Zev Le Wolfe

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Welcome to synchronicity. My guess this week is Zeb LaWulf. Zeb, I met up here a few weeks ago, a few weeks ago, a few months ago. Couple months ago, I don't know. Time's an illusion, who knows? But we met up here recently. He's a neighbor of mine, unbeknownst to me. And when he first hit me up, he is running a really cool place called Dreamland over in Myelin, New York. You'll hear all about it in this episode. He's also one half of the groove. Groove, that's not how you say that word. One half of the group, oof, talking is tough today. One half of the group, Wolf and Lamb, which is an electronic music duo, DJs, producers, you'll hear about that in this episode too.

More importantly, he's a really, really nice guy, really cool, I'm super happy to have connected with him up here. The Hudson Valley, we were discussing it a little bit off air is really a, it was quite a cool place. I gotta say, I am constantly reminded when I walk outside every day, how much I love just the environment of the place, but there's some whole people up here too, you know? Not just for the city goers who want to get away from the hustle and bustle, it's got its own perks and its own right. Anyway, we get into that a little bit in this episode too. This episode is about so many things that are close to my heart, not the least of which are, are, is community.

And there's something that's going on and I keep alluding to it in this episode, you'll hear it quite a bit, is a lot of people I know are in the processes, processes of starting up, I don't wanna call them communes, but shared living places on property that is not the idea of this kind of old hippie commune, but kind of intentional communities where it's like, you know, we see what the system is out there, is there a way we can kind of pull together and make something work for ourselves? You know, not in an exclusive way, but in something it's like, you know, maybe we don't wanna be getting into a tremendous amount of debt for a house that, you know, we only fill up, you know, 10% of at any given time, depending on how big our family is, maybe that's not for us.

So there's a lot of different options that are emerging, but I've been seeing and having conversations with a lot of people who are well along their way. There's obviously Zev here who has this up and going, they have houses on the property, it's really cool, I've been there, but I have other parents who are working with indigenous communities down in South America who are building kind of havens there for cultures and populations to kind of, you know, not get sucked up into the capitalist kind of Western culture but not that it's necessarily bad but often it's a destructive force. And then other people who are building or intending on building things around this country, kind of aligned with that.

And then also of course, you know, some of our former clients and guests on the show, Roshi Joan Halifax has Yupaiya Zen Center, which, you know, obviously has not a religious, but kind of a monastic aspect to it because there are monks and there are Zen practitioners there and Abbots, but, you know, these institutions that are kind of serving a higher purpose. And that doesn't have to be some high-handed, you know, lofty kind of grandiose. We're gonna change the entire world type of thinking. That could be a part of it, of course, in healthy amounts. But really, it's about coming together for some shared purpose that you believe in and with other people who believe in the same thing.

You know, this obviously doesn't make any of these things immune from the regular challenges that people face in the society we normally live in, in our culture. But obviously it puts a little more freedom into our, you know, domain in terms of what, choosing what we wanna be doing and how we wanna be doing it. So I'm always a big fan of that. And it's really inspiring to see people like Zeb do that. So that's a big part of this. We also get kind of nerdy about some music stuff 'cause we've been around the electronic music scene, back in the day, in the late '90s to now. And it's changed so much since then.

So it's always fun to talk with people who've been around since then. Now I'm at the point where I go and meet people. I'm talking about electronic music. And they be like, oh, you've been listening to a way long time. I'm like, oh God, I'm actually getting to old person status and some of this stuff. So that was really fun to end not the least, one of the topics that you'll hear come up multiple times is Zeb has had cancer three times. And has quite the story related to surgeries, eventual healings, kind of things he did to take it upon himself to figure out what was going on with his body and kind of the connection of what he was doing and what he was eating and how he was treating himself.

Really, really good stuff here. I'm definitely gonna have him on again. There's a whole crew there that I'm sure I will be connecting with more because they're nice people and I do believe that people who kind of gravitate to a certain type of music, you know, for, I don't wanna say the right reasons, but not because it's trendy and not because it's cool, but because it's what they love, there's something there. You obviously know on this show that music is near and dear to my heart. And I think the people who really pursue it in any capacity, full throttle, I love those people, typically. So, yeah, that's this episode.

Oh, of course, we have to sponsors. We have sponsors for the show. We know that, again, in case you missed the previous episodes, the only reason I do this podcast is to make money. It's the most important reason one can podcast, need obligatory ads, and we've been lucky enough at the synchronicity podcast recently to get some really big sponsors and people who are supporting the show. And this week, we have a huge guest sponsor, Food. Food is sponsoring this week's episode. You know it, you love it. Every day you probably eat it, even if you fast once in a while, you love food. So, big thanks to the people at Food.

Keep those checks coming in, big fan. Also, big thanks truthfully to the patrons on Patreon. I appreciate it. I'm gonna keep saying it. You can contribute if you want. You don't have to, but really do appreciate it. So, let's see it. That's it. I'm a little sedated. I was taking care of Eli this week. No daycare. And when I say sedated, I think you know what I mean. He's napping right now. So, we're done. Without further ado, here is the episode and that is not how I normally do it, but I'm just gonna keep trying to get this right without further ado. Here is Zev Loewa. Thanks for coming on, man.

Hey, anytime.

I'm really excited to have this. Yeah, you're a neighbor. That's what's so cool about these is, I've come, you know, I do a lot of podcasts. I do one almost every week. And I do a lot that are remote and they're good. And it's always, it's nice that the internet opens up channels of speaking to people who are not in your physical location, but it's so much better just to be with the person for so many reasons. So, yeah, it's fun being neighbors. All right, so I invited you on for so many reasons. The least of which is there are many synchronicities that actually have connected us before we knew each other, both in terms of physical proximity, preferences for music and all these other things.

But the most recent one is you hit me up and you heard, listening to my podcast, I don't know how you found it, but hey, I'm your neighbor, 15 minutes away in Mylan. And I'm like, oh, I know, I actually know Mylan. It's actually that close that I know.

It's the next town.

Yeah, yeah. And so you hit me up and you showed me this awesome place that you have over there and kind of what's going on. And you know, you demured when I said come on the podcast, you're like, you know, I'm not that interesting. I'm like, dude, your story is particularly interesting and I don't even know that much about it. So I usually don't do this, but could you give a little bit of background about who you are, kind of where you grew up and what you find yourself doing these days?

Sure, I am from New York. I grew up in the Hasidic community. I left when I was about 15 years old, you know, moved around, got into some computer stuff. I think that's another thing we should come in probably, you know, got a piece of that, small piece of that first internet wave, you know, got me going and, you know, I was around this kind of Hasidic bad boy club, which are basically just a bunch of thieves, you know, to put it simply.

Explained. You know, they were into porn and gambling and, you know, typical mob stuff without the violence.

Right, right.

And, you know, life had a different path for me. I, you know, I went out to LA when I was about 20 years old, 21 years old, started company with some guys there, made a little bit of money, came back to New York, met my partner, who I'm still doing music with today, Gotti, we started doing events in Brooklyn, probably in 2000, 2001. It was Giuliani time. It was, he had kind of cracked down really hard on that whole party scene. It almost kind of just died.

Yeah.

There was some people playing hip hop in clubs and, you know, you know, Twilow, all that.

Yeah.

And, yeah, so I met this guy. I knew him through his nephew, who I went to boarding school with, acidic boarding school. He wasn't acidic. He had also made a little bit of money with his family's store in Lower East Side, which had also just gentrified. And, you know, him and I just kind of set out to just do something cool, you know? We both like, we don't really know anyone cool. And we weren't really cool. (laughing) But, you know, and then we kind of, actually just remember this the other day, we kind of went through each other's friends one by one and started picking them off.

Yeah.

We have them over and at the end we were like, yeah. Anyway, so basically, I mean, that kind of, we kind of built this community up, literally one person at a time, starting with this music community, going out to events that we thought were interesting, cool edgy music at the time. It was this kind of minimal stuff that, you know, preceded this wave. And, yeah, I just had a little book and kind of put together a community one person at a time until built these events up with my partner from like one person of five people to 10 people to 100 people. I actually have this little pink notebook that I just found that I had the first hundred names on my 20,000 person mailing list.

Wow.

You know what I'm saying?

But that's how you do it. That's what people always used to ask me. Like, how do I build a big list and like treat each person like a person and then it'll naturally grow into something stuff?

Yeah, and just start, start one, two, three, fours.

Yeah.

At your time, be patient. I'm almost 20 years old, 21 years old.

