Dreams, Musick, Metaphysics, Multidimensional Art, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Beyond
My poem “The Broad Shouldered Metal” has been featured on Aralee Strange’s website Athen’s Word of Mouth. The name for the poem came from what discerning listeners will know to be Coil’s album of detritus, “Gold Is the Metal With the Broadest Shoulders“.
I just got back from a family vacation to Tennessee, Texas, Tennessee and back. I’ll be writing more of this trip here in the near future.
Sometimes the atmosphere of a book is so strong, reading even just a few pages of it is enough to catapult a person into strange dreams. This was the case for me after I had read the first chapter of Michael Moorcock’s The Dreamthief’s Daughter. I turned off the light on my night stand, just before 11PM. In the hypnagogic zone I saw an image of myself standing in a room with my TV-B-Gone device and turning off a bunch of TVs mounted on the walls, before falling into a deeper sleep. Then at around 1AM I woke up mesmerized by the following dream.
I am in a bar at the library. A person is there who wants me to buy some drugs. I don’t want to, but I feel compelled by him to do so, but still don’t. Either way we leave the library together and go outside. Then he is gone and I see a library security guard driving a huge semi-truck. There is a hill, with a trench dug in it where a pipe is, but the pipe has been broken. I then realize, as I go into a dark room, that there is an aspect of myself -a shade or doppelganger- who is also at large, running around. This part of my self is a thief. I hear a voice in the dream. It is an older voice. It says “I have become worthless at my Art.” This doppelganger thief steals whatever it can because stealing is its very nature. Everything has been stolen from it and so it steals. I hear the voice “I steal because it is my soul and it is my soul to steal.” I realize I’m in the world of Moorcock, a hyper multiverse as I start to wake up.
Laying there in the darkness, tears start to well up in my eyes as I write scratchy lines in the dark in my notebook. Though I know I will not forget, they are an aid to remembrance. I have the immediate thought/feeling that this state of thievery is a form of collective soul loss. Words of a cryptic poem started to flood my mind:
Entrapped by a vicious circle of wolves
ensnared at a table
of poisonous soul food
I dine among thieves.
I dress as a turncoat
because my own pockets
have been picked.
I’m saddled to this rocking chair
and ridden by greed.
I’ve taken a sack of bones, without meat
and use them to clean my teeth
wiggled loose
by a tongue who knows only lies.
I cannot see myself
for I have fused with the disguise.
The plight of the modern soul lay bare to me in that moment. I wrote “I must do something to protect the naked children.”
I went back to sleep and more scenes unfolded. The next day I continued to work with the dream and the sequences that followed, all the while delving deeper into the drama of Ulric von Bek, the central character in Moorcock’s drama. Riveted by the tale, I soon learned one of the central themes it explores is that of the doppelganger. Ulric is a double of Elric of Melnibone (and in a convoluted way also his progeny) the Eternal Champion whose heroic efforts and feats are aimed at maintaining balance between Law and Chaos. In the story the first person narrative shifts back and forth a few times from Ulric’s point of view to Elric’s with only the mildest confusion. It is like the type of dream where one suddenly finds oneself in a different body. I feel that reading this type of fiction can help a person prepare for the doppelganger experience.
While my own dream had pointed out to me causes of personal soul loss, like the use of drugs, stealing the identity of another person because portions of my own soul had been taken from me, in an endless revolving door of thievery, from one person to the next, the book I was reading delved into the trauma of collective soul loss that was World War II. Another layer of resonance between dream and reading material was unveiling itself. I started speculating along unusual lines. The warfare of The Great War (WWI) had ripped a hole in reality itself, allowing for even more sinister beings to come through, motivating and taking possession of men like Hitler. Indeed a pre-existing collective soul loss seems to have been a precondition allowing for the atrocities the Nazis perpetrated. The hole was torn more widely open in WWII and the world is still not healed from the psychic shell shock inflicted on humanity then.
Moorcock himself writes, “The rise of fascism had shocked and exhausted her. Mussolini’s successes were an abomination to her, and Hitler was inconceivably shallow and vicious in his political rhetoric, his ambitions and claims. But as she said when I last saw her, Germany’s soul had been stolen already. Hitler was merely addressing the corpse of German democracy. He had killed nothing. He had grown out of the grave, she said. Grown out of that corpse like an epidemic which had rapidly infected the entire country. ‘And where is Germany’s soul?’ I asked. ‘Who stole it?’”
And again, “It was as if some demonic force had been attracted by the stink of the Boer War’s carnage, by Leopold’s Congo, by the Armenian genocide, by the Great War, by the millions of corpses which filled the ditches, gutters, and tranches of the world from Paris to Peking. Greedily feasting, the force grew strong enough to prey upon the living.”
All these thoughts have made me want to dip back into Wilhelm Reich’s excellent study The Mass Psychology of Fascism which I read about ten years ago.
Outside of all the seriousness within the story it is also a wonderful and magical adventure tale. It kept me up late for several nights as each scene unfolded, until I was finished. For the dreamer and the magically inclined it offers a great deal of speculation for study and active experimentation.
