Chapter 19: Walking Through Walls
Learning About The Father I Never Knew
Day Nineteen: Wednesday September 3rd, 2003
Well it’s actually Thursday morning now as I’m writing this, as I was far too tired to write last night. Yesterday I met Luang Por again in the afternoon to play him another song, ‘The Stars Around the Moon’, which is a co-write comprising of my music and his words, which I re-wrote in more colloquial English than the translation Miss Rambhai gave me. After having visited him twice already, I still feel about it as a special event, which I am aware of this time, so I make an effort to be more relaxed today, as last time he said not to ask all these lofty questions because he’s only a monk. He’s incredibly humble for someone we all know is a fountain of wisdom.
I’m sure he can tell how nervous I am anyway. We all sat down to get ready for me to perform the song, as one other monk sets up the video camera. I was not pleased with my performance last time so I really try to feel the song, which is not hard because I find I’m very moved by it anyway. I take the performance as seriously as any other, as if there were many people in the audience, and I give it my all until I’m visibly shaking at the end. I look up and he is expressionless as he is quite often, as if he knows that it will soothe my ego to applaud.
Everyone else claps, but it is his reaction that I am really craving for. When I face him I rapidly convert my expression from expectancy to humility, but the confusion on my face must be very clear. I ask Miss Rambhai if he’s happy with the music that I put to his words and she tells me that he is, or that ‘she can tell he is’.
We spend some time watching the TV and he mentions the mountains that are on the programme we’re watching should be traced too. I play “Let it come…” next and it’s still the same reaction as if he’s testing me to not search for the reward. I suppose, whether or not he is teaching me a lesson, I’m learning one anyway to do with…
…knowing how good you are at your craft should be as much fulfilment as you need.
It’s a question of faith again; to actively search for praise can only come from one not entirely believing how good one is. It’s my never-ending gifts that I have mistakenly been sharing in hope of getting something back to fill the hole in my soul. Instead of simply giving what I have to offer with my music, and that being enough in itself.
The fear that it might dry up one day has made me give it to receive back, instead of giving it away completely with the faith that I will soon be full of more. I might be wrong, but that is what my instincts give me. In the last few years, have sometimes used my musical skills to get money to buy drugs, tricking myself into thinking that because I earned the money, it was ok. Which is clearly a nonsense since there is no decency nor respect, to either the higher forces that have given me those skills, or the numerous people that I owed money to.
I have just had a pause for thought and I think I will try to focus on making music solely for the enjoyment of other people and communities that might not have a way to be heard. I tend to like and be proud of everything I do, so it can only be a good thing to think of it as a gift I am giving to someone else when I am writing, rather than one more example to show myself how good I am. It’s a service and I have only really been serving myself until now. Other people’s happiness has been necessary but ultimately, incidental.
Luang Por answers a few phone calls, then starts to tell me how, by using this way of making music, one can see into the past. He then asks me how I normally feel after I have taken the music from the rocks or trees. I now know I gave the wrong answer.
I should have said “thankful”. What I did say was that I found it to be guiding me back to making the sort of beautiful music I used to make before I started taking drugs.
What I said was not wrong, it’s just not as important as recognising the gift that I am being given. Oh, hang on a minute, this is all correlating with what I said in the last paragraph. In straight speak, you could say I am an unappreciative fuck. I normally think about how grateful I am because it’s the right way to behave.
Then I think it, I intellectualise it, I calculate and reckon I’ve said thanks and been appreciative, I’ve covered my tracks like somebody who pays the bill but never smiles at the waiter. My actions rarely go hand in hand with behaviours that I know are right.
It feels good to use my brain like this without bullshit tricks and traps. I’ve realised I don’t think I actually know how to behave properly without mimicking people who do. My mother used to joke that I was ‘remedial’. But I have always felt socially inept. I have to act all the time to fit in with the way everyone communicates. It’s exhausting.
Nothing normal or ‘acceptable’ comes naturally to me. Does it make me fake? Or do we all just fake it until we get life right?
After Luang Por’s question, he tells me I should always leave money at the rock or at the tree where I did tracing to extract music. From now on, wherever I got the tune from, I might leave a little money in a box and at the end of a year, give the money to charity.
Afterwards I can’t help picking up on his comment about seeing into the past and I gather up my courage to ask him if I could find out who my father is.
To my amazement, he begins to tell me that my father is a Hindu Indian who is quite old, 69 years old. I immediately think is wrong because my mother is 40 and she must be a similar age to my father. And then I remember my mother is 60. I realise for the first time that, I have never really accepted her getting older since I left Spain; I don’t know why, but I haven’t. I just think she is who she was when I was little.
I am still possessed by the demons of doubt like any hardened cynic, but I am longing for what Luang Por is saying about my father to be true. All of a sudden, he tells me that my father is on an a land ‘adjacent’ to Africa by a river in a fishing village. He says he can see a strong connection to Africa. I am gobsmacked, since I told him my father was Indian, but I never mentioned my mother and father’s connection to Zambia, which is where they met.
As I am writing this I am starting to cry at my own words, writing “my mother and father” for the first time, like any other person I have ever met. I’ve never actually said “mother and father” in the same sentence before, ever in my life. But I’m not sad. I’m smiling as I’m crying.
