Finding UFO Harmony with Mike Fiorito
Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.
Mike Fiorito:But there is nothing else. Life is an obscure oboe bumming a ride on the omnibus of art.
AP Strange:Among the misty corridors of pine, and in those corridors I see figures, strange figures. Welcome back, my friends, to the AP Strange show. I am your host, AP Strange. This is my show and this week's show is brought to you by WFSR Radio, a flying saucer rock, bringing you the finest rock music from here to Alpha Centauri from yesterday, today, and sometimes even songs from the future. So tune in through your pineal gland to WFSR, a flying saucer rock radio.
AP Strange:And tonight on the show, fittingly enough, perhaps even a synchronicity is a man who is a musician himself and also a freelance journalist and music journalist and an author. He's written a whole bunch of books actually, one of which was a prize winner of the Independent Press Distinguished Favorite Award in spirituality. That was Mescalito riding his white horse, which is tangential to the book we're gonna talk about tonight, which is Journeys Into Sound. The author I'm talking about is Mike Fiorito. And welcome to the show, Mike.
Mike Fiorito:Well, thank you so much. May I call you Matt or should I stick to AP?
AP Strange:AP is good. That's just generally how people know me. My real name isn't a secret, but it's just, you know?
Mike Fiorito:I I see. So I just blew the whole thing. Sorry about that.
AP Strange:That's okay. No. AP is good. Yeah.
Mike Fiorito:But thank you for having me on the show. It's really an honor. So really looking forward to the conversation.
AP Strange:Yeah, it's really great to have you here because what we have to talk about tonight is really a pretty unique book. I can't speak to your other books. Like I said, there are quite a few. There's a good handful on your resume here.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah. And they have funny names too. I always love hearing people kind of say the title of the books, like Freud's Haberdashery Habit, sleeping with fishes, and they kinda laugh a little, stumble through it, and it's kind of funny to listen to.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I feel like I had heard a little bit about this and seen posts about it online before before you reached out to me and this is kinda right up my alley because I mean, maybe people don't know about me but I I was once a musician too so and I've always loved the paranormal and the phenomena stuff and UFOs, but I was curious about you. What what which came first for you? Was it music stuff?
AP Strange:Or was it both? Were they always intertwined for you?
Mike Fiorito:Well, yeah. It's a that that's a a great question. I think they've I've I probably was first interested in music. Oh, okay. When I was younger, I, you know, I started out doing, believe it or not, Elvis Presley impersonations.
Mike Fiorito:I did one like in, you know, when it's like grammar school and it was kind of funny. I mean, my mom had, my mom worked in the jewelry business. So, she got me like, you know, gold chains and stuff, and I I'm I'm 12, by the way, when I'm doing this.
AP Strange:Right.
Mike Fiorito:And I had a shirt open. Well, there's a wonderful money. And Yeah. It you know, that kind of that launched my music career, which, you know, has not really gone that far. But I've always been passionately interested in music as as a player.
Mike Fiorito:And and to be honest with you, you know, I I probably lost sights of becoming professional a long time ago, but I never lost interest in the history and the details as you know from having read the book. And I have a a broad interest in music. Really there's there's really not music that I don't like. I mean there's good music and bad music in every genre as far as I'm concerned. I would say that as far as my interest in the paranormal, that kind of came in in drips and drabs, I think.
Mike Fiorito:It probably started and I, you know, I wonder what how how other people, how the what their arc is. But it started with science fiction, I think, actually, is that's really I was very interested in science fiction, reading science fiction. 1978, I had a copy of the the first twenty four issues of Omni Magazine and which was a science fiction science fact. They actually published articles on UFO topics on new innovation and technology, genetics research. So it was kind of really avant garde, I think.
Mike Fiorito:And I was drawn to in college. I I was a philosophy and psychology major. I was very much drawn to Jung. But I have to say I didn't really know why. And I I think Jung takes a long time and a lot of experience to to unravel and to penetrate into the deeper aspects of his ideas.
Mike Fiorito:So, you know, for instance, I mentioned in the book about, I I was very interested in Jung's alchemical ideas, his, you know, alchemical studies. I was very interested but I didn't really know why. And when I began, when I got interested in Uphology and the paranormal, and I guess we use this kind of the paranormal being all inclusive Uphology being a branch of it. I began to understand, and this is from my perspective that the relationship between alchemical studies, the I Ching and the exploration of the UFO topic, which to me is not a logical one. It just transcends logic.
Mike Fiorito:So it's something that is kind of knocks on the door and draws you in. And then you go on a journey to kind of discover it, but it's not a, you know, you have people that say, well, I want proof. I want categorical proof. I want disclosure, or I want, you know, hard evidence and it just took me, that's a long winded way of just saying that the the roots of it began in reading Jung and learning about the collective unconscious and it it really flowered over time but then in 2017, you know, the the with the New York Times article like so many people, you know, that really caught my interest. That really caught my interest for the first time being something that was a very public exposure of sightings.
Mike Fiorito:And there was the way it was couched and portrayed, it it just really got my attention. And then I read Jeff Kripal's work, and I blame everything on Jeff really because Right. You know, after him, it's just the avalanche and the the the reading and the investigation. I mean, I'm still I'm still swimming, you know, that I I threw that ball up in the air, you know, years ago and it still hasn't fallen to the ground yet. So I'm still
AP Strange:on that journey. Well, think Cripple is one of those voices that we have nowadays that has moved a lot of people who had maybe a passing interest in the phenomena or, you know, the classic I want to believe sort of folks that put it on the back burner. They're like, actually, this is pretty credible. Like, we got guys like Krapol talking about this now, he's able to contextualize it in a new way. Exactly.
Mike Fiorito:You know? Exactly.
AP Strange:Or a more palatable way for people that are afraid of being considered kooky for being interested, you know?
Mike Fiorito:Right. Well, it's it's it he's given us the framework to talk about things that don't fall into what is generally called the possible and to how how to include, you know, and I'm I'm sure this is nothing new to you, but to folks who may be listening, how do we include impossible events, occurrences, and ideas into the realm of the possible? And if we look back in history, we see that this is, I mean, science is constantly reevaluating its findings and understanding, and this is just a fact of history. But when we're in the moment, it seems preposterous to think, oh, are there ghosts or fairies or UFOs or inexplicable things that occur. But once you get on that bandwagon, you kinda make room for everything.
Mike Fiorito:You make room for everything.
AP Strange:Yeah. And you start to kinda see how they're the boundaries between these different forms of phenomena are possibly just illusory or at least looser than we would think that they were.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah.
AP Strange:So so, I mean, I think that's why a lot of people have started referring to all of it, all the weirdness as the phenomenon instead of phenomena, you know? Right. Which I think you do throughout the book, you know?
Mike Fiorito:And I used the capital P to give it, I think I had read James Madden. Yeah. Who written Gosh, I took a class with him too. UFO And yeah, the just this kind of giving it, I don't know, giving it a formality. I like to he he had he used he used the phenomenon with a capital p, so I followed that.
Mike Fiorito:I followed suit with that. I thought that gave me a license to do it.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I don't think I I don't think you two are in isolation with that. It's becoming more common. Oh, yeah.
AP Strange:I do worry sometimes that people are anthropomorphizing it a little too much and kind of to the point of almost idolizing it where the phenomenon will be a new god, you know, like.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we do. You know, we Yeah. You know, even even as we we break down paradigms, you know, we we get caught in the trap of the the Venus fly trap of a broken down paradigm now reconstituted as a new paradigm and I'm sure I'm doing it as well.
AP Strange:Yeah, it's a it's a kind of an entropy. It's like things tend to coalesce into familiar forms or patterns, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Fiorito:But to your point, just if I may mention, you know, I'm reading, it's a really good book, Magical Folk by Simon Young and some of these and and he's a British I I don't know if he's still alive but these accounts of fairy fae folk accounts in in The UK. And so many of you could read this book, and it's like a UFO book. Sometimes they actually appear as lights, as orbs. So, you know, you're reading these stories and you see the overlay and how it connects with a, this could be an encounter story. This could be an abduction story.
