Episode 4 of the Indefatigable Artist Podcast is Out Now!

I'll be Answering these three questions: When your time is up on this planet, what will you leave behind? Where is the Indefatigable Artist Podcast going? and What’s it all for?

Check it out! Indefatigable Artist Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.

What’s it all for?

What is an Indefatigable Artist?

Why am I suitable to be the host? What the fuck have I done?

What’s it all for?

Creating no matter what.

Saying I woke up today and it’s up to me to figure out why.

It’s saying, I know that I am going to die, but before I do, I am going to leave something behind.

Something that will hopefully help others with this fickle tormenting gift of life, along their indefatigable journey. A helpful steppingstone to keep them out of the mud.

We have to keep going, what other choice do we have?

We always have the right to choose.

Fuck that, “I have to do this, I have to do that.”

Take some self-responsibility for your space and time within this universe. Choose what is best for you. You, the only one who will be there when it’s all said and done. You, the only one who will be laying in that coffin. What matters is the effect you had on others. That’s the only valuable currency there is, in this universe.

The effect I choose to have, is creating art.

So, back to the question, what is an Indefatigable Artist?

And for the record, I know I pronounce Indefatigable differently. I hate the pronunciation Google gives for it, yuck. I prefer my way, and if you don’t like it, too bad, this is my podcast! Haha kidding, but I choose to say it this way.

By definition, Indefatigable. Adjective. Of a person or their efforts, persisting tirelessly.

Persisting tirelessly.

For me, it brings me to the cover art for my first novel, Bleace.

It was a painting I created after the hard drive crashed on my computer. Having been the second time in my life that this unfortunate event occurred, I had most of my work backed up. Unfortunately I, at the time wasn’t using a cloud service to keep it backed up seamlessly, so I did lose a couple weeks of work. Still, not as bad as the first time I had a computer crash on me.

The first time I had a hard drive crash on me was by far the worst. Which is where I went mentally when it happened again.

That first time I lost everything I was working on. I had taken a summer off school, to just write. That is all I did that summer was write. I continued working 2-3 days a week, doing valet, but the rest of the time I was in that one-bedroom apartment, writing.

By the end of the summer, I had written over 1,000 pages. I had basically both novels written out, plus a bunch of other poetry and dream writings, short stories, beginnings of other novels.

And literally in that week before summer was going to be over for me and I was getting ready to go back to school.

Crash.

The hard drive stopped spinning.

I took it into Best Buy to have the Geek Squad look at it.

They couldn’t save it. I spent around $800, nonrefundable, to try and salvage it.

Nothing could be done.

I was devastated.

I didn’t eat for a few days, stayed in bed, and slept.

It felt like I had fucking died, with nothing to leave behind. I would be gone and forgotten. My energy would be transformed into what? I couldn’t answer that question. So without a computer, I took out my art box and started painting.

I painted and painted, just random things, didn’t make much sense, but it was soothing.

Some of the pieces are what I imagined, Cave Painting was like. Something primal within, painting with my fingers, it was something innate, something in our soul that wants to be unleashed. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another. The first law of thermodynamics. Or look at my fellow pi baby, Albert Einstein’s E=mc2 equation. energy and mass (matter) are interchangeable; they are different forms of the same thing.

The paintings were a release for me. I let out all of my frustration. After a couple days I ordered some Chinese food, it was the only thing I ate that entire week.

I couldn’t even speak to anyone.

I stayed in that dark bedroom. My bedroom was really dark then because I worked at night and slept during the day most days, if I did sleep anyway.

After that week of being in that state, the first place I went, was Best Buy, to purchase a computer. I used the funds from school to help pay for it. C’s get you degrees, A’s get you paid in college.

Sign up for all the scholarships and grants you possibly can, you would be amazed at how much money doesn’t get claimed every semester.

Anyway, I get that computer and years later, would say five years? Somewhere around there. That computer crashed, but I did learn my lesson from the first time and had a backup. That wasn’t the issue this time, as this time it was more impeding my ability to get these projects I was working on, done. I was so close to getting things for the website done, different designs, animations, videos etc. all of it had to be put on hold until I got the computer fixed or bought a new one. The problem was, I didn’t have the funds to do either at the time. I was in a really tough spot and had to just wait.

The fucking frustration. I was at a loss on what to do.

So I turned back to my little art box that I have. Filled with different colored pens, crayons, markers, paints etc. and I just started splattering paint over pieces of paper, carpet, whatever, I was throwing paint and unleashing my frustration in a creative way.

Throwing paint down on paper is a hell of a lot better than punching holes in the wall, that much I can tell you. Doesn’t hurt as much and doesn’t shock the living hell out of your family, which is always a good thing.

Now, looking back, I am grateful for those hard moments. Looking at myself as a character, there was a lot of development that happened in those moments.

What those hard moments did most, was instill in me the desire to create. To leave something behind. They were a reminder that it could all be gone today, and that everlasting, looming question for all creatives, what did you leave behind?

If everything I ever wrote or created was destroyed, what else would there be to remember me by? My energy, my presence. What effect did I have on those around me? Was it positive? What could I do better to have a more positive impact?

