Derek (Radiolab interviewee)

I could make it red or I could make it green or golden.

I could make light radiate off of it.

Like right now, I think it's interesting to like make a cloud of thunderbolts coming off of the top of the apple.

And now there's like a village with people and they're like running away from the storm because there's a tornado dropping down from the cloud.

And there's one guy that jumped off of the apple and now he's falling into this ocean down below the apple.

I'm about to be 30.

Massachusetts.

I could just live in my head and imagine whatever I wanted.

It was like living in virtual reality or whatever you want to call it.

My mom and I, we were pretty poor.

We stayed in a homeless shelter for a short while.

We didn't really stay in one place for very long.

So I never got to know people.

And it was very, you know, here and there.

Yeah.

So I would be in a car and I'd be looking out the window.

I would imagine this man, he would look like a superhero or something.

And he would just be running really fast along all of these cars and then jumping and flying and like doing flips.

And by focusing really intensely, it's almost like I can switch to primarily the visualization and it can start to replace what I'm seeing more fully.

Yeah, I can tell it's a projection.

I graduated high school a year early, and I didn't really want to go off into university.

So I ended up moving to Seattle.

I was really wanting to be somewhere more open-minded, where the tech industry was prominent because I am into computer programming.

Couch surfed for a while.

Yeah, I was sleeping in a bed in someone's laundry room in their basement.

So it was very much just like being on the sidelines of life, really badly wanting to find some kind of escape.

I remember I had these coins.

I was flipping over and over again.

That I could make them land on whatever I wanted them to.

Like using his mind.

If I wanted them to both land heads up, then they would land heads up.

If I wanted them to land heads down, they would land heads down.

Heads up.

Heads up.

Heads down.

Heads up.

I remember feeling like... Heads down.

It was some superpower.

Heads up.

Heads down.

Heads up.

Unfortunately, I don't remember much from the night.

I don't remember much from the psychosis.

But he now knows that as he was flipping those coins... Whenever they would land, I would project onto them whatever I wanted them to look like.

So I would see them heads up if I wanted them to be heads up.

But whether or not they were really heads up, I don't really know.

Yeah, basically.

And at some point later that night... I couldn't tell you what time it was, but it was dark.

You know, I wasn't hurting anyone.

I wasn't harmful or anything like that.

They just didn't know what to do with me, and they didn't want it to be their responsibility because they couldn't get me to go to the hospital or anything.

I also practice harsh metal vocals just for fun.

People have told me I should try and get into a band, but I don't think that's really my goal or anything.

Do you want an example?

Yeah.

Okay.

Prepare your eardrums.

Okay.

Whoa.

Whoa.

If I want to experience flying, I can imagine it.

And it's kind of like really flying.

There were stars coming from the center of my vision to the outer edge of my vision, or even planets.

It depends on what I'm passing by.

Large clouds that are like pink and yellow and maybe a little bit of blue mixed in there.

I can feel the coolness of the air as it hits my skin.

Kind of like a sound.