Art Theft, Imagination & The Reality We're Creating

Tim · 0:01
All right, Reggie, what was your favorite part of today's episode?

Reggie · 0:03
My favorite part was actually looking at imagination in a unique way from something Nicky said.

Tim · 0:12
Nicky, what's your favorite part today?

Nicky · 0:15
Um, when you were really opening your heart and it was so honest, um, and Yeah, I feel like I learned a lot today.

Reggie · 0:28
Thank you.

Tim · 0:30
Will, what was your favorite part of today's episode?

Will · 0:31
A lot of really cool stuff going on, um, but I think the thing that sticks with me, like, off bat is the metaphor of 40 Hearts as a spaceship.

Tim · 0:39
Mary?

Mary · 0:41
I have so rarely in my life met such a kindred spirit, someone that I resonated with on this level, so My favorite part was Nicky as a whole, but that's me.

Tim · 0:54
Nicky. And my favorite part was the part about the dream, because I think I've been struggling with my dream and it just reinvigorated me.

Mary · 1:03
Thanks, Nicky. Wow.

Nicky · 1:13
Yeah, you do it. Clickety-clack.

Reggie · 1:16
Clickety-clack. I'm never ready until the clickety-clack.

Mary · 1:18
Did he just say 15?

Tim · 1:21
15.

Nicky · 1:22
Episode 15.

Tim · 1:22
Yeah. Here we are.

Reggie · 1:23
I knew this.

Tim · 1:24
Welcome to AGE, the podcast where we take it as it comes. We pick a topic, we talk about craziness, we talk about deep stuff. Sometimes we talk about funny stuff. Who knows what we'll talk about? And today we're joined with a guest by a guest. His name is Nicky Balachandran, a creative director, lives in LA mostly, by way of Germany, by way of here, by way of a lot of places. Nicky's a good friend, but I want to let Nicky introduce himself a little bit, just a short intro.

Nicky · 1:57
Okay, I am a Sri Lankan German. I was born in Germany. My family were refugees, and that was kind of my first worldview of learning how to integrate into German culture. I was surrounded by white Germans my whole life. I was always the only brown person, and that was normal for me. Like, I didn't think that there was anything— there is nothing wrong with that, but—

Tim · 2:32
Right.

Nicky · 2:34
What I came to realize much later in life that we are living in a world that has at its core right now racial issues and things that we are experiencing, and I was very oblivious to it.

Mary · 2:53
Sure.

Nicky · 2:54
So from being in Germany and having that cultural experience, I grew up in— my parents wanted to integrate into German culture, and so they were very open and young and got converted by a cultish Jesus People type of movement.

Mary · 3:19
We've met the type, yes.

Nicky · 3:21
And then that informed very much my way of wanting to bring peace to Earth. It's like through that type of theology and mentality. And instead of going to school for a regular job, I thought like, I want to serve the Lord. So I went. That's what brought me to America. And in the process of being in the ministry school, figuring out what it all means to have a spiritual connection to something greater, I have found myself also realizing that I wasn't exactly sure how to express that connection, and I didn't feel expressed through white American Christianity at all.

Mary · 4:18
They're not famous for allowing you to express.

Nicky · 4:22
So I was making music already in school, absolutely from my heart. And the point of this school was to make music, original compositions for church. And the compositions that I was writing were deemed worldly, although I was— they were really kind about it.

Mary · 4:49
Yeah.

Nicky · 4:50
It's like, you should put this on the internet, like the church will never We'll never use it.

Reggie · 4:55
The church will never use this. Set it free.

Nicky · 4:59
So I, I, um, yeah, it's a miracle. Everything in life is a miracle. But basically, this was during MySpace days.

Tim · 5:07
And oh yeah.

Nicky · 5:09
Oh, wow. I got into, um, long story short, but I basically got signed to Universal. And then I just stayed in the music industry and learned the mechanisms of brand, sound, and culture, like how that basically makes money.

Reggie · 5:32
It's a fascinating combination. Yeah.

Mary · 5:34
Very essential elements.

Nicky · 5:36
I love that. I was born with a certain harmonic understanding of technology. And the older I got, the more I realized, like, this is when someone has a gift, like an absurd gift, that's like everyone has the gift to learn to walk. Like, that's not— it's still a miracle, but that's kind of more normal. But then when you are having, like, if you have perfect pitch or something, unique gifts, then, you know, like, within your gift is your purpose. Otherwise, why do you have—

Reggie · 6:13
Why else do you have it, right?

Nicky · 6:15
So I don't know how because I was in a refugee home, but somehow when I was 14 years old, this was before they were— it was easy to make, um, music with computers. I built my own little computer, you know, like a Radio Shack in Germany.

Reggie · 6:33
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, basically. I remember those.

Nicky · 6:36
Since I've been 14, I, I've been working on Logic I had a cracked version. I don't even know how I got— like, I had a cracked version of Illustrator and Photoshop.

Mary · 6:48
Found its way to you.

Tim · 6:50
That's all you need.

Nicky · 6:53
To me, the computer and the digital realm is a complete extension of my being.

Reggie · 7:00
Like, I find a deep connection, very deep connection to media.

Nicky · 7:08
And so basically, as manifesting our imagination into existence. Into existence.

Reggie · 7:14
Yeah.

Nicky · 7:14
Um, so yeah, I'm now in the present moment. Maybe one more thing, like during COVID I was just doing a lot of artist development. So what I got really good at is thinking in genre, thinking in brands. So like, if you're Doc Martens and Chuck Taylors, right, then you're like more of a California punk band, and you kind of know how to frame it that they buy into it. Yeah, so that they're like, they all look at those things, but they don't want you to overtly say that.

Mary · 7:45
But like, right, there's a formula.

Nicky · 7:47
There's a formula. Like, the shoes totally inform the music.

Tim · 7:52
Yeah.

Mary · 7:52
Oh no.

Nicky · 7:53
Yes.

Tim · 7:56
What's this band play?

Nicky · 7:57
Like, I feel like with Vans, you can basically do anything you want as long as you're leaning towards freedom. Yeah, counterculture, right?

Reggie · 8:05
Yeah, right.

Mary · 8:06
I'm taking notes.

Tim · 8:06
I think so, but still, it still leans.

Reggie · 8:09
I need a pair of Vans.

Nicky · 8:10
I feel like the Converse and the Vans are, yeah, um, very telling.

Mary · 8:15
They're symbols.

Reggie · 8:16
They're very telling for sure.

Nicky · 8:18
And then like also like culturally, like if I was to wear, if they were handmade, one of a kind, made by like a small independent designer and I'm paying like $1,100 for them. They look pretty much the same. They're ethically made way better. And like, at the place that I'm in my journey at, I just feel like I live in compromise. It's like I wear my shoes out a lot. So I'm going to right now wear shoes that I ethically don't agree with.

Tim · 8:49
I'm there with you.

Mary · 8:54
I love that you expressed that.

Nicky · 8:57
I'm part of the problem.

Mary · 8:58
Oh, we're all part of the problem.

Nicky · 9:01
Cheers to Vans. I like those.

Mary · 9:03
I love that. It sounds like—

Nicky · 9:08
But you know, I'm buying— this is really cool about these Vans, okay? I bought them in an LA you can get really well thrift clothes.

Reggie · 9:16
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mary · 9:17
The vintage things.

Reggie · 9:18
Those are thrift finds?

Nicky · 9:19
These are not for resale.

Reggie · 9:21
What?

Nicky · 9:22
Not for resale.

Mary · 9:23
Wait, they're just supposed to be like a display?

Reggie · 9:24
They were samples. Samples.

Mary · 9:26
I love that. Those are probably prototypes or something.

Nicky · 9:28
What I thought about these shoes was that when I was— they feel really— these are the nicest Vans I've ever had. And I felt like, oh, that makes sense.

Tim · 9:39
I've had a couple pair of Vans that I love.

Nicky · 9:43
If you go and you are pitching to Vans, hey, we're going to make you 1,000 or maybe 100,000 shoes, the one that you're going to send to California is going to be the nicest.

Reggie · 9:53
Oh yeah.

Nicky · 9:55
And so I was like, this is the best pair of Vans that you can possibly get.

Mary · 10:01
Yeah.

Tim · 10:01
Even the tongue is like leather.

Reggie · 10:03
I remember when I was in high school.

Nicky · 10:04
This is the nicest Vans ever. Like, and I paid $15 for them.

Reggie · 10:08
When I was in high school, we had friends that would go to California over the summer and come back with all these fashion trends, things that we don't have. We didn't have in St. Louis, Missouri, where I grew up. And so these kids were always ahead of the game because they like knew, they dipped their toes in California and come back and we'd be like, Holy crap, where'd that come from?

Mary · 10:28
Fly as hell.

Reggie · 10:29
Yeah, California is totally dialed in.

Mary · 10:31
What a roller coaster of a story. But I— and I'm sure there were a lot of difficulties along that path, but selfishly, I'm very thankful that it landed you in this seat today.

Reggie · 10:41
Yes, me too.

Mary · 10:42
I'm excited for what we get into today.

Reggie · 10:44
Yeah, what's our topic? I'm curious to see what the heck.

Tim · 10:47
Right.

Reggie · 10:47
So it would be—

Tim · 10:48
so our host with us, as per norm, is Mary Green.

Reggie · 10:55
Oh, Reggie Tidwell. Sorry.

Tim · 10:56
We're doing it.

Reggie · 10:56
I'm like, she's not the host.

Nicky · 10:57
You're the host.

Tim · 10:58
No, we— I'm the host, but we say our names now because for listeners, they can't see us when we point.

Mary · 11:03
I'm gonna be really easy to pick out.

Reggie · 11:05
That's right.

Mary · 11:05
Yeah. So anyway.

Reggie · 11:06
Yeah.

Tim · 11:06
And we're back after some technical difficulties.

Mary · 11:08
I don't remember what we were talking about.

Nicky · 11:10
No one will see those.

Reggie · 11:10
Well, you were just saying enemy lovers, Germany.

Tim · 11:15
I just wanted to finish that, um, Nicky's a close friend. We've been friends since 20 years.

Nicky · 11:21
20 years.

Tim · 11:22
And I moved to Germany to record music with him. We've had a long experience together, and so it's an honor to have him on the show today, and we're ready to pick the topic.

Reggie · 11:33
But didn't you say he also inspired your interest in design?

Tim · 11:38
Oh yeah, I did say that.

Reggie · 11:38
Yeah. That was really fascinating.

Tim · 11:39
And we just talked about this the other night. He brought— he got me into graphic design.

Reggie · 11:43
Wow.

Mary · 11:44
Lucky us that you fell in— you two fell into each other.

Reggie · 11:47
We may or may not even be— have been on the same path if not for Nicky.

Nicky · 11:51
I sat Went earlier, like we are in life together on a journey because it feels energetically the same. We are learning to fully understand what our incarnation is and what we're doing and how to make this experience meaningful.

Reggie · 12:15
Yeah, I love that.

Mary · 12:17
I'd say that's maybe what's brought us all together. Like, I definitely feel—

Nicky · 12:21
oh.

