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Andrew Lycom: What's going on guys? I absolutely love that song. Probably top two favorite songs of all time. Welcome to “The Creative Mind”. This is the earliest that we've ever had this episode. So we're getting situated. I got my coffee. You can tell my voice is a little bit more mellow. But overall, it's going to be an exciting space. Sleepr, thank you so much for taking the time. I'm really here just to learn a lot about you. For those who are not familiar with “The Creative Mind”, my name is Andrew Lycom. I’m the host. I've been a contemporary fine artist for the past three year’s full time, and my history comes from a graffiti background. I'm pretty much self-made. Never had any training. It was just a lot of grinding, a lot of perspective, and a lot of experience. And now with kids, what we're doing here is expanding on that. So my mission is really to find like-minded individuals, Creatives worldwide, bring them together and do something powerful, because I truly believe that having creativity and using it is a superpower. And so I want to get connected with all the super humans in the world. And that being said, Sleepr, this is an absolute pleasure. You are an absolute legend. For those who are not familiar with Sleepr, he is killing it. I'm not sure how long you've been in the space, but just from what I've seen you do is absolutely incredible. He has exhibited with Sotheby's, which is absolutely insane. That's amazing. Me, myself, being in the fun out world in the past three years or so, I got to really see how difficult and how difficult it is to have works shown in these type of places. Sotheby's, Christie's, which is biggest art auction houses in the world. So, Sleepr, you want to come up here and just say what's up to the people real quick before we get into it?

Sleepr: Nice to meet you. Can you hear me okay?

Andrew Lycom: Yes, I can hear you perfectly.

Sleepr: Perfect. And it's a pleasure connecting with you. And we've seen each other around in this space for so long, but it's a long overdue catch up and connection. But super privileged to be on your show and all of the wisdom that you spout, I really resonate with. I really appreciate it.

Andrew Lycom: We've been doing this show maybe 14 weeks, 15 weeks, I'm not entirely sure. And every time the conversation just goes its own way. This is a very organic space. So think of it as just a conversation between two Creatives in the public eye where people can tune in live and just peep out on the conversation, get some insight on perspectives. Because what I like to really know is learn about your experiences and what formed you as a person, which then formed you as an artist? Because a lot of stuff that you tweet out, for instance, the thing that I have posted right now in the jumbotron, it's a lot of self-awareness. And I believe what separates a good artist from a great artist is really a lot about self-awareness and understanding yourself as a person. And what is it that you're trying to do in this world when it comes to the way you communicate yourself and your art?

Sleepr: I totally agree. Trying to retell the story of where that comes from, it's so difficult. It ends up some false narrative about, it was this and this and that's the linear story, but it's a million puzzle pieces that all join together into overarching patterns that you've picked up over your lifetime. Like, that tweet is a great example. I always try to really tweet out things that I really, really believe in and I try to sit down with a blank tweet or a blank post or whatever and just really pour myself into it. And that's what you do as well. They feel very truthful. A continuous striving towards uncovering more and more layers inside of this pursuit, and whether it's all illusions or whatever, but I do really feel I'm getting closer, whether that's actually false or not. Like this tweet is, “Art is a strange mirror that reflects back hidden qualities about yourself.” And vision is an internal construction that you're not really seeing a world out there. You're only ever seeing what you are and what the capacity you have to construct and interpret the external world. And then just trying to be really poetic, like cursed are those who live through foggy lenses. People who walk around with stories that they've adopted about what life is or who they are and the limits that they have and what the world is. I try to really just live in a really open minded. Open minded sounds a little bit cliche, but a very undefined world. And then there is eternal sunshine for the spotless mind, the one who is the true conduit, who can just really connect with being present with what the external world and what their internal world is and isn't trying to hold on or control it or define it. As soon as you put the limits and the bounds on the infinite, then that's the exact moment where the illusions and assumptions and falsities start coming in. I've had so many hundreds of really high level psychedelic experiences that have just really shattered my ideas of what life is and the limits of what it can be and what's hidden and what's beyond my traditional bounds of what I think the world has and is. I've been really humbled a lot of times and have tried to really incorporate that into a worldview. And then when I'm making art, it feels like I'm trying to channel that idea in about being very semi abstract type of work that is more about uncovering the nooks and crannies between the known and unknown and in between something and nothing, and there's this endless gradation, it's probably enough.

