Transcript si (00:08) Hello, I'm Si Sapsford and this is My Private View, a series about how we look at art and comes out of that habit of looking and thinking and of wondering what other people see when they're doing the same thing. Each month, I'll sit down with someone from various creative backgrounds and talk not just about what they make, but how they see, what they notice, what stays with them and what shapes their way of working. If something in an earlier episode stays with you or if it leaves you with a question, you can send it to me at sizeapsford and I'll bring some of those into future conversations. And I'll also include in each episode, a small reflection, something I've seen or thought about that I can't quite let go of. I'm your host and this is my private view. and this leads me nicely into a musing I had earlier this week. si sapsford (01:10) I was thinking about a time when I was swimming in the ocean mid Atlantic far from land. The wind had died earlier and everyone had decided to take a swim to cool down. As I was on watch, I was last to go in the water, and I found myself alone as very quickly the rest of the crew got back on the boat. Suddenly, just when I was about to return, the wind picked up, and because the mainsail was up the boat quickly pulled away before anyone could help me. I was amazed at how quickly the boat disappeared from view, and even as the crew encouraged me to swim faster, and a life ring was throwing to help me, I was quickly on my own, and I was very aware of myself, rising and falling on the swell, looking to the horizon. On the boat, time went very quickly. The crew had to manoeuvre the boat, drop the sail, and turn it a hundred and eighty degrees. The captain, meanwhile, had taken my position. And yet, For me, time had slowed down, as I waited for the boat to reappear. Would it reappear? Luckily for me it did, but it seemed to take an awful long time. si sapsford (02:28) Hello, before we begin, I wanted to share a little of Murray Hidari's story because the journey that led him to mind travel is a fascinating one. Murray is a musician, composer and entrepreneur. His early career was in technology where he co-founded a successful technology company but alongside that world he has always had a deep relationship with music and an interest in consciousness and our inner lives. In 2006 The sudden death of his sister changed that relationship with music in a profound way. Music became a place to explore grief, emotion and experiences that are sometimes beyond words. Over time, Murray began to wonder whether his way of experiencing music could be shared with others. Over time, Murray began to wonder whether this way of experiencing music could be shared with others. That exploration eventually became mind travel, bringing together his improvisational piano, meditation and a shared space in which people can listen, reflect and perhaps travel somewhere within themselves. His work also extends into philanthropy and social impact. So there are many different threads running through his life. Technology, music, consciousness, connection and a desire to make a difference. And I think it is those different threads, rather than mind travel simply as an idea or an experience, that make Murray's story so interesting. So, with that in mind, let's begin. si (04:11) Looking forward to talking to you about your practice because I think there are some connections for me, so I'm interested in exploring that and sort of mining your experience probably. so your music isn't simply about sitting and listening to composition. You've experimented with using headphones and binaural sound and having people listening on the beaches or in immersive situations. In other words, you're interested in changing the conditions in which we experience music. What are you trying to make possible when you change those conditions, do you think? well, I think it's an immediacy, you know, an immediacy of our attention in the moment and kind of collapsing the space between the experience of the external world and our internal world. So kind of to be a bit more specific, when we're, walking on a beach or just walking in a city or anywhere we happen to be, through our senses, we have an experience of the outside world. We also, of course, have an experience of our internal world, right? Our thoughts, emotions, sensations. And The ability to collapse those two is really what I'm interested in doing. So that there's again this immediacy of what we're experiencing outside and inside is merging in that moment. And for me, the best language to do that in is music, because You know, when we look around us, you know, the universe truly is musical. Everything is moving, vibrating, oscillating, everything is kind of waving through. And of course, that is music. whether we quote, hear it as music or not is is really inconsequential. It's it's a question of what is the universe at its most fundamental. And and it's most most fundamental. It's a it's this incredible spectrum of frequency and vibration from the subatomic quantum level to the grandest level of gravitational waves moving through the universe. And all of those have a musicality to them, like literally, truly. some of it we can hear, some of it we can't hear. but whether it's the waves of the ocean or the wind or the spinning of the planets and the heavenly bodies, that's all music to me. And so using the language of music that we have, which is just an incredible phenomenon when you really think about it, music is Exactly that merger between the external and the internal. Because to generate music, we're essentially creating vibration through some instrument, whether it's our voice or whether it's a hammer on a string of a piano or a violin bow or a drum or whatever it might be. And that energy is converted into vibration of moving particles. moving through the air, moving through a medium. Then it hits our ear and these little hairs in our ear. And somehow that simple movement of molecules gets translated into sound that we experience only inside