“The best way to give yourself a feeling is to give it to others,” Wyoming said to all who had heeded the call to that grand mansion—the world’s first social TV and radio station—the creative super-studio in America’s Heartland that’s reawakening the hearts of America.

We were all solopreneurs, in the business of art and in the art of business, who looked around at our families we’d arrived with, wanting to give them that feeling of joy we could not give to ourselves.

We had entered the World of Songa not through a door, but through a portal: A guerrilla marketing campaign launched on the streets of St. Louis, where doors had shown us the way to what Wyoming was calling The Songa Way.

Once we saw The Way, we couldn’t stop following it.

The Baader-Meinhof Effect: the frequency illusion. Once you notice a concept, an idea, an image, you can’t stop seeing it. Whether it’s reality or illusion—your mind gaining clarity or playing tricks on you—doesn’t matter.

This alternate world, the World Wyoming called Songa, had coexisted alongside ours, and was right before our very eyes. If we looked hard enough.

“It’s all a matter of perspective,” he said. He promised it would be like Disneyland, but the art we co-created—and the people we became—would be the attractions. Our families would be taken on a ride, one that would change them by the end. Our lives would become a funhouse. The mansion itself would be an escape room, but one we would never want to leave.

What were we supposed to say to that?

“Say yes,” he said. “Songa is an immersive theater company, so we always say, ‘Yes, and…’ But we’re also a collective, making our shared dreams come true. So we take it one step further and say, ‘Yes, and… more.’”  He paused, “Would you like me to show you more?”

We all had commitments that night that had almost kept us from coming—our child’s soccer practice, a problem with the family car, an exhausting week of work.

But the ticket was valid for one night, and one night only.

“At Songa we create once in a lifetime experiences,” he said, “But they’re not just once in a lifetime… they’re never before experiences that are also never again.”

The immediacy of the offer had helped wake us to the immediacy of a life that was passing us by. It had helped break us out of the patterns we had been stuck in: the cycle of saying no.

“One night can change your life,” said Wyoming, or rather the ‘Willy Wonka of Dreams,’ as a band member carrying a sitar had called him as he passed our group.

One night can change your life

“Could it really?” I thought, following Wyoming, our sherpa for the evening, through crowds of artists practicing their craft with the families of St. Louis. Drama and comedy, music and painting filled the rooms and halls until the mansion became a single, living, breathing organism of a life we wished to live.

I weaved and bobbed through costumed performers singing and dancing in rapture, trying to catch up with Wyoming, who moved at such a vigorous pace that he had nearly lost us newcomers in the sea of oddities and delights.

“That man called you ‘The Willy Wonka of Dreams’ back there,” I said.

“Why?”

He thought for a moment, a quizzical expression on his face, then turned to me with his answer, “While you’re here, I invite you not to ask ‘why,’ but rather, ‘why not?’”