Plato’s Allegory of the Cave suggests that reality is but an illusion, a dance of light and shadows that we take for granted. We believe what we see, mistaking shadows for truth, unaware that beyond the cave lies the source of the light itself. Yet, in the allegory, one person breaks free, stepping into the blinding brilliance of the real world. With time, their eyes adjust, and they stand in awe of its beauty. When they return to free the others, they are taken for a madman, their revelations too overwhelming to be believed. And so, those who have seen the sun rarely speak of it. Instead, they seek to inspire others to see reality for what it is, an illusion, guiding them by example toward enlightenment.
The origins of ANTENNAE are as mystical and inspired as anything I have ever experienced. If I trace it back to its roots, it leads to a single moment: December 28th, 2022 - the first time I took LSD. Though I had explored mushrooms for much of my adult life, preferring them to alcohol, I had always been wary of LSD. It was synthetic, unpredictable. But at 45 years old, with a mind free of stress, I decided to trust the moment. Alone with my partner, Charlotte, in our country home, I took a full tab.
That night, I found myself completely immersed in the video game of my own life. Since childhood, my artistic and spiritual quest had been to live life as if it were a movie, imbued with poetry and adventure. LSD brought me deeper into that vision than ever before. And when the experience subsided, the ideas, the concepts, the revelations remained.
Finding the Signal
For the next three months, I experimented, once a week, exploring different doses, different experiences. What became immediately clear, as early as the first trip, was that NOMADslow.tv was the ultimate content to get lost in. No psychedelic film, no cinematic masterpiece, no grand visual spectacle worked half as well as the hours of atmospheric films I had created over recent years. The slow movements, the rare cuts, the natural flow, it was perfect. I saw my own work as if for the first time.
While tripping, alone in my home studio, I projected these films onto a wall, reflecting them in a large mirror. I placed myself between the projection and its reflection, wearing sunglasses, allowing myself to be both observer and participant, inside the movie, inside my own dream.
It was then that the idea came to me.
Lying in the bathtub, in my bliss, I would think of people I knew - family, friends, distant acquaintances. With pure goodwill, I imagined telepathically sending them signals of bliss across time and space. That's when I saw it : WE ARE ALL ANTENNAE.
The images of antennas I had filmed across the world, their meaning unclear to me at the time, suddenly made sense. The simplest truth had been waiting for me all along: WE ARE ALL. The universe is within us. Reality is a reflection of who we are, collectively.
The First ANTENNAE
By March 2023, I gathered 33 of my closest friends at NOMAD for a collective LSD journey. Between a 16x9ft screen and a 16x9ft mirror, we projected our shadows against my flickering images of antennas, becoming one with the film, the movement, the moment.
We danced. We turned. The Vitruvian Man pose. The circumambulation. The orbiting. We turned and turned, spiraling deeper into presence, into the NOW.
Standing in the center of my own creation, in my own building, surrounded by my friends, I had never felt more complete. My professional, artistic, social, and spiritual lives had fused into one singular experience.
But as high as I had felt, something unexpected happened.
The Turning
Even when I left the dance circle, it continued inside me, a deep, cosmic rotation, like the planets in orbit. I had connected to something beyond myself, and I felt it spinning infinitely inside.
And then came the pain.
My legs cramped. My toes curled in agony. Suddenly, I wasn’t transcending, I was suffering. I was in tears, overcome by shame, pain, gratitude for being surrounded and so well supported by my friends, helpless, vulnerable, human.
I had thought I was their shaman, guiding them through the experience. Instead, I was the one who needed care.
Inside My Own Movie
As overwhelming as the physical pain was, my legs locking up, the turning never stopping, the fear was worse. What if it never left me? What if this sensation of cosmic spiralling, this gravitational pull of the NOW, took over my entire body?
Yet, even through the discomfort, something profound was happening.
I realized that this so-called “bad trip” was not bad at all, it was theatrical, cinematic, deliberate. An illusion of sorts. A dance of light and shadows. I was in the middle of my own movie, playing out scenes I had written, staged, and directed for others, but had never actually experienced myself.
It was an uncanny mirror of my work, my immersive play, ALL WE HAVE IS NOW, which staged a “No Exit” scenario, trapping both the actors and the audience inside the movie itself. In the play, I played the director, guiding people through a reality that blurred into fiction, where, by the end, the audience had become participants in a surreal unfolding of time and space.
But in ANTENNAE, for the first time, I was not the director. I was inside the film, trapped in the narrative I had once only observed from the outside. Instead of guided by a script, we were guided by music. The spiralling, the constant turning, it was a mechanism of the universe, the orbits of planets, the very force that creates time itself.
And yet, I was locked in it, unable to stop.
I had designed an experience to pull people into a new reality, and now I was the one inside it, unable to escape. It was amazing, incredible, terrifying. It was everything.
The Aftermath
The pain eventually subsided, but its imprint remained. Over the next several months, the discomfort would return, most often at night, as if the LSD had rewired something in my body, a hyper sensitivity, permanently altering my perception of movement, stillness, and time. Even the smallest dose of LSD would trigger the sensation again, the spiralling, the cramping in my legs and toes.
