Ink vs Algorithm: The Writers' Pod
Creative writing in all forms has never been this exciting -- or frustrating. In a time when ChatGPT writes novels, TikTok “authors” go viral, and algorithms decide which stories live or die, Ink vs Algorithm is a podcast dedicated to writers who bleed ink and and publish their heart out.
Hosted by writer, ranter, and raconteur Mookie Spitz, each episode features lively conversations with flesh and blood authors who love what they do -- and hate competing with prompt-jockeys and viral Bots. Along the way more stories will be told and laughs shared, living proof the living still matter.
Whether you’re a novelist, journalist, pundit, poet, or just a cynic with a keyboard and an attitude, Ink vs Algorithm reminds us all why lived experience still matters — and how extracting and sharing it still takes relentless grit, determination, and a mountain of fought for and refined talent.
Ink vs Algorithm: The Writers' Pod
Colleen Coffman: The "Crazy Ghost Lady" Haunts Us with Creativity and Empathy
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Colleen Coffman spent decades as a special effects and makeup artist, building monsters for haunted houses and horror films, working alongside actors like Wes Studi and Lou Diamond Phillips, designing wigs for the Kansas City Ballet. But on this episode of Ink vs Algorithm, she joins Mookie to talk about something stranger than anything she ever built for the screen: a lifelong habit of seeing entities most people don't, and the sketch diary she'd kept of them for years, which vanished during a move in 2014 and reappeared, completely out of nowhere, from a stranger on Facebook exactly one day after she found herself missing it.
That diary became her book, The Adventures of a Sketch Diary, and Colleen walks through some of what's in it: sylphs, satyrs, and a genuinely unsettling personal encounter with a duende, a small, physical creature she watched steal a pair of socks from her late uncle's closet and knew, on instinct, not to follow. Mookie and Colleen dig into where these experiences might come from: Jung's archetypes, the idea of a "thinning veil," and whether these entities represent something genuinely external or a very old, very human way of processing the unexplainable.
What ties all of it together, the entities, the art, the feeling that something else is present, is a kind of sensitivity most people have trained themselves out of. Mookie frames it as something that was never really about belief in the first place, but about lived experience, and the same creative openness that lets someone tap into and express what they're feeling, whether that's through art or through encounters like Colleen's.
That same idea becomes the emotional center of the conversation once the topic turns to 2020. Colleen traces a direct line from pandemic isolation to a lasting breakdown in empathy, patience, and basic human contact, in her own family and everywhere she looks, and argues the same capacity, the willingness to actually feel another person's presence, drives both her entities and her fractured relationships.
Mookie connects it back to why he started podcasting in the first place, a very Socratic argument that real understanding only happens face to face, never through a screen. They land together on something genuinely simple as the antidote: slow down, look people in the eye, and remember that everyone else is struggling too, the same open-hearted attention that let Colleen see sylphs and satyrs in the first place.
The Guest
Colleen Coffman is a semi-retired special effects and makeup artist for stage and film, and the author of The Adventures of a Sketch Diary, published by Hangar 1 Publishing. Her film work includes Nailbiter and The Stylist, and her stage credits include productions with the Kansas City Ballet.
Get the book:
https://hangar1publishing.com/products/the-adventures-of-a-sketch-diary
Tap here to share your opinion! Be a guest on the pod! Mookie wants to hear from you...
Hello and welcome to Inc. Verse Algorithm The Writer's Pod. I'm excited to have Colleen Kaufman in the podcast today. Welcome aboard, Colleen. Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited to be here today. I'm excited to talk to you. You are a retired visual artist.
SPEAKER_01I'm a semi-retired um FX artist.
SPEAKER_03FX artist. I'd like to talk to you about your career on stage and film. Yeah. And you are an active writer. That is correct. My viewers and listeners would like to hear about your works in progress. What you got cooking. And I understand too that there's elements of the spiritual, the paranormal.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah. The oh yeah, that we could get into as well. So tell us about yourself and how you how you got yourself describing these days and what it's all about.
SPEAKER_01By divine orchestration, I think. Just like most pieces and parts of my life are. Because I'm in the entertainment industry, we were out of work for the better part of two years. So, and that doesn't include all of the, oh golly, the vaccination issues that I had, and then caught the COVID, anyways, and it just kind of ravaged my health to the point where I had to go into semi-retirement. So I've that's when the book popped up. It was so divine. Um I'm gonna go back some time here, back to about 2020. Um, I was traveling all over the United States. I do um all kinds of airbrush body painting and makeup and special effects. I've been doing practical effects for uh a long, long time. It's it's been a great career. I've had a wonderful time. I've met some incredible people I've kept. Uh some of them I haven't, but some of them I have. Uh, anyways, my mom and dad, I was on the road a lot, and my mom and dad got me a sketch diary for my birthday. And at the time, um, I I've always seen and heard crazy things that most people either don't or won't. So um I started keeping a journal of the things that I was seeing, and I started drawing them. And before I knew it, I had some entities and energies literally coming to me strictly to be drawn. So that's how that started. I took the sketch diary on the road with me. Um, I used it many years. Uh, then, as life does, things changed. I went through a divorce. I moved several times. Uh, my storage unit was burglarized. And in the process of all of those things, my sketch diary went missing. So I didn't know if it was stolen, if it just got lost in one of the moves. I had no clue where it went. Uh, that would have been in 2014 that I noticed that it was missing. So, fast forward to 2020 when things were so incredibly bizarre for every one of us. Um, I was at a friend's house, babysitting, babysitting, puppy sitting for her and house sitting for her. I was in the backyard. It was just a little after dusk, so it wasn't quite dark, but it was the fireflies were thick. It was June of that year. And I just love the fireflies, and they reminded me very much of the days whenever I was drawing things, you know, fairies and spirits and these things in my sketch diary. And I I got to pining for my sketch diary just a little bit, you know. That's that was a sad, sad thing. I just a piece of my life that was gone. The very next day, completely out of the blue, I got a Facebook message from a young man who said, Hi, I have your sketch diary and was wondering if you would like to have it back. Blew my mind, completely out of the water. I mean, this is six years after it went missing. And uh the young man I vaguely knew. He um was a boyfriend to my roommate's, my ex-roommate's daughter. So I vaguely knew him. He had gone to school with my son, but I really didn't know this young man. So we went and picked up my sketch diary and I finished it. Uh, you know, I put the polish on it and and wrote some descriptions to go with the images that I had drawn. And then Hangar One Publisher popped into my life and landed in my lap from absolutely nowhere, and uh decided that they liked the sound of my book and they published it. So, like I said, kind of divine orchestration there.
