September 4, 2025 • 41 mins
This week's episode was recorded and broadcasted live from the Axel Contemporary Truck onto Radio Tomada in Santa Fe. Thibault talks with Mathew and Jerry about woo, and talks with Zina about the sound bath she did at Electra Gallery, living in Arkansas, and the art world.
About Radio Tomada
Radio Tomada 87.9 is a mobile radio broadcast project organized by Autumn Chacon for SITE Santa Fe's International Biennial curated by Cecila Alemani.
Zina Al Shukri
Zina Al-Shukri was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1978. She moved with her parents to the United States when she was 5 years of age. Al-Shukri received her BA from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and attended the California College of the Arts, receiving her MFA in 2009.
Zina Al-Shukri is an emerging artist whose exhibition history includes Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, and Pulliam Deffenbach Gallery, Portland, Oregon.
Matthew Chase-Daniel
Matthew Chase-Daniel was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1965 and lived in New York City in the 1960s. In the mid and late 1980s, Chase-Daniel studied at the Ojai Foundation in Ojai, California, at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York (B.A.), and in Paris, France, where he studied cultural anthropology, photography, and ethnographic film production (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes & Sorbonne). Since 1989, he has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, making family, and roaming the landscape to make his art. His photography and sculpture have been exhibited across the U.S. and in Europe.
He is the co-founder, co-owner, and co-curator of Axle Contemporary, a mobile gallery of art, founded in 2010, a radio/podcast host at Coffee and Culture, curator of The Lena Wall, and a member of the Railyard Art Committee, all in Santa Fe.
Jerry Wellman
Jerry Wellman is a Santa Fe-based artist whose cultural work includes curatorial projects, performance, writing, video and studio production. Wellman earned an MFA from CalArts. Wellman’s paintings and drawings have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Holly Solomon Gallery in New York City, Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn, The Downey Museum, and The Orange County Center of Contemporary Art in California, The El Paso Museum of Art, The Revolving Museum in Boston, and The Paseo Project in Taos, NM. His drawings were selected for a traveling show sponsored by the Smithsonian. His work with Axle Contemporary has been exhibited at SITE Santa Fe, 516 Arts in Albuquerque, The. Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock AZ, The Western Heritage Museum in Hobbs NM and the Roswell Art Center in Roswell NM. Awards of note include: Art Matters Foundation Grant, LINE Grant, Puffin Grant, and an NEA grant. Wellman has taught at the Pasadena College of Art and Design, CalArts, and New Mexico State University. He was formerly the head curator at Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art. He is the co-founder, co-director and co-curator of Axle Contemporary artspace
About The Side Woo
The Side Woo podcast was created to open a frank dialogue about the overlaps of mental health, queer stories, the metaphysical (woo), and creativity as a way to understand how one builds a sustainable creative life, and to shine a light on the ways artists overcome trauma and adversity. New episodes come out on Thursdays.About ThibaultThibault² is a trans, interdisciplinary artist based in New Mexico. To learn more you can follow them on their blog, artdate.substack.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hello and welcome to the side Woo.
This is your host, Tebow, helping you navigate the wild
and mysterious path that is the creative life.
Join me as I ask our guests about the tools they use to help
them survive in the creative wilderness.
(00:22):
We have a guest coming in. Let.
Me turn this towards you. Just look up make sure I have
her name. Correctly because yeah, and I
got to have your name correctly.Oh.
Yeah, you know your name. I know my name, I'm not as
worried about that. Your name is has lots of
letters, Tebow. Yes, that's right.
(00:42):
You got it. Tebow the side Woo.
Yes, the Side Woo podcast, yeah,which has, yeah, taken many
iterations, but was mostly started in California.
And then I've been doing it since 2021 actually.
Oh wow, long time. Five years.
Yeah, I know. And you're, so you were in
California, now you're based in Santa Fe.
(01:04):
Albuquerque slash Santa Fe depending on yeah, I like moved.
To day of the week. Yeah, I moved to Albuquerque and
then now I'm working up here, soI'm trying to figure it out.
Yeah, and you're working at SiteSanta Fe?
Right I am. That's right.
How'd it go yesterday? It was great.
Yeah, it was nice. Yeah.
Yesterday we had Bob houses pennies for your silence.
(01:26):
Oh, right. So we're handing out little
cloth bags with 50 pennies in each to whoever wanted them.
And Bob was there for a while. We talked with Bob on the radio
for a while, which was great. And yeah, it was nice.
I mean, July 4th is a quiet day for people going out.
Everyone's at home with. Yeah, yeah.
(01:46):
But there was a lot of people inthe museum.
Actually. I was surprised, yeah.
I kind of thought no one would be there but.
Well, that show is new and exciting, and so a lot of people
are coming by. Yeah, almost not unhappy with.
Turn out I thought it was prettygood yet.
Good. Yeah, well, and it's air
conditioned, so like if you're sick of walking around, it's
(02:07):
kind of a good spot to go. Yeah, and they'll make you a cup
of coffee. Totally, and they have a good
bookstore. I love that bookstore.
Yeah, very good. I know.
I was just looking in there yesterday at all the books
related to New Mexico culture and history, and it's a nice
selection on a bunch of books I knew and of books I've never
seen. That might be even new since I
first went there in like February.
(02:28):
Yeah, I think those books are related to this exhibition.
That's why they have that, because it's pulling.
From that history, yeah, if thatmakes sense.
Because that. Yeah, I was like interesting
choice from the bookstore purchaser, but I like it.
Yeah. So I the person broadcasting
(02:48):
after you can delay a little bitif we need to.
OK, cool. Yeah.
I mean, my guess is she just dida sound bath so we're both like
going to be a little blissed. Oh good, a sound bath.
Yeah, over at Electra Gallery, which is like about 10 minutes
away and. What is a sound bath?
Well, in this case, it was different than I expected
because normally it's kind of like having a DJ where you have
(03:13):
someone in charge of like the the soundscape of the room.
And a lot of times they'll use like singing bowls that have
sounds associated with like chakras or different energy
frequencies. But in this case, she went
around and did tarot readings for every single person first.
There was a group in there. It was like 10 people.
(03:36):
Were you one of them? And yeah, and the owner was one
of them. And it was interesting because
like if you get a group of people together, there's all
these resonances with what they're going through.
And so even though they were getting a reading like I related
a lot to a couple. Because you're listening to
their reading. Yeah, you're all there.
Exactly. And so everybody was like, Oh
(03:58):
yeah, that makes sense for me too.
And then she did like a 20 minute sound bath where I like,
I want when she was done, I likeforgot that I was there.
I was like kind of tripping out and I like this isn't very cool,
but it was I thought I was in a parking lot somewhere like.
I. I was like astral sound
(04:18):
projecting into a parking lot where it was going to go into
like a 711 or something. And now you're in another
parking lot in the back of. Literally I'm like, here maybe I
was doing it here. Yeah.
Because then when she told us towake up, I was like, oh, I'm in
this room with all these people.That's weird.
In a sun and yes play. Yeah.
If you've ever heard a singing bowl, they have kind of these
(04:40):
hums, Yeah. And then when you play them
together, they kind of lose the singularity of the sound.
And it's just like a cloud of noise, kind of hip, but
pleasant. Pleasant, Yeah.
And you know, sometimes you can kind of feel it in different
parts of your body depending on the, Yeah, the type of sound.
So it's pretty cool. Played with hypnosis to help
(05:03):
people get through subconscious.Oh yeah.
Joe, you're going to need to choose a microphone if you're
going to. Want to?
Oh yeah, sorry, we can. Share You can sit here too.
If you want I can share one. Sure.
Yeah, no problem. Yeah, could you imagine Sigmund
Freud and having people on a couch and then you?
I would not be able to relax with that guy leading the the
(05:26):
way. It's not not exactly like a
vulnerable space that I can imagine he would have created.
Yeah. You know, I don't know.
I don't know him obviously, but I wouldn't divulge too much to
him, I don't think. I he was just trying to search
ways in which people can work through their subconscious.
(05:47):
Yeah, whatever, man. It sounds like that's a way.
