absurd wisdom
What lies beyond understanding? Beyond certainty? Listen in to conversations between a.m. bhatt and colleagues, confidants, and important thinkers as they tackle questions both timely and timeless, and chat about maintaining your humanity in an ever-evolving world.
You can find a.m. on Instagram and Substack at @absurdwisdom. We are produced and distributed by DAE Presents, the production arm of DAE (@dae.community on Instagram and online at mydae.org).
absurd wisdom
Art/Artifice/Artifact, Flirtation with Being, and "In Tune" vs. Attunement
You can find a.m. on Instagram and TikTok at @absurdwisdom. We are produced and distributed by DAE Presents, the production arm of DAE (@dae.community on Instagram and online at mydae.org).
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent. While we make every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of errors.
You can contact us at daepresents@mydae.org.
was a yoga retreat. You'd go and have classes all day, you know. They're were just cots. They were either shared, you know, two room cots or dormitories. No private rooms, but just, I mean, literally just a cot. They'd give you a towel. There was a sheet. And the new board came in and one of the, you know, first things after they settled in was. Let's have some rooms that have TVs, just to give people a little break from, and the people who work, they're like all just like fucking up and on. And the cafeteria was wholly vegetarian, locally sourced, everything. Let's have a little, just corner area, which just, just has like humanely raised chicken. And, you know, because some people really need animal. And you know, they won the battle. They wound up building another. Facility it's a huge place, but they built another building and this is how they compromised with the kind of legacy board and legacy employees. We'll keep everything in the other building. And so the other building in essence was, you'd have a private room, the beds were like more hotel. Do you have a TV? And we'll keep everything else, you know, and it's slippery slope. It all just became anyway. Anyway, I used to go there a lot and back in 2000 2001 KD was there doing one of his, you know, Kirtan sessions. And again, it's not like he wasn't this wasn't a living It was doesn't help, you know, he wasn't he wasn't getting rich off of this. It's just the way I love them well, how he talked about it and how he still talks about it, I think which is like I Chant every single day I have since 1967 when I encountered this, every single day I chant, sometimes there are just people around you. Like, that's just, that's like, oh, cool, it's amazing, you know? I sat with them at lunch, like it was just one of those, you know, and we talked and, you know. And these guys are, you know You know, from the previous conversation we were talking about, about just this kind of, kind of committed, you know, kind of practicing. This is just like, just every day, this is what I'm doing for my, you know development, liberation, contribution, like it's all wrapped up together. You know, this is it. This is, this is what I do. It's like, I chant.
Ben:I like the idea of I do this every day. Sometimes there's people around. Sometimes there's not. I feel like if you find that thing, you should pursue it. I mean, that's like the definition of of contentment in a lot of ways.
AM:Well, I think I've found that, but I don't think it's a thing. And I think it's the same for KD, like, chanting, but it's, it's, it's, the thing defined is being you. And then it's just like, you know, what am I doing all day? I'm literally all I'm doing all day is I'm amming like that's all I'm doing. Just sometimes it's in here. Sometimes it's, you know, at UNH. Sometimes it's, I mean like that's my job and that I think, I think that, I think that's the thing. Again, it's back to, you know, this fucking society where it's, it's abstracted into a role, into a. Occupation into a, you know, all that and nothing wrong with occupations, nothing wrong with roles, but that's not the thing to be, you know, it sounds like so stupid to say it out loud, but the thing to be is yourself, you know, and then you're just consistently that I don't, I actually don't think it's any more complex than that and I get how hard that is as simple as it is. I get how hard that is in this society, you know, to actually just be yourself consistently.
Ben:It's hard to be yourself without describing yourself. It's hard to describe yourself without marketing yourself. And then you end up with people who've developed a personal brand or concept of self that becomes Less, like, liberating or genuine and is itself a bit of a, a trap. They've worked themselves into a character. Yep. And that can be a really difficult thing, like, on the path to being, Who am I? What do I do? What does it mean to be authentic ly myself? You end up with, you know, the little, like, gene patch that says, Authentic Gap, you know, it's like, The authenticity becomes the brand. And it's it's tricky. I, I've actually been privileged in so much as I feel like a lot of the folks that I work with or have encountered have in various ways figured this out. I'm continually impressed by, by a lot of the, the people I've met just in the last couple of years at, at Driver specifically where I work, who they, they have a great deal of confidence. That what they have to bring to the table is valuable without defining it and by merely by the fact of being in a place and being in a lot of ways, receptive and reactive to the things around them. And, you know, I, I think I'm more often than not come to. Especially in a professional context, you bring some assumptions to the table. This person has a role, therefore they're going to react in the following way, therefore they have the following responsibilities. And I keep being surprised by how the people around me just act like human beings. And maybe I shouldn't be surprised. But I, I think I've been conditioned to be surprised when someone just is completely themselves and not the role, not a persona. And, and I really have actually been privileged to, to have like this wealth of that around me. But I, I wonder, I wonder when that skepticism is going to go away, that initial expectation of somebody's going to act the role and not the, not the person.
