I lay down on the fox pelt, its glass eye right next to mine as I rest my head on its head. I listen to the sound of the gas heater in front of me as I pull the orange and brown rug over my body. My mother knitted this rug. I close my eyes and gently press the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth and breath slowly, slowly, through my nose. It only takes moments before my ears close, just like the pressure change you get when you journey any significant rise or fall in altitude. Like a fog, but one that sensitises me, and nestled deep within the booming foam of that auditory sensation, my body begins to swell. I notice it most with my fingers, which feel like swollen sausages, but when I go deep, it covers my ears then my lips and my whole face, and as the bottom of the sky opens up inside me, my body descends into a thick heaviness, a fallen log, a hibernating bear, a buried treasure. I am awake, alert and very focused on the sounds inside my body, the bio-orchestration of blood and water and air and earth and metal. I am transfixed by the sound of my breathing. I feel as though I am listening to it from inside my body, from inside my lungs.

 

 

I stay like this for as long as I can.

 

 

I lay down on the fox pelt every night during winter that year, and every year after that.

 

 

I know that I was very young when it began, and that even now, I can press my tongue to the roof of my mouth and slowly slowly breathe through my nose, and I begin to submerge and to swell, and deep inside me is the rushing sound of my breath. Overwhelming, overriding, I am filled with this mighty wind and I remember a dream

 

in which I gave myself

 

these words...

 

 

 

The way out is through the breath.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Sometimes the personality disappears, and that objectivity, which is an attribute of pantheistic poets, develops to such an abnormal pitch that the contemplation of external objects makes you forget your own existence, and you soon loose yourself in them. You gaze at a tree bent in a harmonious curve by the wind; in a few seconds what is only a natural enough comparison in the poet's mind becomes a reality for you. At first you lend the tree your passions, your desire or your melancholy; its groaning and swaying soon become yours, and soon you are the tree. In the same way, the bird hovering high in the azure sky at first represents the immortal wish to soar above human affairs; but almost instantly you become the bird. I imagine you seated, smoking. Your attention rests rather too long on the bluish smoke rising from the pipe. The idea of a slow, gradual, eternal evaporation obsesses your mind, and it is soon transferred to your own thoughts, your own sentient matter. By a strange equivocation, a kind of transposition or mental quid pro quo, you feel yourself dissolving into smoke, crouched like a heap of tobacco in the pipe, which has acquired the strange property of smoking you.

 

 

From The Poem of Hashish, by Charles Baudelaire

 

 

*

 

 

Penny White is dead. She died two days ago, finally delivering herself from the near decade of debilitating body pain she had lived within since her accident. A candle that burned bright. An athlete, an aesthete, an avid reader and music lover. When I first met her, I didn't notice the crutches, though we were walking together to a pub with a group of mutual friends and acquaintances. She was much bigger than her injury, though eventually it conquered her.

 

 

I once said to her that she was so strong that the only thing that could destroy her, was herself. You see, her injury was sustained during roller derby training. She pushed herself all the way.

 

 

Never defeated, even now in death, she is a warrior and woman of integrity. My memories of her, though clouded with time and the calamity of our short relationship, are precious. She could see the world with eyes unclouded. Now she has delivered herself beyond suffering. I am proud of her courage to face death, as only a true warrior can.

 

 

*

 

 

The weather is turning and in the Autumn darkness, trucks heavy laden with grapes thunder beside me on the highway as I drive to rehearsal. The harvest is in full flush, and midnight is seen by teams of women and men on machines that drone obstreperously with the massive power of their diesel engines. I live in a land where the summer abundance of wine is a flood. At sunset the dancers arrive and the music begins, our wine-cups are full of songs, bare feet upon the floorboards. We break bread and laugh and for an evening that is our lives, we step into a world that is neither real, nor unreal. Neither here nor there nor halfway up the stairs. Spirits in blue and spirits in green turn on tiptoe and I find myself holding my breath, trying to hold on to what I see

 

 

A Spirit in White. I see the flash of an owl above me as I drive home. At home I sit beside you on the bed. Spirit in Orange, you wear your bright robe and seem to me like a Eucalyptus flower. There is a discernable language in the silence of your movement. Words do not communicate everything there is to be said and the flick of a finger can tell me all I need to know about how you are feeling. A flutter of the eyelid, or a turn of your head and the angle you drape your hair, or perhaps your knee is turned away, just a little. Even your stillness is a song to me, raking my soul over the fires of heaven. Everything I see, I am looking at you. My breath is parallel to yours, my posture, my stillness and the silent language of my movement. Spirit in Orange, Spirit in Red, the earth falls away beneath my feet every time you turn your gaze from mine, all my certainty feels founded on uncertain assumptions.

 

 

I would forget my name if I could.

 

 

 

*

 

 

Preferring invisibility to confrontation, the Crooked Man attenuated his power, and everywhere he walked, he did so in the shadow of another spirit. He left no footprints of his own, cast no outline upon the earth and made no sound save his breathing which nonetheless pulsed always in rhythm with the wind.

 

 

From my novel, The Hangman Tree, which after seven years is nearing completion.

 

 

 

*

 

 

A letter to my drum students.

