you are drawn to something very, very important and you are desperate to figure out a way of getting that out into the world. That's kind of sacred, that's a sacred thing that's happening to you. That's a special thing that's happening to you. That's a special thing that's happening to you if it's truly important to you and you think is important for the world. Duh, it's gonna take some time and just that's the road. And so many culture, you know, cultures in the world really revered the artist, the shaman, the person who's gonna freaking, dig deep and bring something out, and that's a sacred thing and ultimately the most transformative thing for the world. And if that's true, if you believe that's true about you and if you believe that's true about some works of art, you got to give yourself that sacred space that, like this, is a good part of my life.
Speaker 3:This might take a big chunk of my life. I sit every day. Sometimes I'll lay awake at night and I'll have these anxiety attacks like, oh, it's taking me so long to make death in the garden. My life is just flying by and I'm like, and I have to be like, yeah, of course it is. It's important to you who knows if it's going to be important to everybody else, but this is really important for you, like, if you don't do this, you're gonna die a sad, miserable old man. Yeah, and so give yourself whatever, however, however long it's to take. I mean, put the gas on, put everybody. Put the gas on on your projects, like all gas, no brakes.
Speaker 1:When I think about art and I think about writing, cause I've I've never produced a video or anything, so I can't speak to that. Jake, never will. I'm uh, I wouldn't recommend it. I can't do it. So, thank you, it's pure suffering. It's pure suffering. Um, there's, there's this great confusion.
Speaker 1:I think I think I have fusion, I think I have, and I think it pretty well lives in all of the modern ether of artists that a writer produces books like a writer doesn't write, and there's a huge difference there. And I realize that it's kind of short or small, subtle, if you will. But like there's this huge push to have a book or to have a video or something out, right, and we move very quick through the actual act of the art to get to the product. And then the product lives and you know it does whatever it does. But we move through that so quickly that we kind of miss what the road was for. Like you were saying, all you know gas, no brakes, but the road might be long. You can really make that road really short if you just fly I mean, let's get off your rubber tires and just start you know sonic jetting it, if that's a term and just as fast as you can. But I wonder, though, like cause. I always get a depression when I finish a book. It's like, wait, no, like I, I didn't want it to end, like I was happier writing the book than when the book was written. I'm happier in the art, rather, rather than when the art is being had elsewhere. You know, and I think in our culture, like we, we, we really want to solve climate change. We really want to resolve to ourself what the world will look like when capitalism and it's all of its structure starts to collapse, like actually collapse. I think we want to know what our book will do, what our artistic form will look like and be treated and perceived and felt in the world outside of us. But the second that we actually start to go outside of us like we're naked, we're afraid, we don't like it, it's not where we should be.
Speaker 1:You know, my wife and I, we've been doing Morgan you guys know her a lot of ancestral lineage type research and a couple of months ago we've been pretty deep. At this point it doesn't matter. We've learned a lot of things. And I looked at her. I said, morgan, I know that my great-great-grandmother had a three-inch scar on her cheek and she came US with $3 in the 1840s or 50s, during the Great Famine from Ireland, and I know nothing else about her other than everybody loved her, other than her children all seemed to worship her, and that's all I know. I don't know anything else about her life, right? And so when you do this, looking back ancestral research, what you learn is that the things that matter are the things that they did, the things that they were not really, the things that they produced. And I wonder, from an artistic perspective, how much of us are so focused, or how many of us are so focused on the end product and not the act that that product interacts with all day? Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and I think you know it kind of goes into the sort of, um, you know, the hero systems that we have the sort of Ernest Becker idea of, like you know this is. You know, perhaps it is that art is the way that we sort of deny our own mortality. And you know even people who are, like, very, very conscious of our own mortality. You know that I think it's undeniable, at least for me, that like I want to make a mark on the world, and you know that's a sort of egocentric thing to to admit, but I've always felt that way and but I but I do think that it's it has to be tempered with the recognition that there is so much to learn on the way and that the process, the process, is what is actually the most generative part, and and that there's so much, obviously, opportunity that can come from. I mean, obviously, like I'm writing a novel right now and I want it to be successful, I want people to read it, I want people to like it. You know, in a dream world it's becomes a movie series. You know all of these things Like, of course, of course I want all of these things Like, that's those, those things would be amazing and they would really satisfy a lot of the needs that the more material needs that I have, you know. But I wouldn't want to do it in a way where I didn't feel like I was really learning about myself every day and that I didn't feel like I was having to be deeply conscious of, like, how I'm moving through the world, how I'm, you know, I'm more aware of like my body and taking care of myself and what I put into my body. Then I've been in a really long time, like I I haven't had like a drop. I used to, you know, we used to drink, like once a week, you know, and I haven't had anything to. I haven't had like a glass of wine since, you know, october, and that's not that long, but it's still just like. You know it's, it's nice to be like okay, yeah, this isn't that, that doesn't fit into this.
Speaker 2:Marin, who is writing this book right now, like she needs to be really, really tapped in, she needs to go on walks without her phone, she needs to go do things, you know, and so it's I'm learning about myself and that's what's actually going to, I think, be the more powerful thing on the other side of it. It's not just having these sort of accolades that I hope that I get. I want to feel like I'm a better person on the other side and I think maybe that's what we kind of get lost in and why there's so many bad stories right now is that the incentive structure around stories in general is often just financial. Stories in general is often just financial and the desire to just make something that's popular, that's commercial, pump it out Like just again and again, again, pump out the same story again and again and again. You know we're all.
Speaker 2:All of the movies right now are remakes or are, um, yeah, they're basically just remakes. Or you know, gladiator, as an example, was basically just a remake. Um, there was, was basically just a remake. There was no new sort of ideas that were introduced and and and I think we have to really resist those incentives in order for this process to like be as generative as it, as it could be If we were just making videos. Like we could really pump out videos so fast if we didn't care about the quality and we didn't, you know, like it.
Speaker 1:I always joke that like and I'm sorry cause this is outrageous and it's not true universally for everyone, so know that but like I always look at Morgan, I'm like Morgan, if, if you and I just wanted to make money, like we're both quasi attractive individuals. Like only fans exists, like there's plenty of ways that we can eke our way by you know, and not feel the financial strain Like. That's not the conversation at hand. The conversation, I think, is how can you live and live well while still allowing that generative time that should have nothing to do with the end product, like when you visit the muse and the muse visits you. Nothing about a published book, and what I mean by that is a printed book, that is a product that somebody $18.99 from bookshoporg I don't care Whatever that end product would be, that published product, it has nothing to do with that. It might lead to that, but it can't necessarily only lead to that, and so you have to separate those two things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the generative process does have to be that acceptance, the way you're doing it isn't about the end thing. You want to have the end product, but what you want is that journey in between and the self-discovery and the self-development, and to truly commune with the muse, you have to start, like, organizing your life around that experience and you have to, like marin said, cut out the bullshit. Oh, does having a glass of wine once a week get in the way of that Gone? Does you know this job that I have get in the way of that? Well, I got to start working around that and I got to start moving my life around that.
