The Transformative Power of Music with East Forest: AI, Psychedelics, and Creative Evolution

The change that we need to do in this world to survive is going to happen from the inside out. Music's more present in our lives than it's ever been in the history of humanity. You know, in our pocket, we have almost every song ever written. It's just crazy to even think about that. We take this for granted. It's like asking a fish what water is because it's so present in our lives. The John Hopkins stuff, when you have a playlist, it's an amalgamation of songs being used off label. None of them are typically intended for the guidance of a psychedelic journey.

All right, Mr. East Forest, how are you doing today, brother?

Very well. It's a beautiful day here in Boise, Idaho.

Nice. Yeah, it's a beautiful day here too. And upstate New York. Not as nice as yesterday. It's interesting. This week I've had some pretty fascinating conversations and, like, switching hats on the podcast. Yesterday I interviewed a sex therapist and it was all the, like, the ins and outs of.

But you had to say ins and outs. Yeah.

There were countless, countless jokes. At one point I was like, man, my, like 15 year old brain just won't shut the hell up. Like, this is hilarious. But switching gears into creation and artistry and the magic of music. And so I'm really honored to have you here on the show. And where I kind of wanted to start was just a sort of broad question. And then we'll. We'll see where this takes us. But what role do you think that music can play or does play in people's lives that so often gets overlooked or missed?

It plays a really big role in our lives. Some of it's kind of obvious because music's more present in our lives than it's ever been in the history of humanity, as far as we know. But, you know, in our pocket, we have almost every song ever written. That's just crazy to even think about that. We take this for granted. We have music playing in the background. We use music for celebrations to. To change our moods. We want to feel more sad. We want to feel amped up for a workout. We. So it, It's. It's almost. I. I use the. The idea of saying. It's like asking a fish what water is because it's. It's so present in our lives. And then there's the additional layers of sound in general, like just me speaking. The way we communicate is through sound. It's a form of music.

It's. It's just massive. It's just massive. And so in that way, kind of my big shtick, not just with psychedelic therapy, but in general. It's. It's sort of. I think it's like an untapped potential of what we can do that does. That doesn't even get into thinking about creating music, like, what that does to our brain and the benefits of that, which there's a lot of pretty clear evidence about that. I was just talking to Susan Maxammon from Johns Hopkins a couple days ago at a little conference we were at at the USONA Institute in Wisconsin, and her latest book with Ivy Ross, your Brain on Art. I don't know if that crossed your radar about a year ago. And it's just like, you know, evidence after evidence after evidence. Pretty wild things about what engaging in creativity does for your health. Like, straight up, not like. Like, proven results about staving off dementia, longevity, mood. It's crazy. It's so crazy, actually. And the evidence seems to be so clear that it's odd that we're not like that we're taking funding away from creativity in schools and not teaching it as a way of helping with our overall health in our country. But there's a lot of things we do that don't make sense with. With. With health.

Yeah, it is strange. I just did, like, a recent episode on the show. It was like a mini episode talking about A Man's Guide to Mental Health, which, you know, could probably have been three or four hours long. But one of the things that I talked about in it was how in the UK they actually. Doctors are actually able to prescribe stuff like meditation for people that are suffering with depression and anxiety. And it's a very far cry from the United States, as an example, where that's not. That's not a prescription. You know, it's like SSRIs and different types of medications that we are so conditioned to just dish out to people. It's interesting because I think for many people, music is one of those relationships that's maybe underestimated, you know, that, like, I. Everybody that I know has some type of a relationship to music. You know, it's been with them through breakups and divorces. It's been there while, you know, they transition through different periods of their life. And I'm curious about, you know, for people that are out there listening, how would you say that your journey, your relationship to music has shifted over the years? Because obviously you're a creator, you're a consumer. How has that evolved and deepened over.

The years as a creator? It changed in a few ways. One is the digital revolution happened in the early 2000s and so all of a sudden you could make music like I wouldn't be making. I probably wouldn't exist as an entity, as an artist if it wasn't that I could do it on my own because within the studio system it was expensive. There were a lot of barriers and there was no interest in doing long form experimental music. Like, you know what I mean? Like it just wouldn't happen. No one would pay for that. I couldn't have paid for that. And you need time to gestate and determine a style and let that. Finding your voice takes many years. So those are definitely advantages of being able to create and make music, you know, record on a laptop, things like that.

But.

I, I, it's sort of a, it's a double edged sword, isn't it? Like that when something's that available, we also diminish it. We, we don't think it's as important in our lives. But at the same time it's easier to use and we can use music more in our lives. It dilutes it in a way. You know, something I think about a lot is, is the AI generative music that's coming up fast. And.

Of course I think about it because it affects my particular industry and the creative class. And AI is very disruptive in a lot of ways. But I think that's basically what it is doing. It's diluting something that used to be quite hard to do and it's getting easier and easier to do and it's, it's a really interesting question, like what does it mean when things that used to be hard culturally are easy? Like that is a dilution in some ways of humanity. Of course, on one side we get a lot of stuff and that's a literal dilution. That's could be, you know, peak content information sickness. Yeah, that's a problem. But then there's this element of like, especially for, for creativity, like what does it mean when we don't have to work very hard? And I think about that with men too. It's like in development, like if we don't do sometimes things that are hard that maybe we don't want to do. I mean that's an important part of being a human.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting because I think in many ways, you know, I look at my, I want, I do definitely want to get into that AI conversation because that's very fascinating. But you know, I look at Mike, my relationship to music over the years, I've never Been a creator. Like I've never made music in the sense that I've written it, but music certainly.

Put my life on a different trajectory and I would say kind of saved my life. I grew up in northern Alberta and I had no prospects in life. I didn't know what I was going to do. Barely graduated high school, hadn't gone back to school, was working construction. And I found music as an outlet, very sort of obscure.

