Ella Richie has interviewed some of the biggest figures in music, film, television, and radio, including Jeff Goldblum, Brian Wilson, Emma Stone, Ira Glass, the 1975, The Flaming Lips, Sigur Rós, Conan O'Brien, Neko Case, Anderson Cooper, Sharon Jones, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and many others. Ella Richie also occasionally writes outdoor columns about hiking. 

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Selected Interviews & Features

** Transgender Life in Santa Barbara - December 15, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent - CNPA 1st Place Award Winner for Non-Profile Feature **  

Interview: Brian Wilson and Al Jardine - Sep 10, 2019, Richie DeMaria

Interview with Oshun’s Niambi and Thandiwe - May 09, 2019, Santa Barbara Independent

Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes Talks Soundscapes and Beauty of Flaws - April 17, 2019, Santa Barbara Independent

Pale Waves Splash Down at S.B. Bowl - April 6, 2019, Santa Barbara Independent

Positively Russ Spencer - April 11, 2019, Santa Barbara Independent

Spring Into April with Weyes Blood - March 29, 2019, Santa Barbara Independent

PJ Morton on Soul Music - November 27, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent

Jazzing It Up with Jeff Goldblum - October 30, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent 

Puddles Pity Party Plays Santa Barbara - October 17, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent 

Sophie Rose Headlines Girls Rock Benefit - September 25, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent 

Laurence Juber’s Guitarist Gold - September 19, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent 

Pacific Pride Celebrates LGBTQ Music at Pride Fest - August 23, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent 

Interview: Ada Vox - August 22, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent

Karl Denson Expands His Funk-Soul Universe - August 21, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent

OWL Entertainment: S.B. Hip-Hop Takes Flight - July 24, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent

Talkin' Toad the Wet Sprocket with Dean Dinning - July 16 2018, Santa Barbara Independent 

Interview: The Wiggles Founder, Anthony Field - May 30, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent

Peter Harper's Cycles of Song and Soul - April 17, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent

Chef's Corner: Sandra Adu Zelli and Brian Dodero - April 11, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent

A Perfect Circle Returns - April 10, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent

Dante Elephante Looks Ahead - March 1, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent

Spoon Drummer Jim Eno Talks New Album - January 17, 2018, Santa Barbara Independent

Blind Boys of Alabama at Campbell Hall - December 13, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Derek Trucks Trucks On - November 1, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Odesza/Sofi Tukker - October 18, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Andrew Bird: Andrew Bird's Sound World - October 10, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent 

Ira Glass Interview - Through Ira's Looking Glass - October 5, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent 

Wayne Coyne, The Flaming Lips Interview - September 29, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Yoga Teaching in Santa Barbara - August 24, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Bryan Ferry Interview - August 14, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Ishi-Dōrō Light the Path at Lotusland - June 8, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Goya Through Jeanne Smith Morgan’s Eyes - June 6, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Surf Meets Turf at Star Lane-Dierberg - May 18, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Dear Baby Boomers Who Deny Climate Change - April 29, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

David Sedaris on Finding and Keeping Stories - April 25, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Coachella Interview: Sofi Tukker - April 18, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Words on One Last Waking Dream, Lucidity 2017 - April 14, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Sigur Rós Comes to Town - April 6, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Make a Great Escape with The Moth - The Moth, March 30, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Arnoldi’s Chef Is Cracking Pi - March 9, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Alton Brown Gets Cooking at Arlington Theatre - March 9, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Billy Crystal Comes to Santa Barbara - February 16, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

One Last Tour for David Cassidy - February 16, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Kamasi Washington’s Epic Jazz Hits UCSB - February 8, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

A Chat with Emma Stone - February 2, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Looking on the Bright Side with Luis Muñoz - January 5, 2017, Santa Barbara Independent

Nobody Does it Like Nicky D - November 15, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

Consciously Creative: Hauschka, The Kin, and Fred Johnson at the Lobero - November 3, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

Joan Baez: A Singer for All Times - October 27, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

