Ep 1 T.J.T. In The Shadow of The Mountain C.L.Knox story

The speaker wants to share their life story and open up about their experiences as a youngster and adult. They plan to explain certain events and reflect on how those experiences shaped their thinking. They also mention playing a song at the end, sharing a theme song called "Trouble" by Steve Goodman. The speaker starts with a story that happened before their 13th birthday, involving taking LSD with friends and having a psychedelic trip where they believed they were God and then the devil. They later realized they were just a boy. They also mention a vision one of their friends had about going to Vancouver, and they talk about the continuous thread of human history and how our ancestors' experiences shape us. The speaker plans to attach a song to the podcast, but if they can't, they will post it separately. They acknowledge the lack of production values and background noises in their current recording setup. Okay, so here's the thing. I have a story and I want to share it. It's a true story. It's a story of my life. And some of the things that I'll share, many of you have heard already some of the stories. I'd like to, maybe in this 15 minute version of a podcast, open my life up a little bit, let you see what happened to me as a youngster and even as an adult. There's some stories that we all have that just seem to follow us as we do our lives. And sometimes they're interesting and sometimes they're mundane. There's a lot of interesting things in my life. Mostly my childhood people find interesting, but then once you get into that aspect of my life, then it makes adulthood seem more interesting too, because of the background that's involved there. So I want to I want to, I guess, explain certain events in my life and then do a bit of what I'm calling navel-gazing, just maybe just to grab your attention. I don't know, just looking at them and sort of how those experiences caused me to form the way that I think. The things that I think and the method or methods that I use to find reason. So those are the things that we'll do. If you're interested, you can follow along. I'm hoping also to play a song, mostly original songs, though at the end of this, or maybe at the beginning, see when I post it, I want to share a song that has sort of become my theme song, I think you might say. It's called Trouble and it's written by Steve Goodman. The lyrics are good, the music's good. It'd just be me on my guitar and, you know, singing and playing. It'll be fun. Most of you have heard me, if you've heard me play, you've heard me play that because it's like I play that song almost every time I pick up a guitar. Not my song. Steve Goodman gets all the credit for that one. So where do I start? I guess I want to start with a story. It happened right before my 12th birthday, or my 13th birthday. The reason I want to start there, I have to give a little bit of background because there was a catastrophic or a magnificent or, you know, any number of different words. No, that's not the word. The word is providential. There's a providential event that happens in my life that sort of causes me to spin in a different direction. Mind you, my whole life I was spinning in a different direction, it seems. So, you know, and I'm not the only one. A lot of people think that about their lives, don't they? Like, I don't belong here. What the hell? Anyway, we'll get to the story that leads up to that first. But my 13th birthday, right before that, there's me, my brother Joe, who's two days older than me. He's my stepbrother, and two friends, Gina, who was 16 years old at the time. She was a runaway from Los Angeles area. She had had a pretty rough life and fled to Canada. I have a lot of stories about her, and she's a very colorful character. She's written a book herself, which is an interesting portrayal of her life experiences as well. Hers is quite a bit different than mine, the method that she's done. I can make that available at some point or give a link or something because I think she has it online. And then Woody. Woody was a friend from Alabama. So you have to understand that part too. I was born in Birmingham, Alabama and lived there until I was 11 years old. So Woody was part of that group. So when I was 12, she was probably 21, 22, and a pretty close friend. So there was four of us, and we did LSD at the farm, which some of you have been to. It no longer belongs to our family, which is unfortunate, but also a lot less work than having it. So the farm was a commune at this time. The commune was still going. It was just the beginnings of it dying, I think. I think it still went for about a year, maybe a little over that. But the whole dynamic had changed, which I'll get into that in another story. So we were in the main house, which at that time wasn't fully renovated. We'd only had the property for about a year. There was renovations going on in it. And we all took acid, I guess to celebrate Joe's and my birthday. It was before mine. It might have been even a day or two before Joe's, but it was right around that time. Actually, I think it was Joe's birthday, but I don't remember for sure. So as we entered into our psychedelic trip, which is what it's called when you take psychedelics, you go and have a trip. I got to a point, and there's a long story of how I got to this point, but I got to a point in that trip where I believed that I was God. I didn't fully have a clear concept of what that was. I had no or very little Christian understanding. But I did have an understanding of God and the devil or Christ and Satan, I guess. At that time, I didn't say I was Christ. I said I was God. I believed I was God. And I was God representative on earth. So it was a very bizarre sort of trip. The trip lasts for like 12 hours or 14 hours or 15 hours. It depends. But as the trip progressed, thinking I was God was probably when I was peaking. So when peaking is at the highest point, when I was as high as I was going to get. From then it's called coming down. So as I was coming down, then I realized I'm not God, I must be the devil. So I had some Christian concept of God and the devil. So as I progressed in this, as we went through the evening, and I thought I was God, then I thought I was a devil. These two girls were doting on me. That's how I remember it. I remember Joe being kind of freaked. Joe had a different