Not only do the characters tread the moonbeam roads of the multiverse, they spend a good deal of time in Mu Ooria, a type of Hollow Earth deep in the subterranean caverns of Earth, where dwell the Off Moo. The twin/double/doppelganger motif is repeated here, as the Off Moo frequently give birth to twins. Dreaming is also practiced as an art among the Off Moo. Healing was also a very refined magical art among the Off Moo. “Their bone setters and muscle soothers work mostly in the ponds…They have pools of river water, to which they have added certain other properties. No matter what the ailment, be it a broken bone, or a cancerous organ, it can be healed in the curing ponds with the application of certain other processes specific to your complaint. Music, for instance. And color. Consequently, timeless as this place is, we are even less aware of the familiar action of time as we know it on the surface.”
The mind bending complexity of the multiverse is another overarching theme, especially as it relates to time, a common trope in science fiction. Time seems to be different depending on what level of reality one is on in the multiverse. “I was having difficulties with Mittlemarch notions of time. It seemed as if we were all fated to live identical lives in billions of counterrealities, rarely able to change our stories, yet constantly striving to do so.”
As an Active Dreamer I believe we can change our story, and we can do so by tapping into the lives of our other selves taking place in different branches of the multiverse, or on different ‘branes of parallel realites that we can experience through dreams.
In Moorcock’s high concept literary fantasy the struggle taking place between overbearing Law and too lenient Chaos on Earth was mirrored on other orders of reality, by forces that had ever more awareness of the multiverse itself. In our struggles to create balance between Chaos and Order we can draw on the power of the Gods, Goddesses, and spirits who come to us in dreams.
In the last sequence of the dream I had on the night when I began the book I find myself standing across from a building where there are a group of workers who have climbed up several stories and smashed out the windows. I have a metal box on it with some buttons that make sounds in the building. I press the buttons. The workers don’t know where the music is coming from. I am frightened for them because they are being extremely careless for being up so high. I leave the scene and walk over to a door in a wall. As I step through the door, the whole wall smashes into pieces, I am in outer space and the debris from the wall is flying in every direction. I’m on to a new episode in the multiverse I realize, but then I wake up.
One of the many interesting dream games we play in Robert Moss’s interActive Dreamwork forums and ecourse hosted over at Spirituality & Health magazines website is the game of describing a person, place or thing to an alien. This is especially useful when celebrities or other figures turn up in our dreams. We may think we have a clear idea of who or what a person or object represents, but the practice of describing it to an alien helps to clarify essential information, often producing an “Aha!” experience along the way. Below I play the game describing some people who figured in a few dreams of mine in 2010. 
Greetings to you my new found friends from Califrax-3. It is a pleasure to host you on our home world. As part of the orientation process I wanted to describe to you three figures who turned up in a recent dreamy of mine, followed by a fourth who has visited me in a few dreams this year. But first lets here the dream:
Picasso Cartoon, Mapplethorpe Poetry, & Patti Smith’s Circle
December 14 2010 7:15 AM EST
I am watching an animated Pablo Picasso cartoon, drawn and animated by him. It takes place underneath the sea. Strange amoeba/birds flutter around like abstract paper cut-outs beneath the waves, dancing amidst a briny flora and fauna.
Then someone is talking to me about the film. He is a middle-aged man. He has some kind of conspiracy theory about Picasso. He then shows me some newspaper cartoon strips he has framed. The frames are huge, the size of tables. He has two other friends who have been tracking clues about Picasso and his clandestine involvements with him. Then the man is talking to me about poetry. I know we are in New York City now, and I’m suprised by his professed love for poetry. He tells me he liked the later poems of Robert Mapplethorpe the best.
Then I am observing Patti Smith and two other ladies, one of whom is pregnant. Like Patti Smith, the pregnant girl is also a poet, but she is new to poetry, and she seems more thrilled just to be part of Patti Smith’s circle. She rushes to open a door for Patti. Then I am looking at a picture of Patti Smith on a magazine cover.
Now for the Space Alien game:
Pablo Piccasso was the name of a man who was one of the most famous artistes of the twentieth century. He was a painter, a drawer, a sculptor, a provacateur and infamous womanizer. I know him most for his pictures of bulls, the adult male of the dos taurus species, a common flesh food source in the world, especially amongst the human bovines who live in North America. Highly sexualized, he was also highly prolific leaving an indelible stamp on the face of the modern art world, and the legacy of a large body of work. As far as working techniques go, he was known to exhaust an image, drawing it, painting, redrawing from different angles, painting in different schemes of color over and over again. What I would most like to learn from him is the habit of work and to see things with a painters eye.
Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith were soul mates, though there’s was a platonic love. He preferred the company of other men to those of women, and she didn’t mind having other lovers herself. Together they charged through the 1970s New York art scene rising to prominence, Robert as a photographer whose masterful portraits and still life photos are essays in the study of light. Patti Smith is a poet who performs against the back drop of a rock band. She became known as “The Godmother of Punk” a rebellious youth movement revolving around an aggressive style of music playing (mostly using three-chords). Her own patron saint was Arthur Rimbaud, and the punk rock movement in itself can be seen as a historical extension of the bohemians and decadents who proliferated in the metropolitan areas of 19th century Europe. Perhaps it is fitting then, that Patti was named Commander of the Ordre des Artes and Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 2005.
In my own provenance of Cincinnati there was a huge controversy surrounding an exhibition of Mapplethorpe’s photographs at the Contemporary Arts Center that caused resounding echoes throughout the art world at the time, as conservatives came into clashing conflict with more progressive minds. It also brought international attention to the Contemporary Arts Center. I was still a fledgling poet and artist at the time, counting off my days in the compulsory education system the bureaucrats of this planet still suffer our children through, and unfortunately did not attend the show. A trial ensued between those who wanted to censor the sadomasochistic pictures in question, and those who fought for freedom of expression. This was all posthumous following his death by a human immunodefficency virus, for which our planet desperately needs a cure. (Please help our scientists and healers in this regard.)
