SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to a fresh face in hell. I'm your host, Jonathan Evanson. Every week we talk to someone new and interesting, somebody intellectually curious, somebody who will hopefully renew our faith in this cold, cruel world we live in. A Fresh Face in Hell. My guest this week, Lachi, is an accomplished recording artist, touring performer, record producer, and media personality. She is also the author of I Identify as Blind, a brazen celebration of disability culture, identity, and power. I find Lachi, who is blind, go figure, inspiring as hell. Rather than treat her sightless dilemma as a disability, rather than she treats it rather as a creative impetus and a tool for personal empowerment. Geez, I have so many questions I want to ask her about her experience, her music, and her indomitable spirit. Lachi, welcome and thanks for being our fresh face in hell.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Oh, goodness. Well, thank you so much for having me. Really excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

I am Johnny, white, middle-aged, baseball cap, glasses, could stand to lose 15 pounds. I was I was tempted. No, wait, let me do that again. I am Johnny, six foot three, glacier blue eyes, chiseled chin, and a crack of fucking abs right here. Okay. So that's who you're talking to, just so you know. Super excited about this conversation. So your memoir begins not with childhood, but with the afternoon you lost your sight. Can can you tell us about that morning? You actually woke up and your sight was gone.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. Lachi like Versace. She, her black woman with cornrows, identifies blind and neurodivergent. I'm really, really excited to be here. I love your self-description, by the way. All both of them. They were both great. And I will be speaking to both guys at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Um, so yeah, you know, I really wanted to draw people in. Um, I think that the epitome of who I am can really be summed up in the fact that I woke up and my vision was gone and I was like, ugh, like I gotta deal with this now. Was really like the way I responded to it. I don't know if it's because I'm a New Yorker or an Aries or a daughter of Nigerians. I mean, but I was just like, all right, well, let's do this now. And a lot of times people, they think to themselves, oh my God, if I woke up and I had lost my sight, I would just die. Uh and I honestly was just like, hey, I gotta go get this checked out, then I gotta go get, you know, the laundry. And then I gotta go move on with my life. Because at the end of the day, the the what the book is discussing is how disability is just a natural part of life. And the whole reason everyone's masking and just afraid to talk about it is because we talk about it so pathologized and so um pityized. And so I really wanted to talk about it through jokes, through fun, through my stories, through the stories of other public figures and artists and celebrities I know. Um, and just really have a good time with the discussion so we can stop being so freaking afraid of it.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Well, you know, I mean, it's no mystery to me why you're successful. I mean, beyond just natural talent, it's because of that. This is the new normal. This is this is what we do. Like, I mean, when you know, this is the new normal. Whatever comes along, it's just like work in, work out, gotta deal with this now. That's so impressive.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

I did want to ask you you gotta be adapt, you gotta be adaptable. I mean, that's pretty much life is a series of traumatic events.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

So you have to be adaptable. I gotta ask because um I I'm such a big believer um in the unconscious mind, and so how it's so often ahead of ahead of the conscious mind. I'm wondering, weird question maybe, but do you remember your dreams from the previous night?

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Uh I had a weird dream that oh gosh, it's it's kind of there, but it's kind of not there. Like there was like a some kind of like monster arms. Monster arms. Does that help?

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Maybe because like maybe those are the nerves behind behind your eyeball or something. You know what I'm saying? Like the little ganglia or whatever they're called. I'm just curious because the unconscious mind has this way of like, I mean, your body probably knew you were losing sight even with your eyes closed. You know what I mean? Like the I don't know, it's just fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Well, it's you know what's so funny about that whole the whole thing is that, you know, as you know, as as I um as I get further and further away from the time from when I had, you know, I guess much better usable vision, things do like things visually start to fade in my mind, but the concept of it is so strong that it almost is visual. And I don't know how to really explain that.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

I no, this is fascinating. Keep trying, you'll get there. Keep trying. No, because I'm fascinated. I was what that was one of my questions, is because you just like memories fade, you know. Like I'm a nostalgic guy, and like I'm I've been thinking about stuff that happened 30 years ago, and the memories and the details begin to fade. I've wondered like, is your mental picture is it still like a picture or is it more conceptual?

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Yeah, well, so right now the state of my vision is I'm totally blind in one eye, and then the other eye, I have like a small bit of like I can if I hold something really, really close, I can kind of see a teeny like think of you know, when you zoom all the way into like Photoshop and you can see like five pixels or something like that, yeah. Something like that. That's the best way I can describe that. And so if I and then I don't have like I I can see a little like I can see light and dark and a teeny bit of color, so it's so what about movement?

SPEAKER_01 6:26

What if somebody was throwing a punch at you? Would you sense the movement out of your left eye?

SPEAKER_00 6:32

So the it's so difficult for me to answer that because the rest of my body does so much work, right? So, like, let's say, for instance, if somebody was about to punch me, I'm gonna hear the wind of the punch. I'm gonna be able to feel the body language of like a being in front of me moving. You can't move perfectly un detectable, right? So your movement, no matter how quiet you try to be, you're shifting air, right? And so the rest of my body is doing so much work picking up everything else. Um, and so I can't really this because then I don't know that it's not me seeing. Does that make sense? That totally makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

No, I if you can see me right now, my my jaw is sort of open because I'm just really fascinated. This is like right in my wheelhouse, is this this perception, how you're I think the perception of every different every single person is different. Like I it's amazing to me that we have any consensus at all. It's amazing to me that we can look it, we could look at the same shirt and both say it's blue. I mean, that is amazing enough, but now you're sightless, and the way you're describing it, yes, this completely makes sense to me.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Like it well, even like look at even think of the concept of blue. Like, there are some cultures that don't have the concept of blue, and so it's just all green to them, and so they don't even so they don't actually see blue because they're yeah, until 2500 PC, until the Iliad, I think there's a work of literature was the first thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

I remember I just read something about this. Like it was like 25 years ago, is the first yeah, nobody had blue, everything was in the green spectrum. There's no references to blue, I think, in the Odyssey or like in the Bible, or right. It's pretty crazy. So, like this is oh man, this is just so fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Meanwhile, it's our sky and our sea, you know what I mean? So it's kind of like, you know, what what are we really? And honestly, I gotta be honest, I'm not really that good too at it either, right? Because I wasn't like born tot like with this much vision loss. Um, and so there are people that use um locution and and echo um finding to be able to map out a room. Um me, I use generally I use, you know, obviously I use screen readers, magnifiers, and my glam canes and and whatever. But honestly, my biggest accessibility tool is just not being afraid to just go to people and be like, Hi, we're best friends now, and you're gonna help me get to my gate at the airport.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Wait a minute. What is a glam? What is a glam cane? Is that have like a little glass thing with a live squid inside it at the end?

