Today's tunes are from North Carolina's The Avett Brothers, who've been on the CD player in my studio quite a lot lately. I just can't get enough of their bluegrass-flavored harmonies, backed up by Scott Avett's piano and banjo and Joe Kwon's gorgeous cello. When the sun sets behind the Devon hills outside the studio windows, I turn up the volume and lose myself in their music, and on tough days that helps.
Above: a live version of "Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise."
Below: "I and Love and You," performed on NovaFM radio.
"I want my life to be a good strong one - not strong like a Mr. Universe, but like a good strong cup of tea, full of flavour." - Thomas Samoht Hine
This post is in tribute to the work and life of Thomas Hine, who many in the Mythic Arts community will know from his West-Country Folklore group and blog. Thomas passed away on Wednesday morning, at much too young an age. My heart goes out to his wife (writer/artist Lunar Hine), their young daughter, his aunt and extended family....and to everyone in his wide, wide circle of friends here in our village.
In addition to his work as an author and folklorist, Thomas had trained as an archaeologist, and was also an artist, fiddle player, and organic gardener who loved all things mythical, magical, hand-crafted, and home-grown. That's Thomas above, arranging an exhibition of his artwork at the Courtyard Cafe here in Chagford...and below on fiddle, making music with Jason Hancox, Steve Dooley, Rima Staines, and Howard at an Equinox bonfire last spring. The final photograph was taken by Thomas, a few months later, at a local May Day celebration, and posted on his Westcountry Folklore blog.
It seems just a blink of an eye ago that Howard, Victoria, and I were dancing at Lunar and Thomas' wedding. Yesterday, friends and neighbors gathered again, this time for a memorial celebration. I wish Thomas had had many more decades of time to make his mark on the Mythic Arts field...but his life was indeed a strong one, just as he'd wished, full of flavour, full of art, and full of people who loved him.
“I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.” ― Saul Bellow
Grant me stillness today. Attentiveness. And, most of all, a creative focus that is quiet, patient, and rooted in these beloved hills...no matter where life's storms may take me.
"Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration." - Charles Dickens
"Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm." - Robert Louis Stevenson (via Liz Loveday)
Spirits of churning white water and moss, spirits of moorland, tree, and stone, please grant me a quiet mind.
Today's tune: My friend (and fellow Faery Godmother) Elizabeth-Jane Baldry performing Pachelbel's Canon in the music room of her magical, Pre-Raphaelite cottage, autumn 2010...
"Life is not about how fast you run or how high you climb, but how well you bounce. " - Vivian Komori
We've had a setback regarding the Big Life Stuff we've been dealing with, so I'm afraid my blog posts will be sporadic (rather than daily) for a bit, while we digest the news and figure out the best way to go forward. I truly appreciate all the support and prayers we've been sent from so many directions.
I also appreciate all the fabulous responses to yesterday's post ("On motivation")...and look forward to continuing that conversation.
The Magick4Terri auction site has officially closed now, with a very beautiful final post by auction organizers Mia Nutick and Liz Loveday -- featuring another lovely video by David Shane Odom, with music by the Bone Poets Orchestra.
My heart is full to the brim with the magick all these folks have created, along with the auction's creator & fairy godmother Ellen Kushner, and contributions by so many of you in the international Mythic Arts community. My family and I still have a difficult path ahead despite the enormous pile of "Tilly bones" collected -- but those bones are giving us the resources to travel the pathway to its end, with expert guidance along the way; and for that we are so very grateful. The power of Community never ceases to amaze me.
A question today: What gets you to your writing desk or drawing board or rehearsal room or where ever else it is that you create your art? I don't mean on those magical days when everything is flowing so well that a herd of elephants couldn't keep you away...but on all the rest. What gets you into the studio, what overcomes distraction and procrastination, what helps you to put brush to canvas and pencil to page -- even on those days when you're tired, or stale, or fearful, or worried about a dozen other things?
"For me," says Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin and Hobbes), "it's been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I've been amazed at how one idea leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander."
To start off the week with a bit of pure magic: "Bubble" by King Creosote & John Hopkins, from their CD Diamond Mine, with an animation directed by Elliot Dear @ Binklink. (I'm grateful to Julia for recommending it in last week's comments.) In some areas of viewing, this video comes with an ad you have to skip through ('sorry about that), but I promise it's worth it. It's a beautiful song, a beautiful animation...and I love the black Tilly dog....
(Animation and music credits on the YouTube page here.)
"Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind. " - James Russell Lowell
"Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled 'This could change your life.' " - Helen Exley
"I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves." - E.M. Forster
"A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it. " - Wiliam Styron
"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; a bad novel tells us the truth about its author." - G.K. Chesterton
"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was." - Ernest Hemingway
"There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?" - Marina Tsvetaeva
" 'Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are' is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread." - François Mauriac (So true!!!)
If you love books, then chances are that, like me, you also love words and sentences and the rhythms they make in your mind and on the page. If so, I recommend Theodora Goss's latest blog post, which you'll find here.
I'm a writer, artist, and book editor interested in myth, folklore, fairy tales, and the ways they are used in contemporary arts. I work in the New York publishing industry but I live in a little village at the edge of Dartmoor in Devon, England, with my husband, dramatist Howard Gayton, our daughter, Victoria Windling-Gayton, and a dog named Tilly.
The Drawing Board is my "studio blog," containing random musings about art, myth, books, village life, and the world-wide community of folks who create and love Mythic Arts.
If you'd like to learn more about my work, the door into my studio is here.
L'épouse de bois The new French edition of The Wood Wife (a mythic novel set in the Arizona desert) is available here. US & UK editions are also still available. (For those who might be interested, I did a Q-&-A session on the book over on the Good Reads site a little while back.)
Welcome to Bordertown Borderland is back! Urban fantasy for young adult readers. (May 2011)
Teeth Dark fantasy for young adult readers. (April 2011)
All told, I've published over 40 books for children, teenagers, and adults, and been kindly given a number of awards for them. Information about the books I've written, created-&-edited, or otherwise had a hand in, can be found on my website.
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Below are books I've read and enjoyed over the last little while -- mostly books that use myth or folklore in some way, with a few other volumes (poetry, memoir, nature writing) that caught my eye or touched my heart.
John Barleycorn Must Die Howard's graphic novel blog, with artist Rex Van Ryn, and interviews with other artists, writers, filmmakers, etc., every third Friday.
Ellen Datlow Ellen and I have edited over 30 anthologies together.
"Everyone, no matter what their cultural background, has a right to discover the sacred in nature; to heal and be redeemed spiritually by nature; and to revere the ancestors. We are all haunted and saved by our memories."
-- Martha Brooks
(from Bone Dance)
At night I dream that you and I are two plants
that grew together, roots entwined,
and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth,
since we are made of earth and rain.
-- Pablo Neruda
(from his poem "Rain")
"Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating. And the oceans are above me here, rolling clouds, heavy and dark. It is winter and there is smoke from the fires. It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands."
