Birth

Grow

Flower

Fruit

Decay

Death

Rot

Re-

Birth

~

The impulse driving white liberals to exalt black people is a need to worship. This is a non-negotiable need as man is a ritual animal who must worship. The enlightened atheist conservative does not understand this and simply mocks this need for catharsis as tribal and therefore backward. But it is not backward, it is simply a misplaced impulse. Man is not merely an individual, he is also a religious animal and he must make offerings to Creation. If there are no designated spaces for him to do this — if the church has gone stale and can no longer meet the needs of the people — he will find them elsewhere: in other human beings with their own warring spirits who are also aimlessly searching for contact with the divine.

May Jason’s journey across the Great Threshold bring his soul peace. 🌸

🎧 Listen below

NUTRITION FACTS

Serving size 12 tracks (83 min)

Serving size per week (1 Set)

Score 🎼

Drums - Dlala Thukzin
Hold Me Down - Massh, Ninae
My House - Beyoncé
Throwback - Dubbel Dutch
Turning Wake - Ayla Nereo
uMoya - Thukuthela
La Trova Extended Mix- Waae
I Feel Love - Donna Summers, Darkside Vinyl Remix
One -Space Ghost Remix, Jimpster
Kigelia - Eifenberg
Landing Zone - Joez, RBøR
I Know You Extended Mix - Franky Wah

Ingredients

hints of Aquarius, a shit ton of patience, octaves octaves octaves, earth water fire air but not in that order, playa desert sunset orange hue, some tall ass redwoods, a lil magic where you least expect it.

Last week I spent some time with my guitar coach Josh in the mountains of Boulder, Colorado. We played music for hours everyday. It was heaven. We spoke alot about how if one wants to become a musician, one must complete only one task.

One must fall in love with Sound.

We hiked through the mountains one afternoon and talked about the beauty of this practice. As I type this, I can hear the clickety-clackety tap tap tap of my movements, the low and light whoosh as I rub my fingers together while pausing, the fresh silence as I lift my head and consider what to type next. I wonder how these sounds might fit in a DJ set.

“Love the Sound” Josh says, and I smile basking in the knowledge that this commandment is an education for life. If we can love sound, no matter how dissonant, we will notice that dissonance lends itself to harmony. The Ti in Do Re Me yearns for resolution. It begs for it. Impregnated in Ti is a seed that once actualized arrives inevitably at the next octave. This is what Dr. King meant when he said the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.

Love the sound. What would it mean for me to apply this to my feelings towards my parents, Josh asked? I thought for a few seconds. It would mean I would practice loving them as they are, I replied.

Homophobic? Yes. Deeply caring? Yes. Complicated? Yes. Human? Yes.

Love them as they are.

We’re having this conversation right now. Wouldn’t it be crazy if sometime in the near future they reached out to you?

Josh smirked and I smirked back.

It wouldn’t be crazy, I corrected him. It would be magic.

Three days later, this past Friday, my father who has not spoken to me in over a year, sent me a letter.

I screamed when I saw the text.

I had just finished counseling a client who was disheartened by all the darkness she saw in the world. We agreed to sing songs in our next call together. After we hung up, only about 6 seconds passed before I saw the text, that lingering Ti midwifing the next Do into thin air.

I screamed when I saw the text.

I screamed and sighed and steadied my breath. Then I opened the attachment and read.

Should I tell you about the dissonance or the harmony?

One cannot exist without the other, you know?

Musings with Chloé Simone is a reader-supported publication. If you enjoy reading my work, buy me a coffee. ☕

☕ ☕ ☕

A long time ago in a land far far away I ran an inclusion and belonging company called Theory of Enchantment. The exercise in every opening workshop for each team member I trained was simple: Ask yourself the question “Who Am I;” write down every answer that comes to you and say thank you.

Are you sometimes hardworking? Say thank you.

Are you sometimes lazy? Say thank you.

Are you sometimes a mother? Say thank you.

Are you sometimes a father? Say thank you.

Are you sometimes rich? Say thank you.

Are you sometimes poor? Say thank you.

Say thank you and notice the constantly changing nature of your being. Don’t hold on too tightly to any of it because its all constantly changing just like notes in a score. At the center of that change is a perennial stillness, a void full of buzzing potential, which, if you allow yourself to get quiet enough, you’ll hear humming at the center of your being.

A while ago I wrote a note to myself to turn all the teachings I created in Theory of Enchantment into songs and last note I read that note when I was reviewing old accounts. Below is a quick little sketch of a song I made called “Who Are You.”

Write down the answer that come to you; for every answer that come to you say thank you.

Special shoutout to my mentor and music teacher Josh Brill for helping me open my creative geyser and sing praises back to the universe all the day long.

Musings with Chloé Simone is a reader-supported publication. If you like what you read, buy me a coffee. ☕

☕ ☕ ☕

Do that, always

One time at night 
we were in my kitchen, dancing 
and she did this move
that set my soul on fire. 

She dropped,
low to the ground
then sprung back up like it was nothing,
and smiled and kissed my neck. 

My god! I shouted
Do that always! 

Even now, wherever she is
I pray she does that, always. 

Musings with Chloé Simone is a reader-supported publication.

If you like what you read, buy me a coffee. ☕

Buy me a coffee

The subject was the science of groove and though I found it adorable, I also noticed his presentation on groove lacked a certain kind of …groove.

So I asked myself, hmm, what key is this man’s voice in? I pulled up rekordbox and played a few songs in different keys to see if there was a particular sound that complimented his voice. One that seems to work is 12A or C#minor.

Above is a little video on what it sounds like to play the song Hallo, a reggae/dancehall tune. It’s a groove and I think you’ll find it adds to the presentation.

