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What if we could force people to dream about us? · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: OK, well, we have a really special episode today because
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: we have with us Kate Berlant. And Kate is an
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Emmy nominated comedian, actress and writer. She recently concluded her
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: fourth sold out run of Kate, her one woman off
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Broadway play directed by Bo Burnham to a rapturous response.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Her comedy special Cinnamon in the Wind, also directed by
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Bo Burnham, is now streaming on Hulu. And in addition,
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: her A24 Peacock sketch comedy special, Would It Kill You
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: to Laugh?, created with her collaborator John Early, has been
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: nominated for both a Critics' Choice and Primetime Emmy Award.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Kate's film credits include Christopher Borgli's Dream Scenario, Olivia Wilde's
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Don't Worry Darling, and Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: in Hollywood. And we have brought Kate on the show
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: today to talk about Dream Scenario, which is a film that,
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: of course, everyone in my world immediately told me I
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: had to watch. And we've all watched it and we
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: loved it. And it's a very Jungian film. I think
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: it's also a very fun film. So we are delighted
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: to have you here, Kate, to talk about this film
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: and explore other Jungian ideas with us today.
• 1:59
  Speaker 5: Thank you for having me. I've already said this off air,
• 2:01
  Speaker 5: but I'm a huge fan and genuinely starstruck to see
• 2:05
  Speaker 5: you all three before me. So thank you for having me.
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: And I'm in Jungian analysis now. I broke up with
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: my old therapist very lovingly and respectfully. So yeah, I
• 2:15
  Speaker 5: just so appreciate your work.
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: Great.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: And so how are you finding Jungian analysis?
• 2:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I sort of religiously was keeping a
• 2:23
  Speaker 5: dream diary for about three years. And then I sort
• 2:26
  Speaker 5: of have fallen off in the last eight months, but
• 2:29
  Speaker 5: I'm allowing myself to do that and go through this,
• 2:30
  Speaker 5: you know, and it's okay to be cyclical with, I mean,
• 2:34
  Speaker 5: I guess everything, but that's been so illuminating and helpful
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: and yeah, just kind of exploring active imagination and yeah,
• 2:43
  Speaker 5: just this, you know, living an archetypal life and all
• 2:47
  Speaker 5: of that. It's just been very helpful for me. Shout
• 2:49
  Speaker 5: out to James Hollis too.
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah. Yes.
• 2:52
  Speaker 5: Who I assume listens. Yeah. Every six months I wake
• 2:56
  Speaker 5: up in a cold sweat and I'm like, I need
• 2:57
  Speaker 5: to write a letter to James Hollis to say thank you.
• 2:59
  Speaker 5: And I never do. And I'm going to do it.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: You just, you just did.
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: I just did.
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 3:05
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Make sure he hears.
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: So I'm curious since you've been interested in dreams for
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: a while, like when this project came up dream scenario,
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: you know, was that, was it especially interesting? Did it
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: provoke a lot of curiosity on your part?
• 3:21
  Speaker 5: Well, I feel the need to also just clarify for
• 3:23
  Speaker 5: any listener who hasn't seen it. I've got about one
• 3:26
  Speaker 5: scene in the film, so I just want to be clear.
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: So I was very excited by the film. Chris Borgli
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: is such a fascinating filmmaker, and I really loved his
• 3:36
  Speaker 5: short films, which did you happen to see Sick of Myself?
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: It's his feature that he did right before this. that
• 3:42
  Speaker 5: I think you would be very intrigued by as well.
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: And his comedy is so psychological and, you know, has
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: these elements of absurdity, but they're always grounded in this
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: deep sincerity and this sort of like internal obsession with behavior.
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: And I just really love his work. This, I mean,
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: I was also so thrilled for him that this is,
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: he got Nicolas Cage, you know, a huge movie star.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: And I love I love Nicolas Cage. And it's it's
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: funny with this film because Nicolas Cage is such an archetype.
• 4:17
  Speaker 5: Like already he's already kind of have been dreaming about
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: him our whole lives because he's in these movies that
• 4:22
  Speaker 5: have really iconic culture for so long.
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 4:26
  Speaker 5: So that was really interesting to me and. Yeah, the
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: performances in the movie are so great. And I was
• 4:32
  Speaker 5: just really impressed. And also, I mean, he, you know,
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: he wrote it, directed it, and edited it, which is
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: totally obsessive and impressive. So he pulled it off. And
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: it was so fun. It was like very easy and
• 4:43
  Speaker 5: breezy on set.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Well, why don't you just tell us the premise of
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: the movie for people who haven't seen it?
• 4:49
  Speaker 5: Okay, great. my instant panic. I haven't seen it in
• 4:52
  Speaker 5: a second, but yeah, I love it. Um, you can
• 4:54
  Speaker 5: fill in, it might be fresher for you. I'm just
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: supposed to be the actress. It just kind of comes
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: in and adds an anecdote. Um, so correct me if
• 5:03
  Speaker 5: I'm wrong, but, um, so Nicholas Cage plays this kind
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: of every man character, right. Who's a professor and, you know,
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: living this sort of suburban ask like life. And, um,
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: what happens is that people start dreaming about him. He
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: starts to be this persistent figure in dreams and it
• 5:28
  Speaker 5: starts out, it begins with his.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: It starts with his youngest daughter.
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: Oh, right, of course, yeah. And there's like this collective
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: experience that sweeps the nation, I guess the world, and
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: he becomes this celebrity. And what of course then happens
• 5:47
  Speaker 5: is you know, he becomes this kind of living God
• 5:49
  Speaker 5: in a way and he's kind of getting high on
• 5:52
  Speaker 5: his own supply on the celebrity and suddenly, oh my God,
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: is he going to be able to sleep with younger
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: women and is he going to make money off being
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: perhaps attached to some sort of brand? And then, of course,
• 6:03
  Speaker 5: he has to be totally cannibalized and destroyed and turned
• 6:06
  Speaker 5: into a monster and he experiences this like fall from
• 6:11
  Speaker 5: grace from this kind of surreal celebrity.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: I think that was perfect. Ish.
• 6:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: So it picks up on some really current themes like,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: you know, there's a way that going viral in dreams
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: is kind of an analogy for going viral on social
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: media and this kind of very superficial kind of influencer culture.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: By the way, I just want to say that we've
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: had many listeners report to us that we appear in
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: their dreams. And so that term... That term that's used
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: in the film, dreamfluencer, I think we need to claim that. Well,
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: there you are. Hashtag dreamfluencer.
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: Where's the merch? Maybe we're nightmare images. After all, that
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: happened in Dream Scenario.
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: That would be so funny to dream about. It's so literal.
• 7:09
  Speaker 5: It's kind of embarrassing when your dreams are so literal.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: They're never really literal, though.
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: Of course. Of course. When they feel it, you're like, Oh,
• 7:17
  Speaker 5: of course. Like my dad handed me a key and
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: I couldn't find where it went.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: I have to tell you, Kate, we love those dreams, right?
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Cause they're like big softballs.
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: No, they're, they're helpful. Yeah. They're helpful.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: But it also picks up on these deeper themes too.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: And also your life, Kate, I imagine just as a celebrity,
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: as your face is, enters into, enters into the collective and, um,
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: my understanding is that a lot of celebrities also have
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: that experience of not being able to go out in
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: public and have any sense of privacy. This, this, um,
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: destruction of, of private life and how, how frightening that
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: can be. I guess people think it's going to be exciting,
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: but how frightening it can be.
• 8:06
  Speaker 5: So I'll claw my way to, to that. Um, yeah, I,
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: but I, I understand what you're saying in terms of,
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: and I think, you mentioned social media and of course
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: this kind of what it means now to be alive
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: is that even non-actors are used to kind of imaging
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: themselves and narrativizing their lives and kind of performing for
• 8:25
  Speaker 5: social media. So we live in this world now where
• 8:29
  Speaker 5: even non-actors are sort of forced to perform for social
• 8:31
  Speaker 5: media or it's become naturalized to kind of be constantly
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: sharing yourself. And I had that experience just the other day.
• 8:37
  Speaker 5: I was at the the grocery store. I almost called
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: it the market. I've often made fun of for calling
• 8:44
  Speaker 5: grocery store the market, like it's the most bourgeois thing
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: you can possibly, to be like, I was at the market,
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: Whole Foods. But I do say that. I think I
• 8:52
  Speaker 5: inherited that from my mother. But I saw this guy who, like,
• 8:57
  Speaker 5: I had seen recipes he had posted, you know, just
• 8:59
  Speaker 5: this kind of, like, the endless scrolling that you do.
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: And I was like, oh, it's him. You know, and I...
• 9:04
  Speaker 5: That is to say, like, the nature of celebrity has
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: changed so wildly. And I feel... I occupy this very
• 9:11
  Speaker 5: nice place where I... am not famous with a capital F,
• 9:16
  Speaker 5: but I'm, but people usually when they know me, it's
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: because they like my work. It's not because they hate me. I,
• 9:22
  Speaker 5: when I was a child, I used to sort of
• 9:24
  Speaker 5: dream of fame and this like, you know, you want
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: to be like hugely famous. And now truly it's a curse.
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: It's like, it takes so much more than it gives.
• 9:34
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's just like this real sort of nightmare.
