39: Tao Ruspoli on Psychedelics, Consensual non-monogamy, Community & radical Living

Bombay Beach Biennale
Tao Ruspoli – IMDb

Monogamish
Oliver Stone
Timothy Leary
Dying To Know
LSD
Stan Grof – Ego dissolution
Tim Ferriss – Stan Grof
Michael Pollan – How to Change Your Mind
DMT
5-MeO-DMT
Terence McKenna
Aldous Huxley
Bombay Beach
Burning Man
Stefan Ashkenazy
Open Marriage – book
Jorge Ferrer – book
Tao Ruspoli – YouTube
Last Stop Before Chocolate Mountain
Being in the World Podcast

Giancarlo: [00:00:00] Hello, welcome to this episode of the Mango TV podcast. Today I’m so excited to have my dear friend Tau Ruspoli. Tau is a filmmaker, photographer, musician, and co founder of the Bombay Beach Biennale, an experiment in integrating art, philosophy, performance, and community building. In 2001, Tau transformed an old school bus, that’s when I met you, into a mobile digital video studio, and spent several years living and traveling in the bus.

making short films and [00:01:00] documentaries with an eclectic collective of fellow travelers. I remember those as well. It then made me the feature films fix and being in the world bought with mongoose productions. That was probably the first production of. After divorcing in 2011, which led to his last film Monogamish, Tao made his way into the desert, discovering a love for both the high desert near Joshua Tree and the low desert in the town of Bombay Beach.

In Bombay Beach, he has gathered a community of artists who are using their insight and creativity to transform a town that was most often described as post apocalyptic. The New York Times called the Bombay Beach Biennale the anti Burning Man insofar as their goal is very much to leave a trace. And, and what a trace.

Welcome 

Tao: Tao. Thank you Giancarlo. I always there was a, there was an a sense in the 1960s of, of of cinema verite, where they would like, documentaries were supposed to be like, where the camera would disappear, but this never worked because you always felt the [00:02:00] presence of the camera, right? 

Yeah.

Tao: And Someone in the 70s, I think it was Jean Rouch or some French documentarian said, we should see the camera as a catalyst for truth to emerge in a certain way that people like reveal themselves when the camera’s out in a way that they don’t otherwise. And I think that the same thing has happened with podcasting.

It’s really like a catalyst for a conversation that we should have anyway. Right? Like you’re my old friend. We haven’t talked in a long time. I think the podcast is a great catalyst to sit down and have a proper chat for an hour, which has been, we only do when I go on sailing with you usually, but now we’re, our lives have taken us too far apart.

Giancarlo: Yeah. No, but even better, when people are on the podcast, they are on their best behavior. They’re super concentrated, they listen. Yeah. You know, I discover another way to communicate with people, you know, because at parties is always this difficult. 

Agreed. 

Giancarlo: And so now I really have like, you know, when I really want to connect with someone, it’s like, listen, come on the podcast.

So I have the full attention. [00:03:00] Exactly. So. So as I was saying before, starting, you know, we share three interests. But more than share, I think we even start exploring them together. I mean, you went deeper in some of them. So the three topics are, you know sexuality and intimate relationship, psychedelics and community building.

What about filmmaking? How can 

Tao: you leave filmmaking out of that? I don’t know. I thought you were going to say that first. 

Giancarlo: I feel that if I think about you, I think about you more. as a community builder, as a filmmaker, then, then you document the, then you document your life. But you know, if I had to pick a description for you, I would say 

Tao: explore.

I don’t think we can ignore filmmaking cause that’s how our whole relationship was born. And we’ve made so many films together. And I think that the filmmaking is a medium through which some of these things happen. I think maybe filmmaking is a way [00:04:00] of. Engaging in community in a way, so we could maybe make that broader case.

But I think if we have to, if we had to pick our, our shared interests I would put filmmaking and art and then, you know, sexuality and relationships and and community above maybe psychedelic exploration, which I think is a big interest of yours. It’s a minor interest of mine, but it’s, I wouldn’t.

Call it a defining interest of mine. 

Giancarlo: I want, I want to push back a little bit on the filmmaking because, you know, what we are more interested in is what we were filming rather than filming as a medium. You know, you, you know, we did, we did, we did philosophy, we did, you know, monogamish, we did, yeah, fix.

Anyhow, it’s okay. We can, we can, we can settle on adding film. 

Tao: We’ve both, we’ve both moved, we’ve both moved on to other. Focuses right now but I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t want to deny [00:05:00] the passion with which we were engaged with filmmaking as a medium and a process. I think that that was what brought us together originally.

I mean, first, when I met you, you were very interested in. In video art more than film as a, as a traditional medium, like multi, multi channel video installations. We, we collaborated on that, but then you went back to one screen and, and I think that, that we did very beautiful things together in that way.

Giancarlo: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. But so let’s start with psychedelic because that came first. I mean, we had our first,

Tao: why are you laughing? Because you want to start with what you’re most interested in now. And I wanted to go back. I’m 

Giancarlo: just thinking, no, I’m just thinking that, you know, if you think about our friendship, you know, I love your obsession. No, I remember, I mean, you know, like you know, if I have to think Yeah, of course.

We met in New York. We did the, we did the multi channel about the bus. But I think for me, [00:06:00] those years were marked by our first LSD experience in Venice beach, where we were both a little shaken. 

Tao: Yeah. So that was, I, I had a very traumatic experience in high school. With magic mushrooms, the third time I did them, the first two times I did it, I was great.

The third time was still to this day, maybe the worst experience of my life. I went into full you know, just insanity and You know, I was brought to the hospital that, you know, the story, I think, right? I was 16 and I took too many mushrooms in the wrong circumstance. I didn’t have set and setting was all wrong.

I was fighting with my girlfriend. I was tired. I’d eaten a big meal. It was like with a bunch of people I didn’t know. It was just the worst setting you could possibly imagine. And then somebody instead of, you know, Taking care of me and bringing me down. They called 911 and they brought me to a, in an ambulance with IVs in and like in a full throes of the most intense psychedelic trip that I’ve still now that I’ve ever [00:07:00] had probably.

So I was scared off of psychedelics for 20 years after that. And then Oliver Stone approached me to do a treatment for a film on Timothy Leary that he was thinking of doing. And so I went deep into the life of Leary and I had met Timothy in, in the nineties when he was living in Coldwater Canyon and he was dying in this very interesting public philosophical way.

And and I had been very fascinated with his life journey as a, as a philosopher and experimenter and community and all the things that we’re interested in and academic. And so I thought there’s no way I could do justice. to this story or have very, any real insight into how the importance of Timothy Leary’s [00:08:00] life if I didn’t take LSD.

So I said, you know, I, I feel like maybe now as a 35 year old, instead of a 16 year old, I can handle the experience. And I had a friend, a friend who was getting his PhD at Caltech in neuroscience, and he was very enthusiastic about LSD. And he was Getting very pure acid that he was dropping on Altoids.

And the exact measurement of the micrograms and, you know, everything was just perfect. So I thought, well, this is, this is a good way to do this. And instead of doing it in a party atmosphere, I’ll do it with my good friend. My good friend being you on a Sunday morning in Venice beach. And I think my friend black Moses was with us as well.

Right? I think there was three of us. 

Yes. 

Tao: And and so we we, we, we, we, we sat down and took the acid, but you decided to take double for some reason. [00:09:00] So I think you had a very, you had a difficult experience. I actually had a very beautiful experience. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. 

Tao: Do 

Giancarlo: you remember any takeaway from. 

