"Working With Thor"

Dave’s first night in the Sierra Nevada mountains, he was greeted by rain - and a harrowing situation.

“I made it out of LA.”

That was my thought as I passed Bakersfield and it sounded so sweet, I said it aloud.

Adventures are adventures because you have no idea what will happen. You plan, you imagine, you visualize, but all that means squat to adventure. Adventure doesn’t follow rules or have morals or care what’s fair or mean, and that’s what makes it so damn exciting.

As an artist, failure is my best friend. Without it I’d be unsuccessful, lost. After living with failure for more than 60 years, you sense it’s coming - but you never know when. It is possible to anticipate, but failure always catches me like a baseball bat to the head. A catastrophe is a combination of unforeseen failures that fall like dominos. I’m not friends with catastrophic failure. I hate the guy, he’s a prick and makes me feel all icky inside. The only good to be taken from catastrophe is in making a great recovery.

The first truck I rented wasn’t big enough. A measly one hour delay. I know, it doesn’t sound like a falling domino. Patience.

Daylight and my cell phone signal started fading around Fresno and by the time I turned off the interstate onto a two-lane highway into the Sierra Nevadas it was dark, the navigation on my iPhone quit, and I started to realize just how alone I really was. On cue, the asshole voice in my head started with the I-told-you-so’s and the you-should-have’s. It was hard to stay positive and the feeling morphed a little into… survival.

The weather changed, just some rain sprinkles, but it continued to build as I reached the end of the road where my winding driveway started up a long hill to my new life. I could feel badness, waiting for me in the dark like a predator. I sat idling in the huge diesel truck with my animals next to me. The extreme darkness of the country made it seem like I was looking at the worldthrough a pinhole camera. I had doubts about being able to get the huge truck close enough to the house. I just couldn’t see, and then it started raining harder.

I wasn’t seeing any dominos fall though, and I didn’t want to be scared into inaction. The truck was strong, it was heavy, I’d have plenty of traction, it wasn’t as steep as it looked… but the trees hanging over the drive were a problem. And I’d have to move with a good pace up the hill because it was getting muddier. I talked myself into it.

I gunned the truck, dropped it in low gear, and gathered speed so I could hit it hard and barrel though it. It’s all about confidence and doing stuff - like, with confidence. Unfortunately, I missed “smart” by a mile and picked “stupid.” I should have turned the truck around, gone into town and slept in a hotel and had a big expensive breakfast in the morning.

Avoiding the trees, I caught the front tire in the soft muddy ditch, only barely getting out beforeover-correcting and sliding off the driveway onto the steep hill, finally catching the bumper of the truck on a utility pole. My heart bumped like a hummingbird’s and waves of adrenaline made my bones ache. In a state of shock, I climbed out of the truck into the pitch-black night and was greeted by my neighbor’s dogs. I followed them home and asked my new...

"Planning My Escape"

Hollywood is a terrible place to get old. Dave had to get out.

After 40 years of living in Los Angeles, I escaped.

I had to. It was life or death.

My decision to cut and run came from a vision of my death on streets where I’d walked and lived. Sounds overly dramatic, but I work in entertainment. I know drama.

You wouldn’t know me, but you’d recognize my voice on radio, TV, the Internet, narrations, documentaries and cartoons. I’m a professional voice over artist, aka “VO.” I do other things, too. I have talented hands; I can paint portraits and I write, produce and mentor.

In my last decade in LA I moved once, from the San Fernando Valley to the Arts Districtwhere rents were cheap and the spaces were perfect for my studio. The downsides:live/work lofts are commercial property with no rent control and landlords can charge what the market will bear.

Two years after my move downtown, people were paying twice my rent for a 1000-square-foot loft with concrete floors and a counter for a kitchen - a box with no interior walls or privacy. My old nemesis, gentrification, had officially arrived. I’d see Bentleys, McLarens and Land Rovers parked next to my cheap Fiat. Property value rose so fast that building owners made money on empty lofts.

To say it wasn’t artist friendly would be a vast understatement.

