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Welcome to RTalk, the place where we agree to disagree, if we disagree at all, that is.
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My guests today come from New Zealand. They are Peter Foster, and Tanya Batt.
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Our topic is 'Story and Song'.
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Hello to New Zealand.
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Hi there.
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Kia ora.
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That's a very nice thing you say there, Tanya, I never understood it.
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What does that mean?
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Kia ora is a greeting, it's to do with ... ora is your wellbeing and your health,
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so wishing people good health, good wellbeing, but it's commonly used as a Māori greeting.
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I have never heard it, I noticed that you said it in the email, so:
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dear viewers, I haven't met Tanya for very long, we met only very recently, a week ago or so.
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If the two of you allow me, I will say a very brief thing, introducing you two to my audience,
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and I'm very happy if you afterwards complemented and introduced yourself also.
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So the easier part for me in the sense of the person I've known very long is Peter, of course.
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Peter Foster, whom I've known for almost three decades, I guess it is. As a Reiki practitioner, we've been in contact.
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Peter has made wonderful Reiki music. He's a musician, that's what he's describing himself biographically.
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But he's much more, I mean. He masters quite a number of instruments and he even builds them.
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I'm sure we will hear some of his activities later on.
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But to me, quite frankly, he's also somewhat, and this may surprise you, Peter, somewhat of a spiritual guide, if I may say,
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because your music is actually part and parcel of every one of my Reiki seminars for the last 30 years.
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So, all our 10,000 or so Reiki students in the seminar, they've actually been accompanied by you.
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That's why I take the liberty of describing you also as somewhat of a spiritual guide.
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And then we have Tanya.
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Tanya Batt, if I look at her biography, I see she's a storyteller an educator, a gardener, a collaborator, an author
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and she is obviously also in some liaison with Peter.
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I'm wanting to learn more about it. How did you two guys, maybe Tanya meet first?
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And, what is it you would like to add to your biography?
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We met because Tanya is ... she works with a musician in her storytelling
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and the previous musician had up and left for a Czech woman in Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic, I should say.
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Yeah, so Tanya was looking for a new musician to perform with.
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Peter and I share an island, which is Waiheke Island, which is just off the coast of Auckland,
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For those of you who are familiar with Aotearoa in New Zealand.
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In fact, we're waiting on a cyclone as we talk to you tonight.
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We are, the rain's going to start any minute and the wind and stuff.
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...
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Are you owning the whole island? It sounded like you're...
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I know, no, it's about 9,000 people living there.
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9,000 people we share it with, but it's a pretty nice island.
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All right, and ...
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We met because Tanya was interested in doing a storytelling piece around death and dying, stories around that subject.
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And ...
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I've been interested in doing music, possibly doing music to assist people with the dying process.
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So we had that in common.
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And that's how we first met and got together.
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Yeah, we actually knew each other for several years.
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Yeah, I mean, we met 20 years ago.
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Yeah, that's right. But through the process of meeting and rehearsing and creating this piece,
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we developed a professional working relationship, a creative relationship, and a personal relationship as well.
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Yeah, and we since got married.
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So till death do you part and death brings you together, too.
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Yes, yes. Well, it's interesting because I understood from the previous conversation we had
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that the project 'Toby or not to be' which is the death and birth theme,
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I had understood this was a more recent development where you also got an award.
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If I look at your work online, I see a lot of, you know, almost, I saw some mythological tellings, but it was addressed almost to children.
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This death and dying and birth, they sound not necessarily the topics for children.
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So I had noted that down to be, to be discussed with you. And you mentioned it.
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So let's start with that. That's fine by me.
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Tell me a little bit more about that award you won and what is this 'story' all about, this work you've done?
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Describe it a little bit, please.
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Well, we started working on it when we first met eight years ago.
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But it started before then. For me.
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Yeah, but then we sort of laid it aside and just put it to one side. It wasn't finished.
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Then when we came to lockdowns with COVID, we suddenly thought, right, this is the time to finish it.
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So that's what happened. We finished it during lockdowns.
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Because we couldn't be touring. We're at home like the rest of the world.
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But Toby, the young boy that the piece takes its title from, which is a little play in English on words,
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was my neighbor. I live full time on an ecovillage here on Waiheke Island and Peter is a part time resident.
