My mother swears I am too young to have this memory, but I see it clearly. The swing is made of blue rough fabric, probably a heavy cotton. The sound of the chair is a loud tick-tock. And I’m aware of my mother and my Aunt Dolores moving around me in the kitchen, bustling about their own affairs. I am left to my own devices.

I want out of this chair. I want out. And yet, try as I might, I can’t make my legs extend long enough to get my toes to touch the floor. I’m trapped in this endless ticking machine, waiting for someone to notice me.

Perhaps I cried and was ignored. Perhaps I began to wail and I was immediately tended to. I don’t know. All I know is that there was a moment of blinding clarity where I wanted to be anywhere but here.

I heard on the news or read in a book somewhere that your earliest memory reveals much of your present-day self. That’s certainly true in my case. I spend the majority of my time just passing the time, waiting for someone to pick me up out of this cage. Or struggling with all my might to release myself.

When I lose myself in my work or my music, am I really here? Am I present? Or am I dissociating? Tick. Tock. Relentless.

Time forces me down a birth canal I am too large to fit. Towards what destination? I cannot tell. I have given up most of my hope for a new life. Even for a different life. Sometimes I think it will just be no life at all. But mostly I think it will just be the same life, trapped in a swinging chair.

The one thing I know I want to do is music. Specifically, Kaia. I’ve thought seriously about changing my career (history professor, music teacher, even UU priestess), but nothing appeals to me. It’s as if my mental tastebuds have gone flat. The only thing that gets my attention is Kaia. The music, the message, the experience.

I love my house. I love my yard. I feel rooted in that sense. And I have Kaia. Everything else seems distant. I sometimes wonder if I’ve lived on my own for so long that I’ve lost the ability to connect to other human beings in any meaningful way. If I lost my connection to music, what then? Perhaps then it really would be time to let the clock tick to its logical conclusion.

I don’t have a sense of where else I would like to be, except in an abstract, Christmas movie sort of way. I desperately want a husband and community. I still want children even though I can never have them. I want to be a thrumming chord in an orchestra of family and friends and neighbors. I can even see the movement of many people in and out of my house, hear the sound of many people talking and laughing and singing. It all seems very Little Women. It is hyped-up Technicolor in my spirit.

But that doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me. What does? I cannot see. All I see is more of the same and frankly, that’s not good enough.

Whenever I think of this particular memory, it leads me to Oingo Boingo’s It Only Makes Me Laugh. I think it’s the similarity in rhythm to “anywhere but here.”

I don’t know why I feel this way
I don’t know if it’s right or wrong
To laugh at misfortune
Darkness can never last too long 

Perhaps it’s just cynicism on my part. Or some self-conscious gesture, laughing in the face of death and all that. Suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Yadda yadda.

But I know someday there will be a reckoning. Someday the urge to get out of the chair and go somewhere, anywhere, will be too great—and that’s where I’ll end up. Anywhere but here.

We learned my piece Vow in about 2 and a half weeks, which is a record for us. It’s a difficult song. Not in structure or pitch, but in meaning. We started by just going around the circle and sharing our reactions to it (it’s a song about domestic violence but the beginning spoken word section covers all violence against women). Lara wept as she shared what I also felt: That she’d never sat in a group of women and not heard the stories of abuse and violence at the hands of men. My breakthrough to feminism was this very fact: That almost every woman I knew had survived some form of violation.

The Voices Against Violence show was actually two shows—one at 3 and one at 8. Different artists performed at each show; we performed at both. Aside from Vow, we did different sets for the different shows. The sets were constructed to show our vision for a better world as well as to showcase pieces in different languages and our strongest repertoire.

The first set opened with Arise, Lara’s stirring setting of Julia Ward Howe’s lyrics for the Mother’s Day Proclamation. The crowd (though small) loved it. We did some world music before coming around to Vow and then I Love Everybody. Whenever Lara sings the opening of ILE, she envisions the worst of the worst offenders she deals with on a regular basis in her day job, and tries to surround them with love. Just coming off Vow, she had a visibly difficult time making the transition. But I’ve never heard her sing it with such conviction and truth as she did that day.

The second set’s anti-war piece was my Not One More Day (which I find, to my surprise, that I have not posted about before). We mixed in some world music with Vow and closed with Dubula, a jubilant South African dance piece.

