Dowsing for Sound: "Unpredictable" four years on. Some hazy memories and cliched reflections.

January 29^th, 2011. Great St Mary’s Church. I think I remember it being freezing cold. I certainly remember being a bag of nerves and going to the loo three times in the half hour before we were due on stage. I remember the deeply unpleasant experience of tasting a Vocalzone for the first time. I remember huddling in the vestry and vanilla schnapps and whiskey being passed out in tiny plastic shot glasses. I vaguely remember a mad scramble to get Andrea a tin whistle in the right key.

I remember the start being delayed because there were so many more people than we expected, filling the ground floor of the church and extending up into the balcony, and my mounting excitement as I waited. I remember the opening chords of “White Sky” giving way to the joyful, exuberant “hello, hello” in “Alive” before I could so much as blink. I remember sitting in the pews, shivering but excited as an intrepid rower talked about her solo Atlantic crossing. I remember singing “The Book of Love” and it being the last time I truly believed in it. I remember the dropped guitar at the beginning of “Hoppipolla” and the feeling of losing myself and soaring on the melody as that wonderful piano and string line swelled out. I remember the mounting excitement throughout “One Day Like This” and the incredible sense of togetherness as we cheered each band member at the tops of our lungs. I remember the sense of how bloody fast it had all gone. I remember the applause and the chants of “more” and the absolute disbelief that these were for us. I remember my euphoric, dizzy happiness all through “Radioactive” even though we had no idea what we were doing, and to this day I need only hear a few bars of it to be brought straight back to that moment. I remember bouncing off the stage, jumping up and down all the way to the back of the church squeaking “We did it! We did it!”

Four years and a number of gigs later, the memories have faded into something of a haze. But that feeling of euphoria, the tremendous buzz and rush of having actually performed on stage, for the first time, that doesn’t fade. Closing my eyes for just a moment, I can feel it as vividly as ever.

I think I can only express the significance of that moment in clichés. It was the moment a new world opened for me. It was the last moment of perfect happiness before my world slowly fell apart over the course of the ensuing eight months (and has been put back together since, with the help, love and friendship of the Dowsers, among others). It was the moment I realised I could be myself and belong to something greater without sacrificing either. It was the moment I understood the value of doing something for the joy of it without having to be perfect or be the best. It was the moment that the Dowsing magic to which so many in the Dowsing Sound Collective casually refer, took hold of my soul and has not yet let go.

The Dowsing Sound Collective may have gone on to bigger and better things, but to use another cliché, you never forget your first time. And despite all the tremendous and wonderful experiences that Dowsing has given me since, that moment when less than forty of us, on three months of rehearsals, took on Great St Mary’s and did so with joy and flair and fun, is one never to be forgotten.

Pushed too far: a liberal and proudly British Muslim responds to the ink spilt over the Charlie Hebdo attacks

I thought this time it would be different. I read article after article of thoughtful, nuanced commentary. I applauded writers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, who referenced Islam’s rich history and diversity. I nodded gravely at the equivalences that some writers and cartoonists were drawing between the latest spate of cartoons and the racist and anti-Semitic cartoons of the past (http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2015/jan/09/joe-sacco-on-satire-a-response-to-the-attacks?CMP=share_btn_fb). I cheered at those who pointed out the inconsistencies of our stance on free speech. I grieved for the cartoonists – he who takes a life, it is as if he has killed all of mankind. And I thought, maybe we’ve grown up. Maybe we can deal with complexity. Maybe we can examine ourselves and acknowledge the complicity of our nations, corporations and political leaders in horrific events taking place in the world – that we see and do not see. And then I read the comments below Pankaj Mishra’s latest Guardian article and I finally snapped. (http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/jan/20/-sp-after-paris-its-time-for-new-enlightenment)

 

Because after hearing yet another person mock religion as being a childish sky-God fantasy of no value, and hearing yet another person naively champion the Enlightened West against the Backward Other of Islam, and hearing yet another person confidently state that Islam is inherently conservative, inherently violent, and so dismiss 1400 years of a complex history, I have had enough. Enough being told what I believe by complete strangers. Enough mockery of a tradition by whose wisdom I do my best to live, even as I challenge and critique it and sometimes even rail against it. Enough implications (no matter how subtle) that no matter how white I look, or how middle-class and law-abiding my lifestyle, or how liberal and pluralistic my values, or how straight-up BBC my accent, I do not belong simply by virtue of my religion. Enough valuing of some lives more than others. Enough looking the other way as the political leaders for whom I did not vote are complicit in the mass killing of innocents in the guise of stopping terrorism.

