Long Con: Sterlin Harjo & Cannupa Hanska Luger, Ep 11

Long Con is a series of conversations between Director Sterlin Harjo and Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger about life, art, film, history and everything in between - informally shared from the lens of two contemporary Native American artists and friends actively participating in the record of the 21st century.

Sterlin Harjo is an award winning Seminole/Muscogee Creek filmmaker who has directed three feature films and a feature documentary all of which address the contemporary Native American lived experience. Harjo is a founding member of the five-member Native American comedy group, The 1491s. Sterlin’s latest project Reservation Dogs, is a television show created in collaboration with Taika Waititi, now available to watch on FX. 

Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multidisciplinary artist who creates monumental and situational installations and durational performance and often initiates community participation and social collaboration. Raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, he is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota descent. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:04

I mean we obviously we talk about the year the end of the year and the new year, right?

SPEAKER_06 0:08

Oh it's 2025 to 2026. Yeah. This is the first day. 2026. Happy New Year's. Let's talk about what a crazy year it was. No, my year was really good and it wasn't crazy.

SPEAKER_04 0:25

I didn't say bad. I said crazy. Yeah. Tell us how good it was.

SPEAKER_06 0:29

That's what I'm saying. I I think I will also hurt the feeling. We never are afraid of that in here. And like the void? Staring into the void. Oh, we do.

SPEAKER_04 0:46

Have fun. Remember if it's eating if it's eating you, you just scratch it.

SPEAKER_06 0:51

Scratch it. Go in here. This area. Yeah. Eyeballs. Try to sever that cat tendon right now.

SPEAKER_04 1:00

You think this is gonna work? There's recording.

SPEAKER_06 1:02

Fuck, I hope so. Anyway, back to KJ.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

That's pretty. Oh, I always wanted one of these. It's nice. Do you have any of the ones, you know, the ones where you can like cook on top?

SPEAKER_04 1:20

Or like hot key have like the little stove on top?

SPEAKER_06 1:24

Like a stove, like a stove? Yeah. Like the old school the stovetop, yeah. I so my water in the studio is cold coming out of the sink down here. Right. And so I have all these stainless steel uh buckets that I just put on top of here to heat my water up. That's nice. For while I'm working.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Do you make tea with that water?

SPEAKER_06 1:44

No, I do have a water boiler down here. I there's things that are down here that just came in down here that I never use. I just got water, like drinking water. Right. Like a little drinking water station.

SPEAKER_04 1:54

So we are in Chinupa's um studio. It's pretty amazing. There's there's lots of uh things that he's built all over the place.

SPEAKER_06 2:02

Welcome.

SPEAKER_04 2:03

And there's a giant kiln.

SPEAKER_06 2:04

Welcome everybody. Um this has been sitting here for about a year unfired, and I finally fired it.

SPEAKER_04 2:14

It kind of looks like a giant egg, but it's a drum, apparently.

SPEAKER_06 2:20

What is it really? It's really a drum. It's called an Uudu. Wow, that's cool. It's like an African-style drum. Whoa.

SPEAKER_04 2:26

Um was it part of a bigger project?

SPEAKER_06 2:29

No, I You just wanted to test out the kiln or what?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

I just wanted to see what I could do.

SPEAKER_06 2:34

No. Uh I had a friend ask me about it like probably eight years ago. And uh was like, have you ever made one? And I was like, no. So now if you ever ask me again, I can say yes.

SPEAKER_04 2:47

So part of your day is making stuff that aren't a part of bigger projects. It's kind of like testing things, or just or just like keeping stuff working and whatever, keeping your finger joints loosed. Um and then you do bigger projects, right? Because you have a lot of stuff that you don't actually have for like an art show or anything, just kind of a round that you've made.

SPEAKER_06 3:08

Yeah. I will say that that is what I'm calling in for 2026. What's that? Um I want to so the answer to your question is no. Almost every single thing that you see that's laying around was like pieces that either failed in the process of working on a larger exhibition. Got it. And so it uh, you know, sometimes I'll make extra.

SPEAKER_04 3:36

You abandon something.

SPEAKER_06 3:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or you know, try something out, it doesn't work, walk away instead of chasing a problem. Right. You know. Um so there's a lot of like ceramic bits and pieces kind of kicking around in the studio. The mostly what you're looking at when you look in here right now is I have a huge pile of trash up against my garage door, which consists mostly of um uh packing materials.

SPEAKER_04 4:04

So uh is that so you can pack stuff? It's it's or it came in with that.

SPEAKER_06 4:09

It came in with that. So things coming to me that got filled up. I'm working on the Sydney biennial this year um in the studio presently, so on the on the workbench, that's what I have. I'm I'm uh uh gold leafing some teeth for these um dingo skulls. I have seven dingo skulls and rigged a um uh I had a friend of mine named Gordo from Earth come on down. Gordon Clement. Uh Clement Clement is how he says it. Oh, Clement. Um but uh uh we he created this kind of like valve system and it and it it allows these seven dog skulls, which are actually ceramic whistles with gold teeth. With gold teeth. I'm I'm gilding the teeth right now. Um and it's uh I'm the funny thing is I'm not a hundred percent happy with how they look. Why? Um they look pretty great. Why aren't you happy? Because I'm too close to it.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

But why aren't you happy with them?

SPEAKER_06 5:15

The the trying to gild around these teeth is tricky. I'm not uh I'm not a a great gold leafer in the realms of gold leafing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:27

So that's the part you're upset with is the gold leaf the gold leaf.

SPEAKER_06 5:30

Yeah, the aesthetic of the gold leaf. I I just don't, I'm not crazy.

SPEAKER_04 5:33

So you just kind of like you have this thing and you kind of wrap the tooth. Yeah. And then you have to cut the edges that you don't want.

SPEAKER_06 5:40

No, it's it's way more complicated than that, unfortunately. There's an adhesive that you have to paint on and let dry for a little bit so it's tacky, and then you take the gold leaf, which is just like ultra thin foil, and uh press it onto it. Right. And it's not uh it's not a hundred percent every time, so you kind of have to do it a little bit if you want to build up the gold. Um I've been paint pre-painting the teeth gold uh underneath the uh gold leaf so that it's the sparkle of the gold leaf that I think the only reason I'm doing it is the this box that has these valves in it, it runs compressed air into it, and I have these brass fittings that are mounting to the ceramic. Um and the brass of that fitting and the teeth is a nice aesthetic ring. So that's why I'm doing it.

SPEAKER_04 6:39

So how long have you had to work on this? And when is the biannual?

SPEAKER_06 6:42

So I have to have these out by January 5th. They're coming to pick up the work. Right. Um, I've been working on it for I've known about the project for like a year and a half, you know. Right. Um we pitched a few different ideas uh between um between Australia being an uh a huge island continent nation, yeah, um shipping is a is a challenge. So materials, um our our first pitch for it was actually sending my van there. That is. Yeah, actually, this is what I'm learning. And I think if I keep doing these these um uh biennials, I think that's probably the smartest thing to do is actually carve out time to build it where it's being made. Yeah. Um and either bring a small team with me, like a few like in this instance, the guy who built these valve boxes, he does something I have no idea how to do. Like he's programming these little computers.

SPEAKER_04 8:01

Yeah, it looks like some sort of like it looks like the first it looks like if you were to like take apart a spaceship, this looks like the insides of a really complex, amazing door that opens on its own, right? Made by NASA. Right. And that's all it is, it's not the full spaceship. It's just the door.

SPEAKER_06 8:26

It's just the door mechanism. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:28

It's crazy.

SPEAKER_06 8:29

It looks amazing. It's crazy. Well, and we we we built them into um uh pelican cases so that so all of that stuff is built into a pelican case, so it's like uh watertight, like the survivability of all of those little mechanics and just the the look of it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

And is that guy that did this Gordy, you said, is he from here?

SPEAKER_06 8:52

Mm-mm. I think he's originally from But does he live here? No. No, he lives in um I think he has a uh he's got a couple of home bases, but he has this amazing uh bluebird bus that he converted into a home and shop.

SPEAKER_04 9:11

Wow, yeah, so he just drives around?

SPEAKER_06 9:13

Yeah, he since he left I met him at uh this place called MPAC at Rensselaer Polytech, um, doing a project at MPAC, which is uh experimental uh uh movement and uh performance art center, I want to say, something like that. Uh very techy place, very cool. They had a really great group of people working there and still do, but the for the way when I went through, he was a part of that wave of people who were working there. He went to school at uh Rensselaer Polytech for IT, but because of this facility, he had the opportunity to work with using his IT uh education applied to the arts. Um so he's he's got a really interesting niche know-how, you know. Um since he's graduated, and then also since he's left MPAC as a as a space, um he's been kind of cruising around and doing sound and light for like uh outdoor festivals and stuff like that. So he hauls this van to these places, and on it is crazy all of the sound stuff he needs. Um he's got like a little fab shop that he can build on. It's a really when I say it's a bus, it is at the far end of the Venn diagram of school bus van life conversions, where you're like, it looks like the Death Star. No joke. The interior on the thing, he's like he made all of his own cabinets out of like aluminum and shit.

