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
Thought Nuggets, Banana Bread Next Tuesday, People Aren’t People, and Stu-Stu.
Delve into a discussion navigating history from Catalina de Erauso's life to cutting-edge generative documentaries. Explore journaling and personal archiving, AI's impact on creativity, and the evolving nature of identity through philosophical musings. Engage in reflections on identity, human interactions, and the essence of authenticity in relationships. Explore contemporary art, sound art, personal experiences in art creation, digital legacies, identity, systems thinking, engagement, teaching approaches, and disrupting patterns for meaningful interactions.
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.
And the voices in today's conversation are Kylie Sam Asensio, And our producer, as always, is Scott Amore. all are colleagues of mine at DAE. Let's listen in.
Sam:The thing on my mind is that story that I shared with you, Scott, which was I've been recently reading about, like, prehistory of gender, and I recently found this really interesting story of it's like this, this individual who was going to be a nun, and she, like, ran off because she didn't want to be a nun, and she, like she started dressing, like, as a male, and, like, acting as a male in society, and, like, I think it was, like, 17th century Spain, but the really interesting thing about this story is there's so many close calls We're like she's standing outside as like a squire her dad comes by to complain about how she's like Oh my daughter ran away is the worst thing ever mean while she's standing in the room like looking left and right like I'm gonna go and like she ends up on the same boat as her brother going to war and the brother just happens to take a Liking to her and it's like oh, you know what? I'm gonna save you from war and then like it's just it's like a whole It is the most dramatic story I've ever read about history and pre gender That's the only thing that's been in my mind is how interesting that is It's like I don't think I could get away with that to this day. Just I Think my mom would cloth me a mile away. It's the only thing I got this week. I don't know if you got anything Kyley, usually you have interesting things. What, what period was that? I think it's Like what? I think it was like 16th, 17th century Spain? Let me see if I can pull it up. Yeah, it's called the Lieutenant Nun. That's the name of this. Wow. So, Catalina de Uraso fled Dominican Convent in Basquet, Spain, cut her hair and disguised herself as a young man. She started a new life on the road. In this rebirth, she was no longer Catalina, but Antonio, or Alonso, or on another occasion, Francisco. She was no longer a nun, but rather a traveling soldier, merchant, musketeer, gambler, murderer, conquistador. She spent her years traveling throughout the Spanish American empire, going so far as the Chilean frontier, where conquest still raged against the Achacurian, I think, Indians. So, yeah, it looks like 1626. Yeah. It's really interesting. Cause the whole story kind of explains like how, even though they were masquerading as a male, they're kind of presenting this, like the idea of like, you know, the colonizer attitude, like that a lot of male individuals had at that time, which was really interesting exploration of like gender and power differentials. It's a really cool story. Check it out. Lieutenant Nun. I thought that was just so cool.
Scott:So I went to, New York last night to see the premiere of the Brian Eno documentary. If you heard anything about this, it's a generative documentary. It's never the same twice. So I saw version 2. 9. It was coded and then there's a hardware box that it plays out of where all the scenes are loaded into this thing and it randomly pulls scenes and kind of arranges them with music and interstitials and stuff. And it was amazing. It was really good. It was pretty straight interviews and stuff, but the way it bounced around, there was no, it was all thematic, and then it would be like, all these, see all these code go across the screen, and it would pull up another scene, and then you would have this new section that played and stuff, so. It was pretty amazing. It was smoother. I thought it was going to be more glitchy, but. Obviously, there was, you know, glitchiness was part of the aesthetic, because it's all computer generated and then regular interviews and stuff, but,
a.m.:you're, you're, you're implying what you're leaving out the, the punchline. It's not a generative documentary, it's a generative AI documentary.
Scott:Well, it's not AI. It is. Well, I mean, the guy wrote code to pull the scenes randomly from a file list. It's not creating the scenes. The storyline is generated.
a.m.:The storyline is generated and I thought there's interactivity that generates it. No
Scott:There's a box, but they just hit generate and it kind of randomly writes a script and then pulls from that script. It shoots for about 80 minutes out of 168 hours of footage. Right. And so it's,
a.m.:yeah, so it's, it's, I don't know, I, I, I haven't dug into it enough, but from what I understood is that they, that they. That they built an AI for this thing, right? So they trained it on the kind of, you know, voice and aesthetic and all this, and then gave it a finite amount of content. In essence, what they did is gave it, instead of giving it a prompt, they're saying here's a collection of prompts. There's a macro prompt, which is make a movie, and then there's a collection of prompts. But then the AI is trained on
Scott:And it's a physical piece of hardware made by the company Teenage Engineering, a musical instrument company. And they also made that rabbit AI device that just came out recently that
a.m.:I'm tempted to get that thing.
Scott:Well, I talked to Mo cause he, he did some stuff in deep dive. It's basically like an Android code running inside. They found out and it's not, you know, it's not, it could have been an app. They just made it to get you away from the phone screen.
Sam:What is this rabbit thing?
Scott:It's a, it's a little, looks like a little game thing, but it's a AI you talk to.
a.m.:Does, is, is, does it not have a camera? I'm not sure. So it's not like, it's not the Humane AI, I thought it was a Humane AI competitor.
Scott:It's a little different, I think, and I'm not, I'm positive about all the little hardware iterations of these things that are coming out, but, yeah.
a.m.:I'm, I'm tempted to play with the Humane AI, but I just really, you know, lack of transparency on where the data is actually going. Yeah. It just kind of bugs me, but. I'm sort of tempted to play with walking around. That's it right there.
Kyley:It does have a camera. It does. Okay. It does. Sorry. Sorry. It has a 360 degree rotational eye. Yeah. So it looks at you almost when you're looking at,
Scott:depending on, I remember that now. Right.
a.m.:Which is the humane promise, right? It's sort of interacting with, which then that gets you out of app, right? Because you're not doing that with your phone. You can't clip your phone onto your, you know
Scott:yeah. And there's, you know, all the rumors coming about, about different companies coming up. Like the rumor is Apple's got a ring, what they're working on. We'll see if that kind of comes, you know, comes to fruition. They're probably more for fitness and health, I would imagine, not like interactivity.
Kyley:They had the first successful AI dogfight with a real plane.
Sam:Really?
Kyley:Yeah. The pilot in the back was sharing safety with the other plane that was fighting it It was like a practice dog fight, didn't have to touch a stick once. Very exciting. Yeah, it's
Sam:interesting.
Kyley:War.
a.m.:We're training it for war. And I think there's a tank. First AI tank is being developed. Oh my god.