Shoutout to Toni, Maria A.G. Witek and Ethiopian singer-songwriter Yohana for producing the track.

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

NUTRITION FACTS

Serving size 14 tracks (83 min)

Serving size per week (1 Set)

Amount per serving

Calories 0 | Calories from Fat 0

%Daily Value

Rhythm

~ 120bpm

Groove

~ Infinite

Bass

~ Unbelievable

Ingredients

cedar husk, echo’s bone, strong endurance gravy, a dash of patience, trust. (contains soul lifting ingredients that will probably make you dance)

I was on my way to Capoiera last week when I got a notification that the location for class had changed. I had already waited for the train for 12 minutes and as it approached, I I realized I’d have to move to the other side of the track and catch the south bound train to get to the new location.

I sighed and quickly switched sides.

I was going to have to wait another 12 minutes to come. I called my Mestre and he told me I could come to the academy first, that original first location, the one whose train I was waiting for in the beginning of my trip but by the time I finished the call with my teacher, that train had come and gone.

Some kind of hot sensation began to fill my chest and the bottom of my throat. I don’t like being late. Something to do with time.

I was also carrying food for everyone since this weekend was an encontro, a series of games and workshops where Mestres fly in from all over the world to train and play the students. Feeding people is a responsibility I felt blessed to carry and I didn’t want to mess it up. A man was sitting next to me as I waited for the third train. He asked me about the quality of the bluetooth in my headphones and I brushed him off as politely as I could. I said I didn’t know what he was talking about, which was only half true.

He was pleasant enough but I didn’t feel like talking. If I had been more present I would have simply said, “hey I don’t feel like talking.” But I didn’t.

What’s funny about all of this is right before I left my house I said a blessing: Now I prepare my body to be subjected to the waves. Teach me to surf.

I was talking about the waves of Capoiera, the ups and downs of the role’s, esquivas, and aú de frentes. But the universe, the one Song, heard me and winked. And then she sent her Tides.

After this 45 minute ordeal, I arrived at another station and waited for the F train which took a very unusual amount of time to come. I started to notice how the hot sensation in my throat was no longer there, how it had come and gone, how it rose and fell like all waves do. When I finally arrived to the academy I learned we were actually gonna walk the Williamsburg bridge all the way to Brooklyn to train.

Well played, mama. Sri Mata. Game on. 📿

Read more

• Techniques and games that make you more comfortable with your voice.

• Animate indigenous worldviews on the power and medicine of song.

• Chanting to calm your nervous system and help you connect to the center of your being.

• + so much more!

I hope to see you there! Get your tickets here.

I’m currently learning the wonderful song Cuñaq which is a water song sung by a farming community in the highlands of Peru. It was adapted by the band Curawaka and I first heard it sung live, in a plant medicine circle by curanderas serving Mama Aya, a powerful animate force brewed in the Amazon, which you probably know as Ayahuasca.

I am in love with this song as it does something some of my favorite songs do: strike a note that is at once sorrowful and triumphant. The mood of the song feels low to the ground and yet the words are soulful and affirming. The village praises the river, which is both a Mother and a Serpent; Cuñaq provides life to the people and it also ebbs and flows and bears witness to their comings and goings throughout all the seasons of their lives. The chorus, which is my favorite part of the song, is a shout of praise for the animate force which brings forth life, which, in spite of its ups and downs is ultimately, a fiesta, a party, a celebration. ‘

Like the commandment to dance at a New Orleans funeral, or Rumi’s insistence that his practitioners show up to his passing with drums and tambourines and feverish dancing, this song is a constant reminder to me that no matter what I am going through, life is ultimately a celebration. As a great West African Proverb puts it, “to be alive to hear this song is a victory.”

It’s a wonderful challenge to learn this guitar plucking riff and sing in Spanish at the same time; I’m still working at mastering the technique. To do both at the same time is like trying to pat my head while rubbing my stomach! I love it.

Tomorrow night at 7pm, I’m running a two-hour virtual How to Sing workshop where we’ll meet and do some exercises to open up our voices and sing the song of creation back to itself. Tickets are $30 and you can get yours here. I hope to see you there!

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: “When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence? - Gabrielle Roth

🌸🌸🌸

Greetings friends, happy cancer season!

I’m back with the second installment of my new workshop: How To Sing!

But first, why am I doing this workshop?

Well, simply put, singing has saved me. It continues to save me every day. As many of you know I have been hit by a wave of grief I’ve never known after my parents disowned me for being bisexual; and what has helped me move through these emotions of grief and sadness has been singing.

When I’m sad, I sing. When I’m angry I sing. When I’m happy I sing. And by singing, I’m able to give expression to what is. I’m able to be present with what is and what I discover when I’m able to be present with what is is that what is, changes. Emotions shift. Waves titrate and energy swells and then plateaus, just like songs.

This singing thing is a godsend because it helps me surf the waves of my emotions, and it brings relief and solace to my aching heart.

And yet I know that soooo many adults in the world don’t let themselves sing even though they want to. They might feel like they don’t sound good when they sing or they were told not to sing when they were kids. This is a shame because singing is literal medicine.

So I designed a 2-hour workshop to help adults get over their fear of singing and let your voices ring out just as you were designed to do.

This workshop is mostly games and activities. Its hands on, meaning there’s not a lot of lecture-based content and it isn’t very heady; it is super super fun though and I promise you’ll have a good time and maybe even a revelation or two about the joys of discovering your own voice.

So, if you want to join, I’d love to have you! Details below!

How To Sing Workshop

When - Monday, July 6, 7-9pm est.

