Endicott Redux

The Monday Video

Today is our May Day holiday here in Britain (even though May 1st was actually last week) -- a three-day-weekend holiday comparable (in practice if not intention) to the Memorial Day long-weekend in the U.S., but with its folkloric roots firmly planted in the pagan festival of Beltane.

In the last British census, a remarkable number of people identified themselves as pagans, wiccans, druids and pantheists. (Mind you, there was also a large contingent who identified themselves as Jedi Knights, so who knows how seriously people take these forms?) The West Country, where I live, has been a stronghold of pagan practices since ancient times, and one can still find many who hold pagan beliefs today -- not only in the young New Age community centered around places like Glastonbury and Totnes but also among the old country folk, some of whom see no conflict between adherence to both Christian and pagan spiritual practices.

Pagan and folkloric ceremonies are making something of a comeback in the UK, and various May Day celebrations, both old and new, can be found across the British Isles -- such as the Beltane Fire Festival in Scotland, the Padstow 'Obby 'Oss Festival in Cornwall, and the Parade of the Ooser in Dorset. Here in Devon, the pagan community has quietly engaged in ceremonies on hilltops and in old stone circles, while other parts of the populace celebrate with spring fetes sponsored by our village churches.

The Monday Video this week goes out to all the folks who lit Beltane fires on the hills this morning. It's a clip of the Hunters Moon Morris troupe performing at Wimborne Festival. If you go to the YouTube page itself, you'll find a short description (in the text to the right of the video) of the Morris tradition and its connection to May Day. Alas, I can't find any video clips of my very favorite Morris troupe, Beltane Border Morris, here in Devon. They're a young, raffish, slightly punky group that seems to have stepped off the streets of Bordertown, performing Morris dancing in an incantatory, deeply magical way that absolutely gives me chills. Check out their website for pictures and information on their dances. (A dancer from the troupe is pictured on the right.)

America has its share of May Day celebrations too -- the most famous and elaborate one being the May Day Parade and Festival sponsored by the Heart of the Beast puppet theater in Minneapolis, pictured here.

For more information on Beltane, read this excellent article by Heather Shaw on the Strange Horizons website -- complete with advice on how to put on May Day festivities in your own community.

The Monday Video

Our Monday Video this week is "Maybe Sparrow" by Neko Case, with animation by Julie and Paul Morstad. The song comes from Case's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, an album recorded at the Wave Lab Studio in Tucson. You can hear more of her music on her website.

Julie Morstad is a Vancouver artist whose work I just love. Go to her website to see more of her art -- and also check out her terrific new artbook, Milk Teeth, from the Canadian art & comics press Drawn & Quarterly.

   

The Monday Video

This week's Monday Video, from the French singer and composer Émilie Simon, is for all the doll artists and doll art fans among our readers. I hope you enjoy this unusual little piece.

Simon, who is from Montpellier, studied ancient music at the Sorbonne and electronic music at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique. She has released several CDs, including Végétal, The Flower Book, À l'Olympia, and The March of the Empress. For more information, visit her website and MySpace page.

The Monday Video

We have a terrific Monday Video for you this morning: a clip of Phil Cunningham interviewing Scottish singer/songwriter Karine Polwart about the creative process of writing her songs, which are influenced by traditional folk ballads and the works of Robert Burns. Visit Karine's website to learn more about her gorgeous, gorgeous music...and then visit Phil's to learn more about his. (Phil and his brother -- the late, great Johnny Cunningham --were the founders of the band Silly Wizard, and he's created a lot of wonderful music in the years since.) You'll find another good video interview with Karine here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).

The Monday Video

Our Monday Video this week comes from The Mothers, an all-women punk band in Derby, UK, whose music celebrates the joys, vents the frustrations, and punctures the myths of motherhood. The band consists of five mothers, who describe their songs as "everyday tales of nits, pregnancy, school run dilemmas, and the computer game obsessions of our kids." Their video "Milk Pistols,"  animated by Eclectic, is a surreal "ode to breast-feeding" by "punk cows with attitude." (You've been warned.) For more information on The Mothers and their CD Ovulation, visit the band's website or their MySpace page.

Catching up....

"April 1st: This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three-hundred and sixty-four." — Mark Twain

      

First of all, our apologies for the erratic nature of this blog recently. Midori had to take time off from Endicott & JoMA over the last couple of months while she's back in the Midwest selling her old house, and I've been coping with health problems this winter, making my own work schedule unpredictable. Midori will be back to the Endicott office in Tucson soon, and then, between us, we should be able to return to a more regular schedule. (Many thanks to the other Endicott reviewers, who have been pitching in when they can.)