• 9:37
  Speaker 5: And so that being said, I'll, you know, try it.
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: But I think that I feel lucky. I'm in the
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: good zone. Like I said, people don't know me because
• 9:47
  Speaker 5: they hate me.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's a really interesting point.
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  Speaker 5: I feel like really famous people, that's, yeah.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: That if a certain level of fame just attracts almost
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: sometimes people that just kind of want want to hate
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: you or want to take you down or something like that.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: And of course that happens in the movie where he,
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: his fame brings this unwanted attention. You know, there's a, um,
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: a psychiatrically ill person who breaks into his house in the.
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: But he buys into the whole fame opportunity there. There's
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: a way that he reminds me of Icarus and he
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: flies too high and he gets burned. And I wondered
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: about that in the film of his delight in his
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: sudden fame and accolades and being the center of attention
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: and how and if You know, there was an effect
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: to that, that then the images in people's dreams turned negative,
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: analogous to Icarus' fall from the sky. Uh, so there
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: is a whole through line about fame.
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: Certainly. And even like the, one of the funniest things
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: to me is his, you know, his desire to be
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: invited to this very exclusive dinner, like, you know, this,
• 11:09
  Speaker 5: like this professor who were, and like, and just, and,
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: and that is like so human and so familiar. And
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: then of course, kind of like finally you get there
• 11:18
  Speaker 5: and then it's like your presence actually is this huge
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: causes this rupture. I think it's like fame, prestige. It's
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: like even among chimps, right? Or it's like the hierarchical
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: structure is so pervasive. I think that's the word that
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: is used that's really interesting. It's prestige. Even animals are
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: vying for that and aware of that. And he starts
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: to get it. And then, of course, it's so funny
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: because he's like, well, I want to channel that into
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: my my academic work and get people excited about my book.
• 11:49
  Speaker 5: And it's like, of course not. You know, maybe your
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: image will be used for a Sprite ad if you're lucky.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: Right. Right.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: He's naive. I mean, he is really kind of a,
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: he is kind of a man child. And in that
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: way is kind of being a savage by this world
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: that he did not choose to be thrust into.
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: Well, I think the other analogy is he's a zebra. Yeah.
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: And the character he plays is an evolutionary biologist. Is
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: that right? And so he's talking about how the stripes
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: on zebras don't camouflage them against the environment, but they
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: camouflage them against predators because a predator or a lion
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: will seize all these stripes and can't identify an individual
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: zebra to pounce on. And so zebras only get into
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: trouble when they stick their necks out, which is exactly
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: what that character does.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: Foreshadowing that one of the students says, unless you want
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: to mate.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: And then you kind of want to stick out with
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: your mating dance, and then that foreshadows his... Hilarious, unbelievably
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: tragic attempt at a mating dance, which.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: Is just so painful to watch.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: So painful.
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: Pretty iconic scene.
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Deliciously cringy. You know, so some of the things I
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: was thinking about, and this relates to the zebras, is
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: there are these two human needs. We both desperately need
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: to feel like we fit in and belong. And we
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: want that prestige. We want to stand out. And I
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: think the film kind of looks at both of those desires.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: And his name is Paul. And, you know, he desperately
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: wants to stand out. There's this thing about, you know,
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: he has been conducting, he conducted this, he had these
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: ideas in graduate school, but he never really did anything
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: with them. And then this other kind of colleague has
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: gone ahead and done all this research, and she's getting
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: it published in Nature. And, you know, one of the
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: things is he wants to be famous without having done
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: the work. He's had the ideas. He says, oh, I
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: have a book, but he hasn't ever written anything. So
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: I think it's like.
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: It's like I wrote it, right? Or he says something
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: like that. Like, well, I had the idea.
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: Right, right.
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: Essentially published.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: Right, right. So there's the sense that, you know, hey,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: if you're going to stand out, you'd better do the work.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Because otherwise you're just standing out for something really kind
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: of silly and fatuous and you can be savaged with it.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: He wants evidence that he is creative and talented. Mm-hmm.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: And he wants that evidence to be concrete in the world.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: But he is legitimately stolen from.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: In the last scene where she coins a term.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: That he had invented, which was substantive and substantive enough
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: to forward the career of the competitor. But because he
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: had not laid claim to that in a way that
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: the evidence of his intelligence could be linked to him,
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: that then it becomes an object that can be taken
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: by another person. So there's a danger in hiding because
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: when we hide, there's a way in which the public
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: does not know that we have ownership of our own creativity.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: Or as Robert Bly said, your gold, showing your gold.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: So Nicolas Cage, who might have had some gold in
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: his personality, fails to share his gold or to let
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: anyone see his gold, which brings up that other question
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: of who was he? such that bringing his gold forward
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: was either so shameful or so frightening. And I think
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: like a lot of us in the world, having anyone
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: see our gold, psychological gold, and subjecting it to other
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: people's opinions, other people's desires to monetize it or to
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: change it in one way or another, can be very frightening.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: And we can be extremely ambivalent about that.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Well, also because when we show our gold, we have
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: kind of a responsibility to it that might really make
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: demands on us. I mean, hypothetically, if Paul had shown
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: his gold and tried to write about this, he might
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: have really had to harness his psychic energy in service
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: to doing this research. Instead, you get the feeling he's
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: kind of coasted. He hasn't really had to put a
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: lot of effort in. He sort of, you get the
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: feeling he teaches the same class year after year. So
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: there's a way that he maybe was reluctant to let
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: his ideas make a demand on him. And he just
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: wanted the payoff. You know, he just wanted the quick
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: connection that he was looking for from your character, Kate, of,
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: you know, hey, you guys are going to set me
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: up with a publisher, right? And you're like, no, how
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: about a Sprite commercial? Yeah.
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: I love that. So this is something I was truly
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: kind of talking about last night. You're talking about the
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: weight of that gold also in the psyche, which I
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: know you've mentioned before on the show, but just when
• 17:06
  Speaker 5: you fail to do that for whatever reason, yeah, how
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: distorting that can be to your life and how painful.
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: And von Franz takes something forward, which is also in
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: the Gnostic Gospels from Nag Hammadi, that if we bring
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: what is in us forward, that there is a kind
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: of blessing. But if we fail to bring what is
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: inside of us forward, it becomes a poison.
• 17:34
  Speaker 5: I love that.
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah. The talent will hurt us if we don't give
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: it breathing room, if we don't let it come to
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: life at some point. So I'd like to personalize this
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: for a certain moment. You're a talented person. You're funny.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: You're creative. You had to make that decision that your
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: talent is talking to you and pressing on you as
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: a young person. How did you navigate that decision of
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: when you would let other people see your gold and
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: when you felt that you needed to hide it until
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: a certain point?
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: I think I started very young, which is deeply helpful.
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: I did stand up for the first time when I
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: was 17. Wow. I mean, I had always been the
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: class clown and I always felt very much from when
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: I was extremely young, like I want to be an actor.
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: And I just, that was my, the way I moved
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: through the world was just being a clown and a ham.
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: And so that's, my identity was so firmly formed around that.
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: For better or for worse. And so I think that
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: really served me because also just the pain tolerance. I mean,
• 18:46
  Speaker 5: when I think about it now, I'm like, How did.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: I do that?
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: I had to get a fake ID to go do
• 18:51
  Speaker 5: open mics, like the Laugh Factory on Sunset Boulevard at 5.30
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: in the afternoon on Tuesdays. And I was the youngest
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: by far. It was mostly men. It was all men.
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: And I somehow was able to force myself into that.
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: My best friend, Sammy Birch, was by my side waiting
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: for me, which really helped. And so I had that support,
• 19:16
  Speaker 5: but I don't think I could have. I think so
• 19:19
  Speaker 5: often when people wait longer and their identities or egos
• 19:22
  Speaker 5: are more formed or something, then it just becomes far
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: too terrifying. And so because I started so young.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: You started before you evaluated the different consequences. Totally. You
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: were already leaping off the cliff, like the tarot card
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: of the fool kind of.
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you have to be. And so I sort of
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: did that almost like self-hypnosis of just like, this is
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: what I'm going to do. And this is, I'm deciding
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: that this is who I'm going to be. And this
• 19:49
  Speaker 5: is going to be what my goal is. life is about.
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: And so my father's a visual artist. I can't pretend
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: it's not like, well, my parents were locksmiths and they
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: told me, don't you dream of Hollywood little girl. You know,
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: it's like I grew up in a house in which,
• 20:02
  Speaker 5: you know, my dad, well, you know, this was made
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: available to me, this idea of like, oh, you can
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: be an artist and you can, you know, but- We.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: Have a personality that's in the front of the house,
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: that's right there in the proscenium of the stage. But
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: then we have the personality that's in stage left behind
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: the curtain. I'm wondering if that other side of you,
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: the other voice in you is coming out in other ways,
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: for instance, perhaps in your writing or in other dimensions
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: of your creative life that isn't the 17-year-old girl who's
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: the vaudevillian out there in the front.
• 20:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think, I mean, the show that I have
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: been doing, which is called Kate, is sort of this,
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: all my work tends to, you know, it's this idea
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: like you're doomed to make the same painting over and
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: over again or like the same movie over and over again.