Where - Zoom

Cost - $30

Here’s what you’ll learn:

1. How to overcome any fear of singing you have

2. How much fun it is to sing and why you should do it more often

3. How singing can move energy and help you relax

Buy a ticket here!

Right now, I’m in a 10-week learning cohort studying the Blues and Jazz traditions as viewed through the writings of Albert Murray, Stanley Crouch, and Ralph Ellison.

I studied Albert Murray’s The Omni-Americans a few years ago and spoke about it on a few podcasts. In the text, Murray richly declares that America is fundamentally mulatto, mixed, and composite, and that what makes America possible is a skill that musicians, writers, comedians, and the Fool in Tarot embody: knowing how to play on the breaks.

Now, I know what you might be thinking:

Great question.

The simplest explanation is that in music, the breaks are the moment when an instrument drops. For example when Clyde Stubblefield, James Brown’s drummer, plays on the breaks in this song Funky Drummer (around 5:26), the guitar drops and the drummer keeps playing. These are the breaks:

This musical moment is not a “concept.” Rather it gives expression to an experience built into the very fabric of human existence: the downs, unexpected blows, sudden drops, and unpredictably spontaneous gaps in what you thought you knew about this life. These breaks simultaneously destroy our sense of an individualized self and puts us in touch with the Great Mystery of the life-death-life cycle inherent in all being.

This moment is recounted in all great world myths which reflect and express patterns found in material reality.

When Kore is taken to the underworld, this is a break. When West Africans are taken captive and brought to North America via the Atlantic Slave Trade, this is a break. When The Fool in the Tarot walks off the cliff, this is a break.

Murray notes that the capacity to play on (or through) these moments is a kind of surrender to the transformative, initiatory process, and this initiatory process is both fundamental to what it means to be human and essential to the endurance of the human spirit. It is also the ritual foundation from which all elite art forms spring.

Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald’s famous song perfectly captures this orientation:

“It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.”

The line “makes no difference if its sweet or hot; give that rhythm everything you’ve got” brings tears to my eyes now. It means something completely different than what it meant when I first heard this song, or even when I first studied Albert Murray. It is one thing to know the breaks in an abstract, philosophical sense. It is another thing entirely to know it in your bones through lived experience.

Maybe this is why Kurtis Blow’s The Breaks, was the first rap song to sell one million copies and be certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. Ironically, it’s a song my mom used to sing to me when I was a child, almost as if she was unconsciously warning me about my future.

Here are a few lines:

If your woman steps out with another man
(That's the breaks, that's the breaks)

And she runs off with him to Japan
(That's the breaks, that's the breaks)

And the IRS says they wanna chat
(That's the breaks, that's the breaks)

And you can't explain why you claimed your cat
(That's the breaks, that's the breaks)

The breaks are the trials and tribulations that shape us, dissolve us, and remake us: A loved one suddenly dies; you lose all your money in a bad investment; you tell your parents you’re gay and they disown you.

These are the breaks. They are the initiatory “briarpatch” as Murray put it, the thicket of thorns and prickly plants that put you in touch with the mortality at the center of existence. They are meant to demolish you and reweave you into proper relationality with the cosmos. These are the encounters that the human being must pass through in order to transition from adolescence to adulthood and return to the community with the wisdom pruned from the nectar of her experience.

This process is excruciatingly uncomfortable but it is also a direct education on what it means to be human. In order to come into the fullness of who you are, you must go through a death process, be dismantled, and be regrown.

Our human condition is cyclical like the Moon. We are born wide eyed and bushy tailed but we cannot stay in this pristine, Edenic state. Adulthood requires confrontation with Winter, with death, both in a literal sense at the end of our lives and through the dissolving of our egos at the varying stages we pass through while we are still living.

Mother. Maiden. Crone. These are the many faces of the Goddess. There are breaks in between. This is life’s orchestral cycle. And if communally and ritualistically enacted through art forms like musical composition, writing, dance, and storytelling, Kore is transformed into Persephone who then calls Spring forth from Winter and makes creativity possible.

Murray asks us to say yes! to this journey and to affirm this journey, despite the fact that it is painful and will ultimately leave us undone.

I have always been an incredible dancer and I’ve yearned to marry my artistic sensitivities to my intellectual mind. I am starting to now see how my experience of sorrow and grief in the face of my parent’s decision to cut ties with me is a break, a “ceasura”, inviting me to dance.

Will you join me?

My Offerings This Month

How To Sing Workshop - Monday, July 6th, 7 - 9pm.

I’m running another virtual How to Sing workshop in two weeks. Tell your friends to come. Get your tickets here.

Inner Light Counseling

I have a few more open spots if you’d like to get some one-on-one coaching. We chat once a week and I recommend art based practices and modalities based on what you’re going through in life. These are practices that will help you deepen your relationships with yourself, others, and our beautiful planet. Respond to this via the comment section or email me at info@theoryofenchantment.com if you’re interested!

4th of July Afrohouse Party 🗽

If you’re in New York for the 4th of July, join me and DJ Spyon at Acoustik Garden in Brooklyn for an Afrohouse themed day party. You can get your tickets here.

The universe is musical. Hear me weave with Emerald podcast host Josh Schrei as he retells Tolkien’s tale of how the universe began.

Bittersweet

The nectar of sorrow
The nectar of longing

Oh, let me not forget
that honey comes
from creatures that sting.

I’m looking for a sound engineer and studio to record it in for cheap if anyone knows anyone.

Plus here’s a link to my recent DJ set at House in Harlem Radio on WHCR 90.3 FM. Thanks to DJBlackIcon for having me and the girls over, we had a blast.