Speaker 3:And the experience of trying to make art or something creative or generative shapes your life and therefore it shapes like reality in a sense. Know, you begin enacting that, that experience, and that in of itself changes you and your behaviors. Um, and that's what it requires. It's I wouldn't call it the sacrifice, but it's the uh. It's the uh, something you'd bring to the altar. Altar, you know, in front of a deity. You know something like I am going to bring you this glass of wine for you. You know the embodiment of the muse as my, my giving to you, and I think that is the most incredible experience as you see your life change because you're so disciplined on the, on the creative aspect, that it changes you and it changes your life around you. And that's what we miss along the way If we're just willing to cut past all of that to get something out, uh, quick and cheap.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, it really is like that's. You know, I I use the word courtship earlier deliberately, because it's like it is it is basically like adding another, like romantic partner, to your life or something like that. Like it's it requires that level of devotion and time and dedication and fitting your life into that person, Like if you love someone enough, you will transform your life to like make that relationship work. And I feel like it's like we're in a fun sort of scenario as a couple that it's like we are fitting in this sort of like this relationship that we have with the muse into our relationship and it's this devotional that we have to show up for every day to this sort of God, this sort of deity that matters to us, that is allowing us to be in the world the way that we want to.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, it's not something that you can just sort of do in a haphazard way. It's like you actually really you do have to sacrifice, just how in a relationship you have to. It's like you actually really you do have to sacrifice, just how in a relationship you have to sacrifice certain things or you have to. There's there's certain limitations that are put on your just on the way that you are, you're no longer this just like the singular being.
Speaker 2:When you're in a relationship with somebody else, or you're in the relationship with the muse, you recognize that you are like a vessel, like a channel for something that the, the, the, the story wants out, you know, and whether that's from you because you feel like you just have such great ideas, or if it literally feels like the universe thrusted upon you and you feel like you were chosen to tell a certain story, however, you want to sort of frame that. It's like it requires this level of attention and devotion. That I think is part of the process. Like you know, it's like the same, just sort of extending the metaphor. It's like my relationship with Jake. I've never learned more about myself or about anything else like then through that relationship. You know these, these relationships, they shape us, they help us understand who we are and how to be in the world, and they take time and they take energy and attention.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's worth it.
Speaker 1:In a minute I want to visit Jake this, this connection that I have between like the muse and just say mother earth. But before we do that, maren, maybe this is a question for you. Something I've been looking at recently is the acknowledgement sections on a lot of books. It's weird I always dismiss those. Um cause in my own writing work I've recently been confronted with the uh cost of editing, the financial cost of hiring editors and such, and I've been through the publishing process, the traditional publishing process, enough times to know that, um so like, when an author writes a book and they go through the traditional publishing process, there's a lot of people that play with that book previous to the person who's reading it gets to read it. I don't think a lot of readers actually understand that, like Stephen King is notorious for saying that his editor writes his books Like he writes it, but then the editor pretty much rewrites it and that's what you're reading. And so he says all my books are dedicated to my editor To some degree. He says these things pretty outrageously and I don't think a lot of readers actually understand that. And I don't necessarily think that's cruel or unfair or immoral, I just I think we need to acknowledge it. Not that we're doing that here, but I think generally, as people, we need to start acknowledging the fact that the art that we are interacting with is not actually from an artist. It's from many people, but that's really also the interesting point.
Speaker 1:So when I was looking at these acknowledgement sections, I've done this about 20 books New York Times bestselling, popular Booker Prize type winning books, all fiction, on average between 40 and 65 different individuals human beings are responsible for the production of every one of those books. So let's just use the average. Let's say 50, it's low average, so 50 people. So, for instance, one of the ones I was looking at was one of Brandon Sanderson's most recent books and it was like 70 something. And, like you know, I was thinking. I was looking at Morgan cause. I, I just wrote a book and I think two people were involved in the production of this book, including the author, and I was like man, what could I have done with 75 people, none of which I had to pay? And that's a really, really important consideration when you write popular stories for popular audiences.
Speaker 1:So we're not challenging the myths around us. We're not writing in a way that forces people to stand up straighter. We're not forcing people to interact with themselves and their emotions and their deeper conscious states in ways that they wouldn't do voluntarily, when you're truly actually presenting a piece of art into the world that I think has lasting, multi-generational, if not perpetual, value. You live over here, but if you want to do lesser things, you just write the book and you have 75 people do it for free. The publisher pays for the developmental editing, the proofreading, the copyediting, the alpha reading, the beta reading, the arc readers, the advanced reader, copy readers, and they're managing all the publicity and everything else and the author just continues to write.
Speaker 1:And so the modern system, which is really an ancient system, is still constructed to provide authors space to think and write, and I think that's wonderful. However, they are only interested today in authors who could sell a lot of books, so they're not interested in actually having you think and write. They're just interested in you thinking and writing enough to write something popular so that they can sell it and turn it into a profit. So it's just capitalism, it's not art. I realize that it looks like art, but it's capitalism or whatever you want to call it. So my question is is art surrounded by a great plethora of people, a large community, better art. Should we be focused on these things and creating these sort of mechanisms in a new way? Is that a inherent misstep or problem weak point in the modern system?
Speaker 2:Does that question make sense. I think the challenging thing is that we really live in a winner-take-all system, really live in like a winner take all system, and so you know it's. It's not everybody's going to be Brandon Sanderson, who gets to, you know, makes $14 million on Kickstarter and is able to, you know, self publish his books and make all this money. And you know, and not everybody's going to be like that, not everybody's going to be able to like, have that level of, you know, the sort of the 1% makes more than the 99% combined, kind of a thing. Right, I think it's hard, because I do think that this is a community-based process. It's like I'm figuring out right now who is going to beta read my book, who's going to be the editor, who's going to do all of these different things. I'm thinking about that, even though I just finishing now the first draft and and there there's something about it that I'm like I love that there's going to be people that are going to be telling me like, is that like really helping me through the process of writing this? Like I think that it's going to be a really beautiful thing and I just hope that I can reciprocate that in the future with them, with my critique partners and whatnot.
Speaker 2:I think that the problem is is, is the whole, is the fact that it's like, even though art is so democratized now, it still is so hard for people to actually have the space to be artists because of the fact that there's always going to be the one person who kind of takes, takes it all, and and that. And that doesn't necessarily mean that I, that you know, someone like Brandon Sanderson, is like taking away from, like maybe smaller scale artists, but it does change the, it does change the sort of environment and it makes it seem like this thing that is more inaccessible and and it is. You know, I'm I'm aware of the fact that I'm going to have to save up a lot of money just to get the cover designer and the editor and the copy editor, the provers and all these things, like I know that these are things I'm going to have to save up money for and that, as someone who is doesn't have a lot of money, that's going to be a much more difficult thing than somebody who's already established. So I don't know, I guess I just think that we live, be able to make the money to continue doing the art, and so I don't say that as like a discouraging thing, but I just, I do just wish that we lived in a more reciprocal culture where these things were just valued more.
