A TUI IN BULGARIA

FOLLOW

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30 April – Tonight I had a conversation, with a man I’ve never met.  Him a stone, and I a bird.  Pierre.  Tui.  We stood upside down from each other, on either side of the planet.  Wood was the language in common.  The resonance of it.  The way it carries music.  The calm it harbours.  The way it is both permeable and protective…

Apparently we spoke for his (beautiful!) blog piece @ La Maison Jaune concerning the release of my new record with Beating Drum.  But in truth, we spoke for the life altering properties of listening.  For the way strangers can meet in intimacy, through art.  For the alchemic wonder of surrendering our lives to the riddle of colour, shape and frequency, where ideas echo our impermanence, and in doing so, confirm our belonging, to the great wheel.

20 May – Oh, what happens when you let the music lead!  I confess I started playing the guitar when my heart broke.  It was a physical consolation.  And a revelation.  I started writing from a new silence.  The one that came after.  After my Bulgarian Folklore studies in Plovdiv – where I soaked in odd-meters, crumbled beneath the beauty of the timbre (vocal that is) and was securely wrapped in ornaments.  I wrote armfuls of songs into that silence, and a handful made it through.  To a recording…

In following the incandescent (or is it indecent!) “why not” protocol, I hunted out the sound engineer, who, in the world, had captured my favourite female vocal recording – Rokia Traore’s Tchamantché.  Yep, internet.  I found him, and his microphones.  Patrick Jauneaud.  We agreed.  And so, tucked away in resonant mountains in the south of France, some delicate, ardourful songs were stitched to light.

I wanted to do it all alone, you know, and with just one voice and one small guitar.  To . render . complete . justice . to . the . silence.  Patrick suggested that this was ambitious – that artists usually do such a thing in their masterful age!  He coaxed me into playing around with a few layers.  Relaxing the rules a little, I allowed myself to some sing harmonies on the record.  And.  Patrick passed the tunes onto someone I’d never met – but had admired the music of – Piers Faccini.

Piers heard something of  himself in this music.  And his delve into my online presence confirmed our common love for quiet spaces.  He offered to collaborate on a record.  We took an EP worth of my songs and let his expert ears/hands influence their body.

I was scared.  Scared of not being strong enough in my vision.  Scared of failing in my new found independence, by letting another artist alter my babies.  Temperaments shuffled.  We braved it for the love of music, for loyalty to the unknown, and to let the colours in.  Because none of it belongs to us anyway.  And they were beautiful.

The way I see it, Piers bought the village, dancing, to my hermits cave.

These arrangements feature layers of tender instrumentation, including slide guitar, harmonica, voice, piano, gembri and an evocative selection of percussion.  Much of it was played by Piers himself, with spirited interventions by Malik Ziad and Tunji Beier.

Stills taken from FOLLOW.  Underwater capture by Monty Bevins, thank you!

The tune I’ve made a film for first, travels for 6 minutes of 11/16 time, looping around our hearts, the globe and back.  With footage from Bulgaria, France and Aotearoa/NZ – this is a song for the first smile, for the last sigh, and for all the gratitude in between.

WATCH [FOLLOW by TUi MAMAKi] HERE

The RECORD from which this song is takeN, TUi MAMAKi “Hear My Voice” (Beating DRum RECORDS 2018), is available in limited edition vinyl – with artwork by Piers Faccini – and/or download HERE

 

 

 

Capture

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This one… what is in a raw capture?

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when a storm strikes, we don’t sleep but we play. And the audio captured there has all the traits of befriending chance: the swells of wind rocking the hut like a small boat, the lashings of rain on the corrugated iron mingling with the breath, the proximity of the fingers that blur the lines, the turning, the hisses and the crackles of a voice telling a story… once. This is what I wanted to share with you! Not the studio control, not the pristine malleability of elements, but an actual living moment = a moment I loved and the imperfect traces of which, are perfect.

