Sarah Kane: How a Blind Astrophysicist Looks at the Stars through Sonification and Generative Music

00:00

Joe Patitucci

This episode is brought to you by PlantWave. PlantWave turns a plant's biorhythms into music. You just attach two sensors to a plant's leaves. PlantWave connects wirelessly to a mobile device running the plantwave app, and the app has instruments on it that are built for plants to play. Check it out plantwave.com and share it with your friends.

Welcome to the nature of now podcast, where consciousness becomes form. My name is Joe Patitucci, and today we have an amazing guest. Her name is Sarah Kane, and she's an astrophysicist. And unlike most astronomers or astrophysicists, most of the time you get this image of a person staring through a telescope, looking at the night sky, all that good stuff. Sarah doesn't do that now. Why? Well, Sarah is legally blind, and Sarah uses sonification as part of her practice of understanding and studying the universe.

01:00

Joe Patitucci

So I thought that this was really cool. When you listen to this music of the stars, it's actually not much different from plant music in certain ways. It's a way of translating data from the cosmos into sound so people can have a better understanding of it, better understanding of the universe, just like we do with PlantWave, with plants. And it's really cool to hear from Sarah how useful this is and how NASA researchers are using sonification to understand the cosmos. So without further ado, let's join Sarah Kane from the panel, sonification and the future of generative music at South by Southwest 2023. Hey there. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the sonification generative music future of generative music panel here or conscious conversation. I'm here with Sarah Kane. Hello, Sarah.

02:03

Sarah Kane

Hello. Excited to be here.

02:05

Joe Patitucci

Yeah. So today we're going to talk about different ways of translating data into music, different practices, some of the value that sonification can provide, and the different approaches and the different ways that we come through. So, just as an intro of myself, my name is Joe Patitucci. I'm CEO of Data Garden. We design data sonification systems, one of which you may have experienced here, called PlantWave. It's a device that translates plant data into music. And so you can check it out over there at 1545, down here in the expo hall, and then also upstairs in eleven b, we have a plant music zone, which is plant music lounge, which has multiple plants, all connected to PlantWaves. It's a really immersive chill space to go and relax, and it really showcases the power of sonification. So, yeah, that's my intro.

03:15

Joe Patitucci

And then we have Sarah Kane. And so, Sarah, would you like to introduce yourself.

03:19

Sarah Kane

So, yeah. My name is Sarah. I am a fourth year undergraduate studying astrophysics at the University of Pennsylvania. I'm primarily interested in how we can use the current structure and status of the Milky Way to understand the formation history of the galaxy. But I am also legally blind, and so I'm really interested in this emerging field of sonification. How can we represent astronomical data as sound, both to make it more accessible to people like me who are blind and visually impaired, but also to make it more usable or enjoyable to sighted people, too? I will be starting my phd at the University of Cambridge next year in astronomy as a Marshall scholar selected by the british government.

04:06

Joe Patitucci

Wonderful. So I think we can start first by giving some. Well, we'll first start just by defining sonification. So sonification is a way of taking non audio data and representing it as audio. So it can sound musical, it also can sound like noise. There are lots of ways of doing data sonification. You can think of it similar to a weather map. A weather map is data visualization. We're all familiar with that. Similarly, we're taking information and then we're making it sound. Is there anything that I missed? Anything there?

04:48

Sarah Kane

I think one of the things I like to emphasize with sonification is that it's just a different way of representing data or ideas. So because sighted people, most humans, are inherently visual, it feels very instinctive to represent things visually. Think about a line chart, a bar graph. These things might feel like instinctively natural ways to represent data, but there's no reason that same data cannot be represented in sound instead. So I think that gives us good sort of framework with which to think about sonification, that it's not necessarily an alternative to some natural form. It's just another option that we have.

05:36

Joe Patitucci

Yeah, that's a great .1 of the things I really love about sonification, and this kind of comes from studying film and stuff in college, is, I remember my one professor would always say, when we be creating films, he'd always say, start with the audio, because the audio is the way you're going to tell the story, whether or not someone's looking at the screen or whether they're paying attention. And you can kind of build the images on top of it. What I really appreciate about sonification, even for sighted people, is that it's a way of monitoring data without having to pay direct visual attention to it. And that can be really powerful, especially if you're monitoring some kind of system that maybe only has anomaly happen once every couple of hours. You don't want to be staring at a screen the whole time or something.

06:35

Joe Patitucci

So, yeah, it has that benefit as well.

06:38

Sarah Kane

Yeah, I love that you brought that up, because I'm talking about a lot of these sonification ideas from the perspective of a blind person. But there is all sorts of upcoming research suggesting that, as you said, sighted people benefit immensely from sonification. There's a paper from 2014 saying that doctors understand eeg, so heart scan data better when they have it sonified. It's more intuitive. There have been a recent slew of NASA papers suggesting that, or not NASA of nature papers suggesting that sighted people can understand data better when they have both the sonification and the visualization. And this all comes back to this idea of universal design, this concept that when you make things that are accessible for disabled people, so in this case, blind people, you're actually just making things better for everyone involved.

07:33

Sarah Kane

So I think this is a sort of perfect example of that. In some circles, sonification arises initially for blind people, but then we start to see. It actually helps everyone.

07:46

Joe Patitucci

Yeah, it's a great point. There are lots of different ways people learn, different ways people absorb information, and different ways that our sensory system is connected to aspects of our brain. So if you think of visual stimulation is more related to the prefrontal frontal cortex, way more intellectual in a way, whereas I think you used the word intuitive there when you were talking about sonification, that makes a lot of sense because sound is more connected to the emotional and the feeling centers of our system. So it can also be a really powerful tool in terms of. It's like a direct connection to our nervous system in terms of how we're feeling. And we'll get into that a little bit, too. That plays into how we design for sonification as well. But let's have a look or listen at some different examples of sonification.

08:57

Joe Patitucci

We could start maybe with the. We'll start with the plant. How many of you have checked out the plant music lounge today or at all this whole time? Okay, we got some folks. I highly recommend checking that out. Definitely. Here's some plant music. It has, like, a little pad and little bass and maybe a little. So what you're hearing there is a plant, I think it's an orchid, actually connected to a PlantWave. And so you're hearing changes in conductivity through a plant represented as music. It's mostly changes in water content, graphing that as a wave and translating into pitch. And so each instrument you hear is actually being controlled by the same data. It's just being represented at different resolutions.

10:07

Joe Patitucci

So the bass is allowed to be triggered like once every 10 seconds, whereas that little staccato Ep thing is allowed to be triggered more often. So you're getting a higher resolution of the, quote, unquote image of the wave from the staccato sound than you are from the flute or the Bass. So that's one example of data sonification. And, yeah, you can check that out with PlantWave, and then we're going to have a look, I believe, and a listen to some of the space sonifications that we have.

10:47

Sarah Kane

Yeah. So I've picked out some sonifications from NASA's universe of sound. This is an incredible sonification project headed by Kim Arkhand and Matt Russo. So I've picked out a couple. I don't know if we'll listen to all of them, but we have both the visualization. So this is probably what you're more familiar with if you've seen telescope images before. There are these really beautiful images of astronomical objects, and we'll see sort of a visual representation of how the scientists are turning this data into sound. So maybe we will start with the galactic center. So this is a visualization. So an image and a sonification of the image of our galactic center.

11:40

Joe Patitucci

Lam you.

12:06

Sarah Kane

So in this sonification, those little twinkling noises, you hear the sort of compact notes, those are stars, or what we call compact sources, those become individual notes. And then those more extended sounds, those are like the clouds of gas. What you see is the more sort of, for lack of better phrasing, blurred parts of the image. You might have heard a bit of a crescendo towards the end of it when we hit the right side of the image. That is actually the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, sagittarius, a star that you hear is that sort of crescendo of notes.

12:45

Sarah Kane

In this particular sonification, the scientists chose to pan from left to right along the image with higher pitches representing light at higher points of the image and lower pitches being lower points on the image to sort of give us that full 2d picture. And then how loud the noise is corresponds to the intensity of light or how much light we're getting, how bright it is. And in that way, the scientists are trying to capture all aspects of the visualization in the sonification as well.

13:23

Joe Patitucci

Amazing. How has sonification changed your way of seeing space data? Because I know that my understanding is you got into sonification kind of through this. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about how you got into it and then what? It's meant for you.

13:47

Sarah Kane

Yeah. So I stumbled into the world of sonification completely by accident. I was doing my first ever research project. I had just finished my freshman year of college, and I was looking at something called exoplanet transits, which are when planets pass in between us and their host star, and we see these little blips in how bright the star looks to us because the planet keeps blocking some of the light. And I was trying to get some data that was hosted by. From a NASA telescope hosted by the space telescope Science Institute. And because I was a freshman, I was very confused. I was very lost. I didn't know what I was doing. So I tried to find someone at the space telescope science institute to ask for help.

14:30

Sarah Kane

And then I happened to see in his bio that he's the project lead for something called Astronify, which was a project that tries to turn the type of data that I was working with into sound. And I couldn't believe it. So I send him this email. First of my questions, whatever. I was confused. And then I go, by the way, I saw that you're the head of this project astronify, and I'm blind, and I would love to do anything at all to help with this project. And they were very welcoming. They let me be a usability tester for them. And things sort of snowballed from there. I got more and more involved in sonification. I heard about projects like this one from the universe of sound, and it means a lot of things to me.

15:19

Sarah Kane

I think there's a lot of potential in sonification to be a real research tool for people like me, to be a scientific tool that I would use in my day to day life when I'm doing data analysis. Are we quite yet there? Not yet. I think we're still in the beginning stages of sonification as a scientific tool. But even more than that, it shows me that people care. People care about inclusion. People care about making things accessible to blind people. Before I got into sonification, I really thought that I was the only blind astronomer in the world and that I was going to have to be the first one to figure out how to do things and how things worked, and that I was alone and that no one would care about making things accessible.

16:07

Sarah Kane

And I feel, pardon the pun, sonification opened my eyes to the fact that people do care about accessibility in science, and that caring about that accessibility makes things better for sighted people, too.

16:24

Joe Patitucci

Yeah. Wow. Thank you for that. There's a lot of evidence that when we remove kind of one way of absorbing information, we can go deeper into another. And I'm sure that I would imagine that your attunement to listening is much deeper than most people's, as it's true for a lot of musicians and people that have to prioritize one sense over another, we kind of get into that space. It's for everyone. Sonification has a lot of power. And so when you're listening to something like we just heard, what are you comparing? I'd imagine you're comparing this image to that image. What are some of the things that you're listening for?

17:38

Sarah Kane

Yeah. So what's interesting about the world of astronomy sonification as it stands right now, is that there are roughly two, maybe three classes of sonifications, and this is true of actually visualizations too. So there are sonifications and visualizations for education and public outreach, and then there know the visualizations and sonifications for research tools. If you have seen, for instance, the beautiful images from the James Webb telescope recently, that's not necessarily what images in astro papers look like. I'm sorry to say they're not. Well, they're not the same sort of beautiful. So when I'm listening to something like this, which is material made for outreach, I am chasing that sense of awe that drew me and I think a lot of other people to astronomy, that sense of wonder, the sense of smallness in the face of the universe.

18:40

Sarah Kane

So I don't want to discount the fact that the sonification is just beautiful and that is an end unto itself, because that is what inspires people to study astronomy, to study other sciences. If I'm listening, for instance, to a sonification of data, for instance, something like astronify, which still sounds very cool and is lovely to listen to, but it's a very different sort of tool, then I might be listening for changes in the data. Where do I hear changes in pitch? That could correspond to changes in how bright a star looks? What could that say? Does it mean the star is getting brighter? Could it be like a flare on the surface of the star, or is it a dip in the brightness of the star? Could that be a planet passing in front?

19:25

Sarah Kane

So depending on what the goal is of our sonification, we could be listening for very different things.

19:31

Joe Patitucci

And is there a way to delineate between whether it's a flare or whether it's a planet? Because it sounds like what you're looking for in that situation is kind of like the delta or there's like a big change. So yeah. Is there any way of indicating the direction of change, whether it's light or dark or density of whatever the body is?

19:58

Sarah Kane

Yeah. So this is a great question, and this is something we think about a lot in the astronomical sonification community. How do we standardize what these changes in pitch mean? So that it's an intuitive sort of process. So if we're talking about these flares versus transits, these brighter changes versus darker changes, the type of data we're looking at is something called a light curve, which is a measure of how bright the star is as a function of time. It literally just looks like a line graph that goes up and down as the star looks brighter and dimmer to us here on Earth. And a sonification of that data would just sort of pan along. You know, you hear the line as sound, where higher points in the line graph are higher pitches, and lower points in the line graph are lower pitches.

20:50

Sarah Kane

And that makes it quite intuitive to hear the difference between a flare versus a transit, because in a flare you hear this sudden whir of louder or not louder of higher pitches, whereas in a transit, you hear a dip into lower pitches.

21:07

Joe Patitucci

Cool. All right, that makes a lot of sense. And so this is all being done. So it's similar in terms of with PlantWave and making plant music. We're following this wave that we're getting from the plant. That's basically changes in impedance graphed over time. In real time. And so when the conductivity goes up, when there's more water between the two points, the notes go up. When it goes down, they go down, and then the delta kind of thing comes into play as well. So how quickly it changes will result in different effects being applied. Maybe if it changes quickly, the pacing of the notes may increase, or if it decreases, pacing could go down. And that's all done in real time.

22:04

Joe Patitucci

And because PlantWave is done in real time, one of the challenges that we have to deal with is that, well, I'll start with astronomical data, especially when you're dealing with an image and you're sonifying the image, you kind of know what the maximum and minimum values will be, right, because it's all there in front of you. It already exists. With plant sonification, one of the challenges is that it's changing all the time.

22:33

Joe Patitucci

You kind of think, you know what the baseline is, you know about what the range of data is that you're going to get, but you have that thing hooked up for a few days, and before you know it's way out of there and if you had it as a direct sonification of tone, like you would do it in an image, what would end up happening is that at a certain point the notes would go outside of the audible range. So one of the things that we have to do with real time sonification is do some way of either measuring and recalibrating the system, or do like what we do with PlantWave, which is we actually wrap, we wrap the notes, so we'll have a set range that the plant is allowed to play.

23:19

Joe Patitucci

And then when it hits a certain point, then it just has to wrap back down under. Yeah. I'm wondering what kind of design challenges appear on the sonification of space data side.

23:33

Sarah Kane

That's incredible. So I had never thought about the challenges of live sonification. I'm over here complaining about standardizing sonifications of data we already have, instead of dealing with an ever changing data set. That was very interesting to hear about. I suppose the challenge of astronomical sonification is that there are so many different types of data, so many different types of visualization, and it becomes a challenge to find the most intuitive sonification when you have 100, a thousand different plots that are wildly different. So, for instance, what we just listened to in the galactic center is a sonification where we pan from left to right, and how high or low the pitch is corresponds to how high we are on the plot, whether we're in the top or the bottom part of the plot. And then the volume corresponds to how much light we're getting.

24:38

Sarah Kane

But we could look at just an image. So not even a different type of plot, but still just a picture of a very different object. I'm going to ask you to pull up the Cassiopia a sonification in a second, please. We have still an image of an object, just a different object. And the method we use to sonify the data already has to be wildly different, because the image is so different. So if you could play the cas. A sonification is a sonification of cassiopia a, which is a supernova remnant, the remnant of a star that died explosively. And as you can see, it's roughly circular ish in a way that the galactic center image didn't look.

25:41

Sarah Kane

And this means that it makes much more sense to sort of scan out from the center of the image, rather than panning from left to right, as we did before. And since we're moving out from the center, it no longer makes sense to have pitch correspond to whether we're hearing noise from the top or the bottom of the image. So now the different pitches or the different instruments you're hearing are actually mapped to the different elements you can see in that graph. You can't see the elements, but the elements that astronomers know are there. So that's like calcium and silicone and iron, remnants of this supernova. So each instrument you hear sort of in that chorus is mapping how much of that element is at the point of the image where we are currently sonifying.

26:35

Joe Patitucci

Okay. Wow. So there are just many different ways that one would sonify. And when you're doing research or when you're checking out these different images, is it common for the different practices to all be available? Is it kind of like, visually, it would be like a histogram or something, and you say, like, oh, I'm looking at these certain things, but can you look at the. They normally provide the image as a sonification in multiple ways.

27:10

Sarah Kane

Yeah. So, this is a really interesting thing in astronomy, and I think one of the most common misconceptions about astronomy growing up, I would often hear, how in the world are you going to be an astronomer? You can't see through a telescope. Most astronomers don't look through telescopes, and, in fact, most of us don't look at images, either, not in the same way. So, for instance, in my research, I unfortunately never actually get to look at those pretty pictures. That's not really what my research looks like. Instead, it's many line graphs or other types of bizarre and unusual plots. And one of the challenges of being a blind person in astronomy is that there are not sonifications available for all of these different plots we have.

27:57

Sarah Kane

So, astronify, which I've talked about, is a sonification of one very specific type of plot, a light curve, and it works really well at that. But suddenly, you move to a slightly different graph, and it no longer works. So it's a really great question of, are all of these sonifications available? And the answer is, not yet, but I hope someday. Yes, I think people are working towards that.

28:24

Joe Patitucci

Got it. And it sounds like there isn't yet really a standardized way of sonifying, or there aren't necessarily, like, named types of sonification where one could. Yeah, sounds like there's a lot of opportunity there. And maybe, I don't know, we have a pretty cool real time sonification engine. Maybe we could plug it in one of these days and let it rip. Yeah, that's really cool. So, one of the things I'm hearing from you is the way that you're doing research is astronomers aren't necessarily looking at pretty pictures all day, right? Or just staring into telescopes, listening to planetarium music.

29:12

Joe Patitucci

But one of the things that I find interesting is, and that people might not know is a lot of these images you're talking about, some of these things are meant to be more internal for scientific research and some of them are more for outreach. So those images that we see of galaxies and all these things are like how true to the visual are they? And how much interpretation is done in that space, on the visual space, is that something that maybe most people aren't aware of?

29:51

Sarah Kane

That's an excellent question and something I was really hoping to get to talk about because I think this really hammers home how sonification is no less intuitive, no less natural than probably. Again, I'm going to talk about James Webb because, know, shiny new toy maybe you saw those incredible pictures from James Webb that came out this summer, and it's easy to think that those are just like pointing a camera and taking a picture. But in reality, a lot of telescopes are actually looking at light that we cannot see. So our eyes, if they work better than mine, can only see a very narrow, little tiny strip of the electromagnetic spectrum of all the light that's out there. So a lot of telescopes like James Webb, which looks at infrared light, I believe, are not looking at light that we can see.

30:48

Sarah Kane

So anytime you see an image from James Webb, there has to be some interpretation there in terms of how do we translate this light? We can't see into light. We can. You know, I'm no expert in that process, but I think it's pretty faithful to the actual data. That's a primary goal there. I won't claim to be an expert in that process, but because when we have this light we can't see, we are already translating it into something we can see. It's already a change from the original. That's something. I like to emphasize that sonification is just a different sort of translation. We are still taking something we can't see naturally and making it into a form that we can see or hear naturally.

31:42

Joe Patitucci

Totally. You mean that the galaxy doesn't sound like celestial flutes? Is that what you're saying, Summer?

31:51

Sarah Kane

Yeah, I know. That's something I get asked a lot. Like how can you hear something in space? Especially a lot of these black hole mergers are represented as sound, like a really cool chirp noise. I don't know if any of you have heard that. And one of the questions we get a lot is like, how do you hear anything if space is a vacuum? We're not hearing anything. We are representing some data we're getting as sound. It is a representation of something we observe, just as an image is a representation of something we observe. It's not literally music from the stars. It's more music of the stars that we're making.

32:32

Joe Patitucci

Exactly. Yeah. That's an important point. With PlantWave, we get a lot of. Sometimes people are angry on the Internet. Some people like doing that. That's a hobby. And they'll in all caps, like, plants don't sound like flutes. And it's like, okay, yeah, no, but we can represent the data from plants with flutes so that we can hear these changes that are happening. Yeah. It's just really important to note that sonification is a way of representing this information to humans in a relatable way. And a lot of what we see out there, even in the visual land, is in some ways a translation as well. And that doesn't make it any more or less real. Let's be clear about that, because what it is it's a tool. We're expanding our ability to perceive outside of the apparatus we've been given as humans.

33:43

Joe Patitucci

And, for instance, plants are able to absorb light and respond to light that's outside of our visible light spectrum. And so if we're able to listen to plants as they're responding to changes in their environment, then in a way, we are opening our ears to be able to see with the leaves of a plant. And there are lots more applications we can get into. But do you have anything else to add to that?

34:17

Sarah Kane

No, I think you put that very well. I think, as you were saying, one of the things, and I know I've said this already, but one of the things I just always want to emphasize with sonification is that it's just a different way to represent data. It's just another way to do the same thing.

34:35

Joe Patitucci

Sure. And so a lot of people might get into, like, I love Carl Sagan. I used to just go to sleep listening to the Cosmos series every night. Like atoms is massive, as sun's universe is smaller than Adams. And I just blissed out into wonder. You know, I think a lot of people that are into astronomy and into space, they get pulled in through the wonder of images and things like that. How is that for you in terms of, is the sonification doing it for you? When you hear the sonification of space, does it bring you into this feeling of this sense of wonder and awe and good vibes?

35:25

Sarah Kane

I definitely think it does for me. I think my inspiration to get into astronomy was a little different from a lot of sighted astronomers. People will talk about looking up at the night sky or watching these documentaries and whatnot, and a lot of those things weren't accessible to me. And so I got into astronomy because I watched a lot of Star Trek. But in the past few years, as I've gotten into sonification and I've heard these images, I guess I feel that sense of wonder, and I can get a sense of the beauty that other people are able to see. And it makes me think of the next little blind kid who wants to be an astronomer and who will hear that and be able to get that sense of wonder from something real, from real data.

36:21

Sarah Kane

This is the sound that we use to represent real astronomy and not just a tv show, as good as it might be. So I definitely get that sense of wonder. And I'm excited for a new generation of blind people to get to experience it at a younger age than I did and hopefully to inspire more blind astronomers to pursue the career and to know just by hearing that sonification, that people want them in this community, that they're welcome here, that people are working to make sure that they can experience that sense of wonder that will make them want to be a part of this scientific community.

37:00

Joe Patitucci

That's really cool. I'm thinking now, too, about the way that the data is represented as sounding celestial and things. I'm wondering who the first person was that started to make the sonifications of the space data. I would imagine they were likely sighted, and they were taking that feeling they have and communicating that through sound, which is now translated through a human, through the technology, back into wonder for you to experience and all the next generation coming up.

37:43

Sarah Kane

I think that's one of my favorite things about sonification that you've sort of just touched on, is that it's such an incredible opportunity for cross discipline collaboration, because you don't just have astronomers working on sonification. You have musicians, you have psychologists to understand how we interpret sound. You have sound engineers. You have all these different people who have to sort of work together to make a sonification that is not only faithful to the data, but is also enjoyable. It captures the feelings that we want it to. I would be remiss in talking about astronomical sonification without mentioning Kate, Meredith and glass education, an incredible nonprofit that organizes a monthly sonification world chat where people from all over the world talk about sonification. And it is not just astronomers. It is people from all different disciplines. It's very exciting.

38:41

Sarah Kane

I think sometimes us scientists get a little stuck in our bubbles of hard sciences. And it's exciting to get to collaborate with artists and sound engineers and psychologists who have perspectives on how to make sonifications better than we could ever make them. Just a bunch of astronomers sitting in a room, clacking away at a keyboard.

39:06

Joe Patitucci

Right on. Yeah. It's important to have the qualitative aspects of our work available to us. Right. The environment that we work in is important. So always having that connection to wonder and to having that connection to the kind of magic that is qualitative as we're studying the quantitative. So I think we might be ready to open up for questions. Does that sound good? All right. Yeah, I think we're ready so we can open it up. Are there any questions from the audience on sonification? Plants or space or where we're going, what's happening, who's setting the harmonics and the limits? Like the scaling and that stuff with the plants. Right. With both the plants and in this case, the astronomical image, because it's so beautiful. Clearly there was some thought put into making sure that the harmonics work despite whatever frequency is being activated. Yeah.

