E8: Side Effect of 7th and Pine; S7: No Trauma Zone?

This may be the first episode I’ve ever made that contains no trauma.None.No childhood trauma.No political trauma.No societal trauma.No trauma involving sexuality.No trauma involving addiction.No trauma involving religion.No trauma involving genocide.No trauma involving the collapse of meaning.No trauma involving being gay in the 1980s.Actually, wait.There is a story about being gay in the 1980s.But that’s not trauma.It’s just a story about meeting a friend when I was a senior in high school and he was a freshman.And then staying friends for nearly forty years.And then making songs together.That’s all.No trauma.There is also a song that includes the line:Because I have diedBut songs say all kinds of things.No trauma.And there is another song that argues that language may have accidentally produced thought as a side effect.Which, depending on your disposition, may sound either fascinating or deeply alarming.But not traumatic.Certainly not traumatic.There is also some discussion of discomfort.But if you’ve listened to this podcast before, you know I’ve spent a lot of time trying to move discomfort out of the category of “problem” and into the category of “thing.”Just another thing that happens.Like comfort.Or friendship.Or music.Or spending an evening combining guitar doodles from 2022 with lyrics from 2025 using software that didn’t exist when the friendship began.Nothing traumatic about that.Probably.The truth is that this episode mostly consists of me talking for a while and then playing two songs.One of them keeps declining opportunities to become profound.The other wonders whether language accidentally created the conditions for humanity to become obsessed with proving things.Neither one appears particularly interested in hurting your feelings.At least not intentionally.So I think this is a trauma-free episode.Or perhaps more accurately, an episode in which trauma never takes center stage.Which may be different.Then again, maybe not.And now I’m realizing that I’m making a lot of assumptions.Specifically, I’m assuming that enough of you have listened to enough episodes to even know what I’m talking about.I may be wildly overestimating my importance here.Perhaps nobody has developed any expectations at all.Perhaps nobody opens one of these episodes wondering whether they’re about to encounter some personal catastrophe, social catastrophe, historical catastrophe, existential catastrophe, or all four simultaneously.Perhaps this entire premise is absurd.But if you have listened for a while, I’m curious.Do you believe me?Before you hit play, do you believe that this one contains no trauma?Or is some part of your body already preparing itself anyway?Waiting for the turn.Waiting for the reveal.Waiting for the thing that usually happens.And if it is waiting, what exactly is it waiting for?Maybe that’s because my episodes have trained you to expect difficult material.Or maybe they’ve simply reminded your nervous system that difficult material is everywhere.That trauma is not rare.That it is ordinary.That it is woven through individual lives, cultures, institutions, families, histories, and daily conversations.Maybe the strange effect of spending time with all of that isn’t becoming more distressed.Maybe it’s becoming less surprised.Maybe it’s discovering that what seemed exceptional is often common.And that recognizing its commonness can sometimes be oddly calming.Anyway.No trauma.Probably.Enjoy.