MADNESS

Yesterday I spent almost the entire day out of the house, away from screens, news and social media.

If you’re the outdoorsy type, this might not seem like a very big deal. But if you are an internet-addict-slowly-becoming-a-hermit person like myself — you may understand how big of a change spending even half a day away from screens can be.

I met a friend for coffee and then we hit a few vintage shops. We looked through rack after rack of cool vintage clothing, tried a few things on and ended up with a couple of fedora hats, rings and a necklace.

We picked up a rug and some pillows at a home decor store and then hit a barbecue joint for pan seared trout, pulled barbecue chicken, beans and fried okra.

Next we headed up the hill to my place to hang out on the back patio, listen to music (the Nick Drake station on Pandora is my new favorite thing) take pictures and talk about what we’ve been up to lately and some of the wild and hilarious things that have happened over the 27 years we’ve known each other.

She had to go — we shared a hug, waved goodbye and she drove away. I closed the door, opened my laptop, pulled out my phone and checked my marketing campaigns stats, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and then started reading the news on TMZ.

In a matter of minutes I went from having the best day I’ve had in a long time to feeling that little nervous anxiety you get when you go from phone screen to computer screen back to phone screen from site to site to site.

The change in the way I felt was so drastic that I noticed it, big time. I closed the laptop, put the phone down and walked back out onto the patio where I lounged on my newly bought outdoor pillows, put my feet up and watched the sun set.

“Remember”, I thought to myself. “Remember this feeling. Don’t let the screens suck you in and make you forget how much fun it can be to get out of the house, see a friend, get a cup of coffee and just walk around sharing a smile with strangers passing by”.

Most people that I know grew up before the internet existed. We talk about how, while we love the Internet and all the new technologies that have popped up over the last 20 or 25 years… we also miss the days when the only thing there was to do was go outside and make something happen.

Sometimes I think we all forget that we can refuse the strong desire to stare at screens all day and spend some time looking into each other’s eyes or just watching the clouds going by…

I wrote about it in a song that’s on my new album ‘STAR CHILD’ coming out in June, called ‘The Great Outdoors’. It goes like this:

The sun is shining in the Great Outdoors
Anytime you want it can be yours.

And it’s true.

I had my first hallucinogenic experience when I was about 15 years old.

I remember the day and the surrounding events vividly.

One of my best friends had taken acid the night before and he excitedly shared his experience with me the next day. He tried to explain what he saw and how he felt, but ultimately, he said the only way to truly understand what he was talking about was to try it for myself.

He didn’t have to convince me, I immediately agreed and said I was in. The only problem was the price tag.

Each hit of acid was being sold for $20 (the dealer was probably getting them for $1, but knew he could take advantage of uninformed high school kids in a small town). At that time I’d estimate my net worth was about $3, so I couldn’t afford it. Luckily my friend had a job and said he’d gladly pay for both of us just so we could do it together.

This was a pretty common thing with us. I never had any money. When he would get a paycheck, I’d ask him “how much money did we make?” and we’d laugh. But I was serious… like… how much do we have for booze and food this weekend bro? He’s a great guy that one. One of the best I’ve ever met and we are still are friends to this day.

A few days later we held two tiny pieces of paper in our hands. They didn’t look like much at all. He said all you had to do was put it on your tongue, which I did right away.

We sat back and waited and about 30 minutes later the giggles started to kick in.

The Tripping Experience

When you take LSD or mushrooms, there is a waiting period. At first you don’t think anything is happening. Then about thirty minutes later… you start to giggle.

Maybe you say the words “cat food”, but it sounds like “clam foot” and you start laughing about that. Then your friend sees you laughing and he starts laughing. Pretty soon you are both laughing yourself to tears with no real idea what it is that’s so funny.

Soon the giggle energy morphs into waves of heat, blurry lights and emotions. You feel like you’re on a psychedelic roller coaster that is approaching the precipice of a cliff.

It hangs in the balance for a moment. You look into each other’s eyes. And then you feel it slowly moving forward.. click… click… click…

Then all at once, the roller coaster dives off a cliff, the tracks turn into energy fields and the ride officially begins.

For the next 5–6 hours we were tripping balls.

I laughed and cried while watching the Universe come to life all around me. I could see the energy of the Universe, the thing that holds us all together pulsing through the air. When I waved my arms the energy would move like water and ripple through the wind and then disappear into the clouds.

