Stand up to the line and sing...

"Poets know this moment
when it's too soon to scream yet
but too late to hold your tongue."

Ewa Lipska

I wrote once that the world needed a new heart, and I asked of myself - what can I do to help create that? Recently, I have gone through periods of despondency as I have witnessed the poets and fools of my world increasingly allowing their spirits to become caged in the dullest of lead cells. When this happens, we begin to sing the wrong language. Yes, I want comfort, the security of belonging, the warmth of a fireside and the safety of acceptance, but I would rather live with the rain in my face than sleep in a velvet-lined cage, for when we allow ourselves to become too dictated by our desire for accolade, approval, recognition, security, reward - we run the risk of missing the moment when it is 'too late to hold your tongue'.

But it is natural, yes, to seek legitimacy, to seek labels that make us feel 'worthy'. I had big low lately when I didn't get a job I had applied for. Why? Because I had wrapped up somewhere in the mix that this was a signal of my legitimacy as a poet. And why seek this coded legitimacy? Because it gives us a label against the 'mad', against the feeling of it being somehow a decadence to live this way. STOP!!!

The poet and Fool tells us the stories of what is is to live, to be human. In ancient days, the poet-shaman went out and told the stories, created magic to explain the existance of their world. The troubadours told of our capacity to love, of the struggle of the free-heart against a growing political and moral oppressive force. In the 20th Century, women and men began to tell their stories in poems, to speak their existence and break the silence. They stood up and shared the individual breath, and in that action, showed that in each single life, all humanity is held. The war poets broke the myth of the heroic bloodshed. Prisoners have sung the poetry of the oppressed. The silenced children have grown up and spoken of the tortures of hidden abuse. Poetry is not about earning the legitimacy of a label (am I a real poet now? a little voice asks), but is about the willingness to break silence. It is a passion for the telling of the human, and the shared, experience. It is about the act of connection, much as this act is. And it is there for everyone. We can all break down the silences.

And this is why I continue the Fool's Path, why I continue to want to sing my songs and why I am blessed to meet and share the journey with so many beautiful travellers! It is why, in the end, I suppose I cringe at the thought of being absorbed into the mainstream, of releasing my autonomy of expression, of creation. I choose freedom and all it entails, the good and bad.

Perhaps in time, the value of the poet and the Fool will come to be appreciated in monetary terms, though it would be an interesting society that rewarded subversion! But if it happened, maybe I might be able to pay my bills once in a while, which would be nice (I have noticed that big business does not accept poems as payment!) but meanwhile, well - rice is nice and the rain feels good.

Hey baby, baby it's a Wild World...

WILD Living in a state of nature, not cultivated, stormy, furious, rash, extravagant, excited, unrestrained, tempestuous, eager, frantic, enthusiastic, random, feral, free, untamed, undomesticated, uncontrollable, turbulent, uninhibited, unfettered, delightfully enjoyable.

Wild Women Press, 2004

In 1999, I founded Wild Women and Wild Women Press. Together with other women from the original Wild Women collective, and my partner Adam, we publish our poetry and perform it at various venues across the UK. Recently, myself and fellow WW, Gill Hands, travelled to Sheffield to perform at their Literature Festival. It was a great night all in all, and I enjoyed sharing the new work from Byron Makes His Bed. It was a pleasure to be invited to read.

Last week, along with our payment, we received a feedback letter from our hosts, stating that:

"...whilst we enjoyed the performance we did feel that it was rather less 'wild' than we anticipated and did have a couple of comments from the audience to this effect..."

Whilst it is always good to receive feedback, this one got me thinking.

This isn't the first time such a comment has been made. The last time was at Stirling Poetry & Sexuality Conference, where an academic (male) came and said "...you're not very wild are you? You shouldn't call yourselves that...". At the time, I had the distinct desire to give him a Glasgow Kiss (headbutt) and ask if that was wild enough, but being non-violent and also tending to steer clear of confrontation, I tried explaining that the Wild was in the content of the poetry. Given that the other works dealt with sexual fantasies and the acting out of these, along with cross-dressing, sado-masachism and homoerotica, and in my case, on that occasion, a very tender account of a love affair, of sensual desire and of miscarriage (Fragile Bodies), it was a varied set and I wondered how he thought we should present it instead, how he thought we could 'make it wild enough'?

