Speaker 1: Whatever you need.

Speaker 2: Great. I've brought- The only administrative thing I do is that contract. If you feel comfortable, great. If not, I'll leave them with you. But it's- You'll read it and it's the best contract you've ever read because it protects you.

Speaker 1: Awesome.

Speaker 2: It gives me a year to write the book. You'll see it before.

Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you for that, by the way.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: I mean, you're- I don't know how the other folks are, and you've got a drink [00:00:30] over there if you need, but, yeah, I'm just going to, just. It's your painting and you just paint it.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: I've had a lot of bad things said about me, so.

Speaker 2: Really?

Speaker 1: Oh sure. I haven't, you know, I mean.

Speaker 2: Oh, you mean like just review people's opinion?

Speaker 1: Oh, no, I'm just saying, like, in life. I mean, just.

Speaker 2: Oh, sure.

Speaker 1: So, I'm not too worried.

Speaker 2: No, and you've read the premise. I mean, there's no, there's nothing that's going to be negatively controversial, but I hope things [00:01:00] challenge people.

Speaker 1: I hope so.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is where I was talking to Tracy Sharp. I talked to her Wednesday or Tuesday, I don't ... But her studio's in a church. In a corner of a church and when the kids sing choir she goes and works up there. Right? It's kinda cool.

Speaker 1: Yes.

Speaker 2: But then she says, "yeah, the church rents out these buildings. There's nine artists that have their" ... That was so interesting to learn. Yeah, and this is where, I've been chewing on this lately, is, [00:01:30] when you're- because you have kids. When you're two, three, four, you- white piece of paper, crayons, whatever, and are told to go at it and everything you do is great. Everything. What is it? Great! Let's put it on the refrigerator, let's herald it. Let's celebrate it. Let's really explore what it is. And then somewhere around ... Eleven, twelve, that gets taken away and it starts becoming judged and molded [00:02:00] and you have to follow this pattern and learn this technique and all of that. And so I wanted to talk to you a little bit about, when did you start, take me back from when you were a little kid with every freedom in the world. Then how did you get back into it? Or did you never leave it? Or that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: The restraints of?

Speaker 2: Just think back. You know, you were born. [00:02:30] Most of us don't remember that. It's very dark. And then the normal creativity that happens. There's crayons, there's markers. Every time you go to a restaurant they give you crayons. Were you different back then? Did you have a feel back then that this is something that I really- Or did you just- Totally regular?

Speaker 1: It's going to- It'll sound odd, but I- I really didn't find a creative outlet until I [00:03:00] was eighteen or so. And before that I didn't do a lot of drawing or creating or anything in that respect. It wasn't that I wasn't creative, but I was mischievously creative. So, my creativity was surviving and figuring out how to navigate my surroundings and things going on in my life.

Speaker 2: Tell me more about that.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Just growing up, I mean, I had [00:03:30] a mom that was, like I had told you, a wild kind of anomaly, mental anomaly. Undiagnosed. Probably seven different things. And was very scared and reserved from doctors, so she would never go to the doctor for anything. So she just went unchecked. She was just like a tornado with skin.

Speaker 2: That was your whole-

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Right, right.

Speaker 1: And then a lot of death, you know. Very sick sister. [00:04:00] They divorced when I was young. Then she remarried a fella that was very old. World War Two old. He died of cirrhosis of the liver and that was when I was young. He started dying when I was ten. And so I was just taking care of him and then my grandfather came to live with us and he had emphysema so he was dying perpetually. Then she was trying to take care of my sister, who was always dying from juvenile diabetes and-

Speaker 2: And she herself [00:04:30] was kind of unbalanced? And then-

Speaker 1: Very unbalanced. Her mom died- Her mom went to get the flu shot when she was- She was super close. Affluent, had a great little family, only child. Her mom went to go get the swine flu shot and dropped dead. She was like one of a thousand people that just had a- And then they were like "oh that's not a good idea, let's not do the swine flu shot". So from that point on, she just was like, nothing to do with doctors.

Speaker 2: It spurred-

Speaker 1: Yeah. And she just went- She went off the deep end and then we just, [00:05:00] with all the chaos of the death and everything, I just- We lost everything. So we were super poor and, you know, I never saw them. I lived out in the country. They moved way out in rural Morgan County and I was twelve miles from the little town and one mile from the closest neighbor, so I was just-

Speaker 2: With who?

Speaker 1: With my mom, stepfather, dying sister, and- And then they all just basically kind [00:05:30] of started falling away. I started collecting boxes of ashes, you know.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I do.

Speaker 1: I've got about ten boxes of ashes in my basement right this second because I can't- I don't know what to do. So everybody's-

Speaker 2: It's in your house.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I just kept collecting them.

Speaker 2: So I painted the picture, which is kind of interesting. I painted this picture of this kind of quasi-idyllic, you [00:06:00] know, grounds, paper, as if it's normal. But you didn't grow up in normal in any way really. And so, you said you were mischievously creative.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And that's because you had to balance what your reality, you know- Tell me a little bit about-

Speaker 1: Well, I mean, like I said, we were super poor, so I started- I just started becoming- doing anything I could to make things easier. Not just for me, but for us. [00:06:30] I started stealing. I started doing a lot of things, you know.

Speaker 2: Surviving.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so. Taking advantage of whoever I needed to take advantage of to stay alive, I guess. I know that sounds very dramatic, but, looking back on it, I mean, it was very dramatic. And it seem normal at the time, but it was far from that.

Speaker 2: I think it's good for people to have that perspective, though. Of "oh I would never do that". You don't know. Because you've never been in [00:07:00] the situation where you've been destitute or desperate or had this scenario where, you know.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: Because I get in a lot of fights with people about dog fighting. "I would never do that".

Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2: It's like, if you could sell a dog for fifty bucks and feed your family, yeah you would.

Speaker 1: Yeah, for real.

Speaker 2: Right. So, it's interesting when I'm reading now your current art bios and stuff, it talks about how you see things that, you know, are seemingly natural or kind of in an environment and you bring it back and create something out of it and [00:07:30] you've been doing that your whole life, then.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Once I got- Once I ... Basically, like I said, people started dying off and by the time I was in tenth grade, I mean, up until then, I skateboarded, I was clever, so my wordings were clever and I had fun, you know. I was always the class clown and I was creative in that respect but I didn't do really what I would consider art, you know, I just didn't have an outlet, [00:08:00] you know. I just had angst and I was pissed off.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Pissed off.

Speaker 2: So the normal, kind of.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So I just went out and- So, once I left that environment, we lost the house and my mom actually moved away and left me at the house.

Speaker 2: And you were what age?

Speaker 1: Tenth grade. So I repeated tenth grade. So my second year of tenth grade, I just was living in a house in the country with no [00:08:30] power and nobody there, just me.

Speaker 2: How long were you there?

Speaker 1: About a year. Little over year. And then finally my father, who I hadn't lived with since I was three, he asked me to come live with him in Atlanta.

Speaker 2: Oh wow. That's quite a shift.

Speaker 1: It was a big shift.

Speaker 2: And you didn't really know him.

Speaker 1: No, I'd visit him. You know, I'd visit him on-

Speaker 2: Random.

Speaker 1: You know, the visitation type of deal. He was a good man, he [00:09:00] just was stoic and quiet. When I went to see him, that was my reprieve. So I didn't- He didn't know what all was going on.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: He hated my mother. They hated each other. And so, I didn't talk about it. They had no idea the extent of what was going on. I'd show up and he's like, "why am I sending all these child support checks? Aren't you- Why are you wearing raggedy shoes?" And this and that. And I'm like, "well, you know, just, I like them," you know, whatever, just to keep it calm. [00:09:30] I think the knowing what was going on I could deal with. It was the unknown that was scary to me so I didn't want to bring on more unknown.

Speaker 2: You wanted to leave it because it was just bearable.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I just kind of pacified things. So when I moved to Atlanta, I had a rebirth- personal rebirth where I- nobody knew me. Nobody knew I was the guy with the crazy mom or that smelled bad when he came to school or, you know. Nobody knew anything about me, so [00:10:00] when I came to Atlanta, I just made a mental shift of I was just going to be who I had always wanted to be.

Speaker 2: How old were you when you just made this?

Speaker 1: Just turning eighteen.

Speaker 2: Right, so you just said ...

Speaker 1: Yeah. So I went my senior year of high school and I just became the most popular guy in school. Got the best girl.

Speaker 2: How so? Like, how did you- Did you, like, I'm sure your dad afforded you things that you didn't have in your other life.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, they weren't super rich or anything like that, but, you know, I had a warm house and running water [00:10:30] and food and all of that.

Speaker 2: Regularly.

Speaker 1: Exactly, regularly.

Speaker 2: That actually someone brought you instead of-

Speaker 1: I know, right? And my wife now was my neighbor. She lived across the street from me. And so I just decided I was going to be ... I mean, I already had a very carefree, just really don't really give a fuck attitude about things. And so I was kind of, you know, I just decided [00:11:00] I was going to be the cool slick kid in school that came in with a bunch of attitude and a bunch of whatever, because I was a very different person. And that built up a lot of confidence in me. I was still the same person I was back there, I just didn't have the baggage, and nobody knew about the baggage, and-

Speaker 2: Well, it probably gave you a bit of inner strength and chutzpah, because you came from this environment and you made the choice to change and it was successful.

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Speaker 2: So that's a pretty-

Speaker 1: Well I-

Speaker 2: At eighteen that's a pretty-

Speaker 1: [00:11:30] I'll tell you, I, like I said, I've always been creative, but that senior year of high school, I really- that's when I first started drawing and painting and really trying to be kind of the teenage angst artist. Because I had a lot of angst and I was like, I could identify with these people I see in movies that could put it out and live this life of mystery and, but, you know. So I was like, I want to do that and I had a dear friend back in Madison in Morgan County that [00:12:00] was an exceptional artist and he just was a true head could communicate with hand. Perfectly.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: And so I kind of used him as a model. I was like, you know, he-

Speaker 2: Tell me about him more.

Speaker 1: His name was Matt Lassiter. He was just a regular weirdo. But a cool, smart, never studied, exceptionally cool, [00:12:30] mysterious guy. Ugly as hell.

Speaker 2: Age difference to you?

Speaker 1: Same age.

Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so he was like, right-

Speaker 1: Yeah. He was like a, he just- I don't know. He was way cooler than he knew he was.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: But he died in a van not to long ago with a needle in his arm. I mean, he's one of those guys that just had everything but he couldn't escape it.

Speaker 2: So he became, or something you saw in him was like, "okay, I'm [00:13:00] going to do that" from an art standpoint.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So no training. No exposure to it.

Speaker 1: Yeah, none.

Speaker 2: You just decided.

Speaker 1: I decided that's what I was going to do and start doing that. And so I did start and it turned out I could be really good at it, like I had a little bit of that. And I don't know that I have anything- I don't know- And I never have really thought that I had anything special. It's just that I had- I unlocked what we all kind of have, or something, you know? Like I found a way to pick [00:13:30] the lock and I was like, "oh," and then the confidence is a big deal, you know. The confidence-

Speaker 2: Is it confidence or a lack of fear or both? Or what- You see, there's a difference between I know I'm good at this and I don't care, I'm going to do it anyway. And you seem like you might have had a little-

Speaker 1: Well there's like, I guess there's kind of a symbiotic thing between the two, you know? Like on the boat ride over here, when we were saying about how you- hard times and hard [00:14:00] situations can prepare you, you know, for things. It just seems like those things prepared me to not care about- I mean, if you're walking in with a 400 pound mom that's cussing everybody out in sight, at your elementary school, you're just not going to care if you express your deepest, darkest things on a piece of paper, because it's not going to matter.

Speaker 2: Because they're already- Yeah. They've already-

Speaker 1: Yeah, the shame of exposure is ... that's nothing compared to how I felt constantly [00:14:30] growing up around everybody, you know. So.

Speaker 2: And that happened.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so I just would feel a lot- I felt like it was good for me to express the stuff and I didn't have any shame in pushing it a little farther than other people would push it. And I'm not talking about from the-

Speaker 2: Even now you do it.

Speaker 1: From the design aesthetics, and you know, because I do a lot of things, I guess I have a really wide spread of creative outlets [00:15:00] and some of them are like writing and things like that. Some of those are super personal.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: But there's no shame in it at all. It's just like it wouldn't matter who wanted to talk to me, I'd talk very freely about my deepest, darkest things because now I'm kind of like, "you know, that okay".

Speaker 2: And it comes through in your work, I think. It's so earnest and there. And there's- And maybe that is what I saw, because I don't- I have a trained eye, so when I picked [00:15:30] you guys, I randomly went through our suggestions and I was like, "yep, nope, yep, nope".

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: So there's something. What's interesting is, one of the artist's had her first show with- Tracy and Scott had their first show together in there- Right-

Speaker 1: Oh, that's cool.

Speaker 2: Yeah, out of the thin air. And then, the one person I asked that said no was this, her name's Maggie Taylor, she's uber famous, is the mentor of someone I did pick. [00:16:00] I had no idea.

Speaker 1: Wow.

Speaker 2: Right. So it all- There's something. But take me back. I really want to go to that moment or time period, it doesn't have to be a moment. Time period, where you said, "I'm going to do that". And then what was that like? What'd you pick up first? How did you decide? How did you literally head to hand out?

Speaker 1: I mean the first thing that I can remember doing was at the high school my senior year, you know. I had art class and [00:16:30] I did this giant ink drawing of, I mean it was a bunch of really dark- I mean, guys with dicks in their hands and, you know, ribs exposed and you know, houses on fire with kids jumping out of it. Just all kinds of dark stuff. And then I remember I watercolored it in with blood. You know, I mean, [00:17:00] I'm like- That's some real high school, turtleneck stuff. But, at the time, you know, everyone was like, "what the hell?" But in a way it was kind of really interesting and weird. Powerful?

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: And I think I just felt that it was kind of like ... I don't know. Like validation? That it's okay to be ugly, you know? [00:17:30] Up until then I hadn't felt like it was okay to be ugly. It was just shameful and I guess at that moment in that class, I was getting props for being ugly, you know. That was something I'd never experienced before.

Speaker 2: Being ugly topically in your work, or being ugly like you just felt yourself were?

Speaker 1: Just putting ugly out-

Speaker 2: In the world.

Speaker 1: And I don't mean ugly as in unbearable to look at, but just ugly content.

Speaker 2: Yep.

Speaker 1: Ugly content.

Speaker 2: Yep. [00:18:00] That there is a commonality if people could really-

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And I think that is a turning point where I felt like, publicly, I was accepted to do that.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Because you grew up around it. You grew up in, you know.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And then you're among the people who didn't necessarily but they responded so they got you.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: To me it kind of made sense that that's how you assimilated [00:18:30] as you're like, "I got this," and they're like, "we got a little too. It's okay".

Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that's cool. I think that's, you know-

Speaker 1: I will say, and it takes it back to what you were asking me about the creativity prior to that and stuff like that. I have always tried to turn, and that's really what the whole spectrum of my whole art career has been, is taking something ugly and making it beautiful. And that has been kind of a lifetime pursuit. [00:19:00] It just wasn't in a tangible form before. And then it kind of started morphing to where- and it started feeling good. Where I could take these ugly things and I could transform them into something that was beautiful and that kind of goes into the furniture and stuff that I make.

Speaker 2: Oh yeah. The before and after, like , what you saw and what it inspired. My favorite thing.

Speaker 1: Well thank you.

Speaker 2: Oh. I was like- And that's where [00:19:30] I want to ask you this question. It's probably a hard question- I hate when people say that. But it's probably a hard question to answer, is, you came from, let's call it the ugly because we've called it that. I mean I'm sure there were some not ugly moments, but let's say-

Speaker 1: Sure, of course.

Speaker 2: What, in you, do you think kept you from staying in the ugly and being angry about it? Because so many people from those types of environments stay there. And you miraculously, I would say, [00:20:00] you just did this with your hands. You took where you came from and you started making it beautiful and you're still doing it with things you see and you're still- What do you think it is that gave you that ability to take and make pretty? I mean, that takes some strength.

Speaker 1: Well. I will tell you this, I don't know if you read this particular writing about me being arrested and stuff on-

Speaker 2: Oh, I have not read [00:20:30] that.

Speaker 1: Okay. It's briefly interesting.

