Have you ever been woken up from the deep slumber of the wee hours and asked to sing in concert for three hours?
It happened to me on January the 8th, at 5pm, in Palo Alto, California.
I returned to California from India after a 12 week trip and got severely jet lagged. I have almost always gotten jet lagged travelling against the spin of the earth, but never in the reverse direction. One of life's little mysteries ...
So, here I was, waking up in the middle of the night, very awake, and falling asleep at noon. 5pm would, in this shifted sleep cycle, correspond to 3 or 4am.
I landed on the night of the 4th and had a concert in Palo Alto on the 8th evening.
As I said, this was the first time in my life, that I experienced what it was to wake up from Slow-Wave sleep (the deepest stage) and sing in concert for 3 hours!
I thought this would be an discordant, disoriented, dizzy disaster! What happened instead was akin to pinning a microphone directly to my subconscious mind. I performed things in the concert that I had never consciously known or thought. It was, in hindsight, like being hypnotized on stage!
Now, keep in mind that in most concerts with an energetic audience, I usually channel tremendous amounts of energy from them and amplify it musically. But this time, it was not only effortless, it was untainted by the barriers erected by conscious thought.
The conscious mind creates filters based on fear -- of failure, being misinterpreted, crossing some musical line, of being misperceived.
Music of the subconscious mind is beautiful, pure, personal and unpretentious because the ego is divorced. I wonder how I can make this divorce permanent!
It happened to me on January the 8th, at 5pm, in Palo Alto, California.
I returned to California from India after a 12 week trip and got severely jet lagged. I have almost always gotten jet lagged travelling against the spin of the earth, but never in the reverse direction. One of life's little mysteries ...
So, here I was, waking up in the middle of the night, very awake, and falling asleep at noon. 5pm would, in this shifted sleep cycle, correspond to 3 or 4am.
I landed on the night of the 4th and had a concert in Palo Alto on the 8th evening.
As I said, this was the first time in my life, that I experienced what it was to wake up from Slow-Wave sleep (the deepest stage) and sing in concert for 3 hours!
I thought this would be an discordant, disoriented, dizzy disaster! What happened instead was akin to pinning a microphone directly to my subconscious mind. I performed things in the concert that I had never consciously known or thought. It was, in hindsight, like being hypnotized on stage!
Now, keep in mind that in most concerts with an energetic audience, I usually channel tremendous amounts of energy from them and amplify it musically. But this time, it was not only effortless, it was untainted by the barriers erected by conscious thought.
The conscious mind creates filters based on fear -- of failure, being misinterpreted, crossing some musical line, of being misperceived.
Music of the subconscious mind is beautiful, pure, personal and unpretentious because the ego is divorced. I wonder how I can make this divorce permanent!