AM:I mean, I think in part, it's, it's, it's just a product of, of how we perceive. It's certainly a product of the society. For me, at least, it's, it's important, you know, when you say authenticity or, or, you know, when I say I'm just myself, or you say, you know, these folks are kind of themselves. One of the important things in there for me is I don't engage that as a noun. Like when I say I'm myself, I'm not, that's not a noun. And in fact, nouns, the, the nouning of myself is to be fundamentally avoided, right? It is, I, it is how I, I said, I'm AMing, it's verb. It's all process. And so what happens is by virtue of our, it's, it's sort of like, like, like right now this table is disintegrating. My, you know, ability to, to, to perceive the data that's, that's here allows me to only see this as a solid object that's immobile, right? As a thing. But of course, this is not a thing in the sense of it's, you know, completely inert, right? It's moving. It's slowly deteriorating. There's, you know, atoms flying off, or however the hell that works. I haven't officially reached the edge of my scientific knowledge this area. But you take my point, right? Some type of entropy. Yeah, some type of entropy. It's happening. It's, you know, it's in motion. But based on how I can perceive the hardware I got, it's a thing. And this is so with each other, I think. Right? And so when I look at someone, they are You know, a noun. You're here. You're a thing. And then when I see someone behind the counter at Starbucks, they are a very specific thing. Or if I see them sitting, you know, you know, you know, in a 6, 000 suit behind a big desk, they are a certain thing, right? And so we're, we're kind of, you know, I think wired biologically, perceptually, but that's certainly societally to engage with each other as things as nouns. But for me, that's not, you know, that's authenticity isn't a destination and it's, and it's, it's not even a thing. Right? It's, it's, it's process. It's, it's just ongoing process. Nature is authentic in that it is in process constantly and it's in process in a way that has zero sort of artifice to it.
Ben:I mean, I, I think the, the artifice comes into play. In order to allow us to move faster in a lot of ways. Like if we were to try to perceive everything that's going on around us all at once with no filter, we'd be fundamentally just immobilized. And I, and I mentioned psychedelics conversation. Well, there you go. You know, I keep, keep coming back, but and I had mentioned earlier in that context, the the composer Lamont young he was. I don't want to say famous, but well, well known for doing things very slowly and very methodically. I think for the purpose of taking in every detail if you know, if you read his obituary was in the New York times not too long ago, and it mentions used to take five hour long showers. And. At first that sounds outrageous, but if I wanted to experience everything that the shower was providing and really process that, maybe that's the length of a shower. Maybe we allied the experience of having a shower to say, a shower is this thing and I'm calling it a shower and I have a context of a shower and the purpose of it is to make myself clean and then I'm going to leave and move on because it's just a precursor to the rest of your day. No one, really, schedules a shower as the main event of the thing they're gonna do, except for Lamont Young, who says the first thing I'm going to do today is take a shower, and if it takes five hours, it takes five hours, and that's going to be the experience of my life today. I'm guessing he didn't shower every day, otherwise maybe there was a limit to the number of things he could have gotten accomplished, and he was prolific, but that's sort of the point.
AM:Not too much, the amount of moisture, you know, the lotion he would need afterwards with all the drying effect.
Ben:Yeah, you'd get pretty pruney, but but that's it. It's like, how do you know? We have to make these, we have to align things. We have to provide shortcuts and images that allow us to contextualize and understand things as a whole very quickly. To kind of get to the next thing that we want to slow down and absorb fully and recognize for being the thing that it is. And that's, that's like the sifting and filtering process that I think, you know, causes a lot of Stress and anxiety and people talk about anxiety as being the predominant theme of our times. And I wonder if that's just been every time is like our times more anxious than the time that came before. Maybe we're just kind of, you know, continuing along a well trodden path. But I feel like that comes from this idea of. I want to call it focus, but it's, it's something different than focus. It's, it's knowing, knowing when to accept the image of a thing versus the reality of a thing as you perceive it.
AM:Say that again, but in different words.
Ben:So like, if I, if I am. looking at this plate, I don't really observe everything about the plate. Right? Right. There's a plate sitting in front of me. The light's reflecting off of it in a certain way. I may or may not care about that, but I can, I can replace all of that right? With plate, and it just, that's it. That's all I need to know. It's a plate and it's the function of the plate. Sure. I don't need to stop and observe everything about it. Yeah. I've made a conscious decision that that doesn't provide value, and so that's not where I'm spending. My day, my time, my, my energy, but the, I think the, the engine that creates anxiety for people is knowing when to stop and to do that and wondering if they've gone past something that was worthy of, of that pit stop or, you know, do I need to back up to, was, was there just one thing? Do I keep going? Would there be another thing that's more worthy and it can become. become an engine that never stops. Interesting.
