Ep4 Turtle Genesis and Kibbutz - Galore Orr

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Automatically Transcribed With Podsqueeze

Luke 00:00:04  Welcome to episode four in studio today I have galore. I don't know your second name galore. It's actually two words. It's girl.

Galore 00:00:12  Girl in Hebrew means wave. So I was born by the sea and all means light.

Luke 00:00:18  Wave, light. That's nice. So what's your relationship with improvisation? Are you an improviser?

Galore 00:00:23  Well, my relationship to improvisation would be life. I suppose the best way to learn in my book is to, improvise. Maybe it's the most vulnerable place to be. Because if I'm going to play a song and I know how it goes, then the safety in that I know that I'm not going to make a fool of myself or something. That sounds kind of weird, and I feel that there's always something that wants to be expressed and not necessarily mine. When I'm able to drop everything and express what is there that really gives me that sense of liberation, and it's almost like I'm just listening. And then whatever emerges, emerges.

Luke 00:01:09  So I'm going to play your piece of music, okay? And I want you to tell me what makes you think of any kind of images that come to mind, any kind of emotions, that sort of thing.

Luke 00:01:18  Okay. Yeah. Don't overthink it. So that was completely made up. I didn't think about that at all. I thought that was really beautiful.

Galore 00:02:16  Actually, it was really moving. I could really feel it in my heart. You said don't overthink it. And so I closed my eyes. And as soon as you started playing, I was in the forest. In the jungle. All of a sudden it was full of life. And I could feel these beings flying around that I can't even see like little spirits. It felt like a journey through a jungle, almost like tumbling. You know, like Alice in Wonderland. Tumbling down the rabbit hole. But just into the jungle. There was a part where you played and kind of changed keys or whatever that was. And it made me feel like the possibilities that everything is possible. And until you finished it, it was like I came out of the jungle following the river down the waterfall boom into the water. And here we are out in the open again.

Luke 00:03:02  I see that there was a moment of transition between the jungle and another space. Yeah.

Galore 00:03:07  Yeah, definitely.

Luke 00:03:15  So I want you to tell me a story and you can make it up. Or if you have something that you really feel could benefit from the soundtrack, something that happened, you say.

Galore 00:03:26  Well, I have a direction quite inspired by what we played earlier, so it made me go quite cosmic. This should be interesting because I have no idea where it's going, but I know where it starts. It starts once upon a tree. There were many, many apples. This was many, many, many moons ago. And those apples on these trees were not fruit, but more like stars in the universe. This tree was the illustration of the beginning of time when the creators would travel the universe. They were just at the last stages of creating the world that we know, and they've created this turtle swimming across the universe. And so the children went to play on the turtle. The turtle was huge.

Galore 00:04:21  It was like a planet. And being the son and daughter of the creators, they played with the elements of creation water, light, blood. So in order to make this story fit this podcast in length, we'd have to go a few thousand years forward to where there is a whole community of humans living on this turtle as it swims through the universe. The goal of the chief of the village noticed this one guy who always sits outside by this tree. The tree of knowledge. So one Wendy went to him and says, why do you always sit here? Why don't you join in with us? I mean, we have all this sitting around the fire and singing together and celebrating life and speaking to the turtle. But you always sit under this tree. So the old man said to her, well, the reason I stay with the tree really is so it is protected. You see, if some people knew what knowledge this tree holds, they might want to use this knowledge in ways that might get in the way of the harmony of the community that you live in.

Galore 00:05:36  And she says, what do you mean, I don't understand? He said, well, once upon a tree, many, many moons ago, this place was created and this turtle that we're on was created to hold all the secrets of life from all the ends of the universe. So that's the reason why I sit with a tree. Make sure that nobody eats from the apple. And you know, I had a dream that in the future, we might find ourselves in a situation where we have eaten from the apple, from that tree of knowledge will be in danger of that knowledge taking over us, and everyone will carry this apple with this missing bit in it. Maybe that's just a dream. So go back to the fire and sing and know that I am well, and that the tree is well.

Luke 00:06:31  All right, music time then. Here we go. Yes. What were your thoughts on that?

Galore 00:09:38  I really enjoyed that. You just went for it. I felt myself searching for the part where the girl goes to the old man, and as it was concluded, I felt that in my original story that I said I never really concluded it.