Mike Fiorito:They're trickster like. And I'm I'm, you know, reading my reading has gotten so broad and so out of control that it's sort of I need to rein it in. I don't know how. Need help.
AP Strange:You got the bug, and you got the piles of books everywhere, I bet. Yeah.
Mike Fiorito:Exactly. It's it's it's it's really an affliction. You know? My my wife is looking at me like, it's it's either you or them. You know?
Mike Fiorito:She's kinda giving me that look.
AP Strange:Right. Oh, man. My long suffering wife is is a saint for putting up with it because I just Fuck. It's like, it's time to buy another bookcase. Sorry.
AP Strange:Right. I need another one.
Mike Fiorito:Right. Well, we've built them. We've we and she's like, well, there's nowhere left. You know? We're we're gonna put them in the bed or something.
Mike Fiorito:You know? It's we have a whole bookshelf that's been filled up. But you could also recycle and give them away. That's it's possible.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. As you kind of put it, you end up kind of branching off into a lot of different subjects and categories that you probably never thought you would. So, I mean, I look at my library, I've got books on like mentalism, I've got books on like witchcraft and all kinds of occult stuff and old back issues of Fate Magazine stacks and stacks of them. It's just like, I want all of it.
AP Strange:But there's always these weird little things that it's like, okay, I really gotta chase that to its end. And you end up with books on subjects that you never really thought you'd be reading, but there you are, right?
Mike Fiorito:Yeah. And also as a writer, you know, I think for me as a writer, reading triggers writing, inspires it. And so, you know, I'm like thinking of my new, a new project, but it's still coalescing. It's still kind of, it's not completely formed, but it's that pursuit, you know, it's kind of like the lure of the ferry, you know, into the forest and you go out there and you, you know, then you get yourself into a lot of trouble and you you're in a world that is upside down. And you hopefully find your way out.
Mike Fiorito:So, but I'm in the midst of that, right now, that discovery is such a joy for me, that discovery process. Yeah,
AP Strange:and you're on the trail of a mystery, which is at the heart of all kinds of spiritual and religious pursuits. So, you know, it kind of hurts me to see people portrayed as just being, well, crazy. People think of you as crazy for believing in UFOs and it's like, well, you know, belief doesn't really have anything to do with it. Belief is on the side. This is a quest to find out, right?
AP Strange:Like this is, you know, but to that point, like the question I asked you at the beginning of the show is it seems like a through line for a lot of the people that you talk to for your book, like not necessarily which came first, but kind of how did these things intertwine in your life, music and the phenomena. And you've gotten a lot of really interesting answers in this. So for your own experience of it, do you see them as being kind of related or just totally intertwined to the point that you can't really pull one apart from the other, the music and the phenomenon?
Mike Fiorito:Yeah, think it's, that's a great question. You mean in terms of my interest in it or in terms of just as things that they're related?
AP Strange:Well, I mean, I was I was asking from your your experience and your kind of conclusions based on getting all these stories from other people because for listeners right now, this book is composed of Mike's thoughts on on UFOs and sound and, like, all kinds of phenomena and sound, but it's also there's snippets of his personal life and a lot of reports from other people, interviews with other people on the subject. So it's kind of like multiple books in one. You get a little bit of a lot of different kinds of
Mike Fiorito:Polyphonic.
AP Strange:Right, yeah, polyphonic. Yeah, know. Yeah. So the polyphony prose that you get in the book is well worth your time. But yeah, I mean, from your perspective, do you see them as being inextricably linked?
Mike Fiorito:Yeah, I think it's funny because when I began the book, I wanted to, to contribute something unique to Uphology. I, I didn't want to, there are great books. I've read many of them. And I, I didn't want to repeat what has been done. I just felt like that, that would be, that would be a that wouldn't expand the topic or or bring other people into the topic.
Mike Fiorito:Being a music journalist, being a musician, being someone who's deeply interested in music and and seeing the connection And the connection that I saw was music is a language. And I like to use the word, it's a kind of, it's a deliteralizing. It deliteralizes our experience in the sense that music brings us into an altered state, music and or sound. But the sound part came later, to be honest with you. That was through my research and discovery process.
Mike Fiorito:But the, you know, there's the basic way that sound takes us on journeys. I mean, it's kind of like a transportation system, you know, I often say, but there's so many layers that music transport us. And it's really the taking us out of our ego. That's the key thing. There's a kind of communication in music that triggers us get us out of ourselves.
Mike Fiorito:And it could be something as prosaic as remembering your high school graduation or something or an old friend or an old love. But it's way more than that too. And what I asked people, I came to people with a very simple question. I said, can you tell me a story that connects something inexplicable to music? So it was a very broad question.
Mike Fiorito:I didn't want to feed the answer to them. I didn't want to lure them into the answer. And so what you saw when you read the book, and it was varied stories. So some people's stories were often associated with grief. They were often associated with death, but not always.
Mike Fiorito:In some instances, people had they had an encounter experience and there was this incredible symphonic music associated with it. I think there was one account that I read and which is also in the book is is Orfeo Angelicci. And I discovered him. Jung actually wrote about him. He was an American.
Mike Fiorito:And he describes going into he goes into a craft and interestingly he goes into a craft and the the craft itself is very small. But when he goes into the craft, it's this gigantic, like cathedral size, enormous. And it's a recurring theme of space and time being elastic and being not so linear in what we think it might be. And then he hears this most beautiful music. He hears this what he describes, you know, and I'm I'm paraphrasing.
Mike Fiorito:I but just the symphonic, this most gorgeous music that was beyond description, believe beautiful. And there were some accounts that I had in there. James Iandoli, who you might know from engaging the phenomena. James is a podcaster. He's deeply in the subject and he's talked with all of the big honchos in the Ufology biz, Jacques Filet and etcetera.
Mike Fiorito:Also a very nice guy. And his experience, his encounter experience, he also had a something similar to what Orfeo had. He heard this beautiful music. He heard this just exquisite symphonic music. Now, not everybody hears music.
Mike Fiorito:Interestingly, I mean, some people hear nothing.
AP Strange:Right.
Mike Fiorito:Or they hear a They just hear like this. They see this thing as big as a building. And what's so shocking is that it's the enormity of the object, whatever it is, it's inversely related to the footprint of noise and impact it seems to make in the physical world. It has a kind of, it could be completely silent or as I said, Glowing. And James described that what he saw the the the UFO that he saw turned into and it's not he's not the first person to say this.
Mike Fiorito:It turned into kind of a like a plasmatic thing. It began to, you know, morph and become this kind of ball, this more organic looking thing that if you touched it, it would, you know, it would, you know, undulate or something. So, yeah, sometimes what what really fascinated me, music is a form of communication, and it's it's a very deep form of communication that goes beyond language. It goes way beyond language and it goes to the source of something in us. Something that I don't think I answer it in the book because I don't know what it is.
Mike Fiorito:I don't think, and we talked about one thing this subject does, Uphology is it makes you, I think if you want to approach it intelligently, you have to look across subject matter. So I looked across, you know, read books on anthropology, musicology, philosophy, psychology. I mean, I don't wanna go on and on, but no one can tell us where music comes from. That that was kind of curious that no one can say, in fact, it is believed that our ability to make music, vocal music, other, maybe rhythmic preceded our ability to use language.
AP Strange:Which I
Mike Fiorito:think is fascinating.
AP Strange:Yeah. Mean, that's that that's kind of right at the beginning of the book. You talk about that a bit, and that is fascinating. And it makes sense because animals sing, you know, like birds sing. Like, it kinda makes sense that humming or, you know, vocalizations that are melodic.
AP Strange:Especially because, like, the whenever a baby is born, what do people do? They they sing little lullabies and stuff like that. So it's always, know, maybe that's always been a thing and that's the kind of primordial instinct is toward melody, you know? Yeah.
Mike Fiorito:But it sort of begs the question why? You know, that's, because it's an interesting thing. I mean, it's soothing, you know, you could have all of your reasons for it, and it's not always soothing. Sometimes, it's it's it's to prove it's provocative. But it has this grip on us.
Mike Fiorito:That's that's beyond rational. And it could it could it makes us do irrational things frankly. It can. Right. Fall in love.
