I've got an idea for a movie. Okay, We've got something akin to Fast and Furious. We've got a future era where there's rabid life sucking entities out on the run. There's something akin to Buffy the Slayer. We bring in a B grade Vin Diesel Ben Diesel. Perhaps we could go on.
You play, Oh, I know where this is going.
The villains, love interests, no lines for you, just hisses. This is my idea. What this is, this is class, this is okay, so you're in awesome. Okay, the Bleeding We had fun watching that last night. I was like, Amy was like, what are you putting on?
Why would you do that to me? You want to you want to open up this interview by talking about the one B movie that I was in years ago. Of course I don't even think I was the love the love interest of them.
I was just like, you were conquy by number one.
It was that my credit, that's my credit, that's my credit to you.
But you were on his left flank and then there was another chick on the right flank, and you guys were hissing it up.
It was the worst listen. I love vampire movies. Vampire movies are my second favorite movie genre ever. But this one just went against everything. If you, if you actually watched the whole movie, which I think you could, you guys did I got killed with a silver bullet. I know that's a werewolf, that's not a vampire.
Let's not be legalistic. Okay, there's flexibility is but I wrote, so, I.
Wrote a couple of your line stay through the heart. You said, why so sad your death brings me life?
Well, I think you need to answer for this. A lot of people are asking. You said. At one point in the film. Towards the end of the film, you said.
You're promoting something that I was hoping would never see in the light of day.
What do those lines actually mean?
I don't know. I tried to change them because I thought they were so bad. And that's when I learned that you can't as an actor do that on set without a writer going actually you need to Yeah. I tried. I tried my best. I had no control.
I love B movies.
I warned you that that was a C minus movie.
Fair fair grades. But I did say I would bring up and you did a whole interview with Stephen Baldwin about your movie, so I don't feel bad asking you about He has.
A podcast about the one bad movie You've been in. That's the only bad movie I've ever That's the only movie I've ever been It was a bad one.
You can ask my wife. I always wanted to be in a B movie, you know. I thought we were about to be in one, and the funding fell through. So if you want to hire me for a B movie, it's not too late. I'm out here exactly. Okay. You grew up in what's known as poverty, and you you, for a time, didn't have what they call running water. What was that like?
I was born in Mexico, in a little tiny town outside of the city of Monterrey. It was called Monte Moreros, and it's about six hours south of Texas. I'd lived there until I was about five years old, and then we moved to America. But my parents were My father was a missionary for the church that we attended at the time, and so myself and my siblings were born there. And you know, I don't have too many memories outside
of joy. I think, as cliche as it sounds, I think the simpler your life is, the the happier it can be. And you know, I was a tomboy and I remember putting frogs in my pocket and just having dirt under my nails all the time. But you know, this was a place that didn't have medical help, and so my dad built this clinic, like literally built it and then worked in it, and then you know, we were born there. So interesting. So my family's from Argentina,
they're from South America. I was born in Mexico. So you know, I think it confuses people like to learn that that I'm Latina or whatever.
Latina latinax. Yeah, no, not that in regards to Argentina. You your family moved from Argentina to Mexico.
Okay, yeah, my dad is a long generations of missionary workers. So my grandfather was also a missionary doctor. He actually delivered me, which I think would have been in hindsight now that I have a son, I would be so weird to have your father in law be your obgn. But but there's a really cool photo of him holding me up. And you know how they used to spank babies and stuff when and uh, that's my grandpa. Yeah, he's passed away since.
But the name von Drachenberg, right.
Yeah, is that it's of German descent, so on my dad's side he has German ancestry. So there's actually a little castle outside of Cologne about twenty minutes ouside of Clone called Schloss von Drachenberg, and it's it means dragon of the mountain.
So yeah, so is it nobility like do you? Yeah?
So usually I think it's v O N versus v A N. I think there's like a difference in Dutch blood or something like that. I think we're the blue blood. I have no idea.
We have a Scottish castle my clan, you do. It's all ruined. It's in ruins and the queen owns it, which ours is ours is.
A museum now and it's cool because I have fans that send me photos and videos and so it's really beautiful. It was one of the few castles that weren't damaged through any of the wars, so that's nice.
It makes me think of the Baroness from g I Joe, you could play the Baroness, do you know what I'm talking about?
No, when you say baroness, I always think of like Countess Bathroo or somebody else.
Yeah, not too so Argentina poverty to Mexico, I don't even think.
About being poor. Is that you don't if as a parent, if you do it right, you don't even know you are, you know. So for us, it was a very joyful time. It was all about family and I had no idea that we that there was anything different.
Did that protect you from the later temptations of what like celebrity in Hollywood offers? Do you think there was some?
Yeah? I think my parents did a pretty good job at not protecting so much, but just teaching us importance of certain things. I remember my dad bought us a family van at one point. This was it was like an astro van and I was in elementary school at the time and it had one of those doors that slid open, and I was my mind was blown at the time because I'd never seen anything. I was like,
this is the coolest thing ever. And I remember my dad having a conversation with me in the first grade saying, hey, like, when you go to school, like don't show off. And I was confused, It's like, what do you mean I can't like tell my friends that we got this cool new van. And you know now that as a mom I look at my kid, and I'm kind of dealing with some of the same things where it's like, how do I give the gift of you know that, the simplicity and value to my son, and I think we're doing it.
Okay, Yeah, no, I get it. I mean when I was coming up in Tennessee, we lived kind of outside of town. We also didn't have much. My dad bought a trailer and we had to live down by the river in a van down by the river. That's not true, that's not true.
Are you really from Tennessee though.
Yeah, I'm from Tennessee. You said you're the master of your own reality many years ago too.
You never said that, Joe Rogan. So you know what, Like I saw your question, I stole your book and I looked at your notes and these are all terrible. And if you continue, this.
Is important though, because your worldview has changed. Right. So, yeah, you, Doug Synchronicity, you had a very I think you said in one of the other interviews too, like later on you said, I think a lot of people just end
up kind of worshiping themselves. I think that's a crucial realization that marks everybody's transformation, you know, like they you realize that even if you believed in a higher power quote unquote, or even if you thought, oh, i'm you know, serving a higher ideal, and you might have been a time sincere but I think at the end of the day we end up realizing that eventually, until we have a specific encounter that we'll get to in a moment, we're kind of worshiping ourselves. Is that accurate?
I think so. And I mean, whatever these old quotes you pulled up to embarrass me, I think I've always had a seeking nature and most most people that I meet do too, and we're always like trying to find answers and trying to, you know, know, figure out what all this means. And oftentimes you get stuck, like with whether it's a self help book or whatever it is, like meditation what you know, it's I've talked about it before. Sometimes it feels like a band aid on a sinking
ship type thing. And I look back at those days where I was in some of the New agey stuff is very very temporary. It's like these also grateful for those like stepping stones that brought me to where I am now. You know, It's like I'm glad I was at least thinking of these things, you know, even though I definitely didn't have it right back then.
What's interesting about a lot of what you said, even in your previous too Christianity era, you talked about things like, oh, I quit watching TV at all, Like back in twenty ten, you know, you mentioned that you would sometimes watch films.
That sounds like something a snob would say.
Well, no, but that's actually it's actually good though, because if you watch TV now, it's like nothing but just boomer like mind control program.
You're talking about actual television.
Yeah, Like television is like just it's a meta level of dystopian reality. If you look at it, if you haven't watched it in a long time, it's like you go to it, you're like, whoa, this is crazy. But I'm just saying it's interesting that even before, there seems to have been a kind of sensing that you know, something is off with this, something is like media is
doing something weird. And I think a lot of people who do media notice that quicker than people perhaps not in media, because you see it from the back end. You see what's going on in the background, not that you necessarily saw like a bunch of corruption, per se.