Another figure who has shown up in my dreams a number of times in our Solar Year is Science Fiction author Bruce Sterling. Sterling is credited as being one of the original founders of the cyberpunk movement, a subgenre within science fiction. While he is not my favorite prose stylist I admire him for being a “visionary in residence”. A Texan by birth, he currently lives in Turin, Italy with his Russian wife. (Russian femme fatales frequent his short writings.) He has written around 11 novels, and a slew of short-fiction, and has won many prestigious awards within the SF genre. One of the other things I admire about Sterling is his voice as an environmentalist. At first glance his work may appear to be consumed with admiration for all manner of techno-gadgetry. A closer reading reveals his deep concern with issues such as Global Warming and the effects this will have on human culture. These are highly developed in books like “Heavy Weather” which examines a hypothetical F6 tornado sweeping through the American southwest as it is tracked and traced by a group of renegade scientists and weather hackers. “The Caryatids” examines the prospects of rescuing earth from complete environmental collapse in the year 2065, through the combined tales of four sisters, who are the clones of a Balkan warlords widow. He has written a few non-fiction books as well, his most famous probably being “The Hacker Crackdown” which tells the story of those early explores of telephone and computer networks. He is deeply enamored of the various disciplines associated with “design” and is also credited with helping to kickstart the “Viridian Design Movement” -his attempt to create an ecologically sound, yet sleek and high-tech design movement.
I thank you for letting me to take the time to discuss a few of Earths luminaries with you. Through all this I see several clues to help me in my own projects: bringing more visual imagery into my poetry and writing, try and write poetry like a photographer, whilst getting back in touch with my (cyber)punk roots, whilst not forgetting to share an environmentalist message at times. The Alien Game is a fun one to play.
Filidh’s were the storytellers and keepers of the sacred order within ancient Celtic tribes, the living memory banks of an oral culture. Eleanor Hull, in his Textbook of Irish Literature, said in earliest times the Filidh combined “the functions of magician, lawgiver, judge, counsellor to the chief, and poet. Later, but still at a very early time, the offices seem to have been divided, the brehons devoting themselves to the study of law, and the giving of legal decisions, the druids arrogating to themselves the supernatural functions, with the addition, possibly of some priestly offices, and the filí themselves being henceforth principally as poets and philosophers.”1 In this article I will be looking at the earliest conception of the Filidh, before the various divisions of duty begin to take hold.
What does it take to be a Filidh? In the olden days, at least twelve years of training.2 Much of this involved an intense concentration on the development of memory skills. John Carey, in his paper The Three Things Required of A Poet, elaborates on three psychic skills mentioned in the tale of Finn mac Cumaill, “that give the Fili, or professional poet his special status”.3 These are imbas forosnai, or “knowledge which illuminates”, tenim laedo “illumination of song”, dichetal di chennaib or “extempore incantation”. Each of these gifts or powers, developed through the dedication of long work, deserves an essay in and of itself. As part of my own work as an amateur metahistorian and aspiring filidh, they are subjects that I am still researching. Still one must begin somewhere, and my dreams took me to the work of contemporary poet Gary Snyder.
Besides having a long term interest in the work of the Beats, I had a powerful dream involving my version of Gary Snyder that spurred me to read more of his work in late 2009. My ongoing engagement with his poetry and essays, have subsequently deepened. Like the filis of old Snyder has spent more than a fair portion of his time among mountains, rivers, and woods. His home is in the Pacific Northwest and part of my admiration for him lies in his dedication to his bioregion. From what I can tell he is a person who has a strong connection to the land. To those of us who seek to honor the earth and its inhabitants, this connection is primary. While this primary connection may seem obvious to me, and whole slews of eco-activists, it is not so for those who have shut their eyes to the basic facts of life. These are people who have lost touch with the environments which they traverse and are immersed in every day. What will it take to pull them up out of a mire of soul sucking distraction? Among other things, stories. These are a special province of the filidh.
This essay analyses Snyder’s poem, “What You Should Know to Be A Poet”, keeping especially in mind the soul and world repairing functions of a poet. First let us look at the poem as a whole before taking it apart piece by piece. Any good poem or story speaks for itself, but it can still be fun to excavate the vast amounts of knowledge contained within each compacted line.
What You Should Know to be a Poet
all you can know about animals as persons.
the names of trees and flowers and weeds.
the names of stars and the movements of planets
and the moon.
your own six senses, with a watchful elegant mind.
at least one kind of traditional magic:
divination, astrology, the book of changes, the tarot;
dreams.
the illusory demons and the illusory shining gods.
kiss the ass of the devil and eat sh*t;
fuck his horny barbed cock,
fuck the hag,
and all the celestial angels
and maidens perfum’d and golden-
& then love the human: wives husbands and friends
children’s games, comic books, bubble-gum,
the weirdness of television and advertising.
work long, dry hours of dull work swallowed and accepted
and lived with and finally lovd. exhaustion,
hunger, rest.
the wild freedom of the dance, extasy
silent solitary illumination, entasy
real danger. gambles and the edge of death.
