LA-based artist Christopher DeLoach and I talked about his path from class clown to intrepid traveler—walking the Appalachian Trail—to becoming an artist and creating the iconic bumper stickers you know and love. He tells a story of how a series of surreal encounters while hitchhiking changed him. Our conversation covers: identity, American culture, sustaining a career as an artist, superstition, doubt, belief, and even death.
LA-based artist Christopher DeLoach and I talked about his path from class clown to intrepid traveler—walking the Appalachian Trail—to becoming an artist and creating the iconic bumper stickers you know and love. He shares a series of surreal encounters while hitchhiking, including rides with enigmatic characters that challenged his worldview. Our conversation spans time—from his childhood in NYC to adventures in his early 20s and how both continue to shape him today. We talked about identity, American culture, his painting process, collecting ideas, funding and sustaining a career in LA, becoming known for something, doubt, belief, and even death. It’s a humorous and earnest conversation that I really loved—let us know if you listen!
Show notes:
- Find Christopher on the Web | Instagram -The bumper sticker story we talk about
- My Substack | IG: @letitouttt + @katiedalebout
- Zine shop is here! - My Creative Clinic
If you liked this episode, try out from the archive:
Episode 393: Kismet Color with Artist Kimmy Quillin: Painting, Living in NYC as an Artist, and Highs and Lows of Creating
[00:00:00] christopher : I mean, we're all hitchhikers. We're all waiting for a ride. And this story has really compounded my ability to understand exactly what I believe. While at one point in my, they gave me a lot of certainty, I've realized through lived experience of my certainty was hubris and I don't really know what's going on on this planet or at all.
[00:00:20] christopher : And it feels apt to let it out and like share. And it's a long series of stories to get up to the story them digressing from the actual fabric of the narrative. Them being like, how did the stories that we perceive that have a big influence on our identity, how does keeping them in or sharing them like affect our day to day life?
[00:00:54] katie: Okay. Hi. Welcome back. Welcome. Perhaps for the first time, this is Let It Out, my podcast. [00:01:00] My name is Katie. This week I talked to artist Christopher DeLoach. You may know him from his incredible paintings or. His famous bumper stickers. He has made the best bumper stickers that I've ever seen in my life.
[00:01:15] katie: You perhaps have one on your car, or maybe you're driving and looking ahead at the road and at someone else's bumper sticker. Maybe you're honking at a sticker that Christopher has made as we speak. And there's, there's many more minutes of this podcast to come, so you might see one while you're listening.
[00:01:37] katie: This episode is a little bit different than usual because Christopher has this story that he. Tells that we weave through the episode and we end up having a conversation. I, I really, really loved about it and around it, and [00:02:00] I I can't wait for you to hear it. So what you're about to hear is him setting up this story and he gives a bit of his background and how he got into art.
[00:02:09] katie: He tells the, the sticker story and we went on some tangents and I asked some questions and I honestly cut a, a decent amount of those out, but they really made me laugh. So to be honest, it was tough to kill the darlings. And I put them all in a different audio file. So maybe I'll, I'll release that as a bloopers of sorts, or not a bloopers, more of just a companion piece, if you will, if that would be interesting to you.
[00:02:41] katie: Maybe you'll get a kick out of some of the parts of the conversation that. Would've taken us away from the thread we were weaving through of, of his story. So here is our conversation, Christopher and I, in his garage, you'll hear cars driving by, which is fitting. [00:03:00] It's, it's a studio. His studio a garage.
[00:03:03] katie: And fittingly. Cars keep, keep on coming. We're eating a snack, which we'll address. And we mentioned pretzel a couple times. Pretzels a dog that is sometimes mine and I brought with me. That's it, I think. Thank you so much for, for listening. Let me know what you think and get yourself a hard copy of a bumper sticker or, or several.
[00:03:28] katie: Okay. Take it away. Here we go.
[00:03:35] katie: Really nice time. The last time. And now we're just doing it. Recorded today. Posterity. Yeah. How you feeling? I'm pretty good. We're getting a sucker.
[00:03:44] christopher : We're a lollipop. I call them a lollipop.
[00:03:46] katie: What's the difference?
[00:03:47] christopher : I think it was the same thing. I think that suckers just very, very Midwestern.
[00:03:50] katie: Really? It's like pop and soda.
[00:03:52] katie: I think so.
[00:03:52] christopher : Southern too.
[00:03:53] katie: Oh, is it?
[00:03:54] christopher : I don't know. We're gonna have to go to the phones. Yeah.
[00:03:56] katie: Yeah. We'll have to contact our research department.
[00:03:59] christopher : Yeah.
[00:03:59] katie: [00:04:00] Pretzel.
[00:04:00] christopher : Oh my god.
[00:04:02] katie: Sorry. Bets.
[00:04:03] christopher : We're having lollipops. We haven't had breakfast, but it's okay. You know. Um. It's like an amused bush, I guess.
[00:04:12] katie: Yeah, an appetizer.
[00:04:13] katie: Yeah. Have you ever picked up a hitchhiker?
[00:04:17] christopher : Yeah, I have been a hitchhiker many times over and I feel an obligation, a sense of philosophical and spiritual duty to help people get where they're going. Ah, I'm relatively discerning. I think about, you know, at a quick glance if someone's gonna be a problem.
[00:04:43] christopher : I've never picked someone up who's caused me any kind of conflict. I've never had any strife in my car, but I have been picked up by a few psychopaths, and I'm gonna tell you the story. [00:05:00] I used to tell this story a lot when I was, when it first happened, 2005. Okay. Like many men of all American generations who either read too much Jack Kerouac, or listened to too much early Bob Dylan, I fantasized about, and then fetishized the American West and I guess what you'd call tramping or hobo.
[00:05:25] christopher : When I was 21, I was living in Brooklyn in Fort Green.
[00:05:31] katie: Where did you grow up again?
[00:05:32] christopher : I grew up in Bensonhurst, which is like South Brooklyn. It's nestled between Coney Island and Bay Ridge. Sheephead Bay is on the other side of Coney Island, Brighton Beach, et cetera. But I grew up there. Okay. I went to high school on Long Island in a town called, or a town named Babylon.
[00:05:49] christopher : Babylon Village. And what were you like in high school? I went from being a hyper overachieving scholastic nerd [00:06:00] in the city. And then my parents, my dad opened a restaurant in Manhattan, a pizzeria, and started to get like his first sort of like cake. He went through his first cake up. And what does that mean?
[00:06:11] christopher : Like, making money?
[00:06:13] katie: Oh,
[00:06:13] christopher : you know, to be caked up, right? Yeah. Get that bread.
[00:06:15] katie: I didn't know that.
[00:06:17] christopher : Um, yeah, follow me, smash the, like on all my youth culture references. But my dad, my parents bought a house on Long Island. We moved to Long Island. My, my mom's family lived out there. And my childhood in Brooklyn was, I was in what was called the magnet program.
[00:06:37] christopher : I got to pick my middle school. I was sort of prospected by the Feld Ballet Academy and went to ballet every Tuesday and Thursday, like fourth and fifth grade and Wow. That's cool. Yeah, it was incredible.
[00:06:53] katie: So you were a dancer, you know?
[00:06:54] christopher : Yeah. And I played ice hockey. Wow. Very, like I put a lot of ice hockey.
[00:06:59] christopher : I played ice [00:07:00] hockey like three days a week or something. Cool. Yeah. But my. Attention as a child was very siloed. I did really well in school. My parents were really, I don't know, kind of severe about getting good grades, and I grew up in a Victorian home that my great grandparents had bought who were Sian immigrants.
[00:07:23] christopher : And four generations of my family lives in that house. Me and my brother being the fourth, and my grandma and grandpa were very involved in my childhood. I don't know, my, my attention was really siloed, but when we moved to Long Island, it was like movies that I had seen as a preteen and teen.
[00:07:39] katie: How old were you when that
[00:07:40] christopher : I, we moved there right before I turned 15.
[00:07:43] katie: Okay. Whoa. It's a weird age for a big, yeah. I
[00:07:45] christopher : really, really didn't want to move, but you know, we moved, I didn't get a vote and we moved to a very, I don't know, quintessential New York suburb. Long Island is where the suburbs began in this country, and it's holding [00:08:00] strong. I think life there goes on, not super dissimilarly from the way it did in the fifties.
[00:08:08] katie: So your, your dad has the pizza shop. You moved to the suburbs. Does your dad still have the pizza spot
[00:08:16] christopher : right now in 2025?
[00:08:18] katie: Yeah.
[00:08:18] christopher : No. No, he doesn't. How's
[00:08:20] katie: the pizza?
[00:08:22] christopher : I remember it being extremely good. I, yeah, the pizza was very, very good. It was like a sit down formal pizzeria. Was that my first job? Yeah, that was my first job.
[00:08:32] christopher : I was a busboy at my dad's pizzeria, but it wasn't like a real job. You know, I would go in with my dad once or twice a week and, and I would like clean tables and then he'd be like, all right.
[00:08:42] katie: Yeah. Like he chores, but outside the house.
[00:08:44] christopher : Yeah. And then I would go walk over to the Museum of Natural History or walk across the park to the Met or so.
[00:08:50] christopher : Cool. Yeah. City kid. I used to walk down to Times Square. Wow. And go to the Virgin Mega store. Yeah. I have a lot of nostalgia for [00:09:00] the parts of my childhood that were unsupervised in Manhattan. Some of my fondest memories in my life.
[00:09:12] katie: Do you remember what your first record you bought at the Virgin Store was?
[00:09:16] christopher : The first tape I ever bought was Mc Hammer. Can't touch this, can't touch this,
[00:09:24] music: can't touch this.
[00:09:25] christopher : And then, and then you and ITY single by Queen Latifah.
[00:09:38] christopher : And then she says it over and over again, and then she like wraps the verse.
[00:09:41] katie: Oh,
[00:09:41] christopher : cool. Yeah, it's a solidarity track.
[00:09:44] katie: So you, you have this cool city childhood. You end up in Long Island,
[00:09:48] christopher : move to the suburbs, do high
[00:09:49] katie: school there. Yeah.
[00:09:50] christopher : And then between junior year and senior year, my whole childhood, my dad would spin this yarn about after high school, he and my [00:10:00] godfather and their two other best friends.
[00:10:05] christopher : Dominic and Patty, these guys are all like Brooklyn, Bensonhurst, Guidos. Like my dad maybe isn't a Guido, but he's like a Paisan. He's so Sicilian, New York. Like if you looked, if we could cut a photo into this, you'd, there'd be like, yeah, this guy is very Italian American from New York. And him and his other buddies who he was, you know, fucking off with as like a youth, they drove my, I'm pretty sure my dad's friend Dominic, who's passed, who was a dentist, had a a VW bug.
[00:10:41] christopher : And the four of them drove it to Wyoming, down through Colorado, to Arizona and back to New York. And I think they did it over the course of like two months. And as kids, when these guys would get together, they would rehash this incredible trip that they went on. And between junior and senior year, [00:11:00] my dad decided, I'm sure my mom, my mom grew up very much an outdoorsy person for someone from New York.
[00:11:07] christopher : My, my mom's dad jumped ship in Brazil during World War II and stowed away on a boat and ended up in New York. Whoa. Met my grandmother, got her pregnant, got caught, got deported, and then. My grandmother and my great-grandmother got him back in the country 'cause he had fathered her child.
[00:11:28] music: Whoa.
[00:11:29] christopher : So he, he was a very wild guy and he really fell in love with the same parts of the American dream that my dad and myself are at best romantics with or of, and at worst victims of.
[00:11:49] katie: Okay.
[00:11:49] christopher : So you, we go on this road trip.
[00:11:52] katie: Okay. You go on this road trip
[00:11:53] christopher : we drive from New York. It was, this is when you're in high school for a month. It was, it was the summer between junior and senior year.
[00:11:59] katie: Is it, are we up [00:12:00] to your, oh, nevermind. That was when you were 21. Okay. We're working.
[00:12:03] christopher : Yeah. No, no. I'm trying to like trying to
[00:12:05] katie: You're said we're setting the scene to
[00:12:06] christopher : contextualize my own indoctrination.
[00:12:09] christopher : Yes. Into being someone who was like,
[00:12:11] katie: I'm with you.
[00:12:12] christopher : Like during college was like, this is bullshit. I gotta go west. Yeah. Yeah. I gotta like, what am I, I don't even know this country. And, but anyway, we did this road trip and I think it was like three and a half weeks. Like 24 days. And we went to Yellowstone, we drove down through the Rockies and we went to the Grand Canyon.
[00:12:32] christopher : We saw wolves, bears, wow. Buffalo. The whole. Shebang. My college entrance exam essay was about this road trip. So
[00:12:39] katie: you were, you were stoked. You were like happy to be with your parents and your brother doing this?
[00:12:45] christopher : Yeah, the first time I ever drove a car in a serious way, I drove through all of Nebraska on that road trip.
[00:12:51] christopher : Oh wow.
[00:12:52] katie: So you, but you got along with your parents and, because I just feel like there're a 14-year-old, 15 year olds who would be like, I
[00:12:58] christopher : was 16. Oh no, [00:13:00] I was 15. Gonna turn 16. Yeah. Well,
[00:13:01] katie: even, even so like even more so like at that age, who would be like, I'm going away from my friends to hang out with my parents and my sibling.
[00:13:08] katie: But that's cool that you were into it.
[00:13:10] christopher : Yeah, I mean, I don't remember any enmity from that time. My parents got divorced, like right when I went to college. My college experience was, my first week of college was nine 11.
[00:13:26] katie: Oh my God. I went
[00:13:26] christopher : to Stony Brook and I woke up like landline, ringing off the hook. My mom freaking out.
[00:13:32] christopher : My dad was on the West Side Highway, no cell phones. My uncle worked in the Twin Towers at the time, it was just like mayhem. Classes were canceled for days. Campus was kind of a scene. There was some anti-Islamic violence that happened.
[00:13:48] katie: Was your uncle okay?
[00:13:49] christopher : Yeah, my uncle was on. I wish that I. Had the kind of brain that could hold on to stats and numbers better.
[00:13:58] christopher : But my uncle, I believe, was on the [00:14:00] 70th floor. And my uncle is a, is a union tradesman. He's an electrician. And he had been on that job for a while doing some kind of electrical work in, I think Tower one. And the foreman of the building just never showed up. Electricians need to be let into these panels by someone with keys.
[00:14:21] christopher : And my uncle was with his apprentice and he was up there waiting for this guy, guy's not showing, they call him nothing. And 15 minutes before the first plane hit, my uncle was basically like, you know what? Forget this. Let's go. Let's go get a bite. I'm not gonna wait up here all day for this guy. This guy's clearly either extremely late or not coming.
[00:14:42] christopher : And this part I do remember with great clarity, he walks outta the building and he's crossing the street to go get coffee and snack, smoke a cigarette, and as they're about to open the door to the cafe, the explosion happened [00:15:00] directly above them on the side of the building that they were on. And my uncle was right there.
[00:15:04] christopher : He didn't see it happen, but he was like watching the aftermath. Oh my
[00:15:07] music: God. And
[00:15:08] christopher : then he worked, he was there all day. He was with first responders and he worked, he was part of this team of union electricians who turned the stock exchange back on and then did whatever it was that they had to do to make sure that electricity was running.
