Robin Williamson

I have no doubt that if the institution still existed, Robin Williamson would hold the title of 'Nightingale', the Chief Bard of Britain. I owe him a lot.

I had piano lessons at school and the experience was dismal. I struggled to read music (to this day I muddle crotchets, quavers and minims) and in any case hated the pieces I was supposed to learn. I never really warmed to the sound of the instrument. When I scraped a pass at grade 3 my teacher told my parents that I had no musical ability and that they were wasting their money. Though I yearned to play it seemed that music was for others, for those who'd been born with the elusive gift.

When I left school I spent a long weekend with my friend Andy, a fine rock guitarist, down in the New Forest (I don't know what happened to him, or whether he still plays - we lost touch). He'd just picked up the tin whistle and so I sat under broad oaks while he played tunes learned from early Clannad albums. It was all rather haunting.

So I thought 'perhaps even me, with my total lack of musical ability, might be able to get a tune from a whistle!'

After a certain amount of aimless noodling I realised I needed to learn a bit more systematically. I spent a day playing and rewinding a Clannad tape, figuring out 'The Harvest Home' by jotting down how many holes I needed to cover. It was a slow, laborious process.

Then, when I got to University, a friend passed me a book, The Penny Whistle Book by Robin Williamson.

I think Williamson wrote it when he was living in California, playing with the Merry Band: certainly the American can do attitude shines through. Using the US-favoured system of whole, half, quarter and eighth notes (mathematical sense at last!) he taught me to read music. With his characteristic wit and wisdom he led me through ever more complex tunes, through ornamentation (cuts and rolls), vibrato and how to make the whistle sing, all the while making me feel like I was embarking on some kind of adventure.

It was the perfect start. The whistle led to the mandolin and to singing, and also, in the other direction, to my becoming a piper (my logic being, well, if I can get a tune out of the whistle, maybe I can get a tune out of a mandolin, and so on, step by step). And so it was a tremendous honour to support Williamson at the Wildways gig, the weekend before last. He was the man who got me started and I remain extremely grateful to him.

Williamson's music has always been strange, otherworldly and potent, often filled a kind of prophetic charge. With such a strong flavour it's something to be savoured, like a fine whisky. Now approaching his seventies, the power of his music hasn't diminished. I took home a vinyl copy of his latest album, Love Will Remain, complete with a gatefold booklet of his paintings. The whole package is a beautiful meditation on a life, richly lived. It's an album about memory and about love.

Like The Penny Whistle Book, it is profoundly wise and I could quote from it at length: Williamson still has much to impart. Instead I shall just encourage you to buy it, and leave you with one short quote from the autobiographical 'A Road Wound Winding.'

'Music is a power which comes from the Eternal. Sometimes humans get to play it.

Sometimes they don't get in the way too much.

And the music gets through.'

Blowzabella day

Lovely audio diary from Paul James of Blowzabella, about the band's recent day of workshops and concerts in the Limousin, France. Listen out for some gorgeous playing in the background, rhythmic and lyrical.

Chaga Saga

Last weekend saw our third, for once long-expected but for the time-being final, encounter with the World Drum (it's gone to Belgium).

I'd been booked to play at a British Druid Order event at Wildways in Shropshire, which also happened to be Philip Shallcrass's 60th birthday. On the bill were Philip himself, the Northern Lights Shamanic Band (from Norway), acoustic guitar wizard Jake Thomas, and none other than the Chief Bard of Britain, Robin Williamson. Quite an honour, then, to be asked to play.

It was a fantastic night and everyone was on fine form. Robin Williamson had us laughing so much we were crying. For myself, I'd forgotten how much I love solo, bardic, gigs in yurts and other intimate performance spaces. I'd always rather play acoustic, without electrickery, so it was a triple delight to perform in such a lovely space, on such a bill, and in front of such a warm and welcoming audience (if you've got a yurt and want me to come and play, just give me shout - it's about time I did more solo stuff).

Photo by Elaine Wildways

But the weekend held so much more. It was another chance to unclench. We got to walk through spring woodlands that were filled with birdsong...

