Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jim Kleiber Show. This is the first time that I'm doing a mutual, a joint episode in a long time where I have a guest and I'm not just talking into my phone for five minutes. And today our guest is Caleb W. Cliff.

He's a good friend of mine that I've known for many, many years now. And we have shared many a conversation, even on this platform for you old time listeners. Listeners, and today I wanted to talk to Caleb about some of the work that he's done for many, many years as well, and is starting to revitalize a little more and go into new areas. And so just curious to hear about his background in the space and also where he wants to go with it, because as most things do with me, they still evolve emotions and helping people process how how they're feeling and communicate how they're feeling. So, yeah. So the essence of today is to talk with Caleb and to hear more about his work and also to interview him slash have a conversation with him. So, Caleb, I imagine you could probably introduce what you do with sound and emotions better than I can. So please take the mic. Yeah, not the floor. Take the mic. Happily. All right. Thank you for that introduction, Jim. And it is kind of crazy to think it's been, this year marks 10 years since we met. Wow. Or maybe I've actually, well, since we became friends. I think I knew of you in 2013. But all the same, let's see.

So I will go back just a little further just to give more context. My original...

Degree in my undergraduate was music composition. And then I, while living in New York, discovered the holistic modality of India called Ayurveda. And on the suggestion of the director of that program, my final paper for that was a combination of understanding Ayurveda and sound healing, of which then i went on to study that uh in my graduate studies um and kind of in a uh low pressure way kept developing what i did in my graduate studies um here and there and then i I would say, in the past two years have really revamped a lot of ideas.

And especially as of late, my partner, Heather, who teaches yoga, she and I have been teaming up to do yoga and sound meditations. And so these days, I spend a lot of time writing or composing those sound meditations, which range about 20 to 23 minutes.

And that's been, it's been great. I feel like I've, I don't know exactly, I wouldn't point to just one thing that's opened me up so much in that way, but I can highlight a few things, that I imagine will come out as we talk. Um but so and in addition to that it's getting me into the idea of wanting to finally somehow offer more of these um these pieces these compositions that are intended not specifically to do just one thing but more relax somebody and ultimately if possible get them into a state where their conscious and their subconscious, have a bit, there's a bridge that would exist that exists between those two whether it be in words or if it be in memories or colors and shapes, whatever is evoked for the person and if they can kind of have what would be akin to a safe experience Um, I feel that that is a. This kind of music you know ultimately provides a safe space where you can emotionally feel, safe to express whatever is coming up um and i will say just to kind of jump back and also tie it to you and a lot of the things that we talk about uh emotion was a huge player in my graduate studies I found that and it was the key into reaching someone and if if the music was going to have a greater impact if in any way shape or form it was because it reached the its audience in an emotional way and that where people people would be softer emotionally and therefore more receptive to some of the things that may show up while listening to the piece of music. But yeah.

So that's, so now jumping forward again, back to writing these pieces, I guess in some way they also kind of bring you into a dream, dreamlike state which is sort of what helps bridge the gap between the conscious and the subconscious and yeah I'm still it's still very new Heather and I have only done two of these classes I'm currently working on the third sound meditation piece for our next class which is towards the end of February and.

Yeah, I guess the one, I'm also looking to potentially take this kind of work and explore how it might be utilized in therapeutic settings.

One type of therapy that feels like it's definitely on the rise is psychedelic-assisted therapy.

And so far, there have been a few artists who have written intentionally for this type of practice. One of those being John Hopkins. He wrote a very straightforward album called Music for Psychedelic Therapy. Right? Yep. It's right on the nose. But I will say it's one of my top five albums of all time. It is astounding.

Without the psychedelics. Without the psychedelics.

It is, I, he, well, the story is that he apparently wrote it for his own ketamine experiences, or based on his own ketamine experiences, which tend to be just about an hour and change. So the album, I think, is an hour and six minutes.

Regardless of what it's written for, I think in terms of trying to achieve the types of things that I want to with my music, that album does it better than pretty much any other album I've ever heard.

