Early morning peering out on the winter wonderland that is Minneapolis. Deepest drifts i've seen since the 70's and i was a little chap. Came in on a late flight from Seattle and ended up in a French cafe hearing one of my buddy's and favorite musicians, Glen Hegelson and his wild Gypsy band.
Washington state was a wonder. Reunited with my soul brother Daniel Deardorff at his magical encampment up in Mossy Rock, Port Townsend. Thank you for the Mythsinger foundation for doing such a splendid job on organizing three days of events for me up there. Packed venues all the way - i feel i have several hundred new friends. We also shot several hours of video conversation between me and Daniel - on myth-telling, wilderness, rites-of-passage etc, so hopefully that will be edited and appear on our websites and Youtube at some point soon.
Lunch with Robert and Ruth Bly and then more stories and music tonight in Minneapolis with my friend the one and only Miguel Rivera - ceremonial leader and a great drummer. Then it's the Men's retreat out in the shaggy wilds some distance out of town - back to the UK on the plane on sunday night,
A short trip, but baring yesterdays flight to the midwest, i have taught everyday and traversed some great distances - energy levels good though, and mood restful. I have one window this morning for buying presents and so will briefly be striding out into the freezing air of uptown Minneapolis and looking for books on recipes for Raw Chocolate, Princess dresses and something unexpected - i'm not sure my one small rucksack can cope with much more!
NOTE: The Robin Williamson and myself weekend is selling places FAST. So, UK folks, please book in or risk missing out,
Friday, 28 January 2011
Monday, 24 January 2011
SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE
Early morning Seattle. Love this city. my buddy Jussi (the big Finn) picked me up from the airport last night on the last plane out of San Francisco northwards. We were soon nursing beers in his local tavern and cackling away. Last time i was here i accompanied Jussi on his second date with a new girlfriend, a kind of mythic chaperone - at 55 he needs a watchful eye on him in case he tries to get to get to second base. Actually the poor guy was trapped with looking after me and accepting the date. Anyway, the girlfriend didn't pan out but Jussi and I are now happily married. Ok, maybe that last bit isn't quite true. He is a catch though ladies - brooding but twinkling they say.
In a few hours we head up on ferries and the open road to Port Townsend to be reunited with my great compadre DANIEL DEARDORFF. Tonight is an evening on 'The Culture of Wildness' - talk, discourse and stories, and tomorrow rumors abound of a hush hush work shop. Contact mythsinger.com today if you want more details. After that its a jump over to Minneapolis (jump, well a leap at that distance) for the Men's retreat and then home. Missing the girls as usual. We all travelled together last year as you may remember, and i miss seeing all these new things with them.
Had another wonderful weekend in Point Reyes with everyone at the Westcountry School of Myth. Kudos to core team Lisa Doron, Steve Costa from Point Reyes books, Champions of food Maggie and Luke. We examined the Trickster through the guise of 'Tristan and isolde' - barely a dry eye in the house by our end. Love this mad group of opinions, intelligence and slanderous speculation.
WAITING LISTS: More and more of these events are ending up with growing waiting lists of folks that apply too late. Don't be disappointed and sign up early - places go quickly. Bear this in mind UK folks for the below 'Red Eared Hound' event.
Ok, the chariot awaits, more soon folks - have you checked out our facebook page? Click the Facebook logo to the right of this blog.....many good video clips: Malidoma, Hillman, Barks, Woodman etc. It will be a growing resource - please click 'like' on the page and pass it onto friends - thank you.
In a few hours we head up on ferries and the open road to Port Townsend to be reunited with my great compadre DANIEL DEARDORFF. Tonight is an evening on 'The Culture of Wildness' - talk, discourse and stories, and tomorrow rumors abound of a hush hush work shop. Contact mythsinger.com today if you want more details. After that its a jump over to Minneapolis (jump, well a leap at that distance) for the Men's retreat and then home. Missing the girls as usual. We all travelled together last year as you may remember, and i miss seeing all these new things with them.
Had another wonderful weekend in Point Reyes with everyone at the Westcountry School of Myth. Kudos to core team Lisa Doron, Steve Costa from Point Reyes books, Champions of food Maggie and Luke. We examined the Trickster through the guise of 'Tristan and isolde' - barely a dry eye in the house by our end. Love this mad group of opinions, intelligence and slanderous speculation.
WAITING LISTS: More and more of these events are ending up with growing waiting lists of folks that apply too late. Don't be disappointed and sign up early - places go quickly. Bear this in mind UK folks for the below 'Red Eared Hound' event.
Ok, the chariot awaits, more soon folks - have you checked out our facebook page? Click the Facebook logo to the right of this blog.....many good video clips: Malidoma, Hillman, Barks, Woodman etc. It will be a growing resource - please click 'like' on the page and pass it onto friends - thank you.
Thursday, 13 January 2011
The Rattle Bag and the Story Road: Travels in Winter 2011
Well hello there 2011. Rain loosens from the twitching groin of an angry Devonian God down onto the little town of Ashburton. Sweet potato and aubergine curry simmers downstairs (had i mentioned that i can't stop cooking vegetarian food? this is most irregular), and my little one is home from school soon so all is well. My (much) better half is in a recording studio laying down some fiendish 'licks' on a new batch of songs.
