# The Junkyard Love Podcast Episode 0116 w Curtis L. Harnagel - Same Room, Different Angles

- Episode: 0116
- Date: 2025-08-01
- Duration: 2:45:56
- Guest: [Curtis L. Harnagel](/guests/curtis-l-harnagel/)
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wkx7i9CO2U
- RSS: https://share.transistor.fm/s/4a34cfc1
- Spotify (show): https://open.spotify.com/show/45J7CBdM8j29doqyBp2bFs
- Apple (show): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-junkyard-love-podcast/id1489118788

## About

Curtis L. Harnagel is a creative polymath - a director, consultant, and producer whose career moves fluidly between live entertainment, multimedia, dance, art, and nonprofit worlds. A true pop-culture savant, Curtis carries decades of music knowledge, behind-the-scenes reasoning, and pedagogical wisdom from his perspective that apply across every industry. I first met Curtis on-site at a stunning fashion show fundraiser. I was hired as the shows Live-DJ while Curtis was the shows Music and Staging Director. After a few days of working with Curtis, I knew this was someone who sees a room from different angles. I asked him to join our collection of outlier teachers here on The Junkyard Love Podcast, we had nothing short of an excellent conversation.

Armed with a degree in Radio, Television, and Film, Curtis’s path has been a mosaic of lighting grand productions like Phantom of the Opera, sculpting award-winning dance performances, staging massive live events, and mentoring creative teams to greatness. He coined GESAMTCURTISWERK (“Total Work of Curtis”) to describe his craft. It's a philosophy that threads art, logistics, and human connection into something greater than the sum of its parts - a way of thinking that refuses to split art from logistics, communication from creation, or teaching from doing; it’s all one interconnected, ever-evolving work: Curtis lives it. To top it off, his tagline? - "Turning Dreams Into Entertainment."

In this episode, Curtis and I pull back the curtain on what it takes to knead, bake, and present large-scale creative projects with a true human touch. We talk about perception, the unspoken layers of communication, and how one thoughtful phrase can redirect an entire production. Curtis shares stories from the unpredictable trenches of live events - moments of tension, flashes of brilliance, and hail-mary's that knealed to the 'The show must go on'.

We unravel wisdom passed down from influential teachers, explore the psychology of feedback and leadership, and examine how different minds approach creativity and problem-solving. We talk about the invisible threads that hold collaboration together, and how communication and listening can shape art, teams, and even lives.

“GESAMTCURTISWERK [guh-zahmt-kur-tis-verk]

noun, German.

1. "Total Work of Curtis"

A. Gesamt - adj; total, overall (German)

B. Curtis - noun; English proper name of Anglo-Norman origin derived from the word courteous.

C. Werk - verb; to work (German)

2. Derived from: Gesamtkunstwerk [guh-zahmt-koo nst-verk] noun, German

A. German for "Total Work of Art" or "Synthesis of the Arts “

Resources / Links:

Website: www.gesamtcurtiswerk.com

Instagram: @gesamtcurtiswerk

YouTube: GESAMTCURTISWERK

Bold Journey Interview - https://boldjourney.com/meet-curtis-l-harnagel/

Voyage Dallas Interview - https://voyagedallas.com/interview/conversations-with-curtis-l-harnagel/

Canvas Rebel Interview - https://canvasrebel.com/meet-curtis-l-harnagel/

DIFFA - 2025 theme trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gugNT39gHjw

DIFFA website: https://www.diffadallas.org/hod

DIFFA Instagram: @diffadallastx

Checkout Curtis's official music playlist for Ep: 0116 Junkyard Love: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/06CsHwodO7jxWav75ieiX6?si=BI8KIR9qR5SbSsxODd3eeg&pi=lUYZBKGITUmCj

## Chapters

(none published in episode notes)

## Quotes

- “Listening is the cornerstone of communication. Most people hear - you have to actually listen.”
- “Kindness is not niceness. Kindness and goodness have one thing in common: benevolence.”
- “Observation itself is a form of communication.”
- “Every move is a signature... make it count.”
- “Your emergency is not my emergency. Take a beat, be polite.”

## Guest links (from published notes)

- Website: www.gesamtcurtiswerk.com
- Instagram: @gesamtcurtiswerk
- YouTube: GESAMTCURTISWERK
- Bold Journey Interview - https://boldjourney.com/meet-curtis-l-harnagel/
- Voyage Dallas Interview - https://voyagedallas.com/interview/conversations-with-curtis-l-harnagel/
- Canvas Rebel Interview - https://canvasrebel.com/meet-curtis-l-harnagel/
- DIFFA - 2025 theme trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gugNT39gHjw
- DIFFA website: https://www.diffadallas.org/hod
- DIFFA Instagram: @diffadallastx
- Checkout Curtis's official music playlist for Ep: 0116 Junkyard Love: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/06CsHwodO7jxWav75ieiX6?si=BI8KIR9qR5SbSsxODd3eeg&pi=lUYZBKGITUmCj

## Tags / keywords

curtis l harnagel, curtis harnagel, same room different angles, gesamtcurtiswerk, creative direction, communication, deep listening, live events, junkyard love podcast episode 0116, JunkyardLovePodcast, CurtisLHarnagel, GESAMTCURTISWERK

## Transcript

[00:00:09] Jacob: Hello and welcome to the Junkyard Love.

[00:00:11] Curtis: Hey, everything's going to be all right.

[00:00:13] Jacob: It's all good. It's all good. The Junkyard Love podcast. to the junkyard.

[00:00:31] Curtis: So, we were just talking about YouTube. I So, I think what happens with me when I watch YouTube, I almost get the same thing with video games. Like, I don't really play many video games. My attention is I think they're cool, but it's just they aren't something I spend a ton of my time on. And I noticed if I do end up playing video games, as much as it's like, yeah, I'm having fun. Maybe I'm having fun with friends. That's important. that's valuable. But I start to very quickly have this ticking clock or like a air horn of, hey, you're not doing something valuable. You're consuming rather than creating or outputting, you know, and you're a creative. So, I have this alarm that goes off. And sometimes I feel if I'm watching too many like TV shows or uh movies, whatever. I love movies and everything, but I'm more prone to listen to the modern podcasts, the like what are the philosophers talking about right now? How can I expand my mind? how can I um you know in some ways maybe it's not super healthy to like listen to all these like self-development self-help like here's what you need to work on today but I am just way more drawn to that like I just you know I'm way more prone to listen to something that I feel is giving me value in my life and making me better versus something that I'm consuming I don't know well it makes sense well it activates different parts of your brain so when you're listening to somebody's ideas you're developing your own whether that is you're saying no I don't agree with that statement and you're holding your line or you are turning around and you are developing new ones or you're making new connections and you're kind of sitting there going oh okay maybe I can assimilate that but I'm in a different stage of my life or like the situation's not right for what you're saying but maybe I can extrapolate a piece of that and use that in my life

[00:02:16] Jacob: And I Know I find that works a lot with the way I view things. But maybe that's the intuitive quality, you know, because a sensor doesn't act like that at all. I have a lot around me. They none of them act like that. But all the intuitives around me, whether they realize it or not, tend to extrapolate information and go, "No, but there's a point there, and I need to find more information, and I feel like I need to develop whatever that is, whether they realize they're doing it or not." Yeah. Well, dude, I get amped that area right there where where I can notice, oh, my thinking is differently than this or I feel strongly about the opposing view or I feel strongly uh about agreeing with you. Whatever it is, I love challenging what I think. I love like hit and play on a podcast and you know, maybe it's just two knucklehead comedians, but then I'm like, man, I am now thinking in a different way than I thought of before I hit play on this. I love that. That entices me.

[00:03:12] Curtis: It's funny. I was watching one just the other day and it was a funny podcast. It was a short one, like a super short interview podcast scenario, but neither one of them are Christians, but they were two different types of non-Christians or atheist agnostic, like they just don't believe in any sort of God or any sort of deity thing. But watching them, one's coming about it, well, you know, it's community and it's this and it's that, so it's not all that bad. And the other one's like, nope, I'm done. I'm out. like kind of thing, but they're spiritual. So, it was very interesting listening to these two very different viewpoints and one finally saying, "Oh, well, I was reared Catholic." I was like, "Well, when you're browbeating in the church, you're going to run from it." Or anything, whether it's politics, whether it's church, whether it's education, whether what your home family, whatever system and structure it is, you're going to run. Well, yeah. I mean, I think it's a good Well, well, I mean, it kind of tells it tells you a lot about a person. like you can hear them going on like, "Oh, they have this idea and here's what they think, whatever." And then they have a sentence like you said where they just suddenly go, you know, "Oh, by the way, I was raised in this way or like I grew up in a Catholic household, whatever." Then you can, not always, but a lot of times you can go, "Oh, okay, that makes sense why you feel the way you do." Like I've talked about um the difference in people who like they just blindly trust or appeal to authority versus a lot of like you know the you know creative poet uh independent from a young age type. And so like I never I didn't have that instant trust in like adults even, you know. And so sometimes I'll hear people and they're going on about all these whatever their beliefs or they trust this person who said this thing or this scientist or this government entity whatever blah and I'm trying to figure out why it is like man so you heard that and you just fully believe that and like but that's not my experience. I hear it and I feel like I want to challenge it. And then you kind of hear a sentence like that. It's like, okay, well, I grew up in this sort of household and it was this teaching. And not just use it as a broad example, not to just say like people who are religious believe everything they hear or something, but um ju just like uh it's a good example of how we all come to the different conclusions differently in reasons why we land on different areas, but you know, we could we could have conversations there and get to the point of, oh, okay, I was raised differently than you. I had a different experience growing up. why I think these things. Tell me more about why you got to how you're where you're at, you know?

[00:05:36] Jacob: Well, and that I do find that's the lynch pin. And I don't think especially in society today, it's intentionally reinforced to not do that. You don't want to get to know your neighbor. You don't want to know the reason, not just the why, but the reason behind why because the rationale because if you did, it humanizes somebody. And we can't sew discord. We can't we can't meddle in society, you know. We can't then move in the shadows over here because wait a second, Dave, pay attention to us. We have you squabbbling down here. And I mean that for everything from marketing to the most insidious of stuff that you could talk about. But I really do think that between social media and media, you know, archaic news, which is just a bunch of pundits talking in my opinion in today's day and age, like not a single journalist exists anymore in my opinion. Like you'll have the really independent ones that are trying and they're just putting facts out there, but you have to s hunt and search those people down and even then they have their own bias.

[00:06:44] Curtis: I think that was the one thing that I learned. one of my best professors, my favorite professor ever at university. My degree is radio, television, film, but I their focus was independent film and documentary film making. I didn't want anything to do with documentary films. Like I it didn't interest me. I wanted to do fiction. I wanted to do music videos. Like that's one of the reasons I was going to school. Bring back the modern movie musical because it was I was started university before Mulan Rouge existed. I graduated high school in 2000. So, we didn't have a modern movie musical like it died with Eva kind of thing in the '9s. They tried it and it didn't work. But what's interesting is we would sit there in her class and she sat there and said to us, "If you don't like documentary, think of this as an independent filmmaking class." I was like, "Great, fantastic." And I was like, "Thank you for giving me another viewpoint." That right there is the mark of a good educator. It's not trying to browbe you or tell you what to think. It's somebody that goes, "Here's an alternate way to look at something."

[00:07:43] Jacob: Oh, okay. Cool. Here's another tool in your tool belt. But then she turned around and asked us what we thought documentaries were. And so everybody, you know, as you do in the classroom in your late teens and early 20s, everybody's raising their hand. It's National Geographic. It's that and the other. And then she said, "Well, any how-to video is a documentary. You're documenting the process of doing something. You know, any feature." Then all of a sudden I went, "Oh my gosh, all the featurettes I love to watch on the making of a concert, the making of a movie, the making of theater, the making of a behind the music behind or the making the video on MTV. It's a docu series. Is it partially scripted?" Yes. But you're documenting making Britney Spears toxic music video, right? Like you're seeing the process of how something is made. And it changed the way I viewed it. I love that. Yo, that's cool though. I mean, that's so cool. A good teacher can do that, right? Like they can they can take something that you think you know all about and when you're in high school or college, you obviously think you know everything you need to know. Uh anything like me anyway. Um and then Oh man, I love that. And I'm going to reuse your uh term of lynch pin too because that is another lynch pin of just like as soon as a teacher can say things in the correct way, you go, "Oh, okay." And then you could suddenly you have this whole genre basically that now you could be totally happy about learning more about and diving into. Well, that's I mean I could go I could talk just for an hour about the great educators I've had and then the bad teachers I've had and just and how that has shaped a lot of things because we all know we've had bad teachers. We all know that there's they don't like me. Well, that's 50/50. That's perception. But we all know that we've at least had one teacher in our life that did not like the cut of our jib. Didn't we were too talkative in class. We fidgeted too much. We didn't turn in assignments on time. Like stuff that innately is a problem. Or you would do something and they just had a chip on their shoulder, you know? And we're human. It happens. I know I've definitely had a few teachers like that. But even the ones that weren't a fan of me couldn't say that I wasn't polite. couldn't say I wasn't cordial and congenial. Like he talks too much in class. Like he just needs to settle down and just stop it. But he's polite. Like I can't just get on his case cuz he's not like all the other little spits in the classroom, you know? So that I mean it's nice to know that when your parents go in for a meeting and they're like, "Well, you're in trouble, but you're not in trouble because you're a little spit. You know, you have to do turn your homework in and you have to do the things." Yeah. you know, you're participating too much. Yeah. Wait, were you not even participating? That's the problem. You're just you're distracting everybody around you because you're bored in the classroom. Yeah. And that's and that was always a big problem for me. It's like this is too much. And I don't think the classroom environment is good for a student anyway. But that's a whole different topic. Well, well, did you Man, I actually kind of do want to talk about this. What did you Were you born Did you have ADHD? Anything like that? Do you consider yourself any Do you have any of those neurode divergent traits? Not to my knowledge. I was never diagnosed with anything. Uh, the closest thing that shares those traits is in middle school, we all got hauled into the cafeteria to take a test, just a random test. They didn't tell our parents, which, you know, that probably went over very well. I know with my family, you don't do that. So, welcome to the public education system. But what was cool about the test is I didn't know what it was. I'll tell you what the test is in a second. I'll bury the lead, but I take it. I'm like, "Oh, this is easy. Like, I don't know what's, you know, blah." I was like, "Oh, these are kind of different questions. These are fun." Da. So, and but what was weird was I was in the class with everybody that was in honors classes. So, I was in middle I was in middle school at this point. So, I'm not with the honor students. I was kind of a work smarter, not harder. Like, I sit on the back row, don't care, you know, kind of student. I got so burned out in elementary school. whole another topic. But what's funny about it is I take this test, I'm like, great. I'm not I don't belong with these kiddos, but fine, whatever. Cool. I'm not with like the bad behavioral ones, the ones that end up in-house suspension or do the other things, but I'm over here with Okay, you're straight A's. Great. Cool. Um, ends up later, I get called by the office over the PA to go to the library like months later. And this the librarian who loved me, I loved the librarian and she loved me, handed me this manila envelope and it was this package. She's like, "Give this to your parents." And I was like, "Oh, shoot. I'm in trouble." Yeah. Like, "Oh, crap. Don't look at it." And but you're going to take a peek. And I took a peek at it and I was like, you're in the top percentile, top five percentile of the United States, blah. I didn't understand what it means. I am on like at least for my age bracket this gifted and talented scale. What I don't know what the tests are called now. I don't know what they called it back in 1990 blah. They called it gifted and talented. And so come to find out I'm like some between spatial relations and linguistics. I'm like off the charts on something. But I can't even find the packet to this day. Like I've moved, my family's moved. And so I've been trying to find it. My parents keep all of that stuff and none of us can find it. But it was like this really interesting thing, but being gifted and talented shares about half of the ear markers of ADD, ADHD. So if you don't have somebody that knows how to

[00:13:33] Curtis: Differentiate, they'll s you on medicine just to control you in my opinion. Uh but

[00:13:41] Jacob: Everybody around me thought it was like an ADD, ADHD kind of thing. But it's like children aren't meant to sit there for hours like you're in a sweat shop and listen to the work bell, you know? I mean that's the whole thing is structured intentionally to be like a worker drone. So the classroom environment, especially when you're younger, you're meant to get up, you're meant to move, you're meant to do these things, but you also have to structure it. I see both sides of it. Like if you're actually thinking about you have to structure it. You can't just run a muk. Those classrooms don't work. Yeah. So, it's you need to learn to sit here for this short amount of time and then we're all going to go do a little field trip and go do this, clear your mind out, and then come back. Those kind of classrooms were the best ones for me. So, to answer your question, I've never been diagnosed with anything, but I'm on some sort of wonderful special scale that annoys teachers. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's probably different nowadays. I mean, I don't the amount of people that are diagnosed with that sort of thing nowadays versus when you and I were in school is just huge. Obviously, you know, it's a it's a ton more. Um, I don't know if that necessarily means that there's more people with ADHD. I'm sure there is. I'm sure something about our environment or our food or our, you know, vaccine, whatever the question is. There's something that is changing making us more uh susceptible to ADHD and that sort of thing. Our phone, for example. Oh my gosh. But yeah, I man I think the core of it is a decent teacher with the correct resources. You know, granted that they have the time and they could give these students the resources. They find like, okay, that person doesn't do well in this environment, but clearly they're passionate and they're interested in something. So, let's see if we can set them loose on the right things. Cuz like I can be considered someone with ADHD, but like man, put me in front of a DJ controller. That's a great place to have ADHD. You know what I mean? Like I can hyperfixate on things that pay my bills and it's worked well for me in my life. But in school, if I'm trying to like pay attention and stop talking and only they'll listen to this history from 1954 and re remember it and repeat it, whatever. Man, that's so boring to me. But get me on other things, I can pay great attention. So I'm sure you were probably in a similar boat. It's I think everybody is like if we're interested in it, we're going to we're going to be drawn to it. And none of us want to sit there and read from a book. Nobody wants to read about Ted and Fred and how their the cat sat on the hat and you know figure out the word problems in math when it would be better shape us. Who needs to know about the red train going from Tokyo to Los Angeles and how much time is it going to take when it would be better for us to learn about economics from the perspective of you know the word problem about work running a business. if you have this many items and this is your inventory and you just reshaped the word problem, but it I was reading something recently and it was talking about Rockefeller and how he helped shape the education system and that it's anybody that's affluent or is educated has that they get that at home. So, we intentionally don't put it in the education system to keep people, you know, at a certain level. I don't know how true all of it is. I haven't done a deep dive into it. It was just some stuff I was reading and I was like that doesn't surprise me because

[00:16:54] Curtis: That makes sense.