Reggie · 12:21
Michelle is.

Mary · 12:22
Oh.

Nicky · 12:25
Hmm.

Mary · 12:25
It's hard to recognize that one.

Reggie · 12:28
Somebody sneaked that one in there. What is it?

Mary · 12:32
I never thought to be nervous about the topic, but now I am.

Tim · 12:35
Art theft.

Mary · 12:36
Oh, because I think when we wrote this, it was around the time that the Louvre was being vandalized.

Tim · 12:41
Oh my goodness. What an interesting topic.

Reggie · 12:44
That's going to be an interesting one.

Mary · 12:46
Can I tell you?

Reggie · 12:46
Well, I think I know where that goes too, because No, go ahead. Well, I was going to say that's a really good option for us to be able to bring up how AI people are actually stealing music. They're saying 40% of songs being uploaded on— so this is, I guess, the what comes to mind is 40% of songs uploaded to Spotify and Apple Music is AI generated.

Tim · 13:12
40%?

Reggie · 13:12
Yeah. And they are— this is at least from one source. I haven't actually fact-checked that, but he did say And he brought up a really good point that they're training AI on songs that smaller studios are creating. Now, he found a song on Sumo, which is a music-making AI, that was a complete knockoff of Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode. But everybody knows that. So you're immediately going to know that that's a knockoff and you're not going to upload that to anything.

Mary · 13:42
You're like, this is a bad cover.

Reggie · 13:43
But if you make something and it's trained off of some small studio somewhere else that you never heard of, you'd be like, wow, this song's a banger and you're going to upload it. not realizing that it's probably a direct knockoff of somebody else's song.

Mary · 13:56
I went to a similar place. I was like, art. I love the word art. There's so much in that for me personally. But my mind immediately— I've been colonized. My mind immediately went to intellectual property, like stealing intellectual property. And that's where the law gets involved in our country. But yeah, I haven't thought about the idea of the only people who stand to be hurt by that are the small ones.

Reggie · 14:22
Yep, absolutely.

Tim · 14:23
My mind just went to Thomas Crown Affair and how cool art theft is. I mean, I grew up watching movies about art theft.

Reggie · 14:32
Yeah, totally.

Tim · 14:32
I don't know why it was so cool.

Reggie · 14:34
National Treasure, all of these are kind of—

Tim · 14:36
Remember in Thomas Crown Affair and they have the hat scene and Nina Simone is doing it? Yep.

Mary · 14:41
You've never seen that?

Reggie · 14:42
Oh, it's such a good movie.

Tim · 14:42
It's Cinnamon Man.

Mary · 14:43
Can we screen it?

Reggie · 14:44
Yes, let's screen it.

Nicky · 14:45
I would love to do that.

Tim · 14:46
There's this whole scene where they're stealing the artwork and everyone in their team has this bowler cap. Is it a bowler cap or is it—

Nicky · 14:53
Yeah, it's a bowler cap, I think.

Mary · 14:55
Because if you're going to rob, you need a squad uniform.

Reggie · 14:58
You've got to have it.

Tim · 14:59
It's important. Because the officers can't find the guy who they're looking for because everyone's— they'll see a bowler hat go that way and then someone goes that way.

Reggie · 15:07
Such a cool scene.

Tim · 15:08
I know that shouldn't be good. I shouldn't like art theft, but immediately I just thought of like— It's Hollywood.

Reggie · 15:13
It's okay to like Hollywood art theft.

Tim · 15:15
There's just something about an art thief who steals art.

Mary · 15:18
A rogue hero kind of thing.

Nicky · 15:19
But they also have really good taste. The Herding.

Tim · 15:21
Don't even bring that up.

Reggie · 15:24
That was—

Nicky · 15:24
Let's unpack this right now. I feel like we should always go with the most excitement, right, in a conversation. And you got excited about like, there's maybe something that—

Tim · 15:39
this goes way back.

Mary · 15:39
Well, I think that's also what captured the world's imagination with the Louvre heist that happened a couple of years ago. Same excitement.

Tim · 15:47
Possibly.

Nicky · 15:47
Were you excited about stealing?

Tim · 15:50
He's referencing Thieves and the Hurting was a band I started in, I don't even know, 2000.

Reggie · 15:56
Thieves and the Hurting.

Tim · 15:58
Yeah, and it was called Thieves and the Hurting.

Reggie · 15:59
Oh, interesting.

Mary · 16:00
In the Hurting?

Tim · 16:01
Thieves and the Hurting.

Mary · 16:02
And the Hurting.

Tim · 16:03
And I played at the Dripolator when it was down the hill.

Reggie · 16:05
Oh, yeah, I remember the Dripolator.

Nicky · 16:07
Maybe we talk about a couple of things of like, we take the dualism out of stealing and we talk about what's negative about stealing and where we can steal in a good way.

Mary · 16:17
Oh, great prompt.

Tim · 16:20
Right. Because I— there is a— so this AI thing is, it feels, it feels wrong. It is wrong.

Nicky · 16:27
Yeah.

Tim · 16:28
But through history, art has always been stolen in some way or imitated.

Mary · 16:33
Can I— I, I would challenge that. And I don't— I haven't figured this out. I'm in process right now. To accept stealing as a notion, the premise seems to accept ownership. as a notion.

Nicky · 16:46
Yes.

Mary · 16:47
And I don't think you can own it. And I also think if it's mine, if it's my expression, if it's truly unique to me, it can't be stolen. But AI is, you know, the example that you gave is a really interesting one. The copycats are getting really, really good. But I don't know.

Reggie · 17:04
So, so I think as a designer, we're always stealing. Like anytime I'm like, if I'm trying to come up with an identity for a client, I'm looking at lots and lots of inspiration and stealing parts of— and something. Yeah, like I'm not going to knock something off completely, but something I'm looking at is going to inspire a thought and I'm going to execute and I'm going to go, wow, this is how this type of style applies to this particular—

Mary · 17:33
Where's that line between stealing and reference?

Reggie · 17:35
Yeah, but if you look at the end result, you won't be like, oh, you completely ripped that off. But it's all kind of stealing.

Mary · 17:42
Maybe for me it's about credit.

Reggie · 17:44
It's remixing.

Nicky · 17:44
I like it.

Reggie · 17:44
Like sampling. Totally.

Nicky · 17:47
I know there's nothing original ever.

Reggie · 17:49
I mean, I know, right?

Tim · 17:50
That's the foundational truth.

Reggie · 17:52
How do you have an original thought or concept at this day and age?

Nicky · 17:56
Impossible.

Reggie · 17:57
It's impossible.

Mary · 17:58
Well, I think that though, the most, uh, the ones that feel the lightest, the most joyful to me are the ones where somebody uses a sample or uses somebody else's reference and owns it and honors it. And my favorite ones, I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but they'll take something from a specific point in time or a specific culture, and then the new work that they're using that in references that in more than one way, and it sort of points you back to the original source.

Tim · 18:26
And do you think hip-hop did that?

Mary · 18:27
Oh, definitely hip-hop did that.

Tim · 18:29
Do you think they pointed back to the source though?

Mary · 18:31
I think different— I'm, I'm not as much of a hip-hop person.

Reggie · 18:35
I do think, I think some artists are better at it than others. Like Janet Jackson, she leaned into that Joni Mitchell sample Oh, don't it always seem to go that you don't know? You know that song?

Mary · 18:48
Oh yeah.

Reggie · 18:48
So like, it's like, I'm pretty sure at one point she maybe—

Mary · 18:52
No way.

Reggie · 18:52
It stopped again.

Mary · 18:53
Oh, I thought you were talking about—

Reggie · 18:56
Big Yellow Taxi. Oh yes, Big Yellow Taxi.

Mary · 18:59
Thank you, Will. Yes, yes, yes.

Reggie · 19:01
I love that song. I'm a huge Joni Mitchell fan. So when that sample showed up, I was like, oh my God, this is, this is legit. But I think, did she have— I think she had Joni on in her video, maybe. Like she, she paid homage to her her in a bigger way than just sampling her music and putting it in her song?

Tim · 19:20
I, I just think that we live in a culture that incentivizes the idea of originality and unique differentiator, which is what we all live in.

Mary · 19:30
Kind of our whole industry.

Reggie · 19:31
Yeah.

Mary · 19:32
How do we make things different?

Tim · 19:33
Absolutely. And so I'm always confounded by this idea that you can have something that is yours. Like when you try to look for a domain, A URL. It has to be completely original. So people just start making up words. And it's almost as if we're like, okay, it's time to name your child. Now come up with a name that's completely original, that's never been used before.

Reggie · 19:54
You're like, good luck with that.

Nicky · 19:55
You can't name them Mary Elizabeth.

Reggie · 19:57
Good luck with that.

Nicky · 19:58
It's an original brand. Right.

Tim · 19:59
It's like this original branding and original song. And so when I was growing up doing music, I grew up in a musical family, and we started singing in church. But I never had, and we sang hymns together, but then I learned that there were cultures—

Reggie · 20:14
Sang hymns.

Tim · 20:14
There were cultures that sang traditional music that was part of their culture, and everyone sang the same songs, and it wasn't like you wrote a song to identify yourself, to like evoke some sort of independent creativity. You actually you performed with each other, like in community, and you sang as an expression of joy and community. Like there was a family-connected tribal thing to this experience of music. But now it's like a performance, like, watch me perform this thing.

Mary · 20:51
Even with your family, you feel that?

Tim · 20:53
No, just in culture. So I wanted to grow up where, like in the old Irish cultures— I mean, I am Scot-Irish, so there were— part of my history has that, but I wasn't raised in that.

Mary · 21:03
Or as my grandmother would say, Scotch-Irish.

Tim · 21:05
Scotch-Irish. I had to stop saying that.

Mary · 21:07
I learned that a little late in life.

Tim · 21:09
You're back?

Mary · 21:09
We're back.

Nicky · 21:10
All right, just keep talking.

Tim · 21:11
And so that, to me, even art, when an artist in the old days was commissioned, they weren't, they weren't these wealthy, well-known people. They were commissioned by powerful people to do something almost like a working man, like a laborious job.

Reggie · 21:29
Yeah.

Tim · 21:29
So, and then they had all these apprentices that they would train to do their art, and they had this whole team of people that did this art. So I don't know if it's good or bad, and I'm not trying to moralize it, but I feel like there is this lack of identity that we have as an American culture where we need to do something that makes a stamp of unique contribution. Or else we feel like we lack value. So that's why we're all trying to say, no, that's mine. No, this is mine. But we're— none of it is original.

Mary · 22:00
We're all co-opting something else.

Tim · 22:01
There is no original source. I think there might be an original source, but it comes from really deep within ourselves and our experience.

Reggie · 22:09
Which I think it's very— I think we as creative people should carry that with us and understanding that we are inspired by one another and there is no true sense of ownership, which almost feels like selfish, like This is mine. You know, I—

Mary · 22:26
But I don't know. I feel music is a really— I'm glad that the conversation has started with music because that's something that's made such a difference in my life. But I do feel like there's music that is mine and not in the way of no one else can have it, or I uniquely own this in a way that other people don't, but in the way that, like, my family is mine. You know, this was my inheritance in a way. I didn't get a choice about this. So like Johnny Cash is mine, not because I picked him, more like he picked me, more like the world picked him for me. But he is a part of my roots.