40:25

Joe Patitucci

I can give a little on the plant side. So I'm the guy. I made those decisions in the PlantWave app. I've been working on it for, what, eleven years? I've developed a sonification practice and framework. I can give you a little insight on that. So there are a few core values with it. One core value is the value of harmony. So the value of harmony is that if something sounds nice, people are going to spend more time with it. If you're looking to observe data over a long period of time, whether it's with your eyes or with your ears, you got to make sure it's non fatiguing. Right? So value of harmony, then I say, okay, pentatonic scales. So everything's always scaled to a pentatonic key. That way, no matter what order the notes are played, it always stays kind of harmonious.

41:27

Joe Patitucci

The next thing is that the next aspect is to provide multiple levels of resolution of the data all at once. And so you can do that with multiple instruments. So people will comment on an Instagram post or something and they'll be like, yeah, cool, that orchid sounds great, but I wish you'd remove the piano because I was just trying to listen to the plant because it's like maybe piano, bass and whatever. The plant is controlling multiple instruments, and so they've missed the fact that it's all being represented of the plant, but yet providing different resolutions of the data as music. So you might have. The bass is allowed to be triggered once every 10 seconds. So you're getting the change over time on the.

42:29

Joe Patitucci

You're getting a change over every 10 seconds on the bass instrument, whereas maybe marimba or something that's way more staccato, you're getting a finer level of resolution. So that's why with PlantWave, we have four different instruments that the plant can play all at one time. And so you're hearing the same data, but at different resolutions. And together it ends up sounding like a symphony. So those are two. So harmony providing different levels of resolution. The third one is providing insight into large changes, like allowing novel events to be very clearly novel events. So we designed for that by, the notes are generated by the change in conductivity. So you can think of that as like a lie detector and lie detector wave. Imagine that wave. It's funny because it's the same circuitry, basically.

43:33

Joe Patitucci

So lie detector wave, imagine that being translated into pitch, right? But then imagine that lie detector wave goes from something that's like a really low frequency, so the wave is really long to something really high, really fast. So like there's a huge velocity in the change. So an event like that with PlantWave or with our sonification system would change a knob, which can be mapped to one of many things. You think of knob in your car stereo or something as volume. But a knob could also be turning up the reverb. A knob could make it so that the sample rate becomes faster and it's able to trigger more notes faster. So we're using CC messages, which is a midi is musical instrument digital interface. It's like a computer language for synthesizers. So we're using the MIDI CC signal to represent changes in activity.

44:44

Joe Patitucci

So there's a lot of information there when you're listening with a PlantWave. And we're trying to make it as easy to listen to for as long as possible so that you can be with the data for those emergent happenings of large changes in the delta. That's how we approach it. And then we're also applying that to other. We're applying that to wearable data and things like that. So we have some patents related to that. That's the bigger thing for Data Garden. Moving forward beyond PlantWave. It's using that same kind of sonification engine to make real time biofeedback music for wellness, for meditation, for exercise, high intensity interval training, all these, you know, our lead developer Carl over here has been amazing know, ensuring that we're building it in a way that it can scale.

45:46

Joe Patitucci

And, yeah, we've developed a language, and so I think there are different languages, maybe for different. There's a different language, maybe for biological systems in real time, that have to recalibrate than the language that's used for sonification, but that's how we're doing it. I'd love to hear more on your side.

46:06

Speaker 3

Yeah.

46:07

Sarah Kane

So, unfortunately, I am not the guy who does that. So I don't know if I'll be able to give you as in depth answer there. What I can tell you is that oftentimes for especially these outreach sonifications, we use real musical instruments, which will set some limits on the pitches just based on what instruments, the noises they can make. And that's because that's aesthetically pleasing to the ear. A lot of effort goes into making sure that things are aesthetically pleasing. As you said, people won't listen or look at things that they find grading. And that's where a lot of our collaboration with sound engineers and musicians comes in. In terms of here's our we don't have live data, so we know what the brightest and the dimmest point is.

46:56

Sarah Kane

So how do we map that onto a range of pitches that is broad enough that you can hear the differences, but narrow enough that we're not getting to any pitches that are absolutely miserable to listen to in terms of some sonifications that are maybe more research oriented when maybe we're not using instruments in that case, again, still, a lot of thought goes into sort of default pitches that are used to map things, again. So it isn't painful to the ears of whatever poor astronomer is listening to it. And a lot of that comes down to usability testing, a lot of testing, which definitely needs to include blind and visually impaired people for best results, because we're good at listening to things.

47:43

Sarah Kane

So a lot of usability testing and then sometimes including, I believe, with astronify, because you can make your own sonifications of your own data. With things like astronify, you, I believe, have some control over the pitch range. So maybe if you need to modify the pitch range so you can hear something else, you as the user, I believe, have the option to do that. At the very least, with astronomy, you have the option to invert the pitches, like invert color on your phone, you can invert the pitches. So higher points on a line graph, brighter moments for the star, will actually be lower pitches. And that's all in terms of making things more usable, making things more pleasant, and again, that comes down to a lot of usability testing.

48:31

Sarah Kane

So, again, another wonderful opportunity for collaboration, not only with musicians, but now with astronomers, with the blind, visually impaired community, to include them, to include us in the creation of these tools that will help them. That idea of nothing about us without us.

48:55

Joe Patitucci

Yeah, great question. Along with that, there's also this kind of, like, spacing between the notes. We arpeggiate things just to make it so that it has more of a time feel. Sometimes it's not. I know that with a lot of the sonification stuff for NASA, a lot of times it's not because you want to know precisely where the star is or where that thing is on the image. Right?

49:21

Sarah Kane

Yeah. So in these sonifications we listen to. So these compact sources, like stars, like little points of light, those would be a single note, whereas other things are sort of like more of a wave. I don't know. How do I describe this? I don't know. More interconnected points of notes. I suppose. Something like astronomy is a bit different. I likened it in one interview to, like, a glissando on a piano, where you run your hand down the piano and you hit every key. You can still hear the individual notes, but they sort of blend together. It doesn't sound like a piano, but it sort of has that feel of we hit individual notes because they're individual points on this line graph, it's not a continuous line. It's like each individual observation.

50:11

Sarah Kane

So we hit individual notes, but they all sort of blend together in something that gives you a good picture of the continuous whole. So, yeah, it's interesting to think about how all of these aspects of the sonification play together. The pitches, the spacing between notes, how loud it is, how all of these things interplay, to give us a comprehensible image, quote unquote.

50:36

Joe Patitucci

Right on. Thanks for that. We have another question over here. Yes.

50:40

Sarah Kane

Hi. My name is honey. Thank you both for sharing your practice and your findings so concisely and generously with us. I'm really interested in playing with sonification, and I'm wondering what tools are available to us lay people to collect and translate data for sonification, and probably most particularly for biofeedback, since we are the instrument that we have available.

51:05

Joe Patitucci

Sure. So for biofeedback sonification, we have PlantWave. For plants, you could technically use PlantWave on your body. In a way. We have another, like an alternate firmware version we might release eventually that will allow for more of that kind of thing. We started experimenting with sonifying breath patterns and things like that. We're working on connecting our sound engine to different wearable devices. There's nothing out there right now. And honestly, I don't think that right now there's a market for it, which is great because we're building it. That's what we want to do. We want to build the market for it. We just feel like this is something that we want in our lives. But there's nothing really out there commercially that does sonification.

52:08

Joe Patitucci

There's a lot of arduino projects you can find to do to play around with things, but I don't know of anything right now on the market that's doing direct sonification in that way. Most of it is like, even with the biofeedback devices, it might unlock certain sounds, or you might get little birds if you're wearing a muse headband or something like that. But not in the same way of the real time direct biofeedback music. Do you know of any?

52:42

Sarah Kane

Certainly not in the realm of biofeedback, I'm sorry to say. A little outside my wheelhouse. There are certain astronomical tools that will let you do your own sonification, one of them being astronify, another being sono uno. But these are primarily for astronomical data, and I will say, I don't know how accessible they are to lay people. For instance, astronomy will require you to know how to program in Python. I would say, if you're interested in getting into this kind of thing, I would definitely point you at the sonification world chat again, hosted by glass education. And you can get a lot of different perspectives, not just from astronomers, but from people sonifying all sorts of data. So that's probably where I'd point you as a starting point. Unfortunately, it's not a tool, it's just a community. Thank you. Who else has a question?

53:39

Joe Patitucci

Awesome. We have the sonification of this ending soon with bagpipes, I think. But we still have like five minutes left. Go for it.

53:49

Speaker 3

Hi, I'm Caroline from Australia. Thank you for your talk. I was just wondering, sonification has been around for quite a long time, and it seems to me, I think I bombarded you a bit the other day when I first met you because I was so excited this was here. It seems to me that it's not still taken very seriously. And what do you think that emerging tech might bring to that conversation? Change things?

54:12

Joe Patitucci

Yeah, I think one of the biggest challenges is actual audio literacy in general. To me, it's like a media literacy problem, and we're such a visual culture and so to me, the biggest challenge, to me, the biggest challenge is that people, there's a lot of room for humans, of post industrial societies to step into learning how to listen. That's part of what I'm looking to do with PlantWave. We're creating this thing where some people walk up and they hear it and they're just like, I don't know, it's just playing the same music as playing before. Oh, I hook up this plant, it's playing the same thing when I hook it up to that plant because they're like, oh, it's the same instruments. I thought it would be like a totally different band if I hooked it up to this versus that.

55:19

Joe Patitucci

But even sometimes, if you say, well, do you notice that the flute isn't playing now and that it's in the same key, but this isn't happening. I feel like it's like listening literacy, and it's really easy for us musicians and folks to think, oh, how hasn't this taken off? And the reason is that people need to be educated because this is a tool that you need to learn how to use. It's like riding a bike or anything. For us musicians, it's easy. For people that are hyper intuitive, it's easy.

55:59

Joe Patitucci

But if it's somebody that's really super analytical, that isn't into as many of the qualitative aspects of being a human being, unfortunately, some of those people are the ones that are making the decisions of what gets funded and what doesn't get funded, because they're looking for the hockey stick graph on the investment and all that.

56:28

Speaker 3

You think it could? Certainly one of its first uses could be in areas where people are looking at whole systems or listening to whole systems, like cybersecurity has a lot of anomalies in the system. And if you're someone who listens to that on a daily basis, then you could hear those distinctions when something might go awry.

56:48

Joe Patitucci

I've thought about that, too. That's a great point. I think that for those systems, though, they might not need a human to listen to it. They have the AI in place for other aspects of the system to manage itself. I think its greatest potential is really in allowing people to connect more deeply to their own bodies through biofeedback music. And I'm sure there are going to be other areas too. We'll find out. Do you have anything you'd like to add?

57:22

Sarah Kane

Yeah, it's interesting. I think we come at this from very different perspectives, which makes at sonification from very different perspectives. And backgrounds, which makes things interesting. I think within the scientific community, it's not so much an issue of it not being taken seriously, because people are generally very receptive to this idea of sonification so much as it not, as you said, being mainstream. There isn't sonification available or sonification tools available for everything that we use in astronomy. And outside of the actual sonification community itself, there's not much of a push for there to be tools. From my perspective, I think the biggest solution to that is going to be inclusion. I am one blind person, one of, mind you, a relatively small number of blind people in the scientific community calling for these changes to be made.

58:26

Sarah Kane

And it's hard for things to become mainstream when you have, what, 510 blind astronomers in the entire world. I don't know how many there actually are, but not many. So I think I often talk about this idea of a snowball effect, something like the sonifications we played for you are going to inspire more blind people to become astronomers. And the more of us there are, the more of a push there will be for more sonifications. It will become more mainstream. You'll see more blind astronomers in the field still. You'll get more sonifications, and eventually there will be so many of them that it will be mainstream not just for blind people, but for the whole community. We have all sorts of things that started out as accessibility tools and eventually just became so popular that they're universal.

59:17

Sarah Kane

For instance, I talked about invert colors on your phone or dark mode. How many of you guys like dark mode? That was initially a visual accommodation for people with various reading or sight issues. Eventually, when you have enough people with disabilities pushing for these changes, they become mainstream, and people start to see that actually, again, this accessible, universal design is better for everyone.

59:43

Joe Patitucci

I love that. That's so wonderful. There are so many different ways that our systems are configured right as human beings. We all have different hardware here, and all of our hardware is configured specifically for our highest contribution as humans and as individuals. And the more that we can create ways for human beings to fully express themselves and fully engage in the world around us, the better it's going to be for everyone, because everybody has a really unique gift, and I'm really glad. It's really great to have met you and to hear about sonification from your perspective. It does feel really promising also to use this technology to really illuminate deeper connection with the universe and our solar system and galaxies and ourselves, our own bodies and the natural world around us. Thanks so much.

01:00:50

Joe Patitucci

I think we're going to close out because we have a party that's rolling right into this place, but we'll be around here. Thank you so much for attending and go on upstairs to the plant music lounge. It's such a zone. It's such a good space. And meanwhile, I guess let's check this out. Peace. Thank you.

01:01:11

Sarah Kane

Thank you.

01:01:13

Joe Patitucci

Thanks for listening to the Nature of now podcast. Of course, we will have links in the show, notes to Sarah Kane and all the information. Really, really cool conversation. I'm looking forward to staying abreast at what Sarah is up to because she's just such a brilliant human being. So, yeah, thanks again for listening. I hope you learned a lot from this show, and we'll catch you all soon. This episode is brought to you by PlantWave. PlantWave translates a plant's biorhythms into music. All you have to do is connect two sensors to a plant's leaves. PlantWave pairs wirelessly to a mobile device running our free plantwave app. And the app has instruments on it that are designed for plants to play. So every single note that you're hearing right now is an expression of real time data that is coming from the plant.

01:02:07

Joe Patitucci

These are the impulses in the plant being expressed as music. Nothing's pre recorded. It's just real. It's happening. And what's kind of cool about that is that a lot of people, when they hear this, they think it's kind of pre composed music. And I'll get accused in the comments, like, yo, man, this is definitely something that's been composed, and I find that really cool. That's flattering. I wish I wrote millions of hours of music and just put it in an app. Fact is, I didn't. I'm not that great of a musician. I'm better at thinking of how to design algorithms and things like that. PlantWave is all scaled to a key. That's why it sounds harmonious like this. I did that on purpose because it's designed for human beings to be able to tune into plants.

01:03:00

Joe Patitucci

And in order for a human being to want to spend time tuning into the plants through these impulses, made a design decision to make it in a key. So that's why you're hearing this. So this is the plant playing this collection of instruments, and I have other collections of instruments. So, like, what if we heard this plant biorhythms triggering piano samples? What would that sound like? Let's check this out. Cool. That's what that would sound like. And then what would happen? If I touch it cool, the notes are going up a little more. That's fun. What's cool is that you don't even have touch the plant. If you just hang out with it all day, you'll notice every once in a while that it's doing completely different things. It's going into a whole other octave range, or it's switching what instruments it's triggering.

01:04:06

Joe Patitucci

And that is because a plant is a living being. Newsflash, it is not a thing. And my hope is that by sharing with PlantWave with the world, we can help us all have a greater understanding and compassion for the life around us and realize that we're all a part of earth and we're all in this together, floating around through space. So if you're interested in connecting to nature in a new way, check out plantwave.com. And yeah, I'm just happy that you're experiencing this podcast and this music and any way that you want to experience or support PlantWave, whether that's just like enjoying our videos on TikTok or Instagram or any of those things, or checking out our YouTube videos, or just send us some. Just send like a. How about you just send like a field of love to us for doing this?

01:05:06

Joe Patitucci

That's all we need, really. All we need is love, right? And food and water and all that stuff too. Unless you're a pronitarian. Still skeptical about that, but I digress. Check out planwave.com and thanks so much for listening.

Eduardo Castillo: Impact through Artistry and the Organic Rise of Habitas

00:00

Joe Patitucci

This episode is brought to you by PlantWave. PlantWave turns a plant's biorhythms into music. You just attach two sensors to a plant's leaves. PlantWave connects wirelessly to a mobile device running the PlantWave app. And the app has instruments on it that are built for plants to play. Check it out at plantwave.com and share it with your friends.

Hey, friends, I'm out here in the jungle today. And this podcast was actually recorded about a year ago in a different jungle in Tulum. This was done with Eduardo Castillo. Eduardo is an artist. He's a musician. He's also a co founder of the global experience brand called Habitas. And so if you're wondering what a global experience brand, you know, some people might think of it as a chain of luxury hotels. But as you'll find out from this episode, it's a lot more than that.

00:56

Joe Patitucci

It really is an outgrowth of Eduardo's creative expression as a musician and as an artist. And he was able to build that, and now he's moving on and going even deeper into his music. So this podcast was recorded right before we did a performance in Habitas Tulum, which I will make available in the show notes. And even more cool is that I'm going to actually have the opportunity to perform with Eduardo again this coming spring at south by Southwest. Well, I guess just before spring, March 16 at south by Southwest, we're going to be performing in a huge church. It's like 450 people. Really excited for that. Also, I just want to say, Eduardo is one of the most important people I've come across in my life.

01:41

Joe Patitucci

One of the things that he did with Habitas was they did these clubhouses around the world, and they had one in Venice beach in California that I joined. And I can say about 60% to 80% of my closest friends, they're all from that crew that I met there, including my partner, who I live with now, and I'm traveling with here in Costa Rica. Yeah. So just such an amazing guy. I'm so blessed to know him. And I'm excited for you to get to experience what it's like when a human is just following his art and his mode of expression and what that can lead to. This is super inspiring how simply creating music events can lead to creating a whole global experience brand. So, without further ado, let's dive in with Eduardo Casillo on the nature of now podcast.

02:38

Joe Patitucci

Eduardo, thank you for joining today.

02:41

Eduardo Castillo

Good to be here, man. Yeah, man, actually, I'm happy you're here.

02:45

Joe Patitucci

Yeah, it's amazing to be here. Beautiful light with the copal and in the jungle. And it's amazing. So, for those in the audience who are new to your world, can you just give a quick intro of who you are and what you do?

03:01

Eduardo Castillo

Of course. Eduardo Castillo. I am a musician who accidentally now has hotels. That's really sort of how it sums up. My background is in music. I studied composition. Studied. It was a double major. I did a composition, vocal performance, philosophy and religion studies. And then I went to pursue my career and accidentally built a career also in hospitality, just to pay my way through. Mean, eventually, one thing led to another and the two worlds collided. Music and hospitality. And here we are in Tulum at one of the Habitas.

03:56

Joe Patitucci

Amazing.

03:56

Eduardo Castillo

I don't know if that was.

03:58

Joe Patitucci

That's great.

03:58

Eduardo Castillo

Okay, cool.

03:59

Joe Patitucci

Yeah, that's great. And talk a little bit about.

04:03

Eduardo Castillo

Yeah, happily. So Habitas came about through this hunger for me. I always wanted to create musical experiences. I felt that in the circles that I was involved, that lacked. Inspired by Peter Gabriel and his tours, inspired by these, really, there was so much attention to a storytelling other than just the music, but how do we take it to another level? And that always kind of stuck with me. And so I wanted to create beautiful experiences. And I started doing that in LA in a big way. Just started really kind of growing in that space of. Not in a big way in terms of massive festivals and numbers, but in a big way of quality versus quantity kind of thing. And it went very well.

04:56

Eduardo Castillo

And I met my dear brother and business partner, Kafir, who was also sort of on the same path of been. He had grown tired of coachella, and I had grown tired of Coachella and him and I had been going to burning man for many years without knowing each other, but been going in for many years. And we had this thing where we wanted to create this extremely beautiful experience. And we really, at the end of the day, wanted just to share how we wanted to live our lives and how these very peak moments of joy and bliss, how do we share this with the world? Moments that we had at Bernie man and moments. And also building a camp at Bernie man was really fulfilling and satisfying.

05:41

Eduardo Castillo

So one day we said, why don't we build our own Bernie man camp, but not at Bernie man. We do it in a beautiful place and different place, and then we maybe take it around the world. And that sort of becameHabitas. And it kind of went viral after the first event because it was really special. Fast forward to having an event in Mexico that sells out very quickly. And then us realizing that maybe it's not just a week of an event, but maybe it's two weeks or maybe three weeks, maybe four weeks. Oh, maybe we need a reception, and maybe we need a restaurant. And, oh, we have a hotel. That was the beginning of Habitas. We built the hotel as if were building a camp.

06:31

Eduardo Castillo

I don't know if you can see much, but it's essentially a jungle that we very carefully place tents in. And we built a camp, which became the firstHabitas hotel. Nowadays we have eight operating all over the world, with obviously many more to come. But the ethos stays the same, the essence stays the same. And that ethos is respect for nature, a place for human connection, a place for empathy for nature, and to build these experiences that I had always been building before. But that is the dna of this hotel industry that all of a sudden we're in and we call our home. So the essence is really what makes it special. And the people.

07:26

Joe Patitucci

Yeah, definitely. The people feels the way that you attract the right people into a place is really beautiful.

07:35

Eduardo Castillo

Yeah. What we've learned is that as we're expanding, were worried about finding the right people. And what we've learned is that because we are moving with purpose, it's not just a business. There's a reason why we're doing what we're doing and how we're doing it. It's sort of attracting the law of attraction. It's attracting the people that want purpose. And so when we land in a certain country or a certain place, and if you look at a list of an employee list or, like a recruitment fair, and there's this hotel andHabitas that actually cares about human connection, actually cares about the planet, is building and putting their money where their mouth is, as opposed to the other one, which potentially could just be a paycheck very easily. People gravitate because I believe that humans do have innately this sense of good.

08:44

Eduardo Castillo

I want to believe that. And we're attracting beautiful people just simply because we care about what we do. And it trickles down, obviously. I mean, the founders, we care about the people, and there's a lot of love, and it's contagious. It's beautiful.

09:04

Joe Patitucci

Absolutely. I really feel that in all the interactions I have here and with you, of course. And with all the people that I've met through this network and the servers.

09:19

Eduardo Castillo

And the housekeepers, I mean, they're all incredible.

09:21

Joe Patitucci

They're just light beams. It really feels lovely. Yeah. That's amazing. And one thing I notice is it feels like it's a true expression of your life, of how you live your life, is this place. And I was wondering, how did you find this piece of land? Or how do you find these pieces of land? Because one thing I notice about you is that you have a really deep, intimate relationship with place. When you perform, you're always performing in a new. You're performing in these places, and the performance happens once, and it is a representation of a moment in time. And I feel like that's something that is core to what you do. And I'm curious, how do you find these places? Or how do these places find you or call you in?

10:22

Eduardo Castillo

Yeah, with hotels, they have found us again. People realizing and taking note to something that's special. And if you have a big piece of land and you're an entrepreneur and you want a business and you have a consciousness, you'll try to find something that resonates with you and that aligns with you. That's what happens mostly with our properties is property owners, landowners, or people that know of landowners tell us you have to meet this person. You have to. And sort of these kind of, again, the law of attraction and that alignment of why it is what we do and how we do it. And that's how we ended up in Tulum.

11:14

Eduardo Castillo

Somebody came to one of our events, and the owner came to, the landowner came to one our of events, and he said, you guys need to come see our land, because it would be a great place for an event. Because he had been associated. We weren't hotel people. He was like, I'd love for you guys to come and enjoy my land. And we did. And then when we said we might stay longer, he's like, never leave. Don't ever go. Yeah, that's on the hotel side, on the music side, I do seek out spaces. That's where I get a little bit more granular. Obviously, the feasibility of building hotel. There's a feasibility study of building hotel. For a concert, you can pretty much do a concert anywhere as long as there's a road to it.

