Bonus Re-Release- Watsky

I love life, I love living. I believe in good, I believe in beauty. But I also think that it's important not to turn a blind eye to all the messed up things that are going on our planet. Welcome to the One You Feed. Throughout time, great tinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, Garbage out, or you are what you think ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,

or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us everyone. Our guest this week is George Watsky, who goes by

the stage name Watsky. He's a rapper and poet from San Francisco and we had a chance to talk to George as he's wrapping up his US tour. His latest album is called Cardboard Castles, and you can find more details about him on our show notes at One You Feed dot net. Slash Watsky, thanks for joining us today. George,

my pleasure. Thank you for having me so. Our podcast is called The One You Feed, and it's based on an old parable that goes something like, there's an old Cherokee grandfather who is talking to his grandson and he's saying to him, Uh, you know, in life, we have two wolves inside of us that are always fighting. One is good and kind and loving, and the other is is bad, you know, greedy or hateful or self pitying. And the grandson thanks for a second and he says, well, Grandpa,

which one wins? And he says, the one you feed. So our podcast is really about how people feed their good wolves well, and that means very different things to very different people. So I guess the first question I have for you is sort of what comes to mind when you when you hear that parable and and how do you think it relates to what you do personally and in your work? Yeah, I mean it's very profound, it's awesome. I mean the first thing that springs to

mind is just I'm not a perfect person. That I know that the capacity for evil exists inside me. I've seen it rear its head. But I also believe that every human beings good too. And you know, as an artist and as a person, we get to choose on a daily basis what direction we want to take our lives and our art. And I've tried to do that with honesty. I've tried my best to do it with

integrity every step of the way. I try to make the choices that I think I'm going to be able to live with and that my parents are gonna be proud of me for. And I fail sometimes, but I'm very proud of the little empire in world that we've built with our fellow artists that were on the road with you know. So I think that relates to everyone. You know, everyone is fighting a constant struggle for trying

to let the good parts of themselves emerge, and nobody's perfect. Yeah, I And that's that's one of the things that resonates to me about your work is that that struggle is evident, but there's a clear um, there's an acknowledgement of it as well as a an attempt to sort of an attempt that there's effort that has to go into sort

of the uh, the positive. And there was I was reading some something you had somewhere where you're talking about um, the the the kill, the hipster uh savior hood, and you're you say in one of your comments somewhere that you know the most important part of that is to take a look in the mirror. And I thought that was really interesting. That ship is no good Star plus

where the skates a mixture does no good right on? Yeah, I mean that whole song, and I think that people the problem with that is that that's a five and a half minute song where I get to the self awareness portion of it about four and a half minutes into the song, and some people with today's modern attention spand don't stick around to see the message evolve. But a huge part of my work is um not so much just diagnosing, but taking those things that I see

wrong and then turning the mirror on myself. I mean, it's it's the same as tiny glowing screens Part two. The poem that I have. It's a troupe that I use in a lot of my stuff, which is diagnose an ill in the world, and then figure out how I'm implicated in that, because I don't think that a message is as powerful if you remove yourself from responsibility. You know, like, if you're talking about global warming being a problem with the world, how am I a participant

in that? You know that carries more weight than saying, hey, you guys who are screwing up our planet, why don't you get it together? You know, there's nothing more powerful than saying I'm a part of this problem. We are all a part of this problem, and now let's look at it together. The other thing I've I was looking at of yours that I really liked was the letter to your sixteen year old self. I think that's one

of the most powerful things that you've done. And it's probably resonates with me a lot because I have fifteen year old boys, and so you know, they're at that age where they're starting to make their decisions about you know, what they're gonna do with your life. Is a parent you sort of sit by semi helplessly at this age. I mean, you can, you have influence, you talk to them, but they're gonna they're kind of at the age they're

gonna do what they want to do. And and I love the positivity that's in that letter um to yourself, as well as the acknowledgement of how challenging it's going to be at certain times. Do you want to share a little bit about that, sure? I mean, I just think that that era, like fifteen sixteen, you're freshman and sophomore year of high school. At least for me, that's when I kind of found myself and those those things, those parts of my identity that came out in that

time are things that are still with me today. You know. That's really when I feel like I became an adult in many ways, and like the man that I am was kind of became concrete and not that I'm not changing. But that's when so much identity comes in. And it's a message in a lot of my pieces, which is I don't have all the answers, that there's a balance between hopelessness and hope, that there's a balance between ugliness and beauty. I mean, let her to my sixteen year

