Episode 42 - One Wild Life Body (Part 2)

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it's so easy to think of ourselves and our experiences on this rock hurtling around a giant ball of burning gases at thousands of miles an hour as normal we're just used to it we're used to having eyes that see ten fingers that could all move independently of one another we're used to breathing air into lungs and having hearts that beat in our chest and we forget how marvelous and insane life as a human being is a human body can be seen from any number of perspectives only one of which is from a human scale from a cosmic scale we are invisible as small as an atom from a microscopic scale we are as large as a universe from every perspective but the one on this planet we are alien life forms from the trillions of other planets in this universe we are the alien life forms stuck to this tiny blue speck this song alien apes examines how strange it is to live in this human body this ape body it also examines how powerful this strange alien race that is humanity has become and how we need to figure out how to live more effectively in these bodies that have egos together peacefully or we're going to wipe ourselves out in terms of just like oh she loves it getting down that's the song on the record to get down with when we get in the car i know she's gonna yell at me until i turn on alienates like she doesn't want the she like lovely broken or some of these songs that start real pretty she she doesn't want that she needs a beat right up top so anything any song that starts with the just strings or you know something some sonic sound i have to fast forward it to a beat or i know i will get it from lucy [Laughter] this is the song i'm the most afraid to talk about because if it's not set on mars i don't want to know that i don't want to hear that this is not on mars or maybe titan a titan could be but if it's not on one of those two places i just don't want to be disposed of that notion the earth has depleted and we've got colonies on mars and europa trying to figure out basic viability i might be reading too deeply into the [Laughter] song i love it but with the timing of elon musk's uh mars announcement you know what i mean it was really hard to not just picture you know these rocket ships with 100 people each leaving the surface of the planet and trying to build a million person colony while we've gone past the 400 criteria for climate change we've reached this critical point like what they call the point of no return in terms of carbon in the atmosphere in september this september for the first time we're sustaining that when it should be dropping and now they're saying that could just be the permanent value and what a timely piece of musical storytelling coinciding i know you you there's no way to plan that uh yeah but like it's a alien apes is a perfect soundtrack for this month i planned this out mike i knew that was all happening i've been calculating the secret scientist the technological advancements from the last decade and by my counseling calculations i know that we had to uh release it right at this certain time no that i'm actually scared you said that and i'm sitting here scared now i didn't know that that was happening oh my bad i mean i knew we were you know i knew we're going down but like the i i didn't i didn't know we were at that point so uh why are we you know why are we re releasing music what are we all doing there's gotta be something to listen to on the spaceship so this is spaceship music that's why uh that's amazing so get ready to dance this is alien apes [Music] come on [Music] cause love on our planet [Music] is [Music] is [Music] we are aliens keep on our bars are just is [Music] [Music] [Applause] me um [Music] okay now in my notes oh man now we have to talk about already here ugh i did not like this song at all really because i found it personally indicting in the deepest way possible like that feeling you had at church uh when you felt like the pastor had been reading your email masturbating yes and then was preaching about it that was this song for me in this season of my life wow wow i mean you nailed what you nailed where we find ourselves today with our our pursuit of of whatever it is i don't even know what it is we're pursuing and when that chorus came in the first time i just i looked at how i lived my life [Laughter] was this intentionally kind of echoing placed after ego and kind of the the ramifications of what it does to the earth is is this song in some way a response to those two tribes yeah to me when i think of these aspects that linger of youthfulness within our society and within ourselves always wanting something other than what you have the nine-year-old wants to be the 10 year old and have the double digits and the 10 year old wants to be the 11 year old and the 11 year old wants to be the 13 year old and 13 must be a 16 year old and it keeps going i wish just i just wish i was in college i just couldn't and then and then you get done with college oh i miss high school and then you you know it's like um always wanting to be somewhere else have something else be something else than what you are right there in that moment and and so that's kind of a major theme for this whole record again is learning how to be present in and what is happening and uh we're afraid and yeah it stems from the ego it stems from this not being at home in our own bodies not being at home in in our place in the universe um and and feeling fear and unease and all the core shadows of our egos and you know always looking for something outside of ourselves to to fix it you know when i'm when i'm old enough when i'm strong enough when i have everything that that i need and i think this this plagues all of us like