I suppose anybody else who ever said there was something ‘missing in me’ was right. Not because I have needed anything more than what I’ve had in my life, but just as a basic understanding of what I am and where half of me has come from. I suddenly feel that the side of me that is romantic and connects to my dream about meeting a beautiful woman and being in love for the rest of my life, makes me realise it’s a compensation for the one thing I’ve never been able to see for myself as I was growing up. Of all the beautiful things I have seen, it’s the most beautiful I can imagine and I’ve only seen it in films. I love that my mum is gay. But I can see there hasn’t been much space for me to learn anything about growing up as a straight person. The only relationship I’ve ever been any good at is in my relationship with music.
I know that people who do grow up with both their parents don’t all have an easy experience either, but they can visualise the possibility of their parents being happy together one day, and I’m sure some do experience that. I know I never will.
I have just stopped writing for a second because the bell rang for us to go outside and sing the Thai national anthem.
I try to push back tears, but between the singing I couldn’t help myself (I don’t think the others noticed). While I’m singing, I remember my sister in-law once asking me if I was angry or upset that I didn’t know who my father was and if I was angry at my mother. I thought it was a strange question, but i suppose i just can’t see it from any other perspective than my own. I remember telling her that I wasn’t angry at my mother and that it didn’t bother me. I said I was happy being who I was and it needn’t change. It’s not that I was lying when I said that, I was just wrong. It’s not that I have angry thoughts toward my mother for it, because I cannot fault her love and care for me through my life. But what I believe now is that in order to know one’s own true nature, it is helpful to know where you came from to meet the whole person of one’s self.
I’m thinking about the song I wrote about my father a few weeks before I came to Thamkrabok ‘What you Mean To Me’. Maybe this was all meant to happen?
Whoever my father is, he took part in creating my life and I suppose we both deserve the chance to know each other.
I’m finishing singing the national anthem and worrying that I am intellectualising again, but the tears are real. I have shed many tears in the past that I wanted others to see, but this overwhelming feeling feels intensely personal. I’m not ready to share it.
At the end of the anthem we are told by Phra Koh to pick up the fallen leaves and, straight away, I see it as a metaphor.
This entire journey has been about clearing the dead leaves that have been lying around rustling in the wind, occasionally blowing out of the picture, so that one catches a glimpse of the beautiful landscape that lies beneath. To reconnect with one’s faith again.
But the direction of the wind inevitably changes and the view is hidden once more. It takes a simple five minutes to bend down, pick them up and throw them in the bin, to be able to see the beauty clearly and long enough to understand. Like this, the picture can stay in your mind.
Whether or not I should try to find my father, I do not know, but the real healing comes in knowing the truth in my heart. From here I can really start to become a complete and better man. Luang Por says I should find my father.
I explain to him that I don’t really feel I need to find him, that it’s big enough to finally create a new space in my imagination where there even IS a father.
Luang Por says again that I should meet my father. I say thank you, but repeat that I don’t feel the need. Then he says:
“Meeting your father is not for you. It’s for him”.
I don’t really understand what he means but there’s a reaction of agreement from the monks and followers who are all sitting around us. I feel stupid.
I’m so full of excitement about what is happening in my renewed relationship with music, that I can’t even imagine going on a journey to meet my long lost father. I ask LP what was more important: “To find my father or to find my goal in music?” Miss Rambhai asked him the question and from his response she gathered that I should find my father, “full stop”. She asked him again: “Which one should I do first?”
He said I can do them at the same time.
We start to talk about my plan to come back to the monastery and, in a moment of what I can only describe as weakness, I mention I’ll be back as soon as I can find enough money for the flight. Although I was not aware of it when I said it, I know now that my fucked up habit of hinting to people that I have no money, savings or property reared it’s ugly head. It just always seems everyone else has a way of living their life and making decisions without the barrier I have: I don’t have any money. So I always have to bring it up and it sounds like I’m being negative. But I’m not. I want to do all kinds of things. But how without money?
Asking for money to buy drugs always felt okay because I think I’m worthless. And getting money to fuel my own demise felt at one with the universe and all the people in my life who seem to think so little of me and my music.
But asking for money to come back here and start a new life where I can be at peace at last, feels impossible. I need to learn to value myself.
Luang Por gets up to pick a long leaf from a banana tree to explain another way of taking music from a series of numbers, and he writes notes on the leaf.
I think, at this point, that the leaf is an important part of the process. He sees how seriously I am taking it and laughs, saying, “If you have no money to buy paper, then you can use this leaf!” I feel foolish when everyone laughs.
Then, out of nowhere, I feel an almighty slap on my left shoulder and I think I am under attack or someone’s leapt out from the bushes in the garden to beat me up. As I turn round, I realise it was Luang Por and he is now pointing over at Bill Bloomer (an American monk to be) because I hadn’t noticed that he’d arrived.
Bill’s a songwriter from America, who was once a patient. He has come to be ordained as a monk. We chat for a bit before leaving what has been a huge meeting for me. I cup my hands and bow to Luang Por to say goodbye and thank him, and I’m gone.
The slap feels really sore for quite a while and I feel hurt, and a bit scared, that he might have read my mind and got cross about my anxious thoughts about money or something. Or maybe he saw the monkey on my back and it was that which he was slapping off so I can finally walk straight and true in my life.
Phra Hans said it might have been a transmission of energy. I hope so.
I support these organisations who are shaping a system change to integrate mental health awareness and well-being into the music industry. Please do read about their work.
The Creative Well
Music Mind Matters
Waterbear College of Music