Yeah.

I'm no life ahead of me, you know? You know, and, you know, we started doing the events. Eventually we opened up this underground club called the Marcy Hotel, which was in Williamsburg. It was in a part that really wasn't gentrifying. At all, at the time.

At the time.

And kind of what, going back to what we were talking about earlier about kind of working for evil, you know?

Yeah, yeah, right off.

You know what we were talking about before? We started this interview. We had this party series, it was really cool. It was starting catch on and we're trying to figure out what to do for the website 'cause like, you know, we needed some kind of online presence. And my partner is like, you know, I was working at the time on the Trump, the Trump Hotel in the apartment complex in Philadelphia. You know, I was consulting on the design and the brand development and everything. And so God is like, well, I think you kind of have the idea. Why don't you just copy their whole website and we'll call it, the place was on Marcy Avenue, so we'll call it the Marcy Hotel.

We made this bullshit website with, you know, detailed room floor plans and, you know, really got into it except the place itself was a graffiti dump, a doorway. Anyway, that kind of got, you know, that kind of fun style of just like kind of messing with people, but then once they wander around for three hours, they got inside the place and they just met a whole new group of people who, everyone just like had this total living room vibe. You know, we would have 250 people there sometimes, you know, I mean, but everyone who came in and the things would go on from like, you know, started two in the morning and go on until, two in the afternoon sometimes, you know.

Very unexpected in New York, do you know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

At the time especially.

And what year, around what year is this?

We opened in 2005.

Yeah, yeah, that's like--

It's like 2005, 2006.

So what's interesting is I was heavily involved in the underground scene from around end of '98 to about 2001-ish, two-ish. Then I went off to Boston, kind of hung around on Lansdowne Street and Axis and all those places, but didn't really have any sense. I knew though, at the time though, that New York was getting hammered. Like everyone in the scene was just like, it's done. Like they basically, so what you're talking about is, you know, people think of New York City as always, especially nowadays, this is a million fucking party crews, but it really was going through, it had gone through this like serious clampdown and doing something like this wasn't really going on back then.

It was an extreme contraction of the scene.

Yeah, there was a couple of small things going on. But you know, lucky for me and him, we're so clueless that we didn't really, we never really sat and thought about our position in the whole scheme of things. It was just me and him waking up, what do we want to do today? And just kind of like, you know, chugging forward. And, but anyway, so, you know, we started that in '05, 2006. I had cancer for the first time. I had thyroid cancer, stage two. And that kind of just put a clamp on everything. I mean, just shut down.

Well, what was the circumstances kind of behind that? Like, how'd you find out? What were you doing, like?

I remember I found, I figured it out at Burning Man. I was sitting down and just kind of contemplating and something drew my hand to this bump that I never noticed before. I kind of immediately knew that it was cancer and some, you know? And, yeah, it took a couple of weeks for me to actually end up getting a biopsy and it already spread to my lymph nodes. And what's really funny at the time was like kind of, that was my first brushings with the alternative scene, with the spiritual scene.

Yeah.

I wish it was a little earlier 'cause maybe I would have known to listen to them.

Yeah.

But I was just still, you know?

Yeah.

And, yeah, I had this, there was this woman in New York that we were friends with and she was doing some kind of like, you know, body work with spiritual discussion and just like coaching, you know, one of those people that kind of do their own, you know? And she was a raw foodist. Never heard of that before.

Yeah, 2006, this is.

You know, we started becoming friends in '03, '04.

Gotcha.

But this happened in 2005 is when I, you know, actually right when we just opened the place.

Gotcha.

In 2006 is when I was like kind of dealing with it, you know?

Okay.

But anyway, she, it's really funny because I came to her and I said, oh, I, in my next session, I'm like, oh, I have cancer. And she like kind of was pretty flippant about it and was just like, oh, you know? If you want, I would be into moving in with you for a month and, you know, I guess we were pretty close at that point.

Yeah.

Like we had formed quite a bond, me, her, Gotti, her husband, it was this kind of low-reast side crowd at the time, you know, the orchard bar, you know.

Yeah, I know it. I mean, I moved here.

Pony, you know, yeah, you know, that max fish, is that what it's called?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

You know that whole scene?

Yeah.

There.

So yeah, and she was just like, yeah, I could show you what to eat and it'll be gone in a couple of months and it'll never come back. And I was just like, oh, poor girl, she's so delirious. Like if there was a way to change it, that's cute, you know? But I'm gonna go ahead, the surgery. Anyway, make a long story short, the surgery was just a complete butcher job, you know, cut some of my vocal cords and like, you know, it didn't get my feeling back on half of my body for a really long time. But you know, that kind of tempered the whole thing and was the beginnings of me trying to start shifting towards, you know, some kind of exit strategy, even though I knew that I still had a career in front of me and we were starting to, our career as DJs were starting to talk.

Yeah, yeah.

We were traveling to Europe and, but I knew I had a couple of years more of that to do to kind of build it up, but I also kind of started getting the first, you know, the first inklings of like, there's something more important than that, you know, that I have to do besides that. And also what it did was, and this is another thing I mentioned to you before, it kind of made us question the music that we were pushing and the music we were playing. I guess maybe some of your listeners don't know the specifics of electronic music. I'm not gonna get into it too much, but, you know, there's a dark side of electronic music, which is emotional and brooding and maybe a little bit frenetic.

Yeah, sure.

Kind of what you'd imagine if you were watching a rave scene and they dubbed like, you know, aggressive, you know, dance music.

Yeah.

And then there's the more like uplifting, spiritual.

Soulful.

Soulful side of the music. And I think that that first process of like, dealing with my mortality at such a young age, kind of made me realize that I need to keep this music aligned to that and all the energy I put into this music should be, you know, should be towards the uplifting side and bringing joy into people's lives and, you know. So that's kind of how I got into the music thing. And then this thing that, you know, the reason I'm here actually living next to you, which I guess I can give a little background.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is a dream land, it's called as a, I don't want to say an intentional community, but honestly, I don't really know what that means. But I just want to say community, you know, because there's a lot of intention behind it. We're trying to, we're trying to do a couple of things. We're trying to like, first of all, make our own living situation more natural, more, you know, more holistic, more sustainable, more comfortable. We're also trying to pool our resources as a community and say, well, look, none of us are rich, but that shouldn't stop us from pursuing, you know, a better quality of life.

The standard of living.

Just be smarter, you know, about it. So the idea of getting a few people together onto a piece of property versus buying property next to each other, you know, is basically to, you know, to pool resources and to pool energy and to get a lot further with a community than we would have if we were just kind of--

Doing yourselves, kind of split off in a nuclear family.

Exactly, which is, yeah.

And one of my, or my main partner on this one, I'm doing this project with is a farmer who is, who I've farmed with. We had a farm together in the Catskills for two years. Incredible learning experience, growing food for your friends, driving back to the city. Everyone would come on Sunday to her house and pick up their CSA and barbecue and hang out and smoke weed and drink wine. And like really kind of, you know, connect the food to the community, to the people, to the friends, to the energy. And yeah, we embarked to find a property that can sustain this kind of situation. We looked for almost three years and then randomly ended up here, because we knew we wanted to be on this side of the river.

And we knew we needed a lake, 'cause everyone wants to go on a lake when they come up and stay.

Yep.

Yep.

And a lake is nice. Anyway, some water, I'm a Pisces.

I'm a Cancer.

Water animals, water science.

Water science.

We need something, a stream, a lake, some ocean. But also that had six houses on it for the first set of people to kind of move in, right away without having to go through a whole planning thing and without all these unknowns that happens when you buy a property and you plan to build, you know? And we ended up here super randomly. I literally didn't know anyone in this whole town. None of us knew anything. We knew one person who had a home goods store in Kingston, sorry, in Rhymebeck, and then pretty much as soon as we moved in, he moved to store to Kingston. So, you know, besides our neighbors, which are really cool, who I've met all of them, a lot of them are farming and getting into this kind of stuff as well, you're the first person I actually met in town that's connected on kind of all these other levels.

So that's really cool.

Yeah, which is just really interesting because I've met a few people up here. We were lucky enough that our immediate neighbors actually are incredibly cool people and we got to meet them the first week we were here. But for the most part, you know, it's like meeting new friends. You don't have these connections and, you know, kind of shared experience, if not together, where you can relate to, which I always find fun. You know, because like, I find it hard enough to talk to people about electronic music just in life as it is because now, as you know, like it's popular, like everyone is into their own type.

