We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ryan Heflin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Ryan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
Written while listening to film-noir like jazz (maybe the reader should do the same).
I don’t think it was ever a choice. I saw a bumper sticker in a Nashville dive bar once that said, “Music Chose Me” and its true. I was terrified of it because it mattered and matters so much, because I cared so much about it, because it was and is my heart, so I tried to run from it, to pretend I didn’t love it, but despite myself, despite my attempts at running away, playing it safe, eluding, self-sabotaging, she (I think of music as my beloved, Lady Muse) patiently and assuredly said “you know you love me, stop trying to deny it”. One day I did (stop trying to deny it).
I went to school for psychology (starting out as a music major in LMU’s classical guitar program for a year before I realized it wasn’t the kind of music for me). Post-college I took a few years to breathe, look at the world, look at myself and ask “who am I, what matters to me, what lights me on fire, what’s my special gift/superpower that I can harness to give to the world?” (I always tell kids who just graduated college to TAKE TIME to consciously think about their path (read The Alchemist! + travel! ) and look within; a 180 paradigm shift after so many years of us being programmed to be externally fixated, lead by carrot and stick. Like McKenna so said “‘get a degree’, ‘get a job’, ‘get a this’, ‘get a that’, and then you’re a player; you don’t even want to play in that game, you want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron, consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.” ).
Half-heartedly looking at graduate schools (the more head choice) while still denying and discovering my musical destiny, I decided to start playing solo cover gigs (as I’d had a friend in my youth who did this and I’d always admired/envied it (we attract those who are doing what we want to do as mirrors and foreshadowing)). I remembered thinking those days that I’d give ANYTHING to have ANYBODY let me play ANYWHERE (shitty dive bar or loud restaurant), but slowly a few gigs came. I always say it was “getting naked in public during an awkward phase of development”. (I’m amazed that we can love something so much as to put ourselves in front of a bunch of total strangers just when we are at our most insecure, raw and tender, beginner phases, that’s a marvel to me).
A much uncertain period of my life, barely getting by, my path blurry, still baking in the Taoist void, my romantic relationship in a tornado, Venice Beach. Overwhelming times. But something great was waiting around the bend. From amidst the disintegrating relationship and disintegrating life in Venice beach and the little trickle of gigs, I received an email from The Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel (of all places), the GM had seen me somewhere and I’d been a part of a vision he’d had (the classic California romantic dude with his guitar) and that they wanted me as their resident musician. Clinging to the sinking-ship of my relationship I said, “sorry I have a life in LA, thanks anyways.” But the universe wouldn’t let that slide; it became VERY apparent that it was a part of my destiny whether I wanted it to be or not because a month or so later my relationship was at a battlefield-like catastrophic finale and The Ritz-Carlton just so happened to email me again, persisting. She’d cheated. They’d emailed again. Tough love shove U-verse. Nice one. That was that. I packed all my stuff into a mustang convertible (even a drumset) (I can still see all my clothes flying from the second story balcony (my then girlfriend throwing them off in an admirable fury), how could I be mad…as long as I feel like I’m in a movie I’ll enjoy anything) and I was gone.
Somewhere into the first few years of my 8 years as the resident musician of The Ritz (that strange and luxurious castle by the sea of which I could write some great and tittlating chapters in my memoir) I finally admitted, relented, declared “ok ok, you win, music I love you, I will follow you where ever you (sassily) lead me you beautiful sexy mystery.”
The journey continues as of 2020 when I finally admitted it all even further–declaring my barbaric YAWP—finally declaring that I am an ORIGINAL artist, a songwriter, a poet, a performer that has a lot I need to express to the world in my own words with my whole life. It is a further and further undressing into my love, for my Beloved, by way of brave vulnerability. In a way it feels like the same pattern of those testing times of Venice Beach days staring into the mysterious, sometimes daunting, sometimes exciting void of possibilities, looking from below at higher heights on the mountain and wondering how, how, how it will all happen, how it will all come together. I suppose it gives me comfort knowing that I’ve been here before, that I breathed with patience, and left room for the magic, and trusted myself, trusted the universe, because look at the magic, the completely unforeseeable, unexpected lift I got back then. So I go, I know not where I go, but I know that I go towards something great. Romantic, no? Does that answer your question? Something was said I hope.
-Ryan
Ryan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
“To renew people’s sense of wonder, starting always, with my own.”
Ryan Heflin began honing his craft and finding his voice as clifftop, oceanside Gatsby of The Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel; enthroned and enthralled as their in-house musician for 8 memoir-worthy years. A luxurious perch that would lead to many adventures playing high-end weddings and corporate events in picturesque places.
With the stirrings of the soul loud, wailing without compromise, Ryan has given himself over fully to writing, recording, and performing his soulful, iconoclastic, singer-songwriter words, set to dark, hurts-so-good indie rock vibrations.
