Peter Verwimp

I

Backdrop

How did your upbringing affect who you are today? What do you think has influenced your artistic vision so far?

I was raised in a severe catholic environment, my dad had been a Jesuit missionary before meeting my mom, but I also grew up surrounded by nature. We lived in a small village where the border with the Netherlands ran right through the centre.

Our house had a huge garden with a pond and was surrounded by fields, forests and a big nature reserve. As a kid I was not much impressed by the Catholic iconography or architecture but a lot more by the giant trees in the forest. I would spend a lot of time by myself among those trees and shrubs and plants.

My games were to recognize faces in natural forms like clouds, dead leaves, in the bark of trees…I could spend hours watching ants build their nest, or how tadpoles metamorphosed into frogs. There was a pond close by where salamanders would come to the surface…I have always been fascinated with natural processes.

Musically on the other hand I was very impressed by the music of the Catholics. The huge sound of the church organ, the emotions that I felt when all the voices of the choir sang together, the devotion they put into the Gregorian chants, the way the echo of the church building carried them around…that and my classical upbringing are elements that can be traced back in the music I make today.

I started music at a very young age and followed lessons in the method by Carl Orff. This method is very playful and very well adapted for kids. Later on, I studied Baroque music playing the alt recorder and also joined the local brass band, where I first tried the trumpet for a while to settle for a saxophone when one became available. At the same time, I went to music academy to study written music, singing and percussion.

When I was twelve, I got my first acoustic guitar and learned to play it by myself. At age 14 I joined my first band playing the saxophone and when the bass player left, I picked up the bass guitar. In those first bands I was in we did a lot of jamming and improvising on the spot, certainly something that is still very present in my music these days.

When I was 17 I formed my first serious band, Maya, where I was the vocalist, saxophone and guitar player. We recorded some demos and soon after our first full-length album was released. At that time, I also studied jazz at jazz studio. We toured Europe several times and recorded our second album after which the band split up. After two years at the jazz school, I got fed up with jazz and all the rules surrounding that genre and got interested in noise and industrial music.

Most probably as a counterweight to all the rules and preconceived notions of music I had been exposed to before. Later on, I joined the Building Transmissions sound art collective with which we did a lot of sound experimentation and did a lot of different sound performances around the world.

We played the Venice Biennale, gallery and museum shows, did projects in Thailand and China, exhibitions in the US and the UK. And while being busy with that I played in all sort of local heavy bands, from scream-o Hardcore to alternative metal acts.

How would you describe the music and art scene in Belgium back in the days when you were at your peak state of music exploration?

I`m not sure if I have already reached that peak, to be honest, but I`m sure we can`t complain about the musical and cultural landscape in Belgium at any given time. It might be a tiny country, but it well makes up for everything cultural.

In Summer more festivals are happening than one could ever visit and also in fashion, art and the culinary world we have a lot to be proud of.

When I was a teenager I came in touch with a lot of alternative music through a local radio station that would broadcast the weirdest sounds I had ever heard and that influenced me in many ways. During the 90`s we had a thriving squatters scene in Antwerp and for a few years, I lived in a squat right next to the river Schelde myself.

On the other side of town, there was a squat where we would set up shows, organize free kitchens and have rehearsal spaces for bands. I think that because of the small size of the country it was in a way much easier to find like-minded people and mingle with different art forms. So vivid is certainly a word that describes the Belgian scene very well!

At what point in your upbringing did you feel that you might take this musical and artistic road, and how did that occur?

The first vivid recollection I have related to music must have been from when I was 4 years old. We were visiting at friends of my parents and their kids had a tape recorder. I was enchanted when they had me speak in the microphone and recorded my voice.

When they played it back to me I couldn`t believe that was even possible, it was like experiencing magic. I`m sure that my love for recording sound was born from that experience.

It wasn`t too long after when I got my own tape recorder and started making all sorts of experiments. At first, I would act as a radio host, record and present the music that belonged to my parents’ record collection to tape.

I wasn`t aware of anything like the noise scene at the time, but I played a lot with the noises at the end of the FM band. I was fascinated by the fact that a radio could be used as a sort of instrument to generate sounds. Not that I was very aware of it back then, but it was something I loved doing and could keep me busy for hours on end.

II

Sound

What is sound to Peter Verwimp?

Sound is magical, sound is emotional, sound can be suiting or irritating, sound is alchemy…it`s everywhere around us; footsteps on gravel, birds in the garden, the hissing of trains, leaves on trees sounding like a choir of a thousand voices when a storm hits.

