To Those Who Love the Sea

To those who love the sea: A New Rigged Ship on cello, harp and violin.

Re: Your Brains OR A Moral For Our Times

Have you ever been in a meeting where the speaker sounds sane and you see some people in the room nodding in agreement, but you know, you know, he's lost all touch with reality and that what he's is actually saying is so far on the high end of rabid weasel crazy that you and your merry band are starting to eye the exits? Well, then, this should make your day.

Let no one say that fantasy isn't relevant to the times we live in.

Youtube video: Re: Your Brains" by Jonathan Coulton performed in ZSL (Zombie Sign Language).

Enjoy,

Sia
Who has had a rough work week but who will be fine after some good sushi and a walk in the woods.

Faun

Today, I would like to share a music video from Faun, a Pagan group from Germany that played at Faerieworlds for the first time this year.

It's got a good beat and you can dance to it.

Enjoy,

Sia

This video dates from a festival in 2004. Now imagine this band playing near a river, on a open stage in summer. All around them, standing in a beautiful meadow under the moon and surround by protected forest, are thousands of people who make up a joyful, peaceful audience. Oh, and they're dressed for Bad Faeries Day. Some fun.

The Lady and the Rose

Among the things I value most are music and gardens. I find these two joys beautifully combined in my favorite rose, a floribunda (isn't that a wonderful word?) named after one of the greatest cellists of all time, Jacqueline du Pre. The Garden Hopping blog has a charming post about the lady and the rose named for her. It includes a Youtube video of her playing. Go to that site and listen. Tune out everything else for one brief moment and listen. There was, and is, nothing else like her.

As for me, I'm off to plant this exquisite, sexy and deeply scented rose, which will make me and my bees very happy.

Climbing Roses and Moon Gardens

This year I will also plant an Iceberg rose which will climb my fence. It, too, will offer color and scent for me and pollen for the bees. I used to have one on a tall round pole back at our old place. It was my very own May Pole, and it bloomed for me beautifully beginning in May and going all through summer. For Solstice, I will plant more roses and flowers in my moon garden. Most of my garden now is designed to support our wildlife. We've spent hours removing invasive, non-native species like scotch broom, and I will now put in native plants to give food and shelter for the birds and wildlife who share this beautiful space with us.

Enjoy the video. The lady was something very special, as is her rose.

Sia


Related Articles:

Gardens to Come

Beauty and Meaning: Gardening Like a Green Witch

Plants for a Moon Garden

Photo found at Garden Hoping website.

Header w/ poem found at Jacqueline du Pre.net

Posted in Honor of Pagan Values Month

Returning: Looking for the goddess in Malta and in the new film "Agora"

Today I would like to share some views of the goddess temples of Malta while we consider reactions to the new film Agora, courtesy of Jason at The Wild Hunt. The movie was filmed on the island.

Jason writes:

The movie “Agora”, which centers on the life of Neoplatonist Pagan philosopher Hypatia, had its first official screening at the Cannes Film Festival and initial reviews are trickling in from the entertainment press...

“…there is much in the picture to sustain sympathetic interest, including its dedicated historical perspective, intellectual seriousness and credible presentation of epic film elements that have often tripped up filmmakers in the past. Then there is the physical side of the production, which is genuinely impressive. Lensing entirely in Malta, Amenabar has fleshed out real locations with extensive sets and helpful (and largely undetectable) CGI extensions to provide a striking impression of a legendary ancient city. Production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas has mixed traditional Greco-Roman style buildings with Egyptian motifs and various interior decorative influences to palpably evoke a Mediterranean port city where many cultures convened. Gabriella Pescucci’s costumes colorfully support this approach, and Xavi Gimenez’s widescreen lensing captures it all with colorful mobility.

I knew this was in production and I've been both hopeful and worried about the ways in which it will present this ancient Pagan scholar, teacher and herione. This is the review at Jason's blog that made me happy:

As for the historical accuracy buffs, The Guardian’s Charlotte Higgins calls “Agora” a “gift to classicists”.

Here below is the "teaser trailer" for the film:



I quite look forward to seeing it. Thank you, Jason. To read his entire article, go to the link above.

Goddess Music in Malta:

You might also enjoy the Returning CD by Jennifer Berezan which was recorded in the Oracle Chamber in the Hypogeum at Hal Saflieni, Malta. A 6000 year old Goddess temple made for sound. You can buy this CD at her Edge of Wonder music site or at Serpentine Music.