Andrew Lycom: That's absolutely beautiful. Really well said. When I really step back and I look at humanity as a whole, I see the same things as being an issue, because I feel like we as people are very much suppressed. And even though in the time, in an era where knowledge is so easily attainable, I feel like because of the overwhelming inputs that we're getting, we are getting even more lost as people, as individuals, and finding ourselves on what is it that we truly want to do with our lives? Because at the end of the day, I believe that we're only truly content when we're fulfilled. And so each person's fulfillment is different. But one thing that I've noticed is with Creatives, we're the ones really pushing the world into a very colorful place where things are a little bit more alive and we're doing it based on really nothing. We're pulling this shit out of ourselves and projecting it onto our worlds. Like you said, we're really taking our environment and things that are influencing us, putting it through us, and then filtering it, and then putting it back into the world in a different way that can inspire and motivate people. At least that's how I see the world, and that's how I see Creatives. That's why my thing, no matter how big I get as an artist, I just want to be around like-minded Creatives like you, like others in the space. Because I feel like us together having these conversations and bouncing back ideas and just energy, I feel we have the potential to really inspire the next generation. Nowadays, you look at people, let's say, for instance, take it back to the 80s in New York when Basquiat, Keith Herring, Madonna, they all came from that era. It's not by mistake. They all were in this one place and they were all doing what they really wanted to do, no matter if they had money at the time or they didn't. And they all kind of just made it work and found their voice and became something truly amazing. And I feel right now, at this day and time, things are a little bit different, obviously, with tech and the way the world is. But I feel we're finding these individuals who have that ability and the voice and are striving to become something truly fucking amazing that can have that type of impact. So I feel it's my duty with ODK to steer the ship and start connecting people and connecting talk Creatives and just being this fucking entity of a voice of just inspiration and hope that you can live life a certain way on your own terms. You don't need to be conformed to just what people tell you to do and having just a job that you're not happy with in a lifestyle that you're just slowly dying from. So this goes far beyond just art. We just spent the first 15 minutes just talking about the perspective on the way we see the world as Creatives. So it goes so much deeper than just what we put on pen or paper, on the iPad, on a painting. But art is technically the voice that we're using to communicate and bring forth a different experience into this world, which is why it's truly fucking amazing to be an artist. But that being said, let's run this way back for the audience, especially for myself included, because I really want to get to know what young Sleepr was like? Take us back to some moments where you were inspired to become a creative and just create anything.

Sleepr: I had all these experiences that were just really rattled me as a person, and I didn't have any means of being able to translate them out. So, in Australia, I was growing up around these crews of dudes who were pretty psychedelically oriented, and there was a lot of DMT flowing around my neighborhood and where I grew up. And as a young kid, I just stumbled into that world of smoking DMT, and it just really opened up a whole new aspect of myself and this other dimension of contact and beings and worlds and visions. It really set me on a lifelong pursuit of that field, and I'm still on it now. So I then went and studied at a university and did a Bachelor program. Then I did a Master's, and then I was doing my PhD in DMT and trying to think about how artists could support more formal psychedelic research in neuroscience and psychology, and the role that artists could play to support more formal research. So that is the broad umbrella of how I think about art. I really actually see it as a tool that's much more powerful than what most people use it and maybe most people think of it. I see it as such an incredible medium and form of communication. And what you communicate is how we define the value of that. So art is often the capturing and the communication of someone's inner self, but it can also be the documentation of the exploration of further spaces or further places that we don't currently know very well at all. And we don't have cameras or we don't have telescopes that can clearly see them. So I've been very interested in hallucination research history and the way that in the past people have documented things like cluster headaches and all of their inner world experiences. And when they document them, the way that further parts of the community, like researchers or psychologists or neuroscientists, can take that information of the arts or the imagery that was drawn by someone, and then what can we do with that to help further understand that phenomenon?