[00:15:23] christopher : And he also got very sick and was part of that whole class action, I guess, and got himself a new boat I believe. But good. Yeah, he was there. Yeah. It's a rough start to college for you. Yeah. All this stuff precipitated this moment when I was 20 where I was
[00:15:50] christopher : teetering on the edge of do I want to finish college? What am I doing? I was, at this point, I was already painting and making, [00:16:00] making things, but really headless. A lot of close friends of mine at the time went straight to art school and then subsequently right into their MFAs and that was my social milieu and it kept me working in a way where I saw that my friends were making these things and it was very inspiring.
[00:16:22] christopher : And it's funny, there's like a weird analog to my claim to fame as a bumper sticker person because like bumper
[00:16:30] katie: sticker mag, I do believe Magnate Mag, excuse me, the Andrew Carney of
[00:16:33] christopher : bumper stickers. Someone just said this week, but I ran for class president four years in a row, but with absolutely zero intention of winning.
[00:16:45] christopher : I ran for class president four years in a row, in a row in high school. At this high school where like sort of the fabric of my scholastic life just disintegrated into me being I was class clown. If that makes sense.
[00:16:59] katie: Congrats. [00:17:00]
[00:17:00] christopher : Thanks so much. So the other, it's funny, the other person, you know, there's the female and male, they, the way they did it back then in those, in the old days, the other class clown was also from Brooklyn and also moved to this town and went to this high school the same year as me.
[00:17:15] christopher : Oh,
[00:17:15] katie: there's something, something there and our,
[00:17:17] christopher : our yearbook photo of us, I'm like, you know, I'm in my blow up period. I'm like, I went from being like five, nine sophomore year to being like six two by senior year. And then I'm, I'm like teetering around six five right now, but like, like real a my, anyway, my class clown photo in the, I think they're called superlatives in the yearbook is like me at like six two or six three looking like literally they woke me up off my desk.
[00:17:43] christopher : I was asleep in ap in AP history, which I did not get college credits for. And it's me and Tice Jennings, we look so schlubby and like reluctant and also I guess kind of, there's like a sardonic smile that we're both wearing where're splicing this
[00:17:59] katie: picture in. [00:18:00] Yeah.
[00:18:00] christopher : I'm so much taller than her. But What was that name
[00:18:05] katie: you ran for President?
[00:18:06] christopher : Oh, I ran for cross president. But the reason that I did it was because my other close friends also ran with the intention of winning. And when you would run for president, you were allowed to, or vice president or whatever, cabinet treasurer, you were allowed to make signs and put them up all over the school.
[00:18:26] christopher : So I was already drawing a lot.
[00:18:28] music: Yeah. I
[00:18:29] christopher : did it because I would make these very juvenile absurd posters and like the first year that I did it freshman year, they were pretty like mellow. I think it was like really silly stuff like Vikings are voting for DeLoach and it would be like a really rough drawing of a Viking.
[00:18:49] christopher : But I was also using clip art and I would print them at school and put them up everywhere. But senior year they made a rule because of me that you had to have [00:19:00] all the posters approved by Mr. Steve Howe, who's my marketing teacher because my posters had gotten so confrontational and off the wall
[00:19:10] katie: we were gonna have to make a, a visual, I wish there
[00:19:14] christopher : were photos of these things, but I made these, this one series of posters that said Piss on Slack.
[00:19:19] christopher : And my friend Matt Slack was also running for president and I put them in the urinals. All that's your finest
[00:19:24] katie: word get. I
[00:19:24] christopher : thought so. But then after that they were like, this is, I got in trouble. You know? I was really class clown. Like I really embodied that without, it wasn't like my intention, it just was, it was well-earned.
[00:19:33] christopher : Yeah. It's just like a part of my, it's just lives inside of your, as my IFS therapist would say. It's one of the many Yeah. People that live inside of me. Oh yeah. But. Where are we going towards
[00:19:45] katie: We're, we're working our way towards college and the hitchhiker. Yeah. But was there anything else about high school that was, I
[00:19:54] christopher : think I was just like the zone kind of off the rails.
[00:19:58] katie: Yeah. You know, like, oh, I, uh, I asked about [00:20:00] art and painting and like, when that came in. So you were doing, you were drawing and making art all through.
[00:20:06] christopher : But I, I was high school. I like there was no, there was really no ulterior motive, minus the brief flirtation with running for class president and it being like a perfect vehicle for making work.
[00:20:23] katie: Yeah.
[00:20:23] christopher : That essentially was the same thing I'm doing now, making propaganda or, you know, these kind of like covert tongue in cheek advertisements. God,
[00:20:34] katie: isn't it so funny how like, we're, we're pretty much like fully baked?
[00:20:38] christopher : Yeah. I mean, I don't have kids, but most of my friends do. And the thing that I hear a lot of them say with great frequency is there's a very unique specific modality that they're operating within from the time that they're like born.
[00:20:55] christopher : Yeah. And it's, I guess it's kind of the job of parents is sort of like, [00:21:00] keep that, whittle that down to something that can both function in society and also contribute to make things better down here, not only for the. Commons. But for the kid. Yeah, the person, the nascent being, but yeah. Anyway.
[00:21:18] katie: Okay, so you and Oliver, your, we went on this road trip.
[00:21:20] katie: IFS parts go on the trip. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:22] christopher : We went on this road trip. It really opened my eyes and I started to, I remember coming back from that road trip and getting all these backpacking gear cool. Like catalogs and like I got a subscription of backpack or magazine I think. Anyway, here, keep me on track.
[00:21:40] katie: I'm ready for the road, the road trip.
[00:21:42] christopher : Okay, so you got enough? I am 20 years old. I find out that this thing called the Appalachian Trail exists. Okay. And I'm in college, but I'm like really not United States is gonna blow up, you know, a third of a continent. [00:22:00] Who knows what's gonna happen, anthrax, maybe there's another nine 11. I'm like, you know what?
[00:22:05] christopher : The cacophony around me at the time was a lot of people saying that America is this and it matters. And America, this America that and I became really fixated on what even is America. And like how, who, what, when, where, why designates these people to posit all these very grandiose notions about this a thing.
[00:22:36] christopher : That's just an idea ultimately. And. I decided that I was going to walk from Georgia to New York on the Appalachian Trail. I it, do you know anything about the Appalachian Trail? No. It's, I think it's twenty two hundred and seventy one miles. Maybe it's twenty one hundred and seventy eight or something.
[00:22:53] christopher : But it's a long corridor of public [00:23:00] and private land with easements that runs from Springer Falls, Georgia in northern Georgia, all the way up to Mount Kain in Maine. And then it continues as I forget what, it becomes a different trail that runs all the way up into Canada and people have been walking on it.
[00:23:18] christopher : This is 2005 that I left. I left February of 2005.
[00:23:23] katie: You left school to do this? I
[00:23:24] christopher : took a semester off. None of the impetuses for this decision of mine were like, they were all pretty novel and ubiquitous, you know, young men, like trying to find themself. I'm not trying to like Grand Ossify it, I was just, but yeah, a willing vehicle.
[00:23:41] christopher : Vehicle for the same things that other people, I don't think it's a gendered thing were captivated by that. Motivated them to go, you know, want to be alone in the wilderness. Yeah. Or semi alone. But yeah, my, my dad drove me down, dropped me off and [00:24:00] yeah, I don't know why. I guess I was just ready to do it and I had done some research, you know, I didn't have a cell phone.
[00:24:07] christopher : I printed up all the maps. I got really into ultralight backpacking, but the first like 15 or 20 days, it snowed like half the time.
[00:24:18] katie: Yeah, I was gonna say February.
[00:24:19] christopher : Yeah. It was cold as hell. It was like in the twenties or the teens most nights. Oh my
[00:24:23] katie: God. I mean,
[00:24:24] christopher : I have many memories of hiking in two to three feet of snow and it was hard.
[00:24:31] christopher : And it, but I really, it didn't matter. I like really romanticized the hell out of what I was doing. Wow. And that's cool. A big, a big part of like why I, I did It also was my earliest aspirations were never to be an artist. It was much more, I was much more interested in, in writing.
[00:24:51] music: I
[00:24:51] christopher : didn't really have any story to tell.
[00:24:53] christopher : And it was my great hope that I would do this and I would get a glimpse of what, you know, [00:25:00] this idea that I had of real America was like, and then be able to like come back and say something that was worth hearing. And I guess that did happen. Although, anyway.
[00:25:11] katie: Did you write about it?
[00:25:12] christopher : Yeah, I've read about it a lot, but like I've never done anything with it, um, yet.
[00:25:18] christopher : Yeah. I have yet to do anything with it, but,
[00:25:20] katie: so I'm getting the exclusive
[00:25:22] christopher : Yeah, you're getting, you're getting the first, the first beat. But what ended up happening was, I mean, my day to day on that trip I left the second week of February and. By Memorial Day I was back in New York. Most of it's pretty mundane.
[00:25:38] christopher : There's really not that much of interest, but some things did happen before this one hitchhiking story that did really irrevocably change the direction of my life.
[00:25:51] music: Oh,
[00:25:52] christopher : you know, I'm from New York City. Yeah. But like I had some understanding of like what southerners [00:26:00] were like, or could be like, there were a lot of, there were, we don't have time for it, but this was a very big actualizing experience for me politically also.
[00:26:12] katie: Yeah. Did what you were set out for it to do? It sounds like
[00:26:15] christopher : it. It did, and also I felt, yeah, it's, I, I got what I was looking for in a lot of ways and then some where it really made, it really helped me make sense of what the actual national character is and exactly what people are working with politically, intellectually, and emotionally that informs their behavior as Americans.
[00:26:41] christopher : And up until that point, I found it very confusing. And I mean, you know, nine 11 happened to the people who lost family members on that day, more than anyone. But in a big way. The way that the branding, advertising, marketing [00:27:00] of that administration and subsequent administrations up to this day. What have you believe is that it happened to all of us.
[00:27:07] christopher : And so there was really like a full sail campaign to get people to reinvest in this idea that no one can do this to America. And I think before nine 11, a lot of people weren't thinking in those terms, and I think it took a long time for them. Or maybe not a long time, just one event for people to really buy in, to vote in ways that were really not in their best interest.
[00:27:38] christopher : But that experience that I had on that trip in some ways shape or form did help me understand Yeah. Formative that moment. Yeah. But this is all backdrop for this very specific, okay. Yeah.
[00:27:58] music: I [00:28:00] New York,
[00:28:03] music: welcome back.
[00:28:04] christopher : Welcome back. Are you driving on the Yeah, but it depends. Color pencil wipes right after.
[00:28:09] music: Can't believe.
[00:28:11] christopher : Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, and so
[00:28:15] katie: you're, you're walking the I'm
[00:28:17] christopher : walking in the woods. I'm getting picked up by, by weird people.
[00:28:20] katie: You see it, you see 'em. Um, it's,
[00:28:22] christopher : it's now Spring.
[00:28:23] katie: Spring has fun.
[00:28:24] christopher : I'm in
[00:28:25] katie: hear those birds.
[00:28:26] katie: I'm in
[00:28:26] christopher : the, I'm in the like ver Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania corridor. And my cousin at the time was going to Penn State, and I had planned on visiting him when I was closer to him. And at this point I had friends who were going to college in Baltimore. I hitchhiked to Baltimore, visit some friends in Baltimore for three days, and then I hitchhike [00:29:00] back to the Appalachian Trail.
[00:29:02] christopher : I think I took a train and then hitchhiked like a couple hours and get back on the trail in West Virginia. And I'm planning the next week to go visit my cousin and I come upon this stone home in the woods on the Appalachian Trail in West Virginia, just outside of the town of Harper's Ferry. But I get to this stone home, it's a hostel.
[00:29:28] christopher : It's run by this elderly man. It's very beautiful. It's like rich in civil war history. And they have a big communal dinner at this hostel every night where the hosts cook. And it's part of what you're paying for is to eat dinner and then breakfast, and then stay the night indoors. And at the dinner there's all these other, hi other hikers there, people hiking the Appalachian Trail.
[00:29:51] christopher : And we're all sharing stories. And I tell. This. And remember at the time I'm 21 years old, I'm saying, yeah. I just hitchhiked to Baltimore and visited friends at [00:30:00] college and this 19-year-old kid who is hiking the Appalachian Trail for credit college credit at Ole Miss who's born and raised in Mississippi is after dinner he propositions me and he tells me that he has never hitched more than just into town on this trip.
[00:30:20] christopher : And he's afraid to hitchhike by himself. But his uncle is a congressman in DC and he is supposed to go visit him. And he would rather hitchhike than take the train. He tells me that, or he asked me, he asked me if I would go with him and he would pay for all of our lodging and all of our meals for me to essentially like escort him.
[00:30:46] christopher : And he is like a really nice person. We play, we like after dinner, it's May, so the days are getting longer. But we play Frisbee, you know, as kids. As kids love to do [00:31:00] college age, kids, we play for, we play Frisbee and we get to know each other and I agree. And so we come up with this plan, we're gonna wake up at the butt crack of dawn and hike the four miles to the road crossing and then hitchhike to DC And we wake up at Dawn and I call my aunt and.
[00:31:24] christopher : I am like, Hey, and Chris, I'm in West Virginia and I'm on my way to dc but I wanted to get ahold of you and get William my cousin's phone number so that I can reach out to him and plan to visit him at Penn State. And my aunt gives me the number. And the entire time that I'm on this trip, I'm keeping like very detailed journals.
[00:31:50] christopher : Like I had, you know, for all my obsession with ultralight backpacking, I always had a novel with me and I had the two journals. Yeah. But instead of [00:32:00] writing the phone number in my journal, which I remember being with me, I take a hundred dollars bill out of my pocket and I write William and then his phone number on the a hundred dollars bill.
[00:32:12] christopher : I have no idea why I did it to this day. And also the, the $300 that I had, I, I had $300 on me, was pretty much the last of my discretionary money to get back to New York. I had like my first credit card with I think like a $250 limit as like the emergency thing. But I also never set out to hike the whole trail.
[00:32:37] christopher : I was just trying to walk from Georgia to New York. I'm 21 years old. There were plenty of times like where I had a very specific budget, but people were like, we're gonna go into town and we're gonna drink. And I was like. Okay, Yolo, let's go. And spent, you know, probably $50 that I had not budgeted for this trip.
[00:32:55] christopher : Right, right. So anyway, I write on the a hundred dollar bill, Alan, this kid's name.
[00:32:59] katie: [00:33:00] It's very cinematic to be like, I'm gonna use the hundred, not my journal.
[00:33:02] christopher : Totally unintentional. I don't have no idea why I did this, but the kid person's name is Allen. I'm not gonna give his whole name. He's since gone on to be a high power lawyer in Washington DCI have reached out to him a couple years ago because of what this story that I'm gonna unfold did to me.
[00:33:24] christopher : Wow. So we start hiking the four miles to the road crossing and we are, you know, getting to know each other. He's, he's sharing like intimate details. He's very religious, evangelical Christian. We're talking about life in the church and like my upbringing being raised between like the Catholic church and the Lutheran church and we're talking about sex and virginity and it's not like a casual, like, I don't know if this is just an effect that I have on people or if this was a particle in [00:34:00] or if this is a particle in people's experiences doing these kinds of trips.
[00:34:04] christopher : But it makes for like fast intimacy.
[00:34:06] katie: Yeah. Probably a little bit of both.
[00:34:07] christopher : Yeah. We have this really sort of smash and dash get to know one another. At this point, like four miles is about an hour and 20 minutes. We're like cruising. We're, he's also a tall kid. We're lean, we're like, have walked over a thousand miles in three and a half months at this point.
[00:34:26] christopher : So we're like flying. We get to this road crossing and some blue road, some state highway, and we start hitchhiking. You know, I've got hiking poles, I'm like waving and there's probably a car every two minutes at first. And it's around, I wanna say 10 30 or 10 o'clock in the morning and 20 minutes go by.
