Nimue Brown's Blog, page 19

Asking for help

(Nimue)

I’ve got a project on the go, and at the time of writing this blog post I am not confident that it’s going to work. I wrote last week about Hopeless Sinners so you might have read that already and know what’s going on. If you are able to share that post anywhere on the internet I would be profoundly grateful.

These days a lot of social media sites are set up to actively suppress links – especially kickstarter links. It has become incredibly difficult getting projects in front of people. I’ve been asking friends for help, because it’s the only way. Please know that if you like, share, or comment on anyone’s post about a crowdfunding project, a new book or anything like that you are helping them with visibility and keeping them going. It’s a massively kind and useful thing to do. On sites that use algorithms to decide who sees what, interactions are what makes all the difference.

The vast majority of creative people are struggling. We can’t get our work seen, and we don’t reliably get paid fairly for it when people do see it. What that means is that you, as an individual, are much more powerful and important than you may have realised. Anything that you do to support the creative people you care about is making a real difference to them.

Right now I could really do with some help. If you are able to share the kickstarter link somewhere, or leave me a like or comment on the Hopeless, Maine Facebook page, or anything else of that ilk, I would deeply appreciate it. Thank you. I’m also sharing this on Twitter, Bluesky, Mastadon, Instagram and Substack – if you are on any of those sites, I’m always delighted to connect with people.

Forgiving each other

(Nimue)

I’ve committed to exploring the idea of forgiveness. The first post about it is here. Self forgiveness is an essential thing. None of us are perfect, all of us make mistakes. We can’t learn or grow without giving ourselves room to make mistakes in the first place.

Once you’ve made a mistake, and dealt with it as best you can, self forgiveness needs to enter the mix. If we insist on carrying blame and shame, it can slow us down and make us afraid to act. Failure to act does not let us off the hook – inaction and silence can be deeply harmful things. Refusal to learn, change, heal or grow can make us incredibly toxic. We need to be able to forgive ourselves for being human so that we can keep moving and improving. Or at least making new and different mistakes!

If you don’t forgive yourself, you might instead take other defensive measures. People who cannot hear they have messed up end up gaslighting themselves and the people around them in order to feel comfortable. That way lies narcissism. The person who can acknowledge their flaws and issues can face them honourably. Accepting our imperfection and our failings gives us the scope to be better people.

 A little self kindness makes it easier for people to tell us when we aren’t doing what they need. Imagine a person who responds to criticism with a tirade of self abuse, maybe shouting at themselves, falling into deep despair and otherwise centring their own discomfort with the criticism. How can you bring an issue to that person, when you know they might have a massive and dangerous meltdown? It can so easily become a way of silencing criticism, whether that’s the intention or not.

Forgiveness is key to how we allow each other to be human. We’re all of us getting things wrong all of the time – that’s intrinsic to being alive. No one should have t be desperately anxious or hypervigilant around trying to be super-humanly perfect. Asking too much of someone can be really harmful – blame and punishment for small mistakes can be abuse tactics. When that comes from places of self-judgement, it is still harmful to others. Being kind to each other is very difficult without also being kind to ourselves.

Forgive the small things. Forgive the honest mistakes, and the people who tried and couldn’t manage. Forgive the people who are trying their best and giving what they can and who want to learn and do better. Forgive the people who care about harm they have inadvertently caused. And when you are on the wrong side of it, ask for forgiveness, try to learn how to do better and get in there for the restorative justice that allows everyone to move on. Forgive in yourself the things you would have no trouble forgiving in others.

Honouring your muse

(Nimue)

Whether you consider inspiration to be something sacred, or not, how you treat it matters. When you walk the bard path, honouring your inspiration is an important part of the process. That also means honouring the sources of your inspiration.

We all have bills to pay and we all have to eat. Honouring your inspiration doesn’t mean you have to suffer or work in unsustainable ways. It does however raise questions about what your work is for, and what it serves.

If you betray your inspiration, you will damage your relationship with it. If inspiration is something you hold sacred, then the failure to treat it with respect is a kind of sacrilege. If you only think about it as something happening within you, then failing to respect the process will make it less available to you.

It’s important to feed your inspiration and nurture it. Be aware of what inspires you in the first place, and honour that, don’t take it for granted, exploit it, or use it unreasonably. Don’t deploy your inspiration for the sake of things you don’t believe in, or that are at odds with your values. If you feel that your creativity is being exploited, resist that and protect what is precious within you.

