https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=_DBkN5_LQJQ
So hello everybody. I am here with Owen Cyclops. Owen Cyclops is an artist who does illustrations that use a lot of symbolism, a lot of Christian symbolism, a lot of weird symbolism, and I encountered him on Twitter and I was so impressed by his work that I decided to commission him an image based on the watch the fool’s theme in my videos. The notion that the fool is also there to flip things when things are chaotic to bring the king back, let’s say to bring order back when the world is upside down. And so we just finished this image last week. I put it on some merch and I’m putting it out there as this video is playing. And so I’m really excited to talk to Owen to figure out about his own journey through art, through symbolism, also through religious ideas and get a sense how we connect. This is Jonathan Pajot. Welcome to the symbolic world. And so Owen, maybe you can give us a bit of a sense of your journey about your work and kind of where you get your inspiration and where you feel like you’re going right now. Yeah, man. Yeah, I’m really glad to be here. Well, basically in a nutshell, I guess you could say my kind of path, my artistic path, spiritual also, because those are kind of the same thing for me actually, would be that I was pretty much the I’ve always been into religion, mysticism and things like that. But I would describe myself previously as kind of like the caricature of white guy in his 20s really into like psychedelics and vaguely Eastern stuff. And maybe seeing myself on kind of like a faux shamanic or like Western occult path. So I really lived in that world for a really long time. I was really into Buddhism, Western occult, and was kind of just floating for a really, really long time. And eventually I became Christian probably like two, two and a half years ago now. And it’s interesting. It’s kind of one of those things where like in Buddhism, actually, there’s a debate whether you get enlightened all at once or whether it’s gradual. So the joke is kind of that it’s gradual until it’s all at once. And it’s kind of how I feel looking back at my work and my path and stuff. It’s like it did happen kind of all at once one day, but there also was a slow build up where I was figuring things out. So yeah, basically now I view myself as I mean, I never really use this term to sounds kind of pretentious, I guess, but kind of like a reformed occultist in a way. I really do view myself as someone that was on like a particular path, and then I got off of it. And now I’m in Christendom. And that’s a huge part of my work is exploring that and bringing you know, what I know and what I did into the light of that and also taking the light of that worldview and bringing it back into all the other things that I’m interested. I guess the other piece of it not to go on too much about myself would be that part of that whole world is being into just kind of weird things in general, whether it’s like paranormal stuff, maybe even touching on like conspiracy world or just kind of the whole strange set of odd things that happen in life. So yeah, now I am kind of going back and bringing the world view I have now into that and things kind of make a lot more sense. And then my art has always been married to that whole process. Yeah. Well, it’s interesting when you talk about the idea of being a reformed occultist or something like that, I really have a theory about that. I know a lot of people that kind of came to Christianity and more traditional Christianity, even let’s say Eastern Orthodoxy or more traditional Catholicism who actually come out of an occult past, you could say. And my theory about that is that Christianity became so milquetoast, you know, in the the later centuries, let’s say towards around 17th, 18th century, it became very materialistic and Protestantism but also counter-reformation was part of that, that the mystical aspect was almost forgotten. It’s as if it kind of faded away and or was left there that no one knew what to do with it and so it was taken up by all these stranger parts. And so what I felt is that people who are looking at the occult, usually their desire is not bad. They want to find something deeper. They want to get a deeper connection. They want to understand, you know, how these patterns manifest themselves. You know, they can see that that’s what some of these occult writers are talking about but sadly they end up with a kind of piecemeal solution. You know, the occultism is very fragmentary and it’s very, it lacks the full metaphysical structure that traditional Christianity offers. And so I’ve noticed that a lot of those people when they come back then they see something like Eastern Orthodoxy, they encounter, you know, the writing of the Church Fathers and how powerful it is and how, you know, the, let’s say the little things they got from magic in terms of understanding how ritualized reality is, they notice that communion, that, you know, the liturgical year, the liturgical structure is, you know, it’s whatever you learned about magic, it’s that times a thousand. You know, it’s actually world building. It actually holds reality together. And so it’s just interesting to see that you have, you’re kind of on that, on a similar path. So are you part of a group? Like are you in a particular church? I am not, actually. It’s not really, it’s actually not by design at all. Really I guess you could say is that when I first kind of got on board I decided that I should take some time and just kind of get my own life together and get my head straight. And what I told myself was I was going to focus kind of on my relationship with God more than trying to pick like a particular group to be with. I think also in the very beginning, you know, like I wouldn’t say like you hit rock bottom, but like you hit the wall and you’re like, okay, this is not the road to go down. Maybe the theological minutiae doesn’t matter like as much at that point. But after a year, maybe a little bit more than that, I started to feel like I kind of had to figure it out a little bit. So I’ve been doing my own like theological investigations and stuff like that. I guess right now where I’m at is I’m more sympathetic to apostolic, secession style Christianity, that being like Catholicism and orthodoxy. But I guess I’m kind of at this point where I can see where everyone’s coming from. And I do, it goes back and forth between being like something that’s on the front burner for me where I’m like, all right, I really got to like figure this out. But sometimes I feel like, I actually don’t know if you were born into orthodoxy or not. But I feel like for me, oh, cool. So yeah, for me, it goes back and forth between being like something that is genuinely coming from my like need for spiritual refuge. But then also sometimes, you know, we were just talking about Twitter a minute ago, it does become kind of like an ego aggrandizing exercise. And when I get to that point, I kind of put it on the back burner again, when I’m like, oh, it’s my job, like, I’m going to come in and decide this like theological debate from centuries ago, like me, I’m so important. So I go back and forth. I’m figuring out slowly, you could say. Yeah. Well, I think there is a there’s a great value in kind of engaging. I talk about this a lot in my on my channel. It’s hard to do because the world is so spectator like our whole world is very spectator like but there is a great value in participative patterns, right where you actually engage inside the pattern as we’re going to a church participating in the liturgy, submitting to a priest like submitting to a spiritual father, all of these these gestures make you participate in these these symbolic patterns that we notice in the world, you know. So I mean, I would say, I mean, you’ll figure it out on your own, at some point, you’ll slowly kind of find your way, hopefully into some community. And so we’ll trust God to kind of bring you towards the bring you towards whatever whatever ends up being the best for you in that moment. Yeah, yeah, I think it’s happening slowly. Yeah, I’m kind of in this weird Venn diagram overlap where like I don’t belong to a group, but I’m also not one of those people who’s like, yeah, it doesn’t matter. It’s all kind of the same anyway. So I feel the need to like clarify a little bit. Yeah. So so the thing that really kind of attracted me to your art was, of course, it’s very symbolic in the sense that it’s very, you use a lot of imagery that that is structured in a way that’s very erratic, you know, that it’s very, it’s like almost like