SPEAKER_03So this is a a visual book. So it's it adventures of your sketch diary is the title, is that right? And so what is it? Uh the sketches with your own commentary interwoven. Is that is that the book itself?
SPEAKER_01That is the book itself. It has uh it has a journal. It's a journal, it's a diary of many of the um entities and energies that I've come across in my travels, and I drew them and uh wrote descriptions and and my interactions.
SPEAKER_03So, how did these visions come to you? You're conscious and you see them in your mind's eye? Did they come to you in dreamlike ways? What was your experience like?
SPEAKER_01Interesting that you would put them in those two ways because those were exactly the two ways that most of them did come to me. They were in my mind's eye. Typically, whenever I see something that most people don't or won't, uh, because I believe that everybody has the ability to see and interact with things that we've been told are not there. Um, when they come to me or when I recognize them, they're typically like a vapor or a smoky-looking substance or a glare or a light of different colors that moves around. Um, and they impose the visual of a physical self into my mind's eye.
SPEAKER_03That's pretty cool. So, did some of them come with their own little mini bio? Did you interact with them? Did you communicate with them? What was that added dimension like?
SPEAKER_01Uh it was really personal. They uh told me about, you know, their their physical structure and how they were built, um, what their feelings and thoughts were on us and the world that we live in, uh, their jobs here, the things that they take care of here, uh, just you know, a conversation with an individual that was very cool.
SPEAKER_03Well, that is cool. And then could you categorize them? Was there like a zoo of creatures? Were they self-organized? Did they have particular roles? Did you give them names? Did they tell you their name? Give a give us some more details on uh these different entities that you interact with.
SPEAKER_01So none of them ever gave me their name. Um, I would give them a name so that I knew who I was addressing, but by and large, they really didn't give me their names. Um, they typically would tell me uh what realm they came from, as far as what their jobs were and how they interacted. And if they were a unique individual and they really didn't have like, I don't know, a genus and species. Uh, you know, they shared, like, let's say a cat. Okay, what kind of cat? Well, is it a Siamese? Is it a Maincoon? Is it a tabby, you know, those kinds of things. Uh, it was very similar to that. Uh, the ones that I interacted with that I had the the best time with would have been the Sylphs, and and that's spelled S-Y-L-P-H-S. Uh, they are everybody knows them as being kind of a they're a fairy and they remind me incredibly much of Tinkerbell. They're little winged ladies that fly around and uh and sparkle. They sparkle a lot.
SPEAKER_03Well, can you give us some samples or some visuals so we have a frame of reference to uh to maybe talk about a few in particular? Do any stand out as illustrative of your experience and how you shared it in your book?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So, uh, like I said, the Sylphs were some that I interacted with a lot, and there were a grand variety of them, uh, just different breeds, I guess. They had different jobs, but they were very similar. Uh, and I found that a lot of our mythology uh was based on people who interacted with these entities and energies down through the ages. And for instance, um, I I interacted with a Seder. I had no idea Satyrs were real, but I surely found out that they are. And then there's lots of them, although I only I've only really ran across one personally. Um, another thing that you might keep in mind is that they they kind of feel like they interact on the same realm as like Bigfoot, you know, the woo-woo Bigfoot stuff, or uh uh cryptids of different varieties. They all come and go kind of the same way.
SPEAKER_03That leads maybe some viewers and listeners to frankly call bullshit because a lot of people don't believe in bullshit of the Loch Ness monster or Bigfoot or UFOs and the like. As uh as a creative person myself, I find it intriguing that you have these experiences and that you documented them. And if we look at even philosophers and psychologists like Carl Jung, who write about the archetypes and about the common images and themes and language and associations and metaphor that human beings have been sharing forever, many of the creatures you describe fit into these archetypes.
