Latest / Mooney's Mythic Podcast / P.J Harvey, limerence and the Oak Kings' throne

Transcript

P.J Harvey, limerence and the Oak Kings' throne · Mooney's Mythic Podcast

0:02
SPEAKER_00: Hello, welcome to Mooney's Mythic Podcast.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: Mooney's Mythic Podcast is sponsored by Style Gardening.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Do it with style, do it over the style, or you could just get style to do it for you.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: They'd not only sort your garden out,
0:21
SPEAKER_00: but with style gardening they are committed to getting adults with learning
0:26
SPEAKER_00: disabilities into paid employment.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: Style gardening.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: Do it with style, do it over the style, or get style to do it for you.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks for coming.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for being here.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm in my kitchen today doing this podcast.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm just peeling some apples.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: So that's what that noise is.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's a bit annoying, so I'll stop doing it in a minute.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: But I just wanted to sit by my kitchen and record this podcast as if you and I were
1:03
SPEAKER_00: around my table chatting.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: And one of the people who I really would celebrate around my table is Claire Richards.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: Claire, thanks for all the stickering you've done.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: Really, truly amazing.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: Claire's been putting stickers out and taking pictures of the stickers that she's been putting out.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: And she dared.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean, she has put stickers in places I wouldn't dare to put them.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: And on that note,
1:29
SPEAKER_00: thank you to Lizzie and Imogen for putting the stickers out at Dance Camp because I
1:34
SPEAKER_00: saw them in places.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: I was like, ah!
1:37
SPEAKER_00: There's me again.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: That was really, really kind of you.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: Claire put one last week on the upright piano that is inside the magic teapot.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: She put a sticker on the upright piano that is inside the Magic Teapot.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: And the Magic Teapot is a venue,
1:59
SPEAKER_00: it's a gorgeous little place that's run by Joseph Peace that you can find in lots
2:04
SPEAKER_00: of different festivals.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a kind of, is it hexagonal?
2:09
SPEAKER_00: It's like a wooden hexagonal structure and there's always tea on the go and there's always music.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: It's a really special place.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for that.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: And if you're thinking, oh, I want to get involved.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: I want to put some stickers out.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Then let me know and I'll send you some stickers.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: And also, if you're thinking, wow, that voice sounds dry.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to I'm going to treat that woman when I next see her.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to treat her to a pint or a coffee or a lozenger.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: Then you can support me on my Patreon page, which is Moonies Mythic Podcast.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: It'd be great, but it's not like this is free for everyone and this will always be free for everyone.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: So don't feel like you ever have to give anything you haven't got.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: It's just if you wanna.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: so today i have been out on a big bike ride and i've been collecting apples and
3:09
SPEAKER_00: collecting blackberries and that's what i'm going to make now i'm making a
3:12
SPEAKER_00: blackberry and apple crumble because the nights are getting a little bit cooler
3:20
SPEAKER_00: And I lit my fire for the first time.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: My fire in my bedroom I lit a night ago.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: And it's time for a crumble.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: Also, my lovely Noah has been away in France with his dad for a week and he's coming back.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: And so to celebrate his return,
3:39
SPEAKER_00: I was going to make the crumble anyway,
3:40
SPEAKER_00: but to celebrate his return,
3:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm peeling the apples,
3:45
SPEAKER_00: which I don't usually bother doing.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: I like a nice rough crumble.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: But as he's got a more sensitive palate, a more delicate constitution, he prefers his apples peeled.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you what I've been doing.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: I remember that when I last recorded the podcast,
4:06
SPEAKER_00: when I recorded the Snow Whites and the Seven Dwarves,
4:10
SPEAKER_00: how out of my flow I was feeling.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: I was feeling overexposed.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: I was feeling a bit lost.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: I was feeling lonely.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: It was a real ache.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: And the things that have come up for me since I recorded that story,
4:25
SPEAKER_00: and if you'll notice,
4:26
SPEAKER_00: I've done a bonus track,
4:27
SPEAKER_00: which was a drum journey,
4:29
SPEAKER_00: which is completely inspired by the weekend.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to tell you about that.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: But what I've been thinking about,
4:36
SPEAKER_00: about the story of the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,
4:39
SPEAKER_00: is that we all need this support team around us.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: And...
