A Deep Expansive Dive with Bjarki
We discussed capitalism, warped wellbeing culture, nature's rhythms, going back to smaller communities and lots more...
Welcome along to Music Is The Answer. I’m on one at the moment - staying up late working into the night, cracking through lots of half-finished projects and generally in “Doing Mode”. I’m very aware that this kind of activity is not sustainable, but while I have the drive, I’m taking full advantage. Expect lots more from the newsletter in the coming weeks. I’ve had a backlog for a while, but I’m moving through it and it’s all going to be appearing in the next few editions. I’m really doing my utmost to make sure everyone who has subscribed gets a lot of value from the newsletter. This isn’t just a dumping ground for ideas, it’s a space for me to share my love for music, to give a platform to people who I find interesting and explore ideas that may not work in the publications I normally write for.
This edition features another long-form interview. It’s with Bjarki, an artist who I first came across about 10 years ago when ‘I Wanna Go Bang’ was doing the rounds - although, I’m sure I’d heard of him before that track really blew up. When I received his latest album and delved into the information in the press release, I reached out to his press rep immediately. The concept of the album is inspired by the warped world of “wellness” that has emerged in recent times - “capitalism in yoga pants,” as he calls it. As someone who has had many dalliances in this world, and seen through the superficial facade, I knew we’d have a good chat. And it really was a special one. It’s such a pleasure to be able to talk to a stranger who’s able to open and vulnerable, and talk about real stuff, and to find so much alignment in our views. Read the interview below.
Also, head over to the Extras section for the following:
An interview with Harry Wills and Mikey Sebastian on the success of their tune ‘Sweatbox’
LP Recommendations
Tunes I’ve Been Rinsin’
A bit on the incessant war being waged on commercial electronic music
One More Tune!
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Getting Deep With Bjarki
I was really keen to speak to you because of the album’s concept around wellbeing and the capitalist-driven culture that's emerged from this whole, seemingly positive, approach to life. I find it really interesting, because I've delved into the wellness space, as they call it, a lot myself over the last decades, and I've witnessed this development first-hand. I haven't really seen many artists address what's been going on and I’d love to have a chat with you about it all.
Weird, isn't it? Also, just how strange it is that music has sometimes gone into this completely neutral state of not taking any political sides. It's quite weird to have a society that’s on the brink of collapse sometimes, and yet that isn’t driving musicians or creators to create or use that for their musical output like they did in the old days. There is some kind of a punk movement going on within the DJ scene. I enjoy it. I really like it. Some people are very against this kind of influencer culture and whatever. I think some part of it is alright, to a certain extent for sure. I just don't want to be a negative person. I'd rather be more optimistic about it than just look at the downside of everything. I remember when I was younger, nobody really enjoyed the music that I made, and I was such an outsider in many ways… with my family as well.
I always wished that everyone would just listen to this kind of music. I remember wishing it could be more accessible, like electronic music. It wasn’t until I moved to Holland when I heard the Prodigy on the radio and stuff like that. I was like, “Wow, I come from that kind of place”. It was much more hidden back then. So it's strange to think, today, that it should be more underground. There’s actually this gatekeeping mentality going on. I think more than anything, people who are against the influencer side of things have their own vision of the whole idea, and of themselves in it as well, which doesn’t always enhance what’s happening.
The thing with music is that nobody has any control over who likes it or who doesn't. Like you say, you can end up being a gatekeeper if you're like, “I don't want this to be popular and I want it to be underground.” You can't control it once it's out in the public domain, it’s not up to you anymore..
I think also if you want to become popular, that is just a certain route you can take. Today you can ask AI all kinds of stupid stuff online, like making a plan for how to get rich in a month. Step by step, stuff like that. There's certain music you can make, of course, to try to appeal to certain people. There's a whole industry and labels you can focus on. There's an easy way to find a complete blueprint to manipulate the whole industry for your benefit. You can be whatever you want to be (kind of) because everything, all the information you need, is there. Nothing is unknown. There's no unknown territory. You can be whatever you want, but for what reason? What are you trying to do? Why do you want that? What do you want to achieve with that?