old self, Tinygoing Screens Part two. It's kind of all different variations on that theme of I believe in life. I love life, I love living, I believe in good, I believe in beauty. But I also think that it's important not to turn a blind eye to all the messed up things that are going on our planet. And you know, I don't have a message that's as appealing as say a religious leader who can say, here are

all the answers, this is how you should live your life. Uh. The message that I have is a little bit less appealing than that. In many ways, my messages that I don't have the answers and that none of us have all the answers, and that we're all kind of trying to puzzle through this. Uh. And I've actually I had a girl email me through my manager. A couple of weeks ago saying how could you do that to me

with tinygoing screens? Part two? Like you built me up to believe in hope and optimism and then at the end you said, well but it's really kind of all meaningless at the end, And um, you know that is my That's the core message of my work is that is that life is worth living even though it sucks sometimes, and that you just have to you have to ride the roller coaster and just enjoy it for what it is. Another thing that my my, one of my boys said, if you're going to talk to wats, you gotta ask

him a question. He said, what what is it about his little cousin on the record? You know, you look cousins all over the record, and and I said, I think it's because he's adorable and he loves his cousin. But he seemed to think there might be more to it than that. So yeah, it's funny. Actually people assume were related, but I am not related to that kid.

His name is Norton, and I actually met him through casting him in a music video and trying to remember the first thing I did with him was a promo from the Rest album when I just needed a little cute kid to say, hey, wat's key, why are you doing a bluegrass hip hop album that sounds really weird? And uh, and that's all. I just shot a little promo video with him. But then you I ended up talking to him on set and making this connection with this kid who in a lot of way reminds me

of myself when I was younger. And Norton and his mom have become like friends of mine, and he lived in l A. He's a very quirky kid who he's been getting bullied in school and stuff, and so I've kind of become a mentor to him and went to his jiu jitsu ceremony graduation, and like, I went to go see The Hobbit with him and his mom, and I went to see his play in North Hollywood. I kind of have like a little big brother little brother

relationship with him. And Uh. When I was kind of coming up with cardboard castles and figuring out what glue was going to hold the album together, I thought, you know, so much of it is about coming of age and having realizations of things in the past, and I thought, how cool would it be to get a kid who I feel like articulates a lot of the things that I was going through when I was younger, and actually have him provide the perspective from an honest place. There's

like only one bully in my class. He just thinks he's all cool. He thinks he's smarter than me, he says, he thinks a lot of things. What's really cool about it is that their unscripted moments of honesty from a ten year old or and at that time an eight year old kid. It was just kind of trying to you know, he wasn't filtering his thoughts. He was just talking about growing up. And you know the thing that I'm constantly in search of his honesty moments, unscripted moments

that reflect something that we can all relate to. And and he was kind of that glue that held the album together. He said so many things that were like to me, I was like, like the idea of feeling your own the impending doom of turning ten years old because you'll never be nine anymore, and just like you know how how much weight you put on everything when you're that age, because that's what you know, and so um,

that's the answer. He's not my cousin He's just a random kid that I've created a connection with and who I'm trying to not have too close a connection with because like, if things go wrong in his life, he'll text me and I'll and he'll he'll ask me for advice, and I'll be like, dude, don't text me, Like ask your parents if I give you the wrong advice and then you go and get punched in the face in school.

I don't want that on my hand. Ends you know, like you, uh, you gotta you gotta let your parents do that. And I'm I'm trying to be a positive figure in his life without being too to present. Yeah, he's he's uh, he is a he's funny. The there's

the things he says come come unexpectedly. When you were just talking about the the term, you know, he was mortified about turning ten um And at the very end of that you say something, you say ten is a great year or something like that, and then you go on and say the thing that used to help you was your parents would make funny faces and tell you stories, and then you kind of go into the song you want to share a little bit about that. Sure, Yeah, I love my mom and dad, My mom and dad,

if you happy to be watching, it's possible. My dad follows my online activity closer than I do, so he might be. Um, my parents were really great parents to me. They my dad is a psychotherapist and was also a poet. Um, he's a writer and he has you know, million degrees. Is one of the smartest guys I know. And my mom is an elementary school librarian now. And they both read to me a lot growing up very active. My dad showed up at all my baseball games even if