4:48
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like they're called dwarves and it kind of diminishes their power,
4:53
SPEAKER_00: you know,
4:54
SPEAKER_00: but they're small and they're mighty.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: And we always it's like it's like a kind of clockwork thing.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: We take it in turns, you know, we support people and we step in into the center when it's our turn.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: And I just feel like in our culture, so much that can be supportive for us is diminished.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: So I wasn't calling them dwarves in the journey that I did.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: I was calling them doors.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: Because they're like these portals that mean that if they're standing around us,
5:27
SPEAKER_00: we can access so much more.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: And there was many times over these last couple of days that I've seen examples of that.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you the first thing I did, which kind of really got me back into my flow.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: I went to Dartmoor and I spent the day with Carolyn Hillier.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: Carolyn Hillier is an artist, a musician, and she has lived on Dartmoor for many years.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: She's a very special woman.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: She's got this land on Dartmoor where she has a roundhouse,
6:05
SPEAKER_00: and she works with women and all kinds of different people in very simple,
6:14
SPEAKER_00: beautiful,
6:15
SPEAKER_00: deep,
6:16
SPEAKER_00: ancient ways.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: And on her land, she has created ritual spaces.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: And it was very,
6:30
SPEAKER_00: very powerful to go to land that has been worked for so long,
6:37
SPEAKER_00: that has been dedicated to the sacred for so long.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: It was really incredible to be there and I can recommend anyone to go there and experience that.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: And one of the inspiring,
6:52
SPEAKER_00: there was so much inspiration for me in the day,
6:55
SPEAKER_00: but one of the inspiring things that she talked about was the ice age in this
7:01
SPEAKER_00: country and that she wanted to go to the land where the ice age is in living memory.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: So this resulted in a collaboration with SAMI women, SAMI women,
7:18
SPEAKER_00: which has been like an exchange of over 30 years and lots of her work she's been doing for 30 years.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: And I could really feel that there,
7:28
SPEAKER_00: the accumulation of the footsteps of the sacred,
7:35
SPEAKER_00: of the footsteps of the listening to the land,
7:38
SPEAKER_00: of the living in harmony with the land.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: And she talked about the Dartmoor Hill Woman, I think that's what she was called.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: It's a kitsch, which is like a longbar, a burial chamber.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: There's lots of them on the moors, and this one was found really intact.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: And in the kits there was the body of a woman and she'd been very beautifully
8:03
SPEAKER_00: buried with all her special things,
8:06
SPEAKER_00: her pouch and her amber beads.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: And each layer was sprinkled with meadow sweet.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: Now,
8:16
SPEAKER_00: meadow sweet,
8:17
SPEAKER_00: you'll see if you're driving along a country lane,
8:21
SPEAKER_00: it's kind of this like frothy,
8:22
SPEAKER_00: very sort of white,
8:26
SPEAKER_00: sort of candor flossy kind of a herb.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: And I can imagine that it looks really sort of confetti-like,
8:35
SPEAKER_00: you know,
8:35
SPEAKER_00: so it's like you can adorn,
8:37
SPEAKER_00: you could sprinkle it and it would look gorgeous and also a really...
8:44
SPEAKER_00: beautiful way of honouring things to place,
8:49
SPEAKER_00: to sprinkle herbs or flowers or petals or leaves or to sprinkle herbs on them.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: I have a pouch
9:00
SPEAKER_00: in the glove compartment of my car and in that pouch I've got some tobacco that
9:06
SPEAKER_00: someone grew and gave to me and some mugwort that I've dried and some other herbs
9:13
SPEAKER_00: and just every so often there's an occasion where I might need it and when I say
9:18
SPEAKER_00: need it when was the last time I used it there was a fox I was driving along one
9:26
SPEAKER_00: day and there was a fox a dead fox in the road
9:29
SPEAKER_00: And I carried it to the side of the road.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: And I wish I did that with every dead animal that I saw.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes I'm just too scared to stop because there's nowhere to stop nearby.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: And so I carried it to the side of the road.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: And I sprinkled some of my herbs from the pouch on it.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: And in that way, I just kind of blessed that animal, blessed that life and blessed that journey.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: And that feels a good thing to do for me.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing I thought about when I heard that her...
