Nimue Brown's Blog, page 76

Viola Stories

Back in early October of 2022, I started talking about rebuilding my body so that I could play musical instruments again. It’s taken a lot of hard work, but I am exactly where I wanted to be with the viola. 

When I started this process, I was vague about what, exactly had lit a fire under me. There have been exciting developments around getting to play with Robin Burton, which was unexpected and wonderful as a thing to have happen. I very much like where all of that is going.

What happened, back in September is that Keith Errington (already a co-creator on many projects) admitted to having a guitar and writing songs. There’s been a fantastic trajectory around him sharing this as he’s written a couple of songs for the Hopeless, Maine project over the winter.

Back when I played music regularly, that was very much for and about the musicians I was able to work with. When Keith started sharing his songs with me (cautiously) I had what at the time was a pretty bonkers response – I wanted to be able to accompany him on viola. And so, with no idea whether that might ever be an option, I put in the time, and the work, and pushed through a lot of pain to get my hands and arms back up to strength. I pushed through the frustration of not being able to do half the things on a viola that I could once do on the violin, and by slow degrees I got better.

So here we are, viola and guitar, and me improvising around his songs. It was good. Really good. Everything I could have hoped for, and more. I’m so happy about having got to this point, and about the way in which that autumnal leap of faith is starting to pay off.

When I’m playing accompaniment, I’m entirely focused on supporting whoever is leading and enriching the music in whatever way I can. I like setups where my job is to make the other person look even better. There’s a very particular flavour of inspiration that comes from working that way. 

I had forgotten what it’s like to have music become a whole body experience, not just a matter of head and hands. To play with my entire person, to be utterly focused and in the moment such that the music flows through me and out through my fingers. Keith has written some fantastic songs, and performs them with an intensity that brings out the best in me as a musician. 

Right now, I don’t know exactly where we are going with all of this, but there’s a lot of potential and we’re certainly going somewhere. New adventures!

The Magpie

This isn’t an album review – although I heartily recommend clicking the link at the bottom of the post and going to listen on bandcamp. This is a story about a song.

Many years ago, back when I ran Redditch Folk Club (and had a different name) a trio called Young No More turned up to a singaround. One of the songs they sang was all about magpies, and I was instantly smitten with it. However, I didn’t know the trio, and the internet wasn’t as helpful in those distant days, so I could do nothing but wait.

Eventually, they came back, and arrangements were made to get me a recording of the song. They explained it wasn’t theirs but if they mentioned the name of the songwriter, I do not remember. They told me it was on an old album one of them owned. I learned it from their version and started singing it. The Magpie was always a great favourite with my son, so he picked it up from me and started leading on it. This is how the folk process goes sometimes.

Then The Unthanks covered it and the song became a lot more widely known. 

I’ve arranged and rearranged my harmony lines on this song so many times – we sang it through James’s teens with all that this implies. We sang it casually during the years when we weren’t going to events as musicians, or spending much time in folk clubs. It remained a favourite with people we sang with informally. When we started putting Ominous Folk together, it was an obvious candidate for the repertoire. It’s been our most requested song. This is because Mat McCall of Gloucester Steampunks pretty much requests it every time we see him.

Back in September, we had the amazing experience of getting to meet Davey Dodds, the man who wrote The Magpie. We heard him sing it at an event in Gloucester (I cried). We asked if it was ok for us to sing The Magpies at the same event, and Davey said yes, and listened to us doing it and was nice about it afterwards. Of all the things you can do as a musician, playing or singing something in the presence of the person who actually wrote it is by far the most terrifying. 

(As an aside, there was one terrifying occasion where I somehow ended up singing a Damh the Bard song to Damh the Bard late one night.)

The new album Davey Dodds has recorded features The Magpie. It means there’s a definitive version from the man who wrote it, which is great news. The original recording (1979, the internet thinks) predates CDs and downloads, so it’s good to have something more accessible. It’s such a beautiful version, the harmonies are lush. 

https://daveydodds.bandcamp.com/album/cask-strength

Revenge is a form of self harm

I’ve never been much interested in revenge, or in the idea of getting even with people who I feel have wronged me. I think it’s a way of being in the world that causes the person doing it far more harm than it is likely to cause their intended victim. There’s nothing like obsessing over the focus of your ire to poison your life. 

