 Hey everybody Welcome to culture hub. Thanks for coming out You're a part of a unique group of people. You're the first People to come in person to culture hub since the pandemic started in New York So we're really happy that you're here and it's very meaningful to see people back in this space So thank you I Want to thank Lamama Experimental Theatre Club and the Seoul Institute of the Arts Which are two founding partners and without them the Programming at culture hub wouldn't be possible and I also want to thank the New York City Artist Corps grants which are Revitalizing live performance around the city and and really helping us come back even in these still strange times It's been a great experience over the past few days getting to put this show together with the waves of gravity team and I hope you enjoy the show We are you'll get to meet everyone all the creative team at the end of the show We're gonna have a short Q&A We would love it if you stayed and ask any questions that you might have We're also live streaming out to Audiences online to sort of expand the reach so folks out online if you want to participate in that Q&A There's you can do so from the culture hub watch page There's a chat function built in and if you want to throw out any questions even during the show feel free If everyone can silence your cell phones if you haven't already Those of you at home can leave them on In case of an emergency we have two fire exits We actually have a fire exit to the back here and we also have the stairs, which you probably came up on the way in and As everyone is in the whole building is vaccinated So thank you for being vaccinated and but we're still going to ask you to remain masked You know covering your nose and mouth through the duration of the performance. I'm while you're here. We really appreciate it so Without further ado, I give you Neil more guy Hybridized Fused process of the coming. Do you remember being a kid? I do anybody It's all a blur to me I'm had a different pace back then For most people their childhood was isolated memories The moment you live in as a child is a much bigger percentage of all the moments you All your life you've just been a kid You don't have an experience of that larger Time cycle. I have this concept about the gravity of the moment That's right. You can increase the weight of the moment and you can make time slow down Just like an Einstein's theory of general relativity, you know that one. I do anybody Well, basically the faster you're moving the slower time goes and the more gravity there is the slower time goes This is true My poetic take on Einstein's theory is that if something serious is happening or you Consciously increase the gravity the weight of the moment through your focus sound and attention You can actually slow down your experience And those gravity moments in life stick out fun sad serious You know what I'm talking about when you're a kid and you're having fun time can go so quickly Right, but then if you have that heavy moment happen as a kid That's heavy man. It can be really slow It can feel much slower than even now when I'm trying to slow down Consciously Wapping time and space Fakely remember lying awake at night in our house in Westboro. Maybe being bored. I couldn't sleep. I Remember lying in bed and time moving really slowly And there's this girl named Belda. I didn't like her or anything It was just her name Belda and her name just kept going through my head Belda It was just kept going through my head and I was so bored I had these waves of boredom And it just took so long that time was just can I just go to sleep Belda, Belda, we had some boredom What if we could create waves of gravity like when two black holes collide? literally when two black holes collide an actual Wave of gravity is formed that changes the fabric of space and time Another night there was a moment where I remember lying in bed Maybe playing with my Star Wars figures It was a similar state of melancholy and I was thinking about death somehow. It was it was vague And my dad came into my room. He said, what are you doing? I said, I'm just thinking Said you're too young for that. Go have fun. Stop thinking what happened just a few months later I was 12 years old. I got a call from the hospital. It was late at night My dad was still out playing tennis now. My mother worked at a hospital So I was surprised that they were asking for her They should have known that she was in India at that moment They asked for a neighbor who might be looking out for my brother and I moments later. I watched As he pulled into our driveway Walked up to the front door and that moment took forever And he told me that my father had passed from a heart attack Now I have these isolated images from him Some random memories certain ones stick out more than others. Oh And I have his LP collection the only media known to last and I have some of his mannerisms My family in India tell me that you know, I move like him. I even eat like him Move my hands like him So sometimes I wonder, you know, did he ever move like this? Did he ever move like this? Did he ever move like this? Did he ever move like this? Like this Maybe I should stop thinking I wouldn't say that sitar was my music had become my calling It was calling me away from life as an engineering student That's right. I was studying civil engineering because it seemed like the most civil thing to do at the time classes Calculus chemistry physics electricity and magnetism That e-mag Didn't do too well. I had to do the remag Thankfully, I didn't have to do three mag Any other failed engineers here using my left brain in class and then my right brain outside of class Playing guitar writing