10:07
SPEAKER_00: belongings have been sprinkled with meadowsweet that her body had been sprinkled
10:11
SPEAKER_00: with meadowsweet is that meadowsweet's got um i think it's called salasic acid in
10:19
SPEAKER_00: it which is the same medicine it's the same chemical that is in aspirin and i
10:27
SPEAKER_00: wondered then if she'd been in pain
10:29
SPEAKER_00: Maybe she'd been in pain and they were sprinkling the meadow sweet as a way of
10:37
SPEAKER_00: easing her way into the next life.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, that was one of the things that she shared, which I was kind of inspired by.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: And also she said that there were some amber beads in the chain bum with her.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they might have been around her neck.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: But that they had treated them.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: What do you do?
11:06
SPEAKER_00: They had...
11:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what they did,
11:11
SPEAKER_00: but they found out that these beads were ancestral beads that they had been worn by
11:17
SPEAKER_00: more than one generation of women.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: And that's what's so beautiful about stones like amber,
11:26
SPEAKER_00: that they can take on the memory of the person that is wearing them.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: So I'm wondering if you've got any
11:40
SPEAKER_00: any jewellery that's passed down to you or anything like that.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: And I think that, you know, amber in particular can absorb that kind of, you know, it's porous.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: But also I'm sure that the things that we have do contain the memory of the people
12:01
SPEAKER_00: that wore them before us.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: It's always good to wash stuff when you get it from the charity shop.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it was a beautiful day.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: And after that day, I felt the loneliness.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: Although I've spent a lot of time alone, the loneliness completely disappeared.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: And I realised that it wasn't loneliness at all.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: It was a kind of disconnection.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: And now that I spent that day, I got completely disconnected.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: reconnected with myself and with the land and with my dreaming and that's made me feel very different.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: Also on the day,
12:43
SPEAKER_00: to my utter delight,
12:46
SPEAKER_00: my friend Sally Valley was there and I didn't know she was going to be there.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: And it was just absolutely glorious to see her.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: And she introduced me, amongst other things, that day.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: She introduced me to the concept of limerency.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Do you know what that word means?
13:04
SPEAKER_00: I had to look it up when I got home and I'm just getting my head around it.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: But when I was a teenager, I would have called it crushing on someone.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, so I've in my life had sort of these kind of infatuations that never really go anywhere.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: And the latest one has been very recently when I was having a cup of tea with a man and he said...
13:30
SPEAKER_00: i'm totally unavailable he said and he did this movement with his hands like he
13:35
SPEAKER_00: said the brick walls up boom boom boom boom boom and then he went like this like
13:41
SPEAKER_00: making a sort of zipping action and um i noticed that after that i was um texting
13:50
SPEAKER_00: him a lot messaging him a lot and asking him if he wanted to go here or there or um
13:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, he was like, oh, that sounds nice, but no.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: And no, I'm really busy.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm away.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: No, I need to do something else today.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: No, basically was like 50 shades of no.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, that's really, really interesting that I'm doing this.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: And Sally Valley said that you could say that I was being limerent.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: And so I've been thinking about that pattern of
14:29
SPEAKER_00: someone being unavailable and still going after them and thinking you want them and
14:35
SPEAKER_00: getting something it says with limerency that you you do get a little at the
14:40
SPEAKER_00: beginning there might be some connection or something and it's and it's like that's
14:45
SPEAKER_00: you're kind of going after trying to repeat that all the time um a way to tell you
14:50
SPEAKER_00: that's craig plays the pipes is just doing his recycling if you're wondering what
14:54
SPEAKER_00: that big shaky noise is um
15:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
15:01
SPEAKER_00: one of the ways that you could tell is imagine that you're really attracted to someone,
15:06
SPEAKER_00: but you haven't had any,
15:07
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:08
SPEAKER_00: nothing's happening,
15:09
SPEAKER_00: but it's all happening in your head or whatever,
15:11
SPEAKER_00: and you're thinking,
15:11
SPEAKER_00: oh,
15:11
SPEAKER_00: I just want to touch him.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: I just want to, like, stroke his hair.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: I just want to make love, whatever it is.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: And then if that person was to say to you,
15:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm not attracted to you,
15:25
SPEAKER_00: but you can pay for that if you want,
15:31
SPEAKER_00: Would that put you off?
