Co-creating

All forms of creativity require us to some degree, to engage with them as a process. Writing about bardic work tends to focus on the output of the committed creator, but the creative response of an audience is of great importance too. If we develop ourselves as co-creators, we support our own creativity and the work of others. Making something is of limited good if no one interacts with it.

Some media encourage us to be passive recipients, just sitting there soaking up whatever is thrown at us, not asked to think, feel, or imagine. As an audience, I have no time for this. It’s one of the reasons I do not own a television, as far too much content there seems aimed at a passive recipient. We mistake voting for engaging, all too easily. I do not enjoy the kinds of film that are all about turning off your brain and letting it wash over you, nor do I have much time for the kind of music written to act as audio wallpaper.

Yet at the same time, my experience of creative industries is that there’s a lot of pressure to create work that can just be absorbed passively by an audience that will have forgotten you even while it experiences you. I’ve heard the same kinds of stories from too many creatives: People don’t want to be challenged, they don’t want to have to think, this is too difficult, too demanding, they won’t like it.
Some of you do.

The creativity of the audience is something we could celebrate a lot more. When you are engaged with an innately less passive medium (radio, books, theatre) or with something that aims to make you engage, you have to bring yourself. Your life, experiences, emotions and ideas get into the gaps between the words, the spaces between panels, the empty back of the set where the castle ought to be… you fill it in. Your inspiration and imagination takes on the holes in the story, works out what happened before, and what happens after. If you’ve lain awake at night imagining alternative endings for Snape, or establishing the motivation for Lady Macbeth (what was that reference to killing babies about, anyway?) If you listened to Somebody that I used to know and pictured the people, the flat, the whole relationship implied by that song… you know what I’m talking about. It’s not a high art issue, it’s the willingness to consider the social implications of Calvin and Hobbes, and to otherwise step into what you encounter and do something with it.

No two people read a book in the same way. Toni Morrison once said something to the effect that the most important bit of a book, are the things you don’t say. Gaps matter. Holes, ambiguities and uncertainties are all invitations to the co-creator to come in and add their own bits. And so you give the lead man your father’s eyes, and that holiday home you had once becomes the location. You wonder what happened to Christopher Robin when he grew up, and you clapped your hands when Peter Pan asked you to.

Without the co-creator, the art is only half made.

Fiddling druid

I’ve played the violin for something disturbingly like 25 years now, which rather makes me feel I should be better at it than I am. I’m a folk fiddler, my double jointed hands not able to hold anything the ‘right’ way, and I play a lot of O’Carolan. If you’ve not heard of him, he was the last great Irish bard, a blind harper and writer of many amazing tunes. He should be required encountering for bards, I think.

My current violin was bought years ago at a folk festival. I knew, the moment I put my hand on it, that this was mine. It spoke. It also did wonders for the quality of my playing. Mine is not the prettiest fiddle, the wood is grainy and on the back has a knot in it, the scroll is unevenly carved, its a bit worn in places. There’s a lot of character though. It’s a fiddle with soul. Sometimes, when I am very low, I’ll just sit and hold the case against my chest. The case saved me once, I fell down a flight of concrete stairs, and the fiddle case (different instrument inside it) got under my neck and head, and protected me. I could easily have broken my neck otherwise. As I’d fainted, it wasn’t a conscious choice to protect myself.

I’ve played over the years, with some lovely people, mostly in folk clubs. I’ve done a lot of jamming. I’ve busked in the street and caused children to dance. Last winter I was so sick, so deep in depression with the backlash from everything I’d been though, that I simply couldn’t play. I didn’t get the fiddle out for months. The cold conditions and a lack of checking meant that an old problem kicked off again, and the back started to peel off my violin. I felt just as guilty as I would have done if I had injured a person that badly through neglect. The violin is like a person to me. A friend. A co-creator. It’s taken months of love and care to put it all right again, and today I stood in a shop, trying out new bows, and playing. My fingers are rusty, the tunes no longer fall easily and I’ve got work to do, to regain the ground I‘ve lost. The violin is well, and appears to hold no grudges.

