{"id":1241,"date":"2018-08-19T22:59:11","date_gmt":"2018-08-19T22:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/designerofreality.com\/?p=1241"},"modified":"2018-08-19T22:59:11","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T22:59:11","slug":"the-rasjohnmon-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/designerofreality.com\/2018\/08\/19\/the-rasjohnmon-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rasjohnmon Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I often tell people that half of the world thinks I am a Rastafarian living in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica.\u00a0 It seems quite possible that in a former life something akin to that was my reality.\u00a0 I have lived a bit of a double identity. It all got started when in 1994 I got the chance to be Marketing Director of Reggae SumFest in Jamaica.\u00a0 Since having become a big time fan of Bob Marley and the genre starting back in 1973 at that NYC party, I had amassed a large collection of Reggae music.\u00a0 Through Westwood One I had gotten to know Timothy White, former Supervising Editor at Rolling Stone Magazine and author of a great biography of Marley, Catch a Fire<\/strong>, along with Roger Steffens who was to become the leading authority on Marley\u2019s life and music.\u00a0 I had visited Jamaica a few times and had fun scouring local record shops for rare items and just loving the vibe of the Island.<\/p>\n

Now I was going to get an all access pass to the biggest Reggae Music Festival in the world.\u00a0 Talk about a musical dream come true for me.\u00a0 Here\u2019s how magically things can fall into place when you are really just having fun and loving the process.\u00a0 I was also working with some people who were developing an Internet broadcasting system.\u00a0 Remember that this is 1994 and the Internet is really just beginning to be something that people are taking notice of.\u00a0 Coming out of my Westwood One background of broadcasting live concerts regularly via radio waves the idea appealed to me to see if we could send live audio over the Internet to an international audience.\u00a0 The first thing that came to mind for me was finding a cyberspace station location.\u00a0 On a whim, I decided to put in an application to secure the name REGGAE.COM.\u00a0 The fact that I got the name is one of the more magical things that has ever happened to me because it was to launch an entirely new storyline for me of Ras John (which has evolved into Rasjohnmon).<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the story of Rasjohnmon:<\/p>\n

This was many years ago.\u00a0 The birth of the dream was probably during a honeymoon in Oho Rios at the Playboy Club that has since had a few new incarnations with other resort names.\u00a0 The James Bond movie Dr. No<\/strong> had shot a bunch of scenes for the movie in the area and Ian Fleming\u2019s house \u201cGolden Eye\u201d was further up the coast on this lush tropical island of Jamaica.\u00a0 Bob Marley was not yet on my radar but the Playboy Club had a wonderful piano player by their outdoor pool bar named Leslie Butler.\u00a0 His roots were with people like Billy Taylor, Bill Evans and Les McCann but the growing popularity of Reggae on the island was a big influence on all the local musicians.\u00a0 Leslie Butler\u2019s Reggae infused jazz piano immediately took root in my heart and I would search out an album by him to take home with me \u2013 so that really was my first Reggae album and it all got started in a cocktail mixed with spies and Playmates under the tropical sun.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Rasjohnmon\u2019s story\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometime later or was it earlier I flew into MoBay and set out for adventure.\u00a0 There was a Bob Marley tune and some laughter on the light breeze as I pulled up at an out of the way location many miles out of town.\u00a0 Glad to be off the main road, I parked the dinged up rental car in a dirt parking lot carved out of \u201cda bush\u201d.\u00a0 I had the 360 air conditioning of four rolled down windows letting in the cool night air as I took a last big draw from the spliff I had found in the ash tray.\u00a0 I wondered if all the rental cars came with one.<\/p>\n

Dropping the spliff back in the ash tray for later, I looked out the open passenger window and nearly screeched out loud.\u00a0 A huge bird zoomed straight at me and landed on the car door sending a buffet of air into my face from its jagged wings.\u00a0 I had a sudden flashback to Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s “The Birds” and my hand shot up to cover my eyes so they wouldn\u2019t get peeked out.\u00a0 Then the bird spoke to me.\u00a0 \u201cWho are you?\u201d as I lowered my hand to take the bird in \u2013 it was big and green grey with a very sharp looking beak.\u00a0 The question seemed somehow to have great importance. \u00a0\u201cWho are you?\u201d demanded the bird again.\u00a0 Feeling a little confused and uncertain I simply stared at the bird.\u00a0 \u201cWho are you?\u201d screeched the bird a third time and this time with a sudden inspiration I said \u201cRasjohnmon\u201d and with that the bird flew away leaving me with the feeling that I was at another fork in the road.<\/p>\n