15:35
SPEAKER_00: Because if that would put you off,
15:38
SPEAKER_00: then that would mean that you wanted them to be,
15:42
SPEAKER_00: you want them to like you.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: You want them to be, you want some connection.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: You want some connection with them.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: It's not a physical thing.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: It's not a touch or anything like that.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: So that's been really useful for me to kind of feel into all that.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: Can you hear him?
16:02
SPEAKER_00: He's rolling.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: Rolling is really good.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: And I thought that might be useful for someone out there.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: I've just got to kind of describe to you what I'm doing because I'm sort of talking while I'm talking.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: And I've got a bowl here for my peelings.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: But I'm not putting the peelings in the bowl.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm just putting them in my lap.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: And so now I've got a lap full of peelings, an empty bowl and apples all over my tablecloth.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk a bit more about those kinds of patterns later.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: But for now, I want to tell you about the experience I had when I was driving home.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: So I'm driving home along the country lanes and I'm so...
16:55
SPEAKER_00: The last image is I looked back into the roundhouse and I saw Carolyn's face
17:00
SPEAKER_00: beaming and another woman with a white drum drumming it and the fire lit and the
17:06
SPEAKER_00: women singing.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: It was just so glorious.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: And I'm driving home along the moors in the dark and all of a sudden I'm dreaming about the Oak King.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: And I see this flash image of the Oak King's throne.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: Now there's this legend that the Oak King rules the summer and then the Oak King
17:34
SPEAKER_00: and the Holly King,
17:35
SPEAKER_00: they have a great fight and the Holly King takes over the realm.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: And that this happens every year, every season.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: You know, so I'm kind of thinking about this.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: It's starting to get a little bit colder.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly I am sitting on the Oak King's throne.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: I can feel it.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: It's made of this warm carved wood and I can feel it up against me.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: But slowly, slowly, slowly.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: the wood becomes man and I'm like sitting on the lap of the oak king and he is so
18:13
SPEAKER_00: strong he's so much bigger than me and he's got his arms in front of me like the
18:17
SPEAKER_00: arms of a throne and I'm just just resting back resting back resting back into the
18:25
SPEAKER_00: oak king's throne and then this kind of
18:34
SPEAKER_00: green gloss approaches this kind of rich green and I don't know what it is at first
18:43
SPEAKER_00: and then I know but it's not like I can see a face or anything like that but I just
18:48
SPEAKER_00: know that the Holly King is approaching and the Holly King gets closer and closer
19:02
SPEAKER_00: and closer
19:05
SPEAKER_00: And I start to feel a little bit overwhelmed.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: So I've got this man that I'm sitting on and this other man in front of me.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: And he sits astride me and he kind of breathes out.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: And as he breathes out, I feel my whole body relaxing and he sits astride me.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: so that his whole body is in front of me and his thighs on top of my thighs and the
19:31
SPEAKER_00: weight of his body kind of resting my thighs deeper into the oak king's thighs and
19:39
SPEAKER_00: his chest on my chest that's just just pressing me
19:46
SPEAKER_00: just enough to feel the oak king strength behind me and it's not sexual at all but
19:52
SPEAKER_00: the sensuality and the firmness and the holding is extraordinary really truly
20:00
SPEAKER_00: amazing experience which i've really um really felt grateful to be receiving
20:12
SPEAKER_00: So I've come back from that place and I've been thinking about,
20:17
SPEAKER_00: because we did some simple rituals,
20:19
SPEAKER_00: and I've been thinking about the simple rituals that we can do,
