The Play’s The Thing

Doctor Who - The Giggle - Spice Up your Life (1080p)

Perfect-10 : 

Something entered This World 

in 1925. I don't know how. 

And I warn you, this thing 

can get from 1925 

to now like stepping 

through A DOOR. 

But if we're lucky, the programme I'm giving you can detect 

the decay of an energy signature from 98 years ago. 

It might be on Earth, might be 

in orbit, might be in Space. 

But if we can find The Entrance, 

maybe we can turn it into An Exit. 


Kate :

What are we fighting? 


Perfect-10 : 

An elemental force beyond 

the rules of The Universe. 


SHIRLEY: 

What's that supposed to mean? 


Perfect-10 : 

You think Life is a balance 

between Order and Chaos. 

But The Universe is not binary. 

Far from it. 

There is Order and Chaos... 

and there is Play.

RB: In your understanding, How is The Shadow incorporated? What rituals, what ceremonies, what behaviours successfully incorporate The Shadow, say, using the example of Lust? What’s a way back in for the lust that has been disembodied or repressed? What’s the safe way back in? Is there one?

JP: Well, I think part of it is to admit to your desires within your own relationship. You might say, “well, I’m tired of my wife.” It’s like, “well, yeah. Maybe — maybe you’re tired of the games that you’re intelligent enough to play with your wife. But she’s as pluripotent as you are.” You have to admit to your desires, let’s say, and maybe you have to make them consciously manifest within your own relationship.

RB: Hmm.

JP: People do that by dressing up, or by playing sexually, I would say.

RB: Yeah, Play.

JP: Play is a transformative element.

RB: Yes.

JP: It might be that you’re uncomfortable with the idea of your wife as sexual plaything, because you think that a woman that’s married should be proper and prim, and should only behave sexually in a certain way, in which case—well, that becomes stale and dull, and you’re more likely to be tempted by something on the outside.

RB: To me, that’s a very obvious example of how habitualized thinking is prohibitive, even without reaching the extremes of self-destructive, addictive tendencies. 

If I have a habit of regarding My Mife as Object A — even if that’s not objectification as we typically take it, but limiting beliefs about My Wife — the tools that break down addictive thought patterns could be used to create new terrains, new liberty, new play. 

So once you’ve done up to Step 7 —  you’re right, it’s a sacrifice of the old self, and a handing over to some kind of sublime, divine Self. 

Step 8, you make a list of people you have harmed and become willing to make amends to them. 

So you look back and go, “Oh, God—I shouldn’t have stolen that; I shouldn’t have done that; I treated that person badly; that was wrong; I lied.” So it’s moral; it becomes quite a moral process.

JP: That’s a real repentance and atonement. Atonement is “at-one-ment.” 

If you’re carrying transgressions that you regard as transgressions now, in your life, you don’t want to carry those forward. 

You want to step forward in life without that moral burden, because you’ll have contempt for yourself, otherwise, and you won’t take care for yourself.

RB: Also, in a sense, what you’re talking about is allowing lust back in— incorporating lust. This is a broader method for incorporating annexed aspects of the Self. 

Like, “How can I fully Love myself, if I know I treated that person abominably?” 

Well, if I go back, and say “That was wrong; I did you wrong; I owe you an amends,” you invite that part of your life in.

JP: That’s right.

RB: You amend your path through life, as well as teaching yourself that is not the way we proceed anymore. That’s Step 8.

JP: That’s real action in the world. 

It’s not a hypothetical, at the point. 

It’s kind of like telling people what you’ve written down about your faults, because it makes it real when you’re acting it out with someone else. It’s not only a mental thing, at that point.

They now transition from the ‘wings’ of Yesod to the latter attribute itself. Yesod is the synergy of the analysis of the first 6 Steps and the detailed considerations of the next ones. It then “connects all of this” to the “world of action” in Malkhut.

RB: Step 8 is, “write up the list of people.” Step 9 is, “now go do it.” It makes the distinction, I think, to create a space for you where you’re not continually thinking, “I’m not fucking doing that; I’m not going to apologize; I was abused by them; fuck that—they did as much wrong as I did.”

JP: Right, which is not the point.

RB: It’s not the point.