logo like, it’s not, it doesn’t take realism as its basis, it doesn’t take the the desire to show, you know, like the shadow of something, the shadow of something on something else, or the color, but it’s really typified. And so there’s a kind of strange, very interesting mix of graphic art in your work iconography, Christian iconography, and almost a even a graffiti aesthetic, you could say, bringing it also into a knowledge of Western symbolism, and of course, also Western esoteric symbolism. So that’s kind of one of the questions that I had for you. And it’s funny, because someone came at me on Twitter because of it, because I was kind of, I was promoting your work on Twitter, and someone came at me and said, Oh, he’s using, he’s using a cult symbolism using esoteric symbolism. And I think that I come at it also from a point of view, the point of view that I mentioned before, which is that I see a lot of the esoteric Christianity that appeared in the West as a desire to explore the deeper aspects of Christianity. Now, they did it in a way that sometimes went totally off the rails, that sometimes is unacceptable. Yes, we can all acknowledge that. But for example, like you use some Rosicrucian symbolism in one of your images, and you had a rose in the center of the cross. And someone was saying, Oh, that’s Rosicrucian. But okay, so it’s Rosicrucian, but are you looking at the symbol? What’s wrong with the idea that there’s a rose at the center of the cross? It’s actually a very powerful image of what the cross is, what creation is, what is at the center of the cross, all of these things are being brought together in a very powerful way. So now, whether or not Rosicrucians exaggerated or went off the rails, or because of their secret society status, they were involved in some kind of weird political movement, that’s beyond, well, it’s not totally beyond the point. But is it possible for us to take these images back, right, to bring them back and to show their potential to participate in the Christian narrative? So I don’t know if it’s something you thought about if you’re going about it more intuitively. Oh, yeah, dude. Yeah, I think about that all the time, for sure. That’s a big, it’s a big part of my, my art situation, I guess you could say. Yeah, well, for me, it’s always like, there’s a really, I guess you could say a fine line where, on the one hand, I think of it as like, I never really want to like, concede territory to some, let’s say, ideologies or worldviews that I’m not really about. Like, that’s a perfect example, like, Rose and the Cross together, like, it is kind of classical, like, Christian medieval symbolism, but certain groups have like, used it. So sometimes I’m sitting at my desk, and I’m like, yeah, well, I’m not going to give up this territory. Like, I’m not, I’m not never going to use this because of this like, group or whatever. I had, but then on the, on the flip side of that, I feel like I do have kind of like, a responsibility to not, frankly, make certain things look like really sexy and cool, honestly. I feel like a lot of the kind of like, shadowy, amorphous ideology stuff just gets by on its like, frankly, like, sex appeal, and because it looks really cool. It’s a lot, a lot of it is like, primarily aesthetic, actually. So yeah, it’s always a balance, like, a really good example of that is like, astrology stuff. I used to use like, astrological glyphs and things like that in my work. And it was never even really about astrology. It was more just about like, what it represented in terms of like, the zodiac is like, a cohesive symbol set. But eventually I stopped because I didn’t want to maybe, you know, like I’m saying, give people kind of the wrong idea, or maybe someone would see it and be like, oh, yeah, like, that is really cool. I should get this book on astrology. And then, you know, I’ve accidentally like, promoted that. So I go back and forth. There’s a few good examples. For me, one of the examples I always use is like, a pentagram. Like, you can go back and make like, an academic case like, oh, well, in medieval art, like the pentagram represented, you know, the five wounds of Christ. But at the same time, I mean, I think the ship has kind of sailed on that. I’m not going to be like, putting pentagrams in my heart, you know. So there’s like, a fine line you could say. Yeah. Well, there is the I’ve been showing, I’ve been actually, I’ve had this argument about pentagrams with a few people where I tried to show that there is a pentagram structure in several Christian images. The most obvious one is the image of Christ on the throne with the four cherubs around him. You have Christ’s head at the top and you have these four points, you know, the four points of the four directions kind of going away from him. So he appears, so it’s actually exactly a pentagram symbolism because he is the top point as the head of these four manifestations of himself. And so it’s like, I, like you said, I would never put a straight up pentagram in the, in my images, of course. But I say, of course, but I wouldn’t because of the same reason you said. But at the same time, when someone tells me that a pentagram is in itself evil or that in is, it has in itself some kind of evil meaning that is included in the geometric shape itself, I can’t handle that. Like, I just can’t accept it. I just have to, I end up calling it out every time and say, no, a pentagram is a very powerful shape. It’s very, it has a lot of meaning in it. And it’s there’s nothing illegitimate about it. Now, we obviously don’t want to be a stumbling stone for people as well. But we have to understand what it is. If understanding what a pentagram is, it’s very useful because you can understand what it means to have something above four corners, like that something that is a top four manifestations, right? So the four gospels or the four directions or something like that. So it can be useful, but I understand. But I see that, like, for example, I noticed that you use the all seeing eye, like you use the eye, the divine eye, which the same with the rose and the cross is such a, it’s an image which precedes any form of illuminati existence. Like it’s, you see it in medieval churches. I had a crazy example recently. There’s a church nearby in this small city in Quebec. And in one of the arches of the roof of the church, there was a, the ceiling of the church, there was an all seeing eye. And we were doing a tour of the church and a guy looked at it and said to his friend, he said, oh, that means that this is an illuminati church. I was like, what? You’re completely insane. There’s all seeing eyes in churches all over the, all over the world from the middle ages until the modern world. So it’s not, it doesn’t mean that Freemasons were involved in building that church. Yeah, the church there is probably like the least illuminati place in the city, probably, right? I mean, it’s like, I don’t think there were a lot of illuminati in French Canadian peasant culture. Like I’m not, I’m sure there wasn’t a lot of that going on. Yeah. I always think of the story. There’s, I honestly wish I could find that. I just remember reading it somewhere, but it was something like these like towns people were talking about how the full moon is like the time when like the devil’s active and how the full moon is like this evil symbol. And I think it was a saint or someone, some like holy person was like, you know, actually what the devil does is he just, he just chooses to do things when the moon is full so that you guys associate evil with the full moon. And then this really beautiful thing God made becomes this like perverted symbol of evil. And I really, really liked that like little like tale. And that’s something else I think about also, like, you know, an owl is another perfect example. Like, yeah, secret society is using owls. But like at the same time, I mean, God made owls. Am I like never going to put one in my art? Probably not, right? Well, yeah, no, you’re right. Exactly, exactly the same. But I think we can also do a service to the world by re explaining this symbolism in a way that is more powerful than giving them over to the dark side. Like you said, like, we just let the dark side have this symbolism, then we’re actually making ourselves weaker. Rather, if we are able to reclaim it in a way that’s legitimate, it’s not just, you know, not just random, but we can do it in a way that’s legitimate and can help people understand the deeper meaning, then then I think we can do it like, you know, when you see someone, you see the kind of weird conspiracy side that sometimes that goes off the rails, you know, when they see two pillars and an arch, and they think, as soon as they see two pillars in an arch, all of a sudden, it’s like, this is, this is like Freemason, or this is evil. Like, dude, you can’t, you can’t do that. Not two pillars and an arch, my goodness, like, you’re basically eliminating all of architecture, just with that strange, that strange, or that there’s a keystone, like, if they see a keystone, they think, oh, that’s Freemason, like, dude, a keystone is not Freemason. There’s actually, when you see that, that, the quote of Christ, when he talks about how the stone that was rejected by the builders became the top of the angle, it’s like, that’s, he’s, it seems like it’s referring to something like a keystone or a capstone, rather than just the corner of an angle, because it’s misshapen, right? It’s, it doesn’t have the same shape as the others, and so it ends up being the final stone, which holds everything together. So Christ is actually using architectural symbolism to talk about himself. So if you’re going to give that to your enemies that you see as your enemies, you’re going to give that to them, then you’re missing out on something. Totally. Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t agree more, honestly. And so what is your, because I’ve, so I’m looking at a bunch of images of you, that you’re doing, and you really seem to be exploring more and more kind of Christian symbolism, and you’re using, so you even made an icon of Saint Herman, like a Saint Herman of Alaska. Tell me a little bit, a bit about what attracts you to Saint Herman. Oh, nice. Yeah, that’s a cool one. Well, yeah, just, just off the bat, I mean, some people listening to this probably don’t know me. I’m not famous yet. Just kidding. But yeah, all my work is Christian, for sure. Even if I’m just drawing like a flower or something like that, like I’m doing it like in like a Christian context. So, just throwing that out there. Yeah, well, I made this image of Saint Herman because, for a few reasons, I guess, working backwards, I’m really into Seraphim Rose. He was a really big like influence on me, partially because in case people aren’t familiar with his work, one of the main inroads for me was, he has a book called Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future. And even before I ever would have thought about Christianity at all, someone told me this theory that UFOs were related to demonology and that like UFOs were an extension of, you know, the demonological phenomenon from the past. And that just totally blew my mind. I was really kind of into the paranormal at the time. And I was like, well, I never would have thought of that. That came from Seraphim Rose. So I read the book and he’s a really cool guy even outside of that. I don’t want to pigeonhole him as like the UFO demons guy. And he’s associated with Saint Herman’s monastery in Alaska. So I started looking into it. And I just thought he was a really cool figure. And I really liked the idea. I mean, I’m American, also in case people don’t know. I just really liked the idea of Christianity coming to America in the most general sense, whether it was Orthodoxy or Catholicism or anything really. And so he was a really interesting figure in that context. I’m pretty sure he’s this patron. I wouldn’t say patron saint, but he’s like called the Wonderworker of the Americas or something in the church. And yeah, he’s a really cool guy. I really liked his life story, which I kind of illustrated like in this image here. And yeah, just felt kind of a kinship with him, I guess you could say. Not that I’m like similar to him, but I kind of felt an affinity for him. That would be the real word. Yeah. And the image that really, I guess this is related to what you’re talking about. So I’ll bring it up because the image that someone posted and then I saw that really kind of struck me and then got me connected to you was the image of the mother of God cutting off the alien’s head. Yes. If I had like a greatest hits album, that would definitely, the crowds would definitely put that on there for sure. I love it. And I love the fact that you see, also you see like the sea serpent. There are many images in that. There are many things in there where you see the sea serpent getting his head cut in the waters. Totally. Yeah, this image is actually a really good encapsulation of like what I’m about just in general, honestly. When I drew it, just so also I feel like I should just like qualify a little bit. Like I really do take the creating imagery that would be perceived as religious or spiritual thing, like really seriously. So like when I drew this, I wasn’t thinking like, oh, this is a picture of Virgin Mary. I just kind of drew it as like a somewhat generic, like Holy woman. So just so people know, I’m not over here like doodling, like, you know, and kind of taking it very flippantly, I guess you could say like rendering like Holy figures and stuff. You could see actually the Saint Herman of Alaska image is like totally different than this one because he’s like, you know, a historical person. This is just like a generic figure. So I should clarify. Well, I wouldn’t say I would like for sure I wouldn’t say it’s an icon, especially in my Orthodox context. Like I don’t see this as an icon of the Virgin Mary, but it’s obviously a figure which you call someone because you put a crown on top of her head and you put the stars in the heavens. It’s the illusions are very strong. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. But yeah, this image would be like a really perfect encapsulation of my vibe. Honestly, you have this like Holy woman, like beheading this alien over on the left. There’s like the angel coming down with like Noah’s Ark. I was thinking about the Nephilim and stuff like that. That this guy getting abducted in the bottom, right? I guess, yeah, you could say that part of what I’m about is really like integrating all of these things into a view of the world that is theological. I guess you could say, you know, I was into conspiracies for a long time. Nothing, nothing too crazy. Just saying maybe like, you know, Bigfoot, UFO, nothing too crazy there either. And, you know, little things like that. And then I feel like when I started getting a more theological understanding of the universe, even just little things like, you know, why is evil happen and why are things the way they are, it all becomes integrated in this way. So yeah, pairing the theological imagery with more unexpected things, I guess you could say is probably a big part of what I’m about. So the one weird thing about that image, the one which I’m wondering about, I’ll be honest, is just the image of the ladder with the devil like atop the ladder. Yeah, totally. Yeah. So over on the left, there’s the, I mean, sorry, on the right, there’s the guy getting abducted from his house into like the night. And then above that, he’s getting led up this ladder and there’s like the devil there to like snatch him like at the top of the ladder. And there’s also Saturn over there. I kind of like intentionally put that symbol. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, what it’s about is that I felt like there’s this whole aspect to the UFO and paranormal thing in general, where I really do feel like part of it is kind of designed to like ensnare people and maybe lead them down these like wrong roads. There’s a lot of stories like that. I mean, I could go into it, but there’s some many, many stories where someone will get like just obsessed with like particular minutia of alien abduction experiences or they’ll start seeing UFOs everywhere. And often it’ll like totally destroy their life honestly. Or things like beings like that kind of leading people into like a weird sciency, Gnostic, cosmic, new age religion worldview. So that’s what I was thinking over there. It’s like the guy gets abducted and then he’s led up this ladder like to the devil. And I guess it looks a little weird because it’s like in the heavens. But what I was thinking was that in his mind, he’s like, oh, I’m going up this ladder. Like I’m ascending. But then at the top, he has a surprise like as a bad surprise. Yeah, yeah, I can I can kind of get it just it’s just because the ladder, especially in in iconography is associated with like the Jacob’s ladder. So like the idea of going up the ladder is usually associated with like going coming near God. But because it’s almost like you could call it like the false ascent or something like that. Ascent of pride is what seems to be to be to be represented. But I like the idea of the of the