25 | Unfortunate Brain News

0:09Speaker 1:You're listening to a Live Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures and iHeart Podcasts.

0:15Speaker 2:My brain was broken. It was scary. Hi, my name is Dana Swanson. In twenty twelve, I had an aronal neoplasm very rare brain tumor in my brain. However, it was in such a position within my head that it was extremely difficult to diagnose and basically, I'm happy I'm here today. It was a high risk surgery. I'm a very intuitive person. I'm a very spiritual person, and another series of events led me to become an intuitive reader. I'm a medium, Akasha record reader. I do the cards, I do it all. I do a lot of channeling.

1:03Speaker 2:I'm not chosen. I'm not any of that. It's just everybody can do this. It's just like how do you tap in? And my favorite thing to do is to pull people's soul missions, which is like a thing you've done, and not just this life, but every life before, every life after. It's like the thing that's going to anchor you.

1:21Speaker 1:Welcome to a Live Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous accounts of human fragility and resilience from people. His lives were forever altered. After having almost died. These are first hand accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death. Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering for some listener, and discretion is advised.

1:58Speaker 2:I was so dead set on I need to tell people I love them. I need to get all this out of the way. I think part of that was when I was fourteen, my dad died of cancer, and he had that lead time to be like, Okay, we're gonna fight this, we're gonna fight this, we're gonna do this. And then when he realized, oh this is not going as planned, he didn't use those words, but you know, you realize that hospice care is coming in, and oh there's a bed that's now in the living room, like all that small stuff, and I think he knew that he had to say something before it got too dark.

2:36Speaker 2:He knew that he wanted to be able to express those emotions before it was too late. So I think I use that as a model of I gotta tell people I love them. I have to. I have to make things known that are important. I have such limited time with a functional brain that I want to ensure that everything gets on the page, everything gets handed off off. Honestly, I was a producer at heart. My dad was awesome. He used to do what I would call affordable field tripping, which we lived in Atlanta, and he would take us on Marta, which is the which is the rapid transit system.

3:24Speaker 2:So we just like ride Marta and be like, look what the conductor's doing, and then we go and watch the planes take off at the airport. He was very into like okay, like how do how do I educate? How do I do something on the cheap? He was super funny, very very beloved, funny guy. He had a nickname at work that was Uncle Lou, and I would be so confused. I was like, wait, Uncle Lou, what is that? Oh wait, whose uncle are you? But it was just because he felt like everybody's uncle that was him was He was hilarious. All I wanted to do was make my dad laugh. And so I think it's also why I I studied comedy and I really wanted to go that route of like, oh, all I want to do is make my dad left. All I want to do is make my dad laugh. I have no idea if I've achieved that, but at least gave me some purpose. And I think him passing when I was fourteen gave me that life direction of still all I want to do is make my dad laugh. So before I started to have problems talking, before my brain just took a dump. I don't know if that's appropriate to say.

4:42Speaker 2:I was thirty. I just turned thirty. I had an amazing thirtieth birthday. I was so excited. I was a writer producer at Adult Swim, writing promos and commercials and then occasionally providing voice work. I was writing songs from voice work done, so I got really into writing ridiculous songs and performing those live with what can only be described as a queer core band. I don't I have no other way to describe it, but it was a very like sexual humorous band, which you can look up if you want to. I'm not going to say the name.

5:22Speaker 2:We were doing really well and people loved us. Just won the Georgia Voice Awards Best Local Band. It was like very exciting. I was interviewing celebrities for my job and just getting to like fly across the country. To work on stuff, and I'd really felt like, oh my gosh, this is great, Like I'm making stuff, I'm getting to solve problems. All the time, I had felt like I'm my career is taking off. I'm finally in the place I want to be with my career. Everything felt great.

5:58Speaker 2:I was married and just happy. Everything's coming up, Dana. It just felt on point. Everything felt correct, and then my Saturn return hit. Some shit went down. I had injured my back from going too hard at Disney World and Universal Studios of Florida. You know, sometimes you go too hard at Universal Studios and Disney World and you wear those awful sketcher shape ups. Those messed up my back, y'all. So I had a bad back. I was on painkillers for those and kind of tapering off, and I just remembered being really hazy. So this was probably start of April twenty twelve. I just remembered being really hazy, and I just chalked it up too. I got those I got those painkillers. There was a night that I had two drinks and was just feeling fuzzy, and I just thought like, oh, that's funny. I've only had two drinks, like why am I so fuzzy? I remember laying on this meat wad bean bag that we used to have in our condo, and I couldn't tell my body to get up. I just remembered like laying and being like, hey, get a body, and body was like, no, we're good.