Reggie · 23:05
I think to your point, I think musical taste is something that you can own. Like we all have this unique— like I don't think my music taste is exactly like anyone else's. Like I can go from Nico Case to to smooth jazz to classical and opera. And, and there's so many artists throughout my, I guess, 55 years of being on the planet—

Mary · 23:30
You guess.

Reggie · 23:30
That I know.

Mary · 23:31
We're not sure though.

Reggie · 23:32
And I've never come into another conversation with someone where I'm like, hey, have you ever heard of the Innocence Mission out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania? And someone's like, oh yeah, I love that band. That's like never happened. And so there is this sense of like exposure has shaped your musical preferences and taste to be something I think is unique.

Tim · 23:51
So maybe that's the thing, is your experience with music develops your taste.

Mary · 23:56
Yeah.

Reggie · 23:56
You're a curator. You're not stealing. Yeah, you're not stealing. You're curating.

Tim · 23:59
Exactly. Maybe the only original thing is your experience.

Reggie · 24:01
Your experience. Which, to that point—

Nicky · 24:05
It's unique.

Tim · 24:06
It's unique.

Nicky · 24:06
Everyone's experience is original.

Reggie · 24:08
Is original. Original. And we just had this conversation. recently about AI and how designers, I think, are going to become— I don't think they're going to lose their value. Like, yeah, you may at some point, maybe AI will catch up and be able to make art, design, brand that is passable. But the designer is the master of taste. So the better you are at actually leaning into your unique experiences as a creative individual and using that, because people like businesses will always come, always come to us Because they won't know what's good. And so we will be the curators still at this, on this, this grander stage.

Tim · 24:48
Or they may know what's good, but they might not know what's good to their audience.

Reggie · 24:53
Right. They might not know what's good as it pertains to their brand.

Tim · 24:56
Right. They don't know how to like move or manipulate the good to where it works for whoever they're trying to get to.

Mary · 25:03
Or to own the unique experience of the company rather than trying to manufacture manufacture what we think is good for this audience that we've decided to target, although that is the game that we're invited to play. If you truly owned the idea that the only thing unique you can do is have an original experience, I don't know. I'm curious though, I assume you identify as an artist, Nicky, do you?

Nicky · 25:26
I do.

Mary · 25:27
Do you— how has theft impacted your career, if at all?

Nicky · 25:37
Very— I had a lot of negative experience with theft for sure.

Mary · 25:40
Tell me.

Tim · 25:41
I don't know.

Nicky · 25:46
I feel like, and I don't want to go too deep into it, but I think in general, in collaboration, what I think is healthy practice is when you are going into a room and you decide you create something from scratch, then you— when there are like 4 people creating together, Then you just split the intellectual property 4 ways. There's not political— there shouldn't be politics in the percentages of ownership.

Reggie · 26:14
Yeah, yeah.

Mary · 26:15
I hadn't even thought about it.

Nicky · 26:16
Or like when you're— when you, when you eat, when you make pizza and this is— and you cut it with the 4 people, I think ideally you cut 4 equal sizes and everyone is just gonna have their part. And people that are really deep programmed with politics and hierarchy, they don't know what that is anymore.

Mary · 26:40
Ah, that's so hurtful to me and eye-opening to me. I'm thinking about stealing a whole work and saying, this is all mine, but we can even steal parts of work.

Nicky · 26:51
Yeah. We're trying to own little pieces. I would say if I would have understood my rights and intellectual property and how that all works. I couldn't even barely speak English. I would probably be a multi-millionaire right now.

Mary · 27:04
I have no doubt.

Nicky · 27:05
And the funny thing about this, I can track, I have the records I've worked on. But if you go into American music history and you look at all the famous people that everyone is dancing to that haven't got paid for the work, and they're still not getting paid while they're still alive, I'm nobody. So like, I don't even try to fight that battle or get worked up about it because the injustice on these things is so high up that like people that we worship because they're so dope haven't been paid for their own art.

Mary · 27:37
So it's this metric of success we assume is always tied to financials. Well, we got to define it, I guess.

Nicky · 27:43
I love focusing on what we can do, you know?

Mary · 27:46
Yeah. Bring us back, Nicky.

Nicky · 27:48
Yeah. And I like the AI, like AI is a tool, right? And we are right now experiencing it for the— right now we feel like we're experiencing it for the first time.

Mary · 28:03
Really feel like we're experiencing it for the first time. You think maybe we have experienced it before?

Nicky · 28:11
I think ultimately everything that is what we're experiencing externally is something that came from within, every idea. So we, we are like, everyone has a Bluetooth, everyone has a Wi-Fi. Like, we can— I can say like the idea of Bluetooth might be like us turning on and connecting to one another and being together in the imagination, being able to conceptualize.

Tim · 28:35
We're close together.

Nicky · 28:36
Yes. Uh, Wi-Fi might be like causing an idea. I thought about a person or I thought about something.

Reggie · 28:43
Oh, you just called them, they call. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, oh, that's so manifest. Telepathy.

Mary · 28:48
Quantum fields.

Nicky · 28:49
Yeah, like time travel. We look at an old photo and it takes you back. Just remember the photo and you go back in time, you know, like, yep.

Tim · 28:56
So like, I, I love that.

Mary · 29:00
So we've lived this inside is what you're saying.

Reggie · 29:03
Like, I love that.

Mary · 29:04
I had to come from an idea.

Nicky · 29:06
Everyone has that. Everyone had— we like, by default, we always try to look for what we need on the outside, right? Externally, like, I don't know, I just feel like we are in a good time for positive change because it's becoming more obvious who you're aligning yourself with.

Reggie · 29:32
Yeah.

Nicky · 29:33
Because I would say in a year from now, no one is going to buy anything anymore online because there will be no more spirit in it. And so like, imagine a drum machine. It's a good example, like the 808, right?

Reggie · 29:51
Yeah, yeah.

Nicky · 29:52
808 is a drum machine, but it really doesn't turn everyone into an amazing beatmaker.

Reggie · 29:58
Yeah, it doesn't, right?

Nicky · 30:00
But people think like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna— I'm going— and people DJ this way now. You know, it's like, I'm gonna be a DJ because they just took enough drugs at a party. It's like, I'm gonna do that.

Mary · 30:11
Everybody's gonna be a DJ.

Nicky · 30:12
Everybody's good. And you go to a festival and people are just DJing, you know. I, I think that that's a part of consciousness. Everything— we don't need to fight anything. I feel like when you go try to go against something, you exert the energy that you need to create the thing that you're here to create.

Reggie · 30:26
Yeah, don't go against it. Yeah, just, yeah, going downstream.

Nicky · 30:30
Yeah, so like The AI technology is to me like, and where creation is going, it's like a drum machine. And spirit moves. And if you don't know what spirit is, I think this is a very— this is where colonialism and politics and religion all clashes because we're talking about something that you can't scientifically completely I'm having to resist, like, touching you and, like, shaking you.

Mary · 31:02
I'm loving everything you're saying. Keep going. Might be a little much. We just met.

Nicky · 31:07
I'm saying, like, the—

Reggie · 31:12
I love that.

Nicky · 31:12
There are people in this world that can look at a vase and they say, like, and that you put on the— and you have a vase from Target, and then you have a vase that somebody made. And they will be— you can immediately— no, you can look. I'm telling you, the people that I know, I feel like we all can do this, that we can point at the vase that has spirit and the one that doesn't. Let's say like everything has spirit, but the spirit that is made by the person that loved making the vase versus the person in a factory hating his life is a different vibration.

Reggie · 31:47
Absolutely.

Tim · 31:50
And that comes through all things.

Nicky · 31:51
Oh, absolutely. So like, thank you.

Mary · 31:53
Have you listened to any episodes before you came on? Did you do any sort of like prep?

Nicky · 31:58
I just— no, I did not much. I just wanted to kind of catch a vibe. So I asked him to send me something.

Mary · 32:03
Yeah.

Nicky · 32:04
But then I also thought like, I'm just gonna— I've been in this place that I say a lot yes. I just, I say yes to pretty much everything, because I have found myself it working out.

Mary · 32:22
I mean, it's working out.

Reggie · 32:23
You're not limiting your experiences.

Nicky · 32:25
Yes. Like, I used to be afraid to be associated with the wrong people.

Reggie · 32:29
Yeah.

Nicky · 32:29
But if you're always yourself, you always—

Reggie · 32:31
You're going to gravitate to the right people.

Nicky · 32:32
Even say, like, say, like, you are a racist Christian podcast, right? And I don't know this.

Mary · 32:38
I mean, not yet. No, no.

Nicky · 32:42
But worst case scenario, if that was the case, right?

Reggie · 32:45
Yeah.

Mary · 32:46
Yeah.

Nicky · 32:46
I would shine even more in this moment versus like, oh no, I don't want to be seen with people that are completely different from me.

Reggie · 32:51
That's right. You will be able to like navigate that situation with grace.

Nicky · 32:56
Be yourself.

Reggie · 32:57
With enough grace that it maybe changes their hearts and they're like, why are we racist and Christian? And like, you know, I think that's very interesting.

Mary · 33:05
We've had some incredible guests on the show and we will continue to have incredible guests on the show. But there's something about this moment and I don't know, maybe it's because you came in and spoke specific point in Tim's journey that really set him on a different trajectory.

Reggie · 33:20
Absolutely.

Mary · 33:20
Some deep part of him that resonated with me is also resonating with you. And I feel like I'm on like a great first date right now. I'm like, ooh, something's like clicking.

Nicky · 33:30
I, I honestly, when I came in, I, I, to me, we live in the imagination.

Mary · 33:36
Like, oh, some of us more than others.

Reggie · 33:38
No, no.

Nicky · 33:39
Yeah, absolutely.

Tim · 33:40
We all do.

Nicky · 33:40
We are, physical reality is if you just look around right now, everything that we're experiencing was someone else's idea. The table, the— like, this is just—

Mary · 33:51
Oh yeah.

Nicky · 33:51
Like, we are in imagination all the time.

Tim · 33:58
Surrounded by it.

Nicky · 34:00
If you don't create your own imagination, then you will live in someone else's imagination, and usually all the time. And coming in here and just seeing what you guys are creating is to me like—

Reggie · 34:15
I love it.

Nicky · 34:16
The ultimate hope.

Reggie · 34:17
Yeah, that concept of if you don't create your own imagination, you'll be living in someone else's imagination is a— that's powerful. That is profound.

Tim · 34:27
And that redefines the whole art of what we do.

Reggie · 34:30
Yeah.

Nicky · 34:30
Yes, and I feel like you guys are so You're about to break through.

Mary · 34:35
Oh, wait, please.

Reggie · 34:38
We're in a really good therapy session here.

Nicky · 34:41
I love you. You're going to break through. And I think it's so cute that you're doing this in public.

