Tag Archives: Meditations

The Lilting Banshee – four years of playing bodhrán

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The pandemic created a space in my life for learning and playing the bodhrán. I had virtually no previous music training. Added to that, I was born with a hearing impairment that led me to think learning a musical instrument wasn’t really possible.

During the pandemic, I spent hours and hours listening to tunes, learning to distinguish the different parts. Most tunes have two parts: A and B, but some have many more, like Kid on the Mountain, a five-part slip jig. Learning something while relying mostly on my sense of hearing was new to me.

It took me a year and a half, more or less, to be able to keep the beat. Luckily, we were in lockdown most of that time, so I wasn’t in a position to throw off other musicians. My husband has played music most of his life and took up the tenor banjo at the same time as I started the drum, so we played together. And I learned to use a metronome.

Four years on, I am publishing this recording of me playing along to the Lilting Banshee. I finally like how I sound accompanying a jig! I think my style is influenced by my teacher, who taught me online from Ireland while he was locked down and unable to gig and teach.

Having learned phrases and time signatures (3/4, 4/4, 6/8, 9/8, etc) that I can use to accompany music, I’m now starting to listen more deeply. I am paying more attention to pitch and how to mirror it on my drum through hand pressure on the back of the skin.

The bodhrán is considered to be a talking drum because so much of its potential comes from changing the pitch through handwork.

I added a few photos from a trip to Ireland to the recording:

Land of the ever-young

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Grange stone circle, the largest in Ireland. The cave entrance to Tir na nÓg is nearby.

“Tir na nÓg means ‘land of youth’ although ‘na nÓg’ is probably better translated as ‘the ever-young’ because it refers to a world beyond time in which events occur in a non-linear sequence much like how time was defined by Einstein or Heisenberg in the early twentieth century. Tir na nÓg is the land of youth because without time, aging is not an issue. Everyone is young or at least ageless there.

Some accounts describe [such realms] as consisting of forested wilderness while others describe flower clad meadows buzzing with bees. There are tales of cities and fortresses made of precious metals and feather thatch, while other tales home in on a sacred well at the heart of the land, surrounded by a grove of nine hazel trees or a single dominant tree with a bloom on every bough…

For each element of Tir na nÓg and its other sister lands there are key concepts that must be communicated. For instance, its sacred well was sometimes regarded as the birthplace of humanity, even of the entirety of existence. The tree that looms over the well is considered the axis of the world. It is the central tent post of this circus realm we inhabit and also the central tenet on which the druid’s power is based. The part of the sacred tree known as the silver branch is a metaphor for a concept that is beyond my ability to communicate – a concept as vast as any ocean.”

– Manchan Magan, Listen to the Land Speak

I’m sitting alone on a wooden chair, under an awning that shelters me from the summer sun. I’m surrounded by green cedars, oaks and a garden of flowers and grass. From within, I sense the earth’s opening heart. It unfolds, as if decompressing from being held under an enormous weight.

The old myths seem to tell us that the heart, when finally able to unfold, opens into an infinite space, a place that was present before the heart pumped blood through its vessels and will remain after it has stopped beating.

The weight holding down the heart comes from the time when men began to look at the rivers and lakes, trees and fields and all the animals as a means for their own ends. Not enough to grow food to eat and have water to drink. They wanted riches for themselves.

In the face of this, we need reminders of the deeper reality within the everyday. Sometimes we find it in the intensity of the blue sky. Other times, in the sound of someone making music. I encourage my son to create whatever he can – he’s made trebuchets out of reclaimed wood and carved faces into sticks. He’s printed 3-D figures in resin and built whole armies of fantastical creatures, painted in vivid colours. I’ve found him reading a huge novel, in a corner of his room. I hope that the forces of life and creativity are forming powerful struts within him that will hold up and protect his inner life when he goes out into the world. When he has to deal with the stresses of fitting into the workforce somehow. I don’t want him to lose his inner spark.

