[00:00:00] Hey everyone this is Lynn Vartan and you are listening to the A.P.E.X Hour on K91ɬÂþ Thunder 91. In this show you get more personal time with the guests who visit Southern Utah University from all over. Learning more about their stories and opinions beyond their presentation on stage. We will also give you some new music to listen to and hope to turn you on news and. You can find us here every Thursday at 3pm or on the Web at S U U S U U slash APACS but for now welcome to this week's show here on Thunder 91.1
Lynn Vartan: [00:00:46] OK. Welcome everyone. It's Thursday the A.P.E.X. Hour And welcome back to our listeners. I'm so happy to be here this week. We have been having such a great time with our guests and just to tell you a little bit about how he came to be on campus. This is the first of an annual collaboration that we've started. You know we have this incredible Southern Utah Museum of Art here in Cedar City. And we have a great organization. It's called The Tantor center and it's an institute that can also collaborate to house guests and has a series that has a theme each year and each semester that they feature and so we all kind of put our heads together and dreamed up this idea of an annual Artist in Residence program. So our guest today is our first inaugural hopefully annual guest and I know it's not going to be your last visit to Cedar City side like to welcome Chris Jordan welcome.
Chris Jordan: [00:01:44] Thank you Lin for having me on.
[00:01:46] What a pleasure it's been to explore your work. And I just should say right off the bat for people interested you can definitely find him online and really dig into some of the things that we're going to talk about. So to get going I'd love for you to just tell us a little bit about yourself as an artist. I mean we've been learning a lot but for our listeners or for people who may not be familiar with you or your work how did you come to be? And tell us a little about you.
[00:02:15] Ah well I'm a photographer and for maybe 20 going on 20 years now I've been looking into the issue of mass consumption. Right. So I'm the guy who takes photographs of giant piles of garbage.
[00:02:35] Yes. So where did that start. I mean I know we've talked a little bit about how Albatross which I'm excited to talk about came to be. But I mean were you the little kid that was looking into this kind of thing. I mean were you always did you have any idea that this would become your focus. Is there any inkling in the childhood years?
[00:02:56] If you had shown me a crystal ball when I was young and said you're going to be a guy who takes pictures of dead birds on a remote island in the Pacific whose bodies are filled with plastic. I would have been aghast and I would have said no your crystal ball is broken but it's actually been a really amazing journey. I've been interested in photography for a very long time ever since I was a kid and so I've been photographing I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of photographs I took before I found my way to doing something that was relevant. I connected with the world and when I first started taking pictures of giant piles of garbage it wasn't because I was interested in mass consumption or making like a social commentary. It was just because I thought they looked cool.
[00:03:49] Oh OK. Now how did the camera first find its way into your hands. I know sometimes photographers have a certain story of a moment or a camera that was a gift or what's your beginnings with the camera.
[00:04:03] Well my dad was a photographer and he was also a photographic collector so he had a pretty sophisticated eye for photographic art. And my mom was a watercolor painter. Oh wow I didn't realize that. And so my dad's whole interest in photography was all black and white. So he studied all the great masters and he had all their books and kind of taught me all about color and texture and form and the beauty of black and white photography and my mom her work is all about color. Yeah. And so she would draw her paintings with a really faint pencil just draw the outlines of things and then she would take the watercolor paper and soak it in the bathtub and put it on a table. And when you put a drop of paint onto the wet paper it would sort of spray out in this really magical way and she would paint like flowers and stuff and I remember like she would put a drop of blue paint and then a drop a purple paint next to each other and they would be like a nebula in the Hubble Space Telescope. They were just blend in this incredibly gorgeous way. So I fell in love with color. And so as a photographer I've always been a color photographer kind of trying to plumb the depths of magic and color. And for many years I photographed and I was just taking photographs of beautiful things. And I couldn't find my relevance. I couldn't find a subject that was beautiful because I just love so much the beauty of the photographic process and that carried some kind of social commentary and just by happenstance I started taking pictures of giant piles of garbage and found my way into this issue that has consumed my imagination for almost a couple of decades now.