SPEAKER_04 10:52

Anyway, this is awesome though, like your studio. I mean, like, speaking of remodeling, it's like just hearing you talk about his van and then looking around here, because I came here at the beginning when it was like kind of almost a shell. Yeah. You first had like a loft to stay. The person that was like helping you build it was like living in or something.

SPEAKER_06 11:10

Yeah, that's true, that's true. So it originally, my studio originally came from Home Depot and it was a Tuftshed. And um, it was an 18-foot by 20-foot, like two-story garage that Tough Shed had for a while. Um, I had to put in a foundation, and then they built it at another facility, flat-packed it in here on a truck, right, and just snapped it together. Since then, we added on a 30-foot by 30-foot kind of clay studio off the back of that tuftshed. And um, so it is kind of a little Frankenstein of a of a space.

SPEAKER_04 11:46

But it also I want to do something like this to my my garage just to have it like a fucking heater, yeah. Wood burning stove.

SPEAKER_06 11:55

Yeah, uh yeah, there's a wood stove in here that used to be in our house. So when we did the addition on here, um nobody wanted to come out here to do any work because I live kind of rural. Yeah. And um so all of the subcontractors for the project needed to be incentivized. So we did an addition on our house as well. And uh the whole front half of my house, the entryway where you walk through.

SPEAKER_04 12:22

Well, how does that incentivize it? They just needed more work. More work. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 12:25

Yeah, yeah. So if they're gonna pour this foundation, how about we pour two foundations, you know? So it, you know, in order to get them to come out, they will it needed to be worth their while. Right. And so we did um New Mexico feels different in that way.

SPEAKER_04 12:39

It's like it's like gunslingers. It's like I I gotta I gotta I can fix the pulley system, you know, like it's like I can fix your door latch, but you're gonna have to get somebody else to fix the door latch.

SPEAKER_06 12:53

You're gonna No, no, no, not somebody else. Or it's like you talk to me. My cousin.

SPEAKER_04 12:57

My cousin. My cousin. Or you talk to someone that's like uh, yeah, you gotta be careful, man. Don't like, you know, I'll give you a name of a guy that can fix anything. You don't want to just get anyone, you know, it's like aren't people like like bonded and like licensed and stuff?

SPEAKER_06 13:13

They totally are, they totally are. There is also like uh um, it's a low population density state, yeah. Right? So there is certain counties. I'm in a county that's like probably the highest regulated, right? You know, Santa Fe County. Um, but like a mile and a half from here is another county where the like the building codes are completely like if it stands and you're willing to live in it, count it, you know. Um but I think because of that low population density, um everybody kind of knows everybody. Like if you get into any niche here, you end up meeting almost everybody who works in that periphery.

SPEAKER_03 14:00

Right.

SPEAKER_06 14:00

And in that instance, word of mouth and um uh reliability like mean something in a way, you know. But it is yeah, it is a little weird. Because you you also, you know, everybody also has that little that hustle component, you know, where it's like um what's good for me isn't good for me alone, it could be good for the whole family. Right.

SPEAKER_04 14:26

Um so like you know, I think like one thing that I find, I mean, because it's such a different world that I'm in, um you seem to like you have these like long-moving projects. I mean, not that I don't, but like you'll have an idea.

SPEAKER_05 14:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:45

And it almost feels like your ideas, tell me if I'm wrong. It's not like it's not like you it's almost a lot of like, I want to see if I can do that.

SPEAKER_06 14:55

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yes, I would say that there are there were a couple of choices that I made early that um I'm grateful for making those choices, but I'm also running into the edge of what those choices provided, like the new questions, the new challenges. So coming out of the Institute of American Indian Arts 20 something, yeah. Um I was so afraid of being pigeonholed. Yeah. Because that I just saw it. You saw a lot of it. I saw it over and over and over and over. And so I would try to make something completely different every time I did a body of work. And I would always work in like a series, you know. Let me let me let me hash this idea out and then jump to something else.

SPEAKER_04 15:49

That I saw, which was those stereos. Stereotype, the the like the headdress on those stereo ideas.

SPEAKER_06 15:57

Right. Which I recently came back to. Yeah. You know, on what? I did this project called Speechless, and it was all giant speakers.

SPEAKER_03 16:05

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_06 16:05

Um, but the idea of making those speakers was me thinking about those.

SPEAKER_04 16:10

Sure, but like what I'm saying, too, more so is the scale. It was a small scale. Yeah. And your stuff just grew to like, you know, where you're making giants. Yeah. You know.

SPEAKER_07 16:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:19

And that thing that you had last time in here that's now gone, it was the hands.

SPEAKER_06 16:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:26

That the giant hands and stuff. It's fucking huge, man.

SPEAKER_06 16:30

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that all went into an exhibition that's open right now in Omaha.

SPEAKER_05 16:35

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_06 16:36

Um, I tend to build like build on a theme. Um, but to come back to even the first question that you asked me was like, do I, you know, do I get to kind of play around with ideas? Like, I do, but I'm always working towards a goal on it.

SPEAKER_04 16:56

And I and I think I would like to spend more time making things without it being well because scale, the scale that we're talking about, makes it harder to play around.

SPEAKER_06 17:08

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:09

You have to commit and it takes a while.

SPEAKER_06 17:11

Totally, totally. But the only way to learn about scale is to make in scale. So I've been teaching myself how to do things um without a safety net. I'm just like, this is what I'm gonna make for this show, right? And I'm gonna do it. And then so I start doing it and I'm learning along the way how it's actually done. And then by the time I finish, um, I actually have a better awareness of how it could be done better. Right. You know, and then because I was so afraid of being pigeonholed, I'll jump to a completely new project and not get to like apply what I learned through the process of making the other one. So I'm interested, there were things that I learned along the way that um I would like to kind of expound upon, you know. Uh I find that too.

SPEAKER_04 17:59

There's things that I yeah, I mean, I think Reservation Docs 2 was like one way to do that. It kind of took all of my films that I had been making up until then, right? I found ways to put pieces of them in the whole thing and like kind of talk about that subject or whatever more, you know.

SPEAKER_06 18:13

Well, and that is a series, right? Like the difference between like you know, doing a motion picture show and a series is that you can hash out a bunch of different ideas. And you can actually hone them towards the revisit ideas and whatever.

SPEAKER_04 18:29

What is it, what is like so we're in your studio. What is the biggest nightmare fail that happened in here?

SPEAKER_06 18:36

I have a good one. Okay. So those big hands that you saw? Um, there was another pair of big hands before you saw the one. And you're talking about that pot, right? Where those hands were wrapping up wrapped. So I that was the central piece for this exhibition. And I had um, oh look, I got the um I got a uh catalog from that exhibition.

SPEAKER_05 19:01

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_06 19:02

And in this catalog is the other piece that failed. Oh, really? Yeah, because they came down and took photos early because it was a process exhibition. Oh wow. So in the catalog is a giant pair of hands that I had made, that's a big bowl. And um I was pushing hard to get these things done, yeah, and I threw it in the kiln and fired it before it was totally dry. Right. And I came down and it it didn't even get to, I was actually sitting in the studio um while it was firing, and it got up to about 400 degrees, and I heard this um uh shift coming from my kiln. My kiln's like, it's like six feet tall and like four and a half feet wide in the other two dimensions, and I'm sitting like eight feet away from it, yeah, and I hear this shift, right? Something inside just goes, you know, and I was like, fuck, I know what this is, you know. And so I go to just shut down the the thing because it was only at 400 degrees, it was not even, it's not even ceramic yet, it's still clay, like that's a real low temperature. But at that temperature, the water is expanding because it's boiling at like 200 degrees. So I knew that something, the the water, there was still water in it, and it expanded and shift a rift in the piece. I go up to shut it off, and the fucking thing blows up. What? Yeah, it goes boom, and all of this um uh uh it's called like refractory uh uh the clay bricks that are on the inside of the kiln to insulate it, they're real soft and powdery. When that fucking thing exploded, this like rectangle of dust shot out of the doors like in all directions. Whoa. And I'm standing right next to it. I I I like fucking hit the deck, you know?