SPEAKER_01So let's go out on a limb here, okay? Let's say that because of our limited abilities to see and hear uh into to see into certain light spectrums, that we've not really been fully able to visualize these things down through the ages. Well, now, and this is my belief and my experience, we have uh a thinning of the veil, to borrow a phrase, uh, where people are starting to see and understand and interact with these energies more than they have in our own history. So that's kind of where I'm coming from. Somebody wants to call bullshit, they are incredibly welcome to, you know, people call bullshit on ghosts until their grandmother shows up in their room at the in the middle of the night.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think that that's a fair observation. Um, I've related on other podcast episodes, for example, seeing my father's ghost, and it was pretty damn vivid to me. So I tend to be rational and scientific, but there's also a side to me which is very much a believer in this kind of phenomena, and whether it's an internal expression that then reveals itself externally, or whether we're tapping into anything that's genuinely outside of us individually, I don't know. But experience is experience, and if you are taking in these sensations and meeting these creatures, then I think it's interesting and and evocative and provocative that you put them together in a book and that you share it with the world. I think that that's very interesting. The Bigfoot deniers are gonna, you know, similarly deny your own experience.
SPEAKER_04That's okay.
SPEAKER_03That's what I'm saying. It's uh it's not about credulity, it's not about what is true or untrue, but it's about lived experience and sharing it. And I think most significantly it's about tapping into an individual's creativity and expressing it, and even for the purpose of this podcast, going out there and sharing it. So you published and you let it out into the world. How did you publish? You published with this publisher you mentioned who reached out to you.
SPEAKER_01All right. Yeah, no, I reached out to them, they their information fell into my lap, and I took advantage of that and I reached out to them. I sent them a manuscript and they said, Oh, this is right up our alley, and we would absolutely like to publish it. So now I'm in the middle of writing my second book, which is more like memoirs, which is gonna include a lot of you know things that I experienced in film and theater with my effects career. Uh, makeup, hair, and effects. Woo-hoo! So um I, you know, I worked with a lot of really incredible people through the years. And so I'm gonna uh share some of those inside stories. But, you know, my life is one big spiritual fun park. And I I'm gonna share a lot of my crazy experiences in this book.
SPEAKER_03Well, share a few now. Do you have any highlights that you'd like to tantalize uh the listeners and viewers with uh in terms of your career or this crossover?
SPEAKER_01Let's talk about tangible creatures for a minute, shall we? Um, so I at the time, this is such a crazy story. Um, I my grandmother had been taken care of, my 90-year-old grandmother had been taken care of by my uncle, who passed away very unexpectedly from a heart attack. Uh, and so I ended up shuffling myself into my grandma's trailer and taking care of her uh and packing that trailer up after my uncle passed away. So one night, and I was incredibly tired. I mean, I was her only caretaker. She was invalid. I wasn't, I had to lift her and move her and all of these good things. Um, one night I was exhausted and I was staying in my uncle's room, which was like a 10 by 10 room in a trailer. It was so tiny. It was big enough for a small nightstand, a single-size bed, um, and his very tiny computer desk. That was it. That was all. There was about a foot, maybe less, uh space between the foot of the bed and his sliding door closet. Excuse me. So I had been going through his closet that day, which was a challenge because, you know, you have to kind of stand on the end of the bed and shuffle through the closet. So I had been uh sorting everything and I had a whole lot of plastic grocery bags that were full of like underwear and handkerchiefs and socks and those kinds of things. I was gonna donate. I just left them at the foot of the bed between the bed and the closet. I put Graham on a bed. I came into my room and I laid down in bed, turned the light off. I was fully awake. I had not been drinking or smoking anything that day. Um, but I laid down in bed and I heard the bags at the foot of the bed ruppling around. And I my very first thought was great, we have mice. That's gonna be fun. And so I kind of leaned over the side of the bed to check it out a little closer. And this little dude came running out from the foot of the bed. He was about 18 or 20 inches tall. Um, he was nude for all intents and purposes that I could see. I didn't see any hair on him. He had no hats. Uh, he reminded me very much of um one of the Harry Potter elves, you know. He was with the pointy ears and the long hooky nose and kind of the bulbous eyes and uh kind of hunched over a little bit. And he had a pair of my uncle's socks in his hands. So he looked, he didn't look at me at all. I was looking at him and I was afraid to breathe. He scared me to pieces. So he looked down both ways down the hallway and he slipped around the corner and into my grandmother's room. And I laid there. I just absolutely could not force myself to get out of bed and follow him into the other room. Uh the next day I got up and I called my ex-husband and I said, Would you please bring me my cat? And I uh brought the cat over, which helped a lot. I also did some smudging on the trailer and salted the doorways and all of those things for protection. And I never saw him again, but I saw that guy full on with my two eyeballs, just like I'm looking at you right now.
SPEAKER_03Let me ask you a couple questions here. Uh, first off, you've been interacting with these entities and these spirits most of your life, it sounds like, right?
SPEAKER_04That's correct.
SPEAKER_03So, first off, this experience was apparently so vivid and unexpected that you were shocked at first. And I'm curious as to A, why you didn't follow the creature into your grandmother's room, because ostensibly, if it freaked you out, wouldn't it freak her out? Even from a protective point of view. And then and then B, uh why why such terror? Um, you've expressed interest in interacting with these entities in your in your sketchbook, right? Oh yeah. So why why not pursue this little guy or try to engage with him? Why tune out, go to sleep, and then get a cat who I guess you're thinking that the cat would like mouse this guy away or scare this creature away.