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Yeah.
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(Toby) was my neighbor. He was a four year old boy at the time. He's 14 now.
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The concept of the piece evolved from a series of conversations I had with him
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where he was a witness to his cognizance of his mortality.
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His, our story, our relationship, the connection that Toby and I had is woven through the piece,
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the piece that Pete creates, various pieces of music and plays with several different instruments.
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Along with traditional stories from different wisdom traditions from different cultures around the world,
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because all humans tell stories about death and dying because it's something we all have to do.
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Yes. And when I said earlier, stories are being told to children and I see online that you're almost addressing (them),
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but if I listen to the content very often, it's a story for grownups actually.
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It almost appears to me talking to the children is an alibi to get the message across.
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Yeah ... no ...
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It is an adult story telling.
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Largely because of its length as a performance piece, it's nearly an hour and a half long,
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which even for many adults to sustain attention on an audible piece is quite an achievement.
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A lot of people have a lot of anxiety about discussing deaths with children,
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but my experience is that children are actually quite inquisitive and quite insightful.
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Let's continue in a moment on that.
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It's very interesting and very important what you are about to say.
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I'd like to, in terms of introducing you, I've prepared a little video which I'd like to show you and the audience.
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Just let's have a look at this together.
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Kia Ora, I'm Tanya Bette.
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And I'm Peter Forster.
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This time last year we were both in the UK taking part at the 'Festival at the Edge'.
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Yeah.
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Today we're coming to you from our home on Waihake Island in the Hauraki Gulf in Aotearoa New Zealand.
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And it's the middle of our winter.
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So, we're sending a story from the far north, from Finland to the middle of your summer.
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Maybe this story says something about the kind of stories that arise when you have very long dark winters.
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Once upon a time on the edge of the forest, in a small house there lived three friends, a squirrel, a glove and a needle.
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One day the three of them decided to go hunting.
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And so off they set, squirrel at the front, glove in the middle, and needle behind.
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Squirrel went bounce-bounce, glove went wave-wave, needle went so-so.
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Squirrel went bounce-bounce glove, went wave-wave, needle went so-so.
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(Chuckling)
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It's weird watching you.
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(laughter)
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I'm sure. I wanted to ask you how is it for you to watch but mainly I wanted to show my audience what you people are doing.
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I mean storytelling, music and songs, it's difficult to get the grasp.
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So, this also shows where you're coming from.
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Though it was made in winter, I think.
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I mean, it was the other way around then it is now. It's winter in Europe and it's summer in New Zealand for you.
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So how was this Peter for you to see you being on screen and accompanying your partner?
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It's kind of cool. I looked a bit thinner and younger, so.
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(laughter)
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Memory.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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That's right.
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And for you, Tanya?
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Oh, well, I mean, this is something I've been doing for 30 years now and
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while the whole digital realms are relatively new areas of exploration brought largely upon us because of Covid,
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you know, I've kind of generally moved through my discomfort of self-consciousness of seeing myself and listening to myself.
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I did used to have some of the sort of reaction.
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Well, actually, I was interviewed by a French channel and I got the video yesterday of the
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video with me and I had to look at it and I had to look at myself answering questions
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and don't tell anybody but I little bit fell in love with myself.
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Oh, yes.
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So there isn't only the embarrassment and the feeling awkward.
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It's sometimes also quite, yeah, I think it's enjoyable to see your own work being done.
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Yeah, it is.
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It is.
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I guess one of the things for me that I love about storytelling is the ephemeral nature
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of it.
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It's something that happens in a moment and it's pretty prop free.
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It's me audibly telling us to keep creating music to go with it.
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And with this whole new realm of doing what we're able to do this evening, which is wonderful
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because we can connect with people in lots of different places.
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But we also capture things and I have real mixed feelings about the capturing of performances.
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But that particular recording was for a festival in the UK that was happening during COVID.
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So we made that recording.
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Well, this brings up the question, why tell stories?
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And I'm honestly flabbergasted when I did a little bit of research.
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You're soon to appear at the Mumbai International Storytelling Festival.
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I know you have a story.
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Last week we did that.
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Oh, I see.
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And I know that you're supposed to have engagements in Japan. You refer to Finland.