Tao: Yeah, I think that what I learned from that and the, you know, I did then go through a kind of enthusiastic phase of maybe not a huge amount, but maybe like, you know, eight to 10 psychedelic trips over the next few years.

And I remember thinking that there’s so many insights go by during the experience that you have to try and hang on to just one or two simple ones. Otherwise they just all get lost. So I think it’s like the most important thing is to see what, what is it trying to tell you most. Insistently, and and that to me would be something very simple, you know, like be nice life is hard.[00:10:00] 

Life is hard for everything. So we should be compassionate to other living beings. So, and just like, hold on to that as an insight and try and carry it and integrate it into the, into the rest of your life. And, and yeah, and then I think that the insight to me also was that it’s, it, there’s the, the, the, the word trip is a really appropriate one.

It’s, it’s a journey to a place that not everybody needs to go to or wants to go to, but those who do get to see a view that other people don’t get to see. I also find the experience exhausting. So I think that the most, the most apt analogy is like a climbing Mount Everest or something, or like some, like.

great hike where you’re like, Oh my God, it was felt risky. But now the view from up here is amazing. And not everybody gets to experience this. And, and I’m lucky to have this, this new perspective. Yeah, 

Giancarlo: yeah, yeah. 

Yeah. 

Giancarlo: I mean, there’s been a [00:11:00] Stan Grof was the godfather of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy went a few months ago on a podcast with Tim Ferriss and He was saying that, you know, nowadays that is the back being super popular, but people don’t take enough.

Yeah. He was saying that, you know, to have the full on ego dissolution and to go on the other side, to go through the threshold, you need 300, 400 mic, microgram. And, and, you know, we were taking maybe 50, 80, 100. And since then, I always had the desire, but also the fear to do the The full dose, you know, they are.

You know, like people can read in the Michael Pollan book, there are all these like underground sitter that, that get take you for three days, one day preparation. Then, you know, the full 400 microgram journey and then one day integration. And according to Stan Grof, that’s when you can really regress to, to, you know, [00:12:00] childhood or even prenatal or even previous life.

And that’s where you have a. You know, an ego dissolution that would allow to really get in touch with your subconscious. And I never really did that. And 

Tao: I’m scared. I think we, we, we both probably share a desire to stay somewhat grounded in our, in our reality. DMT, I think is a good way to, to get shot into that space, at least for a moment without having to commit to 12 hours.

of, of, of that rollercoaster. 

Giancarlo: But let me ask you this on, on your DMT experience, because, you know, I’ve been, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll tell you why, but recently I’ve been discussing a lot this idea of the, you know, the ego death. And so, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s still confusing to me because, you know, with 5MODMT, I went straight, I was in heaven, I was in, with God, I was in.

You know, I was, I had this [00:13:00] sense of unbound compassion and love and forgiveness. I was in heaven. I was in heaven. I felt, I knew I was in heaven. So that sounds pretty dead to me, but I had the subjective experience of being me, of being a soul, whatever that was. So you know, is this considered ego death? Or, you know, I hear friends and also from literature, that ego death is when you don’t know who you are.

You don’t know who you are. And, and, and so, did you, what kind of ego, what kind of ego, what kind of disassociation have you ever had with DMT? 

Tao: Yeah, I’ve had it, but not with 5MEO, the, the NNDMT, I haven’t done the 5MEO, which everyone keeps talking about being this really incredible experience, which I’d like to have some at some point, but the yeah, I’ve, I’ve had the, the point where I didn’t know who I was.

Or where I was, but to me that I didn’t, I kind of lost the [00:14:00] point because then I had to remember like, Oh, I’m a human, I did this thing. And then you slowly come back to your identity and then you try and grasp at this experience that you had of not being you But I don’t, it’s hard to integrate the, the significance of that.

I think that it’s, I think of, I think Terrence McKenna described LSD as relentlessly psychoanalytic. Yeah. That it’s all about you and your life and DMT, it’s like not about you. No. It’s like a moment to glimpse the, at the layered. Nature of existence that you don’t get to experience when you simplify as, you know, I think, I don’t remember who said that, like the brain is a filtering mechanism, right?

Yeah, exactly. And so we, we create this illusion of stable objects and atomic objects and like individual identities. [00:15:00] And all of that is just an illusion to allow us to. Eat and procreate and survive in this world that is way more complicated than that. So I think that what the DMT is, it gives you a moment of lifting the veil and saying, you think, you know, what’s happening.

You think, you know who you are? Like that’s hilarious. And so it’s beautiful to witness that what you do with it. I don’t know, you know, I don’t know what the answer is of, 

yeah, 

Tao: it’s like a miraculous thing to get to experience and I’m sure you get to experience it again when you die. So it’s a little preview.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. So, so I don’t know if you know that, but one of my good friend is sponsoring DMT trial. It’s not, it’s not a medical. It’s a conscious exploration trial at the Imperial College in London where he persuaded the scientists or rather the scientists Wanted to try to, instead of inject DMT, to give it as an extended state, like with, with an intravenous.[00:16:00] 

So you get this needle in your arm, and I mean, the idea is that eventually you can go in the DMT world for 10 hours. But so now they’re starting with 30 minutes. And it start, and you know, we’ve been making a documentary, and we’ve been following this psychonaut going under. You know, this has been happening for seven years.

I never volunteered because I thought, you know, even with a normal puff, sometimes this, you know, loss of identity is very uncomfortable for me. But so something happened the last few months, you know, now as I stop alcohol for 10 months. I stopped weed for a year and I had a couple of very powerful mystical experience with allotropic breath work.

And so for us, for a moment, in a moment of course, I say, okay, let’s do it. So I sign up for this experiment and and I’m, you know, I’m, I’m preparing, you know, my people that say, say, listen, I don’t even joke about [00:17:00] the fear, you know, try to. keep a solemn approach. But so yeah, the sponsor, the sponsor of this, of this experiment, he thinks that the entity you meet on the DMT in the DMT world, not only they are independent sentient beings, they’re not, they’re not, you know, they’re not a result of your imagination.

They’re independent sentient beings, but not just that. He thinks that you can develop a relationship with them, but not just that. He thinks that they can help us with our human affairs. Do you remember that movie Arrival when you have the big octopus alien that prevent World War III. No, I never saw it.

Denis Milnev. No, that’s, that’s a good movie. So, so yeah, so that’s, that’s, that’s that’s what I’m preparing to do, and you know, his point is that, you know, NASA, NASA spent billions of dollars to send rockets and send satellites and, and develop, you know, incredible telescopes and, and there is no funding for maybe [00:18:00] exploring the same you know, dimension, but internally.

Yeah. 

Giancarlo: So, so anyway, we’ll let you know. When are you doing it? So it’s a, it’s a two day, April 13 and April 26. They don’t tell you which one is the placebo. Oh wow. So I have 35 days to prepare. I have. I asked a friend of mine, I asked a spiritual teacher to guide me in the preparation in, in, in, in in, in, in, you know, working on this fear.

Good luck. I can’t wait to hear about it. Yeah. We’ll see. We’ll see what happens. But so, okay. So, but what, what about, where are you now? Tell us where you’re, you know, where you’re talking from and let’s talk a little bit about this crazy place you’ve created over there. 

Tao: The Bombay beach was. Is is a very peculiar town on the eastern shore of the Salton Sea.

The Salton Sea is the largest body of water in [00:19:00] California, and most people have never heard of it. Even people who live in California. I had never heard of it in 2008, I was in a bookstore when those still existed, and I saw a book with like a. An Airstream trailer rotting in a puddle of like orange liquid in the middle of the desert.

