The diagnosis that inspired an album

Sana Qadar: Hey Sana here. This episode is one of our favourite from 2023. We are replaying it as part of our summer series.

Music lyrics: Tell me what you see.

Sana Qadar: Okay, so you're pretty used to talking about your music in interviews, but I think this is the first time you're going to be talking about your mental health, right?

Parvyn Kaur Singh: Yeah, absolutely.

Music lyrics: Tell me what you see.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: And so, like, I'm not nervous, but it just does feel a little bit different. And that's why I was joking to Beth that I have a box of tissues ready because I'm just like a little bit emotional about it. But it's good. It's a good thing.

Sana Qadar: No. Fair enough. I mean, I was going to ask whether it feels nerve wracking or freeing.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: It's nerve wracking. It's both.

Sana Qadar: Hey, this is all in the mind. I'm Sana Qadar, and who you're hearing is Parvyn Kaur Singh. She's an ARIA nominated musician, formerly of the cult Melbourne psychedelic band, the Bombay Royale, and now a solo artist. And people process their experiences in different ways. Right. We've had plenty of academics and researchers on the show who've made their lived experience the subject of their work. So today we hear from an artist, Parvyn, who's processing her mental health through her music.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: That's part of why I do music, because I want to engage with people and share my experiences authentically so that other people can relate to know that they're not alone.

Sana Qadar: And what she wants to share and destigmatize is her diagnosis of bipolar affective disorder. The turmoil and confusion leading up to it and how she's funnelling all of that into her music.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: What you see, for example, which is the first single, I started writing this song before my main breakdown in 2019. But on reflection, it's about checking in with the people around you to make sure that the reality you are experiencing is the same as what they experience, which for me is very real that I need to do that to be like, Are you? Is this happening? Is this real?

Sana Qadar: Today music, mental illness and how one musician makes sense of it all. So this story begins a decade ago in 2013, which is the first time Parvyn hallucinated. It happened at a meditation retreat, a Vipassana meditation retreat. And if you don't know what that is, well, it's intense.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: Vipassana is a ten day silent meditation retreat where you don't have any books or any pen and paper or your phone. They take all of that stuff. The first couple of days it's about just focusing on your breath and you can still move around and things. And then after a couple of days it moves to the full vipassana, which is you don't move and you do the sort of body sweep type meditation. So it's like ten hours of meditation a day.

Sana Qadar: Like I said, intense. Parvyn was a pretty experienced meditator, though, so she was enjoying the challenge of sitting still, not speaking and meditating all day. But over the course of the ten days, her imagination started to run wild. It began with really vivid dreams. And then.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: You know, I would see omens in things around me in just a wood panelling of a wall. I would see an image that would come to me and then it would just grow in my mind. I also started to think that I was telepathically communicating because my husband Josh was also doing Vipassana, but he was in the men's section, so it's not like we were talking, but I felt like I was telepathically communicating with him in some ways. It was good. It felt it felt like it was, you know, working as advertised to get to a point of enlightenment.

Sana Qadar: Parvyn had grown up in a pretty spiritual home, so this wasn't out there thinking for her.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: Unfortunately, I think because of my childhood, my mom's a very spiritual person and she would always have shamans from North America come and stay at the house. And I had this ceremony. My mom was really into that sort of stuff. And she was always kind of, you know, telling me I was special and that I had so much power and potential. And I think somewhere in my mind I was like, Oh, maybe I can be enlightened. Maybe I am the chosen one.

Sana Qadar: And so at this time, at the Vipassana retreat, you're not thinking there's anything wrong with what you're imagining or hallucinating or thinking. What, looking back now, do you recognise about that time and what was going on that actually was the beginning of a later diagnosis.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: I think it's just that grandeur sort of thoughts of grandeur and that I am the most important person in the world, sort of delusions that were popping into my head and that my kind of ego was getting inflated in not a healthy way. And I thought I was, you know, invincible. I thought I was somehow tapped into this spiritual realm. But I, in hindsight, recognise that as not being real anymore. And I think it can be dangerous. And I know people talk about spirits and ghosts and this energy that is possible around us, but for me now I'm just like, Nah, none of that is real. And what is real is the chair that I'm sitting on the table that I've got my hand resting on. You know, like that sort of very physical things that that's what I can trust.

Sana Qadar: This realisation would come much later, though for now, Parvyn felt great. The retreat had finished. She was on a high and she was going straight into a national tour.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: Having been rested for ten days straight. My voice was feeling incredible. My body was feeling incredible. And we went into this tour and it was quite successful. Our shows were going really well.

