Wednesday, 19 May 2010
LEAVING THE VILLAGE FINDING THE FOREST
POET AND TRANSLATOR COLEMAN BARKS
BRITISH STORYTELLER MARTIN SHAW
POET LAUREATE OF RHODE ISLAND LISA STARR
MUSICIAN DAVID DARLING
FRIDAY PERFORMANCE: June 18, 8:00 pm at Toby’s Feed Barn
Ticket Price: $20.00
SATURDAY WORKSHOP: June 19, 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Ticket Price: $125.00 (includes Friday and Saturday evening performances)
SATURDAY FIRE CIRCLE PERFORMANCE: Saturday June 19th, 8:00 pm
Ticket Price: $20.00
at
Kule Loklo Coast Miwok Village, Bear Valley
Point Reyes Station, California
Over two evenings and a day, each artist will perform, teach and collaborate: a cello taking flight, the refrain from some old stories, the call and response of ancient words. Starting with an evening performance in the sweetness of a feed barn in the village and ending the following evening round a fire out in the forest, this is a rare opportunity to join world renowned poet and translator of Rumi, Coleman Barks, award-winning British storyteller, Martin Shaw, Poet Laureate of Rhode Island, Lisa Starr, and Grammy Award winning musician, David Darling in a daylong workshop exploring language, landscape and ritual.
Well....the Family Shaw are tattoing passports numbers to our arms, taking one last look at the dismal British weather, taking a nip from the hipflask and start the epic journey to Turtle Island at the end of this week. New York, Vermont, Maine, L.A., San Fran, Point Reyes - a good five weeks on the road - telling the old stories, meeting folks and generally enjoying the mad swathes of culture and staggering beauty of the deserts, forests and lakes.
I have burbled on about most of the events individually (scroll down over the entries below for evidence), but i have to have to give one last shout out for The Great Mother Conference over in Maine, Sat May 29th to Sunday June 6th.
http://greatmotherconference.com/
Here's some lines from visting poet Tony Hoagland on Divorce:
divorce is like being born again
ailimony is the placenta one of them will eat:
Loneliness is the name of the wet nurse;
regret is the elementary school
endurance is the graduation,
So do not say they are splattered like dropped Lasagna!
Coleman Barks weighs in with this in his poem Wine Poems;
if i don't do Zen meditation to wipe out deluded thoughts
then i must pace about drunkenly , spouting crazy songs.
Otherwise in the autumn moon, or with these evenings
of spring breeze, how am i to bear the idle
longing for the past that comes through me?
Terrible rumours abounded that Coleman could'nt make it this year -trapped in Africa. The rumours are unfounded. He has hired 16 Black Swans and a small nautical carriage made of mandrake root and french lingerie to charge the oceans in one night and join the tribes gathering in New England. That's not all metaphor. He's coming.
Mr Bly is gathering waistcoats and crevates and casting a wild eye to the conference too: the wood elves insist he is bringing new work and controversial opinions with him.
Music from The Frantzich Bros,and just a huge wealth of talent (most of whom aren't on the teachers list!)
I have never had so many stories in the crane - skin bag to bring over. Northern European Fairy tales, Seneca Trickster stories, Cornish love sagas, and at least one huge Myth, 8 hrs in the telling -if i get straight to the point. No idea when or if they will want to be told but they all want to come -they've got passports from the Otherworld -black leather with emerald green silk and a signature in leaves and ocean foam.
I'm rambling. I'll see you on the road. I'll still be adding entries as the creaky ship rolls from port to port.
Friday, 14 May 2010
Two entries in one week- is there no end to the madness? Just a couple of moments taken out of a larger essay, putting them together like this they seem to have some sort of relationship. These are just a couple of little nibbles, and need alot more fleshing out. So, something on the breath of the storyteller and the organising currents of the natural world. The phrase 'bridge of breath' was coined by Daniel Deardorff, and very beautiful it is too. Wishing you a great weekend.