You could say electronic music, someone's gonna rail off like Martin Garrix and I'm like, I'm aware of the name, but I really know. Like, so there are things, it's just hard to connect with people on that. But then I've always felt, always felt that in tandem with the music that brought me, you know, so much pleasure and joy when I go to events, where I listen to it alone, where they're making it, whatever it is, there really is this strong sense of community that underpins all of it. And if you look back, even when you were saying kind of this darker, let's say, you know, like more techno stuff, more kind of like, trans-y things that there were, if you go back to the roots of these movements, the more soulful stuff came from Chicago, it came from primarily the black and gay community, which was ruthlessly oppressed, like even back in the 80s, like this is still like a really shitty place to be, crack was around, you see how it influenced other places.

But it was really just this really soulful, amazing style of music that, yeah, of course it was about music, sounds good, novel, cool, but the communities that came together about that transcended that entire thing. And I think that's what I tapped into as much with electronic music as anything else, 'cause there's no overt lyrics in a lot of this stuff originally, so you're not really saying, oh, I'm resonating with this person's story. You're getting something that's sub-language, it's love the level of speech and coherence, so I love that you're kind of have taken all these disparate ideas in my life and things I've been into and are intentionally doing something with this community that a lot of people, a lot of people I am seeing this trend happening, I've been talking about it with my friends for years, but to see someone like you and your friends actually really building this thing is fucking awesome, because I'm in a nuclear family.

We have a house, we have a loan on the house, we have the same thing that everyone else has done forever. I think it's fair to say that whether it works for some people or not, it doesn't work on the whole. Most people aren't doing well with this system and the nuclear family system, the nuclear family system, but also like, I saw it when our son was born.

It's really hard for one person, the mom or the dad to raise a kid by themselves. My mom is up here and my dad is up here, her mom is up there. When you have a community of people, just for the child-rearing process, like you realize this, people weren't designed to have children alone from other people and you recognize 'cause like, people thrive with other people, it provides that experience of loving and feeling loved, if not in a direct one-to-one relationship in a communal sense, which is almost more powerful in a lot of ways 'cause it's not dependent and conditional on one person. Yeah, man, I think it's the coolest fucking thing ever and I also think it's cool that you're actually making progress on this and that the timing seems to be right.

Like, people kind of seem to be ready for this. You're not the only person I've spoken to who is intentionally doing this or, you know, working towards doing this in different permutations, which I think is important. Like, that signifies something bigger taking place. Yeah, and I think everyone would've been happy in New York if they didn't get priced out, you know. I know how to, I talk, whenever I go back, I'm like, oh, it'd been great. I mean, I've been up in the country for over 10 years now. I always lived in the city and I had a place in the city, I had a business in the city and I still have a business in the city, but I had a summer place with an extra guest cabin, which is always full, you know, and the whole summer.

And this is something the acidic people figured out is that to really kind of make the city work, it comes together with going upstate. Like, those are the two things and it's an ebb and play. Because everyone's kind of discovering it and rediscovering it and now, you know, it's becoming a thing again. But to go back to your thing about the nuclear family, I think that, yeah, community doesn't really work very well for a lot of people. I see this a lot. A lot of people feel very isolated in a city where there's like people crawling all over each other. And yeah, and I think it's a big problem. I mean, there's a lot of studies that have shown that you need community and you need other people.

That's just, you know, and I never really looked at it on such a, on like, you know, standing back on a meta level. It was more just like, oh, I get lonely when other people are, you know what I'm saying? Like, normal thing people do, yeah. Exactly, like, I'm there all week alone working. It's cool, but then everyone comes on a weekend and then, you know, and it kind of, and I was really able to see week after week, month after month, just what a difference having other people around me made and how, you know, to my own, you know, state of well-being and feeling connected and a support system, you know, and I think it's really important.

And I think a lot of people want to make the switch to maybe getting out of the city, getting closer to nature, which is any way what this whole thing is about. It's about waking up with the birds. It's about, you know, you know, swimming in the water. It's about smelling the flowers. It's about just connecting to that natural side that people need just as much as they need a personal community side. So I'm really excited about it. And again, this is one of these things that was, I was working in isolation with my partner because, like I said, Recluis. And we just kind of, and this thing inched along and kind of, you know, we bought the place three years ago, we did everything was late, everything costed more than we thought it would.

Yeah, I'll be upset.

The usual. But now that we kind of, I've gone to a place where I could take my head up for some air, now I'm meeting other people and the interest in that community and Dreamland has been very, very surprising. You know, we added another four lots next to it.

Yeah.

And those were all, those got picked up really quickly by people that are just like, oh, I want to get involved with this, you know, this is really interesting. And then pretty much every weekend when people come there, maybe one or two people just hangs back and they're like, you know, I think I can get into this vibe, you know?

Is that, it's kind of like a nap. Here's what I like. What I've been able to sense from you just from meeting you and hanging out a few times is there's a certain degree of normalcy that has to be brought to something like this for people to accept that it's not some weird, hippy communes.

Exactly.

That is you have to throw off the shackles of all capitalist society and we're gonna live in an anarchy up here without shoes. Like, and I say this from seeing many different aspects or things that I'm interested over time, how they get normalized. Electronic music being one of them. It's been normalized in many capacities, not even just in a general kind of pop culture sense. I know more people who know more about music in a fundamental like, whoa, they really give a shit than before. I've seen it happen with weed. Weed has slowly been normalized in no small part to the efforts of groups like normal, which were lawyers who were like, listen, this shit is bullshit.

We're gonna give this a legitimate face. We're seeing this now. I'm not as optimistic as most people with psychedelics, but organizations like MAPS and other places where they're doing clinical studies. But there has to be a bridge between these things. I'm as hippie-dippy, pie-in-the-sky, reality is an illusion as anyone. Like, I can go off that rabbit hole at any time, but I've also recognized the fundamental importance of being able to create a bridge for people, to understand that like, yeah, maybe we wanna move towards something more sustainable. Doesn't mean that it has to be more airy, very ridiculous. - Right, absolutely, yeah.

It's hard, I think, because people who are idealistic typically, you know, they usually air more towards the very side. - Very very extreme side, yeah.

And it's very difficult to practically get stuff done. So I really appreciate kind of what you're doing, 'cause I can see like, yeah, man, I see your Instagram, you're DJing all over the world in cool places, but I also have heard conversations with you on the people phone doing practical things to make this a reality. - Right.

And that's hard, I mean, I've known enough artists, I've been an artist long enough myself to know that, like, it can be very difficult to, you know, get practical shit done when it comes to like this, but it's not gonna happen on its own. Like, the system isn't gonna suddenly be like, "Oh yeah, like, no, don't get into debt, don't do all these things in terms of buying stuff."

Well, I'm into debt for that, just to be clear, but I understand, but it's a different type of debt. It's in the same way that someone like, like, I don't like having owing lots of money to the bank for this house. I recognize in terms of the problem that it's solving, the value of where we live, that it's not a terrible investment, so I do it, so I'm not saying there's any problem with going into debt. Going into debt for college, hundreds of thousands of dollars, going into paying for cars or things or houses you can't afford is what I'm talking about, which is, again, plenty of people listening will find themselves in those positions, I am one of those people with big debt from a house.

My point is, is that you have to be somewhat willing to accept that the culture has pushed these people and us as anyone else into those positions as much as anything else. I'm totally for free will and do what you wanna do, but it's not difficult. Do you know how many loan offers I get from banks now for zero percent interest the first year and at 20% at the next, like, it's predatory. So being able to practically and mindfully and intentionally kind of envision what you're doing and doing it is something that I do wanna give you credit for because I've seen a lot of these things go up. These are pipe dreams for a lot of people.

You know what I mean? Yeah, dude.

No, it's been, I'm not gonna say it's a struggle because that is luckily, you know, that's my, my, you know, something that I do well, you know?

Sure.

Artistry, you know, making music, I don't do really well. That's why I've got a label and that's why there's younger kids who are much better than me actually kind of pushing it forward and pushing the sound. You know, I think God, you know, I both are not the best producers, we're not very musical, but that, you know, that doesn't have to stop you. You can, there's so many other ways to get out what you're trying to do and, and, you know, just being relentless pretty much. You know, well, I got that from my dad, you know, he's the same way he just, you know, nothing phases him really, like, you know, like whatever.

This whole thing he's working on in business could crash into the ground and two days later he's back on the phone, he's like, I got a whole no idea, you know? And he's just right back at it and, and I fought with that in myself for a little bit because I did waste a lot of time on pie in the sky things that I did push through to the end or close to the end and they didn't yield anything except wasted time and some lost money.

