Check Out Keelan McDorman’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Keelan McDorman.

Hi Keelan, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My earliest musical memory was sitting in front of the television as a five year old, mesmerized by a drum solo I was watching on the screen. My dad was watching a live Rush concert, and Neil Peart was playing his famous full-circle drum set. A heavy dose of inspiration hit me like a freight train and I jumped up and ran to the kitchen and got every pot and pan out of the cupboard. I set them up in a circle all around me to emulate what I’d just seen and started playing them with chopsticks and wooden spoons. That was when my parents said “we’d better get him a drum set.” Playing drums became my biggest passion in life. I was constantly in the basement learning new beats and songs. I thought I’d drive my parents mad, but they really enjoyed hearing my progress. They eventually signed me up for private drum lessons in 2007, which I continued until 2013. After a long hiatus from drumming, my passion was reignited through playing with other musicians in 2017. You can only get so far practicing your instrument alone, but when you start playing with other musicians, you open a door to an entire new world – a depth of musicianship that can’t be found any other way. My first band was a punk band called Upstanding Citizen. I went on to join bands of all different styles including Indica Cinema, Cereza, Sunny Sideways, Sweetness Itself, After the Carnival, and Honey Chile.

As time went on I found myself gravitating towards chill, soft, introspective music, which was a far cry from the heavy music I’d been into for years. This newfound fascination with mellow indie music coincided with a journey of self realization or “spiritual awakening,” which birthed my solo recording project Openness. For a while I was in 7 bands at the same time, with a different band practice every day, gigging multiple nights a week, while writing music for my solo project, in addition to attending music college and working. I somehow didn’t feel burnt out at all . . . in fact I felt so excited every day. Suddenly Covid hit the globe and everything froze. School went online and my bands stopped practicing. I went from interacting with hundreds of people a day to only the masked cashier at the grocery store once a week. I took Covid in stride and used it as a time to enter creative hermit mode. Though it was a trying time for even the most hardcore introverts (especially those who lived alone like me), it was actually one of the best times of my life. When else do we get a global excuse to drop out from the world and go inward? During 2020 I’d knock out my online classwork in the first couple hours of the day and then write and record music for twelve hours straight, every day. This deep creative binge manifested itself as 15 songs which became my 2020 LP Adore the Journey.

My long time dream of becoming a drum teacher finally came to fruition a couple years after graduating college, and I’ve been teaching ever since. I’ve now taught over 3,000 lessons – mostly drum lessons but also some piano. I have 50 weekly students between 4 different schools I teach at: Musical Life Denver, Elevated Music Center, Colorado Music Institute, and Music & Arts. Teaching has been bringing so much joy to my days. I deeply value working with people one-on-one. I have students ages 5 to 75, and even have students with disabilities including a drummer with autism and a blind pianist. It is such a gift to be able to get to know people through teaching music. I learn more about music and more about myself in the process. I think it’s cool that I’m teaching an instrument which is simultaneously very new and very old. Drum set is only about 100 years old, but drums themselves date back at least 8,000 years to Neolithic China. I also do session work for artists who need help bringing their songs to life with drum recordings tailored specially for them. I’ve recorded over 120 songs on drums for various artists over the years. There is a Japanese concept called Ikigai which means “reason for being.” It is the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. For me, this is music: teaching it, writing it, and recording it. Making your passion your career can be a tightrope walk for some people, but if you’re devout, there is truth to the saying “do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

At the time of writing this I’m just 26 years old, but I feel like I’ve lived multiple lifetimes since 1998. I neither believe nor disbelieve in reincarnation, but I have existed as many different people in a way, since our cells regenerate every 7 years and I’ve gone through countless iterations of self, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Looking back at my past self feels like witnessing the life of a different person. Still through it all, an unchanging sense of self remains. This ever-present source is what I strive to tap into: the higher self – the self that is interconnected with all of life, rather than a small separate sense of self, isolated in a great big scary world. At this point in my life I am overwhelmed with the breadth of experiences I’ve had in recent years, and all I want to do is integrate those experiences and create. I have terabytes worth of music, photos, and videos to sort through and develop into something special. I am not currently craving new experiences; all I crave is time to create. I have everything I need. I am not searching for the next thing for fulfillment. The gift of life is now, and only now.

