Breaking the Sound Barrier with Michael Joly

Breaking the Sound Barrier with Michael Joly

On this episode we explore sound and how it changes and connects us; how to hear, listen and distinguish the truth in our hearts and souls. We also have a three minute Tone Therapy session with the use of Michael’s invention: the N.O.W. sound device which when you listen for 3 minutes and 20 seconds has the similar outcome of a long meditation.

Wise words from this podcast:

Michael Joly:

“All forms arise from no form.”

“Having a fog experience like that, can kind of bring us back to this primordial pre-formed time. And I think that's part of what we're recognizing in a fog experience; is it's not quite in form yet.”

“…the Holy Spirit doesn't speak first nor the loudest. “

“…sitting in stillness and allowing stillness and allowing spaciousness allows thus, still small, very quiet, inspired thoughts to arise.”

“I realized that when I followed sound so intensely like that in the context of my job as an audio engineer, in the context of, of, you know, designing products and, uh, and listening to them, , that I found, I found I could not be thinking at the same time as I, as listening, if I was truly bringing and intentional attention to listening, right. I could not be thinking at the same time. And then only years later, did I say, Whoa, wait a minute. That sort of matches up with some of the check boxes of what meditation is and intentional unintentional, unintentional nonjudgmental focus on the present moment.”

“Let’s bundle up all the lies and turn our backs to them. Turn our backs to that profanity and inhabit truth and see how that feels.”

“…this is another type of mindfulness practice that you have to have an intention. You have to willfully use your attention…combining the word attention with an, a, an intention. You have to have an intention to listen attentively and to direct your attention.”

“A shift in focus as an aid; these are aids; to give the mind another form object to alight upon, and doing that intentionally.”

Fawn:

“Where the magic happens is in the space of the unknown… everything manifests within that space of nothingness where it's not formed yet.”

Transcript:

Breaking the Sound Barrier Episode 37 with Michael Joly

[00:00:00] Track 1: [00:00:00] We're an interracial couple with two kids wanting to do something that highlights the power of friendship and what it means to be in the company of true friends. We're going to move our society away and out of the loneliness epidemic and into a friendlier, happier world. Welcome to our friendly world.

Better, stronger, together.

fawn: [00:00:42] Good morning. Good afternoon. Hello. Hello. You know the sound of the ocean, the sound of ocean waves. I'm getting right into at first negative wisdom from Santa Monica. This time. [00:01:00] It's the sounds that I heard from Santa Monica. That was my lesson. I, as a small child, as you guys know, I talk about. My mentor, Santa Monica all the time.

But as a child, now that I'm looking back on, it makes sense. One of the reasons I felt so calm and taken care of, I think it was the sound of the ocean waves. What is it about that? It's, it's like, it's like the sound of. Shh. Like, I don't know how that came across the microphone, but you know, when we had our babies and the doctors would say, uh, that's sound calms them, um, on an extreme level, they would say even the sound of a vacuum cleaner calms them.

And I'm like, why? That is ridiculous. And they would say it, it could be the sound [00:02:00] of. Just being in utero. Right. All the, all the pipes going, I guess. I don't know how you describe it, but you know, the sounds of water you're in water. Right. And so the sounds of the waves, I guess it's kind of like, it reminds you of a breath coming in and going out deep breath in.

Deep breath out, Matt, why are you looking at me like that? Stop it. Do you not understand what I'm saying? No, I do. I do ocean. It, it is life. It teaches you so much. Just sitting there, the waves come in the waves, go out and it's so powerful. Even if you're just there with your. Toes in the water, like barely the water reaches your, your ankles, but you feel like your entire body will get sucked into the deep, deep ocean.

When the, when the tide goes out, when [00:03:00] the water goes back out, it's a huge port. Very powerful, much like the sound. It just made me, it was like a mother, a kind loving mother or a parent shushing me. And saying it's okay. Shushing in a good way. Don't laugh. No, no, no, no. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead. And so today I want to talk about, I call it breaking the sound barrier, and I want to talk about communication and I wanted to talk about tone and sound.

I'm now addicted to looking things up. Let me see tone. Let's look it up. Noun, a musical or vocal sound with reference to its pitch quality and strength to the general character or attitude of a place. Piece of writing situation, et cetera, much like you, Matt, you will say something to me. And I will say, [00:04:00] I don't appreciate your tone and you don't, you don't understand.

And you, we get into a fight over tone because you didn't feel like you express yourself a certain way. But to me it was a horrible. Tone, but you don't, you don't hear it, but I heard it, you know?

Matt: [00:04:17] Right. Because I understand the intent behind it, but you hear only what is said.

fawn: [00:04:23] I hear a nasty tone, not what you said, but like a mean tone sometimes.

Right? And it makes a difference, like, even with email, right? You always say you can never hear tone in an email. Right. You don't know, it may sound nasty. But the person may have not had that intention. Right. The other way around right. Tone is a big deal. Okay. So the definition continues. A tone is the kind of sound you hear in a musical note or in a person's voice live or in writing.

Look at that. So [00:05:00] example, when Al was born, I did not read to her goodnight moon. I read to her the journals from Bruce Lee. The different ways to strike a person, right? And then there's this other book that we have on all his athletic feats and his day to day his journal on how to work out. And that's what I would read to.

And she would go to sleep like that because the tone, it was about the tone. And I remember a long time ago when I was a kid, I loved black and white movies and there was this really old movie back in the day when people were hats and gloves. And there was a guy who was reading the newspaper to this newborn and he was reading the races, like, you know, how they would bet on horse races and that's what he read.

And I think that's when tone really came into my existence. Like, wow, look at that. You can read something like that and make it sound like a lullaby. It's all about tone and intention, [00:06:00] right? Matt?

Matt: [00:06:02] Yes. Abs no, no, no, no. Yes, absolutely. I totally get that. As a matter of fact. Yeah, just this past week, I rediscovered a musical artist who redoes actually songs and I listened to some of them and one of their remakes, it completely using the exact same words, completely changes.

The tone of the song changes the, the meaning of the song, even just by changing how it's performed.

fawn: [00:06:29] Exactly. And bear with me because this will really come down to. Our friend, by the way, welcome to our friendly world. Um, by the way, I forgot to introduce us, but you know, that is key. That is one of the keys with friendship with creating a friendlier world is to really.

Hear each other properly and to understand the undercurrents or the forces that you don't see, even with sound with the forces that you don't hear, but you feel I'm [00:07:00] almost done with the definitions. Here we go. Um, so where does tone come from? So, um, Really into the ETA model. Thank you, Anna model.

Matt: [00:07:11] That's a mythology.

Continue to the next

fawn: [00:07:13] word derive the right now I can't talk at all. Derived from tennis. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Okay. Some Greek is about to come in. Do you know that, uh, it's uh, it's derived from tennis and the tension of the string of an arrow bow and the noise that was produced when the arrow was shot that.