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I never knew there is an international conspiracy of storytellers.
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Why is that?
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And what is this community, the storytelling community, and why tell stories in the first place?
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Yeah, I guess it's ... I had no idea there was such a Reiki community.
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So there's all these interesting little pockets in our world of people who come together with a shared interest.
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Humans have been telling stories for thousands of years.
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It's one of the things that I love about the tradition is that when you tell a story, you step into a continuum.
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Of course, the way that we tell stories has changed.
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But you actually can't get away from the good old-fashioned sharing of narrative.
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And it doesn't really matter what language you speak or what culture you come from.
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Every human who's ever lived has told stories.
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We have our cultural stories, our mythologies, our folk tales.
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But as humans, we're a narrative being. And we make sense of the world through the stories that we tell.
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Even when we're asleep, we are dreaming in narrative. All be it a little bit ...
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sometimes weird and wonderful, the dream world. Yeah.
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Yeah and ...
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interesting point, this ... where you're moving away from reality into the dream world with stories, with fairy tales.
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And of course, it's interesting you mentioned 'tradition' and you mentioned the Reiki.
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In our tradition, the oral telling of the stories is very important.
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And quite frankly, when I give a public talk on Reiki, I get up there and I tell stories.
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Case-stories of how Reiki can work. My own story, how I got into it.
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I think that those narratives are in a way more telling and more important
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than any scientific study and any PowerPoint presentation I might offer to my audience.
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And then there is music, of course, the global language, Peter.
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How was it for you when I described you as a spiritual guide through all these seminars? How did you feel?
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I feel a little bit of that. Ever since I've been making music, especially music for Reiki, I have had a strong sense
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that this is something that's just magic. It's just, I don't know, and it's something I've got to share.
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So. Yeah. I feel good about it.
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I think we both people who are passionate about sound.
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And when you think about the sense of sound, it's the first thing that evolves when we're growing in our mother's womb.
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And it is the last sense that we lose when we're departing this world, our physical body as well.
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So in our own ways, I mean, there's even a greater universality about music.
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Storytelling ... I've listened to stories in languages that I don't understand, I'm sadly very monolinguistic.
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It's a bit of a, you know, something that happens when you live on the little islands right down in the southern hemisphere.
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But you know, when someone tells a story that you know in a language you don't know
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often because a story is more than just words being spoken.
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It's a rhythm and a cadence.
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It's ... like I'm doing at the moment, my body moving and expressing.
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But I certainly think there's a greater accessibility with music.
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And music has an energy that just comes through.
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And it's hard to describe.
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I mean, but it's something that we all understand.
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We all sense that the vibration, because I believe on the deepest level, we're all vibration
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and music just taps into the different levels of vibration.
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You know, that's ... A friend of mine and a Reiki person, he is a conductor in classical music.
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He travels the world conducting big orchestras.
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I know personally I don't understand music, I don't read music.
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When he used to live in Lucerne and he was conducting here the local symphony orchestra,
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he often gave my wife and me free tickets to go to the concert.
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I once spoke to him and I said, I really appreciate that but I really know nothing about music.
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My only measure of music is how I respond to it.
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If music manages to give me goosebumps or gets me emotional or even frightful, you know,
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sometimes I can choke, it can choke you.
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Then I know that there is a powerful thing present and there is something great transported,
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which is also transported when stories are a metaphor or an analogy, something else actually is being transported.
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And he said - and this connects to what you just said, Peter -
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that when he is in a good form and his orchestra is in a good form and the audiences in a good form,
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something magical happens to him, which he visually sees That energy, which you are referring to, Peter,
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he told me that he has a visual impression of that, which is of course, for me, quite, you know, amazing to hear.
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But I see both of you nodding, you can relate to this, can you?
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Yes, well ...
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Absolutely!
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Certainly in this ... the metaphor in storytelling which talks about the experience of storytelling
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being like the three-legged stool and those three points on the stool are the storyteller,
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the person, the people or person that you are sharing the story with and the story itself
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and that is a living, active, dynamic relationship.
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Just like, you know, your experience of resonating and having an emotional response to different music.
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It's the same for stories. Some stories, people, you know, listen to and they have, you know, instantly,
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you know, it taps them into something of their own experience or something even deeper that
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they might not consciously be able to connect with, but that's the power of metaphor really,
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is that we're not ... Our conscious mind isn't preoccupied with detail and I think music can work in a very similar sort of way.