Speaker 2: Let me make sure my mic is still doing its thing.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 2: You know it panics me. It is. Now that's going to be in the transcripts.

Speaker 1: So when I moved in with my father, I lived with him for one year and up until then I did no drugs, smoke, drank, nothing. I was super clean. I didn't need any other chaos, you know.

Speaker 2: Right. You always said [crosstalk 00:20:54]

Speaker 1: Yeah. Super clean. And his wife was- She [00:21:00] was a real work. Three time widow. She was just mentally corrupted a little bit herself and I was not- Her name was actually Bloodworth and it was very befitting to her. She was very ... I don't know even the term for it, just she was airs. Period, you know. I was not-

Speaker 2: Parasitic.

Speaker 1: I came in with- Just this wild child, and she was like, "oh, I'll do whatever for Tommy," you know. So I was [00:21:30] there and then she told him, she was like, "I was washing the laundry and I found some marijuana seeds in Joe's laundry," or something. And, of course, she didn't. But my dad was like, look, you're- You've got to grow up. And he didn't know my past. He didn't know what I'd been through. And he was like, "you need to grow up. You need to learn. You need to get out on your own and go through some stuff before-", you know, or something. So he kicked me out. And it was awful. [00:22:00] Because I lived with him a year and all of a sudden I was on the street and- I know. I don't know what he was thinking, but, and I'm sure he would never do it again, had he realized. But at the time it was brutal for me. So I was out in Atlanta. I couldn't go back to my hometown. There was nothing there. I didn't have anybody.

Speaker 2: You've already put closure on that anyway and changed.

Speaker 1: Yeah, well, the house was gone, the family, everybody was gone. Yeah, and I closed up mentally and emotionally. The heart wasn't there [00:22:30] anymore.

Speaker 2: So you were untethered.

Speaker 1: Yes. I was just-

Speaker 2: And I hate to-

Speaker 1: Yeah, no, this-

Speaker 2: It's hurting me to talk about it, honestly. Like, how the fuck did you, with that?

Speaker 1: Well, what ended up happening is I was in Atlanta with a lot of opportunity. I mean, Atlanta's got a lot of opportunity for somebody that's-

Speaker 2: If you're looking for it, but it would've been perfectly normal for you to become a shithead.

Speaker 1: Well, it has- There's a lot of opportunity in Atlanta for shitheads.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: And it's [00:23:00] not that I was a shithead, but I needed to eat and stuff like that and I had some friends who were selling LSD and they brought-

Speaker 2: And you're used to doing what you needed to do to survive.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Like this is a non-

Speaker 1: Exactly. They were bringing it in from this biker gang in California and they were making a ton of money and I needed money. And I was like, "I'll- I want to be a part. Get me involved with that". And so I started doing that and-

Speaker 2: Hunger. Money.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So I started selling a bunch of LSD to Georgia Tech and a bunch of different places and [00:23:30] then I got arrested. Got a year and a half in to that and got arrested and I was driving an ice cream truck. Isn't that colorful? Yeah. I was driving an ice cream truck as a-

Speaker 2: Did it have ice cream in it?

Speaker 1: It did, but it was really just my cover vehicle for my- It's just stupid. But anyway I was like-

Speaker 2: I feel like you're making this shit up.

Speaker 1: I'll let you read my writing. You'll like the writing about it. It's well-put. [00:24:00] But, yeah, I got arrested and I got put in jail and I mean, I had to flip on this biker gang and stuff because they wanted to give me fifteen years in prison, you know. I didn't want that, so, the survivor in me, I flipped on them and then I did have to go do some prison time. So in prison is where things changed for me because-

Speaker 2: [00:24:30] Again.

Speaker 1: Yeah, again. It was a really low spot for me. The first week I was there, this guy got his divorce papers and he hung himself with the phone right next to my bunk, so I woke up with a swollen head like right in my face. Still see it.

Speaker 2: Right. So it's not like he was-

Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, beat downs, and just stupid, just awful stuff.

Speaker 2: Shit that happens in prison.

Speaker 1: Yeah. But I started using what I'd just learned, which was drawing, [00:25:00] and I write. I like words.

Speaker 2: You do, yeah.

Speaker 1: I like words.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: I use my words in my writing and I started drawing birthday cards for their kids or I'd write their girlfriends love letters for them. So I'd write their love letters and then they'd have to, because a lot of them were illiterate, so I'd write these-

Speaker 2: Or not articulate, of course.

Speaker 1: Exactly. So I'd write these, like- I just got good at it. And then I kind of had, like, protection from [00:25:30] stuff because I was this guy that just-

Speaker 2: [inaudible 00:25:33]

Speaker 1: Yeah. I was just this guy that did things for people that they couldn't do.

Speaker 2: You had a value.

Speaker 1: I had a value.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Again, another validation through-

Speaker 1: Yeah. So basically I got off easy. I got a first offender act and, you know, do a little bit of time and then five years of intensive probation, which they cut down to two and a half. So I got out and went through my probation and it-

Speaker 2: Where did you go when you got out? [00:26:00] What the?

Speaker 1: I went-

Speaker 2: And weren't you afraid that the gang would, like- What did you go out facing?

Speaker 1: No, because I was clever with the way that that flipping went down, because I went through a friend of mine who went through to the gang. And I didn't want to bury my friend, and so I made up this whole elaborate story in the back of a DA car about how, you know, they couldn't arrest him. I could get him to the other people, but we [00:26:30] had to have a whole ploy of how they had recorded us and I had to give him all these locations that we had been and how they- So they put this whole- there was this whole little scripted thing and they convinced my friend without him knowing that he thought they had all the dirt on him and they didn't have any dirt on him at all. And that circumvented him and then, so I was kind of out of the picture. They didn't- They would've- He had a deal with them. But he didn't have to deal with prison, so that was good.

Speaker 2: So you [00:27:00] got out and you went where?

Speaker 1: I got out and I went down- I followed my girlfriend, who's now my wife. I followed her down to Athens.

Speaker 2: Your nextdoor neighbor and-

Speaker 1: Yeah. She went down to Athens to UGA.

Speaker 2: What is she doing while you're- Is she still close?

Speaker 1: Hiding me from her parents. They knew me.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: And then they didn't like me, because I was wild. Then they forbid her to see me. So even in the last portion of the time that I was still out and [00:27:30] about, I'd drive up their street at 2AM in the morning after skateboarding all night, honk the horn the whole way up the road. Did it every single night, just so she knew I was thinking about her because I couldn't call her or anything. Just be around.

Speaker 2: The adult version of Say Anything.

Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so they just ... She just kept doing her thing which was school and kept going forward, still, you know, love's a prison itself. That you want to break into, you know.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: [00:28:00] So she could- She was in love with me and there was no stopping that. And I was in love with her and so.

Speaker 2: You can't. You'd like to be able to but you can't.

Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah, she wanted to be out of love with me, for sure. And I understand. So I followed her down to Athens and she was down there and I remember I'd talked a friend of mine into going down with me, one of my childhood friends that had lived in Madison. He wanted out of there, so he-

Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Madison's nice.

Speaker 1: Yeah. He came and picked [00:28:30] me up and we went by a motel and they were doing room service. We saw where the room service people were and we went into the room and got all of our blankets and pillows and shampoos and put them all in a blanket and then I remember them chasing us. They were running after us and we got in his LTD and we took off. We answered an ad in the paper and it was this really weird Long Island guy. Super rocker with long hair and a bunch of cats and [00:29:00] we moved in with him. It was bizarre.

Speaker 2: I can see the movie.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I know. I moved in with him and then the trajectory of my life hit, at that point, started incrementally going uphill instead of downhill. I completed the probation in half the time. They let me off and I was clear. No felony, nothing. I just had a misdemeanor.

Speaker 2: Right. And [00:29:30] no contact with dad, family?

Speaker 1: No, I mean, I called my dad the night I got arrested. You know, "Dad, I'm in freaking jail". My one phone call. He hung up on me. That was my one phone call. I didn't hear from anybody else for a couple weeks, you know.

Speaker 2: He's still got to know how this happened.

Speaker 1: It was awful.

Speaker 2: You had every opportunity to become a complete utter shit.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And the thing is-

Speaker 2: And justifiable given what-

Speaker 1: I was in there with people that, you know, stabbed their daughter in the face. I mean, I was in there with horrible people. Molesters and, you [00:30:00] know, all kinds of people, you know. Some of those folks- I mean, I remember, some of those people were three time offenders. Kids my age, you know, at the time. They were never going to come out of jail. They were going to be in jail for the next thirty years, but we'd sit there and play spades and talk about shit. But their life was done. I felt like I almost had a responsibility for mine not to be. Because they didn't have a chance [00:30:30] to get out. I was going to get out.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And so, yeah. That whole experience of having everything stripped and having body, butt searches every time you go into a place, you know. It just changes, you know. You're like, don't want anything to do with that. I could be there, in my mind, walking the streets, no problem. I mean, I could be in a hell of, you know, emotional prison. [00:31:00] And so the-

PART 1 OF 5 ENDS [00:31:04]

Speaker 1: ... and so the ... just like you could be free in prison, you know?

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: It's just a mental thing. And so I made a conscious effort to try to make more good decisions than bad ones.

Speaker 2: That's amazing to me. Shit sandwich after shit sandwich, and even now a lot of people use small things that happened to them or one thing [00:31:30] that happened to them as the excuse for why they are the way they are. You had multiple relentless stuff, and yet you still kept coming out of it like, "I'm going to make some good here."

Speaker 1: Yeah. My sister died while I was in prison.

Speaker 2: What do you think that is in you?

Speaker 1: That's the hard question. That is the hard question. Why did I not just give up? Is that what you mean?

Speaker 2: I guess so.

Speaker 1: Give up [00:32:00] on trying?

Speaker 2: Yes. Because I'm like, given your past you should cut me up into little pieces and feed me to something in the lake. A lot of people that have gone through a quarter of what you've been through would just be angry the rest of their life.

Speaker 1: Yeah. True.

Speaker 2: Life wasn't fair.

Speaker 1: True.

Speaker 2: So I'm just ... I'm sorry I keep digging at it.

Speaker 1: Listen, I'm telling you, I'm digging at it too. And I've been digging at it. That's what the whole thing is.

Speaker 2: That's amazing.

Speaker 1: I need an [00:32:30] answer. And I don't know if I'm going to find it in my lifetime. I really don't know if I'm going to find the real answer. But what I am finding, some people are responsible for it other than me. And that's ... I couldn't do all this on my own.

Speaker 2: But you ... was it your girlfriend was this positive force?

Speaker 1: My wife was a big part.

Speaker 2: Constant positive.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And it would be nice to say, "Yeah, I got it all and I [00:33:00] had the courage and the inner life and the strength." But I'm not a Hallmark card or something. That's just not the case. There's a lot of time I just wanted to die.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And when I lived in Madison I was going to shoot myself. After my step-daddy had died and everything was just, he had a little sawed off shotgun he hid with his porn and I pulled the little sawed off shotgun and I was sad upstairs. And I just wanted to. I was going to do it.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And I was rolling my finger around the [00:33:30] barrel trying to get up the courage, and I put my finger in. My fingers got stuck in the fucking barrel. It got stuck in the barrel.

There's some ducks.

It got stuck in the barrel. And it took me an hour and a half to get it out.

Speaker 2: What?

Speaker 1: And by that time I was done.

Speaker 2: Right. You went through it, yeah.

Speaker 1: But if it hadn't I probably would have. And so there have been times when I almost gave up.

Speaker 2: And there's just something.

Speaker 1: And I almost gave up when I got arrested because I didn't give a shit. I didn't [00:34:00] care what happened to me.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: I used to do stupid things. I broke my neck when I was in my twenties, jumping off, doing flips off buildings into pools and stuff because I didn't care. You know?

Speaker 2: Yeah. You were, you were.

Speaker 1: I just didn't care.

Speaker 2: You flung yourself just into it.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So I would go arm rob somebody because I didn't care. I was never going to hurt anybody. But I didn't care if they shot me. I'd just take the chance. I didn't care.

Speaker 2: So there's a difference there too, because [00:34:30] sometimes it affects people where they do want to hurt. They lost that. They have, "I don't care," but for everything.

Speaker 1: Right. If I hadn't had so many people that I loved. Like as much as I hated my mom, I loved her. She's still my mom.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: And my sister. I was jealous of her and resentful, because ever since I can remember. She was three years older than me, and anything she needed because she had a short shelf life. So she got everything. If we had anything, she got it all and I just was an afterthought. So I resented [00:35:00] her but I loved her. So I'd care for her. So I had a part of me that just had to take care of people. So maybe that pacified that aggression.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And animals are good too.

My power symbol's a, and I didn't wear my ring, but I've got a gold ring that has a big pointer dog on it and he's locked down in point. My daddy used to hunt quail, and I grew up with doing that. I've always romanticized the pointer, the wild [00:35:30] beast that could focus on the prize and be able to maintain the beast into sculpture, you know? And stay focused. And it kind of became my little power symbol.

Speaker 2: Pointer dog.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Pointer dog. I wanted hood ornaments on almost every vehicle, you know? Little pointer dog.

Speaker 2: It's funny how one keys in on things. Like, "That's my thing."

Speaker 1: I've got a lot of those things. But back to what I was saying about, my wife is, yeah. She [00:36:00] caught me at the crossroads. When I moved up to Atlanta that was my crossroads. And I met her the summer before high school mowing grass, and she'd come by. And I'd kind of see her looking. And I think I saw her looking, but I'd see her looking. And she came and introduced herself to me one day, and we just became good friends but I loved her. And then I've always loved her. I've always ... before that I'd never felt anything like that before.

And I'd never had anybody really take stock in me. [00:36:30] Nobody saw me for what I was because I never really exposed myself truly for what I was to anybody.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: And so yeah, and she just rode with me. So I've had this person that I want to be proud of me.

Speaker 2: Actually be proud of you, yeah.

Speaker 1: I've got this person in my life that I want to be proud. Now I've got two more with my daughters. And like my father-in-law that called while we were driving over here. They accepted [00:37:00] me. I dated her for 10 years and then I went to him secretly and said, "Hey, I want to marry her. And it's taken me 10 years to get my life straight enough where I think I'm good enough for her."

Speaker 2: That's a great sentence, actually.

Speaker 1: That was the truth.

Speaker 2: That would have resonated with ...

Speaker 1: It took a long time.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And they grilled me for two hours. They were like, "You know, you've had a fucked up life. How would you know anything about how to raise a kid? No offense, but you don't have the first idea about what a nurturing parent's like, so how would you know how to be one?" [00:37:30] And he was worried I might be abusive and things like that.

Speaker 2: Fair questions.

Speaker 1: Fair questions, yeah. They asked me everything, and I answered.

Speaker 2: You have daughters, I have a daughter.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: I'd be ...

Speaker 1: Answered them every question, and after they were satisfied they said, "Okay. You'll be our son from now on." And they gave me their blessing and then that was that. So now I've got them, who are also this ...

Speaker 2: So now you've got the family that-

Speaker 1: I've got what I had never had before. And [00:38:00] I think the worst thing for me would be to make them ashamed of me.

Speaker 2: So that gives you the-

Speaker 1: It gives me focus to try to continue to make the right decisions. I still do stupid and wrong things.

Speaker 2: But they're normal stupid and wrong things.

Speaker 1: Yeah, within-

Speaker 2: You're not going to go arm rob somebody.

Speaker 1: I'm not going to go arm rob somebody. But if it's a nice spoon, I'll steal it. If I like a mug at a restaurant it will go in my pocket. I just can't help it because ...

Speaker 2: It's also part of the fabric of where you've been. It's in there.

Speaker 1: [00:38:30] For sure. I don't want to do harm to anybody or anything.

Speaker 2: No. And you haven't. I mean, within, you know.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Wow. That is still going to haunt me now. How does a person endure that and then now what you do with yourself is to see things and then turn them into useful or beautiful?

Speaker 1: Well, and I'll tell you this and then you'll get this-

Speaker 2: And then we're going to back to where we were.

Speaker 1: Please, yeah. But from a writer's standpoint.

Speaker 2: Yes, which you are that too.

Speaker 1: [00:39:00] All the art that I've done in my life, I have never gotten the satisfaction that I've gotten from writing lately. I didn't write before six months ago. I mean, that was not a thing for me. Other than writing.

Speaker 2: Love letters.

