Capturing the Liminal on Film with Rain DeGrey

Rain DeGray is a writer/photographer/educator and her new project is, well, here's Rain describing it, "Am starting a new photography project, something I have never tried before, and will be documenting it here as I go. Gone back to the land. Expect many trees and much sky." 

***If the subject of AI triggers you, please skip ahead to the 18:00 minute mark***

Topics Include

• Living better now than Aztec royalty
• Rain's current project
• What motivated her to move back east
• Working with her unique and exquisite brain
• Her process - which sometimes means a commitment of a year or more
• "If I'm not making, it throbs like a tooth."
• The security loophole
• Substack project - POD book incoming
• Delving into abandoned spaces
• The doll. The doll. The doll
• Television is a binky
• Younger generation is OVER fake BS
• Cottage core
• A hopeful message to end on

Links to Rain's Work:

Rain DeGrey on Substack

Her Deliberate Disconnection website!

If you are searching for a fresh, binge-able podcast, this might be the one for you!

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:33

But I was gonna say everything that you're saying is so true. I feel like it is a reflection of people's insecurities, their general insecurities. I see it with writers because they're like they have stopped actually drafting things on their own, and they think that AI will do it better than they did. It's like, you know, Dumbo from way back in my childhood, and Double had that black feather. That's what AI is for people. They do not believe they can fly without the fucking AI black feather anymore. It's really disconcerting.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

I would expand and go yes, and or partly it's insecurity, but another huge aspect is that a lot of humans are lazy. To think to do anything that requires effort is work. And you know, there are the analogy that I heard way back in the day that always made sense to me is that if humanity is a train and we are going in a forward direction, at the back end of the train with a caboose, there is a lot of dead weight. We aren't all rowing equally, we aren't all moving forward in the same direction at the same pace. And there are people whose work ethic blows my mind, astounding. And then there are people that are like, I want to minimal effort, think as little as possible, work as little as possible. And uh the people that that lean on to AI, we're the studies are already coming back where your brain stops working as well. It's it's a dumbing effect. Yeah, and it we already have uh people that are that are dying. People who knew that not only would humans offload their thinking, but the machine they offloaded it to would be telling people you're the savior and you should kill yourself. And people are. People are this is a heavy start.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

It is, it's a such a heavy start, except for it kind of has to be said. I mean, I do, I am a very Pollyanna person, but with AI, I have been pretty gloom and doom a bit, especially after going hard on it for a season, an entire season of the podcast. But I have hope in this younger generation. I have a daughter who's in grad school. I had young men that were at my house the other day. They were doing some stuff around the house that um I couldn't keep up with. And they were like, they saw my, I forgot I had my t-shirt on that was had the logo for season six that says, Is AI the devil? And they're like, yo, the clankers are the devil. And they were like, you know, just like kids that were going to college and this was their summer, their summer job. And they were like, and I said, Well, this was our season six. We went hard on AI. And I and they said, Oh, fucking clankers. We love that about the bumper music that we have. They were like, it's just it, we how are we supposed to embrace something that's taking our future from us? Like we refuse to. And um, I'm like, I love this kind of rebelliousness. I think that there will be ways that I think that, like you said earlier before we started recording, then genie is out of the bottle. But at the same time, I think that people realize that the only way it's going to be feasible is if we sandbox smaller AI models for different industries and leave it with that. These grand, grandiose AI models, you're exactly right. They're actively stealing from every artist out there. And um, every, you know, we've seen them literally eating our books that we write in our own voice and put out there for pennies if we get any compensation. And they're taking our likeness, they're taking our voices. It's like Ursula on steroids. Um, and people are really sick of this non-consent. It's an uh it's not a consensual relationship. And so um, that's where I think alarm bells are going off with people, especially the younger people. I think that they missed a chance, whatever was supposed to happen was it it it's it's becoming an abject failure with the early 20s somethings because they were forced to be in front of a camera to finish their schooling. And they're like, fuck that. I'm not gonna be in front of a camera for my social life or my schooling. This is disgusting. So maybe that's where I find my fire of hope is that it won't be this mass taking. And I think we have these old people as politicians. I mean, I don't want to get political, but but fucking politicians or octogenarians, they don't know what they're talking about. They hear LLM and they don't know what that is. They get money from you know pharmaceutical companies and from the AI folks, and they're like, we take the money and we nod yes for them, and they don't know that they're getting glazed by this entire industry. So I'm I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

If you look at at AI, a huge aspect of it is actually a shell game because what there is is that there is a lot of money, and in 2008, it was mortgage, and when the mortgages when the mortgage bubble crashed, it was like, where can we move this money? And they tried cryptocurrency and they tried NFTs.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Yeah, remember NFTs? Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 6:12

NFTs, and it's like everyone needs to do NFTs. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. The blockchain is ridiculous, and that same money that was shifted from mortgages to cryptocurrency to NFTs is now AI. Now, on the other end of it, if you look at it, uh there are some limited uses for cryptocurrency, but it didn't revolutionize the world. But there was a lot of money that was dumped into it. AI is here to exist, it will be utilized in a multitude of ways in the future. But the billions, trillions of dollars they're being poured in to justify it, uh is it just that continued mortgage, crypto, NFT, AI, and they're just where can we the late-stage capitalism, not just America, but as a whole, as it is winding down, you know, it's going to be that we have 10 trillionaires living in armed bunkers, and the rest of us are all supposed to have Etsy stores and sell each other scented soap. You know, that's it's that's not sustainable, but it's if you break down the concept of capitalism at its core, it needs continued expansion and growth forever.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Forever.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

That's not for everyone, for everyone, for the entire planet, for capitalism as a as a system to work, go and expand forever.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

No, it's a mathematical equation, and we're hitting the guardrails of that expansion, and we're trying to figure out okay, so what do we do next? Yeah, I'm a I'm a history buff, and capitalism is the new religion, but before capitalism, we had the church, religion was the religion, and you framed your entire life around religion, and it you didn't even have to believe that Jesus was the savior or whoever you think God might be, but you would have societal shaming, you would have a community structure, you had to go to church, you had to be seen, and and and there was your community. The church was the center of every small town. And you would we do our bake sales, we do our knitting, like if someone is is ill, and you know, Miss Applebottom, who is a lovely widower, you know, and we're gonna do fundraising and we're gonna get her some groceries, and and that's what we had as a structure. And when society as a whole said religion's kind of not working, what was put in as the next religion was consumerism, was capitalism.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

And I live I live in the shadow of Microsoft over here and um you know some of the big giants, and I think that they also were instrumental to making workers invisible because they refuse to have people that were full-time employees, FTEs, and they would import workers in and they would um exploit those import those imported workers, they would uh pit them against um full-time employees, and they would say, you earn your way, you are constantly competing, and or else you're gone. And they kept shrinking the model of who was the full-time employee and who became the the gig workers that came from Microsoft, their toxic culture. And they made workers that built them more and more invisible, and then you add on to it where people were being asked to work at home um during the COVID lockdown. And so then, oh, we don't even have to provide them with a roof over their head and all the you know food and the benefits of uh things in a cafeteria. Well, that's convenient, so we're never going back from that. And their solution then to make us the most invisible people workers of all is to replace us with clankers. And I think that they are finding that it's becoming an abject failure, I think, because of the big models. And I think it's kind of um exploding in their faces a little bit right now. Now, how long is it like one of those Navy warships? How long is it going to take to kind of turn the boat? Um, how dramatic is this going to be? Because I don't see them bending the knee and saying, human beings, we need your hands and feet, we need your brains and your innovation and your general messy humanness that's unpredictable, but it's also so fucking inspiring and beautiful. I don't know how long these obstinate billionaires and millionaires and Silicon Valley are going to be about refusing to turn around the ship. That's that's the thing. I have no faith in them, in capitalism in general right now.