There’s something of the human voice in a violin played well. They can cry and mourn, dance and sing in ways that call to my heart. Making music with the fiddle is time out of time, it’s a whole other way of being. I need to refind that.

This has been a roller coaster of a week, emotionally, practically. Fights to take on, practical things to sort, progress towards becoming an OBOD tutor, acceptance into The Society of Authors, the closing of a publishing house I’ve worked with for 8 years, an invitation to make an epic journey… my head is spinning. Tomorrow we are at Saul Church and people are welcome to come and draw monsters with us.

Despite the mayhem, this evening it will just be me, and that glorious melding of wood, metal and horsehair with a little nylon in the strings… the magic that is a musical instrument, and melodies handed down from my ancestors of tradition. Time to be on the fiddle…

Being vulnerable

There are limits on what you can do by playing safely. The person who does not want to expose themselves to risks doesn’t get much done. Any undertaking to do a thing, courts disaster. It gives us opportunities to fail, to be knocked back, humiliated, and made miserable.

I’ve been submitting works to publishers on and off for about fifteen years now. It doesn’t get easier. Granted, I now have more ‘yes’ letters than I did, but I still get a lot of rejections (mostly around short stories). Every time I send a piece in, even if it’s to a publisher I’ve worked with before, I’m acutely aware that ‘no’ is an option. It doesn’t stop there. Books get published, only for readers to hate them, and with the internet it’s really easy to take that hate to the author.
Putting things out in public invites criticism, and I’ve had some harsh ones over the years. One reviewer called an early piece of mine ‘repellent’ and that stayed with me. I don’t have a thick skin.

Bardic work means standing up in public and exposing your work, your inspiration, your soul, to scrutiny. Sometimes it goes wrong. The voice breaks. Words are forgotten. A string snaps. Someone in the audience undertakes to be rude. And again, it only gets slightly easier with practice, and performing always brings you into situations where people can really, seriously hate what you do.

Creativity is a very personal thing. A lot of self and soul goes into it, and not having that recognised and honoured can be agony. The cake that nobody liked and the epic cleaning job nobody noticed. The flowers that barely got a word of recognition, the ritual no one thanked you for… creativity is not just about obvious arty stuff, it’s about the making and the inspiration in all aspects of our lives. Sharing it makes you vulnerable. Not sharing isn’t an answer, because you remain untested, never confident you’re good enough, afraid of being knocked back, or of holding too high an opinion of yourself. We fantasies about the praise and applause, but it’s never enough. Imagining we could be good if only we dared becomes soul destroying itself after a while, just another delusion to cart about. No one respects the book you know you could write or the career you would have had if only…

So this week I answered some questions for OBOD about why I’d like to be a tutor for their course. I’ve exposed myself to being looked at, tested, considered by whatever means seems necessary or appropriate. Last time I did that (an editing job) I didn’t even hear back, not so much as a rejection letter. Well, I know the OBOD folk can and will do better than that.

The day I stop asking if I’m doing a good enough job, if I could do better, is probably going to be the day I stop breathing. The idea of resting on your laurels never made any sense to me. I always have to be pushing to do more, and better, on whatever terms I can. I don’t enjoy being tested, but it’s inevitable. The alternative is to create a little reality bubble in which I am the only person who judges what I do. Sure, that way I would never have to believe that anything I did needed work, but I wouldn’t improve much. I care more about doing things well than about being able to pretend to myself that I’m there already.

In the meantime, never under estimate the power of saying encouraging things and praising the stuff you love – the cake and the craft item, the story and the song.

Without a script

I want to talk today about the importance of not depending on a bit of paper in ritual. We don’t know much about the ancient Druids, one of the few things there is no doubt about is that theirs was an oral tradition. Bards and Druids alike expected to dedicate a lot of material to memory. This is a good thing, it means you have the words with you wherever you go, and no one can take them from you. I do understand that modern life tends not to encourage the hard work involved, but if you are serious about Druidry, this is a great place to start with really, seriously, doing it.