Letting go and moving on do far more good than being focused on someone who hurt you. That, of course is a process, and the greater the damage done the more work it takes to get past it. I don’t personally believe that forgiveness has to be part of this process – this is very much up to each of us to decide. I don’t need to forgive in order to untangle myself from my history. As far as I’m concerned, forgiveness depends on apology and remorse. However, I entirely support anyone choosing to forgive on their own terms. Do whatever you need to do to reclaim your life and head towards better things.

Tom used to say ‘the best revenge is to be much better people,’ and I like that as a thought form. The best revenge is to live well, and be happy, and not have your life defined by things that happened to you. It’s not always easy, especially not in the short term, but it pays off in the long term.

It’s all too easy to end up projecting our own anxieties and shortcomings onto other people and then persuading ourselves that we will feel better if we can take them down in some way. It doesn’t work, because no matter what damage you inflict on someone else, you still get to be yourself, and the anxieties and shortcomings do not disappear. Pulling someone else down does not raise a person up. Quite the opposite – when we set out to cause harm, we are the one person we can count on harming.

Resentment and jealousy are miserable feelings, and investing time and effort in them just brings a person down. I’ve watched a few people do this and it’s always ugly. Blaming other people can be a way of distracting ourselves from our own issues, but it also traps us where we are and stops us from making productive changes. Plotting revenge or wanting to get back at someone uses up time and energy, but doesn’t give much in return. It is better by far to seek nourishing things, comforting things, opportunities for growth and healing. Nothing stops a person from healing emotionally like being fixated on the person who caused the hurt in the first place.

My other major reason for not being interested in revenge is that it is entirely unnecessary. The people who cause deliberate harm will do themselves plenty of damage without any help from me. Also, they have to live with themselves, inside their own heads, being the people they are. The rest of us could never come up with anything as hurtful as the things malicious people do to themselves and the ways in which they damage their relationships and limit their own options with their choices. I’m a big believer in this kind of poetic justice and in my experience, if you can be patient it will just happen. Even if you can’t see it, people who choose to be hurtful and harmful are condemning themselves to cold and joyless lives. Sometimes I feel pity in face of this, but mostly what I wish such people is the opportunity to learn and become a better person.

We all get to choose how we live, and what we focus on. I spend most of my time focused on the people who delight me. This week, the troll has been back on the blog, so I’ve been thinking again about what could possibly be going on in this person’s life to make them so bitter and unpleasant. It must be a lonely way to live, but it’s a helpful reminder to look at my own choices and not let myself be too much affected by someone else’s shit-show.

Online Festivities

One of the good things to happen around covid lockdowns was the development of online events. While I very much like getting to do things in person, that tends to exclude a lot of people. Cost, transport, illness, disability, work, caring responsibilities and more make it hard for many people to go to events. Real world events also leave far bigger carbon footprints than online gatherings.

In 2021, a few of us decided to do an online festival based around Hopeless, Maine. That happened in January 2022 and you can still watch it on youtube https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgL8NSDkxNIrRj4x__RlI_X83XuNR-GRt 

That event was inspired by a previous Steampunk Over Ether event – also still available online https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgL8NSDkxNIoFsTV0D3jpklsmKFaBbPzn

At this point, I’m keen to keep doing the online events. I’m hoping we can be more regularly active as The Eldritch Broadcasting Corporation. Doing online events makes it possible to include creators who otherwise aren’t able to participate more physically in events – for all kinds of reasons. 

Everyone involved in Anomaly was known to me, and that’s mostly how people got involved. I realise that from the outside, that might look cliquey. I also know it isn’t easy asking for space. So, if you’re reading this, you’re always welcome to ask. If you see me doing something and you want to get involved with it, just say and I’ll see what’s feasible. I’m always keen to open up space for others where I can.