Here are some things to catch up on, a combination of recommendations sent to us and items that recently caught my eye:

* Our Monday Video this week (okay, it's Tuesday, nevermind) is "Achilles on Skyros Island," a short film about the mythological imagery on ancient Greek pottery (above). It was recommended by mythic artist and musician Catherine Crowe, whose beautiful work can be viewed over on Imago Corvi.

* The New Yorker Magazine recently published a fascinating article by Jill Lepore discussing fake memoirs, factual novels, and "the history of history" vrs. the history of the novel. ("Just the Facts, Ma'am" in the March 24th issue. You can read it online here.) "Historians and novelists are kin," writes Lepore, "but they’re more like brothers who throw food at each other than like sisters who borrow each other’s clothes."

* If you live in southwest England, there's an event here in Devon on Saturday night that promises to be terrific: "Stones and Spirit: An Evening of Music and a Visual Journey across the Steppes." Katy Marchant and Steve Tyler (from the fabulous Daughters of Elvin) will be performing Traditional and Early Music, and archaeologist Dr. Kenneth Lymer will give a talk on rock art discoveries in Kazakhstan. "During this talk we will take you on a journey through the steppes and mountains of Kazakhstan," they say, "not only in the exploration of ancient rock art images, but also to provide a poignant introduction to this fascinating land and its peoples." Where: Endecott House, Chagford, Devon. When: 7:30 pm, April 5. Tickets are £5. For more information: info@daughtersofelvin.co.uk.

* When I wrote about the Russian painter Viktor Vasnetsov in the March 19th post below, I didn't even realize that an exhibition of turn-of-the-century Russian art is currently running at the Royal Academy in London, featuring a large selection of paintings from the "Wanderers" (a.k.a. "Itinerants") movement. More information is here.

* Over at the Green Man Review site, they're honoring Peter Beagle (author of such fantasy classics as The Last Unicorn and A Fine and Private Place) with the "Oak King" distinction this year. The site will be offering four podcasts of Peter reading his work, one reading per season. The spring podcast--of a brand new story, "The Stickball Witch"--is online now.

* Here's a bit of interesting, and maddening, history: A rejection letter from the Disney Studios to a young woman who applied for a position at Disney's animation training school in 1938: "Women," they told her, "do not do any of the creative work in preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men. For this reason girls are not considered for the training school." The young woman in question eventually became an animator during World War II, working for the war effort.

* JoMA reader El Edwards has tipped us off to this little movie trailer, Wise Women Speak, from Cowgirl Films. Boy does it make me want to see more.

* Salon has an insightful article by Laura Miller on David Hajdu's new book,  The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America. Interesting stuff.

* I've only recently become aware of the pudú, the world's smallest deer, and I'm utterly smitten by these magical little creatures, which are native to Argentina and Chile. You can find pictures, and the video of a pudú adoption, on the Fauna Andina website.

My recent infatuation with the pudú has led, in turn, to the webcomic Little Dee by Christopher Baldwin, in which a pudú is a recurring character. It's a charming comic about a little girl lost in the woods and befriended by animals. You'll find it online here. Or you can purchase print versions of Little Dee here.

* For those of you in the New York area: Howard Gayton and I will be doing a reading in New York on the evening of June 18, as part of the KGB Fantastic Fiction series. That's at the KGB Bar in the East Village (85 East 4th Street, just off 2nd Avenue), at 7 pm. We'll post about this again closer to the date, but I wanted to give you an early "heads up,"  as it would be nice to see some Journal of Mythic Arts readers there....And though it's April Fool's Day, I promise this isn't an April Fool's joke -- despite evidence to the contrary in the picture here! (It comes from a gig that Howard did as a Fool for Daughters of Elvin, as a matter of fact, just to tie some of these posts together.) The April reading at KGB, by the way, will be by P.D. Cacek and Jack Ketchum, on April 16 at 7 pm.

Happy April Fool's Day, everyone.

The Monday Video

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, our Monday Video comes from one of my very favorite Irish bands, The Saw Doctors, performing an accoustic version of their song "N17" at Nighthawks in Dublin. (The band's name comes from itinerant craftsmen who once traveled from sawmill to sawmill sharpening and repairing saws. And the N17, for those unfamiliar with Ireland, is a road that runs from County Sligo to County Galway.) For more information about the Saw Doctors, and a list of their CDs, visit their website. "N17" comes from an early CD, If This is Rock and Roll I Want My Old Job Back, which is terrific -- but all of their CDs are fabulous and I'd be hard put to recommend one over another.

If your taste in Irish music runs more towards the traditional, follow this link to a video of the American-Irish band Solas performing "Coconut Dog/Morning Dew," with some truly lovely fiddle and guitar playing. And then for something different again, here's "Tóg é go bog é," a Gaelic song sung to the beat of bodhrán and djembe drums, from the Dublin folk-fusion band Kíla. For more information on these bands, visit the Solas and Kíla websites.

