November 2024
Dear friends,
Welcome to the dark season! Here in our little creative town in the South West of Ireland we have an extraordinary festival every November for Samhain where artists, performers, dancers, composers, mask makers and philosophers all share their talents to celebrate this time of the year and embrace the dark.
SAMHAIN (pronounced 'sow-win') is the first of four traditional festivals on the old Irish calendar celebrating the arrival of Winter. Traditionally, Winter is celebrated as the first, not the last season of the Celtic year; the darkness from which all light emerges. This was a philosophy that carried into all areas of our lives.
Every people have enshrined in their culture a special time of year when the gates of perception are flung open and otherworldly spirits walk among the living. As a festival of birth, death and ancestral ceremony, Samhain stands on this threshold between worlds. This is also a time when our ancestral wildness has an opportunity to emerge; A chance to engage with and to celebrate the primordial wildness that dwells inside each of us.
This year the organisers of the festival approached me with the invitation to create a musical collaboration with the local Gamelan orchestra (GAMELAN - is a traditional instrumental ensemble from Java and Bali, made up predominantly of bronze percussion instruments). I was of course super inspired to do something crazy. Here is a wonderful video of the collaboration:
Many thanks go to my community on patreon whose support helped this video come into being - its wonderful for me to be making these projects with little funding from elsewhere, but knowing that I have a community of patrons whose financial (from $3/month support as well as ideas and comments and general encouragement spur me on to make them happen! If you’d like to join the community, do head over to the link below - there’s loads more info on how we made the music and monthly music and videos/blogs to feast on!
TRIPLE SPIRAL NOW AVAILABLE TO STREAM OR PURCHASE
After a fantastic launch show at the Hunt Museum in Limerick on Culture Night in September, our film ‘Triple Spiral’ is now available to stream or purchase on the Now and Then Media website. Featuring one of my brand new works for harpsichord/violin/viola da gamba and the mesmerising contemporary dance of Yumi Lee, it’s a hypnotic and energising performance film we made in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick back in July.
ON MY BOOKSHELF….
‘Mastery’ by Robert Greene is an illuminating and detailed analysis of some of the great masters of their art over history - from Da Vinci to John Coltrane - and the patterns and stages they went through to become what they were. It is an inspiring read which spurs me on to practice well, stay inquisitive and seek mentors at all stages of my development.
‘What I know About Running Coffee Shops’ is brilliantly written by Colin Harmon, Irish champion barista and the owner of my favourite coffee shop in Dublin for many years, 3fE - where Pearse McGloughlin and I would wind down over an espresso while on tour with Idiot Songs….Although I have no intention of ever starting a coffee shop, I love good coffee and am fascinated by the things other people do for work - there’s a lot to learn from everyone!
And wow Ocean Vuong’s ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ is stunning - some sentences of this book I wanted to hold in my mouth and my mind for days, so beautiful and fragrant were they, I took snapshots of pages stored into my iPhone:
“We sang, nearly shouting the lyrics, the wind clipping at our voices. They say a song can be a bridge, Ma. But I say it’s also the ground we stand on. And maybe we sing to keep ourselves from falling. Maybe we sing to keep ourselves.'“
Keep singing,
Justin