Music of Maninjau

Music of Maninjau


Part 1 – Musica Instrumentalis

And all this music said the same thing, all of it expressed what was in the musician’s soul; longing, a most intimate atonement with the world and a violent wrenching loose, a burning hearkening to the deeper recesses of the soul, an intoxicating surrender and profound curiosity about the miraculous.

Herman Hesse



Flux. Noise

The aircraft is cruising at thirty-three thousand feet. I’d been bumped up to business class, the unexpected but pleasant result of arriving late after a frenetic dash through the capital. England is flooded. Trains are learning to swim and the people will soon learn to breathe water. In time the landscape will change irreversibly.

A month ago I was still at my desk delivering ultimatums to unscrupulous landlords, drafting pointless reports and flirting with staff twice my age. Every morning I fell into the underworld of London Transport and emerged an hour later bedraggled, rat-like, clawing my way into the office to count the pendulous procession of hours. The shock subsided by noon, but the same rhythms took hold when five o’clock came and the underworld swallowed me once more: the sliding whine of the doors and the bustle of hundreds of scrambling feet. A change was inevitable.

Varanasi is drifting by below. In a blanket of pitch black I imagine I can see the dim flicker of lantern flames, streetlights shining like watery stars. I wonder what the people are doing. Is anyone wondering what is happening up here? A planeload of strangers hurtling towards the transport hub of South East Asia: Bangkok, Krung Thep – the City of Angels, the city of sin in the land of smiles.

I’m shifting in my seat. We’re over the Bay of Bengal. The sun is rising again. The corners of the Earth are dyed red.



It was five o’clock in the morning when the wheels struck the tarmac and we disembarked. I collected my baggage and drifted through customs like a wraith. When the doors to the airport opened, the full impact of the smothering heat struck. Some staggered as it hit them, involuntarily stepping back into the air-conditioned arrivals lounge. Others walked on, oblivious. I stood by the taxi rank and savoured the strange and strangling air. I held my arms out so that the heat could penetrate me, so no part of me was left susceptible to shock later on. It was only five in the morning and Bangkok was still warming up. Cars roared past, dogs bayed in the distance, insects buzzed. I lit a cigarette and before I knew it, I was in a taxi.

Like all first-time arrivals in the city, I ended up on the Khao Sarn Road with its garish neon signs, surrounded by human driftwood and the all-consuming stench of garbage and money changing hands. Mangy dogs patrolled the streets, scratching themselves blind while students from all around the world did the same thing with alcohol. I bought a beer and a packet of cigarettes and buried my senses in the city, drinking myself into a stupor with a host of strangers whilst trying to acclimatise to the suffocating heat. When the bars lost their appeal, I went further afield. I spent days on the canals, on the khlong boats, roaring through filthy water littered with turtle corpses and the scurrying tails of panicking rats. Toothless old men watched from their makeshift huts. Children trod water frantically in their efforts to both wave and stay afloat.

Waking up with a hangover on the seventh day after my arrival, I decided to leave. I had no idea where to go, no plan whatsoever. I wandered into a travel agent and picked the name of a town at random from a list of destinations on a tattered board: Penang, Malaysia. Before I knew it, I had the ticket in my hand and the agent had my money. I was leaving Thailand already.

I spent my last day in Bangkok recovering from a week of alcohol abuse and the lethal effects of Krongthip cigarettes, finding solace in the cushions of the guesthouse sofas. As my fingers rolled across the fret board of my guitar, my thoughts turned back to London. Life there had been frustrating. Music – so often a lifeline in difficult times – had been equally frustrating. The process of musical creation is an expression of an inner yearning. The pursuit of beauty in music is the act of drowning in this yearning, allowing one’s self to be consumed by a nostalgia for something indescribable, shadowy and indistinct. It’s like feeling homesick when you’re already safe at home. The melodies might resonate with a sense of sadness or loss, but they had always delivered solace and reassurance. When they failed to do this, frustration crept in and I grew ill. I couldn’t even tune a guitar: no note sounded true and the strings always clashed. I felt fractured inside. During a bout of fever that lasted several weeks and left me in a fragile state for months afterwards, I began a journal that I still carry with me. In the hours before I left Bangkok, I read through it. Much of it was written in a delirious state, some of it was barely comprehensible, but pockets of clarity were scattered here and there.

Music: the human spirit has always pined for it. Before we could talk we intuitively knew the patterns of rhythm. Before we filled a heaven with gods, we developed the sacred art of music by which we could worship them. Why did men beat bones upon the rocks? To be heard? To have a voice in the vast and isolating universe? Did the syncopated beats of nature seek out the soul of man?

Through my wretched bouts of fever, I had perceived an ether permeated by a fundamental harmony, a rippling universal vibration that set everything into motion.

Everything in the vast and sprawling splendour of creation is imbued with a rhythm, a fundamental vibration, an echo of a noise that permeates all space and time.

The universe is a dynamic rush of excited noise and light, a seething cauldron of matter and energy, forever caught up in a violent state of flux. Nothing can be absolutely still; nothing can cease to vibrate. Vibration is sound.

In my delirium I had imagined that musical instruments were tools to tap into this ubiquitous ether, translating strange mappings of perfection into languages that we could more easily rationalise and understand.

Flux. Noise. And from the chaos, harmony and concord.

I read the description of my fevered dreams four or five times before I put the journal away and set off towards the station. I suppose I was looking for clues. In Asia, with enough money to last me for a year, I could try to gain a clearer understanding of my frustrations. At the very least, I could rekindle my passion for music.

On my way through the city, I stopped at a bookshop to find something to occupy me during the journey. I found a battered tome of Chinese poetry. The I Ching was buried somewhere in the depths of my rucksack and I thought they’d complement each other, so I bought the book and headed on to the Hualamphong station. At midnight I boarded the train for Penang.