Update: Yipes, I posted the wrong song link… I’ve corrected it, you can find the actual song here. Sorry about that…

This song has possessed me. New songs can do that, but this one especially. It’s rare for me to write songs inspired by a world situation; I’m normally more self and relationship-focused and inward-looking with my songwriting. Only three times have world events inspired me to write a song.

The first song, ‘The Women Are Rising,’ was inspired by the Montreal Massacre… the second, ‘Red Hands‘ (this version is from the TreeRoots Revolution CD, “Deeper Than Grass“) was written the day after they started bombing Afghanistan.

My newest song, which I wrote yesterday, is called “The Story in My Head” and you can hear it here. I posted the lyrics in a previous post, here.
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As part of my astrology classes, I like to include a segment in which I sing original songs (got to keep my singer-songwriter self happy) that are relevant to whatever the theme of that class is. Yesterday (because it’s the last class of the year) featured Winter Solstice, which is the Sun’s ingress into Capricorn.

I sang a couple of Christmas songs, including this one. It’s a dark look at Christmas (the first line is, ‘It’s the season of sentiment and suicide’), and it’s oh so satisfying to sing.

Enjoy, and have a happy, sad, scared, mad holiday season.

Lyrics:

Christmas Presence

It is the season of sentiment and suicide
A time for treasure and trauma with no place to hide
from the trumped up cheer and the canned caroling
have we forgotten the reason for Christmas
or lost it in packaging and glitter
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I haven’t forgotten. What a shock it was, all our fears manifest at once. Fourteen young women, massacred for no other reason than being female! We were rocked to the roots by the proof of the pudding of fears our generation of women was fed, to wit: ‘don’t dare pursue your dreams, you’ll be killed if you do‘.

(In case you’re American or too young to remember, you can read all about it here.) Murder sucks for any reason, but random, gratuitous slaughter of the young, ambitious and promising is particularly horrifying.

The tragic irony of Tempest Gale’s murder in November just a few weeks before the twentieth anniversary of the Montreal Massacre just serves to stir the pudding. But dammit, change must come.

I recorded this song last night. It’s raw and rhythmically ragged, but a powerful version, I think; I was alone in the room and feeling emotional at the time. I wrote this just after the Montreal Massacre.

Actually, it was on the following International Women’s Day. Anne Cameron had come to Hornby and given a rockingly powerful talk at the Hall, after which I went out and bawled my head off in my car then wrote this song.

It hurts to sing, because after twenty years, so little has changed. Still, so many pointless losses, so few gains, politically speaking, socially speaking. Oh, women now have the right to go die with the boys in the sands of Afghanistan, I suppose. It was never my ambition to be Sgt Rock.
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I can’t remember if I’ve posted these here or not, but here they are again:

This is my set at the Gong Show (Sungoma, near Duncan) in June …

And this is from March, at “Folk, Yeah!” open mic on Hornby, the first of my vids…

Enjoy, oh, do! And let me know if you saw it, and did you like it, and all that. Thanks, ever’bunny…

Here it is! Video from my set at the Cirque du Cabaret last Saturday night. What a wild and beautiful night that was. My character in the circus was introduced as ‘a fortuneteller / soothsayer raised in the North by wolves,’ which actually isn’t far from the truth at all, as regular readers of this blog will no doubt realize.

I do hope you enjoy it–I certainly did! I would do this sort of thing every single day of my life, happily, if I could get away with it!

So, I didn’t keep up with my blog posts while I was gone, but I have an excuse. I was on dial-up. I got so frustrated with the fricken fracken internet that I hardly even stayed caught up with my scrabble games. It’s all about priorities, right?

Anyway, I’m back, and I’ve just posted the last few days’ worth of self-portraits to my flickr page, so I’ll share them with you in order.

This shot from the 19th is photoshopped, and it’s best to view it in the large size to grasp the full effect. To do that, click on the image then click the ‘all sizes’ button above it. That will open it in a bigger size so you can see its true coolness. I worked hard on this shot and am happy with how it turned out!

It’s me snuggling up with my new favourite Free Store score, a leopard-spotted polar fleece boa scarf. It’s the best scarf I’ve ever owned. I want to sleep with this thing. All praises to the Hornby Island Free Store.

Other new favourite Free Store finds from this trip: a long slinky green velour dress with slits up both legs (rowr!); a pair of hiking boots a size too big that worked awesomely well with three pairs of socks and enabled some good walks while on the island; several warm sweaters, and various odds and ends.

I got arty once I got home. Originally, this one from the 20th was my face silhouetted against P’s skylight. Boring! So now that I am home and back on broadband, I’ve been having some fun. I edited this shot using picnik. Easier than Photoshop.