Even though it's not quite the same thing, it achieves something very similar. Um another artist who has done something in this vein is east forest and he has written a much longer album um i think it's five hours and that is music uh for, psilocybin tripping so magic mushrooms or boomers or whatever people might call them these days uh earth medicine um and you know wait magic mushrooms are called boomers they are yep oh that is i thought you were making a joke about people from the specific generation yeah no i don't know if it's like mushroom clouds and they go i don't know exactly where that comes from but that's yeah that is one of their nicknames um but the but those are the only like two that i know of that are super direct. Otherwise, people have been collecting, you know, making playlists and doing things to support the different types of psychedelic therapies where what I would like to do is make kind of like DJ-style set lists, that may or may not include my own work that creates a seamless experience so that there aren't. You know like a good dj would you have this really nice experience that kind of completely sets the mood while you're on the dance floor and so while you're going through.

Psychedelic mushrooms or an mdma experience or ketamine something that um just like the drug is going to be seamless there's not going to be these gaps where you're suddenly lucid and sober sober for a minute. So, you kind of want to stay with them. And I feel like there's a lot of space where new ideas could be introduced. And if they're done well, they could make the psychedelic therapy even more powerful.

That is my hope. So, and then the last thing, which will take a little little bit of of describing i kind of touched on this very briefly with you before we started is an idea that i've been working on just recently uh while doing while writing music for these yoga and sound meditations is the idea of something called music assisted therapy um and in a nutshell uh we find when we do these yoga and sound meditations heather will do the first hour and change like about 60 to 70 minutes of a very mellow restorative yoga class which focuses largely on just opening up the body calming the nervous system long stretches is lots of just sort of softening and just kind of letting your body just relax. And so at the end of that. The person will lay down in what's called shavasana, which is just a pose where you just lay flat on your back. And then they'll get wrapped up in a blanket. And I will put on the recording of the music that I've made, which tends to be just over 20 minutes.

But doing the yoga first and then putting on the sound meditation, people's reports so far have been really wonderful. Wonderful um you know i give them very light guidance mostly just to say you know whatever this music is intended for you to to become soft to yourself and whatever may be in there if it's something that you haven't resolved so you might be able to resolve is it um is it nostalgia are is it are you tired sometimes people just fall asleep it's very calming music and sometimes times that's what you need is just rest so um but you know i had one example where the woman was having childhood memories and was feeling like certain conflict was feeling resolved and all this stuff showed up for her um and i you know that was i was amazed uh not not that it's It's not my intention, but when you're still just trying this out and you get that kind of result, it was great and gave me a lot of promise to think, oh, there is space for this.

Know what you're doing to your best ability, which I'm trying, um, and, and put your, put your heart into it. I think you can achieve music that, um, without any, any type of, of drug, whether it be pharmaceuticals, you know, things that be prescribed or whether it be something within the psychedelic, um, uh, materials, um, you could achieve these types of things just between music and a little bit of body work which even could be breath work so i have um some formulas some ideas that i'm developing where it's you know either a massage or breath work or yoga uh or any variety of body work that you might start with that for. From 10 minutes to a half hour then listen to the music and then have just kind of a basic uh talk therapy after that that that could be as simple as just just learning what came up during the musical experience and maybe during the massage and then using that to integrate into the regular therapy to the regular talk therapy um have not done this uh just yet but But Heather has recently reinstated herself into the therapy practice and is now taking a much more holistic approach. So she hopes to integrate this into her therapy practice when possible. So there you go. I have lots of questions, obviously, and comments.

Oh, so many things. Yeah. One of the main ones that came up for me is, I think, sound and music accompany us throughout life. We watch a movie, there's a soundtrack, we go to a Buddhist meditation, and then they have the, what do they call it, the singing bowl or whatever? Oh, the Tibetan singing bowls. Tibetan singing bowls. People go to electronic music festivals and do drugs and dance to very fast drum and bass and other types of music. I think, so in a way, I think music and sound accompanies us in many of these ways. I'm curious, would your approach be more intentional? Is that kind of the idea to understand it better instead of just slap stuff? Like, for example, when I run a workshop, I'm like, okay, we're doing a journaling exercise. Hey, somebody find some slow instrumental music and just put it on. You know, that's kind of the guidance I give. Of hey does anybody know a slow instrumental song i can just put on yeah but that's that's to the extent and so is is what you're talking about basically having more intention and uh i guess fine tuning on something like that yeah the way that i think about it is a lot of massage massage therapists, uh, and yoga instructors and all variety of, of body workers are already using music, but it's in most cases it's passive. So, um, it helps, you know, cause we're so accustomed to sound and music being, gosh, as you were saying, just about everywhere. Yeah. You go to a restaurant and there's no music and you're like, what the heck is going on? Yeah. You're like, Like, oh, God, all I have is this awkward conversation. I can hear my food sounds, my eating sounds of my neighbor and myself. There would be no second dates ever. Lots of forks hitting plates.

