Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes
LA’s #1 avant-garde personal development program. I'm Emerson Dameron. I love you, personally. Levity saves lives.
The home of Ask a Sadist, Bite-Sized Erotic Thrillers, and the First Church of the Satanic Buddha. Levity saves lives.
Regularly scheduled episodes premiere on the first Wednesday of the month on KCHUNG Los Angeles.
Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes
War All the Time
It's war all the time, friend.
Featuring the return of audience favorite Sophie Antisocial in an all-new Bite-Sized Erotic Thriller.
Music by Mr. Pancakes and Emerson Dameron.
Got something to say to me? Slide into the DMs.
Emerson Dameron's Sophistication Nation - April 4th - All major music-delivery platforms
Coming Soon! Sophistication Nation: Brief Interviews with Women I Pretend to Understand: https://emersondameron.hearnow.com/sophistication-nation
How am I doing, you ask. Well, in lieu of an exegesis on the concept of doing, I'll tell you it's war all the time, my friend. You gotta strategize well enough to improvise. You gotta sun zoo until you can, macgyver. You gotta get relaxed enough to get super pumped and excited. Relaxation is not easy because you can't really trust anyone. Trust is a leap of faith, but isolation is a luxury that you can't afford. So control information. Speak in code cipher, stand in a cipher, stand in a circle of friends. Trust them as much as you can, but don't pretend to be shocked when one of them betrays you, or two or more conspire to do you dirty.
Speaker 1:Don't take it personally. People are animals and they fight like animals. Don't put money on an animal that you can't afford to lose. Save it, invest it, set it on fire to show that you can. To psychologically totalize your enemy. Claim the moral high ground, get them singing your song, get your national anthem stuck in their heads, conquer them through an ongoing triumph of the will. Remember that life is an eternal struggle. You gotta hang tough. You don't have to like it. Nobody hates war more than a soldier. Nobody loves it more either, but nobody knows that. Because you gotta control your feelings when it's war all the time. It's an age of discontinuity. Nobody's ready for what's already happened and all bets are off. Be flexible, be adaptable. Be like water, well hydrated. Bottle your urine and sell it in a mix containing flakes of real gold. You can't knock the hustle without making yourself a hypocrite.
Speaker 1:And it's war all the time, friend making yourself a hypocrite and it's war all the time. Friend K-Chung, los Angeles. This is Emerson Dameron, with Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes and a message for the haters Work on yourself, look inside and see the places that you have the power and the responsibility to work on.
Speaker 1:How you put yourself out in the world how you talk to yourself. Be kind to yourself. You know I'm not even mad. I want you to feel good. When you feel good, you'll stop hating. People feel bad for all kinds of reasons. I get a variety of haters. That's what happens when you do a lot of different things. I don't even think about the haters. I don't care. Obviously I do, otherwise I'd be talking about something else.
Speaker 1:You don't Straighten up. You know I'll give you 90 days. Invest an hour a day for the next 90 days in coming to terms with your hate and taking responsibility for how you see the world and how you put yourself out into the world. It's the only way you can ever change anything. I think it's going to be okay. I think I don't need to declare war on you. I think I can keep the fatwa in my pocket for now.
Speaker 1:But should that time come to pass and you're not making a serious effort at self-improvement and personal development, self-discovery, self-inquiry, etc. You're not going to like what happens. You know I probably shouldn't tell you that I'm planning to come for you in exactly 90 days. I don't care. Go ahead and prepare yourself. If you'd rather think that you're ready for me than work on yourself, you're wrong. This is new stuff. You do not see me coming. You're not going to see me going because you're not going to see anything anymore. I'm going to crush you totally and your hate is going to be rapidly forgotten. My dark past is closing in on me. I'm not going to tell you what it is. Hopefully you'll never find out. I'm an extremist. Right now I am freaking out. That's why I'm here, because I need to be around other people when my emotions go haywire. If you can't help me, I can take you down with me, and that's one more useless sack of meat out of the mix. I used to love people. That was a mistake. The mix Uh. You used to love people. That was a mistake. You end up hating them. If you used to love them, if you never loved them in the first place. They're not going to disappoint you so much More of a skeptic than a cynic.
Speaker 1:I don't like the wholesale deals, I like the details, I like getting into it. If I'm going to have an opinion, I want to earn it. So yeah, I would say skeptic, still curious. Hurt, badly wounded, open wounds, visibly and sometimes audibly infected. But I'm still here, I keep to myself. I believe that depression is a communicable disease and it's antisocial to infect other people with it unless they have it coming, like you do.
Speaker 1:They hold grudges. They have a cellar full of grudges, temperature controlled. Some of them are quite old, vintage says a lot about what it's doing there and the old ones are exquisitely delicious when you crack them open. Sometimes sometimes not sometimes you hurt someone you used to love. You hurt them because you loved them and you realize you wouldn't have bothered to hurt them if you didn't still love them. That hurts a whole lot. You get that look says that was unforgivable. You wonder what you were expecting to get out of this. It's not a big deal, these loves, these salacious swing and wingdings between two or sometimes more people who dig each other's action. For now at least and're going to see where the chemicals take us.