Speaker 1: Yeah, prison love letters. But not art stuff where it's like, "This is what I'm feeling but I couldn't cap." I've never been able to capture it. I thought I was capturing it because I draw and I paint and I do all these other things, but I thought I was capturing. But [00:39:30] it's got such ambiguity that nobody else could see it. Like, I could see it in it.

Speaker 2: Right. Because you knew what went in it.

Speaker 1: But nobody else could see it.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: And I think I guess I needed the validation of knowing that other people got it. They got my art.

Speaker 2: Yep.

Speaker 1: And the writing is the one thing now that I found that people, just, they get it. They come out the woodwork and they're like, "I had a similar life."

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: "You've given me courage, it's okay." And I don't mean this [00:40:00] in a braggadocios way or something, but I've become a role model for a lot of people.

Speaker 2: Yeah, or a beacon.

Speaker 1: Well people, they've known me for a long time. And they're like, "You know, you're doing good." And they're struggling and they're like, "How?"

Speaker 2: That's what I'm asking you, yeah. How did you?

Speaker 1: They're starting to get that they could too. If I could they could.

Speaker 2: Wow. That's actually huge.

Speaker 1: It's driving me.

Speaker 2: And [00:40:30] I was just going to end, glad you said that, because it's going back to all along you haven't maybe consciously but it's that validation, and now this writing is giving you that from people who need you.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Now it's not validation for self-worth, it's validation value.

Speaker 1: And I'll tell you this. My dad died. He died when I was ... 25. He got electrocuted on a farm. Stupid thing. I mean, he just-

Speaker 2: No, just you're ...

Speaker 1: I mean, he [00:41:00] got electrocuted on a farm. He went out to prime the well, the power had gone out in some bad storm and he went out to prime the well. And you've got to fill [inaudible 00:41:09] with water again so it can start pumping. So he went out to do that and he bridged some exposed wire or something and it just fried him. Burned his mustache off.

Speaker 2: That's insane.

Speaker 1: Yeah, just dropped him dead. And I think back and my dad was a pretty good guy. Everybody loved my daddy, he looked like a damn ... [00:41:30] I don't know, Tom Selleck or something. Just tan, handsome, mustache, curly, wavy black hair, his name was Tommy. Everybody loved Tommy. But nobody fucking new knew Tommy. Even his wives didn't know him. My mom didn't know him, my second step-mother who I'm good friends with now. She married to him 12 years. She's like, "I didn't know anything about him."

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: "Sex was good and he took care of me and he was fun, but I don't know anything about his darkest secrets [00:42:00] or his dreams or what he was like growing up." He didn't talk about anything. He was just stoic.

Speaker 2: Just stayed closed, yeah.

Speaker 1: And as much as I love my little daughters I don't want them to have that. Because there are so many questions now that I'm a grown man, I want to know. I want to know these things. And I can't tell them anything about their grandaddy other than he looked like Tom Selleck and he apparently was a good lover. You know? I don't know anything else. And so that's the 'nother part of this art is making this undeniable [00:42:30] porthole into who their father is. Because I always tell them, "I may be dead tomorrow. I have no idea." None of us know.

Speaker 2: That's right.

Speaker 1: And they know all about how I grew up. I talk openly about things. And I'm like, "Life's short." Y'all may live a year, you may life to be 100, but we just don't know.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And you've seen the realities of that. Not just the supposition.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And I tell them so that it's real, [00:43:00] and not so they're scared. It's just, "It's real, it's what it is." It's what it is.

Speaker 2: Because I have to do that with Elizabeth now. She'll say, "Well, you're not going to die anytime soon." I'm like, "I don't want to say that to you. So let's talk about what happens if it does happen."

Speaker 1: Statistically, I always go into statistics.

Speaker 2: Yes. Statistically, you're right.

Speaker 1: You get into that math, probably going to be around for a while.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: But-

Speaker 2: I just don't want her to have that.

Speaker 1: What my wife's going through now. She hasn't lost anybody. [00:43:30] We're so opposite. We're so opposite. And so now she's having a lot of hard times knowing that, because her family's starting to get old and fall apart. And she's starting, things are becoming real.

Speaker 2: Right. It's hard.

Speaker 1: It's hard. She's been so lucky.

Speaker 2: Hasn't experienced any of that.

Speaker 1: She's been so lucky.

Speaker 2: What do you think it is then? So you're mowing the lawn. Let's go back. What do you think she saw in you? Because you're almost polar [00:44:00] in your-

Speaker 1: Well, I think it's probably cliché but I was kind of a bad boy.

Speaker 2: Sure.

Speaker 1: But I was fun and I was way different than anybody else because I just had a little bit of chaos, but controlled chaos.

Speaker 2: But without malice, too.

Speaker 1: But without malice. She always tells me, "I always knew you were a good person, and I always knew you were way different than anybody else. I'd never met anybody like you and I'd never meet anybody else, never have and I probably never will ever meet anybody like [00:44:30] you. You're just very different." To the point that I guess it's outside of me or something.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: So yeah, she just ... I guess she was just really curious.

Speaker 2: And then it just-

Speaker 1: Because she had a very vanilla, just simple, Mayberry life. And I think she ... I don't know. I guess that's what they say with the bad boy thing. You kind of vicariously learn through somebody else. So I think she just was very interested in [00:45:00] curious. And hopefully I was just fun. Slightly handsome or something to her, and it clicked for her. And then I saw the opposite things in her, you know?

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: I saw the stability and the honesty and the pure heart.

Speaker 2: Which is funny because, in a weird way, you have stability and honesty.

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Speaker 2: Because you maintained who you were through all of this adversity without letting it take over who you are. You know?

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: That's just interesting. [00:45:30] So let's go back. You took an art class in high school, and that's when you started ...

Speaker 1: That's when I started drawing, and then I went really into drawing.

Speaker 2: And then you had that crazy piece. Dicks in hands and all of that. And you realized that you could put ugly out and it's okay to kind of, you know? Take me from there forward. Did you stick with art? Did you [inaudible 00:45:59]?

Speaker 1: I [00:46:00] kind of went into prison and I did a lot. And I was selling LSD and doing LSD. So doing psychedelic drugs was pretty I guess, I don't know, eye-opening. I don't know what other good word would be. But it was, I don't know if you've ever done any kind of psychedelic drug.

Speaker 2: Oh, mushrooms.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Super fun.

Speaker 1: Yeah. But my first time doing acid, they gave me like 11 drops of acid in my eye.

Speaker 2: [00:46:30] 11?

Speaker 1: Of pure acid. These were ... serious people that had serious stuff.

Speaker 2: Professionals.

Speaker 1: They were like, "You can do it, this is the way you do it." And yeah, the whole world you're used to seeing looks radically different and is moving and talking to you and soothing you and beating you. I mean, the world looks ... and then you come back and you're like, "I can't unsee what I saw." I guess? And so [00:47:00] it gave ... everything around me that was dormant had life.

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: And you can't unsee that. It became life. If you see, tripping acid, an entire forest of trees talking and comforting you and singing to each other, you can't unsee that.

Speaker 2: No.

Speaker 1: You kind of saw ... I don't know. I don't know enough and I have not researched enough about drugs. I just know that ...

Speaker 2: Once it's in there you've seen it.

Speaker 1: That I did it and I saw [00:47:30] the world totally different. And that opens some things for me also.

Speaker 2: I never look at brick the same way. Because when I was on mushrooms the sparkles in the bricks put on this show and there was light, so now every time I see bricks I'm like ...

Speaker 1: Exactly. And they had some good acid apparently. I mean, yeah. They had some good acid. Apparently if you're carrying acid across the country on motorcycles you do it in just liquid vials and it's just pure.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I never did [00:48:00] that. I wish I would have done it when I was younger.

Speaker 1: Life's ... you never know. You might be in Morocco one day and ...

Speaker 2: Right, right.

Speaker 1: Around the right person.

Speaker 2: They'll legalize it.

Speaker 1: Exactly. So that was something. And then I had the prison, and then I had ... that going on. And then when I got out I started doing some painting. I had-

Speaker 2: What made you?

Speaker 1: I was in intensive probation. I was in the lockdown and unemployable. [00:48:30] And I was kind of fucked. So I just kind of sat in this apartment with this New York guy who was also an artist. Not a very talented artist, but he was a really kind of flamboyant all out there guy. And I have to say, he introduced me to a lot of music. I didn't have a large music repertoire up until this point. I mean, this man had an entire closet that was nothing but CD after CD. I mean, he had everything. I didn't know anything about that.

Speaker 2: More exposure [00:49:00] to stuff.

Speaker 1: I had, like, 10 CDs or something. Cassettes or something.

Speaker 2: And you'd stolen them.

Speaker 1: Exactly. So I got up there. He exposed me to music, he exposed me to some kind of more fast-lane art type of stuff. Athens was good for me.

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1: So I was in Athens. The apartment complex had this giant bamboo forest. I remember going into one of the head shops. It goes back to my seeing voids, I'm good at seeing voids [00:49:30] that need to be filled. And I saw voids, so I was like, "I'll start making bongs." Because I can't buy this $300 bong, but I can certainly make one and sell it to him for $150. And so I started making them out of bamboo.

Speaker 2: Oh, wow.

Speaker 1: And making these really beautiful ones. I found all the dwarf bamboo that couldn't get any light that had to fight its way out, so they're all curved and-

Speaker 2: Cool, yeah.

Speaker 1: I started selling that stuff, and then I was doing the painting, and then I started drawing and started selling the drawing to tattoo shops to ... but it was [00:50:00] still a bunch of weird guys on beds jacking off and clocks doing things. And a bunch of just weird stuff that had personal meaning to me but it wasn't something that ...

Speaker 2: It was just coming out.

Speaker 1: It was just coming out.

Speaker 2: But it wasn't, yeah.

Speaker 1: It was just coming out. And up until then, I had worked hard physically but I hadn't worked beautifully physically.

Speaker 2: Yep.

Speaker 1: So [00:50:30] I had just worked. Then I got a couple opportunities, like I had a friend opened a skateboard shop and was like, "Hey, you used to build speaker boxes really good and you've built some skate ramps. Do you think you could build me some shelves for the shop?" And so I borrowed a couple of tools and I build them. But I built him some beautiful ones, and I hadn't really built anything like that really before. But it was my friend's shop.

Speaker 2: So you cared.

Speaker 1: It was an outlet. [00:51:00] So I kind of went for it and made something really kick-ass, and then some bar-owner walked by and was like, "Man, can you build a bar back for me?" And I was like, "Yeah, no problem." So I just really started a ... that was a whole new thing of working with my hands and making things that were pretty and that a lot of people would see and enjoy.

Speaker 2: So then did it start to touch something?

Speaker 1: Well, I started to make money. [00:51:30] I started to make money and be able to sustain myself in a legal fashion.

Speaker 2: with something that you cared about and could be proud of versus ashamed of.

Speaker 1: Exactly. And once again, the whole ... this thing of making pretty things.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Even if it was I'm making these things because I've got time to do this, because I can't go get a real job, because I'm still trying to kick off this charge until I get done with [00:52:00] these piss tests. You know? That kind of thing. So I'm just going to do this.

And then I started getting recognition for it. People started to notice that I was a little bit better than everybody else at what I was doing. And then everything is a discipline. I just needed to continue doing these things, because for me I needed to continue moving and ... kind of barfing out this stuff. [00:52:30] But I kept doing it in the same things. And so I kept building up this skill sets that I gave time to them.

Speaker 2: Working with certain materials and [inaudible 00:52:41].

Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's when the drawing, the painting, the sculpting, the writing, furniture, all the things that I do, that I'm doing, they all got a little bit of love all the time. And when you do that, then I think everybody's capable of doing [00:53:00] what I do. I really do think that. I really do.

Speaker 2: Tell me more about that. You mean just from a tactical?

Speaker 1: Everybody can't ... I think you have to be poised in a certain position to make lasting commentary art. You've got to really be in touch ... first you have to notice what bullshit's going on around you, and then you have to know how to harness it and be able to communicate it. So that does [00:53:30] take a certain skill.

Speaker 2: Yep.

Speaker 1: But I think that-

Speaker 2: You just may enhance them.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I think anybody could learn to draw exceptionally well and anybody could learn to sculpt exceptionally well and make beautiful furniture. And I think anybody could probably do all those things, just like any discipline if you give enough time to it and you don't have some kind of roadblock handicap that will. And even then you can work around it.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: I think anybody can learn to do those things, which gets labeled art.

Speaker 2: [00:54:00] Right. Paint, sculpt, draw.

Speaker 1: It's the deeper parts of it that I need. I've gotten good at the skill. It's communicating the ... because I really don't. And I don't know all the people that you've interviewed. And I know a lot of artists, but I don't seek out artists.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: I just become friends with somebody and it turns out they're good at this particular thing and then we've got that in common. That's cool. I'm just like everybody. [00:54:30] I like people. I tell my wife, I talk to everybody. I cannot be around somebody without having to be like, "Hey, having a good day?" I just have to talk. She's like, "What drives you to do that?" And I told her. "I'm always looking for additional people on my team that get me." I think it's just a constant pursuit, and I'm never going to find that person if I don't bridge that gap.

Speaker 2: Family, you're still looking for.

Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Perfect. I'm still [00:55:00] trying to pull family. And so I don't know where I was going with that. The knowing all of the different arts and being immersed in the art world. I just know that I have a bunch of bullshit to get out.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And a lot of dark stuff, unfortunately. And I've got a lot of beautiful things, but I'm really good at the dark things because I just know I'm really good.

Speaker 2: I think your dark [00:55:30] stuff comes out beautifully.

Speaker 1: Well, and that's the thing. Now, am I going to start turning beautiful things into ugly things? I'm afraid to write about my children, I'm afraid to write about my wife. I don't want to write about them. And I mean, I go deep on everything, and they're a huge integral part of what I have to say.

Speaker 2: But they don't need healed or addressed. They're already at the state in which your art gets to.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: That's what I would think is that they're already.

Speaker 1: I guess so.

Speaker 2: I don't know if that's true.

Speaker 1: It's an answerless [00:56:00] question sometimes, but that is the pursuit. The pursuit is this gradual, I've gradually grown to learn to talk. I'm gradually learning to talk. And so now I'm just like ... now I just want to say, you know?

Speaker 2: So when did it go from, you built shelves, somebody noticed, you started getting validation. You noticed they were different. It [00:56:30] started to turn into art. I mean, it was art. But you started the realization that it was something different. When did you start thinking, "This is what I want to do." Or, "This is what I want." Or did that even happen?

Speaker 1: It kind of did. I kind of put it out there to my wife's parents when I was asking for her hand in marriage. At that point I didn't live in Atlanta, I lived in Athens and my wife lived in Atlanta at the time. She had moved back from college, she was helping her parents. [00:57:00] And I was down in Athens still just building stuff and out in the woods doing art and things. And I kind of laid out, they needed a plan and I kind of just winged a game plan and I didn't have a college degree. I don't have any college at all. Just 10th grade twice. And so I-

Speaker 2: That counts.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. So I had to give them a pretty viable game plan. I said, "Listen, I'm going to come up here and I'm probably going to become [00:57:30] a commercial contractor or start doing high-end whatever." But I laid out a game plan. And they were like, "Yeah." And I married her. I moved to Atlanta, and at that time I didn't know anybody up here to do business with. That was, I didn't know anybody. So I kind of had to make it happen.

Speaker 2: But you're used to this.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So I had to make it happen. I'm trying to think how I got my first ... [00:58:00] I met this guy, Randy Gazaway, this super crazy giant clown of a man that lived in a warehouse. We met at something and he introduced me to somebody that owned Club 1150 back when it was. It's now Opera, but it was this giant night club and I didn't know anything about any of that stuff. But that guy, they needed a bunch of stuff built. So he was like, so he gave them my number and they called me. And it's this whole fake it [00:58:30] thing. And so I just like, "I don't care what anybody asks me. I'm going to figure it out." So I'm very confident I'm going to figure it out. It does not matter. So I'll take on anything. So I just kind of went in and they told me what they needed. And I said less and didn't mess myself up. And I said, "Yeah, no problem." And then yeah, I built a bunch of stuff for them in my backyard.

Speaker 2: So you weren't daunted.