This piece is a response to Sam’s recent article, “Why I Won’t Debate Critics of Israel.”

Chapter 1: A Story from the Vedas1

The following is a story recited by Josh Schrei, host of the Emerald Podcast, the greatest podcast on earth. You can hear the full episode here.

Tvashtar, the shaper of forms, together with his partner, Ratchana, the arrangement of the forms: They have a child, Vishvarupa, whose name means “all the forms”.

Vishvarupa, as you might expect from someone whose name means “all the forms”, has three heads. One that drinks Soma, one that eats food, and one that drinks liquor. So he crosses all three worlds, the upper world of the Soma drinking Devas, the middle world of humans who exist here in the food cycle, and the underworld of the Ashuras who drink liquor.

And because he has a head in all three worlds, he serves as a priest who is in charge of the distribution of Soma, the nectar of existence, the vital life breath. In the middle of this great pan-cosmic ritual called existence, Vishvarupa facilitates circulation, the flow between all the forms.

Vishvarupa's father, Tvashtar, is from the Deva realms. His mother Ratchana is an Ashura from the underworld, and he loves his mother, the way that a son does, and carries with him, as many do, a slight bias towards his maternal line. He loves his mom just a little bit more.

So it is that during the Soma ritual, in which the nectar of existence is distributed to the Devas of the upper world, he sneaks a little bit of that soma to the Ashuras on the side. And that creates an imbalance in circulation, in flow.

Universal circulation depends on this balance of boundary and movement, that each receive what is theirs to receive, and Vishvarupa, perhaps just wants everything to circulate well, wanting everything to flow everywhere to everyone all the time.

[But] Indra, Lord of the Devas, gets wind of this imbalance, and he fears that with the divine nectar fueling them, the Ashuras will become too powerful. So he confronts Vishvarupa, and in that confrontation, swords are drawn, and Indra takes his sword and slices all three of Vishvarupa's heads off at the neck.

The heads tumble to the ground, and from each head emerges a bird. From the head that drinks only Soma, emerges a Kapinjala bird, which calls with the rhythmic prayer in the pre-dawn hours.

From the head that drank only liquor emerges a Kavalinca bird, which sings intoxicating songs. From the human head emerges a titari, a Partridge, which chatters and pecks about, grabbing whatever morsels it can.

Tvashtar, the shaper, is enraged at the slaying of his son. He plans a ceremony, a yagnia, of vengeance, and into the fire he pours offerings and utters mantras. But right at the height of the ritual -- right when the energies are circulating just right for the shaping of forms, right when that reverberatory energy has steeped and steeped and steeped, and so it's almost as if every word he speaks into that sensitive vibrational field could erupt into its own creation, its own being -- right then, Tvashtar makes a mistake.

He mispronounces a syllable.

So instead of generating a being who will kill Indra, he gets it wrong, and instead there is born a being whom Indra must kill. There is born from that mispronounced word, Vritra, the dragon. The great serpent he is called in the Vedas. This dragon, says the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, grew day after day spreading as fast as arrows shot in opposite directions. He was, "dark as a burnt and smoking hill and lustrous as a bright array of clouds at once."

The hair on his body and his beard and mustache were the color of melted copper.

And his eyes were piercing like the midday sun. He appeared unconquerable. Dancing and shouting with a loud voice, he made the entire surface of the earth tremble as if from an earthquake.

He placed his lower jaw on the ground and his upper jaw in the sky. His mouth became deep like the sky itself, and his tongue was like a great serpent. He seemed to be trying to devour the entire world.

He seemed to be licking up all the stars in the sky with his tongue and eating the entire universe with his long sharp teeth. Seeing this gigantic dragon, everyone in great fear ran here and there in all directions. And here's the thing. Vertra is terrifying, yes. He is monstrous, yes, but he's not evil.

He worships the great consciousness of the universe just as Indra does, the texts say. He sings the name of the beloved aloud, too. He is called noble in some texts, glorious in others. He is a Brahman. Vritra is not chaos. His name means blockage.

He gathers all the world's waters to him and holds them. The rivers dry up. The rains cease. The flow of Soma, the flow of water, the flow of life, has been blocked. The rain is withheld. The cattle starve. Energetic bloat builds, waiting for a storm to rupture it open.

While Vishvarupa over-circulates, over-liberates, over-shares, over-compensates, his brother, Vritra, hoards everything, keeps everything in. Perhaps you know these two siblings.

These are the two imbalances in circulation that are the offspring of the creation of distinct forms. This is the inevitable movement of the dragon body of creation. From formlessness comes distinction. From distinction comes boundary, and that boundary is central and necessary to the architecture of creation.

You've got to give that serpent power direction if you want a world.

But then that boundary can rigidify, and when it congeals or calcifies, then it can start to obstruct. And when it obstructs, there is buildup. The dragon hoards the waters, and eventually buildup must be released.

When the coiling undulant powers crystallize into patterns, when the boundary becomes too rigid, there needs to be energetic release.

Faced with this constant navigation between movement and blockage, structure and flow, Indra is not the conquering hero. Indra acts as the uninitiated king, responding rashly, fearfully to the slightest hint of an imbalance, overreacting by killing Vishvarupa, and that overreaction sparks an even deeper consequence.

So cycles of freeing up lead to cycles of clamping down, and toppling of orders leave vacuums in which new orders must arise, and this is the ongoing dance of power.