AM:Yeah. That, that, that, I mean, it, it, it's, I mean, my first reaction to, to the, to the plate, you know reference, like, it, it's a great way to get into a car accident, right? Yeah. The, the, the, you know, replace a, a plate with stop sign and just, you know, I, I. Or green light. Like I see a green light and I don't have to process it. Think about it. I just go. Yeah, but really you should be paying attention because just because green light means go doesn't mean somebody it's not running a red light going the other way. All right. And so the shortcuts are there, you know, by necessity to, to, to, you know, so that we don't just lose ourselves and just sitting and staring at a plate for 14 hours examining all it's, you know yeah, they're useful. The, the proposition though around, you know, do we, do we have. Too many things is interesting. I'm, I'm sort of, I'm just, I'm processing that to see if, if, if that resonates for me around a basis for anxiety. I mean, it certainly connects with, with one of my speculations, which is again an obvious speculation that there's just too much period. There's just too much. There's too many serial brands. There's too many streaming services. There's too many career options. There's too much technology. It's just too much. You know what I mean? We're not wired for all this shit. It's just too much. You know? And everybody's circuits are just overlaid with the seven different ways the world will end in my lifetime. Right? Like, kind of, you know, ideas. And so it's just too much. It's just everybody's circuits are fried. The things we pause on, if you take your plate, right, you know would it be beneficial to actually stop and examine the plate, right? Versus the things we pause on are, are are, are in here, right? They're on a screen. I'm holding, I'm holding my phone. They're on here. And In those instances, I, I kinda, I'm speculating on this, I haven't thought about this this way before, but, but, you know, is it the case if I, if I, if I use the, the frame, you know, I offered earlier, that, that I don't consider myself a noun in any way, I am all verb. I am fundamentally all verb, I get that I look like noun in, you know, to other people in various contexts, because that's how we perceive, right? But I'm clear that I'm just all verb. But is it the case when I'm, when I'm, you know, engaged with this thing and scrolling endlessly through Instagram or, or, you know, do Instagram YouTube, you know watching poker videos, I, I, I, I found over the weekend, like I just, I wasn't feeling great and I'm just on YouTube. I used to play poker and I like watching like high stakes poker, or at least I used to. And it just fed me a poker video. And I found that I just started scrolling through watching high stakes poker videos for, again, like 45 minutes without even realizing. Is it the case that I'm being nouned? That what's moving is it? And it's inviting me to just kind of, you know, be a thing that, that's, you know, no longer in process. Because that, that, that creates anxiety in me. Being nouned for too long. Creates a certain anxiety in me. I think
Ben:this is, this is the meat of the trajectory that I was sort of started us on in a way is the reaction to what you had said of being a verb, being your AMing. But to so many people you come across on a daily basis. You're a noun, because you have a fleeting transaction with them, or it doesn't make sense for them to acknowledge that you're a verb. You're a noun to them, and you're probably not a noun that's AM. Like, that actually would be a great noun in the big scheme of nouns. You're a person, you know, and there's gonna be a set of descriptors that go with it, and then that's gonna define kind of how they interact with you. And you can't, people can't be verbs. To each other all the time, or, you know, all the people I passed on the street, I walked from a coffee shop down here today, and I had some thoughts, there was a group of high schoolers walking, and I remember trying to kind of squeak by them, and they were taking their time and having fun, you know, instantly, it wasn't just even a discreet person, it was, I now see a group, you're now a noun, you're a group, and, you know, we, and, you know, it was, I now see a group, you're now a noun, you're a group, and, you know, we, We get these moments of friction where I'm, I'm verbing and to you, I'm a noun and you know, how do you, how do you allow yourself to have that process of amming at a different rates and with different things to allow yourself to pause on something for an extended period of time to idle and then to move forward. Rapidly, like there's, there's not a consistent speed to that process and throughout that trajectory to other people. They're not going to necessarily even acknowledge that that's what's happening. Yeah,
AM:it's just so in the way you're saying that last piece, like when I say I, I, I, you know, I experienced myself, it was a verb. I'm not pointing to doing, I'm not saying like I'm constantly doing things. I'm in action. That's not what I mean. I mean that, that, that. There is nothing fixed. Right? That again, like the table is constantly just in a state of molecules kind of floating around, or even a better example, because I'm not an inanimate object, would be, you know, a garden or a forest or, you know, an ocean, where there's no such thing as fixed. There is no river, right? This thing of like, it looks like a, it looks like the river looks like a thing, because it's bounded by these, you know. But. There's no such thing. The thing is constantly moving. Every, you know, the molecule of water you're seeing isn't there by the time your brain processes it. It's a mile down the, you know, down the way, right? The thing is, is, is, although that, I guess, is activity and so that, that, that undercuts the, the the experience I'm trying to convey. So let me stick with just that there isn't this kind of fixed sense of any part of my, you know, Self experience that the thing is just process But it's not process in the sense of activity doing things. It's not gross process.
