God, gigs and glitter: The unholy origins of Pub Choir’s Astrid Jorgensen

When I was sixteen years old, I flew alone to Zambia to live in a convent and become a Catholic nun.

Anybody who has attended my foul-mouthed and chaotic show, Pub Choir, might find this a bit of a surprise, so let me start by saying that, at the time of writing this in 2025, I’m a nasty little unbeliever who is gleefully living in sin. But in 2006, I wanted to marry Jesus, and Zambia’s capital Lusaka was to be the backdrop of our romance.

I didn’t tell my parents about my holy ambitions when booking the flights. I simply expressed that, to celebrate graduating high school, I wished to spend the money I’d earned working at the local bakery by visiting my Aunt Jacinta. She had been living and working in Zambia for twenty-odd years. She also just happens to be a nun. To be more precise, she is a Franciscan Missionary of the Divine Motherhood (FMDM on the streets). I campaigned to my parents, ‘How much mischief could I really get up to, holidaying with a nun for two months when I finish school?’

Those chumps agreed to let me go. My Zambian adventure also raised the eyebrows of a few school friends. To get them off my case, I loudly talked up my trip like it would be as edgy and cool as their graduation parties. Sure, they would be raving on a beach drinking vodka with handsy boys, but I would be on a safari (at a church service) meeting cute boys of my own (listening to old priests) and taking edibles (communion wafers).

It was a relief to have an excuse to skip the graduation afterparties. I felt too young and naïve to attend (but old enough to marry Jesus, go figure!). I was a full year younger than everybody else in my grade because I’d started school earlier than recommended. I’m not humble bragging – this was not a decision based on merit. With four very clever older brothers, who all attended school at the suggested age, my parents are unable to articulate what happened with me; that is, I’m pretty sure they briefly forgot what year I was born.

Maybe you think I’ve hammed up this story for a book, so I will submit the following as further evidence: my family celebrated my birthday on the wrong day for five years until I glimpsed my birth certificate and fact-checked it with my parents.

‘Mum, my birth certificate is wrong!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, it says I was born on April 22nd, but my birthday is on April 23rd . . . isn’t it?’

There was a thoughtful silence as my parents looked at each other, eyebrows raised.

‘Huh,’ said Dad, ‘would you look at that? April 22nd does ring a bell, now you mention it.’

I truly have no hard feelings over this. Five children is a lot of children. I imagine that, by the tail end of the litter, the placental timelines get a bit murky. I’m not trying to elicit pity, but demonstrate that being the youngest of five children means that your parents are very experienced but also very tired. And if you don’t sweat the small stuff, like your date of birth, you can fly under the radar and do some fairly outrageous shit. Such as travelling to Zambia by yourself for two months when you’re sixteen with only $400 in small change.

In true ‘youngest child’ fashion, I did very little to prepare for my trip. I’ve never been one to worry about my personal safety, and given I was flying around the world to double-check I could take a vow of poverty, 400 bucks felt like more than enough. My only real worry was that I wouldn’t recognise my aunty when I arrived in Zambia.

We’d only met once before, when I was 10, at a family reunion in Singapore. I was quietly obsessed with her. She was my mum’s literal sister, but simultaneously everybody’s. I’d always wanted a sister and here she was: Sister Jacinta! She was friendly and chatty and clearly unbothered by the latest fashions and fads – every day, she wore the same simple beige clothes and a stiff-looking habit to cover her hair. I thought it made her look unbelievably cool. And I was transfixed by her face. Sister Jacinta had smooth olive skin with gentle freckles and a wide, square jawline. As in, she looked exactly like my mum, except . . . peaceful (possibly something to do with not having to raise five yappy children who were relentlessly pinching each other).

At some point during the reunion, I plucked up the courage to ask, ‘Sister Jacinta, when did you know you wanted to be a nun?’

She serenely replied, ‘Wán pí [her affectionate nickname for me, meaning ‘naughty/cheeky’], I heard the voice of God calling me to this life.’ God’s voice was quiet at first, she told me, but the more she listened, the louder and more insistent it became until she couldn’t ignore it anymore.

I listened to her with awe. I wanted to be like my aunty. I wanted to have a daily outfit. I wanted to be nice to people and to do good things in the world. And I especially wanted God to speak to me. Quietly.

Growing up in a family of seven, somebody was always hollering about something at home. We had an actual cow bell to announce that dinner was ready. Whoever was closest at that moment would clang the bell while helpfully yelling, ‘DINNER’S READY.’ No shit! If somebody needed a message delivered, we’d never physically go to them; instead, we’d remain in our place and shout:

‘HUGH, THE GIRL YOU LIKE IS ON THE PHONE. WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO TELL HER? SHOULD I PRETEND YOU AREN’T HOME?’

Mum was always blending or juicing some heavy-duty health potion in the kitchen made of carrots and what sounded like spoons. Somebody was always stomping on the floorboards wearing wooden clogs (also Mum). For goodness’ sake, my brother Malcolm even played the bagpipes. He’s deaf in his right ear but I’ve always believed he knew what he was inflicting upon us in surround sound. I tell you: our house was noisy.

