a mermaid in the attic

January...

2012-01-25T23:46:00.000+08:00

...is the month when I really need to just accept that I'm not going to get anything much done, and get over it! With the madness of Christmas over, I always have this silly idea that I'll be able to get cracking on some creative stuff. But with January comes the searing heat that just seems to suck all my energy, and makes it impossible to spend much time outside, and school holidays don't end until the beginning of February. So much of my time is spent trying to keep munchkins amused indoors, while simultaneously trying to limit the time spent in front of the TV. And get the housework done!

So that's my excuse anyway...for the 3 week long lack of posting.

So we've been out and about, finding some cool refuge in the movie theatres and galleries.

We went to see 'Tin Tin', and enjoyed it immensely (I think it was Beloved who really wanted to see it though, being a longtime fan of the comics).

We went to the Art Gallery of Western Australia to see the 'Princely Treasures' exhibition, of marvelous pieces from the V&A in London. I bought the girls a 3/4 size guitar for Christmas and have been teaching them some VERY basic basics, so they were rather fascinated with this piece.

Joachim Tielke Guitar, Hamburg 1693.

We read 'The Invention of Hugo Cabret' a few months ago, so were very excited about seeing the movie 'Hugo'. It was extraordinary (though a little long for smallest), filled with wonderful original footage of some of the oldest films. A remarkable film, it was actually worth seeing it in 3D (usually just bothers the heck out of me), and I'd like to see it again. Though biggest decided that actually, the book was better.

The next day, we went down to Spare Parts Puppet Theatre again, to see Shaun Tan's 'Arrival'. Something I didn't realise, is that Spare Parts developed this production in collaboration with Shaun, while he was still creating the book, and the production actually opened before the book was published! A beautifully made piece of theatre, without a single word of dialogue, and without needing one. If you haven't seen the book, it's a masterpiece, so go out and find it.

I don't usually make new year's resolutions, I know myself too well and it never works. But I've made a sort of resolution...to do more sketching. It's something I just don't do enough of, I've completely got out of the habit over the years. So I'm trying to do a sketch of something every couple of days, and to try NOT to care what it is, or how it turns out. It's the doing that matters. We took the girls to Kings Park on Sunday afternoon (when it was actually overcast and blessedly cool) and as they played at 'Dinosaur Park', I sat and sketched a tree. I decided to do it in pen rather than pencil, to deter myself from getting the urge to 'rub out' any bits I don't like.

Today the girls and I went into Perth on the train to see the 'Extraordinary Stories from the British Museum' exhibition at the WA Museum. Only a tiny fraction of what is actually in the British Museum in London (I spent a day there about 20 years ago and would have been quite happy to camp there for a week) but I was very excited to actually see this in the flesh (so to speak) after seeing pictures of it for years.

Biggest munchkin was very taken with the Queen from the Lewis chess set, as she started learning to play chess in 'clubs' time at school last term, and got a little chess set for Christmas (I probably shouldn't admit that she can beat me!)

After we finished looking at that, we went down to sit in the lovely new, light and airy and COOL main foyer, and all did some sketching of the replica dinosaur the towers over the seats there. With my sort-of-resolution in mind, I thought the museum would be a great place to do a bit of sketching, and the girls were keen to join in, so we took pencils and sketch books with us. I think we should make it a regular thing, as there's so much to draw, and being able to walk around a stuffed bison or deer, or look at a dinosaur skull from different angles, draw skeletons or fossils or birds in flight, would be marvelous practice.

My dinosaur foot...again with a pen so I can't rub out 'mistakes'.

Biggest munchkin's dinosaur sketch. She was a bit confused and thought that everything in the museum had come from the British Museum!

The Lewis Chess queen. Now if any of you with sharp eyes and photographic memories are wondering why she's holding her left hand up to her face in the drawing, when the actual chess piece is resting her face on her right hand, it's because Biggest munchkin was actually drawing it from the poster hung up on the window and facing outwards. So a reverse image.

Littlest did a couple of great sketches of the dinosaur heads, and the foot as well, but she's off to stay with her grandies tonight, and took her sketch book with her to show them, so I couldn't scan them in.

Phew! This weekend, we have Beloved's best mate, and my in-laws coming to stay.

I think I shall spend the first day of school (Wednesday next week) on the couch with my feet up and an iced tea balanced on my belly!

New Year music!

2012-01-03T15:13:00.000+08:00

Well, not specifically 'new year', but I just found that a friend of my brother's has uploaded a couple of videos to YouTube of Roddy singing with a friend, and as I'm very proud of my very talented 'little' bro', I couldn't wait to share. He's one of those incredibly annoying people who can pick up any instrument and play it after about half an hour. He learnt a bit of guitar at school, then gave it up, then picked it up again a few years later, and taught himself to play. He also learnt to play the drums (thanks to dad), learnt to play keyboards (with a wee bit of help from yours truly when I was about 16 and he was about 12...I showed him some basic chords), bought himself a mandolin so now plays that, has been known to get quite a decent sound out of my flute (poor old neglected thing that it is...4 years tuition at school and I've barely played it since), plays the 'bush sax', and has lately added the cello to the mix. These are a couple of videos of rehearsals, working out harmonies and playing around, so a bit rough, but this is just the tip of the iceberg of what he can do (do I sound like an indulgent big sister?!) He's composed music for stage and writes songs...and is also a very talented actor. And he can bloody draw as well...not fair!!! ;-)

Sigh!!! If only he didn't live on the other side of the country now!

Christmas witterings...and music!

2011-12-22T15:06:00.000+08:00

I wrote this a few years ago (long before I had any way to inflict it upon hapless readers!) and thought, well, now is an appropriate time to post it. Just a few witterings about Christmas, Jesus, the Green Man, Herne the Hunter and other odd things floating around in my odd little brain!

When I think about Christ these days, I see him as a much more accessible figure than I did a few years ago, and oddly enough, this is because some time ago I finally admitted to myself that I simply am not, and have never been, a Christian. My idea of Jesus merges with my ideas of the pagan figure of the Green Man, the two seem immensely compatible to me, and this has allowed me to engage with the idea of Christ in a way I never thought possible. He has entered my pantheon, so to speak, as one of the manifestations of the divine masculine, now that I’ve finally stopped worrying about the claims of Christianity that he is the only one.

I didn’t grow up in a religious household, about the only time I ever saw the inside of a church was at family weddings. But, like most Australians, I grew up in a Christian Culture, I even had RI (Religious Instruction) at school. So I knew all about Adam and Eve, Noah and his ark, Moses, the three Wise Men, the crucifixion, and all that other stuff that we seem to learn by osmosis. But none of it ever ‘spoke’ to me, and quite early on I developed a distinct dislike for the whole ‘Lord, Father, Obey, Fear, One-True-God’ deal, to the point where I actively refused to even mouth the words to the prayers we were supposed to be saying at those weddings!

Perhaps even back then, I was aware that, as a female, there wasn’t really a place for me in all this. I felt excluded. But as a young child I was not aware of any alternatives, and it’s not as if finding my true spiritual calling was on the top of my priority list at age ten or so. It was more just a sense that it wasn’t right for me, I didn’t fit. But something was calling me, I just didn’t have a name for it. It called me through the books I read, and perhaps most influential at the time was Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series. It was most likely here that I first encountered the idea of a Goddess, ‘The Lady’. Or at least, the idea of a Goddess still active and immanent in the world. And it was here too that I first came across a very different image of the divine masculine, an image that most definitely did speak to me, so much so that I felt I was not discovering it for the first time, but rather rediscovering, remembering something I’d always known. And that image was Herne the Hunter.

I cannot now remember where or when I first became aware of the Green Man, but it must have been around the same time, and it too came with a powerful feeling of recognition, the rediscovery of something so familiar, so right, that I wondered how I could ever have forgotten. These two images entwined themselves together in my pre-teen mind, and remain connected, like two faces of a coin, even today.

So where did this leave Christianity? I think I’ve always known that I’m not a Christian, but to actually decide for sure, rather than prevaricating and just calling myself an ‘agnostic’, was a big step. To finally reject it all, instead of trying either to make me fit it, or it fit me, was quite a ‘leap of faith’. But an interesting thing happened. I rediscovered Jesus. Not in that ‘born again’ manner, it was just that I suddenly realised that I didn’t have to be a ‘follower’ to appreciate good advice when I heard it. I’d always thought that Jesus himself was quite a cool dude who said some pretty important stuff. But the two thousand years of baggage that Christianity brought with it just seemed to me to be a barrier to an appreciation of his teachings. I felt that if I agreed with some of what he said, I’d have to take on all that other Christian stuff and give myself the ‘Christian’ label. And I knew I just couldn’t, because I disagreed emphatically with a great deal of it. But when I finally decided, OK I’m not a Christian, I’m a Pagan and I always have been, it suddenly dawned on me that I didn’t have to throw baby Jesus out with the bath water. Just as I can appreciate the teachings of Buddha without being a Buddhist, I can take on all the good stuff Jesus said, without having to take with it all that other stuff. And for me, two thousand years of accumulated junk dropped away, and I discovered two distinct Jesus images that I could engage with.

Firstly, the man. ‘Just a man’, just like the song from Jesus Christ Superstar tells us. Not always perfect, so I don’t have to agree with everything he said, but a guy who shook up the establishment, dared people to take a long hard look at themselves, right into their hearts, and to change themselves for the better and change the world at the same time. And what better teaching can we have in today’s world of fear and ignorance, hate and violence, than “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”? There are a few so-called Christians who could do with a refresher course on that one. It recently occurred to me too, that Gandhi's quote, "be the change you wish to see in the world", means essentially the same thing...it always starts with ourselves.

The second Jesus is a little more complex. And a little more ambiguous too, because he is hard to pin down. He is not a single idea, with a clear beginning and end, he is rather an accumulation of millennia of spiritual and religious ideas. He is a mythological figure, the divine solar child born at the winter solstice, born not as a physical child, but as a promise. A promise that the wheel of the year will keep turning, that rebirth will come, a promise of hope and renewal for the future. He is one of many similar deities, dying and reborn Gods who remind us that the cycle of life continues, that death is temporary, and must be followed by rebirth, just as in the depths of the harshest winter, my northern hemisphere ancestors were given the promise that spring will come. So many traditions accepted now as important aspects of Christmas, as well as other ‘Christian’ festivals like Easter, have been grafted on from these other sources, these older myths, from many different parts of Europe and the Middle East too. We can see the parallels between the Jesus myth, and those of Horus, Tammuz, Apollo, even Odin hanging on the Tree Yggdrasil to gain knowledge, or Prometheus paying the ultimate price to bring light (or perhaps enlightenment) to humans. He wears the mantles of many.

Of course, in the southern hemisphere, the ‘birth’ of this deity is celebrated in the middle of summer, which perhaps doesn’t make much sense if we think of him only as a dying and reborn seasonal God. Many down-under pagans prefer to celebrate this in June at our Winter Solstice. But for me, Christmas has developed a richer meaning than it had previously. Because really, the celebration of the birth of a divine child who carries all our hopes for the future of the world, for peace, for renewal and replenishing, for rebirth on a spiritual and emotional level, could happen anytime. What more perfect image could there be for the flame of hope we all carry within us for a better world, than a tiny, vulnerable baby? A baby who must be loved, cherished, nurtured and protected. A tiny ray of light, a spark of divinity held within the so very fragile body of a newborn. This tiny child, whatever he (or indeed she) is called, touches a huge number of people, and if that large number of people are all thinking about this on the 25th of December, what better time to chime in with my own feelings of love and compassion and hope?

Now perhaps it’s just my own peculiar brain, but I tend to see concepts as colours, and for me, Hope is green. It makes a kind of sense, if you think about the tiny green plants pushing their way to the surface of the soil, reaching towards the sun, growing, telling us that the ‘dead’ time of the year is over and the world is full of burgeoning life again. Of course, the Green Man is a part of this, he is the guardian of the natural world, the wild world that humans have tried so hard to control, or failing that, to destroy. At Christmas, we hang up our plastic Holly and Ivy, mostly unaware that these evergreens were part of that promise of rebirth, the promise that the ‘Green’ time would come again. I see them in part as the Green Man’s promise that he has not abandoned us, though he may have ‘died’, he is still with us and this is his promise that he will return. Now you’re probably thinking that I’ve gotten myself mightily confused and don’t know whether I’m talking about summer or winter, Christmas or Winter solstice, birth or death, and maybe you’re right…but it works for me. The tiny child whose birth is celebrated on the 25th of December is the symbol of hope in a world that desperately needs it. The adult Jesus who sacrifices his life for the greater good, and who, according to a story as old as time, dies and rises again, is the Green Man, promising us that the cycle goes on, the winter will end and spring will come. Darkness will not prevail and light will return. Whatever we choose to call him, he still holds out his hand and says “do not be afraid, death is not the end, I will always return.”

* * *

And now for some appropriately Christmassy music...just in case you haven't yet been driven screaming up the wall by endless renditions of 'Frosty the @#$$&% Snowman' and 'Rudolph' in the shops and malls...I think I barely escaped with my brain intact this morning, and needed a cup of coffee and and a lie down when I got home!

First...Tim Minchin again. Yes, I know, a Christmas song by an avowed atheist. But it says a lot about Christmas that I like, and agree with. And it's sweet and funny.

I learnt this one as a kid, so probably an acquired taste...like vegemite!

And lastly, this is 'Taladh Chriosda', the Christ Child's Lullaby, by the group I used to sing with years ago. No, that's not me hitting the high notes (though I can... in the shower!), I'm singing down in my boots on this one, replacing the tenor who left for greener fields (or Byron Bay actually)!

Merry Christmas, Happy Midwinter, or whatever you might be celebrating, I wish you all a wonderful time, good food, good friends and family, peace and goodwill to all.

Another view of Beauty...

2011-12-19T19:41:00.000+08:00

A few months ago, Beloved and I watched the live broadcast of Tim Minchin's concert at the Sydney Opera House, 'Tim Minchin vs The Sydney Symphony Orchestra'. It was repeated on saturday evening and so we watched again, and again I marvelled at the intelligence, skill and talent of a local Perth boy who's made good. I know Tim isn't everyone's cup of tea, I suspect he falls into the either-love-him-or-hate-him category, but he's not only a consummate performer, he also has a unique ability to make you laugh, while you're thinking 'that's awful, I shouldn't be laughing at that', while at the same time, you're thinking, 'God, he's absolutely right, I do that too, I never thought of it that way before.' I like all of his material, but this song stopped me in my tracks and almost made me cry the first time I heard it, and I felt the same way hearing it again the other night. Typically of Tim, his song is a masterpiece of contradiction. I won't try and explain it, just listen and read the lyrics. And I think it is a great song for those of us who try and create beauty in what we do, to remember that beauty alone is not enough. There must be heart and soul as well.

Etsy Shop Update: New Prints etc

2011-12-15T22:58:00.001+08:00

This is me attempting to sound organised, as if I do regular shop updates at precisely 10.58pm every Thursday evening...ha, ha, ha...oh dear! But it SOUNDS lovely and organised and businesslike, doesn't it?! But I'm not really kidding any of you, am I?!

Anyway...well yes, I have listed a bunch of new things in my Etsy shop, and there are several that have never even appeared here on my blog, so I'll be interested to see what people think of them. Here are some of the new ones.

Shell 2, from the 'Journal Collection' (there are 4 in the set, and are now all available as A4 prints)

The Elements. It's 'Fire' that started everything off actually, you can thank her for my deciding to give the 'professional artist' gig a go.

Babel-On. Witterings and wafflings on the inadequacy of language...and a girl with a castle for a hat!

La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Because I've loved John Keats' poem since I first read it as a teenager.

If you haven't yet checked out the Magic4Terri auctions, pop over there now, as it all ends in about 10 hours and there are wonderful things to be found. I've got two offerings there, and the set of 4 A4 prints of your choice (with lots more to choose from now) is still sitting at the bargain price of $40. The A3 print of 'Beauty Remembers' has shot up to $65, so I'll be adding in lots of extra goodies to that one.

And given that I've once again failed to be organised enough to have lots of Christmas goodies in my Etsy shop actually in time for Christmas, I'm considering getting in early and having a Pre-Post-Christmas sale. What do you reckon!!?

Of course, that would mean getting it done before Christmas.............

Ooops!! I forgot to mention that I've also listed these tea bag and vintage book paintings in my shop as well! All are mounted with plain white mount, as the 2nd and 3rd photos show.

I've never won a Beauty Contest before! And more things for Magic4Terri!

2011-12-13T01:28:00.000+08:00

WELL! THIS was the news that greeted me on Saturday! How wonderful, I'm amazed and excited and jumpy-up-and-downy! It seems this little chap will be making his way down-under, to find a new home in the attic (well, actually, more likely the hallway or the lounge room, I wouldn't want to hide him away!)

Thank you so much to Jackie Morris, I'm humbled and chuffed by her wonderful comments. She understands my 'Beauty' completely.

And speaking of 'Beauty', I've had several people asking about larger prints of her, so I've been experimenting trying to get an A3 print that I'm happy with quality-wise. I thought I'd offer the first one to the Magic4Terri auction, so pop over and put a bid on, I've set an opening bid of $20 and I'll pay for postage, or $35 and I pay postage as a 'Buy It Now' option (only available on the first bid). These will be $40 normal price I think, plus postage of course, so get in early to get a bargain, and help Terri out. And my earlier offering is sitting at $30 now, for the 4 A4 prints of the winner's choice, so still a bargain too (normally would be $80 total, plus postage for 4 prints).

Some rough music (as opposed to 'rough magic') for Beauty, and a Beauty contest!

2011-12-09T10:13:00.000+08:00

I know you've all seen this before, but there IS something new, honestly...I just wanted to keep all the bits together in one post. I've been wanting to set 'Beauty Remembers' to music for a while, but I'm always better with a deadline (otherwise I can go on faffing about forever) and I wanted to record something in time for Jackie Morris' 'Contest of Beauty' (though her NEW blog can be found HERE). I did a VERY rushed version this morning, while Beloved was dropping the girls off at school. My window of opportunity was small, about 15 minutes before he was back and needing to get onto the computer (he is FLAT OUT with work at the moment!). So this is me sitting slightly squashed in at the computer desk, reading the words off the computer as I sing into the dodgy little mic on it. So there are more than likely a few 'ambient' sound effects in the mix, like cars, planes...Flynn going off at something (she's a strange dog, she prefers to bark at nothing!). Warning, it is VERY rough...even scratchier than my previous attempts, but oh well, it's done...for now. I will probably try and recored a better version sometime in the future, but of course, it won't sound quite the same, because it's not a 'song' as such, more me playing around and making it up as I go along, so difficult to repeat myself, and anyway, I would always want to 'improve'. Hope you can hear through the dodgyness something that is actually not bad!

And the poem is HERE (though I have added, or rather added back in) a line for the painting and the song.

Magic4Terri...a very quick post!

