Actor Phil Ristaino: An Interview with a Limitless Talent

One of the questions I asked Phil Ristaino during our interview was his idea of a perfect day. His first off the cuff answer was "this is pretty good." He went on to say,

"A perfect day...There would have to be three or four beautiful women, I would get to play an exciting show, in front of a good group of people with great rock-n-roll energy, on the beach, 80 degree weather, with good food and all my friends, add some drugs but with no bad side effects and everyone else in the world happy, fed and loved. Yeah, an all day and night festival of music and art on the beach with all my friends. And also no war."

Phil Ristaino. Artist, comic book creator, actor, musician, philosopher, lover of humanity. Although his first short answer was accurate, the weather was perfect at Phoebes Coffee Shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the interview inspiring, the waitress damn cute, it was too short for the likes of Mr. Ristaino. He brims with ideas and creativity. When I asked what people would find surprising about him, Phil answered "How short I am real life." He wasn't trying to be profound. But nothing about this man is small, be it his talent, his motivation, his art or his heart.

What has Phil been doing this year? Writing music, acting in 'Star Trekkin NY'comedy shows and 'Mediocre New York' web shorts, drawing illustrations seen at The Whitney and for his graphic novels, collaborating on the pilot of 'Battle of The Band,' painting murals, participating in Earth Shifts to heal the world. He is a busy artist who wants to play and engage you. He may just be the most talented person in the world.

I anticipated interviewing Phil, asking a few questions, chatting for a bit. It turned into a three-hour talk that meandered from his philosophies of life to his passions to his hopes for the future. I asked silly questions ("If you were stranded on an island who would you bring?" He said, "Three hot girls."), I asked poignant questions (You've struggled throughout your life. How come you keep doing what you do? He said, "What else is there to do?"), and the interview could have continued all night. Unfortunately Phoebe's closes and my tape recorder got tired. I'm going to struggle to include all the wisdom Phil conveyed, all the humor in his tone, all the joy I received in sharing an almost perfect day with him. All we needed was a few more friends, live music and some side-effectless drugs, and 'Perfect' it would have been.

Phil Ristaino is an actor. He has acted in numerous plays and comedy troupes. Currently he is performing in Star Trekkin New York, an improv comedy group. After taking suggestions from the audience, the cast improvises a whole new episode, acted in the genre of the original 'Star Trek' series. There is no William Shatner per se, but inevitably he appears in these hilarious skits. For more information check out:

http://www.myspace.com/starttrekkinny and http://start-trekkin.com/

Me: So, who do you like more as Captain of the Starship Enterprise, William Shatner or Jean-Luc Picard?

Phil: That is impossible to answer. Shatner is classic, a ladies man and a brawler. But Picard is the coolest, a philosopher, and not an asshole.

Being a Star Trek fan myself, I had to ask.

Phil has also been collaborating on the web shorts Mediocre New York. Mediocre New York are the antithesis to shows that glorify the extraordinary, the rich, the famous. Instead Phil Ristaino interviews and does exposes on the ordinary, the mundane, the mediocre parts of New York City. He shows people the 'crappy' parts of the city, average fleabag hotels, small apartments, lousy cars, all while being quite funny. Check out the shorts at http://www.mediocrenewyork.com.

Mediocre New Yorkgrew out of Phil's collaboration with Phil Armand and Rob Albrecht on their pilot of Battle of the Bands, (http://www.myspace.com/battleofthebandepisode1), a show about a punk band that moves to NYC to make it big, but don't because they are idiots. Phil Ristaino acted in the pilot, as well as co-wrote and performed the theme song. Phil has been involved in many musical projects as both a writer and a singer. He currently is working on an album with music producer Allen Towbin. He previously worked with Allen musically on The Troy Westfield Experience, an album Phil co-wrote with Mike Gordon, aka Troy Westfield, a friend of his of 30 years. http://www.myspace.com/troywestfieldexperience

At first Phil was nervous asking Allen to collaborate because he idolized him and his talents. Finally, he said, "fuck it," and gathered up the nerve to ask, and Allen said 'yes.' Phil vision was, "Beatles mixed with Hip-hop. Hip-hop inspires me. The sound, the beats, the rap, the incredible poetry. Really good rappers blow my mind, make me excited. I want to eat it up." He felt hip-hop/Beatles with live drum and bass was a genre that hadn't really been done yet.