I was very interested in Indigenous cultures and stories of Turtle Island for many years. I’ve spent time at Mohawk spiritual gatherings and read books about Haudenosaunee culture and politics. But these cultures are not my own and I will always be outside of them.

During the pandemic I learned the bodhrán from an Irish percussionist who also introduced me to modern Irish culture and the notion of the Irish diaspora. I never really thought I was part of the diaspora because my family has been gone from Ireland for such a long time. But ironically, when I turned my attention away from exploring North American Indigenous cultures and stories, I actually found that I have an ancestral culture of my own that seems to have claimed me. Maybe it’s just that I have claimed it, but it’s a bond that’s undeniable and existed before I became consciously aware of it. Sometimes things really are right under your nose and you don’t see them.

At times when I hear Irish people speaking, I hear my own relatives talking. My grandmother and grandfather had very strong Irish accents and my mother does to a lesser extent. It is uncanny how when I hear those accents, I’m transported back to the kitchen table in my grandparents’ house, where I would sit with my granny. An echo within. The sound of their voices almost entering the present.

My drumming is humble and so is my writing. I am not sure I am connected to the sacred tree that towers above the holy well, where it forms the axis of the world. Empire building and profit making have damaged the beauty of the world and those who fear rivers that run wild and forests that harbour hidden holy wells have done everything possible to destroy any entryways to such realms.

But it may be that simply being open to the possibility of such places by listening and looking for them is enough to be a part of them. Connection to the deepest aspects of living is not restricted to the richest or the wisest or the most talented. Knowing this is the key to undermining the empire builders, I think.

So, back to the heart. For me, the working life weighs down my heart and makes the space I need to be able to create harder to access and inhabit. Yet if I am any good at my job, it’s because it’s fed by creativity. Ability to write and to make connections between concepts are the basis of my working life.

So, the heart opens, and the flowers and bees of golden summer celebrate that fact by their mere existence. Within my heart the infinite realm unfolds and expands. I need do nothing but observe it. Like my son, I tuck myself away in the corner of a room where it is quiet, and I can listen. There I sometimes play my drum, and I hear my heart reverberate throughout the whole house.

Chasing the basics: bodhrán rhythms

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When I was in Ireland in September 2023, my bodhán teacher set me up for a lesson with another teacher who plays both bodhrán and drumkit in a band. We were staying in a village in the west of Ireland and the drummer lived 2 doors down from where we stayed while we visited.

The lesson was a bit of a turning point for me. It reinforced the idea of developing a really strong motor rhythm, where your basic playing is really even and you control the dynamics–loud, soft, slow and fast. I have been told before that the most important aspect of playing is the basic down-up stroke. It should both be even and almost perfectly timed.

So when I got back home, I set up my metronome and I’ve been practicing that basic down up pattern along with a few other basic patterns. After many hours of down up down up down up, my playing is much better. I feel I’ve lifted it up another level through that practice.

I have also watched Ruairi Glasheen’s documentary on the bodhrán, which talks about Ringo McDonough and how he developed a motor rhythm, which is what I learned from the guy 2 doors down. Now I really get how important it is. McDonagh’s style was an innovation at the time and his clean, simple driving rhythm is all you really need to play well at a session. Maybe the triplets and fancy fills aren’t really the point. Anyway, it’s obvious but maybe not so obvious!

Walking to the well

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I’ve made a new friend who’s got a way about him. I mean, he is Irish and laughs the way I imagine an elf might. He’s small too, as an elf would be. Even though he grew up in the Dublin suburbs, it feels like he came into the world as a small creature curled up in a brown nest, tucked into a hedgerow of ivy. Then he grew, and tumbled out into a farmer’s field in County Clare, just missing a pile of ewe berries. How he got from there to Dublin, I couldn’t say. Though he is a modern person—he even owns a commercial van—it’s a Ford. Still, when I was visiting, I had to do my best not to stare at the faint drift of sparkles floating behind him and I definitely did not mention the green felt hat. Or the bells tied around his ankles. When he was a young fellow, he liked to leap in the air while wearing them. At least once, he arrived in an Irish village on a donkey that was wearing antlers. I’ve seen the pictures. But fair enough, it was nearly Christmas. He might have once led an ordinary existence in the city, but now he’s in the west of Ireland, where there are holy wells and old stone walls that you could follow for days. I know our time left on this earth is limited. We have only so many heartbeats and hours of sunlight. So I had better catch up with him one day soon, maybe in summer. I’ll tell him to grab his hat and walk with me for a while. We’ll follow the hedgerows, visit the well and wet our hands and faces in its waters.

