In the '90s, Vic DiCara helped set the tone for what became Krishnacore. Since then, he’s had some second thoughts—and a few regrets. But today he feels more like himself than he's ever felt.
This was awesome! I particularly connected to the analogy of involvement with ISCKON and embarrassment over attracting or choosing an abusive partner. I have definitely experienced both and have never really thought about that correlation.
There was one copy of Monkey on a Stick in my high school library that 4 of us shared. In 1991 it was not easy in suburban Long Island to access a book like that. We agreed no one would check it out so we could read it during breaks at school. By reading and knowing all of the details, I could always defend that I was going in eyes wide open.
Personally, 108 may have validated or made my attraction and interest in Krishna feel cooler, but it was never the impetus. As with most things I have been interested in and engaged with in life, I was always kind of on the fringe. One foot in, one foot out-definite personality flaw, but I don’t have any regrets about it in this case. Thanks for having and sharing this thoughtful and engaged conversation ❤️.
"I just have two very different extremes in one person. I’m a very lovey, gushy, gentle kind of person, but I’m also a fucking pain in the ass that likes to rip things to shreds and criticizes everything. They coexist in the same person".
Me in a nutshell. I'm controlling and impatient. I'm loyal and loving.
I feel for Vic, as my timeline and trajectory was similar (and I'm 50). Trying to find your flock when a teen is so tough. As a straight edge, vegan kid seeing one of Shelter's first handful of shows, I was already lined up with Krishna's pillars. It was a puzzle piece for me and my friends. Unlike my crew, though, I dove in completely. Drowning myself. And, still as a child then, was incredibly influenced by what my peers were shouting about over PA systems. Ray said stuff, I listened. Rob said stuff, I listed.
I'm unregretful of my eight years of association with ISKCON, I only wish I hadn't preached so much—and with such nasty, unnecessary volume—to others. I was rude and with WAY too large of an ego. I pushed many friends and family away, and they were understandably not waiting for me when I needed them later.
It's crazy how many of us like this exist. But it's not. But it is? 49. Still in a hardcore band. But now it's firmly seated next to LOVING being a father, in a great relationship, some career success that has allowed stability, and all the while completely informed and fueled by everything hardcore taught me. It's been the one thing I always go back to, so much that I haven't not been in a band for more than a 5 year break here and there. Without it, I am not fully myself.
I saw Shelter in Memphis and the Hardline movement partially started here so that show was a SHIT show. My friends were all hardline straight edge. I was a Cappo follower. I left SxE behind and just went down the Krishna rabbit hole. When my Dad had a major health event during my Senior exams, Shelter was what got me through and helped me get him through recovery. Even though he laughed at my "eastern religion" interest, I think he respected that I was so serious. Neckbeads, shaved head, living in my bass players walk in closet, meditating by the pool, and injecting what was learning in all of the music by band made.
Hard to say you are a Krishna devotee in the Bible Belt and not get fucked with. I got stuffed in trash can by jocks, made fun of by "friends" and finally just did my thing and didn't care what everyone else thought. Years of posi hardcore songs hammered into my brain really made me confident I was on the right path.
I wouldn't be the same without any of this music. Knowing Vic is human, beneath all of those swirling guitars and strong opinons is a wonderful thing.
I'm very inspired today and I thank you both for your contributions to my timeline since I was in high school.
I really connected with his feelings around leaving New York and moving to San Diego, where he says "I wanted to restart my identity." I was a bit of an introvert growing up and to this day I still remember having a conscious thought during the summer between graduating high school and moving three hours away to college where I said to myself that when I started in this new place, I would proactively become a more outgoing, social person. It didn't seem like much at the time, but looking back on it, it was quite transformative. I quite literally changed into more of the person I wanted to be because I was going to this new place where no one knew me and I could "restart".
Great interview! I've never been interested in religion or spirituality, but I found Vic's description of his own personality so relatable. Like another reader pointed out, that idea of two extremes: loving, yet critical as hell, probably describes a lot of us hardcore "kids."
Such a delight to read such a raw and honest interview. We are all on crazy journeys, and it seems like Vic has made some peace with where it has taken him.