Scott:Give the machines the power. How many of y'all keep a journal or diary? I'm holding mine up. And what, what kind of what kind of stuff goes into it? Is it distilled? Is it bread, milk, eggs? Bread, milk, eggs. I'm just wondering, because, you know, in watching the film I was talking about, like, it was piles of journals since, for fifty, you know, forty five years. Brian, you know, had kept sketches and notes and, you know, and his two year old daughter took it at one point and like decorated many pages with, you know, weird abstract like animals and stuff. And I was just thinking like, you know, I, I've always been the person who wish I could do that. I did that for a while, probably when I was in my twenties. And then for some reason I just kind of fell off and never really kept a journal, never really kept it. But. I found other ways to sort of document kind of what I was what I was going through, not necessarily in words. I feel like once I start putting it in words, it kind of loses something for me. I'm visual, I guess, but I can't draw either. So I'm just kind of like the images, photography, that kind of stuff is kind of captured, you know, experiences and brought back whole feelings and stuff. And, you know, pretty sure it's misremembered when I look at old photos and stuff. My when my memories distill it. But you know, is it like, Oh, I gotta write this down? Or is it at the end of the day? Or is it in the morning? Do you have a routine? Do you have a thing? I'm always interested in like how other people kind of chronicle their existence.
a.m.:I have in this thing that I carry everywhere with me, including to the gym, there are three notebook, three mini notebooks inside the notebook.
Sam:Oh, okay.
a.m.:And the first one. Is where I capture one of four things that are coded, right. Coded with an n, meaning it's a thought nugget and so
Sam:thought nugget.
a.m.:Yeah. And so like, like here's, here's one results at this. Results as well results at the sacrifice of your humanity versus as an expression of your humanity. Like, I know what that means. That's a little nugget. A ge it's a, it's a, you know, a condensed high, it's a high density set of words that from which that's like an essay, right? And so when I have these sort of, you know, condensed thoughts, like I, I don't want to capture all of it. I can't, but I capture the essence of it. I've gotten to a point where I can find a sentence that is the essence of the thing I'm seeing. I'll capture that and it goes into future writing or whatever. A D is dialogue. And so like I get like lines of dialogue that, you know, like, Oh, this is cool. And that gets tagged, and that goes into creative writing projects, you know, plays and whatnot that I'm working on. I, idea for a project. And so here's something cool that would be cool to do either in my personal life, in my creative life, or, you know, in, in one of my organizations, currently only one organization. The second notebook is just a scratch pad. And the third notebook is a journal. Um, And this is where like I'm doing the traditional journal shit and I don't you know, like capturing my experience, not ideas, not thoughts, not things I want to put out into the world. Like that nugget I gave you was a nugget for an essay I want to put out into the world. That third one is just me capturing my experience. It's not for anybody. It's not, you know, maybe what we used to call a diary. So long winded.
Sam:How many of those do you have? How many of? Like, those journals do you have? Like, have you ever filled out in your whole life? Oh, God.
a.m.:The Scratchpad one gets thrown away. The, the first one gets thrown away as well once they're transferred. So like that, that one, like the Thought Nuggets, I mean, they get transferred over into Notion.
Sam:Ah.
a.m.:And so I've got like a list of now ideas potentially for essays, right? And so that one eventually gets thrown away. The last one, the journal one I don't know. There's a, there's a, there's a box with it, like, you know, a big old stack of them. Yeah. But I'm not terribly discriminating about them. I just tell somebody about it. I'm not precious about them. I'm not like, whatever. They'll either disintegrate or after I'm dead, somebody will find them or, but I don't use them to go back. And what was I thinking when I was, you know, 10 years younger? Like, I don't care. For me, it's, it's, it's, it's a certain kind of shower that they take occasionally, right?
Kyley:Yeah. Similar structure. DAE, thinking and planning.
Sam:It's actually labeled the way these notebooks are actually labeled.
Kyley:The thinking and planning self, so this is where my ideas and plans and stuff goes. My dreaming and envisioning self, stuff I don't have actual plans around, the stuff that I want to do. And then process reflecting self, like just individual personal experience. Okay. And these are all kind of sketchy. Extra.
Sam:Huh.
a.m.:I've got that larger one that I have with me that I don't carry everywhere, but you see the other leather one that's larger, those are also inserts. And you know, those are the second one is longer form journal, like where I'm, you know, like really, this is like I'm just wandering around and I'm like sitting in a coffee shop and I'm just capturing, like, just. What it's like to be here right now. Potentially the other one is like I'm sitting down to write the end of the day or, you know, like I'm, I'm going to take like an hour and really capture what's going on right now. And then the front notebook is where sometimes I get in the mood to write like essays longhand. I'd prefer to, if I had the time and the lack of carpal tunnel, which I have a carpal tunnel, I would love to just do everything in, in that, in that manual notebook because I just so prefer writing by hand, but yeah, whatever.
Scott:In recent years, I've. Turned to dictation since it's gotten good enough to capture and I can just kind of walk around and talk and kind of do that kind of stuff. But then it's like, you know, distilling that down into something useful as, you know, as the editing work that is kind of like, I got to give it some time, anything that I want to reuse and, or, you know, distill it to something usable, but in another format tried using, you know, AI tools to kind of turn into something. But it seems it just kind of, you know, doesn't, doesn't capture the essence. It just looks for keywords and generates some blurb.
a.m.:So here, I just had a thought that's going to go in this notebook after I stopped talking. But like, I could see, I always thought like, geez, it's going to be like ridiculous, you know, and this first thought is an original to me. I don't know where it first, but like, like our grandparents, you know, like, Oh, here's. Three pictures of when I was a kid. And then here's one picture of me in high school, and we're gonna have like, here's 842 pictures of the food I ate this year. You know, it's just out there, right? And it's a joke, like, oh, it's all disposable. But, but the thought nugget that just occurred to me, now this is original is I could see an occupation 50 years from now that is personal archaeologist. It's like you want to understand your great grandparents. You can't go through 8 billion photos of them on Instagram. All that will be retained. But it may well be an AI application where it's like, cool, you're going to be an archaeologist uncovering, going through, sifting, and creating the meaning. Oh, here's what your great grandfather's or grandmother's or grandparents life was as pieced together by all of these artifacts they left. Like, I could absolutely see that 100 years from now being a profession or an app or a service.
Scott:I feel like it's Capable of doing it right now because of the metadata that's generated with photography, gives you location data, what's in it, that kind of thing, you could probably, like,
a.m.:But it's not a business model, that's the part that I want to capture. Yeah, here, I'm not spending it as a business, take it, you want it, take it.