My epiphanic moment of clarity came while choking on toxic diesel exhaust. I was walking my little rat terrier at 7:00 am, and we had stepped out of the gate onto 6th Street. The produce warehouse across the street was noisy and moving at full tilt, my dogyanking my arm out of its socket to reach that first tree, when I noticed that the crawling masses of tens of thousands of homeless in tents from Skid Row were now within 40 feet of my front door - along with the smell of urine and excrement.

The man I’d seen yesterday, screaming in an expensive business suit, railing at the world’s injustice while standing on the soapbox pile of his life, was now sleeping peacefully, tucked up against a red brick exterior wall. Yesterday it was obvious he was evicted from wherever he’d lived with all his possessions: a cappuccino machine, a stack of stereo equipment and a lot of other nice clothes and stuff that looked like he’d lost an upper management position. Probably never saw it coming. That morning it was just himin a blanket. Most of his belongings were gone, his stereo, all the nice stuff, poof, gone. He had a bag of clothes for a pillow and his now filthy double-stuffed too-expensive down comforter was wrapped tightly around him. He probably didn’t know he’d lost everything, sleeping peacefully on the concrete. This was happening regularly since the depression of 2008. It is, has or will dramatically wound everyone but the very rich.

The reality of my age and his situation hit me like a bucket of cold water. I was one month, maybe two from being him. I’d barely pulled off rent a couple of times recently over parking tickets gone to collection, or union dues, or unexpected car troubles.

The immense financial depression had given people permission to do horrible things and act like heroin addicts, chasing profits with monkeys on their backs. I was witnessing the end of...

"Pay it Forward"

The superpower of sharing, the bliss of giving back, and the happiness that comes from mentoring the young.

• 2
• 0:00
• You The older looked out the window. It was a great day to play.
• 1
• 0:43
• But which instrument?
• 2
• 0:44
• The banjo? The ukulele? The bassooky? It was a great day to play. But which instrument? The banjo? The ukulele?
• 1
• 0:49
• The bassooky? He turned and regarded the weather again, and then decided on his Spanish guitar. He carefully put it in the case, walked out the door, and headed for a quiet spot at the park.
• 1
• 1:05
• He loved playing for animals. They really listened, unlike so many people that smiled but never stopped. He deftly checked his tuning, but was distracted by noise. Something was pushing through the strangling brush at the edge of tall shady trees. He saw the old guitar first, held high, and then its holder, scraped and tattered. A younger, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, arms and body scratched and bleeding. His gaze focused only on the older's acoustic guitar.
• 1
• 1:46
• The older held the priceless craftsmanship out to the younger and asked, Would you like to play it? All he could do was nod. His mouth hung open, his eyes disbelieving about to play something he'd never dreamed of and only seen in the windows of the local luthier. They traded guitars.
• 1
• 2:09
• Carefully, Younger held it and marveled at its lightness. Holding it like a chalice, he played all he knew as Older played Younger's guitar. It was magic, and Younger glowed with excitement as Older took the lead through key changes, different tempos, with chords Younger had never heard. No matter what Older played, Younger played something unexpected that worked and flowed. And when they finished, Older asked Younger if he'd like to
• 2
• 2:47
• learn more, and Younger's head nodded like a bobble doll. Meet me at the statue in the park begin your lessons. This is how it began. do do do do do do do do
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• 4:08
• and and do do do do ♪ ♪
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• 4:50
• ♪ ♪ ♪ So... the the the the the
• 2
• 7:17
• the For three hard years, Boulder grilled Younger on all aspects of music.
• 1
• 7:48
• Then they moved through the stringed instruments, bazooki, oud, tambourine, ukulele, banjo, Mexican bass, and other stringed instruments the Younger never knew existed. Older had never seen anyone ravenously devour musical knowledge like Younger. But Older also spoke on life, love, desire, and many other things because Younger should know that music needs a good life to exist. Older taught confidence, how to act professionally, be on time, and stay open to whatever note was played. All these teachings revived Older's spirit. Going back to the basics
• 1
• 8:37
• with Younger reminded him how healing it was to share and enjoy life again.
• 2
• 8:46
• This is how it began. So... so Here we go. When Younger felt there was nothing more to know the song of the sea, or the birds in the trees, or the sound
• 1
• 10:48
• of the wind?" Younger was astounded. The thoughts that were inspired by Older's questions excited the Younger so much, he couldn't sit. He jumped up, pacing back and forth, tumbling the idea of hearing his world as a song, as music like a symphony with a beat, a key. It made his mind race.
• 1
• 11:20
• For the first time, Younger realized his knowledge merely scratched the surface of a much deeper world. He doubled his practice to keep up, and Older kept the brutal pace for another three years. And after ten thousand hours of lessons, and three times that in practicing alone, Older proclaimed Younger good enough to play with others and not pick up any bad habits.
• 2
• 11:48
• Younger never felt...