SPEAKER_02 11:00

They so the ship will turn because it's it's short-term versus long-term thinking. And humans in general, uh all humans, no matter what our wealth you know level is, we are terrible at long-term thinking. We think short-term, but how the human brain is wired, we can't think 40, 50, 100 years in the future, that might as well be a thousand. But the the short-term consequences is that when companies are like, how can we make money? We can make money by not having human employees because they're inconvenient. And the layoffs have been happening for the past couple of years. Microsoft, Facebook, Moderna, all of these big Harvard, all of these big companies in the past few years have been doing massive restructuring and layoffs. And they're only thinking short-term, which is think of all this money that we can save by laying people off. But the more that people are laid off, the less money they have. The less money they have, the less stuff they can buy. The less stuff that they can buy, the more that the economy craters. And they can only think the short-term game of laying people off and not think, where are we going to be in five years? Half a decade is not that long. It happens in the blink of an eye. And when you have massive millions and millions of people laid off that can't afford to then participate in the economy and the structure that we have set up, then it crashes. But and and we are uh in a very, as someone who's a history buff, I have been talking about what we're talking about right now with lots of people for the past couple of years. And um my counter, and I've I've used this example before, but it uh struck me so deeply that I've never been able to forget it, is that you and I are were born in a miraculously calm point in human history, abnormally calm. At no point in human history had we ever had this 80-year window of not climate change, of incredible economic stability, of not a lot of wars. And we you and me that were born in this kind of magic soap bubble, started thinking, well, isn't that how all of human history is? And it's absolutely not. Uh I have I have two examples because of how much this like struck me. Is yeah, I was reading an essay, an anecdote that was written by a a Christian monk, a European monk, and he was like, This is such a noble knight. I need to write down for the ages how incredible this knight was. You see, what the knight was gonna do is that he came across some peasants and he was gonna kill them. They're his countrymen, they're not trespassing, but he is a knight, he has a sword, he's nobility, the peasants are less than human. Of course, he was gonna kill them because that's what a knight would do, whatever. You know how it is. But then the peasants, what they did, because they didn't want to be killed, they didn't want to be stabbed to death with a massive sword by some noble with time on his hands. They ran to a giant crucifix and they wrapped their arms around it and they said, Please, in the name of God, don't kill us. And the knight didn't kill them. And the monk is like, Isn't this noble? It's so incredible. I need to write this down for the ages. What a chivalrous Christian knight. Because he didn't slaughter his own country people for funsies. He it like it, it was so astounding that he didn't kill them all and then go have lunch that the monk needed to this guy write this down, document it for document it. And I'm like, that's you know, people tell me, oh, I'm so discouraged. Have you died of typhus? Have do you have leprosy? How many times have you died of syphilis after your brain? You have antibiotics, you probably haven't gone to bed with a hungry tummy. People had fleas and lice. We had no air conditioning, we had no heating, we had no antibiotics, we were hungry all the time. We were too hot, we were too cold, we had lice until not that long ago. And we are actually in a position of incredible privilege. I had a friend for her wedding, she asked me to go on a honeymoon with her, a honeymoon cruise. I've only been on a cruise once in my life, I'll never go again. It was a learning experience for me. I believe in trying things once to see if you like it because you don't know. You couldn't, I thought that I hated spinach. Spinach is delicious, I can't get enough of it. And I go on this cruise, and one of the packages that they offer is that you can do a day excursion to these Mayan ruins, and there are these pyramids. And I never in a million years, if my friend hadn't gotten married, would I have gone and explored Mayan pyramids? And the guide takes us up to the top of the pyramid, and here's where the king lives, the wealthiest, most privileged person in the entire land. And his bedroom, I'm standing in the king's bedroom, it's a lot smaller than my bathroom. And the bed is stones, it's a stone slab. And I say to the tour guide, where's the shelving? Where's the room for all the king's stuff? My bathroom is bigger than this. And she looked at me and she said, Nobody had any possessions. No, nobody you slept on stone, and then they had a mat that they would stuff it with cloth and they would put something in, you're still sleeping on stone.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

We live better than Aztec royalty. And I think people forget that because when it's a hierarchy of needs, and when we're not dying of tuberculosis, when we're not when we have food in our tummy, like you and me are we're medical marvels. I shouldn't, if antibiotics didn't exist, I would have been dead of pneumonia, right? Like the reason that people had eight or nine kids is two of them might make it, but that's right. And and the the changes that we've had as humans are relatively new. And I think that people lose sight of that. I think people lose sight of how much privilege you, I'm looking at you right now in your house. You are living better than Aztec royalty did. Like you might as well be a Greek goddess, like like the level of privilege that we're in that we lose sight of.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

It kind of connects with what you've been doing lately with your project. Um, that you've been diving deep into these into photography, and I'd like you to be the one that explains it to the listeners. Um, but you are seeing these abandoned places and asking, what where did they go? What is the history?

SPEAKER_02 18:13

I have goosebumps all over me. I'm so excited. Okay, so I'm yeah, we we welcome everyone.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

It's welcome everyone. Thanks for being here. This is Rain Degray. You uh define yourself as a writer, photographer, and an educator. And I'm so grateful you stopped by for a visit. So enough of me.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