Paper is a problem in many ways. In low light, rain and wind, it can be unreadable, so if you were depending on it, you may be stuffed. It is a literal barrier between you and everyone else, it may seem small, but you will try to hide behind it. When you’re reading, you’re thinking about reading, not the meaning, not the people around you or the below or the sky above. With the words in your head, you have space to connect mentally with the space as you bring the words forth. If you’ve learned the words you’ve given time to pondering their depth and meaning, and you will speak them with feeling, insight, understanding, you will bring them to life. Even if you stumble and muff up a bit, it will be more alive. Lastly, if you really work and still don’t feel able to go without the paper, you’ll do a far better job for having tried to learn than if you’d gone the easy road in the first place.

I’m a big advocate of speaking in the moment. This takes confidence and practice, you need to know broadly what sort of thing to be saying, and so spending time with scripts can be a good preparation. Speaking in the moment, you can invoke awen and inspiration, you can respond to what’s around you, with feeling, making sense of your ritual space, your people, your experience. A script will not give you that, ever, it’s an imposition on the moment devised in advance based on assumptions about what you will get.

Part of this is about permission to mess up. You may forget the words. You may not spontaneously spout poetry. You may pause. But, you’ll have your head up, and you’ll be present. Whether working from memory or inspiration you will inherently be honouring the Druid tradition. You’ll be more real. We all muff up, that’s fine, it’s part of the learning process. You can’t open to the awen when you’re clinging to a bit of paper for protection, it doesn’t work that way. Learn the words, or don’t, but either way, dare to trust yourself. Dare to speak your Druidry in the moment, like you mean it. The difference is huge.

Bard not author?

I’ve come to the uncomfortable conclusion that what motivates me far too much is not love of craft or a call to service. I write, or have written, because I want to feel important, because I want recognition, I do it because I imagine I could earn acceptance and a place in the world. I wanted to earn a living this way, and that’s plainly a nuts idea. I’m a good century too late for that to be realistic.

I think it is because my motives are so flawed that I’m not up to scratch. If I was motivated more by love of craft and less by a desire to make this pay I would, ironically, probably be in a better place to make something of actual worth. Perhaps there was a time when I worked purely out of love, but economic pressures, pressures from publishers, agents… realities of the industry, have helped me fail to sustain that. It’s been a very hard few days in terms of facing up to reality to come to this recognition. A bard should be motivated by love of craft and a call to serve, not by ego.

Putting this into a public space is not easy, I am feeling a great deal of shame at the moment, there’s a penitence aspect to this. I find myself thinking about the mediaeval flagellants, wondering if there came a point in that process where the person might be able to imagine that they had atoned enough. It’s not the absolution of a priest or a deity I need, but the means to forgive myself for being so driven by pride and vanity and self importance that I’ve treated a lot of people badly down the years, angry with them because they didn’t see me as worthwhile or useful or any of the other things I was busily pretending I could be.

When I went into meltdown over the weekend, a lot of people said they had a use for this blog. The response has overwhelmed me, I’m just sat here crying over what people have said. I’ll try and keep this going. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to put something up every day – I have no idea what would be useful and am afraid of sliding further into self indulgence. But at the same time this is the only thing I’m writing, and there’s a lifeline aspect to that.

I have to try and find a way to be of some use, to contribute rather than just taking all the time. I have to stop imagining I can cut it as a professional, because I can’t, and I need to face up to the implications of that. If I am going to write at all, I have to refind that place of love and belief, which I think maybe I did have once. I’ve got a lot of work to do, but I think I have the clarity now to understand why I’m not where I want to be. I wanted to be Mozart, but I’m not going to make the Salieri grade, especially not while I keep trying to do it for all the wrong reasons.