SPEAKER_01Energies like that don't enjoy cats. Cats in them do not get along. So, and I knew that. So that's why I instantly thought, ooh, let me get the cat in here. So um boy, he scared me. And usually I don't I don't feel fear with these things, but whenever my gut tells me to lay still and be quiet, I'm gonna lay still and be quiet. I know it well enough to know that that's necessary. So, and that was the the whole vibe of this guy was dangerous. He was dangerous, he was not something that I wanted to mess around with. And it really surprised me too, because typically, like we talked about before, when I'm dealing with elementals or any kind of spirit, they're typically a light or a vapor or a smoke. And I I can see them in my mind's eye and I can hear them in my mind's ear, you know. But with this guy, oh, he was very physical. Uh, he wanted nothing to do with me, and he was putting up the warning signs. So I was not looking forward to tangling with something I knew nothing about.
SPEAKER_03Okay, fair enough, but you seemed to grab uh the socks, you know, of your relative. So he he seemed to be operating with some kind of purpose.
SPEAKER_01Yep, he did. He could have had all those socks, he could have taken the whole bag as far as I was concerned.
SPEAKER_03All right, so this being, whatever and whomever it was, you had no interest in interacting with, you just wanted it to go away.
SPEAKER_01I was very interested in him leaving the premises, yes. And I could hear my grandmother, she was sawing logs in the next room. He never interrupted her at all. But then it made me wonder later, you know, my my uncle had such a horrible time with sleeping, and the bed was horrible. So I can see why, you know, he wasn't getting great sleep, but it also made me wonder if he encountered anything and just was afraid to say it.
SPEAKER_03All right, but that further makes me wonder why you weren't more inquisitive, apparently, than than you were, and you're saying you were just terrified of this thing, right? All right, well, that that's an interesting story. Did you draw this entity or you didn't do that? I sure did.
SPEAKER_01And then years later, this was back in oh 2008. So um the internet was just getting a good roll on. Well, it was probably 10 years later when I saw that um these little guys are captured on video quite frequently, especially in um South America and Mexico. They're called Duende.
SPEAKER_03What's their role and how do the Latins consider them?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they're not super friendly with anybody, and it's the same thing. They kind of appear from shadows and behind things and run through your room and terrify everybody and then disappear.
SPEAKER_03It sounds kind of scary in a boo jump scare kind of way, but they don't seem to be doing any damage.
SPEAKER_01But you have to understand something about me. I have worked in special effects creating monsters and commercial haunted houses for the majority of my career. So it takes a lot to frighten me. That guy scared me. I was not ready to tangle with him.
SPEAKER_03Your reaction to it's your reaction. Tell us a little bit about some of the stories, apocryphal or or or not, of your days doing special effects. I'm assuming you worked on some films, some stage stage stuff that we would be familiar with and can recognize.
SPEAKER_01So we'll start with film because that's a very fun place. Um I started in film. Um well, I started in commercial haunts, is where I started with my, and I was 10 years old whenever I started with special effect makeup. So I've done special effect makeup since I was 10 years old. Um a lot of haunted houses, but I started in film primarily with my career. And um I've done the two that I'm most proud of. Actually, there's three that I'm most proud of. One's called Nailbiter. That's a blast. It's a feature film. Uh, you can see it. I think you can see it on like Roku. Uh it's it's free nowadays, you can see it. Also, the stylist. And there is a feature film, and there's a short film called The Stylist. We did them both. Uh, the short film was done kind of as a fundraiser, you know, peak interest kind of film. Uh, and it's fantastic. All the special effects are things that I've done in there. Uh, best scalping scene you'll ever find anywhere, including in Glorious Bastards. Uh the feature film is brutal, just brutal. So if you enjoy good horror films and good thrill thrillers, those are three that you should absolutely check out. The stylist short film can be found on YouTube. The shilo the stylist feature film is on it's on one of the freebies, and I think it's Tubi. So you might check that out as well. As for the theater, oh, and I've worked with a lot of people. I worked with Wes Studi. I just love that guy. We had a great time together. Uh, we worked on three different movies together, uh, and they were just a blast. Um Barry Corbin had a great time with Barry Corbyn. I've just um Lou Diamond Phillips. I worked in my very first theater presentation was with Lou Diamond Phillips and the king and I. We had a ball together. Um I've done a lot of the Kansas City Ballet. I worked with them for many years. Uh, I did a lot of their, I did all of their makeup and wig stuff, uh their hair stuff. Um, I designed wigs and makeup and stuff for several different theater presentations, such as the um The Wizard of Oz and uh the Kansas City Ballet's presentation of the Nutcracker. Uh I've just I've done a whole lot of stuff. I've had a great time.
SPEAKER_03Well, that sounds interesting and fun, and it's creative, and it introduces fantastic elements into everyday life, right? So you're taking what's what's everyday and making it either gory or scary or transformative, and it seems like your contact with what other dimension you've been interacting with is kind of similar, right? So I'm just drawing parallels between you bringing uh creative stuff to stage and screen, and then the creativity that you bring in the real world to interacting with these entities, right?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Yep, you nailed that.
SPEAKER_03Tell us about your your religious beliefs. So you have you have this interaction with all these spirits and entities. How does that jibe or not jibe with how you grew up from a religious point of view and what your beliefs now are?
SPEAKER_01Well, my mom and dad came from my dad came from a Baptist background, my mother came from a Catholic background. That lent to incredibly bizarre childhood between the two. Um we really didn't prescribe to any of them, uh, but we kind of tested all of them. So we we went as a family, we went out and we tested everything from metaphysical churches to um the RLDS. So just a little bit of everything in between, and decided that none of them were for us. Uh, and we grew together spiritually as a family, and we kind of uh did our own thing and looked into what was good for us, uh, and we grew from there. Nowadays, I am I'm pretty convinced that there is a great creator of everything and always, and um that's everything else is for question.