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We're operating at another level, a deeper, on often deeper level,
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yeah, where chattering mind isn't interfering with our ability to perceive, yeah.
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And I love playing music with Tanya's stories because it's, sometimes we get into the zone and
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you just kind of ride and the music just comes out of me and just comes and flows
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and I didn't know what I was going to do but something happens and ...
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It's just magic when those moments happen where it all kind of just flows and comes together.
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Yeah, just like your conductor friend, there are real moments and for me the music really helps me lean into the story.
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Yeah, it really holds ...
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So they're mutually inseminating each other, they're mutually making each other grow, it's a true synergy
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and I'm sure that works better some days and not so well in other ways.
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That's true.
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Just depending on how you're feeling, how your audience is feeling, you know, all of those things are part of the dynamics.
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And for you too, the feedback from the audience is like an input which lifts you, can you feel that?
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Is that true even online?
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It's one of the things that I found quite challenging to get used to online.
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I really had to let go of the experience of storytelling being, the experience when we tell stories in a shared space
0:22:25.690,0:22:36.680
with other real human beings because you don't have that energetic exchange.
0:22:37.430,0:22:44.400
But once you've let go of it being that way, you accept that there is value
0:22:44.450,0:22:49.390
in sharing stories digitally as well via these platforms.
0:22:50.460,0:22:58.050
Well, metaphysically speaking, it doesn't really matter whether the audience sits in front - it matters of course, but ...
0:22:58.660,0:23:04.590
what I'm trying to say is even if you're connected to India or Finland on the other side of the ...
0:23:04.590,0:23:14.540
or right now as we are disconnected, we are disconnected geographically and physically in terms of perception.
0:23:14.870,0:23:18.510
But of course, we're also energetically connected with each other.
0:23:18.720,0:23:26.200
Even now, we make each other laugh or think and there is an exchange of energy.
0:23:27.190,0:23:28.400
Sure.
0:23:28.880,0:23:37.560
And you know, like, well, all people who go out into the world publicly to do their Mahi, to do their work.
0:23:38.790,0:23:45.180
This time last year was the first time in two years that we had gone out to perform publicly.
0:23:45.180,0:23:52.610
We toured the South Island for two months with the piece that we were talking about earlier and another piece.
0:23:53.430,0:23:56.020
And after two years of not doing that.
0:23:56.020,0:24:00.380
Yeah, and it was wonderful to actually tell stories to real people again.
0:24:00.410,0:24:01.260
It was!
0:24:01.770,0:24:06.730
It was really lovely. Probably on all sorts of levels because it had been such a strange time.
0:24:09.740,0:24:18.060
You know, to look a little bit, focus a little bit on music, you may remember this. It's a long time ago.
0:24:18.060,0:24:20.700
Today nobody has CDs anymore.
0:24:21.430,0:24:22.970
(laughter)
0:24:23.540,0:24:37.210
But the jackets I still enjoy and if I look at the jacket of your, I think, first Reiki CD, and then it says
0:24:37.890,0:24:49.520
'Peter Foster, classical guitar, steel string guitar, Didgeridoo, synthesizer, pan pipes, wood flute, wind chimes.
0:24:49.700,0:24:55.620
And some are built by yourself. And I know that you recently also built a cello.
0:24:56.580,0:25:01.760
Actually, why don't we just listen for a moment into your music?
0:25:45.380,0:25:46.350
Whoops!
0:25:47.380,0:25:54.490
Yeah, like with the story earlier in the video, I could have listened on and same thing here.
0:25:55.160,0:26:00.010
But I wanted to give my audience a bit of a flavour of what you are doing.
0:26:00.010,0:26:03.090
So, back to talking about it. And I'd like to ...
0:26:03.350,0:26:08.350
You are also building instruments, Peter, which to me is just fascinating.
0:26:08.920,0:26:14.520
The last time you told me that you built a cello. I even found a video where you are playing the cello.
0:26:15.150,0:26:16.590
...
0:26:17.260,0:26:21.980
Tell me a bit about that cello project you mentioned last time.
0:26:23.380,0:26:25.950
I've got a bit here, just by accident.