But I did want to mention as we move from old times up to new times, like when you had a TV show and then the TV show gets really popular, you experience that reality, it becomes kind of surreal, I'm guessing probably, and then you step into totally different worlds. So I want to know, like, what was it like being from a background of I think you said at one point that you you hopped on a greyhound and you just kind of went and smoked cigarettes and did your own thing.
Yeah, you really did some old digging.
I got to study the ops, right, You kind of did it yourself, which is admirable. And then you end up in a situation of celebrity, which is very, very rare. That's why I'm asking about this, So, well, what's the transition from poverty to celebrity like for you? And then what's the emptiness of that type of celebrity lifestyle of like you know, twenty tens la or whatever.
I don't know. I never really thought about it that way, to be honest, Like, I was just a tattooer at the time, and I got on a tattoo TV show and it blew up and I still I don't know. I just always just kept my regular real friends and just didn't really pay attention to the good and the bad. As far as like input, I think again this is due to probably my parents bring me up a certain way, and I think when you keep your circles small, it
makes that a lot easier. But yeah, is there an adjustment to people recognizing you or you know whatever those kind of things. Sure, but I don't know. But so I don't really think about that kind of stuff, to be honest.
But I mean, back then, did you, like was it Surely there had to be temptations of like, oh, you know, like people recognize me on the street. Now, this is not how it used to be. And was there a temptation to think, Okay, I've arrived. And then was there a lack of fulfillment in an arrival that caused you to continue to sort of search because there had to be something that prompted the questioning of, well, there's more to life than this, right, There's got to be God.
There's got to be meaning or purpose, like what directed you on the path of me?
I was brought up Christian, so you know, to me, it's it's just something that was, you know, it was just understood in a certain way. I mean, I think when you're a kid, it's you're still trying to figure it out. And by the time that I became a teenager, I left home at a really early age. I ran away from home and which is a really dangerous thing to do. And I just didn't think about faith at that time. And you know, you can see, like if I were to lay out my life, there's just the
highest amount of destruction that I had. And I do believe that I had something watching over me at the time. I just never like when I straight away, I just didn't think about it and I ended up prioritizing the things that you were talking about self worship. I mean, I would I built a huge career out of you know, vanity, I guess you would say most of it, and I just had my priorities just really flipped upside down. And it really wasn't until I met my husband where I
where those things started changing. Raphael. You know, I haven't dated that many people in my lifetime, but like prior to my husband, most people I dated were terrible for me, you know, and you know, the whole water seeks as till level. I'm sure you know plays a part in that.
What about Darius Rucker, How was that when you dated Hoodie? Because nobody's ast hey, because I mean people, people have theorized for many years that I want to hold your hands. The dolphins make me cry.
You know what, I don't even know what you're talking about.
I'm just not going to I'm sorry. So you had a series of bad experiences in that world.
No, I mean this, and everybody has to go through that until they find the right partner. But when I met Raphile, I just remember, there was just goodness, you know, there was It was like the first time I felt like I was dating somebody that loved me without agenda. And you know what, I really had no idea that he was going to change my life in the way that he did. And you know, at that time when I met him, I was in full force. You know, I had a huge company. I was just doing tons
of stuff, like my work was my priority. And and I remember he was like, I want to have six kids, and I'm like, oh, I'm never having kids, Like my art is Mike baby or whatever, you know. And then the compromise was I'll give you one, you know, and I think that was the first step into.
Really changing most so motherhood and being a wife was a big part of.
Yeah, yeah, I'm shift, yeah, but I think it was it happened more because of the marriage, you know. I think prior to that I was very lost and you know, seeking love and just harmful ways.
I think if somebody had asked you prior to all of that, you know, in the twenty tens, in the two thousands, like what is your worldview? What do you believe? Would you have said atheist, agnostic?
I wouldn't even know what that meant back then, you know, to be honest, I think, and I'm sure we'll get into the Orthodoxy stuff, but it's like one of the things that was very appealing to me with Orthodoxy was just that this a better a deeper understanding of actual church history, which you know, I had no clue about. Like I didn't know what Protestant was. I didn't know, you know. I just was like, it's just like people who believe in Jesus or something, you know, and that's
that's that, you know. I didn't understand even my own upbringing, to be honest, so I wouldn't have I wasn't intelligent in that sense enough to even call myself an atheist or agnostic. I think that when times got tough and I was hitting rock bottom, there was an innate desire to pray. And it wasn't because my parents brought me up Christian. It was a desire to reach out for help from where it counted. And I think for those that have reached rock bottom, like like a real you know, desperation,
I mean, I'm sure there's many cases everybody. There's lots of people that have experienced the same thing. So I remember feeling like, that's so interesting. It's not like I'm not calling to my mommy or my dad, like I'm calling to you know. So that was that's always stayed with me. So even when I was, you know, strayed far away, it never really left. And then and then it wasn't until about twenty twenty when my husband came to me and was like, you know, I think that
you know, we got a lot of things wrong. And it was like a worldview. It wasn't necessarily a faith thing because my husband and I are not necessarily on the same page, and so and I just remember going like, show me you know, and I've learned so much from my husband, you know, and I think he has like a lot of wisdom to share with me. So it changed my perspective on a lot of things. And then
from that go what else have I gotten wrong? And that's when I started like exploring going back to the church, right.
And you said we could maybe do a little deep booking because a lot of people think that because of an aesthetic, there might be something edging into the occult or witchcraft or something like that, but You've always maintained that you were never really into any of that.
I think a lot of people, especially like in the Christian realm, like when when I got baptized, you know, I decided to post a video about it, and it got a lot of traction, which was not the reason for me posting. I just felt on my heart to proclaim my faith honestly and openly because I had gone so many years doing the opposite, and so I felt like that was the most honest and fairest thing I could do, especially to people who follow me.
And I saw an ai of that, and that was Was it Spencer baptizing you? Or was that Donald Trump? I can't remember there's an Ai. There's a beautiful Ai imagery is.
AI. I mean, I think when it comes to like faith or philosophies and stuff, I was, you know, I would read a lot of the old philosophers. I was a big fan of Nietzsche. Stumbled upon a lot of self help books at the time, which I wouldn't call them self help. I would consider them wisdom books. But in hindsight they were all really missing the most important part. But as far as the witchcraft thing goes, you know,
I've I've been a fan of history. I'm still a fan of history, and so yeah, did I have things that veered into those realms? Did I learn about some of that stuff? Shirt? But would I consider myself a practicing which no I was, you know, I'm not. I was never in that club. But there was a point where I did get rid of I went through my library and collection of things and and got rid of, you know, things that I just didn't want collecting dust around my my sphere, in my child's world either.
You know, I noticed that because I had a phase where I was interested in that stuff in my twenties, and I never got serious about it. But one thing that I noticed, and we were talking about this earlier, is that there's there's never kind of an endpoint. It's like there's you get into, oh, this esoteric thing, and oh, but then what about this one over here? And it's like a never ending sort of it's rabbit trail all the way down and you never sort of land on anything.
And in my life, even though I was raised Protestant as well and I've kind of you know, been all around and experienced for things, I always kind of land back on if I ever sort of stray. It's like I always come back to orthodoxy because there's nothing else that really gives you a kind of a stability in terms of a paradigm or worldview compared to all of these other They just never go anywhere. And they're also just sort of like they're ideas, and I think we
need more than just a new set of ideas. There's something that has to be actually real, grounded, historical. And the reason I keep bringing up past is not to shame or not to remind you a bad time. It's important because we did a live stream the other night, and the whole live stream was about how technocracy technology is actually I think erasing the past. It's all sort of a mauist thing to get rid of everybody's previous memories and existence, to only live in the sort of
immediate and stantiated infinite present. So it's like a mimicking of God's perspective where you think you're your own God, but you only live in the immediate, and so you're past your family, your nation, your history, none of that matters. It has to be erased and you only live in the immediate. That way, everybody is like completely controlled. But that's getting way way too conspiratorial. But the reason.