I grew up in the countryside right next to a forest, and especially at night it would be very quiet. And just because of that quietness, it was very easy to distinguish different sounds and its sources.

Late at night, I would be up in bed listening to the cracking noises coming from the woodwork in the house, or the wind blowing around it, rain falling on the rooftop, a car passing by in the distance… I was always very aware of sounds and even use them to navigate through traffic for example. Instead of watching left or right, I would just listen if it is safe to cross (I would however not recommend this for anyone).

For me, sound is an infinite source of pleasure, discovery and amazement.

I have been part of the Building Transmissions sound and multimedia art collective for ten years, and together we explored all sorts of possibilities related to sound.

Field recordings, microphones on pencils and drawing sound, performances and random computer-generated sound installations were among some of the experiments we researched with this group. Sound in relationship with architecture, poetry, dance or visual art. It`s never-ending!

You do organize small concerts at your place, tell us more about that – and what feedback do you receive from attendees?

It started of necessity. It`s sometimes difficult to find the proper space for artists to perform, especially when it`s experimental or acoustic music. Clubs usually are too big and the bars are too loud.

Eventually, I started organizing these living room concerts myself. It also ties in with the intentions I had with the Deer Trail Records platform.

Touring musicians would get in touch and I`d book them at my house supported by a few local acts. In the beginning, we had them playing in our large bathroom, some played in the garden, our kitchen, in the basement and after a while, we settled for the living room. 

It`s been more than ten years now and we`ve had a great variety of artists performing in different musical genres ranging from Noise, Ambient, Folk, electronics, experimental, and just to name a few: Old Seed, thisquietarmy, Darsombra, Tim Holehouse, Agathe Max, Zohastre, Crank Sturgeon, Pedestrian Deposit, IIVII, Stratosphere, Nordra, Bob Corn, Above the Tree, Shazulla…the list can go on! 

Now and then we`ll have art exhibitions here too with spoken word performances, video projections and the like.

What I usually get from attendees is that they appreciate the intimacy our house offers. To see a show and be very close to the performing artists, the possibility afterwards to talk to them are all things that are highly appreciated and makes people want to come back.

First time we recognized you was through the Belgian band Emptiness, which is in a way a twisted approach to music that generated phenomenal sound – What was the secret behind Emptiness sound and visuals?

I`ve only been a part of Emptiness for the recording of their Not For Music album from 2017 and the few gigs that followed.

They were looking to expand their sound and my guitar-driven ambient was exactly what they were looking for at the time. I can only talk about their secrets from a personal point of view.

They started as an already twisted black metal band and each album they shed their skin and re-invent themselves. That demands an open mind and the courage to move in different directions regardless of what fans are expecting.

Their previous record Nothing but the Whole had been a successful album and they could have easily copied that blueprint to gain more success. Instead, they took a risk and went in a different direction.

I would say that part of their secret is in the layering of different sounds and rhythms that at times are harmonious but at others give a lot of underlying tension in the music.

Also, the sort of aggressive parlando of the voice sets them apart from a lot of other bands. They dare to break out of a lot of cliches and blend different styles and genres in their music.

The musical act Ashtoreth is your solo project that was initiated almost five years before playing in Emptiness, did any mental collision happen between both at any point? Or how did you run both together?

I think both musically and conceptually both projects are quite different. Ashtoreth`s themes are mostly about nature, the landscape and the search for a spiritual connection.

The music of Emptiness on the other hand is cold and distant and deals with urban and human alienation.

We first met each other when they asked me as support with Ashtoreth for the release show of their Nothing But the Whole album. We kept in touch and sometime later they asked me to replace their previous guitar player. I learned their older songs and we played some shows and festivals. That gave us the time to connect and work on ideas for the Not for Music album.

Since they don`t play live very often it was easy enough for me to combine both acts. From a musical viewpoint, it was interesting for me to do something that is almost the extreme opposite of what I`m doing with Ashtoreth. T

he thing that gave the connection is the fact that they too start from a concept, a concept that might not always be clear at the beginning of the writing process but becomes more obvious the longer we work on it. So talking and discussing was a big part of that and it`s an opus operandi I like very much myself and that ties in with my previous work in sound art and my studies in art.

The sound-signature that Ashtoreth owns is a fusion between your deep Shamanic perspective and a meditative, noise and experimenting sound – How did all of this come together?

Prior to Ashtoreth, I had always been playing in heavy bands and at that time I was tired of playing structured music. I wanted to improvise more and let the feeling of the moment decide where the music should go.