2011-12-03T23:30:00.000+08:00

Just to let you know that there is an online auction happening HERE to raise funds for writer, editor, artist and faery godmother to countless up and coming fantasy writers and artists, Terri Windling. She is going through a very difficult time at the moment, and the fantasy world (yes, it does exist) is pulling together to help her out. There is some AMAZING stuff up for auction, like original Froud and Lee works, so pop over and have a look. My own humble offering is the winning bidder's choice of any 4 of my A4 prints (normally $20 each) and I've set the bidding to start at $10. Or you can 'buy now' for $70, and get $10 off the normal price, plus I'll pay postage. You've seen him before, but I'm rather fond of him, so here's one of the prints on offer.

'Photo Essay'...or, why I haven't been blogging lately!

2011-11-23T00:31:00.000+08:00

Hmmm, it's been a month since my last post, oh dear. I find that the longer there is between posts, the harder it is to write anything. There's so much I've got lined up I want to talk about, it just gets to be TOO much and it all becomes too hard and I give up and go and watch something dumb on TV instead...a bad habit I really must give the flick to! So just so you know I have been doing something while I haven't been waxing lyrical (aka waffling pompously!) in the attic...here's a list of stuff I've done. Which I've decided to give the very undeserved, but terribly professional sounding, name of 'photo essay'.

Sooooooo...during the school holidays, munchkins and I made a 'spring goddess' scarecrow for the vegie garden out the front.

Her head has seen a LOT of history! An old polystyrene foam wig/hat stand, which I swiped from the wardrobe department in the theatre at uni about 14 years ago (well, ok, I asked first), and used for a life-size (and very basic) puppet 'Miranda' for the one act reworking of "The Tempest" that I wrote and directed there. Hands were courtesy of Beloved who made them for me back then. She's been knocking around in old boxes and upside down in crates since then, so I decided it was time to give her a new lease of life. So munchkins were given one side of her face each to paint, on strict instructions that there would be NO FIGHTING OR MUMMY WILL DO IT!

Then we decorated!

They seem pretty pleased with their work!

Munchkins in the foyer of the Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, after the two day puppet-making workshop. Smallest made a 3-eyed alien, and biggest made a dragonfly (with a touch of Dame Edna Everage I think). I was volunteering, and had a great time and learnt lots. Particularly the wonder that is the HOT GLUE GUN, which I have never used before...I now own my very own.

Can you tell which are their favourite t-shirts? And hats for that matter!

I bought THIS book (re-worked for the Australian market), and tried out the simple cheese recipe. And it worked! Even munchkins declared the fresh herb cheese to be yum

Equipment laid out.

All that it required was supermarket bought full-cream milk, and some lemon juice!

Lemon juice added to the hot milk.

Curds put into the muslin to strain.

Knotted up and left to drip overnight.

This was my actually second attempt. The first went so well, I made a double batch this time because I wanted to see if I could make a 'baked ricotta' style as well. So half was mixed up with some salt and fresh herbs from the garden, and the other half mixed just with salt, and put into the muslin lined mould (the middle of a yoghurt container with top and bottom cut off) and weighed down with a can (which very conveniently fitted perfectly into said yoghurt container!), and left to drain overnight again.

Very carefully wrapped in baking paper and popped into the oven.

Crikey! It actually worked. And it tasted alright too!

A cuppa out under the apricot, which now is in full leaf (and is covered in apricots...we've already started 'jamming'). Me looking slightly rumpled (ok, it's how I usually look!), with my painting apron on...well, it's a painting apron now!

The garden looking at about its best I think, everything blooming and green and lovely!

The Lavender and those lovely poppies.

Some small feral creature spotted on the back lawn.

And California poppies too!

On the last weekend of the October school holidays, we went camping up in the hills, in the Darling Ranges out past Gidgegannup to the Avon National Park. And trying out our new Pentax DSLR. Looking north westish.

Fairly impressed with the zoom!

Sunrise on the granite outcrops that overlook the valley below.

Looking back over to the north west, to see the moon going down.

The way the granite splits naturally fascinated me, it looks for all the world like some ancient human cut monument, old standing stones perhaps, that have fallen in the aeons since they were built.

Munchkins in matching hats scarpering over the escarpment!

Dinner on the Barbie. Grandad cooks! Our tent in the background.

Ahhh, now you could have knocked me down with a feather when beloved said "you know, we need something to hang up here, some kind of a family decoration or hanging, something we can put up every time we go camping." Because, well, I'M the hippy, tree-hugging, rainbow-kombi-wishing member of the family, and beloved...well, he likes motorbikes...and stuff like that. So, after I picked myself up out of the dust, I suggested some prayer flags. And because I just happened to have brought my little green handy sewing case with various scraps of fabric with me...I set about making some straightaway. And here they are!

View from the big rock which munchkins insisted on climbing without PG!

Then back to school, and I put my hand up to help out in biggest munchkin's art class again. They're looking at mythical creatures this term, so this was my idea for an art project, junk monsters. This was the first prototype to show the teacher to see what she thought. Of course, I was only half an hour into it and I realised that this one was perhaps a bit complicated for 2 adults to supervise 27 small children to make, so I made a simpler version as well. But I had so much fun making this (adults really should do stuff like this more often, pure silly fun is so good for you), I decided to finish it and show the class anyway. They were pretty excited, and I've seen some lovely monsters being created in the last three weeks since they started working on them.

And so, back to the garden! This is what the vegie garden is looking like now.

The triffid on the right was once a Cos lettuce. The triffid on the left is a Beetroot. I have never seen beetroot run up to seed before! And spring isn't even over yet!

And this is my cherished Elder plant. Well, that's what it says in the label. And it looks like the pictures I've seen. But aren't Elder flowers supposed to have a lovely scent? And aren't they tasty enough to actually make fritters out of? These, however, have no smell that I can discern, and after having a nibble on a couple of blossoms, no taste either. Anyone know what's up with it? I had utterly implausible romantic dreams of making my own Elderflower wine and Elderberry cordial, and they have been dashed to pieces by the utter inodorousness of my Elder plant...sigh!

And finally (this must surely be the most photos I've ever put in one blog post), I was asked by the school if I would run a little art club on Friday afternoons for Years 4-7. And for reasons unfathomable to shy and never-taught-anything-to-anybody me, I said yes. I decided to make some simple hangers with the kids, and here is a sample of finished work after the first 4 week block.

They're rather lovely, aren't they!

Phew! So, I haven't been spending ALL that time watching Big Bang Theory!

Descending into the underworld, the labyrinth, the abyss...

2011-10-23T17:38:00.000+08:00

I'm not right now (thankfully)...but it's something that many of us struggle with, it seems, many times in our lives. Reading Terri Windling's series of blog posts 'On Creative Burn-out', it seems that creative people of all types struggle with this strange circular journey. Round we go, heading up and up, feeling on fire and full of creatives sparks, then suddenly we find ourselves over the top and heading down the other side...down into doubt, melancholy, greyness, lack of inspiration, lack of motivation. Deep into some dark place that we're sure we'll never climb out of, we'll never find the key, we'll never find that magic spark again.

Although many of us realise we're not very good at dealing with it, it seems to me that artists and musicians, writers and pretty much anyone who lives a creative life, at least has some understanding of this cycle. Many of us know deep down that sometimes we need to stop and refill the well of inspiration, go off by ourselves perhaps, and give ourselves time. Not always easy of course, in a world dedicated to deadlines and 24/7 and better, bigger, faster, NOW. And we may fight it, ignore it, deny it, try and push it aside, but most of us know that sooner or later, we'll have to give in and let it run its course. And we also know (though it's often hard to remember) that quite often, we will discover something new, a new direction, a different way of seeing, a solution to a problem, in that very darkness we've been trying to avoid. That usually, if we don't dig our heels in and refuse to go, kicking and screaming all the way, then the journey, though painful, might actually be worth it.

But I don't believe this cycle is peculiar to artists. I think it is a HUMAN cycle. And I think it is a human cycle that for too long the modern world has been trying to pretend doesn't exist, and that it does so at great risk. Because I suspect it may be one of the reasons that, despite living in absolute luxury and abundance compared with so many in the world, we seem to be in the middle of an epidemic of depression.

Now perhaps I should say right now, that I am not a psychologist or a doctor. And I don't for a moment believe that every case of clinical depression can be cured by someone patting your hand and saying "it's OK, you'll be fine, there's nothing to be afraid of, it's just going to get dark for a while". That would be ludicrous. So what you have here is simply the musings of someone who has suffered from grief, depression (PND to be specific), and also has spent a fair bit of time on the ups and downs of the creative ferris wheel.

In 2000, a week or two after I lost my little girl (story here for those who haven't stopped by before), I remember sitting in my doctor's surgery sobbing my heart out. As you might expect. And she offered me anti-depressants. She said it wouldn't take away the pain, but it would take the edge off my grief. I was floored by this. Why on earth did I need to 'take the edge off my grief'? Why would I want to take away the pain? I believed I was feeling exactly what I SHOULD be feeling given the circumstances. And more important, exactly what I NEEDED to feel in order to mourn properly, to walk the journey that can not, must not, be avoided, to heal and to come out the other side stronger, with peace and acceptance in my heart. But it seems there was something unacceptable about my grief, about a woman sitting sobbing her eyes out. Visible grief is just not acceptable in polite society.

A few months after the birth of my last little one in 2004, I could feel something was not quite right, but it took the visiting health sister to pinpoint it. She very gently suggested to me that I might be suffering something more than just 'baby blues'. And I'm very grateful that she pointed me in the direction of a women's health clinic with a counselling and group therapy service. With all due respect to overworked GPs, I think it's pretty likely if I'd visited my local medical service, I would have been given a prescription for anti-depressants after a short consultation. I know people who have.

Clearly, I did not have as bad a case of PND as some women suffer from. I managed to function OK (mostly, though there were times when I just curled up on the kitchen floor and sobbed), I looked after my girls and I did not actually have a problem bonding with my littlest. I just felt as if I was disappearing, fading away into nothing, that everything I'd ever been, everything I'd ever done or created, everything I'd imagined or built, was gone and would never be back. I loved my girls so fiercely it hurt, and yet there was resentment too, a truly horrible twin-sided coin. And yet, meeting with other mums (who also looked normal on the outside) going through it too, talking and having a good cry in the one on one sessions with the counsellor, got me through. As well as, it MUST be said, with huge support from my family, who understand the need for a good cry and a good talk, and my poor Beloved, who had been through so much with me, and somehow trusted that I'd get through this too if I was allowed to find my own way.

But I also know mums who were given anti-depressants and years later were still on them, afraid that if they give them up, those feelings might come back. I've met people who mentioned to their GP that they've been feeling down lately, and were given prescriptions. It seems that we are afraid of being sad, or melancholy, or down. Even that society demands that we must not be. And yet, aren't these emotions all perfectly normal?

On the Beyond Blue website, there is THIS checklist. If you have more than 3 of the symptoms for more than two weeks, you probably have a depressive illness. I just tried it, ticking all the boxes that equate to how I feel when I'm in a creative funk and can't muster the energy or the motivation to even pick up a pencil. I scored 11. Most of the time, I don't go for a whole two weeks feeling like that, but there have been times when I have. Or I've had some of the symptoms for that long (or longer) but not all. I've had ups and downs most of my life, and even as a kid I had my 'melancholy' times. The PND WAS scary, it lasted a long time, but generally, I don't panic when I'm feeling down because I KNOW this feeling. I know it will be a pain, and I hate being there, but I know it will go, and it might even leave behind something useful. It's kind of normal.

But what if I didn't know? What if I hadn't really felt this before? What if no-one around me could tell me about it, what if I'd never seen anyone else deal with it? It would scare the hell out of me I think. And I wonder, I really wonder, whether we set ourselves up for a bad dose of it by allowing ourselves to run to the point of empty, because we don't know we shouldn't? We don't allow ourselves 'downtime' until it becomes 'DOWN time'. We are part of the natural world, and without any exceptions I can think of off the top of my head, it works in cycles: action/inaction, growth/rest, flow/ebb. In order to flower in spring, the almond must sleep through winter. This is what I said in comment to Terri's 2nd post:

The need for fallow time. Everything else in the natural world works in cycles of activity and inactivity, fallow and productive. Why should we humans think we are any different? And yet we push ourselves, or allow others (clients, deadlines, family and so on) to push us to keep going, not stop (or feel guilty if we dare to), and keep producing. No wonder the well gets empty, the creative flowering grows weaker and less beautiful. But it's not just in the arts, it's everywhere. I just noticed a headline yesterday, that Australian workers are working longer than ever hours, and yet are more inefficient than ever before...hmmmm, I wonder why?!

A few years ago, I attended a workshop led by Wendy Rule, an amazing singer/songwriter. As a pagan/wiccan, she's interested in myths and archetypes, and is endlessly inspired by the myth of Persephone and her underworld journey, the cycle of descent and ascent. And she said something that stuck in my mind. That this descent into the underworld is a necessary journey, it's a chance to 'cleanse', to slough off the unneeded bits of our psyche that have outlived their use, to 'lose the baggage' we've been carrying around. And without this voluntary going down, going within, this withdrawing and retreat time, we end up carrying around all these dead bits of ourselves, parts that rot like bits of old meat, more than likely making us sick in the process. That might sound a bit 'out there' but if you think of people who have worked so hard for so long that they burn-out or suffer from a break-down, then that's pretty much the same thing, just in less colourful language.

So I wonder...if there were elders (who had journeyed there before) to tell us 'it is not an abyss, it is a tunnel with a light at the end of it', would we be less scared? If we regularly allowed ourselves time to be truly 'fallow' would the journey be shorter and easier than if we fight it all the way? I wonder too, if we medicate at the first sign of the downward journey (instead of waiting to be sure it's something more than that and needs more than just time and retreat), are we in danger of precariously balancing ourselves forever on the edge of what looks like a terrifying bottomless black pit? When if we allowed ourselves to step down gently into the dark, we might find a well trodden path that is not so dark or terrible, and we might find we have things to leave there, and new things to bring back into the light.

Because it's in the dark that old things compost down into rich new soil. And it's in the dark that the seeds that become the trees that provide the oxygen we breathe, germinate.

Perhaps she is finished...

2011-09-30T00:15:00.000+08:00

Well, I have to send off a JPG of the painting to enter a local competition, so it's as finished as it's going to get for that...but I think it's quite likely I will continue to add a little here and there, at least until such time as I find out whether or not my work has been accepted.

It occurred to me today that my paintings are always more than just paintings to me. I think it's to do with the layers of thoughts, the attempt to capture all the feelings and ideas that I have in my head AS I'm painting, and with the search for some intangible thing, some magic or meaning, the attempt (always unsuccessful of course) to encompass something too big for a mere canvas to hold. It's the STORY, in all its marvelous, mutable glory. But that's also the beauty of it...the story is ever unfolding, never ending. Never to be captured and pinned down. Always free. Like Beauty and her Wolfheart.

The poem is HERE if you haven't read it and would like to.

Beauty Remembers...progress....

2011-09-27T21:27:00.000+08:00

Well, I left her alone for a while, maybe we both needed to ponder the next step. But if I'm going to enter it into anything I need to stop being afraid I might screw it up, and start working. This will be a process of layering, and I sometimes wonder whether I'm wasting time and effort in working each layer in such detail even though I know it may well disappear completely under the next. Quite a lot of the pencil shading in Beauty's hair is disappearing under the paint and ink line work, and then there will be more working back into it over that, perhaps with coloured pencil, perhaps with black pen...I don't know yet. But, I can't really see it as wasted effort, I know the work is there, and each layer teaches me something about how to proceed, it has its moment in the sun, even in it must be obscured by what comes after. And layers make story, don't they. The more layers there are to peel back, the more complex and interesting the story.

So here is Beauty so far, the first colour 'washes' from a few days ago, and then yesterday's effort, working back into her hair, adding more colour to her and the beast. More to do, and I can't wait too long, so I will be busy tomorrow with it. It's quite different to previous work, but I do like it.

The paint runs ARE intentional...I wanted to try something a little looser, I wanted to let it find its own way a little rather than carefully orchestrating everything.

However, I did decide that one running down the middle was a little too dominant and distracting...so I lightened it off a little.

Taken with flash above, and without, below. The truth (as is so often the case!) lies somewhere between. I've extended Beauty's hair, and worked colour into her and the beast. I think I may need to darken their features a little to make them stand out, they're getting a little lost in the colour. The trees on the horizon definitely need to be better defined. I'm a little worried I might have to do the same with the text, but I really DON'T want to have to go to all that trouble if I can help it.

I still like the poem.

The well of inspiration...and there's no denying it...

2011-09-16T18:24:00.000+08:00

...spring has sprung! Actually, it's been springing for the last few weeks, since early August in fact. I like spring well enough, the trouble is it's always the herald of another long summer, which rather puts a downer on it for me. Especially after last summer lasted about 6 months. Winter has been very lax this year, hanging around half-heartedly for about 2 months, then it buggered off early. Still, at least it put in an appearance. More than I can say for autumn, who failed to turn up at all. Spring is when the garden looks its best, though I can't take the credit, it's the nasturtiums that make it look so lovely and they just come up by themselves without any help from me at all. I only wish they'd hang around a bit longer, but come summer, they will all die off and leave the garden looking (and me feeling) bereft and empty.

I've never planted Flanders poppies before, I'm so glad I did this year, they're gorgeous.

This is one of the babies of my old lavender, which seeded itself all over the place (I've got about 6 babies from it). It obviously likes this spot, some of the flower spikes are over 6cms long and the bees love it.

The McCartney Rose. It does this every year...as much as I love it, I wish it would just pace itself a bit better and flower over a longer period. These will probably all be gone in a week or so. The apricot next to it flowered, then leafed, and now has baby apricots, all in the space of about 2 weeks...or less!

My poor confused almond. The poor thing is probably wondering how the heck that year went round so quick (it decided to flower in autumn, the weather was so warm).

Nasturtiums taking over as always. The tree in the left foreground is a Crepe Myrtle. Hubby and I have a running joke we laugh ourselves silly over every year. For the first 3 or so years we had this tree, spring would arrive, everything around it would be budding and blooming, and it would continue looking very, very dead...right up until November or later, then it would suddenly grow leaves, and flower. And each year, I'd sigh and say "I think we're going to have to pull that Myrtle out, it hasn't survived," convinced that this year it really WAS dead, and he would disagree and say it was fine. And then Hubby started getting in early..."Hmmm, Chris," he'd say, snickering, "I really think we're going to have to pull that Myrtle out." So now, we see who gets in first to say it, then both snicker like 6 years olds! Daft, I know!

I think these are pansies. See, I told you I know nothing about gardening. They were pretty and cheap, so I bought some!

Look! Over there, to the left...a tiny wood violet. Again, I don't know what kind, it may be the native violet...but it's very tough, I can tell you that. It will die off and you think "oh well, there goes the violet" and then in autumn, tiny green shoots will reappear.

The McCartney taking over Hubby's studio.

Nasturtiums and Lobelias together. Beautiful, intense colours.