of our brains. The sound is not out there, it's only internal. out there is just movement. The sound is not out in the world. It's only an internal phenomenon. and so how do we really push that to its extreme? Well, by putting headphones on the participants, it truly makes it a very internal experience. And visually and sensorially, we're looking around. and taking in the world. And so there is this collapsing that is possible to take place where our external and internal experience is completely merged. And it's quite a beautiful state of consciousness to to be in. so you know most typically in our day-to-day people are often thinking about the past. Or thinking about the future, right? They're thinking about so many different things that it are actually taking them out of connection with the moment that we're in, with what's literally right in front of us. and so this experience is about realigning. It's like a temporal realignment where we get to just be with everything that is. And so that that that's really what interests me. si sapsford (08:13) I've enjoyed listening to music on my headphones and I could really get a sense of that vibration in my head. It does feel different. hadn't actually experienced binaural beats before. auditory illusion that happens when you listen to two slightly different sound frequencies in each ear at the same time. Not consciously aware anyway. si (08:33) and when you're performing, you're not wearing the headphones yourself. No, I I I wear the same headphones as everyone else. right. Yeah. Now what when I'm playing the piano, it's it's all extemporaneous, it's all improvised, a real time composition. during the live performing, there are no binaural beats taking place there. I have separate compositions because those need to be kind of engineered. So I have a separate set of of music tracks that use binaural beats. in in the mind travel concert experience, we actually start with that before I start playing live as people kind of get settled in. And so before I start playing, people are listening to that in the headphones. And that really does calm the mind. and it really can shift. Our brainwave state quite effectively. As you probably know, our brains are, you know, electric. they emit brain waves at you know very low energy levels, but nonetheless, they are they are emitting these kind of low energy brain waves. typically in our awake state, they're in a beta frequency range. But then certain activities. can either speed that up or slow that down. So for instance, when we go to sleep, there is a slowing of the brainwave state, typically to theta and deep sleep would be delta. These are kind of lower frequencies, which just means fewer oscillations per second. but things like meditation or mind travel can actually slow them down to something in between a fully engaged awake state, which would be beta state, and kind of a sleep state, which is kind of theta or delta, and something we call alpha, alpha state. And that is a really lovely, like you're awake yet in a very deeply relaxed, focused mode. And so that's kind of that's called entrainment, but it's essentially kind of coaxing the mind to match what it's listening to. And that's what the binaural beats are doing in that beginning part of any mind travel experience. And then so that by the time I start, kind of there's a already a calming of the mind through the these specific. Binauralbead compositions. I I understand that completely. that does make absolute sense to me. I mean, w when I've listened to you speaking as well, I think time seems to be quite important to you in many different ways. and that was one of the reasons I was interested to speak to you because like a lot of my work is interested in time and and perception of time as well and how it can be stretched or or reduced. And I know you've traveled a lot you do mountaineering and lots of painters have done paintings from the top of mountains. So you get that sort of sense of elevation in a different world And I get the feeling that you use travel and different experiences, climbing and things like that, as well as sort of research to help you with your work. And and that and that made me think about I I sailed for seven years. It was my job when I was younger. So so again the travel thing was quite interesting for me because when I was sailing, I sailed across the Atlantic and Pacific and I had quite a lot of time at the wheel where I couldn't go off and be distracted. And this was obviously pre phones. and one of the things that, I really liked to think about when I was sailing, as well as watching the wave and the amplitude and things like that, which I thought about a lot, was this idea of, you know, I was going on this journey from A to B, but quite often, because of the prevailing wind, I couldn't go directly to B. I had to tack back and forth. And when I heard you speaking, I sort of feel like maybe that's that's something that you're interested in as well. the slowing down of time, which, being at sea it's a just a completely different experience. Yeah, I love that. And you know, I I do think I'm very interested in perceptual diversity for sure. you know, meaning placing ourselves in quite a varied a number of circumstances and situations to be able to connect dots in different ways. And of course, the easiest way to do that is to just place your body in very different environments. So whether it's Antarctica, where I was able to bring my piano and, you know, create a musical experience there and film that, to Greenland in the Arctic, and the Amazon rainforest or the Serengeti in in Africa where I actually placed my keyboard in a hot air balloon and flew over the Great Migration and watched, thousands of animals roaming and running and and created a soundtrack for that from, 1500 feet in the air flying over that live. So, you know, that that's what interests me is that again, that perceptual diversity is is just placing yourself in these different and varied environments and just to see what emerges in those. new canvases. that that I think