It's not justly that I'm ashamed of it. I mean, a good chunk of my life has been documented and aired publicly, So it's not that i'm you know, I mean, do I cringe at certain things I said at a certain time, sure, But I also I'm proud of myself that I'm not stuck in that same place when I have friends that never moved on from those those you know, yeah, those times. So it's no, I'm just I'm just poking fun at you just because you've brought up old quotes from old interviews that I'm just like.
What are the three transfer of energy words? Everyone I just did a podcast with Eddie Bravo, and you told Eddie Bravo, there are three words gave me.
I agreed to this. You're in my house, all right.
So one thing I noticed in some of the older interviews that was interesting was that you did also kind of mention the demonic. You said that, yeah, I want and this might be a newer interview, but you said something like you did come to believe that demons and monic possession was real. I'm curious what was it just
the Christian paradigm or was there anything else? Perhaps I gonna like the temptation to addiction, Like is there something that peaked the idea of the demonic in what you're talking about?
I mean, I just think that sometimes you can understand things like it's easy to be like that's demonic based off of a movie like and I love the Exorcist genre as well, that's my number one favorite type of movie. But and I think some things are it might be
that way. I'm not an exorcist, so I can't speak to that, but I know that there are people that become possessed by worldly things, and like, if you want to label that a demon, it makes sense to me, you know, like I'm happily sober for actually I'm like losing count might be sixteen, seventeen years now, maybe eighteen. And I don't want to blame, you know, my past addiction on a demon you know, even though I would say that when you're on drugs, it is a type
of possession. You know, you're not in control, You're not you know, and so whether you relinquish that power over to another entity, you know, is that That's what I think I meant by in that quote. It is all fascinating to me, you know. I think that I get called demonic all the time, probably just because of my aesthetic or you know, maybe some of the lyrics in my music are misconstrued, but I don't, I don't. I
would say that that's like a superficial like label. That's not you know, when I'm talking about a demonic possession, I'm that's not what I'm referring to it.
No, Well, I had a really bad acidrip one time, and I think I did see something actually demonic. So I was just curious if there was because you had mentioned drugs in the past, like if there was a bad experience or if it was just more so like this is becoming an addiction.
I'd have tried acid and shrooms and stuff maybe once or twice, but my drug of choice was more uppers. So I you know, I think that that maybe it's a different type of demon you know, I think, I mean, it's definitely a different.
Flavor I think, and what so you.
But I don't think I saw a physical monster or something. I'm talking about like a demonic possession of the heart and you know.
Right like where we put all of our time and energy and yeah, you mentioned as well, like a period of AA.
I was never a fan of A. I mean, I love the Big Book. I think the Steps are awesome. I would I think the world would be better off if everybody did the twelve steps at one point and did the inventory. I personally do that now as an Orthodox Christian, like through confession, and but I'm just not a fan of group therapy in general, Like I've never been good at that. And I think too, like the anonymous part is very rarely honored within that circle, especially
in LA. I would go to a meeting and then I would have to like hear about it on Twitter somehow or whatever.
You said that a lot of the stand ups practice their new material. A.
Yeah, I mean in LA it's a different story. And I know that there are like pockets of meetings where there's more like elders that are more serious.
You got a good drunk joke?
Do I have a good drunk joke?
From the comedians?
Oh? No, I just feel like when people would go up to say their their story, a lot of times it's like I would see, you know, some up and coming comedians like practicing bits and things like that. Yeah, sometimes I don't know. I'm not trying to judge because honestly, like everybody's trying their best.
I guess, but I'm trying to judge. I'll be all about that judgement listen.
But I think my biggest gripe with it was just more like I never felt safe to in those circles, but also to like I just you know, where's the step where you don't have to do any more steps? That's that's the part where it's like, where's the step
where you can stop calling yourself an addict? Like I don't consider myself an addict because I don't do drugs anymore and I don't drink, you know, it's like but for them, it's like this like label of it's a forever mark that you have to go to everybody forever or else if you don't, you will fall. And it's like I see that with my relationship with Christ, like I have to keep my you know, my my eye on that prize. And but I don't need to go to you know, a meeting with with you know, some
Hollywood people to confirm that. But I do feel like I need to do it, like you know, with my
parish and my priest and saints all around me. But you know, at one point when I first became an inquirer and like started really seriously I'm going into Orthodoxy, you know, I it's all I could think about, and it's all I wanted to think about, and and I'm still that way now, but it got to the point where, you know, it was causing problems in my own marriage, you know, because I just wanted to be in church all the time, and and you know, my husband is
very supportive of me, and he's very patient and loving, but he's not you know, he's not a Catechuman. He's not for you know, and that's something that's you know,
it's a struggle for us sometimes. But I remember at one point he's like, like, I'm competing with Jesus at this point, and I really had to look at and I you know, I've talked to my priest about it and everything, and it's like, there's a point where it's like, I need to make time for my marriage and not you know, because if it's up to me, if I didn't have the responsibility of a marriage or motherhood, I might consider the monastic life, you know, and like that
that to me is very appealing, you know. But but I'm also a very extreme personality. So it's like, but that's not the that's not the card that I'm dealt, you know. And so I have to make sure to take care of my marriage and take care of my mother and still prioritize that, and you can you can balance that together. I don't know why I got on this tangent. I know we were okay, oh no, but there's a reason why I brought it up. We were talking about something prior to this.
In other words, he's not Orthodox. Would you describe him as an eventual local?
No, Oh, my gosh, I just got it. We just yeah, no, no, Raphael was. He was brought up Roman Catholic, so but I wouldn't say he's a practicing you know, he comes to church with me every you know, on Sundays he comes with me, and you know, my our son just got baptized and he's very happy about that. And he
loves Orthodoxy and he loves it for me. That's what I was going to say was that, you know, in AA, it's like when there's people that's like, I have to have this meeting WHI else I'm going to relax, you know. And to me, I remember sitting down with my husband explaining to him that like this might I might be annoying to you in a sense, but like Jesus is the best thing to have happened to me and to you,
because without this peace, I will ruin everything. I've ruined all my other relationships prior to you know, I have a I have never been faithful until my marriage, you know, and it's like and and the biggest part to that is is the Jesus part. And so I sometimes I you know, I think I think he understands that. It's like it's good for me, you know, it's it's good for me to go to church, and it's good for me to be surrounded by that and have these daily reminders.
You know, I'm a hard headed person, so I tend to need these daily reminders all around me, whether it's like the cross around my neck to the things in my household, and.
Oh, we'll do it. We're all that way. Like one thing you said though before we got to the Orthodox part, and I think we were eating dinner and you said this, So AA has this idea that you just appeal to any higher power. And I've always seen that as because I've had a lot of friends that have gone to AA, and so I've always seen that as kind of one of the flaws in that system is And I just
had a debate with two dudes the other day. Those guys whole ethos was to defend the idea that it doesn't really matter about Jesus, it's more so just generic God. But the problem is that generic God is generic. It doesn't tell us anything about you know, be like saying if you I mean imagine saying that instead of well, I'm not in love with my wife, Jamie, I'm in love with woman. I'm in love with human. Right, it's not specific to tell you anything that's the same. It's like, oh,
I just believe in God. And the whole thing with AA is that although there might be some pragmatic things that help people, if at the end of the day, it's just generic God, it's allowing you to paste into it whatever you want. But that's the problem, is that what those people are after is what it's not offering, Like, it's not offering the specificity of Yeah, that's an awesome.
