Today, church, I want to preach on the subject of one life. Now, as I begin to pray for this sermon, as I begin to ask God, God, what do you want me to pray? One day, while I was at work, this phrase began to go through my mind, one life, one life, one God, one spirit, one chance, one test, one God, one opportunity. And as I began to think about it, I was like, oh, maybe. I wanted to preach about something that'll go viral in some of my breakthrough, draws and tribulations, something that all the popular preachers are talking about now. I wanted to preach something on that because, you know, everyone can relate to it, everyone hears that, and I wanted to go viral, not gonna lie. But God wanted to preach something, it is not what's on my heart, I believe it is what's on God's heart. As I was praying that night, if God really wanted me to preach that sermon, I began to pray that night. I usually pray in the back where the soundboard is, and I pray back and forth. I never pray upfront, but I began to, you know, go up to the front. And as I was walking, I was walking over there and I saw a Bible. I was not looking at the Bible, I was looking at the stage. And when I was looking at the stage, I saw a Bible lit up right next to me, and I looked at that Bible and it said Ephesians chapter four. Didn't think much of it at the time. I went on the stage, I prayed for it. Pray for the sermon. God, this is what you really want me to do, I'll do it. And then I went back and prayed some more in the back. And Ephesians chapter four, Ephesians chapter four, I was like, man, what does that say? So I looked at Ephesians chapter four and that phrase over and over, one life, one life, one God. And Ephesians chapter four verse four through six, for there is one body and one spirit just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all in all and living through you all. And if that doesn't want to make you shout, then I don't know what we'll, if God's some glory. She got that, but they shake it. Now, one Wednesday service, after Wednesday service, I began to talk to brother Larry. And I'm sure many of you know who he is. I don't know if he's here today, but I began to talk to brother Larry.  If you would have told me three years ago that I would be seeing, that we're seeing healings that I would be seeing deliverances that I would be seeing God manifest his power that I would see the evidence of the greatness of God. I would have told you, joking, you must be crazy. You're lying to me, but we are truly seeing the power of God being manifested. Somebody give God some praise. Sorry, I'm making you praise God so much, my bad. And I was talking to brother Larry and we began to talk and you know, Jacob, all these kids, you know, are on this phone addicted to the phone and on that tic-tac or tic-tac or whatever the heck it's called in. And he began to say, all these kids are, you know, on the phones, you know, even in the churches.  You are so blessed to be raised by the leadership here. And I'm so thankful. And I truly believe that I am so, so, so blessed because of my pastors who poured into me, who gave me wisdom and guidance. Pastor Martin, Pastor Vasili, Pastor Ilya, and Pastor Vlad and newly ordained pastor Zach, come on somebody. And I am so, so grateful of this church. That wasn't a point of the story, but I'm getting to it. And he began to say to me, you know what, Jacob, if I could live my life one more time, if I could push a restart button and I would start at birth, I would live my life for Jesus. He said, no, Brother Larry, I think he's 72, 73 years old. And he said, if I could live my life one more time, I would do it for Jesus. Now, if you don't know Brother Larry, if you don't know his story, at the age of 17, he started drinking, he started smoking, and he started sleeping around, he started partying. And for 11 years, somebody say 11 years, he was a captive to addiction. He was a captive to sin. He was a captive to the devil. But in 1983, the power of God transformed his life. The power of God encountered him. And he was forever changed. He was free from every addiction. And since 1983, Brother Larry has been serving the Lord with all his heart. Thankful for Brother Larry. If you're watching this, Brother Larry, if you're here, oh, I think he's right there. Thank you, Brother Larry. And I began to realize that Brother Larry had tasted the two sides. Brother Larry has tasted sin, and he has also tasted God. Brother Larry has lived in darkness, and he has also lived in light. Brother Larry has seen and heard the things that the devil can offer. For 11 years, for a full decade and some change, for 11 years, Brother Larry was a captive, was a slave in a jail cell. For no hope, no future. But God encountered him, and he tasted both sides. He knew what the devil could give him, and he knew what God can give him. But I want to tell you today that he's tasted both sides. And he said, it tastes better to serve Jesus. It tastes better to live for God. It tastes better to serve the great God Almighty. The devil's not going to give me what I desire. Jesus is going to give me what I desire. The devil's not going to give me an eternal life. Jesus is going to give me an eternal life.  You only have one God. And you only have one opportunity to live for Jesus. Life is like a test. Once it's over, pencils down. The tests are in the teacher's hands. You're not going to say, hey, teacher, hold on, one more time. I know I messed up on question number two, and I need to fix that real quick. The teacher said, no, you had your time. You had the opportunity to answer that question. You had your opportunity to study. And the teacher will say, I'm going to grade your test based on your answers now. There's no time for changing answers. There's no more time to switch the answers, to fill in the other bubble instead of putting A, you put B. God's going to grade your test. And depending on how we live our life here on earth, God's going to grade our test. God's going to, when we go on judgment day, we will either hear one of two things, good and faithful servant you make to the kingdom of heaven, or which I believe and I hope that none of us here will hear this from the words, from the mouth of God. Depart from me, I never knew you. And we will have what is made for us, which is the second death, which is the lake of fire. Now, a lot of people say that, how could God do that to me? I had a broken family, I had addictions, and how could God reject me?    I decided to live by my own rules and regulations.  But I want to tell you today, church, here is the good news.  That is the good news that we have as a body of Christ. That is the good news that we have as believers, that whoever believes in him, shall have everlasting life.  Denying Jesus is not all the time gonna be like Peter, where they ask him, hey, are you with them? Are you with Jesus? Are you a disciple? He said, no, three times. Many times it's not gonna be like that. Many times it's gonna be hidden. Many times the sin we commit is denying Jesus. It's not always gonna be, are you a Christian?  No, but it's always something. Devil will not do that. That's not how a devil works nowadays.  We're denying Jesus.  No, you're denying Jesus. You wanna go sin? You wanna go hang out with that girl, that guy?  That is denying Jesus. Living by the flesh is denying Jesus. Now, Jacob, you've made all this point of why we should serve God.  But how do we live a life? I'll tell you right now, sir, we can, we are equipped with things that we must do every single day as a believer, as a Christian. The Bible says whoever wants to save his life must lose it. How do we lose our life? Point number one, live out of your connection to God. Someone can help me with this power cord over here. Everybody just start praying in tongues, just kidding. Because of the cross, I wanna tell you something. There's a verse in Galatians 2.20. It says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith. Somebody say faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So Jesus, because of the cross, it is nothing that we can do to access the power. It is nothing that we can do to access forgiveness. It is nothing that we've done. The Bible says we were once enemies of Jesus. But because of the cross, because he shed his blood for us, we may now have his full power. We may now have this full healing. Like Danny said, he does not wanna just heal one portion of your body. He wants to heal you completely inside and out. Now I believe that Christ lives in us. Christ lives in me, Christ lives in you. Those people in the back and you on the front. Christ lives in us. But if we do not pray, if we do not read the Bible, those powers, those gifts, those miracle signs and wonders will not manifest. It is a gift, it is our portion, but it will not manifest unless we pray. And prayer is like the nervous system. Prayer to the Christian is like the nervous system to the body, what the nervous system does. I have my arm right here. I don't expect my arm to move on its own. I don't expect my arm to lift weights on its own. I don't expect my arm to play piano on its own. I don't expect my arm to lift things up, to pull things down, to build things, to destroy things. My brain will send signals on my decision.  The signals is what helps the arm move.  The nervous system is sending signals. My brain is sending signals. The prayer is your signal sent to the situation. You will not have circumstances, trials and tribulations, storms turn around if you do not pray.  