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Oh yeah, dude, bro, give me one of my glam canes. Let me show them. So, you know, people use like the regular, you already had one ready. Thank you. Um people use the regular like white cane as a blind person to get around. I use what I call glam canes, and they're like super bejeweled canes. These are all rhinestones, and uh because I gotta look cute and all the outfits I wear are dope, so my canes are gonna be dope. My personality is loud and ridiculous and rambunctious, so so does my cane have to be. And um yeah, and we sell these now. So, and we're selling like bejeweled walkers and bejeweled like mobility canes, and so it just makes me feel so happy to get the response of like, hey, I'm going to a Swifty concert with a glam cane, or I'm going on a first date, or I'm going to my kids' graduation, and they're using these canes and they're feeling so gorgeous and wanting to be seen. So that is such a rad idea.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

What a rad idea, though. Like, that's such a cool idea. Like, you know, oh, that's that's that's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Listen, I gotta make this money out here.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

That's right. You're the Michael Jordan of Glam Canes. Um, you so you wake up blind and you had to take yourself to the doctor, and you which was all the way across Manhattan, and I love that adventure. Can you yeah, can you walk us through that trip? That is one trip. I mean, walking across Manhattan, getting across Manhattan is always an adventure. Uh yeah, yeah. But sightless, it's it's even more of an adventure. Walk me through that.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Sure. Well, first of all, Nixon Five. I don't care what anybody says, boom. We're gonna be living Nixon Five for the next 50 years. Um, but Manhattan, New York, Manhattan, I'm like the epitome of New York and Manhattan. So I know my city super duper well, like to the point where I know exactly where you need to sit on the train to get the elevators as soon as your doors open, right? So I'm that New York. And so when I woke up one day, totally like imagine yourself at the bottom of a roiling dark, you know, ocean. That was essentially my vision as soon as I opened my eyes. And the first thing I do is I I call my partner who's at work and I go, Hey, you know, I'm blind. So how are you? You know, and he's starts freaking out and he's like, Oh my god, just wait there. I'm gonna get you at lunch. So don't do anything, don't move. And you know, the if anybody knows me, the one thing you don't tell me to do is to don't do something, right? So I was like, no, don't worry. I'm like, I'm gonna, I'll be fine. Let me go get this checked out. And so at the end of the day, you know, I knew where the banister was to get down the stairs, fifth floor walk-up, because you know, Harlem. So I knew how to get down the stairs with the banister. As soon as I get outside, we've got kind of the railing is to the right, the park is to the left. I can hear the kids screaming, I can hear um some truck is backing up, you know, the beeping of the truck backing up. And so I'm good. And so I start going to the end of the block. Of course, the cat callers are always there every single day. Cat calling, trying to get in my number. Today was their lucky day because I needed them to walk me like caddy corner to go get to the, you know, so I continue to use sort of my city almost as my cane at the end of the day. Um, because, you know, like I wasn't gonna not, I you know, you ever read The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People by uh by Covey? I I don't remember his name.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

I know the book. I I've seen it in a meme a million times, kind of thing. Like I've seen some sort of distillation of it in a in a five-minute video kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

So the first thing that he talks about is always to begin with the end in mind. And so I used to run track, and so I would always begin with like the finish line in mind. And my finish line, I already lived in a world where I'd got to the clinic. So it was just a matter of like filling in the blank there. Um, and so I get on the train, and once I'm on the train, um, it's kind of over. Now, a bunch of wacky antics that I'm leaving out happen along the way that I almost want like your viewers go get the book to get like the real ridiculous bits of it because Yeah, no spoilers. It gets real wild out in these streets of New York, but I do make it to the clinic. Um, and it was um when I finally finally get to the clinic, my um my partner shows up, which was ridiculous. But I was told that I had like my corneas had erupted, all sorts of different things had happened in my eyes at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

See, maybe those are the monster arms, that's what I'm saying, right? Like behind your eye, those nerves.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Maybe, maybe it was like God or Gaia or something, saying, like, hey, by the way, but I have to tell you, like, when when the doctor was like, Hey, this is gonna be your life now. Um, and you know, he was super apologetic. He's like, you know, and so maybe there are some services. And while he's talking, I'm thinking, like, how do I monetize this? Like I told John. Oh my goodness. I was like, I'm a daughter of Nigerians, so like, how do I monetize this? Um, and I don't know, I I started doing things like jumping out of airplanes, you know, going uh spelunking, camel riding, and snorkeling, and just doing a whole bucket list of things. And I it always just remind like when people tell me, hey, if I lost my sight, I would want to just die. I just I felt like the day I lost my sight was the day I really started to live.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

That's amazing. I mean, I just I want to talk about this later because it's got a more nuanced conversation, but this idea of limitation, like as an artist, is like the greatest tool, right? Like it's like people want to have a deadline or you know, like having to work within certain parameters allows you to allows you to explore the nerd nuances and really plumb the depths of something. Sometimes having access to everything all at once is a mistake. I see it in my workshoppers trying to write their first novel, trying to put every life experience, everything in there without limitation. And like the the what you would the the truth you're speaking here about limitation throughout your book, and it's just just just your your whole life distall is just it's like no wonder you're good at what you do. You know what I mean? It's like you've just fully embraced that ethos. Um, yes. I want to switch just briefly to to to the cultural conversation because you know, I mean, I'm I'm a writer, so you know, language shapes culture, and I wanted you to discuss the D-word, as you call it with me, and and like some of the unintended effects of some of our you know or more modern euphemisms for disabilities because I don't know what to say anymore. I mean, I'll be honest. I'm a middle-aged white dude. Do I do I call you blind? Do I call you sightless? I mean, it's a constant struggle with like sexual identity, anything. I'm just like, I just I'm like, hey, you now, because I don't I don't want to fuck up.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