0:26:26.260,0:26:29.170
(laughter)
0:26:34.460,0:26:37.200
Anyway, that's the top of the cello.
0:26:40.460,0:26:41.820
It's quite a special cello.
0:26:41.820,0:26:46.340
It's a special cello because of the I've decided not to use the traditional cello woods
0:26:46.340,0:26:53.310
which are maple and European spruce, but rather to make it from a New Zealand tree called the Kauri Tree,
0:26:53.660,0:26:58.580
which is quite an endangered tree here in New Zealand because so many of them have been chopped down.
0:26:58.760,0:27:02.810
And the only timber you can get from these trees now is
0:27:03.400,0:27:08.020
generally old recycled timber from old buildings that have been knocked down.
0:27:09.830,0:27:16.490
This top that I showed you, it's made from pieces of timber out of an old house that was knocked down.
0:27:16.900,0:27:21.720
So, the tree was cut down 120 years ago and it's nice. It's really mature wood.
0:27:22.830,0:27:26.230
Because yeah, the oldest wood makes the best instruments.
0:27:28.420,0:27:34.620
So I decided to make to make this cello out of recycled wood basically and see how it sounds.
0:27:34.620,0:27:38.980
It's been a long project many, many years, but I'm getting close to the end now.
0:27:40.450,0:27:47.870
I know that when I first met you in person, I know that you had, oh, and this is more than 20 years ago,
0:27:48.510,0:27:53.940
you had your guitar with you, which you had built also yourself back then.
0:27:54.050,0:27:57.090
Right. Yeah, I've made a few guitars. Yeah.
0:27:58.760,0:28:06.140
I'm familiar with this project though because we've agreed that when it's almost like a story in itself that.
0:28:06.340,0:28:13.130
When Pete has completed the cello, we are going to create a storytelling piece
0:28:13.170,0:28:22.750
that not only tells the story of Pete creating the cello, but tells the story of the 'poetry tree' here in Aotearoa New Zealand.
0:28:23.820,0:28:27.970
So it feels like it's going to be a really special project.
0:28:27.970,0:28:30.140
It does actually. I'm really excited about it.
0:28:30.140,0:28:35.250
The cello is just such an amazing instrument because for me of all the instruments,
0:28:35.400,0:28:38.890
it has a quality that is like the human voice.
0:28:39.800,0:28:41.690
Totally. Yeah.
0:28:46.820,0:28:55.240
Let's get back to that where you started and I then transgressed and got you to talk about all kinds of things.
0:28:55.420,0:29:08.140
Let's get back to Toby and 'Toby or not to be' a nice game of words.
0:29:08.140,0:29:15.260
Tell me a little bit more about that and why is it, I think we gathered, why it is important
0:29:15.260,0:29:24.290
to tell stories, why oral tradition has a value and I don't see that in competition with written records.
0:29:25.420,0:29:31.040
They are substituting each other, they are complementary with each other, they are not in competition.
0:29:32.110,0:29:40.840
So we understand the importance and the value of storytelling and of music. Obviously. Most people know,
0:29:40.930,0:29:48.330
but now you are telling stories and you have this work and the award you've won for it
0:29:48.410,0:29:56.320
on the topic of death and dying and birth, presumably.
0:29:57.090,0:30:03.060
Tell me a little bit why this is important, why also in connection with children.
0:30:03.060,0:30:10.800
I get it that they have a more free and less inhibited approach even to those topics
0:30:10.910,0:30:15.260
then we think, we grown-ups often think of children, I get that.
0:30:15.260,0:30:23.090
But still, why is it important to talk to children and why is it important to talk about those things?
0:30:23.330,0:30:26.940
Aren't they morbid for many of us?
0:30:28.390,0:30:35.580
I think it's important to talk to children about all kinds of things that are interesting for them.
0:30:35.580,0:30:45.060
I think the important thing is for us not to develop ideas about what we shouldn't talk to children about.
0:30:46.300,0:30:55.500
I think, for me, what I see in the world around me is a lot of anxiety and adults around death and dying.
0:30:55.840,0:31:02.810
In fact, there's been all sorts of things written about our death phobic society
0:31:02.810,0:31:10.660
at a personal level in terms of our own human deaths, but also at an economic level,
0:31:10.880,0:31:13.900
what's actually happening to our planet at the moment.
