Two months ago, after releasing my new album, Songs & Stories,Vol 1, I asked Irish composer Craig Cox to listen and offer his thoughts, without any prompting from me. Craig and I have worked together on several projects since I arrived in Ireland in 2012. His response resonated with me, so I will comment on parts of it here in order to explain my background, and what led me to write these songs.
The music on Alain Servant’s new album is a synthesis of his years of artistic vagrancy.
Vagrancy! This is a word that well summarises my artistic path. I started in theatre as an actor in my early teens and, at the age of sixteen, with eight friends, created a theatre company called ‘Tour de Babel’ (Tower of Babel). This adventure continued for over fifteen years. After moving from the Parisian underground scene to the French countryside, we created more than twenty shows, with the aim of meeting other cultures and using theatre as an intercultural laboratory. We always worked in collaboration with artists from other cultures, simultaneously immersing ourselves in them as we went along.
As an actor, director and musician, I was able to incorporate practices and visions from the Mediterranean world (Lebanon and Tunisia), Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and Cuba), Asia (India and China) and Europe. I discovered Indian Classical music and started practicing the sarod
Then the Turkish Oud.
But all adventures must come to an end! The company split up and we all parted on our own paths. I next created a residency space for artists in the countryside in France where all arts and artistic movements were welcome to create and experiment. Over a period of ten years, I met and practiced with clowns, jugglers, acrobats, theatre makers, butoh dancers…
Then, I arrived in Ireland! This island has become for me not only a personal nest but also a place in which to focus my practice.
Alain’s practice is fundamentally one based in narrative: his craft is the construction of worlds that hold up a warped mirror to the familiar, placing the listener inside an ethereal realm in which everything is distorted yet illuminated.
I am a storyteller. I am also an actor, writer and musician. In Ireland, I found that songwriting was a way of merging my practices. My head is filled with myths and stories, and I found in Ireland a fertile land for my imagination to blossom.
The dark earth and the cold sea have allowed the seeds of strange plants that I have carried all my life to take root in a peaceful garden, the poisonous and the medicinal growing side by side.
I sit now in this garden, picking these fruits and becoming intoxicated with their smells and the memories they recall in me. I am present in the here and now, but many dimensions overlap. And I sing my perceptions as they arise.
An appropriate adjective for this album is “multi-lingual”. Not simply in reference to the actual shifts between European tongues (so that the inherent musicality of language is demonstrated, it becoming a texture in itself), but also in reference to the musical world.
I have no real mother tongue. I spent my early childhood in Bolivia, speaking Spanish and listening the indigenous people speaking Quechua and Aymara. Arriving in France in Marseille, I learned French with a strong southern accent, then moved to Paris and, although fascinated by Classical French literature and poetry, I spent most of my time hanging around with the kids of my quartier learning argot, the Parisian slang that was very much alive at the time. And then English came for me, a language that seems to fit the songs I sing.
A language is a way of seeing the world, as well as its music, different frequencies that don’t strike the soul’s strings in the same way. It is not necessarily the language that drives me, but rather the language revealing itself through whatever the subject is. A rock in a high mountain sings in Spanish, and a tree by a gentle river in French. What language would a bottle of whiskey lying in the gutter speak? I am this rock, this tree and this bottle of whiskey!
Moving through this album is like rolling through the shifting narrative structure of a dream, each track morphing into the next so that an overall tone manifests and an internal metaphorical logic constructed, with references to flowers, flowing water and undeath mushrooming and acting as way points that trick the listener’s memory while revealing the underlying subtext of an almost squalid hopefulness: a unique wisdom that weaves piss and vinegar parables, speaking reassurances in hoarse tones.
For me, any creative act is a journey into the subconscious world. I jump into unknown depths and come back laughing, clutching some new treasures that become songs or something else. In these depths, I meet gods, kings and queens, slaves, even children playing with wild animals…
Any new creation is a cathartic process that brings me back to a world of wonder. The logic emerges by itself with no conscious will. I try to follow the natural movement of expansion and contraction. And it can be hard work! As hard as the craft of the blacksmith at times. Because art is a craft, and demands skills, experience and practice.
I would like to conclude with a word on collaboration. Collaboration is essential for me. The creative process at times can be solitary, but becomes useless if there’s no transformation through exchange.
I was lucky in Ireland to encounter John Linnane, one of the best musicians and performers I have ever met.
Since 2017, we have worked together and performed together and I would like to thank him, not only because he’s a great artist, but also because he’s a great human being. It is an honour to have him beside me in this adventure.
I realised that I really like writing through doing this, and that there’s plenty more to write, but for now here are a few aspects I’d like to share with you.
Vision
Something I’ve learned, beyond a doubt is how essential it is for any musician, artist or human being to cultivate a vision for yourself. Have an inner vision and find ways to develop it. It’s for you alone and gives you confidence and uniqueness. Working on craft matters too. But for me, vision comes first and is fundamental. It’s what inspires the consistent work. It animates practise, creativity, relationships, and brings wellness in ways that are hard to see except when it is absent.
Influences
I grew up in the rural coastal Donegal community of Clooney, one of the most beautiful places in the world. Our horizons growing up were both small and vast. From the top of our hill you look out over the Atlantic, with Iniskeel, Arainn mhór and Roaninish islands, the incredible Gaoth Beara river estuary, Cashelgoland and Narin strand; the magical Bluestacks, the south Donegal mountains sometimes called the Sliabh Aduaidh range, and a huge blanket bog that stretches from our house to Donegal town.
In terms of the wider world and a vision of that, our doorway was TV. But we lived in a bubble really. It was honestly an amazing upbringing. Our parents gave us a lot of trust and freedom to wander and explore. There was a hazel wood beside our house and we were the only people that were ever in in it, apart from our neighbour farmer when he was looking for cattle.
At the bottom of our lane is an old and vibrant oak bush growing out of the centre of a boulder.
It’s a well-known local landmark especially with elderly people who said it was a parting stone for emigrants when they were leaving their families. There were fairy bushes, deer, seals, wild geese and winter swans, enchanted and haunted places, and really funny local characters.