[00:05:54] Wow. That the first moment are the first pile of garbage. Where was that?
[00:06:00] It was in the Port of Seattle. That's where I lived at the time. And this was back before 9/11 and so the port was open and all the gates of all the industrial yards are open and you just walk in there. Yeah. And it's such a bizarre place. I mean there's massive piles of shipping containers and train cars all lined up by the thousands in giant piles of broken glass and crushed cars. Just like this kind of awesome infrastructure of our mass consumption and it's simultaneously visually fascinating to behold. And it's also sort of like getting to go behind the Disneyland ride and see the scary machine that's running it all. It's like the infrastructure of this destructive force in our world.
[00:06:51] Pulling back the curtain and seeing something very frightening.
[00:06:54] Yeah exactly.
[00:06:55] Wow. And so if somebody wasn't familiar with your work or if you were describing your work and you weren't you. How would you describe your work to somebody else.
[00:07:08] Well they are very large scale photographs of huge piles of twisted metal huge piles of cell phones huge piles of broken glass and crushed cars and they're all in color and the color of all those things is actually really fascinating and strangely beautiful like a whole pile of old cell phones. There's a million different colors in there or a pile of trash. It's all of the supermarket aisle all of the bright colored potato chip bags in Minute Maid orange juice like they're trying to attract your attention in the supermarket. And so when you throw all that stuff in the garbage it's like looking at a Monet painting right. There's just this fantastic palette of color. And so I really love that juxtaposition of gorgeous impressionistic painterly color that you it's so beautiful you don't want to look away and then the actual subject that you're looking at is this horrifying kind of monster of our mass consumption that you can't bear to face. Right. And simultaneously we're sort of held in a trance facing this thing and it kind of stops us. And maybe in that moment a key turns in a lock somewhere inside us.
[00:08:40] Just going back to the history for a moment, do you think that your parents knew you were going to be an artist or photographer? Was that writing on the wall from the get go.
[00:08:50] Well you know I went to law school. Oh no I didn't know that. Yeah. I was afraid to be an artist. Really. That's what I wanted to do more than anything in the world is go to art school and I was afraid to take the risk of failing. And so I went to law school. And while I was in law school my dad sent me a new camera and it makes me feel a lot to remember it. It arrived for my birthday in October of the second year of law school. And I took a fall break. I took off ten days from law school, the University of Texas at Austin and I drove into into this part of the world into Southern Utah and went to the Escalante. I spent 10 days I explored Canyon land. And it was it was the most magical experience. It was a kind of awakening for me like for then from then on I've been a passionate photographer.
[00:09:53] Wow this is a bit of full circle that I had no idea that that Utah connection really held that significance. That's beautiful to hear, thank you for sharing that.
[00:10:00] That deeply transformational thing to be in the desert southwest for the first time and alone with a camera in the fall it snowed there was a dusting of snow and just the incredible clear air and that feeling of a billion years you know being there with those layers and layers of rock and ah- magical experience.
[00:10:22] Well and for somebody so interested in color. I mean they Utah color landscape is something that you really can't- I mean nothing compares. I mean all of the Reds all of the blues all of the Greens all of the whites and that contrast is really really striking.
[00:10:39] And since then I've come back almost every fall for how many years and explored the state parks and the National Parks craze and done some cross-country hiking and BLM land and some rafting and just really really love this part of the world.
[00:10:57] Oh that's great. And it's a great lesson. You know about fear that you mentioned. I mean you know being a little bit afraid of pursuing your passion or pursuing something that at some level on a very deep and in a very deep level. You knew you wanted them and that's a great message to our students. That's a great message really to anybody you know to embrace in that that trueness to oneself. So thank you for that lesson also.
[00:11:24] Yeah you know that the thing the only regret that I have is the the fear that I had about going to art school I didn't know that I had that fear. I wasn't consciously aware that I was making a decision out of fear. Right. So it was a fear that resided in in my unconscious. It was it was below my awareness. Interesting. And so for young people I wouldn't necessarily say you have to follow your passion. Haha.
