In May 2013, I visited Jo Ann Karl at the Integratron in Landers, CA, to receive sound therapy, also called neuroacoustics or pschoacoustics. The Integratron is a very unusual white dome shaped building in the middle of the Mojave Desert. I was there with a group of fifteen other artists.

In the downstairs belly of the building, there are instruments scattered about and its wooden walls are dotted with mystic iconography, classic 1960’s UFO landing recreations and photographs and newspaper cuttings devoted to George Van Tassel, the engineer, architect and promoter of the building. In 1953 Van Tassel claimed that aliens of a spaceship from Venus woke him up at his home under Giant Rock and both verbally and telepathically gave him a technique for rejuvenating the human body, “to recharge energy into living cell structures, to bring about longer life with youthful energy.” The aliens told him the exact spot where he should build what was to become known as the Integratron.

In 1954, Van Tassel, who had previously worked as an airplane mechanic and flight inspector, began building with some others what they called the Integratron to perform the rejuvenation. He wanted to create a center for scientific and spiritual research with the aim to recharge and rejuvenate people’s cells. He called it “a time machine for basic research on rejuvenation, anti-gravity and time travel.” However the Integratron was never fully completed due to Van Tassel’s sudden death a few weeks before its official opening.

“Before I came here I would never ever thought I would be into this,” Jo Ann says to me, “I was a New Yorker working a regular office job, if you asked me ten years ago I would have said UFO’s, alien sightings were all rubbish.”

I climbed the wooden staircase to the upper floor and stumbled into a circular room with a vaulted dome-shaped ceiling suspended by a crisscross of arches. The floor appears to be held up by a giant acupuncture needle sticking out of the earth. I stand atop the needle and sound a tone, which surprisingly feels as if it is coming from within me, really within, with a resonance that seems infinite. It is shocking and I stop instantly. I hear my own frequency and I am not sure about it.

The sound therapy session takes place via a sound bath. Jo Ann guides each of us to find a place on the floor and explains that she is going to ‘play’ seven giant quartz bowls. She explains that bowls generate very pure frequencies that are keyed to the major energy centers of the body. I feel almost like I am being hypnotized as she starts to tell us about the correlation between the seven major notes of the scale and the seven major energy centers, or chakras, of the body. “If any of us wish to stay on and relax after the sound bath we are very welcome to do so,” Johanna says lastly, “but please do maintain silence and relaxation from this moment on. And no snoring during the sound bath, please.” With that, she begins.

As I lay there with my eyes closed listening to Jo Ann playing the quartz bowls the room becomes a sound chamber. I experience layers of textured tones, which in turn created feedback loops, spiral-like in form. The resonance of which makes it unclear what sounds are in my head and what sounds are outside it. Halfway through the sound bath, I hear it. Snoring. As it persisted, it was all I could hear. I was conscious that my colleague beside me is sleeping, but I am pretty sure he was not the snorer. I couldn’t figure out where the damn noise was coming from, but it seemed to be getting louder, louder, and spread all around me. A little bit disgruntled, perhaps I sat up a bit from my lying down position. Johanna spots me in a flash and says loudly, “Stop snoring please”. The snoring stops abruptly.

Once the sound bath ends, I am the first to leave and take a seat on the hammocks outside. When the rest of the group come one by one, I recount how I heard the snoring and amazingly, only a small number of the others had heard it. Anyone exempt from the snoring is positively glowing: I hear stories of deep healing dreams and visions, of symbols, messages, answers, healing feelings, and beautiful colors. No one knows who the snorer is.

That night, camped in the desert, off the main road leading on from Joshua Tree towards Palm Springs. As we were sitting around the campfire before bed, I wander into the desert for a nighttime pee. In front of me is a large expanse. I only now notice that the panorama is a surrounding circular ring of frozen waves cut in the center by a highway. I hear the unmistakable sounds of a motorcycle gang vroom-vrooming along the center of this highway. These stark sounds emanate from the bikes and somehow that night acts like the striking of the Tibetan singing bowl, except now the bowl is the landscape; the landscape is in a state of vibration. I hear the frequency of landscape and I am very sure about it. It is the emotion, or the expression of that place, right then, time as everything that has come before and time as everything that is right now, combined. I feel as if I have been turned into cello strings.

I squint and try to pick out the silhouette of the mountains against the bright night. The mountains stand sentinel, ready to keep my dreams in sleep. And then a single cloud passes over the moon and the land gradually disassociated from the sound. The tones uttered now cease to exist. Later, I sleep under the night sky surrounded by sonic reverberation.

2477 Belfield Blvd, Landers, CA 92285