Lots of news in my webly world–and my really world too! I’ve made some changes to the format on the website. I removed the ‘astroblog’ because it seemed redundant. The worthy astrological and metaphysical postings I’ll link to on the ‘articles‘ page, with the aim of keeping it simple. Everything gets posted here anyway. It’s all an experiment, ever-changing and rearranging, just like life.

I’ve created a new page for a listing of upcoming performances, the link to which has replaced ‘astroblog’ in the menu bar. I’ll be updating that one often, so do check in. It looks pretty good when it’s all laid out that way! I’m particularly looking forward the house concert at SoulSpeak which is coming up at the end of May. Look for more information about that one, coming soon. And do check out the brand spanking new SoulSpeak website, isn’t it lovely? I can be found on the ‘SoulSpeak Weavers’ page, and what a community of offerings we are spinning here!

Speaking of SoulSpeak, I’ve decided to postpone the classes I’ve been planning to offer. Instead, I will start off with evening workshops (to be announced) and work my way up to ongoing classes as interest is generated.

The house concert last weekend on Saltspring was a sweet treat indeed. A smallish group cuddled on couches and chairs and the floor listening with every appearance of enthrallment, feeding my Leo Moon with waves of appreciation. Blissful sigh of satisfaction… we ended the evening with a kind of salon, a stimulating group discussion about everything under the sun which was inspired by the lyrical content of many of the songs.

And I collected a couple of comments which I’ll be adding to my testimonials page. This one is my favourite (from a young woman traveling from Australia):

“Heartfelt. Brave. Expressive. Everything I aspire to be in my music, myself, my life. I hope one day I am able to bring them together, connect, with the eloquence and beauty you have. Thank you.” – Amelia

My goodness. Thank YOU, Amelia. That’s the sort of response that gives me strength and courage to continue, makes me feel I’m on the right track after all. I have my moments of despair (being a creative depressive with a tendency to shoot myself down on the slightest provocation), and these comments are pure gold for getting me through those moments.

Here’s another:

“Love your faery song and the one you wrote for women’s camp. You have a unique gift for songwriting. Thanks for sharing.”

and

“When you sing, I feel our presence of Gaia. Singing, speaking, blessing, teaching, healing.”

and

“Thanks be! Thank you Phoenix for giving your being in song for the good of All.”

All right. I deserve to live after all. Sweet. That’s a joke, Mom. Sorry. Dark humour is my forte, though not everybody finds it funny. Repeat after me: “I will not worry about Phee.”

To quote a Talking Heads song that I love to sing, “I’m okay, I know nothing’s wrong.” I feel good today. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, spring is approaching through the chill in the air. Blessings and goodness.

Click on the thumbnail below to see the full-sized poster for this event

Spring is here at last, and life begins anew, springing forth from the wintry void. I hope you are all getting in tune with the juicy joyful risings of this sweet season. I know I am!

I am thrilled to be performing a house concert on Saltspring next week. I’ve worked hard all winter to get ready for spring and feeling very ready to begin performing again. I’ve been playing regularly all winter at various open mics in the area (the Dancing Bean in Chemainus, the Gabriola open mic with Penny Sidor and the Nanaimo Singer-Songwriter Circles at the Mermaid’s Mug) and I have lots of new songs. It’s been an inspired winter and the songs just keep coming.

The show starts at 8 pm; cost is $12. The venue is intimate; it’s best to get childcare for the kids. There should be plenty of time to catch the ferry home afterward if you don’t already live on Saltspring or have a place to stay there.

If you are interested in coming, please email me and I’ll send you a Google Maps link so you can find the place.

Happy spring!

My friend Shauna said to me this morning (laughing), “You couldn’t promote yourself out of a paper bag!” And I had to laugh rather than be offended because despite appearances (this blog and all the self-trumpeting I do online) it’s so freakin true.

I played the open mic at the Dancing Bean Cafe again last night. I’ve done that every month for a few months now, and every time I get positive feedback, I think of all the things I coulda shoulda done to promote myself.

And you know, I really shoulda. Last night I got the best feedback! it was a golden opportunity for self-promotion. When folks were praising my superlative wonderfulness, did I say anything like “Thank you! I have a house concert on Saltspring this Friday, if you’d like to hear more,” or “Would you like to join my mailing list?” or “Here’s my card,” or “If you’re interested I have a CD for sale from my former band, TreeRoots Revolution,” well, duh. No. I didn’t. All I could think of was the ‘thank you’ bit. And I smiled and nodded a lot.