We made a moving image to expand on this capture. The women I worked with brought their eye, their imagination, their emotional response to the sound, to the one day we had together, to the gear we borrowed and to the spirit of improvisation-collaboration we claimed as our own… It is my genuine pleasure to share with you “Between Storms”.

It speaks to the slice of silence between great changes, departures, transitions. To the sanctuary of intimacy – which for a moment feels like a kind of eternity. To the solitude we choose, like a position on the edge of the world, on the edge of ourselves, on the edge of each other… it is a tender piece of attention to our transience and mortality.

BETWEEN STORMS

I let you in
Just enough to feel the breath between us
I let you in, just enough to be known
Put me to sleep between the sheets of our ice and snow
Willing to meet between the words where the silence grows

Two thousand years
Just enough to feel the breath between us
Two thousand years, just enough to be known
Put me to sleep between the roots and the earth around
Willing to meet upon the leaves where the light is found

дай ми да спя
между теб и снега
дай ми да летя
в ръцете ти, да видя

че,
луничките ти са звезди
на бели равни ливади
на чаршафа

там се срещат сънищата ни
и между тях се движи душата
на зората…

Translation:
Let me sleep between you and the snow
Let me fly in your hands, to see
That your freckles are constellations
On the pale, even fields of the linen
There meet our dreams
And between them moves
The soul of the dawn…

*Thank you Iliana Tabor for helping me with my first ever Bulgarian language lyrics!

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

“Between Storms” composed & performed by TUi MAMAKi.
Audio captured on a ZoomHn4 on a stormy night in a hut…
Moving image directed by Meg Perrott & Margaret Gordon.

Direction of Photography – Meg Perrot
Editing – Margaret Gordon
Costume – Rochelle Beaty

Still from “Between Storms” https://youtu.be/itAGDk5aBeo

 

 

MOVING IMAGE

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I started out as a visual artist.  Or was that simply being a child?

I grew up in a remote, wonderfully isolated valley, without streetlights or tar-seal, or television.  The endless wonders of a blank page were akin to the endless aural spaces one could interact with: to sing-talk with the birds or the ocean, to build huts and stories in the bush, or to draw boundless imaginings in colour, on the kitchen floor or table.  Long intimate conversations unfolded between me and perhaps, pure potential.  It was thanks to kind and creative teachers that dance, song and art were valued in the curriculum.  The focus sharpened when I met Mr Harris at Tikipunga High School and embarked on a painting, sculpture and photography odyssey, and never looked back… not until I reached Elam Art School that is, where I found myself longing for happenings. I wanted to see things in motion!  If there had been a Performance Art Department there at the time, I might have stayed, but the roads called me out of school – into the world of fire-dancing, street-performance, theatre and ultimately, song.

Still taken from RiUWAKA by TUi MAMAKi

These days I hardly put a pencil to the page, save for designing concert posters or occasional album artwork… but the SOUNDS I get to make are colours, and the words that come conjure images… and then there are the opportunities to collaborate:

When I met Shannon Aroha on Takaka Hill, at Luminate Festival 2017, we found ourselves brainstorming a collaboration just a few sentences into the conversation.  Let’s do something!  A few months later, equipped with a zero budget and a common love for improvisation, we found ourselves filming in the limpid lights of the Raglan area, where she is based.

The theme of clear water kind of hurts these days, given that intensive dairy farming in New Zealand has polluted so many of our rivers… (time to turn that around!!)  And so, potently, a song about clear water – as a reality and a metaphor – is the one to start with.  RiUWAKA (Riwaka) is a sacred place at the foot of Takaka Hill, that many visit for it’s healing waters – waters distilled by the crystal mountain labyrinth through which they pass, before springing back up at the resurgence.  Raglan, where we actually filmed, is on the other island.  A journey from Te Wai Pounamu to Te Ika a Maui is but a small hop, given the international fabric of this project:

The instrumentation is inspired by my love affair with Bulgarian Folklore rhythms, intricately irregular, but played on my Little Martin guitar, like a harp.  The story is one of reaching beyond the feeling of fracture in intimacy, through into the inevitable wholeness of surrender.  The vocal lines, though steeped in the ornaments of Bulgarian songs, are delivered like a delicate prayer.  My parts, on voice and guitar, were recorded in an old silk-worm incubator: a beautiful stone-floored, high-ceiling, luminous music studio, in the Cevennes mountains, in the south of France.  (How I found that place and the magical engineer, Patrick Jauneaud, within it, is another story for another time).  Add to that a serendipitous meeting with Australian percussionist Tunji Beier, on a festival stage.  Tunji here plays the Kanjira, a South Indian frame drum, with both subtlety and spirit.

