THIS IS AN ALL CAPS KINDA EMAIL

Because death is nigh and I have some important things to say.

REBIRTH by Lauren Purves

I told someone recently, ‘If you don’t follow this dream, it’s going to kill you.’ And I really meant it. I mean it for all of us.

Maybe not today, nor tomorrow. But that niggle is calling your name for a reason. MY GOD there is a dream that lives inside every one of us, that is either kept locked up and hidden away in a cupboard, OR given the chance to breathe and be cultivated into being. 

THESE DREAMS OF OURS ARE THE HEARTBEATS OF LIFE.

AND IF YOU’RE HEART AIN’T BEATING? THEN WHAT?!

Dead.

I love writing about death on here. Why wouldn’t I? It’s my one FAT reminder that I am alive, and today is for living.

SO THIS IS GOING TO BE AN ALL CAPS KINDA EMAIL, BECAUSE DEATH IS NIGH AND I HAVE SOME SHIT TO SAY. 

I feel so very SAD for those dreams in the cupboard. I feel sad for the people who never dared to have a dream. But I am sadder still for those who have a glimpse of that dream, but have purposefully locked the door and thrown away the key. 

You’re afraid. Why wouldn’t you be? This whole LIFE thing we’re doing out here is terrifying. And yes, death is a coming. But maybe the most terrifying thing of all, is never glimpsing that dream at all. Never naming it or kissing it, or caressing it’s hair and saying I see you, I love you, I believe in you. 

That terrifies the hell out of me. 

And so I treat all my dreams as life and death situations. 

Because they are. 

I treat all my desires as holy. 

Because they are. 

My friend John S. Couch wrote a book called The Art of Creative Rebellion. It has been hugely inspirational to me - “YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE SO BE COURAGEOUS!!”, and he quotes this Bukowski…

The sun inside me is currently burning my gut. It is doing it by itself. And this, my friends, is a call to arms. 

THIS IS A CALL TO THE BATTLEFIELD OF THE MOST HOLY ON HIGH!!

I want to know the thing that sets you on fire. The thing that makes you come alive.

I WANT YOU TO PROCLAIM IT LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!! 

What is it that you dare not whisper out loud?! Put all the boring adult stuff aside. Bills, mortgage, what other people will think, how old you are, how ugly you are, how you don’t have enough time, or money….

Ssshhhhhh. Pause that all for a minute. It’s BORING. And you are not. 

What DREAM lives inside you?

SAY THE THING THAT SCARES YOU. 

Put pen to paper and watch what happens next. 

Even better. Put it in the comments. Let it live on the internet. What a REBEL you can be today!

Being a musician is what other people did right?

Wrong. I woke up one day and started calling myself a musician. 

And then some really quite miraculous stuff started to happen. Did I tell you about the time I was camping in Joshua Tree and camped next to Michael Jackson’s nephew who is a producer and he invited me to his studio and I recorded my first songs?

That was 2 weeks after I said out loud for the first time in my life, ‘I am a musician’. 2020. Age 30. 

And now I have a band, I have shows coming up, and my GOD I know some of the music coming out of me currently is so good it gives me the tingles.

HOL band, Theatricum Botanicum, photo by Lauren Purves

And maybe that dream is a creative venture. Or running a smoothie bar in some beach town. Or being around horses. Or building shit with your hands, having them deep in the worms and the soil. Maybe it’s full autonomy over your time and money. Maybe it’s going to space. I DON’T KNOW…. There is truly NO END to this game.

And it doesn’t have to be so black and white as ‘my dream is X’. I have a long list of all the ways I wanted to be. Ways I wanted to feel when I woke up in the morning. Ways I wanted to live, and love and earn money and be in community and joy and creativity.

As soon as we start naming it, we are taking our dreams by the hands and French kissing them and saying I love you, I care about you, you make me feel so good inside. And miraculous stuff just starts to happen. 

I don’t care if you don’t believe me. I believe me. AND I BELIEVE IN YOUR DREAMS. 

So put it in the comments already. Just do it. Get it out there. As ridiculous and scary as it feels, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY GET IT OUT THERE. 

I said this was an all caps kinda email. 

And one of the dreams that I have been playing with, and writing down, and speaking into being, is, I WANT TO HELP PEOPLE WITH THEIR DREAMS. I’ll give myself some more credit here, I already have, I already am. 

And what have I spent the last couple of decades doing? But meeting a lot of people, building a very deep and very vast community. 