Speaker 1: No. But I built all these beautiful things. They needed a bunch [00:59:00] of daybeds and pretty things for this night club. So I built this stuff, did a great job. And they didn't know I didn't have a shop. I was like, "Yeah, big shop, bunch of guys, whatever." It's just me. And then they were like, "We're going to renovate the whole place. You want to take that on?" I was like, "Yeah, no problem." Because I'd been a laborer and I'd always see the person making the money is the head person. Everybody else just gets a little teeny bit or gets screwed. So I was like, "I need to be that [00:59:30] person." So I said, "No problem." And in Atlanta you didn't have to be a certified contractor then. So I just said, "No problem, that's fine." And I'm good at gaging people. I can tell if I can trust you or not trust you, or if I can take advantage or not take advantage. I can pretty much feel that out in three seconds.

Speaker 2: Because you're used to having to do that.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Your mechanism.

Speaker 1: So I started making people, then trades pretty quickly, and size them up real quick.

Speaker 2: "Here's [01:00:00] my electrician."

Speaker 1: Yeah, brought a little team in. And we did that renovation, and that gave me a huge nest egg that I didn't have.

Speaker 2: That's awesome.

Speaker 1: Up until then I didn't have much backup. And then that just started multiplying. I kept taking on bigger and bigger things. One guy wanted me to build this giant modern house, and I'd never built a house before.

Speaker 2: That's awesome.

Speaker 1: God, if I told him he'd die. If I told him now he'd die. But he was like, there was just land. There was no ... there was nothing. It was a beautiful [01:00:30] place. It was on Marietta Boulevard. It was this beautiful place, and he was like, "I'd like for you to build." I was like, "No problem. I've built a hundred homes." You know?

Speaker 2: In my head.

Speaker 1: We did it though. We built that place. Me and seven guys. We built that whole, and it's beautiful too.

Speaker 2: That's crazy.

Speaker 1: And I just kept taking on things.

Speaker 2: So as you were doing this, because if we look back at high school it was, "Let me get the ugly out, it's okay to put ugly out." And now you're putting beautiful out.

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Speaker 2: You're wanting to get that out. [01:01:00] And as you're getting, it's still mixed with, "I'm making money doing this." So it's divisive. But it's sounding like it in your words and in your voice it's beautiful. You're starting to see that you're creating something that's beautiful. And you haven't talked about the money since back there.

Speaker 1: Right. The thing is starting to learn that I've got value. That was really what it boils down to is that it has never ... I had never been boosted. I had never [01:01:30] been lifted, ever.

Speaker 2: And valued.

Speaker 1: Never.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Just my entire growing up.

Speaker 2: Your girlfriend and no one else, really.

Speaker 1: That was it.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: And I just had never had anybody be like, "You know you could be anything." Got never told that, ever.

Speaker 2: Right. Except from here.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I was just a burden, really. You know? Kind of. And a spectator. A burden, a spectator. I think [01:02:00] really the juice for me was I could-

PART 2 OF 5 ENDS [01:02:04]

Speaker 1: Really the juice for me was that I could be good at things that were valued because it's always cool to be different, oddball. I learned that in a small town environment, that you're gonna have a lot of people that are like, "what the fuck's wrong with that guy?" Or "are you a fag?" Or you know, whatever they want.

Speaker 3: That's an easy to be because you [inaudible 01:02:25]

Speaker 1: They call you everything there, but there's a small nucleus of people in [01:02:30] a small town that appreciate that there's some mystery to somebody that's different. I learned early on that my friend Matt, I saw that people respected him because he was just naturally different.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 1: My daddy used to say find what the niche is at least the rich is. So I gotta find the niche is being different.

Speaker 3: You said, I wanna do that.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm [01:03:00] never gonna be a rich man, you know, but I don't think I'm every gonna be a poor man either. The money part was a stress that was gone. Okay, I don't have to worry about this bill today. A few months out, I'm okay. Break leg, I'll be okay, and that was a stress I'd always had, so that went away [01:03:30] which I think probably alleviated me to be able to be a little.

Speaker 3: To consider it more than.

Speaker 1: Yes

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 1: That just built into a healthy lifestyle of me having something very tangible at the end of every single day. There was something that proved that I had been here, and I had done something good.

Speaker 3: So you were making your own validation at this point?

Speaker 1: [01:04:00] Yeah

Speaker 3: And each piece was like that was a tangible thing? I get that.

Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3: Yeah, let me get this out of the sun, it's [inaudible 01:04:07]

Speaker 1: Oh, thank you. You want something to drink or anything or?

Speaker 3: I'm good.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 3: If you want to start yourself?

Speaker 1: Oh, no I'm fine. Whenever.

Speaker 3: This is starting to make a lot of sense, your life. At first I was like how did he get from here to here, now as you're walking through it, it's starting to kinda forge into you came from this darkness and you're starting to get that out [01:04:30] and then you started to assimilate, value and get validation in different ways and then it turned. Your hands, I wanted to know that you started making things beautiful because you could, because you realized you had value. It's kind of interesting to see that.

Speaker 1: It gave me power.

Speaker 3: Yes.

Speaker 1: I didn't feel empowered. I didn't have a power. That was like a superpower. Like a alchemist, like I could just produce something and everybody else is like "how'd you do that?". It's like your magic or something. To me, [01:05:00] you're like magic, what you can think is magic and it feels good that you do. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 3: Yes, I do.

Speaker 1: That's kinda powerful. It's kinda a powerful aphrodisiac.

Speaker 3: You're doing commissioned work? You're being hired to do certain things. When did you start to do things, or is this all along, that were just for you? Like you see that and you made a thing.

Speaker 1: That was kinda all along.

Speaker 3: All along?

Speaker 1: It's just before I [01:05:30] would see them, and that's the part that I didn't really expand on about my early time. Everybody's head works different and my head works real weird. I see things but I don't really see.

Speaker 3: Which is why we're out here?

Speaker 1: I can't look at something and see it just as something. I have to see depth into it, and I have to see things in it or history in it or [01:06:00] attach some weird story to it that I have no idea if it's even true, but maybe this is why that's the way it is.

Speaker 3: More to it than appearance.

Speaker 1: My head works on hyper drive visually, super-hyper drive so when I see things there's always gotta be some poetry to it or some romance or something, and I think it just goes back to growing up, I just had to make something pretty outta something [01:06:30] that just wasn't.

Speaker 3: You wanted people to look at you and see that or see there is more to you than just, there's something interesting to the way, and it goes back to what you were telling me when you said, "I wanna go out on a boat, I don't wanna go into a studio because I want to show you", and I think this is probably more honest about where your creativity comes from because we're looking at things that if I described them I would [01:07:00] say boat, tree, lake, house, and you would say protector of the universe. You would see different values and different attributes and different stories behind all these things that I am naming with normal nouns.

Speaker 1: For sure. And they do manifest in artwork, and they do manifest in my writings. I'm really profoundly moved by the physics of buoyancy [01:07:30] and being tethered and being able to float and being able to die in a second. The whole thing of this is very fascinating to me in an outward life death kind of way. It's not out on the lake having a conversation, it's like I'm [01:08:00] sustaining buoyancy.

Speaker 3: That is weird. We are on a on a body of water.

Speaker 1: It's something very spiritual to me.

Speaker 3: I see what you mean.

Speaker 1: It's very metaphorical.

Speaker 3: There are laws that say sink, and we are actually fighting the laws that say sink because we've got some sort of buoyancy.

Speaker 1: I've always felt like my mouth was a quarter inch underneath the water. You know what I mean? I've always been [01:08:30] barely, just barely, and this is different. That's why it's kind of like this church, I feel like I'm floating. I'm not gasping, I'm floating.

Speaker 3: Yeah. You finally got to something.

Speaker 1: That's why I feel like I could talk really honest out here cuz this is really a sanctuary-feeling.

Speaker 3: And you're not submerged any more, you come up through and broken the [01:09:00] surface.

Speaker 1: I'm not just treading and fighting to keep my head alive.

Speaker 3: So do you feel like you have a sense of peace about certain things but that you now versus you back through the tumultuous life you've had, where are you now just from a dark versus light?

Speaker 1: [01:09:30] Now my stress is time. Time weighs on me. I know that I've watched everybody die young, sister, mom, dad, everybody's dead, they're just gone; and they've been gone for a while. I forgot what their voices sound like, they've been gone that long.

Speaker 3: Yes.

Speaker 1: Now that I've found a little bit of a stride, a real little, now I don't have enough time [01:10:00] to really develop it. That's the struggle now. The struggle is the time.

Speaker 3: What do you need time for?

Speaker 1: I think all the things I don't know, like all the things I don't know I'm goo at. Does that make sense? I didn't know I could be this good at a lot of things and now I've found out, hey I can be good at a lot of things, but I bloomed really late, and now [01:10:30] there's a whole world. I'm not a world traveler, I mean I am a Georgia-boy. I'm a really simple person, really, in some ways and really complex in some ways.

Speaker 3: I was gonna say.

Speaker 1: It's just an anomaly, so now I have this [01:11:00] yanking me back of what can I accomplish?

Speaker 3: Not just surviving any more.

Speaker 1: Exactly, and making missteps and things that set me back and things like that. I can take a lot in stride. I mean I can take all kinds of whatever that comes my way pretty easily.

Speaker 3: [inaudible 01:11:26]

Speaker 1: No problem. But, there's the small things, it's the [01:11:30] small things of living up to what my daughters will remember me as. Am I gonna be as great as I want them to remember me as?

Speaker 3: Right.

Speaker 1: Am I gonna be good enough for this woman that's basically given her life to me. Am I gonna be good enough, you know, when it's all said and done? And what positive things in the world can I now, now that I've found I have some power to help people that have been down like me, [01:12:00] am I gonna make the right decisions to maximize my ability to help the world in a good way, not just survive, but really make a difference, a substantial difference. Those are the things that are really hard now.

Speaker 3: Well, given where you've come from, I think it sounds like what you are worried about is continuing on because you've seen so many things fall [01:12:30] off. It can just stop, and I feel like your creating things that will continue cause you want to keep that coming out in the world.

Speaker 1: That's why I have to keep moving. I have to keep making things. I have to keep doing things because I just don't know when it's gonna end. Believe me, I totally get it and know two-thirds of the world have way worse than anything I've ever gone through, way worse but it still doesn't diminish [01:13:00] the fact that I know that the people that are supposed to raise me and be close to me all failed me whether they failed me while they were alive or they failed me by leaving too soon, they're just gone. So early on I just knew that this is really temporary, and that's a weird thing to know when you're a kid.

Speaker 3: Yeah it is.

Speaker 1: This is temporary. I don't have faith in a church-type, traditional-type of [01:13:30] way. I'm still trying to find my way and what is.

Speaker 3: Any of that?

Speaker 1: Yeah, any of that, and I'll never know any of that to the point that I will really believe it. But, I may have some faith in something.

Speaker 3: In something?

Speaker 1: At some point, I'm trying to get there. I don't know.

Speaker 3: It's okay. I wear this mustard too because if you have this much faith you can figure life out, and I'm always like "okay". I'm still trying to figure it out.

Speaker 1: But you can't eat spicy [01:14:00] mustard. [inaudible 01:14:04]

Speaker 3: I've always been overwhelmed by the concept of the size of your faith, and it can be small, and that as long as you've got that you can do anything you want. If you're looking at your work, it's funny to me. The story I can make up, this guys' name is Hans, he's from Sweden, and he's this fine artist who studied, because it's this beautiful, [01:14:30] flawless, natural, not contrived, when I'm looking at it. It's so funny because of where you came from.

Speaker 1: It's funny, isn't it?

Speaker 3: Yes. Because I would have definitely pegged that work as somebody whose internationally traveled and understands. It's funny.

Speaker 1: I didn't even go to my first museum until I was in my 20's. I just had zero exposure to anything which has been a good thing for me really cuz I have [01:15:00] a very unique, what I'm finding, is a unique voice to it.

Speaker 3: It's trained and controlled, and I think you're exactly right. You know it's funny, I applied to teach at this art school because I've taught before, and they said you have to have a MFA, and I have a MFA, but why? I've got 25 years [inaudible 01:15:17]

Speaker 1: Exactly.

Speaker 3: You have to have an MFA. But you're an art school? You should know that you don't have to have anything.

Speaker 1: [01:15:30] I don't understand a lot of the art community, and that's probably why I don't seek out. Because I remember, I went to the High Museum when I first started doing furniture, I did more commercial stuff, I went into furniture because the economy tanked. I was like, "this is fucked", [01:16:00] and I'd never been in America's Mart or any of that stuff. There was this opportunity if you win best of show and high design then, it's free. It's $15,000 to show in best of show, build a trade booth, and do all this stuff, so I created a whole line, got in, built a booth, and then I won best of show out of 1,000 [01:16:30] people showing there. I won. If I hadn't won, I would've been done because I would've been $15,000 in and would've been done. But, it was free, and they actually paid for me to go to New York to show whereas even getting there I wouldn't have been able to go there, but their like it's good enough. We'll get you there, you're good for us.

Speaker 3: What's happening on the inside while all this shit is happening to you?

Speaker 1: There is [01:17:00] some celebration. I'm excited.

Speaker 3: Yes.

Speaker 1: I have to see me winning before I win. If I don't see the end result, I probably not going to get the end result. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 1: You gotta see the finish line or you're probably not gonna make it to the finish line. I can see myself, yeah I'm gonna win because I'm gonna win. That's the confidence. [01:17:30] It's being confident and willing to take the personal risk.

Speaker 3: Yes, because you didn't care.

Speaker 1: I didn't. It was all-or-nothing

Speaker 3: Will you go back to [inaudible 01:17:42]cussing people out.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

Speaker 3: I don't give a shit what these people think. You've had that training.

Speaker 1: Right

Speaker 3: Yeah, wow.

Speaker 1: That's where that came from, that furniture, I got into the furniture world that way. [01:18:00] But, my story was that once I got going into the furniture world and I was like, "I'm actually really good and people really love this stuff I'm making." They had this famous Spanish furniture designer, I can't remember his name, don't quote me on it, he's still a nice guy.

Speaker 3: You'll see it, don't worry.

Speaker 1: This famous guy, and he was up there, and I saw his stuff and I was like "I think we could be good together". [01:18:30] I liked his stuff. I was like, "I'll never be as good as he is." He did a lecture up there so I stayed late, and was there by myself, and I pulled him aside and was talking with him and everything, but he was so arrogant. And, he was so trained and so this and that.

Speaker 3: That's what happens.

Speaker 1: He wouldn't have anything to do with me. I was like, "son, we."

Speaker 3: I got this.

Speaker 1: We could be big. I mean we could do something really amazing [01:19:00] together, even if it's just one project, it could be amazing cuz our minds are very similar. I could see, but he wouldn't get past the fucking conversation. I must have emailed him 25 times. I was like, "I'm not going to give up, man, I'm just gonna keep emailing you cuz it should happen, I see it." He just wouldn't budge, and it just pissed me off.

Speaker 3: But that's what happens, and that's what we go back to what everyone's [inaudible 01:19:27] about, the crowns getting taken away and by the time they get [01:19:30] given back we treat it so precious that you lost.

Speaker 1: Right

Speaker 3: The ability to really relate to it, and it's truly only those people can do this.

Speaker 1: Correct.

Speaker 3: No, no. That's why art is in every house, every hallway, art is everywhere. Every city has, why, because there's something in it.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

Speaker 3: You still wanna find that thing, but why does it have to be only 10 people?

Speaker 1: I know. They put the crayons down too soon, [01:20:00] or they didn't get enough encouragement. I mean, that's really the two things.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Or they could've put it on the refrigerator.

Speaker 1: As a kid, there's no telling where I'd be right now. I'm telling ya, there's no telling.

Speaker 3: Might not even be here.

Speaker 1: I might not even be here.

Speaker 3: Because you might not have needed it.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

Speaker 3: But if I had got some encouragement, and I had some good direction or a good mentor, there's no telling. Had a little earlier confidence, there's just no telling. But there's still no telling, like you said, it [01:20:30] may have changed everything.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 3: I could have taken it all for granted, not given a damn about any of it.

Speaker 1: Or just needed to get it out, and that's why I think people want it around them all the time because there's something they needed, there's something they didn't get. It's interesting, I think.

Speaker 3: Can I make you a sandwich?

Speaker 1: Sure. [inaudible 01:20:47] make a sandwich.