[00:16:55] Jacob: The school bell is a work whistle if you think about when they were developing the department of the education system and then becoming the department of education which has no love loss for me. Um I you see how the structure and then the bureaucratic structure mixed with it ends up hurting students, right?

[00:17:18] Curtis: And it hurts teachers as well because it doesn't give them the resources. It's the reason why the arts are defunded. It's not because the arts aren't helpful. It's because they're too helpful. It's because the arts create connective tissues in your brain. Music is math. Math is music. rhythm, time structure, notes, all of it. They all sync up. You can look at all sorts of things from woo theory to actual practical music theory and they all say the same thing. And so you'll have all these people talking about the arts are so important and we both are in arts field that have a tech side and logistics and all this, but heaven forbid we put resources and effort into that. I have a whole series of thoughts about it because it's also the type of person that flocks to it and those people are not always taken seriously.

[00:18:13] Jacob: Okay, tell me more. Tell me more.

[00:18:15] Curtis: In my opinion, as what I've noticed because I've worked a lot in as a contractor in education. So, I've worked with students from a little bit in the middle school, but predominantly teenage and 20somes like that's whether it's in the education environment in the institution or outside of it. And it's the same kind of age bracket whether it's theater or coral or dance or tech or any of that sort of stuff. Design totally derailed my own train of thought. What was I going to say? Uh you said tell me about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're talking about the arts and um essentially how like you know we have different minds and we're kind of trained to be factory workers essentially and that doesn't work for everybody. Well, when it comes to the arts, one of the big things it is, like I said before, it's a connective tissue to extrapolate to a lot of different things. We literally consume art every day. We consume it. The billboards you watch, the structure the billboard was built on is a form of art. Architecture is art. The house or the apartment you're sitting in, you know, the things that you take for granted, the freaking carpet, like there's art in everything. It's just some fields are more logistic and some fields aren't. One of the problem with the education system is that it's bureaucratic and bureaucracy. A lot of times sensors gravitate towards bureaucracy, not necessarily intuitives. Sensors aren't always artists. You'll find the predominant amount of people that are intuitive. It's going to be a higher amount of intuitives in the arts than you are going to find sensors full and well. and being reared by a sensor, a very strong sensor. It's interesting how she can appreciate art very, very much so, but doesn't feel artistic in her own right. So, and I'm kind of the opposite where it's like my feelings are intuitions. They're not always emotional. Like I don't have that feel or emotional reaction to thing. So being more being more on the thinker scale, it's interesting when I get around the performing arts and you're around a lot of willowy feelers and all this sort of stuff. You just start going, "Okay, I'm I really need you. You're at a 10. I need you at a two. I'll take a four or a five kind of thing." And that's not to denigrate anybody. It's just to say we all process things differently and our thresholds are different. and intuitive feelers really tend to go towards the performing arts specifically. And so in tech, you'll get a lot more sensors and you'll get a lot more people that would be an engineer, but they have an artistic streak or they want to be involved in something creative. And so you'll end up with students or adults that are creating these amazing sets, doing this great lighting design, doing running audio, you know, editors, you know, it's all interchanges. I don't know if I completely answered what you where you were wanting to go.

[00:21:18] Jacob: No, pretty much. Yeah. No, I'll poke and produce towards things I think are interesting. Actually, what I would like to do, um, just curious if anybody listening, if they have not, um, you know, gone the Myerbriggs route and explored their own personalities. For one, hey, check it out. I definitely encourage everybody 16 personalities.com. I think that's the one that I like. Um, could you tell me the difference between like a sensor and a feeler? Um, feeler or sensor and an intuitive? Sensor and intuitive. Yeah. In your definition, it's fine. You don't have to. Yeah. Do you want me to pull up the clinical one?

[00:21:48] Curtis: No. No. Yeah. Whatever you have to say about it is good. Basically, I just I just go with the fact that a sensor is someone that lets kind of the external world dictate the way that they are going to interpret their information. Whereas an intuitive, you run it through your own funnel and then you output the data. So my reaction is going to be I collect everything around me and then every time I make a bad decision I used to go to the site and actually test just a bridge test when things keep going wrong and just like it's bad and things haven't been going right. I'll usually test slightly more sensor like I it'll ping over to the sensor. I'm like because you're not listening to yourself. you're not listening to what's innate to you or to me personally. So, which is redundant to say, but you know what I mean. Uh so, I've noticed that where it's like, okay, when I make bad decisions, it's this happened, so that happens, so I need to do this. You don't take that beat and run it through your own funnel. You're reacting as opposed to absorbing, re reinterpreting, and then not putting the data. It doesn't work for everybody. I have a lot of sensor. I shouldn't say a lot. I'm 50/50 probably with sensors around me and intuitives, but I will tell you it causes conflict when you have a strong sensor and a strong intuitive and they're trying to communicate with each other. You can say the exact same thing.

[00:23:12] Jacob: Yeah. And one's coming at it from the front door and one's coming at it from the skylight. And neither one of you are going to meet until you can take a beat and take a breath and go, "Hold on. How is this person? I think we're saying the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. How are we saying that? What are we saying? Yeah. But if it's in the point where you're getting heated, it Oh my gosh. And that can be in anything from your chores to political nonsense to, you know, religious doctrine to just anything. But I think you have to take the beat. And as I've grown older, I've learned how to kind of go, oh, I'll fire back. Most people don't nowadays people don't see that side of me until they meet the side of me and then they're like that came out of nowhere. It's like no it didn't come out of nowhere. I was just very I've learned to be very patient and go okay there's so many things you have to do in a day. This is not the battle that I Okay, this is the battle that I'm going to have to fight. Okay, cool. I'm down. Let's go. You want to go? We can go. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that is how it goes. you do have to you start to learn especially if you're able to kind of take that step back that meta perspective of okay what's going on in this situation cuz so often we're you know we're trying to fight it from being within it like we're our head's deep in the dang thing and we're like having the arguments and we're disagreeing or whatever a lot of times you got to you know pull your head out of your butt or whatever this example I'm putting here uh I'll save my inappropriate jokes um so basically just like pull yourself out of it and observe it from a distance right and then you can kind of have Uh um you could you could see where you're where you're butting heads and where you're both all you just you're trying to overall accomplish the same thing with this other person, but you can kind of go, okay, is it worth me taking my energy to argue this? If this were is this worth me letting go for a while and then we reapproach it? Do I need to let them cool off and me cool off and then we realize, hey, we're on the same page. We're talking about the same thing. So, where in your life has you've had so many different experiences, so many, you know, in the creative world for sure, but all of your other expertise um how did you start to find where you noticed, okay, my reactions, me arguing with this person isn't helpful. Me bumping heads with this type of person seems to keep happening. Um because what I what I want to ask, Curtis, is kind of like maybe there's people listening who they notice they're bumping heads with everybody. They were they're work with creatives. Maybe they are the creative, maybe they're not the creative, but they noticed that there's a way that they could better, more amicably communicate. I think that's something that definitely one of the a lot of the main reason I want to get you on there. One of the main reasons um you're an excellent communicator. It's something that I noticed right off the bat. I mean, all of us working together, even our casual conversations, we just talk forever and you communicate so well. Um, and I think it's a superpower and a lot of people, um, there's a lot of people who probably work with you and will work alongside you or see you and your ability to be so charismatically communicative is admirable. So, I'm sure there's other people who are like, man, I'd love to be as charismatic and communicative as Curtis, how would I get there? So, I'm just wondering if there was a maybe an opening for you or maybe how you used to do things versus how you do them now. How could you speak to those people who want to communicate better? It's a series of things. It isn't just one, right? We'll start with I'm just naturally a articulate, very gifted in that. That is a genetic innate thing that got reinforced. My grandmother and my mother were very big on English. They were very big on language and speaking clearly and concisely. I'm an officer's child and my father also ran joint ventures, international joint ventures later in life. So I'm, you know, an executive's child slash an officer's child. So you have to present a specific way as it is. So now you have this kind of waspy thing going on and then you have this, oh, you do naturally speak. I spoke early for a girl like as in developmentally. I was speaking early. I walked early. I like I only crawled to climb up onto something to become bipedal. I didn't do the ooching stuff. I didn't do I didn't go through the normal steps. Same thing with talking. I started a little bit of babbling my mother says and then you had full words and then it was full phrases. It was never why. It was for what reason as a toddler. Like what toddler says for what reason? This one. But the funny but the funny thing about that is I must have keyed into something being around adults all of the time in that there's a rationale and a reason or it was the type of adults I was around. My mother had as an educator defed as well as English. So being articulate would have obviously been reinforced. She would notice if there was something wrong with a speech pattern or you're congested or you can't hear something and we need to get in and see if there's something wrong with your ears or there's something going on. She just saw it almost immediately as soon as speech patterns but I had it. So I don't know that's where that nature nurture thing is. It's genetic 100%. But it got nurtured. So there's that. I was very loquacious and very obviously and very u engaging when I was a child. Never met a stranger kind of thing but didn't trust certain people like wy at an early age and then school just kind of beat it out of me like I became way more insular. You know when you don't really have friends in school and you're just kind of working your way through it. the trying to communicate on that level with people it becomes difficult. So that's where the first major hiccup in the journey is. I could communicate with an adult like that no problem. And I had this immense frame of reference where I could talk to somebody and they'd be like how do you know about laughing? How do you know like this episode of a show that I watched when I was a tween or a teen kind of thing and you're in 1980 whatever early 1990s kind of thing. I'm like because I was allowed to watch it. You know, Nick at Night existed and Exactly. And I think that's something we can I do want to hit that as a point later about exposure to things and this younger generation versus my generation and what I've noticed throughout the years. Yeah, definitely. Please. But in regards to communication, I'm talking way too much. But to get to the point is that I would then start having hiccups with my own peers because I was anac an anacronism in my own time. Yeah.

[00:30:08] Curtis: I love the Beach Boys. who as a 5-year-old, an 8-year-old in 1980, whatever, Texas, loves the Beach Boys, loves um Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Frankie Valley and the Four Seasons, Jan and Dean, uh the Chapons, the Charels, any of the Mottown music, any of the Phil Spectre, the Brill Building pop music. I It was the first music that I found that was mine, which was weird because I had Michael Jackson. We had the original thriller LP. That's what got me to sleep as a toddler. You know, I wasn't stuck listening to Lullabis. I was listening to like pop rock music curated, of course, but you know, I had the Madonna. I had the Michaels, but then I'd found this section of music. My peers weren't listening to that,

[00:30:58] Jacob: Right?

[00:30:58] Curtis: They were listening to Cooko because that had come out from the cocktail soundtrack, but they So, I didn't have a shortorthhand with my own peers, but I had a short hand with adults. So that took a long time to develop with my own peers. It was just frustrating. It just never worked.

[00:31:15] Jacob: Yeah. But it but it wasn't difficult to communicate. It was just we had two completely different sets of interests and I was a social paria. So when you're those two things, you just kind of you do you. You learn to do you and you just move forward. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I think it's something to be said about if the students in other classmates around you are just not into the same things you're into or they're not really talking about things that interest you, I could see that being like, you know, you had a kind of an a taste for intellectualism almost like you almost wanted to have conversations maybe that were um a little bit different than the people around you could potentially provide. I would agree with that assessment. Like I think what's interesting is you only know what you know. The rest is learning. So at any given stage, especially when you're younger, you're still developing. Like your prefrontal cortex lobe is not developed until approximately 25 years of age. So boy, we all thought we knew a lot as teenagers, didn't we? And I consider a 20-year-old a teenager. You know what I mean? Like, you know, just because you're 18 and you're magically an adult legally, you're not you're no more an adult than you were at 17, but it's like calling a 17-year-old a child. You're not a child. You know right from wrong. Yeah. Like you know what I mean? Like for the most part, 000 whatever percent of the people that don't know it, blah. Like but in all seriousness, like you know certain things by that point. So, it's that's when things got better was finally getting to a being a teenager and I'd found friends outside of school that were older. I would I would have be friends with people that were my age and then I would gravitate towards their older siblings.

[00:33:04] Curtis: Sure. I would I would then I just met this friend group at the local university just one of them happened to work at Blockbuster Video and I was always in there and we struck up a conversation and I was basically by my junior senior year I was living a dual life during the day I was a high school student and some weekends and then some evenings and some weekends I was hanging out with these college friends and they weren't people that I with whom I went to school so I didn't know them all the way through. It was the first true group of friends that I made of my own accord and we could talk about different things. They were being educated at a higher level and at a different rate and had more exposure to different topics or a more in-depth exposure to topics. So it automatically filled I guess what was lacking in a lower educational environment that has a lot of surface or a lot of when you're in a religious area and it's a very specific group of people there's a lot of what's the word I want to use not stigma but castigation

[00:34:16] Jacob: Like you're bad there's something wrong with you if you don't go to our church or if you don't believe this thing. And I'm like, there's so many denominations, dude. We're all Christians here. Or if you're not Christian, Judeo-Christian or, you know, whatever, because of where we were in Texas. Yeah. Come on. Like, take a take a beat, take a pill. It's not It's deep, but not that deep. You know what I mean? You're a child. I'm a child. Like, let's move on with our lives here. Yeah. I mean, and to put someone in a whole box of like, oh, he doesn't he didn't say yes to that one sentence that we really feel good about when he says yes. So, let's not invite him over for dinner like that. Like, come on. Like, how about just expand yourself and talk with the person? He might teach us something you don't even know. What's funny about that is but I've done it myself and not realized I've done it to people. Yeah, you and that I think is the next part of communication is realizing that you will inevitably do the very thing that you're being you're upset that somebody else is doing. You're going to do it. We're human. You know, it's just natural to want to be tribal. I just naturally happen to be a lone wolf, but it's natural to want to cluster off and be a part of the group and oh, this is a fun crowd. I want to be Oh, I really don't want to be over here. Or, oh, yeah, I really do. And do they accept me? Do they not accept me? Yeah. As I got through university, I started realizing that the that quotient I have for big picture thinking, not everybody had. And people can't then zero in on that minute detail. Most people live in the midplane. Yeah. Of observation. So when you're leaping between you can't see the bigger picture like five steps down the line, but I'm so focused on this minute detail over here, you've just missed a whole bunch that everybody else is like,

[00:36:01] Curtis: "Duh."

[00:36:02] Jacob: Yeah. So it's finding that way to fill that gap and ask someone for that information. So that requires listening. Yeah. So I would say that the next part of it, you're probably going to have to chop all of this up for it to make sense. Yeah. It's decently cohesive. It's fine. Yeah. or to streamline it. But listening, the biggest thing I can say about communication is listening. Most people don't listen. They hear you hear what I'm saying. You're not listening to the words that I am using. And words have meaning. Yes. Because we give it to them. And in today's day and age, people play fast and loose with the meanings of words. I understand that there's an etmology of language, but it has a root. As archaic as it may be to raise someone is not to rear someone. You raised chicken and cattle. You rear children. But we colloquially use raise in lie of rear. It's two different things. My mother always said you were reared not raised. You know, it's that semantic. That's great. Yeah, that's they are important details. They are, but if you're not taught those details and where did I where was I taught those details? At home, not in the education system. So, right there's a thing because even the best educators have to follow curriculum, right? And curriculum is going to dictate a lot. The best teachers I ever had,

[00:37:30] Curtis: Jog on. Like they did their own thing within the very loose framework of it. But I'll get to that later because I would love to talk about some of the best things that teachers have ever done.