20:23
SPEAKER_00: that anyone we can do.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: If you live in a city, you've still got a tree nearby and you can tie a ribbon.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: in that tree to remember something or honour something.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: You can carry a leaf of that tree around with you to remember the properties of that tree.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: You can carry a stone for a little while.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: You can
20:48
SPEAKER_00: bury something in the earth that you want to forget about or that you want the
20:55
SPEAKER_00: earth to support you with letting go.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: So many simple rituals that we can do.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: And it got me thinking about the retreat in Wales that I'm going to do at the end
21:05
SPEAKER_00: of September and how we can,
21:08
SPEAKER_00: through the story,
21:10
SPEAKER_00: we can create simple rituals for our lives that we can then
21:15
SPEAKER_00: take on for ourselves and take through the winter.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: So that made me want to go to a burial chamber, spend a bit more time with burial chambers.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: And I was going to London
21:34
SPEAKER_00: to see PJ Harvey I was really excited about and thank you Emma Stowe very much for
21:40
SPEAKER_00: the experience because Emma got us the tickets because she knows the drummer
21:47
SPEAKER_00: Jean-Marc very well who was just absolutely lovely and so I decide that I'm going
21:55
SPEAKER_00: to go to West Kennet Long Barrow on the way home
22:02
SPEAKER_00: But before we get to West Kennet, Long Barrow, let me tell you about going to see PJ Harvey.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: Do you know who she is, PJ Harvey?
22:11
SPEAKER_00: She's a singer and she is incredible.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: She's from Dorset.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: And I was very excited to go and see her.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: And it came about because she was playing on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury recently.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: And I just didn't feel like going to the Pyramid Stage all the time I was at Glastonbury Festival.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: I was just like,
22:35
SPEAKER_00: I remember trying to go and see Diana Ross and just like turning the corner and an
22:40
SPEAKER_00: absolute tidal wave of people were there.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: And I just thought, I don't know about that.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: So I didn't go and see her.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: So I was excited to see PJ Harvey and I was not disappointed.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: Let me just talk you through the experience.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: There's all this ambient sound and there's been music throughout the day that PJ
23:13
SPEAKER_00: Harvey has curated,
23:14
SPEAKER_00: this kind of very spacious,
23:17
SPEAKER_00: strong music.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: You can look at some of her latest gigs online and see what I mean.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm not very good at describing music.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: But then there's ambient sound before she comes on stage.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: Birds and rustling and...
23:39
SPEAKER_00: sounds,
23:40
SPEAKER_00: a kind of landscape of sound from the natural world and then she's on stage and
23:48
SPEAKER_00: she's got this long white cape on but the long white cape has got branches painted
23:57
SPEAKER_00: on it.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: It's like, it reminded me of shadow puppetry and
24:05
SPEAKER_00: and cut out paper and I was thinking about paper and I was thinking about trees and
24:12
SPEAKER_00: then she starts to encant the names of trees and the way she moved it was so
24:20
SPEAKER_00: precise and I was
24:23
SPEAKER_00: I felt like I was moving through the pages.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: I was in the forest, but I was moving through pages of a book at the same time as being in the forest.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: It was such a magical experience.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm going deeper and deeper and deeper into this forest of trees,
24:44
SPEAKER_00: into this narrative of fairy tale.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: And I suddenly start thinking, oh, God, I want to tell PJ Harvey a story.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: What will I tell her?
24:53
SPEAKER_00: What would I tell this woman who's kind of got this mastery of fairy tale,
24:59
SPEAKER_00: of myth,
25:00
SPEAKER_00: and that she can kind of summon it on stage in the way that she was summoning it?