Speaker 3: I brought you some cold coffee. I don't know if you drink coffee, or not.

Speaker 1: I do not.

Speaker 3: Okay.

Speaker 1: [inaudible 01:20:53]

Speaker 3: I got sharp cheddar and [01:21:00] muenster, what do you prefer?

Speaker 1: Either, whatever you're eating so we can only open one.

Speaker 3: And I've got black forest ham.

Speaker 1: You want one?

Speaker 3: Yeah, that's fine. Thank you. And, oven roasted cured ham.

Speaker 1: Great.

Speaker 3: Either one?

Speaker 1: Yep.

Speaker 3: I'll open this one [01:21:18].

Speaker 1: I always think this wrapper is funny.

Speaker 3: I know, that's the only reason I got it, I thought it was funny too.

Speaker 1: It's really good bread. Really good. And it's super popular.

Speaker 3: Good.

Speaker 1: [01:21:30] I like people who say I'm not gonna get a graphic design to do a logo, and blah, blah blah, I'm just gonna put myself playing guitar the way I always do or banjo, I guess.

Speaker 3: Take all of it.

Speaker 1: I'm a meat person.

Speaker 3: Good for you.

Speaker 1: I feel like, and I can be wrong, and again I'm just reading in, so you correct me, I feel like [01:22:00] you don't make furniture. You make furniture, but you don't make furniture. You're not out to make furniture. You see something that turns into what it is, or do you make furniture?

Speaker 3: My situation is morphed a little bit. I had a factory in downtown Atlanta, and I had a bunch of guys, we made a bunch of furniture. So, I was a furniture maker at that point.

Speaker 1: Is that [inaudible 01:22:25]

Speaker 3: That was Shiner. The logo [01:22:30] was a black eye and it was just highly damaged goods, that's what my whole little brand was Black Eye Furniture.

Speaker 1: Sorry.

Speaker 3: Then I won an award, I don't remember the place, called Cipriani's or something in New York, some famous place there, and I won this big award, it was the rising star award for some [01:23:00] big thing. I can't even think what it is right this second, but a bunch of people. I was up against Tommy Hilfiger's daughter, and there were big people there, but I won. I won it. I won this award in New York. It was awesome.

Speaker 1: About how old were you, what was going on?

Speaker 3: The furniture business was two years old, it lasted two years. I had this rocking [01:23:30] bed that everybody flipped over this thing, and so this fricking company came to me, this corporate company.

Speaker 1: Let's exploit it.

Speaker 3: Yeah. But at the time, I'm not a like just developed and keep going with the same thing, I gotta just keep changing it up anyway, so I was like it ain't no problem. I go to them, and they're like we'll buy it all, all your design [01:24:00] and everything.

Speaker 1: The Gostopo-thing.

Speaker 3: Yeah, but the condition is we want you to work for us for three years. We need your design mind. I was like, okay, but they fucked me. They fucking screwed me.

Speaker 1: Really?

Speaker 3: They screwed me. They were just awful. Bad corporation. There are good corporations and there are bad ones, they were a bad one. They didn't give any care at all about [01:24:30] actually being a steward of the stuff. It was just turn and burn.

Speaker 1: Turn and burn, yep. Exploit, exploit, exploit.

Speaker 3: They thought they knew more than I did. Same thing with this damn Spanish guy. I'm sitting here trying to tell him, we can make this, and they just wouldn't listen, and they screwed me over.

Speaker 1: Short-term thinking bullshit.

Speaker 3: They screwed me over. It left a bad taste in my mouth. That was a few years ago, and they took the life from me. [01:25:00] I mean, a lot of money, you know a lot of potential money, a lot of owed money. They left me screwed.

Speaker 1: That sucks.

Speaker 3: I had automated equipment, and hundreds of thousand's of dollars worth of machinery that I had never had a credit card, never took out a loan.

Speaker 1: You put the risk for.

Speaker 3: Yeah. They took it all. [01:25:30] Still working?

Speaker 1: Yes. I can't see it, can you see it? It's a little light or if the numbers are changing, we're good.

Speaker 3: Numbers are changing.

Speaker 1: Fine. It's a weird one.

Speaker 3: I understand. They took me for half a million dollars in just cash.

Speaker 1: [01:26:00] Which given where you came from, you understood the value, that it wasn't just a line item.

Speaker 3: Shit, that was everything man.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And, everything cumulative to where you built it to.

Speaker 3: I thought I was making a good move that would further my children. That this was a move that wasn't propelled just by what I needed, it was more like this is a good move for my family. That was new for me, and I made a bad move. [01:26:30] I didn't read them in three seconds. They were better cons.

Speaker 1: Stuff just got in the way. It wasn't just you.

Speaker 3: I wanted to see something that wasn't there, I really did. They messed me up. But luckily, I had a reputation.

Speaker 1: They can't take that.

Speaker 3: Yeah, my reputation was bigger than that stuff. [01:27:00] People started coming to me. I had a bad year, let's put it that way, I had a really bad year. I [inaudible 01:27:11] goal-pondering three times in a year, and then some people came to me that I knew that used to buy from me, a wonderful couple. Mike and Mike, two guys, two lovers, and they design hotels, [01:27:30] and they were like, we're doing this hotel in Lauderdale, and we need Joe, and I was like okay, no problem.

Speaker 1: That's awesome. Much [inaudible 01:27:42]

Speaker 3: They were like is your shop capable and everything? I didn't tell them my shop was fucking gone. Once again, I was like, how can I make this? There's an opportunity, I need to figure this out. I called this good friend of mine that I had met in the furniture market, a [01:28:00] great shop in Chattanooga, and I said "listen."

Speaker 1: I need that.

Speaker 3: "I need you." We took that opportunity, and me and him are like brothers. We never see each other, but we knew we're one in the same, so we wanted a reason to work together, and I needed the money. We made that project happen. A 220-room hotel, we did all the rooms, everything, and [01:28:30] we built all of it in the shop.

Speaker 1: You said did all the rooms? What do you mean?

Speaker 3: I designed them and designed the common spaces and then brokered, but as far as they knew, built. I made the first of everything. Most like they do.

Speaker 1: [inaudible 01:28:47]

Speaker 3: Even with furniture, I made the first of everything, guys come in and make a bunch of them. We did a hotel, and they kinda pulled me back [01:29:00] up. I started feeling like I was going under that water again.

Speaker 1: I was just going to say.

Speaker 3: I was starting to sink a little bit, I was getting dark, and feeling bad. I really felt like I had just let everything I had worked for for over a decade [crosstalk 01:29:16]

Speaker 1: Which is good for you.

Speaker 3: It's big because I don't know if I got another decade kinda thing. I did that job and then we started getting other jobs and a bunch of other jobs and bunch [01:29:30] of other jobs.

Speaker 1: Built back up.

Speaker 3: That's been the last three years, so I've got kinda an equity share in his shop now, so it's kinda our shop. We're doing restaurants.

Speaker 1: That's awesome.

Speaker 3: Nightclubs and different stuff. I'm actually really good at automated equipment and know that I would be, it's just that I went to this guy. I had hundreds of things that I needed, and I was doing everything by hand. [01:30:00] This guy pulled me over one day off the road, I had a logo on a van or something, and he was hungry too. He's like I got a CNC router.

Speaker 1: You noticed.

Speaker 3: I got a CNC router, and if you ever need anything, I didn't even know what that was, so I was like "yeah, I'll call ya". And I was like CNC router, oh, whoa. I went there, and I saw him whip out 500 parts effortlessly with a machine.

Speaker 1: Um-hm

Speaker 3: I gotta get one of those. [01:30:30] Period. That was my goal. I started getting into that world a little bit too. We were a nice blend of hand-made and automated. We could make a lot of stuff that was still hand made in most respects. Then I started doing remote control work with a company in Los Angeles. They're the best in the world, they really are. They're incredible. Their company [01:31:00] is Noir, like black you know. They're just killer, man. It's just family. They're German and Swiss. Brilliant. They're just cool as fuck. I mean, they are so cool. He was my neighbor at my first furniture show. I met him, right next to my booth.

Speaker 1: Of course. Booth-mate.

Speaker 3: He was like, "everybody else here is fucking merchant. You make this shit?" And I was like, yeah. He respected it because he used [01:31:30] to be a mold-maker in Sweden, or in Switzerland I'm sorry. He knew everybody else there just bought shit and had it made in China and whatever. He already had a chip on his shoulder, and he liked me, so we became good friends. I started designing stuff for them, and then got them into the automated world cuz they didn't know anything about it either. And now I'm like all the way, could not be farther away, unless I was in Alaska, to them. But, I was like we can do it all remotely, so I figured all that, and [01:32:00] I'd run their machines from my little house.

Speaker 1: That's crazy.

Speaker 3: Yeah. I started doing a lot of that, and then started doing it for other companies. So then I started diversifying with other incomes. I had furniture design that was doing stuff. I had some brokering with the commercial build outs doing something, and I still flip a lot of stuff. Like this boat, if I found something that has extremely good value but is very [01:32:30] overlooked in the market, I'm very good at finding it and getting it, as much of it as I can.

Speaker 1: Makes total sense to me because your whole life you've been looking for value.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 1: You've been sprouting and reading and having to assess like that to survive, and now it's like a reflex to you.

Speaker 3: I know how to find things that people want. I still do a lot of that, where I'll just find [01:33:00] things that I get for nothing and sell for fortune.

PART 3 OF 5 ENDS [01:33:04]

Speaker 3: And things that I get for nothing and sell them for a fortune?

Speaker 2: And then makes ... yeah.

Speaker 3: And so it just ... Yeah, things just started getting a little thicker, and I had more body in my life where I just ... and that's what freed me up where I started really writing and drawing. I got really good at drawing over that.

I do furniture rendering and I didn't know that I was going to be a furniture rendering, but people go to school to [01:33:30] hand render. I don't know if you're familiar with really good hand rendering of furniture, but it was just like ...

Speaker 2: Grid paper?

Speaker 3: It was like it's sitting, right? No, these people draw conceptual things and it looks like it's sitting there. They're amazing, and I realized to be freelance I had to be good like that because you can't be like, "Yeah, I've got this idea. I'll present it. Let me work on it."

If you're at a table and you've got the skills to whip out something in one second, five seconds and then they're like, "Well, [01:34:00] what if you did this?" And you have the skill to make it happen right then. You've got them; you've got the sell. You got it. There's nobody else. Just a handful of people that really can do that in that little industry, and so I got really good at that.

Speaker 2: That's so you, just like, "I'll figure it out. Whatever it is, I'll figure it out."

Speaker 3: Well, that's it. I know how to draw, but I don't know how to draw like that, and so I put little strokes, and over time those strokes turned into something big. [01:34:30] They turned into a really strong skill. So I've got a very strong skill on that now.

Speaker 2: Shocking.

Speaker 3: You're saying that's okay? It's gone.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 3: You did. Gone a bit.

Speaker 2: I loved Dave's bread and the munchies. You nailed it.

Speaker 3: There's more if you want, and there's some cookies too. I read you have a sweet tooth.

Speaker 2: I do.

Speaker 3: Everything's online now.

Speaker 2: That's why it is bad. But where did I get it? I started Orange Theory, that [01:35:00] extra size thing where you have to get into a certain zone for a certain amount of time. Kicking my ass, but it validates the cookies.

Speaker 3: There you go.

Speaker 2: So wrong with that. Everything you're saying, when you first say it, I'm like, "How did it? How did? How did?" And as you were saying them a while ago, looking at it comprehensively, it all makes sense. If you said to me, "Oh, yeah. And then I designed a rocket for whatever," it wouldn't surprise me. Because I feel like you've had to have those skills since really [01:35:30] probably birth to figure stuff out. That's been your life is figuring it out.

Speaker 3: Right.

Speaker 2: Some for survival, and some for emotional survival and some for ... You've just, your whole life has been figuring shit out.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess so. Everybody's is, but most has been dramatically amplified.

Speaker 2: Hi. Yes.

Speaker 3: They like us, don't they?

Speaker 2: Yes. I had a while where I can get, [01:36:00] couldn't get darks out of my head because it's a buoyancy thing. They could just sit there. I don't have to do anything to stay afloat, but they're made out of meat.

Speaker 3: It's amazing. Yeah.

Speaker 2: But then I always sort of wondered why I don't have stuff on their feet. Certainly that's cold on their feet. Their feet don't have any ...

Speaker 3: Right.

Speaker 2: I think about that a lot, like in the winter. It got a way. I saw something that made me laugh. They do stuff out of ... As [01:36:30] I was at Emory and there was a walk around this lake. They have bullshit lake, it's tiny. And it had frozen over. Then birds were sitting on the lake as if it was the water. They were like ...

Speaker 3: I'm not suppose to be here with you. It doesn't feel right.

Speaker 2: Yes, I swear to God, and it was funny because they just sat out on the lake in the middle of the lake as if it was the lake. I'm like, "You guys might as well ... You're on the cold." Okay. [01:37:00] I'm just going to go.

I wish sometimes I had the wisdom of animals, even though a lot of people, "Ah, it's so stupid." They're not. They're not.

Speaker 3: No. It's all the stuff we know that makes us stupid.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 3: They're very ... Yeah.

Speaker 2: And they're out there.

Speaker 3: They're very ...

Speaker 2: They're more in tuned. I'd love to walk. This is going to sound weird, but I'd love to go through the water with that duck.

Speaker 3: Wouldn't it, though?

Speaker 2: Like, "Would do you see?" This current, [01:37:30] and that wind, and this swarm and they're going to be ...

Speaker 3: Exactly. Yeah, they know all the things they need to know.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 3: I'm sure they appreciate things just like we do. I know they do.

Speaker 2: But they know them.

Speaker 3: But they don't get bogged down with all the things that they don't need to know. You know?

Speaker 2: Yes, and the thing that ... I watched something the other night on National Geographic. They're talking about sharks and shark attacks. I thought this was ... I've been chewing on and ever since I get little things and I could just chew on them. They taught a hammerhead shark.

There was a pool [01:38:00] and it was divided in two. There was one pool over here and one pool over here and this pool had a triangle on the wall, and this one had a square. When he went into the square, they would feed him. When he went into the triangle, they wouldn't.

So over time, he knew square, and they even reversed it. Square, it was the shape not the direction.

Speaker 3: He needed the square.

Speaker 2: Right. He needed the square. So he learned that. Three generations of that shark later, without training that shark knew square.

Speaker 3: It's amazing.

Speaker 2: Right. So they called ... [01:38:30] It was called cognitive genetics or something like that where you pass down that stuff.

Speaker 3: Oh, and that's the ...

Speaker 2: I think we've lost. We are waning ours, and they are improving. It's interesting to me how we've ...

Speaker 3: I go back and forth to that. Part of me thinks ...

Speaker 2: Yeah, tell me.

Speaker 3: Well, part of me thinks that that's a big conflict for me as ... It is for so many people is that you replicate [01:39:00] these things that you hate about your parents.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 3: You replicate. You do these things that ...

Speaker 2: Or tendencies or whatever.

Speaker 3: Yeah, and they get in you, and I have a lot of tendencies. I'm extremely loud, and I'll be way louder than I need to be to little girls.

Speaker 2: Really?

Speaker 3: Like to my daughters.

Speaker 2: I don't see that in you.

Speaker 3: Well, and it's weird. I'm not always like that, but I have a penchant for cleanliness. [01:39:30] My mum was a hoarder. The house I would grew up in was like fucking ... I only had one person in my house in my entire youth.

Only had one friend spend the night. And that's a tragic story. One friend, only because he lived behind the family gallery in a trailer park and he was beat. And I was just like ...

Speaker 2: It comes to that, yeah.

Speaker 3: He couldn't ... He'll be okay.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 3: But then the damn dog. We had a dog on the porch that was in heat, and my mom put it on the porch, [01:40:00] and it's a hot porch, and barricaded it off, and the dog jumped over the fucking rail at night and hung herself. So when we got up in the morning, I'm coming out with my fucking friend ...

Speaker 2: And your dog was ...

Speaker 3: And the dog's fucking hung, and there's all these scratch marks where it had been trying to save itself, and I know you hate that, because I know you love dogs.

Speaker 2: Jesus.

Speaker 3: But he's brutal.

Speaker 2: How does that happen?

Speaker 3: I heard the scratching. I thought the fucking branch was scratching the fucking house that night. And so, it haunts me still.