I command you in the name of Jesus, every Satan, every depression, every suicide. In the name of Jesus, I cast you out. The prayer language is a signal sent to situations, to trials, to storms, to certain circumstances where it is contrary to what heaven has. It is contrary to what the word of God says. Now prayer connects. Oh, hopefully it turns on, praise Jesus. Come on, sorry cameras if that's too bright. I don't know. Prayer is what allows the power to flow. Come on somebody, prayer is what sends signals. Prayer is what allows the power to flow. Jesus is connected to God. Jesus is connected to us. But if we do not pray, we will not receive the manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit Church. I wanna tell you today, there is power in your prayer. The Bible says life and death is held between the mouth of the believer. It's gonna ruin my analogy if I just keep it on. Prayer is powerful. John Wesley said, man cannot without God and God will not without man. Let me say that one more time. Man cannot without God and God will not without man. It's not that God is unable to be connected to you. It's not that we are connected. It's not that God is unable to work miracle signs and wonders, but the question is, are you able to pray? The, I think John Wesley said again, that God will do nothing on this earth unless man prays. God will do nothing. God will transform nothing. God will never turn anything around. Unless the believer prays, the devil cannot stop God's power from operating in your life. The devil cannot destroy. The devil cannot malfunction. The devil cannot manipulate God's power in your life. The devil cannot turn around, cannot block the God's power in your life. But the devil will try everything that is in him from stopping you from prayer. The devil will try everything, every planet, every scheme, every weapon that is trying to form against you. He is trying to stop you from praying. He is trying to stop me. Why do you think you have thoughts like, I'm too tired, I'm too busy? The devil is saying, I don't want you to pray because demons will be cast out. I don't want you to pray because sicknesses will leave. I don't want you to pray because the loss will be saved.  That's why we need to pray. We need to pray because we will see the manifestation of God. You see, Elijah, he was a man. The Bible says he was like me and you. He was a flesh and blood. He was not special. He did not have diamonds, he did not levitate anywhere. He walked as a human being. But the Bible says that he saw the supernatural. He saw miracle signs and wonders. He saw the evidence of the greatness of God. Why?  You will see the power of God working in your life. And there's a quote that I found. It's a Christian who does not pray. It's like the prince in beggars clothes who stands inches from his father's throne but does not ask.  We will go always from deliverance to deliverance instead of walking in dominion. We will always go from sickness to sickness instead of walking in healing. If you pray, 1st John 5, 14 through 15, now this is the good news. Now this is a confidence that we have in him. I want to tell you that you can have confidence in God of heaven. You can have confidence in Jehovah Jireh. The Bible says, now this is a confidence that we have in him. That if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we ask of him. You will have the petitions that you ask of God according to his will, but what is his will? How do we find out the will? How do we know Jesus? How can we please Jesus? How can we pray to Jesus? Well, I want to tell you, the only way you can know Jesus is through the word of God. The word of God was not meant to be only memorized. You see, it was meant to be memorized as well. The Bible says that I have hidden your word in my heart that I may not sin. We are meant to memorize, but not only memorize. The Bible says that you will deceive yourselves if you only hear and not do the word of God. Now, we will know the word of God by reading the word of God. Some of you say, how can I be a good Christian? How can I be a good businessman? You go to the word of God. How can I be a good husband? You go to the word of God. Well, how can I be a good father?  The Bible will guide you. It is not something to be as a check mark. It is something to live upon. The Bible says the wise men build their life upon the foundation of the rock, but the foolish men build their life on the sand that when storms, that when tribulations come, that when problems come your way, that when come on somebody, lockdown comes your way. You will sin firmer on the rock of God. You will sin firmer on the rock of God. The Bible says that everything that I touch will prosper. We must read the word of God.  And there's this quote that I heard. What is more important? Praying or reading the Bible? Well, I want to tell you what is more important? Breathing in or breathing out? What is more important? Breathing in or breathing out? They are equally both so, so important. See, the Bible is not only something because the Pharisees memorized the Bible. You could put a nail through the Bible and they could know which words that the nail punctured, but they still failed to see who God was. They were still failed to see who God truly was. He was a son of God, but they called him a teacher. The Bible says there was a woman who came to Jesus with the alabaster oil anointed him and did all these things. But the Pharisees said, if only he knew who that woman was, but if only they knew who Jesus was, they did not even know who God was. Though they memorized all the scripture, they did not know who God was. Here's an example. Say, God forbid a man kills another man. And in the court of law, he's guilty. And the judge says, how do you plead? What's your defense?   That is not living. Just memorizing the word of God is not enough. We have to live and build our life on the word of God. Now I want to tell you some good news. Jeremiah 17.5, it says, thus saith the Lord curses. Well, good news starting off with curses, Lord, but I'll get to the good news right now. Jeremiah 17.5, it says, thus saith the Lord. Curse is a man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord. Jeremiah 17.7 through 8 says, bless is a man who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is in the Lord, for he shall be like a tree planted by the waters which spreads out its roots by the river and will not fear when heat comes. But its leaf will be green and will not anxious in the year of drought nor will cease from yielding fruit. Now in this time of lockdown, you will not cease from yielding fruit. Why? Because you build your life on the word of God. You trust in what God says. Your leaves will not turn greener. You will not go dry it. You will not live in poverty. Why? Because the word of God says he is our provider. He is Jehovah Jireh. He's the God of Abraham. Isaac and Jacob. Somebody shout out hallelujah in this place. Point number two, turn on the switch. Truly, truly in John 12, 24 says, truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. The best thing that you can do for your life is to die to yourself. It's kind of like an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp. It's the best thing you can do for your life. The best thing you can do for your life. The best way to save your life is to lose it, the Bible says. And to deny yourself is not to deny, many people think, I can't have any more fun. No more friends. I can't hang out with people anymore. Spent all my time with God. Can't be rich.  No, you're not rejecting fun. You're not rejecting, you're not rejecting a good time. With God is the best time. Let me tell you somebody, during worship, I had the best time that I ever had in my 18 years of life. With God is the best thing you can do for your life. Surrendering, denying yourself is the best thing. Now if you die, you will produce much fruit. The Bible says denying yourself is denying sin. Denying yourself is denying depression. Denying yourself is denying addiction. Denying yourself is denying what the world has to offer. You see, many people think, I can't really deny myself. It's so easy for you because you're on the pulpit. And no, the Bible says the grace of God does not empower us to sin more. God forgives by his grace and his mercy. Yes, it is true. God has mercy. Yes, it is true. He has grace upon our life. But that grace, that mercy, that forgiveness was not meant for you to sin more. It was meant for you to be empowered to not sin, to reject the devil, to say, you know what? I'm not gonna do this today. I'm gonna be in the Word of God.   That is denying yourself. First John 4-4, it says, little children, you are from God. You have overcome them. For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. I wanna tell you, church, the person, the greatest example that we can see is self-denial is Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. He came here for 30 plus years. The Bible says, as a ransom to pay for your sins. He got whipped on his back, numerous whips. He got beat until he was unrecognizable. He was rejected by his own disciples. God came on this earth to pay for your sin, to overcome the world. And because he overcome the world, we can overcome sin. We can overcome addiction.  We can overcome the devil. We can overcome the Bible says that I can trample on snakes and scorpions. I can trample on every demon. I can trample on every power of darkness that tries to come against me. No weapons may be formed against you. They will not prosper. Somebody say with me, they will not prosper. One more time, they will not prosper in the name of Jesus Christ. You are not struggling. This is what set me free personally from sin. You do not struggle with sin. Sin is not your portion. Addiction is not your portion. I wanna declare over every single person in this room, sin is not your portion. You do not struggle with sin. You do not struggle with addiction. You do not struggle with alcohol and drugs. You do not struggle with women. You do not struggle with manner. You do not struggle with things of the world because greater is he that lives in you.  