A whole new musical genre might be born.

But yeah, so it's...And that, I think...To a degree, even in this passive sense, music is helping the massage therapist. Music is helping a yogi teach a good class and kind of maybe to set breath and to set just a tone, a general feeling of the ambience that you feel like is appropriate. So, if you take that a few steps further and you say, okay, I'm going to work with you very intentionally to create a piece of music or a DJ style set list that is specific to the way you teach class or specific to the way that you do therapy. Or even there's so many different things that you could do you could consider the setting you could consider um your client you know certain clients are going to do better with certain types of musics or certain types of of the timbre quality you know a guitar sound versus a piano sound versus an oboe or whatever the instruments are. People, because of the emotional relationship people have with their favorite music, with their most preferred music, if you can somehow get closer to that while doing the body work or therapy.

I really think that you could amplify the power of whatever impact you're trying to have on someone. Um, so yes, it is a much more intentional and active use of the music versus it being passive versus someone, you know, back in the day or even now putting on Pandora and be like, okay, I want this type of music. Let me put on Pandora. And then an ad comes on in the middle of the session. You're like, what? Why is there an ad playing right now? That kind of ruins the mood. Oh gosh. Yeah. Pandora is like the ultimate passive streaming service. Um but yes nothing like pandora so it's it's like you said i mean the analogies that come to my mind are one like being a dj for these experiences and two is almost being like the uh the person writing the soundtrack for the movie for these experiences because soundtracks are very involved and very intentional to try to create emotional experiences in the audience you'd agree right Oh, and no, actually, you make a great analogy, because that is that the music is so guiding of the audience, of the single viewer.

I feel like film has a lot of places, a lot of things that it relies on to tell a story, and sometimes no music is really good for certain types of things being conveyed.

You could argue that certain films rely very heavily on the music in order to make sure that the audience is aware that this is a distressing scene or a deeply emotional scene or a nostalgic moment.

And so without there being any kind of like statement, literally like to the viewer at the beginning of the film is like, do be aware the music is guiding your emotions.

It is very much a part of conveying the bigger emotional parts of the narrative.

I can't imagine the music industry being what it is without music, simply stated. You mean the film industry without music? Did I say the music industry? Yeah, I imagine the music industry without music would not be the music industry.

Statement still true live recording here folks live recording no no edits yes film industry and well and for that matter video game industry would also be very naked without music helping you to understand what is happening with your character and the other characters i saw an interview that stephen colbert did with christopher nolan the other day and talking about Oppenheimer, yeah, the film. And Colbert asked him about the soundtrack and the music. And I think Nolan said that at one point he wanted to use a violin because a violin can sound very beautiful, but if you just go slightly off, it can be wretched. And so talk about this powerful and narrow balance of dealing with nuclear technology. I was like, wow. And the tension that can be involved with that. And how precise it needs to be, right? To split an atom, you can't go wrong.

And if you, yeah, exactly. And if you do, what happens to society? So like if there's an accident, I think they were saying that at some point when they were doing, I think the first test, some of them thought there was a non-zero chance that it might blow up the whole earth. And they're like, well, okay, let's do it anyways.

So how to convey that in music so that the people feel that experience.

And so i think that's what you're getting at i'm curious what kind of emotions are you trying to make somebody feel does it depend on the scenario is it like if it's a super fast hot yoga is that different than if it's a i'm trying to dig into uh divorce therapy um Um, this is something I have been thinking about and it, it's a little, there's a lot of gray area.

Uh, I, I do kind of wonder in a year from now, us having the same conversation, what I might say. I think.

Well without overthinking it too much in the moment and for the sake of anybody listening I would say, yes but not maybe as much as you might think or at least as far as I can tell now I think when I was doing my graduate studies I had a more rigid way I thought things needed to be done. I tried to do customized pieces for individuals. And while that was...

