Some unbelievable gift of nature and spirit and technical mastery has conspired to provide the Vahdat sisters – Marjan and Mahsa – with voices that exude impeccable vocal control, deep passionate expression, and unending soulfulness. Marjan Vahdat’s new album, “Our Garden Is Alone” is outstanding and topped World Music Central’s Transworld Music Chart for May 2022. That is a list which never fails to deliver amazing music, by the way. I must have first heard of the Vahdat sisters about six or seven years ago when I stumbled on a recording that Mahsa Vahdat made with Mighty Sam McClain, called …
I was watching this great interview with Roger Penrose this morning speculating on the origins of the Big Bang, and sharing some of his most recent thinking on how the universe might be in an eternal cycle of recreation in which, at certain points in the cycle, size and time don’t matter. My early morning mind connects a lot of things together, and today that video led to a reflection on smoothness and lumpiness. And the universe, mushrooms, and jazz. One of the fundamental patterns in the universe is that there are clumps of matter. This always amazed me. The …
I think we are living in a time when every emotion we are capable of generating is seen as a potential for making money. Our loyalty is co-opted by brands. Our anger is co-opted by politicians who channel it towards groups they scapegoat and then ride in as saviours of our condition. Our sense of reverence is owned by Hollywood, who exploits it for the latest superhero movie. Our love is sucked up by celebrities who are ciphers for the qualities in ourselves we can no longer recognize. The most disempowering thing you can do to another human being is …
Isn’t that beautiful image? Here on the west coast of Canada the Douglas-firs and cedars and hemlocks that cover the mountains and islands rake the sky for moisture. As the rains return in the fall, the trees help the forest drink. Rain showers pass through and for hours afterwards, the trees drip water onto the forest floor, feeding all the understory and the mushrooms that keep them alive. That image was one given to me by Chris Weaver, a fellow Open Space Technology facilitator and a poet and a friend who spent years on this coast, south of me, in …
Spellbound this morning watching Sean de hOra, a famous old Irish singer, performing his version of the Irish air Bean Dubh an Ghleanna (The Dark Woman of the Glen). He is a gorgeous interpreter of the “sean nos” or old style of Irish singing, which is deeply emotional and moving evoking in the performer something of the duende that Lorca wrote about in flamenco. In both flamenco and sean nos, there is a sense that supernatural creatures are near by, and there is tradition that links the singing of these songs to the kidnapping of the singer by fairies, so …