Andrew Lycom: We're on the same wavelength here. I understand exactly what you’re saying, how you're using art, how you're studying it, how you're going deeper into psychedelics to push this even further. And not a lot of people are doing that. You said it earlier, “A lot of people will tend to look at art as just like a visual format of your expression” which is true, but it goes so much deeper than that. And clearly seeing your work, you can tell that not only is there a lot going on, even in your more minimal pieces, but you can tell you're really pushing the boundaries of what is possible. And hearing you talk about psychedelics, I can see how it plays a factor. Not saying that your art is this way because of psychedelics, but at the same time not saying that it isn't. So, what I want to know is, for the audience tuning in right now, take us through a session of you coming down with a blank page. Talk about your environment, like your setting. Really put us in that narrative. What happens in these type of sessions? How do you start them? How do they tend to go for you as an artist? Take us through that real quick.

Sleepr: That's a great question. And that's the most beautiful time of all for me when it actually all comes together. I'm strangely very cautious about making work. There's a strange timing that it feels like it has to be. I won't start work. I might just stop making things for weeks or months and just have a lot of ideas and visions that flash through my mind, but I might just not even make any work. And then when it feels really like I have emptied my mind of a lot of stuff, then I can really sit down and channel it forth. But it really feels like a channeling process. So I'll make sure I have a cup of tea, and I've got some jazz on, and I've got the blank canvas open. But I will have thought for probably a week or two before about one image. And my favorite time is actually in bed when I go to sleep. I normally can't sleep for an hour before I actually fall asleep, but I'm laying in bed. I'll think of that image over and over and over, and I'll roll it round and I'll pull pieces out, and I'll split it in half and twist it up and really try to understand more about it, or I'll play with techniques. And so I do just so much prep work before making anything. Just in the imagination, I guess. And then when I'm making work, the work really rarely matches the vision. It's just like trying to think about paths through a jungle. So there's infinite paths in art, and there's infinite artworks that can be made. And that's the biggest challenge, is that anyone can sit down and make any work. That's not really hard at all. What is hard is getting to the spot that you really want to get to. And so for me, I'll start drawing out shapes. I'll start grouping and twisting shapes. I'll 3D model stuff, and then I'll bring it back in and draw over the top. I'll use celled shading texture in the 3D to help understand super flat ideas. I'm looking for these certain types of shapes that trigger these responses in me that align to the vision and also align the feelings I've had in the psychedelic sessions that I've had. So there'll be these weird fleeting eyes, there'll be these little faces in the corners of shapes that come out of the strange. And it's like, there it is. And I might spend 6 or 7 hours making shit and it'd all be just trash. I make so much bad work, it's not funny. And when I look through my pro, I'll often save 30 or 40 versions of a single work until I get the final one. And when I look through them all, they're just horrendous. But I can see the journey. I have to trust the process. I have to trust that if I keep going, I'll get there, but it takes a long time and I can't just sit down and draw it straight. That's really challenging for me. That type of work ends up really boring. And so I'll often save all these versions thinking I've actually got something that is riveting and interesting. And then when I look back at it, it's not there and it doesn't make the cut. So I have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing for it to continue to reveal this mysterious mercurial quality that I'm in such feverish pursuit of. I'm really trying to get this thing. And how I get there every time is really difficult. My friend said that they're 1000 spinning plates just all strung up, that all hang together for this one moment. And it's really how it feels because if I change anything, it collapses and it all falls down and it's just shit again. And honestly, I feel exhausted after the work is finally birthed out.