I struck out three times and sat on the bench. Um, and yeah, I think them reading to me was one of my favorite things about growing up. That we did bedtime every night and reading time and um he would read me novels and think that definitely like spiked my intellectual curiosity and never you know, being smart in our household was not something that you should be ashamed of or embarrassed of. Um. You know, it's just there's a lot of curiosity and um, a love for language and

a love for art. Did you go through any adolescent rebellion period towards your parents? You know, I went through periods of like angst and being a teenager and like not wanting to hang out with my parents all the time and being embarrassed of them and the kids. There's not that all kids do. But I was never like I hate you guys, like I'm moving out of the house and running away. It was never that much, you know. I always knew that they loved me and one of

the best for me. Um. But I every kid, most kids of that age, I feel like, have a period where they don't want to be best friends with their parents anymore. So I had that. But now I'm twenty seven and I have a great relationship with my folks and I call them all the time and I love seeing them. Yeah, I think for teenagers there's a it's part of their their duty to distance themselves from their parents. It's just part of what they have to do. Yeah, And so to some degree, and some of its uh,

you know better worse. That's one of the things I You know, there's a lot of things I like about what you're doing. But I love it when my sons and I can find something that we both genuinely enjoy and can share. And your music is one of those things. So that's really great because it does get hard to connect sometimes and it's nice to find those things that are genuine and real right on. Yeah, well, I appreciate that.

That's awesome, and I think it's it's been really cool seeing the kind of people who show up to our shows and seeing that sometimes it's fifteen or sixteen year old kids, and you know, we and then we get clusters of people who are like in their mid thirties and mid forties who relate to the poetry and love it too. So we bring out a motley crew definitely into our events. And I think that's great because it

means it's reaching a broad variety of people. Um. Another question for you around you know, there's a theme that runs through a lot of what you do is, um, the concept of work. Can you talk about kind of what what work means to you and and and the value that that has. Yeah, well, I'm self employed. I am an independent artist, which means that if I'm gonna go on tour and I'm gonna make an album, it

has to come from me. I'm not I've known breathing down my neck to say, George, you gotta get up at nine and do this, and you know you've got to be on the clock or else. It's you know, time is money. It comes from me because uh, we're doing this as a labor of love. And I feel like, especially for someone in my position who gets to be an a professional artist and gets to perform and gets to follow his passion, you know, it's not that people who are in these luxury jobs should be able to

be lazier than everyone else. I feel like, if you're going to have one of the jobs that's coveted by nine percent of the population, you have a duty to actually treat it like a real job and work really hard because it's a hell of a lot more fun doing what I do than being a fry cook or shoveling in a mind somewhere, which is what most human beings have to dedicate their lives to, or something of

that variety. If it's a desk job, even you have to do something that you don't want to be able, that you don't want to have to do from nine to five in order to you know, pay rent and pay the bills. And for me, I'm in this extremely lucky position to get to do exactly what I want to do, and for me to be lazy and flip

into about that opportunity would be a criminal travesty. Like I believe so strongly that I am in a privileged position and that since I love what I do, I have a duty to try and do it the best I can and work really hard at it. And you know, that's pretty much as far as it goes. And it seems that you you have, you know, clearly had this had this work ethic for for a long time. And I'm always interested in people who are successful because there's tends to be two things that sort of at least

that I notice that are driving. One is just the love of what you're doing, the satisfaction of doing work that's good. And then the second is the desire to be successful at it. And and I sort of have heard both coming through in in your music. How do you how do those two relate to each other? Well, I think that this is like the fundamental paradox of my life and of a lot of artists lives, is knowing that we don't matter, but wanting to matter a

lot at the end of the day, you know. And and I think that the idea of trying to be successful is is my drug. You know, everyone has a poison. Some people it's alcohol some people. You know, every everyone has a bomb that sues them. And at the end of the day, the positive reinforcement that what I'm doing is good is what my poison is. It's what my drug is. And I've, you know, from a very young age, I've had this feeling and I'm gonna put my cards

in the table. I'm not a religious person. I don't believe in the afterlife, at least from from what I've gathered and the lens that i have to view the world, that is not something that is part of my life, and that that fear of not existing and knowing that I love this life so much means that I've from a very young age felt like I have a very brief time on this planet to make my mark and

to exist and to do something meaningful. And you know, it's that it's that constant struggle against wanting to matter. And you know, since I was fifteen or sixteen, I kind of felt like the clock was ticking and I only have so long to kind of make an impression. And and it can be a bad thing too, because sometimes constant seeking out of validation is not healthy and you have to be able to to exist and be happy without being validated all the time. So there's not

really a simple answer to that question. You know, I'm struggling constantly against trying not to care too much about what people think about my stuff versus also taking a pride in it and being able to have self satisfaction that what I'm putting out into the world is good. So it's kind of a constant pushing a pull between

those two things. It's fairly timely in that today was the I think it started today, maybe yesterday, the whole thing with Joe Rogan and his podcast and sort of you know, bizarre uh, you know, a sort of attack of of slam poetry and of yours in general. And I thought your response was really really well done. How much does that sort of stuff, you know, it is a somebody not validating you, not doing that. How much do the do the haters get to you? Um people?

