I’ve lived multiple lives, it seems—in Iran, where I grew up during the revolution and the Iran/Iraq war; in Los Angeles where during the 1980’s I experienced high school in “the valley;” in San Francisco, where I attended the San Francisco Art Institute and earned a BFA in painting; and in Hawaii, where I lived for twenty years and spent my professional life organizing creative cultural events in Honolulu’s historic Chinatown district. During the second decade of my life in Hawaii, I founded, owned, and operated a groundbreaking, successful, and influential multi-media creative space called thirtyninehotel which, under my creative leadership, spearheaded countless events centered around the visual arts, music, dance, poetry, performance art, installations, lectures, educational programming, and, of course, superlative and spiritually-advanced dance parties following in the lineage of David Mancuso and The Loft. thirtyninehotel was instrumental in fostering a broader outgrowth of more sophisticated creative and entrepreneurial expressions in Honolulu and beyond and is currently referred to by many as “mythical” and “legendary.”
When thirtyninehotel closed in early 2014, I pivoted toward my new creative path—writing and scholarship—passionate vocations that had been waiting in the wings. I began attending Pacifica Graduate Institute (an institution of higher learning devoted to the teachings of C. G. Jung) in early 2016 and have since earned two MA’s in depth psychology (the psychology of the unconscious, the study of the soul), one in the Humanities and the other in Jungian and Archetypal Studies. I am currently a doctoral candidate at PGI researching and writing my dissertation about the liberating spiritual and magical qualities of music.
In 2020, I founded a private practice called Luminosity Mentoring focused on dream analysis with clients from diverse backgrounds.
In 2023, together with my childhood best friend, I co-founded Kosmos Institute, a new online school for the advanced study of mythology, esotericism, and archetypes.
I tend to move towards what is beautiful and ennobling in the human spirit and I look for ways in which consciousness can be freed from the constrictions of ignorance. These metaphysical, philosophical, and psychospiritual preoccupations are primarily explored through music, writing, art, and academic scholarship.
I am just beginning to publish my work officially, but my unofficially published work is available on this website, on the Disco Liberation Movement website, and on Medium. I also make a new DJ mix every week and my music is available on my Soundcloud page.
If needed, you may reach me at gelareh.khoie@gmail.com.