Living As If There Is No Death

Ferry from Amsterdam to Edinburgh, Aug 2013

Before a new SoulJahm phase begins, I want to say a few things about the death of Kate and about the life she lived from my perspective.  I can't presume to know totally what is going on inside another human being but we shared as close a journey together as two humans could so maybe I can try and give an insight into our way of living on her behalf.  Even to call it a "way of living" is not quite right because there is no way.

The simplest way I can put it is that Kate was enjoying her life moment to moment too much to be concerned with death.  That might be too simple for some to accept but that is what I saw.  From the moment the first difficulties with her body showed up until it was no longer possible she was adamant she wanted to carry on what we were doing.  She didn't want to miss out on LIVING NOW by being side-tracked with concerns for her health.  What label you stuck on her condition was pretty much irrelevant because it was what it was in any given moment.  It wasn't that she was deliberately being reckless or ignorant, simply that she did not feel to take any action for a long time and what was going on now was all that mattered and she included in that any difficulties present in her body.  But those difficulties were not going to stop her LIVING.  She never saw or felt of herself as ill (see video below for a further explanation of this).  What I saw is that wherever we were, whatever we were doing, was the only place she wanted to be and the only thing she wanted to be doing.  There was no room for anything else.

This kind of simplicity is missed in a culture that starts from the idea death is terrible and is all about prolonging life at any cost, a culture where the quality of your life is measured in number of years not in how meaningful what you are doing now is.  We live in a society obsessed with health and the body and so it is difficult for people to see past that.  That there is a peace and joy within that can even surpass concern for the body.  It is essentially living the way any other animal lives.



I have seen too many indications now that an individual's death is somehow predestined.  Things they say or do in the years leading up to their death, and looked at in hindsight, suggest to me that on some level it is known they don't have much time left.  I don't necessarily think the individual consciously knows when they are going to die but something does and it is often reflected in their behaviour.  

Budapest, April 2011

To onlookers it might look like what Kate was doing wasn't all that special.  No big achievements, no wordly successes, no fancy career.  Surely she couldn't be happy with that?  But that is the very value system we were spotlighting all the time as false.  That's why people who achieve all those things are never happy, its never enough, they always want more.  You've got the family in place, you've got your house, your career but still you're never satisfied.  Peace and contentment comes from inside and what you do after discovering that becomes fairly irrelevant.  The paradox seems to be that when you hit upon that peace inside, your outside world begins to change and reflect that and you fall into doing something that gives you great joy without having any big intentions.  It happens quite effortlessly.

Barcelona, Sep 2011

 This is what we found in SoulJahm.  The way of it, the twists and turns, the ideas and visions around it, all happened and continue to happen totally spontaneously.  It is a living discovery.  Looked at over a period of time it might appear we planned and strived for it, and knew what we were doing, but the actual fact of living it is nothing at all like that.  Even the struggle of it becomes a joy in a way that is hard to explain.  When things got tough we'd often stop for a moment, before recognising and saying to each other "I'd still rather be doing this than anything else in this life" and we'd be back on track.  Never did I see any regret in Kate at what she'd given up to live like this.  I don't believe you can regret it once it happens but that is difficult to get across to those contrained by their own mental imprisonment.  Even in the final months, she wanted to be in this Music energy field.  It didn't matter that she wasn't actively taking part any longer, she was content just to be around it and immersed in it and nothing else would do.  Those who cannot feel that Presence will doubt that but who feels it knows it.    

Living like this can only be understood from the inside not from looking on as a bystander.   Everything was and is still being lived moment to moment without needing to know where you are going next.  That is a beautiful way to live and I would say the Highest way to live and Kate lived her last years this way.  Once the body could no longer go any further on that path there was nowhere left to go.  Now the body may be gone but the energy that is Kate is indestructible and that energy will always be part of what is here now as SoulJahm.

Jah Rastafari!

Florence, July 2011

SoulJah Colour - Kate

On the 13th May 2014, Kate Threadgould, a founding member and one half of SoulJahm, passed away.

There is a sadness that we will no longer physically share this journey alongside a joy and happiness because she put freedom above all else - a beautiful pain. Kate is the most determined, joyful and authentic woman I have had the good fortune to have known for 15 years. Three years ago the SoulJahm journey began in Budapest in an apartment block just around the corner from here so some sort of circle has been completed.

Kate is a true SoulJah who carried on in adverse conditions when anyone else would long have given up in order to lay down the foundations in Europe and bring through this Music for no other reason than loving the journey itself. She lives on as we move into a new phase together in a new way.

Jah Rastafari!

Musical Odyssey Europa

We have been asked the questions over the last few years what we are doing in Europe, why we live the way we do, how long we will go on like this, why we can't make this Music in either Australia or the UK (our places of birth), why don't we get proper jobs, when are we going to settle down...  Mostly these questions sound kind of funny and puzzling to us, like implied in the questions we are the strange ones.  If you really look at it, the questions themselves are the strange ones.

I came across something the other day which pointed out that people who pursue their passion or vision are often seen by society as self-indulgent as if the "normal" aspirations of a good education, a successful, lucrative career and marrying, settling down, having children and buying a house are somehow not selfish? 

