Johanna Warren

Today, Daniel speaks with singer Johanna Warren, whose achingly splendid expressions are appreciated all around the world. 

“For Johanna, spirituality & humanity are inexorable from each other—to her, it’s all energy.” (NPR)

Multi-instrumentalist, healer, mystic, and so much more, we’re psyched to have her on the show today!  

Quotes:

Johanna: I was really sick & sad & the drugs that doctors threw at me were only making things worse.  My friend introduced me to mushrooms & it completely reawakened my awareness of magic. Humans are inherently connected to the aliveness of nature because we are nature. It’s how we evolved, to be connected, and it’s only so recently that we’ve separated ourselves from nature & I think that’s the reason for so much of our collective diseases and disorders. 

Johanna: (on a transformative LSD journey) I worked thru this desire to be pretty & feminine, which had always haunted me, & pushed thru that where I saw I was so much bigger than that—I  heard the words:  you are ancient, you are timeless, you are wise & I trust you. 

Johanna: (on covid-related tour cancellations) It’s been unexpectedly blissful to not be on the road, as I have been for most of the decade.  I’m grateful to be chillin’. It’s pretty brutal, the touring life is not for the faint of heart or body.  It’s been weighing on me, the hypocrisies of caring about the future of our planet yet having to be in a different city each night, just burning a ton of fossil fuels & putting your body through inhumane stresses. 

Daniel: There’s this romanticized idea that the musician is almost sacrificial—this live fast, die young & leave a good-looking corpse. It’s a fetish that we have.

Johanna: Our food system’s messed up. We go to the store to buy a mango that’s flown in from far away that’s not even in-season, vs. foraging in the local forest…there’s amazing treasures that are growing all around us & we’re caught in these capitalist traps we’re not even aware of. 

Johanna: (on artistic martyrdom) I’ve been thinking of Jesus Christ as an archetypal figure, our collective fixation on the narrative of the Crucifixion & what that does to us to have that image constantly broadcast.  Why is that the dominant visual, instead of him healing someone, performing a miracle, or sitting under a tree obtaining enlightenment.  It’s like the heroes death is the cherry on top of a sundae of martyrdom & dead hero worship, and it’s all kind of twisted. 

Johanna: We don’t live in a death positive society. To me death is beautiful, & I’ve seen these beautiful celestial landscapes which it’s beyond my ability as a human to translate—but, that’s the goal.