I quite like this one, actually; it’s the second photo I’ve edited in that puzzle-piece style. I think it suits me.

Almost forgot this one from the 21st. It’s me beside the woodstove trying to get warm. It was so cold! And P’s woodstove makes pretty flames, but it doesn’t put out much heat; it mostly goes up the chimney. I don’t do well in the cold, as I say later on in this post.

For the next shot, from the 22nd, I decided to go for drama. I was getting tired of my normal face. So this is the horror movie version of me!

Again, it’s best to view this one in large format. I was having a lot of fun with my camera and a sweet time with my sweetie and connecting with some old friends while on the island; but I didn’t spend as much time outside hiking and such as I had originally thought I would. I ended up doing a lot of indoor nesting, finding delicious ways to keep warm. I recommend it. I don’t like the cold.

Let me put it another way: I’ve had my quota of cold for one lifetime. When I was a kid, I was never warm enough. Now, I’m about ready to move to someplace tropical. If I can see my breath, it’s too cold. Snuggle time.

And now here I am, back *sigh* home, in my usual position in front of the computer.

I feel enriched by the last week, rejuvenated, refreshed and nourished. At the same time, I feel depleted, depressed, deranged and ready for some profound and fundamental change in my world. My life is beginning to suck butt. Yet, by now I’ve learned that this is just how January feels to me.

Still, I’m broke, and I have rent to pay. If you know anybody who wants or could benefit from an astrology reading (and just about anybody could), or any of the other services I offer, please do pass my info along to them! Thank you! Mwahh!

This show is coming up — less than a week now! I am really excited about this event, I hope everybody who can comes! Apparently St. Andrew’s Church in Nanaimo (where this will take place) is rated among the top ten acoustic venues in North America. Please do bring a cushion; the pews are rather uncomfortable.

But it will sound wonderful. If anybody wants a ticket and can’t make it into Nanaimo before the performance, let me know, I can get you one.

It was very interesting. I had prepped myself heavily beforehand, grounding deeply, telling myself, “This is not about the money, and it’s not about whether anybody likes what I’m doing. It’s about strengthening and deepening my connection and commitment to the music. It’s about the moment, it’s about the practice and it’s about the singing.”

I kept repeating that, over and over. I had to, because all around me people were doing exactly what I do around buskers: hunching slightly and hurrying past as though I were a torturous gauntlet they had to pass through. As though if they paused for a second or gave a sign that they heard a single note I was singing, they’d be obliged to shell out hard-earned cash and they were determined not to do that.

It was an education all right. I could see myself in them immediately. It was easy not to take it personally though, because it’s so clearly not about whether the music is any good. When I see a busker on the street, my own body adopts that hunch, I turn away slightly, and I walk a little faster and avoid eye contact. Above all I try my hardest not to hear any of the music. As though I have my fingers in my ears, reciting the multiplication tables to myself. I had never realized that I do that! But I totally do!

I admit… I’m scared of buskers. I’m scared to look at them, scared to listen, scared to give them anything. I’m scared that I owe them something just for being there. I’m scared that if I like their music then I’ll feel bad about not giving them money, and I don’t want to give them money. I resent them as though they are demanding something of me, I resist them as if they are grabbing at me. It’s all projection, and I don’t know yet what the root of it is. But I’m not alone in it, and that became clear.

This is all very unconscious; I don’t tend to be aware of this process in myself at all. A light has turned on in that room inside me and it’s cringe-inducing to see myself in that glare. This gives me something to work with, all right. I don’t understand why I have these feelings, or why anybody does, but I’m very glad to be unearthing this stuff. It feels potent, as though the key to some mystery I’ve been attempting to resolve might be hidden in here someplace.

Still, I had fun. I pulled out the covers I knew that seemed energetic enough to be heard over the traffic and sang quite a few of my own songs too. All in all I played for a little over an hour, and I made just under the minimum wage. Most of that–$6–came in the last five minutes of that hour, from one woman who worked in the shop I was standing outside of. She said, “I liked your ‘Ghost Riders’” and dropped in three toonies. Lesson learned: it pays (literally) to play those covers.

I quit when I had to pee and had to pack up to find a toilet. I made enough to cover my gas (my car gets good mileage), and I didn’t want to push it, feeling some soreness in my throat from singing so hard for that long, competing with the outside noises. I’ll try again tomorrow, with more awareness, and we’ll see if anything changes.

It’s the Taurus New Moon today! Time for grounding and getting real.

I’ve been a busy girl—it’s been a while since I had time to write. Experiences pile up when you don’t write regularly! And then I feel overwhelmed by things to say and so don’t say them, and so more experiences pile up and more things to talk about. Whew!

