Nimue Brown's Blog, page 35

Econarrative

(Nimue, review)

Econarrative, by Arran Stibbe follows on from his book on ecolinguistics and the stories we live by. This is a book exploring the way in which stories impact on our relationship with the world. It ranges widely, taking in religion, science, advertising and fiction to look at how the mechanics of a story inform people’s thinking.

These are important considerations for anyone on the bard path. How do we talk about the living world? What can we do that would be helpful? What’s acting on us, and on the people around us? There’s a lot of material here to inspire and engage you.

While the author has gone to some effort to make the book as accessible as possible, it is quite a demanding read. It’s not impenetrable for the non-expert (me). If you aren’t in the habit of reading more academically orientated writing then expect to have to move slowly. This is a densely packed book with a lot of ideas in it. However, it has been written to be used by people who want to think about how they tell stories and what impact their words might have. This is a text for leaders, teachers and of course… bards and Druids. Although we aren’t the target audience it is absolutely relevant reading for anyone on this path.

Language is a powerful thing that impacts on us emotionally in ways we aren’t always conscious of. Skilfully used stories and ways of telling them can persuade us without even alerting us to the ways in which we are being persuaded. I was really glad to see adverts treated as a genre and analysed in this way – I have a lot of issues with the way adverts impact on us, especially the subtext in adverts and it’s great seeing someone take this on with the skills to thoroughly dismantle how it works.

I found this book hard work – but that’s not a complaint. It is a demanding read, and also a rewarding one and has given me a great deal to think about that I will certainly be taking into my own writing.

More on the publisher’s website https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/econarrative-9781350263147/

Becoming a bard

(Nimue)

Everyone should have the time and opportunity to be creative and to express themselves. The first step onto the bard path is to make time for your creative self. That means being creative on your own terms and in whatever ways speaks to you.

However, becoming a bard calls for more than this, and there are a number of things I think are necessary parts of the journey.

You have to be interested in things. It doesn’t really matter what enthuses you, but you need to be engaged with the world, and curious about it. Learning is part of being a Druid. The more we learn, the more we have to work with. To some extent you can just mine your own experiences for raw material, but that will only take you so far. The more of the world you let in, the more there is to be creative with and inspired by.

There’s a lot to be said for using creativity to heal and grow. It’s a great way to process your own emotions and to make sense of yourself. However, I think one of the things the bard path calls for is considering an audience that isn’t you. When you create for someone else, it becomes a conversation, and an exchange. No two people read a book in exactly the same way. When your creativity impacts on someone else, it becomes more than whatever you originally made.

It’s good to ask what others might need from your work. What good can you do? What can you share that would uplift, inform or inspire other people? These are very powerful things to do.

Money is not part of this equation. You are not invalidated as a bard if someone pays you for your work. Spirituality is not defined by an absence of payment, and you do not have to create as a form of sacrifice or service if that doesn’t work for you. Equally, the value of your bardic work is not measured in cash, and your economic success is not a measure of how you impact as a bard.

This is a process and a journey – there is no end point, no finish line. It’s a way of life, a way of being. You can step off the path if it doesn’t suit you, and you can take breaks. You don’t have to be constantly focused on your bardic journey in order to consider yourself to be on the bardic path.

Living with fatigue

(Nimue)

With many people affected by long covid, there are now far more of us dealing with fatigue. It’s hardly a new problem. ME/CFS has been (somewhat) recognised for a long time although there are still people trying to diagnose it as an attitude problem rather than a physical condition. Many people who suffer from depression experience a dramatic loss of energy and motivation as part of that. Pretty much any illness or ailment will sap your energy. Fatigue is something most people will have to deal with at some point.

Low blood pressure has been a major issue for me in recent years. In the past there were often days when that meant not being able to stand up or move around. I’m a lot better than I was, but any activity that necessitates getting a good oxygen supply to my muscles is still challenging. I’m working on that as best I can. I also have the issue that hypermobile bodies are expensive to run and we tend to get tired more easily than non-hypermobile people.

Not all forms of fatigue respond well to rest. Cancer treatment fatigue isn’t alleviated by resting. With the hypermobility and low blood pressure it’s complicated – because if I lose strength or fitness I’m less able to deal with the underlying problems, so sometimes it pays to push. Pushing all the time is overwhelmingly exhausting, and that doesn’t work for the longer term either.

There aren’t any simple solutions here, because why you have fatigue in the first place will have a huge impact on how best to deal with it. If you’re burned out, or physically ill then total, short term rest is often the best choice. If you’re managing fatigue as a longer-term issue, then there are all kinds of balancing acts around what serves your mental health and what your body needs. Sometimes all you can do is pick the way in which you find it preferable to struggle. If I can get outside, I’ll do it even if it wipes me out afterwards because I need to get outside.