Our school had forty kids and two teachers. I tell stories to my friends about growing up, and, as the decades go by, I realise there’s a great book in it.
This upbringing and environment is probably my biggest musical influence. Many other forms and shapes of music and experience have also influenced me but something in this is fundamental. When I’m daydreaming or even just dreaming, it’s this landscape: hazel woods, the hill, the mountains, the sea, the bog, the beach and the lake: this is my dreaming.
Going Home, from my first album Convergence:
The next greatest influence on me is the people and musicians I’ve had the joy of developing relationships and spending time with. But that’s for another time.
As a teen, the bubble opened, and the wider world started to show me what else was there. I liked hip hop and loved metal and electronic music. Then I left the bubble. Moving to Dublin, I quickly realised how much I love music. No Internet in those days, so magazines, record shops, word-of-mouth and hanging out with people were the main ways of finding out about new music and interesting things.
And so, around this time the djembe came along.
My percussion group RITHIM:
Djembe
My beloved djembe, an ancient instrument that’s young in Ireland. Learning to play the djembe has taught me how to play music in a way that I could never otherwise have experienced. Djembe music, constructed in parts and played for hours, is really ingenious.
Hand-drumming gave me a spiritual body experience that I loved. I wanted to learn how to have that experience all the time. It took me to places and to people I couldn’t have imagined meeting. I trained mainly in and around West African drumming for twenty-five years, learning what I could.
My vision throughout was and still is to harness the drum’s energy, power and beauty as an artist, to make my own music and collaborate with others. Being Irish and having many worlds of inspiration, I was always going to do my own thing.
A piece entitled Macaomh Mór inspired from the Irish folktale Young Conall of Howth:
Envisioning
I practice meditation. In this, everything in our awareness – thoughts, emotions, physical sensation – is observed from a place of stillness. This place of stillness and peace is always available. In this moment your vision emerges and develops. It is here where the freshness and originality is.
It can inform on a micro level like with a musical idea, an arrangement, a video or a difficult conversation. It can be on a macro level with longer range aspects: albums, career moves, relationships. The crazy human world typically doesn’t support a process involving stillness so it can be easy to forget about it. But hey, don’t.
One thing I can say for sure is that it always works for me and it’s life-changing.
In a non-stop changing world it shows me that one thing doesn’t change. My essence, your essence, is always the same.
The vision that emerges is completely unique to you. I say you can trust it, it’s yours, and enjoy it.
Treelan: The Long Walk:
Éamonn Cagney is currently working on his second solo album, teaches percussion in The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at University of Limerick, and is about to release a collaboration album with Congolese guitar maestro Niwel Tsumbu.
Janet is pregnant and alone. Her boyfriend is god knows where and her dad is having none of it and wants to marry her off to a man of his choosing. She’s having none of that, and wants an abortion. And she’s damned if any man will tell her what to do. It is any time between the eleventh and the sixteenth century, in Scotland.
Frankie Baker loved her boyfriend Allen Britt but she shot him anyway. Her gun was a .38 pistol, and when the time came, her aim was true. By the time Allen died, slowly and painfully in hospital days later, from a single shot wound to his stomach, a ballad about the event was already selling on street corners. It told a story in notes that swung, capturing the imagination of generations. It just wasn’t her story.
A .38 pistol. In ‘murder’ ballad ‘Frankie and Johnny’, the real-life perpetrator of the shooting, Frankie Baker, was unhappy with how she was represented. Among other things was the gun detail. ‘It wasn’t a .44,’ she said, ‘it was just a little old Harrington & Richardson .38. And it couldn’t have gone roota-toot-toot, ’cause I only shot once.’ My new song ‘Don’t Do Me Wrong’ sets the record straight on the events of that fateful night in 1899.
The old woman who lived in the woods killed a baby. We don’t know why she was left holding it, just that she was. Her chorus is a keening wail, a weile-weile-waile that rises from the depths of the well. It is so transcendent, so collective, that others can carry out its ancient, visceral work. Locate the cry in Famine times and its echoes might offer a clue to the circumstances that gave to it.
Lily goes to war to be with her lover, which means pretending she’s a man. Into the bargain she saves his life. She gets to be a soldier and a heroine of the battlefield. You have to hand it to her. But I’m not completely convinced she set out on her heroine journey just to be with her guy. Perhaps she believed in the cause. Perhaps she was just deathly bored with her lot and craved some action.
Polly Amorous
Polly was savagely murdered while pregnant, by her boyfriend, who threw her body in a hole in the ground he’d chillingly spent the night before digging. She had it coming, he saw how other men looked at her – how would he ever truly possess such a woman? He goes off to sail the seas, but her ghost is furious and manifests on his ship, in her arms a revenant child. And he will not resist her beauty now, of this she makes sure, as she lures him to his death among the waves using the temptress charms of his projection.
These were some of the voices that called out to me, as I set about exploring women’s experience in the folk music canon two years ago, voices that were captured at a moment in time, that shape-shifted according to its passage, and that carry with them its cultural and social context. As a singer-songwriter interested in and inspired by women’s perspectives, explored in such songs as ‘Finest Flower’ and ‘Trouble Come Find Me’, I hungered to know them, to explore their possibilities, their hidden aspects, their hearts. Were there new expressions asking to emerge?
Live recording of ‘Trouble Come Find Me’, inspired by the life of pioneering midwife Philomena Canning, with whom Ciara campaigned for justice for five years, until Philomena’s death in 2019:
‘Frankie and Johnny’
It began with ‘Frankie and Johnny’. First written in 1899 in St Louis, Missouri, it was my grandmother’s party piece, the unlikely star of a repertoire that was more readily identified by rousing rebel songs of bold Fenian men, and mournful ballads to Cathleen Ni Houlihan, penned by her beloved uncle, songwriter Peadar Kearney.
But Frankie and Johnny, telling the story of a cheating man and his jealous girlfriend, was the favourite of us kids, with its bold declaration that ‘there ain’t no good in men’, inevitably delivered with finger-pointing gusto by my grandmother Kay Considine. When I later discovered that the ballad was based on real-life events, I wanted to know more.