Maison Foo

Our "Monday Video" this week comes from the Maison Foo Theatre Company, presenting highlights from their dramatic adaptation of Carol Ann Duffy's mythic poetry collection The World's Wife.

Maison Foo is a theatre collective based in Derbyshire, England. Their name, they say comes from "Maison (house, home, dwelling, abode, address, residence, quarters, place, igloo) and Foo (an indescribable word given to indefinable things; happiness; influenced by the Yiddish word 'feh' and the English word 'Fool'; a rare species of dog; cult word in early Surrealist comic strips; rooted in the French word 'Fou,' meaning to be mad)." To learn more about the company, and their production of The World's Wife, visit their website.

The Monday Video

Thanks everyone for your patience while waiting for this blog and JoMA to get back on schedule. I'm still not entirely over my illness, and thus not back to full-time work yet, but I'll start posting again as I'm able to. (If you're waiting for correspondence from me, please be patient a while longer. There's a lot to catch up on, and I'm still under doctor's orders to strictly limit my work time.)

Our Monday Video (above): Natasha Khan's quirky all-women band Bat for Lashes (based in Brighton, England) peforming their eerie song "Horse and I" at the Mercury Awards.

If you like the music made by Khan and her cohorts as much as I do, then be sure to check out their weirdly wonderful videos for "What's a Girl to Do" -- which makes me laugh every time I see it -- and for "Prescilla." Want more? Here's the band performing "Trophy" at Maxwells NJ, and a short interview with Khan at Flasher.com (followed by another gorgeous performance). Enjoy.

The Monday Video

Our Monday Video today comes from Anglo-Indian singer Sheila Chandra, performing the Scottish song "Lament of McCrimmon/Song of the Banshee." It's a rendition that draws upon both sides of the singer's heritage, evoking the ancient sound of the Indian drone and the distinctive drone of traditional Scottish pipes.

"This melody was composed in 1745 on the departure of Donald McCrimmon by his sister. Another legend has it that Donald McCrimmon had a premonition of his death and composed the tune the night before he died and that his sister later wrote the words. Donald McCrimmon is said to have been killed in a skirmish in 1746 at the Rout of Moy during the last Jacobite Uprising. The McCrimmons were famous pipers and the hereditary pipers of the Clan MacLeod."

See "Folklore of the Voice," our profile of Sheila Chandra, for more information on this extraordinary performer.   

The Monday Video

We kick off the week this time with a video of Israeli singer Yasmin Levy and her superb, international back-up band performing "Ir me Kero Madre" on Dutch television during their recent tour of Europe. Levy's father was one of the leading figures in the preservation of traditional Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) songs, and Levy herself is dedicated to the revival of this passionate, cross-cultural art form. As her website explains it:

"The Spanish Jews who fled Spain in 1492 after the Edict of Expulsion took with them a rich cultural heritage including the Spanish language. For nearly five centuries Sephardi Jews have kept alive the language of those Spanish exiles. Ladino, as it is popularly known, is an archaic form of Spanish with structures and vocabulary that can be traced back to the 15th century. Over the centuries it has absorbed vocabulary from the countries in which the Iberian Jews had settled.

"While there remain very few native-Ladino speakers today, there has been a recent worldwide revival of interest in this 'dying' language. Likewise enjoying great popularity today are Ladino songs. These can be divided into romansas, ballads (dramatic narrative poems) and kantigas (lyric songs), the most popular of which are love songs."

Visit Yasmin Levy's website for information on her various CDs, and her tour schedule. If you have the opportunity to see her perform live, don't miss it. She has the presence of a goddess onstage and her voice is truly transporting.

The Monday Video

Our video to kick off the week this time is of the Canadian "folk fusion" band The Duhks playing "Greenfields of Glentown" at CBC Routes Montreal 2006.

Sunday and Monday on Tuesday

With Midori and I both down with winter illnesses (*cough* *cough*), we owe you a belated Sunday Poem, and a Monday Video too. Both are from poet, fiction writer, and musician Joy Harjo.

The poem is "A Map to the Next World," a deeply mythic piece which draws on the sacred stories of Harjo's Muskogee Creek heritage.

The video is of Harjo reading her work as part of An Evening with Native American Women Writers in Berkeley back in 1997.

Joy was born in Oklahoma, earned an MFA at the University of Iowa, and has taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Arizona State University, the University of Colorado, and the University of New Mexico. She currently lives in Hawaii. She has published many collections (How We Became Human, A Map to the Next World, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, etc.), won numerous awards, and performs with the band Poetic Justice. Visit Joy's website & blog for a list of her books, her CDs, and the films she is in. She also has a MySpace page where you can hear some of her music.