SPEAKER_03 21:04

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_06 21:04

And uh uh shut it off, and I was like, that was it, it's fucking toast. I opened it up and it was in destroyed 10,000 pieces. Whoa. I mean, just total shatter. In fact, there's like three uh five-gallon pails right over by my sink, and in that are those hands. Um I cleaned out my kiln, got it out of all of the elements, um, vacuumed it, and my son Seisha was smashing up any of the large pieces with a hammer, and we put them all back in those buckets and filled them with water, so I'll get to make something out of it.

SPEAKER_02 21:47

Wow, really? It'll be reusable?

SPEAKER_06 21:49

Yeah, yeah, because it didn't get up to uh right uh high temperature. Wow. Yeah, so it was all still just clay. I was just I fired it too soon. But that was a huge fail in in here.

SPEAKER_04 21:59

I mean that's like I think that project's the most stressed I've ever seen you. When I've come down a couple of times, not stressed, but you were just like the deadline was looming. A lot of work to get done. Probably because some of it was exploded in your kiln.

SPEAKER_06 22:14

Yeah. Well, so by time you came down here, that explosion in the kiln, that ate up my, you know, my last one up on the project. You know, my last life on the project. I was like, I can't, I can't have any more fails like that. Right. Like, that's it. Now everything has to go perfect. Perfect. Wow. Um, and those hands that you saw when you came down was me taking everything I learned from making those first ones that exploded. I built these in like half the time. Oh, yeah. And it's they were better.

SPEAKER_04 22:50

Why? Would you like? I mean, like, what the building of it?

SPEAKER_06 22:53

Um wall thickness, uh uh shape of the bottom of the of the of the thing. Basically, when you see something explode, there were large enough pieces that I could you you can almost open up the kiln and like a fucking forensics guy see what went wrong. Right. You know, if you do it long enough and you've done it long enough, you can see where it's failed and what has happened and and what were the weak points, and so you avoid those on the next one. Right. And um, and that's what I did for for this other piece. Plus, it was taller and not as wide. These ones were wide. It started off as a different thing. It was like they were they were bound to teach me a lesson and fail in the process, you know. It's crazy, man. Yeah, so I was pretty stressed out at that point because I I didn't have any more um fuck-ups. Yeah, no more one-ups. That was my last extra life. Uh uh, but that whole exhibition went off really well, and I was happy. And then there's like a thousand other little fucking failures that just kind of like add up, you know. Any of the there's like pieces all over in here that are um, you know, I've been doing clay for shit, I don't even know.

SPEAKER_04 24:09

Um if you had to give if you had to give up everything, would clay be the thing that you besides one thing, would clay be the thing that you stayed with? Um is that the thing that calls you to the studio most?

SPEAKER_06 24:22

I I it doesn't. I mean, not the most, but it is probably the most cathartic. Right. You know, right. I I think if I had to, if I had to drop all of the other things that I do, um, and not even that I that I drop it, it's just you know what it is? Clay feels like a medium that um I have the most um like I I learn from it. Right, you know, whereas like I know it's possible in any medium that you just get better and better and you learn all these little hacks and little tricks and stuff like that. Um any other medium that I've worked in hasn't taught me things that were applicable to life. To life, exactly, exactly, you know, I'm like painting a you know, cutting a straight line on a canvas is not applicable, right? You know, in the ways that like even the failure and the destruction of that, where it's like get back on too soon.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_06 25:29

Exactly, but you didn't have patience, don't rush it, take it easy. Everything's if you get it.

SPEAKER_04 25:34

So it's 2026 now, first day of first day of the white men's new year, 2026. Yeah, but it is the first day of 2026.

SPEAKER_06 25:45

It is um Gregorians? Do we blame the Gregorians?

SPEAKER_04 25:48

Gregorians, yeah. And then we have uh a year of 2025. Um seems like a lot of people had a bad 2025 year.

SPEAKER_06 25:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:59

Well, I mean I didn't necessarily. I have ups and downs. I think 2024 was worse for me. 2025, I kind of figured some things out about life and people. Yeah, you know. Um and then I made a show for half of that. Right. Um, and then the rest of the half it came out, and you know, and there's like hard stuff that happened in the lowdown. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 26:28

Is it present? Is it present time?

SPEAKER_04 26:31

Yeah, yeah. But like present time, like reservation does is present time, you know, like it's present time in my mind. Yeah, yeah, but all of my influences come from the 90s too, so like and 70s. So there's those sort of influence and shout-outs, and sort of that world in there that you know, because they have cell phones. I mean, like the you know, like there's iPhones being fucking sent around.

SPEAKER_06 26:58

That's true. That's true. Yeah, I I but I like thinking that like well, there's there's also something in like you grew up in the Midwest. Yeah. I grew up in the Midwest. And I also grew up in in Phoenix, Arizona. So like this the going between these two places um was always funny to me because I always felt like back up in North Dakota, it was like it was like eight years behind.

SPEAKER_04 27:24

Well, yeah, that's the thing. It's like in Oklahoma, like you go, you don't always know because like we're we're 10 years behind, five years behind, probably, you know. I mean, like, even like if you look at like when Tulsa's counterculture happened, everywhere else it was the 69, it was like the 60s, you know. Tulsa's was 70s, right? You know, that's when it like like Leon Russell and all of them, and like the culture changed there. It's just kind of, you know, I think we take everything a little slower. And so because of that, you can kind of incorporate things that are already done into the show.

SPEAKER_06 28:00

Totally.

SPEAKER_04 28:00

But I also think that like having a strong point of view and being specific about stuff and having a strong point of view um helps with that. Because it is coming from my brain.

SPEAKER_05 28:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:13

And it feels like, you know, a little different. Well, and I mean But I think any great filmmakers, not saying that I'm great, but like it but you know, if you look at David Lynch's stuff, you're not watching the current world as it is. It's like it's a fucked up filter that you're watching that story through, you know.

SPEAKER_06 28:31

Right, and it's his it's it's all of his experiences recontextualized in a in a timeline, but like having that timeline be semi-fluid, like you can be two years behind in Tulsa, in Bismarck, today, yeah, in 2026, and it still feels like 10 years compared to everywhere else. You know, like with the exposure to the online shit and all of that sort of stuff, like you you're you're you have access to the pulse, but it's just socially applicable, takes a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 29:05

And I think most of it is I mean, it's the the the thing that sucks the worst about making shows or movies is dealing with cell phones. That causes so many problems.

SPEAKER_06 29:18

Like I mean, you want to know what's wrong with 2025.

SPEAKER_04 29:21

Cell phones, cell phones, yeah, exactly. Well, and it also complicates these stories because it's like, well, they would just call the person.

SPEAKER_06 29:28

Right.

SPEAKER_04 29:28

They're not gonna walk down the street and go find them, you know. Right, right.

SPEAKER_06 29:32

Like, uh, you know, or like but I think of like my old man who's has a cell phone, granted it's a flip phone, but all he does with it is let the bot battery drain in his left breast.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Yeah, there's people, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_06 29:44

You know? Yeah. And I I I feel how are you on the phone? I'm not great. You know I'm not great. Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_04 29:50

But I mean, do you like do you does it give you anxiety if you're not No.

SPEAKER_06 29:54

Yeah. Um I calendars give me anxiety. Oh yeah. You know?

SPEAKER_04 30:00

The only thing that I don't the only thing that's hard for me about the phone is kids.

SPEAKER_06 30:05

Like your kids being on the phone.

SPEAKER_04 30:07

Yeah, like no, like my kids being with their mom or something or somewhere else, and I want to be able to communicate. So I'm it causes me a little bit of anxiety.

SPEAKER_06 30:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's because we know that we can, and if you don't, then that's something like that.

SPEAKER_04 30:25

I would love to go back to like 1995 when none of us had phones and just see what life was like. I remember having to like call someone's house and then being like, yeah, he'll probably be back around four. Uh-huh. Well, I'll show up at like four thirty.

SPEAKER_05 30:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:39

They may or may not be there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:41

You know? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:42

But that was a roll of the dice. And I and back then, I wasn't driving there. I was walking across the town of holding the local homeland because I walked everywhere. It was like a fucking MO.

SPEAKER_06 30:53

You didn't have a BMX bicycle?