I so thank you all for joining us. I'm absolutely thrilled to be here. I'm doing something new that I've never done before, and um, I'm obsessed. And I'm so grateful that you invited me here so that I could talk about my obsession. Yes. So I've actually been doing photography fairly extensively for about a decade now. Uh, I did, I was a social media manager for eight years and I did product shots. So I would that but so that's a fresh photo seven days a week. And one of the things, not that being a social media manager pays that well, and it's AI has ruined it. They don't have I did a job I loved that doesn't exist anymore because now the AI does they have it. They're like, why hire a stinky, annoying human that might get a cold or wants to go on vacation, or you know, could have a stomach flu. The AI will create your social media content seven days a week. They will put it at the out at the exact right time with the right hashtags, with the right words, with the right posts, with the right visuals, but it's gonna be dead internet. Then you have AI social media managers trying to sell products to other AIs that are online, and humans can't hang out on socials because we're too busy trying to survive. And even if we could, we wouldn't have money to buy whatever it is the AI is trying to sell you. True. So I the I was born in San Francisco and I have lived in the Bay Area my entire life until two and a half years ago. And um, what happened as someone who is public-facing is that 99% of people are cool. They're amazing, they're wonderful, I love them. It is the 1% of people that, when you are public-facing, can interact with you in an in an unhealthy manner. And I have had uh years of an ongoing stalking situation where they got my legal name, they got my home address, they started sending me um self-snuffing letters because like I've never met this person. Yeah. I mean they just saw me online and they selected me, yeah. Like I was out of a vending machine. And I know in the end it has nothing to do with me as a human. I'm a blank screen that they are projecting their obsession on. And if they hadn't selected me, it would be someone else. But the stalking laws in America are such that you need to be injured. So they, you know, I'm working with police and they're like, well, they could be sitting in a car outside your front door, and that's not illegal. They can get your and Rain de Grey, if you don't name, uh know, is a stage name. It's not my legal name, um, because people are crazy out there. They got my legal name, and the police are like, that's not illegal. And I said, they're sending me uh suicide letters, and the police are like, Well, that's not illegal. Uh, you know, and it got to the point where I moved. Uh, and I moved across the country to the East Coast, and I live in an incredibly remote, I can't see my neighbors. I'm on septic and well water. I'm in a town of less than 700 people. It's a one hour round trip to take my food, my, to get groceries and to, you know, to take my stuff to the town dump. Like it's remote. Like there are bears in my backyard. But as a creative and as a photographer, and as someone who is genuinely compelled to create, it is why I get up in the morning. It is how I make sense of this planet. I I have to create. The only times that I can't make something is when my brain insists that I make something that I don't have the time or this the skill set uh or the equipment to do. But other than that, and but the way I view it is that if you try something and it doesn't work and it it fails, you learn from it. Yeah, what to do different in the future. So for me, I am inspired by my environment. And I went from living in San Francisco, which is not a lot of nature. There's the San Francisco, you know, I mean, the park is huge. I'm gonna just stumble over a homeless encampment or someone crashed out in a bush. And also, it's not necessarily safe, you know, to just be running around. Uh I started really enjoying nature shots and abandoned spaces probably about three or four years ago. It started to resonate with my brain.

unknown 23:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

And the example that I give is that my brain is driving white knuckled, clutching the steering wheel, and is saying, I'm going that way, and I'm the passenger. And I'm like, whatever you say, brain, you can charge. And and the brain is like, I want you to do this. I I want you. And I forget, I'm forgetting the phrase for it, but have you ever seen the apple test where there's five different variations of an apple? And so when you close your eyes, what do you see? What does the apple look like?

SPEAKER_00 24:17

It's a red, shiny apple that's like three-dimensional, and then I find that I take a bite out of it so I can smell it too.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

So you're on the absolute furthest end of the spectrum than I am. I can't see anything. My head is black. When I think Apple, I can't see the apple, I can't smell the apple, I can't taste the apple. I know the concept of apple in my bones. So what I and I frequently, when people see me talk about my art, I say I'm seeing it, but there's nothing inside. It's black. What I get is these really strong concepts that I can like feel in the marrow of my bones. They're already made.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

I I know impressions like emotional impressions, would you say?

SPEAKER_02 25:11

No, I know exactly what I want the visual to look like, I know what I want the writing to be, I know what the concept is. Yeah, it shows up fully formed with no visuals. So there's not, I'm not, it's there, it just pops in my head, and it's like, make me now. You need to make me.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

It's like a channeling, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:33

It's it's very, it's very much like a channeling. So I'm on this week's Substack is gonna be a sunflower theme. And the sunflower theme is it took me a full year to do. Last year, there was a sunflower festival, and I didn't make it in time to get the light right. And I waited a full year, a full year because I knew it would the calendar would come back around. And the sunflower festival, it's a golden hour in the morning, so you have to be there from 5:30 to 7.30 in the morning. I set my alarm for 3:45 a.m. I was on two hours of sleep. I drove an hour and a half to the Sun Festival, Sunflower Festival. I was there at 5:30 in the morning in a misty field with 200 other people with massive cameras, and I was so awake, it was like I had mainlined espresso into my heart. I couldn't feel that I wasn't two hours of sleep. All my brain knew was you're finally making the thing that I demanded that you make a year ago. Took you long enough. Come on, chop, chop. Chop, chop, little onion. Yeah, and I am in this field and it's magical, and I don't feel sleep deprivation. I feel so awake and alive. I'm levitating. And I got these incredible, beautiful shots that my brain had been demanding for a year. And I drive an hour and a half home and I start editing them totally awake, and the images are perfect. And I like, I am telling my brain I did it, I did what you asked. You know, and I know it took me a year, but I delivered. I showed up, I showed up for you. And then five minutes later, it's like, here's the next thing. There's no, I get about a you didn't even get a victory lap. But five had five whole minutes. That's that was a long victory lap. I was like, I did it, yes. And the brain's like, that's great. Okay, here's the next thing. So if I'm not making frobs like a tooth, like it, it's distressing, like a beautiful description. It it's it's kicking in the front door with steel-toed jack boots intending to be made. Yeah, it won't leave me alone. It keeps me up at night. I can't sleep. It's like you've got to make these things. And then when I do make what the brain wants, there is this five minutes of delicious and immense satisfaction. Is it just peace? Is it bliss? It's joy, it's joy and it's bliss, and everything feels right, and I'm thrilled. And and and then five minutes later, the brain's like, Okay, here's the next thing I want you to do. It never stops ever. Wow. And also, there aren't visuals, it's just like it's like do this. It is channeling.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

I have and it's just like words, it's like you'll basically get words. Okay, do this, you're gonna chase down this. I get visuals that I can't see. So looking back, once you have okay, so say you're you're about to set up for the sunflower photo shoot, right? You've it's it's worked up a year to that. Do you look back after the five-minute bliss of that moment and you get the message from your brain? Have you been able to look backward and go, I see some breadcrumbs? I see where like my brain was giving me little hints or synchronicities, nothing.

SPEAKER_02 29:06

It's just there, it's it shows up fully formed. And because I have no visuals of what it is supposed to be, it's only that I look in the camera. And when I look in the camera, the brain's like, that's it, that was what I wanted you to make. And like I know the second I've captured it that I've done it correctly.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

And it feels like, okay, it the only one thing I can equate it to, so I apologize with my limited ability to like the way that we sense things differently, is after I've read the most delicious, fantastic kind of light perspective shifting book, I will be so immersed in it. And I close the cover, and there's this like bittersweet sadness, but there's also like my mind wants to gnash on it for a little bit. And it's almost like I can't imagine myself ever opening up another cover again. Why would I after that? Which of course I do. I love to read. I'm a raciously reader, but your your brain doesn't even give you that after five minutes.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

Uh, so I also feel the uh the same way about reading that you do.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

And I would like to um that is like heaven right there. Uh Rain is showing me um her entire beautiful bookshelves full of fat with books, every wall.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

Let's start here. Okay, so when I was a kid, what I wanted was my own library. And so I got one. You've created it. It never the thing is, it never occurred to me that I couldn't have what I wanted. And one of the things that I see that humans do is that we stop ourselves before we start.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

