Surfing The Moonlight

I am an artist, a writer, photographer, ceramicist, a designer, a Priestess of Stonehenge, a healer, a shaman, a warrior, a Druid, a Bard, a singer, a poet, a Witch, a Goddess, a woman, a lover, a friend, a sister, a mother, a daughter, a sun, a moon, a star, a nebula, a flower, a tree, a butterfly, a mermaid, a dolphin, a dog, a swan, a snake, a symphony, a quantum particle, a diamond, an Andromedan, a human, a spirit.

I am love.

I am a light.

I am a solar year at Beltane.

I surf the moonlight, ride upon the sun and swim the universe to sing to celestial bodies with issues.

I'm all things to all things.

I am everything and nothing at all.

I just needed to remind myself of that fact, as my kids and mundane living, routine and the overwhelming truly single parental responsibility has almost dampened it out of me, over 15 years.

Thank you Tim Booth.

You re-ignited my confidence, inspiration and passion for capturing life on film and in words and giving birth to pieces which grow and have a life all of their own.

You helped realise a fairy's dream.

Swimming against the tide is never easy.

Sometimes the mermaid has to manifest so you can breathe underwater. Life is never about drowning, but adapting and growing gills and fins when in deep water and loving the pressure of water above your head and the resistance against your body as it tries to crush you under its infinite weight. Its what gives you the ability to dive to the bottom and find pearls. Its what makes us grow strong. Its what makes a diamond from coal.

I am so used to being the one who gives healing, and feeling like mother to the world that I forget about the Goddess inside me that is also itching to let chaos create heaven on this planet.

Losing myself in dance and song in Birmingham and Camden at Tim's gigs, (as I have done many times on my own out in the Devon countryside, in the car or at home), gave me a new energy level evident in Camden as I danced and sang in the front row with Tim Booth.

Magic brought me 2 free tickets for Camden, courtesy of Tim Murphy who I met in Brum, who won them at music Glue. His daughter Shiv and I sang "Point of Darkness" in Brum with Tim. Magic moments.

I don't mind telling you, that when Tim spotted me in the front row and smiled at me, and then came down to sing "Bless em All" with me again, I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve who had found Santa stuck in the chimney, helped him free, and then was asked if I'd like to drive the sleigh for him for a bit, complete with talking reindeers, elves and fairies. Talk about being lifted. I didn't think I could fly any higher especially as I zoom around the cosmos daily, in the same the way that people drive to Tesco's without a second thought. To sing with Tim once is a dream come true which had me floating on air, but three times in the space of a fortnight? That's real magic. Never in my wildest imaginations did I think it would happen. Its amazing what happens when you wish hard enough. We co- create our own reality if we dream it into existence. Wish hard. I never thought in a million years that I would be a Priestess of Stonehenge, yet that happened, and I have a King as a brother, and a High Priestess as a sister. Lets hope that this magic is strong enough to bring my Warrior to my side from the North. Love will find a way. Dream the reality into existence from the well that is your heart. Sing it into manifestation before your eyes.

As I sang with Tim inches from my face, my face and heart splitting into the biggest grin ever, I felt the words and music materialise into energy which I then pulsed as a mushroom cloud of energy and light which spread throughout the gig venue, Camden and the City of London. Anyone with eyes to see it would have seen a Hiroshima type of explosion of purple healing light over the city spreading thru the universe and I sang the outro with Tim. Even Tim shone brighter.

Bless em all, indeed. I sent blessings and love to heal this world, especially in the Middle East and in Japan and held the universe in my heart, and loved it as mother unconditionally loves her baby.

It was an energy that had enough magic in it to heal the impossibly damaged and make things grow overnight. Fairy magic which makes beanstalks grow to the sky, chariots fly across the stars, and alto saxes turn up 5 minutes before the gig starts. Being a priestess means walking the walk every day no matter where you are at. Sometimes the road is bumpy and hard, sometimes it smooth and peaceful, and sometimes you ditch the road, and fly.....

From that moment in, I was on another level, as the love I have for life, the universe and everything just poured from me like an unstoppable tide, the dam broken wide open and everything negative within a million miles washed away in its wake, leaving renewed fertile cleansed land. I was a tsunami of pure love expressing itself in song and dance, lost in the chaos energy of the music, all inhibitions diminished, confidence off the scale and as pure as the clearest brilliant diamond shining like a blazing sun overhead.

