Week Ending 23rd July 2023
On Saturday 22nd I drove the Cellist ANgel Turpov to a Birthday Party Engagement. It was booked through an Agency and the client said her mother – who was celebrating her 70th Birthday Anniversary, loves cello music. So this was to be a surprise 70th Birthday Present.
I have known ANgel for several years and claim him as my honorary son, as he has no relatives in the UK. I am so proud to call myself his mum and support him in small ways, such as driving him to Engagements like this.
It was a rainy day and the Engagement was in Norfolk, so we set out quite early.
Mindfulness is all about self-awareness. When we are mindful, we are fully aware of where we are – our surroundings – especially what we can see and hear. Our physical senses can bring us strongly into this particular place at this particular moment. We are in the ‘here and now’ – aware of what we are doing, thinking and feeling. That is one ‘wing’ of the ‘mindfulness-bird.’ The other ‘wing’ is our attitude. We approach our experience of this moment with an attitude of curiosity and kindliness. There is no criticism or judgement in mindfulness – and you can take this attitude into everything that happens in the day.
I have been teaching ANgel mindfulness ever since I met him back in 2018. I play the Pipe and Tabor and love to go to Embankment Station at the weekend, ‘lifting the world’ with the dynamic energy that I feel flowing through me when I play. I love to see the way that tired faces melt into smiles and often people start to dance. I believe that we can’t make any enduring positive change in our lives or in the wider world unless we ‘raise the consciousness’ (some people call it energetic vibration) and spiritual music has the capacity to do this in a very direct way.
ANgel also liked to play at Embankment – so that is where we met. In such a situation there can be competition and rivalry as good busking spots are always popular but we exchanged phone numbers and would arrange to plan so we could both have the time there that we needed. (Our arrangement occasionally caused problems with other buskers who weren’t happy that we ‘tied up the space’ – I always invited them to work with us as well but nobody else chose to join our ‘family.’)
We often met up in a coffee shop before or after playing – and our friendship grew. As the autumn flowed into winter I chased ANgel to wear warmer clothes. He always came dressed in shirt-sleeves – as if for a concert, and never with a coat or scarf. He said he needed his arms to be free to play. When the lockdown made busking impossible in 2020 I did crowdfunding to help ANgel survive – which further strengthened our friendship.
My spiritual name is DurgaMata. Durga is one of the key Hindu deities. If you think of God as Mother rather than Father, this is one of her aspects and it embraces both spiritual power and compassion. It is what my soul came into the world to learn and I certainly felt as if God was blessing ‘the mother in me’ with a new honorary son as our relationship grew.
As the months and years passed I began to appreciate what a serious blessing this was. ANgel is an extraordinary musician. He is a cellist of the highest calibre, not only as a performer but also as a composer. Indeed, after studying for years at The Juilliard School in New York, he came to Europe to study composition, first to Vienna and then to London.
Last Saturday, on our drive to Norfolk, the driving conditions were far from ideal, but we had a great time. My family loved to sing ’rounds’ when we were on car-journeys, and I am teaching ANgel some of them, so we sang and laughed for most of the way.
When we arrived the family were very warm and welcoming. Often when I drive ANgel to a wedding or an ‘official dinner’ I sit in the car for a few hours while he is playing, but here they invited me to join the family at the table. (At first I felt shy and didn’t eat anything, but after a while I indulged myself with Earl Grey Tea and Scones with Raspberry Jam and Clotted Cream. I normally keep to quite a strict low sugar, low carb diet – but this was an exception!)
ANgel played with barely a break for over 3 hours. Each and every piece he played was mesmerising. He lives and breathes music. He is on the autistic spectrum which I guess gives him a special capacity to focus and be absolutely in the moment not just of each note he is playing but each tiny vibration of the sound. It is quite beautiful to watch as well as to hear. The family were entranced and later wrote a glowing testimonial for the Agency. The daughter wrote –
What a wonderful afternoon listening to ANgel play for my mother’s 70th birthday. He is an exceptional musician and his playing was faultless.
