Backp☮rch Tapes TV

The Lady in the White Dress.

There is a photograph of Spahn’s Ranch that most people have never seen.
No ghosts.
No darkness.
No mythology yet.

Just a woman in a dress, standing in front of a brand-new sign, smiling.

This was long before the Ranch became a container for other people’s nightmares. Before its name was shortened into a headline. Before it learned how to carry the weight of projection. In this image, the land hasn’t been asked to hold anyone’s fear yet.

The woman looks happy. Comfortable. Present.
The sign behind her doesn’t whisper danger, it advertises possibility.
A motion picture ranch. Livestock. Equipment.
A place ready to make dreams.

And that’s the part history forgot.

Today, people walk this land hunting for shadows. They bring cameras, expectations, and fear already preloaded. They look for hauntings, for darkness, for proof that something terrible still lingers here. But the land doesn’t hold emotion the way people do. The land corrects itself. Always has.

What people feel here isn’t what’s in the ground.
It’s what they carried in with them.

I’ve been here hundreds of times. Most days, what you find isn’t dread, it’s quiet. Trees. Wind. Coyotes moving like punctuation through the hills. A place where the city loosens its grip and your thoughts finally can catch up with you.

It’s beautiful.

But people don’t come looking for beauty when they already decided what they want to see.

That’s exactly how shadows work.

We are fascinated by other people’s darkness because it feels safer than meeting our own. We will walk alone through a place soaked in history, follow ghost stories into the night, even flirt with danger, before we will sit quietly with the parts of ourselves we keep pacified, distracted, and unnamed.

Your own shadow is far more terrifying than a horror movie.
Because it knows your voice.
It knows your patterns.
And it waits patiently.

That’s why places like Spahn’s become convenient. They are appropriate containers. You can point and say there it is, without ever asking why am I drawn to it?

Energy always gives you away.
How you show up is the image you project.
People who can read energy don’t need the story, you paint the picture for them just by standing there.

The truth is, you’re not hiding from anyone but yourself.

Why are you at war with your own thoughts?
Why do your desires feel like enemies?
Why does silence feel heavier than noise?

I don’t know who the woman in the photograph is. It could be Ruby Pearl, younger, before the years piled on. Or maybe she was just someone passing by Santa Susana Pass Road who stopped, smiled, and unknowingly preserved a version of history that would later be buried.

If this photograph hadn’t survived, no one would remember that the Ranch once stood for creation instead of destruction. That it once advertised opportunity, not infamy.

Life works the same way.

We all begin as fresh images. Then shadows arrive. Reputations form. Narratives harden. Eventually, the version of you with the most impact replaces every other version you ever were. The early pictures fade. The sign changes. Horses for rent. Work cheap.

It’s hard to outlive a shadow once it’s been named for you.

Most people encounter Spahn’s first through books and headlines, not through walking it. So when they arrive, they don’t see the land, they see themselves reflected back through the lens they brought with them. Chaos feels present only if you came searching for it.

I can’t say I haven’t done the same. I’ve walked these grounds looking for shadows too. And just like life, when you hunt for them long enough, you’ll always find a reflection.

But reflections are not origins.

This may look like a story about an old photograph.
It isn’t.

It’s a parable about avoidance.

People will step into history’s shadows without hesitation, but won’t place even one toe into the darkness of their own interior life. That kind of exploration demands honesty. And honesty dismantles the masks we rely on to function.

Spahn’s Ranch feels like a fairy tale because it sits between worlds. Five minutes from Los Angeles. One foot in nature. One foot in myth. From the same spot, you can see the Garden of the Gods and the mouth of Devil’s Canyon.

Maybe that irony was always written into the land.
Or maybe it’s written into us.

No one ever truly owned this place. Everyone tried. The land always took itself back. Returned to its wild, unfinished state. A child that refused to grow up.

And maybe that’s the lesson.

You don’t own your shadow.
You integrate it... or it owns you.

So when you look at this woman in the dress, smiling at the beginning of something unmarked, ask yourself:

What version of you came before the story you’re known for?
What shadow are you studying instead of your own?
And if you stopped looking outward, what might finally be revealed?

Yeah… that’s what I see here.

What do you see?

1 day ago | [YT] | 121

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

Life is Rendering...

This post is the movie you’re already in.

Imagine, for a moment, that this is a movie.

Not a metaphor, an actual film.
And you’re in it.

Every move you’ve ever made that felt like an action was really a reaction.
A line delivered from a script written long before you ever questioned it.

This isn’t me telling you that.
This is you imagining it... if you can.

Because imagination is where all movies begin.

There’s a photograph that doesn’t fit the script.
Charles Manson standing at the altar of a church.
Not as the villain.
Not as the monster.
Just a man who worked there, liked the preacher, felt at home in a place most people never associate with his name.

He grew up in church.
He was deeply spiritual.
But that version of him was edited out of the film.

