Collinsville Gong Show

Spent an hour Friday night at the Collinsville Yoga Center, lying on my back with lights dimmed and incense in the air, listening to the “planetary gongs,” bells, and Tibetan singing bowls of musicians styled “Himalayan Voices.”  The metallic vibration of several gongs resonated through the room, filled it.  Wave after wave of sound crashed over me.  You might think the volume would awaken you, but it sent me into a state of half consciousness on the far frontier of sleep.  I felt myself slowly sinking in a deep ocean of sound as the metal discs were “bombilating,” as Dylan Thomas once described the noise of a gong.  Near the end, several bowls were struck in close succession, their pitches harmonizing like a chorus of voices.  I absorbed their humming in my fingers and between my ears until I felt like a human tuning fork.  When the last sound slowly faded, I found my usually tense body strangely rubbery, and my mind clear.