Jethro Tull: A Rock Opera with a Consciousness - October 13, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

Wise Words from Weyes Blood - October 5, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

Matisyahu Breaks the Mold at One Love Experience - September 29, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

Sheila E.’s Beat Goes On at Chumash Casino Resort - September 8, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

'Weird Al': Still Weird After All These Years - July 28, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

Suga Free Talks the Sweet Life - July 28, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

Interview with a Goo Goo Doll - July 14, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

A Talk with CCR’s Doug Clifford - July 11, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

The English Beat’s Dave Wakeling Discusses the Rhythms of Life - June 2, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

A Farewell to Prince - April 28, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

A Deep Conversation with Glen Phillips - April 25, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

The 1975 Play the S.B. Bowl - Matt Healy interview, April 14, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

Conan O’Brien Chats with Arlington Theatre - April 7, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen @ Arlington Theatre - March 10, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

David Crosby Plays Solo at the Granada Theatre - March 17, 2016, Santa Barbara Independent

Anything Goes with Gerry Gibbs - December 24, 2015, Santa Barbara Independent

This Is She: Melissa Etheridge to Play Campbell Hall - November 12, 2015, Santa Barbara Independent

Gregory Blackstock Visits Devereux Center - October 29, 2015, Santa Barbara Independent

Old Is New Again with Dave Rawlings Machine - October 15, 2015, Santa Barbara Independent

Scientist and Dylan Judah Say Hello, World, to UCSB - October 6, 2015, Santa Barbara Independent

Transgender Life in Santa Barbara

Transgender Prom Queen and Religious Leaders Are Changing Santa Barbara’s Attitudes to Gender Identity

by Ella Richie DeMaria, Thu Dec 15, 2016

Crowned the Queen of the Prom on the night of May 21, 2016, Blue Nebeker stepped into the spotlight and into Santa Barbara history. The first transgender prom queen at Santa Barbara High School (SBHS), Nebeker’s coronation signaled a momentous cross-generational shift taking place. To many it looked as though the traditional rules and roles of gender and sexuality were being dethroned.

Hardly anyone at school seemed surprised by Nebeker’s victory. To most SBHS students, theirs was not only a vote for a popularity contest but also a vote for change. Nebeker was selected as queen, her classmates told reporters, because they knew her as brave and bold, disarmingly charismatic, and downright hilarious, a leader among her peers. Nebeker herself didn’t seem terribly surprised with her election. “Once I got nominated, I was like, we know who’s actually going to win this,” she said.

The prom brought Nebeker a moment of joy on a sometimes difficult journey. Growing up Mormon, she admitted that she experienced a lot of anxiety during her struggle to understand her true self, especially when some family members expressed disbelief and disapproval. In the 9th grade, Nebeker began to realize she perhaps wasn’t a gay boy, as she had first thought, but someone else. Nowadays, the dazzlingly confident and self-aware Nebeker can usually be seen in ’40s and ’50s pinup-girl-inspired ensembles. “I’m taking something and flipping it,” the aspiring cosmetologist said of her look, a way of redefining what it means to be feminine. A youth advocate leader for Pacific Pride Foundation (PPF), Nebeker walks her queer classmates and allies to PPF youth groups after school, assuring them it is not only okay but great to be who they are. Patrick Lyra Kearns, the outreach advocate at PPF, saw “her courage and her visibility” as giving younger kids a feeling of safety. This feeling of safety is increasingly important, transgender advocates have said, because of remarks from some within the new presidential administration, such as the recently appointed Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who called transgender identity “the height of absurdity.”

Nebeker’s coronation, however, came at a time when the lives of transgender individuals in Santa Barbara and across the nation were not being treated as an absurdity at all, but as part of nature and a fact of life. Thanks to the work of the Santa Barbara Transgender Advocacy Network (SBTAN) and PPF, S.B. county schools, churches, hospitals, and workplaces have made huge strides toward understanding and acceptance. In early December, the Fund for Santa Barbara awarded SBTAN a grant to run the S.B. Transgender Center, a by-trans, for-trans gathering place hosted by the First Congregational Church. As the whole country braces for a sharp shift to the ultraconservative right, Santa Barbara has a chance to become a crucial model for how a community can embrace and protect transgender lives.