Taught me a lot of things and there were definitely things about it that felt like i was. Close to something um in terms of creating a relationship between the listener and the music it was too specific and also as like a business model it didn't it didn't fit either because it would require so much effort just to write one piece of music for a person and then And say, for example, that I didn't do a good job and that piece didn't really do anything for them. That's, you know, anywhere from 20 to 40 hours of music writing that would just be tossed. So I, in the more recent efforts that I've made, I've tried to focus on how music has, not only does it have emotional. Strong emotional components, it can also have very altered state type qualities. Again depending on the the sound the timbres that you're using and uh rhythms polyrhythms things of that nature uh and like the frequency range there's a lot of stuff out there especially within the holistic community that speaks to very specific frequencies nothing in my research or experience has showed me that very specific frequencies have such powerful impact on people it's again it feels more about the emotional connection that you can make and to some extent this kind of hypnotic thing that you can bring about but instead of which is maybe something along the lines of, is it EDMR therapy, which is, wait, EDMR, E, something, it's a, it's a.

Eye sort of the rhythm against the eyes that cause you that are yeah i'm going to totally destroy whatever this practice is this this modality but it uses somehow interacting with the eyes and creating a bit of um like a frequency within the eyes and then you do, therapy around um you know traumatic episodes uh it's the one with the eye movement yeah you're supposed to move your eyes in a specific way or whatever yeah yeah and i was not electronic music electronic dance music rave so i had to say i had to say it i'm sitting on it i'm like i gotta say emdr that's perfect that is a mr they kind of like what do they call that self-medication yeah uh yeah this is not that but um but i would say the hypnotic kind of thing is maybe in the same vein as the rapid eye movement thing is sort of again like doing creating something in your in your brain or in your head that isn't normally there and then that makes you more susceptible to something else and so the way i'm trying to use that hypnotic thing is is to sort of simultaneously kind of activate different parts of your brain.

Kind of like wake them up, and then introduce music that is softening.

And that was kind of something I did years ago when I was studying my graduate degree. Just to say i did a five-person um clinical study that was very unofficial but it was all based on you know client survey and um but that was something i i felt like i understood back then was you need to sort of have an introduction that allows them to you know make a separation from their day-to-day and you're entering into this new space um right it's like a like a threshold correct yeah you're you're making your way you're perforating the membrane of experience, um and so it's i i can only imagine the type of stuff i'm making isn't for everybody you know i I don't think anything is, but I do think people who are open to this idea would probably be, you know, get the most benefit out of it. But even to say one of the people who've been coming to the meditations.

You know, I wouldn't peg them for someone who would necessarily be as impacted by it. But the first time we did it, you know, he towards the end, he was he was tearing up and not I don't know why I didn't ask him about it. But I felt like what, for me, that was him being vulnerable to himself, vulnerable to something that normally he would not be as vulnerable to. And potentially, my hope is that by being able to have some tears for whatever he was having tears about would even just create a little catharsis. Um so so yeah it it's uh still very much exploring it but the but those are the basic tenets is not hypnotism which sounds kind of funny but kind of a hypnotic vibe which just to say if you look back thousands and thousands and thousands of years and you go back into tribal communities communities um the oldest places of healing places of ritual um places of community and i would say integral experience would have been something akin to these communities gathering together. Around the campfire sharing um very kind of basic elemental music rhythm chants um but somewhere in that really primordial human experience uh lays this connection or lives this connection that we have to ourselves to each other to existence if you want to ask me that's that's my feeling um vibration is so essential to human experience and And music organizes vibration into ways that have a more powerful experience, whether that is just literally to help us dance or find, you know, share something with someone else, right? Music is this invisible thing which we can all sort of find the same rhythm in and therefore share something differently. in it.

