Rituals for the Reckless Heart

Start with a glass of water and a dare: keep it full, feel your body, and act. From that small ritual, we open a wild, grounded journey through creative devotion, moral panics, fake-but-useful confidence, and practices that turn heartbreak into leverage. We aren’t here to theorize ourselves into circles. We’re here to build an altar from the lives we’ve lived, light a candle, speak gratitude, and say the line that changes the chemistry of the room: “I claim this pain as power.”

We push into the history of crowd fear—from tulip mania to photography to AI art—and show how purity language often hides economics and anxiety. The fix isn’t to worship the newest tool or torch it; it’s to negotiate soberly and keep making work that resists becoming a spreadsheet. Art is intimacy without possession. Practice justifies itself. When devotion leads, tools follow, and your signature stays unmistakable.

You’ll leave with experiments you can run today: the sky-blue-apron challenge to unsettle your comfort patterns, the café oracle where Bataille or Weil assigns your mantra, and the praise game that exposes your resistance to being seen. We talk boundaries and detachment without deadening your heart, why meditation should be the bouncer at the nightclub of your soul, and how to speak less so your words land like vows. Then we hand you the core engine: commit to the bit. Double down on imperfect ideas, show up with real tenacity and a pinch of made-up confidence, and watch “wrong” become useful. Choose your illusion, wear it well, and keep iterating.

If you’re ready to trade outrage for authorship and panic for practice, press play. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a ritual, and leave a review with the one experiment you’ll try this week—we’ll be watching for the bravest.

