Katzbachstrasse Sessions

Through July and August of this year I stayed in an apartment in the Kreuzberg area of Berlin - my first time there.  It was a musician's flat so she had a piano and vintage organ.  This apartment came up out of the blue, during a period where I was struggling to find anywhere suitable and staying in hotels, along with another apartment with piano.  This one was cheaper! 

I had a go at recording a version of "Balcarres Street" on piano and then "Wood For The Trees" sprung to mind as a song that might work solo on the organ (since the E keys didn't work that song is in a key which doesn't require any E notes!).  Just for fun.  I would do these differently if I had more time to work out arrangements.

 

The Story of Budapest 2014

For a long time during 2013 we felt Budapest was the most likely place for our new studio phase.  It wasn't so much that we wanted to go there but at that time it was the only place we could go.  Apartments in Budapest are much bigger and cheaper than everywhere else in Europe.  So we booked a flight for October.

Once we arrived in Edinburgh it became clear we were not going to have everything organised in time so we postponed.  A strong feeling for Berlin then emerged.  There was really only one apartment suitable there but we never took it since the landlord could only guarantee it to us for 6 months.  (In hindsight, that would have lined up with Kate's death and when I had to leave our Budapest apartment anyway).



At the time we felt we couldn't risk having to move all our stuff from Edinburgh to Berlin and then another move 6 months later.  This is something we would have been prepared to risk but we were considering how it would affect everyone involved.  It wasn't long after we'd let this one go that a landlord from Budapest we'd previously contacted a month or so earlier got in touch.  Her lack of concern about noise issues (which other landlords were sometimes wary of) and her general enthusiasm encouraged us that this was the right apartment.  There were a few other signs that seemed to indicate this was the one.  We signed up before Christmas 2013 and booked a new flight for Budapest in January 2014.

Everything seemed fine but a week before we were due to leave I saw a picture of her on Facebook and it sent a shudder right through my body.  I'd seen what she looked like before but this time a strange unpleasant feeling flashed right through me - like a warning.  It happened so quickly but was very strong.  It actually made me consider "should we abandon this apartment and landlord?".  I seriously thought about dropping everything but again, what stopped me was concerning myself with those involved.  They would lose out financially in quite a big way and I knew they wouldn't understand my decision to abandon it all based on just this feeling.  This would come back to haunt me a few months later.



Once we got to Edinburgh airport everything went very smoothly in getting to Budapest.  When we met our landlord she seemed friendly and yet there was something about her that bothered me.  We arrived on Sunday night and our first rent payment was due by the end of Monday.  When she hadn't received it by Monday morning (we were just about to make it) she wrote a snappy email.  She then came round to the apartment again on Tuesday, apologised for the tone in her email, and started asking questions about Kate's condition and suggested a doctor friend of hers.  It was a little uncomfortable for my dad and I who were present and felt she was putting Kate on the spot but we said nothing and were both impressed with the calm, straightforward way Kate responded.  The landlord was confused at Kate's refusal to see a doctor but didn't say anymore.

A week later, after my dad had left, she came around again and this time we sat down at the kitchen table for a chat.  She spoke briefly about spiritual stuff - asking if we meditate or do yoga.  I don't know how she knew we were in any way spiritual because we never spoke about anything prior to this.  Then out of the blue she asked me "what is the purpose of your Music?".  I was surprised by this question because in all of the places we had stayed no-one else had ever asked about the Music.  This question brought a direct answer out of me: "To show people the truth of what they are".  Her body language immediately got defensive on this response and she snapped back at me: "But how do you know what is the truth for others?  Everyone has their own path and truth".  I replied "Yes, but what I am is also the same in you".  She relaxed on hearing this and nodded, saying "Ok, I understand now, I get you".  I then went on to explain we never force this on anyone, that we are simply putting this Music out there for those who it is to reach.



The only reason those words came out of me was because she provoked them by asking such a question.  We never spoke a word about what we were doing to others who had never asked.  I have the feeling now that initial encounter unsettled something in her because after this she began behaving strangely.  At the end of that chat she showed enthusiasm for coming round regularly, like she somehow wanted to be part of what we were doing.  She wanted to see the studio and was impressed with it.  Yet each time she came round there was a restless energy to her that irritated us.  Then she became unreliable - contacting us to say she wanted to visit and then cancelling at the last minute.  We thought we had found an ally at last, probably too readily because we were struggling and some desperation had crept in, before it eventually became clear to us that she was not with us.

She was attracted to the energy and commented one day "its so Zen in here!", so she clearly felt some kind of peace and yet it unsettled her at the same time.  I sensed she was wary of me because I could see right through her.  There was a strong defensive energy I always sensed coming off her and we weren't giving her the reactions she was used to on certain matters.  She was 'spiritual' in the sense she did yoga, meditated, etc... but this was the issue - she had created an identity for herself out of being spiritual.  She could impress others with this but it didn't impress me.  Instead, her dark side had nowhere to hide in my presence and so it started to take her over.   The only song we managed to complete and release during our time in Budapest was this...



By the time Kate's parents were about to come over we were sick and tired of her.  There was an incredibly dark, dense atmosphere in the apartment in those final months.  We said it all along but nobody would take us seriously - there are dark forces that want to stop this Music because this Music is part of exposing that very darkness.  We had no help, people thought we were crazy to speak such things.  In those final weeks and days before Kate went into hospital, we were singing songs - SoulJahm and Bob Marley - and chanting "Jah Rastafari!" in an attempt to drive out whatever negativity was in there.



Its worth mentioning at this point that Kate had felt to have Skype sessions with an energy worker in America shortly before we left for Budapest.  She told Kate that we had both been trying to communicate this Truth on our own over various lifetimes and that we'd always been either tortured or killed for it and this was showing up in Kate's body in this life - hence the symptoms.  Remember, a 'brain tumour' is just a concept like any other.  Just because we have a name for it does not mean we understand why and how these things develop.  She said this time we had agreed to come as a team to deliver it through this Music.  She told Kate she could see dark entities around certain chakras, some of which she removed, and also spoke of how Kate's life force chakra (which ties you to Planet Earth) was low and that she had to somehow try and root herself here again.  

