Stewart Lane Music
Composer Performer Cultural Activist
Fields Of Mars
release date
Photography and artwork by Chico
Notes
when I started these songs, I recognised they were describing what I might best describe as my ‘quantum’ experiences. I was young when I had my first spontaneoius out-of-body experience (OBE). I often found them disconcerting. When I became very uncomfortable with them, they stopped. Years later they began again for a time and I found I could relax into them.
WAR IN HEAVEN? FIELDS OF MARS and SCENES AT SEA (about a long-term relationship I experienced with someone in an alternate reality) are songs that describe these experiences. Two other songs, TIMELESS and JEWEL describe the state of consciousness that allow me to have both OBEs and Lucid dreams*. Sadly, there are people who could be seen as casualties of having ‘quantum perception’. They cannot integrate their experiences into conventional society and as conventional society often cannot see the relevance of such perceptions (unless they remain on the fringes or are rendered into something more palatable, such as art, where it can be dismissed as ‘abstract’ or ‘surreal’) such people drift to the world's edges and often endure much pain and loneliness. Many find themselves caught in the ‘homelessness cycle’.
EXILE and ALL THE SLEEPING BEAUTIES directly explore this conundrum, while JUMP captures the dilemma of a person at a watershed moment; to jump off a roof or take a leap of faith? Give up or Press on with renewed vigour? Do things the same old way – or approach life with a new heart and a new mind? Any of these choices take prodigious amounts of courage.
Finally we come to why quantum perception is so important. We are vibratory beings, composed of atoms and more, as is our entire universe. All vibrating, either connecting or repelling. The world we live in is magical. It’s only when we try and squeeze ourselves into narrow definitions, allow ‘rationale’ to drain every drop of joy from life and confine ourselves to focusing on our own, or another’s, apparent limitations, do we cease to notice this.
Our thoughts interact with the quantum world. To envision the kind of world we want to live in gives energy and momentum to our desires. It enables them to take shape and manifest themselves into the world. By the same principle, focusing on all that appears to be wrong, on the hopelessness of any given situation has exactly the same effect. In this respect, we always have a choice. New revelations from the field of neuroscience show us that there is a direct link between positive thinking and feeling good and a healthy robust immune system. This particularly opened up for me when I was writing FOR THE BIRDS and I SEE MONSTERS. One of the greatest gifts of our humanness is our ability to imagine. Let’s put it to work; imagine the future world we would prefer. Give it our focus. Give it our attention. Be and Be Love.
Stewart
** (I don’t actually like this term because, these are experiences are very lucid and don’t feel like dreams at all)
My eye caught the headline of an online article recently: “Parallel worlds exist and interact with our world, say physicists.” It highlighted a 'new theory', the “Many Interacting Worlds hypothesis” (alternate or parallel universes are interacting with our own world all the time). As another attempt to explain the fantastical nature of quantum reality, it seeks to understand why the reality perceived through our physical senses doesn’t actually show us the true nature of things.
But for people like myself, quantum theories represent another (albeit more palatable to a conventional western mindset) attempt to explain something we have experienced directly. From my earliest childhood I recall interacting with beings that others around me didn’t seem to perceive. These beings were as real to me as anyone else, but I do remember being puzzled that others couldn’t see them. They explained to me that that was just how it was, but they liked to play with the people who could see them. As the years passed, my interest in them shifted and they became less of a feature in my life, sometimes disappearing for long periods, sometimes returning, but not always in quite the same way. Sometimes I missed them, wanted to make contact and found I couldn’t, which was more often the case in my adult life.
I noticed a pattern emerging; feeling stressed, unhappy, or overly focused on problems, my world shrank to accommodate only those concerns. I lost my broader perspective and my ability to interact with a ‘wider reality’ diminished or disappeared entirely. This was disconcerting, as I had recognised my most creative moments, particularly writing music or composing songs, relied heavily on this connection. Without it, whatever I tried to produce felt laboured. In that state of mind, connecting with inspiration was akin to pushing against a fast flowing river.
Eventually I got it: my own inner equilibrium was the key to making the connection. My ability to maintain it, no matter what was happening in the ‘real world’, was vital if I wanted to stay in touch with it. As a child I felt unable to discuss this with anyone. As an adult, my path began to cross more and more with others who’d had similar experiences. It dawned on me that many, if not most, have them to a greater or lesser degree. Yet because they appear anomalous and outside the common (and very narrow) definition of reality, many people overlook or ignore them*.
So how do you try to establish a connection to this ‘quantum multiverse’? Simple really; By plugging back in to your pre-installed ‘quantum perception’. People have been doing it for millennia. And sharing the formula: Be yourself. Be with yourself. Celebrate others being themselves and allow them to be with themselves. Daydream. Be creative. Risk. Embrace the unfamiliar. Enjoy the challenge and the journey. Breathe consciously. Focus on what is important to you and ignore what’s not. Play. And above all Love. For those of you who don’t need quantum theories to know you have the ability to interact with other realities, you are probably doing this already. For those of you who don’t, but would like to, this is a good way to start.
* the very narrow definition of reality: go to school, adapt yourself to ‘fit in’ and bland monotony, get a job, find a life-partner, pro-create, shop, pay taxes, own property, go on holiday, see life as uncertain and full of dangers, stare horrified at the daily diet of awful news, feel powerless, get frustrated by ineffective governments armied by people who equally feel powerless, rarely are up to the job and generally make little difference, complain, die.
Stewart Lane