Right.

But then, you know, I realized if I can just focus that kind of relentless enthusiasm on, you know, just making sure that the project I'm pushing is worthwhile, making sure I have community support and I have people behind me that are also committed to it for the long haul, then I know I can sit and, and work on it for a year, two or three and not really think too much about whether it's going to work or not going to work. Who cares? And then, and I think that feeds into what you're saying. Like, it's like, I have, it's like, you know, the, the dogs in the, in the horse track, you know, they're like, there's something like file, you know?

Yeah, the rabbit. They chase it.

Something, yeah, they're chasing, is that what they're, I don't know.

It's chasing a rabbit, yeah, yeah.

And they're just, and that's kind of how it is with me. You know, I just wake up in the morning and there's this goal that I decided I need to, you know, to run after because of all these different reasons.

Yeah.

And yeah, I just run after like, I'll go horse.

Well, I mean, it's a really important.

Do whatever it needs to get done.

It's hard, I've found myself both in that position and then at the exact opposite. And I never thought I would do a 180 from just waking up every day. Even if, like you said, like I've, I've had business ideas, things collapse as I'm doing them. And then immediately like within a week, have a new idea of how to actually do something and have it be good enough that it succeeds. So I get that. And now I think what's been interesting for me in my life, it happened almost exactly when UI came into the world, is I've had to get used to kind of this slower non like goal. Like I don't wake up every day and say, oh, this is definitely what I'm doing.

I'll find little projects, I'm learning Python, you know, obviously have the podcast, which is a big driving thing. But, you know, I've had to get used to kind of this uncomfortable not knowing. And it's been like a whole fucking thing for me to kind of just get comfortable in, 'cause it's a very uncomfortable feeling. I'm much like you, I want something to be doing. And I've just kind of been learning to get used to that. But yeah, man, I've found when I get so driven on one thing for so long and it does kind of evaporate, like you were saying, now you're very mindful about working on things that you believe in in terms of the long vision.

I hope so.

Well, you're living there with other people. We'll say that if at least if it doesn't work, like you had all the things in places.

You know, I was thinking about the other six projects I'm working on. (laughing)

Well, that's a cool other thing, man.

No, I think that it's stabilized. It's there and now, and actually now I had to switch into that mindset of waking up and saying, look, this is like 10 years of work here in front of me. And every day I have a new idea or someone has a new idea, so that adds another half a year of work onto it. And it's cool, you know what? Everything's cool, we're comfortable. We've got a place to sleep, but there's a place where we will come. Most of the owners, or actually everyone, has already moved into their place, so it's kind of a big deal. And yeah, now we're just having fun.

Yeah, you're having a big party there, too. I mean, I think that's really cool, too, because you've kind of laid the foundation of this being, and I'm telling you, I've seen a lot of, even the grays, I'm going to interview Alex Gray next month, they had their thing down there in Wapungers with Cosm. I mean, to see that evolve and talk about, you know, that's hippie-diffy. Like, you go to one of their full moon gatherings, and you'll see, but to see how they've built up an intentional community over the years, through the consistency and the belief that this isn't something they're doing for their self-aggrandizeman, or to be important or special, but because they, like you, recognize like, hey, if we can have a place where people can be not as stressed out as they normally are, whether it's because they have a secure place to live, whether it's because they're in nature, instead of clouded up with other people, whether it's because they have other people they can go and speak to, this can only pay dividends over the long run.

And, you know, I think what I see more than anything, these days in the spiritual scene, whether it's Burning Man, or the Ramdas people, or whatever, is people are really looking for that community, that that's like, that's the thing. They want to call it God, they want to call it, you know, any number of gods and goddesses, or the unconscious, or whatever, but I think what they're trying to feel palpably and be reminded of, is like they were all connected in a tangible way, not in some esoteric like, yeah, we're all connected, man, but like, oh, like I have a group of people who care about me, and know that if I get in a hard time, still help me, or vice versa.

And when people have experienced that, whether it's usually through their family, but friends or otherwise, like, nothing really makes, if you feel more alive, like that's what it's about. Which reminded me of a question I don't want to differ too much, but like, you mentioned you had cancer once, you had cancer more--

I had cancer three times. - Three times.

That was the first time I had it was during that story. More recently, I had it, I'm 36 now, I had it when I was 29 the last time.

Yeah. - Well, I had a third cancer again a few years later, after the surgery, I did radio iodine, which is radiation therapy, and I did not listen to my friend, and I did not become a raw foodist, and I did not have colonics, and I did not take her seriously, and what she said actually came to pass, which was that if you don't do this stuff, and you just follow what they say, it's gonna come back, and absolutely, you know, two, three years later, I can't remember exactly, but I had a recurrence, even though I had no thyroid anymore. Been taken out completely. - Yeah.

So it was just so aggressive, it came back again, second time was kind of small, I thought it was over, and it kind of got back into my touring, and still, we definitely shifted into the more, into the light, and we actually kind of redefined our whole group and our label sound onto this more uplifting, slower kind of vibe, and we did really well with that in the Obama years, and that's another theory I don't know if I ever told you.

No, no, what is this theory?

But I kind of see the global electronic music scene kind of sway with the political wins.

Yeah, in terms of BPM, too.

Yeah, in terms of BPM, and so during the awful Bush nightmare years, that minimal dark stuff was great, maybe because it's that community, you're feeling dark, everyone's acknowledging the darkness, but at least you're with your friends, you know, possibly. And then Obama came, and we were just like right, we were just kind of taking off at that time, and that kind of say, relax, everything's gonna be okay, kind of disco music, and that whole thing, and that went really well. I think we had our run, our last big run, I would say globally was, and when I say ours, I don't just mean me and my partner as a musician, but this whole group that we got activated, you know, there's probably 15 to 20 artists that whose careers all took off from this thing, and a lot of whom are still touring today.

Not that it's so much later, it's only 2018. But yeah, I think that was like perfectly aligned with, and then, yeah, once this Trump thing started stinking, and the Brexit thing, and the whole world started to get all angry again, you know, this darker, brooding, sounds depressing to me, but whatever, you know.

I'm in a weird phase with a lot of this music right now. Dixon, who I loved three, four years ago, I'm listening to mixes now, and I'm like, what is this? And he's a great DJ, I've heard him rock out rooms before, but I'm like, this is some weird shit. I'm like, I'm not really sure that I know exactly what is the aim of this, obviously I'm not German, I'm not plugged in to the scene around the world globally, but also, you know, something that I'm sure you noticed, the word you're going right into electronics stuff, but like the Playa House scene, I mean, that double shaman housing.

Oh my God, yeah.

My friend has an eternal evergreen Facebook post, and he's one of the members of Dance Spirit, really good group, and it says no more shaman house ever, and this thread won't die. People are, it's like the Jordan Peterson of electronic people have to comment on Shaman House, but you know, that whole thing took over in no small part because of Burning Man, and people being exposed to these different camps.

Tulum was a big driver of that, Sam.

Tulum, of course, BPM festival, yeah, I mean, so it is really interesting to see how kind of the, the collective unconscious of what's going on in the world does seem to reflect it.

It does, I really think so. I really think so, and I kind of feel a little bit more than most people, maybe some people think because my booking fees change, (laughing) the amount of, you know what I'm saying? Like literally my income changes depending on what trend is in the ascendant. Now, I've been doing this for 15 years, so it's, you know, the sound that we have has gotten up and down in sideways, and you know what I'm saying? And we definitely make a living, but like, yeah, that's just what, just the side kind of thing.

I thought you might relate to it because you kind of know the sound and the direction that's gone in, and yeah, people, I don't know why, I think it should be the opposite. If you are in the Trump times, and the world is dark around you, then don't you want to dance and smile, you know, but I guess it's not so simple.

You probably know this as much as anyone else, and this is something that I always pay attention to, especially having really been predominantly interested in music that originally, or at least when I started original listening to it, it was not popular, especially in this country. I mean, there were small little subsets of people who'd be listening to electronic music avidly, but for the most part, you weren't gonna come across it. It wasn't played on radio, it wasn't played on--

It was super underground.

Super underground, right? Girls weren't at most of these things. It was just a bunch of people on the internet who had found this shit, and were like, whoa, we're got turned on, went to a club and a beat there or something. I think art as an emanation of the collective unconscious basically meaning that there's the shared resonant frequency that we all are aware of, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. Art is a reflection of that. Now, with something as underground or still relatively not as popular as say Justin Bieber or something, the masses also have a tendency to just kind of enjoy what's being put out there, right?