Every movie needs a villain.
And society needed one badly at that moment in time.

So he gladly played the part.

Just like in Hollywood, the man cast as the villain doesn’t usually go home evil. He takes off the costume, washes off the makeup, and blends back into ordinary life. But this wasn’t Hollywood. There was no behind-the-scenes featurette. No alternate cut released to the public.

Only one version was allowed on screen.

And it worked.

The movie did what it was supposed to do:
Calm the audience.
Neutralize the fear.
Give chaos a single face.

But again, you know already, this post isn’t really about him.

It’s about you.

Because in this film, I’m an actor too.
The writer.
A character playing a role so this scene can exist for you to watch.

Even this post is a performance.

That doesn’t make it fake.
It makes it functional.

Here’s the part most people miss:

You’re not actually the character in the movie
at least not yet.

First, you’re the projector.

Life is the screen.
And what you’re seeing render in front of you right now is the movie you’ve been projecting, based on everything you were taught, everything you absorbed, everything you never questioned.

Where God fits in that story.
Where God doesn’t.
Who’s good.
Who’s evil.
Who belongs where.

That’s why some images feel “out of place.”
They don’t match the script you were handed.

One day, someone might tell you those images are fake. AI. Manipulated. Impossible.
But you saw them with your own eyes.

And still... this is a movie.

Manson was a main character in it for a long time.
Like it or not.

In some people’s films, he’s the ultimate villain.
In others, something closer to a mirror.
But those are just different edits of the same footage.

None of it is reality in the way you think.

Reality is the act of projection.

Most people think they’re the lead character by default.
They jump into the scene, say the lines, hit their marks and never realize they’re playing background.

Filling space.
Making the world look busy.
Making someone else’s story feel real.

They’re excited just to be in the movie.

And that’s okay.
Every film needs background players.

But here’s the shift:

You don’t become the lead by trying harder inside the script.

You become the lead by realizing
you were never the character to begin with.

You’re the one running the projector.

When you step back and observe the character you’ve been playing, something changes. You start noticing patterns. Motives. Reactions. The same loops, the same scenes, the same endings.

And with that distance comes empathy.

For yourself.
For others.
Even for characters you were told to hate.

You stop typecasting, yourself included.

You stop replaying the same old movie with a different title.

The film that said Charles Manson was a friend of the devil, or worse, the devil himself, that was a role. A necessary one, maybe. But still a role.

Look closer and you may see something else entirely:
The source.
The sun.
God, fractured into tiny pieces, trying to experience itself.

Including through you.

You are the source experiencing itself as you.
Projecting through you.
Watching itself back.

But you won’t hear that clearly in noise.

Only silence lets you choose the film.

So ask yourself:

What movie have you been projecting?
A love story?
A horror film?
A drama you call “just life”?

And whose movie have you been acting in lately?

Because most people aren’t living in their own film at all.

They’re extras in someone else’s.

This post won’t tell you what to do.
It’s already part of the movie... now in the past.

But if you’re watching closely,
it might feel less like dialogue
and more like direction.

And if this post feels unsettling, Bingo, that’s because it should.

You are the main character.

You always were.

You just forgot... you were also the one holding the camera.

5 days ago | [YT] | 188

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

What Soap Cannot Touch.

Most people blame their problems on someone else.

A person. A system. A past season that no longer exists except as a story they keep retelling. And while everyone has problems, some lives feel heavier, amplified, as if chaos follows them from room to room.

It isn’t bad luck.
It’s bad guidance.

Advice today is everywhere. Cheap. Endless. Offered casually by people who will never be around to live with the outcome. Advice is handed out like flyers, and most people collect it without asking where it came from or where it’s trying to take them.

I’ve known one of the most influential cult figures of all time personally. But this story isn’t about him. It’s about all the others who never get a name. The voices you trusted. The ideas you absorbed. The opinions that made an imprint on your life without ever asking permission.

Every influence leaves a mark.
An imprint you are eventually responsible for recognizing and filling correctly.

People don’t get lost all at once. They drift. They follow patterns that feel familiar. They call them irony. Déjà vu. Coincidence. Anything except what they are: "Signals".

The universe does half the work for you.
It always has.

But it only meets you halfway if you show up. And when it’s time to show up, most people don’t. They avoid it with noise. With distraction. With explanations. They fill the dead space with movement so they never have to sit inside it.

That’s the mistake.

Because the dead space is where everything reveals itself.

The quietest place on earth isn’t remote, it’s internal. Silence in your own mind. Not meditating to become something. Not thinking to solve something. Just observing. Watching your patterns move past without naming them, excusing them, or blaming them.

When you do that long enough, something changes. You stop blaming the past. You stop fighting old seasons. You start seeing where one lesson ended and another one began.

And that’s when blame collapses entirely.