I’m honestly shocked to still be here. I try to live my life in a way in which I’d be satisfied if it abruptly came to an end, because it really can at any moment. Life is so precious, fragile, and fleeting. I always intuitively knew this, but when a close friend of mine died recently at my age, I was confronted with death in a visceral way that I never had been before. I can honestly say I will be happy with my time here whenever I go, whether it’s in 70 years or 70 minutes. All that matters in the end is that we treat everyone with love and compassion and do our best to leave the world a little better than we found it. Everything else is ancillary, really. We’ll never know the impact we’ve made on those we’ve met. All our actions ripple outward eternally; it’s the butterfly effect. I remind myself of this when I feel small and insignificant. One of my favorite words is “sonder,” which is the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as our own. My friend Issac explained this word to me as we were sitting atop a tall parking garage overlooking the city one late night when I was around 16. It dawned on me that the world didn’t revolve around me. That realization put things into perspective and took a lot of weight off my shoulders. Suddenly it wasn’t all so serious as I’d supposed.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Being a human is hard. The road is never smooth. Anyone born into human skin is in for a hefty dose of hardship whether they’re in a third world slum or an affluent suburb in America. Everyone experiences stress, grief and existential crisis. Although people who are dealt a worse life situation generally tend to suffer much more, there are poor people in third world countries who are happier than members of the elite billionaire class in their seaside mansions in the USA. Although we all inevitably feel pain and will endure immense physical and mental challenges, suffering is actually optional, because suffering is made of mental judgments about the emotional or physical hardship we’ve endured. It is something we mentally inflict upon ourselves by resisting what is.

It is possible for us to extricate ourselves from suffering through spiritual practice, which can be many things for many different people. My direct spiritual practice consists mainly of making music, spending time in nature, and meditating. But the further along I get on this journey of life, the more my spiritual practice is expanding to become life itself; every moment is an opportunity to meet life with openness and mindfulness rather than resistance and contempt. If you are truly tuned in, it is possible to feel a sense of spiritual connection with all living beings and even non-living things. You can feel it with your loved ones, the cashier at the grocery store, a passerby on the street, or even the person who cut you off in traffic. You can feel it in the woods, in the mountains, by the sea, in a cemetery, in the corner store, or in a construction site. You can feel it with a beautiful building, your favorite article of clothing, or even your favorite mug you drink coffee or tea from. But most of all, you can feel it with a great song, poem, film, or painting.

My outward life situation is one of great privilege; I am a white male born into a middle class family with loving parents who gave me everything I needed and set me up for success. Nonetheless, I’ve gone through trials and tribulations. In high school I experienced the dark pit of despair that is depression. For a long time I was caught in a nihilistic, misanthropic view of the world. It’s easy to feel like a meaningless infinitesimal speck in relation to the universe. In the following years I experienced a “dark night of the soul,” a period of immense sorrow which made me question the meaning of life and why we’re here. I concluded that since I’m a human being, I should try to just be. I embraced stillness and began to focus on what I could control and disregard everything else. Negativity bias is so strong in us, but when we learn to focus on the miraculousness of life, we are set free. The same futile truth that once brought me agony now brought me immeasurable comfort. We are but a blip in the existence of the universe, and yet we encapsulate the consciousness of eternity within this moment. What a beauty it is to be both a cosmic grain of sand and the entire universe itself. Until it’s time to go back to just being the whole beach, I am going to enjoy my existence as a grain of sand. How crazy is life? We are literally beings made of stardust who get to hang out for a little while on a gorgeous 4.5 billion year old rock ball populated by 9 million species, hurtling through space at 67,000 mph, rotating around a giant fireball within one galaxy in a universe that may well be infinite. All the while, there is a universe churning within us: a phenomenal network of complex systems – atoms, cells, DNA, neurons, veins, organs, bones, muscles – which all somehow coalesce into one coherent vessel in which we can run around and experience the gift of life through our senses. It would have been so much easier for there to have been nothing at all. Worry is preposterous. We have every reason to rejoice in the great mystery and give thanks for life.