[00:11:57] It's just to become aware of what you're afraid of and what might be running your life in the background out of fear. I mean you still get to go to law school you still get to go to business school or whatever path Iran but to just become aware of that fear and when you become aware of the fear then it's not in control of you anymore but then you get to choose it you have choices that you didn't even realize you had. And if I had become aware of that fear back then I might have decided you know what I'm going to just deal with that fear. Of course it's scary living your life as an adventure. Yeah. Course it's scary. Going to art school but I'm going to take the risk. All right. Or I'm going to be with that fear and just contain that fear and I'm going to go to law school and like but it would have been a choice that I got to make consciously and I wasn't aware of the fear.
[00:12:47] That's fascinating. And it goes into a little bit of what I'd love to talk about more when we get into the Albatros and some of your on the more recent work which is being opened to feel. And I think that's something that's been really it sounds like it's been really transformative that seems that that's something that's come up over and over again during our time together is the importance of being open to feeling and and to allow allowing that feeling in ourselves. I'd love to continue that conversation but it's already time for a musical break. I can't believe it. And I've been looking for some interesting music. This is. I know that you're we'll get into the musical thing later too because I happen to know now which is my guess is that you have a musical background. And one of the things that struck me in in Albatros in the film was was the incredible use of music and a bit of a fondness for both guitar and piano. So I have a guitarist for you listen to this is Fabiana Striffler and the piece is called Despertando de otro sueño. So waking from a dream if you will and we'll get started on that. This is K91ɬÂþ Thunder 91.1 Right. Well welcome back everyone. This is the A.P.E.X Hour I'm Lynn Vartan, I'm joined in the studio with Chris Jordan. Welcome back Chris. Thank you. Chris is our artist in resident amazing photographer and filmmaker. And we're going to get into starting to talk a little bit about that. But we were just chatting about a topic that both of us hold very near and dear to our hearts. And that is of course music. And you were just telling me if I don't have you mind sharing your story. We were sharing a love of mutual love and adoration for Herbie Hancock and also the great album. "Dis is da drum" which a lot of people don't know about. It's one of his- I mean and based on your meeting with him- It's one of the albums that many people don't know about or haven't heard. But for those who are particularly percussion minded you might want to check it out. Do you mind recanting the story of you meeting Herbie Hancock?
[00:18:58] Oh man. It was one of my shining moments. Well I've been a jazz pianist since I was a kid. Herbie is- that dude is just from another planet in terms of the depth and power and brilliance of his playing and I think he's one of the greatest artists in any medium in the history of humanity. Yeah a guy is just not even from this planet. And so I was at a conference and he was at the conference at the Getty Museum in L. A.
[00:19:28] So there was a break and we were all standing outside and I saw others Herbie standing over there and I'm like oh my god. Too shy to say anything fanboy so I just walked over and sort of was standing near him and he was talking to somebody yeah just steady year Herbie Hancock and he finished his conversation with whoever that was and he turned to me and he said what are you doing. And I said I'm standing near Herbie Hancock.
[00:19:56] That's a great response. Perfect. I love it.
[00:19:59] And I told him I've been a fan of his forever and that my favorite all time album of his is disses drum which is this. It's such an interesting offering by him. And that's one of the things I love about him so much is how much he evolves. Yeah he does a solo piano thing then he does a super gnarly electric funk and then works with singers and he's just always trying something new. Yeah and this the drum was like it was like hip hop rap and just the fattest unbelievably fat as possible grooves imaginable with that Herbie Hancock sophistication of harmony and. And there's something that he's tapping into in that album that is so primal. Yes. It's like when I listen to those songs I see African masks going by and like hieroglyphs yes. And he's he's just tapping into some really deep kind of primeval archetype for something that I just cannot get enough of. I've had that album. It's the top of my playlist. I listen to it for six months on repeat one time.
[00:21:19] Well it's a very unusual album, experimental I think is a good way to describe it. I mean in term of what you typically think of Herbie Hancock. And I think that it got a little bit of a backlash because people were a little shocked by it. But he told you it was one of his favorites.
[00:21:39] Yeah I told Herbie that's my favorite of his. And he said Yeah I think that's my favorite work of mine as well. It's like oh wow.