Well, and have you read mini minds mini Masters or mini lives
Mini masters where this I think he's like, they're always like
Harvard trained psychologist andhe had this patient who was
struggling like she had all these problems and then he was
(06:08):
trying hypnosis as like a way toget her to tap into some other
part of her brain or relax for the session because I think he
was following that train of study.
And I think something's like going to feedback a little bit.
There's some kind of. I think we're.
OK. Yeah, it was like a little like.
(06:30):
Yeah. That's cool.
No, this is great. But so in the book, like he
starts doing hypnosis with this woman and then instead of doing
what they normally do, which is talk about her problems, she
starts flashing back to past lives and she'll go all the way
back and then talk about it up until she dies in the lifetime.
(06:52):
And sometimes she'll even talk about after she died, like what
she experienced, and then she'llwake up not remembering any of
it. And he'll like, play her a tape
of it so she can remember. But going through all these past
lives, a lot of them were not happy.
She somehow, like subconsciouslywas like clearing stuff out
(07:14):
because in her waking life, she would get better, but she
wouldn't remember any of these, like past life conversations.
And then the thing that really proved it for him that they were
real is during one of the hypnosis sessions is she would
like, she went past her life, she died like died in the
conversation of like, oh, and now I'm in this other space.
(07:38):
And she then started channeling these, like, guides, and they
told him about his son that had died, that only him and his wife
knew about and like, the name that they had for the son.
And so it kind of was like prooffor him that it was real because
she would have never known. Nobody knew.
So it was. Yeah.
(08:00):
It's super interesting. Lot of mystery.
Out there, but that's like a famous book from like the 70s or
something, I don't know. What's the name of the book
again? Mini lives, Mini Masters I
think, and then he wrote a couple other books in that vein
where he used hypnosis to help people access past lives.
This seemed like back in the 70sthere was a lot of books and
(08:22):
information kinda like this. Yeah.
I don't know if that's still around to.
For sure. That's just on TikTok.
People don't write books anymore, so the other thing,
they just do that. A lot of videos, whether it's
past lives or Churro or Iching or is that a lot of it, it works
(08:44):
even if it's not true. You know, like you were saying
that people were going around, she was going around with 10
people doing tarot readings and the ones for other people
applied to you. And that's a lot of the
brilliance, a lot of these divination systems that they're.
Around you don't totally understand how it works.
Yeah, and all of the things havemeaning to everyone.
(09:05):
That's how they ended up in the Book of Tarot and in the 64 Yi
Ching hexagram descriptions and so.
And I think that's like more Jungian, like he talks about the
collective subconscious. So like, we're all kind of just
tapping into it in different ways.
So whether you're resonating more with like tarot or, you
(09:25):
know, Yi Ching, are you into Yi Ching?
My wife is studies and has that website.
Oh cool website that you put together years ago.
Awesome. With Stephen Karcher, I don't
know if you know he's a well known E Ching guy.
Anyway, so there's a book in a website called Mothering Change.
It's a sort of. Women centered E chain.
(09:47):
Oh wow, I'll look it up. Yeah.
And there's a you can do free divinations on there.
You can just. Motheringchange.com or
something. Or.org, I'm not sure.
OK, I'm going to look it up. And if she wants to be a guest
on the show, OK that. Means there was a physicist,
Niels Bohr who? Was.
(10:08):
Famous physicist and he had thissome African protector mask
thing hanging above his fireplace in his house.
And a friend of his who was alsoa scientist came to visit and he
asked him what it was. And he, Niels explained what it
was. And he said you can't, you're a
(10:30):
scientist. You, you can't possibly believe
that that is going to does anything.
Yeah. And he said, oh, they say it
works even if you don't believe.Oh snap, Neils.
I thought that was. That's fascinating.
Yeah. I think people really struggle
with that. Like, you can't be both.
But then you talk to quantum physicists and they, like, even
(10:52):
more believe it than anyone because they realize, like,
everything's conditional based on your thoughts and your
consciousness. And and different realities.
You know the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and
Schrodinger's box and all that. Like 2 opposing realities can
both be true at the same time? Hey, we guys.
(11:13):
Xena. She's.
Here. OK, I'm going to hop out of the
way. Cool.
And come on in, Xena. Thank you so much, guys.
Hi. OK, so to catch you up, I told
everybody that we were doing thesound bath with you and that
we're probably like blissed out.But how do you say your last
name? Shukri?
Al Shukri. Al Shukri.
(11:34):
OK, Cool. Well, welcome to the side.
Woo. We're.
Yeah. Where do you live?
Not in Santa Fe, for those listening.
I'm in Little Rock, AR right now.
Well, and you opened your sound bath session with something I've
never heard, which is that Arkansas is really healing.
(11:55):
It is. Actually a very healing place.
It's has a lot of clean water and we're laying on a basically
standing on a crystal crystalline grid of quartz
crystal. It's it's so.
Wild, yeah. Very potent energy there and
deep, deep forests and a lot of are the.
(12:15):
Ozarks in Arkansas, they are OK.Do you feel that connected to
that part of the like country because that's got its own
subcultural? I only am saying this because I
just watched Ozark, the TV show.Not an expert opinion by any
means I think. The ancestral energy there is
(12:36):
really repressed. I think that there's a lot of
decolonial work to do in Arkansas because there's so many
native bodies there that have been severed from the deep roots
of their heritage. It's been kind of covered up
(12:59):
with a lot of Red State stuff and good old boy.
Activity. And what does quartz crystal do
again? Like what is the energy of that
it? Amplifies whatever energy you're
hanging on to, whatever energy that you're trying to to bring
(13:23):
in or attract. It's just an amplifier.
It's like a creates A mirroring effect.
Wow. OK, interesting.
So maybe it's not good or bad, it's just.
Well, it's definitely a benevolent being for sure.
But I mean, everything is neutral, right?
(13:44):
It's what what you decide to make it, Yeah.
Got it. That's interesting, thinking
about people living there and like what it brings up so that
potentially there could be healing.
But yeah, I mean, So what? Because you haven't lived there
all your life, so you're kind oflike discovering it from like
(14:05):
fish out of water perspective somewhat.
Yeah, I was. I was born in Baghdad right off.
And we, we came here to the United States as refugees.
We immigrated and we lived all over Saint Louis, Florida.
Oh, really? Why did you was it military that
(14:26):
you traveled a lot or just? Academia higher?
Same thing. Yes, it is.
There's. Probably, yeah.
I never thought about that way, but there's probably a lot of
like kind of parallels to the lifestyle.
Get in line, get in line, followhierarchy.
Sit in this box. Yeah, cool.
(14:48):
OK. And then you landed on the East
Coast, kind of the like end of that.
Period. The West Coast, OK.
Well, no, but like during our session you said like you're
from the East, but maybe you meant.
The Middle East. OK, Swan region.
Got it. OK, I was.
Thinking like Jersey or something like 'cause you're
(15:08):
like we yell a lot and we throw things and I'm like, that sounds
like Jersey or something. Well, I mean, 'cause there's a
lot of Italians in Jersey, right?
I mean, I'm part. Italian.
So I resonated with that a lot. I was like, yeah, we do yell a
lot. You know, we're.
Hot people the molecules more fast when it's hot.
It's true, yeah. But yeah, and then you ended up
(15:29):
like in probably the polar episode of San Francisco.
Very, very much so. You have.
To be chill. Very much so.
I do. I don't miss San Francisco as
much as I thought I would. Yeah.
Good. I love it, it it created so much
space and and connection and energy and creativity for me.
(15:53):
But it's just not what it used to be.
But nowhere is. And we're in the process of
creating something different forourselves now, yeah.
And how did you get into Lulu stuff?
Because I don't know if you wereas into it when I met you or if
it was it wasn't like as forwardlike we were in grad school.
(16:15):
So yes. And it wasn't the same as it is
now where you could really talk about woo woo stuff and be taken
seriously. Yeah.
The. Witch wound has definitely been
healed and and a lot of us, I think we've been working on that
for the past few years. I think I've always been into
woo woo stuff, even as a child because I do come from a long
line of women healers like midwives, village medicine,
(16:39):
women herbalist, like my great grandmother was the village
medicine. The doctors would take people to
her when they couldn't figure out what's going on, she would,
she would heal them. So you know the psychic, the
psychic, Spidey Claire Claires are very potent in our family.