But I had no idea of how to go about that. Until I saw the first incarnation of Darsombra, back then it was just guitarist Brian Daniloski. He played a heavy drone set supporting Wino on his acoustic European tour.

Seeing him perform solo with a bunch of effects in front of him, resulting in a massive wall of sound, made me realize there was a possibility to play alone and still make a hell of a racket!

On the other hand, I`ve always been busy with sound experiments but there I found that something was missing too. Just sounds for the sake of sound seemed a bit detached for me and I was missing a sort of narrative in that particular scene of music.

So, I bought my first loop station and started experimenting at home. Nothing serious really, just jamming it out. Until some time later I was participating in an exhibition as a visual artist and they needed an opening act for the exhibitions opening night. So I decided to play my first show.

On that evening, some old friends passed by and were impressed. They run Pelican Avenue, an art and fashion label. They had just finished a new collection based on different animal prints, scales and feathers and talking to them about my shamanic interests we connected the dots and I was asked to come and play during their fashion show at the 2010 Paris fashion week.

The performance was recorded and pressed on a limited, single-sided LP by the name of the collection Itobia. So in a way, I think you could see Ashtoreth as the culmination of all the different projects and musical interests I had been a part of in the past, a fusion of noise, drone, folk, Lo-Fi, alt-metal, industrial…All tied together by the root concept that is a shamanic perspective/approach to things. The shamanic journey became the unstructured structure of my craft.

Produced under Cyclic Law, Rites I & II album is a pure Shamanic approach to sound, and it seems that you are touching on subjects like interconnectedness with nature, the importance of ceremony and ritual in our daily lives as a journey through flesh, sound and spirit – How was the process behind producing such a sound, and what message does this intend to deliver?

At first, the process in the recording studio (Blackout Studio, Brussels) was rather difficult because I was trying to somehow come to the same energies I created in a live situation. That didn`t work that well in a clean studio environment and I was struggling to bring together all the elements that make up my live set.

Until I realized that I should use the studio as an instrument by itself with all it`s different possibilities to manipulate sound and compose music using the sound building blocks I had already recorded.

The struggle became a play and I used a lot of the possibilities a recording studio has to offer. Working with Ivan Houben behind the helm helped me a lot too. His expertise in sound engineering made it possible to create the sort of pieces I was looking for.

After that initial effort, the rest of the recording and mixing process went smooth and in a natural flow. That is a very important part of things too. I was trying too hard at first to mimic what I was doing live. So the other recordings (for the follow-up Rites III & IV, soon to be released) went well because we established a good way of working with Rites I & II.

An important part of shamanism is the connection and I wanted each piece to be a translation of that. So I choose the 4 elements as working themes for each piece. Earth, air, water and fire each represent a different element and all the different associations and emotional connotations these elements have.

I want to leave the message open as well so that the listener can bring his/her owns ideas to the fold too. I don`t want to be too specific either. In a live situation as well as with recorded stuff it is important for me that the listener makes up his/her own narrative and can conjure up his.her own images and lets him/herself drift off into a journey of their choosing, much like in the shamanic journey.

How was the direction of Rites I and II when it comes to video production? Who directed both official videos, and what was the concept standing behind both in terms of visuals?

Tim Van Der Schraelen is the person responsible for directing, filming and editing the Rites and a lot of other videos I have released. We have a long history of working on music and videos together so it seemed only natural I would work with him again. He shares the same deep connection to nature and has the amazing talent of doing great things with little resources.

The concept behind both videos are the same as for the music and we wanted to achieve the visual counterpart to the ritualistic nature that the music holds. I also wanted to show the spiritual connection in the videos. The spirit that comes in when conjured up in ceremony. He applies the same methods to visual manipulation as I do with sound and that works together really well.

III

Label

You have launched Deer Trail record label, is it your label or was it a joint project? How did this come up to the light, and what was the purpose behind it?

Deer Trail Records was brought into being mainly to release physical carriers by Ashtoreth and not (yet) by other artists.

It was established at first to release the `Angels Will Guide The way to our Harbor` split LP I did with TCH (UK) in 2012.

I had previously been a part of the now-defunct Conspiracy Records and Hydra Head Europe as their PR person. From that experience onward, I knew how much work goes into running a label.

But that label did much more than only release music. It created a scene here in Antwerp and to a larger extent in the whole of Belgium by organizing shows and festivals.