- Gary Snyder4
According to Snyder a poet should know “all you can about about animals as persons.” Learning what roles an animal plays within its ecosystem is certainly valuable, useful not only for the preservation of ecosystems, but also in the remediation of those already damaged. When I approach an animal as a person though, beyond facts, figures, and statistics, I touch something closer to myself and my own being –the soul of another. Humans are not the only species with soul. The whole world is a shrine for the soul. This is something you should know to be a filidh.
Animals are encountered everywhere, from the industrial urban environment to the suburban, from rural farmlands and forests to untouched pristine wilderness. Nature is a continuum and from it we cannot be separate. No matter where one may live, animals will be encountered. The filidh is at home in the city as much hiking through the brush or paddling up a stream. In this waking world animals make star crossed paths with us and we can look to them for guidance, as their appearance is always relevant to our lives. Creatures are also encountered in the amber field of dreams. These connections should be noted and studied by the aspiring filidh.
Snyder says a poet should know “the names of trees and flowers and weeds”. To learn them the poet should also be a flaneur, a rambler, walking anywhere and everywhere as the famous Romantic, Symbolist, and Beat poets themselves did. Along the way learn the local flora.
Naming a thing or knowing the name of a thing has long been associated with magickal power. It is important to distinguish between power over something and power with, for a filidh would never wish to manipulate for his or her selfish glory, but seeks to raise the consciousness of all, to ever greater levels of playing. Restoring colour to a world that is growing ever so gray is the special job of poets at this time, and to do so it may be necessary to call forth the souls of the plants and animals who are on the verge of disappearing.
Any good poem calls forth its implicit qualities, whether good or ill, through the power of its words (praise be Thoth). Poetry can evoke and invoke. Knowing the names of trees, flowers, and weeds asks the poet to be involved in the life of the land. If the name of a plant is known, what else can be known about it? What stories, songs, and myths are associated with the plant? What medicinal virtues do its leaves, roots, and stems hold for us? Some plants offer the gift of prophecy, others merely intoxication. There are those considered poisonous, and to greater or lesser degrees, some of those poisons can be transmuted alchemically. It is not surprising that one of Walt Whitman’s poems is called Calamus, the leaves of this famous grass being associated in biblical times with the gift of prophecy.
I heard once in a source I cannot place (briefly ponder current media barrage reality) that children recognize more corporate logos than plant species. This trend must be reversed. Through poetry and storytelling the mysteries of the natural world can be restored. When we know the name of something we may be less likely to destroy it, as our intimacy with it has grown. A filidh should have frequent and intimate encounters with plant life. Filidhs may be able to recharge their creative batteries through esoteric eroticism, the ecstasy that comes from tuning into the ever evolving and regenerative play of life around us.
Knowing “the names of stars and the movements of the planet and the moon” helps the Filidh to fall gracefully into syncopation with natural time. The cycles of electricity, the glowing screens of computer and television, the collective light pollution eeking out from cities, have for many of us obscured the awe inspiring majesty of the starry sky, Nuit. The stars dwarf our worldly ambition, helping us to get a sense of the bigger picture. Learning the constellations alone can fill one with a lifetime of stories from many different cultures.
Snyder says we should know our “own sixth sense, with a watchful elegant mind.” The mind must be stilled from an excess of voices and internal chatter in order to receive clear messages from the senses – the signs and symbols of synchronicity that speak to us when we make ourselves available to listen. Poetic insight, while informed by the five senses, is revealed by the sixth. Polishing the glass of intuition so that it may reflect clearly should be basic maintenance of the human instrument.
A traditional form of magic should also be learned. Snyder mentions four types, and these have been most commonly used for divination. A watchful elegant mind, open to the insights of intuition has less need for formal divination. Rather, the traditional arts of magic should be studied for their deeper applications.
The second stanza addresses dreams and the denizens who inhabit the multiverse, beginning with “the illusory demons and the illusory shinging gods”. In this stanza Gary shows how the poet acts as a shaman by traveling into the astral landscape, into the higher and lower worlds. In dreams a person comes into contact with spiritual beings of all shades and stripes, the demonic, angelic, the indifferent, ghosts who haven’t moved on. Dreams are the playground of the soul, and in them direct knowledge of the universe and our place in it can be gained.
In the lower world the poet connects with these beings in a most visceral way, by kissing the ass of the devil. This specific image recalls to my mind how the Knights Templar kissed the ass of Baphomet as part of their initiation, which in turn can be elaborated upon as a metaphor for eating shit. Having congress with devils was certainly dangerous in the times of the Inquisition, but thankfully now those interested in these paths can pursue them without fear of being burned at the stake. Even so most folk will recoil at the image of kissing the devils ass and eating his shit. From an alchemical point of view however, eating shit may be equated with the negredo stage of the divine transformation. The black, dark, base matter of life must be internalized, and eaten, before it can be transmuted into the philosophers stone. The devil is also symbolic of creative power, especially as it applies to the material substances of the world. To partake of the devils defecation is to ingest what he more thoroughly digested. Images of poop in my own dreams often seem to refer to creative output. Putrefaction transforms into enlightenment.
All of this is followed up by Snyder suggesting we “fuck the hag”, or the Crone, an aspect of the Triple Goddess (who appears also as the Maiden, and the Mother). In her old age, at the peak of her wisdom and in the full grasp of her accumulated power, on the verge of transitioning through the blue gates of death, the poet goes to the Crone or Hag for initiation. By copulating with beings from the otherworld, the boundaries between this world and the other merge for a time. To have intercourse with spiritual beings is to enter into discourse with them. When the poet emerges from holy sleep, new powers are found awakening in the soul, gifts from the congress that has been shared with the spiritual allies who are now his intimates. These beings are the muses who will make the tongue silver.
