Imagine a glove with the fingertips cut off. From the perspective of the finger, it is alone. Each finger moves independently. It believes itself to be distinct from the others, unaware that beneath the glove, all the fingers are connected to the same hand.
This is how we experience consciousness. We move through life as separate selves, bound by identity, beliefs, and experience, unaware that beneath the surface, we are all expressions of the same awareness. The hand is consciousness itself, but the glove—our individual ego, our sense of self—creates the illusion of separateness.
Alan Watts put it simply: “You are something the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something the whole ocean is doing.” When we begin to see through the glove, we recognize that we are not just individual waves, rising and falling in isolation, but the entire ocean moving as one. The realization that you and I are the same being, peering at each other through different eyes, is what allows true compassion to emerge.
A good practice is imagining yourself as any other person; your partner, a family member, or a friend. Sitting, breathing, and using your imagination to actually view the world through that person’s eyes. But this is no exercise… This is the truth. The single consciousness of humans is simultaneously conscious in all people. Meaning, me imagining myself living through the eyes of someone else is no imagination at all, it is reality as the consciousness doing the imagining is the same exact consciousness living in that other body.
But when you see with clear eyes, when you recognize that the same awareness flows through all things, the illusion crumbles. You are not just the finger—you are the hand. You are not just the wave—you are the ocean. And in this realization, compassion is no longer an effort; it becomes the only natural response.
Ram Dass spoke often about this connection with Hanuman, a Hindu deity.
He told us a parable in which Rama, another Hindu deity, asked Hanuman, “What are you, monkey?”
Hanuman replied, “When I don’t know who I am, I serve you. When I know who I am, I am you.”
When you dissolve the illusion of separateness, every interaction becomes an opportunity to recognize yourself in another. The anger you hurl at someone else is anger you are hurling at yourself. The kindness you offer another is the kindness you extend to yourself. Love and hatred, connection and conflict—they all exist within the same unified field of being.
To live from this awareness is not to abandon individuality, but to see through it. It is to dance in the paradox of being both a wave and the ocean, both the finger and the hand. It is to recognize that in every face you meet, you are looking into a mirror. And once you see this—truly see it—you can never unsee it.
It’s easy to fall into the illusion of separateness, to believe that we are individuals distinct from the Earth we stand on. But this is a misunderstanding, a trick of the mind. Just as the cells in our bodies work in harmony to sustain us—each with its own function, from the heart pumping blood to the lungs drawing breath—so too does the Earth operate as a single, living entity. And we? We are its consciousness.
Alan Watts once said, “You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.” The same can be said about our relationship with the Earth. The planet, through us, gains self-awareness. It grew us—not apart from itself, but as an extension of its own being, just as a tree grows branches or a river carves its path. Humanity is not separate from nature; we are nature reflecting upon itself.
This consciousness is not exclusive to humans. It is an aggregate of all life—animals, plants, fungi, even the microbial world—all part of a vast, interconnected intelligence. Carl Jung spoke of the collective unconscious, a shared psychic reservoir that all beings contribute to and draw from. The Earth, too, has its own collective awareness, formed by the thoughts, instincts, and emotions of everything that lives upon it. When a flock of birds moves as one, when trees communicate through mycelial network, when an ecosystem thrives in perfect balance, we see glimpses of this planetary intelligence at work.
If Earth is a conscious entity, then surely other planets must be as well. Some may have developed consciousness in ways we can’t yet imagine. What would the self-awareness of a gas giant look like? A planet covered in oceans? A world where life moves at a pace so slow or so fast that it defies our understanding of perception? If we are the Earth’s way of knowing itself, then other planets, too, must have their own ways of awakening.
Krishnamurti once said, “You are the world, and the world is you.” This is not metaphorical—it is a literal truth. We are the sensory organs, the dreaming mind, the reflective awareness of the planet itself. And as we awaken to this reality, we have the opportunity to live in harmony with the Earth, not as masters of it, but as conscious participants in its evolution.
To recognize our role as the Earth’s awareness is to dissolve the illusion of separation. It is to see that we are not in nature—we are nature. And just as a healthy mind nurtures its body, a conscious humanity must nurture its planet.
A beautiful reflection of this idea can be found in Nature, a song by East Forest & Ram Dass. In the track, Ram Dass’ words serve as a gentle but profound truth that humans must dissolve the barriers between ourselves and the planet in order to fully prosper as a species. Check it out.