Of course, to anyone not on the ride with us, we probably looked like crazy people.

We sat in closets, spent hours in the bathroom staring at our own reflections. We flicked the lights on and off, then watched ourselves turn into skeletons in the mirror. When I walked around it felt like I was an astronaut on the moon.

It was all very crazy and overwhelming. But in a way – my mind was more clear than it had ever been. I could see clearly for the first time in my life and what I saw as amazing.

Everything was connected. Everything was alive. Everything was the same thing. The Universe was one mass of energy and we were just small bits of bacteria inside of and endless field of colors, love and lights.

Things like war, religion, racism and money didn’t make sense and when someone unfortunately turned on the TV, it was easy to see that it was a propaganda machine used for mind control that disguised itself as sitcoms, commercials and evening news anchors.

It was like I had put on a special pair of glasses that allowed me to see straight through life’s bullshit and hold hands with God. No, not that God… the real god, that no organized religion can own.

In those hours I got an education that I think everyone on Earth would do well to get at least once. It was amazing and took me to another place… a place that I would return to many (many) times in the future.

A Great and Illegal Experience

After the trip ended, we sat back, guzzled water and talked about what had happened.

I don’t remember the exact conversation. But I do remember that we both agreed that the experience was a really good thing. We’d gained an insight into life, the Universe, God and reality. An insight that the teachers at school and the adults at church had no clue about.

From that day forward I felt a little bit better. I felt smarter and more insightful. There was nothing bad about it. No downsides. No hangovers. No regrets. It was a completely good experience inside and out.

Of course, what we were doing was completely illegal and if we’d been caught we would have been arrested, handcuffed and thrown into a cage.

To this day I’m not sure why LSD and magic mushrooms are illegal. Why should people who want to bypass expand their minds get put in cages?

The only reason I can come up with that makes any sense is that…

They’re trying to hide something.

Psychadelic Medicine

Over the last few years I’ve watched as the health and science communities have tossed around the idea that hallucinogenic drugs might be helpful. Today, it seems everyone is willing to give it a second thought.

Stories have popped up of Silicon Valley tech geniuses micro-dosing LSD every day. I’ve heard people talk about how Ayahuasca has helped some heroin and alcohol addicts get clean. And more than anything, I’ve been seeing lots of talk on how LSD and mushrooms may help with depression.

Here is some info from just the last three years. You can see the progression from year to year and how hallucinogenics as medicine are being taken more seriously all the time.

Time.com in 2016:

A team led by Robin Carhart-Harris, a research fellow at the center for neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College of London, report on the encouraging results of a small group of people treated with psilocybin.

After one week, all reported improvement in their depression and two-thirds of the people were depression-free. By three months, about 58% showed improvement, five were in remission while five relapsed. “What these data show is that this is doable, and seems to be well tolerated,” says Carhard-Harris. “The efficacy of the treatment is impressive.”

This year it has been announced that the Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of the psychedelic ingredient in mushrooms for a drug trial to treat depression.

The BBC in 2017:

A hallucinogen found in magic mushrooms can “reset” the brains of people with untreatable depression, raising hopes of a future treatment, scans suggest.

The small study gave 19 patients a single dose of the psychedelic ingredient psilocybin.

Half of patients ceased to be depressed and experienced changes in their brain activity that lasted about five weeks.

However, the team at Imperial College London says people should not self-medicate.

There has been a series of small studies suggesting psilocybin could have a role in depression by acting as a “lubricant for the mind” that allows people to escape a cycle of depressive symptoms.

But the precise impact it might be having on brain activity was not known.

FOX Business 2018:

The federal agency gave the U.S. approval to London-based life sciences startup called Compass Pathways that launched in 2016 under the backing of billionaire Peter Thiel.

Regulatory approvals for the trial have already been given in the U.K., the Netherlands and Canada…

For years, many psychedelic scientists have been theorizing that hallucinating on so-called magic mushrooms could possibly reboot the brain and clear out negative thoughts that may contribute to depression.

Compass Pathways says psilocybin therapy, which combines a dose of psilocybin, a psychoactive medicine and the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms,” with psychological support has shown promising signals of efficacy and safety as a treatment for depression in academic studies in both the U.K. and U.S.