Way to put it. Yeah it does. But I will say, you know, I think I'm not knocking AA in any way because it's helped so many people, including myself. I think whatever gets you sober is the best thing because without sobriety, like I wouldn't be a good Christian, I wouldn't be a good mom, or a good wife, a.
Good friend, or good anything literally anything.
If I'm on drugs, I'm going to tear apart my world. Is that what you're asking?
I'm just saying, could there be a trade off that you said anything that gets you off of drugs? So no, I'm obsessed with creed.
No, no, no, I'm sorry, You're right. I shouldn't have generalized. I'm not a debater. Okay, it feels like it. Oh no, no, not at all. But I will say I was like intimidated when you asked me to do this, because I was like, you know, I'm sure I've obviously seen your debates, and I'm like some sometimes I I have to look up words that you say, and like, you know, it's hard to keep up because you're appear you know, and it's it's very cool.
I love that it's word solid. I don't even know what's half the word's name. But if I write down a fancy word, I got a booklet it's called fancy Words. And then so I'm just in the middle of a debate, I'll appeal to the fancy word booklet. Yeah, well I just know the words.
Yeah. Hopefully we're not letting down your audience considering that this is this this is a different type of word salad.
Right, So you're in a a you it helps you.
I only I've only gone to A a few times.
We weren't there a lot a lot, and then you just decided I got to make these choices, these changes.
I've just always been lone wolf about things. I'm like, I can do this on my own and I think a lot of that is where I started going into self help stuff. You know, I find you know, not necessarily manifest like that kind of stuff, but you know, and I don't even want to bring up the types of books, but you know, just things that there feel good and it feels like you're making progress, you know, and I think I was, you know, but it's it
was like such a tip of an iceberg. But yeah, so it's kind of like I just started getting sober on my own, right, So I didn't depend on the meetings or anything, but I did have to go through like the roll decks of friends and drug dealers and everything and delete everything and start from scratch. And you realize very quickly that you don't have any friends, you know. I mean most of the people that I was surrounded by at the time were fellow drug addicts, you know.
And it's I mean, and it makes sense.
So you ghosted Pablo Escobar and now he's like, hey, where's she dude?
It was more like the bouncer at a strip club or something like that.
So then what tips the scale towards going back to Jesus? Right, Because I know there's a phase of if youangelicalism where you kind of immediately get back on the sphere of Protestant Evangelicalsot.
How did I make my way back to Jesus. Yeah, that was in twenty twenty, and I was like years later, I was already sober for many years. Yeah. Yeah, it was just I think seeing what happened during twenty twenty with the lockdowns and just so much crazy misinformation, and just I lived in LA in the middle of all that when it was happening, and so I got like front row seats to it wasn't even what the news was showing you, because it wasn't. It was I think worse.
But and so I started questioning a lot of things that at the time I was like, I used to be so gung ho about this, and I realized I got things wrong, you know. And so then Rafa has always again, even though he's not necessarily a Christian, he's always been pointing me in that direction. I do believe that's a part of why God's paired us, you know. And so I definitely just credit my husband towards all
these pretty large landmarks, you know. And then once I, once I you know, started going to church again, we decided to leave California at that time.
And then was it the dystopian aspect of that period of twenty twenty, Like was that what I'm.
Not a fan of government. I have never been a fan of government per se. I mean I like very small government, but or I prefer that. But like in California specifically, I was. I was not a fan of our governor, still not. And you know, I have such a love for California and seeing it destroyed the way that it's been, it's like, you really have to be
super hardheaded to not hold certain people accountable. And so after twenty twenty and seeing like the government overreach that took place, I mean, I had my tattoo shop for over twelve years and I lost it due to a lockdown that was not handled with small businesses in mind. But with that being said, we had a really small child at the time, and we had a beautiful house in Hancock Park. It was a nice area, and we
realized that we just never left. We were just always I'm like, are we confined to our small front yard for the rest of our life because we don't want to go out there anymore? This isn't you know how are we raising Leaphar, you know, And so I've always been a huge fan of restoration for Victorian homes, and
I had restored that house for eight years. And then there was this house in the middle of nowhere in Indiana that was operating as a bed and breakfast for twenty years and it went on the market and it's a very unique home, which is the one that we're in right now. And I remember telling Raf. I was like, hey, let's just fly out there and just see it. You know, like other than driving through Indiana, I've never spent time here. I never I don't have friends here or anything.
So you flee California.
Yeah, I mean that sounds dramatic, but yeah, it was a process. We moved out of California and we found this place. And you know, it's a very small town of twelve hundred people, and it's so small that it doesn't even have a mayor. It's just it was the perfect balance of nature. But I'm like a majority of people here working class. It's just nice neighbors. You know, I lived I lived in my house in LA for eight years and I cannot tell you my neighbor's name.
And here there's just a true sense of community. So we love that and people leave us alone, like, you know, it's easy for us to have like a normal life, and you know, my kid can run around and be a kid and we don't have to worry about the craziness.
This mansion is amazing. It's actually like resident Evil, like when you're wandering around and then you come up here to the crow's nose. The first time I came here, I was like, this is where you snipe the peasants, right, the zombie peasant villagers.
It's just like, well, for context, we are sitting in what we call the crows and us. It's the four story tower of this building that when we bought it was pretty much just abandoned. There was like dead birds and flies everywhere, and so then I decided to make it like a tea room. So but we love this room. It's pretty, it's cool, and this is the first time I'm actually hanging out in it, Like this is the first time we've filmed done anything in here.
So you flee here but not in flight, and you come to the middle of nowhere, and this is concurrent with you transitioning to a new paradigminal worldview, and originally I think you said it's like sort of Baptist evangelical ideology. So I'm curious.
We landed here, and I just prayed to for the Lord to put us in at the footsteps of the right place. And you know, because it is a small town, it's not like there's an Orthodox church or and there's not really that many churches here. There's like two or three in this there are actually three, but now too.
And there was this Baptist church that we can see from the window here, and we just one Sunday walked up and the people there were very warm and welcoming, and it was a beautiful It was a beautiful time. You know. I don't just because I'm Orthodox now does not mean I don't love my Protestant brothers and sisters, you know. And and without that transitional period, I don't think I probably would have found Orthodox the way that
I found it, which I think was good. So I was there for about a year and then got baptized and hit a wall pretty quickly after that, Like meaning I just had a lot of questions, not a lot of discipleship or disciple ling, I guess, or shepherding and after that, I would share with my husband just the struggles that I'm like, man, I just feel like my cup's not fool you know. I know it sounds silly, but I'm going and through the motions. But something there's
there's more, and he goes. He sends me a YouTube video of an Orthodox priest talking about something philosophical. But it was so beautiful and I was like, Oh, this guy's cool. I really like what he's about. But I didn't understand. I thought like Orthodox was, you know, I didn't know it was like Christian you.
Know, so like the weird uncle to Christianity.
Yeah, I didn't understand what it was. I was like, okay, and so so I didn't think about it at all. And then it wasn't There's like two other things that happened that that really like, after the third time of kind of being called to it, I was like, you know, I'm going to actually just go and check out on
Orthodox church. And so I googled what the nearest English speaking Orthodox church was to me, and I stepped foot into to the parish that I go to now and like a greeter talked to me briefly, was like, oh, hey, are you visiting, you know, and I said yeah, and he goes, here's like a little it was like a little card that.