So that's what tone that's where tone comes

Matt: [00:07:40] from. Did you know that I can, I can totally feel that.

fawn: [00:07:43] And then I looked up like, what is sound? It's a sensation produced through the ears late 13th century from old French. S O N soul sound musical notes, voice from [00:08:00] Latin. So news sound annoys. The atomology of sound is derived from the Anglo-Saxon or old Norse word Sund.

Again, I apologize for my pronunciation, which also means swimming. Did you know that the word sun S U N D is documented and old Norse and old English as meaning gap or narrow access and geography of sound as a large sea or ocean and let deeper than a bright and wider than a Fjord or a narrow sea or ocean channel between two bodies of land.

That's interesting because sound is like the vibration and the land is in fact, us, do you know where I'm getting at? Like we are the land, the [00:09:00] water, the sound it's I, I take it as a direct correlation to our connections as human beings. The sound, the water, the actual sound, the land. You know, the, the interplay, why are you looking at me?

Track 2: [00:09:14] Like

Matt: [00:09:14] I gotta stop looking at you. Why Omar? Well, no, I'm thinking I'm just, I'm drawing my own, like connections and inferences, but yeah, go ahead. Okay.

fawn: [00:09:22] Your eyes are scanning. Awful. Look. All right. So here's where our super friend comes in. Michael Dolly is here, everyone. Please meet Michael, Michael, please talk to us because you are the expert.

You, you bring in the metaphysics, you bring in sound listening consciousness. You're an inventor. I would say a scientist. You've you've invented this amazing now. These discs that for three minutes, give you [00:10:00] a heightened state of meditation. I feel, um, I just got these in the mail recently. We, we are so excited.

It's making our house completely buzz and vibrate in such a beautiful way. And it takes me right back. To the ocean, which, you know, Matt, I miss so much because somehow we're living in the middle of the continent and I feel like ship, not a ship. I feel like a fish out of water. Like I am, I can't breathe.

I need, I need a water anyway, Michael, I'm sorry.

Matt: [00:10:33] Michael. Welcome. Hello. Welcome

fawn: [00:10:35] to our friendly world's Michael.

Michael: [00:10:38] Good morning. Good morning. It's a very friendly reminiscence of Santa Monica. And the ocean also, thank you for setting up my entry with some sound memories.

fawn: [00:10:50] Thank you so much for being here.

We've been wanting to talk to you and we, we friends, we scheduled a little meeting beforehand and Matt [00:11:00] refuse to talk to Michael because I know so through. Okay. So. Michael. I met my goal last week at a convention or this week, I don't remember. And through Michael, we met Barry who we interviewed a few days ago.

We had such a great time. I was talking to Barry and Barry was saying w such amazing things about Michael, which I already sensed anyway, because as soon as I heard Michael speak at this convention, I was blown away one by his beautiful voice. But by the way, this man speaks, he is an exceptional human being, I think.

Michael: [00:11:40] That's a pretty, you know, you're making a pretty high bar

fawn: [00:11:43] there. I'm sorry. But I think you guys are actually

Michael: [00:11:46] like aspire to all of that. Let me, let me put it that way.

fawn: [00:11:50] I think you guys are best friends. And so Matt didn't want to talk to Michael because he wanted to keep it fresh for this, for this, for this episode.

[00:12:00] But I'm going to let you guys talk. Now

Matt: [00:12:04] what she's referring to is just, I started like riffing and that's what happens when I connect with some people is all of a sudden it kind of generates. Different and new and glorious thoughts and, and attempting to re kind of invent that, or have a, have that conversation over again can be problematic.

So, yes, let's start from the

Michael: [00:12:24] top. You want to have a conversation in the now?

Matt: [00:12:27] Exactly. All. That's cute in the now you

fawn: [00:12:33] guys, these, the no, these discs are called the now. These what we'll get into at you, and we're going to have them in the show notes. When you guys go to the show notes, you can totally hear the experience.

Three minutes of tone meditation. Michael will describe a better, of course. Uh, Michael, can we start from the beginning? Can you tell us all about yourself? How did this start? How did you get into sound? Who are you? Tell [00:13:00] us everything. Welcome. Welcome.

Michael: [00:13:03] Well, thank you. Uh, thank you for the invitation Fawn and Matt.

It's lovely to be here. I'm speaking to you from Tampa. It's East coast time here at this moment. I love these images of the description of tone and also sound and waves and water. Let's see. Yeah, I came here from, uh, from the Island of Martha's vineyard off the coast of Cape Cod separated. The two are separated by Nantucket sound Heyo.

Uh, I would take a ferry boat back and forth a few times a week to go from the Island to the mainland Cape and, uh, ferry boats. These very bows had a twin engines and the two engines would come in and out of sync, uh, with their, their sort of th the throbbing of the. Diesel moaners. So you'd get these pulsing and, you know, you get this horrible blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:14:00] And, uh, so those low frequency pulsations can really move you into a meditative state because that kind of amplitude pulsation in that frequency range helps. Set up what we would call an entrainment, a brainwave entrainment situation, where the brain recognizes those low frequency sounds as being something that's pleasant.

The kind of, it's the kind of, um, it's the kind of brain waves that are generated when you are in an open monitoring meditation, uh, or you're, um, sort of gazing out onto the mid distance across the ocean. You'll find that you have more brainwaves in the lower frequency range, alpha brainwaves, Delta brainwaves, as opposed to the kind of faster beta brainwaves that when you're having a conversation, you're solving a puzzle, you're doing something like that.

So these, uh, so traveling back and forth on the ferry, I was exposed to these [00:15:00] very powerful, low frequency brainwave, entrainment frequencies. And then you could very quickly fall into a relaxed, open monitoring meditation. And that was through through sound and the brainwave entrainment, but that's, that's recent history.

That's not my earliest memories of being in the fog when I was five years old.

fawn: [00:15:21] Yeah. You mentioned that before. What do you mean when you said that it took me to Santa Monica because we had, what was it called? Matt when w the. The, the Marine layer.

Matt: [00:15:35] So it was always overcast until you got about a mile inland, which is not where we ever

fawn: [00:15:40] went.

So yeah, we always had was, so there was a big street that would go all through LA called Lincoln and in our neighborhood, we would even have t-shirts that said always West of Lincoln, AWOL, always West of Lincoln, because on our side, towards the ocean, Like literally across the [00:16:00] street from Lincoln, we had Marine layer and the vibe was different.

The sounds were different. The temperature was a good 15 degrees different. And then you literally cross the street, this big street Lincoln. And it was, it was this, the vibration was hectic. It was loud. And the sun was blaring on you.

Michael: [00:16:22] Right. I've never been to Santa Monica, but I've, I lived in San Francisco and, um, you know, the fog there is very predictable.

