I was at an art gallery checking out the art and this guy walked out of a trap door in the wall and said, “You see what I did there?”
“Yeah, I do. And I bet you’ve got some stories.”
“I do, but first of all, let me say, it’s important for me to become a better person. Everybody has light and shadow. I like to get deeper in the good things because that’s the place to be.”
“Got it.”
“So in the 90’s I was running this club called Necropolis, named after the city of the dead. It was a goth industrial club, but then people started showing up in burning man costumes, rabbit costumes, the whole thing started to transform so the time came to leave the city and I moved out to the country to Fairfax to recharge in the forest for awhile. I was growing a bunch of mushrooms and learning that there’s something to be learned there. Then I decided that I was gonna brew some ayahuasca. I didn’t know any shamans, and you can get the stuff through the mail, so I did. The first time I saw some colors, it was cool. The second time about the same. The third time, I was sitting in the bathroom and these mandalas started coming up on the wall. Really intricate and beautiful. They looked like sri yantras. One would be all neon green or bright pink. I was feeling this open wildness. And I started feeling like I was somewhere. And mind you, you don’t lose your normal consciousness. We could have this conversation. Unlike mushrooms, you don’t lose your ability to communicate or think logically. You do become aware of other stuff. So I became aware of being in this Mexican palapa, these mamas were cooking food, and these dogs running around. But, I was still in my bathroom and there were still mandalas on the wall. Ayahuasca is called La Purga because it purifies you and I can feel the energy really starting to shift at this point. So I look down at my freckles and they had turned into all the stars. There was a lot of depth. If you look in a really good telescope into space, it doesn’t look flat, you can see the depth of space. So I was looking at the depth of space on my arm, and this leopard print started flowing over the top of all that. And I though, ‘This is great, I wanna check in with myself’. So I did, and I started to feel this something not right in my throat. So I knew I needed to get rid of it, so I threw up and this thing was all like ‘Ahahahhahhha’. It was talking and stuff. It was the energy of growing up in this dogmatic way of life, that preachiness. I flushed the toilet, and my voice changed, and it’s been different from then on. It’s been more resonant.”
“Whoa, that’s pretty far out. I haven’t done ayahuasca yet but it sounds pretty interesting.”
“I think the main thing to take away from it is that your teacher is inside of you, it’s just a matter of getting quiet enough to listen. When you’re quiet, spirit comes to you and says ‘Here’s a funny thing we’ve noticed about you’ and you have to look at that and let it go. With mushrooms you get these messages but then you have to come back and make some effort to change your life. With Ayahuasca it literally changes you in the moment. Then it’s your responsibility to hold that space from then on. It’s pretty radical therapy.”
“Well thanks for sharing that, can I share that on my blog?”
“I’d be honored. And thank you, you have a very earthy quality that just draws stories out.”
“Thanks for saying that, I’m an Aries sun, Libra moon, Libra rising so I tend to think of myself that way and not as an earthy presence but more and more people have been telling me I’m grounded so I’m opening to that.”
“Grounding is the other half of any mystical journey. Plugging what you learned into the real world. That’s how you bring real change.”

“Tell me about this jacket, it’s pretty cosmic.”
“As a person who’s done ayahuasca, you know there’s all sorts of beings around. You see a lot of beings all around us who’ve been here in physical form and haven’t left. And this is just a poetic thing, I’m not saying it’s literal. Having said that, when you journey you start to see that life is really thick around us, there’s a lot more going on than what we see. I love this because, there’s the earth with humans, but there’s all these other beings, and then there are all these other planets with funny aliens and dinosaurs. Wouldn’t it be like this if we could actually see all the habitable planets that exist through out all eternity. We can imagine atleast. It’s a celebration of life.”

“What else do you like to do besides psychedelics?”
Him – “I do a thing called Mystic Midway, we all dress up in crazy costumes and do this thing based on Alexander Jodorowsky ‘The Theater of the Marvelous’. When he does his readings he gets people involved in the theater. We start off by telling people’s story. So it’s the Mystic Midway and there are different entractions to the midway. For instance, there’s the hat of many closets, or Mr. Nobody’s voodoo swamp shack. We’ll do a puppet show and people draw cards, there are cards that ask you questions, but they’re questions about yourself. The intention is to get everybody to shake it off and come together. It works really well, the language of it is quite extraordinary. We did a box truck at night market where we got people to meet with Mr. Nobody and we explained that he’s here to eat your fears. So you tell your fears, and people are honest about it, and when someone isn’t honest people call them out. So it’s a moment of coming together and being real.”
“That sounds cool, when’s the next time you’re gonna do it?”
“The next time is at Treasure Island Music Festival.”