Boston – Encounter with Charles
In the final few months of 2006 I was again back in Cape Town. During these years I was traveling back and forth fairly frequently in order to see and spend time with my mother, whose health was declining but whose spirit was certainly not. And it was a real pleasure to share with her the musical stories unfolding in my life, on which I kept her updated. She adored the experience with the giant tortoise and never tired of hearing me recount it. There was a baby grand piano in the lounge of the retirement village where she and my step-father lived in a garden cottage, and I played there on several occasions, feeling her smile and seeing her pleasure at the return of music so centrally into my life. These were special times.
During this visit I also reviewed the materials which had been recorded n my piano in Thonon-les-bains over the past few months, and found that there was in fact sufficient to produce a second CD. So the time was productive with many fruitful musical encounters and sharing.
On one of my visits to a bookshop, browsing the shelves, a particular book jumped out at me as they tend to do. It was placed horizontally on top of the others, and had not been filed away vertically. It’s title clearly visible ‘Music and the Soul’ by Kurt Leland was enough for me to go home with it and get lost in its contents for days. It provided me with exactly what I was looking for at that moment. Answers to the question why some music touched people in different ways affecting some people and not others. I appreciated the analytical framework which this book provided, as the author, a composer himself, had classified certain music according to their potential impact on our different energy centres. It was not, however, a simplistic differentiation of musical works according to chakras. It was a sophisticated exploration based on subtle definitions, and with the extensive listing of diverse musical works provided a focus for intentional listening to the large and eclectic collection of music, which I had built up over the years.
The material in ‘Music and the Soul’ provoked a series of questions for me about the nature of my own music. I was fascinated and sure that Kurt Leland was someone I needed to meet. I went online, found his contact address and initiated a correspondence. He was based in Boston, an author of several interesting books and well versed in the metaphysical questions I myself had earlier come across. And he seemed interested enough in my ‘case’ to reply with a lengthy email. As this exchange took place I began to feel that I might now need to consider a visit to the States. My first visit. The timing was right!
So it was that Ronald and I decided on a trip together for early March 2007. I would have a series of private sessions with Kurt Leland in Boston to explore music and ‘my soul’. And Ronald would have a series of meetings at the UN in New York to further the Geneva Declaration. Since his return from Angola, Ronald was coordinating this Global Initiative on the Reduction of Armed Violence for Development.
After a weekend together in Hull, across the water by ferry from Boston, I then spent a week in Jamaica Plains staying at a guest house around the corner from Kurt Leland. We met four times for sessions lasting several hours. As I climbed the wooden stairs of a ramshackle clapboard house in a run-down neighborhood I knew this was to be an out of the ordinary encounter.
What had been clear from his writings and the research I had done prior to this visit was the role of an energetic being called ‘Charles’ and the role this Being plays in Kurt’s life and work. And it was to Charles that most of my questions would be directed. I’m not sure if there was a relationship between ‘Charles’ and the River Charles which runs through Boston.
Finding myself in his shabby, book-lined and quite cluttered apartment, we sat across from each other in a very small study. There was a huge, ancient illuminated book open against the wall. I assumed it was of spiritual writings but did not ask. In one of the sessions I recall Kurt stressing the importance of spiritual discipline and practice and was acutely aware of the absence in my own life at that time of such practice and devotion.
I left a copy of the CD ‘Elements’ at the conclusion of our introductory session and also another containing recent recorded material, as yet untitled. The range of burning questions around which I was seeking guidance included asking for an energetic ‘reading’ of my music. Which energy centres are touched by the music coming through me? Can I become more conscious in working with this? I had a sense that individuals may respond differently… I was wondering if my music could be used in specific settings, like psychiatric clinics, prisons… What are the influences coming through in my music? Am I an instrument and should I be preparing for these transmissions in any particular way? Many, many questions.
At the start of the second session we sat in his music library, and Kurt had made notes on his listening of the CDs I’d left with him the day before. ‘Elements’ began with my interpretation of Arvo Part’s ‘Fur Alina’, and it was clear Kurt really appreciated it. “This IS you”? he insisted, and listening again to it I was aware of the extraordinary vibration and truly beautiful quality which was present in the recording of my playing.
And so, I was treated to an indepth reading of each of the tracks on both CDs. In fact as some of the tracks on the second CD are long, there were subtle differences within them, where Kurt indicated the frequencies in the music moved up and down, touching different energy centres. It was amazing and detailed feedback and I was gratified. He said that in general he found that only violin strings emit the frequency that touches seventh and eighth chakras. But there were some moments where that was reached in my music, certainly in the playing of Arvo Part’s beautiful piece and in some of my own intuitive spontaneous music which followed. What was particularly affirming was his reading of the music on the second untitled CD. Kurt found ‘radiance’ in quite a number of places and his suggestion for a title, “Calling in the Light”, was what it became.
I also wanted to know more about Antonio Centi, the composer and choirmaster in Rome and why I had been introduced to this particular past life in such detail. Was there something more I needed to pursue in relation to this experience? Was there a need for me to return to Rome, to study the manuscripts…?
Charles’s response was clear, precise and left me in no doubt.
The purpose of being shown a past life in the the detail with which I had been introduced to Antonio Centi is not that one needs to return to that life and immerse oneself again in that experience. Rather, past life experiences are revealed to us in order to remind us of what we already know, what we have already lived and experienced. Our past lives can be thought of as a series of beads or pearls strung together. What is important is not the specific past life, but the thread that links them together.
In my case, I had been grappling since the music had returned to me with my lack of theoretical knowledge of music, my inability to ‘read’ music, how to classify my music when questioned by trained musicians. The question ‘what genre of music do you play?’ got me flustered. I had sought several teachers, a couple of sessions with a jazz piano teacher, a couple of sessions with a classical teacher… Wondered if I needed to work at my technique etc… seeking guidance from outside of myself.
The purpose of my meeting Antonio Centi, as that earlier life of mine in Rome, was to show me that as a choirmaster and composer I already have the musical knowledge. Having lived a life as composer I have the theoretical knowledge I need and can draw on this intuitively, when I am in a state of coherence and connection to myself.