Ari shares the journey behind his new single-shot film Brother Verses Brother — an intimate, real-time odyssey through the streets of San Francisco with his identical twin, searching for music, love, and their 99-year-old father. He also opens up about Helicopter, his decade-in-the-making documentary about processing the death of his mother through a psychomagic ritual prescribed by legendary director Alejandro Jodorowsky.

We talk about what it means to truly experience art versus merely consume it, why specificity is the key to universality, the creative flow state and what it feels like when something takes over, and bending reality itself.
A conversation about loss, healing, and why art — at its deepest — is an act of lighting people up.


https://www.instagram.com/arigold/
https://www.instagram.com/rezasafiniamusic/

From 16 years of conservatory training and a Juilliard education, to a 10-day silent meditation retreat where she started hearing phantom cello in complete darkness, to becoming artist-in-residence at the San Francisco Conservatory after a chance encounter at a wine dinner — Suuvi's path has been anything but linear.

In this conversation, we get into her album Dark Therapy, the neuroscience of music and the brain, what it actually means to process darkness (literally and figuratively), the sunk cost fallacy of a classical career, seven years of being single and what that taught her, and why she believes softness is the greatest strength.

We also talk about flow states, Muay Thai, Dostoevsky, the Mandy Moore story, and whether music and magic share the same root word.

A wide-ranging, deeply human conversation about art, suffering, and what it takes to finally find your own voice.

https://www.instagram.com/callmesuuvi

https://www.instagram.com/rezasafiniamusic

In this conversation we go deep. We talk about the spiritual nature of music, the discipline of making music 12 hours a day every single day, and what it actually means to clear your energy when other people's emotions get tangled with yours. We also get into some of the biggest questions — are we God disguising itself from itself just to have an experience? Can music still change the world? And what does it feel like when a piece of music is finally right?

A conversation about sound, spirit, and showing up for your art.

https://www.instagram.com/echoesofstarlight/

https://www.instagram.com/rezasafiniamusic/

https://youtu.be/gja2wDI-h1Q?si=j6ry50PpQyH9-u8I

Can you guess what the song's about?

Here are the simple lyrics…

I gotta deal with you the right way

Take a drive on the superficial highway

I wish it could be any other way but

You can't live and let live and love your neighbor

You can't keep it fluid baby you're a vapor

Did you figure it out?

It's about cancel culture and general canceling of people. About how we have such low tolerance for confrontation now that we keep conversations superficial for fear of offending, crossing boundaries etc…

Vapor is used here as a metaphor for bypassing liquidity, fluidity…

It's like the old Bruce Lee over quoted wisdom goes…

“Be like water my friend”

:)

Ari shares the journey behind his new single-shot film Brother Verses Brother — an intimate, real-time odyssey through the streets of San Francisco with his identical twin, searching for music, love, and their 99-year-old father. He also opens up about Helicopter, his decade-in-the-making documentary about processing the death of his mother through a psychomagic ritual prescribed by legendary director Alejandro Jodorowsky.

We talk about what it means to truly experience art versus merely consume it, why specificity is the key to universality, the creative flow state and what it feels like when something takes over, and bending reality itself.

A conversation about loss, healing, and why art — at its deepest — is an act of lighting people up.

https://www.instagram.com/arigold/

https://www.instagram.com/rezasafiniamusic/

It's an absolutely incredible and timeless work. It still sounds innovative, brand new and deeply resonant with the human soul.

So interesting to feel the humanity of this in this age.

The subtleties in this album are so beautiful. So poignant. I'm not even going to mention the production which is self evidently spectacular.

The song “Sour Times” is haunting me today. It's a literary masterpiece aside from being a banger.

The main line of the song “Nobody Loves Me….” Seems so simple yet, after a pregnant pause it's followed by “Not Like you do".

This could be interpreted in so many ways. But I feel like the pause is the part that does the most storytelling. You see, nobody loves me… is a statement in the moment, that with the passage of time can be turned around to not like you do. Total emptiness can lead to absolute devotion. All it takes is time and perspective.

Those are the most simple lyrics in the song and even then the range of interpretation so vast.

Some other lines that stood out for me in this song…

“Courtesies that I despise in me”. Wow does that land. How often have I put up with things from people I knew were wrong and why?

This next one…

Covered by the blind belief that fantasies of sinful screens bear the facts…

Who knows what that means but I can only imagine it's a reference to the dizzying nature of that spiritual feeling lust, the sex that makes you feel you are seeing another soul and being seen by them, that feels like fact. But is it just a cover of lust, obscuring what is actually fact? And even then what is a fact? When you can be so on the same page with a person one day and another day feeling like you weren't living in the same reality?

Beth Gibbons goes on to sing

“who am I what and why? Cause all I have left is my memories of yesterday"

Identity disintegrated in the aftermath of that aforementioned dizziness, after the disintegration of the union.