Sia


Related Articles:

Interview with Jennifer Berezan about recording Returning in the Hypogeum in Malta

Video: Youtube:
Goddess Temples of Malta
Trailer: Agora

Andy Hallett: Thanks for all the songs

EW.com writes this about Andy:

Andy Hallet...best known for playing Angel's suave, friendly green demon Lorne with the ability to read people when they sang (most often at his violence-free karaoke club) -- passed away March 29 following a five-year battle with congestive heart disease. He was 33. Fans will remember his voice (watch the clips below), his impeccable comedic timing ("Is there a Gepetto in the house?"), and his gift for making you see past layers of prosthetics and makeup. ("They have no music there. It doesn't exist. Do you know what that's like? No lullabies, no love songs. All my life I thought I was crazy, that I had ghosts in my head or something... simply because I could hear music. Of course, I didn't know it was music. All I knew was that it was something... beautiful and... and painful and right. And I was the only one who could hear it. Then I wound up here and heard Aretha for the first time...")

Hearing Aretha for the first time will do that for a person.

Bye, Andy. Thanks for all the jokes and songs.

Sia

More information about Andy can be found here.

Youtube videos:

Lorne tribute - Green Psycho - posted at my blog

Numfar does the dance of joy
Note for fans: That's Joss Whedon playing Numfar.

Related Articles:

Zoe, Inara and Kaylee: We Miss You
Joss Whedon's Equality Now Speech

Joss Whedon: Honorary Pagan

Now the Green Blade Rises - Earthwise Version

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;
Hope lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave we laid him, blessed now by the rain,
Wondering if we'd ever see our joy again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

Up he sprang at springtime, like the risen grain,
He that for long months within the earth had lain;
Up from the dead my risen hope is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,
Here we plant the seeds and call back life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

Sia

Youtube Video:

Video at blog: French carol Noel Nouvelet played on guitar by Brad Sondah

This piece is often done with handbells. Here is another video version: Piano and and handbell solo. (Close your eyes and it sounds like a concert at Hogwarts)

Original words: John M. C. Crum, in The Oxford Book of Carols, 1928.
Earthwise version: Sia Vogel
Music: Noël Nouvelet, 15th Century French melody
Now the Green Blade Rises - Here is the Easter version for our Christian friends.
Hat tip to Dance of the Elements

Welcome Yule! Music, Dancing and Revels.

Joy. My tickets for the Revels have arrived so today I would like to share Cari Ferraro's post titled "Why I Revel". Here is an excerpt:

True magic can happen in a darkened theater, and Revels knows how to enchant. Whether it be the Abbots Bromley horn dance, a 900-year-old mummer's dance performed on a twilit stage with six antlered dancers and four other strange characters, or dancing out of the theater with audience and cast at the end of every first act to The Lord of the Dance, year after year in a joyful celebration, I am always moved.

Enjoy.

Sia

Related Posts:

Yule & Solstice Links

Lord of the Dance

Yule Recipes from Iceland

Art: from the Portland Revels
which is featuring music and dance from the Scandinavian countries. Different companies choose different themes. Here is a list of performances to be found in the U.S.


Notes from the Portland site:
Moon wanders its silent way...only Tomte is awake.

This midwinter the Christmas Revels follows the North star to the land of Kalevala, of Nordic gods and Julebukking, ofkantele, nyckelharpe, and hardingfele, in a happy celebrationof the solstice. Audiences will enjoy songs from Norway,Sweden, Finland, and Denmark, including carols new to many ears yet sounding familiar. Among the choral works will be Paul Hillier’s arrangement of “Personent Hodie” from Finland’s "Piae Cantiones," an arrangement of the advent carol “Folkefrelsar, till oss com” (Saviour of the Nations Come) by Linn Andrea Fuglseth of Norway’s Trio Medieval vocal ensemble, and Edvard Grieg’s stunning setting of “Ave Maris Stella”. This show will feature a number of individual performers. The Karelian Folk Music Ensemble—Igor Arkhipov, Sasha Bykadorov, and Arto Kalinkina—will bring their Finnish repertoire of songs and instrumental music, and international artist Loretta Kelley will be featured on the hardanger fiddle, joined by Portland Revels’ own fiddling master, Betsy Branch. Karin Brennesvik, with dance partners Eivind Bakken and Ola Narverud, from Oslo, will strengthen the large dance component of the show and Portland’s own..