Vic,
Hopefully you see this comment. I wonder when you last went to India and how you feel about the place now. I love that ISKCON and Krishnacore introduced me to India, and it has become this incredible place I keep returning to. Every visit involves some place new, and I enjoy continually learning more about India. I also have little interest in ISKCON India.
I love India so much its honestly abnormal. :) Someone did a metal remix of Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn singing Mirabhai's "Sasson ki Mala pe" and I like it more than Reign in Blood. Indian food, Indian music, Indian fashion, Indian architecture... Indian dance, Indian... well NOT Indian government. And also not Indian urban living standards or police. Basically anything still very rooted to ANCIENT India, I am literally infatuated with.
Last time I was literally in India was something like 2014 ish.
Edit, Indian beauty is offfff theeee hooooooook... skintone, hair, eyes..... i died.
This conversation and the comments on it have helped me understand the question, What did Hare Krishna ACTUALLY offer the 19 year-old Vic DiCara?
Up until the time I read Īśopaṇiṣad* no one had been able to show me anything that made me feel like, “YES! THAT IS WHAT I WANT. MY LIFE IS MEANT FOR THAT.” Typically we get that sort of thing through our parents or teachers, or friends, or media. But for me, none of those people, even including the Hardcore and Straightedge variants, could show me anything that made me feel that way.
But that is exactly what Īśopaṇiṣad gave me.
Hare Krishna certainly did NOT give me a sense of family or a home or a place where I was welcome. Outside of my wife and children, honestly, no one has ever succeeded in doing that (and even they had a hard and long road to accomplishing that). When I was a freestyle kid, I thought I was really a metalhead. When I was with metalheads, I thought I was really a skater. When I was with skaters I thought I was really a BMXer. When I was in straightedge - I thought I was a negative-approach rasta. When I was with non-straightedge punks, I definitely thought I was a straight-edger. When I joined the Krishnas I debated with them constantly. When I was with hardcore people, I preached Krishna to them. HK didn’t solve that problem for me. In fact it really exaggerated it. I abandoned the world for HK, but HK didnt want to embrace me because I was critical of their bullshit.
Another thing I have thought about since doing the interview is why I was trying to throw Norman's potato chips out the window. =) It wasn't really to be a “good boy” (except in one very complicated sense).* I realize now that the other thing I mentioned was the primary thing. I didn’t join the Hare Krishnas to feel loved or whatever. I joined them to get what the Īśopaṇiṣad was talking about: true-self-knowing. So, since there was a particular process for getting that, I wasnt going to beat around the bush, and goof off or take the slow and low roads to it. I was going to practice that process to the utmost, without dilution. As far as I knew, in my immature and noob understanding of it, potato chips represented what was antithetical to that process. =) (I now understand that was actually a wrong evaluation of norm's potato chips and their relations to bhakti-sādhana, btw).
NORM, thank you again for this opportunity to think out loud and with people (especially YOU) who can actually think on the same wavelength. The edit you put together, I must say, is outstanding.
* Īśopaṇiṣad is an ancient Sanskrit text that the Hare Krishna founder translated and commented on, and that the Cro-Mags wound up giving to Alan Cage one Sunday Matinee, who wound up giving it to me one afternoon before a Beyond “rehearsal.”
* The complicated “good boy” psychology was that I thought the gurus in the Hare Krishna movement must be a lot closer to true-self-knowing, so I wanted to get into their circles... so I wanted to behave in a way they would admire. So thats another reason I was so "by the book"
I think it’s an interesting dichotomy that you feel a sense of responsibility for drawing kids into something with your music that they would then find to be different from what you were projecting, yet were continuously questioning what you were experiencing and learning. Being in New York at that time, and actually hearing you speak often left me feeling you were a critical thinker for the masses. It was a comfort in many ways, especially as a woman, that you were challenging norms and would speak on it.
I’m not a fan of using “lol”, but I did laugh out loud at that potato chip story. While I never ate potato chips in the ashram, I was always adding just a little more warm water to my shower without creating steam.
I’m a teacher on break this week, so this discussion came at the perfect time for me. My children are teenagers and are doing their own things. The quiet lulls always make me reflect on life experiences. As an introvert who enjoys solitude, this medium for discussion is lovely.