SPEAKER_03I lost the thread there. So you have a you know formal religion from two sources, right? And then your family tried different stuff and then didn't really land anywhere, so just figured what the hell landed on our own feet in our own area and did our own thing. Okay, so if I say God, what pops into your head is whatever that I mean it depends on what context you're using, because I believe that some people believe there is um there are there are gods that are not necessarily the great creator.
SPEAKER_01I think that there is a great creator, and uh it, he, she, they um are responsible for everything in creation. Uh, but I think that there are some other entities who think that they are so all-powerful that uh they want us to call them God. So, you know, I I there there's just a whole lot out there. It's kind of hard to de-thread that one.
SPEAKER_03I think religions struggle with this too. Um, you know, if you look at uh Judeo-Christian tradition, you know, Jude Judaism didn't really have a personal God at all. You got the uh the burning bush, and then and then you got this God that is not a person at all, it's it's something that's beyond even understanding. Then you got Jesus and Christianity, which I think had better better marketing, right? Personal Jesus. So God God came down from heaven in the form of a human, and then we could relate to that person who was nonetheless divine, and that was a connection with this all-powerful God dude, right? And then Islam came and kind of took bits and pieces of both, right? So you had Jesus in the form of Muhammad, but then you had God in a way that was like the Jewish God. You couldn't even imagine what this dude God was like because he was so amazing and powerful, and but that left a lot of space, right? So throughout the Middle Ages, you had all the religions thinking of demons and angels and all these intermediaries, right? So you have the Hebrew Hebrew Kabbalah has a whole hierarchy of angels all tied to the stuff hirote, and then you've got Christian angels and demons, and even in Islam, you've got the angels and demons, the angels and demons. So I think there's a human need and there's a human recognition that between this all-powerful God entity and us, there's a lot of room to move. And presumably nature abhors a vacuum. So if you do believe in anything spiritual, then it makes sense that there would be these entities that would lie in between us and and and that God does.
SPEAKER_01Well, and not even necessarily in between us, but just how about all around us? You know, or or beneath us. There is it, there's just it goes in every direction.
SPEAKER_03It just goes in every as above, so below. I think you know, you make a good point. Usually everyone looks at it hierarchically, right? The gods up top and that we're at the bottom. But by but by all around, I do appreciate what you mean, which is like it's not necessarily better or right or wrong, it's just um experience.
SPEAKER_01It just is. That's right. It just is. And the deeper you look, the more you'll see. So um there's just a lot to look at out there, and I don't even think that we're fully capable uh incarnated on this planet. I don't think we're fully capable in understanding or seeing all of it by any means.
SPEAKER_03Why do you think they're hiding out? So this is pushback that a lot of skeptics will provide, which is okay, let's say that your experiences are actually of something outside yourself and that these entities actually exist. So, how come they're not more prominent in our lives? Why do they duck and cover like UFOs? And why do they show up in these odd moments when we least expect them? And if they are powerful in ways, why aren't they influencing us more than they apparently do?
SPEAKER_01Whew, I wish I could answer all of those, but I know I can't. So, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you my opinion on that, and that would be that there's we're not capable. Our bodies are just not capable. Well, let's take light spectrum, for example. Uh, we are only capable of seeing a certain amount of the light spectrum. Beyond that, we're not capable of seeing it. You know, they're just now discovering that ocean life uh comes in all kinds of different colors, even though we don't necessarily see them as being different colors. A lot of that is um uh UV reactive, and they can see it in each other, they can see it in themselves, but we don't have those light spectrum capabilities in our eyeballs. So I think that it has a lot to do with that same principle that we are physically incapable of seeing or hearing these things around us.
SPEAKER_00That's what I think.
SPEAKER_03You're right. I mean, even the most rational, skeptical scientists would agree with that. I mean, even bees, bees tend to see ultraviolet, so they see patterns on flower petals that are invisible to us. That's right. So there's uh there's a whole spectrum of radiation sounds that we can't hear, sights that we can't see, yeah, that are that are invisible to us. And scientists even go further than that. They think that even our idea of space and time aren't aren't absolute either. And then you look at at specialties like quantum mechanics, the things are connected to each other in ways that don't seem to make rational sense, and we can't really explain it. So all of this is is sound, even from a very conservative scientific point of view, but it does beg the question as to why the veil parts so rarely under these circumstances and only for a few people. What's your what's your opinion on that? Why are you more in tune than most? And why isn't isn't this conversation more common than it otherwise could or should be, especially if this stuff is real?
SPEAKER_01I think that the conversation is becoming way more acceptable and needed uh than it ever has been in history, in our history here on this planet. And I think the reason for that is because we are evolving. Our planet is evolving, we are evolving, uh, the veil is evolving, and um we are coming in closer contact with things that we've only speculated on before. And I think that that's also scientifically sound if you look at some of the things that are coming to light nowadays. Let's look at the fifth dump of UFO files on the uh whitehouse.gov or war.gov or whatever it is nowadays. Um, and all of these things that are there, and they're videotaping these things with specialized equipment that we've never had before. So, you know, I think that it's the same thing with us. I think that we are evolving to the point where uh we are seeing and hearing and feeling these things more than we ever have before. Did that answer your question?