7:21Speaker 2:This is fine. Which when you tell your body to do something, even if it's like hey, just wave your arm, okay, and it does it. Okay. We have work in communication, but I just felt like the communication wasn't working, and I was like, oh, that's interesting. I didn't take those weird painkillers and I'm still hazy. So I was trying to relay the story the next day at work, and when I was like, oh, it's so funny, I couldn't Wow. I just couldn't get up from this band bag. I was trying to say that, but my voice started to do this, So I was speaking with this stilted robot, stuttering almost to where I knew what I wanted to say, but it wouldn't come out. So when we talk about the brain, sometimes it's word finding. I don't know the word.

8:12Speaker 2:I want to say, what's the word. Oh, But for me, it was the actual packaging and distribution of the word. I had the words and knew exactly what they were, but couldn't get them out of my mouth. My mouth was like, nope, we're good. We don't need to we don't need to say those. That was frightening. I called. I remember calling my doctor and my doctor was like, you're having a stroke, and I was like, what, I'm having a stroke. So I'm freaked out. And then that was what spawned my husband at the time and I going to the emergency room of like, I guess I'm having a stroke. I don't know, and then that adds more stress, and when your brain's not functioning well, I got to tell you that stress doesn't help it. I was just like I felt not quite catatonic, but I was definitely just in a daze of like I don't know which way is up, and I don't know I don't know what my baseline is anymore because this is so stressful. When everything was happening, and I realized that I couldn't I couldn't speak correctly, that the words were coming out weird or not coming out at all, my first neurologist diagnosed it as language seizures, and I was

9:33Speaker 2:trying to tell him things I did at my job, and I was like, yeah, I write and I produce, but I also, you know, sometimes I'll get on the mic and I sing and do all this stuff, and he was like, you might want to you might want to not do that, and hearing those words having somebody else tell me that it's not my choice was really hard. So having another person say like, yeah, you know, I know you occasionally do voices on aquitine, hunger fors and squidbillies, but maybe don't. And I felt like, oh, we have to keep this between us was what I felt like, like, oh, we can't tell everybody that I have to stop was part of my processing there. And I also noticed that certain words were hard to say, very emotional words hard to say. Being on Mike was such a big part of where I wanted to be. I wanted to be doing more voice work. I wanted to be speaking more on Mike. I wanted to be performing more. We were trying to record an album. I wanted to be on stage and be able to speak and be able to communicate clearly through speaking. But then also whenever I had to produce something, being able to be like, hey, this

10:42Speaker 2:is me and this is what we're doing, and just even that thing of like, hey, I'm the person in the room to look at, here's what's happening. Okay. I felt like I was being faced with death, death, and then the death of who I was. So as far as it being a long term life change, I think I was just trying to get through the next piece. So Okay, go see this doctor. Okay, now try this. Okay, now try this. Okay, now go to Houston. Okay, now schedule surgery. Okay, now have surgery. I think it wasn't until after surgery that the life change sunk in. Is just felt like what do you mean? What do you mean?

11:33Speaker 2:I have to take a lot of naps. But recovery is its own journey and everybody goes in different phases with that. But it was a long road to get to where I am today, which is I'll never be the person I was when I was thirty. That was a different person. I'm this person now and I like this person and that was its own journey too, of like, oh, I have to forgive that and I have to like who I am now and see the good things that I've done in the past twelve years that are different as far as that realization setting in of oh, things are going to be different. Now you're kind of just trying to keep your head above water until there's this quiet.

12:27Speaker 2:It's like when we're go go, go, go go, and you know, maybe we're working or at a convention or something, and it's go, go, go, go go, and then we get sick right after because your body finally has time to let everything catch up. It's like we put everything off of the adrenaline. Puts it off, puts it off, puts it off. So I feel like that that realization didn't set in until maybe after because I was so concerned about, well, I might not be here, So dealing with that of Okay, what happens if I'm not here?

12:57Speaker 2:Number two, what happens if I can't function? The recovery process of having an eight hour brain surgery. So my surgery was done on what was called an MRI suite. I was on one of eight in the country where they're using an MRI to find where your issue is, and that's where they discovered I had a neuronal neoplasm and rare are air brain too, where they have no idea how it behaves. But it's chill so far. So I'm on that tip. I still have some in there.

13:45Speaker 2:So that also was part of it, was I wake up from this surgery and you're high in anesthesia, y'all. Like anesthesia is its own thing. People breakdance, people do weird stuff. But I remember looking like Toad from the Mario Brothers. They put you in this giant it's it's a turban, but it's like a very pronounced turban, so it's not like, oh, it's like this nice turban and it's it, you know, looks like something you'd see somebody wearing. Now this is its own thing where it's like extra gauze.

