Hey friends, how's it going? Welcome to Tea Cakes and Tarot, Conversations with Queer Futurists. I am your host, Will Wilhelm. It's so nice to see you all. So if you are new to this space, thank you so much for coming. I can't wait to tell you a little bit about what we're gonna do. And for those of you who are returning, it means so much to me to have you here again, to take a little space, you know, to dream about the future that we're about to manifest, y'all. Things are happening out here in these streets. So please tell me, as some of you already are, where you are coming in from. I am gonna be drinking some tea. So tell me if you're sipping on something special as well. And what we're gonna do today is we're gonna share space with a beautiful friend.  So what I love most about the queer artists and makers in my life is their ability to sort of creatively work around problems and to invent in the way that I think only a queer sensibility teaches you how to bring. So we're gonna be doing that with a new friend, I'm gonna introduce you to and we're gonna share their talents and insights. And then I'm gonna provide them with a Tarot reading, but before we do all of that, I want to see how you are and what's going on with y'all. So how we do that here is with a poll that's coming at you right now. And it's about Gemini season starting tomorrow. So I'm gonna read that for you. Gemini season starts tomorrow and what effects are you looking forward to feeling?  The twin sign of communication and connection. So you're trying to meet and greet. Feel free to respond to these as I read, by the way.  Well, Master of Acts are both, I hope. That's kind of me. Brainiac, we've got these dueling perspectives. So we're figuring out some critical thinking, maybe figuring out what clubhouse is eventually. I've downloaded it, still haven't really used it. Or the only WC in your future is a gin and tonic in a public place. I think I'm all of these. But I respect that y'all can only pick one of them. So what are you most feeling right now? I'm loving these responses and I think we're ready to publish it. A lot of you are feeling twin season gin and tonic. This is just tea, but as soon as this is over, it will be more than tea, trust and believe. Okay, thank you for doing that. I'm glad to see you all here. And I appreciate you sharing how you're feeling. So as I mentioned, I'm gonna be providing a little tarot reading and we do a special one here on Teacakes and Tarot. What we do is one card from the Major Arcana, which I'll explain in a little bit for those of you that don't know a lot about tarot. And I use the Star Spinner Deck by a Vietnamese American artist named Trungles. It's really gorgeous. So you get to see one of those cards. And then we have a special Island Shakespeare Festival, Teacakes and Tarot, Sonet Deck. So these are Shakespeare Sonets and I'm gonna be pulling one of them as well for our guest. All right, if you have any guests, any thoughts that you wanna share, please feel free to use the chat. That is your way to make yourself known in this space and at that time, at this time. And if you are moved by anything that you see, feel free to donate to the Island Shakespeare Festival. Okay, that's all we got. We're ready to rumble. Today, I'm so excited about the new friend that I'm sharing with y'all. They are, I don't even think a multi-hyphenate is the right word. They are a community organizer.  They're obviously an artist. They're a writer. As you'll meet in a second, they have an ability to, like I said, creatively think around all of the things that face are, all of the challenges that we face as a community. And so I'm really excited to talk more about how they bring artistry to all of that. My wonderful guest today is artist, writer, actor and all around badass, Yehan Osangin. And here they are. Hey, babe. Hi, how are you? I'm well. How are you? Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. It is my pleasure. I can't wait to talk more about what it is you do in the way that only you do it, which I think is true of all of us, but the more I get to know about you and your work, the more I realize you have these amazing abilities to, you have these amazing billiards to, like we said, like we always invite queer futurists to this program. And I just see you creating this future. So I want to let the audience hear a little bit about what you're doing from your perspective and from your mouth. So will you start us off with just a little bit about the work that you're doing with a company you created called Earthseed and how that sort of works? I sure will. So Earthseed is an organization that I started a long time ago by a different name, but it uses theater in wild spaces to decolonize those spaces and the bodies that pass through them. And so when I say decolonize it, just me and not just means a lot of different things, but it's about developing our identities in accordance with our own beliefs and not just in opposition to oppressive constructs. And so using theater in the same way in which we understand text and we prepare to be witnessed on a stage, that's the same way in which I approach like professional development, racial equity, somatic embodiment, all of those things. And oftentimes the vehicles I'll use to do the art theater, of course, but it's also the wilderness because there is rarely a more unpredictable given circumstance dealer than the wilderness.  And it's like, who are you in this moment? Yeah, and so I'll canoe, I will whitewater raft also whitewater canoe or backpack or go, I hate hiking because then I have to come back. Like it's a really hard thing. But backpacking, like, oh, I get to get taken to that for several hours, got it. Yeah, so that's the gist of what I do at Earthsea. That's amazing. Yeah, please, were you about to say more? But I forgot the theater thing. Ha ha! Ha ha! It also is the company that hosts the things that I do like staged readings of my works or before Corona, I'm just putting up Yankee Picney in the studio before I took it on the road. And also it's the company when I work with young people, we have a youth ensemble. And so we did a piece called Grief at 2019 Whale. And so that Earthsea is the entity that hosts all of those things. Thank you. Yes, I want to talk more about Yankee Picney in a second, but I'm obsessed with what you just said about the wilderness as like the biggest provider of given circumstances, uncontrollable provider. And I'm curious, what do you think we tried to control less than the theater? Like what do you think we let, in what ways can the theater be more like the wilderness? It's my question. I love that. So one of the things that is super interesting to me is we cultivate so many things to a teeth. And so many things are reliant upon, the backstage storytelling is reliant on front stage story. We're all, it's a great team and it's wonderful. And however, when we cultivate things like a set or things that are definite or even costume, those things cannot change necessarily as quickly as the wilderness particularly in the Pacific Northwest because here you'll be hiking and then it's all of a sudden it's snowing and then it's raining and then it's, and so not only is it about the temperature, it's also about how your body is acclimating to it. Also how your body is acclimating to the other heartbeats of the people that are in your party as you're traveling through the wilderness. And so just like on stage and just like in humanity, our heartbeats are connecting and we're having empathy in the best case scenario. And that's the same thing in the wilderness except with the varying given circumstances. I'm talking so fast. Thank you Brad. This is slow for me, me and keep it me. Don't me too, me too, don't worry. I also can't see Brad, so I'm just like guessing at the pace. He is always doing incredible. Okay, great thing, Brad. And now I'm making him sign about himself. Interview, Brad. So I think I don't remember because I got signed to it. We were talking, you were talking about like the sinking of the heartbeat, which is like in case anyone doesn't know that's more than a metaphor. That is something that has actually been studied.  I'm like, that's proof that the theater is real and the theater teaches empathy. I'm sure a scientist would be like, those two things have nothing to do with each other, but I don't care. No, and you also have the mirror neurons and things that are fired when you're hearing a story. Yeah, so our physiology is definitely connected. Yes, that's so cool.  You have to sort of invite that in as a part of the experience because it is inevitable. It's not gonna be perfect weather every day. That is so cool. Will you tell me also and tell us more about your solo show, Yankee Pickney? Sure, I wrote it in 20, you know what? I was preparing for this interview and I was like, how do I prepare to speak about myself? You look at dancing at him. What did I do and when did I do it? Exactly, I wrote it in 2017 and I was approached by this theater that is well, now defunct called Theater Schmeter. And it was, I think, earlier on in the Let's Diversify our season situation that we have, you know, we found ourselves on the other side of in a different way. And so he asked about a solo show and I'd written one that I performed in Chicago many years ago, but that just, it just wasn't right. And so then Yankee Pickney was one, it was also 2017 and so the deaths or the murders of black bodies that were state sanctioned by the police were really hitting me hard. Also, there were several gun deaths in my own personal life, in my teaching professional life. And so guns played a huge role. And so when I thought about, there's no one ever approached me to say, would you like to do a theater show as a part of our season, like a solo performance? And so I thought, let me take advantage of this. So what are the things that I wanna do?  I wanna have my dog and I would just like it to be honest.  It's a lot about identity and it's also about gender and the ways in which, I, what is it? I call myself a gender vassalator sometimes. And so when we put, you know, masculinity or maskness with this black body that also has me intersecting with power in interesting ways. So Yankee Pickney was about the exploration of all of that and my dog roamed through the stage and it was really beautiful because he was with me for the whole run except the last weekend and I took him out on the water because he got really sick and we paddled in like Washington and he looked up at Seattle skyline and then he passed away in my boat and like I was on the river sticks just paddling his body to the shore. And so it was like, oh, that's the weekend that ended and it was really meaningful show for me. And so all of those things happened. Yeah. Wow. That last bit has me like literally speechless in a way that I'm not supposed to be right now to continue an interview. Wow, that sounds amazing. I wish, I can't wait to see that in the future. I know you're not done performing it. So I love that you brought up the gender vassalator because I actually, you know, when I was getting ready to when I was looking through all of your wonderful work I wrote down that and I was like, I wonder if that's like out of date because I love to, I did not create these terms but I love to think of more like exciting terms to describe what gender is to me.  