my own music and working at the radio station where I hosted a show called continental drift And I learned about music from all over the world It wasn't until later that I learned to refuse those parts of my brain When I started about the science and mathematics of sound and music After I graduated from Georgia Tech, I went to India and I started studying sitar You have to start with the basics You start with sitting. That's right. You have to sit on the ground to play not in a chair You sit on the ground. In fact, that's why they call it sitar No, that's not that's not But it's sitting is such an important part. You have to learn this discipline of just sitting and doing that one thing For a while and I haven't been all that disciplined. So that was hard for me These strings of the sitar can take a while to tune Sing back at you with these waves of harmonious overtone rich sound Do this one thing the Raga science years later Finishing my MFA thesis and I was thinking about concepts of the physics and metaphysics of music Questions about sound and time. Can we have sound without time? Can time exist outside of sound? Swimming and all these concepts MFA portfolio was due Cindy can I speak with Neil? Cindy Lauper I'm playing with Wycliffe on David Letterman tomorrow. We want us to talk player and I heard you might be the guy. Oh Yeah, yeah, I definitely Play some hip-hop beats. Have you ever done that before we need someone who has done that before. Oh, yeah Yeah, I used to jam with all these bands Are you union you got to be union for this gig? I'm not union, but I'll join the union Oh, hold on. Hold on. Let me talk to my manager. Hold on. I'll join it. It's okay. Okay. You don't have to be union Okay, all right. I'm so excited to play with you. You wanted to tell me about the music See you tomorrow Okay. All right. That's cool. All right. We'll see you tomorrow. All right. That sounds good. Okay. This is good Our next guest is a Grammy award-winning musician whose new EP is entitled from the hut to the projects to the mansion We you want to chair? Can we get you a chair? I'm sorry. I didn't curtain me. You need a chair. You're right. Okay Where are my man he meant to be there? I don't know. That's where he's supposed to be That's right. I was meant to be there. That is where I was supposed But the best part, you know, the best part was when we in the commercial break We plugged in our instruments and Paul Schaefer and the band were jamming on this Bob Marley song that you all know And Paul gave me this look through his sunglasses. He broke down the band And I just started playing long I asked why for the after party was that Dave flew by Right there in four minutes of song I was the only sitar player ever to play It's true ask Paul Schaefer That's right, this is sitar he knew it he knew it. That's good. He was telling everybody else, too How's everybody doing? That's really good to hear because this show is not just about me But it's about you and me your focused Energy and attention create and shape the space. That's right. In fact, has anybody ever heard of entrainment? Entrainment. Yeah, what's entrainment? That's right. That's basically right entrainment is a physical Phenomenon applied to all waveforms Like-minded waveforms, they like to sync up. They like to come together If they're kind of close then the energy will bring them together to one to one thing That's entrainment. Have you ever seen people walking in NYC and their arms and legs just start moving naturally together in unison? Or let's see Or you're in great conversation with somebody and the ideas are flowing and you're on the same wavelength man or Oh, yeah, did you know that the earth and moon are entrained such that We only see one face of the moon as it travels around the earth every 28 days That's entertainment. I mean entrainment It's the process of like waveforms syncing together This drum is called DAF It's a great tool for entraining minds It's from Iran, from Persia. In fact, I wanted to go to Iran once I was in India traveling around I had a letter from Jalal Zulfunun, this very senior maestro of Persian music who had accompanied in dozens of concerts So then I went to the Iranian embassy to try to get a visa. I showed him my letter This won't work. You need a letter from your own embassy Okay, all right. So I go to the US embassy And I show them the Jalal letter And I say, you know, I just really, first I had to wait around. This guy took a long time to show up I was waiting there forever. I showed him the Jalal letter I said I just want to go to Iran and study The Iranians tell me that I need a letter from you guys in order to go to Iran What can we do? We don't need to show any such letters, especially now for the Iranians Oh man, that's harsh. Okay, so I go back to the Iranian embassy This time I brought my DAF. I was sure I could get this visa So I give them the letter again. I explain how I just want to go to Iran, study the music And imbibe the culture. It just wasn't working So in a flash of genius, I pulled out my DAF and started playing Our eternal time signatures. Arts in the room What I really wanted to do right now is tell you about this This special vocal style that we are all singing all the time We just don't know it. We're not aware of it We can't always hear these different dimensions of our own voices Or in the voices of others Judicious attention to the mathematically aligned infinite musical harmonics The universe of overtones inside all waveforms, all sounds Like right here, right now, the magic of the sitara sound is in the juwari That's the bridge that gives life to the sound That buzz you here, infinite in number, the life of the party And