 That part of running a label did appeal to me and next to the living room concerts I was already setting up at home, I started organizing the Ceremony of the Ascension Festival.

For three consecutive years, I ran that Festival in various locations in my home town of Antwerp, a church, the museum of Modern Art and in a concert venue. At first, it was a merely ambient/experimental music festival, but by the third edition, it had grown into a cultural festival, delivering a mix of music, art, food, performance, video art, photography etc…but running a festival takes up a lot of time too and I decided to end it and focus more on my music again.

Deer Trail Records is described as a platform for music, art, nature and the beyond, In the spirit of community. Can you define these words?

As I explained above, I don`t use Deer Trail as a label to release music by other musicians/artists but I do use it to create a platform for others to showcase their talents. That explains the community part of the quote. It`s important to me to create a scene or community around the things I do.

A feeling of togetherness and connectedness. Alone is just alone, in a community there is much more strength and it creates a place to come together and exchange ideas, help each other out and builds upon that.

The living room concerts are a part of that as well as the exhibitions we organize every once in a while. In those exhibitions, I try to bring together an amalgam of art forms.

I blend music with visual art, food, live tattooing, performance, poetry & spoken word, documentary film and video, photography and witchcraft. These exhibitions and concerts very much follow the same concepts as I use in my music.

IV

Collaborations

You are having a collaboration with Onsturicheit who describe their sound as film-ish psychedelic and electronic analogue palette – How did you both connect and how far is it going?

Collaborations are something I enjoy doing and being a one-man project it is fairly easy to connect to others and work with them.  I`ve done collaboration albums with No-One, Chthonia, TCH, Deha, Grey Malkin, and soon a collaborative album with Stratosphere will be released by the Dutch imprint Winter-Light.

The interesting part in collaborations is the fact that there is energy coming from someone else, a bit like playing in a band. This gives for an interesting synergy.

I got to know Peter Moorkens aka Onsturicheit at one of my concerts and he`s part of the small but interesting experimental/ambient scene in Belgium. I appreciate his unbridled approach to sound very much.

We started talking about music and got to know each other better. During the 2020 lockdown, he got in touch with me and asked if I was interested in making an album together. Because of the restrictions, our government had imposed on us we were not able to gather physically, so set about sending musical ideas to each other over the internet.

He works a lot with modular systems beside guitar, voice, samples etc…and his material is very rich in texture and sound manipulation. I think each collaboration I do brings out different elements of my music and persona. Working with him brought up the more wild side of me.

It brought a lot more distorted or heavily manipulated guitars to the surface then I used on other collaborations. And that to me is an indicator of it being a worthwhile collaboration.

So far there are no current plans for another album, but as soon as this one is released (by Belgian Neumusik / Wool E-tapes) we will try our very best under the current restrictions to finally play some shows together.

As an artist and a musician, how did the pandemic lockdown affect your recording work with Onsturicheit, knowing that this collaboration is producing an album this year?

Previous to the pandemic, I was in a bit of a depression and didn’t feel very well. I had cancelled all my gigs (which was a visionary act in retrospect because all gigs were forbidden during the following lockdown).

Then came the lockdown – we were all forced to stay at home and I was lucky enough that money kept coming in from a chefs job I was doing at the time. That created a sort of comfortable and relaxed atmosphere which sparked my imagination and creativity.

I`ve worked on a lot of music during that time and I think more than one album will come out of that period. I feel that the lockdown created a sort of dreamlike non-existence…a time frame that stopped all action and allowed turning inwards and coming to some realizations about where I wanted to take things next.

We all have seen pandemic movies before the real pandemic and now we were living it. I took this opportunity to delve into the fear, anxiety and dystopian nature of it all and that resulted in sounds that were more oppressive and tensed than before and that was very much what got into the collaboration with Onsturicheit.

Speaking of film-related material, what on-top-of-the-shelf set of films and soundtracks might have captured you all through your life – knowing that you have composed music for movies and video poetry?

I`ve always had a strong connection to film and soundtracks. when I was a kid I used a simple keyboard to come up with soundtracks to imaginary movies and I sometimes play alternative live soundtracks to existing movies with Ashtoreth.

Those are mostly my favourite movies too. We did Stalker by Tarkovsky with TCH on several occasions and I did most of the Jodorowsky movies, The Holy Mountain, El Topo, Santa Sangre, and I`m a big fan of the work of David Lynch and the way he uses music in his work.