I just think that's fun and subversive. And I also like to, especially with my theater work like to call myself gender imaginative because that also just speaks to what my experience of gender is and saying like, oh, I'm a gender vassalator. I know exactly what that is. That's a very like specific, like amazing way to talk about an ongoing relationship with gender that changes obviously from day to day. But the other thing that was included where I read that was Yehan is a gender-vassalating one-sided storyteller. And I was like, that's so funny and so fierce. I love describing myself as a one-sided storyteller because like in a way, aren't we all?  Will you talk to me about claiming that? Absolutely. So I have an interesting relationship with my biological parents. And so I've had to go back and Yankee Pickney has so many journal entries from when I was, I just slowed down to my pace because Brad, I know you're still with us and thank you. So I had all of these journal entries and I've written in these journals since I was nine years old. And I looked back and that was the only record because of trauma, because of me being given away at 11 because of so many things that I only had this record of Yehan who wrote really hard things about being hit by their parent and there were marks that were, thank you, Peggy. There were marks that were on my body and I had this written record of myself in my own hand. And that was super powerful. And it also then made me think about what are the ways in which that is trauma of me living in that moment and not necessarily remembering things that are correctly or remembering things correctly or what are the ways in which my biological brother would have seen this differently or my parents would have seen this differently. And so I just tried so hard because I try to be kind and gracious to all of the things that like two perspectives it's what makes me such a great facilitator. And however, it does not make for good theater. We need some drama and we need the truth from one person's perspective at least. And so with the solo show, I felt like the most important piece of that work was focusing on my perspective on all of the, from all of the, if it was from Jennifer, if it was the conversations with my parents or my brother, it was really important for me to, for my own survival as bodies around me were dropping on the streets. And oh, how do I reconcile all of these things to heal? Yeah, that is amazing. And more power to you. Be that one sided storyteller. Like that's what we're here to explore and that's what sharing, I think empathy and humanity is. I just love that you wrote that in your bio because on paper that could be misconstrued as something negative that it doesn't have to be. It shouldn't be, I loved it. Is there anything, I'm curious. So you said you did the solo show in Chicago. So either from that first attempt or from all of the success of Yankee Picney. Like what did you learn about yourself? Was there any sort of like awakening or, I don't know, what are you working on a solo show teach you about yourself? I guess it's my question. I think working on a solo show told me that you need help. And here's if I am someone who does a lot with a little and have for such a really, really long time. And I also though I get really frustrated because bureaucracy is in the sinew of white supremacy and white body supremacy. And I'm able to take my time often and that doesn't work for me because if I'm trying to change something then that means something's not working. And so I got lost at the word sinew. What was the question again? What had taught you about yourself? I love where you're going as far as when you are working against things. Sometimes you feel like you have to do it all yourself if you want it done a different way that works better for you. Well, I think it's that. And I also just budget wise, it didn't make sense to me to, like we talked about a lot of work into having a set. But I just wanted to, because it felt weird to have the set cost so much money and then have the fee for like a stage manager and $25, like I decided to look at the budget and put it in the people power. And so that was great. And though, because of the limited budget, it then reduced me to, oh, like I can't actually find black people who can afford to work on the show behind the scenes because of the way in which the resources were laid out and people power. And I also just, I had my dog there as my emotional support piece, but I also, Alicia, who I think is still here, came in and did the video recording of it because people are like, can I see it? I mean, no, because I just, I don't love being on camera, but Alicia had said, you know, this is something you want to remember and want to have recorded. I have my friend, Jess Smith, because I had to let go of the director shortly before rehearsals, who came in and was my eyes for lighting, particularly when I was on stage. And so I am someone who can do things by myself, but I also, someone on Twitter who was on Black Twitter was like, this was a black woman. She said, I don't want to hear myself described as resilient ever again in my entire life. I want to be soft. I want to be weak. And so that is the stage that I'm at. That's what I learned. But like I absolutely can do that. And I did it for so many years of my life and like, spoil me, baby. Like I'm trying to not work. Listen. Yes, you deserve some gentleness. Absolutely. Victoria, do I have a manager? Do you want to hook me up with that, Jungian? Literally, every time people are like, yeah, so like what's up next for you? Like what do you have like in the wings? I'm like, I don't know. Do you have something for me? Is someone gathered in this audience trying to offer me something right now? Do you know an artistic director? We're like, I'd really love to see you play this role. I'm like, who do you know? Send them in.  You do facilitating work. We haven't talked about, I know you do a lot of mutual aid and community work. You do a lot of education work and this is on top of all of your artistry, even though I think you approach all of those things with artistry, I would say. But is there one sort of central mission that those all serve that ties them together or are they disparate to you? Well, so I was raised within how they would identify themselves as a Judeo-Christian boarding school that's probably rooted, probably it's definitely rooted in white supremacy and white savior complex. And so I was raised with the idea to whom much is given, much is expected. And I was like, yes, right? Like I'm gonna do that. I believe in that.  Like I'm tired. I don't know if I'm gonna be an actor anymore. Like I don't know what is happening. And so like before it was about being of service, before it was about healing, ooh, Brad, before it was about being of service and it was about healing. And now I just want to be human and I want to take care and I want to be the princess version of a potato. Like just let me not stress and I've made some decisions and yeah, especially in the pandemic and that's worked out for me in all of the spiritual ways in all of princess fun. Yes, T-shirts, I will make us those in my craft. Yeah, I do. And so that's what's happening for me at this point. My art is, it's shifted completely. I don't know the direction completely but I'm excited for it to be from a place of ease and thank you, Peggy, a place of ease and a place of, I'm tired of the energy that doubt takes up in my brain. I'm tired of the energy that self-hatred takes up in my brain and I've dealt with that in very deep and like in ways that I'm surprised I made it out of. And since I've gotten to this other side, I've realized like, oh, I'm actually never going to be at that place again because I'm now older, because the world is different. I may be deep and dark and hurting in a different way but I now have like these different experiences and so I'm choosing ease and I'm choosing myself and that is probably what my art will also reflect me. Yes, I think part of ease and part of choosing yourself, I was reading an interview that you did for American Theater Magazine and something that you said in that that I always try to echo, especially when I talk to young artists like fresh out of school, I'm so eager to say yes to everything and be grateful to be here.  And yes, it does abuse like in different ways to different people in different bodies with different experiences but there is a potential for a lot of abuse for a lot of people. Will you talk to me a little bit about what it means to have a healthy relationship with you as an artist and how that includes having other things that fulfill you so that if and when this does not provide you the space that you deserve, you are able to say goodbye or see you later. Can I ask a clarifying question? Of course, yeah. So you said that in the beginning you said that has a healthy relationship with an artist like someone having a healthy relationship with me or how to have a healthy relationship with me? Someone having... I think you are modeling in that statement how to have a healthy relationship with the arts industry or your own artistry. And I think that a lot of especially younger artists are ready to put themselves in harm's way for the opportunity or exposure. And I think that's so destructive and harmful but it just happens. And I'm also saying that having been there I'm sure you've been there, we've all been there. So I'm wondering what it took for you to arrive at that realization that you could be ready to walk away at any moment and I think that that probably improves your artistry. Thanks for helping me understand that differently. Yeah. There's something I think, I'm on Twitter a lot.  And I realized because of the life of it that I have lived and the body that I have that I am absolutely disposable to some people. And I mean, when you learn that from your parents like the people who are genetically supposed to keep you and they're just like, no, I'm good. Right, like what is the world if those relationships can discard you? So as I healed from all of those things and as I looked at and worked in corporate, the corporate world and worked in the corporate nonprofit world. I watched people be discarded. I watched students be discarded and I watched the punitive way in which relationships are built. And I also watched and experienced the relationships that required my healing or the relationship that like nurtured my healing. And I started to believe in myself and love myself which I'm like laughing about but it's absolutely what happened. And I read this one book called Women Don't Ask who's about salary negotiations and it talks about the ways in which and this is very binary but women don't ask for more money in the ways in which other folks do. And so I started to think, I was like, oh, do I really get that much? As a black person, I get so much less money than other people. People are so willing to devalue me plus I have been devalued my whole life. It comes from a place of weariness. And so once I realized that I'm an awesome person like actually just a really great person. And if there is something in my belly, if there's something in my neck, if there's something in my left nipple beneath my areola that tells me that I'm not supposed to be there anymore, part of my somatic embodiment and futuring journey is to honor this vessel that I'm going through this world in. And so I will listen to my body and time and time and time and time again, this body has taught me that the decisions I make are the right ones for myself and for others.  