Speaker 1:Sex is a great precursor to a great relationship, or it lets you know up front that you're better off not getting in that relationship. You start to get a sense of these things if you have a variety of experience which, if you open yourself to, will come your way. You always have the option of not sabotaging yourself anymore, and once you stop doing that, you will be amazed at the doors that open wide for you, even if sometimes you have to sneak out the back window. The moral task of a lifetime is to create our own morality. That's what we do literally for a living. To keep ourselves alive. We craft our own code. Some of us share it, some of us despair it, some of us can't bear it, because we built in a lot of contradictions that we thought would be self-serving that ended up rotting us out from the inside. Fortunately, I I'm here to fix that. I'm here to save you first.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you're going to like it, but you are going to get saved. But it might not be what you're imagining or hoping it will be, but I'm fully confident that I can pull it off. It is essentially already done. I've learned my lesson from flying too close to the sun and journeying too long and too twindy a roundabout route through hell. This time I'm doing it.
Speaker 1:It's okay to want power. It can be used for good and is necessary to make good things happen. So really you could say power is good. Sensitive people think that they're not entitled to power, that power is a bad thing to want and all of the power goes to people that don't want anything other than power. You need it the most. As a person who thinks about these things, if you don't have any power, it doesn't really matter what you believe. You don't have any ability to make it manifest. Power is good. Go get some. You love it. You know you love it. You love explaining your jokes. I'm the Socrates of humor. I want to hear you deconstruct that. I'm going to interrogate you about all your opinions. That's how you get smarter and that's how you get off. Because you love it.
Speaker 1:I want to impose some structure on myself. I'm not on my mission. Right now I should be swinging it, dominating, putting the mac hand down to thunderous applause. The world needs me at my full capacity, killing it, owning it, delivering the goods, making y'all feel good. I don't belong here, broke, bereft, adrift, indefinite State of confusion. This is not where I want to be. I'm a leader. I'm a king, warrior, magician and lover, tender, patient, present and passionate Lover at that, full magical powers, hanging tough Just now inheriting my kingdom, the gold and the glory. Y'all need me. I'm the warm and fuzzy center of the universe. I'm also red, hot and rock hard. This ennui and angst are dumb as hell. It's all love here. You need my tender love and affection. It's a crash course in poetry and paradox. Fools, goddamn. Y'all deserve better than this from me. Let's get on it.
Speaker 1:Know your enemy, know yourself. Know yourself first, because you are your worst enemy. Learn all that there is to know about whatever it is that you want to know about. Turn inside out the entirety of human knowledge on the subject and then walk away. Go play Pac-Man on an arcade machine. Play Pac-Man for hours, days, weeks, however long it takes to get the subject completely off your mind. Forget that you forgot to think about it and then make way for the epiphany, because it's coming at you. That epiphany is going in one hole and out another. You don't know which one it's going to pick. It might be a hole you don't even know you have.
Speaker 1:Once you get railed by that insight, it's your responsibility Make a plan to put your plan in action. Remember there is no failure, only feedback. If you die, that's death. The ultimate feedback. Confuse and conquer. Remember you are the only real person currently alive. Ben Franklin was a real person. There were a few real people in Australia many, many hundreds of years ago.
Speaker 1:Right now, it's just you and possibly three other people maximum. Everyone else is fake. They are soft, moist robots and your job is to figure out how they work and then confuse the hell out of them so they don't work anymore and you can conquer them. Remember your responsibilities are honor yourself and confuse others, and don't get those two things back with you. Help people get what they want. If that happens, it is 100% guaranteed to ruin their lives and it's fun to watch.
Speaker 1:People love novelty, they love shock, they want a bit of a break from the norm. In the words of the great Will Smith, the only skill that will matter is adaptability. We are in an age of discontinuity. Nobody is prepared for what's already happened. All bets are off. Intellectual capital, bad habits all those things will hold you back or they'll hold other people back, and you will get way ahead of them because you are adaptable.
Speaker 1:You're not afraid of change. You are afraid of change, but you kind of get off on that fear. Never do anything twice. Try it. There are many different ways to breathe. Make sure that each breath is done in a completely different style. Reinvent yourself always. Be David Bowie.
Speaker 1:Get in the habit of mixing it up and scrambling people's minds and insides. Then change it up. Scramble your own mind. You can do that by moving your eyes in a lot of different directions. Do as much as you can while you can, and don't think about it too much. Scorch the earth, burn the boats. Let the critics decide. Always know where north is and how to ask where the bathroom is in the local language or the translation, for would you like to receive a golden shower? For everything else, you can make it up. Invent your own jargon and draw from different areas of knowledge so that there's no one person that has enough background to comprehensively call you out, you'll be surprised if you act like you know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Most people disbelieve you Tell them to do things. The easiest thing for them to do is just do it. The map is not the territory. Explore the territory for yourself, know it empirically and then go home and relax and recharge by looking at the map and jerking off with it. The real story is the adventures that you share and help orchestrate for others. Trade something on your maybe list for something on their yes list. You might be shocked at what you turn out to be into.
Speaker 1:Love yourself, but get over yourself. Your love for yourself should be a pimp's love, not a square's love. Eyes open, fully informed. Don't take yourself seriously. Don't be too into yourself, because in order to get information, you've got to get into other people, not necessarily in a sexual way, but in an interested, engaged way.
Speaker 1:Make people feel special. Use their names. Ask questions that are open-ended, that give them a chance to talk about themselves and say things that they probably shouldn't Be fascinated by other people. Don't worry, this isn't a waste of time. You're gonna screw them over later. Be curious about how they're wired up, where their pressure points are, what they want so badly that you can get them to do anything, if you can help them get it, which, if they succeed, will ruin their lives 100% guaranteed. Succeed will ruin their lives 100% guaranteed. Dive into their creative output.