[00:21:46] I know it's really great. I mean if you have a chance to listen to it and want to open your ears you know, well while we're in sort of theme of openness, definitely check out Herbie Hancock. "Dis is da drum". It's really very very cool. Well I'd love to continue the discussion of music and particularly if you're using music in your film Albatross which I believe is 2017. Is that the correct date for the film?
[00:22:11] Actually was released last year. 2018.
[00:22:14] Okay great. There's so much to talk about in it. Some of us were so fortunate to be able to see it at a screening here on campus. But I also know that it's possible for other people to see it as well. But before we get into some of the use of music and some of the interesting techniques in filming and the Midway and all of these things can you tell us, for anybody who may not know, just a little bit of an overview about what that film is about.
[00:22:44] Albatross is a film about birds on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean whose bodies are filled with plastic. Right. And it started as a kind of horror story of a documentary film about an environmental tragedy. And when I met the live birds when I went to the island and was actually there with these huge magnificent creatures that are the albatrosses there are million albatrosses that live on this island. I fell in love with them. And they've been on that island for four million years and they've never had a predator. And so they have no fear of humans and they're as big as eagles like they're these huge magnificent spiritual sentient beings. And imagine being able to walk out into a field of 900,000 eagles and as you walk among them they don't run away and fly away. And if you sit on the ground they actually come toward us. Until pretty soon you're surrounded by a bunch of them that are just like- they'll come all the way up and their face is inches away from yours just curiously looking like "what are you?". Yeah. The most amazing experience. And so my film sort of walks the line between experiencing the horror of the tragedy that they're ingesting plastic and they're dying by the tens of thousands as a kind of reflection on our culture and the beauty and magnificence and grace and elegance of these amazing creatures. And so it kind of turned into a sad beautiful love story. Yeah and it's available for free. We put it on our website for free. So anyone who wants to watch it you can just go to the website albatrossthefilm.com and you can download it and own it or stream it for free. So anyone who hasn't seen it or heard of it you're invited to do that and I hope you love it.
[00:24:43] It is a transformative I mean to see it is quite transformative. I mean it it had a lot and it has a lasting impression on me and I know everybody who is there. The choice to make it available for free, I mean that is just so rare it's not something that you hear. I know you've you've referred to it as as a gift in a way. And as the Albatross as your teacher in a way also. And tell me a little bit about that decision to put it out there so freely.
[00:25:21] There were a few factors. One of them was it it felt to me like that. Well first of all I spent eight years going to the island going back and forth to the island and filming, then four years making the film. And that entire process was a life changing thing for me. It felt like a gift that came to me from wherever. And I wanted that experience just the spiritual experience of being with those creatures to pass through me in the cleanest and most transparent way possible. And to add the commercial element to make people pay just didn't feel right. And it feels to me like this is the time for each one of us to to do something radical. And by radical I don't mean violence in the streets type of radical it's just the word radical comes from the Greek word for roots. Like going back to our roots. What can I do that's more than just bringing canvas bags to the supermarket and you know like we know we have to go further than that. It's not enough to just say "when I go to a bar and order Martini I'm not using a plastic straw". Or like we're all called to something deeper right now. And so one thing that I decided I could do is give away as a gift economy offering, as a gift to the world, as a gesture of trust to the world, the film that I just worked for eight years on. And it carries with it a particular kind of energy that way. That was to me consistent with the experience of being with the birds on the island.
[00:27:08] Beautiful. Well thank you for sharing the gift to you as a gift to the world. That's really incredible. Rhythm is something that we just got off of talking about. I'd like to come back to you. And I know that in the intro to the film you talked a lot about how the rhythm of the film itself is quite unusual and that actually you were advised not to take the pacing or the rhythm of the tune if you will or the tempo of the tune if you will at the pace that you did. Can you talk about that a little bit and then we'll get into more of the musical choices.