Speaker 2: I was going to say you're carrying that.

Speaker 3: I did a good writing about it. I did a good ... I'll let you read it.

Speaker 2: I was going to say you're carrying that, [01:40:30] yeah.

Speaker 3: And then yeah. So bus came and drove on and we got some shovels and buried the fucking dog, and we never had anybody else spend the night ever. But the house was shameful. It was just ...

Speaker 2: How do you not become mad from that? You know what I mean? I know a person I was dating. He's an alcoholic. Underneath the alcohol part and figured out it was something with his dad. [01:41:00] That was the reason for this. Okay.

There was one thing. One thing that happened that he'd remembered. That was he was ... His dad and mom were divorced and his dad came to visit him on his birthday and he gave him an inchworm. One of those ride on things. And he rode it down to the end of the driveway and he rode it back up and by the time he had ridden back up, his dad had driven away. He didn't wait from ... That was it.

Speaker 3: Wow.

Speaker 2: Then I hear you.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Then [01:41:30] it has ruined his life. He's 51, and in detox right now. I can't.

Speaker 3: Right.

Speaker 2: I just try to figure out how is it that you have stayed you through ...

Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2: And I'm not even really asking you.

Speaker 3: And I know friends. I've had friends since I was young. I don't have any from when I was ... Well, I have a couple that I reconnected with and stuff, but [01:42:00] yeah, I've got friends from Madison.

Speaker 2: That's a great town and that's a peaceful town.

Speaker 3: Fifth grade or so, sixth grade, and have friends to this day, and they're like, "You know, you're not that different." But they didn't know any of this stuff, because they never came to my house. They never. I always wanted to come to their house.

Speaker 2: You've created.

Speaker 3: Yeah. I had a barrier, and ...

Speaker 2: Well, and you knew what to show and what not to show.

Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And so they're just learning a lot. They're learning a lot about me lately with all this stuff.

Speaker 2: All the [01:42:30] stuff, all your life.

Speaker 3: Yeah. But they're still saying. They were like, "You know, you're not different than why were before. You're just the same dude. It's just ..." And they're like you're saying. They were like, "How? How did you not change or?"

Speaker 2: How are you not a mass murderer or dead, suicide?

Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, almost was the statistic. I was in ... I almost went to prison for the rest of my life. I probably would have died in there or something. So I was close. I was close.

Speaker 2: [01:43:00] It's crazy, though. And is it that you had, that you found outlets when you were full and needed to? I don't know.

Speaker 3: It may have been ... Yeah, maybe just to have a kind of a perfect storm thing where I find the right outlets at the right time and the pretty girls at the right thing at the right time, and ...

Speaker 2: It can be that.

Speaker 3: I think it can be.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it could be that decision.

Speaker 3: We're all kind of a heartbeat away from giving up. It [01:43:30] really ... Five, six times a day you can get knocked down.

Speaker 2: You really can.

Speaker 3: To the point that you want to give up. You have some bad days.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I was the poor kid bus to the rich kid school, when busing, I was going to school in the ... I remember it's funny. You were saying that about I always wanted to go to their house. I always went to their house, because I didn't want them to have to come to this side of the ... It wasn't real train tracks, but that side of the tracks and see where I lived, because I saw where they lived.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Two-storey, big [01:44:00] dog, full refrigerator, all of that. It's not like I didn't have food. I wasn't. But it wasn't that.

Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I know.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 3: That's funny the way you try to create, so that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so now we're trying to have the house where all the kids want to come to. Now we're trying to. But I am loud. My daughters, they make a mess, spill yogurt all over the floor. Things that [01:44:30] shouldn't fucking matter at all. It triggers me.

Speaker 3: Yeah?

Speaker 2: I'm not like, "Ah." Or anything like that. But I'm loud. I'm louder than I should be. They're little girls and sweet kids.

Speaker 3: Is it? You know what it took to get you to this point where you have yogurt in a floor in a kitchen and all of that?

Speaker 2: No, it's the pissed off part of me that doesn't. It's the part of me that still is in freak out mode about living a squander.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, [01:45:00] I see. So it brings back.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it just triggers me. Our house, we had ... There are roaches everywhere, dog shit everywhere. It was just fucking fucked up. Stuff, because my wife ... My mom couldn't control anything, so she just does what hoarders do. They just control because they can keep things, and that's what they control. And so, she just ... Just stupid stuff.

People's trash. She just had stuff. Like little pathways to get through a whole house. But my room was spotless. My room was fucking spotless.

Speaker 3: That's what you can control.

Speaker 2: Not [01:45:30] even a piece of dust in it. I'm not that fanatical now, but back then I was. You went in my room, it was spotless.

Speaker 3: You still had ... I love it. I was careful, because I noticed you would hold your sandwich out and do the cut. Well, you got to know that. It says things.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't want bugs. That was the test. I had to look at the puffs to see if they moved, because we had weebles in every fucking box of cereal. It was just like that.

Speaker 3: [01:46:00] Right.

Speaker 2: So there's those things. There's residue. Just residue.

Speaker 3: How come they're happy?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Mine was my mom said at one ... I don't remember this, but she said at one point we had lived in a trailer, because my dad was in the military enlisted, and she said she used to have to wake up at night and shake my crib because the roaches would get in and bite me.

Speaker 3: Oh.

Speaker 2: I don't remember that, though.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So it doesn't. It's not to me, but it does her.

Speaker 3: But it is the truth.

Speaker 2: Right. She's meticulous. She labels everything. When she's back [01:46:30] from the grocery store, everything goes in a plastic thing and its label cast in locks.

Speaker 3: Yeah, that residue. So those are my hurdles right now is the residue, and I'm getting pertinent.

Speaker 2: Are you purging or just addressing and leaving or? Tell me a little bit about that.

Speaker 3: Well, the thing is I've got an astounding memory, and I ...

Speaker 2: Your visual memory.

Speaker 3: Very good with visual. I can remember everything, all the way back.

Speaker 2: I bet you're not just a vent, because I've listened to the way you've described things, but it is [01:47:00] the feeling.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember the feeling. I remember the smell. I remember the color. I remember everything about it. The temperature.

Speaker 2: And you can bring it back.

Speaker 3: I just remember really well, and I always have been able to. And so now I'm starting to ... You first when you start digging into this stuff you get the high points, the things that are just the most impacting, but I'm starting to get into the mundane stuff. The stuff which is really almost ...

Speaker 2: Watching the puffs.

Speaker 3: It was, yeah. But it's really more brutal than really the big things, because they're longer lasting and they're slower and they ...

Speaker 2: Constant.

Speaker 3: Yeah, [01:47:30] those are the things that really wear you down before you know that you're being worn down.

Speaker 2: That would kill me.

Speaker 3: Yeah. The puffs thing would have killed me every morning.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 3: So now I've ...

Speaker 2: Smell the milk.

Speaker 3: Now I'm getting through the little things, and I'm starting to get into that layer of it. But it's still cleansing. Because what it is is I get it out. I was writing the stuff out. I was writing it, and then just writing it. And it was fulfilling because I was ... It was there and I could re-read it, and I was like, " [01:48:00] Yeah, okay."

It was well-crafted and stuff like that, but it wasn't ... really do anything else other than that. But when I started putting it out socially, I couldn't take it back. And so, it was that one thing that made ... It completely changed it all. Just like with you, Ryan, book, or anything else.

When you put it out there, it's out there. And so I'll put this brutal stuff, and I'm just putting it out there. I may even went to the point of just making it un-public and everything. I just like ... Or making it public. That's like I [01:48:30] don't care who and what and everything. Just out there.

Then I'll pull it back in and archive it, so it's not out there. But it's out there for a few weeks or so. And then I felt free of it, because it's like ... It really becomes the truth then.

Speaker 2: You bared it.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Because I'm really good at embellishing.

Speaker 2: Yes. Is it embellishing or is it capturing the whole part of it?

Speaker 3: No, it's embellishing.

Speaker 2: No, that's good.

Speaker 3: A headline [01:49:00] or whatever you want to say. Because I've always been really good. If I could tell you this to get this, then that's good. That's fine. If I can tell you this truth and then it would get me this reaction or this thing, or whatever, then that's fine. But most of the times, that doesn't really work.

It takes a lot of work to make that work. So I'm better at giving you this thing with every other thing that you want to hear to get me that thing. [01:49:30] Then that's how I grew up, and I just ... So I'm really good at people call spinning the yarn or whatever. I'm really good at ... I'd be a great fiction writer.

Because I'm really good at building a deep, depth thing and that's not what I'm doing here. I'm telling you the straight honest truth about everything, but I am ...

Speaker 2: It makes sense to me though, because I think ... And I think some fiction writers do this. It's fiction. But it's fiction for the sake of getting you to the true feeling.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 2: So [01:50:00] is it?

Speaker 3: Yeah, no.

Speaker 2: Does that matter? Does the circumstances of the story matter if the feeling is the same? You know what I mean?

Speaker 3: That's a good way to look at it. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is to that, but that's a good way to look at it. Yeah, because you have the ... You're right. The end result is still the end result.

Speaker 2: Because if you wrote, just wrote. I'd watch the cereal box to see if the ... But if you had to make it, to get the same feeling, because someone hasn't sat in that chair, a rickety chair that didn't match the [01:50:30] other chairs on the table that had start ...

Speaker 3: Right.

Speaker 2: They wouldn't get it. They would say ... All they would see is the puff box and the things. You need them to feel the room. So I kind of ... I don't even know if excuse is the right word, but I get why sometimes people telling stories tell them bigger, because you're trying to evoke the feeling not the work. It's not the scene. It's the ... that.

Speaker 3: And my wife has been pushing me to ...

Speaker 2: It's a scene paneling. If [01:51:00] I had a panel there. Your wife especially needs there.

Speaker 3: She's been pushing me to continue doing those, because it's ...

Speaker 2: Why does she push you?

Speaker 3: Well, because she's starting to see results. I'm not a quiet person. I'm pretty just honest. If somebody asked me a question, I'll tell them whatever.

Speaker 2: You are an open book, yeah.

Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm pretty open. But there's a lot of dark stuff that I just don't even get into.

Speaker 2: There was that conception.

Speaker 3: Or I went into it and I didn't go into it any further. Yeah. [01:51:30] Crazy. My sister's dead. She died, a long time ago.

Speaker 2: You could leave it there or we could, yeah.

Speaker 3: Yeah. But I never mourned anybody, because I never had the chance to. Because something else fucked up happened. So I never got a chance to really address any of it. It just fucking too much happened.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Even just hearing it I'm like ...

Speaker 3: So instead of the caterpillar with your ... That. If there weren't a lot of other stuff going on, you could focus on that, and then it could be whatever you wanted it to be. But I had so much going on that I never grieved anybody. It was [01:52:00] just kind of like, "Everybody's going to die."

Who's next? I never grieved anybody, and so I ... That's why I still have yeah. I still have just a lot of ashes. A lot. I'm going to have to figure out what I'm doing with them at some point, and final this grieving. But I'm getting through relationary things with writing and drawing and stuff that is really touching on that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and that would be a good ... I [01:52:30] can see you doing something with him or her. That would be a good title for your book is "The Man Made of Ashes" and all of this stuff ...

Speaker 3: That would be good. I've actually got a title.

Speaker 2: Oh, good.

Speaker 3: And it's funny, because yours is Periscope. Mine is Snorkel.

Speaker 2: You're fucking under.

Speaker 3: Yeah, mine is snorkel.

Speaker 2: That's funny that analogy you gave me of your, "Well, do you need your split?" And then you find it.

Speaker 3: It's always been this. I did a writing about this. I've found a snorkel, my mom's second husband I met when I was four was ... He had a [01:53:00] houseboat. He was a cool guy. He was a really cool guy.

Paratrooper D-Day. He was a badass guy, jeweler. On the first cab company in Atlanta. Started a cab company. Him and his friends were coming through Chicago, through Atlanta and were on the way to Fort Benning to get ready to go fight Nazis and they're all like, "We should have fucking cabs here. What the fuck?"

They were like, "What's going on? This is weird." So they basically said as they're going through the war. They were like, "If we survived the war, let's start a damn cab company, because [01:53:30] that's ..."

Speaker 2: And they did?

Speaker 3: And they did. It was called Million Cab. It was the first cab company.

Speaker 2: That's crazy.

Speaker 3: One of their cabbies killed Margaret Mitchell. She was walking across the fucking street and ran over. Yeah, legacy stuff. He was a really interesting guy, but he had a big houseboat. And he never married until he married my mom. I think he only married her because he saw I needed him.

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3: I was suffering. So he married her, and he had this houseboat [01:54:00] and set ... Pretty much Daryl lived in our driveway in Stone Mountain for a few years, and he used to tell me how he'd go out to Bermuda and all these places. He'd take his houseboat out into the ocean, and he'd dive often to the ocean in the night.

Speaker 2: Oh wow.

Speaker 3: Cool stuff. But he had this fucking snorkel. He had this weird snorkel that had a hook on the top of it with a little ball. And a cage, and so when you went under water the ball went up and plugged the hole. I found it fascinating, and I ... It was the best thing ever.

Speaker 2: I've never seen it, yeah.

Speaker 3: [01:54:30] Yeah. I got it, and I kept it for years. The snorkel I sleep with under my pillow. And so, it was really personal to me.

Speaker 2: You still have that?

Speaker 3: I don't. It got lost when I went to jail. All my stuff went ...

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 3: Went outside of the curve. But that's okay. I got a bunch more stuff.

Speaker 2: Stuff?

Speaker 3: Yeah, stuff. But I did buy one off of eBay. I found that exact snorkel.

Speaker 2: Oh, that's awesome.

Speaker 3: They're apparently very rare.

Speaker 2: EBay?

Speaker 3: Yeah. I found one. I have [01:55:00] one.

Speaker 2: What is it with stuff? I used to play with Fisher-Price stuff when I was little ... Now it's cheap plastic shit. But I went on eBay and found the old stuff. I paid $400 for one of them.

Speaker 3: Wow.

Speaker 2: I just wanted it that bad.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I understand.

Speaker 2: I'm so object-oriented person.

Speaker 3: I just wrote something about that.

Speaker 2: I was like, "Oh."

Speaker 3: Oh, I'm starting to realize. Yeah, it's one of the last things I wrote. I don't know if you read it or not, but it's about objects. [01:55:30] It's about objects.

Speaker 2: I'll take it down when I have the time.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Read it. You'll like it. It's basically somebody said something to me on Facebook, a friend of mine referred to a designer. He was committed on something. His mom was selling her bed and breakfast or something, and it didn't ... 30 years in the making, and had made some comment about how it's ... Settle it.

That type of thing go, or something. He said he just real simply said, he's like, "I'm [01:56:00] more attached to people than I am things, luckily." And it just fucking hit me, and I was like ...

Speaker 2: And you chew on things.

Speaker 3: Because I'm real different. I'm real attached to people, but I'm real attached to objects.

Speaker 2: I put value in them.

Speaker 3: I do, yeah. Everything. If everything has got a story about it, and ...

Speaker 2: That's what you see.

Speaker 3: Yeah. So I take ... I'm kind of klepto and not in a bad way, but ... I don't take belts that I want from belts or anything, but if they're from something, some [01:56:30] really amazing or something really tragic happens, I usually take something. And I keep it. And I have little objects, and they all have these rich stories attached to them.

I started realizing that the objects ... I have the faith in the object. The longevity of it, because I don't have the faith in the person attached to the story, because they're going to die and go away, but the object is there.

Speaker 2: You will always have that, yeah.

Speaker 3: And I got the object. But I never realized that. Isn't that stupid?

Speaker 2: No.

Speaker 3: It's always been around and I've always wondered. I've really spent years wondering [01:57:00] why do I?

Speaker 2: Keep this?

Speaker 3: Covet objects. To the point that I steal them. To have something.

Speaker 2: They were more prominent than people to you.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 3: But I didn't realize it until just a week ago. There's a great epiphany that I'm like, "Oh my God." Another thing that I'll tell you that's just ... That has nothing to do with anything we're talking about. But I had this really strange thing happen. I don't know if you ever had this happen or not, but about 10 years ago.

Yeah, about 10 years ago I was about in my 30s. [01:57:30] I realize that I couldn't really fly. Until I was 30, in my dreams I had always dreamt that I had the ability, no matter what my dream had to do with me, had the ability to lay near the ground and hover.