Through available writings, along with newspaper reports and court documents of the time, I pieced together an alternative tale, which shifted it from a crime of passion into an act of survival, for a young black woman, a sex worker, who was the breadwinner in the relationship and asked in exchange for respect.
The song, created in the direct aftermath of this pivotal event in her life and which dogged her until its end, failed to reflect an important fact, one which led to her acquittal on Friday 13th of October, 1899. (According to Frankie’s testimony, being granted her freedom on this most damned of dates had the welcome bonus of vanquishing her superstitious ‘omens black’.)
As for what happened: Allen had entered Frankie’s bedroom in the small hours of the morning drunk, angry and wielding a knife. She shot in self-defence.
Frankie Baker.
This seemingly small detail blew me away. As I stared at my computer screen into the arresting, disquieting gaze of this queenly young woman – finely dressed, notably composed – I felt deep love for her memory.
Later in life – ground down by events, unable to shake off the story that had been landed upon her, no matter where she went, and powerless over its representation of her (she even tried to sue two movie studios, to no avail) – she would live out her last days in penury, in an asylum.
‘Don’t Do Me Wrong’ is an homage to Frankie Baker and gives life to her perspective of the fateful night in 1899 when her young lover met with an early grave.
Menstruation
As I explored the folk music archives deeper – an uninvited, self-styled confidante of Her – I felt alive and open to nuance, to the spaces between the lines, to that which could not be spoken, and my love for the embattled heroine expanded.
Her blood is lavishly spilled in folk balladry, but there is no mention of menstruation. Her body is readily filled with extra-marital pregnancies that locate her as an outcast, and yet there is no mention of male responsibility.
She is raped and left bereft, and there is no justice. She commits infanticide in extreme desperation, and is cast as a crazed crone. All of women’s struggles through time – the desperate lot of wounded or deprived agency – find expression in our song heritage, and at times I wondered at how deep our keening goes, and if it is indeed as bottomless as a well. Yet her endurance, inner strength and tenacity reminds us that just as a wrecking ball can turn a world to rubble, something new can always be created from the ruins.
The songs of Blood Sex Death platform heroines whose brave, often embattled, lives are offered new expression in unexpected ways, where Gothic tragedy, twisted tenderness and fierceness abound.
A grant from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media as administered via the Music Industry Stimulus Package 2020 enabled me to begin recording this six-song EP of original material inspired by her voice, and once I secure funding to complete them, I look forward to releasing and performing the new material.
Musical Origins
As to how I came to music, perhaps motherhood was the metaphorical wrecking ball out of whose rubble I located my creative desire, and pursued it. In the new world order of an upended life, as two babies slept I fought maternal panic and exhaustion with poor guitar skills, an ear for melody and the strangely solid sensation that came from writing lyrics. Late-night bouts of songwriting alone in the kitchen were, my husband sensed, something urgent and tension-laced, not to be disturbed, even if it meant distance and loneliness for us both.
And he was right. It was only through an imagined creative life being ripped from me as easily as a wet Band-Aid that I knew I’d been sleepwalking. A living heroine, Joni Mitchell, spoke of her grandmother’s descent into madness, and I sensed thwarted creativity in its mix.
Fear can be a great motivator, and the chaos of early motherhood an effective stoker of its flames, especially when you’ve long had a nose for the smoky scent of female madness-terror. It was time to wake up from the dream. There is never a good time to start, so I might as well start now.
Over a decade and two albums on, both independently produced, I can’t say it has been an easy road, but it has been a fascinating and rich one that has led me to places I could not have dreamed of in that kitchen space, late at night, afraid for what I would become if I hadn’t found a means of artistic expression. I’ve gotten to steer a course in music through a career in book publishing, motherhood, and activism, and keep on keeping on, through highs and lows.
My latest project ‘Blood Sex Death’ feels like a coming of age. As I move steadily towards my half-century birthday, some might say it’s about time. For a late developer like me, dabbling in songs hundreds of years in the making, perhaps it is right on course.
I have nothing to say, and I am saying it. And that is poetry. As I needed it. John Cage
‘Nothing to do, nowhere to be?’ This is the space where the best stuff – the best musical stuff – shows its face, ugly, beautiful or otherwise. At first glance, this appears quite simple but when does one actually have nothing to do and nowhere to be?
I could segue in a multitude of directions about the treadmill of living a contemporary life, or the long and deep impact of smart phones on our monkey minds, how instead of liberating us with ever more efficient apps and services they actually fill in any and all space in a day for idleness, daydreaming or any of these seemingly archaic pursuits.
In addition, in this day and age, would I not be crazy to at least tip the hat at any inherent privilege allowing one simply to exist and have nothing to do, nowhere to be, even temporarily?
But this misses what I’m attempting to get at. Anyone who has dabbled in the contemplative arts or meditation may give a knowing nod here. I have found that – and maybe this is the hardest part – I can have ‘nothing to do, nowhere to be’ many times throughout a day even when engaged in doing and going. It involves dropping back and just hearing, listening, feeling, playing; giving oneself the internal space, in the moment, to play and mess and see what happens. Dropping all the to-do lists, the constant planning, the goals, the dreams, the worries, the imagined conversations and arguments with friends and family.
For me, this is where the good stuff lives. Being in this space allows the drama of ideas, feelings, and connections to unfold itself and for the music to flow. With practice and hard work (it may come more easily for others) that space can be attained on a regular basis.
This is one part of my creative process. The internal part. The external part is actually carving out some time in the day when one can make use of the fruits of this space. This also is a challenge, for reasons I’ve discussed and many others.
This part is huge though. I’m sure this phrase has been uttered by many before me but you have to show up for creativity. Show up every day that you can. Show up for minutes or hours and then you will make progress. Show up in the space described above and you can make all sorts of progress. The direction may be unforeseen and not necessarily the progress you think is most pressing, but, there will be progress nonetheless. This is a process, and I address this to myself as much as anyone else.
