We recently had the chance to connect with Chad Gerber and have shared our conversation below.
Good morning Chad, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? What do you think others are secretly struggling with—but never say?
Social starvation. I think the majority of people are starving for actual connections to other people. Not curated social media images and posts, or “picture opportunity” events, but just a raw interaction where nobody fears being posted online or canceled for being vulnerable in their walk through life trying to figure things out. Everyone is struggling with being alone on unprecedented levels because people feel if they open up to anyone it could end in them being a meme, ridiculed, or banished from whatever friend group they’re trying to get into.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Chad Gerber. I’ve been a professional musician since high school, playing music around the world, for bands, DJing, indie rock, Vans Warped Tour, A Prairie Home Companion, bands on indie labels, scoring TV and film, and working with major labels. In recent years, I invented several things in technology that led to me founding two tech companies, one in a VR/AR studio music collaboration called Meloscene, and another based on my deep tech inventions in intelligent telecommunications systems, quantum telecommunications systems, and other weird stuff. So now I’m not sure what or who I am, but ultimately I strive daily, lose sleep nightly, all while trying to create the things I see in my mind and feel desperately compelled to create.
Okay, so here’s a deep one: What part of you has served its purpose and must now be released?
Probably the part of me that portrayed an easygoing, chill musician who doesn’t know much about things other than music. I used that persona as a type of security blanket so that I didn’t have to deal with things in my mind. Things that called me to a higher purpose, I guess, so I leaned on the carefree musician trope up until pretty recently. I wasn’t required to move outside of it, so I just got comfortable in it. I enjoyed people thinking I wasn’t too bright and flying under the radar because I was just written off as someone in entertainment. Sadly, recently I’ve had to set that person aside and embrace another version of myself I put on a shelf when I was a kid taking apart electronics, reading aviation books, and building things that would blow the breaker in my parents’ house. I got to a point where being that musician person was pushed far enough, and creatively I had no choice but to expand and somewhat grow into something that combines the old with the new. I was playing with a box of crayons and had done as much as I wanted with those, and now it was time to build and create on a much more complex and fulfilling canvas of physics, technology, and human connection. I’m still a musician making records, but now I’m combining many things into a new type of creative direction that’s moving a lot faster than I can keep up with.
When you were sad or scared as a child, what helped?
I would visualize an older version of myself facing me in the mirror, telling me how the future was and how I needed to keep pushing forward because of certain events that were going to take place. This grownup version of me dressed a certain way, gave me tips about the future, and overall made me feel like I wasn’t on my own. Oddly enough, that future version of me began creating technology around particle physics, which showed me that time isn’t linear and theoretically both versions (and others along this experiential timeline) are actually existing at the same time, so maybe I was really speaking to myself, bridging the gap of time through the mind. Now, if I look in the mirror at times, I’ll picture my younger self looking back and I’ll tell him to hang in there. Just in case.
So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. Is the public version of you the real you?
Absolutely not. I think the real version of me is far too moody, annoying, and chaotic to allow the world to see. Those close to me are patient enough to endure my chaos, but I’m not going to make strangers deal with that. What people see is the artist version of me. My voice through the lens of creation, which is more digestible than the version of me that doesn’t sleep for weeks on end, collects disposable chopsticks, and wears ponchos for no reason.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. What are you doing today that won’t pay off for 7–10 years?
I have several that are highly classified (my inner X-Files nerd loves that), but one of them that is going out soon through ShadowGen will lay the groundwork for people to be able to speak to one another with zero latency anywhere in the world. So between London and LA, or even Tokyo to Mars, zero latency, perfect clarity, literally bypassing space and time. The same system has mass applications, but that’s the piece I’m excited about that keeps me up at night. So assuming everything stays on track, that will be what everyone experiences in 7 to 10 years… or less.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.chadgerber.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chadgerber
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadgerber/
- Twitter: @woodrowgerber
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodrowgerber
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/woodrowgerber
- Soundcloud: https://www.soundcloud.com/woodrowgerber
- Other: https://www.meloscene.com
Image Credits
Joel Edwards