No, you know what's I mean, at the end of the day, like, like culture, language always is gonna like grow and twist and turn and stuff like that. And I don't, I don't like to focus too hard and too much on language because I'm like, there's so much other issues that we should be actually working on and other than policing language. But there are a few words that I'm like, okay. So first and foremost, I like to just say disability. Just disabled, disability, disability, disabled, accessibility, access, disability, all of that stuff. Because I feel like, why are we using euphemisms? Um, you disab there's nothing wrong with disability that needs to be euphemized. I personally believe. And so when we say things like differently abled, that's the one I hate. That's the one I would like fight. I have actually, I'll be talking to world leaders and they'll be like doesn't roll off the tongue.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

I mean, it does.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Yeah, it's like it's like, what are we differently able? It just sounds corny to me. It sounds like what am I eight? So um, you know, I don't really like that one. And then like things like handy capable, all the ones that just sound just fucking corny, bro. Oh, can we cuss? I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

Yeah, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. There, it's off the here we go.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

It's okay, good. It's done. I just I think that they're corny. So I just always encourage people to just say the word disability. Also, just ask the person what they prefer. So some people might like person with a disability or disabled person or just say blind or whatever. I usually just I'm like, okay, well, what do you like to say? Because I'm gonna, I swear to you, I will mess it up. And so then they just tell me what they want me to say, and I just say it.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Um I think that we're afraid to ask people that because, like, you know, I mean, I'm not gonna lie. I'm like, when I'm going into this interview, I'm I'm framing it slightly differently than if you if you weren't sightless. Like, is this an offensive question? Because but you're saying that just ask. I'm saying asking. From your perspective, you're giving anybody a license to ask. It may be a weird, awkward question, but like you understand that the motive is to just try to get it.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Well, so there's two, there's there's two sides to the coin. Because I know for me, I give off a type of confidence that l when someone asks, they're generally not asking because they're scared, they're asking because they're curious, right? Because they recognize that like I'm not gonna give a shit, right? It's like, well, wait, are you are you blind? Are you disabled? I'm like, oh, you can just call me blind, it's fine. But a lot of times, because people are afraid to talk about it on both sides of the spectrum, then people are afraid to ask, people are annoyed to answer. This is kind of actually why I wrote the book I wrote the way I wrote it. I wanted to offer people jokes, I wanted to like allow people to enter the conversation, invite people in in a way that wasn't like all charity feeling, corny, grievancy, medicalized, right? It's why I have these glam canes to be like, oh look, you know, you can be fashionable and talk about disability. It's why I make the raps and and all the music that I do, and it's super duper like bad bitch energy. Because really ultimately, what I'm trying to do is to get people to be to to no longer be so afraid to talk about it. That's essentially my whole goal with everything I do. Because it's not fair to be that that people have to be afraid to be curious.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Yeah, that's isolation. Yeah, I mean that creates isolation.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

It creates isolation. You know, one of the something that happened to me the other day was a kid comes up to me and goes, Hey, what's that to my glam cane? And I was like, Oh, it's a glam cane because look, I'm out here trying to be cute, okay? And the kid was like, Well, it's really, really pretty. You are really, really cute. I was like, Oh, thank you. And um, I was like, and I use it because I'm blind and I can't really see, but I know people can see me. So I'm out here trying to be gorgeous. And like me and the kid are laughing. And the beauty of that conversation is that the mom never stopped the kid. So I yeah, with the honey, that's unpolite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, exactly. Like, usually, like, oh, don't say that. Oh, that's rude. It's like you are already teaching the kid to internalize that disability is bad, so that if the kid ever gains a disability, then they're gonna think they're bad. And that's the thing I want to eradicate.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

That's cool. The more you normalize it, the less stigma is attached to it.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

So while we're on the subject, let's talk about disability identity and and how some people embrace it while others reject it. Like, I mean, both people that are disabled, but also the general public. Like, what are the factors at play here? It sounds like you've got a solution, which is let's just fucking talk about it. Get all the weird, rude questions out of the way. So everybody has a context here. But like, yeah, do you find yourself having dialogues that are maybe um tense with other disabled people about like how should we frame it? People that disagree with your sort of laissez-faire, like, yeah, I'm just me, let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

