An Interview with Metatron – Co-Founder of Lucidity Festival

Read on for discounted tickets!

Nestled in the hills of Santa Barbara, CA, Lucidity is serving up more this year than ever before with its focus on collaboration to obtain personal as well as community expansion and growth.

Not to mention for us music lovers, a stacked lineup featuring artists such as Craze, Ryan Herr, and Ardalan.

Recently, I had the chance to interview “Metatron,” one of the co-founders of Lucidity Music Festival. Over the phone I could hear the screetches of young children and commotion in the background, as well as a clock ticking down, signaling the approach of the final days before Lucidity Music Festival 2018.

I knew I was talking to a busy man so I didn’t waste time before jumping in to the interview.

First off, I’m curious to know, where did the name Metatron come from?

The name Metatron. What’s the easiest way to explain that?

The name came to me in a deep meditation.

I had never really heard the name before and in my meditation I started looking into it.

It was intriguing. I had a following deep meditation a month later. I was staring off at a distant light, like a star, communicating, and I realized I was talking to myself. Then friends of mine started calling me Metatron and it stuck.

You’ve been on the team since day one, how have you seen it evolve?

Yeah, I’m one of the original co-founders. It has been a beautiful process of creating a space where healing and radical self transformation can happen.

We want to create an environment where people are inspired to be their authentic selves. This has been a call out to the community to get involved and use this platform.

We began as a place to bring yourself, your gifts, your talents, the things you want to share in the way of healing, art, music, performance, transformation. We’ve seen it explode further and further into that.

People have come not even knowing what their talents and gifts were, and from being in that space and seeing others expressing themselves authentically, it’s empowered people to really step into their own authentic self and examine what it is they’re wanting to do, what they’re good at, and what they’re being called to do.

They maybe don’t have a place to express anywhere else.

A lot of the feedback year after year is how much Lucidity has inspired and given that platform to do this self exploration and find those answers for themselves. People expand upon that, taking it outward to other festivals and other places where they can grow.

We are providing the platform for those already doing it and making space for those in the community coming up and wanting to share.

Where would you like to see Lucidity go in the future?

There’s a couple of ways.

As a company, we’re expanding the ways in which we can play and meet our audience. And expanding that audience so we can expand individual healing and transformation, as well as collectively connect those pieces so that there is a larger community behind it.

Lucid University sprung out of Lucidity. We create workshops, weekend retreats, and seminars on permaculture, spirituality, movement and more. There is a vision to take that to more of an online platform and offer recordings of workshops at the festivals for people to more easily access information that is shared at the festival. Some of us hold a vision for shifting to a location where we can have a larger event and reach more people.

It’s important for us to hold the container for safety and what we’re trying to create.

The larger you get, the more you attract a party vibe. We keep our hearts and minds and feelers open to what is wanting to happen. We are staying connected to the energetic field we’re all co-creating in. We’re at that edge of not necessarily wanting to control what we’re bringing through, but just being able to at least hold the space to maintain our values and environment.

Your title is content curator and family services. How have you seen this festival positively impact families?

I have four kids. I have a 24 year old daughter and I’ve seen it impact her in her adult life. This is our seventh year producing this festival annually.

My wife Ally Avila, another co-founder, and I got married last August. Together we had three kids in last four years. Directly for us, we’ve raised a second generation of children, three kids, who have grown up in the midst of this type of work.

For my wife and I, our primary business is healing. We are both massage therapists, energy workers, we give reiki courses (my four year old sons name is Reiki), so healing is really our focus. The first year of Lucidity, there were 50 or 60 kids and parents; now we’re well over 200 plus children and families.

One of the courses offered this year is on drama free love. It’s about working through the difficulties of being in relationships, but doing so in a conscious manner, in which we understand that the things we do impact our children and set them up for how they view life and how they react in life.

It’s super important to us; everything we do is centered around family and children.

We also look into long standing multi-cultural wisdom and what it is to be in a community and in a family unit. I’ve watched it blossom and have really impactful, life-changing effects for people including myself.

How does Lucidity interact with society at large?

Good question.

We have written into our business structure one of our operating director’s roles, called Strategy for Good. Anything we’re in support of, local or global, and can support, we will support. We’ve done things from local clean-ups to keeping housing for the homeless in our local community.

Luke Holden, another co-founder, was instrumental in keeping housing which was going to be removed from the local community. The Council for Peace at Lucidity is a council formed up of both indigenous and other cultural wisdom keepers who come and meet together. They build their own relationships in hearing, discussing and supporting things happening in their areas.

We try to take the overlap in wisdom and share it outward to participants. This is done in the festival through workshops and through collaborative ceremonies like the opening and closing ceremonies.

The way our community supports collaboration influences performers, staff, artists, and crew members. It creates a better working relationship in their lives in general. Anyone outside of our community work or relationships that developed are only strengthened by that.

In our community, flow is a big thing. We’re talking about fire dancing, movement, play, and instruments. At Lucidity, the Flow Zone is created with collaboration of multiple flow artists. There’s a local sound camp that is providing music. A builder from our crew is building the space. None of these people would be able to pull it off alone.

These amazing things come together when each person can focus on their gift talent what they can share. It’s pretty magical to see the end result of collaboration.

It has inspired many of us to be more open to collaboration in our working relationships outside of the festival, in instances where maybe it’s not the traditional way of doing it.

For lucidity festival goers, what is one thing they absolutely cannot miss this year?

There’s a lot.

The Council for Peace will have a Sunday visionary panel and a community activism panel with local and out of state presenters. These are for people looking for ways to dive in and support the change they want to see in the world.

I definitely wouldn’t miss the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, Friday and Sunday at 11:11am. These will include a combination of Council of Peace, elders, wisdom carriers, from multiple traditions coming together to open up the space to create the intention together, collectively with all our dreams, and intentions and aspirations focused.

We’re all in this space together intending for healing transformation, being conscious of nature and the planet, and living together peacefully and harmoniously.

I don’t want to miss Craze on Saturday night at the Nook Stage. He is world class turntablist. I’m super stoked to see him.

The Flow Zone. For people into flow, yes, but also for people who aren’t into flow– there will be collaborators with hoops for people to try.

Lucid University is where a majority of all workshops are happening.

The Oracle Tent will be a place to come get a short oracle reading. Afterwards they are sent out into the realm of their choice (four oracles for each element). After seeing whichever oracle they see (you choose), oracle will say “now please explore the alter of (chosen element).” Here, they can learn their part of the ritual transmission. A real world application of the ritual will be taught for your specific element.

Then on Sunday night there is a Lucid Rising Dawn prayer performance. Wisdom keepers, prayers, performers all gather. If you learn one of the rituals during the festival you will be immersed in the performance.

This discount is offered to educational institutions. Users will receive $44 off their ticket! Promo code is “studentlove.” The website can be found here. 

If you’re not a student you can use the promo code ‘KCPR’ when buying a ticket to receive $15 off your ticket.

Hana Shiozaki is a KCPR DJ and a Graphic Design fourth year. Hana conducted the interview and took the photographs. Check out her show this quarter from noon till two on Wednesdays.