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originally a facebook post

buddhafield 2015 singing

buddhafield! some moons ago, 2015 0r possibly 2018?! I love to sing!! few things make me happier… tho obviously I can’t hold a tune, stabbing wildly, and with bewilderment, at each and every note
this pic a pleasant stumble upon, I’ve never seen before today, i’m malingering at home with the vestiges of a summer virus, cheerfully whiling away an hour rummaging through the official bf photo account… some beauties in there! such fun to find friends in photos of yore, else to spot myself ‘wheres wally’ styleee lurking somewhere in the crowd scene… weirdly comforting to have passed through such emotional extravaganzas and somehow to have left a trace, not too much, not too little… a soupcon
anyway singing!! hurrah!! it really is such an profoundly joyful and glorious thing to do… particularly wonderful at festies in a large group, singing spiritual songs in four part harmony. communion. euphoria. belonging.
i’m always burrowed away in the bass section (had to google to make sure it wasn’t base!), standing in solidarity with most of the men… it has a proper brotherly tribal vibe there
i tend to be in the front row, luckily many british men are foot shuffling shy grunters, so there’s usually room at the front! which means I can dance! and gawp at all the beautiful faces across the circle… I really love to dance too
the front is also the best place if your a singer lacking in confidence, your held by the voices behind you, there’s normally at least one strong bass singer, so follow their lead and try to mesh with them… if your stuck at the back, why, guaranteed you’ll just just get lost, drift off and wander away!
down the front your cocooned by voices… oh and it’s even better when you go right in the middle of the circle… that’s where you can hear the full interplay of parts… it’s the most healing and nourishing of things to be caressed by several hundred human voices.. really is the pinnacle of being human. kindred. vibration
after a singing workshop, theres a real synchronising of moods… everyone leaves mildly radiant
ha! so many times someone will seek me out elsewhere in the festival, tell me how much they loved watching me in the circle
mantras/kirtan are brilliant too… and this year never managed to leave the ‘land and social change’ fire before 1:00… singing around a fire, so many lovely talented people, primordial, full power… my throat chakra is always really open by then, sapphire blue, i love warbling along in a resonant basso profoundo
just to clarify, when i say i can’t sing for toffees, i mean that i can’t hold a tune, or hit a note, i actually enjoy the fruity timbre of my voice, congealed wisdom (yeah baby!)
but nope no musical ability in my family… not allowed to be in the choir when i was a child… music teachers love to spout something like ‘everyone can sing’… yeah after a fashion
mostly i think it’s more like an aptitude for say maths? ‘everyone can do maths?’… well i can anyway, possibly one of the reasons why most money I’ve earned is from programming? a brain box for book learning… i remember tutoring my daughter for her gcse maths, which, absurdly, everyone has to pass… watching her failing to grasp what seemed like the most obvious of concepts… anyway i get the same polite blank incomphrehension when the choir leader looks at me when they teach the tune, a diligent effort to supress their eye rolling, incredible people.
hmm somehow I’ve digressed?! long windedly! how does that happen… daughter passed her maths! i love singing! huzzah! x

60

canterbury
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Thanks for all the birthday wishes! much appreciated

Sixty (60!) years old… so, on the day, my son and I cycled 60 miles to Canterbury

Truly Heroic! the first half was the beautiful, but brutal, High Weald… Up followed by Down, by Up, then, logic defying, Up again

for the second half National Cycle Route 18 just cruises, meandering gently through the countryside

High High Summer, Britain has seldom seemed more radiant

woodland, golden summer fields, the green hills beyond… we stopped for a dip in the River Stour… arriving at the Cathedral for a sunset peal of bells

half a mile short of our allotted 60, so we cycled a loop around and around an ancient plane tree

Canterbury, ideal destination for a birthday pilgrimage, and bizarrely, somewhere I’ve never visited before!

a pint, then an endorphin doze on the train home… blessedly barely thought about my birthday at all

a cheerful lazy lazy day today xx

plane tree
ophelia
route

solstice

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channeling a ‘boat of the sun’ venetian gondolier vibe… yet more prosaically, just an impromptu sunset river swim in piddinghoe, post downs bike ride. Ridiculous sun soaked days!

……………

no Stonehenge/Avebury jaunt for me this year… couldn’t find anybody who fancied it, tho didn’t look that hard… fun, but a long old haul
instead i went for an afternoon cycle… rattling along the river upstream towards lewes, then following the cycle route to glynde
saw on the zu page that pete, vicar of firle, was having a low key solstice celebration up by the beacon… so i set off for that
a steep, steep haul up the road to the top of the beacon… the vicar waved as he drove past!
i ended up walking nearly all of it… i’d presumed the celebration would be near the car park, but no, rather they’d opened the gate and, in their 4 wheeled drive vehicles, driven the mile or so further along and up to the beacon itself
out of puff, i couldn’t be bothered, so, rather followed the ridge along homewards to where it dropped back down to Beddingham
majestic views, an umbrous mellow light, all the way
back along the river, arriving at piddinghoe… a gaggle of folk having a sunset, solstice dip… so in i hopped
the tide was just turning, so there was a harmonious balance between the fresh water river flowing down stream and the sea salt water surging in
within ten minutes the ocean began its retreat, my body began to be sternly, resolutely tugged downstream… time to get out!
the tide was just turning, much as within the greater cycles, the tide of light is also turning
solstice blessings x

Bloomsday

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Bloomsday! Ulysses is one hundred and twenty one years muddle aged… such a gush gobbledygook, babble clamour of a book…
both an incomprehensible compendium of tedium and a work of flabberghasting genius, this restless, and relentless, churning of words and lives
I was listening to the audio book when foolish awake at 5:00 this morning… one of this, my summer of 60, regurgative projects…
the audio book really helps! brilliantly read by Bishop Len Brennan, from Father Ted… Jim Norton… his narration is marvelously nuanced…
often Joyce brain hops between 3 or 4 characters, allusively, all within the same sentence… but a subtle shift in intonation nudges you somewhere towards comprehension
also really helps with the cadence and flow. recommended
I’m up to chapter 12, about a third of the way through… no expectation of finishing… but thats not really the point… brogue, vim and fortitude!

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I first read it whilst living in a squat, next to Karlov Most in Praha
endlessly roaming the streets, always with a colourful hippy bag containing Ulysses and my juggling clubs… preposterous drunkenness, surprised I never lost neglected them in a pub!
took me more than 2 years to get to the end, the gusto of youthful pretentiousness (not that much has changed)… forever bewildered, having to lurch back to the beginning, or some other random point in the tale
I remember finally finishing it in Piran, Slovenia… i’d hitched down to see Boris in Ljljljubljana… sunset, somersault into summers salt water, sitting on a rock on the beach, where i’d sleep that night, a murmuration of starlings weaving a spell around the church on the hill above… from my seat, a view across the water to Trieste, where, curiously, Joyce had been living when he began the book… pleasing linear circularity

anyway snap of me, from yesterday, with my old battered 90’s copy… and one of curati and i, spring 91, on the steps in Staroměstská (thanks RP!)
Bloom to my own Dedalus