JP: They might have done more wrong than you did, but you’re still stuck with the fact that you still did something wrong, and that’s not good.

RB: That’s right, and if you refuse to surmount the obstacle of some arbitrary measure of who is more wrong, then you continue to cast yourself in victimhood.

JP: That’s exactly right.

RB: You have no personal autonomy.

JP: It doesn’t matter if you’re only 5 percent at fault, and it also doesn’t matter if the other person apologizes to you. They should; it would be better for them; it might make things lay out. That’s not the point.

RB: This, perhaps, is where what I think is significant—now that your life has become not a negotiation between you and other beings as materially present themselves, but between yourself and a higher purpose that has been declared earlier, you are now operating on a spiritual plane. 

You are no longer about, “if I do that, I get that.” 

It precisely doesn’t matter if the other person goes, “I don’t care if you apologise or not. Fuck off.”

JP: In religious language, that would be expressed as The Discovery of Your Father in Heaven, instead of your earthly father. 

Your Father in Heaven would be the higher spiritual authority to which you owe allegiance. 

You can think about that either in religious terms or in nonreligious terms—what you’ve done is you’ve, in some sense, abstracted the idea of a higher authority and a higher purpose, and you’ve decided to devote yourself to that. That’s a religious act.

RB: That’s precisely antithetical to postmodernism : “There is an essence; there is a code; there is a way; there is a Truth.”

JP: That’s right. That’s what is precisely antithetical. 

The postmodern claim is that there are multiple ways of looking at the world. That’s True, but the antithesis of that is, “Yes, but just because there are multiple ways of looking at the world doesn’t mean that there are multiple proper ways of looking at the world.”

RB: Yes.

JP: In fact, there’s a very narrow range of proper ways of looking at the world.

RB: My concern with atheism has always been its sort of easy affiliation with nihilism: “oh, why don’t we just wander over there and start fucking people, then?” That’s where my mind immediately goes. If there is not an order, why not smash everything to smithereens? You’re saying, ideological, that is what’s happening. Ideologically, we are deconstructing God; we’re deconstructing morality; we’re deconstructing gender.

JP: That was the danger that both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky pointed to, clearly. You dispense with the transcendent principle, and you open up the landscape for impulsive nihilism.

RB: They responded to post-enlightenment rationalism. Is that what Dostoevsky and Nietzsche were responding to?

JP: They were responding to, essentially, the idea of the death of God. Both of them, and explicitly.

RB: Is that an enlightenment idea? Where is the death of God happening prior to Nietzsche?

JP: At the hands of a kind of arrogant and narrow rationalism and materialism.

RB: Exponentially, that has led us where we’re going now, which is a kind of digging the earth from beneath our feet, putting ourselves into the abyss.

JP: That’s right. That’s the hypothesis, precisely.

MALKHUT

Step 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Step 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Steps 10-12 reflect the left, right and center aspects in a similar manner to Step 1. We continue to inventory (an aspect of the left), pray and meditate (the center column of harmony) and take active steps to share with others (the proactive aspect of the right)

This final grouping of Steps 10-12 are synonymous with the 7th of the 7 Habits – “Sharpen the Saw.” We have to continually refine and move forwards. Stagnation is not an option as our environment will change and we need to constantly be on guard against any forces (internal or external) that can cause us to stumble. This is the motto of “One Day At A Time.” found in AA literature.

RB: The last three Steps. Step 10 is, like, “continue to make inventory. Let this process continue.” For me, in psychoanalytic terms, it’s like when there’s a moment—I know any spike in my energy: if I go, “oh, I felt something. That was interesting. I felt jealous, there. I felt small, in that moment.”

JP: Exactly.

RB: These are the moments I know. “How was I participating in that? What belief of mine was being challenged? Is that a helpful belief?” “Belief” being a thought that I like having.

JP: Right. That’s a kind of consciousness: “well, I’m going to fall apart. I’m going to make mistakes. I don’t want to make mistakes. I’m going to keep an eye out for when I do make mistakes, and I’m going to make them conscious. And then I’m going to try to work on them.”

RB: Yes—”bringing them into consciousness.” My number one fear on a personal level, and possibly on a social level—I don’t quite know how to extrapolate or conflate those two notions—is unconsciousness. I get very afraid when I’m dealing with unconscious individuals—when people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. You might see this in violent rage, or in less dramatic or theatrical behaviour.