Andrew Lycom: It's like a battle.

Sleepr: It's such a battle.

Andrew Lycom: This is crazy. I don't know if it's because I'm a creator as well, but you really put me in that dynamic of what it's like to create these pieces, and it's a beautiful journey. But I can see how it can become a disaster at the same time and become very frustrating because you're aiming and shooting to literally pause the frame at the perfect time where you feel your piece is complete. Like you said, any little movement of a change can collapse the whole thing, and you're back to square zero. I just fucked it all up. I know I can really see you yourself, even though I have no idea what you look like, but I can see you in that environment of just like, “Fuck, I almost had it, but it wasn't it. I got to come back tomorrow and see what we can do with it.” It's crazy.

Sleepr: You really said that beautifully. I really feel the burn because so many times I've actually gotten really close and fucked it, and then I've lost it and then I can't. And there's another thing that, because it's channeling, it's hard to come back in the next day, and it's hard to come back in a week's time and sometimes you can. I really think that art is the culmination of everything, of that person, of everything in the external world. It's this summation moment of everything. And when you come back next week, it’s like you've changed a little bit. And when you're trying to capture something so fleeting, it's sometimes possible, but sometimes it's just gone. The ones that have got away, I'll never let that down. That's such a burn.

Andrew Lycom: And for the Creatives, like the artists listening right now, that's why a lot of the times, what happens when you start a piece, whether it's digital or physical, and time passes and then you come back to it with fresh eyes and you're able to see, “Oh, this needs changing right here. I see exactly what this needs now.” It's because we change as people, and the way we're perceiving the world changes as well. Even though a lot of time might have not passed, but enough time to come back with a fresh perspective and be like, I see exactly why this piece was frustrating me, and now I know exactly what to do. Let me go ahead and try again. That's what usually happens, because when we tend to create and we're creating for such a long period of time, we're just so in tune to this piece. We get lost in it where everything starts to become and feel the same. And so we need to detach from it for a bit. Like Sleepr said, sometimes it takes even longer than a day to be able to come back and be like, let me re-channel and retry to finish this piece. At the end of the day, you know when the piece is finished. But at the same time, you don't know when they're going to have these sparks of that true magic that's going to finish the piece. But what you can do to continue to progress is show up and put in the hours either way, because that's still going to advance you from a technical standpoint. Your ability to channel yourself and get it out the way you want to get it out is also very important. So the tools, the things that we use, the mediums, our ability to be able to put out what we see in our head is also very important, and that we can show up every single day and practice those skills. Learning how to shade, learning about color, learning how to do different shapes, learning different software depending on your medium, these are things that we can continue to do on a day to day basis as discipline. And then when these moments of magic are here, you're ready for it. And you're trying to get the most out of it. So for me, that's the best equation to just show up every day and put in the work, but at the same time, also understand that not every single day is going to be a success.

Sleepr: Absolutely. Totally agree. I really resonate with that idea of a lifetime of work for the luck moment. And I really hold art in such a high esteem. I'd be so proud with one work that feels timeless, and I really just want to achieve one piece that really is memorable for all time. That is the endless pursuit to get there to that one work. So I need to do a lifetime of work to be ready to be able to channel that when all that magic aligns and to capture it all and pause perfectly. It's really well said.

Andrew Lycom: 100%. And now that I know a little bit more about yourself and your context and the way that you create your perspectives. Like the post, the artwork that I just pinned to the top, I can really see what you're doing now. Because beforehand, I had seen your word. I thought it was absolutely amazing. And for whatever reason, I was like, why does this feel different from just abstract work? What is it about it that has a little bit more life than just looking at and be like, that's just abstract? And I'm seeing the shapes. And you talked about this earlier. Your shapes to me feel more like entities. The artwork that I'm looking at right now, it seems like these are entities that are just dancing around, and they have a lot of life in them for whatever reason. Literally just shaping colors, but the way that you do it, it gives them life. I want to look at these on shrooms, and I definitely will, because I'm actually doing a shroom treatment right now. So I'm going to take a day and really take double the amount and just go in on your work, and just really look at it, dive into it, and try and see what I see based on the context that you just gave me.