So what are your motivations with making music and putting it out there into the public domain, especially with respect to this particular album?
I kind of talk to myself a lot about it, actually. If I want to release something or not, it's a very Jekyll and Mr Hyde kind of conversation, and very manic as well. Because one day I'm absolutely going to delete everything, and I don't want to be part of anything at all. And then there's a part of me that's like, “No, this belongs to the public domain. You are doing it to connect yourself. People would also love to hear it”. I'm not really doing it to have a career, if that makes sense. I never had that kind of approach. I've always tried to be more in tune with my mind and what I want to do and what I enjoy. Of course, you have to reach the public in a certain way to let them know that you exist, but I absolutely don't believe in any stance of creating this deliberate pop status. I'm very anti-pop star. You cannot make music if you're too busy during your day. You don't have time to do things. If you have a family of five, you don't have much time to daydream about the world and write music about it. Your agenda is just full of other stuff. And I really enjoy thinking about things and writing music about the world. I feel like I am connected with everyone sometimes, and myself, especially when you focus on these kind of angles [the album concept] in the world. With this album I've been very vulnerable, very fragile, seeing the world from many different perspectives.
How do you cultivate a life that allows you to have the space to daydream and not be overly burdened with all of the responsibility of family or work or admin and so on?
With this album, things were more organised, which gave me that kind of space. There was no rush to jump into the studio or record something just to keep up. I was doing other things, and the album just lived in my head for a while. I had time to think. I would write down thoughts and ideas, and that would lead to another thing, and then another. It got wild. I now have endless PDFs and basically a full research project behind this album. It got to a point where it wasn’t just about wellness anymore. It spread into other areas - political theory, philosophy, even speculative social design. At one point I wrote a kind of term paper about how to build a new Iceland from scratch.
I had people around me pushing back. We’d get into arguments where both of us were so convinced we were right, and those were actually the best conversations. It’s energising to disagree like that when it’s mutual and passionate. It always ends with me needing to write everything down to get it out of my head. That’s how the ideas become real - on paper.
In one of those rabbit holes, I ended up outlining a system for creating a better society: decentralised communities of around 200 people, each responsible for housing and work in their area. If you live in a block, you contribute a communal fee that grants you partial ownership and responsibility. Each unit elects a representative to bring their voice to the Senate. It’s idealistic maybe, but it felt good to imagine and to design it, especially in a time where we’re constantly told nothing can be fixed. Sometimes, just writing it down helps you believe it can.
And maybe this all loops back to the sound itself. I’ve been thinking a lot about how sound functions in relation to the visual. It may be that sound art adheres to curator Hellermann’s idea that “hearing is another form of seeing” - that sound only becomes meaningful when its connection to image is understood. That junction between sound and image demands something of the viewer. It forces real engagement, participation in actual, physical space and concrete, responsive thought, not just the illusion of it. That’s what this album became for me: not just music, but a way of forcing myself and maybe others into more active thought, more space for dreaming, arguing, imagining, building…
There's so much to be said for the therapeutic benefit of just getting stuff out of your head and written down. There's no need for it to go any further than that catharsis of putting it on paper. But if stuff's just bouncing around in your head all the time, it can be a lot to carry around. So actually getting it out and putting it on paper can alleviate some of the the pressure and stress of having ideas in your mind,
Exactly. You must be understand this pretty well?
It's really funny because there have been a lot of times in my life where writing has purely been connected to my professional and creative output, and not necessarily for my personal benefit. Talking about wellness, something they talk about in the wellness space a lot is journaling. I’ve only recently been using writing as a channel for personal development and mental health support. I've been journaling a lot and getting stuff out of my head. Sometimes it'll be every night, sometimes it might be twice a week. What's really important for me is having time and space to process. It doesn't even necessarily always have to be that I'm writing stuff down, but the times in life where I struggle the most are when I'm so busy I literally do not have the time to process life and its multitude of experiences. So I need that space.