I am humbled and awed by the kindness and support that has come to me from many different sources in the last few days. I have to admit that I feel so fraudulent that it is hard to believe any of this is deserved (Alex, Jo, Autumn, I think I deserved your assessments), but I am profoundly grateful to everyone who has taken the time to comment, text, offer help. You are very lovely, generous and wonderful people, and I shall aspire to be worthy of your friendship.

It is not possible, I think, to be both a bard who is driven by soulfulness, service and awen, and to be a ‘proper’ professional author who is driven by industry trends, market research and who is willing to spend more time marketing than creating, as appears to be necessary these days. I can’t have it both ways. Right now I’m failing to be either, I think because I’ve been trying to be both, or imagining I could be both, and I’ve lost my way. I did not start this wanting to do a lot of marketing, to write fillers and disposable commodities. That’s what the ‘real world’ wants. At the moment, I can’t write fiction at all and have little confidence that I can pull off the non-fic project even. But, if I can find those right reasons again, and some way of believing that there is a point (Cat, I hear you, but I’m not feeling it right now), perhaps I can do something in the future.

Once upon a time I wanted to be a professional author working from bardic principles, but I don’t think I can have it both ways.

Bardic contests and other competitions

I should start by saying that I have never won anything in my entire life (although I’ve entered plenty) and that it might therefore be fair to assume I’m a wee bit jaded and cynical as a consequence.

There are contests and prizes in just about every field of human endeavour. The bardic chair, and bardic sparring being the resident Druid option. We also have the Mount Haemus awards for scholarship. Every year the ebook world gets excited about the Predators and Editors poll. One of the authors I edit for dreams of a Pulitzer – who wouldn’t? Of course we all want the recognition of a win, and whatever we say about the value of taking part, that’s not what drives people. The hunger to achieve and be recognised is there in all creative people in all fields, so far as I know. But of course most, like me, won’t even make second or third place. And then what? The sense of failure and inadequacy.

Losing is that bit worse if it feels underserved. Many online contests are in essence, popularity contests. The person who can round up the most friends, wins. In such a scenario, someone new, talented and unheard of never gets a look in. It can often seem that in contests of skill or talent, physical beauty and youth can be what wins the day. I once saw a bardic contest won by a young, slender, pretty creature who did not know her song, lost her word sheet several time and had to pause and restart, while slick and well rehearsed efforts from older, rounder and less pretty people went unregarded. And quite frankly, that kind of thing makes me really frustrated. Losing to the better person is no shame at all. Losing because your face doesn’t fit, or you haven’t done enough ass licking, is not funny.

When it comes to sports, it’s usually fairly easy to ascertain who the winner is. They lifted most, jumped highest, ran furthest, fastest and you can measure that. Where the nature of the activity does not automatically define winners and losers (ie writing poetry) there enters in a subjective element. An element of judgement. A matter of preference. Someone decides, based on whatever they like, who was best.

A couple of years ago I found myself in the strange situation of judging in a poetry contest (they picked random people from the audience). I was not popular as a judge, I got booed a lot by the audience because I did not give high marks to the contestants who were simply working to shock, or to induce emotional responses without having any meaning or wordcraft in the mix. I’m sure there were people that night who felt cheated by how I had judged them. But, I set my own criteria, as required and it being poetry, I put wordcraft before stagecraft, and depth before shiny surface and paid no attention at all to how pretty any of them were. Or how many cheering friends they had brought along. I learned along the way that I prefer not to get into competitive things. I have no problem with anyone else doing it. If I am going to compete, I would rather play chess (at which I am rubbish) than get into something painfully subjective, like a poetry slam, or one of those publically humiliating popularity votes. Because I’m not popular or pretty enough for either. Or perhaps it’s easier for me to see it that way rather than risk pitching my limited talents against the greater skills of others. See, told you I was cynical and jaded!