JP: Yeah. There’s a great idea that lurks at the bottom of the Christian mythological tradition: a little bit of consciousness destroyed the original paradise. We became conscious enough to be aware of our own mortality. The cure for that is way more consciousness, not a return to unconsciousness.

RB: Yes. There’s no going back. I sometimes think the plethora of zombie movies is, you know, “they don’t know they’re already dead!”

JP: That danger of the zombie is the danger of the desire for unconsciousness, as a solution to life’s problems.

RB: I think, again, this something we are being invited to participate in, through consumerism: to live your life continually on the frequency of unconscious energy, such as desire and fear. We’re not being invited to participate on the level of conscious interaction, presence in the moment.

JP: Well, you could make that case if you made the case that consumerism promotes the gratification of immediate desires, above all else.

RB: I think it does. That’s what I’m pushing for. With this original sin, a little bit of consciousness is a dangerous thing. We become aware of our vulnerability and mortality, our nakedness, our corporeal nature. But the solution to this is…

JP: To become more conscious.

The solution both Peterson and Brand arrive at is to become “more conscious” and escaping the gratification of immediate desire. This is also the main overarching theme of The Matrix movies as we discuss in another article. 

(Our portion of the transcript ends at 44:21. The entire transcript is available here: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/transcripts/russell-brand-2/ 

In the kabbalistic tradition, the seven lower sefirot are associate with seven Biblical figures. Beginning with Chesed they are; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David.  The two representing attributes from the left/restrictive side, Isaac and Aaron, have the least written about them in the narrative yet play critical roles based on aspects of ‘restriction.’

All the sefirot relate to different names and terms used for God. Tiferet is associated with the ‘most holy’ 4-letter name (spelled Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey) and with the powerful expression, “The Holy One, blessed be He.”

The back story to where the first Matrix movie begins is found in supplementary Matrix materials including The Animatrix film.

“We can only break through the vise grip that mechanistic science has on our consciousness by recognizing the role of God in everything. The Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism, taught that no leaf falls without God’s willing it. Each of us experiences amazing events—from coincidences to clear miracles—in our lives. We must see the Divine acting in all these and have the courage to tell those stories. When we do, we will see that the billiard-ball causation of the old mechanistic science is not the only force in the universe. God is in our midst, with the force of cohesion rather than mere causation, bringing people and events together for an ultimate good. “God sent me before you.” (As Joseph told his brothers – Genesis 45:5)

― Tamar Frankiel, The Gift of Kabbalah: Discovering the Secrets of Heaven, Renewing Your Life on Earth

SIX :

You knew the only way to beat me 

was to gain my respect?

TWO :

Correct.

SIX :

Then I would confide?

TWO :

I hoped you'd trust me.

SIX :

This is a recognised method?

TWO :

Yes. The Patient must 

trust His Doctor.

SIX :

Sometimes they change places.

TWO :

Essential in extreme cases.

SIX :

Also a risk...

TWO :

A grave risk.

SIX :

….if The Doctor has problems.

TWO :

I have!

That's why it's known 

as Degree Absolute.

It's You or Me.

SIX :

Why don't you resign?

TWO :

(Laughs) You're very good!

You're very good at it!

Cold Lazarus

“In the opening few minutes of Lazarus, Newton expresses extreme annoyance at his inability to die : ‘I’m a dying man who can’t die actually … not being able to die is a joke. A fucking terrible joke. Apologies for the f-word.’ The audience is allowed to assume at first that his problem of being immortal, or at least extremely long-lived, is somehow due to his alien physiology, with other characters routinely making comments about his extraordinary youthful looks. After a while it becomes clearer to see that Newton is the one standing in the way of his own death. 

In situating the main character’s redemptive arc within a psychological/unconscious space, Lazarus parallels specific approaches that were used to great effect by the British dramatist Dennis Potter in The Singing Detective (BBC 1986) and his final work(s) Karaoke and Cold Lazarus (BBC and Channel 4 1996). 

