Chaos and Creativity
Musician Kimi Recor and writer/director Lou Lesko bring you conversations with the outliers and outlaws of the creative industries.
Twice a month Kimi and Lou discuss the creative industries through the lens of their experiences and interviews with independent musicians, filmmakers, photographers, writers, and artists.
Chaos and Creativity is produced by Claire Duncan with music by Kieran Kerwin.
Chaos and Creativity
Everything Feels Legit
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Big changes are afoot at Chaos & Creativity, as our long time producer and good friend Claire Duncan moseys down the road of life to her next big thing. We wish her nothing but the best.
Lest Kimi and Lou be left alone too long without supervision, we’re excited to announce the arrival of our new producer Cheramie “CJ” Johnson. We’re also thrilled to welcome Alexandra Covey to the podcast editing bay. She’ll be cutting together Chaos & Creativity as well as our sister podcast Mothers of Creativity.
In this episode: Everything Feels Legit—everything ends up on the nose as Kimi and Lou utilize an outline to attempt episode cohesion. What results is an extra dose of chaos, with Kimi and Lou covering everything from fellating a lightsaber to Y2K fashion and Facebook regrets to the reflecting pool and beyond. Come for the disastrous segues, stay for the synergy, and listen closely for hints of a 2-part series on the art of sound, coming soon.
Mentioned in the episode:
The Chaos and Creativity Instagram
The Last Kings of Hollywood by Paul Fischer
The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders Documentary, Part 2
Hi, Kimmy.
SPEAKER_00Hi.
SPEAKER_01How are you doing?
SPEAKER_00I'm doing great. How are you?
SPEAKER_01Everything feels legit. That's our today.
SPEAKER_00I love where we're like, I have an idea for the name. And then first thing you do, like very let me just insert, let me just insert it directly. Okay, guys, guess what we're talking about today? Everything is somewhat legisl. We're going legit. Okay. We're going legit.
SPEAKER_01So first we have to say goodbye to um our friend and producer, Claire Duncan. She has moved on. She's living her best life in um San Francisco right now, actually.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean she graduated from college, got her got it, got a more full-time job, and is now an adult. And I feel like we uh we walked out.
SPEAKER_01Well, she's passed the step is what she's done.
SPEAKER_00I mean, this is fine. Fine.
SPEAKER_01Fine.
SPEAKER_00But, you know, when one door closes, another door opens.
SPEAKER_01Right, and we can say hi to our new producer, Sheremy Johnson, affectionately known as CJ.
unknownHi!
SPEAKER_01Hi! And then also we have a new um editor because you decided that it's just too much trouble.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm just like kind of moving into my like cat lazy cat phase where I just kind of like lift my head and like record some episodes and then like nap again.
SPEAKER_01And so um really excited to not have to do the actual work, which is the editing, which is we're just gonna be um our new editor is Alexandra Covey, who so now we have two adults in the room, yes, and us. Mildly mildly intimidating, but that's okay. So um uh so hello to new producer and uh editor, Alexandra and Jeremy. So that's great.
SPEAKER_00And Lou, what else is new?
SPEAKER_01Oh my god, you just teed me up too. Lou, what else is new? Is this like the on the nose episode? That's called the on the nose.
SPEAKER_00We're like it's no longer legit, it's just on the nose. Okay, Lou. So I get a new mic. If you can't hear, Lou actually sounds really good now.
SPEAKER_01I know it's fit, it's great, but it this thing on the screen looks like I'm fileting a lightsaber or something.
SPEAKER_00It does.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it's just it's a huge thing and it looks like a lightsaber. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00It is, it's like a very it's it looks like a and I think it is based off like old um broadcasting microphone.
SPEAKER_01So is that what it is? It's cool.
SPEAKER_00I mean it's cool, but it's just like for uh anyone, any nerds out there, it's the Electro Voice RE20.
SPEAKER_01It is the RE20, which is fantastic. I love it. Very nice.
SPEAKER_00So wow, just lots of new things flowing.