Sleepr: That'd be very cool. And I really appreciate about the entities. These shapes feel alive, because that's all it is. It's just shapes and color. And the way you organize your shapes is the entire craft. And what I do best is capturing these strange shapes that feel like they're alive more than other shapes. And I don't know if it's my experience with seeing things that are like that or whether it's just this continuous pursuit to try to push and find interesting combos of little groups of shapes. So they make me feel so alive and so honored when they emerge through. And even that work that you posted, the whole idea of that piece is that there is this veil even in a concrete street. Even a normal street in the city, there is this veil that if you lifted only just inches from your nose, there are this whole world teeming with stuff that this real magic that we actually in the west are really resistant and have just chokeholded out of our normal life. It's just not integrated at all. And if you go anywhere into any other country, most other countries have this real spiritual dimension that is teeming with entities and beings and spirits, and their world is filled with an animist idea. And ours have really dead concrete streets. Everything's dead, kill the insects, and it's just completely static. I really believe that underneath the skin, underneath the veil, there is this whole world happening. And I really want my work to try to breathe that in, even into the JPEG, even into the pixels, you can make the shapes come alive. It's like magic. I talk a lot about magic in my posts. Whatever the term is like, spirits or magic or the unreal or inter-dimensional or quantum physics. It's all the same stuff anyway. It's just whatever lens you prefer to hear. But I really think that art transcends just pixels and just JPEGs. I really think that there's more going on with art than we know, even beyond just documenting things that we can't see. I think there's this real strange relationship. I even think this is a wild thing to say. And what's my source I made it up? When you make art there is this bound relationship on a quantum level with that work and the energy that you pour into it. I wrote recently about it. Like, in Buddhism, you can generate entities and pour energy into them and they start as a thought form, but then they are able to pour energy in. Where does that go? It's almost at this quantum level. And then these entities become alive and interactive. So the same with the art. And I actually think this is a wild thing to say, but I can change the feeling of an artwork through a meditative practice of connecting back with it. I feel I can go back and change the history of a static JPEG, because it's not just the paint on the paper or the pixels on the screen. There's this other energetic folder that's hiding behind the scenes that people are pouring and connecting into. And you can go back and change the feeling of it. You can change the resonance of an artwork because you were the birther of the work. You were the original resonating point. And this is like Einstein talked a lot about spooky action at a distance. Like, there's this entanglement that happens when you generate things from nothing. There's an entanglement between the artist and the artwork. And when people connect to the artwork, they're connecting to the artist, and it's all happening simultaneously at the same time. We really don't have much of a clue of what the fuck's going on, to be honest, about art. And there's very little pursuit of it because we're still scraping the surface in traditional quantum physics. We're still trying to figure out just very basic stuff. And then this is a really high level implementation of all this stuff. It's just way too complicated to unpack properly. Anyway, I think there's much more going on.

Andrew Lycom: Thank you for just opening the fuck up and just really speaking your truth, because it's a very vulnerable place to be in, to really sit down, be in the space, and talk about what truly inspires you and motivates you to create and the way that you see the world as it is for your life and for others. I think you put it very well put on your site. I'm looking at it right now, and I absolutely love this statement at the bottom where it says, “These artworks document the pursuit into the unknown and the attempt to bring back visual clues from the other side.” That's so well put. And I feel like everything that you have put together here, the way you present yourself, the things that you talk about, it's all very much connected. And what I want you to do is if you can give some type of advice for people listening in that are struggling with the matter of connecting everything together for themselves to kind of have a voice or start to put this voice and energy together, because it's not easy to really understand yourself, understand what your values are, where you're headed, what you actually want to do in this lifetime, because it's such a short lifetime and how you do it. These are all things that come from putting a package together that you come to understand is you and you're pulling from the same place every time, but every time it's different, but you're pulling from the same energy. And that's how people are perceiving you, and that's how people are connecting with you. So for somebody who's struggling to do that and contextualize all this stuff as a person, what would you tell them? Can you direct them in the right direction for themselves?