is so critical for creating new connections, creativity, again, connecting dots that's, we might not have otherwise. but we don't have to go to these kind of extremes to have that. It could be as simple as, you know, going somewhere nearby within 20 minutes or an hour of where you live. And there are so many wonderful places to to place ourselves. I used to play in theaters and and one day I was like, okay, it's beautiful. And you get to curate and craft your own experience as the performer, for the audience from the lighting and the staging and you can really very specifically create and craft the experience. but but then I was like, What would it be like to take this audience and put them on a beach, you know, looking at a sunset, looking at the sky, and having their feet in the sand and letting them not just sit there stuck in their seats, but move around and put their feet in the water all while they're listening to the music that's getting created in the same moment. So, you know, the music can it by being improvised can can embody the fluctuations of the breeze and the wind can interpret the bird calls of the seagulls that are flying by and and you know can embody the the formations of pelicans that are soaring overhead in V formations and just majestic, you know. So none of that's available in a theater, unless you artificially introduce it through, you know, digital screens and projections and things like that, which, it's cool, but but what if we can actually do it in real life? And that's when I had the idea for the headphones to really create that immersion. So again, the music's not out there, but it's in here. The whole all of life is happening in here. And that's truly how it is. I mean, you know, we think we experience life out there and no, life is only only happening in our brains. That's where the that's where the the sensation is. I mean, so It it really is trying to be the ultimate kind of metaphor for life in that in that way. and of course all the healing properties and connective properties of of truly immersing ourselves in nature cannot be understated. it it is, you know, nature does does half the half the job for me, and the music kind of takes it across the finish line. so that that truly is an important combination of music, nature, and coming together in community, putting people not in rows in a linear fashion in front of a stage, but putting them in a circle, you know, around the piano. Now they're actually not just seeing me, but more importantly, they're seeing each other. you look at you look across and you're seeing everyone in a circle. And so there's this a deeper sense of community and connection. as human beings we are social creatures we're social animals so there's a pragmatism to a theater for sure but it is not organic in that same way you know in the realm of sculpture you have the you have the liberty of of having the the person experiencing your sculpture walk around it interact with it in that way that's wonderful That's inherent in the art form. but typically music is not that. Typically music is someone on a stage and an audience in linear rows. And that that is not nature. That is not natural. so you know, how do we flip this whole experience and and have it be something that is that is more organic and conducive to our wiring, to to how we're built. So we're not, you know, meant to be sitting and say stuck in our seats for an hour and a half, two hours. But now people have the freedom to move around, find their own moment. it's important for social creatures to have their own private moment and then come back to the community, to the tribe, right? So that that's all happening at every mind travel. it's this embracing of the individual and the collective, not the individual. versus the collective. And so that's an important element, I think, as well. So people after the concerts finish, people are sort of sharing their experiences. Is that what you're finding? That yeah, we do have that as part of the format. I didn't always have that, but people would always come up to me, see after afterwards and share their own private personal reflections one-on-one. And at some point I was like I really shouldn't be the only one to hear these. They're so human, they're so sensitive. and so much could be learned from them if they're able to be shared. So I said, well, let's see if people are willing to share this kind of vulnerability, this kind of personal narrative. And I just put the invitation out, I put a microphone out and and each time I just invite folks up And every time people do, they they come up and they share. And that's you know, the the ability to share some of our most tender experiences is really where we find our deepest humanity. that that's that's tends to be my experience. So, you know, people coming up and you know, sharing themselves, whether it's about for everything from grief to celebration to birthdays to anniversaries to hardships to disease to overcoming adversity to I mean everything that you can ever imagine has been shared up at that microphone. So you've got all of that going around, but then it brings an openness of the mind then to maybe reflect on things that you you don't give time to and maybe you should. Yeah. I mean, I I think that most people don't set aside time to be deliberate about their thought, you know, like Socrates said, to know thyself, to really spend time to learn the nature of your own mind. most people move through life And whatever thoughts and emotions arise, they just take that as at face value. They just take that as, well, that's that's reality. Whatever I'm thinking is real. I'm thinking it, so that's real. as opposed to just taking it in as an information source. And evaluating it for okay, it I I could I could accept it, I could not accept it. It's you know, it's just one data input. it's a very different relationship with one's mind. it's quite difficult, I think, for most people to make time, and realize that they need to make time unless you've experienced that before. I mean, I found it very difficult