I guess I came here in search of enlightenment.\u00a0 It was all very strange.\u00a0 In my head I sang “what a long strange trip it’s been” – the Grateful Dead song but to a Reggae beat.\u00a0 My growing collection of Reggae Music included the two \u201cFire on the Mountain\u201d CD’s of Reggafied Dead tunes.\u00a0 There are said to be many roads to enlightenment and I had given up looking for a map.\u00a0 I was just going on instinct and possibly clouded perceptions.\u00a0 A little herb often helped. \u00a0 The important thing was that reality shifted in subtle ways so that you could no longer be certain that what you perceived at any moment was all there was to the world around you.\u00a0 Some people go through their whole life cock sure that their sense of what reality is is all there is.\u00a0 Anybody that does not see it their way is simply wrong. They are clearly not on the road to enlightenment.\u00a0 In fact, I was totally certain that anyone who thought they had all the answers was very likely mentally and spiritually deficient.<\/p>\n

I had made a lot of twists and turns on the road I travelled and wasn’t at all sure of where I was going.\u00a0 I sure had a lot of questions seeking answers. Jah only knew why I thought I might find some answers way off the mainstream at this \u201cClub Tropical\u201d separated from the rest of the world and now feeling almost like being in a different dimension.\u00a0 Any of my friends would have felt it was pretty farfetched and that I was just going to chill out and party in the tropics.\u00a0 Well, if that was all it turned out to be, that would be fine too.\u00a0 It would just be one more little side trip.\u00a0 I sat back to collect my thoughts and calm myself down.\u00a0 I could hear lightly crashing waves in the distance and the rustle of the breeze through the dense tropical foliage.\u00a0 It was soothing after the bird incident and the rather harrowing drive from town on narrow twisting roads.<\/p>\n

The car door creaked as I opened it sending some unseen creatures scattering in alarm.\u00a0 In the distance, I heard the opening bars of a song called \u201cCelebrate Life\u201d.\u00a0 It was a favorite of mine for the music and the message.\u00a0 I had seen the song\u2019s creator, Lucky Dube, live several times.\u00a0 His performances were always a joy to behold.\u00a0 Lucky was from South Africa and his blend of African riddums with Reggae was infectious.\u00a0 His message, like Marley\u2019s, was one of hope and the determination to rise above despair and the hardships of life.\u00a0 Both of them came out of often cruel societies.\u00a0 The apartheid in South Africa made things even worse for Lucky than Bob growing up in Trench Town, Jamaica.\u00a0 In Trench Town there was poverty and violence but not the extreme racial hatred and separation of South Africa.<\/p>\n

I had never understood racial hatred.\u00a0 Particularly in the U.S., it was supposed to be \u201clive and let live\u201d \u2013 as long as you don\u2019t try to impose your ideas on others or do anything that will cause them physical harm, you should be free to do what you want.\u00a0 Apartheid in South Africa was just one notch above outright slavery where a person could be \u201cowned\u201d as personal property with no personal rights to speak of. This was the world that Abraham Lincoln had saved the United States from with his Emancipation Proclamation that is took a Civil War to put in force.\u00a0 The\u00a0Emancipation Proclamation, or\u00a0Proclamation 95, was a\u00a0presidential proclamation<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0executive order<\/a>\u00a0issued by President\u00a0Abraham Lincoln<\/a>\u00a0on January 1, 1863. It changed the federal legal status of more than 3 million\u00a0enslaved people<\/a>\u00a0in the designated areas of\u00a0the South<\/a>\u00a0from slave to free.<\/p>\n

Apartheid in South Africa didn\u2019t go as far as making the ownership of fellow humans legal but it severely limited the civil rights of a whole group of people based on nothing more than skin color.\u00a0 It consisted of a body of laws giving a white minority the right to segregate, exploit and terrorize native Africans along with any people of mixed race.\u00a0\u00a0 Lucky and his family had no human or political rights when he was growing up in the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s.\u00a0 He was born on a small farm near the town of Ermelo which was a little over 100 miles from the capital of Johannesburg.\u00a0\u00a0 He was raised by his grandmother and at six or seven started working in local gardens to help support his household.\u00a0\u00a0 His grandmother eventually got him in school and it was in the school choir that the door to his future opened.\u00a0\u00a0 Everyone liked Lucky and his sweet voice and the school became his refuge.<\/p>\n