So there's a there's a few schools of thought of people that have I find, you know, if no one criticizes the book, right? Your book, then like no one's reading it, right? So I was waiting for like the avalanche of criticisms and it finally came. Yay! First of all, a lot of people don't like the title. Um, how dare you identify as blind, which makes me so happy because that's why I wrote it. Um also the idea of hey, you know, and and well, I talk about this a lot in the book of this idea that everybody has some form of disability or neurodivergence or chronic condition that, you know, God, just listing four, like ADHD, anxiety, chronic back pain, and titus. So you have everybody's got at least one of those, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Oh, I it's only an hour a show, or I'd stop listing mine off. I mean, like every joint in my body, I'm I'm I'm bipolar to ADHD, is like I mean, on steroids.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Uh, you know, I'm like dancing, like because every time I say, every time I even just list those four, everybody raises their hand and goes me, right? Yes, and and I'm like, everybody has some disability identity in some way. You don't have to identify as disabled to acknowledge disability identity. And it's like until you recognize your disability identity, you can't really empathize, you can't actually be an ally, right? You can only be a true ally if you recognize the vast spectrum of the disability umbrella and then recognize where you fit in it. And it's not like a problem for like when you're older and you know, potentially have to use a wheelchair or a cane or whatever. It's now everybody has something now. And so some people don't love that framing within the disability community because their response is, oh, well, if you if you say that everybody has a disability, then I'm not special, right? Then I we we don't count as like a protected class or a special class or something. And I'm like, you know, the issue that we're having is that people aren't giving you accommodating your needs, right? The real issue is that people aren't accommodating your needs. So let's say, for instance, John the wheelchair user, he's not upset because his legs are broken, he's upset because people are treating him like crap, right? He's upset because he can't get into a bar, right? Not because his legs are broken, because his legs, yeah, that's just how he was born. Like I tell people the easiest thing to do is be blind, because it just is, right? But the hard thing to do is to deal with assholes. Um and so if everybody starts to recognize that they all have needs that should be met, if everybody prioritizes access needs in general, that will help your access needs get prioritized to a disabled person that's upset with me about. So, you know, so that's that's one of the criticisms that I've gotten. Um, but I have to honestly say, generally, especially from from both sides of the coin, right? From folks who identify as disabled and folks who don't identify as disabled, there has been like a huge onpouring of like praise and gratitude for the way that I'm framing it. Um, mainly because A, like I said, it's a bit of an invitation to get folks who don't know anything about disability or who are afraid of it to actually like feel a little closer or a little more comfortable with it because it's like the only path to empathy is that understanding. Exactly. And so I've been getting, you know, um from both sides some a lot of positive um response.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Yeah, and um back really quick back to the the reason I think the word we talk about the word disability. I think that when you look at it in the right context, what it is saying is disability in the context of how our culture is built. Meaning disability is in I am unable to use the stairs, or I need a wider berth, I am unable to get my wheelchair through that berth. I'm the disability doesn't have to be this broad spectrum, like there's something wrong with me. It's very specific. I am unable to use the infrastructure this society has built around me to navigate or to, you know what I mean? So that's how I kind of frame it in my mind.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Like well, if we think about if we think about how things impair us, right? So let's say for instance, um I can't read a book, right? I can't like read like hold a book and read it, right? But I can read a book if I have, you know, a screen reader and I've got it uploaded, right? I can uh, you know, someone can get into a building if there's a ramp, right? And so at the end of the day, yes, I'm still disabled, but I'm not impaired. If I am able to, if society is able to meet my needs, right, then I am no longer impaired, even though I'm still blind. And so that's the that's the frame through which I want folks to see disability. Like if you see a disabled person, don't just look at the cure, at a cure as a hero. Don't just look at like us passing around a bowl for everyone to put money in, like uh charity as the hero. Look at a more accessible society as the hero. Like if we work together to be able to give people their access needs and to kind of kill stigma, then we we deplete what had impaired us, even though we still have these different bodies.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Yes. Completely makes sense to me. In chapter five, Vice Spice and Everything Nice. I love this. Um, this this really resonates with me because it's true as a culture, we we tend to imbue disabled people with nobility at times. And I've been guilty of it this before. I I remember once I was in, I don't know, I was in like Boston or DC. I was at a book festival, and I met this uh this poet in a wheelchair, and he had DMD, and you know, he's a poet, and and like I'm guilty of it. I'm like, God, how brave! You know what I mean? I'm I'm instantly, I'm instantly sort of imbuing him this with such a nobility because like he must have a hard lot in life, you know. I'm bringing all that baggage to it, and and I meet the guy later, and he gives me his poems, and I'm reading his poems, and like this guy was the biggest perv. It was gross. I'm like reading his poems, and like the first one is like being in line at a cafe, like looking up some lady's skirt. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. So this guy can be, you know, guys with muscular dystrophy can also be perverts. I mean, like, you know what I mean? I it it's a weird thing to say, but I do think we tend to we we do tend to imbue nobility on people that have uh what we view as a harder lot in life or things to overcome.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Right. And I feel so, you know, it it and it goes both ways, right? People often view people with disabilities as not maybe being romantic or that, you know, party or this and that and the other thing. And like I remember I was talking to somebody and I had started cussing, and they're like, Oh, wow, Lachie, like, oh my god. I'm like, have you not seen any of my content? Like, you're lucky I know actual other words other than cuss words. So, like, I think um a lot of people do this because they have to like it's it's like a I don't even know how to explain it. It's like a way to cope with disability. Like you cope with it by saying, well, it has to be magical and mystical. That's why they're able to do it. Like a great example is, and I say I talk about this in the book, like this woman, these girls come up to me after I do like a speech, and they're like, Wow, you're so amazing! Like, how did you how did you do that? Like, how did you do say the speech? And I was just like, I mean, I got up and said words. And they're like, Well, how do you just know how to answer our questions? Like, we say something and then like, how do you know to say something back? And I'm like, it's called a conversation. These are like normal things, and they're assigning me some like magical mystical thing because I'm blind, because they feel like if they were to ever become blind, that it would have to be a miracle for them to do anything. Yeah, and I think a lot of it is because of the way Hollywood represents exactly yes, it's a societal trope. Yeah, it's a societal trope. All you either see trauma, tragedy, or inspir what I call inspiration porn whenever you see disability. But let me tell you this you know the disabled people that you see on like Shriners or like Sarah McLaughlin is playing in the background, you know, like eyes of an angel, and you're seeing these like, you know, disabled folks. That is actually the exception. So when you see those severely disabled folks, that's actually the exception. What's the norm is just you and me just fucking having ADHD and then going to aero laundry, um, just having general anxiety, like throwing a big party and then, you know, hiding in your room for the next four days because you just expended a lot of energy. That's what disability actually looks like. And the stuff that they show you on TV, the what I call big trauma, so that they can get you to donate dollars to exploit and disabled folks, those are the exception.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Yes. Yeah. So I I wrote this book called, and it got turned into a Netflix movie. Uh, it's called The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving. And and you know, I'm not, I don't have the Shen Muscular Dystrophy. So there's an argument to be made that this wasn't my story to tell. But I was a caregiver, and one of my clients, who's a dear friend still 30 years later, was a uh teenager with the Shen muscular dystrophy that I worked with close. And I was always pushing on his limits, and he I was as disabled as him at the time. I had my my first wife had had an affair with my best friend. I was I was walking through life on as a blur. Life was a blur to me because I was so traumatized. The person I thought I was gonna die with suddenly overnight had an affair with one of my friends. I had no ground to stand on. We helped sort of build each other in this. We pushed each other's boundaries. He kind of pushed me back out there, but I pushed him out there because he led a very insular life. And I made him, I started taking him on these road trips, like halfway across the country and stuff, which was way out of his comfort zone. And and it was kind of like a big brother, little brother relationship. And I remember just first working for him and being very curious and and asking him questions. This is back to the ennobling thing where I was like, you know, one day, it was probably like maybe my first week working with him. I'm like, if you could, if you had your if you had your mobility back, you know, what what's the first thing you would do? And of course, I'm expecting him to say, like, chase a butterfly down a hill or something. He's like, take and he says, take a piss standing up. You know what I mean? I'm like, so it's it's it's like I I think we forget, you know, it's like what you call the big drama of trauma, and how we as a culture tend to make assumptions that disability is always traumatic. So my brother in his 40s started suffering from it, it was never diagnosed as ALS, but it was definitely a neuromuscular ALS-related neuromuscular disease. He eventually ended his own life because he just, but I remember at one point, maybe three years after he had lost his mobility and he was in the wheelchair, I had noticed that my brother had always been sort of an embittered guy. He's 14 years older. He had always been a little bit embittered, like the world owed him something. He was kind of he was kind of embittered that he didn't fulfill his lifetime dream as a lounge singer and some other things. I actually saw him grow less bitter, like more open, more. And I asked him about it, and he said, the truth is I'm happier now. He said it was very it made sense when he said it. He said, People are so nice to me now. Like everybody laughs at my jokes, like he just felt like because they have maybe it's because they have this sort of ennobling thing to them, but everybody, he just felt like so accepted in this way that like I don't know, it was just a weird, it was a different take on it.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Well, okay, you you mentioned a few things. First off, let's go back to you talking about the friend um that you were caregiving for with or together. I mean, at the end of the day, you you describe to a T uh what is called within the principles of disability justice, which are 10 principles to help folks really reframe disability rights to be inclusive of everyone. Um, and this uh principle is called interdependence. And interdependence is essentially saying just the recognition that we all come in different minds and bodies, and we essentially take care of each other to overcome the obstacles of society together. So, like a really good example is you know, I'm, you know, legally blind, and then my partner is neurodivergent in a way where he hates other human beings. He has several neurodivergences, and for whatever reason, one of them manifests into I don't like to talk to people. And so what ends up happening is we tour all the time, and he uh gets me to the airport, but while we're there, I navigate us around and ask the questions and this and that. And so in that way, we are interdependent. So your friend was able to help you kind of work through your depression, you're helping your friend work through physical like aspects of life. And I often, you know, I do speeches to all sorts of types. And, you know, when I'm talking to caregivers, um I often talk about interdependence. Um, because there's a lot of times where on both sides of the coin, and this appears to be not how it was in your situation, but oftentimes, sometimes the caregiver feels overwhelmed or overburdened or like not necessarily um thanked in a way. And sometimes the disabled person feels like they don't like to have to, you know, almost kind of put the person out. And so I often try to tell folks, like, listen, at the end of the day, this is an interdependent relationship. Who is getting what? Like, how are you getting and receiving, and how is the other person getting and receiving? Because everything is a relationship that is a push and pull.