Speaker 2:That you know someone, someone says that they're writing a book and it's like, it's like, oh my God, wow, like thank you for doing that. You know, like thank you, thank you for for taking the time to do that, and I think part of it too, as people like movies come out from Hollywood so quickly. Crappy romance movies are are just pumped out and they are just like literally lining the shelves, like everything is so easily accessible, and so most people just legitimately have no idea how hard these things actually are.
Speaker 3:Right, and and I do think to kind of refer back to what we're talking earlier to make it easier, since we're all so stuck in this difficult world to live in, like, well then, don't do it alone. You know, art is collaborative. Even if you look at the most isolated art forms, such as somebody who's just doing illustrations by themselves in their bedroom that's as close as you can get to, by yourself. But that person has friends and relationships that all informed it and they saw somebody in the street that made them think something. Even in that way it's very collaborative and I think it's impossible to. It makes it so much easier if you can collaborate with people and I think if you do start using this concept of the muse, you begin to understand that it's like, actually, this has nothing to do with you, this isn't your, it's all in the zeitgeist, it's all floating around in this weird creative atmosphere and sometimes you're the one chosen to just grab it. But once you've got a hold of it, you need a bunch of other people to help you get it down and figure out what it is. And yeah, you might be touted as the guy who grabbed it, but you need help, big ideas, you need help to get that out into the world. I mean, even with our work. There's no way I could do it alone. And it's interesting because in our credits we're going to start putting like, oh, edited by and camera work by, and writing by, and generally some of those categories fall with between the two of us. But we would both be lying if we didn't say, yeah, actually quite a bit of that writing was you, you know, or some of that. I actually came up with that shot and but you know it's. There's no way that it can't be collaborative and that's why I like mediums such as film, because it's you need hundreds and hundreds of people to make something like that happen, and I think that the end result becomes much more rich.
Speaker 3:If you can have as many people out there grabbing things from the zeitgeist for you, you might have this nice foundation of creativity. And I'm sure you have this in your own life, whether you're a friend or your wife. You're talking about the idea or something and they're like that reminds me of this and you're like that's talking about the idea or something and they're like that reminds me of this and you're like that's a fricking better idea right there. And sometimes, marin, I'll. I'll be talking about something nerdy like how a car engine works, and she's like, oh, that's really informative for my book Cause I don't you know. And so I think you have to accept that. And I think creative people and I suffer from this a lot, where I think I'm going to be at the one at the center of it all. I'm going to sit there and be like this was my creation, and that's just stifling and that's just ego centered. And the more you can get rid of that and just use up the resource of everybody else in your life, it's great.
Speaker 2:And I do think that film is like. I feel like we've learned a lot about that through film, because we really tried to just do it all by ourselves. Because we really try to just do it all by ourselves and I mean, to an extent we really are, but we're really like our main goal is to like get editors, get, you know, hire my brother as a prop designer, like all of these different things, like how can we sort of spread this out and have more creative input from other people in this and make it a bit more collaborative? And you know, I think there's something important about like having some sense of creative sovereignty and control over, like, what you're doing to a degree, but the but yeah, it's like it's just the boundaries are diffuse. You know, there are no boundaries, there's no edges, like everyone, like these influences that we have that like lead us to be creatives. Those are really really complicated. You can't pin them down where they come from, and so I'm just imagining, you know, like my own acknowledgments section of a book, it's like oh man, like I mean what I want to list every single book that helped inspire this, every single, every single director that helped inspire this story.
Speaker 2:You know, cause it's true, like I literally, you know, we all stand on the shoulders of like so many people and so many of the ideas that I've, I've come up with for my book. It's like some of them are flashes that that just came to me and I'm like, okay, yeah, that's mine. But then others, it's like I would never have thought of that if I hadn't read this book. I never would have thought of this if I hadn't, you know, watched this film or something like that, or had this conversation, and so, yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting. But it's like I just I think it is true communion with people, like there's something about that. We are such a creative animal, like that's one of the things about us, the storytelling creative creature. It's really interesting.
Speaker 1:And I don't know, jake, if this is I don't mean this negative to your side of the conversation at all, so correct me if it does feel that way. But I think with film you have like Hollywood, and there's a particular expectation there for the product, for the viewing experience or like, and then maybe there's multiple tiers. But then there's like the videos that you produce, which I really hope isn't Hollywood quality, like I hope I don't see, like you know, name a Hollywood actor in there.
Speaker 1:I hope I don't see them in your film. But like I judge the film entirely differently than I would gladiator to like the special effects in there, I hope you're not able to do. I hope that's just beyond your expertise. And so we have two different categories for that. But with other art, like books especially, we don't have that Like when you pick up a book it's just a book, right, and you have the traditionally published and then, let's say, you have him in the four.
Speaker 1:He wrote four different endings, a hundred pages each, totally, totally different endings to his last book, sent them to over a hundred people each and then picked his favorite and then rewrote it, did it again Like. The point is, you and I will never have access to this I can't even find five beta readers, let alone a hundred qualified beta readers, in four different endings for me just to sit there and just be like I don't know if it's going to work or not. And so that book, that ending I hope, is more put together to some degree from a final book form than any book that I could have ever put together. I don't know if it's as real, or I hope mine would be as real, but there's a quality difference there. Same thing goes with online reviews. There's a book festival here in Virginia and there's a lot of opportunity, but you can't go to it unless you're published traditionally, so all published authors are out. If you want to get somebody to read your book online like a book reviewer, there's only I think as of now and I could be wrong I think there's two online book review type sites that I can submit a book that I write for that I don't have to pay for. The rest of them I have to pay for, whereas if I was traditionally published like the list is in the 70s or 80s that I could just submit.
Speaker 1:There's huge hurdles in the way for some art to be independent, whereas with film it seems like like I'm sorry, I creeped on your one of your videos recently on YouTube and I saw somebody comment and they were like I can't believe. Like one of the commenters on your video was like I can't believe that I didn't have to pay some theater to watch this. This is stunning. It wasn't like because he could have written it. The opposite, because I didn't pay a theater. Your film is shit, but that's not at all what he said. But a lot of books. We don't have that grace like the community around deep thought, deep time, you know, true authorship courting, the muse in community needs to like, arise together. Does that make sense? Like we need readers, we need editors, we need writers, we need beta reader like you.
