Wallaki

Wallaki: "The Follower of the Sun"

There are many moments in my life which stand out as though they slowed down and got more colorful as they were deposited in my life's memory bank.

One was the time i watched a total eclipse of the sun through a piece of film sitting on my daddy's shoulders as we stood in a crowd of people outside my acting class in Long Beach, California. (I was playing the coroner in wizard of oz). I remember feeling like i had made friends with the sun that day.

My mother is a self-proclaimed sun-worshipper. She grew up in South America and the tropics and is so addicted to palm trees she cries when they are not around. When we lived in Germany and Switzerland she would dress my sister and I in little hawaiian skirts, turn on every lamp she could find, crank up the heat, and blast latin dance music. Party. (Love this woman)... One of my first movie watching memories is when she showed us kids "Endless Summer" and i remember thinking how happy my mother would be if once the sun set, it just bounced back into the sky and starting arcing the other way.

Hence, the daughter of sun-worshippers... i too follow the sun.

Last year i came to Indonesia for the first time after a lovely divorce not knowing what to expect but entering with arms and heart wide open and by some divinity i ended up at Togat Nusa Retreat on Pitojet Island in the Mentawais.
My father, my ex-husband and my then-current roommates are all musicians... so i felt very happy to arrive on the island and see a guy strumming a guitar.

It just so happened that Wallaki was staying on the island too.

Fast forward one year and his album "Follower of the Sun" has been released and is getting play time on Indo radio.... I had the privilege of hearing the mastered copy before the sleeves were even printed and I got to experience one of these slowed-down, hyper-color memory bank deposit moments that week as Wallaki and I sat on the island under a driftwood bungalow roof and co-wrote a song called "You Can Never Go Too Slow"...

At this moment in time, I am sitting in Bali sunshine, listening to Wallaki's Bali Flow.

the islands took my heart and soul.

They did.
I feel so infatuated with the islands of Indonesia.
(for me... it has mainly been with the Mentawai Islands) - but all Indonesian culture moves me... the language, the food, the culture, the people, and the symbolism i seem to find in everything.
But it's just the vibe when you are here... this "Jam Karet" or "Rubber Time".... this easy island vibe where i find that people are so much further evolved in their view of "time" then we are in the western world.
Yes... i believe it to be more evolved.
To be ABLE to move slowly and feel each moment instead of releasing a stretched rubber band in the morning and sling shotting through the day. No. Here, time is always bending, flowing and taking in each ray of the sun and somehow EWO. Everything Works Out.

free wheelin'
sunshine stealin'
spirit freein'
now we're believin'
and all the things that took their time.
they took a while, now i'll take mine.

When Wallaki and i met, we immediately bonded, as music loving, sky watching Aries sun-worshippers.

He lives "out there" - flying beside the sun... drinking in the synchronectar, making friends with the spirits in the clouds and the people walking beneath them which makes his unique and intriguing as a musician in the saturated industry.

His enthusiasm for the Indonesian culture and language echoes mine - or rather, mine echoes his- and I appreciate his music on such a personal level, in that i live on these islands - which are his muses, and we got to write music together...
But what i love the most, is his lyricism.
The way he paints articulate, colorful pictures, sewing them together with strings of words that i can smell and taste...
His poetic lyrics remind me of a combo of Colin Dieden & Jack Johnson.

i LOVE words.

I have been accused of using too many words.
I have been encouraged to use word economy.
But my love for words is what brought me to where i am.

In Bali.
In a perfect moment of peace as Wallaki's Follower of The Sun plays...
The beautiful Suara Alam (which means "the sound of the atmosphere") is playing through my speakers and summing up my vibe pretty perfectly at this moment in time...psh. time... whatever THAT shit is.

Maybe I fell into the Bali Flow without even knowing it.

I followed the sun to this moment and i encourage everyone to do the same.

As Khalil Gibran says "You see but your shadow when you turn your back to the sun" - so face the sun, infuse your soul with light & let music like this be the soundtrack to your journey.
- phoenix kaivalya