I cast a magic spell today, a kind of magic mirror, or mirrors I suppose, that lets me see all the parts of myself as if we were a circle of friends, facing inwards. Anxiety, doubt, courage, creativity, all the others, all the old gang together under one roof. When they speak, now they speak to me, not through me, and in their overt gestures I can see machinations, hear clever word games and no longer am I their unwilling conspirator in the complication of my inner life.

So now that I can see them, I can speak to them by name, and when they assert their ignorance and call it experience, I can say to them...I know you. I see you. I know your NAME. Though at first the circle only had a few recognisable forms, the number of faces and names is increasing, while their unseen, Unseely voices grow tired with even their own games, as I, as I, step into the light of their acceptance.

*

I saw an invisible woman. I knew she was invisible because I could see her, but no-one else looked, even though she intruded upon their space and moved strangely, furtively around them. Her hair was pulled back in a functional pony tail. Function. A good way to describe her fashion, it was to a function, not a style. A purpose. She wore tough running shoes and denim jeans, and a long, dark blue, RAAF trench coat with original gold coloured buttons. She wore a backpack, and kept her hands in the deep pockets of her coat at all times, but around her wrists, tangled almost to her elbows were bangles and bracelets of every kind and colour and around her neck were a mass of necklaces. Chains, leather and string, like a Hindu woman with all her wealth upon her she wore jewellery to a purpose, and among the strands of beaded genstones and silver charm trinkets, dozens of keys hung from her neck.

She looked hungry, but not famished, clean, but not clean living. I saw her but no one else would turn to look at the invisible woman. The busy flow of the crowd through the market, unconscious of its own aversion, gave her a wide berth, but never did their heads turn, nor their eyes glance to see her.

*

I heard his whistling melody long before I saw him. Its melancholy descent and playful resolution were delivered with a smooth, unhurried purity. Like birdsong in its confidence and revolution, like a concert flute, elusive, emotive. I saw him, sauntering through the dissapating crowd, an old man, white beard, round belly, red scarf tied in the gypsy style at his throat, bags full of fresh food in both hands, and hanging low on his chest, a large brass crucifix. As he walked, his beautiful music escaped from pursed lips and the whole scene became painted with his sound. The tea house where I sat, the fresh food stall across the walkway, the shoe store, the fish shop, even the tea in my cup, all became themselves, but now each was itself, with music. No longer alone, the loneliest lime sitting discarded and fungal in the bin now had the commpany of this man's song, the whistling man, and I sat with book in hand and caught his eye, but he did not smile, or change his expression at all, as if he were alone with his music, and I merely a standing stone or fallen tree in the forest.

*

Teetering on the edge of a well, I can feel the pull of the hollow earth. A sucking wind inside me, calling me down into the absence, the great absence of love, the underdark. I slice vegetables and fruits for dinner, my noisy children playing in the next room. My mask is fitted well, to hide the void inside. I ache with the loneliness of self disgust, overwhelmed by thoughts of uselessness, of unfulfilled potential.

I slice fruits and vegetables and meats for dinner, my noisy children playing in the lounge room. My Mask is fitted well, so no-one can see inside to my hidden face.

Yet, like the shrinking aperture of a flower closing at sunset, the hollow earth beneath me, the sucking winds inside me, are once more sealed off, and with the coming darkness of night, my star rises over the horizon of my family.

Teetering on the edge of a well, the hollow earth beneath me.

I stand in a circle of mirrors.

*

Tall grass around me, I lay with bare feet sloped down to the waters edge. The sound of laughter, children play in the dam, swimming and splashing. A butterfly dozilly undulates through the tiny sky above the ants and I wonder what it was that had me feeling defeated and weary only yesterday.

*

I saw him on Monday. The Man in Black. (and I don't mean Jonny Cash). Black tights in the medieval style, a black tunic loose over his skinny frame, and a black, broad brimmed hat that shaded his pale skin, rough chin and white eyebrows. He was there, and then he was gone, walking briskly past the window where I sat in the cafe, reading Herotodus. Heads turned on the street as he passed, confused, bemused expressions staring openly.

He was there, and then gone.

*

One of them slipped out yesterday, playing me like a puppet all afternoon, telling me all of the most terrible things about the world, making me doubt the love, even the honest expressions of those closest to me. But his critique of the world rarely stands up to visible scrutiny, and with the breath of a kiss, his voice is plucked from the air of my mind and placed carefully back in the circle. He is naught but a reflection of my fear.

*

The howling of a sunset drunk collapsed in a doorway, her youthful shrieking an inverted siren song echoing along the canyon walls of an alley, cries which struggle momentarilly to rise above the throb of amplified dance music, but are, like all sounds, subsumed in the electronic impulses of the night.

There is a sweet smell in the air as I walk, the pollen clouds of streetside clustered smokers billow, illuminated pink and white in the neon twilight. Laughter, smiling faces and glimmering eyes watch for the fall of dice on a backgammon board as the shisha pipe is passed around again and Friday night takes its cue entering stage left to the fading glow of the sun in the west, long shadows collecting unobserved in the gutters and tangled beneath the chainlink arbour signposts of a hotel fire exit.