[00:37:42] Jacob: Yeah.

[00:37:42] Curtis: In my life. But for communication, so it's for me it's been to sum it up. It's natural. I there's a lot of ingrained just traits that I have. I My parents were very influential in making sure to reinforce it. realizing that you had to learn by listening.

[00:38:04] Jacob: Mhm. Because if you don't listen to what the other person is saying, you're not going to respond. The response is going to be a different response. I don't know how better to explain it. If I half listened to you, I'm not understanding what you're asking or what you're saying to me.

[00:38:21] Curtis: Well,

[00:38:21] Jacob: And

[00:38:22] Curtis: Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, and one the last thing I was going to say is I then learned through a series during my work life of I used to be very direct like that kind of tur short because that's in my work life and everything else. You get yelled at if you screw something up like let's say we're working together on a show again. Okay. It'll probably happen.

[00:38:47] Jacob: Yeah. And you accidentally cue something incorrectly. How many times have you heard over the clearcom somebody getting ripped a new one? You know what I mean? How many times in just oneonone you did and it's and it's just like it is heated and you're being browbeating and people in today's day and age like oh it's so toxic. Some of the best things that I ever learned were from somebody just ripping me a new one at 14 years of age because it's direct and it's heated. It puts enough fear into you that you go I don't fear of consequence not fear of the person. like I don't ever want to do that again. I have a whole story about that. But it also made sure that I started realizing I wasn't getting with this younger generation. And when I say younger, I mean like the youngest of millennials and younger as I would work with them when I would say, well, you know, the first act isn't going very well. You know what I mean? I noticed that this isn't this. You know, go fix it and come back. Because that's how I was taught. you screwed up. Go fix it. Come back. You're not going to get attab boy. You're not going to get all these extra things. What ended up happening was the second act tanked and went even worse.

[00:39:59] Curtis: Oh wow.

[00:40:00] Jacob: Because you hurt someone took it personally. And it's like, well, firstly, you should still be backstage and you shouldn't have come out into the house to go talk to friends and family. Like the show is still going on even through intermission. Like let's talk about professionalism here, but clearly no one taught that to you. So that's but being that direct and too honest which sometimes can almost be a sensor trait where it's like well you just need to fix it and I'll give you the tools to fix it but you just need to do it. You now have to create the compliment sandwich. I appreciate the work that you're doing blah. Insert the light version of how you need to fix it. Thank you so much. Have a nice day. And you have to do this sandwiching. And it's been pervasive for how old am I? Probably over 15 years now. It's I've had to do this technique for over 15 years now. I don't feel like I should have to, but it works. It takes a little more time out of my day. Someone doesn't feel, you know, doesn't feel some kind of way. They don't get in their feelings from it. And really, it's elicited a better response. So, like this year more than ever, I've had a lot of people comment about I'm always smiling when I'm on a project and I'm working. I don't know why. Like, and it's not a grim. It's like it's a genuine smile. And I'm like, "Huh, I didn't realize I was doing that." Like, I just didn't realize it. But it's getting into this different mindset. It's say, "I'm not paid to have a bad attitude.

[00:41:33] Curtis: I'm not paid to come in here and tell someone off. There's another way to do things." Two things can be true at once. There are multiple ways to do them. It's finding an extra tool for your tool belt going, "Oh, that didn't elicit the response that I wanted. Let me try this technique with somebody. Let me try that technique with somebody." I mean, I think that's why I gravitated that first year we worked together and I was like, "Oh, I like Jacob." Like, like love it. Well, no, because you got it like you were picking up on things before I even said them. I was like, "Oh, he's he has to be an intuitive." Like there's no other way this would work the way it does because you were like, "Well, I saw that you there were these audio cues and you were missing something, so I just pulled a bunch of stuff for you that was kind of in the vein of it." You went ahead of what you should have to do and you preempted something.

[00:42:20] Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But we were able to communicate and I would say with half of the way we talk with each other on site, they're almost half sentences sometimes. For sure. Yeah. Because we're on the same page, it's like, "Okay, cool. Go." Yeah. I don't know. Does that help anything? Does that

[00:42:38] Curtis: No. No. It absolutely does. Well, okay. So, I think that something that we're both able to do is like for one, like nothing's personal. Like if even if you're like, "That song sucks. I don't want it new." Like, done. Cool. Say less. It's not personal. It's not like my taste in music sucks and you like are insulting me. But I think especially in live events, something that is very useful and helps with communication between creatives is you and I both know we have an end goal. Like this door opens at 6:30 p.m. And like we know that we have high expectations. At a certain point at 400 p.m. Sometimes we have to start lowering our expectations because it's like, do I have time to make this happen in those two? Whatever. But not that we're trying to lessen the impact of the show. We're all still on board for having the best show possible. like we're here to do this thing and like we know from experience when we do it well it's impressive. We're proud of it. The audience has a wonderful moving experience. Like that's the juice, man. We want to do that. So if we're able to get kind of on the same vibe of, hey man, we're trying to make a good show here. So if you can say something and halfway through it I'm like I get what you're talking about. Say less. I got you. We're both here to have a great show. We're both here to make an experience for these people who are uh you know involved whether they're in the show or they're watching it. the work and production. We're all in this to like have a good experience of working a show, a good experience of seeing the show, blah. Um, yeah. And so if I can remove my I think a lot of times our lack of communication sometimes is I mean looking at me when I was younger is like I would keep I would be offended by stuff. So people would say things and I would well I spent forever I spent so much time on this like and you don't you clearly don't even listen to what I'm trying to do and blah. It's like no he There's many reasons why this person said what they said. The door's open at this time. We got to get to work, you know? So, it's not about my feelings. It's not about me finding something that feels really good for me. Like, these people in the audience, they don't care about like how I feel about the song, you know? It's a general cohesive thing. So, um yeah, I think listening part of part of being a good listener is not taking things personally, too. I think that's a that's an important part of it. Yeah, that's something that I've learned in business. I don't do it all of the time, but I have no problem saying this is these are my thoughts. You've hired me or an opinion. These are my thoughts on it. I don't agree I want it this way. Okay, fine. I still don't agree with you. I think this is what's going to come out of it, but you're paying me. It's not my It's not my thing. If you like what I produce, as long as you like what I give you at the end of the day, it's not about me.

[00:45:12] Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. And I don't have to deal with that often. I think I had to deal with that when I was younger. Now I'm way more in tune with the people I'm around. Like it's I don't know. Once you finally lynch pin in and link in and you get there with somebody, you're like, "Got it. I know what we're doing here." You know, it may take a couple of steps to get there. And that's the music side or that's a design side or that's a oh, you're asking me to run the show this way. Okay, hold on. I'm going to have to take a few minutes to like recalibrate what I'm doing and move my head my head space over to this over here.

[00:45:47] Curtis: Y speaking of that, asking about communication because I have done everything from staging and choreography and this more movementbased dialogue based artistic style and then you move over to design and technology and you know obviously you met me as what working backstage. What would how would you even

[00:46:10] Jacob: Yeah. What are all your titles when I'm working with you? What are your plethora of titles?

[00:46:15] Curtis: Well, the actual titles are music and show music and staging director.

[00:46:23] Jacob: Okay.

[00:46:23] Curtis: So, it's like basically music director and staging director. They're two completely different things, but because I have a major background in making sure that performers get where they need to be and do what they need to do on stage and

[00:46:34] Jacob: Yeah,

[00:46:35] Curtis: Formations and dance and movement and all of that, there's that, but that's the on-site component of it. The offsite is periodic opinions on things, you know, as anybody would have, but you're not going to get, oh, well, I said this should happen with this outfit, so you're going to get like that's not a credit. That's a, okay, you're a part of the team. I think that's something that people get twisted. They think that just because they had an opinion on one thing, they should have a loftier title or something else. And I was there when I was younger. It's that you're excited and got to tamper that down a little bit and realize, no, you're part of the team. You were hired to do this. This is the next part of it. And the pre-production stuff, a lot of it is music related and it's music editing and it's making sure that there's a not just a sound bed, but it's cohesive and it's more of a soundtrack. This year, I really went in and said, "Hey, I want to make this more like a soundsscape and a soundtrack, which is why the day before the show, we're sitting there, oh, I have these tracks now with these

[00:47:38] Jacob: With all these tracks." And no, we need to add stuff to them. We need to give it more body. We need to make it atmospheric now whether that's with music or sound effects and it's just a last minute kind of and you have on do your listeners know specifically all the different tiers of what you do? Probably not. No, I don't know what they know. Well, because it's one of those things where when we're working together, you're audio, too. So, for anybody that doesn't know live production, there's your lead and then there's the second person and it can mean a bunch of different things. So, I'm handing over all my music to you and or somebody else is handing the music that I've handed over to you and then we're communicating on how it's supposed to play and when it's supposed to play and oh crud. And you're you do an amazing job looping. And just to kind of round that out, that's something with communication is you have to experience a lot of things first.

[00:48:35] Curtis: Yeah. and then you can articulate what it is that you experienced. But if I were to try and tell you what that show is that we work off, okay? If I'm going to explain it to you, I would say it's a charity dinner. It's a fashion show, but it's actually think of it set up like a concert,

[00:48:55] Jacob: Right?

[00:48:55] Curtis: Like the way the staging happens, the way you would run things is more like a pop concert or a concert tour. It just happens to have theater elements in it. This happens to have a lot of music. It has microphones. Sometimes we have live music. Every year is going to be different. But I would think of it more like a concert and a ballroom or an arena, a very small arena size. Don't think of it like a normal fashion show. Don't think of it normally like a normal awards dinner. Don't think of it, it's not an industrial. Do not think of it at all like an industrial. And I think that's a learning curve people have when they walk into that show specifically because to me it's more of a concert. I don't know if you would agree,

[00:49:38] Jacob: But I'm almost tempted. I think it's a stretch of the word, misuse of the word, but variety show almost. It's not a variety show, but I mean like dude, there's a full symphony, there's a choir, there's bands, there's musicians, there's like there how many models are involved in like one year, would you say?

[00:49:54] Curtis: It's kind of Oh god, it depends on it depends on the year because I don't know how many were this year cuz that I'm not on that side of it. So I don't I think this year because they had it they only duplicated a few of them.

[00:50:07] Jacob: So I would over 50

[00:50:09] Curtis: For sure over 50 easily over 50. So 50 to 100 like depending on the year. Sometimes the show's super duper big and you have all these extra scenes because I've done that specific show off and on since 2011.

[00:50:22] Jacob: Yeah. So this was either year 10 or 11 of me being on site doing the show

[00:50:28] Curtis: And then Yeah. Well, into and so I'll just say for anybody listening, if you're wondering what we're talking about, um there will be links in down below. We're talking about DIFFA, um a fashion show that we both worked. This that's where Curtis and I originally got connected and started vibing with. So, um they can definitely check that out. I'll include Keep in mind, Curtis, there will be links to all your stuff and all that. They'll have a bio already. U we'll cover more of your bio as we continue to continue to just casually talk on, but uh there will be all that info below. So, if you want to know more about what we're kind of talking about specifically, listener,

[00:50:58] Jacob: Check out below. What I do want to ask you, Curtis, um we were talking about communication. We've been talking about um how essentially like communication is something that it seemed that you learned that you actually had as a skill. Like I'm not sure if there was a time in your life where you kind of were able to step back and go, okay, I'm clearly good at this communication thing and a lot of other people aren't as much. Um I don't know if you had any situations like that, but I do think that you've mentioned kind of our younger generation, you know, people who are I want to help out people who aren't as natural communicators, right? I want to speak with them. Um I so taking in what you've experienced by just working with people that are younger than you, working with people with different mindsets. Um definitely in the creative world, but even just kind of like the more logistic sides of our business, the technical sides of our business, which um there's a lot of creatives, but there is a lot of more structure in other sides of our of our world. So what's something that you see in the world of communication that maybe people could do better? Maybe they're making the same mistakes. Um maybe they're making assumptions. What's kind of like some communication advice that comes to mind? I suppose for our younger people,

[00:52:12] Curtis: It's always listening. Like I will always go back to listening because learning that if you're not getting the result you want from something, you it is incumbent upon you as the person communicating the information to communicate the information. You may have said it once one way. Great. The other person may not be receiving it right. They're not getting it. So that means there's something there's a disconnect there. So now you need another tool in your tool belt to say, "Okay, the person doesn't learn that way or the person doesn't isn't processing what I'm saying. I need to rephrase this." I think a big problem is people start getting louder instead of rephrasing. people push and be like, "No, it's this kind of thing or they become more stringent and stridident as opposed to, okay, hold on, let me explain it differently." I don't think because I've also had this situation where I don't think you're understanding why I'm saying somebody gets offended or whatever. No, no, no, no. It's not about offending anything. It's I don't think I'm communicating it to you effectively. Let me try and rephrase this because I think I'm the one doing it. Sometimes you have to take it on yourself.

[00:53:32] Jacob: I think a lot of times in communication you think just because you said something somebody understood what you said and it's incumbent upon both people to sit there and if you don't understand it part of that communication is asking the follow-up question. You have to turn around and go, "Okay, I don't know if I really understand what you mean by what you say. Mhm. This is this is what I this is what I extrapolated or this is what I think you said. Is this what you said? Is this or do you mean this by what you say? And then they can volley back. It's just lob and volley. They can go yes but no. What I mean is da. Oh, it's order of operations is the first place where you're going to get twisted with somebody, right? Because where what I think should go first is not what you think should go first. And it may not be what either one of us think should go first. It's what needs to go first. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's the thing that I always had a problem with in mathematics. I would jump steps. I was really bad. Especially when we got to algebra. I would skip over things. I wouldn't like show your steps. You're like, I don't know how I got there. I got the answer though. I literally I had a calculus professor, business calculus at university and I was doing so poorly in the class. It was oh gosh it was 911 time period like it was it was September and I took my first test and I bombed it. I bombed it and I was like how did I do like what because there a lot more word problems it's calculus I you know all these things. So I went to the professor. The first thing I always say is if you have a question, you immediately go talk to take that time. A good one will take the time to work with you if they have it. Just don't waste their time, right?

[00:55:28] Curtis: Like that's a big thing. I went to him because I was like, but I some of these answers are correct. I think he literally because he had an adjunct or somebody grade everything as you would. He looked through it and he went through every single problem. I went from a D to a B on that one test because he saw where I got off in my work. He would he would go correct. That's off. Why did they count it off? You got the answer correct. Or you got off track. Yeah. No, you totally bomb. No, I can't give you anything for this question or you know what I mean for this problem. But then he turned around and go, "How did you?" He looked at me one time during that session and went, "How did you get back on track?" Like, "How did you like I don't know. With math, my brain will just do some things."

[00:56:18] Jacob: Dude, I resonate with this so much. I would skip steps and then I'd be confused and frustrated that the teacher would say, "Well, you didn't do it the way that we're telling you to do it." I'm like, "But you're telling me an end goal and to get to the end goal and I got to the end goal. I'm not understanding what's wrong with the way that I did it." you know, it's because they were never told how to explain that to students. They don't teach that in education, I don't think, or at least in the way that I would interpret it in that the we do these steps this way for a very specific reason. There's a reason, there's a rhyme, there's a rationale. Okay, cool. If you explain it to me like that, I will then ask, well, what's the reason, the rhyme, the rationale? But most people won't. But you have people that just naturally are followers that will say, "Okay, you told me to do it this way. I'll do it this way." Or they understand it. They don't they don't need you to explain it. They see the steps right in front of them. Whereas I'm more of a for what reason? Why are we doing it this way? That's one of the things that I found communication wise in work, people just will bark things at you and tell you, "Do it this way. Do it this way." And it really tamps down morale. Yeah.

[00:57:35] Curtis: But you don't always have time to explain things to people there. That's something that I would say to anybody that's younger or anybody that is older that still gets frustrated and feels like they're beating their head against a wall, especially with big projects, whether that's in a retail store environment because I have a lot of sales background. Obviously, I do a lot of different types of shows and I've worked with teams and competitions and all sorts of stuff. There's a lot of logistics involved and I don't have time to explain the logistic steps. One of the best producers I've worked with said, I'd suggested something one of the first times that we worked with her and she goes, "Thank you very much, but we don't do it that way, but you may do it that way in one of your other events. It could sound dismissive. It could sound demeaning or it could be the way I took it which was oh okay there's another way to do things and maybe I can utilize this let me let me watch how this happens and why we do it this way and then later when the person had time I went to the producer and said would you explain to me why y'all do it this way I see it in real time that it works why like what's the reason behind it because clearly you've tried it before that way doesn't work. So when I try to communicate, I don't always I'm not always great about it, but it's like I'll explain to you later the why, but for right now, it just doesn't work because of XYZ.