When a person comes down from such a peak experience there is often a corresponding depression. Humans are not meant to always live at the heights of spiritual ecstasy. To be functional in the world, to be of service to the other people and living things in the environment, a poet must know how to ground herself in the routines of daily living. The hearthstone is far from being a constraint to hamper the soul. It is a place returned to with joy, and the daily matters associated with its maintenance should be undertaken in the same spirit. After traveling through the lower worlds and upper worlds the gifts that have been given freely to us must be given freely back to the world; we return to make love with our human counterparts, husbands and wives, we return to the role of parenthood and bonding with children.
Spiritual practices should never serve to remove one from the world, but to help engage more fully with it. The psychonauts, shamans, and astral voyagers who are most adept at the psychic arts are also the most practical. The practice of being a Filidh does not make one removed from everyone else, but, by being a person who carries the stories, songs, and poems of a people, the Filidh is a person who is available to the people.
This is why, in my mind, some of the best stories and poems are those that are easily knowable, not requiring decades of scholarly acumen. The have an immediacy about them, and have not been obfuscated by deliberately so only the learned have access to what is contained in them. A true Filidh crafts stories and poems that touch the heart and soul of all. This cannot easily be done from ivory towers, or by becoming so spaced out I esoterica that you cannot function on the material plane of existence.
To keep oneself humble and in tune with the world, “long dry hours of dull work” should be “swallowed and accepted”. Another way it could be said is in the Zen precept “Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Dishes still need to be washed, clothes hung out on the line to dry, homes maintained. We do not transcend the material world, but transform it through our consciousness. Stripping and sanding the paint off my porch has become a meditation for me. The sweat beads on my brow, on my back, in my arm-pits. After a few hours I start to notice dull pains and aches in my arm, from the reptitive motion, but as I work, I feel a sense of craftsmanship growing in me, a connection with the world of things. Working can be seen as a form of Karma Yoga, sweating out impurities, putting equity into the soul. I feel in touch with my body, a useful counterpoint to all the work I do in my head as a writer. It’s fun to get my hands dirty, and after a day of honest labor food, beer, sex and sleep are fully enjoyed.
Snyder speaks of the “wild freedom of the dance”. Dancing has always been a primary method for entering into ecstasy for both layperson and shaman. In a dance the gods, godesses, animal spirits and ancestors are called upon and may even enter the body. The earth is honored by dance. The feet are drums pounding on her back. The heartbeat is raised. Breathind deepens. The dancer becomes entranced. Movements of the head, hair, limbs, torso take one away from the consensus mind, into the deepness of ones own. Dancing is a bridge between the worlds.
The “silent solitary illumination” or “entasy” is the vision quest, the lone poet on a mountaintop or some other wild place hunting for dreams and visions. Alone and with no one to talk to the internal dialogue and chatter of the mind has a chance to become quiet and the poet is able to listen to the world speak. Blaise Pascal wrote, “all mens miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone”. Here Pascal’s Christianity is close to Snyder’s Buddhism. Both agree that relentless distraction stirs up unending desires, which cause suffering. Out on the vision quest the poet faces her own mortality. When the dream that has been cried for is delivered it is like an answered prayer, but one that requires action out in the world. We return to the fold of community reknewed. Now instead of following the path someone else has laid down for us we have our own map to go by, our own visionary blueprint to build from.
Finally Snyder says a poet should know “real danger: gambles and the edge of death”. What great and bold acts of genius were ever committed by playing it safe and following the quotidian line? Who has moved into new areas of research and discovery by refusing to test boundaries and push envelopes? The treasures that are to be found in the deep may be guarded by formidable foes, but in facing them we prove our own strength. Once those glittering jewels have been claimed as our own we will never be content with the rinky-dink pleasures found while wading in shallow waters.
A poet should know the edge of death and walk it daily. In his higher capacity the Filidh may even act as a guide or psychopomp into the realms of the dead. The Filidh may take on the role of “speaker for the dead” on behalf of the community. With a fine tuned discernment the Filidh will be able to incite proper actions on behalf of the departed when necessary, and ease those who are called into their passing. By walking on the edge of death we gain strength for what we need to do now. Contemplating the end of physical life is a great way to break through blocks of procrastination.
Gary Snyder’s poem may be short, but learning and living what is set out in the poem is a lifetime of ongoing work. Luckily when one is a Filidh, there is no set end, no fixed point where “I am finished” can be said. Being a poet is an infinite and open-ended game. Large victories and small successes may be had along with momentary defeats. These do not constitute the end of play, but rather are mark further points of development and departure.