Ekaterina Malievskaia, chief medical officer and co-founder of the company, added that the study has been a collaborative effort with scientists, clinicians, patient representatives and regulators from all over the world.

The AA Connection

You may or may not know this. But Bill Wilson (who created the AA program) originally used LSD to aid his recovery and thought it could be a useful tool to help new members find and connect to a higher power. He raved about it and thought all new members should experience it.

The program didn’t like that idea much and have wiped all mention of LSD from it’s books, but I think ol’ Bill was on to something.

Getting a drunk to turn their lives over to a higher power is almost impossible. It’s one of the biggest hurdles in the program and has kept many people drunk. But I imagine if they gave each new member a controlled, safe LSD experience… they would accept the existence of a higher power right away.

From PsychedelicTimes

“Bill W. was convinced that connecting with this higher power was essential to recovering from alcohol addiction, but he knew that not everyone could experience a vision like his own. After taking LSD under the guidance of British psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond, he felt he had found the solution he was looking for. He believed that LSD could help treat alcohol addiction by inducing the kind of profound insight and connection to a higher power he had experienced. ”

From the Guardian:

The co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) believed LSD could be used to cure alcoholics and credited the drug with helping his own recovery from often debilitating depression, according to new research.

About 20 years after setting up the Ohio-based sobriety movement in 1935, Bill Wilson came to believe that LSD could help “cynical alcoholics” achieve a “spiritual awakening” and start on the path to recovery.

LSD, by mimicking insanity, could help alcoholics achieve a central tenet of the Twelve Step programme proposed by AA, he believed. It was a matter of finding “a power greater than ourselves” that “could restore us to sanity”. He warned: “I don’t believe [LSD] has any miraculous property of transforming spiritually and emotionally sick people into healthy ones overnight. It can set up a shining goal on the positive side, after all it is only a temporary ego-reducer.”

But Wilson added: “The vision and insights given by LSD could create a large incentive – at least in a considerable number of people.”

“I am certain that the LSD experiment has helped me very much,” Wilson wrote in a 1957 letter to the science writer and philosopher Gerald Heard. “I find myself with a heightened colour perception and an appreciation of beauty almost destroyed by my years of depressions.”

So while LSD and magic mushrooms have long been talked about as possibly being a good thing. The powers that be have been completely against it. But now – it looks like mushrooms and psilocybin might finally get a fair shot.

And while I don’t trust that the FDA, the government or the multi-billion dollar corporations to tell us the truth about what they find. And God only knows what kind of legal and corporate swamps they’ll have to go through to dispense it. I do feel like it’s only matter of time before it’s legalized, regulated and dispensed, not unlike what is happening with cannabis right now.

Are There Downsides?

So far, I’ve only spoken about the wonderful effects these drugs had on me. But it would be a mistake for me to not include some information about the potential downsides that I experienced and how they might be dealt with.

Of course I’m not recommending you go out and try LSD or mushrooms. I’m just sharing my thoughts and experiences with the stuff because – that’s what I do here on the blog. I’m a story teller… not a doctor.

Bad Trips

You hear people talk about “bad trips”. And as I got older, I started to have some. They weren’t the freak outs you’d imagine where someone jumps off of a building or anything.

It was just that the acid and mushroom trips started to get more intense. Instead of mindlessly floating around on a cloud of rainbows, playing the harp strings of the Universe, I would start to think about real life things very intensely.

Adult problems that I had in my life started drifting up and confronting me head on. How was I going to pay that bill? What was going to happen with that court case? Where was I going to end up in life?

When these kinds of “adult problems” drifted up, it caused anxiety and spoiled the fun. At one point I decided “that’s it, I can’t go through that again!” and I quit.

Then, years later I heard Joe Rogan talking about his experience with paranoia and cannabis and it completely changed my mind.

He was talking about the benefits of getting high with a guest who rarely smoked. The guest said he couldn’t smoke cannabis because it gave him anxiety and panic attacks about all the problems in his life.

Joe Rogan responded with something like (and I paraphrase):

When you get high and things start to pop into your head that cause you anxiety, let it happen. Watch what comes up  and see what it’s all about. Then write those things down on a piece of paper and after you come down… work on clearing them from your life.

Cannabis isn’t giving you a panic attack… it’s giving you a to do list.