Speaker 1:Somebody asked General Patton, why are you so good at kicking ass like you did with that guy? And Patton said I read his book. These bad habits that normally go unnoticed will ruin your life Trying to dig food out of your teeth, sight unseen with your fingers, staring too long at raindrops, rolling down a window, going 10 miles over the speed limit, but interestingly not 5 or 15. Those are fine. Twiddling your thumbs, taking a piss when you don't really need to. Styrofoam cups, obviously. Just remember one mistake can ruin your life.
Speaker 1:So don't take anything too seriously. You can't afford to Imagine, picture it, hear it, feel it. You get everything you want. What's it like? What does it look like, sound like, feel like, taste like? Why are you not already there? What stands between you and getting everything that you want?
Speaker 1:It could be a mastery of the arts of persuasion and moral influence. Some people call it manipulation, but as we find when we study persuasion, it is very important. The ways and words that you choose to describe things, do it in pictures, sounds and feelings, use formulas. You gotta play standards before you play jazz. So, AIDA, attention, interest, decision, action. Remember, things are constantly changing. In the past nobody cared, now they do, depending on what we're talking about. If you get caught red-handed, then you're a bad liar. Deny something else, something adjacent. I am not currently spray painting churches with Dante's Circles of Hell, nor do I intend to do so. In the future, my plans might change. Remember, the Toy District is in Skid Row and, despite its reputation, a lot of people go there and never leave.
Speaker 1:What do you think life is about? No, incorrect, life is about recreating it. That's the only built-in meaning that life has. Life has the meaning that you create for it or observe, or however you do it. Either way, it's up to you. Are you trying to wiggle your way out of another dilemma? Yes, you are. That's exactly the kind of thing you would say if you were Anxiously attached worm that you are, which is the correct attachment style. Avoidant is the correct attachment style. We might not be happy, but we're not gonna drag you down with us.
Speaker 1:Oh, were you gonna say something? Go ahead, it's about me, isn't it? I can tell. My ears are burning. You don't have to say anything. That happens when you think about me. Come on say it. You're trying to seduce me, aren't you? What kind of person do you think I am?
Speaker 1:I'm sure I'm wild and better at being the bad guy. Everybody loves the villain. Is it boring to be so virtuous? You suck at this. What are you good at? What are you good at sucking? You can hang out with me.
Speaker 1:Every artist needs a muse. We make a great team. You just need a lot of practice. You need all the help you can get, specifically from me. You know what I mean by help.
Speaker 1:Ah, the time has come and here we are. It has come to pass To kiss or not to kiss. Once I kiss you, I can't un-kiss you and I can see some potential regrets. We could both walk away and when you think you're out of my eye shot, you can start skipping because you've had a magical night, and I can go right home and get back to my purpose in life, which is making ceramic bongs. You'll go home and masturbate. I'll read some Dostoevsky and forget all about this conversation which I notice we're still having. It would be a lot more fun if we were naked. Yeah, you can swing by.
Speaker 1:My place is alright, it could use a woman's touch. I'm just waiting for that special someone or someones. Really, I need a crew to clean that place out. It's close to LAX. The dust gets everywhere. There's not much you can do about the dust. You won't notice it if you're already choking.
Speaker 1:Well, you're playing the away game, I'm playing the home game, so that's really up to me. I don't care what people say. I don't think you're that obnoxious. I think you need to be spanked and put to bed. I have an extra toothbrush. It's war all the time, friend.
Speaker 1:Yes, life is a struggle or it's nothing. If you're going to win it all, you got to risk losing it all. That means taking the big risks, putting some money on the long shots and drinking your enemy's blood from another enemy's skull at the end, at a banquet hall, at a German restaurant, in the side of a mountain, in a cave, because you earned it. This is the way we celebrate in Valhalla, because we are warriors. Well, I am. I can't knock the hustle. You got game, I'll give you that.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you're, if you think that you're hiding the fact that you're trying to seduce me? Yes, I'm concerned. I'm not being condescending. I am concerned for your safety as well as my own, but that's to a lesser degree. I'm more concerned about yours. I don't know that you know what you're doing.
Speaker 1:You need to know what you're doing but then also be able to get out of your own way. You have to be strategic and learn the classics and learn Greensleeves and Heart and Soul, and then you can play jazz, then you can play free jazz, then you can improvise. You earn the license to MacGyver through immersing yourself in strategy, memorizing the order of the war, knowing what your enemy is going to do and think before they do. They'll tell you. People tell on themselves. If you're listening. What do you know about me? Not enough because you're in love with me. And if you're a lover or a hater, you don't understand. Like Bataille said of Dessade Authenticity. That's how I do things. There's no other way.
Speaker 1:Life is theater. People love it. People love the kabuki. People love to role play. All the world's a stage. People like romance, intrigue, mystery, friction, the yin and the yang, the push-pull, polarity inherent in all things, that all have polarity, except when they don't.
Speaker 1:I bring my own kind of noise, I make my own kind of music. Sometimes people sing along. Sometimes it goes in and out of style. That provided shattering, cascading orgasms. That's why I need people that support me, that give me the love that keeps me swinging, because the world needs me at full potency swinging it. The world needs the waterfall of pleasure and the avalanche of feel-good drugs released in the brain that only I can provide when I'm fully swinging it in peak form.