Creatively, my biggest recent challenge has been embracing my own timeline. So many artists today feel rushed in this modern algorithmic age. It’s easy to feel like time is running out. But we should strive to be the tortoise, not the hare. We should live and create at our own pace, from a place of abundance rather than scarcity. It has officially been 4 years since I’ve released an Openness song, save a collaborative cover with Lucille Two. I had no intention of a break this long, but life happens unexpectedly. I refuse to take on the negative mindset of shame that is all too common in artists that says “It’s too late, I’ve lost momentum, people have forgotten about me, I’ve lost my spark,” etc. Creating is all I want to do in this life, and I am in no rush whatsoever. I am the tortoise, not the hare, and I am in it for the long haul. I will not align myself with urgency culture or hustle culture in order to attain some illusory status symbol from the masses. I am uninterested in a quick fix; I am shooting for timeless excellence. I’d say “slow and steady wins the race,” but this is not a race. Art is not a competition, but the purest expression of humanity: our way of bringing the formless into form, making the intangible tangible.

I create for myself first and foremost. Any outside opinion is peripheral. Art is who I am, not something I do as a hobby. It is my reason for being and my way of making sense of the world through fearless expression. Artists are not merely “content creators” meant to feed a soulless algorithmic machine. We are living, breathing expressions of the human experience and its full spectrum of emotion. We are creation itself. We are human, and humans use their hands and their souls to create. So I’ve been creating – music, lyrics, ideas, poems, photos, videos, visions – at my own pace for the last few years and I’m excited to share when the time is right.

Embracing our own timeline does not mean justifying any mental excuses we may tell ourselves in order to procrastinate creativity. To create requires great courage, and many people procrastinate being creative for their whole lives because they have not found the courage within. The real key is to never rush and also never procrastinate – to be in a constant state of departure while always arriving. This is the artist’s spiritual flow state: a constant balancing act of self realization and creation. Art is a timeless realm, because the artist has the power to freeze a moment in time. And in a timeless realm, it is never too late. Think about all the people who’ve created their best work in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and on. Art knows no bounds; it is an open door for all ages, colors, and creeds. The creative spark can reignite the fire of art at any moment, and we all carry that spark within us, even those who say they aren’t creative. We’re all creative because we are all authors of our own lives. So when writing the story of our lives, let’s not let anyone else hold the pen. Your story is yours to create, on your own timeline.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My primary creative focus in life right now is my solo recording project Openness. I started this project in 2018 out of sheer curiosity and exploration. I had a little MIDI keyboard, a microphone, a blank notebook, and Pro Tools First, a free music recording software. I was a drummer who knew nothing of melody, harmony, or music theory, but what I did have was rhythm, a vision, and determination to make music. After releasing a few songs on Soundcloud and Bandcamp I started music school and dove deep into music theory and piano and started training my ear. I started playing keys and bass on many of the songs and started to develop a long term vision for the still-nameless project. I finally chose the name Openness because I’d heard so many of the wisest people I knew use the word “openness” over and over again, usually when describing a spiritual openness to life or openness of the heart and mind. Artists also tend to be very high in openness to experience, one of the Big Five personality traits in psychology. I started collaborating with local Denver musicians to bring the songs I was writing to life. I have so much gratitude for those bandmates, schoolmates, and acquaintances who helped me get the project off the ground in the early stages.

When Covid hit the globe in 2020 I came to the realization that I could collaborate with people anywhere in the world by sending files back and forth. I found musicians on YouTube and Instagram by searching for covers of my favorite bands. One person in particular caught my eye: a fellow who lived in Gainesville, Florida named Oliver Qiu. Oliver is an incredible musician and all-around great guy, and he’s the only person I’ve encountered who loves the band Men I Trust as much as I do. He has played guitar and bass on dozens of Openness tracks and he coded my website (theopenness.com) from scratch. I am forever thankful for Oliver’s contribution to Openness. In 2021 I got the name Openness trademarked in the US so there wouldn’t be a possibility of losing rights to the name, but that didn’t stop someone in Germany from releasing a hardcore techno album under the same name, which somehow ended up on streaming platforms under my account. I was able to get it removed quickly, but it was pretty funny when I noticed a techno album was on my Spotify artist page as I pulled into a gas station when I arrived in Moab on a road trip.