WILD STABILISATION: Learning How To Dance on the Tips Of Spears
One of the few unifying factors in the experience of wilderness initiation is a growing awareness that the wild seems to have some kind of rough organizing quality to it; that the gnotted forest and bleak mountain - and the plant, animal and mineral life on it – find some way of surviving, battling for primacy maybe, but appearing less chaotic than may seem at first appearances. Without the keen hand of a human, over time the area takes on a shape and atmosphere all of its own, it dictates its own terms. The hemlock, willow and blackthorn bush are all involved in some epic dance with each other, involving territory and compromise. The specific animals, trees and minerals of that place have been challenging boundaries with each other for thousands of years, without a human voice in the debating chamber.
We see an echo in this quote from Robert Bringhurst;
” the order of the garden may be easier to see, but it is fragile and superficial. It is artificial and unnatural in a very convincing way: it cannot take care of itself. The order of the wild is self-sustaining, flexible and deep” (Bringhurst 2008 :275)
For some this creates a fresh perspective on tangled and fierce moments in their own evolution: our garden years (tranquility, pruning, afternoon tea) may be more fragile than the strange, quick moments when the wild (abrupt change of circumstance, uncertainty) steps in, and with it some deep part of our own psyche that knows how to negociate its rapid currents. Without those moments we are unlikely to encounter our own capacity for wild stabilisation.That stabilisation may appear to be a frantic juggling act to those still doing garden work, but encoutering the wild brings a visual otherness with it - the terms are stranger, the stakes higher.The stabilisation may look like coyote running around with his paws on fire, but that liminal orientation is what the old Irish sagas call 'learning how to dance on the tips of spears'
THE BRIDGE OF BREATH
When you watch the magician at work…then you realise how serious is the belief that the magic is in the breath and that the breath is the magic (Malinowski 1983 :109)
In the widest association you can compare storytelling to an act of magic. As Malinowski indicates the breath is crucial - no breath, no story, no breath, no spell, no breath, no life for any of us. The breath is the incantational core, the primordial seed that binds every living being in the room; to be unaware of breath in such a moment is to build your story house on sand. It is useful to regard the indigenous practices of breath control –faster and slower – to alter consciouness.
The breath also forms a contrary landing strip for the memory of the story and the spontaneous images and reflections of the teller. In a splt second the two negotiate territory on the tongue, a wild terrain not wrestled into a ‘garden’ by use of a recited script, but kept fluid, reflexive and curious by honouring the convergence of the two streams. Just as we detect a powerful self-regulating principle in the organizing of the natural world, the storyteller can facilliate an in - the- moment confluence of energies in the power of a true oral telling. When this has already been hoed, planted and weeded into shape by unswerving repetition of language, then this convergance, and thus relationship to wild nature, is lost. Although the practioner may claim this is an act of oral narrative, its deepest gift - its relationship to spontaneity and the living world - has gone.
WILD STABILISATION: Learning How To Dance on the Tips Of Spears
One of the few unifying factors in the experience of wilderness initiation is a growing awareness that the wild seems to have some kind of rough organizing quality to it; that the gnotted forest and bleak mountain - and the plant, animal and mineral life on it – find some way of surviving, battling for primacy maybe, but appearing less chaotic than may seem at first appearances. Without the keen hand of a human, over time the area takes on a shape and atmosphere all of its own, it dictates its own terms. The hemlock, willow and blackthorn bush are all involved in some epic dance with each other, involving territory and compromise. The specific animals, trees and minerals of that place have been challenging boundaries with each other for thousands of years, without a human voice in the debating chamber.