[00:34:47] christopher : No one stopped. 30 minutes go by, no one stopped. And Alan is like, Hey, what if we hike to the next road crossing? 'cause this seems to be taking a long time. And we look at the map and the [00:35:00] next road crossing is another four miles. So it's like another hour and a half. And I am pretty firm that if we do that, then we're gonna be starting to hitch again at noon or afternoon and we're gonna end up, we, it could take even longer.
[00:35:18] christopher : We don't know what the next road is. We're here. Let's just keep trying. Okay. And so he's, he's agrees, acquiesces, and we keep hitchhiking and then 45 minutes go by and we still haven't picked up a ride. And now like there's a lot of cars. Now it's a couple cars a minute, and no one is picking us up. We're, we're like, we're, and that's
[00:35:37] katie: really uncommon from your experience.
[00:35:38] katie: Yeah.
[00:35:38] christopher : My experience before that, this was the beginning of my hitchhiking experience, was this hiking trip I went on, but five minutes. Wow. Okay. Like, and also in the, the deeper south portion of the trip, people are largely aware that the Appalachian Trail exists. It's part of their economy, it's part of the identity and the folkloric [00:36:00] sort of sentiment that the, that these towns and places hold and people are very, there's things called trail angels.
[00:36:08] christopher : People who will try to force you to go to their house and cook for you or stay at, you know, things like that. Yes. So it's uncommon to wait this long and now Alan is vehement that we go on, this is not working and we start to argue,
[00:36:22] katie: why do you think no one was coming?
[00:36:24] christopher : We were meant to get in the car with the person that picked us up.
[00:36:27] christopher : There was no other way that this was gonna happen. Okay. And we're arguing and I'm just reiterating very severely how illogical that is. And we're not even like waving our poles or trying to hitch. And as we're arguing a silver dodge pickup truck with an extended cab, like almost brand new, probably a 2002, just pulls over down the road in front of us, like kicks up dust and rocks at us and we, it interrupts us and we're looking and it's probably 50 yards away and parked.[00:37:00]
[00:37:00] christopher : And we're looking at it and the driver makes no sign that he, it's for us. And we like realize he's pulling over for us and we run up to the car and Alan runs up to the front window and the window opens and it reveals a man who looks like the perfect combination of Mark Twain and Colonel Sanders. He looks like if you put those two people together, this is what you would get.
[00:37:30] christopher : Okay. He's wearing a white shirt and white work pants, has a big burish like gray Hannibal mustache, full head of like Mark Twain ish hair. Not, but he's not, doesn't have that like widow's peak thing going on. And he, we look at him and he goes, where are you going? Thick, thick, Southern accent. And we're in Virginia.
[00:37:53] christopher : And uh, in my experience in Virginia, which is not that [00:38:00] much, you don't hear this kind of drawl, but he had drawl and Alan answers. He said, we are trying to get to Washington, DC today. And the man tells us that he can't take us to DC but he can take us extremely close and leave us in a spot where we will definitely get a ride.
[00:38:17] christopher : And so we get in the car and as soon as they get in the car, the car smells like an ashtray. It smells. S intensely of smoke, and we take off with this man and he closes the windows and he takes a pack of unfiltered camels out and he starts to smoke a camel cigarette, an unfiltered one with the windows closed in the car.
[00:38:41] christopher : And without missing a beat, he starts to, he immediately goes into that. He is a retired police officer, and he launches into a literal liturgy of murders that he's committed. And [00:39:00] he goes into great detail about killing children and grown and grown men. And the way that he's structuring his confession and articulating everything is so matter of fact.
[00:39:20] christopher : And so, um, I don't know. It, it was so mundane to him as if, as if
[00:39:33] katie: chilling, as
[00:39:34] christopher : if it was something that everyone would understand.
[00:39:37] katie: Oh my God.
[00:39:38] christopher : And we're in the car with this guy for over an hour and a half. Uh, it culminates with us being stuck on the I five, the major corridor that connects all. Of the eastern seaboard down to the south, and we're about an hour and 20 minutes outside of DC And [00:40:00] he's been telling us extremely detailed graphic stories of CR crimes that he committed while he was a police officer.
[00:40:09] christopher : And I don't know how close we are to the city. And at one point he offers me a cigarette and keep on. I, at this point in my life, I didn't really smoke like I occasionally would have a cigarette. I'd never bought a pack. I'd had some rolling tobacco occasionally, and I remember he didn't even say anything.
[00:40:26] christopher : He, he held, I was in the backseat. And when we got in the car, he asked us where we were from. And Allen, very southern, it was Mississippi. And I never, I didn't say a single word to him or ask him a question, the entire ride. And when he offered the cigarette, he didn't say anything. He just held the pack out behind himself, open and nudged the cigarette out.
[00:40:48] christopher : And I remember hearing in my head, not thinking, will you smoke the devil's cigarette? And I took a cigarette and I smoked it in the car with the windows closed. And then about 15 minutes later [00:41:00] he pulls off. We're in that bumper to bumper, but pretty, we're in some serious traffic on the I five under an overpass next to a sign that says hitchhiking punishable by $2,500, whatever it is.
[00:41:16] christopher : And we get outta the car and he says, good luck and. Allen turns to me and he looks at me and he says, I don't think I've ever met someone that was evil until today. And I, and we're both ged. Like, what are they gagged? We're Yeah. Yeah.
[00:41:36] katie: We're gagged. I'm gagged right now, and we're
[00:41:37] christopher : standing under this sign.
[00:41:38] christopher : And I mean, like, I could, I can't tell this story in this format and like tell you the things that he said because
[00:41:45] katie: it's, I don't wanna know.
[00:41:46] christopher : Heinous.
[00:41:46] katie: Yeah.
[00:41:48] christopher : And we're standing under the sun and we're like, kind of gagged, frozen. Like, it was like we'd seen a ghost. Yeah. And I remember saying now, and I was like, I think that that was the devil.
[00:41:57] christopher : I don't, I don't know. I [00:42:00] don't know if that guy was even real. And like, we're sort of like, like the ice is kind of breaking and we're like, we can't figure this out right now. Yeah. We gotta, we got, we're we can't hitchhike here. We're, we're fucked. Yeah. Like, we're not getting to DC tonight and 50 or 60 yards ahead of us is the OnRamp to the I five and it's the only way off.
[00:42:24] christopher : I remember seeing an exit ramp and we start walking up the on ramp and we're not hitchhiking, we're just walking up the on ramp, but we look like hitchhiker. Mm-hmm. Like I'm wear, I'm wearing like, I hiking boots, like probably North Face cutoff, like little North face gym shorts and like a raggedy like fleece or something.
[00:42:41] christopher : And I have a backpack, hiking poles. I think I was wearing, uh, like a CCM ice hockey hat that I've had since high school. And we're walking up the on ramp and Allen's in front of me and this car unprovoked just pulls over and opens, rolls the window down, same, same way that the first guy [00:43:00] did. And I'm having like heart palpitations and he looks at us, he goes, where are you going?
[00:43:05] christopher : And this whole story that I'm sharing, everything was just automatic. I don't remember making any decisions. I don't remember really talking. It was like being a character in a film. And we say Washington, DC and he goes, get in. And we get in and I get in the backseat again. And in the backseat there's a cooler in the space between the seats.
[00:43:29] christopher : It's an old, not old, but it's like a Lincoln or Mercury Town car. Like big backseat. Big cushy leather. And there's this big cooler there in between it. And then on the seat and on the floor of the behind the driver's seat are trees in pots. And he's immediately says, I can take you to Washington DC right now, but my wife is nine months pregnant.
[00:43:57] christopher : We are having a baby. Any day I [00:44:00] have to stop at home and just get her or check on her. I can't just, and we are just, again, I'm like, I'm not thinking really. And we get off at the next exit and we pull into like a housing community, like. From the show weeds or whatever, where it's like all the houses look identical.
[00:44:20] christopher : And we're pulling up to this house and the garage door opens and it hits me. I'm like, oh, this guy's gonna kill us. He's probably like five 11 little wire, little wire room glasses, little wire room glasses. I forgot to tell you, like before he goes up to the house, he goes, are you hungry? And we're like, yeah.
[00:44:39] christopher : He goes, you can take whatever you want in the cooler. I open the cooler, there's like snowballs, hohos milk, a pear, and I'm eating a pear, you know? And then we pull up to his house, he's like, fattening us up. We pull up to the house and the garage are open and it hits me. I'm like, this is Jeffrey Dahmer.
[00:44:55] christopher : And the guy, the guy that picked us up first was the devil. Like my [00:45:00] life is some sort of strange allegorical continuum that's about to meet its logical conclusion. And, but I, I can't scream, I can't yell, I can't get out of the car, I can't do anything. I'm like captive to what I feel is coming. And the garage door opens and the car pulls into the garage.
[00:45:24] christopher : And as I'm processing all of this or feeling all of this, the door to the house opens and a nine month pregnant woman walks out and she immediately is like confused. And then he's like, I pick these boys up. They're going to dc. And she says, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're staying here. We're cooking you dinner.
[00:45:46] christopher : We're gonna take you in the morning. And both Allen and I are like, no, we ha we have to go. He's like, my uncle is a congressman and is, we're supposed to meet him tonight, which is a lie. And they're like, okay, you know what? Okay, [00:46:00] but we are, we're both gonna go. I'm pregnant. And so they get, we stop. We like, I forget what happened.
[00:46:05] christopher : She offers us water. We're like, no. They can tell we're like freaked out and it's not because of them.
[00:46:12] music: Yeah.
[00:46:12] christopher : It like, we're still, like, we haven't had, we've had like maybe three minutes between when we got outta that truck. Right. And when this guy picked us up, there was maybe 200 seconds for us to like, you know, process.
[00:46:26] christopher : We're still freaked out and we get in the car back out and we just get into the gridlocked I five and I mean, I don't, I'm not a DC person. My girlfriend's is from DC but like, I don't know a ton of DC people, but I'm sure if it's like that five days a week, then they know how this, the rest of the story is because we're in the car with these people.
[00:46:49] christopher : I think where we were was like 40 miles from DC and we were in that car for, we probably got picked up by that guy at the [00:47:00] second guy at one. We didn't get to DC till sunset, so like six o'clock we get in the car with them, we start driving and they just start telling us this story, their story.
[00:47:13] katie: So the pregnant woman gets in,
[00:47:15] christopher : her name is Rachel, his name is Noble.
[00:47:16] christopher : Noble and Rachel Atkins. And they start to tell us this story. They, and this is, I'm just reiterating something that happened to me. I don't know what I believe about any of this. I am, I believe in, I refuse to believe in nothing. And so by default I believe in something, but I don't often know what that something is.
[00:47:38] christopher : And this story has really compounded my ability to understand exactly what I believe. Wow. While at one point in my life it gave me a lot of certainty, I've realized through lived experience that my certainty was hubris. And I don't really know what's going on on this planet or at all. They start telling us a story.
[00:47:54] christopher : They were born to families whose business [00:48:00] dealings were completely intermarried. Their parents were business partners and they were betroth to be married. They had really no say in it. They grew up in Texas. Their parents were oil bank and land wealthy. And when they were 18, they got married and Noble went to work for his father.
[00:48:17] christopher : And he proceeds to tell us in front of his wife that he didn't really have a job and all he did was stay in an office and sort of do nothing. And then he would go out with the boys. Family, friends and people in his male community. And they would go to strip clubs and he would cheat on his wife and he would drink and do drugs.
[00:48:40] christopher : And that was his life for years. And then one day he, he opened the Bible and he was religious, but not religious like they were raised religious, they went to church. Their families were very religious, but had no, I think the term he used, they were not [00:49:00] godly. One day he opened, he was feeling guilty and he opened the Bible and he started reading it and he was overcome by light.
[00:49:11] christopher : And the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him and Gabriel told him that he was living in sin and that there is only one true God and that, that God is not the God that he was worshiping. And he was to go to his wife and confess what he'd been doing with his life and to ask for her forgiveness and that that was the Wolf of God.
[00:49:42] christopher : And so he goes to Rachel. They live in some, some of the, some of my recollection is vague, but the things that matter are very, are very like. Burned in my head, but they lived on some like lavish piece of ranch land in Texas. He goes to Rachel, he tells her what happened, he confesses [00:50:00] and she says to him, I was visited also by the Archangel Gabriel and he told me to accept your forgiveness.
[00:50:07] christopher : And he told me that we are to go to our family and renounce our worldly possessions and tell them that we're called to this, this, this ministry, to do this mission, to preach this true word of God, which is that material wealth and material abundance is a fallacy. And that as long as people who are thriving are thriving on the off of the backs and the labor of others, that it's not godly, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:50:43] christopher : And they go to their family and they tell them that they were visited by the Archangel Gabriel and their families have them institutionalized and they are in an ins and they're telling the story together, like he's telling it. And then she picks up and then, and I'm in the backseat with Alan and we're like [00:51:00] looking at each other.
[00:51:01] christopher : And every time I look at him, and this kid is a born again evangelical Christian, I was gonna say, is he
[00:51:06] katie: eating this up or no?
[00:51:07] christopher : He's like looking at me like, what in the wor like what is going on? And, but it's fascinating,
[00:51:13] katie: right?
[00:51:13] christopher : And like that part of their story took like an hour. It was a long, like lots of details that are lost to me now, but.
[00:51:20] christopher : Uh, the next part is after like 30 days or a couple weeks in observation, they're clearly not crazy. So they're released and they go back to their family and their families disown them and tell them that like they have, as long as they like, think that this is real. Yeah. That they're like, can't be in the family and they need to like sober up and accuse 'em of doing drugs, all this stuff.
[00:51:45] christopher : And so they end up living in a church somewhere in Texas, and I don't know how long that's happening, but it might have been a year where they're like, kind of like living in a church, like at, at the grace of whomever is doing this. [00:52:00] And then they're visited again in a dream the same night. And Gabriel tells them to go to, to go to Israel and to preach the word of God in Israel to the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims that are there, and that they're all children of the same God.
[00:52:20] christopher : And that nowhere in their religious modality is their space for violence or hatred. And that the true will of God is that all of these children get along. And, and so by hook or by crook, I don't know how they end up. They go to Israel and they told us that they lived in Israel for, i, I think almost 10 years.
[00:52:44] christopher : Like when they picked us up, they were in their early thirties and they're living there non-denominational. Trying to convince Jews, Muslims, and Christians of this notion, this very humanist notion [00:53:00] that, you know, we're all children of God. Yeah. And that there's no, there's no space in any gospel of any religious figure, which I don't, as far as I know, is not really part of the Old Testament or New Testament or, uh, Islamic traditions.
[00:53:15] christopher : There's a lot of violence in all of these things. Um, and then they tell us that they were visited a third time and when they were visited the third time, it was like a year before they met us, and that the Archangel Gabriel came to them and told them that Rachel was going to give birth to a child and that they were to move to Washington, DC and continue their ministry there.
[00:53:40] christopher : And that Noble would find work. He's an arborist. He, you, I've, like, I've, I have corresponded with him. Subsequently, he's still an arborist. So they moved back to America and we met them when she was nine months pregnant. And then this is where it gets crazy [00:54:00] if it wasn't already crazy.
[00:54:01] music: They
[00:54:02] christopher : tell us we're past that.
[00:54:03] christopher : They tell us that because we were possessed by some notion to go and be alone in the wilderness like Christ that we have made ourselves. Willing recipients of the real gospel and that we will live. And, and now is when they start to be like, they're like, we know how crazy this sounds. We know we sound crazy.