And it said, you know, the Salton Sea. And I was like, what the hell is this? And I said, I saw that it was three hours away from LA and it’s this vast body of water, huge, where you can’t even see the other side. It’s crazy. And a lot of people, if they have heard of it or had heard of it, they thought it was a dry lake bed, but instead it’s this vast body of water.

that was created by accident in 1903. They were damming the Colorado river to bring water to Southern California. You know, the Colorado river provides half the water for Los Angeles and San Diego and all the farms in California, all the produce that’s being grown for the [00:20:00] entire country. I think half of the produce.

Of the entire country is grown here in Imperial Valley. It all comes from the Colorado River, which is this precious source of fresh water. And they were damming it to try and control it. And there was a breach in the dam. And, and all the contents of the Colorado River were flooding accidentally into this low desert basin, which is.

250 feet below sea level and 100 years ago, it caused the only accident you can see from space, they say rather than just let it dry up the you know, the American spirit that I think both You and I find so amazing and fascinating and pioneering and full of like, you know, what point does, does entrepreneurship and, and optimism turn into like arrogance and hubris and, and the desire to dominate nature in a way that is maybe.[00:21:00] 

Not so wise that’s the question that is asked and answered at the Salton Sea because rather than say, oh my god We made a mistake People said oh we could have the best of both worlds. We could have water and desert we could have Palm Springs with fishing and boating and So built these developers built these little towns all around this body of water and they put fish and they built marinas.

And then there’s all the farming North and South of here, where, like I said, half of the produce of the country is grown here. And they said, all the water they use for the agriculture, the extra water, the runoff, we’ll just. open the taps and keep the sea full with agricultural runoff? What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the answer is everything. And you know, the salt from the ground started to enter the, the water. It’s very warm and it’s a, it’s very, there’s no natural inflow or outflow of water. So it became this. [00:22:00] Petri dish, this giant puddle of water where like algae would start to bloom like insanely, the salt levels would rise, the temperature would rise.

Suddenly the fish would start to multiply like crazy because it was full of nutrients. So you had at one point a hundred million fish. living in this sea. And then it would get too hot in the summer. And there was days when sometimes 9 million fish would die in one day, and they would all wash ashore.

And suddenly in the 90s, then the farmers were starting to put too much water in. And so the, the, there was floods and there was, I mean, it was just catastrophic on every level. Like why, why, why did they decided to put fish? Because they wanted to like have fishing, you know, like boating and fishing and the fish adapted.

So as the salt level started to rise, tilapia fish, which were freshwater fish. Suddenly living [00:23:00] in water that was more salty than the ocean or the Mediterranean Sea. But the salt levels kept rising because every year there’s some evaporation would happen and the salt would continue to increase. And now, for example, the salt, the sea is twice as salty as the ocean.

And now pretty much all the fish have died. But when I arrived in 2008, you would walk on infinite beaches of dead, like preserved fish bones. It was the most surreal thing you’ve ever seen in your life. Like literally as far as the eye could see, and you can Google image search Bombay beach dead fish. It iconic thing where people would come here.

Just to stare at the, at the catastrophe, you know, like when you want to slow down and see a car accident, it was like that, you know, like people, photographers and filmmakers were coming to see this place just because it was so [00:24:00] insanely, yeah, just wrong. Like it was described as like the apocalypse that happened here.

You have this giant, stinky. puddle of water and all the, the towns people left, but not everybody left. So Bombay beach, which is the most weird town which I’ll describe more in a minute, but it, it you know, it’s like five streets by five streets built by a developer in the 1920s or thirties. It started with 4th, 5th, A, B, C, D, as if it was New York City in the middle of the desert on the shore of this, like, bizarre lake.

And, and a thousand lots, all perfectly divided, perfectly rectangular. Again, like this, the theme of, of humans imposing their will on a nature that’s much more powerful than them. I think we can come back to psychedelics through this, this, this interaction between man and nature. So, So most people left, but not everybody left.

So when I [00:25:00] arrived in Bombay beach, it had been a town that had 3000 people. And there was now only 200 people living there. Some because they wanted to be here some because they had nowhere else to be, but it was a very, it reminded me a little bit of. Of Port au Prince in Haiti. It was very like shanty town almost.

And it seemed so peculiar for the, in the United States, here we are in the wealthiest country in the world. And there’s people living in abject poverty, completely separate from the rest of the world. No gas station for like 30 miles. You know, people going around in golf carts and it’s felt. Like a preview of everything that could possibly go wrong in the world in a tiny microcosm.

It’s like practice for the apocalypse is what it felt like. And because global warming, you have climate change, you have this intense heat, you have water shortage, you have, you know, [00:26:00] the fish die offs. You have all the things that the, the, the, the globe is witnessing. with a little bit more subtlety in most places.

You’re probably, you know, in the Mediterranean, you know about climate change, but you’re not really experiencing the dire consequences of what human beings can do. And so as an artist, a filmmaker and you know, thinker of political and philosophical ideas. I was enthralled by this place because I just found it like a confrontation with reality that I thought was just something that you don’t usually get to see, you know, and I also noticed that a lot of people were creating art here, but they weren’t, it wasn’t staying here.

They would come here, grab some images, kind of like in a state of You know, ruin porn is a term that gets tossed around where people get fascinated with, with something terrible, but then they just like grabbing images and then they’re leaving with it. [00:27:00] And I thought, this is so sad that a place that’s already so has had everything go wrong now has people extracting in a kind of colonial way extracting images.

and giving nothing back. And so it’s, I would, I started coming back here more and more often, but like in Bombay beach, there was nowhere to sleep. So nobody could stay because there’s no motels, no Airbnbs. There was nothing, you know, it was just like people were afraid to stay after dark. 

Giancarlo: How many people were living there at that time?

About 200. 200. And it was mostly people that, people with, with, with normal life, 

Tao: normal jobs, or they were like There were some eccentrics who loved the desert. Some, some people living on social security checks. Some people realizing this was the cheapest real estate in the, in the, in the country by far.

You know, you could buy a house for five or 10, 000 here. You could buy a lot of land for 500. People were putting a lot on the market and they would sit [00:28:00] on the market for seven or eight years and nobody would want to buy it. So I was married at the time and I said to Olivia, I was like, we should buy a house in this town called Bombay Beach.

And she said, why the fuck would you want to buy a house in that like God forsaken place? Like that’s a terrible idea. So when I got divorced in 2011, the first thing I did was buy a house in Bombay beach. It was like my assertion of 

Giancarlo: independence. Why were you so attracted by this decay? What do you think was?

Tao: I think, I think we, so I think as artists we’re attracted to extremes, we’re attracted to a confrontation with reality that’s not sugarcoated. We’re attracted to specificity. So there’s a, there’s a tendency in the modern world to level differences, right? We explored this idea in my film, Being in the World, right?

The idea is that every place becomes [00:29:00] Homogenized. And so when you, one way to achieve maximum efficiency in the world is to make everything the same and everything predictable. So when you go to a McDonald’s in New York or California or Rome or Beijing, it tastes exactly the same and you know exactly what to expect and there’s no surprises in price.

Everything is just very manageable and contained. When you exit a freeway on the 10 freeway, which goes from Los Angeles all the way to Florida, it’s the same at every exit. You go to the same gas station. You can go to Denny’s, you can go to Chevron and get your, fill your gas tank. And there’s, there’s a safety in that, right?

There’s a safety and security in, in, in knowing what predictability. It’s also kills creativity. I don’t think it’s an accident that there is no sense of community and there’s no sense of creative possibility. If you go to a Walmart parking lot, [00:30:00] like where are you going to gather? Where are you going to exchange ideas?

