I’m intoxicated by the changing light, heartened by it, buoyed up on the extra minutes and last moments of slanting golden light. My friend Nick Roosevelt is offering a retreat in May all about the light that different spiritual traditions can cast in our lives, and the beautiful possibilities of tasting some of those traditions and experimenting with a blend of them. I’ll be there to talk about the nature-based spirituality of the Celtic tradition and to perform a concert of songs and tales on Saturday night. I’ll also be drinking up the time with Swami Dayananda, whom I adore, and learning from her and the Quakers about the questions and practices at the heart of their worship. I attended a version of this retreat last year at the Summer Solstice and felt changed and enriched by it.
Here is a flier for the event with Nick’s contact information in case you’d like to attend. The pdf may be a bit slow to load but you could consider it a practice-run for “waiting on the light”!
Waiting on the Light
I’ve been a bit shy about youtube – well, about appearing on it anyway. I LOVE the chance to see and hear some of my favorite musicians and authors, and I love the big zany grab-bag of everything posted there. But until very recently I haven’t felt sparked to capture myself on film and share my image with the world.
What changed?
I took part in two events which matter very much to me.
The first was a clinic on creativity and songwriting my dear friend Lauren Passarelli and I held at Berklee College of Music on February 23. Lauren is a professor of guitar at Berklee, and she is passionately interested in the creative process and in sharing what she has learned from a rich career of making songs and performing music. One of her students – a brilliant young songwriter – filmed our discussion and performance, and I’m including the links here in case you’d like to see it:
The second event took place at Club Passim this past Monday – a tribute to Seamus Connolly and Gaelic Roots, sponsored by the Boston Celtic Music Festival. I was deeply honored to be invited to take part in this wonderful occasion because as I’ve written here before, I ADORE Seamus Connolly, and performing with the likes of Laurel Martin (fiddle), Brendan Bulger (fiddle), Mark Simos (guitar), Aoife Clancy (songs & bodhran), and Jimmy Noonan (flute) is pretty much my idea of heaven on earth. Sean Smith who organized the event took some film footage of two of the big group tunes and posted these on youtube:
If you know me, do not look for my familiar face. You will catch a glimpse of me instead in my white hands in the dark, merrily vamping along with the fiddles and flute and bodhran.
Will I do more with this medium? I think so. At the very least, I am so grateful to have the “souvenir” of youtube footage from both of these joyful occasions. And as long as I don’t have to operate the camera myself and if I can be spared the worst of seeing myself in the contortions of extreme emotion that sometimes happen when I sing and play, I am game. And someday, oh someday, how I would love to make a little film – a video – to accompany some of the poem-songs I’m making these days. Just imagine the images that might float along next to “Recuerdo” or “The Fire of Driftwood” or – oh! – “The Song of Wandering Aengus.”
So a little stretching with new technology is all for the best because it leads me to delicious new dreams.
If we’re friends or if you look at my performance schedule (which probably means we ARE friends), you know that I’m about to enter my busiest time of the year. I am a lucky duck to have all these chances to do what I love best and also to share music with so many musicians I love and admire. I am blessed to be able to really celebrate this season of Irishness and to help other people feel included in it, blessed by it, uplifted by it. Lucky, lucky girl!
You might be surprised to learn, though, that I tend to get nervous at the start of all this bounty. I can engage in very crazy thinking on the cusp of such opportunity. If I’m not careful I can talk myself into feeling that I’m not up to the task, that I don’t have enough fresh repertoire, that I’ll get sick with all the driving and racing around, that there isn’t enough time to do things well, that I’ll disappoint listeners or myself… I could go on longer, but I’d rather not. These fears and nagging whispers are not what’s important.
What’s important is what I hope:
- I hope that the music, stories, and poetry I share help people feel that the beauty of the world belongs to them.
- I hope that my performances bring pleasure, respite, engagement, fun, and warmth to my audiences.
- I hope for moments of wit and levity, for moments of sweetness and warmth, for moments of imagination and the opening-up of possibility.
- I hope to feel, at the end of this little “tour,” that I have really celebrated the vitality of what I love: connection, inspiration, courage, humor, imagination, warmth, and a certain jauntiness that looks right into the face of fear or heartache and says,
“Be that as it may: here’s a little tune I invented for the occasion!”