Galore 00:09:51  It was left her with the old man and just. Yeah, and I felt that reflected in the in the music as well.

Luke 00:09:58  So what I was going for there is within the relationship between the girl and the old man. There's a at some point there's a kind of sadness, there's a sense of sacrifice because he has to be there all the time. And then I was trying to make it that that sense of sacrifice is actually okay, because he sees the bigger picture.

Galore 00:10:16  When you do see the bigger picture, then the the sacrifice is in order for their joy to be you sacrifice like for the children to be happy, and you have such joy out of them and you sacrifice for the bigger picture. I can choose not to do that and stay here, because I know what I'm holding for everybody else. And in that there's beauty in this joy.

Luke 00:10:38  Did that music work for you, or were you thinking something was missing within the narrative of the story? Did it feel like a good fit?

Galore 00:10:45  I did to some extent, and then it was an interesting transition.

Galore 00:10:48  What I felt was like the emerging of community. Yeah. On the Twitter, I thought that was quite clear to me, like it was all of a sudden. Life is starting to happen on it. And I could also see the moment of the questioning. What is going on?

Luke 00:11:04  Did you get the transition of time?

Galore 00:11:06  It's quite an expansive story. It's quite short time to to move from one thing to the next. But I did feel it. Yeah.

Luke 00:11:19  Do you have a story? Maybe that's something that happened to you or something that you've experienced?

Galore 00:11:23  Yeah, I do. It's something that I feel is significant in my life and is also significant in life. I grew up in a kibbutz in Israel. Kibbutz is a community. Everyone gives according to the means and receives according to their needs. When I was four, I moved to another kibbutz on my mom's side. Her grandparents built the place. One of the most striking memories that I have is grown up in a kibbutz. Nobody really owns the land.

Galore 00:11:52  It's hard to convey that sense of freedom and empowerment that comes from experiencing that, that nobody owns the land. And today, where the world needs healing and thinking about creating something like that, that is like a global healing village where people can live in and really live to create that relationship with the land, to bring healing, to bring a really good vibration. You can then share it with other people. There's four generations right there. The Native Americans, they say that when you do something, you do it for the seven generations forward. So when I was standing there and seeing four generations and looking at my granddad that built the place, I was thinking, wow, it's not that far to think about the seven generations and how quickly we can create a reality that is is a complete reality for our children.

Luke 00:12:40  How does that work in music? Because I like to have some sort of progression.

Galore 00:12:43  If I try to go to the very simple form of that, it's a very innocent young man enjoying the land and then going out into the world, and then it gets busy and all sorts of things in the world and the world and the world.

Galore 00:12:58  And then there's a real calling and a real pull to come back to the land, to come back to that real connection, to come back to family, to community, to taking care to generations living together, old people with the young people. Everything works like that when it's community. So in a way, it's the joy of being born into that situation.

Luke 00:16:53  Yeah. So what do you think of that?

Galore 00:16:54  I love the way that you do that. As you began playing, I remembered how I used to go for walks on the kibbutz and go in the fields. It's out in the countryside in Upper Galilee, in north of Israel. Very fertile. Sometimes they, the diggers, would work on the land, and I would just look at them for four hours. You know, as a kid. And the smell of the earth being dug out and these kind of sensations has just been out in nature. And how beautiful that is.

Luke 00:17:21  The sense of something being constructed. Did you get that?

Galore 00:17:25  At the beginning, I felt the innocence, and then I felt this movement into the kind of busy busyness going on and then the kind of slowing right down.

Galore 00:17:33  I felt that you were getting to the part of the inspiration to draw in something that is calling.

Luke 00:17:40  I'm glad you got that sense of innocence. That's what I was thinking of to start with.

Galore 00:17:44  Totally.

Luke 00:17:44  Yeah. And then the pull ideas, the kind of that descending pattern of notes, like a splash of water. Right. So like a rock going into water. But you imagine that backwards. So all of those droplets, they will go into one spot implosion. I wanted to portray that with the descending pattern. I got the.

Galore 00:18:05  Image of like a vein of inspiration from the soul kind of thing.

