Video Stories: One Way Ticket

The video for One Way Ticket was the first proper music video we ever made. It was Kate who put it all together. The song and album had come out at the beginning of 2006 but the video wasn't made until September 2010. Although we had ideas for doing all this stuff ourselves for many years it wasn't possible until that time since we never had the resources to make a proper music video before this point. We were a month away from leaving for continental Europe and the start of the SoulJahm journey and in those years between 2007 and 2010 it felt like everything was rapidly shifting in our world. It felt like the end of one era and the dawning of a new one. We felt very upbeat but it was also an unsettling period with lots to navigate, although it very much felt as if it was happening to us and all we had to do was hang on for the ride. Most of the footage from the video was made up of random home made and travel clips - Edinburgh, North Berwick, London, Barcelona and Berlin. The only parts we filmed specifically for the video were the shots of me around Edinburgh High Street. We included the people closest to us during that time as a kind of memento of those times since we were aware everything was about to change.

The parts where I am doing strange movements around our flat is not just me messing about and being silly. This actually went on night after night for me during those years and in attempting to express our life and what we were about I felt we should put that in there. Anybody who got close to us and spent any considerable time with us would witness this so why not put it out there? Afterall, it was a real thing and it was happening. The first time I experienced this kind of movement from within was around the time my mum died in 2007. One night in bed energy suddenly rushed through my body, from the tailbone area right up my spine and it had such a force it was shaking my whole body in the bed. Kate was a little concerned but I reassured her it was fine. I instinctively knew to go with it and let it do its thing. From then on it was almost a daily occurrence for me to have spontaneous movements. This was all part of the spontaneous Kundalini Awakening which had come out of nowhere at the start of 2007. Sometimes I'd spontaneously dance around the room, sometimes I'd hold my body in strange postures, sometimes I'd do what they call "mudras" in Indian sanskrit. My hands would spontaneously adopt these mudras yet I had no prior knowledge of them, had never studied any spiritual practices. As I did all this, I could feel the energy flowing more freely around my body. Similar to the way a current flows around a circuit board. These movements were all about loosening up my body from the tensions created by the society, the artificial, man-made world we live in and realigning the body to its natural rhythm, in tune with nature and everything non man-made. In the years 2008 to 2009, the apartment we stayed in had a bit more space so I was able to dance/move around the room more freely and night after night I would literally "watch" myself doing this. I had no idea how my body would move next, my job was simply to get out the way and go with the flow. So one day we decided to film it for the record, so to speak. It was this footage which made it into the One Way Ticket video.

I didn't care if it made me look crazy. It was real. It was happening. Why deny it? Shouldn't we know more about these things? Shouldn't we get this spiritual stuff out into the open and allow people to see it is part of life? As normal as any other part of life. I couldn't hide it from anybody who got close to me and lived with me for any prolonged period so we may as well show it. Those who connected with it and saw it for what it was would be more likely to be the right people for us, those who were put off were obviously not.

So, to sum it up, I see this video as kind of a marker of where the old life began to crumble for a new, more spiritual way of living.