history than mine. He had some religious training, some spiritual understanding about Christianity, some kind of understanding about Christianity. I had virtually none. So when it was all said and done, I realized I wasn't like as I was coming down, I realized I wasn't God or the devil. I was me. I was just a boy, a preteen about to be a teenager sort of, you know, entering the world of adulthood, I guess, I don't know. It was a very bizarre evening, as most trips are, and it imprinted pretty soundly on my psyche. Regardless, we all crashed, went to sleep. And when we woke up, it was late in the day, by my memory, and Gina had already been up and had gone outside and was, who knows what she was doing, but she came running inside and we were all vegging out, probably toking up, I don't remember, sitting on the couch toking up or just vegging out. And she said, look, I've had this vision. An angel came to me. She didn't call it a vision. She said, I saw an angel, an angel came to me and gave me a name and a phone number and an address and told me we have to go to Vancouver. So the three of us, the two girls and myself, we're all like, oh, okay, well, I guess we'll go to Vancouver. And we invited Joe, too, and he was like, no, I think I'll not go. And he had, you know, he had his reasons. So we ended up going to Vancouver and I guess that's that. Tune in next time. As a bit of an addendum, I want to say, I'm going to try and make the talk about 15 minutes long, between 10 and 15 minutes, and then put a song at the end. So there'll be like two separate things. I haven't quite figured out how to get the song attached to the main body of the podcast. I may have to experiment a bit. I'm going to try and get it hooked in to the end of this podcast. But like I said, as an addendum, I want to say that before posting this, I shared it with Joe, I didn't want to share anything that he might not want shared. Like, I don't know how personal it was for him. It's very interesting. We had a brief talk, it was texting. I don't know how brief it was. We talked quite a bit. But it, you know, we got to sit down and do a face to face. And my experience was totally different than his. And I would assume that Gina's and Woody's was totally different than mine, except that we continued to travel together to Vancouver and become part of the Jesus People's Army. Joe's memory of that trip was listening to music and letting us do our trip. So it's interesting. I think that's really cool. We all have our trip. We all have our own memories. I think there's a constant, I think there's a thread that runs through them. I think there's a thread that runs through all of human history. You know, I had a very cool talk with somebody a couple days ago. No, it was yesterday. Sven, met Sven on the street, had a talk with him about the continuity of history, human history, and how our ancestors affect us, even if we're not aware of it, that their lives, the things that they experienced, imprinted their children. And, you know, so like my mom and my dad's experience imprinted me, because they were a result of the things that they experienced. And their parents imprinted them, so my grandparents imprinted my parents. And their parents imprinted them, so great-great-grandparents. I mean, and it goes on forever. I mean, it's in perpetuity. It just keeps going. Our worldview is established, in part, by the things that we learn from our parents and the things that they learned from their parents. So, you know, we make of that what we make of that. A lot of it is our own decisions. Just some more interesting, that's navel-gazing stuff. You know, if you've ever taken a trip and watched the traces of your own fingers in your own hand, it's a little bit cosmic, but it's based in some very real stuff. So anyway, shout out to Joe and all of y'all. I'm going to try and attach the song now, so we're almost at 15 minutes on the spoken part of the podcast. If I can't attach it, I will post a song separately at the same time, so it'll be like two podcast posts. I don't have a provider or carrier like Spotify or anything like that yet, so we'll get there. This right now completely operates like production values are directly related to the equipment that I have, the knowledge that I have, and where I am. I'm sitting in a bedroom with the window open because it's hot, and I'll pick up background noises from the neighborhood. Anyway, such is life. We'll work on these things. Peace out. Well, the first time you take a drink, it makes you spit and sputter, shiver and shudder. Mumble and mutter, the next one tastes so sweet. It makes you want another, and now you're drinking all the time. If you're looking for trouble, trouble will find you, trouble will find you, trouble will find you If you're looking for trouble, trouble will find you, you sure don't have to look too far. The first time you shake the truth, you want to run and hide. Your throat gets dry, and your tongue gets tired, and then you start to think that maybe no one knows you like me, and now you're shaking all the time. If you're looking for trouble, trouble will find you, trouble will find you, if dumb and blind you. If you're looking for trouble, trouble will find you, and you sure don't have to look too far. Trouble's gonna sail on you, and follow you around. It gets you with your numbers up, and when you're gone, it helps you down. The first time you fall in love, the skies are sunny. She calls you honey, your jokes are funny, and then somehow she shows you she's a wimp In it for the money, and now you're drinking all the time. If you're looking for trouble, trouble will find you, trouble's gonna find you, if dumb and blind you. If you're looking for trouble, trouble will find you, and you sure don't have to look too far. Trouble in your own backyard, trouble in your own backyard, trouble in your own backyard. Trouble in your own backyard, trouble in your own backyard, trouble in your own backyard. Trouble in your own backyard, trouble in your own backyard, trouble in your own backyard. The song Trouble, copyright Steve Goodman. Excuse me, my voice isn't as pure as it used to be when I was younger, and my fingers don't move as swiftly or as accurately around the fretboard or keyboard, depending upon what instrument I'm playing. I hope you enjoyed it, I hope this is an interesting project to you, and if so, we'll see you later.