Justin Vacula engages in a deep and insightful conversation with hurdy gurdy player Anna Murphy of the band Cellar Darling.
The discussion covers many topics, including their musical journey, the impact of Stoic philosophy on their work, and personal reflections on overcoming adversity, creative expression, and coping with emotions.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to Low-Cost Travel
00:48 Special Guest Announcement
01:44 Upcoming Events and Announcements
03:31 Cellar Darling’s Musical Journey
04:46 Exploring Stoic Philosophy in Music
07:27 The Song ‘Challenge’ and Personal Struggles
14:16 The Hermit: Love of Solitude
17:38 Rebels: Challenging Society
23:19 Honoring the Dead: A Celebration of Life
24:00 Stoic Philosophy and Grief
25:30 Friendship and Time: Under the Oak Tree
26:23 The Prophet Song and Personal Connections
27:36 Creating Stories: Star Crusher and Beyond
29:28 The Elements: Water, Fire, Wind, and Earth
31:35 Avalanche: A Monotonous Mantra
33:04 Hedonia: A Fantasy World
34:32 The Essence of Stoicism and Art
40:45 Concluding Thoughts and Future Plans
Show notes:
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Rough Transcript:
[00:00:00] Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures, tales to be told. Make and save money, the world will unfold.
Fight the war on happiness. Pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold.
You’re listening to the Hurdy Gurdy Travel podcast. I’m your host, Justin Vacula. Here to help you travel the world and next to no cost. With credit card points, miles, benefits, and rewards. Make money, save money, and take advantage of great deals.
Thanks for joining me for today’s episode conversation with hurdy gurdy player Anna Murphy and Drummer Merlin Sutter of the band cellar darling [00:01:00] originally recorded in 2018 now with remastered audio This conversation one of my favorites was featured on my previous podcast the stoic solutions podcast The discussion covers many topics including seller darlings musical journey The impact of stoic philosophy on their work and personal reflections on overcoming adversity, creative expression, and coping with negative thoughts and emotions, the conversation won’t be about credit cards, gambling, or travel, but we’ll help you with inevitable challenges you face while traveling and when things don’t always go the way you want in the hobby and life.
Cellar Darling’s featured instrument, the hurdy gurdy inspired the name of this podcast before today’s episode, some quick announcements. Early bird ticket sales for ZorkFest 2025, a miles points and gambling event, are now live at zorkfest. travelzork. com. I spoke at the successful ZorkFest 2024 event and hope to see you at ZorkFest [00:02:00] 2025 in Las Vegas from December 5th through December 7th.
I’m also looking forward to other events in 2025. And had a successful 2024 speaking at events with Award Travel 101, Frequent Traveler University, and both Chicago Seminars events. If you’re an event organizer and would like to have me speak at your 2025 event, please contact me. Visit meetup. com slash philly miles and points to RSVP for monthly Greater Philadelphia Travel.
Credit Miles and Points Meetups I host in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The next meetups are December 15th, 2024, and January 26th, 2025. Find a link in the show notes. For more content between podcast episodes, follow Herdy Gerdy Travel Podcast on Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter. For bonus videos and community content, subscribe to Herdy Gerdy Travel Podcast on YouTube.
Follow Justin Vukula [00:03:00] on Instagram for content, including trip photos. Search Herdy Gerdy Travel on Subscribestar. com or become a channel member on YouTube to financially support my efforts starting at the 5 a month tip jar level. Receive special perks at higher subscriber levels, including private one on one conversations, Asking podcast guests your questions.
Find links and more, including credit card referrals at hurdygurdytravel. com. On with today’s episode. Sailor Darling formed in summer of 2016 out of the split of Switzerland’s most successful metal act to date. The chart topping Elvity. The trio, also including Ivo Henze on guitars and bass, look back on a decade of touring the world in more than 45 countries on six continents.
After the split with their former band, the trio began working on their own songs, a unique combination of grand and heavy riffs. Powerful drumming and a unique voice with the signature [00:04:00] folky, earthy tones of the hurdy gurdy. Confidently fusing heavy alternative and progressive rock with strong folk influences and poetic tales.