[00:27:49] Yeah. Well I didn't go to film school and I'm still really don't think of myself as a filmmaker. And so when I started making this film then all of my friends who are filmmakers all sort of took me under their wing and said "Okay I'm going to give you documentary filmmaking 101". And the very first thing they always say is the rhythm has to be really fast. And they would speak about viewers as having a really low attention span. Like everybody has a YouTube attention span or not even YouTube. That was the past, now it's Instagram. And they would say your shots should be between two and four seconds. And they said make your point and move on. That just totally went against my instinct of like whenever I see a nature documentary and there's an incredible shot of a whale going by and they cut away from it. I'm like "dude slow down! Let me see that whale again. Let's do it in slow motion." Like I wish I could just stretch it out. And if we were scuba diving with whales you wouldn't look for two to four seconds at the whale and then be like ok I'm bored now I'm going to go get back on the boat. And it's the same thing if you could come with me to Midway Island. And we could go to where a baby albatross is hatching from its egg and literally put our faces so close to the nest that our nose is touching the edge of the nest. And there's a baby bird hatching from it's egg. You wouldn't want to speed up, you wouldn't be impatient to get somewhere else. You'd be like "oh my god this is the most amazing thing" you might just lie there and get comfortable and watch for hours. And so that's how I made my film. It's it's intentionally really slow. And there are some long shots where you just see a bird flying for the longest time. But the more you look, then you start to notice the way it's feathers are moving in this really graceful beautiful way and the way its wings sort of underlay it like a wave as it flies. And so the more you look the more you see.
[00:30:08] That's exactly the experience I mean you absolutely get that across. I mean I'm you know watching the baby hatch, I just wanted more. I mean I wanted to watch every single moment and not miss a thing and definitely would have sat there for time for hours. So that rhythm and that choice then begs the question from me about your musical choices in the in the film because the music is amazing. And some of it I think is performed by you, if I read the credits right. Can you tell us a little bit about that process because I know that there were there were some pre composed pieces and and then you're playing something so what was the process of the sound design in terms of the musical choices the timing. I mean there are some moments where the timing of the music is just so incredibly in sync with the movements of these birds so tell us about that.
[00:31:10] That was the most joyful part for me about filmmaking process was working with the music and cutting to the music. Yeah and what filmmakers told me is the standard way to work with music in a film is you cut your scene together without music. I'll just be like on the visual rhythm Oh interesting then you hire a musician to compose music to your picture. Right. And so you bring your almost completed picture in and the musician looks at it and you're like OK we need 17 seconds of of a building feeling, a growing feeling and then seven seconds of a climactic sound and then right on that shot we're going to cut to a sad sound that's going to fade over twenty two seconds.
[00:32:05] Right that's typical for film scoring and movie scoring and all that. Right.
[00:32:09] Yeah. And what I learned from talking to some of those musicians is that kind of music intentionally isn't shaped like real music. It sounds like music, it's notes played on musical instruments but it intentionally doesn't go anywhere right and it doesn't have the kind of melodic strength and structure form harmonic power of music. Because filmmakers don't want to use real music because it will pull focus away from the picture. And so what music that the standard use of music in is cinematically is to support the picture. And the derogatory term is to underline the picture, underscore the picture. People told me if I use real music if I use like Pat Metheny or Herbie Hancock or real music, that the footage won't stand up to it. And I just thought I think it will. Yeah I think you're right.
[00:33:20] And I just love the depth and the arc like music has an arc. Yes and cinematic Music so often to me just- there's a sort of fake feeling to it. So I decided what I was going to do is use all real music for the entire film and use every piece at its full length. Because it's like if you use the first three minutes of a Pat Metheny piece you can't just cut it. Now you've got to get to his solo and hear the whole solo like you just have to hear the whole thing. Exactly. So it was so much fun. But there's also a real challenge to choose a piece like Pat Metheny's "Are you going with me?" Which is seven and a half minutes and cut together this epically exciting scene of birds running off the beach and taking off out to sea for the first time, I had to use the full piece of music so if it's like cutting together music video.
[00:34:17] Yeah OK. OK.
[00:34:18] And so that's kind of what Albatross is, one way that I think of it, it's like 22 music videos all strung together into a film.