Sana Qadar: But this is also when Parvyn says she really started losing her grip on reality.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: That's when I started thinking that I was in a reality TV show and that there were hidden cameras everywhere and everyone else was in on it. But I wasn't. And I wasn't supposed to let them know that I knew. And there was little tests that were happening and I was being captured on video. And so I had to make sure that I was always, you know, doing the right thing and passing these tests because it was also being part of the Chosen one. And I know it's so stupid. It's like I feel so embarrassed about it. And in my songs as well. There's a couple of them or one in particular where I where I say something like, I played The Fool and Only You Could hold me down.

Music lyrics: Only you could hold me down.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: And I say that because my husband, Josh, he was having to deal with that. He's also in the band as well. So he was touring with me at the time and he could obviously see that something was going on. And I kept telling him, just like, Give me a couple of weeks because sleep is also a massive contributor to it. And if I don't sleep properly and my brain doesn't shut off, then it just kind of spirals into this world of a dream. It's like a waking dream.

Sana Qadar: Wow. Okay, so your husband was noticing things were weird. You were feeling all these things. How did things go from there? Because it wasn't until 2019, you know, years later that you actually got a diagnosis.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: Yeah. So once that busy period of my life, like that tour finished and then I was able to rest. And once I slept after a couple of weeks properly, I just fell back into a normal routine. So it did subside and we didn't do anything about it. At that stage it feels like it was just, yeah, this dream that happened. And I and I think some of the people that met me around that time, you know, thought I was just quirky. I was a little bit interesting.

Sana Qadar: Right. And what did your husband think?

Parvyn Kaur Singh: He I got better. So because I got better, obviously we'd done Vipassana. There was this big tour already, those sorts of situations. I think because I'm in an industry where there are those intense situations where your ego does get boosted, you know, people are clapping and cheering for you. So that's a thing that all artists have to deal with, I suppose, at some point. So it's like it feels normal that I got a bit elevated, right? And I was like enjoying myself because it was going really well. Our career and the performances were going really well and but then once it subsided, I kind of fell back into a normal routine and I didn't think about it for a few years. It was fine. And then, yeah, in 2018, at the end of 2018, that's when it started building up again.

Sana Qadar: This was another extremely busy time of touring for Parvyn. Over six months she played shows across Australia, in Pakistan and in New Zealand. There were few breaks, little sleep and lots of emotional highs and lows. But the lowest moment was the death of her grandmother the night before a major performance.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: I sang the Indian national anthem at the Boxing Day Test at the MCG at the end of 2018, and I got the message, like at 12:00 the night I had to be at the MCG at 7:00 in the morning and she was my last remaining ancestor that was born in India. And here I was singing the Indian national anthem that I hadn't sung before. You know, it's for the Indian cricket team. It's a worldwide broadcast. I got back to the dressing room and just like, collapsed and just bawled my eyes out completely.

Sana Qadar: Pavan says when this intense six month period of touring and performing ended, she got home and...

Parvyn Kaur Singh: That's when I cracked. That's the best way of saying it. I just I just cracked. I thought that by doing backbends in my yoga, I was reversing climate change. I thought that when I cried, it rained. I didn't want to use technology. I was getting paranoid about what tracks were being kept of where I went. And so I didn't want to use Google Maps, for example, and got to a point where my husband couldn't deal with it anymore and I had absolutely lost the plot. I thought my neighbour was the king and queen of England. Wow. They have a little corgi dog, so it kind of makes sense somewhere.

Sana Qadar: Yeah. And so, I mean, you know, it's easy to sort of laugh at these details now, but this, this I imagine, would have been so distressing at the time for your husband especially. But, you know, for you were you did you just was it distressing for you or were you just sort of off with thinking these things and thought it was all fine and it was normal.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: Towards the end of it where it got to the breaking point, it was getting scary. I was ended up in the hospital in emergency with my husband, thinking that I was on an episode of Black Mirror and that it was my reality and that I would die in that room with the other actors that were in the room around me not helping me. And I thought that my husband was a robot and that I would never see him again. And that's where I would end up.

Sana Qadar: Parvyn was in psychosis.

Music lyrics: Music rises.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: I was put under a temporary treatment order. At that stage, I wasn't being very coherent, so I didn't know what was going on. I was there for a week. So it's not a long time because I think as soon as I was given the medication to sleep and to calm down, when as soon as I woke up the next day after having an incredible sleep, I felt really good. Like I felt like I was still elevated, which I think, you know, was part of why I was feeling positive about things. I felt safe. I felt looked after. It was kind of like I knew my body and my mind needed to just switch off from my work and my career and being a mother and all those sorts of things.

