Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes
LA’s #1 avant-garde personal development program. I'm Emerson Dameron. I love you, personally. Levity saves lives.
Part pep talk, part brutal mirror, hosted by a witty and wounded romantic who means every word he doesn't believe.
Regularly scheduled episodes premiere on the first Wednesday of the month on KCHUNG Los Angeles.
Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes
From Chaos to Connection in Modern Life: The First Five Years of EDMM
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
A sampler of selections from the show, dating 2020-23. A monument to what once was.
Includes excerpts from:
- Fear of Death is the Beginning of All Foolishness
- I Don't Want Enlightenment
- Reciprocity Now
- People of the Screaming Release
- Limerence
- Loved and Lost and Learned Your Lesson
- Hollywood
- First Blood, Best Blood
As well as a bonus remix of the "Cat, Not a Kitten" letter to Ask a Sadist. Got a problem only the Sadist can help you with? He'd love to hear about it. DM Emerson Dameron on Instagram.
Includes music from Chris Rogers, Visions of the Universe, AHOAMI, and Ohmu.
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Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes: http://medicated-minutes.com/
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Emerson Dameron: http://levitysaveslives.com/
Exploring Art and Existence
Speaker 1I don't want enlightenment , I just want to make art . When I transmute shame into laughter , I am Prometheus getting a hummer from the cosmos itself , and enlightenment is a non-sequitur April Fool's joke compared to that . I want you to make art too . Steal my ideas . There's always more where that came from . Say what you should have said to that bastard six months ago in an aria or a sonnet there's nothing they can do . It's satire . Anything anyone does can be art . Be the Tony Iommi of paleontology or the Joe Coleman of CPAs . When you get into the millions , money gets absolutely psychedelic . I want sufficient health , wealth and freedom to make art . That needs to exist , and if I get perversely rich doing it , I want that to happen before I get enlightened . It's more fun that way , and fun is the law . K-chung is a celebration of the street-level activism , experimental theater , comedy and performance art , wildly eclectic music and edge-of-the-world weirdness of the most diverse city on Earth . We're LA's rebel radio family , the hub for Southern California conversation and chaos .
Speaker 1We do a lot with a little and we need your help in the form of your hard-earned frog skins . Go to kchungradioorg slash , donate , give what you can and be honest . Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes is LA's number one avant-garde personal development program . I'm Emerson Dameron . I'm the producer and host of Emerson Dameron's . Medicated Minutes is LA's number one avant-garde personal development program . I'm Emerson Dameron . I'm the producer and host of Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes , but I'm not the most interesting character in the show , because we're dedicated to exploring the most fascinating subject in the world . You Come for the discussions of power , philosophy , psychology , sex , drugs , etc . And stay for the inspiration , motivation and tools of self-inquiry that have transformed the lives of countless listeners . I don't know how many . It's a lot . It's no coincidence that this show has spawned not one , not two , but three quasi-religious movements . Find out which one is right for you . Episodes premiere on K-Chung , los Angeles , 1630 am . K-chungradioorg . First Wednesdays of the month , 7 pm Pacific . The podcast is at medicated-minutescom .
Speaker 1Levity saves lives , but I understand the suffering thing and here's what I think it's about . It's a good way to make your life seem longer , because the time flies by when you're enjoying it and it drags out when you're suffering through it and running out the clock . So maybe if you want more time , if you're just afraid to die and you don't want things to move too quickly and you know intuitively that having too much fun caused that to happen , that yeah , I guess it makes sense to make things hard on yourself . Fear of death is the beginning of all foolishness . Death is absolute . Life is optional . Sometimes grudges , beefs with other folks can result from the stories that you're telling yourself about yourself . If you enjoy feeling aggrieved , just enjoy that .
Speaker 1You don't have to get revenge . You don't have to forgive . Don't forget , you can make the pretense of forgiving if you do in fact want revenge on a long timeline . You don't want to put your enemy on notice that revenge is forthcoming or maybe in the cards , then you want to at least fake forgive convincingly . But you're much better off cultivating yourself . There's always more work to be done . The more you do it , the faster the time will seem to go .
Speaker 1Avoid obsessions . Let your anxiety show you where you're stuck . Let your obsessive energy go to work getting you unstuck . Put it to work for you , not the other way around . And remember that you always have not absolute choice , but more choice than you think you do , because you only have the choices that you know that you have , and that's always going to be a small fraction of the choices that you do have . So learn to reflect in such a way that you become aware of the previously unknown unknowns , the choices that you did not know before that you had .