"I think that worked out in my favor because now I can sort of say: This is me without any outside influences. This is me when it’s just me. This is the Vic straight out of the box without the additives and not plugged into any other Legos."
God, I hear that. I don't really think I had a good handle on who I was as a person until I lived alone.
I think his insight that he needs to forgive "Bhakta Vic" is right on the money, and part of that is, I think, not beating himself up so much over joining ISKCON in the first place. He said himself that he felt like he didn't belong anywhere, and that's exactly what any kind of community does...makes us feel like we belong. If this was the first place that he felt like really accepted him - and elements of a renunciate life were already in his life - I think it'd be hard NOT to embrace it. We want love and connection, it's hard as hell to turn it down.
Cults (and extremist groups, for that matter) work like they do because they don't hit people with the hard stuff right out of the gate, they start with the most palatable and least controversial elements, and then gradually build on those ideas, normalizing what ends up being some pretty out-there stuff. And at that point, if you're feeling like you belong, like you've found your people, the desire to rationalize the weird stuff is pretty strong. Otherwise you'll have to give up all this love and belonging....because the ugly truth is that the love and belonging is entirely contigent on toeing the party line, no matter how bizarre or dangerous it is.
This may have been the ONE point that DIDNT come across so clearly in the interview. I did NOT join iskcon because i needed a social group. I am like a solitary animal. I have like 1% of the need for social units that normal people have. And if I did need a social group, ISKCON would be a shitty pick, because they suck as a social group and just rip each other to shreds (maybe If i was into emotional BDSM, that would be attractive. But I'm not). I really joined ISKCON because I really wanted what those ancient sages and mystics wanted. And I left ISKCON because they utterly failed to enable me to get that. Not "utterly" - they gave the seeds of what I will need. But still they are incapable of delivering the goods.
My apologies for the misunderstanding. When you said you never really felt like you had "a place," I assumed you meant "...and I wanted one," not "I'm not a "my place" kind of person." That's on me.
But you were still looking for something - wisdom, enlightment, transcendence, however you thought of it, and they said "yeah, we got that." They're not going to get up in your face and say "you ready for the cult shit?" until you're already committed. So I don't think you need to be embarrassed. You assumed that they meant what they said, which is a reasonable assumption unless you're really, really cynical. And even if you aren't, an experience like that could certainly point you that way.
Vic, thanks for taking the time out to write back. I did some further research and found this: “The official definition of "tsundoku" is the stockpiling of books that will never be consumed. The word is a combination of several Japanese words, including "tsunde," which means to stack things; "oku," which means to leave for a while; and "doku," which means to read. Sadly, there's no direct synonym in English.”
Wow that was great. I’m on my break at work right now and really wanted to ask Vic just some quick questions before my boss tells me to go back to work. First off this a completely non-hardcore question: being that you are a fan of dungeons and dragons do you think it is strange that it wasn’t created earlier then the 1970s? Also. Ring that your father was a physics major and you said you were a carbon copy of him I thought that was fascinating. Also do you think it is strange that issues of “enquirer” are being sold on eBay for lots of money. I also thought it was strange that according to “train wrecks and transcendence” ray cappo submitted the questions and the answers for your enquirer interview with him. Plus being that Zack wanted to call inside out “no spiritual surrender” to you regret going which inside out? (I hear my boss calling got to go I apologize for the strange writing style) plus I heard in Japan there is a word for someone who owns a lot of books put never plans to read them. Fascinating.)
1) no, why? Also, the rules didnt become crytalized till Gygax in the 70s, but really D&D is, essentially, just a slow motion version of what everyone does naturally whenever they read any story. So I think its an eternal thing in essence.
2) <3 dad
3) People sell used socks on eBay for a lot of money, so no.
4) There are a lot of strange things about that person.
5) He didnt want to call Inside Out No Spiritual Surrender. He named it Inside Out. He also had the title No Spiritual Surrender for a song, i heard the title and wrote the song. Inside Out is also a nice movie. I regret not watching it more often.
6) Not sure what word that is because I read the fuck out of my books. Except some. That I didnt buy. But maybe the word is "otaku"?
Norm <3 u so much for doing this, and doing it so well.