-Justin Patrick Moore
September 8, 2010
Cincinnati, Ohio
1. Textbook of Irish Literature, by Eleanor Hull
2. Word of Skill: The Art of Celtic Storytelling by Mara Freeman available at: http://www.druidry.org/obod/theorder/archive/mara-wordskill.html
3. The Three Things Required of A Poet, by John Carey, in Eriu, Vol. 48, 1997.
4. No Nature, New and Selected Poems, Pantheon Books 1992 by Gary Snyder.
After the war
they came home bleeding
holes punched into the soul,
mysterious illnesses, government silence
they left home whole
went to distant shores
mosquito jungles, dust devil deserts
were told to hunker down in rat holes
opiates passed the time between card games
and cigarettes and letters from mom,
and the fifteen year old girl picked up from Ho Chi Minh
between carting off bodies, maimed, dead, on stretchers
darting enemy fire
poisoned by our own Orange Agent
radiated by slugs made from plutonium shells
not recognizing the home they returned to
transformed, not knowing
the ghosts they’d brought back
the hungry ghosts of distant lands
clinging to vacant eyes
tormented by visions of choppers in the sky
some took to Wild Irish Rose
while others kept pace with the needle
marking tracks of who they would have been
soul now stuck in some astral swamp
camping out on the margins,
over the guard rail on the highway behind the bushes
beneath the overpass
haunted by voices
and nightmare schisms
no recourse to the plastic virtues of suburbia
without aim, drifting from vacant motel
to vagrant parking lots
telling their stories to the few who will listen
shouting on the corners, gesticulating
trying to shake off the hungry ghost
flying a sign
nearly invisible off the turnpike
becoming ever more ghost like
dying without a name
until someone checks the dog tags
buried but not gone
these rusty shells, these earth bound spectres
burning with a prayer for dawn
waiting for the inmost light
hoping for a harp to sing them sweet home
watching for a guide
a gentle hand to lead them out of night
I’m almost 31 years old now, and I’ve been writing since I can remember. Looking through old school papers my Mom had saved I found my first science fiction story from around the third grade called “Space Quest”, and I remember the stories that I wrote as assignments in second grade already had chapters. But I started keeping a diary about my life in the 6th grade, a practice I’ve kept with throughout. I have a filing cabinet in the closet in my study/library/writing & music room filled with old notebooks and journals. It’s full now, and the journals I now keep spill onto my bookshelves -themselves already full, double rowed or with stacks of more books and papers in front. I write all this to say that over the years I’ve experimented with a number of ways of keeping my journals organized. This is how they stand now. Perhaps this set up will be helpful to others:
1. I keep a small moleskine or other durable memo pad (unlined if it can be helped) in my pocket, or next to me on my desk at work or when at home, at all times. This also sits on my nightstand for capturing things during the odd hours of night, morning or what have you. This pocket notebook is essential for writing down keywords from dreams, synchronicities as I notice them, intuitive flashes and ideas as I get them. First, I am a dreamer and a writer, but at this time I’m still working the proverbial day job at the local library (a great place for my ongoing researches in any case). The work for an essay, article, or story doesn’t stop when I put the pen down (it usually just joins the other one already in my pocket anyway); and as I get back to earning the green reality tickets we’ve all agreed upon to trade with by consensus (and perhaps stifled imagination) I continue to compose the story, essay, review, poem, etc. in my mind -especially, if I’ve just come back from my hour lunch break, which is really an hour break so I can write. The pocket notebook allows me to write some notes down, that I can get back to later, and I can sketch them in on the fly without annoying my co-workers too much. Anyway, they should be keeping a journal as well.
2. I used to keep separate books for my waking thoughts and my night dreams. These were black hard bound blank page notebooks. As I take my journal with me everywhere I go, along with a book or two I’m reading, this set up became too cumbersome. As I started working with my dreams on a regular basis, it became apparent, that I was often writing about my waking thoughts, day time events, synchronicities, what I was reading, etc. and my dreams, all in context with each other, so the separation began to feel artificial. I now no longer worry about it. What I did do, though, and this I got from Robert Moss, was start keeping my stuff in a binder. I can’t stand to write on lined paper, so I take blank paper from the office and punch holes in it. Keeping things in a binder allows you to go back and add in some thoughts at a later time about a dream or event -especially useful, as pointed out in Robert’s “Dreaming True” book- when you’ve had a precognitive dream, or various types of “life rhymes” experiences.
3. Although I do not separate my dreams from my waking experiences in the journal any longer, I do have a few sections in my binder. A) Dreams, Waking Events, Ideas, Thoughts, etc. I index these by title/subject/theme at the beginning of each month. B) I already mentioned that I am a writer. If I don’t write I get really depressed and feel like I am not only letting myself down, but feel negligent for not doing what I know is part of my purpose in the world during this incarnation. I write poetry, stories, articles. To stay organized I keep current drafts and print outs of finished pieces in a second section of my binder. c) Although I will often write about things I am reading and listening to in the fist section of my journal -as what I read is often based on research leads and cues from dreams and coincidence. I also try to write at least a page or two of thoughts/notes/feelings about books and articles I’ve just finished reading, more if it is particularly important to my own path. Photocopies of relevant material, printouts from blogs, magazine articles and other stuff, along with my marginalia may also go in here. As a huge music fan with my own radio show I also write music reviews for the independent music website Brainwashed.com. Printouts of the reviews of the albums I’ve listened to and written about also go in this section, because oftentimes the music I listen to is just as important to me as what I’ve been reading.
4. Lastly, I have a travel binder. This is the one I put in the bag that goes with me. (Interestingly enough I bought the bag at a yard sale from a lady who is a member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams -before I knew she was a member.) When it starts getting too full, I take a month or two’s worth of dreams, drafts, and reading/music thoughts out and put those in separate large binders. So far I fill up about one large binder full of dream stuff per year. The drafts, printed copies of finished pieces, and reading notes fill up separate binders.
I’ve got a review to write now. You’re on your own when it comes to storing all those diaries you’ll be filling up.