Chapter 2: The Problem with Sam’s Epistemology

In a 53-page report published in 2024, Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazetti document how Israeli authorities have allowed settlers in the West Bank to harass, humiliate, and persecute Palestinians with impunity. Starting with a 1982 internal government investigation (the Karp Report) that found widespread negligence and cover-ups by police and military, the piece traces how this pattern of non-enforcement became institutionalized. 2

Even after major incidents like the 1994 Goldstein mosque massacre that killed 29 Palestinians, perpetrators received reduced sentences or pardons. This culture of impunity—one law for settlers, another for Palestinians—allowed a radical ultranationalist movement to gradually move from the fringes into mainstream Israeli politics and eventually into government itself, where figures like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir now actively obstruct law enforcement in the West Bank.3

This report took years to write, and includes “interviews with more than 100 former and current Israeli government officials — including four former prime ministers — scoured secret government documents, and reported from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, the West Bank and Washington. Natan Odenheimer, who contributed reporting from Israel and the West Bank, also obtained documents about how ultranationalist crimes went unpunished.” 4

I am linking to the archived version because it’s really important that folks read it in full. Smotrich, who is now the Minister of Finance in Israel, said in 2015 that “Hamas was an asset,” not in spite of, as Harris describes, their “Nazi-like tendencies”, but because of them.

This cuts to the heart of the issue with Harris’s piece which obscures an ongoing dynamic. Israeli extremists in the West Bank are not, as he put it, “ethically different” from Islamists. They are “fanatical men or adolescent boys, brainwashed, apocalyptic, and messianic, who have emerged from the dark and brutal undercurrents of religious Zionism. They want to rid the West Bank of all non-Jews (and maybe some secular Jews as well) in order to hasten the arrival of the Messiah, who is scheduled to turn up as soon as this campaign of ethnic cleansing is completed.” 5

As David Shulman wrote in the New York Review in 2024, these fanatics have the backing of government institutions including Ben-Gvir who as Israel’s National Security Minister has sweeping authority over the Israeli police and the Border police.

This would be like “if the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan had been appointed head of the FBI.” 6

(To put an even finer point on this, Ben-Gvir used to have a portrait of infamous terrorist Baruch Goldstein in his office. Goldstein murdered twenty-nine Palestinians in a massacre in Hebron in 1994. Ben-Gvir agreed only to take it down after it became a political liability.7)

So, like Hamas, extremists in Israel are apocalyptic in nature and believe that the redemption of the world will come when Palestinians are ethnically cleansed from the land;8 and like Hamas in Palestinian society, these extremists often attack and in some cases murder Palestinians with impunity.

Over the course of many decades, they have become part of the government and have undermined democratic institutions; Hamas and Jewish extremists in Israel are thus two sides of the same coin and, as with two competing metal rock bands, play the same music. 9

Harris seems to perceive the two parties as fundamentally separate. He describes Israeli society as fundamentally “free” in comparison to Hamas-run Gaza in which Islamists regularly “murder dissidents.”

He writes:

“The question is not whether Israel governs the West Bank the way it governs itself. The question is what kind of society Israel is. Israel has competitive elections that turn out sitting prime ministers, a supreme court that overrules its own government, a press that savages it daily, and Arab citizens in its parliament and judiciary. Hamas murders its dissidents. That a free society is also running an unjust occupation is a damning fact about the occupation. It isn’t evidence that the society itself is unfree.”10

This feels like a “but look, over there!” kind of argument. Israeli society is free for Israelis but not free for the out group, namely Palestinians, whom it also governs; and a society cannot be truly free if it is systematically denying rights to millions of people that it governs.

Islamists and Jewish extremists are not separate, atomized, discrete objects operating independently of each other. They exist — as we all do — in an ecological field of relationship and they run off the fumes of the same fundamental belief system. That Harris is unable to see this is troubling.

He goes on to write,

“If the Palestinians laid down their arms, there would be peace. There could be a two-state solution; there could even be a one-state solution; it wouldn’t matter.”

This, again, is absurd.

There are plenty of Palestinian families today in the West Bank who have no arms, who were run off their land by roving bands of settlers, and who appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court for respite, only to have their buildings demolished, their sheep and cattle run over, and their schools destroyed. This has been happening for decades. 11

In fact, there would be no two-state solution or one-state solution or any state solution if Palestinians “put down their arms” because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that he is against such a state in the first place.12

In his worldview, Palestinian self-governance is inherently a threat to the sovereignty of the state of Israel, because, as his longtime advisor suggested, he believes “there will always be a hostile world that would not care for the security and welfare of the Jewish nation, and one thing that we should do is do it ourselves, and take our destiny, so to speak, in our own hands … and never trust the outside world to protect us, because it won’t.” 13

The tragic irony of this worldview is that it produces the very thing it was meant to defend against: settlement policies are deeply corrosive and threaten the state of Israel. This is the mispronounced syllable that Tvashtar, the shaper of forms, makes in our earlier story.

Something built to protect the Jewish people has created a wreckage.

As early as 2004, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked Talia Sasson who had just retired as the head of the special tasks division in the state attorney’s office, to “draw up a legal opinion on the subject of “unauthorized outposts” in the West Bank.”

He was being pressured by George W. Bush’s administration to get a handle on ever-expanding illegal settlements and deputized Sasson to draft a report. Her findings were damning:

“‘The settlers, she wrote, were ‘the moving force,’ but they could not have succeeded without the assistance of ‘various ministers of construction and housing in the relevant periods, some of them with a blind eye, and some of them with support and encouragement.’

This clandestine network was operating, Sasson wrote, ‘with massive funding from the State of Israel, without appropriate public transparency, without obligatory criteria. The erection of the unauthorized outposts is being done with violation of the proper procedures and general administrative rules, and in particular, flagrant and ongoing violation of the law.’

