THE MINDSHIP EXPERIENCE
THE MINDSHIP EXPERIENCE
For many years I tried to remember the music I experienced during one extraordinary night at an Exodus rave.
I remember the experience more clearly than I remember the music: the confusion, the fear that I might be losing my mind, and the feeling that something very important was happening.
Much later, while making Mindship Man, a creative experience brought that memory back with unexpected force.
This page follows that connection without claiming to explain it.
THE EXPERIENCE
At the rave, the music suddenly stopped and I experienced everyone around me as looking directly at me. The MC addressed me by name and asked what I would do if I could change the world.
I answered, “I would stop all the wars.” When he asked what else, I said, “Everything would be more colourful.” I remember the environment becoming brighter and more intense.
Then the music in my mind seemed to grow louder, almost as though my thoughts were becoming part of the sound around me. I experienced the crowd as synchronised with it and had a powerful sense of everyone ascending together.
THE RETURN
Years later, while making Mindship Man, something in the creative process recalled the earlier experience. The circumstances were very different, but the feeling of letting go and following the music felt strangely familiar.
I began to wonder whether the later creative moment might somehow have been a key to the earlier experience. That remains a later interpretation.
I have sometimes wondered whether I was working in a heightened state of attention, absorption or trance during this period. I cannot establish that from the surviving records.
THE QUESTION
What, if anything, connected the experience at the rave with the making of Mindship Man?
OBJECT 022OPEN MINDSHIP MANLISTEN / READ THE OBJECT RECORD