This was awesome! I particularly connected to the analogy of involvement with ISCKON and embarrassment over attracting or choosing an abusive partner. I have definitely experienced both and have never really thought about that correlation.
There was one copy of Monkey on a Stick in my high school library that 4 of us shared. In 1991 it was not easy in suburban Long Island to access a book like that. We agreed no one would check it out so we could read it during breaks at school. By reading and knowing all of the details, I could always defend that I was going in eyes wide open.
Personally, 108 may have validated or made my attraction and interest in Krishna feel cooler, but it was never the impetus. As with most things I have been interested in and engaged with in life, I was always kind of on the fringe. One foot in, one foot out-definite personality flaw, but I don’t have any regrets about it in this case. Thanks for having and sharing this thoughtful and engaged conversation ❤️.
Awe. Some.
"I just have two very different extremes in one person. I’m a very lovey, gushy, gentle kind of person, but I’m also a fucking pain in the ass that likes to rip things to shreds and criticizes everything. They coexist in the same person".
Me in a nutshell. I'm controlling and impatient. I'm loyal and loving.
I feel for Vic, as my timeline and trajectory was similar (and I'm 50). Trying to find your flock when a teen is so tough. As a straight edge, vegan kid seeing one of Shelter's first handful of shows, I was already lined up with Krishna's pillars. It was a puzzle piece for me and my friends. Unlike my crew, though, I dove in completely. Drowning myself. And, still as a child then, was incredibly influenced by what my peers were shouting about over PA systems. Ray said stuff, I listened. Rob said stuff, I listed.
I'm unregretful of my eight years of association with ISKCON, I only wish I hadn't preached so much—and with such nasty, unnecessary volume—to others. I was rude and with WAY too large of an ego. I pushed many friends and family away, and they were understandably not waiting for me when I needed them later.
eHug
Huggeth. Returneth.
It's crazy how many of us like this exist. But it's not. But it is? 49. Still in a hardcore band. But now it's firmly seated next to LOVING being a father, in a great relationship, some career success that has allowed stability, and all the while completely informed and fueled by everything hardcore taught me. It's been the one thing I always go back to, so much that I haven't not been in a band for more than a 5 year break here and there. Without it, I am not fully myself.
I saw Shelter in Memphis and the Hardline movement partially started here so that show was a SHIT show. My friends were all hardline straight edge. I was a Cappo follower. I left SxE behind and just went down the Krishna rabbit hole. When my Dad had a major health event during my Senior exams, Shelter was what got me through and helped me get him through recovery. Even though he laughed at my "eastern religion" interest, I think he respected that I was so serious. Neckbeads, shaved head, living in my bass players walk in closet, meditating by the pool, and injecting what was learning in all of the music by band made.
Hard to say you are a Krishna devotee in the Bible Belt and not get fucked with. I got stuffed in trash can by jocks, made fun of by "friends" and finally just did my thing and didn't care what everyone else thought. Years of posi hardcore songs hammered into my brain really made me confident I was on the right path.
I wouldn't be the same without any of this music. Knowing Vic is human, beneath all of those swirling guitars and strong opinons is a wonderful thing.
I'm very inspired today and I thank you both for your contributions to my timeline since I was in high school.
Great conversation. Thanks to both you and Vic.
I really connected with his feelings around leaving New York and moving to San Diego, where he says "I wanted to restart my identity." I was a bit of an introvert growing up and to this day I still remember having a conscious thought during the summer between graduating high school and moving three hours away to college where I said to myself that when I started in this new place, I would proactively become a more outgoing, social person. It didn't seem like much at the time, but looking back on it, it was quite transformative. I quite literally changed into more of the person I wanted to be because I was going to this new place where no one knew me and I could "restart".
Great interview! I've never been interested in religion or spirituality, but I found Vic's description of his own personality so relatable. Like another reader pointed out, that idea of two extremes: loving, yet critical as hell, probably describes a lot of us hardcore "kids."
Such a delight to read such a raw and honest interview. We are all on crazy journeys, and it seems like Vic has made some peace with where it has taken him.