Once again, I ‘forgot’ to bring business cards. I ‘forgot’ to bring CDs. I ‘forgot’ to mention the house concert. And I ‘forgot’ about the mailing list. I could call it a mental block, but that’s a cop-out. It’s an emotional block. I’m scared to say nice things about myself in a real, live, in-person way. I’m actually very shy, even bashful, about what I do, the ways that I put myself onstage and sing my own heart out.

I blame my childhood (that’s always easiest, and often true). I was embarrassed, growing up, about the ways I stood out from the other kids. I had a big family, lots of siblings, step-siblings and cousins my age, and my parents and other relatives tried to treat us all equally. I interpreted that to mean, “Nobody’s any better than anybody else. Nobody’s special. Stop bragging. Don’t be so conceited.” And that was hard for me, because I was quite the gifted little hotshot, what with my succession of straight A’s, singing at grown-up parties, awards for artwork and all. I tried hard to be quiet about it so I wouldn’t stand out. I got real good at being quiet. Too good.

Now I find myself called on to put myself out there in all the ways I was discouraged as a kid. It’s weird. It’s hard. I’m not so good at it yet, but I suppose I’ll learn, being no dummy.

I’ll pass on the nice things other people said to me last night in the hopes it will sink in. Maybe I’ll get that it’s okay to blow my own horn. It’s my horn. If I’m scared to blow it, why should anybody else?

A lot more was said last night, but these are the words that stand out in my memory:

(from a table of women who beamed and bobbed agreement with their spokeswoman as I left the stage) “You were wonderful! What a lovely voice, how gifted you are! And you were so present–that’s not easy to do–you had us in the palm of your hand!”

(from a man who sought me out during the break) “That was a great song–that Mother Earth song. And that Leonard Cohen song, wow, I’ve never heard it done that way. You took it to so many different places. It was just beautiful.”

(And from Phil, emcee / sound guy and member of the awesome host band, the Flying Accusations) “That was a dynamite set! That’s the best you’ve ever played here! What have you been doing?”

Phil then gave me a pep talk, with some suggestions for next time. “Next time, I want you to come on earlier in the first set, because I want you to set the tone.” And, “Next time, I’m going to turn the sound up on you. Way up. I don’t want them to have the option of not listening.”

He had other things to say of a similar vein. Was this guy drunk? Was he coming on to me? Really, I didn’t get that vibe. He just wanted me to get how well I did. He was very sweet. At the end of the night, he gave me a hug and said, “You’re part of the family now.”

Thanks, Phil. I feel honoured.

Beauty is the bottom line
I am told
The equation:
Youth plus beauty equals lovability
With beauty an ever-decreasing value
As age increases

Female value
Depreciates faster
Than male
Which is why older men, even poor
Can look good
Be rated worthy

My chances of
getting laid with love
Have shrunk in proportion
To my rating according to the equation

Despite my increasing sexual power,
Communication skills, lovingness
Unquenchable fire, passion
And capacity for pleasure

I am a better lover than
Twenty years ago
But men wanted me then
While now, I find myself
Shelved
In the name of
Beauty

I don’t believe it
Somewhere must be a man
Who hasn’t swallowed
That poison

I’ve uploaded a wealth of new song for your listening enjoyment… these are from a house concert in Duncan a couple of weeks ago which was recorded on decent equipment by a good friend (thanks, Rick). These are live, raw and flawed, with the odd musical imperfection, the occasional random percussive sound of kids pounding on the ceiling (their floor) overhead and distractions caused by a kitten cavorting cutely. Such is the nature of the live experience…

Christmas Presence written last December in Toronto, inspired by the frantic urban Christmas experience.
Something About Christmas (a capella Christmas song, written a few years ago)
Cup of Clay
Because
A Woman Like Me
Death to Sacred Cows
Fat Naked Woman
For Waiting
Freedom is Salvation (new song, debut performance)
Red Hands
Fool’s Gold
Midnight Flea Circus
Drown
Lilith
Beauty is Free a capella
Obvious (a capella)
The Way to Say Goodbye (a capella)
Fishbelly Skin

More songs here: myspace.com/phoenixwolfray

I have a myspace page now, it’s pretty bare bones but it has songs available for listening, including my Christmas songs. They’re much better quality recordings than what I’ve had so far; from a recent house concert and recorded on good equipment. I’ve made the Christmas songs downloadable, so please feel free. Enjoy. And Merry Christmas. If you have a myspace page, please add me as a friend. I can use all the friends I can get.

myspace/phoenixwolfray

What does one say? In the aftermath, post-blossom and pre-crash, I feel bliss and a wish for more. To heap praises upon my own head is considered crass, yet praises were heaped and I would but repeat them. Ego and over-inflation of same is a problem in our world, one I have strained to avoid. I trained myself (as I was trained) to wait in shadowed corners, to applaud those standing brightly brandishing their wands in the spotlight, and I politely diverted attention inadvertently directed my way.