Ben:Yes, so I work with someone who You know if you hear him describe what Motivates him, why he, why he wakes up in the morning, it's building, just loves building things and it's, it's both like literal and figurative. He loves building software. He loves building teams, building relationships with people and he builds literal buildings. It's actually in the process of building a building. And he was talking a little bit about when, well, when this is done, the process of building will be over and to the people who live in the building. He won't be someone who loves building, who's enamored with that process, he'll be their landlord, right? He transitions from this state of being that he loves into being a noun for however many people now kind of inhabit this thing. And that's just such a strange transition, I think, to go from Like the passion that, like this really fundamental thing that drives you to create, to construct, to like put your life in orbit around a process and then to suddenly be done with it and have a landing spot that is this very fixed relationship with a whole group of people. And I, I think that's, that's something that we all kind of. Find ourselves in a little bit, like you can't be in a state of being endlessly without actually kind of creating things along the way and creating sets of relationships that are fixed. And, you know, this happens to me as an engineer quite a bit too. The difference between conceptualizing something, building it, then completing it and providing service for it. Those are really, really different. Phases of an engagement and they require you to be different flavors of the same person, different facets of, of this thing that begins to reflect light differently as it, as it progresses. And so I, this is a very fragile concept that I'm trying to hold in my hands right now, but I, I'm really curious, kind of. What the manifestations are of that state, and whether it's ever really possible to directly communicate the verb part. Or if what I'm getting at is, it's actually the nouns is what's going out into the world, what people perceive. And, you know, you have to The level of, of deliberation that goes behind what those nouns become as you're just doing your things, right?
So,
AM:so here's a rub. Actually, before I say that, let me just say, you're describing your activities. So if, if, if I'm just sitting on a, you know, a piece of grass in the middle of nowhere for three hours, I'm still having, I'm still verbing, right? But, so now let me get back to, you know I, my experience is, that is the case, that I cannot engage with you as noun, unless I first engage with myself as noun. And that if I engage with myself as verb, I'm very likely to engage with you as verb. And I think very few people engage with themselves as a verb, they engage with themselves as a noun that's doing something. Hmm.
Ben:That's a good distinction.
Scott:It reminds me of a realization that I've had probably almost a decade ago. I was in, you know, in the process of ending one significant relationship and trying to figure out what was next for me in my life how to move on with, Who I thought I was at the time and something became evident that it was like, you know, we always talk about relationship as a relationship, a thing, like a static thing. It became like, well, how about just relating? Just continue relating. I kind of hear it as what you're saying is like being, you're not in relation to somebody else as two fixed objects kind of spinning around in the middle of nowhere, but you're relating to somebody and that's constantly changing. And then it's, it's exponentially changing because they're changing too. And how do you sort of find yourself? So I identified as, you know, A caretaker after that, you know, started becoming a caretaker for people that I loved. And it was also reframed for me. It's like, no, no, you're a caregiver. You're not taking anything. You're giving what you have the ability to give and you're relating to who they are in that moment. And it was like these two concepts kind of congealed in front of me. Like it was like a. It was like a ball of light or something. It was weird. And I was like, oh yeah, relating. Relating is a verb. It's, you know, I want to relate with this person.
AM:Hmm. Yeah. So, so, just, just, in my philosophy nouns can't be in a state of relationship. Fundamentally, nouns can't be in a state of relationship at all. They can only be in a state of transaction. And it looks like relationship most relationships there, but yeah, but they're actually, yeah, because they're, they're two, there's a husband and a wife and I'm in a relationship. Nope, if that's your sense, you're transacting and it could be very healthy transactions, really meaningful, healthy transfer, but it's transaction. In the way I can't really be in relationship with table as table. I can only transact with it and put things on it, take things off of it, et cetera. Right. But if I engage, if I acknowledge that this is fundamentally a verb, or let me, let me, I keep using table, you know, I got a plant in front of me, right? As a plant, as a noun, I can only transact with it. I can appreciate it. I can smell it. I can water it. I can do things, but if I acknowledge it as just process. Then part of what emerges in that is the understanding that without doing anything, the verb that is the plant and the verb that is me are currently exchanging gases. We're exchanging physical properties with each other is taking in my carbon monoxide. It is releasing oxygen that I'm taking in without any action. I'm not doing anything, but we are both verbs that are interlinked. And the whole thing is a verb
Ben:that's interlinked. To go to your example of, of sitting in the grass for three hours, that, that to me is so clearly, that's, that's your state of, of verbing, of being. But as soon as I see you, there's, there's a noun introduced. Yes. And that's, that's the thing that I, I haven't figured out in this, this equation is. How do you present yourself as someone who wants to be in a verbing relationship with me, who has now observed you as a noun? What do you do? So if I've observed you and I've made an inference. Hey, as a person sitting in the grass, they're relaxing, they look like they're having a moment to themselves. This is now a picture that I can hold in my hand of the noun that I've encountered. So, what if you get up and you do a backflip, right? You do something that breaks, that shatters that noun, does it shift to another noun? It's just, it's a more eccentric noun. Okay. We've drawn, we've taken that circle and we drew another circle around it. You know, I, I find myself in, and I think about this in terms of like professional interactions because I, I, I found myself in conversation with people where. It moves very fluidly to acknowledging each other as a verb, and you can kind of sense it when you've gone from your, your positions, your relative kind of definitions, either in that professional environment or societally, and suddenly you're coming together and you're having a real interaction as two things that are in motion together and relative to one another. What's the, what's the signal For that?