SPEAKER_03It does, but I'm a little skeptical, if only from a historical point of view, because before we really even had the scientific method or what we would consider a rational explanation of things, then this idea of spirits and demons and entities and not just one god but many gods was universally common and accepted from basically what we know of most of human history. Before we had a scientific or rational explanation to most of the natural world, we assigned it to entities like what you're describing. And then slowly, with the help of technology and what we would consider science, those beliefs started to ebb, right? We shifted our worldview away from this kind of thinking to uh into more technological, rational explanations of things.
SPEAKER_01So I don't think that we necessarily shifted our focus away from that. I think our focus was shifted away from that for us. I believe that um I believe that the spiritual um we have been pulled away from that because I feel like this is gonna sound so conspiracy theory, but I believe that we have been pulled away from those things on purpose. They empower us. And um, the more we learn about them, the more we're empowered.
SPEAKER_00And so um I think that we've been pulled away from that on purpose as a form of control, to be honest.
SPEAKER_03I don't think it's that conspiratorial and it's not even that fringe. Let's go back to Carl Jung. Carl Jung would agree with you, he'd categorically agree with you, and he documented this in his Bollinger series of books, where basically history's movement away from accepting and embracing the archetypes was done for all these reasons like societal control and making people behave themselves, and when people are chasing after demons, they're a lot harder to put them to work and be citizens, right? So, so yeah, I don't think your idea there is that fringe, and I like your idea that it comes from here naturally, and that the side the science and reasonableness is the artificial construct that's put on top of that to try to explain, try to explain stuff. So I think I think that's legit and it's interceptive. And uh and and it it also kind of points in the direction of trying to find some kind of balance, right? Clearly, science and technology have advanced the species in ways that have been helpful. It's not all bad. I mean, we got a pot to piss in, we got running water, we got technology that enables this conversation. Uh, you know, overall the human population is doing probably better than it has been in a lot of ways. People are better better educated, better fed. They're actually safer statistically than they've probably ever been in documented history. So there's a benefit to this big mess that is civilization. There's a lot of prices to be paid for it, but the overall net benefit has been pretty good. We tend to live longer and better than we have, but what's lost is this spiritual essence and is this connection to these other things that you're bringing up.
SPEAKER_01And I think that that's coming back around for us. I think that now is the time for us, and maybe it's because we have been uh so technologically advanced and things are relaxing enough that we can actually open our eyes to these other things that we've missed or been guided away from.
SPEAKER_03I think that that's that's definitely a big part of the story. I think the other part of the story is that science and institutions have also let us down, and people like to gripe on the social media. So you mentioned COVID, COVID was a big experience for you. You weren't the you weren't the only one. So not only this government, but I think most governments blew the shot on COVID that they reacted to it or overreacted to it or underreacted to it in a way that really destroyed many people's faith in science and institutions and medicine and medicine. Well, science and institutions and medicine, they're all kind of interwoven, but yeah, and medicine, right? So with that increase in skepticism opens up the door to other kinds of thinking and being. It does, and if and if science and medicine and institutions let us down, well, maybe some of this spirit stuff can hold some of the promise that it has for millennia before, right?
SPEAKER_01And self, too, because now we are having to depend more on our own selves uh for our own care and our own understanding. And that's that's rough, especially with the internet the way it is. You know, everybody's a keyboard warrior nowadays, nobody wants to have an eyeball-to-eyeball conversation, and that is so necessary and so lacking.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I agree a thousand percent. Uh, one of the many reasons I do these podcasts, I have five shows. Wow, I think this is this is episode 339, and it's only been like a year and a half or something. So I'm I'm doing a bunch of these every week. And at first I started because uh, you know, the technology's there, and I'm a writer, and I wanted to connect with the writing community, and then the realization struck me, which is exactly in line with what you're saying. Uh one one thing I cite frequently is you know, good old Socrates from from the Greek tradition. Yeah, he he distrusted people who wrote anything down. And I I used I used to always think, come on, man, you know what what what's the problem with that? And now I understand it, and it's based on what you just said. Everyone's a keyboard jockey right now, and people are doom scrolling, and then you see on your feed meme, meme, comment, mean comment, meme, meme comment about the mean comment. But yeah, and no one's directly interacting with each other, like like we are now. You can't look people in the eye, they're they're hidden behind their words and their post. Absolutely, and that's what Socrates was complaining about. If I'm reading a piece of parchment or some cuneiform carved out of stone, there's no emotion there, there's no essence. I don't know who you are, I don't know your intent. Oh, your tone of voice, I can't see you, I can't smell you, there's no real human contact. And and again, I was dismissive of that, but ever since I've been podcasting, it's been reinforced that you really need to just talk to people if you really want to communicate with them. So I feel blessed doing this because I get to meet people like you. I've met dozens of authors of books where I just read the book and I'm like, okay. And when you read, when you meet the author, sometimes it could be disappointing, sometimes it could be enlightening, but you do get that extra dimension to see who they are and what they're trying to say. And same goes for for idea people, for business people. It's like there's really no substitute to human communication. So to your point, it goes full circle, which is we've gone from like this technology that is helping us communicate better, like over time and distance. And then it gets to the point we're not talking to each other at all. And then it's like, well, well, we gotta start that. Start that again, right?
SPEAKER_01If we're really gonna understand each other and ourselves, it has affected every single relationship in my own life. I know that.
SPEAKER_03Have you noticed the deterioration in gratitude and kindness and politeness and basic human civility over the years?