And while I'm not, like I'm not trying to be the right, I'm trying to be soft, I'm not trying to pave the way necessarily, but if me paving the way with softness, like I was a glacier, carved through a mountain over time, if that's a thing that means passage for people, absolutely. And I will do it with fierceness because I protect my naivete and my kindness with a fierceness. Yes, thank you for like, we all need to be looking at each other and be like, I am fierce, I am awesome, and anyone can find me disposable, but I will never be disposable to my goddamn self, excuse the language, but like, you know, that's yes, 100%. Thank you. Because it's something that we talk about on this series a lot, I'm curious to have your input in it, especially with regard to everything that we just talked about. We talk a lot about like classics and Shakespeare is just a topic that we include as we consider how to make those relevant to contemporary humans and bodies, as we consider how to excavate queerness, like it's really not that hard, but to find like a non-binary joy like within classics. And so I'm wondering like, do you have a relationship with Shakespeare at all? Do you have thoughts on Shakespeare? Is it something you think about at all? Oh, I love Shakespeare. I think about Shakespeare a lot. My lexicons are right there. My anthology of Shakespeare, like I love language and I love literature. And so one of the things that is, I was thinking about this as what was preparing for the interview by talking to myself. What is my relationship with Shakespeare? And I studied Shakespeare in the conservatory. I performed Sylvia Intergentum in the Verona. I've performed Shakespeare before, but I don't often, because I do so many artistic things and when I get a script, someone, and when someone asks me to audition, I read the entire script. I go through it, I do the work. I've learned as a director, not everyone does that anymore, filing that one up here. But with Shakespeare, I don't necessarily have the time to read the entire text all over again, to go through the lexicon, to understand, oh, fi means this here, and it means this here, right? So like, and so one of the things I've been thinking about is just like brushing up on that Shakespearean model on and getting to audition for different things, because I have worked on new works for so long. I have worked on like modern pieces or modern tapes on slavery pieces. And I would love to play with Shakespeare again, which can happen now that I have my schedule that works for me, that I work three days a week for like five hours. Amazing, yes. And your own company to incubate that in your own way, because I would be really interested to see more of like, we talk about white supremacy and cis normativity and heteronormativity and all that, that's kind of not like is ingrained in the text, but is more so ingrained in the repetition of how we produce it for no reason. So I'm like, I'm really interested to like, to see like the earth seed, like what does it mean if our primary objective on this text is to decolonize it? Feel free to like respond to that in any way, but I'm also curious if there are any like other poets or wordsmiths that you love and wanna give and live by and wanna give to gifts as us, because I know you have a couple other gifts you're about to give us too. The one I wish I had one that came to mind faster than Edna St. Vincent Millay, where she wrote the 14 page long Renaissance poem. I think she was seriously tripping on drugs, all I could see from where I stood were three long mountains and a wood. And she just talks about this journey of what it was like for her to trip, but then also experience God and the language is gorgeous. Who else, classics? Oh, wait. More contemporary wordsmiths and poets too. Hold on, I just had, there's some that are right here. I've been reading a lot about who do culture. And so there's a woman, her name is Lilith Dorsey, who writes about who do culture in Spanish and in English. Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, in Spanish and in English. And that has been super interesting to me. Also, just listening, like I've been reading a lot of plays by young people that in terms of rhythm are really interesting to me. But as far as classics, the thing that I'm not supposed to do is blank on things that I love or like my cannon. But yay, but I am. Yeah. No, you've given us someone. I actually, everyone responding like that in the chat is like, I don't know who that is. I probably should. So that was a selfish thing for me to have more to look up. So I already appreciate that gift. Yehan, you ready? Can we do a little tarot reading? Those are two different answers, but yes, I am not ready. Love them. Amazing. Okay, we're going to transform. I know before we start, I know that you have some really amazing decks that you would love to share and feature and I can't wait to see them. So I'm going to be doing a little shuffling ASMR while you share that with us. Okay, so I couldn't find one of the decks but this artist, her name is Jesse Jumanji and this isn't one of her Oracle decks. I'm going to put it, this is, I should have practiced. There we go. Yeah. That's the floor and pond of Africa deck. And to show the artwork that I really want to show, I also love the way this is her Afro Goddess Oracle deck, the unboxing. And there's just like each color of the bones on the outside, but it's like a gold color. Yeah. And so it has these really interesting pictures like there's someone with a, that's going through a library, but she's got acrylics on. And then this other Who Do Tarot deck by Tyana Lee, which I think is Miquilar. Yeah, the size is really wonderful. She wrote or did the work on this Who Do Tarot deck. This is the book and the artwork is gorgeous.  And so what this deck does, like the other deck does is it takes characters from either African-American Who Do or Caribbean Who Do and it replaces some of the characters or it replaces some of them. So like Strength is one of the major arcana. And so that one exists, but then you have here the eight of sticks instead. And so the, oh, I feel like it's catching it exactly. And that you got it. There we go. The artwork, it's just beautiful, look it up. And it's more like a watercolor that is also just a haunting kind of image of black faces and black stories and black histories. And so what I also love is just the way that this, the Who Do Tarot explanation guide gives you, and this is frustrating for me as a person who's no longer a Christian, but it gives you the Bible verse because that was so much a part of black culture coming up after the trans-Atlantic genocide. And then it also gives you the character or the person, the story of the person when they met to African-American culture. And then it gives you the meanings in the traditional deck and then it gives you meanings that are possible through the other, through the new book. Amazing. Thank you for sharing that with us. I love contemporary like out of, just like I love contemporary like clearings of any and everything. I love contemporary like, let me just like paint this similar story, but with my brush. And like I'll give you what resonates with me and I'll like take creative liberty to change whatever I feel like. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, cool. All right, I've been shuffling these cards. What would you like a reading on, Yehan? Anything particular, any question, any word that you wanna invoke? Oh, peace. Peace, boom. Yeah. Easy. I love it. Easy. So easy, peace. All right. I've been shuffling these cards and we're gonna do a reading on peace. So I'm gonna just be cutting the deck on camera.  Okay, a reading on peace. Oh, beautiful. So I have drawn the moon. Show you this moon. And the moon is about your intuition and your instincts. It's also about your fears. And you know, it's the moment of night where things are kind of lit, but not really. So like, it feels like everything could be a lot scarier than it is because we're seeing a shadow we outline instead of what's really there. But it's also a beautiful time for fantasy, right? We just like we can imagine the horrible version of whatever that dimly lit shape is. It could also be like the tantalizing, exciting, shape-shifting, it could be so many things. There's an unease and an excitement in the not knowing of, you know, and that's really interesting with pursuing peace, especially when it's not something that a lot of us are privileged to feel very often or some of us artists, I feel like are loved to be constantly troubled. Yearning. Next to like my life in this morning. 100%. Okay, so I'm learning more about the different parts of my chart. And so my Gemini is in being, my Venus is in Gemini. It's about to be Gemini season. And so this a torologist that I follow, I think I read from a while ago said that I should focus on the following the moon because for Gemini, I'm for Venus and Gemini because it's going to one highlight man tuition. It needs to highlight parts of my life that I haven't been paying attention to before. So to like get this is definitely confirmation. Thank you. You're very welcome. So now I'm going to pair that with a little Shakespeare sonnet. So I'm going to do the same thing with our deck of sonnets. I am just cutting the deck and okay, okay, fun. This is sonnet 135. Ready? Whoever has her wish, thou hast thy will and will to boot and will in over plus more than enough am I that vex'd thee still to thy sweet will making addition thus. Will thou whose will is large and spacious not once vouchsafe to hide my will and thine shall will and others seem right gracious and in my will no fair acceptance shine. The sea all water yet receives rain still and in abundance addeth to his store. So thou being rich in will add to thy will one will of mine to make thy large will more. Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill. Think all but one and me in that one will. I love that we included this one like selfishly because I feel like I have a, you know, I have a connection to Shakespeare because I think I'm like, yeah, we're will and will. And like I asked you all these questions about the solo show because I'm working on a, on my own solo show that's about will and will basically. So this is like, it's so sexual. It's like, it's very much, and I love that he uses the pun in the double entendre of his own name to sort of seduce and like try and like get whoever he's written this to to, I don't know, like give in to him in some way but he's also saying like you can never have too much of a good thing. He talks about abundance. Even the ocean is rained upon and receives more. And when it comes to peace and when it comes to channeling your love into whether it be one recipient or many, as many as possible. As many as you, there's no, there's no limit. I think of love as a, you know, an unlimited resource. And I, I wish that upon peace. I wish peace felt, you know, unlimited and accessible to us. And maybe it is once we figured out how to access it. Once we know, like you have learned like, oh, when I know that my body is not in peace any longer I have to listen to it. When I, you know, whether it's that particular breath or closing your eyes, you know, I'm working on that too. Being able to control and find a moment of peace for myself that feels accessible all the time. I'm gonna read it one more time. Yeah, of course. And then, you know, you can close your eyes if you want, feel free to just like, let this all watch over you. And then I'd love to know what jumps out at you about the sonnet, anything else about the card and anything at all. Actually, I told you to close your eyes, but I lied.  Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will and wilt the boot and will in over plus. More than enough am I that vex'd thee still to thy sweet will making addition thus. Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious, not once vouch safe to hide my will and thine? Shall will and others seem right gracious? And in my will, no fair acceptance shine. The sea, all water, yet receives rain still and in abundance addeth to his store. So thou, being rich in will, add to thy will, one will of mine to make thy large will more. Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill. Think all but one and me in that one will. I'm so glad you read it again. So one of the things I was thinking is I think less connected to love. But I was thinking about the show, The Magicians, you know, as we talked about, have you watched it at all? I've heard of it, but I've never watched it. It's super queer. And that's, it's not the reason I love it, but the way in which it handles clearness is one of the reasons I love it. And so there's this one episode where they have to ask the moon to do something for them in order to save the world. And so then they all have to band together to do these spells to then get the yes or the no from the moon. And as I was watching the figure on the moon card, I just kept imagining like the way in which an abundance of peace is possible if I want count on that all of the people who are doing the spells and the people who do spells in my own life to come and show up for me. And one of the things that's really funny about it is in order to get into the right space to deal with the moon, you had to get to a place of delirium. You weren't allowed to sleep for five days. And so I think about like the way in which I get to that place of theater, the way in which I get to that place of art and the way in which peace is almost like a delirious state when you have realized like, oh yeah, this, I'm not trying to push myself into chaos because of trauma. I'm actually just happy. And it's almost like a third lung. And so I'm excited about this abundance of peace. With a bunch of queer people in delirium, like delirious state asking for guidance from the moon. Yes. That's so cool. I love it. And I also just want to point out on this moon card like this little rabbit that's hopping around her face. Oh yeah.  And you know, rabbits, if I'm not mistaken, are like most active kind of around dusk and around dawn is when they're hopping around most. And it's at those moments where we see the moon come out and this sort of like in between moment of breath that is just like, I'm thinking about that when you're talking about delirium and the sort of peace of being neither here nor there and just like existing in the sort of limitless of the nothingness and the limitlessness and the abundance of all of that. Yeah, it's, there's, I think, I can't wait to see how that continues to affect like these next steps for you and finding peace. I think we had to sort of make a lot of peace with isolation recently. And so now that we're no longer quite so isolated, one of the positive things that I was trying to bring out of quarantine and isolation was access to peace and being able to manufacture and make space for peace whenever I need it. So I hope that that is something that you can receive in a way that feels not limited to you and as we move forward into reopening. Thank you. Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for doing this with me. It was such a pleasure to hang out with you. I feel like pulling this on it is like just telling me that I'm gonna be giving you an abundance of will in myself. And so I can't wait for us to be connected now and you'll never get rid of me. Oh, I love that. Yay. Thank you for having me. This is wonderful. I totally needed this. And thanks to folks for showing up and being here and holding space. Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for being here and I can't wait to see you soon. See you. Bye. Bye. Friends, thank you all so much. This has been an absolute delight. Thank you to the Island Shakespeare Festival and HowlRound Theater Commons. They are our co-producers. If you enjoyed your experience today, please feel free to, you know, share it on social media, tell a friend. We have another episode exactly two weeks today, two weeks from tonight, at the same time with writer and director Robert O'Hara who was just Tony nominated for his Broadway debut directing Slave Play. I can't wait for that conversation. And if you can't get enough of this content, we also just released a podcast earlier this month. So we just dropped our sixth episode today. We sort of went back to the beginning of our experiment that we started in September and we have been feeding you a little bit of all those old conversations. There's also some exclusive content that is available only via the podcast. So if you are interested in revisiting any of those conversations that you may have been here for, I hope you enjoy the extra little presence that we've got for you all. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Please get masked or get vexed or, you know, both. That's fine too. And until the next time, please take care of yourself. Give another huge round of applause to our interpreter, Brad, who kept up with me in your hand. I'm talking a mile a minute, but that's what he's best at. Thank you so much. Sweet dreams.


Having been part of the winter school, I see the connection or the nexus between the tax policy aspect and administration and I think that reaffirms the work I've been doing in my current role in my organization of trying to make sure we build a capacity on the continent in understanding issues and the connection between certain policy and administration to make sure that the tax system is more effective. So the immediate thing I would do for me is identify some of the issues that we've discussed within this program and see where more research can be done and see those where there's already research what can we do now in terms of implementation and sharing more knowledge with countries on what they can do about this in Africa. Some of the changes that I would like to see in Africa is first, in global standard setting and conversations I think there is need for Africa's voice to be heard more and to be understood based on the peculiarities of Africa, rather than Africa being tickers or just being at the table but the voice not being heard but not being taken into consideration in certain conversations. The second would be probably more capacity building around policy development in Africa especially as we find our frontier issues around like digital economy because for us to have conversations around certain things we have to have the capacity and understanding of those on the continent who engage in these conversations.


We just recently did a bio and when we pulled up the carpet, there were maggots everywhere.  I think I ate a few a couple times. Anyways, so I just want you to know you can't die from maggots. Anyways, they were crazy. I have seen lots of bodies where you go and you pick them up and there's maggots and stuff. But when we went to that decomp the other day, it was horrible. Like I have never seen so many little maggots in one area and it looked like waves of them, like just flowing along the floor, like doing their own thing, having to get all the time. And we interrupted the party.


Hello and welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart Vanderzee and today I'm joined by my friend Mr. Barry James. Barry, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Bart. Pleasure being with you again. Yeah. I mean, we've, uh, I should say you are one of George Lawrence Stone's, uh, last living students. Or would you say you are the last living student of Stone? Well, no, I've been corrected recently on that by another gentleman who studied with him a little later on. It's interesting that you should bring that up because just the other day I received an email from a gentleman who said, well, you studied with Mr. Stone up until 1961, but I studied with him in 1966. And I thought, wow, okay, let's get more of this. You know, I hadn't met anyone before. The fact of the matter is I studied with him while I was a college student at Boston University School of Music. And Mr. Stone was on the faculty there. So I had a good four years with him from 1957 after high school until 1961. And he resided around 1963 and went back to home to Medford Mass. And apparently at that point in time, he started teaching in the public school systems, volunteering his time. And so he had a whole bunch of young students from about 1964 or five to 1966. He died in 1967. So he, um, he did have some students after me. So I'm not his last student. I just happen to be his last student that teaches his method and is still teaching his method 60 years later. So that's between actually being his last student and the last student. Well, actually has taken his method and carried it on. Cool. Okay. Well, thanks for that. It's good to have the clarification there because we did do an episode before which folks can check out. And I'll include a link to that in the description, but you talk a lot about stone and all that stuff. So people can check that out. But what we're here to talk about today, though, is you have two new books that will be coming out in February. And I'll let you kind of describe them. Number one would be counting exercises of stick control, which you worked on with Morello and kind of Joe Morello and thought of this idea and all that stuff. And then the second one, which again, you can explain more is future rudiments, which is basically stone and coming up with more rudiments than what we have. And now you'll give a lot more detail than that. But so tell us about these books, maybe starting with the first one about the counting exercises. Sure. And thanks for asking about those books because they're a liberal love to me and a word to Joe while he was living. And here's how the first book started. The stick control book, as you know, is the consider the Bible of drumming. It was written in 1935 by George Lawrence Stone and has become the book for building your technique. And professional drummers all over the world have used this book for many, many years. It's a book of technique and technique building that has a lot to do with repetition of motion. And that's how stick control came to be and became such a big, big selling book. I'm told by the Stone family that after over 80 years now, it's still selling about 22 to 24,000 copies a year. So you can see that it's one of the best selling drum books of all time as well. Joe Morello and I met at a clinic that Joe did here in Orlando.  