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: And so I kind of can't get away from like,
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: oh yeah, I'm sort of always, my work is sort
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: of always about performance or about the nature of the
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: performing self or these sort of like liminal, liminoid, you know,
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: like the self is that sort of, creature in my
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: own there's always a sort of like meta element that
• 21:11
  Speaker 5: I can't get away from and this show because my
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: stand-up is also highly improvised this show was my attempt
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: to which was it was a huge personal challenge like
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: I'm actually going to try to write something and that
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: was kind of this there was a lot of fear
• 21:24
  Speaker 5: going into that like of court of like like it
• 21:27
  Speaker 5: was like unfamiliar technology of the self for me to
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: like try to write and kind of adhere to some
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: kind of Aristotelian logic, like, okay, what if I tried
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: to write a story where something happened? And then of
• 21:39
  Speaker 5: course I ended up, well, I ended up writing the
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: show that is sort of about myself, but also not
• 21:44
  Speaker 5: about myself in this kind of, I think because standup
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: is such a, is seen as a sort of confession,
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: you know, and this performance of confession, I've always resisted that.
• 21:55
  Speaker 5: And my standup has always like kind of not, has
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: always not been about myself, but I've also always felt
• 22:01
  Speaker 5: that performance is just inherently so vulnerable to you up there,
• 22:04
  Speaker 5: whether or not you're talking about your childhood, like it's
• 22:07
  Speaker 5: still you, it's still the material of your psyche and life.
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: Like the things that you create and fantasize are still
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: coming out of you.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, completely.
• 22:17
  Speaker 5: So I've always kind of been almost like baffled. There
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: is this, there's this real cultural, particularly now a consistence
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: on authenticity and truth and like revealing your trauma in
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: this very cogent, straightforward way.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: But even that's a narrative, right?
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: Yes, of course. So I'm like, well, it's all, and
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: this idea of like the sort of person on stage
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: is like bearing their heart to you. And it's like, well,
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: they're in a costume. They decided what to wear. You know,
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: it's like the body on stage is always this performance,
• 22:48
  Speaker 5: even when it's, you know, doing this. And I've always
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: been fascinated by that performance of like the stripped down truth.
• 22:55
  Speaker 5: Like that's always seemed so strange to me and kind of,
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: Not that there isn't a way to be authentic on,
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: like I've never under, like I've always used artifice. There
• 23:05
  Speaker 5: was something that I remember reading when I was 18
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: that really helped me, which was, I think it was,
• 23:13
  Speaker 5: and I've been trying to find this. Someone maybe can
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: find it for me. It's like Carl Dreyer, the filmmaker.
• 23:17
  Speaker 5: He was writing about the making of Ordette or he
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: was right. And he said something about using artifice to
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: strip artifice from artifice. Which like, and that really clicked
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: for me. And I was like, oh, that's exactly what
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: I find funny. That's like my, that's what I do.
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: Or that's what I relate to. And so, yeah, artifice
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: has always, for me, been the way in because that
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: is what life actually, that's more real than reality.
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: But it's also the symbolic because the artifice is the
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: artifact and the artifact is some kind of a representative
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: object that is indirectly or symbolically related to a larger reality.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it reveals even while it conceals.
• 24:08
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: Like every symbol.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: So the performance is a symbol of something greater, even
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: though what is visible, the art, is just the gate.
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: And this kind of idea of like the mask, like,
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: you know, there's this idea of, oh, the performer wearing
• 24:24
  Speaker 5: the mask and then the place where you see the
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: skin of the actor and then you're aware of that slippage.
• 24:31
  Speaker 5: And so that kind of like slippage has always been
• 24:33
  Speaker 5: to me what's interesting or just where I go and
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: like what I kind of can't get away from.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: And why people love when like Saturday Night Live, people
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: are doing a skit and then somebody just laughs uncontrollably.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: Like the audience just howls to see the slip.
• 24:50
  Speaker 5: And even perhaps more fascinating, when the laughter is fake.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: Ah, the artifice of the artifice.
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:58
  Speaker 5: Or when it's kind of like, yeah, yeah. I mean,
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: it's a lot.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: So swinging back to dream scenario and these parallel processes,
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: which is why I had brought that up. Because I
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: think that what's happening there, what's happening in your life perhaps,
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: what's happening in everyone's life, which has to do with
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: public and private life. And how.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: We are so massively affected when the collective turns this
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: enormous eye of Sauron onto us and the voltage that
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: that evokes in the individual's psyche, let alone the ramifications
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: of how other people will treat us. And I was
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: thinking about the idea of anonymity. So anonymity is to
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: not have a name versus to be nominative, which is
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: when you have a name. And in ancient Egypt, in
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: their mythology, to have the name of someone is to
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: be able to command their soul. So when we can
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: walk down the street and no one knows our name,
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: there's a way in which our power still belongs to us.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: But as people found this man's name, his power and
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: virtue began to leave him, and he changed and began
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: to be under the control and the weird sway of
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: other people. Somehow, if that's done carefully, something good can happen.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: Isis steals the name of the sun so that she
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: can get the secretive resurrection to resurrect Osiris. But here,
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: his name has been stolen by some force, forced out
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: of him that he does not understand and is totally
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: indifferent to him and he is subject to, which also
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: not only is part of that Egyptian piece, but leans
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: into the idea of Job. The gods are playing dice
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: and you're on the table. So I'm just wondering about that.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: I'm wondering about how our name can be co-opted and
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: then we are controlled. And I wonder about the idea
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: of how we orient to forces that are so much
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: larger than us that we cannot control.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Well, there's something here too, I think, about the way
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: that the character, Nicolas Cage's character, becomes identified with people's
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: projections of him. And of course, that can absolutely happen
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: if we're famous too. People project stuff on famous people
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: and you run a great risk when you become identified
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: with what gets projected on you. So in the very
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: first opening scene, one of the other fun things about
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: this film is that there's so many dreams that are
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: depicted Which is always great, and they do a wonderful
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: job with it, too. Someday I want us to do
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: an episode on our favorite TV and film dreams, but
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: for another time. But anyway, the film opens with this
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: dream of his youngest daughter in which she is in
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: distress and he does nothing. He just keeps raking the leaves.
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: And that is a theme in the beginning that he,
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: he keeps on appearing in people's dreams and not doing anything.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: And he says to his daughter, that's not how you
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: see me. Right. Remember the time that I, you, you
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: were drowning and how fast I ran. And, and it,
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: you know, it's sort of like you can hear the
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: false note right from the beginning and, that he assumes
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: that what is depicted in his daughter's dream is somehow
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: representative of how she sees him or even of who
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: he actually is. And we always have to try to
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: make sure that we keep that space between how other
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: people see us and what they project on us and
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: who we really are.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: So I'm thinking about projective identification, which, of course, the
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: erotic scene is all about. Mm-hmm. And in projective identification,
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: not only do people project things on us, which can
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: happen without any kind of relationship. People see your films
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: and they see pictures of you and they have whatever
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: they want to project. But because they're not talking to you,
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: you may or may not have any awareness or effect
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: on that. But if you're actually in a relationship with somebody,
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: there's a way in which they want to push their
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: projection into you and then really manhandle you.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Well, and that happens several times in the film.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: That's exactly what I was saying. And so wonderfully with
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: that erotic scene. And I really loved the way that
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: actress did her work.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was great.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: Great it was amazing because she's great yes so you're
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: in that scene and that's the scene you're also in
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: Kate where they're in the middle of this marketing you
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: know blitz and this attempt to get him signed on
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: and so that's going on but then this smoldering sexuality
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: is happening in one of the people in the room
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: and the way she was looking at him and then
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: inviting him over to the house and really, really manipulating him.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: And she's like, no, no, no, no, no. You have
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: to stand in the corner. You have to stand in
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: the dark. Don't say any words because you've got to
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: be the fantasy. And, and he, in this nebbishy way,
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: he's like, Oh, okay. Okay. Um, but I think it wasn't, I,
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: I don't think he's terribly inflated. I think he's curious.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: I think he looks frightened the whole time. He doesn't
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: seem inflated at all. And then as this beautiful woman
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: just touches him, he immediately ejaculates and then farts, which
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: is that marvelous, in a certain sense, self-saving instinct in
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: his psyche because he doesn't get inflated and that what
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: happens is his own body, refuses to take on the inflation,
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: and he is just a creature in the room.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but see, Joseph, though, I would say that, you know,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: because what happens at that point is he is so humiliated,
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: and there is just this kind of rage that comes
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: with this humiliation and this impotence. You know, he's so
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: unable to kind of make anything happen. And that is
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: when the dreams turn dark. It's like that rage at
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: his own impotence begins to infect the dreams. And it
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: starts again with his youngest daughter who has this dream
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: of him charging into her bedroom. And then all of
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: the dreams are showing him being completely sadistic. And I
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: think that sadism is in him because he has this
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: frustrated desire to take on this inflation. And then he
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: does that terrible cringy apology, which is also very inflated.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: You know, it's all about me, me, me.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: So I don't know. I think he has gotten sort
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: of carried away with it. And there is a kind
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: of not taking responsibility for your shadow.
