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Links from the Show at a Glance:

 

Artist: Yours Truly

Title of Art: Rolling Rs with Wine

 

The Sacred Geometry Movie by Spirit Science (The bit that inspired this essay can be found between 01:16:05 to 01:20:20 – 4 minutes well worth it!)

 

The double slit experiment – If you have Hulu, the best explanation I’ve seen is in season 3, episode 9 (titled Magic without Lies) of Cosmos: Possible Worlds with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

 

In case that’s not available anymore, here’s another explanation with Joe Scott on YouTube: Down the Rabbit Hole of the Double Slit Experiment

 

Art Ink Submission Guidelines: rebekahnemethy.com/artinksubs

 

Art Ink Podcast Transcript (Below Photos):

 

[Intro:]/[Art Description:]

Today we’re going to start with the art, because what’s interesting is that I made the photo that appears on this episode’s cover before I really knew how ubiquitous frequency is in our reality. Everything is made of energy and therefore, everything has a frequency… literally everything… but before I hop into that bunny pit, I want to describe the cover photo, for those of you who are operating heavy machinery and can’t see it right now, and give you a behind the scenes look at how I made it.

 

On a black background, a jagged, diamond-shaped waveform made of thin, teal green lines stands out in sharp focus on the left side of the image. And in case you don’t know what a waveform is, because I didn’t before I started editing audio, it’s that squiggly line often used to represent music and voiceover brands – think of what a heart rate monitor looks like. On the right side is a similarly shaped waveform, except this one looks smudged and blurry – and around this teal blur is a circular swoosh of red, like someone painted around it with light.

 

I created this image in a couple of steps. First I downloaded an app that made real-time waveforms of my voice appear full screen on my phone as I was talking. Then I proceeded to make a bunch of silly sounds. Off the top of my head I ohhhmmmed, and rolled my Rs, and probably face farted into my phone too if I know myself like I totally do. I took screen shots of the most interesting looking sounds and transferred them to my laptop.

 

With the now larger, full screen images displayed on the computer, I turned off all the other lights in my studio except for one bare LED bulb; which is actually a Halloween prop designed to look like a flickering flame. (Nick won it during a pumpkin-carving party his friends throw every year.) On a tripod, I pointed my camera towards the laptop and filled the frame with the glowing wave on the screen, then made sure the red light wasn’t spilling onto it. Between the camera and the computer screen I used a wine glass to distort parts of the screen, while also catching the ghostly glow of red light.

 

As usual, this photo, and a few others from this series can be seen either on today’s cover, in the show notes, or on my website which will be linked in the show notes, but, for now, let’s back to the significance of frequency, shall we?

 

Riding the Wave – An Exploration of Why Suffering Exists

 

[Story:]

 

I wish I could tell you who said this, because it hit me like a train would were I daydreaming along a track. “When you stand in the light, you still cast a shadow.”

 

In other words, it is impossible, in the 3d world we exist in, to have all light and no dark. And that fact seemed like an epiphany before I knew all that I know now… and I’m still learning my friends… I’m still learning.

 

So, frequency. We see examples of how frequency is measured in modern day life all the time. We already talked about heart rate monitors and audio files, but what about radio waves, earthquake measurement tools or polygraph tests? I mean a spoken lie is scientifically proven to have a different frequency pattern than a spoken truth. That’s kind of mind blowing, don’t you think?

 

While I was observing what sounds made what shapes when I was in the screenshoting phase of my photo project, I discovered another surprise. You know the ohhhmmm sound you’ll hear and perhaps chant yourself in a yoga or meditation class? Ohhhmmm. Well this sound was actually the most symmetrical waveform I could make in the time I spent experimenting.

 

I was in shock.

 

It was kind of an, aha shock, though, more like, OMG that makes complete sense, why do we not teach THIS kinda shit in school. Of course we ohhhmmm to get more in sync with the universe. Duh. And then I sat back on the little black love seat in my baby blue studio and I smiled, because life made a little more sense in that moment.

 

Months later I came across an amazing YouTube video by a channel called Spirit Science. It’s 104 minute animated film called The Sacred Geometry Movie, that basically breaks down the geometry of our reality. It was so fascinating that I’ve watched it 3 times already, and if you want to jump to the bit that had a hand in inspiring this essay specifically, I’ll have the time stamp along with a link so you can watch it for yourself. Which means, by the time you hear this, I’ll most likely have already watched it a 4th time, ya know for research. But seriously, I’m sure this won’t be the last time I mention this video, because I have another episode planned on what I continue to discover about an ancient symbol called the flower of life… but anyway highly recommend that video for anyone interested in the cross sections between art, science, and spirituality.