[00:34:27] Oh nice. I love hearing that. That's really cool. Now are these songs that you've always wanted to use or how did the choosing of those come to be? I mean are they favorites that you've had forever that you knew you wanted to use or a combination or you sort of had an idea like "oh this sounds like flying or sounds like water". How did how did the choosing of the pieces happen?
[00:34:52] Well that part was really funny. Something like eight of the pieces are in my top 10 all time favorite tripping mix. Oh really. So it's a whole bunch of my own favorite music that just happened to fit perfectly in my film.
[00:35:13] That's fantastic and true to self too which is amazing.
[00:35:16] I guess.
[00:35:17] I think so if they're your favorites that's cool you know and how amazing they work so well that's cool.
[00:35:24] And it's amazing how much difference it makes to try a different piece of music over the same footage.
[00:35:32] Oh right. Like there's this one scene where the birds wait through the night that there's one sitting on the nest and it waits through the night and I have all of this kind of trippy there's some time lapses. The moon with the clouds rushing by and the stars turning and I wanted just an echoey, magical, spiritual piece of music and I had a piece of guitar music in there. And the scene was almost working. And then I dropped Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and his voice just that sacredness in his voice was like oh my god instantly I knew that was the right one.
[00:36:06] That's perfect. And you I think you use your voice and in a little bit as well. Is that right?
[00:36:12] Yeah. I practice a form of Tibetan throat singing that was in there at one point.
[00:36:17] That's amazing. Well thank you for sharing all that. Now it's time for a little bit of music here and this is a recommendation from a friend of mine. So shout out to Sylvia if you're listening I'm totally playing it on the show. She just turned me on to Juana Molina and the song that we're going to hear is Paraguaya and this is the A.P.E.X Hour. OK. Welcome back everyone. So yeah that was just this really cool new artists that I've discovered. Well I actually don't know if they're new but new to me Juana Molina, that song was Paraguaya. So yeah check out really cool. Welcome back Chris Jordan. Thank you it's good to be back again.
[00:40:38] We we're talking about your film Albatross and I wanted to get into a couple of the key themes in it. To start and maybe, well neither are easy topics but perhaps maybe, I know it's a question that you get asked all the time because it's such a the film has such a powerful message about the damages of mass consumption particularly of plastic. I just can't iterate to our audience enough about how powerful it is and what a profound effect it has on the audience and continues to have on you. I mean even after the eight years that you spent with this film it still gains quiet emotional impact from you when you talk about it. And so the question immediately becomes I mean we are many of us are becoming more conscious about straws and about plastic silverware and these kinds of things, but I know you get asked all the time in the context of the work that you've done, what have you done in your life, what changes have you made, are you completely plastic free, what should we all do. Help us please you know and I know it's a question you get asked all the time and so I appreciate you entertaining the answer again.
[00:42:04] Well it's such interesting territory to kind of wade into. Right. Because if you step back from just one level and have a perspective on this whole conversation there's a whole paradigm that we're all in that is people talking about solutions, individual solutions, to global problems. So we look at a massive global plot problem like climate change and what are you personally doing. Well I ride my bike to work, well I drive a Prius or whatever thing. And we look at a giant global problem like hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic in the ocean. And activists tell us like what are you doing? "Well I don't use plastic bags." I've always sensed this strange disconnect between our individual behavior and the global problem. Right. And the disconnect is that there's an assumption built into that whole conversation, that if we each do these tiny little gestures like not using plastic straws when we go to a bar and order Martini that that will somehow lead to something bigger that solves the global problem.
[00:43:30] Right. You hear it all the time.