I over-sang during the second set. I noticed it most clearly on Not One More Day. For some reason, I felt a deep urge to connect with the audience, to drag them along, to make them see the insanity of the Iraq war and of all war. The audience was warm, appreciative, and even tried to clap along until they (as always) discovered it interfered with their ability to hear the lyrics. But I felt something missing—maybe it was something missing in me.

Both sets were intense. They whipped around the world and through our key messages of peace and social justice with breakneck speed. And we rocked both sets. The audience was very appreciative. But we did not get a standing ovation. No one got a standing ovation, actually. It was very weird, since it’s ridiculously easy to get a standing O in Bloomington. But even among this crowd, Vow, for the first time, was just listened to without that without-words shout that rises up in people hearing it for the first time.

Gladys DeVane was on with a monologue about Amelia Earhart. Diane Kondrat did Marge Piercy’s The Low Road. Janiece Jaffe and Curtis Cantwell Jackson did their usual mellow songs of love and light. All of it spoke to the meaning of the event, and to the hearts of those assembled.

And then came Roadkill—an opera trio including the famous Sylvia McNair. They opened with The Man I Love. They sang I Feel Pretty. Sylvia soloed with another piece from West Side Story. The others soloed with pieces I wasn’t familiar with but had that same Broadway/cabaret songbook feel. They closed with My Favorite Things. And I squirmed.

It wasn’t the quality of the music, of course, which was exceptional. It was the content and the delivery. They sang with songbooks in their hands, which is fine for classical music but seems off-putting in a show like Voices Against Violence. But it was their song selection that was intensely jarring to me.

To open with The Man I Love at an event about domestic violence struck me as downright chilling. The rest of the pieces, while amusing or moving or interesting in themselves, were so far from the content of the rest of the program that I felt almost sick. It was a dinner set, the same they would perform for any event. It wasn’t tailored to the content of the show or the needs of the people in the audience. In my opinion, it was inappropriate.

The experience shown a light on my feelings about performance: That it be transformative. Not that it simply entertain. It’s like design—design isn’t about decoration, it’s about information. It’s about creating change in the viewer. And music is a great changer. It gives voice to that which was previously inarticulate. And for those in the audience, who seek such a fundamental change in our society as the end to violence against women, and even an end to all violence, we have a responsibility to them to at least attempt to give them a voice.

I’ve seen it many times with Arise. I’ve seen it happen every time we sing Not One More Day—by the time we’re singing, “No more torture / We’re forced to pay for / No more torture in my name,” we’ve got people ready to rise up singing. They want to join in and raise their voices to say no more, a better world is possible, and I want to manifest it.

I Feel Pretty just doesn’t cut it. Not for me, at least. I don’t deny the artistry of the women onstage. I just wonder whether they considered pieces that would articulate the deepest desires of those in the audience, and whether they agree that an artist has a responsibility to try to articulate those needs.

My living room window was open and I heard panicked journalists talking faster and higher that usual. All I could catch was that a tower was falling.

I turned on the radio and tried to make sense of what I was hearing. I went to the TV (I only receive PBS) and there was a children’s show on. It was one of the more jarring, surreal experiences on that most jarring and surreal of days, to hear the horror pouring out of my radio pitched against the saccharine-sweet music and primary colors on my TV screen.

Got ready and then fled to a friend’s house where CNN played the plane crash over and over. Interview with a congressman calling for nuclear strikes. People jumping. People falling. Jerry Falwell blaming Pagans for the attacks.

I felt Called. Upstairs my friend had a room dedicated as ritual space. I spread out my things on his altars and opened fully to the Spirit realms. And what I found there was completely overwhelming.

Chaos. Complete and utter chaos. Thousands of souls, panicked and shrieking. Terror in its purest form, without bodies to mediate it. I was aware of intense motion but also a stopping: They did not know what had happened to them, and they could not get past the Veil.

I went where I was Called to go. I cleared my back and made it a bridge. I calmed my spirit and stepped into the maelstrom. I cast a Circle and breathed soothing peace. I sang every lullabye I was given, and ended with a heart-rending, aching version of Blackbird by The Beatles. And I acted as wayfinder and guide, showing them the way through the Worlds.

I have never known such suffering as we experienced on September 11th, 2001. I pray I never do again. The suffering in the Spirit realm was beyond anything I was prepared for. Later, as we got the lines of communication flowing, a Witch set up a psychic pentagram in New York City where we could direct our energies. Her coven then redirected that energy to people and places that needed it. It felt good to have a community that came together in a crisis to offer our unique gifts and skills for the greater good.

