Why The Relaunch With A New Concept?

I want your IP After Hours installments to be told as the story of a new community building endeavor.

We start the new season of the podcast with my producer coach and creative mentor, Kris Bradley, whose courses and conversations have pushed me to dig deeper in every aspect.

As it relates to Imagine Paradise Podcast, her insistence on heart centered creative action brought my unresolved issues to the surface.

Feeling A Void.

There are boys and girls all over the world who are born musical, but with what seems to be a yearning to use art to make a difference. You might reduce this to the simple influence of the churches many of them grew up in. But regardless of their environment, these are kids who most naturally fuse their spiritual convictions with musical expression and they hear a call to do so. Many of them find a natural outlet in the churches, and that’s their story. But many kids suffer significant religious wounds. And in turn, their spiritual seeking leads them elsewhere. For these kids, if they can’t numb themselves to this calling and move on, a creative void is felt.

Where do they go?

Society sees these types of kids and says, “Oh, they just want to be a gospel, Christian, or religious artist!” This reduces the kid’s experience down to a music genre preference when in reality, it’s less about that and more about their relationship with creativity – their wiring – how art is more of a divine download in their experience. But in a spiritually deficient society, you have two options. “Go over there and do religious music or come over here and do secular music. And if you’re over here…please don’t make the room awkward by singing about spirituality.”

Social media has done one thing very well. It helps you find your people. Those creatives whose music is an extension of their spiritual life can simply search the hashtag #consciousmusic or #highvibemusic, and see hundreds of accounts of like-minded creatives killing it online and growing their fan base. That was not the case even 3 years ago.

Today, there is a movement of young, vibrant, intelligent artists who are part of what is called the high vibe music scene. I experienced the same kind of excitement as I felt when I first discovered the OUTMusic scene in 2004. I immediately started building a community of like-minded artists.

I think that is what is going on here.  I want to curate, celebrate and elevate each one of them. To help strengthen a little music movement that is happening.

Every episode you’ll meet a new artist.  And every episode will be one more step in nurturing a corner of entertainment culture where artists are encouraged to create art that awakens the consciousness of this planet.

And my eyes opened when Kris called me out!

My unresolved issues were that I have grown to really dislike other people in my business as all I see is competitiveness, jealousy, pettiness, manipulation, lying, opportunism, and the list goes on. But my judgements and dualism (me verses them mentality) were proof of my NOT having done the spiritual work around this. We always find what we’re looking for. So metaphysically, it was my fault. So why not start looking for a different breed of artists to engage with and grow alongside of.

My conversations with Kris put me in the metaphysical drivers seat. She told me to find a solution instead of bitching about it.

And here we are. I hope this podcast can truly contribute to building a corner of the industry, like we did with OUTMusic, where artists who wanna say something different have a place to do so.

Enjoy getting to know Kris Bradley. And moreover, enjoy the new journey that Imagine Paradise Podcast will be.