At this point I have released 41 Openness songs featuring 34 musicians from places across the globe including Australia, Canada, and Switzerland. Calling it a “solo project” is almost laughable now, but I suppose I’m the main brains behind the operation. I am currently finishing up an LP called Light the Way which will be my fourth LP following Adore The Journey (2020), Songs from the Open Nest (2019), and Artistree (2019). Openness has now garnered over 1,000,000 streams on Spotify. I don’t obsess over or seek validation from numbers, but to think so many ears have tuned into my music is really quite special. I have people messaging me from all corners of the world saying my music has helped them through hard times or has helped them come to grand revelations. I make the music that I want to listen to. It is the best form of self expression and therapy for me. But even if my music resonates with one person, that makes it so much more meaningful.

When doing a jigsaw puzzle, people usually start with corner and edge pieces . . . but who’s to say you can’t start with a piece in the middle? Songwriting is like a puzzle – you can start with any piece. I’ve started songs in every way: with a melody, a lyrical phrase, a bassline, a drum beat, a poem, even refrigerator magnets. I get a lot of inspiration from nature, and oftentimes when I’m out in the forest or in the mountains I’ll hum a little melody or beatbox a drum beat into my voice memos on my phone, and go home to my little cottage I call “The Open Nest” to develop a song from it. Then I’ll usually go back out into nature to write the lyrics. The majority of my songs have started by walking in nature and capturing ideas that spontaneously arise. Songwriting feels more like capturing something that’s already there than generating something through willpower. This is a common theme I hear from artists; they feel like the art comes through them and they’re not actually the author but the messenger – a vessel through which creativity may flow.

My inward mission is fearless self expression, and my outward mission is to have the courage to create so I may help humanity move in the right direction. It may sound grandiose, but it’s actually quite simple and practical. If I create songs from a place of openness, they’re more likely to be received with open arms and ears, and that can ripple out and have a profound effect. It’s easy to look at the news or social media and think the world is burning and everything is doomed, but if you look deeper you’ll see that people everywhere are helping each other, creating and sharing art from the heart, waking up to the gift of life, and cherishing beauty. I want to be one of these people. We all have the power to foster connection and raise the level of human consciousness in a way that is much bigger than we know. I had the phrase “courage to create” tattooed on my left palm as a reminder of this after being inspired by Rollo May’s 1975 book The Courage to Create. Creation is a momentary current between the finite and infinite; it is pulling something out of nothing. When we have the courage to release our art into the world, that is a part of us that will never die. We can’t take anything with us when we leave this world, but we can leave something special behind in the form of timeless expression. That’s why I’m not interested in accumulating things in life. I only seek to give and express. It’s so important to set aside our insecurities and perfectionism. Art from the heart transcends the struggle of being a human, yet embodies it so fully. No matter what is going on in the world, artists will always coalesce and create to propel the true spirit of living.

I really value my independence as an artist and I like to have full control over my artistic vision. In a world where artists are being bombarded with strategies about how to market themselves and present themselves as a brand, all I care to do is put out music that resonates with me and promote it in an authentic, creative way. I combine my passion for art, photography, videography, and poetry to create visual themes around my music. I’m planning to make a book that has the lyrics for all my songs written out like poems accompanied by my favorite photographs I’ve taken over the years. I get to define what success means to me. I’ve dropped the need to appease any of society’s expectations. I have made the decision to follow my heart and intuition for as long as I live. I have made the decision to never lie to myself or anyone else. I’m not tirelessly chasing fame or some future goal. I’m not in competition with anyone. This isn’t the NFL. I’m not comparing myself to anyone other than the me of yesterday. If I’m not using others as inspiration, they’re nothing but a distraction. As long as I’m enjoying the journey of expressing myself genuinely, I am achieving success. Although I value external input, I don’t let anyone else’s opinion sway me in my artistic choices, because I know as soon as I do I’ll become inauthentic, and people see right through that kind of corruption. If an artist is guided by the opinions of others rather than their own creative intuition, it can be smelled from a mile away. Maintaining a facade is exhausting and is a huge distraction and detraction from the art itself. For this reason, I like to leave all my old songs up even though some of them make me cringe. I stand by the lyrics and the essence of the songs, and I like that my progress is visible. I’m still only scratching the tip of the iceberg in my musical journey, but I have come a long way.

