Fabulous Beast - an introduction to the company and its outlook

FABULOUS BEAST DANCE THEATRE
An introduction to the company, its outlook and way of working
Commissioned by Barbican for Flowerbed, 2005
by Manchán Magan

For the neophyte the Fabulous Beast world may seem intimidating. Certainly it is hard to find suitable parallels in our world. A performance can consist of tragedy, slapstick, opera, yoga, ballet, footlight revue and contemporary dance all moulded into a dynamic format which is tender, gruesome, raucous. In short it is a series of exquisitely posed cartoons built around a taut but multi-tangential narrative that shears through the cloak of convention to expose a frequently scabrous underbelly.
Finding oneself submitted to this animalistic honesty, this determination to express can be unsettling at first. There is a rawness here that is increasingly rare in our world of compromise and mediocrity. You can be sure that a Fabulous Beast performance will be as intimidating as it is entertaining.
Does that make it any clearer? I fear not. The performance is sort of like a composting chamber – the performers being insects and bacterial organisms that create nourishment from the dung heap of the human condition. The narrative extracts entertainment and insight from the extremes of our experience. Fabulous Beast frequently wallow in the unseemly aspects of the human psyche – revelling in the murk of our lives. It is gruesome, yet gripping. At its core there’s an honesty and a simplicity that, although shocking, is very reassuring in this sanitised world. It’s sort of a purgative; nourishment for the soul. At the risk of sounding pretentious, (something that would make any Fabulous Beast member gag involuntarily) the determination with which the company operates reminds me of a working party of, let’s say, dam-builders or reapers or turf-cutters - the simple, skilful timelessness of labourers from any era and any place.
Is that any clearer? Perhaps I should try breaking the performance into its constituent parts: themes explored, narrative style, language, characters, performing style and idiosyncrasies of the development process.
Let’s start with the themes. They tend to loiter around the areas of rage and fear, the wastelands in which sexual and spiritual ecstasy bleed into one another. There is often a tendency towards darkness, a focus on the veniality of society. The storylines are cut and pasted from tired old myths, classical literary sources or simply the imagination of the director/choreographer Michael Keegan Dolan. Their primary purpose seems to be as scalpels, which are then used to eviscerate a culture. Keegan Dolan carefully severs the tendons joining sex and violence, compassion and depravity, insanity and genius. As I say, it can be gory, but it is in the freshness, the new-minted ingenuity, with which these staid old themes are ripped apart and remoulded that makes one prepared to endure the, at times, unedifying spectacle being played out on stage. Storylines in a Fabulous Beast performance are so idiosyncratic and anarchic that they prove difficult to summarise; yet somehow, despite their contortions, they manage to knit the dance, theatre and song into a driving force that hurtles forward. Narration and dialogue are largely absent from early Fabulous Beast works – the later pieces use language in a playful, loose and irresponsible way; punctuating it with exclamations, obscenities and the odd clamorous bout of popular song. The savage simplicity of the words lend them an air which is both contemporary and ancient. It helps to anchor the far-fetched narrative in an almost credible world. Overall the stories can be read as quirky parables that constitute the internal logic of the Fabulous Beast mind. The company are multicultural, coming from four continents and speaking in a mix of global accents which heightens the universality of the themes explored. Most of them are veterans of previous Fabulous Beast shows - they return to the fold each time the call goes out. While their appearance and style may be too idiosyncratic to describe them all as traditional dancers, each displays a marked charisma and stamina, and possesses an array of skills that become apparent throughout the performance.
The characters that they play are invariably compromised. Most reveal a sense of thwarted ambition or festering hurt; lives starved of mercy, twisted by circumstance. Their unsavouriness would make for unpalatable theatre but for their sheer eccentricity – ranging from, a bi-polar nymphomaniac nurse, a catamite butcher, a Glaswegian Kendo dojo master, a bisexual Slovakian line-dancer, a naked pianist with a double life as a Chihuahua, a golf-obsessed patsy, a tiresome, wheelchairbound gimp and a father who lives up a telegraph pole. No matter how gruesome the character, each is expressed with such vitality and grace that one cannot fail to warm to them. Their movements have an integrity that gives even the most ugly actions a contorted elegance. At some point in the story each is given a chance to redeem him or herself through dance – as if the body is the ultimate and only source of healing. This notion that the body can heal itself through motion and breadth is carried through from the development process. The performers undergo hours of yoga discipline each day in Shawbrook studios, the converted milking parlour in the Irish midlands, which they use as their base. The practise unites the company, who vary in age and skills training as much as they do in nationality, and creates a harmony, which allows for a style of movement that is beyond the personal, that aspires towards the timelessness of folklore. It is this element perhaps most of all that keeps the audience rapt through the chicaning speedway of the narrative. There is an edginess, a trance-like focus from the performers that locks one to the stage. As the tone and style swerve unpredictably, one finds oneself in a state of heightened expectation. It’s almost oppressive. One dare not look away.
As a final note, it is worth looking at the issue of the term genius, which a number of reviewers have resorted to in describing the work of Fabulous Beast. They use it in a somewhat tentative way - ‘a brush against genius,’ ‘a bit of a genius.’ One wonders if it is appropriate. It is certainly true that creating something so profound, yet anarchic - such avant garde physical theatre - requires a gift that is beyond the norm, but it is perhaps unhelpful to burden it with such a lofty label. Fabulous Beast thrives on its insecurity, its fallibility – it does not appear to aim for the perfection that genius implies. Either way, the company director/choreographer Michael Keegan Dolan is clearly a brave new voice in European dance, able to excel in many different disciplines at the same time, to scramble them up and throw them back at our faces.
This brazen reinterpretation of Gautier's classic romantic ballet, Giselle, which Fabulous Beast is bringing to New Zealand is like nothing that has come out of Ireland before. It offers a perspective on contemporary Irish society that might leave you horrified or deeply moved, but one thing is certain, you will be riveted for the entire performance.

