More than words can say

Musicians bond with each other deeply, sometimes instantly. It happens because our neural networks synchronize when we play together. No really, it's a science thing, they've documented it, look it up. So because our brains start grooving together when we play together, we get deeply lodged in each other's heads and hearts.

And sometimes a musician, say a mandolin player just for example, happens to also be a fantastically good person who practices deep compassion and kindness, who inspires everyone around him to be kinder to each other, to play more and better music, and to live gently and love everybody. A family starts to grow up around such a person, based on that whole synchronized neural network and heart combo platter thing. Everybody adores everybody, because the dominant vibe is love--love of music, love for each other, love for the audience, for the place, for the time. Life gets so good. It's beautiful and magical and precious.

Then that mandolin player finds out that he's got cancer, so his musical family, which by now is HUGE, gathers around him and says "We're gonna do whatever it takes to keep you around because the music and the love and the vibe are too good to let go, and we love you like lightning loves thunder, do you understand?" So everybody gets together and raises a bunch of money, treatment is given, and the mandolin player gets better and all is well.

Until the leukemia happens. And then it just hurts and hurts and hurts. The family gathers around the mandolin player again, but this time everybody feels helpless and scared and utterly bereft. But they hold him tight, and they check on each other, and they say "I love you" to everybody so many times it seems unreal, but because of him every time they say it, it means more than it did the last time. And they wait.

And then the messages go out, he's gone. It's over. And it feels like the heart has been ripped out of the whole community, and yet the relief that his pain is at an end is equally great, and the two feelings whiplash back and forth and through the family for days. But the beautiful thing is, everybody talks to everybody, bonds are renewed, hugs are exchanged, and one person helps another heal, and that person helps another, and so on, like great ripples in the shared neural network.

I was at folk club when it happened. It was my friend Kimberli's turn to share a song, and something inspired her to sing "Death Come a Knockin'," and just after that the message came through. Bobby has gone home. And we knew, we all knew. She had the profound honor of singing him home. And her eyes shone from the tears of deep sadness, and from the fire of knowing she helped him find his way.

There's a hole in the world where Bobby used to be, and no one yet knows how deep it really is, or how far it goes, or whether anything will ever heal it. Nothing and no one will ever replace him, but hopefully that hole will slowly fill up with the kind of love we found playing music together. Blessed be, safe journeys, and hurry back. We got tunes to play, my friend.

Oh, the Dreadful Wind and Rain

Well, wind anyway. I played Saturday night outside in gale force wind. It wasn't that cold, but wind that strong sucks the heat right out of you. I had to play like a maniac just to stay warm, and as soon as I got into my car, I was drenched in sweat. What an odd combination of discomforts. All in a day's work.

But it got me thinking about all the elements, and how much I love to play music out in the world, walking through a field of wild grasses and flowers with my fiddle, sitting on a fallen tree with my guitar, or just singing softly in the center of a forest. All of these situations are usually totally spontaneous and uncontrolled, and most of the time they have been flat-out magical. But try to control an outdoor situation and often it becomes unmanageable instantly. Blazing, burning sun, high winds, storms blowing up out of nowhere . . . And that's just spring.

We are, believe it or not, wild animals, too, just like the wolf and the bobcat and the falcon; we have just excused ourselves from being part of nature, like petulant children confronted with a healthy, organic dinner: Scoffs, rolls eyes. "May I be excused, pul-lease?"

Um, no. We're part of it. We are, somehow, a vital part of this ecosystem, though I can't imagine what good we are possibly doing any other living thing. We can shut ourselves in our houses and complain endlessly to our friends about how stupid our weather is, but that doesn't change anything.

Matter is energy, and energy can become matter. If I put some energy into making amends for the extreme abuses humanity has inflicted on the planet, for example, by going out into the woods and singing to the trees, good things happen in my life. If ten of my friends will go into a forest and sing to the trees, good things will happen to them. If ten of their friends do the same, good things will start to happen all over the planet. We may not be able to redeem ourselves, and we may not have much time left, honestly. But music is power. And power can be used for good. And there is no better audience than trees and birds and bugs and flowers.

Bowing

I bought another new bow . . . Yes, I did . . . A carbon-fiber one. Very pretty. Snakewood frog, sterling silver hardware, very pretty white abalone. It's a beautiful thing.

And it got me thinking about the right hand again. And I certainly don't mean to be biased against any lefties out there - so let me just say by "right hand" I mean the hand that generates the sound by plucking or bowing. I guess I will always be obsessed with the right-hand part of playing, the textural side of technique. The right hand is responsible for more than half the tone. You can have an incredible violin, but if you have a bad bow, you're going to sound bad. You can have a so-so violin, but if you play it with a fantastic bow, you'll sound great.