...I got to bond with some sheep in Wildways' very own, bespoke stone circle...

...and then there was the opportunity to take part in an extremely powerful chaga healing ceremony. It was led by none other than the founders of the World Drum project, White Cougar and Morten Wolf Storeide, and two other Norwegian shamans from beyond the north wind, Lena Paalviig Johnsen and Willjar Rubach: men and women of knowledge, all.

Oddly, I'd never heard about chaga before, but it's a parasitic fungus found on birch trees in Northern and Eastern Europe, where it's prized for its curative properties. There's a certain amount of scientific evidence which supports its traditional usage, but I was happy to enter into the shamanic worldview, that this is simply a benign and healing plant (how do we know? Cos it told us). It's harvested, dried, and then made into a kind of tea, a ritual process that takes several hours.

The ceremony took place at night in Wildways' reconstructed Iron Age Roundhouse. We were asked not to drink any alcohol beforehand and to remain silent throughout.

For obvious reasons I don't have any photos of the ceremony but I can tell you that it was powerful and profound. Philip and the four Norwegians led it using the traditional shamanic technique of drumming. Now I've endured many hours of 'shamanic drumming' in my time and all too often it feels like a kind of monotonous hectoring, about as otherworldly and transporting as having your teeth drilled. Not this time. The drums were rich and sonorous, brimming with the North, and, played with sensitivity and musicality, had a noticeably transporting effect. 

In fact, the leaders had created such a powerful atmosphere that before I'd even drunk the chaga (which, in case you were wondering, isn't hallucinogenic) I was weeping and shaking, a welcome opportunity to grieve some more. When the World Drum came round, I was able to pound out some of my demons and to pray for those of my friends outside the circle also in need of healing.

Over the weekend we had some extraordinary conversations with each of the four, who told us not only how they'd come to their profession but also about some of the wonderfully odd things that had happened to them since. I cannot thank them enough for the blessings they bestowed upon us both.

For when we left, it was as if I'd been pulled out of a boggy mire, one through which I've been tramping for months. I felt unstuck. I don't know if it was the chaga, or the gig, the ritual, the gifts or the conversations, but the wooji worked, good and proper. The world is a happy place to be in once again.

To Cymru

As I mentioned in my last post, we went to Snowdonia for a long-planned recovery week (black armbands still apply). Nomi found us a simple cottage up a long forest track in a deserted village. Perfect.

Thick snow and a biting easterly wind kept us off the mountains until a slight change in the weather allowed an attempt at Yr Wyddfa. We got about halfway up the Pyg Track at which point conditions became treacherous. A cold mist descended while half-melted snow gave way underfoot, plunging us up to our knees. We beat a hasty retreat.

Better safe than sorry. In any case, there's a machismo to trekking culture that I find tedious, especially when there are stunning walks to be had at low level in every direction. Our stomps took us to eldritch trees, made luminous by moss and lichen...

...to perfectly proportioned waterfalls and pools...

...to plunging chasms...

...and over hills sufficient to get the heart pumping.

I'm always amazed at how, after just a few days of this, you start to unclench.

On one walk we passed Dinas Emrys, site of the famous showdown between King Vortigern and the young Merlin, but to be honest you get the sense that forgotten stories are tangled around every tree, hummock, outcrop, hill, ridge, Cwm and mountain. If only we could remember.

On our last day the weather broke and it rained as only it can in the mountains. Ghostly veils drenched the valley. We decided on a day of rest and drove to Ynys Môn to visit Bryn Celli Ddu. Once a neolithic henge, then a Bronze Age passage grave, the version we see today is ours, a twentieth century reconstruction, complete with fake serpent stone. It's nonetheless impressive however, with a stunning view of the mountains to the south west and a megalithic doorway that beckons you in to the chamber inside.

But what's this? Some kind of Druid ceremony? Bugger me if we hadn't stumbled on Philip Shallcrass and the World Drum. Again.

As Philip put it so eloquently when he spotted us: 'you have got to be kidding me!'

