Feasts and Bouquets
Evolution is not a linear arrow. I have come to believe it is both an infusion and a secretion. Teilhard’s Omega Point is not a pin pointed arrival so much as the other side of the transfiguring process of the holy longing, the fire, brought through a journey.
As with everything else, Creativity is undergoing either a death and radical transformation - or merely a death.
Here in our little corner of the world, we are preparing to release the first track from Cianalas/Tãsknota - this folk opera I keep telling you about.
Last night, after having been brought again into alignment by rereading Cynthia Bourgeault’s Eye of the Heart, I really began, after months of planning, to jot down the true vision for this new release. (The chapter that sang out like an exquisite choir was The Conscious Circle of Humanity - particularly the section Is Paris Burning?).
For some of you, this album will look like an “escape” from what I’ve been up to these past 10 years. If you are drawn to devotional and spiritual musical weavings to tend to the inner circle, this work might not resonate for you.
It has teeth. It has tongues. It intercedes way down at the roots, on behalf of angst-ridden union thwarters.
For many years I have wondered what it looks like to release a work in a transfigured way. To set out the table with an array of wonder, zest, life, floral arrangements, colour, beauty, flavour… in a time that has all but lost authentic zeal for what is good - for each other - and the flourishing of the planet.
It has taken me a couple of years now, to wrestle my way out, of the realm of programmed reactivity. (What Gurdjieff called the “formatory” World 96 - described by Cynthia Bourgeault as: “where everything operates on autopilot, in clichés and thought-bites: stale, conditioned, habitual. There’s not even any real thinking that goes on here, as there is in World 48; it’s all recycled opinions and stereotypes… It is monochrome, repetitive, and boring - uncreative, stony, and inanimate; the lowest world in which human consciousness can even barely hold its shape.”)
Although the grief is very real, it has been difficult to sense why there are so many lifeless dystopian aspects to our reactions. Even our creativity has felt stony and inanimate.
Over the last two years, those of you who know me will have noticed a gradual but dramatic shift. This is because I was brought to my knees. And then it took over two years, until I was authentically prostrate… called out of the heat of the sauna to lay on my back in the snow until I exhaled right to the end, and long enough to “die”.
Along this journey, I had to “go there”… to touch untouchable things, to begin to bring in, to call in, the most mockable mutations excreting from our culture. I couldn’t see another way but to exercise and risk getting near enough to offer it to the tender flame of love, to begin to work with a sweetening, fragrant energy, in the midst of what is otherwise seen as a hopeless cause.
So... this is an invitation of sorts. As I embark on what might look like a “genre hopping” nose dive, I invite you to please trust the work. And…
A couple of announcements:
Ian (my beloved husband), just began working as Project Manager for Wild Orchard Studios this week (our little record company).
We met last night and have decided that we will be working with miracle energy, casting our nets on the other side, and will be throwing a delectable, beautiful, album launch with FEAST energy, in the midst of so much uncreative noise.
This “feast” will include guest reciters, poets and writers, who will be joining the constellation to recite a lyric from the album. Also, some tremendous independent makers have been matched to each song, to craft limited edition special creations.
Ian and I will also be crafting some beauty, inspired by and working with the wild orchard growing around the studio.
We are joining in with the Fragrant Choir around the world, that is bringing in the fruits of the spirit… welcoming courage… calling in goodness… and summoning even a wild plenty.
From the very beginning, I wanted Cianalas/Tãsknota to join in with all who are helping to awaken each wellspring, across the globe. And part of the steps toward this, are continued acts of reconciliation. Stories that lower defences. Stories that dialogue. Shift. That touch the Great Ache, and cry for beauty.
On May 5th, the first song from the new album releases… and it is not only a nod to my pagan heritage, it is also invoking Eros longing right out of the gate. So I put music to W.B. Yeats’ Song of Wandering Aengus and invited Celtic Carnyx horn player John Kenny to guest on the recording.
In the meantime, I’ll share this video with you again for Holy Week. The legendary Margaret Starbird shared it again yesterday, saying she “has listened to it at least a dozen times”.
When it first released, Cynthia Bourgeault said of it, “wow! Holy Week has finally found its voice, and its heart.”
Two brilliant women I will forever count as dear to my heart and my formation.
Human One is a theme song for banquet throwing lovers (like the ones in this song). The ones who would set an elaborate table in the midst of the rubble, when all that is imminent are bombs and despair. The ones who would arrange a fragrant bouquet in the very depths of hell, and so love the forgotten wellsprings up from the heart of the world, till they bubble up to the surface… and the desert blooms.