Speaker 3:just, you need all of that piece of that world to rise together in order to be able to produce something that's authentic yeah, well, and this might not be my, you know expertise on these guys, you guys are the writers, but you know and correct me if I'm wrong brian, brian sanders uh, brandon sanders. Oh my, I don't care what, it's, definitely not brian sanders um, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we've talked about him a lot, but he like uses Indiegogo and stuff like that right Kickstarter.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Kickstarter, which connotates that he has brought his community with him and he's built that community so that he has that foundation and I think we're trying to cultivate that more. If this is a collaborative process, you got to start from ground one and those handful of fans that you find, cultivate them and value them. And right now, marin's brother she mentioned before is this great model maker. He makes really interesting printed things and he paints them these monsters and these creatures and we're like that's cool.
Speaker 3:Imagine if we collaborated on something. And he's not a professional at this, this is just a hobby and it's like well, let's cultivate you and let's have a symbiosis and then you can cultivate other people and I think maybe as writers, it's cultivating those people to bring with you and then finding out which ones would be good beta readers. And again, that collaboration. But you have to build your own community and I think that's the power of being able to raise $14 million and have to. You have to build your own community and I think that's the power of being able to raise 14 million. As the and maybe I'm totally wrong about this guy, but I I would assume that he valued really finding his audience in that community and the value that offered to him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know, I still haven't read his books, but I mean, my brothers absolutely love them, and but yeah, I think Come on, maren, you haven't, you haven't dipped your toe into the Cosmere. No, I well cause the first book is like a thousand pages long. I was just like my brother handed it to me.
Speaker 1:Every book is over a thousand pages. It's, it's wild, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think I think that's really cool. But when I see, when I see something like that, I'm like, oh man, I am literally in the middle of like 40 nonfiction books right now. Like, I cannot even imagine being able to have the time to read this. Um, I'd like to, though, like, because obviously I want to be a better writer and so I need to read more in order to do that. But, but, yeah, I, I.
Speaker 2:I think that it's true that we just, like, these things need to be cultivated at once, but also, I think that there's a lot of shifts in culture that are that are actually happening. I was about to say need to happen, but I think that they are happening. I think that, um, there's a lot more emphasis. I think I think it's actually because of the dearth of, like, good stories and all of the bad movies that we've been sort of faced with the past several years. And you know, then then you have like one movie that really stands out and you're like the past several years, and you know, then, then you have like one movie that really stands out and you're like, oh my God, like I believe in cinema again, Like you know, but it's, I think that enough has happened at this point, where it's like there is this sort of Renaissance that's happening and I think, in a weird way too, it's like a similar thing that's maybe happening because of like things like book talk, which I actually don't even use TikTok at all, but it's like I I I don't even use TikTok at all, but it's like I I I've seen YouTube videos about book talk and like how it's mostly run by, like romance novels and things like that are kind of the main thing that shows up on it and it's like kind of this like hyper consumptive thing, and so it's not the thing that we're trying to cultivate here. But there's something about like, when something goes into one extreme, it the the pendulum swings back and you kind of want to catch it in the middle and be like okay, can we find like a synergy here? Where or can we find a moment of catharsis where we take this sort of energy and this interest in reading that is being revitalized by TikTok, but we allow ourselves as creatives to actually really write books that mean a lot to us and we don't we're not worried about showing up on tick, on book talk, but maybe there's enough people that have just like all of a sudden gotten really into reading, that they're like these books fucking suck and they want to find good books. And then they stumble upon our books. It's the same thing with, like, bad movies.
Speaker 2:I see so much commentary online about people just want good stories, like really desperately. That's what people really want they want they want less CGI, they want more practical effects, they want to feel like there, there's like a heart to the things that they're watching. Um, and you know it goes, and I think also AI is going to do a good job of sort of sending people towards people like us, because it's going to be so artificial and sanitized and boring and dull and people are just going to get so sick of it so fast, and so I think these things have a way of sort of self-correcting and I think it's just more like as creatives, we just need to be there with the thing, creating it, even with no recognition, but waiting for the time when maybe those people are ready to be experiencing something that's more real and has more heart.
Speaker 1:Something that I find is an interesting connection that's been brought up here is, jake, when you were saying how I forget or it might have been you, maren, I don't know you were talking about how there's the war of art, the book, and you made the comment that just showing up, like being there, knowing you know, or the muse, knowing that they can, like, trust you. Mary Oliver, she wrote a book on how to write poetry. She says the same thing the first act in writing poetry is to sit. The second act is to show up every day without pen and paper and just to sit there. And then the third, you know, act is to actually accidentally bring pen and paper and the poem was given to you. The point is showing up in the same clothes, at the same time, with the same drink, and the muse is going to find you because it can count you as trustworthy.
Speaker 1:And I think, maren, that's kind of what you just also said. Like the good artists, we just need to be there, because the human spirit of this life spirit is searching for something authentic. So, as the world decreases, it's the artists, the storytellers, I think, are going to be held accountable most, most importantly, for our times. We just need to be there, and that's the same idea as the muse, and I see the same thing in the ecological reality that surrounds us. I wonder if there is a connection between all these two receiving this inspiration and handling it to being the artist and being true to yourself, diving into that deep work and then producing an art form that is authentically the dream that you were given. Being there and hopefully it sells. You can make some money, that'd be pretty cool, but like just being there and then, ecologically, the same thing is true.
Speaker 1:So much of our want and desire to save the world, I think, is only a manifestation of more problems, and I don't necessarily want to like dive too deep into that. I know we both know a lot about that space and so if you want to put some comments in there, I'd love to follow it. That, what ecology needs, what the world needs, you know, here in these ruins, as some people write, or in the collapse, as some people write, or in the machine, as other people write, is just like to acknowledge that the tree is still there. The tree is still animate, the tree still knows what's going on.
Speaker 1:The tree has been there for 800 years and she's fine, like I know we don't feel fine, and I know she might be struggling because of droughts or erosion or desertification or deforestation or something like this, but she's still there, like hope, is still here, planted in the ground. And so it seems like the role of the artist is to I don't want to say mimic, but to like to be what life is here in, in, in ground, rooted. I don't know what. Don't know, what do you think?
Speaker 3:I mean, I really like the way you put that. I think you're right. It's about that that steady assurance that the path of the universe is gonna, is gonna, unfold itself and you are, in your own way and in your own craft, a vessel for that process. And you need to be calm and steady as you ride, ride that wave. And when it comes to ecology, I think there's that this thinking might be unpopular but it's like well, maybe the planet is going to take care of herself how she needs to take care of herself and she will be fine.
Speaker 3:That might not look great for our current civilizational you know experiment. She might. The planet's probably just going to burn the whole thing down. It's going to be like sick of us, but there is kind of like a, a calm that can over, like come over you. If you think about that, like actually there are things, there are forces way, way outside the control that humans will ever have and that will ultimately win the day, and if I can be okay with that and do my best to understand that and ride that wave, then you can sit somewhere sturdy and confident in your life and I think that's a much more, that's a bigger truth, anything to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of things about that.