Me: How is the music on this project different than the music you created in the past?

Phil: My old songs were filled with self-pity, relationship problems, my way of trying to get over a broken hearts. Now, I write about society, politics, the state of the world, spirituality. Allen's songs are more about his relationship with his wife, love songs. At first I was worried that I had nothing to say about girls, and rock-n-roll is all about girls. But I realized I can write a song about a girl and to me it is actually the earth, where for Allen it is actually a girl.

Check out some of the songs from the upcoming album at :
http://www.myspace.com/thesearedreams

Me:So, what would your ultimate concert lineup be?

Phil: Wow. There are so many permutations. But today I would have to say The Beatles, Dukes of Stratosphere and Jason Faulkner. I like music with a strong sense of melody, lots of layers of sound, and a fully developed approach to vocals.

Phil Ristaino creates illustrations that blow my mind. You can see many that he created this year at: portfolios.com/PhilRistaino and portfolios.com/prmovement

Some of the illustrations were created for the multidisciplinary performance group Visionintoart.com and were displayed at the Whitney Museum. He was hired to draw illustrations of each member of the company that were then transformed into playing cards for their program playbills. Phil also draws illustrations for the comic books he creates. I wasn't sure if comic book artist or graphic novelist was the appropriate terminology. Phil said, with a slight laugh, "Well, comic book sounds stupid, but I say comic book." He is working on a series about a guy who is stuck in the Empire State Building after WWIII. All of New York City is flooded with only bits of building sticking out of the water. The guy is isolated, yet there are others in the building with him. No one knows about each other, and they are all waking up enlightened and turned into Superheroes. He would like to create music to go along with the comic book. Eventually the comic book idea would only be a portion of a larger story told through various mediums. The larger story would be told through music, film, live performances, morphing from medium to medium. Each entity would tell a story unto itself, but when seen as a whole it would be a much larger than life experience. He is currently seeking musicians to collaborate with. He can be contacted through his website: http://www.myspace.com/thesearedreams

Me: So, if you were a Superhero, what would your superpower be?

Phil: Every Superhero should be able to fly, and be able to shoot laser eyebeams. (Phil pauses for a beat, searching his mind) See, my whole problem is I don't want to limit myself, so my superpower would be I could do everything. Limitlessness, like the Green Lantern's ring. It is the most powerful weapon in the universe. His ring can do anything according to his imagination. So, if his imagination sucks, he can make like a giant rubber duck. But if his imagination is incredible he can make an intricate piston engine or a solar system."

Me: Favorite comic book artist?

Phil: My favorite is a writer named Grant Morrison. But you see, now most comic books are corporate assembly lines. There is a writer, an inker, a colorist, editor, all passed down the line.

Me: You do it all?

Phil: Yes, for this project, yes. But, for money, I would gladly be a part of an assembly line.

Phil has been actively involved with vortexhealing.com, a divine healing art that believes we can heal ourselves and awaken the spirit through meditation. It believes that much of humanity suffers because they feel separate and isolated from each other and the earth, but in actuality we are all connected. Your experience of consciousness feels separate, but we are all touching each other. I touch the ground, Phil touches the ground, we touch each other through the ground. Phil and other Vortex participants believe the next stage of consciousness is a reconnection with identification with the universe.

Phil: I think people do crazy things, destructive things, because they feel so separated and alienated. Through the meditations I do, I have come to identify as an earthling, to believe we are all in this together somehow. That's why I write songs about the earth now. I feel more positive because I no longer feel so separate.
Phil has been involved in group meditations with other Vortex Healing members called Earth Shifts. They believe in the limitless healing powers of humanity and as such come together to erase the past negative energy embedded on a place. They meditate to heal the world.

Me: How did you get involved in Vortex Healing?