My voice seemed to change into a clear, purer tone, hitting all the notes with an increased lung capacity (that as a smoker of 20 year who had recently quit, is very slowly beginning to regenerate) and I felt like I was in one of my dreams where I am singing with such confidence that I had to question if the voice coming out of my gob was that of mine or that of someone else and indeed, if I was really awake and not under a warm duvet with a dog snuggled and snoozing under my feet. I needed no mic, as I have my own natural amplification ( a skill developed for singing on Salisbury Plain and at at Avebury in the wind) which was evident as the band's mic's picked up my harmonies from the front row. Pure, pure magic.

Now, 48 hours later, as I find myself editing the images and planning to make it into a booklet with my words to compliment it, I am finding that the healing which took place, the light which I exuded and was healing in, is still flowing like Niagara Fall, an endless rush of waterfalls and rainbows illustrating my ideas and practical ways of manifesting them into small bubbles of purple magic which others can see, touch, feel taste and smell. I am a tornado of ideas and concepts drawing from a deep and bottomless well of creativity from which the stuff of dreams are made of. My mind is in an altered state of conciousness and my heart and mind is open to all possibilities. Bi-polar or spiritually free? I don't know. Crazy? maybe a little, but not as crazy as living in a straight jacket and thinking that is normal. I embrace my crazy moments, they are the ones where life is real and magic happens.

I have burned the last of the boxes we hide in and and gone totally free range again, running with the wind in my hair and the sun on my back. I've turned the chains which shackled my soul into butterflies to lift me along on a flying magic carpet of tiny purple and silver wings, beating in unison as they take me to heights and places I have not yet discovered.

Gone are the insecurities about body shape, volume or creative prowess. Gone is the fear which melted away in a pool of cold liquid glass, to remain as the mirror from which I can see truth.

We get but one life, so as the title of Tim Booths latest cd suggests, LOVE LIFE, and love it to its fullest. Grab every opportunity and don't hold back.

So, it seems that I am realising all of the prophecies and visions I had about myself 9 years ago, when I had what doctors call a "psychotic breakdown" and I was saved by the lyrics on "Sometimes" by James as I spent some hours staring into my own green eyes in a mirror looking for my dead father and literally made a life and death decision. I was teetering on ending it all. The precipice loomed before me, a cavern, a pit, a void: The Abyss. As I gazed over the edged poised to jump these words fell into my ear.

"Sometimes, when I look deep into your eyes I swear I can see your soul."

Gazing into the mirror before me, into those sad green eyes of mine, whose flame had been beaten out of them, I saw a small flicker. A light. A tiny purple flame, which begged not to be extinguished. Its fragility that of a candle in a hurricane. That flame was the last vestiges of my spirit, the last ember of my fire, almost extinguished by years of abuse.

I had finally seen my own soul and I fell in love with it.

In those green eyes I saw my father, in my own DNA, the father who had long, long abandoned me, his fate the same as the one I was about to take jumping into the Abyss.

I backed away from the edge of the precipice, and the sun came out from behind the cloud. I shone out across the universe, a bright purple flame, all consuming everything I thought I was. I grew wings.

The Fairy was born.

That was the day I chose to love life and all it offered, both good and bad, after years of living a death.

That was the day I found my singing voice and my creativity and vowed to create and not destroy.

That was the day I swore I would never be downtrodden or diminished again by anything.

The disembodied voice I heard?

Surreal as it was, a recording Tim Booth's.

A recording which had taken on a life of its on, and found me on the edge of a cliff, and brought me safely back.

That's when the tears fell like diamonds from a green sky and refreshed the land that was my soul, making all things grow again in the arid and barren landscape. I was an oasis in my own life, drinking from a pure stream and eating ripe fruit from a tree. Life once again blossomed.

After a 9 year gestation which completes on May 11th this year, I will have completed my own personal growth period, and will graduate from the degree course at the University of Life. I plan on having a spectacular graduation party which will last until I draw my last breath, passing on all I have learned and am continuing to learn through the medium of my art and my love.

Its so easy to identify yourself with the roles we play and experiences we endure, and if you play them long enough you forget that you are a spirit having a human experience, not a human having a spiritual experience.