of the person getting abducted by aliens and then coming up and realizing that it’s the devil. Yeah, if I did if I did this again now, it would be cool to have like a longer like more classically like angled ladder on the left side that maybe did like go all the way up to the heavens or something. So it’d be like more of an obvious like comparison. Yeah, well, you could you could like a good way could be to show the flip because it’s almost like a flip. You’re you you get abducted into a spaceship. So you’re physically going up like into the spirits of the air or something. And then what’s actually happening is you’re actually going down the lap going down the slide like you’re actually sliding down into the mouth of hell. If you look at the images of the Last Judgment, you’ll get you might get some some ideas about that you see this either like a snake starting at the foot of Christ going kind of sliding you down into the mouth of hell or sometimes there’s like a array of fire which comes down from Christ’s foot and then that people kind of ride down into the into the mouth of the of the of the monster. Yeah, I’ve seen those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s actually it’s something we kind of touched on just like really quickly before. But yeah, that’s one thing that got me hooked into I guess you could say sacred art in general, even when I was just kind of starting my path was the ability to read it and kind of get information out of it was something that I thought was really awesome. I was making images and I was painting but I’d kind of been more schooled in like a you know 16, 17, 1800s like oil painting kind of aesthetic situation. So then when I started seeing images and I was like wow this guy basically wrote a book that I’m looking at and I’m like unpacking all of this and it’s telling me so much that really like changed my artistic path forever. Yeah, that’s I think I had the same experience when I discovered medieval art and especially the especially that church decorations because the church decorations they they appear as this this like 3d system of imagery that are relating to each other that are kind of playing off each other and so it ends up being really like a system of meaning that is that is manifesting itself to you you know that you can it’s a pattern really like it’s a pattern of of it’s an algebraic pattern and so that’s what I like about your work is I did that’s what it feels like as well it’s like you have this you put all these images next to each other and they create these analogies that that bring out the the meaning. Yeah, totally. Sorry do you want to say something? No, I’m just gonna say yeah I spent a lot of time like in different I think that’s also part of what I took away from being a part of different kind of like worldviews I guess you could say is after you kind of do the whole survey like every worldview theology religion whatever it is has its sacred art that kind of carries its worldview in it and that was one of my other main motivations for kind of doing what I do is that I felt like for our modern culture there’s not really that there’s not really like oh here’s a clear thing that embodies like our kind of like spiritual experience at this moment that’s how I felt at the time anyway so yeah that was something else I wanted to help work on. So who like who what kind of people do you feel are the ones who are responding to your work right now like what’s your what’s your public like? That’s interesting man I feel like I’m in the overlap of a lot of Venn diagrams. Yeah it’s what I feel too that’s why I asked. Yeah it’s pretty interesting it’s interesting too because you know I think it’s people that I mean on the one hand well I guess you could say the main kind of core in my opinion because this is kind of how I feel and where I come at it from is that I feel like there’s a lot of people who have been like young guys at least I don’t know if it’s just guys but in my mind I’m a guy whatever like young guys maybe who for a while it’s kind of like eventually you wake up to like wow like things in society are really unideal and there’s all these like large forces and like I’m actually really like maybe angry or not happy with this and I really don’t like it and I feel like at first you’re on the surface level of that like maybe there’s some like particular political issue you’re interested in and yeah it’s probably important but then you kind of like go deeper and you untangle all these like webs of these interconnected wires and I feel like eventually it kind of leads you to like a theological view of things where you’re like oh there is like good and evil and it’s more than just like things generated in the human mind you know so I feel like I get a lot of people like that who are like yeah I have some kind of inkling that there’s some like theological nature to things and I feel like I don’t know if I explained it well but yeah that’s how that’s what I feel like it’s kind of like the core of people people who I guess you could say are interested in culture and society and how it’s going yeah and then that has dovetailed with a theological understanding of the world because that’s me but then also on top of that yeah there’s other people who are just into like weird like what I call like third eye weird stuff like could be like big foot or ufos or anything um a lot of people who have maybe been on a similar path to me who are like yeah I used to really be really into like psychedelics and stuff and now I’m like kind of just floating and then also people who maybe are Christian or have been Christian but uh just enjoy seeing like a different embodiment of it I guess you could say I get a lot of messages like that um you know I think that’s the other thing is like I’m very like realistic about who I am and what I do like you know you mentioned before like yeah I would never like call this an icon like yeah in my mind like I’m like on the bottom I’m like a little pawn on the whole chessboard of like Christian stuff happening and I’m just a little pawn that makes like my cool weird images so yeah I think some people get a kick out of that um so I think it’s a lot of open diagrams overlapping yeah and I often talk about in my in my work I talk about the notion of the narthex or the art of the narthex and the idea of the bridge art or the limit liminal art right and so that’s when I saw your work I kind of right away felt like that’s one of the roles you seem to play and when you’re just when you’re discussing the type of people that are interested in your work it seems to make sense that it would be those kinds of people you know because because there is an aspect like you said to see yourself like at the bottom using imagery from popular culture and and and uh kind of weird culture but then also connecting it to more formal iconography um is something that would happen at the bottom or on the edge or you know in a place like the narthex which is a transition between inside and outside so you can have like you said people coming from psychedelics coming from all this stuff and then all of a sudden realizing that okay this Christianity which I always thought was stupid all my life because every all my teachers told me it was stupid and all culture told me it was stupid all of a sudden it’s like oh wait a minute no there’s something else going on here I don’t know how to grasp at it yet I don’t know how to attach myself to it yet but here’s something that I you know here are these types of images that are kind of slowly bringing me towards a a fuller understanding and something like that totally yeah yeah there’s this guy I really like named Benoit Mandelbrot he kind of like popularized you wouldn’t say discovered but he kind of made like fractals a thing and like science and mathematics and he has this quote which is um all established fields owe a great debt to those scholars who are nomads by choice um because that’s how he felt you know he’s not an artist but all his work is visual he’s not really a scientist because it’s more like theoretical math but he’s not really a mathematician because it’s all about the natural world kind of um so I’ve always really identified with that archetype where it’s like you know I’m not a theologian but I really like theology I’m not a sociologist but I’m really into analyzing culture and I think a lot of people can identify with that especially now when things are kind of getting more in mesh than ever yeah that makes sense I think that your work has that quality to to a kind of uh kind of hybrid monster kind of hybrid monster work but there’s a word