News first: “Salon Phoenix” starts next Tuesday at SoulSpeak and will take place on alternate Tuesdays following (look for me under ‘Weavers’ on the SoulSpeak website). Each evening will revolve around a particular theme; I’ll sing an hour’s worth or so of songs that explore that theme from various angles, then we’ll do an hour of discussion and interactive exercises that develop the theme further.

Next Tuesday’s theme will be: ‘Finding Guidance Within’. I hope you can make it out. I’ll send announcements out a week or so ahead of each Salon evening.

My house concert at SoulSpeak takes place on the 31st of May; I’ll be sending reminders of that as well when the time approaches.

I’m stepping off a scary edge in myself–I’ve decided to try busking on the streets. This is something I’ve pictured myself doing in the past, but never quite had the proper sequence of opportunity, desire and willingness! As of today (the Taurus New Moon seemed the appropriate time to take this step), I am the proud holder of an official City of Duncan busking permit, so expect to find me occupying random street corners over the spring and summer. I also plan to apply for a permit in Nanaimo.

Why busk? I hadn’t realized this, but in some folks’ minds there’s a stigma, as though buskers are ‘merely panhandlers’. I was surprised to hear this recently from a musician who admitted he’d always wanted to try it but never had because he didn’t want to be seen as as some sort of beggar.

I enjoy buskers, though. I admit to a bit of an icky guilty feeling if I can’t afford (or don’t want) to toss money into their guitar cases, so I must share that bias too, a little. Still, I want to try it, partly because it’s an opportunity to make some good love dollars playing music (I can’t think of a good reason why not), and partly for the experience, as a form of dues-paying.

My new busker friend Joseph tells me that busking got him off the street. Musicians receive money to play their music all the time; street performance has a time-honoured tradition and I’m proud to join the ranks. Thus goes the internal pep talk. It’s true. Why not be proud?

Truth is, I can really use the experience and practice playing in front of people, whether they are bustling by on their way to someplace else, pausing to hear a few bars or even settling down nearby to enjoy the music. There is a kind of magic to playing in the presence of others, attentive or not, that doesn’t happen playing alone, and alone is how I nearly always play unless I’m performing. And the whole wandering minstrel mystique appeals to me in a big way. So wish me luck, and if you happen to pass by, a toonie in the case would be well-received .

It’s very scary, though, and that tells me it will be excellent for me to do it. I am moving in the direction of my fear these days and finding vistas of joy and good feelings open up as a result.

In addition to the salons and the busking, I continue to play and gain experience at the open mics in the area, on Gabriola Island at the Roxie this coming Saturday and at the Dancing Bean the first Saturday of every month. I also have become a regular at the Nanaimo Singer-Songwriter Circles at the Mermaid’s Mug, the second Thursday of the month. I feel I’m growing a family of very supportive musical friends and starting to really accept my self-identity as a musician.

I once was a wannabe. Now I am. Sweet. The feedback I receive after the open mics and songwriter circles has been superlative. I’m almost embarrassed to keep reporting it. Ok, I’ll tell you a little bit of it .

After the Dancing Bean last Saturday, an audience member said, “It’s nice to hear somebody singing Leonard Cohen songs who can actually sing!” That gave me a laugh. Someone else compared my voice, in the same sentence, to both Bjork and Suzanne Vega (who sound absolutely nothing like each other). Last month I was compared to Buffy St. Marie. Either my voice is constantly changing, or I don’t sound like anybody and so I get compared to other woman singers who also don’t sound like anybody! I love it!

I definitely feel a great improvement in my singing ability, thanks in no small part to Penny Sidor who has been coaching me over email. Thank you Penny!! The exercises and visualizations have helped tremendously. I feel a mini-revolution in my voice, and I’m all about revolution!

I’ve been recently told, variously, that I have an ‘absolutely riveting stage presence,’ that I ‘had them in the palm of my hand,’ and that I’m ‘mesmerizing and entertaining.’ Since these similar bits of feedback came from three different sources at three different venues, I’m having to take it seriously! What, little ole me? There’s my perfectionistic, self-minimizing Virgo rising perspective for you. But I’m learning to accept that perhaps I’m a wee bit interesting after all. Mostly I’m growing a solid commitment to this musical path, and I imagine it shows.

I had an epiphany around that recently. For a long time I’ve talked myself out of taking my musical self very seriously because I felt I was ‘too old’. There is a strong consensus in society that music is the sphere of the young, and I’ve never really questioned that. I wallowed in self-pity and regret that I ‘gave my precious and fleeting youth’ to raising kids instead of pursuing my dream.

