Tim Yohannan: Most people are going to be co‑opted and if you look at most people, even the people who are most vocal and charged up at one point, five years from now, where are they gonna be?
Michael Imperioli: If you can see that, then you really kind of get down to the essence of why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Yohannan: That’s true. Your nails turn black.
Imperioli: I mean, without a doubt.
Yohannan: (laughter) Any publicity is good publicity.
•••
Imperioli: Once your consciousness gets tuned to whatever it is—an image, a story, a chord progression, a melody, and you’re working on it; you know, it might be a year, not all the time, but you’re working on it—once your consciousness gets tuned to that, anything that comes into your head related to that idea, you have to respect it.
Yohannan: An interview with a band gets done, it takes a month or two before it gets sent to us, four or five months before it comes out, band’s broken up.
Imperioli: Too much voltage at that age. The lines of what’s bad and what’s good get muddied.
Yohannan: It’s more a matter of them self-destructing and if there is going to be anything left for anybody else after that. It wasn’t crucial.
Imperioli: Yeah. Everyone’s young, it’s kind of innocent and still fun. It’s a vibe.
•••
Yohannan: That pays my bills and keeps me grounded and this is my hobby or fancy or whatever.
Imperioli: A bunch of different people call at the same time and it makes me think that something bad has happened.
Yohannan: I think I’ve been on the receiving end of that. But that doesn’t happen that often.
Imperioli: I think there’s a stillness to those moments. You’re in that level of awareness—and not just that level of awareness, but also I guess the realization of the truth of existence, interdependence, impermanence, and non-duality.
Yohannan: At this place, the waitresses don’t write down your order, they remember it all. Hours later, you can go up to the front and the waitresses remember exactly what you had.