This post started off as a comment over at the new Dreamgates blog by Robert Moss, where you’ll be sure to find me joining in the various discussions. Find it at the following address:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/dreamgates/
Specifically my comment was on this post: Why You Want to Keep A Journal
http://blog.beliefnet.com/dreamgates/2010/06/why-you-want-to-keep-a-journal.html
also of keen interest: Games to Play With Your Journal
http://blog.beliefnet.com/dreamgates/2010/06/games-to-play-with-your-journal.html
In this episode of “On the Way to the Peak of Normal” intrepid world traveler Robert Moss call’s in to talk about the second edition of his book Dreamgates and other dreamy subjects, like shamanism, paleopsychology, initiation, Sirius B, current miasmic conditions around the Earth and the Kogi tribe of South America. Robert was kind enough to share some of his own dream inspired poetry, and the discussion ends with some brief thoughts on dream theater. We hear music from Cincinnati dreamer and musician Serenity Fisher (from her forthcoming indie-movie for the stage Sophies Dream), and a selection of music from Nocturnal Emissions (opening) to Droidsongs, The Beau Alquizola Band, and the Astral Surf Gypsies. Bon Appetite.
On the Way to the Peak of Normal: Robert Moss, Serenity Fisher & Local Musetry: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadI Hear A New World - Joe Meek (Rod & The Blue Men)
Tharumuncrape An’goo - Nocturnal Emissions
Robert Moss Interview
Porcupine Spikes and Fall In Love Again by Serenity Fisher
Cathedral of the Soul by Justin Patrick
two droidsongs from Liminal Transfers (due out in June from Sothis Medias)
You Hit Me So Hard by The Beau Alquizola Band
poem by Justin Patrick Moore
A Riftless Sea by Astral Surf Gypsies
Voiceovers courtesy of Professor Nutbudder
One of the questions currently occupying a place in my mind is: How can Western Culture begin to rebuild authentic communities? I am not under the illusion that communities have entirely disappeared, but I do feel that many of them have eroded, the ties of fidelity once held by families to the land we live on having nearly disappeared in America. Local flavors and traditions are passing out of memory, replaced by commercial jingles, the rhetoric of corporate and celebrity culture.
Humans have become adept at building networks, and I believe these can be of great importance to our collective evolution, but only if they are tied to living and breathing communities, built on the body of the land and with strong stories as the backbone. I hold as true that stories will be more important to humanities long-term survival on Gaia than food. I learned this from Badger Woman, when she spoke through Barry Lopez in his book Crow and Weasel, saying, “Remember only this one thing… The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away when they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory. This is how people care for themselves.”1
Stories that are shared, upheld by an entire tribe or clan, whether for good or ill, chart the course of history. In America we have shared a story of unlimited growth and expansion, a story that says it is better to let factory farms grow our food than real farmers, a tale of pills that magically cure maladies of the soul, even as the underlying issues of depression and psychological illnesses continue to fester. With little back to them these stories now have to fess up to their bankruptcy. The damage they have caused is still being played out, and the drama will continue as long as people still adopt stories designed by corporate profiteers whose only aim is a narrow, fitting in the margins of their balance sheets.
Another dominant story in our time is that of the machine. It has been aptly expressed in the literature of Science Fiction, a genre that of course has many other facets, which more than any other popular literature maps the collision zone of technology and society. Other stories are about resources, economics, how we treat each other and the planet. In order for an egalitarian society to prevail these stories need to be told. A healthy media manned by competent journalists is essential for knowing what is going on and how to respond to it. However, the soul of the individual and the collective soul of the community are fed by stories that resonate on the frequency of myths and dreams.
My own dreams and search for deeper community have called me into the imaginal and historical realms of the Celts. Like other ancient cultures, they have much to teach us about how the ties of community can be bonded together, woven by the silken threads of parables and poetry. The Filidh’s were a type of bard, or poet by vocation, held in high regard by the Celtic tribes. They acted as a storehouse of collective memory, maintaining the oral pool of history and tradition. They memorized tales and poems, commemorated heroes and leaders, and roasted those of a villainous nature. Pupil poets composed new stories and poems on a subject given to them by their teacher, using a method of incubation that required them to lay in a dark hut with a stone on their stomach to make sure they did not go to sleep2. Using the mnemonic devices so crucial to oral culture to compose new verses, the bard would eventually be overcome by awen or poetic inspiration, and new material would be composed out of the images and voices coming to them in the altered state provoked by sensory deprivation. These new verses would then be shared with the community.
The Ceilidh was a primary method Celtic people used to gather together and share accumulated lore. It was open not only to the Filidh’s who were perhaps the most practiced storytellers but to everyone. Alexander Carmichael wrote the following in his introduction to a wonderful collection of Scottish oral folklore, the Carmina Gadelica:
In a crofting community the people work in unison in the field during the day, and discuss together in the house at night. This meeting is called ‘ceilidh’–a word that throbs the heart of the Highlander wherever he be. The ‘ceilidh’ is a literary entertainment where stories and tales, poems and ballads, are rehearsed and recited, and songs are sung, conundrums are put, proverbs are quoted, and many other literary matters are related and discussed. This institution is admirably adapted to cultivate the heads and to warm the hearts of an intelligent, generous people. Let me briefly describe the ‘ceilidh’ as I have seen it.