Phil: I say that my journey towards vortex healing started around 1993 or 94. I had graduated from college and was physically and mentally ill, having fallen in love and gone through a very painful breakup, and I was just a mess. I went from being a big cheese in the theatre department, winning awards, beautiful girlfriend, great friends and promising future, to being alone, sick and pretty much insane in a matter of months, now broke and working as a dishwasher. I decided to travel across the country by myself, and eventually made my way to Seattle, Washington to visit my sister, Christine. There, one evening, we met a Blackfoot Indian homeless man who followed us into a coffee shop. He was obviously an alcoholic, but there was something strange about him, almost alien and childlike. He said some really amazing an simple things to me, and I decided after meeting him I would write and draw a comic book with him narrating it.

Not long after, I moved back to Saratoga Springs, where I had gone to college, to join an avante garde theatre company with friends from college. We started a theatre in Saratoga, created "happenings" in Saratoga, NYC, and on a farm outside of Philadelphia, until eventually we decided to go to Prague to perform in a festival that never happened. We ended creating this crazy free form 12 day long performance all over the streets of Prague, then stayed there for a few months to create a new piece in an underground theatre. Every day of our experience was rather extreme there; people would get into fights, we'd do plays in every major part of the city, sometimes dealing with mobs of people virtually attacking us. I had an old German film actor approach me on the street and pull a sword on me. Seriously, a sword. (I was also wearing a sword as part of my costume.) I was dosed with mushrooms at one point, and later on took this extremely powerful LSD with Albert Hoffman (the German scientist who invented LSD) riding his bicycle on the tab. That trip was unreal--I saw buildings moving and heard water speaking, did front handsprings on abandoned farmland, drank champagne with cops on a bus, and ended up at the end of a runway at an airport that was closed for the holidays. All the while I was still physically ill and messed up mentally, and dealing with a broken heart, as the ex girlfriend was in the theatre company and I was determined to win her back, which of course didn't happen. By the end of this experience I think I actually was suffering from some form of schizophrenia. But I think what really happened was that the drugs and the painful experiences had done damage to my spiritual body, but had also created spiritual openings in my soul, so to speak. I was really pretty crazy.

I soon moved to San Francisco to start a rock band, and my experiences continued to be strange and unbelievable. Synchronicities would happen to me constantly. I'd "randomly" run into people I knew from other parts of the world on the street. Around this time I began to write and draw the comic book again, with the Blackfoot Indian man narrating the story, until one day, walking down the street with the pages to the book in hand, I came upon the Blackfoot man, lying on the sidewalk, his face covered in yellowing cancer. I sat down and talked to him, it was crazy. I even showed him some of the book. He seemed like his mind was gone. People would stop on the street and tell me how important he was. I watched him literally pull pieces of his mustache out of his face. Eventually I watched him drink like a fifth of gin in one gulp and pass out. But wait, there's more.

I continued to draw the book. One time, I had drawn a page of Gary (that was his real name) digging in a trashcan. Within a few days, I was standing around downtown after an earthquake and Gary came lumbering around the corner, walked right up to me and stuck his hand in a trashcan in front of me, retrieved something from the trash, and walked away. I would never see this guy, and then he would sort of just appear in my world with major significance. And I was writing reality!! I would write and draw something and it would come true.

Eventually I met a white woman who was a witch and had studied with Native American healers. She gave me a healing stone to give to Gary, saying it would return his soul to his home. I carried the stone with me for several months. One day, during a month of a blue moon (which means two full moons in one month--that's why they say "once in a blue moon," because it very rarely happens), I got off a train to find Gary once again lying on the street right in front of me. I approached him, spoke with him, gave him the stone and left. I never saw him again. I look at this series of events as a spiritual initiation of sorts, and Gary was sort of the gatekeeper for me in that stage of my quest for god.