ALTERNATIVE ENDING FOR Dublin Festival:
It is precisely this reason that, despite all my earlier posturing, none of us has any idea really what to expect of James son of James until we have sat down and the lights have dimmed. This is a brand new work for the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival, The Barbican and Dance Touring Partnership, and as such it is a volatile entity that could very well tear up the rule book of what Fabulous Beast is all about and redefine it. Everything I’ve written might well be redundant . . .

Fabulous Beast - an overview of the Midlands Trilogy

Fabulous Beast - an overview of the Midlands Trilogy,
Commissioned by Barbican Centre for James Son of James Brochure December 2007
by Manchán Magan

Who are Fabulous Beast? They are a dance theatre company, which can mean anything from the play-thing of an ego-maniacal director, to a way of branding uneven work under a saleable name, or a haven of relative stability for wandering dancers. In the case of Fabulous Beast the dance theatre company is a way of being in the world, an ethos that infuses the minds and bodies of the members in the company. They are a community of diverse performers from five continents who are based all around the world, but who gather together in a converted cowshed in the Irish midlands to develop performances under the guidance of Michael Keegan-Dolan, a pure-hearted, fearless and visionary theatrical choreographer.
The work they produce is theatrical in that it is rich in dialogue and involves complex plots and subplots. The dance element of their work is two-fold: firstly, their performances involve fully choreographed dances, both skilfully arranged duets and occasional ensemble works, secondly the whole movement and staging of each production is choreographed as one large dance performance - whether the performers are acting, singing or clowning, they do so with the grace, intensity and integrity of physically-trained, body-aware performers. The meld of the two juxtaposing concepts of dance and theatre is more fully realised in Fabulous Beast’s work than in most dance theatre productions.
For the last five years the company has been working on the Midlands Trilogy, a series of works written by Michael Keegan Dolan in conjunction with the company. The trilogy is loosely set in the Irish midlands, and while the primary concern of all three productions are the strains and struggles of the human condition, a secondary theme running through them is the radical social upheaval being experienced in the dour, bog-covered Irish midlands as a result of new prosperity, foreign inward migration, shifting sexual mores, erosion of religion and increasing reliance on medicine. The trilogy treats these concerns as universal themes which underscore the primary stories being told. The works offer a bleak, though cathartic, take on the hypocrisy of modern society; yet there is always a hint of redemption, most apparently in James Son of James, this final instalment of the trilogy.
The first in the series was Giselle (2003), a brazen reinterpretation of Gautier's classic romantic ballet, set in a fictional town in the Irish midlands, in which the character of Hilarion takes on the role of Giselle’s mentally disturbed brother who literally treats her as a farm animal and Albrecht becomes a Bratislavan line-dancer. It's a darkly comic, anarchic tale of betrayal, abuse and disaster, cauterised by an impossibly beautiful final act involving androgynous Wilis dancing in a bogland setting. Moments of terrible depravity are leavened by occasional bouts of hilarious slapstick, seaside-postcard farce and a memorable Slovak-Italian version of an Irish ballad. Giselle offers a raw exposition of the harsh, inbred nature of rural life, which surprisingly, because of the beauty of the dance scenes, leaves one feeling sanctified - or at least somewhat less traumatised.
