I’m currently in rural Oaxaca, Mexico where I just finished a week of volunteering with All Hands and Hearts to rebuild an elementary school after a magnitude 8.2 earthquake destabilized the area in 2017. 

There’s nothing like some hard manual labour to signal the definitive end of the holidays, and it got me thinking about the role holiday traditions like Christmas play in my life. So in this episode, I recount the stories of some of my favourite traditions, most of which actually began within my lifetime either by accident or conscious creation. It has become clear to me that traditions can be a powerful tool for connection, community, and comfort, as well as something to look forward to to break up the monotony of “normal” life.

Some traditions, however, have lost their meanings altogether and may even trap us in outdated customs and ways of thinking. The classic musical Fiddler on the Roof comes to mind as an example of the way tradition can stifle younger generations and create unnecessary rifts between old and young. My view is that the real meaning of tradition is to create connection and community, so if an old tradition is tearing people apart then it is no longer serving its most useful function. These outdated or “dead” traditions need to either be retired or changed to revitalize them and recreate a tangible sense of purpose and importance for the people involved in them. 

Christmas comes to mind as a perfect example of a tradition that in many ways has gone off the rails. We think we have to do Christmas in a certain pre-prescribed way, on a certain day, as if there were something inherently sacred about it. But it seems most of the traditions associated with Christmas have already been co-opted by corporations anyway, so why can’t we all change Christmas to make it more meaningful to ourselves, our families, our friends, and our communities? We can!

Traditions were created by people no smarter than you, and so you have the power to change them, ignore them, or even create our own. This could mean inventing a whole new tradition completely using your imagination, or by taking inspiration from other cultures, or by turning a one-time, spontaneous communal experience into a kind of ritual and celebration that you repeat every year. 

If you have your own unique or favourite traditions I’d love to hear about (and possibly steal) them! 

The short film that I mention during the story of the birth of our Krampus tradition is called Hirsute, and you can watch it here: 

Hirsute from A.J. Bond on Vimeo.

While I was in Bali in December, a friend recommended I try something called Ecstatic Dance in Ubud. Given that I’ve been wanting to take more dance classes after the fun of secretly dancing with closeted guys in Serbia, this seemed like a perfect opportunity. Ecstatic Dance, it turns out, is not a dance class per se. It’s not about learning how to do a specific dance, it’s about learning how to dance however the fuck you want, basically. 

Once I found a class I could actually get to, I immediately recruited my up-for-anything sober friend Katie from episode 30, who also loves dancing and trying new things. We hopped on our scooters and rode for an hour from Canggu to Ubud (which was an adventure in and of itself), and arrived at a community movie theatre populated by hippies and vegan desserts. As we walked into the auditorium, people were already writhing around in strange ways and I was immediately nervous and apprehensive. Ecstatic Dance traditionally takes place in the day time, with all the lights on, and no drugs or alcohol — none of the defense mechanisms we use to make dance less awkward. Talking is also not permitted. This video does a good job of showing what it’s like:

As the class started, however, I found that it was surprisingly easy for me to “dance like no one was watching” in front of a group of open-minded strangers, in fact, I was almost disappointed by how not uncomfortable I was.

But then, the teacher insisted we actually try dancing with other people, and I discovered how truly uncomfortable Ecstatic Dance can really be! What followed was an hour of self-consciousness, an inability to connect, and a whole lot of self-doubt. It was a perfect microcosm for the difficulties and insecurities of trying to connect with strangers in general, a subject that is close to my heart as I venture off on a year of traveling alone.

The class made me wonder if the discomfort of dancing with strangers (or anyone really) is connected to my assumption that dancing is always related to sex. Part of me wants to challenge that belief so I can relax and just dance, but I recently did an informal Instagram poll about it and 63% of the respondents agreed that dancing is inherently associated with sex…

Additonal music: ONE MINUTEN 6 by Gabriel Pereira Spurr

This episode explores some of my experiments with sensory deprivation. While I was in Bali in December, I encouraged my brother to find some “hippie shit” we could do in the notorious hub of new age spirituality that is Ubud. He suggested we try a sound bath at the Pyramids of Chi. Instead of the traditional “ancient sound healing”, we chose the “Acoustic Bioresonance” sound bath because it sounded more intense and interesting, and it certainly delivered. We had a surprisingly psychedelic and yet relaxing experience, not on the level with my Ayahuasca trip, but pretty impressive for being stone cold sober. Here’s a video where our sound healer, Laurent, explains the process he invented in more detail:

As a follow-up, I spoke to my brother recently and he said the sound bath we did in Bali not only made him feel more relaxed than he had felt in months, but that he still feels calmer even now, a month later. That’s what I call a ringing endorsement (pun intended).