Sleepr: Definitely. And this has been such an effort at Curation. It's almost months or years of continuously trimming the fat back on pieces that don't feel aligned because we're all so complex and there's so many moving pieces to who you are. But the thing I continue to just go back to whenever I get lost is really my own curiosity. Why am I doing something? I think that is the most important question. And returning back to the original departure intention is the key. So what is it that you're most curious about? Why are you making the work and trying to incorporate that into all aspects of your actions? You don't need a big reason. It can be just to understand something. It can be just to engage with beauty and a certain type of beauty. It can be to just channel your inner demons out. And that's more than enough richness to have a life-long pursuit in the arts. It's just about trying to align that original intention.

Andrew Lycom: I fucking love that. I love the idea of if you're getting lost, if you're going too deep to one direction, just hit the reset button. And the way you do that is by going back to, why did I even start this in the first place?

Sleepr: Exactly.

Andrew Lycom: It’s such an easy way to have that string. It reminds me of those movies, “Insidious” when they're going into the other realm, but they have either a string or something to pull them back. So use that reason why you started in the first place to go back to that and start over in a sense, but not really start over because obviously you've been doing stuff for quite some time, but it just puts you back in a place where you're like, “Fresh canvas. Let's chill. Let's just start from zero and build from there” because I've had that happen to me. I'm so deep into my shit and that sometimes I tend to get lost and I'm just like, hold up. But the way you put that, that's exactly what I did. I was like, what's my why? I'm always going back to what's my why with everything that I do, whether it be my art, my career, or being this project leader, founder, window kids, and what is our why? And I tell my team, if we continue to build from that framework, our products will change, maybe our brand will change from time to time, but our overall reason to exist will never change. And being the leader of that project, my thing is to make sure that they’re conduit that perspective and just stays intact no matter how big we get.

Sleepr: I totally agree. And you really nailed it about branding, that the branding might change, but the value stays the same. And even in Solana, it's been a bit of a rolling meme about branding. And what is branding? It's really a value that the final individual in the company has. It's the final check and balance from one person in the company, the last guy, the boss. What is it their value system is? And everything else can change under the sun. It could change every day. The logo could change a thousand times. The artwork is posted, but the value is the quality. And that is beyond an individual medium, it's beyond an individual output. And as the artist, that's what it is. And I went through many detours along the road of why was I doing something? There were times where it was like, this is a way for me to receive love. This is a way for me to feel needed or desired or wanted. And then it might get shat on the next week, or someone will say, actually, I hate that work. And then you think, I got to put my defenses up. That wasn't really the reason why. That was me filling my own cup or trying to use this for other unfinished puzzle pieces within myself. A lot of times it will reflect things I'm still working on in my own personal life. So I need to feel really grounded and stable and really healthy and happy and as though I need nothing from anyone else to be able to make the work for me. Because then it returns back to why I started. And it was this curiosity about documenting this hidden world. So I don't get lost in treating it like it's this other thing. I don't treat it like this is my income source. I still work full time. And often in this space, it's so driven with money and it's so driven with success. And deep down I have this desire to be the full time artist, and I really hope that can be true. But also for me personally, it has not be true so that I can just get on with the job for now. And maybe that happens in a year or two or never. And both of those are okay. Because as soon as I started tying success to the work, I could feel something slipping. I'm going to make this type of piece because this is what the audience wants and all these assumptions and projections and you're just nodding yourself up. It may work for a little while, but it's a departure from your original intention or my original intention. So departures and detours are totally normal. They just continue to reveal great things for you to keep improving and succeeding.