(17:00):
The Five. Claires the Five.
Claires for those who. Don't know what that means.
Yes. It's like clairvoyance.
Claire. Sentient Claire.
Audience. Claire.
I don't know what else there is,but there's five of them.
Yeah. Yeah, we don't have to box them
up. Oh, really?
Yeah. Well, I was going to say, like,
we're operating. Yeah.
(17:20):
So clairvoyance, like you see with your third eye slash, it
looks real depending on how strong your ability is.
And then clear audience, you like literally hear things Clear
sentient is like feeling. So for me, that happens a lot.
Like if someone's got some physical ailment or like stress
(17:43):
is manifesting in their body, like you feel that from them
before you can like articulate, like it usually comes first for
me. I don't know if that's true for
you, but it also takes a while to figure out that you're doing
it because I do think probably we all do it to some extent,
right? But and I.
Feel like they also crossover onto each other.
(18:06):
It's not, you know, there's verydegrees.
Yeah, the varying degrees of each ability.
And you can really just cultivate it and exercise it,
yeah. And you can say like, say to
your guides or to yourself, like, I don't want to hear, I
don't want to see a ghost or, you know, like, I don't want to
(18:27):
constantly feel other people's ailments or.
Stress. Or whatever and then focus on
like getting it through one of the channels.
Is what like? Teachers that I worked with have
suggested like if you don't wantall of them, like, yeah, focus
on the one and like kind of workon that.
Exactly. Because it is just the the
threat of creativity and you getto choose which channel it goes
(18:50):
through. Totally.
Yeah, like being a painter versus or a.
Dancer. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So, I mean, I've always had very
vivid dreams as a child and thatsort of it sparked my curiosity
into astrology and the human psyche and like the psychology
(19:11):
and the mapping and even like physical mannerisms and
attributes of people. I've always had a curiosity of
of humans and and animals and their psychology and astrology
just seemed to be the rational, for me at least the rational
(19:32):
route to. Oh, that's cool.
Yeah. You got really into astrology
during our tarot. Oh.
My gosh. They yeah, they heard all about
it, so. 2020 was like a deep obsessive dive where I would
stay up until 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning for like 6 years and
(19:52):
then after that I said I actually need, I need teachers
now. So and when I kind of let that
out into the universe. They appeared like literally
like 78 year old women in the woods on a full moon.
Was like my first astrology teacher and she appeared and
then another one I found online and we've become close.
(20:14):
So yeah, it's just Jessica. Lenyadu has been my main teacher
because she's been doing her podcast since like 2016 and
every week does her like a chartreading for the week.
And then also talks a lot about just bigger picture astrology,
which it's been like very kind of amateur for me because I
(20:38):
haven't taken a class where you can pull your own chart and
everything. But I feel like from that I've
learned so much. And also it's very much how she
reads things. So I don't know if like would
discipline you're part of like because there's different ways
to interpret astrology too well so.
With Maureen Richmond, she is, She used to be a money
(21:01):
astrologer for extremely wealthypeople.
Oh wow. She quit that and she became a
UFO astrologer. And so she has had.
So what does that mean? She has.
Done extensive research over thepast like 30 years and she has a
book now on the astrological aspects of UFO sightings and
connecting that to historical patterns and patterns in war and
(21:25):
that's part. Of our psychology and maybe not
so much real or. Well, no, I mean, it's part of
the, the, the patterns, partly psychology that we recreate for
ourselves, but also the, the fate that it's outside of our
hands to versus the destiny thatwe create for ourselves, right?
(21:45):
Because a lot of times we are atthe mercy of the energy that
we're being dealt. And it's what we do with that
energy is how we sort of create our life for ourselves.
Right. And so she has a, she has an
extensive research that NASA tried to get their hands on.
And she was like, no way, really.
(22:05):
Oh, yes. And then Lynette Duncan, who is,
I mean. And I will say NASA seems pretty
benign now compared to other government agencies.
Well, but. Probably they put it in the the
files and you wouldn't want everybody to see it.
I don't know well so. My parents worked for NASA and
not to devote too much information due to put any
(22:29):
threat on any family members lives but they were hired for
not so benevolent or or you knowastronomical like research
research. It was more like space war kind
of situation kind. Of yes, yes, like a lot of a lot
(22:51):
of spy stuff going on in NASA. They're spying on a lot of other
countries and spaces. Yes, right.
Totally. Yes, you can.
Well, that's. Why Elon makes such a fun enemy
now that we're like turning the,you know, Trump is turning on
him. Like, cool.
Well, I mean. He's just a giant child with a
(23:11):
bunch of really expensive toys, and that's very dangerous when
the child doesn't have a good a guiding parent.
And too much money. Too much.
Money. Yeah.
A recipe for destruction, yeah. But back to UFOs.
So like, is she saying that they're like coming all the time
(23:33):
and that we just are seeking them out at certain points or
are they going to touchdown? It's like and really like be
present or what's? The.
What's the arc of this? So she.
Has said that they've touched down for a while now, that they
have been watching and that there's a reason why after when
(23:53):
the US military detonates experimental nuclear.
They're like, don't do that and.So that's when that's when
sightings start to pick up, right?
That's why there's a lot of sightings in New Mexico.
So they're watching and they're paying attention.
And there are some, some assigned to Earth to make sure
(24:15):
that they protect her and not tolet her depraved children
destroy her precious body. Yeah, Yeah.
I mean, that makes sense. Yeah, there.
'D be. Some kind?
Of just error for. Planets not to blow up.
So much bigger than us. Yeah, well, and then like she
(24:37):
was your teacher. So what did you guys do together
as like teachers like Cuz that'snot really the focus as I know
you to have. Like you're not talking about
aliens all the time. No.
I would go to her apartment every Tuesday and Thursday
afternoon for an hour and it would sit there and it just, I
would get my lesson and she would start with the basics and
(25:01):
move, move through there. And she's very rigorous.
OK, cool. Yeah.
That's great. And so how do you use it in your
life now? Are you mapping out your day,
your week, your month? Or are you more bigger picture
like you know, wars and you know, I don't know, there are
(25:22):
different terms like humanistic versus event centric.
Definitely for me, I don't really pay too much to the
astrology for myself just because I'm writing on my my
inner knowing and you know, if there's something, if there's
something pressing, I will look and and I'll and I know too.
I already know that the transitsand the aspects that are
(25:45):
happening because once you lock in shake.
Shake things up for you or yeah,but once you.
Lock in. You know that there's always
just going to be constant shifting.
So I think for me at this point,I'm really kind of mapping out
what's happening collectively, what's happening with this
country, what's happening with the psyche of of the people in
(26:08):
the United States, what's happening with the psyche with
the people in the Middle East and how do you?
Suggest like if people listeningor like, but like, how is how
would they as people who maybe aren't going to do the study
that you would do? How could they use astrology to
like inform their activism or their understanding of like what
(26:30):
feels like overwhelming amount of bad news?
You know, like, how could you maybe use astrology to deal with
that in some way? Yeah, so.
My or do you think? That is even the point of it,
like it is. The point of like service, self
love and service is the point ofwhat what we're here to do.
(26:50):
So my second astrology teacher, Lynette Duncan of at Oracle of
your Soul on Instagram, she teaches, she taught me life path
astrology. And so we can look at someone's
chart and see like, what would be the reap the highest, like
potential growth as far as like what we're here to do on this
(27:15):
Earth, Like what are Yeah, what's our.
Career path or our personal path, or even.
Like spirit, yes, like spirituallike because those can those I
hate the word should, but they should intertwine with each
other the spiritual path and thecareer path because we we're
severed from that for a very, very long time.
(27:36):
But now we're starting to come back to ourselves and that we
cannot sever our spiritual, our heart, our soul from our career
because we show up at a job where we hate and it starts to
break us down. And that's, that's not, it's not
sustainable and it's not going to last for much longer.
