The music comes pouring out of The Church. Why couldn’t it always be so easy?

IT’S 2011 AND I’m standing on stage at the Sydney Opera House. Everything is going unfailingly right. The Church are playing with a 70-piece orchestra conducted by the charismatic and flamboyant conductor George Ellis. There’s a sold out standing-room-only crowd in front of me, and they seem to be really enjoying themselves. Once again George Negus has introduced us to the audience. We’ve flown our friend Patti Hood over from the US, and she’s playing harp to my right and smiling. The songs sound astonishingly incredible with the orchestra. The arrangements are beyond cool. Tim Powles has put a lot of work into this, along with George Ellis, and our songs come alive again but with all of their new elements. It’s absolutely magical.

Yeah, I’m standing on stage and I’m playing and singing and yet I’m outside myself watching it all happen. The voice goes on singing, the fingers go on plucking at my Fender Jazz Bass, the body keeps moving, the foot keeps tapping.

But as I always explain it to people and myself, just because you can play bass guitar and make up songs doesn’t mean you’re a natural born leader of men, does it? It’d taken me a long time to learn to let it all just happen and not try to control every aspect of every thing. I was at last at home with myself. It felt nice to bask in the spotlight and receive a little bit of peer acknowledgement.

It was a long way from some of my other lives, but since 2002 I’d been living at Bondi Beach doing yoga and swimming every day at the Icebergs ocean baths. I was pretty close to being vegan. I was pretty damn healthy. I’d taught myself to paint. I had numerous musical collaborations on the boil all over the place. I was acting in plays and doing seminars and all kinds of things. I was writing a blog and writing poetry. I was constantly busy and constantly in demand for something or other. Artistically, I was completely fulfilled and I felt needed and loved by our incredible fans.

Then, an added bonus: in 2012 Elektra and Miranda formed their own band, Say Lou Lou, and released a stunning debut single right out of the blue. The song had all the qualities I’d tried to inculcate in my own songs – mystery, melancholy and melody. It was a feeling of the baton being passed on to the next generation.