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: I think there is a way that he wants to
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: take on all of the favorable projections. And he... He
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: wants to do it sort of vicariously. And so he
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: goes along for the ride and all of a sudden
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: his classroom is filled up with people because he's appearing
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: in dreams. So he has the magic, the charisma, the
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: mana moment. And then he does it again with the
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: young woman where he wants to be able to take
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: it on without, just like the book, without actually having
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: done the work And I like your point, Lisa, about
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: his impotence because he says to his daughter, you know,
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: but I wouldn't just stand there and watch. I'd do something, right?
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: And then later he says the same thing when the
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: dreams turn dark, but I wouldn't cut off your toes.
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: You don't really think that I would do that, do you?
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: So he's wrestling with how is he seen, how can
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: he then see himself, and what can he embrace, right?
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: and live into in his waking world. But he's a victim.
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: Even though I will say, I want to go into, well,
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: you go ahead, Joseph, and then at some point I
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: want to talk about all the cancel culture piece of
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: this film, which I thought was just great.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: If we see the movie as a purely subjective dream,
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: that Nicolas Cage is actually dreaming the entire movie What
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: he comes in touch with is that that rageful, strangling
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: energy inside of him is why his life has not
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: been successful. That he has this book idea, but he
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: has an inner strangler that is choking off his ability
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: to be creative. So that's already been well established in
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: his personality. It becomes visible, as all of you are saying,
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: through the dreams of other people. And this again goes
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: to this idea of projective identification. These energies start getting
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: put into other people. I guess my feeling is I
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: have such a hard time thinking that he's inflated because
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: often when people are inflated, there is such a sense
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: of overconfidence. And my sense is that in all of
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: these environments, and even during the date, he is just
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: shaking in his boots. He's like a kid on a
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: first date. He's 14. And you know, Someone kissed him
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: and he had a premature ejaculation, unlike that kind of striding,
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: strutting kind of energy. So it may be that there
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: is a missed opportunity for an inflation that might have
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: helped him, helped him feel big enough to take on
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: what was happening. But at all opportunities, he and his
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: unconscious kept shrinking. I don't want a Sprite commercial, which
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: maybe might have given him millions of dollars. I want
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: my book on ant intelligence to be published. That's all
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: I want. I just want to have an experiment on
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: a date with a beautiful woman.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: He feels entitled. He feels entitled to have a conversation
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: with Obama. He feels entitled to, you know, try to
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: have this sexy scene with this girl. He feels entitled
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: to have the whole world feel sorry for him because
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: he's been a victim. But, you know, Joseph, what I
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: really like what you're saying about how he has an
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: inner strangler, I think that's just right. And one of
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: the most important scenes in the film, I think, is
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: when he has a dream of being hunted by himself.
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Because it is a real image, I think, Joseph, just
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: like you're saying of... His own sort of self-sabotaging, you know,
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: the way he's just sabotaged himself throughout his life. He
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: sabotaged his career. He sabotages his marriage. He sabotages his...
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: I love the teen daughters. I mean, I think the
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: funniest scene in the film is when the oldest daughter
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: is watching his cringy apology on YouTube and she says,
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: I'm going to have to kill myself.
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: But he does have that inner predator who is very
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: much going after himself.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: And I think that image of him with arrows sticking
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: out of his body, I kept asking myself, is this
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: an Actaeon moment? I thought, no. But it is a
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: little bit of a St. Sebastian moment. Because he does
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: go online and says, I'm being martyred unfairly. And that
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: famous image of St. Sebastian being tied to a post
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: and these arrows being shot into him. Although he can't
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: quite take on the exaltation of being martyred, there's still
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: this complaint of fate. There's no amor fati in any
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: of this. Yeah.
• 37:22
  Speaker 5: And I love the way he's actually sort of like
• 37:24
  Speaker 5: driven into this, as you said, sort of the comment
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: on his cancellation and watching him go through this. And
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: then he's driven into this like actual underworld of him.
• 37:33
  Speaker 5: One of my favorite moments in the film is when he's,
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: you know, doing this book tour and it's, you know,
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: really pathetic. And I'm trying to remember the detail of
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: his book has been translated into French.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: And it's like, there's this mistranslation or what?
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: It was supposed to be called Dream Scenario and it
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: wound up being called Je Suis Tant Couchemar.
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 37:54
  Speaker 5: And then he's down there and it's like, you know,
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: he's this pariah at this point and it's this kind
• 37:59
  Speaker 5: of like creepy group of people who are gathering in
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: this basement. And then he's sitting there for his book signing,
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: which is a huge failure. And, you know, no one's
• 38:05
  Speaker 5: arrived and he's down there in the basement and just
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: the lighting fixture from the ceiling just dismounts and hits
• 38:10
  Speaker 5: him on the head. Like this punishment just is so funny.
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: But the gods have given him something and now the
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: gods are torturing him in same measure. Mm-hmm.
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm going back to what you said before, Joseph, about,
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: you know, in a way, a comedic analogy to Job
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: of the price of innocence, the price of naivete, the
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: price of not grabbing hold of your life with more
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: consciousness is that you get taken for a ride. Things
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: just happen to you and you don't know why and
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: it doesn't make any sense. And then when you're doing
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: a book signing, even a light fixture falls down from
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: the ceiling and bangs you a good one in the forehead.
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: And he goes through the film with things just happened
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: to him. Right.
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: But much like Job, because some people say that Job's
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: flaw is that he was a good scholar of the Torah,
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: that he was... And he was obedient to the laws,
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: but actually did not have a living relationship to the self.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: to the inner worlds, and that that was not adequate.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: And so Cage's character has this PhD mental life of
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: some kind. Maybe it's iterative, but he does have real skill.
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, he got got a PhD, and he's a professor,
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: which is not an easy thing to do, and he's tenured.
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: So he has this life of mind, and as we've seen,
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: not a lot of libido. He's not a terribly sexy guy.
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: His body doesn't have a lot of energy. He's not
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: concerned about his appearance. His wife is really wonderfully patient
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: and kind of generous with him, actually. So he's kind
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: of there at that beginning of the Job story. And
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: then the gods notice him. And as always happens, when
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: the gods notice you, they fuck with you.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Don't stand out from the crowd.
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: Whether it's Yahweh or whether.
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: It's Zeus or Apollo.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: When the archetypal forces turn their eye to the ego,
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: some crazy stuff is going to happen.
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: Very unpredictable.
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: And that's exactly what happens is his ego is flattered
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: and seduced. And he's the center of attention, you know,
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: and the marketing people say, you know, you're the most
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: famous person in the whole world right now.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: It's like, whoa. You're the most interesting person. Right, right.
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: The most interesting.
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: That if you buy into all this with your ego,
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: watch out.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: Well, and there is also a very subtle comment that
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: the marketers, and Kate, this was your scene there, where
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: the marketers are curious that if they stick a can
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: of Sprite in Nicolas Cage's hand, will then everyone dream
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: of what he has in his hand? Which really goes
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: back to the whole underpinnings of marketing in the United States,
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: that it was Freud's nephew, actually, who was reading his
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: books and had this insight that if we understood the
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: unconscious mind, we could manipulate a nation. And his first task,
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: which was successful, was a campaign to convince women that
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: they should smoke cigarettes.
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: And so that moment is happening in the room, which is, hey,
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: we've got a door into people's unconscious minds, and what
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: can we do to turn them from citizens into consumers
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: of Sprite?
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: Which also reminds me of just this sort of like
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: the absolute elimination of private space because of social media
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: and just every moment being co-opted. Yeah.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: But that it's like, it is totally terrifying. And that's definitely,
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: I think one of the big themes that the film
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: is exploring is yeah. Like what, what happens when they
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: can just be inside your head at any moment. And
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: in fact, you know, there's the, the, the, the Norio
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: is created out of the, the experience with that Paul
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Matthews has where they, They create this device that will
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: allow you to insert yourself into other people's dreams. And
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: then they can use it to, you know, there's product
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: placement in your dreams. So you're having a dream and
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you know, it's like, oh, there's
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: this pair of sneakers.
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: So it is. And, you know, I think you're absolutely right.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: There is this total collapse of sort of interiority in
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: our culture.
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: Or that it's not to be explored, it's just to
• 43:08
  Speaker 5: be mined.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, monetized.
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: Or that even your dreams, that rest shouldn't even or
• 43:14
  Speaker 5: doesn't need to exist.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: And I would say that that may be where the
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: gods turn on him because he's been granted this access
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: to the collective unconscious. He's become a figure in the collective.
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: And instead of being humble and being in a state
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: of wonder that the gods have chosen him, he's seduced
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: in this very satanic way. I mean, it's that moment
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: where Jesus is being tempted in the desert. It's like,
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: you know, just bow down before me and whatever you want, buddy,
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: I'll give it to you. And it's in that temptation
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: that he falls. And I think he's not the one
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: who mentions Obama. Doesn't someone Which is somebody else in
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: the room.
• 44:03
  Speaker 5: I mentioned Obama.
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 44:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah, well, it's just like spitting ideas. And, oh, maybe
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: we could get Obama to dream about you. Wouldn't that
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: be cool?
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: So it may have been hubris that he took the
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: serpent's apple. I mean, everyone in the room is tempting
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: him with these various things. But it wasn't really his idea.
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: He just looked at Molly, your character. And he bit
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: the apple. And so the seductive, the seductress invites him. Molly, Kate,
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: says the apple of influencing heads of state. And I
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: thought that moment where the chief executive in the room.
• 44:51
  Speaker 5: Mike Serra, played by Mike Serra.