Speaker 2: Hover.

Speaker 3: And fucking hover.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 3: And I never thought about it. It was always in my subconscious, but I'd wake up from a dream and it was just second nature that that was part of my dream.

Speaker 2: I can do that, yeah.

Speaker 3: And I never talk about it, and it was never a thing. But then one day, I woke up [01:58:00] from a dream in the middle of the dream and then realized it was just a dream. It woke up and it was just a dream, and I wasn't really flying. It was just this really weird thing, but ...

Speaker 2: You were like, "Wait a minute, I thought I actually did." And I was okay with it.

Speaker 3: Ain't that weird? My whole life I thought that I had this weird ... Not that I could just all of a sudden fly like a superhero, but I had this other part of ... Yeah. But I really could and it was the saddest fucking day.

Speaker 2: But in that space, I can totally get that. Right.

Speaker 3: It was tragic.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 3: But it's just funny how many decades [01:58:30] can go by before you realize something you've been looking to understand all those decades. So bizarre.

Speaker 2: I still think I can move shit. That it's just a matter of believing at the right moment and it's the right ...

Speaker 3: Yes.

Speaker 2: I'm going to shut the door. The pen's over there and I just need it.

Speaker 3: Will it happen?

Speaker 2: Well, some day maybe I'll get to the realization that I can't move things.

Speaker 3: Maybe or you might get to the realization you actually really can.

Speaker 2: But I still I can ... It's not ...

Speaker 3: Yeah, I know. It's not weird at all. That's why [01:59:00] I brought it up, because it's just that's one of those things that three decades went by that I have really believed something that ...

Speaker 2: Have you had the hover dream now where you wake up and you hit the ground? Were you like?

Speaker 3: No, just the closest I could get to was just that dream that I woke up abruptly and ...

Speaker 2: You weren't.

Speaker 3: I literally was still in the process ... I was like, "Oh, this is a fucking make believe." This is not happening. I don't know.

Speaker 2: No, I know, and I'm really big on ... I like [01:59:30] wind chimes because there's so much other energy and forces going on that we don't know about. There's wind right now, and there's gravitational pull, and there's buoyant. There's just shit going on that we have no idea. And we forget that we're not the only ones creating the movement all around us.

Speaker 3: Yes.

Speaker 2: Every time I hear wind chimes, I think, "Right. Got it. There's other shit going on."

Speaker 3: That's awesome.

Speaker 2: I'm like that with animals too. I feel like ... I read a book called [02:00:00] the gift of ...

Speaker 3: The fish job and my energy.

Speaker 2: No shit. Called "The Gift of Fear", and we have this in it. When you're afraid, there's a reason. Somebody is giving off pheromone or some situation is giving ... There's a reason. There's an energy coming in from it. And there's a reason that your body is picking it up. Or just so out of tune from it.

I would give anything to spend one day back in tune. It's kind of like we were talking about the ducks. To just walk around with ... Smelling the right thing, hearing the right [02:00:30] sounds, because if we're quiet, we can pick up these things. But we're so out of tune now.

Speaker 3: I was thinking about that on the drive over here. That's crazy that you brought that up, because I was thinking about ... Because I've been on this whole journey of remembering all these things, and so I've ...

Speaker 2: My whole life is remembering.

Speaker 3: Yeah. And so I've been just reliving these things and I just remember entire energy about myself was completely radically different [02:01:00] at particular times, and how much in love with that energy I was. There was an electrical field. There was a smell on the air. There was the whole thing that just is not here now.

And I want to understand. There's four or five distinctive ones in the course of my life that I can remember the full feeling. The full feeling. Some of it's good and some of it's bad. And some of it is very carefree and [02:01:30] which is rare. It's been rare for me. But how to? What made? What defined those things to make that feeling? Because I wanted to capture it.

Speaker 2: Yeah, what was the ...

Speaker 3: What was it? I want to reproduce it.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I just want to ... You know when you get phone and they say you only use your phone to about 20 percent of the real capacity, because you just don't bother to learn about the rest of it?

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Speaker 2: That's what I feel with ourselves. Dogs can smell cancer. [02:02:00] That's really crazy.

Speaker 3: Right.

Speaker 2: We have some of that in there. We just don't know what it is. We have senses and feelings and we're built to observe all of that. We're so out of touch with it.

Speaker 3: That's what the whole curiosity for me and that drive is right now, because I didn't know I could draw. I didn't know I could write. I didn't know I could express myself. I didn't know I could love another person, or be committed to them for so long.

Speaker 2: Right. And it's natural ...

Speaker 3: We're going on 20, almost 28 years now.

Speaker 2: And it's natural now, right?

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: That's one of [02:02:30] my favorite things. That's one of my favorite animals right there.

Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one of my wife's too.

Speaker 2: They will land on you if you ... I had a small pool in my backyard.

Speaker 3: That's a really pretty one.

Speaker 2: He's gorgeous. So off the blue. And they will land on you and just hang out.

Speaker 3: No matter where my wife is ... Oh, wow. No matter where my wife is, they'll follow her on the highway.

Speaker 2: I love it.

Speaker 3: Where she's in traffic, there'll be one buzzing right there on the ...

Speaker 2: I'm so glad you did that.

Speaker 3: That's awesome, yeah. I've been told now. I've never [02:03:00] had a dragonfly land on me.

Speaker 2: Hey, buddy.

Speaker 3: I know.

Speaker 2: Maybe it's your wife saying hey.

Speaker 3: Yeah, or you're telling it it's okay. That's awesome.

Speaker 2: It is gorgeous.

Speaker 3: Yeah, that's fantastic. I don't think I've ever seen one that looks like that. Truly remarkable.

Speaker 2: Me neither actually. People always say, "I swerved on the way over here because there was a monarch flying across the street. And hit my windshield, or just something like, 'No, I'm killing it. I'm just not.' I just swerved out and it flew. I hope it made it."

Speaker 3: Yeah, I always dread hitting the [02:03:30] grill. I'm like, "Don't. Just miss the grill. The wind'll take you around me, but just don't hit the grill."

Speaker 2: Right. Just don't hit the grill.

Speaker 3: Exactly.

Speaker 2: I picked the wasp out of my grill the other day, which didn't bother me as much, but dragonflies I love them. I think they're magic. That's what I was thinking. It's like, "Always ..." People say to me. Not always. People say to me sometimes, "Who do you think the best artist is?" I'm like, "Nature."

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Nature. Picking a dragonfly. If I were to say to you, if they didn't exist, and I was going to say, "I'm going to make an animal with a really long neck, and it's going to have all these [02:04:00] cool spots and things on its head, and a giraffe-"

PART 4 OF 5 ENDS [02:04:04]

Speaker 4: Cool spots, and like things on it's head. And ... a giraffe? That's fucking magic. A rhinoceros? Like who thought of that?

Joe: Yeah, unbelievable. I agree.

Speaker 4: I love it.

Joe: I spent a lot of youth in the woods.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I bet you did. I did too.

Joe: Yeah, a lot. Just by myself. I'd go out for two, three days. Even when I was eight, seven or eight. Cause they were in the [inaudible 02:04:23] all the time. So I would just like ...

Speaker 4: You were really-

Joe: I really was feral. I mean, [02:04:30] it was like ... yeah, it was. And so I would ... yeah, I just spent a ton of time in the trees and understanding-

Speaker 4: That's why you're so in tune. That's why you see.

Joe: I think so, yeah. I guess so.

Speaker 4: Totally. You're one of the continuations of this conversation. That's why we brought it up. 'Cause you see, you're still in touch with that.

Joe: Yeah, I've got another writing called Loblolly Pines, and Georgia Pines, Loblolly Pines. Which I like saying anyways, but every [02:05:00] memory I have, somewhere or another has a Loblolly Pine in it. And yes, I've been a Georgia guy, and there are a lot of damn pine trees here, but the fact is that I've always make it a point to notice them and they're like always around. They're like the family. And the writing-

Speaker 4: You created your family?

Joe: The writing's kinda brutal 'cause I used to go out back of our house, there was ... I'll send that writing to ya.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I was gonna ask you [crosstalk 02:05:28]-

Joe: You'll like it. I'll send all of them to ya.

Speaker 4: Yeah, great.

Joe: But [02:05:30] you'll like that one, just 'cause it's ... I used to go back. I just remember this night, you know? Everything was going down, and I just remember going back there and hugging the fucking tree. Hugging it. And I'd just learned about tree huggers and term-

Speaker 4: So you took it literally?

Joe: In school. Well, I learned about that in school and so I understood what a real tree hugger was. And what the plight was. But in my own respect, I was ... they were the [02:06:00] only one there for me, and so-

Speaker 4: And they were permanent.

Joe: Yeah, and they still are. They still are like a ...

Speaker 4: That's cool. And then that must be part of your vision is, you are so in touch and you never really lost that. Which is why you didn't get marred down and being normal and regular, and that's probably why you can read people so well, 'cause they're part of your landscape, not your only landscape. Some people only get ... you know? 'Cause you got used to reading ... [02:06:30] that's cool! Awesome.

Joe: I hope I'm answering things for you.

Speaker 4: This is exactly what we're supposed to be doing. I want people to be able to read the stories of each of you, and either find it in you, or in her, or in him, or in you know. And just go "I should try this. I shouldn't be so hamster wheel, and just stick in it and run". No.

Joe: There are the super high-highs and low- [02:07:00] lows involved with being a super feeling person. It really is.

Speaker 4: And I think when you learn to be okay with the lows, is when it really gets [inaudible 02:07:10], because you're like okay, I'm sad today, I'm gonna be sad today, and not fight being sad, or push it away, but I'm gonna be sad today. I'm gonna have a bad day today, like I can feel the ... okay.

Joe: I've always been good with the bad days. I'm having good days with family [02:07:30] and normalcy. And it's trying to get used to the good days.

Speaker 4: Does it cause you anxiety?

Joe: It does a little bit because forever I just didn't feel worthy of it. Like I just didn't feel worthy of good things happening to me.

Speaker 4: 'Cause you never had [inaudible 02:07:42].

Joe: I felt like a pariah, really. I mean I felt like a curse. I was super healthy unlike ... never any problems.

Speaker 4: Well you were kinda invisible, right? Because everybody else had problems?

Joe: Everybody else had a horrible chronic problems, and just seemed like everybody I was around just kept fucking just-

Speaker 4: [02:08:00] Succumbing to-

Joe: Yeah, and so ... yeah, I just felt like a ... I don't know, I just felt like I didn't deserve good things to happen to me or something. So now that they are, I'm trying to-

Speaker 4: Be okay with-

Joe: Well, yeah. 'Cause more of them want more ... more wants to happen to me if I let it. I'm finding that, but it's ... I wish it wasn't so hard to, but it's really hard-

Speaker 4: But you've been trained. I mean it makes sense, 'cause your reflex is gonna be when's the [02:08:30] next thing gonna happen?

Joe: Yeah, I got messed up. I got some cold water, if you'd like a water.

Speaker 4: I would.

Joe: And the restroom's right over there, if you need a restroom also.

Speaker 4: Thank you. So now when you are creating art, you've got this whole basically, your epic. Like your life is epic. It's an epic story. And so you've been through all of this, and now you're creating and so take me to the before and afters, 'cause [02:09:00] I told that's my favorite thing, the before and afters. I'm gonna be meticulous 'cause [inaudible 02:09:05]. This life you've had, now you're at this point, little bit of anxiety with all the good stuff, you're kinda maybe a little ... you know? Is anything gonna happen to this? Do I deserve this? I'm this guy now. Are you walking through a field or a forest and you see something and then you go "make it". 'Cause that's what it seemed like when I was looking at the before and afters. [02:09:30] So it's everything you are and have been, is what you see, and then you make it into this beautiful thing, which is what you've done with your life. Is that ...

Joe: Yeah, that is really what my life is right now. It's always been a pattern of seeing things in things. And so, I like the idea of finding something nobody found. Does that make sense?

Speaker 4: Yes.

Joe: Or like it's a little treasure hunt or something to me.

Speaker 4: Or seeing some of it [02:10:00] seemed ... I would walk right by it, not seeing anything in it. And then you go back and create this bed, or this chair, or this ... out of ...

Joe: Right.

Speaker 4: It would take your life to give the vision to see that into that.

Joe: Yeah, I guess so.

Speaker 4: I couldn't wait to come and talk to you.

Joe: That is really ... that's what I do now is continually archive all of these moments during the day that I get these ideas, [02:10:30] and then I try to act on as many of them as I can and apply them to projects or apply them to works. I'm still trying to figure out the communication of art through drawing and painting, and like visual stuff. 'Cause I'm super visual person and I should be able to do it, and I've got a lot of skill at it, but I don't feel like I'm able to [02:11:00] communicate what I'm able to communicate in words. Not in my words talking to you, but in my words ... when I can really sit down and write, and think and stuff like that. It's different. Everything else seems lesser right now.

Speaker 4: That's where you're just a writer right now.

Joe: Yeah. Kind of.

Speaker 4: That's okay.

Joe: Kind of.

Speaker 4: There's a quote that keeps coming to my mind that is the opposite. See, I was thinking if you heard about this life [02:11:30] you just said, Edgar Allan Poe had this sentence he would say to describe how he saw things, and he would say "whenever others see skies of blue, there would be a demon in my view". And he was describing, he would be looking at clouds, and everybody would be saying "fluffy bunny", [inaudible 02:11:45], and he's like "hell, and Satan", and ...

Joe: Right.

Speaker 4: And you're kinda the opposite. Instead of the blue sky, you've had this hellish, kind of, life. But you're seeing [02:12:00] beautiful in it.

Joe: Yeah, I guess that is a opposite deal, but instead of the Poe, I'm the Joe. Alright, I like it. [crosstalk 02:12:09].

Speaker 4: [crosstalk 02:12:09] book.

Joe: That's good. [inaudible 02:12:16]. To me, it's a nicer way to deal with it. I'd rather my view be those things.

Speaker 4: You are quintessentially ... there's a beautiful butterfly.

Joe: I saw.

Speaker 4: You are quintessentially the opposite of what most people [02:12:30] would have to ... you know, this tragic artist, this thing [inaudible 02:12:33] through their art, and all of this. I love that you are an anomaly that way is like you don't ... you heal through it, and [inaudible 02:12:45] not trying to like ...

Joe: Right.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Joe: Well, when I started doing these really griefy, hard writing things, I started putting a [inaudible 02:12:55] to some grief support places, like pages [02:13:00] and stuff. Because, you know, everybody is like kind of just, how do you get over this or [inaudible 02:13:05] barbecue, I see my husband, but he's dead. You know, the regular things. The things that they're going through, and then I started posting these writings about kinda the similar topic, but in a very different way.

Speaker 4: Showing them the path through the ...

Joe: Yeah. And it really resonated. I mean they were like how can you write about something so bad and make it so beautiful? And [02:13:30] so it made me keep wanting to share those things out there 'cause it seemed like it was helping some people and then I decided I [inaudible 02:13:38] the other two at some point.

Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. I don't think you can help yourself.

Joe: I did get a realization, 'cause I'm not a writer, I don't know anything about writing, and I'm not a real avid reader either. I mean I read some, but I'm not like ... I'm a listener. It's what I do. I listen. And [02:14:00] I have a few friends that are in the writing world. I mean they're like professors and stuff, they're like it's hard to be a writer, it's good what you're doing 'cause you're doing it for the right reason, they're like it's hard to make a living as a writer, and it's very hard to ... Like a memoir, to me, there's a lot to say, and it's a really crazy amount of stuff, but [02:14:30] they're like everybody's got a lot of crazy shit. And they're right. I have a unique set of crazy shit-

Speaker 4: You do. An inordinate amount of crazy shit.

Joe: Yeah. Or at least condensed. We're all gonna go through ... we're all gonna lose everybody until we lose ourself. I tell my wife that, I'm like you're gonna go through everything I've gone through, it's just spread out over [crosstalk 02:14:54]. Same thing, it's just different.

Speaker 4: Again, wonderful perspective though.

Joe: Well [inaudible 02:14:58].

Speaker 4: 'Cause it could be that someone sitting [02:15:00] there angry. "I had to go through it all when I was ... ", and justifiably angry. You're not.

Joe: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Word. You're weird.

