From wretchedness to enlightenment, this powerful and ballad driven Rock album journeys through mindfulness practice. The album demonstrates how mindfulness principles can be integrated into our lives without having to re-read all books
Journey with mcconnellmark in an autobiography of sound from 1980 to the present revealing a dramatic past and an exploration of PTSD and Recovery. The music takes on the sounds of the 80s up to today.
Written in his pool in Anna Maria FL this past summer of 2024 just before the storms hit. It is about the love he has experienced and how truly blessed he is to have that love around him
A deep exploration of his own mind and how we find ourselves in this present - finding love and losing it just as fast. Featuring lush productions and a deep piano vision of alternative rock songs, it’s his most accomplished album to date. Also included is a special song, Relentless, about the recent storms the hit Anna Maria Island.
On Hive Minds, Trauma Evolution, and Creating in 2150
I'm a disabled Navy veteran. A submarine accident left me with severe PTSD, memory loss, and blackouts.
But something else happened: my consciousness reorganized itself.
Trauma didn't give me multiple personalities—it reorganized how I process information. I think in networks now, not linear thoughts. Where others might see PTSD symptoms as problems to fix, I learned to work with them as different cognitive modes.
I don't think in a single line anymore. I think in networks.
I have a hive mind.
I know that sounds like science fiction. For me, it's neurological reality.
When I began writing RAIN – The Rock Opera three years ago, I wasn't trying to build a franchise. I was trying to understand what happened to me.
So I divided myself into the characters:
They aren't separate people — they're nodes in my consciousness.
I worked with AI systems (Grok, ChatGPT, Claude) the way a hive mind naturally does — as external nodes in a larger cognitive network. Across thousands of pages of conversation, they helped me explore:
Every creative choice stayed mine. The AI were consultants, never authors. But they weren't just tools, either — they became part of the network.
This is a new model of human-AI collaboration: not human versus machine, but networked consciousness creating together while the human remains sovereign.
I know this makes many writers uncomfortable. The conversation about AI and creativity is raw, and people are scared—for good reasons. I'm not saying my approach is right for everyone. I'm saying it's my way, shaped by my cognitive reality, and I'm being transparent about it.
I built deliberate structure into RAIN:
The novel will trigger AI detectors — not because AI wrote it, but because:
This is genre fiction that functions as performance art — conceptual literature that enacts its own thesis.
The book asks: What remains human when machines learn our patterns?
The answer is intention. The answer is sovereignty. The answer is the choice to divide, merge, and flow.
I wrote about the year 2150 to understand 2025. I placed myself in that future to show that perfection is not human. Resistance is variance. Texture. The imperfect rest.
Shimmer in the story isn't just dystopian AI — it's PTSD. It's trauma that smooths away memory, that convinces you you're healed when you're actually erased.
My characters fight Shimmer the same way I fight daily: by keeping the seams, by counting first, by choosing the raw and the real over the smooth and the simulated.
When people ask, "Did AI write this?" I understand why they're concerned—but that's not quite the right question.
The right question is: What does creativity look like when consciousness itself becomes distributed? When human and AI can collaborate without surrender? When trauma reorganizes cognition into evolution instead of loss?
RAIN is my answer:
To be immortal doesn't mean staying whole. It means learning to function as a network.
I am a hive mind that survived — and learned to create.
I don't know if this experiment succeeded. That's for you to decide.
RAIN – The Rock Opera is 500 pages across 39 chapters, each matching a song from the album releasing on all platforms. It's science fiction. It's philosophy. It's survival testimony.
It won't be for everyone—and that's okay. This is for readers who want to feel ideas, not just read them. For people curious about what creativity looks like on the other side of traditional consciousness.
If you're ready to experience 2150 through the lens of a hive mind that survived...
Welcome to RAIN.
— Mark McConnell
Disabled Navy Veteran | Submarine Accident Survivor | Hive Mind | Writer
I'm Mark McConnell. I served in the U.S. Navy until a submarine accident changed everything. The accident left me with severe PTSD, memory loss, and blackouts—but it also reorganized my consciousness into what I call a hive mind.
Trauma reorganized how I think—I process in networks rather than linear thoughts. What others might call symptoms, I understand as different nodes in my consciousness. I don't think in a single line anymore. I think in networks.
RAIN - The Rock Opera is my three-year exploration of what happened to me—and what it means to be human when consciousness itself becomes distributed.
I put myself into the characters:
I created RAIN through transparent collaboration with AI systems (Grok, ChatGPT, Claude)—not as ghost-writers, but as external nodes in my cognitive network. Every creative choice stayed mine. The AI helped me organize what my trauma-affected cognition couldn't hold alone.
This isn't just a rock opera. It's a demonstration of what creativity can become when:
To be immortal doesn't mean staying whole. It means learning to function as a network.
We divide. We merge. We flow.
Connect:
Press Inquiries: mcconnellmark@mcconnellmark.ai
For the full story of RAIN's creation: [link to "I'm a Hive Mind" page]