when I stopped sailing. I did miss that enforced period of stillness. I mean, I'd still be working, but it was the mental freedom. and I and I think the waves or the open expanse or a hilltop do sort of encourage that. And music is, much more fundamental and readily available for everybody really, isn't it? It is, but it's also a question of how we use music and relate to music. For for most people, it's either entertainment or a way of escape. and then that's actually achieving the opposite of what you're talking about, right? it's filling in the space as opposed to creating space. I suppose so. But also you know, a record that takes you back to a particular moment, whether that moment is a happy moment or a traumatic moment. But records do have a habit of of taking you back to a place as well, don't they? They do. And and and actually part of why music and memory are so closely linked is because from my understanding, I'm not a neuroscientist or neurobiologist or neurologist, but my understanding of the brain is is those areas of the brain that process music and memory sit next to one another. And music at its core is about kind of a pulse, kind of a that's why music and dance and rhythm, right, are so are so tied together. And the hippocampus, that's the the this is particular part of our very early brain, is where motion comes from. And so you have these areas of the brain where motion and memory and that's that's what music is impacting. and so yes, when we hear something, it can take us right back to that to that emotional experience that impacted us. And it tends to really be an incredible portal, you know, right to that moment. They've even found in folks with dementia, very quite severe dementia, that listening to a song that they might have listened to when they were twenty takes them right back to that time and they can recall the lyrics, they can recall even memories relevant to that song. Yeah. And your music is a completely different kind of thing. It's not bringing familiar music to trigger a particular memory. It's more about them sort of engaging with themselves and taking time just to be really, to sit within themselves, isn't it? Yeah, it's an interesting line that I try to walk musically where you know the brain likes two things which can be can appear to be at odds with one another. And this relates to music and other areas of life. But those two particular things the brain likes are novelty and predictability. Now, how do you have novelty in a brain that likes predictability? And how do you have predictability with a brain that likes novelty? Well, there is a line that you basically can find. Now if something is too novel, it's all over the place. It's so you can't predict anything. It's just it's so novel. It actually can create anxiety. Because it's just like it's all over the place. I it's it's pushing me too hard. Now if something is too predictable, then we experience that as boredom. So it can't be too predictable, and it can't be too novel that it's just an anxiety ridden. And so there's a line in between, there's a sweet spot of novelty and predictability, right? Patterns. And variations of patterns that can actually keep the mind's attention and put you in this kind of zone. You might think of it as a flow state. That's one way to think about it. some people use that term. but it is this really very powerful state of consciousness that is tremendously active and relaxed at the same time. It's hard to explain in words that are not seemingly. paradoxical, but but that is the state of consciousness of mind that one can enter. Absolutely. when people have their first experience of this kind of music and this opening up. Is it is it something that seems completely novel to them or do they think, Yeah, I've sort of almost had that experience before, like you know, I've talked about being in a concert and suddenly having this idea for a piece of work and it came to me almost wholesale. And and I could see it and feel it while the music was going on around me. And so I did have that transportation of emotion and being in that place. and so I kind of sort of thought, I have an understanding of what you're talking about before I listened. And then I listened to it and then I think, yeah, that is how it felt that time. do you feel like most people have that? I don't know. I it's it's it's hard it's hard to know that kind of across such a large number of people, but but anecdotally for sure, you know, many times I hear folks say, that was exactly what I needed, and I didn't even know it. I hear that quite a lot. so they're coming maybe with some expectation or some sense of what it is or not, but then they're leaving with something else that they could not have articulated going into it. Right? They're not coming saying This is what I really need, and then they get that. They might come and say, Hey, I really need something peaceful, relaxed. I need to kind of, you know, maybe they come in that way, but they might find something quite, quite you know, much deeper than that. And do you think, once you've experienced something like this, and maybe, you know, people do have this sense of things, but it's actually having the awareness of the whole experience and being there. I think that sort of gives you clarity, of maybe that lack and is there a neural pathway then that's potentially created where you sort of do perceive things differently in the longer term? Or do you have to be reminded through revisiting the music and those sort of things? Or does it make a permanent change? It'd be nice to think so. Yeah. I I would I would think so. I would hope so. I mean You know, one of the things I didn't know when I started this, you know, many years ago was would people have the patience to place their attention for such a long period of time? I mean, a mind travel can be the better part of two hours. It's not, a trivial amount of time in a world that is so distracting and, kind of short form. And so what I tend to find is people actually are able to really settle into it and are so grateful