Just you know, did the aesthetics draw you in partly? No, there's a lot of people who are into esthetics, fine, Orthodoxy esthetically appealing.
If we're talking about esthetic, I mean, I would say the Roman Catholics have the most beautiful architecture, not talking about icons and all that, but like, I was always a fan of Carbagio paintings and you know, Rembrandts, like all the Master style. So I mean, to me, it was funny. I was talking to Father John Parker about this the other day. That was like, I never understood icons obviously until I was introduced to Orthodoxy and I
had seen them. I had seen these depictions of Christ and I thought, oh, this must be from the fifteen hundreds before they learned how to draw, like, because everything was so flat. I didn't understand that there's some symbolism and meaning behind all that, and just was like, oh, cool, that's just more ancient. But when I saw the Caravaggio's painting of the Uh Doubting of Thomas, I saw it in real life and it hit me. And this was
before I had come back to the church. I just was like, this really happened, the resurrection, And I'm like, could you imagine what it would have felt like to see Christ and even being a disciple and seeing all the other miracles, you still have doubt to the point where He's, you know, in his amazingness, is like here, let me just prove it to you again. And it just I just remember seeing that painting and it just was like, Oh, if this is real, like we should
be we should be scared, you know. And so I was like, oh, icons make so much sense to me, Like this is you don't need to know how to read to learn about Jesus. You know.
Also your so cool. Your background is to you drew from the time you were young. You're always drawing and then you just on people. Yeah, and there's something about that, and you even described it like it's not just you know, a job or whatever. You're also having this sort of unique experience with the person, getting to know the person.
So it's almost like for you from your earliest days, like art and imagery and iconography was also personalized, and the whole point of the icons is to personalize the saints. Thus to also personalize God. So it's not just an abstraction, it's not art. It's a window to heaven to meet people and to know people. And I'm just.
Saying, but there's also like historic storytelling that Then that's the part where it's like I'm learning about something and understanding and experience because I'm seeing an image and I don't need to be, you know, a theologian. I don't need to have a high IQ. I can just look at this and understand. And I thought that was so
cool and so moving. So when I did, you know, see icons after that, it's like, oh, it's it's not a hard step for me to understand why we would want to kiss an icon, you know, it's it'd be weird if you don't.
Yeah, right, so well, and so many other things that in our lives we honor and revere in the exact same way. And then I think, through a lot of the sort of Protestant Islamic ideology, we tend to think that that would be a violation of divinity or something, But why if we do that for the lesser things, like obviously, we would do it that much more for the higher things. So another thing about this need about icons.
That goes back to what I was saying about the past and about history is a lot of like the tech today, what is geared towards is getting you focused on only caring about immediacy and fulfillment in the immediate. But an icon is like the right version of that, because even though they're they're two D, they aren't just an eternal now because within the nows that they show, there's almost always a background in a history and a future to the story of the person in the icon.
For example, like if you see icons of the life of Christ, like where they have like a big one that has all the stories in one it's one image, but it's telling you this timeless story, but it also projects into the future. So there's like an aschotological reality to the icons as well. And I can't really I mean, I know a lot of art can sort of do similar types of things.
I don't know.
I'm thinking like Lord of the Rings is you know, according to Tolkien, like his historical fiction, but it doesn't really tell you about I mean, it tells you moral things about life and meaning, but it doesn't tell you the future. It doesn't tell you all of reality in a single image and the cosmic scope of icons I think is unique in that way. I just thought it was probably you were probably already providentially being prepared for worth through what you did and what you were into.
And I talked to a lot of people from the world of the arts and you know, the domain of the creative who would become Orthodox, and there's a lot of similar patterns with those people that they were already kind of prepared for that, you know, through So how.
Would you explain what an icon is to someone who doesn't know what that is? I only say that just because I'm sure by the time this goes up, like a lot of people follow me don't know like what we're talking about.
So probably everybody knows about religious art work. And for the Orthodox Church, icons are not just religious art. They're
much more than that. So for us, there's a very specific what we call canonical or sort of limitations on how you do the art or the writing of an icon or the painting of an icon, and that has to do with expressing the theology of this world and the next world or heather in a very limited so you have to use certain patterns of symbolic color, certain ways of presenting people's lives and stories so that you accurately capture not something abstract or ahistorical, it has to
actually capture the history. So, for example, Saint Moses a black he'll never be like in the icon like a gray dude. He'll always be the black dude that he was, because that's who he was and he will be for all eternities. So icons have to express the actual historical reality as well as also stepping into and presenting what we call windows to heaven. So an icon is basically a window into the next dimension because when we go to the liturgy, we actually believe that it is literally
heaven on earth. It's not a symbol necessarily, but it's symbols as reality. In the Old Testament, it was symbols of heaven and what was to come. We think when Christ came, he brought all that reality at the first event, whereas Protestants, for example, they typically will postpone a lot of that to the second event. So an icon is a window went to heaven and it's the end times.
It's the escton the end of the world right now in reality at this time, so it kind of steps out of time and space, and that's why it has those unique features that you mentioned in terms of dimensionality and you know, telling the past and the future in one single image, and not all art does that, and that's why for us it's much more than just art. It's also a holy thing.
Yeah.
Cool, So.
You're so poetic sometimes I don't think you realize it. I appreciate you.
I appreciate that this was interesting. I do want to talk more about other things that you found theologically relevant to your life. You talked about the book of Job in the past, which is nobody ever talks about the
pot job. This is very overlooked. I thought that was interesting that you brought that up before we do though, now that we're talking about imagery iconography and we talked about you know, phones and tech and art and all that, you did make some interesting comments that you're very much
pro human creativity and you've got songs. Right, I am a machine, You've got songs that I mean, the way I was interpreting it was like sort of dystopian warning almost about where we're going, and so I wanted to touch on that because you know, orthodoxy, we're not gonna have we shouldn't have like an AI icon in the church, right we would have it has to be painted with
a human hand. And I wanted to know, do you feel that not just because of twenty twenty, but is there something seeping through the art that you do that's warning of technocracy?
I don't know. I mean, I'm my strong point. I think in advice giving, which I don't like to do at all, is just like trying my best to lead by example in whatever way I can, you know. And I think that if somebody that you know has odds against them or you know, it's like you can still try, and you can still work hard, and you can still
figure out how to do something. And I think that, like I'm in no position to talk about necessarily like AI or the I don't know much about it, to be honest, Like, I just know that I appreciate the human fingerprint, you know. I mean, that's why I love old Victorian homes. You know, there's these things are storytelling and they're made by a human, you know, like all aspects of them.
Well, this was in the context I think of you discussing your house, and that was everything what you wanted to have, that human element in contrast to everything nowadays sort of being replaced with I.
Mean I try to have it in everything, you know. I mean, like I homeschool my son, and it's like I look at you know, it's I'm very passionate about homeschooling, by the way. But you know, I have friends that Leah Farr had these two little friends that had some circumstances and then they had to be put not had to but they're now in.
Public school, in public school.