SPEAKER_04 30:55

I didn't fucking, we didn't, we didn't, we did, but I remember one time uh dri I lived out in the country, and I remember it was about a four miles, it was about three and a half miles to the highway. Four mile, four miles to the city or to the town. And um maybe longer than that, maybe five or six miles, but I can't remember. But it was about three and a half, four miles to the dirt to the highway. So it was all dirt road. And I was riding my bike, I was gonna ride it to town. And so I'm cruising on my bike and blow a tube. And I was like, fuck. So I just rode it on a rim for like a mile and then just ditched the bike. I was like, I'll come back and get it, and I just threw it in a ditch. Uh-huh. I started walking, got to the highway, and I remember this group of like native dudes pulled up, and I know them, like they're one of them was like a friend of the family. He'd been at my house maybe a couple times when I was a kid. And um they were trashed. I mean, on a couple day bender, and they knew who I was, you know, and the pull out.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Hey, hey, I know your mom and dad. I know your Uncle Marty. You want to ride? I'm like, yeah, I know who you are. Uh yeah, give me a ride.

SPEAKER_04 32:12

And so I get in with them, completely trashed, and I think beer had been spilt all over the back seat because it's just wet. My pants are wet now. That's beer. I don't know. And we drive into town, and you know, they don't take me straight to where I'm needing to go. They have to make like four stops along the way and get more beer and go to a couple houses. And I'm just like kind of nervous, but along for the ride. Right. But like it's also that that feeling that I got, I think, as a kid, which is like, this could go wrong, you know. And I don't have my parents here, like, this could go really wrong. Um, but I'm just gonna try to be smart and keep going. But I think about like my kids in that situation, like, there's no way I would let that happen.

SPEAKER_06 32:56

Yeah, there's no way. I know. It's crazy. I know. I I was, I mean, even like the sanctioned things, there's just a few, it was like two summers ago. I was back in North Dakota and I was uh Sanction things. Well, uh I I'm bringing this up because like that story, like your parents may or may not have thought that that was a good idea. Yeah, you know, hopping in with these cats because they know them, they know their history and all that sort of stuff. So I would consider that a unsanctioned, but let's just get from here to there kind of scenario. I was driving tractors at 11, right? You know, and like baling hay and like driving this old like fencing truck back home from the fields uh at eleven. I know. And I was sitting in a tractor with my boys a couple of years ago, and my oldest boy was eleven, and I was like, there is no way in hell. I know the heavy machinery that could kill you. I I mean, I just wouldn't trust him to not like run over a fence, drive onto the interstate, like not like lose uh focus, you know. Uh uh and and I thought that was that was hilarious. I mean, fuck, we were I was just thinking about this. We our hideout when we were kids, so bicycles, going back to that, and just getting around, you know. Um I remember there was there was probably like 15 stolen bikes, you know, that we would like spray paint and uh uh like repair and fix up, and they just became like community bicycles, you know, right? Where like you'd ride it to the store and get off to go get something and you'd come back out and it would no longer be there. Right. But then you'd see it again at the basketball courts and you'd go still ride it. And there was like 15 bikes that just kind of cruised around as like get-around bikes.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

It's like it's like it's like um e-bikes before.

SPEAKER_06 34:55

Totally, totally like rattle can spray paint, like somebody knew somebody lost a bike, right, you know, um, and then and then it just became a part of this network. But I remember we used to have a um we had this hideout uh where we would go and hang out because everywhere we hung out, also everybody from all these different ages also hung out, you know. Like we had tons of like surrogate uncles who were like town drunks or you know, teens who were much older than us hanging out in the same place. The basketball court here or there in front of the store on these stoops. But uh when we me and my cousins, we had this old uh combine, like in 1930s, actually, maybe probably older than that, 20s, like uh uh it was probably pulled by horses, you know, or oxen or whatever. Uh combine for pulling up grain. Yeah. Um, we used to climb in underneath it, and only us could fit like you know, the frame of a of an eight-year-old. Like in the blades? Over the blades, over the tumblers, and into the interior where it would thrash the grain. And uh, you know, it was just rusty, like deep, yeah, yeah. Deep rust, that brown. Yeah, you know, it's no longer even orange or red, you know. And we'd hang out inside of this thing. And the only way in was through that fucking over the blades.

SPEAKER_04 36:27

I remember going down and um, I just don't think you could, I was thinking about this the other day. I was down at my hometown and my parents' house, and we used to, and I would do this by myself or with my cousins, we would cut through the back of my parents' house, and there was like a tree line of just timber that led for like you know, an acre led to um this fence that then went into pasture land that was where they build hay and you know had some ponds and stuff. Cattle. And um, so I would just cross that fence and we would go and we would play like uh fucking hide and seek, or we would go and just climb those bales rows and rows of hay. We would climb the bales and you know, run, jump across them, try to jump and fucking chase each other or whatever. I was like, my key, like I I would be like, even now, like now I would be afraid my kids to like go onto someone else's property, cross a fence line, yeah, and play on their shit. And you know, when we were kids, we like were were were aware that oh the owner of this could come get us or tell us to leave, but whatever, you know. Yeah. But they never did, you know, like we're just fucking played by there. I didn't care. I think about like when my uncle was uh well, my uncle was strapped for cash, which was often, uh, he would get me and my cousins, and they would do it more than me, but I went a couple times to go uh pick pecans, which meant drive around dirt roads, back roads, find a pecan grove or even just one tree. Uh we had burlap sacks, and you would get out, sneak in through the fence, and he would shake the branches and they would be falling off, and you just fill these burlap sacks up with pecans.

SPEAKER_05 38:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:21

And then you took them, he would take them to town or wherever and sell them, you know, and they make make money for the week or whatever, you know. And it was like totally just on other people's land. We had no land with a pecan tree.

SPEAKER_06 38:34

Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. We didn't have pecans. Yeah. So you tell me that story, I'm like, uh. It was all it was all alfalfa.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 38:44

Mostly corn. Um, you know, it's it's it's interesting. The the that gap between cell phones, like the escalation and the speed at which our world has changed, just in our lifetimes. Yeah. We were just talking about this. Oh, train dreams.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 39:03

You know, when Ginger and I were watching Train Dreams, we were like, imagine how weird it was. The the story of this guy's life, yeah, the things that had changed in his lifetime. Yeah, you know, was was I interesting.

SPEAKER_04 39:18

I was thinking of Train Dreams today and uh Marty Supreme, and I was like, those are the exact same movies, but about different people. Totally, totally. Just two totally different personalities. Dude, Marty Supreme and that guy were in the world at the same time. Exactly. And they're the exact same story almost, except just two different people with different personalities, with different backgrounds, with different upbrings, and making totally different decisions.

SPEAKER_06 39:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is funny. Yeah, well, I you know, I'm I was thinking about that because of all of those changes, but then I think about the changes that are in my life, and like you're saying, 1995, no cell phone. I mean, really, 2000.

SPEAKER_04 40:03

You know, I didn't have a cell phone until I was 26.

SPEAKER_06 40:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:06

That's I mean, like, there's not a 26-year-old in this world right now that doesn't have a cell phone.

SPEAKER_06 40:12

Right, right. That's true. Yeah. I mean, they're out there.

SPEAKER_04 40:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 40:17

But you don't know about it because they ain't got a cell phone. Right. I mean, like, how do you how do you I I avoided it.

SPEAKER_04 40:25

I avoid it too. That's that's way late.

SPEAKER_06 40:28

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was like 33 before I got uh got a phone. Wow. I mean, I had one. Um, I like got one a couple of times, some like flip phones, you know. And uh it did not make my life better, and I had to pay for it. Right. And I was just like, this is dumb. And so I just stopped trying to pay for a cell phone, you know. You have to pee. I knew it. I knew it. I'm sure we'll go outside and talk into this mic a lot. Yeah, yeah. I'll uh I'm gonna I'm gonna make I'm gonna pour some water into this uh pitcher to make some tea. Oh yeah, good. That's what I'm doing right now. That's what the sound is that you're about to hear. Oh yes. Oh tea's ready. But thinking about thinking about like how things changed, how times changed, how it is the the day one of 2026, um January 1st. Uh I had a really great last year as far as um travel and opportunities and all of that sort of stuff. I was very fortunate. And it's funny because I work like two years out, right? So like the projects that I'm working on right now, I heard about two years ago. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 41:57

Um, and then you you slowly start working towards it. I've found that I'm exhausted because it always, even though I know about it two years out, there's other things that I learned about two years out, and I'm constantly chasing the edge of it's January 1st. These pieces have to go out on the 5th. They're literally getting picked up. Um, and I'm down to the wire again, you know? And I'm like, why am I always down to the wire? You know? If I I've known for so long.