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: Mike Serra. He feels that he's lost. He's lost everything.
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: the main character there, and then he turns his back.
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: I thought that was such a really interesting cinematic moment.
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: Whatever is going on in his mind and everyone else
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: in the room is just waiting and waiting and waiting
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: and waiting. So, Kate, from your perspective, what do you
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: make of that transition in the movie?
• 45:23
  Speaker 5: Well, I think it sort of amplifies this joke of
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: that there could be any kind of sincere or emotional,
• 45:29
  Speaker 5: like this is about money, right?
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 45:31
  Speaker 5: This is just, they don't actually care about this guy
• 45:34
  Speaker 5: and they certainly don't care about his academic world or
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: any of his actual aspirations. They see him purely as
• 45:43
  Speaker 5: this like vessel for capital. maybe. And so there's like
• 45:49
  Speaker 5: this performance of Michael Seraf kind of doing this performance
• 45:54
  Speaker 5: of an apology of like, you know what, I'm sorry.
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: I feel like I haven't appealed to you in the
• 45:56
  Speaker 5: right way. Like, let me gather my forces as though
• 46:00
  Speaker 5: there could be any sincerely emotional connection in that room
• 46:04
  Speaker 5: or between these people at all. And this performance of
• 46:07
  Speaker 5: kind of turning away, humbling himself and coming back to
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: him kind of with this more sincere pleading, like, I'm
• 46:14
  Speaker 5: forgetting what he actually says once he turns back, but
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: there's this like strange and everyone in the room is
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: sort of like stunt or maybe he's done this before.
• 46:21
  Speaker 5: It kind of seems like, oh, this is his thing
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: that he does to kind of coerce people into some
• 46:25
  Speaker 5: sort of collaboration with him or to give their image
• 46:28
  Speaker 5: over to him because it feels like, oh, well, he's
• 46:31
  Speaker 5: like a nice guy. He cares. This isn't about money.
• 46:35
  Speaker 5: This is about me.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: What he says when he turns around is, I lied
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: to you. I haven't dreamt about you. Oh, that's right.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: So it's like now I'm coming clean, you know?
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: So you're absolutely right.
• 46:46
  Speaker 5: The false confession.
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: It's false confession.
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: It's just what you were saying about the artifice of artifice.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: Exactly. He's still lying.
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: The tempter. Yeah.
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like your take on it, Joseph. That whole
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: scene is about temptation, right? He's being tempted with money.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: He's being tempted with sex. He's being tempted with fame.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: And he is interested in fame.
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: Very interested in fame.
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: And then once it starts to collapse, he goes, can
• 47:19
  Speaker 5: we get Sprite?
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. What about Obama?
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: He's like flailing.
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: Is there anything good that I can harvest from this moment?
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: And that takes us to the point that you were
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: going to raise, Deb, which is about cancel culture. There
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: were these... There were these wonderful little things going on
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: throughout about cancel culture, Twitter. Have you been on Twitter?
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: lived experience. And he, and then at some point he says,
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: trauma is a trend. I was like, it was, it
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: was just, it was just so great. But, but you know,
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: that part where you guys are like, well, we might
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: be able to get you on Rogan or maybe there's
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: a Jordan Peterson angle here. Right, right.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: It's like, oh, you've, you've, you're now at that, you're
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: now in that place in the culture.
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: And you can still be capitalized. Yes.
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: Yes. Right.
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: There's still potential here, but. communal fantasies and like, can
• 48:14
  Speaker 5: that cause harm? Like if you have a dream about someone,
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: if you have a terrifying dream, is that harm? You know,
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: it's like, does that actually, like we can wake up
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: afraid and it's scary and dreams, as we all know,
• 48:25
  Speaker 5: are deeply impactful and you can't, they can change the
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: energy of your entire day or, you know, it's really
• 48:31
  Speaker 5: something to shake up or wake, you know, wake you
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: up in the night and you can, your heart can
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: be pounding and you can be afraid, but you are safe.
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: Or that what are, I mean, this is, I'm just
• 48:40
  Speaker 5: sort of curious here. Like what, what is really.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: That's a great point.
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: That's a great point.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Because I mean, we of course would say, yeah, you've
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: got a frightening dream. Okay. You know, let's roll our
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: sleeves up. The psyche is trying to get your attention.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: You know, this is, This is the healing function of
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: the psyche at work, but all of his students were
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: traumatized and needed cognitive behavioral therapy.
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: And couldn't have him in the room.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: Couldn't have him in the room. So, yeah, I mean,
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: there is a kind of inappropriate attitude toward the unconscious
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: throughout the film that's really picked up.
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, totally. It never occurs to anybody that this... is
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: my dream that features this person and what is going
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: on in me. It is absolutely taken for granted as
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: a reality that the dream figure of Paul is is
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: about Paul, it is Paul, somehow Paul has a special power,
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: and then it gets, you know, other people won't, they
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: won't let him see his daughter in the school play
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: because to have him be in the audience would be
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: so upsetting. So it's such, you're right, it's just such
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: a denial of what internal life is like versus... the
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: external figure of Paul who has some sort of mysterious
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: power that he injects into people and he infects people with.
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: It never seems to occur to anybody to do a
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: little introspection and go, what is going on with me
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: that I'm so upset by this? I had a bad dream.
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: And I do think there's some reality to it for
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: all of us that when we have a really powerful
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: dream with somebody that we know in the dream that
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: we do tend to sort of think about like, oh,
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm going to call up that friend and say, oh,
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: my gosh, you know what? I dreamt about you last night.
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: And the friend will inevitably say, what was I doing?
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 50:58
  Speaker 5: So you can wake up next to your partner and
• 51:00
  Speaker 5: be like, you are so mean. You feel angry. And
• 51:03
  Speaker 5: it's like, how could you do that? You know, and,
• 51:06
  Speaker 5: and then I'm done with you. I'm not, there's a betrayal.
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: I'm not going to speak to you for a week.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: Well, and the whole world becomes psychotic in that moment
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: because the definition of psychosis is that the ego and
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: the unconscious barrier has collapsed. And whatever the unconscious is,
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: sends up from the depths becomes real. I dreamt it,
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: so it's real. Or I thought it, so it's real.
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: My senses were tickled and it must be real. So
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: it is also a movie about this descent into a
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: collective psychosis and how frightening that is. And in one sense,
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: it may also be that Nicolas Cage is the only
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: sane one in the room. We could say that when
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: he's lamenting into the YouTube, his wife accuses him of
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: being narcissistic, but he's also being an individual because the
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: people that he's talking to are psychotic. And he is
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: the reality principle in that moment. I am, I have
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: not done these things to you. I am not invading
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: your dream like an army and I am being injured.
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: He is the one that more than anyone who is
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: being injured. So, I mean, yes, the, The wife looks
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: at him and scorns him for not sympathizing with the
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: people because she wants him to believe you have done things.
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: But that's actually a lie.
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't think she wants him to believe that
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: he's done things. It's more that his, I mean, what
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: she says is that his apology is self-serving because he's like,
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: it's all about him, him, him, him, him. And she's
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: been reluctant all along to have him capitalize on this.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: And she's been like you said, Joseph, she's been kind
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: of patient with him, but she also has not been
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: a big fan of him capitalizing on it and trying
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: to monetize it. And she's a little sick of him
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: feeling all puffed up about it and that kind of thing.
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: Well, I think that the suggestion that he should apologize,
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: who does that come from? I think it comes from her.
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: Who says that apologizing is the way that it should go?
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: Because that again, Will you please join us in the psychosis,
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: which is you are savaging the world. And the only
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: way you must admit that and confess to something that
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: you didn't do. And I wish we had that film
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: clip here. I think Cage has every right. I don't
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: think he's inflated. I think he's the only human being
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: in the world at that moment who is distraught that
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: he is being savaged by the gods. I don't know you.
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: I have never done these things. I've never hurt you.
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: My life is being destroyed by this insane psychosis.
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: But I think what we see over and over again is, again,
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: your analogy, I think, to Job is right on because
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: that's what Job does is, what did I do wrong?
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: And there are all the, you know, Job's comforters are,
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: you know, all saying, well, you must have done something,
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: which is what happens to the Nicholas Cage figure.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and what he's done wrong is he hasn't taken
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: responsibility for his shadow.
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: Kate, what were you going to say a minute ago?
• 54:37
  Speaker 5: Oh, I just was gonna say that moment of the
• 54:39
  Speaker 5: YouTube apology, the apology has become this like, I don't
• 54:43
  Speaker 5: even know what the word is, but it's this modern language.
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: It's like a brand new.
• 54:48
  Speaker 5: Social demand or this new thing to sort of master.
• 54:51
  Speaker 5: people commit these sins or, you know, or become these
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: figures and we, and then they're forced to apologize. And
• 55:01
  Speaker 5: it's like how, and that apology is judged based on
• 55:04
  Speaker 5: its authenticity and have you properly.
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: And it's never authentic enough.
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: Right. Yeah.
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: And how, yeah, your ability to kind of get on
• 55:14
  Speaker 5: your knees and prostrate and like, and, you know, beg
• 55:18
  Speaker 5: for your life back. Or beg for your image to
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: be restored. That's sort of the apology as his currency. Yeah,
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: it feels relatively new.