14:16Speaker 2:It's just it's large. It's a large turban. And I had that on and I remember looking up and seeing my partner and just like I he told me that I made out with him, which is like my mom's there and he is there, and I'm like, oh, like just gross, gross tongue out in front of my mom, Like not cool, not cool, But like it's so hard because you can like sit there and tell yourself, hey, when you wake up, you might be an asshole, like you could do that, but you just you have no function when you wake up. Okay, so brain surgery is wild.

15:00Speaker 2:They the day after they make you get up and walk around part of the deal. So I was doing laps and part of like one of our landmarks was what we called puppy corner because there was like a little puppy puzzle that somebody was doing and so we're like, hey, it made it past puppy corner. Keep going. They have you up and walking because they want to make sure that your mobility is still in check and that nothing is off that way, so check that. Let's see they oh, day I think I might have been day three. They took the bandage off and then you kind of see like, okay, I have this giant head scar, which I thought it might just be this little when I my hairdresser was like, oh, I know somebody had brain surgery. It was just like this a little like made that little noise and like it's what she was showing me was it was like a tiny, little, maybe centimeter scar in the back of her head. And I was like, that's what I'm going to have. And I remembered my sitting with my surgeon and I just felt his finger or start from the top of my forehead, so right where a widow's peak would be, and then drawing all on the side down

16:10Speaker 2:by my ear, and I was like, girl, that is a seven inch train. That is much larger than what my hairdresser would refer to as like it was much larger. So even just like that of like having to see the scar, there's all these staples, it's very it's your face. So then you're like, my face is different, even my hair is different. The whole thing's different. But it's I'm alive and that's working. So I have this giant head scar and for the first week or two, they don't let you wash it yourself. You have to have somebody else wash around it because they don't want the staples getting wet. It's a whole thing. So I remember my nurse being like, you get to go to the beauty parlor today. And for those of us who are assigned female at birth, it can be like oh wow, yay, like that might be something we grew up with and that's exciting and or people want you to be excited about it. So I just remembered being like, okay, cool, let's do that. So we go down and it smelled horrific because of just my nose is so sensitive and I'm just smelling shampoo and conditioner. And I don't think they had nail polish there, but it smelled like they

17:24Speaker 2:probably should have. But it was so strong, all these things that seemed so innocuous. When your old factory nerve is pissed off, all of a sudden become your world of this is so disgusting, Like this is so gross. When when is this over? I remember telling a friend of mine that being in the hospital it's war, and surgery was war. That's how I felt about it. And yeah, I remember that being a tough part of recovery, of just being in the hospital, my days of being in the hospital, and I remember telling people it's war. Being in the hospital is war, which is not, but that's that's what it felt like. So then getting home, something they didn't tell me until after surgery was hey, you can't lift more than five pounds right now, so don't do that. For three weeks, we had friends come and feed the cats if my partner was at work, because I was so afraid of tripping over them. They were sharks, man, they just want to get underfoot. I was really tired.

18:28Speaker 2:I just remember being really tired for a long time. I tried to I was so bored that I went back to work earlier then I needed to. They gave me six weeks off. That was what my surgeon said, was you can take six weeks off. And I was just so ready to get back to what I knew that I was like three and a half weeks, let's go. I remember we were eager to get back on recording and making stuff for this album that a friend came in to record and I was engineering in the vo booth, and I just remembered being like, I have to nap now, I am done, and falling asleep at the computer, like I hope we got that. Having a brain tumor, having surgery recovery, the recovery from all that just taught me how to slow down and how to be okay with slowing down. And I still feel like that took me years of being okay with slowing down. I eventually got to where my energy levels are good. I'm in a much better spot with it now. I still have side effects from tumor from surgery. I'm a different person. I feel like I used to be this very loud, lively, goofy person, and that would just be quick, like I'm gonna jump on what you're gonna say. We're gonna like

20:05Speaker 2:riff and have a good time, very playful, and I felt like I had to learn a new way to play. I had to learn all about food sens activities. And I worked with a naturopath group for a while and loved it. I found really wonderful community through it. But then the hard thing is people go, and then you have survivor's guilt of why did this person pass and not me. That's a piece of recovery that I don't even know how to talk about, which is you make friends that are going through something similar, or you coach friends of friends that come to you for advice, and you support and you provide resources where you can. But then when if they don't make it, or their situation doesn't turn out for the best, if they die, or if they are rendered very different, rendered into a position where they're now really not themselves, you have a lot of guilt. I wanted to start recording and sharing my process because I was so terrified of the rumor mill.