SPEAKER_04 42:27

But it's like, I don't know, I mean, that's like our life as artists. It's like I don't part of my life of being an artist, I have to like absorb and feed off of life, uh-huh, or it doesn't come. Like, like I have to experience, and this happens constantly with my work. Like, I can be running a writer's room or writing something myself, and I'm just like I'm forcing it. And if I'm forcing it, it's not gonna be good. And so I have to like go and experience something, and and that might be as simple as like listening to a song or watching a good movie, uh-huh, or watching something tonally that I think is what I'm trying to do, right? And getting inspired that way, or it could mean, you know, uh going on a trip, or that could mean like going and driving, you know, going on a drive across town, you know, there's so many different ways that I have I can pull from. Sometimes it takes a lot longer, and I just can't and I don't know where it's gonna come from, and I can't force it, and I have to just wait for something to happen, and that happens to me a lot, but that is part of the writing, and that is part of what I do, you know. And I think that like if you were just like, you know, I'm gonna get I've got a year for my new project, I'm gonna get started today, it wouldn't be good. Like, you know, you have to like live life a little.

SPEAKER_06 43:45

I I would a hundred percent agree with that because that is true up through twenty twenty five. It's fucking twenty twenty six now.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

And I am turning a new leaf. I'm gonna be working on day one, I'm gonna be 47.

SPEAKER_06 44:00

In like a month. Right. You know? I'm like, there's gotta be another way. Yeah. And I've gotten really good at doing it this way because of the fucking practice. Can I practice doing it another way?

SPEAKER_04 44:13

Well, I remember there was a time period when I couldn't, I felt like I couldn't write anything unless my life was falling apart, you know, whether it was a breakup or whatever, and I was like, So you self-sabotage.

SPEAKER_06 44:25

And I was outburdened breaking up.

SPEAKER_04 44:26

So I sat self-sabotage for a lot of years. Um and look. And then you learned. And breakups still make me write. I'll write some fucking dime.

SPEAKER_06 44:37

But that's because that's that's muscle memory.

SPEAKER_04 44:39

I know, but I had to learn to teach myself. This is like 10 years ago, where I had to teach myself to try to have some sort of discipline to write without that, without my life fucking like burning down around me. Right. And I was able to. And the other thing, one thing that's really cool about doing TV, um, I had deadlines, and there are hard deadlines. And there are not, you know, a TV show, you know, if you have to shoot an episode next week and you got to prep it this week, and you're doing a page one rewrite on an episode, you have no time to wait for inspiration. Right. It's got to happen tonight, and if it needs to be sent by 4 a.m. Yeah. So they get it the next morning. And that is like so I know whatever is in there, whatever thing that my inspiration can unlock, I can unlock it myself with the right amount of pressure and whatever.

SPEAKER_05 45:32

Right.

SPEAKER_04 45:32

That the idea and the key is to try to be able to unlock that just on a whim. That's getting better at that, but I'm not 100% yet.

SPEAKER_06 45:41

This is what I'm saying. This is this is what I am calling in for 2026.

SPEAKER_04 45:46

For 2026, unlocking the inspiration.

SPEAKER_06 45:50

Yeah, I have opened the door. Yeah. I'm like Well, you had a bird in here the other day. I did that. What kind of bird? It was a flicker tail, which are pretty special birds. It's funny because it's actually pecking a hole in the outside of my my place. They also peck on my other on our house, too. And our house is steel.

SPEAKER_07 46:08

Right.

SPEAKER_06 46:08

So it just goes gang, gang, gang, gang, gang, gang. You know. But I would, my studios would, and uh um, he's pecking a hole in my in my overhang.

SPEAKER_04 46:16

You know, one of our most sacred animals is, and I have tattoos of a couple, um, one from a a shell that was uncovered in Moundsville in an archaeological dig, um at one of our mounds, but um from a but uh is woodpeckers, is the I it was specifically the ivory-billed woodpecker, which they thought is extinct, but then they found some now, but it's down in the southeast of America. But like it was known as like very powerful bird and also like a fucking war bird. Like they like they're fucking like bang your head up against something and that's exactly not afraid.

SPEAKER_06 46:54

Yeah, these are these are like a like a like a woodpecker. Um I mean they do the same thing. I don't I don't know if they are um woodpeckers, specifically woodpeckers, yeah, yeah. Because I know that's like a a species or whatever. Um but they're in that in that realm. Um but uh they keep trying to get into my studio and um sometimes I l sometimes I often leave my door open. Yeah, I think I close it behind me. Oh yeah, and it doesn't close. Um and so I was I So Birdie Bile comes in? Yeah. I many a hummingbird I've rescued from in here. Yeah. The um the flicker tail. Seems like it'd be hard to get them out of here because the the wood, the the hummingbirds are hard to get out.

SPEAKER_04 47:39

But just the way this thing's laid out, it seems like like there's no like big windows up high.

SPEAKER_06 47:43

No, I have to open this garage door. And but the the hummingbirds go above the garage door when it's open. So I have to just catch them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:54

I had uh one day I had um, I'll tell this story. I don't think my brother will care. He's gonna care. Yeah. Um he doesn't listen to our podcast. No, no.

SPEAKER_04 48:04

I'll tell him to I'll tell him that I didn't care that he cared if he cares. Uh just did the pretty crazy thing where um we I was sitting in my office uh that's out in the country that you've been to, little studio uh outside of Tulsa. And I'm sitting there, and all of a sudden, this crow comes to my office window and just starts freaking out on my office window, and like squawking and squawking and pecking and squawking, flapping its wings. It was like frantically trying to tell me something. And I was like kind of freaked out. I was like, what is happening? Like it was just freaking out on my window, and then I banged on the window and it took off, flew over, you know, it's a big building, flew over the building and went to the back window and started doing the same thing. Wow, to the the main part, and started like squawking and hitting the window doing the same thing. And I did I took a video of it and I posted it on like a uh Instagram like story, and I was like, I think this, I think this crow is trying to tell me something. And what do you think? And then my friend, a friend of mine that I grew up with, she wrote me and she's like, Hey, I'm not trying to like say anything about anything or like scare you, but this happened to me, and you know, someone in my family passed and like just let me know, which like obviously that's what I was thinking, right? Warning me if something happened.

SPEAKER_05 49:34

Right, right.

SPEAKER_04 49:35

Well, that night, my brother, I wake up the next morning at 4 a.m. Or like maybe the next next morning at 4 a.m. to my brother. My mom, this is the worst phone call you could ever get. Like, my mom waking me up at 4 a.m. screaming and crying about my brother. Yeah. And I'm just like, I know he's dead, you know, like I know he's dead, the way that she's talking. Yeah. And I can hear my dad in the background, and she's like, he's been stabbed. Your brother's been stabbed, and um we don't know if he's okay or if he's making it or if he's alive or what. Um and I'm like, what do you mean? And uh she said, I won't say this name, but she said the name of someone who I know who had just got out of prison maybe not long ago ended up coming around and is a cousin of ours. Not close, but I was close to his mom. Um and he's friends was friends with my brother back in the day. And um she said this person did it, and I'm like automatically like, oh fuck, like what happened? You know, and he had mentioned this person to me and said, Oh yeah, he wants me to be in his wedding. I'm kind of like, and my brother at the time was like, I don't know if I should, I don't know, we're not that close, like, but you know, I want to be cool and whatever. Um, and so I get this call where I'm like, I don't know if my brother's alive or dead, and I have to go. I call my oldest daughter, I tell her what's going on. She heads straight over to my house because my kids were there, and their mom I called to who came over as well. I think my daughter came over first for because they were asleep and I wasn't gonna wake them up. I need to leave. So I got my shit together, left. They said that they were metaflighting him to Tulsa. So I found the the hospital that he was going to, and it was just a crazy story of like, um uh, you know, and he lived. It was crazy, it was like hours, we didn't know. And then eventually a tribal cop came out. He was investigating it. Tribal cop came out and he was like, hey, just so y'all know, he's fine. Like he's talking to me. I was like, we were like, oh great, thanks. And like he was okay. Obviously, it took some time to heal, lots of trauma involved and whatever. Um, but I I I obviously couldn't help but think of this bird like coming and telling me this thing's happening, you know. So if I remember I got up and I somebody had just, Dana Tiger just gave me tobacco, given me tobacco that was from our homeland, which is like a super sacred type of tobacco. And um I uh I just remember like pull she was like, anytime you need something, pull it and pray over it. And I did it that night. The first thing that I did was that, and I was just like, I don't know what, but I thought I was for sure it was like, oh, that's done. Like it's crazy. That's a crazy phone call to wake up to.

SPEAKER_06 52:49

That's pretty wild. You should have acted the moment now that crows rattle on the window.

SPEAKER_04 52:56

Exactly. What should I have done? There's nothing. Hey, whatever you're doing, just don't do anything crazy.

SPEAKER_06 53:01

Don't do anything. Let's go see a movie. Right. Let's all go. Go see a movie. Right.