What if God had been whispering messages to me this whole time, and I’d missed them for all the bloody racket?

At night, I began closing the door to my bedroom.

I use the term ‘bedroom’ loosely – I slept in a repurposed greenhouse at the front of the family home. Every single wall was made of glass and the temperature inside was incompatible with human life during sunlight hours. I’d close the curtains so my brothers couldn’t see me being extremely weird, then I’d kneel down and cover my ears to block out as much noise as I could.

I listened. I strained. I heaved. But I couldn’t hear God at all.

What about a sign? Maybe God had changed contact methods? ‘If you want me to be a nun, flicker my bedroom lights!’ Nothing. ‘If I should be a nun, make the TV turn on!’ Silence. I narrowed my eyes at an electrical outlet and tried to make it short-circuit with my mind. Had I confused the mystery of God with Roald Dahl’s Matilda? Being unable to start a single electrical fire confirmed my suspicions that my aunty was chosen and special, but I was not. God had spoken directly to her, but wouldn’t even lightly haunt the electrics in my room.

What I didn’t yet realise is that I have no ‘inner monologue’. That most people can apparently hear voices speaking in their mind, like a narration of their thoughts, is completely foreign to me. I can’t hear a word. I can remember conversations I’ve had, but I can’t replay them as a soundtrack, nor can I rehearse future conversations in my head. My thoughts are wordless concepts and urges. 

I can’t visualise anything in my mind’s eye, either. If I close my eyes, I . . . can’t see anymore? I can’t picture anyone’s face, or an apple; all I can see is the inside of my eyelids. I’ve since learned that the absence of mental imagery is called ‘aphantasia’, but when I was ten I had no idea how other people thought. I had no idea about anything, really.

Which is why it was so phenomenal to me when I finally heard a voice in my brain.

When it happened, I was once again kneeling on the tiles of my hothouse, ears covered, staring at a small, plastic, bedside figurine of my future mother-in-law, Mary. ‘Speak to me, Mary. Speak to me, God. Just say if you want me to become a nun like my aunty,’ I incanted under my breath.

‘Say something. Say SOMETHING!’

‘Astriiiiiid . . .’ came a wheezy reply inside my brain.

‘You . . . should be . . . A NUN.’

A straightforward message delivered in an asthmatic way. It was weird how God’s voice sounded exactly like my voice, but surely that was just God making a clever point.

It was so rare and unusual to ‘hear’ specific words in my brain, I truly thought I was having a spiritual revelation. In reality, I had experienced A Thought. Like people have sometimes. I had wished and willed God to speak to me for so long that my suggestible, arid mind finally squeezed out this miniscule audio crumb and I gobbled it up like manna from heaven. I never heard God’s voice again, but once was enough for me. I felt chosen (which is not something fifth children say very often).

Armed with my heavenly DM, I focused all my attention on marrying the most famous nepo-baby in history: the Son of God.

On Christmas Day 2006, I boarded the plane to Lusaka, wearing flip-flops and holding a bag packed with just two pairs of brown pants and two T-shirts. The aircraft was almost empty.

The flight attendants tried doting on me, to no avail.

‘Are you sure you don’t want an extra meal? A little chocolate for later?’ they probed.

‘Oh no,’ I fatly whispered, ‘I don’t need anything, I’m not hungry.’ I imagined them returning to the galley, all agreeing that ‘She’s the best passenger we’ve ever had’, and ‘Her self-control is so impressive, it’s almost like she’s taken some vow of poverty.’

At the airport, I recognised my aunty instantly (what a relief), and off we went to the FMDM house in Lusaka. There, everything I knew about convent life – learned from my rigorous study of the movie Sister Act starring Whoopi Goldberg – seemed to be real. 

These softly spoken, cloistered women sang, ate, worked and prayed together up to five times daily. Every chore was tended to with care, and every surface was spotless. (Which is so much easier to achieve when your four grotty teenage brothers don’t live in the same house.)

The FMDM sisters let me tag along and gawk at everything they did. I followed the nuns who were qualified teachers into local schools to ‘assist’ with their lessons.

‘What’s the tallest mountain in Australia? Oh . . . Mount . . . Gravatt, I think.’ (The pre-internet days were incredible for telling lies.)

I shadowed those who were nurses into community hospices and ‘helped’ clean wounds and pretended I wasn’t at all bothered.

‘Who, me? Oh no, I don’t mind the smell of that lanced boil, not a bit!’ I trilled with a panicky smile on my face, while swallowing the little bit of sick at the back of my throat.

While scraping the tumour-ridden, pus-caked groin of a man suffering horrifically through the end stages of AIDS, it did flicker across my mind that, perhaps, nunhood was a bit too hardcore for me. But any unpleasantness during the day was more than balanced by the satisfaction that coursed through me as I experienced unrivalled quiet inside the convent walls.

For the first time in my life, everybody shut up. On New Year’s Eve, the FMDM sisters imposed a Great Silence for the hours leading up to midnight, while sitting together and praying for the world. Of course, given that I can’t conjure any specific words in my mind, I just sat on my cushion for several hours, doing and saying nothing, in a blank state of total ecstasy. Finally, a bit of shush.