There was one night during the period Kate was in hospital when I was sitting alone in the apartment having my tea when I happened to notice the star shaped light on the wall.  It was a pentagram, a five pointed star, and it was upside down.  I thought that was a bit odd and so looked it up on the internet as I had remembered seeing somewhere before that an inverted pentagram represents darkness and evil.  For a moment again a shudder passed right through me.  In an earlier email exchange our landlord had made the ominous comment to us "stay away from black magic", intimating she had some experience of it.



Also during this time, after Kate had passed away, the landlord wanted to meet me.  We agreed to meet at the apartment and then she cancelled at the last minute again.  She then re-arranged the meeting at a cafe a few days later.  The name of the cafe was called Katapult.  I woke up that morning and something inside told me not to go so I cancelled.  She then sent me an email later that day blaming me for Kate's death and threatening to call her police friend and have me charged with manslaughter.  Its not for nothing that our landlord's name was Bogi.

She also kept our deposit to cover the expense of a few items of furniture she had offered to get in for us before we arrived in Budapest.  These would still have been useful for future tenants.  These kind of people are psychic vampires - they are somehow attracted to this energy initially but when they begin to realise that same energy exposes their dark side they react viciously.

By the time my dad came to stay in the apartment, coming over for Kate's cremation, the atmosphere was really dark.  Both of us would get up in the morning and just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.  We'd go for several walks each day just to get some breathing space.  In the midst of all this we had to pack up all the studio gear and find somewhere to put it.  Eventually, we had to leave and book another apartment for a couple of days before leaving Budapest as it was unbearable and not worth staying in any longer just to save money.



With the call now to go to Berlin, despite the circumstances not being in my favour, I was going to honour that inner voice no matter what.  At the beginning of June 2014 I caught the night train from Budapest to Berlin with my guitar, laptop and a case to begin a new adventure.

Control - David Icke, The People's Voice & SoulJahm

Soon after the idea came to us in Spring 2013 for a studio set-up we noticed a parallel with David Icke and his journey.  About a week after our idea came he announced his plans for The People's Voice.  He was looking at ways he could take what he was doing and expand it, give it a louder voice.  This was also our intention with the studio.  Our paths seemed to move in a similar direction from that moment on.  By the autumn when he was acquiring equipment and putting together their tv studios we were acquiring equipment in Edinburgh.

The other side of that coin is that around about the same time his thing began falling apart early this year so did ours.  A woman who had initially helped and supported him in setting up his channel turned against him.  We had a similar experience with our psycho of a landlord in Budapest.  Then by April/May, during the Cardinal Grand Cross in astrology, he parted ways with people who'd been on the journey with him for years, which seemed to mirror what I was experiencing.

In the interview above, David talks about how so many people use spirituality as an escapism.  This is something I have encountered again and again on this journey.  I don't know if this is what happens in Icke's case but every single time I have encountered resistance, disagreements and fall-outs on this journey with anyone it is always down to the same thing...  People don't LISTEN to what is ACTUALLY being said as its being said.

It's like all along you are holding this thing - Truth/Music/Reality - up to them saying "Look here it is!" but instead of looking directly at it they are distracted by whatever else is going on around them.  The sheer openness and transparency of it is what seems to blind them to it.  We live in a world of such complexity where to get on in life, to be successful, you have to have something up your sleeve.  You need to have some sort of advantage over others and one of the subtlest ways we have of doing this is being diplomatic.  This is what politicians and businessmen do.  They can never tell the truth, they have to hide their true feelings and manipulate to keep everyone on side.  It works very well in that sphere but it does not work with Reality.

So when people are confronted directly with this they bury their head in the sand, they don't want to see what is actually there but instead twist what is there to fit what they want to hear through their own ideas, interpretations and beliefs.  Its as if what is being said is too simple for them to accept as it is so they have to colour it somehow.  This usually results in a conflict somewhere down the line when it becomes apparent to them that the 'thing' they thought this was is not actually what it is!  Then they see you as the bad guy for their own failure to pay attention to what you were holding up  to them in the open, trying to show them all along! 
 
Control is a big part of it.  The people I have observed who are affected most by this are those who need to control everything around them.  They are used to having a considerable amount of control in their personal working or home situation and so when they come into contact with this Music energy for any length of time it is foreign to them and undermines the control they thought they had.  Since nobody is 'doing' this undermining - it is the nature of the energy itself - it is a background thing that these people may not be conscious of but will feel on a subtle level, perhaps as a discomfort or restlessness of some kind.  Then at some point some issue or event will bring it to the surface.  Usually lots of gentle attempts to steer them in the right direction prior to this will have been made but because they are in a kind of denial mode, not listening, it often ends up that the only way to wake them up and get them to pay attention - or at least move on - is to clobber them hard.  There is also nobody doing this hard-hitting, it is a response to the resistance and where there appears no other course of action will be effective in keeping the way clear and moving on.

This Music is like water and water will flow peacefully and easily when it meets no resistance but when it is required to it will move around or apply force to get past any obstacles in its path since its only interest is to flow, not to remain stagnant.  Movement is the very nature of Music.

Those with a real passion for Truth and this Music will stick around through all the rocky and bumpy periods.  It is during these times you see clearly people's motives and who is in it for real and who has been there for other reasons.  It is one of the reasons why so many individuals that come into this thing and are serious about it have to walk the journey alone - such as David Icke himself.  Friends are hard to come by because when the going gets tough most will walk out on you and take the easy road.

Journey Through Berlin 2014 - Part 1

While in Budapest during the first half of this year, numerous signs were presenting themselves to point to Berlin as the next destination.  Accompanying the inner voice telling me to come to Berlin were a solitary book on the bookshelf next to my bed in French entitled 'Mon enfant de Berlin' ('My Berlin Child'), a van which pulled up in front of the taxi I was in one day with "Berlingo" emblazoned on the back and a pair of underpants in a shop window on the street of the apartment in Budapest with 'Einfach Berlin' ('Simply Berlin') written on them.

