Indie-rock legend and front-person of HEARTLESS BASTARDS Erika Wennerstrom sits in on the Dirt from the Road podcast to talk about worst jobs before music, tripping in the amazon, and what happens after this life in a human body. Erika has a new single called "Revolution" available on all streaming sites.
EXCERPT: Check out some of our conversation below-
Brett: Let’s say reincarnation exists. What do you come back as?
Erika: Oh gosh, I have no idea.
Brett: You’ve got options. You can be a duck, a lizard, a muskie fish in Wisconsin?
Erika: Well, sometimes I have this feeling, because the family tree is such an important part of who we are, that some point, maybe not my very next life, but a later one, I could be a tree.
Brett: That seems like a good, sturdy option.
Erika: Even if at some point I get torn down, or there’s a forest fire, I’ll still get to plant some seeds.
Brett: The content of your branches and leaves, your carbon, would still go somewhere, definitely. You could get swept up in the wind, even. I like to believe you can get to steer the particles of your former self into a million different directions and pick where they go.
Erika: I do feel like it’s almost science that we will have something beyond. In science class, you learn about how energy can’t be created or destroyed, it just changes form. And we are very much energy. It feels inevitable for our spirits to move to something. Even if it’s just Earth, I don’t know.
Brett: Not to get too esoteric or dark, but death, or the next stop on the cosmic circuit, is that something you get excited about, or afraid of, or somewhere in the middle?
Erika: Somewhere in the middle. I think there are so many things I’d like to do and experience in this life, and I think some of my anxiety comes from wanting seizing the day, trying to do too much. And then I get down on myself when I don’t achieve these extremely high goals, and things I’d like to get done. The bar is high for me to get to, in terms of constantly being productive.
Brett: Does that backfire? Do you think it can make you work too much? How do you get off the hamster wheel when that happens?
Erika: Oh yeah, it does. I think it’s a bit of a balance. I think because our energy moves on to something else, I really do believe that there’s positive and negative energy and the more positive energy that I can work on, the more positive I can try to be, that’s important.
Brett: You’ve talked a bit about anxiety. Is there anything that you do consistently or routinely that is helpful for that, or that other people would find helpful
(FROM HERE, TWO OPTIONS: A: you can include the answer or B, which I like a bit better, put a “You’ll have to listen to the pod to hear Erika’s answer” or something like that)
Erika: I’ve been lately remembering to breathe deeply. I think that’s so important. It’s amazing how I get so caught up in my days, and lately I’ve been going on walks, and I just have these moments where I start breathing all the way down into my gut. Just really nice, good breaths. It makes such a big difference.
But I am a constant work in progress.
*HEAR THE FULL AUDIO ABOVE*
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*Erika has a new single called "Revolution" available on all streaming sites.
More on Heartless Bastards and Erika: https://www.erikawennerstrom.com/