21:30Speaker 2:I wanted whatever my journey was, I wanted that to come from my mouth. I wanted to be able to control the narrative. As some publicists say, I think I was dead set on getting the information correct. And also for me, I felt that it was easier to do that than to like sit twenty people down and tell them here's what's going on. So I made videos so I could speak about what my process was as myself. And then I also was so tired and so disorganized. My thoughts were so disorganized that I wanted to be able to put them on video, edit, organize, like here it is. It was definitely twofold, and I put it on YouTube. I put my first videos on YouTube called Unfortunate Brain News, and I think I entitled the first one Unfortunate Brain News number zero zero one because I was like, I don't know how long we're going to be talking about this, so I kind of just made it like this could be one hundred episodes, Like that's kind of When I think back to that, I'm like, that's really ambitious.

22:44Speaker 3:I was having weird problems Wednesday night. I thought maybe I was just drunk. I'm tired, but I couldn't get it from my bean bag chair or tell my husband Chris, what was going on. It was a little weird.

23:03Speaker 2:And then I went into work to try to just do whatever.

23:06Speaker 3:And I was talking with my boss, who's also one of my best friends, and telling him, yes, weird thing happened. Maybe I was drunk, and uh, it started happening again.

23:20Speaker 4:So I went to the emergency room with my husband and we were there for seven hours, and it was like an episode out of Children's Hospital. After a cat scan in an MRI, they found a spot in the same place. I don't have a picture to show you in this episode, but it's.

23:45Speaker 3:Behind my cave man lobe. There's a little spot behind my sonus cave man lobe when they discharged me.

23:57Speaker 2:A piece I didn't expect was finding community through it and finding other people who were like, hey, I found your videos. Come into this group. It was so nice to be able to find other people going through similar stuff. I tried to make them funny, because that's just my nature is how do I find the balance between silly and serious, because there's this very serious thing that's happening to me, and I would get real serious on those. But I also wanted everybody to know that my sense of humor is still here and I'm still intact, and there was I think a big part of my identity.

24:33Speaker 2:I remember the most important thing I ever read. It was a comment there was something to the effect of my son has a brain tumor. I'm up all night trying to find resources and information and your videos made me laugh. Thank you, And I was like, if nothing else comes out of these that felt so important, and it felt like, Okay, this is bigger than me, these videos are bigger than me. I felt really driven by that, and it also made me realize whenever I was doing it gave me a lot of purpose. Because if I was doing something in my life or working on something and I'm like, listen, nothing's gonna does this top that comment?

25:26Speaker 2:Like does this top somebody finding a place to rest after having a really awful day of trying to research what's going on with their child? That really fuels me. Now, that feeling and that purpose have fueled me in a new way, and I love it. I'm a very intuitive person. I'm a very spiritual person, and when I moved to La, another series of events led me to become an intuitive reader. I'm a medium, akashak record reader, I do the cards to do it all. I do a lot of channeling.

26:09Speaker 2:Part of it is I realize, oh my god, so many people, so many people are afraid of intuitive work because they're like, oh, what a scam. It's a scam. It's a scam. And then you're like, you know what's a scam? Mlfs, this is a scam. So I try to make things as affordable as possible with what I do, and if someone's just looking for answers, you just realize how tough it is. Especially I think I work with a lot of people that have animals. You're gonna get the five hundred dollars diagnosis, so you're gonna go spend thousands of dollars on stuff. So part of what I do is like, all right, what do you actually need to do? What needs to happen here? What's the deal?

26:48Speaker 2:So I definitely try to help people figure out if they need to spend five grand on a course or on something for their pet because of that, as of like, I'm so desperate, what do I need to be doing. I was a senior writer, producer. I was a super creative person, constantly every year getting a little better with my health. Which was very exciting. So my partner and I were kind of hitting a like, I don't know, I don't know if this works, Like we're we're hitting that and nothing wrong with it. Just sometimes two people grow apart, and it was that part was super hard for me, not only because he's a great person, but also I felt so indebted to him. It was wonderful.

27:37Speaker 2:It was so nice to have somebody. So you have that piece and then you're like, oh am I gonna find anybody ever again, who's gonna put up with my with my soup of what my brain is doing, and that risk of I don't know. I might have twenty more years, I might have thirty more years, I might have two months. I don't know, like of having that, I don't know what my brain's gonna do. I need to I need to see what else is out there. I got to try something else. That's terrifying. Moving to another cities terrifying. I lived in Georgia for thirty seven years.

28:11Speaker 2:I had a wonderful job. I lived in the same state as my mom. It was just that thing of like, uh oh, buddy, I just felt this pull of it's time to move. So I moved from Atlanta to Los Angeles March twenty nineteen. I decide, I'm going to give myself a year to kind of see what it's like to be freelance. I'd also for most of my adult life, I'd had a career. I had had a corporate job that afforded me amazing health insurance, and I was getting a paycheck. So then all of a sudden, Uh, oh, I'm going to a new state. I don't know if I'm going to get health insurance. I don't know if I'm going to have a paycheck. I don't know how this is all going to work. Was terrifying, Absolutely terrifying.