With Shannon’s eye, and Andy’s flying captures, the visual flair this time is not mine.  Shannon’s musical sensitivity translated seamlessly and it was a joy to let her lead.  Somehow, playing a character in the moving image was an experience between dance and meditation:  attuning to the light, the bush, the water, to the dreams that turn our eyes into windows, where imaginings can impart tranquility, and somehow bridge our mortal separations.

I hope you will enjoy the viewing as much as we have the process!

Please share/embed the video freely, and do leave your impressions in the youtube comments + touch that thumbs up thing – it all helps to gather kin energy and to celebrate this piece of quiet, in a loud world.

WATCH RiUWAKA HERE

KAMWA FESTIVAL

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KAMWA, the mythological name of the Kama River, brings together the elements of KAM (human or shaman) and WA (water). A privilege it was to be invited to sing at this multi-faceted, soul stirring, Ethno-Futurist festival, 40km out of Perm, in Russia…

Notes along the way:

20 hour journey from Sofia.  The world is my bedroom.  Startling ability developed – to be able to sleep upright and anywhere – even on the bumpy bus ride out to the festival site,  as a blood-red sun rises over the damp fields.  Gravel roads and a million wild flowers.  Log homes. I mean, whole trees.  A people living in the embrace of sleeping trees… and who tend to their windows.

Tents, sculptures and stages nest in the ample fields of Khokhlova Architectural Museum.  Art-full installations: a forest of bird houses, a grand piano made of willow, a giant boar and his piglets in perpetual trot, as tall as a man and made of driftwood.

Bejeweling the plateau, the 300 year old Church of Transfiguration.  I fell in love with this building.  The spirit of the wood captured me.  Or was it the scent engulfing my body.  Or was it the light shafts, so magnetic.  Or the silence of a naturally breathing protection.  Or the sound of the wind through the gaps – a faint allusion to the bright world outside…  Home, as if in a timeless ship, a loft, a womb – the skin of the wood worn smooth by human touch.  Grace energy is stored in this place.  I couldn’t tear myself away.  Hours.

These beaming grannies teach me how to say spasibo(a).  How far can my Bulgarian language carry me in Russia?  Some words in common.  But a lot not.  Good will and gestures do the rest.

Festival goers wade chest-high into the fields of flowers, and emerge crowned in colour.  Summer time praises.  We are amongst the earthly delights, while giant kites keep watch from above.

Break-though learning: Inna makes me cry with the raw and true spirit of her calling.  Luiza bewitches me with the refinement of her vocal ornaments.  I realize these are the two qualities I seek in my vocal practice.  I get the chance to try the blend out on stage, not once, but 5 times over the festival days.  How to craft but surrender.  How to be wild but reassuring.  How to lead but follow.  How to raise the dead and soothe the living?  How to serve the timeless laws of the water and the sun.  In song.  Ambitious.  Devotional.

A compliment that lands deep: “I really like your voice. It’s like the sound of whales and birds gathered together.”  Conversation leads to ancient symbols, where a fish carries the human and upon the human, is perched a bird.  Being bridges between earth and sky.

An invitation to Moscow.  You will have everything you need if you come to play there – food, drink, striptease… !¿  Explanation: “A musician takes everything off, until there is nothing left but the soul.  I don’t know of any more complete striptease than this.”