And I attended it with him. And on our way out, we were talking about our affection for our drum teacher, George Lawrence Stone. Joe had studied with him when he was 16 years old in the 1940s. And I studied with him, obviously, as a college student from age 17 to about 21. And one of the things that we noticed and Joe noted was that a lot of people don't know how to play the stick control book. The stick control book is a book of ours and L's, all the rights and less. George came up with all these various exercises and hand building exercises, but he never taught within the book how to count those exercises. And particularly in the back of the stick control book where we call them compound rhythms. Well, the compound exercises, the compound rhythms may have a set of eighth notes, four eighth notes. And then of course, 14 sixteenth notes or 30 second notes. Well, how do you count that? We don't know. And Mr. Stone never gave us a hint as to how to do it. So Joe and I were walking out of his clinic and Joe said to me, Eric, when you do a clinic or a master class, does anybody ever ask you how to play page 43 as an example in the stick control book? And I said, all the time. They don't know how to play it. And because there's no indication in the book how to play it, how to count it. He said, jokingly, we ought to write a book on how to play the book. Because you and I, only ones left, well, and Vic first at the time, the only ones left to study with Stone and know how to play the book. And I said, you want to? And he said, yes. And I said, let's do it. And so we exchanged phone numbers that night and I started bugging him about doing it. I think you forgot about our conversation. But I kept reminding him over and over again. And he finally said, well, you know, Joe was blind, of course. And so he said to me, I can't do any of the research because I just am not capable of doing it. And I said, I'll do it. I'll do the research and then we'll get together and we'll put a book together on how to count the exercises and stick control. And he thought that was a great idea. Now people who have not been able to count it before will be able to count it and be able to get through the whole book. Because I've been finding out, particularly with surveys that I've been doing lately, that a lot of the drum teachers don't know how to recount the book. They make up stuff. University. University. I never heard Stone use those terms, you know. It was always some sort of count based on simple time signatures. Stone's idea was not to use a 12-8 signature or to use a 7-4 signature. It was a set of 4s and a set of 3s. 4 and 3 equals 7. Why not? We always play 4-4. We always play 3-4. But until recently, we probably haven't played a whole lot of 7-4 time. Likewise, Joe Morello did a tune with the Dave Ruber Quartet called Take 5. Big, big cellar for them, you know. It was written in 5-4 time. But Joe didn't count it in 5 because Joe Stone didn't teach them in 5. It wasn't 1-2-3-4-5. It was 1-2-3-4-5. 1-2-3-5. It was 1-2-3-1-2. 1-2-3-1-2. So it's a measure of 3 and a measure of 2. And you can hear the lilt. Another, you know, idea Stone came up with it. You got to play the lilt, which I never understood quite frankly.  But it's exactly that. Instead of 1-2-3-4-5. 1-2-3-4-5. It was 1-2-3-1-2. 1-2-3-1. Big difference in the feeling of the song. So do-de-do-de-do. Do-de-do-de-do. Do-de-do-de-do. Do-de-do-de-do. And that's how Joe recorded the song. Playing a measure of 3 and a measure of 2. For me then. And it makes a big difference. And so, that's sort of the concept behind the idea of teaching people how to read Stone's idea on counting the stick control exercises. Yeah, I mean, I think too, what you're saying is like things without that guidance from the original writer of it that things can evolve and kind of go in a different direction. Which, you know, there's something to be said though about someone evolving and making what they want out of notes on a page which can be good, but also I think it's important to have someone like you who's basically like, okay, you know, this is what it's supposed to be counted as. Obviously that book in particular, people take pages and just do them with their feet and then their hands and they mix it and they get really creative with it. But it's a good resource to, I don't know, to really know what you're supposed to be doing, like actually. Yeah, and in Stone was of the nature to be able to say things like well, the reason I didn't give a count in the book is I wanted people to make up their own count. He actually admitted that on a few occasions and then he would admit to his students, well, I should have put the count in, you know, it would have made it so much easier for people to read the book. And I found mainly, frankly, through your last interview, I was able to gain a lot of professional drum teachers who don't know how to count the book. And when they found out that I was doing this book on counting they joined up and we've had a very good relationship now and I've taught many, many of them how to, even before this book is being published, how to count the book. And if you were to look at some of my early stick control books, you'll see that I had marked them all up with the counts on almost every page. So if the teachers don't know how to teach it, the students certainly don't know how to play it. Yeah, and when I was taking some lessons with you, which we can talk about that later, about how I basically failed you as a student and had to focus on... No, I know. But you would give me these counts that just made it so clear and it's just like, I don't know, sometimes there's something really... Like you kind of had a no-nonsense, like, yeah, this is how you count it. Like it wasn't kind of guessing, it was kind of denying that this is actually the way you do it. So what is the book... Maybe describe a little bit about what it looks like. Like, is it basically stick control but it has more information on each page or what does the actual layout of it look like? Well, what I did is I took each exercise that was different from the last exercise. So on page 5, 6, and 7 of the stick control book, they're all single-beat exercises. So I didn't want to take 72 single-beat exercises and show you how to count them all because they're all counted the same. So I just took exercise 1 and I said 1 in, 2 in, 3 in, 4 in. Very simple, right? Then we get to page 8, which is the triplets and a 1 in, 2 in, 3 triplet, 4 triplet. And same thing when we got to the rolls and the rolls and the triplets and the flam sections. And then after the flam section becomes the compound rhythms if you will, a 6, 8 rhythm, you'll have three of the six beats the first part of the measure and then you might put eight notes against it. How do you put three against eight? There's a simple way of counting that and that Stone had in mind and so that I would put that in. So it's not that I had to go through every exercise on every page because there were so many that were counted the same as the last one. So I took as each exercise changed in nature I would give them the count for that particular exercise. I would call it more a booklet than a book because it's only 30 pages long but it covers all the various exercises and stick control and how to count them. The count that was used by George Stone in teaching me the book and teaching Joe the book and that's why we said, Joe said so we read a book on how to play the book because nobody knows how to play the book. Yeah, it's like a nice companion to have for the most, you know, widely used kind of standardized book out there which the fact that there's still that book has been out for so long and is so prolific but I just think it's neat that you are still giving it juice and life and new stuff. And it's funny, I know you were talking a little bit about how Joe Morella would be you'd have to keep reminding him. You deserve a pat on the back for actually bringing it to life because I know you've been working on this stuff for a long time. Yeah, for bugging Joe to get me to help him because Joe had one thing that I didn't have he had an elephant's memory. He could remember things with studies when he was with Stone, you know, 60 years ago, 70 years ago.  Don't you remember that? I'd have to sheepishly say, no, I don't, you know. I didn't have that kind of memory. No, but it takes both sides. It takes his memory of that but it takes someone to actually put the pen to paper and get it written down. So yeah, kudos for that. We were a good team and we had a lot of fun while we were doing it too, you know. And let me back up just a little bit because here's what happened to our quest to get the exercises and stick control accomplished in a book form. That was our original intent and then both Joe and I around the same time remembered that while we were working on this, you know, the stick control count, we remembered that George Stone had written articles for the International Musician which is the AFM, the American Federation of Musicians newspaper. And he had done so when I found an article of his all the way from 1941 but he really started doing monthly columns in 1945 and 46 and for all those years, every month he would write a column based on usually questions from other drummers who would write them a question, what about this, what about and he cost stick control was out by that time and he had an international reputation Mr. Stone had. So when Joe and I realized that we had all this treasure trove of information on Mr. Stone's columns we decided to change a task a little bit and decided to write a book on Mr. Stone's columns and we called it drum lessons with George Lauren Stone as it turned out and we got the blessing of the Stone family to put it out and we got it published and it's been published now for a couple of years through Alfred and it can be had through Amazon and now Hudson has just taken it on and Helen has taken it on as an e-book so it's doing very well and that is really the companion to the Stone lessons because, you know, all these lessons were not necessarily on roles or on, you know on other rudiments they had to do a lot with rudimental drumming of that era and so we decided we would go to work and study so I went to New York and they let me into the archives and gave me some help in copying all those articles from Stone for all those years I got Joe a copy of it, took it back his wife helped me read through it and some of his students helped him read through it and we started we changed direction at that point in time and decided to, we would write about the lessons that we had with Stone from all different perspectives not only from a rudimental perspective but from all perspectives from the techniques that he used his handholds his level system that he was very famous for and so we wrote a book on the book and also on the columns that he wrote for the news and that's how our first book came about we sort of put aside the idea of the stick control and we decided to go with some lessons with George Lauren Stone and we recalled a lot of the lessons we had and we took a lot of the research that we had done right from those columns since then the Stone family has actually published all those columns in a book called Techniques of Percussion which happened to be the name of the columns and they're in a book that's about 400 pages long now and it includes all of the columns that Stone wrote for the magazine over many many years great treasure trove of historical data and I wish the book was a little bigger because the printers are a little on the small side but there's always ways of blowing that up a bit the Techniques of Percussion book was the first runner of our book Drum Lessons with George Stone well unfortunately Joe during this whole period of time even before Drum Lessons with Stone was finished and published, Joe passed away it was a very very sad moment for so many many drummers including myself of course so I sort of took Drum Lessons with Stone and I put it on the side a few years I didn't touch it, it was on the shelf and I did nothing with the stick control out book it was just half done and we changed directions so few years later some of my drummer friends and so forth said you got to finish those books you got to finish those books and I sent the unfinished book to Barbara Haynes George Stone's granddaughter who was very motivated really motivated me to get this thing done I did, we got Drum Lessons with Stone done and so now I'm sitting with a half finished stick control exercise book so just over the last year or so I finished that it's ready to go to print and we're going to do it as an e-book through Kindle to start off with and I'm going to have some copies advanced copies for people who want to have a solid print copy rather than an e-book and I'll have those