(28:00):
I just read Martha Beck's new book, Way of Integrity, and she
talks a lot about that. Like, integrity in every area of
your life is important, otherwise that part will start
to destroy everything else. And like, your soul wants to
resonate in harmony. And as soon as you're stepping
away from what is for you, Yeah,it's like you go into the the
(28:25):
woods of hell, basically. She uses the whole Dante's
Inferno as a metaphor. So like going through the
different layers of hell. And then the interesting thing
about Dante's Inferno and this book is I don't did you ever
read that growing up, like in college or something time ago?
And pieces of it, yeah. Not like frack to back hungrily.
(28:47):
Totally. I think I like skipped over in
Italian class or something, but basically the end of hell for
Dante is you have to climb onto Satan and go down underneath
where he's standing and then youend up in Purgatory, which is
like the beginning of your ascent into like a happy life.
(29:08):
And I thought like that really resonates with what we were
talking today and the tarot readings, which is like digging
into your like deepest darkest shadow and like loving it as a
way to resonate like in this different way with all your
shame and all the the garbage and so.
We kind of. Switched gears, but I don't know
(29:29):
that came up for me. Like this idea of like just
loving the darkest parts of ourselves in order to move
forward, Yes. Yeah, that self love practice is
crucial. And I think, yeah, that it like
that translates to how we can love people who are maybe doing
bad things right now too, because ultimately we can't just
cut everyone out who's acting like an idiot right now, like
(29:52):
they're still going to be here. So how do we integrate them back
in? It's a very.
Good question. Yeah, I think, I think the the
matter is that we set the example like we set the
precedent with our own integrityand other people will feel
(30:15):
emboldened to do the same thing,right, Right.
Because that that type of this type of behavior goes both ways.
If you behave badly, that's alsoinfectious.
Right, yeah. And if you what I've learned,
cause like I've been in, you know, in hiding for a lot of my
(30:37):
life. For those not listening, I've
talked about it on the podcast, but I've been in the closet for
a lot of my life and just recently came out as queer and
trans. And I mean, being so woo woo,
I've gotten the message of like all the opportunities that I've
missed to like, make other people's lives better by showing
them someone who is OK with themselves.
(30:58):
And then they didn't get to havethat model.
And so they didn't do the thing that they're supposed to do, you
know, or it's like, you just don't know what ripple effect
you're going to have. And sometimes all people need is
a model of what that would look like.
And you just. Don't even know like who you can
affect just by being yourself which also came up.
(31:19):
In the tarot rating, the age of the guru is over, so the shadow
side of Pluto and Capricorn, which is what we were going
through in the past 17. Years was, yeah, capitalism.
Patriarchy, misogyny, but also integrity, right?
So anything that wasn't built onintegrity is why we're seeing it
(31:41):
crumble now. And now the shift into Aquarius
is creating authenticity. And that's how we heal each
other is by completely being ourselves.
It is that simple. It is that simple.
Yeah, and I love that because itmakes you, I think the fear,
since maybe, yeah, the fear, especially in America, is like
(32:04):
by being completely yourself, you're going to separate from
the herd, be ostracized or be selfish.
And why do you get to be happy when everyone else is suffering,
when really again, you might be showing the way and or you're
just going maybe to a different group of people.
Like every time I've made like ahuge change in my life, there's
(32:28):
always been people there. It just the the move from one
group to another, the one lifestyle to another.
There's always people at the other end, but you have to kind
of go alone. I mean for you, like I'm curious
to like how this plus like your creative path have intersected.
I think we're kind of getting close to time, but just I feel
(32:51):
like the artist journey is also very kind of solitary one where
you have to kind of carve out community.
You definitely or you have to create, you have to create
everything. Like as a creator, like this is
what we're here to do. We create our community, create
our life. We create our, our, our art
pieces. We create our podcasts, right?
So as an artist, I think for me the the thing, the biggest shift
(33:17):
for me was death. Just facing and seeing a lot of
death in my personal sphere, family, community, even like the
death of a country, it was triggered inside of me.
The need to heal through my creativity, through making art,
(33:44):
because creativity is the closest we get to God or the
universe or whatever you want tocall it, right?
That thread, because that's whatit is.
And so the closer that I got to my creativity, the closer I got
to myself, the closer I got to the universe, to to God, to the
ancestors, to it's just been this amazing avalanche of enter
(34:11):
and exterior connectedness that it's created.
And your, one of your practices is doing painted portraits of
people, like in person. So that's like a literal
connection as well as, you know,this kind of creative
connection. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, that's how I started was I've done portraits
for 20 years now. Cool.
(34:34):
Yeah, it was the most simplisticway for me to be able to hang on
to people, like to have some kind of like longevity and a
short lived conversation and to actually feel like there's a
tangible evidence of a relationship there.
And also to show people love andto make people feel seen.
(34:59):
Yeah, I was going to say that. Yeah, getting your portrait done
is like, yeah, you're literally being seen and documented and.
And they're watching themselves being seen, because it's not
like the easels turned away fromthem.
They're watching themselves. We're going to have to do a
portrait. I was going to say I love that.
Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, they're.
Watching themselves emerge through what they're giving me
(35:24):
and the filter that this world has created that is my my psyche
and my body. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, I love that.
I feel like I want to do some hot takes.
OK, OK. What kind of food do you have in
in Arkansas like? Oh boy, what are the?
Like. So there's been some nice farm
(35:46):
to table surgeons in in Arkansas, but it's a really a
lot of fried food is. It OK, it's still.
That that country fried food that the farmers would eat
before they go out to till the land.
And it's like we're not going out there to till the land
anymore. So you don't.
Need that. Delicious fried pies and fried
(36:07):
Pickles and fried tomatoes and I'm not.
Angry about that? It's.
Delicious. Well, OK.
I guess this will be good for the Santa Fe people.
New Mexican food? Have you been eating here since
you got or mission style Mexicanfood in this from the Bay Area?
This is like fighting words. Oh.
(36:28):
I'm going to say mission style. Oh snap.
And why? I feel like because I'm in Santa
Fe right now, there's a different level of patronage and
there's a different clientele, and so it's not.
Like comfort food here, whereas the.
(36:51):
Mission and catered it's very. It's.
Catered to the population that lives here, which is
predominantly retired white folks, right?
They don't want really spicy food.
They want something a little more mild because it hurts their
mouths well. And I've learned apparently the
(37:13):
chili crops, every crop is different levels of spiciness
because I had that complaint where I had like a couple really
spicy dishes when I first moved here.
And then it was like, where did the spice go?
Burn my face off? You're not doing it.
I need the spice. And I was told like, it could be
just even the crop of chilies, but possible.
(37:35):
But I feel you. OK, so you need the spice you
want to be like. I feel like in the mission
though, that the community was so tight, yeah that they weren't
catering to anyone else but then, but they're traditions.
I agree. With that, yeah, so.
It's different. Yeah, it's such a it's total.
Like the geography of it alone is a different ball game.
(37:55):
Yes. All right, Let's see what we
got. So, art world snobbery, LA or
New York? Oh my, very different.
Both petty, both. Both Doggy dog.
Both. Petty.
Both petty. Both highly pretentious, but I
like LA better. OK.
(38:17):
Just because I've been able to have more, and I don't know if
it's the timeline of the situation, but I've been able to
have more heartfelt conversations and connections
with people in Lai, feel like they might be more open.
And I feel like the people in New York are a little more
guarded and a little more nose to the grindstone.
(38:40):
OK, Yeah. OK, what about like Europe?
OK, or let's see, destinations are also art world.
We got Mexico City or Berlin. Mexico City, OK, yeah, yeah,
yeah, I. Feel the same way, vibrant and
not depressing. No offense Berlin, but it was
(39:02):
kind of depressing. Like, that's kind of why you
would go to Berlin if you want to be depressed for a while,
dance it out. Right.
Some hard, hard house. Yeah, yes, yeah, definitely
Mexico City just because the climate.
I like the warmth. I like the warmth.
But there's, there's so much integration going on in Mexico
(39:27):
City right now. And I feel like there's still
that level of hierarchy in Berlin.
Racism, classism, definitely thewhite supremacy is alive and
well. Well.
I do think it's there too in Mexico City.
And there's like, of course, allthe like ex Pats and I'm using
(39:49):
quotes because that's kind of like a shitty word for
immigrants, right? Right.