Long story

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“…I had heard whispers over many years about a chamber of female divinity that was said to exist somewhere west of the Shannon, but I could find no reference to it in any book or journal. Then, finally, two years ago I stumbled upon the chamber, as some in the local community in Tulsk, Co Roscommon, had chosen to make it public again. It’s a cavern called Oweynagat in which an ancient goddess energy is said to reside…When the time was right, they were able to point small groups of individuals towards a tiny opening beneath a hawthorn tree in the bank of a field that led to it. The field is down a narrow laneway, apparently leading nowhere.”

– Manchán Mangan: Indigenous people, Ireland and guardians of old lore

These are dark days. Sometimes, before dusk, I walk across the street from my house to sit alone in the field. After a while, I feel vibrations coming from a great distance through the earth into my body. The movements remind me there are places where the goddess lives, even in these times. I imagine they are hidden safe houses where she appears. They are not written down in books or recorded in databases – they’re hidden in plain sight – maybe through that small opening among trees that could be a fox’s den. Except it opens to a much bigger place, where from time to time over many centuries, people have sat in silence, holding each other’s hands, listening to the slow, soft whisper of time passing. They are listening for the long story, the one that opens up and folds back, further and further into the past until they find themselves at the roots.

In the dark and stillness, I feel afraid. I don’t have time for this. I check my phone, but there is no signal. I’m off the grid. But I’ve already begun to sense vibrations in all directions from where I stand, which is in an ordinary field beside the bike path. It’s as if I always suspected this place was here, and somehow found that fact reassuring. Right now, I have to force myself to stay still and not run back to the house. And resist the urge to get back to business. Because this place is deep and asks a lot of me. But I know the world is at stake now. Maybe it’s always been, but we’ve reached a tipping point. We need the goddess who loves gentle creatures, like my little dog who lies in a patch of sunshine on the floor. I love to look into his glassy eyes and smell the warmth of his fur. I need to visit the goddess. I must let time take me back and further back, all the way to its roots.

Inside the snow globe

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In Being Human, ghosts are like snow. Like embracing someone who’s just come inside on a cold day. They bring grey sky in the door, and the clean air; they etch you with frost and ice crystals, making your cheeks red and your breath into clouds.

A ghost opens your door and shows you light shining through. She turns your lamps on at night and burns out your light bulbs. Blows the fuse in the bathroom. Boils pot after pot of water on your stove, making herself at home on the chesterfield. Full cups of tea appear all over the house. You look out the window at the full moon; it’s come down from the sky to inhabit you.snow globe

Mitchell tells Annie her lips are cold, a bit tingly, like kissing someone who just came in from outside. Mitchell knows Annie’s in the house. He feels a cold draught under the door; sees her by the window, colour of the moon. He’s burning up with memories of blood; all the people he’s left for dead in abandoned buildings and empty fields. They’re boiling over. Dripping down his skin. Faces of his victims press against the inside of his skull. Voices in the drains at night. He’s a twisting, moving fire.

He reaches for Annie. She soothes him with her cooling touch. He covers himself in her colours—grey and white, winter in the city: starlight and streetlight shining on paths of snow between the cinderblock buildings. She’s nighttime and the moon’s unblinking gaze.

Annie wonders, will she drift through the house forever? She’s so light she doesn’t even dent the cushions; she has no place in this world or the next. She looks through open doors and sees light, but no welcome. How long will it be? How long by the window, looking out? 