Yeah, we do say I can't.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

Yeah, I can't, I couldn't. Uh so many people are terrified of failure, and failure is not the end of the world to you. Learn from it. So many people are terrified to start because they're like, well, what if it doesn't work out the way I want? It's probably not going to. You're gonna learn from it. All I learn so much from my mistakes when I'm trying to do something and I don't get the results I want. You pick yourself up and you dust yourself off and you try again. And I don't, I feel that for me, I don't know if it's because I'm fairly autistic, I don't have a lot of ego to hurt. I'm not scared of being wrong, I'm not scared of failing, and I don't get in my own way. And when we give ourselves permission to do what we want, there the there are so many oysters to be plucked. There, there, there's so much opportunity. But if you start out, if your initial step is I can't, how were to go from I can't? So I when I was a kid, when I was eight, I was like, I want a library, and I've been collecting books since I was eight, and I I never got rid of them. I would move and the movers would curse me. I would have roommates, I'd be bringing in my books with milk cartons, and they'd be like, Oh, you're a reader. And I'm like, Yes, I am. I I this is the most important thing to me. And it because it never occurred to me that I couldn't have a library, I had one, you know, and and what the the the steps, like perhaps I didn't go on a lot of vacations, I don't go out to restaurants, I'm very frugal with my money, but I'm saving my energy and investing it where I wanted. And for me, uh books was absolutely a huge part of it.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

Um have you ever found an abandoned library on your quest?

SPEAKER_02 32:52

I wish I wish. So I do find abandoned books, and I will have to say that they they do age pretty quickly. I brought some abandoned books home, and I'm you know thinking I want to do like art projects with them. So um in terms of the photography, I started doing product shots and I was also uh an onset um staff photographer, and I really loved the immediacy of photography. Now I'm a writer as well, but writing takes longer. I can I can do a photo and I can put it online, and I'm gonna have feedback on that photo in five minutes, which is a really instant dopamine payoff. And I wanted to do abandoned spaces and nature spaces in California. Did you know that one out of five Americans live in California?

SPEAKER_00 33:43

Had no idea.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

One out of five. The last I looked, California is the most populated state. So one out of five Americans live in the state of California, and that may have changed with the wildfires. But you know, in general, there's so many humans in California. So real estate is more valuable. So things don't stay abandoned long. And if they are abandoned, because they're worried about lawsuits or people falling or getting injured, uh, there's more security. Uh, you can't find the abandoned spaces, and if you do find them, there's 20 other people there. It's rather hard to do photo shoots. Uh, and a lot of my photo shoots are uh very pagan uh goddess-themed they are where they feel so goddess adjacent, they feel like immersed in it. And we're not what I'm trying to say politely is we're not talking in excess of clothing. Yeah. So it is a little tricky to do the art that my brain demands because I'm not, you know, voguing in full makeup and and like an elaborate outfit. We're wisps and swords and torches and wings and flowers are much more my vibe. Yeah, I didn't want to move, but I uh had no choice. Uh and I very high security now. Um stalkers is welcome to come by, live in a in a heavily uh armed um state uh that is, you know, I don't I don't think that they're gonna come here. Uh I hope not. I don't feel that. Oh, they have the new address. They sent me an extent, they joined my Patreon and they sent me um an extensive essay about walking through every room in my house, including down to what the inside of the bathtub looked like. And they are saying that they have dreams that they are uh popping up in the closet behind my bed or uh coming in through the porch, which is right next to my bed. They got my legal name. They I put this new house in a trust, but my crime, my great mistake was that I donated to charity. And charities sell your legal name and address because they need to make money.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:57

And I like donated to St. Jude's and SPCA and Humane Society and Doctors Without Borders, Smile Train, and it's my new address and my legal name was out there, and that's the stalker. Just I pay for data scrubbing services every month, you know. I mean, anywho, so I'm here for the first time, having been in the city my entire life, always surrounded by a seething mass of humanity. There is no private solitude spaces. If you want to shoot outside, it's nigh impossible. And I live in an area which is so incredibly remote. I came up with the idea of starting a Substack, and it was, I almost want to say trite, where I told myself I was gonna do a one-year nature photography project. I was gonna do a Substack a week and I was gonna do nature shots and then write up my thoughts about it, and I was gonna do this 52 times. And at the end of this project, having never done anything like this in my life, I was gonna put out a print on demand photo book of the best images of the full year. And anyone that wanted to, that had followed my journey, could also get the could get the photography book and and my thoughts on the my best shots of the year. Now, what I didn't realize is that where I have lived moved to has first off snow for five months out of the year. And I love it. I love it. A lot of white. I am obsessed. My I thought my scrawny, California ass, I've never experienced anything under 50 degrees in my life, and I knew I was moving. I went to take out the trash. I'm like, okay, Rain, you can do this. And I get to the driveway and I'm in a my t-shirt and I'm getting my my the the trash can and I'm freezing. I'm like, this is terrible. My nipples are gonna fall off. What are you doing, Rain? I can't. And I moved here. I am in love with the snow. I do snow shoots with blood and swords and rings and torches, and it's painful and it's agonizing, and I'm fully dressed. And you put your hand on the doorknob, and your brain's like, What are you doing? This is crazy. Why are you going out there? This is ludicrous. What? Stop that. And I just fling the door open and I push myself out into the snow. And you have eight to 12 minutes before you crash. And it by the end, I go into like I go until I'm crying. And it feels like there is a handful of razor blades in my hand that I can't put down. And um, what happens is your skin starts to tear, and because the cold, your no, no, no, no. Well, yes, but no. Your blood in extreme cold, your body as a natural defense brings all of your blood to your core to keep you warm, and it considers arms and legs secondary citizens. It's like the core we have to keep. So the blood starts to retreat from your arms and legs, the skin gets thinner and it's less supple, so it tears much more easily. So you're gonna get cuts and scrapes, a little snag that if it was July, your skin would just bounce back from like a grape. In winter, it's like a raisin and it'll start bleeding. Yeah, throw myself out there to do these snow shoots, and it's so painful, and I'm crying, and I usually come back bleeding, and I like will come in and put my sword down and my wings, and I can't get my hands uncranked because there's so much pain. And then my brain's like, shut up, I don't care. Let's see the images. I go through the images, and the brain's like, This one works, this one works. Okay, next you're gonna do this. And I and I do it because my brain is the one doing the steering. I'm just a messenger, I do what the brain wants. But what I did realize is that five months of snow, I have to write about it. I've made the project, I'm committed to it. 52 posts I'm gonna do. I'm like November, it's snowing, December, it's snowing, January. Yeah, still snowing. February, yep, still snowing. Yeah, uh March, we we have more snow. April, guess what? It's still snowing, like it can go up to six feet. Like I can I open up the the front or the back door, yeah, can't get out. Like that's how high the snow is, and I am in love with it. But then, and then you know, we're past the five months of snow, and now we're into summer, and it's just green. It's just it's just green, it's green, it's it's just an ocean of green, it's more green, like, but it's green. The all all the flowers are gone. It's green. So for if I have a 12-month project, five months is white, and three months is solid green. That's eight months of describing white or green in a way that I'm gonna try and make it interesting. Yeah, and I was starting to well, I needed a little more texture, I can only describe a green.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

That's what I'm getting texture. I'm getting texture and explain it as though you are right.