SPEAKER_01I have absolutely pretty so since 2020, really. Since 2020, it has been an insane thing to try and keep good relationships with people. Even the people that you love the most, you know, your children, your grandchildren, your sisters and brothers, your everybody that you were I grew up in such a tight-knit family. And nowadays it's just not the same. And it I can pinpoint it back to 2020 100%.
SPEAKER_03I think that that's really insightful. And I don't think enough people are talking about it. I I think a lot of people act like the pandemic never happened.
SPEAKER_04Oh, it didn't.
SPEAKER_03It's something that, you know, we were locked down for a year or two. It's usually like this blind spot, and people just dismiss it. And this is actually common going back a hundred years to the pandemic of 1918, 1919, where there's nothing that came out of it really of note creatively and in terms of human processing and catharsis. No, no books, no plays, and then eventually no movies. It's like it just never happened. We just forget about it. And it seems to me that one of the reasons we're not paying attention to it is for the very reason that you bring up that it was so devastating, so transformative, and so impactful that we're like, no, we don't we don't want to go there. And yet we're living through it every day by being increasingly alienated from each other.
SPEAKER_01We were so traumatized. Every single one of us suffers from PTSD to some degree or another over 2020, for real. And I wish that I could talk to more people about that. I wish that I could look them in the eyeball and say, I'm really sorry. I know that it hurt you. It hurt me. It hurt me very much. It changed my life completely.
SPEAKER_03If you got through it with minimal overt damage, the broader psychological damage in terms of relationships with other people was significant too. And this has to do with every level of human interaction. Uh, arguing about the pandemic, arguing about what to do about the pandemic, arguing about how you were impacted by the pandemic.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03Arguing about and fighting your circumstances during and after. It's all this big swirl of a lot of emotion that has never never really been released or settled.
SPEAKER_01Well, then you throw in the fireball of all the politics, and it's insane. Nobody, nobody wants to talk about it. They all want to argue about it.
SPEAKER_00And so it's just it's it's debilitating for our society, really.
SPEAKER_03It is it goes back to um some of our foundational beliefs were crushed by it. So we we live in a society where we benefit from everything we've been talking about earlier, which is you know, running water and the lights go on and off, and traffic lights, you know, prevent car wrecks, and we go to the doctor when we're sick, and there's this parachute for us created by society. And we really we really felt to mix metaphor that the rug was pulled out from under us, and and it makes us feel that we're really truly alone, that that what we believed in was bullshit. And at the end, and at the end of the day, there's no one that could really help us. And that's that's terrifying.
SPEAKER_01It is, especially whenever you are used to having people who are close to you that aren't close to you anymore. And that stands for everybody I know. That's not just me, that's not just you, that's everybody I know.
SPEAKER_03Why do you why do you think that is, though? Let's unpack this because I think this is deeply insightful. And you bring up something that I've been ruminating over too, and I didn't really factor in the pandemic. I'm I'm getting a little bit older. As I get older, I do get a little wiser, at least I think I do. And and and as a product of experience, I'm kind of like, well, am I understanding people better than I did before? Is my tolerance for other people's bullshit less than it was before? And have I learned from my own successes and failures in a way where fuck it, I'm fine by myself. Or, or to your point, did something happen to the fabric of society that fucked fucked us all up?
SPEAKER_01It did. We are fucked. We are fuckered, yes, we are. So I really believe that we are, like I said, we were all traumatized. I mean, we need human contact and interaction. What were we absolutely forbidden to do for almost two years? All of us, young and old alike, it didn't matter. People died without their people being able to hold their hands, you know. Um, I couldn't hug my own kids or grandkids, I couldn't even stand in the same room with them. I was lucky to be able to see them on video. You know, there was a sincere lack of human contact and communication for almost two years. We are social creatures. We need to be hugged, we need to be touched, we need to have your voice in your ear, we need to have um uh the contact and communication, and we were deprived of that. We were forbidden from that for almost two years.
SPEAKER_03There's ancillary effects too. There's a wake that's that's been branching out, and this has to do with other implications of the pandemic that result in pretty much what you describe in terms of the breakdown of interpersonal relationships. So, for example, and you know, I don't mean to get political, I'm just talking about the facts. Ever since COVID, income inequality has only risen. The rich have gotten exponentially richer, and the poor have gotten poorer. So, what is what has separated us in the past is now a chasm, and that has a ripple effect throughout society too. And there's this general feeling that it's all about me, it's selfish, it's self-consuming, it's further reinforced by the clusterfuck that is social media, and and it seems to be, as I'm describing, the wake of what you're describing of this period of alienation where you feel like you're by yourself, you're like, fuck it, nobody cares. And then that translates into the economy, into politics, into culture. Look at Hollywood, look at our streaming media. It it sucks for the most part. The movies that are popular now, it makes you wonder what the hell happened. And and you can say that you know, we're turning into old farts and we're just like, you know, old movies complaining about Led Zeppelin, but it goes beyond that, right?
SPEAKER_01It goes well beyond that. I know that my grandchildren, who are between the ages of six and eighteen, okay, that they have suffered interpersonal relationships and the cuddles and the the um all of the learning that that we should have been doing, the learning and the teaching, they lack because we were not able to be together like we should have been.
