Speaker 1: Creativity is an addiction, unplugged because we will always say
yes to creativity, totally uncut because we all make mistakes.
So let's turn it into a tool. This is arrow unplugged,
hey Zaro, And this is vocal D. Vocal d fragging
is asking yourself questions and then questioning your answers. I
also keep a d frag journal where I write out
the questions in the journal and then I answer them.
I argue with myself. I sit there and I feel
good or bad. I go through the emotional exchanges. Same
thing with the vocal dfrag. But what I love most
about the vocal dfrag is that you're preserving your inflection,
the pitch, the volume of the tone. And I strongly
suggest that you do that with your smartphone. Start using
it as a great tool for you to share your
personal thoughts, your visions, things that are moving through you.
Come back and just listen to it, ask the questions
and then question the answers. This is vocal D fragging.
I've been hit today with several different angles of why
you should be real listening to your heart. I did
a commercial for Spotify today that was based on one thing,
not podcasting in the way that people get on there
to tell their jokes, or they do their famous people interviews,
or or just get in there and just joke around
with their friends, or to basically just talk about a product.
My angle today was based one hundred percent on the
advertiser because I was reminded that the reason why I
got into podcasting in twenty twelve was because I was
trying to design a platform for advertisers who were spending
a boatload of money for thirty second and sixty second commercials.
So I thought podcasting would be such a great angle
to take our advertisers too, And in twenty twelve, that
big old broadcasting company looked at me and said, yeah,
I don't get it, man, I don't get what you're doing,
but keep trying. And so I kept trying, and the
more I tried, the more I got into those famous
people interviews and doing things like we're doing right now.
But at the same time, I documented something inside another
journal that I keep, which is called stream Thinking, and
it wanted to know why I was doing this storytelling
of this forest, this tiny forest in South Charlotte, North Carolina.
Speaker 2: And the answer that I came up with.
Speaker 1: Was was kind of odd because it was based on
one thing. When I'm gone, all of the energy that
the forest and I shared will be gone as well.
And the forest has been speaking so loudly to me
over the past couple of weeks that it says, write
the story. If you don't write the story, then no
one will know of what happened here in nineteen ninety two,
growing forward, because what's going to happen to my daily writing?
If I know my wife, she's probably going to get
rid of the daily writing at the time of my
passing because it takes up a lot of room in many,
many protective boxes. So I have felt it in my
heart for the past couple of weeks, share the story
of this forest. I did a fourth episode this morning,
and I'm still going, what the hell are you doing?
So I bring this to you. When you get into
those moments of what the hell am I doing? How
far do you take that? Do you lean into it
even more? Because you're trying to locate the real source
of the energy. What the hell are you doing? My
dad used to ask me that question all the time.
He'd walk into my room, he'd walk out into the
chicken hut with me. Well, in the chicken hut. I
was out there with a garden hose, and I was
singing in one end and on the other end it
was going into my ear because it created an echo.
What the hell was I doing? I was singing, I
was being creative. I'd like to hear that little delay
because it made me sound like I was live in concert.
What the hell are you doing? How far do you
push yourself before you finally say, well, what the hell
I was doing is exactly that. It was what I
was doing, and there was no payoff. And I often
wonder about those payoffs.
Speaker 2: What is it that.
Speaker 1: We're truly looking for when we set out to accomplish
something and it doesn't reach that one particular level. I
get really super jealous of these carpenters and these construction
workers that follow these gigantic maps. This is the way
it's supposed to be, this highway, this house, But does
it really achieve that level. I mean, we may not
see it because we're not trained to see it. I
call them easter eggs at the grocery store. I can
be walking through that store and see something that's completely
out of place, but a billion people have walked by
and have done nothing about it. What the hell are
you doing? What are you doing in your life that
you see that you're feeling energy from, and yet the
only thing that's happening is you. Nobody else is participating,
and if they were, it might be a judgment call,
but that in itself serves as fuel in the way
of well should I continue doing this? Or what I mean?
A guy walking through a forest into a telephone, what
the hell are you doing? Well, it's called vocal d fragging.
Vocal D fragging came to me because of a breakdown.