I was heavily involved with this event, I participated live on the night, contributed a poem, and short story, and some of my ideas and text made its way into other people’s pieces. I’m also there singing with The Ominous Folk for a couple of videos. It was very much a team effort, and I feel very blessed about the people I get to work with. The creativity, imagination, skill and awesomeness that went into this means I’m proud to have been part of it. Most of us were very low tech, there was no budget. 

All of these online events were possible because Keith Errington was willing to make his skills, experience and tech available to all the rest of us, and to hold it all together on the night. Keith is also responsible for the monthly SteamPaper for the steampunk community https://steampaper.co.uk/  which you can support via Patreon if you feel so moved. https://www.patreon.com/steampaper/posts 

You can find Anomaly over here, in sensible, snack sized chunks –

Creating is vital

Creativity is something we all need. It’s not just about making art, and it certainly isn’t all about making art for money. Nurturing a garden is a creative thing. Parenting, being part of a community, even just socialising can call upon us to be creative. Anything we do in the course of the day can be approached creatively and enriched by that.

For most of human history, we’ve engaged with each other around the things we’ve made, individually or together. Making and sharing food is a really powerful thing. Making clothing, shelters and essential things is really bonding, and sharing in this way puts people into powerful and cooperative relationships with each other. 

For most of human history, music, stories, art and dance were things we did together. This is one of the major reasons I’m worried about how AI ‘art’ is going to impact on us all. I worry about the loss of paid work for creative professionals, and I think we’re all going to be considerably poorer if we don’t have access to new ideas from creative people. However, I think the cost around our understanding of what art is, is already much higher.

Art where you push a few buttons and a computer makes you a picture or writes you a story doesn’t allow you to meaningfully share yourself with other people. How interested would you be in the fiftieth poem your friend has got a computer to write for them? How exciting is it if your sister has made her 700th piece of AI art? Why would you even care? The first few might have the merit of novelty, but that’s all they really have. It’s not the same as going to an event and listening to a poem your friend has written. It’s not the same as watching your sister grow as an artist, image by image as she learns her craft.

Creativity should be something we do for ourselves, and to share with other people. I want everyone to have opportunities to do that. I feel strongly that we should be using the technology to free up time so that people can spend their lives doing whatever they find interesting and rewarding. What is going to happen to us, as humans if instead we use the computers to give ourselves less scope to create in meaningful ways? What if we undermine this whole aspect of what it means to be human so that a small number of people can make a profit out of it?

Shared art gives us access to beauty and joy. It is however more than that. Creativity is how we express to each other what it means to be human and how we make sense of our human experiences. When we can dance and paint, tell stories and share songs we’re sharing references for how to live and what life is for. Culture is built of our shared ideas about what matters, what’s good, meaningful and desirable. What happens to us as people if we stop doing that and have machines do it for us? There are already too many pressures on too many people making it harder to connect and share in this way.

I think there’s a lot at stake here for us as a species. I think our compassion, co-operation and relationships are greatly enhanced by sharing creatively with each other, and that if, culturally, we start thinking that art and stories are things we make by feeding a few keywords to a machine, we’re going to lose far, far more than we could ever gain.

At the limits of love

My troll has brought me some interesting challenges this week. She’s my troll now in a way that seems personal and involved. She’s been showing up here for months, so whatever this is for her, it’s clearly a significant act of dedication. Sometimes she uses a male name – perhaps like me she’s genderfluid in some way, or experimenting with her identity, but I know it’s always her, I recognise her easily enough.

Her response to my complicated heart post suggested pain and need, a desire to be cared about and to be important. She’d like me to be kinder to her, more welcoming. Never mind that her previous visit had been to call my online event a flop – but I suspect that too is something that comes from a place of pain. I know she’s desperate for attention – there’s no other reason to keep coming back here to get cross with me.

What do I do with this? I consider compassion to be an important part of my path, and generally my impulse is to try and help people. It’s hard to respond with warmth and care to someone who only ever shows up angry and wanting to pick holes. I’d genuinely love to be able to do better, but I need something I can work with.