that. They get to just, like you said earlier, to listen and just be with in free association. You know, that's the thing. It's in it's completely free association. Whatever arises is arising. And you just kind of are there with this soundtrack, witnessing the mind having this completely different experience. and it's so emotionally connected because of the music that. Everything has this charge to it that it probably wouldn't have had if you experience you know, many people go for a walk on the beach, but then they do this and it's it is a whole other level, you know, of of experience. So how do people sort of access this how can it be not just a one off? presumably you're not doing concerts in the same place or every week. Well, two things. the first thing we do is we actually choose locations where we can have somewhat of a of a frequency of a of a regular presence. Some places are monthly, some places are, every few months, but there's some regularity to it. So and each time it's different. It's the music's improvised, the music's different. even the same location, whether it's a beach or park, right? The Conditions there will be different, The weather, the wind, etc. and so it becomes music as a practice, music as ritual. so that's an important element to how we actually design and schedule this. The other part of it is for this to be a portal, for this to be a glimpse into what the mind is capable of, and you don't need to have this experience to be able to access that. being able to access a sense of stillness in a in a swirling world is something that is a very useful skill to have as a human being in a modern context, especially living in an urban environment. we were in Central Park, last night. I mean, the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world, New York City. And there was such a profound sense of presence and stillness that people felt. You could taste it, it's palpable, you can feel it. And so now they walk away. Whether they ever come back, it's doesn't matter. They know that that's possible. they don't necessarily need the music to do that. They now know that they can experience that and they can self generate that experience. Yeah. Yeah. I know you recently went to Greenland. Were you doing a concert there as well? Yeah, the impetus to go there was of course the timing of the so total solar eclipse. And that's something that, I've chased a few in my day, and it is such a powerful, incredible phenomenon to witness in person. And so that was the the initial motivation to go. And then we went with this incredible group. Where I've done many extremely adventurous and exotic trips around the world. and so we went with about, I don't know, a hundred and ninety folks or so. And we get on this ship and we, kind of take these communal adventures, if you will, in a way they're like pilgrimages. And I bring my piano with me and we set it up in in incredible remote locations, in this case on Greenland. And then everyone gets to experience, with the headphones, a mind travel in these just incredibly inspiring and evocative places. And and then we film them and and then we we we release that film for others who, you know, can't get there to to have a taste of that. So we've done that now in Greenland. We just returned from there, but we've done it in Antarctica, we did it in the Amazon rainforest, in the Sahara Desert of Egypt, to the Serengeti Great Migration in Tanzania and Africa. So, you know, many, many different places and know, we we're always looking at at more and more radical places to do this. I was gonna ask you how important is it that the experience evolves and for you I think that's really important. important you seem to be really enjoying the adventure still the physical adventure as well as the adventure that the music provides absolutely I mean my whole life since I was a teenager I you know I traveled around the world on a bicycle for a better part of a year by myself just to feel the world to taste it just have a proximity and intimacy to all of its textures and smells and sights and sounds and you know and that certainly has not left me. Now I get to do it through music, but the name mind travel there's the word travel in there. It's a it's an important part of it is this sense of sense of adventure, sense of sense of pilgrimage, sense of, you know, it's not mind trip. It's not about a trip. It's about a travel. It's about it's about truly going somewhere. and it's not just physical, but it's going somewhere with the growth of your own being, so that through this journey, through this adventure, you emerge as as someone quite different than than the person who entered it. So when you went off traveling when you were 18. Is that something you'd always imagined yourself doing? I dreamt of that for a while and the moment I turned 18 and I was able to I took off and and that's what I did. I think that traveling is a similar sort of thing in an odd way. it is inhabiting your own journey and being that self-sufficient and open to experience. I think it is the open to experience that, you seem to enjoy. I don't know, I guess it's a sense of of of connection, of expansion, of getting in touch with something larger than our immediate world, you know. it's always lured me in that way. you talk a lot about connection with people. And I think, when you're traveling and you're presumably living in quite a basic way, if you're cycling, of definitely living within your means and a budget. And then you're more open to meeting other people. If you're traveling with someone That's right, you don't have to open a conversation. You don't have to engage with different community. And I'm imagining that experience must have been quite pivotal in in how you saw the world, or maybe you saw the world differently and that's why you went as well. Yeah, I I I think it's invaluable to travel alone for that kind of trip, you know. I mean, going away with your friends for the weekend, that's a very different kind of trip, but but to really go on an inner journey through an external