We see an echo in this quote from Robert Bringhurst;
” the order of the garden may be easier to see, but it is fragile and superficial. It is artificial and unnatural in a very convincing way: it cannot take care of itself. The order of the wild is self-sustaining, flexible and deep” (Bringhurst 2008 :275)
For some this creates a fresh perspective on tangled and fierce moments in their own evolution: our garden years (tranquility, pruning, afternoon tea) may be more fragile than the strange, quick moments when the wild (abrupt change of circumstance, uncertainty) steps in, and with it some deep part of our own psyche that knows how to negociate its rapid currents. Without those moments we are unlikely to encounter our own capacity for wild stabilisation.That stabilisation may appear to be a frantic juggling act to those still doing garden work, but encoutering the wild brings a visual otherness with it - the terms are stranger, the stakes higher.The stabilisation may look like coyote running around with his paws on fire, but that liminal orientation is what the old Irish sagas call 'learning how to dance on the tips of spears'
THE BRIDGE OF BREATH
When you watch the magician at work…then you realise how serious is the belief that the magic is in the breath and that the breath is the magic (Malinowski 1983 :109)
In the widest association you can compare storytelling to an act of magic. As Malinowski indicates the breath is crucial - no breath, no story, no breath, no spell, no breath, no life for any of us. The breath is the incantational core, the primordial seed that binds every living being in the room; to be unaware of breath in such a moment is to build your story house on sand. It is useful to regard the indigenous practices of breath control –faster and slower – to alter consciouness.
The breath also forms a contrary landing strip for the memory of the story and the spontaneous images and reflections of the teller. In a splt second the two negotiate territory on the tongue, a wild terrain not wrestled into a ‘garden’ by use of a recited script, but kept fluid, reflexive and curious by honouring the convergence of the two streams. Just as we detect a powerful self-regulating principle in the organizing of the natural world, the storyteller can facilliate an in - the- moment confluence of energies in the power of a true oral telling. When this has already been hoed, planted and weeded into shape by unswerving repetition of language, then this convergance, and thus relationship to wild nature, is lost. Although the practioner may claim this is an act of oral narrative, its deepest gift - its relationship to spontaneity and the living world - has gone.
Tuesday, 11 May 2010
_-_Wheat_Field_with_Crows_(1890).jpg)
Well another year programme at the School comes to it's end. I always experience a mixture of emotion - sadness as for sure there are some faces i won't see again, but also the delight at a memory-bank of robust and glorious windswept moments this last year has offered -salty tears and raucous soul laughter. I will see you all the Westcountry Storytelling Festival if not before!
news just in; there is to be a conference on;
'Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious' to be held at The University of Essex, UK, 2-4 September 2010
I am giving a paper on 'storytelling and the ecstatic image' and the conference as a whole looks very interesting. I will post more details when i get them, in the meantime i suggest going direct to the university for details.
I hope you are enjoying the coyote ride of government intrigues this week brings us-takes my mind off that biting north eastern wind.
Deposits for the next WHEEL OF STORY day workshop are now being taken. We will be studying the gnarly old Northern English tale 'The Lind Wurm'. What shadowy twin sister or brother was thrown out by the mid - wife the day we were born? At what stage in our our lives do we meet that dark sibling on the road bellowing 'Eldest Marries First!!'- and lo, soul trouble begins. The ancients say we approach that shadow being with ritual, story and understanding, lest it devour all our best laid plans (plans that involve finding just what it is we want to quest for).
I begin an extensive U.S.teaching programme from the end of next week (around the 22 May) and so am asking for a prompt response if you are planning to attend -Sam and I would appreciate getting a clear picture of numbers before i leave as i return only a few days before the event. Please make cheques for £20 to Martin Shaw at: Tregonning House, 27 Eastern rd, Ashburton, Devon, TQ13 7AP
A BRANCH FROM THE LIGHTNING TREE is in negotiation for a re-release in early 2011 with an American publisher and world wide distribution. Here's a taster of some new material that will appearing in the new, revised addition - you may notice words and phrases from old blog entries, so please, just chant along with it.
New Words
The patterning of crows over a winter field is an oracular thought of the mud, sky and bird; the elegant procession of the raindeer across a spring meadow is part of some epic train of imagination that has been running for tens of thousands of years. The swift dive of the killer whale is a new vision from an ancient sea. Thought is not just contained in language, not even for us humans. But it is all story. The hundred ways the otter gleefully crosses a stream is the same way the storyteller splashes their route through a story: the same destination but differing currents, details and varying intensities of stroke. The animals are myth – tellers in the way that they are. These images are more than just metaphors for our ‘own’ condition but, entered respectfully, offer a glimpse of the great, muscled thoughts of the living world. It is always thinking.