Mitchell says
Things move and shift and settle again. It’s like those— what are those snow storm things called?
Snowstorms.
Yeah, ’bout so big, glass?
No, they’re called snowstorms.
Right. Well, them. You shake them and it’s all mad and then it settles again. That’s what time is like.

That’s what Annie’s like, her translucent body. The world shifts and stirs in her, a frenzy of colour and sound. Outside, she hears footsteps on the walkway. Tires screeching in the road. Voices rising over the walls. Then everything settles once more into a cool bank of snow, shining in the streetlight, enveloping the world, cooling its fevers.

Thoughts from the continuum

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I would like to challenge the notion that there are “mental” illnesses and “physical” illnesses – that certain illnesses are biological and others are psychological.

For example, what are the causes of high blood pressure? Well, according to WedMD, it is caused by the following factors, most of which are no less “psychological” than the causes of depression or anxiety disorders:

  • Smoking
  • Being overweight or obese
  • Lack of physical activity
  • Too much salt in the diet
  • Too much alcohol consumption (more than 1 to 2 drinks per day)
  • Stress
  • Older age
  • Genetics
  • Family history of high blood pressure
  • Chronic kidney disease
  • Adrenal and thyroid disorders

And if you look at the list, you will see that many of these “causes” of high blood pressure are the same as the causes of depression. The following all contribute to depression’s onset or its return after remission: stress, alcohol abuse, family history of depression, genetics, older age and lack of physical activity.

There are other known (and probably unknown) causes for depression, anxiety and high blood pressure, no doubt, but isn’t it interesting that people with high blood pressure are almost never sent to a psychologist for therapy, even though their condition would probably be improved by learning to cope better with stress, reduce alcohol consumption and change and improve lifestyle?

What about type 2 diabetes, many cases of heart disease and chronic pain? These conditions could also be improved through specific types of psychotherapy and counselling, often in conjunction with medication.

I have grown tired of the argument that people who suffer from certain “mental” illnesses like depression and anxiety should not take medications, but should instead see a therapist to get to the root of their problems.

These illnesses are not curable, as far as we know. They are conditions, just as high blood pressure and diabetes are conditions. Those who suffer from them have to manage them, usually with some combination of medication, exercise, stress reduction, nutrition and, often, psychotherapy. Why is it that people with conditions that can be measured with a blood pressure cuff or a blood sample are not so often told to get to the root of their problems?

And then we have scientists like Dr. Irving Kirsch, whose research into anti-depressant medications resulted in him confirming his own bias that the medications don’t work and are nothing but placebos. Imagine if you were a diabetic and had been taking a medication that helps you keep your blood sugar in check and a scientist publishes a study telling you that it’s all in your head?  “Guess what? Your medications don’t work! You just think they do!” That’s what Kirsch has done, and many media outlets trumpeted his message uncritically.

Scientists are in the midst of developing an antidepressant medication that works in hours instead of weeks. Perhaps if we start having medications that have rapid effects, the notion that antidepressants are nothing but placebos will come to an end.

We have learned that even our genes are influenced by our environment, with certain genes being turned on or off depending on the conditions in which we live. There is no absolute division between environmental and genetic causes of illness, just as there is no real dividing line between the psychological and the biological. It is all on a continuum. To believe otherwise is to create obstacles to wellness for people suffering from a great number of conditions. Why close the door on psychotherapy for high blood pressure problems? Why discourage sufferers from using medications for their anxiety?

I realize there is a problem with medications being overprescribed in many cases, but there is an even bigger problem with under-treatment of diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, chronic pain and anxiety disorders.

Just as there are biological and psychological dimensions to all diseases, there is a moral aspect as well. We can call on sufferers to improve their diets, manage their stress, get to the root of their problems. We can deny health coverage to smokers who develop lung cancer. We can discourage medication because we are so sure that sufferers can pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

But moral judgements won’t reduce suffering or lower the great burden of disease that society continues to bear. The costs to us are enormous in terms of lost productivity, social breakdown, medical expenses and quality of life.

