Cellist’s music helps soothe lost souls
Cellist Morag Northey has a simple message and advice for people who have lost hope in their lives. Walk on. “Because that’s the only way I’ve gotten my way out of stuff. To put one foot forward and then the next. You do that with hope. You hope for a better future. You hope for something beautiful,” she says.
When the chips are down, move one foot forward with a goal in mind and walk towards that. “One foot and the next. One foot and the next. I’m literally trying to use my cello as an icon for one foot and the next and hopefully people will learn about it, buy into it and remember it. It goes pretty deep for me all this stuff.”
Northey is on a mission, using her cello and her voice as a sacred instrument to help people reach into the depth’s of their souls for healing.
It’s her Together Calgary Together World Walk On Project, which really had its genesis three years ago when Northey began a series of meditative lunch hours for people at the downtown St. Mary’s Cathedral where she improvised with her voice and her instrument to create a sacred space for them so they could reflect on their lives and the world.
“Each year I choose a theme I really believe in and it reflects also what I’m personally thinking about and where I’m at,” says Northey. “It’s just to offer something to people where they can spend their hour and just consider. They don’t have to. There are no rules. That is really important to me.
“Everything I do is completely inclusive. All ages. No rules. All religions and no faith. I belong to everyone and everything. I don’t belong to one sole thing myself and I think that is powerful unto itself that I can be completely open.”
The Cathedral experience will run during the lunch hour every Monday until April 14.
Northey says the Cathedral offers a beautiful place for acous- tics as soundwaves are healing for people. It’s a point in time when they can get away from their hectic and busy lifestyles and just ‘be’ for a period of time.
The theme of the series in its first year was Listen. Last year, it was Forgiveness. This year, it’s Hope.
“What a fantastic theme to be working with,” says Northey.
The series covers the spiritual journeys many people have in their lives. From the cold, dark winter to the hope of life, warmth and light in the spring.
“People are depressed in Calgary. This is a high depression time because of the cold and the dark and the long days,” she says.
“I want to help people through the dark, cold time. We want spring so desperately but we don’t have it yet. That’s a time I can be most helpful.”
At the end of last year, she had about 300 people taking in her Cathedral time. She always starts those sessions with her own personal meditation to get herself out of the way. Then she embarks on a spiritual journey that is “out- side the box” as she improvises with her voice and her cello.
“I am inspired. I have melodies come into my head. I’ll look at a person and start playing a melody. I don’t know where it comes from,” she says.
Her Together Calgary Together World Walk On Project has now gone beyond the Cathedral. She has also brought the project to the outdoors with full moon meditations at Fish Creek Provincial Park.
“It’s to get outside. To get together and to embrace a natural phenomenon that is hopeful,” says Northey. “The moon is known as the holder and the giver and the inspirer of dreams. And full moon is wholeness. The full moon represents new beginnings. Letting go of the old that you no longer need or require to hold you back. Embracing the new. Starting fresh. I think it’s really poetic that the moon is considered a luminary in our world and yet it’s the sun’s light that the moon shines down upon us.”
Northey’s ambition is to go beyond Calgary with her project, to take her cello to important places where the message of Walk On is needed. That goes beyond Canada’s borders as well.
For example, she’s taking her cello in the fall along the El Camino trail in Spain where pilgrims for centuries have undertaken spiritual journeys.
“I want to stand for something. Clearly. I want to stand for peace. I want to stand for community. I want to stand for walking on,” says Northey.