Speaker 1They're back in the old awful times of really gnarly animal experiments . There were some evil scientists that had a collection of rats and they put the rats in an enclosure with a floor that was wired up to shock them , and they indeed shocked the rats at random intervals and some of the rats , before they got too shocked to have their full faculties about them , noticed that there was a little ledge around the side of the enclosure . If they could get up on the ledge they would not get shocked , they could just watch what was happening . So some of them got up there before they got shocked too much to even be that observant , and some of them got so shocked that they just thought this is the way it is . There was a pattern to the shocks for a while and the rats got accustomed to the pattern and then the pattern changed a little bit and then the rats altered their behavior somewhat to comply with the new pattern and then it just became utter chaos .
Speaker 1And that's what the business in Hollywood is like . You always have more choices than you realize and sometimes you choose to do things that aren't so compassionate . That might hurt someone other than yourself , or you might hurt yourself badly and thus hurt other people by proxy . And that is because you are infinitely good and infinitely evil , and so far beyond good and evil that it's just so damn sexy that it's hard to tolerate sometimes . And just know that you can accept your own wrongness , sickness , twistedness . Accept your own wrongness , sickness , twistedness .
Speaker 1And if you're afraid that you can't get what you want without undergoing a lot of unnecessary suffering and tedium , I've got good news you can get what you want . There are different ways to do it . I would take a fun one Maybe have a little bit of fun , spread a little bit of mischief and then get what you want . And then , if you want suffering and tedium , you can have that also . The ease of getting what you want will not preclude any suffering that you desire , but as much as you can keep your nose clean , eat right , exercise , maintain your integrity , avoid clutter in your space or in your head space , set your goals and go after them , cut your losses and learn to learn your lesson without beating up on yourself Unless we're talking about masturbation , in which case go for it .
Speaker 1It is now time for Ask a Sadist a round of Q&A with me , your host , a sadist with a heart of rugged gold . I like to hurt people in the ways that most help them , and it means the world to me when you let me be mean to you . We have reader-submitted questions and we will start with this one . Dear Sadist , I am a recently graduated 20-something who just started my new job in my dream profession . What could that be , the mind reels
Navigating Power Dynamics in the Workplace
Speaker 1.
Speaker 1The one hitch is my boss , selena I assume not her real name , since it's in scare quotes which fail to scare me . Selena , who is around my age , but on the more conservative side , she seems determined to make an uncomfortable work environment for me in the office . So the dream profession involves an office Interesting . She accuses me of being too sexy Also in scare quotes that could be scary depending on context and a distraction to my apparently very susceptible male coworkers very susceptible male co . -workers she asked me to stop wearing skirts and heels and has even gone so far as to call me quote sex on a stick unquote . Now I'm shaking Within earshot of co-workers in the break room . She silently drills her disapproving eyes into my back during staff meetings I have chills and makes inappropriate remarks about how my quote legs do all the work for me unquote . Any advice on how to get my boss to respect the work I am actually doing and stop insinuating that I'm the office sex kitten , signed Cat , not a kitten .
Speaker 1Cats are not known for being joiners or team players , not that they don't work hard . If you've watched a cat , interestingly they mostly do this when humans are not looking . But if you've seen a cat hunt in the wild or on the street , it is absolutely fascinating to watch and it merits a slow motion replay . And I feel the same way about your letter Cat , not a kitten . The power dynamics here are delicious . The great Oscar Wilde said that everything in the world is about sex except sex . Sex is about power . Power is also about sex because sex is about everything and we have a heaping hellbent of sex and power , which is also about everything In your anecdote letter of grievance because you're not getting the respect that you feel that you deserve .
Speaker 120-something encompasses a wide range . The human brain is not fully developed until age 25 . So if you're under 25 , you might not deserve the respect that you think that you are owed . That's true of many of us . However , you are obviously attuned to this dance , this game of power dynamics in the workplace , in a way that I would venture to say that Selina is oblivious to , as she is wielding the cudgel of conventional morality against you , the weapon of boring brutes and dullards , in order to engage in a sadomasochistic relationship . She is the one that keeps bringing up sex with regards to you . I don't know if these men are wolf whistling or if they're complaining about the distractions , or if their wives bring them lunch and complain to Selena . I would guess that this is only a problem in her troubled , addled with conventional morality excuse for a mind . And that gives you immense power in this situation .
Speaker 1My friend , my advice enjoy your youth , first of all , and the power that it gives you , and your sexuality and the appeal that that has , because there's the perception that it's somehow unspoiled . And on and on and on . People want to break your innocence , which I'm sure you're perfectly capable of doing yourself . Innocence which I'm sure you're perfectly capable of doing yourself because you are already in tune with this in a remarkably astute way . So my advice to you is enjoy your power , embrace it , use it , enjoy the dance . Let this goon feel important . Meanwhile , get good at your job . You say that it's your dream job . You're not going to be working in this office forever . You are going to be running . Something important is what my intuition tells me , based on your fluency in the hidden , silent language of power . So get good at your job , become indispensable , become unfireable and thus , in the end , ungovernable .