Andrew Lycom: This is why this space is titled “The Creative Mind”. I absolutely love this conversation. I can't believe we're almost at the one hour mark. I wish this will go on longer, but we always cut it off at the one hour. So we learned why you create and then we also learned how you create. So now take us through real quick on the process of how did you get your work out there, in a sense, to have people or entities like Sotheby's reach out? I don't know if you reached out to them, but can you give us some inputs on how these things happened for you? Were you hitting people up or how did you really just expand and really push your work out there to this point where you're exhibiting worldwide in New York and London and Berlin and France? Can you give us a little insight about that?

Sleepr: I haven't really been reaching out. I really don't know where or who to reach out to. If you send an email to Sotheby's, they won't reply probably. It's pure luck. And that idea before of a lifetime of work for that luck moment, it's just so true for me. And I'll go six months or nine months with nothing happening at all. And then one day, there'll be one collector who has a hundred followers and a dog photo, and then suddenly they know someone and they really love the work, and then they tell someone, and then suddenly I'm on a call with Hong Kong Sotheby's. And they go, “Send me some work.” And they say, “Actually, we love this stuff. We'll put it in this next auction.” And that process took a day to get in. And all of these places are just individuals. They're just everywhere else. It's just someone behind who's making decisions, and there's too many things out there, and they're looking at just the top items in their funnel that get through. It 95% luck or 99% luck. So very lucky to have that. I just try to do everything I can that any opportunity that comes through, I try to really embrace it and engage with it really meaningfully. And it's just that continuous work mentality that has helped enable an action and create fruition out of opportunities. But I don't know the secret. I've been very lucky. It's a very tough space and it's just been downhill forever in terms of it being harder. And I can only imagine how hard it feels for so many others. But it's just tenacity to that this is a non-negotiable in your life and your pursuit. It is a non-negotiable. I can guarantee you in ten years, Sleepr will be ten times bigger. And I don't know how that's going to happen, but it's just not an option for it not to happen.

Andrew Lycom: I love that. And the reason I ask is because I tend to see that everybody's answer is pretty similar. And it's just showing me that that's just really the way. Like you said, tenacity, showing up. All that we can really do as not just a creative, but as people is just show up every single day and just try to get a little bit better that day than we did yesterday. And that's it. That's really the formula right there. And you do that enough times, you're bound to catch some type of break. Some call it luck. I like to think about it as just you were ready for the opportunity, so it came to you finally. And so all these little things, when you're looking at yourself, whether you're an artist or you have a business, it doesn't really matter. It's just how prepared are you to receive these opportunities. It can be something as little as having a functional website, having the same logos across all your socials, to have people really be able to find you or having a working email or something. Sometimes it's the simplest things, but they go so far in the form of you being able to connect and really have these opportunities show up. Because if you don't have the funnels, then how's it going to happen? And you just never know when it's going to happen, which is the crazier part. It's nothing crazy, literally just showing up. I know it sounds so boring, but I don't know any other way. I wish I did. And all the creators that I've talked to has literally said the same thing. It's just consistency of showing up and just putting in the work and constantly looking at yourself and trying to really be truthful with yourself as far as who you are, what you value and what you're aiming towards for the rest of your life. Before we close this off, I really want to know what Sleepr is going to do for the next couple of months. What can we look forward to and how far are you really trying to take this? Not the end goal, because I don't believe in having a true end. But what's the vision for you going forward?

Sleepr: In next few months I'm working on Sleepr world, which is going to help expand Sleepr a little bit more. So Sleepr world is going to come out, which is very exciting. I'm working with ministry very closely as well, so there'll be a push towards a range of traditional artist outputs and ideas. So it's the establishment of Sleepr as an artist and that's for now in those next few months, maybe the next six months. It's really probably the establishment outside of this hyper NFT space and still being really active in here, but just spreading the roots a little bit more. In the next few years, it's to be where the top NFT artists are now. I think that's really the big goal is to be present with those artists in traditional auction houses and traditional galleries and museum acquisitions and that's the lofty goal that I'm working towards.