What Is Transgender?

That there is more to human life than being strictly male or female is not even a new idea for Santa Barbara societies. The Chumash traditionally recognized a third gender, called ’aqi, biological men who wore women’s clothes and performed women’s roles. Throughout all of human history, in fact, societies have had varying ideas of what makes a person a man or a woman or both or neither ​— ​whether chromosomal pairings or bodily traits or societal roles. Today a person is transgender (or gender variant or gender nonconforming) if their inner lives and sense of self do not correspond with their biological sex. The term “trans,” which comes from the Latin meaning “across” or “over,” applies when the gender glove doesn’t fit a person.

Transgender people often describe similar emotions that they experienced before transitioning: You can feel dislocation, disconnection, and dispiritedness in yourself and the world around you or just a vague agitation, like your skin is too tight, the clothes you are meant to wear make you ill, or the word that people use to refer to you makes you feel invisible. There’s a longing for an unlived life you carry inside you or for a person as yet unseen. Gender dysphoria is the name for that experience. It is very deep, very physical, very emotional, and very real.

As someone who doesn’t identify exclusively with either gender myself, the gender journey has meant unfurling new horizons, expanding my heart and mind, finding a lightness that had long eluded me. Many little puzzles of my inner life now feel solvable, and I make a little more sense with my soul. In my so-called height of absurdity, I have felt closer to people and more human as I’ve come to understand that I’m not just masculine but feminine in my ways, too ​— ​on a deep level. So as Nebeker and I and so many others have discovered, to be transgender or gender nonconforming can be a freeing, liberating, wonderful experience.

When I spoke with Deja Nicole Cabrera ​— ​PPF community outreach associate, one of Santa Barbara’s most celebrated performance artists, and a woman who was assigned male at birth ​— ​she agreed that transitioning is a life-affirming experience. Cabrera said she always knew she was attracted to men, but she didn’t identify as a gay man. “I tried to pray the gay away.” When she became a performance artist working in Las Vegas, trying on femininity allowed her to realize her true self; as a religious woman, transitioning also allowed her to feel in sync with her spiritual role on Earth. “I felt normal. I felt like I was no longer living in sin.”

For many, crossing the gender divide means going by a new pronoun: no longer “he,” but “she,” or even “they,” if neither feels fitting. If you once knew a person as a “she” and they are now identifying as a “he” or going by a new name, the most respectful thing you could do is honor their request. Though it can be a difficult process to readjust, using the wrong word can be devastating. “It invalidates everything you’re trying to do,” Nebeker said.

It’s an adjustment for all involved, with some serious mental rewiring required. Even the most supportive and well-meaning of parents, such as Blue’s mother and father, Jo and Eric Nebeker, admitted there were moments of guilt and unintended hurt as they adjusted to the correct pronouns and emotional acknowledgements. To other parents, Blue’s mother advises, “Support and forgive yourself. Talk to your kids and apologize to your kids. As long as your kids know you’re trying, there’s a lot more leeway.”

Finding the right word and identity for oneself isn’t an easy or clear process. “I didn’t have the vocabulary,” Blue said of her early years. As a kid, she felt a pang of recognition in Disney princesses and pinup girls, a beauty she wanted to emulate. “She always liked girl things from when she was a baby,” Eric remembered. Both parents recalled Blue testing the waters of gender expression and self-identity until she fully presented as a woman in dress and manner. “Her whole personality changed; she was much happier, socially much less timid. She had been very shy before ​— ​something which seems unbelievable to people now,” Jo said.

Genevieve Le Duc, owner of Segway of S.B. and an athlete who has swum in a relay race across the S.B. Channel, recalled the profound sense of loneliness she felt growing up in the ’60s. Assigned male at birth, she was raised in an Irish-Catholic household with five brothers. “I knew pretty quickly my behavior and desires were different and not super acceptable,” she said. “I always felt that I was trying to be a person I was having to manufacture, not me.” Back then, only the language of adult stores, with their crates of “transvestitism” and “female impersonation,” offered some slight semblance of self-definition. “Growing up, there was no middle. If you were trans, you were perverted.”