there’s a place for that I talk about Saint Christopher a lot and the the imagery of the of the monster as being important like the gargoyle all of this stuff is also part of of the Christian tradition we just have to understand its role like it’s a kind of thing where I always joke about that because I make t-shirts and I make all this stuff and I and I and I say things like you know yeah I make t-shirts and but if I saw a priest wearing my t-shirt in the altar like I would physically eject him from the altar like things are just have their place you know if they’re in the right place then they’re fine it’s the same with your images like if I love the images you’re making but if I saw if I saw someone painting an image of that lady decapitating an alien like in the apps of a church I’d be like dude you need to be excommunicated you know it’s just about it’s all about place totally yeah definitely so I have a question it’s it’s almost like a technical question but so in in your work there’s a there’s a little thing that appears a lot and it’s like this square with a triangle in it and I’m trying to like figure out what what it’s what it’s referenced like there’s a version of it on the hand of this holy lady decapitating the alien you see it there’s an image of oh that nice yeah totally yeah the guy in the church yeah that image it’s called the amateur theologian I like never title my work but that one is a title nice I like that amateur theologian that’s a great image yeah I drew this because honestly like sometimes I’m working in purely like you know oh I want to explore this idea but I actually drew this because it’s like really how I feel and how I felt especially like at that time where it’s kind of like you’re you know you’re just like some random guy but like you really want to figure out these like huge theological issues that are like way beyond your comprehension or like you know you’re beyond your station in life let’s say so yeah I drew this guy and he’s almost like anguished I guess like like like screaming out kind of just like just because what I just said he like knows he’s like just this one random guy but he wants to like figure it out so yeah that’s really literally how I feel all the time yeah that it’s supposed to be like a little gem like a little like diamond or like a little jewel that little square thing he’s holding I basically used that for a few reasons I often have it on well well I kind of picked it up I guess you could say I did this image of Saint Augustine that’s probably one of my other most popular images and I took it from this Renaissance painting of him being coronated him being like crowned and they’re crowning him with these white gloves and on the white gloves is a big gem on the back of the glove and I just drew it without really thinking much about it and someone told me they were these special gloves oh yeah I think if you search for like coronation of Saint Augustine it’s on the Wikipedia page I’m pretty sure too uh someone told me there were um these gloves they would wear and the jewel represents like one of the wounds of Christ on his hand and there would be these like red gems to represent like those wounds basically so yeah so I see I see that yeah yeah so I guess you could say like I don’t really expect other people to like pick up on it necessarily but I often use it in that way where it’s like this red gem red often correlates with like passion and like the passion and like suffering in some way to me so I kind of thought of it that way it’s like this like redemptive aspect of like suffering in my mind again I wouldn’t expect anyone to like pick up on that but also the gem is kind of an interesting symbol because gems are made deep down in like the hidden parts of the earth where there’s like a ton of pressure and you know all this time and these huge like almost cosmological like geological forces but they produce these like beautiful wonders that then we have to dig down deep in the earth to get um so obviously that’s some like level of symbolism there where like you know you have to dig down to like find these things that are like hidden in the earth but ultimately you know are really beautiful because they come from this like dark weird um inaccessible place yeah so yeah it’s kind of like what I think about the gem symbolism yeah the gem symbolism is important because it especially for Christians it’s important because it it’s exactly what you said it’s it’s related also to fish symbolism which might sound surprising at first yeah it’s the idea of shiny things in the darkness right and so that that in the darkness are hiding that life is hiding in the darkness and that Christ one of the roles that Christ has is to go down and to gather the the fish gather what is alive in the dark places so save us from death go down into death take the souls out of death is part of it but it’s also this idea that the seeds are hidden in the world right the seeds of meaning the seeds of let’s say the hidden presence of God is there in the world if you can dig in and find the the hidden gems right the parable of the the pearl in the field that you know the man who sells his field who buys his field to have the pearl or um all these images of like little things like small things the seeds and and and fish and everything so yeah so the gem is perfect in that sense because you like you said you you actually go down into darkness into these dark caves and then you find these glowing things it’s almost as if they have uh they brought light down into darkness right they brought they they’re they’re shiny and uh and so then so then that ends up being the last the last image of the world too is this city which is covered in gems um yeah nice that’s true actually yeah yeah yeah it also makes me think about you know like society’s relationship to those things because the gem is also it’s almost like money like it inherently has like a financial value but it’s deeper symbolism has like nothing to do with that like commodification so i also sometimes think of it in that way it’s like something that society has taken and been like oh hey you know this is worth a lot of money right but it’s like actual value has like nothing to do with that yeah yeah no you’re totally you’re totally right um and there’s also there’s also an interesting tradition about the idea this is more of a jewish tradition but it’s interesting to think about that the first tablets that moses made you know when moses when moses received the tablets from god of the the law that the first tablets the ones he broke were made out of like a gem because it just says they’re stone tablets we always imagine the stone tablets as being like granite or something but but the idea that the first tablets would have been gems and then the second tablets would have been more coarser like coarser um material is related to this idea of something coming down like that has to be brought down lower in order to be seen but also the idea of raising something from the earth up so that it becomes full of light like this gems that come up also because we facet gems and so we we in order to make them even more resplendent we have to make them geometric right we have to make them into like geometric shapes so all of that totally is totally i think it’s very the symbolism of gems is really something that i probably should make a video on at some point because it is very fascinating yeah so where are you seeing like where do you see yourself going because that you talked about before we started recording you talked about how you’re almost you’re almost becoming over realm right now with commissions um and so where do you see yourself going in terms of choosing your projects going you know what direction would you like to go with your art well yeah it’s kind of the main thing on my mind right now um well my setup is i used to live in um i used to live in a really big city and then for a variety of reasons i just kind of packed it all up and moved out to kind of the middle of nowhere style and yeah i’m really just trying to do my art and have it work both as an outlet for everything we’ve talked about but also i mean i hate saying it this way but it’s reality of like the world like kind of like a business i guess you could say i have to like have a family and stuff like eventually so yeah it’s been really interesting man because the last year i’ve basically just been learning how to run my little studio and i do have like a little studio it’s like a little room that i’m in right now and just figuring out how to run it and everything how i want to balance projects um i’m really