Zen Tom Zen

So the challenge is to create a playlist of peaceful music you listen to when you meditate, stretch or need a brief escape from reality.

The trouble is songs are a story and the effect they have on us is how that story relates to our own.

One persons Iron Maiden may be another's Enya.

I like the irony of life, it's cruelness. There is a humour in being able to step outside of yourself and look at your predicament objectively and find that perfect movie soundtrack to fit the scene. My mum taught me that. It was a game we played to make each other laugh when life took a twist. Sometimes when the stresses of life build up, what calms me is to think of it as some badly constructed comedy and what music should I play to further entertain my audience.

So let me tell you a little about myself.

Before I go any further I should explain I live in France but I am not French.

France is mad. This nation has no concept of logical behaviour.

I also brought this place to renovate with little or no spoken French, seven years ago, and have lived here ever since so I am also mad.

‘Zen, Tom, Zen’, is a phrase a local guy used to say to me as he drove me around and helped me navigate my new world. He spoke no English but could see the signs of Britishness and frustration begin, normally it was a frothing in my mouth and steam bursting from my ears.

For him the phrase, ‘Zen, Tom, Zen’ was needed for that moment. It is that moment in ‘Das Boot’ when the red sirens are going off and the submarine is about to sink. It also helped that with my rudimentary grasp of the language it worked, I understood.

I mean I am a hopeless romantic. It was not supposed to be like this. How was this endeavour so difficult. I had always imagined it to be more like this.

City dweller, successful fella

Thought to himself, “Oops, I’ve got a lot of money”

Caught in a rat race, terminally

I’m a professional cynic but my heart’s not in it.

I’m paying the price of living life at the limit

Caught up in the century’s anxiety

Yes, it preys on him

He’s getting thin

Try the simple life.

***

It is almost seven years now living in ‘France Prefend’. That means deep France. The countryside’s countryside. Where nothing happens as it is supposed to happen. ‘France Prefend’ is the rabbit hole. It is the Bermuda Triangle of French existence. Forget WiFi, internet connection, Amazon deliveries or even post. France believes if you live here you have chosen to; so to live here and expect anything to work or function or happen in your first five years then you are an imbecile.

Sometimes when the world cannot give you the answers you need you need to embrace that chaos. That’s when it is time for these guys.

I can’t stop the way I feel

Things you do don’t seem real

Tell me what you’ve got in mind

‘Cause we’re running out of time

Won’t you ever set me free?

This waiting ‘round’s killing me

***

I sold up and moved to France because my father needed better healthcare, more attention and one last adventure. I talk a bit about him on another article here.

I have now been in France for 7 years

I joke that it is my own personal ‘Tribulation’.

I am only 43 but the world is starting to move very fast. Out here in the wilderness it can over take you. In seven years in the real world we have had Brexit, Trump, Boris, BLM, division, hate, tribalism. All my news comes via BBC Radio 4. It is the only English station I can pick up. So my world is now narrated to me with a middle class, slightly feminist slant on everything. I have started to enjoy 'The Archers'. I have no television and very shaky internet.

Sometimes I worry I am losing touch. I received a message this week saying that the language I was using on Facebook was incorrect and disrespectful. I was shocked, I mind my P’s and Q’s and speak with moderation. I reread my crimes and I saw nothing wrong. Subtext is now being added to plain speak. I am being labelled and pigeon holed without conversation and consent.

Then politically Macron is shaking his sabre at Boris across the channel and turning his attention to the expats like me with a sinister smile.

People want you to pick a side, when all you want to do is just your thing and live in peace.

‘Zen Tom Zen’ I can feel myself getting worked up again.

It is times like these I need to remember the world has always been crazy and no one reminds me better of that than Billy.

One leap forward, two leaps back

Will politics get me the sack?

Here comes the future and you can't run from it

If you've got a blacklist I want to be on it

***

The biggest thing at the moment is the bug.

We have just gone from curfew to our third lockdown. The gendarme (the local police) are walking around issuing tickets like it’s a new tax. I have been fined twice. Once for letting a local guy, out of work, do a day’s work in my garden. I live on eight acres of land so we can socially distance. The second one for having a bonfire after doing annual maintenance in the woods improving the natural habitat. A trip to dispose of the waste would have been ruled as non-essential.