On the Road Again
So, here's wishin us the best as we creak and groan into another year. I havna had much time to contemplate this before heading out to California next week for 'The Snowy Lions of Language' - the second stage on the Point Reyes School of Myth program. Not a spare seat in the house says valiant organizer and pretty rockin storyteller herself, Miss Lisa Doron. All details at www.pointreyesbooks.com - open evening on the friday night, a couple of seats left. Then up to Washington state to be reunited with the devilish Daniel Deardorff and the wonderful Mythsinger Foundation for an evening on 'The Culture of Wildness' - stories and talk. I will try and post the flyer above. Final stop is in Minneapolis for a winter men's retreat " Into the Belly of Ice and Snow" with me, Miguel Rivera and poems by ROBERT BLY. Yes, the man himself will be dropping by for a poem here and there. Ticket sails have been brisk for this event so contact www.feedingthestory.com TODAY to get a last minute place. Do not, do not, do not, turn down an opportunity to see Robert in action - these are very precious moments.
Oh - the website just mentioned also has news of a show for everybody in Minneapolis on the friday night - any gender! hurrah.
SO.......is the U.S. getting the best of all worlds my briteeesh chums? NO.
'RED EARED HOUNDS AND THE QUEEN OF WILD HORSES'
a weekend intensive on Celtic Myth with Robin Williamson and Martin Shaw will take place 18-20th March in Devon, UK for an amazing 130 pounds. Read it and weep. This is the beginning of a cycle of study that will lead into a kind of Bardic summerschool around the third weekend in August. Places available today at 01364 653723 or schoolofmyth@yahoo.co.uk
This is available to all but especially essential to all that have studied at the School before.
PLEASE FIND US ON FACEBOOK
I am very excited about this event. In case, somehow, impossibly, you may not be familiar with Robin and his work here is an interview from the late 90's. The school has just launched a page on FACEBOOK so please come find us - we will load up a plethora of interesting myth related goodies.
Three things that make a bard:
Playing of the harp
Knowledge of ancient lore
Poetic power.
- from the Triads
Robin achieved fame in the '60s as an innovative folk musician, and lived in the USA for a number of years. Now he is respected internationally as a top storyteller who integrates masterly telling with virtuoso playing. His style invites favourable comparison to the ancient Celtic Bards, of whose history and stories he has such a deep knowledge.
I asked him about his approach:
Robin: I do like folktales, but one of the things that I was fascinated in was the Bardic stuff - the old literature of Britain and Ireland. The spoken word had to do with the harp, even if it wasn't exactly verse. There were metres for reciting verse to music, and there was also a tradition of extemporary prose to music. It went hand in hand with the concept of inspiration, where you would reach out into universe and draw in truth and tell it, with music. That's I think what the Bardic philosophy was based on. Bards were a kind of Druid, in a nutshell. A lot of this literature survived, but in an unperformed way, so I became interested, in about 1980, in trying to perform it, to put it into my own words and try to tell it with the harp. I always liked ballads and I grew up with them - the Scottish Border ballads. There was always a connection for me between stories and music.
Tim: Were you interested in storytelling per se, or was it all just part of those ballads?
R: I was interested in speaking and saying things, but not so much in storytelling until about 1980. I had worked in various bands - the Incredible String Band, and my own Merry Band, in the States. I liked Jack Kerouac when I was a kid, I liked the notion of that flowing voice that he had, and later looking for his origins I found that he liked people like Walt Whitman, and the origin of that style goes into William Blake, and the origins of William Blake go right into the Celtic heritage. So I found myself back with my own ancestry, which is Scots-Irish mixture, and I began then to write new material in a traditional style, because I was also very interested in Scottish and Irish music and wanted to write this flowing, original style, which I admired.
T: Did you play the harp at all then?
R: No, I played the guitar and the fiddle, and various things. Over the years it's become more like traditional storytelling and less like Jack Kerouac, but I still like the improvisatory - the notion of off the cuff, you know. Not only humour - but I like humour, and I like to put in things that are spontaneous.
T: Do you have a sense of wanting to preserve the very traditional stories - a duty to carry them on in the form that they are?
R: The form that they are in is not their ideal shape nowadays. Say you've got a story that's written in medieval Welsh, only someone who studies that can read it. So then it's translated into English, but is it translated in a good way, or is it just a literal translation? Because what you have to put into it is the tooth music and the vowel ringings, assonances and internal rhymes that they had in the original. You've got to make out a meaningful English version of it. So in that case I do try to stay to the literal text or language, and improvise the music. Then you've got two levels of creativity within a confined text.
With the folktales that aren't originally literature I take quite great liberties, because I know enough stories that the beginning of one story will mush into the end of another. Things can go on in the back of your mind, and I find about three or four threads going to make up a different story, so I do take more liberties with the oral folklore.
The longer you live, and the better sort of a life you have, then the better sort of a storyteller you're going to become. If you wanted to be a dancer you'd have to create a dancer's body. If you want to be a really good storyteller I think to a certain extent you have to create a storyteller's life. You start off your life with a "Once upon a time...", and go off on the adventure. The magical thing to me seems to be that those who seek an adventure generally seem to get it, don't they?
T: Which is more important to you, the music or the stories?
R: They're one thing to me now, because I don't have a tune that I play with a story. I just tell the story and play along. The music's never the same, it just follows the words.
T: Has it been difficult to find a way of accompanying yourself?
