Slay the Dragon, Clown the Crown with Keith Gladysz / Diet Kong
Keith Gladysz is a musician and creator in many artistic mediums. In 2019 he came on InnerVerse to talk about how he overcame Lyme with Eastern Medicine and movement practices. Tonight we'll be talking about his creative journey in the last 2 years since returning to peak condition, and maybe talking about being a home-school dad. Expect dad-gags.
Plus+InnerVerse Plus+
InnerVerse Plus+Hear every full episode
Every extended episode, the complete Plus+ archive, premium video and a private podcast feed for your app.
Cancel any time.
Get tuned with Chance
Tuning forks find where energy is stuck in the field around your body and bring it back into flow. Sessions over Zoom, recorded for you to keep.
30 Minute Consultations
Have something to look at, or looking for guidance? We can consult oracular tools, read your chart, or just talk through whatever you choose.
In this episode
Core themes
Playing the fool to face the shadow
Keith described how the wigs and the Flaccid Dick character began as a new look and turned into a way of studying a hidden side of himself. He said he disliked the figure he was making, then realized he was looking at his shadow, so he named it and kept going. He released seven short EPs over a year, three songs each, about a minute apiece. Chance read the project as the opposite of the cool persona most artists present, and the two compared it to the fool who stands close to the king.
Clown the crown and the magic of words
Chance opened with the episode title and the idea of clowning the crown, and Keith explained that his video condemning the monarchy was really about the words used to control people. The two enjoyed the lore and lure pairing and the L to R shift between the words, and stayed with word magic and the unsaid meaning inside what is written. Chance argued that people get lured into lore and chase side paths, and later said that seeing matter as spirit would undercut the divide the clown crowns have used to control people.
Art made from lineage, outside the culture
Keith wondered what it means to be an artist in relation to society, and whether he would still make art if society fell apart. He said talismans and totems were his answer. He showed totems cast from his grandfather's lead fishing weights and his own childhood model paint, which he wanted to be literal materials and not a metaphor. Chance said the pieces carried meaning from his real lineage, outside the larger culture. Keith said he tried to radiate from within into a culture that would easily swallow him.
Unschooling with care and labyrinth walks
Keith said his two children were homeschooled, a daughter who painted and a son who told stories, and that his approach was to teach critical thinking, reading and math, then let care drive the rest. Chance added that teaching communication and self love might be all a child needed. Keith said he skipped religion because of his Catholic upbringing, so the family kept a shrine, said short prayers and walked labyrinths found through the Labyrinth Locator website, using mantras like may all beings be happy.
Surrender, will, and flow
Keith contrasted the will to power with the will of the way, and said letting go of the self he had built was the hard part. Chance pulled two I Ching cards, Conflict and Influence, and read them as will versus deep flows and as the ground that lets many personas play. Gordy called in, said early psychedelic experiences cracked the shell of his ego, and described meditating under a tree of owls that followed him home. Chance later linked sorrow and joy, and Keith named frustration as his motivator and playing live as getting out of his own way.
Quotes
“We're not here to rehash that story. But what's amazing to me is to see that two years down the road, our boy Keith is totally crushing, making music, clowning the crown.”
“As I did it more and I started creating this Flaccid Dick character, I realized it was really like looking at my shadow, like my hidden self. So I decided to pull it out and look at it. And it was really like being the fool, playing the fool.”
“For me, slay the dragon was confronting the self. You know, that is essentially what it means for me. So in the Middle Ages, it was literally slaying the dragon, with the knights going up and rescuing the soul, the virgin that's sacrificed to the monster.”
“The condemnation of the monarchy or whatever I'm saying in there is related to the words that are used to control us. That's what it's really at the heart of it.”
“People get waylaid by lore, lured into lore, and spend their time going down a million different cul-de-sacs.”
“I'll just produce it because it's Flaccid Dick. It should come out wrong, especially at the beginning. If something goes wrong, I'm like, yeah, that's how that should be probably.”
“When I first had psychedelic experiences, they cracked the shell of ego melting. I won't call it ego death because it was still there, but it melted a lot.”
“I'm out there, this is my walking meditation. This is where I process the shit of the day, you know, and so that's my practice, kind of to be alone on purpose.”
“I've had this experience with these owls. We're so connected now because I meditate under their tree, and that's where I started my meditation practice. I was there every morning and they would just watch me, to the point where they followed me home.”
“All of your joy and all of your pleasure only exists because of displeasure and sorrow or pain. They're the same exact thing. It's just feeling of what is. You could say in the hermetic laws sense that there's not hot and cold, there's just heat. It's just temperature and what degree it's at.”
“What Daoism and Buddhism and Christianity are talking about is the will of the force, the will of the way, the will of God or whatever you want to call it. It's tapping into not what you perceive to be the way through your ego but the actual way.”
“If I'm out of whack, something needs to be fixed or worked on, and it could be painting, like literally that way, or in my body. So yeah, frustration is an indicator and a motivator.”
“We're getting to a point where we're going to stop seeing our bodies as being like suits for our souls or our spirits and recognize that matter is spirit and spirit is material. And it's just one thing that will be really handy when people get there.”
Kyle and Serena Denton are community herbalists creating wild-crafted and organic plant medicines out of Milwaukee since 2015. I have used their teas and tinctures on an almost daily basis for years now. Kyle is a great friend of InnerVerse and has appeared on the channel more times than I can count. These products work, not in the allopathic "pharma-medicine" way, but in a terrain-support, consciousness bolstering plant-teacher sort of way.