Mary · 34:48
I think so too.

Nicky · 34:50
Like, we put all these great ideas in the trash. And it's like, fuck everything. And let's take it out of the trash.

Reggie · 34:59
Yes.

Tim · 35:00
Talk about it.

Nicky · 35:00
Talk about it in front of everyone.

Reggie · 35:01
One episode at a time.

Nicky · 35:04
None of this makes sense.

Mary · 35:05
You're getting it, Nikita.

Tim · 35:08
Let's process it live.

Nicky · 35:10
No, but I'm telling you.

Reggie · 35:11
And then he's explaining it to us so that now we understand what the fuck we can do.

Nicky · 35:15
But I think I do feel like that there's— we need to pick our battles because we get exhausted by fighting battles.

Reggie · 35:27
Yep.

Nicky · 35:27
In our minds that we cannot— we— I'm sorry, but we won't win. We can't win. There's so many things we can't win. Yeah, I don't want to talk about the things we can't win. I only want to talk about the things that we can win.

Reggie · 35:37
Yes.

Mary · 35:39
I would follow you into battle, Nekky.

Reggie · 35:42
I would go anywhere.

Nicky · 35:43
Yeah, you guys follow yourself. Don't— first of all, don't follow anyone.

Mary · 35:47
Ah, that's what they all—

Nicky · 35:49
Don't follow anyone. Just resonate with the people that follow themselves.

Tim · 35:53
Yeah, um, creating their imagination.

Nicky · 35:57
Yes, creating the world. But you're already so close, like you've already done so much. America's mind is right, Beast. If you haven't reached the peak of your career as an artist, as a creative in your 20s, then you are basically a failure and you need to be working for a corporation that is going to take another 20-year-old, making them successful, you know, and they just become basically a puppet.

Reggie · 36:26
That's the machine.

Nicky · 36:26
That's the machine, yeah. And it goes through every sector of society. And we are living in a world that is run by money, and we cannot fight that. The only way to win that battle is for us to make that kind of money to make that kind of deals. Like, I went, I did a lot of traveling, and my heart was really broken by how much trash there is in all the waters in the world. The world isn't as big as we think it is.

Mary · 36:57
Not enough people are saying that.

Nicky · 37:00
If you go in the ocean and you get hit by plastic.

Tim · 37:03
Yeah.

Nicky · 37:03
I experienced this in Malta.

Mary · 37:06
These beautiful places that we—

Nicky · 37:09
I experienced this in Bali. I experienced this in Sri Lanka, in California. You go in the ocean and you get hit by trash. So that means that the body of water that this is all in isn't that big.

Reggie · 37:20
Yeah.

Nicky · 37:21
So, and you look it up and it's brands like Nestlé, big brands, and you can't fight these brands because they're empires.

Reggie · 37:31
They're too big.

Nicky · 37:31
The only thing that we could— and I don't know, this is to me like my— as an art— if every artist understands that you're either part of the Earth and you feel like trees are beautiful, whales are beautiful, like you kind of—

Tim · 37:46
Are one with it.

Nicky · 37:48
One with it, and you want to protect it, then you're going to take your life force and your creativity and you join people that are going to create resources, money, to make deals with a company like Nestlé. Like, if you had enough money, you could go to Nestlé and create a recycling program. I don't know if they would ever give up their power all the way that you could buy the company and change it. But I think like—

Reggie · 38:14
But you can influence them.

Nicky · 38:15
You could totally influence, you could influence their campaigning. They need advertisement. You could totally, as the dopest agency, curate the story. Like, advertising is the way you can change consciousness by telling a beautiful story. So, I'm—

Mary · 38:36
I've said this for years now. One of my biggest, probably one of my biggest clients that I worked on in my agency life before now was PepsiCo, Frito-Lay. And I've always thought, why don't they just acquire a waste management company and become a closed-loop system?

Reggie · 38:51
Yeah.

Mary · 38:51
So, it's so bizarre to me that you've picked this example to go through. And I think a lot of people say, well, coming from a branding angle, what right do you have to say, or what's your in? But what you're saying, this insight around Communicating and signaling out to the world has more power than I think we have given it credit for up until now. Advertising and the communication.

Tim · 39:12
I think because what we see defines how we move.

Nicky · 39:16
Yes.

Tim · 39:17
It defines your imagination.

Nicky · 39:19
So do not share, for example, we should not tell the world that we want to change the world because you will be shut down. It will be—

Tim · 39:26
Just do it.

Nicky · 39:27
Yes. Just do it. Never stop exploring.

Mary · 39:31
Wait a minute. Whose imagination am I inside right now?

Reggie · 39:35
Well, I—

Tim · 39:36
you, you, if you think about like how much—

Nicky · 39:38
Think different.

Reggie · 39:39
Think different.

Nicky · 39:41
I'm just, I'm just feel like the dopest— you guys are the dopest brand. You are interracial.

Mary · 39:53
Thanks, Reggie. I'm glad you're here.

Reggie · 39:57
Now listen, I'm the, I'm the primary race. You guys are—

Mary · 40:02
I believe that.

Nicky · 40:02
No, you're, you're, you're— check this out. And I don't think this should necessarily be streamed, but because we're in this thought right now, or we can talk about things you want to stream and talk about this later. What do you think?

Mary · 40:12
Just do it. Go, go.

Reggie · 40:13
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mary · 40:14
Nothing limits here, dude.

Nicky · 40:15
Okay, so like, to me, if you share your values too loud, then you become— we are an environmental movement for humanity. The safest way to go about it is if you save the planet with what you're doing, you by default save humans. If you come into a humanitarian cause or something, right?

Mary · 40:38
Mhm.

Nicky · 40:38
You quickly get into culture. Like, if you understand what your product is and you design that product and you micromanage that product, then you are in charge of how this product relates to the planet and everyone that is working for the product. And you can create this little tiny bubble within your power. It's like, in this moment I'm creating common sense. Like, I'm going to operate from a place that I was born with. We are all born with this.

Tim · 41:07
Yes, we are.

Nicky · 41:09
This is inside of us and we don't have words for it, but we're just going to do it. Going to think different. We're going to keep exploring and we can work with all of these brands if we— if our work screams, I think different. Apple will endorse you. If your brand screams, never stop exploring, North Face will, you know, like, if your brand screams, just do it, Nike will work with you. So what you have right now is you kind of won the jackpot if you think about it this way.

Reggie · 41:47
I love where this is going.

Nicky · 41:49
You have a creative studio in America. You are close to an international airport, which means don't think of the Earth as countries. That's part of the program. Think about it this way: we are on a planet with different regions, and you have access to— that's not everyone has access.

Reggie · 42:12
Yeah.

Nicky · 42:13
We happen to be the people that have access to all the regions. You can go anywhere you want to go in this world. There are people that can't. That's your first privilege.

Tim · 42:20
Yes.

Nicky · 42:23
Hyper, hyper privilege that what most people can only experience through their phone, you can be there in person.

Reggie · 42:28
I love that.

Nicky · 42:30
So which already gives— I hate that, that we are in this reality right now, but you are already so above. And then you're not famous. If you're not famous, you will never be seen. So you can go anywhere. without being recognized. This is another superpower.

Reggie · 42:49
We're always incognito.

Nicky · 42:50
Yeah, you know, so like you have a lot of things to work with. Um, now you are living in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Reggie · 42:59
Indeed.

Nicky · 43:01
That AI will never be able to recreate. That's the spirit. If you're taking— if you focus on as a brand and as a creative studio to, to have 100% of your content be taken in nature and that you're vouching for every person in front of the camera, everyone's going to buy that because you are going to— aesthetic is going to be a prompt. I want a house that looks like designed by Rick Owens mixed with, uh, Nicky Kehoe.

Mary · 43:35
Yeah.

Nicky · 43:35
So like you're getting this really weird combination. Anyone can have that. That's no longer special.

Tim · 43:41
Now you have the tool to make that.

Nicky · 43:43
You can do this yourself. But when— and the idea of what intellectual property is, is going to become even more obvious how you're going to either share with people eating pizza together, or you're going to be part of something where someone eats the pizza in front of you and asks you to eat the crumbs off the table, you know, like That's a hard thing. And you know in your spirit when you go to sleep at night what you're working on. Are you eating— are you giving— eating the crumbs from someone? And the people that you're working for and with can't say these things out loud too much. You have to think, you have to go through a process. You're like, you cannot just quit your job. It's a process to come into that space. But you guys, where you're at, because you are doing this together, no one can stop you. You just have to create it, and you have to think outside of branding. You have to— you are the brand. The brand, your ultimate client that you want to hire, like, say, like, oh, I wish we could do the next Apple campaign. Do that campaign without Apple and guess what it's going to do?

Mary · 45:08
They're more like collaborations these days.

Nicky · 45:11
Yes.

Mary · 45:11
Like own your space in the relationship.

Nicky · 45:13
Yes, they will show up if you really do the work. If you really express the essence of who you are as a person and how you relate, it's world building. And in music, we build worlds, right? I feel like I talk too much.

Reggie · 45:30
No, you don't.

Tim · 45:31
I love it.

Mary · 45:31
I'm in like a lot of— I'm navigating a lot of tension internally right now because I'm— there's so much resonance right now. I'm feeling almost like scared of how good this is. And I want to stay here and be in it and be close to you. And I also want to just sit down and cross my legs.

Reggie · 45:50
I know.

Mary · 45:51
Just let you keep talking.

Nicky · 45:52
Okay, so let's talk about— let's talk about really quick about world building. When you think about Katy Perry, right?

Mary · 46:00
And we do all the time.

Nicky · 46:01
Yeah. Let's think about Katy Perry. It's an immediate world, right? Of who she is as a being.

Tim · 46:09
And sorry, you don't like it?

Nicky · 46:12
I don't know. I don't know.

Mary · 46:13
Have you not seen— sorry, I was making a joke.

Nicky · 46:16
Or Lady Gaga. I feel like I'm talking about big American ideas because if you hit the Super Bowl halftime show, you are part of the most important financial transaction that controls every transaction on this planet. Every transaction happens, everything leads back to everything. Like, if you think about it long enough, you can kind of trace everything back to—

Mary · 46:40
There are these like cultural moments that are—

Nicky · 46:41
That cultural moment is everything. And so like, I'm using Lady Gaga and Katy Perry and Because those are worlds that have been created that take people into that world and they're highly profitable. And as a creative studio, you don't create Katy Perry because—

Mary · 47:09
It's been done.

Nicky · 47:11
It's already been done.

Reggie · 47:13
It's already been created.

Nicky · 47:14
In the music space, or if you're— I think it makes sense to create parallel realities where you take someone's personality and put them into their ultimate fairy tale childhood imagination. I think finding— being able to build a world that you actually live in, it's like Pinterest kind of did that, right? Like, you go places and all of a sudden, like, I feel like Airbnb— Pinterest became Airbnb's interior designer. You go places that kind of look aesthetically kind of okay, but actually it's pretty bad, you know?

Tim · 47:55
It's a pinboard. Yeah, everybody's laid out in real life.

