Sunday 27 May 2012

At midnight on Saturday November 12 2011, I turned on my webcam and recorded myself speaking for the first time. I then went to bed and got up to film myself next day. I recorded my thoughts and feelings and spiritual practice of sound dreaming at Pentre Ifan.
I ended my days filming saying that I felt it might have been one of the happiest of my life. What was best about it and most fulfilling was that on watching the footage, I had not cringed once. I thought I looked and sounded good which was very unusual for me.

I then spent a very frustrating few months trying to upload the footage first to youtube, then a nasty iphoto library eating Filezilla. Britain In A Day team must have really wanted my footage because they kept trying to get it uploaded too. Finally last week I heard that they had used some of my footage and I made a pilgrimage with my friend Mandi and canine companion, Sputnik to the NFT to watch the first public screening of the film. Mandi, myself and my cousins went to The Blue Room for drinks before hand and I was immediately recognised. A number of the production team came up to me to introduce themselves and I tried not to let this go to my head and assume it meant there would be lots of my footage in the film. After all I knew I was only one of three hundred contributors chosen from thousands.

We sat front row centre and listened to an introduction which emphasised that this was our film no matter how small a contribution of footage had been used. The film was beautiful and quirky and very British. There was a lot of footage of the St Paul's protest which I was surprised and pleased about. If I hadn't known that the director and editor were men, the juxtaposition of a human mother breast feeding with a milking parlour would have told me. There was some very brave footage of self injury scars and a young man visiting his mother after a long break. There was touching footage of weddings, proposals, and a meditating man interrupted by his children. None of my morning footage appeared and I was almost lulled into watching a film in a cinema that had nothing to do with me, when I was physically shocked by seeing my face filling the huge screen. They used two clips of me sound dreaming and two spoken sentences, one of which was : "I am aware that I am wyrd" That got a laugh, presumably interpreting wyrd as weird. I cringed and regressed instantly to the self conscious teenager who everyone laughed at and bullied for being different. Then there was a tiny clip of Pentre Ifan with the dancing faerie light of the setting sun. It was over in a matter of seconds. None of my musings about spirituality or quotes from my poem Slow Dance were used.

I could not enjoy the rest of the film much and I was furious that for all the big wigs saying it was our film, the credits for the big wigs were big and prominent and first and the contributors flashed past in a text box without time to even read all our names. In the Q and A that followed, by far the most interesting contributions were from a few contributors given a meagre fifteen minutes at the end.

The first person who came up to me outside was another contributor who seemed genuinely to have enjoyed my contribution and my mood lifted somewhat. My cousin's neighbours said "Oh she was good. She got a good laugh." The further I got from that embarrassing moment of seeing myself magnified in all my weirdness, the more the film has grown on me. It is an unusual and beautiful picture of the place I have made my home. Next morning, I realised that they had managed to edit my hour long footage into a few seconds of it's essence. I am wyrd and weird. I sound dream. This is probably the most original and unique thing about me. I drum and sing in communion with the land and sacred places. The sound is not necessarily beautiful or tuneful, not by conventional western standards, but in a picture of Britain the director made room for unconventional and completely unique music.

It was as I listened to the dawn chorus under Uffington white horse, that I remembered the last time I captured dancing light on film. It was by the sea near where I live. I was lead to understand at that time, that the dancing light was faeries. Now I know that I can never prove this and that there is probably a perfectly logical scientific explanation but I choose to believe that the faeries and angels of Carn Ingli were dancing with me that afternoon in November at Pentre Ifan and that they are to be seen by those who choose to see them in the dancing light at that sacred ancestral pile of stones in a film about Britain that thousands of people will watch. Alternatively, I will now forever be known as "that weird woman on Britain In A Day who is away with the faeries".

Tuesday 1 May 2012

A love song to Earth on May Day

I WORSHIP THE GROUND THAT YOU WALK ON by Bríd Wyldearth 2007 I worship the ground that you walk on, the grass beneath your feet, the sand between your toes, Gaia, earth goddess, on whom we meet. I worship the ground that you walk on. She is the love of my life. She is my soul mate, my life support, my partner, my lover, my wife. I worship the ground that you walk on. She is with me wherever I roam. She feeds me and clothes me and cradles me. She is my goddess, my spiritual home. I worship the ground that you walk on. My heart sings with her beauty and love. My whole being dances to the beat of her heart. When we kiss, I feel the earth move! I worship the ground that you walk on. When you touch her wear a kid glove. Look after her like your own mother. Tread softly for she is my love. Inspired by art work by Shaula Groulx, p.203, Wemoon ‘08

In honour of the ancient Goddess on the festival of Beltain

SHADOWS OF AN ANCIENT GODDESS by Bríd Wyldearth 2011 An ancient woman squats above an old church door. She holds her vulva open, impossible to ignore. Weird witch Síla na Gig, powerful, daring and rude, I wish I dared sit on a church wall wicked and wanton and nude! Eerie faerie Síla na Gig, bathing your quim in the sun, your holy hole outrageously obvious, your mouth fixed in a mocking grin, you might as well be shouting to pilgrims rich and poor: “I am your mother, your sister, your wife, your daughter, your lover, your whore." Orgasmic dancing Síla na Gig, are you just prehistoric pornography? Or do you have something to say to the twenty first century? "I will not collude in your big cover up. I will not clothe myself in your shame. Uncensored and open and honest and proud, I show the world who I am and why I came." Why do you sit on a church wall? Why do you show us your cunt? Why did the stonemason carve you? And what exactly is it that you want? “I was here before the church was and I’ll be here long after it’s gone. I honour the place of original magic the place from which we all come I open the gate between worlds the doorway to life and to death this gesture is just as important as any gesture to pray or to bless I am your ancestral goddess. I am swollen and violated and raped. This is the result of your violence. I will not disappear without trace. When you seek to disempower me, you invade me against my will you build churches over my temples and groves and convince my children that I am evil. Remember where you originate. Remember your spiritual roots. Remember that god is a woman as well. Remember deep, radical truths. Womanhood is as sacred as any church or holy place. We give birth, we give pleasure and we give love, we give comfort and healing and peace.”