Owls, Mutants & Meditation with Gordy Hamil

“I see your journey as shamanic because in my shamanism, there's a really consistent aspect to it where people go through a major healing crisis, where they're either going to die or they're going to become magic. And to me, that's kind of like the emergence of the mutant gene in the X-Men.”

“And so as I'm meditating and kind of praying and really embracing that it's possible to get close to these owls in an authentic relationship, and just kind of letting it happen instead of forcing myself on them, I would just go out and do it every day. And they allowed me into their life.”

“I think people would benefit from 20, 15, even 10 minutes a day. For me, 15 minutes is like the sweet spot where I feel the parasympathetic nervous system activate. And like, I feel my heart rate change. I feel myself settle into it. And it's almost like that's the point where you're just beginning to actually meditate.”

“And you kind of have to surrender something. It was like two years of my meditation practice where almost every time after like 10 minutes into it, my brain had just started being like, oh shit, man, you're going to die, man. Now that's not even a thing.”

“So when you're getting in tune or alignment with spirit or your breath in nature, you are basically inhaling and embodying the template of wholeness that created you in the first place. And that's how your body heals itself. Nothing heals your body for it. It does it itself. And it uses that Chi or that Prana to do it.”

“And comics do not need to be even called comics. We could call it graphic novels or something else. And they don't necessarily need to be tied to these licensed characters. But that seems to be the only way that the industry makes the money to continue, by rehashing and recycling the same characters ad nauseam.”

“But there is also a visual reference that adds to that story. Whereas with TV and movies, it's just telling you, you just have to be a passive participant. It just tells you what you're getting. And you want to be participatory in a book, in a comic, you're part of the story. So I think that's why the medium is important.”

“We're making it together. It's that creative experience of the book. The original experience was cooperative. And, you know, they were able to imply things. And you met them halfway. So the comics were co-made.”

“I do feel like Hollywood and, like, making all these comic movies and stuff huge is just to make grown men into like little children. I love all this stuff, and I love connecting with my childhood on some level. But, dude, I know some people that, like, this is their religion. They like fight you if you tell them the Spider-Man movie sucked.”

“To be attached to these ideas that bring us back to our childhood, they have that nostalgia, which is one of the most powerful alchemical ingredients there is, that they keep us in a state of childhood and perpetual youth, which is, you know, a fantasy.”

“Film is almost like switching you into this hypnotic mode, where you're just programmed to receive because you don't need to fill any gaps yourself with a novel. You're making the mental movie in your head with comic books. You have this space, the liminal space between the frames. And in that space, you are creating a unique experience of the story that's different from everyone else.”

“I'm like, okay, I'm going to see if I can get in a coyote and see what the desert's like from a coyote's point of view. And you're feeling it, you're experiencing exactly as coyote. And once you realize you're in coyote, you're like, I am coyote. And you're like, oh my God, I'm part of everything.”

“So he can keep an eye on the other side of the desert while I'm keeping an eye on this side of the desert. They treat me kind of like one of them. And it's an amazing, amazing thing. And I will continue to document this as long as it goes on.”