But yeah, I would say they both have problems but I still like
Mexico City better give. Me, the sun and the Yeah.
And the good food and you know, yeah, well, I think we're
overstaying our welcome. But thank you so much to the
guys running the truck. And if you want to find the Side
(40:11):
Woo podcast, you can go to wherever you find podcasts.
It's on Apple, Spotify, the sidein Woo Woo, like Woo Woo.
And then Zena you can find work.Yes, my work is a electric
gallery which is at 825 Early St.
Ste. D in Santa Fe.
(40:33):
Amazing gallery. George's the owner and she is
really pushing for collective spirituality, collective
integration rooted in heart and and authenticity and integrity.
So it's a really great space, yes.
And I will be in a group show next Friday that opens.
(40:56):
And it's called The Third Way. And it's all artists who
identify either as queer, trans or something in between, part of
the LGBTQ plus community. So if you want to go see some
queer witchy art, come by, I think it's 5:00 to 8:00 PM on
Friday next week. Thank you so much.
(41:17):
This is so fun. So impromptu, but also fun, yes.
Thank you. OK.
Bye bye, that's all for this week's.
Episode Thank you so much for listening.
This is your host TiVo with sound editing help by Natasha
Lowey. If you.
Love this episode? Please share it with a friend,
write us a review, and give us five stars for good karma
(41:39):
points. To watch along, subscribe to our
YouTube channel and see all of our videos and live talk
recordings there. Thanks so much for listening.
See you next time on the side.
Hello and welcome to the side Woo.
This is your host, Tebow, helping you navigate the wild
and mysterious path that is the creative life.
Join me as I ask our guests about the tools they use to help
them survive in the creative wilderness.
(00:22):
We have a guest coming in. Let.
Me turn this towards you. Just look up make sure I have
her name. Correctly because yeah, and I
got to have your name correctly.Oh.
Yeah, you know your name. I know my name, I'm not as
worried about that. Your name is has lots of
letters, Tebow. Yes, that's right.
(00:42):
You got it. Tebow the side Woo.
Yes, the Side Woo podcast, yeah,which has, yeah, taken many
iterations, but was mostly started in California.
And then I've been doing it since 2021 actually.
Oh wow, long time. Five years.
Yeah, I know. And you're, so you were in
California, now you're based in Santa Fe.
(01:04):
Albuquerque slash Santa Fe depending on yeah, I like moved.
To day of the week. Yeah, I moved to Albuquerque and
then now I'm working up here, soI'm trying to figure it out.
Yeah, and you're working at SiteSanta Fe?
Right I am. That's right.
How'd it go yesterday? It was great.
Yeah, it was nice. Yeah.
Yesterday we had Bob houses pennies for your silence.
(01:26):
Oh, right. So we're handing out little
cloth bags with 50 pennies in each to whoever wanted them.
And Bob was there for a while. We talked with Bob on the radio
for a while, which was great. And yeah, it was nice.
I mean, July 4th is a quiet day for people going out.
Everyone's at home with. Yeah, yeah.
(01:46):
But there was a lot of people inthe museum.
Actually. I was surprised, yeah.
I kind of thought no one would be there but.
Well, that show is new and exciting, and so a lot of people
are coming by. Yeah, almost not unhappy with.
Turn out I thought it was prettygood yet.
Good. Yeah, well, and it's air
conditioned, so like if you're sick of walking around, it's
(02:07):
kind of a good spot to go. Yeah, and they'll make you a cup
of coffee. Totally, and they have a good
bookstore. I love that bookstore.
Yeah, very good. I know.
I was just looking in there yesterday at all the books
related to New Mexico culture and history, and it's a nice
selection on a bunch of books I knew and of books I've never
seen. That might be even new since I
first went there in like February.
(02:28):
Yeah, I think those books are related to this exhibition.
That's why they have that, because it's pulling.
From that history, yeah, if thatmakes sense.
Because that. Yeah, I was like interesting
choice from the bookstore purchaser, but I like it.
Yeah. So I the person broadcasting
(02:48):
after you can delay a little bitif we need to.
OK, cool. Yeah.
I mean, my guess is she just dida sound bath so we're both like
going to be a little blissed. Oh good, a sound bath.
Yeah, over at Electra Gallery, which is like about 10 minutes
away and. What is a sound bath?
Well, in this case, it was different than I expected
because normally it's kind of like having a DJ where you have
(03:13):
someone in charge of like the the soundscape of the room.
And a lot of times they'll use like singing bowls that have
sounds associated with like chakras or different energy
frequencies. But in this case, she went
around and did tarot readings for every single person first.
There was a group in there. It was like 10 people.
(03:36):
Were you one of them? And yeah, and the owner was one
of them. And it was interesting because
like if you get a group of people together, there's all
these resonances with what they're going through.
And so even though they were getting a reading like I related
a lot to a couple. Because you're listening to
their reading. Yeah, you're all there.
Exactly. And so everybody was like, Oh
(03:58):
yeah, that makes sense for me too.
And then she did like a 20 minute sound bath where I like,
I want when she was done, I likeforgot that I was there.
I was like kind of tripping out and I like this isn't very cool,
but it was I thought I was in a parking lot somewhere like.
I. I was like astral sound
(04:18):
projecting into a parking lot where it was going to go into
like a 711 or something. And now you're in another
parking lot in the back of. Literally I'm like, here maybe I
was doing it here. Yeah.
Because then when she told us towake up, I was like, oh, I'm in
this room with all these people.That's weird.
In a sun and yes play. Yeah.
If you've ever heard a singing bowl, they have kind of these
(04:40):
hums, Yeah. And then when you play them
together, they kind of lose the singularity of the sound.
And it's just like a cloud of noise, kind of hip, but
pleasant. Pleasant, Yeah.
And you know, sometimes you can kind of feel it in different
parts of your body depending on the, Yeah, the type of sound.
So it's pretty cool. Played with hypnosis to help
(05:03):
people get through subconscious.Oh yeah.
Joe, you're going to need to choose a microphone if you're
going to. Want to?
Oh yeah, sorry, we can. Share You can sit here too.
If you want I can share one. Sure.
Yeah, no problem. Yeah, could you imagine Sigmund
Freud and having people on a couch and then you?
I would not be able to relax with that guy leading the the
(05:26):
way. It's not not exactly like a
vulnerable space that I can imagine he would have created.
Yeah. You know, I don't know.
I don't know him obviously, but I wouldn't divulge too much to
him, I don't think. I he was just trying to search
ways in which people can work through their subconscious.
(05:47):
Yeah, whatever, man. It sounds like that's a way.
Well, and have you read mini minds mini Masters or mini lives
Mini masters where this I think he's like, they're always like
Harvard trained psychologist andhe had this patient who was
struggling like she had all these problems and then he was
(06:08):
trying hypnosis as like a way toget her to tap into some other
part of her brain or relax for the session because I think he
was following that train of study.
And I think something's like going to feedback a little bit.
There's some kind of. I think we're.
OK. Yeah, it was like a little like.
(06:30):
Yeah. That's cool.
No, this is great. But so in the book, like he
starts doing hypnosis with this woman and then instead of doing
what they normally do, which is talk about her problems, she
starts flashing back to past lives and she'll go all the way
back and then talk about it up until she dies in the lifetime.
(06:52):
And sometimes she'll even talk about after she died, like what
she experienced, and then she'llwake up not remembering any of
it. And he'll like, play her a tape
of it so she can remember. But going through all these past
lives, a lot of them were not happy.
She somehow, like subconsciouslywas like clearing stuff out
(07:14):
because in her waking life, she would get better, but she
wouldn't remember any of these, like past life conversations.
And then the thing that really proved it for him that they were
real is during one of the hypnosis sessions is she would
like, she went past her life, she died like died in the
conversation of like, oh, and now I'm in this other space.
(07:38):
And she then started channeling these, like, guides, and they
told him about his son that had died, that only him and his wife
knew about and like, the name that they had for the son.
And so it kind of was like prooffor him that it was real because
she would have never known. Nobody knew.
So it was. Yeah.
(08:00):
It's super interesting. Lot of mystery.