Where are you going to have. Original approaches to existence, there’s no room for it. And that’s not by accident, that’s on purpose. Like there’s a desire by the structures that have power, I think, to create a predictable, you know, and controlled populace. And there’s a reason there’s no piazzas in the United States, because a piazza is a place where people can conspire, I think, and have original ideas.

So when you stumble on a place like Bombay Beach, despite the sadness of the place, despite the dire destitute disaster, catastrophe, there is the possibility of new ideas, of new images, of new like conversations, of Of, of a place that’s very specific to circumstances of what happened here. And so I [00:31:00] think that I, as an artist, was very drawn to the, the specificity of the place and the uniqueness of the circumstance and the confrontation with the reality that most people want to sweep under the rug.

I think what happens in these places that are all the same, it’s also there’s no confrontation with death. There’s no confrontation with with with the consequences of capitalism. There’s no confrontation with the consequences of, of inequality and, and of environmental, you know, of lack of care or stewardship for our environment or any of those things.

All that stuff is pushed away. So I think that to be faced with it directly. If you’re an artist or a thinker, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s fascinating. And that’s worth like stopping. So and, and, and looking and contemplating in a real way. So so that’s what I did as I bought a house. 

Giancarlo: Also the, the anarchic in you.

You know, like the, there’s no police, there’s no, I mean, [00:32:00] that’s some rules, but they’re not really enforced. So I think there’s a, 

Tao: yeah, there’s a beauty to the, to where everything has gone wrong where the systems have collapsed. Yeah, there’s an opportunity for, for, for new invention. So there is no, there’s an absolute failure of systems here.

Right. Right. So it’s, it’s the American government, which is one of the most. powerful machines of, you know, it’s done great things, but it’s also undoubtedly been an incredible force of, of imperialism and domination, right? The United States is one of them. And, and of, of, of, you know, the government. of the United States has done everything it can to control everything in the world, right?

To become a dominant, like force for, you know, some people might say for good, some people might say not for good. But whatever it takes, they’ve just done what it takes to, [00:33:00] to dominate. And here in this little corner of the United States, There is a vacuum because the systems have failed. 

Giancarlo: It was just, it was just as to struggle a magnet for you.

It 

Tao: was irresistible. And, and if you, if you want to question like the capitalist enterprise It’s like capital lost interest here, right? You couldn’t buy a property like 500 and nobody wants it. Right? So, so suddenly you have this vacuum where artists could, could come and And really explore in an interesting way.

So, so art also has become more and more safe and predictable. If you look at the art world, it’s this kind of commodified, you kind of came from this a little bit, you know, again, like you were a collector. It’s very. It was very much a part of the entrenched systems. Right? I think that a lot of [00:34:00] the art world is basically a elaborate money laundering probably, you know, or like am 

Giancarlo: I wrong?

I don’t know. Maybe, maybe, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but, but definitely, definitely the gallery circuit, the museum, they keep a, a tight grip around what. you know, the, the body of work, what can be done, what cannot be done. I mean, definitely the artists there have 

Tao: all 

Giancarlo: the 

Tao: freedom in the world, right?

They’re not challenging the systems there. I think they’re reinforcing the system. Even when the world, the work might be provocative, it’s provocative within a very safe container that a person can buy it and put it on their wall and feel cool. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Tao: And, and feel like I have some sort 

Giancarlo: of. I mean, what do you, I think, I think the type of art there is more like Burning Man art is more experiential and interactive, 

Tao: right?

Well, see, so Burning Man, it’s interesting because Burning Man, when, when I started going in like 2001 and even more, even before then, in the late nineties, it [00:35:00] was, a truly radical experiment, right? It, it was, it was the Cacophony Society. It was people trying to like, do something really Right. Go out in the desert, blow up cars, you know, like just do crazy shit that was not commodified, but the thing about the capitalist system is it co opts anything that seems to the way it fights it is by absorbing it.

And that’s why it’s so effective. Right. So radical music, for example, becomes. packaged, it becomes fashion. It becomes so like, like the punk movement. Suddenly a few years into it, you can buy punk style clothes, you know, and on Via Condotti and like Rodeo Drive and Same 

Giancarlo: with the rap. 

Tao: Everything. Yeah.

And then tattoos that were like a really, you know, expression of rejection of society suddenly [00:36:00] just becomes mainstream and it becomes co opted. And unfortunately, that’s just a pattern of this of, of this system that is able to absorb and co opt anything that’s happening. And that’s what happened with Burning Man.

I think Burning Man went from being this really interesting radical experiment in, in community and. A prefigurative space for like, again, it was like seen as practice for the apocalypse. Now all of a sudden the, the, the tech entrepreneurs are there. It becomes like a jet set thing to take your private plane from, you know go from Ibiza to to, to black rock city.

And it’s just like a cool thing to do. And, and I enjoyed the process. Like I, I’m, I’m guilty as anyone of going and having a fun party, but I think it’s, It’s nobody could take seriously the idea that Burning Man anymore is a radical experiment. It’s more of a entrenched anarchism doesn’t [00:37:00] scale.

Somebody said once, but so you get divorced. 

Giancarlo: Your wife said, why would you like to buy a house in Bombay beach? And the first thing you did, you bought your first lot. And then how, how did you start building a community? How did it, because now it’s becoming. You know, super known and, and, and, you know, you said that back then one lot would be in the market for seven years.

Now there is fast market that the auctions, is that true? The last auction was like this, is this. You know, more demanded supply now because of you. 

Tao: Yeah. And so, so this is, again, it’s, it’s, it’s the difficulty of what happens when something, when, when artists discover a place and are really engaging with it in an interesting way, suddenly there’s like parasites.

Latch onto that and then the artist can even get blamed for being the reason, but it’s like blaming the [00:38:00] host for the parasite in a way like when artists find a really interesting community, let’s say in an inner city or in a place that has been. you know, rich with, with, with culture. You know, let’s take Brooklyn, for example, right?

Artists arrive and say, wow, this is great. This is an opportunity for a more authentic interaction with the world, a more authentic dialogue with what it is to be human, with what it is to be part of a community. And then. People see that and they see the artists as a kind of, someone said, it’s like the shock, the shock troops of gentrification.

They see you can, you can, if you, if you want to exploit and you want to like, you know, buy and sell and make a profit, you can look where the artists go and you say, that’s going to be the next thing. That’s going to be good. Right. 

Yeah. 

Tao: It’s the same thing that happened with like. Cryptocurrency, right?

Like cryptocurrency is promised to be like a, an alternative to [00:39:00] centralized government, like control of money. And it seems like this cool anarchic thing, but then as soon as people see that as an opportunity to make. A lot of money and it kind of create new systems of, of of inequality and power and then the dream gets killed.

So I don’t, I, I, I struggle with this a lot because we came here and I think how do we, how do we keep that from happening here? How do we keep it from becoming the next burning man? How do we keep it from becoming, so yeah, I’ll back up and explain to you how we went. 

Giancarlo: Yes, exactly. Because you can’t help having your system theories philosopher head on, but you know, not all the audience knows the history from, from, from you, from you being alone there, how, how did the community start developing?

And yeah, so guide, guide that. 

Tao: I, I bought my first house here. I realized that it’s a, it’s a more interesting, even if you don’t just come and take some pictures and [00:40:00] leave, like there actually is a really interesting community here. There’s a really interesting, eccentric, unique individuals who live here.

There’s a one bar called the ski in because people used to water ski up to it. So. I started inviting artists and friends to come here and, and, and appreciate this amazing place. And I, at the time in 2015, I reconnected with my childhood friend, Stefan Ashkenazi. Who is a very great kind of creator of experiences.

