The BASIC Show

SUUVI: "Juilliard Trained Me to Be Perfect—Then I Burned It All Down" | EPISODE 6

• Viktorija Pashuta • Season 1 • Episode 6

Share episode

Suuvi — cello prodigy, Juilliard graduate, and fearless electronic music creator — shares her remarkable story of transformation. From living under crushing pressure as a child performer to using music for shadow work and deep trauma healing, Suuvi opens up like never before.

Tune in as she reveals:
 • 🎻 Life as a cello prodigy accepted into Juilliard at age 10
 • 🖤 Why she left the elite classical world to reinvent herself completely
 • 🧘‍♀️ How silent Vipassana meditation rewired her brain and ended her insomnia
 • 🎧 The neuroscience behind her new album Dark Therapy — designed to guide listeners through deep introspection
• 🔥 How she uses sound to process PTSD and catalyze radical self-discovery

Known for haunting compositions that blend classical cello with Berlin techno and ambient textures, Suuvi (@suuvimusic) is carving out a raw, genre-defying path that challenges what music — and healing — can be.

👉 If you enjoy the show, please follow, rate us ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐, and leave a review — it truly helps spread these incredible stories to more listeners.

Full length video episodes available on YouTube

Subscribe to the Print Edition of BASIC Magazine — A Collectible Work of Art Delivered Quarterly - https://buybasicmagazine.myshopify.com/products/basic-subscription 

🖤 Follow Suuvi: @suuvimusic

🎵 Listen to Dark Therapy: suuvimusic.com
🎥 Recorded at The Agency Studios: theagencystudio.com
🏠 Interiors by DesignTonik: designtonik.com
💧 Fueled by Drink MyMuse: drinkmymuse.com
🎵 Music by Brandon Dalo: brandondalo.com

Send us a text

Support the show

SPEAKER_00:

So you were accepted into Juilliards at age 10. I internalized from a very young age that hard work was the only thing that mattered and leisure and play were bad. And for me, everything was focused around achievement. I was like 14 years old. There was one day when I was traveling from Europe to the States that I couldn't practice the cello and I was freaking out because I didn't practice for one day. I was 27 where I knew that I had to make a huge, huge difference in my life. I changed my name. I, you know, I did all these things. I got sober that year. Welcome to

SPEAKER_02:

The Basic Show with Victoria

SPEAKER_01:

Machado. Welcome, Suvi. How do your friends actually call you?

SPEAKER_00:

They call me Suvi. They

SPEAKER_01:

call you Suvi?

SPEAKER_00:

Unless they're old friends. I have a couple old friends from New York who call me Sofia.

SPEAKER_01:

Sofia?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

What about like your loved ones?

SPEAKER_00:

My parents call me Sofia. I don't think my parents have... I've actually never directly talked to them about my name change. I mean, I think they know because they follow me on Instagram, but maybe they've just chosen to not talk about it and not acknowledge it.

SPEAKER_01:

Wait, did you actually officially change your name?

SPEAKER_00:

Not legally, but pretty much in every area of my life.

SPEAKER_01:

So it's your like alter ego.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Your extra little spicy identity.

SPEAKER_00:

It was supposed to be an alter ego, but then I realized that it was actually almost like a new person I had stepped into being. And then it didn't actually make sense to be Sophia anymore. It was almost like a chapter of my life that I felt like I closed and I wanted to let go of. And it's actually sometimes confusing when people call me Sophia. Like I was on a Zoom call a couple months ago and I remember someone said Sophia and I was like actually confused. I was like, who are we talking

SPEAKER_01:

about? Who's here? Sophia with us in the room right now. Right now?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and then I realized they were talking to me. I was like,

SPEAKER_01:

ooh, okay. So walk us through, how did the name change come along? Why?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so basically, I had been thinking about it for a while. The reason was actually, so I had a whole career as a classical musician, and it was a very traditional, strict, conservative classical career. And what I really wanted to do was make electronic music. So I was trying to figure out how I could do it. publicly without messing with my existing public image. So originally I thought about it for about six months and I had planned to basically create an anonymous alter ego called Suvi under which I would release music that wasn't classical music. But by the time I actually did the name change, I realized that I just didn't actually want to be a classical musician at all. So what happened was it just became a new chapter of my life.

SPEAKER_01:

So how long have you been a classical musician?

SPEAKER_00:

Since I was two. And I would say it's not that I'm not a classical musician anymore. I think there's this binary, I think, in classical training where you're either a classical musician or not a classical musician. It's a skill that doesn't go away. I started when I was two years old. I trained for 16 years in conservatory. So it's not like I forgot, but there is a very sort of traditional narrow lane for what people expect a classical musician to be and do that I was very much in for the first part of my life. And I just knew that I had no interest in being in that lane and being that person. So for me, in order to do it, I really had to actually create a whole new identity, which really was actually my real self that I was stepping into. I felt like when I was trying to fulfill that image of what a classical musician should be, I was actually... really kind of diminishing myself and molding myself into something that other people wanted me to be. And nowadays, I feel actually more myself as Suvi than I ever did as Sofia.