Returning from the crematorium to the apartment in Budapest, I also knew I was to carry on this journey when the main SoulJahm theme song came on in the taxi - George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set On You".

A - Apartments-Maison Am Olivaer Platz
B - Hotel-Maison Adenauerplatz
C - Apartment, Käthe Niederkirchner Strasse
D - Hotel Les Nations
E - Novum Style Hotel Berlin Centrum
F - Hotel Comenius
G - Hotel Friedrichshain
H - Pension Reiter
I -  Hotel Atrium
J - Hostel City Bed am Kurfürstendamm
K - Hotel-Maison Am Olivaer Platz
L - Hotel-Pension Rheingold am Kurfürstendamm
M - Hotel Panorama am Adenauerplatz
N - Hotelpension Margrit
O - Apartment, Katzbachstrasse
P - Apartment, Sonntagstrasse 

Arriving in Berlin at the beginning of June, it was becoming pretty clear something was going on, as I was being led to stay very close to places Kate and I had previously stayed.  On our first Berlin stay in 2010, our first stop was Citadines apart-hotel near Olivaer Platz.  This time my first stop was a few streets away so I found myself walking through familiar territory.  The second hotel I stayed was still in this area before I got an apartment.  I booked the apartment in Prenzlauer Berg but did not realise till I arrived that it was just off the street Kate and I walked up and down with our groceries and laundry on our second Berlin visit during the winter of 2011/12.  Greifswalder Strasse was where Kate first began showing signs of difficulty walking.  My apartment this time turned out to be on a street just off this main road and directly opposite the bio supermarket we shopped at.

Käthe-niederkirchner Straße

Greifswalder Straße

After a month there and going through some sort of physical 'death process' I found myself going through another crazy hotel period lasting almost two weeks and staying in a new place nearly every night.  It was during this period I began noticing sunflowers everywhere in Berlin.  The most unusual was when I spotted a solitary sunflower in the corner of the dark corridor just outside my hotel room one day.

Katzbachstrasse

Finally an apartment showed up - in fact two on the same day - which had a piano.  I went for the cheaper apartment in Kreuzberg area, first time I'd stayed there.  It was on a street called Katzbachstrasse and the name on the doorbell was 'Helene', although this was not the owner's name.  Kate's middle name is Helen.  The month long stay in this apartment opened up a whole new dimension - The French Connection.

Sonntagstrasse

After this, I found myself back in familiar territory, building number 7 on Sonntagstrasse in the area of Friedrichshain now with brother Mark.  This apartment happened to be just around the corner from the "I love you 7UP" graffiti and I must have walked past here the day I came to take a photo of that graffiti a couple of months earlier.   I also took a photo of Bob Marley painted on a cafe shutter that day (see 'Definitely Berlin') and now Bob was there to greet us in this apartment.

Yesterday's Bar

Highest Excitement

We first encountered Bashar sometime in 2011, after we'd already been travelling Europe for many months.  Here in this video he explains how Kate and I were living:


Before we had heard the term "highest excitement" this is how we were naturally moving through this world.  The initial feeling to come to Europe would be an example of this.  It was the highest vibration for us at that time - that's why we always said we had no choice.  When the thing that excites you the most presents itself in front of you, what other choice do you have but to follow through?

So then Barcelona became the first location that attracted us most so we flew there.  There was no apartments we saw that "excited" us before our arrival so the next option was to book a hotel for the night.  After that first night we left the hotel with nowhere to stay and so walked for a bit.  Until we found ourselves standing across the road from a Citadines apart-hotel.  In that moment a thought came "how about we try there?" and that move was the "highest excitement" of that moment. 

Moment to moment this is how we carried on throughout Europe.  The places we went next, whether we stayed in our apartment or went out - it was all based on this principle naturally.  We documented this journey in our Spitting Out The Shit blog and this was the reason for that blog.  To show to others how this thing works so they might try it out in their own lives.  All the synchronicities we noted in that blog were not for nothing.  There is a reason synchronicites are profound.  They are signs you are on your natural path.  The path that is right for YOU.  It is Life's way of communicating with itself - through symbols.  The mind needs words and logic, the Heart responds to and understands symbols.  The powers-that-be know this all too well which is why they subliminally bombard us with them through advertising, politics, etc...

When you are awake to yourself you automatically notice and respond to the symbols right for your path.  They become a guide through this crazy, confused world.  We found the more we followed our highest excitement the more signs and synchronicities presented themselves, which made it easier to keep following that excitement and knowing which road to take next.

Just as Bashar says, it often means your path will not be a straight line but it will reveal more of you to yourself through all the twists and turns.  Isn't that the real reason for being here on Earth?  To find out who or what we are and put it into action?

Voice

This reality is NOTHING at all like we've been told it is.  They have all lied to us to keep us in suppression for centuries and we think we are clever and sophisticated but its a joke.


Its become all too clear to me recently that few have been listening or taking us seriously.  This SoulJahm thing is no joke and its about time this Voice was heard!



The first lie is that there is such a thing as death.  There is only LIFE!  All other errors we make come from this deception because the idea of death creates fear and fear is what they use to force us down certain tunnels like lab mice.

From this death error, they can brainwash us into putting our trust in doctors and all sorts of so-called experts.  Doctors are nothing more than modern day witches.  People marvel at how many lives they 'save' and conveniently forget how many they lose such is the strength of the brainwashing.  They save no lives at all - only Jah can give or take life.  The way people are fooled by them is no different to falling for the priesthood.  The same people who fall for doctors and modern medicine mock those who attend church and believe what the ministers say.  I don't see a difference!



Its time for all of this bullshit to end.
All these false systems must start falling.  Its time for the natural intelligence of the human being to arise!  Jah reigns supreme.  If you listen to Jah in ALL areas of Life you cannot go wrong.  There is an intelligence in the body which they've kept us from and now we have a world full of messed up, sick people who are like children, relying on experts of this and that for how to live.