now with the voice, just gonna hum. That's the best way to dampen the overtones Overtones revealed. The reverb. It's just me, the microphone, and all of you My handy dandy overtone warp tunnel right here That's right. These concentric rings that you see represent different pitches, different frequencies So you can actually see in living color the universe of sounds If you do this, if you sing, well first let me tell you That our voices contain all these other dimensions We just have to learn to pull back the curtain a little bit Now you don't have to ask how you do this, Neil You have to ask, why do you do this, Neil? That's because why, very slowly, is U-O-I-A-E And sweeps up through the overtones You can see in my overtone warp tunnel, little secret That last little bit, primordial sound, you can get four distinct overtones It's so therapeutic to make the Y sound If you do this 20 times in a row with deep breaths in between, I guarantee you'll feel transformed So remember that when you go home and practice in the bathroom No really, I used to walk around New York City looking for the most reverby, echoey spaces I could find Stairwells, the subway The train would come by and the brakes would be screeching I would be singing at the top of my lungs, but nobody could hear me Anybody else? Anybody else do that? Yes, okay, alright, alright, we're like-minded people here I've worked with these sounds for 20 years And I found a lot of comfort and support in discovering these tones within the tones, the overtones Living in that sound, the pure sound, is a healing experience I made a song about the creation of the universe It's a kids song, I've written a lot of them over the years But this one is my first time, I wanted to make it simple, about the sound, that's the one And how that sound created the universe and the galaxy and the stars and planets and all of us Because we're all made from the same stardust This is the concept of the Big Bang, the sound that created the universe How do you tell that story to a child? First there was the sound I'm teaching it to my two-year-old daughter Lila She's so inspired by all things space She asks to see the moon every night, she knows the names of the planets in order She wants to know about the galaxies I think I did something right there, but I was actually a much younger man In a different space and time And I did not realize it then, but perhaps I wrote this story for my first daughter, Rihanna Shortly after she was born, Rihanna passed After only a few days of being on this planet This was almost 20 years ago Rihanna was here for such a short time But she had such a huge impact on my life How can those few days of space and time feel so much longer than the days themselves? How can one person's life have so many ripples and waves throughout my much longer life? Losing a loved one is one of the heaviest moments you can go through And yet time just keeps marching on I learned lots about music and played hundreds of gigs Learned how to cook like a champ Had long rafting trips through the Grand Canyon I even got my MFA in interdisciplinary arts and learned how to mix it all up And I have to get real for talking about the black holes here My partner Jessica Who had such a zest for life and was so connected to earth and nature Jessica, she too passed It's hard to hear and even harder to say But she was in a lot of pain And she took her own life It was 10 years later that it only just started the process of trying to pull back See the larger picture, like an astronomer through a telescope Searching for the big cycles of time On the small things you can see without a telescope Don't make sense But since then I have been making my own path forward And choosing to move on in time Through healing and sound and music and community With Brooklyn Raga Massive Anybody know it? I thought so We literally started our weekly jam session the month after Jessica passed It's been an ongoing music therapy A place to experiment with new ideas Be with friends And also create space for other performers and lovers of Raga music Today we've been trying to slow down Feel the gravity of each moment But time is going to catch up with us Just like making improvisational music We don't know how it will end until it's over First there was that First there was that First there was the sound First there was the sound First there was the sound First there was the sound First there was the sound From that sound Was made from that See them from First there was the sound First there was the First there was the sound First there was the sound First there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first there was the sound, first Now time has moved on. Since I was born, I'm in a new space in time. And teaching this song to my daughter, Leela, makes me so happy. First there was the sound First there was the sound First there was the sound First there was the sound Everybody sing First there was the sound You guys still with me? Time for the last song I know We want this time to last forever But you know time moves on And it's time for the last song I'm gonna do a little tuning A little setting up here We've seen all our great director Maybe I was sad inside I'm not sure, but it made them sad So I wanted to sing an upbeat song A song about having been scared of hope Having any hope at all I started to worry During the better times of lightness And joy, that oh no There's another black hole just waiting around the corner So I've been afraid of hope But I hope for hope Hope is a thing worth hoping for But right now today I am here with you And I wonder is getting together In a room full of people again During COVID a form of hope I'm excited to