SPEAKER_01:

So you were accepted into Juilliard's at age 10. And I did some little research. And for those who don't know, apparently, Juilliard accepts fewer than 8% of applicants, which is making it harder to get into than Harvard. And celebrities like Viola Davis, Robin Williams, Adam Driver and Jessica Chastain went to jail. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if it's Wikipedia. I don't

SPEAKER_00:

know about the celebrities, but the acceptance rate might be true.

SPEAKER_01:

Chat told me that.

SPEAKER_00:

Really? But I love ChatGPT. I talk to ChatGPT more than anybody else. Chat is everybody's buddy. I know. It's becoming a problem for me. I think I'm addicted to ChatGPT. My friends, have you seen those memes? It's like,

SPEAKER_01:

oh, did we live

SPEAKER_00:

before? Yeah, like those memes of the girl like hand in hand with, chat GPT and it's like the love of their life. That's my friend sent me that meme. It

SPEAKER_01:

is the truth right now. But anyway, bottom line, it's a really prestigious school. Yes. So you went to a very prestigious school at a very young age. How did it feel for you? Because 10 years old, I mean, it's like you, a little baby who just want to be nourished and play with her friends in the sandbox. So how did you feel?

SPEAKER_00:

Did you go

SPEAKER_01:

by yourself or?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I went by myself. It was, it was funny because actually my parents kind of tricked me into getting into jewelry. I didn't know what jewelry was, obviously. I was actually nine years old when they told me I was going to audition. And they basically told me that if I went and played this audition, it was the first audition I ever took, I didn't even know what that was, they would take me to see a movie afterwards. And I was just excited to see this movie. So I went in, I remember I think it was like eight in the morning I played, and then I was accepted and I started studying there. And I think that was a really... big moment for my life, probably bigger than I understood at the time, because even though I didn't have the vocabulary to articulate this, I had been playing cello since I was two. But at that point, it really became my profession and my career because I was training to be a professional and training to compete as a professional. And that put a lot of pressure on me. I remember it was, on one hand, very refreshing to suddenly be in a very competitive environment where everybody was operating at this really, really, really high caliber because I had always been very disciplined and had very high standards for myself. So I didn't feel like I was the only one who was like this anymore. But then on the other hand, I was acutely aware that I was not the only one and there was a lot of competition. And I would say that I think at the time, there wasn't as much of a conversation about self-care and mental health and all these other parts of developing as a person that we are, I think, as a generation now more vocal about. At the time, kind of overnight, the only thing that became important to me was overachieving. It put a lot of pressure on me. Because I was so competitive with myself, I was never really competitive with others, but I was extremely competitive with myself and holding myself to super... The worst

SPEAKER_01:

critic,

SPEAKER_00:

yeah? Yeah, I was my worst critic. I just remember overnight, I had this intense, intense pressure to suddenly perform at my best standard all the time. And that shaped the rest of my life in a way that I guess is not... normal for the typical 10-year-old to experience. Definitely not typical. Yeah, and it was interesting to be in this elite environment because we were all behaving that way. We all wanted to be the best. And I think for me, it was interesting because there are a lot of things that I internalized at the time, which now as an adult, I have to reprogram in myself. For example, I internalized from a very young age that hard work was the only thing that mattered and leisure and play were bad. So there was no concept of play. There was no concept of fun. There was no concept of time off. And for me, everything was focused around achievement. And that's something that I've really had to unravel as an adult because for a long time, I would feel guilty. I remember even when I was like 14 years old, there was one day when I was traveling from Europe to the States that I couldn't practice the cello. And I was freaking out because I didn't practice for one day. It wasn't until probably my mid-20s that I allowed myself to actually ever take any time off. And nowadays I'm much better about it. I

SPEAKER_01:

have so many questions. I didn't want to interrupt you. Tell us, what is... What do you mean by saying elite environment? Like, what was it? To me, it's some kind of like a Harry Potter school, you know? Yeah. Wizards and this crazy schedule and all this, you know, professors. What was it for you? What did you feel? Describe us a little bit what that environment was for you.

SPEAKER_00:

I think it was just being around a standard of excellence that was implicitly just prevalent everywhere. You know... there were so many people who were playing at such a high level and competing at a high level. And we were basically just all grouped together. And there was this, I think, especially when I started competing, because I think I started competing internationally when I was 12 or 13. Then it was quite literally, we were in competition with one another. It was this feeling of, you know, even though These people were your friends. They were also your competition. So it was kind of like if you imagine like taking, you know, a couple hundred kids who are all competing for the Olympics and putting them in the same place. It was the same thing, but for music.

