Dreaming of waterfalls

There’s a peculiar kind of anxiety I’m experiencing when my daily 40 emails start downloading. I’ve been having so much correspondence with America, trying to get through the armies of agents, publicists and management that surround everyone we want to interview or make music with, that when those emails start arriving I’m anxious we’re going to get bad news. Not today though! Two timely victories arrived in my inbox this morning. A ‘Yes’ and a date and time from both Noam Chomsky and Neale Donald Walsh.

We had an acoustic guitar session this morning and our long awaited string section this afternoon, but what I want to talk about are the interviews.

First, I was taken to see a Shaman woman who lived in a very poor neighbourhood in a simple little flat down an alleyway with the loudest barking dogs you ever heard. As I walked by their side door it was as if they were laying in wait for me and the explosion of barking made me jump out of my skin, much to the amusement of Anna, who by the way, has been coming up trumps again and again with her interview suggestions and escorting me everywhere to translate. I should perhaps also mention that she’s the most flagrantly dangerous driver in Brasil. She calls it multi-tasking with the phone in one hand, her diary in the other, drifting from lane to lane unconsciously as horns blare and constantly jerking us back into the correct lane just in time to avoid flattening some poor kid selling street-wares. Our second camera Bernardo and I have often exchanged frightened looks as another poor soul barely escapes with his life, let alone our own precious skins.

So we were admitted to the Shaman lady’s house which was half inside and half outside, up on the steep hill that the famous Jesus statue stands on, and she emerged from the stairway, a little round lady with a heart-melting grin and eyes which looked in opposite directions. I had thought about trying to cancel this interview as I’m finding it exhausting doing these chats with a translator. The whole point of the exercise for me is the one on one vibe I get on with these people, the energy exchange, eye to eye. But with a translator I often feel I’m just reeling off a bunch of pre-set questions, just like the kinds of journalists I hate being interviewed by myself, and the process even gets quite boring at times. But not this time.

The interview itself was interesting. She comes from yet another strand of the Candomble religion, from Santo Diyme Church, where Duncan drank the hallucinogenic tea last time he was here. The mad thing is, which is one of the main things I wanted to interview her about, that they even give it to the kids of their communities. I asked her why. I said that people in London would be quite shocked that kids were given what Londoners would see as a heavy drug. She didn’t elucidate much on it though. She just said the tea is there to bind the body and spirit closer and stronger, so it’s good for kids. And that was it. Fair enough. I couldn’t think of anything else to ask about it after she said that so we moved on. The interview was all from a spiritual perspective, very pure answers. She certainly wouldn’t be drawn on what was wrong with society or anything. There wasn’t a judgemental bone in her body, she just kept bringing it back to spirit. Then out of the blue she started talking directly to me and Anna had to keep up to translate. She said our project was very important for the world and that even though we didn’t realise it we were doing God’s work. She said many people were going to feel healing and clarity when we saw our work and that now she understood why she felt she had to do this interview where before she’d always refused to do any. This was her first one.

We got back to the final questions.

Then at the end she started to talk directly to me again. I say directly because I really felt a directness. I don’t usually feel much fro spiritual types, something that’s always been a bit disappointing in my line of work, but she was really moving. She told me that in a past life I used to be a deeply suffering little child. That I was diseased and abused and experienced terrible suffering. I was nearly in tears when she was telling me this. Then half way through a sentence she shook her head strangely and stopped. The guides, she said, had told her not to tell me any more, to stop there. She told me to take off my clothes and lie down on her bench. She rubbed oil into me and pinched me and chatted away in Portuguese. She told me, through Anna, that I had a strong spirit and a beautiful soul and all kinds of positive stuff. Then she said I needed to be more patient and when I go to sleep I should think about waterfalls.

I totally tranced out when she was working on me and came round feeling very chilled like I had been asleep for a whole night.

As we were driving off, Anna remembered that there was a really progressive Rabbi her Dad knew that had written all these books about the Kabala and science and stuff, and by some stroke of luck he agreed to see us right away. We drove up his guarded drive and were admitted by a very shy looking maid. We sat in his garden as it grew dark while he finished a meeting he was having about tomorrow night’s music for Friday night service, and then we set up in his office for a chat. He was great. Totally comfortable talking in sound bites. Honest and vulnerable, he had no problem when I asked him what his biggest temptation was. One thing I loved when we were talking about marriage was him saying “every man is looking to marry a woman who is exactly the right percentage his mother, and exactly the right percentage not his mother.” That’ll be in for sure!

I don’t know if it was because I was having a spiritual kind of day, which has been rare for me these days, but at the end I asked him to give us his blessing. He did so beautifully, saying as you travel out, far beyond places you know, may they all bring you back to yourself. And then he blessed us in Hebrew too and once again today, I felt quite emotional.

Said goodbye and thanks to Bernardo at the hotel, he’s been great, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know him. Sao Paolo tomorrow. Four more nights before Jessica and Lola arrive, and five more before Hud and Indy. I’ll sleep well tonight I reckon. Dreaming of waterfalls.