make this It's a story telling a form of hope It's making music a form of hope Let's hope another word for healing I'm gonna do a quick Q&A Or a brief Q&A in a moment So you can stretch if you need to People on the ground Okay, anybody here Have a question Or a comment Or anything for Neil or Seema or me This is Neil Merguy, he didn't introduce himself So Neil Merguy And Seema Lisa Pandia Who did art and video And then my name is McCall I'm the director, so anybody? So what was it like to work as husband And wife as a question? With a baby? I'm not going to realize here right now So this whole week we could just work together And it's great We've been working together On and off over the years And she's been part of helping me Develop this whole thing As I Been working with my looping And expanded that To include video Video looping as well as audio looping And producing this kind of psychedelic Live stream With sounds and visuals And then we used some of Seema's artwork And then I thought Well, I'm already doing The making the music And mixing the audio and the video I'm just not doing enough here So then we added the theatrical element I would say that You know the We both are artists At our own right and I found that the videos Actually came as being inspired By Neal's work So they have evolved together And but I'd say working On this show in particular It was nice to have McColl As like kind of our pivot point So it's like oh I want Neal to do this I'm not going to nag him I'm just going to tell the director To tell him that So that helped working together Yeah and there was a lot Of these intimate stories That McColl and And I You know we mined my MFA And you know just My mind and picked out stories From my life but actually that was Kind of that was part of the process That I couldn't work with Seema too much on It was like just too close To personal those harder stories But I've known McColl For 25 years or so So you know She's very familiar Oh this doesn't work but I'm pretty Okay I was just saying have you tried Or attempted using your music Intentionally for therapeutic purposes Like maybe with communities When you were in India or even if you were here That Yeah definitely I participated In kind of I mean concerts are healing too But then there's a certain more intentional Kind of sound healing Space that I've definitely Been active in And not in India yet I'd like to do that And also during the pandemic Over zoom a little bit too Doing this whole like you know Visual part Over zoom with kids And school kids and adults And schools has also been very Empowering but Definitely want to do more of that And it's part of ceremonies too Definitely anybody else yes The platform you mean About the stage The platform if it was for acoustic reasons I think it sounds better to be higher For sure but also the presentation You know presentation It was a little higher than I would have liked But these are these great Great things that they have I think it does change the sound for sure But you know there's so many speakers around too That You know it's better to be raised for sure Yeah Thank you Happy to take Any questions Also I don't know if we're monitoring The chat but if anybody Online also has any questions No Yes using Ableton Live To loop the audio And in conjunction With VDMX which is a VGA software to do the Video so There were times when I was controlling The video and Other times where you know they were controlling SEMA's videos From the back and when I was controlling It yeah I have like MIDI Keys set to start Looping in Ableton and in VDMX At the same time and then I can run All these effects on the videos And audio of course too And then you know Mix and match the video and audio Through both of those softwares together I haven't seen too Many people actually try to do video looping And audio looping at the same time This might not be working Is it working? Try it again Here My question is In your process of Creation How much of what you're creating is like I have an idea and I'm going to figure Out how to make it With these tools and how much of it is I have these tools like what can I do With them Actually this has all been like A pandemic project And at the beginning Of the pandemic I'd already had this kind of looping Practice that I'd used different Starting with a boss pedal And then expanding to this app Called loopy on an iPad And then at the beginning of the Pandemic I was like okay let's go To Ableton and do the real thing And because I knew it was just so much More sophisticated But then at that time I had the vision For the video And to do that In conjunction And I was just like exploring so many Different softwares to see how to do it So I definitely had the vision First to try to do that But then along the way It's like oh what can I do now What can I do now? Like that I have a question for Nicole Which is just how it was To work with somebody That you know you've had Long friendship with and to be able To extract This story Which I think Is I think you did a beautiful Job at really bringing that Story together and You know not telling Neil's full journey But certainly like pulling out These moments that came together In such a beautiful way and I'm Just curious what that process Was like Well we agreed that Well I read Neil's I'm a faith thesis More than 200 pages So I read a thesis Which was about as he speaks about In the show like how you know Connecting like sound And actually Space and time And so it's like some of it I didn't understand But actually in his thesis he also writes very personally And like had made a lot of connections Between things that Have happened in his life And these High concept ideas and I