SPEAKER_01:

So

SPEAKER_00:

what

SPEAKER_01:

was it

SPEAKER_00:

like?

SPEAKER_01:

I just imagine it in the movie, like you can't sit with us. Like, how did you make friends? How did you interact? Were you just going to classes, studying, go back and practicing? Practicing, what kind of interaction did you have between each other?

SPEAKER_00:

So I was actually a little bit of a bad girl. I skipped a lot of classes. We want those stories, the bad girl stories. Yeah, I remember. I think I was actually almost kicked out when I was... maybe 13 or 14 because they caught me climbing on the roof. Climbing on the roof? Yeah, they were doing construction in the building and one of the construction workers left a door open that had access to the roof. So I went up onto the roof because I was curious and I didn't realize that there were security cameras everywhere. So like maybe two weeks later, I got called in to the dean's office and they just put the photos down and they're like, what is... I want those photos framed. I know. I mean, they must still have them. But But yeah, I remember they basically, yeah, that was not a fun meeting, but they basically put me on probation. But I was skipping class a lot. I was actually skipping class because I was secretly studying art at MoMA down the street, well, a couple blocks downtown. So I used to actually, I remember like what was my... lunch and practice break in the afternoon, I would actually sneak out and go to MoMA to spend time in the museum and then come back. And then there were also just, yeah, I was kind of, it was funny because I was not actually, I personally think I was one of those students. I would say I was extremely talented, but extremely, um, strong-willed and determined to do things my own way when I was young. So therefore, my teachers had a very hard time with me. I remember actually very distinctly my cello teacher, who's now a very dear friend, and I studied with her basically from age nine to 20, almost 26 when I graduated from my post-grad. I remember one time in the middle of a lesson, she just walked out and she's like, I just need a And she's like, I don't know what to do because you're like so, so, so talented, but so, so, so difficult. What did you do? I just wouldn't listen. Were you asking questions? I would just kind of, I had my own, you know, with classical music, there's, there's a way of doing things. Okay. And, um, I just had my own way.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you just were a rebellion, huh?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, from already in school. And then I remember, you know, I was kicked out of orchestra one time because I came in wearing like, I went through a goth phase when I was maybe 12 or 13. I can

SPEAKER_01:

see that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I was coming in in like, you know, panda eye makeup and like Nirvana t-shirts and black nail polish and... I got sent to CVS to go get nail polish remover. They were like, you can't be here like this.

SPEAKER_01:

We had something like that back in my culture. You couldn't wear a skirt past a certain level, things like that. But did you, were you supposed to wear a uniform?

SPEAKER_00:

We didn't have a uniform, but I think we had dress codes.

SPEAKER_01:

I did have

SPEAKER_00:

a dress code. And I think I definitely violated them. But it was funny because when I came back from my artist diploma, like I went to Europe for my undergrad and my grad, and then I came back from my artist diploma when I was 23. And then I fully leaned into this like wild persona where I almost made it like my mission to come in every day and as out there of an outfit as possible. What kind of outfit? Just whatever. The craziest. Yeah. I went through all sorts of phases. Like, you know, sometimes it would be like ultra glam. Other times it would be like a fur coat that was like different colors. That's my style. Yeah. It was like all over the place. And I kind of It became a thing. I would do like crazy makeup. Like I would do like, you know, like 10 colors of eyeshadow and like gold eyeliner and all this stuff. And I think it annoyed a lot of my teachers, but they kind of realized that I was going to keep doing this. Do

SPEAKER_01:

you think it was a cry for attention? I

SPEAKER_00:

think it was. I think it was a cry for attention. I think it was also me already at that point feeling very, very frustrated with the fact that there was so much conformism and I was determined to, you know, break the rules as much as possible. I remember when I was in my first couple years at Juilliard, one of the things that was definitely in the dress code was I don't think it was even explicitly listed, but you were just expected to wear shoes on stage. And so I made it a thing where I would never wear shoes on stage when I came back from my artist diploma.

SPEAKER_01:

Bad girl.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I started working with a lot of dancers and I justified it by, you know, the dancers are not wearing shoes.

SPEAKER_01:

But I've heard the thing that you feel more connected to music and feel more grounded. I've actually seen a few artists, musicians who perform on stage with no shoes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, I love it. And actually, it's interesting because Because I am wearing very high heels right now.

