Laura Barrett is Toronto's own kalimba sensation. This interview was conducted in a non-linear series of e-mails long after the submission deadlines. Don't blame Laura though. This was the fault of Wavelength's own ragamuffin reporter Trevor Coleman, who forgot to do the interview before leaving on an eight day Caribbean cruise on a boat with limited and expensive e-mail access. He was apparently too drunk to send in a coherent list of questions so his questions for this interview have been culled from the rambling e-mails he sent to Laura and other friends over the holiday. Ms. Barrett on the other hand is punctual and attentive and has a lot of interesting things to say about the kalimba and cognitive science.

Cruise ships are middle class cocaine.

The kalimba is an African instrument, also known as a likembe, mbira, sansa, or many other terms, depending on region and language.

It's like being at a circus where cars crash into each other all day long with trunkloads of babies in the back.

Playing it is like going into the fifth dimension and coming back reversed, left and right brain functions intertwining in the ether.

But you know that none of the babies are actually being harmed.

But you maintain the thumb-to-metal interface, and to the outside observer, nothing appears to have changed.

It's hard to keep track of time on here.

Sometimes I create polyrhythms of which I'm not immediately aware, nor can I fully control.

We sailed the day before yesterday and it feels like I've never been anywhere else in my life.

I've only been playing for half a year, but the kalimba sometimes feels like my kid sister, and at least a toddler.

There is a TEN STORY ATRIUM on this thing.

Two of my kalimbas have 15 tines, two have 17 and one has only seven but it can play a wicked cover of "Hash Pipe."

I feel like Hunter S. Thompson in Las Vegas.

I feel like Steve Reich in New York City, who on January 22nd will be playing six marimbas at the exact moment when I fiddle around with two mbiras at home before Wavelength.

Everything is fake.

We are all parts of one big, worldwide idiophone array.

Everything is exactly what it appears, and NOTHING MORE.

"We create nothing, express nothing; we only discover or uncover what is already there." - my birthday meditation

I had to lay down the cash so I could get in touch with the outside world and remind myself that it's me who's sane, not this crowd of hedonists.

In wonderful dreams, I travel across Africa, learning how thumb piano players co-ordinate music, lyrics and digital dexterity... while never putting it in technical terms like that. I just need to learn a couple thousand languages and I'll be set!

I'm going up to the lido deck for some sun and chilli fries.

The most recent kalimba I purchased had a half-eaten cracker inside. I like to think its owner had taken it on a picnic and played to the ants and the trees.

Seriously, there are no words to describe this weirdness.

It's likely I haven't properly articulated my feelings about how awesome it feels to make music on a kalimba or mbira. Seriously - it pulls you into a trance state, and I just hope I'm not too antisocial when mesmerized onstage.