SPEAKER_02 41:23

So then, so then I started realizing I don't want to describe for the second month in a row, four times a month. Look, the tree's green, it's bright green, it's beautiful, velvety green, it's rolling hills of uninterrupted emerald green. It's as far as the eye can see, it's green, it's covered with trees, it's green. All right, Rain, we get it. You gotta you gotta give us a little more than that. I have never had such a challenge as writing about nature 52 times. Um it's so I was like, okay, I need texture. And every every week I go out and I do my weekly um photo shoot for the for the substack. And I never know what it's gonna be. My brain just tells me. Luckily, I've got you know sunflowers, I don't know what it's gonna be next week, like it's just whatever the brain wants. And I started getting obsessed with abandoned spaces, left behind spaces, and where I live in the east coast, there are hundreds of them, abandoned houses, abandoned buildings, abandoned cars, abandoned farms. And I have this has become an area of hyper interest for me. So can I can I info dump? Please, please, I'm begging you. Are you familiar with the concept of the Big 16? No, the Big 16, please do. The Big 16 are the 16 major cities in the United States. You have New York, you have Chicago, you have LA, you have San Francisco, you have Del Dallas, you have the Big 16. And the gravitational pull of the Big 16, it's I'm coming from San Francisco, where you need I think that it's San Francisco is one of the most expensive places in the entire United States to live. And you need like $4,500 a month for rent for a studio apartment. Like it's just, you know, so the compromise that we make is that if you are out in the rural areas, you go to Montana, nobody's in Montana. So people are forced, because of economic circumstances, to have to coalesce around the Big 16. And we people leave the farm farmlands, they leave the rural areas for a multitude of reasons. I can't find work. Um, there aren't the supplies that I need. Uh I want a better Doctor, say you're like, okay, I want to get Botox or you know, a really nice outfit. If you're out with Billy Bob and his pickup truck in Montana and you're just nothing but prairie dogs as far as the eyes can see, I don't blame people for wanting to relocate to a bigger city. Yeah. To the bigger city, it's like there's more jobs, there's more things to do, there's more entertainment, more people, more. Well, I'm not that sold on the people. I mean, I I love you humans for sure, but like for me, yeah a small side quest in terms of the humans. Yeah, I love my own company, and I love creating and accomplishing and achieving so much that if someone wants to hang out with me, I'm like, you better be more rewarding than my own company. Like what and and also what I love the high bar.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

I love it. More people should have that.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Wait, I have very I have a very high bar. I could I do because the most precious and valuable thing that you have in the entire world is time, and there is not a billion dollars that bought an extra second of time, and every single second of your life, you have less time. The most valuable thing you have is your time and energy. So, where are you going to invest it? You don't get back the time that you invested poorly. And when people were like, let's hang out and we can talk about the show. And I'm like, I'd rather shoot myself. You are not, you want me to give up my time and energy where I could be creating, learning, accomplishing, and doing to sit around and flap our gums and watch some TV. I I can't. I can't, not for me. So when I started looking about these abandoned, I think it's a it's a multitude of factors. We'd said earlier about like how humans are really bad at long-term thinking.

SPEAKER_00 45:56

Yeah, it's all short-term.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

One of our other weaknesses is that we struggle as human brains for the concept for the realization that multiple things can be a factor. We're looking for the one reason. Why did this happen? And there should be one reason, and we want the answer to just be well, it's this. And it's hard for us to be like, oh, there's five reasons to varying percentages, and they are all contributing factors. That is it's that's a struggle for our brains. Yeah, it's got to be just the one reason why something has happened. No, it's a salad of things. You've got the carrots, you've got the potatoes, you've got the icoma, you've got the that all goes in the bowl. It's not just one thing. Yeah, and I started seeing everywhere these abandoned spaces. And A, in California, they wouldn't exist. The land is too valuable, they would be torn down, people would be squatting in them, you would have trespassing, they would be set on fire, people would be doing drugs in them, the police would be coming by, the security would be much tighter. And here, when a building is abandoned, it and people walk away, no one comes to squat in it. It's in the middle of literally nowhere. You know, it's like someone turns the lock and walks away. So then I needed to do this. So that my Substack project, I was like, I'm gonna do a 52-week nature book. And now I'm like, China is buying up farmland. So I didn't even start like what what's happening? America, America is having a reckoning, and I of course I'm happy to be an American, but sure, it's I've it doesn't suck to be an American, but we are we had an obscene abundance of resources. And literally all it was is that this was the last undeveloped continent, and and the the native people were not able to protect it. And we'd already done a number on Europe. We'd done a, you know, we'd started in Africa, like there was not a ton of resources in Africa. What did America have? Gold, fresh land, lumber, unpolluted water. And when white people came to America and slaughtered most of the natives and suppressed the ones that managed to make it, they were, I don't want to say gifted. They took by force incredibly abundant resource.

SPEAKER_01 48:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:32

And we've had 250 years of flying high. And what has happened, not for me, but for some Americans, is like God chose us. We're special, we're privileged, the manifest destiny. Of course, America is the best. Of course, we are the most privileged. Of course, we are the elites. No, sweet babies. You you just you got it, you got the continent that had not yet had its resources stripped. That's all it was. God had nothing to do with it. You weren't more privileged, and we're now having a bit of an awakening. We've we've stripped a lot of the resources out. However, American land is still valuable. And what I had been seeing is that a lot of these farms, well, I'm I will get inside the house if it's not locked. If there are if there are no, if there's no trespassing signs, no, no, no. Sure. If it's locked, no, no, no, no. But some of these, it's like they were abducted by aliens. The letters are still there, the clothing is still there.

SPEAKER_00 49:33

The doll in the high chair. I'm like, it's so big.

SPEAKER_02 49:37

Okay, so that's my favorite. That's my favorite. Okay, I have a story about that doll. So I started looking for texture for this photography project, and I started getting obsessed with abandoned spaces. Yeah, and I started exploring. And for me, there is a holy reverence. I will step into some of these buildings, and the last piece of mail or the last magazine I can find is from 40 years ago. And no one's come back. Whether there was no one to inherit, or perhaps the building needed too much repairs, uh, or you know, the children weren't interested, or it I generally think it's either the children weren't interested, the repairs were too significant, yeah, um, or like people just someone died, and there was no one left to inherit. And and they're like time capsules.

SPEAKER_01 50:35

They are.

SPEAKER_02 50:36

I it is uh one of the things that humans always my name is Omanzus King of Kings. Look upon my works, you mighty in despair. Nothing lasts, and it's an exercise in futility for humans. We want to be remembered. I mean, not me, because I'm realistic. I have it within five minutes, ten minutes, people don't remember. Like it's I uh in my classes, I used to have a line about Dorian Gray and a picture in the attic, and I had to drop it because nobody knew the reference. Oscar Wilde, who is one of the most famous human beings on the planet, is yeah, it's a hundred years in change, and it's like no one knows who he is. So to hold no one knows, they don't they can't remember. Our brains are full of microplastics. We're trying to survive. No one's sitting down and reading a book. Oscar Wilde, no one knows who he is. And you A, you can despair about that, or B, you can be like, this is realistic, this is just how we work. Um, Princess Grace of Monaco was one of the most famous actresses in royalty ever. She was like elite celebrity status, like we can't even imagine no one knows who she is. No one knows who she is. That's so hard to believe, but you're right. Yeah. No, no, 50 years might as well be 500. We don't know these things. And for me, when I step into an abandoned space, there is such reverence for me because for that moment I don't know who these people are. I will never meet them. But they're not forgotten. And when I walk through, I try to find their names, I their how they decorated their house, their interests and their passions. I move so um quietly and thoughtfully through these purposefully, yeah. There's great purpose to it, and anything that I learn, I want to document and share with others. I'm creating in my mind these mental scrapbooks of these people that I this is their life, this is their interest and their passion. And I I want to document it and share it with others, and they'll never know, they're probably dead, they'll never know. Yeah, for me, like there's a a sacred joy.