“Don’t notice me,” I’d state primly, virtuous in girlish modesty. “Don’t look, and don’t listen. I am no one. Look at HIM.” When I took the stage with others, it was them I sought to support, whose voices supplanted, superseded and defeated mine. Now, for the first time, I stand alone, and I have grown.

To stand in the light, to allow others to look at me, listen to me, notice me goes against every habit of my soul, yet these solo flights have ignited my flesh with fresh awakenings. At last, I believe that the shining eyes of those who receive must mean something. I am finally shedding my monstrously egotistical modesty (thinking myself special in being the one with nothing special to offer). At last, I acknowledge that I have a voice that gives pleasure, that enlightens, awakens, moves and soothes. At last, I believe.

I sang. I opened my mouth, shaped it around words and melodies graved so deeply I need not struggle to remember, and I let the wind blow through me. I grew. I filled with light and life, I smiled, I was (in the words of one present) “so charming.” This feedback disarms my cynical self-hater who sees nothing to admire in the mirror, which has slowly attenuated to a ghost, a wisp from past realities, losing credence and power. Now, I can stand on the ground and own my sound. I have a voice. This is what I do.

In short, I blew me away, that self which identifies with what others might think (as filtered through the judgments, self-shaming and belittling which has passed for ego, the the opposite and inverse of self-importance: self-negation). This doesn’t mean I’m suddenly a pillar of confidence, but I now have some ground to stand on. I’m still shy about initiating—(it takes a huge surge of motivation to compel me to attend an open mic)—but once there, newly centered confidence displaces the habitual shame.

Lyrics to my newest songs reflect a freshly-fledged sense of readiness: “I have a song, and I’m not afraid to sing it.” “I’m ready to become the one I really want to be.” “I have a choice, and this what I do.”

Alas, it is a sad statement on the state of my internal atmosphere that I actually feel ashamed of feeling good about no longer feeling bad about myself, and embarrassed about that. How convoluted, how twisted, how strange!

This is me, changing. This is me, learning who I am, accepting and transforming.

Glory hallefrigginlujah. And about time.

These are a few new songs I’ve just added from a recent local house concert. It’s challenging putting live material out for public consumption because there is no chance to clean up warts and blemishes. One take, that’s it, no editing. That’s also the beauty of live performance. Listen at your own risk.

Drown:

This song is from a dream in which a woman with long straight flame-red hair was dancing under a roofed shelter with no walls in a house downpour, twirling and sending her hair out like sheets of flame. As she danced, she sang this song to me. I introduce it as a ‘lesbian love song’.

Beauty is Free

This song is fairly recent; it grew from a moment of feeling utterly transported and knocked-out by the intense, overwhelming beauty I saw in everything around me. No drugs were involved.

Everything is True

This song is my answer to the hype about global warming. The song is saying, in essence, that Mama Earth knows exactly what she’s doing. We’re a part of it, we’re doing her work, even if we don’t understand it or what greater good might come from whatever collective part we play in the environmental changes happening now. Still, the song is not expressing endorsement of abuse. “Mama’s got a big lap, room for all her babies / She says we’re allowed to do pretty much as we please / But that don’t mean we get to do anything we want to..” It’s about finding the balance and acting according to our own sense of integrity.

Red Hands

When I first hear that Afghanistan was being bombed, I was utterly horrified and stricken. I could not believe that this poverty-stricken little country could be pounded on by the bombs of the world. For what? Because a terrorist was hiding there somewhere? Why couldn’t they send in an elite team of assassins? Nothing about it made sense to me; it felt to me like an act of pure, gratuitous, insanity. Yet I couldn’t rid myself of the sense that I was somehow involved, that those were my hands dropping the bombs. As a human, I am responsible for what humans do. This song speaks to that sense of responsibility. It’s a protest and a prayer at the same time. The ‘evil’ in the song refers not to the act of violence, but to the self-righteous justification and finger-pointing. “Evil walks the planet in our flesh / we point at others, whisper, “Wickedness! / They are the ones who must be shown that our God’s the one to dread…”

The Way to Say Goodbye

I wrote this one lo, these many years ago when a man I believed at the time to be the love of my life returned at last… with his fiance. They got married and I was invited to the wedding. It was a truly mythic experience! So of course I went home and wrote this song. It was about working through the processes of shock and betrayal and coming to a state of acceptance and release, letting go with love still intact. “I can love you like the eagle loves the sky / and that’s the way I say goodbye”