25:08
SPEAKER_00: I start thinking about all the stories that start in the woods.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: And most of them I've told already on the podcast about Snow White,
25:16
SPEAKER_00: about Hansel and Gretel,
25:17
SPEAKER_00: about Little Red Riding Hood and getting lost and lost.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: And then I start thinking about the Lion,
25:23
SPEAKER_00: the Witch and the Wardrobe and the Snow Queen,
25:25
SPEAKER_00: because it's all so white.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: And I think that is the story.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: I think the Snow Queen is the story that I would tell her.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: And I thought about telling it today, but...
25:36
SPEAKER_00: She's so precise, PJ Harvey.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: She's so considered.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: that I just wouldn't want to dash off a story.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take as much care on it.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: I thought the words that came up for me when I saw her were precise, artistic, mesmerising and awareness.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: So they're the words I'm going to take to my preparation of a story.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: And in another podcast, I will tell you.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: that story so yeah that was that was totally wonderful and at some point I'm in it
26:19
SPEAKER_00: all she had a tiny writing desk on stage and she sat at this tiny writing desk and
26:24
SPEAKER_00: she opened a drawer and she got a notepad out and she wrote in her notepad and then
26:31
SPEAKER_00: she closed the notepad and she put it back in the drawer
26:35
SPEAKER_00: And my heart was just like beating and swinging open because so often I don't write things down.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm so used to being an oral storyteller and just doing things orally, which is great.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: But there's also this way and I link it back.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: to Carolyn Hillier and like walking the land and walking the same piece of land and creating ritual.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: It's like writing it down.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: It's grounding it and it's grounding it and it's grounding it and it can build from that place.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: It can build differently.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: So that was just super, super inspiring for me.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: And at a certain point,
27:16
SPEAKER_00: I just stopped thinking about what story she was going to,
27:21
SPEAKER_00: I was going to tell her
27:24
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to tell her.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: My little girl was going wild for it.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: And I suddenly thought, just let her tell me her story.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: And through the narrative and through the songs,
27:38
SPEAKER_00: I felt this woman expressing her building power and her building resilience.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: And it was truly extraordinary.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: And I remembered that she had just released a book.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: And I started reading it and some super fans I'd seen before the show had told me
28:02
SPEAKER_00: that the show was inspired by some of the poems.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: It's like a narrative poem, the book Orlan.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: So I was really looking forward to getting back and reading it.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: And I'd started reading it, but it's half in the Dorset dialect and half in the normal English.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: And I was reading it both at the same time.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: But what I've decided I'm going to do is actually read it in the Dorset dialect and
28:34
SPEAKER_00: just let it wash over me like a kind of dreamscape and then read the English and
28:41
SPEAKER_00: sort of get a bit more of a grounded idea of what's going on.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: And I am going to read to you the first page.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: Birth of Ira Abel.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: I knelt to eat the inflamed brain of the false morel and the woods took me in.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: The grouse beat their wings on a rotten log.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: The wood culvers hit the road jack.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: The crows wove a cloak of plaited sedge,
29:23
SPEAKER_00: in which I fled across great ink field,
29:27
SPEAKER_00: scratching at my skin,
29:29
SPEAKER_00: uprooting black stalks to write this.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm just going to break that down and talk about what I understand within these words.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to take it four lines at a time and talk about it.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: I knelt to eat the inflamed brain of the false morel and the woods took me in.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: Now the first two lines, I knelt.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: And that is, I really feel how I want to approach nature.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: I want to approach the sacred, to kneel, to be humble.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: But also when she talks about the inflamed brain of the false morel, it's a mushroom.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: And it's sometimes called brain mushroom because it looks like a swollen brain.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: So imagine her there, this character, sitting, kneeling to eat a mushroom on the forest floor.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: And the woods took me in.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: I feel like there's a thousand keys in those four lines of how we can get into the
31:04
SPEAKER_00: wonder and enchantment of nature.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: To kneel to meet it.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: to eat from it, to be part of it.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: Now false morels I think are poisonous.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: So I wonder what effect that would have on your body, on your mind.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking about mushrooms and
31:39
SPEAKER_00: all the ways that they reach deep,
31:44
SPEAKER_00: deep,
31:44
SPEAKER_00: deep inside us and move us in the way that they,
31:50
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:50
SPEAKER_00: reach all across the woodlands and talk to each other and communicate in the way
31:56
SPEAKER_00: that they do.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't read Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life or listened to it on audio, it's so wonderful.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: If you listened to it on audio, then do, but...