Out there, but that's like a famous book from like the 70s or
something, I don't know. What's the name of the book
again? Mini lives, Mini Masters I
think, and then he wrote a couple other books in that vein
where he used hypnosis to help people access past lives.
This seemed like back in the 70sthere was a lot of books and
(08:22):
information kinda like this. Yeah.
I don't know if that's still around to.
For sure. That's just on TikTok.
People don't write books anymore, so the other thing,
they just do that. A lot of videos, whether it's
past lives or Churro or Iching or is that a lot of it, it works
(08:44):
even if it's not true. You know, like you were saying
that people were going around, she was going around with 10
people doing tarot readings and the ones for other people
applied to you. And that's a lot of the
brilliance, a lot of these divination systems that they're.
Around you don't totally understand how it works.
Yeah, and all of the things havemeaning to everyone.
(09:05):
That's how they ended up in the Book of Tarot and in the 64 Yi
Ching hexagram descriptions and so.
And I think that's like more Jungian, like he talks about the
collective subconscious. So like, we're all kind of just
tapping into it in different ways.
So whether you're resonating more with like tarot or, you
(09:25):
know, Yi Ching, are you into Yi Ching?
My wife is studies and has that website.
Oh cool website that you put together years ago.
Awesome. With Stephen Karcher, I don't
know if you know he's a well known E Ching guy.
Anyway, so there's a book in a website called Mothering Change.
It's a sort of. Women centered E chain.
(09:47):
Oh wow, I'll look it up. Yeah.
And there's a you can do free divinations on there.
You can just. Motheringchange.com or
something. Or.org, I'm not sure.
OK, I'm going to look it up. And if she wants to be a guest
on the show, OK that. Means there was a physicist,
Niels Bohr who? Was.
(10:08):
Famous physicist and he had thissome African protector mask
thing hanging above his fireplace in his house.
And a friend of his who was alsoa scientist came to visit and he
asked him what it was. And he, Niels explained what it
was. And he said you can't, you're a
(10:30):
scientist. You, you can't possibly believe
that that is going to does anything.
Yeah. And he said, oh, they say it
works even if you don't believe.Oh snap, Neils.
I thought that was. That's fascinating.
Yeah. I think people really struggle
with that. Like, you can't be both.
But then you talk to quantum physicists and they, like, even
(10:52):
more believe it than anyone because they realize, like,
everything's conditional based on your thoughts and your
consciousness. And and different realities.
You know the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and
Schrodinger's box and all that. Like 2 opposing realities can
both be true at the same time? Hey, we guys.
(11:13):
Xena. She's.
Here. OK, I'm going to hop out of the
way. Cool.
And come on in, Xena. Thank you so much, guys.
Hi. OK, so to catch you up, I told
everybody that we were doing thesound bath with you and that
we're probably like blissed out.But how do you say your last
name? Shukri?
Al Shukri. Al Shukri.
(11:34):
OK, Cool. Well, welcome to the side.
Woo. We're.
Yeah. Where do you live?
Not in Santa Fe, for those listening.
I'm in Little Rock, AR right now.
Well, and you opened your sound bath session with something I've
never heard, which is that Arkansas is really healing.
(11:55):
It is. Actually a very healing place.
It's has a lot of clean water and we're laying on a basically
standing on a crystal crystalline grid of quartz
crystal. It's it's so.
Wild, yeah. Very potent energy there and
deep, deep forests and a lot of are the.
(12:15):
Ozarks in Arkansas, they are OK.Do you feel that connected to
that part of the like country because that's got its own
subcultural? I only am saying this because I
just watched Ozark, the TV show.Not an expert opinion by any
means I think. The ancestral energy there is
(12:36):
really repressed. I think that there's a lot of
decolonial work to do in Arkansas because there's so many
native bodies there that have been severed from the deep roots
of their heritage. It's been kind of covered up
(12:59):
with a lot of Red State stuff and good old boy.
Activity. And what does quartz crystal do
again? Like what is the energy of that
it? Amplifies whatever energy you're
hanging on to, whatever energy that you're trying to to bring
(13:23):
in or attract. It's just an amplifier.
It's like a creates A mirroring effect.
Wow. OK, interesting.
So maybe it's not good or bad, it's just.
Well, it's definitely a benevolent being for sure.
But I mean, everything is neutral, right?
(13:44):
It's what what you decide to make it, Yeah.
Got it. That's interesting, thinking
about people living there and like what it brings up so that
potentially there could be healing.
But yeah, I mean, So what? Because you haven't lived there
all your life, so you're kind oflike discovering it from like
(14:05):
fish out of water perspective somewhat.
Yeah, I was. I was born in Baghdad right off.
And we, we came here to the United States as refugees.
We immigrated and we lived all over Saint Louis, Florida.
Oh, really? Why did you was it military that
(14:26):
you traveled a lot or just? Academia higher?
Same thing. Yes, it is.
There's. Probably, yeah.
I never thought about that way, but there's probably a lot of
like kind of parallels to the lifestyle.
Get in line, get in line, followhierarchy.
Sit in this box. Yeah, cool.
(14:48):
OK. And then you landed on the East
Coast, kind of the like end of that.
Period. The West Coast, OK.
Well, no, but like during our session you said like you're
from the East, but maybe you meant.
The Middle East. OK, Swan region.
Got it. OK, I was.
Thinking like Jersey or something like 'cause you're
(15:08):
like we yell a lot and we throw things and I'm like, that sounds
like Jersey or something. Well, I mean, 'cause there's a
lot of Italians in Jersey, right?
I mean, I'm part. Italian.
So I resonated with that a lot. I was like, yeah, we do yell a
lot. You know, we're.
Hot people the molecules more fast when it's hot.
It's true, yeah. But yeah, and then you ended up
(15:29):
like in probably the polar episode of San Francisco.
Very, very much so. You have.
To be chill. Very much so.
I do. I don't miss San Francisco as
much as I thought I would. Yeah.
Good. I love it, it it created so much
space and and connection and energy and creativity for me.
(15:53):
But it's just not what it used to be.
But nowhere is. And we're in the process of
creating something different forourselves now, yeah.
And how did you get into Lulu stuff?
Because I don't know if you wereas into it when I met you or if
it was it wasn't like as forwardlike we were in grad school.
(16:15):
So yes. And it wasn't the same as it is
now where you could really talk about woo woo stuff and be taken
seriously. Yeah.
The. Witch wound has definitely been
healed and and a lot of us, I think we've been working on that
for the past few years. I think I've always been into
woo woo stuff, even as a child because I do come from a long
line of women healers like midwives, village medicine,
(16:39):
women herbalist, like my great grandmother was the village
medicine. The doctors would take people to
her when they couldn't figure out what's going on, she would,
she would heal them. So you know the psychic, the
psychic, Spidey Claire Claires are very potent in our family.
(17:00):
The Five. Claires the Five.
Claires for those who. Don't know what that means.
Yes. It's like clairvoyance.
Claire. Sentient Claire.
Audience. Claire.
I don't know what else there is,but there's five of them.
Yeah. Yeah, we don't have to box them
up. Oh, really?
Yeah. Well, I was going to say, like,
we're operating. Yeah.
(17:20):
So clairvoyance, like you see with your third eye slash, it
looks real depending on how strong your ability is.
And then clear audience, you like literally hear things Clear
sentient is like feeling. So for me, that happens a lot.
Like if someone's got some physical ailment or like stress
(17:43):
is manifesting in their body, like you feel that from them
before you can like articulate, like it usually comes first for
me. I don't know if that's true for
you, but it also takes a while to figure out that you're doing
it because I do think probably we all do it to some extent,
right? But and I.
Feel like they also crossover onto each other.
(18:06):
It's not, you know, there's verydegrees.
Yeah, the varying degrees of each ability.
And you can really just cultivate it and exercise it,
yeah. And you can say like, say to
your guides or to yourself, like, I don't want to hear, I
don't want to see a ghost or, you know, like, I don't want to
(18:27):
constantly feel other people's ailments or.
Stress. Or whatever and then focus on
like getting it through one of the channels.
Is what like? Teachers that I worked with have
suggested like if you don't wantall of them, like, yeah, focus
on the one and like kind of workon that.