Speaker 1:It is utterly shocking how delightful it is to watch you do your thing and bring the magic you bring, and you are so adorable when you're confused. Cuter than a button It'd have to be a really cute button. But here's the thing You're not bringing it hard enough. I have very high standards and love bombing IRL is basically the only way to get through to me and not love bombing narcissistic manipulation, because I can see that coming a mile away. But like actually being the bomb authentically. But don't you know, don't be totally authentic. There's nothing more authentic than a baby soiling its diapers. I get a lot of mileage out of being myself and you would get a lot of mileage out of being more like me, but not too much, that would be creepy. I need someone complimentary, contrasting. I need friction. Polarity Comfort is what makes love possible and a little bit of friction is what makes the sparks fly and makes the sex hot. It's not a hypothesis, it's a theory.
Speaker 1:The book's coming out next year. I'll sign it for you. You don't get a discount 10% off. You get what you earn in this life. You better learn strategy and know how to strategize from a lawyer's point of view, because you're going to need to improvise because we have no idea. Well, you have no idea. I have some, even the great optimists that I know. I was friends with a guy who ran for president as a socialist One of the more outwardly brave people that I know politics quite a bit and climate change came up and he was like, yeah, we're doomed. I can't stand to think about that too much. Our only hope is to both bring it 100% hard and smooth, like Rex and Effect.
Speaker 1:Don't get stuck in binary thinking. It's always all. It's everything. You got to be able to depend on yourself and I got to be able to depend on you. If you're on my squad and I don't know if I can trust you in a combat scenario, I don't know enough about you.
Speaker 1:Look at the world the way. It is not the way you want it to be. Feel your feelings and let them pass on through An emotion lasts for 90 seconds and then passes on and leaves you alone, unless you start telling yourself a story about it, which I know you do, because you love telling stories and you love to suffer, and you love to tell stories about your suffering stories. And you'll have to suffer and you'll have to tell stories about your suffering. Conflict is how we become who we are. We grow and we develop ourselves and discover ourselves through conflict, through establishing and defending our boundaries, through kicking out the screw-ups that screw the crew up. And that means looking at things as they are making excellent slaves of your emotions because they can work for you quite well. They are terrible masters. You don't want to work for them. They're not reliable sources of information Like you, they're inconsistent and you don't want to make decisions or tell yourself complicated stories or get tattoos based on your feelings. Put them to work for you. Anything can happen, including nothing interesting.
Speaker 1:Proper warfare is a spiritual practice. As the book says, being unconquerable lies within yourself. It doesn't lie. It keeps it 100. It tells the truth. You just have to find it. Forget. You forgot how to declare war on your own weakness and then take out your enemies after you conquered yourself. I still don't know you well enough to think ill of you. I don't judge you at all. I barely think about you. Life is for pleasure. Plants grow toward the sun and people love delight. People love mystery and adventure and mischief and sex and lots of it. It's a great way to spend time, almost as fun as parasailing, but you haven't really done either. Until you combine the two. My birthday is Bloomsday. Never forget it. There's no excuse for you to forget it now.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Sophie was an artist known for the shocking things she did with red and black paint, less well known as a performance artist, an anarchist, prankster, pervert, as when her gambits in that field were successful, nobody knew who did them. That was the whole point. Tristan was a millionaire, recently a double-digit millionaire, feeling pretty good about that, feeling as if all windows and doors that were once closed were then open, as long as he looked more for opportunities and less for threat. The hunt is love, and sometimes the predators are a little bit smaller than us, unimposing, size-wise, if quite imposing in their goth industrial bohemian garb. Tristan was either a suave, debonair, reluctant patron of the arts or enthusiastic patron of the arts, who was reluctantly, suave and debonair, just couldn't help himself. Tristan's international conglomerate sponsored an art show and Sophie was one of the featured artists, and that's how they met. That's when the tension became unbearable, and so it remained. When Sophie was an extremist, she could be dangerously impulsive.
Speaker 1:At her best she was a virtuoso of controlled chaos, putting on a spectacle, doing shocking things with red and black paint. Tristan was a master of the sale. He could create a sense of urgency, deal the cards and thus control the options. He wanted Sophie in more ways than one. It was a fractal quantum lust. He wanted her physically, emotionally, and he wanted her artistic talent, charisma and large online following to be put to service at the international conglomerate. That was the long game. The short game was they got to third base in the fire escape. Sophie bit him near his hip, just enough to draw a little bit of blood. She was highly skilled and experienced in doing this. Tristan's blood was exquisite. It was the perfect balance. She wondered how he did it, although she was sure he didn't know. She had to have more of this delicious man. Plus, there was a certain intoxicating and habit-forming perversity and having all kinds of wild sex with a guy with a useless but highly compensated corporate job. She orchestrated chance encounters around downtown LA where he worked and she lived and worked. Tristan was enjoying their sexual relationship quite a bit.
Speaker 1:Sophie was an artist of life and she brought that to the bedroom in spades, clubs, hearts and diamonds. Tristan was good at logistics. He found locations, brought the accoutrement and never talked past the sale. Sophie talked past Tristan about everything. She spun a seamless blend of fact and fiction, confusing him until he got dizzy. That may have also been the choking. At first. He kept interrupting her, as was his want, but after he decided to just let her talk, she revealed a lot of vulnerable information about herself. That made her more powerful, but also made Tristan more powerful. The push-pull power dynamic struggle was getting out of hand, and they both wanted it that way, was getting out of hand, and they both wanted it that way.