Speaker 1But make this dullard feel powerful . Let her think that she's getting to you , let her feel like she's hurting you . That will be tremendously exciting for her If you feign subservience , if you act as though she's getting to you and she's hurting you and she's breaking you down and she's rewiring you to make you more subservient to her , and that you're developing a genuine respect for your tormentor , which I believe that you're capable of doing this without going too far with the act . She's gonna believe it . It's what she wants to believe , but does not want to think about directly . This gets her off . She is the worst kind of sadist because she has no idea . She thinks that God and conventional morality are compelling her to behave in this way and is thus rationalizing it and is thus not making peace with her own proclivities . So you can do her an immense favor by letting her think that she's getting to you and I .
Speaker 1From the way that you write , you might have a little bit of the masochist in you , and that's something I love to see and do not discourage , and you can enjoy that . Enjoy the dance . My friend , my cat-like prodigy , if you're going to get what you want , you have to know what you want . And if you don't know what you want , decide what you want . Have a very clear idea , a picture , know what it sounds like , feels like , smells like , and then learn everything there is to know about it . If you want a boat , learn everything there is to know about that boat and boats across the harbor . Quit your job that you hate anyway and spend all of your days in the Marina del Rey Public Library , which has a massive selection of books about boats . You'll be broke because you quit your job . Hopefully you're charming and people will give you money to buy sandwiches , because you need that energy to absorb the information that you're reading about boats and philosophy and Crowian magic so you can manifest your bloodthirsty demon boat into existence . Know why you want a demon boat .
Speaker 1That requires understanding your values , understanding the value of values , how to value them , and quantification is not a perfect paradigm , but it's the one that we like the best in America . The scoreboard doesn't lie so much . Like the great philosophers such as Seneca and Aristotle , you will want to calculate the value of your values using an abacus . Slide those balls back and forth , those nice , smooth , hypnoticic balls , the way that they move , a clacking sound that keeps your confused roommates awake at night . And hypnotize yourself with the balls and then believe whatever the hell you want .
Speaker 1The important thing is that you take action . Ideas are nothing without massive action , and that means execution . Killing someone is maybe not the best thing that you could do with your time , but it's better than nothing . You are what you do every day . If you're really all in on something , you're going to do it every day or you're not going to do it at all . So unless you're killing someone every day , you're not really a murderer . You could kill the ghost over and over again . That would be repetitive , but that would be taking action . Take action , do it , do it . Do the damn thing , like we always do about this time and , whatever you do , go all in .
Speaker 1As you get in the game and get active , you will encounter problems . The only way to not have problems is to not leave your domicile , and the problem with problems is that you don't know how to enjoy them . And being a grown ass grown up involves staying cool in the face of chaos and being the kind of warrior survivor who does not need to have fun to have fun . You're having fun regardless . So go out there and get the problems that get you off . Become a problem for your problems . Put your problems in their place and then you'll have new and better and more difficult , challenging and rewarding and exciting , very sexy problems .
Speaker 1You will tell yourself stories about yourself and your problems and your opportunities and what you think other people think of you and think that you think of you and them , and it goes on and on and it's all quite ridiculous . We talk to ourselves about ourselves all day and it's almost entirely crap . We are wrong about everything , sometimes in very interesting ways . Most of these stories are just depressing and not interesting or fun . They're like miserable little art films miserable little art films . So if you're going to be telling stories to yourself , why not make them exciting ?
Speaker 1Go on an adventure , be a hero Star in a rip-roaring comedy , or make it porn . Just make sure that you dress well and look good as an action figure , as Mitch Horowitz , the author , advises in his guidelines on style . And if you're afraid to look good , if you're afraid to get your shine shining and your swagger swaggering when you get the right fit , understand that fear and anxiety are two interpretations of the same thing . If you're not scared , you're not challenging yourself , challenging yourself , and keep improving and improve yourself before all the other people . Improve themselves and be better than other people . Be terrified all the time . Put out a hit on yourself . Know that there's someone out there who's tracking you down and is going to murder you , murder you , and understand that anything that you attain or gain could be taken away with the swing of a blade and the vicious sting of betrayal , because anyone could turn on you at any time . You don't really know who you are to those people .
Speaker 1Make a plan and be willing to adjust as you go . Plan ahead , plan for the worst . You can hope for the best if you want . That doesn't really matter , but what does matter is that you improvise , iterate and be able to MacGyver your way out of hell . Plan for chaos , dance with discontinuity and learn to enjoy drinking your own urine , because you may have to survive off of that . Water is going to be the oil of this century . So drink your own urine and like it . You were born ready for anything . Just get out of your own way and gargle that stuff , or you can have some of mine , that might be better . Mine gets excellent reviews .