What's your own connection to wellness and wellbeing, and all of this stuff that gets pushed a lot on social media: Coaches that say they're going to take you from zero to six figures a month, etc... What's been your own personal experience?
I’m so miserable, and I enjoy it very much. I don’t know when that started exactly, but I think it was early on when I realised that feeling good and making music just doesn’t go together for me. I can’t do the morning gym routine and then go make music like some kind of high-functioning wellness bro. It doesn’t work. I’ve always been fascinated by what people think happiness is. For me, it’s just… being okay. I’m a pretty easy going person. I can walk, I eat my fish, I drink water, I’m from Iceland. I’m very lucky. But still, I’ve spent years thinking about all these contradictions around happiness. This bizarre pressure we’re under to pursue health and joy every single day, it’s unnatural. And then they sell it back to us. It's absurd. Capitalism in yoga pants.
It’s hard to truly be happy when others are suffering. That’s just basic human wiring I think. But the system doesn’t want you thinking like that. Capitalism thrives when we’re isolated, anxious and individualistic. When each of us is alone, staring at our screens, panicking about our jobs and bank accounts, that’s when the machine runs best. Because when people are actually together, wild things happen. Something energetic and ancient. They’ve studied this. They know it. So, of course it’s better for business when they make us feel alone and not enough.
I kept asking myself, “What exactly are we searching for when we talk about wellness and happiness? What is actually missing?” It’s not money. I’ve had none and, weirdly enough, I felt lighter back then. I’m not driven by money. I’d rather just eat rice and be left alone. I say no to gigs a lot now, because performing just feels strange and many festivals and clubs are very corrupted. I still have to survive, but I try not to centre everything around this idea that my music needs to make money. It’s just crazy how far we’ve drifted from community life. From any kind of ritual that isn’t tied to productivity or consumption.
So I went backwards. A thousand years back and looked at how Iceland and other pagan countries lived before the church came into power and rewrote everything. It’s surprisingly difficult to find much information, because so much of history was documented by Christian monks who, let’s be honest, had an agenda. But these pagan cultures had rituals. Actual ones. Not #wellness content. They had winter celebrations, solstice gatherings… moments to mark the shift in energy. They needed them. Winters were brutal. No food, no fishing, people got sick and there wasn’t much help. Reading about that makes you weirdly grateful. That’s a kind of hope and happiness, too.
But more than that, those rituals were about togetherness. Releasing depression. Like one in Latvia I learned about: in winter, a group would drag a log along the ground. Everyone would put their hand on it and pour their negative energy into it. The log symbolises the penis. The ground was the woman. So the dragging was a kind of symbolic release - man, woman, friction, purge... Then they’d burn the log. Let it all go. Make room for what’s next or the new..
Every culture had some versions of this. Moments to gather, reset and remember - where we are not alone. Someone is listening. We’re in this together. That was wellness before it got rebranded and sold back to us in beige fonts. That’s what I’m interested in. Not six figures. Not hustle. Just how to stay human, and how to share things for no reason and not lose your mind while trying.
And it was about having a connection to nature, and having reverie for nature and the seasons, and being connected to the natural rhythm of life.
Absolutely. That's funny, in this thing that I wrote about the new Iceland, I wrote that we need a new calendar. The one that is serving us now is this capitalistic calendar.
It's such a load of shit. In fact, I was actually saying to someone just around New Year, I don't really celebrate New Year's Eve. My new year is around Spring Equinox.
Oh, that's so interesting that you're saying that.
Over the last few years, I've tried to detach myself from all of this stuff. For most of us in Northern Europe, especially, or the northern hemisphere, winter is a time where we're supposed to be retreating, taking care of ourselves and being less focused on work, or productivity. But absolutely everyone hits January, and they're like, “What am I going to do to sort my life out, right now? I'm going to have a fresh start, and blah, blah, blah”. But, really, January is not the time for that. The Gregorian calendar is all wrong.