[00:59:02] Jacob: So let's move on to the we but we got to keep moving with this, right? Thank you. Come find me later. And if you really want to know and I'll explain it to you and I'm willing to take that extra time. I'm not getting paid for it. I'm not getting any The only thing I'm getting out of it is making sure that somebody doesn't walk away feeling like they were dissed and dismissed because I never want that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:59:25] Curtis: Kind of thing. So, so it's taking that extra time if you can manage it and learning to say there's another way to do things and there's a reason why we don't do it that way or whatever. Yeah. I think it's actually pretty powerful what you said about like making it clear to them that you're willing and would love to explain to them later because in our world of live events sometimes it is a bit more direct like I said you know we start unloading and that's an hourglass tipped over that sand is pouring the doors open at the same time you know so a lot of times we do get more short and precise in the way we communicate um I've actually that makes me think um it's funny coming off of right at this convers you know we're mentioning this conversation about math and like hey just do it this way and like they always don't know how to explain it to you that way and you're like I came up with the right answer blah I don't know why you want me to do it this way but there is a moment for sure and I see it with young people where you do need to kind of just at least in that moment blindly trust the person who's telling you to do it a certain way so like especially in live events so I know just an example of um in my world so I just had uh the supervisor for a show We were just running um Dan and Sheay was the artist that had those

[01:00:40] Jacob: And um essentially there was a person on a forklift who was doing things in a way that isn't the proper way to do them. They don't have the view of everything that you know essentially the supervisor knows more information about that show overall than the person driving the forklift. That's just a true fact. like he has the advance, he has the diagrams, he's been having email conversation, he's in contact with all the leads. He just knows more than the person who's, you know, in the narrow forklift. He's telling the person, "Hey, we got to do it this way. We need it this way right now." Basically

[01:01:11] Curtis: Turns into an argument. The person is like, "Well, no, I'm doing it this way. Here's why." Blah, blah, blah. Cool. I get that you're going to do it that way. And the forklift, but right now, I need you to do it this way. And in that moment, there's other people listening. There's clients around. There's maybe an artist around, whatever. There's the supervisor up top who knows a lot more info about the show as a whole does not have time and it's not the most important thing in that high intensity moment where it's like a forklift jammed and people are waiting. It's not the time to explain to you why we can't do it your way. You need to trust the person who's in that authoritarative position authoritative position. I don't love that word authoritative, but in that position of they you got to admit they know more than you and trust them. They're saying, "Hey, do it this it's not the way you're going to do it. And then later on, they're going to explain, they're happily going to explain to you, hey man, the reason why I didn't want you to drive the forklift this way in that manner was because over my right shoulder, that guy watching me, he works with OSHA or he, you know, there's some reason that you aren't privy to in that moment why you're being asked to do it in a certain way. And so a lot of times something I'm always learning is um to trust that person to like, hey, there's a reason why that why that individual is telling me um why we need to have it done in this way. And I noticed in their voice, in their vocal tone, they were being more direct than they normally are. They're being kind of quick. He seemed a little bit shorter with me. He usually explains things really detailed to me. I've got to go. If I'm the forklift driver in that situation, I've got to go, man. must trust this individual's reasoning why he's telling me to do it and just do it the way he says and then like you said have that conversation on the back end of hey I know that I was kind of short with you I know I was kind of direct with you that isn't the way that you want to do it I do trust your skills as a forklift driver I'm not trying to insult you as you know you have wisdom that you're bringing to this table but all that to say like there's moments especially with a live show where you just got to trust that person they're telling you what's up and then having that openness of I would love to explain it to you on the back end. I don't have time for right now. Please, before you leave today, let's have this quick combo. I want to I would love to explain to you why I did it the way I did it and told you the way to do it the way I told you to do it, but right now you got to, you know, do it this way. So, I all that rambling for that story on um just to agree like it's huge to just trust that person in that moment. Trust that they are great at what they do. You know, they're good at what they do. You know, they're they have a great decision. They haven't let you down before. listen to them. Do it the way they solve the math problem in the way they told you to solve it in this moment. Later on, we're going to have the conversation. So, yeah. I don't know if you resonate with that. Well, what's funny is you made me think of something else that those of us that have an artistic side like designers, editors, people that have or creators, but are also will get contracted to do a task. This is where I learned to stop getting it twisted a long time ago. If I'm hired for a mix that I've already made, you're buying my mix. You're buying my edit. You're buying my this. You're buying my art in that situation. If I've hired you to do a job, I'm hiring you for your skill set, not your art. And we get that twisted so easily in the arts, any sort of I shouldn't call it the arts, in any creative field. And that's where you start getting, for lack of a better turn of phrase, but hurt. Like that's when you start getting Sally and Sammy sensitive because it's like, "Yeah, but it's my art." It's like, "No, you're editing music for a freaking show. I need music that's enjoyable for the show. If I want you to shorten it, I need you to shorten it." The best one of the best producers that I've worked with over the years will send me emails. These are the songs I want to use. Fantastic. I need I don't like this intro. I need you to get out of this and into the this the lyrics really quickly or I don't like the lyrics but I love the intro. So I'll get time code of where to cut things with it. But usually there's a caut in there somewhere that says after you do these things whatever sounds good to your ear. So if you need to adjust the edit whatever because she trusts my ear, she trusts my expertise. That's where you can be kind of artsy. And then, oh, by the way, once it's finished, I need you to loop it. So, then you go through this period of you knock it out, you draft it, you send it off, you get approval, or you might get a critique. Knock on wood, usually I don't get a critique. Usually, it is bingo, you're good. Thank you, Swifty. I'm out. Or speedy. Speedy is what I usually get called. But it's one of those things where it But it's not about me. It's not about me being creative. It's not about me trying to do something like that. It's about you have this skill set and you do it in a creative manner. You know, please execute this the way I've asked you to. Doesn't mean I can't interject something and say, "Hey, I was listening to this. Would you mind?" Or I'll take it of my own accord and I'll do the extra work. And whether it's a video edit or a music edit or create an extra queue when I used to do a lot of lighting design, I you know, I'll just create it. I can always omit it. I can always take it out. Now I have two files. It's faster for me. And then I can say, I just mocked this up. Would you listen to both, please? Or would you look at both, please? I had an idea. You don't have to use it. You if you love it, I will high render it kind of thing. But if you want to be heard and seen that you can do other things, sometimes you have to do stuff off the clock. Sometimes you have to put that little bit of extra effort in. But it's also asking. If you don't ask, you'll never receive. And I'm the worst at asking. I'm really the worst. And I preach to everybody, ask. If you don't ask, it's always a no,

[01:07:07] Jacob: Right? It's always a no if you don't ask. But nobody wants to deal with rejection or criticism. Hey, I'm with you on that. It hurts. I hate it. But that's the one thing I would love to impart is that's another issue in communication is you have to deal with criticism and rejection and then you have to separate the wheat from the chaff. You have to be able to go this is constructive. This is someone being salty. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are they being salty for a reason or are they just being salty to be salty? We all have bad days.

[01:07:40] Curtis: Yeah. Well and in what level of personal Like what level of personal insult am I taking on to this? Something that I've definitely had to learn is like my so like being a D I was certainly a DJ before I was making my own art and writing my own poetry and writing my own like I like a lot of hip-hop and I do some producing and stuff like it took me a long time to unwind how precious everything felt. It's like, man, I spent like I poured my hope and dreams and my tears and my real thoughts and my experience and my traumas and I worked on this thing for you and like isn't it amazing? And they're like, it's not going to go in the show. See you later. And you're like, but it's everything. But it's like that is that is the continuous arc of doing anything creatively or as an artist or whatever is you got to let it go. You can create it. It can come from all of those places, but then once it's out here, shared to everybody else, it's not personal. It's you got to let it go. It's

[01:08:38] Jacob: Do you think that's a your NF function like the intuitive and the feeler combined that it amplifies that? Here I have given you this beautiful bird. Smash, we're not using it. Thanks. Have a great day. Like do you think that might play into it a little bit? Yeah. I mean because you know a lot of times I'm looking for my own worth in that sometimes. Um a lot of times I'm not necessarily from other people. A lot of times it's like I want to prove to myself that I'm an artist and can make these things and you know like whether I want to say it out loud or not like the way someone else reacts to what I hand them is going to you know it's a perspective right back on myself like okay this view that I have of me and how I interface and see the world if it suddenly doesn't hit with somebody else even if I know for a fact like they're they don't think like me they're not going to see it like me even if I wanted them to it does take this like oh gez maybe I'm just like a weirdo sees the world in a weird way, you know, like it becomes this personal um inquiry onto who I am as a person. I'll say not so much anymore. You know, it's um I'm able to I can create the most precious thing and if someone doesn't like it, it's like, well, whatever, man. It's what I created. I don't care, you know, it's less and less these days, but um yeah. Does it bleed over into an imposttor syndrome feeling? A feeling not that you actually have it, but does it does it add or do you ever experience that or is it just Like does that extrapolate or become something different? 100%. I think um dude I and I think the only way to unwind imposter syndrome is to just keep doing the and like you prove to yourself even accidentally. I mean after a while like so often I you know I've have I've had hundreds of podcast guests. You know I've made all this art. I've put myself out there so many times and for so many hundreds of hours in different ways whether it's art or poetry or content creation or DJing or whatever it is. It's like of course I'm going to feel like an imposter, but after a while it's I don't need anybody else to confirm for me what I already do. I don't need a single other person to call me a podcaster or an artist or a poetry poet. I write poetry every day, so I'm a poet. You know what I mean? Like Well, I was going to say it's funny because I had this conversation with a friend of mine who's a PhD. I have several friends that are as you would if you work a lot in and around education, but someone we met when she started working in the middle school level and I worked with her off and on, you know, as she went and got her doctorate. Now I we're probably more friends than we are colleagues, but whenever she calls, I'm like, I'm on it. Like, what do you need? What do you want? uh one of my favorite people in the world. But we were talking about imposttor syndrome and I was like because I think she just had been having a really rough week and I was like I can't understand it because I don't have it. And as we talked about it and we talked through it and the short answer to it because I'm long-winded is that I get in over my head a lot of times like I've since I was young I would get jump into the deep end either intentionally or unintentionally. So, I could end up in a job, oh, I didn't realize I was unprepared for some of it. And then that could easily breed imposttor syndrome, but I don't know if it's a function of being able to see the bigger picture and then zero in on key functions of that. I go, it's just stuff I haven't learned yet. You got that job for a reason. You're here. You are here for a reason. You know, I can see a few places in life and in society where I would say, "Yeah, imposter syndrome is probably valid because either nepotism or other sorts of immutable characteristics and you're like, did I get hired for this or that?" I could see how that could burrow into your brain. But all in all, for anybody that deals with it, as I've talked with a lot of my friends who have it, I say just take it on as it's stuff that you haven't done yet or you haven't learned yet or if you're already doing it, you're already doing it. You don't need external validation. Like you exactly what you were saying. As long as you know, okay, I've done it. Like it would be like someone saying to you, "Oh, well, you're not an audio engineer because you didn't do this one thing over here." Or you got on the job site and you were asked to work a board you've never worked before and you're like, "Oh crap, this is going to be a learning curve and it's a fast one and a short one." So, I would say if you can take a step back from the situation, if you start feeling that feeling of whatever imposter syndrome feels like to you and kind of go, "No, I know all of this stuff. It's just one little piece." Okay, it's one little piece of the puzzle. Got it. I can I can work on one little piece. Play to your strengths, work on your weaknesses, hide your faults. I say it all the time. Play to your strengths, work on your weaknesses, hide your faults. Yeah, I like that when you So, you had mentioned that in one of the articles that I read of you. Um, can you tell me more about this hiding your faults because I think that's actually like a really dope I actually really love that because it sound I think on the surface it sounds like what do you mean hide your fault? You like you got going to be dishonest or something, man. But it's not that. I think it's definitely not that. Can you elaborate more on hiding your faults? Well, I think it started with my generation being lied to. You can't do any and everything. like I'm not short. I'm over 6 feet tall. There are certain things I am not going to be able to do that my friend who is 5 foot nothing can do. Right? So like and that's just it's a genetic thing. There's nothing I can do about it. It is what it is and that's okay. That is absolutely okay. But I have friends of mine who come to me all the time because they're mothers and they own their businesses and they're working and they're the primary bread winner and they're burning the candle at every end. And she's like, "We were sold a lie." And I said, "I told you that 15 years ago, almost maybe more like 12 or 13 because we've known each other for 16." So, probably more like 12 or 13 years ago. But it was like, "No, our generation was lied to. You can't do it all. You can try to and you can accept that it's not going to always work. That's a fault. We were sold an unrealistic set of expectations. We're trying to live up to something that cannot happen. That is a fault. but I'm really good at these things over here. If you're in a business setting, people are not going to invest in something that's failing. You know, you may find an angel donor that out of the goodness of their kind heart is willing to step up and they need the tax write off. Two things can be true at once, right? They can be generous and want the tax write off. Nothing wrong with that. Uterior motives, right? and they're not always nefarious and negative, but in that situation, you have to hide not in a negative way of disclosing it. You don't have to tell everybody everything.

[01:15:39] Curtis: It's not your if I walked on, if you knew how sick I had been before we did the show this year and how badly I felt sitting there with you in the hallway editing music, I felt like trash. I wasn't I didn't have a fever. It wasn't anything like that. But I did not feel good. I'm not I have to hide that. You didn't tell me about it a single time. I didn't know about it at all. I mean, I certain people knew cuz I was like I might I almost didn't do the show. I was I was I had been that sick for that long because I've been traveling and I'd been on a dance competition convention and I was pounding it every weekend, flying out, flying out, flying out. And then in between I had other gigs like an award show that I direct and a coral performance that I was doing and I was pinging and just burning the candle at every end almost and because it just happens to be that season but I'm the fault that I'm hiding in that situation is the fact that I am kind of miserable. It's like I when you got to go you got to go kind of situation but you can be delicate with things. I would say it's being polite. It's being proper. It's being congenial. It's being cordial. It's waspy society. Hi, here's the varnish. Here's the veneer. It's the Vaseline on the lens. Right? You don't need to know all the flaws and you don't need to always see all the way behind the curtain.

[01:17:05] Jacob: So, that's what I'm talking about with faults. We all have them. We all have like those little things, but if you're going to play to your strength, this is what I do really well. And you can be honest about, you know what I mean? I need to work on these things. and I recognize that I do, but I'm actively working on them. Please work on them. Right. Right.

[01:17:24] Curtis: But a fault isn't necessarily being shady. It isn't being deceptive. And I think that's what I mean by it. It's not I'm not being deceptive with it. It is I don't need to sit there and moan and groan. Like if I was sitting there moaning and groaning the entire time and being huffy and it's not going to do anything for the morale around me. No. Well, in what you find, I mean, really in any work situation is the um kind of the inevitable like complaining trauma bonding that starts to happen 100 like the and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. totally. And it's, you know, it's a human thing, but I think man, so I had this uh this guy Trevor May, he's a he played uh in the MLB. He's from the same hometown as me. He's really cool. I had him on the podcast and um we talked about this thing and I don't know if he exactly said it or if I had brought it up because I had heard it but regardless we talked about it essentially like if you're a baseball player and you strike out like dude that sucks, right? That sucks. Like you're bummed technically you let your team down, right? But like you don't you don't need to go to the dugout and throw a fit and complain for the next five minutes like I let you guys down or like that pitcher sucks or you know whatever it is. It's like you got out next, you know, like we got we got a game to play here, you know, like are you really going to go your upset mood that you're bummed about, you got you got struck out, you whatever, you didn't hit the ball, you're going to go bring that vibe and like just, you know, cloud the whole dugout with that energy, you know what I mean? And so that's a great Yeah, I think that's a good example of like what you're saying, hide your faults. You know, yes, you're sick. Yes, you're not feeling good, but you recognize, hey, what I could do is I can kind of keep these complaints that I'm feeling like, you know, my stomach hurts, but I don't need to tell everybody right now. That sort of stuff. I think that's actually a pretty big factor. I think that's actually a pretty big one, man. I like that. Thanks. I mean, it's something I've thought about for years, and it's just something I used to say as almost like a mantra because it's you had to remind yourself at times because we're human. We're going to fall into that trauma bonding, complaining, commiserating almost. It's more commiserating than anything. But I do know certain people that are energy vampires and all they ever do and they put the negativity into it.