Some moments stick with you, even years later. One of those moments for me was born from the time I spent in my cozy 1-bedroom cottage in Santa Barbara. It was a charming little space, with a back porch that looked out onto a lattice entwined with vibrant morning glory vines. For eight years, I watched hummingbirds flit and dart around the flowers, sipping nectar and bringing life to the garden. But it wasn’t until my final year there that something truly magical happened.
It was late summer, edging into fall, when I first noticed what I thought were hummingbirds zipping around the morning glory—but something was off. These “hummingbirds” weren’t coming during the day, as they always had. They were swarming at twilight, just after sunset. At first, I thought I was imagining it. But it kept happening night after night. Curious, I turned to the internet for answers, and what I found blew me away.
These weren’t hummingbirds at all—they were hummingbird hawk-moths! I had no idea such creatures existed. With their rapid wingbeats and long proboscis, they mimicked the hummingbirds so convincingly that I hadn’t thought to question it. Yet there they were, working the night shift, drinking nectar from the same flowers that their daytime counterparts favored.
This discovery led me down a rabbit hole of research about both hummingbirds and hummingbird hawk-moths. I was fascinated by the parallels between the two species. Did you know that hummingbird hawk-moths are capable of hovering in place just like hummingbirds? And that their wings can beat up to 85 times per second? Watching them felt like witnessing a miracle of evolution right on my back porch.
Hummingbirds, of course, are no less remarkable. With their iridescent feathers and ability to fly backward, they’re nature’s tiny acrobats. They’re also fiercely territorial, which I learned watching them fight each other off from their favorite flowers. Yet despite their feisty nature, there’s something undeniably magical about their presence. They’ve been a symbol of joy and beauty in cultures around the world, and now I understand why.
This story and my love for these creatures inspired a piece of artwork I call “Hawk-moth & the Hibiscus” It captures the moment of connection between the two worlds—the day and the night, the familiar and the mysterious. The hummingbird hawk-moth drinks from a vibrant hibiscus bloom, a nod to the endless cycle of life that plays out in nature if we only take the time to notice it.
I hope this piece resonates with you as much as the real-life moment resonated with me. Nature has a way of surprising us when we least expect it, reminding us of the beauty that exists in even the smallest details.
I’d like to share something I’m very proud of learning; but first some context.
I often like to trust the universe in directing me to the next thing, and this time it delivered. I was laid off (non-performance based) from my tech job of almost a decade. Since then I have done some soul searching and this had lead me to some interesting places: learning sound design for video games using Wwise, learning how to create sound journeys using Ableton live to loop and develop ideas using audio and MIDI, and most recently learning how to design audio systems for music venues and production sets.
Back in December I was approached by Jackpocket to help them with their weekly live lottery broadcast that they film at their headquarters in Santa Barbara. They wanted ideas on how they could create a better experience for their viewers from an audio perspective. They sent me an example video (under NDA) that I could review for ideas.
I sent them a few ideas: 1. Since this is a lottery drawing, no gambling is complete without loud, highly compressed sound FX. I suggested they revisit their sound design content and maybe hire me to develop out the sound design to create more of the gambling experience people are used to when they go to a casino. 2. Remote capability would be huge for any audio engineer to be able to control their system from anywhere in the world during their live streams. This is valuable because their set was small and so the fewer bodies that needed to be present, the better. 3. The audio was not clean and clear. I surmised they were not using a good microphone, pre-amp, or acoustic treatments. I suggested I audit their current setup and provide a consulting rate to provide them with an audit, suggestions, and presentation.
They accepted 2 and 3. This kind of work immediately felt second nature. I suppose it makes sense since I had spent the last 18 years as an audio engineer, building my own production studio, and have a degree in audio design from Berklee. I took measurements of the space, took stock of their current inventory, and got to work on a suggestions document and presentation. I even reviewed their current OBS system and found that the way they had integrated their audio system was not optimal.
After I suggested different acoustic treatments to use that provided dampening or dispersion, provided options for pre-amps and microphones, changing their audio system to make it remote, and gave them a presentation on how audio works and the reasoning behind my suggestions; they were absolutely floored. They said “You knocked it out of the park” and were so thrilled to be educated on sound, and now have tangible aspects to their production that they could upgrade and how to do it.
Well, the next month when I moved to Newport RI, I needed to find some more freelance work and I felt like I had a knack for this type of work. I visited all the venues downtown and one of them took big interest, One Pelham East. They not only wanted me to totally revamp their downstairs sound system, but they had also purchased some QSC line array boxes for their 3rd floor venue as directed by one of their musicians that plays there regularly.
