A gift for you, reader, that wasn't mine to keep.

This week is my birthday, and I want to give you a gift.

The gift is one weirdly magical hour away from the world. Somewhere outside, after dark, under the moon, with music in your ears — and whatever you discover there about the place, the people you’re with, or yourself.

It’s called DARK MEDITATION, and it’s open to everyone during the week around the full moon, July 24 through August 2.

Before I tell you how to access this gift, I want to tell you how it got to me. Because I didn’t exactly ‘create’ this so much as it arrived.

Earlier this year, in an accelerator with a group of artists, I was working with Midjourney to build a mood board for my music branding. I was generating all sorts of ideas and images, and one of them caught my eye - Whoa. There was something weirdly powerful about it.

I shared the visual explorations with my friend Sebastiaan to see what he’d see. He noticed textures, repeating themes — the circle, the moon. In this image, he commented: “I don’t know what this is, but there’s this feeling of… dark meditation.”

Dark meditation. Mmmm.

Meditation has been a huge part of my life for more than five years, and I find there’s something weirdly attractive about the dark (notice the color scheme of this blog?). Put them together? I’m hooked.

Later that week I sat down to imagine what that might sound like. Dark, haunting, the beach at night. Lots of cool tracks arrived, through a flow I’ve described before. I say “arrived” on purpose: I was prompting, choosing, steering, but the music felt conjured, like it came through me rather than from me. I mark the tracks I like, then double star the ones I LOVE. There was one where I wrote - “what energy, feels like dancing on the beach at night.” I later polished it, added a video of a woman dancing on the moonlit beach, and published it as “Dark Meditation DM1”

A couple of weeks later I invited a few friends to a late-night Twitch session I called the PORTAL, and we conjured together — casting prompt “spells,” summoning instruments and vibes, feeding images into ChatGPT for mood, seeing what came through. Another polished track eventually came out of that session.

Then I put the rest in a drawer. Some tracks had semi-lyrics, various hallucinations, nothing was polished, and I told myself I’d finish them someday. Maybe. I kept listening anyway — at the gym, around the house, I loved the vibe.

Four months later, on a trip to Mexico, I was on a beach with friends next to boulders that looked like an Aztec temple. I knew exactly what this place reminded me of, musically. I took out some of the conjured drafts, warned everyone they were unfinished, and played them on my Bluetooth speaker. We danced by the temple to the mysterious vibes.

After the second song, my friend turned to me: “What do you mean, draft? What’s missing on these songs?”

I didn’t have a good answer. Another friend said it was better than most of what he heard at Burning Man the year before.

Thanks to my friends, I started believing that maybe this music was worth sharing.

And that got me planning this dream I’d always had from that first song - I want to dance to it on the moonlit beach. And so for my birthday, I planned how to make that dream come true. I compiled the tracks into a complete set of music that takes you on a journey. I chose a spot. I figured out the details.

Then last Friday I got the real gift. I went to preview the event on the beach. This was the dream that I’d had in mind for months. I laid out the beach towel, put on my headphones, started the set, and magic arrived. The ocean called to me, and I went to dance in the warm water to my music. The waves hit to the beat, the warm wind hugged me, and the moon bathed everything in a light I’d never seen before.

I realized suddenly — where has this been all my life? I’d lived in Miami for over four years. The beach is walking distance from home. How did I never think to come here after dark and dance in the ocean?

That hour was so magical that I fell back in love with where I live, seeing it with new eyes. When I told my friends from that Mexico beach, one of them said: “Sometimes the most beautiful places hide in plain sight.” What a gift.

There’s a little book I love called Flashes, by Pir Elias Amidon. He is the spiritual director of the Sufi Way, a mystical order that follows the Sufi tradition. The book is a collection of short phrases that came to him over a lifetime. At the end there’s a dedication to friends who helped with the book, including one who convinced him to write it, “who told me that these gifts were not mine to keep.”

That’s something I’ve been feeling these past few days. This music that I love so much was given to me — through an image, a friend’s comment, a night of conjuring with friends. The beautiful gift of an hour on the moonlit beach was given to me. I’ve enjoyed these gifts so much. They were not meant to be mine to keep.

I have been sharing this invitation with a close circle of friends around the world. And I want to invite you too, so you can discover something of beauty with new eyes.

So I invite you to step into this portal of DARK MEDITATION, on your own time, from a place of your choosing.

Here’s what you do:

Pick a place where you feel safe to hang out after dark — outside in nature, somewhere you can see the moon maybe. Go there after the sun sets, with headphones. Bring a mat if you want to sit on the ground. Bring anyone else you want to share the experience with.

I built a simple player (with AI, fittingly) that will give you access to the music on your phone. You hit play, and let the music carry you… somewhere.

There are no visuals, on purpose. You can dance, walk, stretch, lie down, or do almost nothing. The music asks very little of you — almost no lyrics, no story to follow. It’s open, waiting for you and the environment around you to pour the meaning in. Maybe something will move through you. Maybe you’ll just think about tomorrow’s chores. Both are fine. The music opens the door, and the hour away in a special place might bring up its own special gifts.

So, details:

🌕 Open your gift from anywhere: any night from July 24 through August 2 — the week around the full moon. Sign up at iplusai.art/portals/dark-meditation, and you’ll receive the listening link by email with the full instructions.

🏖️ Join us in Miami: Saturday, July 25, 8:15 PM — silent disco on the beach, RSVP on Luma. We’ll dance together under the moon, sit, lie down, and generally provide nourishment for the mosquitoes.

The first track is below - this is the one that made me feel like dancing on the beach at night. If you’re interested, come try the rest with us when the portal opens.

If you’re curious, let me know where you’ll be joining us from!

💗🎶

Itai

I+AI is the inside story of the AI music movement — how songs actually get made, who’s making them, and how creation, suddenly open to everyone, is becoming a new way people connect.

I’m Itai: ex-Google/Meta, AI music creator under the name I+AI, and co-founder of Vibya, where we’re building a home to connect people through music.

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