Scott:It would be great to, like, you know, write my obituary at a time when something isn't in my photo library.
a.m.:I mean, it's an interesting thought because, you know, if you did just, you know, we're about 15 years into the internet era and just after, like I get on Facebook memories and I'll repost some of them because the stuff I post in like, oh, that's interesting. It'd be a really interesting thing right now to have some third party, you know, maybe an AI scour through all this and be exactly right. Use the, all the check ins and the metadata. And the phrasings and the nature of the quotes and, and then, oh, you quote Mary Oliver, you know, the highest out of everybody. Let the AI also is going to go research Mary Oliver and, and pull the aesthetic there and, and, and come back with like, I don't know. It's, it's, it's sort of what's the word? Not, it's not an ethnography. What's, what's the archaeological? I don't know. The evolution of you as, as represented in what you put out into the world. I think it'd be really interesting. Take my box of journals and then have it, you know, have those scandic and have those too. Though that gets into it for the, I would want to look at just the public facing stuff and say publicly who have I been in the last 15 years? That I may not even be aware of. I think
Scott:like I did go back and look at journals from when I was in my 20s and stuff and you know the Turmoil and angst was, you know, it seems less relevant now. It seems like I'm reading somebody else's story. You know, I was like, you dropped that in your twenties. Did you?
Sam:Yeah.
Scott:Well, I stopped writing it down. I just went right into it. So that was the that was the takeaway. I was like, Oh, who wrote this? You know, I was also like, I can't read my writing from, you know, that, that period of time anyway. So that's another reason why I'm not Hand to paper kind of inclined. Horrible handwriting, never really spent a lot of time getting good at that. But now it's more like, you know, my notes app is, you know, just filled with things that are categorized and stuff. So just being able to tag things and kind of sort them that way. But at the same time, you know, I never think about it. Now there's a new journal app on iPhones that kind of pops up every day like, oh, you know, You Journal entry, and it suggests a journal entry for you, like, you know, spent the day in New York City, like, whatever was happening that day, or, you know, had a great dinner, you know, like, it starts it for you, and I'm just like, no, this is creepy, get out of there, I don't want to necessarily have it done for me, I think the prompt is great for, folks who want to capture this kind of stuff, but it's, like you were saying, like, here's every meal I eat. You know, it's not important.
Sam:Yeah, it's interesting because I do like art journals, so like wherever I have my sketchbook I just draw. But it's really interesting because sometimes I'll take old ones and I'll rip them apart and I make like collages. And then that one gets ripped apart and gets made into a new thing or like I go back to an old drawing and I watercolor it. Or like, kind of similar to what you talked about, I put like, oh, I gotta buy milk, eggs, cheese, whatever, I write it, and then later on I'm like, oh, you know what, I'm gonna draw that, or I'll draw my breakfast that day while I was at work, and so it's funny, because like, as you go through the books, there are times I'm like, oh my god, I was dating this person, this time you can see this, and then you can see like an entire new year come in, and then it comes back to the old year, so it's really interesting to explore that in like a, a visual way, so it's really funny, because I was thinking of like, as I am sounds like, I have I have so many sketchbooks, and now since I've moved, they're all at my old house, and my mom's like, well you gotta do something with them, and some of them are huge, they're like my size, but they're like really big explorations of where I was at periods of time, and I'm like, well, shoot, what do I do? Do I just throw these away? But they feel so personal, because there's so much work put into them, like there are times I've come back and I've done entire like acrylic, like three hour long paintings into these, and it's like, A circle, just a circle, but it's really deep and meaningful and I know what it means and I'm like well I don't want to put this on someone else when I die and it's like oh shoot I would get all these sketchbooks, but it's funny because when I do show them to people and I go Yeah, I'm gonna be throwing out this section people always try to take them like people are like I want your sketchbooks I'm like, what is it about this thing? Like me living out this like breakup in this sketchbook that you want And it's really interesting because some people take it and I notice they put in their offices And I'm never sure how to feel about it because I'm like I know what that means You're making your own meaning out of this thing. And it's just, yeah, it's really interesting. So I always wonder about people who have like written journals, like what that's like as a person who is very visual and like sometimes I give away pieces of my journal for people. Like when I draw people, they're always like, can I have that? And in my head I'm like, no, but I know this is meaningful to you. So I'm going to give it to you anyways. And the joy that people have is really interesting.
Scott:I think it's interesting to make collages of your own work. After years of go by, it's kind of a. Concept. Think about it that way.
Sam:Yeah. I I was, I would take this like Brazilian clash or something and they were talking about like how to like, kind of like, cause you know, when artists, when they draw, they're like, they're like their work. It's always just like, oh, this isn't good enough. And so they, they kind of said like a really interesting way to re engage with your work is to make it into something new, to explore it in a new way. Because like, maybe you really liked the line, but the art itself wasn't good, but you want to keep that line. Like. Put it in something new and see what happens. And I think it was when my art teacher said that it's, it's really interesting to rip the paper rather than cut it with a scissor, because a scissor is clean. But like the way it's ripped is kind of a unique way that you can never get again. Even if you make a mistake, it is like a really lived moment that you're capturing in that art piece. So I've always just gone to like ripping the paper and sticking it together moshposhing. And it's always come in these like, Really beautiful ways and I had my husband do it one time and he had like a really cathartic experience with it So I do recommend like if anyone ever does art and you don't like it or you have some old art as a kid Like rip it up collage it and it's just a whole new wonderful experience. I highly recommend
Scott:redefining it.
Sam:Yeah, it's it's really nice
Scott:I do that with sounds Like I'll record 10-15 minute long Soundscape kind of things just randomly as a sort of, you know, way to shed my skin at the end of the day or on the weekend or something. But then I'm like, I got hours and hours of this stuff. Does anybody ever want to, I don't want to sit and listen to it. How can I expect anybody else to want to sit and listen to it? But I'm always kind of like going back to little pieces. So if I'm working on a film or something or even some of the stuff I've done here, I've grabbed sections of that as music bed to use on videos and stuff. So it's kind of like. I don't know what this is for, but it's like just a, a chunk of content that can be, you know, have an emotional tinge to it when it was made, carry that through to the, where, where it ends up, it becomes more of a supporting, you know, a foundation to some, some feeling.
a.m.:This is also where AI, you could play with, right? Because you can just feed, if you've got 10, 000 sound clips of a variety of things, just Feed that in and then give it prompts, right? Like I want something that's three minutes long, that has this tonality, that has, you know, and use my shit and make, you know, make a collage.
Scott:I've been playing around with one of the, you know, the AIs that Kay was using to make songs and stuff and it's just like horrible like pop or hip hop music and stuff, but the idea of using a prompt to create a whole song feels kind of like yucky to me, because I've spent decades, you know, sometimes working on specific projects, music projects, and just generating it in 30 seconds with a, you know, a sentence. It seems kind of like, wait, but at the same time I could see like, all right, so, you know, we talked about this a long time ago. Like, how do you, how do I misuse this creatively? You know, how do I maybe generate a pop song and then chop it up and kind of throw it into something so it's, you know, it's remixed every time that it plays? Kind of like the film that I was talking about.
a.m.:Well, I mean, listen, you're, you're I mean, you're not generating it in 30 seconds, right? You've generated it over 30 years. The final step is 30 seconds, if you're using your own clips. But then in terms of chopping up and reshopping, I didn't think of this initially. I can't, I'm drawing a blank on the name. What is are you familiar with the disintegration loops by William Basinski? Yeah. So for you guys, if you don't know, it's, it's, it's, I mean, I'll play a little piece of it maybe, but it's, it's, it's pieces, it's sound. So this is on like reels, I'm assuming.