A new wave of folk rock. The release of Seller Darling’s debut album, This is The Sound, signed to Nuclear Blast Records, received widespread critical acclaim, also entering top 100 charts in Switzerland, Germany, and the UK, peaking at number 16 in the band’s home country and surpassing 1. 8 million streams on Spotify alone within six months.
Thank
you for having us.
Yeah, thank you.
And you’re quite busy now, recently having toured in France, the UK, Italy, Germany, Brazil, and now you’re in a recording studio, and soon off to Japan, Canada, and the United States. That’s right. We’ll go wherever they’ll have us. I first heard about you through your former band, Elveady, but one of your songs is titled Tears of a Stoic, and now it’s titled Hullabaloo on your new album, This is the Sound.
Can you tell us about that song?
Originally I wanted to [00:05:00] call it Tears of the Stoic, but the title seemed a bit pretentious and a bit misleading also. Because it doesn’t really convey what Stoics are. There’s this notion that a Stoic shouldn’t cry. So I changed it. And I also wanted to work with metaphors.
What I was imagining when I was writing the lyrics was someone crumbling beneath his emotions. Feeling that I had while writing it was wanting to be in a Stoic state of mind, but not achieving
it.
The metaphor for it is like a rock. And what do you call it? Corrosions?
I was a statue, a stone called Iron Heart, right?
So it’s this idea of a person who’s very resilient, who came across some sort of crisis in life, and has had a hard time dealing with that.
Exactly. I heard your podcast, you think very far when interpreting our lyrics, which is pretty cool. And sometimes it just happens spontaneously. You don’t think too much, and then [00:06:00] just stuff starts pouring out of you somehow.
Thanks. There’s a lot to talk about there. No matter how much training we have, no matter how hard we work to be resilient, there’s still going to be those trying times. It’s not that we’re absent of emotions, but rather we can be mindful of them and try to cope with them the best we can.
Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. And I think that was the mindset at the time. Yeah, exactly. That’s how this whole thing
came to be. Good. And that’s some of your story as well. You had documentary about your new album. This is the sound in which there was a crisis and that’s your previous band you had separated from, but yet there was a rebirth and you seem to come out of it quite well.
So far
so good.
Have you read Antifragile from Nassim Taleb? It’s a really good book. It describes our situation very well. It’s a really complex book. To be honest, I don’t understand about 80 percent of it, but the parts that I do understand, I can see myself in those. Basic theory is that we try to avoid catastrophes.
Especially in Switzerland is actually a great example. We like being safe. [00:07:00] We try to avoid situations that could cause something negative. And that’s not good because this is not going to sound very elegant, but all the shit makes you grow. If catastrophes happen, you can cop out stronger. The other end, that describes very well what happened with us.
When we split from Melbaithu, we thought this is the biggest life. Catastrophe for us ever, but now we’re actually much happier.
Good. I think that fits well with your song challenge. You write as an inner struggle, a battle you are fighting against yourself and the world screaming at yourself in the mirror and getting high on newfound strength, failing, overcoming and achieving.
Yeah. Challenge is an interesting song. Um, that song, actually, we wrote that one before. We had our lyrical concept of storytelling. It’s a very personal song. It, it describes me. It, it describes my bipolar state of mind very well. We then decided that [00:08:00] the lyrics shouldn’t be so personal because I do that with my solo project.
I do it with other projects and we wanted to create something new. We basically take personal experiences and personal feelings. But turn them into stories and create other pictures and metaphors that people can interpret other things into. Challenge is one of the more personal songs where I really had no idea what my actual thoughts and feelings are because they kept on changing.
That’s also what the video shows. It’s a woman fighting against herself.
Good, and it’s a good medium with music, reaching a lot of people who might not be picking up the philosophical texts and getting through those, but rather they can gain something from the music and really think about those thoughts and feelings.
And even with your genre, it’s very creative folk rock and using the hurdy gurdy, many listeners might be unfamiliar.
I’ve been playing it for years, I think. I picked it up three months [00:09:00] before joining Albaethi, and so I basically learned since mainly. By being in that band. It’s a love hate relationship between me and the instrument.
It can be very tiring to fix things and then it has a weird noise, but it’s also very interesting and I think it’s what makes our sound unique and we don’t use it in a traditional way. Like we all write our own tunes. We don’t use traditional folk tunes, which fits our concept of modern storytelling. We don’t want to tell old stories.
