And I think a really poor person feels the same way. They just look out at so much of the world around them and think: This isn’t mine. I’m actually not welcome in any of this. For all intents and purposes, we both—me and the poor person—live in separate worlds from everybody else, but we’re also both in constant contact with the normal people world—the world that everybody else lives in—and so we both kind of have to navigate it and negotiate with it because it’s the only thing that exists. Like, we have to burrow our own little holes within this world and build our own societies within this larger society that mostly doesn’t include us just so that we can have a space to live. And like, obviously, my society is a lot nicer than the poor person’s—I’m not COMPLAINING about my situation at all—but the thing I have in common with the really poor person is that we both have to go around the rules. We both have to get creative and create our own spaces and find our own pockets within the world that exists just so that we can live our lives. And what that does, I think, or like, what that makes possible for both of us is that we can see that the world around us, the world that most people live in, is just total bullshit. Like, the normal people world is not “reality.” It’s not some concrete fact of the universe. It’s just a story that a lot of people are telling themselves at the same time. But the very fact that we exist—me and the really poor person—the very fact that we’re breathing and eating and walking around on the same Earth as everybody else is a rejection of the idea that the way most people live is “normal” or “natural” or “necessary.”

And for Bob, like, the problem with the people in the middle, the problem with normal people, is that they take the world so seriously, you know? They look out on the world around them and they treat it all with this heavy seriousness, because for them, there’s never any reason to doubt it. It all seems like it’s been perfectly arranged just for them, and so they treat anything that threatens it with this really intense heaviness. But what’s actually required is a sort of lightness, you know what I’m saying? For the normal people, for the people in the middle, the world that exists is this unshakable, unmovable thing. And they may not even know it, but they’re hungry for another world. The only reason they show up to my concerts, and like, the only reason they consume so much media and spend so much time obsessing over people like me and my life is that they’re hungry for an image of a world where all the bullshit they tell themselves every day just isn’t real. They’re hungry to let go. And so when people show up to my concerts, that’s the only time they’re really allowing themselves to be free, because it’s the only time they’re allowing themselves to imagine another way of being.