Wednesday 22 October 2014

Sound in the landscapes- the breath of travel

"In the landscape are the voices of the people that got lost. The spirit of the place involves the people that were saying something and it never got heard. That is what one does as a poet. One allows the place to enter your soul and you speak the place. What you speak is the vision. It's the place"  Susan Howe (poet)

Last year, in Autumn, I returned to sing in the caves in New South Wales. The beauty of the green, the drop into the landscape, the coolness, the shift from the broad plains to the mountains. The change in the air and the sensations moving towards these hidden depths. The autumnal leaves as they changed. The sense of returning to the depth of the cave. The familiarity. The stillness. The coolth.
Listening to the birds, the river, the sounds of mother nature. The stories they were telling with their rhythms and their songs. This year, I had a holiday at home, or a "staycation" as some would say. it was enjoyable and deeply memorable. I still listened to the birds and the trees and nature which surrounded me. It was familiar and it was with a sense of return that I travelled inwards.

"Why travel? We need to travel. If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull , our world becomes small and we lose sense of our wonder. Our eyes don't lift to the horizon, our experience is restricted, as we pass our days in routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and we find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.... Sure there will be moments of doubt when you stand alone, on an empty road, in icy rain, or when you are ill with fever in a rented bed. But, as the pains come , so too will they fall away. In the end you will be so much stronger, so much clearer and a so much happier person, that all the risk and hardship will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge you have gained and the life you have lived.Author unknown

Nomadic tribes in times of old would sing as they chartered new lands. The idea of the Songlines is well known amongst the Indigenous Australians. There is something about the spirit of moving that is incredibly uplifting in its ability to see the world anew, be amazed at fresh qualities of being that allows melody to permeate through into our everyday being. Melody can also assist us with our internal travel: breathing, making soothing sounds, or sounds that allow the walls to shake. Singleness also allowed us to remember what we were hearing, rather than just being talked at. 


"For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy and unfulfilled. Even after 

400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a 

nearly forgotten song of childhood" Carl Sagan


In our modern day of Instagram and facebook and twiter, we tend to glorify the external journey: where we have been, what we have taken a picture of, which monument we saw and how many countries we could fit into a short amount of time.
I too have been an avid traveller of the world. I always thought that through exploring other peoples lives, customs, pantries, languages, bookshelves that I would somehow know more about my own internal and external life: That I could perhaps understand the human race a little more from glimpsing into the unknown lives that others lead, however humble. The open road is also a sense of timelessness, that we have put time aside to honour ourselves and to give our bodies, minds and spirits a sense of recharging and renewal. 
As important as the external travel is, so too is "internal travel", for it can tell us so much about the world in which we find ourselves. It can be nigh impossible to take a photo of the "inside", but it makes it no less eternally memorable. We are all travellers on the internal planes and it can be joyous and perilous. Perhaps it is here in the deep internal travel that we can travel to far away galaxies and glimpse the divine and find deep peace and relaxation. Like a "staycation" where we pack ourselves up in love and wonder. 


Love is a travel. All travellers whether they want or not are changed. No one can 
travel into love and remain the same" Shams of Tabriz




Wednesday 3 September 2014

Hamam songs

The seven lights on the steamed dome roof seemed to call in the seven sisters of the Pleiades. We numbered seven in the room who were singing.

A while I was privvy to an evening of bathing decadence at some outdoor thermal springs in the middle of winter. The moon was waning, and the night sky was darkened. Cloudy at first, and later a glorious web of stars in the sky was revealed.

Might I say that it was not myself nor my 2 companions who started the sound. It was a group of 4 young people: 2 with booming bass notes and 2 girls who sat cross legged as if opening themselves up to the wonders around them with open throated "ahhhhh's". What gloriousness to be spontaneously creative. Was it also due to the dome, the curvature, the essence of water or of the slight vision altering of the steam that made it easy to commune and make sound with people not yet met. The unifying nature of the voice and sound was palpable and powerful. Together we made sounds that luxuriated, reverberated and rejoiced. Hearts full with beautiful intentions of making sound to fill the wondrous space around us.

"Sacred chants paid as much attention to the way the tone was reached as to the tone itself- just as a true lover considers the way he or she approaches the beloved as important as the act of love itself" Rudhyar

The joy of hearing others make sound. The pleasure of making reverberations  enhanced the beauty of the environment. New friends made, new joys shared.

I heard one of the girls say "As she sang... I felt my whole body release"

A special gift from above that said "People want to use sound to be happy, to release, to be social"

Sunday 2 February 2014

Lovers of caves

"The cave that you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek" Joseph Campbell.

Time indeed takes on a degree of timelessness whilst in the cave itself. It is hard to know how long I had been in there. Sometimes it felt as if lifetimes had passed. Othertimes, it seemed to move very quickly although I had been in there for hours. A true sense of the elasticity of time.

For therein lies the peace and calm. Stephanie Dowrick once spoke of “intra-personal” peace. The space inside ourselves where it is no longer in conflict.  Just being.  Not the doing. Just being. Resting. Eating, nurturing talking, voicing. The parasympathetic nervous system. Where our bodies should reside for most of the time- at least 95%. And how in modern society it generally doesn’t. It often runs on adrenalin. And keeps running on adreanlin. And then we wonder why we are tired, or have nothing "left". Adrenalin is a non-renewbale energy source. The energy from the parasymaptheitc nervous system is renewable, long lasting, and easy. Kinda like the tropical island relaxation one gets when one is well and truly relaxed. It needs to be nurtured, and loved. 

How can we make our bodies reside more in the Being?





“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead.”