Exactly. Because it is just the the
threat of creativity and you getto choose which channel it goes
(18:50):
through. Totally.
Yeah, like being a painter versus or a.
Dancer. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So, I mean, I've always had very
vivid dreams as a child and thatsort of it sparked my curiosity
into astrology and the human psyche and like the psychology
(19:11):
and the mapping and even like physical mannerisms and
attributes of people. I've always had a curiosity of
of humans and and animals and their psychology and astrology
just seemed to be the rational, for me at least the rational
(19:32):
route to. Oh, that's cool.
Yeah. You got really into astrology
during our tarot. Oh.
My gosh. They yeah, they heard all about
it, so. 2020 was like a deep obsessive dive where I would
stay up until 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning for like 6 years and
(19:52):
then after that I said I actually need, I need teachers
now. So and when I kind of let that
out into the universe. They appeared like literally
like 78 year old women in the woods on a full moon.
Was like my first astrology teacher and she appeared and
then another one I found online and we've become close.
(20:14):
So yeah, it's just Jessica. Lenyadu has been my main teacher
because she's been doing her podcast since like 2016 and
every week does her like a chartreading for the week.
And then also talks a lot about just bigger picture astrology,
which it's been like very kind of amateur for me because I
(20:38):
haven't taken a class where you can pull your own chart and
everything. But I feel like from that I've
learned so much. And also it's very much how she
reads things. So I don't know if like would
discipline you're part of like because there's different ways
to interpret astrology too well so.
With Maureen Richmond, she is, She used to be a money
(21:01):
astrologer for extremely wealthypeople.
Oh wow. She quit that and she became a
UFO astrologer. And so she has had.
So what does that mean? She has.
Done extensive research over thepast like 30 years and she has a
book now on the astrological aspects of UFO sightings and
connecting that to historical patterns and patterns in war and
(21:25):
that's part. Of our psychology and maybe not
so much real or. Well, no, I mean, it's part of
the, the, the patterns, partly psychology that we recreate for
ourselves, but also the, the fate that it's outside of our
hands to versus the destiny thatwe create for ourselves, right?
(21:45):
Because a lot of times we are atthe mercy of the energy that
we're being dealt. And it's what we do with that
energy is how we sort of create our life for ourselves.
Right. And so she has a, she has an
extensive research that NASA tried to get their hands on.
And she was like, no way, really.
(22:05):
Oh, yes. And then Lynette Duncan, who is,
I mean. And I will say NASA seems pretty
benign now compared to other government agencies.
Well, but. Probably they put it in the the
files and you wouldn't want everybody to see it.
I don't know well so. My parents worked for NASA and
not to devote too much information due to put any
(22:29):
threat on any family members lives but they were hired for
not so benevolent or or you knowastronomical like research
research. It was more like space war kind
of situation kind. Of yes, yes, like a lot of a lot
(22:51):
of spy stuff going on in NASA. They're spying on a lot of other
countries and spaces. Yes, right.
Totally. Yes, you can.
Well, that's. Why Elon makes such a fun enemy
now that we're like turning the,you know, Trump is turning on
him. Like, cool.
Well, I mean. He's just a giant child with a
(23:11):
bunch of really expensive toys, and that's very dangerous when
the child doesn't have a good a guiding parent.
And too much money. Too much.
Money. Yeah.
A recipe for destruction, yeah. But back to UFOs.
So like, is she saying that they're like coming all the time
(23:33):
and that we just are seeking them out at certain points or
are they going to touchdown? It's like and really like be
present or what's? The.
What's the arc of this? So she.
Has said that they've touched down for a while now, that they
have been watching and that there's a reason why after when
(23:53):
the US military detonates experimental nuclear.
They're like, don't do that and.So that's when that's when
sightings start to pick up, right?
That's why there's a lot of sightings in New Mexico.
So they're watching and they're paying attention.
And there are some, some assigned to Earth to make sure
(24:15):
that they protect her and not tolet her depraved children
destroy her precious body. Yeah, Yeah.
I mean, that makes sense. Yeah, there.
'D be. Some kind?
Of just error for. Planets not to blow up.
So much bigger than us. Yeah, well, and then like she
(24:37):
was your teacher. So what did you guys do together
as like teachers like Cuz that'snot really the focus as I know
you to have. Like you're not talking about
aliens all the time. No.
I would go to her apartment every Tuesday and Thursday
afternoon for an hour and it would sit there and it just, I
would get my lesson and she would start with the basics and
(25:01):
move, move through there. And she's very rigorous.
OK, cool. Yeah.
That's great. And so how do you use it in your
life now? Are you mapping out your day,
your week, your month? Or are you more bigger picture
like you know, wars and you know, I don't know, there are
(25:22):
different terms like humanistic versus event centric.
Definitely for me, I don't really pay too much to the
astrology for myself just because I'm writing on my my
inner knowing and you know, if there's something, if there's
something pressing, I will look and and I'll and I know too.
I already know that the transitsand the aspects that are
(25:45):
happening because once you lock in shake.
Shake things up for you or yeah,but once you.
Lock in. You know that there's always
just going to be constant shifting.
So I think for me at this point,I'm really kind of mapping out
what's happening collectively, what's happening with this
country, what's happening with the psyche of of the people in
(26:08):
the United States, what's happening with the psyche with
the people in the Middle East and how do you?
Suggest like if people listeningor like, but like, how is how
would they as people who maybe aren't going to do the study
that you would do? How could they use astrology to
like inform their activism or their understanding of like what
(26:30):
feels like overwhelming amount of bad news?
You know, like, how could you maybe use astrology to deal with
that in some way? Yeah, so.
My or do you think? That is even the point of it,
like it is. The point of like service, self
love and service is the point ofwhat what we're here to do.
(26:50):
So my second astrology teacher, Lynette Duncan of at Oracle of
your Soul on Instagram, she teaches, she taught me life path
astrology. And so we can look at someone's
chart and see like, what would be the reap the highest, like
potential growth as far as like what we're here to do on this
(27:15):
Earth, Like what are Yeah, what's our.
Career path or our personal path, or even.
Like spirit, yes, like spirituallike because those can those I
hate the word should, but they should intertwine with each
other the spiritual path and thecareer path because we we're
severed from that for a very, very long time.
(27:36):
But now we're starting to come back to ourselves and that we
cannot sever our spiritual, our heart, our soul from our career
because we show up at a job where we hate and it starts to
break us down. And that's, that's not, it's not
sustainable and it's not going to last for much longer.
(28:00):
I just read Martha Beck's new book, Way of Integrity, and she
talks a lot about that. Like, integrity in every area of
your life is important, otherwise that part will start
to destroy everything else. And like, your soul wants to
resonate in harmony. And as soon as you're stepping
away from what is for you, Yeah,it's like you go into the the
(28:25):
woods of hell, basically. She uses the whole Dante's
Inferno as a metaphor. So like going through the
different layers of hell. And then the interesting thing
about Dante's Inferno and this book is I don't did you ever
read that growing up, like in college or something time ago?
And pieces of it, yeah. Not like frack to back hungrily.
(28:47):
Totally. I think I like skipped over in
Italian class or something, but basically the end of hell for
Dante is you have to climb onto Satan and go down underneath
where he's standing and then youend up in Purgatory, which is
like the beginning of your ascent into like a happy life.
(29:08):
And I thought like that really resonates with what we were
talking today and the tarot readings, which is like digging
into your like deepest darkest shadow and like loving it as a
way to resonate like in this different way with all your
shame and all the the garbage and so.
We kind of. Switched gears, but I don't know
(29:29):
that came up for me. Like this idea of like just
loving the darkest parts of ourselves in order to move
forward, Yes. Yeah, that self love practice is
crucial. And I think, yeah, that it like
that translates to how we can love people who are maybe doing
bad things right now too, because ultimately we can't just
cut everyone out who's acting like an idiot right now, like
(29:52):
they're still going to be here. So how do we integrate them back
in? It's a very.
Good question. Yeah, I think, I think the the
matter is that we set the example like we set the
precedent with our own integrityand other people will feel
(30:15):
emboldened to do the same thing,right, Right.