As for inspiration, this week I've been revelling in the world of Brian Froud, having bought several books that I've been wanting for ages. I was introduced to Brian, and Alan Lee's book Faeries by my art teacher at school when I was about 13. It had a profound effect on me. One of the inspirational milestones in my life actually.

And the last two weeks I have also found much inspiration in these places on the winding web path:
Sometimes a Wild God
(Tom Hirons writes a poem to make you want to run barefoot through the woods and find the wild heart you've lost somewhere)
On wooing the poem. A beginner's guide.
(Tom tells us the secret...in magical prose)
Jackie Morris writes a long post with the most wonderful links (visit them ALL!)
(and if you haven't found Jackie's blog before, you're in for a treat!)
This is just one of them!
(Isn't this marvelous?! What an amazing revival of craftmanship.)
And lastly, this is just sublime!
(Make sure you read to the end to see them all. And again thank you to Jackie Morris for the link.)

The deputy head at my girls' school asked me if I was interested in running an 'art club' at the school next term. I must be getting braver, I said yes without even stopping to think. So, a group of six or seven 9-13 year olds. Hmmm, I'll have to think of a cool project we can work on over a few weeks! I'm nervous and excited, I've never done anything like this before!

Yes, it's been a while...

2011-09-05T21:39:00.000+08:00

I've been busy, but not everything has come to fruition. I missed another deadline simply because I could NOT get inspired with a good enough idea. I started a painting, worked on it for a whole day, and in the end decided it was just not worth completing and I ended up painting over it. I almost never do that, but I think most of us know the difference between that awkward stage where nothing seems to be working but we know if we just keep at it something will happen...and reaching the point of realisation that the piece you're working on has NEVER worked, the idea wasn't up to scratch to start with, and your heart just isn't in it.

However, something did FINALLY get finished! Do you remember this painting? Here it is again.

Yes, it was part of a duo...a painting each for two little boys. And I have finally, FINALLY finished them both...Phew!!! So here is the second one, which I called 'Here Be Dragons'. I think their mum was pretty pleased with them. She's going to keep them for Christmas pressies, so I'll have to wait a while yet to find out what the boys think of them!

As for what else has been happening in the attic...or in the general vicinity anyway...spring is most definitely here, the McCartney rose is covered in blooms, the Apricot has almost lost all its flowers already and has all new leaves. My silly jonquils bloomed about a month and a half ago, but we really never got a winter at all. I don't know what the Almond is doing, it doesn't know whether it's coming or going. We've planted out our vegie garden, and a new herb garden, and the garden out the back is actually looking nice and, well, sort of almost slightly organised...as if it had been created by someone who had a vague idea of what they were doing!

Beauty is still waiting for her colour washes, but I'm almost glad now I didn't have to rush to finish her, I think a little pondering time is often a good thing. She will be finished anon!

Beauty Remembers the Beast...getting there...and disappointment...

2011-08-12T11:36:00.001+08:00

I wonder if I'm the only one who, no matter which version of Beauty and the Beast I read (or see), always feels a sense of disappointment, of anti-climax, when the Beast turns into the handsome prince. Beauty falls in love with an extraordinary person, she makes a huge leap of faith, and then he turns into a man. Just another prince, like all the other princes in all the other faery tales. Did she feel let-down too? Did she wonder if her sacrifice deserved better? She loved a beast who turned out to be gentle and loving, yet wild too. Not the sort of husband who would care about table etiquette, or small talk at parties to keep guests amused. Not the sort of husband who would care if she went barefoot, or let her hair hang down. And what does she get? A prince, for whom all those sorts of things would be of paramount importance. Not a man to run wild in the woods with...a man who would require a wife who knew how to behave on state occasions, to entertain endless boring sycophants...to behave APPROPRIATELY.

I'd choose the beast, wouldn't you?

My Beauty did. She's coming along, I've spent HOURS (or rather OWW-ers) hand-lettering the poem onto the canvas. Almost done, but OH, my aching fingers and shoulders. So here are more progress pictures, as requested.

Some winter trees added to the horizon.

The whole canvas. 91cm x 91cm.

Beginning the free-form hand-lettering. Guess all those hours in Typography and Hand Lettering classes during my Graphic Design course were useful after all!

Close-up. 2nd last verse, phew!

Almost done!

______________________________________________________________________

SIGH! Just after I posted the pics above, I sat down outside in the sun for a well-deserved cuppa...and got a phone call. Apparently my entry form, for the Art Award/Competition that I entered "Beauty Remembers" in, did not arrive in time. Sad to say, it seems that it takes Australia Post 5 days to deliver a letter that I could (and obviously SHOULD) have dropped off myself in 10 minutes. And it takes the organisers almost two weeks to let me know (on the day before it was to be taken in) that I could have saved myself the trouble of rushing to get it finished. So I'm feeling rather down and disappointed. These competitions are a good way to get your artwork out in the public eye. Ah well, I've finished the pencil and it's now sealed, so I may put it aside for a bit, as I have another painting to do. Then I can pick it up again and take my time over it. But here's a pic or two of where it's at now, ready for the 'colour wash' step.

The Talesingr: The Tale of the Wolf Bride

2011-08-11T10:00:00.003+08:00

The Tale of the wolf bride

In the time of ice when hunger bit deep, a hunter was tracking game along the sleeping white river. But the river yawned in its sleep and the hunter fell into its mouth. A wolf saw him fall and went to the edge and looked down. The wolf looked at the man and thought, “This man will make a fine meal, for my bones are rubbing my skin it is so long since I last ate.” And the man looked at the wolf and thought, “That wolfskin will make a fine coat, for my bones ache and I cannot remember what it is to be warm.” But the wolf could not get to the man, and the man could not get to the wolf. So both decided to bargain. The wolf said, “If you will give me meat, I will pull you out.” And the man said, “If you will pull me out, I will give you meat.” But the man was foolish and thought, “I will trick the wolf and when he pulls me close I will take my knife and I will have that skin.” So the man threw his rope up to the wolf, and the wolf caught it in his teeth. And the man held the end as the wolf pulled. When he was safely out, the man took his knife and stabbed, but he was clumsy and the knife did not kill. The wounded wolf could not fight the man, so he turned and ran, leaving a trail of blood and anguish at such betrayal. The man was cold and hungry and went home to find food and fire to warm himself.

When the man arrived at his tribe’s camp, he was welcomed for they had feared him lost or dead. And the hunter told them the story of his rescue, and laughed at how well he had tricked the wolf. And his son and eldest daughter laughed and told their father how clever his trick had been.

But the youngest daughter was silent, and she saw the look the Dreamspinnr gave her father, hooded and dark. And she thought, “My father has broken an oath, and no good will come of this.” So she went to her hut and packed her medicine bag, took her knife and bow, and in the dawn before the tribe stirred, she crept away. She found the river of ice, and followed the blood in the snow to the wolf’s den. And she found the wolf, cold and close to death. She wrapped it in her new reindeer skin coat, and dressed the wound with herbs and bark, and took her bow and went to hunt. She found a snow hare and brought it back to the den. There, she cut the meat into small pieces and fed the wolf from her own hand.

In the days that followed, the wolf grew stronger. His eyes grew brighter, and the ribs that pressed against his skin were covered with flesh as the girl hunted for him. She made fire to keep them warm, and at night she lay beside the wounded wolf and wrapped them both in her coat. In this way, the wolf grew well, and grew to love the girl who saved him. In return, he taught her wolf ways and wolf lore. How to track, to sniff the wind and find game that men could not, to hunt like a wolf and how to sing the moon song when the curved moon grew fat.

One day the girl said, “Now you are well, I have righted my father’s wrong doing, and I must return to my people.” The wolf was sad to see her go, but she had saved him and he could not make her stay. And the girl returned to her people, who were overjoyed to see her but unsure why she had chosen to leave. She said nothing, but the Dreamspinnr knew and smiled, for the girl had averted the fate that might have befallen the tribe with the breaking of an oath.

But the girl could not settle, she no longer felt she belonged to the human tribe, she saw them through different eyes. She hunted strangely and they began to fear her success, for it seemed like sorcery. She could smell and hear things they could not. And she would sing the moon song when it rose full and fat, and it frightened them. She longed for the company of the wolf, for the smell and touch of his fur, his bright eyes that saw the wind, his loyalty and lack of human guile. And once again, she packed her belongings, and in the dawn before the tribe stirred, she crept away. The Dreamspinnr saw her go, and nodded. The girl followed her own tracks back to the den, and found the wolf waiting for her, for he sensed her coming. And she knew this was her home now.

And it is said by hunters who pass that way, that they have seen a wolf and a woman dressed in white fur running beside each other, swift as the wind. And their feet never touch the ground.

__________________________________________________________________________________
All text and images © Christina Cairns 2011

‘The Talesingr’s Children’ is a story invented by Christina Cairns, and all accompanying ‘anthropological information’ was found hidden in an old wooden box with aged brass handles, in the attic in a corner of my mind that doesn’t get dusted very often. Or perhaps it’s all true...............................

Work In Progress: Beauty Remembers

2011-08-09T10:00:00.002+08:00

This is 2 days worth of work, I've just about finished with the pencil rendering (some trees to be added to the horizon), then it will be sealed, then I'll get into the acrylic washes. I'm working with it leaning up against the dining table while I sit on the floor in front, probably not the best way to go about it, but I couldn't get it on the easel at the right height to sit at. The canvas is 91cm square, and I intend to have a fair bit of white space. I haven't worked out how I'm going to incorporate the text of the poem yet though, what style writing and whether I should do it in pencil, or pen and ink, though I think it should be either grey or sepia toned. Beauty's hair seems to be taking on a slightly tree-like look which I quite like, though it wasn't intentional. I struggled with the folds of the sheet though, I REALLY can't do draping cloth! It has to be finished by the end of the week, so no time to stop and procrastinate about which way I should go, which is probably a blessing!

Late Note: for everyone popping in thanks to Terri Windling's very kind recommendation at The Drawing Board, thanks for dropping by, and it you click on the 'Beauty Remembers' label just under the post title, you'll get all the posts relating to the creation of this drawing/painting as it progresses.

I must share this, I love it!

2011-08-08T20:59:00.000+08:00

This gorgeous illustration is by Lecte on Etsy! It's called 'A Net for the Birds'. Hmmm, does it ring any bells?! How many birds are there?! Lecte added me to her circle and so I popped over to her Etsy shop to have a look around, liked what I saw and something about the thumbnail for this piece jumped out at me and I clicked to have a closer look. I looked at the picture, then noticed the title, it was all looking very familiar and I thought 'Oh my goodness, I must have read the 'Tale of the Seven Bird Spirits' somewhere and completely forgotten, I obviously didn't make it up at all!!!' (Well, aside from the fact that it's intentionally based on a fairytale that I hope people recognise, because if you believe my controversial...and fictional...Professor Woodford-Harding, the Talesingr's Tales could be the ancient prototypes upon which famous fairytales are based!)

So I quickly read through Lecte's description. And NO, I haven't...it's actually an illustration of MY story! How cool is that? Someone all the way across the other side of the world was inspired to illustrate my little Talesingr's story. And how cool is that drawing? I love the dynamism in it, I love the strength in the Dreamspinnr's arms, I love that she is tattooed just as I imagined she would be. It's just stunning, isn't it!

And I love the way the world wide web makes this kind of thing possible...it really is a kind of magic!

Another Etsy Treasury inclusion! Yay!

2011-08-07T22:09:00.000+08:00

Got back from a few days away down south (relaxing with the other half sans munchkins, and window shopping for blocks of land!) and found my little Autumn Hanger included in this lovely treasury of all things Autumnal, by Robyn at Cardstamps http://www.etsy.com/shop/cardsstamps.

A faery you wouldn't want to meet...and a gift in the mail

2011-08-04T13:29:00.004+08:00

I think this needs a colour wash, it's not finished yet, and I think it needs some green. This is the kind of faery you don't want to bump into. I've written short story, a scary faerytale for big people...well, I hope it's scary...and this is the character met by the protagonist. As part of my plan to continue being a frustrated writer, I submitted the story to The Fairy Tale Review for their latest issue, and this was meant to go with it, but of course, it's not finished yet, and submissions have just closed. I have a snowball's chance in hell of being accepted (I mean, Marina Warner is just one of their stellar contributors!), but it doesn't matter, it's the writing and the sending off that's important. If I keep doing that, then one day I might write something that is good enough.

And this is what I received in the mail yesterday! From Mo who bought my little Talesingr. The card is beautiful enough, but the little heart is so perfect in its raggedyness, it has love in it, can you feel it? I love, love, love it! Thanks you so much, Mo! Do pop over and visit her lovely blog, and check out the other beautiful hearts and wonderful crow drawings she has there.

P.S. if the Scary Faery (or Erl King as I'm thinking of him as) looks vaguely familiar, then yes, it's based on me...with some distorting and fiddling done! But I'm not in the least bit scary!

Birthdays, goblins, and W.I.Ps...

2011-08-02T23:07:00.001+08:00

I've committed myself to doing a new, large painting for an art award/exhibition coming up in a couple weeks. It's at least a year since I last did something big, and it's a scary prospect, so I decided the best way to get myself to stop procrastinating was to provide a deadline. So now I have one, Friday week! I've decided to do something using the same technique I used for the 'Green Jack', a pencil sketch on canvas overlaid with acrylic colours. The 'Green Jack' was the first piece I've done using that method, and it was only 20cm x 20cm...this one is going to be 91cm x 91cms. So I'm a little apprehensive about how I'm going to go about it, but I know without a deadline I'd never give it a go at all.

So I've entered a painting that doesn't exist yet, called "Beauty Remembers". If the title sounds familiar, you might remember the poem I wrote last year. I've had an image in my mind for a while now, so it's as good a time as any to get cracking on it. I want to incorporate the text of the poem into the painting, and I've been scribbling some ideas. So here's a peak at my sketch/ideas/general ranting/notebook.

And as my smallest munchkin had her birthday during the school holidays, we delayed her party so her school friends could come along. Several faeries and a couple of pirates turned up, and it seemed like a good time was had by all.

A Faery feast.

No, my munchkin isn't levitating, unless those wings are genuine. A robust game of Musical Statues got everyone up on the dance floor (er, carpet)!

It was bucketing down for most of the morning, but luckily the rain held off in the afternoon long enough for little people to head outside and go Goblin hunting, with prizes for the most goblins rounded up (because as I explained, my garden was over-run with goblins and they're a terrible pest, scaring the birds away and teasing poor Flynn by pulling her tail and biting her nose). The goblins were simply pictures purloined from the web (late the previous night...it was a last minute brainwave!), printed in black and white, cut out (very roughly) and stuck onto pop-sticks and pegs, then stuck in the ground or clipped to trees and bushes. Beloved hid them all in the garden and I gave him strict instructions to remember to think like a 4 foot tall and rather over excited 7 year old (sometimes he forgets everyone else isn't as tall as he is)...and they found them all within 5 minutes!

So...here's a goblin for you (this is one of mine)! I think though, that he really isn't ugly enough. An extreme makeUNDER required perhaps!?

"The Green Jack" featured in this lovely treasury!

2011-08-01T08:55:00.000+08:00

My 'Green Jack' has popped up in a lovely Etsy treasury Have You Seen the Green Man? along with some other beautiful items. The treasury was created by Dante at Suntribe Designs, who makes the most gorgeous jewellery...the sort of thing I can just imagine Boudicca, or perhaps Helen of Troy wearing. I've got my eye on some earrings in there!

Ashes and Snow...

2011-07-28T22:47:00.001+08:00

I saw this over at Ruthie's wonderful blog, A Faerietale of Inspiration and followed her links to the Ashes and Snow Website. Browsing the site moved me to tears in ways I cannot begin to express. The deep, deep longing for something lost, a knowing that has not been passed down, a way of being we've forgotten. A homesickness and a longing to return from exile...from ourselves. Here is a taste from Youtube, but the online exhibition is so much more. Go visit and be amazed.

Edited to add this wonderful interview with Gregory Colbert.

The Talesingr: The Tale of the Mountain Spirit and the Fire Bird

2011-07-27T17:40:00.000+08:00

The Tale of the mountain spirit and the fire bird

Various, fragmented versions of this story survive. It appears to be a creation myth, though specifics differ between tribes, particularly in the geographical details, as one might expect from people so closely linked, and reliant upon, the landscape surrounding them. In some versions of the story, the fire bird comes from an island far out to sea and flies to the dark mountains. Clearly such geographical details are dependent on the location of the tribe, and what lies to the east and west of the land over which they journey. The mountain spirit is male in some versions, and female in others, and sometimes not considered to be either, or perhaps both.

In the beginning times, the world was cold, dark and still. There was no light to wake the spirits, so they slumbered. Only the mountain spirit was awake, silent and watchful, for he was the oldest spirit. But the mountain spirit was lonely and wished for company. So he began to sing. And as he sang, the fired that burned deep inside his belly began to rise, and as it rose, its red glow could be seen, becoming brighter and brighter. And the slumbering spirits began to awaken to this new song and this new light. And still the mountain spirit sang the fire up, until at last it flew out of his mouth in the shape of a fiery bird, sweeping on great flaming wings towards the water-without-end. And all the spirits awoke and the world grew bright and beautiful and the spirits moved over its face and they began to join the song, singing all the peoples of the earth into being, the fur and feathered people, the human and scaled people, the green growing people, the small and large. And when the flames of the fire bird had faded and the world grew dark again, it crawled back into the mountain spirit’s mouth, to sleep and grow strong again. And the mountain spirit was so pleased with the beauty and brightness of this new world, that he has sung the fiery bird out of his mouth each day from that time to this.

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All text and images © Christina Cairns 2011

‘The Talesingr’s Children’ is a story invented by Christina Cairns, and all accompanying ‘anthropological information’ was found hidden in an old wooden box with aged brass handles, in the attic in a corner of my mind that doesn’t get dusted very often. Or perhaps it’s all true...............................

Last day of the Hols...birthdays and puppets...

2011-07-25T15:59:00.000+08:00

...a bit of what we did!

We went and saw 'Hare Brain' at the wonderful Spare Parts Puppet Theatre...actually, I saw it 5 times, because I volunteered to help out for a couple of days, ushering, taking tickets, vacuuming the foyer and making sure the loos were kept well stocked with loo paper (very important when you've got lots of very small bladders in the audience!) I have to say, I enjoyed it every time, and laughed at the 'blue lettuce' joke as much on the 5th as the 1st time. The Spare Parts people generously gave free tickets to volunteer helpers, so I took my girls on my smallest munchkin's 7th (eeek, when did that happen!?) birthday. Spare Parts is a WA institution, celebrating their 30th birthday this year...I'm looking forward to their next season!

And that birthday...I don't know how it happened, I'm sure she was 2 just last week!

Daddy and his girls!

Daddy decided to help blow out the candles...and there were great exclamations of "DADDY!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Followed by the 'Connect Four' tournament. It looks like bigger munchkin has just lost to Daddy, but smallest did well against Grandad (and they both beat me...without any help...on several occasions...oh embarrassment!)

Smallest munchkin went Goblin Hunting...apparently this is the regulation GH uniform.