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point. It is another place where
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: the film kind of picks up this current social phenomenon.
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: And so I would say that in terms of the
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: fall from grace, why I think your scene is so important, Kate,
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: in that movie, Again, it's the temptation of Christ. There
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: are several different temptations that are offered. And really where
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: the dreams change is that the Nicolas Cage character bites
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: the apple. And then that's when all the dreams change,
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: which coincides with the idea of being thrown out of Eden.
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: And then there is a fiery cherub. That standing at
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: the gate of Eden, that is going to attack you
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: if you try to crawl back into Eden. And that
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: fiery cherub shows up everywhere. You no longer have access.
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: Because if you had stayed innocent, if you had not
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: eaten of the knowledge of good and evil, you might
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: have been able to stay if you had just been
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: an innocent fool, a divine fool, in the midst of
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: all this and continued saying, I don't know. Who knows?
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: But again, he was tempted, he bit the apple, Sprite, Obama,
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: sexy stuff. And all of a sudden, that will not stand.
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: He lost his innocence, which then suggests that in the
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: first half of the movie, if this archetype is real
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: relative to the movie, he was innocent. That he was
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: truly an innocent creature in the garden. just stumbling around
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: in the classroom, bumbling through life in a harmless, maybe
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: even sweet, awkward kind of way.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: But with unmet narcissistic needs that he's carrying on with him.
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: Which goes to how we often interpret the fall from grace,
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: which is that human beings or every human being needs
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: to get thrown out of the Garden of Eden because
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: the Garden of Eden is the infantile fantasy. The goddess,
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: the great mother, just provides everything and you don't have
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: to think or do or know anything. It all just
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: kind of happens.
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: He never achieves, there's no redemption.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: I'm going to contest that because when I watched it
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: the second time around, and Kate, I'd love to know
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: your thoughts on this too, there's a hint at redemption
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: at the end. And this is what I came up
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: with is all along. He's wanted all of this stuff
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: without having to work for it. He's wanted to have,
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: you know, be recognized for his academic work without ever
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: really publishing or writing a book. He's, he's wanted to
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: have the book contract given to him, you know, just
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: because he appears in someone's dreams doing nothing by the way. Um,
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: but then once the Norio is invented, this device that
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: lets you enter another's dreams, um, He gets it and
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: he works at it. You see him watching YouTube videos.
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: You see him practicing. He's working at something. For the
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: first time in the film, we see him really putting
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: effort into something. And what he's trying to do is
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: enter his wife's dream to give her the fantasy she wanted.
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: And it's the first time we see him really behaving
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: in a kind of generous way. You know, he's lost
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: his wife. She's left him. He's, you know, just heartbroken.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: And here he is for the first time. We see
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: him really being relational, you know, and wanting to, you know,
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: he appears to her, you know, in this David Byrne suit,
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: you know, rescuing her, which is the fantasy that she identified.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: And that's how the film ends. So I think there's
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: a lovely little hint at redemption.
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: And what's that final line I'm trying to remember? They
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: reach out for each other and He says, I wish
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: this were real. Is that what he's, right?
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: That's it, yeah.
• 59:32
  Speaker 5: That moment is when we see him trying to kind
• 59:35
  Speaker 5: of concoct this fantasy to appease his wife and get
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: her back. And it's a loving.
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: It's loving.
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: It's like a loving fantasy.
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: It's like the first time he's not really just thinking
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: about himself.
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: And yeah, his desire to kind of live out that
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: fantasy for her, be that dream object, like the way
• 59:50
  Speaker 5: he can't, you know, he can't become the sexual fantasy
• 59:53
  Speaker 5: of this other woman, but maybe he can become this
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: fantasy for his wife.
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: I think your point is really well taken, and who knows?
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: We can tune in next year and see if he
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: manages to translate.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: It into the waking world.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: It's a nice hope.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: There's hope for redemption, but we don't know if it
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: gets there.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: You know, and it's still in the dream world of
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: not in the lived world. So the redemption may be
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: out there somewhere.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: So Kate, did you have interesting dreams while you worked
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: on this film? Yeah.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 5: I'd have to consult my dream journal, but, um, which
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 5: of course you keep.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: Which I keep in Google drive. Feel free to hack me. Um, yeah,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 5: I know. Not that I, not that I, not that
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 5: I remember. Um, I'm trying to think, I'm trying to
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 5: remember if I've had any dreams with celebrity figures lately.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: How about us?
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 5: I hate to say it, you haven't been in my dreams.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 5: But I don't even dream about myself. I haven't even
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 5: appeared in my goddamn dreams.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: People have a lot of celebrity dreams. That's such a
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: common thing.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: It's always so fun.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: Well, I remember when Yuan Yong went to India, he
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: thought he was going to have all kinds of really spectacular, interesting,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: different dreams. He dreamt of the most quotidian things back
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: in Switzerland. So, yeah, but they may be coming.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 5: I know it's funny when dreams sort of stop. Like
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 5: I was having, I typically have very vivid dreams and
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 5: they feel like really intricate and they're long and a
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 5: lot happens. And then there was a period where I
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 5: just stopped and I sort of was like, oh, but
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: my interpretation was like, It's because I'm integrated. You know,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 5: I was like, I'm like, I'm living in an integrated
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: way right now. You know, and I do think it
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 5: felt very deliberate. Like my dreams were being held back
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 5: by something. It was like, okay, enough of this. Because
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 5: I had been so kind of obsessively thinking about my
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 5: dreams and writing about them and really finding them to
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 5: be very like fertile. But yeah, they felt like they
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 5: were being like almost intentionally like, stop. now you just
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 5: are going to live a little bit.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: And do you, I mean, do you find that there's
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: a kind of ebb and flow between your creative work
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: and your dreams? Because sometimes I think that if we're
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: really outputting a lot creatively, it's almost like, well, that's
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: where all that psychic energy goes to.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: Totally. Maybe. Yeah.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 5: I definitely have the sort of classic, um, I just
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: came off of a run of doing my show and
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 5: I would have the dreams of like, I don't know
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 5: my lines, you know, or just, you know, you get
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 5: out there and you freeze and then, But there are
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 5: even moments in like waking life, performance is such a dream.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 5: I was just doing theater. So it's like, that is
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 5: such a dream space. And there are times when you
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 5: are on stage and you're sort of like, is this real?
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 5: Like it kind of feels unreal because it is such
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 5: an unreal position. Like you're standing there, you're in the dark,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: everyone's staring at you. It's like, and it does take
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: on in moments, almost it's like out of body kind
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 5: of like, okay, I guess I'll do this now. And
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 5: your body sort of takes over and goes into the,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 5: it knows what to do and you can be talking
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 5: and performing and you're, you are completely thinking about something else.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 5: I've had it only, I've had it a few times,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: maybe once or twice, it was disturbing to me and
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 5: I felt almost dissociative, kind of like freaked me out.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 5: But that does happen. You really feel like the body
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: take over and kind of do this thing and you're
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 5: kind of next to yourself, watching yourself.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can imagine that. I know Joseph is the other,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: is the thespian in our group. I'm wondering if that's Joseph.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: The under-actualized thespian. A.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: But you're talking about, and the film talks about, you know,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: how we have all kinds of parts to us Jung
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: called it the dissociative nature of the psyche, that we
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: have all these things. We have muscle memory and dreams,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: and one part is doing this and the other part
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: of me is thinking that. And we like to think
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: we're far more unitary as beings than we really are.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: It takes us by surprise sometimes. Kate?
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: Tell us where, tell the listeners where they can find you.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: I'm sure you have a website and also you have
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: a podcast. So just tell us a little bit more
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: about that. We'll also put it in the show notes.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 5: I did start a podcast in COVID as some of
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 5: us did with one of my best friends, Jacqueline Novak,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 5: who has an amazing Netflix special you should watch called
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 5: Get On Your Knees that you would all love.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: Oh, okay.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 5: It's like highly essayistic, brilliant, truly a genius. And we
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 5: started a podcast called Poog, which is goop backwards, which
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 5: kind of came out of our interest and obsession with
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 5: wellness and, but kind of also this idea of this
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 5: search for, you know, it's sort of, there are a
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 5: few things at work here, but I think sort of
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 5: like the The attachment to products, makeup, beauty, this kind
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 5: of endless search and this sort of almost this idea
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 5: of like preparing to never arrive. Like you're never going
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 5: to find the face cream that changes your life and
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 5: you're never going to. But isn't it kind of fun
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 5: to think that search is actually... That's great. We sort
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 5: of like to lift up that search as being... Because
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 5: it's often trivialized as sort of like feminine obsession with like.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 5: You know, and it's like, no, like this is actually profound.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 5: What if we actually approach this as a more cerebral
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 5: act and this kind of existential obsession?