AM:You know what it looks like, Ben? It's flirtation. Now we hear that word automatically. The only place people use that, you know, flirtation is in a sexual context, but actually all of nature is flirtation. All right. It is this just kind of interaction that is, is that is simultaneously inviting. And pushing it is simultaneously playful and yet serious is, you know, everything is veiled and yet revealed, right? It's a way of engaging. And so the, the gross things of, you know, I do a backflip. Yeah. It's just, you're shifting from one category to another, one noun to another, right? It's not about behavior. It's not about you do something different. You put on a different hat and now you're, you know, you put on a different hat and now you're different now. Right? Yeah. But it's, it's the interaction. It's how you approach me in the grass, right? It's how I approach and it is flirtatious. The, the, the, the Sufis are great to read on this. The su, the Sufi poets is, it's all about flirtation with the universe. It's not sexual, but if you read even their, their, their conversation about God, right? It's like this, it, and they used literally the metaphor of of of, of courting. You're a lover, right? And they're talking about God. And, and so, that's what it looks like for me, is, is, you know, when people are engaged in verbing, it's a flirtatnon sexual. It's not about that, right? But it's a flirtation. It's a lightness, and yet a seriousness. It's a playfulness, and yet a consequentiality, right? It's, it's, it's not dealing with the transactions of the nouns. It's spinning. It's like when musicians are just kind of, you know You know, when they're playing a song and you know, when they're noodling and just kind of, I don't know, what are you doing? It's just, you know, you're just kind of noodling. You're not playing a song. You're just, you know, And, and when you can do that, what's that? I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm not a musician. You two are. So I'm saying something abstractly that you two have a direct relationship to, right? But you know, when you're with a musician who you can just kind of, it's just, you musically are flirting. Like, you know, that's, that's the kind of thing I'm pointing to. But, but, but do you, do you just see what I'm saying? Like, like as, as, as players or when you're with somebody that's like, I'm playing a song. There are people you can play songs with and the songs can be great. Yeah. But you're playing a song and then there are people who you just kind of like, you know, and the thing is spiritually sexy and it's engaging and there isn't anything fixed and it goes somewhere. That's what I'm pointing to.
Scott:I remember reading this book, kind of transformational book. When I was, I just kind of, you know, on the free card at the library and just kind of grabbed it and stuff. It was called Powers of Mind, and it was about all these different ways that Western cultures use, use yogic practices, but other things, sports and all these different modalities And one point I think it was in the, in the, towards the end of the book. The author talks about going to see Indian classical performance and everybody sits down, lights go down and stuff, and then they proceed to just noodle for 30 minutes. You know, at least 30 minutes. And he's looking at the people he's with, he's like, well, what's going on? You know, I don't understand what's happening right here. Oh, they're tuning. They take 30 minutes. Everybody just kind of Gets in tune with our instrument and then in tune with each other. Yeah, and then somebody just says, okay And then they start the raga and it goes and it's completely perfectly latched up and it's like well you need that 30 minutes But you know in Western view you do that behind the curtain before it opens not when the curtains open and people are there watching I guess it was important to kind of experience that That coming together to really get the crescendo of the first note of the raga.