Creativity involves relationships. Between creator and audience, the creator and their tools, the creator and the ground beneath them. Everything we do happens n a context – social, physical and so forth. It is important that we know what is supporting us, whose giant shoulders we are standing on, and what keeps us going. Being respectful to all of that is part of what makes you a bard rather than simply someone trying to make money out of their ideas.

For me, inspiration is sacred, and the flow of it is intrinsically magical. I honour where that takes me, and I take it seriously. It’s important to me to acknowledge the people who inspire me and enable me to create. Creating feels like a sacred contract to me – and that’s down to the pledges I made when I initiated as a bard. I have promised to use my inspiration for the good of people and planet, as best I can. I’ve made other promises along the way about how to do that. When unexpected inspiration comes to me, I honour it by giving it form.

How your honour you muse, your awen, your flow of inspiration, will be entirely personal. What inspiration demands of you will be your alone. If you feel like you have an honourable relationship with your own creativity, then you’re doing fine. If the idea of honouring the source feels uneasy, take the time to ask why, and whether there is something you need to change. Invite your inspiration to guide you, and accept what it brings – that’s the essence of the path.

Steampunk Druid

(Nimue)

Recently, I had the lovely opportunity to chat with Rachel Patterson for the Moon Books podcast.

Moon Books have published a lot of my Pagan non-fiction. You can find my books here – https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/authors/nimue-brown The photo on the thumbnail below is startling old – from 2011 I think, although I’ve not changed a vast amount since then.

We talk about some of my books, about Druidry, steampunk, the origins of the Secret Order of Steampunk Druids (not a secret, not orderly).

I met Rachel in person earlier this year at the Pagan Tribal Gathering. I’ve known her online for more than a decade. She’s a lovely soul, who writes primarily on Kitchen Witchcraft. If you aren’t familiar with her work, she’s great for gentle introductions to all manner of subjects, as well as the kitchen witchery and has a Pagan Portal on Sulis coming out this month – which I am going to read and review as soon as I can (which might not be for a few weeks given how ridiculously busy things are at the moment).

Autumn windfalls

(Nimue)

We’re shifting towards autumn in my corner of the UK. Mostly the trees are still green, but there are other colours creeping in here and there. Elderberries are ripening, along with other fruits. I recently picked up a handful of windfall crab apples and used them to make the topping for a cheesecake. This might be my new autumn thing.

I’m careful about what I bring home. Humans put far too much pressure on the wild world as it is, without adding to that. As a Pagan I want to connect with the seasons and with the wild world, but my Paganism also calls for care and respect.

Windfalls are good for bringing home. Especially the windfalls that drop on paths and roads, and would be destroyed quickly enough if left in place. I try to make sure that what I gather in the way of autumn bounty does very little harm, and often I return things later in the year anyway. If I haven’t eaten them.

There’s a tension here. Foraging, knowing the wild things, interacting with them and eating them all helps us connect to the wild world. We need to do that, and doing it should lead us to reducing our impact on the world and becoming better citizens of the Earth. At the same time, if too many of us do this in one place, we’ll harm the ecosystems around us by taking too much. It’s important to connect, and vital not to do things in the name of connection that cause damage.

I made one jar of blackberry jam this summer. I made quite a lot of teas from things that were abundant – nettle and plantain especially.  I find something very powerful in gathering a handful of wild, windfall apples, cooking them and eating them. This need for connection is so human, so important, but we have to find measured and unobtrusive ways of doing it.

Druidry and forgiveness

(Nimue)

Many spiritual paths embrace the concept of forgiveness as something we should practice. Ancient Druidry comes from a heroic culture where – based on the stories that have come down to us – vengeance would have been more likely seen as a virtue than forgiveness. Modern Druidry certainly has more room for the idea than our ancestors did, and we certainly aren’t under any pressure to forgive if we don’t want to.

In recent weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness. It’s not been something I’ve explored in earnest before. There are things I have endured that I have no intention of forgiving – because that’s part of how I now hold the boundaries I need. However, forgiveness is a complex, multi-faceted thing. Anger is useful for protection, but I don’t want to end up carrying bitterness, resentment or anything else that might get in my way. I do not want my life poisoned by experiences I had no real control over.