Before I ramble too far. That was just to say that it's like the hypnotic component, I think, ties back to our ancient origins of rhythm in music. I mean, right when you said that, I started thinking about dancing around a fire. I've spent a lot of time in Africa and different places where they have people playing the drums or people dancing and singing kind of this combination that's happening and it happens here in the u. s too again going to a rave where you have electronic dance music playing boom you know and people all kind of bob in their head at the same time and um and can and can have that hypnotic experience with or without drugs i would say in that setting too yeah and and what i like about and i'm curious to ask you about so the idea of kind of bringing somebody into a new space but once they're there the music is still helping them right so they're still it's almost like you have an introduction and welcome to the space and then once they're there okay now we're in the space this is what we're doing in the space and maybe even a an outro or hey okay um now you're leaving the space. And side note, I mean, this is a plug for Caleb. Caleb has created the intro and outro for this podcast and the Daily Gym segment as well. And hopefully, I hope more in the future, because I think that's what show theme songs can do. They invite us into a space. Hey, hey, this is what's about to happen. And then once the show starts, then there are different types of sounds or experiences that are happening, and then there's another way out to let people out of this space. So do you see it as kind of a journey as well, where it's not just about the introduction or the inviting in? Yeah, no, very much.

There's you know as i again i think the soundtrack a movie soundtrack is probably the the best way to kind of help people think about it they're just shorter films and the the the movies quote unquote that happen would be inside of your head i will say um Um, these so far, these are, they, well, they can be a companion to like taking a walk in the woods or doing work. But, um, I think that places where they work the best are in kind of a, you know, a non moving meditation. You don't have to be like sitting in a meditation pose. You could be lying down, you could be sitting in a chair, but they're going to take, they're They're going to have their best effect if you're not, you know, ambulating somewhere or if you're going to sleep because they are very like, like the one I'm working on right now is almost like a, like a 20 minute dream. It's so dreamy and you, you know, you don't, you don't feel like the ground shifting beneath you. It's not like you're losing yourself in like a, you're not uncomfortable, but it's, it's very soft. There's a lot of space. And I think it, yeah, it just sort of pushes you more into like a dreamlike experience.

Um but the but right so intro long middle section and the outro tends to be quite a bit different than the intro the intro is meant to be somewhat activating to sort of initially it seems a little counterintuitive but it's like wake up the brain a little bit um it's kind of just letting you know like hey you should you should be attentive at least for this part and then gently ushering you into the next about 15 minutes or so and then the end is something very soft very gentle i usually finish with very quiet um nature sounds um that just slowly fade out so you have something that kind of somewhat brings you back into a real-life experience but that's a very gentle what a lot of science has suggested is very comforting to people of nature settings and nature sounds so it so it seems to me like it's.

Less about being background and more about being foreground where it's bringing it more into the foreground bringing more attention to it so it's not like going on a walk and having a background soundtrack to what you're doing it's more of like no this is the main activity yeah does. That sound right yeah yeah um and it's but the thing too is if you get into a place where you kind of forget get what's happening um that is fine like you're still hearing the music but you're not it's you're not just like laser focused on it and you're having you're drifting off into some kind of awkward conversation you had with your boss last week and you're reimagining how that conversation could have gone or that's fine that's that's kind of that's the kind of thing i'm hoping people people can explore while this stuff is happening or if like goes the opposite if there's, say, something you've achieved recently that you feel proud of or have strong, you know, positive feelings towards, it could also be a time for you to be proud and to have love for yourself, um, or love for something you did. Uh, I feel like too often we talk about these in a sort of like "examine the negative things" light where it's like, "No no no, this is examining yourself, this is being with the deepest parts of yourself," and I sure hope there are deep parts to people that want, they want to celebrate not only things that they're trying to overcome or understand better but things where they can, they can be joyous.

So it's like a guided meditation but not with words. But but more with sounds or with music in a way.

I would say...

Because it's like a...If I think about a guided meditation, often it's like, hey, be in one spot. Don't like, for example, don't do this while driving. Don't try to do a guided meditation while driving or operating a heavy machinery. Right, right, right.

I would say, I think, if done mindfully, And without too many words, that a few prompts throughout some of these sound experiences could potentially, if someone was using it in conjunction with their therapy, for example, and someone was trying to examine a fear, let's say. And so the therapist were to potentially prompt them at the very beginning, like, you know, once you get past the introduction, you know, maybe you're, you know just just try to think about the memory during this time and see what comes up or something to that effect i i'm by no means should anybody hear this as like a thing that they should do with it but i think in the right setting and according to the practitioner's uh wisdom, it could be there could be some guidance but it wouldn't be like a guided meditation where you know every 10 to 30 seconds there's like a new thing to sort of listen to or whatever.

