MY MANY COMPANIONS
First off a big welcome and deep thanks to all of you who have subscribed to We Are All Lichen. If you’re recent you may not know there’s a growing back catalogue of my talk, demos and photos you can access on the Substack website/app. Not to mention so so many other people’s work too - many far more brilliant than my own!
Special shout to you if you’re one of those who have migrated here from what the now defunct Deep Cabaret Mailing List. Apologies for my constant nagging but delighted you’re here! I number all of you among my My Many Companions.
I know I’ve been going on about My Many Companions and it’s album, zine manifestations for most of this year. The Tour of Cherished Land was the boldest version. An experiment in creating a more sustainable, more reciprocal, more attuned and soul-aligned way of sharing the music that’s emerging from my engagement with Mystery. Shifting from ‘gig’ to ‘offering’, from ‘venue’ to ‘land’, from ‘ego’ to ‘eco’, from ‘audience’ to….what exactly?!
With the Spring version done and just two September events to go (details below) it feels time to say something about what I’ve learnt. So here are a dozen things I can now say that I would not have been able to say before I began this process.
Hosts
People are willing to host me to make my offering on land they cherish and help me gather humans to share it with. I am sweetly suprised and deeply grateful.
Participants
Whoever turns up, however many or few, is exactly who’s supposed to come.
MoTHs
Whichever humans come, the more-than-human (MoTH) will be always present and participating - Wind, Spirits, Bird, Frog. All are Companions.
Ego Disolution
I am beginning to understand the nature of the careful preparation and attunement I need to attend to be able to shift from ‘ego’ to ‘eco’. How to become a receiver and channel for something to pass through me and emerge as music. In some moments simply Becoming Prayer.
Mystery Working Me
As much I am Becoming Us through sharing this Offering, I find the music and images continue to work on me as I sing and play; blossoming the personal myths of my deepening relationship with Mystery. Activating True Troubador From Before The Naming into being.
Journeying
When it works I journey, taking some/all of the participating beings with me. ‘You took us somewhere I didn’t want to come back’ someone said. I only know this has happened afterwards. As I soon as I think ‘This is going well’..or ‘Got that bit wrong’ I know I’ve lost it. And also know that, with attention and attunement, I can get back there.
Preciousness
I can be too precious about what I think I’m doing. Insisting it’s not a ‘gig’ and not wanting an ‘audience’. Then again, calling the events ‘offerings’ and remaining curious about what people thought their ‘role’, helped me keep in mind the need to attend to the Land and Mystery.
But perhaps I don’t need to fill in so much backstory or context in the chat between pieces. And I wonder about the significance I give to the intimacy of the event. To put it another way, how would it be different if there more people and I used mics and amps? Risk finding out?!
Participants
Despite feedback I remain uncertain about what those present are - audience, witnesseses, congregation: all of these or none. What do I want them to be? Well, one of the songs invites ‘be receptive and participate’. So receivers and participants!
Acapella
With all the material I wanted to use the first version of what I was offering felt too long. I cut the time it by doing half of it acapella. It felt not just a practical timing solution but absolutely right for this Offering. A contrast to the guitar songs and what, for me at least, feels like the atmosphere of enchantment WeeLow (my guitar) creates. I can feel exposed and vulnerable in acapella but also more authentic and connected to those present.
Money
Making it a ‘pay what you feel’ event by asking for donations and using a booking app is useful. People commit and I can keep an eye on numbers. But do I need/want to make money from this or is it just how I’m used to valuing what I’m doing? I am in receipt of a state pension and I’ve begun to think of that as being like an Arts Council award and myself as a Musician-in-Residence - in the World!
Incanting Spells
So do I know what I’m doing yet? I think of what Adrienne Maree Brown says about Spells - ‘poems that shift my state of being and power’. And what Sharon Blackie says about Incantation ‘to enchant or fix a spell upon by singing [and so] sing our selves back into this world.
And why do I do it? Blackie goes on to say Incanting can….’Unpick and create new mythic patterns and stories that lead to more sustainable and authentic ways of being in this world’. I’m showing up for that for sure.
Don’t Know Why…
On the other hand here is a very rough, but attractively croaky, acapella taster of one of the most recent Prayers I’ve created - part of the Becoming Prayer series. These are memes, mantras; material to improvise with, meditate upon, disappear within. The words go …… I don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing / I know I’ll be doing what I’m doing till the doing is done.
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DATES TO REMEMBER AND BOOK.
Sun 6/9 2-4pm.
Deep Cabaret solo: My Many Companions + Sarah Hymas.
Ottergear Bridge, near Clougha, LA2 9HD. Pay what you like, by donation.
https://www.trybooking.com/uk/GTKQ
My Many Companions is a Deep Cabaret enchantment offered to and on the Land. Solo voice and guitar incanting tales of deep questing, shamanic journeyings and mythopoetic encounters.
This is music as soulcraft. An offering that aims to serve the ecosystem of Nature, Community, and Imaginaton. An animistic response to our environmental crisis that invites us all back to loving the living world.
Sarah Hymas, cottage artist of all intimacies, will be sharing her newest folded poem: Take a breath and... Her words are a celebration of cycles, life, death and continuities.
Sun 20/9 at The Sondering*
Barn in the Fells, Rydal Farm, LA22 9PN
*The Sondering is a new life-affirming festival exploring themes of death, dying and grief in new (and old) ways. 300 curious souls will gather in The Lake District for a wildly human weekend of music, contemporary arts, nature, ritual, community and progressive death culture. Asking - can exploring death creatively, consciously and communally help bring us closer to life and each other?
Sun 13/12 2-4pm.
DC Trio + Hymas&Lewis. Payment by donation (c.£10)
C23, LA1 1TH.
C23 is a very occasional, (last time was two years ago!), intimate gig Deep Cabaret hosts at a secret indoor venue in the centre of Lancaster.
This iteraton will feature a DC trio with Darren Leadsom (double bass) and Ben McCabe (drums) playing brand new, never before heard material. Work that continues the ongoing story of My Many Companions* but demands the vibe of a small band.
Hymas & Lewis will also take part - offering the very first chance to sample a taster from their new project, provisionally entitled Dying To Live : Living to Die. A Beginner’s Guide to Change, Uncertainty and Composting.
Pay what you like , by donation. Numbers will be strictly limited so booking is reccomended but won’t be possible online till November. Save the date or, to reserve a place, send an expression of interest to steve@deepcabaret.co.uk.
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