The second instalment of the Midlands Trilogy was the Bull (2005). It too was a co-commission by the Barbican International Theatre Events and the Dublin Theatre Festival. It involves a sensational and expletive-ridden retelling of the ancient Irish myth, An Táin Bó Cúailnge (The cattle raid of Cooley), written again by Michael Keegan-Dolan. This radically modernised version is played out in a ramshackle, roller-coaster spectacle of greed, deception and venality between two vying families: grasping, urban land developers versus traditional, stubborn farmers. It is again set in a fictitious midland village, which is contrasted with the booming metropolis nearby. Both families display the classic Irish obsession with land and it drives them and the rest of the unsavoury cast of deviants and ne’er-do-wells to a series of massacres. The violence and profanity is both in keeping with previous Fabulous Beast works and the style of the mythological source material. The themes of greed, abuse, violence and debauchery appear again. It is even more violent than Giselle, though again, sweetened by moments of great sensitivity.
It would be natural, having read the above, to be concerned about what awaits in this third and final instalment of the trilogy. Thankfully, it is a calmer, more tender piece. The glimpses of redemption revealed in the earlier works are more prominent. James Son of James, while occasionally caustic and hyperactive, and frequently uproarious, is a more sensitive piece, offering an almost compassionate view of society. This final work in the trilogy explores the parameters of true love and goodness; echoing themes that were touched upon in Fabulous Beast’s earlier Flowerbed (2000) piece (re-staged by the Barbican in 2006). The piece is in parts a musical, in that the sporadic use of popular song which played a minor role in the earlier works has been brought to the fore. James serves as both a great introduction to the work and mindset of the company, and a fitting conclusion to an exhilarating triumvirate of productions
One of the most interesting facets of the trilogy is the location in which it is set. While Dublin, the western seaboard and the north of Ireland have all been the settings for great works of theatre, poetry and literature, the Irish midlands have long been regarded as an artistic Siberia of lakes and boglands, ignored by everyone, apart from the novelist John McGahern. Keegan-Dolan, who’s father hails from the area and who now lives there himself skilfully uses it as a lens through which to examine both the changing nature of modern Ireland and the timeless yearning of the human soul. He and his company manage to incorporate the blocked physical energy of its people and the rhythmic harmony of their daily yoga and breathing (cut this, don't need it) practise to give a performance that is both brutal and beautiful.
In conclusion, a good way of regarding Fabulous Beast is as the Van Gogh of the dance world: bright, garish, brutal, honest - somewhat tortured - and with an intense central integrity. Their work has the vitality and immediacy of his brave, broad brushstrokes. Performances are moulded through improvisation, often focused on breath-work. Keegan-Dolan describes his dancers as energy-based rather than technique-based. The choreography is as pure and intense as mineral pigments poured straight from the tube. There is no artifice. The work is elemental and true, often unsavourily so. Those seeking the subtly and veneer of Manet or Matisse should look elsewhere, but if you’re after the edginess, integrity and unsullied purity that Van Gogh strived for, then this is the place to be.

Manchán Magan is an author and travel documentary maker.

MAD FOR THE ROAD - Clare People

Mad for the Road
From Urine-drinking to battling rabies, travel writer Mancháan Magan has lots of incredible stories to tell, writes Christine Breen.

