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
a blessing: radiant white gem of clarity and constancy
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watching tree creepers in the glade… for Joanna Macy
heat bludgeoned at Buddhafield, plunge into the cool shadows of the glade, deep within this submarine realm of myriad green hammock marooned, a cheerful sprawl, limbs strewn, arms and legs akimbo above, glimpsed through patchwork leaves, the blue calm of sky girth of benign pondersome oak, surrounded by slender silver birches
a tatter scrap of a bird alights, nervously it skitter stitches up the trunk, spiraling higher. then scarper flits from tree to tree I recite the dictum ‘nuthatch down, tree creeper up’ another bird joins, then another, a whole family, shy oblivious, as, again, buddhafield bloom blossoms around them
I love to walk this land, a deeply storied place within this glade, standing in circle, as friends made their wedding vows, else the soft solemnity of the grief space
tumble into sandals, hoik heft of rucksack, follow the path towards the stream, heading for crew food, tea, friends the gentle chatter before shift the background ommmm of nature? we the creatures of busy burden
but here, earth rumpled, astonished, a molehill in the path earth fresh excavated from the night before, a blacker dirt, a more recent tumnulii than it’s neighbours, volcano splattered about fresh grave? Joanna, your personal turning within the seasons and cycles of our own great turning but more, molehill, with the steady measured comfort of your words, seek for sanctuary, this soft earth turned burrow of being almost home Thank you
pic from bf website
context and natter chat!
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another Buddhafield festival come, and after 10 days in the field (for me!), gone
Buddhafield is a conscious festie, ‘no drink, no drugs’, held in the Somerset Blackdown Hills every July At its heart it’s a Triratna Buddhist festival, with Meditation, Dharma Talks and Pujas… yet due to the nature of the movement, theres also yoga, inclusive spaces, shamanism, dance, singing, permaculture, 12 steps, live bands, music around the fires… the whole hippy kit-kaboodle!! hundreds of beautiful people to dance with, laugh with and hug!
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On the Sunday afternoon, as the festival was beginning to wind down, I ambled along, grooving to the musicians jamming outside old tree popped into the beloved arms tee-pee for a smattering of a Kirtan, before ending up in the dance tent… where Sofia and Sandra, Italian friends, were holding a ‘dance of the elements’… think dance followed by Didge and Singing Bowl Sound Bath whilst I was nimble prancing around the dance floor, a seed spore blew in from one side of the tent… one of those huge ones, spore sputnik, hairy awesome gossamer spider THINGS… it was drifting towards the ground, so i wafted it back upwards, like you would with a giant Rainbow soap bubble… a gentle gyre, then it caught the gust of wind and exited through the other side of the tent… i chased it to see it drifting deep into the dark, ominous fairytale woods reminds me of Bedes Olde English Saxon tale on the stark brevity of this life on a winters night a sparrow flys into a mead hall, where a King and his thanes are feasting, a brief flutter, before it leaves through the other door, back into the cold and dark which, to mind(!), chimes well with Buddhist thinking
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I’ve been coming to the festival since ooh 2009 and, thru a quick head mathematical totting up, as an ex programmer, I love being logical(!)… reckon, that down the years, I’ve spent over three months in this particular field… and what a joy that has been! every year several old familiar faces don’t return… but always there’s new people to Love! the inevitable truth that in fair time, one year, however distant, I will no longer return… which admittedly sounds a little maudlin and nostalgiac, but in my opinion is exactly how life should be Anyway I’ve always stewarded, usually running one of the teams up by the front gate… Rocking the Podule!… I love the energy of arrival, greeting people just as they first get here
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oh, the poem, I was going to say something about that… I wrote it sitting in the glade, between shifts, we had heard that Joanna Macy was in the last few days of her life… I’ve always loved ‘the work that re-connects’, usually popping in for at least a couple of the daily sessions at BF… it’s a profound body of work, crucial for all of us alive in these times… and also a great smorgasbord of a workshop, which has a little soupcon of everything… bit of eye gazing, a few games, a lot of soul sharing! In the poem I wanted to give voice to the other creatures that live on this land, all year round… the owls that hoot deep amongst the trees… the frogs, that go hopping about the site every time it rains… the brawler hares that live in the fields up by the front gate… what do they make of it when the glade is invaded?… by slack liners, teetering along a rope… by kids whooping… by the tranquil sanctity of the grief space they just get on with it, going about their tree creeper and mole ways… oblivious to the festival, but beyond that, oblivious to the throes and heroism of human mortality i would wish that when i die that this is treated with deep nonchalance and disregard, by nature, going on with it’s own business but my fear, THE fear, is that this is now only the case in isolated pockets? that such the hubris, such the sickening tragedy, of our reach that this has become the exception rather than the norm?