I can only wonder about similar psychic shocks, especially the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Who ferried the dead then? What psychic scars still remain?

I have always walked between the Worlds. It is a lonely place to be. But on September 11th, I knew my place and I knew my path. I couldn’t help everyone. I couldn’t do it all alone. But I know the realms settled into balance over time. On the tenth anniversary of that terrible day, may we breathe peace for the living and the dead, for all that went before and for all that came after. Blessed Be.

See Kaia performing Rise In Love

(We asked Ysaye M. Barnwell’s permission to record and perform the song—to my delight, she not only said yes, she said she loved the arrangement!)

Here are my revised lyrics:

Dear one, I never thought that you would see such a time
I hear your cries
Dear one, there is a reason for these things, but there’s no rhyme
I hear your why’s

But I don’t have the answer to your questions
I don’t have answers for your prayers
I just know this is a moment of transcendence
If we just have the courage to care

Let us, let us, let us rise in love

Dear one, our world has changed in the blink of an eye
I hear your cries
Dear one, a part of each and every one of us has died
I hear your whys

But I don’t have the answer to your questions
I don’t have answers for your prayers
I just know this is a moment of transcendence
If we just have the courage to care

Let us, let us, let us rise in love

The universe is polarized by hatred
We ourselves have been baptized in fear
Some of us are even paralyzed in principle
And there’s anger in the falling of each tear

For so long we’ve just watched foreign agony
The tide has changed; now we grieve at home
Though we’re victimized by terror, we’re not innocent
Where’s the courage to change, oh the courage to change what we’ve condoned

Let us, let us, let us rise in love

It has long been a joke in Kaia that I have dog hearing, since I have a really good ear and can ferret out all kinds of tuning issues. Now I feel like I finally get it. This sound engineering is great stuff.

We start with rough takes—from 1 to 16—of a single song. Those are painful to listen to because the sound is absolutely naked. There’s no mixing going on, so I can hear each individual voice without any blend. We sound awful.

I listen to each take multiple times to pick the best one overall. Then I go back in and start dissecting the chosen take. If we have a sloppy entrance or exit (we have lots of sloppy exits, it’s embarrassing), I note that. If there’s a note that’s not quite in tune, another note. Notes for people who take breaths when they’re not supposed to or who forget the words. (I actually sang the wrong word in a piece that I wrote! How pathetic is that?) Suffice it to say, my notes are extensive. (They are also very small. I don’t know why, but I’m allocating very little space for them and my handwriting is cramped and teeny. But for the most part I can decipher it.)

We often have the option of grabbing a section from another take and punching it into the main take, but there’s also a lot of bleed-through on the sound. Since we all recorded in the same room (with a couple exceptions), the mikes picked up ambient sound as well as each voice. So sometimes we can’t punch something in because the ambient sound doesn’t match.

Lara is celebrating her tenth wedding anniversary in Kauai, so I’ve been working a lot with Chip directly. My goal is to get all the songs to a “penultimate mix” stage by the time she’s ready. Then she’ll just be focused on hopefully minor notes so the polishing phase can be quick.

Mixing: We go through my notes and Chip does absolute magic to make us sound fabulous. He adds reverb so our sound fills out and gets warmer. He mixes the voices so the melody comes forward and the harmony goes back. Then I take that home and dissect it some more. I run through each song about 4 times before declaring it ready for Lara.

We’re also sharing tracks with other creative directors, like with Angela for Kaiababies and Jane for Ergen Deda. It’s great to get their input, since they have a whole different set of expectations and they hear things very differently.

It is so much fun to go through all this stuff, even if it is super time-intensive. We’re heading towards 4 hours per track, and I’m sure that will go higher once Lara’s back. One good thing: I’m certainly learning the road back and forth to Airtime Studios (Krista Detor’s and Dave Weber’s house)! It’s north of the city and requires some quick reflexes for the twisty turns. But if I ever go back for parties, I will at least know how to get there this time!

The downside of all of this for Kaia is that I’m taking extensive performance notes for us and I will be even more nit-picky than ever when we return to our regular rehearsal schedule! But I know everyone will be up for the challenge. We want to do more performing this fall and we want everything to be taken up a notch.

So—that’s my life right now. Time for me to go listen to the latest set of mixes!