In a crofting townland there are several story-tellers who recite the oral literature of their predecessors. The story-tellers of the Highlands are as varied in their subjects as are literary men and women elsewhere. One is a historian narrating events simply and concisely; another is a historian with a bias, colouring his narrative according to his leanings. One is an inventor, building fiction upon fact, mingling his materials, and investing the whole with the charm of novelty and the halo of romance. Another is a reciter of heroic poems and ballads, bringing the different characters before the mind as clearly as the sculptor brings the figure before the eye. One gives the songs of the chief poets, with interesting accounts of their authors, while another, generally a woman, sings, to weird airs, beautiful old songs, some of them Arthurian. There are various other narrators, singers, and speakers, but I have never heard aught that should not be said nor sung.3
These types of gatherings have by and large been replaced by mass produced entertainment culture. Television and recorded music can be watched and listened to by a group of people together, but the transmission is still one-way. At a Ceilidh the line is blurred, as the entire community is encouraged to participate. Luckily the Do It Yourself ethos is spreading through multiple underground subcultures and making inroads into the mainstream. In these communities the line between audience and artists has to a degree, been obfuscated. Due to the tribal nature of subcultures, created by a kinship of shared aesthetics, participation within them is often highly encouraged. A shared aesthetic is not enough to create a connection to the living earth, but from the fertile ground already being sown by these groups, the subcultures can be bridged and more encompassing communities can be built, anchored by stories and strong sense of place.
The shared histories of a community can be embodied in a story, poem, or song and it will help the community to remain united and be resilient when the trials of life come calling, promoting what Wendell Berry has called membership. In his essay Poetry and Marriage4 he writes, “Belief in culture calls for the same disciplines as belief in marriage” and “consists of the accumulation of local knowledge in place, generation after generation, children learning the visions and failures, stories and songs, names, ways, and skills of their elders, so that the cost of individual trial-and-error learning can be lived with and repaid, and the community thus enabled to preserve both itself and its natural place and neighborhood.”
Today we need Filidh’s, people who know the history of the land, who know their ancestry and family stories, true Bards who can inspire right action and livelihood, who can stand up for the soul in a world where soul loss has become epidemic. We need stirring tales of heroism, magick, and the Otherworld so that the imagination may once again be upheld as a power of practical virtue.
The Otherworld was a favorite subject for storytelling among the Celts. It is hopeful to know that it has become a key element in the burgeoning field of Young Adult literature, yet it would be nice to restore this element into the popular lives of the people. A true purpose in life, a definite direction, or aim, can be found in the journey to the Otherworld, and by returning home, the great work of making that purpose real can begin. Beings are available in the Otherworld whom can help guide us on our path and offer us timely wisdom. And in the Otherworld we may also find –and reclaim- stray bits of our soul that have gone missing, thus restoring power to ourselves and to this world.
The Filidh can help repair the bonds of fidelity that have been severed by both the industrial revolution and the information economy. These, along with many other factors, had the twin effect of causing a widespread uprooting of people from the land and widespread divorce, two forms of disconnection that caused communities to gradually disintegrate. We in the twenty-first have inherited a dissociated landscape that is now our job to mend. Decentralized networks may spread across the globe connecting us to kindred spirits all across the globe, but communities always form in connection to a place. Those communities must remain intact or else the global networks will become a fiber optic skeleton draped over a burned out husk.
This work can be done at a Ceilidh. I am aware that they are still taking place, particularly in Scotland and Ireland, but from what I have been able to find the emphasis of these is on dancing and music as opposed to storytelling. Sure, there will be singing and song (would Taliesin go without his harp?) in the type of Ceilidh I plan to build, but the purpose will be to revive oral culture through the art of storytelling and ground community with a firm sense of place through the transmission of local lore.
The task of implementing a Ceilidh in my own family, which includes not only the bonds of blood and biology, but also the ties of friendship, may not at first be easy in a time of competing agendas and distractions. Still the Ceilidh is something I feel obligated to rebuild. This obligation is not a burden but a joy, for it is my response-ability (how I choose to respond with all the skill and power that I may have to what I perceive as a need in my life and the lives of those around me: the need for meaningful stories).
I plan to have one in my back yard next to a roaring campfire with plenty of warm flagons of mead on hand, a few acoustic instruments, people who are ready to share their tales. It will be an event where families are welcome, toddlers, teens, and elders alike. At the Ceilidh we will build a home for the soul and woo it back with stories and song.
Addendum: This is just one idea I have for rebuilding community from just one culture and tradition. The spirits of Camellia Sinensis have also been calling to me in my dreams, and The Way of Tea is another facet of my current studies. Concomitant with the Ceilidh I also intend to learn the Tea Ceremony of Japan, and practice it as a way of bringing people together. But that is another story and shall be told another time.
Notes:
seductive virtual universe,
multitask allure,
landmarks of the lost
I was born into a culture
of nebulous phosphenes.
My eyes, from rubbing,
had built in floaters
specks of luminosity
electric sparks charging the visual battery.
I threw a rock into a purple lake
(memory recall recalls memories
distant faces distant past)
deep below the ground
clunking through a fissure
startling a jelly fish, it hung
perched with clenched tentacles.
It slinked & I followed
underneath black ice waves
past cave white crays
and blind shrimp
I wanted to reach bottom
touch the cracked stalactites
but my lungs ache
shivering from the undertow
ecstatic cold,
dreams of oblivion
screaming empty bubbles,
my bronchia filled with brine
then I saw the Kraken
sitting on a nest of jewels,
his glowing Luciferins shined.
-February 7th, 2010