SPEAKER_01Oh, so I'm gonna get a new couch coming too from my office.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's nice. And what are you gonna do with your old couch?
SPEAKER_01I'm giving it away, but I can't give it away. It's a futon. It looks a little collegiate, I gotta be honest.
SPEAKER_00Is it the one that you've had forever?
SPEAKER_01Well, yes.
SPEAKER_00Since college, it's actually like antique now. It's like this is uh 1970s antique.
SPEAKER_01I was in college in the 80s. Give me a break.
unknownOh my gosh.
SPEAKER_01I don't realize how much I hate.
SPEAKER_00Well, I was born in the 80s, so were you born in the 80s? Yep.
SPEAKER_01What year were you born?
SPEAKER_0084, girl.
SPEAKER_01Jesus Christ. I can't even um so segueing into our next topic.
SPEAKER_00Okay, what is the next topic? Because uh, I can read the topics that Louis sent me, and they're like amazing because they have there's no way to segue any of these topics.
SPEAKER_01Not at all.
SPEAKER_00Like I'm like looking at the topics, and I'm like, okay, Lou, can't wait how we're going from the couch to this next part, which is we haven't done a fashion episode yet.
SPEAKER_01We haven't done a fashion episode yet. So, how do we go from the casting couch, the casting futon to the we haven't done a fashion episode yet?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I don't know. I don't I really I've I don't know if this is like my uh strength, but you are right. We have never done a fashion episode, which is funny because you used to I was a model and you were a fashion photographer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that's and that's the funny thing about that is that I I don't know what to go after now because fashion fashion has changed everything so much. Yeah. And um the way fashion scrolls across on on um Instagram and various other social media, is that there's no staying powered any of the images in a lot of ways. And so a lot of stuff that I get sent to me by Sarah Laird. Sarah Laird is a production house that does that focuses on fashion. And when their emails come out from Laird and Good Company, it's it's it's insanely stunning. Like they're their stable is in exceptional talent. And I just wonder how they are able to produce the type of work that they do to the level that it can get consumed and sort of be spit out by social media so quickly. And so maybe that's the angle. I mean, how maybe we talk to an artist about how they keep up with the social media and still keep it really good and fresh, you know?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, I have a lot of ideas around this and a always always a lot to say about it. Um, so I feel like we could for sure do a fashion episode. So everyone who is into fashion and would love to hear two people who don't work in fashion or are um that's veterans talk about fashion. We're we're gonna do it.
SPEAKER_01No, we're I think we can call ourselves fashion hasbins at this point, really.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure has been.
SPEAKER_01We're totally fashion hasbins. So yeah. Love that. Love that for us. I love that for us. I used to be somebody, damn it. Come on. Um, so we're gonna do a fashion episode coming up.
SPEAKER_00I feel like I actually could do an entire episode on like how upset I am that like Y2K fashion has come back.
SPEAKER_01Oh, you're kidding me? Has it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh Jesus.
SPEAKER_00You are are you not in the streets? Are you? Do you just stay in in your home?
SPEAKER_01Like you are like at my age, I I just live in my ivy tower. I'm very happy here. I really enjoy it here. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I live in Berlin where there's like tons of cute fashionable kids, and half of them are running around in like stuff where I'm like, oh my god, I'm old. Like this, you know, when when this is the moment where I was like, holy shit, I'm old because you know, when I was like in my early 20s, we were wearing like weird 80s stuff and 70s stuff. And and I remember like my friends who were like a little bit older were just like, absolutely not. Like we already did this and we did it was not great the first time around. And we were like, now it's so cool, you don't know you're old. And now I'm like, oh my god, I'm those people. I'm like, guys, like this, you're gonna regret all of this soon. Like, I promise you, in a couple years, you're gonna be like, I should not have worn the weird bedazzled, like low rise pants. Like, no one loved that the first time around. But, anyways, I love that this is turning into the fashion episode.
SPEAKER_01Uh this is the legitimate fashion episode now. Okay, I like this.
SPEAKER_00I'd like to have every topic we're just gonna go a little bit into.