Speaker 1Create rituals that help you get into the state beyond unconscious competence , in the golden realm we call Paradise City . Some people call it flow , some people call it just state . That's where you want to be . Every morning you can do an exercise called the Morning Pages , which by julia cameron in her book the artist's way , which just involves writing 750 words , the equivalent of three handwritten pages , every day , and the morning is the best time to do it . Just get it done and do it kind of the same way every day , because the more things that you do exactly the same every day , the more mental energy you will free up to put real thought into important things . So your morning pages should be variations on the same theme .
Speaker 1Every morning you should write a letter to an imaginary friend , a middle child in a family in the suburbs of connecticut who is relatively happy , very bright , curious about the world , feeling a little boxed in by suburban life , kind of knowing in her . It's creeping into her conscious awareness that the dream of the mortgage marriage and monogamy is dead and she's bored at a family dinner with relatives who she doesn't really feel anything for . And you can be the hero that she needs every day . She has not yet heard the song Life on Mars by David Bowie . It is your responsibility and will be your honor to introduce her to that song , as well as the rest of his catalog , which will serve her well when she becomes a theater kid later in life , which you will not discourage . You in fact will familiarize yourself with some of the great arias as her musical tastes expand into realms that yours have never been in , and you will write to her every day and that will put continuity in your life , and that will be all to the good , because there's going to be a lot of uncertainty .
Navigating Personal Development and Relationships
Speaker 1You're wrong about everything , but you have to trust your instincts and your experience . Until you awaken from the daydream , that's really all you've got . So you can't trust your own instincts and experience , you're kind of lost . So that's a good thing to be wrong about , and it will help if you can embrace the power of poetry and paradox and realize that nothing has ever made sense and we're still trying to make sense of that . That's the struggle of our modern age . The future is full of surprises , but don't put money on that . It could be boring . Again , it's full of surprises . All bets are , or should be , off .
Speaker 1Make sure you get the big stuff handled every day . You can do maybe four significant things in a day . You'll give yourself a massive to-do list and then you'll barely put a dent in it and you won't trust yourself . So stay humble . Take notes on how it goes Again , revise as you go . Have sex every day . You really should be doing that . You should have the self-confidence and swagger flowing through you at this point where you want to throw down hard in the bedroom every day . Make that happen , whatever it takes . Do it before dinner . Don't try to do it after a meal . Have sex first and then eat and then watch Netflix or whatever else it is you're going to do . And make sure that at least twice a day you do your meditation practice .
Speaker 1Meditation is not a nice to have . It is absolutely necessary for enduring the cascading avalanche of too much information , too much garbage , too many outer orbit acquaintances taking up our time and awareness . You need a meditation practice . It doesn't have to be sitting meditation . That's boring and the people who do it are obnoxious and precious . But you can do screaming meditation precious , but you can do screaming meditation . It's kind of a combination of a meditation and primal scream therapy . Like John Lennon and Yoko Ono did , just make sure you do the same thing every day , because every day should be close to identical vis-a-vis your own itinerary and plans , so that you will have plenty of energy left to deal with the inevitable . I don't know , it's not guaranteed , nothing's guaranteed . You're probably going to chew on some chaos .
Speaker 1So be consistent in the areas where you control and find the people who deserve to have you around and share your oxygen , and only hang out with people who deserve your company and who you enjoy hanging out with more than you enjoy being alone and who enrich your life in some way . They can be mentors , people who are a couple of levels ahead of you , but humble and see the greatness in you and help bring that out , rather than just trying to make copies of themselves . You want to be aware of that and help people who are struggling but can help themselves . If you give them a hand and give them a platform . And help people who are struggling but can help themselves . If you give them a hand and give them a platform , they can take it from there and they can take it with them and they can reciprocate and return your gratitude at some point , which isn't the point . If you never see them again , your job is done . But it is kind of nice .
Speaker 1You can have someone around to help you move across town or just enjoy a pizza without them moving . You will be filled with gratitude . You have people like that on your team and you really ought to be there's . No should Just be full of gratitude all the time . You already are . You can't help it because gratitude is everywhere . So be grateful for everything and to everyone . If somebody is your enemy or did you dirty , you may as well learn what you can from it and laugh , ask yourself , what can I learn from this ? What's funny about this ? And then get revenge and be grateful for the opportunity to do that and sharpen your killer instincts . Make peace with your capacity for violence . Be grateful to anyone you may have choked or strangled over the years . Those are your best teachers . They helped you in ways you'll perhaps never fully understand , but that are deeply embedded in your psyche and who you are and how you move in the world . Have gratitude for fruit cups , for the sunk cost fallacy , for the color magenta and , when you have a chance , get some stuffed animals . They could be yours or somebody else's , or you could get them from a thrift store and set them on fire and sacrifice them and purify them with flame because you can , and be grateful that you can , because you are free .
