Shoutout To @one_matgarita_please On Instagram! Thanks For Digitally Painting Me!

“Music is magic. If it’s not magic, it’s not music.”

— Mike Liebo (via grungeloveandotherthings)

Listening to music in my mind…

I am fleeting.

"Kingdom Of Nowhere "

All 4 chapters are out now everwhere as individual albums. The entire musical with never-before heard skits and dialogue will be coming out soon! To anyone struggling with addiction, mental health, or are just completely lost at what to do with this life, this one is for you.

You are poetry and the universe loves you.

I am human. I want and give unexpectedly.

What does heroin feel like?

Some people believe the afterlife or Heaven or whatever you want to call it is whatever you imagine it to be. Something like an endless and infinite lucid dream. I believe that’s what heroin is to people. It’s whatever you want it to be. It can be your lover or your enemy. It can be your Heaven or your Hell, your God or your Devil. When people hear about my past, the things I’ve done...the ones that never been in that world, at the edge of the world, the place where death holds your hand until it’s cold as ice: they always want to know one thing. They all ask the same question. “What did the high feel like?”. The fact that no one ever asks what the withdrawal is like shows that people really think addiction is a choice or people are just choosing over and over again to get high. Well, you know what the high is. Whatever you want it to be. Let me tell you about the withdrawal. It’s like being aboard a space ship that is running out of air supply and you know you only have 12 hours to live and right when you’re about to die, literally right at the end when you have your last breath, out of no-where the oxygen begins to flow again and you’re fine. Then the next day it happens again and then the next day and so on and so forth. To be on heroin is always knowing your inevitable demise within hours and then at the last second being saved. It is nothingness in waiting and all time is on a borrowed watch from a character in a lost dream you once had. The only way to escape is to let yourself die. That’s how the brain perceives it. So no it’s not like hitting a joint kind of high. It’s entering the realms of nothingness. For the first few times it’s whatever you want it to be to leave Earth. You can feel euphoric and free and loved until you can’t come back. Then you’re just lost in orbit. The oxygen begins run out, and you’re stuck. The only way to come back to Earth is to let yourself die.

The Truth About Music

Music can change someone’s whole life. One song can make a bad day a good day or something that’s misunderstood, understood. It can teach you how to live. It can show you how to love. It can spread peace and connect people from distant lands. It is a force of empathy that transcends propaganda and the prostitution of the populous. It can brings all classes together to show class separation is an illusion. All of this, music is and can do when created for such reasons.

This is my song “The Hardest Place To Find”. This song has been 6 years in the making. It may be simple and quaint but this is a piece of music I wrote about 6 years ago when I was addicted to heroin and in a dark place. By my side was my best friend Stamper who, too, was struggling with his own issues. I wrote this song to get us through one really bad night. Unfortunately a lot of bad nights were to come because I remember he would often ask me to play this song and it became our anthem to get by on when things were tough. He told me my music was special and people like me should be heard and I thought that was sweet yet unrealistic considering society looked at people like me like dirt. Like garbage. Like something you can throw away or ignore. Thank you Stamper for believing in me when no one else would or could or even just for knowing me for me and loving me for me. We would often bring up trying to quit heroin in conversation and it would always lead to this ongoing and ever-evolving fantasy of what we would do with all the money we would have saved up…. maybe we’ll get to record a song in a studio one day..or a whole album!…the instruments we’d buy…the road trips we’d take….all the things we’d do, but it was never serious…because we never actually thought we could get off heroin. It was just this fantasy to get us through the night…a lot of nights…It never seemed like it would ever be in reach for people like us. In this great ocean of life we are constantly at the whim of waves and wind with one hand on the helm and one hand on our heart. The right wave caught me by surprise one day and I was able to ride it to safer seas. Metaphors, aside, I was able to get off heroin and within 2 weeks of being off the stuff I had found myself in a very big and very beautiful music studio with people telling me I had something special. They didn’t say it like Stamper, though. They had money on their mind…Stamper just had this sincere way of saying it. He was pure like that…even amidst parts of the world that are regarded as the most tainted. Sometimes it is those..us…who are so lost and debased that we need angels in our life to get us through. Stamper was that angel to me. Stamper always said in these…fantasies we had about getting off dope… that if I ever were to find myself in one of those “big fancy music studios” I should record this song. Well, I’ve had access to studios like that for a while now but it took me 5 years until I had finally gained the resources to bring this song into the right studio with the right producer for the job. After hearing the final recording the only thing missing from this really being a fantasy come true is not having Stamper by my side to hear the song and be part of it with me. This song is a miracle….to me at least, it’s a literal miracle. I should be dead or in prison. But somehow something happened and I reacted and then kept reacting and a life happened where there was just the void of a life of before. This song is to anyone out there struggling who needs a miracle in a world that tells you they aren’t real. They are real and if you’re looking with the right vision, even on the blurriest day, you have it inside you to find the hardest place to find. Keep digging. Stamper unfortunately got caught in the wrong part of the ocean with his hand still on his heart, just lost control of the helm, as we all could at any moment. This song is dedicated in loving memory to Matthew Stamper. You will never be forgotten. If this song affects the way you look at your life in anyway you have Stamper to thank for that because without him this would of never happened. Much love everyone. Be safe on those oceans of life. Nothing is guaranteed so keep your hands on the helm and heart as much as you can.

Mike Liebo - Of Life & Death [full album]

Chapter 3 from "Kingdom Of Nowhere"

1. Your Life, Our Life 2. I See love 3. Killing Me 4. So Long (Need Someone Now) 5. Who Needs Suffering In The Streets? 6. Day After Day 7. End Of The Line 8. The Hardest Place To Find 9. Good Times And The Bad 10. Holy Feeling 11. Oh Well 12. Eye, Eye, Eye