I wish she’d tell me what she’s so unhappy about. I wish we could have a constructive conversation about that. Maybe then I could do or say something useful. I wish she’d write me a guest blog, – she could just email it to me at brynnethnimue at gmail dot com. She could send me her creative outpourings and I could put that out into the world in a supportive way and she could have the attention she needs in a better, happier sort of way. 

The connections we make with each other when we share the best of ourselves are just so much more fertile and rewarding. 

I can’t afford to care too much about someone who only shows up to try and knock me down. I’ve spent too much of my life being treated that way, and no one is going to send me back there. No one can have happy or meaningful relationships on those terms, and my heart goes out to my troll, because she seems so desperately unhappy and it’s pretty obvious that if she treats other people in her life the way she’s acting here, then there aren’t going to be close or deep relationships available to her.

Maybe she sees kindness as weakness. Maybe someone or something undermined her confidence so badly that she doesn’t know how to form meaningful connections. I can only speculate. I don’t want to leave anyone needlessly hurting and alone. 

I have limitations though. I can’t help a person if they won’t step up to change their own life. It is too much to ask that I respond to unkindness with love. People go to religions for that, for the idea of the divine parent who will love you unconditionally no matter what you do. I’m not a deity, I’m not capable of boundless and divine love. I’m human, and I have limits.

Come to me seeking help, care, support, friendship, connection… I’ll do what I can for you. Challenge me by all means, question my thinking, offer alternatives – but don’t just show up to try and smack me down, that’s not a basis for friendship, and for the person who craves attention, affection and warmth it’s a really self-harming thing to do.

Maybe dare to show up with your real name, as your real self, offering something of your own making, and you will find that there’s room for you.

Mage in Miami

Recently we’ve had some wonderful comments on the blog from Miami Magus, who has shared considerable insights into traditions I know little or nothing about. So, I got in touch, and the result is this blog post and me pointing at things! Jose is a Cuban Magician living in Miami, Florida and writes about a broad array of topics. This is just a small selection.

This is a really helpful post about appropriation and plants – https://miamimagus.wordpress.com/2020/01/11/palo-santo-sage-exploiting-native-american-spirituality-for-money/

This post shares a ghost experience the author had – https://miamimagus.wordpress.com/2023/01/27/the-jade-buddha/

Over here we have a substantial exploration of ghost sin Christianity – https://miamimagus.wordpress.com/2019/03/27/ghosts-in-judeo-christian-tradition/

This is a deep dive into Roanoak folklore https://miamimagus.wordpress.com/2019/11/29/the-white-doe/

While this post explores the folklore around wailing women in South America. https://miamimagus.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/la-llorona-the-woman-in-white-weeping-woman-wailer/  

This is a post about nature, and ghosts https://miamimagus.wordpress.com/2020/06/28/the-green-dead/

And finally, a really interesting Christio-Pagan perspective on the harvest festival, with a lot of sharing of personal practice https://miamimagus.wordpress.com/2021/09/30/michaelmas-the-christianized-harvest-festival/

It’s always a joy to have people sharing their own work and insights in the comments – please do jump in if you see something that relates to something you’re working on. I’m always open to sharing other people’s work where that’s relevant and likely to appeal to regular readers here. If you want to talk to me about possibilities, drop me a line – brynnethnimue @ gmail dot com 

Tazmand – a review

As is usually the way of it for me, I can’t claim any significant objectivity in writing this review – I know and like the author. This is also a book with a Tom Brown cover.

Tazmand is a YA fantasy novel, and book one of a series. I have every intention of reading the whole thing. YA isn’t an area of fiction I’m widely read in, although fantasy certainly is. To my delight, I found the world of the novel entirely unfamiliar, with more technology than you tend to find in fantasy, and no tedious explanations of history, or how magic works or anything of that ilk. We’re thrown into a number of related situations and left as readers to figure things out as we go along. 