Yeah. What music? I'm curious, what were you getting into?

I was a classical singer, so I sang opera for a number of years.

And you were listening to opera, was that.

I was listening, yeah. I was listening to opera. I mean, just imagine like me in a 95 Mustang, you know, GT with a V8, driving down the road listening to classical music, you know, trying to figure out what the hell I was doing with my life. But that something about it really pulled me in a direction and I, I ended up exploring singing, you know, had a. Had a good voice, practiced, got into university, went and, got a degree in music, went and performed all over like Europe and China and, and like, you know, went and sang. And even though I kind of reached the threshold where I was like, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life for many reasons that had more to do with the sort of classical industry than anything else.

It really pulled me out of a place that like, I was in a pretty dead end place in life. And so I have a very special and sort of sacred relationship with music. It's always been there in the background through, you know, literally and sometimes metaphorically. But I think that that's the case for so many people. Like, I think from an anthropological sense, music has played this role of being something that taps us both deeper into ourselves and deeper into the community, you know. Absolutely. And I wonder, as we sort of to come back to that AI conversation, I wonder, you know, what do you see as being maybe worrisome because as we sort of strip away the human capacity to create music and hand that, you know, the reins over to a machine, to AI, where it can generate music that sounds like anybody or in the style of anyone, you know, the necessity for people to even play instruments seems like it.

Right.

It, you know, becomes, I mean, in a logical sense of redundancy. So I'm curious about what your thoughts are on how AI is going to shift that landscape. What can creators do? How do you prepare yourself?

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy.

Just all the big life questions.

I think most people don't even really Understand where this is going. They're still stuck on like, have you heard the fake Drake? And like, right, it's like, dude, that's nothing, that's child's play. And this stuff is exponential in its, its development.

Well, on one hand it's interesting because I think there'll be a polarity of reactions. And so while you'll get more music, that's just like there's a hundred thousand songs a day right now. That's like one a second on Spotify being uploaded. That's now, what if it's 100 million? I don't know. It's like it breaks the model too. And Universal, Sony, the major record labels have a stake in Spotify, for instance. So it's actually like they're double dipping. And so Spotify says like, oh, we don't actually care if it's a artist because maybe we can own the artists, create them. As long as the users are listening, we'll just pay the AI less or nothing. So that's the literal dilution in the value of music. And if the platform is making money, Universals and Sony's are happy. So they're like, well, we're making money even though there's less human beings involved here. So that's a tricky space to be in. But on the other hand, I think it's a natural reaction of humans to want to connect. And so they'll be more hungry to go see live events and group events and see something happening right in front of them like they already are. Right. But it's going to be way more. And so we'll be like so bereft of, of that magic that will be seeking it out. And so that industry I think would actually increase. And there will, and there will also be people who just on their own discover that they're like, I want to play guitar because I, I'm realizing how much I enjoy it. Like I'm, I just want to learn, I want to do that. There will be plenty of people who won't because they're like, well, you know, recording music and performing, they are different things. And so some people just see the value in being able to still play. But I think, I think what I really look at is I think the two main immediate concerns are like, how do people make a living when partners. Part of it is on recorded music and that just becomes information sickness. And this is going to happen at peak content maybe or in shittification that idea with everything, right? We have more of everything. And so when you can just churn it out.

And.

Yeah, so it's mostly just about. We get a wash in too much, which I think we're all familiar with what that feels like. It's just hard to imagine when we get into like a post Truth. Nobody would that break the Internet, maybe.

I mean, I think it's going to break a lot of people's psyches, unfortunately.

It already is, right?

It already is for sure.

Argue that's kind of how this polarization we're in from largely social media and like news that gets more and more tunneled is breaking our psyches. Yeah, it's.

Do you know who Bo Burman is? The comedian?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's got that.

He did that series right, in the Pandemic. Yeah, Wild.

Wild series. But he. As you were talking, I was thinking about the line that he. I mean he's great at sort of using music as a medium to. To communicate. Communicate his comedy. But he has a line in one of his songs about the Internet. It's like, can I offer you a bit of anything? All of the time. And you know, it's like that's, that's what the Internet has become and it's wild. Like I think average person doesn't have con. I mean even, I mean even for me, sometimes my wife and I get into this conversation. I'm like, it's a wild thing to try and comprehend the complexities of living in a world where you have AI creating so much content that are all opposing narratives to the point where people just can't agree on what intersubjective reality actually is. Like the, the reality of story and narrative, people just can't agree on what it is. Like that'. That's brutal. It's damaging to culture and society. And so I think for. What you're saying is that people will start to migrate more and more away from the, the realm of story in digital space and back into the communities in the sort of objective reality space as a safe haven from this level of insanity that you know is coming. I mean, Google just put out a. Their, their latest quantum computer is like 261 million times more powerful than the previous generation.

Like that.

That's insane.

Like, that's.

How is that even a thing? You know, and like, and, and what it's going to be capable of is wild. And so I think about the arts and I think about content creators and I can imagine that the impact there is going to be swift because anybody's going to be able to generate. I mean people could generate content of you or me, you know, having a conversation or saying some that we never said or, you know, singing a, a song, you know, in the voice of whoever.