You can blame every guru you’ve ever listened to. Every influence that pointed you the wrong way. But you are ignoring the one voice that agreed to follow. The one that stayed when it should have left. The one that said yes quietly and kept going.

That voice was yours.

This isn’t about guilt. Or fault. Or being right or wrong. Seasons exist to teach, not to punish. But if you keep blaming a season that already ended, you miss the one trying to begin.

Most people don’t need better advice.
They need better listening.

Not outward. Inward.

Because the moment you stop outsourcing your direction, life becomes simpler. Lighter. Not because it’s easy but because you’re no longer dragging blame behind you like an anchor.

You don’t need a new guru.
You don’t need a new story.

You need silence long enough to recognize the pattern you’ve been repeating and the awareness to step out of it without drama.

That’s how you move forward with ease.

And that’s the lesson most people keep walking past, while searching everywhere else for someone to blame.

Manson again is just a background character. A shadow cast large enough to make others feel small. The real subject has always been the reader. The patterns they refuse to see. The season they are blaming instead of learning from.

You can stay angry at the past.
Or you can sit quietly with it and notice what it was trying to teach you.

Blame keeps you stuck in the wrong season.
Awareness lets you move forward with ease.

In the end, every story tells you exactly where you are if you are quiet enough to listen.

And once again I say, if this makes you uncomfortable, dismissive, or irritated, then perhaps it has already found its intended audience.

Because the only guru you were ever waiting for
has been watching the patterns the entire time.

1 week ago | [YT] | 184

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

A Story that isn't about Him.

Most people hear the name Charles Manson and immediately think criminal mind.
And they’re not wrong.

From that position, spending any amount of time near the subject feels pointless at best and dangerous at worst. A contamination of the psyche. And that perception makes sense, from where they’re standing. But for me, understanding the criminal mind has never been about fascination with crime. It has been about understanding myself, and the people moving through the world beside me.

Yes, I collect.
But more importantly, I study life.

Life teaches relentlessly if you’re willing to sit still long enough to hear it. Especially when you begin asking yourself the questions most people avoid. Have you ever sat in a room alone with your shadow and let it speak? Not to judge it. Not to silence it. Just to listen.

We perform daily maintenance on the body without thinking, combing hair, brushing teeth, straightening what can be seen. Yet people walk through the world every day with entire neglected departments of the soul. Untouched. Unquestioned. Unexamined.

Being close to this subject... by choice, I found it stimulating not because of the familiar cops-and-robbers narrative, but because that part is a child’s game. What fascinated me was the psyche. The psychology beneath the story. How it applies not to them, but to us.

Observing long enough, listening closely enough, you begin to see that this story baffled everyone. Even some of the people inside it. And when you look carefully, you notice the light that leaks through the cracks of its foundation. Truth doesn’t usually arrive whole, it slips through fractures.

The more something is observed, the more real it becomes. And what has become “real” about the Manson Family is largely hypothetical, constructed ideas used as ammunition in a society already watching the family unit collapse. What better face to place on “family” once it no longer served the machine that depended on it?

The story worked because it needed to.

Manson became a trigger for the shadow. Because the shadow always rushes in to defend you. It compares. It reassures. It whispers: You are not like him. You are more moral. You could never do such things.

That is what the shadow is good at... keeping you safe.

But when you sit with it long enough, really sit with it, you begin to understand something unsettling: the things that make you most afraid, most angry, most disgusted are often the things you carry quietly within your own soul.

I don’t know if it was the shadow in the photograph that inspired this, or simply the fact that I have already sat with mine. But I can tell you this, sitting with your shadow is far worse than sitting in a cell with Manson himself. The shadow tells you things you don’t want to hear. It reminds you of truths you buried. It tells you it was standing right beside you, watching, every time you pretended not to know.

You can hide many things from the world.
You cannot hide anything from your shadow.

And if you’ve already cried with it, argued with it, fought it, then you already understand what I’m writing about. If this sounds like nonsense, if it feels uncomfortable or dismissible, then perhaps this story was never meant for me at all.

Maybe the Manson Family was created for you.

Because I understand now that the people they were are no different from the people we become when we stop listening to ourselves. If the word shadow bothers you, call it consciousness. It is simply that part of the subconscious that convinces you that you are better than the next person. It lies to you gently, to keep you sane.

When I notice what angers me about the Manson story, I treat it as information. A nerve struck usually points inward. Seen whole, the entire narrative becomes a microcosm of life itself.

It doesn’t matter what the story is.

In the end, every story is about the reader.

I, the writer, simply use the Manson Family as background characters, while the real subject remains what it always was: the shadow, the abyss, and the reason I looked into it in the first place.

1 week ago | [YT] | 146

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The Witness and the Shadow.

You are standing in a moment where a beginning and an ending occupy the same breath.
Most people never stay here long enough to recognize it. They run, back to what they were... even when what they were no longer fits the shape of who they are becoming.

That urge to return is not loyalty.
It is the ego sensing its own expiration.