 

I am not opposed to the careful critical analysis of the doctrines and history of the different interpretations of Islam. I am not opposed to speaking truth to power, even (especially) when that power is conservative religious clerics who take their partial, punitive, historically myopic interpretation of Islam and try to impose it by their military and economic might. But I don’t think the Charlie Hebdo cartoons were either of those things. There were a million other ways of satirising some of the more ridiculous, or oppressive, interpretations of Islam. The cleric who condemned the building of snowmen as idolatry is a pretty soft target. Western journalists could even have taken a leaf out of the books of the Persian and Central Asian cultural traditions and told Molla Nasreddin jokes, many of which poke fun at the presumptions of the religious establishment. By targeting the Prophet, by demonising Islam rather than those who oppress others in its name, the so-called upholders of free speech do no more than alienate their potential allies, those Muslims who are deeply critical of the oppressive policies of many Muslim states and who see themselves as proud citizens of the countries in which they make their homes. I count myself in that.

 

I am on the liberal fringe of an already-liberal Muslim community, one that has assimilated into British life without much fanfare and got on with the business of being productive citizens and giving back to society through volunteering, a community that places emphasis on human dignity, has built girls’ schools in remote regions of Northern Pakistan, and is often persecuted in Muslim-majority countries. I am deeply grateful for the freedoms that I have in Britain and deeply appreciative of the rich artistic, scientific, literary, academic and cultural heritage I have grown up with living in London. And even I have had enough. I would suggest that when even your most liberal, proud-to-be British, Muslim citizens are trying to tell you that there’s a problem with the way that some people demonise and mock Islam and Muslims, maybe there’s a problem.

 

I did not expect that I would be this angry. I will channel my anger into fighting back with the pen (or the keyboard), into showing at least my small corner of the world how much wisdom, how much richness, there is in this religion that I love and live by, while not being blind to the oppression and injustice carried out in its name. I will continue to speak truth to power. I will channel my rage into seeking to listen and learn and understand and find better ways of living together. But I now understand, in a way that I did not before, that were I less privileged, more marginalised, more excluded, less hopeful, this same anger would have found more destructive outlets.

 

We cannot afford to go on mocking, marginalising and provoking our minorities, be they “benefit cheats” or “sky-God fanatics.” We may not agree with each other, indeed, we may think that the other is fundamentally wrong or misguided or even dangerous, but that does not take away the other’s humanity and dignity. And while words may not be sticks and stones, they have power – to hurt or heal, to dehumanise or uphold. So I find underneath my anger a resolve to be more sensitive to my own language and to use words to seek to understand, rather than to denigrate. It’s not much, it’s hardly a drop in the ocean in the face of these seemingly insurmountable problems, but it’s what I have. 

On fear and fearlessness: two ways of being

Fear always stopped my every wish to give.
I opted out, broke hearts, but most of all
I broke my own. I would not let it live
Lest it should make me lose control and fall.
Elizabeth Jennings, Words from Traherne

I have noticed recently the prevalence of fear in my experience of life. Fear of letting people down, fear of failure, fear of being “found out” as less than I appear to be, fear of getting it wrong in some non-specified way, fear of losing the friendships and other relationships that mean so very much to me. So I have been paying attention to the experience of fear and how it drives my behaviour.

The physical experience of fear is very powerful, almost overwhelming. Tightness in my chest, heart pounding, tension across my shoulders, the proverbial sweaty palms. And there is too a sense of narrowing, of the world constricting and space closing down, closing in. And I often react by opting out, breaking my own heart in the process of trying to avoid that painful feeling of fear. I don’t give my all to a project, or I don’t stay open and present in a conversation. Sometimes I can go whole days being so driven by fear, without realising it, that I am absolutely unable to be in the present moment, and I distract myself by playing games or reading on my phone, or living in memory, or doing anything other than face whatever it is that I fear. I condemn myself to a curious half-life, meeting the world at a distance, joylessly.

And yet I know it doesn’t have to be this way. I have tasted another way to be – a way of being which is joyful and expansive and deeply engaged, where it feels as though I have stepped through a narrow gate into an open field with the sun shining and the grass green and I can run and dance to my heart’s content. I’m a terrible dancer, but in that state of being every movement feels like dancing, as though there is both complete freedom and complete inevitability.

It’s a stark contrast. I know I want to live more of my life in that second way of being, so how do I do that? The answer is at once blindingly obvious and completely counter-intuitive – and far easier said than done, of course. It is to approach my fear with kindness rather than running away from it, to expand the space around it so that my heart can hold the fear and everything else at the same time. It is to open up rather than close down, to step in towards the fear and to let it be as part of the ever-flowing stream of life. And in the moment that comes down to noticing it, noticing the thoughts and the physical sensations and breathing into them, telling myself that it’s okay, this is just what’s here right now – and not trying to change it but not fixating on it either.

It feels as though I have come to a watershed moment, a turning point. There is a line in the sand – this far and no further. I am no longer willing to allow myself to be held back by fear. I no longer want to continue to break my own heart by opting out. I want to give, open-heartedly and fearlessly. I want to live, to lose control and fall and trust that I will fly.