SPEAKER_01:

Feel free to take

SPEAKER_00:

them off. No, but I do feel that when you're grounded flat on the floor, you do feel much more centered. And I actually, I've had experiences. Yeah, there was definitely a phase where I was wearing really high heels when I was playing cello. And it could be scary in the sense that you could feel a little bit unbalanced.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And before we started the interview, you told me you actually were wearing super high heels and you broke your ankle.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I broke three bones in my ankle. So it's actually I always say it was like the best thing that ever happened to me in a way when I moved to L.A. because I was going through a phase where I wasn't sure where I wanted to live and I had come to L.A. just like on a whim. And the first couple months here, I was barely here. I was touring. And then I came back after maybe three months and thought, okay, maybe I'll give this city a try permanently for like six more months. But then what happened was the very first night that I decided to go out and celebrate with my friends, we tried to go to a club downtown and I was wearing a like massive stripper heels with, they were like platform heels that had a very, very narrow stiletto that was shaped like the barrel of a gun. And yeah, and they had like bullets all around the side. They were like the best shoes ever. You're some

SPEAKER_01:

fashionista, huh?

SPEAKER_00:

I know. So I was so excited. I was like, I've never worn these. It's my first night out in LA. I'm going to step out of this Uber. And then I saw a puddle. So I was like, I can't get my shoes wet. So I tried to step over it. And instead I lost balance and ended up with 14 pins in my ankle which sucked in the moment

SPEAKER_01:

welcome to LA

SPEAKER_00:

right away American dream yeah but the great thing is they kept me in LA because I couldn't walk for three months so I got stuck in LA had to relearn how to walk and then by that point I was like okay I'm living here my stuff is here

SPEAKER_01:

yeah so certain things maybe happen for a reason right good or bad just for you to be here do you see yourself here in LA down the line long term

SPEAKER_00:

yeah so it's actually now finally become the place where I've lived the longest Which is only three years, but for me that's long because I basically moved almost every one to two years for my entire life since I left home at 16. But yeah, I was actually really amazed because I actually re-signed my lease contract. about two weeks ago for the second time. And last year it was the first time I ever re-signed a lease. I never lived anywhere for more than one year. So it was like a big moment. I remember like when I re-signed it the first time I had this whole panic where I was like, I feel like I need to move, like just because I always do. And my friends were like, well, where are you going to go if you move? I was like, I don't know, like somewhere else, but I just, I've never signed, re-signed at least. It felt like a massive like commitment, but. And

SPEAKER_01:

you've lived in so many places, especially in Europe. I'm surprised you didn't want to stay like in London or in Paris.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, so I was, I went to Paris first and I loved Paris. And then I went to Berlin and I loved Berlin for different reasons. But I think I was, you know, LA was somewhere I never thought I would end up. I, if you had asked me, I think at any point, Before I moved to LA, if I would live here, I had no interest in the city.

SPEAKER_01:

But

SPEAKER_00:

what happens was by the time I finished my 16 years of conservatory, I realized that what interested me more than anything was popular music. And by pop music, I mean everything that wasn't classical music. And so I figured the place to come to learn about that was Los Angeles.

SPEAKER_01:

I would never think Los Angeles about that. I would maybe think like New York more. Really? No,

SPEAKER_00:

because the whole pop music industry is here and there's just so much happening here with the music scene. So it was interesting because when I came here, I literally felt like I had been raised Amish and I was like seeing electricity for the first time because I came from a world of, you know, playing with orchestras and everything's acoustic, like no micing, wooden instruments. And I got here and I remember my very first week, I sat down to do a session with a hip hop producer and I had never seen a DAW, which is Digital Audio Workstation, which is how everybody...

SPEAKER_01:

Sorry, you haven't seen what?

SPEAKER_00:

Digital Audio Workstation. It's how everybody makes music now. And I remember almost feeling like I had been cheated in my education. I was like, how did I go through 16 years of... what's supposedly the best conservatory training and I don't know how basic music technology works. And so it literally felt like I had been raised Amish in a musical sense. It's like you have to

SPEAKER_01:

start again from ground zero to learn now this technology.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and it was crazy because I remember just looking at it and I was like, I have no idea what this is. I had never played with mic. I had never recorded myself. I had never used any sort of contemporary music tech. But the one thing that I knew is that I loved popular music. I had... Actually, I remember my last couple of years at Juilliard, I used to listen to Eminem while I was practicing cello in the practice rooms, which everyone thought was really weird. Weird choice. I know. And like Brockhampton and Mac Miller. I was like a big hip hop fan at the time. I mean, still am, but I was really going through like a hip hop phase. And I remember distinctly like I would be practicing and at the same time have my AirPods in and be listening to Eminem. Slim Shady. So it was like this dichotomy. But so even though I got here and I didn't understand how to make pop music in any way, I knew that I loved it. And I just wanted to understand it better. And I'm the kind of person who learns by doing. So I just said yes to everything. Like within a couple of months, I was touring with like R&B artists, electronic artists, hip hop artists. And from there, I just picked up things and learned. And after... The first couple years I started producing myself and now I'm a full-on producer and just this morning made an EDM track.

SPEAKER_01:

Just this morning, sipping my morning coffee, creating some tracks.