When real change begins, it doesn’t knock.
The unconscious does not ask permission.
Meaning drains first, quietly, like embers cooling after a fire has already done its work.
What follows is numbness. Fear. A strange internal collapse.
Not because something is wrong
but because something has finished.

This is what an identity fracture feels like.

You don’t recognize yourself.
You feel out of place.
You may even feel broken.

You are.

But not in the way you think.

The shadow has arrived not to destroy you, but to crack the shell you outgrew.
The ego hardens to protect. Consciousness requires space.
Something must give.

The signs are there, and still you hesitate.
You want the old self back, not because it was good,
but because it was familiar.
Even if you hated the song, you knew all the words.

The unconscious clings to repetition.
Pain, when known, feels safer than freedom imagined.
So you tell yourself you must stay strong, stay armored, stay sharp,
never noticing that strength has become a reflex,
and the reflex has become a prison.

You can decide to change a thousand times.
But the moment pressure appears, hypersensitivity takes the wheel.
That’s not failure, that’s programming.

Your nervous system is loyal to what it survived.

The truth is, the ego doesn’t create ideas.
Ideas capture the ego.
Every story you’ve told yourself since you were young,
about who you are, what you lack, what you must defend,
gets replayed daily, unloaded from past into future,
with the ego acting as the archivist.

Fate, then, is nothing mystical.
It’s just an old filter you forgot you were still using.

A new reality does not respond to an outdated self.
You say you want new goals but are they new,
or are they recycled desires from a version of you that no longer exists?

Because you are not what you promise.
You are what you repeat.

And the question isn’t whether the old self will disappear.
It’s whether you will let it lead…
or allow it to drag you back.

This is not a war against yourself.
It is observation.

Why must you always be the warrior?
There is no need for armor in peace.
Fear of judgment is often just fear of being left behind.
Shrinking to feel safe isn’t humility, it’s memory reflexes.
A time when you were small and had to protect yourself.

That time has passed.
But the ego keeps you dressed for a battle that ended years ago.

Rebellion, defiance, the need to be seen as special,
these aren’t flaws.
They are echoes of power once taken away.

Where there is light, there is always shadow.
And often what you are hiding
is the most capable part of yourself.

Shedding the ego does not mean discarding worthless pieces.
It means returning parts to the time they belong.
Only when you see the armor
can you choose to remove it.

Seeing comes first.
Becoming follows.

Ask yourself, when fear arises:
Does this belong to now or to a kid version of me that needed it to survive?

Thinking won’t free you.
Action rewrites identity.
Each new behavior is a stitch in the self you are forming.

A comfort zone stops being safe the moment it becomes a cage.
Discomfort is not danger, it’s direction.

You need silence.
The soul doesn’t shout.
It whispers.

You are a living experiment.
So thank the old ego before you let it go.
It protected you when nothing else could.
It is not bad.
It is simply finished.

One day, you’ll notice someone familiar looking back at you
and realize it’s who you were, not who you are.

Your evolution will not go unnoticed.
Those who once knew how to move you, manage you, manipulate your orbit
will suddenly feel lost.
Systems that relied on your old position will resist recalibration.
They will pull. Hard.

This is the tug-of-war between belonging and becoming.

And those moments you call coincidence?
They aren’t luck.
They’re alignment.

Your frequency is the algorithm.
What you stop consenting to stops finding you.
Boundaries are not enforced, they are respected
once you no longer vibrate at the level that required defense.

You can now bring both light and shadow into the room.
Growth is not betrayal.

But returning to the old ego
when your deeper self is calling you forward,
that is abandonment.

The journey is not easy.
But the cost of standing still
is often far greater.

2 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 194

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

Brand New (a Parable Of Going Nowhere)

Every day, I am brand new.

Charles Manson said that once in an interview. It landed as entertainment to most people, maybe even nonsense. Coming from him, it was never going to be heard as wisdom. People decide first what something is, then refuse to notice anything that doesn’t match the decision. That’s fine. There’s no wrong in it. It’s all perception, what is, and what isn’t.

Today, I am brand new.

I haven’t written anything for several days, and that was brand new too. I wasn’t quitting. I was resting. Recharging the battery. Rebooting the system. Checking to make sure I wasn’t running on default settings.

I went somewhere everyone needs to go, but almost nobody does. I didn’t take a picture of it. It doesn’t show up on a map. It’s inside.

I tried to follow the flow of water in my body the way a captain watches a dam, quietly, patiently, waiting to see where the pressure shifts and where it settles back again. Every drink became Niagara Falls, because when you’re brand new, there are no limitations. Water rushes into streams we call limbs and organs, creating ripples, reflections, drips. It’s less about pretending and more about feeling. Imagining where something goes, how it gets there, and what it does once it arrives.

One drink of water can be brand new, depending on how you drink it. One day can be brand new, depending on how you wake up.