Biggest joined the pirates.

Inspired by 'Hare Brain' and to combat the 'I'm bored!' syndrome, we made some (rather odd) puppets. Faeries of course. Not quite finished, but never mind.

Finally, just when you think you've tired them out and can afford to sit down with a good book...you make the mistake of saying 'well, you've got mummy and daddy home today, what do you want to do?" And biggest says "Lets make a movie!"

Ahhh...ummmm...hmmmmm...okaaaaaaaaay...I guess we can do that...

Biggest had great 'Cecil B. De Mille' yearnings, involving everyone getting dressed up as Princesses and Princes (hmmm, if you can convince daddy to dress up, you're a better woman than I am, sweetheart!!), and doing Cinderella...on location in the front yard! Given the cast of thousands required (the Ball scene) plus all the trained mice and birds, I managed to steer her to a slightly lower budget (think cool, indi and hip) style, and Little Red Riding Hood instead (only needing a cast of 4). It was hilarious really, I do wish I could show you, but our video camera really is a VIDEO camera, circa 1999, and needs to be wound up with a large brass key and fed dusty little cassette-type things that some say can only be found these days in the very bottom of old leather suitcases belonging to ladies who go exploring while wearing button-up boots and crinolines. Luckily, we had a couple on hand! A whole day and a half was spent making sets, props, costumes...and casting (very important, you have to consider things such as...is Barbie too tall for our leading man?), while filming took all of half an hour. So here are some 'stills' from the epic production of 'Little Red Riding Hood'!

And a good time was had by all!

What else did I do...? Oh yes, I turned the 'spare room' into a 3rd bedroom, so my girls have a room each now...which is very exciting for them. Alas, as I'm sure you all know, there actually is no such thing as a 'spare room'...stuff tends to expand to fit the available space. Which means that everything that was IN the so-called spare room is now NOT in it.

So at the end of the school holidays I have about 3 weeks worth of house-cleaning to catch up on...as well as the Herculean task of trying to find the lounge room floor beneath all the stuff excavated out of the spare room. There's layers and layers of it to go through...I wonder if Time Team would be interested?!

Inspired by this...A New Kind of Map

2011-07-18T23:09:00.000+08:00

Inspired this evening by this marvelous post by Rima Staines, I followed her links to the dark mountain. Inspired by what I read there a little while ago...I wrote this poem off the top of my head. It really is straight off the top of my head, because I always have this illogical feeling that it will somehow be magic if only I just don't think about it too much, so I write the first thing that comes into my head. The phrase that came into my head when reading the dark mountain manifesto was "we need a new kind of map"...and being rather enamored of the idea of maps, I went from there to see where it would go. I suppose we can consider it a first draft, though as I said, I always feel it loses something if you fiddle about with it too much...........

I Wished for a New Kind of Map

I wished for a new kind of map

one marked ‘here dance’ and ‘now crawl here’
a path of bread crumbs to follow to a stream I can drink from
and not fear what’s in it.

I wished for a new kind of map
with no names but only the ones that came to me as I passed
whispered by the trees, the rocks and knowing
I heard them as I hear you.

I wished for a new kind of map
that requires an old canvas swag and a tongue full of songs
no tyre tracks, only spiralling footprints winding the ways
of those who have gone before.

I wished for a new kind of map
changing with each unfolding
what use is a page that tells the same lie each time?
Where’s the journey in that?

I wished for a new kind of map
that might lead me to a different when as well as where
and if I dance where yesterday I walked, I might arrive
in a stranger place than before.

I wished for a new kind of map,
though indeed, it is the oldest kind of all
the soft re-membering of my eyes to places new
yet beloved and long lost.

I wished for a new kind of map
that showed the spaces between the roads, and not the roads at all
and marked the wilds where wilds once were
and marking made them so.

I wished for a new kind of map
in a song I can sing and be sung to
in a story that tells me I am
on a journey that has no end.

The Talesingr: The Tale of the Seven Bird Spirits

2011-07-18T20:36:00.001+08:00

The Tale of the Seven Bird Spirits

There were once seven bird spirits full of self-importance. All believed that he or she was the most powerful, and they argued day and night driving away the peace of the forest. To decide once and for all who was the greatest among them, they proposed a contest. Because the bird spirits had power over the seven winds, they would each harness the strength of one and for a whole month would blow as hard and as fierce as wind has ever blown since the beginning times. At the end of seven months they would hold a council and each spirit would cast their vote.

First, the wind of the summer morning blew, bringing the smell of first greening, of fruit budding and herds returning. Then the wind of winter morning blew, bringing the smell of hardship and hunger, and the earth froze and the herds did not come. Then came the wind of summer afternoon, bringing the scent of the sea-of-sand and no-water, and melted the frozen earth and all was turned to mud and slush. And the wind of winter evenings, endless and cruel, froze the mud like rock and the trees were bare. Then the scorching wind from the home of the sun burnt all before it, and the trees burst into flame, till the blackened stumps were frozen by the wind of the tomb of the sun, bringing darkness and death. For six months the people of the forest, human and animal and growing thing, endured the contest of the winds. And the people knew if the seventh wind, the wind of the spirit place, was unleashed, all the spirits of the ancestors, good and bad, would be hurled into the world of the living. All was chaos, and the people feared starvation...or worse.

So a great council was called, and the chiefs and Dreamspinnrs of all the tribes, human and animal and growing thing, met in circle to say what must be done. And the oldest and wisest sat among them and listened and said nothing, as they shouted and argued for a whole journey of the sun. But in the end they fell silent, for none knew the answer. Then the oldest and wisest opened her eyes and touched two fingers to the geisan on her chin, and spoke. “I will dream.” She went to her hut and lay on the reindeer hides, and slept. And in her dream she wove seven nets, made of hair from all the people of the tribes, to make it strong as the tribes. And into the nets she wove the thorns of the Martuk tree. She spoke no word but the spell of net weaving. She did not eat, nor drink, nor could she lift her eyes from the work. And when she had finished, she bound a strip of cured fish skin across her mouth, for to speak one word would cause the nets to break. She tracked the bird spirits to their meeting place, and waited for them to sleep. And when the curved moon rose and the fire sank low, she threw the nets over the bird spirits. They woke and struggled to free themselves, but the harder they fought, the deeper the Martuk thorns bit into their skin and tore away their feathers. They begged and pleaded to be released but the oldest and wisest said nothing. When all the feathers had fallen away from their skin and with them the power over the winds, all that remained were strange creatures like wizened human children, and they crawled away into the caves of the snow mountains and were not seen again.

This was the dream of the oldest and wisest, this was done, and order was restored.

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All text and images © Christina Cairns 2011

‘The Talesingr’s Children’
is a story invented by Christina Cairns, and all accompanying ‘anthropological information’ was found hidden in an old wooden box with aged brass handles, in the attic in a corner of my mind that doesn’t get dusted very often. Or perhaps it’s all true...............................

For a stunningly beautiful illustration of 'The Tale of the Seven Bird Spirits', please visit Lecte's Etsy Store.

The Talesingr: The Tale of the Coming of Humankind (for Mo Crow!)

2011-07-14T18:28:00.000+08:00

The Tale of the coming of humankind

Only a tiny fragment of this tale survives, a brief outline with little detail. Woodford- Harding collected it from a seafaring people he stayed with very briefly, most likely in 1904, but he recorded almost no information about the tribe itself, thus it is difficult to determine who exactly they were or even their exact location, though it is believed they were most likely people living along the coast of the Bering Sea in far Eastern Siberia. Unlike modern western perceptions of killer whales (also known as 'Orca'), this tribe clearly thought very highly of them and considered them to be the ancestors of their people.

Two spirits eloped together, for the laws of their tribe forbade them to marry. To escape they turned themselves into fish and swam down river to the sea. There a Killer Whale came upon them. She was hungry but she could see they were spirits disguised as fish, so she said to them, “I am hungry. If you will give me the fish bodies you wear, I will hide you from your families.” So the fish swam into her mouth, and she swam far away from their angry tribe. And in her belly, the two spirits took off their fish bodies as they had promised. But they were afraid they would be found again and punished for breaking the law. So they stayed in the belly of the Killer Whale. And in the spring, she gave birth to a woman and a man, and they became the mother and the father of the first people.

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All text and images © Christina Cairns 2011

Psst...a Talesingr and a few Wandering Souls have made it to my Etsy shop...

2011-07-12T21:47:00.000+08:00

...Songs for Wandering Souls being the name I decided to give my other little hangers, as the Talesingr's Children were getting all the attention and glory! More will be uploaded to Etsy later this week, but I want to post the Talesingr stories onto my blog first. Stay tuned....

The Talesingr: A Brief History part 2

2011-07-12T19:02:00.000+08:00

The meaning behind the Talesingr’s Tale

The fragments pieced together by Woodford-Harding, and more recent scholars using his raw data, tell a very simple tale of a tribal storyteller who has lost the ability to tell stories. While in today’s modern society this may not be considered a calamity, in an oral culture it has grave consequences. Many oral cultures, both past and present, have a designated storyteller, or bard, and their role goes far beyond mere entertainment. In a society where writing is unknown, such people are the source of vital information, the living, breathing libraries of their people. It is their responsibility to preserve the accumulated knowledge their tribe requires to survive, and to disseminate it when needed. What may seem to be simple ‘fairytales’ to the modern observer, in fact hold vast amounts of information on everything from the correct herb to use to heal an open wound, to the best moon phase to trap particular game, to applications of tribal law, blood connections in relation to marriage, migratory patterns of game, weather patterns for planting and harvesting, the care of the elderly, and so forth. These stories not only strengthened and unified groups in times of hardship (particularly for arctic dwellers during long, freezing winter nights when there was little to do other than huddle together for warmth around a fire), they also taught the younger members of the tribe all they needed to survive and become useful members of the group.

Thus the Talesingr’s story appears to be a cautionary tale, warning against the dangers of withholding information. The Talesingr has selfishly chosen to hold back certain stories in order to benefit herself alone, and as a consequence she loses the ability to tell all stories, simultaneously calling into question her place among her people and putting her whole tribe in danger. The Talesingr is shown the error of her ways, and to put the situation to rights she must sacrifice the very treasures she has hoarded.

Inscription on back reads "Fitting in with the locals! W.H" The man on the far left is believed to be Woodford-Harding, circa 1907. Woodford-Harding bequest.

Professor Woodford-Harding's groundbreaking discovery and his controversial conclusions

Details of the Talesingr’s story emerged gradually over the course of Woodford-Harding’s researches. He began to take note of the ‘prologues’ often used by storytellers to begin a tale because he noticed similarities wherever he travelled. Phrases such as, “I found the bones of this story hanging in a tree…”
“The old woman left this tale in the snow when she passed long ago…”
“Crow found the bones of this tale, and whispered them to me…”
“I had this story from the wind, who took it from the Talesingr…”
Woodford-Harding presumed at first this was a standard phrase, much like our ‘once upon a time’, which simply indicated a story was about to be told and people should hush and listen. However he realised as he travelled more widely that the same, quite specific, details appeared again and again, and he began to ask storytellers not only about the stories they told, but also about the Talesingr motif used to introduce them. What emerged was a consistent, though highly fragmented tale. What also emerged was the indication that traditional storytellers from Finland to eastern Siberia used the ancient figure of the Talesingr as both a kind of muse, and a validation of the stories they told. Old tales known among many groups were often considered to be ‘Talesingr’s children’, stories passed down from storyteller to storyteller over aeons. But equally, a new tale would rarely be introduced as invented entirely by the storyteller her/himself. Rather they might say, “I was walking in the snow and I found the bones of story left by the Talesingr and I have sung new life into them.” Storytellers also told Woodford-Harding that the vast majority of the Talesingr’s tales had indeed been lost, many known only through tantalising snippets, sometimes no more that a story title or a character name. Woodford-Harding collected many of these, hoping that by piecing together these fragments he might be able to restore these lost tales as he had done the Talesingr’s story, an thus create a storehouse of some of the oldest stories known to man. Some of Woodford-Harding’s conclusions are considered controversial at best in this regard, particularly his insistence that many well known modern fairytales are the descendents of these lost tales. Given that there was (at the time) no knowledge of these fairytales among the people most familiar with the Talesingr, and in countries where the modern fairytale developed there is no evidence the Talesingr was ever part of oral folklore, this seems highly unlikely. Most modern scholars consider that Woodford-Harding’s belief this was the case led him to piece together story fragments to fit his preconceived ideas, rather than using rigorous and objective research to match parts together. Research is continuing in this area, using both Woodford-Harding’s raw data, and new research collected utilising modern anthropological methods. The outcome remains to be seen, but whatever truth is ultimately revealed, Professor Woodford-Harding’s contribution cannot be overstated.

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All text and artwork © Christina Cairns 2011

Old photos public domain (as far as I know!)

Success...in an unexpected manner!

2011-07-11T21:03:00.000+08:00

Yesterday turned out to be something I wasn't quite expecting...fun! I've never done an art show/expo/stall type thingy before, and thought I'd possibly be nervous...shy...uncomfortable...bored...but actually I was none of the above, once I'd managed to calm myself down and actually get the wing nuts done up holding my sign onto my table (very fiddly, and already responsible for one broken nail on my guitar plucking hand)!

What you can't see is my ugg boots...it was VERY cold yesterday (mind you, that's Perth cold, which of course isn't REAL cold!) But it's OK, they are very swish ugg boots...purple with braid around the top, he he!

What was also unexpected was that I didn't sell any small items other than 1 print and a few cards, though lots of people showed a lot of interest in the wooden hangers. But what I DID sell was 'Storm Spirit Moving', the large painting in the lower left of the photo. I thought that the smaller and cheaper items would be the bigger sellers (seemed a logical assumption!) and didn't think it very likely that any of the big ones would be sold. Not that I'm complaining! I actually made a profit after taking out the $350 or so costs. But I think it was a bit of a lucky fluke, the right people happened to come along, and if they hadn't I would be very out of pocket. Has anyone else found this to be true, that market type situations often defy all your expectations and you end up with a most unlikely outcome?

But 'Storm Spirit' has found a new home, and it was rather wonderful too. A lovely couple and their daughter came along, and admired all my work and we chatted for a bit. Then they moved on to look at all the other stalls and I didn't think any more of it. But a while later they came back and wanted to have another look at 'Storm Spirit', and then they said the magic words 'Yes, we'll take it, thank you!' It turned out that their daughter turned 21 last year, and they'd promised her a painting for her 21st birthday, and she has been looking and looking for the right one. I think 'Storm Spirit' whispered to her, and I wonder if perhaps she whispered back? Perhaps the 'true' owners of a painting are the ones who know the painting's story and the painting senses it and whispers "you are the one who can tell me my tale, and only you." What do you think?

Other unexpected things happened too. I've long despaired that my work is so eclectic (or rather, all-over-the-place with no rhyme or reason!) that there doesn't seem to be any unifying theme or identifiable style. And yet, I found myself telling people over and over yesterday that the one thing that appears in all my work is STORY. It was only when I'd said it about 5 times that it dawned on me what I was saying and I realised, that's it, that's what holds my work together, whether it's a large acrylic, or a pencil sketch, or a stitched piece or a piece of wood and pyrography. It has a story.

I also found myself being told very sternly that I am a writer! I was chatting away to a lady who told me I should really do book illustrations, and I laughed and said it's a one-day dream and that I'm just a frustrated writer. Then she listened as I chatted on (waving my hands around a lot as I do when I'm excited and enthusiastic), telling her the story behind the 'girl in the boat' paintings and 'Shipwreck Coast', and she listened as I talked about the Talesingr and all the little stories I'd written for her, and she flicked through my book of 'prints available' and asked me if I'd written the info and little 'blurbs' for each one. And she said 'so you wrote this?' Then she pointed to the flyers and sign about the Talesingr, "and you wrote that?' Then she looked me right in the eye and very seriously said, "so you're ALREADY a writer, aren't you!" Perhaps I am.

I even plucked up the courage to take Cordelia along, making sure my neighbouring stall holders were happy for me to play guitar. And I plucked away (as well as I could with no decent fingernails!), and even sang a bit, very quietly. And the lady in the stall next door told me it was lovely, and when I stopped and put Cordelia back in her stand for a bit, the lady opposite popped up and came over to tell me not to stop, that it was beautiful!

Perhaps the most surprising thing I learned is that I'm actually quite good at the 'chatting to the customer' thing. Normally, I'm pretty shy and the idea of starting up a conversation with a complete stranger makes me nervous. I'm just no good at all at small talk and general chit-chat, utterly hopeless at parties. But if people stop and ask me about my work, I can chat away and tell them all about it and enjoy doing so. I had some really interesting conversations with people, getting their impressions and ideas about my work too, which is always refreshing and interesting, and lots of people took my cards and pamphlets, so perhaps they might even pop in here. So if any of you are people I met yesterday, thank you so much, I had a lovely day and enjoyed talking to all of you!

So while I DIDN'T learn what is a 'sure fire' seller at an Art market, I did learn lots of other things that may ultimately be more useful!

The Talesingr:The Tale of the Foolish Bird

2011-07-08T20:39:00.000+08:00

the tale of the foolish bird

There was once a bird who wanted to make her nest the best and most beautiful. In the spring, all the feathered people of the forest returned to build their nests and lay their eggs. The forest was soon full of the chattering and cheeping and squawking of birds large and small collecting twigs and leaves and moss and fur cheekily stolen from the fur people. And the trees glittered with colourful plumage, and the leaves shivered as birds swooped and landed among them, weaving their homes to cradle their young.

And the foolish bird tried first one tree, then another, then another. But she was not satisfied. The first tree had thorns. “This will not do, for these thorns will scratch my little ones and I.” And so she tried the next tree. Its branches were young and thin. “This will not do, for these branches will bend and sway in the wind too much and my little ones and I will fall.” The next tree was small. “This will not do, this tree is too short, and the foxes can reach easily and devour my little ones and I.” She went to tree after tree, and each was no better than the last, and sometimes worse. “This tree is too tall, my little ones and I will be burnt by the sun and frozen by the wind.” “This tree is too far from the stream where I catch fish, my little ones and I will go hungry.” This tree is too close to the river, what if my nest falls in?”

All spring and all summer she did this, as all the other birds laid their eggs and raised their young. Then one day, she felt a cold breeze on her feathers, and with horror she realised that summer would end soon. She raced back to the tree by the river, but it was full of nests of other birds and there was no room even for one more. So she went to the tree far from the stream, but it was full too. She visited all the trees she had discarded, but all were full of nests, and the cheeping of half grown chicks trying out their new wings. Even the thorn tree was full. And as the leaves began to turn and the air grew cold, the foolish bird grew desperate. Finally, she found a broken sharp stick in a crevice in a granite rock, a cold place where the wind rushed through, where foxes and wolves could easily find her, overhanging the rushing river. And she built her nest there. And she laid her eggs as all the other birds were teaching their young to fly in readiness for the long journey to the winter home. And as the other birds began to leave, she sat and shivered and her eggs grew cold. And when the snows came, the foolish bird froze on her foolish nest, and turned to stone. And if you pass by that rock near the river, you may see the outline of her etched into the rock even today, and be reminded that the search for perfection must be tempered with common sense or it will lead only to emptiness and sorrow.