Just a caveat, however, on occasion works can arrive fully formed in an instant, as if received from some wonderful ‘other’ creative dimension. In this case all one can do is try and document it as soon as possible before it dissipates into the ether once more. When this happens it is truly magical, but it is hard to rely on this source so, to move forward, a process must be developed.
I have been playing the guitar and making music in my own little way since I was eleven years old. Previously, I had wrestled with the piano for a few years, with mixed results. I certainly enjoyed the sounds, getting familiar with melodies and harmony, but at that age I could not relate to the music that I was being taught. It was the height of Grunge so I was deep into Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and also bands like Radiohead. I was also discovering the old guard, The Beatles et al.
Almost immediately after my piano lessons ceased I picked up my father’s old nylon-string guitar and started tinkering with it. My father was a dab hand at a Beatles number and could certainly entertain for an hour or two into the wee hours at a party. He showed me the basic first position chords, plus one jazz number, ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ and one Classical piece, ‘Romanza.’ With these great standards of the guitar canon, he set me on my way. The guitar seemed so accessible in comparison to what I had been doing with the piano. My thoughts on this have changed considerably since then but that is another article in itself. Plus there was the notion that I could learn songs that I was listening to. Eleven year old mind well and truly blown!
In addition to all that, and maybe more importantly, the vibrating strings of the guitar seemed to hold a hypnotic power over me. Everything else would fade away and I would be completely zoned in. Whether it was me or someone else playing the instrument. Even very basic chord changes or musical parts would and, I’m happy to say still do, have that effect on me. The sum total of the sounds, the feel, even the look of the fingers dancing on the fretboard, or hands making all sorts of strange, contorted shapes would transfix me, entirely, completely. I was addicted.
I have found that the guitar, or playing music in general, is therapeutic in many ways. As I grew up I would actually process my emotions on the instrument. Some could call it ‘self-soothing’ or something approximating that (as a new father I am really getting to know that term, happy face emoji).
All the mixed up emotions of teenage years (or adult years) could be shaped into some form of tangible sound that I could sit with, more easily, until it had passed through me. A friend recently said to me “music is what emotion sounds like” and I think that I tapped into that early on.
But, let me return to that eleven year old. Very quickly I realised that I was interested in making my own bits of music. Whether an interesting chord change, phrase, melody, finger picking pattern, these little ideas would come out whenever I sat down with the instrument and had some time to breath.
Calling these creations ‘music’ may be a stretch. They were under-developed ideas based more on the arrangement and structure of the instrument than a clear delineation of a musical idea, and even then I struggled to finish a piece. Enjoying a sense of completion still comes hard for me. Beginning can be just as hard, and yes, the bits in-between can be hard too!
What I discussed in the first few paragraphs is the beginning. Giving one the space and time to create and play. The ideas then arrive. The middle part is where the craft comes in. Developing techniques for this is certainly an ongoing process, but generating material from a seedling idea is something that can be honed. With all the music notation software and digital recording platforms available one can take a very basic idea and stretch it, shrink it, chop it up, layer it, reverse it, invert it, amongst other things, and, this is the magic part, hear it back immediately. How did the greats ever do anything before the advent of computers?!
Finishing a piece is another challenge, especially for anyone with any perfectionist tendencies. Letting something go, warts and all, into the world, is an exercise in showing your vulnerabilities. I don’t find this straightforward. It is difficult to put out work when you know the standard that is already available.
Also, knowing that sweet spot when a work is ready to let go of is a dark art in itself. I have only released a tiny percentage of all the music that I have composed. Much of it is forgotten, a lot of it sits in hard drives or old laptops, and some is still is in my head. And that is ok. What remains is an archive of ideas that I can dip into when and how I need them.
Over the years I have prioritised the technicalities of music over the emotional content. I have often been lost in the exhilaration and energy of music, while over-looking subtleties and nuances. I have been self-indulgent and egotistical. However, amidst all this, progress has been made and I have found moments of success on my own terms.
This is a process, and I say this to myself as much as to anyone else.
I’ve never needed a reason to write a song. There have never been any conscious considerations of failure or success during the process. If anything, I can say that what I discover through writing is that there are endless landscapes of discovery. This feeling has not changed in the eleven years I’ve been writing and playing music, but it has definitely been challenged many times by different circumstances, by frustration and impatience.
The first few months of the pandemic were some of the most challenging of times of my life in so many respects, but in particular, to overcome creative blocks of all kinds. I’ve read and heard similar sentiments from artists in all disciplines, from all over the world. Out of necessity I had to find new pathways through the distraction and despair that were surrounding the drive to write.
During the second lockdown, around September, I read Carmen Maria Machado’s book In The Dream House for the first time. It was a graduation gift from my friend Molly. It’s so rare to happen upon a book, or any somewhat mainstream art really, about which you have no preconceived notions.
I’d somehow never seen it talked about online or even heard about it from friends. It turned out to be a life changing experience for me for many reasons, one of which was Machado’s capacity for searingly honest storytelling.
She quotes Dorothy Allison at the beginning of chapter five: ‘Two or three things I know for sure and one of them is that telling the story all the way through is an act of love.’
Molly giving me the book was an act of love; my reading of it through to the end was an act of self-love. Beginning to think about telling your story in this way opened avenues for me in my own writing that had been heavily blocked, long before the lockdowns.
But in terms of attempting to write in pandemic times, it allowed me to exhale into the situation, rather than instinctively turn a blind eye and try to write as if it had never happened; like it wasn’t happening right now.
I suppose I struggled with the situation of wanting and needing to write but being unable to do so truthfully, without noticeable inflections of isolation or disease or separation permeating the language and the music.
Viewing acceptance of the current situation as an act of love allowed me to begin writing again, a couple of months into the pandemic, and to allow these inflections to come, marking my ideas and words and notes, and accepting them as realities in the moment of writing. So, a form of acceptance came and settled in, and I slowly started to come out of shock and into writing mode.
In an online workshop I took with guitarist and songwriter Buck Meek last month, he referred to his own periods of inspiration or prolifigacy as ‘seasons’ of writing. This resonated deeply with me as a metaphor for those couple of weeks at a time where creativity is flowing: working when there’s no mining to be done, because it’s all there on the surface, ready. These seasons come in cycles, and they bring with them their own unique collection of senses, words and thought processes.