Speaker 1One thing I probably should have prefaced this with , and something you need to know as a person of the Screaming Release , is you do not have to say things straight out . You do not have to share your true beliefs . First of all , nobody cares . It doesn't matter what you believe in your heart of hearts . People will draw conclusions about you based on how you make them feel and how you affect their lives . Nobody cares what you really think and you really have nothing to gain by sharing it in most situations , because you don't want philosophical intimacy with most people and most people do not want philosophical intimacy with you . They don't care what you think intimacy with you . They don't care what you think .
Speaker 1What most people want is to be controlled and infantilized . People pay medical specialists hundreds of dollars an hour to treat them like children . Anything that smacks of childhood regression is forever and always in high demand and goes for a premium price . So people want to be controlled , and they will show you how to control them . If you're paying attention , if you haven't noticed how badly people want to be controlled , tune into that . That's the first thing you want to do . Improve your radar and your ability to notice the ways in which people are begging to be subjugated , and offering you the resources to do it . Conjugated , and offering you the resources to do it .
Speaker 1People are bad at being animals . We're probably the only animal that's not thoroughly competent and doing the best that it possibly can , which is how we've created the conditions for our own annihilation , because what we crave most of all is that relief . We suffer and we make up stories , and most people spend most of their time craving and seeking out a bully , because the human condition is a nightmare . There's no way out . It does not get better , it gets worse the further in you go and people want to destroy themselves . And the best way to control people and the best way to get what you want is to help people get what they want , with the knowledge in mind that getting what they want is pretty guaranteed to destroy .
Speaker 1You want to be cool about it . Don't make sudden moves . Don't explain to people what you're doing unless you're hiding it in plain sight . Just figure out how to control them . Figure out what they think they want , what they really want , where the overlap is there , and then help them get it , and that will eat them alive and you can avail yourself of their resources , their energy , get your protein . That way , have your rotating cast of disciples .
Speaker 1That requires making people feel good and that's why that requires making people feel good and that's why I like to make an example of narcissists that try to get involved with the people in the screaming release , because y'all screw it up for the rest of us , whatever strength and self-confidence you have , is a millimeter deep and you just have to be cruel and obvious and stupid in the way that you go after people and try to control them , and it's pathetic , it's aesthetically disgusting to me and when the time comes to make an example of somebody , it's going to be one of you , because humiliation works on you . You are simple that way . I love to fail . The world is my laboratory . I learn so much and get so much inspiration from the things that make me feel small and insignificant and worthless even significant and worth us , even If it doesn't . It's not a good learning experience and it is good to be king . But if you're the smartest person in the room , you're not in the right room for learning . So if you limit yourself and you're basically a narcissist and a creep , I will come at you and you're not gonna like it .
Speaker 1The most important thing to remember as a person of the screaming release is that no one really likes you . That's a tough one , but it is worth keeping very much in mind at all times . Nobody likes you . Nobody cares . You are alone in the world . People care about what you can do for them . They care about how you make them feel about themselves , how you fit into the scheme of their lives . Know that , absorb it . Once you've really figured that out , you can do pretty much anything you want , and way , way more than you ever thought you were capable of .
Emotional Confessions and Relationship Breakup
Speaker 3I feel like I'm losing my mind , and that's not the way I normally feel . I've got a pretty good handle on my mind . Way I normally feel I've got a pretty good handle on my mind . All my friends say so and they would know , as they're successful people with punishing standards for excellence . My friend Alexia is one of the most creative artists I've ever known and also an in-demand life coach . She says there's just a certain something about me , something people trust . My friend Mark has the third most popular Vimeo channel of them all by certain metrics , and he always solicits my opinion . He thinks I'm a genius and says he loves being around me just to soak up my demonic energy . I think that's kind of silly , but I'll take it , but only because it's from Mark .
Speaker 3And yet it's hard for me to accept that a genius could feel the way I feel today , the way I've felt for the last few months . It's been 90 days . I expected some relief . I just knew I could wrangle this to the ground , the way I attack all my problems and everyone else's problems . But this one is different . Mark can't help me . He's too self-absorbed . Even Alexia can't help me . Maybe she's really not that smart after all .
Speaker 3I've been over and over this and these wild feelings keep driving me back to one person you . You're the only one who really gets it Well , aside from my friend Stuart , who's also probably the greatest living contemporary philosopher and no one has heard of him because he's so humble and he's not on any map they could understand . He gets it , he gets that , you get it , and he wants me to tell you . So I'm telling you I love you . I love everything about you . I'm obsessed . You're the only person who knows how to break me the way .
