November: Your Questions About Me Answered

It’s an ingrained part of British culture to hold one’s feelings to oneself. Brits don’t commonly eat together, they’re rarely open to meaningful conversations and they never ever intrude into another person’s personal affairs.

Welcome to India. Where are you from? Where are you staying? Are you married? You have family over here? Why aren’t you married? What happened to your face? You didn’t shave your head today? Here is my daughter’s telephone number.

Over the past 45 weeks in India I’ve lived with a constant barrage of questions – some understandable, some too personal for comfort. But what I’ve realised is that some of these questions are basic, simple things for all people, and that because it’s obvious my answer isn’t basic or simple they feel the need to figure out how I fit into their way of seeing the world. Put another way, they want to get their head around me.

The answers are not straightforward and inappropriate for base-level conversation, but I have felt the need recently to put them out there for you, dear reader. Mostly so that any “but why’s” inside you would be satisfied, but also, in turn, that you would stop badgering me. Laughing out loud.

Let’s start with an easy one…

“Are you naturally bald?”

Yes. I started losing hair on the top of my head when I was 25 or 27 or something, I really can’t remember. I noticed I was thinning up top so I bought a trimmer and gave myself a number 1 all over my head. Mum mourned for days, I suspect because I didn’t look like that lovely Tim Henman anymore. I miss having hair, of course, and there is a stigma of masculinity attached to having a full head of hair, so I have felt ‘lesser’ because I shave my head, but I’ve gotten over that now and I don’t care what others think. People here tell me I’m handsome bald, so there we go.

“Why did you change your name?”

The name given to me was David William Adam. David was my mother’s father’s name, William was my father’s name, and Adam is the family name inherited down from my father. For all of my life living in the north of England, I’ve been known as David, or Dave for short, but when I moved to London in 2013 I felt like I needed a change. It was a new life, so to speak. I was looking to start a career as a film composer and needed to market myself well, and as much as I love the name David, it is often associated with more manual labour – Dave the Plumber, Discount Dave’s Carpets, Dodgy Dave.

So I started thinking about taking my middle name as my first name – William inferred royalty and class – but most of all, it would be a nice way honour my wonderful father who passed away in 1993. I asked my mum if it was ok to have people start calling me Will/William, as obviously it could touch a nerve for her, but thankfully she was delighted at the idea.

But this was still going to be a big thing – did I really want everyone calling me by a different name? It would have to be permanent because the last thing I want to do while I’m making friends in London is to confuse them with something so basic as what to call me. It was actually my friends who indirectly made the decision for me as it turned out that most of my new friends in London were, in fact, called Dave. In December of 2013 I was in a car with 3 of the Daves when I just piped up and said, “you know what, call me Will”.

However, there’s a deeper reason for wanting to change the very thing that people call me. You see, up until my 5 years in London I lived a very different life – I was blindly obsessed with “Christian Churchianity”, with building an idea of who ‘Dave’ is, with figuring out how my life can work for me, with going after the social norms of having a wife, kids, a house, a car, a career, a pension, a mortgage. During my London years, all of that was stripped from me by life/God/the universe (delete as per belief) and I found myself with nothing more than my soul in an open field. I stopped caring what others thought about me and found that I was thinking more about what I thought about others. Now I see that the world is bigger than me – infinitely so and wonder-fully so, and all engineered and powered by this great force we call love. Everything was different in my life. I was born again (to my dear Christian readers, maybe this is what Jesus was really talking to Nicodemus about in John 3).

So, because my life was dramatically changed, I saw it as appropriate and convenient that my name should change.

“So should I call you Dave or Will?”

Will. I don’t associate with the name Dave anymore because it holds memories of things I left behind.

“Why are you still single?”

Think about this question worded 2 ways: once with the word “still” and once without the word “still”. Go ahead and say the question aloud both ways. Do you feel the difference? The word “still” inserts a sense of post-time into the question – “why are you single after this time”. This changes the intent of the question-word “why” to “what is it about the time you’ve spent up until now that makes you single”. It’s a question that comes from a point of view that something has gone wrong and that the person answering the question doesn’t live up to the standard system of the person asking the question. It puts the questioner into a higher position than the answerer – the two people are now no longer equal.

Now say it the other way – “why are you single”. This time you’re asking “what is the reason for your being single” – you’re seeing the answerer’s viewpoint as being as important to you as your viewpoint is to you. You are seeing the other as equal. It’s kind of like washing someone else’s feet or inviting yourself to a social outcast’s house for dinner. You are seeing. the other. as equal.

Now, I understand that most people like to know what’s going on with another person’s love life (maybe it replenishes their electrolytes or something) because we live in a media-saturated world where we’re always seeing romances blossom dramatically on our screens over hours or weeks or years. People want to know whether I’m idealistic, like Ross, too dissatisfied and distracted like Joey, or too gay like Chandler (Monica: “I don’t know, you just… you have a quality”). If the question is “why are you single” then the answer is “because I choose to be”. I would never have come to India if I was married and right now in my life I’ve never been more content, more happy, more empowered, more received and forgiven, more… whole.

My point is, please equal yourselves with one another. Everybody sits on a spectrum of so many things – race, politics, belief, class etc – it’s what makes the human race so beautiful and amazing and diverse. Let’s stop wanting the world to be just like us but to start valuing how others see the world. I wish that all of you were like me, but God has given different gifts to each of us. Here is my advice for people who have never been married and for widows. You should stay single, just as I am. But if you don’t have enough self-control, then go ahead and get married. After all, it is better to marry than to burn with desire.
If you think that’s bad advice then take it up with Paul who wrote it in 1 Corinthians chapter 7.

“When are you coming back to the UK?”

When are you coming to India?

Thank you, my friend, for taking the time to read. I’m going to close with the words of Truman Burbank as he left the set of The Truman Show, “good afternoon, good evening and good night”.

Sidenotes:

• I apologise for the me-focused blog but it felt so right to write this at this time.
• There have been some big moments in November but I’ll put them in the December blog, which will also cover what I’m doing with the kids over Christmas, including carol-singing. So cute.
• The senior boys got me a mug for my birthday. It’s plain-black but when you pour hot liquid in, my face appears and a message saying “Happy Birthday Will”. It’s one of the most beautiful gifts I’ve been given.
• I am in need of donations. If you feel compelled to give to help me teach here, you can do so via this JustGiving link or contact me on social media or send an email to hello@willadammusic.com and I can provide my UK bank details.