The debut album ’Where Does the Wonder Go?’ shows us the start of something un-usual and wonder-full:
Powerfully reflective and contemplative, with layers to be burned and undressed slowly, finding passionate expression in the extra-ordinary themes of childhood, nature, the wonder of existence, the beauty and tragedy of the human condition, and a healthy subversion of societal norms.
Both sensual and intellectual, metaphysical and deeply human, the music of Ryan Heflin takes us beyond the prosaic and back into life as poetry.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
It’s funny. Well, sometimes. Relatively recently starting out on this journey as an independent artist, I’ve really, over the past few years, come to see all of the ancillary things one must do as an artist these days, all the hats one must wear. It is a good day and age to be an artist in many ways, for we get to—more than ever—create our own way and tailor our journey how we want to. That said, the trade-off is that we often (especially in the beginning) must be our own record label, management team, roadies, booking agent, graphic designers, video makers, video editors, administrators, promoters, marketers…..I enjoy the creativity of some of it, and the expansion from developing new skills, and it feels good to have control over everything I do (because I see it all as a meta-expression, a life-long work to say what I want to say in the way only I can say it, through a grand faceted birds-eye mosaic. I am building a world!), but it can be distracting, depleting, dissipating.
I always say, “all this song and dance for all this song and dance!” for it amazes me all that goes into simply expressing something through rhythm and melody to the world. I love the moment when all logistics have been handled, all the technical stuff dialed in, all the practice and coordination with the band has been given due diligence, and I get to step on stage and FINALLY let go and enter into flow state. For me flow state is where I get off, where the magic is and the fire that everybody wants to come and warm themselves by; to absorb and become that beautiful and liberating dancing rhythm of the universe, rhythm of the here and now holy moment, where doer and doing are one, where there is no I, no you, no worry, no ego, no separation, all is one, all is the moment and all is good, blissful, beautiful, true, we are home once again, “oh yeah!” We say “it’s all right here, it’s always all been right here! I remember, I remember!” I want to live t(here); I want all of us to live t(here).
All music (and art) is degrees of the here and now (the more something can bring you into the moment, the more powerful work of art it is for you). A song is 3min 30sec of a bunch of instruments and sometimes a voice with every note and beat going “here, now, here, now, here, now, here, now”—tapping the here and now for your attention to come into. Get enough of that and you begin to flow and dance and you are liberated from the disconnect and disjoint of the ego’s (that part of us that believes we are separate from the moment) lag time and damn it feels good, like the best making love, where at the end of it you and your lover are falling off the edge of the bed, breathing fast, not knowing how your bodies got there, the preceding moments dream-like and hard to remember, as if coming out of a trance. That is flow state to me and it’s all I want. All I hope as I move further in my journey is to build a structure that makes all simpler around me so that I can more quickly, immediately, effortlessly, powerfully enter into and give that to people. (I’ve always said “my adult [self] is only here to set up my playground”). Flow…fly! Oh yeah–It’s what this is all about.
I also, of course, love the actual MAKING of art, the nonlinear magic of connecting with something mysterious and beyond, making love with the muse, and the deep peace that comes from saying something that burns in me in way that only art could express. Nothing excites me or fulfills me quite like when I’ve created something beautiful and true that says what I needed to say for myself and for the world. I rest deeper, I feel alive.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My mission is to “renew people’s sense of wonder, starting always with my own.” (You can listen to my song “Where Does the Wonder Go?”) I believe that if we could all remember and return to our more childlike eyes on this life and the world, life and this world would be a very different place. If we could all slow down enough to start to see the poetry pop back into the foreground all around us, to start to see the miracles in every little molecule, to marvel at the mystery, life would become more sacred, interesting, simple, fufilling, exciting. The endless worlds in smaller spaces, the endless delightful games and playful meanings and forms right here and right now; the playground is right in front of us! hiding in plain sight!
An artist’s role is to remind us all of infinity, the infinite possibilities all around us to attend to, infinite possibilities for how we define ourselves and our story, infinite angles to see the world by (like a little kid does) (a painting of a tiny flower in a frame on the wall, for example, elevates something usually passed by and ignored, into our awareness so we can remember to look at things outside of the groupthink attention track, to be freed into an atypical way of skipping around with our mind’s eye, like children do before they are melded by the machine). If society is about limitations, illusory rules, structures, artists are the counterbalance, the ambassadors to our infinitude. We say “Yes society is playing a game and some of it may be a necessary ev…function…but it is not all there is and not all you are!” We unnecessarily complicate things, we are chasing mirages, we are missing life, we are missing this sacred and amazing gift! For me a renewal of wonder is not mere sentimentality, nor can it be intellectualized; it is a simple yet powerful state of being that changes everything for the better. I will spend my whole life trying to “say” THIS.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ryanheflin.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/ryanheflinmusic
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/ryanheflinmusic
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/ryanheflin
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7c7TnxU4O4KsNSOB71JUks?si=ikYJimayT5aicK3mevZF7A
- Other: Help Support the Music! www.patreon.com/ryanheflin
Image Credits
Brandt Heflin, Jon Spenser