SPEAKER_04 53:07

Let's just sit in my house and look at each other.

SPEAKER_06 53:10

Everybody come over here. The crows.

SPEAKER_04 53:12

But I mean, you know, we have that a lot. Obviously, like, I don't know how y'all are up there, but like with Creeks and Seminoles, where owls were just like, you know, as soon as you see one, it's like, oh, any day now I'm gonna hear of someone passing away. You know, it's always that for us.

SPEAKER_06 53:27

Yeah. Um Yeah, uh because I'm from mixed nations, yeah, it varies. You know, some of them, same story, right? You know, where it's like, but this is like, oh no, it's an honor. They're here for us. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you just get to choose which I get to choose. Yeah, I get to choose. Choose your own adventure. Yeah, yeah. I never choose family members gonna die. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm like, if I since I have choice, I'm gonna go with never this being that can see farthest into the night, that can see.

SPEAKER_04 53:57

I mean, I was walking with a friend of mine, I won't mention his name, but um, it was uh, he's an Alaska native dude. We were hiking one time in this big canyon, and it started getting dark, and we just started hearing this owl, super close, and we'd been talking about it, you know, like, and we I knew his feet his feelings about it, and I knew that his tribe was similar to mine. And um, so we're walking and we started hearing this owl. He's like, we're both looking at each other, let's get out of here, man. And we're kind of like far in, you know, far into this um can't be high. And so we're booking it out of there, and it felt like it was kind of following us, like it kept kind of the whole way, kind of seeing us out. And we get out, walk straight to his pickup.

SPEAKER_06 54:39

Never seeing it, just hearing it.

SPEAKER_04 54:41

Never seeing it, just hearing it. Hit the highway, and he s shits you not. His phone rings. I'm just sitting in his truck. He gets a call that his cousin died, his close cousin, right after we left that canyon.

SPEAKER_06 54:54

Dang. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's why I always choose the other one.

SPEAKER_04 54:58

Yeah, you gotta choose the other one. One time I was like, what great mystery are you at the end of the day? One time I was uh I don't know, this is a weird one. I went hunting one time, and I was hunting on this guy's land that we were kind of leasing, and I went on to this uh this dry creek bed and I sat up top on the set sat up top on the creek bed and was just kind of waiting to see if there's deer would always pass through there, and so I was seeing if I saw anything and had a I think I had a bow and I was gonna, you know, get a deer. And I'm sitting there oh no, earlier before I went to this place. I went to the I had been two leases going, uh probably 30 minutes apart, 20 minutes apart. And I was at this other lease, and it's a much more bigger land. I grew up kind of hunting on this land a little bit, like through high school, and I'm walking out by myself, and dad had to work or something, and I'm walking out, and I just see in the corner of my eye this and I turn and look, and this bird had landed on this just like stick, this like pole that was sticking out of the ground, uh-huh, wooden pole. And I got my binoculars out and I looked, and just fucking owl, midday, it was like a you know, 11 a.m. Yeah, just fucking turns its head and looks at me like from uh from way off, but like close enough. I was like, fuck, I was like, I'm leaving. I left that land. I was like, I'm going the other land. And I went and sat down, it was just on my mind, you know. And I went and sat down on that riverbed or that creek, dry creek bed, and I was waiting and waiting, and all of a sudden I just felt it was like on a it was like on a fantasy shoot movie or something where like I just felt tired. Like I just fucking like I just like exhaustion kicked in and I laid down and fell asleep and I woke up and it felt kind of like I had I don't know, like I had the chills and like I was sick. And I got up and I just went to my car. And I remember like I just felt like I needed to eat. I went and ate and like I just I was like sick for like that night. After that, almost like almost like for the next three months, I would have night chills and sweats, and like wake up in a sweat, and like and probably for the next up to six months, I felt real freaking off. And then I just sort of regulated and got okay and quit. But it was after that. I always I always attribute it to that. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 57:22

Yeah, it's weird. That is weird, yeah. Yeah, uh I I but 2026, I've never good omens. Yeah, yeah. I've I've I've I've seen I've seen our our owl relatives many times. And um I think because of the privilege of of being able to choose, they've never we're were never followed by anything ill, um, fortunately. So um yeah, good omens. Let's bring those in for 2026. Okay, so I had I had a good year, I had a good year in 2025. There was a level of like we were talking about it on the way down here, and I was like, I don't know if I want to talk about 2025 because I had a good year, you know, and I know it wasn't a great year. And I and I'm and I'm bouncing that off of everything that I'm getting exposed to.

SPEAKER_04 58:16

It wasn't a good year, but I mean, sometimes you have good years and sometimes you don't. My year was I wouldn't call it good. It was a lot of good that happened, but there was also a lot of pain.

SPEAKER_06 58:24

There were a lot of fortunate things that happened. I will tell you that I also carried the the um um just being like aware of where our society was going politically.

SPEAKER_04 58:37

Yeah I mean that's kind of what's made everything dark, I think.

SPEAKER_06 58:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and and watching it and trying to flex what power I have in the positions and my proximity to power, it it just feels um futile, man.

SPEAKER_04 58:57

And that's what I was gonna say is like I think that's what we learned this year. I think we learned this year that our voices aren't as powerful as maybe we thought. And I think that's fucked a lot of people up. Yeah. Because and Trump has helped show us this. Right, but his voice is somehow strong. Well, the system in which his voice uh can use is strong. Not his voice, I mean he's a bitch, but like the system in which he is able to uh manipulate and wield is very powerful.

SPEAKER_05 59:30

Right.

SPEAKER_04 59:30

And the media that comes along with that's powerful, the voices that come along with that, and like you know, you have it's it's it it's become relegated to like like fighting the power and and everything has become regulated to social media, right? Which I think is what we're just not our voices aren't powerful, it's the way that we use them. The platform on the platform is not very powerful. Right. You know, it is a safe place that they like to keep us to get mad and say things because it doesn't affect them at all. That's what we learned, is it doesn't affect them at all. You know, there is power in let's say, you know, videos being showed of Palestinian children being killed. That's power because you know that that's the that's use of the platform that is powerful because that piped it into everyone's face on their phone. And what did it what did it do? I don't know that it did anything. I'm just saying that that exposure is important no matter what. Yeah, you know. Um whether that caused people to get depressed and do nothing is one thing. Whether it caused people to speak up more is another thing, whether it led to actual um sort of force or like um I mean protest is a weak word for that, but like um if it led to actual like resistance, yeah, I don't know, you know?

SPEAKER_06 1:00:59

Well, and I mean it's at the point at which that I'm like, is resistance the the the answer, you know? And then not saying like submit and follow directly, but my question is has the models in which we've used for uh presenting and expressing our um rage? Not rage disagreement with how these things are going. You know, rage, sure. You know, that that that for sure. Rage on the on the on a social media platform is so empty. Yeah, it's it's like it's like uh there's nothing there's you're not risking anything. It's like gold leaf. Yeah, it's like thin. Very thin.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:53

And it's well, and it's just it also it's but it runs the risk of like keeping people pacified.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:02

Well, you've you're not doing anything.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:04

You feel like you've done something.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:06

Yeah, exactly. That's I feel like I've done something when I share something. Did I? I don't know. I know that's that's the thing that's that's I I mean I think all that people can hope for is they're changing minds. I mean, like, you know, um, but yeah, but real change is I don't know if that's happening. I do believe that art and things like that still have that power. Um, but I think art is even being like weakened because of social media. Like I mean, art because you feel like because artists feel like we're gonna oh you're seeing my work. No, we're not.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:40

Like, no, I'll tell you art is tremendously powerful, and all of us who are doing it out there, like don't stop, keep keep it going, keep it coming. Yes, um uh uh reflect the society. Make people question things, give them questions if they don't got them, you know. Right 100% absolutely useful. Success in art diminishes that because now you are um I mean this was this was the way in which people with power have manipulated artists for a thousand years now, you know, which is fund them.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:26

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:26

You know?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:27

Yeah, no, I know that.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:29

And and and here we are, you know, getting funded. Right. So like where where do we where and how do we flex? And I don't know, it it is a little, it is a little um, I would say that futility sometimes does sit in the position of like, what what what can I even do? Yeah, you know?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:52

I just wonder if like our job is to get people to think differently, slightly even, you know, like not necessarily sweeping change, but like, you know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:04

There's a part of me that also thinks about what um like yes, maybe one or two, yeah, you know, but like on a on a level where you know the the um the tipping point hits, you know. I think we're all collect like you can't you can't do it alone. Yeah. So we're all doing it, right? But we're all doing it in our own ways. Yeah. So we're reaching people. There is a mass that is generating.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:36