Speaker 1:Sophie, like most great artists, was a keen observer of human behavior. By observing Tristan both in and out of his element and his thousand dollar suit, she learned the art of frame control, dealing the cards and controlling the options. She knew what Tristan was after and made sure that only the options that best benefited her were visible on the menu. She knew he would ask about the secret menu. She had a plan for that too, but in post-coital glow, while he splattered her with red and black paint, she had revealed a facet of her past that was hazardous to expose, plus the name of her arch-nemesis.
Speaker 1:Tristan sought out and formed an alliance with said arch nemesis. Tristan hated her too. He could immediately understand how she could become anyone's arch nemesis, even someone like Sophie, who admitted in her candid moments that she wasn't sure she was fully human. She had feelings, but they were different from the feelings she heard other people talking about. Tristan said he didn't understand this, but fully respected the fact that, because he couldn't sympathize, he needed to give her space for it. She said space is infinite. Why would I want more of it? I want her to have sex.
Speaker 1:That was that Tristan planned to strike at Sophie's big show in Pasadena. Sophie saw this coming and made excellent use of the venue, creating a synesthetic onslaught of pictures, sounds and feelings that enveloped the attendees in her red and black, bloody dream world. It was like a saloon, except instead of peanuts on the floor it had teeth, provenance unknown. Tristan, realizing he was up against a serious opponent, declared his own war Internally, psychologically, planting his flag and declaring himself in favor of everything Sophie was against and anything she was against he would be for. This felt a little bit reactive, but this was war and, as in most fights, both sides felt the need to escalate because they both thought they were losing.
Speaker 1:Tristan got so far into his own end zone that he decided to surrender as a tactic. He told Sophie that his life had been changed by the show and asked if she wanted to have all of his money in cash so she could set it on fire. He knew she would say no, because that stunt was already done by the KLF years ago, before she was born. It was really hard to tell. Tristan looked like a guy who could afford to say he was a little bit younger than he actually was because he had enough money to back up a lot of BS. Unfortunately, living a double, triple or sextuple life takes a lot of mental and emotional spark plugs, which can't be bought for money but are well understood by artists.
Speaker 1:In our next show, sophie created a seamless and fascinating blend of the ordinary and the extraordinary. The first room was so quotidian that when you walked into the next room it felt like the extraordinariness of the next room had walked into you. Tristan immediately fell more deeply in love with Sophie than Sophie was with him, and they spent the next few years going back and forth in this dynamic like a seesaw. Tristan controlled the frame, dealt the cards, didn't trust his friends and used his enemies against his more significant enemies. Sophie gave into her impulses and committed violent crimes that she needed Tristan's money and clout to cover up, which put her in the submissive role until she could confuse and conquer with brilliantly controlled chaos. One night they broke even, and that was by far the best sex they'd ever had.
Speaker 5:Thank you, a partner in crime with a six-figure income.
Speaker 1:Someone who agrees with me, even when I'm dead wrong.
Speaker 6:Someone good with good values, Someone who'll walk the dog while I'm out cheating on him.
Speaker 1:That's what you say you want, but what do you really want? Surely it's more than this. Dating apps don't work. You've been on the same miserable, chemistry-free first date in every sweet green franchise in the city. You want drama sparks friction. You need Polarizer, the first and only dating app based on the concept of sexual polarity Yin and yang, in and out, light and dark, the moment you're born screaming and the moment you die in the gutter. And, of course, the masculine and feminine. You've all got a little bit of both, and some of us take a little bit more of the other. When you find yourself in the throes of the ecstatic and sometimes wildly destructive union of the feminine and masculine energies, as your heart shatters at the exact moment of your convulsive volcanic orgasm, you are not going to care about this person's tastes in prestige TV or their five-year plan. Polarizer runs on an exclusive algorithm that factors in painful insecurities, childhood attachment wounds, unaddressed Jungian shadow material and the narcissism of small differences to match you with someone who will annoy you just enough for the best hate sex of your life. Trust me, you are someone's fetish and Polarizer is free to join. So get polarized today. You'll regret it in the best possible way.
Speaker 1:I like passion. I judge people who aren't interesting. I believe in postponing pleasure. I can't stop thinking about it right now. You know what. I'm getting off on it a little bit. I don't know about that. I just don't want to hurt anyone.
Speaker 1:Why does this always happen to me, this nonsense? Why do these people let me down? Why did you let me down? I've earned this wonderful life that I have. Why would you even try to interfere with that? I don't know. I don't think I really did anything wrong, but I can't understand why you're hurt and that hurts me and I have a bad reaction to it. Let's just sit with that and see how we can be the adult in the room and respond to this in a way that's mature, that says all the right things.
Speaker 1:Everyone should stop Stop. You have nothing to say. There was a time when I trusted you a lot. Now I trust you a lot less. I don't know what's going on in your head. I'm used to giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1:I'm going to assume your intentions were wrong. You were doing what was right for you and that was the only thing that mattered. It felt like you were scorching the earth. You wanted to crush and absolutely destroy. Like I said, I'm not saying that that's what you were doing. I lean toward thinking it's not. But it felt like if somebody had said if you throw this person overboard to save yourself and you'll know for the rest of your life that you absolutely did the right thing and you have nothing to be ashamed of and it's entirely this guy's problem, we'll give you a hundred bucks if you do that, but we'll give you a hundred thousand dollars if you really make it hurt, if you twist the knife, if you do damage, if you break this first, just wipe this creep off the face of the earth. I don't think that's what happened, but if it had been, what would you have done differently?