What were you like growing up?
I was born and raised in Denver to incredibly loving parents. I knew I was loved when my dad bought me a Hot Wheels ice cream truck on the first day I didn’t poop my pants during daycare. Truthfully I am so grateful to them for teaching me important life lessons in the best ways and surrounding me with music. As a kid I was always searching for a thrill around the house or neighborhood. I remember making extravagant blanket forts and marble runs with my sister, sledding at midnight on bright winter nights, and face-planting when I jumped off a ramp on the neighbor’s Barbie scooter. I have been fascinated with existential life questions as far back as I can remember. I have a vivid memory of laying on my front lawn with my friend Will one night when I was around 11, looking up at the stars and contemplating how vast the universe must be.

In middle school and high school I started to care about what people thought of me. I started to take on social identities: skater, photographer, stoner, party kid, punk. I bounced around to different cliques, but I never felt a true sense of belonging. I struggled through bouts of depression and suicidal ideation. I was bored and dissociative. During junior year of high school I started to embrace being alone. I began to really enjoy hanging out and doing things by myself. For the first time, I was cultivating a real sense of self love and a lust for life after hating myself for many years. At this time I was quite an adrenaline junkie, always searching for the wildest adventures. I got my kicks by bombing hills on skateboards and brakeless fixed gear bikes, jumping down huge stair sets on scooters, exploring abandoned buildings, and roaming the streets on drunken nights with friends. I was the most fearless kid I knew. After getting hit by cars and narrowly escaping death in other ways, I started to realize how fragile the human body is and how easy it is to get permanently injured or die. Now, I’m a very careful person, because I’ve come to value life so deeply and I want to cherish and preserve this body while it’s still young and able, and treat it as the temple it is.

As soon as I turned 18 I eagerly moved out of my parents’ house into a small one bedroom carriage house across the street from DU that had everything I needed. Rent was $500 including utilities and I had a private fenced yard with a hammock and firepit, a spacious loft bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, and no neighbors above or beside me. The place was built in the late 70s as a poker house for the owners of the bigger house on the same property, and was finished with wood paneling to make it feel like a cabin. It was acoustically perfect for a home recording studio, with exposed wood beams and insulation for sound diffusion/absorption. I’d go on to record over a dozen records there. It was a dream come true for me: an oasis in the city. I was there from 2016-2021. I truly found myself in that little home. At first, I chased excitement. At long last, I was finally parent free. No rules! I’d have friends over every night and we’d stay up until the sun came up drinking, joking, smoking, and laughing. We’d be hooligans and do stuff like jump from the upstairs loft onto the couch below, and play punk rock music with a Marshall stack amp on full volume, loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear. Cops would come for noise complaints. I’d live off quesadillas, ramen, and granola bars. I had a house show in 2017 with over 50 people in that little house. My punk band performed that night; it was my first live performance playing drums with a band. I started calling my home “The Open Nest” because it had become self-evident that it was a place for people to come together and be open and vulnerable and share their music, art, poetry, and thoughts – a rendezvous of open souls. Countless deep conversations were had around the fire, and countless jam sessions left us elated. Well over 100 people spent time in that house over the years, and I’m forever grateful for all of them and for that exhilarating period of my life.

I’m actually very glad I dove head first into an indulgent, hedonistic lifestyle in my late teens, because it wasn’t long before I was just . . . over it. I got it all out of my system much earlier than a lot of people do. I felt like doing a total 180, so I did. I started eating healthy, exercising every day, and pondering long term goals. Living alone did wonders for me. All the identities and labels I’d been collecting began to drop away. I realized all I needed to do was be – just be. I remember coming across an Alan Watts talk on YouTube and being mesmerized by the way he saw life. His philosophy gave me a whole new perspective and led me to Eckhart Tolle, Adyashanti, Michael Singer, Ram Dass, and many other wise beings who have helped me so much on this journey of life. I found out that the essence of spirituality has nothing to do with the woo-woo connotations I previously had of it, and that it is really quite simple and practical. In truth, spiritual practice is about disidentifying with thoughts that cloud our lives with judgement so that we may see clearly and show up for life in a truly present way. All of life unfolds in the present, and to resist the present moment is to deny life itself. We begin to see clearly and awaken to the true essence of life once we relieve ourselves from the overwhelming burden of constantly living in the future or past in our minds. We can take back the immense joy of life we once had as curious children before being swarmed with social institutions and outside opinion. Through this process we come to know our true selves, something omnipresent and unchanging. People have many names for this: soul, spirit, consciousness, source, etc. — what you call it doesn’t matter all that much. Sincere truth seekers pull back the veil of all worldly illusions and find the truth of interconnection, synergy, and oneness of all things. Even the seemingly mundane is revealed as divine. Once we begin to embody our spiritual practice in daily life, we become a beacon of light for others. We live intentionally; every act becomes sacred. This is where the real work is – not up in the clouds, but right here on the ground. It is about not grasping anything and not pushing anything away – sitting with the entire human condition in all its misery and glory. One of my favorite writers Kahlil Gibran wrote “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” Artists tend to be hypersensitive and feel things much deeper than most people. The weight of holding both the immense pain and bliss of the human condition can be overwhelming . . . but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

