It’s not often that one gets invited to do an interview where one of your songs is linked up to Bible scripture. Two kind and bright souls, Carolyn from the US and Manasseh from India, conduct a weekly podcast called Treasure Vessels where they discuss artists’ songs from all over the world and from all walks of life eg agnostics, atheists, religious, you name it and somehow couple up Bible references to their compositions.
Not being a Christian myself, I find that intriguing. I thought Strange Things would be very appropriate to discuss, since it’s a very meaningful and hypnotic song about an out of body experience/meeting God after death. Carolyn and Manasseh duly came up with 10 references from the Bible. An hour-long interview over Google hangout ensued, and thus folks, is the result of my very meaty first recorded face-to-face interview in the history of the world. To top it off – at the end, Carolyn said a prayer for me which is truly heart-warming, I feel blessed. 🙂
The lovely Carolyn summarised the interview:
“We are so excited this week to have as our special guest the fabulous Sharliza Jelita from Singapore who is now residing in London! Sharliza’s excitement for life comes out in her music and her songs have an uplifting and fun appeal with a lot of deep thought wrapped up in much of her lyric writing. We had a very interesting conversation with her about life and death. She spoke how she and others believe we all need to prepare ourselves for death even in this life, and that we do so by meditation and prayer and getting outside of ourselves and communing with God. It’s really a good thing to communicate with the one who made and loves us! She spoke about our need to come to a point where we will stop trying to hide from God and to also realize that we have to accept who we really are, our true self. We have the choice in our lives to accept who we are with positivity or negativity. We had a really great time in our conversation with her over her piece entitled Strange Things.”
I have to say that I felt brave to be able to complete the interview and get positive feedback from it, because when you are thinking and philosophizing on the fly it’s very easy to say stupid things and judge yourself immediately after, which then knocks your confidence for answering the next question, leave things hanging etc. And of course Carolyn and Manasseh were clearly more knowledgeable and articulate on the topic than I am. Spirituality is a touchy subject! Exposing your thoughts about sensitive issues, being visibly open to others’ perspectives and viewpoints. And generally speaking, in England, religion is ‘uncool’. But hey, self-acceptance right? I heard that ‘When you judge someone, you don’t define them, you define yourself’.
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