Lucky was attracted to Reggae music through the songs of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh among others.\u00a0 He heard the same cries for freedom and equality that he felt in his own heart.\u00a0 In his early live performances, the Reggae tracks got particularly strong responses and so, after a few albums of mostly traditional Zulu and Africaans styling, he locked in to a Reggae beat on \u201cThink About the Children\u201d.\u00a0 This was the politically tinged Reggae sound that Lucky would become famous for around the world while being shunned at home in \u201cApartheid\u201d South African.\u00a0\u00a0 His musical voice joined other rebel South African voices such as Nelson Mandela and the power of their message of hope and liberation chipped away at the roots of Apartheid.\u00a0\u00a0 Lucky Dube took that message around the world and I went to see and hear his shows whenever he happened to perform near where I was.\u00a0 I saw him many times in NYC and a final time, a couple of years before he was killed. The last time I got to see him is one of my favorite live music experiences.\u00a0 Lucky and his band were in top form at a beach bar club in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on a beautiful tropical night.\u00a0 It was a magical night like tonight.<\/p>\n

As I walked toward the entrance to The Club Tropical listening to Lucky\u2019s \u201cCelebrate Life\u201d, I realized again the power of music to keep a message alive long after its creator had moved on.\u00a0 This was one of Lucky\u2019s last songs and spoke about how we lived in a world of crazy people who often did terrible things but that we must not let that overwhelm us, we had to rise above it and \u201cCelebrate Life\u201d.\u00a0 Apartheid had been abolished.\u00a0 Lucky and his family had happily been able to return to South Africa where he was living with his family in Johannesburg as an international celebrity and cultural hero to his countrymen.\u00a0 Maybe it was because his mission had been accomplished, who knows, but ironically he was fatally shot in an attempt to steal his car after dropping a couple of his children off at their uncle\u2019s house.\u00a0\u00a0 Here he was, back in his homeland as a truly free man and then gone, just like that.\u00a0 I figured Lucky had sure scored some Karmic points with what he had given the world.\u00a0 His message of celebrating life had always come through loud and clear for me and many others.\u00a0 I thought it would be nice if a lot of people who had far less trauma in their lives would get that message and help spread it.<\/p>\n

A stone walkway lit by flaming torches on tall poles lead from the edge of the dirt clearing where I had parked to the open entrance to the club.\u00a0 Lucky\u2019s voice singing \u201cCelebrate Life\u201d rose above the sounds of talking, laughter and clanking of glasses and dishes \u2013 it brought a smile to my face.\u00a0 I looked around and figured this was a pretty good place to celebrate life for a few hours at least.\u00a0 I saw an empty table by a window looking out toward the beach and took a seat.\u00a0 There were a couple of dozen other people there, spread out between the bar that extended out to an open air deck and the other tables.\u00a0 An unoccupied stage was at the inside end of the room where I was sitting.\u00a0 I could easily picture Lucky playing there in my mind\u2019s eye.\u00a0 The walls were covered with all kinds of musical mementos from framed LP\u2019s to photos, posters and ticket stubs.\u00a0 The floors were smooth and shiny, I imagined from plenty of dancing feet.\u00a0 Big bamboo fans turned lazily from the ceiling.<\/p>\n

As I was taking it all in, a short dark skinned girl in shorts and a bikini top came over to me and said, \u201cWelcome back\u201d.\u00a0 I thought for a minute trying to remember if I possibly could have been here before and then said, \u201cThanks\u201d.\u00a0 The girl said, \u201cYou gonna have a nice cold Red Stripe?\u201d – I said sure.\u00a0 Lot\u2019s of Rastas didn\u2019t drink alcohol at all but Red Stripe was still the official beer of Reggae being the main brew in Jamaica.\u00a0\u00a0 Moments later, she brought the Red Stripe and I sat back and took a sip.\u00a0 I was suddenly totally exhausted and I kind of drifted off.<\/p>\n

It turns out that this was actually my club but no one actually knew that I was Rasjohnmon at this point.\u00a0 With very few exceptions, people just assumed he was a dark skinned Rasta with long dreads from the Blue Mountain area of JA not far from where Bob Marley was born. I happened to be a nicely tanned but rather light skinned guy originally from New Jersey. \u00a0The Club Tropical was a retreat for me and a good cyberspace home.\u00a0 Rasjohnmon was known to most people through my internet website, REGGAE.COM (now RadioReggae.com or Rasjohnmon.com) which is based at the Club.<\/p>\n

