Gallery
Mountains
“Waimanu was a paradox, both harsh and forgiving. Winds could howl like freight trains or cool your skin like a lover’s breath.”
Forest
“Cold fresh water flows down from the cliffs like veins to the ocean.”
Light
“And presence, I believe, is the antidote to suffering. Nature lives in the now.”
People
“The fireflies. Their tiny lights pulsing in the dark like stars that had fallen to earth. They asked for nothing. They simply glowed.”
Mist
“For the first time, I felt how fragile and porous the boundary between the known and the unknown really is.”
Water
“We had no answers. Just awe. The kind that rearranges your inner map.”
“I did not know then that I would spend much of my life trying to follow that light back home.”
“The ocean was no longer just ocean—it had revealed another face, one feral and alive, and not to be trusted.”
“The farther I traveled into mystery, the more I valued careful observation; the deeper I immersed myself in science, the more I came to appreciate that not everything meaningful can be measured.”
“Maybe we aren’t here to worship anything. Maybe we’re here to notice.”
“Solitude had done its work. That sense of deep aloneness gave me a deep sense of belonging.”
“I felt different, stripped clean, as if something heavy had been burned off.”
“Every true medicine simply holds up a different mirror. The healing begins only when we have the courage to look.”
“The delusion that we’ve arrived, that we know all there is to know, can be one of our greatest flaws. We confuse book knowledge with lived wisdom.”
“We are here to gather experience. To live. To become fully ourselves—and in so doing, to contribute that experience back to the greater whole.”
“A funny thing happened after that day. I spent more time alone, but I felt far less lonely.”
“I had been going fast. Too fast. Toward an edge I didn’t yet know how to name. And I had not gone over it.”
“Healing, I’ve learned, requires more than treating symptoms. It means returning to the source and letting the body remember how to breathe again.”
“I realized this could be the most alone I had ever been in my life.”
“The purpose of life is not to conform or impress anyone. It is to discover—to live a life that is distinctly your own.”
“The stars hung like fireflies, a message from the sky I had been ignoring for decades.”
“A full-grown humpback whale exploded from the ocean, rising impossibly high, an immense arc lifting free from gravity itself.”
“Trance is not the absence of awareness. It is a different organization of awareness—one built on trust rather than control.”
“Watching those lights flicker over the hay fields felt like peering through a window into heaven.”
“Music transforms. It is where structure meets freedom, math meets emotion.”
“Surrendering felt like trying not to flinch when a punch is coming toward you—and then, slowly, I dissolved.”
“Maybe love is like that. Brief. Luminous. Easy to miss.”
“When the spirit’s wounds go unhealed, they surface in the body as illness, in the mind as despair, or in the heart as an ache that never stops whispering.”
Aerial view of Waimanu Valley, waterfalls, and coastline
A tall waterfall streaking down a green Waimanu cliff
The Black of Waimanu Bay
The Waimanu coastline framed by a sea cave
Banana trees in Laupāhoehoenui
Laupāhoehoenui Sunset
Waimanu Sea cliffs viewed from Nui
Panorama of Laupāhoehoenui
Laupāhoehoenui Coastline Hike (4 fingers)
Waimanu coastline seen from a high overlook
Large Breakers in Waimanu Bay
Waimanu Rainbow
Waiʻilikahi Falls, Waimanu
Conor’s Album Cover
Black Locust
Grandaddy Tree, Muliwai Trail
Tangled Hau Branches
Aerial View of Waipiʻo & Waimanu
Conor in Waimanu 1993
Conor in Waimanu 2017
Conor and Nuiman in Laupāhoehoenui
Conor on the cliffside trail above the valley
Conor in Nui 2017
Jamey Beecher, giant koa tree, Muliwai Trail
Conor and one of his favorite trees
June and Conor, Genesis II Costa Rica 1994
Conor in Hilo, Hawaii
Conor and Cisco, Groundwork Training
Conor’s Father, Liam O’Brien
Conor on tour with Gerard, Baily, & Raine — Virgin Islands 2017
June and Cisco
Conor and Cisco in a lesson w/ Georges Malleroni
Conor in the studio
Charles Czeisler and Conor in hard hats!
BWH Sleep Medicine Team
Shaman’s Drum, Thundering Sky Studio
June and Conor in New England
Conor catches a Striper in NH
Dwight and Conor & 42″ Striper
Conor recording vocals in the studio
Conor and Big Blue World Live
Conor built a chair for writing from lava rock, 2017 Waimanu
Fresh fish and mushrooms cooked in banana leaves
ʻIo — Hawaiian Hawk
Sunset on the Mystic in Somerville
