Livestream talk with Quincy Johnson aka Alpaca Shakur
Back from hiatus on the livestream front, Quincy Johnson aka Alpaca Shakur joined me for a chat. He stood outside in the cold and talked on his phone, showing the grit of a Colorado trucker.
We became Twitter mutuals a while back, then I saw him on a couple of my other mutuals livestreams. Then he put out a video of himself doing push-ups naked, so I decided to bring him on, because he is the utmost example of authenticity.
He’s improving his life. He’s buckling down. We talk about what that means to him, and a lot more.
Heidi wants you to live in reality. She wants you to see the wonder of the world around you all the time. There is surprise in that. In surprise there is humor. Where the mind is free of pretension, it can be surprised. In all of this you have joy. So it is fitting she moved to the desert of Yucca Valley, where the mind can stretch out.
I want to thank Heidi for giving my little show here legitimacy. This is the second time that she has lent her open mind and credible name to my cause. We collaborated on Cathedral Park Jazz Festival and she nearly joined the InterArts board of directors before I went the opposite direction and dissolved it.
She is a giving person and a good friend. Truth be told, we met when technically everything in her life was going great, but she admitted to some kind of void. Now that I see where she is at today and talk directly, I think she has filled the void and has become a fountain of creativity for others.
The same person who lived in a fairly upscale home, wearing suits, sipping wine, going to brunch, now lives in an airstream in the desert, wears overalls, scavenges for trash, and lets the dust gather in her hair. She seems totally free.
We skimmed the surface of what is going on there in Yucca Valley from a social, economic point of view, as well as from her professional development. But from what I see, it’s all on the up and up.
Nicco Augustave is co-host of Aquarian Anarchy and I was interested in how he swam his way upstream to that podcast. He half the age of the other guys, and society would have him going a totally different direction in his politics let alone social life.
This conversation went two hours as we slow simmered a stream of consciousness discussion about the issues surrounding the Anarch way of life. It is wide ranging and touches deep territory while swiftly moving on in the stream.
I’ll be honest. I lost track of this conversation. I always try to keep just enough control over the interview that it remains recognizable as such a thing. I also enjoy free-flowing conversation and don’t like to hold the reigns on it.
I enjoyed it however and look forward to another talk.
Yesterday, I sat down in the basement with Nathan Brannon in the yard. He won Portland’s Funniest Person contest a decade ago, subsequently debuting a comedy album to Kill Rock Stars. Today, he focuses on growing food and sharing his experience on social media.
The conversation moved quickly from humorous to serious, digging in the weeds of communities challenged with healthy food scarcity, concepts surrounding systemic poverty and state intervention with food benefits that enable poor people to continue buying bad food.
We agree that growing our own food and engaging with our own communities is the solution, while struggling with the problem of motivation and engagement.
Joined by Estevan Munoz for an hour plus catch up session, we go into topics surrounding the creative process. Portland versus Philadelphia and how an artist evolves from their home base.
One of my first contributors with THRU Media, he was only 19 and searching for a portal to Portland. The time he spent helping build that foundation for the publication was mutual and it reinforced the direction he continued to go. I always thought he had the spark and I continue to see it.