These moments required of me, to Go Further.

It was those moments that hardened my resolve, that made me appreciate what Indefatigable means, persisting tirelessly. Creating no matter what. It’s saying, I woke up today, with that simple act, I am already more resilient than the day before, if I choose to see it.

What’s it all for? What’s this Podcast about?

Creating no matter what.

It’s about self expression.

It's about releasing frustration.

It's about alleviating depression,

For those carrying the weight of yesterday.

It’s about alleviating anxiety,

For those fearing the worry of tomorrow.

It’s about alleviating presence,

For those not enjoying the whimsicality of today.

We have to keep going, what other choice do we have?

We always have the right to choose. Again, fuck that, I have to do this, I have to do that.

When people say they have to do something, it’s funny to analyze what they bring up, so much of it is made up by other human beings. Most of those human beings aren’t even alive today, yet their written words still hold sway over millions, if not billions of people. A few simple words can have an everlasting effect.

Now I am talking on a universal level here. The knee jerk reaction is to dismiss what I am saying here, negating a different perspective, instills the illusion even more.

In the Bleaceful Journey Series, I have cities inside of domes. There is a number of reasons for this, there is the practicality of these cities being on a free-floating planet that is heavily polluted, but there is also the allegorical level. The illusory dome that I see when visiting different cities. How most of the time spent waking for people, are living in illusions. They live inside the creation of others, constantly distracted, ever more so now than ever before.

What is scrolling on a social media platform? It’s spending time in someone else’s creation, someone else’s imagination. Now, it’s more and more spending time inside a computerized algorithm.

In the novels, the Consumptians, Creatisizens, Miserians, and others also travel in these creature mover tubes, all the while distracted by their Ipokes, which have several needles penetrating their eyes and temples, feed off the energy of their attention.

What I love about the new James Webb Satellite images, is that it finally drew some meaningful discourse out of people.

It made people zoom out of their busied life. Yes I feel we all know the universe is a vast place, just too much to think about, hurts our brains to think about, plus who has time to think about it?

Oh, you’re one of those guys who likes to talk about outer space and aliens.

In this vast universe, how could we ever think we are the only planet with life on it, let alone the only planet with conscious life.

I really didn’t want to label my novels as science fiction as I didn’t want them to be immediately dismissed by anyone. I feel like there is a large percentage of readers, or moviegoers who aren’t into it.

My goal with the Bleace movies, is to take animated films to that level of being taken serious. Similar to what we saw with the original Beauty and the Beast animation, the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture. But Bleace is about bringing a level of harshness to animation. It’s supposed to be shocking, just as reading it is supposed to be jarring. That is how we shake up “what is normal?”

 Surpass Normality

Living in our own universe

In a foreign being’s eye

We may not be fit

 It’s ok to bewildered. I think so many as adults are made to feel vulnerable when they come across ideas, concepts that they don’t understand, so they use a defense mechanism like belittling, to make their ego feel better.

 Belittling the youth, telling them to be quiet, to shut up.

I say we need to listen to the youth more. I want to hear about their wonder. Of how they see themselves in this space and time, verse being told their role, forced upon them by environmental factors. Let them be limitless for as long as they can, see where their mind wanders.

I would like to point out the paper clip experiment. If you don’t know about that, definitely look it up.

In 1968, George Land and Beth Jarman conducted an experiment with children. They originally designed it for testing potential NASA engineers and scientists on how innovative they were. The researchers asked 1,600 5-year-old children how many uses they could come up with for paperclips. They then retested those children at ages 10 and 15. And they tested a group of adults.

The results were shocking when we compare them to common beliefs about the intelligence of children vs. adults. The proportion of people who scored at the “Genius Level” on this test were:

• 5-year-olds: 98% genius level
• 10-year-olds: 30% genius level
• 15-year-olds: 12% genius level
• adults: 2% genius level

The point here, is to show that we shouldn’t belittle or dismiss any voice. New perspective to our living environment should be welcomed and listened to. Question everything.

Fuck that, This is the way it is. This is the way it’s always been. Do it because it’s what our grandparents did.

I say, Go Further. Zoom out. Look how insignificant, not only humans are, but our entire planet, our entire solar system, just one of TRILLIONS, trillions of galaxies, from what we can actually see!

How much is left unseen.

We will live and die on one planet.

We may be one of the last generations to say that.

Humans are a nomadic species, meant to travel. We have now traveled all over this planet, one of a few species to do that, and now we are taking that deep need to venture to other planets.

Embrace that vulnerability of not knowing what else lies out there.

Who says the universe is to be understood by humans?

Somethings just hurt to think about. Why Einstein called it, A Spooky Action at a Distance. Quantum Entanglement, how one atom can have an effect on another atom no matter how far away it is.

This bring me back again to the point of saying we have to do something. What is your answer to that? When you say you have to do something, what is it in reference to?

We have to pay rent. We have to pay bills. We have to pay our taxes. We have to drive the speed limit. We have to put our seat belts on.