So yesterday was far more successful—Chip was able to sync up the percussion we’d already laid down with the new vocals we recorded. The wonder of technology.

I was antsy because I knew we’d need the bulk of our time to record Ergen Deda and Las Amarillas, but first we needed to do Lu Lops. It’s an intense song that takes immense concentration to get the emotional qualities just right. It’s in Occitan, which is a language sort of between French and Spanish, so there’s constant squabbling over the pronunciation of the Js (English J or French J? Blah blah blah).

More importantly, it tells this intense story of “The Wolves” who guard the prisons where, presumably, innocent villagers are held. The second verse tells of what the soldiers did when they attacked. It’s a disturbing account, full of blood and bones. “Watch out! They will jump on your bones like crazed people!” Translation always leaves something to be desired but we try to communicate the meaning even if only a couple hundred people in the world speak the language.

The third verse is our favorite—I think of it as the “partisan” verse. It starts out with “Venyez a mic” which is something along the lines of “To me! To me!” There’s a sense of planting a flag in the ground and calling to the oppressed to rise up. The verse paints a picture of freedom in the days to come, and ends by calling on comrades to stick together and help each other. It’s very stirring.

But then there’s this coda that repeats the opening of the song—the wolves are still howling. So did the villagers free themselves but they’re still surrounded? Or was the dream of freedom only that, a dream? The meaning is ambiguous. But chilling nonetheless.

It’s a lot to try to communicate, and it’s much easier done live when we can use our facial expressions and body language to get the point across. But we did our best in the studio. It’s not quite as tight as I would like, but it is good enough for this point in time. At some point we’ll likely get it recorded live, after we’ve had a chance to get it into our bones more, and it may be more powerful.

After Lu Lops came the challenge of Amarillas. As of Thursday, sistahs were saying they didn’t want to record it at all because they didn’t feel ready. I took on the unfamiliar role of cheerleader because I believed we could pull it off. And we did! It took about an hour and a quarter to record a song that lasts 3 minutes.

We recorded it in three sections, with a click-track to guide each one (it’s a very precise three-part piece where the parts rarely come together). We just recorded each section over and over again until we got the rhythm, pronunciation, and pitches correct. When I gave the starting pitches for the third section, we discovered to our horror that we had floated sharp by a half-step! This never happens—we are excellent at staying in tune.

So then a 10-minute period of discussion ensued as we tried to figure out what happened and if we could correct it. Long story short, we had to record the whole thing over again, this time with a tone (A) and a click track running through the whole thing. Chip quickly switched the click track to the faster tempos on each of the sections so we could stay in an Amarillas state of mind. And then it was done! Almost.

We moved on to Ergen Deda, a new Balkan piece that people aren’t totally confident in. I think almost all of us were using our music or cheat sheets as props. It’s in 7/8 and there are a couple places where no one is exactly sure what the timing should be. We’re using a recording by the Bulgarian Women’s Chorus as a guide, but our version is slightly different. Though how different is still up to interpretation!

We had about 15 minutes to get that one in the can and it ended up taking about 20. Lara and Tristra sounded amazing on their duet—assuming you like Balkan music, it will knock your sox off.

The whole piece isn’t as tight as Bre Petrunko, our other Bulgarian piece, but it will get that tight, “knit” feeling over time.

And then! Just when we thought we couldn’t possibly eat more chocolate, we had another short break while Chip set up the mics for us to record the percussion on Amarillas. We talked Lara out of doing the stomps-that-aren’t-really-stomps, thank goodness, otherwise we might still be there. The percussion is claps, snaps, hand-slides, and side-slaps. And it all ended up being much more complicated than we expected. Took us about 20 minutes to record.

As we were wrapping up and dithering over whether we should record this part or that one more time, another band came in and that made the decision for us! It was hard to believe this journey of a year was finally over, but we quickly thanked Chip and got the heck out the door. Everyone was in good spirits, even if we still had the click track going in our brains!

Lara and I will be working with Chip this summer to do the mastering and mixing of everything. We still hope to have a CD release party in the Fall, though our schedule is getting so full I’m not sure if that’s going to happen. We all feel pretty good, though, at journey’s end. Many thanks to Chip for his endless patience with our singing, bickering, and fake Minnesota accents.

When I was growing up, I saw only two kinds of people: Victimizer and victim. The victimizer had all the power; the victim had none. “Power” was defined as the ability to come and go as one pleased, to do as one pleased, and to experience no consequences for any deed. Ultimate freedom.