It comes in every day. Well, in the hate, it comes in every day at four 30 in the summer. And, um, neighborhood to neighborhood you'll have, uh, a fog neighborhood or not a fog neighborhood. And each of those neighborhoods has a different, um, tambour and feel, um, Yeah, so fog is Fogg's wonderful. Fogg's, uh, you know, it's, it's a flood, right?

And it is fluid. Um, it's, uh, nearly formless. And so when we have fog experiences, we're [00:17:00] experiencing something that is closer to the unformed. You know, the mystery before things take shape inform, uh, which is, you know, so all forms of rise from no form. And so having fog experiences, you can do this with a steaming cup of tea also, but having a fog, it's really nice because it's a very immersive, right.

Uh, so having a fog experience like that can kind of bring us back to this primordial pre preformed time. And I think that's part of what we're recognizing in fog experience is it's not quite informed yet.

Matt: [00:17:44] Yeah. And certainly when I'm in a fog, when I'm quote unquote, like driving through a fog, you're, you're much more introspective and you're much more cautious and you're much more definitely I'm in my head when I'm quote unquote in a physical fog,

fawn: [00:17:58] for sure.

But [00:18:00] also that's where the magic happens is in the space of the unknown. When there's no thing, no sound, no one. That's I think when you, I mean, scientists are now totally recording all this, that everything manifests within that space of nothingness where it's not formed yet.

Michael: [00:18:22] Yeah. There's a great allowing.

For inspired thought to come in. If the egoic mind is running all the time, I know mine wants to run the show and she does a pretty good job. No, it does a good job of taking over from my essential self. It doesn't do a good job of running the show at all and messes things up. Um, but if we, uh, if we, you know, that, um, that allowing in the silence that, that you said, stillness, silence, we want it.

Nothingness then allow for inspired thought, you know, um, I'm a, a reader of a, and have been for a long time of, [00:19:00] uh, of course in miracles and, um,

fawn: [00:19:04] Marianne Williamson love her.

Michael: [00:19:06] Yeah, I I've never read her, um, her interpretation of it. I know that she really popularized it in the eighties, but I've never read her work, um, inspired by it, but inspired thought.

And the course of course in miracles says that the Holy spirit doesn't speak for nor the loudest I'm paraphrasing here. Okay. Uh, I think what the course means by that is sitting in stillness and allowing stillness and allowing spaciousness allows. Thus still small, very quiet, inspired thoughts to arise.

The quick response, the quick to jump in finishing someone's sentence, as they're speaking, this is, uh, an almost, um, you know, I interpret that as almost like an egoic need to be heard and to be right or to create drama. [00:20:00] That's interesting. But, but stillness, you know, there was, uh, the, uh, falling, you talked about the, the, uh, podcast conference that we were at, that, that we met at, and there was a wonderful presenter.

Um, Raquel Ark, a R K I think her name is, she was talking about how, if you're interviewing someone, it takes almost eight seconds for the subject to be able to sit with the question and have. An honest, informed, spontaneous, truly spontaneous answer to arise. That's not part of a rehearse pattern. So she was really advocating for the allowing of spaciousness.

And that's a it's, you know, it's difficult to do because we're not. We don't practice that very much

fawn: [00:20:46] uncomfortable as I'm interrupting you. It's very uncomfortable because I think we all know that in that space, what can come up, all the things that need to come up [00:21:00] will come up and maybe we want to suppress that.

Maybe

Michael: [00:21:03] not go. Yeah, that's a, that's a great insight. Like, keep it, keep it busy so that we don't have

fawn: [00:21:10] to deal with it.

Michael: [00:21:11] All right. No, the, uh, the stillness, spaciousness and silence, uh, can be really uncomfortable. And that's, you know, that's one of the reasons why we made, um, while we made now tone therapy is, uh, in three minutes it gives a complete life cycle.

You know, it allows people to experience a complete life cycle of, of, um, emptiness and stillness. Then I sort of. Inspired intention to act then from stillness emerges. Sounds. Those sounds very. And change over time as all forms do. And then those sounds fade away as all forms do and return to stillness again.

So [00:22:00] we, we made something that in three minutes, you know, the most, this is a hardware device. So it's a hardware meditation device, two little speakers you're holding your hands. Um, but it's really an experience. And then it's an experience of, of, uh, a life cycle. Over and over again. And, and we made it only three minutes long.

And then the question, the most popular question we always get is I love this. I want it to last longer. This is like the conundrum of life. Isn't it. When your life is going good, do you want the life to live? I want more of that good life. And then when it's not going so well, I would prefer not to have this particular life right now.

So we, we made now in three minutes to give you a complete life cycle of a stillness emerging form, and then form that fades and returns to stillness. And if you, and if we made it continuous, Without the ending gap, without that ending, uh, into return to stillness, we, we would not have made [00:23:00] something that is true.

And one of the overall over writing experiences with tone therapy is that there is a kind of truth that comes through. There are multiple truths, but there's, um, this emerging from nothing returning to nothing is true. That's a kind of truth and it's experienced as truth.

Matt: [00:23:21] Now were you also inspired? I know that, uh, there are certain practices of meditation that, you know, they bang a gong and you're supposed to focus on the sound and then the sound obviously fades away.

And that that's like your entry point to a meditation.

You can say no

Michael: [00:23:43] short answer. No, uh, long, long, longer answer. Um, I was trained in practice as an audio product design engineer for many years. And so after you breadboard a circuit and you build it out and then you, um, then you run some [00:24:00] signals through it, and then you listen to the result of that circuit. The kind of work that I was doing was for motion picture sound, and this is back in the analog days.

And, um, yeah. Uh, analog noise reduction circuits, uh, to keep the sound of the clicks and pops and his and haze of emotion, picture optical soundtrack from getting in the way of the speech and the music. So I was working on noise reduction systems, uh, and, and one aspect of my job was to listen to the effect of the circuits I had built.

And that meant listening and following sounds all the way down into the background haze of the optical soundtrack or magnetic tape recording medium in those days. And I realized that when I followed sound so intensely like that in the context of my job as an audio engineer, in the context of, of, you know, designing products and, uh, and listening to them that I found, [00:25:00] I found I could not be thinking.

At the same time as I, as listening, if I was truly bringing an intentional attention to listening, right. It could not be thinking at the same time. And then only years later, did I say, Whoa, wait a minute. That sort of matches up with some of the check boxes of what meditation is, you know, an intentional and intentional unintentional nonjudgmental focus on the present moment.

But in my case, In my case in the, in the oral dimension.

fawn: [00:25:36] I wonder if that's one of the reasons music is so healing. I think most songs are three minutes or I actually, I looked it up it's three minutes and 20 seconds or most songs and lately, um, I read that it's now 20 seconds shorter these days. And I wonder if that's because people.

