Excuse Me While I Kiss The Sky!

  Categorised under: Musings, Uncategorized

The following extract is from my book-in- progress!
This is a commitment to continue writing.

Excuse me while I kiss the sky! Jimi Hendrix

1970 Great Yarmouth, The Hippodrome. The Flying Olsens

The song expresses it all. I surge upwards to fly into the blue void, so pure, so true and free. I fly in my dreams. I soar above and away from the ghosts, apparitions and monsters in my dream world that trap and taunt me. I speak the magic words and in an instant I am transported on invisible wings to the safety of the sky.

My mission in 1969 was to abandon all other dreams and goals in order to ‘Kiss the Sky’. I was inspired by Jimi Hendrix and felt a kinship with him and his search for the lost chord. He had a mission to shift his audience’s consciousness through his music and to raise their vibrations- and he did. His life ended early as he pursued his ideal relentlessly. I too tripped the light fantastic in my dance with the Muses. I trained my body and mind relentlessly to become another being, a being that could experience flight.

1970 I remember…

There is a potent silence. I breathe into a second of suspended time. I stand poised, I am ready to take hold of the flying trapeze bar and on the command to leap off the pedestal and slice through the air in poetic, precise motion. The air speeds past my ears. I see my body in motion 50 feet above the ground in the spotlight. The sequins reflect the light. I am a collection of hard trained muscle, a flying missile intent on my target. There is the sound of wind and like a bird in flight, I purposefully arch my back at the lowest point of the swing and then propel my legs forwards to reach higher and become lighter in the tempo of the momentum of the pendulum motion. Once more to pike my legs before breaking back with determined force which allows me to propel myself upwards and off the bar into a tuck of a somersault at high speed in the weightless moment. I exist in an altered state of consciousness on another dimension. I transcend time and all mundane reality. I am transformed into an awe-inspiring sight. I am a vision of beauty in motion. I am a flyer; I kiss the sky! And surrender to the arms of my catcher.

I return from catcher to bar to pedestal. I unravel the trick. The return is as dramatic and skilful and requires as much concentration and strength. Once more my body arches back in preparation for the lurch onto the pedestal and at the precise moment I let go of the trapeze bar and spring like a cat onto the narrow wooden plank. I turn towards the crowds and lift my arm above my head and receive the applause. I welcome this high point at the end of an acrobatic feat that took less than a minute to complete.

I am enlightened, I transcend time and space. I arrive at an apex that makes everything else look bland and ordinary in comparison.

…and once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you long to return…

It seemed unattainable; flight. In those days when I trained as a flying trapeze artist in 1969 it was a specialised art. You could manage to get to the level of skill that enabled you to go from board to bar to catcher and back again and not truly fly. It was essential for a combination of factors to harmonise in order to experience flying. Besides being fit and prepared for flight, you needed to be alert and psychologically clear. You had to be poised like a panther and ready to leap off the pedestal at the precise second in synch with the catcher’s swing. Your timing determined the outcome. If you were a millisecond out you would be in for a bumpy and painful ride. When your timing was ‘out’ flying became an effort and a feat of concentration and adjustments in order to survive without falling into the net.

Flying is a metaphor I often use to describe the spiritual journey. I experienced the reality in my body daily over a period of 3 years. It changed my mind patterns forever.