R: Well there's various models. If you can play and can talk, then it's possible to put the two of them together. It's remarkable how music falls into shapes and sentence structures and pulses. With a film, it's remarkable how the music adapts itself to the visuals. These things are related aren't they?
T: When I first saw you perform, you started playing the harp, gradually eased into a story, then as it developed you interrupted the story with a song which itself was interrupted by a story...
R: Oh I like that! Boxes within boxes. It's nice when it happens. I generally work in that way, where one thing flows into another, but I don't generally plan out a programme with that in mind. I often have things I'll do repeatedly in a year, but I'll do everything else differently round those things that I know will be sure-fire. So I allow myself quite a lot of change, because it keeps things interesting for me too. I start off with the same tune on the harp very often, but then I just take it from there.
I don't know anyone else that does it, but it always seemed to me to be a good idea. It's an idea that I got from radio - segue/s isn't it? When you start doing it spontaneously it's quite fun.
T: It's something I've come across in the Arabian Nights, which has the same kind of structure but not so complex.
R: And they're all cliff hangers aren't they? It's fantastic. In the famous Culhwch and Olwen story, in the Mabinogion - it's a quest for the King of the Giants' daughter - there's zillions of sub-quests, and I think a good storyteller could have strung it out to last an entire winter. But they didn't bother to write all that into the text that survives.
T: What advice would you give for combining music and stories?
R: Try and get as close as possible to what you are. In my own case it's not very specific: I grew up mostly in Edinburgh, in a Northern Irish family, and I now live in Wales. So I'm not specifically about a place. I know very much who I am and how I got that way, so I stay with that. And the songs I feel comfortable singing are either because I've written them or they mean something to me because I've lived with them, and the music feels comfortable like an old shoe. That's the way to go rather than trying to get into a style which is a long way away from what you're about, because that's acting. Storytelling is distinct from acting and when you get people acting it doesn't make for good storytelling. It comes across as overdone then, doesn't it? People tell me I overact. I tell them: No! Noooo! A thousand times no!
T: It's one thing to play music interspersed with stories, but to accompany oneself it's very easy to overwhelm the story with sound. How have you dealt with that?
R: It's quite easy if you're doing the music yourself because you pace it to the pauses in between the lines, but if you're working with someone who plays the trumpet you have to work out where they're going to toot loudly or quietly. The beauty of working on your own is that you can be unstructured. And the harp just floats right in there - that's why it was designed.
T: What do you think of contemporary bards from unbroken traditions in other countries?
R: I got to know the Ashiks [traditional bards from Turkey], and I love that stuff. They sing and play at the same time. They also have that notion of doing, to become an inspired person. There's a process of becoming, there's a method of achieving it, and there's a way of acquiring it. That tradition is spoken about again and again in the Welsh Mysteries. In the Middle Ages these things were still going on within the official church, there was a subtext of inspiration - some of the clergy were not only saints but also Bards. It involves knowing the landscape, the meaning of places, lakes, mountains, trees, when the flowers come out and why, the migrations of birds and so on. Knowing these things is an education. The real meaning of an education is not going to college; it has to do in the end with love, marriage and children, and learning to be a good human being, and you also get a big chunk of education from a tradition of any kind. ...One of the things I like most about the Celtic tradition is that it hasn't become a formal school. It never says here's what you do, step one, step two, it's a bit hazy like a lot of Celtic things. That allows scope for individuality.
They brought in the harp to the Scottish education system; you can take an exam in it. In a way it's good, but in another way maybe it would be better if they'd tried to suppress and outlaw it, so that would have a certain wildness to it. If you make something too formalised, you whack it on the head.
T: What do you think of the revivalists who quickly style themselves as bards, without going through the years of spiritual discipline?
R: You do get that. But in the end there is no shortcut. When you're a kid and you want a moustache, you're not going to get one until it starts growing. These things do take time. The only reason they are Mysteries is that they can't easily be communicated. And similarly with quality: it will out.
I've got two immediate tasks which I'm working on flat out. One of them is the recreation of how to play the Celtic harp, since no one knows how to play it. I'm working on the fingerings, the approaches to it, harmony and construction, the repertoire, and try and make it something I can do. I've been working on that since 1980-ish, and I'm really getting somewhere with it. Also the notion of trying to put into context the traditional metres, patterns and modes of music suitable to perform to text. Those two things are going to keep me busy for quite a while.
T: Do you think it's possible to recapture that, since so much is lost?
R: There's a lot that isn't lost, it's a question of learning how to do it. I've been going through the manuscripts - there's a lot of Welsh manuscripts on the subject of music. The Ap Huw is the famous one, and that's a detailed description of how to approach individual notes, how to treat patterns and shapes of sound, so I've been having a go at that.
T: Do you find that helps the stories too?
R: I think so. It's possible that originally certain melodies were associated with certain stories. There's a lot of lost stories too - in the Irish tradition there were a lot of romantic stories, none of which appear to have remained but they're mentioned by title in early manuscripts. Similarly in the Welsh poems of Llywarch Hen from the ninth century, what remain are the song sections of a vast, lost prose epic, which presumably had tunes but not now.
T: Do you hope to develop a performance in the authentic traditional way?
R: No, I'm not really trying to recreate how it might have been. I just try and perform in a way that I like, but inevitably there is something that's going to be vaguely like it was.
T: At least one can learn from the wisdom of the past; presumably all that sophistication produced something good.
R: That's right. The Indians say that music is a teacher and I'm not at all sure they're not right.