A visit to Pass Control

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This morning I went to Pass Control. I waited in line until the commissionaire called me forward on his intercom. He pushed open a metal drawer, where I placed my forms and ID. He closed the drawer and did the paperwork to get me a temporary pass, which he slid into the metal drawer. I took the card and sat back in my seat. A little while later, an old gentleman in uniform came to the entrance and called out “Pass Control! Anyone for Pass Control?” I got up and went with him. We passed through two sets of security doors, turned right, and then passed through another door. It had a Men’s Washroom sign on it. I was starting to feel a little nervous. Once through the Men’s Washroom door, we walked past the men’s and women’s washrooms and arrived at an elevator. Then we went down, down, down until we reached Pass Control. The old man left me there and I took a number. On a bulletin board nearby were posters advertising wanted men and posters offering rewards for information leading to the arrest of a variety of murderers and kidnappers. It was called the Military Police board. When my number was called, the clerk said “No. You need the person whose name is on this card (she handed me a business card) to approve this other person’s signature.” Back to my seat to wait for the elderly man in uniform, then up, up, up, and through the Men’s Washroom door, back out through the security doors and into the line-up. I slid my temporary pass once again into the metal drawer, got back my own ID and left the building.

Being Human

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“John Mitchell: I’ve got this friend. He says the human condition, the human nature, ‘being human’ – is to be cold and alone. Like someone lost in the woods. It’s safe to say he’s a ‘glass-is-half-empty’ kind of guy. And I see nature differently. I see the ancient machinery of the world. Elegant and ferocious, neither good nor bad, it’s full of beautiful things, unspeakable things. The trick is to keep them hidden – until the right moment.”

I happened upon the BBC version of Being Human on Netflix. As a Canadian, most of my TV viewing has been either American or CBC programs. Seeing BBC’s Being Human has made me realize how truly awful most mainstream American TV and film actually is. It is formulaic, boring, poorly acted, poorly written and beats the same themes of racism, sexual repression and violence to death over and over again. Now, I have NOT seen any HBO programs and I suspect there may be some very good shows on HBO.

What I love about Being Human is that the program is courageous. Nothing happens that is not fully considered – thought through all the way. If there is violence, it has a purpose, one that the actors, the writers, the set designers – everyone involved – seems to be aware of.

The show is a compassionate, funny, well thought-out exploration of the dark side of being human through the lives of people who are no longer human. The only American program that I can think of that reminds me of BH is Joan of Arcadia, which also seemed to move beyond unreflected violence and formulaic script writing to explore the depths of human life. But of course it was cancelled after two years!

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As far as American TV is concerned, I have gone on strike; called a boycott. I have decided that there is just so much wonderful programming to be found elsewhere that it will take me the rest of my life just to scratch the surface.

Braveheart has left the building

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Now that the USADA report is out,  I’ve been thinking about how it could be that the sport of cycling was so dirty for so long; that an aggressive and single-minded athlete like Armstrong, for whom winning at all costs is more important than any else, could be so successful. I also wonder why we focus so much on medals. In Canada, I know there was been some discussion about why it is that government sponsorship for athletes destined to the Olympics is so heavily weighted in favour of winning medals, as opposed to excelling in a sport, whether that leads to medals or not.

There is a kind of contradiction in highly competitive sports. The intense competition brings out the best athletes, and their best performances. But it also brings out, and encourages, our worst qualities – like we have seen with Armstrong. Maybe the shocking extent of the problems in cycling will push the organizations and corporations attached to this sport to rethink their values – that competing in sports should not be about winning at all costs, and that we (the fans) need to stop looking to these athletes to fulfill our cultural fantasies about heroism. After all, the Tour de France is not Braveheart. If a person needs a hero, why don’t they get on a bike, or put on some runners, maybe get out the skis, and become their own hero? Failing that, why not just go see a movie?