The boundary pushing and all of that isn't accessible to many people. So in music, a sound can get popular, irrespective of the cultural, like what you're saying makes total sense to me, and that's what I'm listening to. I'm listening to Eli's show, by the way, on your friend Eli from SoulPaw.

Oh, yeah.

I love this stuff. I've really in the past two years been listening to a tremendous amount of African music, especially. Really happy kind of sounding Nigerians and Bobweb, just like cool fucking shit. Polyrhythmic stuff. What I think happens in the electronic music scene is very quickly a certain sound will get recognized as popular for whatever reason, then the DJs who are the tastemakers capitalize on that, and you've seen this before. How many DJs just like switch up their style completely to catch a trend? I mean, the most famous example I could ever think of is Tiesto back in the day. I mean, this dude is playing trans cheese all over the place, and then he gets an essential mix, and all of a sudden, he's a prog house, you know, Wonder Kid.

So I think that it's hard to gauge what's popular or what's like an accurate emanation of what people want to hear, because the business overlaid on top of that can so easily get co-opted by the popular sound. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, definitely.

And I think that's probably when you go to your places and you play what you're playing now, you still get a really big response, 'cause that is kind of what people want. They don't wanna be bogged down but some dramatic overly Orwellian music now. They want kind of cut loose when they go to a party. So yeah, no, yeah, I hear you.

It's all fascinating and interesting to me. But yeah, I hear what you're saying, and I think you're basically saying that it's not so much connected to a reflection that's gone, 'cause the business is, and the virality of it, where, you know, with Beatport and how that whole thing works, and something can chart and then, and DJs are all plugged into that and then they start charting, they start playing it and people start hearing it and pretty quickly it could be, luckily Shaman House is on its way down.

People can't sand it.

People wanna get a fucking pamphlet.

Only question is, what's next? But I've got it.

Here's what I found too, and I'm sure you know this being connected to a lot of artists is the people who are doing this for the love of this did it before it was popular and made the money.

Absolutely.

Did it while it was popular, had their waiving made money, and most likely will continue to do it afterwards, and those are the people you stay connected to, which is again, why building up a community like crew love or just people who share this kind of resonant frequency is so important, 'cause that can be the length, the thread that ties everything together. Like people's musical tastes change. I mean, I was, my first exposure to electronic music was happy hardcore. There's nothing worse. - Second and worst trends.

Yeah, same.

The only thing worse than that is psychedelic trends.

Oh, and I was super into that too. Oh my God, dude. Oh, Jesus. Me too. - Yeah.

Yeah, so I mean, to me, more importantly than the vibe of the music, it's fine in the people who are just being pure and what they're putting out, and then trying to recognize that there may be something more substantial than just going out and partying with people, not that there's anything wrong with that, but building a community based around kind of that frequency, I think is really what we're talking about too.

What do you think? I hate to just continuously go back to the cancer thing, but I find it interesting. Yeah, I find it really interesting.

That's a long story. It was six, seven years long, so it's--

And you had another cancer.

Yeah, I did, and this time I'm gonna finish about the cancer, but basically, the last time I had the cancer, which was, let's see, about seven or eight years ago now, I had testicular cancer, which was unrelated to the thyroid cancer, technically.

Right.

But, holistically, yes, if your body's in the mood of cancer and is not healthy and can't fend for itself, any cancer, I have both of them, my family, incidentally, one from my mother's side and from my father's side. But, regardless, I had it, it was again stage two, and it was, I had a two and a half centimeter tumor in my retropenial lymph node, which is kind of in your lower back.

Okay.

And I went and had the surgery, and then was slated to have nine rounds of chemo, so it would be four rounds of chemo to shrink the tumor, then this really, really gruesome surgery called an RPLND, where they take apart your whole abdomen to get at the tumor because they can't go from the back. They take apart your abdomen, so as I was looking down the barrel of that, it's a whole year. I already had dealt with the first time kind of reconciling how I felt about the whole thing, and I was in the cancer ward in Long Island the first time, and I had a little tumor on my neck, and I was being wheeled past people with much bigger fucking problems than my stupid little tumor.

And I kind of had that moment where I was just like, all right, you don't need a pity party here. You're lucky that you're gonna walk out of this thing with two feet, and the ability to walk, and the ability to talk, and so I guess the next time this came around, I went with it, it's what I have to do, I gotta go, and then I did the first surgery, which was to remove one of my testicles, and then I did one round of chemo, which is five days of getting these, you know, poison injections. - In venous, yeah.

And then during that five day period, which was the first five days I was,

Me too, you've got so cool up until now. Is it the mailman? Is it the mailman?

No.

That's enough.

Bad dream.

We'll leave this in just for you, bad boy.

Yeah, and during that, so it was the first five days of this year-long kind of experience.

Yeah.

And I had this really interesting kind of epiphany, I was sitting there, and they bring you your lunch, which is a roast beef wrap, and a coke, and a wafer, and, you know, and I don't know, something just started, didn't feel right, this is a Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan. You know, I had to pull strings to even get this into this place, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

It was like a whole expensive, you know, they were supposed to be the top of the top of the top.

Right, Sloan Kettering, of course.

And something just didn't feel right. They had like, they had really good systems, they double checked your bracelet to make sure it was given the right drugs to the right people. On the surface, it looked pretty slick, you know?

Right, right.

But something just didn't look right to me there, and I think the last day they brought donuts for everyone, the nurses brought big trade donuts for everyone. And I don't know, something just hit it, I went back home and I started looking online, and I was like, something doesn't feel right about giving donuts to cancer. I don't know, something's fucked up about that, I don't know what it is. And I just started, I was so clueless, this is not so long ago, and I had, you know, it's all my fault, because I shouldn't have been so clueless if I had, but anyway, I started Googling sugar cancer, and it's just like, no, don't do that.

Don't eat donuts if you're trying to get your, you know, you're trying to get the metastases to calm down, you know? Anyway, so I don't know, I just kind of, I just called these guys up and told them that I'm leaving the whole thing. I had no idea what I was gonna do. And I, you know, at that point, probably had like 30 appointments set up, because there's like, you have to go to this guy and they have to go to that, it's endless, it's endless. Just a stress alone of being a cancer patient can cause cancer, I'm pretty sure of that.

Yeah, it makes sense.

You know, all the appointments and it's insane. You know, people get apartments near the cancer center, so they can just go back there every freaking four or five days to get more blood drawn. But anyway, I just left the whole thing, you know, I also had this thing in my head, which was like, it all came crashing down, it's like, you know, if I went there the first time, I had cancer, and they couldn't fix me, and I went there the second time I had cancer, no, I'm here the third time, and it's worse than it ever had been before, because, you know, I knew this surgery was nothing, my previous surgery was nothing compared to, and the previous surgery was pretty bad, you know?

So anyway, I just, I canceled the whole thing, the head of the department called me back to tell me that I was gonna die, he was like, why did you cancel, you know, why did you leave his program? I'm like, you know, he's like, well if you don't, if you don't do this, and you don't follow the, you know, what the doctors told you, you're gonna die, so, and obviously that just made me more angry, and I was like, then I'm never gonna come back.

You're confirming my decision.

Confirming that something's really fishy about this, and then I just ordered a bunch of books from Amazon, and, you know, shut the door to my apartment, and just started reading about cancer, and about, you know, and about how cultures have a lot of different ways to deal with cancer, and how there's, you know, I don't need to tell you, probably know all this stuff, but it's, but, you know, there's a lot of confusion still, there's a lot of overlapping information, there's a lot of conflicting information, and to deal with that, since I'm not a doctor, I decided to just kind of stick with what was the most natural sounding out of these things.

Some of them are like heavy injections of vitamin C, and things like that, to me that was like, well, I don't know, that sounds like very contrived, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, one of these, you know, I settled on like, probably one main alternative therapy, that's kind of popular, I guess, and like the underground mailing list of alternative do-it-yourself cancer treatment, and a couple of other kind of supplementary things.

Which are what, mainly?

Well, the first thing that I followed was a protocol by a researcher out of Germany from the '50s, where you, you know, she had a lot of strange things kind of put together, but she got to this protocol by having a clinic for like 25 years.

Great, it's a good way to come.