We want to. invent new ones, but tell them with the same vibe as the old ones.
You’re combining the heavier and the acoustic and you’ve credited Seneca with some inspiration for your music.
Yeah, from my part, it’s actually interesting that we’re doing this podcast. I grew up in a family of artists and my plan was to go the complete other direction.
I wanted to go to the gymnasium and then [00:10:00] my main subject was Latin in order to study philosophy later on. At the time, I didn’t really think of what, what do you do when you study philosophy, but I just wanted to do that. And then it just completely flipped and I left school to, to pursue a career of music.
So it seems that my genes just caught up with me and yeah, so I’ve always been really interested in it. And my favorite philosopher actually is Heraclitus.
Ah, Heraclitus.
Yeah. When you’re talking about Seneca, actually, when we split from Elveti, we came back to the whole philosophy thing because I lost touch with it and I wasn’t reading that much anymore.
And then actually, when I was feeling really down Merlin, he gave me a coffee of meditations. That’s when it all started coming back and we started incorporating it into our music.
Things just fell into place around that time. I was just getting into the whole Stoicism, literally a few weeks before the whole [00:11:00] Elevated thing happened.
I discovered Meditations and Epictetus. For me, that was a path through that ginormous setback. So I bought another copy of Meditations and sent it to Anna. So that was just, Giant coincidence, but that’s how it happens in life. Things fall into place and you connect to such a philosophy that it makes sense.
Do you personally,
were there any particular concepts or passages that you found to be helpful or inspirational? I would love to
be able to quote passages and stuff, but I am a drummer, but I’m no good at that. But what I like about Stoicism in particular is that it’s a hands on philosophy. It’s a lot about doing rather than just abstract thought.
You can read effectetus and you can apply it to life. And that’s how it, that’s what makes sense to me.
Merlin is much better at that shit. He’s much better at applying it as his Evo actually, which is strange since I’m the lyric writer, but I am, to be honest, to be completely honest, I am the complete opposite [00:12:00] of a Stoic.
For me, it’s like a secret wish to attain. That mindset at some point, but I’m not at that point where I can, because I’m so driven by my emotions, it’s almost ridiculous at times, but in the end, it’s also what I create art with. So I can’t really imagine not being like that, but my goal is to have more inner peace and it’s essentially what everybody wants, right, with some ups and downs, but just to compress it a little.
And those thoughts within Stoicism is working towards goals and it’s not going to be easy. The change isn’t going to happen overnight, right? Life is difficult. But how can we hold on to a fraction of our sanity, right? As you say in the song, Six Days, right? It seems to be some themes in that song, triumph amidst adversity, that one can see a destruction of a world all around him, but yet still hold on, still find something to live for.
In the song, you can
imagine when I came up with the idea, I just had [00:13:00] Pictures, just pictures that accompany the melodies. You can look at it more like a comic. I think you can interpret whatever you want into the song. I actually just saw a picture of the last man left on earth and. All the entities around him turn into being, I always see it as a cartoon.
The moon has a little face and there’s the devil and every possible gods that you can imagine or mythical figure. And they’re all just wondering why he’s holding on. Cause there’s nothing to live for the comic, but also a tragic story.
So maybe some can feel that experience in their life, maybe feeling desolate, feeling without help.
Yeah, exactly.
And some can also ask themselves, it’s really that important, the whole thing.
And stoicism encourages us to have a perspective in the longer term of things, that maybe day to day we see something that doesn’t go in our favor, and we could take a perspective and say, oh, maybe we can be a better person.
[00:14:00] Grateful for being able to get through this experience, or perhaps it’s not as bad as we think. As many times in life, we don’t know how things are going to turn out. It can be for the better. Yeah, I think it’s
achieving a balance between the cognitive and the emotional part of the brain.
And it segues into your song, The Hermit.
You write it as a song about the love of solitude and indisposition felt within society and towards other people. So here we can be self reliant and still depend on others. Yeah, exactly.
The song, it might sound a bit like that, but the song doesn’t suggest that solitude is the way to go, that it’s something better.
But It’s something that all of the band members feel connected with. All of us love being alone. We love being in nature alone. We don’t really enjoy large spaces with a lot of people. And that’s where the song came [00:15:00] from. The demo was actually called Hidden Path when Ivo wrote the demo. That’s what I was imagining at first.