I got to work, first attacking the downstairs. I took the exact model I used for Jackpocket, and applied it here. Their current system was a column array system that looks like it was installed completely wrong. If you walked in any direction from the center of the floor, you got comb filtering and dead spots every 3 feet, it was Bad. This time I gave them 5 levels of different budgets they could spend to replace their system; the most expensive being a complete L-acoustics overhaul (my buddy is a rep for them), and the least replacing it with some low budget QSCs. They elected to take the 2nd highest level and install some EAW AC6s, which are active column arrays with DSP technology to throw and disperse the audio in any direction you’d like.
While this was happening, I decided to help with the upstairs. Problem is, designing an audio system for recording is different from a system for live music. They have some similarities, like acoustic treatments, but the hardware has the opposite function, in stead of recording, it’s playing it back.
Through talking with EAW, they suggested learning EASE Focus, which allows you to take the specs of any pro-audio speaker and put it into a CAD like program to create a predictive model of the room. It also allows you to balance and optimize the location, rotation, splay, and tilt in 3D space. First I took some measurements of the space and used their existing blueprint.
I am the rare kind of person who likes to learn from manuals. So I read the entire EASE Focus 6 manual and created a digital representation of all the listening areas in the space. Since the venue owners had already purchased the speakers they wanted to use (it wouldn’t have been my first choice), I just grabbed the specs from that manufacturer and imported it into the software. I was able to play around with all the different parameters to give a pretty decent coverage of the entire space from a SPL perspective (loudness).
The other thing the program allows you to do is take measurement of the frequency response in any spot in the venue. What I immediately noticed is that these 8″ line array boxes wouldn’t provide enough of the low end necessary to get a sonically balanced mix. And so I went to the manufacturer and tried out some different subs in this same program.
This worked out great because the sub I chose was 2x 12″s and the response graph showed a drastic improvement. The owners were happy so I worked with their installer and got these line arrays flown.
Meanwhile, the downstairs was coming along. The predictive models had come back from EAW. The adaptive nature of the EAW AC6s was of huge value to the owners because their bartenders were constantly having issue with the noise volume when taking customer orders, and with this, we could effectively cover the oddly shaped room’s dance floor and pull the coverage back around the bar area so the bartenders could spare their ears.
I’m excited to announce my new project: Pit Witch. This project will be my solo music and sound creations with a focus on ambient, experimental electronic, EDM, global trance, electronic jazz, and spatial genres. The project will be under the Open Ocean Studios label, which is my recording studio here in Santa Barbara CA.
Don’t have Spotify? See below for links to other streaming platforms.
For my first release, I bring you “Flipping the Sand”. This song has technically been 13 years in the making, because it’s about the time I’ve spent with my good friend Christ Esten going to see the band Phish on New Years Eve starting in 2010 (more on that below). I wrote this as a show of my love and friendship for Christian since our experiences together have inspired so much in me to create art and music. The lyrics to the song are here and will make sense once you know a little more about what Phish does for NYE shows:
“Flipping the Sand”
Bring a gold compass to abide
The source of nature is rooted inside
Take it all in and give it all out
Bring a Winnebago to a campout
The major obstacle at every stage in the path of enlightenment is in our own thoughts
Thoughts keep us separate, even the thought of unity is far different from unity
The thoughts keep coming, each one making it’s bid for our attention and identification
The world swings around once more
You heard the flock to the golden shores
Dancing around a flying street meat
We pray good deeds to a ball
Show my shadow to help me evolve
My obsession with seeing phish NYE shows started because of their ‘musical gag’ that they performed in 2010; Phish has a song called “Meatstick” which is arguably about the bass player’s (Mike Gordon) fight to remain a vegetarian while on tour in Europe (or Japan, I can’t remember). There’s a famous chorus reprise in this song after the jam that features the lyrics of the chorus in Japanese. Building on this theme, Phish had groups of people come out on stage dressed as many cultures from around the world sing the chorus of the song in their native tongues. Unknown to the crowd, Phish had put the backing music on loop and had snuck off the stage. After a little bit, Phish came out, but this time at the back of Madison Square Garden suspended in a giant hot dog. They proceeded to fly above the crowd where they then set down on the stage and proceeded to jam out the rest of the song into the final 10 second count down into 2011. It’s a memory I’ll cherish forever, and this was only the first. You can watch the full performance of Meatstick here. Phish always does something special on Halloween or New Years, you can actually check out the list of their musical gags here.
