Imagination & Goa Gill

Baga Beach, Goa India - 14 Nov 2010

I had the thought today that sometimes it's the imagination we carry with us that makes our travel experience. How we perceive our journey is as much about our inner life as the outer phenomena we move through.

A great storm passed through this afternoon and somehow the incredible dark skies, enormous bolts of lightening and crashing thunder made it easy to imagine a different time. I felt myself not in the modern India of IT and package tourism but in the more mysterious East I've always loved the idea of. Listening to the  warm tropical rain against the window I could imagine Fisherman of long ago coming back to shore hoping to beat the storm or the feelings of Portuguese Soldiers looking out from their forts watching the first Monsoon storms of the year coming.

Perhaps that's why people like history so much. You can live, at least in your mind, in a place that seems far simpler, more interesting or romantic than where you actually find yourself. I'd never understood the attraction before.

For now the present is quite beautiful. Walking to the beach tonight I saw a young Indian man practising a martial art on the roof of a building site by the beach. He was silhouetted agains the faintest hint of the moon behind the clouds and with the backdrop of palm trees and the ocean it had a surreal quality about it. As if David Lynch was doing a version of Karate Kid.

I bought some Goan Trance music yesterday. The whole art-form was apparently almost single handedly invented by a guy who came to be know as Goa Gill. He was a San Francisco Hippie in the 60's who came here in the late 60's and became a Sadhu (one of the Indian Holy Men who wander around the landscape seeking enlightenment mostly by smoking gigantic quantities of pot). By the sounds of his wikipedia entry he pioneered a form of sampling in the 70's  by recording portions of records (the instrumental parts) onto tapes and playing the cassettes back. He and his friends began playing the music through PA's on the beach pretty much starting the electronic dance / rave movement. He's still getting around the world now running dance parties in different countries. His philosophy is that dancing in a tribal environment is a religious ceremony and he creates hi music accordingly. He sounds like a cool cat and I can't believe I pretty much missed this whole phenomenon. Anyway I got some of his CD's and I'm digging them. Google him if your interested.