Just [00:26:00] don't have the attention

Michael: [00:26:01] span or, and when I was, when I was a pup in the sixties, uh, you know, uh, progressive music, you know, the FM radio progressive rock, right? Uh, the songs sweet, the eight or nine or 12 minute extended version that would then be cut and you need to make a three minute and 20 seconds single version of that.

So, yeah, th there are these different, uh, Oh, um, uh, Forums form, uh, durations, uh, the pop song three minutes, three classic pop song or symphonic, um, for much longer. Uh, but they, but they both have, you know, start, uh, evolution and ending. And, um, yeah, so connecting with, uh, the impermanence that, you know, the arising from nothing and to, to hearing something and that something changes and then something goes away.

Uh, I used to love, you know, I'd have, uh, you know, get your favorite 45 RPM record and say, man, I will just leave that thing on all [00:27:00] day long and just go over and over and over and over again, love that so much, but, but at least there was a little bit of gap between the successive plays. Um, right. That favorite record

Matt: [00:27:13] right now, question audio engineer.

The loudness Wars. Do you think that those are serving us or not serving like Phil Spector popularized? The whole making everything allowed her and all the artists were like, make it louder. And so what do they call it? But what is that scale? It's like a D there's like a Dr. Number, like dynamic range. I think it might stand for.

And the higher, the number, the more actual, quiet to loud happens, the whole crescendos. How do you feel about like popular music and the loudness Wars?

Michael: [00:27:47] Uh, you know, I came across a quote this morning of, uh, Walt Whitman and he said something like, um, am I contradictions? Well, I am, I am everything. So, so be it with contradiction. Uh, so my [00:28:00] answer is, uh, yeah, uh, loud, this war is good and bad aggressive use of compression. That's the type of circuit that, that reduces loud sounds to the mid range and brings quiet sounds up.

To the mid range to meet them. It helps with intelligibility of speech. So it's a good technique for speech where you're really trying to focus on the voice. And maybe there's some background noise in the place where you're, when you're listening, uh, uh, road noise or in a car. So FM, radio, or even am going back to the days of am radio.

Okay. Loudness compression is almost essential. Uh, early days of telephony telephony com compress the, the dynamic range to emphasize the volume aspects of the voice that are key to intelligibility. So it's good when it's used in music, it can be used as a musical effect and some of the earliest, um, uses of compression, aggressive compression, dynamic range reduction.

Um, And pop music would be like [00:29:00] some of the earlier Beale. Well, from the time of, uh, let's say, uh, rubber soul Beatles, rubber soul, 66, late 65 recordings. When the drum recordings of Ringo's drums were heavily compressed. So you would get this, the kick drum would slam in and then it would be this.

Reduction in volume following the kick drum hit. And then there would be a rapid swelling back up in between the kick drum beats. And what would happen is you'd get a, a cymbal sound that would was quite unlike a normal symbol. Normally when you hit a symbol, you hear the Pang crash decay. But these early recordings of a, of Ringo's drum kit, and with only two mikes with heavy, heavy compression, you'd get a, you get a swelling of a symbol that was like,

like a backward sound to like, then you're hearing, um, Oh my God, the [00:30:00] world has gone backwards or something is, you know, in, in, in the middle of this beat is a part that seems like it's backwards. So that's a, that's a beautiful use of, of compression. Now the worst use of compression is when you take the entire song, the entire production and, and smash that down so that there's almost no moments, a moment amplitude variation, you know, maybe a DB or two of amplitude variation so that it slams and, um, the, the, the, um, Broadcast channel or the recording channel, uh, and an attempt to make that song appear to be louder than those songs around it.

But when everyone does it, there's no difference. Right? So you haven't achieved the end of standing out. You've just literally leveled the playing field amongst all the participants. So that's a. That's a, that's the [00:31:00] answer? So, uh, dynamic range and processing. Um, yeah. Good. Yeah. Good, bad and ugly.

fawn: [00:31:06] Right?

Speaking of good, bad, good, bad, and ugly. I have a question to pose. I have my own theories, but not really. I would love your take on technically scientifically vibrationally. Why sounds affect us the way they do, for example. The good, you know, hearing a good sound that will soothe you or hearing a piece of music that for three minutes makes your ego mind be quiet so you can totally just listen without having your own input.

I think that's why music can be so moving because it takes you out of yourself and into the wider spectrum of the universe. But, and then you hear sounds like I heard about the government's having a certain sound wave that [00:32:00] can destroy somebody. Remember ma we would watch, it was a couple of years ago, how they would like one forest would out in the ocean, points the sound at a ship that would make them go crazy.

Right. You know, what is it about sound it's this other REL sound as it, as it relates to us as human beings, connecting with one another and understanding one another or the other way around making us fight each other, um, or causing harm to our bodies. And then there's also sound there's sound therapy, sound bath.

There are these sounds that actually will heal cells. What is it? It's it's really, Oh, it's like diving into the ocean with discovering all these things that we're not aware of yet, you know? Yeah.

[00:33:00] Michael: [00:33:00] It's um, I'll try to give a short, short answer. Um, and, uh, and, and to make the answer shorter, I'm going to put aside, um, Um, idiomatic expression.

Um, so let's group music that has genres, new age music, jazz, hip hop, rock, rap, whatever, all wrap it all up in one balloon and put it to the side for a moment so that we can concentrate on the more abstract qualities of sound and not the idiomatic expression. That's culturally informed. So I'm not responding to music because it's from the place and time of my birth and early childhood.

It's it's, you know, it's comforting to me because it reminds me of home or it reminds me of a certain being a certain age. So let's take all of that aside because that's all true. That's all true. But, but my work and my understanding comes through the empirical [00:34:00] work that I've done with more abstract sound and the basic physical dimensions of sound that is amplitude.

How loud or soft. Uh, frequency how high or how low, um, uh, and, uh, tambour, which is another word for, for tone. That is the tone quality. Is it buzzy or is it, uh, more, uh, flute, like a simple, simple sine waves. And then how do those, uh, how are those qualities, uh, combined together? Um, and then how do they change over time?

Um, now when you w you opened the show by talking about Santa Monica and the ocean, and, uh, this is something, you know, this is a sound that a lot of people are familiar with this crashing waves or even lapping water that's. Um, that is broad band sound. It's a lot of frequencies all at the [00:35:00] same time, mashed up together that the ear in her interprets as a.

Right. A lot of different frequencies. You don't recognize any one particular frequency and in a noise source like that broadband noise source and, and noise doesn't mean I'm. And here, I'm just saying, it gives you going to, as an engineering term noise, uh, without any value judgment attached to it. So it's just a broadband signal that we would call noise.