SPEAKER_01Just a little deep, not a lot deep. The shallow end.
SPEAKER_00Um, but also I'm really interested in this next topic. Also, I just wish you could all see this because Lou sent me like a Google Doc, and the topics are like so large in in font size. Like they're they're like half the page is just a topic. I feel like I'm being yelled at by the topics. But the next topic is which I don't know anything about because I just read about it in the topics, is we have a website.
SPEAKER_01We have a website now. Okay, it's a little sad right now, but it's coming together rapidly. Okay. But um, yeah, I'm gonna try to.
SPEAKER_00I thought we already had a website, but we have a new website.
SPEAKER_01Well, no, it's it's sort of a website where I'm gonna write like every other week type of thing. Uh CJ's gonna write some stuff there too.
SPEAKER_00I will not be writing anything.
SPEAKER_01No, no, you're not gonna write anything. You never write anything.
SPEAKER_00Unless you want me to treat it like how I treated my Facebook circa 2010 and just like put emotional updates on my life. Facebook, I only keep Facebook because it does this awful thing, which is every day it reminds you of your memories from the past that you've had on Facebook, and it just goes like up to like 18 years back and just shows you what you wrote. And every day I'm reminded of like how much of a loser I am. Because some of the stuff is so emo. Like I used to really just put everything on the internet and it survived, you know, but like very dramatic poetry. Um, so that's fun. But uh, but yeah, I could I could do that. I could do like dramatic poetry on the internet.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, dude, dramatic poetry, that'd be fun. I mean, it's it's really sort of an all-comer type of thing, but you know, we're we're gonna figure out some stuff. We're we're we're trying to figure it all out.
SPEAKER_00You're all doing like very serious uh long form, and then there's just like god no all caps.
SPEAKER_01I'm just I'm just I'm just gonna um write there to avoid writing what I'm supposed to be writing. So there we go. That's gonna be my distraction. Okay, my good thing.
SPEAKER_00So um but we also underneath this topic is another thing that you wrote, which is I love this. I love that you just decide topics and then I just grill you on them. No, completely.
SPEAKER_01This is exactly what's happening.
SPEAKER_00Um, are we gonna do YouTube? I don't What does that mean? What does that mean, Lou?
SPEAKER_01What do you I don't know? I I tell me more.
SPEAKER_00Tell me what you're thinking.
SPEAKER_01The most hardcore podcast that I listen to, which is amazing, which is audio only, has now gone to YouTube. They they're doing occasional episodes up on YouTube. Where it's it's interesting to watch because there'll be three people in a room and the cutting is jarring. It's like almost nausea inducing. But I don't know.
SPEAKER_00As long as I don't have to edit it, and then I'll actually have to.
SPEAKER_01No, that's what Alexander's gonna do.
SPEAKER_00And then I'll just actually have to do it.
SPEAKER_01She's scowling at me right now.
SPEAKER_00We're like, we're gonna have people do that. Other people do that.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, no, we're we're just this that's because we're legit now.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well then I guess there's gonna be I can't just sometimes jump to the podcast in my pajamas, being like, hey, just I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if we're gonna do this or not, but I think I feel like there's legitimacy to doing that, and since this is legitimate.
SPEAKER_00I do feel like every podcast now is also like a video show, which is weird.
SPEAKER_01How interesting can it be to to watch people talking into a microphone that look like a big giant.
SPEAKER_00Also, I've I only ever watch clips of people on on like Instagram for the case. I never watched like the I never watched like a full I would never watch a full podcast on the podcast is what you listen to when you walk from one place to the other or you have to like or those just to drive because we live in California, thank you. Yeah, I mean for yeah, for the people who still drive, um, who still have to drive. But it's crazy because I'm like, I was thinking about I'm like, I don't ever just like lay on my bed and listen to podcasts. I always use it as like a thing when I'm like, okay, I I want to have something else going on while I do this very menial task that I don't want to do. But I would never just be like, let me watch my favorite show that is a podcast.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00But I will doom scroll like really funny clips of a podcast and then be like, maybe I'll watch that podcast because this is pretty funny.