These violations, Sasson warned, were coming from the government: ‘It was state and public agencies that broke the law, the rules, the procedures that the state itself had determined.’ It was a conflict, she argued, that effectively neutered Israel’s internal checks and balances and posed a grave threat to the nation’s integrity. ‘The law-enforcement agencies are unable to act against government departments that are themselves breaking the law.”’14

Behold, Vritra, the dragon.

In 2016, Eyal Arad, former advisor to Netanyahu noted in an interview with Frontline PBS, that “the prime minister has a messianic notion of himself — as a person called to save the Jewish people from this new Holocaust.”15

I sense it is this salvific, messianic force that is the energetic glue that links Islamists and Jewish extremists in a never-ending game of violence and destruction. It is the same waveform that causes thousands of people around the globe to lose their minds and become apoplectic in response to the mere existence of Israel — and not, say China; it is the same force that causes thousands of people, including Sam Harris, to effectively ignore Israel’s transgressions because “the other side is worse,” not realizing that the “sides” are locked into synchronization, dancing to the same tune, and animated by a dynamic with its own rules and fundamentalist ways of seeing the world.

That dynamic, that animate force, is Messianism.

Now, despite what you may have heard, Messianism was not invented by humans.

Messianism is a dragon; it is a Titan, a Form that rises whenever certain weather patterns are favorable.

It exists within many religious systems, and yet doesn’t require capital R Religion to be stirred awake. (I’m looking at you, Soviets). Conditions for its awakening include societal disruption, decay and disorder, and extreme prolonged pain endured by us homo sapiens, who are sensitive mammals, still evolving and learning how to deal with pain.

How do we deal with searing, devastating, hair-splitting pain? From generation to generation, that perennial question must be confronted.

It is pain that awakens the sleeping dragon of Messianism. Pain — like the pain of your great grandparents being murdered in a genocide or the pain of having your home destroyed, your land ransacked, and you not being allowed to return — stirs the beast from its slumber. And sometimes this stirring causes people to fall into nihilistic despair, yearn for utter and complete transcendence of the earth, and a savior figure who can bring it into being.

I grew up in the shadow of this dragon. I was raised a fundamentalist Christian and taught to memorize the spiraling, trance-like stories that promised an afterlife that would rid me of all my suffering, if only I bowed in loyal devotion to destroying the Other. I was trained to breathe the dragon’s fires and drink the trance emanating from its tendrils.

Many indigenous folk say that there are protocols for dealing with dragons. After all, dragons aren’t merely evil.

Life is hard, suffering is maddening, and respite from that suffering is necessary if we are to thrive as a species. A messianic search for transcendence can give rise to movements that spur hope and encourage adherents to look within the horizon of their soul for a new day that comes; but it can also create death cults and blood-thirsty fanatics who paranoiacally see the other everywhere and spiral into a mania of violence and bloodshed.

These are the benevolent and brutal sides of the dragon we call “Messianism,” and in Israel-Palestine, the violent “sides” of Islamists and Jewish extremists are limbs belonging to the same body; they form the coiled dimensions of its many scales.

Sam Harris is aware of one half but is blind to the whole, and so remains caught in the talons of this great creature’s piercing grip.

The sacred is awkwardly closer than you think. 
- Bayo Akomolafe

Last night I went to a bar in Manhattan to perform a show, and guess what?

No one showed up.

That’s right. Not a single soul.

Now, on one hand, I could look at this through a certain lens and scoff. How pathetic!

On the other hand, I couldn’t help but chuckle. Of course no one showed up. Behold, the work of the first Tarot Card in the deck dancing its dance right off the cliff.

Behold, The Fool.

Okay wait, let’s pause.

Let me walk this story back a few frames.

Last night I had a show at a series called Mike Geffner’s Inspired Word; Mike is a sports writer and journalist that’s also been running an incredible series for artists in New York City for 17 years.

17 years is a long ass time, ya’ll.

It’s more than a decade of hosting poets, singers, comedians, bands, and other artists in New York City; its also a labor of love that makes zero money.

In other words, Mike Geffner is a real one.

He’s an OG who’s been holding it down in the Big Apple for a long time, and he’ll go to bat for the artists under his keep if he feels venues are screwing them over. He’s seen a lot, has earned his stripes, and he’ll say exactly how he feels whenever he feels it.

If he’s annoyed with an artist for not bringing in an audience or frustrated with a venue, or verklempt over the nation’s politics, he might let you know even if you don’t want to. Being a sports writer, he connects with you through his pugnacity. (There’s a boxing metaphor somewhere in there, I’m sure.)

He can become easily irritated when things aren’t turning out well during a show and he can have a prickly attitude without really meaning to hurt you with it. Mike is turning seventy soon and, in his own words, he’s got a “crusty exterior”.

I’m really grateful to him for giving me a platform all these years. He’s really believed in my talent and my gifts and Inspired Word has been a beautiful platform for me to try my hand at live shows, mini concerts, and stages. I’ve learned a lot and I’ve grown as an artist.

Through the small concerts I’ve hosted, I’ve become more used to the stage and the nervousness that inevitably rumbles in my belly whenever I’m on a raised platform; I’ve become much more comfortable with playing acoustic guitar live; I’ve learned how to adjust to the sound of my voice on the mic, a sound that initially surprised me at my first concert.

But last night, as my time slot approached and no one arrived for the first feature act, and the first open mic arrived to an empty room, and my friend texted to say she wasn’t going to be able to make it after all, all while I was in the middle of the What The Fuck is This Grief Portal I’ve been moving through lately, Mike’s prickliness ended up being too much for me to hold.

So I left.

Somehow, I knew I needed to get out of there and be among people. Not on a stage, not on a platform, but with people.

which is really funny because I’ve been thinking I might start busking in NYC soon.