Right. And all the things can't even imagine, like, right. It's like. And that's probably 99 of like all these things that don't even exist yet that we haven't even thought of. Um, you're so right. It. That's, that's the, that's why I say break the Internet. Because like, how do you discern? Because then we all get to a point where if you look at things, you're just like, I don't know, we started to taste this in Covid. And things where you're trying to find information and you're just like, I don't know. Because things have agendas and it's hard to tell and, and you just sort of throw up your hands and that causes quite a bit of an anxiety where, like, what's a fact anymore? I mean, it's gotten to the point where I guess certain things we can look up. Like, I don't know, you're looking for like an airline ticket. It's like, that's the price, I'm pretty sure. And there's not another site and it'll be Delta's now a different price. It's like, maybe, but maybe it just gets to a point where it just doesn't function. And it's challenging for us to think of, like, how would that be regulated and fixed? Because right now the method is not, it's not totally free. Like it's really just capitalism. It's like what makes, what makes the money churn through. So that's what will be the driving force. And that's why even the record labels just yesterday, they're suing some of these Udos, some of these new platforms that are making the music. But it reminds me of the Napster era. It's like, it's like whack a mole. It's like, I kind of doubt you're going to put this genie back in the bottle in any meaningful way. Even though it is true that these models are pulling from all created content in a sense. So it's unfair because it's like, well, we all humans made everything and now you're just pulling from it to make other stuff.

Yeah, it's, it's a really wild, like, I don't know if you've seen the people creating these compilations of songs. I think there's a YouTube channel called There I Wrecked it or something like that. Where it's like they take, you know, a John Wayne song, but it's in the stuff. It's like Snoop Dogg's voice or, you know, it's. It's Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice, but it's, you know, it's some country singer actually singing it.

Yeah. Johnny Cash.

Johnny Cash. There we go. Thank you. So just so I'm clear, what you're saying is that artists specifically that are out there listening will benefit from moving towards community building, moving towards honing their craft within a live performance space. Like, I know I'm asking you a big question that maybe doesn't have a clear answer, but I'm.

Multiple answers. Yeah, yeah.

I'm curious, like, do you foresee your future? Like, how. What are you going to do to. And to sort of like ward this off and weather the storm? That is. That is. AI.

Well, it's. It basically is disruptive to the industry and that's not necessarily bad. So I think it's just going to. What is changing right now is largely the recorded music industry and. Or I should say, and that is something that hasn't exactly been a great system so far. Like, you know, Spotify doesn't pay a lot and so forth and so on. So where that will end up, it's possible level it could be in a better place. We were disrupted by the Napster thing. We were disrupted by CDs or disrupted. You know, there's always been, you know, mono to stereo always has been like this huge shift in like what do we do? Or the. In the digital revolution. And so. And in many ways that's inevitable. I just think this one is a bit different because it's fundamentally changing, like how the thing is created. And I hear from various artists who are a bit more sanguine about it would be like, oh, well, you know, you're just. But we'll make all this cool stuff. We haven't thought about all these new tools. And I'm like, that's not really what I'm saying. Like we've had AI type plugins and tools. It's a bit different than just typing in prompts and it just makes songs. I mean, I don't even know if that counts as making music. I don't know what that is. That's more just like telling a computer to do something. And I don't know, it's just. This feels like a very different space. So for me at least it makes me think about, on a practical level, just diversifying verticals of a business. You're just like, what? Like, I tour. I. I happen to do some different things than other people. Like, I do retreats. We're going to Esalen this weekend to lead a retreat. And I, you know, I enjoy that. I, you know, I'm making a movie that's coming out, Music for Mushrooms. And so I enjoyed making the movie. And these are different creative mediums to accomplish the same thing I'm trying to accomplish with the music, too. They're different doorways for people to walk into. You know, I have a podcast that's another door. It's more. And everyone has the thing that they're. They're comfortable with. To me, it's all about engendering a conversation around inner work, the value of that, and helping inspire people into personal, positive change that can be done in different ways. And music has always been the base of my tree for me because I just think it's so powerful. It's so emotional. It's all about feeling. And ultimately the change we're talking about is really a kind of feeling you feel, and then that inspires you to take action in certain ways in your life. But it's you deciding that it's your feeling, and it's about introspection in the end. And music is amazing at that. But so. So can be films and retreats and books and talks and podcasts. And so to answer your question, it's a little about just trying to look at the. The crystal ball and being like, where might it go? Not being too freaked out about it, but also.

You know, putting a little work into the things that. Other verticals that already exist.

It makes me sad too, man. You know, it does, because I'm like, what? You know, there is the what if? Of like, huh, it's possible it all just goes away like that. You know, that's just not really a viable job anymore. I'll still make music, but I. In my life, it's like, oh, if I have to spend time doing other things to make a living, it's like maybe back to construction in that way, you know?

Yeah, it's. It's interesting because I think the intention of tools like AI should be to better our lives from a standpoint of being able to assist us with the things that are more mundane and banal in their inherent nature, to free us up of time to actually go and create, not rob us of the creation. The creation.

Right. Which is like the magic of what actually is. It's a. It's a food, a vitamin. It's a necessary, vital Force, actually, of being a human is to create. If you don't create, you wither. We create in our conversations, we create all the time. I mean, I really feel like that is God as a creation and creativity is just a larger flourish of it. And so you're totally right. Like, to take that away from us is a mistake, and it's not. But how can you stop the progress of technology? It's capitalism driving it, and the innovation is actually good, but it doesn't seem like anyone's in charge. It's like, all. All we're being driven by is like, who can get the most real estate here, which company? Or it's like, oh, but China's going to do it if we don't do it, and then they'll take over. And it's like, that may be true in some ways, but it's like, but if it's a race to the bottom, what difference does it make?

Right? Yeah, I think. I don't remember who said the quote, and I'm going to butcher it, certainly. But it was something along the lines of, you know, everybody wants to believe that there's some conspiratorial power that's in charge when the reality is much more terrifying, which is that, no, nobody, no one's driving bus. Yeah, right. And. And this is why you have, you know, this is why it's like there's lizard people that are running the government. And, you know, it's much easier to get into a space of.