0:31:14.420,0:31:20.150
There's lots of different explorations of the experience of death and dying and its value.
0:31:20.150,0:31:35.630
Ironically, I do believe that when we engage deeply with our fears around death and dying, we actually can live fuller lives.
0:31:37.060,0:31:42.740
It is the irony of something that we naturally feel inclined to push away.
0:31:43.460,0:31:49.160
I just think to normalize conversations around death and dying.
0:31:49.540,0:31:54.780
People have a similar kind of anxiety about talking to children about sex and sexuality.
0:31:55.180,0:32:01.220
By being humans, we become to be human through a sexual experience
0:32:01.220,0:32:04.620
and by being human, we're going to have to die as well.
0:32:04.620,0:32:10.100
These are very normal and sacred and ordinary parts of being human.
0:32:10.100,0:32:16.700
So, for me, it's about embracing the opportunities when they arise.
0:32:16.700,0:32:17.700
Do you want some water?
0:32:17.700,0:32:18.700
Yeah, I've got it.
0:32:18.700,0:32:22.180
You're going to keep that.
0:32:22.180,0:32:24.780
These conversations I had with Toby, they weren't contrived.
0:32:24.780,0:32:32.460
They just naturally came up in our relationship through ... in conversation.
0:32:32.860,0:32:39.780
I didn't push the situation and I just continued to respond to his curiosity.
0:32:39.780,0:32:47.930
Because I work with stories, my natural inclination was to have those conversations sometimes through picture books.
0:32:48.110,0:32:52.260
As you said before, I don't privilege one over the other.
0:32:52.260,0:32:56.780
I think they're both really valuable forms of storytelling and through telling stories.
0:32:57.640,0:33:02.660
After having that experience, I thought, wouldn't it be amazing if we all had those opportunities
0:33:03.420,0:33:08.210
to talk about death and dying, not necessarily just because someone we know or
0:33:08.340,0:33:14.980
ourselves are going actively through that process of dying, but just in everyday life.
0:33:15.140,0:33:21.190
I feel like there's such a lot of richness and opportunity to be had from these experiences.
0:33:21.410,0:33:22.540
I fully agree with you.
0:33:22.540,0:33:28.380
It's very life-affirming to actually speak about these things and become conscious of it.
0:33:28.580,0:33:34.380
And we shouldn't wait until we're sick and old with this conversation.
0:33:34.700,0:33:36.170
It's very important.
0:33:36.970,0:33:51.820
Peter, I never, in your music, I never consciously perceived that the topic of dying and death was in the forefront.
0:33:51.820,0:34:00.770
So this project has brought it to the surface or to the forefront also musically for you? Can you tell us a bit about that?
0:34:02.780,0:34:10.080
I guess it has, though I still feel like I haven't achieved that goal I had 15, 20 years ago
0:34:10.130,0:34:13.720
to make music that people could actually die with,
0:34:13.770,0:34:18.500
that you could play this music when people were in the process of passing away.
0:34:19.860,0:34:28.660
I've since had the experience of a couple of times of playing music to people who were in the very last stages of life.
0:34:29.020,0:34:31.630
And it's been very profound.
0:34:31.940,0:34:39.930
I may yet still create a piece of ... an album or some music for that specifically.
0:34:40.020,0:34:46.340
I think actually by doing this project, it's actually brought us into contact with
0:34:46.340,0:34:52.050
communities who commit ... The choir who sing to people.
0:34:53.340,0:35:02.070
I want to hear a bit more from you, Peter, about this because last June, I was at a conference in Vienna, a Reiki conference.
0:35:02.440,0:35:10.300
There was a very, very - not a Reiki person, a doctor - very, very impressive.
0:35:10.630,0:35:14.260
He actually documented the impact in the dying process.
0:35:14.260,0:35:20.860
And he even showed us videos exclusively and very dignified, very, very correctly.
0:35:20.860,0:35:26.460
He showed us video's of dying processes accompanied with music.
0:35:26.700,0:35:37.180
So I want you, Peter, to say when you were there, when you had the opportunity and how did you play?
0:35:37.180,0:35:40.060
Was it just improvisation?