Mike Fiorito:Why do fools fall in love? Right. And there was something else I wanted to say about about the the origins. Oh, that's right. Birds because you brought up birds And the book that I had written, Mescalito Riding His White Horse, I did a lot of investigation into birdsong.
Mike Fiorito:And I was just fascinated by it. And I don't know about you, and I've said this before in other, you know, podcasts. When I hear birds, I feel like, you know, we're we're just about to go into spring. And so the birds have returned. Even in New York City, they come back.
Mike Fiorito:They they come back with a bit of an attitude, and they're a little cautious, you know, because it's New
AP Strange:York City.
Mike Fiorito:But they do come back. I live right near the a park here, Prospect Park. And there's actually a a a a big variety of of bird types. And so you'll hear this profusion of birdsong, you know, starting at what, five or so? And I hear I feel like I feel like there's something being said, and I don't know what it is.
Mike Fiorito:And I think that it's a bit it's kind of like what we began with this calling. It's a calling to, because we're all sort of wrapped up in our everyday ego, our kind of everyday reality that we, the stories that we take to be true, and the stories that we take to be true, sometimes they're just, they're just, they're, they're bad for us sometimes. We believe that we are a X or we're a Y. Sometimes nations believe that they're a this or that and that becomes a combative thing. But when we get out of our ego, when we realize those are just stories, that's just a story.
Mike Fiorito:You know, yeah, okay, it's true. It's meaningful. It has truth. I'm not saying that there's, but it's not the whole thing. And for those people, the debunkers and the poo pooers that say, well, I have read.
Mike Fiorito:There's no actual Neil deGrasse Tyson says and I'm like, you know, forget Neil DeGrice Tyson. That guy should he should go back to school, really. I don't I don't accept his his positions. But to go back to the point of, you know, birdsong, it's so complex, it's so interesting, and I kinda feel we're not we're not being we're not being brought into the the intergalactic, you know, sentience of society because we're not smart enough to pay attention to even the terrestrial intelligence that abounds us. That's all around.
Mike Fiorito:Like, you guys are you guys are, you know, you're you're still monkeys. You know, you're still
AP Strange:Well, this is what cracks me up when Uphology or, you know, since the term now is UAP, I I I guess it's Uapology. Uapologist. Is that it? Yeah.
Mike Fiorito:That's a
AP Strange:good It's kinder than saying UAP ons.
Mike Fiorito:I gotta write this down while I listen to it on the podcast.
AP Strange:Yeah. It's I don't wanna take all the credit because then I'll have the hordes after me, you know, yeah, NHI has become the, you know, one of these new acronyms that people like throwing around, non human intelligence. And when you're talking about, you know, when Steven Gruisch was talking about evidence of nonhuman well, I mean, I I guess he he was talking about just organic matter that wasn't human. Biologics. Biologics.
AP Strange:Yeah. Non human biologics he's saying. But you're like that could be anything. That could be fungus. That could be, you know.
AP Strange:But when we talk about non human intelligence or non human biologics, like we're surrounded by them all the time. Like, I have several of them living in my house right now and I don't know what the hell my cat's up to sometimes. I don't know I don't know what she's thinking, but other times I do, you know. And
Mike Fiorito:Yeah.
AP Strange:And it's like if you can cultivate that kind of knowledge or just pay attention to the non human elements in the world because I mean talk about anthropomorphism, there's also anthropocentrism, I guess, where everything's about us. Everything's about us human beings that are actively destroying the planet. And I mean, what did the UFO occupants say to Angelucci when they talked to him? It's like, knock it off. You're killing it.
Mike Fiorito:Take care of the earth. Yeah. As they say to so many, as this is such a common thing.
AP Strange:It's worth noting too before I forget that and I think Jung points this out is that he had kind of the perfect name for that kind of encounter because Orpheus.
Mike Fiorito:Right.
AP Strange:The Greek the Greek god that you all associated with music and the Orphic cults were like the early basic drum circles and festivals of yore.
Mike Fiorito:Exactly.
AP Strange:And descending into the underworld and coming back out and then his last name being like basically Angel Light would be the Exactly. Yeah, so.
Mike Fiorito:It was it was it was denoted by me as well. It was a great great kind of interesting, you know, ironic ironic coincidence, I suppose.
AP Strange:Right. Right. Because, I mean, you're talking about for for listeners, Angelucci was like a factory worker. Like, he wasn't Right. He wasn't like a sci fi writer or Yeah.
AP Strange:You know, an academic or, you know I mean, that was his real name, so it's just I mean, the this is how synchronicity tends to work.
Mike Fiorito:And interestingly, his writing is very fluid. He has one of those writing styles that it's very readable. And I read the book and I really enjoyed that book. I really enjoyed it. You know, sometimes they're academic writers and you're just, you're kind of like wading through mud, you know, and you just, you're waiting for that, the gem, and then there are gems maybe on the way, but they're so hard to read.
Mike Fiorito:But I highly recommend his book.
AP Strange:Yeah, well, I mean, that's what makes your book fun to read too is because you're telling a story, you know, you're not getting bogged down like that and you're talking to people and about people and you're also sharing your own experiences with music.
Mike Fiorito:Well, thank you. Thank you for that.
AP Strange:Yeah, no, I really appreciate that because it makes it a lot easier to read, you know, like you said, there's a bit of poetry to the way you're writing it. Is almost an art project as much as it is like a ufological text or a
Mike Fiorito:speech language text. That means so much to me. If you Earl Grey, if you know Earl Grey Anderson, he he's he's a great guy. Lives in LA, and he is a director at MoveOn. But he's very interested in, you know, the the new developments in Uphology and I didn't know him and we we interacted and met and I sent him for all we know which is a fiction book.
AP Strange:Right.
Mike Fiorito:And my previous book. And he said, this is UFO literature. That's what he said. So I didn't have to do any research. I didn't have to convey complex ideas of philosophy or musicology or psychology.
Mike Fiorito:I just told a story. So I just told a story. There are many stories, it's a novel. And I that was like the highest compliment. That's, you know, like you, we said, you said before we started, it's not not typical UFO book.
Mike Fiorito:And for some people, it's not going to be the coin operated thing they may want. Because I mean, I'm just as much interested in narrative and storytelling language as I am in the subject. So I may fall in that middle place between someone wants mantids, you know, they want a checkbox. I want a mantid. I want a non riveted UFO.
Mike Fiorito:I can knock on the thing and I want, you know, X, Y, and Z. And I've gotten some of that feedback, like on Goodreads or whatever comments. And I just say, well, I'm just not for that person. My writing is not for them.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, well, I approach writing much the same way. If I were going for a broad readership, I would have to I would have to target audiences a lot better, you know, and I even with this show, it's like, I mean, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna slow down and cover things I don't feel like covering. Mean, for the discovery of it and the creation, you know? And just following my bliss.
Mike Fiorito:Why not?
AP Strange:The best reason to do anything,
Mike Fiorito:right? Exactly.
AP Strange:Ironically, it's kind of why I stopped playing music because it stopped being fun for me. Like the idea of, I mean, you're you're in the Northeast, so you know this, like, loading in at a bar.
Mike Fiorito:Oh,
AP Strange:god. On one of those nights where it's just brick cold, it's like 10 degrees. Yeah. And then knowing that at 2AM you gotta load back out and Yeah. Worry And then maybe not a lot
Mike Fiorito:of people show up.
AP Strange:Yeah. Nobody's there because it's too cold that night. And Right. There was one night, it was like a February night in Massachusetts, and I was there was a a regular weekly event happening that night. And I knew what was happening and I had the option to go or not go.
AP Strange:And they had a band, a backing band and I was like, man, if I was in that band, I'd be loading my amp into the car, I'd be worried that my guitar truss rod is gonna get all messed up from the cold and like Right.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah, exactly.
AP Strange:But instead I could just sit on my couch. That's much better.
Mike Fiorito:And in New York too, it's like family and friends, you know, by the way, it's like you're expected to bring a crowd. So now I have to bug my people I know. And I mean, if I'm playing a lot, then I'm bugging them all the time. And that's just not, I don't want to do that. That's not why I'm doing it.