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: It's a quest.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 5: It's definitely a quest.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: And.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's a deeply raw, kind of essentially unedited,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 5: not to disparage our editor, but it's a very, it's
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 5: truly just a conversation between us. And sometimes it goes
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 5: to places that I think are kind of profound and
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 5: sometimes it kind of dwells in this like, we're just
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 5: kind of can't stop talking about kelp noodles or something,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 5: you know, and these sorts of like fascinations and how
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 5: they lodge. And this recurring theme is a sort of like,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: trying to find a routine. And wouldn't my life, if
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 5: I woke up every day and meditated, like I had,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 5: you know, it's like, I'm going to meditate for 20 minutes.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 5: I'm going to write in my journal and then I'm
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 5: going to make this breakfast and then I'm going to
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 5: do yoga. And if I do that, then I can be,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 5: then I'll be my optimized self. And then I'll be
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 5: able to find the strength to write my book, you know, or,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 5: and then I'll be the fully integrated, like this, this, um,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 5: and how hard it is to adhere to these structures
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 5: and why, and, and the importance of, trying but also
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 5: the importance and kind of like having a loose grip
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 5: on that self that optimized self that's like always hovering
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 5: and it's very much you know now in the culture
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 5: this um the culture kind of demands that you do
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 5: that and how dare you not be this optimized healthy self.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah i appreciate that about you about your conversations
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: is because it's that war between the ego and the
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: unconscious but how that's resolved and i've seen this in
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: some of your episodes that you were looking for the telos,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: that even looking for the special tea or the product
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: that I can use, that there's meaning in this somehow,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: that it is not meaningless.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: Totally.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 5: It is ultimately the search for God. Through face creams.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 5: I mean, truly. Yeah.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: But really.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: Which is why archetypally, you know, millions of people will
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: move towards a particular product because there is a There
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: is a transcendental or archetypal promise that is connected to it.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: And you guys are talking about that.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 5: Especially when it's attached to a person, right? This beautiful
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 5: woman uses this, you know, and so I'm going to
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 5: use that and then I'm going to essentially ingest her
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 5: and become her. I mean, it's so real. And I still,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 5: you know, I'm like searching for these products whose ideas
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 5: are like, what does this one person do? What's their
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 5: routine that I could you know, co-opt and then transform
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 5: and become this whole other self. Um, so that's called Poog.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 5: You can find it wherever you find podcasts. Um, yeah,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 5: I have a standup special on Hulu. You did such
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 5: a glorious reading of my, my bio up top. So
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 5: feel free to rewind to the beginning folks, but, uh,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 5: you can, you can find me. I exist.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: And we'll put, we'll put some links in the show
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: notes too, but thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: This was just a ton of fun.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: Fun.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: I think, I feel like we all had so much
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: to say. We were just kind of popping off.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 5: It's truly hell to jump off. I really do. And I'm,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 5: have you done an episode on, on phone addiction? I
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 5: feel like you've talked, is there a full episode just
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 5: about that?
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: Please, please help us.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 5: I think that's such a, what's your take on that?
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: What's the hook that it has for you?
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 5: I mean, this is really my obsession, but also my
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 5: current obsession is sort of like how to talk about
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 5: this thing because we all, it's so universal, right? There's
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 5: this understanding of we're all on our phones too much.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 5: And then the conversation sort of stops there. And it's like,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 5: I feel like we haven't really reckoned with what's been lost,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 5: which is so overwhelming and so- devastating. And I feel it.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 5: I mean, I was talking to my friend, John Early,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 5: who I make a lot of comedy with, and we're
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 5: kind of constantly like, well, we just, our youth, we
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 5: just gave it to Instagram, you know, to the hours logged.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 5: I mean, and I really find for myself, and I've
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 5: gone through periods, I actually have two phones now. I
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 5: have one phone that has social media on it, And
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 5: then I have my normal phone so that I can't–
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 5: when I go out in the world, I don't have
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 5: social media with me. And that has helped a lot.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 5: But I– I mean, we need 12-step for this. I mean,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 5: it's like I truly am powerless. It's like if I
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 5: just have my– I will scroll forever. And that desire
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 5: to just clock out and just go into this other realm.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 5: And I just feel like we don't even have– I
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 5: know people, I mean, I've read a couple of books.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 5: People talk about how to, oh, you should be on
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 5: your phone less. And again, we all know this and oh,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 5: these companies are, you know, we are laborers where it's
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 5: free labor for these other, for these companies. And the,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 5: you know, we, we donate our lives and our, and
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 5: I really feel to it. I mean, it's just devastating
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 5: my own. Now it feels exotic to just sort of go,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 5: I'm going to go out on the deck and not
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 5: bring my phone and kind of just like stare. And
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 5: it's like, where, and I think about this a lot.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 5: It's like, where do ideas come from? They don't come
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 5: from your phone. They come from just kind of staring
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 5: or thinking.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: This kind of fallow time.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and how it's so... Actually, I don't think he'll
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 5: mind me saying this. Chris Borgli, who made the movie,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 5: he has such a dedicated... When he's writing, he takes
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 5: his internet modem, he puts it in his car, he
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 5: drives his car to a location, he parks it, and
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 5: then he does a long walk. That's like his morning
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 5: walk back to his house. And that's how he gets
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 5: work done. And I found that I was like, that
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 5: is so correct. Like that's almost the only way to
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 5: do it. You have to physically rip yourself away from
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 5: this thing. And I've gone through periods. I do like
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 5: a month here, a month there. I go, I'm not
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 5: going to look at social media. And the strange thing
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 5: is you don't miss it, which is almost the most
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 5: disturbing element. I find maybe a couple of times like, oh,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 5: I kind of want, and you're like, no, like you
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 5: just don't need it. And somehow when you're in this system,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 5: it is Um, I forgot who said, I like read,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 5: like someone said this where it was like, if you spend, um,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 5: a day off Instagram, you miss everything. If you spend
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 5: a year off Instagram, you miss nothing.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 5: And it's like, that is kind of what it feels like.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 5: And so I think there, you know, yeah, it's sort
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 5: of the conversation that no one's really having. Cause I
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 5: think it's also just so disturbing when you really reckon
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 5: with what's, what we've lost and what we're losing.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: And what's the draw on that deep unconscious level and
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: what is the archetype that It's so powerful that it
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: can grab a world and command their attention.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 5: What else? When you think about it, what would you
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 5: give your life to? What would you give your waking
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 5: hours to? And we would think it would be to
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 5: our loved ones or to deepen our relationship with ourselves
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 5: or our work. And it's like, no, we just sort
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 5: of give it over every day to this thing. And yeah,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 5: we can't rip ourselves out of it. And even people
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 5: who I know who I've... admired for their work ethic
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 5: and their ability to focus. They're like, oh, I can't
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 5: watch a movie anymore without looking at this. Or I
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 5: can't read. I mean, for myself, I'm like, I think about, yeah,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 5: the way I used to be able to. And even,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 5: and it did sometimes hurt. It was hard. Like, it
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 5: is hard to read a challenging text and to really
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 5: sit there and grapple with it. And that's, and we're
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 5: losing that ability to do that.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: I'm likening it to the Nicolas Cage character in the movie.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 4: We're easily seduced. We're very easily seduced to something that
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 4: has immediate gratification. We get all the little dopamine hits
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: or whatever from social media and screens and video games and, and, and.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 4: And Nicolas Cage got the same kind of thing from
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 4: his unearned, sudden, unexpected fame. Yeah.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 5: Thinking about dreams and what's so disturbing, of course, is
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 5: the phone. It's, you know, it's an algorithm, right? So
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 5: you only see what, it's showing you only what it
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 5: thinks you want to see or what you have seen before.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 5: So there actually is no, a dream, like there's no,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 5: it's also like the death of the future in a
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 5: way or a death, like you, the phone's never going
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 5: to show you anything new.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: Right. Exactly.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 5: And then it's even more disturbing now when you see
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 5: children on it. I mean, I don't have kids, so
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 5: I can kind of be over here and go, I
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 5: would never allow my child. But it's really disturbing when
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 5: you think about who are these kids now who are
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 5: now just watching this all day. It's like children are
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 5: supposed to sort of be imaginative and where will anything
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 5: new come from? And there is this feeling of there's
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 5: nothing new.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: This goes to the psychology of play.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: And this is so strange to me that kids who
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: are even doing these video games, that they will watch
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: other kids.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 5: Oh, I know. I mean, guys, I'm scared.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 5: That is so dark.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah. But what is play in the psychology of playing?