Around this time I had another very powerful experience that I kind of forgot about immediately and later began to recognize its significance. I was in a doctor's office getting very uncomfortable tests done to me. I felt like I was losing consciousness and told the doctor I was going to pass out, which I did. The doctor told me later that my body had gone into seizures. What I experienced next was being completely separate from my body, just sort of floating and just being present, while in front of me, a gigantic white whirlpool of stars churned and spun in what I remember to be a counterclockwise direction. It looked as if you were looking into a compressed version of a spiral galaxy, very bright white light, with little stars joining the whirlpool on the outskirts of the spiral. Around me, flying in spirals like a leaf being sucked down a drain, flew two-dimensional rectangular shapes. I kind of looked at them as dimensional doorways. They would fly around me and into the center of the whirlpool. As I watched them, a voice, sort of coming from nowhere, said to me "These are dreams." I don't know who or what the voice was. Maybe it was the voice of the whirlpool itself. But I knew it was talking about the 2-d windows. Eventually I noticed the sound the whirlpool made. It was like a mechanical breathing, as if a million engines were running backwards underwater. The noise got louder and louder until I got scared and woke up back in my body with all these doctors looking down at me. They sent me to the hospital and I left a few hours later, no worse for wear.

After this time, I spent more time traveling and searching, looking for truth or peace or god, or maybe just running from myself, I don't know. I spent a little bit of time with a Blackfoot medicine man, went to a conference run by Lacota Indians about a series of spiritual teachings given to them by extra terrestrials, hung out with a woman who claimed to be a reincarnation of Mary Magdelene and had had several ET abduction experiences, one where she says they took her to Venus. I spent time with a group who channeled the ascended consciousness of Jesus, called Sonanda. I lived with anarchists, in SF, sang for a rock band in Albuquerque NM, traveled Europe with a Swedish/German dancer, did theatre in NYC, lived in my car for a while.... Eventually I got so sick of the instability of my life that I gave up and just moved to New York City permanently. It was sometime after this, when I sort of given up on my spiritual path, that I came across the Vortex healing poster and the whole next phase of my enlightenment began. Not that I'm enlightened now, but I do think this is what the spiritual path is, the path towards awakening to the true self, the god self, and this is how my awakening has gone so far. I don't think I'm crazy, though I'll consider the possibility. I do think my experiences have shown me how unreal reality seems to be. They all seem to point towards something more going on in the universe, especially the "these are dreams" experience, which seems to be the closest I've gotten to having a true "spiritual" experience, where I actually saw a glimpse of the spirit world itself. I do think all these crazy things happened to me because I was looking for them to happen. I wanted the experience of them, of something more than the mundane rat trap day to day we are
force fed, and I certainly got it, though not in the ways I was expecting.

Me: Could you say These are Dreams is your motto for life?

Phil: Yes. These are Dreams.

Me: What does it mean to you?

Phil: I think it is a reminder not to get too caught up in what reality should be or has to be but rather we should focus on what it is and can be.

Me: Is there any question you've always wanted to be asked?

Phil: Yes.

Me: What?

Phil: Can I offer you a million dollars?

Me: And the answer.

Phil: The answer is yes.

Me: If you could be anyone beside yourself, living or dead, who would it be?

Phil: John Lennon. I like his journey. He had a real interesting hero's journey. Loses his father, then his mother. Goes on a quest to find his father. He went from middle class nobody, kind of outcast rebel to reinventing a whole new art form, he became a leader in the peace movement, he was inspirational, a great artist, and his personality was so awesome. I read he was an alcoholic and a creep, but everyone has bad times.

Me: Anything else you want to say?

Phil: Yes. This is what I want to see happen in the world. I want people to realize we aren't being told the whole truth about the history of humanity. That if we evolve consciousness than things like government will be unnecessary because we will intrinsically know what to do as a people. We will have a more profound understanding of how we fit into the equation of the world. I want people to really start looking and trying to understand their spiritual nature, as an actual entity that exists. Something that we can activate and use and interact with. A real thing that is not just an idea. We can eliminate most suffering of the earth through developing consciousness. I want people to pursue the thing that excites them, that makes them happy. That is the most important thing a person can do in the world because that is their clue to understanding how they fit into the universe. If you don't know what it is that excites you, do some experiments. Look around you until you find something that makes you excited, and then pursue that, because that is where you belong and is part of your development and how you fit into the world. I want to encourage people to pursue happiness as opposed to fear and war and ignorance. That is what will save the day.

Like a little kid, Phil says he just wants to play.

Phil: That's why I do things. I'm dying to play. I want to have fun. I want to make other people's lives fun and I want to have fun.

Phil Ristaino doesn't have to imagine having limitless superpowers. His talent and passion already are.