Sana Qadar: It was during this stay in hospital that Parvyn was diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder. It's an illness that causes extreme moods with emotional highs called mania or hypomania and emotional lows. Depression. Now, most people will be familiar with what depression is, but mania and its less severe version hypomania can be incredibly distressing and dangerous. Although it starts off pleasantly enough, people get lots of ideas, they get very productive and they feel on top of the world. But they also stop sleeping. And at its extreme mania can lead to psychosis. Where a person loses touch with reality, they might hallucinate, become paranoid or agitated and require hospitalisation. Like in Parvyn's case. Getting that diagnosis. Was it devastating? Was it a relief? Like how did it feel and how did it impact you?

Parvyn Kaur Singh: It didn't actually feel like a surprise. It felt like it almost explained things and it made things better for me because it wasn't like something was wrong with me. It was just that I have this thing and it's a chemical imbalance in my brain, but it is something that can be managed. You know, putting a label on something I feel like helps with me then dealing with it to be able to continue a functional life.

Sana Qadar: You're listening to All in the Mind. I'm Sana Qadar. Today, Aria nominated musician Pavan on her music and her mental health. So after Parveen got her diagnosis, she began piecing together the chaos and confusion that led up to it, as well as the clarity that came afterwards and put all of that to music. The result is her debut solo album, Sa.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: The very name of the album Sa means to breathe. So pretty much it's it's almost like I'm using it as a self-help kind of thing. And being able to sing these sorts of songs like to remind myself to breathe, you know? Sa. Just breathe.

Music lyrics: Sa.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: Sab theek ho jayega is one of the other lyrics, which means everything will be okay. Sab theek ho jayega.

Sana Qadar: Parvyn says writing the songs on this album helped her accept the reality of her diagnosis. And every time she performs the songs, she feels she gains agency and power over her circumstances. Take the song Anchor where she grapples with the experience of depression.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: One of the lines that I love, or one of the moments that I love about Anchor is that I get to the bridge part and I say, There's nowhere left to go. And then you hear a key change. And so I kind of wanted to musically explore this idea of there's always somewhere to go and a key change we move off. I keep singing and the story does continue because, you know, there have been moments in my life where the story could have stopped. But I'm still here. I'm still breathing and sometimes just taking that next breath if all else fails, just taking that next breath and focusing on that and sometimes that success, if you can just keep doing that.

Music lyrics: Creeping down. Quiet as a willow. Oh, steady as an anchor.

Sana Qadar: I was listening to the album last night, just sort of reminding myself of the songs and what you talk about in them. Damage Inside, that song. I wondered if that also related to some of the experiences you've talked about.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: Absolutely. There was some trauma attached to very intense touring and yeah, some experiences that I had. And then after that I went to India where I learned Kathak Dancing, which is a North Indian classical style of dance, which you hear at the end of the track. So I wear bells on my ankles and I learn how to speak the rhythmic patterns before I dance them. So all of the (imitates the bell sound) that you hear and you can hear bells. That's me actually dancing. So it's about kind of letting go of that experience and then coming back to India and reconnecting with my art and using that as a way of of healing and getting over trauma.

Sana Qadar: Has this album been really cathartic for you?

Parvyn Kaur Singh: Absolutely. It's this weird thing where I don't even know where it came from. And I've come to a point now, which is it's been released for over a year now, and I can't even believe that I made it. You know, it's like, wow, did I did I do this? Where did all of this come from? Because it's a weird thing sometimes when you're writing songs that it doesn't feel like you're doing it. It feels like it comes from some other place and you're just kind of catching it. And so it's kind of been this incredible experience of being this vessel, of this music coming to play.

Sana Qadar: And so how do you manage now when you're in tense situations, when you are touring, when you are in front of a crowd and it is a high, like how do you manage all those things that were previously tipping you over into, you know, psychosis or hallucinating, having ideas about, you know, grandeur?

Parvyn Kaur Singh: Yeah. So I've learnt now that when I'm in that intense touring situation or performing every day without any breaks in between, that I do need help to sleep mostly. So I have medication that I can take to do that, not on a regular basis, but just when I feel like I need it, when I resist taking it, it's one of those things with my husband. If he tells me that he thinks that I need to take some medication and if I get angry at him, that's one of my indications that yes, okay, probably I do. And so it just through yeah. Time and situations. I'm learning those things and seeing it really early on. So I catch it when it's just sort of like the possibility of that is what might be coming.

Sana Qadar: What are those early glimmers that you still might notice now?