Luke 00:18:09  And this thing is like inherently chaotic, but it finds its purpose. And it's interesting having a sense of utopia, a vision of a nice place. But that isn't cheesy. The way you use the major chords and things, I use them. You do it in a way that hasn't been done before hundreds of times, maybe adding a ninth or mixing it up a bit so that you don't get this sense of cheese.

Luke 00:18:39  One last story. Maybe you could tell me about one of your adventures.

Galore 00:18:43  My recent adventure was I went on a Vision Quest. Vision quest is a Native American tradition family of people that hold the space for you and the ceremony sweat lodge. And then you go off to your spot somewhere, and then you have your prayer ties that you have prepared beforehand. You put these on a string around the perimeter where you're going to stay. This was last year. We had a heatwave. I think it was August or something. It was really hot, unusually hot for England. I discovered the day before going on to my spot that I've got Covid. I was just laying on the grass. I was thinking, oh, it's really hard. It's just really hot. Oh God, I've got a fever. You know, I just realized that I was delirious, so I ended up sleeping that night in the tent. But the following day I came early in the morning to the ceremony, then went to my place on the vision quest because I thought, well, if I've got Covid, I might as well just lay down anyway.

Galore 00:19:39  So I was quite delirious. So I took some water with me, because traditionally you don't have any water or food for the four days, and this is just time to spend with your self and nature to receive this kind of guidance. That comes because when do we ever stop?

Luke 00:19:55  So can you tell me a bit about what different kind of emotions you went through? I mean.

Galore 00:19:59  Not to have food for four days, especially not have water for days. That's huge. I could do without food. But water, that's a whole nother thing. But I could not begin to describe to you the boredom that plays just to deal with that. You know, as I had fever and it was aching my body, it was really challenging in that way. So you're just going through that challenge and going through being alone and just like, how long is it going to take? How will time pass? Just just connect with my breath and meditate and then just really just be present. The berries that I couldn't eat because they were out of my perimeter and I can't, but I could see them.

Galore 00:20:40  Raspberries. Very beautiful, very tempting, but just to be. It's a huge challenges to be.

Luke 00:20:46  And did you find there was a point of letting go?

Galore 00:20:49  Yeah for sure. Because what good is it for me to complain to myself about my situation and just realize, okay, what do I have? And somehow it gets me to sink deeper and deeper into myself and to be nourished by that. Somehow it's hard to explain, actually. And of course, there's the the time of where they come and pick you up. It's time to go. And you take your stuff, you take everything and you walk and then be received back into the village, if you like. And to feel that you're really needed here and that you're really valued and the care that goes into people when you come back. And again, that brings the emphasis of family, that coming back to community. And then when I go back, I was felt right as rain, you know.

Speaker 3 00:24:54  It's cheeky. Yeah.

Galore 00:24:56  I really challenged you today.

Galore 00:24:58  Yeah.

Luke 00:24:59  So what did you think of that?

Galore 00:25:00  When one word that came to me was, surrender. And I noticed in your plane, you know, it was quite dramatic at some point, and it really touched on some places where there is that, you know, this kind of internal battle or something like that. And as you were swirling down the, the scale, it reminded me of when the day end, it gets darker and darker and you think, come on, it's nighttime, it's not yet. It takes forever. And then waking up in the morning, the last day, I remember the mornings coming and I'm like, I got that feeling of swirling down to the scale of this landing from this, this journey. As we're walking back.

Luke 00:25:41  I tried to get that sense of, like, welcoming and acceptance into this community with a new purpose. And then I tried to get the discomfort before that and then the gradual self-acceptance, if you like.

Galore 00:25:53  In hindsight, after hearing you play, it made me look at how I expressed my experience because I had a lot of like, physical discomfort.

Galore 00:26:03  Like I said, I think when I got there, my body was aching, like I've already been there for days. So when you played it, I was feeling this, these kind of subtle dissonances, which was how I was feeling for long, quite a bit. At the time. You played quite dramatic parts of the maybe in a battle kind of thing, which I felt some of it describes it, but mostly it's quite subdued in a way. In my experience, it's just a bit dissonant.

Luke 00:26:32  Yeah, I think we'll call it a day, though. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's been very insightful.

Galore 00:26:37  I love your interpretations. Well, I enjoyed it very much. It's not something I do every day. I thank you for inviting me.

Luke 00:26:44  Join us next week for another episode of Impro Pod. Thanks for listening.