28:57Speaker 2:Had a childhood friend reach out and just like in insist on reading for me, and I was like, okay, cool, yeah, buddy, Like let's do it. She sits me down. I'm like, oh, I'm so excited to see her, and talked in a while. She's in Atlanta, I'm here in Los Angeles and we're talking over FaceTime. She's like, sit down, and then she proceeds to read me a three page letter from a spirit who basically was telling me things I said at my dad's grave. So it's probably my dad, and it was it was wild. It was this whole thing of I just felt like, oh my god. I had avoided talking to my dad through readings because I think I had when I was a kid, and just it was so generic that I I was like this, I don't know if that's my dad, Like I don't know, I don't know, And so I just avoided it because it made me upset. So oh, this was just like boom, I'm here, by the way, you can do this. I was like, I haven't heard from my dad since I was fourteen, Like, yeah, let's go. At the time it was twenty four years. I was like, I, yeah, how do I talk to my dad? I got obsessed with how do I how do I channel? How do I talk to spirits? Like what are the gifts? What are

30:28Speaker 2:my psychic gifts? Like how does this all work? I took a lot of classes, I practiced a lot I and then I did a program where I actually started reading for people. I was just going to write a script with my dad and call that it like we did it, we write a script. That's fun. But instead I wound up reading for people. The hook for me was, oh, here's the thing you want to be doing. What do you need to do to get it to happen? How do I take this work which is very, very otherworldly and then like bring it down to what you're going through right now. I also really love teaching people how to use their own gifts, because everyone's got them. I think everybody goes through stuff we don't know about. So I'm in a city where people kind of have reintroduced themselves a lot, like you don't know my past life.

31:22Speaker 2:You don't know who I am, Like you don't know past life in the sense of like I had a career well before this and a life and friends before this, and so you're meeting me today now. I think everybody has stuff like that in their previous, previous work, previous whoever they were. Even if you're twenty and your elementary school friends remember you way differently than your high school and college friends. Like even if you're even if you're young and you're listening to this, everybody knows us from different worlds. So for me, it's part of it's like, yeah, this is my different world is I think of it that way. But it also gives me a lot of empathy for everybody's gone through something we don't know about.

32:00Speaker 2:I have people that I know now that find out about my brain surgery and they're like, what are you talking about? So it's that that's a big piece for me, is like you just don't know what somebody's gone through. You have no idea. And same with losing my dad at a young age. I don't know. I don't know who's gone through that. I don't know who's gone through, what kind of losses or what kind of situations people have done. And so it reminds me to always keep that door open to like, there's something else to this person, There's something else in their life, There's something hard they had to do. Because we're humans, we all have battle scars, like we all have things that we've had to do.

32:48Speaker 2:They are hard, and if you haven't, then I'm waiting for it to happen to you. I think that being kee in as a mixture of free will and fate, and if it ain't, I don't want to.

33:33Speaker 1:Welcome back. This is a Live again joining me for a conversation about today's story or my other alive again story. Producers Lauren Vogelbaum, Nicholas Dakowski, and Brent Dye and I'm your host, Dan Bush.

33:45Speaker 5:All Right, this is.

33:46Speaker 1:Dan Bush and I'm in the studio with Lauren Vogelbaum, Brent Dye, and our story producer for Today, Nicholas Dakowski.

33:53Speaker 5:Hi, I'm Nicholas Dakowski. I'm our story producer.

33:58Speaker 1:Let's talk about Dana.

33:59Speaker 5:Yeah, Data, I have known for years. They are one of the funniest people I've ever met. They have always been really quick on the uptake, really charming. They make weird art. They are They've produced for Adult Swim for a number of years. They are the voice of Sarah and Tunami. They're like really well established artists. And years and years ago, as I was just kind of first getting to know Dana, they went through this thing and all of a sudden, there were these videos called weird brain News kind of pumping out, and I was aware of those at the time. I watched a handful. This wasn't a person I knew particularly well, but they were talking about this thing in this incredibly charming, very open, honest kind of way. And we're also really really fucking funny, just really funny. And Yeah, when we first started reaching out to people for this show, the first person I thought of was Dana. This was my very first interview and it was easy peasy. It was just like, here's this person who has a really great grasp on this thing that happened to them, and uh yeah, and they just tell it really, really well. It's a very It

35:22Speaker 5:was a very just as a producer who's never done this kind of thing before, it was like a gimme.

35:28Speaker 6:I mean, it's pretty cool to make your first interview someone who is a storyteller.