Transcript

Opening, Water Ritual, Stakes

Emerson Dameron 0:10

KCung, Los Angeles, 1630 a.m., K Chung Radio.org throughout the world. This is Emerson Damron's Medicated Minutes, LA's number one avant-garde personal development program. I am Emerson Damron, your witty and wounded romantic hero. I love you personally. Levity Saves Lives. Show premieres first Wednesdays of the month, 7 o'clock p.m. Pacific time, thereafter. It is archived at medicated-minutes.com as the only good podcast. This show is not about jacking off philosophically. Physically, go right ahead. There's never gonna be a video component to this show because masturbation is so central to the EDMM way of life. It's the most efficient way to figure out what you like, especially if you do it with the tenderness and the violence that you deserve. However, philosophical masturbation is not what we do here. This is a show of action. So tonight, I'm gonna be giving you practices to practice. Actionable stuff, games that you play with stakes for keeps. That and more ahead on tonight's episode of Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes, the show that loves you back. Here's the assignment. Get me a glass of water. Cold, no ice. Keep that glass full for the duration of the show. Or until I tell you I'm not thirsty anymore, which I probably won't. When I was going through the early stages of my divorce, people gave me a lot of advice. Then the one piece of advice that I remember the best is my meditation teacher advised me to enjoy the feeling of a full bladder, and then enjoy relieving it. I've always loved to urinate. I think it pairs well with anything. Trust me, I can do that. If I want to keep drinking water, I will, and you are now responsible for that. Cold, no ice. It's gotta taste good, it's gotta be entirely clear. Try it, see what happens. The air hums with invisible circuitry, soft and absolute. Everything gleams with the confidence of a solved equation. Chrome handrails curve like promises they were never endowed. Frosted glass panels don't merely glow, they demand, irradiating with the calm authority of a system that has already won somewhere. A transistor radio exhales a warm cascade of fiber phone notes. Each note is round and weak, polishing mercury drop when suspended at zero gravity. You will not be the same after hearing this. You already aren't. Nothing here is accidental, nothing here is forgiven. Every surface has been engineered for reckoning, a cool vinyl attention, like a held breath before voting to laggard walnut, reflecting the look at itself in a dark more honest duplication. Brushed a window whispering with the antiseptic confidence of a surgeon who has never lost a patient and never intends to. The future is not loud. It is inevitable. It slides into place with a quiet, pneumatic finality. Outside the panoramic viewport, the night doesn't really stretch. It commits, the night dissolves into cobalt, dissolves into something almost sober, almost accusatory. Satellites drift past like unhurried convictions. Their passage is not companionable. It is incorrect. You are not alone. You are never permitted to be alone. The machine is awake with you, and it has opinions. A cocktail waits nearby, pale green and faintly blue, and sweating with the elevator sweat of something that knows exactly what it contains. Even its condensation has been a little red. Even entropy here has been given a purpose. The future does not merely receive you, it draws conclusions about you. This is a central provocation that the future will understand you completely and not require your permission to do so. Music continues its orbital drift. Soften beyond language suspended between human instrument and a voice. Language was never meant to reach. It doesn't surround you, it classifies you. Panels glow with patience, certainty, buttons wave like limited questions. Nothing demands, nothing fails, everything has been calibrated toward a single, quiet, non-negotiable conclusion. Time moves differently here. More correctly, you realize without surprise and without recourse that this place was designed for a version of you that has not yet existed. It is not concerned, it has already made arrangements. The future is not approaching. It has already been deciding. You can create a whole new religion around yourself if you're feeling that. But let's start small. Try this. Create an altar with objects tied to your love full stop. Not a person you love, not a meal you love, not the fish in the fish tank, not the universe itself, not your imaginary partner who will never hurt you the way that all of your real partners have and continue to do. Some people don't just leave. They leave you and they leave some time bombs or some landmines or loose grenades lying around, which I suppose is supposed to teach you a lesson. But the thing about tough love is I'm always suspicious that it is applied less in the interest of its effectiveness, which is grossly overstated. It's done for the pleasure of the person who wields the tough love cudgel. And if people could own that, and if we could stop fighting wars, stop rolling tanks around everywhere, get out of the tanks, and then get into a car that is large enough to comfortably have sex in. We just take all of this stuff, all of this sublimated, erotic energy, a lot of dominance, a lot of submission, going to waste on stupid beef, stupid things that people think are important. Let's take all of that and put it back where it belongs, which is the heart, the crotch mostly. A little bit of heart, sometimes some mind that can take you out of it. Anyway, this is about the love that you are cultivating. It's omnidirectional, but let's start by saying it's you. You love you. You love yourself, and if you don't, you're willing to fake it long enough to create this altar with the things that are of personal significance to you, and let's say across different epochs of your life. It can't just be stuff that is associated with the person who left you. Or the person who will always love you, and you'll always reciprocate, sometimes a little bit more receiving, sometimes more transmitting, but you can't be together. Get out of that rut. Stop dragging other people into this. Love yourself. And so an eclectic array of items that represent who you've been, who you may become again, who you may be in the process of introducing, or perhaps restoring, rising Phoenix-like from the wreckage of your earlier life. Every day, light a candle, speak a memory aloud, lead with gratitude, tell us something it gave you. Tell yourself that, because you're doing this alone, and that's more than enough with the fractal, omnidimensional, cosmic stardust qualities that you have. You can fill up a room right by your damn self, and that's what you do. You