Anyway, Union Square was nearby so that’s where I went. I sat by a fountain and took in the hustle and bustle of New York City.

It’s summer now, finally, so people were out. Rollerskaters everywhere, vendors selling their wares, grown folks playing chess.

It was loud.

It was chaotic.

And it was magic: the noisy, messy, yet-somehow-still-sonorous sound of the people come alive in Summer.

One vendor played various songs like ‘Everyday I’m Hustlin’, Up by Cardi B, you know, tunes with percussive soundscapes that motivate you and boost the confidence of everyone passing by.

I settled in by playing harmonies with those songs, percussion patterns on my guitar that were in both melodic time and rhythmic time, so to speak. I did this for about an hour, maybe 90 minutes. I was struck by what others might disparagingly call the riff raff, but which was actually the beautiful diversity of the people and the panoply of sounds they made when they walked by.

The great singer songwriter Trevor Hall says that all of his lessons come in the form of sound, and in an interview with the Emerald Podcast, he and Josh Schrei spoke about how all sounds are sounds emanating from the Divine Mother of the Universe.

Like the simple conversation of humans leaving work and heading to the subway, or the phone calls bikers made as they rode through or the laughter kids shared as they danced to a song playing from the bluetooth of a skateboarder sailing by.

All of this is Her, an affirmation of the Vedic teaching of Nada Brahma: The World is Sound.

There was something trance-like about it all, something both liminal and enduring.

Next to me, two MTA workers who seemed to be on break were chilling, just talking. I walked past a man with gold chrome roller skates that were so cool. A woman yelled for ten minutes at the top of her lungs, just, hurling curse words at one of the vendors.

As I watched, I had to laugh even as I braced for conflict to burst out. This, all of this, is the magic of New York.

(Btw, nothing happened. The yelling came to a fever pitch then dissipated, just like the rest of the crowd which began to fan out as the sun started to set.)

Around 8pm, as the crowds died down, and I switched from playing notes to playing chords, I felt comfortable enough to sing.

I can’t recall what the first song was but at some point I started singing Love Runs Out by One Republic and something began to stir. The energy shifted; things became still.

I'll be your light, your match, your burning sun
I'll be the bright in black that's making you run
And we'll feel alright, and we'll feel alright
'Cause we'll work it out, yeah, we'll work it out

I'll be doing this, if you have a doubt
'Til the love runs out, 'til the love runs out 

Now, I don’t know about you but I think this song is FIRE. I fucking love it, it stirs so much in me; and One Republic’s version is fast. It’s foot-stomping, hair raising gospel and I sang it on acoustic guitar which made for a more raw, stripped down version.

There’s a sorrow in these lyrics but there’s also a triumph and a power that I hear; it’s something that sounds, at least to my ears, like redemption.

The wind of the people quieted. It slowed down. The street lights in Union Square Station turned on.

And I began to belt.

That thin, illusory veneer of separation I sometimes feel exists between me and my fellow human being, that trick of my mammalian biochemistry, began to peel away.

Sorrow does this to you, I think. Its a kind of psychedelic all on its own. It really drops you to the root, the axis mundi, the pulse at the center of the earth. I am beginning to taste the nectar of this natural acid, even as it washes me over.

A woman stopped and sat nearby. She was white and probably in her early fifties and she kept a considerable distance from me. It was clear she was troubled. She would occasionally mutter to herself, almost as if she was having an inner conflict with herself.

I’ve learned to notice troubled spirits; I know how to recognize my own. The Nigerian poet Bayo Akomolafe says that if you see a person troubled by something, know that what you’re witnessing is a Force inside them, a living energy, “the passing of a wild god."1

Many of the teachers I’ve sat with have learned protocols for how to be in the presence of wild gods. They’ve learned from indigenous wisdom keepers how to guard themselves and protect the space.

As I took in the scene, I felt in awe of the spectacle of this as well as the quiet truth of it.

Whenever we are troubled by hard times, malignant spirits, or weary currents, each of us receive a measure of healing, even if just a spoonful, when we listen to the sturdy medicine of good music.

More than just entertainment; more than a good time; more than a way to escape: Good music is medicine, and a spoonful is often enough.

Eventually, I sang an original song, a prayer I wrote last Fall to help me work with the warp and woof of my tears. Afterwards, I sang a song by Dido called Some Kind of Love. Then came Get Up, Stand Up by Bob Marley. Next was The Cave by Mumford and Sons.

My eyes began to dampen. Some part of me was praying through the singing. I haven’t bawled my eyes out in a long time. I didn’t last night either. I am still trying to. I’m finding that singing helps my tears make the journey.

Soon, a black man, maybe in his late thirties, sat across from me. I could tell he was hesitant to come close. I liked that he respected our distances. I sang and he sat across from me and just watched. And then, another woman who appeared to be of Indian heritage, probably in her early twenties, sat right next to me and just…listened.

The stillness of that was what maybe moved me the most?

There was no fanfare, no loud whistles or bells, no words of interruption, no requests for songs. There was just a simple moment in time with humans from different walks of life, each one carriers of the divine, just like you and me, who must make the trek from birth to death just like you and me, who yearn and fear and love and cry just like you and me, maintaining their respectful distances, sitting in sacred ceremony, and listening.

I set up a Partiful invite weeks ago to bring people to my show tonight at Mike’s. I titled it Music Meditation with Chloé Simone.

Even though no one showed up at the bar, I left feeling full.

Upcoming Offers 🪩

1. Sunday I’m DJing in Brooklyn at DLNo9 from 5pm to 8pm. Come say hi and dance with me!

2. Next Wednesday, I’m running a 2-hour virtual workshop called How To Sing. Come learn improv techniques and the fundamentals of Nada Brahma: The World is Sound. Get your tickets here.

