PEER DISCUSSION: GREY GERSTEN
Published · 54:48 · 1,101 views
About This Video
A Patreon-exclusive peer discussion with Grey Gersten. The peer discussion format inverts the typical creator-audience dynamic, giving a patron's perspective and experience equal weight with Van's own. The series treats the audience as collaborators. That is not a metaphor.
Transcript
all right so this will be coming out like almost simultaneously with the video that you and i are going to
sort of write right now or figure out what it is and uh so i don't know maybe tell people who you are
okay my name is gray gersten and um i'm a musician and an artist i make
music for the spirited man and for lots of other things all right that's good so i have a little mirror over there
that i need to look to make sure that the camera is working there's a little red flashing light okay so i have a mirror on oh i put this
gopro here in case you get the urge to like shoot something so this is like the prototype oh that's cool this is the proto my glasses keep
fogging up this is the prototype whatever this is podcast or talk or whatever and um
uh yeah so the idea is to come up with ideas i've been up so long today um when do you wake up i got up at today i got a bit like 3 56.
but i was just talking to the guy on the phone he's like i get up at 3 30. oh great so you know i had an idea
that um this woman she sent a letter a handwritten letter because in the already like the video
that i published on friday i like said you know this guy sent me a letter and i was like he put a stamp on it he
wrote it and this woman from tennessee sent me a letter and it's like
you know i think people think a lot about the direction they're gonna go in or they like want to go in a certain direction they
don't or they don't know where to go and they and the idea that i i wrote down so maybe i don't know if this is what
i'm gonna make or whatever but i wrote the little voice and what to do and i already like touched on the little
voice in one of the earlier videos but you know casey in the first episode of
the nystat brothers it's i think it's the best thing he's ever made he does this like he's like
in jack in the beanstalk jack is sent by his mother to trade the cow for blah blah blah right and he
brings back magic beans right yeah and it's like the most foolish
why would you do that but then it makes you know makes all the difference in case he said goes on to say he's like
and it man we decided to buy the magic beans yeah and like right now personally in my life
i'm like it's like i guess i'm transitioning between stuff and it's getting really
hard and crazy and like people around me are suffering and uh and i'm and i just listened to mike rowe
on the on on this podcast the guy who does dirty jobs yeah you know that guy and he's like the ford the voice of ford
yeah and uh he was talking about because everyone went in our generation went to college like the trades
are so secure right now and so and i just look back i'm like i wish i had just been like an intellectual
uh electrician or uh whatever carpenter or whatever pick anything anything and you were crushing right now yeah there's kids
there's people i send my kid to school with and they're contractors and they're crushing it right now yeah and so i don't know why do we why like
why why did you do it why am i making creative stuff yeah instead of you're smart you're smarter than me
i don't know i don't know but i think you make creative stuff because you have to you know that's how i feel i really
like the older i get the more i'm like this was such an odd choice but i don't what do you have to you do you mean like
i'm full of ideas and i'm full of feelings and i'm full of abnormal perspectives and
and things and they're not gonna it's gonna be an unfulfilling life for me if i'm a tradesman because it's gonna
it's just not gonna feel right it's not gonna feel like i'm expressing my purpose here like i think people are given uh
certain things that they can offer us while they're here and i feel like that would be disrespectful to that like
i don't want to have crazy ideas i don't want to have weird or interesting ideas i don't really that's not like a desire of mine is to be a guy that has
lots of interesting ideas and then to try to convince a gallery to give me money to make to make this interesting idea i don't that's not
interesting to me at all like the fame or the vanity of it is totally uninteresting to me but nonetheless these ideas are here
they're just innately yeah that's what's that's what's coming in my mind all the time is like oh what if we did it like that or why can't we do something like
this you know and so it feels like a denial of my essence if i'm not trying to put those things out
you know yeah i mean but i wanted to say to people that are watching this if they are thinking about getting into the arts
don't do it yeah just don't just don't don't do that at all no i was gonna say i was just gonna say don't do unless you really really need to do it because it's
the kind of thing that looks incredibly cool from the outside but is really tough on the inside like if you look at
photographs of miles davis in the 1970s nothing could probably look cooler than that person in that time
like it's just one of the coolest looking images of all time but if you read about his life or watch the documentary it's just
super difficult super intense very dope you know just so i just wanted to caution people watching it because
the whole the whole like there's so much propaganda to make artists look cool and that's to sell the work
right it's not to sell the lifestyle of being an artist it's to sell their work so just when you're watching it make that distinction be like
right they made miles davis look cool so we would all buy his records not so that we would all try to become miles davis i think there's like a
a confusion there and that's miles davis that's exactly that's like and that's like a success story yeah one of the greatest jazz
musicians of all time and yet or i mean the one that's even sadder is
maybe it's not sadder i just like her music more is the great nina simone i know yeah you know no there's just that's just uh
yeah but i don't want to sound discouraging too because i think we need artists we need we need radical thinkers we need those people but just like
if you're just on the fence you're like gosh it would be really cool to like wear sunglasses and uh burn down a hotel room like get
get a real job like or do yeah just do something else well okay well let me just i'm just
because i've thought about this a lot i thought about like you have bill withers right who did both
oh that's it tape that's it all right i like that hard ending i'm just gonna done
i think that's good that's great let's see still rolling
Products & Tools Mentioned
- GoPro uses — camera discussed
People Referenced
Grey Gersten, Mike Rowe, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Bill Withers
Films & Media Referenced
- Mike Rowe's show
- Mike Rowe spokesperson