Scott:Yeah, it's reel to reels. The tape is cut into a loop, so it continues to play on several reels.
a.m.:Until it burns. Yeah. And so slowly, you know, kind of acoustically, Yeah, sorry deteriorating each cycle
Scott:and it's a it's feeding back on itself. So it's rerecording itself onto the tape. So it's, it's like, you think about like, you know, frosting a cake until it's, you know, gone until the cake just gets smashed by the weight of the frosting, that kind of vibe. Cause tape is just a piece of plastic with metal glue to it and the glue starts to wear away and all that stuff. Yeah.
a.m.:It's a fascinating experiment and really like, I mean, if you've got the patience to sit through the entire cycle of it. It's a pretty interesting effect. It, it, it, it, yeah. So my point is, with your, you know, sound library, you can just, okay, 30 seconds to create a thing, but great, now I'm going to chop that up. And have it, and keep chopping it up until you get to a point where it's like so many abstractions removed and now what is the thing? And, and, yeah.
Sam:You know, that kind of reminds me of You know the banana with the tape on it? You know how people hate contemporary art? Yeah, it's like how people never really get the meaning behind contemporary art.
Scott:Yeah, it's There's quite a few of that those kind of ideas resurfacing in art. Sort of like it started in the 50s and 60s and then kind of fizzled and now with digital access to art. Things. It's like, how do we degrade digital, you know, digital artifacts the same way that we used to with a banana or whatever, you know?
a.m.:Yeah, I, you know, this is, this is one of the ways I might describe the difference between pop art or pop music and art music or art art is, you know, in pop music, the content is the focus and they're fairly simple contexts. He left me. Taylor Swift. The context are fairly simple context, right? But banana taped wall, the content isn't the point. The context might be really simple or dumb or right. It's the context as a rich and the context is not black and white. Content is black and white, right? Either the song is in tune or out of tune. The song, you know, the melody is catchy or it's not right. And so art, like, has this sort of contextual element to it that requires you to engage beyond just consuming it. And so if you consume, you know, banana tape to wall as content, yeah, it's a piece of shit. It's like, what is this? You get paid for this? I could do that. Yeah. But if you're willing to spend the time to engage with the, with the context and then become part of the context, I think there's a different thing that's happening there. But we, you know, through social media and a whole bunch of other forces we are we are unable to deal with engage with context more and more and solely focused on content. And then you get to, you know, binaries and all these things, right? Because content is linear and content is binary and etc., etc.
Scott:That was what they talked about in the Q& A for the, you know, film. Was when they premiered it. It was at the Venice Biennale, and it was because there's 168 hours of footage randomly assembled. They let it run for 168 hours, even when the galleries were closed. There's no humans in there, just ran for straight 168 hours and nobody saw it. And it just kind of happened. Nobody recorded it. It wasn't anything like that. They don't plan on recording any of these screenings to, you know, for later use. And he was like, I don't know how we screen, you know. This is not going to be able to be streamed. You know, I'm not really sure how it's going to be consumed by the wider audience. But at the same time, it's like, you know, why, you know, it brings me into this, like, Oh, that's, you know, that's a cool concept. Maybe it was a proof of concept to let it run and see if it crashed or, you know, like what, what was the idea behind letting it run that way. But it's kind of like the banana on the wall, you know, they closed the gallery at night, banana still ripening. It's eventually going to. Turned brown and turned to mush fall off the wall.
a.m.:Nobody noticed the stainless steel bowl with the sugar and flour and eggs in it. Waiting for that banana to fall off the wall. And so they missed the whole sort of broader purpose of that piece.
Scott:That's, that's the next one, right? Yeah. Banana bread.
a.m.:Slow banana bread. That's the, nobody even read the title of it. That's what it was called. The original title, I think, was Banana Bread Next Tuesday, and then they thought that was too long. I've got an idea. But you just asked why, like around that thing, right? Like this, this is, if there's, if I could break one thing in this society, it would be that everything has to have a clear why. That everything has to have an outcome. That everything has to have, like, a purpose. And if it doesn't, it's frivolous somehow. Like, if I could take a sledgehammer to one thing, it would be that. Like this has no purpose. Yeah, this is what I'm doing. You don't like it. Go find something else.
Scott:I think it's, you know, the idea of it being generative and based on Brian Eno, you know, he's been doing generative artworks and installations for years now. And it kind of, he said no to previous documentaries you know, made about him, but then once they came with this idea, he's like, okay, you know, this sounds great. And he's been documenting everything he did, since day one film and then video and tape and you know, all kinds of things. So all this stuff was ready to be kind of loaded into the machine and done. So I understand the why behind that. Like, how do you present this in a way that's exciting and new every time, as opposed to just like, you know, listening to the same song over and over again, or pop music, the context is different every time. So
a.m.:We haven't even selected a topic that's gonna be interesting in the editing. I think you should take this episode and and just chop it up into like 42 second segments. Just just little 42 second segments and then randomly piece them back together. And whatever happens, that's gonna be
Scott:This is the banana on the wall.
Sam:I was just going to say, I hope that it starts with banana bread next Tuesday. Like if it doesn't start like that, then it's not worth it.
a.m.:That's the song that popped into my head. Yeah, I don't remember. M. The artist was M. 1979. M. And the song is pop music.
Sam:Just that and then him saying banana bread overlaid on top of it. Pop music.
a.m.:Actually, you could probably sing that. You know, Should we do it? Banana bread next Tuesday. Pop, pop, doo wop.
Sam:This is a stupid story, but did you actually hear that the, like there's people who love Lost Media, and they were looking for like an old 80s, Song and they were like, oh look at this. So everyone's obsessed like, oh my god, people's parents jamming out to this song. And then they come to find out that the song's actually from an adult film and this person had been playing a prank on everybody the entire time to look for this song. So everyone finds it and they're like, wait, where is this from? No! And it's just like,
Scott:Is there lyrics that were adult in content?
Sam:No, it was like a Bad intentions or something like Alright It's like everyone's mom jamming out to this music not knowing it's gonna be lost in 10 years Just
Scott:Curiosity
Sam:So imagine just looking for like AM banana bread music and just lost in a podcast
Scott:There's something about generating something and then randomly re editing or, you know, however, physically moving parts of it around to play differently has always been interesting to me. And it would kind of disintegrate over time because it just wouldn't hold. So the same kind of idea as the Basinski pieces.