Speaker 3I ache to be broken . I'm so tired of being so tightly in control of everything in my life . I'm tired of managing other people's lives . I want to be free . I want to be swept away . I want to be owned by someone who's strong enough to hold me in that space and handle that responsibility . I have very good judgment , especially when it comes to people , and I believe you are that person . If you can handle that , I'll be hopelessly devoted to you forever . I'm angry , I'm tough and I'm tired . Tough and I'm tired . I'm tired of hiding my hurt . I hope you can help . I hope you can hurt me in ways that will help me . I want to let go . I want you .
Speaker 2Hey , sandy , it's Aaron . I haven't been ignoring you . I've been on my magical mystery tour , riding the lightning , doing my thing and making things happen . I've got a lot of cool projects . I'm working on magical mystery tour , riding the lightning , doing my thing and making things happen . I've got a lot of cool projects I'm working on . They're not ready yet . I can't wait to share them with you when the time is right and the feeling is right , after I've done a little bit more work .
Speaker 2I refuse to get specific about . Okay . I admit it , I have been ignoring you , but I haven't been doing it faultlessly . I'm ignoring you with intention , because it's fun and it's sexy and I know it gets you worked up . I know your secret , don't worry . I'm good at keeping secrets . But I know and you know , I know and we both know why you have to protect your little secret .
Speaker 2You've accomplished so much in your life . Everyone who knows you loves you or at least respects you . Most of them want to be you . But you're not so sure you want to be you anymore . You'd love to have another option , another woman to be you . Underneath your tough , successful exterior , you crave submission . You long to be dominated and owned . You want to let go , give in , give up , get lost in your lust , throw yourself into the lava of pure sensation and experience . You're in luck Because I like you A lot . We both know that .
Speaker 2Well , now that I think about it , I'm not sure . But admittedly you have your flaws and I don't know if you're ready to get what you really want . You're more screwed up than you like to admit . You're a self-centered , mean-spirited , living elitist and you're afraid to let go . It takes a special kind of person to break through that , to coax and seduce you to release the real you underneath all that static and noise . I want to be that person . I want to own you , to break you , to take you to the place where you really want to be .
Speaker 2Well , part of me wants that . If I get around to it , you're right about one thing we do fundamentally get each other . We get each other in the ways we've always longed to be gotten . You're one of an infinitesimally small number of people I've encountered in my global travels . Who gets it , who gets me and who gets yourself , even if you don't see the full scope of that yet , you're so healthy it makes me sick . I want you and I'm starting to enjoy wanting you . I want you to know that , to feel it , to live it , to release your control . I want you to want me too . I want you to want me to want you . I want you to meet me more than halfway . I want you to beg for it . You love it , don't you ?
Speaker 1it's for your own good I'm breaking up with you again for the last time . This time have I handled this as well as I could have ? Absolutely not . I would have ended a year ago , but the sex was so good in the beginning I was still chasing that dragon God . It was degrading . I never specifically told you I hate being lied to , so maybe you thought I was into that .
Speaker 1I don't care , because I may always love you and be the world's foremost scholar on you , but I don't trust you anymore From now on . I trust my instincts and experience , because I'm a wild animal in the red chakra . I'm pure passion . You've been over and over and over everything I did wrong . I'm an avoidant , weirdo , a screw up and a bad person . I can be a lot worse and screw up down and around a lot harder than that and you won't get to experience it . The women who do will be women who put you in the shade , who are excited about my personal growth and my hardcore slut phase this summer . It may leave me feeling empty inside . I'm willing to risk that . I'm sorry I hurt your feelings , except I'm not because I'm done apologizing . I'm not sorry . I said I'm sorry that time because I'm not sorry at all anymore . I've got my confidence back . I hate you so much I want to screw you almost to death , but not entirely , because I have integrity and I care , and one day you'll realize how hot that is . I could leave tomorrow morning after a vigorous round of goodbye , hate sex . But I'll leave now , no matter how touch hungry I am . Peace , call me .
The Insomniac's Revelation and Fear
Speaker 1The difference between you and me is that I'm tuned in . I get it . I know the angles above the angles . I know the players . I see them come and go . I've been around long enough that there are no surprises . There are repeating patterns . Some of the names change , some of the fashions , but it's mostly pretty predictable when you can see it like I do . But that's the difference between you and me .
Speaker 1The difference between you and me is that you need a sense of magic , and that's admirable . It's a good quality to have in young people . You should be having fun making those sexy , risky investments , but you've got to give that up at some point if you really want to make it in the business , and I know what it is to do that and I can have fun doing that . I don't even need to have fun to have fun , and that's the difference between you and me .