available within the next few weeks so that's really what happened we did a change in direction there you know sometimes you got a pivot and it sounds like it all worked out so far and then later on as we're going to this a little later I found that in one of Mr. Stone's articles somebody had asked them the question, well Mr. Stone and like I say most of his columns were based on questions answering questions from other drummers from all over the world and somebody had sent him a note and said Mr. Stone right now there are 26 rudiments as there were in that day and he said can you imagine a time where there might be more than 26 rudiments and under what circumstances might that be well that sparked Mr. Stone's creative body of work and he started saying yeah I think so and he explained in his next column he said yes and I think there can be and there will be when a couple of things happened one genres of music change so that instead of four measure phrases there might be 10 measure phrases or 13 and a half measure phrases and so therefore the fills that the drummers play now may be longer and if they're longer they're going to have to have longer fills and longer fills will mean some sort of other type of rudiment or other type of exercise to help fill that gap in the music and so not only that did he make that mention in his column but he started, I was a student of his at the time, and he started writing these what he called future rudiments out and he would give them to his students at that time and say take this home and work on it and see what you think and it would be a flam plus a drag which today is called a cheese and cheese tap a cheese dittle can be a lot of those different things and so he, but stone started at all off in around the 19, I want to say 59, 60 doing these things and he called them future rudiments and he'd write out a sheet and then he'd give them to his students and say play these and I got many of them from him over the period of years and he gave me a lot of them as handouts later well I found these things you know sort of in an old storage box and I pulled them out and we started your friend in mind, Jason Edwards started looking at them and saying how can we use these as another tribute to stone, another book by stone and something that he really dug his chest into, you know, dug his hands into writing all these new rudiments out which were new at the time he called them future rudiments so that's the next book the last of the book perhaps of the stone book and it should be out around the same time as the control book is out, you know. Yeah, that's awesome and you mentioned Jason and we just got to say right off the bat that that's Jason Edwards of ProLogix which great guy you guys started doing lessons I believe after you are on the podcast and you guys have become great friends which I love hearing and every time I see Jason we start talking about you and it's just this kind of small, it's a cool connection there but so then is it fair to say this future rudiments is sort of a smaller kind of shorter book as well or is this one a pretty, yeah, I think it's good. Right now we're looking at maybe 36 or 38 rudiments that he considered, stone considered future rudiments and so again it's, we take a couple of different looks at the sticking for those and we're putting them in the same style of stick control that is a four measure phrase that can be used and expanded upon or added to or deducted from and yeah so it is more like a booklet in the 30, 35 pages range. That's great, I think that's a good number and I just think it's an interesting way to think about things for him you know like as a teacher. Yeah and that was stone all the way, he was so creative and he always came, he always wanted to come up with new ideas you know and and he, his one of his drum teachers was a gentleman by the name of Frank Dodge and I'm not going to get into this yet because this could become a book as well but he had the Frank Dodge drum charge where Mr. Dodge came up with some ideas as to taking eight notes as an example or four eighth notes and eight sixteenth notes and changing the sticking and changing the accents on them and building an exercise so he has a small book stone has a small book I'll call the Frank Dodge drum shots and I've been speaking with the stone family a little bit about the possibility of rewriting that book you know what I'd like to do and it's sort of my bucket list and we've talked about this before I'm 82 now so I want to get things done and would it be to you know sort of re-establish the stone books in a more modern era? Dodge Pablo Galarro has done a great job in editing the stick control book and the accents and rebounds books and there are still a few books left that stone had his hands into and as I say it's the future rudiments and the stick control count and then the Frank Dodge book would be another one if we decide to go there by the way what we were doing Joe and I were doing the drum lessons with George Stone the publisher wanted to limit the pages on it to under a hundred pages and so we ended up with 92 pages but that gave us 30 lessons with George Lawrence Stone but I got 46 lessons with George Lawrence Stone finished and with many of them we didn't use in the first book it could be a book too we'll note Wow man you are always working I think that's a great thing because you are still obviously a teacher I love it and I love these guys I can tell you that from your podcast the last one we did I ended up with something like 16 professional drummers studying with me from all over the world I got a young man from Shanghai that is still studying with me now and so your podcast is getting around man well that's great that's great to hear and I wanted to say that too at some point in this that thank you to everyone who did take some lessons with Barry after being on the podcast because I mean obviously as you can tell Barry's a real deal obviously excellent teacher but he's about as close of a connection to this stuff as you can get and he's a working drummer I mean who doesn't like especially during the pandemic some students here and there but yeah that makes me also want to say that so our lessons that we had were just an absolute joy it's been a little while and so to kind of explain that because last time we left off with that previous episode we were taking lessons but having a I heard you took some time off to make babies yeah that's a good way to put it so pregnant wife moved houses it's just been crazy kitchen renovation but I will say I wanted to tell you I play the piano like every day now and that has been very helpful and you can kind of think from a drummer's perspective when you do that of like you know you're you're the dynamics and your timing and your rhythm and I think it's great for drummers to play piano too so I've been having fun with that I think a second instrument for drummers should be piano and that not only leads to playing piano and composing and arranging but it also leads to playing mallet percussion vibraphone remember and vibraphone and in the telephone you know so you get that as you've already got the hands having played drums so you can lay those on mallets and use your piano knowledge to stop playing tunes and start improvising and stop playing chord changes you know you take someone like Mario the cutist from alternative mode he plays four mallets as if he had four hands on each on each arm you know and he was just sensational and so many others Beth Gottlieb as an example they just play you know so where you take your five fingers on each hand and play piano you can just do the same thing with mallets whether it be two mallets or four mallets and all of a sudden you've got a whole new branch of availability for you and by the way if you were in Orlando and you were playing gigs here you know through the union contract if you if you doubled on an instrument you get double pay that's not bad that's not bad at all it's just fun to do something different obviously I play the drums a lot still but something different and I would just attest to people either working with you or let's just say any teacher in general there's something different about having someone correcting you and having someone course correct what you're doing and just watching out for you and you would even just over the zoom say oh you're lifting like turn your hand a little or kind of you know you're doing this like I would always push I would always do way too much like forcing like really force out things and but working it was kind of relax it work on the bounces and it was I'm sure we'll pick it up again soon after baby number two arrives this episode is brought to you by dream symbols I want to talk a little bit about the dream symbols recycling program the recycling program is simple bring your broken or unwanted symbols all brands accepted into your local dream dealer and you can earn $1 for every inch of symbol you bring in towards the purchase of a new dream symbol for example bring in two 20 inch symbols for recycling receive $40 off the price of a new dream symbol it's that easy they in turn take the symbols recycled and use them to create new products like the re effects crop circles and the naughty saucers check them out online at dream symbols dot com and follow them on social media at dream symbols I think maybe there might be some other folks who haven't heard that first episode and who might want to take lessons with you so maybe you kind of explain a little bit about you know what you get when you come to bury and learning those stone techniques for maybe some new people yeah that's great thanks for asking that I have I have two different courses that I teach for a professional drug teacher as an example who just wants to get into the four corner stones of the stone system the relaxation method you know the hand hold the level system and so forth I have a four week course that we just you know to have a lesson a week and then at the end of that they can make up their mind if they want to go any further because I will go further with them we'll take everything in the stick control book and I will show them the proper way to play it and of course with this new book they'll have account right there for them like an appendix to the stick control book they'll lay it next to their stick control book when they want to know how to count the compound rhythm they will just open the book and look at the rhythm and then open the appendix and look at the the way they count it and it will be a very simplistic matter the so that's that and then I also have a 12 week course just three months and then I'm not trying to make a living out of a one particular drummer because a lot of these people that are studying with me are professional drummers already and professional performers already and that would be an insult if I started teaching them how to hold the stick but I can show them what to do with the sticks once you've got them in your hand and I can show them both the power stroke and the rebound stroke that Stone was famous for so we could do all of that and the 12 week course goes a little further we go into stick control and accents and rebounds which is a really important book that nobody seems to be into right now and then if we go beyond that there was another drummer that studied with Stone before he went into the military and became a star and that's the Boston drummer and Berkeley instructor Alan Dawson well Alan studied with George Stone before he went into the Navy and into the Navy band and I was because I was only studying with Mr. Stone during the school year you know because that