[00:54:24] christopher : And they're like laughing and they're smiling and they're like, you guys think we're so crazy?
[00:54:27] katie: Do they seem like cool? Like what's their seem vibe? They seem they're the nicest people. Okay.
[00:54:31] christopher : Like those two people are the nicest people I have ever met in my life. I've never, by the time that they start telling us the craziest part of the story, I'm like in love with them.
[00:54:42] katie: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:54:43] christopher : I'm like, I think these people are batshit crazy, but I like, love them. And the feeling in the car was like, incredible. And they tell us that like, because we went and chose to be in alone in the wilderness, that when Revelation happens, that because we are with them, that they are [00:55:00] giving us the true word of God, the true gospel, and that we are now prophets of the true gospel and that we will live to see a time when humans and machines integrate to form a new being.
[00:55:15] christopher : And that, that is the, is the final, is the final. I forget how they said it, that that's the final, uh, blow against God. Like that that's the, that that's the, the Rubicon, the crossing, the Rubicon, if you will, for our, for like God's children. And that if and when, but they didn't say if they're like, when that happens, under no circumstances.
[00:55:42] christopher : Become a machine. And then they go on to say that all of the religions started as holy things that were like the seeds that God planted. But slowly through both technology and just the failed nature of man, [00:56:00] that the devil has infiltrated all religion, all political machinery, and that everything is more evil now than it has ever, ever been, and that we will live to see Armageddon and, and they're like, we know it.
[00:56:18] christopher : They're like, we know it sounds crazy. They're like, we know how crazy it is for two people to pick you up and drive you and tell you that the Archangel Gabriel told them this, but it happened. And like we lost everything. We have no money. Like they clearly have some money. They're living in this, you know, like prefab house, but like we lost our family.
[00:56:36] christopher : We live destitute, but like, this is real. It's like we wouldn't do this if it wasn't real. And we're just like, I don't remember saying anything to them or I don't remember asking 'em a question. I don't think Alan asked a question. It was just them doing a ministry. Like they were just preaching, but like sort of like interacting as well.
[00:56:54] christopher : And I'm trying to remember if it was anything else. They
[00:56:56] katie: were charismatic.
[00:56:57] christopher : They were, they [00:57:00] were, they were effortless, effortlessly charismatic. I mean, it's a pregnant guy and his wife, right? A pregnant nine month pregnant woman and her husband like congenial clean. Telling us the story. They didn't really, yeah, they were charismatic, but it, it was sort of like, I mean, like, I don't go to church.
[00:57:19] christopher : I've been to church like four times in the past, like decade, and it's always been on vacation twice to an orthodox church in Greece, once in Florence, once in Rome at the Vatican. But they felt holy, they felt like godly people.
[00:57:31] katie: Yeah.
[00:57:32] christopher : And that's charismatic. I, I assume, you know, and I
[00:57:35] katie: feel like it helps that they were self-aware enough or like in on the joke enough, they were completely self-aware.
[00:57:42] katie: This is crazy, but on, that's what we got.
[00:57:45] christopher : Yeah. They were completely self, they did draw a line in the sand, so to speak, where they were like, Jesus is the Savior. They were like, you, like, you have to accept Jesus as your savior. Like it's the beginning and the end. They were like, but all this stuff is satanic.[00:58:00]
[00:58:00] christopher : And there, this is also before I'd ever heard this idea of transhumanism, of, you know, it was just something in a sci-fi. It was just Terminator. It was the only thing that I could relate it to, you know what I mean? Right,
[00:58:12] music: right.
[00:58:12] christopher : Like, now, Elon Musk is a startup where they're putting woven digital fabric in your head so you can, you know, control a computer without, you know, with your brain.
[00:58:23] christopher : It's happening anyway. We get to DC they pull up, they take us to the capitol, they park at the Capitol, and they put the child safety locks on. They lock the doors and they make us take all the cash that they have. They're both turned around facing in the backseat, and they go, this is what it means to be godly.
[00:58:43] christopher : They go, if you have enough to give, you, give it all because God will refresh you. And then they're like, let us take you to an ATM and give you more money. And we're like, no, no, no, no. And they're like, we're in the car for like five minutes. And he's like, [00:59:00] finally, like, we're so not willing to receive his, his, his grace, if you will.
[00:59:08] christopher : And he finally, like, he gives us like $170 or something in cash. And then before they let us out of the car, they're like, we know how crazy this is, but you will live to see the end of this world and you'll, you'll remember this moment. And we love and we love you. They, they get outta the car. Noble looks at me like he's my father, holds me by the shoulders.
[00:59:34] christopher : And he goes, if you ever need anyone, if you ever need anything, you can call me. Gives me his business card, gives me like a really long hug, like he's my dad. And then Rachel comes over, does the same thing, squeezes me, belly rubbing into me, gives me a kiss, and they're like, enjoy Washington, DC. Yeah. And Alan and I walk away, we play Frisbee on the Capitol lawn, and we're like, what?
[00:59:59] christopher : The [01:00:00] just happened to us? Yeah. And I'm like, do you realize that we got picked up by a guy who, for all intents and purposes, if you were gonna fictionalize the devil, you'd make him a police officer. Right? Who's talking about going to find sex workers and like how to get away with, and then tells you how he killed a bunch of people.
[01:00:15] christopher : And then we got picked up by these people who are literally like the Archangel Gabriel came to us three times. We lived in Israel, we're on a mission. You're gonna live to see the end times we're like laughing. We're like, what the, but we're also like, this is nuts. You can't make this up. And then we're like, you know what?
[01:00:31] christopher : Let's take the money he gave us and go out to dinner. So we go out to dinner, we go to some top bus bar that's right off the mall. And I remember the Lakers were playing the Celtics. It's like May 17th or whatever, 2005. We could look it up. And we're watching the game and I'm just like hoping that Boston loses.
[01:00:50] christopher : 'cause, you know, and we get like bacon wrapped scallops and like flatbreads at this tapas place. And we drink like a bottle of wine and we [01:01:00] pay and we have money left over and, and we're like decompressing on everything. I'm like, you know what, I'm actually done. Like after this trip, when we get back to the trail, I'm gonna hike for like, actually no, I'm just gonna go home after this weekend.
[01:01:14] christopher : I'm gonna go home. I, I don't even know why I was doing this, but like, this feels like the last Yeah. Like I'm good was I was already, I was burnt out. I was like only had a like. Maybe $500 to my name. And so I take out the a hundred dollars bill and I'm like with my cousin's phone number on it. And I'm like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna order some more food and wine.
[01:01:35] christopher : And he's like, okay, let's go. So I order some more food and wine. I pay for it with this a hundred dollars bill. And then we spend the next three days, we go to the Smithsonian, we go to the National Art Gallery, we go, his uncle cancels on us twice. We like hang out outside the White House. We do all this DC stuff, Lincoln Memorial, Kennedy Memorial, everything.
[01:01:57] christopher : And I call one of my friends from high school and I'm like, Hey, [01:02:00] can you drive down here tomorrow and pick me up? And he is like, for sure. My friend picks me up. I go home. It's So you have your
[01:02:06] katie: like before sunrise with Alan?
[01:02:08] christopher : Yeah. All around DC I get home summer's in full swing. And that story just becomes, people are like, how was your experience?
[01:02:15] christopher : And I'm like, oh, it was crazy. And they're like, did you, what was hitchhiking? They're like, and I'm like, how much time you have? And I told my family the story. I told some close friends, but it was sort of like a party favor, like, like this is the craziest hitchhiking story ever. Yeah. And then
[01:02:32] katie: party trick.
[01:02:33] christopher : Yeah. January of the next year I get a phone call. I am living in Brooklyn and I get a phone call from my friend Kyle Murray. Shout out, what's up, Kyle, who I went to high school with, who Kyle calls me, he moved to San Diego right outta high school. Love him to death like. Kyle is someone I really like. It was my first crush, if you will.
[01:02:58] christopher : Guy crush? Yeah. Kyle calls me, [01:03:00] he like moved to San Diego right outta high school so he could surf and go to college at the same time, year round. He's like, he's like, dude, you're not gonna believe what just happened. He like holds up the phone. He's with a bunch of other people I know from high school at a party in San Diego.
[01:03:12] christopher : And I'm like, what happened? He goes, dude, he goes, so I'm at this party. He was straight edge until he was 28. Uhhuh. He's like, and all these girls, college girls are asking me why I don't drink. And I'm like, 'cause it's a waste of money and a waste of time. And I take all this money I got out of outta my wallet.
[01:03:26] christopher : I got all this money for Hanukkah and Christmas and I have it in cash. And he goes, and I hold up like two G in cash and one of these girls. And she's like, Holly shouting my name. She's like, call that number. There's a number on that bill. Oh
[01:03:39] katie: my God.
[01:03:40] christopher : And so everyone but him is drunk at this party and they call William and my cousin picks up and my cousin
[01:03:48] katie: that
[01:03:52] christopher : he's like, hello? It's like one in the morning in Pennsylvania. He's like, and Kyle's like William. And he's like, yeah. [01:04:00] And he's like, I've got your a hundred dollars bill. And William's like, I don't know what you're talking about, man. It's like late. And Kyle's like, where are you?
[01:04:06] katie: Oh, he's like,
[01:04:06] music: my God. He's
[01:04:07] christopher : like, oh, I'm in Pennsylvania.
[01:04:09] christopher : And Kyle's like, oh, it's sick. I'm from New York. And William's like, okay, great man. Like, great. Like my cousins are from New York because like I guess William's also like how do you have my number? Right, right, right. But my cousin's like very normal. Married, his college sweetheart, has two kids, owns a home, like super normal, lives in, lives in Harrisburg.
[01:04:29] christopher : Wow. So my cousin is like, okay, my, my cousins are from New York and Kyle's like, where? And he is like, well, they're from Brooklyn, but they went to high school in Long Island. And Kyle's like, where'd they go to high school? And Williams, like, they went to Babylon High School and Kyle's like, wait, what's their name?
[01:04:42] christopher : And my cousin Williams, like, Christopher and John DeLoach. And Kyle's like, shut the, like, your cousin's my best friend. I have a matching tattoo with him. And then they were like, that's, that's crazy. He must have given you the bill. And then he calls me and I'm like, wait, it, it all hits me. I'm like, I remember that [01:05:00] Bill.
[01:05:00] christopher : I remember spending it and then it really re-contextualized that experience that I had.
[01:05:07] katie: Did you ever go back and tell Rachel and I
[01:05:10] christopher : emailed Noble like seven years ago. 'cause this, this happened 20 years ago, like 19 years ago. Right,
[01:05:17] music: right.
[01:05:17] christopher : I emailed Noble Atkins 10 years ago, maybe 2011, maybe 14 years ago.
[01:05:25] christopher : And I didn't tell him about How'd you
[01:05:26] katie: find him? You just, I had his business
[01:05:27] christopher : card. Oh, I see. He could look him up. He's online, he's on LinkedIn or he was, he, the care of Trees was his company. But I like emailed him and was like, Hey, like I, so
[01:05:37] katie: I started drawing a tree during
[01:05:39] christopher : this. Yeah. I was like, Hey, like I just want to know that, like, I want to let you know that like that ride that you gave me was really.
[01:05:45] christopher : An incredible experience in my life and I really appreciate you and I think about you somewhat often. And I just wanted to say hi. And he's like, I've, he's like, I would never forget you. Like I hope you're well. Like, email me back. And then I emailed Alan like not that long ago, like [01:06:00] seven years ago, and I was told him about the bill and he immediately, the first email he replied to me that was like, man, that was a crazy day.
[01:06:08] christopher : And then I responded with seven paragraphs about the, about the a hundred dollars bill. Yeah. And like I looked up, I looked up at one point how many hundred dollars bills were in circulation that year? And I'm, I don't remember anymore, but it's, there were more than a hundred million dollars bills.
[01:06:28] katie: That is the craziest.
[01:06:30] christopher : So the odd, the odds of Kyle getting the bill, calling the number, and my cousin picking up, calling the number, my cousin picking up and my cousin staying on the line long enough to figure it out. Getting,
[01:06:40] katie: yeah.
[01:06:41] christopher : And there's like, there were a hundred million plus a hundred dollars bills in circulation. It's all really, what
[01:06:47] katie: did Noble say about that?
[01:06:48] katie: Kismet?
[01:06:49] christopher : I didn't tell him about the bill. I mean, I, you know what he would say, right?
[01:06:53] katie: Right.
[01:06:53] christopher : This is a guy who's telling you that like the book of Revelation is about to come true. I was just
[01:06:58] katie: saved
[01:06:58] christopher : and like man and [01:07:00] machine merging together. Right, right. But yeah, that's the story I wanted to tell you.
[01:07:04] katie: I am speechless.
[01:07:06] christopher : Yeah. I don't know what to think about it. Still. It happened 20 years ago and I still can't make any sense of it.
[01:07:11] katie: That is the. I Wow. There were so many twists and turns are there. Yeah. I thought when you said that, I, I thought that maybe they were gonna, you know where my You told it so well. That was Thanks.
[01:07:25] katie: Incredible. I I thought that when they child locked the door or, and they gave you the money, I thought maybe this is kind of a, it's a war shock test, whatever people think of this story. Yeah. But my brain went to, for some reason, that you were gonna get to the restaurant and try to pay and they were counterfeit.
[01:07:44] katie: Oh my, my God. No. And they took your
[01:07:47] music: no no hundred because I, I
[01:07:48] katie: knew the hundred something was gonna happen with a hundred the way you told it.
[01:07:52] music: No,
[01:07:52] katie: I just thought it had to happen quick, because I didn't know there was a part two. Yeah. So that was, that was a twist for me. [01:08:00] Wow. I mean, that was kind of a party trick, but how do you think it impacted you?
[01:08:04] katie: So then you, you leave, you're now done with college, and then do you start I dropped
[01:08:10] christopher : outta college
[01:08:11] katie: because of that trip, kind of.
[01:08:13] christopher : Yeah. I, I mean, I went on a very haphazard series of more involved elaborate trips, just like that. I walked from Mexico to Washington. I did a lot of, I had a hit list of every endurance trial that I wanted to engage in.
[01:08:34] christopher : Kind of like seeking another, a more clear kind of. Psycho poetic spiritual experience that alluded me to this day. Do you know what I mean? I think so. I I was sort of chasing that. Yeah. I was chasing what that story made me feel was possible.
[01:08:57] katie: What did it make you feel was possible [01:09:00]
[01:09:00] christopher : that God could potentially like, reach down and like tell you that he's real or it's that it's real?
[01:09:06] music: Yeah.
[01:09:07] christopher : Because the odds, it's just, it's just very weird. Like I, I've since become very agnostic about the story. Like I, I have only told the story three or four times in the past 10 years, and I told it twice this year to, to people that are very important to me in an effort to come to an understanding about how I've lived my life.
[01:09:41] christopher : Because that experience really influenced the deprioritization of anything amounting to material success until I was at the cusp of turning 30 and I needed medical help and I had some medical stuff go [01:10:00] on and I was like, oh, no one is, I don't come from money. Like there's no net. There's no safety net.
[01:10:05] christopher : Yeah. And then I was just like, it wasn't so much the story. It was that I was never concerned with money in the bank or artistic success. I lived in Brooklyn, I made art. I would save up a ton of money, go on a long trip, RAF the Colorado River for 30 days through the Grand Canyon. Or I went on a series of really intense backpacking trips.
[01:10:31] christopher : And in the back of my mind was this notion that when the time was right, I'd be nudged and I would know what to do. And it never happened. And then I was like turning 30 and I needed $8,000 of dental work done.