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: What does it mean to have that intruded upon? And
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: say in another 20 years, 30 years, you're going to
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: lose an entire generation of people, myself included, who are
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: the only ones who remember what it was like before
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: laptops and iPhones existed.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 5: I don't think I, I was talking about this, like
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 5: what I have started doing standup, you know, it's like
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 5: these things, like I would not, I certainly wouldn't be
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 5: who I am or I wouldn't, I don't think I
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 5: would have cultivated any of the things that I'm so
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 5: glad that I did if I had had, phone if
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 5: i had been given social media when i was i
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 5: mean forget 16 10 or 8 i mean or you
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 5: know i mean who knows it's i mean there's a
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 5: serious it's a disaster we've lost so much more than
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 5: we've gained.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: I i i think you're you're right yes we promise
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: that we will put that on our.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 5: List from you and i need the performer.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: Okay, and we'll do an episode on the psychology of performers.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 4: Oh, that would be great.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah. That would be great.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: We owe you that.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 5: I need that. That's an emergency.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Great. Okay.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: Maybe we can have you back on when we do
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: the episode.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 5: On the performer.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: That would be wonderful.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 5: I'll tell you anything.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: You can invite us on Poog. We'll talk about our
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: favorite facial products.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 5: You'll be the first Poog guest. I know, truly.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: Hello, listeners. I want to take just one minute to
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: remind you about my upcoming women's fairy tale and yoga retreat.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: We have just a few tickets left. It is April
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: 25th through April 28th in central Pennsylvania. It's a beautiful
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: time of year to be there. It's a great group
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: of women. We have a ton of fun. We hang out.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: We do yoga. We talk about fairy tales. We eat
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: good food. We tell stories and share poems around the campfire.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: We do some dream incubation. It's a really great time.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: So if you're interested, pop on over to my website, lisamarchiano.com,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: where you can read more about Women's Wellspring Retreat. Thanks.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 4: Today's dreamer is a woman. She's 44 years old. She's
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 4: a teacher, and she entitled her dream, in another time.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: And here's the dream. I'm a passenger in a moving car.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: The driver notices that we are going through a bad
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 4: area and begins to close the car windows with a
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 4: second layer of window, a dark sort of armor that
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 4: comes standard in these future cars. She's closing the windows
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 4: when I realized it was too late to close mine.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 4: A young boy comes through the still-open gap in my window.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 4: He lands on my lap, and he has a metallic
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 4: stick that's like a toothbrush, but instead of bristles, it
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 4: has spikes. This is part of a scam that is
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: known in this future environment. These bristles will be used
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 4: to poke me, to infect me with something horrible. If
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 4: I am so scared that I open the door to
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 4: eject this child... There are people waiting outside to attack
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 4: our vehicle and to hurt us all in ways that
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 4: could be even worse. Even in the dream, I begin
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 4: to ponder what infection in my past led me to
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 4: this sad life where I'm about to be infected. The
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 4: past and future are jumbled. If I had made better choices,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: could I have had a better life? Could I have
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 4: been a better person? I see all of my missed opportunities,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 4: and it's as if I accept that my life was
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: already infected before I face whatever infection will come of
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: these bristles. But I won't open the car door. So
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 4: for context, the dreamer says, I've been reflecting a lot
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 4: on my life lately, which I do in the dream
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: as well. And she says the main feelings in the
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 4: dream were, this felt scary, and I was sort of
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 4: bracing myself to accept all of that within the dream.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 4: And she adds, I'm not in a recognizable time or place,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 4: and I recognize no person in the dream.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: One of the things that came up for me when
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: I was sitting with it was that there is an
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: image of psychological defense in this dream. So there are
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: these armor windows that come up when you're in a
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: bad area. So it's the way that we shield ourselves from...
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: We have defenses against things in the outer world. We
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: can shield ourselves against attack or shield ourselves against bad
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: opinions of ourselves or become defensive with another person. But
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: defenses also work in the inner world. So we might
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: defend against, for example, new information that the unconscious wants
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: to bring to our attention that might upset our ego's equilibrium.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: And I think of these windows as being an example
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: of that. And then there's a young boy that comes
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: through the window. And I can't help but imagining that
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: that's a positive thing. Children and dreams are usually positive.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: They usually carry this sense of new life that's developing.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: And I think it's positive that the dreamer is not
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: going to eject the child and is willing to take
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: whatever's going to come from this encounter.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: I find myself visualizing this toothbrush with spikes on it
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: and wondering if such an object even exists or something
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 3: reminiscent of that, that the psyche has, I don't know,
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 3: seen at some time or has some kind of value?
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: Well, there's the idea of injection and, you know, what
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: can be injected can be medicine or sometimes it can
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: be poison. And sometimes those two things are one in
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: the same actually. You know, sometimes something that's actually toxic
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: in high doses is the thing that heals in a
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: small enough dose, for example. And so an injection, you know,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: is also what a snake does when it bites us
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: or a spider. So there's the notion that when we
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: are injected with something, we are changed on an inner
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: level and we have to submit to it. And I
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: think that this dreamer understands that she has to admit
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: to it. she has to submit to it. And in
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: a sense, it might involve a kind of death or suffering,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: but that that is the price of being changed. And
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: she's not, fortunately, she's not too defended against what the
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: psyche wants to bring to her attention. She can allow
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: the new life in and allow it to change her.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: I knew that I was thinking about something. Now, it's
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: certainly not a toothbrush, but I was trying to figure
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 3: out what medical devices might have spikes on them and
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: how might that be relevant. And because I have idiopathic
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: neuropathy in my feet, so I'm familiar with these sensory pinwheels.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 3: They're very, very sharp. They could pierce the skin, but
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: they're not meant to, but they are intense. And so
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: the neurologist will rake it over my foot and I
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 3: will feel it, but I'll have no pain. And then
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: it'll get right above what would be a sock level.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden I'm like, ow! And
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: it tests this line between ordinary and reduced sensory levels.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: And if it was misused, of course, you could really
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: jab that into someone. So I had this fantasy that
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: while she would imagine the spikes could only be used
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: to break her skin, There may be other reasons. And
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: one of the things is, are you sensitive enough? Or
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 3: where are you lacking adequate sensitivity? And where are you
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 3: more sensitive? So it's a way of giving testing stimulus response.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 3: And I don't know if that's exactly what the dream is,
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: but it offers another lens because the dream ego is often,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: I don't know, As it is for all of us,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: it jumps to conclusions, it gets worried. But she's there
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: wanting to put armor around, which means I am not
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 3: going to feel anything. And then this little sprite, so
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 3: to speak, comes in with a little neurologic pinwheel saying, ah, well,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: let's test how sensitive you are in various places in
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: your body where your armor hasn't had a chance to
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: lock you in.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: That's really interesting.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think our dream ego gets it at
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 4: the end in a way where she says she's kind
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 4: of doing a little life review. If I'd made better choices,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 4: you know, would I have had a better life? Would
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 4: I have been a better person? I see all my
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 4: missed opportunities, and it's as if I accept that my
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 4: life was already infected, presumably by her missed opportunities. and
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 4: poor choices, before I face whatever infection will come of
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 4: these bristles, and I won't open the car door. So
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 4: the dream ego is aware of the telos of the dream,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 4: of where is this going? And in the dream, she
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 4: talks about past and future, and this is a future car,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 4: and so on. So there's something in the dream that
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 4: is aware of that this is going somewhere. There is
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 4: something purposeful about it. And what if she was already infected?
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 4: The difference between something curative and a poison is often
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 4: in the dosage. Snake venom is used medicinally when it's diluted.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 3: I would also love to read the dream again, but
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: just replace the word infect with affect.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 4: Try it. Go for it.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: I'm a passenger in a moving car. The driver notices
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 3: that we're going through a bad area and begins to
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: close the car windows with a second layer of window,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: a dark sort of armor that comes standard in these
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 3: future cars. She's closing the windows when I realize it's
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: too late to close mine. A young boy comes in
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: through the still open gap in my window. He lands
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: on my lap and has a metallic stick that's like
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 3: a toothbrush, but instead it bristles and has these spikes.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: This is part of a scam that's known in the
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: future environment. Those bristles will be used to poke me
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 3: to affect me in some horrible way. If I am
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 3: so scared that I open the door to eject the child,
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 3: there are people waiting outside to attack the vehicle and
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: hurt us in ways that could be worse. Even in
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: the dream, I begin to ponder, what affect in my
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 3: past has led me to this sad life? where I'm
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 3: about to be affected. The past and future are jumbled.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: If I'd made better choices, would I have had a
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 3: better life, been a better person, my missed opportunities? It's
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: as if I accept that my life was already affected
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 3: before I face whether affectation will come of these bristles,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 3: but I won't open the car door. And often we
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: are afraid that we will be infected with a kind
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 3: of feeling that is going on in the unconscious mind.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: I don't want to feel certain things, so I put
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: my armor up. And then we begin to treat a feeling,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: an uncomfortable feeling, as if it's a poison or an infection.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 3: But actually, it could just be psychological pain of some
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: kind that we really hope to wall off. And we
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 3: know it has something to do with being bad. We're
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 3: going through the bad area and the barriers come up,
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 3: so I wonder... Whether or not she's got much access
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: to her badness or knowledge of it at the very least.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: You know, there's something about being worried about being infected
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: and she's already been infected that says to me that,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: you know, it's sort of our fate to be infected
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: in a sense by life or to be affected by life. And,
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: you know, there's a sense like, oh, it's already happened
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: and it's happening again. And it's the inescapability of our fate.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: And what still feels positive to me is that, you know,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: the streamer's not thrilled about accepting it, but she's accepting it.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: This is, you know, what she knows is that if
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: she rejects this fate, it's going to come out worse
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: for her. She really gets that. And so she's prepared
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: to take what is her destiny, in essence.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: It's also a story about getting inoculations and being vaccinated.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 3: So I have been vaccinated, which is an infection, previously.
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: And so the boy comes in and he's going to
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: vaccinate her again. But it's not safe to open the
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: door and be exposed to all the other infections or
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 3: affectations out there. I actually need to get my vaccination first.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: And then once I build up some immunity, then I
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: might be able to open the door and withstand it.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 3: the badness, whatever that is out there. And I think
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: of dreams as often being like vaccinations. They give us
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: tiny little doses of something and our psychological immune system
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 3: kind of gets a little more muscular.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook,
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: help us produce future episodes by funding us through Patreon,
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: and submit your dreams for possible interpretation on another episode.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: We'd like to thank our listener who shared a dream
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.