Ben:I like have to stop you and make us dwell on the idea of tuning being not just tuning your instrument, but tuning to the other musicians in the room. Tuning to the space. Tuning to yourself. I mean, that's like, there couldn't be any better than that. That is exactly what it should be. And that's, I mean, I think there are musicians, you know, to your point where you can become attuned to one another very quickly and enter into that space, but allowing any amount of time to say, no, this is a prerequisite for us to do this thing we're about to do. And if we don't get there. Maybe we don't do it at all. Maybe this 30 minutes becomes it and we get up and walk away and say, not today, folks, you know, the instruments are in tune, but we are not. And like that, that's the greatest thing I've heard all week. And it's so, it's like, it's so phenomenally true. I mean, when I was I went through years where I was a serious orchestral musician. And then years where I was not, I was not doing any of it. And there's this, you know, rigidity to classical music performance that at various points kind of turned me off, but I began really missing the experience of playing with an orchestra because if you can do it, and this is like one in a million where you get 60 people completely attuned to one another, making music in the same way. With the same mindset at the same time, it's this, it's phenomenal. I mean, it feel, it could fill any space. You could fill a stadium. You know, I'd love to see classical music performances at like Foxborough stadium. Let's do it. Because it could really, it amplifies the energy like that. And it can happen with one other person and it can happen alone. But that, that idea of being attuned, I think this, it cuts straight. To the conversation that we're having is it's, if the way that's the way that two people in a state of verbing actually relate is being attuned.
AM:Yep. Yeah. And they're, and you're constantly right. Sound is great. It's waves. There's nothing there. It's all waves. And you're constantly to matching the waves up
Scott:In that sense. The table is vibration and waves too.
AM:And that's what I'm saying is like, it's, it's, it's all verb. Everything is verb interacting, you know? And, and so that, that, when I say I'm amming, that's what I mean. Like I'm a piece of music and I'm just listening to other pieces of music being played, right. Versus most folks think of themselves as sheet music. Yeah. Here's my music. Yeah. As opposed to acknowledging that they're actually playing music.
Ben:God, I want to, I want to institutionalize this in a way, but institutionalizing it is completely against the spirit of it at all. So I'm going to, I'm going to stifle that impulse. But I mean, just imagine if there were a period of, of tuning to the other people around you before you embarked on anything serious. So
AM:I, you know. So much of the design of this place is covert because nobody wants to hear my shit other than me like Kyley. Kyley is the only one got tolerance for it and actually loves it and he's one of the, you know, every single day. Do you know how we start with the students? We do something called huddle. It looks like a, just a, like a process. We ask What do you want us to know what are your barriers today? What are your successes? On one level, they're just questions. Right. But it's tuning. We're just getting everybody to kind of just kind of presence. This is the music I am today. And when it's hit sometimes, we talked about this in the, in the last group thing we did just, you know yesterday, I was saying, you know, we do the huddle and you could just be reading a script and just checking off the questions. If you did, you missed it, right? You have to actually be living that question in that moment. And all that's doing is inviting everybody to tune. And so there are practices you can put in place, but they require that the person, at least one person in the space, is verbing. So that the tuning can happen. And then you invite others in.
Scott:I feel like my experience with the huddle, you know, since I started attending them last year, you can always tell, you know. Like, who might be ready for some support or engagement by the lack of participation in the huddle. Like, the more participatory a lot of folks are, they realize, like, okay, they're going to be all right because they have a system where they feel comfortable in expressing themselves. Sometimes it's like, all right, pay a little bit more attention over here and let's get to the, you know, get to a good place so some other stuff can happen. Yeah, that's kind of, kind of, you could tell. You can tell when it's not happening. I had met an author a few years ago who was writing a book on non verbal communication. And she asked me, like, as a musician, you know, what is it like when you have that non verbal communication with the people that you're performing with? And I was like I don't really know. I only know when it's not there. I don't know when it's there, but I know definitely when it's not there. And she looked at me like, what? Like, how does that make sense? So I was like, yeah, it's the absence of it. That really is the, the, the flair that gets shot up in front of you. Yeah.
AM:It's actually really simple. You can know nothing about music. And you'll, you'll, you'll, I mean, unless you have like, you know, a tin ear or something, you'll know when an instrument's out of tune. You won't know how it's out of tune. But somebody strums a guitar, and you can know nothing about music, and you'll say, Oh, that doesn't sound good. That same kind of awareness can be brought to human beings. Right. And in the huddle, what Scott's pointing to is you can just see, Oh, she's out of tune. Let's, let's, let's, let's spend focus time here and a tune, not fix anything, not get them somewhere. Just get the instrument tuned. Just get them back into. Active verb, and then they're going to do whatever they're going to do
Scott:over the, over time, they become almost microtonal themselves, you know, they're able to do in between pitches between what you would think would be in tune and it's perfectly harmonious.