Vic,
Hopefully you see this comment. I wonder when you last went to India and how you feel about the place now. I love that ISKCON and Krishnacore introduced me to India, and it has become this incredible place I keep returning to. Every visit involves some place new, and I enjoy continually learning more about India. I also have little interest in ISKCON India.
I love India so much its honestly abnormal. :) Someone did a metal remix of Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn singing Mirabhai's "Sasson ki Mala pe" and I like it more than Reign in Blood. Indian food, Indian music, Indian fashion, Indian architecture... Indian dance, Indian... well NOT Indian government. And also not Indian urban living standards or police. Basically anything still very rooted to ANCIENT India, I am literally infatuated with.
Last time I was literally in India was something like 2014 ish.
Edit, Indian beauty is offfff theeee hooooooook... skintone, hair, eyes..... i died.
This conversation and the comments on it have helped me understand the question, What did Hare Krishna ACTUALLY offer the 19 year-old Vic DiCara?
Up until the time I read Īśopaṇiṣad* no one had been able to show me anything that made me feel like, “YES! THAT IS WHAT I WANT. MY LIFE IS MEANT FOR THAT.” Typically we get that sort of thing through our parents or teachers, or friends, or media. But for me, none of those people, even including the Hardcore and Straightedge variants, could show me anything that made me feel that way.
But that is exactly what Īśopaṇiṣad gave me.
Hare Krishna certainly did NOT give me a sense of family or a home or a place where I was welcome. Outside of my wife and children, honestly, no one has ever succeeded in doing that (and even they had a hard and long road to accomplishing that). When I was a freestyle kid, I thought I was really a metalhead. When I was with metalheads, I thought I was really a skater. When I was with skaters I thought I was really a BMXer. When I was in straightedge - I thought I was a negative-approach rasta. When I was with non-straightedge punks, I definitely thought I was a straight-edger. When I joined the Krishnas I debated with them constantly. When I was with hardcore people, I preached Krishna to them. HK didn’t solve that problem for me. In fact it really exaggerated it. I abandoned the world for HK, but HK didnt want to embrace me because I was critical of their bullshit.
Another thing I have thought about since doing the interview is why I was trying to throw Norman's potato chips out the window. =) It wasn't really to be a “good boy” (except in one very complicated sense).* I realize now that the other thing I mentioned was the primary thing. I didn’t join the Hare Krishnas to feel loved or whatever. I joined them to get what the Īśopaṇiṣad was talking about: true-self-knowing. So, since there was a particular process for getting that, I wasnt going to beat around the bush, and goof off or take the slow and low roads to it. I was going to practice that process to the utmost, without dilution. As far as I knew, in my immature and noob understanding of it, potato chips represented what was antithetical to that process. =) (I now understand that was actually a wrong evaluation of norm's potato chips and their relations to bhakti-sādhana, btw).
NORM, thank you again for this opportunity to think out loud and with people (especially YOU) who can actually think on the same wavelength. The edit you put together, I must say, is outstanding.
* Īśopaṇiṣad is an ancient Sanskrit text that the Hare Krishna founder translated and commented on, and that the Cro-Mags wound up giving to Alan Cage one Sunday Matinee, who wound up giving it to me one afternoon before a Beyond “rehearsal.”
* The complicated “good boy” psychology was that I thought the gurus in the Hare Krishna movement must be a lot closer to true-self-knowing, so I wanted to get into their circles... so I wanted to behave in a way they would admire. So thats another reason I was so "by the book"
I think it’s an interesting dichotomy that you feel a sense of responsibility for drawing kids into something with your music that they would then find to be different from what you were projecting, yet were continuously questioning what you were experiencing and learning. Being in New York at that time, and actually hearing you speak often left me feeling you were a critical thinker for the masses. It was a comfort in many ways, especially as a woman, that you were challenging norms and would speak on it.
I’m not a fan of using “lol”, but I did laugh out loud at that potato chip story. While I never ate potato chips in the ashram, I was always adding just a little more warm water to my shower without creating steam.
I’m a teacher on break this week, so this discussion came at the perfect time for me. My children are teenagers and are doing their own things. The quiet lulls always make me reflect on life experiences. As an introvert who enjoys solitude, this medium for discussion is lovely.