[01:10:45] music: Mm-hmm.
[01:10:46] christopher : And I had to have oral surgery and I was like, oh man, I gotta grow up. And so I shared the story in an effort to be like, well, okay, well while you were finishing grad school and doing this, this is what I was doing.
[01:10:58] christopher : And it didn't [01:11:00] really help. Do people understand me? 'cause it is both so ridiculous. Why
[01:11:05] katie: not?
[01:11:05] christopher : I don't know. I mean, you have to ask them that. But what interests me more than the story itself or like what it means is what interests me more are the stories that people carry and how it informs their sense of self, their identity, the way they move through the world.
[01:11:24] christopher : 'cause I've heard stories that are, uh, almost as crazy as this. Or for the person sharing them, they're just as crazy. And it becomes part of the mytho poetics of their identity, their and their individuality, and. I think that that can do a lot of great, and it can also cause a lot of harm. There's people who have such a profound sense of hubris because they feel like God, like spoke to them and they're capable of doing crazy things.
[01:11:50] christopher : Yeah.
[01:11:53] katie: You know what I mean? Yeah. What did you want the, when you told the story, what were you [01:12:00] hoping people take away from that?
[01:12:03] christopher : I shared it with one peer who I'm not gonna name, just to protect their, a peer, a friend of mine who is really, I love a good conspiracy, but it's like not, I'm not living and dying for the tea on conspiracies, but I do have a friend and like colleague sometimes we, we've done some work together who, like, that's their wheelhouse.
[01:12:28] christopher : And they were sending me some, some, some stuff came across their desk about transhumanism and Neuralink and mach and machine learning and like the, I don't, this isn't even fringy. Like there's a lot of, there's billions of dollars being pumped into what will be the fusion of man and machine cybernetics.
[01:12:50] christopher : And I, we were really getting into it and I was like, I gotta tell you the story.
[01:12:55] katie: Yeah.
[01:12:55] christopher : And I told him the story and he was like, he redid the math [01:13:00] on the a hundred dollars bill and how many were in circulation. It was like, he, that's crazy. And I was like, yeah, it's crazy. I was like, he's like, what do you think?
[01:13:05] christopher : And I was like, I don't know anymore. I was like, I all I think is that it's crazy and it happened to me. And I mean, we're living in a time where it's highly likely that in the next decade with the exponential growth of artificial intelligence and implantables that we'll see people who have machines that like work with their biome to help them be better versions of themself.
[01:13:31] christopher : Whether they're people who lost a limb or have like a cognitive impairment or veterans or, it's, it's almost impossible that we won't see this, you know, doing, people can't see this, but this air signs prophecy. But also like, that's not, that's neither here nor there.
[01:13:48] katie: Right. The
[01:13:48] christopher : story itself is what's more powerful.
[01:13:51] katie: Yeah.
[01:13:51] christopher : But this person who I shared it with was like, you do make a lot more sense to me now.
[01:13:57] katie: Yeah. Yeah. Same. Yeah. But
[01:13:58] christopher : someone else was like, [01:14:00] yeah. Other, there have been people who were like, people who were like atheist, but, and I don't mean religious, but like, there's nothing after you die, there's no, there's no veil that you can look behind.
[01:14:11] christopher : It's all the mind
[01:14:12] katie: dead over.
[01:14:13] christopher : Yeah. I've, I'm like pretty, I'm not, I'm really not like looking for my ego stroke from sharing the story, but when I've, and when I've shared it with people like that, they're like, it's just crazy. It doesn't, it doesn't mean anything.
[01:14:27] music: Right.
[01:14:28] christopher : And I think that's a really weird way to go through life too, but also, you know, it makes sense.
[01:14:32] christopher : It's protective. A kind of facet of someone's waking life.
[01:14:40] katie: Yeah. I mean, I think that the thing that's most interesting to me right now is like, why, and I get in many ways why you wanted to tell it presently, at least to the person you were talking about because of how [01:15:00] relevant it is. Yeah. The machine stuff.
[01:15:02] katie: But I mean, I, I think that we all wanna be, we all, the worst thing, one of the worst feelings is being misunderstood.
[01:15:14] christopher : Yes.
[01:15:15] katie: And
[01:15:16] christopher : that, that's the biggest motivation for me.
[01:15:18] katie: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, you know, we all wanna be seen and loved, hopefully for who we really are. Right? Yeah. But it feels so terrible to be seen for who we really are and then rejected.
[01:15:37] christopher : Yeah.
[01:15:38] katie: And so then therefore we, we put on all of these masks, outfit or weed outfits. Yeah, exactly. Of course. And then we. Might still get love or get attention or get validation for those things. But it's fleeting and it doesn't really hit, yeah. But the rejection doesn't really feel as bad either. But [01:16:00] then when somebody, and it happens just naturally when somebody like actually sees us, it feels so good.
[01:16:07] katie: If they don't, if they stay, you know? And it feels so terrible when they see the real part and they, so the stakes are very high, you know? And I think
[01:16:16] christopher : for, for Revelation, the stakes of revelation to be, to be seen, you mean? Yeah. To be sincere.
[01:16:23] katie: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think we were talking about this the last time I was here with you about earnestness.
[01:16:29] katie: Yeah. And I guess it's just, we all have, I mean, it's kind of like why astrology is so popular, I think. And I think it's why, 'cause
[01:16:39] christopher : it's so vague.
[01:16:40] katie: No, I, I think Why Myers Briggs or astrology or human design, any of those. Which one's? The Myers-Briggs.
[01:16:46] christopher : Like ENF.
[01:16:46] katie: Yeah,
[01:16:47] christopher : yeah, yeah, yeah,
[01:16:48] katie: yeah. But I think all, all of that, any of it, it's just information about ourselves and it's shared language to be understood.
[01:16:54] katie: Like, yeah, if I tell you I'm a Taurus, or I'm an ENFP [01:17:00] or whatever, you may be able to be like, oh, I know this other person. That means you're like this. And then I'm able to tell you more about myself and then you know me more. Because I think it just, I don't know, I'm kind of just spit balling here, but I feel like you wanna tell the story because you wanna connect with someone and you want someone to see you.
[01:17:16] christopher : Yeah. I wanna be clear. There in no way, shape or form do I share the story because I feel like it's part of some kind of ministry. The way these people, it's more, the extreme nature of the coincidence affected my psyche. Right. And then subsequently my behavior. And it feels apt to let it out and like share and it's a long series of stories to get up to the story.
[01:17:48] christopher : Yeah.
[01:17:48] katie: You gotta take it from the top.
[01:17:50] christopher : Yeah. But then it doesn't make sense. The real interesting stuff is then digressing from the actual fabric of the narrative and then being like, how do the story, yeah. How do like the stories that we [01:18:00] perceive that have the big influence on our identity, how does keeping them in or sharing them like affect our day-to-day life?
[01:18:08] katie: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wonder if like, does everyone have a story like that? It might not, it obviously isn't the same and it, it isn't maybe as interesting or as cinematic as that.
[01:18:24] christopher : I don't know that everyone has a story, but I think that's kind of where these other, these other institutions sort of step in and they give you a story. Like, you're an American, you're a Catholic, you are a writer. You are,
[01:18:42] katie: you are a tourist. Alana Del Ray fan. Yeah.
[01:18:44] christopher : Like, and then. That becomes your story.
[01:18:46] christopher : And there's, and it's easier because it has parameters, it has an inherited specificity to it.
[01:18:56] katie: You can just put a sticker on your car to tell your story rather [01:19:00] than have to, to tell it.
[01:19:05] christopher : Yeah. All kidding aside.
[01:19:06] katie: And then your identity. Yeah. No, I I, that was completely earnest.
[01:19:11] christopher : Yeah. And that's also fascinating.
[01:19:12] katie: Yeah. I wish you could somehow make a sticker of, could, can we make a sticker of the story? A dollar bill with your cousin's phone number?
[01:19:20] christopher : Dude, I wish, I wish that Kyle kept the bill. He didn't even spend on anything fun.
[01:19:25] christopher : He was straight edge.
[01:19:27] katie: Wow. I mean, thank you for telling me that. I feel like I,
[01:19:31] christopher : yeah. Thanks for letting me.
[01:19:32] katie: Wow. I'm
[01:19:32] christopher : talk at you for so long. No,
[01:19:34] katie: I'm really, I, I have so many questions.
[01:19:37] christopher : Ask a few of 'em. What do you got?
[01:19:40] katie: Well, I wanna know how it impacted your art.
[01:19:44] christopher : You know, I mean, I think it had the effect of making me a little removed for a long time from feeling like there was a worthwhileness to saying or [01:20:00] doing anything.
[01:20:01] christopher : I felt sort of in a state of philosophical arrested development. I, I don't know. It, it had a pretty negative effect for a long time. It really, it was what precipitated my. Very sincere desire to be alone, to want to be on land surrounded by trees and animals and far away from civilization. And I'm someone who comes from like a big city and a big family.
[01:20:29] christopher : And I'm very social and a lot of my half of my twenties was spent doing things where I was either with only one person or I was alone.
[01:20:41] music: Mm-hmm.
[01:20:42] christopher : And often not in a city. And it was ultimately maybe kind of antisocial. So the story like had adverse consequences from chewing on it and trying to digest it.
[01:20:59] christopher : And [01:21:00] ultimately it's just something crazy that happened.
[01:21:02] katie: Yeah.
[01:21:03] christopher : You know?
[01:21:04] katie: So you don't think that, like,
[01:21:09] katie: so to you, you feel like it stunted you, you feel like it held you back?
[01:21:14] christopher : Yeah, a little bit. I mean, nothing that I'm saying or doing now with in my creative practice is all that different from what I was saying and doing. Then I was painting through that whole time kind of better than I am now. I really didn't care.
[01:21:32] christopher : I care a lot more now about how things that I make or received, and back then I didn't, 'cause I was kind of antisocial about it.
[01:21:38] music: Yeah.
[01:21:38] christopher : And I really had my nose up to. People and, and communities that were in, in the cloisters of the art world. 'cause Yeah. 'cause uh, I don't know, 'cause I'm a brat, but not, it had, you know, what I'm making now isn't that much different.
[01:21:56] christopher : I'm like still essentially class clowning, [01:22:00] you know, like try to jab at this, at the soft spots in our society and, you know, and then I also make things that are tongue and cheek and just sweet.
[01:22:10] katie: Yeah.
[01:22:11] christopher : Because I'm also sweet. I'm, you know, like,
[01:22:17] katie: it's funny because I feel I relate, but I didn't have that story.
[01:22:23] katie: But I, I, I feel like I had a similar impact of like, I, and maybe every, perhaps everyone feels behind in their life in some way, or maybe that's what getting, maybe the thing we share is like getting older. And then being, I had this feeling of, and you kind of described it, of wishing I spent my twenties differently than I did.
[01:22:44] katie: And maybe the through line is just we both, regardless of hitchhiking or not, or whatever I did or didn't do. We know more now because we've had more experiences. So of course we can be like, oh yeah, I shouldn't, I should have spent [01:23:00] that time in a different way than I did. And I also look back at that time, similar to what you said about the.
[01:23:06] katie: About your paintings and I'm, I look at that person and I'm like, how did I do all of that? Yeah. Like, how did I, I had some sort of delusion of like my, that I couldn't, that I didn't have now. So I both like
[01:23:20] christopher : the delusion of youth.
[01:23:22] katie: Yeah. I, I both admire that. And I, and I also wish that, I feel like I similarly spent a lot of time alone.
[01:23:30] katie: I didn't really have it friends. I didn't really, you know, I was very disciplined and meticulous and I, I didn't know. Yeah. And I wanted to have a life like I do now, but I'm, which I'm having in my thirties, but it sort of feels like I should be having a different life now because, anyway, I, it's just interesting of like, maybe we all feel that way about when we look back,
[01:23:56] christopher : you know, some people don't, some people loved high school, loved [01:24:00] college, loved their, like some people look back and they're like, I made all the right decisions.
[01:24:05] christopher : I'm, and I'm still killing it.
[01:24:07] katie: Really? Is that? Yeah. I guess should, yeah. Yeah. Definitely like that. Definitely. I know,
[01:24:10] christopher : I know those people. Yeah. I wonder what that's like. I think it's nice.
[01:24:16] katie: Yeah. It must be nice. I think there's
[01:24:17] christopher : all these cars driving by.
[01:24:19] katie: Yeah. I like
[01:24:20] christopher : it too. For everyone that's never been to my studio.
[01:24:22] christopher : It's a two car garage on a small street.
[01:24:25] katie: I'm kind of unaware of it 'cause Oh, you
[01:24:27] christopher : got the buds in. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:24:30] katie: So do you. Uh, yeah. I don't know. I feel like I've been like in a fever dream and like in this, in this world with you. Yeah. Welcome to
[01:24:39] christopher : my life. But we're all, I mean, we're all hitchhikers, you know?
[01:24:42] christopher : We're all waiting for a ride.
[01:24:43] katie: Yeah. I guess that's my other, yeah. Question, but go on.
[01:24:47] christopher : No, no, no, no. That's it. What's your other question?
[01:24:51] katie: Well, why did you wanna tell it to me now? Why'd
[01:24:53] christopher : you I, I think it's, 'cause I've told the story twice in the past four months and it felt [01:25:00] good to share. And when you asked me if I wanted to come on the podcast, I was at a loss for a, to come up with anything.
[01:25:09] christopher : And then, yeah. I don't know. I thought, I'm glad
[01:25:14] katie: you did.
[01:25:14] christopher : Yeah. I thought, why not?
[01:25:16] katie: Yeah. No, I'm glad you did. Yeah.
[01:25:18] christopher : I was writing about it. I was in Greece for most of October and I wrote, I've written it down a couple times, but as I get older, some things I do get better at and writing has been one of the things that I'm, I'm actually constantly improving at, I think.
[01:25:35] christopher : And I wrote most of it down when I was in Greece just to sort of like have it. And so it's just been on my mind.
[01:25:45] katie: I'm glad we got it recorded. Yeah,
[01:25:46] christopher : me too. It feels like a let it out thing.
[01:25:49] katie: Yeah.
[01:25:49] christopher : Yeah.
[01:25:49] katie: Great. I, have you seen the movie Serendipity?
[01:25:53] christopher : Is John Cusack in it? I have a long, like when it came out.
[01:25:58] katie: So I wonder if that would've been before or [01:26:00] after the dollar bill thing.
[01:26:02] katie: I don't know. You know, the dollar bill thing?
[01:26:03] christopher : No.
[01:26:04] katie: So Cusack kpac and sell 2000, weirdly. I right on the verge of, around the same time. Yeah. But they meet, they both grab a glove. Is this ringing a bell? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they're like, oh, sorry, I was getting this, I was getting this. And they, he's like, but maybe you should just gimme your number just in case.
[01:26:26] katie: And she is like, no, not gonna do that. Whatever. And then she comes back. Do they end
[01:26:31] christopher : up in Italy?
[01:26:32] katie: No. No, no. Okay. They come back, maybe in the sequel, they come back, they, she forgets her scarf, he forgets something else, and they're like, serendipitous. And then she's like, well, this has to mean something. And then they go to, she writes her name in a dollar bill and then sells it to a used, sells a, or she writes her name in the inside of a book, sells it to a used bookstore.
[01:26:53] katie: He writes his name on a dollar bill and she buys a pack of gum. And then they go to the [01:27:00] Waldorf Astoria and they press different numbers on the, and they try, they do press the same number, but then there's a kid dressed as a devil who comes in and like presses all the numbers so they don't meet each other.