Speaker 6:My life is always insane, but sometimes it feels really good and sometimes it just doesn't. I'm going to find my translucent heels. Let's go to the goddamn purple peach.
Speaker 5:And adorable bold blast are inspiring. Exciting, ignite, beautiful, fascinating jumpstart. Breathtaking, intriguing kickstart. Dazzling, riveting launch, gorgeous, tempting quickstart, stunning, thrilling, speedy swoon. Transform supercharged swoon worthy turbo charge no-transcript. Unusual, expensive, lazy, glamorous, luxurious.
Speaker 5:Absurd, achieve awkward blunder, clueless, cringe worthy, dumb, fail, fail, proof, failure, faux paw, fool, foolish, idiot, lame. Last mediocre Mistake obvious, pitiful, reject or fuel incenses, shameful, silly, stupid success. Threatened triggers, unknowingly useless waste, safety, abuse, assault, aware, broke, catastrophe, caution, cheat, dangerous, diagnosed, dirty, emergency, ethical, exactly fierce, hoax, horror, jeopardy, lifetime protect, provoke, punch recession, prove sacred, safe, scam, scare, shaking science, survive, terrifying, unstoppable, belong promise, stop alluring, amazing, astonishing, astounding, awesome, badass bomb, brilliant catapult, charming, defying, delicious, delightful, dreamy, epic, explosive, exquisite greatness, heavenly, incredible, jaw-dropping, kick-ass, legendary, mesmerizing, mouth-watering, nail-spellbending, sublime triumph, unbelievable, unleashed, polarizing, dominate.
Speaker 1:I'm deeply kind and fiercely passionate, heartfelt, wily and wise on the total package, and it's fully engorged and bulging, ready to tear down the walls that separate us from each other. We resurrected the spirit of the warrior. The bloodlust became true gorillas fighting outside of linear time, ambushing our enemies, letting them know we were coming with shrieks, just not giving them enough time to strategize and react. Most people can't really improvise unless they've already learned the classics. Our enemies are our enemies for a reason they're pathetic. Pity breeds contempt and we've had enough of that for one lifetime. We declared war outside of time, using secret envelopes to pass around little-known formulas and magic spells for dealing with issues of space, creating warps when we needed them when we needed them. At the end, we gathered victorious in a German restaurant inside of a cave and drank the blood of some of our enemies from the skulls of other enemies. And, wouldn't you know it, we were smited. God struck us down, not the god we expected either. Most people will be shocked when they find out which religion is the correct one. I can't tell you because I'm very dead. I was tortured for a while before the end. By the time it arrived, I was happy to know that it was happening as I was reabsorbed into a universal consciousness. Actually kind of cool, I'm not angry anymore.
Speaker 1:We hooked up at one of the group meetings Meetings Like excuses for Dionysian frenzy. She was all about changing up her politics, subscribing to a new morality. I said, baby, I'm the apolitical kind of anarchist. Why switch up your morality and 86 it all together? She said ooh, that's fascinating, I'd love to learn more. I took her back to the bungalow. I knocked that thing out. We liberated each other from reason with an unfettered passion. Haven't seen her since the war broke out. Group kind of fell apart at that point. Too many people got conscripted. I know sex and violence are inseparable and I can stay home and jerk off to war footage if necessary, but damn, I miss those Bacchanals.
Speaker 1:It's hard to make friends as a grown-ass grown-up living in the big city. It doesn't get any easier to make friends if you won't stop complaining about how hard it is to make friends. Make friends. If you won't stop complaining about how hard it is to make friends, you might get people who want to engage in an ongoing game of eat it awful and just complain and one-up each other on how awful things are. You can do better than that. You don't want to hang out with those people. You want to make friends, maybe do something for others and yourself. There are very few pure acts of altruism, so what could you do that would serve the world, which is something that people seem to be attracted to, so it works for you as well. You make some friends and you get to be the boss of the thing. Everyone needs community.
Speaker 1:Outsiders might need community more than anyone. These are the people not primed to find community themselves. You have more important values than making people like them, which is good. Wanting people to like you makes it hard for them to like you, because they don't know much about you, because you're trying to get them to like you if you're not even a little bit selfish. No one knows what you really like and they can't trust you.
Speaker 1:They don't know much about you. Outsiders are the people that buck that convention. Outsiders are the rule breakers, stakers of their claim to the future. They're willing to think outside of social conventions, which are a big constraint. That makes most people think that they're willing to think outside of social conventions, which are the big constraint that makes most people think that they're not creative, is they don't want to alienate people around them by breaking the tacit prohibition on doing something that your neighbor is unable or unwilling to give themselves permission to realize that they're free and at liberty to do.
Speaker 1:Start a community for people with nothing in common. Start a group of outsiders, the in crowd within the out crowd, the corporation of the unincorporated. It's a good idea, you say, but where do I start? Do I have to incorporate? Is this going to be an inconvenience of any sort? Here's how you do it. I can't help you market the thing. You could put it on Meetup. There are ways to do it. It might be a total failure for a while. You might just have to sweat that out. Success is just perseverance. It's not over until you give up or you die.
Speaker 1:Stick with it until the latter of those things happens, you die. Stick with it until the latter of those things happens. Don't give up. You will be able to establish a community of outsiders given time. It's hard. Outsiders are not joiners. It may be hard to find them. They don't always advertise, but it'll work out. Get your fundamentals straight first. Here are the things you need to know and prepare for.