Mike Fiorito:So if I do play now, but I play very kind of here and there and happenstance kind of thing. I've run an open mic, which is nice because it's zero pressure. And I get to keep my chops up without too much commitment. It's an open mic. They they they pay me to stop.
Mike Fiorito:That
AP Strange:reminds me of a March Brothers joke.
Mike Fiorito:Which one is that?
AP Strange:Oh, it's a well, Chico and Harper are in the club and yeah. The how much does it cost to get you to stop playing? There's, like, a whole joke with that. Yeah.
Mike Fiorito:Oh, okay. Maybe that's unconsciously. It's like I would never wanna belong to a club that would have someone like me as a member kind
AP Strange:of Right. That's the classic grad show line. Yeah. That's what You could pay him not to play. Yeah.
AP Strange:But yeah. So are you are you're mostly a guitar player, or you're multi instrumentalist?
Mike Fiorito:Mostly a guitar player. I do play different percussion instruments. I do sing. You know? And I'm I'm I'm not a bad singer.
Mike Fiorito:I'm okay. You know, I'm not like, I'm not going to screech and make you, you know, wince. But I'm not like Steven Tyler with that kind of range. But I I like to explore my range and try different things and learning. My wife and I do harmonies together which is fun.
Mike Fiorito:Practicing stuff like The Beatles or Bluegrass is very harmony oriented from coming from gospel. Right. And you could say really there's a through line from Bluegrass, you know, Gospel Bluegrass that goes to, it carries forward really into the Beatles through through, you know, different groups.
AP Strange:Well, the Everly Brothers was.
Mike Fiorito:Exactly. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Fiorito:Exactly. And hit their father, Ike Everly, was, you know, a player who taught Merle Travis how to play guitar, wasn't strictly a Bluegrass player, but he's from Muhlenberg County, you know, Bluegrass Bluegrass territory for sure. But Merle Travis was a kind of unique composite of everything. He jazz, ragtime, Bluegrass, you know, western, what did they call that? Western big band.
Mike Fiorito:He just did it all. Merle Travis. Yes. Texas swing. Texas swing.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Fiorito:Take me back to Tulsa. I'm too young to marry.
AP Strange:Yeah. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.
Mike Fiorito:You got it. Yep. Yeah. And in fact, I loved him so much that I named my son Travis, my younger son.
AP Strange:Nice. Yeah. And I mean, you do have a chapter about that, which I could relate to harmonizing with your wife because you know my wife and I do the same thing and that's for us it was the Beatles but also like Simon and Garfunkel. Yeah. It's always fun to try to do that which also comes up in the book.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah,
AP Strange:yeah. In a different chapter, but yeah. Where was it gonna go with that? It's also funny that you brought up the Elvis impersonator thing because I don't know if you knew this about me, but that's I'm kind of the go to like weird Elvis guy because I
Mike Fiorito:don't think I know that or I've forgotten it. Don't know. But tell me, please.
AP Strange:I mean, is a there's a there's an occult Elvis book out now.
Mike Fiorito:Yes. I'm
AP Strange:like picking myself because I'm like, I should have written that like three years ago because I totally, you Yeah,
Mike Fiorito:written by I know I know the know Miguel Ponder. Yeah. That's it, that's it, yep.
AP Strange:But yeah, it just bugs me because like I had an inkling that like, oh, I could write a book about this. And then I was like, ah, there's like a million Elvis books out there though. And then somebody went and did it and got published by Inner Traditions. I'm like, I should have done it.
Mike Fiorito:That's an awesome idea though, but it's an occult Elvis book. Right.
AP Strange:Yeah, so I'm not sure what all he covers in it, but there is an Elvis UFO connection.
Mike Fiorito:I know he did he did see a UFO there's some story.
AP Strange:Right there there's a book called the Elvis UFO connection and it's really hard to find because they only did one thing of it, but it's a lot of fun. I'll send you some of my writings on Elvis.
Mike Fiorito:Please. Please, it'll rekindle some of my old moves and stuff.
AP Strange:Right, right. It is fun stuff. No, I think I was gonna segue from what we were just talking about with the harmonies to another part of the book, something that was in the book. Oh yes, now I remember. Since we were talking about Bluegrass, this is a big moment of disclosure for my audience, and I hope it's not too much
Mike Fiorito:of a spoiler for your book, but Bluegrass is the preferred music of aliens, I guess, right? Right, right. There's that long story that Mark Turner I saw Mark on, I forget what it's called. I think it was called encounters and it was a a show that was it was interviews. These really candid interviews and it, you know, really low production, just kind of the camera pointed at at people.
Mike Fiorito:Tim Kaney was another guy that I met through through that show. But Mark had these these series of kind of anomalous, you know, events occur. You know, he saw this woman dressed up. They looked like they were from the future dressed up in like a space space suit outfit or something. Mhmm.
Mike Fiorito:And and then you know he they he went with his wife to a Bluegrass event and they all saw a UFO. So it was like a group of people that that all saw it together. And then he was online. He was investigating this he was investigating. Was there a flight?
Mike Fiorito:Was there, you know, air traffic? Could could someone give him information on this? And then he went to some blog site and there was a guy with a weird a weird handle. And I think I I just came up with like aliens like Bluegrass music too. That was just my kind of summer summation of it.
Mike Fiorito:But there was some association with Bluegrass and UFO. And I don't remember exactly what it was to be honest with you. But isn't that how it these things occur? They these constellate of weird, you know, inexplicable events. It's like once the fire gets going at the embers kind of disseminate, but you were gonna say something, I'm sorry.
AP Strange:Yeah, no, it's okay. Yeah, I mean, I think I've referred to it as like a spider web of meaning. It just goes out in every direction and connects all these different things. So it's these numinous qualities about things that we can't necessarily explain because language isn't the right thing for it. Like, spoken language isn't isn't the language that it needs to be trans transmitted through.
AP Strange:Tones, though, or even, you know, something like dance or a certain look or color patterns can communicate something that language can't.
Mike Fiorito:Exactly.
AP Strange:Right? And it's hard to put our finger on it, but all of these things I think I've long thought are interrelated and it's like you kind of give lot of oblique views of it through other people's experiences in the book, which is the only way to do it as far as I'm concerned. Like, it's the stuff that can only be viewed out of the corner of your eye because you're not even supposed to see it. You're supposed to hear it, you know, and feel it. Right.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah. There's some sense that's awakened, you know, and not to belabor the fairies, but often people just see something, there's a quick thing out of the corner of your And I think what that is, what these things are is we have this sense of what we call reality. We have this kind of comfortable sense and it's Donald Hoffman talks about this and I like, you know, what he says is our consciousness didn't evolve to tell us the truth. What it evolved to was to be adaptive so that I can get food, I can evade predators, I can obtain a mate to procreate. I could get the means of things I need to to subsist.
Mike Fiorito:But it doesn't obviously, it it just doesn't how could it give us there's so much information that's out of the bounds of our sensory tools. I mean, dogs can hear things we can't. Myriad insects and animals see things we can't. Are people that see things we can't. There was one of the books I referred to.
Mike Fiorito:It was a linguistics book. I read it and it just blew my mind. Something like about snakes, I forget what it is, but this guy is in the Amazon, he's a linguist and he's with one of the indigenous person that grew up in in the jungle. And that person says, don't move. He says, why?
Mike Fiorito:He says, don't move. There's a snake by your foot. And he couldn't see the snake. His eyes weren't trained for it. It's my point, his perceptual field.
Mike Fiorito:And so what these things, I think what they do is are trying to remind us that don't believe everything you see, there's so much more to it and explore. Don't be satisfied with, and it's, you know, we're all hyper. I'm certainly hypocrites of this. I mean, we fall into every moment we're falling asleep. We fall into the dream of who we are.
Mike Fiorito:You know, you you get it, you get caught up in like your story, how much you hate your boss or how much you, you know, you, this sucks or you're better than that or whatever it is. We all do it and but it's just a a a it's a false it's a false it's delusional. Think right.
AP Strange:That's what Gurjeev would call like sleepwalking, you know, right? Right.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah. I mean, Buddha means awake, you know, awakened one, and it's where we're constantly going back into the into the dream, not the better kind of dream, but the dream of the singular dream, the the flatter, less interesting thing, dream of our own self aggrandizement or just our own we we love our suffering. You know, no nothing like anger. You could just get so worked up about it, right? And it's like an intoxicant.