The opposite of that would be a single tone. Like you would hear from a Tibetan bowl as you were S. Scraping the Stryker around the outside of the bowl. More, more pure tone sound. Um, so we have, we have, um, noise. Oh, there's a continuum between noise and, um, pure tone. And both of those types of sounds [00:36:00] can affect us psychologically because there can be some truths.

The, the sounds that are impactful. I think the sounds that are impactful are expressions of truth. And then our soul and mind resonates to truth. You know, when someone lies to you, there's a discomfort that's associated with this shared knowing that the person knows that they're lying and it comes across in their voice.

And then you know that they're lying and, and you know, that they know that, you know, so the whole thing is a big ball of discomfort. And, you know, we've lived through and we're currently living through we, um, a lot of the chaos of disinformation and lack of truth. So music and sound is a way for us to parse our way through an intentional misuse of sound, to obscure and [00:37:00] confuse and to sow chaos.

Now, the former president. Would not have been elected, had so many of us given that person attention and listen to that person sound right. You know, or we're all somewhat complicit and bringing our attention, uh, two lies. You would think that, Oh my God lives have to be called out and, and, and, uh, reacted to, well, no, that feeds the monster.

But it let's, you know, my work, uh, uh, is an attempt to say, well, here's truth. Let's, let's bundle up all the lies and turn our backs to them. Turn our backs to that profanity and inhabit truth and see how that feels. Right. And that's where we live and that's so when people say, [00:38:00] well, now it makes me really now tone therapy.

It really gets me relaxed. Well, in part that's because you're not getting lied to.

fawn: [00:38:08] How do you do that though? How do you turn your back on it?

Matt: [00:38:13] Yeah. It, it, it has a nasty habit of, unless you call it out for what it is, it has a nasty habit of just being repeated and echoed and echoed and echoed in your own mind.

Sometimes he asks him sometimes just in popular culture

Michael: [00:38:25] or, yeah, well, uh, to, to Fonz question, how do you tune that out? Well, it's practice. Um, this is, this is another type of mindfulness practice that you have to have an intention. You have to willfully use your attention. You know, bring in, I'm always combining the word attention with an, a, an intention.

You have to have an intention to listen attentively and to direct your attention because, um, um, to interact with free, will we have a free, we have, we have a free, we have the freewill to do this. How do we do that? [00:39:00] Oh, you can substitute it, but something else to begin. Well, you can get a singing bowl. If you play an instrument pluck.

The string on an instrument or tone and hum to

fawn: [00:39:11] yourself. So causing an interference?

Michael: [00:39:14] Um, no, I wouldn't call it an interference. I would call it, um, focus, uh, a shift in focus as an eight. These are AIDS to give the mind another form object. To a light upon and doing that intentionally free will is something that, uh, it's like a muscle, right?

And you can, sometimes you want to exercise your free will. And other times you don't, you know, I know that I have this problem. Well, I know what my, I know what, you know, my, my true essential self. Consciousness would have me do, but then there was like, well, let me just dip my toe in this mess over here and see how that [00:40:00] feels.

Matt: [00:40:01] Yeah, no, no, no, no. I totally get it. Sometimes I'll wake up. And first thing in the morning, my brain just starts spinning. And if I wake up too early and I know I'm going to be tired all day, I don't want to think, I just want to go back to sleep for instance. And so I will turn on, uh, and listen to something.

And, you know, that kind of sets my kind of higher mind. My thinking mind starts to quiet down and starts to quiet down. And finally, then I can go back to sleep. Um, you know, and it's just a question of, I'm just not ready to spin it all up yet.

fawn: [00:40:40] It saw, kind of reminds me of when we had our first child and.

That's Al Al would be crying and crying and crying. And I would do everything in my power to ease the situation, ease her, you know, I would start from the basics, like, [00:41:00] is it a diaper? Is it a burp? Is it something tight on her? Like her clothes don't fit or whatever, all of that. And nothing would work and she'd still be crying.

And are you, so is this kind of like, On the realm of sound changing things up. So I, I said interference, but Matt, will I call it cutting your key in martial arts? So Matt would take owl and he would take her into another room or take her out in nature, like remove her from that. Situation, give her a different perspective, different sounds, different temperature, different environment, going back to communication, and maybe you're hearing a lie.

Usually I know when someone is lying, when I can feel a gap in my brain. Like they're talking, but it doesn't make sense [00:42:00] on some other level on a deep, deep level where they're, I, I, there's a gap. Like there's a, there's just a gap is all I can describe it as, um, there's a point in time where there's nothingness and to, to get at the truth.

My question was, how do we, how do we do that? How do we get to the truth? Do we dive into that gap? Where there's nothingness, where in your brain, there's no sound

Michael: [00:42:32] well, you have, um, you know, you suggest a good way to do it, which was paying attention to your body signals. And this is easier for some people than others.

You know, the F for people who are, it's not my first mode, right. Paying attention to my body and my emotions, you know, it's, it's partially gendered. Um, You know, it can be developed. We can all develop that. So yeah. Paying attention to what your body, how does it feel in the gut? How does it right. [00:43:00] Tension, no tension.

Yeah. So I think you're, you're, you're certainly right about, about. Recognizing what the body

fawn: [00:43:08] is doing. It's so weird because I don't consider my brain as part of my body when you're saying that I'm like, it's not in my body, Michael it's in my brain. The brain is the body. Isn't that weird though? I just realized that.

But yeah, there's a, there's a, yeah, I have to get back into that space. Like what. I always say this. I always have, when I'm talking to someone on the phone, I can always tell when they're not listening, because I find myself shouting or my voice goes up and I'm trying to get louder. And as soon as I catch myself doing that, I'm like, Oh man, this person is not listening to me.

So, you know, but I can't put blame on that because I think we're in. Society now in such a way that we all have so much pain and it, you can describe it as not pain. You can [00:44:00] describe it as there's so much that needs attention. And we all haven't had attention placed on the things that desperately need it.

So that's why people interrupt each other because they desperately want to be heard. And they desperately also want to be hearing. The other person, but if, if we're both, if both sides are having such, um, turmoil in a way, maybe that's not the right word. Matches raises eyebrows up because I'm sure that's not what he would say.

He says, I tend to get negative with my descriptions, but what I'm saying is I think we're all experiencing so much and we, that it's a give and take. And right now we need to speak. We need to have our sounds, need to be expressed and released. At the same time. I think we're in a culture where there's so much coming at us where we're hearing so much and we're [00:45:00] seeing so much, and all of our senses are on overload.

That the basic sound, the basic thing is the sound. And I think if we start from there, I think that will start some. Some healing is if we go back to the quiet and then slowly introduce reintroduce sound to each other, if we go back into the quiet and really listen to ourselves, and then we're able to listen to the birds outside, we're able to listen to.

A new friend standing in front of us to understand what they're really saying instead of putting our own baggage, our own history into what they're saying. Do you guys see what I'm saying? Yeah,

Matt: [00:45:51] no, no, no, I totally get it. Um, no argument. I mean, we're certainly our brains are getting reprogrammed to be like these multitasking monsters.