SPEAKER_01Your your life's more complicated than mine right there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, because I have an Instagram and you don't.
SPEAKER_01We have an Instagram, Chaos Creativity. Yeah, but you don't. Alexander's doing our Instagram first.
SPEAKER_00Hallo, you are not doom scrolling Instagram ever.
SPEAKER_01No, I don't even have Instagram on Facebook.
SPEAKER_00That's what I'm saying. Like, no. Just based on that, my life is more complicated than yours.
SPEAKER_01No, absolutely right. Absolutely right. Um, wait, so we also we so in the we did the bumpers for our Skywalker Sound episode, but this is one in a series of potentially three, it definitely two. And we need to figure out how to do a series. I kind of think that we should do Wednesday, Thursday, Friday if we have three, the third person confirms and I get to interview them, or a Thursday, Friday thing if they do two. What do you think?
SPEAKER_00I mean, uh when I used to listen to like anything that had like more than one part, unless the story was broken into, like if they were like it was the same person, but they're like this is part two, then it makes sense. But I feel like if you're doing a limit series, you can still just be like, these all exist together and they can be still like a week apart.
SPEAKER_01They can have a three line but still be a week apart.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. All right.
SPEAKER_01So maybe we just maybe we just do our our Thursday releases then. Yes.
SPEAKER_00But we're like, but this is we can just tell people this is specifically about this.
SPEAKER_01And they will forget it immediately.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Perfect. I love that. Okay, well, nothing like grappling with a moral dilemma. That's now done. So um, all right. So we're getting that to the highway. You don't have this holiday in Drewland, do you? The July 4th thing.
SPEAKER_00No, because uh we did not have to like start a new nation and take it away from somebody else.
SPEAKER_01Oh, true fact. Um this is the 250th anniversary of our nation.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I oh oh, I'm aware. I'm aware.
SPEAKER_01Uh I can't believe it's in the hands of the fucking assholes.
SPEAKER_00Didn't you guys didn't you guys have like a WWC wrestling thing?
SPEAKER_01Oh my god, on the on the I mean it was just like it was just so next level crap. I mean, it's unreal.
SPEAKER_00So something that's really funny in Berlin is whenever whenever I go anywhere and there's like Germans and Europeans and then there's Americans, like the Americans with no matter what, within like 10 to 15 minutes, whatever the conversation is, talk about segue, no matter what, we will get into how fucked America is. And like, but like it's not the other, it's like no everyone else is kind of like, yeah, well, you guys have been like off the rocker for a while, but we're like, no, but this is the worst, you know, like I think they've just I think they've just been like watching for a while and they're like, yeah, you're you're a pretty young country and just consistently drunk. Um, but but like the Americans are just like, oh my god. And then we just like all recite this trauma dump everything that we've been reading on the news um for like the last, you know, however. But it is really funny because that it is no matter what. No matter I mean, my boyfriend is German, he's like, it is crazy that Americans are so traumatized by this that this is all they can talk to each other about at this point when they're in another.
SPEAKER_01It is it's traumatic though. It's traumatic. I mean, it's it's a basic tenants of how this country was built being completely destroyed by bloated assholes.
SPEAKER_00It's it is like it is an insane, it is insane, especially like that when you're removed from it, like when you're not in it, it's like a completely different uh sort of insanity to watch. Like also just like sometimes I'm like, this would be so funny if it was a movie. Like this would be like such a funny movie, like if people weren't actually living through it. Like the reflecting, like the things that happened.
SPEAKER_01The reflecting pool is my own. People are getting arrested, like people are putting their hand in the reflecting pool and getting through.
SPEAKER_00Because it's peeling, because he had like his like cont. Oh, it's like such, it's like the sh this the plot is so good, you know what I mean? They're like if you're watching some weird political like comedy, and the president would be like, I'm gonna make this pool like my pool in Florida, and I'm gonna hire my pool guy from Florida and do it, and then it would be like there's some guy out there named Hank's painting in the bottom of the thing, he's getting paid $14 million, it's insane. I can't, it's like so it is like you have to think. Sometimes I'm like, you just have sometimes have to laugh because it's like if you're not gonna laugh, you're gonna cry. So you sometimes just gotta laugh.