Nicky · 47:59
Yeah, it's like, like, it's kind of, it's kind of photographs, but it's not, it's not a design.

Tim · 48:04
And empty.

Nicky · 48:05
Yeah, it's not good. Like, are they—

Tim · 48:06
huh?

Nicky · 48:07
What's—

Tim · 48:07
there's lacking spirit.

Reggie · 48:09
Lacking spirit.

Nicky · 48:10
There's lacking spirit, but there already is spirit because you can tell someone tried to make it nicer. Because if there are people that live in, in soulless boxes, it's, it's like measures. It's a spectrum.

Tim · 48:23
So is there levels? Like there's a journey that people go through where you do not notice the imagination you're living in?

Nicky · 48:30
Yes, exactly.

Tim · 48:31
Whether it's yours or someone else's, most likely someone else's. And then you slowly start to wake up?

Nicky · 48:36
Try to.

Tim · 48:37
To what that imagination is and whether you're a part of creating that?

Nicky · 48:41
Yes.

Tim · 48:41
And as you go through life, you start to wake up to more of it and more of it? Or do you think it's just— you think it's a progress of life, or do you think it's a choice someone has to make at certain points in their life?

Reggie · 48:51
I think it's a choice they have to continually make.

Mary · 48:54
Maybe that's the practice.

Tim · 48:55
Well, how do you know if you're sleeping, I guess, is my question?

Mary · 48:58
Or is the dreamer the real you? Right.

Tim · 49:01
Like, how do you know you're sleeping in someone else's imagination versus—

Nicky · 49:04
We are.

Tim · 49:05
Yeah. So I guess maybe just assume you are.

Nicky · 49:07
No, we— I think we absolutely—

Tim · 49:09
I pinched myself. Wake up.

Nicky · 49:10
No, no, no.

Mary · 49:11
I think it's a lucid dream.

Nicky · 49:12
No, it's a lucid dream. And it's not so much about trying to wake up in it, but more understanding the nature of dreaming.

Reggie · 49:20
Yeah. And what your role is.

Nicky · 49:23
Yes. And how to be in it. And so, like, it is a lucid dream. Understand the nature of dreaming. You can totally influence where your original experience is going, because that's the only experience that matters to you.

Tim · 49:40
Yeah, that's true. And my kids.

Nicky · 49:44
Yeah, but that's still your experience. You have an experience.

Tim · 49:48
It's their experience.

Nicky · 49:50
No, but your experience of your kids isn't their true experience. That's your experience. They have a completely different experience of you. Yeah, that's Like, do not worry about it. Like, just have— worry about your experience being in harmony with the dream. Because if you are not in the dream with harmony, you are in a nightmare.

Mary · 50:09
Like— And you get to create that too.

Nicky · 50:10
You totally create the nightmare.

Mary · 50:12
Can I tell you— You were mentioning before about you and Tim being on a journey together and navigating some of the same tensions and figuring things out. And I feel like I'm gonna stop. Maybe I'll do one more at the end of the show.

Tim · 50:28
Yeah.

Mary · 50:28
But I'm— to say today is the best day of my life seems like a crazy overstatement, so I won't say that, but something like that is coming up within me. I just feel like you are encapsulating a lot of ideas that we believe or that I believe that my life has built within me, and I think is part of what has sort of stuck us together. And I hope that this won't offend you that I'll say it out loud, Tim and Reggie, but I think—

Tim · 50:54
That's a preface.

Mary · 50:55
We have, we're having like financial discussions and trying to figure out how to navigate financially in this early stage where we're trying to, we're trying to dream the dream together, you know, the 3 of us.

Reggie · 51:05
I'm offended.

Mary · 51:06
But I think our, that's not our biggest issue in my opinion. I think the biggest challenge that the 3 of us are facing each day is a morale challenge. Like just making sure that we can stay in the headspace to dream the dream and express ourselves fully and actually come from in here and stop trying to— you were telling the story about the round peg and going in the round hole.

Reggie · 51:28
Yeah, we're still putting all the shapes in the one peg.

Mary · 51:30
Well, we're just trying to conform still despite saying over and over again that we don't want to conform and despite saying over and over again the things that we've learned. And in particular, Tim, you've been marinating in these for a long time, I think, think you're awakening me to some new ideas and ways of thinking about myself and my avatar and my persona out in the world. But I just think you've come into our journey at a really important moment in the life of 40 Hearts, and you're so encouraging. And I feel like we're getting a free consultation with an incredibly intelligent—

Reggie · 52:04
I know.

Mary · 52:04
Cultural mover.

Reggie · 52:05
And I feel like there's a— There's a big takeaway too that I think we haven't leaned into. And what I'm getting from Nicky is like, we need to be radically authentic to who we uniquely are together because this is a really—

Nicky · 52:19
It's the band.

Reggie · 52:21
Yeah, it's the band. It's like such a great sound.

Nicky · 52:24
You have a resonating vibration.

Reggie · 52:27
Yeah. And we feel it every day when we're together, which is pretty amazing.

Mary · 52:30
If I'm not bummed out about the money stuff, you can feel it.

Reggie · 52:33
Yeah. I mean, I think we all get bummed out about the money stuff because that's just kind of the industry right now. But I also think that there's still something that allows me to push through it, and it's you guys. I push through that every single day. You're the best stuff. I come in stressed about, you know, we gotta crush this. But then I like totally lighten up when I'm around you. And see, I get playful and I get— and I feel the energy and I'm like, all right, we got this.

Mary · 53:06
You're wise in many ways, Reggie, but that might be the most profound one to me. And I do think in many ways you hold us together in that way. And I— that's something that I learn from you all the time.

Reggie · 53:17
You are the glue.

Tim · 53:19
I like that. Melted brown sugar glue. Sweetness.

Mary · 53:27
Sticking us all together. And like a role model, I guess I'm trying to say. I don't This is kind of rude to say, but I don't find many people out in the world that I'm like, I could be more like them every day, and I think I would be a better person. I feel like I would be more myself. In fact, you inspire something in me. So you've made me really introspective today, Nicky, but I agree.

Tim · 53:52
Yeah, I think it is a tender point for 40 Hearts. I think there is, and it might be for a lot of agencies and Where are we, urgency-wise? Companies in the world feeling the rocking nature of AI and the shift in culture and economics. And I get this sense, like when you were talking, I was imagining myself in my dream. And I imagined someone, and I don't think it's someone, I think it's me, a part of me comes banging into this dream with like threats. Like, it's not working. No one's buying it. You know, like, this is—

Mary · 54:25
No one's buying it.

Reggie · 54:26
No one's buying it.

Tim · 54:27
Yeah. Yeah. It's like this feeling that you're dreaming this dream and there's sometimes I can really connect to it and it's real to me. And then I'm like, wait a minute, am I crazy?

Mary · 54:38
Yeah.

Tim · 54:38
Like, am I, am I like making this up?

Mary · 54:40
Somebody else has to say, yeah, this is real. And I feel like maybe that's the crazy thing that we all did. Crazy in a good way.

Tim · 54:47
Right. For us. But I do feel like there's this weird need for validation in the world where it comes to money. Like, Mary's always questioning my definition of success. being money. And I always say that that's just the most accepted form of metrics when it comes to success. Yeah.

Reggie · 55:02
It's the most measurable way of saying this guy is successful.

Tim · 55:05
Right. And so then we look to that measure to define whether or not what we're experiencing is real. Like, are you having a valid— are you validated in your experience? And when it doesn't validate your experience, you start to question your reality or your dream and whether or not it is something that others can share in. Or whether you're off your rocker and taking everyone down with you in like some kind of— I don't know if it's deception or delusion.

Mary · 55:35
Or enabling is the word that I often—

Nicky · 55:37
Enabling. Right.

Tim · 55:39
And I think I've been at this point where like we used to resonate on this level nonstop, like as artists, as musical artists, and as spiritual kids. You know, like we just thought we could do anything in the world. There was nothing stopping us. And like, as I've walked through my life, I've noticed this opening and this closing at the same time where I've experienced myself getting slammed by reality or what—

Nicky · 56:04
At the dream.

Tim · 56:06
Threatening the dream. Like, that's not working. This is not working. This is what you have to do. And all the social media will tell you one thing, and then your friends and family will tell you something, and then the powers that be will tell you something and brands. And then you start, you get beat down. You're like, no, you need to fit in here. This is where you belong. Don't go out of the lines. And then I have this other part of me that's literally at the same time experiencing psychological breakdown. So I'm like falling apart in my mind.

Reggie · 0:56:34
Yeah.

Tim · 0:56:34
But it's falling apart down into my body. And I'm experiencing my life at a deeper, a deeper, almost like a care— careless but a careful place where I could care less what the world thinks. I just want to know that I'm in my reality, that I'm feeling my reality. I'm with the people I'm with. But when both these things clash, it's like you were saying, the clash of religion and politics and culture all at this moment of— what was it? Was it— what was that? What were you just saying? Was it money? Was it that the thing where it clashed? No, spirit.

Reggie · 0:57:09
Yeah, spirit.

Tim · 0:57:10
It clashes at spirit. And so it's like I was watching this movie called Rise of the Guardians. Because my son hadn't seen it yet. It's one of my favorite movies. And there's a part in it where, well, Jack Frost doesn't know his center. He doesn't know what his center was. He doesn't know his history.

Nicky · 0:57:25
Yes.

Tim · 0:57:26
And Saint Nick knows his center, and he uses these little nesting dolls to say, like, I'm this big guy. You see this big guy, and then you open up. I'm this a little bit littler guy, and I have these feelings. Then you open up and there's this little thing in the center. And it looks like a little baby. And he says, but look closer, it has big eyes because it likes to see wonder in everything. And he knew his center was seeing wonder and allowing others to see wonder. And then Jack Frost gets to his at the end. This is kind of a spoiler, but it's been around a long, long time.

Reggie · 0:57:58
Spoiler alert.

Mary · 0:57:59
Jake Springfield, one of his favorite movies.

Tim · 0:58:01
Is it really?

Mary · 0:58:02
I can't go a whole episode without mentioning Jake, so I've got my one.

Tim · 0:58:06
Jake mention.

Mary · 0:58:06
Go ahead. Sorry.

Tim · 0:58:08
But near the end, Jack Frost doesn't know what he's meant to do. And when he sees these others interacting with kids, he's like asking them, when is the last time you interacted with a kid? And Santa Claus says, well, we're doing the work. We don't have time to interact with the kids. We're building the toys and all the things. And his center was fun. And Jack Frost would play. Like, he would bring surprise snowstorms, sledding, ice, and like surprise—

Nicky · 0:58:34
Beautiful things.

Tim · 0:58:35
Twist in weather. And so I'm like, when all these things— and maybe this is what the experience is— when you start to feel the crushing nature of the world on your dream, but you also start to feel your dream becoming more lucid at the same time.

Mary · 0:58:50
Yeah.

Tim · 0:58:51
So you feel like you're going crazier while the world's telling you stop, but you keep walking into it. It's like those dolls, those nesting dolls being opened up. It's like, no, this is not you. I think this is not you, and this is not you.