Pyramid Power

Inspired by our recent rediscovery of the wonderful 1970s children's book Strange Things to Do and Make, and short of things to do thanks to this never-ending winter, we decided to put the book's experiment on pyramid power to the test! Can a model pyramid be used to preserve something like a small piece of food?

Here's what we did. First we cut out some equilateral triangles - we used psychedelic dayglo card for a more authentic Hawkwindy effect, but any card will do.

Then Nomi decorated them with some far-out Egyptian designs. She used an Eye of Horus, a feather of Ma'at, a scarab beetle, plenty of ankhs and, of course, a blue-lotus flower (upon which Ancient Egyptians seem to have been permanently whacked).

Next, we taped the triangles together to make a pyramid. (By the look of my wrinkly old hands, it seems I could use a bit of pyramid power myself, eh readers?)

The book suggests using your pyramid to preserve a piece of meat (ugh!) or a dead butterfly. We chose the less icky option of a button mushroom, which we placed on its special plinth, right under the apex of the pyramid.

We made sure the edges were aligned to the cardinal directions, and as this was an experiment, we left an almost identical mushroom outside as our control.

Then we went away for a week to the mountains of Snowdonia.

Imagine our excitement when, on our return to Oxford, we lifted back the pyramid to see what was inside!

Good lord! The mushroom seems to have been turned into a miniature plastic unicorn!

Just kidding! No, what we found was a perfectly preserved button mushroom (seen here on the right), all dried and shrivelled up and, um, pretty much identical to the control.

So it looks like it's Spirit of Free Inquiry: 1, Pyramid Power: nil (though it must be said that the mummified mushroom was just a nadge drier and harder than the control - make of that what you will).

Tune in next time when we make our very own Orgone Accumulator to see if it really does 'make ya feel greater.' (Um, or quite possibly not.)

Strange things to do and make

In 1976, when I was eight years old, my mum bought me two 'Practical Puffin' activity books. The first, Body Tricks to Teach Yourself, was innocent enough and full of games familiar to anyone who grew up watching Why Don't You?: sock puppets, mime games, balancing tricks, juggling, rubbish disguises and so on.

There was just one hint of strangeness, however, in a game where, having pressed your hands down hard upon a friend's head, you were supposed to be able to lift him with just four fingers. 'Now imagine that you weigh nothing at all' the book went on. 'You could float away in the wind.' 

I think the authors might have been hippies.

But this was a mere prelude for the weirdness of companion volume, Strange Things to Do and Make. It would be a challenge to find an odder children's book.

In one experiment you were encouraged to see if plants had psychic powers. You had to grow two seedlings, all the while sending kindly thoughts to one and hateful sentiments to the other. The unlucky plant was supposed to wither and die.

I badgered my Dad to cut me a hazel wand so I could try my hand at dowsing...

...and I vividly remember my disappointment at being unable to attempt the various wart cures: I was already wart-free.

You could try telepathy with a set of homemade Zener cards...

...or if that wasn't racy enough, you could make your own Ouija Board...

...or hatch chickens at home (presumably to the delight of parents everywhere).

My favourite was the experiment on pyramid power. In a rare appeal to academic authority the book suggested that 'some scientists think that the space inside the pyramids might have special powers.' (This was the 1970s, remember, when recently unearthed prehistoric computer stones sent out evil mind-rays that forced all scientists to entertain weird shit.)

There were careful instructions on how to make a scale model of the Great Pyramid of Cheops complete with its very own cardboard altar, upon which you were supposed to leave a small piece of meat.

With the mini-pyramid aligned to the cardinal directions, mysterious powers would mummify the meat and preserve it from decay. Probably. From meat you could move on to preserving caterpillars and butterflies.

I tried it with a dead fly but oddly I can't remember if the experiment worked or not (it's almost as though secret forces don't want me to remember...)

Though it reads like a book from the Scarfolk public library, I can assure you the book was real (and, collectors beware, its second-hand value is rapidly escalating).

But I ask you, growing up with books like this, is it any wonder I turned out the bosky way I did?