This would be my base for a continuing mission to spread PositiVibes with a focus on the Inity (or oneness) of the human family and of all of Creation.\u00a0 For many years Reggae.com had over a million visitors a week which gave me a huge audience to try and deliver a positive \u201cupful\u201d message to the world.\u00a0 With the positive Reggae vibe as a backdrop, I promoted the Bob Marley \u201cOne Love\u201d vision.\u00a0 I encouraged people to never lose hope about where their lives could take them and to realize that we are all in this adventure together with fear and hate our biggest enemies.\u00a0 The beauty of having the Internet as a platform is that it gives you even greater freedom to create the character you want presented to the world.\u00a0 The fact that most of the Internet audience never really knew the color of my skin gave me the ability to speak to everyone and be listened to as a peer.<\/p>\n

Rasjohnmon has always promoted the belief that each of us can create the future we want for ourselves regardless of what current appearances might indicate.\u00a0 I shared \u201cpositive\u201d thoughts of inspired individuals like Deepak Chopra, Denis Waitley<\/a>, Richard Bach, the Dali Lama, Les Brown and Marianne Williamson.\u00a0 The \u201cPositiVibes\u201d page as it would come to be known was a popular destination for cyberspace travelers.\u00a0 It was filled with little spinning book icons that each would reveal a different quote when clicked on.\u00a0 Having my own platform for promoting love, world peace and unity gave me great satisfaction. \u00a0I would get messages from people all over the world thanking me for lifting their Spirits with the music and words on the site.\u00a0 It shows the advantage of being \u201ccolor blind\u201d and the truth of the adage that \u201cyou can\u2019t tell a book by its cover\u201d.\u00a0 Everyone could just \u201cassume\u201d I was whatever they wanted me to be and it let their hearts and minds better accept the positive ideas without being stopped by any firewall of preconceived notions.\u00a0 The cyber world had the image of The Club Tropical before it even formed \u2013 an oasis away from the turmoil of so much of the world where there was nothing but hope, love and sense of joyous adventure Imagineering a better world.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the magical part: that is exactly how you intentionally Design Reality.<\/p>\n

I know that it is still difficult to look at the world around us and really accept that it is all totally based on a series of decisions about how to think<\/u> about the world.\u00a0 From birth we have learned to become very good translators of the vibrations around us.\u00a0 Our ego basic operating system believes that whatever it perceives \u2013 an object based reality – is real and it conceives the future based entirely on what it believes about the past and present moment.\u00a0 So the \u201csecret\u201d really is to quit worrying about all the \u201cun-wanted\u201d that seems to be going on and do more dreaming up of realities you want to live in.\u00a0 Those dreams will be yours for the asking if you allow them to flow into your reality by believing in them.\u00a0 Like Dorothy getting back from Oz, all she had to do was tap her heels together and believe \u201cthere\u2019s no place like home, there\u2019s no place like home\u201d.\u00a0 What\u2019s real and what\u2019s illusion?\u00a0 It\u2019s all in your mind and imagination \u2013 and most important, you have the power to decide what you are going to do and who you are going to be.<\/p>\n

By the way, the Reggae SumFest adventure was everything I had imagined it would be. I shared a house in the Iron Hills section of Montego Bay looking down at the beautiful Caribbean in the distance.\u00a0 The house was spacious and came with a staff to cook and care for us during our stay.\u00a0 I was there with the show exec producer and a couple of the heads of the production team.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t get a lot of time to spend at the house but it was sure enjoyable when we were there.\u00a0 I had my own driver to get me back and forth to the venue and keep an eye on me to make sure no one gave me any trouble.<\/p>\n

There was some turmoil \u2013 not everyone goes through life with a persistent positive attitude \u2013 and I got the opportunity to play peacemaker which is a role I often seem to fall into.\u00a0 Being genuine and focused on positive outcomes for everyone involved usually has a way of moving things in the right direction.\u00a0 So with state-of-the-art recording equipment courtesy of Disney who wanted to field test a new all digital mobile recording studio and a camera crew mostly made up of MTV people from NY, we captured four days of great musical performances in spectacular quality.\u00a0 No Problem Mon!\u00a0 Only thing, our Jamaican show producers had neglected to get artist releases before the show so none of the material could be made commercially available.\u00a0 Luckily Rasjohnmon found a copy of most of the audio that you can listen to on-line at RadioReggae.com.<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I often tell people that half of the world thinks I am a Rastafarian living in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica.\u00a0 It seems quite possible that in a former life something akin to that was my reality.\u00a0 I have lived a bit of a double identity. It all got started when in 1994 I got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/designerofreality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/designerofreality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/designerofreality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/designerofreality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/designerofreality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/designerofreality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1244,"href":"http:\/\/designerofreality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions\/1244"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/designerofreality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/designerofreality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/designerofreality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/designerofreality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}