T: Are you putting down your other instruments to focus on the harp?
R: No I still play a variety, but the harp has become the main one, and I'm learning a lot from it. It's as good a place as any to start, if you wanted to be a British person - it is the personification of the instruments of Britain.
T: Would you say that there's a ritualistic element to storytelling?
R: Originally in Greek theatre the stage was an enchanted space in which reality was suspended and wonderful things could occur, and I think telling was in such a sacred space, so for me in general I think there is, yes.
T: There's a lot of reduction of performance to a commodity these days, and less awareness of that link back to all the hidden depth and profundity.
R: That's right. The other day I read out - something I don't often do - The Dialogue of the Two Sages to an elderly audience and they'd never heard anything quite like it. That piece is almost Japanese in style, with these wisdoms they're talking about. These things were widely available in Britain once, but people today have sold all that for a sense of practicality instead of the wonderful walkers between the worlds which the early Scottish-Gaelic traditions used to talk about. But it's still there, like a sleeping dragon.
On the Road Again
So, here's wishin us the best as we creak and groan into another year. I havna had much time to contemplate this before heading out to California next week for 'The Snowy Lions of Language' - the second stage on the Point Reyes School of Myth program. Not a spare seat in the house says valiant organizer and pretty rockin storyteller herself, Miss Lisa Doron. All details at www.pointreyesbooks.com - open evening on the friday night, a couple of seats left. Then up to Washington state to be reunited with the devilish Daniel Deardorff and the wonderful Mythsinger Foundation for an evening on 'The Culture of Wildness' - stories and talk. I will try and post the flyer above. Final stop is in Minneapolis for a winter men's retreat " Into the Belly of Ice and Snow" with me, Miguel Rivera and poems by ROBERT BLY. Yes, the man himself will be dropping by for a poem here and there. Ticket sails have been brisk for this event so contact www.feedingthestory.com TODAY to get a last minute place. Do not, do not, do not, turn down an opportunity to see Robert in action - these are very precious moments.
Oh - the website just mentioned also has news of a show for everybody in Minneapolis on the friday night - any gender! hurrah.
SO.......is the U.S. getting the best of all worlds my briteeesh chums? NO.
'RED EARED HOUNDS AND THE QUEEN OF WILD HORSES'
a weekend intensive on Celtic Myth with Robin Williamson and Martin Shaw will take place 18-20th March in Devon, UK for an amazing 130 pounds. Read it and weep. This is the beginning of a cycle of study that will lead into a kind of Bardic summerschool around the third weekend in August. Places available today at 01364 653723 or schoolofmyth@yahoo.co.uk
This is available to all but especially essential to all that have studied at the School before.
PLEASE FIND US ON FACEBOOK
I am very excited about this event. In case, somehow, impossibly, you may not be familiar with Robin and his work here is an interview from the late 90's. The school has just launched a page on FACEBOOK so please come find us - we will load up a plethora of interesting myth related goodies.
Three things that make a bard:
Playing of the harp
Knowledge of ancient lore
Poetic power.
- from the Triads
Robin achieved fame in the '60s as an innovative folk musician, and lived in the USA for a number of years. Now he is respected internationally as a top storyteller who integrates masterly telling with virtuoso playing. His style invites favourable comparison to the ancient Celtic Bards, of whose history and stories he has such a deep knowledge.
I asked him about his approach:
Robin: I do like folktales, but one of the things that I was fascinated in was the Bardic stuff - the old literature of Britain and Ireland. The spoken word had to do with the harp, even if it wasn't exactly verse. There were metres for reciting verse to music, and there was also a tradition of extemporary prose to music. It went hand in hand with the concept of inspiration, where you would reach out into universe and draw in truth and tell it, with music. That's I think what the Bardic philosophy was based on. Bards were a kind of Druid, in a nutshell. A lot of this literature survived, but in an unperformed way, so I became interested, in about 1980, in trying to perform it, to put it into my own words and try to tell it with the harp. I always liked ballads and I grew up with them - the Scottish Border ballads. There was always a connection for me between stories and music.
Tim: Were you interested in storytelling per se, or was it all just part of those ballads?
R: I was interested in speaking and saying things, but not so much in storytelling until about 1980. I had worked in various bands - the Incredible String Band, and my own Merry Band, in the States. I liked Jack Kerouac when I was a kid, I liked the notion of that flowing voice that he had, and later looking for his origins I found that he liked people like Walt Whitman, and the origin of that style goes into William Blake, and the origins of William Blake go right into the Celtic heritage. So I found myself back with my own ancestry, which is Scots-Irish mixture, and I began then to write new material in a traditional style, because I was also very interested in Scottish and Irish music and wanted to write this flowing, original style, which I admired.
T: Did you play the harp at all then?
R: No, I played the guitar and the fiddle, and various things. Over the years it's become more like traditional storytelling and less like Jack Kerouac, but I still like the improvisatory - the notion of off the cuff, you know. Not only humour - but I like humour, and I like to put in things that are spontaneous.
T: Do you have a sense of wanting to preserve the very traditional stories - a duty to carry them on in the form that they are?
R: The form that they are in is not their ideal shape nowadays. Say you've got a story that's written in medieval Welsh, only someone who studies that can read it. So then it's translated into English, but is it translated in a good way, or is it just a literal translation? Because what you have to put into it is the tooth music and the vowel ringings, assonances and internal rhymes that they had in the original. You've got to make out a meaningful English version of it. So in that case I do try to stay to the literal text or language, and improvise the music. Then you've got two levels of creativity within a confined text.