That's how we can overcome Jesus. That who we... I was about to say that's how we can overcome Jesus. Lord, have mercy on my soul. That's turning on the switch. Saying, is it dark? Yeah, it is dark. So saying no to darkness, saying yes to light. Sorry for those in the front row. And point number three is shine. Now, doesn't being connected in prayer and Bible reading denying yourself, isn't that the will of God? Yes, but the Bible also says, to go into the nations, making disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God did not call us. I wanna tell you church, I want you to hear this clearly.  God called you to go into the nations. Go to your family and preach the gospel. Go to your school and preach the gospel. Go to your friends and preach the gospel. Unashamedly and boldly, the Bible says, my miracles will accompany your words. As you preach the word of God, miracles will begin to flow. The power of God will begin to flow out of you. And God called us to shine. The Bible says that we are the salt of the earth. We are the light, a city upon the hill. You may be the only Jesus that a person can hear. You may be the only Jesus that a person can see. You may be the only Jesus that a person has. You may be the only person that a Jesus can experience. You may be the only Jesus a person can experience. Come on somebody. Chippin' all my words over here. Now, there's a man named Mordecai. And he was telling Esther, he sacrificed her life.  Now, Mordecai was telling Esther, you need to do something about this. You need to sacrifice your life for the good of the people. Now, our life was not meant to be just based on our own precepts, based on our own wills, based on our own emotions. The Bible says, the passions and desires is crucified with cross on the cross. Yes, it is good to pray. Yes, it is good to read the Bible. But we have all this information. We have all this wisdom inside of us. But if we do not share it, it may cost some lives. And if you do not share it, God will use another light bulb. God will replace you. The Bible says, if you do not do it, salvation will come from another camp. Mordecai was telling Esther, salvation will come from another camp. I will raise someone else to do it if you do not want to do it. If you do not answer the call, if you do not preach the gospel, the Bible calls us to preach the gospel, to make disciples, not just to preach it once, but to make disciples. Doing the will of God is not just, hey, God loves you, and then run away from there. You get the number, you get plugged in with them, you stay connected with them, you have a home group with them, you grow together, you learn together, you do life together. That is making a disciple. Now, I turn on the switch. The power is connected, but if you're not plugged in to the purpose of God, you will not shine. If you do not preach the gospel, the gospel will not be preached. I wonder how many lives will still be in church? How many people would still pray? How many people would still read the Bible if our senior pastor, Pastor Vasili, did not answer the call upon his life? Now I think about that often. Well, would I still be here if a man said, no, Jesus, I'm too comfortable where I am? He came all the way from another country to establish a ministry here in America. God called him here. Though he was struggling, though he did not have a building yet, he still said yes to the call of God. And look what's around you. Look at this building. Look at the lights. Look at the people around you to the left and your right. They are here because a man said, yes, God, I will do your will. I will say yes to the call. I will be a light upon the earth. I will be the salt of the earth. And we cannot shine if we're not plugged in.  Bible says for us to be the salt of the earth. The earth is flavorless, but we're meant to be the salt. Salt preserves. Salt saves the flavor. We are meant to be lambs. We are meant to be shining upon this world. I heard this one quote that we are meant to be mirrors reflecting Jesus. Every single way that we walk, every single way that we talk, every single way that we do things, we are meant to reflect Jesus. The way we love, the way we are husbands, the way we are fathers, the way we are friends, the way we are brothers and sisters. We are meant to shine upon the earth, reflecting Jesus.  When people see you, they experience the love of God. When people see you, and when you pray, miracles start to happen. Elijah was just a normal man, but because he prayed, because he self-denied, because he did all these things, he began to see the supernatural. And I wanna end with this. In John eight through 12, eight and 12, again, Jesus spoke to them saying, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me, will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. I wanna tell you church, following Jesus was the best decision that I can make, and it's the best decision you can ever make. Following Jesus, giving your life completely surrendered to God, is the best decision you can do for your life. Well, hold on. You may say, you know, the Bible says that though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but there's a difference between these two words. One says I will walk through the valley, and one will says I will walk in light. You will walk, you may sometimes, here's an example, here's just two rooms, pretend there's two rooms, and both of them are lit up, but there's a dark hallway. And you have to walk through that hallway. You're not walking in darkness. You're walking through darkness from light to light.  Following Jesus is gonna take some cutting off of people. Following Jesus is gonna hurt sometimes, but in the end, you're gonna walk from glory to glory. The Bible says that he will delete you and guide you into victory. He will prosper you. He will prosper your marriage. He will prosper your kids. He will prosper your businesses. He will prosper your health. He will prosper your life. You will be walking from victory to victory. You will be walking in the light of the world. You will walking and you will shine upon the earth because you follow Jesus.  I want to encourage you guys, follow Jesus. No matter what happens, follow Jesus. No matter what you're going through, follow Jesus. The Bible says that there was a Samaritan village that rejected Jesus. Now I pray and I hope that none of us will be like this village.  Jesus said, no, I came not to destroy but to save.  Jesus does not want to make anything fail. The Bible says he called us to have a life and life more abundantly. God of heaven does not want to see you fail. He loves blessing you. He loves talking with you. He loves being there with you every second of the day. He loves you. He cares for you. But the Samaritan village rejected Jesus and they were not able to experience Jesus because they rejected him, because they didn't want him in their land. They were not able to because in that time when Jesus was on earth, as he was walking around, he was performing miracle signs and wonders. Let me tell you church, the lepers were cleanser. The blind could see the dead were raised to life. The deaf could hear the poor had the gospel preached to them because people accepted him.


Hello everyone, welcome to another live video here on Narc Survivor. If you haven't seen today's premiere, why didn't the narcissist stick it out with you? I highly recommend that you check that out. Lots of good information in there. So, let's discuss this. Why didn't the narcissist stick it out with you? I mean, you've got to think that they targeted you for a reason. They could have targeted someone else if they wanted to. A narcissist tend to have many options when it comes to sources of supply. So for some reason they chose you out of everyone else. And let's think, what is a narcissist looking for? They're looking for a sense of security and stability. They're looking for convenience. They're looking for someone who they deem to be desirable and attractive. Powerful. Successful. They're looking for someone who will make them look good. Who will make them feel good. Who will give them what they want. And of course in the beginning, you were giving them what they wanted. You listened to their demands, but then back then they weren't even really demands because they didn't have to demand anything from you. We think that they're just these nice friendly people. So we want to help them. We want to give them what they want. We don't realise that we're being taken advantage of. They might love bombers in the beginning. Making us think that it's reciprocal. Or maybe they'll play the victim and use future faking. Everything seems to be going their way. So naturally, of course they're going to stick around. If a narcissist is getting what they want, why would they ever leave? The problem is, when they do things wrong, which they inevitably do, they can't help but put you down. Disrespect you. They have to feel in control. They have to feel superior. So they end up putting you down. They end up pointing out how something isn't good enough even though you're really trying your best to fulfil their needs. It's never enough for them. And maybe you start questioning and confronting them. You want to know what's going on. It's like the person you see is very different to who you saw in the beginning because they can't maintain it for long periods of time. They could do a short burst, but then after that, you start to see what they really are. They're puny, weak and small. It's just in that moment and in the beginning, they looked a lot bigger and better than they actually were. Can you hear me now? Okay, great. Yeah, it just gets really confusing. It just messes with your mind because the difference between what you see at the beginning it's just completely different and the truth is what you saw at the beginning, that was not really them. It's who you see afterwards. That's who they really are. These puny, weak, fragile, that's them. And they do their best to hide it. They don't want you to realize how weak and broken they really are. But when you realize that, they can't be around you anymore. They can't be in your presence. They need someone to validate their false self. They need someone to validate the illusion. And if you can't do that, they're not going to want to be around you anymore.   