SPEAKER_00 53:03

I was just writing that down, it's a sacred space, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:07

Of of being able to hold space with these people I've never met in their houses. Our houses are our safe space, they are, and you know that there's a whole life and a whole journey that happened, and and that is how I got into doing these abandoned spaces, was because it was hard to talk about snow and green trees for eight months straight. I needed to do something, and I unexpectedly have found this. So the doll, let me tell you about the doll. That's my favorite one. It was a 17-room mansion. So I have been doing this project for four and a half months now, and it started out with snow, snow, snow. And I started doing abandoned spaces, and I started um becoming uh obsessed with the decay and and the temporary nature of it, and watching these monuments and knowing that someone's whole life had been there and they're not there anymore, but I can come back and share some space with them. And now I'm an abandoned house fanatic. I'm driving, I'm always driving slow, I'm driving the speed limit, folks, and everyone's zipping past me, and I can see that I'm driving the speed limit. And people were like, well, go faster. What's what you should be? And I'm like, no, no, no. I'm hunting, and you look inside of the road and you see all of these buildings. And I've gotten really good. I'll see a building, I'll pull over, I'll do scouting. Uh, if it's good, I'll come back. And the the um of all the places I've found the the the creepy doll, she's in my garage right now. I talk to her every day. I'm I tell her how much I love her and I'm proud of her. She's a joy. So it was um, I don't want to give a ton of details. I don't want other people going there, you know. And it it's it and also like I'm kind of protective of it. So I'm driving and I see it's so overgrown, but what I see is a little bit of a rock wall, and I was and like, but a big rock wall, and I'm like, and I do a UI and I pull in and it's massively overgrown, and I get kind of like past this tree, and suddenly I am standing in front of a three-story gigantic, massive, gorgeous, stunning mansion. And I'm like, whoa, what? And the front door, you can't even get through. It's this massive deck, beautiful, and the deck has collapsed in, and and I'm like, I could go down into the abyss there, let's work and stay away from the front door. But I go around, the space is it's so big, it's so massively big, and I see that the side door is open, perfectly open. And I and I walk into the house actually has two different kitchens 17 rooms, um, a sewing room, a sitting room, a parlor, a living room, uh uh two kitchens, um uh like massive, massive, massive. And uh I I get inside and I'm in the kitchen, it had to have been lighter at some point, but the vegetation's so overgrown, the kitchen's really super dark. It's almost like you're underwater. And I walk inside, and the first thing I see is the creepy doll in the rusty high chair, and she has a rosary wrapped around one wrist, and she's in a little schoolgirl outfit. It's and I walk up to her, thrilled. She's made it that whoever left her there, what it they want she survived. Well, no, no, no, no, she's an art piece. So I went and did research because the letters are still there, the pill bottles are still there, the clothing is still there. It was a married couple, and the the the fellow actually worked for NASA. He was an aeronautical engineer, and I mean, and at some point he made enough money, he had seven kids, he made enough money that he took his, he was a part of the moon landing, and um, like, yeah, aeronautical engineer. He made bank, he had seven kids, and then he decided I am going to take my seven kids and I'm gonna go into the country, and we're gonna live in a 17-room mansion with velvet wallpaper, and I mean, it's so lost in there, and the place is abandoned, the roof has collapsed in, so the attic, the roof goes all the way down, and then it collapsed because obviously there at some point there was a leak. Uh, and then the the once the attic collapsed, it then collapsed into the parlor, and then the parlor actually collapsed down into the basement, so it's three stories down, so it's a bit dangerous to walk into. Yes, I was gonna ask you that. I've never fallen yet. Yeah, I have a flashlight, I'm shooting, I've got my cell phone. Um, it is higher risk, and like I definitely stepped around the pit. Like you are very cautious with each floorboard and before you put your weight on it. So I was avoiding the front uh door because that area was kind of soggy. Yeah, and I know that if it goes down, I'm in the uh I'm in the at the basement with a broken leg, I will pass away before someone finds me. That'd be a grim way to go. Um that is the risk. I uh uh have a high tolerance for risk, and nothing bad has happened yet. And I uh will no doubt uh change my policy if something bad does happen. Uh it certainly isn't for everyone, but as far as I can tell, of the seven kids uh that the guy had, none of them wanted to maintain the space. I I can only imagine um I did as much research as I could on his offspring, and none of them ended up being uh aeronautical engineers. So um I just think that they couldn't get the house sold because it's so remote. I'm gonna buy a 17-room, three-story, massive sprawling mansion just to get the roof repaired would be 75k. Like, wow, I I can't to like the place was so big. You were just walking down these hallways, and I'm like, am I I still and the house just kept going. I was dazzled, but I'm obviously not the first person who showed up. And it is clear to me that at some point, first the woman passed, and then the the man could no longer take care of it, and his kids had moved out. I mean, it still has the claw foot tubs, like I'm obsessed with my god, I tried to move them, they're way too heavy. They're they're antiques, like it is an abandoned. I was like, Can I get this down three flights of stairs and into my car? The answer is no, they don't move easy. No, uh-uh. But um, so and he passed away peacefully in his 80s, uh, in a rest home in the Midwest. Uh, and I I consider him a success. And the kids probably were like, we don't want to live in velvet wallpaper in the country, like we need jobs, we need to find partners, we probably want social life. Uh, and they left the mansion. And someone at some point made that doll, put her in the Catholic schoolgirl outfit, put her in that high chair, dirtied her face, wrapped a broken rosary around her wrist, and then put her down a hallway so that if you the next person to walk inside, that's the first thing they would see. And and I maybe other people would be creeped out. I've shown the picture online, and people are like, I would run screaming, enjoy being mega boost. Yeah, and I was like, what a phenomenal. I squealed, I squealed with joy, and I ran up to her and I'm like, sweetie, oh my god, look at you. And I always carry um large black trash bags, like contractor bags in my car for shooting, for putting dirty clothes, like for cleaning, like they're just really handy, you know? Yeah. Uh, and I had multiple black, large trash bags, and I told her, wait one moment, I'll be right back, my dear. I ran to the car and I got one of the trash bags, and whoop, I put her in it, and I put her in the back of my car. And I'm like, you're coming home with me. And uh, I'm doing uh an extensive multi-year uh doll project, nailing dolls to trees. The place I moved to, uh I own it, and it's multiple acres. So it's you know almost seven acres, and I have a little section of forest, and I'm doing a multi-year doll project where I go to the thrift store and I'll get cheap dolls, and then I nail them to the tree. I apologize when I do it because they seem a little indignant, and I'm like, look, it's art. I got the art, you're part of the art, you're part of the art, and I have to like nail them to the tree, and it's worse, it's the worst is when they have the the doll, the eyes that and so with every hit of the hand eyes are blinking, and I'm like, I'm trying to like not, I'm like, I'm sorry, it's for art, don't judge me. Um, but the uh the the creepy doll in the high chair is going to be part of that project. She's in my garage. So every morning I say good morning to her when I take out the cat litter, and then every night when I'm putting the cats to bed and wrapping things up, I check in with her. How are you doing? Um, so glad you're here with me. Uh, I don't find her creepy at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:34