It’s all a creation of another human being. They simply made it up. I am not going in a nihilist way of thinking here or revolting against these, it’s to see them as creations from other human beings, who are no different than you or I, we are all apart of the same species occupying the same planet, around the same sun, in the same Milky Way Galaxy.

The only 3 things I can think of that human beings have to do on this planet, is breathe, eat and reproduce. Other than that, it’s a human-made illusion. Written laws can be changed at will, how? Because another human creates a new law and gets others to agree to it.

How much rent do I have to pay? That is up to another human being to decide.

How many bills do I have to pay? Depends on how distracted you want to be.

What happens if you don’t pay rent? What happens if you don’t pay those bills? What happens if you don’t drive the speed limit? What happens if you don’t put your seat belt on?

It’s frustrating. I know. I get it. My point here, is to tell you to take time for yourself. you have time for yourself if you make time for it.

Now that I have listed a bunch of shared frustrations. I want to do a quick exercise. This comes from Dr. Joan Rosenberg, whose teaching have really helped me with my anger and anxiety. I highly recommend looking her up as her book is very transformative. She talks about the 7 difficult emotions – Anger, Frustration, Helplessness, Sadness, Embarrassment, Shame, and Vulnerability - that all humans struggle with to a certain degree.

Now if you can, if you’re in a safe space, not driving down the freeway. And if you are, I implore you to come back to this and to really give it a try, it’s very simple, but over time will have a profound effect on your daily life.

Now, close your eyes.

Take a deep breathe in threw the nose. Hold it a couple seconds.

Breathe out through your mouth, while saying the words Anger and Frustration.

Another deep breath through the nose. Hold it in.

Breathe out through your mouth while saying the words, helplessness, sadness.

Now, last final Deep breathe in through the nose. Hold it, hold it for as long as you can.

Then let it out while saying the words, embarrassment, shame, vulnerability.

Let those words out of your system. Get those words off your shoulders, they aren’t your burdens to bear, not your weight to carry, let it out. It’s ok to feel, feel how you feel not how you think others want you to feel. Drop the façade. Put down the variety of masks we feel we have to wear every single day, wear a mask around family, wear a mask at work, at the gym, walking down the street, around our friends, our posts online, what are all these different masks? Why are they so heavy? So heavy we don’t even realize that we are carrying them around with us, every waking moment. We are human beings, not human doings.

Wake and be. That is all you “have to” do, is be.

Be exactly who you are, you are right where you need to be, whether you like where you are at or not, you are still here and that is all that matters right here right now.

Embrace that vulnerability. Grow from it. You woke up today, with that simple act, you’re already more resilient than the day before, if you choose to see it.

Take a good hard look in the mirror, know that you have done all you can to spread your energy to all you know, not only in this moment, and to those people around you in the present, but those who you have yet to meet, those future generations.

We are made to feel powerless. Like we don’t matter. Get fired from your job, no matter, we have 10 others waiting to take your spot. You quit? We will make you feel like shit. Fuck you.

Think about it, people have actual, Hospital bills, that they say they have to pay.

They have to pay, hospital bills. It’s 2023 and people have, hospital bills, a bill they feel they “have to” pay because something happened to their health now they have to pay a monetary value to this hospital.

Self-preservation has turned into selfish greed. Living has become too easy for the majority. Our wants has a species continues to drive us. Want for more illusions, more distractions, no matter the cost financially, environmentally, psychologically, sociologically. Who has time to think of the consequences? Shut up and be quiet! We write the rules around here, we have the means not only the way we want to, but tell you how you “have to” live.

Sorry to go off on a tangent there. But it’s a good way to show how self-expression can be a way of letting our frustration.

Leads me back to the initial question. What’s it all for?

Where do I want to take this podcast?

Further and beyond.

I feel like we are trapped in these domed cities, as fantasized in Bleace and Bleace Paradox. I want to be like Breezy, who can jump into the air, break the glass ceiling, and fly over the dome to anywhere he wants to and bring any individual who is willing to go.

What is it all for? What is this podcast for?

It’s to tell others to write down their frustrations. To get them to zoom out. Drowned in this dome, one have to” to the next, one bill to the next, one project to the next, it’s incessant, never tiring, all the time, everything all at once, you keep paddling, but the water, the chemicals, the bills, the toxins, fickle friends, the illusions never end, so why not choose to go off into your own world, where everything in the universe appears as it truly is, infinite. To quote William Blake, when the doors of perception are cleansed, everything will appear as it is, infinite. It was that quote that inspired the name to my favorite band, The Doors.

Into the infinite, into another dimension. Where the lines between dreaming and realizing are blurred. Down is up and up is sideways.

I am learning something new, in real time, before your eyes.

I want this podcast to be an escape for both myself and whoever takes time out of their day to listen.

Filled with interesting stories from my life. How these stories inspired events in my first two novels.

A poem from my first novel, Bleace, encapsulates this point.

 

 

What is it all about?

 Living after we die.

 To quote Orbie in the first novel, Bleace.

 Dying is for the weak,

Dying is for anyone, but me!

 Again, What. Is. This. Podcast. about?

 

It’s about Going further Together,

One Step at a time!