And all this concluding with “Scattered seeds, buried lives, mysteries of our disguise revolve. Circumstance will decide…”

Are the buried lives the ghosts of former lovers? Or the life that two lovers buried in each other because they were not able to let go of their disguise? We don't know, but circumstance will decide, if the conclusion is “Nobody Loves Me" or… if it's followed by “Not like you do”.

The depth of this poetry presented as 90s pop hit music is so moving to me.

Pierre went from a small town in Burgundy, France to the halls of DreamWorks, and his journey is as layered as the films he makes.

We get into why great animation can hit deeper than live action, how he embeds real societal themes — like reinsertion after prison — into family films, and what it actually feels like when years of craft finally become a creative language you can speak fluently.

We also go deep on consciousness, manifesting, the Akashic records, what it means to be made of stardust, and why the universe might be more magical than science wants to admit.

This one's for the artists, the dreamers, and anyone who's ever made something and wondered if it matters.

 Thank you so much Pierre for opening your heart and mind to us in this incredibly honest talk!

https://www.instagram.com/pierreperifel

https://www.instagram.com/rezasafiniamusic

This series aims to shine a light on the spiritual nature of art. Especially in a time where most art is reduced to “content” and much spirituality is repackaged as a productivity hack.

Artists create because they have to. It overrides logic. This cinematically crafted long form interview series delves deep into the process of a variety of diverse artists who have been generous enough to share how their spiritual practice fuels their creativity.

In this first episode, Miguel opens his heart and mind and goes so deep. The conversation unfolds slowly - and if you give it your presence it will touch you. I’m saying this because I edited the episode myself, and the beauty of Miguel’s words have already left a lasting impact on how I think about things, especially in processing emotions. “Think with your heart, feel with your brain” - he says at one point! - I just loved that and it was what I needed to hear in this moment!

Here’s a little clip…

And here are the full episode links:

Thank you for your presence if you made it here :)

He generously shares how emotions - like waves - are meant to be listened to, not suppressed. It's a heartfelt exploration of growth, creativity, and finding connection through music.

Miguel Atwood-Ferguson is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, conductor, band leader, arranger, and educator based in his hometown of Los Angeles, California. The depth and range of Atwood-Ferguson’s work is vast, having contributed to over 600 recordings, and 2,500 live concerts.In orchestral settings, Miguel has joined the likes of John Williams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Tilson Thomas, Zubin Mehta, Emanuel Ax, James Galway, Sarah Chang, Feist, Roy Hargrove, Francisco Aguabella, Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, Wayne Shorter, Ray Brown, Brad Mehldau, Guru (Gang Starr), Vince Mendoza, and Henry Mancini among many others.As a studio musician, he has recorded for Mary J. Blige, will.i.am, Dr. Dre, Flying Lotus, Anderson .Paak, Raphael Saadiq, Kobe Bryant, Seu Jorge, Heath Ledger, Lianne La Havas, John Cale, Swizz Beatz, Eddie Murphy, No I.D., Barry Manilow, Kimbra, David Foster, Joss Stone, Bilal, Michael Bublé, Marisa Monte, Common, Randy Jackson, and on Ray Charles’ Grammy winning album ‘Genius Loves Company’.

Thank you Miguel for this deep and very heartfelt conversation about your innermost thoughts.

https://www.instagram.com/miguelatwoodferguson

https://www.instagram.com/rezasafiniamusic

Anyway… this song…

Began its life like this…

And the whole thing ended up like this…

It’s hard to know how or why inspiration strikes but quite often I just sit at the piano and a start playing something and random phrases just come into my mind, with this one it was I feel you, I need you… simple and meaningless at the time hahaha… but then as I played it over and over again, the line I feel your energy through the screen came to me and it suddenly gave a heartfelt significance to the prior seemingly generic filler lyrics… that’s one of the things I love so much about poetry and art in general. The banal can be turned on its head with just one other thought added in tbe right place…

David Bowie said the difference between an artist and a craftsman is that the artist knows when to stop. I don’t know if thats a hard rule but the part of my work that I feel comes from outside of me is the part that knows when to add, when to subtract and when to stop…

Making this music is a journey for me, and a journal. When I listen to these versions of the song, I remember all the steps in between and the events of my days… its a secret code autobiography :)

Those are the first words of my new album, coming later this year.

It’s not just an album — it unfolds over time, and asks only one thing of you: presence.

1/∞ is a reflection on something I keep coming back to — that we are one consciousness, and at the same time, endlessly fractured into individual experience.

Somewhere inside that paradox is where meaning lives. And maybe where art comes from.

This is the heartbeat of the work — and the beginning of a wider conversation I’ve been wanting to open up, around art, creation, and something deeper underneath both.

Here, I’ll be sharing the process behind it all — the thoughts, the fragments, the pieces that don’t make it into the songs, but hold everything together.

Listen →

More to come…