Aside from the complete satisfaction from his actual playing, the other elements were also very professional – he was very quick to respond, very helpful and flexible with logistics and punctual.
I’m very happy he was available and we shall be booking ANgel in the near future.
Thankyou. Seamless booking.
The three-plus hour journey – both there and back (when we were both quite tired) could have been tense and stressful but because our consciousness was high and we were ‘in the moment’ it was a delight. On the way we sang rounds. On the way home, we played a game where we celebrated every fifteen minutes. ANgel would keep an eye on the time and tell me when we were in the last minute before that fifteen minutes would be complete. Then we would count down together and laugh and shout with delight, like two little kids, as each ‘fifteen-minute-milestone’ was completed. In that way we stayed in the moment and kept our energy and consciousness high. It was a great way to remain focussed and not be daunted either by fatigue or the now heavy rain.
A friend recently asked if ANgel has a tiktok account. He said that musicians can upload examples of their work on tiktok and promote it with 20 pounds. Do it regularly and you get a following. I am very mean. I said to ANgel that we must respond immediately when ‘The Universe’ asks us to do something. So he must immediately create a tiktok account and post something. I would pay for the first one. If he didn’t post before the 22nd I would not drive him to the Birthday Engagement. So he did take action. That post has been viewed over a thousand times. He was inspired to share another one last Wednesday. He put the video of just the first of the tunes he played at the Birthday Event onto tiktok and that one already it has over 10,000 views! (now, editing this on 6th August, I just spoke to ANgel and he has three videos on tiktok now. The one from the Birthday Concert has been viewed over 17,000 times and he now has 70 followers. That’s just in three weeks! Once he has enough followers it will give him the capacity to sell some of his own compositions. So this is quite exciting.
Here is the link from my youtube.
I would love to share photos of the family and their beautiful house, but that would require me to ask permission. I simply don’t have time. The week has just flown by because tomorrow I have my monthly Mindfulness-Joy Silk-Painting Workshop and a million things still to do to prepare for it, so I will conclude this week’s blog with just one photo – of one of the flowers on their Birthday Table.
Using Drawing as a Mindfulness Tool
Returning to the subject of Mindfulness, whenever you use the sense of sight to bring you into this present moment, if you can look at a flower you will find many benefits. Everything we look at or listen to, everyone we speak to, every book we read or film we watch, everything we see or touch, has a certain ‘vibration’ or ‘consciousness’ and that has an impact on our own consciousness.
Flowers hold a consciousness which is pure and beautiful. Just to look at them, tends to raise our consciousness. This is why they feature so strongly when we want to celebrate special occasions or decorate our homes. This is why we choose flowers to go beside the alter in a church or on our shrine at home. That’s why the Chinese Proverb is so true – ‘If a man has two loaves, he should sell one and buy a flower, for the soul too must be fed.’
When it comes to lilies like this one, just take a few moments to notice the colours, patterns and sculptural shape. You may even like to try drawing it – as a mindful exercise – and notice how your stress just melts away as you concentrate on the flower and the process of drawing. Remember to stay in the moment, focussing on what you are doing and not looking at the drawing with a critical or judgemental mind. Concentration itself is an excellent way of disciplining the mind. Try doing some observational drawing as a mindfulness-practise every day, for as little as 3 or 5 minutes at a time. Don’t judge your efforts or throw your drawings away. As an Art Teacher I encourage my student keep all their work in a folder so that in time they can see the progress. I like to think of each drawing as a little child. It is doing the best it can at that time – so we can appreciate our struggles and enjoy the journey.
I’ll finish as usual with one of my spiritual Teacher’s poems…
Love is a flower
That grows in every
Heart-garden.
Doubt is a flower
That grows in every
Mind-garden.
Progress is a flower
That grows in every
Life-garden.
God is a flower
That grows in every
Gratitude-heart.
Sri Chinmoy
Meditation: man’s choice and God’s Voice, part 1
Thank you for reading this week’s blog and I wish you all the best for the week ahead.
Love and Peace
DurgaMata