Potter’s teleplays are distinctive for their use of non-naturalistic, non-linear devices, flashbacks and delirious visions that confuse fantasy and reality. He was also known for steeping aspects of his personal life into his characters and settings. The Singing Detective’s protagonist was a writer who is hospitalised with chronic acute psoriatic arthropathy – Potter himself suffered from this disease and, like his lead character Philip E. Marlow (played by Michael Gambon), Potter also had to resort to writing with a pen tied to his clenched fist. 

Childhood flashbacks are set in the Forest of Dean, where Potter grew up, and on and on, fiction and biographical details dovetail. The Singing Detective sends its protagonist on a journey through medicated dreams, unresolved trauma, psychotherapy and confrontations with uncomfortable personal truths, arriving at eventual healing and wholeness. It is implied that treatment and recovery from his debilitating skin condition has been blocked by his unconscious self, which is also in grave need of healing. 

The Next Day’s final track, ‘Heat’, has thematic connections to the second episode of The Singing Detective, also called ‘Heat’, wherein the main character hallucinates scenes with his deceased father and misremembers repressed traumatic events from his childhood. 

According to Enda Walsh, The Singing Detective was a shared fascination that he and Bowie bonded over and it became a key reference in their early development of Lazarus, alongside Bob Fosse’s semi-autobiographical musical All That Jazz (1979) (Hunter-Tilney 2016). 

The music video for the song ‘Lazarus’, Bowie’s last, appears to reference the visual aesthetic of The Singing Detective’s hospital ward set. The last two television dramas written by Potter were completed in the decline of terminal cancer, produced and broadcast posthumously nearly two years after he died. Karaoke and Cold Lazarus share a central character, Daniel Feeld (played by Albert Finney), and are connected by themes of death, resurrection and redemption. 

Predictably, Feeld (the character) shows many of the traits that Potter was known to possess, not only aspects of his personality and memories but also his profession and predicament : Feeld is a television writer racing against time to complete two screenplays before his terminal condition catches up with him. As he faces the end of his natural life at the conclusion of Karaoke, he decides to allow his corpse to be frozen and preserved in a cryogenic facility in the hope that one day, once a cure for his illness has been found, he might be revived. 

Cold Lazarus is set 374 years in the future, where Feeld’s frozen head has been installed in a science lab to be mined for authentic memories and emotions. Trapped in this future dystopia and forced to repeatedly replay the contents of his mind, it becomes evident that Feeld is aware of his situation and is begging to be put out of his misery. At the climax of the story, which also involves the machinations of various oligarchs and revolutionaries, the frozen head is mercifully destroyed along with the facility it was kept in. Feeld himself is granted a moment of transcendence as his memories play out one last time, now reversing back through his life, memories borrowed from Potter’s own life, his triumphs and traumas folding in upon a clear white light. 

In pulling off this remarkable feat, Potter managed to stage a resurrection of sorts, two years after his first death. A Lazarus-style comeback that allowed him to continue to work and speak from beyond the grave, stage an imagining of his ideal second death and fictively perform the closure of his public life.”

[Arena]

Time’s Champion : 

I have fed you enough,

Gods of Ragnarok — and you found 

what I have to offer :  indigestible.

So, I have taken myself 

OFF The Menu. 

La comedia e finita.


DADDY RAGNAROK : 

We command you. 


MUMMY RAGNAROK : 

You cannot stop. 


Time’s Champion : 

I already have!


DADDY RAGNAROK : 

THEN  You will DIE. 


Time’s Champion : 

Probably not. 

It's all a matter of Timing, 

don't you know. 


(The Doctor points 

The Sword to The Ground.)

Man on The Moon

 

All men dream : but not equally, Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: 

But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. 

The story which follows was first written out in Paris during the Peace Conference, from notes jotted daily on the march, strengthened by some reports sent to my chiefs in Cairo. Afterwards, in the autumn of 1919, this first draft and some of the notes were lost. It seemed to me historically needful to reproduce the tale, as perhaps no one but myself in Feisal's army had thought of writing down at the time what we felt, what we hoped, what we tried. So it was built again with heavy repugnance in London in the winter of 1919-20 from memory and my surviving notes. The record of events was not dulled in me and perhaps few actual mistakes crept in—except in details of dates or numbers—but the outlines and significance of things had lost edge in the haze of new interests.