Speaker 1The difference between you and me is that I always keep my ear to the tracks . When I finish a project , it's not over , it's a beginning , it's a resource for new information and I will always come back and pay attention and build on the work I've already done , add to the stories I've already told , revise , edit , redo the whole thing , because life is not a product , life is in flux . I make products , but I understand a few things about life that make me a little bit better at making products and make each of my products a little better than the previous one . And I see you trying new things , seeing what works , what doesn't , what gets people clapping , then doing a little bit more of that thing , and doing a little bit more of that thing Eventually becoming that thing , and then people stop laughing , people stop clapping . Maybe they still do , but you know they're just being polite and you wonder what happened . And that's the difference between you and me , because I don't always know how things are going to happen . But I got a pretty good idea of what's going to happen and I can help you understand if you're interested , if you want to know . But you'd have to ask and you're proud . You want to figure things out on your own . That too is admirable .
Speaker 1I certainly understand taking credit for things . I certainly understand taking credit for things , and the fact that I get most of my ideas from other places has never stopped me from doing that . But I ask , I listen , I look and I learn . I don't try to do it myself . It does itself through me , the work flows through me , for I am a conduit For the source , for the power , for the genius , and you're a conduit for yourself , and that's the difference between you and me .
Speaker 1Who needs sleep ? Not me . I get all my best work done when you're sleeping . All my thinking usually happens in the wee hours . Right now , all of my hours are feeling a little bit wee . I haven't had eight hours in weeks and I'm on it , I'm in it . I'm on it , I'm in it , I'm feeling it . I'm getting insights that feel like revelations . I know and I know , I know I'm working on solutions , not going to be mistreated , I'm going to stand up for myself .
Speaker 1If I'd been sleeping , I never would have figured that out . I don't want comfort , I want reality , I want the truth . I want to know the things that get squeegeed away from the mind in the sleeping hours . I want to feel so fatigued that the seconds just drag by and I have so much time , and the fatigue , the tirednessness makes everything feel like a lot more effort , which makes it feel a lot more real . There's no half-assing it .
Speaker 1When you've been up for three days straight , you're in or you're out . It's hell yes or hell no . And I say hell no to sleeping . Never let me sleep , because if I sleep , then I'm sleeping , and if I'm sleeping I'm not getting things done . I'm not putting the boots to the people that want to give me problems . Oh yeah , I'm not drinking water either . Drank a gallon of water about three days ago . Now I have no need for it . And even if I did drink it , I don't think I could keep it down , because I'm not keeping anything down right now Waves of nausea . Feels like I'm on a boat right now , and in a sense I am , because I can control my own perception of what's going on in my waters . I can edit , I can enhance , I can add madcap , comedic elements . This is my domain , and it's only because I resisted sleep for so long that now I can't sleep .
Speaker 1I have a confession to make . I thought last night maybe I really need to get some sleep , and I tried and it wasn't happening . So I thought you know what , as long as I can't sleep , I'm going to meditate , and I'm going to meditate until I fall asleep . And I thought this would incentivize me to fall asleep , because if I don't fall asleep I have to keep meditating , and that's hard work . I meditated for four hours . I saw God , or something like it . I revisited my childhood . I revisited earlier childhoods that I'd forgotten about . That's what I'm doing . If you're sleeping , enjoy that .
Speaker 1I'm not safe . I have discovered some information that has come to light that has taken me from the point of thinking well , this is a pickle into . This is a really screwed up situation and possibly not a safe one for me to be in . Since then , I've , as I mentioned , had some difficulty sleeping . I've felt waves of nausea which have made it difficult to keep my food down . I've had the overwhelming sensation of physical fear , of fight , flight , freeze . That tells me on a molecular level that I'm not safe . I've learned a little bit more about people that I thought I could trust . I've seen the other side , seen the lack of consideration , and I'm accepting now that I may be much more alone than I previously thought . I'm very much alone right now at home , but the sense that the world is closing in . The problem-solving part of my brain is spinning , trying to figure out an exit strategy , a way to get out of here .
Speaker 1I know that I took a big risk , just followed by a series of bigger and bigger risks , and they were fun . I enjoyed the risk . I was willing to compromise some of my safety to get that jolt of adrenaline , to see what would happen , to make this place my laboratory . But maybe it was a little bit too much of a compromise because I gave up on a lot of my favor . I'm starting to get scared . I'm starting to think that perhaps I'm not safe . I'm not safe . There are people that I thought had just screwed up . I rarely attribute to malice what could be just as well explained in terms of incompetence or mistakes , but I'm starting to think that not only are these people hurting me on purpose , they might be getting off on it , and that's a little scary .
Speaker 1I don't want to go down . I don't want to be in pain . I don't want to lose what . I don't want to be in pain . I don't want to lose what I've worked so hard to gain . But if I do , I at least don't want people to enjoy it . I want to run , but there's nowhere to go . So I'm hiding in my closet , rocking back and forth , just shaking , until I'm all shook out , but that's not happening . Shakes just keep happening , happening , shakes just keep happening , and it's getting a little harder to deny that I'm not safe . I'm sorry , please forgive me . Thank you , I love you . Please help me . I'm still here , but I'm not safe .
