Welcome to the Indefatigable Artist Podcast, I am your host Bleace. 

Just Wake & Be, not be happy, not be this or that, just be. Wake & Be, take life One Step at a Time, you woke up today with that simple act you are already more relisient than the day before, if you choose to see it, you woke up today, it’s up to you to figure out why! 

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Appreciate you taking the time to listen to today’s episode, there is nothing more precious than your time and I am eternally grateful you choose to spend it listening to this podcast, I hope it motivates you to create and to express yourself more in life. Say what you have to say while you have the ability to say it!

Episode 33. Same age as me.

Who would have thought I would make it this far? Not me.

Taken many steps to get here and will hopefully have many steps ahead but those are not for certain. So I have to talk now, before the curtain closes.

Each day brings with it a massive amount of energy that it’s hard to fully comprehend it all from every angle. Over time we gain insight. Sometimes it can be in a dream, where we re-run the scenario, or at least our subconscious mind does. I have had this happen several times where it has gotten me to see others differently, to forgive them, to see myself differently and to forgive myself.

We aim to be perfect, but what does that mean? A subjective definition. A culturally defined word that is different everywhere you wander.

On episode 33, I think about what is the perfect episode for this podcast. I admit there are some that are what the fuck is that, but then there are ones that I get done recording, and I feel like I was fully committed, completely entranced in it. So perfection would be others feeling that same way. 

At age 33, I think about what the perfect day, the perfect life would be, a different definition than when I was 23.

I realized what I wanted was programmed into me. My mind like a computer and all that I have been taught or told was installed like software into it.

Why do I want these things? These material possessions that I can’t take with me to my grave. That will lose all meaning once I cease existing.

Say I own all of these things that were on my dream board when I made it back then. The cars, the private jets, the mansions. I thought about none of those laying in that hospital bed alone. If those were my last moments atop that staircase, what would I have left behind? How long until I would be forgotten, sure, but that comes from the ego. Did I put enough progressive positive energy? If I left, what would there be, oh he worked so hard for these cars and houses that we get to sell and have common denominations that almost every human in the world has.

What is uniquely me?

What is uniquely Bleace?

I can speak

But it’s hard for me to teach

Yet I feel this obligation to share what I have learned

Where I struggle with teaching is patience. I would rather just be able to share, then to have to test and make sure it’s understood, and answering questions. I get claustrophobic when peppered with a bunch of questions.

I have a deep appreciation for teachers. They are modern day superheroes who are severely underappreciated and under direct attack now, both financially and literally. They are on the front lines in many ways. Funding getting cut, responsible for educating the next generation of workers who are falling behind globally in literacy, mathematics and science. They are also on the frontlines of school shootings. They too, have to go through gun shooter drills, the drills which are traumatizing enough, let alone having to go through one, which are becoming more and more prevalent. And many think that arming teachers is the solution, they think the gun violence problem will be solved by introducing more guns.

It's easy to just point to a problem, and say, hey look, this is a problem. What am I going to do about it? What am I as an individual going to do about it. 

Back to the obligation I feel.

Looking back at those who have inspired me in my life. How many were teachers? How many times as an adult do I think back on the teachers who positively impacted my life.

These can be literal teachers or just life teachers.

I certainly would not be here recording episode 33 of the indefatigable artist podcast, at the age of 33, if it weren’t for said teachers. 

Where I see Bleace in this issue, is raising emotional intelligence.

Out of all the test scores these students have, what is their emotional intelligence score? Where do they rank on that?

They go from test, test, test, have to score high on this test to get to this school, have to score high on the ACT, on the SAT, score high high high, test test test, test. We are testing them constantly, then life tests them outside the prison school walls. We sit this universal ball of energy behind a wooden desk and if they so much as flinch and misbehave we pump them full of drugs to make them focus, because they need to focus on these tests, tests, tests. Then hormones start rushing through their veins at a rapid rate and they have all of this pent up energy, but they have to sit at this desk for 8 hours a day with a 30 minute lunch break where they eat a bunch of sugar induced foods, then come back inside and forced to test, test, test.

The pressure these high school kids are under is immense and has only gotten worse, then there are adults who say they had it harder when they were growing up.

Yea? When you were bullied in school at least it was held to just being at school, not this hazing can continue all day, nonstop via social media.