It was his initial impulse to call it that. So I went from there. And I imagined a hidden path and thought, okay, where does it lead to? And then I came up with the idea of the hermit. And then I incorporated some stuff with, we can do magic because I’m the author of this song, so I can do whatever I want.
So there’s going to be magic for some reason and nobody’s going to find him. And it’s very simple because the end it’s a song and you have to try and sit a story.
There are these thoughts within stoicism to not be wholly dependent on externals, things outside of ourselves, other people, and to be content in our own space that we can still be social, but yet still have some time alone and be all right with that, as some people might lament, Oh, there’s nothing to do.
I’m so bored. And that’s a really mysterious feeling for me as I can be engaged with so many things. Yeah, exactly. I
think we are [00:16:00] all like that as well.
I don’t think I’ve ever been bored.
Yeah.
And in some way, the hermit seems to turn his back on at least some aspects of society. You use the Greek phrase, hoi polloi.
Yeah, the hoi
polloi originally means the many, and then when it was incorporated into the English language. It morphed into a different term, which refers to the common people. That sounds very arrogant, obviously. And I’m not referring to them because we are actually a part of the common people, we’re
not aristocrats
or anything.
We’re very much hoi polloi. I was actually referring to the original term, which simply just means the many. And I thought that fit very well, rhythmically and with the whole story.
And the Stoics point out that we are social beings, and there’s this cosmopolitan theme of being a citizen of the world, being connected with society, and being socially engaged, reaching out to others, and contributing to the common [00:17:00] good.
And with music, perhaps that’s a way to go about, as people find inspiration from your song, they’re able to think about their thoughts and feelings, reflect. And have that creative space. Exactly.
That’s actually the most amazing thing about the job that we have. I love reading interpretations of other people about our songs.
And I think it’s so valuable that people go so in depth into the music and they don’t just nod their heads or bang their head. Yeah, they do podcasts and shit. It’s amazing. And that’s really rewarding for an artist.
We have the song Rebels, in that I see a character daring to challenge a corrupt society, as the song says, a fraudulent utopia, perhaps looking for an escape and also seeming to have second thoughts, living in a life where ignorance may be bliss.
Exactly on
point. That’s the first song we wrote, and that actually also has a very, Personal background, [00:18:00] the lyrics especially do, and once again, I transformed it into something that can be interpreted whatever way you want. You can interpret it into political stuff that’s happening nowadays, but with us, it has a very personal background and it has to do with the situation at the time and the people that we were with, it’s also a, it’s a song about Swiss people, basically, because we’re in a lot of situations where the people are together, but They don’t confront things, they don’t fight, because they want to keep, like in the lyrics, this fraudulent utopia, and it makes no sense, and it’s really destructive behavior, and we were the rebels that fled.
That’s right.
Good, there’s some risk in even not speaking up and not challenging things, not getting out there in the public, just going along with a common narrative that can be quite destructive. It seems that there could be a case where, oh, people would just not want to look into things, not want to challenge, and maybe [00:19:00] just live that blissful, easy life, but with that comes its complications.
If you’re tuning out, you’re not paying attention, you’re liable to be taken advantage of and deceived. Yeah,
and it is very deceptive. If you don’t confront things, if you do things behind people’s backs, that is a deceptive thing. It’s much more deceptive than when you’re being an asshole into somebody’s face.
It’s the classic philosophical idea from Socrates that the unexamined life is not worth living. That’s much better put.
Yeah, that’s much better, that’s much better phrasing than what I said.
The lyric, lie for our leaders as they burn the vacant stakes down. So perhaps people can be conspiring in that direction.
political realm, or not challenging what’s going on, even when it’s right in
front of them. Yeah, that line was, it’s a very weird line. I’m not sure if a lot of people get it. And actually on the record, it sounds like eggs and steaks, like burning eggs and steaks. [00:20:00] Yeah, my idea was you see this picture of a king, but he’s a really cowardly king.
And he has the stakes to Not the eating steaks, but the steaks in the ground. He has them burned. He fully has the torture chambers and everything. But he doesn’t utilize them.