one, right? To do that by yourself, it has all those benefits because, like you said, there's a forcing function to engage, and you also don't have the pressures of okay, should we do this, should we do that? You know, you just you kind of just you go where your intuition is leading you. And that's that's always more challenging with when traveling with other folks. because you know could be a lot of different opinions about where do you want to go next. So it's it's fun for certain kinds of trips, but for something that is trying to be, a bit more of a spiritual journey. and all I mean by that is to to tap into one's source of spirit. Like where is your spirit Coming from what is animating you, right? And when you came back then from that trip, did you feel like you had found the meaning that you were looking for when you set off? And then presumably able to go to university then, feeling like you were in a better place for it and a better understanding of the world and what you want at There there definitely was a certainly an initial satisfaction because I didn't know how long I was going for. I didn't have a plan. I got a one-way ticket and I had no sense of return. And it was finally after, I don't know, the better part of 10,000 miles of riding that bicycle, that I was in the middle of a rice field. I remember, with my bike and a tent. I was just staring at the stars and I had, just experienced so much in such a compressed amount of time, like a lifetime of experiences in under a year, you know, at that point I was like, okay, I think I'm done for now. was just that. It was that simple. It was not a whole deliberation. It was just like, yeah, I I think I'm good. And it it was kind of like that scene in the movie Forest Gump where he's running, across the country. Then at one point he just stops in the middle of the road and he's like, I think I'm gonna go home now. It was really that. and so I then, made my way back to New York and went to the registration office at NYU where I was originally accepted and I just kind of disappeared and I said, Okay, I was just on this trip and they were initially perplexed, like where had I gone and then they allowed me to re register and and then I, you know, pursued my degree in music eventually there. And do you think that experience altered your time at university in terms of the kind of music that you wanted to make and how you wanted to express yourself? very much so. I would I would really bring in, I would call in kind of all those experiences I had from you know the tops of mountains to the depths of scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Like I I had just done all that. these really extreme life experiences. I then was able to to bring all of that and translate that musically. And I already had that in mind when I was doing those things. You know, part of doing those extreme activities was to kind of push myself and see what I was made of. You know, can I get to the top of that mountain? and can I do it in winter? And can I do it in a storm? it was like, what am I made out of? You know? so there was an emotional and there was a mental element to it. But equally it was about how do I experience the world in such an intimate way that I could really interpret, you know, I could become an interpreter of nature, interpreter of the universe into music. Because I remember studying Olivier Messien, he would create these incredible modern, sounding pieces, all from the recordings of bird songs. And that like set me off on a whole experiment of okay, how how do I how do I interpret the the face of a mountain? Well, it's one thing to do it from a distance, but it's another thing to experience a mountain from one inch away while climbing it, you have a very different intimacy with it, a very different experience of its texture, its details, its shapes and colors and and same with, the sea. I got really into kayaking in in rivers because you you truly are one with the water, in those scenarios. But then what about under the water? So I got my scuba diving license and I I would go deep under the water to experience that whole universe. And I think all those experiences, and then getting my pilot's license as a paraglider, so I could feel the winds and and understand what it is to be one with the wind. You there's no no engine, there's no motor. It's like you're you're with the currents of the air. So all of that gives you a very different facility with these languages of nature. And my hope was I could then take those experiences and give them a sound quality through music. Did that start straight away at university or is it something you so it's always been business then and that's where you wanted to get back to? But it sounds like you're still constantly searching for sort of experiences to add to your repertoire for the concerts for yourself. And I I also wondered, does it s mean that you're still searching yourself? there are still questions to be answered. Well, I think it's more about just the the ever unfolding nature of experience. I don't think the journey is ever over. I don't think we ever reach the horizon. Ever. It's it's the nature of a horizon is you never reach it. And the beauty is in the walk, you know. And and and so every time I have another idea of how to create. an intimacy with with with the natural world, I I embrace it. And of course, technology keeps allowing us to change that in different ways. You know, the kind of headphone technology I use now certainly didn't exist when I was in college. You know, the kind of underwater speakers that I use now for those those underwater concerts, I mean that didn't exist back then either. So it's a dance with the evolution of all things, including my own evolution, but the evolution of technology, the evolution of, you know, just all these different elements. And it's a delight. It's a total delight, to have an idea one day that says, hey, what would it be like to have 10 hot air balloons with 15 people in each, 150 people floating, listening live to music through the headphones and being