When Dannah and Suzy approached me about helping them create a podcast, I jumped at the opportunity. Suzy is a death dula and Dannah is a all around badass that has created a non-profit to support all sorts of activism in the Santa Barbara community. Problem was, they had never made a podcast before and didn’t know anything about audio production or audio gear. Luckily I own a recording studio here in Santa Barbara called Open Ocean Studios. Unluckily, Our Everything Bagel did 7 episodes for season 1, but Suzy moved away and so there won’t be a season 2. Sorry fam!
We recorded their introduction episode and it went well. I used Shure SM7Bs with a cloud lifter because Dannah was a little soft spoken. I setup the room with a table and some water. It felt like a nice relaxing podcast studio! After we finished rolling, I noticed that they really needed a introduction. So I produced this sound design for them! I quickly put together a script and I had them read it back and forth. I was imaging it would something like the Radiolab intro with a build and a release. I then had them both say the title of the podcast in an enthusiastic way. When I got home, I pieced something together. I took a piano and played a dissonant dominant chord and then recorded the audio file out. I then reversed the piano audio to give it a build/rise. Then I wanted something like a heartbeat, but wanted to make it more modern to I grabbed a synth, set a white noise oscillator, set a high-pass filter, turned the envelope to have a really quick decay to an inaudible sustain level, and then I added some delay and voila! A modern heartbeat. Then I wanted the release to sound like confetti exploding from a cannon, but first I made the piano chord resolve with an arpeggio. I then duplicated that arpeggio, recorded it out, reversed it and pitched it up super high. I added some quick tape delay and that gave me my confetti sound!
For the podcast itself, check out the production. I recorded, mixed and mastered the podcast myself!
I’m a giant fan of Spotify. I’ve been a subscriber since 2013! Before Spotify existed, I relied on a massive 400GB music library that I had been building since 2003. When I got to Berklee College of Music in 2005, the exchange of music was overwhelming. The size of my library had tripled in just a couple of years.
Once Spotify came around, my need to rip CDs and trade music became obsolete. I could discover new artists by going down tangents like the ‘if you like this artist, you’ll also like…’ services that Spotify offered. I was instantly hooked.
Pandora was another way to discover new music at that time, but I found their algorithm for introducing new artists to be quite shallow, to the point where it seemed like it was repeating the same songs in the same order. Spotify, on the other hand, would gently deviate from the artist or genre you were listening to, and over the course of an hour, you’d find yourself in a brand new genre and space you didn’t expect. It was magical.
So, what to do with all this new music to listen to? Well, I wasn’t a playlist type of person back in 2013 because I found the iTunes playlist interface to be annoying and too much work to organize. Also, Spotify had an advantage because, since I didn’t have an existing library, I could build playlists as I discovered new music rather than needing to sift through my existing library to organize them into playlists.
So, I made playlists, but I didn’t want them to be categorized by genre or artist. Instead, since I was already streaming different artists at different times of the day, I wanted the playlists to reflect those moods or times of day. That way, I didn’t have to think too hard about it in the future. I could just put on my ‘RISE’ playlist during my morning coffee, the ‘CHILL’ playlist when I’m winding down at night, or my ‘TRIP’ playlist when I felt like I needed a dose of psychedelic music. The only small exception was that I created a ‘REGGAE JAM TOWN’ playlist, but I think reggae music is not just a genre; it’s also a mood. Are you feeling irie, mon?
My good friend started a podcast about the drama and secret lives of NFL players and asked me to do some sound design work for it. I jumped at the opportunity because I think having a podcast for non-football NFL gossip is original and interesting. Here’s all of the SD I’ve done for it so far
The following playlist is for a segment in the show called “The Final Goss” which is a pun combining the last boss in a video game with the final piece of gossip (“goss”) of the episode. He wanted it to sound something like the “Finish Him” in Mortal Kombat. I gave him 3 plain versions plus some versions with gongs and other actions like tea cups being smashed, punches, etc. For the voice I used myself for the actor, pitched it down, and added some reverb to give it a booming character effect. My favorite bounce is the “Final Goss with gong 3” version. Enjoy!
The next episode, my friend asked me to do sound design for a segment called “Pop Quiz”. This sound design was super fun because it gave me an opportunity to create game show sounds in addition to the intro dead pan teacher saying “pop quiz.” I decided to make the intro a little extraordinary by adding in a heartbeat which puts you in the anxiety ridden experience of being a kid who just had a pop quiz dropped on them. I also had a lot of fun adding crowd reactions to the contestant getting the answer right or wrong, a suspense ambience with heartbeat, and (my favorite) the “time is up” buzzer. I also put a bonus demo of the first intro (more abstract) I made which the producer wasn’t fond of before I took a more realistic direction.