The sound bath reminded me of the few times I tried “floating” in a sensory deprivation tank back in Toronto. Floating is fascinating* in a completely different way, however. It’s not an intense experience so much as a non-experience. With my body suspended in lukewarm salt water and a clear mind, it actually felt like I didn’t exist at all — which it turns out is a pretty great vacation from life! It reminded me of this passage from the short story Manhole 69 by J. G. Ballard, about a group of test subjects who can’t sleep:

“Continual consciousness is more than the brain can stand. Any signal repeated often enough eventually loses its meaning. Try saying the word sleep fifty times. After a point the brain’s selfawareness dulls. It’s no longer able to grasp who or why it is, and it rides adrift.”

Lastly, this episode explores a recent trip I took to The Dark Table in Vancouver, a restaurant that serves dinner in utter darkness. With a staff of blind servers, it’s a disorienting dining experience like no other. I can’t say that I “enjoyed” it per se, but it was worth it for the sheer discomfort and angst it brought out in me, much to my own surprise. I learned a lot about the way my senses construct reality, the way fear and shame operate when I feel vulnerable, and the fact that I can’t tell the difference between the taste of squash and eggplant, apparently. In the end, I learned to relax and the experience definitely made me more grateful for my sight.

*Bonus drinking game: take a shot every time I say a variation on the words “all-consuming” and “fascinating” in this episode.

In keeping with last week’s theme of holidays past, episode 32 unearths some of my old New Year’s resolutions lists to embarrassing and humbling effect. Apparently I accomplished very few of my recurring resolutions (which were pretty uninspired to begin with), and a few even remain pending to this day. It made me think about my love/hate relationship with New Year’s resolutions in general, the excitement and utility of planning and looking forward optimistically, but also the stress and anxiety that my perfectionism inevitably brings.

Dating back to 2006 through 2009, these resolutions are a fascinating and banal insight into the life and mind of a privileged, shame-addled, pathetically adorable (if I do say so myself) twenty-something wannabe filmmaker manchild just discovering his sexuality. This is the kind of thing that you probably shouldn’t share on the internet, but hey, that’s what getting Discomfortable is all about!

Part of the fun of this episode is that you can literally hear me having a small epiphany right in the middle of recording it! Everyone from Viktor Frankl to modern day psychology researchers attest that a feeling of “purpose” is essential to our sense of wellbeing. It’s something that I’ve been searching for and actively cultivating over the last few years, with varying degrees of success (this whole podcast is one product of that process). But as I was recording this episode I realized that I’ve been viewing “purpose” as a future-oriented plan, like “I will become the first male ‘Fly Girl’ on the inevitable remake of In Living Colour”, as opposed to a present moment feeling, like “I just love dancing anytime, anywhere”. It may seem subtle, but it’s actually a huge shift for my thinking. Maybe my sense of purpose isn’t about what I will achieve at all, it’s just about what I am doing and feeling right now…

Here’s a sample:

Episode 31 is a holiday bonus special! I recently returned to Canada for the holidays and I finally found an old cassette tape I’ve been searching for for years. It’s a Christmas album my siblings and I recorded in 1988 as a present for my parents. I only vaguely remember the actual recording of the album, I was just 8 at the time, but I’ve never forgotten certain lyrics and jokes featured on the tape itself. It also stars my younger brother Ian, at age 6, and my older brother Jamie, at age 10. The whole thing was spearheaded, directed, written, orchestrated, conducted, and generally forced on us by our older sister Cali, at age 12.

Listening to it again after all these years, I have to admit that it’s pretty impressive! Keep in mind this is the 80s, before digital became a household technology, so the entire thing — music and sound effects and all — was recorded live (with some stopping and starting between songs), like an old-timey radio play. It’s clear that the entire production (coming in at over 30 minutes) must have required significant writing, rehearsal, and direction (a testament to my sister’s overachieving personality, not to mention militaristic control over her younger brothers). My brother Jamie was in charge of most of the piano playing, I was the sound effects artist and character actor, and my younger brother Ian giggles and yell-sings in the background as well as can be expected for age 6. My sister Cali presumably did everything else, including writing and performing a few now infamous original Christmas tunes.