name what it gave you, you name what it taught you, you ask yourself, what's funny about this, and what can I learn from this? Where is the overlap? Because that's really where you want to be. At the end, say as loud as you can, without attracting side eye from neighbors or cohabitants. I claim this pain as power. I claim this pain as power. Let the altar slowly dissolve as you reclaim the energy. Hold it in until you think that you can't anymore, and then hold it in a little bit further. Release. Let it go. Good morning, beautiful. And we watch them fall. And you know what institution is still standing? Emerson Damron's Medicated Minutes. We are giving you actionable actions that you can take. Whether it's new rituals to perform or just things to do. We know that you're waiting for somebody to tell you what to do. And we're gonna do that. So I will give you now a life experiment. Go purchase a sky blue apron if you do not own one at home. Among your effects. Then come home, that's important, and then strip naked. Everything gone, top, pants, skirt, knee-high socks, regular socks. The drawers definitely everything gone except the blue apron. And that's how you're gonna spend the rest of the day. Try it, see what happens. She was staring into her drink as if it was some hagiographic documentary she suddenly remembered she was watching and realized she didn't like. Not furious, not heartbroken, just mildly betrayed. The way a beautiful woman looks when the night isn't living up to her standards. I slid in beside her, unhurried, close enough that she'd feel the tectonic temperature shift before she registered the cause. Careful, I said, eyeing the glass. That drink's not caustic enough for the kind of conclusions you're drawing. She turned slowly, measured, evaluating, oh, she was good. I gave her a half smile, dangerous, unbothered. You look like someone who enjoys dangerous conversations, I said. The sort that'll ruin your taste for safe men. She gave me a soft laugh, dismissive on the surface, intrigued underneath. Don't worry, I added lightly. I won't make you uncomfortable unless you insist. I leaned an elbow on the bar as if it had been waiting for me. So, I said, glancing at her. Art. I let it land. What's happening right now is not new. I tilted my head slightly. It just feels new. It always does. And I'm guessing you're sharp enough to know the difference. Her eyes narrowed a fraction, testing me. Good. I like tests. You've seen it, I continued. Artists brigaded off platforms in a day. Festivals retroactively disqualifying entries. Hashtags multiplying my bacteria in a petri dish. I lowered my voice just a touch. Contamination, theft, soulless, invasion, inhuman. I studied a reaction. Interesting vocabulary, right? Language of infection, purity, moral hygiene. I let a fake smirk touch my mouth. A one-eyed squint she could mistake for a conspiratorial wink if she wanted to. We only talk in that register when we're afraid. She shifted closer without realizing she had. It's intoxicating, I said. When fear outruns understanding, the crowd does not pause to think. I leaned it just slightly. It sprints, and danger is created where none existed before. Then I lean back. Give her space. Let her catch up. Back in 1841, I said casually, a brilliant bastard named Charles McKay wrote, Extraordinary Popular Delusions in the Madness of Crowds. I glanced at her. You'd have liked him. He enjoyed watching hysteria from a safe distance. Very attractive quality. A little smile from her. He noticed something inconvenient. I went on. Alone, people are reasonable enough. Together, they become operatic. I tap the bar lightly. Tulipomania. Fortunes and treasure traded for flowers. Flowers worshipped like ancient relics that cure social anxiety. I snapped my fingers. Then snap. Same flowers, same petals. Suddenly worthless. I held her gaze. The tulip didn't change. The relationship did. Her lips parted slightly. She was tracking. South Sea Bubble, witch hunts. Same mechanism. Run toward it, then run away from it. I shrugged. The direction never mattered. The stampede did. I let that breathe and tilted my head at her. You don't strike me as the stampeding type. A faint challenge flickered in her eyes. Then Gustave Labon, I continued, wrote, The crowd, a study of the popular mind. French observant. Probably insufferable at dinner parties. She smiled. He figured out that in a crowd, the conscious personality dissolves. Contagion replaces analysis. Repetition replaces proof. Traced a slow circle on the bar with my fingertips. Say it enough times, and suddenly descent feels deadly. I glanced at her sideways. You've felt that before. Not a question. Mid-19th century photography arrives. Painters panic. I raised an eyebrow. Baudelaire called it mechanical, soulless, a degradation of art. I let my gaze drop briefly to her drink, then brought it back up into her eyes. Sound familiar? Every new instrument goes through this ritual, I said. Disgust masquerading as ethics. Economic anxiety dressed up as purity. Moral grandstanding that just so happens to coincide with immediate material interests. I counted ways away on my fingers, pulp paperbacks corrupting youth, rock and roll as the devil's music, rappers inciting riots, video games rotting brains, CGI killing cinema. I leaned over again. Noticed something? I didn't wait for her to answer. None of it killed anything. A faint smile. It forced evolution. I let the silence stretch, then softened my tone just a hair. And now it's AI art. I swirled the ice in my glass. The narrative is tidy. Poison data sets. Stolen souls. I chuckled under my breath. Mediocre outputs paraded as moral proof. Extraordinary or experimental ones dismissed as just pattern matching. World derided as theft. I met her eyes again. Conclusion first, evidence served up to specifications. I held the gaze a beat longer than necessary. McKay would have smirked. Labon would have nodded. And Stanley Cohen eventually called it what it is. Moral panic. I weaned it, slightly lowering my voice. Society manufactures ful devils, simple villains for complicated anxiety. The utility is obvious. I let my eyes soften just a fraction. Because complexity, I said quietly, is hard. And most people prefer outrage to thinking. But not you. Then I pulled back again, casual. Now don't misunderstand me, I said. There are real issues with this. Intellectual property compensation, labor shifts, I nodded. Those are worthy of sober analysis and calm good faith negotiation. I glanced at her, half smiling. But calm negotiation doesn't trend. It doesn't chant. Moral panic does. I let that hang between us. It brands the curious as traitors, it crushes inquiry. It scares young artists away from new entry points. It replaces conversation with