Over the years, I have encountered some interesting notions around the word WILD. Some, like the people above, obviously had pre-conceived ideas of what that meant. Often, it seems, this entails some kind of political ranting of radical feminism or alternatively, a fantasy mix of sexual depravity and dancing girls. Which of course, we could manifest, but that is not where the origin of the name Wild Women comes from.

I call myself a Wild Woman because I honour my innate self, my true self and I am determined to be that person, wherever I am, whoever I am with, whatever I am doing. I honour my creativity and my sexuality in my daily living, and as much as possible, I live close to the truth of the heart and express that in my actions and reactions in the world. When I started to think about it, I began to see what, in my own life, defined the WILD act, and I came up with the following...

the act of creating without limitations, of publishing my own work without intervention, of standing up and speaking out loud my lived experiences and perceptions;

the refusal to dismiss my creative life as secondary, and the rejection of usual capitalist, status-driven modes of living;

the ownership of my sexuality and my sexual desires, and my freedom to express this, in my life and in my work;

the active questionning of all experience, and the search for truth beyond the media-fed images and political saccharine of 21st Century global politics;

the creative act of establishing and nurturing a space where other women and men are encouraged to do the same;

the celebration of the beauty, magic and mystery of life, whatever it brings, however bloody hard, however full of ecstasy, through the creation of music, song, dance, love, food;

the willingness to get up every day and keep on the journey, to turn my life inside out when it becomes entrenched in crud, the willingness to face myself and my soul every damn day, however much it hurts and to keep smiling and keep believing;

to dance and not give a damn what people think or who is watching;

and to believe that my single existence can change the world for the better, just as is true for each of us.

The work of Wild Women is honest, real, often raw, beautiful, naked, sensual, unafraid of its spirituality, its eroticism, of challenging boundaries and asking questions. It speaks out on love, on loss, on sex and passion and nature and violence, on the body and its decay and glory, on divorce, parenting, friendship, food and everything that makes a human being part of humanity. It often speaks of the politics of being Woman and Poet, of the creative feminist, of the destruction of this planet, of attitudes towards what is feminine and the imbalance of power (still) towards a patriachal, moralistic society, but we do this within our words, within our living.

We get up and we speak our truth without shame, though oftentimes it feels terrifying. We howl, growl, play and say our words out loud, and we live our lives free. To me, that is what the Wild in Wild Women means. And you never know, next time this Blissfool puts on her Wild Women cape and joins her wild sisters in poetry, she might just surprise you!

To close, here is a little something from Byron's Bed...


Legacy

Doctor, what am I
if not wrong?

Wrong in the head and wrong in the heart,
wrong in the flesh and wrong from the start.

Am I not like my deadly playmates –
the other girls who grew into their lives
misshapen?

We know them by the little lives
they laid down in verse,
by the ways they calculated
the brief
and final full stop.

Oven-baked and drowned in a lake,
counting out pretty pills to take.

Am I shaped that way too?

I was spoon-fed on imagery,
given the world in words
then told it was not mine,
to let the old dogs lie
and lie some more.

Beyond this, the only choice -
they called me crazy whore:

sticks and stones can break my bones
but the words will surely hurt me.

But what am I,
what am I, Doctor,

if not this body,
if not
this errant voice?


Dr.Kaufman (2000) conducted two historiometric studies. The first study, which examined 1,629 writers, both male and female, showed that female poets were significantly more likely to suffer from mental illness than both other types of women writers (fiction writers, playwrights, and non-fiction writers) and male writers (fiction writers, poets, playwrights, and non-fiction writers). The second study, which examined 520 eminent women from various fields, showed that women poets were more likely to suffer from mental illness than journalists, politicians, actresses, and visual artists. This finding has been given the preliminary label the “Sylvia Plath Effect”.
(from Byron Makes His Bed, Wild Women Press, 2006)

These female runagates...