This American Life: Music

This one goes out to those among us who were in their high school band, orchestra or choral group. You know who you are....

Last Sunday, This American Life put on one of the best programs I've ever heard them give. Called Music, it featured three radio essays by authors David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell and Anne Lamott. Sarah's essay - where she tells us all the things she learned that had nothing to do with music - was my favorite.

Listen.....

Sia

Endnotes:

(1) A music critic who writes both comedy and history, Sarah is also the author of Assissination Vacation and The Wordy Shipmates. She is also well known as the voice of Violet Parr in the brilliant animated film, The Incredibles.

Here is video of Sarah on The Daily Show, talking about her new book on what she calls "those elitist Puritan Jesus Freaks". It's very funny - enjoy.

More Links:

Just cause - Elizabethan & Tudor Music

Image: from Strange Guitars

La Guitarra - A Song for Mother's Day

Outcasts and girls with ambition
that's what I want to see
- Pink

Margaret was a dear friend of my mother's. A master teacher, and two decades older then Mom, she mentored my mother when she began her career as a science teacher in the early 50's. The two remained friends until Margaret died in the late 60's.

Margaret had married a older man, an widowed officer she met in 1917, during her war service. He went on to do very well in business. They loved to travel together and saw much of the world between the wars. Her husband passed on when he was in his 60's and Margaret was in her early 40's. They had not had children so by midlife, Margaret was a woman of independent means living in a time that glorified young women and dependent mothers. Rather then marry again, or party to no particular end, she choose to go back to work and teach on the East Coast. This is how two strong minded women would meet and form their friendship.

My mother loved to tell me stories about her as I was growing up; how she traveled during summer break and brought back handcrafted art from Africa, India, Asia and Europe to show to her students, (1), how she learned to speak Italian, French and Spanish in her 40's, climbed mountains in her 50's, learn to ride a horse for the first time in her 60's, and continued to do and learn and travel well into her 80's. I met her once when I was 8 when she came out to California where we lived. She brought me a present, a sweater she'd made for my favorite doll out of brightly colored, hand-dyed wool she'd bought from women weavers in Guatemala. I kept it for years. It was in my treasure box, long after the doll itself was gone. It was Margaret who bought us kids our subscription to National Geographic. I would look at those photos of other people and places and dream of traveling the world like Margaret. Growing up as a girl in the 1960's, a time when women were told that their place in the world was at best, horizontal, I found Margaret and my mother to be the inspirations I needed to sing my own heart song, rather then echo the perky, simplistic little ditties the culture wanted us to sing. (2)

So, it was with Margaret in mind that I walked into a music shop yesterday and bought my first guitar. I turn 50 this month. My guitar lessons start that same week. This something I've always wanted to do but never found the time for. That's the beautiful thing about getting older, you can pick wonderful, new adventures to have with each succeeding decade. (3)

I talk to my mother on the phone every day. She is 81. This week she began her new training for her volunteer work in a cardiovascular ward. This spring, she and her lovely dog, Sally, started their training together in a Veteran's hospital. Picture a tall, slender gray haired woman in a pink coat walking a sassy Dalmatian in her matching harness. They grace the halls, greeting the men and women there, and giving them something other then pain and boredom and yet more physical therapy to think about. Well done, Mom and Sally.

Margaret, you never had any children of your body, but you do have children of spirit. Today, I would like to honor those who have a kinship of spirit. Here's to those who inspire us to sing our own song at every stage of life.

Sia

Art

This guitar image is by the Mexican artist Hugo Rodriquez. I love the way he paints the same guitar image over and over, but in a different way each time. His work reminds me of the ways in which Monet would revisit the same subject, like haystacks or train stations or ponds, and give us a new vision with each work, each change of light. Such artists remind me to keep looking.

You can read more about his work at the Guitar Festival website.

Endnotes:

(1) This was long before multiculturalism was fashionable. Some people thought her art collection was primitive or quaint. She saw it as a way to broaden her student's horizons as well as her own.

(2) Years later, when I heard Pink's song, Stupid Girl, I thought, "Margaret would have loved that". When I watch Mona Lisa Smile, it reminds me of what Margaret and Mom were up against.

(3) In my late 30's and throughout my 40's it was all about building a business and working in community and taking care of my family. I still do many of these things but now I can give more time to music and travel and art. Like many women, I've had several careers and I'm looking at retraining for the next one. I like to work and I've always worked hard. I also feel compelled to give back. I know how lucky I am to have choices.