That’s the thing about LSD, it’s not addictive. In fact, it pushed me away when I had gone too far, when I had flown too close to the sun.
Despite everything I thought I understood about the substance, despite my multiple experiences and my certainty that overdoses were impossible, I had still underestimated its power. I had lacked the reverence it deserved. And now, in some strange way, it was rejecting me.
A New Beginning
Three months later, I hosted another ANTENNAE. This time, only a dozen people showed up. Among them was Dan Handelman, someone I had only recently met. He brought along his bandmate, Christina Gavino, who had played with him and her husband, Andy Kerr, in a project that was now coming to an end.
Christina and Andy were moving to Winnipeg, leaving Dan without a band.
That night at NOMAD, something happened.
A jam session unfolded, one of the best they had ever had together. I, however, missed it entirely. The discomfort had returned with full force, and I became the first person to leave my own event, retreating home to escape the pain.
I had set the stage for something new, but I wasn’t there to witness it.
Still, the energy of that night lingered. Dan had felt something electric, something worth returning to. And so, he reached out, asking if we could meet at NOMAD to jam again.
I agreed, except this time, I invited the best musicians I knew.
That was the moment ANTENNAE went from an experience to an ensemble.
Becoming the Music
I first called Piki Chappell, a musician I had worked with twenty years prior, still one of the most gifted improvisers I had ever met. He could make music out of anything, an instrument, a chair, a heartbeat.
Then came Quentin Noël Bourbeau, or Quinn, who had approached me like a godsend, offering to work on music for NOMADslow.tv while being funded through a government grant. He later told me that NOMAD had been calling him for years, ever since he first noticed the TV color bars on the building’s facade, sensing that something there was meant for him.
Quinn had written on his résumé that he played piano, but I had no idea just how intuitive, cinematic, and deeply immersive his improvisation would be.
I also reached out to John Juster, a saxophonist who had once transformed an entire New Year’s Eve in the early hours of the morning by walking in, unannounced, and breathing new life into the night with his instrument. I had never forgotten that movie moment, and from then on, I invited John whenever I had the chance.
Then there was Karina Marquez Caballero, an artist who had been part of ALL WE HAVE IS NOW, a multi-instrumentalist who lived in two worlds at once, the virtual and the real. Karina is everywhere, always willing to come play, to experiment, to push boundaries. I remember telling Piki, in one of our first sessions, that we needed a female presence in the music, and that Karina was the one.
Finally, I reached out to Carlos Aedo Vaillard, an old friend from the early days of NOMADlive.tv, back when we were livestreaming across the city. Carlos had always been a problem solver, an editor, a cameraman, but his true gift was in music and sound. I knew he would be the right person to record everything.
The First Sounds
Dan handed me a harmonica, the only instrument I had ever intuitively played. He taught me the basics, how we should all play in the same key, and the rest came naturally.
I went out and bought steel tongue drums, drawn to their hypnotic, resonant tones, which reminded me of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, the purest, most elemental composition I know. I got congas, layering them beneath the steel tongue drums, and then I simply pretended I knew how to play, and somehow, I did.
For 2–3 hours at a time, at least once a week, we improvised, losing ourselves in the music.
The ANTENNAE Jam Guidelines
1. Establish a key.
2. Listen to one another.
3. Try never to repeat yourself.
4. Keep it cinematic, psychedelic, and/or atmospheric.
5. No obligation to play. We shall fill the space.
6. Always invite someone new. Keep the sound fresh.
7. Record everything. 8. Play for as long as possible.
We transcended, forgetting where we were, forgetting who we were.
We started calling it spiritual music. Because it was.
A Full Year Around the Sun
If you had asked me two years ago whether I was a musician, I would have laughed and said no. Music was something I admired, something I facilitated, but not something I ever imagined myself creating. And yet, here I am, with an album available on all major platforms, an ensemble of artists gathering under every full moon, and a sound that feels like it has always existed, waiting for me to tune in.
I didn’t plan for this. I didn’t sit down and decide to become a musician. I simply listened.
I took LSD and saw my own work through new eyes. The images I had filmed, the stories I had told, the rhythms I had followed—they were all pointing me toward sound. So I followed the way, and the way led me to music.
I trusted the moment, and it turned me into a musician.
That’s why we do it on full moons, because intuition is heightened, because we are all more connected to the cosmos, because it is the perfect moment to ground ourselves in presence and creation.
We thought we had started late, but the Snow Moon was actually the first moon of the cycle. Now, we have come once around the sun. We have 24 musicians in the ensemble. We have recorded and released 2 hours of music per week through NOMADslow.tv.
And it all started with a single moment of surrender, a moment that lives on to this day, and may very well live on forever.
Last week, I sat at a piano for the first time. Days later, I was playing publicly, my hands moving as if they had always known the keys.
What else is waiting to emerge?
What else might I be a conduit for?
What other signals are out there, ready to be received?
If reality is indeed an illusion, a dance of light and shadows, then we are both audience and participant, dreamer and dream, antenna and signal.
The world is our reflection. The universe is within us ALL.
WE ARE ALL ANTENNAE.
Comments