Mary · 0:59:03
Take off that suit and then take off the next one.

Tim · 0:59:05
Yeah, and then you're this little tiny thing inside.

Nicky · 0:59:08
And then you're not even that.

Reggie · 0:59:10
Not even that. Not even that.

Tim · 0:59:11
You're spirit.

Nicky · 0:59:12
Yeah.

Tim · 0:59:12
You're a unique experiential spirit in the world. And so you do come at this moment where it, it reinvigorates. And this is what you did for my music career. You know, I was a failed musical artist, and Nicky says—

Nicky · 0:59:25
Depending on—

Tim · 0:59:25
Well, by the world's standards.

Mary · 0:59:26
Depending on your definition.

Nicky · 0:59:27
Okay, so by the world's standards, I was receiving this To me, I can see why you would think that you failed based off the culture that you were born in.

Tim · 0:59:38
Mary's saying, I told you so, with those eyes.

Mary · 0:59:42
I'm like campaigning alongside you.

Tim · 0:59:45
But you sat me down in like a barbecue restaurant. No, I was with Steven in the barbecue restaurant. But me and you talked and you said, come to Germany and let's record something.

Reggie · 0:59:52
Let's record.

Nicky · 0:59:52
This should be recorded, but you should never say those words ever again. Like, I'm a failure. That's crazy. Yeah, I think that otherwise you wouldn't have said that. Yeah, it's in your heart.

Reggie · 1:00:01
And I think back to your story is that when you're grappling with those 2 sides of yourself, the one that's like in a box and being forced down, and then the one that wants to break through it all, is that you have to actively choose this one every day. Every day. Because the forces are always trying to crush your spirit and push you in your box and keep you in your hole. And you have to make the conscious decision every day. No, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to bust through, and I'm going to bust through again and again and again until I get there, until I make something.

Tim · 1:00:35
Do you ever feel like your delusion is hurting other people?

Nicky · 1:00:38
Yeah, absolutely.

Tim · 1:00:39
Like you have a family and you're dragging them through this crazy experience.

Reggie · 1:00:42
Absolutely, it can.

Tim · 1:00:43
And you, and you have to keep believing against all reality hints that reality, other realities are trying to give you.

Nicky · 1:00:52
Yeah.

Tim · 1:00:53
And so there's this, like, I was talking to my brother and I was like, I'm at this point where I almost want to choose. I bring things back, as you know, to ancient biblical texts. And so the myth of the Garden of Eden is real in my life right now because there were 2 trees in the garden. There was one of the knowledge of good and evil, and there was one of life. And the Creator had said, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, eat from the life. But I feel like the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the thing that makes our world work. It's all here. It's like, it's like the, the powers that be hold this, like—

Nicky · 1:01:29
It makes one world work.

Tim · 1:01:31
One world work.

Nicky · 1:01:32
One reality. Right.

Tim · 1:01:33
It's a stronger reality. Or not, it's not stronger at all, but it's like a prevalent reality that a lot of people share.

Mary · 1:01:39
The dominant reality.

Tim · 1:01:41
The dominant reality through narratives in movies and narratives on political campaigns. There's like there's smaller dreams. Like you said, you create a bubble when you have a product. You create this bubble of people in this world. There's a bigger world that's influencing all the little dreams, you know, like these bigger forces of gravity that are holding these other forces in kind of this spiral.

Reggie · 1:02:01
Yes.

Tim · 1:02:02
And so when, when I think about this tree, these 2 trees, it's like the delusion, or what I would term the delusion, it's not really delusion, but it's life. It's like digging into life. What actually brings you life? What kind of work? What kind of, what kind of contribution is life-giving to you? And then the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is like, how can you sell yourself to survive? You know, like—

Mary · 1:02:32
How can I be consumed in such a way that people would pay me for it?

Nicky · 1:02:36
Right.

Tim · 1:02:36
How can I be wise enough to navigate the tricks and the schemes in order to win.

Nicky · 1:02:42
See, don't think this way.

Mary · 1:02:45
It's about joining for— it's about getting—

Nicky · 1:02:47
Check this out. I, I feel like I don't think this way. I, I have— and now this is so bad, it's toxic. But think about, think about a little bit this way and tell me if this resonates.

Mary · 1:02:56
It will.

Tim · 1:02:58
First, did you say my thinking was toxic?

Nicky · 1:02:59
No, if you just wanted it to be real for me. Yeah, I mean, like, if you have to think about, like, if you diagnose If you're going from this, if you meet your beautiful life with that, that's crazy.

Tim · 1:03:13
Yeah.

Nicky · 1:03:15
That's that. And it's not— Well, that's good because I feel crazy. It's not crazy to question it. You know, I think that depression And it's your true self waking up within the dream. And that's just like, you know, when you first thing waking up in the morning and you kind of just like heavy and it's— yeah. And you have to kind of get into your body. You have to wake. That's all that is. It's completely natural to have that experience.

Reggie · 1:03:50
That sense of like being outside yourself, feeling crazy.

Nicky · 1:03:54
You know how people want to go to Mars? So like, even like, so like no one knows how it's going to go down, but you're going to basically medically go, you're going to put a crew together, it's going to look at— if I was to send people on Mars, which I never will, but I'm just saying, I'm just going to make it like a for Earth, okay?

Tim · 1:04:14
Hypothetical.

Nicky · 1:04:15
Hypothetical. Like you look at medical, you look at personality, you look at skills, you build a perfect team that could create a society, right?

Tim · 1:04:25
Right.

Nicky · 1:04:25
From scratch.

Tim · 1:04:26
The raw material.

Nicky · 1:04:27
There's nothing. Raw material, everything. And you bring people there that have done this before, so that, that have a good resume. Okay, so, and then they are going to try their best to create a world up there. So I think that this is exactly what's happening to us on Earth. Like we came here, we came here to create. And the same way when you go to— when you go right now with people to Mars and you're part of the team, you just— all you're going to get is what the tools that they were going to give you. But once you get there, you're going to be confronted with the reality of Mars.

Reggie · 1:05:12
Mm-hmm.

Nicky · 1:05:13
So we weren't given all the tools.

Reggie · 1:05:17
Right.

Nicky · 1:05:17
To come here. And now we're confronted with the reality of being here.

Reggie · 1:05:22
Yeah.

Nicky · 1:05:22
And we have to first unlearn and take all the things out that are part of—

Reggie · 1:05:31
This is good.

Nicky · 1:05:32
They're part of this experience that we're having. But do you understand?

Reggie · 1:05:37
Yeah. Yeah.

Nicky · 1:05:40
But so like You're not— I'm— we need to remove the, the labels that we put on ourselves. As like, I'm a— you ask me, how do you want to be, um, introduced to you? I think creative director, right, me, works in this setting. But it's true, if you really like invisible in this world and you are operating on, on a vibrational frequency and you're going to— you see the world as a singular place, then you know who you need to be in that moment. You might be a photographer. I'm going to take the photos right now. I'm going to be an interior designer. I'm going to be the cook. I'm going to clean up. It doesn't really matter. You're just going to recognize your role in the moment. You move through it. And you move through it and you don't define your— you wear according to the— you dress according to the occasion, right?

Reggie · 1:06:33
To the occasion, yeah.

Nicky · 1:06:34
So like, if you're cleaning up, you're probably going to wear something different than when you go cook, or when you are in a music video, or if you're in a design studio, like you're going to be yourself in all of those things. Right. But we need to kind of, that's when you are succeeding at life is when you are able to not be defined by the program that is destroying our experience.

Tim · 1:07:01
I hear that.

Reggie · 1:07:04
That's deep.

Tim · 1:07:05
When I was going to the bathroom before this started, I was like, I was just in myself asking like, who am I? What am I?

Mary · 1:07:13
Just a typical Tuesday.

Tim · 1:07:16
A typical Tuesday. And I felt that, I felt something tell me, you're like the day. When you wake up, it may be different. It may be raining, it may be cold, it may be hot or sunny.

Mary · 1:07:30
It's just weather.

Tim · 1:07:32
You're the same beautiful day, but there are changes in the weather.

Reggie · 1:07:36
That's precisely the point.

Mary · 1:07:38
Someone once told me, you're the sky. The sky is, it's immense.

Tim · 1:07:43
I think I try to compress myself into a sameness so that I can be safe, so that I don't have too much lows or too much highs. I'm trying to make myself flat so that I can survive.

Mary · 1:07:57
Because 3 dimensions are hard to, to manage.

Tim · 1:07:59
And weather's scary. I mean, we experienced the hurricane. Really intense weather in a day can scare you to death, and it can wreck your world.

Reggie · 1:08:07
Big time.

Tim · 1:08:08
You can experience loss and death, or you can experience peace and calmness of a, like, a spring breeze, or you can be in the coldest winter alone. You gotta go to the restroom?

Reggie · 1:08:22
I do, because you were just talking about the bathroom.

Mary · 1:08:24
I'm sorry, Reggie.

Reggie · 1:08:25
I need to go before I—

Tim · 1:08:28
You can be, you can be all these things, but it's not— I guess I've been trying to change the weather to always make it sunny in Philadelphia. It's always sunny. Like, even when I was in LA recording with Brian West, I actually got tired of the sun in LA. Like, it was like perfect 70-degree sunny weather, but I'm a kid from the mountains. I'm used to rain and thunderstorms and emotion in weather. And I got— I was there for like 30 days.

Nicky · 1:08:54
That's right.

Tim · 1:08:54
And it was just constant normal boring weather. And when I came When I came home, it was the first time I looked at rain with such love. Like, I just went out and sat on my porch and just felt it, and I heard it. And so I, I thank you for, like, shaking me in my— I don't know if it's like a dream within a dream or some kind of weird nightmare that's trying to impose on my dream.

Nicky · 1:09:17
I think this is what it is. I see this right now crystal clear. You're doing all the right things. you are putting yourself in this— you're doing exactly what you came here to do, and you're doing it the best you can, and it feels like that isn't enough.

Reggie · 1:09:35
Yes.

Nicky · 1:09:35
Because it doesn't acquaint— like, it financially isn't rewarding. Like, it should financially— you want it to financially mirror how much time you put in and what the ethics represent, because the core— we were talking about the gravity of the company and the creation is so directly connected to the real values of life that it should show up in a certain way.

Tim · 1:10:06
That's what it feels like, yeah.

Nicky · 1:10:07
And so that makes you existential. It's like, what the fuck am I— what is this, right?

Mary · 1:10:17
Yeah.

Nicky · 1:10:19
And that's why you need community.

Reggie · 1:10:21
Hmm.

Nicky · 1:10:22
That's why you have to kind of understand, like, don't treat this as a business. Treat this as your team that you incarnated to Earth to, to do when you are in the prime of your mental capacity and In the prime of leadership, you will be put into this team to do Earth.

Tim · 1:10:49
To do Earth.