However, if that sort of thing does float your boat… my lovely man, who is much braver than me, is currently taking part in a contest to pick cover art for the next Professor Elemental CD. http://www.professorelemental.com/fr_home.cfm You might want to wander over and consider which, in your subjective opinion is the best bit of art, by whatever criteria appeal to you. And of course this might not be about the art at all, it might be one of those ‘bring a friend’ scenarios where the person with the most chums, or in some cases, email addresses to deploy, wins. I’ve seen that done, too. Plenty of fairish voting systems can be beaten by a couple of people with a lot of email addresses. Fortunately this poll will recognise your computer, so you can only vote once a day. In the meantime, enjoy the art!

From Pooka’s Pageant

I’m in Ipswitch, Tom the Tigerboy and I having spent the day at a Polytheist/bardic event called Pooka’s Pageant, which raises money for animal charities. It’s been a blast, and also a very important day for us.

This was the first event Tom and I have done together. We’ve both done events before, he in America, doing talks, panels, workshops and selling arts, me gigging various places, public speaking and whatnot. I’ve never done a whole set of storytelling before. And, for added drama of art without a safety net, Tom spent that set drawing accompanying picture on big sheets of paper. We were jamming on things from www.hopelessmaine.com and stories from today will go up there soon. We also did a workshop together, another first which was an absolute joy due to the fabulous creativity of all the folk we were workshopping.

It was a lovely day, inspiring and interesting, and if you happen to be in the Ipswitch area next year when it runs, I can heartily recommend coming along.

I’ve been to so few events in the last two years. It’s the first gig I’ve had since leaving my old life behind, and this marks the turning of a corner of me, with events lined up at a rate of one a month, for the coming months, and potentially at a higher frequency beyond then. I’ve missed being on stage, connecting with people, sharing inspiration in this way. I’ll admit that until I stood up this afternoon, I had no idea if I still could. I can. People laughed. It was a good sort of afternoon. Time to fall over now.

All kudos to Robin Herne for running such a fab day.

Bards to sing their praises

One of the functions of historical bards was to sing the praises of heroes, great leaders and other worthy figures. To be ennobled in verse by a bard was to have a place in history, and when you’ve got a culture that doesn’t leave a written record, being part of the oral tradition is the only way of being remembered.

However, praise does not have to be the just the business of epic poetry, and doesn’t have to just be about war heroes. It’s something that any of us can choose as an aspect of daily practice. It’s a way of integrating your Druidry into ‘normal’ life, you can see it as part of your service, and it has a lot of powerful effects.

From an individual perspective, the giving of praise is currently seen as a way of developing your self-assertive skills and therefore can help raise self esteem. Giving praise is one of the easiest kinds of opinion to offer – let’s face it, very few people are going to reject praise or give you a hard time for praising them, so if self assertion is a difficult issue for you, praise is a safe way in. There’s also the fact that it feels good. We don’t have a culture that praises, so it may feel a bit odd at first, but it’s such an inherently lovely thing to be doing.

Having work recognised is the most tremendous morale boost. That’s as true for artists as it is for the person who just washed the kitchen floor. Recognition gives a sense of self worth, a feel-good reward for the effort made. Knowing the work had a value to someone else makes it easier to keep working. Knowing your efforts are recognised saves you from feeling taking for granted. It’s all good. While money is frequently an issue for people who live by their creativity, it’s not the be all and end all. A few words of encouragement, a round of applause, helps keep a person going. If you can’t pay your bard for their efforts, let them know you enjoyed what they did.

It’s easy to take things, and people for granted. Why thank the person who was just doing the job they were paid for? Why honour the person who was doing what any decent person should be expected to do, in the circumstances? Because it isn’t always as easy as it may look from the outside. Just because there is money doesn’t mean recognising the value doesn’t matter. A word of thanks, praise or appreciation can turn drudgery into something meaningful.

When it comes to children, there are learning implications around praise. The child who is only ever told off and criticised will have low self esteem, little confidence in their abilities and may come to think there’s no point even trying. The child who is praised for their efforts and progress feels good about learning, is motivated to learn, consolidates their successes and is likely to do better. More carrot, less stick.