12:08

Eduardo Castillo

And even so, you might even take a hike to one of my shows. No. So that's really kind of really looking into, if it's an urban setting, looking into a unique setting. It could be a church, it could be a subway station, it could be something really interesting if it's outdoors. Obviously, the more immersed in nature, the better. But I think. I think what's important there is that the space becomes a container for not just the music but also the message and. And the call to action. So when you're in nature and you're playing, hopefully beautiful music, there's an emotional connection that's very powerful. And when you're in that context and you look around and I'm able to tell the audience, take a look around and take this in right now while I'm playing this really lush, beautiful pad and chords.

13:13

Eduardo Castillo

And maybe there's a beautiful singer and somebody. It's so cinematic that it feels fake, but it's not like, pinch yourself, because we are actually living this moment, and this needs to be preserved. And then that emotional connection turns into a call to action right away. And this is how we do it. And I try to give that out in a silver platter. Like, you don't even have to think about it. Here is how you can make that happen. Just by arriving to a concert, you've made it happen because you've opened yourself and you're committed to purpose and intention.

13:53

Joe Patitucci

Sure. Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about the impact platform you guys have created through Habitas.

14:01

Eduardo Castillo

Yeah, we just launched something that's super exciting, which to me, I think is probably the most important thing that Habitas will ever do. And it's called Habitas rise. And Habitas rise, essentially, is this almost one for one kind of model that we've been seeing popping up forever? But every guest that checks into our hotel for every stay, we donate $10. Then we ask the guests to match it at the end of their stay. Once they're inspired by what we've done, the goal is that they're very inspired, and $10 is nothing. They'll say, here's 100 towards the cause. And then we align ourselves with incredible organizations here in Mexico. We work with underprivileged children, with coral reef restoration, with sustainable logging, and we work with water preservation for tulum and for bacalar, for where we are in Mexico.

15:01

Eduardo Castillo

And that's going to grow and grow because we're actually building a fund that directly is funneled to all these organizations. And with the concerts, it's amazing because the concerts, what we do with the concerts is we have a hotel. It could be sold out. We're not really interested in. We're not a concert space. We are a hotel. The heartbeat of the hotel is that concert space, but it's not the business. That's the impact component. Like real time. Sure. And so obviously, we have Habitas Rise, but with every concert, we don't sell tickets. Tickets are contributions. Those contributions every single person that comes to a concert makes a contribution, and that contribution goes directly to our causes. So it's like real time happening in the moment. That money goes immediately to these organizations, and there's a really beautiful sense of pride there.

16:01

Eduardo Castillo

When you have that conversation during a concert, I'll talk about this. And it's palpable how people suddenly are inspired by the fact that just by going to this concert to be entertained and be inspired, they're also giving back, and there's a sense of pride there that's really beautiful. And it's sort of this beautiful feedback loop of, let's do it again. Let's do it again. It's amazing.

16:29

Joe Patitucci

Yeah, absolutely. I can resonate with that, because when you invited me down here, we worked together three years ago or so, and it was just like, absolutely, yes. It's such a beautiful space, and it attracts just beautiful people, and it feels great. That's the first thing I said when I got here. Oh, this feels really nice. And then the candles and just feeling. Just seeing the space, the way it's taken care of. And I've even heard you talk about part of your shows. The ambiance, of course, is really important, but you even talked about, I want to have a say in how the candles are lit. Right. There's this deep intention through every aspect of the performances.

17:27

Joe Patitucci

And so that intention, for me, it feels like it creates the space, it creates the container for then this wildness or this freedom to kind of flow. And that resonates a lot with me as a musician who makes music with plants, because my whole thing is creating these containers for the plants to kind of just flow and have that expressed as something that's harmonious. And I see you doing that on so many different levels. And there's a resonance between not only you and everyone on the team here, where that's happening in a really beautiful way.

18:13

Eduardo Castillo

Yeah, I use the word contagious a lot because I also always say that if we take care of each other, we all thrive. That's just how it is. If we watch out for each other, if we're mindful of everyone else, then we thrive. Never is that more important than in that setting where the stage is set, the container is set, and then anything can happen. Right? And then you feed off the audience. The audience feeds off you. And that's why I set the stage in the center, so that we have sort of this cocoon, almost the womb of this experience, and it's impossible for it not to be contagious. You can see across the stage. Typically, you're at a concert and you're looking at a stage, and I'm sort of not interested in that anymore.

19:10

Eduardo Castillo

For me, personally, for performance, there's a lot of artists that prefer that. But I don't just want to face, and I don't necessarily want to have this tunnel vision where I'm not seeing what's around me. One of the things that I'm always struck by is when I'm at a concert, whether that's beautiful and really inspiring, and we are looking at a stage a lot of times when it's a very emotional and powerful moment, I'd usually turn around and look at people and look at the audience. And what makes it more most emotional for me, almost to tears a lot of times, actually tears is how people are reacting and how people are touched. And you see people putting their hands to their face or their heart or just closing their eyes.

19:53

Eduardo Castillo

And that connection to them is more powerful to me than the actual artist that's on stage now that obviously it's because of that artist, but it's really how I'm affected by everyone else that really kind of is contagious. And so that's why the stage is in the middle, and that's why everyone's into a 360 degree setting. Because if the stage is in the center, I'm here, you're there. There's no way I'm not going to see what you're doing. And if you are moved and you are suddenly dancing or meditating or even laying down and looking at the stars, I'm going to wonder why you're doing that. And I'm going to figure it out right away because of the setting, and I'm going to want to go there as well.

20:37

Eduardo Castillo

So I've seen people totally possessed at these shows because they feel safe and because they feel that there's very powerful intention. And so I want to be part of it. It's incredible.

20:55

Joe Patitucci

Absolutely. I was actually just sharing some of the photos from our last concert together with Paola, your amazing production manager. And I was looking at them and just seeing all those reactions, just seeing people deep in meditation, seeing people just in ecstatic dance, like, all in the same concert and without any specific prompts. Like, now we're going to do this, right? It just happens and it's an emergence and it's generative and it's creative. Exactly.

21:30

Eduardo Castillo

Yeah. We're living creativity right in that moment where before the show there was calm and peace, then all of a sudden, there's, like 300 creative beings owning their creativity, sometimes without even realizing it.

21:51

Joe Patitucci

And it's all from that point of the consciousness from which you're creating or that everyone is creating and thing that. Is it true that. Did you study opera?

22:06

Eduardo Castillo

Is that. I did. Okay, cool. Yeah.

22:08

Joe Patitucci

All right. Yeah. So I was wondering, because whenever we're talking about how the run of show will go, you always have this really beautiful touch for spectacle, but not spectacle in a grand way, but spectacle in a very powerful way where it just feels super meaningful.

22:34

Eduardo Castillo

Yeah.

22:34

Joe Patitucci

And I'm wondering where that came from. Did that come from? I mean, obviously, you're a heart centered human, and I'm wondering, I don't know, did studying opera bring this out in you, or what was your childhood relationship with music and performance?

22:58

Eduardo Castillo

I think authenticity, I think, would be where you can have very little and have it feel spectacular. Sure. When it's radically honest and radically authentic. And I do love lighting and the power of fire and candles and all these things. Not in the way that is very spectacular, but not an extravaganza. It's subtle, and I love elegance as well, and I love subtlety and elegance. And when you combine, less is more kind of with authenticity, it has that spectacle power. But at the end of the day, the spectacle also comes from the creative influx of the audience. When all of a sudden, I can bring in a baseline and have the layers start to just kind of bubble and bubble, and the pot is steaming and steaming, and then it bursts, and everyone burst into excitement and a reaction to that. That's the spectacle.

24:23

Eduardo Castillo

And all I did was take it there with emotion, but it wasn't something that I hired a crew to build the stage. And it's really about go back to what we said before. It's about the people, and it's about how present people are. The more present they are, the more profound. That spectacle that we're kind of redefining the word. That word. No, but that's where it's more spectacular. And it's really in that exchange of energy with people. I think that's where the magic is.

25:04

Joe Patitucci

I love that.

25:04

Eduardo Castillo

Yeah.

25:05

Joe Patitucci

When I hear elegance with honesty, it, in a way, makes me think of things as simple as the copal smoke during a certain time of late in the day with a little bit of sunlight filtering through the leaves. Right? That is that moment, and that is everything that moment is. And honesty is really just being present with all that is happening in the moment.

25:43

Eduardo Castillo

And it's also nature. These things happen in nature, there's no better spectacle. I mean, the hero we're standing right now, if you just look around, the lighting is beautiful. Coming through the trees. There is nothing more incredible than this space.

26:00

Joe Patitucci

Totally.

26:02

Eduardo Castillo

And going back to that idea of spectacle, it's nature. Yeah.

26:11

Joe Patitucci

There's this word, do you know? Stochastic. Basically, it's kind of like that phenomenon of light filtering through the leaves and the trees. It's this kind of randomness that happens. People theorize that's when the Buddha reached enlightenment under the bodhi tree, that really what was happening, part of what was happening was that the kind of like that can get physics. Right? Yeah. Oh, there's always a materialist answer. It's the spiritual. Right, exactly. But, yeah.

26:48

Eduardo Castillo

That's like a ten hour conversation.

26:52

Joe Patitucci

To be continued on that one. Yeah. But, yeah. I just love the way that you create the spaces for those kinds of things to happen and people. And I can say that hobbitos has actually radically influenced my life or changed my life in a lot of ways by you guys opening up that space in Venice back in the day. Right. And you created a space for artists and people to connect. And most of my best friends in the world, actually, I met in that little house.

27:32

Eduardo Castillo

That's incredible.

27:33

Joe Patitucci

Yeah. And then same what you're doing here, bringing people in. Like, I'm meeting other musicians that are here. And then I found out we're both friends with Christopher Willetts, who is just like brother from another. So it's. Yeah, it's just really cool.

27:52

Eduardo Castillo

Awesome.

27:53

Joe Patitucci

Yeah. So I feel that impact not only on the environmental landscape, but also in terms of supporting artists and creatives.

28:04

Eduardo Castillo

That's incredible, man. It makes me very happy. What better way for us to evolve and progress than with like mindedness, than all kind of working towards the same goal? It's incredible. That's why I love PlantWave, and that's why it's just like anything that connects you to nature in that way where it isn't esoteric or isn't just a moment, it's just an exchange. It's so simple, special, beautiful.

28:38

Joe Patitucci

Well, I know we have a sound check to do soon, so I don't want to take up too much more time, even though we could talk forever. We'll do a part two at some.

28:49

Eduardo Castillo

Point at another property.

28:51

Joe Patitucci

Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about your experience. Because we worked together a few years ago and it was in a different format. Right. It was like with a whole band, but, yeah, just tell me a little bit about what you remember from that experience or what you remember having experienced plant music, PlantWave, in our previous iterations of it was awesome.

29:19

Eduardo Castillo

First, when I ran into you and you showed me the device, I think I immediately said, we got to do this into Zoom. I think literally within seconds. And the experience was amazing. I mean, the idea of generating musical atmospheres from devices connected to plants, collecting, it's incredible. I was so excited to make that happen, and that time was really nuts, I think we had eight musicians on stage. Dave Harrington was on stage with his distortions, and we had violin, we had singers, we had drummers. It was wild. Yet the devices and PlantWave were sort of like the foundation and kind of what held everything together, because also, that's how my music is. I work with a lot of drones, and I work with a lot of pads that start taking different shapes, but it's there.

30:33

Eduardo Castillo

And so having that be a life force on its own was really exciting for this show is even more exciting, because now that was sort of. I was kind of conducting an orchestra, a little orchestra this time, just you and I. And I really want to listen to the plants, and we have an opportunity to do that. I'm super excited about it.

30:59

Joe Patitucci

Yeah, I like that. It sounds like there's an opportunity for more vulnerability, too, with the audience in terms of just being open about what we're doing as we're performing and just kind of sharing in that moment.

31:14

Eduardo Castillo

Totally. I feel like tonight's going to be a bit of a hybrid of a talk and music and presentation and meditation. I'm excited to have it be much more about listening, really? Yeah, and. And then, like, you know, when you listen to it and you. It's almost. It's almost like all of a sudden, they come. They are alive. Obviously, trees are alive, but we all of a sudden go into the human realm. I'm performing with a living organism, but might that plant or that tree also utter some notes by singing or all of a sudden, there's, like, a personality there, and it's all being generated by the devices. It's awesome.

32:07

Joe Patitucci

You're inspiring me to give the plant more control over things. Tonight, I'm actually going to offload some of my workflow to the plants. I was just going to have them playing all the notes, and I would switch instruments and things, and arpeggiation might give them a couple more knobs so I could just hang out. That's awesome.

32:28

Eduardo Castillo

So we can just hang out.

32:29

Joe Patitucci

Yeah, exactly.

32:30

Eduardo Castillo

We're just, like, sit there in awe of everything. I'm excited.

32:36

Joe Patitucci

Yeah. Okay. That's what's up. Well, thanks so much for being on nature of now.

32:42

Eduardo Castillo

Yeah, man.

32:43

Joe Patitucci

Yeah, man. And is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience.

32:49

Eduardo Castillo

Just to. The more I stay true to my purpose and pursuing that happiness that it brings, the more things start to unravel in front of me that are only there to validate that's what you should be doing. It's beautiful. If I could share any wisdom, that would be. The main piece of wisdom is to stay true to that path for the good of all. Really?

33:32

Joe Patitucci

Yeah. The synchronicities will emerge.

33:34

Eduardo Castillo

It's incredible.

33:35

Joe Patitucci

Yeah, it is absolutely incredible. And you've created many a vortex on earth for those to hop on.

33:45

Eduardo Castillo

Thank you, man. Thank you. Thank you for that and for the acknowledgment. And thank you for having me. And I'm super happy that you're here with us.

33:51

Joe Patitucci

Yeah, thanks so much, brother.

33:53

Eduardo Castillo

Yeah.

33:54

Joe Patitucci

All right, let's play.

33:55

Eduardo Castillo

Let's do it.

33:58

Joe Patitucci

Thanks for joining us on the Nature of Now podcast. Now, the performance we did after this interview is also available on the PlantWave, YouTube, and you can check that out, the links in the show notes. And there'll be much more of this kind of stuff because Eduardo and I are going to be collaborating at south by Southwest this year, March 16, 2024. So really looking forward to doing that. I also really encourage you to check out Eduardo Castillo. He's also going to be in the show notes there. Eduardocosillo.com. He is just working on such amazing musical projects and just has this really amazing global presence. He's doing this project called the overview Effect, which is based on that phenomenon. What happens when astronauts first view Earth from space and they realize that we're all in this together, we're all one.

34:55

Joe Patitucci

There's nothing really to fight over here. It's really about working together. And once we start to see the world like that, it really changes the way we can collaborate and work with other people. So, really happy to know Eduardo, and he's just such an amazing artist and such a warm presence. So really encourage you to check out his stuff. And if you like conversations like this, I really encourage you to subscribe to the nature of now podcast on whatever platform you're listening to this, that really helps me out, and it helps just keep this going and helps us keep getting guests and having cool conversations. So, yeah, just hit me up there. And if you have any guest ideas or any suggestions for the podcast, just feel free to reach out@natureofnow.com. And until next time, we'll catch you all soon. Lots of love.

35:55

Joe Patitucci

This episode is brought to you by PlantWave. PlantWave turns a plant's biorhythms into music. Just attach two sensors to a plant's leaves, and PlantWave connects wirelessly to a mobile device running our app. The app has instruments in it that are built for plants to play. So right now you're hearing a flamingo Lily playing this soundset, this collection of instruments that I call event horizon. So it kind of has like a really nice glacial feel to it. I like it for winding down or actually just being in nature, out in a forest with huge trees, just helps to kind of amplify a sense of wonder for me. And a lot of people ask me, why don't you have more albums out?

36:45

Joe Patitucci

I've recorded a couple albums, but for the most part, the reason I don't record that many plant music albums is because for me, it's really about listening in the moment with a plant. And so I designed PlantWave and the plantwave app to, in a way, be my albums. You have endless instruments, I guess, from me that I've designed. And then you have musicians in your home, these little green friends called plants that can select every single note that you'll hear, and it will be a non repeating symphony into eternity. So, yeah, doing an album just feels less interesting to me than giving everyone the opportunity to have a deep experience of plant music at home. So that's why I created PlantWave.

37:52

Joe Patitucci

And if that's something you're interested incorporating to your life and experiencing and sharing with your friends, go check out PlantWave.com and get one for yourself. Have a great day.

Plant Consciousness and Earth-Based Storytelling

00:00
Joe Patitucci
This episode is brought to you by PlantWave. PlantWave turns a plant's biorhythms into music. You just attach two sensors to a plant's leaves. PlantWave connects wirelessly to a mobile device running the PlantWave app. And the app has instruments on it that are built for plants to play. Check it out PlantWave.com and share it with your friends. Welcome to the Nature of now podcast, where consciousness becomes form. My name is Joe Patitucci, and today we are going to join a conversation from south by Southwest 2023. It's a conversation called Plant consciousness and Earth based storytelling. 

00:39
Joe Patitucci
It was a panel that I was a part of and it was facilitated by Josh Kogan, who is an award winning photographer, anthropologist, ethnobotanist, along with Susan Leopold, who's an ethnobotanist and executive director of United Plant Savers, and Stephen Binali, who is the founder of Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative. And then, of course, I was part of this conversation as well, bringing in the Plant music aspect to Earth based storytelling. This was a really powerful conversation. To bring all of these people together in this way was really amazing. And some of the things that struck me the most were how sensitive Stephen is, the insight that he's able to see in terms of how our culture is commodifying indigenous wisdom. Super powerful to hear that from the source, from a person who is so deeply connected to this wisdom through ancestry. Super powerful conversation. 

01:46
Joe Patitucci
I'm so grateful to have been a part of it. And Josh did a great job at Moderating and helping to put this panel together. I know Josh from I met him about a year and a half ago, almost two years ago. We've been working on a film project that is about people that are protecting native habitats in different parts of the world, so far different parts of North America. We'll have some links to little previews of some of those. They're not actually finished yet, but it's something that's a work in progress. But yeah, super grateful to have had this conversation and really grateful for you listening. So let's dive in with the Nature of now podcast. 

02:36
Josh Cogan
Hi, everybody. Welcome to Plant Communication earth based storytelling. I'm Joshua Kogan. I'm a photographer storyteller ethnobotanist. We have Susan Leopold from the United plant. Savers. We have Stephen Binali from the Indigenous Peyote Conservation initiative. And we have Joe Patitucci, just the man and one of the co creators of PlantWave and an artist and a scientist in his own way. And we're going to talk about a lot of topics up here. It's probably going to be free ranging and roaming. I'd also at some point, if there are questions out in the audience, I'd really like to open it up to that because we really have some wise stewards and teachers and thinkers here. I thought I'd start just real quickly telling a story. In 2011, I was in Alaska working on a project that was not about plants that was a cultural story. 

03:34
Josh Cogan
And I got surprised late one night. They said, tomorrow we're going to take you out to a logging site. Be ready to go at 05:00 A.m.. And so they put me in a helicopter at 05:00 A.m., they flew me out to a logging site. I'm an east coast kid. I'd never been out to a big logging site, certainly not an old growth logging site. About a half hour flight to Prince of Wales Island in Alaska, we landed. I was immediately picked up by the site supervisor. He said, Let me take you to where the active cutting blocks are. He took me up to the active cutting blocks. It took about maybe half an hour through some really tough, blasted roads. And as soon as I get up there, I start seeing them two men cutting down a really big cedar. 

04:26
Josh Cogan
And this is a big tree. I haven't seen a lot of trees this size in my life. And I immediately start photographing because that's my job. I start photographing, and they're cutting, and I'm photographing, and they're cutting, and I'm photographing. And then immediately, probably about 20 minutes later, the tree starts to fall. If you've ever seen a tree that has a 13 to 15 foot base fall, it's a really hard experience. When it lands, it sounds almost like you would imagine a dinosaur falling down. And I was very shaken, and I didn't know what to do because I was scared to admit the fact that I was shaken to these loggers. And the man that took me up there said to me, if you don't feel something when that happens, something's wrong with you. 

05:20
Josh Cogan
So we are in the middle of a massive extinction crisis, an ecological crisis, and it requires a certain urgency of animacy in our storytelling and how we're relating to the world. And the reason we wanted to bring these folks up here is to tell stories about the urgency that they're dealing with the plants and the places they're trying to steward and to see what we can learn as storytellers. As people who are interested in these topics to really try to think about how we see the world and experience the world in different ways. So with that, I really wanted to go down the panel and really hear from folks and a little bit of their stories. 

06:06
Josh Cogan
And I think maybe I'll just go from starting with you, Susan, because you're closest to me and tell people a little bit about the work that you're doing. 

06:13
Dr. Susan Rene Leopold
Hi, everybody. My name is Susan Leopold. I'm the executive director of United Plant Savers. United Plant Savers is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1994 by herbalist Rosemary Gladstar, who was deeply concerned about the rapid interest in medicinal plants and where those medicinal plants were being harvested from. And so the mission of United Plant Savers is conservation of at risk medicinal plants. We're based in southern Ohio. We're a membership based organization. We have over 10,000 members and we have a network of botanical sanctuaries that anybody can join. We have loads of information about the medicinal plant industry and how you can get involved by starting your own medicinal plant garden and being aware and understanding the supply chain in the medicinal plant trade. 

07:06
Dr. Susan Rene Leopold
For me, I have very vivid memories as a child of going out in my backyard and discovering a beautiful patch of lady slippers. And when I was a child, everything was alive for me. The lady slippers, the fairies that gathered when the lady slippers bloomed. And I remember I had this amazing science teacher in 6th grade and he gave us this assignment to go out and pick wildflowers and press them and bring them in. And I was like so excited to have the opportunity to share about these pink lady slippers. And I picked them and I pressed them and I brought them into class and he was like, these are so endangered, you can't pick these lady slippers. And that was like a light bulb that went off in my head as a child. And it's kind guided my path with plants. 

08:08
Dr. Susan Rene Leopold
So I am also an ethnobotanist, got my PhD at Antioch University and I'm also a proud member of the Padawamback tribe of Virginia and that's where I'm from. So with that, I'll pass it along and it's so great to see all you here kind of doing this deep dive into plant consciousness with us. So thank you. 

08:30
Steven Benally
Yate. Greetings to all of you. My name is Stephen Benali and my wife and I my beautiful wife over there, Lucy. By the way, today's her birthday. 

08:48
Josh Cogan
Happy birthday. 

08:49
Steven Benally
So it's celebrating her birthday here today with her and talking about something that we love, nature plants. Working with Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative which started several years back, probably about good six years. And I'm one of the founding members with that nonprofit organization. All because of our children, our grandchildren. Our purpose here on Earth is to ready those up and coming and giving them what they need to enjoy and survive here and teaching them about all these plant foods, medicinal, medicines, survive, how to survive and what they need to do to live here on this Earth. 

10:12
Steven Benally
I think the responsibility that we have is to assure ourselves that we are giving them what they need and that when our calling comes to move forward way down the road, we should be able to assure ourselves that we have done what were supposed to do and leave knowing that they're in good hands because of what we've done for them. And so the whole idea of giving information to one another and sharing information with one another is for the purpose of just that. Getting the up and coming generations what they need to take care of here. All that was given to us here on this Earth came with a responsibility of taking care of it. 

11:16
Steven Benally
And so with this indigenous peyote conservation initiative, that's one of the things that was really first and foremost in our minds in protecting this medicinal plant that we revere, for an example, the recent pandemic. It was a hard three years, I think, for everybody. For us, we lost a lot of people, but in that we also survived due to this knowledge that we have with plants. If it wasn't for that, I don't know how much or how many more we would have lost that were able to help. Knowing that when your grandson is in ICU and barely breathing and trying to fight off this, what they call COVID, and being able to offer him medicine to help him, being able to do that is something that you really are thankful for. 

12:37
Steven Benally
And that's what we know, that everything, life is going to be good, but we also know that there's going to be challenges again down the road. And so we have to give our children and our grandchildren, even ourselves, if we don't have the means of having connections with these very elements that sustains us in a spiritual way, then we need to help one another so that we can get to that point where we can assure ourselves that we've done our part living here. And the last thing that we're put here for is to fatten our wallets. But that's what's happening. That's causing all the issues that we're faced with today. So let me cut myself out there for now. 