Where do you think these people get their knowledge from?  They were once a baby like you!  Why do you believe they know more about you than you do?  Its absurd.  Some of us have come in these times to deliver this message.  We are the ones who can remember what its like to live without all of this suppression.  I am from the future and the past.  I am from another planet.  I am a Rasta!

The SoulJahm Voice is only going to get louder from here.  Jah Live!


  

7 Up!

The day Kate and I left Berlin in January 2011 we spotted some graffiti saying "I love you 7Up".  We immediately recognised it as a sign on the journey.  The night before we had both felt incredible energy and love come through us for Berlin as we lay in bed.  I went into one of my states where insights and information is 'downloaded'.  What came strongly was that we would return to Berlin one day and the Music would really begin to take off, as if Berlin was being recognised as one of the major centres of this Music.  I wrote about this on the "Spitting Out The Shit" blog at the time.

While in Budapest this year, in an apartment where Kate's parents were staying, they pointed out to me a lampshade with "7"s engraved in it.  I had already had a few signs to back up the feeling to come to Berlin, including spotting a van just in front of the taxi we were in at the traffic lights with "Berlingo" emblazened on its rear, and a pair of underpants in a shop window on the street of our apartment which had "Einfach Berlin" (Simply Berlin) written on them!  Somehow I knew this time in Berlin was what was being shown back in January 2011 as we left.  (We had returned to Berlin in November 2011 but there was no significance felt then).  So when I was shown the lampshade the first thing that went through my head was "7 Up"!

I returned to the graffiti in June this year to take a photo to use in the video of the song "Definitely Berlin".  On my return was now a rainbow painted on a nearby building.  This was not there in January 2011 or at least it wasn't visible to Kate and I.

The number 7 has been hugely significant throughout my life.  I don't know why.  I lived most of my childhood on the 7th floor of a block of flats.  I was 17 when I experienced the first indications of some sort of awakening, and this was also the age when I received my first guitar and Music entered my life.  For years around that time my favourite song was 'Distant Sun' by Crowded House which features the line "when your seven worlds collide".  My first artist name was Seven Worlds in homage to this.

In 2007, when I was 27 and my mother was 47, she died suddenly and quite mysteriously, just at the point where I'd come into contact with spiritual information.  Whatever had happened to me when I was 17 seemed to be a precursor to what was to take place 10 years later when reality as I knew it was turned upside down and the ground pulled from under my feet.  That year Kate and I were forced to move out of our rented flat and into another, which was number 17.

So many apartments we went on to stay in throughout Europe involved a number 7 and the dates 7th, 17th and 27th were often when significant things would happen on this journey.  So for Kate to leave the body 7 years after my mum, aged 34 (3+4=7), which I also am, had a certain inevitability to it.

Spiritual Battle

To understand SoulJahm it must be first understood that this is a spiritual Music.  That means it carries a certain vibration that resonates with Truth and Reality.  There are forces at work which do not want this vibration to spread on the Earth since it would collapse the current world systems we live under.

When Kate and I went through certain stages of awakening to this Music it was like a key being turned.  Suddenly we understood our role and destiny in this battle.  It was always there just waiting to be discovered (see Indigo Lightly post) but we had to mature towards it.

This was the reason I stalled for many years, stuck in a state of indecisiveness of which direction I should go in.  Although it was presented to me at 17, I didn't understand fully what this Music was until 10 years later.  Some part of me understood its importance, which is why I never gave up even under pressure from society to get a job during those years, but I hadn't yet come into full understanding.  This also explains why I did not or could not go down conventional channels in getting the songs heard or establishing a career.

There is a different audience waiting to hear these songs and they need to be played in a different setting and they need to be played by certain musicians.  This will all come in time.  It is not the best technical musicians who should play this Music but musicians with heart and soul.  Who understand and feel that vibration in the Music.

Kate and I were aware of this all along which is why we carried on alone.  We would go on as long as it took to find the right people.  Still that is the case for me.  When Kate opened up to this Music it was like something clicked into place for both of us.  Then we followed through.

We suffered for being too far ahead of our time and perhaps Kate paid the heaviest price for that.  Only time will tell.  Those around us and those coming into contact with what we were doing could not understand nor would take it seriously enough.  Some are now waking up to this in light of Kate's passing.  You will only be able to see in others what you see of yourself.  So although we tried and tried nobody would listen or could hear the depth of this Music.  Now is the time.  

All along these "dark forces" have been trying to prevent its development.  From the moment we landed in Barcelona and had our laptop stolen within days.  In truth it goes back further.  At every major step up in the Music's development there would be an element of intense struggle we'd have to overcome.  Sometimes these blockages were fairly normal, physical reality things that would be common to everyone.  At other times there was a more mysterious element to it.  Sometimes downright sinister as we discovered in Budapest earlier this year.

This is why it is crucial those who are in support of SoulJahm work together and are on the same wavelength.  We are stronger when we move as one and can conquer whatever comes our way.  Unity is what this thing is all about.  Music to bring people together in harmony and discover living as natural beings without the suppression the System imposes on us.

Mystery Virus or Kundalini or Ascension Symptoms

During the school summer holidays of 1996 I went on my last family holiday to Malta.  It was my third time there since my maternal Gran is Maltese.  I returned to school to enter what would be 6th Year (to get into university in Scotland you really have to stay on past 4th Year).  I lasted a couple of weeks because they were trying to force me to take subjects I didn't want to just to fill up the schedule.  I felt something rise inside me and announce I'd had enough with education.  I told them I wanted to leave and was sent to the Careers Office for school-leavers.  This was in August 1996.  By October, just after I turned 17, they got me a job in a private banking firm, at the bottom of the ladder in the mailroom.  I had disappointed some people in my family because they had rested their hopes on me as being the first to go to university.  This was the beginning of my journey of disappointing people!

In the run-up to Christmas 1996, I was becoming more and more agitated.  I remember sometimes trying to get my tie right in the mornings and losing my temper throwing it on the floor.  My mum observed the change in me more than I did.  As the office Christmas party loomed I really didn't want to go but with persuasion from people eventually gave in.