Sam:I kind of wonder what would happen if, like, you could, there was a way for, like, AI to just take over you as a person. Chop up certain parts of who you are, like core pieces, and then spit out a new person. Like, who would you be? That would be really interesting. Would you be a new person if certain parts of you were missing even like little things like that sandwich we ate last Tuesday, would that change who you are?
a.m.:It's a, it's a, I forget who it's from. It's a, it's a philosophical question, right? The Theseus's ship. I mean the general, yeah, the general thing is like, you know, the Theseus from Greek mythology, you know. If you, if you replaced every board. Oh, right, right. Of the ship with an exact replica and put them back in exactly the right order. Is it the same ship? Like, is the ship in the concept or is it in the pieces?
Scott:Yeah, it was the fundamental thought behind, you know, as your cells die and regenerate, you know, no cells really last your whole lifetime. So you're constantly, are you the same person? Are you the same body? Are you the same entity?
a.m.:Well, and then, so this is, you know, I mean, I've talked about this before to, to get now podcasty about it. Like I don't conceive of myself as a noun. I just fundamentally don't conceive it. And so like, there is no entity. This is process, right? I'm am ing as I say, right. Yeah. And so it's just, it's just, it's a cycle. It's a, it's a, it's a system. It's a system that's moving and just this is the pattern it moves in. And like those tape loops, as the patterns are moving, they are picking up new, but they're the same pattern, but they're picking up the sound, the sound that the AMing makes gets picked up by the process of AMing and alters, the And yet still keeps the pattern of amming. But each iteration of that has the effect of deteriorating the system until eventually it'll fall apart. Yeah.
Sam:How does that work? I'm just curious. How does that work in the context of like businesses? Like, since you have a lot of experience with businesses. Like is, do you feel like if, for example, you replace all of your employees, right? With like equal experienced employees, right? Including yourself. But the business model stayed the same. Is it the same business?
a.m.:For me, it's not. Okay. It's not. It's a different system. You know. Every time somebody leaves here and somebody new comes, it's a different system. Now the, the macro pattern is the same, right? It's like a river, right? Like at any given, any five second period, it's totally different water. Like you're standing and watching a river. In five seconds, like down to the atom, it's totally different water. But it's the same river. And so it's totally different and yet it's not, right? So the process that this place is, is kind of the same, the pattern. But it's totally different. The trick becomes, Are you clear about what the banks are that make it this particular river? And can you hold those immovable? Because if the banks break,
Sam:Yeah.
a.m.:Now, it's not about different water, now it's no longer a river.
Sam:Right.
a.m.:Now it's just water that's absorbed into the ground.
Sam:So what goes into the process of, like, sustaining those banks? Is that like, Process, paperwork, and all of that junk, or is it?
a.m.:Attention.
Sam:Attention.
a.m.:Yeah. What happens is the process and the the policies and all that, Too much of that actually turns the river into a canal. Okay. It's still flowing water, but now it's an artificial thing. And it can't react to its environment. And you get a traditional organization.
Sam:So I don't have a lot of questions since you're teaching grad students about these concepts, like how do you help them learn these concepts without directly telling them? Because in that sense, aren't you also creating those banks for them?
a.m.:Yeah. So, so it's, it's it depends on the class or there, there, there's one class with my anchor class, my, you know, P638, where my intention is, and I'll tell them this a third of the way through the semester, I said, hopefully, almost all of you, and ideally all of you, are really, really confused and frustrated at this point, because there's too much information. And if you are, and you want to settle into that, now we can actually have you do some productive work. It's a part of it is just disintermediation. I'm not like I'm providing rigorous and, you know, because I'm looking to help them break down not the banks of their own river, but the walls of the or their own canals that they've been habituated into sort of living in by virtue of the previous 16 years of schooling and, you know and defined actually the banks of their river.
Sam:Right.
a.m.:Right. And to build them up in such a way that has some porousness with it, with, with, with their environment, yeah. But then after that, you know, the other classes are it's, it's, it's all, it's like here. I mean, all the stuff is, it's, it's holographic, right? It's, it's projects, case studies, things to work on versus ideas. And then working on the thing that becomes an opportunity, like, oh, that didn't work. Okay, let's talk about this aspect of systems. Okay. Oh, this really worked. Okay, let's talk about this aspect of kind of language and reality, right? And so it's, it's, you know, I, I'm a do and then learn person, not a learn and then do person. Learn and do is only useful to me on things that have a high potential for harm. And so I don't want to do, like, Nobody should be a fireman by first doing and then learning. You know what I mean? No one should be a surgeon by first doing and then learning.
Sam:Yeah
a.m.:There are some things that really benefit from first Do abstract learning because the potential for harm to yourself and others by just diving in and doing is too high But most things I'm biased towards do Fumble, fail, find yourself, and then there'll be context now for the banana on the wall But if I deliver it to you in a traditional lecture, it's just a banana on the wall, and you'll, the degree to which you trust my authority, you'll memorize banana on a wall. But you won't have the context to really bring it into meaning. And I'm actually, you know, I've gone through cycles of this, but I, I, I told students this year, this is my last year teaching at the university, and We had a department meeting yesterday, and then the chair of the department said I, I heard you're telling students it's your last year teaching. I was like, yeah, I think it might be. Because I, I'm, I'm, you know, sort of concerned that Like, I was allowed to come in and do weird stuff.
Sam:Yeah.
a.m.:Because that was the work I did out in the world. It was ahead of where the world was. The World now is where I was teaching, you know, 20 years ago. And there's other stuff that I think needs to get engaged with. And there's no space to do it. And I can't, I can't, the main thing is I can't do it in a, in a 13 week course. For 3 hours a week. And really it's not even 13 weeks, 3 hours a week. It's, it's, you know, 6 weeks at 3 hours a week. Because all the courses now are mini mesters. You know, half semester intensive things. I said, so, you know, if you can help me figure out how to do it at the university, the stuff that it needs doing, in my niche, not the only thing it needs doing, but the stuff I can see doing that's going to be useful the next ten years, then maybe I'm interested. Because what I just explained to you about, you know, that stuff they can now get systems thinking is fairly ubiquitous. They can get this other places. Design thinking is very ubiquitous. The language and reality stuff and how do you actually, like, live in a world where, you know, that was MAOL and that I don't have space to do enough of. I can only give them a taste, and 20 years ago and 10 years ago a taste was enough, and right now a taste is not enough, where we need to accelerate. I think in here, one of the conversations when we start next year, July And we've talked about kind of design for next year and all that. But I really, really, really want to up the game on the non technical side of what we're doing.