The joy of an oral culture is the old bones of story reconnecting to the inflamed tissue of spontaneous language. It is a specific kind of animation, an incantational convergence of narrative tracks worn smooth by the ancestors and giddy new vistas of linguistic image that are only glimpsed in that telling in that moment. Oral culture understands that the voice spoken in this attunement reaches towards the harsh thinking of the wind moving over a fissured moor, the excitement of the bat as it senses dusk. So does nature think? The ancients thought so. The whole point of something like a Vision Quest was to create an axis of experience that somehow accommodated the thought – ripples of nature.
This is a complicated business; the ‘thinking’ of nature could well seem inexpressible; to truly encounter it involves a coming adrift from entirely village centered ambition. What we are left with is a strange image - language that seems to have hawk feathers and the tough, green scales of the alligator in it. Poetry is the natural result of any mythic experience. The myth teller somehow articulates the story from many positions; its empathies are generous, its community oceanically wide. To hold rigidly to the script is a western plague, to deny what Finn Mac Cool call’s ‘the music of what is’, to concrete over the entrance to the badgers den. The more defended we are, the more ‘in dominion’, the more wildness shrinks from us.
We could say that earth is relaying a lot of information right now, and not all of it is accessible with statistics and logic. I believe it is a call to the prophetic within us-a big word. The pastoral-creative work designed to appeal and comfort mass-civilisation, completely lacks the receptivity for the task.
However, without a process similar to the one I am describing it would be very difficult to engender the psychic readiness required. To be clear: to function in their deepest vocation, the storyteller – teacher - poet, should stand in the ground of prophetic image, a scarecrow of words, pushed by invisible winds. There’s a great deal of grandeur in that statement, and all sorts of problems, but I’m sticking with it.
I thought i'd finish today's entry with a poem i'd forgotten that i'd written and just found in a draw whilst looking for my passport. its dedicated to all parents and those 4 am trips to the hospital, whilst trying to remember if the child is allowed to doze or not after a banged head.
A Fall From The Bed
We love the little head
Never more so than when we pace the minor injuries reception
Dulcie’s eyes incomplete and sleepy
Ready for some purplish dream we can’t follow
So we throw nettle lines of question
to keep her hovering above the swamp of rest
Oddly, the nurse is a gate-keeper of night
And recommends twenty minutes dives
Providing we assemble our anxious tools
To unchain the ivy every now and then
But she doesn’t want to rise from the ink-mouth,
Too many Dragons are cleaning her blood
Golden mice are tingling her elbows
These Healers are underground powers
Surging up from Guinea into our local views
Indecent energies throng our daughters muscle
Waves crash, continents rise and fall as she lies under
my tweed coat,
Whole empires pour like lemmings over ruddy cliffs
The black priests sing a Madrigal
While we sit by the edge of her ocean, feet in the foam,
Imagining.
news just in; there is to be a conference on;
'Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious' to be held at The University of Essex, UK, 2-4 September 2010
I am giving a paper on 'storytelling and the ecstatic image' and the conference as a whole looks very interesting. I will post more details when i get them, in the meantime i suggest going direct to the university for details.
I hope you are enjoying the coyote ride of government intrigues this week brings us-takes my mind off that biting north eastern wind.
Deposits for the next WHEEL OF STORY day workshop are now being taken. We will be studying the gnarly old Northern English tale 'The Lind Wurm'. What shadowy twin sister or brother was thrown out by the mid - wife the day we were born? At what stage in our our lives do we meet that dark sibling on the road bellowing 'Eldest Marries First!!'- and lo, soul trouble begins. The ancients say we approach that shadow being with ritual, story and understanding, lest it devour all our best laid plans (plans that involve finding just what it is we want to quest for).