Wild Women.
Those who go in for “women’s rights” and general topsyturvyism. Some smoke cigars in the streets, some wear knickerbockers, some stump the country as “screaming orators,” all try to be as much like men as possible.	1
“Let anyone commend to these female runagates quietness, duty, home-staying, and the whole cohort of wild women is like an angry beehive, which a rough hand has disturbed.” —Nineteenth Century, March, 1892, p. 463.

E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.

My question is this: why does it seem like such a either-or choice? If I am a cigar-smoking, knickerbocker-wearing Wild Woman, does that mean I cannot also want to nurture a home, cook on the hearth and love my family?

Today I am frustrated with this choice. I am all of these - the woman in the street, the angry beehive and the nourishing mother. For me, integrity is paramount in life. How do I go about integrating all these aspects of the woman I am, when even my own 'brain' tut-tuts at my desire to remain true to all aspects of my being?

This morning, I sat in a hospital room and was spoken at by a sharp-dressed man who prescribed me a drug to over-stimulate my ovaries, because for some reason, they are no longer working. When I tried to tell him about some of the difficulties I have had these last years, and the problems following my last failed pregnancy, he didn't look up. He continued to write his prescription and told me I could not blame the doctor for not noticing I was carrying around the debris of this pregnancy for 3 months - an oversight which led to infection and scarring. I wanted to shout at him that I bloody well did blame the doctor and why the hell was no one listening to me describe my own body. Instead, I burst into tears.

I burst into tears because deep down, I very much want to have a child, yet when I lost the last one, something inside me whispered "silly woman, to think you could have that life". It whispered it because part of my mind actually believes the bullshit, that I have to be a 'different kind of woman' to be a mother - not a wild woman, not a poet, not a free-wheeling dreamer. That to be a 'mother' means to be a 'good woman' who is quiet and dutiful and stays at home. That if I want to be A Mother, I have to give up being a poet.

Plath tried it. Sexton tried it.

How many more?

I am Wild Woman. I am Blissfool. I am a Lover. I don't want their drugs. I just want to embrace who I am and hope one day that I can also say "I am Mother".

Meanwhile, I have to go change into my knickerbockers . I am off to cheer on my good friend and fellow screaming orator, Gill Hands, as she performs poetry as part of the Apples & Snakes UK Exposed Tour. Now, wear did I leave that cigar?

Only in silence the word...(Ursula LeGuin)

Day 43

A single, white feather
drifts in heat-ribbons
to the frozen ground,

lands amongst the blades
tipped with silver,

trembles;

waits for wings to fly.


(from my Book of Days, a work in life-progress)

Love is not consolation. It is light. (Nietzsche)

End

These are the messages we leave:
paper feathers to the wind
that say in abbreviated code
all the things we cannot say.

I am having to learn our language,
these words of desire we press
upon finger and thumb, scan
with curious intimacy in public spaces
and return.

This is our touch, the body's union;
our sacred dance.

(taken from Byron Makes His Bed, my latest collection, released October 2006, available from Wild Women Press)

"A single word opens up infinite horizons to my soul" (St Therese of Lisieux)

"Total unity goes beyond the sense and the intellect, and the greatest of poets is rendered silent by the inability to share the inexpressible."
(E.G. Melillo)

I have just returned home from my trip with Angela to Assisi. The city itself is more beautiful than ever imagined, wrapped in rose-blushed sunlight, glittering. The experience was deeper and greater than I could have planned or hoped for. I have so much inside that I am trying now to understand. It feels too soon to try and find the words to express the heart-journey taken. This morning I sat in bed and watched the rain fall in white-light sheets, turning the world a vibrational green, and I re-read though my journals of the last week. I feel like I have been gone a month!

During my stay, I had the privilege to meet with Murray Bodo, OFM - the poet and Franciscan priest who wrote the Foreword for my last book Fragments. We sat on the roof terrace as the sun sank down into the valley, and we talked of the Poet's Path. It was good to talk this way, without feeling the need to explain the sense of mystery, and it got me thinking about my own journey, in the past, the present moment, the future.

