Meet the Artists Behind the Artists: From the Doors and Crowley to Lady Gaga and Abramović

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Learning how the sausage made is never easy. Disgust, horror, fascination are only some among the feelings we experience as we discover how many of our favorite foods are really made. But what about the songs and culture we consume? How often do we get to see how they’re really made?

Since the time of Plato and his Republic, politics has been understood as essentially downstream from culture. The songs and art we emote with and the stories which capture our hearts and minds shape our affective systems and color our imaginations in ways that are hard to quantify. Indeed, the effects are nearly impossible to measure because they permeate all facets of our being, including the unconscious and automatic dimensions. As a result, the consequences of various cultural phenomena may often only become apparent years after they’ve weaved their magic and cast their spells over generations.

So, why not take a closer look at some of the most popular artists of our times and get to know the wizards behind the magic? In our immediate times, two of global pop superstar Lady Gaga’s spiritual and artistic mentors stand out.

Take, for example, Fernando Garibay. Known as a Mexican-American Polymath, record producer, songwriter, entrepreneur, author, and academic, Garibay describes himself as someone who teaches creativity and helps pop stars “find themselves.” One of the leading artists behind the artists, Garibay served as a musical mentor for Lady Gaga and now teaches creativity as a skill to World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leaders.

In his own words, Garibay describes his creative relationship with various global pop stars in the following manner: “I am your mirror; I am going to show you the best version of yourself, a version you can’t see because you can’t put a mirror to your brain.”

When it comes to the question of song-writing and the magical art of creating new “hits,” Garibay explained the following in an interview with Gulf Business:

People don’t know what they want. You must show them. Or, more accurately, you must create a reality they have not yet perceived. Show me a part of me I never knew existed, and you have a hit. The way you create reality for people is to author a story that is genuine, that they can buy into, so it becomes their story. The story you’re telling, what you’re wearing, what your video is projecting, must be congruent with your message and identity.

Create that world to be so authentic they want to be like you, hang out with you, or want to have a romantic relationship with you. Hit all those marks and you have something. That’s N.W.A, Beatles, Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin. They created entire worlds. What N.W.A. and Prince did is create a reality different to the one where you’re risking your life and fighting off the bad guys. You listen to one song, and you’re immediately transported. Reality shifts, and it connects with audiences from the Middle America to Japan. When art, pop music, film, or any media scales, it’s because you have created an alternate reality for people.

While perhaps little-known by the general population, Fernando is indeed exemplary of the artists behind the artists. Founder of the Garibay Institute, Fernando plays the role of polymath and creativity guru for a new generation of Young Global Leaders, pop stars and “high performance” individuals who desire to transcend the regular “limits” of everyday life and access their deeper “human potential.”

Under the banner of the “Creative Industrial Complex,” the Garibay Institute’s webpage describes itself in the following terms:

THE CREATIVE-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX™ is an ecosystem founded by the Garibay Institute, the first and only research and development institution focused on art, creativity, entertainment (film, gaming, music, experiential) as an instrument for soft power, cultural identity and patrimony, intellectual renaissance, and sustainable economic growth.

​The brainchild of renowned hit record producer and polymath Fernando Garibay, the Institute unites global leaders, world-class universities and academicians, financial institutions, and thought leaders with elite members of the creative class to catalyze innovation, empowered dialogue, and cultivate engaged and inspiring icons of the future.

Our research and applied methodologies bring together creative industries’ best practices. We collaborate with an extraordinary network of top artists, performers, producers, influencers/key opinion leaders, financiers, empresarios, intelligentsia, and entertainers. We deliver innovative breakthroughs in creativity, instinct/intuition, and sense literacy™ for organizations, public and private, sovereign and disruptive, for-profit and not-for-profit.

At this point, we must warn readers: this is a rabbit hole.

Alas, we see and hear so very little about the artists behind the artists, and yet, they’re the far the more interesting and creative ones. Indeed, with more elaborate ideas and refined perspectives, one could argue that they are the real artists and visionaries.

Consider another spin-off of Garibay and his circles: the Liminal Collective. Driven by a 2.0 vision of humanity, it describes itself as an elite institution bringing together high performance individuals from the military, entertainment, science and business world:

We assemble bespoke, multi-disciplinary teams to work at the threshold of human potential, applying the deep science of elite performance, tapping ancient traditions and breaking convention…

The Liminal Collective’s role is to bring together various high performance individuals who seek to challenge their limits and work at the “threshold of human potential.” Take its intimate and invitation-only “Legends of Ibiza” gatherings. The exclusive get-together is described in the following terms:

An invitation-only, intimate and exclusive gathering for a diverse group of high performers including entrepreneurs, business leaders, athletes, military, music, culture or arts. If you are at the top of your game or looking to increase your human potential, this experience is for you. This  immersive journey through creativity, science, technology, music and ancient wisdom is designed to be life-changing.

Interestingly, the collective’s Executive Acheron offers “experiential adventures” that bring together the world’s so-called “elite leaders” so that they can learn to unlock their hidden “human potential.” A description of the exclusive program reads as follows:

A reference to Dante's infamous journey, we will guide you on an experiential adventure that brings cohorts of the world’s elite leaders together to explore the first principles of humanity. We will infuse the powerful and transformational practices of ancient rites of passage with cutting-edge science and insights, so you can optimize yourself for both life and business. In challenges lie our greatest transformations.

While perhaps seen as a generic term by many, the notion of unlocking one’s deeper “human potential” or hidden reserves is a theme popularized by one of the vanguard counter-cultural institutions and New Age meccas, the Esalen Institute. Pioneering the works of Abraham Maslow, Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, Sigmund Freud, among others, the notion of expanding one’s human potentials has its roots in a very specific historical development in the modern West, one whose deeper implications remain largely unknown, despite its having shaped generations of artists and thought-leaders across the Western world.

Human Potential

Established in 1962, the Esalen Institute served as vanguard for a new counter-cultural vision of America and the Western world. Specifically, it sought to establish a new religious and spiritual ethic to replace what were regarded as the outdated religious traditions of Platonism and Judeo-Christianity. Among its interests were drug-infused mysticism, psychical research, the integration of Eastern mysticism into American life, and a heavy focus on the “liberating” effects of altered-states of consciousness through chemicals, meditation and various forms of “experiential” learning.

As Jeffrey J. Kripal notes in his Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion:

In 1960 Price went to hear Aldous Huxley deliver a lecture called “Human Potentialities” at the university of California, San Francisco Medical Center. Although “we are pretty much the same as we were twenty thousand years ago,” said Huxley, we have “in the course of these twenty thousand years actualized an immense number of things which at the time for many, many centuries thereafter were wholly potential and latent in man.” He went on to suggest that other potentialities remain hidden in us, and he called on his audience to develop methods and means to actualize them. “The neurologists have shown us,” said Huxley, “that no human being has ever made use of as much as ten percent of all the neurons in his brain. And perhaps, if we set about it in the right wat, we might be able to produce extraordinary things out of this strange piece of work that a man is.” (Kripal., 85)