[01:27:10] katie: And then, you know, drama ensues five years past, I don't remember this movie. And then it's a great Christmas movie. I mean, it's not it movie. I love it. A movie. Yeah. I, I watch it every year. It's like very important to me. Just, I
[01:27:21] christopher : just watched the Family man. Have you seen that? Um, with Nick Cage, it's like similar Misto.
[01:27:27] katie: Oh, funny. He
[01:27:28] christopher : like wakes up and he married his high school sweetheart and he's not a high power traitor, but I, I have seen serendipity when it came out.
[01:27:36] katie: Yeah, me too. Like, I mean, uh, every year since.
[01:27:40] christopher : Yeah. It's got serendipity. It's serendipity pills.
[01:27:43] katie: I, well, I feel like my story, like, I mean I often say that like my, all of my neuroses, like I could blame on the romcoms that I grew up in from the early two thousands.
[01:27:51] katie: But that one is up there. I would watch it so often. I tend to make meaning of things or I, I think it's, it's a more fun way to live. Well, [01:28:00] it's
[01:28:00] christopher : human nature. Yeah.
[01:28:01] katie: Okay. It's not serendipity,
[01:28:02] christopher : you know, 'cause otherwise you're a chaotic accident. In a meaningless universe. Part of our drive is to derive some kind of meaning from the feelings and
[01:28:14] katie: experiences
[01:28:14] christopher : that we're all having.
[01:28:15] katie: Yeah. And you have to have doubt to have faith, you know?
[01:28:18] christopher : Yeah, absolutely.
[01:28:24] katie: Where do we go from here? So what do you think happens when we die?
[01:28:30] christopher : Well, I don't know. I mean, uh, the house that I grew up in was h is, is haunted. Um,
[01:28:41] christopher : before my great grandparents bought the house, it was owned by a pharmacist. And the story that my family tell told growing up was that. This pharmacist's daughter fell in love with the ice cream man around the turn of the century, and he was [01:29:00] not fit to marry her, and they forbid them to see each other and she killed herself in the attic.
[01:29:04] christopher : And yikes, my childhood dog would stand at the foot of the attic and bark incessantly as if there was a murderer in the attic. And I have these really hard to explain memories of being a child and going up into the attic and feeling like the hair is on the back of my neck, stand up or feeling someone touch me on my back.
[01:29:29] christopher : And my grandma used to tell a story before she passed about like things moving and so long and short something. But I don't know, I, I mean, I'd like to think that there's not a hell and that it's all just pizza parties and cupcakes when you leave the body, but I don't know.
[01:29:51] katie: You don't think we come back.
[01:29:54] christopher : I mean, there's a lot of peer reviewed and very serious research [01:30:00] on multiple fronts about reincarnation that seems scientifically credible. Like children who have very graphic and detailed memories of being murdered and can take you to the last, the undiscovered, last resting place of the corpse and.
[01:30:19] christopher : There's blunt head force trauma to these. Are you familiar with any of this? Yeah. There's like a lot of research that suggests that it's
[01:30:26] katie: definitely the most interesting option.
[01:30:28] christopher : Yeah, I mean it's definitely, it's also a little fluffier than like the Catholic notion that I was raised with that.
[01:30:37] katie: Me too.
[01:30:37] christopher : Yeah.
[01:30:38] christopher : That you're either gonna go to hell or purgatory because it doesn't seem like anybody's getting in past St. Peter. You know? I mean, I think something happens, you know, I listen to other worlds. I know I'm, listen, not totally agnostic on afterlife stuff. There. There's another like, uh, a [01:31:00] cousin of mine died very young and a family friend with no real intimate knowledge of my family's relationship to that death.
[01:31:08] christopher : Went and saw a famous psychic and came back to my cousin with a message from beyond. And so between the growing up in the haunted house and that and some other stuff in my family, like I was raised with a lot of room for that, for the, for afterlife mysticism to be real. My mom is very, who like who, who he, like we had tarot cards and my mom had both of my brother and i's charts done by like a computer when we were kids when we were born and.
[01:31:45] christopher : Yeah. Like most of the people in my family are believers in something. Yeah. You're a Gemini. I'm a Libra.
[01:31:54] katie: Libra.
[01:31:55] christopher : Yeah. I'm a Libra. That's what I
[01:31:56] katie: meant. Wouldn't it be cool if I got it?
[01:31:58] christopher : It would, but, but it's, it's [01:32:00] nice to have to, you know, lay it down. Lay down the laws. Libras like to do. No, I'm a Libra. Yeah.
[01:32:09] christopher : What are other questions you got?
[01:32:10] katie: All right. Yeah. Do the question, let's, how intuitive is your painting process? How much do you plan and how much is led by intuition, I guess, for painting or, or life?
[01:32:21] christopher : I, the best, the things that I've made that I'm happy with, which is probably 1% of everything I've ever made are completely haphazard.
[01:32:31] christopher : It's like I'm in the shower.
[01:32:34] katie: Yeah.
[01:32:34] christopher : And I have a thought. And then it's a really good bumper sticker, which also was an accident. The culture, the success of the culture thing. A complete accident. Someone, a company I worked for was like, you should make a bumper sticker. And then that was what came to me. I was listening, I was Coltrane and it was totally haphazard.
[01:32:53] christopher : And I, you know, I stand on it like, but [01:33:00] with painting it's like, there's only like a couple of paintings I've ever made where when I see them again, I'm like, damn, I really hit a home run there. And none of those paintings. Were sketched out beforehand. None of them were like planned. There was no methodical approach to it.
[01:33:21] christopher : And so the things that I've pleased myself with making have been spontaneous and chaotic. But most of the work that I love that other people make is hyper like, you know, so methodical and planned. Like my favorite painters are masters.
[01:33:46] katie: Who are some of your favorite
[01:33:47] christopher : Caro Goya? The people who really, really methodically understood the science of painting, which I do not understand at [01:34:00] all.
[01:34:00] christopher : I did not go to art school. I didn't finish school. Painting for me is like a game of raw material chaos that I like, engage in because it brings me joy. But, you know, so
[01:34:19] katie: what's interesting to me, like with, I talk about this with, with my friend Maddie, who you know too, she always is telling me, you gotta paste what you copy.
[01:34:27] katie: I always have all these like ideas. No problem. 90% of them are garbage. But every once in a while there's something, but I sit on it for so long that you have to quickly, like in 24 hours. Get it out, or at least start with the bumper sticker, for instance, or with these paintings that you're proud of. How quick is your like idea in the shower to making it happen?
[01:34:53] christopher : I mean, with the Coltrane sticker it was five minutes, [01:35:00] like, you know, so
[01:35:04] katie: you did it right away. You got the idea and you didn't like sit on it for a week, you just
[01:35:08] christopher : No, it, it was immediate. I wrote the copy. I was listening. I mean, it's the story I've told so many silly times, but I was working a startup. They made vans.
[01:35:21] christopher : They were like, we make all these vans. I ran their retail operation and among other things, and they were like, why don't you design a sticker for the vans? You can do whatever you want. I was listening to Alice Coltrane, this track going home, and I had just seen the key honking, I'm listening to jazz bumper sticker at my friend's store.
[01:35:39] christopher : Shout out Ariel, Mr. Green. And I was like, oh man, keep honking. It just, that was it. It was one, it was one take, you know, and we made it in five minutes.
[01:35:58] katie: How many ideas [01:36:00] do you think, I don't know if this happens to you, but do you feel like you get ideas and then if you sit on it too long it evaporates or it just
[01:36:09] christopher : No, I mean. There's, are you pretty good about that? There are some ideas I've had for, like, I've had one idea for something for 20 years now. I just don't have the means, the material means to make it, and I think that when, if I finally do make it, it will be complete and total gas
[01:36:28] katie: and it'll be just as good as if you had, it'll be
[01:36:29] christopher : better.
[01:36:30] christopher : Like it's just not the time for it. That's
[01:36:33] katie: interesting.
[01:36:33] christopher : Some things, some ideas come to you and you don't have the material means, or especially with, with art stuff or the, you know, the physical space in your existence to like bring it to life.
[01:36:47] katie: Okay. But if it's, if it's something that you do
[01:36:49] christopher : mm-hmm.
[01:36:50] katie: Do you ever, it sounds like you don't have the same problem as I do.
[01:36:54] katie: Like, it sounds like you kind of get the idea and knock it out if you can. If you have the means and if it's within your wheelhouse, you don't sit [01:37:00] on things too long.
[01:37:01] christopher : No, I mean, no. I mean, it's, that's good. The answer is yes and no. I mean, you know, it's, I'm very lucky that the bumper stickers have like taken off to the, the degree that they have because copy is like coming through my head like all the time and I have a notes thing on my iPhone machine that is like, I mean, for the 140 bumper stickers I made, there's like 1500 that I've written.
[01:37:26] christopher : Maybe not literally, but, and when it's good then I just, you know, my laptop's always with me, but painting is very different. Yeah. Painting's like a completely different beast and like also. It, you know, it's not the same market, it's not the same, you know, just to like stretch a canvas, prime it, sketch it, like you're talking about like hours if not days of prep for every painting.
[01:37:57] christopher : And it's like, but there are plenty of [01:38:00] like things that are incubating in here right now that I'm just waiting for the right gallery or the right moment to be like, yeah, I'm gonna like produce these things. But right now is not the time.
[01:38:11] katie: Well, it's really nice that you have, you know, the like commercial editorial of it all.
[01:38:19] katie: Like you have those stickers and you have this other thing, so you can depend while, while you're waiting for that, you have another thing
[01:38:27] christopher : Pumper sticker that's creative
[01:38:28] katie: that, yeah. Well, what was going through your head when that happened with the first, with the Alice Coltrane sticker? Like, how did he feel?
[01:38:37] katie: Um, I, I don't, when they took, like, when it started to take off,
[01:38:42] christopher : I, it's, it's very similar to like, you know, when you tell a joke and people laugh,
[01:38:48] katie: it feels good.
[01:38:48] christopher : Yeah. You're like, oh man, I, I am funny.
[01:38:51] katie: Dopamine. Yeah. Yeah. You're
[01:38:52] christopher : like, yeah, I'm funny. Like, that was pretty much it. And then it was like, oh man, like I need to build a store because I [01:39:00] can't like, answer all these dms and be like, go, you know, reading the receipts in Venmo.
[01:39:06] christopher : So it was like a combination of like. Oh yeah, I'm very funny. And then like, oh man, this is out of control. Like, this has gotten like, you know, this has gotten away from me. But yeah, it felt good. It still feels good. I went through like a, a rough patch last year where I, like, I couldn't be at another group function in New York or LA and have someone introduce me as the bumper sticker guy.
[01:39:34] christopher : And it was really, really grating on me. And then a friend who's a celebrity introduced me to a celebrity celebrity. It was like, he's the bumper sticker guy. And it was the coup de gra where I was just like, Jesus, man. Like, how about just my name? Hey, this is my friend Christopher. Like, do I have to be like, it felt like I was being hauled out.
[01:39:56] christopher : Like, uh,
[01:39:57] katie: I was wondering about that. Yeah. It felt like,
[01:39:59] christopher : but I'm also [01:40:00] like, thank God that I have any attention on me. Like I'm just like another obnoxious white guy trying to sell his goofy wares. Thank God I'm the bumper sticker guy because it's, you know, it's paying for my ability to make art.
[01:40:14] katie: Yeah. It's like the person in like the TV show and they're like, this is what my gravestone is gonna say.
[01:40:21] katie: Even though I've done all of these movies since, or I've done whatever. But they're still gonna be known for print or Yeah. Who's like, who's like the, how I met your mother
[01:40:31] christopher : who's like the, the like poster child for that.
[01:40:34] katie: Well, I interviewed Josh Radner and he was, and how I Met Your mother. I didn't watch it, but I love his movies that he made and I love writing.
[01:40:42] katie: What movies did he, his writing, he made two movies that he wrote. One's called Happy Thinking More Please, and one's called Liberal Arts. Okay. Came out a long time ago, but he's done a, he's worked a bunch since, but he talked about this exact thing, like when he did the podcast a long time ago, but he was like, I just had to kind of [01:41:00] accept, and I think actually I just saw that he's doing a, like a rewatch podcast of it.
[01:41:04] katie: Yeah. And he was, he has a good perspective about it. Where it was, it was like, exactly like you said, where he was like, God dammit, like am I always gonna be the, and he just got so sick of people calling him by the name and the show and like, you know, and he got, he was really like, I mean, I, I'm telling the story.
[01:41:19] katie: It's, it's probably more nuanced than this, but it was like the same thing where he was just kinda like, this gave me my, that's fine. I'm grateful that people are like, it is. Yeah, me too.
[01:41:28] christopher : I like had, I had like a coming to you know, God moment where it was like, this is all your ego, like your ego wants to be thought of as something bigger than the bumper sticker guy, but it's like, who cares?
[01:41:42] katie: It's kind of funny, like as I was preparing for this, I went onto your website and I looked at your, I looked, read everything and made my copious notes and I must have had some intuition of that because I. I was like, I don't wanna, I wanna really focus on the paintings and the sleeves. You'd be the [01:42:00] only one.
[01:42:00] katie: And I, and I was like, I only, I don't wanna be that guy. No, it's okay. And so I had like, I have like two bumper sticker questions, like at the bottom, what you got? Maybe because no,
[01:42:09] christopher : no, no, no, no, let's do it. But it was, give the people what they, give what I need.
[01:42:13] katie: Yeah.
[01:42:14] christopher : Take me down,
[01:42:15] katie: buy some stickers.
[01:42:21] katie: The GQ interview, you talked about how the bumper stickers help people embody. Cool.
[01:42:31] christopher : I think, I think people think that I, I don't remember what I said, but I think what's become more and more fascinating and what keeps me making them is a combination of what is it that people want to say about themself that I can say better than they can say that ultimately is what the product is culminating in this, this statement.
[01:42:54] christopher : And coupled with why do people feel the need [01:43:00] to propagandize themself on their car, their luggage, or, you know, essentially like bumper stickers. I, I didn't come up with this. It's like someone else, like Twitter is essentially bumper stickers on the internet. Why do we feel the need to do this? And I've like thought a lot about it the past five years.
[01:43:18] christopher : And ultimately I think it's a consequence of. Yeah. Advertising and propaganda and being constantly bombarded with all of, with it being done to you. Yeah. And I think it's like unconscious and unconscious reaction to that. I, I also, you know, I, we all contain multitudes and I hold a lot of space for variables on that.
[01:43:42] christopher : I think it's fun. People like, like doing it. I think there's definitely some truth to this notion that it makes the highway a more fun place, but I think there's actually like a, not dark, but sort of like a shadow there too. You know
[01:43:59] katie: what
[01:43:59] christopher : I mean?
[01:43:59] katie: [01:44:00] Yeah. I mean you, we talked about this the last time I was over here about how and mean, and it goes back to the story a bit of like identity and community and how I think I, this was the part I said last time of like, we used to put up posters in our bedroom and like look at them, but now we're taking a photo of them to show other people this is who I am.
[01:44:26] katie: Yeah. And I think this, that's, that's this. And you, you were, what you said in this was people see it on their vehicles and they think these people are kind of cool and they're like, this person's really cool and I wanna embody that. So my question was like, is there a time in your life that you remember that you.
[01:44:49] katie: You both like that you were trying to embody, I mean, we all do it. I, I certainly do. But you did something, not a bumper sticker per se, [01:45:00] but to show that, and did you, have you noticed someone doing it to you, like pre predating bumper sticker?