Yeah, she was in the '50s when cancer patients were kind of in a really bad way. Nobody understood what it was, their instinct was to be really violent with it, which is kind of still tilled today to some degree, although it's calmed down in the last couple of years. But they were like, "Oh, x-rays killed a tumor." So you would just like put your leg under the x-ray, and they would just like crank it up. And you know, they just had no, they didn't know what anything was, or, you know, so.

Yeah, yeah, understandable x-ray.

So this researcher, Johanna Budwig, that's her name, if anyone is interested in looking at this up. She started this clinic, she was a researcher, she was researching margarine in the early days, when it was, you know, it came to Germany, this is a story anyway, who knows how much of this is anecdotal, or chose translated from German. And, you know, but, you know, she was given margarine to assess the safety for human consumption. And she, you know, she came back to her boss and was like, "I don't know what this shit is, but people should not eat this." You know? And she quickly, she's just like, "If people eat this, and these kind of fake fats is what she called them, which are basically half fat, but half screwed with."

So your body thinks it's a fat, and starts to use it to build, you know, lipoid membranes and things that need fat, but then they don't behave properly, and they malfunction. She's like, "Everyone's gonna get cancer." Sure enough, it gets approved, she got fired. She started researching all these other kind of things that had crept into it. And then she was fighting with the German government for years, all the chemical companies were after her, all the cancer companies were after everybody.

I wonder why.

Yeah, and she just got sick of it and moved to Switzerland where they had no laws on this, and you couldn't basically sign a waiver on your way into clinic that says, "I allow these people to do whatever the fuck they want." You know? And she had a clinic there for, I think it was close to 30 years, and people would get wheeled in on a stretcher because they were so banged up by X-rays or whatever other shit they were giving people time.

Modern day leaching, basically.

Pretty much, yeah, in the 50s and 60s, pretty brutal. And she managed to get people better. And I always say this to people who are wondering about alternative therapies. The alternative therapies that made it today are bulletproof to some degree because they, people with simple cancers don't go to this alternative stuff, you know? The first time you have cancer, you're not gonna go download something from the internet and try it and fight with your doctor and lose your friends and scream at your face. You know what I'm saying? It's only after you've gotten it like me three times, you know, or people that are stage five and the doctor is like, we have nothing for you, go home and die.

And then they go, you know? So I always, I don't realize that at first, but these things have really, they're really potent because they work for the worst cancer cases. They're administered by clueless DIY cancer patients like myself who don't, you know, we don't follow routines or know how to like make notes or we don't know anything.

You just like literally, you know?

You just have cancer.

You're just walking.

Exactly. You just wanna live and you've tried the other thing and it's not working for you, you know?

Yeah.

So anyway, that's what I followed primarily, this researcher. She put together a really interesting regimen which was very, very natural. A lot of flaxseed oil blended with other fats and, you know, sunshine. 20 minutes of sunshine a day. She didn't know at the time, you know, the connection between sunshine and vitamin D.

Vitamin D, yeah. - She didn't know that. She just saw it helped him, you know? You know, she was like, and it's funny because all of her notes and all of her books that survived are like 30 pages longer. She's like, she's not, she's not just gonna have 250 pages to-- - Right.

To pontificate on why this is working or not. Worked for this person, she, you know, that's exactly right and that was really powerful to me because, you know, so I, so, oh, and at the time I started going to Miami for the winter. I was in New Yorker, but I was like, all right, just 20 minutes of sunshine, I'm gonna get the fuck out of here. I'm gonna go to Miami. - Yeah.

So I started going hanging out there in the winter and you drink champagne or prosecco before lunch. You eat a lot of fermented stuff for power crowd juice first thing in the morning fresh. - Oh, amazing.

I started making sauerkraut and, you know, I got into it and then I layered it on with other shit that I found, you know?

Like what?

Dried barley grass, pressed barley grass pills that are also good. I did, got into Chinese medicine. I found an incredible practitioner who was, who kind of listened to the whole thing. I was like, well, I'm sure I can help somewhere, you know?

Yeah.

And also just was a great person. She's actually an MD as well and just got, you know? But, you know, she was a great person to like talk to about the different vitamins I was trying. You know, just like, she was like kind of like my doctor but like, you know, helping me take notes and like--

The most doctorish that she's talking to.

Yeah, exactly. - Yeah.

So I did that, that was extremely helpful. I got into yoga, I started doing meditation daily and then, you know, it's a mostly vegan diet for the most part.

Nothing wrong with that. - Cooking yourself. No leftovers, no frozen foods. And I followed that pretty strictly for about five years. I would say after six months, five or six months of doing it, I was complete, all my blood markers had gone to normal.

Wow. - Yeah.

And then my tumor had started shrinking. It was down to like two centimeters after, you know, six months. And yeah, I knew I was on the right track. I had taken off from DJing and doing that stuff for a while. Started getting back into that slowly but in a much more responsible way. I remember I was traveling with a blender at some point to make my little magic bullet.

Yeah, magic, I was gonna say, what's been a magic bullet?

It was, yeah, it was just funny. You know, I was like, pickles at people's houses on tour under the healthy DJ. - Ridiculous, yeah. That wasn't fun. But anyway, you know, I did that for about five years. After two years, it had shrunk down to like half a centimeter and after three years there was no sign of any cancer anymore. And, you know, that's the last, hopefully the last of my cancer stories.

So, I mean, it's incredible. And one of the reasons I kept asking you about it is because I just listened to another podcast, one of the people on my iPod network, Sean, they have an awesome thing. Ooh, they might come up for this thing and stop by.

Awesome.

They're very awesome people but they had their friend, Bailey on, and she had cancer a few times. Stage four melanoma.

Damn.

And was in a not dissimilar position to you, had gone through chemo, had beaten it a couple of times, I think, and it just kept coming back. And it was a, I mean, stage four. Like, she was given essentially six months to live. Eventually went down to Mexico, did an alternative, you know, animals and these other bees and other stuff. And same thing, it shrunk, it went into remission. It's just been cancer-free and, you know, my mom had, what was it? Not ovarian. Yeah, I think it was ovarian. They later said it was pre-cancer, but they were pretty sure it was cancer at the time. And I saw the way it was dealt with and she was at Johns Hopkins.

I mean, this is like, you don't get more reputable than these places. And I saw the recovery time and man, it's still pretty fucking aggressive how this stuff is treated. And I'd be curious, what is your experience? I mean, do you think it was, your cancer going into remission and the difference in the last time as opposed to the previous times, do you think it was just a function of your diet and these holistic things or do you think there was also some other kind of like awareness that there were alternate ways of doing this? Because if you're only being presented certain options, like what are you gonna think?

Like they're the professionals, you know what I mean? I did think about that. And I thought about that because I would often encounter, you know, in the research phase of this thing where basically I just stopped working, I lived off of my credit card for a year and just like became a full-time cancer nurse for myself, you know? Yeah. But I would come across things that were like very, you know, it's just about changing your mind. And it's just, and then, but that was like kind of a direct conflict with the nutritional approach because the nutritional approach is kind of saying that like, look, you ate a bunch of garbage.

Your genetics are already screwed. You have, you know-- You're predisposed to this, yeah. You're predisposed to this thing from your family. You know, acidic people eat a lot of margarine because God said you can't mix meat and milk, so just use margarine. Yeah. You know, so I grew up on a very, very full diet of exactly what, you know, this researcher was saying is gonna happen if you eat, you know? And then combine that with like the stress of, of, you know, being a religious person which just adds whatever stress there is in life plus all that, you know, I think, I think that that, and actually just get, maybe I'm gonna blame a little bit on the party scene because that, I got into that towards the end of it and staying up later, whatever.

Maybe that was, but again, I don't think it happened like right before that. So basically like, it was such a simple understanding to me, it was like, this is kind of why it happened. Now you're gonna undo it with extra care and devotion to this regimen of cleanliness and using all these different kinds of natural herbs to really get your body back and shit. I did probably 200 coffee enemas. I did tons and tons of colonics. Just clean out, and then your body should be able to take it from there kind of thing, you know? But then don't do that again, you know? Don't go back. Yeah, so then that's, and that was in conflict with what I was reading 'cause there's a lot of people that say that.

It's all, you know, you go to a shaman or someone and he'll like, he'll change it for you on a what, I don't get it like how your lipoid membranes are still not linking correctly and your DNA is still exposed during the, you know, during your cell division. Right. So that's why I think now at the same time, yeah, you do need to believe that you're gonna get better. But for me that you need to believe you get better is only because otherwise you're not gonna follow through on this shit. Do you know what I'm saying? I don't know that I needed to tell myself I was gonna get better so my bodies can be like, oh yeah, you can get better.