Dates and places are correct, so far as my notes preserved them: but the personal names are not. Since the adventure some of those who worked with me have buried themselves in the shallow grave of public duty. Free use has been made of their names. Others still possess themselves, and here keep their secrecy. Sometimes one man carried various names. This may hide individuality and make the book a scatter of featureless puppets, rather than a group of living people: but once good is told of a man, and again evil, and some would not thank me for either blame or praise.

This isolated picture throwing the main light upon myself is unfair to my British colleagues. Especially I am most sorry that I have not told what the non-commissioned of us did. They were but wonderful, especially when it is taken into account that they had not the motive, the imaginative vision of the end, which sustained officers. Unfortunately my concern was limited to this end, and the book is just a designed procession of Arab freedom from Mecca to Damascus. It is intended to rationalize the campaign, that everyone may see how natural the success was and how inevitable, how little dependent on direction or brain, how much less on the outside assistance of the few British. It was an Arab war waged and led by Arabs for an Arab aim in Arabia.

My proper share was a minor one, but because of a fluent pen, a free speech, and a certain adroitess of brain, I took upon myself, as I describe it, a mock primacy. In reality I never had any office among the Arabs: was never in charge of the British mission with them. Wilson, Joyce, Newcombe, Dawnay and Davenport were all over my head. I flattered myself that I was too young, not that they had more heart or mind in the work, I did my best. Wilson, Newcombe, Dawnay, Davenport, Buxton, Marshall, Stirling, Young, Maynard, Ross, Scott, Winterton, Lloyd, Wordie, Siddons, Goslett, Stent Henderson, Spence, Gilman, Garland, Brodie, Makins, Nunan, Leeson, Hornby, Peake, Scott-Higgins, Ramsay, Wood, Hinde, Bright, MacIndoe, Greenhill, Grisenthwaite, Dowsett, Bennett, Wade, Gray, Pascoe and the others also did their best.

It would be impertinent in me to praise them. When I wish to say ill of one outside our number, I do it: though there is less of this than was in my diary, since the passage of time seems to have bleached out men's stains. When I wish to praise outsiders, I do it: bur our family affairs are our own. We did what we set out to do, and have the satisfaction of that knowledge. The others have liberty some day to put on record their story, one parallel to mine but not mentioning more of me than I of them, for each of us did his job by himself and as he pleased, hardly seeing his friends.

In these pages the history is not of the Arab movement, but of me in it. It is a narrative of daily life, mean happenings, little people. Here are no lessons for the world, no disclosures to shock peoples. It is filled with trivial things, partly that no one mistake for history the bones from which some day a man may make history, and partly for the pleasure it gave me to recall the fellowship of the revolt. We were fond together, because of the sweep of the open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. The moral freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up in ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.

All men dream: but not equally, Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses oftheir minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did. I meant to make a new nation, to restore! a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts. So high an aim called out the inherent nobility of their minds, and made them play a generous part in events: but when we won, it was charged against me that the British petrol royalties in Mesopotamia were become dubious, and French Colonial policy ruined in the Levant.

I am afraid that I hope so. We pay for these things too much in honour and in innocent lives. I went up the Tigris with one hundred Devon Territorials, young, clean, delightful fellows, full of the power of happiness and of making women and children glad. By them one saw vividly how great it was to be their kin, and English. And we were casting them by thousands into the fire to the worst of deaths, not to win the war but that the corn and rice and oil of Mesopotamia might be ours. The only need was to defeat our enemies (Turkey among them), and this was at last done in the wisdom of Allenby with less than four hundred killed, by turning to our uses the hands of the oppressed in Turkey. I am proudest of my thirty fights in that I did not have any of our own blood shed. All our subject provinces to me were not worth one dead Englishman.

We were three years over this effort and I have had to hold back many things which may not yet be said. Even so, parts of this book will be new to nearly all who see it, and many will look for familiar things and not find them. Once I reported fully to my chiefs, but learnt that they were rewarding me on my own evidence. This was not as it should be. Honours may be necessary in a professional army, as so many emphatic mentions in despatches, and by enlisting we had put ourselves, willingly or not, in the position of regular soldiers.