Where the drummers gather to play on the street.

Where the booming voices of their Darbuka's crackle and split the air with a clattering of hands upon the curved steel rims. Five drummers make much more than five times the sound of one drum, and in the sunwise ravine of Hindley street the music of the ancient world peels back the veneer of modernity, to reveal a perpetual scene of humanity everywhere, everywhen, walking upon the stone paths of a city by the sea. It could be any city, anywhere, for what difference is there in people of any nation who take leave of their burdens at the end of a working week and come to eat, drink and be entertained in the restaraunts, nightclubs and cafes of a busy city precinct?

Even the bookstore is still open, the resin glow of its lamplit interior revealing the sacrosanct romance of the book to be far from faded in this hyper-futuristic present, where the dreams of rocketships and spacemen are already sepia toned and receeding, retreating into the forgotten past of our new virtual reality.

Yet, the drummers are out there, making new what was forgotten. Making new inside themselve the experience as old as our common ancestry in the trees. The language without words, the solution without problem, the resolution of unwoven threads between us. Music.

Though the drummers may leave, the rhythm never does.

*

...There is something about the smoky orange red lights of a stage that sharpen the senses and make the incredible, possible. In the restaraunt, huge Moroccan lamps from the ceiling hang ponderous, swing pendulous in miniscule pirouettes driven by the breeze of a hundred breathing, moving human beings. Beneath such lamplight the drummers play, beside themselves with kinship, before the glimmering eyes of diners who twist from every seat to watch such music as might make the Gods take notice. When voices are lifted in union, when hands are joined in the common task, these are the moments that make us, the experiences that we build our lives upon, they become the stories we tell ourselves at night, the lullaby that speaks the truth; that we are more than the sum of our parts.

Hands dance upon the drum as do feet upon the floor, and when the two are met, the magic that ignites is promethean. The first languages are still spoken today, long after a thousand others have been forgotten, their names lost to the wind, yet Music and Dance prevail, spoken by all people in all nations upon the earth, and all the nations of the sky, and those beneath the earth, for do not all animals in some way share these languages too? The drummers follow the dancers' feet, the dancers lift and step in time to the drummers' hands and the circle follows itself out into the cool night air, out into the eternity of our lives and our actions echoing without cease out beyond the city by the sea, out beyond the island nation, beyond the blue planet, beyond the milk of distant star light that fed the dreams of our ancestors. All generations rising and falling as wheat in the field, a crashing tide line of chaotic life falling upon the shores of time, hissing with the pleasure of its dispersal and settling swiftly into the sand. As we too, must one day settle gently into the sand.

Though the drummers may leave, the stories never do. The stories we live, live on in their telling, and they grow and they change and with every narration they become themselves something wholly unique, just as we, who told ourselves a story of music and dance and drumming in the night, grew to become ourselves, something wholly unique, and not ever to be repeated, though the universe might live on forever.

*

The Christian initiation ceremony of Eucharist, or First Holy Communion is an interesting piece of modern magic. The transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, when eaten, represents the union of the body and soul to God. Young girls dress in white, like brides before the altar, young boys dress in suits, the formal wear of a groomsman attending his own wedding. I remember the ceremony from my own childhood, and though my country town experience was somewhat less grandiose than the one I attended on Saturday, the elements of ritual and ancient pagan belief still hold.

The magic of this ceremony is celebrated every year in churches across the country, initiating children into the community, absolving the sins of their youth through confession, and admitting them into the greater mysteries of their religion through the breaking of bread and drinking of wine. For Catholics, the old ways still hold and while modern churches now substitute grape juice for the Eucharist, Catholics still drink wine, a strong, dark liquor that stains the lips and wets the throat, drunk from a golden chalice offered by a priest in white robes.

The Bridgewater Trio were invited to play at the feast held after the Mass in a Catholic school gym, converted and consecrated into a temporary church which held over five hundred people, families of the children to be initiated. An entirely Indian community, Alice and I were two of only five non-Indians in the room. Solomon was too sick to play, so Biju was his temporary replacement.

I wittnessed several things. I saw an enthusiastic gathering of people, celebrating a common belief, and a shared sense of both aesthetic and integral religious ideas. I saw young children singing on stage with far more confidence and ability than is commonly seen in those under ten. I saw teenagers passionately giving a dance performance, a kind of Bollywood love song routine, with a dozen boys and a dozen girls sharing the stage in a theatric display received to great cheering support. I saw a young initiate in the evening's ceremony, given pride of place upon the centre stage to play a rock and roll drum kit solo clearly rehearsed with rigorous discipline and performed with a free and easy smile I will have to try to emulate.

I saw Alice. In the bright lights upon the stage she seems superhuman, barefoot and beautiful in her Persian gown with the scrolled timber curls of her violin and the golden waterfall ringlets of her hair. I saw myself and Biju, seated beside her like court attendants, drums in our hands and rhythms in our hearts.