Now Touring the U.S - The Singing Revolution

I finally caught a showing of The Singing Revolution. It's a wonderful film, and the story of these courageous people will stay with me for a very long time.

I went with friends of mine, and we saw it last Saturday in Portland. It was a deeply moving experience for all four of us. We went out to dinner together afterwards, and we just couldn't stop talking about it. One friend, a gal who had been very active in the Civil Rights Movement, said that the scenes at the Song Festival grounds brought to mind the powerful, peaceful marches she attended at the National Mall in the 1960's. As a young woman she heard Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous speech during the Great March. She told us that this film reminded her of those gatherings; times when hope and optimism for the future were something thousands of people shared.

As for me, I walked out of the movie theatre feeling inspired and humble at everything these people had endured and especially at what they had accomplished by peaceful means. I even felt a little hopeful - I haven't felt that way in a very long time. What a wonderful film.

Go see it. Go see it. Go see it.

My original post about the film and the movie trailer can be found in the article linked to below.

Visit their website for a list of screenings to find a showing in your city or sign up to request a screening of the film in your town.

Sia

Related Articles:

The Singing Revolution

Wicked Tinkers

I had the great good luck to attend a concert last night by the Wicked Tinkers, an incredible band, which plays traditional and original Celtic music like you've never heard it before, using didgeridoo and a bronze age horn, dumbecks and djembes, as well as the usual large celtic drums, bodhrans, Highland Bagpipes, whistles, mando cello and guitar. The four musicians gave us two and half hours of a vibrant, earthy, powerful music, music which had many people on their feet dancing for most of the night. The audience members (and their kids) were a nicely mixed lot, and I saw all sorts of moves out there; everything from jigs to belly dancing, all done in the isles and at the front of the stage. Discworld fans will understand me when I say that this is a band with rocks in, not to mention a fervent fan base.

I've decided to write an article about that night for The Witches' Voice. Since I'm not a music professional like Anne Hill, I'll write about that evening as an Pagan experience, as well as a concert gig.

I was lucky to catch them in such an intimate venue. They were in a town near us, doing a charity gig at the local Elks Lodge, before heading off for the Pacific Northwest Scottish Highland Games in Enumclaw, Washington, where 40,000 people are going to gather to hear them play. Lucky people.

I've heard a lot of Celtic bands over the years, and what I like best about the Tinkers is this: They take the music seriously, but not themselves. (1) These guys respect the ancient traditions and at the same time their playful demeanor on stage coupled with the witty, running commentary by the piper Aaron Shaw, gave their show a hip-yet-friendly, iconoclastic edge. The guys in Wicked Tinkers are four funny, joyous, talented wild men, and they are very happy to dance with a child, take a drink and to be among us. Why do they use a didgeridoo when playing Celtic music you ask? Their answer is "Because we like it!". Good answer. This isn't a gimmick but an intregal part of their sound. And what a sound it is.

And not for nothing, guys and gals, they've got the legs for those kilts.

One of the band members, Jay Atwood, is a practicing Pagan. All the guys are Pagan friendly but I knew from talking to their manager on the phone that afternoon that one of them was a very active member of our tribe. When I saw the handsome fellow with the shaved head wearing with the purple and blue kilt, leather jerkin and face paint, I figured I knew which one it was.

Jay and I talked between sets and we found that, although we have never met before, we have several good friends in the community in common. Jay's a very likeable guy not to mention a talented didgeridoo and percussion player and he was involved with the late, lamented Santa Cruz festival called Fire Dance. Jay is currently touring with WT and doing his own brand of fire alchemy out in Las Vegas. He also has a solo album out (I'm listening to it as I write this) titled Bonfire Dreaming. You can hear a cut from that album in the Bardic Section of Vox. I love it so much that it's going on my "What to give people for Yule" list. Ditto for the Tinker's albums, the titles of which are:

* Whisky Supper (Their "almost live" album)
* Banger for Breakfast
* Hammered
* Loud
* Wicked Tinkers

and these ae the lads in the band:

Aaron Shaw * Warren Casey * Keith Jones * Jay Atwood

Catch 'em if you can. Their tour schedule is up on their website.

Sia

Note: The image used above is titled Ivy Greenman and the stained glass artist is unknown. I first used it to illustrate an article I wrote for Beltane titled In Praise of Pagan Men.

(1) Goddess spare me any more musicians who are too cool for their own music)