This is a photo of my siblings and I from the summer of 1987, the year before this album was recorded, just for context. From left to right, Ian is peeking over Jamie’s shoulder, Cali is the tall one, and I’m holding what looks like a hard-earned penny from our lemonade stand. Coincidentally, my oldest niece and nephews are exactly these ages now, and I can’t imagine them creating something as elaborate as this Christmas album in their spare time and of their own volition, even with all the fancy digital tech at their little fingertips. 

I’ve edited the tape down to the most amusing songs and skits, peppered with my commentary and memories, for your holiday listening enjoyment!

In episode 30, I interview my friend Katie on her 19th anniversary of being sober. I travelled the world with Katie for an entire year on Remote Year, we lived in the same apartment for a month in Colombia, and I even used her to secretly dance with a closeted guy at a music festival in Serbia. Through it all, Katie was always full of boundless energy, enthusiasm, and positivity, proving to be one of the biggest partiers in a program full of partiers — always game for an all-night dance party — and all without ever drinking a drop of alcohol or taking drugs. Katie inspired me to drink less and dance more! And she’s one of the few people I’ve met who talks almost as loud as I do (almost).

I’ve wanted to interview Katie for a while, to find out what led to her struggle with addiction, what she experienced in the process, and how she learned to control it. I also wanted to know more about Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization and belief system that has clearly impacted her life in a positive way*. Katie opens up in a very brave, radically honest, good-humoured, and highly insightful way, making for one of the most emotional and powerful episodes of the podcast to date, I think.

So much of Katie’s story and what she learned in recovery connects directly to the subject of overcoming shame and many other topics that I’ve explored on the show, and she even introduces a novel approach to spirituality that has inspired me to see if I can create my own “higher power” and determine whether that will improve my life or if there are any downsides to creating my own subjective “God”. So expect a followup episode about my experiments with a higher power in the future!

If you want to know more about AA, visit aa.org and if you want to contact Katie about being a sponsor reach out to me and I can put you in touch. In keeping with the tenants of Alcoholics Anonymous, I am keeping Katie’s full name off the record.

*As an interesting counterpoint to the AA process that worked for Katie, there are others for whom the 12-step process doesn’t work and scientific studies have shown that other treatment methods are in fact even more effective, have a read here for more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and interest.

The interview I did with Josh, the flat earther in episode 27, generated a lot of discussion in my life and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it over the last few weeks. I think my brain was desperate to make some sense out of this conspiratorial belief system that seems so nonsensical to my way of thinking. Anything that we can’t wrap our heads around becomes threatening in a way, disturbing our comfortable view of reality. Brené Brown talks about the way our brains reward us when we come up with a story to explain things, even if the story isn’t true. In fact, Brené warns that the stories we come up with are very likely to be nothing more than a “shitty first draft”.

And so, if anything, this episode represents my shitty first draft of what I think may be behind the urge to believe in a flat earth, at least as far as my interviewee Josh is concerned. It’s a pet theory that I came up with this week that uses shame theory to explain why such an outlandish and seemingly radical belief may actually be the safest and most comfortable thing for Josh to believe, given his childhood indoctrination into Christianity and his pre-existing bent towards conspiracy. I think in a surprising way, the flat earth theory directly protects Josh’s sense of meaning, purpose, and personal value, and defends him against shame.

Though we can never really know what is going on inside someone else’s head, and it’s admittedly kind of irresponsible to even try, I think this pet theory is at very least useful and interesting as a kind of hypothetical thought experiment. Or anyway, that’s what I’m telling myself to justify it, so I can go on with my life with a satisfying sense that the world makes sense again (which, ironically, is basically the same kind of psychological satisfaction I think the flat earth theory provides for Josh).

The second part of the episode gives a humorous glimpse behind the scenes at the recording process of Discomfortable, and I play a rare unedited clip from the recording session of episode 18, Getting Discomfortable with Spontaneity.

Last year, while living in Serbia on Remote Year, I went to my first ever music festival. EXIT Fest takes place over 4 crazy nights in and around an old castle fortress in Novi Sad, the third largest city in Serbia. What started as a student movement in 2000 demanding democracy in Serbia has grown over the last 18 years into a massive international party destination, with nearly 200,000 attendees a year. It has been hailed as one of the best music festivals in Europe.