The Will to Live

This one is so recent that I’m not certain what it means specifically; it takes a while for me to really grok where the specific images in a song come from, what it means. It has to grow in me. But basically, this one comes from a very intense feeling that sweeps over me sometimes, a visceral, existential hunger to exist, to experience, to lust and live fully. It feels very good to sing! “I’m waiting for that antler-headed man / He goes by many names, I’ll call him Pan / Pan is my man…”

Fool’s Gold

This one is lighter on the surface, but has depth when you look more closely. I wrote it as a children’s song, in the sense that we are all children. There’s a bit of a twist at the end, it goes to an unexpected conclusion. It’s about goals, materialism and being careful about what we wish for. “Fool’s gold glitters in the light of day / Fool’s gold fades in the night away / Fool’s gold is nothing but a pile of leaves in the light of dawn…”

For Waiting

This song is a celebration of, and an exercise in, heart-opening to someone I once felt hatred for. It was written for someone I was in a bad relationship with long ago. After many years I became close friends with him, largely due to his patience and faith that there was something worth salvaging between us. Now, this song helps me keep my heart open while I return the favour. “Thank you for waiting for me / thank you for letting me be …”

If you want to download the songs, you can right-click on the links in the title and choose ‘save as’. But you’d probably enjoy a live performance more. House concerts are low stress and easy to arrange; just get together a group of friends for a potluck and invite me. I’ll do the rest. If you’re interested, email me. I will travel if I can get together a string of linked venues and dates. So far I have one in Northern California!

Beautiful words received after this most recent concert, or salon (I like that word better) on Saturday night:

“This was a perfect evening or ‘Salon’. Your lyrics are a beautiful expression of complex subjects and emotions that are often difficult to put into words. Thank you for manifesting on my holodeck.”

“Thank you for this magical journey – visiting past and futures still to come and culminating with the present. What a glorious singing being you are — what a glorious singing being you are — ”

“I just want to thank you and let you know how much T and I needed an evening like this. I won’t forget you and know that we’ll cross paths. I feel like I started to breathe again.”

“Thank you for sharing your stories and journeys in your beautiful voice, soft and strong.”

“Thanks so much again for the wonderful soothing concert last night at —’s home!! It was wonderful! I look forward to enjoying your CD for many moons to come.”

I gratefully receive magical songs that fly into my head and sing themselves to me. It has taken many years of process and practice, discovery and recovery of my voice, and the help of many amazing teachers and helpers. This has been a very long apprenticeship; now, I emerge from my chrysalis to offer myself, to fully be what I am. Yes!

My vision is to travel with my guitar and my songs and go where the wind blows, play in peoples’ homes and share my muse and heart, travelling in true troubadour fashion called forth by those who seek what I offer. I need no roots. I am not a homebody. I am subject to a holy wanderlust I have only recently learned to name, and it only grows stronger the longer I live.

The road is calling me. Your couch is calling me. I come to sing for my supper, and I spread the beloved word as I go.

Imagine a circle of friends curled up in your living room, snuggling and journeying to an intimate sharing of songs. I break the paradigms of performer and audience, musician and fans. I seek to become, I am a vessel for the nourishment of hearts and bodies, minds and spirits, and this is my bliss, to give, to live.

The business of music is no business of mine. I am not about business. I am all about playing my part in facilitating the evolution of all personkind, including the great Person which is this living planet and the Person who is the Whole, greater than the sum of the parts of all that is, was, might have been or might become.

Once, I feared to show my face to the world. I shrunk from the light into the shadows, but the shadows were not safe. I am ready now, and I am still shy, still careful. I dare to risk sharing my heart with others that they may more easily open their own hearts with their beloveds and that they may, if they chooose, join my own growing and evolving circle of friends and lovers.

Rather than fans, applause or money, I seek love, new experiences and heartsharing. I am here to offer my gifts to you and to rediscover who you are as we meet again for the first time. I trust my friends, my brothers and sisters and travelers on the walk of life. We are familiars from the beginning of things, and we know. I trust the path which beckons, calls and moves forward under my feet. We are ever-growing souls in an evolving universe; the world is getting smaller because we are kindred spirits growing greater.

I am a sacred vessel, as are we all, and I am here for you now, as we are all here for each other.

The songs should be listened to with the ears and the heart and felt with the body. If you feel called to have me come to your home, email me and we’ll find a way. It doesn’t matter to me so much where you live; I will connect the dots of the places I am called and trace a trajectory around the world if it goes that far. It may take a little longer if you live in Australia, but if you want me I’ll get there somehow.

And I’ll keep writing. Have laptop, will travel. Holy Hallelujah, Batman!