Absolutely. I wrote exactly that. Winter is a resting phase. It’s for slowing down, being with people, letting things breathe. The body knows it. The brain knows it. But what really got me thinking was summertime, because I usually feel worse. The sun makes me depressed. Not always, but sometimes it’s just too much. Too much light, too much pressure, too many expectations. And it’s strange because culturally the summer is meant to be the good part. The celebration. For me it can feel like suffocation and sometimes I feel anxious just because it’s sunny.
It’s crazy how connected we actually are in this. We all feel it in some way, even if we don’t talk about it. There’s this unspoken pressure to enjoy the sun. Especially if you’re from a place like Iceland, where having warm days is rare, sacred even. And then suddenly it’s there all the time, and you’re supposed to perform joy just because the light says so. It becomes this weird performance of wellness. Of productivity. I’m scared of the sun actually, a lot of the time. Not physically just... rhythmically. I can’t really work in it. I can’t access anything deep when it’s like that. Sounds morbid I know.
Of course, in theory I can still be creative in summer. But it’s not the same. There’s something in the way. I have more days where I just can’t tap into any internal and external worlds. Like the light keeps bouncing off everything and nothing gets in. Nothing processes. When the sun doesn’t set for 24 hours it’s almost like you forget how to reflect. You forget how to be still. There’s no contrast and without contrast there’s no meaning.
I understand this. In the summertime I often have quite a bit of background agitation, because I don't want to be stuck inside, sitting at my laptop working.
Exactly, yeah. That’s the feeling - and it can spiral. I start to panic. I don’t want to be inside, but I also don’t want to be outside either. I don’t know what to wear. My wardrobe is entirely winter-optimised. I look terrible in shorts. I feel exposed. I don’t have enough summer clothes and suddenly all my T-shirts feel too small. But it’s fine in winter, because there’s always something layered on top. You don’t have to present yourself in the same way. In summer, there’s no hiding. Just you and your tiny T-shirt trying to pretend you’re thriving in the light.
And then there’s this weird thing with time. I was thinking about New Year’s the other day, and how it never really feels like a beginning of something new for me. My New Year is maybe in the autumn. That’s when my shift starts. That’s when I begin preparing for the winter, when I actually start setting intentions. Autumn is the true threshold. The real reset. Because winter is a project. You have to plan how you’re going to get through it. Not just survive it but live inside of it. Dream inside of it.
I can't remember if this was something I read or watched, but around October time last year I came across a piece of media that described something very similar to that. The Autumn is like a preparation period. It's interesting, isn't it? I think there's definitely something to be said for humans reconnecting with that rhythm. A lot of people, when they actually really start digging into it and going a bit deeper with it, would find a lot of benefit in it. But most of us are just so disconnected from the natural rhythm of the seasons.
Our existence is the mind and the body. We need time to live in both. And I’ve realised that summer pulls me into the body. Vitamin D makes me want to move, I want to do things, go outside and smell flowers. There’s this physical urgency in summer. But winter… winter brings me back to the mind. It makes me slow down, go inward. That’s when I start to process things, not just from my own life, but from everything around me. Man I’m a downer kind of guy. Anyways...
This winter was intense. I lost a friend. There were hard conversations I had to show up for. I had to open up, and also create space for others and listen. And it made me think: just like we have to process the pain of what’s going on in the world, we also need the space to reflect on it, to sit with it fully. Sometimes it’s not about fixing everything at once. Sometimes it’s enough to just enter that headspace honestly. To feel what needs to be felt and not look away.
There’s so much coming at us all the time, so much pain we’re expected to digest instantly. But we can’t. Not if we want to do anything meaningful with it. We need time to let it settle.