Here’s a video from this year’s edition to give you some perspective:

It was an incredible and overwhelming experience. Fortunately, I had two seasoned South African festival goers as spirit guides to help me enjoy and survive the whole thing. Though Serbia is generally known to be a highly conservative and homophobic nation, one of my guides taught me how to find curious or closeted guys and engage in a secret, subtle form of dancing unique to music festivals. It involves furtive eye contact, elbow-rubbing, and dirt kicking. Though I was skeptical at first, seeking out clandestine dancing partners became the highlight of the festival, leading to many fleeting, strangely innocent, and yet thrilling encounters. In fact, EXIT Fest is up there with doing Ayahuasca as one of the most memorable parts of my Remote Year.

CORRECTION: At one point I describe Novi Sad as being on the “coast” of Serbia, but Serbia has no coast. The beach where we washed ourselves every day was actually on the Danube river. Geography never was one of my strengths…

While at a bar here in Cape Town I overheard Josh, a local friend of a friend, talking about an unusual belief he holds, one that I’ve heard exists but have never actually encountered in the wild. It’s the kind of idea that most people, myself included, would dismiss out of hand: the belief that the earth is flat.

When I realized Josh was a flat earther, I immediately wanted to know more, not because I’m particularly interested in the flat earth theory itself, but because it’s a perspective that seems totally foreign and almost willfully crazy to me — the kind of unorthodox perspective that makes for very uncomfortable conversations. I wanted to know what would lead one to adopt such a belief, what the allure was, and what other beliefs connect to this fundamental distrust of science and society.

And of course, I wanted to explore the shame angle! How can one withstand the constant judgment, criticism, and social rejection associated with such a fringe ideology? Our discussion led me to an interesting insight about the way shame can be modulated by deciding whose opinions really matter.

Josh seems like a perfectly normal 26-year-old professional. Unless his range of conspiracy (or “contrarian” as he prefers to call them) theories come up (which apparently isn’t often, he’s not always keen to talk about it), you’d never know or guess that his view of reality is so different from your own (assuming you’re a “glober” like me). Josh asserts that he’s put more thought into the shape of the earth than most people, and I think he’s right. But has he put as much critical thinking into the religious beliefs that underpin his flat earth theory? Though I still see no reason to distrust what society tells me about the shape of the earth, I think it’s always an interesting thought experiment to look critically at our most basic, unquestioned beliefs and ask, how do I know this is true?

This interview was also a great opportunity for me to practice what I preach by trying to conduct a potentially inflammatory conversation with a sense of respect and equality, resisting the urge to try to “win” the argument or to try to make the other person look bad. I went into this uncomfortable conversation with the goal of trying to understand an unusual point of view while at the same time trying to authentically communicate my feelings, all without being emotionally reactive. It’s worth noting that, ironically, I probably went easier on this flat earther than I did with my own mother in my interview with her. The urge to judge, mock, and/or shame someone with an unpopular, outlandish, and arguably irresponsible belief is always hard to resist, but I don’t think it accomplishes anything useful. It’s not an effective strategy for changing someone’s mind, it’s disrespectful, and it’s shaming. And I have to admit that I was surprised to discover, at least with this particular flat earther, that on many issues of personal value we actually agreed more than we disagreed.

The controversial film Josh references as igniting his flat earth beliefs is The Principle. I haven’t seen it, but can watch the trailer here:

This interview has been edited for clarity and interest. More thoughts on what might lead one to become a flat earther in Part 2.

Building on the themes from last week’s interview with my mother, episode 26 is all about family and shame. As mentioned in my shame series, I increasingly see shame as a form of childhood. Shame is natural, especially in young children who aren’t mentally and physically prepared to survive on their own. But at a certain point, we need to demystify shame in order to become healthy adults. Perhaps, as noted by Carl Jung in his book Man and His Symbols, we need some kind of modern initiation rite like the kind practiced by many indigenous cultures (which is, in effect, what I would call a “shame breakthrough”). We need some way to transcend the classic family hierarchy that Baby Boomers and Millenials seem stuck in and create a new egalitarian family group that is more akin to peers or close friends. This is all informed by my own struggles with adulting, and how it has only recently occurred to me that to become a true adult essentially means becoming your own parent.

As I mention in this episode, some of my thinking was fuelled by a “family meeting” we had this summer after a 12-year hiatus following my fateful coming out. On a related note, inspired by family meetings gone awry, I wrote a short film many years ago that never got made, you might find it amusing. You can download a copy of the script here: THE FAMILY MEETING