Grasping onto something that your brain can contextualize, to say, this is what's happening for sure than it is to say, the system is so much more complex than I can comprehend. And that doesn't make sense. And so that's, you know, that's frightening or, you know, anxiety inducing or whatever. And, and I think, I think that that's the challenge. But I don't want to veer us too far off course. I'm going to bring us back a little.

I get into this stuff, man.

No, me too, man. Me too.

Like, this is a junkie about. I mean, as much as I am in. Into nature, and I'm also into tech and I'm into politics, and I really think about society. I'm really. Because the name of the game, I imagine, even for your own podcast, is really like, how do we sort of help push things in a certain direction? You just kind of give your gifts and you hope that's positive as opposed to, like, putting people to sleep. So that is a societal transformational question. And so all These things we're talking about, I feel like that's the North Star. Yeah.

And supporting people and being able to traverse the complexities of life, whatever they might be. You know, it's like, how do you. I think about, you know, the men's weekends that we run. A big part of it is that men have to cross this threshold into the unknown. And that.

That's a.

That's actually a part of initiation, is that the sort of beginnings of it are that you are. You're sort of whisked away into the unknown. And I think that we as a species are, you know, bumping up against this threshold that we're about to cross into this vast, wild, unknown territory within the digital space that is, in a way you can't really prepare for. You can put some guardrails on it, you can have some conversations about it, but I think socially, it's very hard to prepare for something that we. We can't even comprehend what it's going to necessarily do.

And there is this very physical ecological component that we're also facing, like something very grounded and real and physical that is challenging, of the climate is changing dramatically and that will have effects on our, you know, continued effects on our economy and politics. And that is a very physical stress. And for some people, that turns into wars. And actually, you know, if you're. I know I have a friend who's Ukrainian and his long story, his brother's here. And, you know, that's a situation of like, having to be somewhere else and be on the front line pretty much indefinitely. You know, it's like there's. These are real things that are happening in our world. And I often think it's about inner fortitude in some ways, you know, and that that's a skill that's very needed these days and probably very useful in the future because what we. We need a lot of people who, when a hits the fan, they know where their feet are on the ground, in a sense. And even if you're rattled, you're not completely leveled, or at least less often, so that you can just be there for witnessing and helping other people as well, and be like, look, yeah, this is. This is gnarly what's going on, and we can do this. You know, this is. I'm right here. You know, I'm not completely like. And because when you fall off is when you start to reach, as you're saying, for those easy answers, like pointing the finger at, oh, it's the immigrants or whatever it is.

As opposed to.

But people need those kind of resources and support and inner strength.

Yeah, yeah. It's almost like having people that are well equipped in the art of reorienting themselves in a very disorienting time. And that is a very incredible skill which I'm going to use as a segue into how I came across your work in 2019 when you released the album with Ram Dass. And it really was, you know, I mean, that project, I think, was something that so many people in my life were tuned into and really loved and experienced. And, I mean, I had been following his work for a really, really long time. And you seem to have. I mean, I was just blown away by how you kind of seamlessly made the music interweave with his teachings. And so I wanted to ask, like, what was that process? Like, how did you go about creating the music for it? And he's sort of elevating the message that he was putting out.

Well, we went there in the summer of 2018 to record with him, and I didn't have any preconceived notion other than that I thought I would. I would record him. I thought it'd be little bits of words. I had experience in my music in doing that with some field recordings I would make of people. Spoken word, really. So I felt comfortable in that space. And I thought, given his aphasia, you know, he had a stroke and it was difficult to language words that I would sort of get certain phrases and I would use them almost poetically here and there in music. But what I didn't expect is when I got there, the first. The first.

Thing he said was, what was the first song on the record? Is the song Nature? I'd ask him. I just asked him a question about, like, how do we use nature or should we. Or whatever, something rambling. And. And he kind of just listened for a second, and I wasn't sure again. I kind of thought we'd talk, you know, but it was a little more formal in that regard. Like. And then he would just, like, process it for a while, minutes, and then he would speak. But these long pauses in between his words. 30 seconds, sometimes 60 seconds. And exactly what you hear in the song nature is what he said. So I think he said, like, trees. And there's this long pause. I'm like, huh, water. You know, a minute goes by, moon. I was. At first, he's like, where? What. What are we doing? You know? But then he said everything he said in that song. So if you haven't heard that song, check it out. Maybe you can play part of it in the podcast. And when he got to the end, and if you hear the song, you realize it's this beautiful little arc, this little micro teaching with a little bit of humor, beautiful poetry, a little tag. And it's like one minute. And we take out the pauses, of course, and put it in music. Actually, the pauses become an advantage because now I can move the phrases to the rhythm of the music, like where it would land best.

And he just totally came alive out of his aphasia, gets erased, and it's like, there's Ram Dass. And you realize, oh, this guy's at the top of his game right now.

Little did we know it would be his last recorded teachings two years from his death. But he was strong, he had wisdom, and he was more than willing to share it. But it was. It was a bit locked away behind that aphasia. And the mechanism of music allowed it to be transmitted in a way that was like the perfect, I thought, you know, marriage. So I. The music became after. So I had those things now, and I heard what I had, and I was like, oh, man, this is incredible. And then it was sort of pairing music to it, kind of like scoring.

Very cool. How do you go about. How do you go about scoring something like that? You know, you hear this teaching and. Because again, as somebody who was in the music space for a long time, it.

That first track really sort of. It felt like I was walking out in nature. You know, it felt like I was wandering through the. The trees, you know, in. In my yard. And it sort of had that quality of being able to feel the wind and, you know, hear the leaves and stuff like that. So how do you even go about producing something like that and putting music to the message?