And [00:46:00] it's hard for us to focus solely on one thing at a time anymore, because cause we don't have to, I've got my computer and I can Google this while I'm talking to that and I can see this and I can listen to that and I can do a million things at once. And you know, I think on some level. It does our, does our census of service, but on another level, it doesn't, it makes it harder to be quiet and still,

fawn: [00:46:23] and I think we should go back to in utero, you know, like hearing that ocean sound when you're in the womb.

Michael: [00:46:33] Well, you know, to stay on this idea of truth and. Truth being, um, comforting and untruth, not being comforting. Um, I'm a comfortably lapsed, um, Roman Catholic and, um, so, um, I don't have any problem like using the Christian terminology and mythology. Um, so you can substitute whatever your favorite words are for these concepts.

But you know, in the beginning, [00:47:00] before there was anything, and then there was something and then what happened? Um, God said, Through the first thing that happened was God speaking versus nothing, then God speaks. Then God creates light.

fawn: [00:47:15] Oh my God. Right? Yeah. Like

Michael: [00:47:18] so, so there's, it's, it's really kind of huge when you think that, um, enlight is what we use to, um, to be able to perceive forms, you know, objects, object forms, um, sound, sound objects.

We are, are a bit more ephemeral because they are truly not fixed informed. They're they're moving through time. They're constantly evolving through time. So they're less like they're less like a form than they are like energy. So I'd like to remind myself that before there was anything. Before there was light in physical objects.

It was sound. And before there was sound, there was nothing. Wow. You can kind of work your way back to silence. And then that, uh, uh, the [00:48:00] experience of, um, that's that stillness,

fawn: [00:48:02] you know, I'm a big fan of Gregg, Braden and Joe Dispenza. And. I was, I spent like a week long time with Greg Brayden and one of his workshops and we were concentrating on sound and he, he kept emphasizing that as creatures.

We are, he said we are unique. I really don't think so because I think every creature makes sound, but he was talking about how your sound, your ability to vocalize something, manifest things. And because we can create sound from, from this area, the throat that it is, uh, it is a tool that will manifest things in physical form.

I tend to think every. Creature will do that. Right. Birds will do that, I think. Yeah. Do you know where I'm getting at? Like, I [00:49:00] just think

Michael: [00:49:01] you gotta be careful with that manifestation stuff, you know?

fawn: [00:49:05] Oh, right. Because you hear all the time. If you speak it out loud, that's the first step. Well, the first step is the quiet.

I'm sorry.

Michael: [00:49:16] You can manifest, you know, you can manifest the ego can manifest quite well too. And then that's going to be a boatload of pain. Eventually

Matt: [00:49:27] it depends. Right? Because, you know, I would say almost on a most primordial level, a bird will make noise in order to announce that they're there and then a mate shows up and then , you know, that's a very straight line, very scientific way of looking at things.

You know, versus, you know, I imagine I have a winning lottery ticket and boom, it's right there to it. And that feels more mystical. And yet, you know, the birds dead, it's just how it works. And

Michael: [00:49:58] yeah. Yeah. When you, when you get to [00:50:00] the level of the human, where we have conscious intention, it can, we can load that manifestation activity or the gap.

Deepak Chopra likes to say, it's like, And cert the intention in between the gap and thoughts, or Frep the intention with a gap and then into that gap of no thinking and then into that gap in certain intention. And then, then boom, you know, you've kind of loaded your intention with that manifest. You've loaded the manifestation with an intention.

That's more conscious. So yeah, we so. We're not bird-like in that way. You guys,

fawn: [00:50:39] the gap is great. I love that one. Isn't it reminds me of London. When I would get on the tube, what did they call it? I don't remember what they called it, but the train, you know, underground the underground. And you would always hear that voice come up and it would say mind the gap.

Michael: [00:50:58] And I wonder how many, you know, what [00:51:00] percentage of people actually did mind the gap?

Matt: [00:51:03] I was there. I was like, I don't want to get hurt, but yeah, I think, I think the first 20 times you hear it, you certainly hear it. But then I think after a while, it just kind of blends into your reality and you know what you're doing.

Michael: [00:51:15] So yeah, in China, it's funny that they don't tell you the mind, the gap they tell you quite, uh, quite clearly to step back from, from, from the, uh, from the train.

And they have, uh, right on the floor. They've got, um, um, you know, stand here even before COVID painted on the floor, we'd be the footsteps. So you stand here, you stand there and say, uh, and that's really interesting, you know, because, um, you know, it's a bit more of an authoritary immigrant. We're gonna compare 'em day in the life in London, day in the life, in, uh, in Shenzhen or Beijing.

It's a bit more authoritarian, uh, experience. Um, In in China. Uh, so, so rather than this, allowing, you know, th th the [00:52:00] in, in, in Britain, uh, the subway safety message of minding the gap, which is a beautiful. Double entendre, right? Uh, the mind, the physical gap, and maybe you might want to consider paying attention to what your mind is doing and the gap in between thoughts or pate.

Right. Um, but, but in China they say, don't go there.

fawn: [00:52:24] I was wondering

Michael: [00:52:25] doing that. Don't go there.

fawn: [00:52:29] Oh my God. It's so true. And there, you know what, now I get it and it's quite beautiful. Sometimes you need to, we will take

Michael: [00:52:36] care of it. We will take care of that gap for you,

fawn: [00:52:40] but you know what, sometimes you need to hear that.

Don't go there. Because I can easily go into this messed up memory or messed up thing. Yeah. Yeah. Just don't go there. Someone has to tell me that.

Matt: [00:52:53] See, I'm just laughing because every time like we start talking over a movie, cause that's what we do, uh, as a, as a household [00:53:00] and, and my wife was like, can you guys please be quiet?

Cause I want to hear this. Then we all yell. Don't go in there. Cause that's something you yell during a horror movie, right? Like, you know, the stupid heroin is about to walk in and encounter the, the, you know, our antagonist.

fawn: [00:53:17] Uh, I used to watch movies in peace and quiet, and I am grateful. I'm grateful. I have a family.

However, looking at a movie, it's just the movie experience I haven't had in many years because these guys will just talk. I don't understand is, is something happening to my hearing that. I can't listen and hear at the same time. Like I can't hear the movie and hear you guys at the same time. Are you guys able to hear what's going on in the mood?

No, of course not. I'm not

Matt: [00:53:48] paying attention to a score. So why a plan? Oh, my clowning. That's what I do.

fawn: [00:53:52] I've try to watch a movie anyway. We digress. That's what we do. And other thing that trips me out is [00:54:00] when I hear politicians or I hear just anybody actually. Would they start raising their voice, like what is happening?