I need an individual separate permit every time I leave the property.

I am now not allowed to travel over ten kilometres away from my property.

When you live in the middle of nowhere everything is over ten kilometres away. Feeding my thirty animals over the last year and coping with two lambing seasons has been difficult.

The shutters go up everywhere at nightfall and people cocoon themselves away.

It is like the world for half the day just disappears.

To calm me in these moments I turn to something ‘special’.

Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?

We danced and sang as the music played in any boomtown.

***

I miss home, my real home.

You see Dad passed away almost three years ago. I have a friend who comes out and looks after the animals and then I pop back to the UK for a week. I have not been able to do that for 18 months, due to travel restrictions.

I miss a decent sausage roll, proper bacon, a fry up.

Bangers and mash. A pint of Guinness. Seeing my brother and my nieces. Walking in the Jolly Sailor Public House. Eating Sushi with Andre in King’s Cross. Watching Football on the telly in English.

I even miss bad trains and crap weather.

When that happens I need to hear a bit of Martha.

Got nowhere to run

Got nowhere to hide

***

I live in a country that controls its population through paperwork and bureaucracy.

It took me two years to sell my father’s car even though I had a buyer immediately.

I needed an ownership certificate. I could only get an ownership certificate with a control technique, (the biannual service). I could not get the control technique without an ownership certificate. This paradox was allowed to continue because we missed one service due to my father’s ill health. With so many different departments refusing to talk to each other you find yourself in the land where the civil servant is king. Dictators have no power compared to the person that stamps the paper.

I have lived all over the world. This is the first country where when I phone someone official they hear my English accent, still speaking French and hang up. I have been lost in Africa and up mountains in South America and never experienced this.

At these moments I need to hear some of this.

Life's to short to make a mistake

Let's think of each other and hesitate

Young and impatient we may be

There's no need to act foolishly

***

All this stress can give you sleepless nights but a bit of Wilson can clear those thoughts and bring you back to sleep after listening to this.

I'm gonna wait till the stars come out

And see that twinkle in your eyes

I'm gonna wait till the midnight hour

That when my love begins to shine

***

I have a good life here but stress will find you if you let it. Sometimes the tunes that bring you Zen are not the ones you first think of. This Christmas my sheep escaped in to the neighbour’s fields. Climbing over the barbed wire fence to fetch them back I ripped my last pair of jeans on the barbed wire. Not a problem. Sit down have a think and there is a song out there.

***

This weekend has been tough. Easter is for family and being this far away alone is hard. Loneliness is extremely harmful and with lockdown stopping me visiting friends and Brexit effecting all my old phone and data tariffs it is easy to find yourself missing many things. Especially people that are not here or there. I heard in a film this year that if you stop talking about the people you have lost it is like losing them twice. So I don’t do that.

For my Mum I played this.

***

For my Dad I played this.

***

For my beautiful Malinois Belgium Shepherd, called Marla who I lost this summer I played this.

***

The truth of everything, is all our lives have their problems but my solution to them is to find a song that fits. It gives me that ‘Zen, Tom, Zen’ moment. I have a big decision to make soon. You should now see a pattern in the music and the song should tell you everything. It is an anthem for me at the moment.

What do you think I should do?

***

I can fit my life into a soundtrack and my calming songs change to fit the situation. Meditation and Zen calmness can be found in the strangest places but only if you look for it. Sometimes the maddest corners of our mind bring us the calmest moments.

This is my soundtrack.

What would be on yours?

Now France has driven me mad at times but I do have a love for the real France and the friends I have made here who have helped out a lost Englishman in the wilderness so I will share a last song with you that also brings me some calm. This one I dedicate to my French friends.

I deliberately did not name the songs in the article because some of you speed readers are missing the pleasure of absorbing an article. Each song here tells a story and in a way they are now also part of mine. Sometimes our stories should not be played on fast forward. It is why I moved to France to slow down and enjoy life moving a little slower.

I have other stories here. A real mixed bunch but some lovely short fiction stories. Blues and Twos has a setting like my home.

I am not going to ask you to leave a heart. If you enjoyed this piece, pick your favourite song and listen to it again. That would be the best reward you can give me.