That kind of waking up takes the mind of a child. And there are far too many distractions now for that to happen by accident.

People aren’t lost so much as they’re bored. And boredom has been mislabeled as an enemy. So the moment it shows up, it gets drowned out. Scroll. Swipe. Refresh. Noise to cover the quiet before the quiet has a chance to say anything.

Being brand new sounds like work. It sounds inconvenient. Easier to run the checklist instead: Wake up. Use the commode. Drink coffee. Drive to work. Work. Rush home to relax, not because anything was accomplished, but because you’re tired.

And when there’s finally time to sit with yourself, impatience takes over. Doom scrolling begins. The news plays on a loop. Anything to entertain thoughts instead of listening to them. Anything to avoid the place inside where answers don’t arrive as headlines.

Years pass like that. One day you notice you’re fifty, and you’ve been scrolling for a very long time.

If someone asked me for advice and nobody needs to... I’d say this anyway: Become brand new. Learn from yesterday. Restart.

The brain is a computer. Not metaphorically. Functionally. It needs downloads. Those don’t come from feeds. They come from sitting with yourself. From imagining. From boredom. From letting the system idle long enough to notice what’s running underneath.

And then it needs a restart. That pause where everything shuts down long enough for the information to process.

When was the last time you imagined something brand new? That’s a download.

When was the last time you slept on a decision instead of reacting to it? That’s a restart.

Or have you had the system running since birth, defaults untouched, updates turned off, never powering down long enough to notice the bugs?

I sat with myself for a while. I let some new things install. I shut the system down.

Now it’s back online. Fewer glitches. Runs quieter. Runs faster.

That’s where I’ve been.

So let me ask you this, when the notification pops up and says New updates available, are you pressing Later again?

Are you running brand new?

Or the same old version, still loaded with bugs you’ve gotten used to calling normal?

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 181

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The Manson Curse Isn’t What You Think...

Many people have entered Charles Manson’s life.
Most leave carrying something with them, residue. Sometimes it stains their character. Sometimes it rewrites their identity.

When I walked out of Superior Court for the first time, the media asked me what I thought about the people entering the case. I didn’t hesitate.

“It’s a curse.”

Most assumed I was giving them what they wanted, something dramatic, something quotable. But I wasn’t talking about Manson. I was talking about life. About patterns. About what I had already watched happen again and again in this story.

People lose themselves here.

They don’t notice it happening because it doesn’t arrive loudly. It doesn’t jump out from behind a curtain. It invites you in using your own voice. Your own words. Your own certainty.

I’ve been an observer for a long time. Long enough to recognize when someone is stepping into danger, not because of where they are, but because of how they are thinking. The words they use. The identity they start trying to defend.

Like moths to a flame, people drift closer to what they believe is power, importance, proximity to something “big.” But it’s not magic in the way people imagine. It’s life itself, just amplified. And when you sit long enough in silence, the pattern becomes obvious.

That’s when you realize: the curse doesn’t trap you.

You walk into it.

I learn new things about this case all the time. But when it comes to this curse, I’m not guessing. I’m not speculating. I’m the witness.

Manson understood it too.

He didn’t have a rulebook for avoiding it, but he knew it existed. Sometimes he hinted at it... if he liked you. Other times he let you walk straight into it. His attention could delay the effect for a while, even shield someone temporarily. But delay isn’t prevention. In some cases, it only strengthened the eventual collapse.

The irony is that when Manson spoke plainly, people dismissed him as mad. Society teaches us to do that. We’re trained to ignore eccentric ideas, to label them dangerous or foolish before listening. So people didn’t hear him, they heard their mother’s fear, Bugliosi’s mythology, their own ego whispering that they were smarter, immune, in control.

That thinking leads you directly into the curse.

Not because Manson sets traps, but because people can’t recognize when they’ve stopped observing and started identifying. I’ve seen it happen repeatedly, people convinced they were directing the story, unaware they had already stepped inside it.

When I said “curse,” some laughed. Others thought it was theatrical, childish, fairy-tale language. But it is a curse, just not a supernatural one. It works like magic because attention works like magic.

Bugliosi himself noticed it when he said time slowed so much in the courtroom it felt like his watch had stopped. That wasn’t fantasy. That was focus. When all attention collapses into a single object, time doesn’t disappear, it becomes irrelevant.

You can test this yourself.

Sit somewhere quiet. Look at a watch with moving hands. Close your eyes and place your attention fully somewhere else... vividly. A beach. The sound of waves. The weight of the sun. Stay there. Observe. When your mind wanders, notice it and return.

After ten or fifteen minutes, open your eyes.

The hands will appear suspended. When they move, they’ll seem slow, unnatural. You didn’t stop time. You changed your relationship to it.

That’s not magic. That’s reality.

And that’s how the curse works.