For my work on the Arab front I had determined to accept nothing. The Cabinet raised the Arabs to fight for us by definite promises of self-government afterwards. Arabs believe in persons, not in institutions. They saw in me a free agent of the British Government, and demanded from me an endorsement of its written promises. So I had to join the conspiracy, and, for what my word was worth, assured the men of their reward. In our two years' partnership under fire they grew accustomed to believing me and to think my Government, like myself, sincere. In this hope they performed some fine things, but, of course, instead of being proud of what we did together, I was bitterly ashamed.

It was evident from the beginning that if we won the war these promises would be dead paper, and had I been an honest adviser of the Arabs I would have advised them to go home and not risk their lives fighting for such stuff: but I salved myself with the hope that, by leading these Arabs madly in the final victory I would establish them, with arms in their hands, in a position so assured (if not dominant) that expediency would counsel to the Great Powers a fair settlement of their claims. In other words, I presumed (seeing no other leader with the will and power) that I would survive the campaigns, and be able to defeat not merely the Turks on the battlefield, but my own country and its allies in the council-chamber. It was an immodest presumption: it is not yet: clear if I succeeded: but it is clear that I had no shadow of leave to engage the Arabs, unknowing, in such hazard. I risked the fraud, on my conviction that Arab help was necessary to our cheap and speedy victory in the East, and that better we win and break our word than lose.

The dismissal of Sir Henry McMahon confirmed my belief in our essential insincerity: but I could not so explain myself to General Wingate while the war lasted, since I was nominally under his orders, and he did not seem sensible of how false his own standing was. The only thing remaining was to refuse rewards for being a successful trickster and, to prevent this unpleasantness arising, I began in my reports to conceal the true stories of things, and to persuade the few Arabs who knew to an equal reticence. In this book also, for the last time, I mean to be my own judge of what to say.

Ante-up --

Why won’t they just take 

their damn pills..?

Don’t they want to get better…?

It’s complicated, to be fair… 

Perfect-10 : 

One request -- Tell Me :

The Human Race back 

in The Future - Why does 

Everyone think They're right?

Geppetto :

So that They Win. I made 

every opinion supreme. 

That's The Game of 

The 21st Century -- 

They shout and they 

type and they cancel. 

So I fixed it. Now, 

everybody wins.

Perfect-10 : 

And everyone loses.

Geppetto : 

The Never-ending Game --

[ which is exactly what HIS existence is like -- ]

Now, name your challenge.

Dave Chappelle - Closing Joke (The Dreamer)

"I’m gonna close the night with a long story. Do you mind?

All right. It’s a long one. So pretend that I’ve finished. ‘Cause I gotta go get a cigarette. All right? I’m not done, but just act like it. I’d prefer standing ovations since we’re acting. Thank you very much. Good night.

Thanks for not giving me a standing O, motherfuckers. This is the worst. It’s all right. I just wanted to smoke. You like that, don’t you?

Okay. Before I did Killin’ Them Softly, when I was 22, HBO gave me the biggest opportunity of my life at that time. They gave me a half-hour special, but this shit was not like a special, you know what I mean? It was like, generic. It didn’t even have a title. It just says “Dave Chappelle.” And I shot it in San Francisco, at a place called Broadway Studios, which is on the second floor of a building. And beneath Broadway Studios is a nightclub. And the special was only supposed to be 30 minutes. 

And I got ready. I practiced. I did all the shit I was supposed to do. And the night that I taped, 20 minutes into my 30-minute set, I’ll never forget this music. Music started blasting from the nightclub underneath. You could hear it real loud and it fucked my whole show up, and I was devastated. I was a young man. I really believed in what I was doing. And I thought that my dream had been killed. So when I got off stage, I ran down the steps to the alley behind Broadway Studios, where the control trucks are parked, and I kicked that motherfucking door open. And I started yelling at all the producers. I was nobody in show business. Just a guy that believed in myself.

I said, “Man, you fucked everything up.” 

“That fucking music. What the fuck were you thinking?” 

And there was a guy who was a big-time producer. I ain’t saying no names. He stood up and he said, “Hey, kid, sit the fuck down.” 

He said, “We didn’t ruin anything.”

He said, “We made a deal with that nightclub to not play music, and they didn’t honour The Deal.” 