They just have to keep it real with you there. They don't care. They will use you up and burn you out. So you've got nothing left, even for yourself. And then that's when they'll just leave you. They'll just leave you for dead. And then they'll go out and find a fresh source of supply that still has their life and energy, their passions, dreams and aspirations, resources, all of these things, which they haven't used up yet, and they'll go to that person while you're left on your own with nothing.  They're doing everything that you never did that maybe you couldn't do when in reality that's something to be proud of. If you didn't give your all to the narcissist, count yourself lucky because many people do. They get walked all over, treated like a doormat because that's what they're really looking for.  And then they go and find someone who is willing to be their fool, but they try to make it look like that's their prince or princess, someone who is always there for them, does whatever they want, and in reality that's just someone they've manipulated. And the only reason why they left you, they didn't stick it out with you, is because you were no longer susceptible to their manipulation, but they tried to make it out like there was something wrong with you. They want to make you think that because you don't just accept them as they are, they don't know quite what they're doing to you. They want you to think that that means there's something wrong with you, but either way you can't win because it's inevitably going to lead to the devaluation phase. And once you've seen what these narcissists are really like, what they're really capable of, it doesn't matter how much you think you love them, how much you think you care about them. In fact, the more you love and care for them at that point, the more they're going to hate and resent you, because deep down they know they're not meant to be loved.  They know you don't really want them. They already know that. Because right from the beginning, they weren't being genuine with you. They lured you in with lies and manipulations, making you think you were getting into something very different from what it actually was. So even if you think you love them, or you care for them deep down, they know that's not true. They know you're just under their spell, and in fact, it doesn't matter about loving them once you've seen who they really are at that point and what they're capable of. The narcissist doesn't even want you to want them. Or to love them. They just want you to desire their false self. And once you've seen what they're like, because inevitably as time goes by, they will say and do all of these horrible things to you. They know you're never going to see them the same way after that. They know it's too late. They know it's game over, which is why from that point on, although they may return to the love bombing now and again, just to see if they can pull you back in, they're mostly just going to devalue you, point out all of your flaws and weaknesses. It's like what reason do they have? What incentive have they got to act good? They do evil things because they believe that that's going to put them on the path that they want. That's going to get them their desired result. Because if a person really believed that they could get what they want by doing good, why wouldn't they? Why else would someone do evil unless they believed that was going to get them what they want rather than them doing good? If you haven't seen the premiere yet, please check it out. It has a lot of good information in it. And if the narcissist didn't stick with you, please let me know below. I'd like to hear about your experience and what happened. I'm just sitting in the car by the beach here. The car's shaking. It's very windy. Oracle Nazira Luara says, no, they didn't stick it out. They always left when I needed them. I was always there when no one wasn't for them. That's just how it is with these narcissists. And it's very sad. You might jump out in front of a moving car for them, but they wouldn't do the same for you. If a car was coming towards you and about to mow you down, they wouldn't stick around. Pai Tumbler says, you're always alone with a knock. It's worse than being alone. That's so true. All they really care about is their own feelings and needs. When you're around them, everything revolves around them. They haven't got the capacity to consider you because they're constantly in survival mode. Thank you for the donation, Angela. I greatly appreciate it. Thanks for the donation, Plum Duff. Yeah, a lot of people. When these narcissists leave them, it just leaves them looking at themselves and wondering, what's wrong? What did I do? Why would they just leave me? It makes you think that you're not good enough. And then they try to show you this new source.  They do things with them that they didn't do with you. They make it out like they're so serious about this new person. While with you, it was just a joke. They really want to hurt you because hurt people hurt people. And anyone who's doing that when they're with someone else and they're supposed to have moved on is not happy at all. Someone's happy and they've healed and they've moved on. They will wish the best for you. So whenever these people are trying to hurt you they're trying to be mean to you that should reveal to you how they feel. Thanks for the donation, Kenneth. These people aren't happy at all. They're very insecure. Always trying to take it out on someone and when they leave you that's intended to hurt you. It's intended to upset you. They're trying to project their emotions onto you. What a narcissist says and does always says more about themselves than it ever does about you. Well, anyone else because these people are disconnected when you create a false self you disconnect yourself from reality which means that they can't even see you or they can see as extensions of themselves. You think that they're looking at you. You think that they're analysing what you're doing but no, whenever they are around someone they're either going to be projecting their positive or negative traits onto them and they're going to assign those traits to you to projection which is why they'll make accusations or they'll say something about you and it just makes you think wait, that's exactly what you do because they can't even see you so never take anything these people say or do seriously. They'll always want to make you think something to do with you but no, they just want to disown all of these parts about themselves and they've been doing it for a very long time. They abandoned who they really are and created this false self but to get what they want with such a strong sense of arrogance and entitlement naturally that causes them to do things that they know are not right things that they're not proud of and they try to dump that onto you but just know it's nothing to do with you people often wonder why did this narcissist even come into my life they look at themselves and wonder what's wrong with me and while we should take responsibility for why we attract them into our lives the truth is it's often just because you're a good person you care too much you care for other people more than you care for yourself and they see that and that is why they want to get involved with you anyway I hope this live has been helpful for you please check out the premiere if you haven't seen it yet there will be more premieres tomorrow so thank you all for joining and I hope to see you then


Spence, you gotta be honest here. How do you feel about the Mavs not making the playoffs after trading, you know?  I mean, there's a certain level of, you know, happiness from the, from the pettier sides of my psyche. Um, you know, they're my friends though. So, you know, I didn't want to see it go down like that.  They're a playoff caliber team. Obviously they had their mishaps and things that didn't allow them to see the postseason.  I'm kind of a little bit happy.


Same, same thing out of rivers that we've seen in the past. Same on interview, yeah, great player, smart, one of the smartest quarterbacks in the league. Throws a great anticipation, understands the offense, been playing the same office for a long time, so it's going to be a good challenge. I've heard anticipation from the Braves, the Deans, and now you. Yeah. How do you defend anticipation? I think a lot of quarterbacks try to throw in anticipation, but he just he's pretty much mastered that. And he has the ultimate trust in the offense. And I think sometimes he throws the spots, and he expects guys to be there. I think for him, he trusts his guys. He knows where they're going to be. So it's very hard to defend, but we'll be all right. Hunter Henry has been a guy that has been a current class for a couple years, but he's been back this year and making an impact. What does he do for their offense? Yeah, he scored two touchdowns late in that Steelers game in the red zone. They weren't really targeting their tight ends as much, and now that he's back, he's more involved. It's a small sample right now, so I'm sure they're going to get him involved. But he's a good tight end. He's reliable in the run-in pass, and Rivers trust him. So if Rivers trusts you, he'll get you the ball. And what makes him teamer now? It's his route-running ability. I mean, everybody knows that. I mean, you knew the answer to that question. She's going to hear it from me. Route-running, great hands, mentality. I think people don't talk about people's mentality all the time, but I think he wants the ball. I think he has that dog mentality, that alpha male mentality. We came in together. I have a lot of respect for him.