The things that get to me most are the well thought out criticisms, And Joe Rogan's didn't actually bother me that much because it was very clear from listening to the podcast that he just kind of had a pretty sort of pull out an example of a white person doing slam poetry, and that's what he wanted to go after. So I actually thought that it was an opportunity for me to use that random coincidence as a way to actually have a meaningful conversation about the merits and spoken

word poetry. What does get under my skin is when I feel like somebody says something very insightful and well thought out. That is that you know that unearthed insecurities that I have, which happens occasionally, although I'd say nine percent of the time on the Internet, someone just writes like gay lamb, and you know that's that's a lot easier to deflect because it's it's not well thought out. But yeah, I think I'm pretty good at having a

thick skin. And at this point, you know, comments pouring and pouring, and so many, the overwhelming majority of them are so positive that you know, I'm I'm doing fine comfortively,

but I can't say that I'm perfectly immune criticism. I think that the best thing is to wait a while, Like if somebody says something negative and you're heated about it, just take a day, take five hours, take ten hours, whatever you need until you're not so emotional about it, and then try and actually figure out if there was some merit to it, because sometimes you need to listen to criticism or else you're just gonna go bluntly on a path of thinking that you're all what you're doing

is always golden, and sometimes you need to be able to say, you know what that criticism isn't is merit lists and I don't need to listen to it. And there's a balancing act between taking in criticism and actually being able to internalize it when it's appropriate, and being able to brush it off when what you're doing is right and it's coming from somebody who doesn't know what

they're talking about. So back to you, back to your letter to yourself as a sixteen year old you, there's another part in here that I love where you talk about you know, you don't remember people's names, you're at the center of attention for all the reasons, and spend roughly six hours a night on your side watching Boy Meets World reruns. That was that a phase in your life?

I watched a lot of TV. I watched a lot of TV and the re and that I like to pick on specific examples that I think illuminate trends and to me, that speaks to an era and nostalgia for people who were in that era of growing up, but also just the idea of TV being medication, the way that technology is medication. Now. When I didn't want to think about stuff, I would just turn the tube on

and I wouldn't have to think about it. So that was a way for me to distance myself from the things that I was afraid of and didn't want to think about. Was just constantly distracting myself with stimuli. Yeah. And the great part that follows that is when you say you're capable about growing that bullshit all right on? Yeah? Yeah,

and everyone is, everyone is. Do you still did you find for yourself that you hit a certain point where you started to uh work and make some progress and and it you got momentum that made it easier to keep doing that stuff or is it just sort of a constant battle for you to stay productive and do

the things that matter. I had a real crisis, a real existential crisis around the time when I was seventeen, where I I felt like I had had these fears of growing up and of mortality that we're bubbling underneath the surface and I can't I was pushing them down with distractions, and they bumbled up to the surface in

a way that I couldn't ignore anymore. When I was a junior in high school and I became depressed, not because I was sad about anything specific, but just because all these things that I was afraid of they really hit me like a ton of bricks, and I was like,

and they they were very present for me. And so I went to therapy and I started talking to therapists and they were like, well, these are just things that all humans have to deal with, and you're kind of making me depressed right now, So can we talk about girls or something? And you know, I wasn't getting the answers from anywhere. My parents were just like, oh, don't think about that. That's not for a long time. And

none of those answers were satisfying to me. And the one thing that did actually kind of give me some relief was reading books by this guy named tik not Han who's a Buddhist philosopher, and very simple, basic Buddhist message messages of living in the present moment, end of realizing that if you're afraid of something, the only thing that you can do is face that fear head on

and actually allow yourself to be afraid. And actually it's something that Louis c. K talked about in his recent clip that went viral on Conan about just like allowing yourself to feel shitty things sometimes. And if you feel fear and your fearings feel anxiety. Terror is a natural human thing and if you allow yourself to feel it, then what's going to happen is your body is going to accept it and then you're going to have this

wave of actually positive emotions that come after that. And so, um, when I was around seventeen, I had that kind of realization and I think trended Buddhist a little bit and I think that helped me a lot. And since then, I you know, I've been a very hard worker my whole life. Since then, I think the last ten years,

I've just, if anything, worked too hard. I think that the bout the battle for me is really trying to prioritize my personal life and love and family, uh, and working on my career comes naturally to me, and it's making sure that I'm feeding the other things. That is something that I need to do and remember to do all the time you were talking about in in tiny glowing screens to uh sort of meaninglessness, and you know, the the universe is so huge, how could we possibly matter?