Le Duc, who is now married to the Olympic cyclist Avalon Jenkins-Balker, described their wedding day this April as Santa Barbara’s first-known transgender marriage. It was, for both athletes, an incredibly joyous occasion, the kind of joy earned only after decades of turmoil. Le Duc demonstrates what kind of happy rewards can await a life with enough endurance and strength, and while not all of us can set world records swimming from Santa Cruz Island to East Beach, there is something very universal in her life’s interpersonal hurdles. “We’re all trying to achieve the same end, which is to be yourself,” she said. When Le Duc came out as a woman in her first marriage years ago, it was a torturous and shaming experience. “It takes a lot of balls to come out as a woman,” said Le Duc. But perhaps it will not be as devastating for today’s younger, more gender-versed generation. People such as Blue Nebeker and Sabrina Dabby, a bisexual and gender-fluid individual who was elected SBHS’s King of the Prom this year, are helping to normalize identities. PPF’s Kearns believes that “they are helping map what it means to be human.”

A Sense of Self, a Sense of Family

Gender definition begins in very early childhood. SBTAN Executive Director Rachel Gloger and her husband, Barnaby Gloger, are parents of a transgender child and cofounders of TransYouth Santa Barbara. They recognized the critical need for family support to help a child navigate the gender journey. Rachel Gloger described TransYouth as helping “trans-supporting families build community, celebrate our really magical kids together, and find a place where our kids feel valued.” It certainly seems to be providing a service. When the group began nearly two years ago, Santa Barbara had no resource for families with transgender children. They started with three families. Today there are more than 40. Having parental support makes a profound difference. In the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, released December 8 of this year, 40 percent of respondents reported attempting suicide in their lifetime ​— ​nearly nine times the attempted suicide rate in the U.S. population (4.6 percent) ​— ​and for youth, the numbers are also dramatic. More than half of unsupported trans teens attempt suicide; 37 percent of trans teens with supportive families do.

“A lot of the families that come to our group are just terrified. There’s so much media narrative, with a realistic lens, about violence toward trans people ​— ​a lot of families know that narrative, and they’re scared,” Rachel Gloger said. Parents can want the best for their child and fear that helping them transition may endanger them. “They’re holding the fear: What is safer for my kid? Not allowing them to transition and then having all these terrible mental outcomes, or if I have a trans kid, will my church still accept me? My family, my job?” And sometimes parents and family experience grief for the person that no longer appears to be, according to Bren Fraser, PPF’s clinical supervisor. “Their grief is organized around their own specific hopes, dreams, and images that they had for and about their child.”

A Need for Greater Care

Health care remains perhaps the biggest institutional barrier for transgender individuals in Santa Barbara. To address this need, UCSB hosted the first-ever medical conference in early October on providing sensitive clinical care to transgender children, adolescents, and young adults. Doctors are becoming fluent in the medical needs of people who, not long ago, were completely ignored. Three primary care providers in Santa Barbara now offer transgender-sensitive services, and Cottage Hospital emergency personnel and the S.B. Police Department staff alike have been trained to ask an individual’s preferred pronoun.

However, crucial services are lacking, not just in Santa Barbara but throughout the state, particularly hormone replacement therapy and surgery. One of the closest medical facilities offering such treatment is the Santa Paula West Medical Clinic in Ventura County. In order to undergo a sex change surgery ​— ​an operation not every transgender person needs or desires, and one even fewer can afford ​— ​a patient must have as many as three letters of approval: one from a hormone replacement therapist and two from mental-health officials.

“Historically, trans patients have had to prove to the medical system that they are trans in order to get care,” said Dr. Jake Donaldson, a physician at the Santa Paula clinic. This “gatekeeper model” means the doctor, not the patient, knows the patient’s core identity and can pose “all these hoops and protocols to get the care the patient needs.” Donaldson sees the system evolving to an informed-consent model, in which the patient is informed about the risks and benefits of surgery but is assumed to understand their own identity. Because such procedures still require adult consent in order to get a doctor’s approval, young people who know they are trans must often wait years to become themselves. Aydin Olson-Kennedy, director of the L.A. Gender Center (where many S.B. families have visited), is a huge advocate for early transitioning methods, even if a child cannot consent to surgery until 18.