Well, I appreciate the question because it's a little more of a music question. I like that. You know, my process is largely, like, writing a bunch of stuff, and then it's more of a curation. So it's harder for me to actually find film scoring to be difficult to say, like, okay, here's the scene. Especially if it's like, in 45 seconds, it needs to have this rise. And then you're sitting there, like, writing that. It's easier for me is like, all right, 10 things, like, record things, and then it's just, like, trying to pair them and feeling like that is the right match, and then maybe adjusting it and it's. It's more vibe. So, for instance, the second song on the record is called Dark Thoughts, and one of my favorites and it has a bit more of A minor. It's C minor and it's a little darker. And it has these. These kind of soaring as a double bass doing a bowing. And it just sounds like a dark thought, you know, and that's an unusual instrument to hear. Bowed. It's hard to do. Usually you hear it, you know, plucked.

Plucked, yeah.

And the guy could bow and Owen Hoffman Smith. And we were just like, oh, let's. It's one of those happy things in the studio. Like, yeah, give it a go. Just play around and. And then, of course, that was amazing. And then Kyleen King came in next. Who's the played? Viola. And I hadn't planned. I was like, oh, we just got. I need half an hour to comp this part. He did. Because you have to play on top of this because it feels like dark thoughts. So a lot of it's just going with the flow and following what's happening. All I had was the piano layered part, which is the C minor thing, which I liked. And so I'll. I'll write like every day when I'm in a writing period. And so I come into the studio in the morning and just try and get one to three ideas out. And they're all improvisationally based. So it's just like get an idea going and maybe it's on piano. And it's. So it's like for that one. Dark thoughts or nature. Nature. One is also two piano parts. That one's in B major. And so it's sort of like making that little high part.

And that's just looping that in the computer and then playing some chords over that. That's improvisation. Like, oh, this is nice. Not knowing what it's going to go on or if you'll even use it. It's not being attached to that. It's just sort of getting ideas down. You have. And you have like a bank of songs, like, first draft, you know, just the bones. Sort of like if a song works on guitar and vocal, it probably. Okay. Then if you feel like you need to add a bunch of things to it. But you don't need to put lipstick on a pig, right? It's like it has to live on its own. So it's like. If a song just like a piano melody and chords, it has a nice shape and it's interesting. It's grabbing you into some emotion. I mean, come on. If you add Ram Dass to that, it's only better. You know what I mean? But if it was an okay song and Ram Dass makes it great. It's like. But it could have been better if it was a really. A great song on its own. Just instrumental.

Yeah.

And that's always my vibe. Like, can we like nail the instrumental in a sense where it just feels right?

Yeah. Very, very cool. Very cool. So a lot of it is very. It sounds like a lot of it's very intuition based where you're. You're sort of feeling into the essence of either the quote unquote lyrics, we'll call it for Ram Dass, or the essence of what you're wanting to create. Like you. You put out.

Music for Mushrooms same year. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, a lot of that doesn't have any lyrics and it's a very different intention, which. It's phenomenal. And so maybe just speak a little bit to that. Like, how do you create.

Yeah, very.

Music for a psychedelic journey.

Yeah, well. And to finish the answer on the Ram Dass, it is so it is like the. The music itself is coming from an intuitive improvisational space. And then how you're pairing that or if it should have other instruments like strings or whatever, or which Rom does that's more of like a curatorial producer mind. But you can stand back from it and like objectively listen to these different music pieces you've made and think like, you know, what's the vibe of the nature song? Or what kind of feeling is usually am I trying to engender? You know, is it hopeful? Is it what? And then it's just, it's. You're kind of looking for music that matches that.

The Ceremony albums are very different because they're recorded in ceremonies, mushroom ceremonies. They're live and they're totally improvised. And so it's really. What you're hearing is just that's what came out once. And there might be a curation afterwards of, you know, let's use this song that happened and. And not this next one. And. But I try to use as much as I can and keep it as it was because I'm trusting the. The process and if anything, how the process informed the music, meaning the people in the room, the mushrooms themselves, the energy, the arc of the experience. I can decide in advance. These are the things I've learned that help that experience. These are the instrumentation. This is what I kind of have the palette to paint with. But what comes out is unknown in advance. So in that way, it's very purpose driven music. All the elements are designed and employed. To say this will help the journey and the order it's in even the way it's mixed and how it's all done. So that's a huge difference, largely, than a studio record where I can lay down that piano thing I did one day, but then I'll come back to it, you know, many times and think, like, how do I feel about it today? Oh, I think a cello would be great on this. Okay, let's go find a cello player and then try that and so forth and so on and keep tweaking it. And, you know, everything's on its own track. You can adjust it much differently. Whereas in the Mushroom Ceremony music, it's one track, it's a stereo track, just recorded to tape, so to speak, in. In the session, in the Ceremony. And, you know, that album came out in 2019, and before that I had released that type of music. I just didn't really say what it was. It culturally wasn't as safe, frankly. And I finally was like, I need to come out of the psychedelic closet. We've been doing this since 2008. And that's where all my music came from.

Wow.

Like, the reason I loop, the reason I had the field recordings, the reason I'm singing without the words and the glossolalia stuff, all of that was. And I just thought, like, I think we need some more tools out there to. For the psychedelic therapeutic space. And so we put it out, and since then, it's a series. It's called A Soundtrack for the Psychedelic Practitioner. There's volume one is Music for Mushrooms, and then there was another one called In Volume Two, and the third one is called Lovingly, and that's coming out soon. And that's actually like, technically the soundtrack to this narrative documentary we made called Music for Mushrooms. We're kind of now making a. A movie where we can, like, not just talk about the role of ceremony and music, but is it. Is it important or valuable in this societal transformation that, you know, we're getting into?