we're afraid to be where we're at and do what we need to do in this moment because we're looking for something outside of ourselves to to make it easy for us to make it the perfect thing it's just never never happens it's just you're already there you're already in the moment that you'll be in and it's never anything but that moment yeah and that's also sort of the the first look when it finally transitions to you're already here already here already here just keeps hammering it over and over at the end that's the first kind of transition [Music] the rest of the record which starts being a little healthier i think the rest of the rest of the record starts starts is actually starting to experience that presence after that [Music] this one felt like an invocation and not just because right now i'm traveling city to city and they're very briefly um but i've found that i tell my friends at home i literally can see them when my schedule clears yeah and my friends who are in cities i'm visiting and i say i don't have time to see them because i'm just here on the tour and there's no time but i literally had told someone recently i'd come see them when the money's there you know i think i think i've done a lot of self-work and i thought you know we i feel like i'm pretty good at being present most of the time and i felt like this song acted as a reality check as a gut check as a regrounding as a re-centering um what ratio of my time do i spend obsessing over exactly how many physical copies of the book have sold on a moment-by-moment basis versus just being happy i have a book out and how much time do i spend being grateful that people show up to see me at all versus obsessing over how many tickets have sold in the next city i don't know it's just so interesting to kind of go from um alien apes where you're just like uh going nuts to then in this very melodic introspective spacious tone it does lend itself to a lot of reflection which is it's kind of like i figured out that's like kind of your genre your musical genre is existentialism it doesn't matter what like sonic brush you need to use to get to existentialism you'll grab any tones you need but that's where you're ultimately going to take people you just change the twitter bio today i think after everything blew up with us it was really difficult it felt like for a while we were just running running running trying to get people to like us again trying to salvage a career again trying to yeah she's referring to when the evangelical christians got mad at us for yeah believing in evolution or whatever um [Laughter] so yes man i'd never felt such a sense of always or such a feeling of not being present always looking towards the past and what we should have done and continuously looking towards the future and what we should be doing and should be striving for and and then moving out here to la there's i've i have a love hate relationship with la it's amazing and the people are incredible and but i didn't anticipate kind of feeling this a little bit of anxiety uh about just producing producing producing um and so even when we moved to la i was definitely still in that space of man we gotta get this career back on track we've got to regain the people that we've lost and and have money for our family i mean it was i felt like i was constantly stressed out i really feel like the last probably four months it's so nice to not have that feeling that to to not just have this idea of being present but i really feel it and it's amazing to not have that worry about how many albums are we gonna sell what are people's comments do they like it do they not like uh it took a lot of struggle and a lot of prayer and meditation to let go of that um but man it feels so good to not to not really care about that and even yesterday i felt myself getting back into that a little bit you know that concern and the wanting to be busy look at the comments and the sales and all this and and just what that does in my own soul is not takes me to a really bad place obviously and so even this morning getting up and taking a moment and breathing and it can be really difficult like for you mike when your career is based on what other people think about you it's it's different than other careers where you have like to please your one boss you know you're going out there and pounding the pavement having to do this tour and people's ideas of you is what fuels your career um so it it you can be bound to that so i think specifically in our veins of what we do for work it can be really hard to be present but it's when we're present it helps what you do and it helps the other people that you're talking to while you're on tour and it helps our music ultimately last night we had a listening party and i have never in my life experienced such a feeling of connection and oneness with a crowd of people and and i think about half of the people that i taught i mean every one of them said that they loved it uh but half of the people i talked to one-on-one which was about i mean maybe i don't know how that was maybe 70 people uh they said that too they said whoa i felt this thing that i've never felt before this oneness it wasn't like you and michael were up there and we were here we were all experiencing this thing together and i think that stems from michael and i feeling present and not feeling anxious and that all so when you're out with your people on your book tour they will feel that energy from you uh you're the one that fosters that feeling of present and hereness and i don't i don't think we would have felt that last night had michael and i have been striving striving hoping please like me like me you know the idea of we're already here and this is the music we've made and we're proud of it we hope you are but we're not