I've often struggled to find a way to explain our reasons for being in Europe these last few years to anyone who asks.  It is not a struggle to me because I don't need to justify it to myself but it can be difficult to put into words that make sense to others.  Wondering about this reminded me of the quote from Bob Dylan in the intro to the film No Direction Home:

"I had ambitions to set out and find, like an odyssey or going home somewhere... set out to find... this home that I'd left a while back and couldn't remember exactly where it was, but I was on my way there.  And encountering what I encountered on the way was how I envisioned it all. I didn't really have any ambition at all.

I was born very far from where I'm supposed to be, and so, I'm on my way home, you know?"

For us, it's kind of like that.  I don't know exactly what Dylan means by "home" but to me it is heard not as a physical location but the centre of you - the place before your personality, your true home.  Once you identify and sit within that home you no longer need a physical home.  You need shelter, a place to stay maybe, but not a permanent home you can call your own.  When you no longer need a physical home paradoxically physical locations start to 'speak' to you.  You are drawn like a magnet to the right place at any given time.  This is how we have moved over the last 3 years.  Since countries are just illusory man-made borders, we don't travel to visit countries and "look at the bricks", as John Lennon said.  I watched an early Beatles interview recently and the Canadian interviewer had a bee in his bonnet about whether they were getting to see the sights on their travels.  John eventually got irritated by this and replied "we are here to work not to see the bricks".  That is how it is for SoulJahm.  We may not have an entourage and a proper organised tour or recording schedule but it is a kind of work.  The best kind of work.  Our boss is Jah! 

There is something familiar about the land of Europe for us.  It couldn't be anywhere else but Europe.  We are not particularly interested in the history, the sights, museums, nightlife and all that.  The vibrancy that is there NOW in any given place is all that matters.  You don't need to go anywhere or do anything in particular to feel that. 

Entwined and inseparable from this is Music.  For us they are like the land and the ocean, the soil and the seed.  We can make music anywhere but we can only make this Music in Europe and this Music is the only one we are interested in working with.

That is not necessarily an easy thing and complications will always arise and attempt to deny simplicity but they can only ever cover it up.  When your mind is clear and pure, it is very simple.  The hard part is keeping your mind clear and pure because this world is built on complication.  On this type of journey, there is only one outcome possible and so each time we fall all there is to do is get up and continue walking in the only direction we can go in. 

Another thing Bob Dylan said:

“When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don't back down and don't give up - then you're going to mystify a lot of folks.”  

And from Bob Marley, he said this:

"Life and Jah are one in the same. Jah is the gift of existence. I am in some way eternal, I will never be duplicated. The singularity of every man and woman is Jah’s gift. What we struggle to make of it is our sole gift to Jah. The process of what that struggle becomes, in time, the Truth"

 

"Trojan Horse" (Analogue 4-Track)

Another of the Edinburgh 4-Track recordings.  This one is called "Trojan Horse" and was written in Barcelona in September 2011 on a piano which was in the apartment we stayed.  We recorded this song while in Europe as part of the 'Sketches of Europa' collection but it remains unfinished.  So for now this is the first public recording, played together as a trio.

Studio Update

We are currently in a period of transition, ready to move on into the next phase of SoulJahm.  For the last 2 - 3 years we have worked to get this Music out, often under adverse conditions in all areas of life.  In May this year we began to feel we'd taken it as far as we could go under those conditions.  Recording with one budget microphone, a laptop that was on it's last legs and few instruments, we managed to put out a collection of songs and videos to introduce SoulJahm.

The studio taking shape in its temporary home...

Now we must take it further and we are in the process of putting together a small home studio where we can work and create in a more favourable environment for the foreseeable future.  Thanks to some good people around us, we have spent the last month or so acquiring equipment and have the studio itself ready and waiting to go.  It is now only a matter of finding the right space to set-up in and begin.  Berlin or Budapest look to be the main contenders but we will go anywhere we're moved so long as it is for the benefit of this Music.

Testing...

Analogue 4-Track Version of "Mysterious"

While having a bit of a jam a few weeks ago, we experimented with recording this song on an old 4-track tape machine. We played acoustic guitar, bass and percussion live together in the room and then overdubbed electric guitar, some more percussion and finally vocals. All of this was recorded to tape - no editing - and then we stuck it all on the computer. It is pretty much the sound we make in a room at the moment. We recorded two more songs this way from the same session which might go up here in the coming weeks.

Molenpad Piano Sessions

We have been in Nieuwendammer Molenpad, Amsterdam for a couple of weeks now.  The apartment we are staying in happens to have a piano in the living room and upstairs there is a bass guitar and some mixing equipment.  We never knew this when the apartment was booked.

So we've been trying out some of our songs on piano and today recorded a few.  I finally got a chance to work out a way to play "That's How It Goes" on piano after writing the song years ago on guitar.  We also recorded a version of "Karl-Marx-Allee".

If we get a chance we might record some video while we're here and put them up on youtube but for now here are audio-only live versions of "That's How It Goes" and "Karl-Marx-Allee".