I was eighteen. Second year at Edinburgh uni. Me and my friend Catherine had booked Thailand for the summer, all set, tickets paid, peak excitement. Last minute she pulled out due to funding.
No refund was possible, so I had two options: lose the money or go alone.
I went alone.
This was pre-mobile phones. Pre-proper internet. I had a Lonely Planet under my arm and an MP3 player with two albums on it: Moby and a Massive Attack record. That was it for six weeks (it was a simpler time).
Fresh from a tiny Irish village, two years living Edinburgh, and suddenly I was getting off a plane in Bangkok by myself. The heat hit first, then the smell, then everything else. Complete sensory overload. Walking daydream.
Six weeks. Chiang Mai in the north, hikes through the hills, all the way down to the islands for the early full moon parties before they got commercial. Temples. Trains through paddy fields with Moby on loop, feeling completely out of my body, watching the world go past and feeling like I'd stepped sideways into a different spiritual frequency entirely. Different age. Different self.
Then on the last day, my locker got broken into. All my money and one passport gone (thank fuck I have dual nationality).
I cobbled together taxi fare from Thai friends, got to the airport, and then remembered the departure tax. Couldn't leave the country without paying it. With no money, no phone and no easy way to contact anyone, i was completely disconnected from the world.
So I sat down in the airport and cried glamorously.
A man came over. Didn't say much. Asked what I needed and I told him the story. He opened his suitcase and it was full of cash. I remember thinking this guy is definitely an international drug dealer or an arms dealer or something.
He handed me what I needed plus extra and told me to go past security, find the nearest champagne bar, and buy everyone a drink.
I asked him his name. Who do I thank?
He said: "I'm nobody."
And here's the part that still gives me chills. I had been singing Elvis in my head all day, in particular Devil In Disguise. As he walked away he turned around and sang the line back at me. The exact line.
I'm the devil in disguise.
Then he was gone.
I still don't know if he was real.
That trip completely changed me but I realize that this experience was not unique to me whatsoever. Walking the same hippie trail every backpacker walks, having the same awakening every backpacker has, dancing in the same temples, taking the same trains, listening to the same albums on loop.
All of us copies of copies of the people before us, having our own version of the same spiritual reset. I recently returned to Thailand, again on my own, to retrace these steps that changed me so dramatically as a younger Rocket - and painted this work during my travels.
I painted myself as Shiva. Transformation, destruction, creation. The version of me that went out wasn't the version that came back.
(oil on canvas (16" x 20") - physical included).