I was reminded of that this morning, when my 15 year old son bollocked me for not "doing my job" of being at the constant beck and call of him and his sister. His disdain of me spending a month holding onto and being carried by my dreams have left him feeling insecure as he sees his mother in a different light. I got outside of the box he had put me in. He has forgotten the recent Easter holidays, where he ignored me and refused offers of a short camping holiday, days out and quality time, in favour of his pursuit of online gaming and social interaction of the youthful cyber generation. It was all I could do to get them both out of their rooms outside into the garden for a night or two, by the makeshift fire-pit I have made form an old BBQ and a car wheel, where we sat and was fumigated by woodsmoke. We cooked sausages on a wood fire and looked at the stars through the wisps of smoke that climbed like prayer to the Milky Way in the Devon sky. My 14 year old daughter was pissed off that I could not take them on a holiday abroad to Italy, France or Spain in a hotel, (like all of her friends at school do, apparently) and was completely oblivious to the fact that most of her friends would be so envious to have a parent who is there from dawn till dusk for them, and would kill for the opportunity to have a parent give so much of their time around a camp fire singing and playing guitar to them.

"Why am I so boring? Why Am I so mental? Why can't just be "normal" like everyone else's parents?" She bitched at me.

I just said "I am who I am, but it doesn't mean I don't love you".

She just huffed and put another marshmallow on a stick into the glowing fire, and gave me a look that would kill stone dead.

Sometimes, there's just no pleasing people, and it can make you feel inadequate, so you swim harder, dive deeper, seeking that success where you feel like a constant failure, just to feel like half decent human being.

Kids are hard taskmasters, and they intensify as teens, and as you become "so boring" they become wild with the anticipation of the excitement and promise of impending adulthood.

It dangles in front of their nose, like a carrot on a stick in front of a hungry mule. Its just out of reach, but close enough to smell the fake concept that it will bring happiness and freedom from the shackles of immaturity.

But you can't tell them, and even if you could, they won't listen.

Its a part of their journey.

They'll soon find out that its all packaging and gloss and what's important is the thing you make from it.

You know you were the same at their age, and smile a wry smile at their disaffected notions towards your advice.

You also remember that you refused to listen to sense and reason from your elders who had done all the things that you are going to re-invent.

The Youth Of Today is just the same as the Youth of Yesterday.

Tim's song "Buried Alive" is a song which describes where my kids wants me to stay. Sadly to their frustrations, I decline to acquiesce to their demands after 15 years constant 24 hour a day, 365 days a year, single handed service, with no holiday, breaks or concessions.

I am still there for them, I still do all the things that I have always done, but with one difference, I am doing it not as "MUM" but as "ME".

Its a concept the burgeoning young adults will have to wrap their self obsessed heads around, and soon.

Its a bit of a scary moment for you, when you see your parents as human and not the robotic 2 dimensional life forms you selfishly and arrogantly believe are here solely for your service and to satisfy your ever increasingly arrogant demands. Its normal behaviour for a 15 year old and probably one of the only times when you can get away with being so self obsessed and self absorbed to the exclusion of everything else. Growing up is shit.

Hell, we've all done it.

I'll always be their Mum, and I'll always love them and I will always be there for them, but there comes a time when you have to start living your life for yourself, and you don't get to choose when the moment comes, you have to grasp the opportunities that come along, because there is no dress rehearsal to life.

This is fucking it.

And this is the second half of the game after you hit 40, where there are no subs and you don't have time to dither.

The hours you whiled away, as time dragged by when you were younger, now zip past you like stars on the monitor of the USS Starship Enterprise at warp 9 with the dilithium crystals glowing like Homer Simpson's nuclear fuel rods and some shouting "She can nee tek it any more, captin!" in your ear.

After 40, life becomes a bit more urgent.

My view of life, is that its an open book.

You write the story and you choose whether to ever read it to others or sit by the fire as the storyteller and enthrall your listeners with tales of magic, dragons, fairies and cosmic adventures beyond the stars which sail above our heads. I have chosen to write the book, read it and be the storyteller.

It is time for me to make my début, and really get my rear into gear on a level I have not worked upon yet. Bear with me, as labour and birth won't happen overnight, but the braxton hicks have already started, and you will witness the birth of something beautiful and see a spirit soar across the sky in a trace of ultraviolet light.

Its time to go.

Thanks Tim.

You just don't know what a beautiful thing you unwittingly did for me, not just this month, 9 years ago and for for many years since. You channelled the words from your spirit and made the decision to follow a dream. You birthed songs and words which then went on and took on a life of their own, which found sad fairies with broken wings and helped make them flight worthy again.

You are, and will always be my Patti Smith moment :)