There are also implications for relationships. Giving praise to those around you is a simple way of reinforcing bonds, be those of family, community, work colleagues, or amorous in nature. Praise shows appreciation, it shows that you value and enjoy those around you. This in turn improves their sense of self, their morale, their enjoyment of life, and probably increases their positive feelings towards you. Once a culture of praise is established, you are more likely to receive praise in return, which is a bonus.

There are many things it’s easy to be stingy with, without even noticing it. Praise is one of those. Being generous with praise is incredibly powerful though. Voice your gratitude. Honour those who take care of you. In praising what is good, you shift your focus towards the good things and away from the less good things. It’s win all round.

I’d like to round off this blog by praising a few people publically. Dalia Craig, my editor, who goes far above and beyond the call of duty on a regular basis, makes words look beautiful on the page, and is endlessly patient with my foibles. I would like to praise Robin Herne, running this weekend’s Pooka’s Pageant (to raise money for a Hare charity) and kindly giving me some performance space as I come out of hermitdom. Running events is hard work, takes considerable skill, a lot of nerve and vision. Wendy Stokes running the Lightworker’s Hub, always supportive, nurturing, generous with her experience and wisdom.

There are many more who deserve public acts of gratitude. I shall catch up with them where opportunities permit.

And thank you, to all of you who leave insightful, inspiring, challenging, provocative and enlightening comments here (especially Alex, who hardly misses a day). Much appreciated.

The importance of messing it up

Success is not a great teacher. Oh, it’s very pleasing when everything goes smoothly and well. It can be a great sop to self esteem. The ritual that runs perfectly. The project that finishes without hiccup or error. That kind of success can encourage us to feel perhaps more competent and knowledgeable than we really are. Mostly that’s not a problem, although it can mean when we get into trouble, we’re even less prepared for it. It’s not always obvious with success as to why, exactly, it went right. Often, we take success at face value, not analysing why we got it. Failures tend to make us think more. It’s important to consider both.

Mistakes invite consideration. We tend to want to know where it went wrong or why it fell over, and from this, we learn. We also learn about what matters to us. It’s very hard to do anything if you aren’t prepared to risk error. If you don’t have the space to mess up now and then, how can you move out of you comfort zone? If you aren’t allowed, by yourself or others, to be wrong once in a while, or to make mistakes, then where is the scope for growth? I think culturally we push too hard, we don’t give people enough learning spaces, we don’t accept fallibility enough. It’s not just human to make mistakes, it is necessary.

I gather from what psychology I’ve studied that we have a locus of responsibility that we attribute things to in any given situation. Some people view themselves as all powerful, some as entirely powerless. An event happens, and we see the win as entirely of our making, or as pure luck. We get knocked down by life, and we see it as our fault, or as inexplicable misfortune. Of course you can pick and mix. The person able to see every success as proof of their own skill, genius and entitlement, and every setback as pure fluke, will be very happy in themselves, although not well connected to the rest of reality. The person who sees every success as just luck and every failure as deserved will spend their days miserable, and also will be out of touch with reality. In practice all that comes to us, for good and ill, will be a mix of things of our making, and not of our making. Anyone who wants a meaningful relationship with reality needs a nuanced approach to this, not an assumption.

How we understand our mistakes is just as important as what we do with them. If it’s never your fault, then you will never bother to learn or try to change. If you are unassailably perfect, then you have to look for reasons outside, the external locus of responsibility an essential to maintaining your illusions. And equally, if you don’t think you are capable of being better, or getting it right, or you believe the gods are going to punish you no matter what you do then there’s still no reason to bother. Failure does not have to be viewed as punishment or divine judgement. It doesn’t have to be viewed as a one shot deal, either. Most mistakes can be done over. So long as nobody died, it’s usually not insurmountable. Messing up once does not mean it’s pointless to try again. It takes courage to try again, to risk further humiliations, further hard lessons about the limits of our understanding and ability. The person who doesn’t risk those blows will never be more than they currently are. They won’t let themselves.