He is a kind of has this surreal dadaist approach to hospitality. He has a hotel in LA called the Petit Hermitage and he was creating just wonderful experiences. And I started getting excited with him, telling him about Bombay Beach. I didn’t know that in his head. He was already planning to do an arts kind of happening in the high [00:41:00] desert in Joshua Tree.

And he, or maybe somewhere else, he was looking at ghost towns that were completely abandoned and looking at the possibility of creating an unexpected experiences in the middle of the desert. And so in his, in his narrative. He had a rocket that was already packed and ready to go to the moon.

And I like helped detour it and say, let’s go to Mars instead. And then at the time I always also spending time with Lily Johnson. White, who was like a great patron of the arts. And she was sitting on the board of many art foundations. And I brought her here as well. And, and so basically the three of us came together, me and Stefan and Lily.

And the idea was to bring, like, again, unexpected juxtapositions. I, I brought my friend Mark Rathall, who’s a professor of philosophy at Oxford. I said, what would it take to do a philosophy conference here? And he looked at me like I was crazy, but he said, you know, it doesn’t take a lot because [00:42:00] philosophers love to talk.

So if you invite them here. And Stefan loves ballet and opera and, you know, very high art. And the idea of like creating that on this background was really exciting to us, all of us, you know, like how, if you put like the world’s best ballerina in an abandoned building in the middle of the desert, that would be very beautiful, maybe more beautiful than seeing her at the San Francisco ballet.

Right. So the idea was born to kind of, and then coming from Italy and the, and the Venice Biennale. You know, there’s, again, there’s a pretension, I think, to the art world, to the enmeshed, you know systems of, of art making. And so to kind of undercut that and make fun of it by putting it here and also Bombay Beach Biennale, I like the sound of it, the alliteration.

So we said, what if we do a bial, it’s supposed to be every two years. We, we, we’ll do a bial every year. , [00:43:00] we’ll borrow the name from the Venice Bial. ’cause there could be nothing more opposite of Venice, Italy, and Bombay Beach. Like I, I think two more distinct places couldn’t exist. So again, just like playing with unexpected juxtapositions, the, the three of us founded the Bombay Beach bi in 2015.

We started preparing the first, the, the first year. We called it year zero because we didn’t know if it was gonna actually work. And so year zero was 2016. Also year zero, there’s like the idea of starting something new, right? Out of the ashes, maybe like a new beginning. So, so we, we, we did this almost like having no idea whether it was going to work, but it, it, it struck a chord unexpectedly, I think, and suddenly we got all this.

attention around it. The New York Times wrote about it and gave us a full page and the Sunday Styles and, and Vice gave us the front page. And, and again, like it [00:44:00] was, it’s this uneasy relationship with the. And entrenched systems of media, for example, like how much does, does having recognition by these, you know, institutions, how much does it help what we’re doing?

How much does it hurt what we’re doing? That’s a question that we’re kind of grappling with all the time now, because it On the one hand, it validates. It means like, wow, we’re really doing something meaningful, right? If these big things are paying attention, like there’s thousands of little art festivals in the world, but this is like getting more attention than most, but it’s also making, like you said, it’s making real estate values go up.

And, and so how, how do we preserve the authenticity of this? Project is the question that I think we’re, 

Giancarlo: but before before, before talking about the future, what happened between 2015 to 2023? So in those eight years, so Thena was born with this idea to, you know, integrating a little bit the three [00:45:00] personality of the three of you, right?

So the, the, the high art from Stefan, your more radical, counterculture, accessible and provocative art from you. And I remember Lily had a more established artist and I think Kenny Scharf came and, and then there was also maybe the desire to help with the, with the ecological crisis. So what happened in these eight years, which direction do you guys go?

What kind of new resident arrived? How, how, how was the, the, the, the evolution in these eight years? 

Tao: So we did the, we did the, the festival in 2016, 17, 18, and 19. And each year, the idea is that we would keep the dates a secret. So you have to, the, the dates are spread by word of mouth and there would be no commerce.

So no tickets sold, no art sold. So the idea of like a kind of pure artistic [00:46:00] interaction with the place, create large site site specific installations, there would be you know, sculptures and, and, you know, I, I was kind of flattered when the, the New York times called it the anti burning man, because in a way it’s.

It’s in dialogue with Burning Man, right? So there’s no question that there’s some interaction with, you know, you, you take a bunch of like, kind of edgy underground artists and put them in the desert and you mix like art with community, with psychedelic exploration, with, with you know music and, and a party, obviously the, the echoes of, of Burning Man are going to be there.

You it’s, it’s impossible to ignore that there’s some parallels, but I think we’re also, you in the other side of the coin. We’re in opposition in some ways because the whole point of Burning Man is leave no trace. You have this blank canvas and it’s a giant mandala. It gets created and it disappears. And our intention was to enter not a blank canvas, a [00:47:00] real community that has been through real hardship and then and then leave a trace and, and, and, and have some sense of permanence.

Now permanence is a, is a elusive concept in a, in a. You know, a universe going towards heat death, right? And entropy. There’s no such thing as permanence, but there’s, there’s more permanent and less permanent, right? So the idea of just like making things that, that are ephemera and disappear versus here, we’re trying to create things that actually can stay and we get this cumulative effect.

That every, every year there’s more and more art and it was an experiment in trying to use art to bring attention to the ecological issues, to bring attention to the economic and social issues and political issues of the place. And, and in that sense, it’s worked because now more and more people have heard of the Salton Sea.

And I also think that there’s something to be said about focusing on local environmental issues. I think [00:48:00] sometimes when you think too globally, it’s at the expense of actually manageable, tangible issues. So yes, global warming is a huge issue, but sometimes it seems intractable. It’s too much for one person to make a difference.

Whereas Here, a small community of people can make a difference. We can like bring attention that, you know, the, the, the, there is the possibility of, of fixing some of these problems with, with some, with money and, and, and, and resources and attention. So, so we’ve, we’ve succeeded in that to some degree, it’s still, they’re not, they haven’t, they haven’t.

Giancarlo: How do you measure, how do you measure success? I mean, the pollution went down the, the quality of living of, you know, everybody has current water, hot water. How, how is that, how has it 

Tao: progressed? So measuring success is difficult because the problems of the sea are enormous. Like it will take [00:49:00] billions of dollars and real infrastructure.

It’s a much more. Intangible way that I think that we’re helping in a more humble way, which is basically bringing attention by media and government to what is happening here and that we’ve done, people are paying attention, you know, it’s being written about, it’s being talked about, we go to like government meetings here about, and then there’s this other.

Unexpected thing, which is the world’s largest lithium reserves have been found under the Salton Sea now. So now we have, yeah, so now they’re calling it lithium lithium Valley, like Silicon Valley. And, and suddenly there’s interest by, I think Berkshire Hathaway and Elon Musk are buying a bunch of property around here, and that’s going to bring a whole new set of issues of mining and of extraction, I don’t know.

Again, again, like I think, I think the artist’s role is. Is is an interesting one because it’s not, [00:50:00] it’s intangible in many ways, right? Like we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re here in dialogue with, with, with some uncomfortable realities, political realities and philosophical realities of what it is to be human, what it is to be part of this community and what it is to kind of like engage with, with nature in a, in a.

Symbiotic way instead of a dominating way. 

Giancarlo: Extractive. But so back then there were like 200 residents. 

Tao: How many residents there are now? You know, we want to do a census this year. That’s one thing that we’d like to do. We don’t know how many people are here. We don’t know how many people come here for part of the year.