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All text and images © Christina Cairns 2011

The Talesingr: A Brief History

2011-07-08T09:11:00.000+08:00

A Brief History of the Talesingr Stories and their remarkable discovery

Fragmented versions of the story of the Talesingr survive across the frozen north, from Finland in the west, across the breadth of Siberia to the east. There is some speculation it may have travelled further, into Alaska, as folklore there reflects elements found in the Talesingr’s story. If this is the case, it is likely the story found its way there with people who crossed the Bering Strait and settled the Americas. Suffice to say, it is an ancient story, though how old it is impossible to say.

What little we know of the Talesingr is mostly due to the work of Professor Albert Woodford-Harding (1876-1914?). Although a Professor of Classics, Woodford-Harding was a passionate amateur folklorist who travelled to remote areas to collect folklore, songs and stories. He was particularly interested in the folklore of the indigenous peoples of Northern Europe, and lived with various groups in Finland and across Siberia for extended periods, documenting aspects of their everyday lives along with the stories and folklore that informed them. He also discovered pictorial evidence of the Talesingr’s stories in the form of ancient pictographs. He surmised that these pictographs served as mnemonic devices for tribal storytellers, as they remain enigmatic to the casual observer.

Woodford-Harding left behind a great deal of research and data, but very little was published and much remains uncategorized, due to his disappearance on a field trip to Siberia shortly before the outbreak of the World War One. It is known he and J.R.R Tolkien met at University when the latter was briefly a student of Woodford-Harding’s. It is interesting to speculate whether Woodford-Harding’s research influenced Tolkien’s later writing, most particularly the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Woodford-Harding’s disappearance resulted in his work being lost for almost 60 years. His wife packed his research away and it was left forgotten in the family attic until her grandson found it while preparing the house for sale following her death in 1972. Modern scholars have been astounded at the amount of data collected, and although Woodford-Harding’s methods were not always exacting and disciplined, his contribution to the field cannot be underestimated. While details of individual peoples are sometimes sketchy and the depth of information collected is uneven, he was the first to document the similarities between the story fragments of many groups, thus showing the links between what up to that point in time had been considered to be individual folklore unique to individual ethnic groups. By demonstrating this clear link, Woodford-Harding was able not only to prove the connections between widely disparate ethnic groups, but also provided clear evidence of the survival of a myth over several thousand years, and vast migratory distances.

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All text and images © Christina Cairns 2011

Art Expo July 10th!

2011-07-04T17:21:00.000+08:00

Now I realise it would be very a long commute for most of you (requiring rather more than a cut lunch and a water-bag!), but just in case you are in the neighbourhood, or know anyone who might be, here are all the details of the Art Expo that is happening next weekend. I'll be in Hackett Hall, stand No. 7 (diagonally opposite the entrance in the far corner), with some big paintings, some little paintings, lots of Wood Hangers (including 5 'Talesingr's Children'), some prints and cards, and the small original works on tea-bags you've already seen here. Please pop in if you're in Perth, there will be lots and lots of wonderful art to look at, as well as demonstrations, activities for kids, food stalls and coffee! And me...of course! And it doesn't hurt that the University of Western Australia is a gorgeous campus to visit!

The Talesingr's Children

2011-06-29T22:12:00.000+08:00

The Talesingr’s Children

The Talesingr had lost her words. She would open her mouth and nothing would come but the croaking of an old crow, the sound of wind on the bare hilltops in the bitterest winter. Yet the tales were there, crowding inside her, jostling one against the other to be set free, to be loosed from her flesh and dripped like honey from her tongue. They scratched behind her eyes and made them sore. They camped in her stomach like legions of warriors before a battle, tense and sleepless, making her belly churn and ache. The younger ones, more adventurous and indeed, thinner than their elders, squeezed down past her bony knees to try and find a narrower pass to freedom, succeeding only in making her feet throb with every step. They howled in her head all day and all night and she was bereft of sleep.

In desperation she went to see the Dreamspinnr, bringing payment of an antler bone pendant and pine resin for the fire. The Dreamspinnr looked at her through deep hooded eyes for a long time. The tales cried and clawed their way up her throat when the Dreamspinnr opened the Talespinnr’s mouth and peered in, breathing smoke into her face. But they could not climb out. They scratched inside her skull and wailed, making her head ache as if it might burst, but the way was barred. The Dreamspinnr sniffed at the Talespinnr’s breath, looked in her ears and grunted. Then she sat down again. And spoke.

“The oldest stories bar the way. You have kept them too long, and they are afraid to leave. You have hoarded your words, you have not been generous with them. They are dying, becoming nothing more than rotted thought and leaf mulch, and they drag their feet and infect the young ones with their sickness and fear.” And the Talesingr wept in regret, for it was true. She had held back the stories she liked best, waiting for a time of great importance, not wishing to waste them on a day like any other, or a listener like any other. Stories with which to regale a Queen who might one day visit, to win a contest with a fellow Talespinnr from another land…or to win a lover who might stay if the tale pleased him well. Stories she had carried within her for so long she could not even remember how they began…or ended. Stories that were no longer stories, so crippled they had become pushed deep inside her. She had loved them too much and her love had deformed them, stopped them growing tall and true, turned them from tales into nightmares that snatched at her dreams and turned her hopes into ash.

The Dreamspinnr stoked the fire between them, sending fragrant sparks into the small space of the deerskin hut. She said…”I will journey to find what you must do. You and your story children must stay and keep the night with me.” And the Talesingr, tears streaking her face, nodded silently as the stories inside her hushed and held their breaths for the first time in too long.

All night, as the Dreamspinnr danced and sang and beat her drum, the Talesingr watched. Outside the wind howled and the snow lay thick on the ground. It was the time when the Talesingr was most loved. When her stories warmed frozen hearts and filled empty bellies. And she could not speak. If she could not speak, she was no Talesingr at all and she had no place among the people.

When the grey light of dawn filtered through the gaps around the deerskin door, the Dreamspinnr laid down her drum at last, and spoke. “You will go out into the woods. You must go towards the rising sun. At the end of the second day, you will find a cave. You will enter the cave and light your fire. And there you will stay. For three days and three nights, you will spit the words of your broken stories into the fire, you will make the marks of their bones upon wood and cloth and hang them in the trees for the winds to find and take where they will. You will give your twisted children a fine funeral, and set them free. When the wailing in your head has ended, and the stories are gone, your voice will be returned to you. Then you will return to your people, and new stories will come. But you must not hold them back. When they are born, do not seek to keep them locked inside you, set them free and tell them to whoever will listen.”

The Talesinngr nodded in despair, for she must lose forever the story children she had born, but there was no other way. She took up her bow and knife to keep against the wolves, and walked towards the rising sun. To farewell her children and leave nothing of them but ash and the scattered scratches of their bones hanging from the bare branches. Who but the crows might hear their tales now?

The Tale of the The Seven Bird Spirits

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All text and images © Christina Cairns 2011

Late Harvest...

2011-06-23T20:30:00.000+08:00

Autumn colours mixed with the colours of our southern winter...intense greens, of grass and leaf and tree washed clean and bright with rain. Some more little wood hangers for my art stall. Because I am a novice at this, I did not realise that my 'allocated stand' was actually 'allocated floor space' and nothing more, and now must scramble to knock together some kind of display stands to put my larger paintings on. Beloved says he can make something...ah well, I suppose it's all a learning experience.

And another tea bag leaf

I have something waiting in the wings to show you. A slightly different direction...or rather, several directions at once. I have the first pieces completed, but their stories are still floating about my head like a cloud of butterflies, beautiful, but the details are elusive and hard to pin down. So we must be patient and let them land and become still so as to observe them closely without harming or alarming them. Stay tuned!

Making and painting...

2011-06-15T21:59:00.000+08:00

I've been busy the last couple of days. Making and painting. I've been fighting a headache on and off since Monday morning, so I gave up on housework and when it subsided in the afternoons I decided to do something fun rather than cleaning. And I have a good reason to get moving on the creative front, I've committed to this Art Expo in a month, so need to get some smaller works done for my booth/stall. I've never had an art stall before, so this will be a learning experience. I'm keeping expectations fairly low, I hope I can cover my costs and learn some useful things about running a stall, and anything on top of that will be icing on the cake.

I've taken the smallest booth available, so have room for 3 large paintings, a few smaller works, some wood hangers, and I think I'll have a small selection of prints for sale, though I haven't decided which ones yet.

If anyone has any brilliant advice on what to take, what not to take, even what to wear (!) please don't hesitate to leave a comment!

Anyway, here's what I've been working on.

Two more olive wood hangers. Beloved has just cut me a whole STACK of them, so I will be busy!

Having fun with teabags! An ink sketch of a leaf skeleton, on an opened tea bag (post cuppa!), hand sewn to an old book page. Biggest munchkin found the tattered book with pages falling out and brought it home because she knows mummy likes stuff like that (though she's told me in no uncertain terms that she found it so it's HER book, but I can have a few pages!) It's in Russian, but that's all I can tell you, it could be a book of hymns or the Communist Manifesto, I wouldn't have a clue! All neatly mounted and packaged in cello...gosh, I'm so organised!

And acrylic painting of an ornamental pear leaf on tea bag paper, with metal (gold) leaf, hand sewn to an old dictionary page. This one is my favourite so far, it has a little bit of magic in it, because I didn't notice the words on the right until I was almost finished! So it now has a little poem for a name.

The red

season

harvest

the full

autumnal heart

Another pear leaf. No mount yet (ooh, I must remember to sign it!)

A closer view

And finally, a couple of things that are not for the stall. Do you remember this? I think it's finished now, though I still don't know what it is or what to use it for!

And this is a choker for moi! Well, unless someone offers me oodles of dosh for it!

We have actually had rain, REAL rain, but it's far too little. And maximum temperatures for the next week are all around the 20ºC, so not very wintery. Everything in my garden is topsy turvy, all my bulbs are coming up, my apricot tree hasn't lost it's leaves yet (they're just starting to yellow a little now), meanwhile my almond tree has lost its leaves, started flowering, and now has all its new 'spring' leaves! Mad!

Aprons and fairy pancakes...

2011-06-10T23:22:00.000+08:00

I haven't written for two whole weeks. It's not so much that I can't think of anything to write, rather that I have so many ideas wooshing around in my head and I haven't had the chance to lasso any of them and wrestle them to the ground. But it's 10-45pm and I've had a glass of Baileys and am nodding off as it is, so I think I'll leave deep 'thunks' alone for the moment, and throw some pictures of what I've been up to at you instead!

I promised a pic of the aprons...well, one will have to do for the moment, though they are now all finished. This one is a gift, but I've made myself one in the same fabric, minus the frilly bits (I'm not really a frilly person!)

One scarf commissioned by littlest munchkin...though probably rather longer than it needed to be. She wanted one just like the one I made biggest munchkin last year.

Then of course, biggest munchkin wanted a photo in hers!

Then a lovely lunch at a very exclusive alfresco restaurant.

Yes, dear readers, it is actually winter. Looks like it will be a very dry one.

The chef in her kitchen. The rather untidy courtyard/barbeque area.

(Hah! Beloved teases me about my paving efforts, but they're still there, still doing their job, after about 7 years!)

Ooh lovely, the kettle's on!

Here's the menu. I was going to make a comment about the frequent appearance of be-socked feet OUTSIDE (I'm constantly telling them to 'put your shoes on'!) Then I looked at the next pic and though better of it.

Mummy in her gardening clothes...and socks! Very flattering I don't think!

Mmmmm, pizza! And Flynn makes another appearance. Looking innocent and NOT digging up the bare patches in the lawn.

Then we were treated to a floor show of aerial gymnastics...by the chef...and waiter!

Just as well daddy wasn't there...children believe hills hoists are designed to swing on...daddies on the other hand, believe they are designed to hang up motorbike filters, tent flies, karate protecty shin pads, old tarps and the like.

And we discovered that faeries are rather partial to faery size pancakes with lashings of maple syrup! Littlest said she could see tiny footprints in the syrup, so they must be very sticky faeries!

And last, for now, this is what you might call an aural doodle. Sat down earlier this evening, after munchkins were off to bed, and muddled about with Cordelia and a little song melody, and thought, hmmm, I like that, I'd better record it so I don't forget it. It might even get words one day!

Thank you all...and blessings abound...

2011-05-27T22:12:00.000+08:00

Just a quick post to thank everyone for the beautiful comments. If anyone has taken comfort or found understanding for a friend or loved one through my words, then I am so very happy for that is why I write.

Today I went over to a friend's house to do a simple meditation, just sitting back and relaxing and listening to a CD of words and music. At one point, the guide on the CD asked us to think of all the things that we are blessed with in our lives. And I thought of my beautiful girls. Yes, I should have three little girls...but I have two here with me to fill up my heart with love...and fill up my life with chaos and laughter (and the odd tantrum), and Hannah Montana posters (aaarrgh!) and refusals to eat cooked carrots (although oddly, tinned ones are fine), and a fringe that I am absolutely NOT allowed to trim (I've threatened to sneak in and cut it when she's asleep!), and half eaten biscuits under the beds along with dirty socks (always odd ones), and soggy dolls in the bathroom (and something that left a bright pink stain on the white grout)......and hugs and cries of "you're the best mummy in the world!", and impromptu interpretive dance performances (usually at bedtime) and singing loudly while climbing trees in the front yard, and two note recorder playing, and "I have to be a monkey for today's assembly item!", and "I don't have any clean knickers (have you looked in your drawer?)", and homemade Mothers' Day Cards with enough glitter to make Tinkerbelle sneeze.........well, you get the picture! Life is full to bursting, and my precious little ones are growing so quickly it makes my head spin sometimes. But they are my blessings, and so you see, I am blessed indeed. There is a Morgan sized hole in my life, but how can I be sad for long, when I have faeries such as these shining like rainbows in my garden?!

Lullaby for a lost mermaid...

2011-05-20T22:46:00.000+08:00

It hardly seems possible that a whole year has passed since I wrote THIS. But my little mermaid would be 11 today. Time passes so quickly. When I was pregnant, I had great plans to write a lullaby for her, her very own special song, and sing it to her to welcome her into the world. But I was so busy getting ready for the new arrival, I didn't have time. I thought, 'it's OK, I'll write one when she arrives.' I thought I would have all the time in the world, that when I brought her home, I would be able to sing it every night, for many years, to send her off to sleep.

When she arrived I knew there would be no singing her to sleep, no years of kissing her goodnight, that I could never take her home. I wished I had written that song, so I could welcome her...and say goodbye. Instead, I sang what I could remember of an old gaelic lullaby...and lament...late one night in the hospital, just her and I together. I didn't want anyone to hear me singing. I didn't think they'd understand. But it was something that I needed to do, the instinct was very strong.

Months later, I did write her lullaby. It's not a lament, it's the song I might have written if she had come home safe and well. But I don't have a reason to sing it very often. So I sang it tonight, and it's rough and painful, but maybe she hears it and knows it's her song. And it's here if you want to listen too.

Meditations on home....

2011-05-19T22:14:00.001+08:00

I've been thinking a lot about 'home' over the last week or so, after Terri Windling wrote not one, but two evocative blog posts about home, belonging, and how where we are relates to who we are. I meant to pick up the conversation thread earlier, but better late than never, as they say. I was reminded of a strange short film I saw on TV years ago. In his 1991, "I dreamt I woke up", filmmaker John Boorman (Excalibur) created a dreamy meditation on the notion of home and finding a place to belong. This paragraph jumped out at me, because it's how I feel, how I've felt as long as I can remember. That I'm not quite in the place I should be, in order to be really me.

And the world itself has never looked quite right to me. But when I came here to Wicklow in Ireland twenty two years ago, I felt I had come to a place that had always existed in my imagination. That here I could somehow come to myself at last. Is that what home is? Finding in the outer world a place that coincides with an inner landscape? What makes a landscape? Is it the contours, the colours, the light, the rock, the things that grow upon it? What is the mysterious thing that touches us and says 'This is your place'?

As a descendent of immigrants from another, very different land, I’ve always felt as if I had a foot in two worlds and belonged to neither. This country is the only home I’ve ever known, I know its rhythms, its seasons, its beauty and its frustrations. But culturally, spiritually...this land remains a cipher, a mystery that I cannot take part in beyond a superficial level. This land has a people whose deep and abiding affinity with it has survived against all odds. But I am not of this people, and I cannot truly share in the knowledge they have. I can learn aspects of it out of intellectual curiosity, but I can never embed myself within their culture, I can never belong to it or learn its deepest secrets. I will always be an outsider.

As a child growing up, the stories I read, the cultural traditions I learned, the spiritual teachings I was given were all imported from somewhere else. They did not arise here, out of the soil of this country, in a symbiotic relationship between people and land. They rose out of a different landscape, they were the tales of my ancestors, stories that spoke to my soul, things I seemed to already know even as I was discovering them for the first time. Myths that made my heart sing...and ache. But they did not fit. There was a huge and impassable gulf between the land in the stories and the land beneath my feet.

Great stories, the ones that survive and are most loved, I believe are not created out of the aether, but rather they grow out of the land. They are embedded in it, linked inextricably to it. They have a sense of place and their role is to teach each new generation what that sense of place is. How to behave with respect for the land and its spirits (be they ancestors, or animal spirits...or faeries), how to belong, how to honour the earth beneath your feet in the place where you live so it will continue to sustain you, the place your ancestors have lived for generations. Stories like this hold vital lore. In oral societies it is the only way to pass down from generation to generation the important information that is vital for the survival of the community. Stories are the living library preserving knowledge of what plants are good to eat and when best to harvest them, or which leaves and flowers cure headaches or toothache or soothe a fever. When the animals that are hunted for food or fur will be on the move and what signs to look for. Everything you needed to know.

But what happens when these stories are cut from their roots and transported thousands of miles? Rather like cut flowers they live for a time, but deprived of the soil that sustained them, they eventually wilt and lose their vitality. They no longer speak secrets of the fields or forests they came from, but become something pretty and meaningless to put on the mantelpiece and nothing more. As a child I revelled in stories about faeries and bluebell forests, old magic oak trees and hedgerows, standing stones and King Arthur. But it was all abstract. I’d never seen a bluebell...or an oak tree...or standing stones. I had no idea what a hedgerow even was. And King Arthur was a name. There was nowhere I could go to see where he might actually fit into the landscape. I knew of Elderflower wine, but I didn’t know what an Elderflower was. And conversely, though I know there are many edible native plants, like most Australians I haven’t got a clue which ones they are. If I was lost in the bush, I wouldn’t know what I could eat and what I couldn’t. I have no LORE passed down about them. If you blindfolded me and waved a distillation of ‘the bush after rain’ under my nose it would make me hopelessly homesick. But if you said “what is that plant, what is that animal?” I probably cannot tell you. If you point to a wallaby, I can tell you it’s a wallaby. But I can’t tell you which particular kind, what it eats, or its habits. And, more than that, I cannot tell you its stories. I know quite a bit of folklore and mythological associations of animals like foxes, ravens, deer, wolves, cats, dogs, horses, cattle, bears, salmon...and so on. But I don’t know the stories of the wallaby, or the dugite, or the redback spider, or the pink and grey galah, or even the magpie (probably my favourite Australian bird). I can probably find out but they won’t be MY stories. Not the stories of my ancestors. They won’t belong to me and, perhaps even more important, I won’t belong to them. They might be in my head, but they won’t be deep in my bones.