In a time just before the world adopted a permanent state of online connectivity, I barely contacted home for two months. I felt like I had the chance to try on a new personality and properly test-drive the nun lifestyle. I could pretend I was the sort of person who had always used the sun to mark my sleep schedule. 

Nobody needed to know that I usually spent school holidays awake until 2 am, torturing my Sims on the family computer, and desperately hoping I wouldn’t get caught watching late-night international films for the full-frontal nudity. That was unless I had a shift at the bakery, where I would spend the day gorging myself on stolen croissants, my pockets filled with loose change that never made it to the till.

The FMDM sisters were gently responding to a sincere calling to humility, service and faith. But sixteen-year-old me was too young and idiotic to understand that becoming a nun for the lifestyle benefits and social detox was ill-advised and offensive at best. On top of this, a big red flag was waving right in front of my face, which I pretended not to notice (easy if I closed my eyes). When I tagged along to the many daily prayer sessions, I simply wasn’t thinking about my boyfriend Jesus.

The moment I flip-flopped my feet through the door of my first Zambian church service, my relationship with Him was in big trouble. No matter how many Hail Marys I muttered, or how firmly I clasped my hands to pray, I couldn’t concentrate on anything except the singing. I wanted to love Jesus, who just like me wore opened-toed shoes in formal settings.

But the music was just too good. Too distracting. It was an unexpected love triangle – a most unholy trinity.

As a child, I received consistent piano and violin lessons. I taught myself to play the guitar, bassoon and trombone to a passable level. I frequently sang at school events, and I’d just topped all the music subjects in my senior year. Yet up to five times a day I would follow the sisters into prayer and be musically destroyed by everyone around me.

When the jangly guitars and egg shakers kicked off the next hymn, everybody in the church unleashed flawless vocal harmonies while stylishly dancing to – what seemed to me – a different song from the one we were singing. 

I tried desperately to make sense of what was happening. I think . . . this song is in 4/4 time? No. Maybe it’s 3/4 time? . . . Wait! Why is everybody dancing in 13/5? Is that toddler clapping in polyrhythms of seven? Did that woman just take a tambourine out of her purse? I felt immobilised. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, when to sing or where to look. I was outclassed and out-musicked at every turn.

Now, I had flown around the world to once again find myself singing from the wrong songbook. And yet, it felt amazing. Unable to contribute, I was simply submerged in a feeling. The music wasn’t a performance for anybody; it was a shared, hopeful experience. I had never witnessed anything so beautiful or collaborative. 

Simultaneously, nobody and everybody was in charge. I was wildly swivelling my head to take it all in, but every other person in the room was lost in the moment, offering up their unique voice to each other and beyond.

All too soon, my Sister Act movie montage was at an end. My aunty bundled me onto the plane back to Australia and I felt transcendent and brand new. I decided that I was definitely going to become a nun . . . as soon as I had the courage to tell other people. I squirrelled away my holy secret and tried to build up the nerve to announce my love for the Lord. But the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth.

Desperate for validation, I decided to contact some local nuns. I looked up where the FMDM sisters lived in Australia, and found a chapter in Bendigo. I wrote to them, begging to join their ranks. In return, I received the kindest rejection letter of my life, which included the following advice from a Sister Monica:

It is exciting that the presence of God is so strong in your life – what a wonderful gift. However, it would be very wise to take time to get some ‘life experience’ and expand your world view. The discernment journey continues for each of us as we go about our everyday life. 

My smooth child-brain could not yet conceive of the wisdom in this refusal.

‘So!’ I huffed. ‘This nun thinks that I, the world’s most advanced 16-year-old, don’t have enough “life experience” to make a lifelong commitment? Even though my school report card said I was mature for my age, which she’d know if she asked?’

I decided to play the long game. I’d go to university and study something – anything – just to tick that silly ‘life experience’ box. When I finished the degree, I’d be at least nineteen years old and, by then, I would know all there is to know about life. That’d be enough time to complete ‘spirituality’.

And God would probably talk to me another ten times and flicker my lights. Sister Monica would be so impressed I followed through. I’d show her. I’d show them all.

Reader, I did not show anybody anything. I’m sure it’s of great comfort to people of faith everywhere that I didn’t become a nun. Instead, I found a boyfriend. I remembered how much I like owning stuff, sleeping in and being a glutton. And while I believe in many things I can’t see, especially when my eyes are closed, an interventionist God is not one of them.

But I’ll never forget what it felt like to be bathed in the rich musical soup of people using their bodies to express a communal hope. A place where every person contributed the exact same amount – one voice – to share in one outcome. I’ve been chasing that high ever since. Seeking out deeply felt, communal experiences has become my religion and choir is my favourite way to worship. Using my singing voice with others is my connection to something divine.

Choir is heaven on earth.

Average at Best, by Astrid Jorgensen, Simon & Schuster Australia ($42).
Pub Choir tours Aotearoa, with shows in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch between November 9-13. pubchoir.com.au