From 2016-2018 I worked dozens of various jobs trying to find something I liked. I was a school cafeteria worker, political canvasser, drum dude at Guitar Center, dude at Home Depot who loads lumber and concrete into your vehicle, artisan market worker, server at formal dining banquets, and childcare worker, just to name a small handful. After realizing I didn’t want to do any of these for my whole life, I made the choice to go to CU Denver to pursue a degree in drum kit performance. I went in wanting to become the best drummer I could be, but after falling in love with melody and harmony since I had to take piano classes, my focus switched to becoming the best musician I could be. I improved my drum skills a ton in three years of studying with a great jazz drummer Todd Reid, but during my senior year I switched to lessons with a fellow named Greg Harris and my eyes were opened to a whole new world of possibilities. On drums he showed me so many new rhythms from around the world, but then many of our “drum lessons” turned into writing songs on piano. He helped me write and record an EP for my senior project which will eventually be developed and released for Openness. Greg is a phenomenal vibraphonist and pianist and he taught me so much about writing unique chord progressions and changed the way I approach music in general. He is one of few people I’ve felt to be a true mentor in my life . . . it felt like he was a pure wellspring of creativity that could give endless musical inspiration and wisdom. He helped me overcome perfectionism and focus on the spontaneous generation of ideas. I still use everything I learned from him to this day and I’m forever grateful for his wisdom and generosity.

During Covid I was an ice cream truck driver and I’d make $800 cash in a weekend and then work on music during the week, interspersed with lots of time for long walks through nature and contemplation. Covid really allowed me to enter into a deep stillness and expedite my understanding of self. The silver lining was that I got to focus on creating rather than consuming. During a 6 week solo exploration of Amsterdam in summer of ‘21, I got a call from my landlord saying they’d sold my house and it’d be knocked down to build a fancy modern duplex and I had two months to move out, even though I’d just renewed my lease. It was a sad end to a transformative era of my life, but I carry all the memories and revelations from that place with me even though it no longer stands. I now live in a similar little carriage house, but it’s twice the rent and it’s twice as old. It is a charming little 1911 bungalow and I do really love it – still a gem of a find in Denver.

Here I sit 4 years later, and though my body may be done growing, I’ll continue to grow mentally, spiritually, and creatively until I die. I am just now arriving at the age where my brain is fully developed, which is wild to me. I’ve been so many versions of myself, met so many people, and been to so many places. I am grateful to have seen much of the world already, and I have lots of great travel stories including almost getting stuck on the island of Cozumel in Mexico overnight with my family, crashing bikes in Amsterdam and having to walk them upright 6 kilometers back home, and getting a train ticket from Denver to Chicago at age 16 before even asking my parents if I could go. These days, you can catch me drinking tea in the forest, writing poetry on cafe patios, recording music with friends, playing handpan by mountain streams, teaching music, or out at local shows and creative events. Life’s possibilities are endless and there are so many things I want to explore in this life. The idea of being bored is now unfathomable to me. Life is truly such a profound gift, and I refuse to dishonor it by resisting the present moment or being consumed by illusory stories and identities. I want to live in a way that is profound, playful, and curious, and I want to help others do the same. Music is the most direct path to the divine for me. I don’t subscribe to any particular religion or dogma, but when I create music, it feels like I am connecting with something bigger than myself: something otherworldly and all-encompassing. That’s why I’ll never stop creating.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://theopenness.com/ and https://openness.bandcamp.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theopenness/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theopenness
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/openness
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/opennessmusic
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/671PTL2M4TT9q3vh9tkba4

Image Credits
Mitchell Gardner
Don Hales
Tori Enyart
Matthew Fredricey