SPEAKER_01 35:38

Everything is recep reciprocal or or or uh, I mean, in an in the worst case scenario, we would use a word like uh transactional, like people that are not good people, everything is transactional. They want something out of it, but every relationship that's what I realized very early on in the caregiving relationship, that it is it's still just two people. One person does have the mandates of a job, you know what I mean? So I'm responsible for certain responsibilities. And boy, did I erode those boundaries. I I think we I would love to talk to that. I mean, I I I think that more uh disabled people should be in on the conversation of creating these hands. The reason my book was called The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving is because the fundamentals of caregiving is bullshit and you figure that out, like it's mostly about avoiding liability and like you know what I mean. And it's it's actually, I mean, I found it to be sort of patronizing to the person that's on the being cared for end of that spectrum. And like it doesn't, it doesn't allow for and part of that is because of boundaries. If you've ever been a caregiver, you know that like if you're doing it full time, whoever you're taking care of, every little bad habit they have starts at like if they scrape their spoon when they eat, it starts to drive you crazy. If they breathe through their mouth, it's just because you know it's proximity. You spend that much time when I I was helping my mom get over cancer, she was driving me insane. I realized that my mom has never made a declarative statement in her life. All she does is ask questions. It's like living with Bob Costas. She never, honest to God, she never. I dare you come to my house, spend an entire afternoon with my mom, and keep track of it. She will never say anything that doesn't have a question. It's just one question leads to the next question leads to the next. She has never made a declarative statement. So that's part of the thing they don't teach you. Is just it all, I guess the answer is empathy, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:24

Like it's all empathy, it's all recognizing, like you said, that there are two human beings, like even if it is a job, like you know, I get hired all the time to sing backing vocals or to produce a track or to write a song. And I know it's totally different, but it's like now I have to do what the artist wants, and it's not just, oh, well, they're paying me, let me do this. It's like, all right, well, we're here. I'm doing my job. You know, let's still be humans and do the thing. And I think if I'm hearing you correctly, I feel like a lot of the issue isn't the the two human relationship, but it really is all of the rules and regulations, like the way that it's set up and the liability and all of this stuff, and you know, the way you have to navigate the system that may actually be the issue. And I think that at the end of the day, that is the issue for everything. It's always the system. The system was always built too fast, too quick, with only a certain kind of person in mind, et cetera, et cetera. And then everybody else has to figure out how to navigate this busted ass duct tape-ass system. Um, and that ends up being the problem. And really, what I think we need to be doing is getting the folks benefiting from the system excited to change it.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

So normally I would say, be patient with me here if some of my questions sound stupid or naive, but now that I know you a little bit, I know I don't even have to preface it with such a statement. You're just you've given me license to ask. I can ask the dumbest questions ever.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

No such thing as dumb questions, only dumb people. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

So a couple weeks back, I was talking to SoundGuard guitarist Kim Thyle about his anesthesia. And I'm an empath, so I'm always trying, if you haven't been able to tell, I'm always trying to glean experiences outside my personal purview. And I've wondered how it would differ. I mean, maybe you have some insight in this. Obviously, you weren't born blind, so you can't, but I would imagine maybe you know, have talked to people more blind people than me, maybe. But like yeah, how would it differ being born blind versus losing your sight later in life? I mean, yeah, like what I mean, you've had this conversation with somebody who's born blind. Yeah, absolutely. Can you talk to me about some of the like what that conversation sounds like?