Beautiful encounters.  Luiza.  Mario.  Dmitri.  Oleg.  Inna.  Singing through the night.  Through.  The songs we belong to.  Not the ones that belong to us.  Traditional vessels.  Such magnitude.  Space to bloom.  Singing songs from my grandmothers, and from others’ grandmothers, imbued with today’s finest heart flavors.

The last night, a stage to ourselves.  I mean, to all the brilliant musicians from eclectic places who have colored the stages over 3 days.  An open minded audience.  Who wants to play?  The capacity to begin, without knowing where we will go…  One time.  Present.  Lose yourself.  Win each other.  Somewhat possessed.  We all rode it home.

A stealthy lioness of a humble woman runs this festival.  She says she hopes we will leave with a little piece of their heart in us.  That despite the darkness and difficulty to imagine a future sometimes, these 3 days give her an annual experience of freedom.  Liyon.  Len.  Linen.  Gifts.  Of ancient grasses grown onsite.  And traditional bread.

4am departure to fly back to Sofia with the Kottarashky crew.  Others will take the 30hr train ride to Moscow/Moskva.  Humbled.

A spontaneous audio capture of Andrey Vinogradov’s exquisite Vielle a Roue play is accompanied below by some images gleened along the way.  Unseen are the thousands of punters and most of the bigger stage shows, as my favorite time to contemplate (and take pictures) was in those quieter moments…

BEFRIENDING CHANCE

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C.H.A.N.C.E = Cosmic Heart-full Alignment (with) Non-linear Creative Energy/Engagement

If anything, I mean anything, was possible, if you could live out your dream, what would it look like, in the detail? What small gestures would populate your days, what behaviors would you engage in, in the small ways, if you were, in fact, your idols? Assuming we are made for this. Participation. Gratitude action. To befriend chance we have to be fit with our craft, alert + actually willing to receive.

Having a solo set (album is on its way) has been more than giving myself wings. It has been a make-over of my fundamental beliefs about how things function. Having this vessel built, and available for adventure, has me being able to say… YES!

YES to collaborating with a collection of such fine Australian musicians at UNwind Festival this May, thanks to a chance conversation and spontaneous collaboration with the phenomenal percussionist Ben Walsh on a festival stage this summer.

YES to collaborating with the enchanting minstrel Piers Faccini in his exquisite acoustic series La Route de La Voix (entirely human-amplified intimate concerts in old stone chapels in the South of France), this thanks to following my curiosity re microphones down the rabbit hole of Rokia Traore’s Tchamantché album, finding engineer Patrick Jauneaud in the mountains, honoring our subsequent collaboration with all the musical love I could muster, and to his sharing those mixes with someone he knew…

(Stay tuned for the release of FLY, taster HERE)

And YES to the privilege/challenge of performing our own arrangements of traditional Balkan folklore with my sassy acapella trio ACAPOLLiNATiONS this Sunday, just because we loved it at Te Uru Gallery last time (another entirely human-amplified concert).

UPCOMING SHOWS
30th April – ACAPOLLiNATiONS @ Te Uru Gallery, Titirangi, Auckland, Aotearoa/NZ
5-7th May – UNwind Festival @ Paradise One, Byron Bay, AUSTRALIA
9th May – Tui Mamaki & Encuentro Dos @ Open Studio, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
20th May – Tui Mamaki & Piers Faccini @ La Route de La Voix, Issensac, FRANCE

And to finish, some stills from an upcoming music video RIWAKA, born of a chance conversation with Shannon Schnittker from Traveling Filmmakers at Luminate Festival this year, and the synchronized map movements that followed.  Definitely a fan of following up on crazy ideas, and in doing so, allowing the paths of grace to collide…

Between Storms

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Composed on the flights between Bulgaria and Aotearoa/NZ, my first ever bi-lingual (English/Bulgarian) tune – a musing on meetings, between cultures and generations, between souls and skins, and on the instrument of language.  (Recorded spontaneously during a midnight storm, in a little hut, on a hill, somewhere in the South Pacific.)

How it came to be?