Andrew Lycom: I love it. This has been absolute pleasure. And I want to take the time to let the audience know if they have a question or statement, this is the time to raise your hand before we close it out. But we definitely need to keep connected, and just chop it up. Because I feel having these conversations, I learned a lot and it just opens up so many perspectives that can turn into ideas that can turn into masterpieces you just never know. So I really like having these type of conversations with people going so much deeper than just the art. Because I feel the art is the visual format of what we're trying to say and what we feel, but the context is the 80% of it. How we got there and what are we pulling from and what are we trying to say. And so that's what I really like to learn about people. Hold on, we have a request. Give me a second.

Charlotte: Super deep conversation today. A lot of it hit home with me, especially with talking about allowing yourself to explore a bit, but also knowing when it's time to reel yourself in. So a lot of us get lost in that, where you just continue to go, go, and then you forget why you started what you started and why you are at the spot you're at. And it can be hard to reverse that. So it's a good reminder. I like the insidious reference, too. That was pretty interesting a way to think about that. It was an awesome conversation. I love your work. I've not been into abstract stuff a lot. I've started doing it myself, but it's beautiful. So I just wanted to share that. And again, appreciate you, Lycom, for having these weekly. It's a great conversation.

Sleepr: Thanks. That's very kind of you to say. We all get lost. It's very normal. I really think of this is like a SWAT mission. Sometimes it's got to be really with bungee cords on and gearing up to go out and then come back. It's tricky.

Andrew Lycom: It really is. It's honestly a fucking battle. And sometimes we lose that battle, but that's life really. Charlotte, thank you for coming up and for tuning in. I've seen Charlotte kinda grow and develop both as a person and his work. And it's a beautiful thing to see when you're seeing in real time a person pushing their craft and they're actually really getting somewhere with it because they're showing up and they're just taking the time to really understand themselves and develop the work. So that's something I've been seeing Charlotte do for the past couple of months, and it's a beautiful thing to see. But that being said, before we close it out, I have one last question for you, Sleepr. I always like to close it out this way. And if you can go back in time and have ten minutes with young Sleepr, what would you say to him?

Sleepr: That's a great question. It’s to maintain a steadfast trust within yourself and understand that the doubt is normal, but to never relinquish the vision and to go further and harder and faster than you think your limits are now in one direction and really, truly learn the trust in yourself process . Because the only important quality you need over the next ten years. But to go further, faster and to trust in yourself more.

Andrew Lycom: I hate to close it out, but we have to. This was a beautiful, beautiful conversation. Sleepr, I actually have something that I want to run by you, but I'll do it via DM. It's something that you'll find very interesting just based on the conversation that we had today. And so for the audience tuning in, you might find out a little bit later. Who knows? But I'll run it by you, see what we think about it, and then we'll kind of just go from there. But thank you so much for taking the time and coming to our space, talking about your truth and opening up. It was a beautiful conversation for everyone, really. And thank you for just allowing One Dope Kids to host you and pick your brain really. So thank you so much, honestly. And on that note, we do this every Friday, “The Creative Mind”. Today we had it a little bit earlier than our original time, but we do this every Friday at One Dope Kids. We host and have a conversation with a creative every Friday. And it's basically the same thing, learning about perspective experiences. And I try to pull information that I believe a lot of people can use, not just artists, but just people as a whole. And this is what we do. In time, we will expand this space into a formal podcast. But, for now, we're going to continue doing it on Twitter. So enjoy it while it's still here. And much love to everybody. Sleepr thank you so much, everybody who tuned in much love. I'm going to go ahead and close it out with some music and I'll catch you guys next week.