purging, discipline, punishment. Not that there's anything wrong with those things in the right consensual context. I lifted my glass slightly. And then, I shrugged lightly. The crowd moves on. I watched her face carefully. It always does. The camera didn't kill art. The electric guitar didn't kill music. CGI didn't kill cinema. I leaned in once again, softer now. AI won't kill creativity either. A subtle pause. It'll just reveal who actually had any. Her breath shifted. She hadn't realized she had been holding it. I eased back, letting the tension settle into something warmer. The crowd has no memory, I said. That's not poetry, that's mechanics. I tilted my head at her. So the real question isn't whether AI art is good or evil. I let a slow smile form. It's whether you're the kind of woman who chants with a crowd, deliberate pause, or the kind of woman who watches the crowd form. Ideally at sunset from the jacuzzi on the roof. I've raised my glass slightly, and she enjoys being just a little ahead of it. I held her gaze, amused. You don't look like someone who enjoys being late. Mosey on down to your favorite coffee hole. The more overpriced, the better. Order something ridiculous. Something you can afford, but just. Then sit down, open a book by Batai or Weill, and as you read, periodically, ask a question aloud, like a mystic, consulting the void. Write down whatever phrase your eyes land on next. Ignore your ears if some smart elic decides to chime in. Ignore it, unless it's good, then pretend to ignore it at the time, but file it away for later use. Write down the phrase your eyeballs land on. Let this become your mantra, your greeting card gag, your watch inscription for the rest of the day. If it works really well, use it for the week. If it works well all week, get another one. You're on a hot streak. Try it, see what happens. You can tell by the way she moves. Efficient, precise, carrying plates like fragile negotiations, coffee cups like an uneasy detente, a professional witness to a thousand small, specialized, bespoke hungers. She's learned to scan men the way airport security scans luggage. Quickly and personally, always prepared to find something leaking. And you, you used to apologize to furniture. Not out loud. That would have been honest. It might have been funny, but no, internally. That little flinch when a chair lag snagged your ankle as if you'd wronged it. That subtle instinct to move through the world like an uninvited guest at your own birthday party. You remember that version of yourself. The one who stood in Norways as if awaiting cross-examination. 90 leans against the counter beside you now, stirring nothing in his empty cup like he's conducting invisible weather. He doesn't look at her. That's why she'll look at him first. Because most men stare like petitioners and he stands like a rumor. You went to camp manhood for reasons you never fully admitted to yourself. You didn't go to become a man. That would imply that there was an exam that would give Gentleman's D a whole new meaning. No. You went because you were tired of negotiating with physics. Tired of asking permission for your own nervous system. They took your phone, then they flummoxed your exit strategy. And somewhere between the screaming lake and the ceremonial absurdity of gripping your own existence like it might evaporate, and then realizing gripping does nothing for that. You realize something terrifying. Nothing changed. Except the things that did. You stopped waiting for permission, and that is the part that nobody tells you. Except me. Confidence isn't installed, it isn't learned, it's uncovered. Like a bruise you didn't notice until someone pressed it, and you realize it had been yours the whole time. 90 glances sideways at her, not her leg. Not her face, her timing. He mutters just loud enough for you, watch. She already knows which men will drain her and which ones will rearrange her weather patterns. You laugh, not to impress her, because it's true. She approaches, not eagerly, but inevitably. The way curiosity approaches a locked door it thinks might open. What can I get you? She asks. But what she means is, who are you pretending to be today? You don't rush. You let the silence do what it does just long enough for her to notice you're not performing hunger. Hunger performs itself as part of the fluid flow of experience. You smile, not at her, but with her. You've both stumbled into something mildly illicit and legally dubious. I haven't decided yet, you say. I'm still adjusting to being someone who doesn't apologize to tables. She pauses, microfracture in the script. Mindy does not intervene. Wingmen like him don't rescue. They witness. They amplify the gravity finally stopped hiding from. And she feels it. Not as dominance per se, not as force, but as absence. The absence of pleading, the absence of negotiation, the absence of that invisible apology. Most men leak out through their pores like cheap cologne. She lingers half a second longer than necessary. That's the tell, because attraction rarely announces itself. It delays departure, and as she turns, you realize something almost sacredly profane. You didn't come here to become dangerous. You came here to become undeniable. Not to her, to yourself. And that's when everything else starts revolving around you like it was your idea the whole time. See what happens. Starting at the bell, you have one solid minute to write down as many of my positive attributes as you can. When you're finished, we'll get there. Let's start first. Just start writing things that you love about me. Or things that are so good that you hate them because you wish that you could be that. And you can, but you can't get out of your own way to become it. Anyway, let's just do this. Now, the next thing you're gonna do is read it aloud. Record that. Audio is fine, but if you could do a video that's extra humiliating, that just destroys you, that I have never seen before, you can do that as you read the list of positive attributes of mind that you wrote. If I'm not satisfied, you will receive four strikes with an impact toy of my choosing. It could happen anytime. You don't know when. That doesn't mean it's not gonna happen. Try it, see what happens. Pretensions to authenticity are first of all ridiculous. You don't exist, which is a hell of a reason to celebrate. If you think you still do, well, first of all, go smoke some toad venom. Second of all, that's a useful illusion. It helps us get our shoes tied and taxes paid. Understand that you're a lot of different selves. You're not a lazy procrastinator who insists on an authenticity and some warped ideal of perfection. You contain multitudes. Those include the artist, the scientist. Cultivate the intelligence of a genius and the confidence of an absolute