The next sound design I did was for a segment called “Drip, Drip, Drip”, which is about the NFL player’s fashion. The producer wanted something simple so I just throw together some drip/water sounds. I wanted to make it cave like, so I took some of the drip sounds, rolled off the top end, and added some reverb to them. The producer also wanted it to be rhythmic so I set a tempo on the session and snapped the drips to the grid (except for the cave sounds). The last water sound I wanted more like a ‘palunk’ sound of a big rock being dropped into water. So I slowed and pitched a drip down and it worked like a charm. Enjoy!
The next sound design I did was for a segment called “Feel Good Stories”. I wanted to make is calm and serene, so what’s better than a barber shop sound?! I’m a terrible singer, but I knew I wanted 4 voices. So I first worked out the 4 parts using a piano. I tweaked each part using midi so that it made sense in terms of which voice moving where. I used a simple ii – V(b9, v13) – I cadence as the blueprint. I recorded each part using my own voice and then fixed up the parts using Waves Tune (auto tune). I showed the demo to the producer who had asked for an sigh of relief in there, but he forgot to mention it couldn’t be longer than 5 seconds. So I recorded the auto-tune’d voices to 5 new tracks to make the warping work better, then shortened each voice and tweaked the formants parameter until it sounded realistic. There’s still some artifacts in there probably from the auto-tune/warp and the FFT it went through, but I think it’s good enough for production. Check out the demo and the final version!
The next sound design I did was for a Thanksgiving episode. Yum! The producer wanted turkey sounds. I didn’t have a turkey to record so I found some sounds on the interwebs. Turkeys sound pretty crazy but I didn’t want to confuse the listener so I just grabbed a classic turkey sound and sliced and duplicated the sound and pitched the duplicates so you can’t tell if it’s the same turkey. Pretty simple!
The next sound design I did was for a segment called “Touch Down”. This one was super fun because he didn’t have any specific directions. But if it were anything like the Feel Good Stories segment, it probably had to be short around 5 seconds. I knew I wanted a stadium vibe, an uproar, the sound of players playing, an announcer yelling “touch down” over the stadium speakers and my favorite; the DJ air horn sound. This required A LOT of layers. I wanted the listener to feel like they are on the side lines. I grabbed multiple stadium sounds where I found a spot where the crowd goes nuts, and I lined up the timing with the sound of someone getting tackled in a football practice sound clip that I found. I wanted to keep the QB saying “hike” in there, so I cut the football play to make it as short as possible while keeping it realistic. It sounded kinda like it could be a 1 yard rush into the end zone. Once I lined those up, I recorded myself acting like a announcer yelling “touch dowwwwwwn” and pitched my voice down to make it sound more football like. Then I found a airhorn sound and added in. But I wanted all the ambience to sound like they were in the stadium, so I added a lowpass filter to them since the further things are away, the less you hear the top end. I also wanted the announcer and the air horn to sound like they were coming from loud speakers so I added some delay (with pre delay), reverb, and rolled off the top end a little bit. That way the sound echos and feels like it’s bouncing around a massive stadium. Enjoy!
The next jingle I did for the podcast was for Christmas week for a segment called “All I Want for Christmas”. I wanted to do something that sounded like classic christmas songs, strings, handbells, sleigh bells, brass, etc. I thought about sampling my own sleigh bells and handbells, but I actually found a free Kontakt library from Fracture Sounds and it was a perfect fit! Work smarter not harder. So I pieced together the jingle and ended up adding the strings and brass using Session Strings and Session Brass in Kontakt. It worked great. The last was getting my vocals, originally I wanted to make it sound more like Bing Crosby or something classic, but it’s really hard to make your voice sound like that I found lol. So I decided to go the more ‘pop’ route and use iZotope’s Nectar to add the harmonies and WavesTune to pitch correct it. The last thing, is I wanted the strings to stick out better on the 3rd bar, so I put the brass pad in the 2nd bar and then cut it out of the 3rd bar but then had an ending hit with the brass. It’s the little things that go a long way! Enjoy!
Did you know that I have a Instagram account where I throw food in the air and take pictures of it? I gained my inspiration for this account because people were posting #foodintheair and the food wasn’t actually in the air… They were just holding it up. I thought, maybe we should actually make it fly. And so, Food Actually in the Air was born.
I don’t know where this project will head in the future, but at the moment it’s fun experiment on capturing that perfect moment where the texture of the food juxtaposes the background and hopefully the emotion of the people in the photo. I imagine it will remain somewhat surreal.
My idea is that eventually the project can be used to gain awareness and funding to fight global hunger. Let’s have some fun while we do it.