Kilometers above the clouds, in a great bird of steel, packed neatly in rows, with hundreds of other souls, it is easy to blur the sense of belonging – in terms of location, climate and fragrance that is – but we cannot escape our histories and our imaginings. The question of cultural identity begs for detail – these traditions, so rich, have been forged through repetition, through an age old distill, whereby exotic influence meets the ferment of isolation. We need the cross-pollination for energy, but we need the hermetic aspect for quality. Each in their own time? Is it a process we can guide?

In Bulgaria I have witnessed a divide between those who reject the said Folklore Music as a pure product of the communist era, as a distortion and appropriation of village song for the representation of the party, as a practice now stuck in time and no longer of any use to the Bulgaria that must catch up for lost (iron curtain) time… And then there are the others.  Others, who rejoice in the vibrant, profound, nuanced and unparalleled prowess of the rhythms, the ornaments and the unique arrangements.  Others, who delight in the lush colors and sacred patterns, through which they breathe the mojo of their ancestors.  Others, who vow to guide a spirited, thriving art-form into a healthy future.

I came here because of it. This Folklore. And the most improbable spirits gather to it from all around the world, like moths to a light. Some of the most bewitching singers I have met in Bulgaria exude a devotion to spread this musical richness globally, naturally, and preferably, person to person. When they come to understand the work I am doing, they generally tell me they are thrilled that I am helping to share their culture. I do, however, fear my own ignorance and feel a duty to honor the quality of the work by continually seeking to deepen my understanding and my own practice. Ironically, it is through sharing it that parts of it get integrated or understood – through performing it with my vocal trio ACAPOLLiNATiONS, through teaching aspects of it in my World of Voice Workshops in NZ, and through composing and recording original works inspired by it, as I am doing for my upcoming album.

Some Westerners, blown away by the power of the traditional Bulgarian song (which has undeniably been forged through generations of passionate, war fraught, tough mountain people), and intrigued by the timbre and spirit that it solicits in my voice, have encouraged me to record some… to be able share it further than in my live gigs… I feel awkward about this. It doesn’t belong to me. But perhaps I belong to it.  And so my whole perspective on cultural belonging begins to shift – as I feel words coming out first in Bulgarian (followed by the curious need to translate them back into English!), as I effortlessly shake my head to agree, as I hear new song ideas in 7 or 11 or 13, and as I write my first lyrics in this new ancient tongue… smalls steps on a long loving road.

The Bulgarians colleagues I have played my new tunes to, relate to them,  tap along and feel reflected, yet are taken elsewhere. The feedback has been luminous.  But the road is treacherous. Do we protect, preserve, guard the authentic forms? Do we share, morph, re-interpret and speak through them, with our own accent? Or is there a way to make a savvy, sacred blend of both schools?

An accent. We all have. But we only hear it when we’ve been away, when we meet another, different. And this is the beauty of our motion – to reach out to each other and be changed for it, but simultaneously to dig deep and slow and to pay our dues to the ancestors – for without their breath, we are nothing, and without our song, they are gone.

On so, on that great steel bird, between Bulgaria to Aotearoa, I watched ‘El Olivo’, the beautiful story of a 2000 year old olive tree and the wound that its sale creates in a Spanish family, and their soul journey to try to bring it home.  All these musings interwove, and I heard something, kilometers above the clouds…

BETWEEN STORMS

I let you in, just enough to feel the breath between us
I let you in, just enough to be known
Put me to sleep between the sheets of our ice and snow
I’m willing to meet between the words where the silence grows

Two thousand years, just enough to feel the breath between us
Two thousand years, just enough to be known
Put me to sleep between the roots and the earth around
I’m willing to meet upon the leaves where the light is found

дай ми да спя
между теб и снега
дай ми да летя
в ръцете ти, да видя

че, луничките ти са звезди
на бели равни ливади
на чаршафа …

там се срещат сънищата ни
и между тях се движи душата
на зората …

Listen to BETWEEN STORMS and other musings: www.soundcloud.com/tui-mamaki

winter-lights-square

Sword Nesting

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I came across this lady yesterday – while getting happily lost on the country roads. Bulgarian villages are never short of imposing soviet monuments. But this one, with it’s proud stork’s nest, took things to another level.