How many people live here year round. It’s a, it’s, it’s a lot of unknowns. So we’re trying to get. You know, we have a team now, so we, we did it four years and then we had to stop because of COVID, so we didn’t do 2020 or 2021. 2022, we came back in a kind of renegade, [00:51:00] rascally way, because we didn’t have any resources, and it was just me and my partner, Dulcinet, who put on the Biennale last year, because Stefan and Lily were still In the throes of COVID.

So now Stefan and Lily are coming back. We’ve actually created a company for the first time. You know, we have a structure we’re going to be doing more fundraising. And again, it’s like this constant balance between being this kind of scrappy truly underground guerrilla. Art movement and being facing realities of bigger systems and needing money to do things and, and, and an influx of interesting people who are now buying property here, you know, we try to be not commercial, but at the end and try and decommodify, but still, you know, the, the, the reality of the real estate game is, is impossible to ignore.

So we have. People trying to buy properties, some for good [00:52:00] reason because they want to be involved in the community, and some because they want to take advantage of what’s happening here. There’s people who just buy properties to just try and flip them and sell them again, and that’s really sad. Like we’re trying to think of ways, how do we can, how do we, how do we stop that from happening?

Giancarlo: Wow. But so, but do you feel that there’s been a little bit of a, more of a glue? that has been built among the resident? Is there like community meeting? I, are the community inter, you know, interacting with each other, helping each other? You know, when I, when I think about community, I think this community I visited like, you know, Auroville and and you know, Tamera and and, and where there is you know, it’s, it’s everybody’s you know, everybody’s happiness and, and, and and, and, you know, integration and, and, and satisfaction is taken to account.

Is there like a spirit of the community or is still very fragmented? 

Tao: No, no, no. There’s a spirit of community. We have community meetings [00:53:00] around you know, there’s a, there’s a little town council and there’s community meetings once a month and it’s, I like it because the town council is. Yeah. Is real and is elected, but they don’t have actual political power.

Which for me, like, again, yeah, you know, you’ve, you, I can see you smiling at my anarchist sensibilities, but I do think that we’re, if you decentralize power, it’s better. I think that if you, if you, if you allow people, you know, a truly democratic system would, it would allow people to have voluntary opt in power, but not like coercive power.

So I like that there’s no, because of the lack of resources here, the, the nice, the good side of the coin is that there’s no, like, oppressive police presence, for example, there’s a sense of freedom that you don’t, you know, America, a lot of people say, Oh, it’s a free country. And it’s actually one of those of us who have traveled a [00:54:00] lot know that it’s one of the less free places, right?

Yeah. In terms of like, a feeling of, can you really do what you what you want? There’s a sense of that here. There’s a sense of like an opportunity of like being of self organizing community, voluntary systems of, of of power instead of coercive systems of power. So we have, we have meetings once a week of everyone’s invited to come and talk about what are we doing with the Biennale?

How is the Biennale transitioning from an event to a movement? And that’s, that’s, that’s working out beautifully. I think it’s, there’s a, there’s more and more people who are like spending time here, the Biennale is shifted from a weekend to a season. So we do like January, February, and March. I, and a lot of other artists and who are people who are interested in this, all these issues are living here for that time.

And and it’s beautiful. It’s a, I think that people who, if anyone’s listening to this and wants to get involved, they should come down and check it out. 

Giancarlo: Amazing. Amazing. But so, so in which way you think [00:55:00] is becoming movement and what, what would be like the two or three words that would describe the movement?

What would be the values? I think, I think, 

Tao: Privileging art as a meaningful tool for community building and social change and political activism. 

Giancarlo: Nice. 

Tao: That’s, that’s, that’s what it is. I think that, I think that, that, that the art here, I don’t think I finished the thought earlier, but I, I, I said the negative part about what’s happening in the art world, about the commodification and the kind of use of art as a way of, of reinforcing systems, I think here art is.

Questioning systems and is like it’s provocative in a, in a real way. So it’s like uncomfortable. I think that that’s, that’s, you know, if you go and see like the drive in theater is like two [00:56:00] lots of smashed up cars and, you know, burnt out. And the drive in theater is such a icon of American, you know, like 1950s dominant culture to see that in this utter state of decay, but in a really interesting aesthetic, you know, gesture.

It forces you to confront the American dream gone wrong, and it asks a question that doesn’t have an easy answer. So people who walk by it, on the one hand, it attracts people, people now coming from around the world, Bombay Beach is on the map, like most people now have heard of it, like I have friends who go to Europe and they talk about Bombay Beach and people know about Bombay Beach.

But 10 years ago, nobody knew about Bombay Beach. So in a sense, it, it succeeded in putting it literally on the map and bringing people here. And then [00:57:00] people come here and they’re faced with uncomfortable questions like, what, what are we going to do about the ecological disaster that’s facing the world?

And that here is. Very, very poignant. Yeah. Like literally the air is, is is more toxic to breathe and, and, and, and you’re, you can’t, you can’t sweep the issue under the rug. The, I don’t know the answer. I think that my job is to ask the question, and our job as a community of artists is to pose the question and confront people with the, with the contradictions of reality.

Giancarlo: Yeah, I, you know, I felt that you guys have almost created a new language, which is like a mix of, you know, the culture of the absurd with the culture of the contradiction and the, and, and it’s like turning everything upside down, you know, even the names you guys gave to the different buildings. I find fascinating, but so just to go a little bit more into your [00:58:00] personal life, you know, I, for people listening, I would recommend to watch Monogamish, which is a, you know, Taos documentary on this movement called the consensual non monogamy.

And it doesn’t preach one way or the other is a very neutral. Exploration of, of, of why we take monogamy as the default system when it’s something very recent, not working and not even natural. But it’s an interesting exploration. And at the end, we see Tao dating a couple. So that was, which year was that?

Spoiler alert.

Which, which, which, when was your affair with the, with the with Lily and Sandy? Yeah. So this 

Tao: was 2015 when I was just finishing the movie. Exactly. We met this beautiful. I met this beautiful couple and, and I’d been for three years trying to finish this movie. And one of the difficulties of [00:59:00] finishing the movie is that I couldn’t, I hadn’t landed anywhere.

I was just asking too many questions and not. Yeah. With documentary is always a problem. Yeah. And, and, and so it went from theory to practice and that’s, was allowed me to finish the movie. Like, so after, you know, eight years of traditional monogamous marriage. That not you know, I mean, I, I don’t think you should see a ended marriage as a failure because that’s one of the problems with the system of monogamy is that it teaches us that anything that isn’t like one person forever is somehow a failure.

I think that one of the lessons of the film is that actually it’s okay to have. chapters, it’s okay to have a multiplicity of experiences and of, and of that each, each, you know, we talked about anarchism. There’s something called relationship anarchy, which is interesting. It says, it’s saying, why, why do we want to like reduce our relationships to these simple [01:00:00] categories?

Maybe each relationship should be defined on its own terms. My relationship with is specific to our history and our friendship and our. Projects and our creative, like, you know journeys. So anyway, I met this couple who was in an open marriage. They’d been together for 13 years. They had two children.

They were, they had kind of, I felt like what we’re experiencing as a culture right now is both with psychedelics and with, with questioning traditional relationship structures. It’s like, in the 60s, there was the sense that we have to just explode the, in mesh systems, that there was nothing worth keeping.

Timothy, if we go back to what we were talking about at the beginning with Timothy Leary, if you listen to his lectures in 1965, it’s quite shocking now to. To hear a professor at Harvard, you know, say, oh, nobody over 40 should be allowed to vote. Everybody should quit [01:01:00] their jobs. Everybody should drop out of school.