For the most vulnerable members of the transgender population ​— ​those who are homeless or in the sex trade ​— ​their chances of getting proper medical support are almost nonexistent. They are most likely participating in “survival sex” because they were thrown out of their homes or otherwise emotionally and financially abused due to their identity. In the 2015 study Meaningful Work: Transgender Experiences in the Sex Trade, trans sex workers reported far higher rates of HIV (including 40.6 percent of black respondents) and far higher rates of homelessness (39.5 percent were denied access to a shelter). Those in S.B. who are undocumented, dispossessed, or unwelcome at home are hit the hardest, and for many, a safe space and a secure life simply do not exist.

A New Normal

But school by school, business by business, a new normal is setting in. Spearheaded by PPF and SBTAN, institutions countywide are changing. Gender-neutral bathrooms have popped up at UCSB and Dos Pueblos High School (DPHS). After some initial curiosity and confusion, DP’s bathrooms are a nonissue. “The novelty was short-lived and benign,” said DPHS Principal Shawn Carey. “And meanwhile, what it means to our gender nonconforming students is … it’s on a whole other scale. You take this little inconvenience of doing something a little different and compare that to the benefit we are conferring practically, psychologically, and sociologically, and there’s just no argument. … There’s no reason to not have this be the practice at all of our schools.”

While so many have been shunned for their identity on account of their family’s religious beliefs, Santa Barbara has a number of churches that offer sanctuary to all. At Isla Vista’s United Methodist Church, Rev. Franklyn Schaefer, who became an international icon when he was defrocked for officiating at the wedding of his gay son, said, “In my book, [transgenderism] has never been a problem. We have always emphasized the soul over the body. … Why as a church should we not stand behind it?” he asked. “You finally get to be the person outwardly that you feel inside. That transition is a beautiful, wonderful, joyous thing.” Reverend Julia Hamilton, at the Unitarian Society of S.B., echoed these sentiments. “To be a human being is to have worth. There is no gender attached to divinity in our belief … There are only incarnated differences between heads and hearts,” she said.

And then there are the role models, the transgender community leaders themselves. There are role models such as PPF’s Patrick Lyra Kearns, striving to elucidate the multifold, nuanced nature of humanity. “The world is a little more in the gray, on a lot of levels,” Kearns said. “People are really kind of getting more fluid and more plastic in the way they think about everything. It’s okay for people to be in between.” There are role models such as SBTAN’s Phillippa Bisou Della Vina, who, in her KCSB radio program, showcases the artistry of the liminal space and the subconscious mind, through the creativity and courage that is uniquely trans. There are role models like Deja Nicole Cabrera, who shows her Latina sisters in the trans community that they can be empowered, like her, as she holds down a full-time job by day and delights at drag brunches on weekends. “Stay confident in who you are and who you want to be. The right time will come around, and things will flourish,” Cabrera said. There are role-model business owners like Genevieve Le Duc, who show that in the long race of life, they can still find their happiness and live in harmony with themselves. “I hope people realize we are just people,” Le Duc said. “We’re just like anybody else. We’re people that love our children and want the best for our friends and community. We all have to help each other; we need to be together, regardless of who we are.”

And there are role models like Blue Nebeker, the inspiring teen queen helping lead the way all over town. “Apparently, people like me like a lot,” she said.

Words on One Last Waking Dream, Lucidity 2017

Encounters Good and Bad in the Land of Eudaimonia.

by Ella Richie DeMaria, Fri Apr 14, 2017

Lucidity, the living dream that first bloomed along the Santa Ynez river banks in 2012, came to an end this past weekend — an end, at least, for now. Word on the breeze suggests the festival in some form or other may float northward for an ecological commune experience; or, it may reincarnate in some form here in our very mountains, as some mysterious publicity suggested.