The night after the Christmas party I was at a friends house.  We had a couple of beers.  I was feeling really weird and spaced out but put it down to a hangover from the night before, although I knew this felt different.  The following day I went out to do some Christmas shopping.  I was still feeling strange.  It was like a sense of being disorientated, feeling foggy headed, sounds were muffled and everything just felt very weird inside my head.  On Christmas Eve I went shopping again, with my mum and brother this time.  I was really feeling spaced out by this point.  My body felt heavy but my head very light and with a kind of pulsing feeling going through it.  I remember I almost got knocked over crossing Princes St, the main shopping street in Edinburgh, as we went to the bus stop.

Since I had never experienced anything like this before I didn't say much to anyone.  I just told my mum I was feeling strange.  On Christmas Day I received an electric guitar.  About a year earlier I'd spotted a classical acoustic guitar in my Gran's flat.  She had taken some lessons but then stopped.  Seeing that guitar stirred something in me.  So although I was delighted to get the guitar I found it difficult to be enthusiastic about it on Christmas Day since I felt so out of it.  I tried my best to go along with proceedings but inside felt terrible - really sluggish, heavy and completely spaced out.    Yet nobody really seemed to notice too much difference in me externally.

After a week or so, all of this disappeared and I felt normal again.  I returned to work and then about a month later the same thing struck me down and I was off sick for a week.  It was like a strange kind of flu but with no cold-like symptoms, just the heavy, lethargic feeling you get with the flu.

Throughout 1997 this pattern continued, being off work for a week or so and then back to work for a month, eventually the off-periods increasing in frequency.  I began to notice other things like I just couldn't read the paper or watch the tv.  My body felt so heavy I would just stay in bed, either sleeping or sitting up but any attempt to read or watch the tv just seemed to be too much for my head to deal with.  Everything felt jumbled.  Even listening to music wasn't enjoyable.  Sometimes I'd read clocks the wrong way round.  Everybody who saw me during these episodes said I looked perfectly normal and healthy on the outside.  This made it more frustrating because I felt so terrible internally that I couldn't believe it wasn't showing up on the outside.

The doctor was called out to see me and all he could say was it was a "mystery virus".  When I told him of the pulsing feeling in my head he explained that would be the virus "rushing through my system".  All he kept telling me was it would go away eventually.  Blood tests showed my white blood cells were slightly low but everything else was normal.  It was getting harder to go back to work each time and shrug my shoulders and tell them it was a mystery virus.  My boss was called Grace (interesting now in hindsight), and she was very understanding and sympathetic but most of the other staff thought I was just pulling sickies and were getting fed up having to cover for me.  The company sent me to BUPA, private medical healthcare, and I had scans done on my brain, etc... but nothing showed up.  One of the odd things I noticed was these episodes almost always came upon me at the weekend after I'd been out drinking the night before.  I mentioned this to the doctor, and asked could it be something to do with alcohol, but he laughed that suggestion off.  Eventually I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (or M.E.).

I resigned from my job in August 1997 because I didn't want the hassle of constantly being off and my local doctor signed me on for Incapacity Benefit.  I'd disappointed people again who saw the prospect of a high-flying career as a banker.  Thank God I got out!

It was during this period - from August 1997 through until March 1999 - that Music began to come more and more into my life.  The episodes continued every month or so for most of that time.  I remember going into town to buy the new Oasis album Be Here Now with my friend in August 97, shortly after leaving my work, and I felt so spaced out but looked totally normal to him.  I kept asking him if I was walking funny or looking strange.  My eyes felt so heavy, sound was muffled, my body felt so heavy and I couldn't concentrate on anything.

One of the first things I did after leaving my work was redecorate my bedroom.  For some reason I painted all the walls black, got a red carpet and black desks in.  I wasn't a goth or anything!  I began getting into the guitar more, and especially writing songs.  I didn't know where these songs were coming from but it was quite an easy thing for me to do.  It felt like slipping into a private universe.

By April 1998, I was getting pressured from the job centre to do something and had been signed off Incapacity Benefit.  I enrolled for a free music course for jobseekers.  There was only 3 of us on the course.  It lasted a few months and then the tutor died from cancer and it was cancelled.  I was back on the dole.  I just kept going deeper and deeper into Music.  I couldn't afford to go out much with my friends, I'd see them maybe twice a month at the pub and the rest of the time I was on my own.  It seemed to all be part of this "mystery condition".  I had always had friends and been quite social during school years but was now finding myself wanting to be alone yet at the same time felt lonely.  All I could do was keep writing songs. 

By this time the episodes seemed to be cooling off but I still didn't feel myself.  In fact, I never quite felt the same ever again.  Its almost as if I just got used to feeling slightly off, as if it had dropped into the background, and I could function pretty much as normal.  One thing I remember about this period was that my mum and some others in the family noticed I had changed in some way.  It was as if subconsciously those close to me recognised something had happened to me but nobody could put their finger on it.  Plus, I was in my late teens so it was easy to put it down to the transition of a teenager into an adult.

After being on the dole for some time, by early 1999 they were pushing me back into work.  I still wasn't feeling 100% but went with it.  I landed a job at the Scottish Executive through the New Deal in March/April of that year but lasted only a week.  The open plan office with bright fluorescent lights and the noise... I just couldn't handle it.  I walked out on the Friday evening and knew I couldn't go back.  This meant I couldn't sign on for benefits for 6 months.  It was probably the lowest period I'd been through.  I didn't realise it at the time but all of this was slowly crushing who I thought I was - I was continually disappointing people.  I'd been a promising footballer at school but gave it up, I'd got good school grades, and now I kept walking out of jobs.  You have to understand, I didn't know myself what was happening and I was fighting it because my self-image was being destroyed.

It was only a few weeks after this - at probably my lowest point - that I met Kate online through the chat program ICQ.  We instantly clicked and shared the same abstract, silly humour.  That was the beginning of our journey together that led to SoulJahm.