This is a big topic, so I’m probably going to revisit it a few times as I pick through the various issues and implications.

My longstanding issue with forgiveness is that it can look a lot like letting someone off the hook. That in turn can enable future harm. Holding people to account is really important. I believe in community responsibility, and I am conscious that where there is abuse there is also often complicity. Bullies usually have enablers. Sometimes that’s active, sometimes it’s just a passive ignoring of the problem or pretending it isn’t there. Active forgiveness does at least require acknowledging the problem for a while, but it can be an enabling move.

At the same time, we’re all flawed, messy humans. We all make mistakes, often innocently. I think most of us mostly act based on what we think are good ideas, but we can get that horribly wrong in all kinds of ways. We need to be able to forgive ourselves, and each other, for our flaws and failings, our cock ups and bad ideas.

I think that where someone has really got things wrong – including deliberate cruelty – if there is genuine remorse and a true desire to repair the harm and do something restorative, then forgiveness is appropriate. I think people who want to improve should have the opportunity to try.

The people who stick with toxic behaviour are often themselves wounded and damaged. That wounding can also look a lot like entitlement – there’s an argument for saying that being brought up to believe you are worth more than other people and entitled to things at their expense is a damaging experience. How much compassion does that merit? Is there any point in forgiveness for a person who refuses to learn, or grow or shoulder responsibility? I don’t have any broad answers to this but the question remains important.

What do we forgive, and when and why? Forgiveness and power are clearly related to each other. We collectively forgive the deliberate crimes of the powerful, and punish the mistakes of those who have least power. Forgiveness isn’t just a spiritual issue, it’s a political one as well.

Questions of population size

(Nimue)

I am in favour of reducing the number of humans on the planet. I also feel strongly about doing that without violence, without eugenics, or any other kind of oppressive cruelty. I think that’s all entirely feasible and that mostly what we ned to do is make it easier for people who do not want children, or as many children, to be in control of their family sizes.

It’s not easy to be sterilized, most places. (If you know anywhere with a better attitude to this, do please say.) It can be hard to do this when you are young, in the UK if you are female then getting it done when you don’t have a long term partner is hard (what, even?) it’s hard if you haven’t got children already.

If you have an intervention so that you cannot have children and then later regret it, this will not ruin your life. It’s ok to make mistakes and have regrets, and it’s not like having children is the only good or meaningful thing you could ever do. Why are we so collectively stuck on the idea that we have to protect people from making this mistake? Or that it will later seem like a mistake? Why are we so unwilling to accept the idea that some people really don’t want children and really do know this about themselves?

If you have a child you don’t want, in circumstances that don’t work, where you can’t afford it… that can ruin your life, condemning you to poverty, misery and difficulty. Not only that, you can ruin the other parent’s life, and you can create a life of misery for the child. Ruining your life options certainly exist, along with the scope for causing some other person serious harm or distress. Why don’t we take this more seriously?

Reducing the size of the human population would reduce the pressure we put on the planet. However, what we most need to reduce is the billionaire population, as they use a hugely disproportionate amount of resources and are the cause of a great deal that is wrong in the world. That kind of wealth depends on exploitation, and the more people you have to exploit, the more profit you can make. Little wonder, then, that the systems we have favour reproduction.

Being able to control our family sizes, and our populations is actually about valuing human life. It’s about not being a disposable commodity here to benefit the few. It’s about raising wanted, cherished children we are able to support and nurture. It’s about self determination, body autonomy and social justice.

Hopeless Sinners

Tomorrow sees the launch of a kickstarter for the next Hopeless, Maine books in American hardcover editions.

For those of you who are new to all of this, Hopeless Maine is a gothic, steampunk sort of graphic novel series. It’s set on a haunted island full of magic, and is a tale about power, and the use of power, friendship and what it means to be magical. It’s also full of tentacles. It’s been called cosy cosmic horror, I’ve tended to refer to it as twisted whimsy. This is a graphic novel series that I wrote, and for which I did a lot of colouring. There are some spin-off novellas as well, and a wider community playing with the setting. This is a complete series, published in the UK by Sloth Comics. You can find out more about the project as a whole over here – https://hopeless-maine.co.uk/

The background colours on the cover above are my work – in pencil. The magical effects aren’t mine and were done digitally.