13:30
Joe Patitucci
That's beautiful. Thank you for that. Yeah. My name is Joe Patitucci. I am founder of Datagarden. We make PlantWave the Plant Music device. The reason I'm on Earth is to bridge people from the technological world, the world of staring at their phones back into the reality of the fact that we are Earth beings in Earth bodies. We are expressions of Earth consciousness in human form. Any idea that we're separate from nature is a story that was created in service to get people to work in factories and behave in a certain way and buy stuff. And yeah, so that's why we're having this panel. And I can tell you that PlantWave was created from a place of my own musical exploration. I would go out into nature and I would record sounds of the forest. 

14:46
Joe Patitucci
And I would always find myself in a place where I just felt really good. And I would just be like, this is a really special place. And I would record sounds there. And I wouldn't take anything from the place other than the sound I didn't want to extract or anything, but I would go back into the studio and listen to those sounds and connect to that feeling of the place. And I would write music from there. And I wouldn't include the sounds in the music or anything. It was just this is the feeling that I'm feeling, and I'm communicating this. And over time, I started to realize, oh, it's almost like these spaces, these places are speaking through me, right? It's almost like there's this voice that wants to come through, that's coming through my being. 

15:35
Joe Patitucci
And I started to ask the question to myself, is the same force or energy that inspires me to write music, the same force or energy that inspires a plant to grow in a particular way? I started to kind of play with that idea, and I worked with an engineer who built some sensors so we could hook that up and make music from it. And the first time I made music with it, which you can experience upstairs, we have a lounge upstairs that's like a chill zone. The Plant Music Lounge. The first time I heard the music, it was the music I had wanted to create my whole life. 

16:20
Joe Patitucci
And so that just reveals for me, it's like, yeah, there are so many of these special places on Earth that we are just extracting value from, and these places have so much to give and yeah. And it's and we need to have a relationship with them that allows them to continue to give, and that involves a certain responsibility in recognizing that this is a relationship with a being that we are connected to and that we are a part of the relationship with the Earth, is the relationship with ourselves. And so there's an urgency there. And so that's what I'm here to do with technology and bring this together. So thanks, y'all, for being here. 

17:25
Josh Cogan
Thanks, Joe. And thank you, Stephen. And was a just before we came up on stage, Stephen said to me, he's like, if you're on the side of plants, you're on my side. And so a lot of these people are on the side of plants. I imagine a few people out in this space are also on the side of plants. We got some plant people in the house, so let's have a conversation together, right? We're going to open this up in a little bit. I wanted to talk about just two topics. At first, I want to talk about the power of story, the importance of story, and the importance of changing language and how we tell stories. And then I want to talk about the ethics of story. 

18:07
Josh Cogan
And so I'll start kind of by saying this right to a degree, what Joe was saying about kind of being able to tap into the plant music as a storyteller. You're always trying to get to the heart of the story and not let get your constructions of what a story should be in the way to actually try to understand what a place is saying, particularly with indigenous communities. And in this case, I'm defining indigenous communities and let me know if this feels all right. But people that have been in relationship with an area of land since time immemorial, and there is a different level of relationship with place. A lot of the stories that Joe and I did over the last year were working with Indigenous communities and trying to understand the story that wanted to be told and from that place. 

18:59
Josh Cogan
And then also the way we construct language. Right. And how limiting language can be. Right. So in Western science systems, we have Linnaean taxonomy. Even in Western language, there tends to be this idea of nouning everything. We noun the plant. It's a he or a she or an it. Even if we don't want to use a genderized pronoun, we use an it. Right. And all of a sudden, we've kind of removed ourselves from relationship, from this thing, which is kind of what I really love about PlantWave. A lot of what I like about the work that both Susan and Stephen are doing is they're trying to restore that relationship with the living world. Right. And so I wanted to actually maybe go down the panel and talk about I know, Stephen, you and I were talking about this. 

19:46
Josh Cogan
Susan, we didn't have a chance to. So maybe I could start with you, Stephen, a little bit about telling me the traditional relationship with plants as you understand it, and the importance of that relationship, in contrast to how you see most Western systems in relationships with plants. 

20:07
Steven Benally
Yeah, I guess the difference is that Western relationships, they can do this. Traditionally, it's where it belongs, its rightful place. That's where they belong. If were to be uprooted and put in somewhere else against our will, it doesn't feel good, because in our history, that's what happened. All Indigenous people, they were relocated from their original homelands, and they're all most of them are gathered in Oklahoma now, not where they belong. So plants are just like us. Fortunately for us, as the Navajos, our people were taken in the late 18 hundreds, 500 miles, herded like cattle. Those that can't make it were shot along the way. And at that concentration camp, thousands died. 

21:20
Steven Benally
But through means, spiritual means, were able to come to a kind of a treaty that allowed our people to go back to their original homeland, but was given just a portion of what was. And that's where we're at today. So these plants, a lot of them, have been relocated against their will, and they're somewhere where they're not supposed to be. And so when you do that, then the health of it, the inner spirit of it, is it healthy? Is it working at its full capacity? If you think about yourself, ourselves, and say, no, that doesn't work, it don't work like that. At the beginning of time, when were all placed here with everything, plants and all, there's a relationship, a protocol that is set there for us to follow. 

22:35
Steven Benally
If I was to go get medicine for a ceremony, there's a protocol I have to follow and that's the reason why we are given spiritual names that we don't call in public. I can't go to that plant and call my name, say, this is Stephen Benali. It would have no idea who that is. But if I use my spiritual given name, I would gain its attention. And then I have to make an offering to it and pray and let it be known my reasons for wanting its help, however way that it goes, it could be for healing. Like right now, it's springtime and our people that have farms over there are getting their seeds ready, and they're going to have a specific ceremony done with those seeds. You're going to talk to the earth. 

23:44
Steven Benally
You're going to talk to the light, the rain, the water, and let it be known what we need and what we want and what we're doing. And help us to have a good season and where we would have the abundance of food that we need for our children so that we can go into the spring. And so this season is the one that would control nature, controls us. We don't control nature. So right now it's wintertime going on towards spring. And right now we're getting our seeds ready, and we're going to be planting, then harvesting and storing for the winter all the way around. And so in working with this natural process, the natural order, originally at the beginning, were supposed to be right in sync with the natural movement. 

24:47
Steven Benally
And so as we're in sync with that natural movement, we're also camouflaged with it so that any evil, danger or harm that's out there will not be able to see us because we're moving with nature. Nature protects us. It takes care of our needs. But right now, the way that we are, it seems like we're just exposed to any and everything because we're not in sync with it like we're supposed to. And the movement here in what we're doing is to get ourselves back to where we can spread the message of what we're here for and what our responsibilities and our duties are to ourselves, our children and our grandchildren. I have a little granddaughter that's four months old, and I want her to have a chance at drinking from a spring, not from a bottled water, but from a spring. 

25:55
Steven Benally
Be able to go out. Years ago when we used to be out on the land with our horses, you would find a pond of water and you would have your horse drinking over here. You would be drinking right there. Your dog would be drinking over here, your animals drinking over there out of the same pond. That's not doable today. But that's the way it was. Being in sync, in harmony with everything. You would see some bugs, insects on top of the water. You just blow them away, clear it and drink from there. And I remember that and there was no health issues because of it. But today, there's a river somewhere here that goes through the center of the city. How many of you would drink from that? Anybody? So that's where we're at today. 

27:02
Steven Benally
And these plants are the ones my grandfather says you talk to these plants, take care of these, because that's the one that gives you good air, good clean air. That's the one that brings in the rain. They have a connection with one another. That's the one that makes the light just right for growth. These plants, they're the ones that are protectors of us human beings. It's our medicine, it's our food, and it's the one that is going to be there way before time. And when we're here, we do right with them. They'll be here for our children, for our grandchildren. And so getting information that there's a lot of plant people that are there that are trying to understand these relationships and to clean up the mess that power and greed has given and left. 

28:09
Steven Benally
It makes my heart feel good to see that there are people really out there that are a different color skin than mine, that have an idea that nature is in charge, that we are at the mercy of nature. And how we deal with it and how we work with it is important. And so maybe I kind of strayed off what he wanted. 

28:35
Josh Cogan
It's a great stray. I find incredibly soothing. You're very soothing to listen to, Steven. 

28:44
Steven Benally
Your approach to these plants is very important. The approach to that and our medicine down indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative there, what we're trying to do to preserve and conserve and to protect is all for our health and our well being. It's not to make money or to gain anything, but to preserve something that is so important to us. And so in this process, not only is there that approach through your name, through your prayer, but there has to be a song with it. And that song is the one that vibrates and brings to life these plants. The water, the air and the elements. It brings it to life where the singing, the vibration, the rhythm of that movement, of that sound is what brings out the spirit of that. 

29:52
Steven Benally
And when it's able to come in sync with it, then that's when the powers of that particular plant comes into play and you take it in. And for an example, listen to this. Yanahiyoaniyo nahi yanahiyo nayo o yanahiyoani yanahiyo. That sound, that sound of it helps to bring everything into sync. So that's why Indian people, we always have a prayer. See, the prayer is the mother's side of you, and this song is the father's side of you. There's life only if there's a male and a female. Life will never happen. Female to female or male to male. It's got to be the opposite. In order for anything to happen that's going to have life. It's got to have that male, and it's got to have that female. 

31:13
Steven Benally
And so the song and prayers go like that to bring out the inner spirit of all of this. And so that's enough again for now. 

31:22
Josh Cogan
It was great. Thank you so much. I'm going to turn it to you, Susan. I'll kind of use as a reference point because were talking about stories before and kind of the power of story as we do that. The photo we have on the screen was I was doing some work with the Kuna indigenous community close to 20 years ago, and I would follow the man you see on the screen. His name was Nester. He was a traditional medicine person for the Kuna people, and we would always go into the forest to harvest medicine, whoever who was dealing with illness that day. 

31:57
Josh Cogan
But about a week in, went in, and whenever he would harvest medicine, he would walk up to the plant that he was going to harvest from, and he would tap it with his machete first, really gently, and he'd say, May I harvest medicine? At this point, I'm 25, I'm fresh out of school, and I'm like, what's going on there? And he was like, well, how would you like it if somebody just took a machete to you without asking or just started taking something from you without asking? So it's a little bit what Stephen's talking about. A little bit want to I don't know if that kind of kicks something off for you, Susan, but I'd love to hear a little bit how you kind of see relationships with mean. 

32:35
Dr. Susan Rene Leopold
For me, I really just intuitively feel like the plants are our ancestors. They're our ancient ancestors. And I think if were able to kind of tap into that legacy and that history, we wouldn't be able to cut down old growth forests like we are at unprecedented rates. Just speaking to the biodiversity crisis that we're in. I mean, a recent report came out by Nature Serve that says anywhere between 30% to 40% of all native species in North America are threatened with extinction, which is something that's really hard to wrap your mind around. But what we're losing is we're losing those wild spaces, and we're seeing the landscape transform at such a rapid rate. 

33:36
Dr. Susan Rene Leopold
And so with that in mind, I think when people tap into that awareness of plants and start to recognize ecosystems and tree species and native plant communities and how they communicate, I think we're seeing this in a really? Positive way with our understanding of mycelium and fungal networks and how all these things interrelate with Suzanne Samard's work with the Mother Tree and understanding how, when we have intact ecosystems, they're absorbing carbon. They're serving all these really important roles that are not only critical to the ecosystem, but critical to our ability to survive on this planet. So it's amazing when you kind of tap in and sink into plants as ancestors, the knowledge that they're providing to us if we just listen to what they're teaching us. 

34:52
Dr. Susan Rene Leopold
So that's really important to me to really express my gratitude to the plant world and to see them as ancestors and the long legacy that they've been on this planet for millions and millions of years before we came into form. So I remember gosh back in the early 90s, kathleen Harrison was speaking at the Bioneers Conference, and there was an article that she wrote where she described how every species has a song. And that has so resonated with me throughout my life. And speaking to that element of when we sing to plants, even when I grow plants in my greenhouse, I play them music. I remember that book, Peter Tompkins A Secret Life of Plants, that was like, wait a know, plants are conscious know, and we can communicate with them just like we communicate with each know, just that awareness. 

36:10
Dr. Susan Rene Leopold
My aunt, who is a historian and the tribal historian for the Padawamak Tribe, I remember her taking me out as a child, and we would water the garden and she would say, as we feed the plants today, they feed us tomorrow. As we feed the plants today, they feed us tomorrow. And so these are the things that I think have just kind of resonated with me. And it's kind of everything I do with how I live my life, my dedication to the work I do with plants. I'm constantly trying to be the voice for plants because I feel like they don't have a way to advocate for themselves in this really changing, dynamic landscape. 

37:03
Dr. Susan Rene Leopold
So that's where the empowerment of all of you being here today, that you take a part of this and you think of ways that you can bring awareness in your own life in whatever level that may be. One thing that's really beautiful about the Padawamack tribe of Virginia who were really massacred in the year 1666 and very few survived. And there's this legacy of these families that have carried through, and I guess it was about three years ago that the Padawamak tribe was given land to land back from that used to be theirs going back. So it's interesting that these threads kind of bring us all back, despite all these things that have happened. I completely believe with all my being, that we all carry this within us. 

38:18
Dr. Susan Rene Leopold
We all have a deep connection to the plant world, and we discover it in all unique ways, but it's within all of us. And so I love that thought that every species has a song, and that reciprocity of plants love being sung to. 

38:42
Josh Cogan
I'm going to kind of pitch it over to you a little bit, Joe here, but I gave you guys the first part of the story about the logging story in Alaska in 2011, right? And that set me forward on. This commitment to do plant based storytelling. About ten years later, I had a story pitch in front of National Geographic that they greenlit. And it was a really hard story to tell because it was going to require me to get back on these clear cut, old growth logging sites, which is I'll just say that most old growth logging sites don't want people from National Geographic on those sites. It's not necessarily a good situation. And all these obstacles kind of fell out of the way and this kind of builds a little bit on what you were saying. 

39:26
Josh Cogan
All these obstacles fell out of the way that all of a sudden I was invited to do this story. And there was a woman that was helping me at the time do that story. And I called her up and, you know, I was like, deb, they're going to let me do this story. I can't believe it. Thank you so much. And she said to me, it wasn't me, it was the trees. Which is a little bit what Susan is saying here too. After I did that project, an editor said, hey, I want you to write up a thing called Plant arc. So we said this about the Nature Conserve report. About a third of plants, if not more a little mess, are in threat of extinction right now. I mean, we are dealing with an extinction cris we can't wrap our heads around. 

40:04
Josh Cogan
So for those of you that know about extinction issues, you can take all mammals, all insects, all amphibians, all fish and aquamarine alms. You can combine all those and multiply those by five. And that's how many plants are facing extinction. So plants are facing a level of extinction not even close to what we see with the other animal brothers and sisters. Right. We're also facing language extinction that is going along with that at the same time, which is something we should probably also turn our attention to right here. We conceptualize these plants too. But I was invited to write this grant, like write a thing, and I called it Plant Arch and this idea that I wanted to go and document these plants that were facing challenges and extinction crisis. And I submitted this grant. 

40:47
Josh Cogan
I was pretty sure it was going to get funded. I was like feeling really good about didn't get funded. And then a couple of months later, I met Joe and went for a know, kind of unbeknownst to me, and he kind of called me up a couple months later. He's like, why don't you tell some stories about plants? And so I want to talk a little bit about what your experience was out and doing some storytelling with us. Joe, what prompted you to do it? I mean, we know your love of plants and your relationship with them, but it's a big risk to say, hey, I want to do this storytelling right now. 

41:19
Joe Patitucci
Sure, yeah. I mean, for me, it's always been about place. I remember I don't know what I was in college. I remember I saw a talk by the director of Im vendors and he talked about all of his stories came. They were never plot driven. They were always driven by place. Characters emerge from places. So all these characters are expressions of a place. And that's how I feel about that's. Kind of what inspired me in part to make PlantWave and to make Plant music. People ask me all the time, hey, why aren't you releasing more albums? And I'm just like, because my ideal way of connecting and listening is to listen to what's happening now. So I connect to a PlantWave and I listen to the music shifting in that moment. So for me, it's always about place. 

42:17
Joe Patitucci
There are these places on Earth that have evolved to be these really unique ecosystems over the course of Earth's existence. And to think that it's worth destroying them to extract US. Dollars and leave this without being able to pass it down to future generations, I think is just like a complete tragedy. And also so the doom and gloom stuff doesn't really necessarily help inspire people to action in the same way. We need that. But I think we need hope. Number one, we need hope and we need to create space for people to have experiences of wonder and to reconnect to meaning. And these natural spaces are cathedrals that are here waiting for us. 

43:32
Joe Patitucci
We've abandoned religion, maybe in our societies, and now we have these open cathedrals that are sitting there out in nature, the few untouched places that are left that are just waiting for us to, I guess, honor them. And so my experience, man, when were out in Alaska this last summer and were driving through areas that were clear cut, it felt even more depressing than when you're in some place where it's like everything was paved over and it's just like Walmart's and Home Depots. And was it was as intense or worse than that. And then especially when we got were guided to this one place where it's like the last little patch of old growth forest on this island. We take a boat there and everything and to experience what that space is like. I had never felt so held by Earth. 

44:45
Joe Patitucci
It was the kind of place where we have climbing gyms with big pads and stuff. Imagine being able to climb a tree and fall off it onto a huge boulder. But there's like 6ft of deep moss on top of that boulder. It's just like the comfiest, most playful, you can just fall anywhere and it's soft and lovely and it's like, oh my God, this is what Earth was like. What the hell have we been doing? And it's really simple. The people that had a relationship with that land, the people there, they wouldn't clear cut there's a certain amount of trees you can take and work with for your society, and the forest will regrow. But when you clear cut, all of a sudden all that moss dies. 

45:43
Joe Patitucci
And when the moss dies, that means that the tree stumps aren't going to decompose, they're not going to be broken down, you're not going to create new soil. So you just have this burnt landscape that's just sitting there, and it just feels like it's so sad and tragic. And it's like, I get it. Human beings on earth, we want to provide material comforts for our families, all of that. That's great. We've done a lot of that. We've done that work. We're realizing now, hey, guys, this isn't really sustainable. Well, it's not sustainable at all, first of all. And also, there's a dimension to our being that is beyond the physical and material, and it's beyond the quantifiable. It's qualitative. And the qualitative aspects of the human experience are as important as the quantitative and the qualitative. 

46:57
Joe Patitucci
It's kind of when Stephen was talking about the kind of masculine and feminine energies, there's the masculine, which is a little bit more quantitative, and the feminine, which is more qualitative in a lot of traditions. And so we've been so heavy on the quantifiable, right, that we've kind of lost our sense of feeling and meaning. And there's also what Stephen said earlier about these plants. These plants are taken from their homes, right? Well, were also taken from our homes and put in buildings where. 

47:43
Josh Cogan
All. 

47:43
Joe Patitucci
The lights are fluorescent lights and we have to work. And all of a sudden everybody's stressed, and then they're on all the drugs and then they're like, oh, my God, how do I feel better? Well, I'll bring a plant into my house and it's like we're all kind of like stuck in this cycle. I don't know. So going out there was just really beautiful. I want to create opportunities for us to tell these stories, and I want to create opportunities for people to have a deeper relationship with plants and with nature. 

48:22
Josh Cogan
I want to just do another thing here too, because we're going to kind of share this film in just a little bit. But there was this thing were at then the film will show we'll have Dr. Susan Samard in it. And one of the things that you learn and I'm wondering, reflections on this from you and Steve and Susan, but when you're in these old growth, these last few patches of old growth ecosystem that actually still live, are still unlogged. It's all living, but that haven't been cut yet. And you're in this river bottom old growth. So you're talking about 10ft of soil duff. You're talking about ferns that come up over your head. 

48:57
Josh Cogan
You're talking about soil matrices that are like undamaged, that have huge miles and miles, perhaps like millions of miles of mycelial networks underneath that have so much biodiversity in the soil that you can't even see. And one of the things Susan says is like, listen, these trees, they shoot up to the sky, but the mycelial networks allow them to do that because what they're doing is they're reaching up and they're converting sunlight to sugar. 

49:23
Josh Cogan
They're pumping that back down in the forest floor that's going out and feeding the mycelium networks, which is feeding the microorganisms that are in soil that are feeding the other plants, which are then creating the algae that goes in the rivers that feed the salmon, that feed the bears, that drag the salmon carcasses back up onto the soil matrix, and they decompose under the trees that create more trees. Right? And the lesson of that, and this is why it's important, I feel like, to really feel into stories of place, is that life is always in favor of more life. That seems to be the rule for me, that life always wants to be generative of more life, right? And I'm wondering for those of you that are working really closely with plants like you, Stephen. 

50:08
Josh Cogan
You, Susan, how those kind of laws of nature are informing how you're showing up in your lives or the things that perhaps you see when places come back into their fullness as you restore them or try to maintain them or steward them. 

50:22
Dr. Susan Rene Leopold
I know it can be really tragic to wrap your head around the level of deforestation or the loss of old growth forest, but I would say in my work that nature is incredibly forgiving and that restoration is completely possible. And often when we just step back and do nothing, nature just takes over and comes back with a vengeance. So I really believe that if we trust in the power of plants and we see the value of ecosystem services and we allow nature to regenerate, it's amazing what can happen in a very short amount of time. So I think there's a lot of hope in that, especially with the work of agroforestry restoration of prairies, allowing nature to reforest on its own has a tremendous amount of potential. 

51:40
Dr. Susan Rene Leopold
So I feel like nature in itself is incredibly hopeful, and there's just an overwhelming wave of people connecting with plants, whether it be in the permaculture space or whether it be in the restoration space. And there's one thing that I really want to just kind of highlight, that we can be a part of the solution. And the more we interact with plants, the ability we have to increase the level of biodiversity, and that's something that we've seen over time. I mean, just look at the diversity of all the different types of vegetables we have, all the different types of fruits we have. All of these things evolved because humans interacted with those environments and with those species. And when I'm really rooted in Appalachia, right, that's where I'm from. 

52:41
Dr. Susan Rene Leopold
And that's where a lot of the work that I do and when we go out and we see this diversity of all the different nut bearing trees and we see the diversity of all the berries and all of these things, the reason why we have that diversity is because indigenous people were here for 25, 30,000 years interacting as agroforesters. They were collecting seeds and planting them. So in that regard, I see our relationship as reciprocal and we have the ability to change the trajectory of biodiversity, so interact more with plants. That's my. 

53:22
Josh Cogan
Time. Or was that a time? 

53:25
Joe Patitucci
I'm getting a little time prompt. I know we have to show I'll. 

53:31
Josh Cogan
Tell you what, we're going to show this film. This is the world premiere, guys. It's kind of exciting. This is the film we made with Susan, Samard and the Moftaguilla land keepers there, particularly Randy, who's the Moocla of his people, the hereditary chief who invited us on this land. And what we're really talking about in this film is the braiding of Western science systems and indigenous knowledge systems and trying to bring those together and you'll hear some kind of, I feel like some emergent themes. I'm going to stick around. Hopefully Susan will and Stephen will a little bit. So you guys can come up to us after the film just so we don't take up too much space and ask us any questions you have. I'll certainly hang out. 

54:11
Josh Cogan
We don't have to take up everybody's time, but I wish were in a dark theater, but we're not. The cool thing, one of the cool things about this series is we scored the entire films with music from the plants, which I think might be the first time that's done. I don't know. It might be the first time. So we explore this whole series with music from the plants, from that place that we made with the PlantWave device. It's really cool. So please watch and hopefully I'll talk to some of you later. And thank you for coming out. This is awesome. 

54:42
Dr. Susan Rene Leopold
Thank you, everybody. 