Same with the guitar - you can know all the chords in the world, but if you can't keep time, or if you play the wrong strings when you strum, you'll sound awful. Likewise, if you approach a so-so guitar with command and confidence, it'll sound like a good guitar, but if you play timidly, even a super nice guitar will sound thin and hollow.

The left hand is the intellectual, mathematical part of playing, the knowing of the scales and chords, which are like equations and formulas. The right hand is the emotional part of playing, the painter daubing notes of color. We say great players draw or pull or coax notes from their instruments, which are emotional, tactile, verbal things, and have everything to do with the way great players use their right hands.

In some traditional kinds of Witchcraft, the left hand is the receptive or invoking hand, while the right hand is the sending or evoking hand, the hand that throws the fireball, so to speak. The left hand reaches out into the Universe for the knowledge, energy, or power needed, and the right hand puts that energy into action once it has been imbued with the Witch's will. The musician uses the left hand to make the intellectual decision about which notes to play, and uses the right hand to send those notes out into the world.

May your right hand know what your left hand is doing . . .

Music and therapy

Sometimes I think of what I do as a healing practice rather than a creative one. Especially teaching lessons. Lessons are by their very nature therapeutic. When you play a musical instrument, you engage both sides of the brain, release endorphins, stimulate deep learning centers, awaken sleeping senses . . . And you can learn so much about who you and how you learn. Helping people navigate those processes can be beautiful or terrifying, brilliant or frustrating, rewarding or exhausting. Depends on the student.

I almost never get frustrated with students unless they don't want to learn. I have every kind of student from whizz-bangs to those who struggle mightily. And it seems that the ones who really struggle, who are really fighting hard to do this, are the ones who are the most engaged--because they are fighting for what they truly love and desire to do. I would rather teach 100 students with Down Syndrome, or senior citizens who have never even picked up an instrument, or autistic students who don't talk to me and never look me in the eye but play with such feeling, than five students who have the capacity to learn it easily but don't care whether they learn it or not.

Desire is the key. Desire to do it, willingness to try, and commitment to practice. My challenged students will probably never play Carnegie Hall, but for me, every baby step they take feels exhilarating. I don't care how long it takes to learn one thing--I don't care if they never memorize a single song--because the most important thing to them is the joy they feel making music, and that's what music is all about.

Furious Activity

This winter sucked. And it sent me so far down a black hole I didn't even know where out was . . . I am not somebody that gets dysfunctionally depressed, but holy crap. I was in trouble.

Fortunately, I'm not someone who lets dysfunction stand in the way of a good time, so . . . I'm back. With a lot of help from my partner and a few kindly but no-nonsense spirit guides, I have recovered. Whew.

"What's happening?" you may well ask. Lots . . . First of all, stay tuned for the launch of gayladrake.com - coming soon to a browser near you! The Aunt G and the Stone City Nephews record is back on track, Pete is mixing like a madman, and we're going to aim for late-spring/early-summer release. Look for the fundraising campaign to begin very soon. The amazing John Rathje has some outstanding t-shirt designs, and a beautiful RECORD cover - YES! VINYL!!! - to entice you to help an auntie out. Can't wait.

I've taken the winter off from gigging, so I'm ramping that back up as well. Natalie Brown and I played at Uptown Bill's Coffeehouse in Iowa City last weekend, and WOW what a fabulous gig that was! Packed house, wonderfully attentive audience, dancing in chairs . . . It was incredible. Next I'm with my old friend Dan Johnson at the NewBo City Market in Cedar Rapids, March 20, 5 to 7:45PM - which is, appropriately enough, the first day of spring, and certainly there needs to be music! Then March 28 I'll be at Mendoza Wine and Music in downtown Coralville from 8-10, and on April 3 at the ass-crack of dawn I am getting in my car and heading for Fort Collins, CO, to play some music to support my dear friend Kevin Houchin's gallery opening on April 4, and to do a riotously fun house concert on April 5. Then back home April 6 to celebrate my son's 22nd birthday. April 19 Johnson and I are at Cafe Paradiso in Fairfield.

So hang tight, stick around, kick back . . . I'll keep you posted on everything. Life is good!

Here goes...

So... I received some guidance this weekend that I need to just shatter the Broom Closet once and for all. For those who know me well, this will come as no surprise. For those who know me a little, it won't exactly be a shocker. And for those who don't know me at all, I look forward to meeting you...