All I can do is make the single human effort to live my life with honesty, without artifice or fear, without shrouding myself in veils. Perhaps each moment of each day is the same journey. Within the simplicity of the poem, we are revealed the simplicity of Being, and in the end, I am starting out where I have always been (or always Being?) - trying to make the word capture, hold the spirit in the still moment.

But in that very action, I meet the paradox of poetry. Can the poem truly satisfy, or is it only ever a sneak transient peek at the essence? For the poet, the poetry is never complete, because each poem is a pathway; in the moment the sensation occurs of capturing the 'truth of Being', that 'truth, by its very nature, dies away and is reborn into another movement, another question, another step, another poem. And every sound uttered is only trying to find its way back to its root of silence.

At the stillpoint of the turning world - there the dance is...(TS Eliot)

"Birth. Childhood. Puberty. Maturity. Death. The dance of life in five movements. Life is a work in progress, performance art, ritual theatre, an epic poem, and we're not called on to be only spectators and listeners but the artists of our own stories, the creator of our own lives. What role are you playing in your life? Why? Do you have a choice? Yes!"

(Gabrielle Roth, Maps to Ecstasy)

The hot desert winds have left me agitated. Something has got under my skin and is scratching from the inside to get out. Life is turning again, and I do not yet know where or how. I just know it is and I accept this, though it scares me.

This is always my most difficult time, the time when I struggle to know when to sit and be patient, and when to move and take action. I am aware something of deep significance in my life needs to be released, or taken hold of, that the choices I make now are important and not to be hurried by panic or lust. I sense that a change of shape is happening in my own being as I unfold into a new state. But I have no idea what that is, or where I am moving to.

That is the thing about living life in constant motion and discovery. There are no set destinations, no established conventions. Just the movement of the body, heart and spirit, expressed through my being, in this lifetime, as I journey to understand who I am, what this path is, and attempt to keep my eyes open to the magic that is all around. And I keep on dancing, because that is all there is.

September calls in all the year

Next week I turn 35. I am wondering where the years went. The last three and a half years seem to have been swallowed in grief. In 2003, I lost the child I was carrying. Yet in the act of giving life and carrying death, I was connected to something much older, much deeper than any 'reality'. Before I knew I was pregnant, I started to dream my child. Before I knew the child was going to die, I dreamt the goodbye. Before I got to name my child in life, I knew my child was named Rowan, the tree of night and secret wishes. The poem below is one I wrote in my daily journal, 2 weeks before I 'knew' I was pregnant. I have continued to write a poem a day since this time.

That loss, and the subsequent trauma of health difficulties, left me exhausted. I shouted at the moon for this loss and wished it were different. Now, as I surface from the grief and feel myself re-entering the world, I know that the loss has left me forever changed but also grown. To love fully means to accept that we, as human beings, also lose. We must always let go. I still wish for that child, and do not know if I will ever have another, but the gift of that loss is the treasure of love. September is here, and I turn another year. A hot wind blows across Cumbria, from a distant and unknown land. It feels strange but right and as the new moon enters, I sense a new journey unfolding.

Poem 1 (3rd May)

In the warm of our bed, I give birth to giant turtles,
carve myself a coracle in which to sit,
my desperate attempt at foiling them.

I could be your mother, I whispered, knowing I lied
yet, even this hardened shall, this sharp
beak and claw can give food.
My black tongue darts in and out,
delivering green mucus, food of the slime gods.

Eat, my children, eat to grow strong,
so that you can swim and become invisible,
so you can become sea-invisible

as the half-light of morning makes this invisible,
eliminated by the kiss of the moon and sun.

As day rises, I slip away into the water,
hiding what I have become.

I'd rather live with rose-tinted spectacles...