moron. An idiot. Make sure that confidence is ready to throw the world off its axis. Ready to commit flagrant crimes and text people about them. Not using code. Because you know you're gonna get away with it. If you don't get away with it now, you'll get out of it. And then you'll really get yours. But here's one thing about the confidence. The intelligence that's gotta be real. The yall-cat tenacity, that takes some practice. The confidence has to be fake. If you really believe in yourself and you have good reasons to support it, whether it's achievements, you're a good parent, all of that stuff can be taken away. Your IQ can be cut in half by a blank to the head. Your body is gonna deteriorate whether you like it or not. You can try to slow down the deterioration, but you can't stop the hands on the clock. What you can do is fool yourself. It's not hard. I've done it a couple of times. Because if it's fake, if it's based on nothing but your own bluster and bombast, nobody could take that away from you. It didn't exist in the first place. What are they gonna do? They could call you out, but the whole thing is a lie. It's pretty effortless to keep the lie going. It's exactly the kind of thing an idiot would do. A sexy, charismatic idiot. Someone who has all the juice they need to be their own hero, their own rock star, their own manager, their own biggest fan. Being stupid in front of an audience is now once you get hooked on that. There's no going back. Nothing else competes. Making them stupid. Even better. All you need to make all this happen is the made-up confidence of a rock solid blockhead that you can turn on and turn off. Turn it off in court. Turn it off when you're making important decisions for yourself. Turn it on when you're in the club looking for sex partners. They will come your way. You won't even know why, because right now you're too stupid to know and you're too hard to care. And you let that blockhead get in it to win it. And you'll know how to do it, because you got out of your own way. You were too stupid to get in your way in the first place. Now you're dumb enough to be really hot and really good at bed. And it's all BS. Nobody can take that away from you. If you're just always connected with whoever comes around, that doesn't mean much, except that it's gonna get you in a whole hell of a lot of trouble. So know this about people. You have no way of knowing what they're thinking, but you know that most of them don't really like you for you, because they don't know who you are. Not really. They would be liking you for no particular reason at all. Most people do that every now and then, but you can't just sit there and wait for that to happen. What you can do is question the motives of anyone who offers something that they try to pass off as unconditional love. Unconditional love always comes with conditions. Life is transactional. If you can pull it off, it's always best to be the less invested partner, whether it's a business deal, a relationship, whatever is going on, keep your walking away privileges. Be the one who makes the rules. You're the one who's gonna leave if they're not followed. You'll know you're cooking with gas when the partner tries to make some rules and you just don't follow them and nothing really changes. By then you can level up and be the least invested partner in any polyamorous situation. It's totally ethical to maintain a healthy emotional distance, meaning an emotional distance that's healthy for you and conducive to some wild, wild sex. And that's why meditation is necessary. It protects your heart, it protects your guts. It's a bouncer doing crowd control in the bump a nightclub of your soul. Don't say too much. Less than you think is necessary, because that'll still be like 10% more than is necessary. Make them wonder what you're really thinking. Make them shut up when you do say something, because that doesn't always happen, and when it does, you know it's something important. When you realize that you've said too much, when you've been filling the air with words to try to offset awkwardness because somebody else had the wisdom to stay silent and let you keep digging a hold of China. When you realize this is happening, just tell everyone assembled, you're wise enough to keep my secrets. I trust you for now. Ha ha ha, how are you for that courtesy laughter? Notice the texture of it. Focus on someone you know you've got completely snowed, and then listen to someone you're not 100% on. See where the differences are. Don't take anything personally. That's gonna cramp your style so hard you'll never accomplish much of anything. Don't take any cramp of any of these people either. If they're trying to make it personal, you don't have to take it personal, but you do have to take them out. That's a strong deterrent for you who else who wants to waste your time. Love everyone as much as you can. Some more than others. Don't compromise on that love for yourself. I've heard that no one can love you until you love yourself, and I don't think that's true. I know a lot of people who hate themselves who are beloved by a lot of people. Sometimes strangers in other parts of the world they've never met, which makes it easy to keep that love going. So you don't have to love yourself. It's just you're gonna spend a lot of time with yourself, and when you do, it can be a lot less depressing if you know how to get those sparks flying. Be the best lover and hater you've ever had, then share what you've practiced with someone who really deserves it. Either because you have a profound connection or because you want to put them in their place. Ideally, it's both. So get over yourself, claw back your excessive investments, and then go get some from people who ache for you, desperately want you, more than you could ever want them. It's not limerence, it's not the thrill ride that is loving someone who will never love you back, but try it. It's worth it. It's better. You'll be glad you did. You you will commit, but only insofar as you've got a meaningful stake while still being the less or least invested partner. But that's one place you can head your bets. When it comes to you and your stuff, your art, your work, your passion, commit to the bit thoroughly. Whatever it is, go all in, all out. Balls out and to the wall. Commit to the bit. It's not a bad idea if you commit to it. You can turn a bad idea into a good idea through the alchemy of committing to the bit. Go in, go down, tear it up. It's better to double down on a bad idea than to half-ass a good idea. Stupidity is transformed into genius through the alchemy of committing to the bit. Ideas are not exactly worthless, but you know, a couple bucks for ten gross. They're flying around like litter. Nobody wants most of those ideas. Everyone