think that's pretty cool And so sort of At first everything was on the table But then it's also like this is a person This is Neil's life you know So I'm not trying to put something On stage that Neil doesn't want So really you know Neil sort of led The process in terms of like you know we I said these are really interesting to me These stories that are in the thesis Neil and I have had conversations and I was like I remember having this conversation with you that was interesting Can we put some of that in there you know So Some of that was like basically conversations With Neil but also I think like every step of the way I was like Don't put something out there That you don't want to put out there Just you know There's no like pushing to put something Out there and whatever you want to put out Is because it's part of your story And you're at a place where you Are able to put those stories out there Is that true do you feel that way Yeah I will just add that You know when I approached McColl you know I was developing This whole sound Visual experience and I was like Wow I need to put a story To that and I've really been wanting to Work with McColl for a long time So he called her up and then It was her I was like I don't know what the story is I just know there's some story And it was her suggesting well It should be your story And not some other story So that's I didn't like intent To tell my story when we started this A couple months ago but That's the way it is And it's been great to work with her And of course Sema makes all these Beautiful pieces of art With tabla heads and Is animated some of those things Into the videos that you saw here So it's a family It's a family affair Yes My favorite part of the show was When you were making like sounds And The video behind you was like Interacting and it was closing in on you Or expanding based on the Why you know But then it's like Can you like talk about what that was Like what were we seeing And why was it reacting that way And then Sema like Since you were creating These shapes and The visuals How did the sound And what that was informed What you were making And does that backdrop also have anything To do with that Well first about the backdrop So I have a whole series Of artwork that's based off Of used tabla heads And for me it's about You know the embodiment of rhythm And rhythm and Repetition and sound And sound waves being This force of the universe As Neil put so eloquently Over the last hour But this form I use in a lot of my artwork And a lot of the visuals that you saw Also on the Screen are kind of based off Of these mushroom shapes that are Based off of Two sine waves kind of Facing each other so One sine wave and another sine wave So it almost creates Almost like Self-referential feedbacks If one could say that And so I would say I had A lot of the visuals that you saw Were based off of stills of the artwork Sculptures And drawings and things that I have But then It wasn't enough to I think say oh this is really cool I just want to put it up you know It's going to be cool you know Like the visuals At least my intention in making them Was to be an aide in the storytelling That Neil was doing so You know I think certain choices like In the piece that you're talking about Where he's doing a lot of the overtone singing You know the round piece Actually really matches the The overtone warp tunnel which is Kind of incidental But it worked really well But it's also like you know Kind of that really slow moving Visual that's not going to Interfere with the music But it's something that's there to Aide in the feeling and not like To overtake the music and I think That was kind of like the Choice in a lot of them And maybe just one more quick Thing is that You know in the idea of Feedback you know you saw a lot Of visual feedback you know Of Neil and things like that You know feedback Being an interesting mathematical Phenomena that creates fractals In sound and visuals And things and so even some of the Background videos were Based off of fractals That we created by Taking a camera Facing it into the computer And getting a visual Feedback so and seeing just What came up in the chaos That we recorded and then using Some of that as like the background Footage along with NASA stuff so So yeah There was also some video Feedback in the last scene where You could see my arm when it had Like 20 arms and stuff yeah that was All visual feedback but you were Asking about the overtone warp Tunnel that's um it's Frequency Basically FFT Basically you can you know You get the audio Information and you can see like On a graph the Frequency But this was like a radial One so I took that And I added you know different effects To it and colors to it To create that that's Yeah specific audio reactive thing To travel through the warp tunnel To get to these other destinations Yeah Satya Your personal process of sharing Your story like this It's you know I didn't set out to do this Necessarily um But it feels good you know it's I don't always talk About About it I feel like I talk About it a lot but Seema says no you never Talk about it about the kind Of the darker things right you know losing You know having The loss um So it feels good it feels Like a natural evolution you know And you know I'm literally Am doing The healing work and playing the music After telling the story I'm doing it I've been doing it and I'm doing it Even more on the stage here And with all your help and Hopefully it's a group kind of healing Experience all right I think yeah I think that's great thank you all For being here all right Stick around I'm happy to talk to everybody And get some drinks if anybody wants To get some drinks with us