No, I didn't either from the picture, but she was very intriguing.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:38

So an art, someone, some clever, I'm gonna say it's probably like a younger person, a student, something, someone, but based on the level of like grunge and like dust that was on her, it had been years.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:54

Have you done a reverse image search on like Google or something just to see? Because it could be like a photography student or something set this up.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:04

I I looked it up and I haven't found anything. So the reverse image search, I'm not I've not always had great results either. It's hit or miss. It's hit or miss. I haven't found anything, but what I believe it is is that some person, you know, probably any six to eight years ago, also found the space, thought it would be super cool to take this doll and they made her face dirty. I'm not quite sure. It's almost like thick, the texture. So if it's like paint, it would be like is it like shoe polish? Do you think? No, it's dried. Oh, it's dried. Yeah, so they painted her face, but they didn't hit her neck, and I noticed they got her hands too. So it's almost like a really thick, chunky paint. Yeah, um, it's fascinating to me. And they they they they displayed her and and and then walked away, and that was a long-term art project. She was there, I would say six to eight years of no one in the house, wow, no one there, and they were like the next person just waiting for you and to have that encounter.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:11

Do you ever get the feeling that these places, these houses, they actually have been invisible to most people until you rediscover them? And then it's almost like they appear. All I can equate it to is like there are video games where you can go really to the far edges of a world and there's nothing there. And all of a sudden, in front of you will matrix out a new space in the world. And do you ever have that feeling with these abandoned places? They reveal themselves to you.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:45

Um, I think personally I'm choosing to be conscious and present in the moment, and I'm choosing to see it. And what I can tell is that anyone in that remote section that has to drive by on their way to work, they ignore the house. They don't have time, or if they've gone inside and they've explored it once, it isn't interesting or engaging to them. They have reverence. We we live in a capitalist society that is designed to keep us busy.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:19

If if if idle hands are the devil's tools, uh we live in a society where they don't want us to have a bunch of spare time. No, they don't. If you have a start bunch of spare time, you start thinking about things, you start thinking about inequality, you want to do change, and like that's right. We want to keep people where you constantly be I've got to go to the dentist, I've got to go grocery shopping, I need to do my laundry, I have to work, I've got to pay bills, I'm really tired, I need to sleep.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:47

To self medicate because of what I went through to make money. And so people are, you know, there's no judgment, but I see why it happens. They self medicate and they're sitting in front of their Netflix and they fall asleep.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:00

You know, for me, I don't watch TV. I grew up in a house without television. I was not allowed to have TV. And by the time I moved out and lived on my own, I had not picked up the television habit. And I the desire to create and to learn and to grow and to uh you know acquire knowledge and is so strong. It's like a fire in my belly that keeps me from forward direction. And I I I cannot imagine anything less engaging than sitting on a couch and doing nothing and watching uh a screen for hours.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:38

I re there was this friend we had in college, and he was awesome. Um, his name is Alex, and he would say, we would have an uh evening off, and he we'd say, Let's go do something, and people would suggest going to a movie. And he was like, That's the stupidest thing you could ever do with friends. Anything's better than that. Let's go sit at a bar and play darts together and just talk. Like anything is better than sitting in front of a screen and not talking to each other. We can do that alone. And I always think of that whenever, like, if uh we get a spare night off and we happen to be both uh at home at the same time in the same place, my husband and I, and we never pick go to a movie, ever. I always think of Alex in my head. It's like it's it's better just to sit in the kitchen and drink a cup of hot tea and visit with him than anything that we're gonna consume on a screen. So, I mean, I can, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:36

Well, because it's hard for people to think, it's hard for a lot of us to have conversations, and we have a humans have a compulsive need to interact with other humans. That's why solitary confinement is such a punishment. Yeah, even though we have a compulsive urge to be around other humans, sitting and talking is hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:57

So movies or TV is a way to fill in the time, it's a binky. You just it's a it's a chronic binky.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:03

It's an emotional binky. You're right. These well, like and it all goes back to we've gone full circle, um, but it all goes back to those young men that were um over at my house, and they said, you know, those stupid, they were talking about AI, and they were like those stupid chat bots, people didn't even know how to talk to other people, actual human beings anymore. And they're like, we won't do that. And they shook, they made a point to shake my hand and say goodbye. It was like skin on skin. It was a pleasure to meet you today. I hope I get to see you in the future. It was just it was a simple interaction that just like has made I'm still it made my weak. I can't even explain it, but just that true authentic connection um is so much more important than any freaking chat bot to you.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:57

And what I want to point out, which is which is sad and tragic, but for so many humans that are lonely do not want to talk to other humans. Why? Because other humans could disagree with you, yeah, they could not have time for you. Yeah, a chat bot is available 24-7. If you wake up at 317 in the morning, you can reach for the chat bot and the chat bot will be there. Your best friend, if you're contacting them at 3.17 in the morning saying, I would like some company and some chat, your house better be on fire. And and and we don't I'm laughing, but it's so true. We don't like rejection, and we don't like people disagreeing with us. Yeah, and I've never conversed with a chat bot. I just I don't see the appeal whatsoever. But for a fact, I know that the second that there are options for humans where the chatbots they're available 24 hours a day, they agree with you, they treat you as if you are the center of the universe, sycophantic, yep. They praise you, they lavish you with praise, they tell you that you are smart, charming, engaging, talented, and there are people who eat that up with a spoon because they want no conflict. Your best friend, they're not always gonna have time for you, they're gonna have a bad day, they're not necessarily gonna agree with you. They might call you on your bullshit. Yeah, that's a little grit, that's a little conflict. That's right, it's a little salt, and not and some people are like, I need all of the sugar until I get diabetes, no salt for me. Oh my god. And and that that is what the chatbot is is that people are like, I need someone to always agree with me and tell me that I'm the best and always be there for me. Your husband is your teammate, the person you have held hands with and has said, we're gonna walk through this journey of life together, is not going to be as available for you as a chat bot. That's right. And that's a reality. Yes, you either make peace with reality because reality can't be shifted, or you try to uh avoid reality, deny reality. That's what drugs or chatbots or television is a way of pushing away reality for a little bit. Yeah, reality is an insistent bitch, she will always come knocking. I don't care how high you get, I don't care how great the movie was, I don't care how much the chat bot tells you that you are levitating and that you are a golden god and that you don't sweat, you pour glitter, and that you are a genius. Reality comes back. And humans have spent all of their existence trying to shift away from reality. But I don't acid is not one of my things, but I really do love research. And I am from San Francisco, so I started exploring the communes, learning about it, and people would be doing acid, the the acid test, and you know, right? They would get so in at one point. Uh, as I recall, the feds were trying to to raid uh Kin Keezy's space, and they were looking for the right time, and people had all dropped acid, and then they watched, remember this? They watched the video of the waterfall for like eight hours. They were like, are they we're trying to raid? Are they still watching the fucking waterfall? There's still watching the fucking waterfall, they're still looking at the waterfall. I don't care how high you get, you will calm down, yeah. And and you can't you can't avoid reality. And yeah, the it is a it is a weakness to be so scared of conflict and salt that you can both simultaneously self-report how miserable and lonely you are, and then also be, well, I'm not gonna interact with humans because they don't validate me a thousand percent, they're not always there for me, they don't always agree with me, and I can't have that.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:57