No, they're in public school. And you know, and so my friend who you know, she's my trainer, and so when I when I see I see her on a pretty regular basis that IO check in like how are the kids and stuff. And there's some there's some complaints, you know, of the the public school system, like for example, these are things I don't I don't know because my kid doesn't go there anymore. And when I went to school,
it was a long time ago. So things have changed a lot, and they've escalated quite quickly, especially with technology. And she told me that kids in elementary school now are it's mandatory to have these chromebooks. It's like a laptop and it comes with AI right in it. And
so I was, you know, I had. I had read some articles and there are some actual studies that they you know, they've been tracking our progress since I think the sixties and during every introduction of technology, whether it's the calculator to like I remember when computers were invented or whatever, and they and we had got Oregon Trail and it was like all of us gathered around one computer and watched like the black screen with the green letters,
you know, and and I thought, oh, we must be improving, and it looked and every landmark proves that are our our children's IQ's are dropping. So this last generation, it's getting so bad. You know. It's like, so do I have opinions of technology? I think that there are so many beautiful things that happened with you know, I love the fact that we can ride on airplanes and calculators, cell phones or you know, all that stuff. But as a homeschool mom like I I, there's just none of
that here. We just I just think there's such an importance in you know, leaf are learning things that are almost also not even relevant anymore, Like like the other day when we were or he just graduated first grade, so he's learning like how to tell time and I was thinking about how like nobody wears like clocks. There's no clocks are irrelevant. We have wind up grandfather clocks here,
you know. But I was like, it's so important for Lefford to learn this because like he's learning how to count by fives, he can, you know, like it's not just something that's gonna you know, like he's learning what a penny is. We're not even printing pennies anymore. But it's helping his math. You know, he's learning cursive even
though they're not teaching that in public school anymore. But I remember when I first started learning how to draw like filigree, like like Baroque architectural filigree, which is one of my favorite things to draw. I mean that that directly correlates to penmanship, you know. So anyways, will I ever use AI? Probably, I mean I probably should, you know, And some business aspects I'm sure, you know, for efficiency
or whatever. But I think when it comes to art, I'm always going to be the analog lady, you know. And when it comes to my music, you know, we I love synthesizers. That's a technology. I learned how to play music classically. I was classically training since I was five years old, so I love all the you know, the greats and stuff, but I still we play the instruments, you know, and in our recordings, we you know, we can program certain things, but for the most part, all
of our sound design is created. So it's it's cool. I think. I think nerds can tell the difference. I'm a nerd, so you know, it's it's cool. But I also don't knock like people who make computer music too, like that's cool, you know, like there's probably a place for it, you know, it's not. But yeah, I don't think I'm ever going to be a fan of like an AI artist that sounds Yeah, I don't know, I can't. Something feels weird about that.
Well, you know, and you've been on various you know, synth wave type tracks. You did the Gunship song, and you do that in your own work, and I've always thought there was something kind of implicit in synth wave and then in vapor wave as well. That's a critique of where we're going, because it's like the art is
getting more and more corporate but also soulless. And then that then, like vapor wave, for example, was a critique of that soullessness by kind of giving it some soul and giving it a new form of life, but it's also critiquing the lack of life that that whole era has. And then within like synth wave stuff, there's always been a kind of a dystopian vibe to it, and gunship
stuff is very dystopian. So that's why I was asking about, Like, I know that it's not a question of could we use a little little bit of AI here there, do we do synthesizers or whatever, But there's something creeping, a creeping terror that has to do with the phones. I think the phone, Like people are going insane from phones.
Yeah know that's kind of cliche because boomers fuss about phones, But I'm just saying, like I'm actually noticing more and more lately, I think people are actually like going insane from their phones.
Damage to that.
Is there an anti dystopian dystopian element to some of your tracks, like or is I Am a Machine? For example? Is that just autobiographical about like something?
No, I mean I'm a Machine is about what we're talking about now, you know, And I mean I think, like, how do we put this the how do we infuse soul into the robots somehow, you know, But yeah, I don't. I don't know.
You have to know this because you're homeschooling, so you sense this, like yeah, for sure, and.
Also too, but there's there's a surrender, and I think that has to do with my faith, is that, like you know, we can look around and see that the world is falling apart and that you know, evil seems to be winning in some ways and the pendulum swinging maybe in others in in other ways, but like at the end of the day, like we knew all this was coming, like it says it in the Bible, like you know, so I think we can find a comfort that like in the sense that like I don't know,
we don't nobody knows that the end day, but but maybe we are in the end times. But like it just means we're probably one step closer to seeing his face, which I think is pretty cool. So you know, for us, it's like what do we do for now? Like I mean, I'm I am a little bit of a you know, one of those weirdo preppers. I like to have my own water source and like you know, have land, Like I prioritize land to grow food eventually, you know, but it's not whereas before I was, like I had fancy cars.
I'm like, I could care less about any of that. Now, you know, we live like, you know, we got a house that's on you know, a small amount of land, but enough to do something with in case if and when the apocalypse happens, you know, we might we might buy a little bit of time, you know, but you can also drive yourself crazy doing that too, you know. But I don't know. But yeah, as far as like AI and something, I just kind of stay away from
a lot of it, to be honest. I mean, I'm not I'm I'm but I'm not terrified yet.
I don't even know if it's AI. I'm just more concerned with, like I don't.
Know, technology and no, no, no, not.
Even if it's something to do with like I'm gonna sound full skitzo here, but like the signals and the phones, is something that is going on that's just making yeah insane.
Because we have ring the bell about five g up forever. Now they're like, I mean it's killing the plants around them. I mean, it's it's you can see, you know, did you see the video of the guy with like the the neon light bulb. That's I mean, that can'tnot affect you, you know. But I also think our bodies are so magically and perfectly created. I don't think their adaptive to everything. That's why we have answer. But like, but I think that there it's constantly fighting for you, you know.
So, so you would say you're not pro cancer if you run for office? Would that be on the platform? Could we get that on record? Now? You know, all I've been doing is sitting here thinking of dad jokes the entire time. That's all I thought about, because that's the vibe. That's the vibe that it went into. So and you were like you were talking about telling time. I was going to say, telling time? What what would you tell time? If you could tell?
Dude? Okay, So I got my son this this this phone. It's a landline because I'm trying to give him the gift of the nineties or whatever, and so it's it's like a landline that he can only call his friends and numbers that I've approved or whatever. And so we were trying to explain to him, like the is your
refrigerator running joke? So a prank call you know, and he and I couldn't figure out a way to explain that, like it's not running, but it's you know, so now you like, he'll prank somebody and then explain it.
He explains that that's nice. You got to introduce them to the jerky boys and then you know, Frank, So we talked about, you know, periods when you were really facing up to the mortality. You've read books about death, coping with them.
I've always been surrounded by the subject. When I used to tattoo, I tattooed portraits. So most people don't get portraits because they're bored. It's usually people that mean a lot to them, whether it's loved when they've lost or you know, a musician, whatever it is, you know, a hero in their life. So towards the end of my career, I mean the last the last decade, I would say I dedicated to just tattooing people with the hardest stories. So I you know, I stopped tattooing for money during
that time. In the beginning, I was just tattooing like pretty beautiful images and then and then I would listen to people's stories and it was like, you know, I've tattooed the father who has accidentally killed his only son, and you know, and he wanted to get something that you might consider silly because it's like who would want that?
So I started reading about books on bereavement and just the death process in general, and it wasn't you know, any thing other than just like you know, I'm I'm not a therapist, I'm not equipped for this, and I
was taking a lot of it on. But I think the more, especially in like this country, people are scared to talk about things like that, whereas like for me, I think it's like it's the most human thing you could do because it's the one thing that you're gonna die, we're gonna we're all gonna experience it in some capacity, so it's okay to talk about it. And I think there are certain ways that are more sincere and less sincere.
And so yeah, so that to answer your question, that's why death was always kind of in my peripheral and I just never have I'm I'm not uncomfortable to talking about it.
And nobody talks about the Book of Job. And I think when this came up for whatever interview was, you mentioned the Book of Job and that I think I was reading it at the Yeah, that was something that resonated with you. Why.
I think that, like in the times where the suffering is taking place, it's like, if I could strive to be more like Job. I mean, it's a it's an example of how I want to be, you know. I I don't. I'm not there yet. I mean I in some some days more than others. But I think that's why I had brought it up, or it came up in that other conversation. But yeah, well.