During the next few years my system seemed to be flooded by nervous energy.  I would get incredibly nervous for job interviews or when I had to meet anyone in a formal situation.  My hand used to shake with nervous energy when I picked up a drink in these settings.  Of course, the more I tried to hide it the worse I was probably making it.  At the time I just thought this was a self-confidence problem - that's what people would say to me "you just have to have more confidence David!".  I heard that line so many times from people.  I also seemed to always feel lethargic.

When Kate came over for her first visit, I was trying to juggle going out during the day with her, showing her around Edinburgh, and then going into work at nights part-time for UPS, and sometimes hanging out with her after work.  It should have been no problem for a 21yr old but I was going into my work feeling totally drained.  Even the guy I was working with commented that I looked shattered.

By the time Kate came over to live with me permanently in 2002 I had simply got used to and accepted this general tiredness and foggy-headedness.  There were also waves of what you might call depression.  No matter how low I felt I always instinctively stayed away from seeing a doctor about it.

It took 5 more years before I finally understood what it was all about when I was introduced to kundalini and ascension symptoms.  I first come across this information in January 2007, a month or so before my mum died.  One of the things listed under symptoms of Spiritual Awakening was someone close to you dying but I'd also noticed so many of the symptoms I'd been experiencing for years were there.  Then I started coming across lots of stories of people who'd also been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (M.E.) when they were in fact going through a spiritual awakening.  On coming across this kind of spiritual information and individuals like David Icke and Eckhart Tolle for the 3 months prior to this, something profound shifted inside me and this included a change in the symptoms I'd been experiencing for years.  It was like how before an earthquake you have tremors.  Well, the years between 1997 and 2007 were like the tremors.  Now it was an earthquake.

Just after my mum had died, in between her death and her funeral, I went to bed one night and felt energy building up at the base of my spine and shooting up my whole body from there.  I started shaking in the bed.  Kate was lying next to me, asking if I was ok and should she call a doctor, and I was telling her I was fine, not to worry.  My brother Mark was staying with us that night and in the living room.  It was a force surging through me and sort of scary in an exhilirating way but at the same time I knew deep inside this was something natural.  I didn't intellectually know what was happening but I intuitively understood.

Over the course of the year 2007, as new symptoms took place, I began to understand it had been a spiritual thing all along and that was why the doctors could never find anything.  The spaced out feeling was my system being flooded with spiritual energy and basically I was going through a major reboot or rewiring.  Now I am used to it and live with these things on a daily basis because there are two parts to awakening.  It is true to say there can be one moment when things change overnight as if you were one person before that point and something else after it.  On top of this is an ongoing process and the body being a thing of time is affected by this process.  There are periods where symptoms get quite intense and uncomfortable and periods when they drop more into the background.  I would never be able to function in structured society again - i.e work in a job, but that is no longer a problem because as part of this process you start to see life moving and rearranging things to accomodate you.  It is Life itself which has instigated all of this and so once you stop seeing it as wrong and give up trying to fit into the society gradually a new path is carved out for you.  It may be unconventional, it may put you at odds with the society you live in but it cannot be wrong because it is a move of the Universe.  In my case I recognise my life is in Music and it has been all along.  Everything has come into focus but its an ongoing process of bringing more and more of myself into alignment with Music.

In truth nobody can truly know what it is but nobody knows what anything is and yet it can be consciously understood on an intuitive level.  The body's own intelligence comes to the fore and seems to know that it is recalibrating itself.  Concepts like kundalini and ascension just give you a verbal framework to place it all in but a simpler way I'd put it is like this...  our bodies have accumulated all sorts of tensions and ideas and concepts over eons.  As long as you are in that stream of the system - go to school, go to work, get married, have kids, drinks at the weekend, holidays each year - you are effectively programmed and running as a kind of automaton.  If that programming somehow breaks down through an 'earthquake' of some kind - and who knows how that happens - then your body is for the first time given a chance to come into its own and begin to function as a natural being.  As the conditioning, the ideas, concepts and tensions you were burdened with break down, they are somehow flushed out of your system by the body's own innate intelligence and within the framework of society, you become useless because your natural rhythm and flow is no longer in alignment with the forced flow of the society.  It is not an easy thing to go through yet it is freedom.

Indigo Lightly

I first came across the term "Indigo" back in 2007 when all this spiritual stuff burst into my life.  I took a look at it, like I did with a lot of things back then, but never concerned myself anymore with it.  Anything that felt restrictive or labelling in some way I didn't want to know about at that time - I was going straight to the root.

Recently the blog page below came my way and I had to acknowledge there seems to be something to this Indigo thing. 

How To Tell If You Are Indigo

Whether I like it or not, I could see a lot of myself and Kate in the descriptions above.  I've since read a bit more on Indigo's and one thing that comes up frequently is that they are here to break down the System. 

"Indigos have a warrior spirit, because their collective purpose is to mash down old systems that no longer serve us. They are here to quash government, educational, and legal systems that lack integrity. To accomplish this end, they need tempers and fiery determination."

My natural tendency is to stay away from words and ideas like 'missions' because it is all too often misinterpreted.  The way I see it, its more like once you know what you're not, and the things everyone else settles for have fallen away, whatever is left burning in you appears to be your mission or destiny on this planet.  Its almost like you only exist for that.

There seems to have always been some force in my life steering me in this direction but its never been an easy ride because the world is so unconscious you face a lot of opposition.  Just at the point where I was considering university like all my friends, I abruptly left school when they tried to force me to take subjects I didn't want to in my final year.  I remember a strong feeling just arose in me very spontaneously - "yep, I've had enough of education now".  I then got a job in a private bank through the career's office.  I lasted 3 months before this "mystery virus" (as the doctors called it) struck me down over the following year.  I was off work more than I was there by the time I decided to quit.  Everytime I tried to go back into work after that this force seemed to push me out again one way or another.

It became clear that Music was the expression this force wanted to take through me but even there, I was not able to fit myself into the mould.  Each time I tried something down the conventional paths opportunities would either fall through or I'd feel so uncomfortable I'd have to walk away myself.