In Druidry this matters a great deal. Those new to ritual need the opportunity to make mistakes, to fluff lines, forget running orders and make all the errors of learners. If there’s no humiliation, no punishment, just encouragement, then there is room to grow. And for anyone leading, there needs to be a sense that perfection is not called for. Perfection in ritual is not possible, the person who has to guard against mistakes will never be as open to the awen, or the flow of the ritual. Fear of failure cuts you off from so many things. In the Bard path, room to mess up is vital. That first, nervous public performance will not be as good as you wanted it to be. They never are. Voices wobble, sweating fingers slide on strings, chords are stumbled over, words forgotten. The two seconds of pause between verses will be an eternity of hell your audience probably doesn’t even notice. But if at this point you say ‘I am a failure’ you’ll not do it again. All the great bards who share their skills at rituals started out the same way, and all of them, at some point, will have messed up in public. It is an unavoidable, and necessary part of the path.

Messing up keeps us human. It keeps us realistic about our less than godlike natures. The fear of messing up keeps us working, practicing, striving. The willingness to mess up keeps us experimenting, creating, and testing the boundaries.

What do Druids sing?

This question had a great deal to do with me self identifying as a druid in the first place. I was asked at a folk club to sing ‘one of my druidy songs’ had no idea what it meant, and  started asking questions. Up until then I’d been just pagan. So, this week Silverbear asked in the comments about singing, and I figured it’s a good topic and worth a poke.

There isn’t a vast body of Druid songs out there to draw on. We have a few truly awesome performers, Damh the Bard http://damh.wordpress.com/ being the songwriter whose work I am most familiar with. I’ve learned a lot of Druid thinking from that man! Plenty of us look to the folk tradition (John Barleycorned to death once more) but that’s not an answer for everyone. Here are some ideas about what to look for in a song, because it is entirely possible to steal from a great many places in order to source good material to sing in ritual or as an expression of your Druidry.

 

1)      It has to be viable to perform the song with the gear you have in the kinds of spaces you use. Mostly this means unplugged and with whatever you can play or whoever you can talk into helping you out. Some songs can be stripped down to just words and tune and work fine, others fall apart. With practice it gets easier to spot which is which, expect to have a few fails as part of the learning process.

2)      It needs to be something you are technically capable of pulling off under pressure. I’m all for taking on challenges, but for live performance, comfy is good. Outside, your voice doesn’t carry as well, the need for increased volume will probably compromise your range, and your fingers may shake. Budget for this.

3)      Songs about the seasons are good, or that reflect for you some essence of a season. Sting’s Fields of Gold (which strips down to guitar and voice with no trouble) is, for example, a really lovely Lugnasadh song. There’s many a lusty rock ballad that makes sense at Beltain and many a mournful goth thing that could be rolled out for Samhain, for example.

4)      Story songs are good. There’s only so much ooh ah love ya baby material that any one circle can take, but a song with a narrative, can be made to work. It is, for example, entirely possible to sing Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell unaccompanied, and it’s a great story (hard on the voice though, with reference to point 2). Narrative songs are always a plus.

5)      Songs of protest are powerful. For events like Peace One Day, anti war songs are a must. But there are many songs, in many genres that are full of protest. Killing in the Name of is unlikely to work unplugged, but you can get some John Lennon in there, and dig out all those sixties peace love and freedom songs.

6)      Songs that mean something to you. If you find a song meaningful, resonant, important then you’ll sing it that way, and often that just works.  Don’t be afraid to try it.

7)      Accidental deity songs. Just sometimes, taken out of context and sung by a pagan, some of the love songs in the world can start to sound more like hymns of praise to a deity. Experiment, see what speaks to you.

8)      Write your own. This is always good, because it comes from your heart.

 

My only ‘don’t’ is, don’t nick things off the Christians and re-write the words. It’s a bit sad and usually awkward and mostly doesn’t work.