[01:19:48] Jacob: A friend of mine was sick and had to go take have stuff taken care of and this one person in their life kept going, "Is it cancer? Is it this? Is it that?" And every time they speak, I'm like, why are you putting that? It words have meaning. In all seriousness, energy is all around us. We are freaking electrons. Like, you can't sit here and say that when I'm going to get woo for a second, but you can't say that you're not going to jinx somebody. I have literally lived my entire life with someone in it that if they say certain things about your automobile, it's going to freaking be the next thing that goes wrong. So, we shut it down. You know, it's probably, yes, we're all on the same page. Don't say it. Keep it to yourself. Like, I got it now. It's become a game all these years later. But it's just it's really funny when you go, "No, you literally Yeah. You can kind of create the world around you and from that perspective." And if I came in huffy or with a bad attitude or miserable, but nothing will bring a group together more than the one person that everybody hates. Mhm.

[01:20:57] Curtis: It's true. I mean, I have so many stories like we all didn't like this one person or they or this person's attitude. Let me rephrase that. Just the way this person interacted with everybody or their attitude and it's like and all of these groups of people or all these individuals that wouldn't normally communicate could all just look at each other and go, "Yeah, I that guy. Yeah, that guy does suck." And so it builds camaraderie. Unfortunately, the other person doesn't get to be a part of that, but or a situation. It may not even be a person. It may be a situation like this is the worst job and you're all miserable and you're all just going but you still have to do it. You have to get through it. You have to

[01:21:37] Jacob: Man, it is one of the more complicated things though. You know, this is something I still to this day, you know, I love all these psychology books and I like Tony Robbins and I like to do my meditation stuff and I still get caught up in like just a couple months ago just bitching about somebody mutually on the job site on the headset, you know, it's like it's a difficult thing, but you got Man, I love that you said jinx. You use the word jinx. I like that. I want to use the word spells. A lot of times we are

[01:22:05] Curtis: We

[01:22:07] Jacob: All of us whether you're on the one saying this or you're the one receiving these things in group cohesion start to look at the way things people say think of them as spells whether they're good spells or negative spells but like suddenly we all kind of shift our vibe and we all kind of you know it's like the lead of a band is going to kind of bring us all to a different you know tempo and a BPM and a rhythm and a key and sometimes the

[01:22:32] Curtis: You know if a intentional leader doesn't take the role of the leader. A lot of times the bully or the loudest person becomes the lead and that could affect everyone's mood, you know, like one person starts complaining about how they struck out of the dugout and everybody's like, "Yeah, this game sucks." And like, yeah, suddenly you're like manifest destiny, you know? You're creating more of this occurrence. Like you said, your car breaks down because you keep talking about how your car always breaks down. We got to be aware of our spells that we use, you know? Well, and I think for me, I've always been I would never say an optimist. I'm too realistic for that, but I'm a potentialist. I see the potential in people. I see the potential in projects, but that then bleeds over into a lot of disappointments because nothing's ever going to rarely, I won't say nothing ever. It very rarely gets where you want it to be because whatever you've created up here then has to either you have to physically make it happen or you have to explain it to somebody else. And there we go with communication again. If I don't explain to you properly how I want something done, you're going to get someone's interpretation no matter what of what you did. So I have to figure out every single wicket. Which is why I think a to some people I'm a control freak. But I will give you but that's why we have tear sheets. That's why we have a book for shows like whether you're doing a musical or you're doing certain types of shows. You have a book or a Bible that you go through and it has images. It has reference footage if it's digital if it's uh you know the text needs to change if whatever it is you can zero in to every fine. I don't think anybody understands how I can walk into a room of 90 to 100 young women that are dancing in this one group and I can notice you're not wearing the light the right false eyelashes and I'm across the room from you. You need to fix the nape of your neck, your hair looks bad, the this is a problem that and it's like God's picking on me. No, if I'm noticing I'm not doing this for the average person that's not going to notice it. I'm doing it for the me that's in the crowd. Mhm.

[01:24:43] Jacob: Because I do it on shows all the time. I was like, "Oh, that wasn't supposed to happen." But I've changed my mindset. Like I've really rewired part of my brain to go, "Oh no, I you know, instead of going, "Oh, well that was da." I'm now like, "Oh, I hope they're okay. Oh, I hope they can get back on track. Oh, like my mindset is in a completely new space." Gosh, I don't know. at least I would say eight years, seven, eight years ago, it really started my mindset started changing on a lot of things and in I want people to succeed. I genuinely do. I may not like you. I may not like the way you conduct yourself, the way you comport yourself, the way you treat other people, the way you do business or just other things. I want you to succeed over there. Like just don't be in my sphere, please. But I do want you to succeed. I do want good things to befall upon you because we all have something going on in our lives. Yeah. And if we can take that beat and realize we all have something going on or someone around us does that we're having to deal with, you can start to go, okay, it takes nothing to hold the door open for someone. What? You're going to lose 30 seconds to a minute of your day? Like the person's hobbling towards the door. Just hold it. Just come on. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's maybe it's how I was reared, but my mindset has really changed about a lot of things and it's

[01:26:13] Curtis: I don't know.

[01:26:14] Jacob: Yeah. No, I mean I think that's really cool though because when we can notice that we have sway on things with our environment like holding the door open for someone is a good example. A lot of times it's kind of a movement of not choosing selfishness, right? Because it's like without really thinking about it, you're going into the door. You know, you're walking in, you're not really thinking about other people. You've got your whatever's inside that building, that's what you're thinking about. But for a second, if you could I open the door, I'm inside the building. Glance over real quick, see that someone's on their way. Suddenly, you can go from having zero impact on someone's day or maybe even like you just they felt it was rude that you didn't even look over and let the door shut. But you could suddenly tell someone good morning. Say, hey, I got you. Yeah, you're in there. Like someone might have been in their own head. they're nervous about whatever they're walking into that building for. And you could, you know, uh, like allow that energy to dissipate a little bit by just saying, "Oh, I got you. Come on in. Yeah, welcome. Good morning. How are you?" Like, whatever. You know, like I think that we all have a lot more power. We take for granted the amount of power that we have um to create good vibes. I know that's a sentence, right? But like you hold the door open for somebody, you say good morning, whatever, and now there's a little smile on your face. There's a smile on their face. Whatever they're doing after this has nothing to do with you, but you just caused a smile. It could have rippling effects downstream. It could have domino effects of them now being more warm and inviting to whatever they're walking into. You know, just helping someone pick something up. You might they might have arthritis. They may have an issue that doesn't even it's internal. You don't see it. They may have vertigo. Who knows, you know? they may have an issue, but just helping someone pick something up and hand it to them kind of thing, you know? It's those are definitely just little things like that. There are times where you don't make eye contact. There are times where you don't smile at people. There are times when it could be a safety problem.

[01:28:10] Curtis: Sure.

[01:28:10] Jacob: Like a hazard or a concern and you need you need to be careful about that. So, I want to acknowledge especially with women there are a lot of times where you don't smile at a male. You don't because he will misinterpret something. You know, you don't there are times where you need to protect yourself. So, I'm not ever saying step out of if your gut feels like you need to be protected. Yeah.

[01:28:33] Curtis: Don't do it. But in general day-to-day life, it's not going to hurt you to just hashtag be kind. But in all seriousness, kindness and nice kindness is not niceness. Mhm. Kind, nice, and good are three different words. They mean three different things. Kind of back to our earlier conversation. Kindness and goodness have one word in common, and that's benevolence. And you've done something. You've stepped outside of yourself and done something even without expectation. I opened a door for somebody, didn't expect anything out of it, and all of a sudden you got a great thank you or you ended up in a conversation and or whatever. Or you just made somebody's day better or easier. Fantastic. But also, your emergency is not my emergency. So, that's the other thing because I've worked sales long enough. Do not come in

[01:29:29] Jacob: Demanding things of me. Like, take a beat. Be polite. There's so many people that treat the service industry as if, well, you're the service industry. I'm like I'm really thinking about in contracts if hiring people you need to have a year's worth of service industry work. I really think it would be important. It can be retail, it can be, you know, working at a restaurant, barback, you know, whatever. But where in a full year, it doesn't have to be consecutive. Like you could do it every summer during college, but there are a lot of places where if you have never worked in the service industry on any level, phone calls, internet, you name it, you do not know how to interact with people and how to how to lock it up and try to diffuse the situation or how to there's this pervasive attitude I keep seeing because there are a couple people that are online that like, I'll meet you where you met me. And I'm like, there's a time and a place for that. And that's a very juvenile way of looking at it. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying try to deescalate first and then if you need to be like, "No, but seriously, we're going to lock this down right now." Yeah. Yeah.

[01:30:47] Curtis: But try to deescalate it. Yeah. I mean, I love your emergency is not my emergency. I think that's a really good one. I think that often we are being invited to be like, "Hey, you know, you're just naturally level two, but like be at level eight right now because that's where I'm at." And a lot of times the answer is like, you know, I'll go up to three or four, but like we're good here. Well, we don't need to yell at each other just because you feel like yelling. You know, your emergency is not my emergency. I think it's a good one. Well, but then the flip side of that is if we're on a work site, your emergency better be my emergency.

[01:31:17] Jacob: Fair enough. Yeah,

[01:31:18] Curtis: Because you and I both know what I don't think people the mystery one of the mystics behind a live show, right? A lot of times it's if it's a concert, they're usually rolling in at O dark in the morning, setting up the rigging for the lighting and the sound, setting up the stage, setting up the tech booth, and then first thing in the morning when normal people would wake up is when people the rest of the crew starts to roll in to set up their equipment. And then midday performers start to come in to do sound check, to do floor checks, with dance rehearsal, to do all the different things. And if it's a one night event, it's all torn down by 2 a.m. Like you have to tear everything you just watched down. So nobody I don't think people really understand the compressed time. I mean that's an extreme one but even if you're doing any sort of touring or any sort of show you are flying in and you max will have 48 hours for a lot of things max. So let's talk about the dance convention I work with. Venues are astronomically expensive a lot of times. So, if I've paid I'm going to pick just an average number of $20,000 for a 3-day weekend. I'm coming in midday Friday and I'm leaving uh by 900 p.m. Sunday. 20 grand is just the venue. So, that's my lobby. That's my dressing room. Possibly a breakout room if we're lucky and a green room, you know, that sort of thing. And the stage that's what you're getting. That's not the money you're paying for the crew. That's going to work your event each day, which is going to be an hourly rate, which if you go over on time, could become time and a half. You could end up with fees and dues there. You can't always

[01:33:10] Jacob: Like that's I'm the time clock on a lot of things. So, I'm the one that's like, "We're about to hit over. Just speed it up." You know what I mean? So, your emergency needs to be my emergency in that situation. like we need we you don't understand this is going to cost us a quarter of what we've spent for this entire event. We're going to have to pay a quarter more. But you don't care because you don't understand that section of the umbrella. Yeah. That's not that's not paying for talent. That's not paying for your staff and your talent and that's not paying for the food. That's not paying. So just think 20 grand is your starting base price. And if I flew anybody in and there's lodging and all of that for people. Yeah. So now you're dealing with this thing that one minute if you show up one minute late that's hundreds of dollars that you have wasted.

[01:34:00] Curtis: Y

[01:34:00] Jacob: So when somebody comes in, oh it's just a minute. It is not just a minute. So I get very frustrated when people don't open venues on time or they're just driving up. We are in at 7:30. That means you as anybody working the venue needs to be there 15 minutes early. That door needs to be I understand keeping it locked, but at 8 a.m. or 7:30 a.m. or whatever it is, you that door needs to be you need to be opening it for me unless some emergency has happened because I get it. You're just doing your clockin job because you work for the venue. But I've done that job before and I understand there's money being wasted and it's not fair for you to waste our money and our time. That's right there is time is money and your emergency needs to be my emergency. Yeah. But when you're running into a store going, "My daughter forgot her tights and d and I need you to pull all this stuff and look on my account and I don't know what it is and I'm on my phone and it's like can you hurry up?" Yeah. Yeah. That's Yeah. Two different scenarios, two different situations. I will help you as quickly as I can help you. But just because you came in like a whirling dervish, there's a line. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there only two of us here. We will try to help you really quickly, but you know, and someone in line may allow you to get in front, cut in front of them. Somebody may do the generous thing like we were talking about before and let you because they see that you're having a thing. Yeah.

[01:35:29] Curtis: I don't know.

[01:35:30] Jacob: Anyway, there's some examples. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, but I think something that does happen in that environment, it's you know, I think entitlement sometimes does leak over like you said, people who haven't people who haven't worked the service industry. I just think that per that's a good example of like going to a store and going, "Hey, my daughter needs tights and it's the thing blah." And like they it's okay for them to be like it's reasonable that they're stressed out. They probably got a lot going on, like whatever. But walking into a place and saying, "You're in customer service. serve me right now to my highest, you know, like that's just a different situation. That's um yeah, I mean I think that there is yeah, your emergency can be my emergency. There still needs to be respect. There's still not an ownership that you have over someone just because they work, you know, a minimum wage job at some store or something like you don't you don't get to walk in and tell them what to do. You don't have that entitlement over them.

[01:36:24] Curtis: Well, would you please would you please

[01:36:28] Jacob: Please and thank you. I mean, I swear. And I was reared. It was beaten into me verbally as a child, you know, manners, manners, manners, manners, manners. But I find that because so few people were reared with that kind of background that and of no fault of their own, right? That we don't do it as much in society. And so it goes way farther. I mean, I don't realize how much I please and thank you on a set. I really don't. But I think it's like every, you know, 10 sentences it's a please or a thank you and it's ingrained. It's wrote, but I mean it because I'm not going to say it if I don't mean it.

[01:37:11] Curtis: Like you So that's kind of it's like don't judge me by who I'm around. Judge me about who I kicked out of my life. Go see you start asking yourself why they're not there anymore. Because sometimes you're stuck in situations where you're around people and they're not your inner circle. They're attached to someone that's in your inner circle. But in work, it's very much like that. No, I'm here. I'm doing my job. I'm doing my thing. But there's no reason for me to not be cordial and congenial until you really mess something up. And I have to go, no, we need to we need to have a conversation and it needs to be the right time and place. And this is not it, but we do not make me have to pull you aside right now because I don't have time for this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I've had that happen like where I've watched it and I've gone, "Oh no, this is going to go badly and like and you're sitting there on the sidelines going tamp it down, tamp it down, tamp it down. Oh, this is going to escalate. Okay, I'm just going to sit over here on the sideline with my popcorn.

[01:38:06] Jacob: This is going Yeah, we see where this is going kind of thing. So, but I think another part of communication is

[01:38:13] Curtis: Learning to be cordial and cenial. A please and thank you. I have seen so this is why I say nice isn't kind isn't good. Good isn't nice. Nice just means harmless. It means you don't want to rock the boat or it's a facade you adopt to make yourself look a certain way.

[01:38:30] Jacob: Virtue signal. Yeah. That or you know you're really I was going to use a specific uh pop star as my example of nice versus everything else, but I'll refrain from that. People can guess on who I'm talking or thinking about, but there have been people in my life where they present a certain societal image, but because I was in the inner circle, I know the exact opposite. So, I sit there and go, if you're going to speak this way of other people, when is it going to turn around and bite me?

[01:39:04] Curtis: I very well I and it did.

[01:39:06] Jacob: The second you leave the room, that's when Well, not always. like sometime well okay maybe it depends on the situation but that's why I've seen some really jerky people do the kindest deeds some of the people that would just rip you a new one that had no manners and I've just seen them do some of the kindest things quietly just very quietly and I just happened to I just happened to be there and it really those moments have stuck with me where it's like Okay, that's the that's kindness. That's benevolence. Like you did something. You took time out of your day. You didn't have to. You look like you were about to go in on somebody and then you realized there's something else at play here and you stopped yourself and you worked with the person. None of the rest of us were going to get that treatment. You know what I mean? But I was like, "Oh." And I think observation is a form of communication because if you don't if you're not paying attention, if you're not aware of what's around you, if you're just kind of surfacily taking it in and letting it wash over you, you're not really observing what's around you, there's so much you can learn by non-verbal cues. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how people interact with each other. That's why, you know, it's it's just difficult. You know what I mean? So I

[01:40:29] Curtis: To be articulate is one thing. You have some people really have to work at it. I learned I'm not great acting on a stage. I can perform till the cows come home, but if acting was never my strong suit. Give me a microphone, throw me behind a lectern or throw me up on the stage with some crib notes about what I need to talk about or like a bullet point outline. Boom. I can vamp. I can make it work. It just for whatever reason, because it's me, I'm not having to pretend to be another character. If I mess something up, I can crack my own joke about it. I have control in that situation. So, maybe it's a control freak issue. Maybe I am a control freak. Um, but I can sit there and communicate and then you can if there's a crowd, I can vibe off of that. I know, oh, this isn't working. This is working. I think that's why I've become the voice of God for the dance competition stuff because it's like I'll flub and people will come up to me afterwards and I'll be having a bad day and I'll get razed like you know that's you called it la soul fads and it's laser feed you know what I mean but I'm just I've gone into teleprompter mode and I'm just reading and I'm tired and I'm on number 200 and you know you're not paying attention and so someone comes and razes you about it. You're just like, you can take that and be defeated with it. All the words I said correctly, you're mad about that one, but they're but someone's engaging with you, they're they're correcting you, but they're also trying to have fun with you as well. And so, if you can take it in the spirit in which it is meant, because when you're tired, you're going to get moody about whatever. It's happened before where I'm like, really, that's what we're going to do now. But it doesn't help backstage. I'm dealing with children, like little children all the way up to teenagers. I have parents sometimes. I have studio owners. I have um teachers.