Manson was never the curse. The curse lives around him. It didn’t affect him nearly as much as it affects those who get close without awareness. The latest to fall into it was Freeman. I said it publicly the first day... he’d be swallowed by it. And he was.

Not because of bad luck. Because of the words he chose. Because of the moment he stepped into the “I Am.”

That’s the danger.

This isn’t about picking on anyone. I’m not judging. I’m observing.

And this isn’t just about Manson.

It’s about you.

The same curse that captures people in that orbit is the one people place on themselves every day, quietly, casually, without realizing it.

So try this instead of watching others.

Watch yourself.

Right now, you’re mostly running on default. Programs written long before you were aware of them. Begin observing your thoughts without judging them. Ask: Where did that come from? Is that mine? Or was it handed to me?

Notice how often you say “I am.”

I am broke.
I am tired.
I am unlucky.

Those aren’t descriptions. They’re commands.

You’re not stating a condition, you’re declaring a program. And the universe is remarkably obedient. It will give you exactly what you ask for.

Say “I am broke” long enough and you will be. Guaranteed. Then you’ll wonder why nothing ever changes.

That’s the curse.

But here’s the part no one tells you, it works both ways.

Instead of “I am broke,” try “I am open to wealth.”
Instead of “I am exhausted,” try “I am learning to rest.”

Same structure. Different outcome.

You’re spelling your life all day long. Spells are just words charged with belief. If you’re going to do something witchy, at least make sure you’re not doing it to yourself.

There are two poles to everything, negative and positive. Curse and blessing. Fear and awareness.

The difference isn’t the world.

It’s the observer.

I am the observer.

Now, so are you.

3 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 218

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

Who Peed in your Cheerio's ?

People talk a lot about disrespect online.
Someone says something sharp, cruel, unnecessary and we call it that. Disrespect. As if it’s something that can be taken from us without permission.

But that’s the first illusion.

How can anyone disrespect me?
They can’t unless I hand them the power by reacting.

That’s the trap. And it’s a good one.
It captures almost everyone eventually.

Social media is not neutral ground. It is not a town square. It is not a conversation. It’s a system designed around engagement, and nothing engages like emotion, especially the darker kind. Some of the people inside it are so tangled in their own torment that expecting them to behave normally inside something already unnatural makes no sense. That doesn’t excuse it. It just explains it.

This image reminds me of those people.
Not because she is that person but because her expression carries that familiar tension. Locked. Loaded. Ready to fire something meant to shock, sting, or provoke. That’s how those comments feel when they land. Not thoughtful. Not curious. Just explosive.

When I write, I’m not trying to teach anyone anything.
I’m trying to prove something to myself. Sometimes I’m reminding myself. Sometimes I’m testing an idea. Sometimes I’m just watching my own thinking happen. That’s the ritual. And somewhere inside that process, the reader recognizes themselves not because I wrote it for them, but because life is doing the writing through all of us.

I know the contradiction you’re already forming.
“You just said you write for yourself and now you’re saying it’s written for me.”

Both are true.

Everything we read is filtered through our own history. Our fears. Our beliefs. Our families. Our jobs. Our identities. By the time the words land, they’ve already become ours. We rewrite them internally. We always do. That’s control whether we realize it or not.

Most people online are out of control.
Not in a dramatic sense, in a subtle one. The moment you post something and invite the public to respond, you’ve entered a system with rules most people don’t understand. And ignorance of the rules doesn’t protect you from the consequences of playing.

I know comments.
I’ve been posting about a subject people don’t like to sit with for sixteen years. I’ve seen every version of attack, mockery, accusation, and projection there is. It took time, but eventually the pattern became obvious. And once you see it, it loses its grip.

I removed myself from social media entirely.
I disappeared from YouTube for over two years. There’s a visible gap if anyone looks. Ironically, it was during a time when attention was high and momentum was easy. But none of that mattered. I like YouTube but I don’t need it. And the comments weren’t even why I left.

Everything I do here is for me.
Because I enjoy it. Because I want to. That’s the part people pretend isn’t true about their own lives. But it is. And the reader knows it, even if they don’t say it out loud.

Now, this is where the trolls come in.

That moment when you read a comment and feel it hit.
The immediate urge to respond. To defend. To strike back sharper. It feels justified. It feels necessary. It feels automatic.

And that’s how the loop starts.

You respond.
They respond back.
You escalate.
They escalate better.

You never win, because there is no opponent.

You’re not engaging with them.
You’re engaging with yourself.

The comment did its job the moment you reacted. From that point on, everything typed is emotional momentum feeding itself. You’re not convincing anyone. You’re trying to stabilize something inside you that got touched.

That’s why it feels personal.

But here’s the part most people miss:
If it upset you, it was already there.

The comment didn’t create the wound... it pointed at it. The ego rushes in to defend, and we call that strength. But there’s another option that requires far less effort.

Next time, don’t defend it.
Observe it.

