Fire in the head

I used to improvise and wing things a lot, in rituals, and musically. There was a time when I’d happily go out with a violin and play music I didn’t know, with strangers, and mostly get away with it. It takes a certain amount of nerve. I think you could do that from a place of arrogance or self confidence, but for me what mostly enable the winging of things, was a deep belief in the awen. I’d open my heart, and the words would come, or the notes, or whatever I needed creatively in the moment. It never failed me. Mostly I just experienced the inspiration as happening to me, a force rushing through me, and I never felt much ownership of the things I did.

Life changes and a loss of nerve have meant I’ve not been out winging it as much in the last few years. Hardly at all, in fact. I draw on inspiration to write, but that’s usually a slow and private process. If it doesn’t work, no one else will ever know. Winging it in public is totally exposed and vulnerable, any shortcomings made visible. It’s one thing to go out and feel that you’re balancing on a tightrope the awen holds steady, and quite another to feel like you can’t. Depression and anxiety are not aids to the flow of inspiration. They are serious blocks, and anxiety makes it hard to just go out there and do it and trust that you can.

I had some unexpected jamming in a pub with some guys about a month ago. That helped me feel like I could just leap in and do those improvised things again. Yesterday I really took the plunge. If you read the blog – here – about Intelligent Designing, I proposed to write limericks for anyone who shared either the blog or the link. I had quite a few link shares on facebook yesterday (thank you everyone who joined in) and was rapidly churning out silly limericks that included people’s names. Exposed enough to feel a bit edgy, hidden behind the computer enough to feel a bit safe.

So much of creativity is actually about trust. Trusting yourself that the skills are there and you can do it. Trusting the inspiration to flow. Trusting people not to bring over ripe fruit and throw it at you… It’s always a bit of a leap into the dark. It always feels a bit risky, and I realise that I’d become risk averse in a way that was restricting what I could do. I need to learn how to trust myself again, and how to trust the inspiration. Yesterday went well.

If you fancy having a play, pop the book link http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Designing-Amateurs-Nimue-Brown/dp/1780999526/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_pap?ie=UTF8&qid=1368694639&sr=8-1&keywords=intelligent+designing+for+amateurs on the site of your choice, and let me know – I’m on facebook, @brynneth_nimue, I’m on Google+ and linkedin and if you reblog to another wordpress one I can spot that. If in doubt poke me here or some other place…

Initiation or Dedication?

There are not enough teachers in any of the Pagan traditions to properly support in person all of those who wish to learn. The consequence is that most of us end up doing some, or all of our learning alone. For Druids, there are a number of Orders that provide distance learning and mentoring in a way the wider community recognises, which is very helpful. Still, to a large extent you have to manage your own path.

The issue of self-initiation most often comes up for Wiccans, where the idea of initiation is very much part of how one learns and progresses. Can a person initiate themselves? Many do, so arguably the answer has to be ‘yes’. I don’t feel it’s my place to invalidate anybody else’s choices. However, I do have my own doubts about how we can, from inside ourselves, take ourselves deliberately forward into new stages of awareness and being. Of course the lone learner is on a constant progression, can make huge and sudden breakthroughs and will experience life initiations too, but initiation within a tradition is a formal thing. To me, it’s all about a group of people recognising where you’re at, and offering you the keys to the door of the next bit.

I’ve run bardic initiations, as they are usually called, but in practice I didn’t feel like I was initiating anyone really. To be a bard takes a lot of individual work, and all I can do is lay out what it means and hold the door open a bit. People have to make their own way through. Increasingly the word that came to feature in the ritual was ‘dedication’.

A dedication is an offering of self, and an expression of intention. We can do that privately, before whatever powers we honour or we can do it in circle with our fellow Druids as witness. We can dedicate to each other in handfasting, in teacher/student bonds, in the fellowship of a grove and as parent to child. We might dedicate ourselves to living more greenly, to peace work, or sitting down and writing that book. The act of dedication focuses the mind on the chosen task, sanctifies it and, if done publically, gives you some people who will notice how you do. When it comes to getting people to study, and adopt greener ways of living, those dedications made in circle bind and empower in equal measure. Once you’ve said it, you’re honour bound to give it your best shot.