Parvyn Kaur Singh: It's almost like because I don't drink coffee, for example. And so for anyone who doesn't drink coffee, when you do have a coffee and you get that sort of like jitteriness and that bubbly sort of energy type thing, it's something like that that I can sense that I'm like, Oh, I'm getting elevated, I'm getting hyper. This is a time when I need to calm down.

Sana Qadar: Do you feel like the diagnosis has impacted your music, whether positively or negatively or you know at all?

Parvyn Kaur Singh: I think it's really helped me focus and work in a way which I'm able to achieve things that I feel like I wouldn't have been able to do as well, before this. I mean, obviously I've gained experience of the industry and I'm at a place now where I am self managing my career. So there's a lot on my plate and that hyperactivity, when I get mentally stimulated, it's actually a very creative thing and I can be very I work really well with that hyperactivity in my brain.

Sana Qadar: But how do you work out when that flow state is, you know, a positive and a really good creative space? And how do you know when it's starting to tip over into mania?

Parvyn Kaur Singh: Yeah, I think it's generally a positive thing. The tip over into mania is when I start saying things or believing in things that are just not right. Right. When I start thinking that there are omens or I start seeing, you know, making conclusions in my brain that don't make sense.

Music lyrics: I want you to come with me now.

Sana Qadar: While Parvyn hasn't spoken publicly about her mental illness until now, she has been pretty open about it in her personal life. She says the artistic community has been super accepting and welcoming, but the South Asian community can sometimes have an issue. We know the stigma attached to mental illness exists across society, but it can take a different angle or shape in immigrant communities.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: It is interesting when I have conversations with uncles and aunties and I'm very open about my experience and that I, you know, ended up in hospital because of it. And they kind of just like hush, hush me to the side and be like, Oh, it's okay, you'll be okay. It's fine. I'm like, Yeah, I know. I'll be okay, but why have you all of a sudden, like, hushed your tone? I'm just talking about, you know, an experience that I had and, and I feel like that's part of what I want to do in terms of just letting it out and being open about these things because it's just a condition as much as anything else that I don't have to be ashamed of. It's just part of who I am and my brain. And yeah, it's just it seems weird to me that there's all of this kind of I shouldn't be speaking about it to everyone. This is family business. It's like, Nah, I'm fine with it. Don't judge me. And I think what is good about the closest people that I have to me is because they support me. I don't really care too much about what the wider community thinks, and so I'm not held back by that. I'm not ashamed, you know? Yeah, just that stigma that I feel like mental health has had, especially in brown communities, is unnecessary.

Sana Qadar: Yeah. Where do you think your confidence in being so open about it and not having that shame attached to it comes from.

Parvyn Kaur Singh: Uh, when I was growing up, my mum went through mental health issues and I think because I've seen her go through it and some of the experience that she had, which was not good, she had a very negative experience. And I remember the community kind of making it feel like it was this negative thing that I am fed up with that and I won't let that get me down. And I think my strength comes from my husband, who the way that he has supported me through this, my sisters, my family who just accept me and love me for who I am and what I am.

Sana Qadar: That's really lovely. What do you hope speaking today will do for people who are listening?

Parvyn Kaur Singh: I hope it gives anyone who has experienced mental health issues to know that it's okay and it doesn't define you. And to also be an example, Yeah. Of how you can still have a beautiful life with a beautiful family and maintain a balanced lifestyle.

Sana Qadar: And what do you hope people feel when they listen to your album?

Parvyn Kaur Singh: I hope they feel calm in some ways. Like I hope they get a sense of reflection from it that they can switch off to everything else and just get absorbed by the music and come into this flow state with me and experience that with me because that's what I love about performing live and about singing. I feel like it's a valuable way of spending time and just to experience all the love that I have that I'm sharing through this music.

Sana Qadar: That is Aria nominated musician Parvyn and the music you've been hearing is from her debut solo album Sa. You're about to start working on another album. Do you think mental health will continue to be like a touchstone of your music and the stuff you write about, or does this album sort of put a pin on that and like has allowed you to process and now you can move on to talking about other things?

Parvyn Kaur Singh: No, I think mental health will be something that I continue to talk about because it's something that we all experience. So the next record that I'm working on will actually be the story of migration of my ancestors from India to Malaysia to the UK to Australia. So it's all of the things that encompass that, of longing for going back home and what home means and what belonging. And so that's all tied up with mental health as well. And so it will continue to be a thread through the work that I do.

Sana Qadar: That's it for All in the Mind this week. Thanks to producer Rose Kerr and sound engineer Roy Huberman.

Music lyrics: (Music continues)

Sana Qadar: I'm Sana Qadar. Thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time.

Music lyrics: (Music continues and fades out)