I think that's maybe where the power lies, is the mass.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:38

Well, and until that becomes critical, but we don't val the only people who have valued artists in society are not the general masses. You know, it it it's it's fallen into the the support systems of of the phil philanthropy industrial complex, the uh fucking uh capitalist corporate models, you know. These are the people who are actually still throwing enough funding to support people doing the work that's supposed to do the other thing. I think it gets really complicated. Um but I do I I I would agree that there is there isn't financial support necessarily at the point of the masses. Um but the more that we receive, the further that distance is from our base, from our mass. Yeah, for sure. You know, yeah. And that's that's that's a that's a that's a challenging, yeah, tricky question that I'm running into. Well the problem is this.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:47

I mean, the problem is like I feel like up until recently, and Trump and all of this stuff has really kind of pulled the veil on all of that. Up until recently, we bought into the whole system.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:59

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:00

Artists were like, Oh, I'm an artist in this world and I'm making art and it will be popular or not. Uh you know, I will be respected for my integrity as an artist, and I will keep doing this and people and have shows and whatever. That's all in the system too, though. Like, we're all apart, you know. It's a the the system has been shaken.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:24

It's all bullshit. So then you have to look at what you do and go, am I bull is what I do bullshit too? Am I falling in line with that? Am I navigating the bullshit in a way to tell like something truthful or something like meaningful? I don't know, but like that is what I'm faced with. You know, it's like I'm getting funded by corporations and whatever, and yeah, they leave me alone. I get to tell stories and whatever, but it's like I'm a part of they're all a part of this big, we're all a part of this system. And the system has been shaken to its foundation over the last five, six, ten years to where we don't believe a lot. We don't believe what we're seeing in front of our eyes anymore. And how do you do anything? How do you how do you navigate that? Yeah, especially as an artist.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:11

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. There's a you know, once again, calling in, let me let me play more in the studio. Yeah, I'm like, what can I do outside of trying to change the entire world? What can I contribute to the craft?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:28

Oh, yes, you're right. I mean, I had this happen to me the other day. I went to I went to New York City to watch a play. I was doing other things, but I went and watched the play with Ethan. Ethan and I went and watched um Tracy Letz, who played Frank in my show. Went and watched Tracy, he's obviously like an amazing actor and writer. He wrote August Os H. County, won a politzer. He had a play, uh, one of his early early plays on Broadway that was starring his wife, Carrie Kuhn. And went and watched the play. It's called Bug. And I had this experience where I went into this play, to this theater, small theater, 300 people, whatever, on Broadway. And I'm and I'm in there and I'm watching this story unfold in front of me. And I'm having an experience. And it's pretty amazing. And you're and and people are having this experience with me live around me. And afterwards, I was just like, that's all that I care about. That's what I want.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:24

Like that right there is what I want. I want to write something, tell a story, have actors perform it, where I can go into a little room with people, a theater, go into a room and watch them experience it and have a dialogue and an exchange in person with those people. That's what I actually love. Filmmaking, TVs, that all gives me it in certain degrees, but not fully like that. That was the full thing. Right. And I left there going, I want to write plays. I'm going to be a playwright. And this is like the pure form of what I try to do. And it's right here in front of me. And of course, there's not as much funding for it. Right. But like this is what I want to do. It's this exchange of experience and storytelling that's happening in real life.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:09

I was blown away by that.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:10

It's all practical.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:11

Yeah. I was blown away by that. And I and I was I'm dead set on writing plays. Yeah, which I kind of dabbled in with the 1491s, you know, with our play. But like, I want to, you know, write some intimate plays and you know do some Sam Shepherd shit.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:24

Let me ask you this. Yeah. Um, you have brought to Tulsa um this TV show film industry.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:37

I mean, other people have been doing it, but you definitely brought a thing there. Yeah, you know. Would you consider like opening a theater? Yeah, totally. In Tulsa. I want to. I mean, I'd like to, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:52

I mean, in that I've been thinking about Because I run the Tulsa Film Collective, and or I'm one of the founders of the Tulsa Film Collective. And that the idea was that that we would have a theater at some point.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:04

A theater.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:05

Oh, theater. A theater. Oh, yeah. I've thought about that too. A theater. For sure. I mean I would love to do that there.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:11

A theater can do both.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:12

I would love to do that there, for sure. Yeah, I've thought about that.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:15

I've been thinking about this.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:17

There's spots right now I could take by, and like there could be theater.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:21

Theater. Yeah, yeah. I I you know, you're a playwright, you're still reliant on actors. Yeah. What brings actors to places? Why is Broadway a a spot? What happens when it's off Broadway? Right. You know? What happens when it's in another fucking town? Right. You know? What happens when it's in Tulsa? Right. You know? Is there I I've just been thinking about like, I feel like I get washed up in the impact of a global society and forget about the community that is immediately around. Yeah. And how much energy that is squandered in the in the impossible that could be applied to something immediate in the local. Totally. And like how would how does that act as a form of inspiration that changes every that ends up changing the world? Yeah, I mean, like theater's hurting right now.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:25

Yeah. I mean, I went the lowdown came about sort of because of what you're talking about. Um so it's inspired by my friend Leroy. And my time at the place called This Land Press when I was making stuff there. Um it was a collection of people. And Leroy really was in Austin before, and then it kind of fell into like he fell into people that were like into this philosophy that were like in Austin, then he kind of brought it himself to Tulsa with himself. And then there was a lot of other people that felt the same way, but there was no word for the philosophical movement, you know, but it was a philosophical movement. Um and it's this idea of learning about the history and the place around you, local. Like what happened, no, don't worry about what happened in LA.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:13

What's happen what happened on this corner? Who lived there before? You know, and like what what how does that impact right now? You know, when you then you get into the Tulse Race Masquer, and you get into the history, and you get into you get into, you know, um the Indian Removal Act when we first got there, and then you get into the oil, and you, you know, you tell the truth about all this stuff, and you talk about all this stuff, and then like if you pay attention and try to like really tell the stories and and and you know tell people where they're from and who they are, well, it's gonna make a difference to them. And I saw it happen. I mean, the work that we did at this land, we were telling stories about Tulsa. And we had free reign, we had we had just a lot of money, and it was just like the lunatics had the keys to the asylum, and we just made stuff, and I it was so awesome. It was like I could drive one of the first videos we put out, I just driving down the street. I saw a homeless, it was a Cherokee man, I saw a homeless man walking by, and I pulled over, just pulled over, had a camera, I kept a camera and equipment sound equipment in my car. I pulled over and I said, Hey, how you doing? I introduced myself and I was like, Can I interview you? And he's like, Yeah. I did a my first video I did for this was this story of this Cherokee man who grew up in Talquah, and you know, he was the only he was on the streets of Tulsa, and he's talking about how it's lonely because he doesn't have anyone that speaks Cherokee with him, you know. Um, and it was just, you know, it was like that. I could just like walk out my front door and find stories, and that's what I was focused on. I was focused on my home.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:47

And we were just telling stories, and like we weren't censored, we we could just tell the truth. And I saw the community change, yeah, right in front of my eyes. And part of it was that telling the truth and telling those stories about our history gave everyone an identity, gave the town an identity. Right. And people were like, Oh, it's these people are saying they're talking about some of our most horrific stories from our past without flinching. I can be proud of it too and talk about it. Yeah, not proud of it, but I can not hide from it. Yeah, and I can I don't have to bury it, I can talk about it because there's something in knowing about it. And it people just sort of migrated towards this building that we were working in, literally. Literally, people just show up off the street, just walk in there and be like, Wait, what is this place? And then there was, you know, we would also uh just started having parties there because people just wanted to hang out. Um and I just saw, and then like all of a sudden that was happening, and then a restaurant opens up downtown. It was a ghost town before that. A restaurant, and all of a sudden everyone's like this splintering effect of everyone like, oh, we can be proud of this place, you know. Not to say that we did everything, but like we were part of the storytelling of our play of this place, which gave pride to everyone, which made everyone made everyone want to invest in the place instead of leave it.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:10