SPEAKER_00:

It's not where I thought I would end up at all. Three and a half years ago when I finished at Juilliard, if you had told me that I'd be sitting here making beats, I

SPEAKER_01:

would not. It's hard for me to imagine too because most of the videos I've seen of you online is just you so proper on the world stages you know beautiful amazing music and I was like wow I cannot imagine you in any other way

SPEAKER_00:

well it's not released yet so actually I'm releasing an electronic album in a couple months okay it's gonna be slowly singles are gonna come out this summer and then the full album will be out in

SPEAKER_01:

the fall okay so let's talk about that I want to talk a little bit later but since you brought it up is it the dark therapy okay so tell me about it I listened to one track and I didn't want to stop it's just such a crazy new is this the one on your website right It was just so interesting. Well, you had that animation, but I was just listening. I've never heard anything like this in my life before. Can you tell me a little bit more what's behind it? What's the story? What does it mean?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so, well, it's interesting because dark therapy kind of fulfills two things for me. On one hand, I guess I can talk about it from a musical sense, first of

SPEAKER_03:

all.

SPEAKER_00:

I knew that I wanted to... move into electronic music. And that was something that I had known for a long time. And where I felt challenged was, like you said, how do I transition from what people know of me playing classical cello in this very proper sense to the world of electronic music, which I've been listening to for probably more than 10 years. I mean, I lived in Berlin as a teenager, so techno is like a big part of my soul. So for a long time, I've actually been making electronic music for a while, but I didn't know how I could basically just drop a techno track and expect my audience to follow or to understand where I was going. So I knew that I wanted to do something that fused those two worlds. And musically, that's what dark therapy is because it was interesting when we were making it, we were just mixing it the other day and I was talking to the engineer and I was like, I don't even know what genre to categorize this as because it's not classical, but it has cello, And he was like, this is electronic.

SPEAKER_01:

It's like New Age or something, kind of? I guess it could be New

SPEAKER_00:

Age. It could be classified as, some people have described it as trance or ambient. But to me, it also does have beats. So it's kind of, honestly, I do think it sort of lives in its own world. But increasingly, I also think we live in a world where genres, like everything, are blending. I mean, I've always felt very much in between cultures being, you know, Cuban and Chinese and having lived in the States and Europe. I feel like I belong to all these different parts of the world. And artistically, I think that was a big part of my dilemma as well, feeling like, where do I belong? Who am I? Because I was genuinely passionate about all these different kinds of music, and I didn't know how to amalgamate them all. And I think I realized over time that what made sense was not to try to make myself either or, yes or no, like I can only do classical, I can't do classical, I'm doing this or that, and instead just build worlds that were my own world and they could be anything I wanted them to be. And I think, you know, a genre is something that we have to, it's a label, we have to give something because of the way music is uploaded to a DSP. But ultimately, I think we live in a very genre-less world.

SPEAKER_01:

Genre-less? What does it mean?

SPEAKER_00:

Genre-less? Like no genre?

SPEAKER_01:

There's no genre?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think there's, you know, in so many ways, things aren't, even in like food, like I compared a lot to food, like food has, there's so many fusion cuisines now. I think increasingly, you know, with food, globalization, we've all influenced each other so much. I see elements of one thing in another thing all the time, whether it comes to like food or music or art or fashion. And I think it's, it's, um, You know, there aren't as many rules now about like you can only stay in this lane or this lane.

SPEAKER_01:

But sometimes it could be for worse. I mean, if you talk about food, I mean, I hate like fried sushi and things like that. I haven't had fried sushi. Like if you go, let's say, somewhere like in Europe, certain places where they don't have access to fresh fish, they would just make some really horrific things and you would think, no, just go back to the original, go back to the basics.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that was also part of the challenge because with dark therapy, you know, that's another thing that's been really challenging for me because the idea of, you know, classical crossover is something that has been done for a long time and it's something that I personally don't like. I, for a long time, was really, really hesitant to do anything that involved the cello and any other genre of music and that was originally why I kind of wanted to divide the two personas just because I think there's been a lot of what has been traditionally categorized as classical crossover music, then honestly, I think it just sounds like a bad version of both genres, like you were saying with fried sushi. I mean,

SPEAKER_01:

yeah, here you're coming from. But at the same time, you're creating something new, but you're also... You're creating something new, but you having your own twist. And it's because you had so many different experiences, right? They impacted the way you see things because you had exposure to so many different cultures, to so many different styles and disciplines when you were studying. So I guess once you reach certain level of knowledge, you can break the rules, right? So you have the right to break the rules because you already went through the old, you went through the classical textbook, right? You went through all the rules. Now you're saying, okay, I'm bored. I've done it. I know how it works. Now I want to experiment and do something different. But you have the right to do it, right? If I do it, I'm like, okay, you just don't know what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00:

Totally. And that's something, I'm someone who really, really feels strongly about having artistic integrity in anything I do. So one of the reasons why I waited so long to put out anything like this is that I really wanted to take the time to study electronic music. And that's what I did for several years. I mean, I was listening to it since a really young age. And like I said, when I lived in Berlin, I was heavily immersed in the European techno scene and the IDM scene. And dubstep, all these things really heavily influenced me. But for me, it's always important that I'm not making a bastardization of something. And so... It was a tough challenge for me, you know, to create something new that I don't want to say it's a new genre in itself, but it doesn't sound like, I hope, like a bad ripoff of two different genres and trying to, you know, like... take a cupcake and a donut and like... Just for the sake of it, right? Exactly. Just

SPEAKER_01:

for the sake of

SPEAKER_00:

it. Yeah, I think there has to be a reason to do it. And for me, it came from a very authentic place. When I started writing it, actually the whole album came really, really naturally to me. What happened was there was one day I was literally just, I woke up, I meditated and I got the idea for this one track, which was the first single, which is actually the one you

SPEAKER_03:

heard.

SPEAKER_00:

And I wrote it out and about... like one hour. It was a really, really quick process. And I was kind of just experimenting. I had this idea to do something in D minor with a lot of drones. And then that whole track kind of emerged almost exactly the way it is in the finished version. And I sent it to two friends and I was like, I just made this thing this morning. What do you think about this? And they're like, oh my God, we're obsessed. Like make more. And then the whole album kind of almost like wrote itself very naturally in about two or three weeks. It was a very quick, short, intense writing process. But what you never see behind that is there were probably like, you know, a dozen at least failed launch attempts to come up with an idea for a concept for an album before that in the last maybe two years. And I had started and scrapped so many projects that just didn't work. But I think when something works and you're in that flow state and it just comes naturally, you're like, okay, this is it. We're doing this.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you think you had it like in the back of your mind for a long time and then Because I can't imagine, like, first of all, I can't imagine how to write music. Do you have this melody in your head and you just put it, you know, in notes? Or you're first like, oh, let me just play around and throw some, you know, throw some notes into the pot and see what it's going to sound? And the second question is, what I was trying to ask initially, sorry, I have so many questions. You said you tried to work on this album for two years. You think it was somewhere in the back of your head in your subconscious and then when you said you were meditating, somehow it appeared. Do you think it was just luck or you think because you are subconsciously thinking about it and it just found an avenue that one specific day and just came out? I don't know if it makes sense.

SPEAKER_00:

No, it makes more sense. So it's actually interesting because the whole origin for this album actually happened last summer. So last summer I did my first Vipassana meditation retreat which is a 10-day silent meditation

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

And during that time, I meditated for 11 and a half hours every day. 11

SPEAKER_01:

hours meditate?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So you meditate 11 and a half hours and you don't speak and you don't have any contact with anybody for 10 days. I

SPEAKER_01:

cannot meditate for two minutes. 11

SPEAKER_00:

hours? Are you

SPEAKER_01:

like in trance?

SPEAKER_00:

By the end of it, you kind of do feel like you're in like another world. But it was interesting because I had this... experience about halfway through, they put me in what they called a meditation cell, which was like a tiny, maybe like two by four room with nothing except a cushion on the ground and no light. And I remember it was such an interesting experience for me because when I was sitting in that meditation cell, I had the deepest, most powerful meditations and I started hearing phantom music. Like I heard music constantly in my head. And I remember thinking, like, what is going on? Am I losing my mind? Like, have I been in here too long? But it was something that really stuck with me. And then I went back to life. You know, you come out of your meditation retreat, a million things are happening. I was super busy, didn't really have time to think about it. A couple months later, when I was meditating, again, the day I wrote the first track, I remember I came out of the meditation and I thought about that experience. And then I immediately texted one of my friends who's a neuroscientist who studies altered states of consciousness. And I was like, you know, is there a correlation between darkness and music and meditation? And Interestingly, he was actually studying dark exposure at the time in his lab. So he had me come over and we spent about four hours just having a really long conversation about basically how darkness enhanced listening can actually help things like PTSD and depression and ADHD and anxiety. So I basically said, okay, I want to do a clinical study to substantiate this hypothesis what do you need from me and he said let me if you give me you know 30 minutes of music i can run this study for you so i went back and wrote dark therapy

SPEAKER_01:

well i've heard about something like that because once you remove some of the senses right so you remove the sense of vision yeah so you pretty much um accelerate and give power to other senses which is hearing i guess right yeah so i would assume that's what i wanted to ask you so dark therapy be because we didn't clarify it in the beginning, it's listening to music in the darkness, correct me if I'm wrong, it has specific frequency or something that impacts you in a sense? Yeah,

SPEAKER_00:

so I had a lot of extended conversations with the neuroscience team. They have been studying music and sound and how it affects the brain for a long time. Basically about how certain tonalities, certain BPMs, certain rhythmic patterns affect your state of being. And so all the compositions were very carefully crafted around those parameters and they're meant to take you into this very deep introspective journey So this particular album for me, I made it with the concept of doing deep shadow work, which is something I've done a lot of.