As I grew up, I wanted to be many different things, but I suppose even more than an artist (which I took as a given), I wanted to write. I wanted to write stories like the ones I loved reading, the stories of oak trees and standing stones. But isn’t the first lesson of being a writer, ‘write what you know’? Every time a story bubbled its way into my brain, I’d be stymied before I even started because I didn’t know how to root it in a landscape I could only imagine. And the other possibility is even more fraught with danger. To take Australian indigenous stories and rework them could be considered ‘appropriation’ of the worst kind. How can I give my stories roots in this land when the traditions I grew up with don’t work here, and the ones that do I’m not permitted to use?

Many customs and traditions and folklore didn’t survive the journey across the oceans. The traditions of Easter and Christmas did arrive with my ancestors, but they’re empty of a great deal of meaning here, they are celebrated in seasons that make no sense. Easter is filled with bunnies and chocolate eggs and baby chickens...just as autumn is beginning to kick in. Christmas is celebrated with plastic pine trees, the original symbolism of an evergreen tree completely lost in a land where leaves don't fall even in autumn, let alone summer. I remember the excitement I felt as a child when spray-on fake snow appeared in the shops...we could make our windows look like something out of ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Dickens. Just like a REAL Christmas! Except of course our houses didn’t look right and it was too hot to even pretend it had snowed. It’s no use just swapping the seasons around, celebrating May Day in October for example. Our winter is short and mild...a pleasant respite from the harsh summer. I don’t feel at all like celebrating when it’s on the way out and summer is rushing headlong in. Yet spring brings with it a burst of colour as even the desert blooms, and summer is our harvest time. But again, it is harvest time for imported species. I don’t know what is fruiting among the native flora. Spring brings daffodils out, and in November every street nearby is awash with mauve as the jacarandas bloom. Summer here is cherries and peaches, apricots and grapes. These are my indicators of seasonal changes. Aliens to the land I live in. Nothing I know fits.

And yet I love this land deeply and I don’t know if I could ever live anywhere else. Perhaps for a while, but my heart would always be where the sun sets over the sea by white beaches, where the smell of eucalypt trees after rain is like a magical essence powerful enough to wake the dead. Where the first flush of green after the long, brown summer makes my heart sing. The smell of peppermint trees down by the Blackwood River, the utter beauty of Green’s Pool near Denmark. The sound of the dawn chorus...could I live without the sound of magpies warbling?

So what can I do? I want to find a way to live (and perhaps even have a go at writing) that roots my traditions, my ancestors’ stories, into this land so that they truly live and breathe and grow in this landscape, a way that harmonises with but does not in any way compromise the traditions of the people who have been here for more than forty thousand years. It’s got to be possible, somehow. Because I honestly believe that until we late-comers find a way to truly belong to this country, we will carry on misunderstanding it, exploiting it, destroying it, and denigrating its first people and their traditions. We need to create lore (rather than law) of this land in a way that roots us here, making us part of the intricate web that binds everything. Because until we do that we’ll only ever be visitors, temporary residents scratching the surface. We will never truly be home.

If music be the food of love...........

2011-05-15T22:14:00.000+08:00

I've been thinking a lot about music lately, how powerful it is, how it makes you feel, how it can elicit such a deep and almost instinctual response. How it can take you by surprise and totally undo you and leave you in a sobbing mess. My mum tells me that when my brother and I were little, she thought I would be the musician and he the artist. It turned out the other way round...but not entirely, my multi-talented brother can still draw beautifully. And I wonder sometimes whether music is actually closer to my heart than painting or drawing.

But...that's all a thought (and quite possibly a much longer post) for another day. I've been sewing the last couple of days, making aprons for moi and for someone special's up-coming birthday (I don't think she reads my blog, but you never know). Also today, the munchkins begged to be shown how to sew with the machine, so I gritted my teeth, tried to breathe calmly and deeply (they probably can't really sew their finger by accident...I don't think), and showed them some basics. Pictures of aprons may follow in a couple days, but biggest munchkin wanted to put a CD on while I was sewing and chose a favourite I haven't listened to for a while, Loreena McKennitt's "An Ancient Muse". Listening to 'The English Ladye and The Knight' made me want to put down the sewing and pick up the guitar. So I did, and had a fiddle around trying to work out the chords, and which fret to capo, to be in tune. Took about half an hour of playing it over and over, but I finally found a combination that seemed to match well enough. Had a whack at recording it a little while ago. I'm just too impatient, I don't want to wait till I've practiced it properly I want to do it NOW, so the chords are very dodgy, and I was reading the words off the screen as I sang...and my nose is rather stuffed up. Not the best conditions, but what the heck. Here it is, and the gorgeous original is posted below!

What I did in the hols...

2011-05-03T22:21:00.000+08:00

Did you ever have to write an essay on that at school?! Here's a 'photo essay' of the last couple of weeks while the girls were at home for the long Easter break.

Ink paintings with biggest Munchkin while littlest was at a birthday party.

Lovely things in the post. Cards from my girls posted from their Nanny's down south. And 5 tiny ceramic robins make by Makiko Hastings. Makiko is endeavouring to make 1000 robins to sell to raise funds for Japan. You can read about her HERE.

The munchkins have lately been pestering for a treasure hunt. Hmmm, what could this be on the old dining table?

Goodness me, could it be? An ancient map, hundreds of years old, surely?! Hmm, looks like a pretty dangerous place to be, what with dragons and wolves, witches and goblins. But where does the map lead?

Ahhh, a long list of clues that must be followed to the letter! I probably got a little carried away with the clues, I wasn't intending for them to rhyme all the way through, but they just started off like that and kept going, and I was having fun. So the munchkins packed lunch, and their invisibility spells and Goblin spying stones, and set off like two intrepid explorers. Kept them amused for all of an hour (they did it twice and I had to go back and hide the treasure again...in the same spot!)

And while I was playing about with paper and tea...and tea bags...

I've never cut open a tea bag before...that's what they look like. Tea and some added Sepia ink.

Makes an interesting kind of print. I rather like this, but what am I going to do with it?

All just playing around with no thought gone into it, so I made a little book of nothing, just for fun.

I really like it, but there's something in me that says a book needs words...or pictures. Or it's not really a book. I don't know, do you think it's finished?!

The Wildwood comes to the City, and the Gypsies carouse in the 'burbs....

2011-05-02T22:23:00.000+08:00

Oh the tangled and wonderful paths the web pixies lead us away on...........

I watched Art Nation last night. The program ended with a song by a group I've never heard of, but I'll be looking forward to hearing more, called The Tiger and Me. Gypsy music is sweeping the world it seems, and the accordion has become cool (all those chunky little boys in velvet tuxedos with ruffles, competing on Young Talent Time in the 70s, have finally got the last laugh!) I want to play in a band like that!

So this morning, I thought I'd do a web search for Tiger and Me, and see what I came up with. Beloved has the radio in the studio permanently tuned to Triple J, and as I was searching, some very cool gypsyesque/punkish fiddle music came on. Wow, I thought, that could be them! So I turned it up to listen and catch the name of the band at the end. No, it wasn't The Tiger and Me, it was a group called The Crooked Fiddle Band. So while I was at it, I looked up them too.

Found both of them on Youtube (yay, I love Youtube). How cool, I've discovered 2 brilliant new Aussie bands! Then, as you do, I scanned the column down the right hand side...you know, the 'suggestions'. One caught my eye, because the tiny still showed a man wearing a wild, almost 'greenman', looking mask. A song called 'Rabbit Song' by a band called Boy and Bear. So I clicked on it and watched. Oh I just love this video...it's every frustrated 9-5 (or more like 7.30 to 6.30 these days) office worker's dream come true. It made me think of Bordertown, which I've been discovering recently (having missed it as a 'Young Adult' reader). And then, I noticed another video of theirs that looked interesting...so off I went again!

So here you are, for your pleasure, 4 videos by 3 cool Aussie bands that I didn't even know existed 24 hours ago! Ahhh, the magic of the world wide web!

Another year older but probably no wiser....!

2011-04-26T17:49:00.001+08:00

Today is my birthday, though I'm thinking I should probably just ignore them from now on! They come around far too quickly these days...I'm still trying to work out where the last 20 years went. It's school holidays and the munchkins are staying with their grandparents down south for a few days, so it's a quiet little celebration at home just me and Beloved (who is cooking dinner and has the wine chilling as I speak). I did manage to make an effort and polish myself up a bit to take a photo, as I don't seem to have very many of me at all. So here I am, in the garden wearing my new colours (the purples and aquas seem to have lost their appeal, and I want earthy, foresty colours now). And of course, my new shoes!

Just for a bit of fun, here's a photo from a VERY long time ago...25 years ago in fact. Taken by my Beloved (who was just a baby of 19 back then) at Perth Technical College where we both studied Graphic Design (and where we met in fact!). It's rather dodgy because it's blown up from a proof sheet (does anyone remember those?!), and I'm wearing my 'please DON'T take my photo' face (which probably explains why there are so few photos of me!) These were my absolute favourite jeans at the time, they'd been through several incarnations of dye, re-dye, bleach by the time this pic was taken. Ahhhhh, memories!

LATE NOTE: For the wonderful shoes, go to Fairysteps, and for the super cool Earrings go to Sparrow Salvage!

A little slice of Devon Heaven in the post...

2011-04-14T18:17:00.000+08:00

Well, I shouldn't have...but I've been looking at these longingly for well over a year now...and my birthday is coming up soon (though the less said about THAT probably the better)...and I've not treated myself to anything much for ages...so I did! And for the last two weeks I've been like a little kid standing at the front door looking, waiting, hoping for the parcel man. And today he arrived...and then went again leaving nothing but a "Sorry we missed you" note because I was in the shower! Aaarrgghh! So I had to wait another whole 7 hours before I could pop around to the Post Office to pick them up. But now they are here, my beautiful Fairysteps 'Pucks' made by the amazingly talented Ren (and her team of tiny elves because I don't know how else she does it) in beautiful Devon. The photo above really doesn't do them justice, taken with a flash late this afternoon (note small grubby foot of munchkin holding my skirt out of the way!), but I had to share them. And they are sooo comfortable! Visit Ren's Etsy shop to see all of her wonderful creations, she makes gorgeous boots and bags and lots of accessories. And here's a much nicer photo of my shoes!

Speaking of Devon, I heard from my mum today, and they are OK and heading to Devon tomorrow with a possible stop at Chagford, but they are playing it by ear a bit, as they didn't take into account the school holidays in the UK, so that has meant they've had to re-arrange things even more. Dad is feeling much better, though I do hope they both take it easy from now on.

I have smallest munchkin telling me she's BUSTING HUNGRY MUMMY (despite the pair of them finishing off the loaf of bread other half made this morning AND a jelly-cup each after they got home from school!) so I shall retire to the kitchen to sort out dinner!

Bits and Bobs...some Gaelic music, some gentle musing, some good advice...

2011-04-11T21:30:00.000+08:00

Just some bits and bobs to share! I got the link to this fabulous post by artist Austin Kleon from a friend on Facebook (so FB comes in handy sometimes!). It's funny, but also so very true...there's some great advice in there so make sure you read to the end! Funny the way my brain works... his website is (as you might imagine) called www.austinkleon.com. Except that until I actually read his profile, I thought maybe it was 'Aus tinkle on'...hmmm!

Great advice for artists from Austin Kleon!

Now that I've worked out how to upload mp3 files, I thought I'd share this. I've mentioned a few times that I used to sing in a Scottish Gaelic ensemble, so here is a song from our one and only CD. This was recorded in 1999, back when I was a young(er) thing. It's a lament and a lullaby, and it's about events that happened back in the 16th century, I won't say any more about its meaning than that. If any of you are Gaelic speakers, please, PLEASE do not laugh too much at our pronunciation, we tried our best! The two wonderful singers with me are Melinda (who also arranged this piece) and Jane (and no, it's not me playing guitar!). If any of you out there have sung in a choir, or even just a small group, you'll know the joy of singing with other voices, when I sang this song I couldn't wait for the second chorus when the other two voices would join in, it gave me goosebumps every time. I think the final chorus is my favourite part.

And here's an article that caught my eye in the local newspaper. Now why does it seem to make such a lot of sense to me?! It's no news that in times of fear and stress (like war) people tend to be more politically conservative. But it's interesting that political views may be influenced by (or perhaps may influence...they're not sure which yet) which part of your brain is more developed. Greater development in the area associated with understanding complexity, and your political views are likely to be liberal (that's 'small l' liberals...because here in Australia we have the peculiar situation where our conservative party is called the 'Liberal' party!) Greater development in the section that processes fear, and you're likely to be conservative. Of course, nothing is ever as straightforward as that, and the newspaper has probably pulled out the most sensationalist few lines of a report that is many pages long. I might go a-hunting further.

And for lots of WONDERFUL music, about and by Gypsies, head over to Terri Windling's Drawing Board Blog, marvelous stuff to be heard there!

I almost forgot! Some nice news from the UK....

2011-04-10T23:07:00.000+08:00

I've been a wee bit preoccupied the last 2 or 3 days so I only realised today that I haven't mentioned THIS at all!

This beautiful piece, inspired by the incredible Book of Kells, is as I speak, winging its way south over vast oceans, all the way from the UK to me! The wonderfully talented Carrie Osbourne is celebrating her 1st blogging anniversary, and little old me won her beautiful birthday giveaway! Carrie calls herself an 'aspiring' illustrator and writer, but maybe she should change that to 'inspiring', her work is beautiful! Please pop over to her blog (just click on the links above) and explore her beautiful drawings, watercolour paintings and wonderful writing, it's a lovely spot to while away an hour or two with a cup of tea at hand!

More news on the roving parents front. Mum has a cold now, but dad is feeling much better, though still on two different lots of antibiotics. They are intending to head off tomorrow and pick their hire car up (with promises to take it easy!), so hopefully from here on they'll be able to actually start enjoying their holiday...and making me insanely jealous again!

As for the weather...well, I can hear rain as I type! We were promised 5 days of rain and lower temperatures, and though we did get some rain on Thursday, it's been nothing but bright blue skies and HOT since. But it's 11pm Sunday now and it sounds rather like REAL rain out there (not the half-hearted 10-minutes-worth-that-dries-as-soon-as-it-hits-the-ground kind), so fingers crossed, this might mean the start of Autumn proper. I most ardently hope so!

Also, a final apology for the distinct lack of anyway vaguely creative here in the last few months. I think perhaps I should just learn to accept that I'm never going to achieve much in the first 4 months of the year, because my creativity goes into hibernation after Christmas and spends the next 4 oppressively hot months curled up in a cave somewhere dreaming of crackling fires and woolly scarves and hats and big mugs of hot chocolate!

A brief parent update....and a thank you

2011-04-09T22:12:00.000+08:00

Thanks so much to everyone who sent good vibes, offers of help and great suggestions, it really does make you realise we are creating a real community here in Blogland.

Heard from mum today that dad came out of hospital. He's still on antibiotics but the doctors presumably think he is well enough to come 'home', though he has strict instructions to REST. Mum said he's in good spirits and seemed quite well today. She has also managed to get a better room at their hostel, ground floor (yay, no stairs!) and with an ensuite. So they're going to hole up there for at least the next two days, then if Dad is OK, they'll pick the hire car up as originally planned (taking a taxi to the train station this time...no more Tube!), and then head off south west and find a nice B&B and stay for a week or so (I hope it's more, but we'll see). She says the weather is currently really nice in London so that's also a positive, they might be able to get out and go for some GENTLE strolls in the sunshine.

So that sounds a little better than it did yesterday! But I'll feel much better when I know they're at a nice B&B somewhere in Devon or Cornwall (most likely), putting their feet up and relaxing and not going anywhere much at all!

When things go pear-shaped and you're 10 000 miles away....

2011-04-08T22:30:00.000+08:00

When you get a text from your elderly mum on the other side of the world that begins "Try not to worry, but..." you just know that you ARE going to worry...lots.

My mum and dad are in their 70s. They're a pretty intrepid couple, for years they've been heading off in little caravans or campers into the wilds of the outback, heading north for a few months nearly every year during winter, or making their way across the Nullabor to tootle on up the East coast of Australia. I've never really worried about them because they've been doing it since I was a kid, when my brother and I used to go with them. I guess you have to accept that one day your parents are actually elderly.

They've been planning the trip to the UK for quite a while. Or rather, dad OVER plans, and then drives mum nuts to the point that she doesn't want to think about it anymore! But they always work it out. The problems this time were bigger than ever before though. Dad is 76 in May, and 3 years ago he had open heart surgery. He sailed through that and you wouldn't know it to see him now. He's incredibly spry for his age! But it means he's on medication that needs to be monitored. They had all the check-ups and info and go ahead from doctors and specialists that it would be ok to travel though. Then another health problem came up. I won't go into details, but he's due to start radiation therapy in June, another reason why he so wanted to go on this trip now. Then a few weeks before they were due to leave, he got Pneumonia and spent a few days in hospital. I suppose we could have put the fear of God into him and forced him to rethink the whole trip, but maybe elderly parents are a bit like teenagers...at some point you have to let them go to follow their dreams. And my dad is not the kind of man who can sit on the couch all day in front of the TV, even if it is much safer than holidaying overseas.

To cut a long story short, mum and dad found their first few days in London difficult. They've been to Britain before, but it was 14 years ago, and they were 14 years younger but kind of forgot that bit. So they took the tube from Heathrow into London and had to stand most of the way, also forgetting about the miles of stairs they'd have to negotiate with unwieldy suitcases with wheels. So both were exhausted when they arrived at their hostel, and rather stressed out, and both came down with colds. And mum's text this evening was to let me know that dad's cold is now flu-possible-pneumonia and he's in hospital. They need to keep him under observation because they're giving him IV antibiotics and it will affect his other medication. So mum tells me it's ok and they managed put the hire car booking off a couple of days, and they'll be in London for a bit longer and she's fine at the hostel for the moment and dad sounds ok on the phone...and I'M thinking maybe they should just COME HOME! But I also know that they would both be so horribly disappointed, and dad would probably feel that it was his fault...sigh!