sword-nesting-1
Somehow the nest captured, in all it’s domestic simplicity – branch by branch, brought by beak – the inevitability of giving life. Tenderness is to return, over stone, over swords, over conquerors. We all need a home and the urge to birth is as old as the world self. A sense of welcome? Perched on a sword…  That strange feeling of relaxing into paradox, of finding comfort on the edge,  of finding stability in perpetual flux.

sword-nesting-2
I keep looking at her again, to see if her warrior’s face might have let a smile slip, might have softened unwittingly, from the life going on upstairs, from the births happening upon her hands – those powerful hands gripping the sword of will and liberation.

sword-nesting-3

As the cold comes, the birds have flown south. Her resolve hasn’t weakened but I’d say she is now carrying a promise, and letting that blade trail in the wind…

Vodka and Cigarettes

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Olga’s rose garden is rectangular, about as long as a man standing.  Her man is lying down.  She brings him a glass of water, a glass of vodka, a cup of hot coffee, and she lights his cigarette.  The smoke curls up into the shady corner of the Armenian cemetery.  She pours water all over the flowering plants that clothe the concept of him, and she wails – what a beautiful love we had! 50 years together, so much love… a good man, such a good man.  He passed on the 8th of January.  New Year was wonderful.  So much joy.  But we didn’t know it would be THE LAST new year.  Oh, milichka!  You are crying with me!?

And yes, I am crying.  So we cry.  A warm salty flow, arms around each other’s shoulders, two women who have just met, in the middle – the place where we are all the same.  Two women, gazing at the smoke from that cigarette, stuck upright in the fresh earth, a steaming coffee cup, decorated with flowers, in amongst the real flowers, on a young grave, and that morning sun, glinting off the water, into the vodka.  They came to escape the war.  And now she is here.  And he is there.  I leave her to speak with him.

_Olga Platcha 1

After strolling in this cemetery for quite some time, I come away feeling like I have met a whole collection of extraordinary, ordinary beings.  Having gazed into their eyes.  Through the veil of time.  Having mused over their absence/presence.  Potent people.  Each life.  All of us, perfectly mortal.  The power of ephemeral beauty – the living lichen, the cracked resin, the fading details, replaced by new detail.  This girl falling in love with strangers she will never meet, but somehow already knows…

Anonymous portraits from the Armenian Cemetery, Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

_Woman 1

_Woman 3

_Boy

 

_Woman 2_Man 1

 

_Young Man_Baba

THE

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Gutter 1Quoting Roots Manuva:

“You’ll be nothing – you’ll end up sweeping the streets, Rodney! Well, what’s wrong with that? Why shouldn’t I sweep the road if I want to? A teacher should have no right to say anything like that. What’s more important – a judge or a road-sweeper? We need both! Every other person wants their child to be a doctor or a lawyer – shouldn’t we just want every person on earth to be educated? Then everything else should take care of itself…”



Street-sweepers are an important part of the calm here in Plovdiv. They grace each morning with their fluorescent vests, always too big, over colorful gypsy clothes. The sound of the brooms is soothing compared to the hideous leaf-blowing machines we get in NZ. Skrp, skrp, skrp… they don’t look up. But neither do others. Crossing eyes for the sake of a silent hello is not something you do here. The leaves, the berries, the cigarette butts – all disappear before breakfast.

Drawing parallels between assigned values in society and assigned values in music. Singing in a language that you don’t (at first) understand, gives each vowel, consonant, syllable, word, phrase… equal value. That is part of the attraction – it is just music! All of it.