0:35:40.060,0:35:44.380
Did you? What? And how was that for you?
0:35:44.380,0:35:50.260
I'd like you to expand on that just a little bit if you're willing to please.
0:35:53.040,0:35:56.510
Yeah, I think both times I used a ... I was just playing the flute
0:35:57.160,0:36:03.170
and it was totally improvised, just playing whatever, whatever comes.
0:36:03.460,0:36:10.550
So it seemed like a very, a lovely thing to do and I think I will do more of it.
0:36:11.220,0:36:18.230
I know there are many ... in America there are people who play harps to dying people
0:36:18.360,0:36:22.970
and that's quite a well-recognized thing called 'Music-Thanatology'.
0:36:24.090,0:36:27.260
There are other schools of thought around music.
0:36:27.260,0:36:33.110
But I think you can just go with your intuition and your feeling for whatever is appropriate at the time.
0:36:33.780,0:36:37.480
Obviously ... heavy metal wouldn't be my obvious choice.
0:36:38.140,0:36:41.200
Unless it was my brother, he was into heavy metal.
0:36:41.660,0:36:50.260
Well, actually, you know, it's funny you should say that because one of the things this doctor said ...
0:36:50.770,0:36:53.580
he had studied this for a long time and ....
0:36:55.570,0:37:02.520
he introduced it in a number of hospices and old-age homes and hospitals I don't know.
0:37:04.520,0:37:15.340
One of the things he said was, very often the tunes from childhood, they have the most profound effect on people.
0:37:15.340,0:37:20.110
So it can be a folk-song or a children's song for that matter.
0:37:21.140,0:37:24.370
Okay, I get it what you say about heavy metal,
0:37:24.500,0:37:28.660
but today the children are maybe not growing up anymore ...
0:37:29.090,0:37:35.080
with folk-songs and children songs in that charming way we all think of.
0:37:35.780,0:37:42.110
So who knows, maybe in generations to come, there will be, there will be more studies.
0:37:42.110,0:37:52.190
But certainly if that doctor was privy to our conversation now, he would very much encourage you Peter to expand on that.
0:37:52.590,0:38:00.700
That's ... after all, the dying process next to the birth process is probably the most important moment of our lives.
0:38:00.920,0:38:12.880
So, to have music in that process ... My wife had a little play box which she played before birth even to our children.
0:38:12.940,0:38:19.640
And it was present during birth recognizing how important that is.
0:38:20.260,0:38:26.930
Why shouldn't the same thing be true in the dying phase of our lives? Of course it must be.
0:38:27.570,0:38:34.340
I totally agree. And it goes back to what you, what you were saying, how sound is the last thing to go, they've studied.
0:38:35.570,0:38:41.460
I believe we ride out on the waves of vibration of music.
0:38:42.520,0:38:47.970
They've always thought, you know, heavenly angels are singing when you get to heaven.
0:38:48.220,0:38:50.250
I really feel like that's true.
0:38:50.310,0:38:59.680
And there's lots of ... the Hindu mythology springs to mind, but it's there and in other mythologies of other cultures as well,
0:38:59.870,0:39:08.140
that, you know, the universe started with the sound and in the Hindu mythology, that sounds is the sound Om.
0:39:08.820,0:39:11.920
But I'm thinking about Lloyd Canham as well.
0:39:12.300,0:39:18.060
Because of Covid, we did something quite back to front.
0:39:18.060,0:39:26.130
We often make recordings and albums of our material, but usually after we've performed that material for a while.
0:39:26.350,0:39:30.280
But with the 'Toby or not to be', we actually made the album first
0:39:30.400,0:39:36.570
and we approached an audio engineer, sound engineer here on the island who
0:39:37.220,0:39:45.620
had a wonderful reputation, had done all kinds of incredible audio engineering to work with us to record this album.
0:39:46.100,0:39:51.360
We didn't know when we asked him to work with us that he was in the process of dying.
0:39:51.900,0:39:56.510
So not only was it incredibly generous, because this was the last project that he ever did
0:39:56.820,0:40:06.380
with this collection of stories around death and dying, but it was really profound for him to work with that material in,
0:40:06.560,0:40:10.680
you know, the last few months of his life and one of the lovely things,
0:40:11.940,0:40:15.220
well not only was it lovely to share that material with Lloyd, but, you know,
0:40:15.240,0:40:19.420
in the later celebration of his life after he actually died,
0:40:19.490,0:40:25.300
we were actually able to go and share some of that material at his funeral. So ...