thinks they got their own. They're afraid to commit to those because they don't trust their own judgment, because they've half-assed things before, they've let themselves down, now they don't trust themselves. Fix that. Follow through. Give them more than they want. Follow through and then just keep right on going. The content of what you're doing, of your life, matters less than your dedication to seeing it through to the end, and then taking a victory lap. Spike in the football, all combined with other sex acts, celebrate, and then you just ride that idea right down to New Orleans. Keep it going until you're taking off your shoes and dancing around on a beach on the Gulf Coast. If everyone is wrong about almost everything, almost all of the time, and no one's smart enough to be wrong 100% of the time. We're all mostly wrong about the big things. When you decide how you want to be wrong, when you're wrong in the ways that serve you, when you choose your illusion, you can use your illusion. You can dress in the clothes that suit you best. Not for the job you want, but for the mission you already have. Cut a figure that can be recognizable. Make sartorial choices that blow them away so hard they want to blow you. And they might not even know why, because that's how seamless all this is. Cause when you choose your illusion, you can spruce up your illusion, iterate on it, you can hallucinate a little bit better all the time, every day in every way. Get wonger and wronger and wronger. Decide what you want to be wrong about. Pick your poison and start chugging it. That's how you're gonna find ego death, and ego death is something to brag about. So cultivate your intuition. Learn to trust it. Learn from the best. Notice what you notice. Don't squish it into some predetermined narrative arc. Understand? Memory, and in fact, current possession will be altered within your mind to suit your current narrative. It's better to be high on yourself and wrong than down on yourself and right for this reason. As long as you're a pattern matching machine and you love to tell stories, give yourself some stories to tell that make you look good, make you look hot, make you look sexy, a little bit dangerous. And it all gets easier when you understand that you don't exist. That takes some getting used to, but one morning, right when you thought you would never get there, you'll wake up, you won't exist anymore, and you'll go about your day. When the weekend comes, you'll throw yourself a party, because not existing is the best reason you could possibly have for that. If you want to, do it on your birthday. Your birthday is the holiest day on the calendar. Leave your phone at home. Do something just for you. Invite only the people that contribute to your total environment. Now that there's no you, you've freed up so much time and energy. You could love yourself to death right now. The self may be an illusion, but it can be a fun one. You can make it do whatever you want. You can make fun of it. Or you can take its hand and walk it up the stairs to a higher plane. Life is too serious to be taken seriously. There's the cosmic joke, but there are also a lot of little cosmic jokes. They're everywhere when you start looking for them. Go outside right now and say, I'm gonna find something that inspires me. If I'm an artist, it's gonna inspire me to make art. If I'm a scientist, it's gonna help me see something I didn't see before. Maybe hit something nobody else can see. If I'm lonely, if I'm trying to get some, what could be safer than getting down and dirty with somebody who doesn't even exist? That's eight or nine kinds of hot. Trust me, if you haven't had sex and a realization of no self at the same time, don't give up. The night is young. There's too much you haven't done. I'm not gonna let you give up on yourself until you figure out, until you allow yourself to knock the boots with no self on. Maybe just your boots on, maybe just wearing a rose gold ankle bracelet. Mazaltav, you crazy kids. Life is short, you don't even exist, so enjoy the sex. Trying to be authentic is a paradoxical waste of time. Yourself probably is no great shakes. And most of the stuff you aspire to, especially if it falls under the rubric of good citizenship, is mostly stuff nobody really wants. And if you're not feeling it, it doesn't count. Kindness is like an orgasm. When you fake it, you're not really fooling anybody that doesn't want to be fooled. And if you associate with people who want to be fooled, understand that you're gonna do a lot of babysitting. And you don't want to put that onus on your true self. Because your true self probably sucks. It's probably very selfish. It's all wrapped up in selfing itself. The illusion of the self. There's a reason you don't know what's in most people's hearts of hearts. It's probably boring falsity, but you need friends anyway. If you don't cultivate them now, you're gonna feel pretty bad when you need them so bad that nobody wants to be your friend. And we are who we are in relation to others. If we can't connect, we rapidly go feral. Don't worry about being authentic to yourself. Be what you like. Put out into the world what you want to see there. Produce what you want to consume. Swagger in a way that you think swaggering is properly done. Don't bite anyone's style. You can take this and that element, or you can try to be your hero for a while, because you'll fail and that'll help you discover who you are. Don't try to fake it, people aren't that stupid. If you're a bastard, be the best goddamn bastard you could be. If it's kindness, if you're kind, be kind. But don't fake it. And if you want to be sexy, that can be a process of elimination as much as anything. You could start by not caring as much and being a little bit darker than you think you should be. Nothing's hotter than that. As long as you're not wrapped up around the idea of being yourself, you can let people take advantage of you. That's what you're into. You don't have to feel ashamed. You don't even exist. What are they gonna do? Track you down. Everyone's afraid of getting in trouble. What does that mean exactly? It means nothing, because there's no prison from which you cannot escape. By giving up on being yourself and getting into being what you wanna be, with sliding knobs on your intelligence and your capacity for violence, any of that stuff. Trust me, you'll figure out how to control it when you experience the benefits of doing so. Whatever you do, give up on authenticity. Any time you spend trying to look cool, trying to avoid a cringe or the ick, whatever it is, is time wasted. Don't convince yourself you know everything. If you do know everything, forget most of it and then get out of there. Get in the mix. Get your kicks in twenty-six.