54:46
Joe Patitucci
Thanks so much for dropping into the Nature of now podcast. Lots of love and gratitude to our panelists for such an important conversation. And please, to learn more about their work, check out our show notes. We'll have links there in the description. You can also watch this panel video of it on our YouTube. We'll have a link to that as well. But yeah, I hope this has been informative for you and is helping you to kind of expand your sense of what reality is and what reality we're choosing to live in and what reality we can choose to move into the future. So with that, thanks for listening and we'll catch you all soon. This episode is brought to you by PlantWave. 

55:39
Joe Patitucci
And unlike most ads, I'm not going to tell you why your life is incomplete and that my product will solve your problem. PlantWave will not solve your problems. It will give you an opportunity to tune into nature in a new and novel way. If that's of value to you, then investing in a PlantWave sounds like it could be a good idea. And if it's not, then that's totally chill. That's great. One of the things that drives me most crazy about the Internet is all of the ads out there that are just there to try to make me feel bad so that they can convince me that I'll feel better if I buy their product. That's kind of abusive. That's, like, not the vibe. I didn't create PlantWave to create any sense of FOMO in people. 

56:27
Joe Patitucci
I created it to give people an opportunity to drop in more deeply into the moment. You can do that with PlantWave. You can do that without PlantWave. I'm not here to shout on the top of mountains saying you need to buy this, but yeah, thank you for listening to this podcast. The best way to support this podcast would be to buy a PlantWave. Or if you know someone that would want a PlantWave, or how about even this? You can share your favorite PlantWave video on Instagram or TikTok or maybe even do a little duet with one of the PlantWave videos. But yeah, you can also learn more about it at PlantWave.com. And I just really appreciate you listening to this podcast and supporting it. 

57:08
Joe Patitucci
And for all the people that have purchased PlantWaves in the past or are considering it, just know that I wouldn't be able to do this without you. So I really appreciate it. And this podcast wouldn't be possible without PlantWave. So. Thanks, PlantWave. Thank you, Plants. 

57:24
Steven Benally
Jeez. 

57:25
Joe Patitucci
Wow. I mean, the Plants really are kind of the star of the show here. They're they're kind of what made this happen. I can go way deep into that in another episode, of course, but yeah, thanks so much for listening and consider PlantWave. Check it out, PlantWave.com. And sending lots of love. Peace. 

Welcome to the Nature of Now Podcast

00:01
Welcome to the Nature of Now podcast. I'm your host, Joe Patitucci. On this show, we'll explore the intersection of consciousness, creativity, and the natural world. We'll dive into the mysteries of existence, perception, and how thoughts and intentions shape the world around us. Each episode features insightful discussions with pioneering artists, scientists, philosophers, and spiritual teachers who share their unique perspectives on how their works come into being. Nature of now is here to awaken curiosity and inspire your imagination. Through heart centered conversations that ignite our inner creative spark. Together, through wonder and curiosity, we'll discover how, in every moment, the Universe is calling us into new lessons, one breath and one insight at a time. So let's embark on this adventure together as we reveal the nature of now, where consciousness becomes form. Thanks for diving in with me on. 

00:57
The Nature of Now podcast. I thought I'd just take a moment to share with you why I'm starting this and what I'm really looking to share. And, yeah, for me, anything that I have ever created, I recognize that in a way, it hasn't come from me or it's more come through me. And so you might hear a lot of musicians talk about there's a certain point where the musician is no longer playing the instrument. It's almost like the Universe is playing the instrument through the person's fingers. We might hear about this in sport, too, where it's just people get into these flow states where it's almost like they have gotten out of the way and the universe is playing them. Universe is playing the game through them. 

01:51
So this, for me, has always been an interesting concept, and I've witnessed this happen through me in different ways. And it's part of why I created Plant Wave, which translates plant biorhythms into music. It was really a way of me getting out of the way, playing music. And instead of going out into nature and being inspired by nature and then going back into the studio and writing music, started to think like, oh, wait a second. Maybe it's that space there in nature. It's that inspiration, it's that natural energy that's actually playing me. Maybe that's playing through me and creating music. And I started to, of course, experiment and play around with algorithms and having these simple rhythms that are happening in plants and translating that into music. And then that ended up creating music. 

02:48
That was the music I had wanted to create my whole life. And so that really opened me up to this new way of seeing the world, and it opened me up to these ideas, like cellular automata, which is a model of computation. It's basically a way of showing that simple rule sets played out over time can create complex forms. And a simple rule set could be something as simple as a way of. 

03:19
Parsing data, a way of seeing the. 

03:21
World, a perspective that you might have as an individual, and how that perspective shapes everything that you create, and how that perspective might be like a filter for that universal energy to express itself in a particular way. That might sound, super esoteric, and it's not going to necessarily be that esoteric all the time. But the basics of what I'm looking to explore are really just the way the universe expresses itself through different human beings, and how our unique filters of perspective and education and life experience lead to these really cool, unique expressions, whether they're music or poetry or actual pieces of technology or products. 

04:17
And so we're going to look at the kind of processes people go through in how they create, and also we're going to look at some of the really interesting creations that are coming out through human beings, and check out what that might mean for the future of creativity. Things like generative music, AI, and biofeedback stuff are big areas for me. But then also just looking at storytelling and ways of connecting to nature and how important that is for what we continue to create in the future as humans, because it's important to stay connected to the earth so that our creations can be an expression of Earth. So with that, thanks so much for listening. We're going to have some really great guests, and I'm excited for you to hear some of these really cool conversations we've had. So check out these episodes and enjoy. 

What is Plant Music: When Artists and Nature Play

00:01
Joe Patitucci
Welcome to the Nature of Now podcast. I'm your host, Joe Patitucci. On this show, we'll explore the intersection of consciousness, creativity, and the natural world. We'll dive into the mysteries of existence, perception, and how thoughts and intentions shape the world around us. Each episode features insightful discussions with pioneering artists, scientists, philosophers, and spiritual teachers who share their unique perspectives on how their works come into being. Nature of now is here to awaken curiosity and inspire your imagination. Through heart centered conversations that ignite our inner creative spark. Together, through wonder and curiosity, we'll discover how in every moment, the universe is calling us into new lessons, one breath and one insight at a time. So let's embark on this adventure together as we reveal the nature of now, where consciousness becomes form. This episode is brought to you by Plantwave. 

00:59
Joe Patitucci
Plantwave turns a plant's biorhythms into music. You just attach two sensors to a plant's leaves. Plantwave connects wirelessly to a mobile device running the Plantwave app. And the app has instruments on it that are built for plants to play. Check it out@plantwave.com and share it with your friends. 

01:17
Joe Patitucci
Hey everyone, thanks for coming out. My name is Joe and this is the what is Plant music conscious conversation. And I have with me here Brian Noel. 

01:33
Bryan Noll
Hello. 

01:34
Joe Patitucci
Andrea Cortez. 

01:36
Andre Cortez
Hello. 

01:37
Joe Patitucci
And Galani. And we all make music with plants and we use a device called Plantwave, which I developed with my team at Datagarden. And I'll give you a quick snapshot of what the tech does, and then we're going to talk a little bit about our individual artistic practices and how we approach designing with plants and collaborating with plants. So Plantwave is the device that connects to plants, and it reads these slight changes in conductivity through the leaves. It's mostly a measure of how much water is moving between two points in the plant. And we're graphing that over time, translating it into a wave and translating that into pitch, and routing pitch messages to different instruments that we design. So the plant wave product, you can check it out in the expo over here. We also have a plant music lounge upstairs in eleven B. 

02:41
Joe Patitucci
It's like a space about this size with musical plants. They're all playing different instruments. It's a really great place to chill out and recharge. It is like, I would say, maybe the most special place here this week. I'm a little biased, so take that for what it's worth. Yeah, so that's basically how that works. And we have a consumer product that anyone can use. You can take a plant wave home, and you can connect it to your own plants. And we have an app that has all the instruments on it. So we're going to go deep into kind of the design process for us. But just know this is an experience you can have at home in a really easy to use plug and play, kind of. So I'll just start. 

03:30
Joe Patitucci
So the way I design plant music is really just as more of a monitoring device. But we're going to talk more about performance. So again, I'm Joe. I'm going to pass it down and we're going to do little intros just on who we are and what we do. 

03:47
Bryan Noll
So, yeah, really, Joe just brought up something about collaboration, and I think that's probably the most interesting thing about plant wave. As Lightbath, the artist's name that I use. I see collaboration as one of the biggest parts of my process, whether I'm collaborating with a modular synthesizer. Say I'm not using plant wave, right? And it's just a modular synthesizer. I set up systems in this synthesizer that make it feel like I'm playing with another musician. It gives me surprises. It's not just playing sequences and things that I've prepared. In fact, it's very often unprepared. So unprepared, like my performance yesterday, that I didn't know what I was going to do. It's just completely improvised, but that keeps it fresh and it keeps it new. 

04:38
Bryan Noll
And what's really interesting is when you integrate with something like plant wave, that it's sometimes almost too surprising in my own process. So I had hooked up to these four plants in this room upstairs last night, right? And I own two plant waves at home. And I had plant wave hooked up to my Monstera plant. And this monstera plant was just like kicking. It was just spitting out all of the stuff. And that's how I prepared the music. And I came into the room and the room was so chill. The plants were just like, bing. Just like notes here and there. And I'm like, what am I going to do with this? I wanted all this stuff. They're like antennas. It's real stuff. I could go on about this forever. I could probably just take 15 minutes talking about this. 

05:26
Bryan Noll
So that's a little bit of what I do. I'll talk more about it. I'll pass it on down the line. 

05:32
Andre Cortez
So my name is Andrea, and I've experienced the same thing as Brian's talking about. It's like you have other band members. The plants are live interaction in how you play with them, and so I play harp with the plants. I'm a music therapist, and I am focused on creating restorative listening spaces with ambient soundscapes, with the harp and with the plants. And so I find this also this kind of surprise. The plants do their own thing, and even if I want to control them. So sometimes there have been surprises when I go and play live with them, like, they're not as active for different reasons because they're responding to their environment. They're responding to being taken. 

06:19
Andre Cortez
I work with house plants, so I'll take them out of my house and take them somewhere, and then they're kind of like they have stage fright or something. They're not playing as much because they're in a different environment and they're responding in a different way. So being aware of that kind of difference, you have to kind of just flow with it when you're working with a live being. 

06:45
Ghalani
Yeah. My name is Galani, and I think, Andrea, you just said it beautifully. Well, that feels like the primary reason I'm here and I'm doing this, and it's probably similar for you. I feel like what you said about stage fright and the fact that there's such an intimacy and you notice the life force and the humanness in the plant and the plantness in you. And I think it feels intuitively like the right direction that we need to be going on as people. Right. 

07:20
Ghalani
And for me personally, the way that I connect with these plants some of the time, because I play bass and I'm from a jazz background some of the time, it's like you playing duets with the plant, and you feel like you have this exchange of energy and exchange of whatever happens in that moment, because just, like, improvisation, just like us as humans, we don't know what's going to happen. And I love that. And that's what brought me to jazz, and that's also what I love about the duets, is, yeah, you can expect things, but people might not give it to you. And the same is there with plants, because they are living. And the second way that I interact with it is it's a way that I'm trying to capture now. 

08:06
Ghalani
And when you go out into native environments, the plants, because it is a different environment and a different set of stimulus, they're going to react, feel, and interact with you so differently. And I think one thing that is really beautiful is that when you go out into nature, we all have this sense of the autonomy that nature has and that we play a role in it. So for me personally, that's what I want to do right now. Go out to native environments, have the plants speak on their own terms and have their own empowerment, be on their own terms. And I can help with that, and others will help as well. 

08:46
Joe Patitucci
I love that. Thank you. I want touch on something that I heard us all mention, which is plants are beings. A lot of people think of plants as things, which is kind of interesting because they're very active. I mean, if you look at a time lapse of a flower through a day, it's clearly responding to its environment. And honestly, the more we get to know what physical reality is, the less things kind of exist, too. We start to see things as processes, right? Everything is happening in a way, and I can get deeper into more philosophy tHere. But I think that one thing that's really powerful about plant music is that it brings this heightened awareness of the fact that we are living beings in a world of living beings. We are Earth beings, and we share elements. 

09:53
Joe Patitucci
We share a lot of characteristics with these other beings. And when you start to see these other beings as collaborators, things can start to shift. And I know that, for me, shifted my life spiritually. And I'm sure that, and I hear that a lot from our plant wave customers, that people use plantwave for the first time, and all of a sudden they're meditating. They're like, why am I meditating? I've never done this before. But there's something about plant music and this exchange and sitting with plants that brings that out in us. And so I thought, anyone have anything to share on that? 

10:35
Bryan Noll
I got a tote bag last night up in eleven B that says, plants teach us how to listen. 

10:41
Joe Patitucci
Plants are here to teach us to listen. 

10:43
Bryan Noll
Plants are here to teach us to listen. It's a plant wave tote bag that you can get. You nailed it. That's it. Listening. How do we listen? Do we listen with our ears? Do we listen with our eyes? Do we listen with something that we can't quite put a finger on? What is listening? What is attention? What is paying attention? Plants surely help that. Even just these surprises that I was talking about earlier, that surprise happens. And it reminds me that I'm now, I'm in the moment. I'm happening right now. I'm happening. And so Galani said something earlier. What was this? The humanness of plants and the plantness of humans. I like that one. I don't know if I want to riff on that right now, but I'll give the floor to anyone else that wants to take that one. 

11:47
Andre Cortez
So, just as Joe was saying that we think of plants as things, I mean, there's this kind of a common way to see plants. And when you use the plant wave and start working with plant music, I see the reactions and the responses of people when I'm bringing it into groups, and they're like, wow, it's alive. And, of course it's alive. BUt that's the first response is like, wow, this plant is reacting to me. And so you can reach out to the leaves, you can even put your hands around the plant, and you'll hear some of the fluctuations and the sounds changing. So you can get an immediate response and feel that interaction with the plant. And like Joe was saying about it raises this awareness of that, yes, they're living beings, but it helps us to make that connection with plants more deeply. 

12:45
Joe Patitucci
Anything to add, Galani? 

12:49
Ghalani
Yeah, I think as far as the connection that we have with the plants, I think it feels like a very positive direction that we're going in. And I think the core thing is, when we have a relationship with these plants, there's a natural tendency to have a relationship of extraction, because we have so much extraction everywhere in our society right now. And I think what's really important, not only as I don't know how many of us are artists or environmentalists or both or a billion things, but I think that one, the intimacy that we gain from these interactions with plants will manifest in different interactions we have with other parts of the natural world that we are a part of. 

13:42
Ghalani
And also, too, I think that the way we treat other humans, if we can embody this intimacy and embody this movement away from an extractive model, it'll be deeply healing. 

14:02
Joe Patitucci
Few things touch on there that resonate is, yeah, the extractive nature of a lot of our society at this time. And, in fact, my feelings on that actually kept me from making plant wave for years. I've known Brian for, what, ten years? Eleven years? And I started making plant music in 2012. And I remember everyone was like, you got to make a product. You got to make a product. You got to make a product. I was like, hell no. I am not making another thing that doesn't need to be made. Right. But over time, it became clear that people actually, there's a portion of humans that felt like they really needed this to demonstrate this connection. And I feel like at Datagarden, we're working to bridge people from where they are. Like, right now, that's where people are. People are in technology. 

15:06
Joe Patitucci
They're in their phones. They're stuck there. And we hope for plant wave to be this bridge, to bridge them out of that world, back into this connection with plants, back into the connection with the physical world and the metaphysical world. And something else that you said there about this healing exchange and tuning, it's a good direction for us to be going, right? And I believe that this is innate to us. It's not even necessarily somewhere we're going. It's somewhere we're reentering. Right. It's a place within ourselves that we're re accessing. And I would love to hear. I'm sure we all have stories. I'll tell a quick little story, like the first time I ever made plant music, in 2011 or 2012. The Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

16:10
Joe Patitucci
There were thousands of people that were coming through this space to check out this installation that's very much like what's going on upstairs. And I would notice, like, school children would come through, and the kids, they would come through, and I don't know if you've ever seen this, but once they understood what's going on, they would hold their hands up and feel the energy exchange between their hands and the plants. Nobody directed them to do that. They would just start going like this. And this one girl, she turns to her mom, and she says, hey, mom, all you have to do is think light coming through your hands, and the plants will sing for you. And I was just like, whoa. It was the first time I had hooked this whole system up. And the mom's, like, crying. 

17:04
Joe Patitucci
Like, I've never heard my daughter, like, oh, my God, this is so incredible. And that kind of situation happened quite a few times. And then certain people would walk into the room, and the music would shift, and I'd be like, what the hell's going on? Nobody's touching the plants. Why is this plant completely changing the patterns it's making? I'd walk up to a person and say, hey, I might sound like crazy, but that plant seemed to completely change when you walked in the room. And each time I would bring this up, person would just say, like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. What do you mean, that makes sense? They say, oh, yeah, I'm an energy healer. Yeah, I'm a Reiki master, or I'm a botanist, or I'm a florist. People with really deep connections to subtle forms of energy and also. And plants. 

17:54
Joe Patitucci
So plants are eating light, or they're processing light for food. And the visible light spectrum is this, and the available light that other beings can process is much larger. So if you start to think of it in that way, it's actually not that, woo. It's just like, oh, we're partnering with plants to monitor these shifts in energy in a space that are outside of that which we can perceive. I thought I'd bring that up and I don't know if any of you have any stories come up from that. Of course, anybody that has a plant wave has had this experience, so I'll open it up. 

18:39
Andre Cortez
Same thing. It's interesting because once people get into the space with plant music, then it's open for them to come up with ideas of how to interact with plants in ways that you wouldn't have thought of. But I've had, one time I had someone rubbing her hands together, increasing the energy. Also bioenergy, which is you find that in Qigong and in Tai chi practices for increasing bioenergy. She did this and then she put her hands over the plant and it definitely worked. The plant was responding to her even though she wasn't touching the leaves. So that was a really interesting response. I've also noticed when I play the harp with the plants, I've noticed, as I phrase, I run through a phrase and then I come to an ending because the music ends and it pauses. The plants pause with me. I've noticed that. 

19:36
Andre Cortez
And it's really interesting and it makes it musical as well. Right? It's like ending and pausing with me. As I increase volume with my harp, I feel like the plant is moving in that direction with more sound, so you can hear that difference also with the harp. And plants respond to sound vibrations. There's been a lot of studies that have shown that frequencies applied to plants can help them on a cellular level, even on the DNA level, to help them, for genes to express, to help them to protect themselves, to grow quicker. So sound also is a treatment for therapy for plants itself. So I find that kind of like we're talking about extractive behaviors, but this is, I feel like that give and take, that reciprocity when I'm playing, right? 

20:35
Andre Cortez
Because I'm playing the harp for the plant also, and then it's playing with me. 

20:40
Bryan Noll
So I love that interaction, this conversational cadence idea of plants pausing. I had an experience where we had a plant hooked up. We had a plant with plant wave. I guess it was Midi sprout at that time, the precursor to plant wave. And it was a ceremonial context and it was a group of people, a lot of family, and we had a moment of silence for those who had passed, and some who had very recently passed, and the plant had been just singing along throughout the ceremony. And we had this moment, and everybody got silent, and the plant stopped for the first time for the whole thing, and got silent. And then we resumed, and the plant started back. And it's like coincidence. I mean, come on, the plant's another being just right with us. 

21:33
Bryan Noll
We all chilled out, and the plants like, yeah, I'm there with you. So it's pretty amazing. 

21:38
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, it's important to note, too. It's like, these are anecdotes, right? So it's hard to say exactly what's happening, however it happened. And that happening created space for a meaningful moment, right? And so part of engaging with plantwave is this, setting aside space to listen more deeply, to tune into the synchronicities that are already happening around us. And, yeah, it's a way of kind of like practicing moving through life, seeing everything around you as a messenger, and holding space for your experience. And that's a thing that to me. So I didn't meditate or anything before I started making plant music. What happened was that the plants, through Those times where the plants changed their patterns, they were creating the plants basically introduced me to the healers, that introduced me to the practices that allowed me to tune more deeply into myself. 

23:13
Joe Patitucci
So I feel like the practice of listening to plants, the practice of listening in general, can have a lot of benefits. Not only just listening to plants, but listening to improves communication and things. Have you experienced any of you guys? 

23:32
Andre Cortez
I definitely think it is so much about listening. And in my work with sound meditation, I talk about how we don't just listen with our ears, but we listen with our whole body. Because vibration, whether it's heard vibration or unheard vibration, our body listens. We can detect vibration through our skin, through the bones, in addition to our ears. So it's a new way of listening. And like Galani was saying, that it can transform how we interact then with our environment. And listening outside of just working with the plants, you go into nature, you are more awake to that interaction and listening on a different level. 

24:26
Bryan Noll
This idea of amplifiers, Joe, you said something about plants being amplifiers and amplifiers of meaning. Sometimes we need an amplifier to hear the subtle sound. And it's like a prosthetic for deeper meaning. The experience that I shared. Yeah, like you said, that's the point. The meaning was so much more poignant when were made aware of it as it was happening. Made more aware of it as it was happening. Because of that amplification and then Joe said something last night, right after my performance. 

25:13
Joe Patitucci
What? You. Yeah. So this is actually like, kind of a guiding principle for me. Over the last ten years, as I was making plant music, I watched this, like, Terrence McKenna talk late at night. You know how it goes. We've all been there. And I just love this quote. It's that biological systems are amplifiers of quantum mechanical indeterminacy. They are a way of taking the smidgen of indeterminacy that exists at the microphysical level and coaxing it into a kind of macrophysical cascade, which is life, consciousness, and self reflection. So in that way, you can think of this quantum realm of possibility. Right? And that is on this microphysical level. And it's almost like when a wave becomes a particle or something, or when an idea becomes a thing, there's this magical moment when anything is possible, right? 

26:24
Joe Patitucci
But then something happens, and there's something that happens there with plant music that I think we've all felt in different ways, where it's like, yeah, it can really highlight moments, and whether that's the plant responding to us and our thoughts, or the plant responding to shifts in light or something else totally out there, all that matters is how we're bringing ourselves into that experience. And I think that. Yeah, I just really love. But there is this possibility. Yeah, maybe this is holographic theory. Everything is an expression of the implicate order of waveforms that consciousness is bouncing off of and creating form. So maybe that's what's happening, too. 

27:12
Bryan Noll
Everything. I kind of want to get into the nerd zone now that you're talking about waveforms, but I don't want to. Does anybody got anything yet? I mean, if not, I'm going to hit the nerd zone. 

27:22
Joe Patitucci
Okay, before you jump into that, I just want to define. There are different ways of creating the plant music, right. So we all have a little bit different practices. So I would love to ask you, or just first describe what I've experienced of you all in terms of your performances. Brian. Brian does live synthesis using the plant inputs. And so you're kind of like mixing the data real time and routing it places. And then, Andrea, I witnessed you were playing harp with the plants in our installation, and then you were also doing some touching of plants, and that was bringing some things up. So that's a little bit of. A little bit of a different practice. And, Galani, from my understanding, you go kind of like out into nature and record things and play bass along with your plants. 

28:24
Joe Patitucci
So these are just kinds of different ways you can do this. And then if you want to check out, just like, a way to make an installation or like a monitoring system for plants, that you can check out our lounge upstairs. But, yeah, with that, Brian, I'd just love to hear a little more about your system. What are you using with your plant wave? What's your philosophy around design? Yeah, take it away. 

28:52
Bryan Noll
Are you ready? Okay, so, modular synthesizers. Who does not know what a modular synthesizer is? So you remember the old telephone patchboards when you call the operator and you want to talk to someone down the street, and they had to patch a cable and patch a cable. So modular synthesizers basically take voltage and allow you to do anything with that voltage. That voltage is something you can hear if it's fast enough or it's something that can change something for you if it's slow enough. A wave that says, I want more of this, I want less of this. Now, there's this idea of random. Random being literal random numbers, random data. When random is fast enough, it is something we call white noise. It's just all the frequencies, even amount, everything. 