[01:42:28] Jacob: I set the tone for backstage. I do like, you know, I'm not in the back booth. When I'm in the back booth, I'm not setting the tone for anything but the booth. You know what I mean? But I'm an omnipresent person. That is a world that I'm in charge of. And people have entrusted their children around me. And so they need to be safe and they need to be okay, you know, and so it's very much I don't know. I work really well with children. I just I always have. I never forgot what it was. Most people are like, "Oh, I didn't think you would work well with children. I didn't think you liked them." I was like, "I don't like things on mass." You know what I mean? But I do like children. Like they're learning. And if you can set a good example, why not do it? Why not take that opportunity? I don't have to indoctrinate you. There's no reason for you to know anything about my life. But if I comport myself in a very specific way, keep a very specific demeanor, and I'm consistent. That's what children need.

[01:43:29] Curtis: Oh, yeah. Consistency. People, humans in general, need consistency. It can boil over into monotony very quickly, but we all need consistency on some level and children especially. So, if you can be that consistent figure, like they're nervous to come talk to you because you have the clear calm on and you have the microphone in front of your mouth and you're sitting there and you're you're tall and you're big and all that sort of stuff and you're serious. So, and I have major RBF like it gets very stern, very Germanic Nordic serious lock in. So that people can be very nervous to come talk to you. But when a teacher says, "No, go talk to him." Or I get out of that headsp space and I'm checking students in, I'll just sit on the floor.

[01:44:13] Jacob: You know what I mean? Or I'll kneel down. Come down to someone's level. And I don't mean lower yourself. I mean you physically

[01:44:21] Curtis: Are not opposing. You're not this ominous figure.

[01:44:24] Jacob: Making approachable. Yeah. 100%. And then you can brighten up. And then you can bring on the real smile. I'd had a really rough show. this season like there was one really rough one and I turned around and like things were just not going correctly and I was like we have to start in 10 minutes we're going to go over time things were not going right and I was so frustrated I couldn't figure out what to do and the you know the owner wasn't there for the city like it was it was there was a lot on my shoulders for the city and I kind of went no I can't I can do something I can check children in I can check the students in for the performance. I can sit there and ignore everything else that's bothering me and I can park my backside on the stage and just start making sure and asking them how they pronounce their name so I can get it correctly and I can do all the things. It changed my mood. It took a few minutes, but I mean just because there's they didn't do anything wrong. There's no reason for me to have a tude. There's no reason for me to act a certain kind of way. I'm dealing with all of this stress and I'm very angry at a couple of things in the situation. It's okay. Yeah, we're gonna make it okay. Do not that energy does not need to be backstage. So, I have to take that down. Yeah. I mean, I was flat out told by an a company owner one time, it's like, it doesn't help me when you get in this headsp space. It doesn't help me at all. when you when you get into that burn it down headsp space, it's not helping me at all. I need you to go take a beat. Like, we need we need to figure it out. And we have I have cues with people and they have cues with me when it's like a day where they're not vibing. It's like one of my colleagues says, "I'm having a really raw day. This has been a week. Done. Got it. I know exactly where you are." That phrase would mean something for somebody else, but I know where you are. Got it. I'm not feeling great and I've told you I'm not feeling great. I have to I have to get out of my head space and I have to step up for you. That person did it for me. You know where it's like I don't like seeing you this way and so they would run interference for me. Yeah.

[01:46:35] Curtis: And it's and it's that's being a colleague. That's communication. That's communication. I mean just

[01:46:42] Jacob: I was going to say that's another perfect example of communication. I love that we've ended up just like emphasizing communication to the nth degree in this podcast. That's really good. I think that's like super valuable. I mean, I didn't mean to. It's just it's kind of I never would have thought that would have been as important or to our dialogue right now, especially. No, I mean, I think it is though because I mean, so we're getting up here in time and I do kind of want to round the corner here. Um, but something that I something that I wanted to cover is uh I mean, it's perfect for where we're at right here. It's like, you know, you're talking about you're this you're this role for in this example. You know, there's a lot of young people around and they're able to, you know, I'm sure you're intimidating to them in multiple ways. It's intimidating situation for them in general. You know, they're nervous. Yeah. Yeah. All these factors, but you're able to you have a leadership position and you're able to find ways that you can uh, you know, most comfortably and most efficiently step into that leadership position. So, you clearly have learned, you know, outside of you, you have these natural abilities of things that we've already discussed um in different things that you noticed about yourself as a child, but you've clearly had mentors along the way. You've had teachers along the way, you've had um you know, so I guess for me, I want to leave that really broad for you to kind of talk about your mentors and like what you've learned from them, how they've changed you, and this is even when you were younger, maybe it was last year you had a mentor. Um I would love to just kind of like o open that gate for you Curtis of just mentors, people you have learned from um your teachers along the way. What are some traits that they have? What have you learned from them and like how does it shape who you are now and how you teach and mentor? Okay, this is going to be long-winded and it's going to be splatter guy.

[01:48:28] Curtis: No. Yeah, please do all day. Go ahead.

[01:48:30] Jacob: So I'll try to keep it into things that you can use as digestible sound bites. um starting I just had a really good foundation growing up because I was really early with a lot of things. My mother was like, "We're getting you out of the house." Like we're going to put you in museum school. We're going to put you in music school. You're going to go to prek. You're going to go to preschool and prek. Like I was in school at a very as soon as you know you're potty trained, you could go kind of thing. I was in some form of schooling. Take that. I my kindergarten class was highly musical. She had a piano in her classroom. She could play the guitar. She played the piano. She could sing. And not only was it a musical classroom because there were two kindergartens in the private where I went to private school. I ended up I just by the fortune of God ended up in hers. I will always go back to some of those formative years because we would do these books where I don't know what your kindergarten or elementary school situation was like, but when I was in school, they'd have these books that were about probably that big and they'd have a letter on it, capital A, lowercase A, capital B, lowercase B. So that would be the unit you were learning. And for one whole week, you would go through each page of it and you would do basically like units within the book. And it was structured like Ted and Fred sat and had an apple. And you know, you had your reading assignments, you had your writing assignments to work on your dexterity and all that. But in her classroom, she would also take with each letter unit construction paper pieces that we would glue together to create George the gray gorilla wearing green glasses playing a guitar. And so there would be a narrative associated with the letter, with the character, with the this, with the that. And maybe it was every two weeks that we would switch it the book out. I don't I was five, but it would be like Sammy the stinky skunk or smelly skunk and she would bring her husband's cologne in and put it on this little construction paper skunk and she'd hang it on this lanyard around her room. We would do like little performances in the classroom. It was a very structured classroom, but there was room, you know. We would we would get up out of the desks and we would sit down and she'd play at the piano or she'd play the guitar. You know, you have all the stickers on your homework. You know, if you got above a 95, you got the scratch and sniff sticker. You know, if you got an A, you got the, you know, whatever metallic sticker. After that, it took a long time before I had teachers where I really vibed. I'm not gonna say anything negatively about them because different era, different time where you learn and how you learn. You know, I've been in the educator adjacent position and mentorship position. It's not as easy as people think it is.

[01:51:27] Curtis: You know, and there's a lot of management that goes on. So, as a student, the educator or the teacher that is more of a disciplinarian is going to be the jerk every time. If that if that makes any sort of sense, you're always just going to be like, I don't have the freedom to do what I want to do. You shouldn't at a certain level. But moving to the next one, I ended up transferring schools. I was in public school. My fifth grade teacher, Tina Dorsy, was amazing. She, once again, creative projects in the classroom. Like I remember doing this shadow box because we would have to do these books and it was like you could do one of five or six different things. You're going to have to read five or six different books and each one you'd pick, you know, am I going to do a book report? Am I going to do a shadow box? Am I going to do a presentation? Am I going to do a this or that? And once you'd used one of those up, you couldn't use it for the next project. So the first book I did was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And I did a shoe box for it and created a nautilus and a squid with dowel rods on the back that you could they could battle each other within it. And I had like all these like art supplies that I'd kept for a while with mesh. So when there was a hole in the top so light could come in and a hole in the side and you could look at it from different angles. And because it was mesh it would give you as close of an equivalency. Like nowadays you'd go buy LED lights and put it on a little timer switch. It would be really fancy. But for 1992, like I think it was a skylight that you Yeah,

[01:52:58] Jacob: Exactly. But she put it we did in that classroom we did uh picture book projects. We had someone come into the classroom who was an author and created picture books and explained to us that would document things. And so we had a presentation and part of the assignment was we would go take all of these pictures and then she would have them pressed into a book. I don't know where my book is but hardback like and you know at that point in time it wasn't like you could just go to Shutterfly like you actually had to go to a printing company to print it. So the amount of work that this one teacher Tina Dorsy put into her classroom like just for the students and I like and maybe some of the other classes did the same thing as well and it was curriculum and I didn't realize it. It was the demeanor and the vibe and the ability to let you kind of run and then snatch you back and rein you back in and be creative. So she allowed me to go off on tangents. Clearly I'm good at that. But she allowed me to go off on them and they would snatch me back and go, "Okay, and now we're shutting it down." But she didn't just truncate it like some teachers would because she knew that at some point I was going to get somewhere. There was going to there was there was a there was an angle. What's the angle? And can we get to it? We're not going to get to it anytime soon. Okay. Have a nice day.

[01:54:26] Curtis: Right. Right. Right. But I would say like anybody that knows me jumping to high school would say Tim Hood, media technology and productions teacher. I had a fight with the counselors to get into the class. I wanted to be in tech theater so badly. We were on something called accelerated block scheduling.

[01:54:43] Jacob: For anybody that doesn't know accelerated block, it's you have four quarters in the school year. So four quarters. Each quarter is the equivalent to a semester. So you effectively in one semester can get rid of in nine weeks you would get rid of health, speech, a computer class, anything like that. In 18 weeks, so the first semester it's a year's worth of work. So it's like you're running through it. No one I don't think does it anymore. They all do some weird version of uh AB block scheduling that I hate, but you had like an hour and 20 minutes for each class. So they wouldn't put me in tech theater, but it was run by the same teacher and I didn't realize that. So I'm sitting in the counselor's office going, "What can I take? I'm not going to take speech. I'm I found out I could clap out of it. I'm not going to take it. I'll do it my senior year and clap out of it." She's like, "No, but you need I'm doing it my way. This is what we're doing." So she was telling me about the computer classes and blah. And like the second or third class mentioned was media technology. And she immediately glossed over it and kept going forward. And I went, "Wait, wait, you said media. What's this media class?" And she's like, "Oh, they just play with cameras in there." I was like, "That's the one." Yeah. We're playing with cameras. We're doing what?

[01:56:03] Curtis: Sign me up. Exactly. And she was like, "You don't want to be in there with those kids." I think the counselors were intentionally trying to It had just become accredited as a class and I think they were trying to kill the class probably. Yeah. Probably didn't think it was going anywhere. Not a big deal. Yeah. Exactly. It's now the program the gold star seal program. It's the magnet program for the Fort Worth ISD. Like you get bust into that program to they've literally taken over the entire half of the hallway that we used to be on. Like it's just insane how that department has grown.

[01:56:35] Jacob: That's cool.

[01:56:36] Curtis: But we also did it was the actual the true tech theater class because in tech theater they just painted and built sets. That's where I learned lighting design. That's why I learned how to run live audio. That's where I learned audio editing, video editing, uh, studio camera work, uh, switchers, like everything. It was such a hodgepodge course. And he's the teacher, Tim Hood, is the one that ripped me a new one backstage. I was running microphones for the musical, and we'd had a costume issue. We'd gone through all the rehearsals. Nothing was a problem. It was a quick change. We're doing the musical Damn Yankees. Lola exits stage right. I'm stage right have to rip the mic off of her and they're the old lavalier mics. So for anybody that doesn't know the law of mics, those are the ones that you see clipped on everybody for talk shows, but it was one with a huge bell pack and had the antenna that had to be hanging out of the cord because if it was tucked in, it wasn't going to get the signal. We're talking old school, old school. And you're having to fish this line up and it was it was a thing. So, she had her quick change, met me stage left, and I had to clip the belt pack on her trunks, but clip it inside out, but make sure the wire was out. And then she had to fish the line up into it's a it was a halter top with a ruffle kind of bust section. And then around the lower part of it, it had all these ruffles. Well, after all of the rehearsals, the seams were coming undone at the bottom hymn and all those cords got tangled. So, she's late for her entrance on stage. It's the big act one ender, whatever Lola wants. She has her song in dance routine. She's late. The devil's vamping. Like, we're going like crazy. And she just rips it off and chucks it at me. And there are three of us there. And none of us could stop Lola from going on stage. And I'm having a meltdown.

[01:58:33] Jacob: Yeah. Going, oh no, you had one job and you couldn't even do that, right?

[01:58:39] Curtis: You one job.

[01:58:41] Jacob: So the audio engineer comes back, the student one comes back and tries to give me the business and then all the girl my the gaggle of gals around me just ripped him a new one. He went back and my teacher came in and I mean it's a scene from the show center stage backstage poking his finger in my sternum barking at me. And of course by this I'm like 5'11 at this point and he's 5 foot something. So he's just looking up at me just you don't ever d the kind of thing that a parent in today's day and age would flip. You know what I mean? It's abusive. It's this. It's that no, it wasn't. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Why? Because guess what's going on some of the time on those clearcoms when we're on set as adults.

[01:59:31] Curtis: I got it at 14 years of age. 14 and a half almost to the day. And I'm literally sitting there. I melted down. Like not in front of him, but I went backstage, had my little cry moment, picked myself back up, never have made that mistake again. And there are a lot of other mistakes I have never made again. It's a life-defining moment as Dr. Phil would say. And I say that to say it's not always abusive. It's not always this. There are times when it is. But that situation wasn't. But if somebody were to look at it from the outside or they got too much in their feelings, but I didn't. I had one job and I didn't do it

[02:00:10] Jacob: Right. Trust me. Once again, never had that problem. But along the way he we morphed from teacher student to colleague mentor after Id graduated and ultimately became friends before he passed away. So and I think part of that

[02:00:29] Curtis: Was because a good friend of mine who was also in the program he was the audio engineer and I was the lighting guy. That's how we were kind of known and we both edited music and all the things. P was shot my senior year. So the week before homecoming he died and they had a very close relationship. So I think you know then you have to take care of everybody around you like that really clouds things but it changes your relationship and a lot is put on your shoulders and you're able if since I was able to communicate well and do that he always wanted me to go into education and it was just not my vibe like I just don't like the bureaucracy of it. It's kind of I like learning. I like mentoring. I like educating. I like all that stuff, but man, I don't like the rules and the structure kind of thing. So, that gives you like a high school perspective. Collegiately, I've had a couple in various programs and classes. My radio, television, film uh professor. There's one in particular, Dr. Melinda Leven. Love her to bits. We haven't we try to keep in contact, but you know, it's everybody's so busy. life gets in the way of getting ahead. But she's the one that in her documentary making class, she's the one I was talking about earlier when I'd said gave Oh, it's something about editing that we were talking about earlier. Anyway, but one of the best pieces of advice I ever got came from her. Do you really need it? As an editor, do you really need it? You're making all these excuses why you want it. Do you need it? It's helped me in my personal life. When you can start going, "Wait a second. It's not It's not just about work. Do I really need that or do I just want it?" It's okay, but just be open with yourself.

[02:02:23] Jacob: But she's the reason I have the um silver remy award for the documentary short that I produced because I produced it in her class. and she said with a little re-edit I think this would be a cute a good little piece not cute but a good little piece to submit to festivals and so I screened at several festivals not a ton I you know I know so much more now that I did then I did like 22 I would I would do things a little differently but I have an award and it was because she pushed me for it I wouldn't have thought to do it myself and we she and I stayed in contact for years afterwards. Like I would drive up to and we'd go have lunch and it was more of a congenial colleague thing. You know, we'd have differing opinions on things, but because it's not a teacher student or an educator student relationship, we could have those conversations. I don't believe that as an educator, you should know that much about me. My personal life, yeah, if you're married, they're going to find out. If you have children, they're going to find out. You don't really need to know much more than that. my religious background. You don't really need to know. You don't need to know my political viewpoints. You don't need any of that information. Uh because it bleeds over into indoctrination too quickly. And people are right that is an issue because I'll see students come into the classroom and in certain classes that they have, there will be teachers that are pushing one thing or the other. And I'm like, this needs to be a neutral space. This needs to be a come as you are and a neutral space. and I need to give you empirical information or different viewpoints and they can be countered to what I believe. Here's the here's the flip side of something and that's what some of the best educators have ever done for me and that's going to bring me I'll give you one more example when it comes to just education specifically and that is my sixth no seventh grade reading teacher.