[00:43:32] And it's not happening. It doesn't work it isn't true. The global problems are getting worse and worse faster and faster and our solutions are not even at one hundredth of the scale of the problems. Right. But when we do those little gestures, we convince ourselves that we're doing something that we're doing enough and so here's how I think about it. I do all that stuff. But just because it's the right thing to do. And we all should. Everything we can think of, in all kinds of ways, not only about plastic. I don't not use plastic straws because it's going to make a difference to the global problem. I don't use plastic straws for the same reason that I pet my dog because I love my dog. And when I pet my dog I don't think I'm contributing to global love and transformation of the world. I know that's a private individual tiny local personal gesture that I'm making and that's all it is. And if we're going to solve the problems on the scale of the problems we have to do something more than make lots of individual, personal, tiny, local gestures. And we have to get out of this paradigm that we're stuck in thinking that that's all there is to do. There's so much more to do to solve global climate change than just riding your bike. And there's a way you can see that entire conversation around individual solutions as being a kind of defense mechanism. Because we can get focused on something like plastic straws and everybody's talking about plastic straws and think oh I'm an environmentalist and everyone's wagging their fingers at each other about plastic straws as if plastic straws are the problem. Right. What we aren't talking about is the 747 and the mill massive military spending and the jeeps and the BMW and the motorcycles and the leaf blowers and the new computers and the phones and the airports and the shopping malls and the freeways and the apartment buildings that are being built like. That's the problem. The problem is not plastic straws. We could eliminate all plastic straws on Earth and it really honestly wouldn't make a smidge of a difference to the real problem. But if we can all talk about plastic straws and think we're accomplishing something and think that we're doing something good and think that we're environmentalists. That to me is sort of like taking a shot of morphine together. We got to get out of that defense mechanism and look honestly at the scale of the problems and start to think how can we as a people, we as humanity address those problems at the scale of the problems? Right. And then what's the role that each one of us has to play because we're each so small? And I believe that the answer lies in focusing not on those individual problems out there but on focusing in our mind, in the morphic field of human consciousness. That's where the problem. That's the root. That is the headwaters of all of the biggest problems in the world is in human culture. It's in our consciousness and that's the thing that needs to change and heal before we have the motivation or the collective energy to look out into the world and make the changes out there that we know need to be made.
[00:47:36] I love the way that you described that because I think it clarifies a little bit the information that we get and we hear in this whole thing about the individual versus the bigger problem. That's a good good segue for me into the next topic which is for you it seems that you really found some some space or some depth or some way to access that level of consciousness through the power of the combined forces of grief and love. And I mean maybe you can you can say if that's if that's true or not or if that's how it's resonated for you but that's sort of a little bit of what I've felt from hearing you speak. Would you say that that's the case or is there something else going on?
[00:48:31] Very much so. And actually there's one little piece that I want to add on to the last bit of our conversation and that is there are hundreds of thousands or even millions of dedicated activists out there who are working at every level solve these problems. And I don't want to put down any of that kind of work that the people who are passing legislation to ban plastic bags and and going and talking to restaurants and convincing them not to use plastic straws like it's all good. And it's just that it's not enough.
[00:49:08] And I think you were clear about that because like you were saying you do all those things you make the personal choice to do that. We all should be doing all these things. But there's a bigger part of that conversation. There's a there's a much bigger part of what's going on that we need to wake up to.
[00:49:24] Yeah and that's why I feel like my channel that I'm most interested in is about shifting consciousness. And so then the question is What does it mean to shift consciousness? What are we trying to shift toward? And it isn't a kind of metaphysical, magical thing at all it's simply too remember what we have forgotten. We remember our humanity like to reconnect with the deepest part of our humanity. That we're slowly losing touch with as we get more and more into our head and more and more even projecting consciousness out of our bodies now into our electronic devices and out into the Internet and starting to talk about AI that's going to rule the world in some kind of crazy way. It's like let's bring our agency and our locus of our consciousness back to where it belongs which is inside our heart and remember that we're mammals and that we feel something to feel our sadness for all that is being lost in the world. And to use sadness I mean sadness can be this incredibly powerful doorway back to love because when we feel sad for the elephants being killed for their tusks or for birds filled with plastic. The reason we feel that sadness because we love those things. And so when we feel that sadness then that's like a doorway home to the love that we all are made of. The love that we all have inside of us for the miracle that we're all a part of the incomprehensibly beautiful and complex living world that we are all a part of. And I believe that if humanity could remember this together and feel not only talk about but really feel our love for each other and for all of life then it would change our politics. It would change everything it would and it would make those solutions that now seem so difficult ,it would make them all seem easy. We Would have new choices that we don't even realize we have now we could change our institutions. We could adopt a culture of generosity and love between each other and for the environment as well and and really step into a whole new world together.
