To visualize and predict a person's future, Dr. Lars Dingman, the upstart Hollywood "Psychic to the Stars" from Prague, doesn't consult a crystal ball, Tarot cards or an Ouija Board. He listens to music. Random music, shuffle played by that person's - and ONLY THAT PERSON'S - digital music player.
"Nikola Tesla discovered that 'our entire biological system, the brain and the Earth itself, work on the same frequencies'!" explains an agitated Dr. Dingman, arriving 20 minutes late, as he presses his clearly home-made business card into my hand.
Reason #5) Tesla was a pretty smart guy, even Edison couldn't invent AC current. But when Tesla wanted to give away free electricity, he was painted as a crackpot - no doubt to the delight of the Edison Company, purveyors of the expensive electricity of the day. And if Tesla wasn't on to something, why did the FBI raid his hotel room hours after his death, confiscating all his journals and notebooks? They've never been seen again.
Dr. Dingman had agreed to meet me at an abandoned Edison Power Plant that's been transformed into a restaurant near his Downtown LA condo to discretely discuss his celebrity clients, his psychic process and the inevitable detractors.
"Everything in the world is vibration!" Dr. Dingman does not speak, as much as slap verbal buckshot across your face until his intense eyes detect a glimmer of understanding. Then, after a stuttering breath, he does it again.
"We TUNE OURSELVES to the Universe. That's what Tesla's journals taught me. In 2011, I got an anonymous, hand-addressed manila envelope from the FBI office in Washington. Inside, someone had sent me a complete Xerox copy of one of Tesla's missing journals. I devoured it. Literally. I memorized it front to back, shredded it and burned it. Then I baked the ash into a loaf of bread and ate it. No evidence," he growled as he looked down Wilshire Boulevard conspiratorially.
"Electrons, solid matter - which is vibrating, just much slower - music, SOUND itself is VIBRATION! Those pulses, Telsa discovered, harmonize with the world around them," Dingman leaned across the table, his dangling, tuning fork-pendant plowing through my Denver scramble.
I looked around for a hidden camera van from Punk'd, until Dr. Dingman grabbed my arm and pulled me close.
"The journal showed how those individuals vibrating in harmony are the happy, successful ones. The miserable bastards that cut you off on the way to 7/11 are... are...are out of phase. Do you see?"
I didn't. I only saw a chunk of onion dangling from his tuning fork.
Reason #4) Simple high school Physics confirms Dingman's basic vibrational hypothesis. Slowly vibrating H20 is frozen water. When the atoms start moving a bit faster, we experience them as liquid water. When they're moving fastest, we experience them as third degree steam burns...Vibration, in a very real sense, IS dictating our perceptual reality.
"To start my readings, I ask people tell me the last three songs their digital device RANDOMLY played for them, and that's the key, RANDOMLY... this is BIOFEEDBACK! With every new electronic gizmo we incorporate into our daily lives, in just a very short time, an individual's Psychic Imprint attaches to the device. Like a psychic fingerprint! Because the device constantly operates within our "Vibrational Cone," of COURSE it is going to electromagnetically - vibrationally - align with its owner! So when these machines - who's only purpose IS to vibrate - play sounds - randomly play songs, what they are really doing is channeling the energy of our collective unconscious to use specific vibrational patterns IN those songs to influence the person back towards their true self. Humans absorb the energy in each song, like Tesla's free, wireless energy floating through the air, and vibrate in harmony with it. Do you see?"
Kinda.
Dr. Lars Dingman in his office where he conducts $1500/hour Psychic Readings.
Reason #3) Sound waves are vibrations. Fact. Pulses of air compressing and expanding against our eardrums, with the frequency dictating the pitch, the intensity. So matter is vibrating. Sound is vibrating. AC is literally vibrating, alternating electrical current. But how can the act of randomly hearing Born to Run cause me to embark on a surprise business trip?
Come on! My iPhone does not control my life.
"Oh My GOD!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!" Dr. Dingman slams his fist down on the table for emphasis.
Three nearby MILF's sipping Chai through balloon lips are so startled by his outburst, their clowny faces actually register subtle hints of surprise. Then they move two tables away.
"People! Stepford faces, and I'M the weird one?" Lars takes a deep breath and whispers, "Of COURSE our phones control our lives! Are you kidding? They wake us up, they tell us to take our pills, where to meet, hold photos of our loved ones, connect us to the world! What I'm emphatically assuring you is that the separation between us and the machine is gossamer thin and getting more tenuous with every Apple Conference."
Nikola Tesla proves his "Tesla Coil" is safe... and works!
Reason #2) Damn! Right again. Look around the next time you're in a mall or public area. 90% of young people, especially young women, never take their phones out of their hands. In fact, doctors at the Cleveland Clinic are reporting a precipitous rise in a new form of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome that primarily affects the fingers and wrists of suburban Millennials.
"Look, I'm harboring no illusions that some guy reading this story at his desk, or in the executive bathroom, is going to be convinced that I have an authentic psychic gift for predicting the future based on three randomly occurring musical events. Never. People are dumb, they're not stupid!"
More defectors flee from neighboring tables. We're alone on the sidewalk now, even the cars are changing lanes.
"All I can do is present my case, have people look at the video testimonials of people, the celebrities and the normal people I've helped see past lives, future events," Dingman sighs. "It's not magic, it's science. Come see me live, then you'll understand. It's not ME, I see movies in my head. Where the movies come from, I do not know. But I don't keep selling out auditoriums and clubs for nothing,"
"Just last week on the radio in Chicago, a young woman told me her three songs, and I immediately saw an ugly romantical apocalypse. She admitted she'd just broken up with her boyfriend. I saw the name of the guy - Robert, Rob. Yes, it was Rob. I saw she changed her hair. Cut it short. Again, I'm right. My vision kept presenting me with clear, distinct, accurate images of this woman's immediate past, then I saw what she must do to change her fate."
All true. I had just listened to that particular radio segment while prepping for our interview. In fact, Dingman's uncanny accuracy is what prompted my interview request.
Dr. Lars Dingman showing off AC Electrical Generators at abandoned Edison Powerplant
Some of Dr. Dingman's powers, could possibly be considered genuine, maybe. But I wanted to know why - and how - having the girl, Jess, sing the opening riff to the Beatles "Back in the U.S.S.R." would heal her.
"Her songs showed me she was like a snake, shedding it's old skin. She shook off the man, the hairstyle, the job (she was starting a new job that night) and was emerging as a new person," Dingman explained. "But she was getting stuck, wasn't getting all the way OUT of that skin. The Beatles' opening riff, with the thundering airplane zooming from right to left through her head as she sang at the top of her lungs across the airwaves, that could dislodge what was left of her old self and allow a fresh new face to present itself to the world to find a new, truer, love. It's obvious, really."
Reason #1) She did it. On the radio. Even though she didn't know the riff - Jess was, after all, only 20 years old -Dingman was able to talk her into making the swooshing sounds and gamely mouth-guitar'd the riff. She giggled in delight while the rest of the guests applauded. Exactly 45 seconds later in the show, right on the air, Geek News Reporter Elliott Serrano asked jess out on a date. Listen for yourself.
Crazy isn't what it used to be.
You can follow Dr. Dingman on Twitter @itunespsychic, or visit his site: www.itunespsychic.com