he was like I say part of the faculty at the college I ended up meeting Alan Dawson and getting some lessons in the summer times with him and so and he was very high on Mr. Stone and of course he's done the rudimental ritual and so forth and Alan unfortunately passed away too but he is he is a genius Alan Dawson was the genius of a drummer and the methods that he taught at Berkeley are still being taught by the teachers at Berkeley today and so we would I would then take you into Alan Dawson's rudimental ritual and how he worked Stone into that the Stone methods into that so we can we can go for four week course or we could go for 12 week course and it depends on how far you want to go I'm available at Barry James drummer at gmail.com or you could call me at<PHONE_NUMBER> and I love to talk to drummers when they call me we end up on the phone for about six hours my wife goes crazy but I just talk with drummers and I get so much out of talking with them and I get motivated by talking with them yeah absolutely and that was part of like our lessons was it just reminded me of some of the things I've heard about with the episodes I've done about Freddie Gruber and Joe Morello and all these guys was that these lessons would go on for hours and even when we did our lessons you and I could just talk and talk and I would and it would be two hours in and I I'd look over and like my wife would be there holding like that baby number one like get off the lesson but it was it was so awesome and I also do going back to Jason Edwards he is a phenomenal drummer and the fact that you guys he's still coming to you for lessons because there's so much to learn from you and you guys have obviously become friends but for someone at his level to come to someone at your level it just speaks a lot I hope that makes sense just there's always room to grow even no matter how you know experienced you are Jason something else I'm trying to wean him off the molar system a little bit but I don't have to because he's so good at both methods now and maybe I shouldn't be telling this story out of school because it's not Jason and I have both been talking about the possibility of doing a book that features both the molar system and the stone system in one book and the beach so that's down the road a little bit and by the way anybody who's looking for a practice pad those practice pads that Jason makes are incredible I play I don't know the name of it but it's green the first time I threw a stick down on it I had to hurry up to catch it because it moved back to me so fast it's the fastest rebound I've ever seen in a stick in a pad before and it's very true to life too it's very natural it feels like a drum head so his pads are just awesome playing tools anybody who really wants to get ahead and play with a very fast rebound a la stone they should try Jason's pads out because they are sensational I've never had a pad in my life as good as the prologic pads Jason's been on here but prologics really are very awesome they sent me a bunch of them a four pack of different materials and it's great so Barry you told people where to find you Barry James drummer at gmail.com and I'll put that down in the description so Barry you've got a lot of books in the works you've done this before you know how to make the process work are there any tips you would give to educators or people about making a book come to life you know what would you say I know it's a long process it's a labor of love but what would you kind of guidance would you give people who maybe want to write a book well there are so many outlets now to write a book and you can self publish and I've known some good friends of mine who are very good drummers as well and they put out some books and they ask me the same question how do I get a publisher well drum lessons with George Lawrence Stone was basically through the Stone family they liked what we had done and the family got behind me so that was sort of a lucky break right there I had been shopping this to publish that book to publishers for a few years without much results and so many drummers have the same but I've noticed through Danny Gottlieb and other people who have self published books they do very well with them and they get their names out there and they get gigs by it and they get students from that from that exercise so you've got Kindle ebooks and you've got Book Baby and you've got several different publishing companies that allow you to self publish and I tell you you make more royalties self publishing than you will with a commercial publisher and I've also talked to Jeff Moore who was for many years the drum guru over at the University of Central Florida here and wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with publishing the book the drum lessons book and talked to Jeff about it and Jeff looked at it this way he said you're not going to make a lot of money if you're dealing with a commercial publisher because they get the bulk of the money they have to print the book and they have to distribute the book and they are in their money too but what you do is you get your name out there and like he's a college professor he happens to be now the dean of music at UCF he's grown beyond the percussion department he's the dean of the entire music school over there and I spoke with Jeff and he said look I've written several books and I've had publishers do several books I've self published several books he said it's it's no more gratifying doing one or the other except for the fact that you get your name out there and it'll help you get gigs it'll help you get recognition from your peers and students and so forth so I would and I decided to go his way and say look I'm not going to make a bunch of money with this first book but I'm going to meet a lot of great people like Bart and it's just very you know I joke about myself I'm the Colonel Saunders of the drum industry you know I've waited until the end of my life to get notoriety and I have from all over the world I'm getting calls and questions and so forth and so it's very satisfying doing that so I would say the first thing is if you could get a commercial publisher and he will distribute your book and it'll be all in his catalogs and so forth go there if you can't self publish and then you market your own book and put it under your arm and like Jim Chapin used to do he'd take his book and put it under his arm and he'd go to PASIC and he'd go to some of the other conventions and he'd have it under his arm and he would sell it to people like the advanced techniques book and a lot of other books that a lot of other drummers have done they do it the same way and realize that what you're going to get out of it is probably even more important than a few dollars yeah absolutely I can I can speak to my brother wrote like a kids book where each page because he does more art stuff he's a bass player as well and he's been on the show but he did a every page is a different instrument from around the world he published it through Amazon but basically though what happens is like you're saying is you then get is like for him it's you got to go to whatever kids book fairs you got to really go out there so I don't think there's an easy from what I'm getting from it is there's no silver bullet like easy oh my book's published now I'm famous it's like then the work begins after you get your book absolutely and in the Amazon you're talking about they're self publishing houses called Kindle two books are going to be brought to life next month is with Kindle and also they give you more flexibility so that just like you say if you want to put some books under your arm and go out to the conventions and even to schools and sell the book you're capable you're able to do that you don't have to give them an exclusive as you would with a commercial publisher yeah but like you said too I'm sure it's probably pretty nice if what is it like Penguin Random House or whatever like if you're like a huge publisher comes to you with a big check I think we'll take that I got a big publisher that comes to me with small checks well the drum world is what it is yeah and it's just it's just a wonderful marvelous feeling to be recognized you know as a professional drummer or as a professional instructor and you can't ask for more than that in this life you know because if you just take a look at the number of drum books well look behind me that's why two bookshelves there's over a thousand drum books on those shelves and and a lot of them are going to be like the one before when I had my own studio in downtown Orlando I used to get publishers would send me free books because they wanted me to sell them to my students and the more I opened them and read them I said this one's like the one before and this one's like the one before so you know how many pictures of handholds can you pass out to your students but there's so much more to it the longer you're in the business the more you appreciate the beauty of the field that you're in you know and just how good it makes you feel as a human being to be able to rub shoulders with these great great players and these great thinkers yeah like you I rub the other guy knock yourself down a little bit but folks I want to tell you right now this guy's a good drummer and you know I'd hire him on a gig anytime so if you got a gig and you're up in his neighborhood call him well thank you Barry yeah yeah and that's where I've always been able to I've played my whole life but again you can play your whole life and be able to play pretty well but then it's there's always fundamental stuff to learn which is where and you can always get better so anyway I loved all of our lessons and hopefully I'm sure we'll start again soon but alright so as we get kind of close to the end here why don't you tell people when the books will be out where they can get them I'll obviously share more info as they are released but maybe kind of a timeframe and all that stuff yeah I think that the both the books the accounting stick control and the future requirements books should be out mid-February and they're going to be out through Kindle which is an Amazon company and they would be available as e-books there if you want an advance copy of that I have them or if you want them signed or if you want them you know to be a hardcover book rather than an e-book you can contact me at Barry James drummer com or call me at three two one two nine seven three zero four two and I'll make arrangements to send you one you know we'll just you can buy it direct from me rather than wait until Kindle comes out with their book first and other than that I expect that we'll probably run into each other at PASIC this coming year hopefully the health of everybody will stay we will good enough to be able to do a PASIC thing and they'll be there that's great yeah because like I said you're a salesman at that point you're now kind of standing with your booth and you're slinging books and I'll be walking around and if I ever go to a drum show and happen to have a booth like maybe at Chicago I would love to kind of put some there and we can represent what you are doing with because I usually have a booth with Vincent from Vitalizer Drums who does Speed King pedals and yeah I think people just need to see this stuff it's important sure and you know go around you know you can go around and you can visit with people too and if you got a book under your arm you can spend some time with them going through the book a little bit and it's just a lot of fun you meet so many great people you know yeah it is fun the next thing you know you're having a conversation with Steve Smith or Dave