The world itself has become a pretty overwhelming place just because of the amount of things that are happening and that we're exposed to. A lot of people don't necessarily give themselves enough time to process their individual experience, as well as the collective experience that we're all having, and that can cause a lot of overwhelm, difficulty and stress. And reactivity and unnecessary conflict. I don't think it's just you or I that needs space to process. I think most people need space to process because it's a natural part of how the brain works. But so many people are on this treadmill of work, and then going out, or being with their partner, or family, as well as being on their phones multiple times throughout the day… Where's the time to sit in silence and just allow stuff to just process?
The rare moment you get to sit on the sofa alone, your phone buzzes and says remember to breathe. Okay, thanks but I was trying to forget I exist for one second.
Silence now feels like something exotic. You can’t buy it. You have to fight for it. Lock yourself in a toilet cubicle and pretend you’re pooping just to sit still for two minutes. That’s where we’re at.
The world keeps demanding more: more output, more noise, more versions of you. But it’s quietly stealing space. And I think what we need, maybe more than another productivity hack or smoothie recipe is just… less. Less stimulation. Less talking. Less self-improvement. More nothing. More sitting and staring at the wall and thinking about how weird your elbows are.
I think a lot of people aren't even really capable of sitting in silence. I meditate, not as often as I would like to, but I've been to several silent meditation retreats that last 10 days (Vipassana). When I first started trying to meditate, I couldn't even sit for five minutes without getting itchy and needing to open my eyes. Now I can sit for an hour. I don't do it all the time, but I can sit for an hour quite comfortably. It took a lot to find the inner strength to be able to sit for an hour because, as we both acknowledged, there's such an abundance of over stimulation, and being able to just settle your mind is a very difficult thing to do.
I absolutely recommend everyone to meditate. Once you know how to do it, it’s like hacking the system by simply not participating in it for a bit. That’s what wellness is. turning off your phone and lying on the floor and meditating like a Victorian ghost. Just draped in silence. Dissociating with purpose. People always act like it's this huge mystical task, it’s not that complicated. The hardest part is to make time for it.. Sure, you can also go to the gym. You can change your appearance and have fillers. You can buy things that make you look good. You can even get a hair transplant. But those are all things that keep you distracted enough from the actual horror - the truth. Which is… no matter what you do, you’re still stuck in a system like the other six billion people on the planet. No serum or cold plunge is going to fix that. It's a weird thing to carry around all the time. Like a backpack made of invisible concrete.
So for me, it’s become important to take the power back in small ways. To create your own body calendar. Think about the rituals I want to honour in summer and winter. What kind of energy I want to shift, what kind of celebrations I want to invent. Because even though we’re all technically living in the same reality-show-meets-tax-office version of society, there’s still a way to make our own personal myths inside of it.
We’re still in the box. We all are. The system is massive. Invisible. Half the time it’s like trying to fight fog with a butter knife and that can be really painful to realise. Heartbreakingly painful. But creating your own calendar, your own rhythm, that’s a quiet rebellion. A way of saying, I’m still here. I’m still listening but I get to decide how I move through this thing.
It's also really interesting, how so many of these individuals that populate social media, those in the wellness space, have internalised this capitalist way of being. The world, as I see it now, is dominated by corporations, but then there are individuals who operate like a corporation. It's so bizarre. I hate to sound like an old man, but I don't remember it being like this 10 to 15 years ago, where everyone is a salesperson. So many people are on social media to sell something: their DJ career, their art, their music, their wellness modality…
That’s also something I’ve tried to distance myself from a little bit. For example, with this album, I don’t want to sell it in that way. It’s really difficult. It’s this Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation again, because on one hand, it’s not for everyone… and on the other hand.. of course it is for everyone and I need to sell it, at least a bit. It costs 12k euros to make an album and you rarely get that back. But I also want to release and make music the way I used to do it for myself - for fun.
Sometimes it’s more than fun, of course, but I want the freedom to decide what I want to do with it afterwards. A lot of my friends are the same. They send me music and say, “I’m making this, but I’m not really thinking about releasing it.” And I’m like, “Yes. That’s exactly how it should be. That’s the last thing you should be thinking about. Absolutely the last.”