Speaker 1I would like to take the liberty of sharing with you a compelling dream that I had . Perhaps your heart sinks at hearing this proposition . A lot gets lost in translation typically when people talk about their dreams , because so much of it is drawn from our own soups of symbolism that some of it's universal , some of it is distinct to us . Enough of it is ours and not anyone else's that a lot gets lost in translation and a lot of times it makes sense to us on an emotional level in a way that we have not fully sussed out . But other people don't have that luxury . They don't have all of the same material that we do . Nevertheless , I would posit that this dream is not only relevant to the intensive work that I've been doing on myself , but maybe of broader general interest , I think it's worth the risk of sharing it .
Speaker 1To begin , I will say that I am more a fighter than a lover . I'm working on making peace with my capacity for violence , and there's a lot of violence in this dream , and I'm okay with that , because it didn't really happen outside of the dream . Who is of symbolic storytelling utility within the dream ? Storytelling utility within the dream ? And it is important for us to acknowledge and cultivate our capacity for violence . If we are not ready to kill when necessary , it makes us hard to trust and rely on in a potential combat scenario or the Age of Discontinuity , which comfort will give way to chaos . It's already underway . You must be ready and able to kill , but not willing . That's where it gets weird . You should never initiate any violence in real life unless it is very much called for , and I was not initially initiating any violence at all .
Speaker 1I was orienteering my way through a woodsy landscape and it felt like I was in an apt milieu for me . I spent a lot of time in the woods as a child , time with nature . I think nature has healing power . I think it can potentially save us from our own self-destruction or maybe accelerate it . It takes the Mark Fisher accelerationist approach and just get us off the planet so it can start undoing the damage . Either way , nature is going to be an important part of what happens with the human race . It always has been , you should acknowledge it . The woods have always been a place of peace for me . It's where I went when I got dumped the first time , when I stopped believing in God .
Speaker 1In the evenings , in the twilight hours , I would walk with my father down a paved road which was surrounded by woodland on either side , and we would sometimes encounter copperhead snakes that had come out to make themselves comfortable on the pavement . My dad carried a hatchet for the purpose of beheading them . On sight , they're poisonous snakes . I guess he wanted to exercise an abundance of caution or make peace with his capacity for violence and actually kill something that would not be missed by anyone who could have an effect on his freedom or reputation , and I don't necessarily condone it , but I was always interested in If a copperhead loses its head , is it still a copperhead ? It's a bit of a ship of Theseus-flavored problem .
Speaker 1I was traversing the wilderness day and night , using the North Star to navigate and I was extremely dissociated . I was not in touch with my body . I could tell from looking at myself that I was quite jacked compared to how I am in waking life , in which I have my nervous system has taken a beating over the last few years . I've lost a significant amount of weight , as more than one person who has known me for a minute has observed In the dream . I am a beefcake extraordinaire , but I can't really enjoy it in an embodied way because I'm just very dissociated and not in touch with my body .
Exploring Dissociation and Transformation
Speaker 1Some people love dissociation and pay good money for it . Aficionados of ketamine and other dissociative drugs will overpay obscenely for the experience of dissociating . I wouldn't say that I love it , but I see the utility and I could feel or not feel , as the case may be in the dream that I was becoming a more effective conduit . I normally assume that I have free will . I think it's a convenient misapprehension and interpretation that is not accurate in the way that we believe it is and perhaps need to believe it is to keep society humming along . I believe a lot of stupid things for the sake of convenience . I consider that to be one of them .
Speaker 1In this dissociated state , I felt much more receptive to letting the lightning live through me . I felt possessed by strength , electricity that was not my strength , electricity that was not strictly my own . And I was on a mission and I had a sense that time was of essence . I was going to find my old friend , who I considered the one person that could understand the pain that I was carrying around my chest . Beneath the dissociation , the sense of frozenness , there was a sharp pain of heartbreak that had been getting worse over time . Heartbreak sometimes gets better over time .
Speaker 1I mentioned that I'm more a fighter than a lover . Love is the more frightening of the two . My advice to myself at this point is to be the less invested partner , or the least invested partner in a potential polyamorous situation . But the romantic will out . The romantic is stronger than the cynic . It has more to live for . If you try to lock it up with cynicism , its revenge will be bloody and brutal . So my recommendation is try not to invest more than you can afford to lose and if you need excitement , practice the art of sex transmutation . That's where you take your sex drive , the very force of creation , and turn it toward backgammon or something where people don't get hurt . Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes is the number one avant-garde personal development program in Los Angeles . We're talking sex , drugs , power , self-help and satanic Buddhism . Every first Wednesday of the month , 7 pm Pacific on K-Chung Los Angeles kchungradioorg . Medicated-minutescom . I'm Emerson Dameron , producer , host and wounded romantic hero . But the brightest star in our firmament is you . Levity saves lives .
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