SPEAKER_00 39:23

Yeah. So you ever go to, or have you ever heard of those like dining in the dark, or like, you know, you put on blindfolds to like have the experience of being a blind person? Um the reason I hate those, first of all, the simulations, is because when you put on blindfold folds, you're just experiencing the trauma of just going blind and not actually experiencing like the lived experience of a blind person.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

Right, because you don't have an equilibrium yet, and you haven't, you know, your other senses have not started to compensate and compensate.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

You don't even have any tools, etc. So the difference between being born blind and going blind later in life generally is um twofold. I think that folks who are born blind are often really taught technology a lot earlier, are taught um are kind of often brought into like the community of blindness a lot earlier. And so you'll find like less, I guess, bitterness for bitterness's sake for folks who are born blind. You're gonna find folks who are born blind also read braille a lot more than folks who go blind later in life because you know it's a lot more difficult to learn how to do things like read fundaments when you're much older. So about 10% or less of blind folks actually read braille. So just to throw that stat out there. Oh wow, less than less than 2% use a dog and less than 8% use a cane. Um, and then also less than 15% of people who are blind actually see totally black. So most people who are blind have at least some minuscule teeny bit of vision. Uh that's so interesting.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

Yeah, we tend to just think of it as black, like the blindfold.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

Yeah, like the whole like just can't see anything at all. But most people most blind people have some um semblance of vision. A lot of people who go blind like much later in life, uh uh by I mean not losing their vision because of aging, but I mean like going blind maybe in their 30s or whatever. There's a blindness called um retinitis pigmentosa that's pretty common where you're blind in your periphery and then it closes in like this, right? And it could be closing in on 2020 vision. So there are some people who are legally blind and can legally drive, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:36

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Those kinds of folks are often very the non-typical, like you'll just see them walking down the street, they will be the furthest away from what folks would deem Hollywood blind, right? So let's so a good example is I go on Instagram and I start singing and dancing and rapping and I'm dancing around, and people constantly go, Well, if you're blind, how do you know how to do those moves? Right? How do you know that that's how you dance, that that's how people dance? Oh, and then they don't all have an hour-long podcast where I can describe, like explain like exactly like that. If you're born, if you go blind later in life, then you knew what dancing was before.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

Um but it what it is different for somebody who's born blind, like like you know, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:24

For someone who's born blind, normally the way they move is very much I'm I'm moving my body to the music. And so that can look like anything. Whereas someone who goes blind later in life, you know, I've watched Soul Train, you know, like I know like how we pose the dance thou heel.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

So um Hey, at the end of the day, dancing's really about more how you feel anyway, right? Like, so if you have a sense of a spatial sense and you know you have four limbs, and it's just all about that joy of moving them around. And I would, I would imagine you would uh your limbs would know what what uh some semblance of what it wants to do, what makes it feel good, what makes it feel joy, what makes it feel because at the end of the so I I don't know if um uh they mentioned it to you from the team, but we're actually releasing an album called Magnificent.

SPEAKER_00 43:11

Um, and it's an all-ages hip-hop, pop, trap, dance album uh made for the full family that celebrates disability and neurodivergence from a place of bops. And one of the songs, uh, and there's over 55 artists with disabilities on this album and some Grammy winning producers, etc. And one of the songs on it is called Moves. And I did this song with a guy named Dom Kelly who has uh cerebral palsy. He and I got together, he was in a band that used to open for the indigo girls. What was their name? Uh I don't remember right now. Don't be mad at me, Dom. But anyway, so the discussion of the song is that we all have different bodies. Maybe we use different apparatuses, um, but we all move in different ways and it's all dope. Nothing is wrong with. The way you move. In fact, there's no right body and there's no right answer to how you move, how you express joy, how you express love.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

Hey, I'm feeling better about myself already. Right? Maybe I don't need to lose 15 pounds.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

Listen, you know what I mean? Just whip out your Lizzo C D. No, I'm but anyway. Um, I feel like at the end of the day, it's more about what makes you feel liberated, right? Because we all have internalized isms, right? Internalized inferiority, internalized this, internalized that, that maybe we got from our childhood, maybe we got it at school, maybe it was our parents, maybe it was a bad relationship, maybe it was, you know, just an environment in general. And what we have to do as adults is work to disentangle ourselves from all of those internalized inferiorities so that we can start to feel liberated, um, so we can start to feel that joy and pass that down to our kids or I love it.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

What a great message. Um, I want to go back to um sort of the body uh equilibrium thing because we're kind of talking about a little bit, but like back to your experience of waking up blind. How how long was it be thing be before like your hearing or your olfactory or if your sense of touch naturally began to compensate for the loss of your sight? Like, when did you begin to notice that like you were more sensitive, maybe in these other ways? Or sure.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

Well, you know, I I had always had lower vision, right? Just growing up, I grew up low vision. I had to wear these like ridiculous Coke bottle glasses. And I had I'd always had this little like blip of um what's it called? Central vision that was missing. And so my brain always had to compensate for this weird little like freckle in my eye that was missing. And if somebody stood right in front like there where the thing was missing, my brain would just color in and just make up, you know, what they're what they should be looking like because you know it saw it from the space over. So my brain has always been overcompensating or adapting. Um, and then as a person who has always had pretty hefty ADHD, um, I I would always be doing like 17 different things. Like I'd be doing one thing, but 17 other things would be running in my head at the same time. And it would just be a matter of kind of pulling up the different tab. And so when I lost my sight completely, I mean, all of those things, like the fact that my brain is just so quick to compensate, just went into overdrive. Uh, the ADHD of like, like I said, when I went outside, the first thing I did was I could feel the the bushes rustling over here and the kids playing over there and the young mothers and the the truck beeping, that's the kind of stuff that would have been like ADHDing me, right? It's like, oh my God, all these freaking sensory overload. Now I can't see, and now I'm like, oh, this is actually just a tapestry. This is like a painted picture of the outside, you know, and so all of the parts of my body's the other neurodivergences, the other disabilities kicked into gear. My full body just went into full mode of like the goal is to get this body from here to the clinic. Let's use everything we have to make it happen. And so it just kind of kicked in naturally.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

Yeah, I mean, as human beings, we can only see within a certain range of of of a certain range of frequency, and we can only hear within a certain range of frequency. So there's all this invisible intelligence out there that no human alive can see unless they just like I mean, maybe with enough ketamine or something, you can you know, jump the the synoptic track or something, but like so I don't know, it's just very interesting. What are your dreams different now that you're sightless? I mean, did you notice your dreams changed at all?