Mike Fiorito:You just, you know, you just drink your anger and it's voluptuous. But that's the thing that, you know, some some folks in the Ufology world will hear that stuff and say, what the heck is he talking about? What does that even I'm looking for things in the objects in the sky, this kind of stuff. And what I think, and I think we have a sympatico here is that this is a spiritual path. It's really, it's a calling of discovery of who we are, what makes us tech, why are we here?
Mike Fiorito:The big question.
AP Strange:One of the things I always like to throw out there, and I think I found a couple of moments in the book where this we have I found I found you to be simpatico with it, is that the phenomenon is like following following a breadcrumb trail that just leads you back to yourself. Mhmm. Or leads you to a mirror where you're just looking at yourself. You know? Right.
AP Strange:And and I think that's just because even if you take spiritual spiritual spirituality out of it because I mean there's people that'll be scared off and think that it's a new age thing. It's some kind of gift. There's some kind of woo to it. People that want to be more rationalist. It's like, well no, I mean it's very simple.
AP Strange:People that have encounters with UFOs or people that have strange paranormal events or experience synchronicity to a really significant degree, it profoundly impacts their life and it informs who they become. So whether or not you believe in a spiritual element, whether or not you believe the phenomena actually happened, it's intrinsic to our makeup as people. It's part of what makes people people. Right. We're part of a broader ecosystem and a broader control system,
Mike Fiorito:right? Right. And there's a humility, the humility of, you know, you haven't one upped the universe because you know it all.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Mike Fiorito:And and there's some humility to to approach things with with reverence and, you know, not that we should not, you know, not that you run-in fear. And like my grandmother, you would say, like, in Italian, you would say, how are you? You would say, not too bad. But you wouldn't say I'm doing well. You'd say, I'm not too bad because you don't want to incur the, you know, the wrath of, you know, it's kind of the superstition thing.
Mike Fiorito:But there's much to be said for that, I think. Still, that's there's knowledge is a quest and, you know, we're even finding in science that we, and it's nothing new. You look at quantum mechanics, you go back to Schrodinger and he wrote a book on he he wrote a book on the Vedanta. I mean, he was so blown away by what he was seeing that it was it it caused a a complete revelation for him. And the the hard sciences we're finding there's a there's a lot of gooeyness to it as well.
Mike Fiorito:I mean, this whole notion of dark matter and we call it dark matter and it's it's so most of the universe is unseen as dark matter. We don't know what it is. Right. And that then that solves the problem. And and you know, I'm not anti science.
Mike Fiorito:I I love and adore science. But we need to keep that door open. The door of our mind open. To not be so categorical, I believe.
AP Strange:Right. I mean, if 98% of all conceivable reality is unknown to us, It seems seems a little absurd to to completely discount unknown phenomena or unexplainable phenomena. Right.
Mike Fiorito:Exactly. I mean, it's and that that's where Jeff, you know, I think Jeff has done a great job to being so sober, Jeff Kreippel. He's so sober. He doesn't take the bait. And I love his voice.
Mike Fiorito:And the way he talks. No. No. We just things impossible things happen. And we just you know I'm not Jeff.
Mike Fiorito:I'm I'm sure you're not listening to this. But I actually adore Jeff's voice. I love to listen to him. I wrote a review of his book, How to Think It Possibly and he wrote he wrote to me because we've been in correspondence and I said something like reading, reading Jeff is like listening to a Nebraskan farmer and, know, the, the, like the ease of the way he speaks and the mellifluous nature of his speaking, it just is comforting. And I said, I think I read Jeff just because I like hearing him in my head.
Mike Fiorito:And he wrote back, he said, I really laughed out loud when I read Like a Nebraskan Farmer. Because I'd read that he's from Nebraska. Yeah. But just, I could see him sitting there in the wheat fields, you know, the corn fields, like kind of, you know, just sober and, you know, like a New York, you know, hot wire kind of going on and inflamed with maybe too much passion because that that can scare people away. But we're we're we're Jeff Jeff will, I think soon be he'll be a saint of Uphology or as you called it, U UAP.
Mike Fiorito:What was your Uapology? Yeah. I love that, man. That's
AP Strange:Well, harkens back to to the old Stanton Friedman line. Don't be a ufologist apologist.
Mike Fiorito:Well, it's interesting because I'm sure you're lured into these conversations. I mean, I have two books now, you know, with the word UFO in the title and I get these funny looks and I get these and what I do is I don't take the bait. You know, I don't, I just try to have a sober, thank you, Jeff, conversation about, let's talk about science. You know, have you read Thomas Kuhn? Have you read the structure of a scientific revolution?
Mike Fiorito:Have you read the books of the quantum mechanics physicists who were perplexed by their discoveries? Did you have you read Goodell, who basically said that, you know, and Whitehead in in their and is in the twenties, Goodell said there is no set that contains the set of all sets. Basically, he said that logic is not self contained. It always has to look outside of itself to make sense. And so that upended the notion that our science and logic and understanding the scaffolding upon which all of our mathematics and science sits is not solid.
Mike Fiorito:It's not. And meanwhile, about forgetting the awakened one, wake up, wake up. I mean, that's been long forgotten. It's funny that mainstream science hasn't caught up with that.
AP Strange:Right. Well, yeah. And I mean, part for that awakening, that kind of Buddha awakening, it's not so much a process of learning new things, ways of looking, it's about letting go. It's about shedding illusions, you So I mean, it's very appropriate. But I I to get back to what you're talking about with logic is is is also ego driven, you know, a lot of So It seems like to me that.
AP Strange:My solution for that generally is humor I tried to I will mess around. And it sounds sometimes I'll try to come up with the most off the wall thing. Just a completely absurd thing to say. As a joke. Then I'll find that, oh, wait, that was unintentionally profound.
AP Strange:I can build a bridge to And sometimes that's how you solve the problem is just through humor.
Mike Fiorito:I think you're absolutely right. I mean, has that three sixty kind of vision humor does and it and it it does what it dissolves that that tight grip of what the ego thinks it has on understanding. So, I I I'm actually thinking about another book right now and I want to make it funny. So, I want to write a kind of narrative fiction book. I've written kind of humorous stuff before.
Mike Fiorito:And I certainly am not insulting anyone, but I don't want to insult it. I'm laughing at myself. I mean, I don't know if you know, about seven weeks ago, seven weeks ago today, I fell, I tripped, and I broke my arm. Oh, jeez. And, and my age, you know, I mean, I'm 58 years old, turning 59.
Mike Fiorito:It was an interesting interesting. First of it's very painful and it was the dumbest thing. I tripped on my shoelaces. I mean, there's no great story. I wasn't like hang gliding or you know, you know, cave dwelling.
Mike Fiorito:You know, I was tripped on my shoelaces, fell into concrete stairs. Talk about humility and now, wrap, you know, I'm dealing with wrap your head around how it limits you and suddenly, you think you you think that you've you figured it all out, Al, me, being, you know, you think you're you've had you're at peace with everything. Go break your arms. See, now you deal with being at peace. See how that feels.
Mike Fiorito:And you're like, yeah, it's very painful. It's very incredibly painful and my, I guess my whole point is that it's sort of like life has a way of laughing at you and saying, you're still wrapped in your own, you're caught in your own trap. Yeah. You know?
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, it will throw a wrench in the gears for sure. Just to wake you up a little bit.
Mike Fiorito:And by the way, caught in a trap. I can't walk out because I love you. Sorry about that. It just it just happened.
AP Strange:Oh, it's I'm I'm never opposed to an Elvis reference. So
Mike Fiorito:but as you can see, I'm I'm much more functional but it's been a a journey. There's a great story. There's the the woman that Jeff Kreipel studied with Wendy Doninger, I think her name was. So he was, what did he call her? His Doctor.
Mike Fiorito:Muda. Doctor. Muda. He did his doctorate degree with her. And she has a book on, I I forget what it's called, illusions, fantasies, something like that.