I begin an extensive U.S.teaching programme from the end of next week (around the 22 May) and so am asking for a prompt response if you are planning to attend -Sam and I would appreciate getting a clear picture of numbers before i leave as i return only a few days before the event. Please make cheques for £20 to Martin Shaw at: Tregonning House, 27 Eastern rd, Ashburton, Devon, TQ13 7AP
A BRANCH FROM THE LIGHTNING TREE is in negotiation for a re-release in early 2011 with an American publisher and world wide distribution. Here's a taster of some new material that will appearing in the new, revised addition - you may notice words and phrases from old blog entries, so please, just chant along with it.
New Words
The patterning of crows over a winter field is an oracular thought of the mud, sky and bird; the elegant procession of the raindeer across a spring meadow is part of some epic train of imagination that has been running for tens of thousands of years. The swift dive of the killer whale is a new vision from an ancient sea. Thought is not just contained in language, not even for us humans. But it is all story. The hundred ways the otter gleefully crosses a stream is the same way the storyteller splashes their route through a story: the same destination but differing currents, details and varying intensities of stroke. The animals are myth – tellers in the way that they are. These images are more than just metaphors for our ‘own’ condition but, entered respectfully, offer a glimpse of the great, muscled thoughts of the living world. It is always thinking.
The joy of an oral culture is the old bones of story reconnecting to the inflamed tissue of spontaneous language. It is a specific kind of animation, an incantational convergence of narrative tracks worn smooth by the ancestors and giddy new vistas of linguistic image that are only glimpsed in that telling in that moment. Oral culture understands that the voice spoken in this attunement reaches towards the harsh thinking of the wind moving over a fissured moor, the excitement of the bat as it senses dusk. So does nature think? The ancients thought so. The whole point of something like a Vision Quest was to create an axis of experience that somehow accommodated the thought – ripples of nature.
This is a complicated business; the ‘thinking’ of nature could well seem inexpressible; to truly encounter it involves a coming adrift from entirely village centered ambition. What we are left with is a strange image - language that seems to have hawk feathers and the tough, green scales of the alligator in it. Poetry is the natural result of any mythic experience. The myth teller somehow articulates the story from many positions; its empathies are generous, its community oceanically wide. To hold rigidly to the script is a western plague, to deny what Finn Mac Cool call’s ‘the music of what is’, to concrete over the entrance to the badgers den. The more defended we are, the more ‘in dominion’, the more wildness shrinks from us.
We could say that earth is relaying a lot of information right now, and not all of it is accessible with statistics and logic. I believe it is a call to the prophetic within us-a big word. The pastoral-creative work designed to appeal and comfort mass-civilisation, completely lacks the receptivity for the task.
However, without a process similar to the one I am describing it would be very difficult to engender the psychic readiness required. To be clear: to function in their deepest vocation, the storyteller – teacher - poet, should stand in the ground of prophetic image, a scarecrow of words, pushed by invisible winds. There’s a great deal of grandeur in that statement, and all sorts of problems, but I’m sticking with it.
I thought i'd finish today's entry with a poem i'd forgotten that i'd written and just found in a draw whilst looking for my passport. its dedicated to all parents and those 4 am trips to the hospital, whilst trying to remember if the child is allowed to doze or not after a banged head.
A Fall From The Bed
We love the little head
Never more so than when we pace the minor injuries reception
Dulcie’s eyes incomplete and sleepy
Ready for some purplish dream we can’t follow
So we throw nettle lines of question
to keep her hovering above the swamp of rest
Oddly, the nurse is a gate-keeper of night
And recommends twenty minutes dives
Providing we assemble our anxious tools
To unchain the ivy every now and then
But she doesn’t want to rise from the ink-mouth,
Too many Dragons are cleaning her blood
Golden mice are tingling her elbows
These Healers are underground powers
Surging up from Guinea into our local views
Indecent energies throng our daughters muscle
Waves crash, continents rise and fall as she lies under
my tweed coat,
Whole empires pour like lemmings over ruddy cliffs
The black priests sing a Madrigal
While we sit by the edge of her ocean, feet in the foam,
Imagining.
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
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