Mary · 1:10:51
I am just— I am putting a lot of my intention into just like surrounding a halo around everything that Nicky is saying, because I really do feel like we are— this has just become therapy for 40 Hearts, but we are navigating daily and trying to find the intersection of our reality bubbles or our dreams and trying to figure out where they merge because there is something here. And I feel ridiculous to say, and I think I've been afraid to say, that this feels more meaningful to me than just a way to get a paycheck. And part of that's because I've got my Sun in my 6th house and I've got a lot of Sagittarius placements. We could talk more about that. But, and that's just how I personally identify. Like, my craft is so valuable to me, and community in craft and connecting with people through the things that we make and express into the world is so important to me. And I think that's— I'll speak to my own experience— that's part of what has made previous jobs feel really hollow to me, is not being met in that.

Tim · 1:12:01
Not being part of the dream.

Mary · 1:12:03
Not dreaming together.

Tim · 1:12:05
Not dreaming together.

Mary · 1:12:05
Like, being asked to sort of subjugate myself to somebody else's imagining of the world that frankly is boring and bland and kind of like a wimpy way to use your one brilliant, beautiful moment on this planet.

Nicky · 1:12:18
Yes.

Mary · 1:12:18
So I just— welcome back. I was just expressing that I think Nicky has given me permission, at least in this moment. We'll see if I can maintain my courage after you leave today. Are you looking for a freelance gig? You want to come on board? Because if you—

Tim · 1:12:37
He says yes.

Mary · 1:12:38
I've got a guest room.

Tim · 1:12:39
He says yes.

Mary · 1:12:40
I have a guest room. I've got a lot of desks here. We've, you know, got— we can get good music going. But I think he's given me permission to say, this feels bigger to me than what people have told me it's supposed to be. The narrative is that my work is just my work. It's a way to get on with life and do the other things that you want to do. And I'm like, no, in many ways my work is my life. It's, it's where I spend my time. And the, the dream I get to create for myself is in part in my work. And I love to make things and I love to use those skills to help other people self-actualize in their own way.

Nicky · 1:13:25
Hmm.

Mary · 1:13:25
And it is Spiritual. That's a scary word for me to say in this space because I feel energetic. Sure.

Nicky · 1:13:32
I can't say spiritual, but I feel like for the marketplace, right?

Tim · 1:13:35
It's energetic.

Nicky · 1:13:36
It's energetic. It's a feeling. And if you don't have feelings and you're a person that doesn't feel, yeah, you're no longer in their reality and you can kind of remove yourself because like, that's like making music for deaf people.

Reggie · 1:13:48
It's like Chinese, in Chinese medicine, it's like your chi.

Mary · 1:13:52
Yeah, the flow. It's this—

Reggie · 1:13:54
you harness this thing that you have just coursing through your body, and you're using it to channel into effort into what you're doing, your relationships.

Mary · 1:14:03
And I feel a synchronicity here. I will learn a lot if for whatever reason— I'm knocking on wood as I say it— but if for whatever reason we determine that this isn't the path, or that there's something else that we've discovered that would serve us better, or that we can imagine a better more interesting way of doing this that feels— makes us feel more like ourselves, I'll learn from that and we'll move on, and I won't love you any less. And I've said this before, my friendship with both of you is so much more important to me than where our office is or what stupid tchotchke I'm allowed to put in my office or how much money we make or, you know, what project we're working on together. Those things feed me in a different way, but—

Tim · 1:14:46
Yeah.

Mary · 1:14:47
I just feel like there's more import to this than money for me. And that is a very insecure place for me to stand right now. But I'm very thankful that this is happening today.

Reggie · 1:14:58
That's great. Thanks for that sentiment.

Tim · 1:15:02
Me too.

Nicky · 1:15:02
I think, like, if you think about 40 Hearts being a space station on Earth that has— think about it as a space station.

Reggie · 1:15:13
Yeah.

Nicky · 1:15:13
Okay. And there's There's an operation to the thing. It has a lot of different functions. Again, take the label off of your creative studio. I'm using that because it's, it's, it's broad. It's, it's the closest thing for the creator to have hands and feet on earth creating something beautiful.

Mary · 1:15:31
Oh, a creative studio, you say? That's a good idea. That resonates.

Reggie · 1:15:37
Yeah.

Mary · 1:15:38
Sorry.

Reggie · 1:15:38
We've used that one before.

Mary · 1:15:40
I just— whether it's right or wrong or good or bad, I don't care.

Nicky · 1:15:43
Don't have too much language for it because essentially you are here and you have to be yourself.

Mary · 1:15:51
Yeah.

Nicky · 1:15:52
Through all, through all things. So if you— everyone has different space stations on Earth that they show up to create their life from. So you have like your home base where you go home and sleep, and that's your—

Reggie · 1:16:14
that's, that's, that's your restoration.

Nicky · 1:16:18
They want you in, on, on, in the Matrix, they want you to separate those things.

Reggie · 1:16:22
Yeah, that's all the way restoration.

Nicky · 1:16:24
That's your private life, and this is your— right? When you are a creator, not everyone is a creator, but when you are a creator, there's continuity. It's, it's fluid.

Reggie · 1:16:35
Yeah.

Nicky · 1:16:36
And there— and you know how close things can come into your bedroom. And people that don't know how to set the boundaries, they will have their bedroom on TikTok, you know, like, literally, you don't have to have your bedroom on TikTok as a creator. That's not necessary. But you can, you know.

Reggie · 1:16:57
Yeah.

Nicky · 1:16:57
But so the function of a space station like 40 Hearts is to create, to design every experience in this present moment to minimize suffering, to make it more beautiful. It can be anything. But basically, the moment you create beauty, you are shifting focus.

Tim · 1:17:26
Minimize suffering.

Nicky · 1:17:29
Yeah, to minimize suffering. So that's like the, that's, that's the the core gravity, and that you're also always going to fight against people that don't care about that. Big companies don't care that their employees are suffering. They are built on suffering. Everyone doesn't want to, you know—

Reggie · 1:17:47
They create the suffering.

Nicky · 1:17:48
They create the suffering. And then, so you always have to first take care of yourself. You can't help anyone else until you help yourself. So you know with each other what your needs are, you know, like, and be transparent about it. Like, don't bring the corporate world into your spaceship because you're literally a space station, and the more freer you are, the more potent it is. So that this rigid way of thinking like, this is where AI is going, social media, data, data. Like, if you bring that all into this place, it's like bringing a different religion into your religion, you know, like it's not gonna work. It's not religious. Yeah, it's just, so maybe you can learn something from it, but like, you, you have as a team the DNA and the energy of what you are, and you are discovering it together. And the only way to discover it is by expressing the things that the inspiration and the imagination is doing.

Reggie · 1:19:02
Hmm.

Nicky · 1:19:05
And bringing in the money is going to— it's a part of it, but it's not everything. It's kind of like putting the gas in the car so that the car runs.

Tim · 1:19:19
The space car.

Nicky · 1:19:20
Yeah, space car. But it's not about the gas. Yeah, it's about the vehicle.

Reggie · 1:19:26
It's about the gas.

Nicky · 1:19:27
So take— it's not— plan together how much gas you have in the cars. You can plan the trip because it's about taking trips. But plan for trips. If you can't take— if you're planning for a trip that you don't have gas for, then you're not going to enjoy the trip, you know. But if, if you're going only 5 minutes down the street That's great.

Tim · 1:19:45
You know, a little bit of gas gets you there.

Reggie · 1:19:47
Such a great analogy.

Mary · 1:19:49
I like it.

Nicky · 1:19:49
And just make sure that you take— that you're on a good trip.

Reggie · 1:19:54
Yeah.

Nicky · 1:19:54
And the trip will get longer and longer because somehow the nature of this experience is the shorter— the quality of trips creates the next trip.

Reggie · 1:20:05
And then we'll have more gas and go further, explore further.

Nicky · 1:20:09
And then when your heart is in your center, And your spirit and everything, you stop putting the gas in your car when it's full. You start filling up other cars so that they can go on the trip.

Reggie · 1:20:22
I love that.

Nicky · 1:20:24
You know, versus like, I'm gonna now—

Tim · 1:20:26
And it's just gushing out of the tank.

Nicky · 1:20:28
You know what, I'm gonna take here my— and what is that tank called?

Tim · 1:20:31
Gas tanker?

Nicky · 1:20:33
Like your sewage tank, you know? But I feel my septic tank, my extra gas.

Reggie · 1:20:40
You never know when you're gonna knock, you know?

Nicky · 1:20:42
It's like—

Reggie · 1:20:42
See, that's the mentality that we're working, we're facing. But I like the concept of not making it about the gas. You're making it about the trip and how far you're going and who you can help along the way.

Nicky · 1:20:56
So the most important thing that you have right now is your website because on the website, you are completely the landlord of— you can on the website fully give the representation of how you, you can extend your world into it. Do you not? On every other platform—

Reggie · 1:21:18
You're not limited to Asheville or to this very moment.

Nicky · 1:21:23
On every other platform, you are in someone else's imagination.

Reggie · 1:21:26
Right. A website is our world.

Nicky · 1:21:30
Your website is your imagination. So like your website is the most important thing that you can put time into.

Tim · 1:21:35
All the social media platforms have talked us into believing the website is useless.

Nicky · 1:21:39
No.

Tim · 1:21:40
It's worthless.

Nicky · 1:21:41
Your website is the most, it's the most important. And understanding how the other websites work, they are only there for you to point to your website. So imagine that you are the most you are in this present moment. In this moment, you are the most beautiful experience that someone could have on Earth. So it needs to be accessible on the internet in your own space.

Reggie · 1:22:08
We need to create that same experience.

Nicky · 1:22:10
So what I see is like you— I'm just throwing it out as I'm seeing it, and you can totally like just kind of—

Mary · 1:22:17
Oh, we're gonna love it.

Reggie · 1:22:18
I can already tell.

Nicky · 1:22:19
But like the function of the— let me say in real life because everything comes from real life. So there's the space station facilitates cultural experiences. What are cultural experiences? Experiences that nourish your soul. You feel energetically full, you know, and you feel inspired. You feel like you are questioning reality in a hopeful way. You can question reality and create a suicide club.

Reggie · 1:22:49
Yeah.

Nicky · 1:22:49
That there's no— or you can create a conspiracy. There are all these clubs that you can join. You are directly connected to the trees and the ocean and the sunrise. And what you're bringing is bringing people back to the realization that that's going to happen tomorrow again. And it's the most magnificent thing that's going to happen tomorrow, the sunrise. We don't know why it's happening, but we're excited about it, you know.

Tim · 1:23:10
Yes, it brings new possibilities.

Nicky · 1:23:14
Yeah, new possibilities. So like cultural experiences within you, not outsourcing them, but creating them from within. So you have music, you have food, you have space, you have movies, you can— you do—

Tim · 1:23:30
you shoot film.

Nicky · 1:23:31
Mm-hmm. People in— we've just did a film, a community film in LA with all people in the community, just made a super indie film, brought everyone together. And to me, that experience experience was so much more interesting than to go to a movie theater because you had this— it created this whole world of now you're having community with people in their free time creating a film.

Tim · 1:24:02
Oh man.