I had always been curious to see what the creative carnival just over the mountains was like, and now seemed like the perfect and only time. I’ll admit a part of me was a little hesitant. I wondered if it would be like a higher-minded Deltopia, a frat party in monk’s clothing. But the more I asked about it with Lucidity frequenters, the more it sounded like a place where hearts and minds truly were more open for the better. Those who went spoke of it with the same reverence as Burners to Burning Man as a place where people are freer, where true selves are shown and true colors flown in a city-like environment built without the oppression of mundane reality.

What’s more, they said, it was family friendly, the kind of environment gentle enough to welcome even the littlest lucid dreamers amongst us. It simply was not just about partying like other festivals, but about having a great bonding experience with your fellow human beings. It was about having the kind of meaningful connections that daily life tends to withhold from us. The founders have shared their hopes to make it more than a festival, but a place for self-exploration and self-expansion, a gathering place for us to achieve our idealized path as an individuals and communities.

Upon arrival, it was clear people were very happy to be there. Lucidity has some of the friendliest, happiest, and most welcoming staff of any festival I have been to. My companion and I crossed the river with traffic directors all beaming mellow smiles. It was a lovely day, with a light wind wafting through the oaks. We danced to deep house from Darcsounds at the Nomads’ Nook Stage, and we were refreshed to note throughout the day how great it was to see so many female and femme DJs, musicians, and performing artists. In the kinds of performers and workshops offered, the organizers clearly were appealing to the strength of the feminine and the under-sung.

Later, we explored the various villages of Lucidity. One of the cooler concepts at Lucidity, this year named Eudaimonia after a Greek concept for ‘human flourishing,’ their villages are camping neighborhoods separated by spirit and temperament: Goddess Grove, Warriors’ Way, Nomads’ Nook, Healers’ Sanctuary, Lovers’ Nest, Tricksters’ Playground, and the Family Garden. We were to sleep our heads in Nomads’ Nook that night, a place true to its name. At the encampment we had been invited to, passersby of all kinds dropped in. Some were friends of friends, but others once-strangers seeking company, or just a unique experience. Some surreptitiously offered us the opportunity to open usually sealed doors within our minds, and others sought from us the same. Some didn’t know where they were going; some were happily placeless. “How are you?” I asked a newcomer. “I am,” he said.

The Pyro Bar, the famed flaming frigate of Funk Zone and Lagoon District artists, held ground near the festival’s center. We grazed within earshot some of the goings-on at Lucid University, the festival’s center point for classes, dialogues, and discusses. At the Art Temple, we saw a mother and daughter painting together, which was sweet. We overheard a man speak vaguely about forest agriculture. We briefly witnessed a rather sensual looking session of Conscious Dance, partners standing back-to-back, eyes closed; a little too tantric for our tastes at the time.

Instead, we ventured over to admire the incredible strength and poise of acro-yogis, a few pairings of whom were striking asanas in inspiring glory along the Warrior’s Way. Adjacent, devil stick dancers and jugglers twirled and whirled. Here, people were doing their thing. Definitely lots of small kids and toddlers were around, and they seemed to be having fun, too. Pretty rad.

One of my favorite Lucidity experiences came with Intuitive Flow, a yoga session held in Lucid University by Divinitree’s Rachel Simone Wilkins and L.A. musician Lavender Fields. Powerful winds blew from multiple directions and rippled the tent walls as the beats and melodies of competing sound systems from various stages melded. It was highly sensational and experiential, an opportunity to go deep within at an outdoor music and arts festival.

Then something bizarre happened to me. When I was walking alone, a fellow festival-goer acquaintance, a three or four time Lucidity-goer who had welcomed me into his camp, leapt out of nowhere and yelled in my face, with angry and threatening eyes: “Faggot!” This is not the sort of thing one hopes or expects to hear from a near-stranger at a supposedly inclusive place like Lucidity, but people are still people, and you can always be blindsided by the latent ignorance, bigotries, and inner issues that sneak like snakes in the grass in the form of soft acquaintance and friendliness — especially if you grew up on the receiving end of words like that. He tried to pass it off as a joke, as cowards do.

