Contemporary Shaman
North West London
“I play different roles. This is fundamental to shamanism. Of course it’s not all at the same time. Whatever the part, I use wordless sound as a direct line to the core self, or to the heart of the matter. Language defines what we already know. The unrealised part of ourselves waits to be vibrated. That might be nothing more than recognition via me, a wordless hello. I didn’t go looking for this work. It repeatedly disturbed my life as a journalist and travel writer until I gave in. There followed many unusual internal and external events, including a close encounter with a thunderbolt and such a disintegration of “I” that at one point madness seemed likely. In societies where the shaman has a part to play, such experiences are invited through hazardous rites of initiation. Mine occurred in the supermarket, on the school run and in moments of solitude between domestic chores and writing. I began to read around the subject, alternating between mystics and quantum physics. Looking back, I see that I was constantly moving between left and right brain activity. Twenty years ago the word shaman rarely occurred in our culture. Now it has currency. My tools are a certain presence, an improbable voice and the ability to see beyond or through the mundane. These are very likely to be seen as esoteric. But they all have an exoteric, very worldly application. I have become a polyglot, switching between different words or phrases according to the company in which I find myself.”