I thought that was genius and one of the healthiest things I’d ever heard in my life.

When you look at it that way… even the downsides are upsides. That panic isn’t fun at all. But if you take note of the things that make you panic, and then clear them all from your life one by one. You will end up a much happier and healthier person in the long run.

There have been anecdotal cases where LSD has possibly exacerbated schizophrenia in schizophrenic people. The stories of Syd Barrett and Brian Jones come to mind. They both are said to have been taking huge amounts of the drugs before losing their minds.

Still no one is sure if the drugs brought out the condition or if the condition brought in the drugs. And of course it’s an individual experience for everyone who tries it. Just like with any other thing you put in your body, it could definitely be possible that some people will not react well to LSD or mushrooms at all.

All that being said, the biggest downside is that they are currently illegal. If you’re caught with them they just might put in a cage for a very long time.

Conclusion

I had my first hallucinogenic experience when I was about 15 years old. Since then I’ve had dozens more experiences with hallucinogenic drugs. The experiences have all been good.

I’ve always thought that if everyone on earth took hallucinogenics at least once in their lives it would transform all humans into smarter, kinder and more gentle animals. And it seems we may be heading in a direction that could make that a possibility.

The medical, mental health and science communities are ready to give these drugs a more honest review. If their results are good enough, maybe these drugs will be made more available to the people who need some help breaking through.

Because there are millions of them.

Most of us wake up in the morning and don’t want to get out of bed. Maybe we stayed up too late, maybe we partied too hard, maybe we lay in bed all night stressing over ever detail in our lives from birth to now.

By the time morning rolls around you might not feel much like getting out of bed at all. But unless you’re independently wealthy and have accomplished every dream in your life, you’ve gotta get up and make things happen.

I’m going to share how I am making my morning’s better with a simple playlist of songs.

Making Changes

After my recent move from the city to the woods I started trying many different ways to make myself feel better. One thing I did was play around with my morning routine.

I remember reading somewhere that a good way to wake yourself up is to go outside first thing in the morning, wearing as little clothing as possible and move around while soaking up some sun.

Another recommendation was not looking at your phone, staying out of your email, not checking social media or reading the news.

So I put the two together.

Each morning I waited for the sun to shine on my patio. Next, I’d grab a cup of coffee, go outside and stand in the sun and do some moving/stretching for ten minutes to wake myself up.

As it turns out – ten minutes is a long time to stand outside and do nothing. So one morning I decided to put on some music while I was out there to make it more fun.

It definitely helped, but some of the songs weren’t quite what you want to hear first thing in the morning. Don’t get me wrong, I love Elliot Smith and The Cure but melancholy music first thing in the morning isn’t really going to get me pumped up for the day.

So I thought, “what are some happy songs that make me feel good?”

And the Malan D Morning Music Playlist 2018 was born.

First Version

The first version of my morning music playlist only had three songs on it. They were about three minutes each and I used it to track my ten minutes outside every day.

But over time – the list has grown and now I spend somewhere between 15–30 minutes outside every morning and it’s f#cking beautiful.

Instead of reading the horrible news of the day and getting sucked into Facebook drama I’m outside in as little clothing as possible, soaking up some vitamin D, looking at the sky, watching birds fly by and doing my best to get myself primed for a great day.

For a maniac like me – it’s a great way to start the day.

I’ve rarely missed a morning since I started and when I do, I realize it, put on the playlist and run outside to feel great.

If you’ve never tried something like this, you should.

Here is the track listing, in order.

My Morning Music Playlist

I’m using Amazon Music. But you can make yours on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify or whatever you use for music.

Should you give this a try? If you’re anything like me and your default feeling is “miserable” then the answer is hell yes.

Start with my playlist and see how it goes. If you need to, edit the playlist and make it your own using songs that make you feel happy and good. Then, play every. damn. morning.

It’s a stupid little thing that helps me a lot.

And I hope it helps you too.

#SYITF

Over the last few weeks I’ve made some pretty big changes.

I moved from an apartment in one of the busiest neighborhoods in Hollywood to a home on the side of a hill in one of the most quiet and remote areas of Los Angeles. I’m calling it ‘The Purple Sky’ because of the amazing sunsets.

Hanging out on the back patio on my birthday at The Purple Sky.