 

So, after watching The Sacred Geometry video I started to see more connections in my own life. I started to see waves, valleys and mountains, in everything. In my own cycles, whether we’re talking mood or menstrual, in how history repeats itself, in the weather, the seasons, in the way a tree bursts into life in the spring and goes dormant after the fall, in the way hibernating animals eat for months, and then sleep for months, and in the way migrating animals go to and fro in the air and across oceans. The way the sun feels and looks in summer and how the light is just so different in winter. And all of these cycles are connected.

 

Like how the moon affects the tides. Like how an ocean wave is both an individual and part of the whole; ebbing and flowing, coming and going, flickering into and out of existence.

 

Which reminds me: ever hear of the double slit experiment? I’ll link to a more detailed explanation of this scientific study, but to quickly sum up the experiment: photons, the smallest possible bits of light, are sent through two slits. And the pattern of light cast on the other side would vary between two results: either the light would act as particles and shine straight through, casting light that mirrored the two slits, or the light would act wavelike and create an interference pattern on the other side.

 

But here’s the groundbreaking part: this study, repeated many, many times, found that the photons only acted as particles while they were being observed by someone, otherwise the resulting light reverted back to the interference pattern created by waves. The conclusion: consciousness literally warps reality on a physical level. So basically light particles don’t even exist unless someone is looking at them. By the simple act of observation, we are actually willing matter into existence. I hope that makes sense, but I know for me it’s taken many different rounds of explaining, from various sources, for me to fully comprehend this. So please check out the links in the show notes to get a more in depth scientific explanation with visual aides, which is essential for me to understand anything lol. Must be an artist thing huh? “Light is both a wave and a particle, and neither. Until we make an observation, the photon exists in a state of uncertainty, governed by laws of probability. And when we do observe it, it becomes something completely different.” – Neil DeGrasse Tyson on that show referenced above.

 

Here’s another interesting connection I’ve found between frequency and matter. In high school chemistry, I remember being fascinated when I learned how scientists have determined what distant planets and stars are made of. Do you remember how? Well it turns out that every element on the periodic table has its own unique light signature, a unique frequency pattern. The technical term for this method of identifying the chemical makeup of distant celestial bodies is called spectroscopy. This is just more scientific proof that solidifies the idea that everything is frequency for me.

 

Now let’s dig deeper into what frequency, what a wave, has to do with how we experience our every day lives.

 

Imagine a gently sloping roller coaster, let’s say it’s a kid’s coaster with perfectly balanced hills and valleys oscillating between one another. Let’s say that when we’re at the peak of each little hill we’re experiencing a euphoric kind of joy, and when we’re in the dip of the valley we’re deeply depressed. Now imagine I go up to the roller coaster operator and say, I want to take a ride, but can you make sure I only coast along the top, I would rather not suffer through the pits. Most likely the moody teenager behind the joystick would give me a confused, if not weirded out look, and if she determined I was serious she’d probably snap her gum and be like, “umm no, you gotta ride the whole ride or not ride it at all.”

 

Our reality is dualistic in nature. Light and dark. Up and down. Cold and hot. Joy and pain. One extreme cannot be experienced without the contrast of the other, and one extreme cannot be fully appreciated without the contrast of the other either, for that matter.

 

For some reason there is a stigma against suffering in our society. And I did not escape this belief system. Not at first. When I started meditating, in fact, my intention was to find happiness and block pain. Had I known what I was asking of the universe back then I would have laughed at myself. Because I know now that happiness can only be found inside of me, and the same goes for all of my pain and suffering too. Up is only a direction until we give it meaning, until our cultural programming teaches us that feeling up is good, that having more is better. Those same nurtured ideas kick into gear when we think of what it is to feel down, when we automatically assume that having less is bad.

 

What I’m learning more and more each day is that my suffering is most often just a story I’m telling myself. And though I’m also learning that I am responsible for it all… all the good and all the bad in my life, at the same time I’ve even begun to get comfortable with the suffering that seems like it’s out of my control. Suffering is what has pushed me to create some of my best work, pushed me to be the best version of me I could possibly be… in any given moment that I’m able to actually pull my head out of my ass and realize this.

 

It’s a learning process, and I’m not saying I’m awesome at dealing with pain and suffering, but I’m getting better at letting it be rather than trying to block it.

 

If we could just ride the tracks of our lives like a roller coaster, full speed ahead down the steepest slopes, the momentum would take us right through the dip and rocket us back in an upward trajectory, onto the next mountaintop. But instead, we see that we’re at the top of a scary hill and we put the brakes on, causing so much friction and resistance that by the time we inevitably come to the low point, we’re forced to wallow there until we can find the energy to start crawling back up.

 

If you’re anything like me, maybe you might ask: Well why the highs and lows? You might say, as I did: Why can’t I just coast through life? I don’t have to be deliriously happy, I just don’t want to feel so much pain anymore.