anyway, i’m hoping the moles don’t mind too much the dance tent, foot stomping, earth juddering base sound resonance? part of the impetus to write something came about because when Love Patrol (they bring us tea, biscuits and love) came by where I was working, Meera had a book of Mary Oliver poems, a couple of which i read aloud to the team… I love reading aloud… Mary an obvious, and much more lofty-profound influence
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Stewarding in the sunshine and the rain… bekky took the sunshine snaps, she wanted to send her mum a couple of pics showing her how it was… her looking wholesome, before donning war paint and reverting to the feral, loving Rainbow child she really was! One of my favourite tasks was driving ‘Dancing Queen’ around the site… the stewards purple vehicle… so named because it only had one cd, Abba, which would play the first three songs then spit it out! I arrived laden with charity shop cds ‘Bat Out of Hell’ which sadly would not play at all, scuppering my plans to dawdle about with ROCK melodrama blaring out the open windows… my other cd was Prince, a purple vehicle deserves tunes by his regal purpleness! This vehicle a huge improvement from the one in previous years, a scrap yard salvage, completely missing 1st gear, this would make getting up the steep hill from slope a wheel spinning extravaganza!! Anyway I’d pop down to pick up a huge vat of crew food, enough for all the Stewards working up top… then with Halley cuddling it in the passenger seat, a human gyroscope to stop it spilling! we’d crawl slowly up the hill, the fruity sounds of ‘Head’ blaring out and deliver grub to all the stewards… there was a huge double rainbow, it’s arch radiant over all the site… slightly soggy, starving, delusionally happy stewards were most content as ‘meals on wheels’ finally arrived!
dancing queen
(to be cont’d)
pujas next! (note to self)
cdslove patrol bicciesold friend from healing gardenbf websiteold tree
Round. Obdurate. Enduring the patience to wait, yet suffice in yourself I come with my monkey whorl of fingerprints to prod, then caress smooth serene, with the occasional hiccup of grit, rough to the touch a small eggs worth of heft One which rolls, a trundle of off kilter eccentricity World Revolves around You World revolves around Our Human Heart
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A short poem I wrote in a ‘Work That Reconnects’ Workshop at Buddhafield curious as I haven’t written anything in months, yet this appeared, full formed, in less than 15 minutes I have always loved the ‘Work That Reconnects’, Joanna Macy’s profound ‘Engaged Buddhism’, which attempts to give us a framework to begin to grapple with our hopes and grief concerning climate catastrophe a spiral of 4 workshops, around the themes of ‘Gratitude’, ‘Honouring Our Pain’, ‘Seeing with New and Ancient Eyes’ and ‘Going Forth’ This year I made 3 of the 4 workshops, they were all held, each day, between 10 – 12 in a small yurt next to the Dharma Parlour A beautiful intimate space, a geodesic dome, of canvas and rough hewn wooden poles, with a buddha shrine and the vibrant colours of flowers… far from the thudding techno of the dance tent (which indeed has its time and place) I enjoyed the daily, routine regular aspect of it, an excellent opportunity to check in, gauge my energy before the cheerful chaos of the main festie Many of the fellow participants used it in the same way, loved connecting with Meg, Emily, Jess, and many others, every morning The workshops themselves are a proper smorgasbord, some eye gazing, some chatting in pairs, some discussion within the wider group, psychotherapeutic practices, creative visualisation and, of course, galloshers of hugging a sprinkling of everything! which satisfies my restless nature!
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before writing the poem we had been in 2 smaller circles, each had a bowl of water in the centre, which represents our tears, we then took turns to go into the centre of the circle and name our grief mine was obvious, and profound, but not for a blog post I found the process of naming this grief a little performative, yet afterwards, sitting in circle listening to the others, my tears began to flow so much stigma, for a man, and people generally, around crying in public, it’s useful and beautiful to do this
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Oh and now I want to tell about the Jewels Wingfield ‘Belonging’ workshop straight afterwards, in the main workshop space a plea for tribal acceptance We split into groups of 4, with each participant focused on in turn, intense eye gazing three staring at the one, 10 minutes each, the repetitive and rhythmic ‘welcome, welcome’ uttered on each and every out breath I’ve done this workshop on previous years, so was quite relaxed about it, our group was a couple of friends, one of whom had her 5 year old son with her… and another with her 5 year old daughter and a 3 month old baby! Part of me was ‘eye gazing in a group with 3 children! probs not going to work’, the first round was admittedly chaotic yet after that the 2 children became extremely peaceful, whilst the baby got on with breast feeding for the woman with the babies turn, I took the little ‘un and cradled him on my lap a beautiful experience, eye gazing always so powerful… as the workshop was themed around our loss of tribal belonging, a sprinkling of kids definitely helped made me think how I am currently missing having small children in my life
and Triskele… a weird, beautiful three holed stone I found a few months back, tacked on the end here!
gorge on courgettes, man and his marrows… tomatoes refusing to ripen, understandable, soggy drek day yawn, slightly sleepy… tons o’fun stuff 10 days at buddhafield, daughters graduation! xx
RIP, had almost forgotten this fabulous song
Nat: Ahh didn’t see you at buddhafield!
Shame! A familiar tale, what with the bonkers weather, so many old friends glimpsed but briefly across the field… but, ha, a glut of glorious connection and hugs galore… So can’t REALLY grumble… Hope yours was a good un xx
oh… and finally… the hazel medicine is with me today…. one of my favourite Christy Moore songs, an irish ballad… its a late at night round the fire type song, don’t listen now,… its actually a beautiful W.B Yeats poem… about a man finding then losing his fairey lover… lots of hazel lore in this one:
The Song of Wandering Aengus BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