So I think she and I have agreed that the best thing to do, is once dad gets the OK from the hospital and is fit to leave, to pick up the hire car, head as far south (and warm) as possible (Cornwall maybe?), find a nice B&B in a nice little town, and just STAY (at least a couple of weeks). Put their feet up and do NOTHING. It won't be the holiday they intended (my GOD, you should have seen my dad's detailed itinerary...you'd need to be a fit 22 year old backpacker to fit it all in...and yes, I DID tell him so, several times!), but it will still be lovely. A different kind of holiday where perhaps they can just experience life in a little English town, take in the changes in the season, get to know some locals, take a few gentle day trips, mum can do some sketching, to stop and smell the roses so to speak. At least I'll know where they are at any given moment. There's not a lot else I can do (I don't even have a valid passport anymore) apart from worry! BIG *sigh*!

A shaggy 'Red' dog story...

2011-04-02T13:05:00.001+08:00

I opened up Saturday's 'West Australian' newspaper this morning to find this article about a rather extraordinary dog. I've known this story a long time, most West Australians probably know of Red Dog, and even the well known author Louis De Bernieres was intrigued enough by the tale (tail?!) to write a book based on the Dog's exploits. But my interest is a little more personal as the Mrs M. Forrest mentioned is my very talented Aunty! As an interesting aside, her name is actually Meri, and she was named after an Egyptian princess (one of Akhenaton's daughters I believe)! My Aunty is a fairly amazing person, being a wife, and a mum to 4 kids (all grown up now) while at the same time managing to find time to paint, sculpt (some quite large pieces too), make jewellery (I still have a beautiful bangle she made for my 16th birthday) and so much more, in a time when women were just starting to think there might be more to life that being a housewife. In her 70s now, she still has more energy than I'll ever have! A dog lover all her life, her current 4-legged companion is a rather scatty but lovely Blue Heeler cross who was rescued from the pound (like many before her), and I can't imagine my aunty without a dog at her side. I don't seem to remember any of her family's dogs ever being bought, most came from the pound or were lost and wandered in and found a home. I guess it's fitting that the job of making the statue of Red Dog also found its way to her.

So apparently Red Dog (aka Tally, or Blue...because Australians call red heads 'Blue', I don't know why, but I still meet people who only know me as 'Bluey's' daughter, my dad being a Carrot top himself) has a new movie made all about his scruffy self. Gotta love a lovable dog story. I'll be going to see this one!

Article in today's 'West Australian'

Photo found here, with a little about the area Red Dog lived in, and another pic and info here.

A short film made recently about the making of Red Dog, narrated by my Aunt.

Yippee, yahooey...Shaun Tan is the 2011 ALMA recipient!

2011-03-29T23:48:00.000+08:00

OK, I'm a little overly excited! This was going to be a simple post to let you all know that I've reopened my Etsy shop...I've pared it down a bit, but I'll be adding more in the next week or so. After experimenting for a few months with prices that barely broke even and not getting much response, I've decided to put the prices back up to normal, and I'll no longer be offering A5 prints, it's just not worth it. I'll see what happens.

But the really exciting news is that LOCAL PERTH BOY (oh, I just had to say that...even though I think he's moved to Melbourne now!) Shaun Tan has, hard on the heels of winning an Oscar for Best Animated Short film, just been announced as the winner of the 2011 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, probably the most important children's literature award in the world. If you haven't discovered Shaun's amazing work, go go go right now and check it out. I've been a fan of Shaun's for years, and years ago I used to work with a friend of his (I think he gave Shaun his first illustration job, on a local Sci Fi magazine!) so I've seen his rise to fame and seen his work just blossom so incredibly. I was also lucky enough back in 2006 to have a sneak preview of 'The Arrival' before it was published...now that is a truly amazing book. So congratulations to Shaun, he richly deserves it, he really is a master!

From the marvelous 'The Lost Thing', the short film of which won the Oscar.

Eric the exchange student, from 'Tales of Outer Suburbia'. He's one of my favourite Shaun Tan characters.

The water buffalo from 'Tales of Outer Suburbia'. Probably one of the reasons I like this book so much is that, despite it's weirdness, the suburbs of Perth are still recognisable in it...makes me think maybe there really could be magic and marvels down the end of my street!

Have I mentioned how much I love my new bedroom?

2011-03-28T23:40:00.000+08:00

Yes, well, I probably have. But I really, really do love it. It's the dream bedroom I would have wanted when I was 14 and it's still my dream bedroom. I'm not sure what that says about me (immature perhaps?!) but I don't care. I had fun the other day trying to take some nice photos of it, adding a little window dressing and some flowers to show it off, so I thought I'd share them here. How could you not love this room (warning: gratuitous artsy fartsy attempts by me to do interior design magazine style pics following)?

View from the door, window made by clever Beloved.

View of Chest of Drawers also made by Beloved, under sleeping loft (which, it goes without saying, was made by Beloved!)

Comfy chair in the corner. Wow, I can see the floor! This really is the perfect solution to a small bedroom with no storage space.

Another, entirely unnecessary I know, pic of the comfy chair, with my grandmother's bedside table.

A 'pan' from door round to window, composite of several photos. You'll have to click on this one to see it bigger to appreciate better. In the corner you can see my nifty solution to needing some quick, cheap but not too ugly storage space for clothes. El cheapo basic pine shelving from the local hardware (IKEA has something almost identical), and some 'shipping cartons' from Office Works with seagrass handles added, painted the same colour as the walls. Worked quite well I think.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love sleeping up in the loft. There's a little square window to let in light, and it's wonderful being snuggled up there in the cold weather when it (eventually!) arrives, listening to the rain pattering on the tin roof. I don't know why more people don't do this.

Visiting the UK...

2011-03-27T00:26:00.000+08:00

"Primavera" for everyone welcoming Spring in the Northern Hemisphere (now if she could just hurry her chronically late sister Autumn along, that would be wonderful!)

...well I wish I was, but no. However, my mum and dad are jetting off on Wednesday to spend 2 months travelling around Britain, so I will be spending the next few weeks wearing a peculiar shade of green, and living vicariously through my parents (mum, this means lots of letters, postcards and emails, with photos if at all possible, ok?!) They have some accommodation booked (particularly around Easter) but didn't want to be too tied down to an itinerary set in concrete...so I may be posting the odd request for accommodation (and eating, sightseeing etc) recommendations from my readers in the areas they are visiting. They are basically doing a clockwise circuit starting from London, then heading west to Cornwall (with strict instructions to visit Chagford while they are in Devon), then north on up to Scotland and then back down the east side, but I'll post details if/when they need some ideas on places to stay. So if you know of lovely, but reasonably priced Hostels/B&Bs, good places to eat and wonderful things to see, please let me know, it will be much appreciated...and I'll put them on my 'one day' wish list too!

Meanwhile, it looks like another week of temperatures in the high 30s...*sigh*...I am REALLY looking forward to wearing socks and boots, and jumpers and scarves, and gloves and hats, and going stamping in puddles....ROLL ON AUTUMN...PLEASE!!!

"Blackwoodwife" because I'm feeling nostalgic about the Autumn school holidays my family used to spend camping by the beautiful Blackwood River when I was a child, and the stories my mum told my brother and I about the Blackwood faeries (I really should finish this one!)

Domestic...

2011-03-24T23:50:00.000+08:00

...or rather, not. My house is a mess, my garden is worse, and I don't feel like creating anything at all. I'm totally disorganised (even more than usual), can't seem to get motivated, and am soooo tired. I wish I could hibernate at least through the last two months of summer, I'm feeling like one of the poor sad brown things in my backyard...sapped dry and brittle, waiting desperately for rain. None this week though, more days of high 30s (celsius) and no rain at all. We had a little equinox celebration and made some 'autumny' decorations to hang on the Apricot tree, just to let it know (because it clearly hasn't realised yet) that it's supposed to be turning yellow...but still there is no sign whatsoever of Autumn. Spring started in late July last year, so it seems that Winter may well pass us by completely this year. If anyone up in the North has a surfeit of Spring showers, please send them down our way, we desperately need rain.

Nannup #3: Minnie Marks

2011-03-17T21:32:00.000+08:00

This is the marvelous Minnie Marks. She won the Nannup Festival Emerging Artist Award. It's not hard to see why. She's 16 years old. Now that is hard to believe! Her Myspace page is HERE. And you can see her HERE doing a 9 minute guitar marathon with Matt Zarb.

Maybe if I practice really hard, when I'm about 90 I'll be able to play this well. If the arthritis doesn't get me first.

Praying for Japan....

2011-03-13T22:40:00.002+08:00

...nothing else to say.

Nannup #2

2011-03-12T20:34:00.002+08:00

OK, here's a little more of what we heard. The wonderful Julia Rose, also from Queensland. So lovely, she was there with her big sis (who was in another band) and her mum and dad were there too, selling her CDs...I had a brief word to her mum, and apparently Julia is one of 5 siblings who are all musically talented. She plays Bass guitar, and wow, she can play. This particular song doesn't really showcase her skills (compared with what we heard...she does great reggae stuff too), but there isn't much live footage of her on Youtube as yet, and it does give you an idea. She has a great voice too. They were so much fun live, she and guitarist Felicity Lawless (aka Flawless...how cool is that?!) just looked liked they were having a ball onstage, so much infectious energy. She's here in this video with 'Anarchist Duck' but this is the same line-up we saw. Enjoy!

Through the window...

2011-03-10T09:10:00.000+08:00

This is where I am so far. I still don't really know where to go from here, I can't decide whether I should leave the trees in the subtle sepia sketch style, or whether I should put in a dark sky and bring the trees out in white against it (the song does mention the moon, and owls, so I guess that means night-time!). And I wasn't quite happy with the composition, the line of the window down through the middle of the page, so that's why I tried to break it up a bit by having it 'bleed' into the trees (also, I wanted the trees to be more dominant). So far it's very understated colour-wise, aside from the red rose...and I'm not happy with the pinkish-red of that so it needs more work. I want it to stand out, but not that much, so I think it will need to be 'muddied' up a bit. And I'm really unsure how to do the girl's face...whether I should keep to the sepia palette or colour it naturally, whether I should continue just with pen and ink or work back into it with pencil for more control (and if I do, graphite or colour?) Hmmm...decisions, decisions!

Nannup: wonderful, brilliant, amazing...inspired...and tired!

2011-03-07T22:11:00.001+08:00

So we have made our weary way home from the Nannup Music Festival. A whole weekend (starting Friday afternoon) of live and amazing music in the beautiful old timber town of Nannup, about 3 hours south of Perth (or longer with small children who have to stop on the way home and play at the Apple Fun Park in Donnybrook, and stop again at the roadside 'conveniences' on the Forrest Highway!)

I am soooo tired, but what a wonderful weekend. The opening concert on Friday was fabtabulous...perfect weather, a warm clear night. We spread our picnic blanket and cushions out on the lawn under the beautiful stars, the gorgeous gum trees ringing the amphitheatre spreading their pale branches to the sky. There were kids everywhere, playing and dancing and just running laps around the perimeter...ours disappeared off to run around with the rest and dance down the front, reappearing at regular intervals for hugs and snacks. The music was brilliant. I really don't get to see enough live music, and I sometimes forget how amazing it is to see musicians playing live to a real live (and loud) audience. Beloved and I lazily looked at each other at about 9pm....."so should we take the kids back to your mum?" (this was the original plan)....."well, we'd have to find them first"......"Oh what the heck, they're having fun, it's the weekend." So 11.30pm found the four of us still dancing down the front to the incredible sounds of a young guitar whiz (who also plays the didgeridoo, and the shakers...at the same time as playing the guitar!), and licking the sugar from fresh, hot, made-while-you-wait doughnuts off our fingers. Bliss!

Saturday and we were down in town fairly early, to see the Fairy concert (for small people) and wander about popping in to various venues to listen and enjoy. A Bolivian group in the marquee, some cool reggae, a sweet guitar duo in the town hall, some really pumping blues and lots of great Aussie folk to make you get up and dance (owww, my poor knees). Later in the evening, the damn fine fiddle and bodhran from a band all the way from Cape Breton, and a singer/songwriter who made me cry then made me snort (I try not to, really) with laughter all in the space of about 10 minutes.

Well, it went on like that all day yesterday too, and even a drop in temperature and a 10 minute rain shower couldn't dampen spirits at the concert last night. But that cleared and the stars came out and another brilliant night was had!

What sticks in my mind particularly were the number of incredible talented youngsters, 15, 16 and 17 years old, who took the stage like old hands. And also (being a woman and therefore noticing these things), the number of fabulous female artists. I don't think there was a single band that had the old 'pretty girl up front and all-male band behind' line-up. There were a large number of bands that were all, or most, women, and a lot that had a good mix of male and female musicians...great to see a whole bunch of female drummers, bass and lead guitar players. And MAN, could they play!

So, I've decided to hunt the stand-outs (for me) down on Youtube, and over the next week or so, I'll post a few videos, of live performances if I can find them, so you can get an idea of what I saw this last weekend. I'll start with The Hussy Hicks, a couple cool gals from Queensland (with a couple guests on base and harmonica). I really don't know what else to say about them, they were AWESOMENESS personified. I couldn't decide so I've uploaded two videos, they performed both of these songs this weekend (no Nannup 2011 Vids up yet, but I'm sure there will be soon). If the amphitheatre had a roof, their closing rendition of "Ghost Riders in the Sky" would have sent it into orbit.

And an original song by Julz Parker, the awesome (yes, I've over used that word, but I can't think of a better one!) guitarist, about a wee brush with the law in the US...with her dad on the harmonica! There's more on Youtube, go check them out!

We'll definitely be back for more next year!

Right! Enough talking...time for some doing...

2011-02-28T18:47:00.000+08:00

There hasn't been a lot of THIS happening lately. So high time I dusted of the pencils, brushes and paints. I am not in the mood for bright colours at the moment...everything is too bright in this weather. I want something more subtle, some softer colours...perhaps I can lure Autumn in with gentle hues and delicate pen strokes. And acrylics are hopeless in this kind of heat, the paint dries on the palette before I can even use it. So a bit of ink and wash sort of stuff, making it up as I go along so I don't have a clue how it will look when it's finished. An illustration for my little song 'Through the Window.'

And this passed by this afternoon. It made a lot of noise, grumbling and harrumphing and promising much, but I tried not to get my hopes up. And then surprise of surprises, it actually did rain. I stood out in it for 10 minutes and got (sort of) wet, but everything is so hot and dry it seemed to evaporate almost instantly. The pavement was hot and wet instead of just hot, for about 5 minutes, then the heat in it dried it off. And I dried off too in about 15 minutes. It has gone off on its grumbling way, still making a lot of noise but it's all bark and no bite. Autumn officially starts tomorrow. I wonder when it will ACTUALLY start?

The language barrier...when words are not enough

2011-02-26T18:33:00.000+08:00

As someone who adores language and all its marvellous permutations and conundrums, it might seem strange to admit that I also see language as a barrier sometimes to a deeper, instinctual experience. I suppose it’s my background of studies in Literature and Culture that has made me very aware of how UN-transparent language can be. Language is not like a glass window that you can see clearly through, it is more like a prism refracting sunlight, splitting the original thought into multiple possible meanings just as sunlight is split into all the colours of the rainbow. That’s one of the wonderful things about language, it has this chameleon-like ability where a single word can have multiple meanings, however it can also be dangerous when misused. And sometimes it simply CANNOT express what we feel, and it ends up getting in the way rather than facilitating expression. Like looking through a dirty window, sometimes your attention is distracted by the smudges and smears and you can’t see clearly what’s beyond. And I find this is particularly true when language is coupled with music.

Because music is essentially something that we FEEL, not so much a thing we ‘understand’ or analyse, there are times I think when words just take away from the experience, rather than adding to it. I’m not talking about vocals here, I’m talking about words because actually, I believe the voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, the most versatile, and absolutely the most ancient. But I find that when I hear a song in a language that I do not speak, I often have a more powerful, or somehow deeper, response to it than I have to a song I can understand. When you hear the melody, you generally ‘know’ immediately if this is a sad song, a song of sorrow or longing, or a happy song full of joy and exuberance. If you know the words, then the meaning is specific to whatever events are described in the song...you can perhaps identify with it, but it’s not about YOU. But, if you hear that song sung in a language that you don’t understand, then you fill that gap with YOURSELF, it becomes about your sorrow or your joy, intensely personal and meaningful. It actually becomes easier to enter into the spirit of the song, to understand it on a much deeper and more instinctual level, because we are listening with our hearts and not with our heads.

I think I first began to understand this when I heard the Trio Bulgarka for the first time. Apart from the incredible SOUND these women make (something I’d never heard before and therefore hugely exciting to my young self), the emotion the music evoked was exciting. I used to play around trying to sing like that, just making words up that sounded a bit like what they were singing. And I discovered how wonderful it actually is to sing without ‘real’ words. It’s as if you’re freed from the restriction of having a logical narrative, of having to remember the right words in the right order. If you’ve never tried it, go ahead, even if it’s just in the shower, it’s wonderfully liberating.

Later, when I was singing with An t-Eilean Mor, the Scottish Gaelic group I was with during the late 90s, I encountered a similar thing, for me as a singer and also for the people who heard us. Though we usually had English translations of the songs so WE knew at least what they were about, singing in a language you don’t speak, once we had overcome the difficulties of learning the correct pronunciation (not an easy thing with Gaelic), the words became beautiful sounds that were filled with emotion that WE felt. And time and time again, I saw audience members reduced to tears listening to a song whose meaning they had no idea of. And often, they would come up to us afterwards and tell us what the song meant, to them. And bizarrely enough the number of times they hit the nail on the head was uncanny...”Oh, I could hear the sea in this one, and then a storm came and the ship was lost and it was so sad”, or “I could see a woman sitting by the fire singing to her baby and I thought of my mum...”

Over the years, there seems to have been a rise in popularity in ‘World music’, and more and more often film music is featuring vocals that have no real words, and I suspect it’s a lot to do with this. Don’t get me wrong, as a fledgling songwriter, I still adore ‘proper’ songs with beautiful, meaningful words and that’s what I strive for when I’m trying to write one. But I’m also inspired by people who use words differently. I’ll leave you with the incomparable Lisa Gerrard, and I defy you not to be moved by her song. As an interesting bit of trivia, it’s always fascinating to read the comments left by people on Youtube videos of Lisa’s music. Debate continues to rage about what language she’s singing in, some people claim it’s Gaelic, others are adamant it’s Latin, or Hebrew, or Sandskrit. Many ask for translations, and some even provide them! The music moves them deeply and they believe that knowing ‘what the words are’ will deepen the experience. But I don’t think it would. For the truth is, almost always, Lisa is singing in a language that perhaps has the odd word from here or there or ones that ‘sound like latin’, but it is her own invented language. It’s not a language you can understand with your head. But your heart will know what she’s singing about.

"The Night Journey" by Terri Windling....