I feel my music can conjure up images and should allow the listener to imagine his/her own movie/images. David Cronenberg’s work appeals to me a lot too, Kubrick, Polanski, Dario Argento, John Carpenter…too many to mention really!

La Scapigliata is an international online poetry film collaboration where artists contributed original material created specifically for a narrative that investigates historical, social and gender issues – these were the film’s directors’ words; how were these issues investigated in such a film and how did your collaboration embody that?

The starting point of this collaboration was the drawing by Leonardo DaVinci by the same title. The American poet Lois P. Jones wrote a poem based upon that drawing and from there we started exploring possibilities to tie it to the times we live in today.

She was linked to the Australian video artist and director of the film, Jutta Pryor, who got in touch with me concerning the sound design. I feel that she did most of the research and should answer this question. Because I approached the work more intuitively. I tried to look for sounds that suited the words and the images I was presented with.

On the one hand, I tried to evoke the time when Leonardo made the drawing, I sketched the sounds he could have heard when working in his studio in Florence, the murmur of people talking on the streets, church bells in the background, doves flying around the square…much like a foley in a movie and a way to emphasize the historical setting.

I used female chants and cello to personify the girl in the drawing and the femininity that radiates from it. There are sounds of wind waving through grasses, the sound of footsteps in the snow, dreamlike, much like in the image itself really.

At times it would be certain words that asked for a certain sound, at others, it would be the images that triggered sounds too. I used traffic sounds to represent our current time and composed a short piece for the acoustic guitar to bring both past and present together.

You collaborated in designing the soundtrack of the movie Doubleplusungood, tell us about this journey.

Doubleplusungood is a film directed by Marco Laguna, a pseudonym used by the singer of the legendary and much underestimated Belgian cult band La Muerte.

He came out to one of my shows and asked me if I could deliver a track for his film that sounded like what I had just improvised live.  I never saw any part of the film but somehow managed to record a piece that fitted to the scene he had envisioned.

The first time I saw the film was during the premier in a large cinema room, on a big screen and excellent sound quality coming from the speakers.

Much to my surprise, my music takes up well over 6 minutes in a very psychedelic ritual scene in the film…mission accomplished!

The soundtrack was released on a double LP by Weme Records out of Brussels. I was delighted by the whole undertaking and my inner child was most happy with this achievement. Doing movie soundtracks is certainly something I`d like to elaborate on in the future.

Another different direction on your path is represented in your musical collaboration with the Spanish industrial act Gravelbed, who describe their music as a combination of all things dark, slow and industrial with a hint of demented dub and hip-hop beats – how would you describe this diverse experience and how did you get to work with each other?

Years ago I got acquainted with one member of Gravelbed while attending Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, The Netherlands’ (Festival of festivals in my opinion and honoured to have been given the chance to play there twice).

We kept in touch over the internet and he got in touch with me this year during the lockdown. He told me he was working on a new project and whether I was interested to try out some guitar parts on one of their tracks.

I was intrigued by what they were doing and I could sense some Godflesh and Scorn influences in what they had been working on so far. Those bands hold a special place in my heart and I got enthusiastic to work with them. David Cochrane from Head of David, Bruxa Maria & Terminal Cheesecake got involved too and now I`m working on some remixes and we`ll do a split album soon together too.

It is indeed a different direction on my musical path and being more of a studio musician for them felt like an interesting experience. I`m all about open-mindedness and inclusiveness and I`m always looking to expand my world. It allows me to think in different ways and come up with new approaches to music.

V

Shamanism

Going through lots of your collaborations, it seems that you are a person who is very open for sound expression and you are not limited to certain directions; is that in any sense related to your deep involvement in Shamanism or how do you think of it?

I had never thought of it that way, but coming to think of it shamanism indeed holds that quality to adapt to change and evolve in different ways (Buddhism evolved out of shamanism for example) because there are not that many rules or guidelines as opposed to other philosophies/religions/spiritual paths.

That allows for a sort of inclusiveness that also works well in the world of music. And as an artist/person/music enthusiast I`ve always been open-minded and interested in all forms of expression.

Shamanism for me serves as an umbrella under which a lot of different sound approaches and practices can exist. Sound is alchemy and each track or collaboration demands its own specific approach. It is my goal to channel the right one.

I`ve worked with electronic artists, folk artists, artists coming from the black metal scene, classically trained musicians and also out of the field of music I work with poets, dancers, visual artists…out of interest in their expression and to find a common path to each other work.

