At the end of 2019, at the very beginning of the COVID pandemic, fire entered my studio and the studio of my friend Alex Aliume in Bushwick and took almost everything. Alex was left with only a few works. Most of mine were destroyed or damaged. We were painting when it started. Within five minutes, the space we had worked in for years was gone.

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Later we learned the cause—rats had chewed through the wiring. In Brooklyn, that was always close, always present. We ran out into the street in our socks. Something exploded inside the building. Alex said, “This is a change of script.” It sounded exact.

For a long time after, I kept returning there in a respirator. The air was thick with smoke, difficult to breathe. I walked through the charred remains, pulled paintings out of the debris, carried them into storage. Some canvases had turned completely black. I still tried to save them, to bring something back.

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The fire did not only destroy a place. It scattered us, pushed us into different apartments, different parts of the city. Our space ceased to exist. Life sometimes uses fire to remove a structure that can no longer hold what comes next.

A few months later, I found myself at Unruly Collective. The movement that began with the fire continued there, but from within. The space was open, fluid. I took a room on the second floor. Other rooms were already occupied by my tribe—artists.

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One night, my friend Sam, my friend Jess, and I took mushrooms. All three of us were creators, and we preferred to paint in that state. The first half hour is always waiting. An Indian raga plays. Then perception begins to shift. Yawning comes in waves, uncontrollable. Eyes water. It feels as though something enters the body and slowly twists inside. Water helps, but only partially. Then the space changes.

The paintings begin to move. The brush loaded with paint no longer feels like it is touching canvas. It feels like contact with something alive. The wooden floor shifts, then the walls, and gradually the entire house becomes part of the experience. A clear sensation appears: you are inside someone’s mind.

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Everything intensifies. The same objects remain, but appear cleaner, as if they were prepared for this moment of perception. Paintings become overwhelming. You can see the artist’s energy inside them. Under RGB light, they shimmer across the spectrum and feel like living forms. We lower the light almost to darkness. In that state, the paint seems to hover above the surface, suspended.

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To this day, I know nothing more absorbing than looking at my new paintings in that state.

In that condition, everything is experienced as one whole, and therefore more deeply felt. When there is no separation, there is no search for flaws.

At some point, I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. There was a man with dilated pupils. But what stood out was something else—an essence: ancient, tired, continuous. It felt like recognition.

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Altered states carry risk. The psyche is exposed. Some do not return unchanged. You need the ability to let go. A rigid identity resists, and that resistance is experienced as death. These experiences are not for everyone. They can reveal something real, but without integration they can destabilize.

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At one time, we believed the world could be changed by giving psychedelics to everyone. That turned out to be false. Not everyone needs it. Not everyone can hold it. Some encounter only fragments—distorted forms, unstable images. Mushrooms are a key. But the structure they open is already there. Without it, the key has nothing to unlock.

I became interested in where I came from. A vision appeared: a small body of water, and at its edge a drop separates. It becomes aware of itself as an independent being. A realization follows: I invented myself. I separated from the whole, yet never left it.

This was not a metaphor. It felt like fact.

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The drop is never lost. It changes form but remains the same. Fear disappears. The ocean experiences individuality through its drops. Memory returns. A human is a drop that forgot it is the ocean.

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From birth, we experience ourselves as separate. A name appears, a body, a story. A boundary is shown—where we end and the world begins. We learn distinctions: self and other, inside and outside. Over time, this becomes invisible and feels natural.

With age, this sense stabilizes. A consistent “I” forms. At times, it loosens. This can happen in nature or in altered states—not for effect, but to remember the absence of separation.

There is no fixed boundary. Air moves through the body. Water circulates. Thoughts arrive. The division becomes less solid.

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An image of the ocean appears—endless movement. Waves, foam, drops that seem independent for a moment. Each moves through its path, yet its essence does not change.

We are such drops—temporary forms of a single flow. We experience ourselves as individuals, but at depth there is no separation. Separation belongs to form. Essence remains ocean.

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Sometimes the drop forgets, and the universe fractures into self and other.

And sometimes the drop remembers. The separation dissolves.

You were never apart from what you are.