AM:Yep. Yep. That's it. That's it. And when people get comfortable engaging that way, Ben, and it's, it's been the secret of, of the work for 30 years and MAOL and here and client sites and you don't have to talk to them about any of this stuff. Because it's all heady philosophical bullshit, you know, when you, when you, you know, for most people, and rightfully so. But if you can create these environments to, again, to Scott's point, they just understand how to tune the instrument. Same thing like with a guitar. If you keep just bringing somebody back every time the thing's out of tune, just to kind of turn the key a little bit for them, over time, they don't know the theory. They don't know any of it. But they'll hear. Oh, yeah. Okay, right and they'll just learn how to tune the instrument that way so they'll learn to how to tune their own instrument without any of the language and then that that brings them if the instruments in tune the verbing gets more comfortable You know, I think that might be another phenomenon of why people retreat to nouns is their instruments so out of tune You know that the sheet music is more comfortable
Ben:Yeah, it tells you what note You're playing. Yeah. Even if you're not playing the note. That's right. Right. It has a time. It has a space. It has a slot. Yep. Yeah. I think it's rare. We get to an episode where there's something that qualifies as actionable advice, but this is touching on it in a way where you, you said is, you know, the way to be verbing as a group to be tuning is one person comes in and does it, this is a, it's a form of leadership by example that doesn't require having an agenda, a philosophy. A result is purely showing up, being present and not slipping back to the noun based approach because it feels like that's what the person, people around you are comfortable with or understand. Right. It involves showing up and being open to that process and allowing that there is a period of tuning. And I think like, this is it for me is that you don't, you, you don't instantly make that connection. And so if you show up and you say, Hey, here I am, I want to engage with you as you are, and the other person isn't ready, you don't immediately fall back to the kind of quick shortcut symbols that we use to get through life expediently. You accept that there's a period of tuning. And I love that you've baked it into the school and I, I feel like you know, I'm going to go relabel a couple of meetings, maybe tuning Monday morning tuning. But that's, that really is it. And I, it takes a a great confidence in that process to show up again and again in that mode. And, you know, I was thinking when you were talking about relationships being in relation versus relationship During COVID my wife and I missed going out to dinner, right? So we, we set up a period and Our day and we set up a little restaurant in our living room and we call it the restaurant and you know I would cook a nice meal and you know put out like Candles and placemats and everything and that that's where we would set aside the eye observation. Yeah, exactly Yeah, we can see you at 630. We'd set aside the notion of that's where we related as human beings actively Both in that state of being completely open to what the other person was bringing to that, whether it was good, bad or otherwise, it was just like, let's, let's have an honest open moment where we're not parents of children or employees or, you know, caretakers of the home that we're in, but just opening the floor in a way. And that was a really like facile way to say like. You don't even need to tune if you're in the restaurant, you know, you're, you're just kind of there. Maybe we're going to play out of tune for a little while. That's fine. You know, we'll just do that. But that was kind of a shortcut. That's a unique time and space that's created to kind of create those, those conditions, but maybe we can create more of those. I think that's what your huddles are in a way, you know,
AM:Yeah, and I, I, I mean, I would, I would go further Ben and say, I think we can create those things as we're walking around in casual transactions. I think, I think you can, you can, you can tune with the barista, you know,
Ben:where, where's the line between that and. The people who think they're tuning, but they really just kind of like say something corny and wink and wink and it's like, ah, I just related to you. How about that? Yeah. You know, like, see that, that's what gets to me is that there's a really, it's really tricky between really, really showing up for someone and, and doing the noun version of it.
AM:Yeah. There's a fine line between. Brilliant. And stupid. What's the line from, from final time? It's something like that. Yeah, no, absolutely. You can, you can go to workshops on how to do this shit, right? Networking and, and, and influence and all this and
Ben:hard pass.
AM:Yeah, right. But, but that's what's going on right there. They're, they're, they're sort of quote unquote teaching you this stuff, but it's really just, hard transactions with a velvet glove, like the feel. Yeah, absolutely. It's artificial. It's go back to the music thing. Like, it's like, you know, you know what I mean? Like, don't you know, when the music's out of tune, people just know, even if they don't know, they know, we just pay attention to your body, you know.
Scott:Yeah. I've had a few of those gigs, yeah. Yeah.
AM:Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's just like, like, you know, when you're, when you're out of tune in your body, even if you're not listening. And then you also know when you're just playing canned music, don't you? Well, it's like, yeah, we hit all the notes. Everybody's quote unquote, everybody's technically in tune. The instruments are technically in tune. We hit all the notes, all the songs got played. And absolutely nothing interesting happened. We just transacted really, really effectively. It's fine.
Scott:Yeah. Sometimes that's what the situation.
AM:That's what the gig is. Yeah.
Scott:That's what Taylor Swift does.
AM:Yup. That's the gig. Hey, listen, Taylor Swift is a world class transaction. Like it is the hot, I'm telling you, I've seen her live three times. It is hot. You know, you, you miss, I don't know what it's going to be. You got a seven month old. So, you know, 12 years from now, who knows what the thing is going to be.
Ben:I'm going to see her under like a Rolling Stones era retirement tour.