going to be bent out of shape if you're not it is what it is and let it the art be the art and this is really really cool moment for me last night so for everyone listening right now i would invite you to take a moment and i want you to think about something that you love to do that you never make time for and i would like for you to think about someone you love who you don't make enough time for and with those two things in your mind take a moment and listen to the song already here it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through better help you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions better help has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over one million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com [Music] liturgists [Music] always see [Music] foreign [Music] always right in front of me [Music] oh [Music] wow [Music] [Music] dark truest way to see [Music] sometimes somewhere [Music] sorry [Music] [Music] so much of my life was spent looking for the flashy moments to break into the normal world and show me we aren't falling into the abyss of human failures i begged and pleaded for eyes to see clearly and then came to a point where i felt it was all a shame i felt tricked i was looking for one magical spot in the ground but failed to see that all of life is a crazy magical unbelievable occurrence walking with our eyes closed encompasses our journey of faith and doubt because after deconstruction after letting it all go and finding what i actually believe i realize the journey is vital and maybe we really have been walking toward the light all along we just had different parts of our bodies shut off to reality feet walking my eyes closed i see it differently now i see more of the fire around me magic that was present all along i just had to go through the necessary events to see it like so many of the cliches but oh so true we have to die to find life have to fall a little or a lot before our sight is transformed to actually have eyes to see that's a really powerful song thank you i mean it's got like radio potential for sure uh but it's not uh radio shallow so it doesn't leave your genre of existentialism um well and it was um the melody for this chorus has been in existence for a little while and yeah i think for me it's harder to write more like upbeat songs and it is lyrics that make me like it like the the existential lyrics but for this song um it was a moment for me you know in all this deconstruction i i felt like that we were had gone the wrong way did we really need to do that did we really was that really necessary and was it necessary that i believed this and kind of looking back on my some things in my childhood and for a while being angry about it and disappointed that i was raised with certain ideas and i think i think that's easy to do when you are breaking apart what you believe you are kind of upset for where you've come from a lot of the times and i kind of came to this moment of being incredibly grateful for it and realizing we have been walking towards the light this whole time and i remember a friend of mine we were in this conversation once at dinner and this woman had asked me kind of where we're at and i was really hesitant to talk about it because i didn't know this person and i felt like i would just have to apologize for where i was and so she said well you know god don't worry god's still chasing you and my friend was sitting there and she said no that's not what this is she's not running away and i was so grateful that my friend said that i felt like that took a lot of guts for her just to correct this person and it was really soon after that conversation that i had that feeling of no i don't need to be disappointed i don't need to regret where i've come from i am grateful for all of it because it's been opening my eyes along the way and this thing had to crumble and crash in order for me to actually see differently to see life differently and it's like we've been on this journey we're walking and different parts of our body are working our legs are working but our eyes are closed and along the way the things that we run into force our eyes open and force our love to open and force us to walk to walk differently and that was kind of the story behind behind us it made me think of uh psalm 139 because i've fallen back into my bad habit of studying the bible and your bad happened i've never heard anyone say that it's yeah back to my old obsession i broke it for years but uh i'm back to reading the thing again and you know there's that idea of where can i go to flee from your spirit and the way that what are you talking about like the divine is already there yes there's nowhere and so like it's an odd question that that has a strangely limited view of god or of the divine to say where is someone at right now i mean los angeles what do you mean like at the grocery store what do you mean now where are they at with god well they're with god yeah what what other option is there yeah that idea of the light the burning all around us already there i don't know made me think maybe think of this as like a deep patriarchy psalm 139. [Music] started foreign bridges long before we knew we'd want to go back [Music] foreign [Music] with fire [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] is [Music] me oh this was part two of five of the one wildlife body series that's happening this week thanks to all those who are patrons on patreon who make this show happen those who would like to become a liturgist and be part of the people that host this conversation make this work happen you can go to the liturgists.com podcast and click on the patreon link on the right hand side of the page thanks for listening we'll talk to you tomorrow [Music] [Music] you