Scott:No, I was going to say, do you find as time went on in the, you know, the university level, grad level stuff that The reasons for attrition were different because of the way the world changed. Like if people were like, I can't handle this right now or something, and then I kind of leave a course or people audit the course and that kind of thing.
a.m.:No, we've always had really high retention in that program. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that, that's never been an issue. At a course level where I'd be occasionally somebody leaves a course. It's like not going to be an occasion. Somebody who's the program, but when people leave the program almost always it's like some life event or something, you know, And it's rare, like it's, you know, one student a year or one student a semester. It's not, it's not common. No, I'm more concerned that we are So I was on the phone last night with a good friend who is at Columbia decided to, cause she had a really, really big career going on and decided to halt it to go do a PhD at Columbia because there's a particular, very specific thing that she's, you know, We've been working on it, decided she wanted to bring, you know, some, some deep research to it. And so she's there, and these protests are going on, and she's talking about, you know, the, the you know, the military invasion of you know what, what's the hall, the What's the name of the hall that the
Sam:Oh yeah, they just renamed the hall. The protestors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But
a.m.:whatever. You know, the same hall that, that,
Scott:Hamilton Hall.
a.m.:Yeah. Hamilton Hall in 65 that the you know, the students back then seized back then they held a dean hostage, you know what I mean? And, and they were allowed to kind of, you know, and, and, and these guys, you know, kind of came into military gear and, and disrupted. And, and so I, I raised that to say like, where I'm teaching. Like, I, I am so, even on the business stuff, I like really push hard on saying, it is not only not my desire, it's not my right to tell you what to think on any of these things around the workplace and, and organization and all that. My interest is that you ask the questions and form a perspective and don't go out into the world a just kind of compliant, the organization is going to tell me what to do. Right? Form a perspective. Whatever that perspective is. You want to be the next Elon, even though I can't stand Elon, I will support you in that. But, but you will not leave me without at least getting uncomfortable questions. So the issues, you know, that the Columbia students, the students at Yale are raising, putting aside which side of the conversation I'm on, the, at that age, exercising in inquiry about These things in the world, I think, like, should be table stakes. Like, we should demand students engage in these things. And I find less and less students connected to having a perspective, whatever that perspective is, over the last ten years. It might be collective trauma, it might be just collective, like, I just want a lot of students my friend Joan, Dr. Joan Ball who teaches undergrad at St. John's. She and I were talking about this thing. It seems like in recent years, the last few years, there are kids coming in who just want stability, like they want the corporate job, not because they love corporate, not because they're delusional about, you know what corporate is, but they just want stability. I just want calm stability, and I think I could see that in the grad side as well. A version of that. And I get it, and I understand it if you kind of grew up in these, you know, these last 10 to 15 years of school shootings and the 2008 crisis and the political environment and the climate and the, you know, COVID and all that. But I'm really bothered that they're not at least asking questions, inquiring, you know. And I think it's not. My speculation, I'm going to end here, my speculation is not that it's a lack of desire to, a lack of confidence, whatever. I think that they don't have the tools to engage in those things without it being a burden. An ontological burden. Because everything is so heavy. Then I'm going to take on world issues, and political issues, and social issues, and economic issues, and I'm fucking exhausted at the age of 22. And, and, and we've got tools and frameworks and perspectives that allow people to engage with these things, right? And so, so that, that's all in the background of driving, like I, I, I want to keep offering grad students programming. I just don't know if I want to do it at the university. There might just be free classes if you're registered in that program. I don't know. You get, you get, you get automatic admission to the, to the school of AM if you're inclined. I just don't know, you know, down the road if anybody shows up to that if I'm not in the program, so.
Scott:You have to build a compound.
a.m.:That, that is, that is exactly, that is a perfect postcard picture of, of the opposite of what I want to do. Like I couldn't, I couldn't find the other side of the coin better than building a compound. With a little hut in the middle for me and, and everybody else is, you know, camping and once a day I come out for 30 minutes and give a lecture.
Sam:God, no.
a.m.:It's almost like a nightmare.
Sam:Jesus, no. Kyley wants to live on a mountain, away from people. Away from people.
Kyley:No, I want to live on a mountain, with very controlled contact with people.
Sam:That's not better!
Kyley:I, I, I want to cook them food at the night, and then I want to go back to the top of my mountain and sleep until the next night.
Sam:Yep. Oh my god, Kyley, no!
Scott:It's your wizard staff. Shall not pass.
Sam:You are going to become a Netflix documentary.
Kyley:People are exhausting sometimes.
a.m.:Here's the problem. People aren't exhausting. It's people aren't people. This is the problem. Danielle, you know, obviously you know, used to joke because I would say, you know, she was a student and then she worked for me and then we were peers and friends and, you know, we're now kind of, you know, good friends. But, you know, back in the old days, that's fucking humans, you know? And then she joke about the other humans bothering against and it occurred to me somewhere in there. It's, it's actually the opposite. It's, they're not being humans. They're being this role, they're being this pattern, they're being this habituation, they're being this story that they ingested from the world and the world as it is now from the, not even from the economy, right? They, they are agents of an economy versus participants in an economy. And then they play patterns accordingly. And that's exhausting. Like I love engaging with humans. I just find so few of them, which sounds terribly condescending and judgmental. And I apologize. Because I, I could fall into it as well. I could fall into, I mean, this many years into the journey, I can, you know, find myself and then, you know, writing it in my journal and going back to that of, Oh shit, I'm in a, I'm in a loop. I'm in a pattern. I'm in a habituation. I gotta do something to break out of this. I'm not here. This pattern is here,
Scott:awareness, right? So it's not a blame thing. It's just like getting caught up in believing your thoughts sometimes can be the wall that shuts off your awareness, closing the closing the lens cap, metaphorical lens cap to your,
a.m.:it's showing up to an interaction with clarity of the outcome. That is only good if we're going to transact something like if I hire you to cook me a meal. Great. Please show up with the outcome clear in your mind, but for human interaction, people show up with the outcome in mind. And now there's no interaction. Now this is a transaction of words. And then we either got somewhere we didn't. But human beings don't show up again. You know, the music thing, right? Like, you know, We're playing these four songs. We got, you know, 12 minutes, got three minutes a song. Here and then boom boom done out. Perfect, right? Great. I mean, that's fine. You get paid for it, but that's not
Scott:I'm of two minds because having, you know, played in front of people for a while and coming up with a set list and really getting dialed in that set list, like it's never the same twice, even though you're doing the same thing. Sure. At the same time, it feels to me like I'm in the middle of a meditation. But yeah, there's a certain, you know, prescription of like, we play, we stop, you clap, we play, you know, just the repetition of the whole thing got very fatiguing after doing it every night for months and, you know, months at a time. It became this kind of like, you know, This, this dance for the sake of the dance as opposed to the enjoyment of the dance. And that's the reason why I decided studio is better, you know, for me, studio is a better place.
a.m.:I'm not even talking about those things though. I could certainly, I mean, not, not being a musician, I don't know directly, but I could see those things getting, you know, grinding as well. But I wasn't even talking about that as outcome. Like I'm talking about like going to a show, it's like, okay, this is the point at which now you're going to have your guitar solo. And like, you know, before you start playing. This is what the solo is. This is what we're gonna do. You got 30 seconds for a drum solo here. You got like, I gotta think that's just like, okay, why am I here? Like, can I just phone this in? Can I just record this for you and just play it?