I found this poem today, a translation of the Sufi poet Hafiz. Recently, I have been following the scent of St. Francis and I find this instinct true - there are many resonances between Francis and the Sufi poet seers, and a number of words written on this subject. In the end though, it is not words that I feel, but the stirring of the heart, of Love. Where will it all lead? Wherever it leads, keep laughing!

Someone Should Start Laughing

I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:

How are you?

I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:

What is God?

If you think that the Truth can be known
From words,

If you think that the Sun and the Ocean

Can pass through that tiny opening Called the mouth,

O someone should start laughing!
Someone should start wildly Laughing –Now!

There are many name-robbers in the outer world...

A State of Emergency

For this
I will risk
everything.

I will kill the despot in my head,
let my body riot for independence.
Before long my blood will break from its cells
and storm the walls of my heart.
Lights flash behind my eyes, warning ships
away from the needle-cliffs of my bones.

Wreckers strip these shores. They’ve looted
the stores, snatched words from silk pouches,
stolen the eyes of memory and left
the sweet smell of narcissi in the air.

People are frightened. They hide behind closed doors
whispering my name. They want to send in the police,
take charge before it becomes dangerous.
All those men and women, busy watching
from their window-boxes,
terrified of civil unrest.

I will do my best
to give them
what they expect.


(from Byron Makes His Bed by Victoria Bennett, due for release from Wild Women Press October 2006. First published Orbis Magazine, 2002)

Everything symbolic must begin with the literal...

Even a fool knows you can't touch the stars, but it won't keep the wise from trying.
Harry Anderson

The Fool's Path is largely directed by the freedom of the wind. Recently, I found myself having to wave goodbye to a couple of wonderful and exciting opportunities, opportunities I had worked hard towards and imagined to be the next step in my journey. This was not the case and, like many times before, I found myself having to step back and accept that my idea of the right direction may differ wildly to the twists and turns of the path I am actually on. This did not cause me to feel too sad. Yes, I felt deflated, but underneath that, I sensed that something else was in the wings, something I had yet to envisage.

A short while later, I came across an old journal entry, from my time at Crossbush Convent an in it I had written down my wish to travel to Assisi - both the birthplace of St. Francis and also a central point for the Troubadours. I called up Angela Dickson, and we both agreed that if we could manage it on our incredibly small budget, we would go. We also remembered that we had said to Brother Andre, a visiting Friar at the time, that we would one day travel to Assisi and perhaps meet him there!

That was a week ago. Since then, a number of wonderful things have happened, from the accidental email contact with a property owner turned spiritual healer and writer, who happened to have the same surname as me, that took us to talking, that led us to find a fantastic place to stay with CEFID - a Franciscan run centre in Assisi. On top of that, the only dates we could get ridiculously low flights from Liverpool took us to Assisi on 3rd October. St Francis died on 3rd October, the day we arrive and the Feast of St Francis, a major event in Assisi and in the Franciscan calendar, happens on 3/4/5th October. Not only that, but we are staying in the town the same time as a pilgrimage is being led by Brother Andre Cirino and Brother Murray Bodo - who have both been wonderful support in the production of Fragments, and the subsequent experience of TV exposure.

As a confirmed opposer of organised religion and a serious questionner of the Catholic Church, it might seem strange to have my life path tied into the path of St Francis, but it does not seem so to me. There was something in the words of Murray Bodo OFM, in his book St. Francis: The Journey and The Dream, that struck me when I read them for the first time in January, though I have different ideas about God and all...

"Francis determined always to be on the outside what he was on the inside...some of his brothers felt he overdid this obsession with sincerity and wholeness but Francis feared duplicity and hypocrisy more that anything in the world...and Francis was sure Jesus would never speak harshly against anything unless it spoiled the human heart...he prayed that God would give all people the courage to be themselves instead of what others expected them to be..."

Just as I had once declared my path as a Troubadour, so I felt connected with this eccentric, obsessive and incredible man and as I read more, I began to understand why. His path and mine, though very different, share threads of Love. It is all part of the same unfolding.

Like I said, I don't know where this journey is taking me - or rather, the understanding or meaning is always obscured in advance and relies simply on trust. I trust that for some reason I am meant to be in Assisi, with Angela, and at that time. If I had secured the previous work offer I had so wanted the week before, I would not have the opportunity to go.