It's. It's interesting because I think one of the things that you've done very well with, especially that I'm just going to sing your praise the entire time. That's what we're going to do here.

Hey, I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you say. What'd you just say?

I'm sorry, did you repeat that?

Let's get a clip of that, right? Every.

Every artist. Every artist, like, yeah, yeah, give me more.

Agile people.

We just like praise. We like praise. I think one of the things you do really well is that, you know, I've done countless psychedelic journeys and they all sort of have this ebb and flow to them. And there's. There really is, in my experience, at least, there. There really is this kind of wave that you are riding where things move low and slow and things can move high and fast and they can stretch out or they can compress or get very intense. And I think one of the. The very cool things about the. The music that you created is that.

Delivers that. You know, there's sort of like this complexity that takes you on a journey. And I remember starting, you know, my journeys with, like, the Johns Hopkins tracks. I think they have. They have a. They have, like, the playlist.

Playlist.

Yeah, yeah. That you can go through. And those are. Those are fun. Those are. Those can be intense depending on the different tracks. But, you know, there's also tracks on there that can be jarring and the transitions sometimes aren't super great. But, yeah, I mean, the music that you created is very much like even listening to it. It's kind of like being on a bit of a journey.

I hear that at times. Yeah. The John Hopkins stuff, when you have a playlist, it's an amalgamation of songs being used off label. None of them are typically intended for the guidance of a psychedelic journey. So one of the main questions is, if we do write music and compose a piece that is designed for that, what are the elements we can bring in that are not offered in something like John Hopkins playlist? So when I make an album that's a bespoke piece for this, it can, of course, be long, like six hours. It can also follow the arc of the experience. You can have longer songs that can have very slow tensions and release and ebbs and flows to allow you to be in this sonic architecture of the space that you are in in a journey. I mean, in a journey, it's largely you, the music, the drug, darkness. You're just in the space, you're often in the music, and that's it. You don't need much else. So that. Showing you how powerful that element of sound and music is to guide a journey. And that's how it's been for millennia. I mean, every ceremony we see, it's the songs that are the structure and the guide. Yeah, that's just how it is. So it's strange to me that we're not putting more importance and doing a deeper dive into what is the modern context of that then musically for us. What tools can we bring to the table? And I wish we had more artists doing that, because there's a lot you can add into the music, you know, that we could get into or not like some of music stuff and some of it otherwise that just create a more positive, safe experience for people.

Yeah, because the. I mean, historically when you. I mean, I've only studied a little bit, but when you study how psychedelics have been used, they have almost always been used in tandem with some type of music or chanting or dance. And it's been very curated or it's, you know, just you and nature. Right. And I think that you can have that combination. Go ahead. What you say.

I've just. I've never seen a ceremony, indigenous ceremony, that wasn't songs. And there might be some out there, but. And those songs are extremely codified, like Lakota sweat lodge. Like you do not change these because it's a technology and if you scre. You know, you don't want to screw it up. It's like it's been a thousand years. It's like this is what we figured out.

Right.

You do it exactly the same. San Pedro Ayahuasca had shamans describe that the song is bringing forth the spirit, not the medicine. The songs, like, if we don't have these songs, this won't work. I mean, that's. So that's their tech, in a way, is like the Icarus. The songs, we see it again and again. And I think we see vestiges of that in our own culture where, you know, even like Happy birthday. I mean, we have songs that we use in certain ways to like bring forth mental states and feeling states and bring people together. Music maybe evolved because it brought people together. That's an evolutionary advantage. Nonetheless, it's strange that it exists. It's strange even thinking about what it really is, especially when you get into the psychedelic states. It's like this kind of bridge or translator into non dual metaphysical spaces. And yet that same song exists here in the three dimensional realm. And you can listen to the same thing, but it works as a tool up there too. And it's just like it speaks that language of metaphor and the non dual. Like, it's like, oh, that is the psychedelic space. But then I can like play with those constituent parts right here. That's so wild. It's. It's hard to explain unless you know, you've, I feel like, had that kind of union with music, time, space, and. And Tryptamine.

Yeah, yeah, that last part, it was interesting because as you were talking, I had one experience where the music that I was listening to had a violin part in It And I became the violin and the frequencies of the wavelengths. And it was such a wild experience to literally lose physical form and become music itself, become the instrument being played. It was just like. I mean, it was. It probably sounds ridiculous to somebody that's like, I've never done psychedelics and like, what the hell are you describing? But it really was one of the most profound experiences because to. It. To inhabit music in that way, I think is. Is such a gift because. I don't know, I think I remember coming back from that. And I had this tradition with my son when he was first born where I would take him out and I would put him in the grass by the tree. And as he got bigger and older and he could start to crawl and start to walk, every single morning we would come outside and there was this one tree on the property that we were renting where we'd go say good morning to the tree every single morning, and we would put our hand on it and I'd say, good morning. He didn't talk at that time, but it kind of kept me in touch that, like, a couple of the experiences that I had on psychedelics have kept me in touch with this, you know, sort of whatever we want to call it, like the frequency of existence, the non. Duality, the I am that, you know, that is me, et cetera. And I keep coming back to those types of experiences because they, they. They both ground me in the now and allow me to. To expand outside of the, you know, the.

The getting caught in the past and. And the future, you know, the. Did I do that? Right? Did that happen? Well, did, you know, is that going to go okay tomorrow or next week? And I think it's those types of experiences, again, coupled with music that can be so profound that really embody it, you know, that sort of like bake it into our. Our somatic experience.

So I'm curious, how do you describe your. How do you describe the use of psychedelics to somebody that has never experienced them, that's never used them, that's maybe curious about them? I'm always. I'm always fascinated to hear what other people say.