It’d be unfair and all too American of me to blame the festival for the festival-goer, and I think if most there had seen and heard his hilarious joke, they would have called him out on its very evident lack of humor, especially in a setting like that. But in that moment and my already very heightened state of sensitivity (life stress, hallucinogens), I felt very alone and a bit betrayed, somewhat like an eight year old all over again, mocked on the playground by boys and girls alike for wearing pink. It was sad to feel that was in a place where I would hope to feel more welcomed; instead I felt alienated by a longtime festivalgoer. My vibe was definitely killed for the better part of the night.

My friend and I wandered, bewildered together, enfolded in the uncertain flow of the evening. We heard bits and pieces of Butterscotch’s set, as she sang a sultry cover of Prince’s queer anthem “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” We sat in the chairs of an artist named Diamond, under the dreamy blue light and hanging dream catchers of an oak tree. People, some dressed as unicorns and others as Vikings, mistook us for Diamond, and we wondered if perhaps they had dreamt us, or we them. We met a friendly gang called the Trigo Tribe, and followed their merry parade for a short while, and I ran into an old friend whom I hadn’t seen in years and who once played a small but important role in another lifetime within my own. Such is the topsy-turvy wanderlusty land of Lucidity, where you can experience so much simultaneous rejoicing, and surprises, and secrets, and sadness, with bass-y music thumping all around you.

My friend and I left the festival grounds and sat by the river for a while, hypnotically lit in the night. We pondered what the meanings of festivals are. Some — most — are gigantic vehicles for commercialism. Some, and hopefully most, too, are cultural hubs to meet and form long life connections with like-minded souls. But you still run into the limits of coming together en masse, leaving our combined footprint on patches of earth. Our human gatherings have never been bigger nor more numerous, but even as we’re flourishing, we’re also just populating. We are aspiring to transcend our humanity, and in many ways we do; and yet in the end, we’re still kind of just gathering in tribes around fires and warm lights, beating drums, getting fucked up, having manlier little men threaten others and boast about the size of their big tent as people spin weapons around and the scantily clad dance. We want the light without addressing our shadow sides. So much shamanism is so-called, so much wannabe wisdom is the passing whim of a bong rip, and not all seekers are finders.

But c’est “last” vie, and I think overall I will remember the more loving and flourishing attributes I saw and moments I felt and the more admirable true colors that were shown. There are many wonderful Lucid dreamers under the sun, even if some are a bit dim or dark, and I’m glad I got to share it with them all. It was a mix of emotions, like all dreams. It was a trip.

Dear Baby Boomers Who Deny Climate Change

An Open Letter from the Next Generation

by Ella Richie DeMaria, Sat Apr 29, 2017

This is a ‘Millennial’ speaking. Please bear with me. Yes, I know you love to hate this inconvenient demographic you helped to raise, these young up-starts with their start-ups and pop-ups who are so entitled and self-righteous. I also know you love to data mine us as a means of stuffing your pockets, as we have probably been the most researched money-generating market since, well, you, so there’s still something about us you’re relentlessly curious about.

Of course, it’s ridiculous to blame an entire generation of people of anything, least not those who gave most of us the miracle of life and abundance; “we didn’t start the fire,” as one Baby Boomer sang, and I agree. Ultimately it’s the blamelessness of being human. No one really understands the impact of their actions on Earth, and especially not when those actions unfold at a rate as complex as unprecedented as they have had in the last century; we are only enacting upon the conditions we inherit.

So for generational name-calling, I am only following your example. We millennials have heard a lot about how we’ve “killed” this industry or that industry, this trend or that trend. Okay, sure. Allow me to suggest, change-denying Baby Boomers, that you, meanwhile, have killed our precious planet.

