Sometimes ...

The summer has arrived with Solstice. I hunt for the yellow bristle blossoms of Saint Joan's (St. John) Wort along the highways watchful of the signs of chemicals sprayed to control growth. If the signs of artificial browning catch my eye I stay clear. In my whirl of definitions the blossoms of Saint Joan are one of the Wild Women Medicines that help me. I've been studying and practicing this wild craft of gathering the weeds. It does take time and attention. While I wait for the weeds to make their appearance I pay someone else (I purchase) the weed/herb to aid me. In my gathering I ask permission when I spot the blossom. Take only a few blossoms at a time. Give thanks when I'm done. And push the freshly-nipped herb into a bath of 100 proof vodka and wait at least six weeks for the blossoms and the booze to do their alchemistry. 

But in some whirls the weed Invades. Beware the invasions, the Invasives take on such a conflicted set of meanings. 

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
A long way from home, a long way from home

Sometimes I feel like I'm almost done
Sometimes I feel like I'm almost done
Sometimes I feel like I'm almost done
And a long, long way from home, a long way from home

True believer
True believer
A long, long way from home
A long, long way from home

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

Songwriters: Billy Sherrill / Charlie Rich

Artist: Odetta

Toni Talia and Mokihana
 at the South Whidbey Acoustic Music Festival, Sunday, June 24, 2018

This spring, a season lived in a new-to-us place has been a test of resilience as 'Prairie' and 'Community' pop its boundaries and definitions. What is a Prairie? What is a Community? We had never lived on a Prairie before; and to live (24/7) on this Prairie with a Community is much like a tourist visiting Volcano (on the island of Hawaii) knows the culture of Hawaii or Pelehonuamea. Definitions and those perceptions change as this collective is charged with new comers -- Invasives. Almost automatically and without filters, these perceptions become defensive or magnetic of the norm as culture is poked with new borders. The stakes pulled up and moved a few or many inches from its origin.

I've been reading Charles Mudede for some ideas to digest and understand humanity. Mudede's article How DJ Riz Rollins Changed Seattle is giving me words and images, and more importantly feels to help me sort through the experiences I'm having as 'Prairie' and 'Community' refine or explode my perceptions about humanity. 

The article and the quote I've extracted lay out a picture of late 1990's Seattle when Mudede is newly arrived in Seattle, "The first cool club I discovered in Seattle was Re-bar (which, amazingly, is not gone). Opened in 1990, it was not only a dance club, but also a bar and a theater, with deep roots in the gay performance community. Riz was a DJ at the club in the mid-1990s. His sets would transform Re-bar into a cultural laboratory for the creation of a brand-new race of Seattleites.

[...]Now, the thing that these sessions at Re-bar revealed to me (and this thing was also expressed by the title of a novel that had a huge impact on me at the time, Josef Škvorecký's The Engineer of Human Souls) is the seemingly infinite plasticity of human culture. To explain this as clearly as possible, two things have to be separated: the social and the cultural. Humans are social, but I think this is a deeper and older side of our animality. We cannot be antisocial. We always need others. That is the kind of body we have. A body that moves and works with other bodies.

But culture, on the other hand, can change rapidly. This is its glorious plasticity. But if this plasticity is not recognized, culture is confused with nature and its hard, fixed, and genetic laws, and we impose these misperceptions of the natural on the social body. This has caused a lot of misery in the world.

What all of this means—and what Riz made so clear to me on those Friday nights, and something that has become the core of my thinking as a writer and culture critic—is that our modes of moving through the world can be altered, revised, or completely reinvented. Some people call this social engineering, but I call it cultural engineering. Social engineering sounds like eugenics, or something that happens in an operating theater. Cultural engineering has a different ring. It can happen on a dance floor"

I saw the hand of God in the sky above as the music rose from the red-painted stage

Do we tinker with the ways in which we move through the world in a flowing and plastic in a good feel way allowing culture to be as changeable as clouds? Does a strange way of being trigger within us a need to defend, or can there be room on our dance card for new moves and a different if at first uncomfortable scene?

Later this summer Pete and I are scheduled to open the doors to the Safety Pin Cafe again. For the first time in two years, we will share chant, stories music and opportunity for group participation.

This year the theme of the performances will be 

Water Catchers ... the songs and stories that flow. 

Save the date: Sunday, August 12, 2018

Time: 11:30 AM - 2 PM

Place: South Whidbey Tilth Farmers' Market

2812 Thompson Road

Langley, WA
FREE
Come without perfumes, scented product and essential oils

"Power of Story" at the Safety Pin Cafe, September 2016

To encourage a shift in culture and perception the stories and songs will be global in reach, some Ancient, some written for the page or the blog, and several will encourage the audience to participate. One of the songs meant to magnetize group participation is the song Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie written by folk singer and blues musician Lead Belly, updated and culturally jangled by the body percussion arrangement of singer/composer Moira Smiley. 

I was introduced to Moira Smiley and the music of Lead Belly through one of my favorite bloggers and mentors, Terri Windling. The whirl of connection influenced by the flow of art and music is the magic that calms my worried mother less child long enough to welcome change. Below is the video of Huddie Ledbetter's (Lead Belly) Bring Me Little Water, Slyvie featuring Moira Smiley and a circle of women in percussion. A YouTube instructional video concludes this ranging and rambling post that is the stuff that sometimes makes its way through, or around life.

Thank the Gods and Goddesses for the light that can be more than enough to lead the way through those times of mother less child-ness that threatens to be an invasive only if we forget, or refuse to be the water carrier for the other.

Come join us in August when the Safety Pin Cafe opens itself to Water Catchers. In the meantime I may be found from time to time napping and refueling in that small golden wagon.

xo Mokihana and Pete