3. I provide one-on-one spiritual counseling to individuals through my program Inner Light Counseling. If you’re interested in working one-on-one, leave me a message in the comments or DM me!

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Thank you for reading and for the gift of your attention. 🌸

Greetings Substack friends and family. I recently passed a threshold that has taken me further into the territory known as Grief. Maybe you know something about this and can teach me?

May marked a year since my father decided to stop speaking to me; and in April my mother used a language to describe me that was so cruel and heartbreaking that I had to block her. Hence, I am no longer in touch with my parents, which has put me into a deep resonance with the difficult terrain of Sorrow, a familiar and strange landscape whose mysterious contours I am getting to know on a daly basis.

My girlfriend Ash introduced me to a way of journaling called two-way journaling. Its a way of dialoging with the Unconscious. I write a question down and the Great Mystery answers back. I’ve been doing this these past few days to try to consciously tend to the infinite shades of Being that Sorrow shows up as.

Sometimes its an aching feeling in my throat; sometimes it’s a small migraine in my right temple. Always, it is a heaviness, a deep sinking feeling that I am learning to write, to stretch, and to sing into expression so that it becomes medicine.

I’m currently enrolled in Joshua Schrei’s Mythic Body course, a year-long program that connects participants to the somatics of myth and storytelling, indigenous wisdom, and how to be a human being in a world gone mad. What does it mean to be in relationship with Nature which creates us and ultimately devours us? How do I devote myself to the Mystery which will, in the end swallow me up. How is sadness and grief an inherent part of that Mystery and what does it reveal about the nature of the Earth? These are just a few of the questions that are comforting me through this strange and heart-stricken time.

And there is music. Oh let us give thanks that there is music. I’ve been on this musical trip for a long time, since birth really. I sense some African deity implanted his spirit in my soul during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. I think about this often. My sense of rhythm is freakishly uncanny and my pores know West African rhythmic time like the back of my hand. I think it was carried over on the ships and somehow made its way to me. I give thanks for this gift every day. It helps me move energy.

Recently I graduated from Tasha Blank’s eight-month PhDJ school and I’m going to start DJing around the city. This Sunday I have a gig from 5-8pm est at Dead Letter Number 9 in Williamsburg. If you live in Brooklyn and you feel inclined to come dance, please do!

Finally, Ive decided to enter into a deep study of Tarot, beginning with the Fool Card which now sits on my altar at home. Special thanks to for her monthly ritualizing of the new and full moons which has deepened my sense of the music of the cosmos. Every day I begin my day with the Lakota tradition of saying blessings to the 7 directions, and every full moon I honor the trek of the phases of the moon.

I have decided to deepen my awareness by contemplating the meaning of a tarot card every full moon. The Fool card will be on my altar until the next full moon in Capricorn. This card is a beautiful place to start, because it represents new beginnings, innocence, and a leap of faith. It is about open-mindedness and curiosity as we navigate our way through the unknown.

Grief is a Mystery, a portal, a bardo. In The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Francis Weller says that each one of us “must learn the art and craft of grief, discover the profound ways it ripens and deepens us…calls us to full heartedness.” I am sitting with the ways in which the Fool and Grief are the same card in a sense and I remain humbly in devotion to their teachings.

My offerings

1. Tonight at Sugar Mouse in NYC at 7:30pm, I’ll be sharing some songs. If you’re in town, I’d love to see you.

2. This Sunday, June 7, at Dead Letter Number 9 in Williamsburg, I’ll be DJing from 5pm - 8pm est. Come say a blessing to the spirits, have a drink, and bless me with your dance.

3. Next Wednesday, I’ll be hosting a two-hour How to Sing workshop from 7pm to 9pm est on zoom. We’ll use improv techniques to loosen our inhibitions and give way to song! You can get tickets here.

Thank you for reading and for the gift of your attention. 🌸

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: “When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence? - Gabrielle Roth

🌸🌸🌸

Greetings friends, happy Summer!

I’m here to announce an all new workshop from Theory of Enchantment called How To Sing!

But first, why am I doing this workshop?

Well, simply put, singing has saved me. It continues to save me every day. As many of you know I have been hit by a wave of grief I’ve never known after my parents disowned me for being bisexual; and what has helped me move through these emotions of grief and sadness has been singing.

When I’m sad, I sing. When I’m angry I sing. When I’m happy I sing. And by singing, I’m able to give expression to what is. I’m able to be present with what is and what I discover when I’m able to be present with what is is that what is, changes. Emotions shift. Waves titrate and energy swells and then plateaus, just like songs.

This singing thing is a godsend because it helps me surf the waves of my emotions, and it brings relief and solace to my aching heart.

And yet I know that soooo many adults in the world don’t let themselves sing even though they want to. They might feel like they don’t sound good when they sing or they were told not to sing when they were kids. This is a shame because singing is literal medicine.

So I designed a 2-hour workshop to help adults get over their fear of singing and let your voices ring out just as you were designed to do.

This workshop is mostly games and activities. Its hands on, meaning there’s not a lot of lecture-based content and it isn’t very heady; it is super super fun though and I promise you’ll have a good time and maybe even a revelation or two about the joys of discovering your own voice.

So, if you want to join, I’d love to have you! Details below!

How To Sing Workshop

When - Wednesday, June 10th, 7-9pm est.

Where - Zoom

Cost - $30

Here’s what you’ll learn:

1. How to overcome any fear of singing you have

2. How much fun it is to sing and why you should do it more often

3. How singing can move energy and help you relax

Buy a ticket here!