I once dated a man who, when he broke up with me, said, “Last night I was at a club and this girl was coming on to me. And I realized I couldn’t sleep with her because I was dating you!” He said this as if it were the most preposterous thing he’d ever heard. It was a real insight to his character. Danny wanted to live a life without consequences; therefore, he lived a life of no consequence. “Power” had been redefined for me. Those who came and went without being touched by the lives of others were the ones who suffered. “Freedom” = loneliness, detachment, and a lost place in the world. The inability to develop fully as a human being.

I’m very familiar with Starhawk’s concepts of “power-from-within” and “power-with,” which seem much more salient to me than “power-over.” Yet I’m still haunted by my childhood experiences of dominance and submission. This week’s dream shows that I still struggle with it, as well as my experiences of abandonment and minimizing of my emotions.

+++

Had a really terrible dream this morn that I was in “my house” with a lot of my family and some of my friends and a Bad Guy came. I saw him thru the back window (yesterday I was  at work and was startled to hear the back gate open and watch this guy walk in as bold as you please—turned out to be the meter reader). He was huge, like Hulk Hogan huge. I knew there was no way to stop him. He had a gun, though it was an ungainly, boxy thing made of thick plastic. He also had a small penknife. But I made everyone drop their weapons (did we have guns or knives? I can’t recall) and offer no resistance as he went thru the house. My brother-in-law was there, and a sister was in one of the rooms, and maybe two of my brothers or at least men who stood in for them. But there was the feeling of a lot of people in the house.

I went with the guy as he went thru the house to make sure no one resisted, lest they be shot. He seemed to be taking inventory—there was this smug sense that he had total power to come and go as he pleased, and to take what he pleased. I just kept watching him and watching him. Finally we were back by the back door of this house and he was distracted and I grabbed his gun. He tried to snatch it back but I already had it and I shot him. My aim was bad (I’ve never shot a gun) , so it hit him in his right shoulder. I tried to figure out how to cock the gun while he stood there, almost disbelieving that I would think that I could stop him. I wasn’t panicked or anything—I was super-focused like I get in emergencies. This time I shot him squarely in the chest—but the “bullets” were like Nerf balls. There was the shock of impact but no actual damage. But it did seem to indicate some kind of power, as in I had power over him and could now somehow stop him.

He seemed sort of disgusted with the inconvenience of the situation. So he came over and stabbed me in the throat, right where my voicebox is. I totally deflated and felt real fear for the first time. I can’t remember if I gave the gun back—no, I kept it, but its power was gone. He walked out. I watched him go thru the mudroom area, then down the back stairs and outside. And he seemed a little annoyed by the whole situation but it was clear he would be back and would do whatever he wanted.

I then started crying and was vulnerable—the need to be focused had passed. The people there told me to ring 911. I’d dropped my cell phone (one of my “weapons”/power items) when he’d come in, so I took my sister’s land line phone.

Cut to some highway where I’m walking along with this ungainly phone pressed to one ear, desperately trying to get reception and hear over all the noise, with the other hand pressed tightly over my voicebox to stop all the bleeding. I rang 911 and got cut off. Rang them back and the dispatcher was all bored and wouldn’t do anything. I kept begging and begging for help, both that the police find the guy before he left my neighborhood and that they come and help me, but she just kept saying it wasn’t an emergency and they weren’t going to come. Shades of the toboganning accident.

Then I rang J. It was the only number I could remember and I had to dial it 2 or 3 times to get it right because my fingers were so slippery with blood. Oh wait—before that—2 guys—they were also Bad Men and they knew what their compatriot had done. They met me on the path and were sort of leering at me, totally holding their power over me. I had to think fast and be very lucky to get out of there unscathed. But nothing was going to really faze them because they had all the power.

So then I rang J and by then I was really small and scared and vulnerable and I just asked him to come and pick me up and take me to the hospital. I kept walking and walking towards town as we talked. At first he pretended like he couldn’t understand what I was saying, then he tried to steamroll my experience and say it was nothing to be worried about, and then he finally admitted he didn’t want to get involved. By this point I was really just flat-out begging—I was so scared and tired and dirty and just desperately needed a clean, safe space where people would tend to my needs. I was worried about losing my voice forever, and it was my singing voice, not my talking voice. But he refused. We hung up and then I was “downtown” so I knew I was somewhat close to home but somehow it was still a ways away.

