WEEK 5: Music – Sound Colliding with Soul

It’s Monday and I’ve spent the entire day cleaning the apartment. After a wash I relax and watch one of my favourite movies on my black and white TV.

It’s Tuesday and the electricity has gone off 6 times. At night.

It’s Wednesday. I’m on the bus, off to work. A cockney accent grinds its way into my ears from behind. The woman’s sentences to her husband either begin with “I just feel that…” or “what really annoys me is…” It’s like I’ve never gotten off the 77 bus to Waterloo. But that’s ok – I’m about to meet up with a friend from Singapore who I haven’t seen since I met him 3 years ago.

It’s Thursday and I’ve given myself a sore throat after pushing my singing and speaking voice at devotion time at the senior boys home. I later help out Santosh with his history reading homework, by reading out loud his chapter on the evils of British Imperialism in India. Amit lovingly laughs at the situation as he takes photos.

It’s Friday and I’ve also woken up with 12 insect bites on my left leg and 9 on my right, plus between 7 and 10 on my bald head. I’m going to look like a hideous itching monster. I later help out Arun with his business studies homework – something I know nothing about but nevertheless still manage to help him out with (it’s mostly help with some of the English in the books.)

It’s Saturday and my sore throat and incessantly irritating itchy legs are getting me down. I think about the possibility of not going to the senior boys home to help with study time and simply going in later in the evening for band practice. I’m not going to do that. I need to power through this. The bottom line is that I love what I do here and I shouldn’t let physical ailments have control over that.

By Sunday I’m deeply exhausted and have swollen glands. I lead 2 of the 4 songs at church and spend the rest of the day zoning out at the volunteers apartment in Santa Cruz where I finish my fourth book of the year (see below). Later in the evening I get on the back of a scooter to a friends sisters birthday party where I meet lovely people and drink Goan wine. I return back to Candolim at around 11.45pm and do a Daniel Kaluuya in the movie Get Out and sink so deeply into an armchair I feel like I’ll never return.

It’s been a tough one. Where do I go from here?

Every culture has a different way of expressing the concept of the soul. Westerners have separate ideas of heart, spirit and soul. The Japanese believe all three are linked trinitarily. Hindus believe in a true self, an essence called Ātman. Atheists may call it the mind. Whatever the belief, it undoubtedly exists – a core essence that keeps us alive.

Music plays an important role in the communication of the soul. Think about this… as an individual, you have a number of favourite songs, right? You and your partner might have a “song”. When you’re feeling happy, a track might resonate at a deeper level than another track. When you’re feeling sad, that very same track won’t resonate in the same way, no matter how hard you try, because the condition of the soul has changed. The layout has shifted. The acoustics are different. That’s why it’s impossible for two people to recreate a memorable moment – the human soul is always evolving and shifting and the chances of two souls being exactly how they were in that moment are a million to one.

After all the strangeness and tiredness of this week, the best thing for me right now is to face that strange music head on. So I download the soundtrack to an upcoming movie I’m desperate to see called Annihilation. It’s an adaptation of a strange, unnerving and though-provoking sci-fi novel by Jeff Vandermeer, quite possibly my favourite sci-fi novel. The soundtrack to the movie is rightly atonal, with acoustic guitar being the only respite from a disturbing mix of metallic noises, scrapes, bells, orchestral strings used in unorthodox ways and synthetic soundscapes. It doesn’t sound like something you’d put on for a dinner party, right? No, you’re right, and neither would I. But its unquiet cacophony resonates and I feel each clang, pluck and whirr speaking to deep places in my soul. If I’d have listened to Chris Tomlin, it would be like forcing a Saudi Immam to listen to Little Mix or playing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring at a 5 year olds birthday party.

Music is sound colliding with the soul. The physical interacting with the ephemeral. It’s divine. It’s miraculous. It could be Bach or Bieber or Parton or Planetshakers or ancient Hindu songs or Nigerian percussion or whale song or bird song or your noisy neighbours through the wall or the whisper of a loved one in your ear. It all communicates in different ways at different times to different people. Including you. There is no limit and there is no right or wrong. Expand your musical taste.

This was definitely the hardest week since arriving. Working with multiple children is extremely draining, no matter how much the worker likes the work. Thankfully, Martin and Beena are ever at hand to suggest changes to my week. They are absolute legends and I don’t know what my life would be like if they weren’t in it. I’m thoroughly grateful for their openness and graciousness.

Though things are changing, one thing is in stone. I’m living my dream. This is my ikigai. I feel like the luckiest soul alive.

Sidenotes:

• In the movie The Bourne Supremacy, a car veers off a bridge in Goa and falls into a river. That bridge and river are just up the road from my apartment. The Portuguese church in the background is Candolim Church.
• My fourth book of the year was A Long Way Home: A Memoir by Saroo Brierley, later adapted into the movie Lion. I’ve never read so much in my life.
• My fifth book will be Sex God by Rob Bell.
• In Goa, roads rarely have names. I have no idea how post gets delivered. India have their own genius ways.
• The senior boys asked me if I wrote songs, I replied that I do, so they asked me to sing some. I got out the guitar and played a couple and they loved them. Bless them.