What's interesting why I was going with it was a lot of people miss how crystallogical Job is because there's so much in it that's and then there's specific like references to the Redeemer I will see him on the Last Day, which are specific, you know, prophecies of Christ. But it's also the sort of mysterious book that we don't actually know what time period it is. We know it's ancient, we don't know exactly if it was a
person adjacent to Israel or living in ancient Israel. But you have this pattern of a man, you know, tempted, a man who goes through the worst types of suffering and then in the end triumphs and has given you know, manifold blessings, and that is the catabasas death royal resurrection motif that you see in the life of Christ.
So I honestly never thought of that. I didn't know. That's so cool.
So many Old Testament people are that way. And in terms of typology, like you see this with Jeremiah, when Jeremiah's persecuted by Israel, and there's all these things that Jeremiah says in the book, like he preaches at the Israelites and rebukes them for giving into the false teachings of the lawyers and the scribes, exactly parallel to what Jesus says to the Pharisees in Matthew twenty three. There's a whole passage in Jeremiah about the good shepherd and
Christ being or God being the shepherd of Israel. And then Jesus matches what Jeremiah preaches. Jeremiah's like led down into a pit and then he's imprisoned. There. That's Christ's descent into Hades. All of these prophets, and Jesus himself makes this point even with Joe when he says just says, Joe was in the heart of the whale, So will the Son of Man be in the heart of the
earth for three days and three nights. So you notice this pattern of it's not just persecution and we likening our stuff, or we sort of join our sufferings for Christ, which is what we're supposed to do to get through it. But it's also a descent into Hades, which you see over and over and over in the Old Testament, which and that's important because Protestants in Rome, although they confess the descent into Hades, it doesn't really have a lot
of significance in the theology. But for Orthodoxy, heroing of Hades is huge because it means that death is not actually fearful or scary anymore because He's triumphed over it. So it's actually, as Saint Anthonaius says, death is actually good for us. It's the doorway to eternal life. We're not worried about it. So I say all that to say that suffering in our paradigm actually is transfigured to
be meaningful. Outside of our paradigm suffering, and I'm not saying that other Christian groups don't have a conception of suffering or united to Christ's passion but for us, I think it's just much more profound than it's a lot. We have a better toolkit to deal with it. And that's the key to the Book of Job is that it's mirrors Christ's life, even though obviously Job is just merely a man. Yeah, but Christ is not merely a man. He's also the Son of God. So I love that
there's almost and everybody's turned towards Orthodoxy. I've noticed some point where they kind of come to the end of themselves. And I don't just mean a conversion, like because everybody who even converts to Protestantism or Evangelicalism like, yeah, I came to it to myself and I saw my sins. And but there's something about going into Orthodoxy, where there's a narrow passageway of humility that requires you to be like, it's not just that I had this experience, like everything
has got to be transformed. Does that make sense?
Like yeah, in.
Protestantism you can kind of like make a decision of like, oh, well, yeah, I did that thing last year where I prayed the Sinner's prayer at the Billy Graham thing, and I'm cool. But now it's like, no, every day is now transformed, so it's it's an eternal thing. Now it's not even a like temporal thing anyway. All I'm saying is that you what do.
You mean it's an internal thing? That you mean the process or what do you.
We will always be this like the cave Doocans say, we will always be moving up into God. So in the asketon we don't have the cessation of movement like the plate. The Platonists old philosophers used to think that, like, well, when you go on, you want to get real, you want to you want to leave the domain of flocks and change. So this world is like temporal it's there's movement, there's change, And so they reason that whatever the good world is, it's got to be the opposite of this one.
So there can't be change or movement or whatever. And this is what led a lot of the Geks and Greek philosophers to say, how could there be a body resurrection? Because body implies movement, change, and they just assumed that you couldn't have that in the eternal state. So what I was saying is that for us, movement, body, image, form, all of these things that we think of as characterizing this world. They're not bad. They're not like Platonists, neo
Platonists or Gnostics. They would denegrate the body in this world and creation, and it's not bad. Those things are all good because they continue on into eternity. So that's what I meant by not the suffering is eternal, but that I mean we don't think about it like a new heavens and a new Earth. We think of it. Most people think of it like, oh, when I go to heaven, it's like my mind goes to this cloud world and I'm like a you know, mind ball floating around. No,
you're actually going to be in this body. Yeah, and you're going to have the same characteristics to a degree that you have. Right, most of the black is still a black duty. He doesn't become a grad dude. So our history matters. We retain it even into the escata,
not all the bad parts, but the good parts. So that's our perspective, and that makes all of what we go through way more meaningful, and you can put it into a perspective, and if you don't have that cosmic perspectives, what I'm getting at is that the sufferings appear to be pointless. Why am I going through this? Why is this happening to me? But you can actually through this paradigm through the Orthodox paradigm. I think it makes a lot more sense. Suffering takes on the meaning of being
a means of transfiguration at deosis. That's all I'm saying.
It's cool.
You talked about influences, and most of them I was like, yeah, I like them. I like the Depeche Mode Cure industrial music. Yeah, and you come up regularly in our playlist. So what's your number one vibe influence right now? I don't.
I don't really listen to a lot of music like that anymore. I listened to a lot of Chance.
Yeah, you gotta do it orthodox chant?
Am I going to do one right now? Oh? I actually am. I wanted to end end this next album with a cover of Oh Gladso Light by the Byzantine version. I would sing it and instead of having a choir, I was gonna just replace with drone sounds. You know, always talking because people are like, are you gonna make a worship album? I'm never going to make a worship album. You know. It's one of those things that especially now when I when I you know, here are a choirs.
I'm like, it's really not broken, Like why would we even try? This is and that's why a gladsom light to me, it's the it's the most perfect worship song, like it's perfection every word. It's one minute long and it's we don't even know who wrote it. It's one of the oldest I think it's fifteen hundred years old that they can trace it.
So it's just like an acappella.
Yeah, so typically it's I mean obviously appella. Yeah, and there's a Byzantine version that I love. I've like we at our parish they sing it during great vespers every every great vespers and and one day I asked one of the people in our choir like, hey, I'd love to hear like a recording of this, you know, And I went on YouTube and I can only find one one recording, but every it's it's it's a tricky one. It's a tricky one to find, like the Byzantine version.
So so yeah that I am going to incorporate that in the next I have the blessing from my priests and you know.
But you're I mean, the rest of the album is going to.
Be electronic yeah. Yeah, I make electronic music, so I like the eighties style but a little darker and you know, trying to bring that soul into the electronic realm.
I sent you in my Mormon space wise new wave. Oh yeah, and there was no comments.
So I guess that tells me that left unread.
Yeah. Actually I have to give a shout out doctor Evoe. He didn't really get on that one.
But oh a person made that.
Or yeah, sectual music, Oh, actual music, you should listen to it.
I thought it was a no, it's not.
No, he's an a legit producer, like an actual But you wrote the lyrics, I sing, yeah, yeah, but you wrote the lyrics. Well, they're all improvs. So they were never written but written in my head. A freestyle written in my I'm a freestyle are Yeah, you're influenced by teen angst music?
No, you know, I struggle. I feel like my my first album was just all like sad love songs. That was my favorite genre at the time, and I still love that, but it feels a bit self indulgent now. I mean, I think it's it's I'm mean, there's things that I'm frustrated with and I think a lot of those things that I talk about about, those frustrations, you know, there's I don't like the divide, you know. So this next album, we've been writing a lot about that type
of thing. But we're still in the in the stages of writing, so we have like a few more rounds to go.