[00:52:03] I love it. Thank you for sharing that I can't wait for those days. I look forward to them.
[00:52:09] And there's nothing standing in the way it could be tomorrow. That we collectively decide, it could be right now that we collectively decide it's just time to it's just time to remember that we love each other.
[00:52:21] Yeah well hear hear to that. Unbelievably we're running out of time I can't believe it. I have two fun questions for you. I had more music to share with you but we'll wait for your next visit for that. But I have two questions for you that are sort of are two favorites. One is a question that I heard from someone that I just think it's just such a fine question. If you met the version of yourself from let's say 10 years ago in a bar fight who would win?
[00:53:00] Ooh wow I never followed up before. You know it's very interesting. First I'd be like dude how'd you get in that time machine.
[00:53:10] Share the technology!
[00:53:15] I think I think I could take him. He was stronger than I am now but I think I value life a little more a little more a little more focused. I think I could probably take him down. I love it. I can see that I'd be like dude let's have a beer and figure out how we both got here together.
[00:53:35] Right. That is fantastic. Well thank you for that. And then the last question that I love to ask and this is it can be anything and it's kind of a loose question. It's what's turning you on this week and it could be we've had everything from a TV show, to a podcast, to a book that you're reading or a poem or a music or it could be anything. And the idea is for our listeners to learn something you know completely personalized and maybe sort of off you know in your realm of things. But Chris Jordan what is turning you on this week? Apart from 91ɬÂþ and your incredible stay with us.
[00:54:18] Well I was just about to say there's actually something about 91ɬÂþ that you guys might not see. That I see really clearly because I get to visit tons of colleges and universities around the country all the time. There's a conversation a kind of academic conversation going on in just about every other school I visited that is really toxic. Oh OK. There's a ton of anger between students and the faculty. Students hate the faculty because they think is the faculty caused the the great problem of that of our world. Students are all angry at each other. Everybody feels this terrible competition. There's this kind of toxic darkness that permeates entire universities all the way to the top of the best Ivy League schools. Where everybody's offended with everybody else and everyone's like staking out their territory, and there's this giant power struggle going on.
[00:55:23] The curse of the ivory tower.
[00:55:26] Not only in the ivory tower schools like schools everywhere. Where everyone's walking on eggshells trying to use the right pronouns and use the wrong pronoun somebody slams their laptop shut and storms out the door and goes complains to the dean. Right. And and it's a really important conversation to be having around race and gender and an identity. Incredibly important stuff. It's like cutting edge cultural evolution going on there. But there's no healing happening. It's just a lot of toxicity and I don't see that here at the school. Great. Like that's the thing that turns me on is walk around this campus and see everybody getting along and learning. And some of the schools that I visited there's not very much learning like everybody so interested in offering their opinion right. Telling everybody their own viewpoint that there's not a lot of curiosity like everybody's out there saying here's who I am this is what my identity is, this is my gender. Deal with it. And then nobody is saying "who are you?". Yeah like looking over with wide eyes at somebody who's different than them saying like "tell me what what you believe in" Well I'm thrilled that you're seeing that here. Great.
[00:56:45] I really love the vibe here so I hope I get to come back.
[00:56:49] Well we hope to have you back and go 91ɬÂþ. Well that's a great note for us to close on and so I'd like to thank my guest. Thank you Chris so much for spending the hour with me I really appreciate it. Can't wait for next time.
[00:57:01] Oh you're so welcome. Thanks for having me on.
[00:57:03] All right that's it for today. We'll see you next time.
[00:57:08] Thanks so much for listening to the A.P.E.X. Hour here on K91ɬÂþ Thunder 91.1 Come find us again next Thursday at 3pm for more conversations with the visiting guests at Southern Utah University and new music to discover for your next playlist. And in the meantime we would love to see you at our events on campus. Find out more check out suu.edu/apex. Until next week this Lynn Vartan saying goodbye from the A.P.E.X Hour here on Thunder 91.1