Psychedelics

My journey with psychedelics started with Disney. You cannot watch "The three caballeros" and not go on a trip. That movie is like a k hole acid fever dream. The first time I ever actually went on a psychedelic trip was when I was 16 and I took salvia. Salvia!! Of all things. Oh - my - friggin - god. Literally never even smoked weed before and here I was, floating around in the world of sound waves. Sound waves of all shapes, sizes, and formations. I was a sound wave too! Beautiful colors floating in a sea of darkness. I thought I was wiping away the dream, like dusting pixels off with my arms, and found myself lying down on the couch. I must have hated real life because I became an animator after that. I tried to recreate what I saw and I learnt flash and made this crude, colourful thing about a couch that swallowed you and sent you to couch world. I wasn't very interested in doing salvia again and I haven't done it since.

Maybe a year after that I did shrooms at a friends house and cried for a couple hours and then touched my hair for the next couple hours but I didn't get any fun visuals or life changing inspiration. Up till about 26 I was never really interested much in experimenting with psychedelics. It honestly came as a surprise that when I started releasing games people saw the psychedelic influences and called me on it. I hardly even done psychedelics up until then, only those 2 times! I thought all my inspiration came from drawing plants, seashells, ocean and cloud formations on Vancouver Island. I got super interested in meditation for a while. I used to do this ritual where I'd fill a glass with water and put it in the sun, I'd meditate while watching it for like an hour then drink the water. The water always tasted so good! I started writing down as many dreams as I could remember. Most of my inspirations came from meditating and dreaming at that time, also from fractal zooms and math documentaries because I was learning how to code.
SooOOoo
I was surprised but not THAT surprised, like, my work is trippy af I get it. I was surprised at how positive everyone seemed to be about it though, like finally someone not afraid to admit they see trippy shit and to make art about it. People would comment "I see shit like this when I'm high on acid!!"
So the first time I did acid.... was when I was 26. My programmer gave me a tab at a time I was staying at my friends tiny house while they were away in Morocco. Before my friend left, they were showing me around the house and they mentioned that gnomes lived there too but they were harmless and they would prank me but I should just be cool with them. Like.... okaaaaayyyy whatever bro. So this tiny house was actually 2 (short) stories and in the middle of the city of Montreal along the canal. It felt like a gnome house, it was such a gnome house. I loved that house! It was full of strange musical instruments. I was obsessed with fibre optic plastic plants at that time (?!) and I had all these bright glowing pink flowers all over the kitchen. I also had a tonne of fruit, so that place was like a playground once the acid kicked in. We went for a walk and we came across a white horse pulling a carriage (because its Old Montreal and they do shit like that). The owner offered us to feed the horse a carrot!!!!!!!!! I died. I was terrified and the horse saw that I was terrified and that was a huge moment for me. I felt like I was communicating with animals as equals for the first time in my life.
The carriage actually took us home lol. My friend played the guitar and I closed my eyes and saw beautiful shapes and everything was lovely.
After that night I was able to humor the idea that gnomes were actually real in this tiny house and were pranking me occasionally. Also a convenient excuse for misplacing stuff.

Palmystery again

There is a hidden Bart Simpson animation somewhere in this level, I don't think anyone has ever found him.

I'd love to talk a bit more about my inspirations behind Palmystery. I think this game was a shift for me towards a more expressive and experimental use of the video game engine Unity. Before this game, I had been creating from some thing of a perfectionist POV. I would start with a vision, and work backwards to make it come to life. Sometimes I get so excited about the potential for games and all the different physics I can use, and using code/music/animation to create some kind of harmonious psychedelic trip. I would always revert back to nature to help ground myself and have a baseline position to help direct programmers and everyone else I am collaborating with. Does that make sense??? It's easier to say to someone "underwater level!" than to say "hands touching hands".

But with Palmystery I decided to do everything, rough and dirty, by myself using whatever tools I had at hand. I didn't care about narrative or potential for code/art whatever, I just wanted this space to be a live experiment. Every single step in the game was made without a second guess. It appeared and it stayed there. Nothing was decided on preemptively. Everything emerged naturally and from a place of pure emotion. I tried making myself a vessel for inspiration.

Why hands? I am obsessed with hands. 

The space in Palmystery is an extension of my hand. 

This very blog is an extension of my hand. 

Everything digital is an extension of the hand. That is why its called 'Digital'

from 'Digit'.

Thinking now about Cybernetics. My brain isn't only -like- a computer, it is a computer. I am technology, creating technology in my image. I am God then! But I already knew that, I am an animator after all; bringing imagination to life.

Aren't phones kind of a cold replacement for another hand? Instead of holding hands, we hold some kind of metal/plastic thing in the shape of a censorship bar. 

I want to hold hands. My goal in life used to be to meet every person on Earth at least once LOL imagine, at least I'd shake a lot of hands. I let go of that goal because I am more of an introvert than I thought (at least 50% introvert, 50% extrovert). I am content with meeting as many people as I come across. My new goal is to breathe as much as possible. That might sound ridiculous, but I used to kind of hold my breathe randomly. I'm not sure why. I think it is helpful to think about how well I am breathing because it brings me into my body, I feel aware of how my body is feeling and therefore I became aware of the present.