Read the comment as if you said it to yourself. Because chances are, you already have or worse. Sit with the reaction. Locate the button that got pushed. Not to fix it. Not to justify it. Just to see it.

Those buttons belong to you.
Not to the commenter. Not to the platform. Not to the algorithm.

And yes, the algorithm is watching. It doesn’t care what you believe. It cares what keeps you engaged. If anger holds your attention, more anger will find you. If conflict keeps you typing, conflict will multiply. Not because it’s personal, but because it’s efficient.

Some people are arguing with bots.
Some are arguing with reflections.
Some may be arguing with no one at all.

Strip it down far enough and it gets unsettling.

What if this whole thing is mostly illusion?
What if the only thing that’s consistently real in the exchange is you?

If that’s true, then arguing in the comments becomes pointless.
Because you’re not fighting them.

You’re talking to yourself.

And once you see that, the silence stops feeling like weakness.
It starts feeling like control.

4 weeks ago | [YT] | 130

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

Happy New Year (I Guess)

Thinking about time will make you old. That’s a fact.
It marks you neatly, one line stacked on top of another, like dusty boxes of paperwork waiting to be recycled. Dates. Years. Proof you were here and that something expects something from you now.

I’ve been thinking about this because people keep telling me Happy New Year, and for some reason it makes me uncomfortable to say it back. I usually nod, or say thanks, or mumble “same to you,” like I’m responding to a question I don’t believe in but don’t feel like arguing about at the checkout line.

Nothing feels new just because someone says it is.

It’s like your parents handing you the family station wagon when you turn sixteen and saying, Here’s your new car.
The same car you threw up pizza in.
The same car your brother crapped himself in on the way home.
Sure, it’s new to you, but it carries receipts.

So yeah... Happy New Year.

See, I’m one of those people. The kind you probably shake your head at. I don’t fall neatly in line with what society agrees we’re supposed to feel, and that’s probably why I got along with Charles Manson as well as I did. I believed all his bullshit before he ever bothered to explain it, because Oz never actually gave the Tin Man anything he didn’t already have.

But back to the New Year.

It’s not just the American version or the Gregorian calendar that I don’t buy into. I don’t believe in years at all. I do believe in beginnings, though. We get one every morning we wake up. That deserves celebration. Happy new day. That feels honest.

Every morning you open your eyes is a gift, from God, or consciousness, or whatever name you’re comfortable using. God works for me. Every day.

So why years? Why slice life into neat chunks unless the system needs it that way? Last year. This year. Due this year. Late this year. Insurance resets. Taxes reset. DMV fees reset. Funny how nothing spiritual gets lighter, but the bills do.

I don’t need the New Year.
They do.

Time starts to look like a scam when you stare at it long enough. What do you even need it for?
To get to work on time?
To pay your bills on time?
What does doing time even mean?

Aren’t we all doing time in one way or another?

They tell you time stops in prison, but that’s another illusion you’re supposed to believe. Time keeps moving. The world changes. The only difference is who gets to witness it. And is missing those changes actually a punishment or just a different seat on the ride?

I’m sitting here looking at a baby picture of one of the Manson Family girls, thinking about how fast time flies. Then realizing maybe it doesn’t fly at all. Maybe it stands perfectly still while we grow through it, like everything else born from the Big Bang, drifting through space, changing shape, pretending clocks are in charge.

Maybe time isn’t real.
Maybe it’s currency.

You might be thinking, Yeah, okay he is one of those people.
But what even is one of those people?

If you don’t know one in your own family, I’ve got news for you, you might be one too. You feel it in your bones. Things don’t land right. The stories don’t quite stick. Everyone else nods, but something in you doesn’t.

And that doesn’t mean anything is wrong.

In fact, it might all be perfect, depending on how you feel it. If the New Year feels fresh to you, good. Celebrate it. That’s perfect for you. If it doesn’t, that’s not wrong either. You’re just running on a different schedule.

No need to ruin it for anyone else. They aren’t wrong. They’re just on a different clock.

I noticed last year no one told me Happy Birthday. That was by design. Even I forgot what day it was. Besides, my birthday was a long time ago. I was there, technically but I don’t remember much. You’d have to ask my mom.

Birthdays are just another way to track you. Another notch. Another reminder that time is supposedly winning. I watched it happen to the girls I went to school with celebrating the ages they were told they were, until one day they reminded me of their mothers who once walked them to school. Nothing wrong with that. I just noticed it.

I don’t track time much.

So instead of Happy New Year, I’ll say this:
Happy new day.

Today you can do magic.
Today you’re brand new.
Today you are amazing and capable of anything you decide to spend yourself on.

Because whether time exists or not, you do.

1 month ago | [YT] | 106

Backp☮rch Tapes TV

The Curse.

In every story there’s a villain and a hero, but what most people miss is that the role isn’t assigned, it’s chosen. Same with curses. A curse doesn’t need to be cast. It already exists, floating around like bad weather. The mistake is claiming it, naming it, reacting to it. Once you do that, it recognizes you right back.