Speaker 3:Don't leave me in silence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think, when it comes down to it, it's like, you know, jake and I, um, are pretty unqualified to be like talking about the things that we talk about with, with death in the garden and stuff like that. We're, we're, we're in this sort of like the way that we qualify people in the modern times. You know, um, we're, we're observers and we're like anthropologists of the world that we live in and we don't have, we're not accredited, but yet I still think that there's validity to what we're doing and obviously I wouldn't continue doing it if I didn't think that it was important. But there's something, so, so much of that this process actually has just really been about like, is there a way that we can talk about all of this and stay calm? You know, like, while everything is trying to be so noisy and so and because there's so what we've just witnessed is it's like the reaction to the fears of climate change are as bad as the disease of climate change itself. And so, you know, when you, when you recognize that and then you kind of take the time to see how, how, you know, how does that reflect in me? You know, what, what, what do I do if I'm feeling reactive. What then happens to me and how do I react and how do I kind of cause destruction in my own life Because I don't take the time to just try to find peace and calm and try to understand things. You know, it's just like just trying to trying to weave through all of the layers.
Speaker 2:And I think we're lucky in a sense and this is going to sound kind of weird, but we're lucky in a sense that we've, you know, been forced to not have the money to be able to move through all of this very quickly and produce all of this really quickly, because I think that it is, it is forced, the universe has really forced us to take our time with all of this, and I feel like for me, it's cultivated this level of patience and calmness that I don't think I would have learned in any other way, and a sense of like okay, if we can take the time to actually observe what's happening ecologically and sort of take the human out of the equation and look at it from different time scales not just me and what I wanted, my of the river, of the mountain, of the stars If I can kind of just like expand my realm of understanding, then you start to have different conversations and then it no longer becomes the case that maybe the most important way to solve climate change is to like maintain industrial civilization. You know you start having different conversations because you're thinking on this different sort of level, but I don't think that we would have been able to do that if we didn't find our own way of like being calm about it and not viewing the climate emergency as this thing that we need to be panicked about and it needs to be an emergency. And if you're not taking, if you're not being urgent and quick and just you know, full steam ahead, then you're not taking it seriously enough. Right, like I don't agree with that and I think that we've been lucky that we've just been around so many really wonderful thinkers who have really like tempered that in us.
Speaker 2:It's like that's that's part of the reason why the movie that we were we set out to make didn't end up happening is because we just recognize that it's like. Well, I mean, like, how how much good would we do with like making a kind of a shitty movie talking about how regenerative agriculture is going to save the world, when actually maybe we don't know that, maybe maybe there's actually there's parts of this that we don't understand, and I think you helped us see a lot of the that there's a way that you can turn something like regenerative agriculture into something that's like dangerously myopic too If it's, if it's coming from the exact same thinking that itself. You know it. You can't just take the, the programs and the practices without the real principles and the new way of thinking, without potentially having other negative externalities that you didn't anticipate Right. And so we've had a lot of like sort of it's. It's all very like, connected in all these different ways, but we've, so you go ahead.
Speaker 3:We'll just add onto that.
Speaker 3:I think if your creative pursuit is some form of truth, the process of finding that truth is going to keep changing you and making you reevaluate and to riz you up.
Speaker 3:A lot of that had to do our time spent with you because before we had met you, like Maren said, we were just making a film about how regenerative agriculture was great, and it's not that we didn't come to the opposite conclusion necessarily, but all of our experiences on farms and with a lot of amazing farmers who are doing great work and we agree with they all taught us so much and it in it. We kind of were on that path. And then you added another key. We're spending time with you on your farm and watching you look at problems and discuss the intricacies of actually what it's like to grow food and try to control and or help nature in certain ways, and you're and listening to you think that process made us really evaluate how we saw food and agriculture and land and said, okay, okay, okay, okay. I don't think we can continue going on what we thought was truth. I think there's another truth that I think we stopped to discover still, and that was very transformative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's allowed us to go into this like subterranean layer of all of this, whereas, like before, we were very much in this sort of solutioneering in our own way. And then it was like, yeah, we just had so many experiences that were like we need to like center ourselves and really, really think about this, like really, really tap into our intuition, really listen to the conversations, observe what people are saying around us, and you, you know, we got to be in this sort of unique position as people who weren't farmers and, you know, weren't these, we weren't climate activists, we weren't, you know, lawyers and things like that. Um, and we just got to kind of sit with it and listen and think and try to figure out how to be translators through that, because I think that's more more than anything. That's what, jake, that's what that's what death in the garden is, is we're, we're, we're translating what we've, what we've learned and what we see, and then we're trying to make it something that makes sense to other people.
Speaker 2:Um, and through that though you know it was, it was so powerful for us to recognize that it's like, okay, there's ways, the things that we're really critiquing, this worldview that we're really that at root is actually the thing that we want to critique. There's ways that we can express that in our own way, and that we don't, and we're just always trying to be as conscious of that as possible, and so that's why the project really went from, you know, being regenerative agriculture is going to save the world to let's have an open-ended conversation about what is this project of civilization, what is human nature? What is what is this thing? What is agriculture? Rather than regenerative agriculture is going to save the world.
Speaker 2:What did agriculture do? What did it do to us psychologically? What as a creature is agriculture? How does that inform who we think we are? And so it's become so much more philosophical. But I think that that's ultimately where, like, this project needed to go, and part of it was because we took the time to be like calm about it and be like we don't need, the world is not going to burn and flame, and so we don't need to make this movie in six months. We can take our time with it and we can actually figure out what the fuck is going on here. Try to.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, I think so much of the. About a year and a half ago, morgan and I ran from regenerative ag and we had never really looked back, and that's a bigger conversation and not one I want to have complete fullness here. Of course not now, but I think it all collapsed for us when I was in a field with some pretty big name people that most people, I think listening to this podcast, would know, and we were in the field and they were talking about the immediacy of the work to be done, like you're describing, many of the climate, people like this, or even like a lot of like the political side that we've lived with for the last election year, you know, like the immediacy of fixing the executive, no matter which camp, party or camp you come from. It's just like we got to fix the executive and whatever the immediacy of it. And I looked up at them and I asked I said, well, what if the nematodes don't want to show up? Like, do they have agency or not? And they were like no, no, no, nematodes want to eat fungi. Predatory nematodes want to swim around in the aqua solution that we call soil, organic matter. They want to eat fungi. And I say, but like what if they don't Like? I'm not saying that they don't intrinsically want to do it, what I'm. What I'm saying is these ones, the ones right under our, underneath our feet, the ones that we could name if we were intelligent enough to be able to go that deep do they have agency to not eat fungi? And? And? And most of the people said no. And to the people that said yes, then I asked what is this all for? Like, this is just a mathematical solution. To a people that said yes, then I asked what is this all for? Like, this is just a mathematical solution to a climate that's mathematical and we're just mathematical beings in some linear operating system, and the nematodes will absolutely eat the fungi. And so all I'm asking here is like does that also mathematically compute that, like, humans are going to necessarily, in a linear fashion, destroy the earth? Like, is that why we're here? Because if nematodes have no agency and nematodes are living like humans are living, then what if humans have no agency? And then why are you trying all of this? So either you believe that nematodes have agency and you should stop, or you believe that nematodes don't have agency. Thereby you don't have agency and now we should both stop. So we need to stop either way, just hold on.