There’s nothing worth keeping in the, in the systems that, that they’re just too oppressive. Right. It was, it was a, a, a kind of. Unsubtle desire to just blow up the systems that, that, that were there. And I think that it was the pendulum swung too hard in a way it was, it was not, you know, it was not nuanced.

It wasn’t, it wasn’t careful. You know, and I think that having learned from the mistakes of that kind of excess, and maybe it wasn’t a mistake, it was necessary because the systems were so entrenched, but I think now when it comes to psychedelics, for example, people are saying, how can we integrate into the things that do matter, that are worth keeping, right?

And maybe there are. Like there are things of monogamy and marriage that we, that pull us to that, that [01:02:00] we do want a certain sense of continuity and of safety and of, of care and of security that come from a long. A committed relationship that come from commitment, for example, but maybe that doesn’t have to mean I’m never gonna be attracted to or sleep with anybody else in the, for the rest of my life.

Right. And maybe I can take a psychedelic journey and see how it. Can help me in my existing community and in my existing family structure. I don’t need to explode it and move into the forest and like follow the consequences of this to such an extreme. I can like integrate it in a real way. Right. So that’s what I learned from meeting Lily and Sandy, like they were in a marriage that was lasting and they were raising children together and they were also exploring other relationships and, and after three years of like doing this only theoretically, I had this, you know, beautiful experience of having a love story with a woman who’s married and then [01:03:00] her husband calling me up and saying, Oh, I heard you guys had a great time.

Like let’s, let’s have lunch and and I was like, I’ve only, I’ve only discussed this in theory now, you know, I don’t know what it’s like in practice. And sure enough, it was great. Me and him became great friends. And we realized that when you take away the sense of competition between men, that maybe two men who love the same woman actually have a lot in common and have a, that can be a reason for like deepening a friendship and realizing that you have common.

So that was the beginning of my journey. And then, and then we ended up collaborating. Lily is the co founder of the Biennale and you know, these, these, these, these relationships are constantly evolving. There was like, you know, one of the difficulties of finishing the movie was also that every month things are different, you know, like every relationship is, is evolving, 

Giancarlo: but so that was so that was the beginning of your non monogamous approach to relating.

And so. When just, just give us a little bit of the chronology [01:04:00] of, you know, after the long monogamous marriage, you decided to explore this non monogamous non monogamous relationship. So who, then, then how so the couple lasted for a while and then you had your first non monogamous relationship with Celeste.

Anastasia, Anastasia, Anastasia, Anastasia. So, and that was what, a couple of years? Yeah. Three years. Three years with Anastasia. And then now I’ve been two years with Dulcinea. But so just just, I just wanted to see how was for you to transition. I mean, I want to create a little bit of a framework for people listening on, on, you know, what is the pitfall?

What is the How was it for you? So because the couple, it was, you cared about them, you cared about her, but it was different than a primary relationship that then was open. Right. So for people that are, you know, like [01:05:00] we hear it now, it’s, it’s becoming much more mainstream. You know, I, I, I hear it all around me.

People are like, You know, it’s very common now to be, to be open, not to be exclusive. How was your personal experience in that world? You know, how did it start? How was the first time that you guys went different in different direction? Was it, you know, a lot of communication, a lot of boundaries? Tell us a little bit, keeping in mind that you’re giving people advice, people that want to try.

Tao: Okay. Well, so yeah, again, it’s, it’s different. It was interesting starting it as a third in a couple. And then you know, that’s a different dynamic than it is being in a couple and opening your, your relationship. Right. There was a book in the 1970s. Written called open marriage. And if you look at it now, it’s very interesting because most of the book is about allowing the wife to have [01:06:00] other friends, have a career, all things that seem so obvious to us now, but.

At the time open marriage meant like actually just having independent lives in some way. And then the last chapter of the book was about some couples extend this sense of openness even to sex, right? And that was the most extreme version. But I think starting from an idea that we are independent people that can have independent experiences And that you don’t have to own or possess the other person to have a meaningful and committed relationship with them is a good place to start.

And then you can say like, of course, it’s okay for you to share other experiences with other people. It’s okay for you to go and have a a meal with somebody else. You know, the, the, the extreme case of not allowing that is Mike Pence, right? The Republican vice president under [01:07:00] Trump, who was like notoriously conservative and Christian said that at one point that he wasn’t, he would never eat a meal with another woman if his wife wasn’t there.

This sense that like, The couple is like this closed thing that is, the people aren’t allowed to like do other, you know, have any other experiences is, is, is absurd, right? We, we know that as, as, you know, slightly more progressive and liberated people. So then you extend that and say, well, why should, why should we, why should sex be excluded from that?

Like, why shouldn’t people be allowed? To have that type of meaningful experience with someone else as well, without it being a threat to the relationship. And of course that’s not for everybody. Some people like it’s that thought is so painful to them that it’s that it’s something that they, that they, they, they need to wall off.

But then there are some people who [01:08:00] say like, no, actually it’s exciting to push at that boundary and we can do it as a couple together. And, you know, I think that what happens in a traditional couple is often you start hiding more and more parts of yourself that you think is going to upset the other person.

So I think that what happens is little by little, you start telling little. You’re confronted with certain things you’re and, and you know, the, the thing that you say can either be the reality or it can be what pleases your partner and you know your partner so well that you’ll often take the easy route and just say what, what you know will make things easier.

And slowly, slowly, this like causes couples to drift apart. And I think that the, what happens in non monogamy is you’re forced to constantly be very honest with your partner and maybe the, the loss. the threat to the intimacy that can happen from being with other people can be [01:09:00] compensated for that by, by the honesty of Talking to about things that most couples don’t talk about anymore, like the fact that you’re attracted somebody else or that you want to explore something with somebody else.

Does that make sense? 

Giancarlo: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you’re very good at the theory, but I want to know the practice for, for you personally, what, what was, what was the, what was the ups and down? How was it for you? What was the moment? When was it hard? When was it really fulfilling? 

Tao: Yeah. I mean, you know, I think that it doesn’t like the jealousy and insecurity don’t go away.

You’re kind of like faced with these things. You’re confronted with these issues in yourself and of your childhood and of like abandonment issues. And yeah, I mean, I, you know, I, I, I think it’s exciting to like explore[01:10:00] 

these more vulnerable spaces. 

Giancarlo: So, so tell me in those three years with Nastasia, what, you know, what was the Peter where you find, Oh, this agreement is really working out for me. It’s allow us to go out and maybe learn new things that then we would bring back to the couple and it would get more, you know, it would enrich our relationship.

It really help us to grow. We would explore, you know, where is this maybe jealousy rooted in and, and then maybe some other time it was like, no, this is too difficult. I don’t think I can do that. Do you remember episodes on both sides? I want people to emotionally connect with you. 

Tao: Yeah, but I also have to respect the privacy of like, but I don’t want to go into too much detail about.

Of course. Of course. Of course. But, but you know, I just, I can tell you that they’re like [01:11:00] having. 

Giancarlo: Because you guys have been open, you guys have been open on podcast. I remember there was an entire podcast with with with, with your partner in the podcast where you both went and, and discuss it. I remember.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no. 

Tao: I mean, that’s. Problems don’t go away when you bring other, other people in and they multiply in some way, right? There’s no question of that. So if you have, if you have insecurities, you’re going to be faced with them. And, and if you open up the relationship to other connections, you’re, you’re playing with fire, you’re risking.

Like that, that, that, that the person is going to be more excited about this other person than there are with you. And that’s going to bring up all sorts of, you know, it’s not like polyamory makes your jealousy go away or your insecurities go away. It makes you just face them. And so that can be.