"Prelude to Pansophy"

Dave gives some backstory on Pansophical’s creation and what you’ll hear here.

• Hello, my name is Dave Thomas and this is Pansophical Podcast. Welcome to this first episode I call Prelude to Pansophy. Most of the work I've done was voice work on commercials. I realized concentrating on selling required me to keep tabs on our shared narrative, and manipulating that knowledge got me more work. It seemed justifiable at the time but now it's just too heavy on my soul
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• 0:56
• to carry around. I feel partly to blame for the overwhelming sense of everything headed for disaster. I used tricks to suck in the audience and helped make all this happen. I want to share why I created Pansophical Podcasts. First, I impacted millions and millions of people with my clever deliveries.
• 1
• 1:26
• And I'm sorry, I was just trying to pay rent. But I think it's only fair that I share the immensely powerful tricks that I used to lower your defenses by tickling your ego. The perspective that made it so
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• 1:48
• successful.
• 1
• 1:52
• This is the best way I can think of to erase the red on my ledger and and teach and to show and to demonstrate just how powerful and successful our species could become through a positive viewpoint and a positive mindset. It turns out evolutionarily people like hearing sincere, entertaining, and emotional story. Sharing stories is powerful and uplifting in our species. When we see our past and its predicted near future, it shows using money as a metric for measuring anything is evolutionarily stupid and suicidal.
• 1
• 2:42
• I mean, in short, I mean, we are where we are because we no longer know how to listen or how to differentiate what's good for our species and what's bad. Now, our present shared narrative started before I was born in 1955, but I've been watching as we've been steered towards being lazy listeners. My retrospective view of life is much easier to see the older I get. Everything is starting to really connect.
• 1
• 3:25
• You know, why stuff happened, and what I did with it is largely influenced by my childhood and what I was born with, like dyslexia and realizing I was different in a good way very, very early on. By the age of five, I knew how powerful being nice to people was. And I say that because I suffered childhood trauma in silence for decades. But I survived.
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• 3:59
• And I became, you know, what I am today. A good human. There were 20 years in there where I wasn't happy, but my positive mindset, my evolutionary elder's DNA kept me in the fight till I could get the therapy to discipline my perspective and live in the now.
• 1
• 4:25
• You know, the repaired me is a confident, old and crafty guy. And the trick was shutting down that negative voice in my head and really embracing more of a positive view and a positive mindset.
• 1
• 4:46
• And that's the secret to winning. I mean, that kind of mental attitude has made my life a very satisfying experience. You know, even when I was lost down deep in the hell of hells, I knew there had to be a way to get out of it.
• 1
• 5:06
• I just had to be patient, stay positive. Pansyfy gives meaning to the reality that we all live alone in our bodies, but we can only exist by sharing with others. This is how our evolution has worked for hundreds of thousands of years.
• 1
• 5:30
• I met loads of people along my way, like the Dalai Lama. Presidents, tons of actors, comedians, producers, directors, loads of brilliant writers, amazing powerful women, artists from all kinds of art making, photographers, printers, painters,
• 1
• 5:54
• sculptors, potters. I learned something from every one of them. You know, life is a chain and it's only as strong as its weakest link. We all know we can...