New Moon INSIGHT
INSIGHT On The Frequency we Choose
Dear Community,
I’m writing to you from San Francisco, in the middle of a run of My Morning Jacket shows, my body in that good kind of ache you only get from standing and dancing for hours and days on end.
Last month I shared that I was going back into treatment. Well, the first infusion is behind me now, and I thought I’d share a bit about how I chose to hold it.
The intention was pretty simple. Sandwich Wednesday’s immunotherapy infusion between two weekends of live music.
Opening Weekend
It all started last Friday at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park, then moved to the first two nights of My Morning Jacket’s seven-night run at the Fillmore. On Tuesday, Taco (my trusty Tacoma and the home of Taco Talks) and I drove down to LA, and on Wednesday I sat in the chair at the Angeles Clinic for my first infusion.
Infusion day was stacked with supportive elements.
I got precise myofascial bodywork, did red light therapy, sat in the Shiftwave chair, and took a banger of a class with Katie Facada, who teaches a method called The Class. I closed the day with a few hours of yoga nidra, a supine meditation where I got to interact with the medicine's intelligence from the infusion.
Thursday was for integrating and resting. Friday I hopped on a plane back up to San Francisco and made my way to the Fillmore for the first of the three nights that close out the MMJ run.
Infusion in the middle with live music on both sides.
And holy hell, it delivered, and it still does.
Sound Moves Through the Body
There’s something alive in live music that I can’t put into words, because it’s beyond them. But I can speak to my experience.
Just as breath comes in through the nostrils and the prana it carries spreads throughout the body, sound comes in through the ears and keeps going. Into the chest, down the spine, all the way into the floor of the pelvis. It lands in the body before the mind can say anything about it.
Then add a room full of people receiving it at the same moment. Nervous systems syncing to the same build, the same release. We’re summoned to surrender to the raw electricity moving into the field. The room reaches a kind of collective transcendence when the band hits the thing. For my taste, that quality of that energy is the key component that works in concert with the immunotherapy drugs.
Back in August, I wrote that meditation and pranayama are like practicing scales, and living with presence is playing the song. This past week, the metaphor stopped being a metaphor.
I believe deeply in the healing power of music, love, joy, and community. I hold it right alongside the power of allopathic medicine. To me, music is part of the medicine of being human, and honestly, if I were writing the protocol for healing disease, I’d put it in there.
The People Who’ve Been There
Garrett and Lisa, who I’ve seen twenty years' worth of shows with. Brenna, who I was in India with back in 2019. My sister Kathleen and Jeanine, who I’ve lived a life with! Michael, who manages My Morning Jacket and still finds the time to stand in the room with his friends and take in the music.
That’s the part I keep coming back to.
All of these folks knew me before the first diagnosis. Before INSIGHT, and before I had any language for any of this.
A friendship that lasts watches you change. It’s seen the version of you that was lost, scared, angry. The version that was certain, and the version that was flat wrong about something that really mattered.
And it holds all of them at once.
There’s a particular kind of rest in that. You don’t have to catch anyone up. You walk in, and they already know you. Old friendships remind the body of who it is.
Left unchecked, that can cut both ways. An old room can call back an old version of us just as easily as it can welcome the new one. That’s part of the deal. This week, these friends and this music keep calling me home to immense joy and love, and I’m directing all of it to the .8cm remnant to shift these cells' frequency.
In the Chair
I went into Wednesday’s infusion with enormous gratitude. For the science. For the extraordinary people who’ve given their working lives to this. For a body that knows how to heal, maybe better now than ever before. And for the plain privilege of having access to this care at all.
For me, there’s no contradiction between trusting modern medicine and trusting the body’s healing intelligence. They’re part of the same conversation. I keep saying it because so many people believe they have to pick a side.
You don’t have to pick a side.
The infusion went in. I felt the medicine’s intelligence at work, with the weekend still ringing in my chest. It’s part of how I’m approaching this ever-evolving world: healing the body while living in the unspeakable radiance of the soul.
What We Seed in the Dark
Tonight’s new moon gives us no light to work with, and that’s the point. The dark is where the seed goes in, long before anything shows above ground.
The last lunar writing was about being held. This one is about what we choose to stand inside of.
The room you walk into. The people around you. The sound moving through your chest.
The company we keep becomes a frequency, and over enough time, it becomes the frequency we run at.
So here’s the question I’m seeding tonight, and the one I’ll keep living into from here: What do I want to be in the frequency of?
New Moon INSIGHT In Practice
The Frequency We Keep
Find fifteen minutes somewhere you won’t be interrupted.
Choose a piece of music with history in it. Something that carried you through a season of your life. I’d say the older, the better. Music holds the hard seasons too, so for this one, choose a song whose memories feel mostly warm.
Listen with nothing else happening. No phone, no dilly-dallying, just sit, breathe, and listen. Let the sound come in through the body and notice where it lands. Chest, throat, belly, the back of the neck. Let it move whatever it moves.
Let the memories come. Who were you with when this song mattered? You don’t have to reach for any of it. Give it a minute, and faces and places will show up on their own. If anything feels like too much, open your eyes and feel your feet on the floor. You set the pace.
Let yourself be known. Stay with a face that feels good, and let yourself feel what it’s like to be known by them, across every version of you they’ve seen. If no one comes, let the music and the light of your presence be the company. It’s been with you through all of it.
Then seed it. Feel the weight of your body where you’re sitting. Ask yourself what frequency you’re choosing to live inside right now. Say the answer out loud once, into the dark. Nothing needs to be visible yet, and nothing needs to manifest from it. That’s what a new moon is for.
The company we keep becomes the frequency we run at. Choose accordingly.
I’m heading back out tonight. Two more nights with my people, one of my favorite live bands, and then home.
More music. More love. More life.
With love,
Kevin