We all want recognition, and in spiritual terms being initiated to the next level is a bit like passing a test, or getting a reward. There’s kudos. Dedications can be more private, less dramatic affairs, but I think for Druidry they work well. We pick our own and make them when we are ready, holding responsibility for our own journey. Many people who step up to ‘initiate as a bard’ at big gatherings are not, as far as I have seen, in a place of completion that means they are initiated, they are at a place of starting out, needing the focus and recognition to commence the work. A dedication seems more appropriate at this stage. You don’t begin with initiation, you are initiated into the next stage when you are ready. You begin with dedication.

I don’t think this is just a semantic issue, it’s a pragmatic one too, having everything to do with how we see ourselves and how we see our traditions. Initiations have a lot to do with power and status. Dedications don’t have the same aura of formal structure to them, they are more personal, more flexible, and I think that makes them good Druidry.

Everyone has a book in them

There’s an idea that drives me a bit nuts. It has too much to do with the fact that most of us can read and write, and books are just a big pile of words, so of course anyone can do it. We don’t have a collective belief that we all have a fresco, symphony, ballet or opera in us. Or a really impressive bit of brain surgery just needing the right context to bring it out. This is in many ways a shame, who knows how many amazing things haven’t happened because the person who should have done it was bogged down in the idea of a book.

I cherish creativity, in all forms. I love the gorgeous photographs on facebook of things people have knitted and sewn, the craft items and artwork. Having dabbled enough in song writing to know I’m not terribly good at it, I am deeply impressed by people who can reliably get an idea down succinctly to a good tune. There are so many ways of being creative, but for some mysterious reason we’ve elevated the book as some kind of creative ideal. At the same time, from the business side, it’s one of the least lucrative things you can do. Write a song and busk with it and at the end of the day there will be some money in the hat. Not so with a book. If you have dreams of wealth and fame for writing, a novel is almost certainly not the answer. The money these days is in film, TV, and writing content for computer games. If you think that’s going to be too hard to get into, it’s not any worse than writing novels. Sure, the illusion of self publishing is that you will get a readership, but putting a book out there and getting people to read it is a whole other thing.

If you’re drawn at all to more bardic ways of working, then creating just for yourself isn’t going to be enough. The sharing of inspiration, and output is so much of what it’s all about. Making things that have nowhere to go is not a happy or rewarding process. It feels like something has aborted, and it feels wrong, and demoralising. Finding spaces to share creativity is actually a key part of the creative process. Short stories and storytelling often results in being able to get a thing into the world, where novels do not.

I’ve seen this from the outside too many times. People who wanted to write a book, and who didn’t know all the technical and business things that go with it, assuming it would be easier than the symphony or the ballet. It isn’t. Not being able to take the work forward cripples confidence and undermines inspiration, and a person who was full of creative energy can end up with very little. Frustration will do that to you.

Everyone has the capacity to create, and there are many different ways of doing it, all of them equally valid. Having been through this process with novels, I’ve ended up moving away to spend most of my time working on other things. The graphic novel are out there and doing well – there is more of a market for them, for a start. I’ve found a deep love of writing non-fiction work, which came as a total surprise to me. Far more of my creative energy goes into non-fiction work these days, and I’m determined to get back into dancing and singing. Novels are nice, and when I find a good one, I enjoy it, but they aren’t the pinnacle of creative achievement, and it’s not worth getting too focused on them. What you might have in you is the next cult TV hit, the next Ben Ten, the next pant wittingly funny piece of stand-up comedy.

If, after all of that you’re thinking, no, I really must write a novel, it is the only thing that makes sense then, yes. You may well have a novel in there trying to get out, and I wish you much joy of it.

Free Book!

Yesterday I managed to put together the new poetry anthology. It’s an overtly Bardic/Druidy bit of work, unshockingy, and it’s now on the books page as a free pdf download. http://druidlife.wordpress.com/books/ If you missed the first freebie book, that’s also on there – Lost Bards and Dreamers, so do pick up both if you haven’t.