Wackler or somebody just like that oh I've known him all my life well the world this world is small and if you do good work and you work really hard I've found that like people like I've seen with other people is like they respect that a lot and those big drummers you named actually do buy books and listen to podcasts and watch drum videos so it's not like they're like you know punch in the clock at five and they go home and they're done with drums it's like no we're all obsessed with it so you get to meet a lot of cool people yeah it was a very interesting one day I opened Steve Smith's web page and he displayed some books and one of them was mine and I said wow that's very cool yeah that happened from Glenn from Wilco Glenn Kochi he was Glenn Kochi did the same thing yeah because he said he heard it on the podcast and then was like you know saying he's checking out the book that's just so cool yeah and these guys are big name drummers and you know extremely fine drummers so yeah it's just gives you a little jolt there to see that happening with your book and I just love it and I just love what you're doing you're doing such a great service for people and I'll talk to some of my students and I'll say jeez I'm gonna listen to a podcast last night and they'll say well I've listened to most of them now I said you have that's days and days worth of days and days what are you doing aren't you working I hope you listen to 135 podcasts all an hour I said holy cow I appreciate it if they're like me they like work around the house and just burn through them I listen to so many podcasts just painting a room or cleaning up or making dinner so I I appreciate everyone listening but yeah Barry alright so everyone I will put Barry's info his email and his phone number in the description but Barry hopefully we can see each other after the COVID stuff or at the next drum show but I just want to thank you for taking the time to be here and kind of catch up with everyone and say hi because it's been a while since you've been on the show and you're always welcome but I'm glad to have you as a real a friend you know we talk on the phone fairly often and just yeah thank you for being here I thank you Bart you're the best everyone out there be well hey guys before we totally finish this episode I wanted to add this on because when we got done Barry sent me an email and said hey accidentally forgot to thank a few people who were really key in bringing these two new books focused around George Lawrence Stone's teachings to life so Barry wanted to thank with the first book about counting the exercises and stick control he said it was edited by you of mass student Joseph Gervais he said he's done a fantastic job bringing to life the book about how to play the book as Joe Morello said the second book may be a surprise in the stone library but demonstrates just how far ahead of his time George Lawrence Stone was thank you to Jason Edwards and Jonathan Fazio for making sense of the mystery of Stone's future rudiments he said also special thanks to Barbara Haynes and the Stone family and to the whole drum history podcast community because he's really enjoyed getting to talk to a lot of you guys and I know I love talking to Barry and have really enjoyed his friendship over the last couple years so that's it and thank you for listening to this episode if you like this podcast find me on social media at drum history and please share rate and leave a review and let me know topics that you would like to learn about in the future until next time keep on learning


10 Ways You Are Causing Your Unhappiness It's a little confusing to think that one can be responsible for their unhappiness, when in the real sense, all that we want is to live happily ever after, right? Of course, no one wants to be the cause of their unhappiness. However, certain habits might be responsible for it. Most of the time, we are unaware of these habits. So, the more that we do them, the more we cause ourselves to be unhappy. There are so many ways we cause unhappiness for ourselves. But until we discover them, we may never be able to stop it. Mayor Anderson, an American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer said, If you are unhappy, you should change what you are doing. The truth is that it is time to change. However, for that change to happen, we have to let go of the things that we are doing to cause these unhappy state of mind. In this video, I'll share with you 10 ways you are causing your unhappiness. This, I believe, will help you become a successful person. If you're new here, consider subscribing so that you won't miss other interesting videos like this. 1. You Worry A Lot Worry creates in a turmoil.  And it makes you wonder and bother so much about how to solve the problem you have created in your head. Sometimes, it is just us overanalyzing a situation and getting all worked up about it. The truth is that worrying never creates action. Instead, it freezes you so you are unable to think clearly and make changes to ensure the negative outcome never happens. Leo F. Boscoglia, an American author and motivational speaker, said, Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow. It only saps today of its joy. Also, according to Emmer Bombeck, an American humorist and author, worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere. Worry is just a thief of joy. Stop worrying. 2. You Compare Yourself To Others How many times have you got a head to achieve something great just by comparing yourself to someone else? My guess is zero time. Have you heard about this?  Comparing yourself to others, either most successful people or less successful people, doesn't change who you are and where you are. If anything, it either discourages you or makes you complacent, depending on the object of comparison. Everything in life is easier when you don't concern yourself with what everybody else is doing. Oscar Wilde, an Irish poet and playwright, said, Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. Dr. Prem Jagyasi, a speaker and trainer, said a night quote, instead of indulging in social comparisons, start comparing what you are today with what you were yesterday and the day before. This way, you'll find positivity within and around you, which will inspire you to radiate it. 3. You Try To Please Everyone Edmund Mbakia, a self-help writer, said, Always trying to please others is an assured path to stress and failures in life. Do you know what? Trying to please everyone is too much work. It is draining.  Dragos Bhattasanu, an award-winning scientist and author, said you strive to please others to fit in and feel accepted. In spite of that, you still don't feel accepted, and not because others don't accept you, but because you haven't accepted yourself as you are. When you live your life trying to please people, it makes your self-esteem conditional as you cannot feel good unless others are responding positively to your attempts to please them. It also prevents you from paying attention to your needs and caring for yourself. When you don't do this, you won't be happy. No matter how hard you try to make other people happy by pleasing them. Easy Victoria Odiasi said it's okay to consider the feelings and thoughts of people who matter to us, but we should also understand that we cannot please everyone at the same time. Do what's best for you, do what gives you peace, declare conscience, and makes you happy. 4. US Sedentary According to a study in Science Direct Journal, there is a relationship between mental health and physical activity. A group of 6,909 adults were observed three times for 10 years. The results show that when physical activities were increased, mental health improved over time, which in turn made the participants happy.  5. You Were Lonely Mother Teresa said, The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved. You see, we were made to be naturally sociable, and to do this, building and nurturing relationships is vital. Now, imagine if you stop doing that, and if you stop meeting people and building healthy relationships, how do you think it will make you feel happy? Of course not! Instead of trying to play tough, smile more and be genuinely interested in others. It will help you feel better and happy with yourself. 6. You Are A Perfectionist Hannah Arendt said, To go on living, yes, it is good to work towards making things perfect and excellent. However, it is also important to give yourself room to make mistakes sometimes. That way, you'll learn much more than you could ever imagine. Niraj Angaroti, a photographer and cinematographer, said, the desire for perfection often leads to the awakening of the procrast demon. Allowing yourself to make mistakes is a single most effective way to get rid of it. Don't be too hard on yourself by expecting you to be perfect for the well. Expecting others to be perfect for you or thinking that the world expects you to be perfect, no one does. So, give yourself a break. 7. You Focus On The Negative Details Of Life A Lot There are two ways to look at life, the positive and the negative way. Oscar Wildeys once said, We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. While optimists view things from the positive side, pessimists view them from the negative side, which is why they are never truly happy or motivated to achieve their goals. And when you are not living your life in pursuit of any goal or vision, you will be unhappy. So, even if you are in the worst of conditions or circumstances, choose to be an optimist by focusing on the positive details of life. 8. You Hangout With Unhappy People Don Ruff said, Always work with and surround yourself with people who help make you a better version of yourself. Kindly avoid those who don't. When you are surrounded by negative and unhappy people, you'll also become unhappy because most of the activities you do and the things you say will be influenced by the negativity in them. When you are surrounded by negative and unhappy people, you'll also become unhappy because most of the activities you do and the things you say will be influenced by the negativity in them. Alex Elly, an author and wellness consultant, said, Energy is contagious, positive and negative alike. I will forever be mindful of what and who I am allowing into my space. 9. You Complain A Lot A quote by Mark and Angel Chernoff says, Happiness comes a lot easier when you stop complaining about your problems and you start being grateful for all the problems you don't have. Complaining never solves a problem. If anything, it makes both the complainer and the people listening unhappy. Complaining means stating a problem over and over without doing anything to solve it. The realization that a problem you complained about previously still exists can make a person unhappy. Instead, make efforts to solve the problem instead of whining about it. 10.  Your health has a direct effect on your state of mind. A quote by Buddha says, Keep the body in good health is a duty. Otherwise, we should not be able to keep our mind strong and clear. Also, according to Marcus Valerius Machialis, life is not merely being alive, but being well. If you want to be happy, then you should pay attention to your health. Thank you very much for watching our videos. We'll like to give you another interesting video for you to enjoy next. But before then, our team will be very happy if you can like this video and share it with your friends on social media. If you're new here, don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss other interesting videos like this. Look at your screen now to see two of the videos we handpicked for you to enjoy next. We love you.