SPEAKER_00 48:07

I don't actually think so. I'm not sure though, because you know, it's kind of gra it's kind of gradual. I don't know, that's a really good question. Honestly, I think my dreams are still the same. I don't know that I ever really had dreams that were like super duper vivid. Um, but I have like five of the same dream that I keep having over and over again that I should probably get looked at. Like I have a dream that I'm being chased by a lion for some reason, and it just seems to be chasing me forever and it never actually catches me.

SPEAKER_01 48:40

What if the lion's you it's maybe it's you, maybe it's your relentless optimism and your relentless strength and your relentless all these things that you're embracing as your strength. Maybe, maybe it's your unconscious telling you, slow down, girl.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

Maybe but I always picture it. That would be 75 bucks. Okay. Uh, but yeah, no, I think this idea of limitation, you know. I mean, somebody like you, you probably know about the whole like RAS, you know, the what does it stand for? Reticular, uh like you only see the things that you care about, right? Um, and so when you stop seeing, right, it doesn't turn your reticulum off. You know, people always say, like, oh, well, that means, you know, when if you're if you're thinking about buying a red car, all of a sudden you're gonna see a red car everywhere, but it's really just because you're thinking about the red car, so your mind is, you know, being kind of biased towards red cars. But if you turn your site off, your reticulum is still there. And now it's just about your experiences, right? And so now you're experiencing all of the th all of your goals that you're trying to get. And so when people say, like, oh, well, we can only see a certain amount, or we can only hear a certain amount. So if our if my site was turned on, would I be able to hear more or less? No, you will reorient because your experience is different, right?

SPEAKER_01 50:05

Right. We limitations again, like it it actually I I touched on that earlier. I I find that if I have limitations in in what I'm able to do, it's one of the reasons I like to say I like to use um the first person limited point of view versus the omniscient point of view, which is I can get in, I can have 10 people in the room and get in as the author, I can get in everybody's head at once. Sure. The limitation of only being able to use the one character point of view makes the story so much more textured and nuanced because then I could move to somebody else, they could be looking at the same thing and have a completely different experience. That's interesting. So, like limitations are kind of this built-in tool. How how does how does it force you to drill down creatively within specific perimeters, your limitation site less and really allow you to plumb the depths of your experience?

SPEAKER_00 50:59

Well, I call it big diss energy, um, which is the idea that like your your disability is what gives you your drive. It gives you your problem-solving skills because you kind of have to be creative, right? To figure out um how to navigate a system that wasn't built for you. Uh, and you have to overcompensate. So it gives you that drive, that determination, that creativity, that ingenuity. And I believe that it's not a limitation. Again, it's just a reorientation. I remember one of the a big thing that I did that I made myself do was during April, I was like, I'm gonna do a rap a day, every day on Instagram. And the rap has to be to a track of like a song that everybody knows. And so, like, you know, I was doing like Mario Kart. I rapped over a Mario Kart, I rapped over Baby Shark. And every rap has to be.

SPEAKER_01 51:50

Oh God, I don't want to hear that one. No offense, but I don't care how you change the lyrics. I do, I'm not listening to that one.

SPEAKER_00 51:56

It is so good. I'm gonna go to the show.

SPEAKER_01 51:58

Go do it. You kill me. I will, it'll be that earworm will be in my head for like two months.

SPEAKER_00 52:04

But I also said I had to talk about accessibility and disability in each rap. I couldn't cuss, and I had to make it sound as hard as possible. Like I had to like sound like real gangster, no cuss words, and then rapping about accessibility.

SPEAKER_01 52:18

So and it's like this part of this is built into hip-hop music in general. Like I noticed that as somebody who DJs once in a while on the radio. It's like there's so much great uh hip-hop I want to play, but I just can't. So it's I I gotta go back to De La Sole or like the or you know, Dr. Octagon. I gotta go back to the artists that like circumstances.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

I mean, they're good, those are some good artists though.

SPEAKER_01 52:41

Oh, there's some great artists, but they're the they're the minority of the of the uh you know of the catalog that I want to be pulling from.

unknown 52:49

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

Okay, that is so what a great exercise.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

It was the best, it was the best um lyrics I've ever written. Like it to have to like be cut put in that little teeny box and to create gold out of it, it was some of the best writing I've ever done. And I'm so glad I did it because now I'm a much better artist. But the other things I was gonna say too is like a lot of times if you know people think, you know, okay, I have ADHD, I can't get anything done, or I have OCD, I get stuck in a, you know, a loop, or I have, you know, anxiety and this and that. And I often tell people like, well, my ADHD, when I accommodate it, right? When I make sure I'm accommodated, it helps me with all of my my zillions of ideas. I have OCD, and when I accommodate it, it actually helps me with so many other things and actually helps to carry out a bunch of those ideas. When I when I sit down and I say to myself, this is the thing I have, like that's step one. You have to like acknowledge what you have. So that step two is how do I accommodate it? How do I accommodate myself? You can't really accommodate yourself if you don't tell yourself what you have. And so if you just look at it as a limitation, you're just like, oh, I'll be fine or I'll struggle through it. It's like, no, sit down. What is it? How do you accommodate it? And then once you're accommodated, you can use this thing you were constantly overcompensating for as like your greatest strength because it's your greatest source of adversity.