There seems to be a case for courage in the song that the call to arms and being willing to stand up and challenge and even walk away from a corrupt society rather than continuing to participate when maybe people try to change things around us.
But. No matter what we do, sometimes things won’t change, and it’s best to walk away. It’s a bit of an
opposite than what you would usually sing about. There’s a lot of stories, there’s a lot of lyrics about people standing up to a government, or to a king, or whatever stuff that is in conflict. There is a conflict, there is violence, and people don’t want that anymore, but it’s actually the opposite.
They are standing up to this wrong, this really fake, [00:21:00] peaceful, whatever is going on. And they’re seeking conflict. They’re seeking something that is real.
It’s a central theme in Stoicism as well, thinking about what’s inside of our control and outside of it, and the idea is that many people can create problems for themselves by lamenting that which they can’t change.
They’re trying, they’re aggravated, they’re really annoyed, and it’s our opinion of things that Marcus Aurelius says very often in his book that really causes us the anxiety and the troubles. It’s the key
of the whole, or my Access to that philosophy. And that’s what I read at the time. And that’s why I don’t know how many of these lyrics and are consciously connected with the philosophy, but much of many of those songs, as you say, can be interpreted that way.
And I interpret them that way and they perfectly capture ours and be my mindset of time. That is really. The key to what was going on at least in my head around that time. The whole thing built up for years. For me this brought it all, this [00:22:00] concept of, at the core of stoic philosophy.
And I think, going back to this idea of emotions, one of the most emotional songs on the album, at least for me, is Under the Oak Tree, talking about grief.
Change, acceptance, and the fragility of life. Yeah, that is
actually a very emotional song, which is also a bit of a personal one. And we actually weren’t sure if we should put it on the album. Because it’s so personal and it deals with the death that was experienced, actually more than one death, one person and one dog, which is very important.
We found a way to make it our own, to make it the band’s own. The main idea behind the song is that it’s in a way dramatic and sad, but there’s this kind of happy, epic ending to it. It combines your friends. Aspect of dealing with grief, which you can also see in different cultures. If somebody dies in Ireland, [00:23:00] people are going to wear black and they’re going to drink a lot of Guinness and cry.
In Switzerland, it’s going to be more reserved, but also very black, very dark, very sad. Minus drinking. Yeah, not that much drinking probably. And there’s other cultures that do the complete opposite. They wear colorful clothing they have with parades to honor the ones that have passed. The music combines those two feelings.
One of the aspects is grief and the other is honoring the dead in a celebration.
We seem to take for granted our time. There’s talk in the song about time passing by. That we have this time we spend with others and sometimes do not take advantage of it. It turns out to be too late, time passes us by, we miss those opportunities.
Yeah, that’s something
probably everybody deals with as soon as beloved ones pass. It’s hard to deal with, but we also learn from it, [00:24:00] as you said.
That song also, or what Anna just explained, connects to the Stoic philosophy. There’s this part in Epictetus, and as I said, I am no good at remembering passages, but I like the kind of plain languages that, that comes out of the translations from the Latin into the English.
And he says that, or part of what he uses to explain the Stoicism is that you have a vessel and it breaks. Been restored. And then he goes on to say, if your child or your wife dies, it’s been restored. And that sounds ridiculous to us to read this. But to me, that is the very same thing that Anna explained or that Anna deals with in that song, which is can be sad, you can get drunk, you can celebrate, but the point in the end is been restored and to embrace this as a part of life.
An inevitable change in that, yes, all things are liable to destruction.
Yeah. Which doesn’t have to be bad. It might be sad, but it doesn’t have to be defined as a bad thing, so to speak.
Exact. And [00:25:00] that actually reminds me of my favorite dude, Heraclitus. In German it’s Heraclit. Panterei, sagt Heraclit. Yeah, like I said, I haven’t been reading up on anything.
The last time I read Greek philosophy was more than 10 years ago, but he really stuck with me because of a lot of things that he says are building up things and tearing them down that creates a kind of harmony. And that just reminded me of that.
And within stoicism, there’s lots of talk of friendship, valuing the time we have.
Even a passage from Seneca about greedily enjoying our friends and being very careful of who we let into our inner circles. And also, two different people sharing similar goals, similar interests, and working together very fully. That process. Yeah.