Its like Bob Marley sings in "Jammin'" - "God knows how much I've tried the truth I cannot hide to keep you satisfied".  I understand exactly what he means.  When this force is the guiding principle of your life, no matter how hard you try to fit yourself into the system, it won't allow you. 

You don't CHOOSE to be an Indigo or a Rasta, you RECOGNISE you are one along the way.

This is not to say you are special.  The truth is everyone has this inside them - what we sing and write about - but it also has to be acknowledged that most don't recognise it.  So in that sense, I can go along with this Indigo concept and accept there is a distinction but deep down I know its the same thing in us all and this is what we try to get across in this Music.

I read somewhere - Indigo's lead with a machete, cutting down anything that lacks integrity for the others to follow into a safer, more secure world.  That means there has to be a kind of toughness, but its not an adopted thing, it seems to develop itself as part of the destiny.  You are shaped and moulded by the circumstances and path you find yourself on.  Its like Bob Marley once said... "my heart can be hard as a stone, and yet soft as water".  The conditions around you in any given moment will determine what is necessary.

Rasta Living

To be a Rasta is to live as a natural being.  Each human being is in fact a mighty Being, an authority and power in their own right.  Very few human beings know this.  They have forgotten.  Yes, people can believe it and say it aloud but who truly KNOWS this?  So from that point of view, each individual has the right to live and die as they please.  Nobody can know from the outside what is right for another individual.

This is where the struggle comes from living the Rasta way.  Society is always going to be against you one way or another because it is set-up to make the individual feel small.  People can only judge you and what you do using the reference points society has taught them and these reference points conveniently and unconsciously imprison the individual.  People have no other way of determining whether you are living 'right' or 'wrong', whether you are 'happy' or 'sad' other than by the definitions given by the society.  Our natural state is happiness but the society is set-up to do everything to disturb this.



As you come into the Rasta way you may change externally.  You may appear to others as more serious and intense, perhaps not smiling or laughing as much, and they will often try and convince you there is something wrong.  Those inside the pen don't like to see anyone escape because it upsets their sleep.  As long as everyone else is asleep they can feel comfort in their sleep. 

Awakening is as much a physical thing as it is mental.  It relaxes the body in a way you have never known.  Memory/conditioning is stored in the cells all over the body.  The process of awakening releases this grip.  As the grip releases what is left behind is the natural peace of the body.  Inner peace requires no outer conditions.  When your true nature is revealed to you that is joy in itself and it will display itself however it pleases.  Most joking around and smiling in society is actually masking insecurity - take a look at all the stupid Facebook photos.  Who are these people trying to kid?  Pulling silly faces, big smiles... trying to show the world how happy and great a time they are having.  Only those who are unhappy try to convince others of their happiness. 

People use what they call humour to avoid meeting life directly head on.  When you discover your Rasta nature, this type of thing becomes irritating.  True humour has a liberating quality to it.  As a Rasta you will find yourself not wishing to participate in any kind of false situations and may have to remove yourself if those around you are unable to meet you - or at least show sincerity - to that Highest State.

That is the strength and courage that comes with being a Rasta.  You know yourself and will not back down for anything.  It is not stubborness, it is unwillingness to lower yourself from your true nature.  Once that place has been discovered and established it is put ahead of all else.  If you have to walk this life alone so be it.  You will do so because you know what you are and you can't be fooled again.  You will only wish to associate yourself with those who also live with these qualities or at least recognise and respect them. 



You might find yourself not interested in many of the things your family and friends enjoy.  Again you may face struggle in this area.  What they don't understand is you are not denying yourself of anything but because the inner peace and joy is there you just don't require those things anymore.  It is too much effort, too much strain to go 'looking for a good time' when you already feel content as you are.  You can do anything the Rasta way, enjoy everything there is to enjoy, but you don't NEED it the way other people do for any kind of fulfilment.



You can't fake being a Rasta.  It is what you are.  It is not a belief, an ideology, a philosophy, something you pick up today and then try something else tomorrow.  It may take a bit of time to recognise what you are and for it to establish itself but once it has been recognised it can't be forgotten.  You will not settle for second-best ever again.

Your work, play, daily living all become one with you.  There is no separation.  That is why you rarely will find a Rasta who can live in the standard mode of society.  There are many wolves in sheeps clothing.  They talk a good game but it does not operate as a living fact in their own life.  It has to operate in your daily life otherwise you are just spouting philosophy.  When your Being no longer resonates with the society you live in - your job, your relationships, your hobbies, activities, leisure time, all of that, then you have NO CHOICE but to walk away.  That can't be faked.  In today's spiritual culture it's very convenient for people to believe they can have both but they are simply fooling themselves.  Many teachers and gurus will tell you it is possible to have both but they are making a living out of that so of course they are going to say that otherwise no-one would buy their books or come to hear them speak!  If you look at their own lives you will see the contradictions - often they themselves walked out of a job or left their family yet they tell others not to.

If this thing really hits you it will shatter your life and yourself as you know it.  It is not an act of rebellion, a phase you'll grow out of, it is rebellion by your very nature which you can't deny.  If that wasn't the case, then the society as it is would be free, and if it was free, why would anybody be attracted to spirituality in the first place?



As a Rasta you no longer divide your life up into parts.  Your work and play are one in the same thing because you enjoy what you do deeply.  If work in society's terms is natural for us why then do we need holidays?  Why do you need a drink every weekend at the end of a working week?

Daily living is all there is, whatever that entails moment to moment, and living without security is part of that.  The System promises security and that is one of the ways it imprisons the individual.  It promises future - a place to stay tomorrow, money tomorrow, savings, pensions, investments.  But no-one knows what tomorrow will bring.  No security is a fact of life which can be masked by the System but not denied.  You may save and invest for 20 years down the line but you don't know if you will even be here tomorrow.  So as a Rasta this is not denied but encouraged and brought out into the open.  Don't be afraid of lack of security, get used to it.