And now there were all these people between me and it, all curious and loud and self-involved. They kept asking me what had happened and it briefly made an interesting story for them but then they would start talking and laughing amongst themselves and merrily move along.  I was so bereft. Just no help to be found. I felt so young and vulnerable and tired, that I was doing all the right things but no one was responding the way they were supposed to.

It was at that point that my conscious mind intruded and said, “C’mon, you don’t have to dream this,” and I woke myself up. I tried to cry a little but couldn’t, so I just whimpered for a while. Talk about needing a hug! I finally fell back into very uneasy sleep but kept replaying the dream until finally the alarm went off. I know I need to get up and get the Sun into my veins but I also just want to curl up and mourn.

+++

When I was growing up, aside from the nightmares of nuclear holocaust, my worst dreams were of pursuit—a monster or Bad Man was coming after me and I had to try to get away. I often flew by flapping my arms strenuously (though once I was in a precarious ejection seat). I knew I couldn’t get away—no matter how fast or clever or resourceful I was, the Bad Man would get me. I was alone in the universe and even Nature was impassive or turned against me.

In my twenties more people started showing up in my dreams, usually family, and we were all victims together. Often I was tasked with protecting them—they were usually completely useless. Into my thirties the Bad Man morphed into other forces, such as tornadoes or tsunamis. Now, in my forties, the Bad Man has returned, but I am surrounded by many more people. It’s still usually my family, but there are often friends thrown in. They are getting more useful in the fight. This dream was the first I’ve had where they actually participated and made suggestions, such as telling me to take my sister’s phone. I hope this indicates that I feel more woven into the world. It’s my first dream example of power-with.

In this dream, the conflict over the gun and the actions of the Bad Man clearly show a struggle over power. The power I was searching for was that of freedom of my tribe to live peaceably. It was a power of defense and assertion. His power was of the old kind—that ability to walk in, devastate the environment, and then walk away. No questions asked. The tyrant.

The struggle over the gun was clearly a literal power struggle—I knew that even in the dream. And when he flicked that knife across my throat, he cut off my access to my power: The access to my singing voice. My song is intertwined with my soul, twisted together like strands of DNA, pulsing up from the great green Earth around my spinal chord and up through the crown of my head.

The rest of the dream is like some version of Demeter’s travails as she wanders the Earth seeking help in finding her daughter—finding her way home. My encounter with the two additional Bad Men made it clear that I was going to be a victim in a world populated by strongmen willing to exercise their power-over. The one bright spot is that I was able to get away by the power of my wits. But still, as in the dreams when I was young, I knew some Bad Man would eventually catch up to me and I would, at some point, fall.

Unsuccessfully seeking help from apathetic people has been a common theme in my dreams for about the last 10 years. I often ring 911 in my dreams and can’t get through or find that the dispatcher or police don’t think my problem is worth responding to. Usually it’s in those horrible dreams where hordes of maddened people are trying to break down my flimsy front door and I am in absolute terror.

I thought it was amusing that, aside from 911, the only number I could think of was J’s. That’s because I can’t remember my parents’ phone number when I’m awake, much less when I’m asleep! Aside from my parents, J and A are my default emergency contact number. So I was still trying to go thru “official” channels.

After both official channels failed, I reached out to random people in the hopes of getting help based on our common humanity. But once again this venture failed.

And all the while my blood drained from my voice, my song, my ability to be heard and express my song of Gaia. My power-from-within diminishing like a light dimming.

Waking up is one of my least favorite experiences. The emptiness of my tiny bed stretches out like a Russian steppe. It echoes the emptiness inside. The loneliness is like a sea with no end, and I am in a tiny coracle, at any moment to be dashed to my doom. It’s the worst after a nightmare, when I crave the very human need to be held and told everything’s all right.

I thought it was interesting that, upon waking, I didn’t want to cry in terror or sadness but that I wanted to mourn. I wanted to sink into this sea of grief and let it flow through every part of my being. Grieving is something I’m very afraid of. I fear that if I start I will never stop. It is one of my fears that, when my parents die, I will not be able to grieve properly and I will become even more of an emotional cripple.