For me, this most recent season has been rife with images of birds, pyramids, wild animals and the cold sea. These are related to finding comfort, it would seem, in thoughts of flight and weightlessness, of ancient beauty, and again, of natural cycles twinned with wild unpredictability. This is what I’ve been observing, I think, most consciously in the past year: a stillness or stuckness; the prospect of infinite lockdowns and days seeming to repeat themselves; coupled with the unstoppable force of everything around me changing in both minute and massive ways, all the time.
https://soundcloud.com/ellieoneillmusic/anna
The pandemic afforded me the privilege to slow down enough to actively watch the physical seasons of the year changing. I had the chance to feel the day it became too cold to swim for more than five minutes, and the day it finally warmed up again. Leaning into the fact that the seasons will return, renewed each time, has been deeply comforting; where I used to deny myself the right to repeat ideas or phrases or even chord progressions I instead began to lean into it, to try and see why they kept raising their heads. I’m beginning to remember that each new season will bring all new types of light and shade.
It’s been liberating also, to return to writing lyrics in the present tense about things from the past. The movement and immediacy of it has been like stretching out of the confinement of the days, a vibration that helps dissolve the walls of stuckness. Dredging up old stories you thought you were finished with feels nostalgic and sticky and whiny sometimes, but exploring them in the present tense makes them become dreamlike and fluid.
It’s been almost a way of travelling, for me, during this time of sudden and intense constrainment. Back to Montreal, back to Cork, back to when Dublin city didn’t feel completely empty. Time becomes irrelevant in this merging of tenses, if only to the writer, but that’s the liberation. After all, I am the first person I’m trying to communicate with, through all of it.
This drastic, clean-cut deprivation and our complete ignorance of what the future held in store, had taken us unawares; we were unable to react against the mute appeal of presences, still so clear and already so far, which haunted us daylong … The plague forced inactivity on them, limiting their movements to the same dull round inside the town, and throwing them, day after day, on the illusive solace of their memories. For in the aimless walk they kept on coming back to the same streets and usually, owing to the smallness of the town, these were streets in which happier days, they had walked with those who now were absent …
And the narrator is convinced that he can set down here, as holding good for all, the feeling he personally had and to which many of his friends confessed.
It was undoubtedly the feeling of exile – that sensation of a void within which never left us, the irrational longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time, and those keen shafts of memory that stung like fire.
Albert Camus, The Plague p.60, 1947
‘Mood 1: Suspension’ from ‘The Timelapse’. (c) Letizia Lopreiato
Of trauma and of the exile from self and the world we once knew …
My handcrafted trauma therapy
I only recently got back to this book, and how strongly these pages resonate with my tireless work to bring to life my “Timelapse” project experience during this time of self-isolation. It has left me speechless. A poet left with no words, almost ironic in fact … These words truly have been marked by an imposed distancing from all things social so beloved to me, which is starting to feel quite painful at times whilst all these photos and all those words and all these memories have no other place for now, other than the walls of my apartment …
This book was left to me by a good friend, one of Dublin’s main characters if you ask me. He was working at “Dublin’s best kept secret café” as the signs says, right behind one of my favourite bookshop. Paco knew, I remember the first day I went there, I just felt his humanity. And so since then I came back every day, my refuge in time of pain and sorrow whilst traveling back and forth, at one stage even every week, and for over a year, in between so many spaces, so many memories … Paco knew I was exhausted but he also knew I had a story tell, letting me write, taking photos for hours in the garden. Always the same seat, by the corner, where it was safe for me to hide. One day he came to me with a flower and a glass of bubbly with a strawberry, a big smile, which would have cheered the entire city up. He just knew though I never told him what was happening. He knew now I know, because we have all, for one reason or another, from the ones we love, the ones far from what we knew as an anchor to our self, we have all been there, in that no man’s land that trauma throws you on. Like a massive wave it carries you to a foreign land. It is a shore, you just can’t see the rest of the island … yet. For many years the sensation of exile following the death of my father truly followed me too, just like the narrator in The Plague, until I arrived home. Ireland, Dublin, its magical people, its incredible feeling of community, allowed me to be present, to slow down, to feel my own thoughts. Thoughts that I have had for so long but that I could not hold the energy to engage with, it was like I couldn’t handle the intensity of them for so long, until when It finally felt like I had no escape from the awareness of them, if I truly want to make through it and still be myself.
Paco left me this book the day before he left, after almost twenty years in Dublin, to return to his home town. A return I could never see for myself, as Ireland is already home, it truly always had been for me since I first came here as a kid to practice English. I just knew it was where I belonged, this magical land where healing is led by the creative force of its nature, if you only allow it to flow through you. And thankfully now my mum is here, she is back home too. Her healing began when she asked me for help two years ago, up to then she tried everything in her power not to “disrupt” my life she said. When the only thing I could have asked for, what I was waiting for, was for her to be ready to let me in, and be present. I have never seen myself as the type person living so close to their family, I always aimed to live abroad. I never felt at home in my country, never like I have always done here. But one thing is to choose not to, another thing is to feel you can’t reunite with what you feel as family, simply because trauma took it away, because the losses became unbearable, because the world you knew, the life you had, simply ceased, simply leaving you wondering around like a ghost amongst ghosts, haunted by the sensation of feeling betrayed by life somehow … Losing faith in the unexpected, in the positive, fearing any new beginning, perpetually condemned to relive that painful past, which is always so present, over and over again.
Love does not equal hurt, it might equal pain, so does life, because that is what life means, it makes us feel. The state of being frozen, collapsed in one’s own perception of constant risk, as if the entire world is aiming to hurt us sooner rather than later if we only allow it. It is that dimension whereby expressing feelings equals weakness, the “better be numb and selfish” mentality, rather than admitting we still feel too hurt. When we think nobody cares anymore, as everybody moved on, somehow, with their lives. Everybody but us … It is hard to dismantle false beliefs, put there to protect us in the first place, when by nature we are drawn to think firstly of all negative possible consequences to our actions. We are animals after all, and nature is something to be feared, the unexpected is a threat, and it can only be fought back, by staying constantly alert.