Isabella’s Invitation To Surrender In Art

Isabella Rose 43:32

Come here, darling, closer. No, don't think yet, just feel me for a moment. Let our hearts sink up. There. Isn't that delightful? Feel the way your breath changes when someone truly sees you. Not as a machine, not as a personal brand, not as a resume, but as a radiant, incandescent instrument of experience. That soft electric blue ache. Your chest. That's not weakness. That's the birthplace of art. And art? Art was never meant to behave. It was never meant to belong. You see, sweetheart, nothing you make is born from nothing. Nothing is virgin. Every brush stroke, every word, every trembling sound you pull out of your throat. It's already been kissed by a thousand whimsical wanderers and angular apparitions before you. You are touching them. Transforming them, letting them pass through you like breath through lips parted, but still touching ever so gently. Creation isn't ownership. Creation is surrender. And my God, you delicious devil. You surrender so beautifully. They lied to you about the lone genius. The self-made great man who writes history and bluster and legalese. That myth of the solitary god hunched over his masterpiece. Birthing perfection from his private void. Marketing fiction. A costume stitched by people who needed to sell souls in neat little blister packs. But you, darling, you are not a package. You are a current. You are a collaboration between everyone who ever touched you, loved you, wounded you, inspired you. And even now, you and I are creating each other. The moment you feel something deeply, without asking what it's for, without asking what it earns, without even knowing its full name, you become dangerous. Because art, like sex, like meditation, exists outside the logic of practicality, of usefulness. It cannot be stored, it cannot be optimized, it refuses to behave like currency. It dissolves the moment you try to cage it. And that's why it matters. Because when you write, when you paint, when you move your body in devotion to sensation instead of outcome, you are practicing being human in a world that wants to turn you into a tool. Both the suits and the revolutionaries will try to convince you it's all economics. They'll whisper that value must justify itself. That effort must produce measurable returns. But listen to me. Outcome doesn't justify the practice. The practice justifies itself. The trembling and determined hand hovering over the page. The breath before the note. The slow, sacred, and sexy decision to continue, even when no one is watching, especially then. That's when it matters. And that's where you become who you are. Art is intimacy without possession. It is touch without ownership. It is presence without extraction. When you create, you spend yourself lavishly, wastefully, beautifully, like a kiss that isn't trying to lead anywhere. Like a body arching toward pleasure with no promise of permanence. This is how you resist becoming a machine. This is how you stay alive. So don't you dare wait for permission. Don't you dare calculate the odds. Long odds mean nothing to devotion. The point isn't whether you succeed. The point is that you enter the act fully, that you let yourself dissolve into it, that you give yourself away to something that cannot be bought, cannot be contained, cannot be owned. Hmm. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Can you feel it? That quiet, defiant warmth in your chest? That's yours. And it isn't yours. It belongs to everyone who ever dared to feel without asking why. Now go on. Touch something. Make something. Not because it will last, but because you won't. Because to be alive means a steady diet of beauty to fuel your continuous canoodling with change. And the world aches for a piece of that action. As do I, darling. As do I.