SPEAKER_01:

What does it mean, deep shadow work?

SPEAKER_00:

Shadow work is essentially where you reflect upon and process the dark sides of your past. So the trauma, the things that you haven't healed, things that you're maybe ignoring. And for me, as someone who was recovering from PTSD, it was really important for me to address a lot of my past trauma and make peace with it and, you know, allow myself to let go of the past in order to move forward and so I always thought about this concept you know the only way out is in and to me what that means is you have to go inward first and understand yourself before you can actually move on so the whole album is meant to take you on this deep introspective inner journey that allows you to be in the state that's optimized for doing your shadow work and for deep emotional release and my hope is that people who listen to it can face those aspects of themselves and hopefully come out of it with a little bit more levity and clarity.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, you say it's such simple words, but it sounds so complex. I mean, I cannot imagine. What are the first moves? What are the first steps? for anybody who has no experience whatsoever to emerge and to get closer to your experience? Because I can't imagine myself just sitting in a room, closing my eyes and be like, okay, now I'm going to like deep work and I'm going to analyze all my traumas. I feel like, what are the tools? Like, right? What are the first steps, simple things we can start with before going into that

SPEAKER_00:

deep subconscious? Yeah, no, that's maybe a...

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, you clearly have done a

SPEAKER_00:

lot of work. Definitely way more advanced. Yeah, so... it's interesting because I used to be the kind of person I could not meditate for years and years. Everybody in my family meditated. My aunt is a meditation teacher. They were all trying to get me to meditate and I was like all over the place. I had no groundedness. That's

SPEAKER_01:

me.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I used to be, I mean, I used to be like a kite that you had to try to like get back down to

SPEAKER_03:

earth.

SPEAKER_00:

It was super flighty, super spontaneous, like all over the place. And my energy was super, super erratic. And it got to a point where I realized that I was actually running away from myself. I was constantly distracting myself with things all around me to not face myself. And I actually started meditating. I had soft launches for years. I would do meditation classes. I would try meditation apps. I would do it for a couple of days and then always fall off the bandwagon. But then when I was 27, for my birthday, I gifted myself TM lessons. So TM stands for Transcendental Meditation. It's a very popular meditation class. I heard

SPEAKER_01:

about that a little

SPEAKER_00:

bit. Yeah, and I got to the point because I had such bad insomnia at the time for probably, I would say... probably since I was 10 or so. I

SPEAKER_01:

mean, excuse me, your brain has to hold five languages. You speak all the skills and definitely insomnia, like your brain constantly in the work mode, probably even when you're sleeping.

SPEAKER_00:

Totally. I used to wake up in the middle of the night with ideas and like write 3000 word emails to people with the ideas I was having. And people are like, okay. Yeah. So, so my brain was always so overactive. I felt like I could never turn it off. And my insomnia was so bad. And because I couldn't sleep, then I was anxious during the day and it was like a never ending cycle and several friends had recommended TM to me. And finally I was like, okay, I have to do this. And I did the training and immediately it changed my life. Like my insomnia went away. Um, and TM is, you know, you practice twice a day for 20 minutes, which sounded crazy. I was coming from like no meditation and running around all over the place to like,

SPEAKER_01:

so what is the technique?

SPEAKER_00:

It's actually, well, it's a mantra based technique. So they give you a mantra when you do your training and then, um, you do it twice a day for 20 minutes and it was really, I don't know what it was about that that changed me. Maybe I was just at a point in my life where I was ready for that, or maybe it was something about the particular technique that worked for me.

SPEAKER_02:

Um,

SPEAKER_00:

but it really changed my life and everybody who knows me has commented on how there was such a clear before and after in who I was and how I behaved. Um, So

SPEAKER_01:

how long did you do it? I still do it. The time when you noticed the change?

SPEAKER_00:

I would say after... After one year, there was definitely... Oh,

SPEAKER_01:

that's a long time. Well, that's commitment you have. Oh, yeah. That's what I want to say. Like, I want to say you need to have patience for it and be consistent.

SPEAKER_00:

Totally.

SPEAKER_01:

Because I feel like if I try for a week, I'm like, it's not working.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's like a diet or like exercise. I see, yeah. You know, it's like you go to the gym twice, you're not going to have like... Exactly. You know, like the dream body. Okay, okay. It's a lot of... It does take consistency. But, you know, basically, because of my experience with TM, I got very interested in studying the brain. And that's when I got interested in neurobiology. neuroscience and for me I just became radically fascinated with the fact that we could rewire our brains because you know people say that you can't change you can't change but it's been proven that like there you know there's neuroplasticity we can change our brains we can change our patterns it's not easy to and it takes a lot of work and deliberate effort but you can change the person you are

SPEAKER_01:

do you need to have an intent or it just physically you can do it or you need to have like have the purpose and wanting to change?