Mike Fiorito:And she was she studied like Jeff religions. And she has a book on Hindu mythology. And she tells the story of this guru. That's he's, you know, enamored with his own, you brilliance and his own saintly kind of devotion and spirituality. And he's standing by the river and he looks at this woman who's kind of pathetic woman who's poor and she has children running around and he looks at her and he sort of thinks, you know, my gosh, you know, here, look at me, I'm this this evolved person and look at her.
Mike Fiorito:She's, you know, so so mundane pedestrian. And then Krishna comes and sees this and zaps the guy and turns him into her. Yeah. He becomes her. And then as it as it the case in in Hindu stories, the notion of time is very different.
Mike Fiorito:He lives every day, every moment, you know, sitting by the windowpane and the powder of rain and the child dying and not having enough food and and all of the kind of experience that she has. He discovers the wisdom in that. But it it happens after twenty five years. And then when he has that after twenty five years of every day in that minutia, he's zapped back in and then standing by the river. And I, you know, it's a kind of, I think it's a metaphor for all of us, right?
Mike Fiorito:When we're, as soon as we think we got it, you better look over your shoulder, you know? Right. Don't Che Male. Don't Che Male.
AP Strange:Gotta keep that evil eye away.
Mike Fiorito:Exactly. Maloykia, we call it. Yeah. Maloykia. Yeah.
AP Strange:Which incidentally, if people don't know, that's that's where Ronnie James Dio got the metal horns thing from.
Mike Fiorito:Exactly. Yeah.
AP Strange:Malaika sign from Yeah. Isn't that
Mike Fiorito:funny? His his grandmother, he says, you know, she she was the original heavy metal. You know?
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, my Italian grandma used to do that too. She taught me that when I was very little. That's how you keep the evil eye away.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah. I like him. I like you. Yeah. I have tons of stories on that stuff.
AP Strange:Oh yeah, yeah I mean we could talk Italian stuff all day I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. You could think of it as that kind of evil eye thing but also just there but for the grace of God go I and that's something I always you know I try to keep that it's second nature to me these days but it's something that I've I had to train myself in a kind of an empathy because you see you see the person begging for change outside the donut shop and everybody walking right by pretending they don't see him covering their face saying no no I'm busy you know and it's like yeah I mean that could just easily be me you know or people are in really dire straits you know so it's and I think music offers a bridge for that because if somebody can sing a song about their situation it helps you understand what that is you know that's one thing I love doing with songs I'm sure you do the same thing or something similar is looking up why that person wrote that song and getting kind of a little bit of a background on it because sometimes it's really mind blowing.
AP Strange:You're just like, I'm not really sure what the song is about, and you look at it and you go, oh man, this song I love is about this whole experience that I was totally unaware of before. But now Right. Now it's part of my it's part of my emotional set when I'm listening to it, you know?
Mike Fiorito:Right. And it could be a little evocative pieces too. There's the song, is it by Neil Young? Is it Harvest? And when you hear, you read the words to the song, Harvest, and it kind of, it's, it's, it's opaque.
Mike Fiorito:You really don't know what's he's saying. But you feel like you know he's saying something. Kind of like a dream.
AP Strange:And Bill Young is really good at that. He'll.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And and I think the best the best, it's funny because I think the poetry and the words, the lyrics to songs can take us to a place. But then the melodies and the sound and the music takes us even farther.
Mike Fiorito:Mhmm. You know I I wrote about in in the book. Well I'm even mentioned I this wasn't in the book. But John Blowfield who was I guess a Buddhist scholar. He wrote a book on mantras.
Mike Fiorito:And what he said is that the mantras they're not supposed to be words. They're supposed to be sounds.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Mike Fiorito:So that if we get caught up in the word, then I'm caught up in an image. If I'm caught up in like egg or a sky or tree. Now, I'm caught up in that as opposed to just pure sound And it sort of detaches us from the anchoring into a particular thing. And the tones just become transportive. Right.
Mike Fiorito:You know, like the section I wrote about the the Hemi Sync technology that was used, well invented at the Monroe Institute and I've played with it and it's incredible. You put those things on, you put a headset on and you'll hear two frequencies occurring one in each ear at different frequencies. And it's very transformative. It puts you in a hypnagogic state and kind of pre dream state that could evolve into a full I mean, Robert Monroe had these incredible interestingly, he met beings who told him they even had a sense of humor and they were giving him advice on what humanity needs to take care of the planet. Right.
Mike Fiorito:And sort of wisdom advice. Interestingly, isn't that a funny occurrence that these things happen in different modalities?
AP Strange:Right, right. Yeah, and that same message often comes through. So what were your experiences with the are you comfortable sharing any kind of like visionary experiences with the gateway tapes?
Mike Fiorito:Yeah, I did a couple of things, and I I can't say I did it terribly deeply. I I did it through the the triad mind. So it's something that Mark Cherto runs. He worked with Bob Monroe and he helped develop, as I understand from his own account that he helped him because Mark Cierdo has a music background. He is a musician and he had a kind of knowledge of music technology and recording technology.
Mike Fiorito:And he helped Bob Onro to perfect getting the the sounds right. But what what I discovered is that it it is unavoidable. You go into a hypnagogic state and basically some other beings pop up. They just pop up. They just cut like like you go and go into a dream.
Mike Fiorito:And then they you begin maybe conversing with them. I had a a one of them I think was an old lady. Kind of like an old straga. Like old lady. Kind of like a grandmother, you know, yelling at me and which is comical because it's also Was she waving a wooden spoon at you?
Mike Fiorito:That was basically, yes. Something like that. But it made me laugh because I, there were a few things that I had that kind of experience. And I'm thinking, and it goes back to what you said that when you see that guy on the street, who's begging for money, that's you. That's also you.
Mike Fiorito:And these things that popped out of my head were me, a part parts of me. And I guess where what I have begun to think and maybe this will change is that there is really one consciousness and there are different instances of it, instantiations of consciousness. But coming to that understanding really through empathy. And without that, without that empathy, we're just navel gazers and we we've lost the way, but yeah, so I had these, you do have these transport of experiences And then because I was doing research, I did research with sound baths as well, which again, you know, you go into these, you go into a studio and it's kind of like a meditation center and they use chimes and bells. Whatever you think when you walk in there, you are going to be washed over with the vibrations and it's gonna take you on a journey.
Mike Fiorito:It feels like you've been plunged into a river and you're just gonna float along somewhere and you're gonna have encounters of some kind. Who it is, what it is, I'm not sure. Yeah. But those are all modalities. And I guess that's what, you know, that's really what I came to the conclusion that music is a contact modality.
Mike Fiorito:With whom? I'm not sure. I mean, who who knows?
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, was kinda fitting that and you do make reference to this as well that in Close Encounters of of the Third Kind movie, you you have, like, the tones or how they or contact. That's how they communicate. Uh-huh. Yeah.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah.
Mike Fiorito:It's like hand signals that I think they were like hand signals, but with tones because, you know, that would make sense. I mean, I can talk to people from, you know, from another continent without having any language commonality. We can speak musically. We can understand something.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. I mean, pick on another movie scene that's not sci fi at all. It's kind of like the beginning of Deliverance where the guy shows up with the guitar and you have the kid that doesn't speak at all but he's playing a mean banjo. You know?
Mike Fiorito:Yeah. That's funny because I was thinking as you were saying it it could be a few things and that was one of the things that it could be that you were going to say. But yeah, or just the communication you have with people where when you sit down, you're a musician and you play and it doesn't happen with everyone. But you said some people you have this incredible dialogue. And there's something there's information communicated.
Mike Fiorito:It could be it's emotion. Something deeper. There's something that you can't quite always put your finger on. But I've walked away from playing with someone saying, wow, that was special. It's like a great kiss or something, you know, you're just an unexpected magic happened.
AP Strange:Yeah and it borders on telepathy, which I think you discussed in this or in the part where you talked to Josh Kutchen, he kind of goes into that as well because he's doing like a New Orleans jazz kind of thing. But I've experienced that before too. And I mean, that's one of the reasons music was less fun for me because I didn't have the guys to play with and it's really hard to find guys, know? And for me, doing guitar solos was really my favorite thing. If you have a great drummer, they can can work with the dynamics and drive the rest of the band so that your guitar solo and the drum are like synced, you know?