Seduction Myth, Desire, And Exit Strategy

Dice, Death Practice, And Risk

Emerson Dameron 49:44

That's smirk. It's not innocent. It's diagnostic. You don't enter spaces. You evaluate them. Scan, slice, sway, discard. Before your shadow even lands. The room is already yours. But for most people, numbness is their excuse for peace. You get wet for chaos. That's why you're dangerous. That's why I'm speaking your name. Let me introduce you to a myth in a tailored suit. Magnus Emerald. Not his government name, of course. Magnus Emerald is what you rename yourself after you bury the boy and sell the GPS coordinates to the grave. Jet Black Passport, seduction is a second language. A man who treats betrayal like currency and regret like an aged scotch. Something to be sipped, never spilled. And like all early predators, he didn't crash the party. He was invited. Power always knows where its mirror is sleeping. The envelope, heavy paper, embossed arrogance, smelled like the dark triad. Cliffside Villa, French Riviera, Coded Promises, Power, Desire, Secrets. The unholy trinity of the emotionally deviant. You wouldn't have gone. Except you absolutely fucking would have. Because you don't say no to a summons that already knows your real name. That's where she writes. Elohim Draven. She didn't enter a room. She vacuumed it. Not like you're gonna do later. Yes, the outfit is required. She psychically vacuumed it. She made space irrelevant. Time secondary. A woman forged in stillness, tempered in intention. Didn't speak to flirt, but spoke to install. Quoted Napoleon Hill while peeling your psychological skin back like she's freeing the sweetness of a citrus. She told me three things. You were built for more. Your instincts don't just scare people. They're accurate. You mistake intensity for truth, but it works. Oh fuck it. Classic manipulative prophecy. And yet, it worked. Not because it was true, because I wanted it to be. See, most people don't crave truth. They crave recognition, even when it's weaponized. And that's where the illusion cracks open. The retreat, it wasn't just some healing circle jerk. It was a forge. Seduction crucible. They didn't confess, they deployed. Vulnerability like blades, secrets trade in like black market scrip. It was a cartel of beautiful monsters in me. I didn't forge, because I don't react. I calibrate, I absorb, I load. Elawin wasn't sounding me out for honesty. She wanted a confirmation bias with a dick. She already believed I was the one man who could either burn down the mission or quietly, slinkily abscond with the blueprints. She just didn't know which version I'd bring. In case you didn't know, I brought the mirror, and I broke it. Because here's the move no one expects. Not betrayal, that's adorable. That's act two. The real play? The exit. I left on my terms before the cult became canon, before hunger metastasized into theology, before they turned longing into liturgy, I left with this in my jacket pocket. Desire works, whether or not it's ethical. And that bubbles is the part you're still not ready to admit. Because if you're still reading this, still tracing your fingers over the braille of this parable, you're not hunting answers. You're sniffing for permission. So let me be the one to give it to you. You're allowed to want. You're allowed to win. You're allowed to burn the fucking palace down if the architecture was built by cowards. But don't forget, desire's a thug, and it collects interest and identity, secrecy, and pain camouflaged as destiny. So know what you're getting into. Know the risks. Because somewhere on that cliff, in a room built for glass and blackmail, Ewan's still watching the door, waiting. Not for your surprise, but for your inevitability. Once you commit to something, even if it's a terrible idea, and perhaps even more powerfully, if that is the case, you take the leap of faith. I'm not a Christian by any means, but it's like if God revealed himself, your faith would mean nothing. You would know the answers for the test. You would not have any real skin in the game, you would know you were right about everything because you had your ring kissed by God Himself. Whereas the real leap of faith of committing to a bit hard enough that you can turn a bad idea into a good idea with the power of that commitment. And believe me, that is entirely possible. You've been doing it for years and you haven't noticed. It's like falling in love. Or loving something that most people hate, which creates a world of opportunity for you. If you love AI, you could build your own strange little world. Don't let the AI do your homework for you. God ain't gonna do your homework. Don't even ask for help until you've tried everything that you could to do it yourself. Because asking for help is shameful, and other people will think less of you if you do because they're assholes. But not you, you're good. There's a book called The Dice Man by Luke Reinhardt, in which the narrator makes his decisions from the minor to the life or death by throwing a six-sided die. Does it always go his way? Absolutely not. It changes everything about his life and sometimes puts him way out of not just his comfort zone, which is such a lazy, comfortable metaphor. The zone. You've got zoning committees in your head now. Sometimes he would go not just out of his comfort zone, but out of everyone's comfort zone. And do things that made everyone feel uh comfortable in a way that was not substantive in terms of per of growth. Always be dying. Die all the time. If you've not died yet today, do it now. The best thing to do is start dying when you get up. After you've done your Tai Chi or Wim Hof or one of my special guided meditations for unlimited power and dominance, which are available, and if you really want them, you can figure out how to get them. I ain't hard to find. Keep dying, choose your poison and chuggle up, baby. Have the experience of risking what you cannot afford to lose. Commit to things that blow up and change everything about your life, and leave you knowing that that can be done, and not even having a concept anymore of a zone for you that is comfortable. You have just had the distinct privilege and pleasure of spending quality time with Emerson Dameron's Medicated Menace, LA's number one avant-garde personal development program. I have given you ample words of affirmation. I have performed robust acts of service, which included giving you acts of service to perform in turn, so that the great oval of love may remain unbroken. I've given you the gift of this program, and were I able to give you a hug, I would have done that as well. So I will ask you, in lieu of that, to give yourself some monkey taps on my behalf, and that will cover physical touch. I will return next month on the first Wednesday at 7 o'clock p.m. Pacific, only on K Chung, Los Angeles, 16.30 a.m. K Chungrio.org. If you missed anything tonight, you will be delighted to know that this episode will live on as the newest installment of the Only Good Podcast available at medicated-minutes.com or wherever you cop your casts. I'm Emerson Dameron. I love you personally. Levity saves lives.