Some people may regard this way of living as irresponsible, lacking committment, feckless. It is not. It requires a steady vision, trust, willingness to fall and fall again and get back up again, tenacity and a heart that is always willing to choose love over security, inspiration over acclaim, freedom over ownership. I do my best to live that way. Sometimes I manage it, sometimes I get caught up in being all too human.

The last few years have been tough to live through - and grief was thicker than the blood in my veins, but it is all part of the journey. It took going into a catholic Convent (bizarre! I wouldn't have predicted that one!) to accept again and celebrate my path as Blissfool. I have no idea where it will lead or why, but I trust that in releasing to that wind, that spirit and letting it flow, life unfolds as it is meant to, and all good surrounds.

All creative dreams become possible in such air.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise (William Blake)

The Fool embraces the unexpected delay as an unforeseen opportunity.

It didn't much feel that way earlier today though. I had readied myself to travel to Manchester for an interview with the Script Team at Shameless (shame on you if you haven't watched it - it has to be one of the most exciting, authentic programmes broadcast!) The preparation had been done, the outfit chosen, the spirit calmed and collected. Then I found out that infact we were meant to be there at 9.30, not 2.30 as we had been told - so interview postponed. As much as I accept all things as the flow of life, I must admit to growling down the telephone at the messenger of this news.

That is, until my fellow wild woman Ruth informed me that today was not an auspicious day anyway, especially for Fools, as this was the same day that Pope John XXII had ordered the inquisition at Carcassone to seize the property of witches, sorcerors , those who make wax images, and troubadours.

Follow the story if you will...

1) last night I had a dream and in the dream I was holding a piece of parchment, old and stained. On this I saw written in script the names of people and beside the names, titles such as God's Fool, Troubadour, Minstrel etc. The edges of this paper were burnt black;

2) when I was in the Convent, I met a Friar from New York who remarked that there was a link between the Troubadour and the Franciscan, with the poet being at the centre of this heart - a bolt shot through me as he said this. This I KNEW. Discovering and embracing my path as the Fool was the most profound experience;

3) the only thing I knew about St Francis when I entered the Convent was that he was called God's Fool (if you want to read more on him, try starting with The Journey and The Dream, by Murray Bodo);

4) 1 year ago, we were visited by the Troubadours of Divine Bliss from Kentucky - the result of me having emailed them a year before that, when stumbling on their site as I followed the scent of the Troubadour;

5) 2 years ago, I was offered the chance to stay in Carcassonne at a writing retreat - I was too ill to take the opportunity, but nevertheless...

6) 3 years ago, I declared one day, in the company of wild women, that I was a Troubadour, that I had been a Troubadour before...it came out the blue, but hit me with such clarity that I had to say it out loud;

7) at the same time, I was given a beautiful gift that now sits on my fireplace - a large silver spoon, and on it is engraved Troubadour - not his doing, but an old spoon, and an old engraving!

Part of the journey is recognising the scent and following it, wherever it goes. So, thanks Ruth for putting another piece in the puzzle. I don't quite know why the events of today happened, but I am renewed in my belief that there is a path unfolding that I must trust, even if I can't see it all clearly.

Templar Car

Oh Lord, won't you give me a

Templar Sportette...

every wondered how God gets around so quick? Well, now you know...a handy little sports number for all your pastoral needs. 0 - eternity in only 7 lifetimes.

This little gem was found on a fascinating website:

http://www.ordotempli.org/the_templars_motor_car.htm

Fragments of a heart on fire...

Day 22

I open the battered box.
In the dark, bright-eyed bats
circle the air, tangle notes
in the hair-strands of my thoughts;

these are the doubting times.
Nothing can be found, or good, in here.

A small light flickers,
glow-worm silk moth, firefly
against the night, bright wings
of sticky incandescence
beating, beating,
learning how to raise
its body from the ground.