AP Strange:Right. So when I did have that, like I'd listen to recordings and he would, you know, there would be two high notes that I'm about to hit and he turns it into kind of a, like, a tacit and just like with cymbal crashes and hits it. Right. Like, how did he know I was gonna hit those two notes? Like Right.
AP Strange:But you're just linked up, you know? So it's crazy how it works and nobody really knows how it works, I guess.
Mike Fiorito:And it's this like everyday magic. And I think Josh said, you know, was it Josh that said music, performing music is magic happening in in public every day, all the time. And but it's looked, it's kind of looked at what, we don't look at it. We don't scrutinize it. They look at things like people watch, I don't know, these science fiction and Marvel movies and all these kind of read books of Harry Potter or something like that.
Mike Fiorito:We're all enmeshed in this stuff. But if you ask them, so what do you think about, you know, oftentimes people will kind of pull their pants up and say, well, I don't believe in that crap, you know? Yeah. But meanwhile we do, we just, because it's probably a little scary when you think about, well, things are boundless and way more complex than we know. And I include myself in that, you know, sometimes it scares me, frankly, you know, sometimes I pull up to go to sleep and I just, you know, the profundity of it all gets a little, you know, you feel like you're drowning, frankly.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Mike Fiorito:You know, it a it is a path that maybe it's not for everyone. Right. I don't even know if it's.
AP Strange:Well, mean, there's something to be said for that that that it is a special quality that people have because I mean traditionally magicians, shamans, healers in different parts of the world are also like musicians or the storytellers, right? So it makes sense. It's it taps into it, right? So.
Mike Fiorito:Often times, they're they're they sometimes are broke. They're the broken people that. Right. That kind of were maybe the outcast and then through their pain and the journey of their suffering came back and said, you know, I I brought these things back from that dark place.
AP Strange:So. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's totally in that Orphic tradition.
Mike Fiorito:Yes.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, like, Jimi Hendrix can communicate a lot more with a wah pedal and a and a guitar and an amplifier than he ever does through the microphone. You know?
Mike Fiorito:Yeah. I
AP Strange:mean, put it all together and it's great, but like those the notes that Hendrix is wailing on is is communicating something that couldn't be communicated any other way and everybody feels it.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah. There's a guy, Robert Dick, I think his name is, that did he's a it's like a flautist, and he has a jazz ensemble. And he did some Hendrix songs on one of his albums. I forget which one. Robert Dick is his name.
Mike Fiorito:And he does machine gun. Right. Right. And but to to make all those sounds, like, took cellos and violins and all of the wah sounds and all of this other stuff and you say, wow, man. Jimmy was really composing.
Mike Fiorito:This is this is I mean, this wasn't music. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because, you know, it it's not always, you know, Paul McCartney learns a technique of doing, how do I do, you know, go up the neck using triads or something.
Mike Fiorito:And he turns that into a song. You know, most of us are trying to get there to try to do these to be inventive and someone who's just, they just, they have the gift, you know.
AP Strange:You're talking about Blackbird?
Mike Fiorito:Yes, yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah, okay.
Mike Fiorito:I mean, it's an exercise really. And he just turns it into a beautiful, incredible song. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Fiorito:Know. It's it's crazy.
AP Strange:I I was gonna I was gonna bring this up because it's it's not something that comes up a lot in your book because like I said, this is a lot of your own personal experience and stories that you collected from people directly. But I was thinking earlier today, not just Elvis but I mean there's a lot of musicians that have had some kind of UFO encounter and I always kind of thought of that as the trickster nature of the phenomenon is going to present itself to people that nobody's gonna believe. Right, right. But now I'm starting to think that the music probably has some part of it because I mean Hendrix himself had a UFO encounter depending if you believe the sources those come from. And then you know the Moody Blues, John Lennon, George Clinton, the list goes on and on but I mean none of What's that?
Mike Fiorito:Sun Ra?
AP Strange:Sun Ra, yeah, mean Sun Ra basically thought he was a, he said he was from Saturn. Right, right. He
Mike Fiorito:had a whole story about it. Right. Yeah, I I think there's a there's an interesting connection. And what I didn't wanna do is I didn't wanna make the book anecdotal. So I didn't wanna say John Lennon had this and and Rick Rick Wakeman had this experience.
Mike Fiorito:I did get bits of those things that are, you know, in blurbs and stuff, but I wanted to tell stories. And I didn't really care about the celebrity level of the musician. It was like whoever it was. But it's funny because I think that yeah, musicians are creative. I sent the book The Flip by Jeff Kripal to Peter Roan, who's in the book.
Mike Fiorito:He's a musician, songwriter. He's a legend, bluegrass legend. And he said to me, who is he writing this book for? And I thought to myself, what, you know, Peter has dikinis, you know, convey songs to him in his dreams. So, he's already there.
Mike Fiorito:I was like, oh, that, of course, of course. Not to you, Peter. I mean, I wanted to show you the book but this is really written to academics and to mainstream kind of you know, people in the universities that are steadfast in these fiefdoms of whatever it is that they're teaching. And but of course, he wouldn't because he receives music in a magic way. And I think it happens in both ways that musicians are open to because of their openness.
Mike Fiorito:They can make music manifest and make magic. And sometimes music is the carpet ride where magic is where magic is made. So I don't know if that makes sense the way I said it, but sometimes out of music comes magic. And sometimes out of magic is made music, if that makes sense.
AP Strange:Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a feedback loop. You know. Yeah. In a lot of ways. You're right.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I'm thinking of like even, you know, would you take a psych a sacred plant and you hear music and out of that music, you are going to have an extraordinary journey.
Mike Fiorito:You are going and it will be profound and it is not a joke and it's not like, dude, man, I just got really high. It's nothing like that. It's super profound and a confrontation with, you know, ultimately with yourself and the universe and maybe one and the same.
AP Strange:Yeah, and it's kind of stepping outside reality and then bringing something back for everybody else.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah, right. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah, so that's really cool. And and there's there's so much of that in the book from from a variety of perspectives. So it's it's really cool to see it all put together. And and speaking of the Peter Rowan stuff, I mean, there was a part where you were coming up to see him in my neck of the woods and I had to have a chuckle over you recounting your harrowing drive through Boston and feeling
Mike Fiorito:like Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. The the the the little farm, you know, that's what he said, Peter, that it's like they the paths were for the animals, the farm And so I'm like, where am I going? Am I making a left?
Mike Fiorito:What is this right now?
AP Strange:A lot of downtown and the North End is like used to be farmers markets and squares and little little carriage trails. So they're all one way streets now and it doesn't make any sense.
Mike Fiorito:Right. And he's written with me a few times and I think he's sort of like, can you drive? Has this, because I drove late in New York. You don't have to have a license. You don't have to drive.
Mike Fiorito:I took the trains to school. I went to NYU. I took trains. And I didn't drive a car really until 20.
AP Strange:Right. And then then you're in Boston. So God help you.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, there are certain places where driving is, know, you you need you need more than a license to drive, really.
AP Strange:Yeah. It's the for listeners, it is the single worst place in the universe to drive. Boston is terrible.
Mike Fiorito:I've been cursed out like crazy in Boston. I mean, I've been cursed out for, I didn't understand when you have those, where you're supposed to stop to let pedestrians walk. And I I kind of missed that. And so I was this guy pulls up next to me. He pulls up, rolls down his way.
Mike Fiorito:He's got a car full of kids. I was with my son in the car. He rolls down the way he goes, are you a scumbag? And I was like, I didn't even know what I did. And then I kind of realized it.
Mike Fiorito:But what I said to him was my son is in the car. I didn't want, I don't want to I wanted him to see a better behavior. I said, is that the way you talk with kids in your car? And that's all. I just went away, but he it was like cursed me out, the guy, you know.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah. Was in Salem, Massachusetts, by the way.
AP Strange:Yeah. Salem's not fun to drive around in either. I'm there pretty regularly. Lived there for a little while,
Mike Fiorito:but Cool architecture.