29:45
Bryan Noll
And so this idea of random is the center, I think, of the way that I've put processes together. And I can take that random and take a sample of it at a moment, and that will be a certain value. And I can take a sample of it at another moment, and that will be a certain value. Those values I can assign to notes. I could make a melody by sampling random and repeating it, or I could make a melody that is repetitive, but changes a little bit over time and slightly changes by having it repeat. But let's insert in one of these slots that I've sampled a new random value and have it develop over time. Right? So I use random a lot with the modular synthesizer. And so working with plant wave, it felt like the same thing to me. 

30:47
Bryan Noll
So I saw plant wave through the lens of sampling random so I can take the data from the plants. That feels like what we kind of. Someone came to the performance last night, was asking a lot of questions, and we sort of came upon this idea that plants are kind of like multidimensional random. Because this random that I'm sampling is, say, coming from white noise, and I'm sampling just one moment, it feels like that's just a singular dimension of data. But the fact that the plants I'm sampling from that, but they're going to be changing in a different way and not giving me as much new information as random is always new and always not as organized organized on some level. That's not able to be understood. 

31:44
Bryan Noll
So I can sample this data and I can change anything in the timbre, the brightness, the darkness of the sound. I can change the melody. I could change the rhythm. If we want to get really nerdy about this, there's a process that I use that I got from talking with new. In my new setup. I call it Nature of Arps. Because from nature of now, which is Joe's handle on a lot of Instagram and stuff like that. And it's this idea of using an arpeggiator. Who are the music nerds here that know what an arpeggiator is? Yeah. So, like an arpeggiator on, like, a synthesizer, you can hold down a few notes, and you say, I want this arpeggiator to happen at a certain rate, and it's going to go quick. 

32:39
Joe Patitucci
An arpeggiator is a way of deciding the timing that notes are expressed. So you can say that the plant is allowed to spit out 16 notes per allotted amount of time. Or, like, one note per allotted amount of time. So what Brian's talking about is setting up systems where you can select how many notes that a plan is allowed to spit out at a time. Keep going. 

33:10
Bryan Noll
This is good. It's time quantization. So if you think of pitch just being a big thing that does that, and you sample it at certain places, you can quantize that pitch into a scale. So it actually sounds like the kind of music we're used to listening to. And so this time quantization is an important concept in the way that I'll sample these. So you sample something so that it falls at a certain division of time and a certain pitch scale. And then you can work with that. And you can start to make it feel really good. Like, one of my tricks is to sample in the duple in twos, in numbers of two, along with numbers of three. Because the music of Ghana was really important to my musical development. And I don't have two hands for it. 

34:08
Bryan Noll
But that was three stumps for every four hits on my knee. And that feeling is like, in all the music that we know, we owe groove and feel. My philosophy, we owe groove and feel to that music, to West African music, but to African music. And so I'll combine the threes and twos on all divisions of time. Like really fast and really slow. And you put those together and you just let it go. And maybe if it's too busy, you carve it down with literal probability. Just chance, Ab coin toss chance. Whether it's going to be an event that happens or going to be an event that is silent and somehow music just happens out of it just starts sounding like music. 

35:05
Joe Patitucci
Beautiful. So that's a really cool approach. I never thought about that three and four kind of pairing. That's, like, super powerful. We'll get into making. We'll build that into the. Huh, Carl? We'll work on that. So, Andrea, how about you tell us a little bit about your practice of designing instruments for plants to play with. 

35:34
Bryan Noll
Yeah. 

35:34
Andre Cortez
So I'm designing the sounds to create therapeutic spaces, restorative spaces. Coming from a music therapist perspective, I think of things like harmony. I think of things like tempo. I think of things that can. Our body responds to sounds in certain ways, so I want to create and design the sounds so our nervous systems can reset, so our nervous systems can regulate and get out of, like, fight or flight and get into deep relaxation. And so I'm thinking of these things as I design the sound. And so I'm using, with the plants, I use Ableton software, and I use some plugins. There's free plugins you can get that you can download, and you can have instruments like a piano, cello, that have samples of real acoustic instruments. That sounds really nice. 

36:34
Andre Cortez
I like using the synth sounds as well, but I really like bringing in the instrument sound that's like acoustic sound. So I have that working through Ableton, and then I have the scales. I make sure to just drop scales into the MIDI tracks so that the parameters are within certain scales, and then I can play in tune with the harp, with the plants. So that's important because in therapeutic spaces, you want to have this kind of harmony and the timing. To be in a therapeutic experience, I'm using the software to design it a little bit different than how, if you got the plant wave just as it is out of the box, it comes with different sounds. You don't have to use a software like Ableton or something like that, but you can design it and take it a step further. 

37:44
Andre Cortez
So that's what I'm doing. 

37:46
Joe Patitucci
Awesome. And I noticed that when you were playing, there was one plant that you were touching to get it to respond, and it wasn't really playing beyond that. Was that because the plant wasn't very active, or is that because you had it set? Did you have maybe a threshold set so that it wouldn't pick up a signal unless you touched it? 

38:13
Andre Cortez
Yeah, I didn't set the threshold. I think that plant was just, like, really quiet. But when I barely reached touch it, and it would just light up extremely. I had the cello on that and another sound coming out of that. But then it's kind of cool, because then it's obvious I can work with the timing, too. Like, I'm playing a phrase, and then I want to hear the cello sound. So let me play with my left hand on the strings, and let me reach for the plant with my right hand and kind of coordinate and then bring the timing in of the cello to come in right when it feels right. 

38:51
Joe Patitucci
Cool. So if it was a more active plant, you definitely would have played differently, because there wouldn't have been. It sounds like you were able to kind of coax the plant into, like, oh, it's your turn now. But other times, we're just like, okay, it's doing its thing. All right, where do I have space to contribute to this music? 

39:11
Andre Cortez
Yeah, definitely. Then that's where the listening comes in. I'm listening to just like you would with a bandmate or another person that you're playing with. How do we fit together, and how do I build this phrasing with what the plant is? Yeah. 

39:29
Joe Patitucci
Beautiful. Awesome. Galani, tell us a little bit about your process, what you're using, and how you're building. 

39:37
Ghalani
Yes. So, as far as what I'm using is the plant wave, my laptop, sometimes bass, and I'm going through logic, the DAw to record. And I think that a key point to make is that this is a medium. It's not just something that you can do exclusively in a certain way or just exclusively, even with plants, even though this is the way we're presenting it here, because I put the soft pads on my dog's paws, and you hear how a dog sounds, you can put it on your own body. So it's not just exclusive to any sort of living thing. Right. Yeah. 

40:24
Ghalani
And I think another key point is that since this is a medium, like, when we talk about the indeterminacy and how there's this type A meets type B, like left brain, right brain dance that we can do with it, or, like, you're talking about curation, like, how we can curate it, is essentially a medium because there's so much you can do in so many different ways. And for me, personally, to get to how I use it, one of the favorite things that's actually, this is one performance I have on YouTube, but I was trying to just experiment things for a duet I was doing. It was out in Los Angeles, and I was looking up a whole bunch of samples, and I do a whole bunch of TikTok samples. 

41:13
Ghalani
And I got this really corny British type of, like, it's a thousand most common know, like, aw, potato. And I was putting all those into the thing. But then if you hook that up to the MIDI, you start to get a generative language, right? And a lot of times we talk about, like, my best friend Caleb. Shout to Caleb, hey, Caleb. We grew up together and basically he's a teacher now. And he was talking about the story of one of his students was using an AI generation for a paper to cheat on the paper. And that's really clever, something I've probably done. We have to tell them not to do it. 

41:51
Ghalani
But I think the key thing is, in the same way that we use AI to manifest new realities and use AI to generate new artistic synergies between technology and art, which is why we're all here, right? The same thing can be used for other living things that we can use plants to manifest new art, right. We can make language from it. The possibilities are endless. 

42:18
Joe Patitucci
Go ahead. 

42:19
Bryan Noll
I'm so curious. What kind of things did the plants say when all those words were, did you hook up the plant so that it would trigger different words? 

42:30
Ghalani
Yes. One was just TikToks. It was just a whole bunch of TikTok memes. That was part of it because it was about a 30 minutes performance. So it was like five minutes were a whole bunch of TikTok samples just interlocked. And then probably another five to eight minutes was the actual audio. There was two performances. One I did exclusively in English and one was English and Japanese as well. But for the English one, it would say a lot of things like, since it's the common. Like, most 1000 words is what I based it on, it would be a whole lot of like, I-B-I am. I ai like mad. I. 

43:10
Ghalani
It got kind of creepy at a certain point because you hear the most common words and a lot of them, it's so human because they're the most common, that it gives us this really humanistic way of expressing itself. Yeah, it feels kind of like. Because it's very limited, it feels how you might talk to how four year olds express themselves where it's very raw. It's not a big vocabulary, but it's very raw in its conciseness. Yeah. 

43:39
Joe Patitucci
I've had a similar experience. I cut up English phonemes and gave it to a plant. There's actually a TikTok video out there of me with Duncan Trussell. And he had it hooked up to his synths and stuff, and I brought this patch out that was just English phoneme. So just like the 46 or 48 elements of the sounds that we creating in English. So we hooked it up and it was like. But then when Duncan touched the plant, it was liKe, so, yeah, so if you check, you can find that on TikTok. Yeah. So everybody, obviously in the comments is like, oh, My God. It said, I love you because we stare at clouds and see elephants and tigers, and we stare at stars and see battles and all these things. But hey, who knows, right? 

44:43
Joe Patitucci
Something else that I feel like we probably all have a similar approach in terms of, we all value harmony in our music. We're all kind of holding space. When I first started making this kind of music, I guess I kind of developed a design language, and part of that was like, I mostly use pentatonic scales. And the reason behind that is because it doesn't matter what sequence or what order the notes are played in, it's always going to sound harmonious. And some People ask, like, well, why Would you Do that? I want to just hear the raw signal. Do you really want to hear the raw sIgnal? You can. It's intense. And also, this is about creating an experience for humans to listen for a longer period of time so that you can experience the subtle changes that happen. 

45:43
Joe Patitucci
And so what we're working to do is we're working to hold space for a person to have that experience. And so that's why we're choosing pentatonic scales, because we want to create this space. And then over time, you'll start to notice, like, shifts in patterns or maybe the shifts in speed and other things. So one thing that I do is the value of harmony. The second thing that's really important for, and this stuff's all built into the plant wave app. So another thing is that it's not just about the notes. The notes are an expression of the wave from the plant. But then there are control messages, which you can think of as, like, knob turns, and those are an expression of, basically how quickly the data changes. So You CaN ThInk Of THIs as, like, In YOur OwN body. 

46:34
Joe Patitucci
If you're resting and you have a slow heart rate, and then 4 hours later, you're dancing. The change in your heart rate between now and when you're dancing is slow, but if somebody lights a firecracker behind you, all of a sudden your heart rate changes fast. So with the plants, yeah, basically, if there's a quick change in the data from the plant, it can kind of turn this knob. And so we have that mapped in the plant wave app to change arpeggiation rates so it can increase the speed at which a note is playing. It can activate some instruments and not activate others. So, beyond the notes, a big thing is monitoring the big shifts in activity as control changes or through effects or through activating or deactivating instruments. And I'm wondering if any of you have any other little tricks up your sleeve. 

47:42
Joe Patitucci
I would love to hear any other Little things. Yeah. 

47:45
Bryan Noll
The control change is sort of the most important part, really. It is what takes what could just be a big mess of notes and allows you to kind of carve different zones of meaning in that. And when I watch the wave that comes from it, I use the software bitwig. And in Bitwig, there are these really easy modulators. You just bring in this CC control change, as it's called, and you can see the wave graft. And so I can just kind of stop and listen with my eyes and see, okay, so the plant's here, and it's kind of moving here now, and it's kind of moving here. And you can say, well, if my values are between zero and 127, you can carve that into a few different zones. 

48:39
Bryan Noll
And those zones can be like, all right, at the bottom, at the least, activity, let's make it slow. Let's make it silent. Let's turn off everything. And at the very high end, let's make it super reverbed, like the echo in this room or something. Let's do something really big and drastic, and you can take other little zones in between. And, you know, I want these instruments to happen here and these instruments to happen here. Andrea was saying earlier, you were talking about the cello being, like, on a plant, as if you have one plant doing one instrument, which is really cool. And I want to start to try that now. Somebody said that last night to me. I made an ensemble of cello and upright bass and piano and harp and voice saying oohs and Oz like vowels. And another instrument that I'm forgetting. 

49:40
Bryan Noll
Oh, and marimba, because I just wanted some acoustic instruments to go along with the synthesized sounds. And they were all, though, working on the same note set from one single plant. So what's helpful is to use that slower rate of change that is coming from. This is a good reminder. I'm glad you said this, Joe, that it's coming from the rate of change. So the fact that it's not about the notes, it's about the change. So you map that change to, well, maybe when it changes fast, we do the instruments that have a fast attack, like, know and the piano. And maybe when it's a little bit lower, I map it to the bode instruments or something. And these are all ways of revealing this change to reveal this thing we're talking about, that we might not be able to see this thing. 

50:37
Bryan Noll
We can't sense these plants being antennas. So mapping the CC, if you want to get into it, I mean, obviously, the plant wave app works just as it is. You don't need to do that. You don't need to get into this level. But if you want to get into that level, the CCs are where it's at. 

50:54
Joe Patitucci
Just to clarify, too, the plant wave app has all of this design philosophy built into it. So, in fact, if you go over to our expo booth over there, 1545, you'll notice there's a plant that's playing this one soundset, which is called celestial being, and there are these chimes that can come in. The chimes only happen when there's a huge shift in the plant. So I just went over there, and on my way here, and I was like, okay, cool. What sound set are you guys using? Oh, here, let's put this one on. Okay, cool. And it was just droning. I was like, okay, cool. It's just droning. What happens if you touch it made this cascade of bliss, and they're like, whoa, what was that? And I was like, oh, okay, it's set up now. 

51:45
Joe Patitucci
I'm going to go to the stage, but it's really simple. All this stuff is built into plant wave, so it's really plug and play. And we're adding new sound sets all the time with even More expression, so that every day when you tune into your plants, you can have a different experience, not only in terms of the melodic content, but what instruments are active today. Like, what's going on over here? Yeah, I would love to hear a little bit more about design. 

52:16
Andre Cortez
Yeah. The pentatonic scales are key for me because I'm playing an instrument live with the plants. So I'm finding that actually, if I set it to a minor pentatonic, and I can actually introduce different scales related to the pentatonic scale. And so I was trying to do that when were in the plant lounge. And so I could start on an F minor pentatonic, but then I could find a related key, and then it gives it a different feeling, because when we move into a different scale, we create a different feeling and creates a different response for people. So it could actually kind of move into different moods with related scales. But the pentatonic scale is key for being able to do that. 

52:59
Bryan Noll
The power of the perfect fifth. For the musicians here, everything builds off of the fifth. It's like the Harmonic series. You've got your root, your fifth, and if you stack fifths above that root five times, you get a pentatonic scale. It's like mind blowing. 

53:15
Andre Cortez
It's all math. 

53:20
Joe Patitucci
This is anecdotal, but I've heard from users, some users are just purists and they're just like, they set it. They just go and they set it chromatic. They're like, I'm just going to let it do whatever I want. And I've heard from some people have claimed they've had parties where they all sang together and the plant kind of came into key. I haven't had that experience. I haven't tried. I don't have enough patience for that. In a way, I just want to listen to it being chill. But Kalani, I've heard some of your stuff. Sometimes you have it scaled. I think you use maybe a major scale or maybe it's chromatic. I would love to hear about some of what you've experienced in that. 

54:05
Ghalani
Yeah, I think especially if you are going about this in terms of an audience watching it, I think it's really nice to play with the fact that all these scales have different moods, cultural contexts, and also a lot of the times levels of intensity to where it's like when we talk about the pentatonic scale, especially because it is based off of the natures of physics, of sound. That's why it's the most cross cultural scale. Right. Every culture has this scale. So if you think of it and you want to convey that you can through the music with the chromatic scale, there's a lot of times chaos and dissonant intervals. It could sometimes sounds atonal or serial, like that music. So you can use that as an artist speaking to the artist in the room. 

54:55
Ghalani
You can use this as a mode of artistic expression to not only have calmness, but evoke any emotion that you want to. 

55:13
Joe Patitucci
Awesome. Is there anything else you'd like to share? I know that we talked a little bit about how we use it or how we design for it. I'd love to learn a little bit. I know that you use different tools, I think, than we do. You use logic. 

55:28
Ghalani
Yeah. 

55:29
Joe Patitucci
Great. Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

55:31
Ghalani
Yeah. So I'll talk about the most complicated example I have of it, because a lot of times it is really simple, like you're saying the plug and go. Especially out in nature where there's like flies that I don't want to mess with. But for those performances, my actual chain is from the plants and to the plant wave. And then I use logic as a daw. And a lot of times I'll have automations for different scenes that I'm doing live, especially when I'm doing duets with the plant. So I'll have a certain voice for a scene. I use Arturia. It's a synthesizer is in the computer, but you can play synthesizer sounds with your computer alone. It's not like a physical hardware thing. So I use Arturia for the voices of the plant and I map these. I say, okay, really airy voice. 

56:24
Ghalani
Let's say to start out lots of wind sounds or textures. Then you can have scene change and you can automate that through logic. I'm honestly envious of Ableton because there's a lot of creative things you can do on it that you can't with logic. But I love logic for it's very intuitive and you can automate it that way. So that's why I do it. And. Yeah, so I think also in terms of when we talk about the expression, you can also change the expression mid performance if you want. So that's another way of playing with the tones and the evocativeness of the plant and you together. 

56:58
Joe Patitucci
Beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, so there's so many different ways to play and create with plant wave and just to even just experience plant wave as a part of your life, just having it. I just have it hooked up at home. Basically, if you go up to the plant music lounge upstairs, it's like a four X replica of my apartment in LA back in the day. If you ever checked out Plants FM, where I was broadcasting plants 24/7 from my apartment, it's basically the same thing, but just like four times bigger. And you just go and chill out up there. 

57:32
Bryan Noll
And if you want to see what that looks like, I have a video called Garment of Destiny on YouTube that I shot when I was house sitting at his place a few years ago, his old place. So you'll see one of those corners of that place. 

57:46
Joe Patitucci
It looks almost exactly the same. Yeah. Thanks all for being here and thank you, everyone, for coming out. I know we just have a few more minutes left, so thought we could go down the line for some final thoughts. Anything anyone would like to share? Make sure that we maybe haven't communicated to the audience yet? 

58:09
Andre Cortez
What about questions? 

58:11
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, we want to do some questions. Yeah, let's do some questions. We have like two minutes or 1 minute, but yeah. Any questions in the house? Oh, yeah, go ahead. Sure. So the question was, have I ever hooked it up to old trees? And does it resonate in a different way than a house plant? Yes, I have. What I've experienced is with woodier plants, there's less water in there that would allow for us to measure the movement in these changes. So I tend to work more with hardy tropical plants because they're a lot more expressive. So, for instance, like a larger tree, a lot of times it'll just be putting out like one or two notes. It'll be more of a drone. It'll sound more like a tropical plant if you don't water it enough. 

59:21
Joe Patitucci
Similarly, like a mushroom will often kind of be more constant too, which they're fungi. I'm not exactly sure how they're working. 

59:30
Bryan Noll
In the mycelium, the network under is where it's all going down. And so the fruiting body above has less going on is what I would assume. 

59:40
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. And it's like, try making a sensor for mycelium networks that are impossible to even see. Great question. Any others? 

59:54
Andre Cortez
Thank you so much. 

59:55
Joe Patitucci
Oh, we got one back here. 

01:00:00
Andre Cortez
Thanks. 

01:00:01
Speaker 6
I'm curious how you strike the balance between kind of staying true to the data and then how much sound design you incorporate. Because I totally understand making it kind of palatable for the ear. I don't know how to express that exactly, but how do you kind of convey that to the listener too, to say there's sound design involved, because I feel like educating the listener in a way is important because otherwise lack of understanding could be like, oh, plant music is beautiful naturally. So I'm just curious about that. 

01:00:42
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. Like, oh, I didn't know plants sound like flutes and angels and piano. I didn't know plants. Plants sound like pianos. Maybe that's why they came up with the piano sound, because the plants told them that they should make sounds like this and they figured it out. Yeah. So we try to be as clear as we can with do our best to communicate that. It's really challenging on the Internet when something goes viral, but we do that through our website and through the app with just like, okay, you connect your plant, and then the plant sends this data and it plays notes on these instruments and we give you control, I think a lot of people, because we're giving you control of what instrument you are listening to. It's obvious, right? 

01:01:33
Joe Patitucci
But on that question related to that balance between design and representing it as purely as possible. It really depends. There are a lot of different sound sets in the plant wave app, and they all have different use cases, some of them are there to represent the data as directly as possible. We have a new one that just came out, I think, yesterday. That's basically a sine wave that just follows the data and it's scaled to a pentatonic scale, but you definitely hear the wave. There's one called points on waves. It's also, like a lot more of a direct translation. And then there are others that are more like, hey, you can just leave this on all day and it'll sound kind of the same. And it's like a little bit less of a direct expression of it, but it serves a purpose for humans. 

01:02:37
Joe Patitucci
So we include all that info in the app, just of the different use cases or what to listen for as well. There's a little what to listen for section. So you'll know, like, oh, wow, it's playing these chimes. It only does that when it's at this level of activity. But yeah, it's really like design thinking and thinking about what the goal is the goal to monitor the plant's activity. And so we have some that are designed specifically for that and some that are designed more for other aspects. Anyone else? It sounds like we all kind of have this built into. 

01:03:18
Andre Cortez
It's easier when you're working with people in person because there's a level that you can show them and they can experience that the plant really is responding to them. And I also mentioned plant responds to the wind, to the lighting in the room. So you do hear these changes. That's not in my design. It's the plant that's responding. And so when they can get that real interaction, then there's that balance you're talking about of that response. 

01:03:49
Bryan Noll
You develop an ear for the change. It's not making the music, it's making the change. We designed the music for it to make, and we hopefully design, or we may design it in a way so as to reveal the change. And the more you experience it and get used to it, the more you. 

01:04:08
Andre Cortez
Learn to recognize and you're listening, and you're working on listening because that helps also people to listen deeply, because as musicians, you hear it, you hear all those changes. But it's kind of like another level for everyone to listen on a deeper level. 

01:04:24
Bryan Noll
What a great question. Thank you. 

01:04:26
Joe Patitucci
Awesome. Well, we're a little overtime, so if there are any parting comments. Well, I'll start I'll just say, check out the plant wave lounge upstairs. It's like the highest expression of what this experience is, in my humble opinion. It's upstairs. Eleven B. Also, we have plant waves for sale here. So come check that out if you'd like to bring this experience home. And, yeah, any other parting thoughts here? 

01:04:55
Bryan Noll
I mean, I'll just talk about myself, I'd say, yeah, I have some plant wave videos on YouTube. Check out Lightbath. Just search light bath ligtbath and plant wave. Or maybe some of them may say Midi sprout. I don't remember. But plant music and that. Yeah, and you can see some of it in performance. 

01:05:11
Andre Cortez
Well, you can find me at Mindbody Music Center. I'm based in Austin. 

01:05:17
Ghalani
My name is Galani. My artist's name is the growth eternal. And you can find me on YouTube at the growth eternal. Thank you. 

01:05:26
Joe Patitucci
Awesome, everyone. We're going to be here all day. Thank you. Yeah, we'll be here. Feel free to stop by if you have any questions. Lots of love. 

01:05:38
Joe Patitucci
This episode is brought to you by Plantwave. What would plants sound like if they could sing? Well, thanks to plantwave, we now know they would sound like whatever you want them to sound like, because you can select instruments for your plants to play. These instruments are collections of instruments that I designed that are designed to help you hear the data from plants as music. And they're also designed to hold space for really cool experiences, like meditation or relaxing or reading or whatever you want to do. Staring at clouds? 

01:06:14
Joe Patitucci
I don't know. 