There is a power there which the System is all the time trying to distract you from.  When you touch that power you become it and there is a voice in you which opens up and guides you.  Jah becomes your boss not Joe Bloggs.  Life is your richness not money and possessions and anything else society promises. 

Jah Live!

Phase II - What is SoulJahm?

Now seems a good time to have another look at what SoulJahm is.

When Kate and I set off for Europe in October 2010, all we had in our heads was "we must go to Europe".  It was ringing out so clearly in us both - there was no choice.  In the background we knew Music would come into the picture somewhere down the line but we weren't thinking that way as we left.  We never took any instruments or prepared in any way for Music.  Originally, it was all about Europe.

It was about 5 months after we landed in Barcelona that October before SoulJahm came to life.  Beginning with a ukulele and melodica, a different type of song began to come.  Songs directly from our current living experience.  Our feeling on it all was quite simple.  Put the songs and videos out as invitations or messengers to bring something of this Truth to people.  It didn't matter that we were a bit rough and ready - it was important to just put them out.  Maybe people would be curious about it all - the songs, the journey, how we lived.  Some people were curious but didn't hang around.  The vision we saw was that slowly we might connect with some people who could see something in what we were singing about, how we were living.  Some of those people might want to be part of it and so with more people, we could all create more and the whole thing might rise exponentially.  Not for any agenda or purpose other than as an environment for people who felt the same about the world as we did.  People who somehow always felt the way we were taught to live was not right, that something was wrong or missing.  Kate and I felt this way since we were children and could never shake it off.  We were trying to say, "you can do this, you don't have to accept the way things are, don't try and change the world, just change your own life, just do what you feel is right and prove it can be done".  That is enough.

One of the saddest things about Kate's death is we felt we were only getting started.  We never managed to fulfil a lot of the things we intended to and the saddest part was that we just couldn't connect with people.  We found time and again, as long as you remain on superficial ground, the known and comfortable, people will happily spend time and relate with you but the moment you try to make any real connection people back off.  Everybody is quite content in their mundaneness but we never gave up.  Nobody wants direct contact with life, direct experience.  On a few occasions we made some breakthroughs but they were always rare events and quickly it was back to business as usual.

When humans sing together something happens.  That is direct communion.  We know it but we can't explain what it is.  It has a different quality to going out for a nice meal together or sitting have a drink or whatever other way humans usually entertain themselves.  When we sing it is direct and immediate.  You don't really know what is happening, it just feels good.  When we play instruments together, even if its just some shakers and a guitar, there is something ALIVE there.  Or spontaneously taking photos, being involved in any way when true creativity is in action.  When we sit and discuss life and reality, question it and question ourselves, in a genuine and sincere way there is something in that we don't get when we sit and talk about the World Cup or our families or anything else belonging to the mundane and dead.  When you speak about what you already know, it is dead.  It has a dead quality to it but when you check out what you don't know and explore that you come alive.  The difficulty is to get to that aliveness you have to become vulnerable and in this society we are trained from a young age to hide vulnerability at all costs.  It is seen as a weakness.  When you don't know yourself anymore that is being vulnerable but nobody seems to want to go to that place.

Kate and I were always looking for those moments in our interactions with others.  Everyday we could sing together for 2 hours and find great joy in it, never getting tired of it.  We wanted to share and encourage that simplicity in others.  You don't need to go out sight-seeing, looking at buildings and dead stuff, or to the pub, you can find Life here in the simplicity of your apartment singing or doing whatever.  Or go for a walk without needing to know where you're going or what you're looking at.  When we created the songs and videos there was a great satisfaction in it every time because we knew we were creating something truthful and powerful and there was such love in the whole process that it didn't matter to us that nobody else might get it.  We could never get bored of singing SoulJahm songs - they continued to feel new to us.

Yet we also understood the way the world is and people don't recognise what is in front of them unless it's packaged and presented attractively.  So our whole idea behind setting up a studio to record and practice was to try and take the songs to a higher level in terms of presentation.  We could quite happily have gone on forever more with just an acoustic guitar singing together but that's the dilemna - the world pressures you to DO something, BE something.  So we figured, "ok, if we must do something in this world it can only be Music because that is where our joy is".  So we did what we could to get that happening.  If a man stands on the street speaking words of Truth, no one pays attention.  If you put those same words into a book with a nice shiny cover and sell it in a book store then there is a chance it will be recognised.  This is where we were attempting to go with the studio.  Also, not to take anything away from that process itself, we recognised it would make the songs more multi-dimensional.  We could explore and bring out the rhythm, harmony and instrumentation in a way not possible acoustically.  We saw that we'd eventually have all these versions of our songs - acoustic, sparse instrumentation, full instrumentation, and so on - and people could take their pick which they preferred. 

We could think about putting together proper albums and building on that.  Not just musically, but in all the directions we felt to go into.  There were lots of ideas and as long as this Truth was at their core, that was all that mattered to us.

Now all that has come crashing down and that is part of life too.  It creates and destroys in equal measure.  But the Heart of what SoulJahm is about has not been destroyed.  The core of what we set out to do remains because Truth is Truth is Truth.  You can break it up, rearrange it, change all the circumstances but it still remains Truth.  In that sense, my work remains exactly the same.  All the circumstances have changed but as long as I am in a body I will do what I can to get this Music out.  It is like we always kept saying - we have no choice.  That is a reality.  I have no choice.  You can ask a monkey to fly like a bird over and over.  We are what we are.  Society is always interested in us being something other than what we are because then we are useful to it.  When you are just what you are and nothing else you are not useful to society because you are too ordinary.  You become a threat or a nuisance or a rebel in some way, not even by trying, just your very core has to go against the grain.  It must be that way for freedom.

It seems Phase I of SoulJahm - the first three and a half years - was all about "Preparing The Soil".  We were like farmers ploughing the land.  Now the seed has been planted it must grow.

I will not give up that there are others out there who feel the way I do and even if this Music only gets through to one individual then it has done its job.  So for now, SoulJahm Phase II starts with me back on acoustic guitar and we see where it goes from here.

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!