There isn’t a huge paying market for poetry. I think there may be a number of reasons for this – the book market in general isn’t thriving, and poetry was always at the quiet end anyway, until you get back to the likes of Byron and Tennyson who apparently could shift copies. I think this is a bit self perpetuating – people don’t read poetry because aside from the old classics, it mostly isn’t there to buy in the first place, it isn’t much talked about either. ‘Poetry’ so often means the scribbling of angst laden teens, or the trite rhyming glops you get in greetings cards. Neither of those tend to advertise poetry as a thing you might want to engage with. I had a lot of good feedback about the first collection, so am offering this one in the same way, as an expression of my Druidry, freely shared.

What I’m inviting you to do is to own (electronically) and read a poetry collection. For free. Just to see how you get on. I figure if more poetry gets read, then the odds of poetry becoming something people will pay money for, increases.

Beyond the Map was created over about three years of enormous upheaval in my life, as my first marriage broke down entirely, my relationship with Tom went from impossible dream to tangible reality, I returned to the landscape of my childhood… so many things changed for me. I’ve been through a total reimagining of self. Several of the journeys involved in the collection I’m going to talk about over the next couple of days, there being enough to say to make individual blog posts worthwhile.
Poetry is an amazing focus for so many things. Fiona Tinker has written a fabulous book on how to use it for pathworking. Poetry as protest, as evocation, or curse are also considerations. The poetry teacher who most influenced me, Dave Ashbee, used to say that it’s not enough to bleed onto the page, you have to scrape it up and turn it into something. Out of pain can come incredible beauty. Out of suffering comes meaning and insight, and poetry can crystallize these things into the clearest, most intense forms.

On the poetry side, I have varied influences. E e cummings and Mary Oliver, the metaphysical poets, especially George Herbert’s religious work. Blake, a whole host of strange, impressionist poets from 20th century America, read in ones and twos, startling and bright. Last but by no means least, Kevan Manwaring and Robin Herne, who personify the modern Bard tradition for me, and whose writing I love.

Cover art is the work of my lovely Tom, and represents a crane. Not so many years ago I was singing Damh the bard’s song with the chorus ‘The crane the wolf, the bear and the boar no longer dwell upon these shores…’ the boar are back, and the reintroduction of cranes has been a huge source of hope and inspiration for me. All things can change.
There’s a paper version if you do have the urge to buy a hardcopy, along with Lost Bards and Dreamers http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/NimueBrown

New Awe Writing Initiative

This is a shoutout for a project that really caught my imagination. There are very few houses out there publishing poetry and very few decent opportunities for new poets to share their words in meaningful ways. I am also very happy to be sharing a call for work that wants new, surprising things.

NAWI is a project designed to provide a platform for original new voices, writing in English anywhere in the world. We are keen to promote writing that dazzles and inspires – writing that moves and motivates, be it poetry, prose fiction, life-writing or essay … virtually any written form you can think of – as long as it makes us go ‘Wow!’ We want work which makes the reader look at the familiar in an unfamiliar way; that makes us appreciate the world we live in, who we are, and what we can be. The poems can be a sequence; and the prose certainly needs to be complete (not a fragment). Both needs to unpublished and original. This will be collected into an (which could become an annual initiative if it works). NAWI opens 21 December 2012 and closes June 21 2013. The anthology will be published late October 2013, to celebrate (a special showcase will be arranged). Contributors will be invited to perform at a launch celebration in Stroud, England (and possibly other launch events). Authors who really impress us might be asked to develop a proposal for a single- author project at a later date. Entry to the anthology will not guarantee publication. The judges’ (3 published authors/creative writing teachers, TBA) decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. We are hoping to present a cross-section of voices, styles and genres. The entry has to be in UK English, either 3 poems (up to 100 lines); or between 1000-3000 words, unpublished, and sent with title, author, address and a 50 word biography to: NAWI, 78 Daisybank, Bisley Rd, Stroud, Glos, GL5 1HG, along with a £10 reading fee (either a cheque made payable to ‘Awen Publications’ or Paypal Transaction ID); and an SAE if you want the work returned. Shortlisted winners will be notified by 1 August 2013. Authors will retain copyright of their work, but will allow their work to be used to promote the anthology. Contributors will receive a complimentary copy, and can purchase further copies at 50%. Their profile will be added to the Awen site. Profits will go towards future NAWI anthologies. Editorial preference will be given to previously unpublished writers (of merit); to daring, new voices, rather than well-established ones.