     Bogeyman: "You a witch or something?" .
     Susan: "I'm just... Something."
                                  Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

That's exactly it, I think. I'm... Something. Parts of what I do and what I am may fall under the umbrella of "witch," or even "Witch," and maybe that's the word I'll end up with, but at the moment, "Voracious Student" and "Relentless Seeker" seem to be more appropriate. "Druid" is good, too, as I am a songwriter and wordsmith, and Druiding is all about that. But neither one seems perfectly right. I am, as usual, neither fish nor foul. That's okay. These things happen.

Many people question the relevance of witches in our oh-so modern era. We don't need the batty old lady in the cottage just outside the village who we despise unless we need her to help heal the sick, birth a baby, terminate an unwanted pregnancy (or better yet, explain how not to get pregnant in the first place), tell us how to solve disputes, tell us when to plant and when to wait, whether or not to build a giant building there or there, sit up all night with the dead to ensure safe passage to the Other Realms... No, we have doctors and architects and lawyers and midwives and agricultural software and undertakers and... consultants... We don't need her services anymore.

Yeah, we do. Witches have the knowin' o' the hidden things (or "hiddlins' ", to quote Pratchett again), like how to walk between the physical and spiritual worlds and connect dots between them that bring clearness to confusion. Like how to see where the spirit is broken and is causing physical illness to manifest. Witches, for want of a better word, see how the macrocosm and the microcosm fit together like a hologram, and how each part contains the whole. When a person suffers spirit loss or a soul injury, there is no doctor who has the training to cross into the spirit realms and find what was lost and call it back, or fix what got broken so the love of the Divine Mind can once again flow unimpeded through the heart. But a Witch does, and he or she will do it, and that will open the paths of potentiality so that healing can happen.

Druids also have some hiddlins', including word magic, music magic and ceremonial magic. Being a songwriter, I have long been fascinated by the interplay between words, melody and presentation. Words have power, and music has power. Put them together with intention, and there's a lot can happen.

Reiki is an energy that has the power to heal spirits as well as physical bodies. It has an intelligence and a will of its own, and those who choose to practice quickly become adept at putting their own egos aside and allowing Reiki to use them as an instrument. I am working hard to refine myself as an instrument of Reiki, and hope to make many strides forward in that area over the next several months.

And that's what I'm voraciously studying and relentlessly seeking, to "ha' the knowin' o' the hiddlins'," to walk between worlds, to use all my talents to help increase the levels of joy and light and love in this world. So consider the Broom Closet door smashed permanently open. Call me what you will, Witch, Druid, Priestess, Student, Seeker... Crazy... Yes, that's a possibility. But I think a very very remote one.

Love and Light, Love and Light, Love and Light...

A Long Journey Began, and Begins Again

In January, I started a journey, and it's been amazing, brilliant, magical, beautiful and more life-affirming than anything I have ever done. I began doing an intensive spiritual training, part of which is studying and beginning to practice Reiki. I look back at my journals, even from two weeks ago, and I cannot believe how much I have learned, how much I have progressed, how much I have grown, changed, bloomed, become in four short months.

It started with a Reiki treatment from my dear friend and cousin Mumsy, because I was feelin' a little off energetically, mentally and physically. Once she had done a full treatment, I knew I needed to do whatever it took to bring the energy of Reiki into my life on a daily basis. And I have a feeling that Reiki may have picked me, too. There was a powerful rightness about it all. So Mumsy and I began working together, me studying meditation, energy, chakras, auras, magic (the real stuff, which is neither Harry Potter nor David Copperfield, but more like Granny Weatherwax), and finally, yes, Reiki, and today, April 14, is the day of my initiation into Reiki, my first attunement.

I've been using some books by Christopher Penczak, The Inner Temple of Witchcraft and The Magick of Reiki, to learn the meditative, energetic and magical skills, and a book by Caroline Myss, Anatomy of the Spirit to study the chakras and a system of symbolic, poetic diagnosis of dis-ease in mind, body and spirit. These are astoundingly challenging, complete, complex and masterful books to work through, and I am grateful to have them in my life.

I feel like I have reached a major threshold, and after crossing it I cannot remain the same. Reiki is always a part of one who is attuned, it can't be shut off. It makes wonderful changes, some subtle, some tremendous. Even now, before my initiation, I feel the transformation beginning, and I am ready. I have surrendered utterly to the will of Divine Mind. I am ready for whatever lessons are next.

Bright blessings, and blessed be.