But before we get into all that, let’s talk about leaving the apartment.

The Glass Cage In The Sky

Six years ago I was living in the Hollywood Hills over the Sunset Plaza. I had a great little house with an enormous view, a nice backyard and a big wooden deck with a sunken hot tub in it.

Waking up in the hills, and seeing that view every day was life changing for me. There is something about looking off into the distance and seeing miles and miles of hills, birds, buildings, trees, clouds and sky that makes you feel better.

Unfortunately the house went up for sale and I had to move quickly. So an affiliate friend of mine invited me to come check out the place he was living, a highrise apartment building called the Sunset & Vine Tower.

The 20+ story building stood right at the center of one of the busiest intersections in Hollywood, an area I’d lived in before, an area that I hated and finally ditched to move to the hills.

The building looked awesome, I had a few friends living there. The apartments were smaller, but each one had 20 foot walls of glass and the views were i n s a n e.

So even though I knew I didn’t like the neighborhood, I moved in, telling myself I’d stay there for a year until I found another peaceful spot in the hills.

The first year my lease came up for renewal I did a quick scan of the houses for rent in the hills. I decided that it would be better to stay this year – but I’d leave the next year.

Then five more years went by.

When the lease came up for renewal this year the rent increased so much that the apartment no longer made sense. When I’d moved in I had the best deal in town, now I could live in a decent sized house for the same price as the small apartment. So I went on the search.

After looking at 15–20 different houses I found one that ticked almost all of my boxes.

• Privacy? Check
• View? Check
• Extra room? Check
• Peace and Quiet? Check, Check

So I put in my 30 days notice, hired a moving service that employed musicians and threw away, gave away or boxed up everything that I owned.

The Move

The move was easy. I think we did it in less than 3 hours. That’s one upside of being a minimalist… when you move, the job is really, really easy.

After the rock n roll movers left (one of them is the current drummer for Orgy) I looked around the new house and couldn’t believe how easy and painless the move was.

I’d been putting this off for years. Now, here I was standing in a big house that hangs off a hill with a view that makes you dizzy. It took a minute to sink in that this was home. And as it sank in, I felt better and better.

What’s the big difference?

• Privacy. When you live in an apartment building at Sunset and Vine, there is almost no way to be completely alone outside your home. You see people in the halls, on the elevators, at the front desk, at the pool and in the neighborhood. As soon as I walked out the front door of the apartment building I was surrounded by people… walking, talking, screaming, horns honking, traffic jams, helicopters, fire engines, police sirens… it was madness. Now I walk outside it’s dead quiet. There are a few lizards and birds running around… and every once and a while, a neighbor walks by with their dog. It’s great.
• The View. The apartment had an amazing view of the city. The house has an amazing view of the canyon. The canyon view is much more relaxing for me. And I can still see a lot of Studio City as well. I get the best of both worlds. And now, instead of looking at the view, I can walk out the back door and be inside the view. It’s a totally different experience being able to walk directly out onto the side of a hill. Big improvement.
• Outdoors. The neighborhood where the apartment building stood was so busy and crazy that I stopped going outside. Everytime I went for a walk in that neighborhood I’d be yelled at by a dozen homeless people for money or honked at by cars that wanted me to get out of their way. Here, I am able to walk directly out of my bedroom onto the side of a hill where no humans besides me are allowed to be. It’s awesome. I spend way more time outside now, and my skin has a nice shade of brown to prove it.
• Danger. Sunset and Vine is a dangerous area to live in. They won’t tell you that as you lay down $3,000 – $12,000 a month for your apartment there, but you’ll find out soon enough on your own. Almost every day I had a ‘weird’ situation with homeless people. They were everywhere, screaming, cursing, asking for money, throwing things into the street. It was like a zombie movie, and it got worse every year. Every year or two there would be at least one murder, stabbing, shooting or someone would get killed while walking across the street. Right now the scariest thing I’ve encountered are blue belly lizards in the backyard and I’ve heard some coyotes fights out in the hills.
• Lifestyle. One of the things I liked about the old neighborhood was that anything I wanted was within walking distance. Sushi, movie theater, gym, grocery store, vegan food, pillows, ice cream… you name it I could walk 5–10 minutes and get it. At the new place I have to drive 5–6 minutes down the hill to access Ventura Blvd, where I can find all those things as well. The differences are that Ventura Blvd. has plenty of open street parking (unheard of in Hollywood) and when I get sick of the noise, I can escape up the hill into silence. It’s so much better.