one with the sky? Like, that's an idea that you know, we we actually made happen. it's kind of remarkable. So that's a delightful life in my, you opinion. Yeah, you have some very ambitious projects and very interesting projects. And going back to the underwater experience with underwater music and the headphones and floating in water. I know you've talked about the first beat and rhythm that we hear is in the womb and I'm assuming that that was in the back of your mind, trying to bring that experience to people when you when you do that. and I was just interested, i is it a very different experience being in water to the other ones, whether you're in the air or or on the beach, or are they just all very different? Well, the the water one is particularly different because I can remember scuba diving and you hear sounds very differently underwater. You know, you know, whales communicate hundreds of miles underwater. I mean it's like how is that possible? Well, that's because the nature of sound in a medium is such that the denser the medium, right? Water is more dense than air. It travels further because there's more molecules to bump into one another. So the energy that gets created by the whale's apparatus, their vocal apparatus, their sonar, they they can transmit that and the medium of water can carry it a lot further, especially low frequency sounds, So that always intrigued me. And I was like, wow. Okay, that's amazing. What was what would music sound like underwater? And then one day I was like, I'm gonna do this. And I I researched and found these underwater speakers that were typically used by like undersea welders to communicate with one another. It was very bizarre research projects. And anyway, I I got these speakers and I put them in a pool. And I I remember first testing them out and going under and listening to a recording of my music under there. And I just started giggling. Like it was just so otherworldly. And then eventually turned that into an experience, which now so many thousands of people have done, where they're floating weightless. So you take gravity out of the equation, and now you're completely weightless without tension. and then your ears are under the water, so you're listening to the vibrations, the sound that's moving in the water, and it has this otherworldly. effect because the sound is bouncing all over you you there's no directionality to it and it has this otherworldly tone and then being in the water with your body also creates this incredible experience our bodies are made of water right every cell has a form of crystallized water so we've got This barrier called our skin that's a layer between our body internally and externally, but it's porous, right? Our skin is totally porous. This all kinds of stuff moving in and out of it all the time. And when you're in water that's been warmed, that's been heated to approximately our body temperature, then the sensation of Where does my body end? Where is my skin? Where is my body? Starts to disappear. And that's the discovery I made, which was just so phenomenal. so you're now floating in this water and At some point, you if you don't look at your arm, you don't know where it is. You cannot feel it. Because the only way we can sense, well, if I if I ask you, well, prove to me that you have a body. Well, you can say, I could look at it, I could see it. Okay. Well, now let's remove one sense at a time. So close your eyes. Well, now you can't see it. Well, you can say, Well, I could, I could feel, I could touch my body. Well, let's take that out of the equation. You cannot touch anything. Well, our skin has all these. has all these nerve endings. So of course we're but what we're feeling is the temperature differential between the air outside and inside the skin. Right? And and it's simply temperature differential is simply the movement of molecules. That's all it is, right? That's what temperature is, right? If it's colder, they're moving slower. If it's hotter, they're moving faster. So if you have the molecules moving at the same speed, within a couple of degrees the body can't Distinguish that resolution. So you now have, say, roughly 98.6 degrees, right? If that's your core temperature, but it's a little different towards the surface. and if you have the temperature of the water about the same, the body gets tricked, gets fooled. The nervous system can't distinguish because all the molecules of your skin and the molecules of the water are at approximately the same movement, same temperature. And so suddenly there is no distinction between your body and the water anymore. And so if you're incredibly relaxed, you you actually have no sense that you have an arm or a leg. And so you're floating there listening to this music and your body actually disappears. Wow, that must be the most amazing experience. So it you become this mind, just this consciousness and and and then at some point you're like, wait, I have a body. And so it it took a lot to fine-tune those conditions to achieve that, but but that's where we go with it. You know, that's that's that's the aspiration with it. And so so what what sort of light do you have in there then Is it just a dimmed light or it's very yeah, it's very dim. I tend to do them at at night and and people's eyes are closed anyway. And then and at times we we'll put a covering on the eye if they want. I don't I tend to not put a covering because sometimes the covering itself can be a distraction. But if people want, they can they can put that on there. but they're just closing your eyes is enough, because there's no bright lights around. That's really fascinating because with the all the other sort of experiences that we've talked about today, there is visual, isn't there? whether you might do it in a a lecture room and have those visuals you talked about in the early days as and and the balloons and you know, there is input whereas you know, you're taking away that external input and it's all about, what's going on in your head and the music coming in directly into your head. And at times