I was a sound engineer, and all of these gurus and shamans would come, and I would record the workshops they were teaching. And I took part in a shamanic journeying workshop, and this woman leading the workshop had brought Ayahuasca, which is a Peruvian hallucinogen and contains DMT.

I started off in architecture, and I just couldn't fit into the vibe there. I just felt more at home in the Art Department, so I just ended up there. But I would be an architect if it didn't require so much engineering.

it's about a love song to myself, and a love song to the universe, kind of like the way that Song of Solomon consists of love songs to God or like the way Sufi poems are erotic love songs to God, I kind of wanted something like that. Because I was getting to know myself more deeply at this point. I've always been on this track where I wanted to be enlightened.

So Nemerov showed us this picture, which is of Apollo flaying Marcius. You don't think of Apollo as being the sort of person who would skin someone alive. But the story behind it was that there was this guy who was a really great musician, and all the women loved him, and people started saying he was the best musician in the world, so Apollo got jealous and he challenged this guy to a musical dual. They would each play a song and the muses would judge who was the better musician.

Like the oxytocin you get as a mom makes you forget everything constantly. And I'm a totally different person after having a kid.

When I was working at Omega, I took this Zen retreat, where you're quiet, you don't say anything for a week, and this guy there said, "You're going to be enlightened at the end of this week, that's my goal." I was the engineer, so I was recording everything at it was happening, but I was also participating, because I felt like it. So at the end of it, I did understand what enlightenment was, one-hundred percent.

The closest thing I could think of that men go through is like a prisoner of war being tortured, and then coming back from that experience. It's traumatic and grounding and makes you commit to the world. Also, because you want all of these things for your kid.