[01:12:00] cathartic in times when things are good and it can be really destabilizing in times when it’s not good. So I think that my advice is, is you know, go gently and carefully and not like explosively with these things, like communicate as much as you can. Don’t sweep things under the rug. And and don’t expect the road to be easy.

It’s again, it’s going back to like our beginning of our conversation with the psychedelics. Yeah, it’s, it’s not the open non monogamy is a lot like psychedelics. It’s not for everyone. It’s it gives you an opportunity to kind of push it boundaries. and it faces you with the most like uncomfortable parts of your psyche.

Yeah. And, 

Tao: and, and maybe that’s a good thing. Hopefully it’s a good thing. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. But so now, and so now you have, you have, you’re in another relationship with also open. 

Yeah. 

Giancarlo: So now that’s your path in life. Would you see yourself? [01:13:00] Going back to a monogamous 

Tao: relationship. No, I don’t, I don’t see myself ever asking for or promising monogamy just because I don’t think it’s, I don’t see it as a, as a, a container that I desire or require.

And also I don’t see myself falling in love with somebody who would have that as a, as an ideal. I could see like. Falling into it for a while, you know, you don’t always have to be exploring other issues, but like forbidding your partner from exploring that if they want to, it seems like not for me. It’s okay for other people.

Giancarlo: Maybe closing if you want to have children, maybe, you know, for after having children. 

Tao: Yeah, I can imagine moments where you say like, okay, now it’s like, but as a principle, I don’t think it’s again, I would see it as like, like the same as saying like, you can’t you can’t have a meal with somebody else.

It just seems, it seems anachronistic. It seems unnecessary. It’s a, it’s more challenging obviously than a meal, but it’s still a basic [01:14:00] biological function that is a, a, a, a opportunity to have a meaningful experience. 

Yeah, yeah, 

Tao: yeah, yeah. 

Giancarlo: We, we, I had on the podcast, this professor of psychology, Jorge Ferrari wrote a book called Novogamy.

Basically he says that, you know, in the same way that we have. depolarized gender, right? Now we have this gender fluid situation. We should be depolarizing monogamy versus non monogamy. And we should be, you know, rather than being, then, you know, choosing between a monogamous and non monogamous, I’m novogamous, which is, you know, sometimes I’m novo, I’m monogamous and sometime I’m, I’m I’m not.

And, that’s binary 

Tao: thinking about it. Yeah. I like that. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. I think it’s I think it’s interesting. So Amazing. So this is, you know, we went almost an hour and a half. So, so what’s the future for you? You know, You’re completely abandoned filmmaking, documentary filmmaking, or are you looking at some are you [01:15:00] interested, is there any topic that you are so interested that you might want to document in the future?

Tao: I mean, you know, my, my filmmaking is always sprung out of things that I’m just deeply in that moment or affected by. So whether it was like drug addiction and my family. With just say no and fix or monogamish or, you know, going to visit the exploring flamenco and that whole kind of culture and way of life.

It’s things that I’ve been steeped in very deeply. And so now, you know, I’m, I’m, I do document by nature. I like, I like documenting and using filmmaking as a kind of. Psychoanalytic tool for, and philosophical tool for exploring the things going on in my immediate surroundings. And so there are things happening in Bombay Beach and in my relationship with Dulcinea and in our blending of, of.

Community building and [01:16:00] art and sex and relationship dynamics that are making me pick up the camera again and, and interested in picking up the camera again. Again, it’s like we, we, we hinted at at the beginning, like the, the filmmaking is is a medium, right? It’s a, it’s a medium, just like podcasting is a medium, just like a sculpture is a medium.

It’s a way to explore. What you’re thinking about and what you’re feeling in that moment. So I think I’ll make more movies. Maybe they’re not going to be feature films. I’m also just very interested in short form, shorter more spontaneous creations. I’ve always been interested in, in in a filmmaking style that’s more raw and immediate.

So I have a YouTube channel that I’m always posting to and I love YouTube because it allows you to put music, podcasts music videos, short form documentaries [01:17:00] feature films, everything is, it can be on there. Everything except still photography, every, every other medium that I’m interested in is, is possible there.

So if, if, if people want to. See my work right now. It’s the thing I’m most excited about is, is, is putting stuff on YouTube. Also as an archivist, it’s really fun to go back and like raw interviews, you know, a lot of, When you make a documentary film, you have hundreds of hours of, of, of documentaries of, of, of, of interviews, which are like podcasts, right?

Like you spend an hour with somebody and then in the movie, you might only use five minutes, but now we know that there’s a, there’s an audience for just raw conversations, 

which 

Tao: I think is a. Is the antithesis of what’s happening in, usually in in a culture that’s more and more ADD. And we only like have these like little, like fast 30 second things on the stories on Instagram and TikTok.

And, but then there’s the opposite, which is these long conversations that people like to still listen to. [01:18:00] 

Giancarlo: Yeah. For like eight to nine hours, Lix 

Tao: Friedman and So, so, so, so I, I’ve been posting like raw interviews from, from all my films on, on my YouTube channel. So if people want to, I’m, I’m posting little unedited clips of Bombay Beach and of just regular life.

That’s what I’m, I’m I’ve always wanted to like document. my existence, which luckily for me has been quite an interesting, an interesting. Definitely 

Giancarlo: interesting. And, and I want to mention also a documentary has been made on Bombay beach and Tao is you know, it’s it’d been interviewed. What’s it, it’s a complicated title.

What was the title of Susanna’s 

Tao: last stop before chocolate mountain, which is it, it premiered at Locarno film festival. And now it it’s nominated for a Donatello award, which is like Italian Oscars. [01:19:00] It’s, it’s it’s, it’s a beautiful movie about what’s happening here in Bombay Beach. Susanna is an artist, so it’s not just documenting here what’s happening here, but it is in itself a great work of art.

A piece of art. Yeah. I love that it’s both, you know, 

Giancarlo: and, and with your podcast are you still sharing the microphone with Patrick or are you doing podcasts on your own? And, and where, where are you going with that? Is there like is there like new interest? You know, I, I remember you went to Venice for consciousness.

conference which direction are you exploring? Are you very fatalistic when something interesting happened to you or, or, or are you looking for the next guest, which feeds some sort of narrative that you’re exploring? 

Tao: No, I mean, the podcast is a just great, like we talked about at the beginning. It’s a great opportunity to have a deep conversation with someone you find interesting.

I don’t put a lot of pressure on myself about it. I [01:20:00] did like 50 episodes with my friend, Patrick House, who’s a neuroscientist. He was living with me and we just kept having these like great conversations. So we decided to record them. So every morning at seven in the morning, we just have an hour chat about whatever we’re thinking about, but then he moved away.

So then I just started doing the podcast on my own with people. And I, I just do about one a month or something. It’s called being in the world. And I’ve done, I just released the 69th episode. a few weeks ago. And yeah, people, I, I, I have it on, on Apple podcasts and on on Spotify and on YouTube.

So if people want to look for that, I do like it as a medium, like we said, it’s a great, it’s a great slow down. It’s a great antidote to the, the, the, the ADD speedy way that we approach most, most other interactions with technology. 

Giancarlo: Amazing. Listen, thank you very much, Tao. That was a long due. chat for us.

[01:21:00] And and yeah, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll check back. We’ll, we’ll check back with you in a next year to see how the Bombay beach is evolving, how your podcast is evolving, how your relationships are evolving. 

Tao: Thank you for your time. Love you. 

Giancarlo: Thank you for your time.