Episode 1: Welcome to Adventures in Sound

I’m sitting atop a ‘mountain’ in Ibiza looking out over the hills below to the sea beyond. It’s the Summer Equinox … the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, shortest if you’re in the Southern. A transition. An ecotome. Where most of life lives. Below is a time-lapse of the sun rising this morning through the bedroom window.  

On such a day, it’s time for a new adventure.

For the last two years I’ve been Adventuring into Uncertainty. Indeed we all have. And forever will be. Not knowing is the most fundamental aspect of living. For those following this blog, Turning Left has become a metaphor for living life as a Vagabond. Not ‘into’ not knowing. But into embracing the not knowing that already exists by taking agency of it’s meaning for your brain, body and life.  

I started the first Adventures in Uncertainty series by Turning Left across America … twice in fact ... by ragtop. My second most favourite means of travel. Part of the adventure included a 30 day, 1,500 kilometers challenge down the West Coast by Bone-Shaker, my favourite mode of travel. Many of you inspired my peddling by engaging in and sharing your own 30 day challenge for which I was grateful.

Well … I’ve Turned Left again. This time across Europe. 

This time into Sound.

Come with me! At least for a while. Maybe for a month, or maybe for 18 months … I’ve no idea where it will end, or how long it’ll take to get there … as is the want of a Vagabond. 

We will be exploring the power of vibration ... and how and why your brain and body are literally impacted by it … and evolved to be so. But also how your vibrations affect the life and lives of those around you. 

It will be an interactive journey … if you want it to be. 

You will be the first ones to engage in conversation with remarkable creators of sound and music. 

You will be the first ones to have access to the Lab of Misfits’ new digital platform that will enable you to move within soundscapes in the real world. 

You will be the first to create completely new wearable fashions from musical scores transcribed from colour. 

You will learn about the traditions of ‘mystical’ music on psychedelics, and the oral traditions of storytelling on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean by capturing wisdoms in time and place of those living both. 

And there will be more. 

But like any adventure, one must start. An obvious first step that so many people forget to take! Instead, putting other seemingly important steps in front of the ‘first step’. While each insertion makes sense ... at least we tell ourselves so… often they are strategic, unconscious pools of quicksand between ‘the now’ and ‘the then’. Until eventually ‘the then’ becomes only a memory of intention. 

Yes … be prepared. But also … don’t forget to start! 

In my case my start was a false start. 

My adventure into sound started in Bristol heading towards the South West of England. I was 30 minutes out when my 1976 long-wheel-base 109 Land Rover stopped moving. 

I love classic cars. They have character. Like people, to truly know them is to know their deviance. When the fuel gauge registers ¼ tank, I know my Landie is full. I also know my Landie pulls in a certain direction. I know that it needs to be disconnected from the battery every evening lest it drain. What I didn’t know at this point was why it had no power. My Land Rover used to be a firetruck in the 1970s. Now it’s a composite of 3 Landies cobbled together into what my gremlins and I call BLT. BLT and I were now waiting for the heroes of the AA to return me to the garage, where it had been readied for the last 2 months. 

2 tow trucks and 2 extra days in Bristol later I was back on the road heading SW to Totnes to collect the Lab of Misfist’s new sound installation built and designed by Kodiak Audio (the sound design company created by my youngest gremlin Theo). This sound installation, which is designed to create awe in the brains of its listeners (and feelers), will come to life in Ibiza in July and August. (If you’re there this summer, get in contact. As there will be a special discount for Misfit Members!).

Once collected, the adventure took me by ferry across the Sea of Cortez to Santander in Northern Spain. From there I shook, rattled and rolled (literally) for 6 hours to a beautiful, remote village called Navarrete del Rio, SW of Zaragoza. All the while I was listening to the Lab of Misfit’s new Spotify playlist designed for movement, like road trips across the US, Europe or wherever you might be moved to or away from. We have made this playlist public and you can find it here.

As in my previous Adventure in Uncertain across the US, my destination was chosen only that morning … by the colour of blue on the map which denotes water. I arrived around 11pm to the center of the small village where I immediately discovered an open air bar (effectively tables inside a derelict construction site) where 4 men were watching football: Spain against Sweden. I quickly dropped off my bag - the same one I’ve been living out of for nearly 2 years - and joined the experience. Upon which I was offered jamon, queso y cerveza de España. I was now beautifully awake … awake to the new sounds of language, of conversation, of the beauty of Spanish football, of the deep bass notes of the distant thunder storm. The same thunderstorm I spent 2 hours ‘waiting out’ under cover in a petrol station earlier that day (BLT’s ragtop canvas roof leaks, and so driving in the storm would have destroyed the sound system). 

I was also rattled from the continuous vibrations of BLT. Each of its sounds, each of its vibration … of which there are many ... was heard acutely. Each time my perceptual brain was aware of the vibration’s meaning. Each time stimulating my adrenal glands to release more cortisol. Since each time the meaning was “possibly stranded for hours on the side of a Spanish motorway”. 

But ... BLT is reliable. 

I often find remarkable how often the human brain takes reliability for granted. Reliability in people, things and experiences. Adventures teach you otherwise. Adventures remind you that reliability … doing what one says one is going to do (or at least trying) … is essential to beauty. The foundation of trust, friendship and love. 

“A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.” ― Aesop, Aesop's Fables

Reliability is an essential, defining context of the nouns we use. Ask yourself how you feel about those around you who say one thing but act differently to that thing. Who are filled with gorgeous intentions and words (woke or otherwise). Who say … “I will make you X” … and yet X is never made though each time you wait … until you learn not to. Also ask yourself, as we must, how often you are that unreliable person, as we all can be? With awareness and self-honesty comes the potential for reliability. Without it, you’re lost and will not know why, since it’s actions in reliability that speak to your brain’s truth. 

BLT has no words, only vibrations. It’s old. It’s noisy. It’s characterful. But it’s also an action. And it’s always wanting to go. It goes with slow, methodical power. With its winch at the front, canvas ragtop on its top (usually removed)  and gorgeous sound-system inside its walls, it goes with beauty to where others often insert reasons to not start. While I live with few chosen bridges in my life, Landie is one such bridge. A characterful, reliable friend to which I will continue to stick because the reliability of its actions over time has revealed its heart to me, as do the best of my relationships. 

“In the village he [My friend Moe] said once, "Me and her is buddies, see? If her gate falls down, I go and fix it. If I git in a tight for money she helps me if she's got it, and if she ain't got it, she gits it for me. We stick together. You got to stick to the bridge that carries you across.”― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek

BLT and I made it to Ibiza. A stunning island south of Barcelona. And here I sit looking out over the imperfection of nature. A beautiful landscape filled with vibrations the meanings of which my brain feels and hears. This is where the decibels and rhythms of the Adventure in Sound blog will ramp up and complexify. What will be the sounds and music, indeed what will the relationships hidden here? Will they be beautiful? Like all things in life … like most of my answers to any question about life … the answer will be Yes and No. Some Ibiza vibrations will be lived at the surface of intentions. Others may last for a lifetime in action. 

Where to, I Don’t Know. 

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