When I say Baby Boomers, I’m talking about that coveted demographic born during the post–World War II baby boom, approximately between the years 1946 and 1964, currently aged in their fifties, sixties, seventies. Let’s take an exemplary Baby Boomer who denies climate change: Sir Donald Trump. He seems delusional, but can you blame him? In the years of his birth, America being great really was an unquestionable reality, and the environment wasn’t really an issue. We had saved the world from the truly evil actions of the Nazis, Stalin, and the Japanese Empire, and ushered in an era never before seen on this planet where people could be free in ways they never had been.

It’s a wonderful story, one that continued to win Best Picture Oscars for decades to come. It’s the story we keep telling ourselves, to continue fighting, to “win” at all costs — just watch footage of Fox News celebrate Trump bombing Afghanistan with “the mother of all bombs” recently with Geraldo Rivera. “One of my favorite things in the 16 years I’ve been here at Fox News is watching bombs drop on bad guys,” Rivera, an esteemed and highly paid reporter and also an idiot, said.

In the minds of you, we are always the victors, always have been, always will be. This is not to discredit the ingenuity, hard work, and individuality with which the Baby Boomers created technologies, medicines, and art forms that have made for one of the most miraculous and wonderful eras of humanity ever. But over time, it is also proving to be one of the worst in its long-term effects. In holding onto the Baby Boomer narrative, in its models of worth, we lose sight of what has changed in the world since we “won” it.

And what are we winning? Mostly money, of course. Forget your Bible that you thump, with its cautions against greed, and your 1960s drug-dabbling in the immaterial. We have always had the most robust economy in the world anywhere, you say, and of course: because we invented it. We invented the McDonalds, the Disneylands, the Pepsi that created that horrific advertisement with some celebrity.

What is the consequence of this rat race value system? It is mainly the cost of our shared lifestyle that we refuse to see. An entire ocean filled with plastic, plastic that will last for about 450 years made for toddler toys entertaining for about three years, plastic that some estimate will outnumber fish by 2050. A planet that the World Wildlife Fund estimates loses between 10,000 and 100,000 species each year, with dying reefs and forests that were healthy up till now. A planet that is paved over and circled by satellites and roaring airplanes absent from our skies only a century ago and all the thousands of years before that. And now Trump wants to open more regions for oil, in National Monuments and National Parks. Typical of us, we then blame China and India for daring to be as industrial as we ever were, because we won, they didn’t, even though they manufacture many of our goods.

If I were you, I would renounce the policies, industries, and beliefs that have led to our warming, melting planet, and invest your money in reforestation and re-wilding programs; in solar and wind energy and energy sources as yet unimagined; in programs and think tanks and politicians who understand that fossil fuels are a finite resource. And I would listen to your children and grand-children, and consider that one day, the world will have fewer animals than the picture books you raised them on.

Climate-denying Baby Boomers, your children are suffering. They are stressed and shouldered with debt to participate in a sedentary desk economy you helped create. I have lost one friend to suicide due to depression brought on in large part to the fact she could not afford her own medical bills; another because the pressure to succeed in school was too great. I have seen people closest to me in my life suffer mental breakdowns because they are being asked to compete for endless rows of toothpaste brands and unaffordable houses, and because despite having all the supposed guarantees to happiness — a college degree, material wealth, privilege — they are profoundly unhappy.

But go ahead, play your golf. We cannot ask of you to fix these wounds because you were only being human in doing what you thought was right, or what was expected of you, or how you were raised. You created some of the greatest entertainments, improvements, and achievements our species has ever known. And I want to forgive you — no one can be blamed for the rose colored glasses they’re born wearing, the tint of which changes to the tune of a status quo out of any one person’s control. Most other Baby Boomers are ashamed and saddened at the result of your actions, as all they ever wanted was to give us love and provide us happiness in the way they could. We’re all just trying our best on this little Earth.

And you all have done a great job at being the best at being business people, bankruptcies aside. However, we see values beyond the market system that you have so much faith in. To millennials and all other younger generations, you have brains and hands. Let us work to heal the planet and create a more compassionate world than this one we are inheriting. And to climate-denying Baby Boomers, I hope if the solutions elude us, that you see the consequences of your actions before you leave this profoundly polluted Earth. Donald Trump, I hope you see Mar-A-Lago swallowed by the rising sea.