2011-02-24T18:17:00.000+08:00

A little while ago, Theodora Goss wrote a beautiful analysis of Terri Windling’s poem “The Night Journey”. Please pop over there and read it before you go any further, it is a stunning and evocative piece. It’s also a piece that resonated deeply with me, reminding me of a short poem I wrote almost 20 years ago, about that same journey towards (or perhaps inwards to)...well, we’re not sure, a muse, a trickster, a phantom...or all three. I won’t say any more than that, it is for each reader to find their own story in it. But reading the poem seemed to me like weaving a spell, and I felt I didn’t just want to read it, I wanted to HEAR it, it needed to spoken out loud, like an invocation. So...I gave it a shot. I blew the type up large on my computer screen and then read/sang directly from it into the computer mic, making guitar bits up as I went along, so it's very....hmmm, immediate (ok, ROUGH!) But I tried to capture the sense of a storyteller, huddled perhaps by a fire in the dark of winter, weaving a little magic for her listeners while the wind blows outside. I ummed and ahhed to myself about what to do with it...then, as I know how precious her ‘spoon’ time is and how full her in-box is likely to be, I tentatively sent it to Terri to see if she’d like to hear it and what she might think of it. So, I’m very happy to say that not only did she like it, but she’s given me permission to post it so you can hear it too (thanks so much Terri!) And she also sent me a link to a version recorded by Oliver Hunter, one of the talented people behind Goblin Fruit (definitely worth checking out for marvellous mythic poetry). I’ve come across Oliver’s music before and he actually has free downloads of it on his website...I downloaded both his CDs a year or so ago and love them and play them regularly, so pop over and check that out too!

So, here you go...2 versions of “The Night Journey” by Terri Windling, as recorded by Oliver and myself. Quite different, but both (I hope) managing to convey the sense of magic and mystery of the poem.

Late Note: I've just checked the links for Oliver's music, and they don't seem to be there anymore, and there's a Malware warning coming up on one of them, so I don't know what's happening there. I hope he makes his music available again soon, it's great stuff.

The Imagined Self...or, who is that masked blogger?

2011-02-22T21:36:00.000+08:00

"The Fantastic Self" cover illustration for The Fantastic Self: Essays on the Subject of the Self.

Having whirled around the world (or just the ‘whirled’ as India Flint beautifully calls it) via the web, discussing the ‘Imagined Village’ of interconnected blogs (or ‘Windlings’ as Jane Yolen suggested!), a comment by Shane Odom on Terri Windling’s post started me thinking about the inhabitants of this aether village we are creating. Shane said this:

Artists and creatives, we are like shamans, going into our inner spirit worlds to find stories, songs, poems, tales, and images. We bring them back, for the benefit of the village, but while traveling, we must not be disturbed. We also must pay the shaman's price, in complicated emotions and life goals.

I use my Facebook as a blog of sorts, for now. I was a LiveJournal poster until so many left it. It is odd, how often I get folks who idealize my life, perceive it to be a dream. They use that exact term, which is of course a part of the language of the shaman. However, their perspective of it is so far and near to the truth at the same time. Oddly, I tell folks that what I share is all Faerie Glamour. It's stardust, and moonbeams, and if I showed you too much it would be dried leaves and old bits of acorns and moss. It seems like I am giving so much, but I am really keeping the best for me.

I’ve been thinking about this, that readers may perceive the lives of their favourite bloggers as something far more wonderful and exotic than it really is, more than their own. Because I know I do this myself, read blogs of adventures in far-off places and think ‘oh, what a wonderful life that person leads, I want to be like them.’ And it has gradually dawned on me, reading the comments that readers leave on my blog, that there are people who think that about me...and quite often, they’re the same people I’m reading. An interesting case of ‘the grass is always greener’ perhaps? Whether we are consciously creating an online ‘persona’ or not, we still choose what to show and what not to show. We decide what we think our readers will find interesting, and leave the boring bits out. We choose when to post and when not to. We post about what we think is important. Mostly, I don’t post about the things that get me down, or make me sad. But I do have things that make me feel that way, just as everyone does. Perhaps what I’m doing when I blog is trying to pin down my own sense of myself, who I am and who I want to be. What I want to be doing and what’s important to me. I’m still a work in progress, and so I usually show the best bits, the bits I’m proud of or happy about, maybe the bits of me that I feel are more ‘finished’, or more polished. I generally leave the messy and untidy and disorganised bits out. So I suppose I am creating a world of faerie glamour, as Shane says. Creating a little corner of magic in the vast web, which does, and also does not, reflect my real life. My life through magical, rose-coloured glasses. Or maybe I’m weaving a spell, and if I weave this ‘magical life’ convincingly enough here, in the 'imagined' village, then it may just begin to bleed into my real world, and become my real life. Perhaps I am weaving myself anew. If nothing else, reading back over the posts I have written in the last year allows me to see the path behind me, the small white stones I've dropped on my way from there to here, and if I know where I’ve come from, it is easier to see where I’m headed, which direction I want to go, and what’s important to me. So, I am web-spinning, creating a ‘Christina’ who looks more like the one I’d like to be. Perhaps when she is finished, I can, like a butterfly, shrug off my old caterpillar self and step into this new thing I have made. Or perhaps that’s part of the faerie glamour too, the belief that we can transform ourselves just by whispering our dream into the aether where others might hear it. Because if someone else can hear it too, it must be real.

Christchurch...

2011-02-22T18:23:00.002+08:00

Sending thoughts and prayers to our Kiwi neighbours across the ditch.

"The Imagined Village"...a moveable feast on blogging...

2011-02-20T18:43:00.001+08:00

"Every adventure begins with a small step and a giant leap of faith."

I've taken the title of this post from a music video that appears in the side-bar of John Barleycorn Must Die, which I only noticed AFTER I left a comment on their fascinating interview with Rima Staines this week. It seemed terribly apt, as the discussion this week is a lot about blogging, and my comment was regarding blogging as the building of an online village/community of creative people who inspire and support each other. That's why I blog, and I suspect it's why a lot of people blog. Incidentally, Rima herself is one of the reasons why I blog, if you haven't already discovered her marvelous Into the Hermitage then go go GO (but not right now, finish here first, as Rima's world is a little like faery land...easy to get lost amongst its marvels, and you may never find your way back!)

In the interview, Rima discusses her view of blogging as an art form in itself, how it is a way of creating a small corner of magic that is uniquely hers and her vision in the WWW, where anyone can drop in anytime and see the art she creates. It has helped her reach a point where she can support herself through her art, and her art can reach into the homes of people all over the world, an impossible feat before the internet. Rima also lives in a very REAL creative village, a beautiful small town in Devon, England, where her neighbours are such luminaries as Alan Lee, Brian and Wendy Froud, and Terri Windling (to name a few). We can't all live there, flung to the far corners of the earth as we are. But we can create an IMAGINED village, where we meet regularly, discuss what we've been working on, throw new ideas around, and share favourite music and good laughter. And we ARE creating it. John Barleycorn is worth a look any week (new posts every Friday), as not only is it documenting the development of a particular graphic novel (and all the highs and lows that accompany the birth of a new work), but it is an ongoing discussion on the creative process in general, featuring regular interviews with artists from all over, and a lively discussion from followers around the world (yours truly can easily claim to be the most long-winded!)

Terri Windling (who is married to Howard Gayton, one of John Barleycorn's partners-in-crime) took up the torch (or perhaps, being a moveable feast, it is a large cauldron full of rich stew?!) and continued the discussion about blogging on her Drawing Board. Terri Windling is the other main reason I why I blog. I first discovered her through her marvelous novel The Wood Wife, and then through the magical websites of the Endicott Studio and Journal of Mythic Arts, full to the brim (like that cauldron) of a wonderful rich mix of poetry and art and essays and stories about mythology and faery tales. An award-winning writer and editor, and a stunning artist, Terri's blog is a wonderful cornucopia of thought-provoking essays, beautiful artwork, gorgeous music, fall-off-your-chair-belly-laughs, and of course, there's Tilly the resident muse (who occasionally smells like fox poo but we don't hold that against her!) Her latest post, about why she blogs and how it can overcome the communication difficulties that suffering from a chronic illness can cause, clearly struck a chord as there is now a comment list as long as my arm (and growing).

But what I found most interesting, as I read through, is how the names on these comment lists are becoming familiar to me. Mostly I don't have faces to put to them, but there ARE words, thoughts, ideas, personalities that I recognise. I feel I do know these people in a way. We regularly meet up at places like Terri's blog, and I visit their little corners of the web world and leave comments, and they visit mine. Their comments stimulate and encourage me to keep creating, to keep challenging myself by trying new things, in a way that is almost impossible in the 'real' world. I do not live in a close-knit creative community, and I can hardly accost a stranger in the street and force them to listen to the song I've just written or look at the painting I'm working on and expect an intelligent, coherent comment. I'd probably just get arrested (I'm just now chuckling to myself as I imagine singing on the train into work, while my fellow commuters carefully move away from the 'crazy lady' and call security!)

In this crazy-busy world where it seems we are all time poor, often it is hard to go out and physically create that kind of nourishing community, find those like-minded people and get to know them, spend the time in the cafes or pubs or someone's kitchen talking and debating and laughing together. So how wonderful it is that we can, at the click of a button, no matter what time of the day (or night) it is, or if we are still in our PJs or haven't got the breakfast dishes done yet, connect instantly with people all around the world who understand what we do and why we do it because they're doing it too! And I love this cross-pollination that happens, the arbitrary yet serendipitous connections that are made. I might read 3 of my favourite blogs, all discussing different things which, on the surface at least, have no links. But reading them together CREATES a connection, a bridge between disparate ideas that suddenly makes sense and a new idea emerges.

Terri commented on the John Barleycorn post that this discussion is becoming a 'moveable feast', flitting from blog to blog across the web. I like that idea, moving from the kitchen in one house to the lounge room in another (or the attic!), each blogger providing a special dish for all to share. Sometimes we might bring a tried-and-tested old favourite we've made many times before. And sometimes we might feel brave enough to experiment with an entirely new recipe, knowing our fellow 'villagers' will appreciate our efforts and encourage and support us to keep experimenting. I've been doing a bit of this lately and I truly appreciate more than I can express the comments you have left for me. They make me brave enough to keep on doing it.

So, now that this has most definitely turned into a novel of 'mermaid proportions' (!), it's time to finish up. But I'll leave you all with a request. A recurring theme in these discussions about blogs has been the almost unanimous dislike of the word 'blog'! It is NOT a pretty word, and really cannot begin to encompass the beauty that we find in a blog like Rima's or Terri's. So...it's high time we found a new name. Here are a few off-the-top of my head ideas, please feel free to come up with something much better.....!

webtale...aethertale...aerthersong...websong...webweave...wable (web-fable, though could be pronounced 'wobble'...quite fond of this one!)

"Coming Home"...to a creative 'village' where we can all live, no matter where in the world we are.

Late Note, Saturday 26th Feb: For anyone popping in since Tuesday, I've posted some follow-up thoughts about who we are when we blog here, and don't forget to check out part two of John Barleycorn's interview with Rima here!

A song for the moon......

2011-02-17T14:05:00.000+08:00

The full moon is upon us, so I thought I'd post a song I wrote for her. You WILL let me know if this starts to get too annoying, won't you?! I wrote this song about 3 years ago. I was listening to a lot of Fado at the time (probably the best way of explaining is that it's the Portuguese version of the Blues...if Billy Holiday had been Portuguese, she would have sung Fado!) I gave up trying to work out the words from CDs and decided to try and write something in English with the same feel to it (doesn't quite work, but oh well). Also I wanted a song that sounded like it was supposed to be sung without any accompaniment. And 'La Luna' was the result, a song about the sad, lonely lady moon.

So of course, one of the things I've been itching to do since I started learning guitar is work out an accompaniment for it. Entirely illogical, isn't it?! So had a fiddle around last night and worked out some chords, and discovered by accident a lovely 'flamencoey' sounding one, and put it together...roughly!

So I recorded both versions this morning...attempting (unsuccessfully) to avoid planes going over. Let me know which you like better!

And click here, and here, for some fantastic REAL Fado!

Through the window...

2011-02-12T00:32:00.000+08:00

OK...this is very very VERY rough. But you did ask for it so you've only got yourselves to blame. Cordelia and I out in the (very UNsoundproof) studio, in front of the computer with its very basic microphone, bumbling our way through Garage Band recording software (which came free with the computer). There's a stuff-up in the middle (dammit, that's what happens when you get cocky and throw a surprise 3rd chord into a 2 chord song!), and the wind picks up and you can hear branches scratching the tin roof, but I think I managed to avoid any planes going over at least!

So...."Through the Window"...the first song I've ever written with a guitar. Words are here if you want to read.
(now lets see if this works...........fingers crossed as she clicks on 'publish post')

Rambling on....

2011-02-10T23:47:00.000+08:00

And more music...well, it's on my mind a lot lately. There has been a distinct lack of VISUAL creativity happening around here, but lots of AURAL stuff going on. So this week I have worked out how to play this song. Well my version of it anyway. I don't quite see the point in duplicating exactly someone's way of playing even if they are the writer/composer. A good starting point, but then I think what makes a song live and carry on are the new things that other singers/players bring to it. And not forgetting the difference in guitar playing ability between some of us!!! So I found some guitar TABS for 'Rambling Man', and changed my tuning to DADF#AD...and then just had fun fiddling around and finding pretty chords that I thought sounded right.

As for other things, it has been disaster central in Australia lately. Thankfully there has been minimal death or injury, but the loss and devastation has been huge. Record floods and Cyclones in Queensland, severe flooding in Victoria, even an unusually far south Cyclone near miss over this side of the country which brought with it a short burst of torrential rain and some minor flooding (just a taste of what could come if La Nina brings us a wet Autumn), high winds, roofs blown off and a 'catastrophic fire warning' inland that very thankfully never eventuated. And just this last couple of days, terrible bush fires have destroyed dozens of homes in the Perth hills, half an hour drive from here. I hope that we have seen the end of it.

I feel I should apologize too, for the lack of blogging action in the attic of late. It's incredible how much time 3 days of a 'real' job seem to swallow up, and I get home with an empty head and nothing of any meaning to say. But now the girls are back at school, I hope to organise myself (now there's an impossible task!) a little better and find some time for the things my fingers are itching to create!

A very brief Cyclone update...

2011-02-03T09:02:00.000+08:00

The news coming in from North Queensland is, well, probably as best as can be expected. The full extent of damage is still unknown and some areas have been completely cut off and emergency crews can't get in yet. But SO FAR...no injuries or deaths have been reported, though it's still too early to be sure everyone is safe. Most places are still in lockdown as it isn't safe to come out yet, and a second, higher storm surge was expected. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everyone over 'tother side' is OK. Thank you to my readers for your thoughts. I'm a long way from all this devastation (though WA had its own Cyclone scare a week ago, thankfully no more than a few roofs blown off in the end but it could have been much worse), but it's heartbreaking to see our fellow Aussies have to go through this all over again.

Cairns...and Queensland...

2011-02-02T12:54:00.001+08:00

My thoughts are with everyone in my namesake city Cairns, and EVERYWHERE in North Queensland, at this terrifying time. Please take care, don't take any unnecessary risks, hold close to your loved ones. The rest of Australia will be here to help you rebuild, just keep yourselves safe. That's all that matters. We are all hoping against hope that somehow, somehow, it will pass you by and dissipate. Hoping and praying.

Updated 8:15pm local time as Cyclone Yasi threatens many more towns and communities across North Queensland. Yasi is the most powerful cyclone to ever hit Australia. It is more powerful than Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in the USA in 2005. It is hitting the east coast as I write. All we can do now is hope and pray that there will be no casualties. Wherever you are, if you are reading this, please send your thoughts and prayers to those people who are going through this right now.

Following a dream...and Cordelia arrives!

2011-01-26T19:07:00.000+08:00

I thought it was time I introduced Cordelia.

She arrived a couple of weeks ago; how exciting when the courier truck pulled up and a large cardboard box with my name on it was brought out of the back. I felt as excited as a 6 year old (and my 6 year old and my 9 year old were pretty excited too!)

She is a Cordoba (so you see Cordelia is entirely appropriate) C5 CE Thinbody. Slim body, semi acoustic nylon string, with an automatic tuner, and she came in a very good guitar bag too, which I wasn't expecting.

She's lovely to play, and was a bargain too, so I'm a very happy little beginner-muso.

This guitar-playing caper is in danger of becoming an addiction I think. I'm loving it so much, I'm playing constantly (though not always...or rather, not mostly, the things my guitar teacher has set!), and I'm hearing guitar music in my head all the time that my fingers desperately want to be able to play. Right now, after seeing Tracey last week (see previous post) I've got serious Blues riffs going round and round in my head. Cordelia is a little too well-bred for some real down-and-dirty blues...so I borrowed my mum's steel string and worked out how to change the tuning to DADGAD (guitar players will know what that means) and lo and behold...it sounds like the blues! Now I just need one of those slidey things!

I've been saying "I wish I could play the guitar" for over 25 years. And now I am...and I think I'm going to be good at it! So the moral of this story is...it's never too late to follow a dream, you're not too old, start NOW!

A little Blues...

2011-01-23T22:54:00.000+08:00

We headed off down south again last Friday to see my in-laws. Dropped in to Bridgetown on the way, home of the Bridgetown Blues Festival, to see the talented Tracey Barnett play (her Myspace page is HERE, for more music!). Lovely evening on the grass at the Cidery there, kids ran amok in the gardens and got covered in mud in the nearby creek, eldest got stung by a bee (NOT fun)...and youngest had a little chat with Tracey after the gig was over, and apparently told her "when my mummy grows up, she's going to be able to play the guitar as good as you!"

Tracey Barnett - Judgement Day

Tracey Barnett | Myspace Music Videos

Music that moves me....again

2011-01-18T22:55:00.000+08:00

I started to learn this years ago, when I sang with a small Gaelic choir (and no, I cannot speak this beautiful language of my ancestors). Back then, I had intended to sing it 'a capella', but I dug the words out again the other day, listened to it again...and decided to give a guitar arrangement a go. I'm rather pleased with how it turned out (7 months into learning how to play, so it's very simple), now I just need to practice it a lot, and remember all the words. Perhaps one day I'll be able to record it and post it on my blog (when it's had a LOT of practice!), but in the meantime, here's the gorgeous version of it by the wonderful Capercaillie.

A young pirate and a winter moon...

2011-01-09T18:07:00.000+08:00

Two pieces I've been working on in the last 2 or 3 weeks. The pirate is a sort of commission, one of two paintings for a very old friend...two paintings I have been procrastinating over for....embarrassed whisper...about 18 months! I'm simply not good with commissions, I worry about them too much and it makes it impossible to even start. When I paint a painting that I like (or at least am mostly happy with), and someone else happens to like the finished product, that is wonderful. But to paint something for someone, to try and live up to expectations (because there are always expectations even when people don't mean to have any), to try and make my work as good as, or better, than what they see in their mind's eye, that is another kettle of fish entirely. But here is one finished finally, now I must start on the other. I hope it's as good as she dreamed it would be!

I think it's called 'Land Ho!'

And a little bit of stitching that I began just before Christmas, inspired by all the wonderful photos of snow on my favourite blogs across the sea. You must understand that as an Aussie, snow has a magical fairytale quality for me, I've only ever experienced it once, and so such pictures are not only a delight but almost a necessity in the depths of our long hot summer! I'm still working on this one, it's just a bit of fun, so I don't know how it will turn out.