 

 

We always start unsure of our ability to learn, but we do not ever let that prevent us from learning. Consider these things today. You have a variety of confidences, and confidants as a group. You share a quiver of techniques developed over years of practice. You have a vocabulary from which to speak music. You have many musical experiences from which to draw inspiration : classes, performances and your own private moments playing while no-one is listening. Drumming on the steering wheel. Drumming on your knee, drumming on your lover's knee. You have your whole life from which to draw inspiration.

 

 

Any challenge that has been set, you have conquered.

 

 

There are many challenges yet to come.

 

 

Consider how you have changed, or grown, or grown humble, because of the drum. Take a moment to remember the things you have seen and done, because you picked up a drum one day and said yes. Take stock of all you have learned and be inspired by your efforts.

 

 

Any challenge you have been set, you have conquered.

 

 

There are many challenges yet to come.

 

 

You have opened yourselves to this wholeheartedly, and for your dedication you reap the rewards equal to your efforts. I too, will consider all that I have seen and done since you began to study this music with me. I will consider all that you have taught me, and all the ways that I have been made humble by you.

 

 

Every challenge you have set me, I have conquered.

 

 

There are many challenges yet to come.

 

 

We always start unsure of our ability to learn, but we do not ever let that prevent us from learning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

I lay down upon the Earth. It is mid-morning, the dew has not yet dried in the shade and I can feel my shirt soaking it up as I rest my head on the grass. I close my eyes and see my body as a canyon, with all the waters of the ocean draining endlessly into it. I take slow breaths, drawing all this energy back into me, all the energy I have wasted throughout the morning, given over to a mounting tension and as I find my breathing growing shallow. I worry about everything I do not know, all the unknown potential calamities yet to befall me, set in motion by my own ignorant fumblings, both in word and deed. So I lay down upon the earth and I breathe real slow and I feel the ocean tumbling into me and I try to remain focused on this sensation, telling myself that nothing else is happening right now.

 

 

I feel myself sinking into the warm soil, the darkness is a mother's caress, it is a swaddling cloth, it is a moment alone but not lonely. I feel my heart beat and I think about getting up, but instead I slow my breathing further and I see myself as a canyon, draining all the oceans into me, returning all the morning's wasted effort and when I do get up, I remind myself that there there is nothing else happening now.

 

 

It's been an interesting week. I left the door open this time, the door to the room of mirrors, and every night I have dreamed. I remember three. In the first my hair was long, a curly cascade of black locks covering my shoulder blades. I was in the streets outside the recording studio. In this dream I was happy.

 

 

The second dream, I had long dredlocks, quite similar to the dreds I used to have about twelve years ago. I was at a commune in Kuitpo Forest, a place I have had friends living in for many years. I this dream, I was not happy.

 

 

In the third dream, I found a super cute baby Brontosaurus (a dinosaur), only it had a peculiar long and flexible vestigial protrusion from its back, which I assumed was the ancestral remains of wings. I picked it up to show the kids, and though it bit me through my garden gloves, it didn't hurt too much, and I managed to show everyone and let the kids pat it before I released it back into the garden. I was in the garden at work in this dream. In this dream I was very happy. In this dream my hair was as it is now, neither long nor short.

 

 

*

 

 

I will tell you about the last twenty four hours.

 

 

          Count backwards from three.

 

 

Eighty school children squeeze into the music room, cross-legged they look up at us and I become a seer with the future lined up before me. Through the window of our art, the seeds of peace blow dandelion soft into the minds and hearts of the little ones. We tell a story, we revel in dance, we drum and we strum and we speak and the question comes every time...what is a Gypsy?

 

 

Though the question itself is fraught with the snares of history and misunderstanding, our answer speaks of the long story of human movement across the land and sea. We name the Romani, the Shuvali, the Indian, Persian, Irish, French, Slovak, Romanian, American and Australian. Our answer is in nine beat, it is in minor scale, it is call and response and howling at the sky and there is something incredible about seeing a room full of children dancing as if they are stirring a huge pot of soup, or wringing out their wet clothes, but greater than these was their fists in the air, wrists crossed above their head striking the seven-eight beat as the dancer in blue revealed the spirit of a culture far removed from their own. With a world atlas unfurled as a flag behind us, the old Czech storyteller points the way of nations driven from their homes by war and prejudice, their possessions few, their spirits resilient.

 

 

We Crossed the mountains

We Crossed the seas

we crossed the rivers and forests

Our Family were with us all the way

 

 

We came to the cities

we came to the towns

the people chased us away

our family were with us all the way

 

 

We came to the school

the children were friendly

we taught them our ways

our family were with us all the way.

 

 

We four, disparate of origin but tangled in the same string, clasp hands and make a steeple of knots and through the windows we can be seen eating and laughing and drinking and sharing our stories and inspiration and gratitude and every moment is practice for our part upon the stage. United by Music, Poetry, Dance, Storytelling and our mutual love for the limping stepping skipping dance of a life well lived, we gadjo give what we can to the fields of the future where the vardos will camp and we pray with our hands and feet that their songs and their dances will continue, as they continue through us.