It's just that if I doubted that this was gonna work for one freaking second, all the kind of pressure on the headwind that I had to push through, I would just go end up back in Sloan Kettering, you know? Yeah. So that's why I think the mind, that's personally, that's where I see the mind and the belief in getting better comes from. Just because if you don't believe you're gonna get better, you're just gonna sit back and you're not gonna do what it takes to get better. That's interesting. It's the very practical kind of, in any sense-- As you get to know me, that's pretty much it. I'm getting it.

Well, and it's interesting. I mean, to me, I look at all of these disparate, kind of seemingly disparate, you know, bodies, right? We can say there's the physical body or emotional body or psychic body or soul, whatever you wanna say. They're not actually these separate things and they all kind of do overlay and function as one thing. And I think what you're saying is there's no denying that's accurate. Anyone who has followed through on anything knows that they have to have the belief to continue up that diligence and focus. Otherwise it would just be cystophistic, and you would never do it. It would just be pointless.

It's interesting because I, the only experience I've never been truly ill, sick, outside of like the flu or anything else, the closest I've come to really any, and I'm very grateful and lucky because of that. But I did have this very weird thing where I was getting these intense pains all down my arm and my neck debilitating. Like this is right when I was moving from the city to go back to Maryland for a little bit. And it was debilitating. Like I couldn't type, I couldn't do my job. I was on the floor most of the time, went to the doctor. They're like, oh yeah, we got, you can see you have a herniated disc, yada, yada, yada, gave me Valium, gave me steroids, won't go away, smoke and weeds, not helping.

And it was like really just a nightmare. Then three people within this span of like a few days recommended I read this book by Dr. Sarno.

Oh my, I know all about this one.

Of course, right?

By the way, I do believe in Dr. Sarno.

It's a clinician.

Only because my dad's big into him and he's had a very similar thing.

Same with my dad.

And I never read the book. Maybe if I did, I would understand a little bit more of what the premise is.

And he's someone I'm not predisposed to like, he is essentially a Freudian. The mechanism of which he says this stuff emanates from is a Freudian one. I'm not a farmer of a young person. Freud to me was wrong on many things. Of course he got some things right, but interjected his own compulsions and complexes into this stuff and it's fucked up many people since. However, I'm reading this book. Three people mentioned it to me and I get it universe. Three people are telling me independently to do this, I'll get the fucking thing. I know I'm that type of dumbass who needs it three times. So I get the book, I'm reading it and my symptom starts to subside a little bit, but I'm like, oh, it could just cause I'm more relaxed.

I get to the point in the book where he, and I read the mind body prescription, which is like an updated, his original book is healing back pain. And he was a clinician too. Much like the person you mentioned, like this is not someone who's like expounding and pontificating on these theoretical things. Like this is due to 10,000 patients. Just come and see what's working exactly. So I'm getting to the point in the book where it's like a certain subset of people will experience as they do these practices and just kind of, it's just mindful awareness of what's going on. You list what's stressing you out.

His main take is that it's unconscious rage, which is rage that cannot be expressed in regular social life because it's completely inappropriate. Like I manage you, like I deserve this, like stupid shit, like when you're a kid, like I see my son do, like you can't, you're not allowed to do that in society and this is a press thing. So it creates all these problems. Anyway, get to the point in the book where it starts to move around. Well, and behold, as I'm reading the fucking thing, it jumps from my arm to my leg. It goes to my balls, it goes to my shoulder.

Because it's totally in your head, basically.

And this is something, you know, if someone said to me in the previous three months that this is in any way related to anything, but physical symptoms of anything, I would have been like fuck you, you're an asshole. Like I don't know why you think you have the right to tell me that, but you're a dick and you don't understand what's going on. In this moment, and you know, I had to do some rigorous physical exercise because we had a flood in the basement right when we moved in, I had to do it and I didn't have any pain. So I learned very quickly, he makes a contention that I think lines up with what I'm saying and with what you're saying, which is that all illness is somehow rooted in our unconscious processes, meaning that we can't consciously understand why we got sick and he's not saying that virus is that we kept from someone else, that's your fault, but he's saying your susceptibility for certain immuno diseases or any major symptoms that you'd be experiencing can be rooted in the unconscious, which makes a lot of sense to me and it also they can serve a particular function and his assortation is the function that the pain or some serious disease may cause us is a wake up call.

It's literally intended to do two things. One, the pain is supposed to mask the root of the issue which is the emotional or psychic trauma that you're inflicting on yourself or has been inflicting on because your mind, your unconscious is saying, oh, well, it's better that this person gets cancer or better that this person has some pain in their body because they don't want to deal with that trauma. That's the worst of what we can deal with. That's gonna be the worst thing. So he's like, listen, I don't think this is gonna be a popular opinion. I don't think you want to tell people that their cancer is caused because of their head, but he's like, I think in future generations, people will see that there's a real connection between everything that happens in their lives and certain things, you know, illnesses and pains and all of these things.

And he came to this theory, again, not as like some mystical reader of, you know, the Kabbalah or, you know, some ancient Hindu texts, but as a clinician who saw people, essentially he had like an 80% success rate for like healing people's back pain and like serious chronic pains. So to me, this is all to say a very, and it's a very long sort of basically say very simple thing. I think all of these things do serve functions in our lives. If the function of your cancer, although no one should have to go through having cancer three times was to get you to realize the importance of what you're putting into your body, being outside, learning for yourself to take matters into your own hands rather than listening to the professionals, it served a function, you know?

And I think that the practicality of what you're saying, which is the fucking truth, which is you have to kind of believe in what you're doing and have the confidence and understand that that is supporting a decision you're making. 'Cause without that, it's just pure blind faith. And I don't think that's very helpful for most people.

It's just not enough to do what you have to do. Like all these protocols, these cancer things are very serious and meaning that they're a very serious time commitment. And you just, it's just a lot of work. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

So you're trying to save a life.

It's like a, it was a couple of years of work, looking back at it now, but going back to Dr. Sarnav for a second, I actually believe that emotional and I guess rage like that would be considered something else. It is actually, you know, was one of the contributors to getting sick. I just don't know that it would be enough to get me un-sick. You know what I'm saying?

Recognizing it.

Yeah, exactly. Like for a pain and for a back pain, I think there hasn't been a physiological chain of events that have been set into motion.

Yes, yes.

That's I think we're, you know.

And I don't think it's that much of a divergence in our opinions because I think like, let's say it like this, let's say someone has cancer, they go do ayahuasca. And they get confronted with all of their psychic and trauma and demons and everything that I don't think they're gonna come out of that experience and their body's gonna start healing itself. However, that experience and then coming into contact with it could be like, oh my God, like I actually have to start taking care of myself then what you're talking about, the physical effects, you know, the lipids, everything, the cellular repair is enabled because that's where I think like, what I'm saying is you're saying we need the belief so we can do the things that have it happen.

And I'm saying that belief is also kind of this weird secret magic ingredient that allows that to happen. It's not gonna just do it. I don't think it's lined over matter in the sense that.

It'll get you interested. It'll get you thinking about it. It'll get you reading about it. It'll get you making connections and asking people and eventually leading to your own recovery.

Yeah.

If you're a nut job and just have a pain in your arm, maybe reading a book can alleviate it in that sense 'cause you recognize it's not a real serious physical problem. That was his whole point. Sarno was like, listen, every single person has these cracks in their spine. There are people who have devastating cracks who are tennis players in high level performance athletes. There's nothing wrong with them. Cancer's different. Handsome can go, there's your cancer. There's something wrong with yourself. So that's also a very critical distinction. I don't want people getting the impression that you can read a book and your cancer is gonna go away at all.

But the Sarno thing is really, really powerful. I gave it to one of my friends on my dad's recommendation. I don't have any back pants, I don't read it. 'Cause it was the one that was called Heal Your Back Pain. So I was like, I've got a pile of things I need to read. Problems I have. But what's interesting to me is why does that always manifest in the back? So here's a very interesting thing. He's a clinician, right? So if you look at the medical history, especially in Western society, but especially in the United States, there really wasn't a lot of back pain or neck pain up until the 50s. You know what, there was a lot of ulcers.

Everyone had fucking ulcers. And this is another example of where the collective unconscious can kind of show itself. There are certain problems that are associated just mentally in our heads. We don't think about language and syntax that often, but when you're carrying a heavy load, when the pressures of society ramped up for, you know, householders and people, they started developing back problems with increased frequency and ulcers start knowing it's ulcers anymore. It's like rare people will say I have an ulcer. I mean, people obviously get them, but it's not like compared to end. Here's another really interesting thing he found.