There's seven billion, forties six million people on the planet. Most of us have the audacity to think we matter. Hey, you hear the one about the comedian who croaked. Someone stabbed him in the heart, just a little poke, but it keeled over because he went into battle wearing chain mailmated chokes. And then you went on to say that you found a way to find meanings sort of within that. Can you share a little bit about that? I think

that that. You know, humans have been thinking about this forever. It's like almost every Shakespeare poem is about it's how are you going to exist beyond your short existence? And for me, the answer isn't trying to build up a legacy that's so huge and unavoidably awesome that people are gonna be talking about you for centuries. It's finding meaning

for yourself. It's it's finding joy. You know, one of the things that gets talked about a lot in these Buddhist texts is you can't just find joy and pleasure in the fireworks that life gives you. Which are you know, weddings and babies being born, and you know, hooking up with the person that you always wanted to be with and seeing you know, the sunset. Those are explosive moments

that life gives you. But also being able to be excited about the feeling of washing your hands and of sipping on a cup of tea and just the breeze blowing on you. You know that that you have to be able to marvel at the life that we have just for the sheer reason that it's amazing that we even get to be alive, and to be able to be in awe of life on a daily basis is really important. And I profoundly believe that that like this life is amazing and it's for you know, we we don't.

We get used to things, We get used to technologies that are given to us, and we stopped being amazed by them. But technology is amazing, and our bodies are amazing, and the birds flying through the air is amazing, and we don't take enough time to actually realize those things. And so that that's what I work on the most, is trying to actually let myself be in awe of little things. And when you step back a lot of

cool stuff going on. It's uh, it's great to hear you talking about Buddhism and tick nott Han as you are framed in a zen background. Where are you I I'm actually in Indianapolis right now, in the basement of a Shriner's club where, um, we're having a show tonight. We're playing a place called the National in Indianapolis or on tour um. But yeah, I mean, these these things that I'm talking about are are things that are addressed in every major religion. Also, you know, I don't mean

to exclude it to Buddhism. It's it's things that you can find in Christianity, It's things that you can find in Judaism and Islam, and it's also things that you can find in in atheist thinkers too. You know, these these are not things that are exclusive to one faith or another. They are just things that I think, you know,

a lot of smart people have jointly realized over the years. Yeah, we've had we've actually interviewed to Buddhist teachers, uh so far for this UM and we're interviewing a guy coming up who's really fascinating. He's I don't know if you know who Victor Frankel is he wrote a book called Man Search for Meaning. It's very applical to what we're

talking about because Victor Frankel was in concentration camps. They killed his family, they killed his parents, and in there he came to the realization that the last human freedom he had was his ability to sort of choose his attitude and to choose what it meant. And he he formed a form of psychotherapy called logo therapy, which is all about making your own meaning. That there is no meaning in life that is um universal, It is your you know, you kind of have to make your own meetings.

So this is interesting that this sort of tie ties into that. And I was actually thinking earlier because I think a lot about that too, that sort of all the religions they're all sort of saying the same thing, um, which is to to give a hater a hug, right, yeah, turn the other cheek. The window dressing is different, but

the core is the same. Yep. So that that coveras is there anything you wanna you think it's important to what we're discussing that, uh, we haven't covered that, you want to say, No, not really, I don't think we covered some really interesting territory. I mean, I think my main thing that I would like to say is too that I don't think I have any of the answers to you know, I don't want to seem like I'm coming off like I know exactly how anyone should live

their life. And I'm sure there's a lot of people listening to this podcast who are from all walks of life, different faith backgrounds and stuff. And I used to perform at colleges and universities all over the country, which meant that when I was in college, I would be going to a lot of red states and perform. And I'm from San Francisco, so like that's from the other end

of the spectrum. And I was actually very challenged to uh communicate with people who grew up across the political aisle from me, who grew up in very religious households.

And the main thing that I came away with was feeling like we're divided so much as a culture, and there's so much opinion based media that's going on right now, and it's being driven by putting wedges between people and creating these false um flashpoints between different groups of people because that's what sells and that's what what drives clicks up. But everyone is trying to do good. You know, this world is not red or blue or black and white.

And if you're Christian, or if you're agnostic or atheist, you know we're all on the same team. That is. That's the last thing that I want to say. You know, perfect, That's a great way to end it. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. I know you've got a show to do in a little while, so um, and thanks thank Nils for me. Also please for for helping get this set up. Talk to guy all right, take care. Thanks for listening to the One you Feed.

You can find out more about Watsky and his work in our show notes at one you Feed dot net slash Watsky