[01:45:06] christopher : You're asking if if like, I saw someone wearing a certain kind of pants or something.
[01:45:11] katie: Yeah. More, less than being influenced, but more to be like, I wanna show, I wanna show my identity as part of this group
[01:45:19] christopher : in some way. Oh man. I mean, yeah, I, I'm sure this is like an embarrassing question kind of. I mean, it's so
[01:45:28] katie: embarrassing. You don't have to, we can,
[01:45:30] christopher : I mean, I won't let wear a leash when I'm surfing.
[01:45:34] christopher : This is a really, this is like the most honest and accurate way that I can embody. Yeah.
[01:45:38] katie: This is a very vulnerable question. I'm realizing because I would honestly,
[01:45:42] christopher : you know, leashes didn't exist in surfing until, I think like the late seventies, early eighties. Jack O'Neill invented the first leash. He famously lost his eye testing a prototype.
[01:45:51] christopher : The first leashes are something that holds, attach you to your surfboard.
[01:45:55] music: Yeah.
[01:45:55] christopher : And the first prototype had a spring in it. And the spring broke and hit him in the eye. And he wore an eye [01:46:00] patch until he died. And the hard, the people that I respect who surf, and we're not talking about people who are like surfing pipe in Hawaii or like these specific places where you just have to wear a leash for safety, but like wearing a leash is considered like kooky.
[01:46:18] christopher : And if you can't control your board, that's your problem. It's not the leash. And I came to surfing much later in life than most people who surf as much as I do. I surfed in high school with friends who grew up on Long Island and became obsessed with it before I could even like really do it. And then by the time I moved to California when I was like 26, I was way behind the curve of everyone.
[01:46:41] christopher : Like, but I wouldn't wear a leash.
[01:46:44] katie: You caught up.
[01:46:45] christopher : Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he
[01:46:46] katie: is wearing an iPad. Yeah.
[01:46:48] christopher : But like, yeah. So it's actually like not wearing something. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. No, it's
[01:46:52] katie: a good one. That's a good
[01:46:53] christopher : thing. Yeah. Like I won't, I won't let wear a leash because
[01:46:55] katie: you don't wanna give a too embarrassing one 'cause we're recording.
[01:46:57] christopher : Yeah. I think this is kind [01:47:00] of, I guess think of, I think this is kind of an embarrassing one because it's like,
[01:47:02] katie: yeah, it's a fun, it's a fun question. It's
[01:47:04] christopher : admitting the foil.
[01:47:05] katie: Yeah.
[01:47:06] christopher : You're like, yeah, like, I'm like, I don't, I don't want to
[01:47:09] katie: say it.
[01:47:10] christopher : You what yours is.
[01:47:11] katie: Yeah. I mean, I could think of, I mean, I can try to think of one, make you feel better.
[01:47:15] katie: I mean, there's
[01:47:16] christopher : definitely, like in high school, like I went from being in a very different cultural milieu in the city in Brooklyn and Manhattan. I like, when I moved to Long Island, all of my, my close friends were kids who went to punk shows and then hardcore shows. And I went to punk and hardcore shows until I was like in my, well into my twenties.
[01:47:38] christopher : And I definitely wore, you know, looking like, I'm glad that that part of my life was not online because. There's definitely like some really embarrassing photos of me in like a skin type blood brothers shirt.
[01:47:52] katie: I mean, it's all embarrassing,
[01:47:53] christopher : you know what I mean? Like I definitely did that. I think it's a coming of age
[01:47:57] katie: or just like anything I, looking back [01:48:00] at anything I did five years ago is painful.
[01:48:02] katie: Anything I did five min last week, like earlier today, it's, you know, to, I'm not in, because hopefully you're evolving. I'm not in kn
[01:48:11] christopher : camp.
[01:48:12] katie: There's some things there. It is not everything, but there are certain things where I'm like, I, what was I thinking?
[01:48:16] christopher : I've definitely had some bad haircuts.
[01:48:18] katie: Yeah. Yeah. It gives a character.
[01:48:20] christopher : Does it?
[01:48:21] katie: Yeah. I think so. Again,
[01:48:22] christopher : I'm like so glad, like I was not on Facebook. There's nothing, like my digital footprint doesn't start till like, not that long ago. I didn't have an iPhone until COVID.
[01:48:32] katie: What?
[01:48:32] christopher : Yeah, I got my first iPhone during COVID before that.
[01:48:37] katie: That's wild. I
[01:48:38] christopher : had one Android phone from like 28.
[01:48:40] christopher : Oh. But it didn't, you couldn't, I'm
[01:48:42] katie: picturing you at a, like a flip phone.
[01:48:43] christopher : I did until like, until like 2016 or something. I had like a, like a, a brick phone.
[01:48:50] katie: That's the coolest thing he said about you.
[01:48:52] christopher : Yeah, right now. Well, I was like, I mean, it goes back to the a hundred dollars bill story. I was like, I'm not, I'm good.
[01:48:57] christopher : I was like, I'm good. This stuff. That's really cool. Yeah. I like, don't [01:49:00] want apart, apart, I don't want to stamp of approval. And then I was like, oh man. I'm like, this is crazy.
[01:49:04] katie: Yeah.
[01:49:05] christopher : I gotta, I gotta get in the digital flock.
[01:49:07] katie: I was, I mean it was, I was younger, but I remember like I had my flip phone way longer than all of my friends and I remember being like.
[01:49:16] katie: I put a, I put an eyeball, like, you know, the stickers that like moved. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, I, this is my iPhone. I don't want my like,
[01:49:25] christopher : oh, I get it, I get it. I dare I say
[01:49:28] katie: a, a, um, sticker. Sticker. Yeah. Your
[01:49:31] christopher : early adopter,
[01:49:32] katie: uh, um, intern sticker magnate. But yeah, I didn't wanna get one, like, thought they were embarrassing.
[01:49:40] katie: And then I remember I was going on, I was, I must've been the, yeah, I guess I was studying abroad and I'd never left the country. Like, none of my family traveled. I had never, and my c my one cousin had, and she was like, she like called me up and she was like, I know that you're like whimsical and like, you know, jump around.
[01:49:59] katie: You're a [01:50:00] ludite, whatever. I get it. It's cool. I'm like that too, but like, I'm just you. It's gonna make you be able to like, be more whimsical and like, do thi if you have your calendar. And she said it like, have your, yeah. And I was kind of like, all right, she's got a point. You know, I,
[01:50:15] christopher : I got put on a family plan and got a free phone and I was just tired of fighting about it.
[01:50:21] katie: That'll do it too.
[01:50:22] christopher : Yeah.
[01:50:22] katie: Talk to me about this quote from Moonstruck. Why did you like enough to put on the, the next, was that the second sticker you made?
[01:50:29] christopher : The second sticker that I made says, why is Jada kiss as hard as it gets? And then in the subtext at the bottom in very fine print, it says, why did Bush knock down the towers?
[01:50:40] christopher : And I made that because I. Think that Jada Kiss is pound for pound, probably the best rapper alive. But the third sticker I made was the Loretta one. And it wasn't even my idea. It was a friend of mine's idea, and he, he was like, you should make the sticker. It's totally insane [01:51:00] and no one's gonna be able to read it, but let's do it.
[01:51:02] christopher : And then we just printed it. But I had printed the Jada Kiss sticker before that, but really just for me and my friends as a, as an inside joke.
[01:51:14] katie: So the Moonstruck
[01:51:15] christopher : quote, do you know the quote?
[01:51:16] katie: Yeah. I love it. Do
[01:51:17] christopher : you wanna read it?
[01:51:18] katie: Yeah. You haven't memorized?
[01:51:19] christopher : No, I have it right here on, on vinyl. Oh, I want, I, I, yeah.
[01:51:23] christopher : I give you like 50 of 'em. I've always sold five. I printed a thousand of these, and I think I sold like 10.
[01:51:28] katie: Oh, I really of one. Oh good.
[01:51:29] christopher : I mean, like, that's the reality of, so you know the scene, right? It's after.
[01:51:34] katie: Oh, McGregor.
[01:51:36] christopher : Yeah. Yeah.
[01:51:37] katie: Okay. Take it from, take it from the top.
[01:51:39] christopher : Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you.
[01:51:42] christopher : Love is, and I didn't know this either, but love don't make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It make things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us. We're here to ruin [01:52:00] ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die.
[01:52:04] christopher : The story books are bullshit. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed. How often do you watch moon truck?
[01:52:16] katie: Not, not often enough.
[01:52:18] christopher : Two. You got it five times. They just played it at
[01:52:19] katie: video. I should. Oh
[01:52:20] christopher : really? Who did someone cool intro it?
[01:52:23] katie: I don't know. I wasn't there. I missed it.
[01:52:25] christopher : That was Michael's, uh, Michael's idea.
[01:52:28] katie: Wow.
[01:52:29] christopher : Yeah. Shout out to Michael.
[01:52:30] katie: Yeah. Wow. My questions are so earnest. I feel like we kind That's good. We kind of covered them, but you
[01:52:36] christopher : got any bangers?
[01:52:36] katie: Should you want me to read 'em off to I feel like I should. Yeah. Fire
[01:52:39] christopher : lightning round. Hit me.
[01:52:40] katie: Um, we don't have to do these. Some of these might be boring, just like laughing at my, see, it's true.
[01:52:46] katie: I laugh at my path. This was from like Thursday. Is there a particular project or something you've worked on that changed your [01:53:00] approach or your Our process?
[01:53:03] christopher : Yeah. The, the stickers. I mean, it really is like I, I have been writing like perennially but very nonchalantly and without any intention of crafting something too elaborate.
[01:53:19] christopher : And then the success of the stickers sort of for better or worse has made me feel more comfortable using text and being literal. Even if the literal element of it is sardonic or sarcastic. I, yeah, I don't know if that's an answer enough, but that's, yeah, definitely it.
[01:53:49] katie: So, okay. This one you sort of already answered.
[01:53:51] katie: You, you write things in your phone. Yeah, we, we, I have, I have
[01:53:56] christopher : copious notes too. I mean, like, I
[01:53:58] katie: So you're organized about that kind of thing? [01:54:00] No,
[01:54:00] christopher : no. I mean, I have, I have like three totes that at any one time have between 4, 5, 6 journals in them. And like, it's, it's pretty far, it's pretty messed. Like, I,
[01:54:15] katie: how many have you ever lost an idea?
[01:54:18] christopher : Um, you know, you know that David Lynch quote, like, there's nothing worse than losing an idea. Like, he, he like goes off. He's like, you want to kill yourself. You just like want to die.
[01:54:28] [clip] : If a person forgets an idea that they love, it's a horror and it could lead to a real yearning to commit suicide.
[01:54:44] christopher : I don't like lose many ideas, but like, I've definitely lost some ideas as I've gotten older.
[01:54:54] christopher : I'm still very young. I'm only 29 years old. But, um, as I've gotten older, I've gotten much better [01:55:00] about making sure that things are written down and so I lose less and less. But yeah, I'm not losing that many ideas.
[01:55:12] katie: But when there's a computer in your brain, all those ideas are gonna,
[01:55:17] christopher : I would never, I'm like, I, it all, everything I've said, keeping in mind everything I've shared, like I am a deeply superstitious person.
[01:55:29] christopher : Deeply, I like pray before I go to bed in earnest. I mean, I've had some weird stuff besides the a hundred dollars bill. I've had some, I've had some very strange metaphysical experiences that I cannot, we don't have enough time here. I've been visited by weird things. Yeah. I don't know. I'm very superstitious.
[01:55:52] christopher : I know that I can't explain it or understand it, but I also know that it's real for me. And so I'm really superstitious.
[01:55:59] katie: Do you [01:56:00] feel like it come like that, whatever that is, God, whatever we're praying to, whatever our superstition comes from, like, do you think that is also what, is that the same place that your creative ideas come from?
[01:56:16] christopher : I mean, you know, all beings are capable Are. Innately capable of creation from like, you know, like even the molecules that exist are the creative fabric of the universe. So it's like, I, I don't know if that comes from God or if it's just the nature of existence, but everything is creative. Yeah. Like there's, you know,
[01:56:40] katie: what do you do when you get uninspired or stuck?
[01:56:46] christopher : That's a good question. I mean, there have been times where I've felt that and I've had like a deadline and there's just like, I just have to power through. And you know, sometimes times you have [01:57:00] to submit something and it's not perfect. I've had plenty of people, you know, I don't, we can't say who it is, but like these people came to me and were like, Hey, we want to, we wanna hire you.
[01:57:12] christopher : He's
[01:57:12] katie: pointing to something that I got to privately see, you'd know what it is.
[01:57:16] christopher : They're like, we wanna hire you. And they were like, why don't you pitch us? And I did. And I thought it was, I thought it was great. And the people who I trust who, like the gallerist who I last showed with and some friends who were like in that, like the sticker
[01:57:34] katie: uncle is looking, seems to, appears to be looking through stickers who are in that drawer stickers, were like, this is
[01:57:39] christopher : really good.
[01:57:40] christopher : You hit a home run. And,
[01:57:42] katie: but Jesus drawer appears to be stuck for the, the sticker magnet,
[01:57:46] christopher : but like. I mean, I was stuck on that for a while. And where the hell is it? When I was working on it, it was pretty clear that I was having a hard time because it felt like a big deal for me [01:58:00] and I made like 50 different things for them and then narrowed it down to seven.
[01:58:08] christopher : And I guess the answer to the question is just like forcing yourself to work. Like you don't have, I don't, if someone comes to you and they have a a due date, you don't always have the luxury of luxuriating in your creative process. Like I, you know, I'm not like that. Oh, do you know what that originally said?
[01:58:26] christopher : Here? Here come look at here. No, no. Here. Close your, it said,
[01:58:33] katie: oh, it's so good. I love it. But
[01:58:34] christopher : it's really also edgy.
[01:58:36] katie: Oh, right.
[01:58:38] christopher : You know, and I was like, oh, you used to not care about being edgy. Right. Right. This feels like it was really on brand for you 10 years ago. Right. And like now they're like, don't cancel us.
[01:58:48] christopher : Oh. But I mean, there have been times in my life where like I, it
[01:58:53] katie: doesn't feel that edgy to me. Like I get the, they're
[01:58:55] christopher : so, whatever. I'm sorry. I wish, I hope that they come back around, but I'm sorry. It's [01:59:00] okay. But like, there have been times in my life where I haven't made or done anything for years, you know, from 20, I think like 23 to 26, I didn't do anything.
[01:59:14] christopher : I lived on a farm, or I hiked the PCT and went on a bunch of really crazy wilderness trips and I didn't make anything. I just journaling and I was really blocked up, but I wasn't trying to, I didn't force it plunge to do anything. I just was like, this is it. And then it turned back on at some point.
[01:59:36] katie: Yeah.
[01:59:37] katie: I think when you, yeah, it's like not forcing, it helps, but also sometimes for forcing, it helps when you need to. It's like knowing what you need.
[01:59:45] christopher : I know that people who I'm close with, whose work I like the most, they just work.
[01:59:51] music: Yeah.
[01:59:51] christopher : And you know that expression, like the muse can only visit you if you're sitting at the Yeah, sitting at the at the typewriter.
[01:59:58] christopher : That's real.
[01:59:59] katie: Yeah.
[01:59:59] christopher : I mean, [02:00:00] if you're not like sitting there working, then nothing's gonna happen
[02:00:04] katie: completely.
[02:00:05] christopher : And I try to operate that way. I think for the most part I do.