Follow link here http://www.awenpublications.co.uk/new_awe.html

(If you have a good thing that needs more visibility, feel free to contact me, I’m always happy to give blog space to good stuff, and if relevant will also forward it to egroups or contacts. I want there to be more good stuff, I am dedicating to stepping up in any way I can, to help raise awareness, build audiences for other people, build a market for work with soul and integrity.)

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.

Author Interview: Aaron Dennis

I found author Aaron Dennis as a consequence of asking around online for places to promote my own work, and as we got talking it became apparent he’s a very interesting chap, so I grabbed him for an interview here…

Nimue: What brought you to writing about the paranormal?

Aaron: My staple is actually Science Fiction but I include quite a bit of spiritual growth in both my characters and their universe. Naturally, the spiritual side in me needed a release once I started writing and that’s where Shadowman came from. I can’t really pinpoint where it all started but I was always drawn to spiritual growth and development. I started with martial arts and read about Tai Chi Chuan when I was about 12. From there I moved on to Buddhism and then Taoism, maybe it was because of listening to Bruce Lee speak on TV or from reading his books, but I eventually moved on to other areas. Eventually, I found myself reading the entire works of Carlos Castaneda, that was at age 21. His stories of his experiences with the Yaqui shaman really sparked something inside me. Once I started writing, only about a year and half ago, I knew I had to implement some of my beliefs, if only loosely. Then Shadowman sort of presented itself to me and I started it as a short story. As the character began to grow and develop his own spiritual powers, the stories kept coming. So the culmination was a novella with four shorts comprised of the protagonist’s dealings with the otherside, or a world where spirits reside.

With Castaneda’s works having such a huge impact on my life, I had no alternative but to incorporate a small fraction of my experiences into my stories, but then, that’s what makes my descriptions and conflicts feel so real. I’m not trying to teach anyone a lesson on proper living in my books but that doesn’t mean my characters shouldn’t learn.

Nimue: From where I’m sitting, that sounds a lot like how the bardic tradition works for many of us! Are there any specific shamanic traditions that you’re drawn to?

Aaron: Dreaming definitely. I started when I was a kid with dreams of events that came to pass, mostly things at school like assemblies that weren’t announced previously. Eventually, I started waking up in what I thought was a catatonic state. Turns out it was just astral projection, so I took an 8-week online course where I developed quite a bit. From there I took to lucid dreaming and finally total control over dreams Most of it has fallen to the wayside with my ever busy life. That, coupled with a great lack of sleep in general, has put a damper on my practices but most of my stories are derived from my dreams. If not the entire story, at least several chapters/events. I would like to, at some point in my life, design a room devoted to dreaming practices and subsequently, practice every day. Maybe my books will take off and I’ll be able to afford it. Apart from dreaming, I’ve grown indifferent towards life in general. Not to say I am depressed, far from it, I just accept everything as an inevitable guiding hand towards an unseen end I have no control over, you’ll see some of that spill over into my stories in one form or another.

Nimue: How do you view the dream world? As an inner state, another reality, something else?