Then I realized something that awakened me and allowed me to begin to take myself seriously again. It is this: Johnny Cash, who was my very favourite singer throughout my childhood, and who remained fresh, vital and relevant for his entire long career, released his best album just before he died in his eighties. This was my epiphany: I don’t ever have to stop! I can continue getting better for as long as I live; in fact, if I keep doing it, I can only get better. I can write songs, and sing them, and I have a good thirty years left of growing and deepening. That’s a plenty long time. What a release, what a relief to realize, I can do this!

My life keeps opening like a beautiful flower, and I recently surprised myself by noticing that I now view myself as a happy person. In the past, I’ve had many pleasurable and joyful experiences, but since my childhood I felt myself to be rather dark and even bitter. My default facial expression in my youth was a resentful sort of pout; I first noticed permanent frown lines between my eyes at the age of eleven. Now my internal emotional climate has shifted. I am a happy person who occasionally has dark moods. Even when I feel dark, the light embraces the darkness and I feel simply, strongly optimistic and utterly confident of my ability to move through the darkness with all of myself present with me. I have fallen in love with life!

I’m also having a wonderfully profound and sweet time doing card readings these days. The cards have a life of their own and I just have to get out of their way and let them talk to people. It’s a lesson in magic, for me as much as the people I read for. I am not a psychic; I don’t ‘psee’ into their souls or anything like that. Instead, I let the cards talk to them, and they are so clear and direct that I don’t have to say a lot. It’s amazing to see what a lucid picture the card readings paint, over and over, and it’s incredibly heart-opening to see the ways that the cards melt people. I am falling in love with people.

Tears do flow on a regular basis, though I try not to mention that part for fear of frightening the poor souls who come to me more than they already are. Every day that I am set up to do readings, somebody comes by and says some variation of “I’m tempted, but I’m scared. I don’t want to know.” Yet I’ve witnessed powerful transfigurations in those brief 15-minute take place when the ones who are most frightened are willing to say ‘yes’.

Really I am as much of a skeptic as anyone, deep down. I first painted the cards without an agenda. They just happened, the way a baby is born. I began reading with them because they were there, primarily as a form of entertainment, and I welcomed the opportunity to show my art too, for I put a great deal of creativity into the design and execution of the deck. I’m as astonished and moved as my customers are by the unerring accuracy of these readings.

Recently I acquired ‘The Faeries’ Oracle’ by well-known Fey artist Brian Froud and I’ve begun using it as a supplemental deck with my own for those who seek (and are willing to pay for) a more in-depth reading. The faeries are tremendously helpful and fun to work with! I believe each card IS a faerie—yes—I do believe in faeries. I do! I do!

Just watch me: I’ll end up being an itinerant street performer and gypsy fortune-teller! My life’s ambition realized! My children will be so proud!

I hope you are all having a blissful spring. Part of my euphoria today in particular has to do with the long-awaited warmth and sunshine. How can one not be happy on such a day? Floral-scented breezes wafting through the treeses, ahhh…

Salon Phoenix is coming

I’m very excited to announce my new project, hot off the presses! A few minutes ago, I sent this email to my friend at SoulSpeak:

Great talking to you yesterday!! I found myself inspired and sparked into other possibilities afterward. I’m looking at my 100%–what do I REALLY want to be doing? Do I want to be teaching classes and workshops right now? No… I’m not ready for that, and perhaps it’s not really my path. I seem to be experiencing great resistance around it. I want to be teaching, yes, but I want to have fun with it and have it be fun for people. I want to teach through singing and talking. My house concert on Saltspring was lovely–the discussion afterward was stimulating, lively and very enlightening, and I was the ‘host and moderator’, facilitating and guiding the talk which was inspired by the content of the songs. And there was talk between songs, too. It really worked.

Then I recalled the very first remark that was written in my little comments book after my first house concert last fall, which began (caps hers) ‘This was a perfect evening or ‘SALON’” and a light went on… I wrote down, ‘Salon Phoenix’.

I’d like to reserve Tuesday evenings for this and do regular informal salons in which I will sing, talk and be stimulating (as I can!). This will benefit me, because I really need a regular venue, at least once a week in which to polish my songs in front of people, and it will also give others a chance to get to know me and my material and what I have to offer. Somebody mentioned to me recently a study that showed that people have to be exposed to something new a minimum of seven times before it sinks in.

I would love to try this, starting next Tuesday… I will show up and play my music, with no amp or mic, just informal me and my guitar, and I’ll put the word out to my network and create something for you to put the word out too. It’s possible no one will come for the first time or two, but I want to start it anyway, open the space and vibration and create magic with my intention and love.

This would be different from the bigger, more formal house concerts like the one we’re planning at the end of May; it is a sort of prepare-the-ground time for that, to generate interest and to give me the experience I need.

She responded immediately in the enthusiastic affirmative, so we’re on! I’ll post more details as I know them, and I’ll be creating some promo material soon too. I love spring.