I’ve become very aware in the last year of just how huge an impact sleep has on body and mind alike. Enough sleep, and a decent quality of sleep makes such a huge difference. Being able to sleep is difficult if you are experiencing a lot of pain, stress or anxiety. Pain can be exacerbated by lack of sleep – it’s possible to get into some vicious cycles with this. Sometimes the only way out of that is with radical change, and not everyone has options on that.

If you are online then you are to some degree engaging with a society that is exhausting, overstimulating and stressful. We aren’t equal to processing the amounts of awfulness we are exposed to every day. Most of us do not thrive in the fast lane and do not flourish in face of constant stress. The social reasons that contribute to exhaustion are many, and pulling out of the culture we inhabit isn’t realistic. But, cultures can change, and talking about the problems is a place to start.

Perspectives

(David)

There have been times in my life when I wished I could be where I am today:

As an abused schoolboy, wishing for a place of safety;

As a young family man serving abroad, wishing to be home with my wife and our children;

As a wounded serviceman in hospital, just hoping to survive;

As a war veteran in a nursing home, desperate to be free of paralysis and home again with my loving family.

Sometimes people misunderstand my acceptance of this situation, housebound by crippling pain and illness in my family home. If they’d been in some of the places I’ve been, perhaps they would understand how I can live in love and peace despite my limiting condition.

Strange spring

(Nimue)

I’ve seen snow at this time of year, and I’ve been sunburned. The coming of spring is an odd process, which can include a lot of wintery moments. Even so, this year is being peculiar.

It’s cold enough that I’m still wearing thermals. Yet somehow, the bluebells are out up on the hilltops. Bluebells are usually a May flower – late April wouldn’t be ridiculous. Garlic and wood anemones – which also flower around the same time as bluebells, are also flowering right now. Whatever set the bluebells off early isn’t unique to them. I have no idea what’s going on, but clearly this is climate chaos in action.

Meanwhile the celandines are still out – it’s late for them.

Bird nesting seems to be happening in much the usual way, in so far as I can tell. However, what happens with flowers has implications for insects, and what happens for insects impacts on birds. As different parts of ecosystems get out of synchs with each other, there are bound to be consequences.

How we impact on each other

(Nimue)

Last summer I read Cider Lane – a novel by Mark Hayes. It affected me deeply, to the point where I wasn’t able to figure out how to write a review. It’s a novel about trauma and redemption, loss, grief, guilt, self-harming and wanting to die. It’s also about overcoming those things – sometimes. Having read it was a major contributor to my being able to fix a languishing novel of my own. I started writing Ghosts of the Lost Forest about fifteen years ago, and couldn’t finish it,

Last week, Mark wrote about his feelings in response to Ghosts of the Lost Forest. It’s not exactly a review either, because he’s had the same kinds of issues with this one that had with Cider Lane. Which seems fair.

Forgotten forests

The act of sharing stories can have powerful and unexpected consequences. That’s true for stories of our lived experiences. It’s also true for the things we make up but that also come from our souls. Sharing stories isn’t particularly about writing novels. Most of us have small, everyday opportunities for sharing stories about what’s going on in our lives. What we share, and how we share it can have a huge impact on others.

It is so powerful seeing something of your own experience reflected back. This is why inclusion is so important, and why we need to push back against the domination of able-boded, white, cis, straight, neurotypical male stories. There are a lot of other people in the world who need to see something of themselves. The majority of people are not served by that narrow bandwidth of stories and the growing diversity in recent years has been such a good thing.

Tell the stories that only you can tell, and seek out stories that show you different perspectives of the world.

Creativity and privilege

(Nimue)

All too often, creativity gets treated as a privilege and a luxury most people are encouraged to believe they cannot afford. To be creative is to be human. Creativity allows us to express ourselves, is good for our mental health and also gives us problem solving skills. Creative people have a lot more options than people who can only buy solutions. It’s also essential for business, for science and for any other human endeavour you care to name.

Capitalism locks us into being users, consumers and workers. Life would be very different if we all saw ourselves as creators, helpers and givers. We could live that way, and a great many people are already invested in trying to shift us all in this direction.  Check out Transition Towns movements, and people campaigning for Universal Basic Income,  if you don’t know where to start.

As it stands, very few people in creative industries earn enough to live on. It’s normal to work other jobs, and that’s been the size of it for me for most of my adult life. Many people can only afford to be creative once they’ve retired. A significant percentage are able to be creative because someone else pays the bills. There should be no shame in any of this when it comes to how individuals get by. There should be considerable shame in the way big corporations extract profit and don’t pay creators properly.

We should all have the time to learn, practice, study and grow in whatever ways we want to. That should be true regardless of whether we’re making money out of doing those things. Adults should be able to go to music, theatre, art and dance classes if they want to. Everyone should have the time to explore subjects that interest them, and to develop skills – not with a view to having ever more side-hustles, but so as to be able to live a rich and interesting life.