we're good Hello, and welcome we're doing this it's happening starting the 12-hour web-a-thon I'm gonna be here stuff before We're already Last time I Which is great We're already ahead of the game before we started which is awesome And I want to thank all those More shout-outs and whatnot Later on but we're gonna get right into it today. I've got a lot of special guests Today with me throughout the day. It's gonna be pretty phenomenal. This is Linda Mac and Ernie Linda just directed my latest show firecracker bye-bye. So if any of you have seen that show She's the one who helped shape it Somebody else called it fun Cool So Really So the first thing that we're gonna talk about today that we're gonna start out with is Oh Yeah Okay, so basically There we go the weird background that I should be in front of but we're getting there folks We're having some what? So Matt, okay, we're having some technical stuff, you know, that's the way it rolls. Oh, I also Great, I did I also want to thank howl around for helping us make this happen at any point if you are on social media and want to tweet about this you have to tag you play You're on Facebook So Linda and I are gonna talk a little bit about icons and what icons are in our culture For me it's interesting. We were just talking before we started about Club But yeah, like all of these people who died at the age of 27 I guess I just wonder what your perspective is on people Hey guys, I can hear everything you're saying if you could be a little choir, that's great Success in terms of them becoming really successful at a young age Challenge Now are we talking Nelson Mandela or are we talking well? That's interesting I guess when I think of icon In Right In a sentence like one of the things that I that I have to work with is branding yourself. Which is something you have to do is so strange. And so, like Oprah, Oprah's totally branded. Oh, magazine, oh television, and all this stuff, but like what is that, what is that duty of a person? How does a person on an ego level handle that type of success, supposedly, supposedly success and fame, and stay like a grounded, regular normal? I have sort of a strange little track on this because my brother-in-law achieves enormous fame and he does right it. So, it's a song that tends to do a film, sort of a hard-finding way to do that song, but the book is brilliant. And if you're using the word icon and iconography and that notion, you know, that book was the iconograph iconography of the time. And so it was really fascinating to a young person to be in my company and observing sort of iconography being built or recognized because the 80s were the 80s and no one, and we were in the 80s, so no one really knew how to name the 80s. And Jay did, you know, Jay built a story that really nailed the iconographic quality of the 80s and then he reaped the multitude of rewards and the very serious of the 80s. And that's, I think, where you're going, is what does that level of fame duty we're supposed to be doing? Yeah, that level of success. Like, what is that? It's really tough. Because we talk a lot about, and I think this is where the whole kind of self-help thing that comes in with the show and whatnot, and is this, you want to be successful, so you've got to like really kind of coordinate with it. But what does that even mean, though? Well, like what is successful? Right. You know, is it money, is it fame, is it? A lot of times it comes to mind. Like, in terms of when...  But I think on kind of a level of being an artist. Okay, now we're talking about being an artist. Yeah. Being a successful artist, now actually that's kind of wacky too. So success, does that mean critical success? Does that mean financial success? Like, would you say that, who can I come up with? Would you say that the real housewives of Miami are successful? Maybe that was their goal, but probably their goals are much bigger and their aspirations are much bigger than that. Like that happens. And actually that's not a good one because they're not artists. They don't self-identify as artists. Would you say that? Well, like for example, I was just interviewing a friend of mine, Mary Beth, at the Writers Mill where I do writing and share a space. Writers Mill, great place. Florence, you should think about joining. Plug, plug, okay, good. I have a commercial for them too. But I was talking to her about, she got published when she was really young. It went really well. And then since then, trying to get published has been incredibly hard. That was, that was J-Stick too. We got the big book and then what happens after. Yeah, so books upon books. And so we were talking about personal success, internal success versus external success and all that. And she said, well, here's the thing. She's like, I've got a great family life, a great marriage and all that stuff. I feel fulfilled by that, but I don't feel successful. What feels successful to me is to get published. She's like, I want to get published again through a publishing house. I'm like, what about self-publishing? She's like, well, I thought about that. And it really made me think about fulfillment versus success in terms of getting- And you have to craft that for yourself what that success is. Exactly, exactly. But again, like with the rhetoric, what is that, where do we go with that? That's what I'm wondering with you. So you said it's different for me, so what do you mean by that? Oh, it's different for me personally because I don't really use words like success. That's not really a word that I embrace or connect to that much, but I definitely connect to fulfillment and happiness and am I serving at the level at which I can serve or I'm able to serve? Like am I doing what I was brought here to do? Or what allows me to fire on all my cylinders? Then I feel good and I feel like that's success. Like I feel, I don't know, I feel like I have a- You have a commercial over your face. I have a commercial over my face. You have a commercial over your face. Now it's gone. It's gone. That was interesting. That was fun. I don't know what's going on. None of us ever does. Okay, so success doesn't, that doesn't sit, what does it mean to you that you don't care about it? Or what? It just doesn't really, it's just not really, it's not really in my vocabulary that much. You know what I mean? Like to me, I feel really good. Is it a good feeling? Is it a bad feeling? I feel really good about the work we did on Firecracker Bye Bye. I didn't get famous doing that. I didn't, you know, oh, what did I get? I got the satisfaction of doing that work, which I felt we did on a very high level. And I felt like what came from that, the product that came from that is a beautiful product. So that's really all I'm looking for. And I guess success for me would be to expand the ways in which I can do that kind of work so that I can, again, serve, you know, more and more and more and more so that I'm serving to my fullest capacity. That's to me, that will make me feel the best. So that seems like it goes more into the realm of fulfillment. I think it does, I think it does. But I wouldn't be unhappy to have that recognized. There we go, there's a word, recognition. Recognition as opposed to success. Oh, recognition, okay. That is a word I like. Okay. I would like to be recognized for the hard and good work that I have attempted to do. Okay. And what does that look like? What does that look like? Yeah. Yeah, that, I don't know if I'm smart enough to know. However that wants to be, you know, but I definitely don't have yearning to be Madonna. I don't really want to be Madonna. Yeah, I don't want to be Madonna either. Do you want to be Madonna? No, although I admire her for her intelligence and her ability to reinvent herself and her ability, and here's the best thing about Madonna. You could go to a Halloween party every year for the next five years and come as a different Madonna and everybody would know which Madonna you were. That's true. Well, remember when she came out with the book Sex? I love that book, yeah. Okay, so she came out with that book. Wait, was that at the same time as the pointy booby ice cream cone outfit? I think it was pre- Pre-booby ice cream cone outfit. Yeah, okay. She was going in that, you know, direction of now I'm gonna do an art book. Yeah, there we go. Now we're back to the word art. Art? It's an art book. It's an art book. It's an art book. It's kind of a dirty book, but it's kind of a, I don't know, I actually feel like it's a Madonna mind book, which is its own thing. Right. But it's different from art because it's crafted to brand her. It's crafted to. It's crafted to brand her. But it's also trying to be arty. Yeah, but only because that would be the thing that would get Madonna to the brand that she wanted at that moment in time. True, true. You know what I mean? True. I don't think, I'd be a little surprised if you point blank asked Madonna if she thought she was an artist. I think she might do a little hesitation on that. Yeah. Because I think she's more of a genius marketing machine. Oh God. That. And utilizes whatever. Yeah, she is a marketing machine. Genius. Yeah, that's what she does. Yeah. That's what she's really, really phenomenal. And then if we flip back to Oprah, Oprah I think has done a great job discerning who can market her well and what pieces can come upon one another. Because Oprah seems like she's a machine too and a marketing machine too. Yeah. But she seems like she's more about purpose. Mm-hmm. I don't know if I have this one down. She's got a different take. She's got a different take on it. Yeah. And it may be, I mean, maybe in the cynical head, she just, instead of making an arty book, she made a self-help book. Or just a self-helpy magazine. Yeah, a self-helpy conglomerate. I think, yeah, I think that it is. It is like she's monopolized self-help. Because if anything comes through her and becomes an Oprah book of the mind. Oh yeah, there's that. Or any kind of, anything where she, you know, I mean, she took that. There's where you use your powers for good instead of evil. Well, Dr. Phil, she made Dr. Phil. She made Rachel Ray. She made Dr. Oz. Yeah. And that was mindful. That's not, and I don't, that's the other thing I really like about some of these amazing human beings who have had all of these incredible accomplishments is they've set their mind to something and created it. That's sort of back to the conversation we were having before is like, what can you make happen? Or what can you allow to happen? Or how do you get that going? And there's a real mindful quality to the way that they've crafted their branding. Yeah. Yeah. But it bugs me too. Hold on one second. It gets to bug you. We're gonna just take a moment and say, you know, I am doing this crazy webathon thing, which we'll get nutty and nuttier as time goes on. Yeah, give Seth some money. Yeah, give me some money. Donate at Sethems.com.  