you feel the vibration across your body. it's kind of fascinating how that works. I mean it it's it's quite transportive, yeah, truly. I was going to ask about how people change or how they i inhabit that experience of hearing. but they're two very different ways of of hearing and experiencing those systems, aren't they? Yeah, you know, we tend to go to concerts and I don't know, especially in the classical world. There's such a intellectual, kind of left brain approach to it. You know, you're we're kind of analyzing it, listening to it, judging it, you know. and I'm trying to get get away from all that and just having it be more immediate and not having this kind of analytical approach to it. and all that needs to happen is you just show up and and just listen and just and just let it. do its job, so it's about setting up the conditions for that. because the mind it wants to be free, it wants to open, it wants to go into that mode which we don't often give it permission to. in recent years, mindfulness has become much more widely talked about. But you've been doing it for a lot longer than that. And and you know, obviously from almost from when you were eighteen you knew it was something that was very important for you and maybe something that, generally we don't ever give ourselves the time to experience. And it's quite a gift to be able to offer it through, your knowledge of music to actually offer possibility of having that experience Because once you've experienced it, that's something that you can always go back to. It's not something that you forget. and maybe life takes over sometimes. But I think once you know there's something out there that's can offer you a different way of thinking or remind you that there is a different way of thinking. Because you know we we forget, don't we? Absolutely. And I think I've also been fortunate in that I have a kind of an audience that is willing to go on those experiments with me, when I want to try something new, like they're up for it, and so that gives me as the artist a lot of latitude to try new things and because I think there's a wide berth that I I think the mind travel community kind of gives me and supports this project with. Wow. Well, I think it it's amazing to be putting these opportunities together lots of people talk about doing things, but not everybody does these things and we only live one life and it's really important I think to just take every opportunity that's offered really and make the most of life where you can. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And and that that probably is a good place to stop. But if if you don't mind, I was going to ask for a recommendation. I normally do this at the end end of the interview. And if you've got anything that you can offer us, that would be lovely. yeah, yeah you mentioned that, you know, either book or something like that. you know, since since in this conversation we did talk about my 18-year-old self and that the journey of that 18-year-old through till today, the the book that really set me off on that path was the book Siddhartha by Herman Hess, which is, you know, a classic was written just over a hundred years ago, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in the 1940s, but but originally published in the 20s, 1920s. And it's a book that You know, it's one of those books you find, or it finds you, maybe you say you could say that. And if it feels like it's written just for you, but turns out that there's millions of people that feel the same way, and it's particularly poignant for me because I've always had a dream of turning that book into a modern opera and an experiential opera, an opera the way mind travel would do an opera. perhaps with out actually out in nature. the way we do our concerts and almost creating the setting of where the book might have taken place, And this in this case in ancient India, over twenty five hundred years ago. so that's what's currently occupying my kind of future creative energy. And you know, it it's a it's a book that's very near and dear to my heart. Well, I think like doing an opera, that's An amazing challenge and definitely something that you've got to do now that you've said it out loud. That's right. You've already said it out loud before. Once you've started, you can't go back really. Well, it's funny, you I I I mentioned it to the group on the boat in a talk I was giving, and I just I said, How many of you? And it was a couple hundred people in the room, I said, How many of you have have read the book Siddhartha by Herman has? And ninety percent of the hands went up, you know? It's one of those books that just found so many of us. And, that that's the reason why I want to take such a classic and and turn it into an opera. And you know, at the core of the book, it's a spiritual hero's journey, but music is such an element of the book. It's not obvious at first, but you know, in his greatest despair, Siddhartha hears this universal sound. and it is sound that saves him. It is sound that saves him in his most desperate moment. Very apt as well. I thought I I had thoughts for my own recommendation. I don't always give a recommendation. Yeah. But in in in the run-up to the interview, I was thinking a lot about time, especially with with the talk about waves And then I was sort of thinking about time and I I went to Christian Marklay's film The Clock. I don't know if you've seen it. but I really enjoyed the surprise. I like his work anyway, but that surprise watching it, and I'm not going to say any more than that, Okay, I haven't seen it. I'm gonna definitely I'll put that on my list Fabulous. Well what a delight. Thank you so much for the conversation. Murray, it's been really lovely chatting to you. And I've really enjoyed finding out about your practice a little bit more So thank you very much. Thank you so much, likewise. And we'll we'll continue the conversation. Please be in touch. Yeah. Yeah. I'll look forward to hearing more. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Have a great weekend. Bye. Yeah. Bye.