The age of back pain where people start getting it is from their mid 30s until their mid 60s. No, that's baby like, okay, well people are getting older, but people after 65 drops off completely. Because in his contention is that the stresses of life dramatically are reduced when you're older. You don't have as many responsibilities. You're, you know, your kids are probably out of the house if you had kids, you have less things to deal with just in life. So you don't have these huge occurrences of back pain. However, people are entering the workforce, trying to get married, trying to navigate life.

They have to deal with these incredible amounts of pressure. So you see this huge uptick in back pain. And like again, if I would have read this from like a Carlos Castaneda type, I would have been able, my mind would have easily been able to be like, bullshit. But when you see that like this stuff works because he's studied people and has reports, it's hard to discount, you know?

Yeah. - It's truly fascinating. I'm really, really, really excited to see that the fringe research that I was doing six, seven years ago, which actually wasn't so fringe anymore. Like for example, you know, this protocol that I followed, I was on a mailing list with 2,000 other patients all over the world discussing how to, she was dead already, the founder. So, and she was German discussing how to extrapolate her things into today's whole foods world and like what, you know what I'm saying?

Wow. - And now I know that list is probably like seven or eight thousand since I was on there, it's gone quite a bit. But all these kind of crazy fringe things that, that, you know, people didn't laugh at me personally because, you know, I had already like proven to myself and to other people that obviously this works.

Right, right. - I was feeling and looking better than I ever did in my life. But all these kind of fringe things are so mainstream right now. And, you know, some people look at that with disdain when the thing that they thought was interesting and the hipster. - The hipster.

The hipster. - Yeah, yeah.

But you know, everyone has it from, you know, but to me like that is for all the people that struggle to make these ideas mainstream who are ostracized, who were lost their medical licenses, who are like shunned and fights with friends and who just push forward and say, you know, I don't care. I know this works and dedicated their life to it. The idea that, you know, that Memorial Sloan Kettering even has updated their chemotherapy guidelines for the first time in 20 years, reducing everything by, you know, 40, 50, 60% of the dose, just in the last couple of years. Like, you know, after all these like Amazon fringe books, you know, and just to see that, that, you know, I think that gives me a lot of hope that whatever ideas were involved with now that we're pushing that fringe.

You know what, in 10 years from now, 20 years from now, there's no reason that it can't be a global shift because, I mean, obviously like Tyson Farms on TV showing that, you know, we don't use any antibiotics, even though they like, I don't know if they invented it, but they definitely had a hand in the destruction of everyone's health in this country and they're absolutely evil, but the fact that they even give a shit to say something like that, to, you know, the work they manage.

We're pushed in that direction.

Yeah, we'll be pushed in that direction, just kind of reminds me that like, you know, shit looks really bad, like, it's okay, you can get up, just get, pick something, start working on it because you can't, you know, major shifts do happen. I mean, the crazy shit that I was reading at the time, you know, I'm trying to think of some examples of it. Even in her, oh, teeth, that, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

We were talking about this a lot of things with the teeth. Like, you know, this guy, Weston Price from, from, what is he from the 1920s, from the 30s, he was hawking this stuff and nobody listened to him. And now in, you know, what are we, in 2015, 16, 17, people are starting to understand the connection between, you know, root canals and chronic disease and, you know, so anyway.

No, and this really does tie everything that we've been talking about together because it shows how the diligence and focus and just kind of tenacity to continuously push for something actually does enact change. And we know we live in a world of like hyper-intense and quick information. So it can seem like when things don't get done right away or within a year or two that they're just not getting done. But I mean, you and I were both lucky enough to grow up before the internet. We grew up with the internet too. She has changed tremendously in a very short period of time. Just in our lifespans, things have gone from night to day in so many different ways.

So it does give me confidence and belief and also just knowing I hear about this independently from you from so many other people that the idea of these sustainable communities really becoming a trend and not just kind of like a fringe idea like, hey, this is kind of a weird thing. We're gonna try, I think we're gonna see that. I think the natural evolution from something like Burning Man and these things that have kind of planted these seeds in people's eyes are these offshoot communities. They don't have to be related to Burning Man in any way where people recognize like, you know what? Rather than meeting up once a year, why don't we do this for as much of the years we want to?

You don't have to live here all the time. But if you want to-- - Do you want to tribe?

A tribe, exactly. So it's like-- - Or make one if you don't like one. - Exactly, which I think you've been very effective at doing too. So we've talked about so much stuff.

Yeah, sorry. - No, but I could do this forever, are you kidding me? I could literally do this forever. So I end with three questions and then one other question, what's your favorite color in?

I'm a white person. I don't know why, I'm just like clean.

You know, I haven't heard-- - The illusion of clean.

White, I have to go back and check and I have the record of these things. I can't imagine more than one or two people to pick white, that's interesting.

You're an iconoclasm. - Cotton ball white on the interiors.

What is your favorite number?

Let's see, I mean, does it have to be single digit or could we double digit? - No, why would it have--

It's a number. - Probably 72.

72, why 72? - I don't know.

Okay, interesting, interesting.

I've used it before, it just kind of come into my head.

Then that's right, that's what it is. What's your favorite animal?

Hmm, let's think about that. You know, I think I've been connecting more to my spirit animal, which is a wolf. I only say it's my spirit animal 'cause that's what my name means in Hebrew. Also what I decided to, you know, with my partner name, our music group, Wolf and Lamb, and then, yeah, you know what, I like the wolf.

I like it too, yeah. - I like it too. I think my last guest just choose Wolf too, interesting. Last question, what's a practical tip that has helped you in your life that you could share with people listening?

You know, I would say, like, probably, like, dreaming about goals and things. And, you know, I don't wanna say some people are not goal-oriented, but just everyone's got a dream, you know, everyone's got, you know, and for some reason, I was really lucky enough to, you know, to not have that other voice that some people have, which is like, I'll never get that. You know what I'm saying, like, oh, that's too big. Like, oh, you can never pull that off, you know? Instead, I had another guy on the other side who started talking it up and being like, "Well, you're gonna do that." Well, you know what I'm saying?

Why don't you do that?

That's amazing.

And, you know, and so I just aimed, like, a little bit bigger than I should have. And, you know, there's consequences to that, for sure. You know, it takes a little more time to digest projects, let's say, but I think that, yeah, I think just kind of dreaming a little bit bigger than you think you're allowed to. Do you know what I'm saying? Or you think you deserve to, or, you know, just like, because you'll probably get it, you know? (laughs) And you'll probably be a lot, you know, so I think that, like, I thought especially about this community, about different ways of doing it, maybe not having so much risk, maybe doing a small or whatever, you know what, why don't I just try for, like, a slightly bigger thing?

You're not even that big. And, you know, it was a lot more work than I thought, which is-- - Still is.

Still is. - Yeah.

But it's worth it, because now I'm getting to prove a much bigger concept, and not just, like, you know, getting another house with someone else, and, like, you know what I'm saying?

I do. - So, I think in the music, too, it's been the same way, I don't know why. And my partner's not any better. He's, like, also, like, yeah, sure, you know what I'm saying? We're both, like, so kind of happy, go lucky in that way, you know? So, I think, yeah, that's what I would say. I'd say, just kind of aim, aim big. It'll keep you busy. It'll keep your mind off of all the, you know, what-ifs and whatever, because you're so far, you know, you're so far, up-shits-creep, you know what I mean?

You know what I'm saying? - You know what I'm saying? You have to do it, you know?

Yeah, I love it, dude. Zap, man, thanks a lot, man.

Awesome. - Yeah.

This is great. - Really cool, really cool. Looking forward to plenty more of this.

Yeah, all right, peace. (upbeat music)

Thanks for listening to that episode. I really appreciate it. Go check out Zev. They've got a whole crew. It's crew love. They've got a whole thing. There will be links on this episode page, which will probably be out on the website in MindPod Network next week. I'm just gonna get this one out as a podcast, and make the posts and the emails later. You know, taking care of a kid, not easy. Dreamland is the farm and kind of shared living area that they have up here in Milan. I'm gonna be there for a Labor Day weekend party shindig. So, you know, if you're up here in the Hudson Valley and you wanna connect, take a cue from Zev.

Hit me up, it was a fun to hang out with people. Okay, that's it, and I will see you next week.

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