They are working with my fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, so that you can get a tax deduction for any money that you give me so it's completely tax deductible. There are perks involved at different levels of giving. So check out those perks on the right side of Indiegogo when you click. And you can just go to Sethems.com. All the information is there for watching the web stream, which you're already doing, right? Clicking through to Indiegogo to donate and whatnot and we're gonna continue. I think the thing, I've done this thing where I call things being like, operatized or the operatization of America, where some of the things I feel like she is pushing like the secret. It's like, can you do a little bit more research? Can you have this be a little bit more grounded? Because really her target audience are middle-aged women who feel alone. That's probably true. That's probably true. Or don't feel fulfilled. Yeah, we're in the home. We're searching. For whatever reason and they feel unfulfilled, yeah. And not everybody, because I'm sure there's plenty of people who watch her for, but everybody, like Dr. Phil, all the relationship advice, I mean the target audience, you know what I mean? Yeah, I think you're right. And as a matter of fact, I'm sure that demographic would show up on all their data. Yeah, and I haven't looked into that in terms of what's the viewership of Oprah like, and I haven't even looked at her channel since she opened her channel, but it's kind of like, well, how are people being, because I see a lot of schlock that she's pushing. Like I mean, I consider Dr. Phil like, probably five to 10% of the time seeing something very useful, very.  Well, and then there's the whole machine of what do you have to do to get the ratings? What do you have to do to get the advertisers? I mean, how much, you know, Mori do you have to put on? How many paternity tests do you have to have flashed up on the screen? Mori. Mori, Mori. Mori, are you ready? You know, I mean, that's the thing about our society that is so strange that I think they said. Oh, there we go, now we got a background. Oh, who's that? That's a guy, he's just embracing the sun. He's embracing the sun. If we both go like this. You know. See, look at that guy, he's having a great time. He's embracing the sun. He's embracing the sun. Wow. Good, love sun. I mean, it would be a really bad day if we didn't have the sun. You know, I know for myself that I could not live in Alaska in any which way. Like, whether the sun was out all the time like it is in the summer, I would go crazy. And if it was dark as much as it is in the winter, I would go more crazy. I mean, I probably would get really good at coming up with really depressing music, but from both. Yeah. Because I don't think I can deal with that much sun either. But. I like the changes. Because you have to shift your whole deal. Right. Every time a new season comes along. And now that we've destroyed, now that we've carried out ecocide and we're in the middle of climate change in the way that is so shocking, we don't even get to even think about seasons anymore. Now that's. We get to think about events. That's a whole, but that's a whole thing too. Like I'm just thinking in terms of, okay, like ecocide, right? Yeah. Like in the context, I'm gonna throw it into this again. Like in the context of political figures who become iconic in who they are, who's like the people, like the big. The Al Gore's of the universe. Well, you've got the Al Gore, but then you have the Santorum. I know. And you have these, but in having these disparate figureheads saying like, well, climate change has been disproven. And. I think even those guys can't even say that anymore. I don't think even Rick Santorum today would tell you that it's a lot of who he is. I don't know if he's one of the main guys on the who we, but there's plenty of other who we. I don't think there's much chance of holding on to the who we any longer. Yeah, but like why do we give those people so much clout? That's a really interesting question. I mean, they're just another human being. Is it so that we don't have to think? I mean, is it so that we think that way? Yeah, I mean, that's a whole, which actually when we're going back to the ideas of icons, I think there's something in our human entity that needs to pattern something. And so at one time this really hit me when I was living in New York in the 80s, there was a movie that was being filmed in my neighborhood called Rhinestone with Dolly Parton and Sylvester Stallone. And I was walking down, I know, right? I was walking down the street and I saw all these lights like we have. It's genius and it's a horror at the same time. So I'm walking down the street and I see Dolly Parton dressed in this incredible outfit covered with sparkles. And I see Sylvester Stallone. And you know what, they're both little mini people because if either of them is more than five foot four, are you shocked? They're little, little people. And I thought we need icons. We have made into a brand or a logo or a something these people. And I think we do that in order to just do a recognition thing to just be like, okay, oh yeah, big sparkling boobs and big sparkling pecs and rocky and Dolly to not think because we fall into a pattern. And I think that politics can be the same thing. Sadly, I don't think they used to be now that we don't really have a democracy anymore. I think we're really right there. But it's to not think, it's just to recognize a pattern. But I guess I've also met people who have said to me, I want to be an icon. I want, yeah, yes. Okay. And I've taken that in and so, but I wonder from, and again, this is my own perspective but I wonder what you think about this. If that is just a really good indication of megalomania. I think it is, and I think it's doable. If you can come up with, like if you were going to brand Seth and iconify, create an iconography around Seth, you know, what would be the pattern that you feel like you would represent to the planet that would be recognizable that people would connect to? That I would come up with? Yeah, you're already doing it, I think. I feel like, yeah, well, and I want to be careful because I want, what's really important to me in my life is to have friends and, yeah, because one of the things with icons is they will fucking, they will just tear people's throats out if they need to to get to the top. Not everybody. Yeah, and I think that that's not a priority. It's obviously not a priority. Well, I want to be very, and this is one of my favorite backgrounds. We've got the nice spark. Isn't that nice? Holiday.  So is that we...  Have people put me?  Woody Allen. He comes, oh, he does that with me? No, he does that. I should have loved for him to do that with you, but that is a thing that he puts out into the world of like, whoa, you're really, you know, I don't even know the language for this, but so neurosis? No, that's not quite it either. Well, he does sell his, he did, for a long time sell his neurosis, but now his movies have gotten a lot more serious and I really enjoy his more serious stuff. Absolutely, but I'm sort of thinking the Woody Allen brand, like what you think of when you think of him as opposed to, and well, there's another one. Are you different from your product? Is your brand different from your product? It's interesting, this whole thing of like, people are like, do you have a Facebook page in the night? I do, but I stop posting it because it doesn't make any sense because I'm the person. The human, yeah. Yeah, so people can just follow me on Facebook instead, for example, you know, they don't have to request to be my friend, they can just follow me in it, but I don't want to get to a certain level of popularity. I've had so many people say to me, you should be on TV, well, we are right now, you should be on TV and da, da, da, da, da, and I'm like, well, I mean, there was this Louis C.K. episode, this thing that we just saw last night where he finds out that David Letterman is losing his job. Oh, I've seen the whole story, yeah. Okay, so there's like three. Yeah, there are three of them lined up, and he gets the job, but it's only a manipulation. It's a manipulation so that they can get David Letterman's salary down, but what's really brilliant about it as well is the fact that this guy at CBS is saying, I'm gonna tell you what's going on with your life. David Lynch or somebody crazy like that? Well, that's the guy who helped him. Oh, that was the helper guy, that's right, that's right. That's right, sorry, I saw it last season. He's like, you make $80,000 a year and you da, da, da, and he probably hit your peak five years ago, it's like all of those things. Like I'm coming, and it's one of the things I was wanting to deal with today is we can wait because we're gonna be done soon. Thanks, Tim. What was that? That's a lavalier, Mike, but I'm not having another guest in person for hours. Yeah, this is working, so. Oh yeah, we got to Ed soon, but what was I saying? Talking about Louis C.K. and talking about, you've hit $80,000. Yeah, so you hit $80,000 a year and probably you peaked five years ago, so you're heading towards teaching comedy at a community college, and you're seeing like, I mean, Louis C.K. wrote this because he knows the to be fact. I'm sure he lived some element of this. He knows the to be fact. And I think that is a thing where people have to decide when they get to that level what they're willing to do to continue because they're either really gonna sink or swim. Absolutely. And in this stage of what I'm doing, I'm just kind of getting over the hump into sort of kind of mid-career.  What does that mean? But I don't know if I am.  I don't even know what a career is, frankly. Yeah, I know. I don't even know what that is. But it's that I'm, what is that? I've got it in my blue period.  I don't know what it means.  Well, obviously I'm not at mid-career because I'm asking you people to give me money. So let's go back to that. But it was. Just give Seth some money so he'll be quiet about this. That's true. $10,000 we're trying to raise today. And one of the reasons we're trying to raise $10,000 in a 12 hour period is because it's ridiculous. Can I do it? Am I gonna fail if I don't make that money? Am I a success if I make $10,000? I don't know. Is it true? Is it false? Is it whatever? I have no idea. But it would be incredible if you can donate. A dollar helps. You can go and you can hit the contribute now button and donate whatever you want. It can be $1. It can be $1,000.  It could be a billion dollars. It could be a billion dollars. That would be fine. Yeah. More about that donated.sethems.com. You can go there. Everything happens. We're gonna be wrapping it up with Linda. Linda, again, is my director of Firecracker Bye Bye. She runs Old Deerfield. I have the hardest time. I can barely say it myself. Old Deerfield productions at a Greenfield, Massachusetts. But they tour on an international level. Linda just came back from some country I can't pronounce. I came back from three countries in Eastern Europe. I came back from Kosovo. I came back from Albania and I came back from Macedonia. It was amazing. And there were some people who ran out of the theater because they were scared. It was great. They were scared of the production. They were wonderful. We're not gonna take a break, but I'm gonna let you go and get ready for our next guest and talk about that. And thank you so much for being with us. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Good to hear. Thank you. A billion. A billion. A billion bucks. That's what we're shooting for now. All right. Thank you. Oh, and have fun in Vermont, right? Well, yeah. Let's run ahead of right now. Have fun. Thanks, sweetie. Linda's going to Vermont. Oh, and now we got the little circles behind us. Whoa, circles. All right. So you can... Okay, great. Do I walk away now? Yeah, you walk away now. Okay. And is your copy back there? Yeah. Okay, great. And I'm just gonna continue. Thank you. Thanks. Oh yeah, I'm going to. All right, folks. So basically, we're gonna start getting into the Skype. And I'm saying this for the guys in the back. We're gonna be getting into the Skype session in a moment. We're gonna have our first Skype guest. So I'm gonna be Skyping in all of these people from around the country. Is anyone international? I'm sure somebody's from Canada. Anyhow, we're gonna be Skyping a bunch of people in from different areas to talk about various things. We're continuing with the theme of icons. I'm gonna be talking with my friend, Talcat, otherwise known as Catherine Kabine next. She is teaching up in Vermont right now at Middlebury College. And she has done something like 23 dance projects in the last three years or something like that.  So we're gonna be talking about various things of her being a professional dancer and what iconography, iconography means to her and her personal definition, et cetera, blah, blah, blah. So one of the reasons I'm doing this as well is I'm trying to get information from people because I am turning all of this into a show, my next show, a part of my trilogy on the underbelly of the self-help movement. I'm really trying to focus it in though underneath about what success and failure means as a theater artist currently in the 21st century, especially now in 2013. Where are we at with all of that? What does that mean for me and other people? People who are doing smaller scale theater, like places that seat up to three or 400 people rather than the people who are playing 2,000 to 10,000 seat houses. Like, are we falling through the cracks? Is it ending? The theater audience has grown negative 12% since 2008 and has dropped 60% in the last 10 years. That's for non-musical theater across the board.  Are you guys ready to Skype in Catherine? We're about to Skype in Catherine and see what happens. Hello. Hey. Skype in. You're here. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Working on it, working on it. Oh. Have you been watching so far? All right, iconographic. Yes. It's going good. It's pretty chilly up here in Vermont, which is rough for an aging dancer because being cold is hard on anyone, but especially those of us with already calcifying joints, it gets tough. It's tough. I want to just... It's like it can be one of the Cloven mammals in Vermont. That's great. Yes. Mm-hmm. One of the first things we started talking about, I was kind of asking you about what you're working on, what you're doing, and you were talking about working on projects about what it's like to be an aging dancer. And then I think I laughed and asked how old you were. Mm-hmm. In your mid-30s, maybe, right? Yeah. 35. Yeah, 35. And that's like aging. It's a special field. I mean, it's definitely a special field. And it's funny because right now, I'm also an associate professor at Middlebury College. And certainly to be a professor, I'm incredibly young. And so I confuse students all the time. I confuse faculty all the time because I can't really understand the power structure with someone who looks like I could be their age. Also because I refuse to wear anything other than jeans and hoodies. So that confuses people as well in terms of my age and power. Don't worry. But the dance world is nutty. And at least I'm a modern dancer, not a ballet dancer. They have it even tougher. For those guys, 23 is like over the hill. It's insane. Most modern dancers, we get till our 30s. But then people always sort of will assume that we're gonna move on for a number of reasons that have to do with how success is defined in this country. Number one is it's not like it's a money-making profession. I sure didn't become a modern dancer because I wanted to become rich and famous. And most people follow their dreams when they're young and then they realize that actually, this is America. I need some. Huh? In line. Oh, okay. Some of the, you know, the first thing I think, it's kind of funny, because I just performed at AS220 down in Providence and in their theater, which is called 95 Empire. And I did my show about my grandmother and AS220 was not at the same location it is now in Providence, it was at another location. And it's the first place I ever performed in a band we were called Quark, the smallest particle known to man. And I was like 15, 16, something like that. And we sucked and it was amazing. You know, we were terrible and we were great, but we were awful and nothing went wrong with our set or anything like that. We just, you know, we were doing our thing. And I felt great afterwards because we had this audience and people were supportive and into it and awesome. And it didn't matter. Like we got, we did it, we practiced like crazy. And it did, it felt really successful, felt really, it just felt liberating and good. And I felt seen in a way that I wanted to be seen, which was really nice. So that's one. Let me tell you the way that I feel successful the most now in my life. Um, Leah said something earlier about how she kind of refers to me as the connector. One thing that I try and make myself available to is I try and make myself available to as many people I know who are doing theater or performing arts, really any kind of art that I'd love and helping them strategize how to get into the world more and get their art out there more. And whether that's to get more visibility or financial gain or whatever, because and yeah, like sometimes I teach classes on how to do that and stuff like that. But really, I love setting up like a Skype session with somebody. And I've done this with a lot of people who I've talked to today, for example. And just talk to it, like kind of like working through all like, well, what are you doing here? And asking lots of questions and getting into the nitty-gritty because I want people to feel like what they're doing is worthwhile. I want people to feel as though and think that what they're doing is, is like of the essence and they need to be persevering in what they're doing. And I just, and I wanna be, I wanna be their cheerleader for them. Like I really, really care about my peers and what they're doing and them making a mark in the world the way that they wanna make a mark in the world. I don't want them making a mark in the world that doesn't feel right.  It's like, okay, well, let's, let's see what the steps are to that. But, but, you know, if somebody's like, if somebody's goal, and again, it comes back to this goal thing, but if somebody just like, if they just say, I want this, it's like, all right, that's great. Like, I know this person in this, and I said this earlier today, like somebody's like, I wanna, Antonia was like, I wanna go to Iowa. It's like, I know somebody in Iowa and I know that they would love your work. It's like, great, I wanna give those people those contacts.  I don't see the point in being competitive with other people because what you do is different than those, than another person. Even if it's similar, even if you both play melodic death metal, you're probably playing different melodic death metal. And therefore you can support each other in that. In fact, I will probably enjoy both of your bands. How do I personally measure it? On a personal level or a professional level? Because I, okay, so the question was, how do I measure success for myself, whether personally or professionally, in case you can't hear it on the mic? I just wanna make sure that, this looks, is this still on? Yeah, it's on. Okay, I just wanna make sure, because we've been at it all day. I'm really, I mean, one of the reasons I'm doing this show and conceptualizing this show and the whole process of today is I'm figuring it out. I don't really know. I mean, again, when I connect with people and when I connect with people in a way, and I mean this is a wide range in what this means, but in an intimate context, where I feel like I get to know the other person on a deeper level, where I get to understand more about who they are. That can be through the context of performing for them. That can be the context of becoming friends with them or working with them or what not. I've realized, and I said this to somebody recently, how important other people are to me. I think a lot of people think about, they put other things in front of people as important to them, which is fine, whether that's politics or a specific kind of art or whatever it is, but the fact of the matter is, those things can't really exist without other people. I think one of the things that gets me is that people will put their beliefs in religion, for example, ahead of other people and their ideologies ahead of their relationships with people and it kind of co-ops and fucks up their entire way of communicating with other people because they're seeing it through this lens when they could have a much richer and deeper experience of being a human being by being open to having conversations with people across the boards in all different sorts of ways in understanding who they are from their culture, from their family, from how they look at life, instead of through the lens of some kind of weird screwed up belief system. I might think one way, but somebody might change the way that I think about that particular thought because they make me see it in a different context and that's one of the reasons why I like to play so many different kinds of characters because I love playing people whose viewpoints are very solid because it helps me slowly, and I do mean slowly, empathize with those viewpoints so that I don't have to have such aggravation and irritation towards those viewpoints because when I'm playing those people I have to be compassionate towards them. I have to understand them on a deeper level. Or I can't play them well because I'm playing a version of them rather than really playing them. So to me people are more important than anything else and so my measure of success is my relationship to people and deepening those relationships however they deepen. I mean it's really interesting because Sharon and I were talking about this recently where we lived in California for a long time where in Oakland, the Bay Area, where you meet somebody at a party and you're like, oh my God, you're my new best friend and blah, blah, blah. And like here it's like from New England, how's it going? Yep, mm-hmm. Nice to meet you. Yep, that's good. Yep, I like coffee too. That's interesting, yep. I've been reading a lot about that myself and I mean I agree with you to a certain point. And then like five years down the line maybe you hug. And so it's like, it's been nice coming back to that sort of, not that it's reserved but it's like, I mean where I'm from it's kind of like if you didn't grow up with the people you're not friends with them. They're like, they've already got their friends. They've already got their community. So it's interesting to have been all over the place. But also it's been amazing to tour and have the opportunity to tour to like Minneapolis and various places across the country and really create these instant bonds with people because we're doing similar things through theater and performing arts and we're on the same page with what we want. And I just want to give a toast right now to everybody.  