I have to admit, though, this album really forced me to sit with a lot of uncomfortable truths. About myself and about the world. It made me confront all these contradictions and distractions in a way I never had before. I guess they were always there… but at some point, the time comes when everything starts to connect. You begin to see things more clearly. You see the root of it. And it’s very humbling.
What uncomfortable truths about yourself did you have to confront? Is there anything in particular that stood out?
I enjoy company. I really do. But growing up, I never had a lot of friends. I usually just had girlfriends. I think I was always trying to make friends, trying to fit in. I was a bit of a people pleaser. And over time, I started realising that I was actually surrounded by all kinds of people that always wanted something from me. It didn’t happen overnight, and it wasn’t just because of the album .. okay, it was … it’s taken time. It made me realise how important it is to let people go.
Lately I’ve been asking myself more: “Who do I really want to be around? Who do I want to support? The people I love… am I showing up for them? Am I showing enough love to the ones who’ve always been there for me?” I had a lot of those thoughts while I was touring around the world alone in a boring hotel room. I missed birthdays. I missed family moments. I missed being there for people. And going through my own stuff, my own problems and a lot of external noise. Looking back, it would’ve been amazing to have someone guiding me through that, just a little. Just one friend understanding and saying, “You don’t have to do it all alone.”
So now I think a lot about boundaries. Not just with other people but with myself. Building your own walls when you need to. Giving yourself space. It’s not always as easy as just learning to say “No”. That’s the line people love to tell you… “Just say no!” But it’s more complex than that. Sometimes it’s about learning to listen. Learning when you need to be softer or firmer. It’s a constant balancing act but it feels good to be in that process now.
It's almost like managing or parenting yourself, because you know there are going to be times where you need to be flexible, and there are going to be times where you need to be quite rigid about the things that you've established boundary-wise. It’s about having self awareness and the ability to navigate all of life's challenges and experiences with that in mind, sometimes flexible, sometimes not flexible. It's imperative because you can't just go through life going, “No, no, no, no, no. My boundary is completely rigid”. But you also can't be too flexible, because then you end up being a people pleaser…
It’s about creating a safe space. That’s really the core of it. There are people out there who genuinely like to see others in pain. There’s a lot of envy and jealousy in the world and it doesn’t always show itself directly. It hides. Disguises itself as something else. And that contrast between sanctuary and unease mirrors the way we experience the world. The goal at least for me is to create something that resonates on a slightly deeper level. Even if it’s unsettling. Especially then. Because that’s where truth lives.
You reap what you sow. That’s something I really believe. We have to harvest what we put out there. I try to give people compliments. Things like “You’re a beautiful soul” or “You’re there for people” or “You actually listen to your friends”. Simple things, but real. Because most people don’t realise how much they have to give. They don’t see their own beauty. They forget. We need space to be reminded. To open up. To allow new friendships in. Because new friends see the new in you. You can get stuck in groups that only see the old you. The version you grew out of but they never noticed. It’s powerful to be seen anew.
And then of course there’s the world we live in right now. Endless information. Constant noise. Everyone has an opinion and it’s not that opinions are useless, it’s just that they don’t mean that much, not on their own. What matters is the underlying connection. The universal thread that binds us. We’re all in this together. And it’s strange isn’t it. To try and figure out how to feel good when others are suffering. But that’s the system. That’s the contradiction we’re living with.
Sometimes I look at my life and realise that just because I live here someone else had to pay for it. Maybe their city was destroyed. Maybe their river is poisoned. So I can drive to a friend’s house. So I can have this phone. This cup of coffee. It’s all connected to something violent. Something someone else had to go through. And that’s not a reason to collapse. It’s a reason to become more aware. It’s like learning about genocide. It’s painful, yes. But it gives you humility. It grounds you. It helps you appreciate where you are and why you’re here.
