“To reawaken and renew people’s sense of wonder,starting always, with my own.”
There is nothing “normal” about existence. All that we live in and all that we are, is bizarre, miraculous dream and gift.
To make music to help people slow down; to stir the depths with naked, passionate authenticity, to move hearts with beauty and untamed emotion; to help us all remember.
Bio
Lady Muse/Music has seduced Ryan Heflin all of his life. There was an undeniable attraction from early on that stayed true throughout all of life’s phases and shapeshifts. From sitting and singing “The Land Before Time Theme Song” as a tiny tot next to his dad on the piano bench, to later, in high school, discovering the curious effects an emo song a la guitar can have on the fairer sex; “I thank my 16 year old self every day for learning to sing and play guitar; definitely one of the best decisions I ever made” chuckles Heflin, “I must give a lot of gratitude to the female race for so effectively moving me to a lifelong passion for music and creativity, amongst other things. What better motivation is there really?”
From flirting with doing music professionally while applying to graduate schools for psychology post-college, paying dues in divey bars and “getting naked in public in awkward phases of development”, to getting the bedazzling opportunity to play the character of clifftop oceanside. Gatsby at The Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel as their in-house musician of 8 years; slinging solo acoustic covers, fighting off cougars of the OC and international variety, and flying to beautiful places like the Bahamas and Hawaii to play weddings and corporate events.
To here and now, with the stirrings of the soul loud, wailing without compromise, “Sing your songs and speak your truth man! Tell it all, be it all! Sound your barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world! ya dig??” (doesn’t everybody’s soul speak like that?), writing and recording his music with albums like “Where Does the Wonder Go?”, taking to the stages with his transcendentalist band and (finally) giving himself over fully to the Mystery and magic he’s been dancing with all his life.
“I’ve fallen in love with it”, he confides, “Music chose me. I know it. I was so scared of it because I loved it so much, it’s beautiful, it makes me cry sometimes to think of it, because I see now that it wouldn’t give up on me, despite my fear and self-sabotage; IT loved ME and wouldn’t give up on me. It's been this force, this presence, this guide in my life, like a lover, a Beloved, that--through our brilliant, poetic, rollercoaster love story--has made me the man I’ve always wanted to be, has made me choose my love for her over my fear and ego, and in doing so, has made me find the infinite love and beauty within myself. She has set me free, and given me a life beyond what I could have ever imagined; dreamlike and yet so perfectly poetically “me” (but of course).”
“I grew up attracted to solitude. I spent most of my time (and still do) on the seashore or in the water (I swear I was a dolphin in my past life and something in me is always trying to go home). I used to sit on the sand to watch the sunset (I’d feel guilty if I’d miss a sunset on any one day (and still do)), with my guitar, my surfboard, my journal, a good book, and a bursting, romantic heart full of longing and dreaming. No one around, a vast expanse of space and silence before me; I would lose myself and find myself in thought and feeling, inside of the beautiful afterglow of dusk, communing and playing with the Infinite Mystery. It’s quite poetic and brilliant how life works when we allow room for the magic, I get to do what I’ve always loved, now bringing to the world, all of those beautiful and powerful thoughts and feelings that found me in my solitude.”