Because that that type of this type of behavior goes both ways.
If you behave badly, that's alsoinfectious.
Right, yeah. And if you what I've learned,
cause like I've been in, you know, in hiding for a lot of my
(30:37):
life. For those not listening, I've
talked about it on the podcast, but I've been in the closet for
a lot of my life and just recently came out as queer and
trans. And I mean, being so woo woo,
I've gotten the message of like all the opportunities that I've
missed to like, make other people's lives better by showing
them someone who is OK with themselves.
(30:58):
And then they didn't get to havethat model.
And so they didn't do the thing that they're supposed to do, you
know, or it's like, you just don't know what ripple effect
you're going to have. And sometimes all people need is
a model of what that would look like.
And you just. Don't even know like who you can
affect just by being yourself which also came up.
(31:19):
In the tarot rating, the age of the guru is over, so the shadow
side of Pluto and Capricorn, which is what we were going
through in the past 17. Years was, yeah, capitalism.
Patriarchy, misogyny, but also integrity, right?
So anything that wasn't built onintegrity is why we're seeing it
(31:41):
crumble now. And now the shift into Aquarius
is creating authenticity. And that's how we heal each
other is by completely being ourselves.
It is that simple. It is that simple.
Yeah, and I love that because itmakes you, I think the fear,
since maybe, yeah, the fear, especially in America, is like
(32:04):
by being completely yourself, you're going to separate from
the herd, be ostracized or be selfish.
And why do you get to be happy when everyone else is suffering,
when really again, you might be showing the way and or you're
just going maybe to a different group of people.
Like every time I've made like ahuge change in my life, there's
(32:28):
always been people there. It just the the move from one
group to another, the one lifestyle to another.
There's always people at the other end, but you have to kind
of go alone. I mean for you, like I'm curious
to like how this plus like your creative path have intersected.
I think we're kind of getting close to time, but just I feel
(32:51):
like the artist journey is also very kind of solitary one where
you have to kind of carve out community.
You definitely or you have to create, you have to create
everything. Like as a creator, like this is
what we're here to do. We create our community, create
our life. We create our, our, our art
pieces. We create our podcasts, right?
So as an artist, I think for me the the thing, the biggest shift
(33:17):
for me was death. Just facing and seeing a lot of
death in my personal sphere, family, community, even like the
death of a country, it was triggered inside of me.
The need to heal through my creativity, through making art,
(33:44):
because creativity is the closest we get to God or the
universe or whatever you want tocall it, right?
That thread, because that's whatit is.
And so the closer that I got to my creativity, the closer I got
to myself, the closer I got to the universe, to to God, to the
ancestors, to it's just been this amazing avalanche of enter
(34:11):
and exterior connectedness that it's created.
And your, one of your practices is doing painted portraits of
people, like in person. So that's like a literal
connection as well as, you know,this kind of creative
connection. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, that's how I started was I've done portraits
for 20 years now. Cool.
(34:34):
Yeah, it was the most simplisticway for me to be able to hang on
to people, like to have some kind of like longevity and a
short lived conversation and to actually feel like there's a
tangible evidence of a relationship there.
And also to show people love andto make people feel seen.
(34:59):
Yeah, I was going to say that. Yeah, getting your portrait done
is like, yeah, you're literally being seen and documented and.
And they're watching themselves being seen, because it's not
like the easels turned away fromthem.
They're watching themselves. We're going to have to do a
portrait. I was going to say I love that.
Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, they're.
Watching themselves emerge through what they're giving me
(35:24):
and the filter that this world has created that is my my psyche
and my body. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, I love that.
I feel like I want to do some hot takes.
OK, OK. What kind of food do you have in
in Arkansas like? Oh boy, what are the?
Like. So there's been some nice farm
(35:46):
to table surgeons in in Arkansas, but it's a really a
lot of fried food is. It OK, it's still.
That that country fried food that the farmers would eat
before they go out to till the land.
And it's like we're not going out there to till the land
anymore. So you don't.
Need that. Delicious fried pies and fried
(36:07):
Pickles and fried tomatoes and I'm not.
Angry about that? It's.
Delicious. Well, OK.
I guess this will be good for the Santa Fe people.
New Mexican food? Have you been eating here since
you got or mission style Mexicanfood in this from the Bay Area?
This is like fighting words. Oh.
(36:28):
I'm going to say mission style. Oh snap.
And why? I feel like because I'm in Santa
Fe right now, there's a different level of patronage and
there's a different clientele, and so it's not.
Like comfort food here, whereas the.
(36:51):
Mission and catered it's very. It's.
Catered to the population that lives here, which is
predominantly retired white folks, right?
They don't want really spicy food.
They want something a little more mild because it hurts their
mouths well. And I've learned apparently the
(37:13):
chili crops, every crop is different levels of spiciness
because I had that complaint where I had like a couple really
spicy dishes when I first moved here.
And then it was like, where did the spice go?
Burn my face off? You're not doing it.
I need the spice. And I was told like, it could be
just even the crop of chilies, but possible.
(37:35):
But I feel you. OK, so you need the spice you
want to be like. I feel like in the mission
though, that the community was so tight, yeah that they weren't
catering to anyone else but then, but they're traditions.
I agree. With that, yeah, so.
It's different. Yeah, it's such a it's total.
Like the geography of it alone is a different ball game.
(37:55):
Yes. All right, Let's see what we
got. So, art world snobbery, LA or
New York? Oh my, very different.
Both petty, both. Both Doggy dog.
Both. Petty.
Both petty. Both highly pretentious, but I
like LA better. OK.
(38:17):
Just because I've been able to have more, and I don't know if
it's the timeline of the situation, but I've been able to
have more heartfelt conversations and connections
with people in Lai, feel like they might be more open.
And I feel like the people in New York are a little more
guarded and a little more nose to the grindstone.
(38:40):
OK, Yeah. OK, what about like Europe?
OK, or let's see, destinations are also art world.
We got Mexico City or Berlin. Mexico City, OK, yeah, yeah,
yeah, I. Feel the same way, vibrant and
not depressing. No offense Berlin, but it was
(39:02):
kind of depressing. Like, that's kind of why you
would go to Berlin if you want to be depressed for a while,
dance it out. Right.
Some hard, hard house. Yeah, yes, yeah, definitely
Mexico City just because the climate.
I like the warmth. I like the warmth.
But there's, there's so much integration going on in Mexico
(39:27):
City right now. And I feel like there's still
that level of hierarchy in Berlin.
Racism, classism, definitely thewhite supremacy is alive and
well. Well.
I do think it's there too in Mexico City.
And there's like, of course, allthe like ex Pats and I'm using
(39:49):
quotes because that's kind of like a shitty word for
immigrants, right? Right.
But yeah, I would say they both have problems but I still like
Mexico City better give. Me, the sun and the Yeah.
And the good food and you know, yeah, well, I think we're
overstaying our welcome. But thank you so much to the
guys running the truck. And if you want to find the Side
(40:11):
Woo podcast, you can go to wherever you find podcasts.
It's on Apple, Spotify, the sidein Woo Woo, like Woo Woo.
And then Zena you can find work.Yes, my work is a electric
gallery which is at 825 Early St.
Ste. D in Santa Fe.
(40:33):
Amazing gallery. George's the owner and she is
really pushing for collective spirituality, collective
integration rooted in heart and and authenticity and integrity.
So it's a really great space, yes.
And I will be in a group show next Friday that opens.
(40:56):
And it's called The Third Way. And it's all artists who
identify either as queer, trans or something in between, part of
the LGBTQ plus community. So if you want to go see some
queer witchy art, come by, I think it's 5:00 to 8:00 PM on
Friday next week. Thank you so much.
(41:17):
This is so fun. So impromptu, but also fun, yes.
Thank you. OK.
Bye bye, that's all for this week's.
Episode Thank you so much for listening.
This is your host TiVo with sound editing help by Natasha
Lowey. If you.
Love this episode? Please share it with a friend,
write us a review, and give us five stars for good karma
(41:39):
points. To watch along, subscribe to our
YouTube channel and see all of our videos and live talk
recordings there. Thanks so much for listening.
See you next time on the side.
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