‘I just want to express myself,’ saying Manchán Magan sitting across from me in Kiltumper on a perfectly blue autumn morning. We’re discussing writing in general and in particular his new book on India in the series of Manchán’s Travels published by Brandon in September. It is the morning after the night before when 15 members of the Clare People Book Club interviewed Manchán for a couple of hours. As one member said, ‘I could listen to him all night!’ I think he looks a little weary but he assures me he slept well. ‘Must be the wide walls of this old cottage. It feels like a cave.’ I tell him that’s exactly what we refer to it as, and many a visitor has slept well and long there. He is only the second writer the book group has had the good fortune of interviewing. I admit to him in the morning that I had been anxious, that often out group can be very vocal in their opinion and that rarely have we all agreed on a book. ‘Well I think they let me off easy then,’ he says with a self-deprecating smile that is part waife and part sage. He admitted that being interviewed by the group was intense but also stimulating. ‘It was invigorating,’ he says. ‘You usually know after half an hour what the interviewer is about. What angle they are coming in at. So this was fresh and latent with different energies, each from a different part. Like mind candy. They didn’t just ask me about my whacky past.’
It’s his whacky past or his whacky way of looking at the world that does grab everyone’s attention, especially interviewers. But we were a full hour into the interview the night before when somebody finally asked him, ‘How do you feel about urine-drinking now?’ It’s inevitable that this subject will come up as Manchán has made no secret of having used this ancient form of self-healing and he answers unabashedly.
‘I’m glad I’m open enough to it,’ he says. ‘it’s called ‘shivambu kalpa’ in India and has been a principle of ayurvedic medicine for 2,000 years.’ That’s the thing that is most striking about Manchán. It’s his way of looking at the world and his knowledge of it. I am reminded of Mark Twain’s An Innocent Abroad. He’s game for anything. He wants to experience as much of the world as possible and he is unafraid of it. If you’re happy to live inside your own head for weeks, even months at a time, and if you believe as he and the Hindus do that reality is an illusion, then there is no reason to be afraid.
The other striking thing about Manchán is his curious mix of ego and non-ego. As he says himself, he’s a bit of a go-between. He lives in the world but at times one does wonder is he of the world – I mean the world we ordinary folks live in. He’s built himself two houses – the original one, made of straw bale and plaster, needing to be replaced as it was cracking, as they do – and he now lives in the second one, with a grass roof and plenty of light surrounded by the 36,000 trees he has planted on his 10-acre stronghold in the midlands. You could spend an hour just talking about building construction and the environment. He nearly suffered a life-threatening disease, schistosomiasis, which he got from the blood flukes (nasty worms) and another time needed to find a quick remedy for rabies having been bitten for a rabid dog. You could spend another hour just on healthy traveling, healing and urine therapy. He’s written several books, done 30 television documentaries, and he’s not yet 40. Although he is happy enough to talk about himself and admits to being somewhat self-obsessed, he says he isn’t all that comfortable in social situations. Or, more accurately, he will retreat into his grassed roof abode in Westmeath and re-gather his energy. One thinks of a cheetah, admired for its exuberant agility but respectful of its need for rest after burning too much energy. The image of the cheetah has been likened to that of gifted children, and I imagine that was what Manchán was, or rather, still is.
No doubt about it, he has boundless energy. ‘Will there be another book?’ (I should have presumed the answer.) ‘Just finished the one on Africa, in fact,’ he says.’It’s the next book in the series, the third.’ It’s been 10 years since he was in India but even longer since he was in Africa. He explains that he kept diaries and they were the source of his material, as well as his memory. He believes he needed that much time and distance in order to write what he felt. ‘It’s a condensation of everything that happened to me. I wanted to write impressionistically. There are so many concepts that overwhelmed me at the time. SO many ideas in my head. It’s like finding a myth or a fable to express it, which is what I’ve done with the character of Tara in this last book.
And, I wanted to write, in a way, for the mainstream. Something that was easy to read. I wanted something on every page to engage with. I didn’t want to just write about what I saw in India, I wanted to get my feelings about it across.’
With so many ideas in his head, his projects are many, with his radio show ‘The big Adventure’ continuing on Monday nights, and presently filming the next series of ‘No Bearla’ which airs in January. He is currently writing a love story in Irish, but on the horizon he would very much like to take a group of teenagers to Africa and witness the experience of it through their eyes, believing that we adults are a bit too deadened to be trustworthy interpreters. He wants to work with young people because of their fresh, unadulterated take on things and is currently doing writing workshops with a group in the midlands.
There is no end in sight for this lad who is mad for the road as we say in these parts, but he’s staying put . . . for the moment.’
© C Breen/Clare People.

IN A WORLD GONE MAD - Sunday Tribune

IN A WORLD GONE MAD
Sunday Tribune, 2 Sept 2007
by Padraig Kenny.

