Category: Mike Monroe Band

As mentioned in the previous coupla blogs, I’ve been having a lot of email conversations with my mom lately about energy. One of the things she has mentioned to me is that people who are addicted to drugs or alcohol can open themselves up to lower energies, which can, in some cases, take over.

I don’t often get into conversations about this, primarily because I have no expertise on the subject, and secondly because I don’t really want to talk to people about “entities” or that kind of thing. It gets into weird territory and it can be interpreted in strange ways. And I don’t want to shoot my mouth off and propagate any untruth.

I do want to tell you a couple of tales though, because I got to see it in action recently, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Lately it seems that as soon as I ask about anything the answers come to me. It helps to have a mother that I can go to for information, but I can also see that the Universe is waiting for us to ask of it right now. We just have to be clear about what we want, or what we want to know.

Anyway, so here are my stories. I’ll try to keep them short:

Many years ago I dated a lovely guy with a terrible heroin habit that he was trying to kick. He got clean while we were together, but it was short-lived, although I don’t know where he’s at with that struggle today. At that time he had a lot of trouble sleeping, and would wake from terrible nightmares in which he said he could feel black, shapeless beings trying to pull his soul out of his body. He woke up freaking out all the time and I felt very bad for him, he was genuinely terrified in his sleep.

The other thing that would happen to him is that often, as soon as he drank a shot of hard alcohol, he would become an entirely different person. His face would change into an unrecognizable snarl and he behaved as if he didn’t know any of us. This extremely gentle, soft spoken person would become an uncontrollable maniac that threw himself in front of cabs, picked fights with random strangers, and pushed people out of his way on the street. It was really bizarre and it was so impossible that even his closest friends would leave him stranded rather than risk taking the tasmanian devil into their home.

I asked my mom about it and she said that the years of constant drug use had probably opened him up to a vulnerability to negative energies. This seemed a logical explanation to me. I am in no way implying that he was “possessed”, but there was definitely something “other” going on with him. Suffice to say that romance was short-lived, although I still think he’s (when sober) one of the nicest people I’ve known.

More years after that, I went on one or two dates with another guy on the scene, equally soft spoken and gentle. It went nowhere and we drifted into different crowds and I didn’t ever run into him again. Then I heard from friends that he had developed a crack habit, gotten into santeria, became homeless, and had just gone to jail for strangling his grandfather to death.

Yes, right now you’re envying my innate ability to pick the good ones, aren’t you? It’s a gift. But everyone who knew him was deeply shocked. It was just so strange, especially as in the past he had made it clear that he loved his family. I felt very sad for him and for his family, and I checked around online and found a couple of articles about the crime, but not too much information. I went to bed feeling very sad and wondering how this bizarre turn of events had unfolded. My last thought as I dropped out was of this guy sitting in a cell somewhere.

That night I dreamt that shapeless, almost cartoony black beings were shooting in and out of my body and pulling at me to get me out of my body. I woke up with a start and was so freaked out by how real it felt that I didn’t go to sleep for a long time. The next day I mentioned it to my mother, who told me the same thing, that if this person was doing drugs and in a dark space for a long time, he’s probably opened up to some fucked up things, and my empathetic concentrating on him so hard had brought me a small taste of what was happening with him.

All of that was years ago, but because of my energy vampire blogs and conversations with my mom and friends about this and other issues, I am paying more attention lately to energy and the way it moves through a room.

I went to a show last week and had a really good time. I was very excited to see the band after not seeing them for many years, and was happy to support my friends who play in the band. The music is very heavy, and the crowd is pretty masculine for the most part, not unlike the crowd CSFH used to get actually. We got a lot of meatheads, which makes for fun when you’re onstage, but not so much fun sometimes if you are in the crowd.

There was a pretty good pit going and I stood up on a banquette to get out of the line of fire. I never like being in the middle of mayhem and found a great position to view both the band and the audience from above the fray, and it was pretty interesting.

The majority of the crowd slamming into each other were male (as usual) and were cheerful and not out to harm each other. They pulled people up when they landed on the floor and held each other up when stage-diving. They brought each other beers and shouted along with the choruses and banged into each other happily like your standard dumb dudes at a metal show.

But it got dark. One girl in the crowd stood out because her energy was different. She was obviously drunk, and very aggressive. She led with her fists and purposely hit people while moshing in the crowd. She grabbed onto people’s shirts and pulled them into other people, jarring everyone in the vicinity violently. Her face was a mask of hate and it really did feel like there was a dark energy swirling around her. I could see the others reacting to her attacks in different ways. Some shrugged it off and others looked at her with angry reaction. All decided to leave her alone, it was truly her own trip, but it subtly penetrated the others and the pit got creepily more aggressive.

A light went on in my head and I thought “Oooohhh, this is what we’ve been talking about.” I am watching an “entity” or maybe “pain body” takeover in action. Whatever you want to call it, it is a dark energy taking over someone and dictating their behavior. This energy was emanating off of her so palpably and filling the space around her so completely that it almost seemed strange to me that people continued on with what they were doing rather than stop the entire show to take in what was happening.

I have no doubt in my mind that this girl is different when sober. She might still be an asshole, but with all that alcohol in her she was on auto-pilot. She probably didn’t even remember it all the next day. I am a drinker and have stepped into my own dark territories when under the influence, so I can’t sit back and say I’m any better than her. I probably focused on her right away because I recognized parts of my own self in her behavior.

I don’t have much more to say about it except that I am continuing to think about ways to keep myself clear and focused and protected from that energy, and I find these observances very interesting. I don’t want to give up heavy metal or partying with my friends, but I do want to remain “in it but not of it”. I will keep you posted on the progress and welcome your stories and thoughts as well.


And on a completely random side-note – we saw the Mike Monroe Band play at the Varvatos store in the old CB’s space last night. Thank you John Varvatos, for spending your own money and time to bring great rock shows to New York. This particular one blew everyone in the room away. Mike is in incredible, marathon running form; he never stopped moving and his voice was strong and pitch perfect. He hit his head on a monitor and continued to play the sax, bounce around and belt it out with blood running down his forehead. The band was completely on point – Sami, Ginger, Steve Conte, and a killer new drummer just hit us over the head with it. My voice and ears are blown today. So if you have a chance to see them, run, don’t walk. You won’t be disappointed.