I lift it up, hold it carefully
in the hole of my palm,
wait for the sun
to dry its wings,
help it fly.

(from Fragments - Victoria Bennett, Wild Women Press 2006)

FOOTNOTE: The poems collected in Fragments were written, one day at a time, during my stay of 40 days and nights at The Poor Clare Convent, Crossbush, UK. I joined 3 other female volunteers, the Sisters and the all-women crew from Tiger Aspect Productions. who documented our shared and individual experiences. The final cut of this journey was transmitted on BBC2 in June/July 2006. It was a unique adventure.

Thirteen Wild Ways

I thought I would share with you my personal, daily guide to living 'wild', developed over the years as I have trodden the Fool's path. At last writing, the list seemed to find itself at 13 (the magical number of the goddess) but I am sure it will keep growing...Number One: step off.

The Blissfool personal guide to having cake and eating it...

1. Be...foolish
the fool is the adventurer who steps off the ledge. Be willing to take that first step - it teaches you how to fly! And we all know...without the fool, the journey cannot begin!

2. Be...OK
just do what you can do and forgive yourself the messy bits in between.

3. Be...happy
doing more of what gives you pleasure and love really does make you happy! So give up postponing happiness 'til tomorrow, or putting on that martyred yoke and enjoy life. Live it with boldness and beauty.

4. Be...honest
with yourself, with others, with life.

5. Be...generous
love increases the more you give it. Try not to hoard it, hide it or harangue it - the bigger your heart, the more love it can receive - same goes for money, pleasure, anything (remember to give yourself the same big love!)

6. Be...courageous
in loving, living and creating.

7. Be...expressive
creative and spontaneous expression unlocks the spirit. It helps us to understand who we are and what our own experience is all about. Do not hide your voice - each individual voice makes up the collective heartbeat of the earth.

8. Be...playful
who said growing up means giving up? Try to maintain that idealism and enthusiasm of innocence. Ok, so life can hurt like bloody hell at times but soul suicide is not the answer. The more you remember to play, the more you will be able to live and learn through the hard times.

9. Be...sexy
in your body, mind and spirit. Celebrate your sex, your voice, your dreams. Enjoy your body, the world around you, the beauty and sensuality of living. Celebrate yourself!

10. Be...powerful
power comes from taking charge of your own destiny, your own day-to-day, your own place in the world. So, don't say you can't do something because someone/thing says it is impossible. If you have a dream, take action and if you think the world is unfair, unkind etc. then take creative steps to change it now. Anything is possible!

11. Be...responsible
not advocating a Christ-like burden here but simply saying that if each of us takes positive responsibility for our own lives, things change for the better. You can't live your life martyred to another person, thing or cause (well, you can but...) but you can be responsible for ensuring that at least in your life you act as much as possible from a place of love and respect - for each other, yourself and the earth you live on. This world can be a better place just by you being in it.

12. Be... you
that is the wildest thing you can do. Don't wait for someone else to give you the seal of approval - give it to yourself.

13. Be...well, just be
there are a lot of people and things in this world that tell us to hurry up, push on, keep going. We soak up rules and regulations until we are so restricted we can't move. Try giving it up for a moment. Most things that feel impossible start to feel a whole lot easier when you relax. So next time you are run ragged, fearing failure, or simply saying it can't be done - sit back, listen to the birds, watch the clouds roll by...

A Life Documented

"...for the artist, this sense that she is herself the text, means that there is little difference between her life and her art...the effect of a life experienced as an art or an art experienced as a kind of life..."

(Susan Gubar: The Blank Page and Female Creativity)

I have always documented my life - through journals, poetry, photography, film, music... Before I could document my own life, it was documented by my mother, through her visual art.

For the last year, I have collaborated with my partner in creating our own videoblog, thecommonpeople and now, I am creating this blog. More bizarrely, I was recently a participant in a television 'documentary' - an interesting, enlightening, challenging and not wholly pleasant experience. I did not take part in the TV programme for any stardom dreams. It was much more personal than that. I don't even own a TV - and never have! But it did present me with a fascinating experience as an artist. To engage in the process gave me an opportunity to be both aware of myself as observed and then to see that self edited, transformed in a creative process through film-making, and returned to me through the act of viewing a DVD. Thus becoming in that action, the observer and the mediated-observed.