The more viewpoints the better, right? In my belief we are spiritual beings who are out here to look for experiences and ways to express ourselves, that is infinite, never-ending chain and I want to take as much in as I possibly can. Like in that famous quote by Gibby `Butthole Surfers` Haynes: “Better to regret something you have done than to regrets something you haven`t done“. Life might be hard at times yet there are so many opportunities to discover and experience.

How did life happen to you especially when it comes to crossing roads with Shamanism? And how did Shamanism influence the person you are now?

Discovering shamanism and actively practicing it felt like a homecoming. As something, I had known before. It tied in very well with my ideas about music too. I guess the first part of my life, before shamanism, was rather dark and totally out of balance.

I dealt with depression, drug abuse and self-destruction for a large part of my life. Through the practice of shamanism, a lot of things became more clear and much more balanced. It gave me inner strength, a way to deal with everyday life and to see things from a bigger perspective.

That is not saying I don`t have bad days anymore, but I just can deal with it better. Shamanism taught me to delve deep into the dark side of my personality and accept those parts of ourselves that we do not always wish to be confronted with. To rise from the shadows and rise into the light. I guess accepting lightness was one of the more difficult things to deal with, darkness had always been my habitat, it was easy in somehow. 

And then balancing those two opposing energies and seeing that they are part of an ongoing, circular movement. Like the eye of a storm…I think I`ve become a more positive person and I tend to linger less on negative situations in my life knowing that everything can be dissolved, integrated and transformed according to a person’s will.

Through the way our system works and the way our culture is devised we all have lost a lot of our sovereignty as human beings and by the help of shamanism I got a lot of that back, my will and free being. Where I would see restrictions and obstructions before, I now see endless possibilities. Where I saw ugliness and decay I can see beauty now…

How did Shamanism change your perspectives on sound, art and personal development?

Through going on shamanic journeys I felt the direct effects that sounds can have on our bodies. I mean music and its vibrations always have had that effect on me or any other person, but during a shamanic journey, other factors come into play.

By placing intentions and coming in touch with Spirit, a deeper connection is made and felt. It`s hard to explain if one didn’t experience it, but in a way, I could compare it to taking entheogens.

The substance of those plants can change the way we see our reality and experience that reality in a different manner. That is sort of what happens on a shamanic journey. It also alters the way we see and perceive things, how we listen to sounds and how those sounds affect us in return.

From those experiences the way I deal with sound drastically changed and I guess became more abstract. Because the abstract allows for our subconscious to rise to the surface and bring its messages into this world.

I depend and trust a lot more on my intuition for example now than I did before. It gave me a different way to navigate through this 3D material plane, freed me of a lot of self-inflicted or societal limitations and mind programs.

What Shamanism-related books might have had a great impact on you?

Mircea Eliade, Antonin Artaud, “The Tarahumaras” and of course Carlos Castaneda, then Jeremy Narby, Terrence McKenna, Algernon Blackwood, Hermann Hesse, Wittgenstein, William S. Burroughs, Helena Blavatsky, Hildegard Von Bingen, Fritjof Capra, Gurdjieff, Alan Watts, Krishnamurti…

What does the phrase “We’re living in a holographic universe folks, contemporize!” imply to Peter Verwimp?

Next to spiritual matters, I have always been interested in science too and I feel that in the perfect world these two should not be apart from each other. I`m very interested in what is happening in the field of quantum physics and how that links to the spiritual realm.

In a way we still live in a Newtonian world, with the beliefs and awareness that comes with that. I`m past the mechanical way of thinking about the world, there is much more to it than meets the eye.

Whereas in science these days so many interesting developments are taking place. It`s a pity we get to see sports every day on the TV news, but hardly anything about the latest scientific developments.

Hence the phrase contemporize; I guess, I think it`s more than about time to realize there is much more we don`t know about in the visible and invisible world and be more open to those energies and knowledge.

Do you feel that your awareness, self-realization and your perspective on the overall life form we are experiencing has changed all through time, and what role did the adoption of Shamanism play in changing it, if it has?

It certainly has. It made me realize I can depend more on myself, my intuition and on the other hand, feel more connected to everything around me. It strengthened my personal will and my relationship with the outside world.

I feel more balanced than before and I`m ready for a new chapter in self-realization. My wife and I are planning to move out of the city to be in a place closer to nature and start work on an idea we`ve had for a long time.

To open a centre for spiritual living that will bring together all the wonderful healers, shamans, mediums, artists and psychics we`ve met on our path. I feel that the time is right now and it`s something I came to realize during the pandemic and lockdown.

We`ll see where that road will lead us!