0:40:26.850,0:40:28.210
That's wonderful.
0:40:28.420,0:40:33.660
We are coming to the end of our conversation and, you know, you said 'celebration of life'.
0:40:34.810,0:40:42.480
And in fact, two months ago, I was invited to a celebration after a funeral.
0:40:42.980,0:40:52.900
The lady was buried two weeks earlier and it was her explicit wish that the people would meet for a celebration of life.
0:40:52.940,0:41:00.100
It was one of the most wonderful parties I had gone to in a long, long time.
0:41:00.100,0:41:04.200
And of course, music is always an important part in a celebration.
0:41:04.330,0:41:05.890
Oh, yes.
0:41:07.090,0:41:08.300
All right.
0:41:08.960,0:41:18.660
The last words of wisdom from you wonderful people towards the end of our conversation.
0:41:18.910,0:41:21.070
Live a happy life with lots of music.
0:41:21.180,0:41:22.810
(Laughter)
0:41:23.080,0:41:23.780
Yeah.
0:41:24.220,0:41:34.500
It's certainly wonderful to have a creative, professional relationship, our story and our song,
0:41:35.160,0:41:42.160
as well as a personal relationship, it gives a great richness to have a personal relationship.
0:41:42.160,0:41:42.980
Yeah.
0:41:43.530,0:41:44.640
... generally ....
0:41:45.060,0:41:48.590
(Laughter)
0:41:50.370,0:41:56.500
I find this what you just said so valuable and important because part of this talk show
0:41:56.500,0:42:02.000
is to inspire people and to show them maybe what's possible.
0:42:02.550,0:42:07.510
Sometimes I'm having very heavy topics, even like 'abuse'.
0:42:07.660,0:42:13.170
But at the end of the day - the topic ... 'death' for many people is a very heavy topic -
0:42:13.350,0:42:19.260
But at the end of the day, the life affirming and also the achievement affirming,
0:42:19.430,0:42:26.920
what wonderful things we have achieved, like you just said in your relationship, your creative relationship,
0:42:27.400,0:42:32.100
and it's - we can sense it, we the audience on this side - can sense
0:42:34.030,0:42:38.010
that the two of you are creating a very self-determined life for yourselves.
0:42:38.200,0:42:40.300
I congratulate you on that.
0:42:41.680,0:42:42.610
Great. Yeah. Thank you.
0:42:42.640,0:42:43.880
Yeah. We've been lucky.
0:42:44.000,0:42:45.360
We're so lucky.
0:42:45.480,0:42:46.280
Yeah.
0:42:47.080,0:42:52.450
I'm not sure luck has anything to do with it, but that's maybe the topic of another conversation.
0:42:53.380,0:42:56.730
It's counting your blessings and (laughs) yeah.
0:42:56.750,0:43:00.780
Yeah. Well, isn't there that lovely saying, isn't it, that:
0:43:01.690,0:43:08.360
All spiritual awakening is accidental and the purpose of life is to become more accident prone?
0:43:08.440,0:43:09.380
(Laughter)
0:43:09.400,0:43:10.710
I like that one.
0:43:11.870,0:43:16.050
Me too. And I think that's a wonderful closing word.
0:43:16.170,0:43:20.150
Thank you very much to the two of you for having joined me today.
0:43:20.380,0:43:23.830
I wish you a nice evening. My day is just starting.
0:43:24.380,0:43:27.440
Peter, Tanya. Bye-bye to the two of you.
0:43:27.820,0:43:30.040
Bye-bye. Thanks, René. See you.
0:43:30.040,0:43:31.380
You're welcome.
0:43:31.380,0:43:32.710
You're welcome. Bye-bye.
0:43:33.630,0:43:36.380
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for having watched.
0:43:36.380,0:43:39.270
I hope you will watch again in three weeks time.
0:43:39.270,0:43:42.430
And please remember to recommend us.
0:43:42.670,0:43:44.950
Subscribe. Bye-bye.
Arno Greter, Switzerland, 
