In this far-out episode of Forging Flame, Ryan and I sit down with Joey Turner and “Baby Nick”, from the yet-to-be-released “Mellow + Yellow” podcast. Joey is also a poet, a stay-at-home dad, and the founder of a work-in-progress collaborative art project called “Dojo Ink”. Joey is currently recruiting artists for Dojo Ink multimedia projects, including an epic graphic novel inspired by Samurai culture (contact him at dojoink999@outlook.com for more information).
I don’t even know where to begin with this one. Truly, this was our strangest episode yet. I don’t know that we got too deep into their creative processes, or really talked about them at all, but Joey Turner and Baby Nick are some very….interesting dudes.
On the surface, that last statement probably sounds a bit dismissive, but I truly do mean it. Baby Nick didn’t get much microphone time, as he and Joey had to share a mic, but despite his age (20), he comes across as a deep-thinking, soft-spoken sweetiepie. Joey, on the other hand, is a super-energetic, charismatic weirdo with a charmingly offbeat disposition. They couldn’t be more different, but they compliment each other shockingly well.
We covered a lot of strange terrain throughout our conversation, but of the topics discussed, one kept rebounding as a prevailing theme-boxes. Primarily, that the “one-size-fits-all” boxes that originate from the needs of the American Industrial Revolution don’t seem to apply to modern humans at all anymore. Hell, those boxes don’t even fit most.
Truly, I could write pages on this topic, but who really wants to read that? For the sake of my fingers and your eyeballs, I’ll stick to the key takeaways. The model for the current US educational system was built on the needs of a long-since bygone era. The societal norms expected of us by the “powers that be”, and particularly of previous generations, don’t fit the build of modern humans—and are in desperate need of a complete and total paradigm shift.
We’ve evolved, and it seems that our needs and talents as humans have changed, as well. Sadly, most of us still possess the programming that makes us believe that outside-the-box thinkers and atypical personalities are bad, weak, or incorrect in their different-ness. It’s tragic, really, to shave off the beautiful and unique edges a person might possess, that when placed inside a container more flexible and form-fitting than the standard US Grade-A Box, might have otherwise become wings.