This isn’t about being pessimistic. It’s the opposite. It’s optimism. Just through a clearer lens. It’s seeing how clogged we’ve all become. With noise. With distractions. With everyone’s hot takes on the state of the world. It’s all built up into this mental cluster we carry around. And meditation at least for me is one of the only ways to actually see that cluster. To feel it. Not to fix it immediately. But just to sit with it and notice it. That’s where healing starts. With space. With stillness. With listening.
You meditate yourself, as well?
Music is of course my meditation. I have this kind of hyper focus. No matter what I do I can completely go into it. I also have to be very careful with that. Maybe it’s my ADHD or something but I need to be aware of how engrossed I’m getting with something. I do get a kick out of sitting still with closed eyes and trying to think about nothing.
I really wanted to explore this notion of this particular album being what you described as like “a big warm hug for everybody”. I really like that idea because, especially on some of the themes and topics that we've touched on during this interview, it's such a lovely concept for me. It’s something that I try to embody myself: giving out love, being a positive presence, and, in my own tiny little way, trying to have a positive impact on the people around me, and the world itself. I wanted to ask if you could explain a little bit more about what you meant when you said this album is a big warm hug for everybody.
Well, I feel like, through all this alone time that I had with myself, I could feel this energy of all the pain of everyone on the planet almost. had a kind of clarity with this introspection and the therapeutic days and months that I was having. It’s just like what we’ve been talking about. Looking at all these forces around us. The uncomfortable truths. There’s this contrast between the mirrors of yourself and the world. And the goal was to create something that makes you more balanced with the world.
A big warm hug can do that, for sure. I also loved that the press release mentioned that a lot of this wellness stuff is predicated on the idea that everyone's broken and they need to be fixed. Or that people seeking out this kind of “healing” are convinced they’re broken. Ironically, it’s such an unhealthy way to think, and it's how I actually used to think about myself a few years ago. I was trying to find ways to “fix” myself and make myself perfect. A more progressive way to think, and actually a very rebellious way to think, is to realise that if you just accept the fact that you're human being, and we all are imperfect, that's what makes us perfect. That, for me, is such a powerful way to rebel against this system, because this system really benefits from people thinking of themselves in a negative way and yearning to fix their perceived imperfections. Whether it's “I'm not pretty enough”, “I'm not thin enough”, “I'm not rich enough”, “I'm not good enough”, “I'm broken”, “There’s something inherently wrong with me”... You can empower yourself if you accept that, “This is how I am and I can make improvements here or there”. I guess one of the reasons why we're here in the world is to try to learn and improve as we go along, but not to be so caught up in this negative sense of self.
Yeah, I mean we have to be able to poke fun at all these things as well. It’s a philosophy. It’s a rebellion. It’s about looking at the contradictions. It’s about finding those spaces within our own mental clock. Like, how much time do we actually have? We don’t have a lot of time on this earth and it’s crazy to even think we’re going to live forever. I find it so beautiful to map out who you want to be with how you want to set up your life and just work around that. I strongly believe that’s going to be the future. Especially with the way the world is going now. Hopefully things will be a lot more communal.
And while we’re living in this chaos, and struggling with our own personal hells and the darkness of our inner self, it’s about understanding that it’s also part of us. It’s about accepting that. I’m not interested in perfection, I’m a lot more fond of imperfection. When I was younger I was drawn to people who were completely imperfect. My friends never understood why I was hanging out with this person or that person who maybe didn’t fit their agenda. I’d say, “I see something more in them than you do.”
This is something that should not be sanitised. Pretending all these flaws and traumas can be healed with a juice cleanse or a trip to Bali… Explore the darkness. It’s the truth. Because Hell in its own way offers more truth than any polished illusion of Heaven.
A Guide To Hellthier Lifestyle is out now - listen to it below. Buy it here.
Really great read, thanks Marcus. Corporatisation of wellness is truly wild...