I tasted the spiciest fish curry I have eaten in my life, more powerful and rich in flavour than from any tradtional Indian restaraunt I have dined at. I saw the concerned faces of the catering staff as I heaped my plate up with this, the hottest dish on offer, and I saw their pleasure at seeing my pleasure, my comfort and delight at the authenticity of the meal. Over and again as Alice and I sat to eat, we were asked if everything were to our satisfaction, did we needed more food, would we like some water? A bowing kind of obeisance expressing a need to see us feel welcomed, included, well fed and honoured both as guests to their community, and as musicians for whom the Indian community seem to have a much greater respect than in general Australian culture.

I saw one of the nicest things about religion, something that doesn't occur everywhere. I saw the beauty of shared belief, an inclusive belief that did not stink of the insecurity of cultish fundamentalism, but rather carried the sweet fragrance of love, community, faith and enthusiastic hard working people who come together to share in the beauty of their children, and of their initiation into the mysteries of transubstantiation and the magic of their faith.


Take this and eat, for this is my body.

*

The sun has set, children gather for bed, a rumple of sleeping bags and blankets on mattresses on the lounge room floor. Dim lamplight reveals their glimmering excited eyes as the storyteller enters, resplendant in blue and gold, his coat and hood and flute cast their shadow shapes upon the wall as he kneels before the little ones. He tells them a story, he plays his flute, and when he is done, one of the children takes the coat from him and puts it on, and kneeling before the little ones the child tells a story. When he too is done, the coat is passed on to a girl who tells a story. The next boy refuses the coat when offered, wrapping himself in his own special blanket, wearing it as a cloak and then he tells a story, and the next boy also wears his own blanket and becomes the storyteller, kneeling before the little ones.

Somewhere in a cave in the mountains, a hundred thousand years ago, this same scene plays out night after night.

*

A boy-man wears a mask, and standing in the broken doorway of a burned out relic, he becomes a portal himself, my imagination drawn into the impassive terror he inspires. I stand as a witness.

*

Many years ago I made three pacts. I called upon the North Wind to show me my desire. I called upon the Ocean to grant me my desire. I called upon the Moon to light the way. The consequences of these pacts defined the course of my life for many years.

But, there came a day when I went back to the North wind and I said my pact was finished. I went back to the Ocean and said my pact was over. But, I asked the Ocean if I could still visit her, for advice, and she said yes. I went back to the moon and held myself in her light for a long time, asking her to illuminate my path, for the road is dark and crooked and she said yes.

So here I am, my shadow moonlit, I have worn the masks of eternity and seen myself for what I am.

Lost in the wilderness.

*

I am pressed into the warm back of a stranger by the storm of humans cycloning themselves in the centre of the crowd. The rock singer towers upon the stage above me, ragged of beard, head dred heavy as a hindu holy man, he clutches at the air with fingers clawlike and the crowd are held by him as the Monkey God was held by the Buddha, for in that moment we are worshipful. Creation he howls, and we howl his words back to him, we are a mirror of his power. Creation, of insane rule, all we hear is Desperate Cry! Every word he sings, we sing with him, we are his voice amplified, we are his will, multiplied. The poetry of this ragged man's youth still finds a voice in us. His mighty and life scarred appearance is seen iterated through the crowd, we who stand, who leap, who spin and fall and float upon our brethren with hands outstretched above us, we lift them closer to the sound, closer to the stage and in their elevation, we too are elevated for in the lifting of one of us, we are drawn to unite in the act of supporting another, granting the gift of raising another human being up as an offering to music.

*

There is a point at which technology becomes indistinguishable from magic, for the processes are invisible, though their outcomes define reality and govern our every living moment and the gap in our understanding is a chasm as wide as the milky way.

　

What is it?

　

I said, what is it?

This...

dancing,

this music,

this

ART

　

It

is

the collision of forces,

of earth and sky

and in the middle,

I,

and time

and always the question, the useless question why...

but the reason, oh the reason does not ask, does not try,

and we,

though free to choose,

are bound to this freedom as a slave to his master,

as earth to sky,

a collision of forces

The duende, the unknowable depths of our own shadows, and the shadows of our knowledge, the vast well of our ignorance, of self, of other, of the world and its processes, of ourselves and our creations and our cultures and rituals and habits and the impossible endless pit inside the human soul that leads nowhere but to the spiralling, looping rotation of birth, death and re-birth. The world is made of this magic, of this un-knowing, this unknown quantity in all our lives. This magic is the reason we do everything, it is the push behid our desire, behind our curiosity, our thirst for understanding, or mastery, or even simple aquaintance. It is the voice behind the curtain, the song in the waterfall, the dance of birds and water and seeds upon the wind. All knowledge is pushed upwards into the light by the magic which is now indistinguishable from technology.

So I say to you; technology is magic. self knowledge is magic, good stage lighting and sound mixing is magic, the computer I type these very words upon is a magic so impossible and beautiful that I find myself unable properly consider the million discoveries that preceeded it and made it posible. Your minds who perceive these words, interpret them, absorb or reject them...all magic.

Let the invisible become seen.