lucky actually because there’s not really a conflict between what i see as projects that would make the studio functional in terms of like me being able to afford to eat and then also things that i do want to be doing i’m really lucky that both of those things have synced up perfectly i don’t really know what i would do otherwise if i had to like fake you know stuff that was going to be like commercially like viable but i’m lucky that i don’t um so yeah i’m basically just figuring out how to run things man um i really want to start stepping up the caliber of what i’m outputting i’m kind of at this point where i always think of things in terms of like weaponry analogies like i have these like little armies out and all the armies are doing pretty well so now i’m back in the lab working on like you know bigger more powerful weaponry for them uh comics is something i’ve been exploring that i feel like i have a lot of like potential on i made a really long comic about like sex and pornography and my own like experiences with it recently um some more like weird tale comics also in the same style as what you’ve got going now yeah it’s actually on my website under comics if you go to my website my website’s oh and cyclops.com by the way that’s the plug under comics it should be there actually is it there i can send you the pdf right now i don’t it might not be there yet actually but i’ll send it to you right now yeah i’d be interested just because that’s the the comics is something that i’ve been that i’ve been kind of diving into oh yeah i saw that yeah you’re working on we’re working on a comic now i mean i’m not the one i’m not the artist it’s gonna it’s someone else uh but i when i wrote it with my brother and so yeah i’m excited to see i think the potential of comics is really great for someone who’s interested in symbolism you know and it’s been taken by the dark side i would say you know you’ve got people like like alan moore who’s just such an amazing has such an amazing grasp on symbolic laying out of symbolic structures within a page and so it’s like i just see him as my nemesis or something like i know nice you know that’s what you’re shooting for nice guys gotta shoot high because he’s really good he’s really good at doing that totally yeah so i send it to you right now as a pdf um yeah the comic thing is something i really like a lot because i enjoy the informational aspect of being an illustrator that’s the other thing also i really use the term illustrator intentionally because i’m not really a fine artist like my work wouldn’t be meant to like just hang like not that anyone would want this but like to hang in a museum or something like that i really do make like illustrations where it’s meant to be like casually enjoyed in this like other kind of like liminal space so yeah the comics thing is really cool for me because i like writing but i’m not a writer i would never really sit down and just write a story but when it’s paired with the images then i really do feel like it’s something that i i mean i think i’m good at it obviously i do it but yeah i think there’s a lot of power there so i made this comic it’s just called sex it’s about like my kind of history with like sex and pornography and stuff because i thought a lot of like young men could like relate to it yeah so totally different than my other stuff but also oddly like completely related to it and yeah one of my plans is i kind of do want to do like a longer like graphic novel like that where i basically just go through these like particular things that like i personally like had to deal with that i feel like a lot of like other people have also wrestled with that also really fits in with like the christian theology thing because ultimately it’s kind of how i ended up there so that’s something that i’m working on it’s kind of like a long-term project where basically i’d go through and talk about like sex and drugs and a cult and all this stuff and then have it all build up to like me kind of figuring it out a little bit more i think that’s a great idea for a story just because it’s so relevant to what’s happening now and and you know this moment let’s say where you have the kind of new atheist type atheism is kind of breaking down and because that has positive aspects but also has negative aspects which people are looking for kind of spiritual sustenance but then they’re looking all around and you know not always finding the best let’s say so it’s that could be a really good story to tell totally yeah it’s funny too because honestly like it’s a lot of stuff that i really never thought i would talk about like you know i’m on twitter i’m you know it’s at owen broadcast by the way other plug yeah but uh yeah it’s not i never imagined myself to be this guy who’s like hey by the way like i used to drink a lot like here’s what that was like and like hey by the way like i did ayahuasca like because i feel like the psychedelic stuff is something i really never thought i ended up talking about a lot because i feel like everyone’s been at a party where someone’s like hey you know i did ayahuasca and it was crazy man i’m like i never want to be that guy but then i go on like my sister’s like normi facebook and like vice news is like hey do ayahuasca lindsey lohan did ayahuasca like go on the view they’re gonna talk about ayahuasca and i’m like okay uh kind of have to like push back against this a tiny bit yeah um no i agree because people in my own circle people that i admire you know have been have been let’s say seen to it seems like they seem to be pushing psychedelics as some kind of a solution and you know i’ve never done psychedelics all right it’s not like i can i can speak out of experience but i i do feel like there’s a there’s an aspect of the message that’s missing and we need to to be careful as people kind of see this as some solution to their problems that they think that they’re going to find it there um you know you there is no chemical solution to your problems in you know in terms of spirituality it’s not it’s not possible it’s not how that’s not how any of this stuff works yeah i also feel like you know i would normally feel frankly like arrogant being like hey everyone like listen to me about this thing but for me it’s more like there’s really no and this also fits in with like the you know christian worldview tying in with like how culture is going and stuff i feel like there’s just no pushback against it at all i think that most people probably 99 percent of people have probably never heard anyone make the statement of like yeah i used to do psychedelics a ton and here’s why i think that is not a viable spiritual path i think that in everyone’s mind it’s kind of just this reefer madness thing where it’s like oh don’t take acid like you’ll turn into a a glass of orange juice or something but uh i think the intelligent case being made against that stuff is almost at zero uh that goes with a lot of other things that i’m not really about anymore but yeah it’s one of the only reasons why i kind of like started talking about it more is that i was like wow no one is either no one’s equipped to push back against it or no one’s doing it or i just haven’t found them yet but uh well i think that that’s maybe one of the issues one of the issues is that let’s say like i in my normie state in the sense that i like i’ve never done psychedelics so i don’t have the tools to push against it either i don’t i just kind of see it weird like i i’ve noticed that a lot of the things that well one of the things that i have noticed is that despite the fact that people tell me how much insight psychedelics bring brings them when i talk to people who’ve done a lot of psychedelics i don’t necessarily feel like they have more insight and so i mean not to be arrogant but i just i just don’t see your insight i see you tell me you have insight but i don’t see you able to communicate that insight somehow to the world around you so so because of that it’s like i’m like i don’t know man i i don’t want to be i don’t like i said i want to be that idiot and just say drug bad drug bad don’t don’t do drugs but at the same time i was like i don’t i haven’t seen i haven’t seen let’s say that it that it necessarily gives something good you know it seems to be like a chemical tool like any other chemical tool totally yeah yeah well it’s funny actually kind of fits with like the whole the whole fool thing that maybe we’ll talk about later but uh i think that in a lot of cases it’s almost and this goes with like frankly everything that i’m kind of against in like society honestly it’s a very like emperor new clothes