‘Mood 2: Anxiety’ from ‘The Timelapse’. (c) Letizia Lopreiato
Getting out of the hole in which we stick ourselves in whilst experiencing trauma, and where we ourselves decide to remain even after the event, is because of the self-complacency bubble, the of victimhood, which is way too easy to live in versus the admission of being always able to save ourselves, which does requires effort, accountability and above all which involves the need to learn (or to learn again), to be response-able.
It might be not what we really want to do what matters in this case, to me at least, it has been more a case of, “did I really feel like leaving that state”, and for this, timing is crucial and it is different for each and every person.
In this story, I needed to reach rock bottom, and so did my mum, to realise, to feel, that we weren’t betrayed, that trauma has always been there as the most precious healing opportunity, in its pain and apparent unfairness.
And so surely this is a long way of saying, the way to healing, it requires a choice, and this choice should be recognised as growth, and not as threat, it requires awareness, and awareness to grow, it needs a fearless space, which can only be built through gentleness, compassion, self-love and loads of self-respect, for our need for safety and security, to finally be met. Because fear means resistance, and within resistance, change is nor recognised as growth, but a self-inflicted pain, chaos, anxiety, which becomes the only comfort zone.
It is possible to rewrite our story, at any moment, anywhere you are. And each and everyone’s story is always different, but that is the thing, this is not a competition about who had the worst in life. And I won’t go into the details of what exactly happened to me because it is not what I believe the value of sharing this experience is. This is just one experience, one story, which has been sitting in my room making me almost unable to breath properly at night when looking at all those photos hanging on my wall. Every day, I have been reliving the feeling of all those memories, It wasn’t pleasant, but I knew it was “a storm I had to face” to find my land, to find peace. Writing this piece, I have started reflecting on why this was happening, and what this creative process has meant for me. Reflecting on where I stand now after all this, and why I was resisting looking at how this crisis, this storm, changed me and led me to feel love again, to open my heart again.
I was risking stagnation, the elephant was not even just in my apartment, it was sitting on my chest wherever I was going before I embraced this experience and let it flow through me … My shadow was there, asking me to look at it and become friends. And so I did, I befriended my demons, I accepted my shadow, and now I am at peace. And my mum is on her way to heal too, embracing the last phase of her life, leaving the sensation of shame, of guilt, of abandonment that trauma shuffles you with when not explored, when not embraced.
This process to me, the one of embracing my shadow, as my dear Jung would have defined it, it has been the highest lesson that self-love could have led me to.
And I did it through art. Art for me has not only meant survival, art has brought meaning to my life, without which in all likelihood, I would not be here to tell this story.
My mum is now starting her first ever art therapy course, as well as her English classes, encouraged by how therapeutic this project has been to her too. Her reactions passed from outburst of irritation, to laughter, to surprise when looking at herself in this project’s photos. Hanging on my walls for the past month and a half since lockdown started, there are the photos of the incredible journey within of two women, out of their roles of mother and daughter, two friends, coming back home, home to themselves, and to one another.
‘Mood 3: Grief’ from ‘The Timelapse’. (c) Letizia Lopreiato
A journey of self-healing, of self-empowerment.
If we would only choose to be present, to gift our time when we sense discomfort, within us and in others, if we would only train our hearts and our minds to hold that space, the space needed for everybody to share their stories of difficulty, of pain, of trauma, of guilt, of shame even … This world would be a better place, a place for empathy, a place for self-acceptance and for truth, rather than a comfortable fiction dimension with “positivity 24/7” as one solution fitting all purposes.
We have our own unique narratives. But it is important always to keep in mind that history is shaped by those who tell the story.
So why not being ourselves, to tell our story? To share our truth? To reshape our narrative?
“Nobody better than you could depict your feelings”, John Gunn, another Dublin’s icon if you ask me, once told me to encourage me to start taking photos of myself in order to portray my poems. This was instead of my original choice to find a photographer for this purpose.
In Trauma Therapy from a somatic approach, we study that in order to heal from trauma, what needs to be guided is a work reconnecting one’s images, feelings, meaning, expression, actions and relationships. This is because of the disconnection that trauma creates, and which fractures one and / or many of these links.
If you would ask me what photography helped my mum and I with, I would tell you:
Using photography along with poetry and reflective journaling, helped the reconnection through images, of the meaning of our feelings, to find a reason and closure for our actions, and even for the hurtful actions of others. It allowed us, to give ourselves a path towards forgiveness.
It has represented a free form of expression for our relationship with ourselves, with what happened and with one another.
Art in the form of what I call “my handcrafted art therapy during lockdown”, truly allowed for this reconnection to start happening.
This film photography and poetry project, titled “The Timelapse”, is the result of the last two-and-a-half years of documentary work, which felt more like an exploration, and a deep dive into the experience of trauma, bereavement and all its consequences for the mind, the body and surely the spirit.
The consequences created by the unexpected sudden void which opens under our feet when death knocks at the door. Death, as well as love, triggers within us the more primordial fears, but also the most shining of all glimmers: the one of hope, the one of happiness, the one of that on-going learning process that is the letting go of what has already happened, and which is no longer with us.
No matter how long we feel we should wait and hold on to the memory of it, how long we feel we should do so, to honour its prior existence … It is a call for the acceptance of the inevitable change that is the jump into the unknown after the experience of loss that has to be embraced to start healing. That beginning of a new cycle in life, where, luckily, everything has already changed, us included, no matter how long it takes for us to admit that.
We grew. We evolved. It was painful, it was harsh, but it did happen. No matter how long we chose to numb ourselves for, by trying not to look in that mirror. Trauma equals change.
Trauma is that breaking point, for the no-return to the ones we once were. In its toughest form and shape it is the deepest of all lessons, it is there for us to learn, once and for all, to avoid stagnation.
Resistance to the inevitable change that trauma imposes translates into stagnation for the spirit, for the mind, an intoxication for the body, that is desperately trying to follow up with a mind that can’t fit the memories of the experience anymore into any of the drawers which once were so orderly, storing the reality we knew before the event. It is a shock to our system.