"I think that worked out in my favor because now I can sort of say: This is me without any outside influences. This is me when it’s just me. This is the Vic straight out of the box without the additives and not plugged into any other Legos."
God, I hear that. I don't really think I had a good handle on who I was as a person until I lived alone.
I think his insight that he needs to forgive "Bhakta Vic" is right on the money, and part of that is, I think, not beating himself up so much over joining ISKCON in the first place. He said himself that he felt like he didn't belong anywhere, and that's exactly what any kind of community does...makes us feel like we belong. If this was the first place that he felt like really accepted him - and elements of a renunciate life were already in his life - I think it'd be hard NOT to embrace it. We want love and connection, it's hard as hell to turn it down.
Cults (and extremist groups, for that matter) work like they do because they don't hit people with the hard stuff right out of the gate, they start with the most palatable and least controversial elements, and then gradually build on those ideas, normalizing what ends up being some pretty out-there stuff. And at that point, if you're feeling like you belong, like you've found your people, the desire to rationalize the weird stuff is pretty strong. Otherwise you'll have to give up all this love and belonging....because the ugly truth is that the love and belonging is entirely contigent on toeing the party line, no matter how bizarre or dangerous it is.
This may have been the ONE point that DIDNT come across so clearly in the interview. I did NOT join iskcon because i needed a social group. I am like a solitary animal. I have like 1% of the need for social units that normal people have. And if I did need a social group, ISKCON would be a shitty pick, because they suck as a social group and just rip each other to shreds (maybe If i was into emotional BDSM, that would be attractive. But I'm not). I really joined ISKCON because I really wanted what those ancient sages and mystics wanted. And I left ISKCON because they utterly failed to enable me to get that. Not "utterly" - they gave the seeds of what I will need. But still they are incapable of delivering the goods.
My apologies for the misunderstanding. When you said you never really felt like you had "a place," I assumed you meant "...and I wanted one," not "I'm not a "my place" kind of person." That's on me.
But you were still looking for something - wisdom, enlightment, transcendence, however you thought of it, and they said "yeah, we got that." They're not going to get up in your face and say "you ready for the cult shit?" until you're already committed. So I don't think you need to be embarrassed. You assumed that they meant what they said, which is a reasonable assumption unless you're really, really cynical. And even if you aren't, an experience like that could certainly point you that way.
Loved this. Thank you Norm and Vic.
Vic, thanks for taking the time out to write back. I did some further research and found this: “The official definition of "tsundoku" is the stockpiling of books that will never be consumed. The word is a combination of several Japanese words, including "tsunde," which means to stack things; "oku," which means to leave for a while; and "doku," which means to read. Sadly, there's no direct synonym in English.”
Wow that was great. I’m on my break at work right now and really wanted to ask Vic just some quick questions before my boss tells me to go back to work. First off this a completely non-hardcore question: being that you are a fan of dungeons and dragons do you think it is strange that it wasn’t created earlier then the 1970s? Also. Ring that your father was a physics major and you said you were a carbon copy of him I thought that was fascinating. Also do you think it is strange that issues of “enquirer” are being sold on eBay for lots of money. I also thought it was strange that according to “train wrecks and transcendence” ray cappo submitted the questions and the answers for your enquirer interview with him. Plus being that Zack wanted to call inside out “no spiritual surrender” to you regret going which inside out? (I hear my boss calling got to go I apologize for the strange writing style) plus I heard in Japan there is a word for someone who owns a lot of books put never plans to read them. Fascinating.)
1) no, why? Also, the rules didnt become crytalized till Gygax in the 70s, but really D&D is, essentially, just a slow motion version of what everyone does naturally whenever they read any story. So I think its an eternal thing in essence.
2) <3 dad
3) People sell used socks on eBay for a lot of money, so no.
4) There are a lot of strange things about that person.
5) He didnt want to call Inside Out No Spiritual Surrender. He named it Inside Out. He also had the title No Spiritual Surrender for a song, i heard the title and wrote the song. Inside Out is also a nice movie. I regret not watching it more often.
6) Not sure what word that is because I read the fuck out of my books. Except some. That I didnt buy. But maybe the word is "otaku"?
Thank you, Norm. Thank you, Vic!!!