With the folktales that aren't originally literature I take quite great liberties, because I know enough stories that the beginning of one story will mush into the end of another. Things can go on in the back of your mind, and I find about three or four threads going to make up a different story, so I do take more liberties with the oral folklore.
The longer you live, and the better sort of a life you have, then the better sort of a storyteller you're going to become. If you wanted to be a dancer you'd have to create a dancer's body. If you want to be a really good storyteller I think to a certain extent you have to create a storyteller's life. You start off your life with a "Once upon a time...", and go off on the adventure. The magical thing to me seems to be that those who seek an adventure generally seem to get it, don't they?
T: Which is more important to you, the music or the stories?
R: They're one thing to me now, because I don't have a tune that I play with a story. I just tell the story and play along. The music's never the same, it just follows the words.
T: Has it been difficult to find a way of accompanying yourself?
R: Well there's various models. If you can play and can talk, then it's possible to put the two of them together. It's remarkable how music falls into shapes and sentence structures and pulses. With a film, it's remarkable how the music adapts itself to the visuals. These things are related aren't they?
T: When I first saw you perform, you started playing the harp, gradually eased into a story, then as it developed you interrupted the story with a song which itself was interrupted by a story...
R: Oh I like that! Boxes within boxes. It's nice when it happens. I generally work in that way, where one thing flows into another, but I don't generally plan out a programme with that in mind. I often have things I'll do repeatedly in a year, but I'll do everything else differently round those things that I know will be sure-fire. So I allow myself quite a lot of change, because it keeps things interesting for me too. I start off with the same tune on the harp very often, but then I just take it from there.
I don't know anyone else that does it, but it always seemed to me to be a good idea. It's an idea that I got from radio - segue/s isn't it? When you start doing it spontaneously it's quite fun.
T: It's something I've come across in the Arabian Nights, which has the same kind of structure but not so complex.
R: And they're all cliff hangers aren't they? It's fantastic. In the famous Culhwch and Olwen story, in the Mabinogion - it's a quest for the King of the Giants' daughter - there's zillions of sub-quests, and I think a good storyteller could have strung it out to last an entire winter. But they didn't bother to write all that into the text that survives.
T: What advice would you give for combining music and stories?
R: Try and get as close as possible to what you are. In my own case it's not very specific: I grew up mostly in Edinburgh, in a Northern Irish family, and I now live in Wales. So I'm not specifically about a place. I know very much who I am and how I got that way, so I stay with that. And the songs I feel comfortable singing are either because I've written them or they mean something to me because I've lived with them, and the music feels comfortable like an old shoe. That's the way to go rather than trying to get into a style which is a long way away from what you're about, because that's acting. Storytelling is distinct from acting and when you get people acting it doesn't make for good storytelling. It comes across as overdone then, doesn't it? People tell me I overact. I tell them: No! Noooo! A thousand times no!
T: It's one thing to play music interspersed with stories, but to accompany oneself it's very easy to overwhelm the story with sound. How have you dealt with that?
R: It's quite easy if you're doing the music yourself because you pace it to the pauses in between the lines, but if you're working with someone who plays the trumpet you have to work out where they're going to toot loudly or quietly. The beauty of working on your own is that you can be unstructured. And the harp just floats right in there - that's why it was designed.
T: What do you think of contemporary bards from unbroken traditions in other countries?
R: I got to know the Ashiks [traditional bards from Turkey], and I love that stuff. They sing and play at the same time. They also have that notion of doing, to become an inspired person. There's a process of becoming, there's a method of achieving it, and there's a way of acquiring it. That tradition is spoken about again and again in the Welsh Mysteries. In the Middle Ages these things were still going on within the official church, there was a subtext of inspiration - some of the clergy were not only saints but also Bards. It involves knowing the landscape, the meaning of places, lakes, mountains, trees, when the flowers come out and why, the migrations of birds and so on. Knowing these things is an education. The real meaning of an education is not going to college; it has to do in the end with love, marriage and children, and learning to be a good human being, and you also get a big chunk of education from a tradition of any kind. ...One of the things I like most about the Celtic tradition is that it hasn't become a formal school. It never says here's what you do, step one, step two, it's a bit hazy like a lot of Celtic things. That allows scope for individuality.
They brought in the harp to the Scottish education system; you can take an exam in it. In a way it's good, but in another way maybe it would be better if they'd tried to suppress and outlaw it, so that would have a certain wildness to it. If you make something too formalised, you whack it on the head.
T: What do you think of the revivalists who quickly style themselves as bards, without going through the years of spiritual discipline?
R: You do get that. But in the end there is no shortcut. When you're a kid and you want a moustache, you're not going to get one until it starts growing. These things do take time. The only reason they are Mysteries is that they can't easily be communicated. And similarly with quality: it will out.
I've got two immediate tasks which I'm working on flat out. One of them is the recreation of how to play the Celtic harp, since no one knows how to play it. I'm working on the fingerings, the approaches to it, harmony and construction, the repertoire, and try and make it something I can do. I've been working on that since 1980-ish, and I'm really getting somewhere with it. Also the notion of trying to put into context the traditional metres, patterns and modes of music suitable to perform to text. Those two things are going to keep me busy for quite a while.