Has anybody else donated Sharon that I haven't given a shout out to or a high five or? Kristen and Jeremy have been great. They came by today and helped out and they also donated and they're great. Morgan you donated, right? Thank you. In person. Damn. I look like I'm in love connection. Oh, that's great. Is that the one where you're like, the woman's on another side of the wall and she's asking the guy questions? No, no, that's newlywed. No, no, no, that's not newlywed. That's love connection. What's the dating game? Well, and she's talking to three guys. It's like, if you, if you, yeah. If you were to take me on a date to an amusement park, what ride would we go on? I don't know what I had to take you out on. I'd take you on the flume and we'd get all wet. It's like, if I was a croissant, what country would I be from? Oh, if you were a croissant, you'd be from my country, Alabama. Like what, like where are people from? All right, how much longer do we have until it's 9.48? I'm getting a little, 9.47. All right, folks. If anybody wants to Facebook or tweet, you can use New Play TV. No, no, no, New Play, hashtag New Play, if you want me to talk about something specific, or on Twitter, or on Facebook, you can tag my name at Seth LaPour.  I mean, actually I could go probably for another seven goddamn hours, but I'm not going to. We're at 9.48, we've got 12 minutes left. Can I just, you know, I would love to be a failure mentor, because I would be brilliant, I would be brilliant. In fact, in fact, I think I need, I think that needs to be my new business, is failing fast and quick. How to go down, I think the name of my book could be like, how to go down in flames with love and persistence. Oh, look at that. You can't really see it. There we go. That is so weird looking. That is so, that's a pretzel, but it's really, all right, okay everybody, I just, I gotta talk about this guy before we end. I gotta talk about this guy before we end. Oh, I don't want it. I don't like white chocolate, I'm sorry. I'm really grossed out by white chocolate. I don't know what it is. It's just, oh, I can't, I can't do it. Thank you though.  In my research, I came across a very nice book at Forbes Library, I love Forbes Library, shout out. Forbes is trying to get an elevator for people who can't use parts of their body. So, if you can help out Forbes, help people get the elevator to go up and down. Isn't it an elevator? That's great. Oh, thank you Jeremy, that's so sweet. High five. This is a book called Permission to Succeed by Noah St. John. At the time of this book, he was living in a town close to us called Hadley, Massachusetts. He's got a quote on the book on the front from Jack Canfield, who is one of the co-authors of Chicken Soup for the Soul. So, we know this is good. Now, when I started to look into this book, I just started looking through the chapters and then I read some of this stuff, and then I went on to, you know, really research this guy to see if he's still out there and whatnot. So, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about him because it's pretty amazing. One of the things that I thought was phenomenal in here, have I already read through this before? Or was I just, I can't even remember. So, there's things like why do we stop ourselves from success and why you need permission to succeed and, you know, be willing to get what you want and goal free zones, goal replacement surgery, which are all great, but this particular part where he discovers what condition he has is probably the most heart rendering, yeah, champagne toasting aspect that I can think of. Part two, the condition how I discovered success anorexia.  This guy went to a talk on anorexia, which is fine, you know, and he even says I was bored, I had nothing to do, and I decided to go to this talk and he realized that after the person talked about anorexia that it fit him and his difficulty with success and therefore he had success anorexia. I mean, but I guess the thing for me and because this goes across, and again, I mean, I think you can parallel any kind of disorder with something else and put them together, but it's almost like he trademarked it and then he went on, but it gets better, he went on to create something called affirmations. Now affirmations are different than affirmations. Oh, he's got two more. Affirmations don't work and let me tell you why they don't work, folks, it's pretty obvious. Affirmations you're saying to yourself, I am rich, I am loving, but you don't believe it. Why don't you believe it? You don't believe it because it's not a question and that's where affirmations comes in. Now, all sorts of people come up with new technology all the time, I came up with a new word. You know, a lot of people said, well, what's a DVD? And then it came out, everybody knew what it was. Affirmations, it's just a word that I came up with. Check it out, affirmations is not I am rich, it's why am I so rich? And then you think, why am I so rich? Because you know what humans like to do? They like to ask questions. And when we ask questions, we come up with answers. So you don't say, I'm having lots of sexy time. You say, why am I having so much sexy time?  Then the answers started to come in. They just started to come in. You don't say, my penis is as long as an elephant.   Basically, and I'm glad you can relate to this and feel free. Yeah, well, you can totally rent this from the library. It's not rentable, it's just takeoutable. You can takeoutable this. But the hands are up, folks. We're gonna put, Sharon, where are we at? All right, thank you. It's nice that my wife, who is 20 feet away from me, is texting me updates. Because otherwise, I wouldn't be able to get these things. Well, we're not countdown yet. Dude, we're at one, two, four, seven, just moments away from five, six, four, eight. And I think that that's beautiful. Let's see, we're at 9.56, we are in the final countdown. Does anybody want me to talk about anything in particular right now, because I will do it. I will do it. I'm not afraid, I'm not scared. Sir, tell me what to talk about. It doesn't matter. All right, keep it, all right. And that's New England for ya. Everyone has their own voice. Yeah, I wanna talk about that a little bit more. Because in the metal arena, let's talk about this. A lot of people say it all sounds the same. But it doesn't, does it? When we really, really tune in, when we really, really listen to what is happening with extreme metal, when we really, really allow ourselves to get into the chug-a-chug-chug, we find ourselves hearing little bits of slow dissonance between things. For example, operatic death metal is a little different, isn't it? There's a little bit of going on. Where if we've got a little bit of cookie monster going on, it's very different. So that's different. Also, you might have some keyboards in there. Drop detuning. Drop detuning. Helmet is famous for this. In fact, helmet detuned their guitars so that they could just play their chords with one finger. So they all had one finger. So basically, if we go back to the phalanges and digits that we were talking about earlier, Helmet decided, let's just get rid of these three and just use this one. Okay? So they just chopped them off and were like, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm. Well, Helmet was more, Helmet was more, what were they? They were kind of like, they were in the hardcore zone. They were in the hardcore zone. Oh, well, that just changes everything. Helmet, Helmet weren't like metal, dude. They were good. Helmet were, have you ever heard Sinatra by Helmet? Because it's awesome. Paige, what's his name? The guy who wrote it? It's great. Did you ever hear, did you ever, dude, you should really come and listen to my amps, dude. I got a mess of boogie I just got. It's awesome. It's right. That's when people talk about their amps and the tone that comes from their amps. Dude, you gotta come over to my house, man. Check this out.  It's like heavy. We're getting there, folks. We're almost there. It's 9.59. And so I should leave you with something in particular and I'll leave you it with balloons and seagulls. Um, I have no idea if success is up to you. I have no idea if you are in charge of your failure or your success. I think there's a lot of things at hand, okay? Because we've got our personal lives. We've got our professional lives. We've got the society at hand. We've got our familial structures that we come from, the families that we create. We have the extensions of the world at large that influence us. We have our mental capacities, our psychology, our physiology, all of these things combined come into how we view ourselves and how we view ourselves in the world and how we view other people and how we either compete with those people or put ourselves against those people or connect with those people or not. That includes group structures, et cetera. So after talking with everybody today, I don't know if success is, I don't know if success, I don't know, I don't know if success is completely in our, yeah, it's 10. I don't know if success is completely in our control or not. I don't know if we're in charge of our own destiny.   Thank you everybody for donating. I'm gonna be taking all of this that we talked about today. I'm going to be translating it into something that I'm gonna start touring next year. I don't know what that's gonna be yet, but I wanna thank everybody for watching today, for contributing, all of the special guests that I had on, all of the donors, all of the people who have worked to help make this happen. I wanna again thank Kim and East Works for helping me. I wanna thank the WA agency, LLC, and Natwa. I wanna thank E-Cat TV. Yeah, like all the volunteers who helped today, everybody who made this happen. I couldn't have done it without you. I am forever grateful. Let's just continue to keep making art and work in weird shit. And I really think it's a good idea to eat ice cream every once in a while.  Thank you so much. Oh my God. Thank you.