We’re friends
in the song here is Under the Oak tree. My best friend Lies under the oak tree.
A part of me thighs. People would see that as a loss of [00:26:00] themselves as another person dies. Yeah, definitely.
For me, that’s true. For me, that’s accurate. I’m the type of person that. It’s a few, but extremely good friends. I think all of us are like them. This is where we turn away from the hermit and start seeing value in, in other people.
Speaking of pulling from other traditions and learning from the past, you covered the prophet song. We’re
going to talk about that.
Why am
I going to talk about that?
Because you picked the fucking song.
For me, that was a simple matter of growing up with that song. I grew up with it at a time where I didn’t even speak English.
So for me, this is actually as a drummer, maybe that’s why I became a drummer. I connect to music on the more in terms of energy rather than lyrics. So I really can’t elaborate on songs like that because I have a personal connection to it, [00:27:00] but. I could not elaborate on the lyrics of the Prophet
song.
I don’t think anybody can.
Perhaps it can tie in with Black Moon, as I see some similar ideas there of people thinking the end is coming, paying attention to certain signs of life. Yeah, exactly. That
is true. Yeah, that’s actually very true.
I brought up the idea of covering it because of my personal connection to it. We weren’t inspired by the Prophet song to found the band, but it seems like this could have been us, what was it, 30, 40 years ago.
I don’t know.
Maybe not quite as good.
Maybe
not.
Yeah, but we’re working on it. Yeah, we’re trying.
And some other stories in your songs, you have Star Crusher. Oh, that
actually has a funny story. It’s a song that Evil wrote and I had no clue what story to put to it. Usually I instantly have images. I just listen to the riffs.
I listened to the rhythms and I see things. I see colors. I see. Pictures of things. [00:28:00] And I go with this impulses and I create something out of that. It’s really not a strained process. It just comes to me automatically, which is really cool. And if you have this infantile feeling of, Oh, I see things and I’m going to write a song about a tree or something.
And with Star Crusher, I had no idea. It would just empty. And then I asked Ivo, what should this song be about? It. And he said it should be about, what did he say it just an, a fairy.
Yeah, a fairy in space, destroying stars. Yeah,
and an angry fairy. And I added that she’s fat for some reason, and that she’s not really good at flying because of the weight.
And she’s just so pissed off that she wants to destroy all the stars so that the world’s gonna be dark.
That’s an interesting thing because in anger, many people can really be self destructive and harm [00:29:00] others rather than taking more productive approaches to fixing problems or conceptualizing ideas.
And on the other
hand, there is also anger as therapy as well, especially people that are prone to have panic attacks or, or anxiety. It actually helps to channel anger.
So perhaps in a more productive manner, rather than just wanting to destroy the world as the stuff that’s your mind. We have the song Water, you’re talking about beauty distracting from what’s real.
Perhaps we can have some idea of something being very good, but be deceived by it and let it stray. That’s pretty much on
point. Water is the intro to Fire, Wind and Earth, which is also one of the very early songs that we wrote together. There also just the images and the words came automatically. And I imagined this battle between the elements and that water is being cast [00:30:00] out.
In The Married Side Write, they created the world together and then there’s this huge war going on where water is the cast out element. And in the beginning, that’s like the calm before the storm, that’s how you can imagine it.
And maybe some competing forces that can be in our lives too, being drowned out by certain voices, certain people, certain emotions, or being under a stage dress.
Yeah, and I think
essentially the lyrics are Even if we’re a band, and even if we tell stories that can be interpreted by whoever wants to interpret it in a certain way, they’re still going to be autobiographical. They have to be. I see myself as water a lot of the times. If that’s been society or even with myself, I see myself as something cast out, something That is not on top with the rest.
And I’ve always [00:31:00] had this affinity to water. I love swimming. And here again, Heraclitus, who says pantare, everything flows. I’ve always had an affinity to, to water. And so I think that’s also where this came from.
It was the idea. I think he had of, you never step in the same river twice, that there is constant change.
Exactly. Yes.
And it fits all of our lifestyles. Yeah.
Yes, the interpretation, you could put out some of your own interpretations. Other people have their ideas and perhaps everyone can gain something from it in their own way. You recently released the meaning of the song Avalanche with a corresponding video.
