Stewart Lane

I am a interdisciplinary artist working in music, performance, song poetics, cultural activism, and short film making, with a parallel life as a performance/life coach and organisational development consultant. I'm chiefly interested in questions of neuro-diversity & divergency and consciousness and their relationship to overall well-being, agency and social inclusivity.

 

I like to explore the  trans-dimensional and therapeutic potential of music and poetics of sound and the fluidities of performance and film, combining professional and non-professional performers and staging and recording spontaneous public 'Life Theatres' (See Liminal States/Life Theatres)

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 As a child, I found conventional learning environments hard to contend with and isolating. I believe this lead me to follow a maverick path of questioning, reflection and investigation. I eventually found my own way to learning composition and reading music and, although I have never been diagnosed as neuro-diverse, I am certainly neuro-divergent. When young, I saw this as a handicap, but gradaully came to see it as a positive attribute, enabling me eventually to confidently share my perspective. It also fueled my interest and creative investigations into the social dimensions of Neuro Diversity and Neuro Divergency, and the interruptions and  boundary shifting they can bring to bear on the more stymieing confinements of Neuro Typicality.

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Reflected in the range of musical genres and styles I've been attracted to exploring, music was never a choice, but a necessity. It has been a constant in my life and I'm always involved with it somehow; a crucible for the mingling of ideas and experiences and giving expression to the ineffable.

 

After joining some bands, I began to form ideas about the kind of music and performance that interested me. I realised, to achieve what I wanted, I would have to learn to read and write music in order to communicate these ideas effectively. This lead to a fairly long gestation, but I felt ready in 1988 and formed   the alternative cabaret  BAL (1988-1996). An experimental protean ensemble, our first performance was in january 1989 at the Kings Head Theatre, Islington, on a set for Hedda Gabler.  Over seven years, its shifting line-up included voices, string quartet, piano, rock guitars, percussion and drums and chamber orchestra. In 1991 we performed as part of the Greater London Arts sponsored Seven Days In May Festival of Contemporary Music and in 1992 we won an Edinburgh Festival Fringe Award. For performance, I drew on shamanic ritual practices and characters from Comedia dell'Arte to explore regions of the psyche

 

Opportunities to branch out from BAL, came in the form of writing for film and theatre, and commissions for a variety of programmatic music pieces (String quartets, chamber works, mixed ensemble, sonatas - violin, viola, cello, saxophone, hand-bells, and orchestra) and other cobntemporary ensembles.

 

As a child I frequently experienced what has been termed lucid dreaming, out-of-body (OOB) and metaphysical states. Trying to make sense of them within the context of the 'real world' was tricky.

My alternative realities haven't only consisted of the ethereal. I have lived and worked among people inhabiting the fringes of society and convention; artists, quantum visionaries, the homeless and the unconventional. I've explored Neuro and Neuro-cardio-Psychology, Cognitive Behavioural Psychology, science faction and fiction, the metaphysical and the ultra-physical. These are the themes and influences that informed and inspired me and found their way into my work with voice, sound, words, people, coaching and facilitating.

 

Working with people and organisations exploring personal development and creativity, inclusion, questions of agency, well-being and social enterprise, alongside music, have been among my most rewarding experiences.  

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