So is it i'm trying to think i imagine most people who do yoga or therapy or like as the practitioner, probably don't have such a background in music right is that kind of your working hypothesis on this that most of the people who do this stuff yeah okay they'll put on pandora you know i mean it's just or maybe they think they're good at music but they don't really understand necessarily some of the impacts of it is that um i think i since i'm working with heather and she'll put together playlists for her yoga and she's quite good, um, at choosing music that is very, very suiting to what she's going after. Hmm. Um, so I think, I think I would say that I believe it ranges. Um, and what's interesting is, you know, someone who understands the power of music and, And regardless of how in tune they are or are not with what they provide, I think they would quickly understand what it was I was trying to get at with them.

And it might even be as simple as taking the playlist they use already and just making it seamless.

You know, as far as further, what I would say, further achieving, you know, that impact that I think any practitioner is trying to achieve. Which in a way is what a DJ often does. Oh. You know, it's like, oh, you like song one, two, and three, but let's beat match them and merge them so it doesn't stop and then start and then stop. And start right let's keep the flow going it's why i like listening to dj mixes because the flow continues the tempo continues it doesn't stop and then start at a different tempo and then stop and then start at a different tempo well if you it's like if you compare it to the human body and the human body is its rhythm is at least our experience of it is driven by its heart and so so to match the the the never you know the never-ending heartbeat of ourselves i mean never not never ending but you get my point is it doesn't stop until we stop for good um so it's the dj yeah is keeping that rhythm alive you know to sort of give your heart and your own natural rhythms a guide to to keep moving along with um a lot of the stuff i make is for these purposes doesn't have a rhythm to kind of guide you in that way um even though it might have a tempo that gets pretty.

Uh in intermeshed into the overall experience but but yeah i think the The stopping and starting, I can't think of a place other than maybe a live music experience. And even then, I don't think people would mind if it was seamless. But there's most places you don't really want the stop and start. You kind of want that continuation.

I think, again, it would be like if you watched a movie and every so often it just went black and the music disappeared and the footage disappeared, you'd be like, what? Or every so often there's a commercial that comes on with loud music that's totally not matching the theme of the movie. That's probably worse, yes. I mean, that's probably kind of the analogy, I think, maybe, that happens with a lot of these experiences, is that they're very discontinuous in a way. And when you're talking about the heart, the heart goes from 60 beats per minute to 120 beats per minute. It doesn't just go from 60 to 120 it goes from 60 to 61 to 62 you know it's like it it smoothly transitions whereas you know i i remember when i was out in living in oakland with you at the time you know and the warriors were in the playoffs and we i'd go watch the warriors basketball games at the local bar and during the game you know the game's on everything's going this and that and this and that and then they go to a commercial and the energy change normally it changes completely yeah but there what they would do is they would turn off the audio from the tv and then they would have a dj play and i'm like this is great oh right yes this is great yeah that was a much better answer to the commercials because it's maintaining the energy it's maintaining that flow and not disrupting it so much well and actually and you could think in a lot of ways jim i you make a good good point that in our modern age there's so much disruption right like if you work uh i don't want a desk job doesn't even mean anything anymore if you work with a computer. And let's say you work on slack and you have emails and whatever other things you might be using it's there's no consistency it's like 30 seconds of this 20 seconds of that a minute of this four minutes of that you're boom boom boom boom it's it's so your rhythms your your whatever the things that kind of help you to get in sync with what you're doing there's almost nothing and so it in a sense this is one of those few brief times in our lives like during the week or during a day where, yeah, just you and this piece of music for 22 minutes. It's not even that long.

That consecutive seamless experience of 22 minutes could even feel that much longer or have that much more impact because so much of our life is broken up into these little sound bites or visual bites or whatever.

And just having some consistency, some smooth, a more smooth experience might even be helpful in and of itself.