She’s looking at me.
Avalanche is the you either love it or you hate it kind of song. You’ve seen the video, I assume. So you know that. The reason it’s so monotonous is because it has to be. It wouldn’t make sense to write a lot of lyrics to it, like a mantra. When we wrote it, the only lyrics were loud.
[00:32:00] Any type of lyric would have destroyed the vibe. I was searching for a story, and I found the story in the mountains by seeing avalanches, and then I just created a kind of wordplay with it. You don’t hear that well on the album, but I don’t always sing avalavavalanche. Sometimes I sing lalavanche and it’s dark and silly and it’s weird.
It’s just us, how we are. And this story developed out of it, of this. Weird, uh, suicide cult that lures people into the mountains and yodels to release avalanches to cover people in snow and frees them to death.
Some different stories throughout the album, and it reminds me of The Call of the Mountains, as, uh, when I saw you performing live in New York, it was the chorus that went on.
Oh,
probably in Swiss German.
Yeah, it was just the catchy tune throughout the lyrics there. And you’ll be coming back. You’ll be coming at least to Brooklyn. You’ll be back in the United States and you’ll be touring in Canada as well. Yes,
it’s about time. [00:33:00] Yeah.
Been touring the world and now finally to the States.
I think the only other song here is Hedonia. Can you talk a little bit about that? Oh dear. It’s
a very weird song and I was in a weird state of mind when I wrote it. Hedonia is a made up term of a fantasy world. It’s a hedonistic world. Everybody’s drinking wine, the sun’s shining all the time and the flowers are blooming.
And there’s a, this dreamer who doesn’t realize what’s happening because the world is actually ending. And everything is dying, the trees are turning to ashes, the sky is turning black, but he can still feel the sun and everything being fine. And it’s a weird song because it’s a really pathy, jumpy melody, but it’s It’s really dark and apocalyptic.
That’s interesting because Major Ethoic Theme is really questioning that which we value and just being careful in the realm of pleasure and [00:34:00] having a sense of moderation and not going too far into desires so that we end up destroying ourselves or being in a really bad spot in life as some obvious examples of some extreme drug use, alcohol abuse, people finding themselves in really bad spots.
But there is a case for pleasure in having the fun in life and having the joys, but of course, not letting it overwhelm us and be unable to function and do what we need to help others support ourselves as well. Yeah,
that’s exactly why I mentioned that I’m not a very good Stoic. It’s a matter of, for me, Stoicism, to a certain extent, is something I would like to attain at some point.
That’s why I write these lyrics. That’s why I’m interested in this philosophy, just being completely honest here, because I don’t think it makes sense to pretend to be something that I am not, but that is what drives my art and for me, stoicism is. Just one of many skills [00:35:00] that I want to train. I think I need also the other stats.
What drives me.
I think that’s an important part of what makes humanity, to use a big word. Is Anna, for me, is the quintessential artist. As she explained, she sees, she hears music, she sees images or colors or she comes up with a story. For me personally, it’s a matter of energy in a way that I could not put into words or image for that matter.
And for the philosopher, there is this eternal quest for understanding, finding true, searching for truth, understanding the world, improving the self. And I think it’s the combination of all of this that makes life worth living in a way. So I find this really interesting just to observe. All three of us, I think, agree that our music, when we put it out there, it should be to the listener.
It should be whatever the listener makes of it.
Yeah,
which is why I really like that podcast that you’re [00:36:00] doing and this talk today is an excellent example of us creating music, making energy flow in a way of Anna and visualizing it and making up these stories. And then of you, for example, finding meaning in it, and it makes sense.
We all connect to it.
And hopefully other listeners of the show can do that as well. Send their feedback on what they think of the lyrics and the conversation goes on. People are continually engaging with ideas in the way they know how. And going off what you said earlier, I like this approach, knowing ourselves, being aware of our strengths, our talents.
It’s a humble perspective and a good one to have, rather than people being unaware of what they’re good at. Maybe some areas. In which to improve setting goals. If we were thinking, Oh, we’re the best people in the world. We have it all figured out. That’s not an honest perspective, right? There’s always some sort of improvement and learning, and that’s a central theme within the stoicism.