 

 

Word by word

Dance by Dance

Note by Note

 

 

            Count backwards from two

 

 

I had never considered that multiculturalism in Australia would mean a renaissance of European culture as well, but up there on the stage, handing out citizenship certificates and hearing the vows of the applicants, is the Mayor of the district, resplendent in his long red robe and projecting a welcoming and magnanimous air. His official attire is not out of place. The audience are international, and with the earthen spectrum of human skin all around me, the once exotic Indian sari's, the riotous patterns of Ghanian fabric, and even the glittering costume I have worn to perform in, seem equally in harmony. I imagine I am in Timbuktu, or Carthage or some other fantastic metropolis from the past or even the future. It smells like food cooking and trampled grass and sunset dew as the band takes the stage. This is what peace feels like.

 

 

Strident, Romantic, a feeling that comes up through the feet and makes me want to laugh like a boy, the music is miraculous and smiling faces gather thick beyond the whirligig of spinning dancers. The violin sings lyrical in place of a singer, each song crafted carefully to evoke a certain motion: push me pull me, or turn on the spot beneath the full moon, or laugh and leap then sway down low and let the hips do the talking. It is music to cut a rug to, music to raise a glass to, music for harmony day in the great brown land down under. March twenty first, two thousand and eighteen.

 

 

It is three musicians from three nations, and two dancers from two more. This is what peace feels like, this is what it sounds like, this is happening right now, the flowers of our efforts spread seeds and are carried on the wind to whatever future will take them in and let them grow.

 

 

There is a choir with voices like a mighty lions, there is a choir like an eager apprentice, there are Ukranian Cossack dancers, a jazz piano and drum duet, there are speeches and certificates and the singing of the national anthem and photographers and sound techs and event managers with schedules soon marked with more changes than original plans. It is a congregation of culture and a ceremony of civil law. This is what peace looks like.

 

 

                 Count backwards from one

 

 

I visit my brother, the shaman, the psychonaut, the sorcerer.

 

 

The midnight clock stands still and I am the ocean floor, metamorphic rock, a primal soup, half squid half exploding star. I can feel my amnesia uncoiling, amoebic....there are a lot of things I have not allowed myself to remember about my life. Holes get cut and the absence that remains is a black hold, dead-weight, knuckle-break...what have I hidden away from myself, from you? I forgot how beautiful everything was, how I long ago lived a life that I loved and adored and thought was so precious that I took no time to appreciate it, or care for it, and so like everything, it was swallowed up by time and locked away by pain and every day that I could not speak of it, it got harder and harder to believe that any of it was ever true. My memories sank to the bottom of the ocean where I did my best to let them die and I got on with my life without them. I told myself over and over – you were wrong about everything – the fantasy of happiness and love that you left to rot on the vine was a fiction, an illegitimate claim to a throne you could never be worthy of – but, counting backwards from three two one, I find myself on the ocean floor deep in outer space and I am half squid half exploding star and somewhere nestled in the gooey liquefaction of pressurised sub-mantle rock, I find my own internal organs growing around the broken fragments of my discarded spine and I am being re-made by wiser hands than mine and my forced amnesia comes undone and I remember how beautiful we were, and how every day since then I have told myself that everything I thought was real about us was a lie. I have stabbed myself in the heart every day. I have carved the commandments of my damnation upon the rock of my flesh and I have done my best to get on with my life without my memories of you, made mute by the self referential evidence of my own denial. I offer no defence against my accusations, I make no plea.

 

But today, sipping coffee in the shade of suburban silence, I remember. I have come back up from the leviathan trench and I take my first breath with lungs that feel new and I am at my brother's house, recalling all the years from then to now, and how he has been there through every part of my buried pain, and that I can hold his hand and weep for reasons that do not need explaining, and say over and over to him, Thank you for being here with me now, Brother.

 

 

I made my past into a hell populated only by demons of my failure. I covered over the sky that once shone bright upon my youthful, loving, striving, kind and hopeful life and I bound with briars all my joys and desires, and I tied my arm behind my back and told myself that crippled was the new black and I turned miserable-ever-after in ever decreasing circles, asking why I could not steer myself out of Hades, though the sun shone bright upon my not-so-youthful, loving, striving, kind and hopeful life. The shadows of my hated past stretch long into the present, and all the chains and weights I put on my abandoned memories and let sink to the ocean floor, took me with them, and staring up at the receding light above I asked when will it ever be day again?

 

 

Will it ever be day again?

 

 

But today I am buoyed by the weightless joys of allowing myself to remember that perhaps not everything was a lie, and that we did know happiness and that I was, if only for a few short years, a good and loving man, and that we made a child together and that the sunlight that beams from his every smile is a reflection of the love we once shared. His light breaks through the sky I destroyed and a beam cuts shadows in the long grass, and I contemplate the possibility of forgiving myself for my mistakes.

 

 

It is day. Sometimes madness is a choice. Sometimes it is the lesser of two evils, and sometimes that is no kind of choice at all and today, in the suburban shaded silence of morning, with lungs that feel new I breathe in and I breathe out and I breathe in and I breathe out and I breathe in and I breathe out.

 

 

            Count backwards from zero.