In the early 2000s I took a trip to Bali. The place is beautiful but also poor and a little scary. We were extorted in the mountains by men armed with heavy machine guns. True story. Kids wanted us to give them our towels and shirts. It was hard to see them going through that. Bali gets into you but it does not let you look away from what it really is.
But Bali does not let you sit in one feeling for long.
I watched monkeys snatch items right off tourists heads and hold them hostage until food was produced. One woman near me lost her item entirely because the monkey dropped it straight over a cliff. But standing at that cliff we watched the sun begin its descent, drowning out the ocean blue, giving the impression of a world slowly going dark. Chaos and beauty in the same breath. That is Bali.
Then we caught the Kecak fire dance. It moved me.
But standing at that cliff we watched the sun begin its descent, drowning out the ocean blue, giving the impression of a world slowly going dark. Chaos and beauty in the same breath. That is Bali.
Then came the Kecak dance and my hearing was working overtime. Ocean in the background. Wind moving soft and easy. Birds doing their thing. And right in front of me, maybe twenty men chanting and singing in layered harmonics, a ritual calling to their gods. As they sang they waved their arms and moved in a kind of trance. The sounds were something like chakakakaka tet chakakakaka tet, others humming underneath it all, building something that felt ancient and alive at the same time.
I want to be honest with you about the women performers. Their beauty had an edge to it. Something that could only mean seduction. Something almost dangerous. And apparently I was not alone in feeling that because in this very dance it is the beauty of the women that seduces a demon. That is the story being told. The art and the feeling were one and the same thing.
The sun began to set as the performance went on. Mountains large and plentiful on the distant horizon. Night starting to swallow the sun whole. The ocean pounding relentlessly against rock. And these performers at the center of it all, commanding every eye in that space.
The scents I remember most are burning smoke mixed with the smell of nature, grass and trees all around. And every now and then a stranger would drift past and leave behind whatever they chose that day. A sweet perfume on a Japanese woman put together from head to toe. The kind of heavy musk a man wears when he means business. Layers of the world moving through your nose all at once.
I had my camera. I had the moment. And I had that feeling you only get when you are on the other side of the world with no one familiar in sight and the whole thing feels like it belongs only to you.
If you can picture all of that, you have seen one afternoon in Bali.
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