TikTok's "Handpan Man" keeps going viral online with videos where he drums on a strange instrument ... But playing the handpan also saved his life.
He told us how it all started.
He told us how it all started.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00I studied psychology in the hopes of helping crazy people.
00:04Now I sit in a forest, playing music on a UFO,
00:07talking to people who don't exist.
00:09And I realize, I'm the crazy one.
00:11My first ever viral video,
00:14which by the way, when I first started playing the handpan,
00:17I was awful. It was really bad.
00:25I had my daughter record the video of me just sitting in the snow playing the handpan.
00:29That video was the first time I ever experienced,
00:33like, oh my god, there's people that I don't know watching my video.
00:38And that was really inspiring to me and exciting.
00:51What sounds better? Jacket on?
00:53Jacket on?
00:58Or off?
01:01You know, I was the kid that was always tapping on something.
01:04I started playing drums at the church, on stage, in front of a crowd of people.
01:08And it was exhilarating and I felt like I was, you know, a little rock star.
01:12My family, we have a history of a disorder called bipolar disorder.
01:20And my father had it.
01:23Part of the bipolar disorder is, you know, really struggling depression and anxiety.
01:29And my father, he really had a hard time accepting that that was who he was.
01:35My father committed suicide when I was 11.
01:39Over the years, I've learned the more often I let out the pain inside of me,
01:44the less power it has.
01:47I started a garage band with a couple of my friends from church.
01:50And again, fueling this desire to be, you know, this rock star.
01:54Later in my teenage years, obviously reality, you know, kicks in.
02:08I finished my degree, got married, had a baby, got a job, got divorced.
02:16And life was really miserable.
02:18It was one of the times that I hit rock bottom and I was starting to have suicidal thoughts myself.
02:25Depression, anxiety, I couldn't sleep.
02:28I was trying to remember happier times and trying to remember what might bring me out of the hole that I was in.
02:37And I remember playing the drums when I was a kid.
02:41And I remember just sitting at that drum set and closing my eyes and just getting lost in the rhythm.
02:49And everything else just fades away.
02:52And that's what playing the drums has always been to me.
02:56It's just letting everything else go.
02:59I took my handpan and went downtown in the city I live in,
03:03just sat down on the sidewalk and opened up my case, started playing music.
03:07People started giving me tit money.
03:09One, two, three, four.
03:16And I started to play the drums.
03:18And I started to hear from my girlfriend about the things that were happening on TikTok.
03:21So I got on TikTok and, holy smokes, it's been like a year and a half now.
03:27And I've got right around 4 million followers.
03:31One of my first ever successful videos on TikTok.
03:38It was just me sitting in front of the camera and not playing a handpan.
03:42Life is like a fart.
03:43Try and force it.
03:44It'll just turn to shit.
03:45And I set a quote that was one of my favorite quotes from when I was a therapist.
03:52And then after that, I just kept on experimenting.
03:55And I just kept on experimenting until I realized that I was doing it wrong.
04:00And I realized that I needed to figure out the right way to do it.
04:05as a therapist.
04:05And then after that, I just kept on experimenting.
04:08And I, honestly, I came to the point where I realized
04:11that music only posts are not successful.
04:16What sounds better?
04:17Easter M&M's or Hershey's eggs?
04:21So you have to be creative and you have to figure out
04:25different ways to get people's attention.
04:27Trust me, if I could just play music
04:30and have people want to listen to it,
04:34I think that would be amazing.
04:35Somehow I figured out to make that happen
04:37during my live videos.
04:39I'm living my dream now and it's been amazing.
04:44And I have every reason to want to be alive.