Dream Rockwell
Dream Rockwell is awe-inspiring. Check out our exclusive interview with the cofounder of Lightning In A Bottle and founder of the Lucent Dossier Experience, it’s not one to miss.
As LIB finished off its 9th year, the size and grandeur of this year’s experience was bigger than ever. How do you see it transforming in the years to come?
What we’re excited about right now is how can we engage our attendees to be more involved. How can we create more interactive areas. Maybe there’s a stage where you can get up and perform without being booked, you can get up and do your thing. Interactive games, interactive play areas, we’re really excited just engaging more in the actual activities and what’s possible. I think listening to music is the reason people come but what else can we do while they’re there, what else is there to explore and get excited about.
Unlike many festivals, LIB focuses on the revitalization of our spirituality and protecting Mother Earth. How will LIB continue to hone this concept and raise its awareness?
We keep building, expanding the temple peninsula which is where all the classes, workshops and meditation. We have a learning kitchen that we expanded this year. We’re expanding everything, the village with all the indigenous art. We’re just expanding that aspect of the festival continuously.
How did you start Lightning In A Bottle?
When we first came together, we had interest in different areas but our common goal was bringing people together and celebrate over a weekend. We wanted to produce a festival and what we were bringing to the table were very broad between the three of us so it just created an environment where LIB could be born.
What did you bring to the table?
We each did kind of everything. My real passion is protecting and saving Mother Earth and making it a better world for us to live in. That was my main focus and creating the Temple of Consciousness was from my heart. I was into interactive theater and performance, bringing that to the festival was something I was super passionate about. All of us brought different elements in a long way, it’s a huge collaboration.
Did you guys start by doing smaller events?
I think LIB was our first event and 800 people came, it was in Angeles Mountains at Gold Creek Ranch which was a place that had different underground events. The first year, we weren’t permitted, we just gathered. It was a really special weekend. Mostly music, we had such a great time. We doubled our event every year until the land that we were on couldn’t hold anymore people and had to look for a bigger piece of land. The land we’re on now, we can expand on and grow for a while.
What impact do you think LIB has on the festival community, yoga community and eco-friendly community alike? Has it influenced other festivals?
I definitely think so. A lot of people contact me asking how did you do it, we want to start a festival similar in this state or this country. I’ve spoken to people in other countries who want to bring this world back to where they’re from. We’ve had dentists, teachers, restaurant owners who want to transform their businesses to be more eco friendly, to expand their processes and ways they’re functioning. It’s kind of like the dream come true.
Photo Credit: Lucent Dossier Experience
The Lucent Dossier Experience was unbelievable. As you see the crowd in awe, how does that make you feel?
It’s amazing. Yeah, it’s pretty special. We work really hard. The one thing we all share, behind the scenes, is that we’re hard workers, we don’t consider it work because we love what we do so we’re willing to work days and nights and weekends. We’re willing to give up vacation, to sacrifice all the things for what we love and what we do and our dreams. We’re having fun when we’re doing it but some of it is genuine hard wrck and you’re struggling through it. What makes it worth while is getting up stage and you’re in front of 15,000 people and they’re screaming or their jaws dropped. It’s beyond…
Do you see LIB going outside the U.S. or going any where else?
Yeah, definitely. We are entertaining all those ideas. How do we take this out further, how do we go beyond in this, how do we include the world in this and how do we let more people in.
Do you believe in the concept that everything happens for a reason? If you do, do you feel that everything in your life has brought you to this moment?
I 100% see that everything happens for a reason and for me, I personally had a challenging early life in some ways and I think that for me overcoming all those obstacles as a young girl created a kind of resilience and strength in me and knowing that I can handle anything so that when in the heat of the fire, I don’t run. I’m grateful for everything that’s gone in on my life. Even today, things happen and I ask why is this happening to me, and I take a breath and I realize that rule, that law, I believe it’s a law of Earth, by living on Earth, we are abiding Universal laws and one of them is: everything that’s happening in our lives is for our own good, there are no mistakes. If something’s happening, there’s a lesson there for us and if we can learn the lesson the quicker, the better, because out of that lesson is our superpower. Our superpower comes from our darkest moments and if we can reframe how we’re viewing what’s happening to us, we can actually turn every tragedy and every challenge into a platform we can stand on with greater strength, to do good in the world. To do what we came here to do. It’s when we sort of bitch and complain and depress what’s going on for us that we diminish our power and diminish ourselves and we actually walk down the road that’s not for us. My goal as a human is to keep staying in the light, stay in gratitude and to remember that everything that’s happening to me is happening to me for my own good even when it doesn’t feel like it in the moment and I need to find my strength in that moment and find my voice and keep moving forward in a positive way.