Pioneering nomad or plain mad? Whatever people think of the globetrotting gaeilgeoir Manchán Magan, Padraig Kenny find it hard not to be impressed by his fearlessness and self-possession.
If you were to listen to other people's opinions, Manchan Magan is either an irritating intellectual twerp who is all "lentils and tweed" or the strident gaeilgeoir fascist of No Bearla with no regard for people's sensitivities. In private, however, Manchan Magan is a lot more personable and grounded than some people give him credit for.
Talking to him reminds you of the lost persona of his new travel book on his time in India. It's a story which details his "rescue" by his brother Ruan, who arrives with a camera to convince him that making a travel documentary for a fledgling Irish-language station would be a good idea. The documentary became the first of many critically acclaimed pieces for what was then Teililfis na Gaeilge, and an unlikely TV star was born.
As Magan sees it, Telifis na Gaeilge and the Irish language saved him. When we first encounter him in the book he is skirting the realms of insanity in a hut halfway up a mountain. Looking back now he realizes how important Ruán’s intervention was. ‘If that hadn’t come at that point I don’t know what would have happened. I was completely unemployable. All I had is what I call a useless degree in cretinhood. I was determined not to use it and not to get any other job.’
India was probably the final chapter in a personal trilogy which had taken him straight from the Leaving Cert to Africa, the Americas and finally to working in a leper station by day and dangerously descending into the self in his hut – where he transcribed ‘angelic messages’ and had the frightening ‘early stirrings of a messianic complex’ – by night.
But what becomes obvious is that he was different from the great mass of backpackers in the early to mid-90’s, a lot of whom were motivated more by personal vanity and a sense of being hip, rather than the urge to explore and understand other cultures.
‘It wasn’t a sense of wanderlust that sent me traveling, I was basically fleeing. The reason I went traveling initially was because I was just so disillusioned with life growing up in Donnybrook. And all these expectations of a mortgage and a nice job in some sort of consultancy just had no interest for me. I just couldn’t identify with any aspect of it.’
Others paid lip-service to this urge to escape the middle-class confines of society only to return to the job, the mortgage, the suit and tie – but Magan realised his own mortgage-free idyll by first building a straw bale house in Westmeath in 1997. This has since been replaced by another self-built house on a piece of land which he calls ‘my own little world.’
He describes his first year in college as ‘disillusioning’. Fully expecting the world to open up he found it restrictive and stifling. Fortunately it provided just the spur he needed to go traveling. “‘Severely disillusioned with life and depressed, I went to Africa. I saw things no kid ever should, getting so near death, facing appalling things, and I came out just thinking: ‘this is actually the most ecstatic moment of my life,’ so it informed everything, I thought, ‘if I’m not Afraid of death, then let’s just live life.’”
What he calls this ‘child man, Peter Pan sort of thing,’ of being open to experience led him down some very strange paths. On arriving in India he was given a book on urine-therapy, an essential component of ayuvedic medicine. Needless to say he took to it with gusto. He confesses in a low voice at one point that he is ‘afraid to admit to it it’ but this doesn’t stop him discussing its positive advantages with the kind of unaffected enthusiasm that has made his travelogues such compelling viewing.
He also describes a typically spontaneous moment in the book where he allowed a man put a wire into his ear, in a mesmeric feat that convinced him it was traveling into his brain. ‘Itls like when you’re faced with ice cubes in a foreign country, normal tourists will not drink the ice cubes. If you see someone wanting to put a wire into your brain in India you just say no. But I don’t.’ It makes for an interesting experience but probably a more dangerous one.’
His bookish appearance hides a tremendous fearlessness which has brought him to the edge on many occasions. All of this stems from a desire to oppose the ‘conditioning’ of society and a resistance to being labeled. He doesn’t care what people think of him, going so far as to present himself even further outside the mainstream when I bring up the subject of how close he came to insanity in India. He makes no excuses for his freeform moments of metaphysical introspection and postulating the kinds of theories about existence that might make others nervous.
‘I am mad. According to every convention set in the western world we’ve got to accept that I am mad. But if I choose to see that the Western world is mad, the conditioning and conventions of our society, that’s my choice. But it does mean that it put me at odds with the rest of the world so it makes me by definition mad.’
He believes offering himself up in such a way prevents him from going down the route of being a guru-like figure. For him it’s a mechanism, a means of making sure he resists both glib expressions of absolutism and becoming a tiresome, preaching, proselytizing type. ‘It’s so much better to present is as the ravings of a fool.’
