Since I began writing more regularly, I have been connected to many new and like-minded friends. And now that I have begun to feel more comfortable sharing the songs I have written at open mics, I have been making more personal connections as well. This is all very exciting to me. The depth of my depression that led me to quit my job and reorient my life around six months ago has been a portal to follow my dreams in a far more direct way, and now I am beginning to see my vision to manifest, which is amazing. Making all these new connections I feel I need to write an about me, which I know is kinda lame and uninteresting. But I am sometimes lame and uninteresting because when I get connected to an artist I appreciate, I will usually search for their “about me.” So if you are not already bored, bear with me, and I will try to avoid the traps and pitfalls that make self-promoting seem eye-roll worthy.
About Me
I grew up in Ann Arbor MI, went to a Waldorf school, an art-focused public high school, and a liberal arts college. I forget when, but at some point during my education years, I began to see that schools and teachers become lazy and teach students “what to think”, not “how to think.” “Art schools” are definitely guilty of this too. The problem is systemic. But I had enough good teachers on my path to give me a good, “how to think” foundation. During college at Warren Wilson in Asheville, my real education came from trying every psychedelic drug I could get my hands on: Mushrooms, Acid, DMT, San Pedro, Ayahuasca ect. Travelling also became a “psychedelic experience” for me. I hitchhiked from Chicago to New Orleans, and from there to Pheonix, Arizona one summer. I almost dropped out of school then, but ended up giving into my fear of the unknown and turned back. Another summer I travelled in India, Nepal and China, being attracted to India in particular from my interest in eastern religion and Buddhism.
I graduated, fell in love, and moved to the most different place possible from where I have lived in my sheltered years. Los Angeles has been my favorite and least favorite place I have lived at the same time. Maybe if I had been ready to give myself in completely to the psychedelic teachings, I would still be there. But after 5 years of trying, I decided it was impossible to follow my dreams, maintain a healthy relationship and pay for the high cost of living in Los Angeles all together. Probably I was just making excuses. I left Los Angeles, and left my girlfriend of 5 years, again for the most different place possible. I moved in with a friend from Ann Arbor who had moved to rural Northern Michigan where he had a vegetable farm with goats, chickens and medical marijuana. I sank deeper into my depression, until I gave in to realization that I had nothing to blame but myself. I quit my job as a landscaper, gave up alcohol, stopped eating processed food, and began focusing on writing, music, and living in the present moment guided by the understanding I had received from my psychedelic experiences.
About The Foggy Mirrors Project
The Foggy Mirrors project is the name I have given to my artistic work in music and writing. This title is based off the narrators name in The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I recommend everyone read it. The first chapter is narrated by someone describing their psychedelic experience and having the realization that soon he will forget everything that he has just come to understand, so he writes down the four agreements, to set a guideline for living by the teaching.
Experience In Activism
My first attempt at being an activist, I failed miserable, yet it was very eye-opening. At Warren Wilson while working in the vegan café, I learned the self-pride that we took in our student crews feeding the community from our own garden and farm was very much over-hyped and deceiving, and largely untrue. I decided that I would try to take on the effort of having our school boycott GMOs and Monsanto products. I presented my case to the rest of the crew members at a team meeting, and was met with silence. Most people couldn’t have cared less about Monsanto’s crimes against humanity, and I began to receive the “crazy-conspiracy theorist” treatment, so commonly used to gaslight and silence activists. Without any real supporters I lost motivation quickly, and didn’t change a thing.
My Only Political Stances
My attempt at activism was life-changing, though I didn’t realize it at the time, and it certainly paved the way for my escape to Los Angeles from the sheltered trap of liberalism. I don’t really consider myself an activist, because any one-word label always seems to come up short in providing any real description into whom a person is. But what I do believe is the truth will set you free, and truth must be discovered by each individual in his or her own way.
I choose not to engage in marches, single issues or political parties because these actions continue the mentality of following the herd, and create the illusion of separateness from people who look that the issue from a different experience. I wouldn’t be political at all if war was not an industry, and slavery had actually been abolished. But with consent for war and wage slavery being manufactured by political propaganda to make people of different descents seem less important to the point that we shrug when our country’s armed forces kill millions of people overseas in wars fought so the wealthy can further enrich themselves, my other main belief is that no one is really free until all people are free. My current activism is attempting to bring uncomfortable truths, like our countries reliance on slavery and war as profit-models, to light, so that liberals and conservatives can begin to see the strings from which they have been manipulated, set themselves free from the herd mentality, and unite under the banner of freeing ALL people.
Final Words
The one realization that really sticks with me from while I was in the pits of depression, is deciding that if I continued to live my life by the rules of others, I might as well be dead or have never existed in the first place. Yet there I was living and existing and feeling upset about everything I had to do starting with getting out of bed in the morning. I never became suicidal, but with constant refrain in my head, “well I might as well kill myself,” I knew that my life was not supposed to go this way. It became apparent though a number of synchronicities that I had no choice but to jump in fully and completely to following my dreams, or risk wasting my life away without joy where the high point of every day was being asleep. I do not consider myself depressed anymore.
Thanks for reading,
-Rain of The Foggy Mirrors Project
“Free your mind and your ass will follow, the kingdom of heaven is within.” –George Clinton