In the initial contract, I had to agree to the 'reproduction of my physical likeness, in the known universe and unknown, in perpetuity' - (honestly - that was the wording!). In the documented life, this is exactly what it becomes - both me and not me. It is the creation of Me through art.

What is it to be both observer and observed? How does this connect with the 21st Century media obsession with 'reality television', the documentation of 'ordinary lives', or the increasing number of 'tv confessionals'? What about our obsession with documenting and sharing lives through this, the medium of Blogging?

I have a theory that in time, this exposure will eventually lead to a more connected, emotionally transparent world. That this reclaiming of media is infact a 'quiet revolution'. However, having recently just survived the weighty judgement of TV viewing folk, I can see that before we reach Utopia, we might just have to go through the increasing tendency to label, box and accept/reject with alarming speed that seems to also accompany such programmes.

Which takes me to an old favourite of mine, the bad-boy Byron (more on him later - he and I go way back!). This pretty boy made an artform of his life. He was, in effect, the first self-created celebrity, maintaining just enough haze of what was true and what was created as to intrigue the social gossips. Of course, he wrote his own downfall and received the all too familiar condemnation from his former fans. Not to be put down, he had a gilded coach made in a replica of Napoleon's, and left London on the day of his exile, in style and two-fingered glamour and went off to became a revolutionary hero, dying young and beautiful in some romantic location. On his death, his estate protectors burnt all his diaries, thus securing his fame for years to come. He created his 'observed image' to the extent that no-one knows the reality - and one is left wondering - did he?

What is the truth of a created life? What is the creation? The interior becomes exterior, the private is made public. By documenting our personal existence, we empower our self to be active in the creation of the past, the present, the future. Self-obsession becomes self-documented analysis becomes self-knowledge becomes recorded existence. In the end, I return to the belief I began with - that our greatest creative act is our lived experience.

"...Your life is the manifestation of your dream; it is an art. And you can change your life any time if you are not enjoying the dream. Dream masters create a masterpiece of life, they control the dream by making choices..."
(Don Miguel Ruiz)

A thousand forgotten nights

"...In one creative thought
a thousand forgotten nights of love revive..." (Rilke)

Lillium

Fingering pollen-dusted fronds
I think of the last time we met,

of how your body opened to mine
like this flower, unashamed,
abandoned to the heat of our night's sun.

Delicate,
such raging extravagance
is not meant to last the summer.

(from Fragile Bodies, Wild Women Press 2004)

...at night, I spin lines from my desire, heat-ribbons left out for you to find...

You too were for rapture strung

"...the only courage that is demanded of us: to have the courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter..." (Rilke)

Dictionary interpretation of the Fool: from the latin follis translating as 'bellows, windbag or empty-headed person'; fools rush in where angels fear to tread - a person without good judgement will have no hesitation tackling a situation that even the wisest person would avoid...

STOP!

The Fool is:

the creative spark, the new beginning, the inspirational step.
the sponaneous heart, the innocent adventurer, the unconventional, ecstatic lover.
the first step to wild living, to Being.

According to Joseph Cambell, there are three terms or words in the ancient language of Sanskrit that refer to 'the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence'. These are:

Sat = being
Chit = consciousness
Ananda = rapture

(Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, pp. 113, 120)

Creative living is the refusal to see any dream as beyond the envisioning and the willingness to always step out off the ledge. Even when the force of disapproval lands heavy in its blow...

Step out, step out!

'...Something to my heart replies
You too were for rapture strung.
Why else the dreams that rise
round you when the year is young.'
(Arnaut Daniel, 12thC Troubadour)

Speak of ecstasies beyond the telling

This body is for making love.
It burns, creates
heat-shimmer in my eyes;

leaves out mirages
so almost-real,
I can feel their touch.

(from Book of Days - a work in life-progress)