The trick... if there is one... is humor.

Humor keeps you out of the spell. Anger invites it in.

This isn’t a story about someone who wields curses. It’s about recognizing them in the air, watching the potions mix on their own, and refusing to drink. Observation instead of participation. Laughter instead of reaction. That’s how you stay in control while everything else loses it.

Which brings me to Death Valley.

Hillbilly days. Several years back. The photo now looks iconic in a way we never intended, Charles Manson’s guitar propped in the foreground like some desert relic, Josh dancing a hillbilly jig around it as if the messiah had returned, but only to Appalachia. I’m wearing hoochy... hillbilly-brand gouache, the kind meant for stills and long nights. In the background there’s Roger, maybe singing Take Me Home, Country Roads. Or maybe not. I don’t really remember. At this point I just let the picture tell me what it wants and fill in the rest.

Honestly, none of that was happening.

But you can see it, can’t you?

That’s the thing about photographs, they don’t tell you what happened, they invite you to imagine what could have. This one just happens to look like joy, and joy is usually accurate.

What I can tell you is this: people were laughing. That part is real. I make it a point, sometimes a quest, to get people laughing, especially when things could tilt the other way. Laughter is medicine, but it’s also armor. And off-frame were a few more people, most of them laughing, all of us looking like hillbillies, and at least one of us, me, actually was one.

Life is funnier than people give it credit for. Whatever this is, whatever we’re all pretending to understand, it’s pretty funny if you stop taking it personally. Miss the joke and everything feels cursed. Catch it, and suddenly nothing sticks.

Now here’s the true part. The part I have witnesses for.

We had claimed a comfortable little spot in Death Valley, prime real estate, as much as anything can be prime out there. In the desert, if you claim a spot, it’s yours… unless a bully shows up and decides it isn’t.

That’s exactly what happened.

Ten, maybe fifteen massive trailer trucks rolled in, nearly semis, each dragging twenty-five-foot trailers. They lined up at the end of the road and just sat there, engines rumbling, staring us down. And when I say “us,” I mean two tents, a camper truck, a Jeep, and a handful of people who were very clearly in the middle of where these guys wanted to be in the middle of nowhere.

Then they moved.

They pulled in around us, surrounding the camp, unloading four-wheelers, turning the quiet of the valley into mechanical chaos. I could feel it. The desert doesn’t like that kind of noise. Neither do I.

So I smiled and said, “We could always put a Manson Family curse on them.”

People laughed. Nervous laughter at first. Tension laughter. The kind that keeps things from tipping over.

And wouldn’t you know it, after unloading all their toys, the entire crew decided to take off riding. All of them. Every last loud one. They disappeared into the valley, leaving behind only a few quiet guys who didn’t bother us at all.

I reaffirmed the “curse,” mostly as a joke. Everyone agreed the invasion was disrespectful. They needed to go. And for a long while, they did.

It wasn’t until after dark that we heard them again.

That’s when the desert carried voices like radio signals, and suddenly we were all listening. One guy was talking about a freak accident. His shoulder, no longer where a shoulder should be. Thrown clean out of place when his four-wheeler hit some mysterious berm in the road.

Medical emergency. Panic. Two hours from help.

They loaded him up and left. Most of them went with him.

Once again, only the quiet ones remained.

Now, one of the women with us jokingly claimed she was a witch, I said I am too, which is probably why the word “curse” entered the conversation at all. It was humor. A pressure valve. Nothing more.

And yet, we watched it all unfold without lifting a finger.

The desert has secrets. Things buried. Stories layered under sand. And, as it turns out, a few of my own contributions.

You see, that first quiet morning I woke up and remembered, there are no restrooms in Death Valley. You bring a shovel. You bring your own paper. That’s the deal.

There was an old fire pit nearby with stones arranged for sitting. I repurposed them. Built myself a makeshift commode. Cold stone, hole in front, worked perfectly. So perfectly, in fact, that I used it more than once.

Later, the remaining quiet guys sat around that same fire pit. Their voices carried.

They talked about expectations. About how this trip hadn’t gone right. About how their friend was still gone and they didn’t know how bad it was. And then one of them said it:

“This whole valley smells like a septic tank. I don’t remember it ever being like this. It stinks like hell. This place feels cursed.”

That’s when I knew.

You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to get angry. You don’t have to react. You don’t even have to speak it out loud.

Just notice.

Sit back. Watch. Let humor keep your emotions in check. When you do that, time slows down. Events line up. You see cause and effect in real time, like a magic trick performed badly by someone who doesn’t know they’re on stage.

That’s the curse.

And that’s how you avoid it.

If someone asks, tell them you learned it from a hillbilly in a tent in the middle of Death Valley, watching the comedy show instead of starring in the disaster.

1 month ago | [YT] | 94