Scott:Yeah, it comes across that way sometimes and you get wrapped up in, you know. But I mean, obviously if you have a lot of people that like what you're doing, it kind of boosts your ego a little bit and there's a different motivation behind it. And then eventually that becomes empty.
a.m.:Well this, but this is the thing, right? This is what, you know, I'm doing, I'm doing the commencement speech for the New Haven High School so I'm doing the commencement speech, right, in June, middle June. And thankfully the person that asked me doesn't have an outcome. Like they know me, they've seen me talk, right? But that thing is, what is that normally? Like. Cool. You're going to show up inspiration. You're going to say you're going to say something provocative and then you're going to say something about how hard and then you're going to say something about how you overcome what's hard and then you're going to share a personal anecdote
Scott:throw the cap in the air.
a.m.:Sure. Right? Like, that's the expectation. Like, nobody has to say it. You just say it. Commencement speech. I already know what it is. The set list. That's it. I already, you tell me you're doing a commencement speech in any, I know what it is. I already know. I don't know the words. I don't know the details, but I know what it is. That's what I mean by showing it to an outcome, with an outcome in mind. Right? And people do this in human interaction. Last night I had dinner with my oldest friend. And we just, you know, we've known each other since 7th grade or 8th grade. And sometimes, you know, we see each other, you know, four times in a month. And sometimes we don't see each other for eight months and, you know. But it's human. You know, we go and there's no, like, there's nowhere to get to. And we just have a meal and then surprising stuff comes up and predictable stuff comes up. People don't approach it that way. They do it with a limited number of people, but they go and I'm having dinner with somebody. We're going to this monthly reception, right, of a group, and they're great people. We like these people. I don't know if you're going tonight, but, but, like, don't you already know what it is?
Sam:Yeah.
a.m.:Yeah. Do you have to know what 90 percent of the conversations have already are?
Scott:I went last time, made a 15 minutes with them, like, who are you, who am I?
a.m.:And they're all good people. This is the thing. Nobody's like, like schmoozing. This isn't like, it's not that. Like that's like, not even on the table. Like I don't even pay attention to those things that kind of, you know, networking fests. Right. I'm talking about good people, really hip, but I already know what the conversations are. There's nothing surprising that's going to happen. There's nothing for me human that's going to happen. And so that's why I say when I'm exhausted about, you know, humans, it's I'm exhausted by the lack of humans, you know. I'd love to be spending time with humans all day long. Here I get to, you know.
Scott:I think those would be better for me if there was like a, something central to it. Like, I don't know. I mean, what if we showed up with board games? I love board games. Just like, roll that. All right, who, who wants to play this game? You know, that kind of thing. Because then there's like, the conversation happens naturally about what's happening, you know, in the, the task or the game or that you're working on instead of like, Who are you? Are you important? Do I need to rank you socially? And then engage with that?
a.m.:Listen, I go in with that mindset. I always have. When I was younger, it was like just playing with house money and it didn't matter. And now it's, you know, playing with a different kind of house money and it doesn't matter. In the middle, I think I was probably less inclined to do this.
Sam:I was going to say like I love board games for that reason that like I just love to pull it out at a party and be like, ha ha. Like I think at a holiday party I did that and Kyley was like, what are we doing? And I'm like, we're going to figure it out. Do you
Scott:always have like a pack of Uno cards in your pocket ready to go?
Sam:I, you know, I actually do have a couple of small board games with me at all times. Like I really stress that when I don't because I, I am terrible at peopling like I'm just like you're gonna ask me about what I do and then they ask me about my research and that's cool But you don't really care cuz I get really excited, but you're not excited. So then I'm gonna get bothered forget it Let's just fight over orcs It's easier
Scott:Yeah, last time we went I was talking to this guy and you know works for the regional water authority and describing what he does. And there was just like, and then we started telling him about here, and you could see just kind of like, I was like looking around the room, like, who else am I gonna talk to? I had a hoodie on, you know, he had a suit suit on, and so it was like, all right, we're gonna, we're gonna move this, this way. You know,
a.m.:I'm here clear on what the outcomes are. Oh, this, the outcome's not gonna happen here, so lemme go somewhere else. And it's like, you know.
Scott:Food and drink were good.
a.m.:Again, I'm telling you, good people, man legitimately no shade.
Sam:not peopling.
a.m.:Yeah, no. So I mentioned another clubhouse name. Maceo Paisley, who's, who's out in Detroit. Really cool guy, works, works in the art world. He used to run these amazing rooms on Clubhouse. He's actually, he ran the best rooms on Clubhouse. Really, really good, gifted moderator. He was running this room once about, about are we in a renaissance, are we about to be in a renaissance, right? And I showed up late and I was listening and then, you know, he invited me up and I, I went and talked and, you know, he said, I, I don't, you know, this is going to sound like, this is going to sound like out of context, it sounds so self involved, but, but I will tell you how I engage with the world. And again, early on, it was, I had, you know, house money because, like, I was, you know, You know what I mean? A poor immigrant had no expectations. It's all win. It's all win, man. It's like, whatever, I'm gonna do my thing. And now, at this stage of life, I'm like, eh, psh, nothing you can do to me. And in the middle, I probably, you know, gravitate more towards the mean. But what it said to us is, in the interactions, my mindset is, I am the Renaissance. Right, that I am the piece of content that's going to fundamentally disrupt your, whatever.
Scott:That could come off kind of crazy, though.
a.m.:Well, no, here's the thing! I am the piece of, because they're dismantling it, what did Renaissance mean, right? Like, so, I am gonna, I, like, I want to be the piece of content that disrupts your context. And, I want to bring context that reshapes your content.
Sam:I am the banana.
a.m.:And so, yeah, so how do I want to engage is, fundamentally reframing your content and fundamentally shifting your context to see if we can't get to actual interaction and something new, you know?
Scott:So maybe I'll go down there tonight. And tape a banana to the wall
a.m.:See, that's not that, but that's, that's performative. That's not, that's the opposite of what I'm talking about.
Sam:What you gotta do is just start a food fight, just straight up make allies.
a.m.:If you plan it, it's not, it's no good. You know, that gets back to now, you know what the, now you're just doing what they're doing.