He believes the line between really using your imagination and insanity is very thin. ‘There’s a different type of insanity, very often insanity in the west is considered as fear and deep depression. But one of the reasons I went to India was because I wanted to face the whole depression thing, and the whole fear we have of being alone and of trusting our minds. It was something I always wanted to do. I didn’t know what would happen, would I just go deep into a spiraling of negativity and depression or would I just come out the other side.’
He came out the other side and now seems to have a great degree of self-possession and a freedom from many of the tics and neuroses which can afflict other creative people. If anything the contradictions of being both a reclusive global traveler and an intellectual ready to push the boundaries of sanity have contributed to his fearlessness and his ability to immerse himself freely in any culture. So much so that it’s hard to imagine anyone else who would have had the nerve to continuously speak Irish in a Loyalist bar as he did in an episode of last year’s No Béarla.
On the surface he is calm and rational, and yet there is an urge to explore both physically and spiritually, which might express itself as unease in others. But there it is again, that sense of self-possession and self-knowledge, as he talks about this need ‘to see beyond the conditioning and have new horizons;, with a real sincerity that allows him to side-step the old backpacking ‘searching for myself’ clichés that can so easily become a default position.
As far as his preference for isolation, it seems to stem from an early age. He describes being a happy baby and remarks on his ‘good fortune’ to have been born with this tendency towards being positive. For a man who once described himself as an ‘isolated loser’ forever on the edge of things, he is remarkably well-balanced.
Neither was he a typically miserable teenager. ‘I went through my teenage years as an isolated outsider, but actually more or less confident and happy in that.’ Now, he feels well-qualified to comment on the ‘sad miserable existence’ of all those bachelors living on the sides of mountains in our past. He describes them as people who were hiding. Magan, on the other hand, at least has some contact with the outside world through the internet which he claims is ‘almost creating tiny utopias the whole time.’
‘In the past you had to be a citizen of Ireland, and so you had to share all the ideas that Irish people had, the interests like going to the pub and being interested in the latest hurling game, and now weirdos, isolated people on the margins of society, can form their own societies online. Even if it’s just people obsessed with Paul Auster novels and rare types of apple trees. They gel, and meet up if necessary, but nobody feels isolated anymore. And yet you don’t even need to, by definition, throw yourself into the dominant community outside your door.’
He sees this as being more selective and it appears he is now practicing what he preaches, as he describes himself ‘just taking different elements of what I want from the world and ignoring the rest, and basically living this almost hermit life in Westmeath where I have a huge lock on my gate and plant thousands of trees around me.’
But choosing to lock himself away from the outside world doesn’t mean he has to stop engaging it with it altogether. In fact he has a huge interest in Ireland and the latent promise of the Celtic Tiger years. ‘I’m really excited about our potential and how we might define ourselves in the future, rather than defining ourselves as a culture under hardship and repression.’
He is pragmatic in regard to our consumer culture, particularly after seeing the effects of Western consumerism in India. ‘Every country that went through hardship and suffering is going to have to go through a period of conspicuous spending. And it looks garish, the nouveau riche thing, but we need to be able to buy as much Coca Cola and as much bling as we want to for a while. Again it’s probably rosy-eyed and optimistic but I hope that it’s a natural pure stage and that something evolves beyond that.’
He hasn’t been traveling for two years and now writes every day. The next book will be about his travels in Africa. He has no television, just his books, his music and the internet. He’s hoping to do a follow up to No Béarla, and redress the ‘car crash television’ nature of the first series with something much more constructive. The idea of having such a unique special language as Irish, and the idea of throwing it way with ‘absolute foolishness’ is something which breaks his heart. ‘If as a nation we want to throw it away then we should come and say it openly and just stop the hypocrisy.’
Although he doesn’t say it outright he seems happy and content in his little world of his own. All the travel has been about celebrating cultures and changing his perspective. He was particularly taken with Indian spirituality and its emphasis on oneness and unity, and the idea of it’s liberating quality, which he says ‘allows you to free yourself from this small box, the limited view, the frame of the body that you’re given, back to this oneness and realizing that it’s all an illusion.’
But for all his received wisdom he still can’t bring himself to preach. ‘the one thing I’ve realised is that I’ve no idea what anyone should do.’ He laughs, ‘I barely have an idea of what I should do from day to day.’
Manchán’s Travels: a Journey through India (Brandon Books)
©Sunday Tribune