Hmm yeah so not even just the music but just the taking of that time yeah yeah i think. You know i think a lot about people's ability to focus. Just in general you know like having a conversation and being able to just Just be in that conversation for whatever period of time and not be distracted by your phone or not be distracted by, I don't know, birds in the tree or whatever it is. Just to have some direct focus. I feel like that's a, it helps. I don't know. I don't know if it's a matter of, again, coming down to these sort of different types of bodily rhythms that we don't really think much about, but that are very active in the background happening within our body and playing a big role in our experience, in our relationship to our emotions. Um if you have if you keep a very active heart rate you might be more prone to anxious or worried worrisome thoughts um and so having something that is intended intending to do the opposite to sort of bring your heart rate down to hopefully help create balance between your sympathetic and and your parasympathetic nervous system. All of these things then promote less obscurity, like more openness within your body. And more openness within your body means the systems are working better, they're more fluid, things are getting there, not obscured or obstructed.

And so overall, Even though it's a subtle thing, is if the more you can kind of get into these states where the systems feel open, feel capable, and can move things freely and at the rhythm that is natural to them, And again, you're going to assist so many other parts of the body, in particular, the emotions to kind of be able to relax and not be in a heightened state of any kind. Even you can't really maintain any one state for too long. It won't then it won't be beneficial.

You know, you don't want to sleep forever. You don't want to be happy all the time. You don't want to be sad all the time. you don't want to be angry all the time all of these things are going to exhaust, something within your system um i actually had a day recently where i'd been through a couple of tough uh things and i just felt emotionally just gray i was i think my if i were to, make a guess i had just used up all of the neurotransmitters that would have helped me stay a bit more positive or something you know not so i just felt flat you know and i think it was um i got some things just got overworked the the you know about 36 hours prior to this happening happening and uh and my body didn't have anything to to put out so i just kind of, you know i was just sort of there for like a half a day or so um and but that was just proof that it's like you know something i was trying to sustain something longer than i should have.

Trying to sustain like one emotion or whatever like yeah one state longer yeah and your buddy said nope can't do that anymore do something else you're like no but i want to keep doing it you're like nope you're done yeah relax like i don't want to relax i want to stay excited and happy it's like nope time to sleep it was as likely generator switch was just shut off it was like nope all any elani electrical charges to any of your system no longer available sorry.

God, how often does that happen in life where we're trying to maintain? My life is just great. I'm just living a great life. I'm living a great life. Boom. Like your body says, hey, you've been ignoring this for a long time. I'm going to turn up the volume until you hear it.

I want to, you know, blast you out. And Caleb, I think you're eating on the phone. No, it's a refilling of water. Oh, nice. Yeah.

Sounds, my friend, sound. earlier i was like you're talking about sounds and i heard the fan on my computer go on i said no see sounds can take us into different emotional states very quickly, no yeah well they i mean oh sound is, ah i love it so much you hate it sometimes too right i mean i well not not as or not hate but But like it makes you feel different things. Yes. Jackhammer. I don't like jackhammers. I don't like leaf blowers.

And well, I'm not going to go into all the things I don't like. Sound world.

Fingernails on a chalkboard. Ah, but what's fascinating is, why, for example, do fingers on a chalkboard have such a physical response in us, right? That is guaranteed if, you know, if it doesn't necessarily, but for most people it's going to cause some kind of skin response, right? Why?

And so what's interesting to me is that I can't answer that question directly. But when I think about how sound exists and how it has become, you know, it's so involved in our overall experience of the world. For example, if you hear a clap of thunder that's very close, you have a very strong visceral response. But you also have the awareness of like, oh, right, I should get safe. I should get out of the way of something that is very big and very powerful, way more powerful than me. I need to get somewhere else. And that's just the sound. Now, granted, over the course, you learn over years. But even as a child, the first time you heard thunder or the sound of a firework, it's pretty similar. You had a full body response.

And there's little clues like this all over within our natural experience, within just the day-to-day experience. There are a lot of things that sounds that have very, very physical relationships with us. So I think that speaks to, it sounds surprising power of what it can do to us. So even in examining the more scary, powerful impacts of music, you recognize the potential for its more beautiful and health-related impacts.

You know i started thinking about how different voices have different impacts on us how you know many people have told me hey you should do a podcast i'm like i am doing a podcast, i'm like you should know about the podcast you should listen to the podcast, you should know the podcast exists really what they should say is you should market your podcast oh that's a separate thing that means i have to type typically and type people people um if only i could podcast about my podcast i'm trying i'm trying i'm trying to do voice notes on platforms you know maybe that's the way to do it voice notes about longer voice notes the meta the meta meta yeah um, yeah so i'm thinking about these experiences um.