Overall I’m really happy with the move and I needed a change in a big way.

Out for a walk in the neighborhood.

I’ve been taking some time to get things setup here. The wifi took a week or so to get right (AT&T bad, Spectrum good) and I’m slowly adding things as needed.

Today is the first day I felt the push to write a blog post, and I bet Youtube is going to get an update really soon as well. (I get asked about it every day)

For now, I just wanted to say hello again and document what’s been going on. I hope you’re doing well. And if you’ve been wondering about me – now you know.

Have a great day and I will most definitely See You In the Future.

Malan

In this post I’m going to show you a video about a ballerina.

Why on earth would I do that, you ask?

Because I get inspired when I see someone living their dream and I want to pass that on to you.

Counting Calories with a Ballerina

A few weeks ago, I was watching a fitness video on Youtube. I saw a recommended video called “Counting Calories with a Ballerina” with a thumbnail photo of a ballerina in mid dance.

And while the video does include some stuff about counting calories, and losing weight, it also showcases a lifestyle that to me is nearly perfect.

Video description from Munchies:

Behind the elegance of ballet dancer Theresa Farrell is an athlete to the core. In this episode of FUEL, we follow Theresa as she drops half a pound a week, working towards her performance goal weight for the upcoming ballet season with American Contemporary Ballet in Los Angeles, CA.

Theresa has honed her diet down to a science by keeping meticulous records, eating pre-packaged meals, and doing lots and lots of calculations – for her it’s a simple numbers game of calories in versus calories out. This precise calorie counting gives her the peace of mind to maintain her focus on training and long days of dancing, hiking, stretching, and icing. Whether she’s having a midnight bowl of cereal or a 5 A.M. corndog, Theresa has it all calculated, so when it’s time to take the stage, she knows that her body will be ready.

Ballet is not my thing, but it’s her thing… and she’s turned it into a lifestyle that lets her do exactly what she dreamed of doing for a living. And this, to me is one of the most inspiring things on earth.

Another thing I like about this video is that she seems to be a good example of a “healthy” person. I don’t mean healthy as “in shape”. I mean healthy as overall lifestyle.

The Day:

• She wakes up with purpose.
• Moves her body.
• Eats a corndog for breakfast.
• Trains ballet all day.
• Hangs out with her friends.
• Ends the day at home with her cat.
• Glass of wine before bed.
• Wake up and do the same thing again.

True Success

I must have watched this video a dozen times now. And every time I go back to it, I get reinspired.

Her success isn’t about money, or private jets or Louis Vuitton bags. Her success is bigger and more satisfying that all that.

She had an idea, then focused her entire life on it and now gets to live her dream every day of her life.

And that is about as successful as you can get.

Watch on Youtube: Counting Calories with a Ballerina

I remember becoming a first grader.

It was at Willard Elementary School, in Ada Oklahoma. Our mascot was a Dragon. We were the Willard Dragons.

I had just finished a few years of pre-school classes at The Methodist Church on 14th street, just down the road from my house. My mom worked there sometimes.

Pre-school was mostly fun and games with a nap thrown in mid-day to give us rest, and to give our teachers a much needed break from screaming children. We were definitely allowed to be ourselves and no one got angry if we spilled some paint, or decided to color our clothes with magic markers.

But after a few weeks in the first grade I started to see something different.

There were rules and regulations. And there were teachers who enforced these rules and regulations.

If you did not follow the rules and regulations, these enforcers would humiliate you in front of the class and/or take you out in the hallway and physically beat you with a carved piece of wood, that some called a ‘paddle’.

Monsters

Some of the teachers gave beatings that were more ceremonial than violent. They wacked you with a ping pong paddle. It made a big sound and scared you, but it didn’t hurt so bad.

Those teachers acted like human beings. But other teachers seemed to really enjoy hitting the kids as hard as they could and inflicting as much pain as possible.

These teachers were monsters.

A few of these monster/enforcer/teachers had their wooden weapons custom made with holes in them so the weapon would travel faster and hit your body harder. One teacher kept his weapon in a cage. He had a name for it, he called it “Killer” or something terrifying like that.