SPEAKER_01 54:18

Exactly. This is how disabilities can breed innovation, like Django Reinhardt. You know what I mean? It's like, okay, I'm missing a few fingers here. What can I do with that limitation that people with five fingers can't do or don't do, or what sound can I get? Or another one is James Joyce. Like James Joyce lost his sight, and like his later writing, not in the modernist sense, but his later writing is so alive, like like the end of the that that beautiful passage at the end of the dead where the snow is falling. Um you realize the musicality of his language has so much to do with his sightlessness at that point. Because when you really start to break it down on a sentence level, there's smell and touch. And whenever somebody tells me my writing is cinematic, it's usually not about the visual thing, it's about all those other things that be bring it into three dimensions. You know what I mean? That's the irony of that. That is so uh, this is great. Um, and I I I love that humor is such a big part of your worldview, too.

SPEAKER_00 55:18

If you can't laugh, then why at all? Right. And so I feel like throwing the joy in. I want to go go really quickly back to this guitar thing. And I mentioned a ton of musicians, artists, folks with different disabilities in the entertainment space, like throughout the book. Yeah. Uh, but but one person I didn't mention that I really kind of wish I had was uh is a guitarist named Raul Medan, who I work with on the album Magnificent that's coming out. And he is a guitarist out of um Mexico, and he is so good. And it's like he's running around going right, but then the nuance of like some notes are just really quiet and just delicate, others are like loud and wired, and he the mastery and control of like what we hear that he is able to do is just virtuoso level intelligence.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

Damn. Well, yeah, we're I'm running out of time. I could talk to you all day. This has been one of my favorite conversations. You're so lively, you never leave me just hanging. You've always got an answer. Sometimes I'll ask a really long question, and the person's just like, Yes, that's right. You know, like help me out here. Um, okay. One thing I mean, so part of independence is knowing when to ask for help, right? I mean so when do you ask for help?

SPEAKER_00 56:39

All the time. Everything I do is in community. Um, like when I was having trouble navigating the music industry, I reached out to as many disabled folks as I could that were musicians. And then all of a sudden, we have an organization called ramped.org, which works to make the music industry more accessible. We're the ones that brought sign language to the red carpet at the Grammys. And it's all because I was like, hey, I I can't do this alone. Where are my people? This book, I identify as blind. I was like, I'm not writing this book by myself. So I ended up interviewing like 60 people. And that book is not just my story, it's like an interweaving of so many people. This album, like I said, has over 70 collaborators. Because I was like, I'm not gonna be able to tell this message by myself. Anytime I'm invited to like do a night at a at a place, at a venue, I'm always calling my other folks, my disabled friends, uh, my other, you know, women, my queer friends, like, hey, help me fill this night. Um, I have no shame in asking for help because at the end of the day, people look at asking for help as a weakness oftentimes, but I just look at it as interdependence. Like, what can we give each other to navigate the barriers of society together to make it better for both of us?

SPEAKER_01 57:56

Yeah, and I also think you're a marketing genius because you realize when you have 70 collaborators, that's 69 other people besides yourself out going, listen to my new record, listen to this thing I work on. Listen to the new record, yeah. No, it's not.

SPEAKER_00 58:08

But it's also 69 other textures that make the record that much more beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 58:13

Okay, so Jason wanted me to ask about sex, and you just said 69, so I don't think I'm gonna get a better transition. Has sex changed with sightlessness?

SPEAKER_00 58:25

I mean, um, no, I know where it is.

SPEAKER_01 58:29

Yeah, but I mean, uh, are you more sensitive? Uh are you more aware of the sense of touch? Smell, for instance, it smells suddenly now part of a bigger part of the equation than perhaps it was before when because we're generally speaking, when we talk about sex and well, you know, whatever, like pornography or whatever, it's like more visually, right? It's more visually triggered. So, but like so much of the sexual experiment experience to me is like textural and feel and and smell. People gross out when you say smell, but come on, musk and then so forth.

SPEAKER_00 59:02

Yeah, it's part of it. Um honestly, it's so funny because when I had um better vision, I wasn't really into looks. Like I didn't care that much what I looked like, and I also didn't care what other people looked like, which was funny because now I, you know, I'm a whole like beauty influencer and I'm a whole fashionista, and you know, I like what I like out in these streets, and I didn't really used to care before. And I think part of it is just because I am so much more confident in myself, um, it's less of a like I'm I'm confident in all things now. So, like, let's say for instance, um I have no fear walking into a bar and just hitting on a girl or a guy or whatever, who cares? It doesn't matter. Like as long as I end up getting a drink bot for me, right? So like I am.

SPEAKER_01 59:59

I'm on board with that.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:00

Uh but yeah, I've I've just I've grown far more um confident in everything. So I think that if we're actually gonna get technical about like literal sex, I don't believe that I was a confident, like person when it came to sex. Today, I mean, because I'm just so much more confident and liberated and open and there's like no fear in anything, it trickles down to uh my sexuality as well. And that and just also like how uh how who I am physically in bed, I guess is getting asked to your question.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:37

That's amazing. I mean, I just all of it. I mean, it's well, it's just consistent with everything else in your life to style. I love this idea that um you are more confident because of your whatever. I don't, I'm not I I can't even call it a limitation at this point. It's more of a gift. You know what I mean? Um, well, we are out of time, but boy, let me she is Lachi. This has been one of my very favorite conversations out of the 80 odd conversations we've had here on a fresh face in hell. Do seek out Lachi's music wherever music is sold. Uh, look her up on YouTube too. There's some great interviews. Uh, and most importantly, here, uh, find the book. Identify I identify as blind. Find it, read it, be inspired. You'll find it wherever books are available. Lachi, thank you for being our fresh face in hell. This has been such a joy. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:25

Thank you so much for having me. And um, don't forget to check out that baby shark wrap video.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:30

I will not. I love you, but I will not ever. And that's a promise. A Fresh Face in Hell with Jonathan Evison is brought to you by Fresh Face Pods and produced by Jason Botkin and yours truly. Check us out on Instagram, YouTube, or at our website at FreshFacePods.tv. Don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter for updates and special content. And if you love the podcast, by all means run it and buy all of Jonathan Evison's award winning novels wherever books are sold.