35:32Speaker 5:Oh my god, I mean, yeah, good looking out and listen the amount of the amount of just like incredible jokes that I had to cut to streamline the story because the initial interview was like an hour and a half.

35:46Speaker 1:I want to hear more about the Unfortunate Brain News because I haven't. I've never heard that.

35:51Speaker 5:It started as a way to tell friends and family in one go what was going on. You know, when something really bad happens to you, Uh.

36:03Speaker 6:Right, numbers you have to make is exhausting.

36:06Speaker 5:Like going like you're you know, going through divorce or a death in the family. Everybody wants to talk to you. Everybody wants to talk to you, everybody wants to hear the story and you reach a point, like a saturation point real ely on with that. And so Dana, who is a voiceover artist and a writer and a producer, was like, well, why don't I just use my skills to just put out this.

36:35Speaker 6:You know, you want to hear the story go to you.

36:39Speaker 5:So you'd get you get a text from a friend, or you'd get a you'd get a phone call, and you would just pass along this information. You know, it's like, hey, here, this is what's going on right now, and you post it on your social media and and everybody gets to kind of see it on mass But it turned into this thing that was it started as something for friends and family, but other people on YouTube who are looking up information about similar problems would find this and start following Dana and would and would start reaching out to Dana and and sort of forming a little bit of a community based around these videos, and Dana gets into it some that you know, it was it was a blessing to find this community. And also at times, you know, there were people that didn't make it, so it was there was this bittersweet thing to It's like I get to talk about this and I get to commune with these people. But I also kind of have to the flip side of that is that I meet people who aren't going to be around, who aren't going to make it, or who aren't going to be the same person.

37:49Speaker 6:I mean, it's it's a heightened version of the human condition. I mean, that's the danger in all kinds of connection and communication.

37:57Speaker 2:And that's why it.

37:57Speaker 6:Can be so seductive to just want to be like, why don't I just sit on my couch and disassociate for a while.

38:03Speaker 5:Well, I'm not gonna let people close.

38:05Speaker 4:Yeah.

38:06Speaker 1:So it starts off, so she's trying to control the narrative sort of before the rumor, you know, factory starts. But then it becomes this thing where she's actually able to use her voice to help all these other people. Yeah, and and sort of indirectly, her art did what all artists most want to ever fucking do, right, which is to actually, you know, have an influence over people in a positive way or be or you know, be a you know, a focal point or a point of reflection so that people can then that's just so cool, man.

38:39Speaker 5:Yeah, and coming from a place where they're really scared of what the future is going to be and they're really scared of whether they're going to.

38:47Speaker 1:Be being honest about that and vulnerable with that.

38:49Speaker 5:And Yeah, I think a lot of artists, or a lot of people in general, you know, when they're in their worst moments, think like I I've never done anything good, I've never been able to like I don't have a positive effect on the world.

39:03Speaker 2:What mark have I left?

39:05Speaker 5:But and Dana got to experience this idea that like, even these small things that we do can have echoes outward.

39:15Speaker 7:Like it sounds cliche, but even if it's just one person, like that comment that woman left. I think if I spent my entire life making art and got one comment like that, it'd be worth it. You made it easier for one persistence made this easier for me.

39:31Speaker 1:Yeah. A film professor told me, like talking about trauma and your own experience in your art, you can't make it right by making it art, Dan, But in this case, Dana, you can't.

39:43Speaker 5:You can't make it right by making it art, but you can help other people.

39:47Speaker 1:Yeah.

39:47Speaker 3:Right.

39:47Speaker 5:You know, there's there's a comedian that I follow on on Instagram. He is He's got this like really raw grungey, like almost nihilistic kind of humor.

40:04Speaker 6:Don't know why you would like that.

40:05Speaker 5:Yeah, I've got a type. But he's somebody that he'll just pop up on my Instagram. He's not super famous, but he's like established. He'll pop up on my Instagram every once in a while and it's just like I'll get a good laugh out of it. And sometimes on a bad day when you're doom scrolling, you just have somebody like make that joke that just like gets you in the gut. But he also struggles from severe depression. It's very clear because every once in a while he'll post a story that's like, what does it fucking matter?

40:39Speaker 5:And every time I see him do that, he does Nobi fucking Adam. But every time I see him do that has happened two or three times now. I'm like, dude, you I know what you're going through because I go through it too.

40:50Speaker 1:M m.

40:52Speaker 5:But like, you have given me bursts of relief at hard moments, and I want to let you know that, like is like, at least I know it's not just me. But but if I'm speaking out, you've done this for other people. Yeah, yeah, and I think it's I think that that's meaningful and I think when something touches you, you should reach out. I think that going back to stuff that we were speaking about earlier today, we were talking about we're talking about how the internet can be dehumanizing.