Right. I don't trust the person that raises their voice. It just makes me feel like they're losing control or they're lying, or they're trying to really push something they know is not right. Or pushing something that they know you don't think is. Right. So they're going to yell at when someone has an even keel.

Speaking voice. Why is that so much better?

Matt: [00:54:37] Well, it, it depends on where your head is at, you know, um, yeah, one of the unfortunate, great lessons, Adolf Hiller told us as a repo, uh, lie repeated loud enough, often enough becomes truth in people's minds. Wow. Speaking with a calm, even voice, you have the opportunity to lose what I call the soundbite [00:55:00] test.

So if I can snip out like two seconds of what you've said, that totally contradicts what you've said, you lose. And that's where we are today in a, in America. We're very much a soundbite mentality because we're kind of bumbling through so many things at a given moment. So if I say something like such and such as bad, and I don't really mean it, or, I mean it sarcastically that meaning can still get lost because of somebody can slice out just that tiny soundbite,

Michael: [00:55:28] this, um, This, this challenge of, um, uh, linguistics words, right?

Subject object, uh, language and how, and how loud or not loud language is spoken, um, is fascinated me for a long time. And I think that's in part, what has brought me to this pure tone work that I do, which is, um, carries truth, but it's it's but not being carried by words. So it can be experienced as truth and not be, [00:56:00] um, rejected or, um, folks radar don't go up as quickly.

Um, so I, so I think what we're able to do with, uh, with tone therapy in these, in a very short period of time, and sometimes even just a fraction of a second of a cup, a few seconds is convey a sense of truth. That transcends the limitations of subject object, uh, language duality, because it's so easy to be reactive to, um, to the words he said.

And then he said,

fawn: [00:56:39] uh, should I, should we play? Should we play a little bit right now, Michael?

Michael: [00:56:47] We could. Yeah.

uh, ready? Ready? Okay. All right. Let's um, let's just take three minutes and listen to now, um, the present [00:57:00] moment and Mo, and the way we can make this easier is by listening to, um, a little. Meditation device, a sound meditation device called now tone therapy. Uh, it, it takes just three minutes to listen to this.

Um, and all you have to do is, um, bring in an intention to listen attentively. Now it's natural for thoughts to arise, and as they do, just notice that you have thoughts arising, but bring your attention, bring your attention back to the sounds and, um, Enjoy the, uh, enjoy the gap between thoughts. You'll notice that.

And that's a beautiful thing because that's, uh, that's your essential self. That is what is noticing is consciousness. And, um, let's uh, let's just give it a listen.

fawn: [00:57:53] Okay, here we go.

[00:58:00] Track 4: [00:58:09] uh,

uh,

[01:01:00] [01:00:00] [00:59:00] uh,

Michael: [01:01:22] I'd like to have a big breath, you know, a big release and then an honor that space, and then gradually come back to the business at hand. It doesn't have to be

fawn: [01:01:32] long. Can I describe what goes through my spirit? What I get from it is so add to remind myself to just focus on the sound and nothing else. And then I started to actually see waves.

Like when you throw a pebble into water and you see. The rings expanding one by one. I saw that cause I was trying to close my eyes so I could [01:02:00] really just focus on one thing, which was the sound. And it made me realize that that's the only way to really get to a healing state, whether it's emotional healing, physical healing, because life is really quite simple.

If you'll allow for the focus on one thing to occur and not putting your attention and your focus on so many things at the same time, because I think what happens is pieces of ourselves ended up dispersing everywhere. And we're not there. Like if you could imagine you're a whole thing. And if one piece of you goes over here, one piece of vehicles in this other direction, It's like you're exploding into space and all these different directions.

And you're not in the now that you're not in that one point in the universe and for anything to happen for your [01:03:00] dreams to come true for you to be able to love for you, to be able to see you have to bring yourself into that one pinpoint part of the universe for, for a little bit. And it's and it's apropos that this is called now.

Did you mean for that to happen, Michael? Yeah, it has.

Michael: [01:03:24] It has two, two meetings, right? The present moment. And it's also, it's an acronym for new origin wave forms. So each moment is a, is a new moment being created and carried forward through sound waves, new origin, making a new moment. So, yeah, the present moment and also new origin through wave forms.

I

fawn: [01:03:47] have, I have a little story that will maybe help. What I'm talking about is there was a moment I was on a photo shoot and it was going through something horrible. There [01:04:00] was, it was, uh, there was some trauma, there was, um, was actually a stalker was after me and I was out, uh, in. The what seemed like out in the middle of nowhere, but it was where I worked the corporation I was working for.

It was there. And, um, I had had a harrowing night actually the next morning. So I went a night without sleep. So much was happening. I was under so much stress the next morning at 6:00 AM. I was on a photo shoot. I was a photographer and I was standing there. And this woman that I worked with who works for the corporation also, she was standing there.

She was in management. So she was helping me with a photo shoot and she knew what was going on. She knew what had happened. Everyone was on high alert and the building, and she looked at me, she smiled and she said, [01:05:00] Child of God. Are you happy? First of all, for her to say child of God, because I wasn't religious, was it tweaked me a little bit?

And then for her to say, are you happy with a smile on her face? And really, uh, it really bothered me. Like, are you crazy? You know what what's been happening? The whole building is like on alert. And you're asking me if I'm happy. And I don't know what I said to her. I probably didn't say anything. I probably looked really confused and I was exhausted.

And she said, she, she kept repeating that to me. And she knew, or maybe I said, are you crazy? And she said, look right in this moment right now. So she gave me these steps. She's like right now, where are you standing right now? Are you not standing in front of me right now? Are you not at a room that is [01:06:00] beautiful right now.

Are you not surrounded by people who are protecting you right now? Don't you have everything that is making you, your body, everything comfortable right now? Is it not peaceful right now? Like she kept saying that she brought me to. That precise moment that if you break it down, if you keep breaking down right now, right now, right now, everything else disappears and everything is okay.

If you go into that space of right now, you can strip out everything else that is happening that is distracting and pulling you in different directions. And I think that's what happens when you listen to this.

Michael: [01:06:55] Yeah, and it, you know, getting to right now then allows for the inspired [01:07:00] thought that allows, that can empower change or in the case of your story, taking appropriate protective actions, asking for help.

All of this can come from a truly empowered, inspired moment. So it's not passive. It's really. Still act, it's still action and stillness. Really? That being able to connect to the present moment doesn't mean that we don't, that we can function in the world. We can function better actually.

fawn: [01:07:31] Absolutely better.

Matt, you're quiet. Yes. Why are you quiet? You're in the

Matt: [01:07:37] now maybe.

fawn: [01:07:40] Well, we know that sound. Is one of the key factors in creation first comes nothing, then comes sound, and then comes what? The

Michael: [01:07:53] 10,000 things. Yeah.

