ZEN AND THE ART OF STADIUM ROCK

or Coldplay to reach new heights, Chris Martin had to ignore the critics-especially the ones in his head

- ALEX MORRIS

The night sky over New Zealand is wide and wondrous, inky and vast. It's the type of sky that broadcasts Earth's infinitesimal place in the infinite cosmos. The type of sky that fills one with awe at the beauty and mystery of existence. The type that brings T to mind how, from some vantage point in some far-off pocket of space, human difference simply disappears and we all appear as one, floating in harmony on our beautiful blue and green marble. And so it is fitting that one night in mid-November, Chris Martin should find himself under such a sky, wandering around the docks of Auckland's Viaduct Harbour in the hour approaching midnight, pondering creation at large and his place as a creator in it. It was not his first time visiting the water that day. A spiritual teacher once told him, "If you feel a bit down, go for a walk and just look up. And it lifts you" - advice he heeded then and has heeded since. Martin, a musician who is known to be mindful, tends to have a lot on his mind. "If you zoom out to about 10 miles above, you see, 'Oh, there's just tiny points of difference, but the human things that connect to you are pretty you are pretty powerful," Martin says slowly, and in a calming tone, the sky arching above him. "And if you zoom back enough generations, everyone is your family ultimately, so you're never not with your family, in a way. You're never really alone."