When he beat a kid, he would create a big, dramatic scene before he did it.

First, he would let you know you were going to get hit. This was terrifying to hear. Next, he would call out to his weapon. “Kiiiiiiillllerrrrrrr where are youuuu?”.

He would walk behind the school’s stage and rattle the cage so it sounded like a wild animal was about to be released. Then he’d bring the cage out for all of us to see. He would ceremoniously pull the weapon from the cage and point to the child who was going to get hit that day.

Finally he’d take us aside and hit us so hard that our backsides hurt for days, sometimes there were bruises left behind. Kids would come back into class shaking, with snot pouring out of their noses from crying so hard.

It seemed crazy that this was happening to us, we were just little kids who broke a rule. Maybe we talked to a classmate, maybe we chewed gum in class. The beatings were violence – and such violent punishment seemed to outweight the crime.

But you could not question their authority. Questioning authority got you banished to the school basement for weeks, or just got you hit more often, and harder.

I remember looking around the grade school and at everything that was happening. In my little kid mind I could tell something was wrong.

Outside of a few great teachers (Mrs. Godwin I’m looking at you) it seemed like most of the teachers and staff were more interested in punishings kids than creating an engaging environment where children would actually want to pay attention.

It seemed like we were being beaten into submission for some reason.

Later, I realized the reason.

Slaves Needed

They beat us into submission so that by the time we graduated high school we would know how to follow orders, how to stuff our individuality and creativity down our throats and accept a job at a factory.

They were building slaves.

Perhaps it is because educational tools that have come into our classrooms over the last couple of decades, whether technology or otherwise, continue to be used within a school structure that is virtually unchanged since the mid-nineteenth century.

That model was imported from Prussia with a different purpose in mind. Horace Mann’s free school movement stemmed less from a belief in the economic or moral imperative of education for all children and more from a desire to simply create a tolerant, civilized society. – The Atlantic

Luckily they made it illegal to beat school kids into submission a few years later and today a teacher would get fired and possibly arrested for what they did back then. But the damage is still going on to this day.

Right now, grade school, middle school and high school kids are still being trained to comply, by threat of becoming outcasts and total failures later in life.

For example, when I was in high school I was told I was going to grow up to be an outcast and a loser by a guidance counsler because my grades weren’t very good. This person messed with my mind hardcore. I can still hear their words to this day.

Let’s Watch A Video

I have thought about writing about this experience dozens of times, but never have.

Then yesterday, minimal artist and all around creative badass, ‪@styblova‬ shared an incredible eight minute video on her Twitter called “HOW SOCIETY KILLS OUR CREATIVITY – IN A BREATHTAKING AWARD-WINNING SHORT FILM”.

I watched it and thought, “yep that’s pretty close”. So I thought I’d share.

Here it is: (watch the whole thing, no A.D.D. fast-forwarding)

Alike short film from Pepe School Land on Vimeo.

 

School Is Broken

This little eight minute video explains what I think is one of the biggest problems our society has, which is:

Schools are a dumbing-down factory who’s job is to beat the creativity and individualty out of children so that when they grow up, they are smart enough to work for a corporation, but not smart enough to shake things up and challenge the status quo.

It’s a complicated mess, that we’ve created and I’m not sure of the answer. Home schooling seems like a great option, but that requires parents who have free time to do it. Montessori schools are fantastic (I worked at one when I was 12 or 13 for a few summers, with an incredible teacher named Elizabeth Ross, who still teaches me things to this day), but are financially out of reach for lower-income families.

I don’t know the exact answer. Maybe we should hand it off to Elon Musk, he could probably come up with an answer and rework the entire system in 100 days. Maybe someone else will disrupt the whole thing, like Uber did to taxicabs.

Until that happens – I would like to encourage anyone who reads this to know that whatever you were told about yourself in school was probably not true. You can do anything you want.

I would guess that schools, in their current setup will not exist in a few decades. It will all be replaced by an online system that teaches you everything you need to know from the comfort of your own home.

In fact, a kid today could bypass school completely and use the free information available online to educate themselves on almost any subject in the world.

I’ve learned everything I know by reading books and using the internet.

Should you do the same? I don’t know for sure, it’s really hard to say.

What I do know is that school is broken.

And I noticed it when I was in the first grade.