Nicky · 1:24:02
And then editing it together, having celebrated making this film. We had a screening. It became this— it became creative community without trying super hard. You know, so like, we had a filmmaker in the community that kind of gave birth to it. So—

Mary · 1:24:23
Beautiful.

Nicky · 1:24:24
There are projects within your space station that are burning to be created. And you create those experiences. And you have on your website a section that fully mirrors that experience. That experience.

Tim · 1:24:49
I love that.

Nicky · 1:24:49
And, and then I'm gonna really make it short. You, you show the people that are in this, in the space fully without selling yourself, just being yourself. And that's— and then the, the section that brings in the money You dedicate— you can't control the weather. You can only control how much you do. So you give as a team a certain amount to that energy, but you do not allow that energy to determine if your creation is valuable or successful. You are bigger than that. Money will come and go, but you are in a time in life where if you don't create the change, no one will.

Mary · 1:25:36
Yeah.

Nicky · 1:25:38
So the universe will figure it out for as you are fully being yourself. They're going to be, um, people, everything is for sale. So you're going to have a section where you can sell things. People will buy things. You never have to, the energy is never begging, never asking for donations. It's you are creating.

Mary · 1:25:58
What do we offer? Like what, what, what is our contribution that people can come partake of?

Reggie · 1:26:04
Exactly.

Tim · 1:26:05
Yeah.

Nicky · 1:26:05
And it's so— if you shared, it's so valuable. I came into the space and I'm just like, I feel like a million bucks in this space. I'm, you know, like, it doesn't— that's what it is. Like, you come into a space and it's like, I want to create my idea in here.

Reggie · 1:26:24
Yeah. Love that.

Nicky · 1:26:25
Those are the right people I want to create my idea with.

Reggie · 1:26:28
Yeah. We just need to get everybody in our space. And I think what you're saying is—

Nicky · 1:26:32
Get them onto your website.

Reggie · 1:26:33
I've always, you know, As a brand designer, I have always—

Nicky · 1:26:38
I don't care if I wanted to build a house or if I wanted to make toothpaste, I would want to do it. You know what I mean?

Mary · 1:26:43
I've said I'm like so inspired by the ability to make in this group.

Tim · 1:26:48
Because of the spirit in this space.

Reggie · 1:26:50
I've always told people, as someone who's created brand, I've always told clients that your website is an extension of you and your space. When you can't get people on the other side of the country to come into your office and experience you in person and what you have to offer and get that vibe, then you recreate it in your website so that people get to have that taste. And that's exactly— you're spot on.

Tim · 1:27:18
I think I'm just being called out on my devaluing of what I thought websites had become. You know, I've fallen for the trick. I think that's a big fallacy that these other social, they bring in the revenue or they bring in the audience and the attention and they— and so it's become so important to have a social presence that we forgot the presence on our website. It's not just to sell services.

Mary · 1:27:41
Those are just invitations into the house.

Reggie · 1:27:44
Right. Yeah.

Tim · 1:27:46
And to create that space in a way that is very filled with spirit, with the spirit of the dream that you're creating.

Nicky · 1:27:54
Yes.

Tim · 1:27:54
And what I think—

Mary · 1:27:56
what I—

Tim · 1:27:56
okay, go ahead.

Reggie · 1:27:57
I was gonna say in the grand scheme of things too, like Like last night, and though he's not our favorite character, we were watching, we were at my house watching The Boys, and there's this scene where Homelander is, you know, like expressing himself in a certain kind of way on the top of the building. He's like, I can do whatever I want. And I think he's not wrong. Like if the trend seems to be that websites aren't the thing, then we ignore that and we still go full into making it whatever we want that experience to be.

Mary · 1:28:29
Yeah.

Reggie · 1:28:30
Stop living in other people's imagination, create our own. And I think that is the most brilliant thing that as a creator, to reorient yourself with your path day in and day out.

Tim · 1:28:41
And to me, it was this weird— and I'm not trying to bring this back around to the theme, but when I—

Reggie · 1:28:46
Yes, he is.

Tim · 1:28:47
I mean, I kind of—

Nicky · 1:28:48
I was—

Reggie · 1:28:48
I am— He's the host.

Tim · 1:28:50
I am. But it's such a natural callback because when When we first started this, I thought about art theft and the, the, the— what is it? The, the— what's the right word here? It was about the person being stolen from. That's who it was hurting.

Mary · 1:29:10
It's about the harm.

Reggie · 1:29:11
Like the victim.

Tim · 1:29:12
But I think the art theft, the concept of art theft hurts the one stealing it because they have no identity and they're stealing someone else's dream and they're not able to live in their own dream.

Reggie · 1:29:23
It's like they don't have an original experience.

Tim · 1:29:24
You don't have an original experience.

Nicky · 1:29:26
That's the experience of being fake.

Tim · 1:29:27
Right.

Reggie · 1:29:28
It's not nice.

Tim · 1:29:28
And true artists, even when they're stolen from, they keep creating a world that is unlimited.

Reggie · 1:29:35
Yeah.

Tim · 1:29:36
And so they keep generating new—

Reggie · 1:29:38
New ideas and new dreams.

Tim · 1:29:40
And then the— they don't suffer for the art theft. It's the thief that suffers for the art.

Reggie · 1:29:46
It's like when you cheat in elementary school, like you didn't learn the material. So you may have gotten an A and you passed the class, but the person that you cheated from actually got that knowledge. It's in their brain now.

Tim · 1:29:59
You're missing out on the original experience.

Reggie · 1:30:02
You didn't evolve in that experience. You just skirted through and cheated.

Tim · 1:30:05
Oh, that's powerful. I love this. I'm going to— I don't know if I can summarize this episode. I feel like it went so many amazing, deep, surreal, and real places.

Reggie · 1:30:17
It was a master— it was a Nicky masterclass of how to—

Nicky · 1:30:22
I talk way too much, right?

Reggie · 1:30:23
No, it was It's a Nicky masterclass on how to be and stay within your creative potential in the world, in your existence.

Tim · 1:30:32
And your dreams.

Reggie · 1:30:33
Yes. Don't lose sight of who you are because you are so busy trying to take or, or mold into what society thinks you should be or what you should be doing. But you got to continue to create your own path and stay on it. I think that's—

Tim · 1:30:52
Would you mind creating a what-if statement for us? Like, if you could take this whole conversation and say, what if, and then finish it.

Reggie · 1:30:59
Oh, that's a great idea.

Mary · 1:31:01
Yeah, make Nicky do it. That's good.

Reggie · 1:31:03
Yes, make Nicky.

Mary · 1:31:05
Invite Nicky to share. Yes.

Tim · 1:31:07
You don't have to. You can say no, but you say yes to things, so I don't worry.

Nicky · 1:31:11
What if you believe The world that you can see in your heart, that you can realize it with this team.

Reggie · 1:31:25
We should put that up on the thing.

Mary · 1:31:33
Would you want to meet my mom?

Nicky · 1:31:37
I feel like—

Mary · 1:31:38
not, I mean, not like in a romantic way, but like, I just feel like—

Reggie · 1:31:41
I like that she had to put that disclaimer in there. Not in a romantic way.

Mary · 1:31:47
This just is very meaningful. And I feel like today, for me, you are so much more than this. But today, for me, you've been a lifeline. And you've been an inspiration.

Nicky · 1:31:57
Honestly, we are for each other all the time. We are like, the more present we are, I think we are each other's angels, like all the time.

Reggie · 1:32:08
Yeah, I definitely get that.

Nicky · 1:32:10
And you're always like an I travel a lot, okay? I see a lot of different, different things all the time.

Reggie · 1:32:19
Different people, different energies.

Nicky · 1:32:21
What you guys have is so amazing, like—

Tim · 1:32:26
Thank you.

Nicky · 1:32:27
Valuable, super, super, super valuable. It cannot be acquainted with money or valued with money. Um, yeah, and just, just create it. Just keep that, keep that feeling super sacred. And yeah, I think like you're, you're learning how to play together to find your sound. There will be things that will be your signature that makes you so you effortlessly.

Tim · 1:33:00
And our identity.

Nicky · 1:33:03
And this here right now is the equivalent of you being on TikTok in your bedroom. Okay, and I think it's great and very cute, but you don't have to do it much longer, you know. You can if you want to.

Reggie · 1:33:16
As long as you don't shit the bed.

Nicky · 1:33:18
You know, you can, but there's so much life force here and ideas.

Reggie · 1:33:26
Agreed.

Nicky · 1:33:26
That you will be busy creating, and no, beautiful things don't ask for attention. No one needs to know who's behind it. Like, that's the thing that we are always told, like, you have to be the brand, you have to be this thing. 40 Hearts is the thing. Oh, even if you were to change the names 100 times, I don't care. It's the soul group. Yeah, the collective group allows you to be invisible so that you can enjoy your life. So you don't have to be in your bedroom on TikTok sharing your why life doesn't make sense, because it does if you have people that you can make sense with. Right.

Reggie · 1:34:06
We definitely make sense together.

Nicky · 1:34:08
Yeah.

Tim · 1:34:08
And I want everyone out there to take this too, because this is like, I think, an artist's dilemma to struggle in this world of making sense.

Nicky · 1:34:17
Yeah.

Tim · 1:34:18
Because who makes sense? We make sense together.

Nicky · 1:34:21
Yes.

Tim · 1:34:22
You know, no one makes sense alone.

Mary · 1:34:23
We're sense-making.

Nicky · 1:34:25
We're sense-making together. Yeah.

Tim · 1:34:27
I love it.

Mary · 1:34:27
This is impossible to close. I do not— I'm like trying to figure out how to I've helped him, but there's no end to this conversation.

Tim · 1:34:36
It could go on for a long time. And I appreciate everyone who's joined to watch this TikTok in our bedroom.

Mary · 1:34:42
I appreciate Will, who agreed to be on a flat fee per episode. And I don't know what time it is.

Tim · 1:34:47
I have no idea either. I feel like I've been transcending time for the past—

Mary · 1:34:50
I— yeah.

Reggie · 1:34:51
2 hours in now.

Tim · 1:34:53
But I, but I'm just going to close this out and send us off. I appreciate Reggie for you taking the time to do this, and Mary, for you taking the time. Thank you, Nicky, for taking the time and for giving us such a gift. For everyone out there, hope you enjoyed it, and we'll see you next time.

Mary · 1:35:09
Bye.

Nicky · 1:35:09
Bye.

Mary · 1:35:12
I almost— can I just, since I'm here and I'm having the idea, I want to share it.

Reggie · 1:35:15
Okay.

Mary · 1:35:16
I'm obsessed with video.

Tim · 1:35:19
Thanks for listening. This podcast was created and developed by our hosts. Reggie Tidwell, Tim Scroggs, and Mary Greene.

Reggie · 1:35:30
Special thanks to our guest host, Nicky Balachandran.

Nicky · 1:35:34
Produced by Mary Greene.

Will · 1:35:37
Live production and editing by me, Will Canady. Graphic design by Dylan Garcia and set design by Megan Scroggs.

Reggie · 1:35:46
Today's episode is presented lovingly by 40 Hearts, creators of enduring value.