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:11

And that's what the lowdown is inspired by. Is that I saw that happen in front of my eyes.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it is empowering. And even I you you bring up something that that we've been facing, which is this um this uh uh I felt like in 2022, 2023, 2020, we were we were really as a nation beginning to have those conversations, right? About this is our actual history. Yep. And we started talking about it, and there was something really great about that. And then people got scared. Well, there were people who who it scared the shit out of them, you know. And so you can't, these were stories that were never shared, you know, they were quieted generations ago, and in doing so, they they masticated, you know, they became like a uh a tumor of sorts or something, you know, they just got heavy and dark and untalked about, which is like you gotta go check it out, otherwise you're gonna die, you know. So we started to do that, and we started to expose all of these truths in our in our history as a nation. And um where it was once uh omitted from the history, it became a part of it. Yeah, and now we are trying to redact that. Yeah, totally, you know, yeah, and there's but there's something that I find fascinating, which makes me, I mean, it keeps me positive about um our trajectory, is that omission and redaction are two totally different things. Yeah. When something's redacted, you don't know. Yeah, but when it's or when when something's omitted, you don't know, but when it's redacted, you know there's something. Yeah, yeah, you know, and I think that there's power in the imagination in that sense. And like when I see a redacted anything, I fill in usually the worst possible thing that could be behind that, you know. And I think in doing so, it um it we can still address some of the traumas that we've omitted previously, we can fill them with false stories, yeah, you know, um, which may encourage the truth to come out in a light that is less um uh abrasive, yeah, you know, in some sort of way. I think we're we're we're moving towards that societally. Um, but I you know, as you're talking about um uh the the beginnings of the lowdown and and what was the name of the community center that you guys This land. This land, yeah. This land as a as a model for that. Like that I think there is great truth in um getting your own house in order.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:10

Yeah, for sure. Well, it's like looking at yourself in the mirror, and you you know I don't you know you look you gotta look at it every now and then you gotta look at it and I eyes down when I brush my teeth too.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:21

I let the tongue do all of the all of the the make sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:25

Yeah, man. I mean like I I I feel like we've been we're being bamboozled in a way that's right in front of our faces, and and the powers that be are betting. They are making a bet, they're taking a gamble that I bet you people won't care. Because that's it. A lot of times people just want someone in power telling them the truth, what they what they say is the truth, and then telling them what to do. Yep, that's all they want.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:52

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:53

And then I think there's artists and other people and people that don't buy into that bullshit that want to know, you know, I want to know the truth. Like, like what really went on? What really are we talking about? But the current powers that be have taken a gamble, and so far they've been right. I mean, I think that it's changing because I think the people that they gambled w wouldn't care as long as they're being told what to do. I think they're actually starting to care now. Yeah. And they're starting to go. I mean, you look at like major, what's her name? Gr uh the the senator that flipped on Trump. Like people are like flipping on him and going, oh no, you can't just like lie about um you know everything.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:33

Everything.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:34

Like you can't lie about everything, you know. We said you could lie about a lot of things, but it was okay though, whenever the lies were against the other side, but I think the lies are kind of encompassing everyone now, and it's gonna get I mean, I it it it's it's the pendulum is fucking gonna swing hard, I feel. And that's positive to me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:54

Yeah, I agree. I totally agree with that. Um and I think I think if you can foster a a strong sense of community when the when the fucking pendulum does swing and swing hard, that is going to be where you're gonna find help.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:14

It's not gonna be.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:16

Well, I think we're on the other end of it, actually. I mean, 2025 might have been bad, but it feels like the the death throes, you know, it feels like the um the last gasps. Yeah. Because what was really bad was a couple years ago. I mean, that's when everyone was fucking fighting. Yeah. You know, Chinese looking us through the window.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:37

She said, Do you want to watch a movie?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:40

Did she say that? What'd you say? What are you doing? We've already talked about that.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:46

Um, well, sense of community, I think, is strong. I think, you know, you're you're absolutely right. I think even following the pandemic, we started to build uh at a at a community level, at a at a town level, at a at a uh family level, we started to build um a network of support. And I, you know, I I don't know if we've we've fully comprehended how powerful that was, but that changed a lot of stuff. And I think you know, what was theory at the time can be applied as practice, and what we learned through failure and through success can be applied at that at that next moment at that next moment in which uh we will be reliant on each other, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:38

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:38

Um I'm happy, I'm always happy to see people doing work. Um I I'm constantly uh uh assessing like where where it's at, who's doing what and what what place.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:56

Um trying to stay in my own lane as well, you know, where it's like, okay, somebody's somebody's doing something like this over there, right? And it's killing. So I'm you know, do do do what you do. Um I think that there is something powerful in uh the impact of how taking care of each other in a in a small space reaches farther than um screaming at everybody on social media.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:30

You know? Um and I think that is one of the one of the tricks of our times is trying to navigate um a global consciousness with a individual body. You know. Um I don't think we've we've uh been able to fully comprehend that those sorts of scales. And we definitely don't have infrastructures or systems that are working, and the ones that we pretended were gonna work are failing us, you know, by and large. And I think that's you know, what was once a good intention can turn out to be the source of great discomfort for all kinds of people, right? You know. Um so I think that's that's all really good. I'm happy for um the next year. I'm excited about what um we're doing. I'm excited about what society's going to do. I'm I'm I'm I'm invested. I want to see how it shakes out, you know?

SPEAKER_04 1:23:28

Yeah, I mean, how many did we do this year? We did like three or four. I don't know. We had Pierre, we had a live one, we had I think another one with Oh, my dad?

SPEAKER_05 1:23:41

Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:42

Yeah, yeah. Got baked and did one with my dad. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:46

Yeah, yeah. I had flashbacks of it last night. Yeah. Um yeah, well, and I'm I'm I I enjoy these conversations. I think this one kind of was a general hash about kind of what what what's shaking out. I I think one of the things that I benefit, how I personally benefit from doing Long Con is actually talking to you about um some of these things that are popping up in my head and uh actually getting uh um somebody else's read on it. Yeah. Um so I find it greatly.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:20

Well, yeah, because I think you have to weigh out these things and like talk, you know. Like I have a few other people that I talk to as well, but not recorded. You're the only one I talked to. Yeah, I know. Um no, but like it's just like weighing out like, should this be important to me? Like, do you have feelings like this about this? Like, there's this thing that's really bothering me. Is it bothering you? Yeah, I mean, I remember talking to you about um I don't even remember what we were talking about, but we got in the car. You picked me up from the airport.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:52

Maybe it went the other way. Who knows?

SPEAKER_04 1:24:55

What? Oh you picked me up at the airport, it was just like this like yeah, yeah. We were both we didn't even have to like prompt each other, we were both just like in the same headspace, and then we saved it for the live talk that we did.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that our drive, yeah, because I picked you up in Albuquerque, which is an hour away from here. That hour drive, yeah. You got in, we just kind of you came in hot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we were both both feeling. We were both feeling it for sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:21

There was a vibration.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:23

Um, I should constantly.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:25

Yeah, it's good. I think that uh I hope I all in all, I mean, I feel like this talk right here, it's like what happened in the last year? How are we feeling? Move forward. There's always gonna be bad years, there's always gonna be stuff happen bad in every year.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:40

Um, but like the owl, dude, just call in the peace. Call in peace. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:45

There's a really great, there's this guy that I know, uh Chief. He he gave me advice with some stressful stuff that was happening. Um you know, uh through and with my work and whatever, but he said, um, you know, this idea of like don't let anybody take your piece. Like if it's someone else's issue, let them keep it. Oh my god. Like don't let them give it to you, and don't let them take what you have, your piece, you know, which I think is like so simple, yeah, but brilliant.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:18

Yeah. I I tell this to Ginger all the time. Oh really? Yeah, yeah. It's not your piece. Yeah, yeah. I say to Ginger, I'm like, put that down. That is not yours.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:27

Exactly. He says that. He says that. Yeah, he's what he said to me. And it was so meaningful to me, and I needed to hear it. So shut up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:35

Yeah, yeah. Well, I hope that these I'm I'm excited for these conversations to continue.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:40

I love when we do get to hang out because we have done some shit. Yeah. And it's about time we get to talk about it. Exactly. Uh, but number two on the list, maybe it's number one on the list, this is really good for for me. I'm I'm I'm assuming it's good for you to have these conversations. But I believe it's probably good for somebody else out there.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:00

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:01

So those of you who are listening, yeah. Uh the ten of you. The ten all ten of you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:07

What's funny is like I don't what I think I love about this podcast is I don't think of it in any sort of social media value or capitalistic value.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:18

No.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:19

I don't think of it at all that way. No one's going to be able to do that. I just want to have these conversations. I know that it could be either a point of history some point or some help someone 20 years from now. I don't care. It's just like fun to put these out and put them out. And if there's one person listening, cool.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:34

Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, um, with that being said, I thank you for coming down to the studio and hanging out. Uh then. Let's go eat some stew. We've got stew, we've got pizza for the kids. Does anybody want to come? Uh come on down. I'm in Glorieta. Um, and uh thanks for joining us on the Long Con.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:58

Thanks, y'all. Peace. It's a good one. That's a good one.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:03

Real good. Real good.