Why You Are A Hermaphrodite (Asking People About Their Lives, Episode One with Matt Wiviott)

Like Dan Savage, Margaret Atwood and Jane Fonda, Matt Wiviott has a Cuttle Fish personality type. (In fact, he was one point off, but I took the liberty of deeming him an honorary Cuttle Fish.) This week, he invited me to be his chief of staff for his 2017 mission to make Jerusalem an International City of Peace and Healing. And on Friday, he composed a Facebook status about pornography, vibrator poetry and Shamanic politics in my honour. For all of these reasons, I chose Matt Wiviott as my first “Ask People About Their Lives” post. We sat face to face on a yoga mat, my iPhone recording between us. Scientists are saying that talking to people face to face constitutes an essential biological imperative. Another essential biological imperative might be to stop obsessing about your own life so extensively. And so, I asked Matt Wiviott about his.

Matt Wiviott

Born and raised in Montreal, Matt is a yogi, architect and musician. He regularly plays the harp at yoga classes. I attended one of these classes. All you had to do was lie down and listen. It made me feel absolutely lovely. Growing up, Matt was sent to Jewish elementary school which he described as “very materialist.” He was one of only two kids who didn’t go to a Jewish high school, and he was grateful for this since he feels that everyone who came out of Jewish high school came out “a brainwashed Zionist.” Well, I wasn’t there so I don’t know. As it turns out, Matt is the partner of one of my very dearest friends. They’ll be having a baby boy in July.

Soon after helping to conceive his first child, Matt had what he felt was a profound spiritual experience. It is probably better not to describe the profound spiritual experience (P.S.E.) in too much detail, so that readers won’t get jealous if their own spiritual experiences have seemed less profound. (Not everyone gets to be a cuttle fish, or Margaret Atwood.) But basically, Matt saw part of the Kabbalah Tree of Life in a vision, his consciousness expanded, and he got a clear sense of what he was supposed to do with his life. This happens to involve a stunning number of hashtags.

Matt was kind enough to tell me what gets his Jewish Kundalini going: “It’s fucking the Jews in Israel that are calling it as they see it, and they see what’s happening and they see it’s corruption and they see it for how it is… It’s a disaster. Everybody’s who’s really paying attention can see that it isn’t getting better. And this is why I'm putting forward my ridiculous political campaign of International Jerusalem 2017.”

So Matt and the UN are going to lead this campaign and transform Jerusalem into an International City of Peace and Healing. The details remain a bit vague; however, the hashtags related to the cause are abundant. I have already been informally appointed as Matt’s chief of staff, whatever that will entail. Yet another gig to add to my recent endeavours as a potty training consultant.

Matt is the first to call his methods “bizarre… the conventional way of dealing with such a large project is to write a book, a blog, or hammer letters onto church doors with nails.” Martin Luther King did some hammering in his day. “Obviously, I am not comparing myself to Martin Luther,” says Matt. “But I do feel like this idea of International Jerusalem is my idea to bring into the world.” Instead of hammering letters onto church doors, Matt is bringing his idea to the world by infusing his Facebook page with hashtags and political slogans. “I just need to get the idea out there. I just need to get people talking about it.” To facilitate the process he has created a Facebook personality which he describes as “the most conceivably narcissistic character I can imagine.”

If you are lucky enough to be friends with Matt Wiviott on Facebook, you will see that beyond the narcissism and relentless posts lies a deep commitment to pointing out the copious patterns and parallels that exist between ancient belief systems. Matt walked me through elaborate diagrams of how the branches on the tree of life line up with kundalini rising through the chakras, and how the Hebrew name of God lines up with vulvas, big and small penises and vaginas, elements of the Tarot deck, and THE elements, earth, air, fire and water. I took pictures of the diagrams for your viewing pleasure. I cannot promise that they won’t be confusing. But I do love chakras, and I love it when life lines up in any sort of way.

  

How Life Lines Up. Do your best.

How the Hebrew Name of God lines up with penises and vaginas, and other things: 



The Hebrew name of God in hashtags = #YUD #HEY #VAV #HEY

These days, one of Matt’s primary schticks is how “everyone is a hermaphrodite.” He is talking about a 6-part Kabbalah Gender theory. Matt believes that one of the main problems of society is that it lacks a gender theory that allows people to exist within a gender construct other than that which they were “born” into. Fortunately, Matt is saving the world by pinning gender nodes onto the Kabbalist Tree of Life. If you are wondering what the six genders are, here you go: man who likes being man; woman who likes being woman; man who likes being woman; man who likes being woman; person who likes being both man and woman (hermaphrodite); and person who likes being neither man nor woman (ascetic, which is different from the Hasidic Jews in Mile End, which I just found out a few weeks ago. Oops). According to Matt, “everyone fucking has them all,” whether or not you scored Brooding Anemone on the Ocean Invertebrate Personality Quiz. By the way, Matt loves Brooding Anemones. Who doesn’t?


Technically born female, the Brooding Anemone
acquires hermaphroditic qualities later in life.