Sam:Just trip a couple times. It'll be all right, I'll make some friends.
a.m.:You can't, you can't plan your way to improvisation. You can have good boundaries in place. You can have good rigor in place, but all preparation has to get done ahead of time. And then you just show up,
Scott:act natural, be authentic.
Sam:Business, business, business. Is it working? Yes.
Scott:The, the, the term that comes up at those things a lot, it's like, you know, a networking event. I mean, it's, I don't know. To me, it seems like the opposite. It's a it's a separation event. Like, you know, everybody kind of, like, stratifies in the room to different places. Yeah. Know, it's not throwing shade on the whole group that's doing it. It's more about You know, this is just a natural stratification of the way we arrange ourselves as humans that we people, you know you know, I used to have more patience for it because I was younger and hungrier you know, 20 years ago, working at a digital agency where you're always looking for clients. It was like, that was what you didn't do. You show up and you shake hands, you know?
a.m.:Yeah. And listen, the whole thing becomes, it's, it's, it's gotta be self, you know? The snake has to get its own tail on this one. Where it's like, just the way we're talking about this now over time is cool. We're being machines. Cause now it's like, we already know because we already know what that thing is going to be. Right. Which is exactly the problem, right? It is this sort of, you know, it's so easy to fall into this. And, and, and so I think the thing is just, just That is default. I find for me, that's default. It's just predicting, knowing, taking past patterns, and projecting. Like, that's just what happens. My speculation is that's just what happens to human beings in general. But I know that's what happens to me. And so the work then becomes, can I be in the moment? And, and can I, you know, again, can I shift context and reframe content. But in
Scott:the moment. Is it one of those things where, you know, we're, we're designed for pattern recognition as humans. Is the work in your ideas, like, to go beyond the pattern recognition to some sort of meaningful action? Once you have a pattern recognized or is it to ignore the pattern and continue on?
a.m.:Again, if you go back to music and, and clean me up because I'm not a musician but like you got to recognize the melody and then you can play on the melody. But if you really are paying attention to melody, you can play a note that's off the melody and have it be something really interesting.
Scott:It's my whole career right there.
a.m.:And so that's what it is. Like what's going on is there's a certain kind of melody. You know, most of the times it's this pop melody. It's like, okay, whatever. But if you can pay attention to it, now you can introduce something again, a piece of content that's not going to be dissonant, but it's going to alter the melody. And then it becomes, oh wait, well what? And then now you have potential for them playing music with you, as opposed to them just playing out their melody over and over again.
Sam:Which you did, you got Kyley journaling.
Kyley:Or you do what I used to do. There was a time in my life where I was like, I'm just gonna be genuine in every conversation all the time, and it would break their melody. They'll be like, what's your biggest fears? Spiders, Bobcats. I'm afraid that you're all gonna find out that I'm not good enough and I'm gonna die alone, and I would just like shut down the conversation, because that's genuinely what I'm afraid of all the time.
Scott:That's a different board game.
Kyley:And, yeah, that's, and that's, and that's, I got a lot of feedback for those interactions. How are you doing today? You know what? I'm not doing great. That kind of stuff, and I find that it would break, you know, Break the music that was being played with these people.
a.m.:That stops the music.
Kyley:Yeah, yeah, it kills it. It kills the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, learn, learn that lesson. That's why I was laughing before when you're like, how do you go into those? I remember what I used to try and it would go badly.
a.m.:So to continue the analogy, right? So that's like, like, you know, paying attention to the, to the, to the melody that the symphony is playing. Mm hmm. And introducing something, you know. That's different, but doing it with a, you know, I don't know, a sitar, like an instrument that's so foreign that it distracts them from, you know what I mean, it's just, it's just, it's too, yeah.
Sam:Bro, you brought a kazoo to an orchestra.
a.m.:Oh, a kazoo, yeah. That's cool. Yeah.
Scott:I'll bring a kazoo to the networking.
Sam:Stop bringing kazoos.
a.m.:Now, if you're with me, hopefully we are a symphony that plays a certain melody and when somebody comes in and plays a kazoo, we're not thrown by it. We can like have all those, in fact we invite, who's got a kazoo? Who's got an instrument we've never seen before? And then play a note and then we can write but you rarely find yourself with people like that and so yeah.
Scott:If you think about it as play. those situations that are, you know, you're not drawn to. I'm not drawn to necessarily any longer. But if I think about it as play, I'm gonna go, you know, play this game for an hour. This, you know, event game. Doesn't have any weight. You don't feel like you need to level up or anything like that. It's just, you're just there.
Sam:Speaking of games, one of my favorite games is whenever I feel like I see people talking about something really serious, I like to start my own conversation with my, like, my neighbors next to me and say the most absurd things and see if I can get them to stop their conversation and listen in on mine. So like I'll, like, they'll just be talking like, yeah, you know, I did this like amazing thing on my test and like it's just like, I'm just annoyed by what they're saying. So I'm like, dude, you're telling me I can't drop ship bananas? Who told me I could have done, you convinced me, you said it was a crypto thing. And just seeing how invested and how much I can escalate it before I realized they're paying attention is my favorite thing. So like speaking to that, like treating it like a game is a lot of fun.
Scott:Yeah. I think it's, you know, there's diminishing returns for the amount of effort you put in, but it can be can be relieving that, that anxiety and stress of social interaction.
Sam:Yeah. My, my usual thing is I just kind of start talking to kind of some little Kyley set. I just kind of try to break the rhythm. And I think it was like the other day I was, I was talking with a couple of you know, I was like, well, I'm an alumni, and she was like, from Yale, and, you know, she's like, oh, I'm a paralegal, like, all this, this stuff, and I was like, man, that's good for you. I'm, I'm stu stu. And she's like, what? I'm like, you know, I'm a little stupid, man. It's, it's fine. I'm stu stu. And she started cackling, so she literally got my number, texted like, I've been using stu stu every day, because you go, like, I'm glad I made a friend. We could be stu stu together, because, oh.
Scott:Sometimes you gotta just sit back and, you know,
Sam:Sometimes, sometimes I just go fully for it, I just say the dumbest thing I could possibly say in this situation just cause I'm like, I don't want to see what happens, just Uno card it. Forget it, man.
a.m.:But I'm going to give you your outro.
Kyley:appreciate the music we started with and the music we ended with,
a.m.:it's great. Sometimes in my weird, random, non linear head, to this day, that song is like 40 years old. Yeah. Something like that. Just randomly, New York, London, Paris, Munich, everybody talking about pop music. That just goes off. I remember the MTV. It just, like, just, it'll just, for no reason, no, yeah. Yeah. There's another line though, the New York, London, Paris, Munich.