Let me ask, why do you keep working on this? You said you've been working on this for a long time with your undergraduate and master's and everything. Why are you still working on this stuff?

That's a good question because I didn't for a long time. And it's not because I didn't think there was merit to what I was doing. I don't know if I wasn't ready or certain other parts of me needed to mature. I think musically I've matured a lot in the past 10 years. Um so that and also i had a very good experience doing a live show just uh this past october which it featured some of my more mellow music but having was about 25 people in the room completely quiet and completely there with you i was like oh okay because i didn't have a lot of, um real i don't know if proof is the right word but some some basic evidence even of what my music was capable of so when i had this audience kind of right there with me i thought, thought to myself later, I thought, wow, that was amazing.

And even though there's so much music out there and so many ways to make it and too much for everybody to ever listen to by any means, I don't know. It's magic just doesn't cease for me.

It's so ephemeral and light in one sense. You can't touch it. I mean, you can feel it, but you can't grab it. You can't pin it down to something. You can't even contain it within a room. It's going to escape.

And so, and those completely supreme and magical elements of music, yeah, they've only elevated over the years. Um and i would also say too that researching the psychedelic assisted therapy and and how crucial music is to these things and knowing that in some cases i didn't say this but especially with psychedelic mushrooms um these people are using these one time now granted on just about all cases they've never tried it before so that's brand new to them and they often might be a uh someone over 50 so a little older um but they are having such powerful experiences with the mushrooms uh and music music i don't know of a therapy with the psychedelic mushrooms that doesn't use music just to say that yeah okay um and so you're like whoa there's something something incredibly potent happening here and music feels very vital to that. So that probably also really revamped a lot of my excitement, my own personal experience and those together. And, you know, when I talk to people and tell them about it, you know, I'm looking into getting more into this. Everyone has a very similar response of like, Oh, that's, that's awesome. Like, that sounds great or like that's a perfect fit for you or i i get it you know it's there isn't. There it's it's not lost on people um so yeah all of that together and and especially just witnessing people's positive experience with it um yeah it it that's why i keep going i mean it i don't know people who who know me best even though music has never been what's made me money or anything always say like yeah music that's. That's your thing um and uh it seems very natural to you and um and i can't stop making it so uh so. Yeah might as well channel your addictions right it oh goodness yeah and that i mean and it feels it's it is amazing it is. Amazing how light it is it's such a weird thing like. Everything else feels so physical and. Not in the making of music is physical but once it's alive once you've you've birthed your little magical musical frankenstein uh it's a good album name um it's it's this weird living thing that just ephemerally moves through space um and and i i i don't think i'll ever fully grasp what music really is which i think think because it keeps this uh mystery then i'll never wanting to stop chasing it and just seeing where it will take me well i'm glad because years ago i'm like hey caleb keep doing music and you're like uh like no do music man so i was one of those people like hey caleb you do music you just came up with that uh intro in i don't know five minutes what you came up with three or four variations of intros and outros in maybe 30 minutes i'm like how the heck did you and recorded yeah what what how huh you're like yeah i'll just get back to you in a few minutes like a few minutes are you kidding me now come on these are like 10 to 15 seconds long so it's not like but it's minutes but yeah but to record them and have them all produced and sent back so quickly I was like, what, how, huh, what? It seemed like magic to me. And so, yeah, what came up for me was you talking about performing in front of an audience. And it reminded me of, I think, Colbert again. I watched a lot of Stephen Colbert when the pandemic was happening and how, When him and John Oliver and a lot of these talk show hosts were doing it from home, just how different the experience was. Because there wasn't the feedback, there wasn't the interaction, there wasn't the shared experience with the audience. And so when he does it in person, it's different. There's clapping, people are paying attention, you can feel the energy. One of the things I struggle with on this podcast is just kind of talking into the void. Especially if it's just me doing a five minute reflection which have been more like 10 minutes these days but but it's just are people even listening i don't even know if people are listening and if they're listening how are they feeling and we're not listening at the same time so there's not this mutuality that i think performing in person can do so i mean i would would love to have kind of live podcast. Oh, that'd be fun. Like on stage. That'd be great. So shout that out for anyone who wants to host a live podcast of the Jim Kleiber show, um, in person. Um, but the other thing that came out for me was, um, what was this?