All of Matt’s posts are accompanied by the hashtag #liveyogamusic, which serves in part to market his career playing music at yoga classes. Matt aspires to one day design his own methodology for teaching music. He believes that “the whole reason to study music is not so that you can play music, it’s so that you have music. And it’s different. And that’s not something that we’re teaching people.” I agree, and I feel like this philosophy could extend into other fields. Children don’t often learn anything without the expectation that they will one day be good at it. Once we grow up, there are so many things we won’t do, because we feel that we won’t be good them. Surely this causes long-term damage. And it deprives of fun activities such as bowling. Matt would also like to expand his music and political activism to include the elderly, since society’s current treatment of the elderly is horrendous.

Matt and his Harp

I told Matt that I might also like to extend my life to include the elderly. Besides being a potty training consultant, my other dream job is to be a People Walker. I could start with the old people in the long-term care facility across the street from me. So many old people don’t get to go for walks because everyone is afraid they will die. And yet, they already feel half-dead since they’re not allowed to do anything. I can take them for walks and when they get back, Matt can play the harp for them and/or guide them through a psychedelic yoga class.  

The day I met up with Matt, I was a terrible People Walker. It was raining and I decided that we wouldn’t walk. Everyone is a hermaphrodite, and we’re all afraid of melting in the rain. Matt says that when we close our eyes, we confront our fears.

Matt: “I overcame a lot of fear. I am not easily startled. And I’m pretty fucking optimistic about the future.”

Erica: “Even with climate change, messy politics.”

Matt: “Yah, I see this as things that have to happen at this weird cosmic time.”

Erica: “Weird cosmic time. Yes, I would tend to agree.  So you’re not afraid, you’re just there. You just walk into it. With some marijuana, though. That seems essential for you.”

Matt: “Yah.”

Before we started recording, Matt told me about how one time, the leaves of a marijuana plant seemed to speak to him. This wasn’t part of his PSE; however, it is one of the reasons why Matt feels so drawn to Shamanism and to ancient wisdom cultures. And to psychedelics.

Towards the end of our interview, I asked Matt about having a baby. Matt considers making a baby to be totally related to his PSE slash revelatory experience:

“Part of my sense of love was missing before.  Another way of putting this is that my cup wasn’t filled… For me it was the last part that had to be filled. It happened by conceiving of this child and imagining a life with my partner… It also coincided with me becoming a huge asshole on Facebook.”

The End.

I look forward to the baby shower next Saturday. And to the baby’s birth, though I haven’t been invited.

Thank you, Matt for letting me Ask You About Your Life!

Me and Matt, hanging out.

Follow Matt Wiviott on Twitter: @liveyogamusic
Matt's Website: liveyogamusic.com

Follow me on Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook  

Are you are a Brooding Anemone? Take the Ocean Invertebrate Personality Quiz and Find Out.

You might also be a Cuttle Fish. Like Matt and Margaret Atwood and Jane Fonda
And my sister.

Erica’s Hashtag: #AskingPeopleAboutTheirLives

Some of Matt’s Hashtags:

The name of God in Hebrew and Hastags: #YUD #HEY #VAV #HEY

      #tetragrammation    #shamanicpolitics     #sephirah     #IsraelitesDoItThemselves    #kabbalah

                #liveyogamusic     #sword     #coin     #wand     #cup     #UNadministration    #VibratorPoetry

        #NoOneEverLikesaSaviour    #Jerusalem2017     #InternationalCityofPeaceandHealing

Some of Matt Wiviott Facebook Statuses:

The "sentence" is a fascinating construct: BOTH a simultaneous whole thought AND a sequential unfolding of symbols.
‪#‎shamanicpolitics ‪#‎liveyogamusic
‪#‎EITHER ‪#‎OR ‪#‎BOTH ‪#‎AND
‪#‎sword ‪#‎coin ‪#‎wand ‪#‎cup
‪#‎yud ‪#‎hey ‪#‎vav #hey...
‪#‎tetragrammaton

So, what does Fate hold in store for Jew tasked with teaching Hermaphrodite Kabbalah and advocating the Global Reclamation of Jerusalem?
‪#‎Jerusalem2017 ‪#‎InternationalCityofPeaceandHealing
‪#‎UNadministration
‪#‎shamanicpolitics ‪#‎kabbalah ‪#‎liveyogamusic

The good thing about pinning Gender Nodes on the Kabbalist Tree of Life, is that the ‪#‎sephiroth , like the ‪#‎chakras , have rich polysemic possibilities. And everyone fucking has them all.
‪#‎shamanicpolitics ‪#‎kabbalah ‪#‎liveyogamusic

I think the real problems with lululemon began when Chip Wilson achieved a Visionary Awakening by reading the shit out of Ayn Rand.
‪#‎shamanicpolitics ‪#‎liveyogamusic

Really Great Classical Music is ALWAYS ‪#‎buddhistic , Really Great Jazz is ALWAYS ‪#‎shamanic .
‪#‎shamanicpolitics ‪#‎liveyogamusic #shamanic #buddhistic

 

Once I made a whole bunch of chakra cards. Perhaps not enough. 

Chakra Cards 
What the fuck should I do with my life? Part One
What the fuck should I do with my life? Part Two
 

Once I wrote a self-help book: I Let Go