Speaker 1:Then a dear friend of mine who's been on the podcast, taylor Keene. He's an Omaha storyteller and he always jokes that his people have been in that region in Oklahoma for 800 years and they still don't even know the language that they need. And so when they're asked ecological questions, they refer to the Pawnee, who've been there for about 3000 years and it's like 800 years. I feel like if regenerative agriculture was 800 years old, we might have solved something, but what he's saying is 800 years, we don't even know the questions to ask. Like we still don't know Oklahoma's name, right. And so when you look at this from an indigenous perspective or you look at this from the perspective that I just presented, with the story in the field the old white guys talking about nematodes and agency in both cases I think slowing down and starting to ask them deeper questions like what is humanity's role, you know, and as you slow down, people get so angry like the second we started slowing down.
Speaker 1:We were no longer a savory hub.
Speaker 1:You know that just that literally just left in a matter of a day in an email or like people immediately just spit you out.
Speaker 1:They're like how dare you not believe that soil health matters and not in the way that you and I would, you know, have that conversation with the video that you guys produce for us?
Speaker 1:But in the sense that I'm not entirely sure that soil health does matter, because if the nematode is responsible for eating the fungi and pooping out plant available calcium and the fungi got the original molecule, the glucose, the carbon molecule, from the tree that photosynthesized, but the only way the tree gets calcium, let's say, is if the nematode eats the fungi and poops out the plant available calcium.
Speaker 1:If the nematodes have agency, then like we need to start developing relationships at every aspect and then seeing what the actual plan here is right Like, just like books and authorship and artistry and everything that we've been discussing, I think to some degree the entirety of the Save the Land, regenerative agriculture, all of this movement has boiled down to individualism and rushed artistry and rushed artistry and I think the unpeeling of that begins with just slow, just go out there and start talking to nematode and see what happens. A good friend of mine, she always jokes that if you walk into a forest and you don't hear the trees talking, it's not because they're not talking, it's you're not listening. So start focusing on why you're not listening, and then you're going to hear the trees talk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a friend of ours wrote in a piece, or I think it was just something that he had sent to me. It was like a. He was just wanting my thoughts on it. Um, but it was like this. This he was.
Speaker 2:He was quoting a friend which had said who had said um, you know, this problem took 10,000 years, however long you want to say it, but this problem took 10,000 years. Why do we think we're going to solve it in 10? Right, you know why. Like what? What is the hubris in that, you know, and what? Where does then that put us? What if we can view that as an inflation, that we think that we're going to turn this all around, which I don't think we will, but if we can understand that and that you know the fact that that's a hubristic thing to think, the fact that that that's, you know, probably impossible, and that maybe the land will resist that too, us trying to fix it, what if we can fit? What if we try to fix it too fast? I mean, you really helped elucidate that for us too, is how, how much control there was still people were still trying to put into, like regenerative agriculture, and how. So much of the problem and that that that has led us to so much of our thinking around hubris and how part of the main problem that we face is that we're trying to exert so much control over the landscape, and so we have to be really, really considerate of what that looks like.
Speaker 2:But, um, and and if we, if we should exert any control at all, um, what? What is our role? Do we what? What is the level of impact that we have as a creature who needs technology to survive? You know there's there's all of these sorts of questions, but you know, the question of whether or not soil health matters is like what is it for? That's always the sort of the question that we're asking. Is it's like the soil health matter so that we can continue doing exactly what we're doing and living exactly as we're living, and being disconnected and not listening to the trees and not listening to each other and hating each other, and you know, burning cities down and anger, like all of these things is like. Is that what it's for? Those are important questions, yeah.
Speaker 1:Or like, even if you were to have it. I think another deeper question that I've been just infatuated with for the last year and a half, especially in the writing of my last book, is like I don't mean to sound overly simplistic, but like what is the? It Like if you were able to have soil health today, and not only one do? I think your scientific understanding of that is just misplaced. It's just wrong. Like it's evolving every day.
Speaker 1:So how dare you say today we have it and tomorrow it's just a new definition. So, number one scientifically it's false. But number two, how dare you like you didn't ask the nematodes when or not they wanted to eat more fungi? Like you're going to the fungi, but if you can't increase the nematodes, I mean we're not God, we can't control the forces of earth in ways that you can't even see the fungi and nematodes swing around without a microscope, and we're still controlling that. And so if that's healthy, then my God, like you mentioned that you know authorship and all these other things is like courtship and foreplay use both of these terms and it's like if we don't need foreplay to have soil health, then what is it?
Speaker 3:yeah, no, but what you guys are talking about is all for me. You know, about shallow versus deep thinking. You know it's. It's like that. You know science is a flashlight in the dark wherever you're going to point it. Yeah, you're probably going to find some truth there, but all around you is this stuff you can't see. That has to do with that point. You can see, and I think we're.
Speaker 3:We're looking at soil health and saying, like the soil is bad, it's leading to these all these things. Let's regenerate it. That'll lead to a bunch of other good things, which is true, like that's a truth, but it's also just a flashlight in the dark. You're just seeing one part of why that's a truth and why that is a thing we need to focus on. And why do we have bad soil health? And if you actually try to follow the chain of truth and cause and effect down that it's not just because we're telling, it's not just because we're putting chemicals yeah, those things are true, but what are the cause of the tractors? What are the cause of the chemicals? Well, maybe that's economic fact. You can follow this thing all the way down and you're going to get closer and closer to the real thing that we need to be focusing on.
Speaker 3:If we took all these little individual flashlights that we have spread across the world, that we're just trying to look for the cause of our problems, and we gathered those things closer and closer to the big part of this mess and looked at how close to that center of truth can we get to, that has to do with not just soil health, but the air, the water, the PFOs in our bodies, all these things. Those are all just symptoms of something much, much deeper and it's ultimately I think you know you're speaking. It's like I feel like we're wasting our time just looking at this one spot with the flashlight guys. There's like a bunch of other places to put this freaking flashlight and I think it's probably might just close your eyes and take a nap.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like that too yeah.