It’s alarm the rate of self-harm and suicide occurring within the youth in the self-proclaimed best country in the world. And when the youth cry out for help, we yell at them to shut up, study for their next test, you don’t even know how easy you have it, just wait until you grow up, yada yada yada, bull shit. It’s dismissive. It’s incessant.

When I see a school shooter, I see a cry for help. I see a product of the environment. It’s not an outlier, it’s a part of the ecosystem. The same ecosystem that we all live in, the same ecosystem that has continued to be polluted more and more by toxic negative emotions. 

We used to just punch holes in the walls or get into fist fights, but if weapons are readily available, then that is the go to. And then it gets portrayed on television, because the motive of the news is to get paid for attention, the more eyes they can get, the more they can charge advertisers in between segments. They do not have the viewers best interest, they have their own self interest, and I think it’s vital to point that out because of this fixation on these school shootings. Why does that footage need to be played over and over again, talked about for hours? Showing those pictures of the gun, inspires others to do the same, so they too can get their 15 minutes of fame. They use the same guns and give hints as to who inspired them with their stickers and in their Reddit manifestos.

And then you have the politicians who too, are motivated by self-interest as they can raise money off each incident, both sides can raise money. One side raises money to ensure that gun laws won’t change, gun sales skyrocket, the other side raises money saying they will do something – we have to stop them, we have to make a change and we are the ones that will do it! – yet they won’t, they will sit on their hands even if they have the majority.

Episode 33, Age 33, and the US National Debt is almost 33 Trillion, that is Trillion, Trillion dollars in debt. By the time this publishes on Spotify, Apple Podcast, it may very well be at 33 Trillion in debt, but as of right now we are almost at 33 Trillion Dollars in Debt.

We can’t even fathom how large of a number that is. there isn’t a single person on this planet who can answer the question, how do we recover from it?

Just keep passing laws, the debt ceiling, to make it legal to borrow more money. Think of how crazy that is, politicians have to pass laws allowing the government to borrow more money. What allows them to do this? Their monopoly on violence. Violence towards the populous. Their willingness to Nuke the ever-living fuck out of any and all countries in the blink of an eye. We have one human with the codes in his pocket and for 48 hours not a single other person can stop them – again legally speaking. This is the environment children are growing up in, a militarized industrial complex. The more in debt the country gets, the more violent it gets. It starts locking up more of it’s people, which we are building more and more prisons for profit, less colleges. Mental Health Help is almost non-existent. Most don’t even think of it. How’s your mental state? How many of the youth get asked that on a daily basis?

We have normalized ruthlessness. Just the way it is. and I agree that the universe is ruthless, no sympathy to be found, same for life here, it’s tough to survive on this planet.

Yet, how much of that toughness is self-imposed?

Could it be easier for the majority of people instead of just the minority. We program the youth to be like a rat hitting that heroin button, guiding them through the maze so they can find that button, what is that button? What is it you want? Why do you want that thing so badly? Why? What fantasies do you have and why do you have them? Where did these words first originate? The origins of these words that I speak and the words you here are here for a reason. Words have meaning, words have power, we learn the words before learning why they exist. To better communicate, communicate anything we can think of, why then do we choose to use these words which connect us unlike any other thing on this planet, to be divisive, to be hateful, to put others down? Why do we collectively choose to do that? Why do we all decide this is a normal way of being? The ego doesn’t allow you to give up on your argument, to say you are wrong. 

We are in 2023, we don’t have to continue acting like we did in 2016, or 2020. We can be better than than collectively. The temperature, in many respects, doesn’t have to continue to rise, we can change our behavior. Yes we can.

 

Paralyzed by an octopus, frozen, drowning with water gurgling in my throat, seagulls pecking at my tonsils, tentacles clasped around my neck, my will fell under a whale, nostrils clammy with a fishy smell, lips sealed shut, two polar bears unaware of each other, one floating out to sea, me, a shark’s fin, nay worry I am too thin, hasten this moment, shredded teeth are welcomed, will I remember myself if I drown? I see penguins swimming around, a fist underwater doesn’t pound, into the infinite black void, I am found.

Universally bound by math and music, that’s it, keep it simplistic, not all vibe to the same beat but they understand it, just respect it, give them quantifiable space for their own accountability and go to the beat of their own drum, finite fun, no countable harm done.

I am leaving on a trip to atlanta today so if this my last episode ever, and one of these times that will be true, so I want to say it now, because if not now, when? But I just want to say before I go, one last thing and if it’s the last thing I ever say I want it to be this -