This is why I support ideas like Universal Basic Income and four day working weeks. We have the resources to allow everyone to live well while causing far less harm to the planet. That we don’t is a political choice based on the belief that the rich getting richer is a good thing. We should all have the time and resources to live well without causing a great deal of harm. The scope to live more fulfilling lives would really help us all to reduce consumption and to reimagine what human life can be.

Stephen Palmer (author and musician) has some further insights on his substack, which I strongly recommend reading in full – https://open.substack.com/pub/stephenpalmer/p/art?r=22oodm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Pronouns for bards

(Nimue)

As bards, we have to be alert to the nuances of language, and the power in how we deploy that language. Words have a huge capacity to impact on people in ways they are not always conscious of, and we must use that power wisely and responsibly.

I’ve written that first paragraph to illustrate the point. I’ve used ‘they’ to indicate a person, or persons of any gender. That’s a very normal use of the word ‘they’. It’s also worth noting that in the English language, singular ‘they’ is older than singular ‘you’ – it’s all evolved out of thees and thous anyway. Language changes over time.

The most important pronoun in that opening paragraph, is ‘we’. By saying ‘we’ I’m saying that you, dear reader, are also a bard, also thinking about these issues of language and that we are together in this. By saying ‘we’ I can create feelings of inclusion and involvement, and sometimes complicity. I often say ‘we’ when I want to talk about things people get wrong, because in that context its softer than a more accusatory ‘you’ – which would also imply I am somehow superior.

If I’d addressed the opening paragraph to you, telling you what you need to do as a bard, then I’d also be expressing my own authority. I do that sometimes in my writing, but my preference is to be more inclusive. We can all do this.

Pronouns can individualise or objectify. This is really important when we’re writing about aspects of the living world – when other beings are ‘it’ we make them seem more like objects. When we talk about creatures, and plants as living beings with their own experiences, we can build empathy and understanding. ‘It’ is an object we might feel comfortable using and exploiting. ‘They’ are individuals who merit care and respect.

Every now and then you may see people claiming that pronouns are difficult and a problem and that they are afraid of getting it wrong. I’ve taken to pointing out that if you do not know a person’s preferred pronouns you can just ask them (singular they strikes again!). When talking to a person, of course the most relevant pronoun is ‘you’ which isn’t gendered to begin with. Misgendering people by accident is socially awkward, saying sorry and moving on tends to sort it. Deliberately using pronouns that make another person uncomfortable is unkind and needs calling out.

The language we use has power. We can use pronouns to include, to validate and to value, and there’s a great deal to be said in favour of doing that.

Grounding and walking

(Nimue)

Walking has always been intrinsic to my Druidry. That made the years when I was often too ill to go out really difficult. Having an immediate relationship with the land I live on is really important to me, and moving about in my landscape helps me connect.

In this last year, there’s been a car in the mix, which is a less familiar experience for me. It’s made it possible for me to walk in places I otherwise couldn’t get to. The hills of Stroud are challenging, and I still can’t manage the longer walks. I’m really glad of being able to reconnect with the wider landscape.

It’s also brought home to me how much I value the immediacy of walking from my own front door. I don’t feel anything like as connected if there’s even a short car trip involved. I’d suspected that was the case, but there was always the thought in the back of my head that I might be making a virtue out of necessity. I wasn’t. Walking without having a car in the mix is more grounding and connecting.

I also find significant value in repetition. There is always joy in novelty and the delight of exploring a new landscape. However, there’s more depth of understanding when you repeatedly walk in the same places. Seeing the turning of the year as it plays out in specific plants and other natural things, is profound. Of course a person can have both, and there’s a lot to be said for revisiting the familiar alongside seeking the new.

My experience is only of walking, but my feeling is moving slowly is the important thing here, not how you do it. Wheels that go at human speeds are likely (I reckon) to result in much the same experiences. However, not having moved through landscapes on wheels, I’m not qualified to speak much on this. My most habitual walk is along a cycle path, and is a very accessible space, which has helped me keep getting out when  I’ve been more challenged.

Ghosts of the Lost Forest

I have a new Pagan novel out. It’s set in the early 21st Century – which is about when I started writing it. I stalled near the end, and had to put it aside for a lot of years. Last autumn I was able to finish it. This is a story based on living as a Pagan and includes the kinds of things that really do happen to people. I’ve drawn a lot on personal experience, but the whole thing is entirely fictional.

I’ve posted a video of me reading from the book –

It’s on Amazon as a paperback – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosts-Lost-Forest-Nimue-Brown/dp/B0CWKW9ZP8

If you pick up an ebook copy from ko-fi you can have it for free, or pay what you like. https://ko-fi.com/s/9be360746d

I’m able to offer free books because people support me on Patreon and people who are able to pay for books do. So, either way is fine. If you don’t have money to spare and want a book – please have one. This is important to me. If you can afford to drop a few pennies in the hat, please know that it makes a real difference. Gift economy works, and we all win.