And I said, “Who didn’t honor the deal?” And he pointed to a guy. I’ll never forget it. It was an old white man sitting in a Ford Taurus by himself. And he said, “That guy right there.” I didn’t waste no time or ask no questions. I went to that Ford Taurus and I beat on that window, I said, “Open the door, motherfucker. I want to talk to you.”

That old man looked at me for one second and wisely drove the fuck off. And left me in the alley cussing at anybody who would listen. And two minutes later, literally 120 seconds later, it couldn’t have been any more than that, the doors of the kitchen in the alley of that nightclub underneath Broadway Studios swung open. And that old man was standing there, that same old man with reinforcements. He had two big goons with him, and he looked at me… He was calm as a cucumber. He said, “You, come here. I want to talk to you.”

I didn’t know anything about streets at this age. But I found out later in my life that these men were Russian mobsters. I don’t know what you guys know about the Russian mob, but these are the n*ggas that killed Denzel in Training Day.

All the producers knew what I was up against. They said, “Dave, do not go in there.” And I said, “Fuck y’all.” And I walked right into that kitchen and they closed the doors behind me, and it got the dark as fuck in there, and I knew. I’m not dumb. I knew I was in a bad situation. But you have to understand, I believed in what I was doing, and I didn’t give a fuck. Just kept cussing at these motherfuckers. Tell them how they ruined my life. And that old man couldn’t believe that I was talking all of this shit. 

And as soon as I took a breath, he stopped me gently. He said, “Hey, kid, listen. Your friends lied to you.” He said. “We made a deal. But your friends never paid me.”

And when he said that, I realised I was locked in a kitchen. I realised he was telling The Truth, which would make me wrong. And the moment, the very moment that I realized I was wrong, for the first time, I was afraid. You see, it’s a funny thing if you believe you’re absolutely right. You can get drunk off the feeling of how right you are. That’s why gay people are so mean…

But I didn’t buckle. You guys would’ve been very proud of me. I was scared, but I didn’t buckle.

I said, “Well, then, sir, I owe you an apology. But I believe that no matter what reason that music was playing, it ruined my life.”

And that old man looked at me with sympathy in his eyes. And he walked over to me and he gently placed his hand on my cheek. Which I gotta tell you, it is a very emasculating thing to do. I was standing there looking at this n*gga’s hand on my cheek, like… 

And he said, “You are a real man.”

And he tapped me on my cheek. Real soft. And just like that, the doors open back up. The light from the alley flooded into the kitchen, and I just walked out alive. 

I lived to fight… 

another day. 

And in that moment, I learned 

one of the most valuable 

lessons of my life, and 

I have to share it with you :

And that lesson is this : 

In Your Life, 

at any given Moment, 

The Strongest Dream in that 

Moment wins that Moment. 

I am a VERY powerful Dreamer. 

Yeah, I’m not lying.

I Dreamed tonight, 

this very night, 

as a 14-year-old boy, 

and I am Living it 

as a 50-year-old Man. 

My Dreams are very strong. 

Today, I walked all around Washington. I used to be poor in this city, and all day, people just said, “Hey, Dave. Hey, Dave.” Like they knew me personally, and I felt like I knew them.

And I say to myself, “My God, Dave, what a powerful dream.”

But then, sometimes… Sometimes… I feel regular. I just feel like myself. Maybe I’ll smoke some weed and be at some nightclub and feel shy. 

But I’ll look across the nightclub, see some guy that no one’s ever heard of. But this n*gga worked all week and got bottle service, and this bitch is bringing Moët and sparklers to ’em. I picture, in my mind, he’s Persian. He’s doing some kind of weird Persian dance. He got six bitches at his table because he got so much liquor. And they all just saying, “Go Cena! Go Cena!” 

And I was looking across the room like, “Oh, my God. I’m in that guy’s dream.” 

I can hear him telling his friends. “Hey, how was the club last night?” 

“That shit was fantastic. I had bottle service. I seen Dave Chappelle across the club, looking at me like, ‘Who is that?'”

And that’s the trick to life. You have to be wise enough to know when you were living in your dream. And you have to be humble enough to accept when you’re in someone else’s. That’s why… That’s why I don’t judge between Will Smith, and Chris Rock. Because you guys look at them as big ideas, but I look at them as fellow dreamers. I can’t judge between them because I see myself in both of them.