AP Strange:Yeah. And it's a walkable town, which is nice. Yes. Whenever possible, didn't drive. I walked, and it was made my life a lot easier.
AP Strange:But but, yeah, I mean, you shouldn't feel bad about getting yelled at because we're all assholes up here. Like, that's that's the road rage is strong in this part of the world. So
Mike Fiorito:No. It was better getting yelled at than getting a knife pulled on you. So I'll I'll take that.
AP Strange:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Alright. Every city has their own challenges. A little bit of both.
AP Strange:People in Boston are afraid to come to my hometown. Like Worcester has such a bad reputation.
Mike Fiorito:What could be Worcester? What could be Worcester? Yeah. Well, I live in Brooklyn. So, you know, my brother says, you live so far away.
Mike Fiorito:He lives in New Jersey and I say, you know, you live as far away from me as I live from you. Yeah. You know, do you realize that, right? Like, he says, you live in the middle of nowhere and I'm like, we live the same distance away. I don't understand what you're saying.
Mike Fiorito:Right. You get in a car and you come here.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, it's really just what? Two bridges to get there.
Mike Fiorito:It's actually super easy. It's, you know, you can go through Staten Island and get to New Jersey. Yeah. And it's it's like we're we're on a on a no traffic day. We're forty minutes away.
Mike Fiorito:Right, right. So it's kind of silly.
AP Strange:It is kind of funny and we're spoiled up here in the Northeast because I talk to people sometimes from the Midwest that drive like two hours to go to a bookstore or something. Right, right, right.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah, we have culture. It's like-
AP Strange:were like, I don't want to go to my brother's house. He's forty five minutes away. Right.
Mike Fiorito:Right. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there's so much great stuff and the density of where we live. We're lucky.
Mike Fiorito:We are. We're very lucky like that.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. We're we're we're spoiled. Okay. So winding down here, I did wanna talk a little bit more about Peter Rowan.
AP Strange:Yeah. How was it when you first met him? Because I understand you you've known him for quite a while now.
Mike Fiorito:Yeah, I met him through, it was funny. There's a crazy long story. I'll make it short. A friend of mine is an artist and he does these portraits. He's Guatemalan, he's half indigenous, And he does these portraits with New York City metro cards.
Mike Fiorito:He also uses gold gold guild. And he was in his studio. It's a Friday night. Kinda drinking a few beers, hanging out, and he, one of the portraits he did, I'll send them to you. I'll send you some portraits.
AP Strange:Okay.
Mike Fiorito:He it's a portrait of this it's in an American Indian, indigenous face. And I said, oh, who who's that guy? And he says, oh, you you don't know who that is? You know, so, no, I don't know who that is. Who is it?
Mike Fiorito:He says, it's this guy, Ernie Panicoli. So, Ernie Panicoli, it turns out, is is half a Cree and he is from Brooklyn and half Italian given, you know, given his name and he he was a photographer that for the hip hop groups and he was a major photographer and got them in their most candid, you know, manner and he got amazing pictures. A lot of that has to do with who he is. He came from places like they came from. They respected him.
Mike Fiorito:Anyway, I meet Ernie because I was doing articles on I was for a local newspaper on indigenous artists. He was this great guy. Had a great conversation. I wrote an article about him and he calls me up and he goes, Ernie's an intense guy. He's got great sense of humor but I didn't know him too well.
Mike Fiorito:He goes, he goes, do you want to meet an international music star? And I said, yeah, sure. You you you know, to write an article but you have to take care of her And I said of course I will. Because I I know I'm I'm talking to you because I know you would. Anyway he introduces me to this woman Yung Chin Lamo.
Mike Fiorito:Who's a Tibetan musician, composer. And she's very she's unique. Yung Chin because she does it's traditional but it's she'll play with like a Russian piano player or flamenco guitar players. She's extraordinary. I I highly recommend checking out her stuff.
Mike Fiorito:Anyway. Book as well. She's in the book. Yeah. And I'm it's funny when I met her.
Mike Fiorito:I did a phone call. It was during COVID. And she's you know dressed in like a bikini outfit. And she has like a you know a pearl on her head. Her head is wrapped up in a some kind of bun thing with like a piece of jewelry.
Mike Fiorito:Totally magical. It's like a genie and she's, as I'm speaking to her, she's going, She's praying because Tibetans pray all all times. And anyway, I had read that she played with Peter Rowan. And I said, oh, so can you tell me about your experience with Peter? And she says, do you wanna meet him?
Mike Fiorito:And I said, yeah, of course I'd love to. I never beg anyone to introduce me to the famous star they played with. So through this series of kind of totally unplanned things, met Peter and it was, I would say it was emotionally powerful because I'd known his music. I was a fan of his and Peter is a racket tore. He's a kind of poet.
Mike Fiorito:He's an extraordinary person. So, he knows he's blowing your mind. You know, he's played with Bob Dylan, played with, you know, Jerry Garcia, played with Bill Monroe and the whole host of luminaries and he's got these great stories and stuff and it was just triggering, you know, dreams and you know, I'm telling him, you know, Pete, I had a dream about you last night. It's like, no, no, I mean, not that kind of dream. I mean, I had this inspiring dream about you and anyway, it just sparked.
Mike Fiorito:We, I wrote a book called Falling from Trees. He wrote a poem in like 1975 called Falling from the Trees. We just found these connections together and I think we enjoyed talking to each other. And I said, Pete, I'm writing this, I was writing an article for him for a magazine. And I said, once we get this done, I think I have a larger project.
Mike Fiorito:Would you be interested? And I told him about the project, which was the spirituality of music. What are the roots of music? And the questions I asked him were, he answered the question in like two hours. He goes, I answer your question?
Mike Fiorito:I said, there's really no answer to the question. But he gave this really poetic, you know, written word worthy response, which I knew he would because he's so, he's such a interesting and learned person. So yeah, that's my Peter Rowan story from seeing a portrait in my friend's studio, a series of introductions that were not prompted by me.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, like I said, that's how this like whole synchronicity and weird kind of phenomena stuff goes. It's magic, really, it's magical. It's almost you manifested this into your life, right?
Mike Fiorito:Once you open yourself to it, right? Isn't it that Once you look at it, it looks back. And if you're, I know there's a vibe and an energy you bring in a vibration level to things and some people can't find, there's no problem that doesn't have a solution. And sometimes you may find yourself just kind of drawing and people and meeting people and like the way we met and you just kind of come upon like minded and they become transformational to your life experience.
AP Strange:Yeah, yeah, and it's all enriching when you're working from like a cooperative perspective and I think in today's divisive world, it's heartening to see the calls for cooperation and empathy and understanding with one another. Then I guess that's what the harmony is all about, so yeah. Great point. Yeah, well I'm very happy that we had this conversation and to have met you because it's just kind of this all came together pretty quickly and I enjoyed reading the book and enjoyed talking to you just as much maybe even more I feel like we're new friends now.
Mike Fiorito:So Yeah. No, it's really my now. Exactly. We're we're we're paisanos. Yeah.
Mike Fiorito:That's what's the other compare? Yeah. But yeah, I know it's it's great to thank you for for reading the book, for taking the time.
AP Strange:It means
Mike Fiorito:a lot to me and asking great questions and reading it deeply and giving me the opportunity to talk to you about it on the program. It's it was fun and but I do appreciate it as well. Yeah, we'll it again. We'll stay in touch.
AP Strange:Yeah, yeah, for sure. So if people want to find you online, what's the best way to like look at your work online and see your other books and purchase this one?
Mike Fiorito:Thank you. It's mikefiorito.com. And so if you'll provide it in the transcript notes and stuff, but it's just my name, mikefiorito dot com. That's probably the best way. And then you'll see all of the books.
Mike Fiorito:You'll see descriptions of the books and some review comments, short synopsis of each book. And I'd love to hear from anyone who has questions or would like to talk more about the books and buy the books as well. More than happy to make that happen.
AP Strange:All right. Well, yeah, I mean, think this has been great and I think my listeners will really enjoy it. So thank you again for coming on.
Mike Fiorito:Well, you AP. I got it right at the end and let's be in touch. Have a great night. I know it's probably late and we're in the same time zone. So have a great night and we'll talk soon.