Joe: [crosstalk 02:15:09] yeah, good weird, man. Somebody said something to me, I don't remember how they phrased it, but it was like the more people you lose, equates to the more people you were able to love. Or something like that.

Speaker 4: [crosstalk 02:15:23].

Joe: And I was like I guess that's a good way to look at it, like I guess I could kinda condense my stuff and it was real powerful [02:15:30] and it really instilled a bunch of weird things in me, but it did kinda clean the coffers out for a whole bunch of other people that I can ...

Speaker 4: Yeah, and it seems like your motivation, which is interesting, which is interesting. Early on, it was you needed to survive and [inaudible 02:15:46], and now it seems like your motivation is ... and again, this is amazing to me, is helping others. Because you said it helps a lot of other people, it helps other people, or other people are helped by it.

Joe: Yeah. Well, because I didn't find a voice. [02:16:00] What I'm realizing now is half the people that were around me, like I have friends that'll read some of my stuff and they'll reach out to me, and they'll be like "yeah, you know", like we were friends when we were 14. They were being molested. I didn't know that. So I had all these people ... I had all kinds of stuff like that. So I had all kinds of people around me that had their own totally experience with horrible. I mean they had their own cachet [02:16:30] of horrible, and if we'd gotten together around a fire and we talked about it, we wouldn't have [inaudible 02:16:34] really been so isolatory, you know? So that's kinda what I wish I could change for somebody is to not ... 'cause if I'd had ... [inaudible 02:16:43] had such darkness if I'd had a friend. If I'd had a confidant.

Speaker 4: Yes, and I feel like that's what you're helping other people but you're also helping your younger self.

Joe: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4: I wish I woulda had this.

Joe: That would have been ... yeah. [02:17:00] Exactly.

Speaker 4: So you're healing by helping because you're going back and addressing if I would have had this. And yet, in a weird way, giving it to yourself because you're creating it now.

Joe: So I'm not being selfless, I'm being selfish but being selfless at the same time?

Speaker 4: Yes.

Joe: I like that. That sounds more real.

Speaker 4: Selfishly selfless.

Joe: That sounds more real though.

Speaker 4: Well, I think there's nothing wrong. You're going back and saying if I would have had this, I'll create it. There you are.

Joe: Yeah, I'd much rather [02:17:30] be that person than the person ... I don't like righteous people. Or I don't like people-

Speaker 4: Right. I'm helping.

Joe: Or that everything's all together ... everything's, I got it going on. Or everything's perfect, 'cause I mean, no [inaudible 02:17:43] fucked up, you know?

Speaker 4: [crosstalk 02:17:44] train wreck. Look at the two Kate Spade and the chef, Andy something.

Joe: Oh my gosh, yeah.

Speaker 4: Top of the world.

Joe: Anthony Bourdain, yeah, I know. That was hard for the whole world.

Speaker 4: Right.

Joe: [crosstalk 02:17:57] heroes.

Speaker 4: But that's your point?

Joe: Yeah.

Speaker 4: That's your point.

Joe: Exactly.

Speaker 4: [02:18:00] It ain't what it looks like.

Joe: Exactly. So, I usually just try to cut through people a little bit if I can. I like small talk, but I also like deep small talk too. You know what I mean?

Speaker 4: Yes, I do.

Joe: So I love putting energy into anybody as long as ... but I don't mind coming right in and kicking the door in and just being like just stop that-

Speaker 4: Here we go!

Joe: Yeah. 'Cause this is ... that's what I meant by my email to you. It's just I don't know you, and [02:18:30] I'm very appreciative of the opportunity to be a part of ... and you take time to make me a part of it, but at the same time I wanted to make sure it was time well spent, and that we're both ... And then the more I read about you, I was like brain surgery, this and that. I mean like you've had a lot and so I felt really comfortable talking to somebody that-

Speaker 4: Been through some shit.

Joe: Well, not just that they've been through some shit, but they knew they had been through some shit. Does that make sense?

Speaker 4: Yes.

Joe: And then share on what you shared just on the boat [02:19:00] ride, that's powerful stuff.

Speaker 4: Yeah, it's never what it looks like.

Joe: It's kinda like meeting somebody that fought in the same war. You're kinda like I was there too! We wouldn't know each other, we were [crosstalk 02:19:12] in that one, but we were fighting the same battle.

Speaker 4: That's a great way to put it, fighting the same battle.

Joe: I like that idea.

Speaker 4: And you've been finding those soldiers.

Joe: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Speaker 4: Through your writing. And they're coming out and going actually I was on the North Shore when that ...

Joe: You know what's crazy? I had this guy Louis Deprie, [02:19:30] man. This country guy.

Speaker 4: [inaudible 02:19:31].

Joe: He's a really good guy. Well, he wasn't a good guy, but then he is a good guy. And now he's a great guy. But he had me cornered in a outside the apartment near that damn New Yorker guy, they yanked me ... they knocked on the door, I was in there smoking some pot and I was high, and they knocked on the door, and opened the door and there were these four guys out there, and they'd already pulled their shirts off, they were going to kick my ass. They grabbed me, they yanked me out, my wife was inside. And she was like "oh my god, what the [crosstalk 02:19:58]", and [02:20:00] me and my friend that moved into that apartment, had ripped off, we'd broken into a house, and stole a bunch of stuff from them. And stupid. Just stupid stuff. But they yanked me out, and he was one of them, Louis Deprie was one of them.

And I know I've seen him practically kill people. I knew between them, Zack Porter, all these four guys, [02:20:30] they were gonna kill me.

Speaker 4: What happened?

Joe: I talked my way out of it. But long story short, we didn't have any relationship, me and Louis. And he was a country boy, and kind of a redneck, and country boy at that, and we didn't really know too much about each other, other than that one experience, and he reached out to me the other day though, and he real sensitively [02:21:00] was like I just wish so bad I had known you back then, because I was a total juxtaposition to anything that I ever heard come out of his mouth. Like I'd never expect him to say the words he even said, 'cause he was just this ... but he was like I had a really similar life in a lot of ways-

Speaker 4: That's why you were probably able to talk yourself out of it. They all recognized ... you know.

Joe: I guess so. And now I'm friends with all of them.

Speaker 4: That you recognized?

Joe: Yeah. And they all had hard lives [02:21:30] in ways.

Speaker 4: You survived.

Joe: Yeah, so it's good work. Doing something right. More right than wrong.

Speaker 4: What would make you quit?

Joe: Quit doing?

Speaker 4: Writing. All of it.

Joe: Oh, I don't know. Dying? I mean I don't know [crosstalk 02:21:50]-

Speaker 4: That's been the number one answer.

Joe: I don't know what else would. I mean I would do anything for my daughters. So if it was like I had to go sit by their bedside 'cause they were ill, and I couldn't do anything [02:22:00] for myself in that respect, I'd obviously.

Speaker 4: You'd have a sketchpad.

Joe: Yeah. But if something for one of them pushed me to where my time had no time to do any of that, then that for sure, but other than that, I think just there's always something happening and I'm always affected and I hadn't even gotten through the first 16 years of my life in writing, so I got so much more stuff.

Speaker 4: [02:22:30] Which is when you had the you need to write a [inaudible 02:22:32].

Joe: I mean, yeah. I'm just gonna need it. I'm gonna need it. One day I'm gonna watch my wife. I'm going to. Or she's going to watch me die. Or I'm going to watch myself die. Or I'm gonna lose a kid. Something's gonna happen. Yeah, it's gonna happen. I mean my mom, she buried my sister.

Speaker 4: That's the one thing. That's my achilles heel. Something happen to her.

Joe: Yeah, oh I know. I still call my friend, Matt Lasater, I call his mama every mother's day. I call [02:23:00] her on the anniversary of his death, and I call her on his birthday. But I always call her on mothers day 'cause he can't call her anymore. And I'm like I just can't imagine.

Speaker 4: I can't either.

Joe: That's the thing [inaudible 02:23:12], I'll cry in second. Even my little speech, I had to get up in front of ... you can watch it on YouTube. Little Caprioni's in New York getting my award. Like little Georgia boy, I was up there, and yeah, I started fucking crying, man. 'Cause I was like I had a ... anytime I [02:23:30] have to give any type of thing where I mention my wife or my daughters, I get so swollen that I just ... so I'm like ...

Speaker 4: That's awesome. That's good.

Joe: It is good. It's so good.

Speaker 4: You seem to have that ... there's a couple of golden threads and you seem to have that piece of life like when we were coming out here and you said what do you need. And you meant it, [inaudible 02:23:52] like literally. But it's one of those things like you found the thing you need so you don't need anything. [02:24:00] Like you don't need ... There's a mark. You don't need a bigger house or this or that, you know what I mean?

Joe: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Speaker 4: There's just not ... everybody that I've talked to so far, all seven are happy. And I'm assuming you are. You seem like you are. You seem like you're at a point where you're like ...

Joe: It's a moving target, man. Happiness really is. And what I think is happiness one year is [02:24:30] totally different than another year. So I'm always playing catch up with it. But yeah, I think I would have to say I'm definitely happy-

Speaker 4: Is it the deserve thing? Like are you waiting for another ... are you cautiously happy 'cause you're afraid another events gonna happen-

Joe: Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 4: That's what I feel like.

Joe: I look at people. I'll go to churches and stuff, see what they're saying. Things like that. And I'll see so many people and just [02:25:00] crying at the songs, with hands in the air, and just loving it. Just so loving it, and happiness, and I'm like oh my god I wish I could be like that. I'm like I wish I could just ... or I'll see teenagers turn in the corner in the car, just fucking laughing until they're crying-

Speaker 4: And singing. We didn't have that.

Joe: Yeah, and I just I wish I could be like that.

Speaker 4: That naive happy that [crosstalk 02:25:23].

Joe: That just unabandoned ... that [inaudible 02:25:26]. But every once in a while, I'll get so ticked I can't fucking breathe. [02:25:30] I'll laugh so hard about something so stupid, that I just can't.

Speaker 4: [inaudible 02:25:35]

Joe: Yeah, and then so ...

Speaker 4: That's your teenage turn in the corner. That's your hands in the air.

Joe: Yeah, and any anthropology about my daughters. Just hearing footsteps or anything, except spilled yogurt. Any little things, that makes me happy.

Speaker 4: I loved bath time. Hearing them in the bathtub, in the water and the ...

Joe: Yeah, all that makes me happy.

Speaker 4: That's good [02:26:00] stuff. Well, what I love is you've had such dark movies to play, 'cause you bring it up viscerally, you don't just bring up ... you bring up the whole thing, and now you have a little bit of those. And I love that. I like that for you.

Joe: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Makes me happy that you have that.

Joe: I wanna keep on learning to communicate though because I feel like the worst pains are ahead of me because there's gonna be a lifetime gone [02:26:30] versus a fragment gone, and ...

Speaker 4: Well, remember before too when you said and I'm reading answers so correct me if I'm not, but remember before you said rob someone at ... 'cause I didn't care what happened to me. I didn't care and now you do 'cause you have people that need you to be there.

Joe: Yeah, the pain will be a little deeper.

Speaker 4: Not to rub salt, but [crosstalk 02:26:56] cared whether you were there. You kinda [crosstalk 02:26:58].

Joe: No, it's the truth for sure.

Speaker 4: Now you have three people [02:27:00] who very much care whether you're there or not. That makes it more precious.

Joe: It does.

Speaker 4: You care now.

Joe: That's why the communication, the art, the writing, all of it. And whatever's around the corner, I mean I might find something else another way to communicate I don't know about. [crosstalk 02:27:19]. What's that?

Speaker 4: We all can't wait.

Joe: I know, I know. But I'm gonna need them and stuff. So yeah, it's a lifetime pursuit. It is. [02:27:30] I think the best is still ... the worst and the best is still ahead. I guess is the best way to put it.

Speaker 4: That's a great. [crosstalk 02:27:40].

Joe: I think that is the way it's gotta be.

Speaker 4: Did you feel optimistic when you were 12, 13, 14, 15, 16? Or were you just surviving? [02:28:00] And just fuck it?

Joe: I don't remember ever having. I had one dream. My grandfather, who I'm named after. His name was Joe. He worked on the railroad, he was like 50 year railroad man, so caboose man. And sucked up locomotive fumes his whole life and cigarettes and died of emphysema real bad.

Speaker 4: Shocking.

Joe: But he saved his money. And they lived in a little house. And it was him and Lucille, [02:28:30] my grandma, the one that died from the flu shot. And I remember they saved their money. And he always told me, he's like "you get the grades, I've got the money to send you to college". Not that college was something that I was like ... but I looked at it as a there was an escape plan. And it's waiting on me. So I worked hard and so there was optimism in trying [02:29:00] to make good grades when I was really young.

Speaker 4: You had a thing.

Joe: Yeah. But when he died, mom got the money, she was the executer, and she [crosstalk 02:29:10] in a year. It was all gone. And we were in worse shape than we were before she got it.

Speaker 4: Did that just ...

Joe: It clenched me a little bit. That was my college money.

Speaker 4: That was your way out.

Joe: That was my way out. And if definitely accelerated some of my drive but it also [02:29:30] really sucked the optimism out of me 'cause I was like that was ... [inaudible 02:29:34] in the release papers and then the fucking the warden dies so the day before some shit or something, it just ... and so I-

Speaker 4: 'Cause when you're mentally somewhere like that, that's harder.

Joe: Yeah, not that I've ever wanted anybody to just give me something, but it was just this thing that was escape plan. And then that was just gone, and I think at that point I just went straight into survival mode [02:30:00] and really just didn't care. [inaudible 02:30:03] didn't care about grades or anything at all.

Speaker 4: 'Cause you had no reason to anymore.

Joe: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Well, there was also probably an element of he had a standard for you and he was wanting you to be a certain way and finally cared what you were doing and what you ... you had somebody to care.

Joe: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4: And then that went away.

Joe: Yeah. They wouldn't even call my mom at school. Even though [02:30:30] they were probably mandated to. I'd skip school or have an altercation or whatever. They would literally be like I'm gonna spare you, I'm not even gonna call your mom.

Speaker 4: 'Cause she was-

Joe: Yeah [inaudible 02:30:42] small town, they just knew. They were like just try to do better [inaudible 02:30:47] or something. Just wouldn't even call her.

Speaker 4: It's crazy stuff. [crosstalk 02:30:54].

Joe: You got anything else you wanna cover?

Speaker 4: No.

Joe: I think we're pretty bold and full.

Speaker 4: I'm bold and full. I'm good. If I think of [02:31:00] something, I got a year to write it, so.

Joe: Absolutely. And I'm very accessible. And we're friends now.

Speaker 4: I'd love to read.

Joe: Yeah, I'll send you. I've got everything on [inaudible 02:31:10], I'll send them out to you.

Speaker 4: I would love it.

Joe: And from your professional opinion, I'd love to understand if you thought ... 'cause I don't know how to put this together. And I don't know if it should be ... I'm really big on visual image so everything's got an image and everything's got a writing. These vignette moments. And I don't know if it should just [02:31:30] be that 'cause that's what it is.

Speaker 4: I think yours, from the few I've read, I feel like you get so deep you wanna stay in the narrative, but there's nothing wrong with having a supportive breather, but when you're in it, like I just wanted to keep reading.

Joe: 'Cause I don't think I have the skills to leave it all together like into a full story. It's almost like vignettes that are literally my journal. I'm just putting it out there. That's my journal.

Speaker 4: That's how Catcher in the Rye was written first.

Joe: Is that right?

Speaker 4: Yeah. It was vignettes [02:32:00] and then he ... 'cause it was the woman at the ice skating rink [inaudible 02:32:03] and then it came together.

Joe: Came together. Who knows.

Speaker 4: He was [inaudible 02:32:09].

Joe: Hey, can you go by the marina for restroom? Or do you want me ... there's restrooms on the way out.

Speaker 4: [crosstalk 02:32:16] good. Yeah.

Joe: You need more food or anything? Or are you good?

Speaker 4: I would like a cookie but, you know.

Joe: Yeah. [crosstalk 02:32:23]. I had another set of them too, but my daughter's got a [inaudible 02:32:27] and they ate them.

Speaker 4: I love it.

Joe: So I've got shortbread. [02:32:30] Is that okay?

Speaker 4: Those are really good.

Joe: Okay. Help yourself.

Speaker 4: Are these still turning? I'm so blind.

Joe: Lemme see.

Speaker 4: Is it still moving?

Joe: It is.