The Experience Collector

I’ll never forget the day that I disembarked the plane and headed out into the spicy unknown of Delhi to catch a taxi. What a rude awakening that was! Forget someone marching into your bedroom at 6am with cymbals clanging and tubas trumpeting – the cacophony of amplified sound, so discombobulating and loud, almost threw me off my feet and flat on my back. It sounded like band members were each playing a different score while trying to master instruments they had never been introduced to before.

While my spinning head unwound, we headed towards Agra. I began to refocus on my surroundings. The street ‘music’ only intensified growing more manic and disjointed the further we got, building up to a crescendo which never seemed to quite climax. It was unrelenting, yet quite thrilling. It seemed to hover in this state my whole journey, but after a few G&T’s at breakfast, I began to enjoy my Indian jamming sessions.

There were so many competitive players to this ensemble: burping buses bunched cheek-to-window, coughing, twerking, tin trucks, stuttering motorcycles, beaten-and-bruised cars swearing, finger-wagging pedestrians screaming and more - all chasing a non-existent lane to their destination – detouring around islands of holy cows - ALL hooting, tooting and mooing as loud as they could, without an intermission.

On the flip side - Silence! A silence so deafening you could hear it, so intense it would wake the dead, so all-encompassing it seemed to swallow me up and stifle my own breathing. Where was I? - Standing in the middle of a catholic monastery’s courtyard, high up in the clouds, on a mountain, just outside Salamanca, Spain. This was Peña de Francia.

This rugged, cold-stone retreat safeguarded its own ‘inner music’ like no other! The volume hadn’t been turned down, but turned off, the plug ripped from its socket. The silence seemed impossible to break. Words got trapped in my throat, quietly strangled to death before they'd even been born. I searched for sound, any sound: A squeak? A peep? A murmur? A breath? A flutter? Nothing! I was caught up in an all-consuming vacuum. Finally, a 'Symphony of Silence', the purest of pure sound: my own rhythm of life, my heartbeat, controlled by its own lively melody, and angels rejoicing gallantly in the chorus!

Every corner of our planet dances to a different beat. Each has its own unique soul with an orchestra, a variety of instruments, a quirky conductor and an endless supply of sheet music.

Just listen!