SPEAKER_01The thing is, is that if any of the people in office were good looking and we could look at it and say, well, at least they're good looking, you know, this sort of no, no, they just they they they look exactly like how they act, actually.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's an intense intense time, but I'm excited for you guys' 4th of July celebrations.
SPEAKER_01At least you'll be able to like have some fireworks and no, I'm gonna be on a boat on a lake away from all this shit.
SPEAKER_00So that's that's I'm uh I'm I'm gonna be on a lake the day before, but not celebrating anything.
SPEAKER_01Well, you're gonna be in a country three thousand five, six thousand miles away, actually.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm like trying to think of like what you know this. I don't know if you know this about Germany, but Germany is not really into celebrating Germany. Like they're like, we kind of did a thing, and so we're gonna we're gonna like actually not try to remind people.
SPEAKER_01But they must be thrilled that what we're doing because we're like the new thing in terms of okay, the weights off us now. Yeah, they really're no longer the chronic assholes of the fucking c world, you know.
SPEAKER_00100% right now. They're like, well, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Just wait, all they have to do is wait for Trump to get out of office, and it's gonna be like going, okay, you're the you're you're the new Nazis, you're the new assholes.
SPEAKER_00It's just crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's kind of nuts. So um, all right. Well, I'm gonna make this suggestion for uh people holiday reading. Uh I'm reading a book called The Last Kings of Hollywood.
unknownOoh.
SPEAKER_01About um Copeless Spielberg and um Lucas, and it is fascinating to I did not know this, but in the late 60s and early 70s, Hollywood was collapsing on itself because how the old studio system was failing. And these guys produced these movies that became massive, massive hit and revitalized the entirety of Hollywood. So it it is um it is really worth reading. It's fascinating, it's really, really well done. Um, we'll put it in the show notes, and um that's that's my big suggestion for the uh holiday.
SPEAKER_00Okay, that's really cool because I think right now we're obviously also in like a new era of everything's collapsing and something new needs to happen. Um in terms in Hollywood also. Uh so it's like nice because I think that sometimes people, I mean, in general, we when we think about everything in the world, I think we're always like, it's never been this freaking awful. And I'm like, well, it's been pretty awful. It's been pretty awful. Like, remember when uh we literally when we literally like destroyed entire nations and I don't know, it's been pretty awful in the past, and on top of that, like right now we at least there is conversations happening that weren't even I don't know, thought about it happening. But I think sometimes I really have to like I think it's okay to be like yes, things are shitty now, we can hold that, but we can also say like it's not it's not the worst of times.
SPEAKER_01No, it's definitely not the worst of times, you know?
SPEAKER_00Let's ask the dinosaurs. Let's ask the dinosaurs, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, in in the same vein, in the same vein of the um the Hollywood conversation, um the what's emerging now is Apple's become becoming the new HBO. It's interesting because they the the stuff that they're producing right now is so I'm I'm watching something right now called Silo. Have you seen this? No, it is so good. Oh my god, Rebecca Ferguson stars in in this I don't even want to call it dystopian, but it's a science, but it it's a science fiction show, but it unravels like a science fiction novel. So it's like a slow and you get really caught up into it, and it's about how there's this group of people, there's 10,000 people, they're underground because outside is screwed up, and and um it it is so good. It is literally riveting. So if you decide to avoid any of the reflecting pool celebration, I was like, Well, I was gonna just watch the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader documentary part two, but now they've given me something else to watch now.
SPEAKER_00Now they've given me that. I was like gonna go real American, you know, but um I'm I think I'm gonna do that. This I will just say this has been one of our most ADHD episodes under the auspices of like trying to be legit, we've completely blown the street up. Here are a hundred and seventy topics and three political rants.
SPEAKER_01We should leave now. Bye.
SPEAKER_00Have a great weekend. Bye.
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