Yeah, I think
a certain acceptance to what you are and the acceptance in [00:37:00] the end leads to control, having a certain control and being able to achieve stability when you want to achieve it. Because. Sometimes you just don’t. It’s interesting that we’re having the podcast today because I saw my therapist for two hours this morning.
And we were talking about that because I’ve been with him for years and he’s like a real Zen master and he’s been in meditation camps where you just meditate for 10 weeks and all that crazy. And I mean, I think it’s amazing. For me, meditation has probably healed me more than any kind of thing that pharmaceutical companies put on the market, but he actually changed his mindset over the years because when he first started working together, he said the main goal is to be stable and in control and meditate.
And he’s also changed a bit and we were talking about it today and basically the conclusion of it was, [00:38:00] no, you want to have inner peace and you want to be stable, that’s great, but there’s a lot of other things as well. And as long as you. Having acceptance and a kind of control over it. It’s completely fine.
It’s completely fine to be overdriven by emotions at times, you know, in the end, it’s what you want it to be. You don’t have to follow a certain ideology and just have to make it your own in the end. Without harming yourself and other people.
And I think it’s a strength of stoicism, especially in its modern form.
And what I’m seeing today, and even in the ancient times, in that it’s not, Oh, you have to accept everything, or we just won’t have you, or you can’t read these books, or you’re being excommunicated or anything like that. People are going to come with it, find what works for them, find what. Make sense for their life, maybe even reject some of it and say there are some good ideas here and we can look towards many traditions throughout the world.
Even Seneca quotes [00:39:00] people from rival schools in his time, particularly Epicurus, saying, OK, even this man has good ideas. It doesn’t matter really where the ideas come from, but rather if they are in accordance with reason, if they are a good place for our life, there’s a foundation behind it. A good reason to adopt the ideas.
Yeah. Absolutely. There’s also a certain open mindedness that you need, and to attain these certain skills. I like to look at it sometimes like a video game, you’re training different skills, and one of the skills also being angry, because anger is a powerful thing. And when, of course, when it’s utilized wrong, then it’s not a good thing, but anger can also be a very powerful tool as can.
Stability, all kinds of stuff. I
think it’s very much a matter of being aware of yourself and how you act and how you’re influenced by such emotions. To me, at least, that is [00:40:00] a big part of the appeal of stoicism is concept of clarity of understanding the disruptions and the emotions that drive you. And I find it fascinating talking to Anna, for example, that she said, like I talked about with her therapist this morning, for an artist, this is a very big thing to wrap their heads around because it’s art comes from emotion, but then not being able to control it and not having an awareness of how sometimes we’re driven by it can really lead to trouble.
So that kind of a fine balance for an artist to allow themselves to be driven by emotion, to create art. But then also to have that perspective and have that clarity about the fact that we are sometimes.
Yeah, the self reflection. This was really interesting and I hope that we could
contribute to the
podcast.
Absolutely.
Yeah. Thank you very much for having us. And this talk was great as were your previous podcasts. It’s a really cool thing that you’re [00:41:00] doing.
Yep. Thank you for sharing the content and for agreeing to come on today. And also if you’d like to direct anyone to any website, any resource, any information you’d like to give, you could feel free to promote that now as well.
Social media pages, websites, whatever upcoming tour dates. Well, as we said, we’re
coming to America. If you Google our name, you’ll find the dates. And if you come to the show, we’re happy to have a chat with anybody who would like to have a chat after.
We could have a philosophy VIP chat.
Absolutely. You’ll always find us after the show and we’re always happy to talk about it.
That would be
fantastic. Thank you.
Yep. Thank you so much for your time. Very generous. Speak
to you soon.
Bye.
Bye. There you have it. A very interesting and thought provoking conversation with members of the band Sour Darling. Visit SellerDarling. com to see upcoming tour dates, listen to their music, and find more information.
Thanks again to today’s guests, Anna Murphy and Merlin Sutter, for their generosity and having a very candid conversation. [00:42:00] Thanks for listening and stay tuned for future episodes. Early bird ticket sales for ZorkFest 2025, a Miles Points in Gambling event, are now live at ZorkFest. travelzork. com. I spoke at the successful ZorkFest 2024 event and hope to see you at ZorkFest 2025 in Las Vegas from December 5th through December 7th.
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