[02:04:24] Curtis: Her classroom was so freaking creative. She was one of those teachers I was talking about earlier. She's not a teacher. She is a true educator and I think she was done kind of dirty by the school system, but she her I don't remember her first name, but Randolph, Mrs. Randolph, shout it out. Uh her daughter was my grade level. And in her classroom, she would take what you had to do as an assignment and we wouldn't necessarily do it in the book. She wanted us to be very socially conscious. So, she would have us go out and find articles and do whatever diagramming or do whatever the lesson plan was on the article. I need a one page. I need it need to be this long. I need it to be about this. This needs to be about the arts. This and every week we had to do some sort of small article like just like a like a little column blurb because at that point we weren't the internet was nothing like it is now. you had to literally type httpwww whatever to get anywhere. There is no Google, there is no Yahoo, you know, it's not like it is today. So, you physically had to read the newspaper. So in saying all of this uh then we would she would extrapolate that and turn it into assignments where she would do talk shows and she'd be the host of the talk show and you would have to act out as a skit in her classroom

[02:05:51] Jacob: As the panel and the audience and the audience could ask questions. She'd bring in the PA system from the library. She'd completely rearrange her classroom. We do mock trials in there. Same concept. She's the judge. And each class, you know, you at some point had you were in the jury pit and some point you were prosecutor or defense or you were on the stand depending on what pods you were in. You would come in for those units and the classroom would be completely rearranged. She think about all the time it would take someone to just re Yeah.

[02:06:22] Curtis: One person rearranging all of her desks and doing all of this. I think about it now and think about what she put into that classroom. How much extra time she gave to us and the gift of being able to look at what's around you in your everyday life in a different way

[02:06:44] Jacob: But still use the systems structure

[02:06:48] Curtis: The framework of it

[02:06:51] Jacob: To explore that. So, she's still doing what she's supposed to be doing. And then we would cram for test taking season. It was like, "Oh, we got to do standardized test. We got to cram for that." But, you know, it I mean, well, she was the one that figured out where my problem was with standardized test taking. She pulled me aside one day and she said, "Will you explain to me why you answered why you changed these questions?" I was like, "Well, when you read the question this way, this is the answer that you get." But then I did what you said and you know you go back over it if you have time and reread it. Well, when you reread it with this inflection, this is actually the answer. Like two are obviously not it, but they've made it so ambiguous that if you over infer hello, um then you're going to trip yourself up. And she looked at me and she said, "Don't ever do that. Don't do what I tell everybody else to do. Your gut instinct is 90% right. like go with your gut instinct every time. And I've taken that advice with me through the rest of my life. I still would make bad well I used to make bad decisions still because I wasn't listening to myself. When I don't listen to my gut and it's hard if you don't have that little voice,

[02:08:04] Curtis: It's really hard to find it.

[02:08:06] Jacob: Yeah. Because you might not you might genetically not have it, but you might. It's just like this. Sometimes it can be this little nagging thing and sometimes it can be it just doesn't feel right. I'm not walking into that store or it just

[02:08:19] Curtis: This my gut just says

[02:08:21] Jacob: D is the answer. Lo and behold because somewhere in your brain is picking up on something contextually or you've noticed something. I don't know how to explain it but it was one of the best pieces of advice I ever got. Just like do you need it? Yeah. And I edited out the thing that was making everybody laugh and I because my thought was well DVDs are big now with at the university level. I'll just put the bonus scene on the DVD. It'll just be bonus. It'll be extra features. Yeah, there you go. You know, and so I was like, there's always a place for something just like you're talking about. You've created a piece of music or whatever that people may not enjoy, but you have it in your arsenal, right? So, you can use it at some point. You can pull it out. There are mixes that I have sitting there that I never completed or that I created 15 years ago. I was like, I've sent them to some of the producers for shows and been like, "Hey, what do you think about using something like this?" Yeah.

[02:09:16] Curtis: Oh my gosh, love it. Thank you. Um,

[02:09:18] Jacob: It's just sitting there. Yeah. Yeah. It's just sitting there and I've already taken care of it. And you're getting paid for work that you were just, you know, Yeah. doing. But there's a time and a place for everything. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. I mean, well, and also everything that you do is making you a little bit better the next time you do it. So even if you don't that never sees the light of the day, just by creating it, you've now improved your skills to some degree, right? Well, absolutely. It's that I think that's where apprenticeships, our lack of apprenticeships in society hurt us and that, you know, everything is go to college, do it this way, do it that way. But there's so much trade and skill you can learn on YouTube, you can learn knowledge through books. We have so many avenues where we can find knowledge. I'm not worried about that. College doesn't set you up always for anything that's a trade. You got to be hands-on with it. And that's where having an apprenticeship is really helpful. And a work practicum isn't necessarily going to give that to you. It might give you the end to get to get there, but I've just kind of that's why I like the micro stuff when you do. Are you familiar with micro and dirty jobs? Yeah. Yeah. And he has he has a whole new series now. I don't watch all of them, but he's one of those shows that I like to watch because it's kind of like, oh, I get to learn about something different, you know. Or Mark, what's his name that used to do Double Dare, but he did the Food Networks, the sweets that made sweets, or you know, this is how these things are made, and you go to the factory. It's very Sesame Street. It's very, you know, how crayons are made kind of situation. But you're learning the basics of how, oh, this is the network. This is the framework. This is the this. This is the that. So, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay.

[02:11:08] Curtis: It's a weird place to end. Sorry.

[02:11:09] Jacob: Well, no. Well, no, not really. I mean, I've a lot of it is very cohesive, actually. I was trying to think of a way to um you know, tie the bow on things like I was trying to think of like, you know what? So, okay. So, what would you say you've collectively learned? So, a lot of me I want to I want to suggest. So, you know, like in Zen they have beginner's mind, right? And that's like one of the most powerful. I mean, dude, if you apply beginner's mind to like everything in your life all the time, all day, you're just going to succeed. You're just going to continually learn. You're just going to like be able to approach things in a new way. Um, I think beginner's mind is very important. Um, creating a space for other people to uh, you know, not only make a mistake, but like try things. I feel like that's what I'm hearing from you. Like, you know, your teacher created this environment for you guys to create. you're learning real world things, but she didn't give you such a high ceiling to where you're like floating off earth, you know, she reeled you back in. Um, so I don't know. Okay. So, so what do you think about like your general looking back at what you just shared, not just your mentors, but also like what you have shared as a mentor like imagining people are learning from you as well. What are some through lines for you? Like what are some common things like what is what is kind of your if you had to say a sentence of like hey man this is important learn this if you're a young person listening do you have anything that comes to mind for you it's going to be a lot of t-shirt wisdom live baby seriously it's two things can be true at once that's I mean be open to the possibility that there's another way to do things may not work in the situation But they're, you know, and that comes from both sides as we talked before about I need you to do it this way in this moment. But that person also needs to realize, oh, you could still learn something as well. Somebody coming up that's younger who is more used to technology might have a shortcut that you've never learned. So, so it works both ways. And that's one of the reasons I love working with students. It really is because they'll have a trick that I didn't learn and then I'll I had one student say was watching me on a lightboard and I was doing a lot of copy paste of cues and I said yeah it's a lot of data entry but it's not all creativity it's data entry I got to I have to sit here and go 365 through 372 copy to Q 42 enter then go back and change the colors on them. It's a lot of procedural work, but if you can think ahead, you can use the lights to your advantage. You can use what they naturally do. Because he went, "Wait, you're just using that the lights track a certain way and you're not creating you're not blinding your cues. You're not doing like, no, I just know I need my lights. I want them here to do this and I want them to sweep there. So, I'll start here. Set that Q. Go back a Q. Record the next thing the where I want it to start." And then now it's going to sweep and do what I want it to do. And then I'll put a time. I'll change the time on it to six seconds because it's a ballad and I just want it to sweep. And then I don't have to do four cues. I don't have to sit there and cue it in blind and do the this and do the that. Like I don't have to do all that extra work because work smarter not harder. Sometimes this is a thing that I need to work with. You do have to work harder. Like sometimes you have to put effort into things. So much has come naturally to me especially in the artistic sense. Sometimes you do have to put effort into it. So that would be something I'd say as well. Yeah, sometimes you have to put effort in. Communication requires listening. If you're not listening, you're not communicating. Period. You're just you're pontificating. It's like when people get heated and they start talking about politics or religion or something like that. They're social constructs. They It all is no matter how we as society have made them up. So you can cherrypick from them. It's not a lock stalk one way to do things. And if you try to find commonality with somebody and you stop yelling at each other, yeah, people will tune you out or yell back at you if you yell. So if we can lower the temperature, which sounds so p condescending or pandering, but it's like no, if we can all just take a be and go maybe we are trying to say the same thing or we want the same outcome. We don't agree by the method by which we get there, but at least we both want the same thing. Yay, commonality. I'd rather find commonality with people than be divisive. I don't need to sow discord. It's It doesn't serve me anything in my life, but don't think I don't get passionate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, finding the commonality is a way in. I always say like if you can find a way that you agree, it opens the door and now you can really have a conversation because if you're just starting where you disagree, you're not going to get very far. Exactly. But then there's the communication part where you have to listen to each other and then you have to articulate because you might find out you really are saying the same thing. It's just one key component that's not. Um I've kind of lost track of where I was going to go with my t-shirt wisdom for what you said were saying,

[02:16:14] Curtis: But well, we have a lot of t-shirt wisdom out here. I feel like a lot of our uh a lot of our quotes are like perfect. There's been a lot of things where the your response has been like, "Oh, that's so perfect." So, people can uh print their own shirts. I'll have AI find a quote in here and make it make a t-shirt company.

[02:16:33] Jacob: What you don't know, you don't know what you don't know. If you were not taught it, if you were not exposed to it, you cannot expect people to be at your level. That was a problem that I had. I was so ahead with certain things in life, I had to unlearn my own programming. I had to sit there and go, people aren't as operating on your level. You know what I mean? And I don't mean like a level above like we're just on two completely different islands and your interests are not my interest. So I have to find a way in or a way to explain myself, you know, and so that's going to be incumbent upon me to take more time and more energy if I want to elicit a different response. Yeah. And it and I feel like it works well. I've seen I asked someone a colleague of mine one time and it was in an educational type environment why they interacted with a student a specific way and the response was I wanted them to think for themselves and I wanted them to what was the word that he used? I'm going to say it my way but make connections and um what's the word I'm trying to find? It's a very specific word. It's when you think for yourself, you're making connections. You're not thinking abstractly, but you are just innately or intuitively trying to find the next step or whatever. And the word escapes me and I'll remember it at 2 a.m., but I just walked away from that and went, "Oh, what you don't realize is they've never been taught that." So it is incumbent upon you in this moment that if that's what you're trying to teach them, you then have to create the safe the safe space but the but the space where you can fail and you can say that's not that's not how you do it. Let me show you the groundwork or the basic framework of how to think to the next level, how to get to the next part. You're not being taught that in school. You're taught to lather, rinse, repeat. But if you can work with somebody and realize, oh, you just don't understand because you've never been exposed. Okay, cool. Let me explain this to you really quickly. I don't have the time to, but I'm going to really quickly like go with me on this rapid fire. Happens quite a lot for me. And it's like, okay, we're going to do it this way. Then they can take that, they can sleep on it. They can do whatever they need to do. And at some point, they're going to end up in another situation cuz it's happened to me where you're like, and it connects. And when it f and when it connects, it's the best feeling. And then they know your expectation as well. Right. Right. Because if you don't, how can you get upset with somebody

[02:19:14] Curtis: If you don't explain your expectation,

[02:19:16] Jacob: Right? Yeah. Hey, you should have read my mind better. Very much so. Like it's like I'm telegraphing it. Well, you didn't state it. Well, I stated this. I'm like, ah, I get it. I see how the inference that would be made. I see your inference, but I see what I extrapolated from it. And once again, now me as the person who said that needs to go, oh, I probably should have worded that better, right? Or I once again, that's the communication part of it. But that's kind of Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because if you I like it because I feel like it's you taking extreme responsibility for it. like you're not trying to, you know, make them feel bad for what they do and don't know or like um yeah, you're like, "Okay, there's clearly a way that I could communicate this differently to where it makes sense for them or at least it helps them more because clearly we're not on the same page right now." But so I mean that alone is a good, you know, leadership move, I would say, because you know, you're taking responsibility for what can I do in this situation.

[02:20:20] Curtis: Well, thank you. It's kind of like I think we all sit here and analysis par I can get analysis over analysis paralysis very easily and I think people in g because you just overthink it. So you never finish a project or you never you never launch it. There's so much stuff that I have that I've never put into the digital sphere because you just kind of go, "Oh, it's not where I want it to be." And at some point you just have to let it free and do what it's going to do. But working in Oh gosh, I was going somewhere with that. Dang it. I was going somewhere very specific with it. Uh over analysis paralysis, letting it free. Oh, random example.

[02:20:59] Jacob: Yeah. Britney Spears. A long time ago, she made headlines when her children were babies for driving on the California freeway with her baby in her lap. Okay. Yeah. Here's the thing. When you grow up in the 80s and 90s in rural Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, wherever and you're on your own property or on back roads, we weren't dealing with airbags. We weren't dealing with any of this stuff. You'd sit on a tractor in somebody's lap and you'd pretend steer somebody else always. It's normal. So, if you've never been exposed or told that you can't do that because you have an airbag in the car because this is this and you're in fight or flight mode because the paparazzi is chasing you and you just grab your child and go, but you present her as this crazy nutter, right? That it's No, it's something the moment that I saw it, I just felt so badly for her because she's like six months older than I am. So, I sit there and I'm like, I know better. But I know better because I understand these things. I grew up riding in the front seat of the car as a toddler of a Cadillac. There weren't airbags and there you put the armrest down. I wasn't even in a car seat. You'd latch it in and the arm would come flying up and you go flying back into the hole that was there, right? Trying to claw your way out of it. You were perfectly fine. You know, how many generations of people produced this younger generation of people that are so worried about all of these things? Airbags are an issue, you know, in an automobile. I'm not saying put your child in the car and don't follow rules. What I'm saying is you only know what you know. And if you don't even know the question to ask to get new information, how are you supposed to do that?

[02:22:51] Curtis: And so then you're just stifled. Yeah. And it almost becomes self-censoring and self-sabotage at some point. And I don't like that. And when I work a crew or a team, I like people that are independent. And I can trust that you're going to do the job that you need to do.

[02:23:07] Jacob: I don't need to I'm type A, but I don't need to sit on you with a thumb. You know what I mean? I don't need to You can be commanding without being demanding. You can you don't have to yell at people. You don't have to do this thing, but you need to I can use tone of voice, but if I need to get loud, I can get loud. I need to be able to have that room to push there. I need to be able to become stern. If you start stern, you can't become stern. And on a crew, I trust you to do your job. You were hired to do something. If I need you to do it differently, I need to then come in and communicate. I need you to do it this way. Right? That's how you would do it with a performer. You're singing it this way. I love that you came in and gave me I put a spell on you and it was a combo of the original version and the Hocus Pocus B Midler version and you gave me this really cool hybrid version. But what we're doing they're going to expect the B Midler version. I'm going to need you to pull that midler for me. But if you want to go up the octave and outshine her because you can, you know, because you because you can give me that highend. Yeah, go for it. You know what I mean? Like you can take that autonomy on your performance, but I need this little correction from you. Right. Right. Right. But and but that's not even the compliment sandwich because I genuinely loved what you did. I just they're going to expect this. Yeah. Just like Curtis, I need you to edit the song out of the mix. I don't need people turning around to me saying that's the one song that they remembered because it was too hard or it was too this or it was too that, you know? So, it's I guess it comes full circle at some point.

[02:24:43] Curtis: Yeah. Yeah, it does. I mean, well, in your ability to, you know, communicate with that person and not, you know, like we said, expect them to kind of read your mind or come from the exact same place that you came from. Like, you know, expect that they had the exact same upbringing as you and they've had all the same meetings as you and blah. Like, hey, can't you read the room? You need to sing it this way. Like, why are you even wasting my time with the rehearsal? You're not approaching it like that. You know, you're hearing where they're coming from. Cool. You clearly have these skills, but we're going to take it this way. You know, that's where Yeah. balance of being polite, kind, understanding, but also stern like, "Hey, I get that's cool that you did it that way. I like that a lot. I would love to hear it again, but for this show, we got to do it this way." So, yeah, I think um man, I a lot of our communication is, man, it really is multiaceted, right? Like there's so many different things that do need to happen at once. It's like communication is a constant. Like, it's not just all right, cool, I'm a good communicator now. It's like every day there's a new opportunity to learn how to communicate to understand when we say things a certain way or a certain, you know, uh, energy that we bring or a mood that we bring to certain people. Okay, I just shut them down on accident because I was too certain with them, you know. So, it's a constant eb and flow, you know, communication seems like it's a it's quite the dance, I feel like, is a good very much so. And it's a it's definitely a partner dance. And what's interesting also about that is don't beat yourself up too badly when you do screw it up.