AM:You won't have to go see Taylor. It'll be like whatever version of this is, you know, in 12 years. But yeah, it's an incredibly rigorous transaction. Everything is in technical tune, but there's no attunement, you know? It's, it's, you know, I know I'm biased, but it's, it's one of the things about the dead that was fabulous. You know, sometimes it was out of technical tune
Ben:most of the time.
AM:Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and yet. when it worked, it was like the entire fucking cosmos was there just dancing in the thing. Because it was all in attunement.
Scott:Yeah, it was like a conduit.
AM:Yeah. That, that, that's what people don't get, you know? And, but you can get this in a whole bunch of places, you know? It's what religious experience is about. I think it's certainly what Shamonic experience is about. It's, it's, it's a, it's one portal into the attunement of the entire thing. And it all just kind of makes sense, that makes sense like logically, it all just, it's harmonic. The whole thing just becomes like, you know, just harmonically balanced. And so we know these things, you know, it doesn't take a superhuman or even an enlightened level of awareness to get. When it's, you know, technically in tune, but not attuned, and when it is attuned, you know, with the barista or with our teammates at work or with our spouse.
Ben:I've been watching a lot of documentary films lately, and there were sort of two that I've seen recently. That felt equally attuned to their environments and exactly this way with radically different approaches to it. And that, to me, it really emphasizes sort of the, like, there's no right answer to the approach. There's only a right answer to the thing done well, and you know, I don't, you guys are both movie nerds, so maybe you've seen these, but it was the store, which is a Frederick Wiseman documentary. It's a movie about Christmastime at a high end department store in Dallas, Texas in the early 80s. And there's no interviews, there's no spoken word monologue, it's just like cinema verite style filmed people in the store buying goods, meetings behind closed doors. The other is the documentary Sherman's March, which is supposedly A filmmaker set out to make a documentary about Sherman's march through the South and ended up making a movie that is deeply personal about his relationships with these women he met when he went back home while his parents were trying to set him up with, you know, a nice Southern girl to settle down with. And that's him setting up the camera late at night with a glass of bourbon, talking directly into the camera and kind of contemplating his future and his relationships. They couldn't be. More dramatically opposed in terms of the style of documentary filmmaking and somehow the confessional one doesn't come off as corny and the one that is just showing people shopping is Completely engaging not boring at all incredibly human and rich and they both they both get it exactly the same thing completely different approaches and That's sort of it. Like there's no there's no right way to do this but both of these filmmakers are sort of Participating in exactly the way that we've described they're not worried about the artifice or like the artifact that comes out. It's very much engaged with the process.
AM:And, you know, we can't, we can't have a conversation without me bashing the society at least three times. And so you should take that last part of what you said. Our whole emphasis is on the artifice.
Ben:You'd love this store, by the way,
AM:people shopping, I don't know, but I'll let you swing.
Ben:Trust me. Yeah. You know, it's one of those love to hate things. Okay.
AM:But this is the whole emphasis of society's artifact. It's output. It's, it's, you know, what resulted from, right? Even, even marriages, what resulted from, right? Whether it's, it's, it's, it's the kids or the collective success or the like, even there, that's like just what resulted from. Transaction. And so the emphasis on the society, you know, among so many other ills is it invites us out of any awareness of attunement. It only invites us into sheet music that gets to the crescendo and move on to the next song.
Ben:Boy, you know, I think when we started having these conversations. You framed it a little bit as occasionally we're going to drift out. We're not going to stay on task. We're going to, there's going to be things that don't land, that don't feel right, that are fragile ideas, have confidence and have faith that they're going to come back around to something. I think this has been one of the most poignant examples of, there was really an idea that you, you teed up that. I, I couldn't quite, I couldn't quite hold and, and I needed to chase it for a few minutes and then suddenly it just, boom, like there it, there it, there it was, right? And the kind of clarity, you know, there's, there's something, there's something kind of meaningful in going through that process, even if that's reflective of where the conversation landed, which is, you know, allowing that to even happen.
AM:All this is, is this, this is Darkstar, right? This is, this is like, this is a Grateful Dead jam. It's like somebody throws out an idea, a musical idea, and if you can actually play, it gets somewhere. Sometimes it gets somewhere really interesting, sometimes it doesn't, but, but this is, yeah, this is, this is the thing we, we, we don't, it's not that we're not good at, we don't pay attention to in the world. You know, because there's no transactional certainty in this. We could have just hit a dead end, which would have been okay.
Ben:You mean I'm not getting paid?
AM:Yeah, that's right. But, but, but to set out with an agenda of, we're going to talk about noun and verb and we're going to get to clarity about like, we could have gotten there. It wouldn't have been interesting. It wouldn't have been useful, not for me at least, you know. It would have had transactional value, and if there's legitimate transactional value in it, cool. But that's, you know, that's not the juice.
Ben:The action is the juice.