For people in the UK, paperback Sloth editions are easy to find online. Outland publishes hardbacks and is based in the US. If you haven’t got the first two hardbacks, these should be available through the kickstarter. You can sign up now -should you so wish – to get notifications.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hopelessmaine/hopeless-maine-1-3-sinners-a-graphic-novel-series

Here’s the Sloth edition of the same book – no cover art input from me on this one, but I was involved with colouring chapter covers and two page spreads.

Hopeless Maine 2 – Sinners Tom Brown

Health, life and commuting

(Nimue)

So many people spend large chunks of their life in slow traffic trying to get to their workplace. It’s stressful and miserable to be caught up in, wastes your time, pumps out pollution and CO2, costs money, wastes energy – there really isn’t much to recommend it. There are a number of things we could very easily do to remove this daily source of misery and in so doing, we’d put less pressure on the planet.

Four day working weeks would mean fewer people on the road on any given day, which would help greatly. It’s been established that when people work four days instead of five for the same money you get more out of them, not less, so it’s nothing but win.

Let people work from home more. A lot of jobs include things that you could do in your own at home, even if that was only a day or two in a month. Letting people work from home when it suits them can be really good for their health and morale, as well as helping to reduce needless traffic.

Better public transport that doesn’t cost much would greatly help. In many places in the UK, there isn’t anything at all.

Better support for walking and cycling – make it easier and safer and more people would feel able to do it. Young people walking and cycling to school would benefit from the activity and the school run is another heavy traffic point in the day. There are huge benefits to be had from walking and cycling, so that’s another plus.

Of course if we had universal basic income then we’d be able to eliminate some of the jobs that really serve no genuine purpose and that would likely help reduce commuter traffic, too.

Even more radically, if we considered work in terms of getting the job done rather than structuring them around hours spent/available, far fewer people would have to be anywhere by nine in the morning. We know that people in workplaces often aren’t working very efficiently, and don’t need to be there for the time they are contracted for. A different work culture would have a radical effect on when people travel to work, and how often they have to do it.

We could have cleaner air, more leisure time, less stress and happier lives if we weren’t so attached to the idea of the nine-five job and travelling to it in person. Some jobs you absolutely need to be in situ while doing them, but many don’t require that. For the people who have to travel, it would be far easier if there were fewer cars on the road, so they’d benefit too.

As is so often the way of it, we could have much nicer things. All we have to do is let go of habit, and things we think are normal, and be willing to look at what actually works and gets good results.

Imagining the Celtic Bards

(Nimue)

We don’t know a lot about what the ancient bards did, because it was an oral tradition. One of the things we know if that the praise of rulers and war leaders was very probably part of the mix. What we have written down mostly came later, but is indicative. In a warrior culture, it makes sense that bards are going to be praising warriors – we know the Vikings went in for that.

It doesn’t sit easily alongside the idea of Druids striding out onto battlefields to stop the fights.

Recently, my partner Keith picked up an anthology of classic Tamil poetry. These poems come from a heroic culture, where being a king meant being a warrior. Bards were very much there to praise the courage, fighting process and success of the kings who fed them. Encountering these poems has got me thinking about our ‘Celtic’ bards and the possible implications.

The thing about praise it that in praising you also define what is praiseworthy. That’s a huge amount of power. The Tamil bards didn’t just praise fighting skills. They talk a lot about generosity, feeding the hungry and treating bards well! This makes an interesting comparison with the troubadours who were interacting with mediaeval fighters and kings. The troubadours praised honour, mercy, love and dedication amongst other virtues. They helped foster the idea that being at the top of the feudal pile ought to be about more than just killing people.

We don’t know what the ancient bards sang and said to their leaders and warriors. But we do know that a role involving praising them does not neatly equate to a pro-war stance or the glorifying of killing. Or at least not just glorifying killing. There’s room to do a lot more alongside this, and to give those who would rule by force some moral guidance, and a sense of responsibility.

Most of us modern folk on the bard path won’t have to sing to kings for our supper. But we are stuck in a toxic capitalist system and obliged to work with tools that are problematic – the internet itself is a case in point. So perhaps these ideas are relevant to us, too. We can speak from inside these systems in ways that aim to improve, change or even dismantle the systems.