But is there a new single? Nothing's out yet, nothing when is Do you know when there will be a single?
Mmm? We're hoping for the fall.
But when it comes to the new album, is this going to be like heavy scent, heavy dark themes or are we getting a lighter, more positive theme here?
I don't. I don't think I can do happy, So that's not I don't know. I have joy in my life. I do. I just it's the you know, find me in the minor chords.
So when Fear You comes on, we actually enjoyed us sing it and I'm happy. Oh yeah, my vibing wrong? Is so I'm supposed to No, no, no, I.
Mean that song was that album was about one particular like relationship that was very dysfunctional. So but it's you know.
I had fun with those songs. Yeah, I mean, remind me we have to be sad now.
When we hear that no, don't.
So we talked about the look of Joe, We talked about music wise lost comments on Let's talk about orthodoxy one last time because this is kind of as far as I'm aware, you might have done a different interview that it's never caught, but the.
Scene I've never really talked about this second. I've done one interview with Father John Parker but it hasn't been released yet.
But so we have to hurry and release this before he does because I want to be the first to get you talking about.
So, you know, I tend to shy away from talking about my faith publicly, and it's not for any other reason than I just don't feel worthy or equipped in a lot of ways. And it it's not it's just me being honest. It's like there's so many people that are so well versed and so eloquent and they're speaking I you know, I think we talked a little bit about this earlier, but I think I shine brightest one.
It's one on one, and I think if someone wants to talk to me about it, like if my friends were to text me about it, which is it's happened and I've gone to church with taking my friend to church at school. But as you know, there's some people that have the calling to be the priests and or what you do for example, you know. But whereas for me, I've like, I love Orthodox Christianity so much that I would rather protect it from my my dumbness, you know.
So I can only speak from the heart from my experience. But as far as like theology goes, I leave it to the pros for now, at least.
The reason I ask about that for the sake of my audience is more so, although I know you're not in the apologetics domain or whatever, but usually people have a couple hang ups or things that kind of when they first encountered the realm of Orthodoxy, they like, what these pictures are weird? Why do they have that? I was just curious about what a couple hang ups might have been that you kind of eventually worked through. Were there any I.
Mean, I had questions, which I think everyone should have questions, because it's important to understand what you do. And we don't just blindly do things, you know. Whereas I think a lot of times, and not again not to knock my Protestant friends, but it's like a lot of times I would see people just kind of going through the motions versus the understanding why do we do this or why does the Bible say that? You know, like you know, I wanted to understand like the commandment about the Sabbath.
Or you know you get an SDA background right seven day even and this is that right.
Yeah, But I usually don't like to bring that up because again I think everyone's going through there. You know, I have my my my own views on that now as as an adult and understanding things, and it's like, you know, it's a very fringe.
The reason I say that is, did that perhaps raise an issue with well, why Sunday versus Saturday? Or why the images in the church? Because a lot of that realm.
No, because you know, I was brought up that way, and then I was. I strayed from from faith altogether for many for decades. So it's not like I was coming in. I mean there are some things like I never you know, I never ate shrimp. Yeah, I still haven't. It's not now it's for other reasons, but before it was because that's what some day Avnas don't eat fish without scales or you know, pork and things like that. But as far as theology, No, no one from the
Protestant realm answered questions to me. So it wasn't it wasn't like this is where I talk about my the cup wasn't filled, you know. Like so it wasn't until I entered the Orthodox Church that I just really started having an understanding. So going back to what you're saying is like, you know, I think it's important to ask the questions and that way you can talk to your friends about it when they do have you know. And for me, I always look at it from the lens
of a mom. I want to be able to answer Leopard's question so that, you know, as he gets older, he's equipped with the ability to have conversations with his friends who are not going to be Christian, you know, and and not just do it because mommy and Daddy brought us up this way, you know. So yeah, and I'm still obviously learning all the time. But as far as hang ups, I didn't really have any hang ups, Like I really understood what venerating the saints meant. It
wasn't you know. I had a friend that explained it to me because I did say that to him. I was like, what's what's up with all those saints. That's kind of weird, right, And then he helped me understand it, and I was like, oh my gosh, like yeah, like how is it that I know about out all the fun facts of every musician that played in the Cure? You know? And it's like, why does everybody know when
Taylor Swift was getting married? Like, you know, it's like, what these are the posters I want on my wall? Do you know what I mean? So these are my friends? Like these I want to know all those stats And it's like those those are my examples versus you know. And I'm not saying that you can't admire our human friends and stuff, but like, but so that that made a lot more sense to me. I think, Like, so I didn't have any hang ups with you know, the
Mother of God. You know, I think a lot of protests have a big hang up with it, and I think that's a misunderstanding, that's all, you know. But like when I talk to my dad about it, for example, my dad's not Orthodox and he loves Jesus a lot, you know, and but and he'll say things like I looked it up, you know, and he's like it's just very depressing and like for him, you know, and I go, yeah, for you, it is. But you know, I've been to like the megachurches or or the regular smaller churches too,
and and I've seen the bands play. I've listened to the hymns from the seventies and it derails me, you know, it pulls me out because I'm like, oh, this is pop structure, all right. Here comes to drop and then here you know, it's like and it's like some the lyrics are so it could be a love song about a romance and to me, so it takes me out and where that brings joy for a lot of other people and they're listening to their car and there I think there's a lot of people that it really does
bring them closer to God. So I'm not knocking that either. But for me, someone who comes from an extreme darkness, like I need the strictness. I like the tradition. I like the simplicity of just it's so direct, you know.
And I remember Father Stephen, my my spiritual father, when when I was a catechory and he had written a little tiny it's like a pamphlet book on liturgy and it explained why do the readers sound like that, you know, because like for those that don't know, like there's when when they're reading scripture, it almost it could sound like you're at an auction to some people if they don't know, you know, and it's kind of just this monotone, you know.
But I remember, like in that little pamphlet says like why do they sound like that? And it's like we're not putting our own personal inflection to things because we want the message to come out and be delivered clearly. And I just had such a deep appreciation for that because concert it's not just that, but it's like I would have a hard time, like like in July, I signed up for an iconography class where I'm gonna hopefully, you know, learn, and I think my biggest fear is
that I won't. I just want to be able to not put myself into it, you know, because I know what an icon means and I've never not done that in my art, you know, so I appreciate that, you know, whereas someone like my dad, he's it's a might not resonate a certain way, and I would hope it would one day, like he came for the first time to my church when Leofar got baptized, and I was a little bit like nervous, not nervous, but just more I guess,
just conscious of it, you know. And at one point I looked over and he was, you know, he was like filming all of it on his cell phone, which made me very happy, even though I know a lot of Orthodox get annoyed when people film stuff, but like to me, it was like, oh, my dad's absorbing this and he's seeing that this is something so special. And I caught him like looking at like the altar on his phone. I'm like, why would have he be filming that if he didn't, if he wasn't in awe of it?
And I think that that's you know, I'm a I think the all senses really is makes me feel like it's true worship, Like I really feel like with all my being worshiping the Lord, Whereas like when I would go to the Protestant flavor, it feels more like I'm attending.
A lecture hole or Ted talk or something.
And you know, again like for someone like my dad, that really, you know, who am I to question whether it brings them closer to Christ or not? You know? But for me, oh, my gosh, it's just so so powerful, you know, it's so I look forward to it, you know.
Thank you so much, Kat, Yeah, no, thanks.
For coming over. I always enjoy hanging out. This is the second time I've hung out, and I love having you in the home and you and Jamie and it's just I feel lucky to be your friend.
So absolutely, thank you guys so much. Be sure it hit like, share, leave comments below.
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