When I write lyrics myself and come to sing them, however, I tend to prioritize some words, at the cost others. For example, ‘the’.  An untapped sound potential?  Or a hair stuck on your tongue, followed by a sort of guttural grunt? (Particularly if we are allowing ourselves to sing with a Kiwi accent…)

Actually, this incarnation of the vowel ‘e’ is not so far removed from the ‘ъ’ (er-golyam) in Bulgarian language – which I have had to learn to sing with beauty, as there is no discrimination upon which vowel you might be landed with, to ornament properly.  The focus remains on bringing beauty and flow to ALL the vowels, treating them as the precious flesh of the music that they are.

A vowel isolation exercise I use – (sing your song without consonants) – reveals the color, placement, density and direction of each unique vowel. Things, that in the consonant clutter, would go by unnoticed. With this lucidity in hand, we are able to remedy hiccups in the flow, un-obstruct the vowels and ultimately, bring more joy through the music.

Intrigued by the THE train of thought, I decided to have a jam on it – Listen to it here

!

SERIOUS FUN

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ON THE THEME OF EASE in singing, life and other creative processes.  Should it be easy? Should it FEEL easy?  And if yes, is there a certain quantity of ‘hard’ work required before the sense, sight and sound of ease, appears?  Or is it, in fact, a WAY of learning? Flow. EASE. An experiment on a group of dancers with the Alexander Technique observed feedback from participants missing the sensation of EFFORT, feeling that it was TOO EASY to be right… Too easy. An addiction to strain, to the position of “I can’t”, to the feeling of being inadequate, can be a real thing of real consequence, as we see humorously depicted in the film What the Bleep do we know.

ON BEING PUNISHED FOR PLEASURE. For those of us freshly issued from Christian (?) heritage – though be it into Atheist or Pagan families – we may find internalized, secreted agents of judgement, tracking our pleasure and marking it down as SIN.  Suffering earns you a place in heaven, work hard, be humble and you shall be rewarded.  Do we ever hear “work supple”? If we are a ninja, we do!  As women, the added red flag on sensuality can have us curbing childhood delights, the deep sense of fun or intuitive pleasures. I realized recently that I take my art very seriously. Or rather, because I WANT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY, I have put a whole lot of SERIOUS into my creative processes, at the expense of my FUN.  A 3 minute slot appeared in my daily practice for pure vocal whatever (fun) recently. I spend it with glee… 3 minutes? That’s quite enough. Snap back to something proper – by golly – we can’t have this whole frolic situation getting out of control! Wow. Stay tuned on that minute rationing…

ADMIRATION is a double edged sword. It guides us towards our chosen stars. It shows us qualities we wish to embody, things we could grow into, but it can also keep us separated from them. By lifting someone else so high in our mind’s eye, we can find ourselves belittled, crushed beneath the weight of the impossibility, apologizing for our insufficiency, as we slouch to keep them above us, when we come face to face. This relieves us of the responsibility for maturing the work in real time, real place. It can be comfortable to be a victim. It can be comfortable to be small, when memories of our brilliance as children, come swathed in the shame we were given for being so fresh, fearless, bright and original. Whoever has worked with Julia Cameron’s Artist Way, can hear her in my words.

GOING NOWHERE because I am already there/here. Charisma is presence, is about being actually present. Bert van Dijk, theater pedagogue, runs fantastic workshops on this theme. Coaches on stage-fright speak of bringing your attention down into the lower back or the feet. Side effects include enhanced communication with your audience/community.  This is about lowering and anchoring our center of gravity, which, anyone working with martial arts, Tai-chi or Chikung will know, is an absolutely timeless treasure. Simon Barker and Carl Dewhurst run barefoot and are experiencing a deep influence on their performance as musicians. They speak of bringing our consciousness down into the body and so, altering the default to be one of continual release and reset. On running.

AN INVITATION TO THE FUTURE. Being a split second ahead. Hearing it before it happens. Is it possible to be in two places at once? In the present and in the future? Yes, it is. The conductor Valery Gergiev shows us that it is. You cannot start without me. Whether we are conducting, improvising, composing a new piece or delivering a traditional song in all its specific modalities, we must be both utterly present – releasing the past like a ninja – and already hearing the future. LOVE IT.

Treva 3