Speaker 1:The core values that you want to have to start a group of outsiders. Nothing is about you and simultaneously, everything is sort of about you. These are matters of interpretation. Most people are thinking about themselves, not thinking about you much at all. It's all in your head to some degree. You are arguing with screwing, screwing over versions of yourself, and all of those people are different, just like you. They're different from the people that they correspond to in the real world and they're unique. You are an individual just like everyone else, and yet not quite. You get a chance to be unique within this brief window of mortality, or at least think you are, and it's a useful illusion. Even if you're wrong, that's a good thing to be wrong about. Basically, you may as well be unique and your duty in life is to find your true desires, become who you are and follow a path of self-inquiry, which nothing should impede you from doing that, and you should not make any moves to forbid, to sandbag anyone else's journey of self-inquiry.
Speaker 1:Individuality in a group of outsiders, a community of people with nothing in common, must be embraced and celebrated because it is strength If you can stick with those agreements to free inquiry and respect their journey as you demand that they respect yours. You don't really put boundaries around a journey, so that metaphor doesn't really work, but having boundaries is necessary. You get what I'm saying. Outsiders can generally do that more intuitively. Also, it helps if you can find weirdos with complementary skills, not people just like you. Personally, hanging out with people exactly like me sounds absolutely horrifying. Gene pool means diversity for a reason.
Speaker 1:Find people that are good at things that you're not good at, that love things that you hate, that have weaknesses where you have strengths, and thus there can be a mutual symbiotic benefit from the relationship. That's something to keep in mind. Celebrate individuality, which is a good way to figure out how people can help each other, because you're all going to need it. As much as you want to celebrate individuality, you also want to seek like-minded souls, to find the others as Tim Leary says, people like you in some important way. You want to avoid getting caught up in the narcissism of small differences, where you find someone that you basically are simpatico with and fight about the trivial, marginal things that you have minor disagreements about. That's what breaks up lots of subcultures.
Speaker 1:Make sure that the like-mindedness is strong enough that you can hang together through those differences. Find weirdos again with complementary skills. If you can forget that you forgot how to use your intuition and get out of your own way, people will naturally gravitate to you and you will start to notice when you're in the same room with a like-minded soul. They're not always the people that would be in your MySpace Top 8 Dream Team. If you're anything like me, you haven't always made wise choices in people you befriend. If that's the case, figure out what's going on there. You can learn a lot from examining your own motivations, which we'll get into more in a bit. Notice who you naturally click with. You click with. The click of the people who click should include lots of clicking. It could go deeper than that. People in this group are probably going to sleep together at some point. It's that kind of party. It's duh. We're on the D&EC inside.
Speaker 1:We're going to talk about that shadow material later. But find like-minded souls, find people that you can at least stand to be in the same room with.
Speaker 1:You don't have to have everything in common, it's not good if you do Make sure it's not good if you do Make sure it's a good mix and that everything harmonizes somewhat or that it's chaotic and anarchic in a sexy way. Promote open dialogue. Comedy is a good place to look for this. The role of the court jester was to be the one person who could roast the king, who could speak uncomfortable truths without getting thrown to the lions, because he was doing so under the rubric of humor.
Speaker 1:That's a good place to start. Every word spoken in jest has a truth buried inside of it. Otherwise the joke doesn't land.
Speaker 1:If you like telling jokes with your friends. See where those jokes are landing. Feel that out. Those are places to explore. Allow people to screw up. Allow people to be awful. Allow honest mistakes. Allow people to bounce back from those. Use the language to its fullest, most glorious, most violent extent. Words can certainly do serious damage, but make sure that this is a place where that's not what's going on. You are pushing each other's buttons in order to get it started in here. You're pushing each other's buttons for a purpose and there's respect, but not respect for taboos.
Speaker 1:If you think all of the taboos in contemporary society are worth respecting. You might want to think about why that is. Could this be the time in history when we finally become correct about everything? Question taboos just for the hell of it, adopt horrifying opinions that you don't believe. See how the other side lives.
Speaker 1:If you find an idea occurring to you and it makes you uncomfortable, that is a huge flashing green light. That's a strobe light for something your community should explore. Brace the shadow. Here we go. This is the good stuff. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate. That's in the words of Carl Jung, which I was reminded of in the book Existential Kink, which is one of the better self-help books that I've ever read. You've got to support each other in your group of outsiders navigating your dark sides. Go into the hidden stuff. Go into the places where you hide things, into your childhoods. When did things go wrong? How you treat the past is how it will treat you. I like a lot of wounded people. I was once adamantly anti-nostalgia and I still think it can be quicksand in a lot of cases, but to the extent that it helps you figure out your shadow material. The past is fair game. The present is fair game. Anything that's uncomfortable to talk about, first of all, is probably what people want to hear about, so you should make art about it that will relate to it. Secondly, dive in. That's where the good stuff is. It ain't easy. If it was, people would be doing it for fun.
Speaker 1:Shadow work is real work. It could also be play. If you're very Apollonian in the concept that you have of yourself and that you present to the world, you could find the party in the shadow. You will find monsters. Most of them will be silly monsters. Some people are harboring genuinely scary monsters. In that case, you should be honest with yourself about it and figure out how to not let the monster out to play. Figure out a place where people want to play with the monster. The monster is probably just ridiculous. People might clown you, but it's not as bad as you think it is. You're not as bad as you think you are. You were born free. Become who you are, pursue your desires and work through your shadow material. The awfulness that seems to keep happening to you could be stuff that you're bringing in because you are not acknowledging the parts of yourself that could be attracting that material Not necessarily true, useful as a thought experiment, part of shadow work.