I know people. I know a lot of people. And connecting the dots and the dreams and the fires between all these people turns me ON so much I can’t even. 

So better still, how do you activate a whole community of people:

1. into their own dreams, 

2. into helping other people with theirs?

One of the BIG lessons I have learnt, is that most people generally want to help. 

I have asked for a lot of help. And I have received more than I could ever have imagined. 

Asking for help is scary. I get it. What if they say no?! Some might. A lot won’t. 

What help do you need to ask for? This is a SAFE SPACE. It is THE place. Ask it. Just do it. 

I have 1500 people opening this email. 1500 PEOPLE!!!! You know how many of them might be the Michael Jackson’s nephew to your dream? And HECK, MAYBE THEIR DREAM HAS BEEN WAITING FOR YOU?!?!?

GIVE ME YOUR ART.

GIVE ME YOUR POETRY.

GIVE ME YOUR DREAMS ALREADY. 

Meet my friend Lauren. Her dream was to be a photographer. She came to LA for the light, she told me. But then life. Job. Money. All the things, blah blah blah.

At the beginning of last year, that dream was very slowly starting to peek its head out of the cupboard. And then Whole Collective had its launch event in April ‘23, and I asked her if she wanted to host her first exhibition. *Didn’t so much ask, as tell her… This terrified the crap out of her and SHE SAID YES ANYWAY.

Fast forward less than a year and Lauren is running around the canyons and the oceans on the daily, taking the most magnificent portraits and scenes and people, ‘CAPTURING THE LIGHT!!!’ getting paid for it all. Self-sustaining on her dream. 

Lauren at her first exhibition in April ‘23 - she’s going places I tell ya

We don’t venture into these scary waters alone. Yes we have to articulate the thing, no matter how big or small, but it’s the community of people around us that help us get much closer to the edge of that fear, because they’re holding our hands and opening the doors and saying it’s all going to be ok and PEOPLE ARE MAGIC I TELL YOU.

Book Lauren for a shoot already. We took these photos in Malibu this week. I’m having a moment, and I wanted to capture it, and there’s no-one who can do it better than she. 

I turn 34 this Sunday and I’m having some big feelings. It was the age Tom was when he died, and a lot is coming up for me right now. Not really in grief for him so much as HOLY SHIT how much your life can change in 5 years. Is this really my life?!

These days there’s a lot of people in my life who didn’t know Tom. I find myself downplaying it at times, but that whole experience was so big for me. It was such a catalyst, seeing the closest person in my life dead in front of me, someone who was always going to be there. Until he wasn’t.

And truthfully, it was never about him. I now see it as the gift I got to receive as young as I did, the reminder that I GET to be alive. I AM alive. And at any moment I might not be. It liberated me to live. To truly live. 

So there have been many tears, but they are ones of gratitude. Of so many aspects which finally feel like they’re landing in the flesh. Of all these dreams I have whispered at night and shouted into the sunset, all these dreams I have written into journals and poetry and letters to myself I burned up in flames. 

photo by Lauren Purves - yes I will receive birthday gifts THANK YOU

I am having a moment. A REAL moment, of being ALIVE.

Today. Right now in this moment. A new moon has arrived. A new lunar year in fact. The year of the dragon is upon us, and my GOD do I feel like one.

I'll be sat naked in a hot springs on Sunday, celebrating being alive to it all. Because HOLY FIRE I did not turn away from the fear. I did not turn away from any of it.

And I now get to hold your hand and say YES it’s scary, but let’s do it anyway, I promise I PROMISE it’s all going to be ok. 

LET’S RUN INTO THE FLAMES AND LAUGH ABOUT IT ALREADY.

We’re here to find our heartbeats. 

We’re here to find our dreams. 

What is your dream? What do you really want to be doing?

French kiss it already.

—Holly Gottlieb (Founder, Whole Collective)

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photo by Pete Vlastelica - Pete shared some cool stuff about breathwork, below.

Corporate Counter Culture

Conversations around passion and purpose and navigating the hard things in life… this is a series of Q&As with business leaders and folks of an ‘esteemable nature’ about the stuff going on inside their heads:

• Creative sage, Dersu Rhodes, on honesty as a super power

• Investor, Pete Vlastelica, on why breathwork practice is a crucial business tool

• Chief People Officer, Matt O’Leary’s journey with mental health

• Copywriter, Kyle Thierrman, on why learning to be funny is the best thing you can do for yourself

• Design guru, John Couch, on the importance of being radically yourself

• Brand master, Charlie Hart, on why your fart doesn’t smell that good