[02:26:13] Jacob: Like I can sit there on that one little thing from 30 years ago going, "Dang it, had I just it would have elicited a different response and I could have fixed it." Well, hindsight's 2020 usually. And you then extrapolate from that. Don't repeat the mistake. Don't do it again. if you see yourself repeating a pattern that's going to elicit that response. Yeah, it's incumbent upon you as that person to correct it. So, there's nothing wrong with looking back and kind of beating yourself up a little bit over it. Then do something with it. Be productive with it. And don't beat yourself up for things that you do in a crisis situation. You do the best that you can with the information you have in that time and in that moment. That's kind of the mantra we've always had around our household. Like crisis situation decisions, you cannot go back and look at those and say, "Oh, well, I should have done this better." And half of that's going to be communication. Like, oh, if I only I had moved this here versus there, man.

[02:27:16] Curtis: You can't

[02:27:17] Jacob: Yeah. I would I was just saying that's actually like uh it's so sweet how that actually landed really with me personally. I didn't expect that. like don't uh don't beat yourself up about how you reacted in a crisis situation. I don't for whatever reason I was like oh I needed to hear that. I don't know what it's even personally applying to but I like that a lot. I think that is a very useful thing to hear. I mean, I think when you the outworld world sees you a certain way and don't realize that you've been dealing with a whole bunch of stuff and you're just you're not just juggling plates, but the world around you is you're on shifting ground and all the different things. You cannot beat yourself up because in this situation, you had to make a decision. You were put on a timeline and your back was against a wall or on just a show. we can make it just as simple as a show. Like I called I said go with the music and no don't go with the music. I was like well I screwed that one up you know. Oh no the whole show's burned down. No it's not you know but it is a place where you can beat yourself up. And so if you can that's another thing on set it doesn't do me any good. Some people go straight to the yelling and if you've coiled cable improperly, they will knot it up for you and make you redo it. And that's how I that's how I was taught. You know that by that road, I didn't like it. So, I don't do it that way. You know, you if you've screwed up, you know, you screwed up.

[02:28:43] Curtis: So, all I have to say is, yeah, I know, but we got to finish the show. We'll discuss this later. We'll figure it out later. But right now, I mean, I'm not happy, but just don't do it again. we have to move forward.

[02:28:56] Jacob: Yeah. There's no need for me to throw a temper tantrum.

[02:29:00] Curtis: Only in a safety situation

[02:29:02] Jacob: Do I need to like you start getting into that head space. It's like no, we got to protect something, a person or you know, whatever. But outside of that,

[02:29:11] Curtis: Don't beat yourself up. Try not to try not to. It's easier said than done. Yeah. I mean, as a as a person who beats myself up often, that is always something that I'm uh it does help me have compassion for other people, though. Because a lot of times if I'm in a situation where it's like, you know, I'm a director and somebody messes something up. I don't need to give them the lecture cuz I know pretty dang well most of the people I work with, they're already beating themselves up about it. They're already wishing they wouldn't have done it. They're very aware of the mistake they made. And it's like, is it genuinely that helpful to like my future of working with this person or the show at hand that's still going on for me to berate them in this moment? And the answer is going to be no. Uh, a lot of times the I like to use the saying weak arms. Um, if in that moment I'm stressed out and I can't handle the stress of like what just happened or I'm like, "Oh no, I'm going to lose my job because this camera person just messed up or whatever," it's on me to like have a little bit of strength in my arms and hold a little bit of my emotions, a little bit of my frustration. If my arms are so weak that the second I get frustrated and angry, I need to hand it to someone, then I need to go I need to work out, you know, like I need to get in the gym. So, it's like uh me, I never want to catch myself with weak arms in those situations where I just wasn't able to handle my own stress and so I took it out on somebody else. So, it just it's just a useful

[02:30:31] Jacob: Well, it's human and we've all done it in different and variety of ways and you know, just trying to make Yeah. It Yeah. Yeah. Well, no. I just I just went into an entirely different thought process that would have gone on another tangent. Well, that's the thing about podcast is we could just keep on going forever. But uh I will I will save whoever's still listening at this point. I'll save you another hour and a half of your time at least until unless Curtis and I do another one in the future. Um but uh man, I do kind of want to round the corner here uh with our pod. Um so I chop it up and just edit fix it in post. Yeah. Yeah, I know. sometime not. Dude, I'm a person who listens to very long podcasts. I listen to them all the way. I love long podcasts. So, you know, as much as there's probably people that are like, "Dude, you can't just ramble on forever." I don't know. I like listening to a ramble on forever myself. So, there's people out there who do. Um and I and I will clip it up. But I do want to just to tie the bow on the end here. Um last couple minutes, I want to ask you an impossible question. Um Okay. And it could have something to do with what we've talked about and it could have nothing to do. So, I'll give you a moment to think about it, but I always like this very difficult question of Curtis. What does the world need more of right now?

[02:31:48] Curtis: I automatically go to love, sweet love.

[02:31:50] Jacob: I know. I set it up. The name is Junkyard Love, so I set it up. But yeah, um there's no wrong or right answer, but anything that comes to mind, what does the world need more of? What do people need more? What do people need to hear? Anything backarak? No. Um, who? A one-word answer that I don't know why this word popped into my head. Insight.

[02:32:19] Curtis: Tell me more. I don't know why insight I don't know why that was the word that popped into my head, but it's you can Insight can be introspective. Insight can be learning about something, but it's that little bit of extra information. There's always something you don't know.

[02:32:39] Jacob: Yeah. And you can perceive yourself as learned. You can have the credentials that say that. There's always something we can work on. There's always something that we can do. Now, that can bleed over into somebody thinking, "Well, whatever I do for you is never enough." That's not what I mean. It kind of goes back to play to your strengths, work on your weaknesses, hide your faults. It's that there's always something to learn and there's another way to do things. So maybe there's compassion in with that, but it's understanding, insight, and understanding. Now, now I have Shar's love and understanding stuck in my head. But, but in all seriousness, it's I think it's there's always another keystone,

[02:33:34] Curtis: Another lynch pin, another nugget,

[02:33:38] Jacob: Like an opening. Yeah. Yes. Exactly. And or another way that you can build on to what you know. There's another tool for your belt or your toolbox. there's something else you can put in your arsenal so that you can take it out and use it as a tool as opposed to saying this is the entirety of what something is. So I think it's more about having more tools in your tool belt and that requires knowing that there's just something else. There's one more thing. Dude, I'm actually I really like the word insight. I think that's actually a really good one. It's a it's a it's a word that I'm I'm a certified meditation teacher on the app Insight Timer by the way for anybody listening. So that comes to mind. But insight I love that a lot. That is like an opening like a sudden it makes me think of magic almost like there's always a new opportunity if you just have the insight. And I think it's one of those words that any listener and even me I think I'm going to just like pop that word into my mind periodically for the next couple weeks and just see what comes up. Like insight like not even like what's the insight I could have about this? It's not even that deep. Just insight and then like lay that word over into any situation and kind of see what opens up. Right. Well, think about it. It's two words combined in

[02:34:52] Curtis: Sight.

[02:34:53] Jacob: It's a compound word. So, there's a definition, but each word has its own meaning. And then there's the combined definition of the two words together. I'm so glad you found that you used that word. That's so perfect actually

[02:35:05] Curtis: Because sight is vision.

[02:35:06] Jacob: Yeah. How am I seeing this? How are they seeing this in sight? So introspective or you're seeing into something or someone or a situation or whatever. And it's, you know,

[02:35:19] Curtis: Brilliant. I love it.

[02:35:21] Jacob: Thank you.

[02:35:21] Curtis: Cool. Yeah. No, that's so great. Um Okay, man. Well, hey, man. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate all this. This was so great. I love that. Uh thank you for running with the free flow style that I do here, man. I think that uh you brought up some like super incredible things that I don't think my notes would have ever touched otherwise. So, I'm really glad that you were willing to kind of play with me here, man. I had a lot of fun. Yeah. No worries. I think it I think this kind of vibe works really well. It's loose structure. Yeah. Yeah. That's like I said, that's what I like listening to and that's where when I first got into podcast, man, people would stumble just kind of the rambling conversational back and forth. They would say something like two and a half hours in on a podcast that I'd go, "Hold up, dude. paused that just changed my life. like what did they just like a random one little sentence of them laughing about a you know a fart joke or something two hours in and somehow that is that is exactly you know we're all looking for that real authentic um you know podcasts aren't planned they're just conversations so I think there's really some great stuff in there not to belver this but I do have a question for you now

[02:36:22] Jacob: Please ask it's going to be I'll get to the reason why I'm asking it what are you listening to right now like as in your personal life. What either artist or album or song or compilation of things like five tracks or something? What has been your go-to recently as of this date? I've been listening to I'm drawn to I'm pretty into like my spiritual lectures and those sorts of things. Um, I really like Ram Doss, Tara Brock, those sorts of things. Um, I think what I'm going to go for my answer would be there's these mixes that this creator Dirty Zen makes. He's actually been on this podcast. Um, and they're chillstep, the music genre of chillstep, so it's like melodic dubstep, but then they have spiritual lectures laid over the top of them. And I love them so much, but I also that is something that I continuously go back to. like I go on a walk and if I can't really find something or I'm not in the middle of a book that's really tugging at me to listen to on Audible, um I will I'll put on one of those mixes. So, Chillstep uh spiritual mixes, check them out online. Dirty Zen, one word.

[02:37:41] Curtis: Awesome. Cool.

[02:37:42] Jacob: That's my response. Do you have one that you've been listening to? Do you have Oh, oddly enough, it's two different things very specifically. I mean, other than like your general podcast stuff and just the kind of stuff that you would put on and listen to, but music genre wise, I've watched Billy Corgan has a new podcast called The Magnificent Ones. Billy Corgan, for those that don't know, is the lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins. He formed the band. He's the composer really of all their work. You would know 1979, Tonight, those songs if you're not familiar with the band. But he was interviewing Carney Wilson of Wilson Phillips. She is the daughter of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys.

[02:38:24] Curtis: And in 1990, I received the cassette, the first Wilson Phillips album, and it was mine. It wasn't like my parents. It was my cassette. And watching this interview, this podcast made me want to go back and listen to their music because it's a trio, the children of the Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys. So, it's the two of the Brian the Beach Boy daughters and then China Phillips and Wilson Phillips. They have these amazing harmonies and um oh my gosh, who I just lost his name. The producer on the album did Jagged Little Pill and Katie Perry's first album. I don't know if he did the some of Glenn Ballard. Glenn B. So, he did Alennena's Jagged Little Pill and then he ended up doing some of the early Katy Perry stuff, like really early. Uh, and just going back and listening through that album and listening through now knowing some of the stories behind their in their early 20s and horrible relationships and how like a 8-year-old, nineyear-old is vibing with,

[02:39:35] Jacob: You know, what a 20 year old female is dealing with, but and you know, Hold On, the big song that everybody knows, it's I think at the end of Bridesmaids or one of those movies. Uh but their biggest single hold on is literally about I need to hold on for one more day and things will just go your way but hold on like my grandfather always said go take a nap sleep something will always look brighter in the morning you don't and I say it's too late for solutions to be solved in the setting sun like right now we can't fix this

[02:40:08] Curtis: That one too like that well I kind of pulled that from a garbage lyric the band garbage has a lyric in one of her songs that says, "It's too late for solutions to be solved in the setting sun." And so I've taken that little nugget, a lot of my stuff will go back to music, but it's too late for solutions to be solved in the setting sun. We'll figure it out tomorrow. Like we can sit here and beat ourselves up tonight about it

[02:40:35] Jacob: Or we can accept it is what it is and we'll fix it, but we just have to get up early

[02:40:41] Curtis: Kind of thing. Yeah. And the other thing I've been listening to is Oasis. This morning was an Oasis. This morning, so it's Wilson Phillips and Oasis because you get much opposite. Brit pop and pop. Like vocal harmony pop. We all got more than one mood. That's for sure. You know, I uh I throw in my second that I've been listening to a lot is John Bellian. Do you know him? He's a producer, singer, songwriter. Um he's written for like Rihanna and Bieber and he's a good um behind the scenes for sure, but he's my favorite artist. I've seen him like nine times. I'm really not a stan or a super fan of anybody but him. He's the only person that I'm John Bellian. You have to check him out. He's a great producer. Yeah.

[02:41:18] Jacob: Is it Is it like pop R&B kind of hybrid? Okay.

[02:41:21] Curtis: Pop I would say very much. He does rap but he's um he's a producer and a beat maker. So his beats are really um they're very original. Like you'll recognize like oh he has a very original sound for sure. He has like a Jay Dilla kind of boom bat uh east coast New York vibe, but he's also very like poppy, very like beautiful lyrics, very sentimental, like hard-hitting, deep stuff. Okay. Um you'll have you'll have to explore him and let me know. But that's the other person I'm listening to. John Bellian ton. John Bellian. John Bellian. John Bellian. Okay. Well, what's funny is that's Butch Walker for me.

[02:41:53] Jacob: Butch Walker. Okay. Butch Walker I love especially his Let's Go Out Tonight's album. He used to be part of a band called Marvelous 3 that I love. Um, so that first Marvelous 3 album and then I love his solo work, but he writes a lot with Pink and a lot of the punk pop people. Uh, yeah.

[02:42:15] Curtis: I don't know.

[02:42:16] Jacob: Yeah. Let's Go Out Tonight. Butch Walker is That's the It's the Butch Walker and the Let's Go Out Tonight, but you'll find it easily on Spotify. Like you'll know it as soon as you see. It's very kind of glam rock inspired. It's like kind of rockabilly, glam rock, pop rock. Like it's a really cool. Okay, I made you up, man. Yeah, you know how I am with me. I love more than I like more than I dislike. That's what I always say with music. I there's too much good me I don't I don't know how people don't like so much different genres. There's just so much good music. I sit there and say even if I don't like an artist or an album, I can find one song. It may be the remix. It may be the acoustic version. It may be something else, but I can find something. I can sit there and go gh. But I can find that one thing, but I may have to troll a little bit to find some B-side or some deep cut. Yeah. But I'll take the time to do it if I need to.

[02:43:03] Curtis: Well, and I like to treat the same thing with books. I like to treat life like if somebody suggests an album or like they say, "Hey, this is my favorite album or I've been listening to this a lot lately." I like to treat the same thing as I do with books. If somebody mentions that, I feel like it means I should at least check it out. Like I like You get so many dope albums if you just listen up to people suggesting what they like. It's great.

[02:43:21] Jacob: Exactly. Well, I don't want to keep you any longer. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Let me end this thing. Um,

[02:43:26] Curtis: What's funny is I thought I wasn't even going to have 90 minutes for you. I was like, I mean, I can talk a lot, but Oh, no. This will be this will be short and easy that you're going to have to edit. Sorry.

[02:43:35] Jacob: No, no, we're good, man. I love it. This is exactly how I want it to go. It's that really is how it how it ends up happening is you just get talking with somebody and um you know, even through Zoom, honestly, like through Zoom, it's not in person, so it is a little different, but even through Zoom, you can catch a vibe pretty quick. And that's all people. That's how I am on the phone. But I was on the phone as a toddler. Like there were pictures of me on the phone with my grandma. Like it literally I when I say I'm lequacious, like literally I will be on the phone with a friend for two hours. I don't have to see you. I don't have to FaceTime you. I don't have to I don't have to see you. I can do go about my day, multitask, and we can have a conversation and we can hang it up and in a few hours to a month can go by and we can pick it right back up where we need to and I think that's a skill. Not everybody has that. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a good skill. Hopefully people listening uh have picked up on some of your skills now and hopefully they're better for it. So, um hey listeners, I love you. Thank you for hanging with us. We'll see you next episode. Please check out the description, the bio down below. If you want to explore any more of Curtis's work, please do so. All the links are below. And uh you know what I always say at the end of these episodes is if you haven't drank any water today, you're out of your damn mind. What are you doing? Drink some water. If you haven't stretched today, you're also out of your damn mind. Stretch water. That's what I'm talking about. I got my jug right here, dude. Yep. I uh Yeah. So, uh, stretch, drink water, love yourself, and if you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, follow, comment, all of that. I appreciate it. We will see you next episode. I'm going to end this recording. Bye, everybody. Oh, wait. Hold on. Let me n Knowledge is power. Reality is Junkyard Love A guest.