32:08
SPEAKER_00: I have asked him to come on the podcast or if I can read some things from his book.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: So fingers crossed.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: So let's go to the next lines.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: The grouse beat their wings on a rotten log.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: The wood culvers hit the raw jack.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: There's a journey starting.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: There's a journey beginning.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: The grouse beat their wings on a rotten log.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: I just feel like there's kind of the ground,
32:45
SPEAKER_00: you know,
32:45
SPEAKER_00: the groundedness of grouse who don't really fly and the world is rotten around them.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: And she's going somewhere else.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: She's going somewhere else, somewhere where there's life, where there's flight.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: The crows wove a cloak of plaited sedge.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: Not sure what sedge is, but maybe it's, I'm imagining that it's kind of some kind of leaf or fibre.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: And just feel the comfort and the protection of a cloak that is woven with sedge.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: feeling always that we need to be aware of what protection that we need so that we
33:37
SPEAKER_00: can be open so that we can try new things.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: The crows wove a cloak of plaited sedge in which I fled across great ink field.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: Now I know that that's a cornfield because I'd read on that's a cornfield in the
33:54
SPEAKER_00: place that they that the story is set but I also feel like
34:01
SPEAKER_00: It's a metaphor for the beginning of a story, for the beginning of writing across great ink field.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of seeing PJ Harvey on stage at that writing desk and the Mad Hatter saying,
34:24
SPEAKER_00: why is a raven like a writing desk?
34:28
SPEAKER_00: And some people have said it's because of the raven's feather.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: can be used as a pen, as a quill.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: And in that way, a raven is like a writing desk.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about the crows and the crow feathers,
34:43
SPEAKER_00: plaiting something for her because they're going to help her on the way with her words.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: scratching at my skin, uprooting black stalks to write this.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: In which I fled across great ink field, scratching at my skin, uprooting black stalks to write this.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm in.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: I can't wait to read the rest of it.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: I really can't.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: So that's a little bit of Orlam for you.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: And I haven't asked for permission to read that.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: So...
35:22
SPEAKER_00: I look forward to a time when my podcast is so successful that things like that matter.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: But I think at the moment, perhaps they don't matter so much.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: So when this podcast comes out, I'm going to be at the Oxford Storytelling Festival.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: I am not telling there.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: I'm going with my gorgeous goddaughter and her sister and her mum, Charlotte Mabon.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: She's singing there.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: She's a friend.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: So I'm really looking forward to being around there.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: If you're around, come and say hello.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: I really look forward to telling you about all the stories that I gather up from there.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to listening to some fantastic storytellers doing some brilliant things
36:16
SPEAKER_00: And then the following week, I'll be at End of the Road Festival and I am storytelling there.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: And I'm doing a historical there, which means I'll be doing walkabout storytelling.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: You can stop me and you can pick some of my story tarot cards or you can ask me a
36:32
SPEAKER_00: question or you can request a story and I'll tell you a story there and then.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: So that'd be fun if you're there.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to go and see the brilliant Lisa O'Neill.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: That's what I want to do whilst I'm there.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: So thank you for listening.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to my meanderings.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: And if you think,
36:54
SPEAKER_00: oh,
36:54
SPEAKER_00: that woman sounds like she needs a cup of tea,
36:57
SPEAKER_00: then you can go on to Patreon and you can support me on Patreon.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: And I just really or if you can,
37:06
SPEAKER_00: you know,
37:06
SPEAKER_00: if you can recommend this podcast to anybody,
37:09
SPEAKER_00: if you can make a comment saying something good about it or just share it with one friend,
37:15
SPEAKER_00: all those things are just hugely,
37:17
SPEAKER_00: hugely supportive.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: OK, go well.