Aaron: Originally, I figured it was an alternate state of reality, a place where the mind experimented with itself through some kind of link with the universe. After becoming acquainted with astral projection and lucid dreaming, I thought it was more like a training ground wherein I could learn about the universe by crossing a threshold into another dimension. Perhaps a dimension where beings that have no physical body exist. Once I learned about “sorcery” through Carlos Castaneda’s books I came to understand that every reality, at all given times, is just the solidification of the “assemblage point’ on a particular band of energetic fibers and that a “dream” is a new position of the assemblage point. A lucid dream is a more stable position wherein the assemblage point does not shift about the bands of energy, which comprise our “spirit” or energy body and astral projection is the actualization of moving in the world using only the energy body. This implies that when we are in our “ordinary” state of reality, we are in fact all “dreaming” together because all of our assemblage points are on a particular spot, or common spot, where we all interact. In part, this is why I became indifferent. I’m no more awake or asleep than when I am having a dream. Instead I’m only more “sober”, or rather, have my assemblage point on an accustomed position in the energy body where it does not shift erratically. Through rigorous practice, I became able to follow certain steps in order to achieve that same stability in dreams, or through dreaming. A normal dream, I believe, is just an erratic shifting of the assemblage point but we can solidify its position and attain a state of dreaming, which is to say, actively living in a complete state of alternate reality. This can be somewhat confusing due to the fact that when dealing with this new reality, we have no inventory, or no analogy for comparison, or no compass to guide us, the way a toddler has no real compass to guide him/her through the “real” world. If we practice, we can find a point of origin and function in alternate realities. Scientifically speaking, this crosses the border in to string theory, or M theory, where several membranes of reality can be accessed, all of which are complete and total realities where we all exist every day. We just don’t realize it. I’ve been at this about 7 years now and have not been practicing the way I should be but my “every day” life has to be treated as the only reality, otherwise I’d be insane and unable to accomplish even the smallest feats. Why would I worry about paying bills if this is all just a dream anyway? So I pretend that my waking life is the only real one. Fortunately, my other lives, or realities, supply me with an infinite amount of experiences, which I then translate into stories. This is why my books are so awesome. *winks*. If I may add, there was an episode of Star Trek TNG where Picard went into a dreamworld and lived an entire lifespan. When he returned to his normal reality, he had all those experiences. I too have lived complete and total lives in dreams and treat those dreams as truths.

Nimue: Tell us about your books?

My first real book was Shadowman, which started off as one short story that everybody seemed to like. I finished it around June of 2011 and was looking to get it published in a magazine or something. At that time, I didn’t know the first thing about being an author or publishing and found a self publishing company. They touted that no one nowadays can get published, it’s all self publishing, it’s the only way to go, real authors get self published and panderers with lots of money hire literary agents and they only care about money. Well it seemed fine to me. Figured I’d go self pubb’d first and learn the ropes. First I needed to expound on the story. Since I left it open-ended, it wasn’t difficult.

Shadowman is four consecutive shorts revolving around an unnamed protagonist and the story is told from his perspective. It starts with our man hanging out in New Orleans, where he witnesses a murder. The dead man relinquishes some power and it possesses our protagonist, who we will call Adja. The young man wakes up in the house of an old Creole woman. She explains the practice of Voodoo to Adja and guides him throughout his journey.

As it turns out, the dead man was her grandson. Once he passed his power on to Adja, he became a Shadowman and took on her grandson’s quest, the quest to kill Snake, an evil Shadowman. With each story, Adja gains new abilities and some new friends. Together, they go in search of objects of power, spirits, and all kinds of crazy things. So my neat little book was finished. Keep in mind I only started writing a few months prior. Some 5 thousand dollars, I sold about 90 dollars worth of my book, it was poorly edited, poorly promoted, and too expensive.

So I took to writing some Science Fiction. I have had enough dreams involving aliens and their complete worlds and chose one piece in particular that I’ve always liked. When I was 12 I had a dream that I was partnered up with a team of aliens, who were looking for a second race of aliens in order to battle a third race of aliens. This became the premise of Lokians, which was not originally a series. The more I played with it, the more I was able to add pieces of other dreams. The Lokians became the insect-monsters, which once chased me around an enormous and empty lab of sorts. A mindless antagonist has its benefits. You know you can’t reason with it. just kill it. From another dream, I created the Thewls. Originally, their heads and faces were different but too difficult to describe, so we have our Skeleton-faced Thewls now. The travelers I took right out of the original dream, a blue, ape-like people frozen in ice. After the original ending, I re-read the story and decided I had much more to tell, so I changed it, and started the series, the first being Book1 Beyond the End of the World. I tried to get it published for months but no one was biting. Finally I found Eternal Press and they were kind enough to say Hey, it’s a little info dumpy at the beginning, So I said, No problem and moved a few things around.