01:06:15
Joe Patitucci
What do you like doing? I like staring at clouds. Clouds are cool. Plant waves kind of like staring at clouds, but listening to plants, it's kind of a similar vibe. So if you're into staring at clouds and seeing cool patterns in clouds, then you're probably into listening to plants. And if that's you, then we vibe. So check out plantwave. Just go to plantwave.com and yeah, get yourself a plant wave. Listen your plants and share it with your friends. 

Laraaji: Harmonizing the Now through Music and Meditation

00:00
Joe Patitucci
This episode is brought to you by PlantWave. PlantWave turns a plant's biorhythms into music. You just attach two sensors to a plant's leaves. PlantWave connects wirelessly to a mobile device running the PlantWave app. And the app has instruments on it that are built for plants to play. Check it out plantwave.com and share it with your friends. Welcome to the Nature of now. Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Patitucci, and joining me today is one of my favorite human beings on the planet. He is a pioneer of ambient electronic music. He teaches laughter, meditation. He is an all around cosmic being. You might know him. He wears orange head toe all the time. He is just a radiant, amazing beam of wisdom. 

00:50
Joe Patitucci
His name is Laraaji, and I had the pleasure of collaborating with Laraaji at South by Southwest in 2023, and we will have a video of that for you to check out. But we collaborated in this huge church. Playing music with plants is a complete dream come true. And this conversation takes place in my backyard the day after that show. Laraaji is somebody I've known for probably about seven years, has been a huge part in my kind of personal growth and spiritual growth just through his music and then also getting to know him as a human being. He just walks with so much wisdom, and every time I have a conversation with him, I learn something new about myself. And I feel like just cosmic things come from interacting with Laraaji. 

01:48
Joe Patitucci
One of those things that came from this episode for me is this concept of moving as rather than moving towards. It's something I've been integrating ever since we had this conversation. So let's dive into it. Let's jump into a conversation with Laraaji on The Nature of now podcast. Laraaji, welcome. 

02:13
Laraaji
Hey, Joe. 

02:16
Joe Patitucci
Here we are. 

02:17
Laraaji
Yes. Texas. Texas Austin. 

02:20
Joe Patitucci
Yes. Is this what you expected Texas to be? 

02:23
Laraaji
Yes. I'm expecting a little bit more centigrades, but here's the sun, here's the warm people. Here's the ground. 

02:31
Joe Patitucci
Feels good to be here. 

02:33
Laraaji
Does. Yeah, here is a good place. 

02:36
Joe Patitucci
Thanks for coming down. So I just started this podcast. A lot of this is about creativity, artistry, craft, universe, flow. 

02:49
Laraaji
Join the podcast party. Yeah. Share the information. 

02:54
Joe Patitucci
Exactly. So last night we made music with plants, and we kind of interweaved a lot of beauty, and it was very touching. 

03:07
Laraaji
Yes. Tonal improvisation, honoring the frequency of plants through sound. 

03:17
Joe Patitucci
And one of the things that got me into making plant music is this idea of seeing that I was always influenced by nature to create music. And I felt in a certain way, nature was expressing itself through me, like the creative force of the universe was coming out in me. And I see that big time in you, the way that you channel, and you do that very live, and you do that through music and then also through kind of toning and kind of light language. 

03:58
Laraaji
Yes, there's not a whole lot of thinking that goes into it, but you're probably right. So nature is an interesting word. So when the nature of space, the nature of timelessness, the nature of the moment, the nature of now, that in contemplation or in meditation or deep witnessing, I'm drawn out of this sense of local time and local body and sensing myself as a presence, as a field of unlimited presence. And this is like a lead sheet. So I'm in it, and it generates my ideas or my inspiration for spontaneous music. So I'm reading the now, and the idea is, in reading the now, I'm celebrating because there's so much freedom, so much non anxiety and so much joy. So the now is a very potent place to it's good medicine. Medicine. 

05:16
Laraaji
And so the nature of the now for me, if I had to put it into words, it's always here, always accessible, and it doesn't put any rules on me. I mean, if I'm in the now and express openly and share my sounds, the sounds tend to be what you call light language. And light also can be interchanged with the term lightness. Lightness to be in the now, to me, extended present time, nonlinear. It's void of third dimensional claustrophobia, third dimensional debris. So in that aspect, it's light that it's not carrying heaviness. So it's the lightness of present time. The nature of now is lightness. And in musical expression, I enjoy the idea of space or sparse notes to sculpt or point to the lightness and the emptiness and the non congestion of nowness. 

06:24
Laraaji
And this was an experiment until people like you commented that they were getting it, they were getting lightness, they were getting expansiveness, they were getting freed up from their dense identity so that they could experience a lighter sense of connection with the cosmos. 

06:44
Joe Patitucci
What started you on that journey of exploring this lightness? 

06:51
Laraaji
Consciously, I could say being in the Baptist church and having my mother insist that we go to church and Christianity, baptism, being baptized, being exposed to the person called Jesus the Christ at an early age without fully understanding at all, but knowing that was something awesome. Jesus, hey, I want to do that. Wow, that is cool. 

07:17
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. 

07:19
Laraaji
And so not knowing how I was going to do it because I was getting mixed messages that only Jesus could do it, but yet Jesus was saying, you can do it too. And so I did my further research in later years. Well, as a result of following the image that I have of Jesus in my imagination, praying to Jesus was good psychotherapy, and it kept the doors open for me to invite in metaphysics in later life because metaphysics seems and Eastern philosophy seems to point in the direction of the mystery that Jesus seemed to represent. If you want to do it, then here are some ways that you can do it. And what I found out is that the way to do it is to switch your idea of your potentiality. 

08:11
Laraaji
There's more to you than human incarnation and human muscles that with the mind and the imagination. Even Einstein supported this. You can create, I call it. You can intuit or you can create your present moment according to the vibration of your mind and the thoughts you think help to establish the vibration of that mind. So when I began exploring mind science and meditation, I found out I was directly altering the frequency of my mental state. And what followed was that I changed the aperture or the lens through which I was perceiving life. And the idea of the prosperity and perfection and eternity became more accessible to my sense of what is real. That through meditation, long hours of meditation, I was able to access the place beyond the titles. 

09:15
Laraaji
In my earlier forms of meditation, I would sit in an easy chair, do deep breathing, and then mentally take off all titles and names and classifications. And what was left is this lightness of just. I am. I am without any titles, without any bone structure, without any ethnic identity, super lightness. And I could stay in that meditative place for hours because there was no anxiety, no fear as this lightness and a very yummy lightness. And I got to thinking, wow, this is better than chunking down one $200 to fly off to India and try to find a guru that right here inside the moment. If the devotion, if your devotion and my devotion allows it, I can access this lightness. And in this lightness, I feel less separate from everything. 

10:15
Laraaji
I feel that I don't need to rush off to a future or rush off to change the past. And I find that my relationship with people shifts too big time. That although I see people in bodies, bone structures, noses and eyes colors, I'm getting to know that we are all a field, a common field, and starting to look at people from inside, look out through people's eyes and feel them more cosmically, intimately, so that there isn't a sense of I'll lose you if you go far away in terms of miles. I feel that we are interpenetrating one another in the perfect present time on all of this understanding came to me through reading and through the practice of silent meditation. So much comes through in meditation called nonverbal information. And that's what I feel I was looking for when I was younger. 

11:21
Laraaji
I was looking for answers, but I thought they would come in terms of words. But I'm discovering that there's transverbal or there is data that doesn't register in the linear condition mind. And whether you call it spirit or the way or Allah or God and whatever you call it, if you're feeling it while you're calling it, then that's the right language for you. 

11:55
Joe Patitucci
Can you give an example of experiencing that feeling? Or do you remember the first time you had that feeling? 

12:09
Laraaji
What feeling? What feeling were Doug? 

12:11
Joe Patitucci
Or the experience of knowing without the words or the experience of receiving the information without it being words? 

12:27
Laraaji
Yes, I think consciously because unconsciously I was receiving guidance into following it. I think that's one thing that prayer does, praying just opens me up to trusting the invisible, the impersonal. And so in my early music improvisation, I feel I was following guidance without saying that I'm following guidance. Just jump on a piano and spontaneous music would happen. But after exploring meditation, mind science and yoga, I learned that by being cultivating an inner stillness, a deeper inner stillness, I could receive guidance from a higher source. And when I say higher, I mean more present. That's where the higher is in the more present. And when we're not digging the higher it's because our focus is somewhere removed from the present and we're into linear time space. 

13:28
Laraaji
But times when I learned how to be in perfect present time, one moment was of that was during the 5 hours of meditation in the early 70s, mid seventy s. One night before settling the meditation I had attracted this sound. At first I called it a sound hearing experience. But later on I realized it wasn't done through these ears. I was aware inside an ocean of musical sound current. And the sound simultaneously was triggering cosmic memory of how it is that I am eternal. How it is that I am a field in which all things are one. And so I didn't make the connection at that time. But one of the sayings from the Bible jesus was I and my father are one. And I thought that was a hip statement. 

14:32
Laraaji
And it was during meditation I began to unravel my understanding behind those mystical sayings. So this sound current that's like activated or either was simultaneous with the activation of unknowingness how it is that everything is one now and that now is eternal. This is where eternity is. I used to think you had to wait to the end of time to know what eternity was. So that kind of knowingness was activated in the moment of deep meditative awareness. But I must say that particular moment I had some help. That was I was probably months into exploring, experimenting with deep meditation, relaxing the identity with the body through the thoughts, deep breathing. And also I found that guidance guided me to the mindful offering of cannabis to the meditation experience. 

15:44
Laraaji
And the first time I felt guided I questioned it because of course it was sort of underground and taboo. Until one evening I was watching a television show and the show was a live theater piece based in the East Village, New York and it was about these detectives going underground to investigate Beatnik community. And one of the sergeants was instructing another police officer how to fake smoking a joint. And I saw it. And this guidance is you got to check that out. Just like that. Check what out? Check that out. Though it wasn't until years later in college that I was offered an opportunity to explore cannabis, and college mates offered me a few toques. And I felt nothing. And the college mates were sitting in the room laughing at me, saying, you're high and don't know it. And still I hadn't gotten it. 

16:52
Laraaji
So years later, fast forward, I was given another opportunity. Okay, I'm going to do ten sessions of marijuana, and if I get nothing from it, I'm just going to chalk up that guidance. So after about four or five experiments with cannabis laying in my room in Harlem, just one day, I was laying in my bed an afternoon, staring out across the courtyard at the window seal across me, which had, I think, tropicana orange juice carton and another with maybe a milk carton standing next to each other. And I remember after ingesting cannabis, I'm staring at these cartons, saying to myself, I wonder how many times I'm going to have to really do this to find a meaning. 

17:46
Laraaji
Then I notice the two cartons were doing one was a penguin, and there were two penguins, and they were doing a soft shoe dance on the ceiling on the window seal. And I'm saying, okay, I'm thinking. So learning getting high was about learning how to focus at the frequency where it's going on, because I was too busy focusing in a familiar terrain. So cannabis and psychedelics, I believe, show us another terrain within our consciousness and imagination that can be explored. So there I am listening to this music, this one night inside my head, and it's calling me to be aware that my heart was cracking open for the universe. It made me how much in love I am with this universe. And I don't know if I cried, but it was like one of those real excruciatingly beautiful experience of family reunion. 

18:52
Laraaji
Maybe you can imagine seeing your grandmother, great grandfather, all at a family reunion and seeing faces that you vaguely remember. And that feeling, this was like, the whole universe is in reunion right here and right now. And as I, over the years tried to relate that experience, I became aware of different aspects of that experience. That I was not only experiencing the music, but I was experiencing, we call it transcendental consciousness that's transcended the body, and that I was the field. I was being aware of another dimension other than third dimension. It might be called the fifth dimension. It might be called the cosmic field or the void. So that experience was groundbreaking for me because a few days after that, I went to Lincoln Center Library music library to start research to find anything that pointed to that musical hearing experience. 

20:03
Laraaji
And there was several religious traditions on the planet honor that sound, including Christianity, but it was kind of covered over in the beginning was the word. The word is that sound. And the more I talk about that experience, the more I have to remember that it never happened. 

20:27
Joe Patitucci
Tell me about what you the teaching. 

20:29
Laraaji
Is that there is no past for it to have happened in that God did not create the universe because God doesn't operate in past tense. So it's all going on now. And because of the way we are linked into this form of creation, it appears and we use language of linear time space, but stepping out of it, going back across the veil into zero point, we see that there's the I am within which all of this is taking place and unfolding. And that in absolute present time. Linear time is you could call it hallucination or illusion, but it's a story within an imaginary realm. But if we're in that realm, it seems real, but beyond that realm, there is just continuous now. 

21:29
Laraaji
And when that music, that experience that didn't happen, it reminds me when I try to talk about it, we didn't happen, we're happening now. It's a story and it's an encouragement to clear out my nowness so that I can have this experience more expansively that the now is where it's going on. And if I don't know it and I don't see it means I've got stuff in my nowness that's obstructing my direct experience of a higher frequency. 

22:07
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, I feel that. I love the way you kind of explain higher frequency too, because I think sometimes I hear people talk about high frequency, low frequency, like high vibe, low vibe or things like that. And I tend to think of it almost like bitrate. 

22:27
Laraaji
Like what? 

22:27
Joe Patitucci
Like bitrate or sample rate. 

22:31
Laraaji
Oh, yeah. 

22:32
Joe Patitucci
How many samples per second you're running? So the higher the sample rate, the more you're connected to the present moment. Whereas the lower the sample rate, the bigger there are gaps between moments. 

22:47
Laraaji
And those gaps we don't see. We look a certain way or we use our faculties a certain way. Like I said, there's big gaps. We overstep the present moment. We see linear activity and unless we're mindful or been trained or thoughtful, we exclude our presence, that this presence, the witness, and getting in touch with ourself as a silent witness, I find is a way of reinhabiting present time. 

23:29
Joe Patitucci
Definitely. Yeah. I feel that I had an experience where I did a plant medicine journey and I was so in that witness state that it was interesting. At one point, I had to get up and go use the restroom and I was out on a farm in Central America and in the bathroom they had a fluorescent light. And because I was in the witness mind and I felt like I was so in the present and that sample rate was so high, the kind of light flashing of a bulb that you would detect as just constant light in normal life. You might feel a little bit definitely feel it. It was like a strobe light. 

24:23
Laraaji
You could it was like a notice that you had. 

24:28
Joe Patitucci
And I was like, I see. Okay, you can run this hardware at different rates. 

24:39
Laraaji
Yes, indeed. And one thing I always felt in talking about this is that I never know how much the same other person already knows. The whole world may be enlightened to the max, waiting for me to catch up. 

25:03
Joe Patitucci
I feel like the whole world is enlightened, waiting to be invited to witness its own enlightenment. 

25:16
Laraaji
The thing I have about that is there's one of two things or both things are happening right now. Either there is this happening all by itself, or I'm creating it. And if I'm creating it moment to moment, then the only way to change anything is to change the whole creation or let the whole creation shift in a way that it includes my prosperity or includes my health. Or I can go out into this and put bandaids on what seems to be a boo, or go help a friend correct their behavior. If I think they're acting out of place, either I go around and manipulate this, which seems to be the physical world, or I stay in the witness mode, and if I just tune into Perfection Completion wholeness, then I won't be so caught up in trying to fix things. 

26:25
Laraaji
And you fix a hole in that dike, and another hole leaks over there that if you try to fix things in this perceptual realm, you may get temporary joy, but eventually I feel we'll get pooped out. And I had a question about being a bodhisattva. Bodhisattva keeps coming back until everyone's I'm saying, what if the bodhisattva satva is creating the need for himself to come back? What if the bodhisattva could create a perfection feel and intuit a world that never needed and never will need healing or enlightenment? Or does the bodhisattva come into a realm where we do need to tinker with things? What is our responsibility to tinker with what we think or step back and let creation nature present the universe in its own way? 

27:25
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, definitely. It definitely could get exhausting going about trying to fix everything all the time. And I wonder too, because you kind of contrast this nowness with the polarity, which might be anxiety if you're looking towards the future or maybe depression if you're looking if you're looking at the past with or regret or something like that. And I'm wondering, was there a time where you were kind of oscillating out of the now as, like, a normal part of your life when you. 

28:08
Laraaji
Say oscillating outside of the now, or using the now as my base, oscillating. 

28:14
Joe Patitucci
Outside of the now. So was there a time when you were I mean, were you always in this now or was it? 

28:22
Laraaji
I was but didn't know it, of course. No, there were times of attachment and you say addiction to outcomes, dependence upon otherness relating to otherness, putting investing my total emotional, psychological balance and equilibrium into my relationship with otherness. And I found that they were like roller coaster rides. And though it wasn't a dependable happiness it's happiness, then there's happiness. 

29:05
Joe Patitucci
Sure. 

29:07
Laraaji
Then I began hearing these messages, especially from Eastern philosophy, that suffering is due to attachment. I said, oh, wait a minute. There must be some things I can be attached to that are going to have continuous joy. But when I think of things that I'm attached to, I might come to a midway point of contentment. But continuous happiness and joy in an attachment situation, even especially if you really love something, if it moves outside of your field of vision and takes a trip to Chicago, you might have a little anxiety about what if a terrorist, what if the plane go down? What if she chokes on a hickory nut? What if a lion leaps over the cage at the zoo and runs palmel through the city and grabs her? 

30:06
Laraaji
So there's anxiety comes know what if when you're attached to otherness and things outside, though, the happiness I'm so happy I got a grandchild. I'm so happy I got this new car and you go to sleep at night. Did I park it in the right place? I don't know. These gas prices are out of sight. You jump in the car and you enjoy the ride. It's driving down highway 101. So there's ups and downs. At some point, is there a road or a path that's in constant equilibrium and that's where the Bible, the word or nadam or the inner sound current comes in. For me, it represents the sound, the frequency of the nervous system, cosmic nervous system in continuous equilibrium. That's why you have nada yoga, the yoga that's built on finding your inner peace by contemplating the cosmic sound current. 

31:10
Laraaji
So that's probably one of the main stays in the practice I do is tuning into this sound current. And it has shown me how to sustain a place of balance and equilibrium. If I step outside of it, I can find myself getting grumpy groggy pissed off. And I'm saying, why am I getting pissed off? It's because I'm attaching too much of the outcome in the physical dimension. I can come back into the witness place and watch those things without being attached. Of course, I give up maybe the joy of saying, that's mine but then I also give up the work of taking responsibility, emotional responsibility for it. That's one thing about possession. I say instead of deciding what I want in life, decide what it is I'd like to take responsibility for. 

32:11
Laraaji
What is it that I would have a lot of joy taking responsibility for. And so if you answer that correctly, you come oh, I wouldn't mind having three children, I take responsibility. That would be fun. Or having a Shetland pony. That would be fun. Or having an airplane pilot's license. That should be fun. I wouldn't mind taking responsibility for that. So in wisdom, if I ask, what is it I like to take responsibility for? My early one was, I'd like to take responsibility for doing what Jesus did. That seemed like a hip place to be. I don't know about the cross scene. I don't know. I guess the cross, if it had to be the cross. I think I've been nailed to the cross already, though. 

33:05
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. We all kind of bear our own cross in our own way. I think we have to be who we are, right? 

33:14
Laraaji
Yes. You do it. And you said oops. Okay. That's into that chapter, you realize how committed you are to following whatever you're following. And so what falls away is the self was faking, like it was following other paths. 

33:33
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. That's so good. What crosses have you born willingly? They might not seem like crosses to you right. Because they were part of a process. 

33:49
Laraaji
But guess one cross getting nailed means having your total current portfolio shifted. It's also in the song Young At Heart, you know. But it's Frank Sinatra Young at Heart. 

34:10
Joe Patitucci
Okay. Yeah. 

34:10
Laraaji
There's one phrase in there. You can go to extremes with the possible schemes. You can laugh when your dreams fall apart at the seams. That's getting nailed to the cross. And one time that happened is living in Park Slope, Brooklyn, working in exchange for at a coffee house, aquarium coffee house, having a free room in the basement of what is now in the Park Slope Food Co op. But anyhow part of my responsibility was to help the man of this loft, who was an ex Marine, prepare the loft for parties now and then. And on this one particular day, I had committed to being up 09:00 in the morning to help him prepare the loft. And about 09:00, I came up to start helping him. There was a lot of work that had to be done. 

35:07
Laraaji
I got this clear signal go downstairs and get your auto harp and go to Central Park and play. And I was so clear. It's one of those clear signals that, you know, if you don't ignore it, you're like you're punching God in the nose. Get out of here. It was clear that I had to follow it, follow the rabbit hole up. So I went downstairs and got my gear, and as I was leaving, he said, Where are you going? I said, I just got a message. Central park. And I left knowing I could feel that I was getting nailed to the cross back there. 

35:48
Laraaji
Because after I got to the Central Park playing at the zoo outside the zoo about 10:00 in the morning, hardly anybody's there, and I'm saying, oh, did I hear the voice right and I'm playing for maybe a half an hour, and I'm noticing only people. There are these two pair of feet standing there for a long time, male and female. And I opened my eyes, clearly stopped playing, and I feel that I had booed. I misheard. And these two people came over to me. One was a gentleman, the other was a lady. And she stooped down to me and smiled, you're psychic, aren't you? And I said, oh, here it comes. 

36:32
Laraaji
And she introduced me to the man she was with, who was a psychic, religious person who was about to launch this Twelve Rays cassette album, and he needed music, and they said my music was just right. And he hired me on the spot to come up a few days later to New England at a house where they were and record all this music. Now back on the ground, I returned to the loft, and part of the loft had gotten completed, and my friend, or my questionable friend said, Where were you? And I says I had the voice told. I don't want to hear any of your muck amuck. And he pushed me across the loft with a force that said, I don't want to counter that. And so I went downstairs and got what I could and left and never returned. 

37:37
Laraaji
And that push was getting nailed. It's just saying, whatever you believe in, whatever you are following, doesn't fly here, doesn't go over here, and it's not recognized here, it will not be honored here, it will be violently opposed here. 

37:56
Joe Patitucci
And so allowing that so that you can go and be where your soul. 

38:04
Laraaji
Is meant to be yes, that taking responsibility for your actions. And I'm saying, I no longer want to take responsibilities for misleading to somebody about my undercover Jesus Freakness. 

38:20
Joe Patitucci
And it turns out that the next place for you to go is somewhere else on Earth and not like, ascending to heaven in that moment. So that works out. 

38:28
Laraaji
Choose your path more. Mindfully. If you know you're committed to this, why are you getting into that relationship? If you know you're committed to running to The Voice, why are you committing your time and energy nine to five to that job, to that kind of job? If you know you're committed to waking up, if you've seen the light and you know you're returning into the next dimension of your evolution, why are you putting all your time and energy in that direction? 

38:57
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, super important, I'm sure that yeah, absolutely. And so you had an arrangement where you're kind of working there and you were a musician. When did you kind of rewinding back? When did you start making music? Or did you do that in the church? Like, growing up, was it a big part of your life? 

39:25
Laraaji
Earliest part of music. Listening to my mother, Mary Alice, humming church songs around the house when she was doing housework, that's music. So I was introduced to the open, uninhibited use of the voice. She didn't scream or nothing like that, but she voice. And then church listening to the gospel choir then in our school system in Perth Amor, New Jersey, was very up on getting children connected to musical instruments very early. I think it was the second or third grade, a little tonet, a flute kind of instrument. Around the fourth or fifth grade I began violin. And my mother also saw that I was interested in the piano and so she had a piano put in the house. 

40:19
Laraaji
So there I was learning piano and violin, singing in the church choir, playing in the high school and the grade school orchestra and choir and listening to a lot of music on the radio. So performing music, I had a lot of inspiration. People like Earl Gardner, Oscar Peterson, AMA Jamal, Frankie Lyman and the teenagers, the Beatles, all of these musical people helped me to feel as how important music is, to be able to access our transverbal state of awareness, to live where we're not thinking linear thoughts, like you said, being in the present moment. And so that musical teachings, education just blossomed. But a funny thing, I hadn't thought that I'd become make it a profession because I liked it so much. 