I am Will Smith. I am the man that cannot take it anymore and will slap the shit out of the next person that says a cross word to me or somebody that I love.

And I am Chris Rock. I am the man that can get slapped in front of the whole world and keep my composure so I don’t fuck anything up. That… is what… men do. Men make boundaries. Men enforce boundaries. And men tests boundaries. And no man test more boundaries than a trans man…

When I see a fellow dreamer, I give them my utmost respect, even if I don’t understand what their dream is. I know A Dreamer when I see one. And I’ve met many powerful dreamers in my life. None more powerful than a man who calls himself… Lil Nas X. I met this n*gga at a party. I had no idea who he was. But the minute he walked in that party, I knew I was in his dream. Everybody in the party was another dreamer. Everyone was famous. But when that n*gga walked in, he was dressed like C-3PO. He was shining.

And everyone was like, “Oh, my God, there he is. That’s Lil Nas X!”

I didn’t know who he was. For some reason, out of all of them dreamers, he walked right up to me. And he said, “I tried to get you in my video.”

I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. I said, “What?” “What video?” And he was just looking at me like… “You know what video,” and walked away.

And I watched him walk away. I said, “Man.” 

I said… “This n*gga’s having a very powerful dream.”

You know what it reminded me of? It remind me of when we was in grade school. Remember, the teacher would ask everybody what they want to be. “Timmy. Timmy, what do you want to be when you grow up?” Timmy acted like he had an idea. He’d stand up and he’d say, “I want to be a fireman.” And the teacher would say, “Timmy, that is a beautiful dream.” But Timmy didn’t mean it. Timmy said he wanted to be a fireman because deep down, Timmy is attracted to fire. And by the time he’s 14 years old, this n*gga is a full-blown pyromaniac, playing with kerosene and matches like a goddamn expert. Then one night he goes downtown with his buddies fucking around with fire, burns a warehouse down. He doesn’t know it, but there’s 13 migrant workers from El Salvador in that motherfucker. They get trapped and then they die in the fire. Isn’t that a tragedy? Well, it was an accident. He’s only 14 years old. But he’s Black. So they try him as an adult. Timmy ends up spending the rest of his life in jail. Dream deferred.

[mimics buzzer sound]

“What about you, Billy? Billy? 

Billy, What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Billy stands up and he says, 

“I want to be President of the United States.” 

And the teacher says, “Oh, my God, Billy. 

Billy, that is a wonderful dream.”

And Billy means that shit. Billy does everything right. That motherfucker gets his grades up, he joins student government. He even does extracurricular activities like show choir just to make his resume look good. He’s on track to be president. But junior year, he wipes. When he’s 16, he gets his girlfriend pregnant, and has to drop out of high school to make ends meet. But lucky for him, the local Walmart’s hiring. By the time he’s 20 years old, this motherfucker makes assistant manager at Walmart. He’s the youngest one in the district. He says, “Oh, my God, if I can keep this up for four more years, I could be a manager. If I can keep this up for six more years after that, I could even be a regional manager and have as many as three Walmarts under my control.”

And he’s a big-picture guy. He sees where this path is going. 

So he kills himself.

[mimics buzzer sound]

“What about you? What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I don’t wanna say. Because I don’t want the other kids to laugh at me.”

“Who cares if they laugh? Your dream is yours. 

Own your dreams so they can come true. Say it loud and proud. 

What do you want to be when you grow up, Lil Nas X?”

That n*gga stood up in front of the whole class.

“I want to be the gayest n*gga that ever lived. I want to do a music video, slide down a stripper pole, all the way to the depths of hell, and suck the devil’s dick at ten o’clock on BET while all the kids are awake and can see me.”

Shockingly, that was the only dream that worked out.

That’s why I’m here. Tonight. In the city where I built the dreams that I live. ‘Cause I wanted to tell you all that they came True. And I wanted to thank you all for making The Man that I am today.

Yes, I am living a very powerful dream. Every time I come to this city and I stand in front of you, I realize that, “My God, man, this is not my dream at all. It’s yours, and I am honored to be in it.”

Thank you very much, Washington D.C. I’ll see you next time."