Matt: [01:07:55] The 10,000 things. But I would argue first comes thought, then come sound, then [01:08:00] comes, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Because you have to set your intention before you, right?

Michael: [01:08:05] Yeah. Now we're getting metaphysical.

fawn: [01:08:11] Well, Shall we continue this for another time it leave it. Sure. The peaceful, peaceful. Now then the peaceful now

Michael: [01:08:24] really, really nice, uh, visit and a wonderful way to, to finish here and for me to start my day.

fawn: [01:08:30] Cool. Thank you so much for being with us. We want to thank

Michael: [01:08:36] you both.

fawn: [01:08:36] Yeah. I look forward to future conversations with you. There's so much to explore. Seems that way. Doesn't it? It does. I think, I think this conversation really had so many facets we could have gone into that I really wanted to go into, but I was trying to be quiet.

Matt: [01:08:55] Me too.

fawn: [01:08:56] Actually. I don't like it when you're quiet.

Matt: [01:08:58] I know, but you [01:09:00] know, you did shush me at one point.

fawn: [01:09:03] I did.

Michael: [01:09:05] That was the ocean waves.

Matt: [01:09:07] And that was not, um, a mother lovingly shush.

Michael: [01:09:11] Oh, I would like to swap some stories around, um, uh, you know, place as a teacher. And we can, we can do that at another time. I love that idea that, uh, you know, Santa Monica, as a teacher, there are many different kinds of teachers we can talk about.

We can have a whole conversation around teachers and students, different kinds of teachers. Absolutely love that places can be teachers for me, read flutes. Our, our teachers. And, uh, I'll try to paraphrase the, uh, the classic Rumi poem, uh, you know, the Reed flute, which, which is, Oh my God, I'm speaking to a woman that should be quite familiar with it.

Reed flute,

fawn: [01:09:51] my family.

Michael: [01:09:53] Yeah. So these reeds grow. By the side of, uh, where it's moist by the side of the [01:10:00] stream. And, um, they, they reach up to the heavens, they, the flowers catch the light and they, the roots are in the ground. So it's really a beautiful conduit between the sky and the earth. And when these reeds are picked and dried and then shaped into flutes, that the sound that they make when you play a Reed flute.

And I believe this Rumi poem is called the sound of the song of the Reed flute. Uh, it's a very mournful tambour, and that's because the Reed flute remembers it's a right relationship between the sun and the earth and its relationship to its brethren. And it longs for all of that together is the beloved.

So it, it longs for the sun and lungs for its feet to be in the ground and longs to be next to its brethren and the Reed Grove and the sound and the music that comes from the Reed flute. It's quite poignantly, um, as a quite poignant, longing, uh, timber.

[01:11:00] fawn: [01:11:00] Nice.

Michael: [01:11:02] So that's a teacher, you know, so the read flutes for me, I used to make these things.

I found them. I found them growing up in coastal Maine when my daughters and I, and we're on vacation. And when they were very young and I started making these floods. And so they became the flute itself, the read itself taught me how to make a flute and then through playing them. There's other kinds of learnings that come in from those teachers.

So there are plant teachers, there are place city teachers, there's all kinds of

fawn: [01:11:28] teachers. Definitely the squirrel outside has been my teacher for the past year. What

Matt: [01:11:34] be greedy and get fat.

fawn: [01:11:35] No. Oh, the school comes up and I just learned so much from the squirrel. Like just keep, you know, just simple play and they survive out there.

Here we are inside. It gets negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit out here and they're still like, Jill, you know, they, they move on with life and they're still cute [01:12:00] and happy and bouncing around and playing all the time. Before we go, I want to ask you a question. Both of you, Michael you first, what is your favorite sound in the world?

Michael: [01:12:16] My favorite sound in the world is a sound I never get to hear because I'm, um, I have a. Tinnitus, which is described as ringing in the ears. You hear tones all the time. It came on very, very gradually I think, as a result of the kind of audio loud audio work I did early in my career. Uh, and I no longer hear silence.

So, um, that would be my favorite sound would be the sound of silence.

fawn: [01:12:44] Wow. How about you, man?

Matt: [01:12:49] Yeah. Wow. As he said it it's like, you know, that moment we have air purifiers and they run all the time in the house for the most part. [01:13:00] But there's a moment where I take the air purifier out of our bedroom and I move it into our study for, so I could begin my day.

Uh, and that moment where I unplug it and I can, I can feel the whole world just kind of go like everything everything's quiet. And sometimes I'll turn off the air purifier by the girls. And I literally, I can. Feel a shift in their energy. Just exhale, everything. Just kind of just settles.

fawn: [01:13:30] Yeah. Yeah. My favorite sound I have too, is you guys laughing?

That's a good sound. The laughter of our children and the laughter of Matt.

Matt: [01:13:42] I was going to go that way, but there's a, there's a visual component for me as well.

fawn: [01:13:46] And I have another sound and I wouldn't know what the visual component is. I just want to finish. Is the other thing is when I reach out and I hear a friend talking back to me on the other end, [01:14:00] that is a lifesaver right there.

True. And it's not fair because I'm the one who asked the question. So I had time to think about it while you guys were talking, but what I need to hear someone's voice to let me know I'm not alone. When I, I, my mind goes into that lie of I'm all alone. Yeah. So what was the visual component you were saying?

Matt: [01:14:24] Just there's a brightness in a laugh, right. And I'll see that on, especially Ellis face, but I'll see that on everyone's face as they're laughing all of a sudden, but it's, it's like a little spotlight is shined on their faces. There's a, there's a Glint in the eye. There's the, there's the compression of the cheek into the smile.

Right. Um, so it's, there's a visual cause I was thinking the exact same thing, but it's, it's the two of them together. Strictly sound. It's

fawn: [01:14:50] that shoe, you know what it is? It's a war. It's a term you use when I first met you. It's a divine spark

Matt: [01:14:57] Heyo, right? Yes, it [01:15:00] is very much. It is kind of this connection.

It feels like a connection with something higher.

fawn: [01:15:06] All right, everybody, we're going to wind it down. Thank you so much, Michael, for being with us today.

Michael: [01:15:13] You're very welcome folks. So great

fawn: [01:15:15] to be here and everyone, we are going to have a link. To the now, so you can hear more and you can. Figure out where you can get your hands on these things.

They're amazing. They're like there is, I've never been near a hockey puck, but is this what it looks like, man? I think

Matt: [01:15:36] it's a little bit flatter and maybe a little bit wider, but, um, so the company is called solar S O L U and it's the now and it's two speakers

fawn: [01:15:45] and this is, this is not a commercial guys.

This is like us for real loving this. Device. Um, we'll put more into our show notes about it. Michael, thank you so much again, and [01:16:00] friends, we will talk to you in a few days. Yes, we will stay in the now take care. We'll talk to you later. Sure.