CHAPTER 1
Shudders
There's light coming from the direction of the window.I'm awake; it's woken me. But it can't be the sun. We live in amezzanine apartment. We're too low to get the sun.
I'm out of my body and moving very fast down a tunnel.So fast, like water gushing down a hose: twisting, turning,bending.
I'm in a landscape. It's real. I'm floating, still withoutbody. Perfect vision. Barren, dry land. I see massive structures:tall, slender towers widening out to broad disks at the top.Huge and too modern. This is real. So it exists: there areothers. This is not Earth.
When you leave your physical body, it's a remarkable thing.Your senses sharpen extraordinarily. Your ability to focusyour thoughts and tune in to your surroundings is both effortlessand forensic. You merge with surroundings, situations, people; youknow what is happening. Normal 3-D reality pales in comparison; itjust lacks the clarity, the sensation. That's why, for a time, I becamequite addicted to venturing into this new state of being. It becamean all-consuming natural high. And it changed me—for good.
To bring this into context for you, I need to take you back a littleearlier in my life and share with you some of what had shaped meup until that point of no return.
* * *
When I turned thirty—around seven years or so before the lightfirst took me from my body—I found myself living in Vienna in themiddle of a turbulent year's musical study, experiencing the peaksand troughs of a volatile relationship with the city and its culture.This included my Serbian conducting professor, a new language,and (against all good and hardy common sense) my Italian landlady,who had just happened to become my girlfriend. In a rare and lucidmoment of reflection, I envisaged life as a boxer dog, with me theever-surprised-looking rag doll caught in its jaws, being summarilyand comprehensively yanked side to side, top to bottom. Sure, itappeared I was living the European cliché—the somewhat naïveand hitherto sheltered boy from Down Under, keen and shiny-faced,seduced a little too easily by the aroma of spaghetti sauces (that reallydo smell a little too good) and the promise of all that comes with it,in a chocolate-box setting of art and culture that really was a bit toocivilized, and pretty.
In our gorgeously renovated Altbau Viennese apartment—ofcourse, just around the corner from where Schubert once lived—silencewould erupt to full fury in seconds. All it took was an errantor mislaid and misinterpreted remark, and languages would be set alla-clash midair before falling to the floor all sullen and cracked. Andyou could really set your watch to the tide of these performances.After yet another customary weekly bout, I came to a sudden andlucid realization: Life is what happens to you when you're planning yourlife! Plain and almost dismissively simple, yet nonetheless relevantand subtly profound, I sensed the merest suggestion of an opening,a crack of light, like the release of an ancient splinter that hadoccupied a prematurely weary and distracted mind. I knew thatI was somehow separate, to a degree, from the ongoing drama ofmy life. On relating this revelation to friends, I would be remindedthat John Lennon had said it first and that I'd actually misquotedhim, in that he said "Life is what happens to you while you're busymaking other plans."
For some reason, this reaction doubly perplexed me. I felt itfurther supported the notion of the human experience standinginexplicably outside of itself. The point I was making was instantlylost to the clever and verbal world of statistical accuracy rather thanactually being considered, and my realization, coming from the"mere mortal" that I was (as in: not famous), seemed somehow unableto carry enough weight to actually hit the ground and exist. What apeculiar feeling! The earth under my feet was eggshells, and I seemedto be speaking into a perpetual vacuum. Where was I?
On returning to Australia at year's end, the sensation of separationintensified, and I felt myself to be very lonely and depressed. I cameto realize that I had actually been this way for a very long time, andI spent many hours alone, lying in bed in a strange and dark limbo.I was in the fortunate yet isolated position of "sitting" a house for afriend, and so I had very few bills to pay. This afforded me the luxuryof time to investigate this immense and heavy state further. And itreally did seem all-consuming and impenetrable.
I slowly began to make out shapes in the story of why I was"this way." I began to really hear my own breath. Certain handsand faces and names would draw genuine fear and anger from me,somewhere deep within and seemingly all at once. While I knew thisto be logical and reasonable according to the particular traumas I'dexperienced in the past, these energies seemed somehow different,as though enlivened by some unearthly blood to snatch at and graband taunt me.
The beginnings of a conducting career, a new living situation,and the too-well-oiled cogs of the civilized and banal machinery—ofhaving to work in a job that you don't necessarily want but kind ofhave to, to pay the bills because you've been unable to get enoughof the kind of work that actually appeals to you—ever gently andforcibly took me back under its kindly concrete wing and mockinggaze to reenter the world anew: uncooked, uncorked, and decidedlyunable.
And a lovely time was to be had! Sure, I was a world away fromthe circus of chaos and delight that had so lovingly earmarked myEuropean debut, but why not shake a few tail feathers of my ownwhile suffering the vast, yet captured and calculated landscape ofthis urbane and plenteous land? In short, it was time to shake thingsup; time to see who was really running the game here. It was timeto play fuck-ups.
Strategy number one was to sleep, or attempt to sleep, withbasically every girl I knew. That went quite well—probably aboutan 85 percent hit rate over the following twelve months, with a three-monthinterim while my Italian girlfriend came to visit. Oh, I washonest! If there was a double-up, I'd let them know. You see, by thisstage, and as an essentially shy person, I'd actually all but given upon love. Not totally but almost.
Strategy number two was to strip back and intentionally under-hypeany contribution I would make professionally. For example, inthe world of music, it's the norm to really ham it up and overaccentuatewhat you actually mean to communicate. The bigger the character,the more huff and puff you exude, and the more important-soundingyou make yourself out to be, the more impressive you'll come across.Not always but most of the time. I rejected all that; I was simplyover the whole "emotional sham" thing and hence became ultra-minimalistic—definitelyto the detriment of my career.
Strategy number three was to push my body to the limits. Justwhat was this whole "body suit" thing anyway? Running one dayand swimming the next, plus a few weights each day would soonsee both my knees taken out of action, literally within a few stepsof each other.
Oh, this life—what an odd and curious play! So emotional,so real, and so bruising. So hurrying and forceful, with so littlecaress.
Occasionally at night, while sleeping in the old and creakyweatherboard house I was now sharing with a musician...