Maybe I would say it's like if your life is normally like having your hand right up against your face, a psychedelic can help their hand be at arm's length or much further. And it's like getting a bird's eye view on life and your habits, your routines, your relationships, your thoughts, your feelings and that it can sometimes go even much further from that, and even that starts to go away. And you've zoomed out to under have feeling, understanding, felt experience of cosmological understandings like existence, the universe itself, like way zoomed out and typically feeling a lack of separation. So really feeling your own connection and role and part of a whole. And like, then that seems to typically be soothing from previously, maybe feeling typically quite separated in our lives. So in that way, you know, that's not even getting into saying yes. It can be confusing or scary or joyful, all these different. But they're amplifiers in many regards.

And, and in being an amplifier, it will amplify or it's like, it's kind of like it's somehow. It can be a microscope and a telescope at the same time. It's like you're getting to understand the detail, but at the same time you're seeing it all at once.

And it's largely done through feeling, understanding. That is very. It's not confusing to you at all. It's just hard to translate that into this world.

Words.

Right. You know, you're always in the journey and it's like you, I have the answer and you know it and it's. And then you put it on paper because you're like, this is it. You know, if I can take that back, I'll remember the world will change. And then it's true. That is the answer. But you've translated it down to like three dimensional reality. You come back and it's a circle or something on paper. And you're like, oh, I can't. How do I explain the circle? But it's. I don't know, maybe it's a gift. It's a gift that we have these different plant medicines that can take us out of the boundary conditions of normal waking reality. So that.

It'S not too hard. Yeah. Because it can really show you things that change your perception of like. Look at the Johns Hopkins study, the first one they did, about lowering anxiety around death for terminal patients.

Right.

Did it or didn't it? And basically they go on these journeys and they're like, you know, maybe death is not what I thought it was. That's pretty powerful.

So for anyone to have that kind of experience, I think it changes your meaning and experience of life to recognize that it's maybe bigger than we feel at our most lonely or anxious or separated.

Yeah. I think, I can't remember what the exact percentage was. It was like 80 or 90% of people that have done psychedelics. I think it was specifically psilocybin say that it is in the top five most impactful and meaningful experiences in their life.

And yeah, in that study, they went back. Yeah. Later. Much later, and asked them, is it still salient? And that's what they said.

Yeah. It's interesting because I. My. My mom passed away earlier this year, and when she was in the final stages of her life.

I talked to her about psychedelics. And, you know, I think I was one. There wasn't many people that she would talk to and open up about her, you know, her impending death and how she felt about it and, you know, what. What she was worried about, whether she was scared, what she thought happened after. And I was sort of that person in her life that was asking her all the questions that I know were maybe a little uncomfortable, that.

She had sort of been chewing on herself. And, you know, I said, I think it might be a worthy experience for you to. To look at having some type of psychedelic experience.

Wow.

And she thought about it and, you know, I think for her it was still. It was. That was like a little bit out there, you know, and. And so she never. She never. She never bid on it, which was. I don't know, in my opinion. I would have loved for her to have done that. But I think in the end.

You know, in the last. The last sort of like nine days that I spent with her, there were definitely moments where I was like, oh, you're in that right now. You know, like you're. You're in it right now. Like you're in the portal right now. You're having the experience right now. And. And so, you know, I think there's many different ways that we. That we can get to that sense of non. Duality or understanding or, you know, experiencing God or something bigger than us or however we want to put what it is that people experience on it. And so, yeah, I mean.

I'm curious from your perspective, and this is maybe a little bit more tactical of a question, but I've always returned to music and turned to music for specific reasons based on what my life is, you know, what I'm experiencing in my life. And I wonder if you have any insight or advice for people in terms of how they can turn to music in moments where they need something, you know, as a guide, as a mentor, because I don't think that we often think about it in that direct way relationally, but I think it certainly is from my experience. And so any insight and guide for people that are listening in terms of how they can turn to music in the moments where maybe they're stuck or lost or Alone or what have you.

Yeah, sure, you know, with your mom. I just want to say, like, my friend vcj, he's got this phrase, all choices are valid and everybody graduates. It's kind of like we all go home, you know, or Terence McKenna used to talk about DMT's, like, you know, that's there for everybody. I mean, it's crazy that in human experience, like that door is there for you and the only thing you need is courage. But it's there. And it's okay, though, if that's not right for you, but it's there. Regarding music, it's actually, I think it's pretty simple. Like, it's sort of a kryptonite to our modern lives too. And it's. It's just about active listening. It's about listening in general and recognizing what that means. And it's largely about clearing away the noise in our lives and just taking the time to do one thing. So whatever the music is you're drawn to, I just say, like, just actually listen to it. And it's very simple. Just don't do other things. Maybe turn off some other senses, like close your eyes and. And just let it be with you. Let. Let yourself feel whatever you feel and be curious, but let it just kind of flow around. And now I feel uncomfortable, or I feel a little bored, or now I feel kind of excited, or I feel some warmth. Now I feel very serene or whatever it is, just allow it. And then when it's done, you don't have to attach to anything, but it's just the gift of your attention. And that's something that we can think about for just about all the things we're doing in our lives, because that's the most powerful thing we have to curate our life and our moods and our attention is attention. So the art of listening, I'm saying art because it's not really like one specific way it has to be done or prescriptive. It's keeping in mind that playfulness about it and that attitude of openness. And I like to say we create the invitation to be spoken to and spoken to by spirit, by yourself, by whatever nature. The invitation is setting the stage. So by saying, for instance, I'm just going to sit here for the length of this song, not do other things and just listen to it and just. That's it. Put my attention onto it, that is creating the invitation.

Is that how, like I. I always love this notion because I've worked with a number of artists from, you know, rappers to heavy metal. Musicians to, you know, people that are, are pop singers and whatnot. How would you love people to interact with your music? Like, is that how you would love for somebody to sit down and listen to your.

