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Sunday 24 June 2007

In This Chamomile Place

In this chamomile place
I'm in your fragrance.
In this chamomile place
I'm in your breeze.
In this chamomile place
I'm in your light.
In this chamomile place
I'm in your earth.
I am, in this chamomile place.

Monday 4 June 2007

Making Music

For a long time I have been wanting to do a bit of drumming, but have never searched out a way to realise this desire. I've often looked at small drum thingys in fairtrade/alternative shops or at festivals but have never played any. The lack of a private, soundproofed room has put me off. Anyway the following happened yesterday whilst on a walk to Hitchin...

The hedgerows are full of the scent of elderflowers honeysuckle, bracken and wild roses. After all the rain recently, the present warmth is a welcome relief. I am walkling along a bridleway and snap a couple of overhanging dead twigs from a branch. This to me was just an almost intuitive action to seeing a sharp branch that could hurt a passing horse rider or cyclist if they fail to spot it. I am now holding two sticks, the longest only being about 12 inches. The desire to see what sound they make when I hit them together is too great an opportunity to pass by. Tap, tap. Just the sound of one sick hitting another. Plain and simple. But somehow on this spring day, the sound seems to belong in the landscape. It is a purely natural sound, like the tapping sound a woodpecker on an old tree would make. I tap out some rhythms as I walk along and I listen to the sound of wood on wood. I could make different sounds by hitting or holding the sticks differently. Simple sounds, yet beautiful sounds in the time and place where I walked. They belonged with me on this sunny warm day, amongst the trees, the hedges, the elderflowers and the honeysuckle. Perhaps this was how our ancestors created their first drum beats. I could have been the leader of a procession. I could have been a pilgrim, on a journey of meditation through the landscape. Later, I try different larger sticks and I am drawn into the music held within their being. It was indeed a act of meditation. To play, to create, to listen, to feel a part of something - it was my own small time of discovery, of enjoying the presence of simple music in Nature.