[02:00:10] katie: What about the reception of your work? What's been the most surprising reaction to it, and what's your relationship with external validation and how that impacts what you make?
[02:00:23] christopher : I mean, that's a tricky one. Uh, just last year I started lying to people. People are like, you must be making so much money. And I'm like, now I just lie. I'm like, money sick. Yeah. I'm making so much money. I'm making like a million dollars a year off bumper stickers.
[02:00:43] katie: Why'd you start lying?
[02:00:45] christopher : I don't know. Fake it till you make it.
[02:00:46] christopher : Logic. No one wants to hear the truth, which is like, yeah, like I've sold one of these, one, I've sold two of these, maybe 22 5. He's pointing it [02:01:00] like, you know, 99% of these, these, they're sitting here. They're like, and I learned the hard way that not to, not to think that just because something's, I think that something's gonna work.
[02:01:15] christopher : Don't print a hundred or a thousand of them. So like I've really kind of dialed in that, I guess I'm sharing all this because the external validation, like,
[02:01:34] christopher : I don't know anymore. Like it's kind of, it's almost sad to admit, but if there, if there are not like zeros behind it and it's in a bank account, it really doesn't make me feel much. And I think ultimately that's a tale as old as time. It's very hard to make it doing creative work. And you get to a point where like there's only [02:02:00] so much patting on the back or like.
[02:02:03] christopher : Comradery or like good feeling that can keep gas in your tank. And I mean that both like metaphorically and literally. Literally, my truck is on empty right now. You know? Like, I'm not driving a 1986 Nissan pickup because it looks cool.
[02:02:19] katie: Well I am a millionaire, so I'll buy all your bumper stickers. I'm gonna test.
[02:02:25] katie: I knew, I knew, I knew this was gonna
[02:02:26] christopher : work. Yeah. I mean like it feel, it feels, it's felt less and less feeling, you know?
[02:02:34] katie: Yeah. I wonder if it's, I don't know, or I think it's kind of
[02:02:36] christopher : the walls closing it. I mean, we live in a very high net worth bleak. I don't, I mean, there are people living all over the world, much more affordably and it's, they have a different quality of life and they have a different way of approaching the economic needs.
[02:02:57] christopher : And you know, it's a [02:03:00] luxury to make art and it's also a choice and you make it every day. And you know, a lot of people do ultimately decide that they can't keep doing it because it's hard. Like not, I don't know. I don't know a ton of people who are like to use that expression again, caked up from making art.
[02:03:18] christopher : It's very few. It's a very small minority.
[02:03:21] katie: Well that was another thing on my list of the, you know, the age old question of balancing art and commerce, and you seem to. You, you seem to do it well. I think we kind of covered it. I mean, I was gonna ask how you balance the feeling. Yeah. I mean, I guess is there anything you wanna add about that?
[02:03:38] katie: I was gonna say, how do you, how have you navigated the line between making art for expression and then producing work that resonates commercially? But I feel like we kind
[02:03:48] christopher : of
[02:03:48] katie: covered that.
[02:03:49] christopher : I mean, they're both fun to do.
[02:03:51] katie: Yeah.
[02:03:51] christopher : You know, and you're
[02:03:52] katie: good at both of them. That's good. Yeah.
[02:03:53] christopher : They both make me feel good to produce.
[02:03:56] christopher : That's good. I don't like, yeah, I mean I could wax poetic [02:04:00] all day about stuff. Things that I would like to create that are totally nuts and have zero potentiality of making me a dollar. But it would be fun to do and I would have just as much fun making something that like slaps and people wanna literally slap on their vehicle or whatever.
[02:04:22] katie: Yeah. What about, I think we kind of covered this too, but how do you balance the fleeting nature of digital culture with making something that's tactile? I feel like we talked about that. 'cause it's kind of, it's not anymore. It's both
[02:04:39] christopher : like, yeah. I mean, I, I'm not on my phone as much as I used to be and I'm not on my phone as much as I think you would like.
[02:04:49] christopher : Not you, but like people would think. I find that the less time I'm looking at the digital world. The less I care about the paradox of like, I'm making [02:05:00] things up on my computer and I'm not actually like painting them. And then I, it like affords me this kind of spatial luxury to just be like, yeah, that's reality now.
[02:05:09] christopher : Does that make sense?
[02:05:10] katie: Yeah, completely.
[02:05:11] christopher : Yeah.
[02:05:12] katie: All right. I mean, I feel like we kind of, we kind of covered my earnest questions. Do you want to do a few rapid fire ones?
[02:05:19] christopher : Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[02:05:20] katie: Okay. What's the the best thing you've eaten in the last week?
[02:05:23] christopher : Wow.
[02:05:27] christopher : Honestly, I'll give you one that I made and one that we went to. Okay. Um, I, I made chicken soup. I cooked a whole, an entire chicken.
[02:05:41] katie: How'd that go?
[02:05:42] christopher : It was so, so dope. We made it with corn, avocado, chicken, celery, et cetera, et cetera. And I used this hot sauce that my friend made and gave as a gift, and that was like the final stroke.
[02:05:55] christopher : I wanted to go out for that night. I really wanted Thai food, [02:06:00] but then I did that and I was like, damn, this is so good. I've been eating a lot of chicken soup, but then I went to Donna's last night, first time. It like, has been open for a while now, and I've sort of dodged it because as an Italian American I have that I'm not gonna go pay $30 for Italian food, but my girlfriend really wanted to go and we went and it was actually quite good.
[02:06:22] katie: What's your favorite food?
[02:06:24] christopher : Like all time, like death row, like they finally caught up with me and they're gonna, they're gonna do it.
[02:06:33] katie: Yeah. What you thought was gonna happen in the car?
[02:06:36] christopher : Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh man. I don't know. It's like, geez. Maybe Is it, are you talking about like a restaurant or like a meal?
[02:06:47] katie: You gotta choose.
[02:06:48] christopher : Yeah, but am I going out to this restaurant for the experience or am I just having the plate of food?
[02:06:53] katie: Gimme both
[02:06:54] christopher : quick. Okay. Quick. Jesus, I'm running outta card space, so sorry. Um, [02:07:00] damn, that's you're, you're dying. You're dying. That's really hard. Uh, maybe, uh, dude, this is hard. Um,
[02:07:11] christopher : I don't know, maybe like if it's a going out experience like psychotic oma Casa, if it's like a restaurant experience, like a psychotic chef's table, like Oma Casa meal, no. For like, no strings attached. Eat everything. $1,500 a person. And if it's just a meal, it's probably like my grandmother's eggplant parmesana.
[02:07:28] christopher : Oh
[02:07:28] katie: yeah. That's like the perfect answer. Yeah.
[02:07:29] christopher : I'm sorry it took me so long. No,
[02:07:30] katie: that's great. I just didn't wanna give the wrong answer. I don't feel, think I'm a
[02:07:32] christopher : loser.
[02:07:34] katie: Couldn't. Yeah. That.
[02:07:35] christopher : Who has bad taste?
[02:07:37] katie: Do you have a time? You laughed really hard.
[02:07:41] christopher : Yeah. Yeah. I do. You mean like time in my life?
[02:07:45] katie: Yeah, just like something that would make us laugh right now.
[02:07:47] christopher : I, I mean like I just rewatched the first few seasons of Arrested Development and I was low. You've never seen it? I was oling a lot time. I laugh a lot. I mean, my girlfriend really does make me laugh. She's, [02:08:00]
[02:08:00] katie: she made the best sticker.
[02:08:02] christopher : You. Yeah, she Francie wrote Caution. I'm holding space, which is a banger.
[02:08:09] christopher : That's the
[02:08:09] katie: best one.
[02:08:09] christopher : Yeah. We've sold a couple million dollars worth of that one.
[02:08:12] katie: Wow. Yeah,
[02:08:12] christopher : it's crazy like that. I'm even doing this right now because I'm so rich off. I really appreciate it. Yeah, but I'm,
[02:08:18] katie: but I have millions too, so it's like,
[02:08:20] christopher : it makes, and I really appreciate you signing the checks.
[02:08:22] christopher : $650,000 for this appearance. Welcome. Yeah. Francie made that one. Like she, yeah, it's a corny answer, but she does really make me laugh.
[02:08:30] katie: Aw, no, it's the best answer. Yeah. What is the greatest lesson you've learned on relationships?
[02:08:35] christopher : I give you like the third greatest. Okay,
[02:08:38] katie: great.
[02:08:38] christopher : Oh man, I gotta like really The greatest lesson or like
[02:08:42] katie: a piece of advice that's helped you or like that
[02:08:44] christopher : we've been dating for two years in May.
[02:08:46] christopher : I think like honest, like you gotta find this like sweet spot between being graceful with your honesty and being a complete and total savage in other relationships. I compartmentalized, it's a good one, and [02:09:00] edited myself so much to where I was really not a version of myself that I want to be. And as I've gotten older and failed in love.
[02:09:10] christopher : A lot. I just, yeah, like some, there's some sweet spot between being really, really, really sweet with honesty and being like, I want to kill you, like you are driving me completely insane.
[02:09:23] katie: Yeah, that's a really good one. I mean, that feel like that's the most, it, it's like it takes resiliency to be able to be vulnerable, to be able to potentially get feedback, you know?
[02:09:36] christopher : Yeah.
[02:09:37] katie: And give it. Has there been a piece of advice that's helped you just generally with anything
[02:09:41] christopher : in general?
[02:09:42] katie: Yeah.
[02:09:43] christopher : Oh man. Yeah. Someone said something to me recently that blew the doors off my barn, and I'm trying to remember what it was. I wrote it down, but I don't wanna like go clog. You gotta go through all your 17 notebooks again.
[02:09:55] christopher : Yeah. I don't know if I'm gonna find it's, I don't think I wrote it. Piece of advice. [02:10:00] You know, my, my friend Dirk, I was, I was, went to his, he had a solo show in Greece and I went to it and we were talking about the paradox of making art and gallerists and the audience caring and, and like quote unquote the rules.
[02:10:15] christopher : And he said something very casually that I really, really hit for me in that moment. And maybe it won't make sense to anybody else, but he said, we make the rules. And I was just like, that might not be true as creative people, but I think it's a better thesis or, or not thesis, but it's a better way to make work.
[02:10:36] christopher : And I've been trying to like, I kind of already operate like that, but I mean, granted, I'm making millions of dollars on bumper stickers, so, um, yeah, we make the rules.
[02:10:48] katie: I like that. I mean, I have, I have a bunch more, but I feel like I, I feel good. I feel like we got it. Okay. Is there anything else that you feel like I squeezed you for all your juice?
[02:10:58] katie: Is there anything you wanted to say? [02:11:00] No, I could, I could
[02:11:00] christopher : talk forever. I like, we'll
[02:11:02] katie: do another one. Yeah. There's like three How long gone episodes in,
[02:11:05] christopher : what's recorded? Oh, that show, that show's really short. Right? So that's three hours. How long have we recorded
[02:11:13] katie: the recorded part? Oh, it's
[02:11:15] christopher : crazy. It's almost
[02:11:16] katie: five.
[02:11:17] christopher : You gotta edit. Edit it down. I'm starving. I'm starving. All right.
[02:11:21] katie: You, you feel good. We did it. I feel incredible. Anything else you wanna say?
[02:11:24] christopher : I, I gotta stop short of saying something embarrassing.
[02:11:26] katie: All right, well let's do the deep breath. Okay. And now let it out. Ah. Thanks for doing it. Thanks Katie. Okay, thanks for listening.
[02:11:38] katie: That was my conversation with artist bumper sticker magnate, incredible storyteller. Like I said, at the top class clown. Official class clown, Christopher Delo was here. Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. I am really grateful. You know, the beauty of not having [02:12:00] ads is that the, the timing of these coming out is loose.
[02:12:02] katie: They can be as long as I want them to be. I get to talk to my friends and recorded and, and I'm so grateful that you're listening. So let us know if you listened and what you thought and. And, and maybe I'll release some of these, some of these tangents that I cut out of this part of the conversation.
[02:12:21] katie: Maybe I'll, I'll release those after this. But if you want more where this came from, get yourself a sticker or a couple or a thousand, and perhaps you wanna buy a piece of art from Christopher, follow him along. Get yourself a hard copy of a sticker. Follow him along. Yeah, follow him along. Follow him along.
[02:12:39] katie: That's cool. Thank you. On instagram.com I'll, I'll leave the link in the show notes and you can follow me too. It's just my name. And let it out with three T's. Also me, I share a photo of, of pretzel from time to time. I, I shared, uh, I'll, I'll share a photo of Christopher's studio, which was really cool [02:13:00] to get to go there.
[02:13:00] katie: You can see the stickers, you can buy some stickers. I think that's all I got. But thanks again, so grateful that you're, that you're here, that you're listening, and I'll talk to you really soon. Bye-Bye.
[02:13:27] [movie clip] : I can't believe I'm doing this. Yeah, please, please let Faith take its proper course.
[02:13:38] music: Oh.
[02:13:44] [movie clip] : That was an accident. Write that down again, please. I can't. That was a sign fate's telling us to back off. If fate didn't want us to be together then, then why did we meet tonight? Huh? Gotcha. Well, I don't know, but it's not an exact science. It's a feeling. Well, what if you're wrong? Huh? What [02:14:00] if it's all in our hands and we just walk away?
[02:14:01] [movie clip] : No names, no phone numbers, nothing. What do you think's gonna happen? Do you think good old fate is just gonna deliver my information right to your doorstep? Do you know that's the best idea you've had all night? What's the best? Here you go. Write your name and number down, or $5 bill. Mm, just do it.
[02:14:19] [movie clip] : You are a strange and interesting woman. Wait there. What the hell was that? What that $5 bill makes? Its way back into my hands. I'll be able to call you. Hey, what about me? What do you mean? Well, we have to send something out in the universe with your name on it, don't we? Come on. Isn't that the only fair thing?
[02:14:35] [movie clip] : That is the only first thing. What have I got? Oh, no, I have a really good idea. What? Okay. Okay. See this book? I'm gonna write my name and my number inside this book, and then first thing, tomorrow morning, I'll sell it to a used bookstore. Which one? You're not gonna tell me. You're not gonna tell me. Why not?
[02:14:50] [movie clip] : Well, now, every time you go past an old book, so you're gonna have to go inside and see if it's there. You don't just have the most incredible night of your life with the perfect stranger and then leave it all to chance. Do you? [02:15:00] Do you.
[02:15:07] [movie clip] : A person can, can see where they've messed up in their life and they can change the way they do things and they could even change their luck. So maybe, maybe my nature does draw me to do that. That don't mean I have to go with it. I can take hold of myself and I can say yes to some things and no to other things that are gonna ruin everything.
[02:15:25] [movie clip] : I can do that. Otherwise, you know what, what good is this stupid life that God gave us? I mean, for what? Are you listening to me? Yeah. Everything seems like nothing to me now against what? I want you in my bed. I don't care if I burn in hell. I don't care if you burn in hell. The past and the future is a, a joke to me.
[02:15:53] [movie clip] : Now I see that they're nothing. I see they ain't here. The only thing that's here [02:16:00] is you and me. I wanna go home. No, I'm going to go home. No, I'm freezing to death. Come upstairs. I don't care why you come. No, that's not what I mean. Loretta, I love you. Not not like they told you. Love is. And I didn't know this either.
[02:16:23] [movie clip] : But love don't make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We, we aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect.
[02:16:39] [movie clip] : Stars are perfect. Not us. Not us. We are here to ruin ourselves and, and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and, and die. I mean that. The story books are bullshit. [02:17:00] Now I want you to come upstairs with me and, and get in my bed.