The brightest spot in this grim dream experience is my conscious mind’s compassionate ending of the dream. “C’mon,” it said. Just gently leading me by the hand away from the nightmare. Like Anubis leading the newly deceased through the Land of the Dead. At least some part of me is an adult, capable of administering to my fundamental needs. I long for the day when I am fully capable. I long for the day when it’s more than I—when there’s at least one other person willing to hold my hand or embrace me in comfort and love.

I spent the weekend with family in Chicago for my niece’s wedding, then hot-footed it back down to Bloomington to be ready in time. It turned out I woke up two hours early this morn and then kept falling asleep behind the wheel on the drive home. I am grateful for those raised bars on the sides of roads that suddenly bring you back to reality.

I had time for a nap, spine realignment, and episode of Glee before heading over to Rhino’s to meet everybody. It’s a hot, humid day which usually means tempos and pitches sag. Fortunately the studio was like a freezer so we snapped back up.

I had about 6 tunes I wanted to get in the can today, but I knew that was aggressive. We did a good job, though, nailing a couple in only three takes. But everything unraveled on Pata Pata. We can’t do the vocals without the percussion and we can’t do the percussion without the vocals. So we just kept trying to record things in fits and starts. By the end of it we were all exhausted and I have no idea if we have anything salvageable.

I’m a little concerned about recording Lu Lops. We nailed it perfectly when we performed it at the UU gig last month but usually we just can’t get it together. I don’t know what it is about that piece. I changed the arrangement at our last rehearsal to have everyone come in at the start of each verse rather than having just the mezzos lead us in. That made a huge difference in the sound—it’s much fuller now, which is great. But I don’t feel like we really own it yet.

Some people are still having trouble with the lyrics. There are some songs like that, that you just can’t get some piece of. I have never been able to get all the lyrics to Oi, Rano, for instance. Of course, it has six verses, so maybe that’s part of the problem, but there comes a point where the brainspace has to be devoted elsewhere. I made lyric sheets and we use them to cheat during performances.

Oh, I guess I really don’t have anything to say except, “I’m utterly spent.” That’s not so very interesting so we’ll leave it there for the night.

P.S. Big props to the sistahs for hanging in there today.

There are a million prayers I can think of that would be suitable, not to mention original works I could draft. But when it came down to it, I went with a classic: The Charge of the Goddess.

(This is not to be confused with The Charge of the Light Brigade. That’s something else. )

I took the version from my Book of Shadows. I wrote it nearly 20 years ago for my initiation. It’s an amalgamation of the classic Gardnerian Charge and excerpts from the Principia Discordia, a feminist speech, Wicca: The Old Religion in the New Age, and my own thoughts. I think there might be a bit of Buckland in there, too. I am using an edited version for Friday that is shorter and more universal in theme.

Filiz declared it “beautiful” so I shall do my best with it on Friday night. Here ’tis:

PREFACE (while ringing bell):

All within! All within! Sit now, children, in the lap of the Goddess, and hear her words which resonate through the ages.

THE CHARGE OF THE GODDESS:

I am the Goddess. I am called by many names throughout the ages. I wake and sleep, wake and sleep, yet always I return. I look upon you in your world of wars and greed, your “shoulds” and “musts.” You have built for yourselves psychic suits of armor; clad in them, your vision is restricted, your movements clumsy and painful, your skin bruised, and your spirit broiled in the Sun.

Yet within this madness you still call my name, and I, as always, come back from the Dreamtime and the twilight of your consciousness. I am the Goddess. I am alive—and I tell you that you are free. Dance, then, make music and make love–all in celebration of me. For mine is the ecstasy of the spirit, the joy throughout the Earth, and my law is Love unto all beings.

Forever in balance, I call to you as you call to me. I who am the beauty of the green Earth and the white Moon amongst the stars, the mystery of the waters, the desire of the hearts of all, call unto your soul: Arise and come to me, for I am the soul of Nature who gives life to the universe.

From me all things proceed, within my arms all things endure, and unto me all things return. Before my face, your innermost self shall be enfolded in the rapture of the Infinite.

Keep pure, then, your greatest ideal–strive ever towards it. Let naught stop you nor turn you aside, for mine is the secret door which opens upon the garden of youth, and mine is the cauldron of Cerridwen which holds the waters of rebirth.

Know that all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. Let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honour and humility, and mirth and reverence within you.

And you who seek to find me, know that your seeking and yearning shall avail you not, unless you know the mystery: If that which you seek you find not within you, you will never find it without you; for behold! I have been with you from the beginning and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.