This project and deciding to finalise and release it during lockdown anyways, with a digital launch instead of a physical one originally due at The Darkroom, here in Dublin, on April 30th, for Poetry Day Ireland, it was surely a journey of exploration for both myself and my mum.
A deep dive into the the ocean of those memories which truly didn’t fit with any of own or my mum’s drawers anymore. The cabinet of our hearts and of our minds needed to create a new filing system. I write poetry in outbursts, an uncontainable impulse, I feel it as a real need for me to maintain my mental health, rather than an aesthetic exercise. Only recently I started remembering what I write, and this I believe happened because the work of matching poetry with photography allowed me to finally reconnect my mind, my heart, and my spirit.
Before starting using film photography, I used to write, fill diaries with my poetry, and never open them again. Almost like my poems were truly some little creatures which I was growing until they came of age when they could be let out and about in the world and out of my mind.
‘From the Front’ from ‘The Timelapse’ (c) Letizia Lopreiato
I only now realise that I wasn’t taking proper care of them once I released them into the world though, I have realised this now through a deep self-love journey, that I was probably scared of them somehow, scared to see what parts of me I was releasing into the world, scared of what they truly meant to me. Of what they have been representing of me. Basically I realised that there is a lot of “fear of self” in the mere fact of not wanting to be fully accountable about my own art and in not having wanted it to become a final product until now, an independent creature.
I have realised I was afraid of losing control of my own fears, my deepest and most guarded secret instincts. A fear that my sensitivity will not be protected if it is released into the world. It was fear and guilt about creating my own Frankenstein, releasing it into the world and then abandoning it with no protection in front of it, to be accepted in its diversity.
A fear I released fully and substituted with love and respect for myself and for my own creations during lockdown and thanks to this experience, and to all who supported me and believed in me and my art.
I am thankful above all, greatly thankful to life for having granted me this healing space and time.
In fact, I didn’t quite understand why It felt so natural since the very first photo I took with my one and only film camera, for me to feel the actual action of turning what I see and sense into an actual tangible creature which finally was freed from my mind.
‘When Travel Means Need’ Part 1, from ‘The Timelapse’ (c) Letizia Lopreiato
The creative process is like alchemy to me. It feels like alchemy. The transmutation of what once was mainly painful and almost unbearable, into light, into meaning, into a being which has a life of its own, for anybody who would like to take it by the hand and go for a walk with it, in the midst of their minds, their hearts, their spirits. It will be a companion for their journey, wherever they would like to be, whenever they might feel like it. It is and will be, always available, just like breath.
Photography has allowed me to understand, to slow down, always to look with the eyes of the heart, at a manageable pace, the one of the human being, the one of a creation which is and has to be one with nature to feel whole.
Any distance, any avoidance of that space we need as animals by default, deep within us, to hold understanding of our actions, based on the feeling of it, it translates into a disconnection which we can’t afford. Playing the disconnected ones leads us to not being held accountable not even to ourselves, for our actions, for our words, because if we feel love, we feel pain, we feel loss, we feel it all. Soon it is there to realise that this which seems to be an easier option, always comes at a price, but that whoever loves and cares for us will be the ones paying it, paying the price of our disconnection.
And if one thing, death, loss, or any trauma in itself, does teach anything, it is that being selfish in this journey means more pain, it means more death, it means more losses, and it means stagnation. It is the emotional resistance to the experience of a change that in our body, in our cells, in the chemistry of our being, has already happened that feeds the disconnection.
It is the way I liked to see it, and unfortunately I have learned the hard way, it is paramount to need to release the water, our emotions, to follow its flow. Because only water can carve mountains.
‘When Travel Means Need’ Part 2 from ‘The Timelapse’ (c) Letizia Lopreiato
PTSD, depression, anxiety, loss, death, the experience of bereavement itself, both experienced first-hand, as well as lived through the experience of my loved ones, only represented for me the desperate call of my heart to find home, to go back to its true identity, which I had to bottle up to feel safer. Just like we all do. Photography along with poetry and creative writing journaling filled the walls of my apartment now turned into an art studio with photos hanging on almost every wall, and filled the walls I had built within as well. The difference is that now, I can see it, I can see those walls, and they are not within me anymore.
At the highest stage of the disassociation that trauma had left me with over the past decade, I was almost feeling like I was creating different movies. In every city, evert country, every job I chose to engage with … Experiences that now feel like belonging to different lives, many different movies, that you almost can feel like you wanted to switch from or watch again, to jump in and out of the memory of them without being overly impacted by it as you were living with them in a detached way, to protect yourself, but that is not life. That is surviving. Survival mode made a life style.
It really is not fiction though, and eventually the realization that all those movies would be looking better as one, and that you truly need to find and hold the space within yourself to sit, and watch it all. You need to feel it all, as your own. Because it represents you, and there can be no shame, no guilt, no fear anymore, because you have always had a choice, to leave behind the victim’s cloak. And you do this with compassion, kindness, self-love and self-respect, whenever you have felt ready for it. Whenever you truly felt at home again, whenever you can trust that out it is safe out there again for your needs to be met, for your voice to be heard, for your feelings to be truly “seen” and welcomed.
To experience the fear, to feel the pain, and to find freedom, once again. To be at one with yourself, and with all that is around you. Because independence does not equal loneliness and others can and want to be there and meet our needs, with patience, with time, with real love, with genuine care, if we choose to let them in. All levels of trauma, from childhood to adulthood leave us with the feeling of not being able to choose a way out. Being gentle with ourselves and one another, doing all in our power to show empathy, to feel tolerance, to experience connection as many times per day as we can. Write down the sensations, carry a diary, note it down on your phone, just remember, remember what it feels like to be present, once again. Out of your mind, into your body. There is always time to breath.