The sequel, Book 2 They Lurk Among Us, will be released November 1st. It picks up a few months after our heroes curbed the Lokian threat. As the name implies, the main topic is aliens ensconced inside Earth government. For this novel, I used some of the well known alien races, such as the Grays, the big-headed gray guys, and the Reptilians, large, lizard-like aliens. This one, unlike the first, has much more suspense and intrigue. Beyond the End of the World is more of an action/thriller, so I tried to write it at a pace that was nearly overwhelming. They Lurk Among Us is provided from many perspectives, which was a challenge, but I think I nailed it. There are so many things going on all at once, and everyone is slowly moving towards a conflict, so I thought a different perspective from chapter to chapter was interesting. We’ll see how people like it.

Finally, I’m working on the third Lokians novel, Book 3 For War and Glory. This is not a trilogy but I will take a pause for the cause once the third one is done to work on some other projects. One of these is a full-length novel based on one of my own shorts, Expedition, available at smashwords.

Nimue: Aaaaand point me at some websites

Aaron: Forgot to add, I have since cancelled my POD contract for Shadowman and it is now available through Damnation Books. At any rate, thanks for everything and point people to my website. Everything is available there. http://www.dennisauthor.com  this was fun

http://sciencefictionwriters.wikia.com

Find me on Twitter @authaarondennis
http://towriteawrong.blogspot.com (where the interview with me is going!)

Thanks Aaron!

Love and inspiration

I’ve always been a creative person, not just in the writing, but in any aspect of my life where I could figure out how to apply it. My talents vary, mind – I can only do abstract art, not things that look like things. I’m a mediocre sort of dancer, but my cooking is pretty decent and I can sing a few songs… For me, love and inspiration have always run close together. I’m not sure there’s any way to tell them apart sometimes.

I’ve never found it hard to love, I’m an inherently emotional entity, I love easily and with considerable intensity. Where I am inspired, I love, and where I feel love, I am inspired and round it all goes. That said, I feel a profound language fail around the whole topic. The Greeks had different words for different kinds of love, and this would be useful. All too often I find myself wanting to be able to say ‘I love you’ to people without the connotation of ‘I would like to get in your pants’. I worry that I will say the one thing and people will hear the other. Not least because I’ve got that bit of my life all covered and am not looking.

The trouble with being hugely inspired and emotionally affected by people, is the desire to mention it. If someone brings a rush of awen into my life, and I create as a consequence, I want to be able to say not only what I did, but what it means to me. It’s also part of the desire to praise – people who do things, inspire me. People with talents of their own, wonderful ideas, people who undertake heroic acts of service – this kind of thing fills me with emotion, awen, love. I want to praise and cheer anyone doing such things.

And I fear, always, sounding like the drunk person at the end of the party who lurches around near the toilet, grabbing folk who are desperate to pee and saying ‘you know I really love you’. I also fear frightening people off. In my early days, I cocked this one up badly, and repeatedly. Not least because I had no idea how to tell between the awen rush and being in love. As commented before, there’s not always a lot in it, but I can awen-rush over a lot more people than I can realistically sustain relationships with. Looking back, there were people I bothered, and I wish I’d handled it better. (If any of you are reading this and it sounds like you, it probably is, and I hope this at least helps make more sense of things.)

I did a lot of awen-crushes. It was only when I really seriously big time fell in love that it became possible to realise there was a difference between that which comes from inspiration and admiration, and true love. I still get the awen-crushes, but I have a better sense of what they are. I treasure them. People who inspire me are a wonder to be around and I’m blessed with some truly amazing folk in my life, and I love them dearly.

So if I do sidle up to you after a gig, or at a book signing, and use the ‘L’ word in a way that makes you do a double take, this will be why.

You know, I really love you.

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.