style situation where the lie is kind of like so thick and everyone kind of takes it for granted that it really takes someone who is kind of willing to like maybe even look like an idiot to be like hey actually like everyone’s saying that down is up but have you ever thought about that up is up and then some people are like wow actually i never i never really thought about that actually and i feel like that about psychedelics like honestly dude like the whole time that i was in that world with a ton of different people doing it a ton of different contexts all over like whatever i feel like there was almost never anyone who expressed any skepticism whatsoever and the first time that i had someone be like hey have you ever thought about like maybe this isn’t like 100 great i was like wow that’s almost why but i actually actually i haven’t ever thought about that wow uh so yeah it’s very i love the emperor new clothes story especially now because that’s like really how it is like you need a little kid to be like what if do it what if smoking weed literally all the time is bad and you’re like oh yeah what if that is bad like so yeah i’m sure some people are listening and they’re like what are you talking about but yeah exactly in that world yeah depends who are in that world know i’m talking about and i feel obliged to reach out to people that are kind of like in the same tide pool that i used to be and let’s say so some people probably are like what are you talking about but some people are like oh that’s probably true yeah all right so now what i want to talk about uh because we’ve been talking for a while but i do want to talk about the image that we kind of made together um so i i’ve had this this theme in my mind where i’ve been talking about the notion of the fool my brother as well talks about this quite a bit in his book uh the language of creation the idea that the the fool is always turning and he’s always turning things but the strange thing happens when things are already upside down when the world is already upside down is that the fool will continue turning and then will end up reinstating the the let’s say reinstating authority or reinstating the king um and so i i had this idea that of a joker card which could have a joker on one side and a king on the other and they could it looks like the joker was turning the king and i actually tried to draw it myself and then i was like no this is not good like i just it’s just not the type of image that i’m really that i’m really it comes close to the art i’m doing it so it just didn’t never look right um and then when i saw your art i thought okay this guy this guy he’s the one who can put it together and so you did and i love it i just think it’s so awesome so maybe you can tell me a bit about the process you went through to kind of to kind of bring this image together nice nice cool man well i’m glad you i’m glad you feel that way i’m glad i was able to uh to step in in that role uh yeah it was super cool working with you and doing it um process wise well yeah you told me about that idea and it’s something that i resonated with really strongly i mean you take on commission so i think you probably know there’s a spectrum of someone being like hey can you draw this and you’re like yeah i probably could and then sometimes people are like hey can you draw this and you’re like oh yeah oh yeah buddy i can definitely draw that um so yeah something i resonated with really strongly um i really really really the fool archetype is like a big part of like what i’m about for sure um so i guess we can go into that more but yeah i really resonated with it and in terms of the visual like the purely visual like truly putting it together like in a visual sense yeah i felt like it was perfect for my style because like you were saying before it’s almost like everything in my art is kind of like flat but in this weird way where it’s like flat but also kind of like has depth i think i got that from the medieval art where um you know it’s like the picture plane that you’re looking at isn’t really a window into a three-dimensional space it’s almost utilizing like the flat nature of the surface you’re looking at to convey information to the viewer so yeah we talked about a little bit send some sketches back and forth um i think the most interesting thing for me was conveying the idea behind it of like the the the fool really flipping the king over and we got this like uh spin with the cards on the back but yeah uh one of the things i like about it and that we hadn’t talked about because i just said you know i’d like the fool to be like kind of grabbing the king and flipping him over one of the things i like and i don’t even know if you did on purpose so you can tell me if you did but i like the fact that he’s that he’s not taking the king by the hand right he’s grabbing him by the arm and it almost looks like the king is resisting it’s almost look like if the king is resisting he doesn’t actually want this to happen but if the fool’s like sorry buddy this is happening like order is coming back even if the king doesn’t want it to happen yeah no totally yeah yeah that was definitely intentional yeah when i’m working with um i guess all my work is kind of like this when i’m working with more of like a simplified like i keep using this word but informational way of like conveying visuals uh people’s body language even like really subtle aspects of it is something that i really really think about a lot probably to an extent that people would probably find like kind of weird so yeah i definitely made it intentional because i wanted to make it clear that he was like the leader pulling him um i had this art teacher once and uh she she did this exercise where she had people line up and she went to hand someone a pencil and before she gave him the pencil she had them freeze she went to hand someone a you know a ball and had them freeze hands with something else had them freeze and you could see that their hands even just the way they were uh the frozen people the way they were positioned yeah you could tell what object they were about to receive from how their hands were and that really made me realize that yeah like everything about someone’s body language even how their fingers are anything conveys like their state and you know what they’re doing and what they’re feeling so yeah i made it i made it intentional for sure and it’s also even with the thumb out it’s kind of like he’s like pulling like he’s just casual like casually kind of like authoritatively like whoop here we go like flipping over uh so yeah that was definitely intentional yeah that’s awesome so tell me a bit about the fool why you feel the fool is something that you connect with yeah um probably for a lot of reasons um on a purely like i guess not purely surface level but in the most like basic way um i feel like you know tying back to like the emperor’s new clothes thing i feel like we’re dealing with like a world whether you’re like into politics or just culture or even just theology and religion or just living your life and hanging out uh we’re kind of dealing with a world where things are so inverted and people get like the wrong idea about what you’re saying and there’s all these kind of like informational archetypes launched like i’m sure anyone watching this probably has been in a conversation where you know you say something and then what the other person hears is like a stereotype of what you’re saying and then they can’t actually hear the words that you’re trying to get out and i feel like the fool is like a really powerful way of like bypassing that it’s almost like the fool is able to cut through all the rules of like how language and information is meant to be structured in society and because of that he can get at these deeper truths without attracting these like you know crosshairs onto him i think that’s one of the one of the aspects of a jester you know the jester could even like critique the king because he’s like quote unquote like just joking um and that’s something i’ve always resonated with really strongly the whole time i’ve been you know doing anything like this even when i was just posting on twitter and stuff you know i get people dm me all the time like hey this is really cool but like are you joking or not like i can’t tell and i feel like that lets me honestly kind of like get away with a lot of stuff because you know if you feel strongly about anything if you just come out and you’re like oh i feel you know it doesn’t really matter what it is like let’s say it’s gun control it doesn’t matter if you just make a post that’s like