"I agree with Gide," Joy says, "that most of what is created is beyond us, is from that source of utter creation, the Creator, or God. We are technicians here on Earth, but also co-creators. I'm still amazed. And I still say, after writing poetry for all this time, and now music, that ultimately humans have a small hand in it. We serve it. We have to put ourselves in the way of it, and get out of the way of ourselves. And we have to hone our craft so that the form in which we hold our poems, our songs in attracts the best."

Dance of the Mermaids

Following Mary Barnard's ondine poem yesterday, our Monday Video to kick off the week is "Mermaid," a dream-like montage featuring the underwater dance photography of Oceanides and music from Aine Minogue's The Twilight Realm.

And speaking of mermaids, there's some lovely "Little Mermaid" art by Tigana here, including "Her Garden," pictured on the right.

In the JoMA archives, you'll find 2 good articles, "A Million Little Mermaids" by Virginia Borges and "The Mermaid" by Heinz Insu Fenkl, as well as two fine poems, "The Mermaid Sets the Story Straight" by Debra Cash and "Undine" by Jane Yolen.
   

Happy New Year from the Endicott Studio

At the Entering of the New Year
by Thomas Hardy

I (Old Style)

Our songs went up and out the chimney,
And roused the home-gone husbandmen;
Our allemands, our heys, poussettings,
Our hands-across and back again,
Sent rhythmic throbbings through the casements
On to the white highway,
Where nighted farers paused and muttered,
"Keep it up well, do they!"

The contrabasso's measured booming
Sped at each bar to the parish bounds,
To shepherds at their midnight lambings,
To stealthy poachers on their rounds;
And everybody caught full duly
The notes of our delight,
As Time unrobed the Youth of Promise
Hailed by our sanguine sight.

II (New Style)

We stand in the dusk of a pine-tree limb,
As if to give ear to the muffled peal,
Brought or withheld at the breeze's whim;
But our truest heed is to words that steal
From the mantled ghost that looms in the gray,
And seems, so far as our sense can see,
To feature bereaved Humanity,
As it sighs to the imminent year its say:-

"O stay without, O stay without,
Calm comely Youth, untasked, untired;
Though stars irradiate thee about
Thy entrance here is undesired.
Open the gate not, mystic one;
Must we avow what we would close confine?
With thee, good friend, we would have converse none,
it the fault may not be thine."

Feathers to Fire

Our Monday Morning Video to kick off the week: "Feathers to Fire," from Gregory Colbert's gorgeous Ashes to Snow "nomadic museum" exhibition.

My apologies for my general absence from this blog of late -- which is likely to go on for another week or two for I'm in the chaotic middle of a house move. Yet it's also a pleasure to leave the blog in Midori's capable hands, for I too am delighted and amazed by the treasures she comes up with...

Music, masks, and more...

The video above captures several members of Daughters of Elvin in performance at the Oxford Folk Festival. (Daughters is a medieval music and dance troupe based here in Devon, directed by my good friend Katy Marchant -- playing pipe and tabor in this video.) The masked figure who emerges halfway through the song (based on medieval Woodwose legends) is just one of the many mythical creatures who turn the Daughters' sublime music into spells of incantation. The Woodwose mask was made by Katy, but the group also use masks and costumes designed by Alan Lee and Wendy Froud.

You can read more about the group here (in an article from JoMA's archives), or visit the Daughters of Elvin MySpace page to hear more of their glorious music. And I hope you didn't miss Chanda Cerchione-Peltier's in-depth article on Katy and the Daughters in the Summer 2007 issue of Faerie Magazine.

Speaking of Faerie Magazine, Chandra has asked us to mention the current Fall issue, which does indeed sound promising. "In the new issue," she says, "I interview [film puppeteer] William Todd-Jones, Ari Berk writes about Beowulf's Grendel, SurlaLune's Heidi Ann Heiner offers a history of Rapunzel, and there is a wonderful spread about Brian Froud's new book, World of Faerie. The magazine is available in the US through booksellers such as Barnes & Nobles and Borders; for readers in the UK, issues can be purchased through I Do Believe."

La Gallina

Here's a bit of craziness to jump-start your week on a sleepy Monday morning, complete with masks and poultry from the fabulous Ozomotli.

Fortune Teller

Click here for a bit of magical musical silliness to kick-start your week....courtesy of The Iguanas. I love these guys. I love to crank them up loud in my pick-up truck on hot desert nights during the months of the year that I spend in Tucson. Listening to their music on a Monday morning back here in the rain-drenched hills of Devon, I can almost feel that desert heat....

Enjoy!

The Weepies

Here's a sweet little video to start your week with a smile. The animation is produced and directed by Joseph Gaffney; the song is "The World Spins Madly On" by The Weepies.