SPEAKER_00:

I think you need to have the intent. I mean, you know, people always say, people can't change. You can't make someone change. They have to change themselves. And that's definitely how I was. I got to a point when I was 27 where I knew that I had to make a huge, huge difference in my life. And I don't think it's a coincidence that I started meditating. I changed my name. I, you know, I did all these things. I got sober that year. Like

SPEAKER_01:

cut your hair.

SPEAKER_00:

No, I actually, I don't cut my, no, I do cut my hair. Yeah. All these, all these like radical changes in my life happened all at 27. And I think you came from a place of being deeply unhappy with who I was and realizing that, you know, it wasn't working. And if I wanted to achieve a happier life and fulfillment, I really had to start from the root causes. And it was interesting because I remember one of my mentors right at the beginning, I was like all excited to make all these big changes in my life. And I was like asking for advice on my career and all these things. And he was like, no, no, no, no. He's like, you're going through a big life change right now. What you're doing is You're pouring cement, which is going to be the foundation of the house you're going to build. And you're asking me, like, what curtains should I buy now? He's like, your job right now for at least, like, six months is just to pour cement and watch it dry. And I was like, six months? Like, that's crazy. Like, what? Like, I was always about, like, you know, doing things as quickly as possible. But then I realized that actually I slowed down and I made it my priority that year when I was 27 to– make my inner work and my self-care and, you know, change a lot of habits of my life. I made that my top priority and I focused on it actually much more than my career. For a year, my entire priority was just, you know, making sure I was in a really good place. And then because of that, I think it laid the foundation for the second year after I started meditating. Everything was just so much exponentially better. Like, I started to be creative. I started to feel... You know, there were so many creative blocks. I had a huge fear around writing music. That was a big one. It took me probably that whole first year after changing my name to even let go of that fear of writing music. There was this whole paranoia I had that because I hadn't been explicitly trained as a composer. I mean, I had done a composition minor at Juilliard, but... For me, my performance career was all as a cellist. I had this huge, huge major fear that I couldn't write music because I hadn't gone through 16 years of conservatory training for music. And then I realized that that was actually just a limiting self-belief that I had internalized along the way. And I worked really, really hard to undo it. But what I find interesting about doing all this inner work is you realize that there are so many things in life that hold you back that are your own you know, self saboteurs. And I've gotten very, very aware and make it a really big practice. I start every morning with just journaling like three pages. And sometimes I do it like stream of consciousness and just whatever comes out, comes out. And sometimes there's stuff that comes out. I'm like, what is going on in my brain? Like I am having

SPEAKER_01:

these, like, what are you journaling?

SPEAKER_00:

Like it can be anything. Like sometimes it's like, you know, about my work. Sometimes it's about my personal life. Sometimes it's about like just random stuff. Like what am I cooking today? And like where I need to go. And like, it can be anything, but the whole point is sort of like actually see what your brain is thinking about. And, um, It's interesting because over time I realized that a lot of those thoughts that I would observe, I'd be like, oh, this is why I'm holding myself back here, and this is what's blocking me here. And I think it's actually really important because sometimes I feel like I would push and push and push towards certain goals, and I just wouldn't achieve them, not because I didn't have the will or wasn't putting in the effort, but because there was this subconscious desire negative self-limiting belief that was completely blocking me. The most important thing that helped me in this whole process was first admitting that I needed to change. Because I think it's so easy to be in this routine of you're living your life and you almost even gaslight yourself into thinking that you're okay. But I think I had to hit like a wall where I really realized I was not okay and I was not satisfied with my life in any way. And that's when I started to think, you know, okay, I need to make a radical change. The radical change for me started with changing my name. But for me, that was really symbolic of starting over and creating a new chapter in my life. And I think the answers didn't come overnight. It was definitely a very slow and, well, in retrospect, quick, but in the moment it felt very slow process. But I think something that helped me a lot was going back to really like my early, early life and thinking about what it was that truly made me feel happy and made me feel fulfilled. Because that to me was a compass for how I should try to build my life. It was interesting because actually somebody asked me this the other day because they were asking me how you find your purpose. And he was saying, you seem to be someone who's very aware of what your purpose is and what fulfills you and what you want to do. And I was like, That is true. And he told me, we were going through that thought experiment of if you had all the unlimited money in the world, you never had to worry about this again, what would you do? And I was like, I would still be doing exactly the same thing. I'd just hire more help and have more resources. But I'd be investing into the same areas of my life and into doing the same projects with just more support. And that's when I know that I'm living a very fulfilled life. And I thought about it. And he was asking me, you know, about how do you find your purpose? And I was like, well, go back to your childhood and think about what were the times where you felt truly fulfilled and in like a flow state of being alive? Because that actually shows you like what brings you that life purpose. So