This is predominantly a story about some young humans figuring out that they need to make some radical changes in their lives and then working together to make that happen. There is magic, conflict, drama, and considerable peril. The young humans face what felt to me like mild peril (it’s a series, it seemed unlikely that any main character would die in the first book). However, what’s going on in the background is violent and hideous – it’s told in a way that I think would be fine for most teens but I’d be careful with anyone under twelve, I think. It’s not detailed, but there are people in the habit of burning other people to death, in cages, for public edification. 

What I liked most about this book is how it handles the issue of empire. The plot of this book is very much driven by the actions of an aggressive empire. We see that from the perspective of their victims and it is clear in the story that violence, conquest and colonialism are horrible, and inexcusable. The way in which empire-makers lie as they go, to justify what they do is dealt with really explicitly. 

At the same time, the empire itself is ludicrous and dysfunctional. I wouldn’t be the first person to compare the set-up to Gormenghast, with the vast, preposterous palace at the centre of the story. The library featured on the book cover carries this part of the world and story. It’s a vast, mouldering, gothic library where the books stolen from colonised peoples are kept. Most of the activity involves shelving and unshelving, with books being hefted about by illiterate children who are at constant risk of being injured by falling bits of the library building. It stands as a powerful metaphor for all stolen wealth and culture, and is a neat way of expressing what empires do to themselves and those around them. 

I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

This complicated heart

I lined my heart softly, with moss

Invited in scuttling beetles, slow worms.

Planted apple trees not knowing if they

Would bring knowledge, life, beauty,

Or the mayhem of fruit loving deities

With all their jealous foibles.

I am ready for epic, unreasonable things.

This heart is laced through with promises

Bonds and binds, pledges and vows.

I am old scar tissue and new growth

A forest unfurls inside me, deer roam

Trees above and mycelium below

I am an ecosystem, a habitat for ideas.

My wild heart, my dirty, unkempt heart.

Small enough to take in your hands, this heart.

Small enough to hold, and needing to be held.

Vast enough to shelter you, offering comfort

Enter in and rest here, amongst my trees

Lie down in my cool moss, in damp fecundity

I am fungi breaking down the old life

Into sweet, renewing decay.

I am live wood rising from out of history

Turning lost existence into living strength.

Growing the future with determined love.

The chemistry of joy

We tend to think of depression as an internal event, and perhaps as a failure of body chemistry. The medicinal approach to depression assumes that fixing your brain chemistry is the answer.

I’m no expert on body chemistry, but I have an increasing impression that body-stuff often involves feedback loops and that simple lines of cause and effect aren’t always what’s happening. Recently reading around the role of noradrenaline in the body, I ran into a few comments about how supporting the production of this hormone/neurotransmitter depends on experiencing happiness.

We know from psychology that our environments affect us to a significant degree. How we develop, what we feel and even how our genes are expressed is informed by our environments. We aren’t separate from what happens to us. If anyone is joining the dots between how the environment impacts psychology, and the treatment of mental illness, I haven’t seen it yet.

This leads me to some questions. How much is the experience of happiness, and joy necessary for the healthy functioning of a human body? To what degree is our body chemistry dependent on experience? Can we make the chemicals we need if we don’t have the right environmental impact? I think about studies investigating the impact of trees and green spaces on mental health and on human behaviour. 

Apparently we need to be happy for our bodies to produce noradrenaline, or produce enough of it, or produce the right balance – some or all of those things. It’s just one chemical, with a relationship to dopamine, that impacts on blood pressure and has a role in arousal and attention. Adrenaline, by contrast, is how we respond to demands from our environments. I’ve read a lot of content about what kinds of activities support healthy brain chemistry, and I’m increasingly convinced that wellbeing is about how we interact with reality and mental health is not something that is all about what happens inside us.

While we all have some degree of choice around how we live, and think, and the environments we spend time in, none of us are separate from the rest of the world. How would political thinking change if we took onboard the idea that being able to function and being happy might be entirely connected? How would we live if we considered joy a necessary thing for health?

On the whole, even if these aren’t biological issues, I am inclined to think it’s a good way to approach life. In our individual choices, in groups, and communities, and as a political approach, the idea that people need joy in their lives would be a good addition to the mix.