Speaker 1:Brace yourself, challenge conventions. In your community of people with nothing in common. There are conventions worth challenging. There are things worthy of the critical and satirical scalpels. Surely this is not the end of history. This could not be the time when we're as right about everything as we're ever going to be. If you can't think of anything in the consensus bucket of opinions, whether it's on your side or in whatever city or municipality, you're part of your community standards. If you agree with all of them, think about that. How would you have felt about the community standards in the 1950s, when slavery was okay? How do you think factory farming is going to look in 50 years? How is it going to feel to have to explain that to kids? One of many examples of things that are worthy of challenging. You can do that through art. I think that everything is art. So your community of people with nothing in common will be making art, as long as you engage in any activity whatsoever.
Speaker 1:I don't know if Burning man is the optimal model for this. There's a lot that I like about Burning man. It also represents a lot of what's decadent about the way capitalism A lot of people hate it. I find that amusing and satisfying. There's stuff I like about Burning man. A lot of my friends go. I might go one of these days just to make you mad if you hate Burning man and because I love their participation rule no spectators, you can't sit on the sidelines, you gotta be in the arena.
Speaker 1:Life is struggle. You gotta be in the arena. Life is struggle. Life is suffering. The problem is the belief that you should not have problems. Beat out those problems and get better problems. Do something. Don't hurt anyone. That might be better.
Speaker 1:Something to say, not just slapstick. If someone gets a pie in the face, it should have a subtext. There should be honey hidden in the pie. That's a reference, a callback to an earlier gag involving someone covering himself with honey and going into the woods to be eaten by bears because that's how he decided to sacrifice himself. He'd be ridiculous. Have fun with it. Get people involved. Always talk to strangers. Make sure it's voluntary. Give people something to do. People are waiting to be told what to do. Don't keep them waiting. You will inevitably have spectators. Most people are happy in that role. So put on a show. Make your own show. The culture is not your friend. Make some friends, get them together, do this, start a band of outlaws.
Speaker 1:Humans need rituals. We're hardwired for ceremony, and not necessarily routine, but rituals. There's a power in anything that becomes a practice and anything can become a practice. Anything that you devote your full attention to, that you do every day, that you're fully present for it becomes a practice and that practice becomes you. In a sense, it infiltrates every corner of your life.
Speaker 1:Things get weird. Some of the better ones involve groups. You should create some rituals for your group of outsiders Ceremonies, convention, secret handshakes, not necessarily hazing, I don't kink shame. Steal some ideas or create your own. Make sure that you're working that body Embodiment, getting into the body, physical activity, energized meditation. That's where you get to the truths that are ineffable. The English language doesn't really do justice If you have a regular meditation practice that primes you to treat these practices in the manner of meditation practice, not the practice that Alan Iverson is talking about, but rather something that you deeply engage with, that you show up for every time body, mind and soul. That sort of presence is our only hope Sanity In this overstimulated world of people trying to make us angry and sell us more stuff we don't need. Your group will meet opposition at some point. Even if it doesn't, things will go wrong.
Speaker 1:To figure out how to be resilient, be anti-fragile, we discover ourselves and become who we are. Through conflict it's absolutely necessary for any progress or growth, and it is hot. Friction, polarity, comfort is necessary so we can loosen up, expand our theatrical willingness to go there. But friction, polarity, differences, disagreements those things are hot. That's where the sparks fly and the sex happens. So be able to sustain disagreements. Be able to kick people out if they're bringing down the group. If they're insiders posing as outsiders, double agents, shake them down. Figure out what they know and set some boundaries. Build a moat with alligators so they can't get back in. Build resilience. Figure out how to do it. Figure out what your weaknesses are and prepare to be challenged in those areas.
Speaker 1:One thing that will get you through is the moments of delight that come from art, music, certain combinations of words, enthusiastic make-out sessions, sublime moments where you feel connected to other people or to a larger intelligence. Those are everywhere. If you aren't looking for unconventional beauty, you don't know what you're missing. Imperfection is a prerequisite for beauty. Cindy Crawford would have been beautiful either way, but she wouldn't have been the biggest supermodel in the world without the mole. Beauty is everywhere Beautiful people are good at spotting it. Wherever they go, look up, there's always something interesting going on over your head. Discover your true desires. What do you really want? What do you not want me to know that you want? What did you want when you first? What were the first things you wanted when you realized you were capable of wanting? Go deep and remember. Someone asked the Zen master what is Zen? The Zen master replied nothing special. Nothing is special, which means everything is special. That includes your allies group of outsiders, your community of people with nothing in common. That's what you want to look for as a group. You're on a scavenger hunt for unconventional beauty.
Speaker 1:Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes is LA's number one avant-garde personal development program. Medicated-minutescom episodes premiere first Wednesdays of the month seven o'clock pm on k-chung los angeles 16 30 am k-chung radioorg. I am emerson dameron, the writer, producer, host at all for emerson dameron's medicated minutes. I love you personally. Levity saves lives.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:At first I thought this was seriously a setup. She seemed really into it. Then I thought maybe she loved taking my discipline and also was using sex for power. I don't know if that blew my mind, but it blew something.
Speaker 6:Steamy, dreamy and way too hot for radio. Crimson Transgressions, a bite-sized erotic thriller by Emerson Dameron. Find it before it finds you.
People on this episode
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes
Emerson Dameron
Self Portraits As Other People
The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo
Desert Oracle Radio
Ken Layne