T: Do you think it's possible to recapture that, since so much is lost?
R: There's a lot that isn't lost, it's a question of learning how to do it. I've been going through the manuscripts - there's a lot of Welsh manuscripts on the subject of music. The Ap Huw is the famous one, and that's a detailed description of how to approach individual notes, how to treat patterns and shapes of sound, so I've been having a go at that.
T: Do you find that helps the stories too?
R: I think so. It's possible that originally certain melodies were associated with certain stories. There's a lot of lost stories too - in the Irish tradition there were a lot of romantic stories, none of which appear to have remained but they're mentioned by title in early manuscripts. Similarly in the Welsh poems of Llywarch Hen from the ninth century, what remain are the song sections of a vast, lost prose epic, which presumably had tunes but not now.
T: Do you hope to develop a performance in the authentic traditional way?
R: No, I'm not really trying to recreate how it might have been. I just try and perform in a way that I like, but inevitably there is something that's going to be vaguely like it was.
T: At least one can learn from the wisdom of the past; presumably all that sophistication produced something good.
R: That's right. The Indians say that music is a teacher and I'm not at all sure they're not right.
T: Are you putting down your other instruments to focus on the harp?
R: No I still play a variety, but the harp has become the main one, and I'm learning a lot from it. It's as good a place as any to start, if you wanted to be a British person - it is the personification of the instruments of Britain.
T: Would you say that there's a ritualistic element to storytelling?
R: Originally in Greek theatre the stage was an enchanted space in which reality was suspended and wonderful things could occur, and I think telling was in such a sacred space, so for me in general I think there is, yes.
T: There's a lot of reduction of performance to a commodity these days, and less awareness of that link back to all the hidden depth and profundity.
R: That's right. The other day I read out - something I don't often do - The Dialogue of the Two Sages to an elderly audience and they'd never heard anything quite like it. That piece is almost Japanese in style, with these wisdoms they're talking about. These things were widely available in Britain once, but people today have sold all that for a sense of practicality instead of the wonderful walkers between the worlds which the early Scottish-Gaelic traditions used to talk about. But it's still there, like a sleeping dragon.
Wednesday, 29 December 2010
Dream-Poetry and Books That Choose Their Owners
Holed up at the parents in Lincolnshire. A fog has descended on the small town of Stamford, but i doubt that will stop me and my father striding out into the sharp air and onto the Toby Norris pub for Lagavulin and pork scratchings by an open fire, discussions strictly and only concerning St. John of the Cross and New Orleans funk drumming. I have finally picked up a copy of "Medieval Dream-Poetry" by A.C. Spearing at a wonderfully old, old school bookshop in the town of Uppingham. A tower of rooms, curly steep stairs laden with esoteric texts from big hitters like Boethius and Alanus - stick in an expresso machine and hog-roast and i'd never leave. Super helpful too. A book certainly for the school of myth reading list, but fairly specialist, so tread carefully.
Magical moment of the yule time was buying a copy of 'Moortown' by my old favourite Ted Hughes in an Charity shop - when settling down with a beer to read it i found that its previous owner was none other than storyteller HUGH LUPTON -one of the UK's premier leaders in the field. We had actually discussed Hughes with much enthusiasm
at last August's Westcountry Storytelling Festival. The chances of picking up the book in a rainy backstreet 300 miles from home must be slight, to say the least. Something shall come from it.
I am very pleased to drop in some new work from the brilliant Daniel Deardorff this week - i will return the compliment soon on the 'Associative Mythology' blogspot - please sign up to it!
Archegestic Resonance, Rites of Passage, and the Dancing Ground of Radical Uncertainty
Posted on December 29, 2010 by Daniel Deardorff
The biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen investigated instinctual responses to particular “stimuli”; response behaviors arising neurologically from, what he termed an “innate releasing mechanism.” As a simple example, we know that human infants are biologically prepared to learn language. The stimuli provided in the vocalizations of the mother; with sufficient stimulus the infant is flooded with a desire to respond in kind (Dissanayake). The stimuli, or “sign” triggers the “innate releasing mechanism” (Tinbergen).
Joseph Campbell was very interested in Tinbergen’s ideas. Campbell saw the “mythic image” as a sort of super stimuli.
The performing bees, birds, fish, or quadrupeds are moved spontaneously from centers of memory antecedent to their own lives. Through each, the species speaks. And since in human traditional rites spontaneous collective responses to formalized displays occur, the earliest creators of the myths and rites of primitive mankind may not have been individuals at all, but the genes of the species. And since in human traditional rites also a certain psychological readiness to respond to specific sign stimuli is to be remarked–particularly among primitives–the earliest individual creators of myths and rites must not have been merely freely inventive fantasists, but inward-gazing, inward-listening seers (shamans), responding to some inner voice or movement of the species.
—Joseph Campbell
The “inner movement of the species” urges the “actions” and “enactments” of response to the mythic image. Before this discussion can move forward, it is necessary to emphasize the centrality of the term “image”; which must not be confused or conflated with symbols, signs, or concepts. These re-present something which is not present, whereas the image presents itself as itself. The mythic image is multivocal; that is, it speaks, sings, and resonates with multiple and contrary associations. Victor Turner recognized the potency of the deep-image calling them “dominant symbols”:
I discovered that what I called dominant or pivotal symbols …were not only possessors of multiple meanings but also had the property of polarization…. It is interesting to me that a dominant [bipolar] symbol—every ritual system has several of them—should replicate in its structural and semantic make-up what are coming to be seen as key neurological features of the brain and central nervous system.