41:23
Laraaji
I thought I wanted to become an engineer or an architect, but I was following a daydream, I thought being a chemical engineer, I could work for Dupont. I'd have a white coat and I have a Mercedes Benz in the parking lot and I'd be somebody. But somewhere around second year of high school, somebody helped me to realize that my heart was really in music and that being an architect or chemical engineer was not the best use of my creative journey. So I applied to Howard University and I no longer applied to MIT or Renzeler Paulnitech. And I got accepted at Howard, got some scholarships and went for music. And that validated my ability to attract a musical scholarship. And my idea was to go to college for two years and get past the feeling being a trespasser in the field of music. 

42:33
Laraaji
But four years happened. After two years, I did get that sense of ability to compose and data. But I went for four years at Howard and it affirmed my devotion to creating and composing new music, that sound. And that to me, turned out to be the best way I could do what Jesus did. Use sound to get people's spirit into soaring, lifting out of no longer necessary frequencies of self awareness. Using sound to introduce people to their capacity to embrace a meditative moment, a sustained silence for 30 minutes at the end of a performance, and to really get to see the self that sees itself when it's not looking through outer lens. 

43:34
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, you said silence for 30 minutes after a performance. Does that happen? 

43:41
Laraaji
That has happened. Last night it was about five minutes. 

43:45
Joe Patitucci
It's probably about five minutes. 

43:46
Laraaji
Yes. 

43:47
Joe Patitucci
I probably ended it by hugging you guys, but it probably could have gone longer. 

43:52
Laraaji
And there's a little anxiety there because when it's happening, hey, this is happening. It happened in Paris after a concert, and afterwards, people comment and says, never have we been in Paris in a room full of these many people, this quiet for so long. 

44:10
Joe Patitucci
There wasn't a sneeze, there wasn't anything. 

44:15
Laraaji
My sense is that certain kind of music can help one relax into what we call shavasana, the corpse pose, where the corpse without a linear agenda does not interfere with the witnesses witnessing. The witnessing. The witnessing. 

44:37
Joe Patitucci
Oh, yeah. 

44:38
Laraaji
Yes. That your sense of the blue light, the flashing, the strobe light of seeing, getting more data. There's lots of data here, like you call data garden. 

44:50
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. 

44:51
Laraaji
This is a data garden, this moment, and depends on what lens you're wearing or your aperture. You read into data, new data, old data, your data. 

45:06
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. And there's a lot of space between the bits, right? 

45:15
Laraaji
Yes. Lots of it. That's what they say. The body's made up of atoms, but there's more space here than solid matter. 

45:25
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. 

45:28
Laraaji
So where is this all going? 

45:31
Joe Patitucci
This is going on. 

45:33
Laraaji
I don't mean that. I mean where is this going? What are we doing here? 

45:39
Joe Patitucci
What are we doing? We're doing this. 

45:41
Laraaji
Yes. Why? Are there others that need to hear this? Or are we just creating this whole present moment scenario because we want to feel ourselves doing something? 

45:53
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, that's a great question. It actually brings a question up. I think I'll answer the question with a question or raise the question that raises for me, which is yeah, what attachments do you enjoy witnessing yourself attached to just for fun? Or like, you know, it's kind of like, well, there's we're human beings on Earth, so I can do a thing and I can will, or maybe it's not even willing, but I can put my energy in the direction of doing something, and that doing doesn't have to have attachment to it. I guess you don't need the attachment, but the fact that you're doing it means that you have enough. Okay. So at that point, it's either something's moving you to do it. Right. So right now, then, we are wind chimes with mouths and different biology. 

47:11
Laraaji
So in your earlier vision, if you can stay present with whatever you're doing, you're not so attached to the outcome that you're enjoying the infinitude of the moment, the sense of connectedness to everything, your sense of health being identified with the wholeness of the field, and that you're not attached to winning this poker game. You're not attached to this or that coming out that particular way, because however it comes out, you'll still be in touch with your inner harmony and peace. So not being attached if you're attached to wow. If that doesn't happen, I'm screwed. That kind of attachment could be the roller coaster ride, but you could say, if that happens, I will still be connected to my sense of longevity, and I will still have a sense of connections to my source of creativity. 

48:10
Laraaji
So that has happened in times when equipment has failed during a concert performance, and I could just smile at it and pick up, go, another way to present this concert. Yeah. So being attached to a specific outcome is probably and then sometimes I say, Am I attached? Or I just appreciate it. Am I attached to that flower? Or am I appreciating that flower? Yeah. 

48:40
Joe Patitucci
And what's the difference for you between being attached? What's a way that you can tell. 

48:44
Laraaji
Attached is a little anxiety. If I'm attached to that flower, what if that chipmunks around here, come and eat that flower, and it won't be here tomorrow? If it's I'm appreciating, I say, look at the form of that flower. Look. Wow. We're on the earth together. And if a chipmunk wants to eat it, that chipmunk should enjoy it. 

49:09
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, totally. On the note of you went to school for music. Did you identify as an artist in high school? 

49:23
Laraaji
The term artist, I think I observed myself taking responsibility for that when I was having to start signing contracts, music contracts. But did I think of an artist or a musician? That's a good question, because you ask your question when you go to get in your car, how do you talk to yourself? Who are you? Do you say, hey, yo, get the car. Hey, artist, go get the car. Hey, human being, brush your teeth. What is this? No, there's a transverbal. I have a transverbal connection or association here. So if you stripped away the body and was left in zero point void, I'm imagining I would be recognizing the inner sound. 

50:23
Laraaji
And because I've learned how to be comfortable with the sound, I would have something dependably, familiar during the transition, during the Bardo or whatever they call it, to the next dimension that focusing on Nadam is like investing in my eternalness I call it a necessary step in smart evolution. You got to get on board with this inner sound current because it's like a navigation it's cosmic positioning signal. 

51:00
Joe Patitucci
Sure. 

51:00
Laraaji
If you're going to be a cosmic traveler, which I believe we all are, we have no beginning and no end. If we don't know it, we're going to be really pleasantly surprised when we do know it. 

51:12
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. Some people love that moment. 

51:16
Laraaji
Yes. 

51:16
Joe Patitucci
And repeat it over and over again. 

51:20
Laraaji
And that's why, I think, have outer teachers and outer gurus to help turn our focus inward. What you're looking for is you. What you're looking for is right here. And those who are looking for outer teachers, the ways inward are really looking for some event or somebody who can sculpt the proper event for internal something like you've heard of Goanka vapassana? 

51:50
Joe Patitucci
Oh, yeah, I've done one. 

51:51
Laraaji
You have? I think that's wonderful. Free offering on the planet, things like that, when people are given the opportunity to be quiet for seven or eight days and have an expanded AHA. 

52:07
Joe Patitucci
Oh, yeah, that's actually when I came to my kind of theory on that bitrate analogy or the sample rate analogy. 

52:19
Laraaji
Yeah, I think that is very contemporarily. Correct. I'm thinking that computer digital language is probably the right language for helping us to make the next leap forward. You got to find the language. You find the language for it, our consciousness of it will expand. And I think the digital world is giving us a language to help access and expand in nearer dimensions. Downloads uploads delete bulk dump. 

52:49
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, because there's that part where the polarity in it is what? The attachment or aversion. Right. And when I was scanning my body, I noticed you're supposed to scan your body and feel you might notice pain in some areas. You might notice areas where there's no feeling. And then you also might notice a subtle vibration. So I was almost thinking of the pain as almost like if I'm thinking of all of everything as an oscillation of awareness is this oscillation between maybe attachment and aversion. It's like the pain is like the top of the wave, like stuck on. And then the lack of feeling was like stuck off and identifying with it instead of recognizing it as change. And once I recognized it all as change, then I got that subtle vibration feeling and I was like, oh, I'm just turning an oscillator. 

53:58
Joe Patitucci
That's all I'm doing. I'm playing with an oscillator. Which is like love. 

54:04
Laraaji
An interesting thing to do, I find now and then as a creative yogic exercise is think of the ways that you are in pain right now, but you've transcended calling it pain. I could think of this situation that I'm in right now would be painful for somebody else because you wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they don't have that. Well, think of the ways that this could be called pain, but that I'm not calling it painful. 

54:34
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, totally. Or when I rollerblade or something, sometimes I think about rollerblading at like 28 miles an hour and I'm like, just on 1ft playing. That would be really terrifying for somebody if they didn't know. You kind of create the lane for yourself through your own being. 

55:01
Laraaji
Yeah, exactly what I'm talking about. 

55:03
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. So what I'm hearing from you then is that your transpersonal view of yourself kind of maybe makes a word or an identity like artist unnecessary or something that you didn't necessarily it sounds almost like the path you followed was finding the inner being and the inner sense of now and then. That is what you are. You're in this constant co creation or you're in this constant mode of creation I'm saying this. 

55:49
Laraaji
Yes. And also, who is not an artist? 

55:52
Joe Patitucci
Exactly. 

55:53
Laraaji
Yes, exactly. The art of rolling a joint, the art of avoiding rolling your own joint, the art of mothering, the art of parenting. Sometimes you don't understand what that art is until you become a parent. Whoa. What Mommy and Daddy had to put up with. 

56:16
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, of course. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So that's how I think about it a lot too. It's just that we're always co creating this moment, right? Yeah. I find that the term artist an interesting one because yeah, who isn't want to accept that? 

56:39
Laraaji
Yes. I believe an artist is a channel of meditative focus or meditative connection to whatever and their work shines a light on something that allows others to see this area more clearly. Where this emotional possibilities or emotional ability of us to enter a new realm of beauty and balance or whatever. Artists can show us how to feel more deeply about something maybe we even thought we could feel about. 

57:16
Joe Patitucci
Sure. Yeah. Well, I can say you're doing that quite well. And yeah, I may have told you, but I met you after meditating to your music every day for about nine months. 

57:38
Laraaji
That was the same music. It was variety of music in that area. 

57:42
Joe Patitucci
I listened to a lot of like I had a playlist, so unicorns in paradise. Yes. Vision Song suite and connecting with the inner Healer. So I listened to those almost every day. I think I would do yoga to Connecting with the Inner Healer every day. And then randomly I was contacted by someone at SUNY Purchase who was putting this show together with you and was like, oh, we'd love for you to collaborate with Laraaji. And I was like, what? Okay. And then I found that you had going into your archive and found the song Cosmic Joe, which my dad's nickname was Cosmic Joe. 

58:35
Laraaji
Really? 

58:35
Joe Patitucci
And I didn't know this until I started making Plant Music. And my parents friends came down from the East Village. They've been living in the same apartment since the 60s. Came down and saw the Plant music stuff. And my dad's friend Norman goes up to my dad, he's like, hey Cosmo, little Joe's a Cosmic Joe too. And I was like, wait, you call my dad Cosmic Joe? And my friends called me Cosmic Joe because I would just always talk about how everything's like meta and an infinite torsion field. 

59:10
Laraaji
Yeah. 

59:11
Joe Patitucci
And so I was like, Wait, my dad's? And then so eight years later, I find your music and I'm meditating all the time with it. And then I see the song Cosmic Joe. And I was like, what? Where did that song come from? Can you tell me about that? 

59:30
Laraaji
Well, in the mid 80s, throughout the my summer spring gigs was playing music for various consciousness conferences. And around America they would run for anywhere from four days to seven days, usually on college campuses. And this one particular annual conference was called the Southeast Spiritual Conference, held on Guilford College campus in Greensboro, North Carolina. And at this conference there were people from all over the United States and some of the world and teachers in various subjects. And one of the teachers there was a man called Joe Tucker, colonel Joe Tucker. He was a colonel in the air force, colonel in the war, talked about his flights. Anyhow, he described himself as a member of the Great White brotherhood, and I wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean, but I think it was an esoteric occult group, but a great white brotherhood. 

01:00:34
Laraaji
And he had a southern accent voice, and he seemed to have after hearing my music, he was a teacher there, amongst other teachers, and I was a presenter and a teacher. He would engage me and walk across the campus and talk about metaphysical things and try to explain to me that the 8th chakra is above the head and you access it. And he would mentor me right there on the campus. And I thought, wow, he's unloading some heavy data. And then I started making the connection. The great white brotherhood probably has some kind of like, masons, you're committed to going out and helping the world become a better place, help humanity evolve, and probably something like that. But anyhow, whenever he had a chance to talk, he would talk about this higher dimension and accessing it. 

01:01:39
Laraaji
And one summer, I came to this conference and he was there. And before the conference started, there's this teachers get together in the auditorium and get to know each other, and teachers were asked to stand up and say, what is it you're going to teach this week? And the teachers would get up and I'm so I'm from Illinois, I'm going to teach curling photography, and y'all come and enjoy the class. And after about five teachers, I felt like, gosh, I don't feel like I don't know what I'm going to do. So I got up and I just ran. Light language gauze on adribiko aguanasi sik shino koho NoHo toho NoHo. And of course, in the moment I'm feeling it and I'm thinking, yo, I think I crossed the line here, but I'm feeling it's real for me. 

01:02:32
Laraaji
And the only other person that got it was Joe Tucker. He just cracked up and laughed like he was on the same frequency. And so after that week, I returned home, and maybe within a week I heard that Joe Tucker had crossed over and the song came together of cosmic joe met Holy Moe in locked embrace, and suddenly they were united. So that was his crossing over. And so there was a joke. Colonel Joe Tucker, and he talked of cosmic things. 

01:03:07
Joe Patitucci
Right on. Beautiful. Thanks for that story. 

01:03:13
Laraaji
Yes, stories are good, aren't they? 

01:03:17
Joe Patitucci
They're fun. As long as they're fun to access in the present moment. 

01:03:24
Laraaji
Yes. Holy mo. There's a holy momentum, which is a sound current. Demonstrate vertical field momentum. It's always in place. There's a holy momentum, holy moment. The instant then Holy Mo is we just call it a place. 

01:03:44
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, right on. 

01:03:48
Laraaji
Then there's Holy Molly. 

01:03:50
Joe Patitucci
Holy molly holly molly. Molly is here. She's transformed there. She loves the song. 

01:04:00
Laraaji
Amazing. This is super duper deep meditation. And I say anyone who gets into meditation are in for a big treat because nothing gets us. We don't get bent out of shape so easily. If we can feel our grounding in a transpersonal place, a place that isn't going to get disturbed by what's going on here, if we can at least feel it, connect with it, and maybe circulate, maybe an hour a day accumulate in that place, we start balancing so we don't feel out of balance. You feel in this place and, whoa, what if that happens? I got no grounding. So through meditation, you can ground in a higher dimension, a higher foundation. And so that when you walk in this world, you say, oh, that's happening over there. But I know I'm anchored in the way I feel the spirit. 

01:05:03
Laraaji
But if you got that much passion because you're feeling it, you're walking it. It's in your prayers, it's in your affirmations. And if it's in your language, I say the only way to arrive is through your language. You got to have the language of where you want to be, and you've got to just de access the language that's where you don't want to be. 

01:05:20
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, absolutely. I look at it as if I was climbing a ladder that was 100 stories high. A dream, just a situation. I look at it. If you're climbing a ladder that is 100 stories high, why would it ever be in service for you to look down? I would not want to just keep going. This is the direction we're going. We're going this way and yeah, we can put our. 

01:05:55
Laraaji
I would look down to see if anybody with pizza is following me. 

01:06:00
Joe Patitucci
There you go. 

01:06:02
Laraaji
The idea of keep looking up or keep looking as I say, as I feel is an important language shift for us to look as. Instead of going to the future, go as the future, instead of going toward the light, go as the light somehow collapse. The sense of being separate from where you want to be. 

01:06:24
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. 

01:06:24
Laraaji
So Asness seems to work. If I think in still linear or I'm going into that or I'm going toward it, I find when I start playing with Asness, the brain starts get what's on here, but I'm learning that it's trippy, but I feel it's crucial to smart evolution for myself. 

01:06:50
Joe Patitucci
That makes sense because to me, because you're melding with where you're melding. 

01:07:02
Laraaji
Absolutely. Ramana Maharshi. What did he say? 

01:07:08
Joe Patitucci
I don't know. 

01:07:09
Laraaji
He didn't say that. He said, Be as you are as. Which means the ultimate place is you're going to be as everything you think there is Asness. And so therefore, I don't look outside of myself. I look as myself. And I cultivating, I say, a clear sense of your as. So really so that in meditation, you drop all the titles. So when you get into that place of clear center, then you can start creating your personal future. I'm, as a well sought after architect, start thinking of not going to be a great architect. I'm going as a great architect, as this great architect. This is what I would be reading right now in my formative years as a great architect. This is what these are the friends I'd be hanging about. Rob as. 

01:08:06
Laraaji
When I think as, I see clearly as wherever you go, take your as with you so that you go where you are. I am as. So that we get to a place that there's no separation and start living in anxiety, a reduced anxiety. Real estate. You are it so it can be taken from you. 

01:08:35
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, I feel that. I love that moving as. 

01:08:40
Laraaji
Yes, I am as. Don't go toward the party. Go as the party. 

01:08:47
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. 

01:08:48
Laraaji
I'm here as Go, trying to become a great pianist. Go as the great pianist. Right now, instead of feeling away, they say the sculpture looks at a block of marble and chips away anything that isn't the elephant. So the elephant appears so in Asness I'm chipping away everything that isn't as, my being there. Now, that sounds trippy, but it sounds trippy to someone who is just waking up to their capacity for trippy. 

01:09:28
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, I mean, if it's the way things work already, it's not really that trippy. It's just kind of the mechanics of it. And I think as an artist for myself, I see that because the way I create is always to just create. And then I find out what the name of the song is later. I find out what the album is later. I find out what the feeling or theme is, because it's just I don't know. I never go like, I'm going to write a song about a cloud today. 

01:10:06
Laraaji
You're free channeling. Free channeling what comes through. Then you give a title for it later. 

01:10:12
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. 

01:10:13
Laraaji
I find that liberates me much, not knowing what I'm going to do, but tune in or get into the state or the flow state and allow and provided that my medium is prepared. And of course, you see, in my business, they say your studio is your instrument. So you prepare the studio, loops your piano, whatever's available at the time, or you turn a record around and you play the studio and spontaneity, you channel it. You don't know what's going to happen. You experiment, you explore. And then three or four or five days later, you listen to what is and you see what inspires you. And you say, I think I'll call it this. Many of the albums. I didn't know what I was going to be calling it until it was done. Just like you said that you just feel and listen and guided. 

01:11:06
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. Mentioning the instrument as the Brian Eno talks about that a lot. Coming kind of from more art school and then going into seeing electronic music equipment and seeing that as like, okay, this is a way I can sculpt sound. This is the way I can kind of compose. I guess we can talk about Day of Radiance really quickly. Did Day of Radiance have a title before it was written? And were you using a lot of effects and things before working with Brian Eno or was that something that kind of came from there? 

01:11:54
Laraaji
I was using simple effects, maybe a phase shifter simple playing through a simple amplifier in Washington Square Park. So at that moment, it was just a sound of acoustic instrument blending in with electronic sound. 

01:12:11
Joe Patitucci
Cool. 

01:12:12
Laraaji
So Brian took the sound and put it in the studio and put great mics on it and then put high end, even tide effects on it subtly later. I think my phase shifter pedal maybe been too noisy at the time. Some recording situation, performance situation. I could get away with my low end pedals that was accepted or either the sound engineer knew how to compensate for it later. High end, traveling around the world. Some of my low end pedals could really create an issue. I can get away with it in some places and in others not. But anyhow, that was simple electronics on Day of Radiance and double tracking, going hammered, zither for maybe 20 minutes, 30 minutes, however, and then over it with complementary tuning. 

01:13:12
Laraaji
Sometimes the tuning be slightly different, but would create this otherworldly harmonic reality and double tracking and then usually picking the best two of the three to go on the album. But we discovered that one of the tracks, Meditative Side, was too meditative for that studio because the mics were allowing rumble from another part of the studio of the building there in Soho to get into the recording. Six months later, we recorded the quiet Meditative Side, which again was all new, being in the moment. And so both meditations and the dance side were spontaneous channelings without a title. The title really was hovering around in the air because my years in marriage, my wife at that time had quoted something the Day of Radiance, and it stuck with me, always stuck. Day of Radiance, she must have commented on my music. 

01:14:31
Laraaji
And so I thought that would be a great title for the album. And then the dance at that time, I was very impressed with Rajneesh Osho and his statement that where the dancer disappears and the dance remains. And so that side, the dance side of Day of Radiance was acknowledging that to allow the dancer to disappear and the dance remain. And then the meditation side was named after I felt like one of my desires to leave humanity is an expanded appreciation and opportunity to explore meditation. This was my contribution, and I deliberately left the liner notes of the album very sparse. So I didn't want to put much verbiage in there. So all of that came the titles came afterwards, and I used minimal effects on the album at that time. I'm surprised. I remembering your question. 

01:15:40
Joe Patitucci
Yeah. Because you're here, you're in it. Well, that's cool. I love that. I love the way you create. Thank you for creating as Laraaji. 

01:15:55
Laraaji
Yes. 

01:15:56
Joe Patitucci
Thank you for being as Laraaji. Yeah. It's a pleasure to be here as Joe with you and share this and yeah, thanks for sharing your time on this podcast and just this week. And I'm excited for well, I'm ready for more fun things that I'm feeling coming our way. 

01:16:28
Laraaji
I would say watch when you use your term, how often you can substitute the word as in places and watch the subtle anxiety or energy that happened in your body, in your brain. When I say I look forward to seeing you, and I say I look aswert seeing you, and I just noticed how awkward it feels to some other way of thinking, but how openly it's inviting me to be in present time. 

01:16:59
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, that's great. I love that because many times I use the conventional language or I'll use my own modification of the conventional language, but there's still more openness. I think there's infinite openness in the Asness. And just tweaking and play. There's a lot of play available. This is fun. 

01:17:34
Laraaji
I would choose to close with just a few seconds of a tone. 

01:17:37
Joe Patitucci
Yes, let's do that's. 

01:18:03
Laraaji
So it is. 

01:18:04
Joe Patitucci
Thank you, Laraaji. So it is. Thanks so much for dropping into the nature of now podcast. Lots of love and gratitude to Laraaji for joining us. What an amazing human being. I'm so grateful to have him as a friend. Please, I encourage you to check out his work. He has some amazing albums out there. Some songs I mentioned there will have in the show notes. And you can just search also on Spotify or Apple Music or wherever you get your music. Just look up, Laraaji. It's L-A-R-A-A-J-I You'll see an amazing, beautiful, smiling face there. And what a legend. So, so grateful. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you all soon. This episode is brought to you by PlantWave. A lot of people ask me, do plants really sound like the intro to Blade Runner? 

01:18:58
Joe Patitucci
And it's important to note they are not actually emitting sounds. We're not putting microphones on plants when we're listening with PlantWave. Listening to plants is a form of data, sonification. And because of that, we can select what instruments we want the plant to play. And that's important because that can help set the mood and the tone and the vibe that allows us to settle into. Some deeper listening. Now, the way PlantWave works, it's kind of similar to how a weather map works, right? So clouds aren't green, red, yellow. They are maybe different densities of air pressure and things. But color is used on a weather map to demonstrate these different properties of the clouds or the sky. Right. 

01:19:55
Joe Patitucci
And with PlantWave, we're using notes to represent these shifts in conductivity in a plant as it's moving water around, as it's moving chloroplasts around, as it's photosynthesizing, as it's having these electrical reactions within it. So in a similar way, yeah. PlantWave is this really cool way of tuning into what's going on the plants through music. And yeah, if you want it to sound like themed of Blade Runner, you can because we have this sound set called Theater Mode that's what we're listening to now. Could be a cool one for just kind of like, staring at stars or kind of dreaming about future realities that are nowhere near as apocalyptic as Blade Runner. That would be great. So thanks so much for tuning in to Plants with me. And if you want to learn more, check out Plantwave.com and get your own. Thanks.