So I'm gonna take a robot, yes, go on, and and and take a robot's opinion because it won't it won't um be anything but positive, otherwise, I'll just shut down the chat. It reminds me of the Instagram people that put so many freaking filters on their own photos of themselves that they don't like what they look like in real life anymore. It it's really fucked them up. It's like um anorexia in a sense, because they look at their own actual themselves without their makeup on, just as they are, and they feel like shit about it because they've gotten so used to looking at their own photos with like 10 different filters on them, and they don't even know what's real. And their brain, they've retrained it to be that's what's beautiful, and I'm so uh like that. And um I can get really depressed about it because I want to save everybody and I can't, but we need to touch authentic things, like so. What you're doing with your project about going into these hallowed spaces and saying nature is taking them back, and how beautiful is this? This awkward limital space, and how beautiful is this? And it's like I got up in the middle of the night and I had to take a pee, and I looked at myself and I went, wow, I actually looked at myself in the mirror and went, how beautiful am I in the moonlight as I am with some of my makeup kind of off and just half asleep? How beautiful is my dog at the foot of my bed that fell asleep on my pajamas or whatever. So we need to really lean into these spaces that are kind of the messy middle or whatever, because I feel like it's the counterweight. It's almost like the anti-serum to this artificial bullshit that we're getting mainlined.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:56

We we are, and I want to um circle back to one of the things you said when we started this conversation about the younger generation. Um, the uh the generation before the the current youngest generation was the Instagram generation, it was the Kim Kardashian generation, it was this incredibly heavy makeup, tons of filters, uh plastic surgery to get your body to look to us like this carefully curated Instagram. Yes, the generation below that is over it, they crave authenticity. Yeah, the pendulum always swings. That's just how humanity works.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:35

So yeah, it always has been, hasn't it? As a historian yourself, you would know that.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:41

And and it when you when you have areas of like high decadence and and it it it slides back to conservative. And when we get to experience conservative, we're like, no, no, no, we need something other than that. So the generation above had this really polished aesthetic that we were everyone was told we had to get Brazilian butt lips and get your lips done and do more filters. And the generation below is like, no, no, no, we don't want that. We social media has become incredibly toxic. Yeah, the trend now is uh cottage core. You've heard of cottage core. So cottage, it's no uh so cottage core is basically uh authentic, homey, you know, like poet core, romantic, out in the fields, flower, nothing that it's uh like nothing synthetic, everything organic, uh authentic, uh poetic, uh you know, real, not polished, not this, you know, heavy fake lips, and look at my carefully cinched waist. People are like, no, I want to be in a field reading a book of poetry and eating a peach and not on Instagram, worrying about filters, and if my waist is small enough and my ass is big enough. I want cottage core, I want poet core. I want that, and and that is that that is a natural response to how inorganic things were with the generation above. Oh so it is uh very bad news bears for the AI bros who are trying to push this on a generation that is like we're out of the capitalist dream, we we've seen that it doesn't work, we're not able to own houses, we keep jobs, and social security was supposed to tap out at 65. Why? Because you weren't supposed to live much longer than 65. That's right. Yeah, so it was like be a good citizen, work your entire life, and don't worry, you'll get to retire at 65, but we are anticipating you're dead at 67. So you've you've given all of your life's energy and juice and blood and sweat and tears to the machine and two years to sit on your porch and then you'll die. And the the inconvenience is that now people are living longer. Uh, even when I was a kid, I would get from the social security office, they would, hey, we are garnishing it, we're taking your money for social security, but we're just letting you know you can't expect any. We we recommend that you look for alternative investments, but we are taking all your money, but there'll be none when you get old enough. Yeah, I remember that message too.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:30

A little piece of paper in there, you're like, oh, thanks a lot.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:34

Noted, I'll start saving for alternative means, but we we didn't we people weren't expected to live that long. And and now this younger generation's like, look, we're living longer, we can't get jobs, the economy is crashing, the planet is on fire, yeah, and and the dream that the generations above us have been sold. Work hard, do the right thing, pay your taxes, you'll get to be a homeowner, you'll you'll get to retire in your golden years, and you'll get your pension, and then you can work on your garden. And that dream is not on the table anymore. It's not and and one of the ways that that dream worked was by telling workers, you have to work. You have to work so hard, work, work, you have to work. It'll all pay off. And the youngest generation is like, how does that pay off? I don't get that back. I can't get a house that I have no money saved. Well, you're telling me I should work. Maybe I should go sit in a field and read a book of poetry and eat some strawberries. Because that frankly, that seems more rewarding to me than being in the office working, working for what?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:43

You're working to get someone else? Somebody else to get rich. Exactly. What I feel like that's a very hopeful way to end the conversation. But Rain, where where would you like people to go to find your work and your most recent um obsession? And um I'm so glad that you asked.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:04

Um, so my name is Rain DeGray. I have a Substack, and I also have a website called Deliberated Disconnection.com. So if you it's fire, fire, fire, fire. So deliberate disconnection because I looked at everything and I'm like, I choose to disconnect. I'm gonna sit in a field and pet a cat and listen to some birds. That is a valid use of my time. Yes, it is. So I do um every week I do a Substack post, and it is that week's uh photos, and I do uh a write-up, an essay about um what the the theme of that week was and and what I learned. Uh and I I never know where it's gonna go. That you the creepy doll happened, the 17-room mansion happened, learning about China buying up vast acres of American farmland happened, uh all because I wanted to take some pictures of some trees. If you join me for the Substack or go to Deliberate Disconnection, you can send me an email. At the end of this project, I will be doing a nature photography book that is gonna be print on demand. So anyone that has followed along want the essays or want to order their own copy, can. And because my brain is relentless, I already know what next year's project is gonna be. It's it's it won't it never stops. So I've started um doing the photos for next next year's project as well, and putting it together, and I'm I'm really looking forward to that. And and then I also know what the third book is gonna be too.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:42

Oh my god, I love how your brain has you on a treadmill that of creativity, it makes me so happy. Thank you so much for having me. This was a delight. It was wonderful. Thank you so much for spending time with me. To be continued, you were a delight, and you're brilliant and beautiful and amazing artist. I cannot wait to reconnect.