I was putting it on paper, but then I was
talking to all of these actors and musicians and artists
and they said, well, what is vocal D fragging? I
want to participate with it. I couldn't put my journals
out there because what of my journals have to do
with you? So therefore we created vocal D fragging in
a way of saying, what the hell.
Speaker 2: Are you doing?
Speaker 1: Why the hell are you doing it? Do you really
need to be doing it? Is there a payoff? Or
do you really want a payoff? Sometimes we do things
to do to find our place to be in a
place of acceptance by way of saying, yeah, I did it,
what do you want to do about it?
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll do it again.
Speaker 1: For instance, like the day that I became an artist
on canvas was a total accident. It was because I
spilled ink on my daily writing and it took the
shape of a perfect wine glass. To this day, when
I see that picture or that painting, I go, the
hell was I thinking? Most people would rip it out
of the journal and throw it away, but no, I
had to preserve it because it changed my life forever.
So in asking what the hell are you doing, maybe
we should say what the hell would you like to
be doing?
Speaker 2: And how much time and energy you're going to place
into it.
Speaker 1: We've all been convinced that there has to be a
return on the investment.
Speaker 2: I get it, that's business. I've talked with directors.
Speaker 1: In fact, the director of the new John Travolta movie
mob Land, we talked about the business side of making movies.
We've talked about the business side of a grocery store.
I get it, there's got to be some sort of
return on the investment. But the situation is based on
one more thing, you yourself and the energy that you have,
and how much of it are you willing to spend
in order to do what the hell you want to do.
When my wife retired from being a school teacher, the
woman at the Social Security office said, hey, welcome to
a new life. You now have the power of choice.
I remember listening to that phone conversation, and I was
moved by it, just like I was moved by the
ink spilling on the piece of paper that took the
shape of a wineglass. Moved because welcome to the power
of choice. At that moment is when I said, I
will never work another job again. That's my choice. See,
I do have an essential job. I do do things
with the movie promotion company. I do do things with
my mobile DJ service. But it's not a job. It's
a choice. I make a choice to do that, and
changing my mindset of what the hell am I doing
it really gives me a better opportunity to enjoy the
love that is shared in the things that I'm doing. Yeah,
being at a grocery store what a pain in the ass, right? Not? Really,
there's a lot of stories there. There's a lot of
everyday average people combined with jazz people, famous people, unknown people,
old people, young people. They're all coming into this place
and they've all got something to share. And if you
take the time to listen, my God, the return on
the investment is just mind blowing because you see for
yourself what a true community is. It's not like going
to a church. I love me some church, okay, But
church people they dress up and they put on their
little candy coat of plastic, bathroom mere smiles, they bring
the little Bible. They do things like them, but it's
not sharing to reality now. The moment they get in
their car after the preacher man has talked, that's when
reality sets in. But at a grocery store, there's reality there.
What the hell are you doing? I ask myself that
every time I go to this grocery store, what the
hell are you doing?
Speaker 2: I'm being with my community.
Speaker 1: I'm charging up my batteries as a writer, as a
creative person, I'm like hanging out with other people that
are also created. They're just not talking about it. I'm
listening to their stories. I'm watching them come into the
store at odd ball hours and then when I say
something to them, they're going, whoa, You actually noticed that
I came in here at this time?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I really did.
Speaker 1: So on this episode of Vocal DFRAG, I really do
want you to ask the question what the hell are
you doing? And in the moments of trying to come
up with an answer. The goal is to find yourself
in a place of discovery as well as recovery, because
your life is going to get stronger when you find
yourself being more truthful with yourself, instead of buying things
to cover things up, instead of going on to social media,
and finding yourself in that place of well, if I
say this, I've released all my statement. Hey, look, if
there's some things that are pissing you off in the world,
I get it. You're not supposed to talk about politics,
you're not supposed to talk about religion.
Speaker 2: I get it, I get it, I get it.
Speaker 1: Then put it in a defragged journal, not necessarily a
vocal journal, because there's a lot of stuff in the
political world that you don't need to be saying, because
you're going to create a storm that's going to ruin
a lot of relationships.
Speaker 2: Don't be doing that. What the hell are you doing?
Speaker 1: Ask the question, question the answer, find yourself in the mirror,
Aye Marrow, And that spoke Wi D Frank