July-August 1995

MUSIC

By Vicki Mackenzie

(Pearly Black with Tell Heaven in South Brisbane, posted on YouTube on June 3, 2009)

 

Pearly Black, rock singer, dresses and acts outrageously – and is a dedicated Dharma practitioner. Vicki Mackenzie talks to Pearly in Melbourne, Australia, where she lives and works, about how she brings Buddhism into her particular way of life.

Pearly Black is 28, a tall woman with green eyes and earrings dotted along her ear rims and one in her nose. On her inner wrist she has a tattoo of a rose and on her head she sports a new hair style that features a shaved head together with a short black fringe and pony tail. She got the idea, she says, from a comic book and cut it herself at home.

She’s also carrying a copy of the CD she’s just cut, called Madam Bones Brothel, whose lyrics you wouldn’t want your granny to listen to. She sings of things that inhabit the dark underbelly of life and taunt conventional niceties, but that isn’t really surprising when you learn that the Punk group The Sex Pistols has long been among her idols (along, it has to be said, with Johann Sebastian Bach). But for all that, Pearly’s voice is fabulous – strong, powerful, unequivocally musical. Her larynx is, she says, her proudest possession – it’s the biggest one her doctor has ever seen.

It’s midday and she’s just got up. Her work in the avant-garde Grunge pub and club scene around Melbourne gives her a reverse time schedule from most people, starting as she does around midnight and finishing at four in the morning. However, today as usual she has made offerings of water bowls to the buddhas on her altar and made sure the flowers were fresh. She is due to do a nyung-nä retreat soon because she says she feels the need for it.

“I prefer to top up my Dharma practice in one solid block rather than go to weekly teachings. It has more effect on me that way. I like to take it in, cook it up and see how it fits in,” she says.

After several years of serious “cooking” Pearly now has no problem reconciling her music scene with her Buddhism. “I used to keep it separate, because I felt I had to protect it, but now I’m thick-skinned enough to talk about it and live it out quite openly – and defend it fiercely if anyone criticizes,” she says.

At a basic level, she says, she keeps the fundamental Buddhist tenets. “I don’t think you can lead a decent human life if you don’t follow the precepts – you know, no lying, no stealing, no harming others. Honesty is also a pretty good Dharma intention. Generosity, of yourself, is another one. I find the more I give to the audience the more they give back to me, so the more I can give them. It goes back and forth. They’re the sort of guidelines you’ve got to keep to if you don’t want yourself or others to be miserable.”

On a more esoteric level, however, she finds her way-out music, and her chosen career, are not so different from tantra. “Tantra and rock ‘n roll go together. Tantra is called the lightning vehicle. Rock ‘n roll is also a thunder and lightning sort of thing. You’re dealing with the same energy. If the performer is worth his or her salt they’re moving molecules. A good singer is affecting people, is challenging them. That’s very similar to tantra.

“To me, lamas are like holy rock stars,” she continued. “When I hear and see a good rock ‘n roll singer I watch, listen, and want to emulate them. They spark off my creative process. It’s like guru devotion. When I see lamas, they’re also larger than life. They push your buttons. They make you see things differently. I love the wrathful practices in the Dharma. Mahakala – what a rock star! It’s the wrathful aspect that gives life its edge – its aliveness. It’s not so different from rock music.”

She gets the same sort of buzz when she exercises that vast larynx and produces what she calls her Samoan war-club voice.

“Music is my channel to bliss. Some days I feel that if I don’t sing I’ll perish. It can be that basic. And if I sing something wonderful, it’s not just a pleasant thing, it has a numinous feeling to it. But the music has to be saying something, has to be exploring something new. That’s crucial.”

Pearly met the Dharma nine years ago. “I heard my friend Miffy talking about it for months on end and decided to go and see what she was going on about. My first encounter was at the Chenrezig City Centre in Brisbane (now called Langri Tangpa Centre) where I was presented with a Shakyamuni Buddha visualization. I thought, ‘this is wonderful.’ I went to more groups and learnt more – mostly from sitting around talking with other group members over a cup of coffee afterward, and hearing what the Dharma meant to them.

“The first time I met a lama was at Chenrezig Institute in Eudlo, north of Brisbane. It must have been a big Dharma celebration because Lama Zopa Rinpoche was there together with Geshe Lama Konchog and Khejok Rinpoche. The whole day was bedazzling.”

After that, Pearly was hooked. “I spent the next one and a half years meditating twice a day and building up initiations. I hardly sang at all. What I had found was a way to exercise and discover the mind. I had always been intensely interested in psychology, and meditation gave me a hands-on way to get into the mind.”

Her thirst for spiritual nourishment was also being assuaged for the first time in her life. “As a child I had always been drawn to spiritual things but had never been allowed to explore them. My mother was a confirmed atheist due to her strong political beliefs, and religion was forbidden. But to me, spirituality always made a lot more sense than politics.

“So, having found the Dharma I went for it. There was nothing else I wanted to do more at the time. It was wonderful. I discovered that the more I meditated the more my mind began to clear. I started remembering events further and further back in my life. What was interesting was that I wouldn’t be looking at myself as a young child but I would be seeing my life from the perspective of that toddler. Once I drew the entire lay-out of the house I had lived in when I was two and asked my mother what and where it was. She was astonished that I could have known it.”

Pearly readily admits that Dharma totally changed her life. “For more than a year I gave up ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll.’ I dread to think what would have happened to me if I hadn’t hooked into Buddhism at that time. The Dharma has kept me on a beneficial track.”

Looking back she acknowledges that in her early Dharma days she suffered “conversion syndrome.”

“I was a bit lopsided, I did and talked about little else. Tibetan Buddhism is so religious, and I had been brought up strongly indoctrinated against religion, that I had to go into it completely. I couldn’t risk being influenced by my former life. I had found the Dharma and I had to protect it. Now Dharma is part of me and my life.”

As for the future, Pearly hopes one day to bring her music to Europe and the USA, where she thinks there will be a bigger, more appreciative audience.

“I feel I have to live this worldly stuff out, and then I’d dearly love to study the Dharma really intensely. I’d like it to be the main thing in my life. After I did the Kalachakra initiation with Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche in Melbourne recently I thought of shaving my head and becoming a nun. I was bowled over by the full extent of what the Dharma means – how huge and serious it really is. Then I thought becoming a nun was a bit extreme! I’ll keep doing my White Tara practice, and hopefully I’ll have time to fit it all in.”