—Victor Turner
Every ritual system has them! What is being suggested here is that the mythic, or deep image, by virtue of its multivocal resonance triggers a biomythic response in the individual. The motivational power of such an image lies in it’s correspondence with something usually termed “archetypal.”
The term archetype is insufficient, for just as designation impedes discernment, the “type” impedes connection to the arche. The arche in archetype refers to the archai, these are defined variously as “universal principles,” or “original forms,” or “fundamental essences,” and finally as “primordial forces that animate creation.” Universal? Yes, but principles? No. Original? Of course, but forms? Certainly not. Fundamental essences? Please. Primordial forces that animate? Very good.
The notion of archegestic energies or resonance arose during the writing of The Other Within. It seemed to me that the types had become more and more fixed, and that the action or dance of the arche was obscured by the literalized form. Hence, I needed a verb to describe the turning—the epistrophés and peripéteias—between us and the formlessness of the archai. As James Hillman has it:
By attempting the congruities between the imagination of the individual human soul with the imaginal patterns that myths call Gods, an archetypal therapy attempts … an epistrophé of the entire civilization to its root sources, its archai. This reversion begins where the Gods are fallen, where depth psychology has always worked with its eye attentive to the ugly.
—James Hillman
The peripéteia or epistrophé is the crucial moment in the initiatory process, when the initiand turns from the old life and encounters the primordial forces of the archai, as the ancient Taoist sages said of this moment, here one sees their face before they had a face.
To recreate rites of passage without the use of the deep mythic image is a betrayal of the soul’s request to receive an authentic and authoritative ritual of transformation.
From the perspective of associative mythology both the narratives of myth and the enactments of ritual are productions of the mythopoeic intelligence. In this view the efficacy of myth and ritual depend on a certain intimate disclosure of something archegestic. In such a biomythic moment the individual experiences a softening of boundaries: “the root of the ceremonial rites of all human societies, from the most primitive to the most exalted, are an elaboration of the neurobiological need of all living things to escape the limiting boundaries of the self” (Andrew Newberg).
Archegestic action in myth and ritual—including all the arts—is restorative in the sense of Eliade’s idea of “the recapitulation of the archetypal gesture.” That is by our participation in the time of first things we tap that energy and through our actions we are renewed and so renew the world—the ever unfolding enfolding dance of creation. In this understanding myth and ritual sing, by a creative participation in originary events, essential to the ongoing life of all things.
The archegestic action of deep images in the story told, in the myth as sung, bring the participants—the teller and the hearer—into the living presence of the originary time. We do not go back in time, but awaken to the presence of the past. In the Birth of Taliesin, when the initiand Gwion Bach takes the three drops of wisdom he becomes instantly aware of past, present, and future; this is the archegestic moment. Mythic time is a spiral, in every direction events intersect. Like the resonating strings of a great harp, the strings present the interval between oppositions. We enter the temple, the tempo of mythic time by passing between the demonic guardians of the threshold. The threshold is uncertain, radically so, there is no other way in. After all, if one is not on the dancing ground of radical uncertainty, one is not really on the ground.
References:
Ellen Dissanayake, “Antecedents of the Temporal Arts in Early Mother-Infant Interaction,” The Origins of Music eds. Nils L. Wallin, Bjiorn Merker, and Steven Brown, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000)
Nikolaas Tinbergen, The Study of Instinct (New York: Oxford UP, 1969)
Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology (New York: Penguin Arkana, 1968) p. 672
Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance (New York: PAJ Publications, 1987) pp. 174-75.
James Hillman, The Thought of the Heart & the Soul of the World (Dallas: Spring Publications, Inc. 1981, 1982) pp. 58-59.
Andrew Newberg, M.D., Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science & the Biology of Belief (New York: Ballantine, 2001) p. 85.
© 2010, Daniel Deardorff. All rights reserved.← The Mythopoeic Intelligence
Archegestic Resonance, Rites of Passage, and the Dancing Ground of Radical Uncertainty
Magical moment of the yule time was buying a copy of 'Moortown' by my old favourite Ted Hughes in an Charity shop - when settling down with a beer to read it i found that its previous owner was none other than storyteller HUGH LUPTON -one of the UK's premier leaders in the field. We had actually discussed Hughes with much enthusiasm
at last August's Westcountry Storytelling Festival. The chances of picking up the book in a rainy backstreet 300 miles from home must be slight, to say the least. Something shall come from it.
I am very pleased to drop in some new work from the brilliant Daniel Deardorff this week - i will return the compliment soon on the 'Associative Mythology' blogspot - please sign up to it!
Archegestic Resonance, Rites of Passage, and the Dancing Ground of Radical Uncertainty
Posted on December 29, 2010 by Daniel Deardorff
The biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen investigated instinctual responses to particular “stimuli”; response behaviors arising neurologically from, what he termed an “innate releasing mechanism.” As a simple example, we know that human infants are biologically prepared to learn language. The stimuli provided in the vocalizations of the mother; with sufficient stimulus the infant is flooded with a desire to respond in kind (Dissanayake). The stimuli, or “sign” triggers the “innate releasing mechanism” (Tinbergen).
Joseph Campbell was very interested in Tinbergen’s ideas. Campbell saw the “mythic image” as a sort of super stimuli.