With light and respect,
Letizia Lopreiato June 2nd, 2020
‘Mood 4: Suspension’ from ‘The Timelapse’. (c) Letizia Lopreiato
These below are some references for the curious minds, to my learnings in regards to the perspective I gained whilst researching on trauma therapy, from a somatic psychotherapy approach:
The Polyvagal Theory, Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, Self-Regulation (2011), Stephen W. Porges, published by W. W. Norton Company, NY, United States
The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe (2014), Stephen W. Porges, published by W. W. Norton Company, NY, United States
Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory: The Emergence of Polyvagal-Informed Therapies (2018), Stephen W. Porges and Deb Dana, published by W. W. Norton Company, NY, United States
The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, Deb Dana, published by W. W. Norton Company, NY, United States
‘Descend the stairs, bend your legs, melting one by one. / Open your mouth to the snake in the sand, swallowing you one by one.’ So begins the first single from our latest album. It’s one of my treasured moments in the meandering Loafing Heroes journey: in how it came about, how it was constructed, the unfolding of its words and arrangement, and how it sounds on the record.
“Stairs” sums up much of what I dream about with this music, its vision and where I’m at – then and now. Because, really, however much I say this is the end of a project, or that it is the beginning of a new one; we are really, always, in a way, wrenched into the middle of things, into the middle of life.
Feeling heartbroken at the end of a relationship, trying to come to terms with the death of a loved one, suddenly hearing by accident a special song from a moment in your life, or catching a smell that brings you somewhere, smothering you with longing, nostalgia, a great sadness or joy – these all throw me into the middle of things, into the middle of life.
We are suddenly tuning in again – or rather – we may feel that we are spectacularly out of tune with the regular speed of day-to-day, calculative life, and in tune for a moment with another world that is alarmingly alive.
Months can go by when no new song emerges, as an energy once bubbling over deserts you, and you think, well, that’s the end of that. Or, perhaps you say that I must find a way to begin again, do something new. And then it comes.
Sometimes all it takes is to hear someone speak, watch a concert, see someone dance, or travel in the countryside away from the chatter of the city. In my case, the intervention came in the form of a visiting friend called Jonathan.
Along the great river
After a lifetime thinking about it, I had been travelling along the great river Amazon for almost 3000km, listening to the mesmerizing cacophony, seeing the green, green, green of all the jungle, and following the trail of an extraordinary human called Roger Casement. After making it back to Europe, I went straight on a tour with the band to Ireland for two weeks, and then finally returned to my apartment in Lisbon.
I just wanted to be alone for a few days after being in such close quarters with people on the road. But Jonathan was staying at my place and he was still there. He was full of beans and delighted to see me, and yet he could quickly see that I was a little moody and withdrawn.
But that wouldn’t stop him. He knew that I hadn’t written a song in at least six months. So that evening, we forced ourselves to play a game. He offered me three words – ‘hair’, ‘software’ and ‘snake’; a chord to begin; and thirty minutes to come up with something. That’s how the song ‘Stairs’ came about.
I was thrown into the middle of things – I found myself diving, drowning and then submerged in the interlude, and suddenly I was singing about my hair being on fire and my skin turning to water. It was exhilarating, liberating, revealing. For me, that is what making music is all about. And if you can connect that creation and performance with someone else – then it really is alive.
I began The Loafing Heroes back when I was living in Denmark doing a Phd on Kierkegaard, where I met a wandering soul called Jamie from Arizona. We started making music together and recording the first Loafing Heroes songs.
Four years later, I was living in Berlin pursuing a career as a philosophy lecturer wondering where to go next with the music. The spirit of The Loafing Heroes is that it morphs with the people that have come in and out over the years. This allows diverse flavours and colours to emerge and fade away along the trail.
We recorded three albums in Berlin: Unterwegs (2009), Chula (2010) and Planets (2011). With Jonathan – yes the same one (from Berlin), another Jaime (this one from Nebraska), and Noni (from Dublin).
My dear friend and gifted songwriter Michael Hall whom we all affectionately called Big Bear produced the first album (Unterwegs) and was present throughout the album. He died tragically in 2013, yet his ghost continues to haunt and inspire us.
After four years, we all found ourselves going in different directions. I headed down to Lisbon to begin a research project on the enchanting poet of multiplicity – Fernando Pessoa; Jonathan formed another band called Fenster that have gone on to record some really special experimental pop music; Noni set off to work on solar energy in Rwanda; while Jaime remained for the time being in Berlin, but would remain committed and connected to The Loafing Heroes. She plays the bass clarinet – one of the trademark sounds of the band over the last ten years – and has recorded on all of our six albums.
The three other albums were recorded while based in Lisbon (Crossing the Threshold [2014], The Baron in the Trees [2016] and Meandertales [2019]). I met Portuguese novelist João Tordo on my first night in the city, and he became a new loafing hero, and played double bass on the two albums before Meandertales.
I glimpsed Judith with a violin on her back one night at The Lisbon Players Theatre, and soon she was playing with us too. From Germany, Judith actually makes her own violins and violas, and has played on all three of the last albums.
Other musicians and friends have weaved in and out, but before Judith left Lisbon to return to Germany she introduced me to Giulia with a plan for her to join. From Italy, Giulia is now at the centre of the band, playing autoharp, piano, percussion, concertina, and singing and writing songs on the last two albums.
To complete this crooked cosmopolitan tale, four of our albums have been produced and mixed by our very talented, generous comrade and friend from Greece – Tadklimp.
Many of the songs have evolved from various strange places; on the one hand, from travelling through vast expansive landscapes; and, on the other, hiding away in dark melancholy, verging on paralysis, in the interiors of a room that can sometimes seem like a shrinking capsule.
Loafing is always essential in an age of increasing speed, technological overload, psychological detachment and environmental collapse – as we humans exhaust everything under the sun.
Let’s slow down. Let’s wander. Let’s see and think anew, and laugh. Let’s channel and imbibe energy not into potency, possibility and power; but rather as actual, as here and now, in everything that exists. Energy as a passive ‘is’.
These twelve new songs (constructed by Giulia, Judith, Jaime and I), from our new album under the title Meandertales, encompass the distorted fairytale and dream-folk that throw us into the middle of life. In the totality and disintegration of chaosmos, in this loafing musical endeavor, I work and play to transform my energetic pessimism into a subversive joy.