I think any artist. It's like when people give their attention to their work, whether it's a painting or a dance or a song, that's the greatest gift. Or even the movie we made, it's like watching it is like, wow, what an honor and a privilege that you're taking your time to dive into this piece that we've made that hopefully engenders a feeling in you.

Totally.

Well, let's talk about that. So the Music for Mushrooms documentary, what sparked that? What do you hope to convey within. Within that movie?

We want to inspire change, personal change. But doing that by not giving them a particular thing they have to do, it's sort of saying like the answer to the film, it's not really a spoiler alert. It's saying like, you matter, your inner work matters. And we're hopefully showing that with different people throughout the film. And maybe you see yourself in there and that can inspire you to say, whatever your next step is, just take it. And it's probably the one that's right in front of you. It's not some like, I need to go to a vipassana meditation retreat or it's like, maybe, but it could just be like, I need to clean my room, you know, three times a week. I need to create some order for myself or I need to be better to my cat. But most likely it's about your relationships is most likely it's right there with your family or your friends or what's right in front of you. And that saying that, that work, that's important, that's how we change. The change that we need to do in this world to survive is going to happen from the inside out. So we have this little tagline, you know, for the films, the way out is in. And I think that's the opposite of the message. We're told it's about going to Mars and the next presidential election. And those things are obviously have consequence, but they're irrelevant if we're not affecting change one person at a time, from the inside out. Because that's how change has always happened. So I started saying, you matter, you matter. So I made the film, I majored in film in college and I was a photographer in my 20s. I have these interests and I think in the back of my mind I was always like, oh, it'd be really cool to be able to do a film someday. But I never really knew how or thought that would happen. And then this film, three years ago, very organically, was coming into space. I was filming other things for the East Forest project, like some biographical things with my buddy Mark and Mark Kochowski. And I naively said something like, oh, this is. This could be a documentary, not knowing what I was getting myself into. And we started filming more. And then you start realizing, oh, we need some story, and then you get some help. And then you start getting a story and more of, like, a script. And we worked on paper for many, many months, and then you start needing more filming help, and then you need funding. And then we were lucky enough to get funding from some wonderful private donors. And then you're like, oh, this is real. Like, you know, I gotta. I want to make their money back. We gotta make a really good film. And it goes from there. Executive producers and editors and consultants, and it's beautiful. But I actually, like, was afraid of the collaboration initially, and that's why I have a solo project, or because I was like, people will let you down, or that's too hard. And actually, it was the opposite. We've worked with such amazing, talented people. That's the only way this film came into existence, is the amalgamation of this talent. And like, Rachel Clara Reid, the editor, is just a genius. And working with her was such a privilege because I got to work with all these people who do things so much better than I do at different things. And collaborating in that way was a joy. So the collaborative nature of the film, which is what films are all about, they're so collaborative, is challenging. That's why it's hard to make a film very good. But when it really clicks and there's a magic layer, it felt like the mushrooms were guiding something about this process because it just organically kept happening in the next step and next step, or I'd be doing something somewhere in the world. But then that turned into a scene. We ended up filming. Filming or an interview we added. And then that was integral to the story. But it's like, well, I didn't plan that. These are actually all the places I went in the last two years, or the people I ran into. And that was beautiful.

That's so cool. I mean, it's interesting. You're. You're talking about it, and it's kind of like putting. Putting you in touch with the magical nature of existence, you know? And it's interesting because as we're talking about, I think that music in its own Way like Mushrooms is a form of magic. You know, that there. That there is magic baked into it. That it has the power and the potency to move us and shift us and change us and alter our perspective and take us into places within ourselves and in the world that, you know, we really don't expect sometimes or we couldn't sort of force ourselves into. So with that all said, where can people find the documentary? Where they can find more about your work and when does it drop?

Well, we're recording this in advance, but the plan right now is a theatrical release in the fall of 2024. So right, if they go to music for mushrooms.com or eastforest.org.

They should be able to see all the screenings and hopefully there's one nearby them and events and from there eventually, you know, you should be able to see it online and then down the road we'll hopefully have some streaming options. But first we're going to focus on going to the theaters and, and people hosting their own events.

Nice.

And having that community element and panels and discussions and. And we have a whole bunch of like additional material and educational material and meditations and music on our site if you, you know, if people want to go a lot deeper.

Just music for mushrooms.com and I'm really excited about it because it's a medium that I think is actually quite consequential these days, like stories in film, things on pick in picture. And I'm just really proud of what we were able to make and sharing it with people is the ultimate joy. So let us know, you know, what comes up for you. And. And then of course the music that goes along with it. There's the soundtrack, which is a lot of the music from Ceremony you hear in the film. And then this lovingly album is sort of like the expanded six hour version of that that will be coming out shortly. And that's the ultimate tool because that's like, that's the spear tip of the last 16 years of this work for me is kind of like saying this is where I'm at with music and Ceremony and this is what's been coming out of those spaces and from all over the world. When we do these ceremonies, it's exciting to be like digitize that. This is like the pluses of technology and then more or less for free for people like a Spotify or something. They can try it right at the safety of their own home and their own comfort and just see. It's like do your own experiment, you know, question any authority and just see what works for you. Nice.

Awesome, brother. Well, for everyone that's out there listening, we are going to have links to all that in the show notes. So if you're watching this on YouTube, you can check it out in the description below. If you're tuning this on Spotify or Apple Music or Apple Podcasts, I should say all of that will be in the show notes. Don't forget to man it forward. This is definitely one of those conversations you want to share with somebody in your life. East Forest, thank you so much for joining me, brother. Appreciate you. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.

Thanks, brother.