The performing bees, birds, fish, or quadrupeds are moved spontaneously from centers of memory antecedent to their own lives. Through each, the species speaks. And since in human traditional rites spontaneous collective responses to formalized displays occur, the earliest creators of the myths and rites of primitive mankind may not have been individuals at all, but the genes of the species. And since in human traditional rites also a certain psychological readiness to respond to specific sign stimuli is to be remarked–particularly among primitives–the earliest individual creators of myths and rites must not have been merely freely inventive fantasists, but inward-gazing, inward-listening seers (shamans), responding to some inner voice or movement of the species.
—Joseph Campbell
The “inner movement of the species” urges the “actions” and “enactments” of response to the mythic image. Before this discussion can move forward, it is necessary to emphasize the centrality of the term “image”; which must not be confused or conflated with symbols, signs, or concepts. These re-present something which is not present, whereas the image presents itself as itself. The mythic image is multivocal; that is, it speaks, sings, and resonates with multiple and contrary associations. Victor Turner recognized the potency of the deep-image calling them “dominant symbols”:
I discovered that what I called dominant or pivotal symbols …were not only possessors of multiple meanings but also had the property of polarization…. It is interesting to me that a dominant [bipolar] symbol—every ritual system has several of them—should replicate in its structural and semantic make-up what are coming to be seen as key neurological features of the brain and central nervous system.
—Victor Turner
Every ritual system has them! What is being suggested here is that the mythic, or deep image, by virtue of its multivocal resonance triggers a biomythic response in the individual. The motivational power of such an image lies in it’s correspondence with something usually termed “archetypal.”
The term archetype is insufficient, for just as designation impedes discernment, the “type” impedes connection to the arche. The arche in archetype refers to the archai, these are defined variously as “universal principles,” or “original forms,” or “fundamental essences,” and finally as “primordial forces that animate creation.” Universal? Yes, but principles? No. Original? Of course, but forms? Certainly not. Fundamental essences? Please. Primordial forces that animate? Very good.
The notion of archegestic energies or resonance arose during the writing of The Other Within. It seemed to me that the types had become more and more fixed, and that the action or dance of the arche was obscured by the literalized form. Hence, I needed a verb to describe the turning—the epistrophés and peripéteias—between us and the formlessness of the archai. As James Hillman has it:
By attempting the congruities between the imagination of the individual human soul with the imaginal patterns that myths call Gods, an archetypal therapy attempts … an epistrophé of the entire civilization to its root sources, its archai. This reversion begins where the Gods are fallen, where depth psychology has always worked with its eye attentive to the ugly.
—James Hillman
The peripéteia or epistrophé is the crucial moment in the initiatory process, when the initiand turns from the old life and encounters the primordial forces of the archai, as the ancient Taoist sages said of this moment, here one sees their face before they had a face.
To recreate rites of passage without the use of the deep mythic image is a betrayal of the soul’s request to receive an authentic and authoritative ritual of transformation.
From the perspective of associative mythology both the narratives of myth and the enactments of ritual are productions of the mythopoeic intelligence. In this view the efficacy of myth and ritual depend on a certain intimate disclosure of something archegestic. In such a biomythic moment the individual experiences a softening of boundaries: “the root of the ceremonial rites of all human societies, from the most primitive to the most exalted, are an elaboration of the neurobiological need of all living things to escape the limiting boundaries of the self” (Andrew Newberg).
Archegestic action in myth and ritual—including all the arts—is restorative in the sense of Eliade’s idea of “the recapitulation of the archetypal gesture.” That is by our participation in the time of first things we tap that energy and through our actions we are renewed and so renew the world—the ever unfolding enfolding dance of creation. In this understanding myth and ritual sing, by a creative participation in originary events, essential to the ongoing life of all things.
The archegestic action of deep images in the story told, in the myth as sung, bring the participants—the teller and the hearer—into the living presence of the originary time. We do not go back in time, but awaken to the presence of the past. In the Birth of Taliesin, when the initiand Gwion Bach takes the three drops of wisdom he becomes instantly aware of past, present, and future; this is the archegestic moment. Mythic time is a spiral, in every direction events intersect. Like the resonating strings of a great harp, the strings present the interval between oppositions. We enter the temple, the tempo of mythic time by passing between the demonic guardians of the threshold. The threshold is uncertain, radically so, there is no other way in. After all, if one is not on the dancing ground of radical uncertainty, one is not really on the ground.
References:
Ellen Dissanayake, “Antecedents of the Temporal Arts in Early Mother-Infant Interaction,” The Origins of Music eds. Nils L. Wallin, Bjiorn Merker, and Steven Brown, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000)
Nikolaas Tinbergen, The Study of Instinct (New York: Oxford UP, 1969)
Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology (New York: Penguin Arkana, 1968) p. 672
Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance (New York: PAJ Publications, 1987) pp. 174-75.
James Hillman, The Thought of the Heart & the Soul of the World (Dallas: Spring Publications, Inc. 1981, 1982) pp. 58-59.
Andrew Newberg, M.D., Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science & the Biology of Belief (New York: Ballantine, 2001) p. 85.
© 2010, Daniel Deardorff. All rights reserved.← The Mythopoeic Intelligence
Archegestic Resonance, Rites of Passage, and the Dancing Ground of Radical Uncertainty
Saturday, 18 December 2010
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