 

And that’s when it hit me, I saw the wave in my mind’s eye, I mentally marked where I wanted to be on the slope of my life, placing an X right smack in the middle, between the highest highs and lowest lows, a neutral zone where I could be… content. I quickly pulled my notebook toward me and drew a wave across the page. I Xed each neutral position across the waveform. Connecting all the dots I drew a flat line. A flat line. All this time, I thought I had simply been asking the universe for a safe space to live, but by creating a permanent comfort zone for myself, what I was really doing, was flat-lining. And come to think of it, any constant state of being is flat-lining, even trying to stay in the comfort zone of “happy” as so many of us are trying to do.

 

One of the only truths I’ve been able to find in my life, that hasn’t somehow evolved into some other truth, is this: nothing ever stays the same. I can confirm this as a photographer who has spent far too much time trying to reshoot the almost perfect photo – the wind blows the flower around, I can’t get back in the same spot, the light changes every second, I look up and see two pigs kissing in the clouds, but by the time I decide to give up on the flower and I raise my camera to focus, it’s become a dragon soaring across the sky.

 

What is right now, is constantly changing, and to not accept all of what is right now, no matter where you are on the wave is what causes the most suffering. When you let go of trying to steer, well that’s when the ride starts to get fun.

 

If we’re too afraid to dive into the next dip, we’ll never discover what’s at the top of the next hill… and the more momentum we have going down, the higher we can rise on the other side. Fall, and fail, fast. It’s not just good business advice. It’s life advice. Learn from your suffering, power through it and move on. The key isn’t to avoid suffering, it’s to take all that inevitable pain and transmute it, turn it into art.

 

When you stand in the light you still cast a shadow. And when you’re deep in the shadows, know that inside you there still burns a light. There’s a whole spectrum of possibilities between the two, and a whole lotta wave left to ride.

 

Now the frequency of any given wave, is another thing I’d like to touch upon, because there seems to be a lot of bias out there about how humans are supposed to vibrate. There are many spiritual teachers who try to teach us the difference between right and wrong, good and bad… and for so long it has felt like I’ve been running along the fence line that divides the moral and immoral, hopping it whenever the landscape looked prettier on the other side. That’s all any of us do really; the best that we can do, in any given moment.

 

I’ve heard the terms high vibe and low vibe thrown around a lot in spiritual circles. And while I’m not opposed to seeking self “betterment” in any way, I’m starting to realize that to label the vibration we’re in, the wave we’re riding, to proverbially stamp it on the forehead with a good or bad is to limit the potential of what it could be. It’s basically like cockblocking the universe by labeling it.

 

It’s early August as I’ve been writing this essay, and we have a bush we’ve let go wild for the past couple of years. Just outside the sliding glass doors into our backyard, I can find at least a dozen pollinators buzzing and fluttering around this magickal bush. Orange and black monarchs are always around, did you know that Monarch butterflies migrate from Canada all the way to Mexico?! Flying along with them are a couple of different black and yellow beauties, some white moths, and one black butterfly with blue undertones I’d never seen before. There are always bumble bees clinging to the gnome-hat-shaped bunches of flowers, and even an occasional humming bird comes along if you can catch them before they dart off again.

 

Fun fact about hummingbirds, their metabolism is so high that they have to consume 50 percent of their body weight every day just to maintain themselves. In North America hummingbirds wings flap at an average rate of 53 beats per second, and one species, the Amethyst Woodstar has a wing flap rate that clocks in at 80 beats per second! Compared to the butterfly’s flutter, which has a wing flap rate I could probably count by sight, the humming bird is flying and literally living in a much faster (or higher) frequency. That doesn’t make the humming bird any better than the butterfly, it might make them seem a bit more ethereal, their wings like a ghost the human eye can barely perceive. But how can we compare them to a metamorphic creature like a butterfly? A caterpillar that disintegrates into a cocoon full of goo, and somehow reforms itself into a being with wings. There is no comparison, only a different kind of beauty.

 

Riding the wave is similar. The only reason we struggle is because of the story we tell ourselves, the labels we put on events in our lives, the boxes we walk around in. Come out of the box with wings, and beat them to your own frequency. You set the pace. It’s your wave.

 

 

[Conclusion:]

 

Thank you all so much for listening.

 

I used what I think is the coolest looking photograph out of the batch I shot as our cover for today, but I actually have four more photos posted on my website, including the ohhhmmm photo, link in the show notes if you want to check them out. I’m sure I have notes somewhere as to which photos were created from what sounds I was making, so I’ll include that info in the captions if I can too.

 

Well that’s a wrap, friends, I’ll let you get back to your wave now. I hope you all are having a fun ride!

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