SPEAKER_03It's like a double triple whammy. So, first off, you have digital technology that's kept people separate, more so than in the past. So young people had been dating less and interacting, yes, less because of the phones for years already. That was already starting to build up. And then the other punch came in, which is the actual physical separation from people. So you have people who are just staring at their phones instead of at each other. Then you have a pandemic that physically separates them even further, and then you have all these other implications about society reacting in a very selfish, narcissistic, yeah, asocial kind of way, and it's all been compounded into a fuck you society, which we still haven't gotten free of. It seems to be just getting worse with time, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, it is, and I really feel like the political atmosphere is feeding that frenzy, and I don't, I, I don't have an ap a political affiliation. What I do have is a great deal of care for people who are so wrapped up in that that they have absolutely let go of interpersonal relationships because of it, and so that has also led to this lack of interpersonal relationships and closeness and communication, real communication. Nobody's interested in listening to each other's viewpoint anymore. They want you to hear theirs, and that's it.
SPEAKER_03This goes full circle to to your sketchbook, which is um you got these entities that are visiting you, and then you're you're documenting them. Do you sometimes feel that it's a little bit compensatory that that that you're you're having a struggle connecting with the people that you love and connecting with society? And frankly, you feel increasingly alone and isolated, and these beings are coming to visit and say hi to kind of make up for other human beings not being able to fit the bill.
SPEAKER_01I have to tell you that over the last six years, um, I have had probably less visitations than I had for the prior 20 years. So I don't feel like that's true. I feel like that is uh I wish I could say that was true, although it make me look like that crazy ghost lady. You know, not the crazy cat lady. I'm a crazy ghost lady.
SPEAKER_03That's your purpose on this podcast right now is to share that point of view. I find it interesting though that my hypothesis was was wrong. So it seems like when society is more social and integrated and friendlier and more civil, then these creatures kind of pop up and visit the ghost lady, right? And then when you're when you're feeling alienated and fucked up along with everyone else, then they're like, eh. Yeah. Yeah, I don't want to around with her, she's being grungy. Very interesting. But you bring up great points, and I like your point of view, which is very emotional and subjective. That's who I am, and and and creative. Thank you. And you do you do introduce uh a very intriguing idea that we're still in the wake of this in ways that are impacting because even just personally, again, to be frank, it's like I find myself increasingly alienated from friends and family. And these podcasts are my way of connecting with people and learning, and and and I feel blessed for for doing these. I make time to do these. Uh, but it's but it also shows how the other aspect of my life is just not what it was. Where is everybody? I feel like everyone's checked out and they don't give a shit.
SPEAKER_01That's not it though. They do give a shit, but they are so wrapped up in their own misery, just like we are, just like I am. I'm wrapped up in my own stuff so much, and I reach out, I do reach out, but everybody is so busy trying to connect with themselves that they're not connecting with anybody else.
SPEAKER_03I just want to reiterate that that's uh a profound observation. It's one of those observations that are so screamingly obvious that you go duh. But you put it into a great context, which is it's just worse than it was in terms of human beings not connecting. I also I also find this degradation of civility and politeness and even basic etiquette.
SPEAKER_00Manners, where are your manners?
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. And then uh I I think it was Nietzsche who said at some point that if if manners go, that manners and basic politeness are the surest sign of a society's well-being above all, right? The granddaddy of the Ubermensch insisted on politeness, and and I find that no accident, which is and I think he's right. If we if we jettison civility and the gratitude that is underneath that, then our raw our raw humanity is out the window. It's it's like where where do we go from there?
SPEAKER_01I don't know. We need to reintroduce empathy and sympathy and feeling for other people, you know. Treat those, treat other people the way you want them to treat you. That's gone right out the window.
SPEAKER_03It seems like a reflex action to the survival mode where I almost died and I was on my own, and now I don't trust anyone, including especially myself. And that and that's a real trend. So rather than being a Debbie Downer here, what what do you think could fix this?
SPEAKER_01We need to heal. For one thing, and I I say this a lot on my podcasts. That's don't feed the beast. You know, there's a beast out there who likes to feed on our fear and our anger and our jealousy and our hatred. Uh, don't feed the beast. That is a number one. Don't worry, don't be, and that's so hard nowadays because we're all struggling with our bills and our families and our health and our jobs and our cars and all of these things. You know, your average guy is just struggling every single day. So it's very difficult to keep in mind that somebody else may have some feelings that you need to take into account. But I think that that's the secret right there. Remember that you're dealing with a human being here who has feelings and a family and a life of their own.
SPEAKER_03Sounds like empathy is one of the the mad the secret sauce that could help us. A little more empathy, a little more caring.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_03And and shifting the attention away from ourselves and our own bullshit, and frankly, giving giving a shit about other people. That might be a start. That's right.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_03That that sounds good. I think that that's a great way to cap a very interesting conversation. I want to put links to your to your book in the description below. They can buy it online.
SPEAKER_01Anywhere you can buy books, you can buy my book, The Adventures of a Sketch Diary. You can also get it on my publisher's website, which is hangarwhenpublishing.com, or you can find it on my own website, which is ColleenKaufman.com.
SPEAKER_03Great. I'll put all three links in the description here. Thank you so much. Colleen Kaufman, retired visual effects artist for stage and screen, current ghost lady who has brought to life the critters and fritters who come to visit her. Critters and fritters sharing. And to me, the big takeaway is open your mind and most importantly, open your heart to possibilities. And and I think that the biggest challenge here isn't just that we're not feeling enough empathy toward each other, but we're not open minded and open hearted enough to embrace different people and different possibilities that could really make our lives more interesting and better. And I think you're doing that with your ghost lady journeys. And thank you so much for making time on Inc. vs the algorithm. Like, comment, share, everybody.