41:25Speaker 5:We can talk. We were talking about how you can see something that pisss you off and you're just gonna go at it, You're just gonna tear down.

41:31Speaker 1:But here's the flip side of that.

41:32Speaker 5:But here's a flip side of that. We also have the opportunity to use that that tool of what is normally a tool of destruction to do something good, to touch other people's lives, and when they touch our lives, we can we can reach out and say, hey, this was important to me. What you do is important to me.

41:54Speaker 2:Yeah.

41:55Speaker 7:But I think it's kind of like Aaron Ralston's story where she's speaking from a point of vulnerability and she being very real, honest about what she's going through, which kind of cuts through the bullshit of And again, you can't create those moments, you know what I mean, Like, you.

42:09Speaker 2:Can't not if you're too hard, right.

42:11Speaker 7:It has to come from a real place to connect like that.

42:13Speaker 4:Yeah.

42:14Speaker 8:Right.

42:14Speaker 6:It also just speaks to how like on a larger level, as we're going about our daily lives, what we do matters, you know, like the communications that we put out there, the just the way that you move through public space, because you never know how what you put out is going to affect other people and who is going to interact with that, you know, and so if you put good, weird, friendly, caring stuff out there, you don't know who needs it. But sometimes it finds just the right person at just the right time.

42:46Speaker 1:It's funny too, because in this sort of state of affairs that we're in right now politically and socio politically happening, you know, a lot of us are very scared, and a lot of us don't, you know, if the future seems uncertain, and sometimes it feels like there's like there's no room. We should all be rebellious, we should all be in the streets, we should all be fighting, we should all be you know, sort of how dare you have a joyous moment when others are suffering? But in this light what you're saying, Lauren, about what you're putting out in the world, it's almost like we have a responsibility to you know, not just good vibes only man, but like right, but like to be a source of authenticity and also to be able to laugh at it in some way and to find a light in the darkness is so important.

43:31Speaker 5:Honestly, I think that the reason good art comes out of adversity is I think because adversity forces you into a certain understanding of the human condition. Yeah, and I think that I think that you can take good and bad things away from that. I think some people allow adversity to make them bitter and angry, and I think that some people it opens up their lives. It opens it opens up the world for them, and it makes them feel more grounded and connected to the world. And that was clearly something that that Dana, you know, went through.

44:11Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm excited for I will say I I thought about, you know, sort of this time period that we're going through. I'm sorry to take it back.

44:18Speaker 5:Oh no, no, no, no, all I think about, but.

44:21Speaker 1:I'm like, I kind of have this thought the other day. I was like, I bet we're gonna have some really fucking good art. I bet there's going to be some really interesting new artists that are going to kind of rise out of this adversity and some new voices that are going to be you know, the next Bob Dylan or whatever right is going to come because of because of this sea change, you know.

44:43Speaker 7:Nice we got some new politicians out of it.

44:46Speaker 5:Well, gotta have a revolution. First.

44:50Speaker 7:We did get Timothy Chamalat as our new Bob Dylan Shallow. I was interested in their whole past life medium reading thing.

45:09Speaker 6:Can I jump in just a tiny bit on that one?

45:11Speaker 2:You take great?

45:11Speaker 1:Yeah? Yeah, So you've got to think outside of your Western box that you've been, you know, imprisoned in Nick.

45:18Speaker 5:I refuse, I refuse to think of anything beyond my experience.

45:23Speaker 2:I like my box.

45:24Speaker 5:It's smelly in here, but it's my smell.

45:27Speaker 1:Consciousness is non local. You got to get past consciousness.

45:31Speaker 5:I don't know about that, man.

45:33Speaker 2:So I'm really okay.

45:39Speaker 5:I do want because I do want to address that, but I don't know.

45:45Speaker 2:So thanks guys, no pressure.

45:48Speaker 6:So I am really fascinated by Dana's spiritual transformation. And they don't talk a lot about how they felt before all of this occurred. But you know, like, of course you go through a brain tumor sit situation, and like you are going to reevaluate your place in and connection to the universe. And furthermore, I'm fascinated by the fact that she kind of did it through performance, because like she goes from in her life from performing connecting with people in stage shows and on broadcasts to these very personal, intimate performances, And like, I've got friends who dabble in taro and other forms of divination, And when you do a reading for someone, it is absolutely a performance, but one way you're working with the other person to create a meaningful interpretation of the cards or whatever signs and signals you're looking at. Whether I think that there's any great power behind and any kind of like universal with a capital you sort of sort of stuff going on in those cards, I'm.

46:57Speaker 2:Like, Eh.