Speaker 2:It kind of all to me ties in, though, to like what we were talking about before, which is like how fiction is, the sort of place that we came to is like the importance of this thing, and I think that's just sort of. You know, what we realize is that, um, you know, that culture and the way that we think and the and the stories that shape how we think, is what leads us to viewing the soil in a particular way and wanting to control it and thinking that as something that that doesn't have agency and that we can control, and all of these things they come from a particular story, and whether they're mythological stories or they're stories that have been told by scientists or enlightened thinkers or whatever, they're told by fucking marvel movies, there's so many ways that these stories, I mean and obviously like this is just mother culture, like using the daniel quinn's terms is like a way that we can think about this, but it goes like almost even deeper than that into our understanding of reality itself, and I think that's just kind of like. Part of the reason why I want to do more fiction but I also want to do the nonfiction is because I just want to challenge the premise of like everything that we think is because I just want to challenge the premise of like everything that we think I want us to really really consider, and I think that's why we love talking to you and we like your mind, because I feel like you're doing that too and you're always asking people like the third perspective, roundabout kind of question that makes people uncomfortable because it's actually getting to what's really the essence of these things of like. Why do we view things in only one way or the other? There's many, many ways we can view things, and I think that that's I think, unfortunately, that's just one of the things that we're going to have to face in our lifetimes.
Speaker 2:We are tasked with figuring out how to communicate these complex ideas and really actually just not even communicating complex ideas, communicating the complexity of the world that we inhabit and how little way to communicate that, to be opening up the door for people to be asking more questions and not just like taking things at face value and accepting the premise that they've been given. And I think that's why fiction is such a wonderful avenue for that, because it opens up, you have more possibilities, you have a fictitious world that you can play with and ask those questions in ways that are less affronting, I think. But it's really hard. It's really hard to figure out how to communicate these things, because we're dealing with different worldviews, we're dealing with being in almost different universes, sometimes from other people, and that can be really, really frustrating, but also really interesting. Like why is that? You know? Again, it's always just why, why, why, why, why.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, and I think so much of good fiction, I think, fulfills all of those requisites. You know it pulls you in, it's entertaining to some degree, like your mind is story, so it satisfies that, that intrinsic need in the human heart and human mind, maybe one in the same. But then it also challenges you in ways that you never could have felt challenged or never maybe would have been like willing to challenge yourself. That's always been interesting to me, like, even if it's John john, not john stott, george orwell, that's who it is.
Speaker 1:George orwell has this wonderful essay, um, I think it's titled good bad books, and he wrote it after going to like some bookstore or something and he was marveling at how many, I think it was. He called him housewives. We can look past that for a minute, but he called him housewives. He goes, how many housewives walk in and buy good bad books, whereas he thought he was writing good good books. But nobody wants the good good books, everybody wants the good bad books, and so what a good bad book is is a book that is both accessible and challenging, whereas the books that he felt like he was writing at the time were just challenging. And he says this is a place for good, bad books, and I think today we just have bad, bad books. I don't think that's even debatable. I don't know where Brandon Sanderson falls, or anybody else, I have no idea, but I think we need to just like.
Speaker 1:There's progression that needs to happen in our own understanding to the intrinsic kinship between us and our natural world, I think, just as the emergence needs to happen in the own authorship community, where indie authors actually have a community that can support them but also opportunities that can help them, for instance, getting a book review without having to pay $600 for it, whereas everybody else just gets a free book review. We have to start to challenge these things. I think the same thing is true with leading the readership, in the sense that if they're reading bad, bad books and all we're doing is writing good, good books the ones that are just totally inaccessible to their modern minds, to some degree we're just placing hope in future generations that they can figure out and they'll come back and find us, which is both entertaining and interesting, and also the opposite. So to some degree there has to be a hand reached out, writing good, bad books that then become good, good, bad books and then become good, good, good, bad books, and maybe they start to become good books, anyways, but there's a progression there, an emergence, an evolution that needs to happen and I think that requires many people because I think the muse gives.
Speaker 1:Like, I think the video you guys created most recently about humanity and our evolution, and such is it's, it's, it's, it's heavy, it's pregnant, it's full, it's not for everyone, right, and then there's also some very much shorter films on youtube that speak similarly not as good, I don't think, and anyways, they're not even comparable to some other degree but like, maybe they're more accessible to others. Like we need a whole force of humanity to, in some sense, to save humanity, right, like we need all of us, and that's a wonderful thing, that's what the community is for, but we have to do it in a way that it doesn't push people away, which is, I think and I said I didn't want to get into too much of this and we only have so much time, I realized, and I still don't want to dive too deeply, but like that's what I also felt about regenerative ag it's so black and white, or it's so white and then black, you know, like, however you wanted to say it, but like it's so polar, it's so regenerative agriculture is good, conventional is bad, period, you know no debate. And in the same sense, you know you have like the best meats online for the planet by the planet and this is just the best thing that's ever happened. And it's just like you live in the 21st century. We've lived for like 3.7 million years as a species. We've diversified in many different ways and rebred with each other. Like this is the best, really, like it's lacking that hubris, as you said, or the humility, and I think that the good author to some degree is a very humble person because it's a very overwhelming task. Like the true artist is overwhelmingly shy and like mild as a character, although like inside it's all fire, you know, but like at the outside it's just like wow. You know, like I read a book and I guess there's a question here.
Speaker 1:I'll make a question that maybe we can kind of start wrapping it up. But I wonder about you, like Jake from a video perspective and Maren from a book perspective. Let's just linearize your lives in those two ways. I wonder about you guys, like when I read a book and it's written well, I get depressed. You know, might be a future I think is so healthy and you can do it so well in story. I don't know what you, what do you guys think I?
Speaker 3:totally get that and I do think it's, I do think it's very healthy to like. For me it's usually like, whoa, I couldn't do that, and then. And then it's like couldn couldn't do it now, but could I eventually do that? Well, that's, that's a reality, like anything's true in a sense so. But what would it take? And I think that's the important things like but then what would the sacrifice required be? What does the muse want for me to become that person who can pull that off? And then you're like damn, I got some changes to myself.
Speaker 3:I gotta make because you're like that thing I want to like achieve, which is like communing with truth as much, as much as possible. It's like it's going to require its penance and I either am willing to not do it or I am, and I better choose either one and do the one fully to be the happiest person. And so I do think that's like a skill that's required and it's like a very bold thing to do. And I always think about in those moments where it's like, yeah, but it requires like a lot of courage, like a bravery to like start making those sacrifices.
Speaker 3:And Terrence McKenna, one of my favorite philosophers ever, he said nature loves courage or no, nature rewards courage. So nature's watching and if you're courageous and what it's asking of you, it's like sweet, here's an open door. Now you got to walk through that door again. But if you can keep walking through these doors, I'm going to keep opening doors, and your capacity to walk through those doors builds and builds the more you do it. But I think the only way you can build yourself and push yourself and change yourself if you can like hold on to like that vision and accept it as a possible truth that you could live, and if you believe that it could be true, like truly believe that you'd be surprised by what happens to you, like in the internal alchemy that happens and the fire's hot. But it can, it can happen. I think that's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you, you have to. You have to have that uh sort of a balance between, uh, audacity and humility and find, find, you know, to have that uh sort of a balance between, uh, audacity and humility and find, find, you know, find your way like oscillating sort of between those things and, like you know, allowing yourself to watch something and be like holy shit. Well, cause, I mean cause, one of the things that Jake and I do want to do is like narrative films, and so, you know, we, we spend together most of our time like watching movies and thinking about them, thinking about what was good, what was bad, and you know, often, you know, especially when we're watching something that's really amazing, it's just like wow, okay, how do I integrate that? How do I turn myself into the type of person who could figure out how to make that happen? And but, but you know, you have to have the audacity to believe that you are the person who should do that thing too. You know, it's it's this fine line between audacity and humility that I think, like people have to.