hey um we should all be allowed to own these guns everyone’s kind of like okay like whatever but if you make it something funny or make it like a joke or maybe like subtly you know then it gets a lot more traction and people are more interested in it and especially if it’s something more controversial than that whatever it would be you can reach more people if it’s kind of like hey i’m just joking but like am i just joking like you can’t really tell um there’s there’s this alchemy book i never read it actually i just saw it in a bookstore once but it was called a serious joke and i really just loved that title because it’s like yeah it’s a joke but what the fool’s saying can also be like serious there’s not actually the dichotomy there that people imagine yeah well that’s what the people who are using memes right now those that are using memes almost in a weaponized manner that’s what they understand you know all the 4chan 8chan types they understand how the use of ironies and double ironies and all of this is a way to it’s like an inn and it’s a way to kind of change the world without people understanding exactly what’s going on yeah exactly exactly uh there’s also kind of the the fool also dovetails with like certain elements of like mysticism i guess you could say maybe you know like there’s the fools for christ and like eastern christianity and then in western christianity there’s also kind of like the mystical fool archetype saint francis is really that i mean he’s usually he’s usually not people don’t seem to see it that way but france saint francis does all the things that the fool that the fool does like he he undresses himself in public he does all kinds of crazy stuff you know so he he’s definitely a fool to a fool type as well totally yeah i also feel like when we live in this world that is such like a um i don’t even know what to call it almost like a cult of like this particular type of like intellectualism where it’s like you have these like intellectual authorities that kind of like are telling you what to think i guess would be the most basic way to put it um the fool has like a really interesting role to to play in all that i guess you could say yeah no the fool is is undermining that’s the that’s the rule of the fool and he’s and so it’s sometimes it’s dangerous right sometimes it can be it if it goes too far in one direction sometimes it can be a destabilizing force um in small doses it’s actually healthy because like you said it prevents the king from puffing himself up or thinking that he’s self-sufficient right at some point the authority thinks that they’ve got it covered when the fool is there to say hey you know what this this thing that you’re hiding here you know this secret that you’ve got is not uh is showing that there’s there’s a piece there’s some stones lacking in your tower of babel you know and so the fool is useful for that as well um but i’m really for now at least i’m really interested rather in how because the the revolutionary types the those that were there to destabilize society to a certain extent because they’ve become so powerful and they’ve actually taken over in a lot of the institutions then the fool in that role now all of a sudden is looks very strange because the fool is actually trying to take power away from those that were that were trying to be revolutionary and so it’s just interesting because it really does show this strange double irony where it’s like what happens when those what happens when contemporary art you know let’s in terms of just art into why art which is there supposedly to be transgressive is now in in the Guggenheim all over the world and there are these multi-million dollar buildings and are being propped up by the institutions like what is going on how is it possible that something which is supposed to be to be questioning authority is now taken up by the highest authority well that’s when the fool all of a sudden you know becomes a very strange figure because the fool is bringing back iconography like in your case you’re like bringing back iconography using almost like a subversive language which is still there but it’s it’s pointing towards something else and so and that’s one of the reasons why I like your work too because I could see that that double flip that I talk about or this double inversion where you know someone who is using imagery that is that looks subversive at first glance like when I look at your work at first glance like it looks like graffiti or it looks like you know kind of esoteric weird esoteric stuff but as soon as you do a double glance you see oh no there’s something else going on it’s actually pointing towards something else so yeah totally yeah that’s awesome glad you feel that way yeah that’s something else I kind of picked up that I guess really actually does fit with the fool archetype someone I really liked I mean I still like him he’s still cool is Bill Waterson the guy that did Calvin and Hobbes and he actually talked about kind of what you were just getting at a little bit where because it’s like quote unquote like just a newspaper comic and people aren’t expecting something deep from it when he did do a comic about like you know maybe like a bird dying or something like that he could kind of just like sneak in like a big punch and get at these like way deeper things themes because oh it’s like just a comic it’s just this like little thing it’s kind of like the fool like oh I’m just playing around and then boom you like sneak in something that otherwise people would have like a ton of filters up for yeah and it acts as almost like a zen colon right it actually goes really deep and will like shock it can shock your world view in a way that you you weren’t prepared for right that you weren’t guarding for let’s say and so yeah it can have a very deep effect I totally agree yeah that was the other thing that I really responded to about your initial kind of like our discussion about it was like the idea of you know what happens when things are already inverted and you have this figure that inverts things it’s actually like a really interesting like paradox I guess that’s kind of what I was getting at with like the cult of like intellectualism I guess you could say because we’re kind of in this position where like you know things are so much about like having the right view and trusting like the right authorities and stuff that I feel like the fool plays into that in an interesting way too because it’s almost like we’re in this position where like the smartest questions you could ask will sound to most people like the dumbest questions you could ask and I feel like that’s kind of like a big part of like how I got led down this road and everything you know like we’re all like so confident in all this like you know scientific explanations for the universe but then you’re like yeah but like where where the first like living thing come from you know and it sounds like kind of a dumb question but it’s not really like yeah why are there like all these things around or you know I always think of Isaac Newton for example you know kind of a bridge between like Esoterica and science like the classic like tale of him like sitting under a tree and then being like yeah wait why do apples like fall down like what’s up with that I feel there’s some fool energy there just asking like the dumbest question possible and then it leads you to you know changing the world basically in this case changing the whole world yeah totally all right man I think I think I think we’ve had a great conversation I tend to have these go for now we’ve been going even more so so I’m really looking forward to seeing how people are going to react to this image we did together so people write down your your your comments your ideas in in the comment section we can see you know what you think and uh yeah who knows it could lead to maybe some more collaborations that could be fun totally man yeah we should stay on each other’s radar I’m definitely down we could talk more whatever I think we have an interesting um you know we have certain overlaps certain things are different so yeah I really enjoyed talking to you man it’s super interesting yeah thanks for coming out yeah thanks for having me here hope you enjoyed my discussion with Owen Cyclops make sure to check out the image we made together in my Teespring account and see if it’s something you would be interested in getting this is really a collaboration we did together and so for each t-shirt or merch item that is sold part of the profits goes directly to Owen as well so everybody thanks for your attention and I will see you soon