46:58Speaker 6:But as people who you know, try to parse together this weird world that we're in and find signals and find patterns, I think that that can be a very useful.

47:09Speaker 5:Tool to help form, to help people form the narratives that they need to exactly to be okay exactly. And I agree with you, I absolutely agree with you on that, whether you believe in this kind of stuff or not, a medium is somebody who helps you understand the narrative. Life is not just a series of unconnected events happening to you. You can create your story and live in that story and and change the world for you will. Yeah, yeah, it allows you to. It allows you to structure your brain.

47:43Speaker 5:That's why we read books, That's why we have religion. I mean, like, there's all of this stuff. It allows us to understand the world that we live in. And and because it's not just some random nightmare hellscape of like just things that happen in the world's people act on the world. We can act on the world.

48:04Speaker 7:Did you just did Nick Tikoski say that life is not just a random collection of a healthscape.

48:08Speaker 5:But here's the thing. I'm not a I'm not a I'm a nihilist in the sense that I think nothing matters except for the things that we attribute value to. And I and I think that that's.

48:23Speaker 1:A creative process. Do you know what I mean by that?

48:26Speaker 5:What creating our narrative?

48:28Speaker 1:Yeah, we're creating reality when we create our native that is free will, and that is.

48:32Speaker 6:The future is what we make it. Terminator too, let's go.

48:35Speaker 5:Right, Well, which is why I think that, like, like nihilism in the best sense is is you know, there is no value except what we attribute value to the negative sense is always like nothing fucking matters. I'm gonna do what the fuck I want. Yeah, that's not that's not healthy, that's not smart, that's not good for you or anybody. Yeah, but I think that the taro. I think horoscopes. I think that.

48:59Speaker 7:I mean, I'll even say, as a Christian, I think religious stories. You know, there's the Christian belief that they literally happen, and there's the Christian belief that they're allegory, you know, but they they they pull us into a collective truth. Whether you can get that from a set of Tarit cards or from a different religion, or from no religion or a TV show. I think that's all possible. I got it through rock and roll as a teenager, you know. I got my door to the universe by listening to Bob Dylan, you know. So whatever can help you align with that greater force is Yeah, it's great.

49:33Speaker 5:And I think that as long as it's not I think that there's something insert your thing you're against here. As long as it's not it's not those As long as not those dirty hippies. I don't know, man, I think that there. I think that that the idea of mediumship, of of of the oracle, of of the person who takes the job upon themselves of helping people navigate this life. Yeah, I think it's I think there's a high value to that, to the guides, whether you believe in their methods or not.

50:13Speaker 5:I think there's a lot of value in people who are earnestly trying to selflessly help others through the world. I think that's where it gets sticky with religion, like a lot of organized religions, because people and you know, mediums who just are telling people what they want to hear so they'll get money, right, there's absolutely a way to abuse that. But I think that Dana is one of these people who's genuinely, like lovingly trying to help guide people through a world that they struggled themselves through for a long time. Also, Dana's fucking awesome. Dana's awesome.

50:51Speaker 7:I will say her personality is bubbled through this podcast. I just loved spending time with her.

50:56Speaker 5:I've really I just I could have just like left the hour and a half uncut and we just we just talk about random shit and it's just a delight.

51:06Speaker 1:Yeah.

51:06Speaker 5:So Dana Swanson you're welcome.

51:09Speaker 1:We can put some jokes back in.

51:10Speaker 5:Yeah, well, Dana Sanson look them up. Just have a talk. Have a talk, Dana. Dana knows where it's that man. Dana's good people and a brilliant artist.

51:24Speaker 1:Next time on Alive Again, we hear the story of Maggie Slepian, who nearly drowned during a kayaking trip.

51:31Speaker 2:How long can a human body survive without breathing? I can't think of any other.

51:36Speaker 8:Time that you're about to die, where you have just a few minutes left and you know it. I have grappled with what it means to have survived and why I went.

51:50Speaker 2:On the river in the first place.

51:52Speaker 1:Her journey through PTSD and self acceptance is a powerful tale of personal reckoning. Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent Die, Nicholas Dakoski, and Lauren Vogelbam music by Ben Lovett, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick and Trevor Young. Special thanks to Alexander Williams for additional production support. Our studio engineers are Rima L. K Ali and Nomes Griffin. Our editors are Dan Bush, Gerhart Slovitchka, Brent Die and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez. I'm your host, Dan Bush.

52:32Speaker 1:Special thanks to Dana Swanson for sharing her story. Alive Again is a production of I Art Radio and Psychopia Pictures. If you have a transformative near death experience to share, we'd love to hear your story. Please email us at Alive Again Project at gmail dot com. That's a l I v E A g A I N p R O j E c T at gmail dot com. Don't don't do