Speaker 2:People have to be on, cause the only thing, the thing that I just don't want to be is I don't want to just be a consumer, you know, of art.
Speaker 2:I want to be part of it, I want to be like embedded in it and I want to be, you know, part of that process.
Speaker 2:And obviously not everybody is going to be, you know, having that same desire. But and and you know, sometimes you do just need there are people who are just the audience, um, but I think that we can challenge the audience and I think that we have a responsibility to you know, um, that that podcast that you did with Amanda Scott, I think, is where she has she said that you know, the um, the, the storytellers, are going to be the ones who are going to kind of pay the penance for the world that we live in, because, I mean, for the past like several hundred years, we've had a really bad story that has, like, led us here and and so, and we've continued to perpetuate that. And so I take that role really, really seriously, and I think that other people should too. And I think the best way we can encourage other people to take that role seriously is to just do it ourselves and, you know, even though it's hard and you're raking through the muck and it's, you know, it's like what George Orwell said like that.
Speaker 2:It's like writing a book is like some long bout of some terrible illness or something in my eye, right, you know, and and I think, uh, yeah, we, we can just like have the resilience to be on that tightrope all the time and and also face the vulnerability of all these things. I mean, when we releasing videos is is very, very vulnerable. I think that releasing a book is going to be very, very vulnerable experience, but it's really hard to share art with the world because you, you know you you're going to experience the opinions of, of the, of the public, but I think that's where it's like you have to find the peace in the process and you have to find the joy in the process and the recognition that that's like actually where the alchemy is happening. And so I think we're all on a good track.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, Well, what else? I think we can talk forever, and, uh, I find myself saying that on these podcasts, but I always it's, it's true we could. It's. We've been talking for quite a period of time and it doesn't feel such what, um, what else? Do we miss anything? Anything else in your hearts that you guys want to share or discuss?
Speaker 3:no, not really. I guess, other than you know times are crazy right now and the world. You know it's hard to not see the world, how crazy the world is, and hopefully something part of this conversation gives some people to stand on. Maybe that's just that things are going to play themselves out and we got to write it out and there's something much larger, a process that's much larger than us happening. You know, I'm sure people are just thinking about this a lot right now, like what the fuck do I do with my life? How am I supposed to be an artist? How am I supposed to be a creative? How am I supposed to try to these things? And, um, so I don't know. I hope part of this conversation gets people something to hold onto in this wild, wild times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I. I think that there's so much purpose that you can glean from following your creativity, and your creativity can look like so many different things. You know it doesn't have to be this. You know super high level of like I want to write things that change the world or whatever. Like I want you don't have to have that level of the problems that we face in this world is that the dominant narrative is extremely meaningless and alienating and people feel really atomized and they don't feel like there's any sort of real purpose for them in the world and the world just feels like this random collection of events and we feel like we don't have agency and autonomy.
Speaker 2:And I think that there's something liberating about Sort of to go back to us calling ourselves starving artists at the beginning. There's actually been something really liberating about just sort of accepting that that's where we're at right now, because in all actuality, it's like I'm doing everything that I always dreamed I was going to do as a child. It's not as luxurious or glamorous as I thought it was going to be, but it's like the fact that I get to fucking write a book. I've wanted to write a novel ever since I was a kid, I've wanted to make movies, and even though it's like we know that we're at like one stage on this journey, making these videos for death in the garden, that we have these other dreams that could go beyond it, and we're we're planning that future out for ourselves, like you can make your dreams happen. It just might look a lot different than you thought, and I and I think that you know, like, for, for anyone who's listening, like we, we don't have a house, like we're literally house sitting, we house sit full time because we don't, we don't have the money to live somewhere and I feel so free, yeah, and and and the fact that you know it's such a weird thing that I never thought that I would be doing or that I would. You know, I thought that maybe I'd feel like embarrassed about it, but I don't, because every day I get to do what I actually want to do and that's that's a profound privilege.
Speaker 2:And so I guess I would just say to anyone who's listening, who's like feeling low, is like there are ways that we can be creative to get get those stories out, cause they want to get out these things that we're talking about. They want to get out these, these things that we're talking about. They want to get out these ideas, these conversations. The universe is asking us. Please, god, have these conversations, tell these stories. The world needs you, and I think that that's true and that's always. What I just encourage people is to remember that we're here for a reason, we were born at this time for a reason, and it's not to panic and freak out and, you know, make a bunch of the same mistakes that our ancestors made in their pursuit of controlling everything. But it's about, like, how can I tap in? Where can I put my attention and where can I put my intentions to be, be in this, in this body, at this time, doing the thing that I'm here on earth to do? We all have a gift to share. Yeah, I really believe that.
Speaker 1:I shared this in a recent podcast, but I'll share this again. It is life-changing. A friend of mine is a Lakota pipe carrier and he wrote this book on Sitting Bull, tatanka Yotaki, and I mean the history of the Great Plains pretty problematic over the last 150 years. I mean for longer than that, but especially the last 150 years. Well, anyways, after about 20 years of fighting the reservation system, sitting below Tatanka American reservation system, he's more or less starved to death. I mean his whole people have starved to death. The journalist asks him. He said why, like you knew the reservation system was going to win. You already knew this. You knew this 20 years ago. You knew that you were going to starve to death. You knew you were going to lose and you kept fighting why? I want to know why.
Speaker 1:And Sidney Bull leans in and he says because I am human, because I'm human, that's why I stood up for what I felt like I was put on earth to do. What a stupid question. I wish I could have been there just to see what is. How marvelously true is that. What a massive blessing to be able to sit in that spot. I think that's wonderful, absolutely Well cool guys. I appreciate it. I'll put some things in the show notes about how people can get ahold of you. But if you would give us like a 30 second spiel, where can people find you? How can they support you?
Speaker 3:Right now. Please find us on YouTube. That's super helpful. We're publishing things on YouTube and and our first video is out. It's called what is the Human Animal. Please give that a like. Subscribe us on there. That's a huge way to support us right now and then from there go find our sub stack. It's say that one. What's the title of it?
Speaker 2:Deathinthegardensubstackcom Got it yeah.
Speaker 3:Find us essays, podcasts, now videos, so that's the best place.
Speaker 1:Yes, got it Well. Thank you guys, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, likewise it's been great, Thank you.