Japan…

Absolutely have not known how to approach writing blog entries, in the wake of these disasters in Japan.

Continuing to write whimsical philosophical journal entries seemed a bit useless, until I realised through my main website stats, that the amount of traffic this blog is getting is quite good. So maybe it can be used to float some useful ideas, just as in the beginning it was a possible forum to help publicise the work of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers.

Here are some brief thoughts and ideas for donations. I have been asked by loved ones there to pray, above all pray. Much like the online guided visualizations that came after the Mexican gulf oil spill – concerted prayer and image work is an ongoing necessity now. This is something we can all do and everyone has an equally valid personal method.

A Japanese friend on Facebook has recommended the following:

mouth-mountains. greenwebs.net/donate_page

Different language options available. And please befriend me on Facebook (link on main page) in order to keep up to date with the stream of dialogue – including bank details which I’m reluctant to post here, until/unless I am given permission. For now, if you wish to donate, just go to the link. Here it is again.

mouth-mountains. greenwebs.net/donate_page

If you are someone who knows me, (I don’t recommend if not) by all means use the PayPal buttons I still have mounted here on the blog, originally to fund the Trip to Amami last October – and I will pass it directly on. If I was a random member of the public though I wouldn’t trust that, and so I recommend the above site and here’s some others. People have different opinions about NGOs and faith-based aid organisations, not sure what I think at times like this.

Japanese Red Cross

British Red Cross

Save the Children

Global Giving

Medicines Sans Frontiers

Japan Society

Another option if you live in London, UK, is to head down to the Japan Centre, where staff are collecting donations in their busy international shop  travel centre and website.

Japan Centre

But above all let’s never estimate the power of our thoughts to rise above adversity and achieve the seemingly impossible.

Springtime, a time for Jazz…

Photo credit: Benjamin John

Times of increased light and energy after a hard winter.  Spending a good productive afternoon with my new PA knuckling down to admin tasks and sending high resolution shots to my CD cover designer. Oh, the joy of having a PA.  It makes me feel like I’ve really arrived as a serious artist to have someone leaning on me and helping me a bit. Thanks to the motivating influence of my genius engineer and sometime co-producer Felix Macintosh, I have been exploring so called new business models for artists and entrepreneurs in today’s changing world. One thing that’s advisable for independent artists and big time celebrities alike is to make sure you have time to do your ‘genius’ work – and to simply delegate your office stuff. Accept that someone else knows how to do the admin better and faster and pay them so you don’t have to. Don’t tell yourself you don’t have the money – prioritise it and do it…then…watch yourself bloom. Challenging at first, for the self-styled, self-managing control freaks amongst us. But worth it… and really good fun. What a relief to have a buffer zone of solidarity and support, laughter and jokes  when the rejections and criticisms come. And high fives and champagne – and more jokes – when inroads of success are made. We’ve had a really good day.

Listen out for me at JazzFM soon! – exact dates to be confirmed.

Check out my new track Bitter Seed, from my forthcoming album Dangerous Loving.

FREE DOWNLOAD at: www.fayepatton.bandcamp.com

(By the way, my PA Becki Burrows, is a talented videographer in her own right. She has interviewed the likes of Usher, and the Flaming lips and has an uncanny knack for winning music biz competitions. Wish her luck with her latest by going to her website, http://www.ohdearyme.com.)

2012

Bring on the New Year. Bring on health, wealth and a (‘nother!) new album in the pipeline. Bring on travel, both physical and mental – not to mention inter-dimensional. Bring on increasing awakeness, levity and sobriety. Bring on compassion. Bring on patience, yet urgency. Bring on wisdom, via youth. Bring on freshness, via experience. Bring on self-discipline…but in a chilled out way. Let time stretch, bring on wormholes and solar storms and paradigms shifts and shake downs and shake ups and new, better places to place love and more suitable companions and right action and courage and faith and candid ‘can- do’ness and renewed pathways and starlit, stepping stones and remembered promises and the necessary trashing of outdated bonds. Bring on running in new pastures at dusk. Bring on different sunrises and alien winds. Bring on wet, young grass and audacious buds. Bring on full throttle singing. Bring on plane rides and ice cream and justice and peace and restitution. Bring on gigs, students, songs, strings, forgiveness, healing, excitement, clarity and humanity. Fame and Fortune. Bring on credit where credit is due and a sharing of quality of life – for all beings. Bring on love, curiosity and generosity. Bring on evolution. Surf’s up. Happy New Year.

 

Adversity as Alchemy

Sometimes life requires us to go the proverbial extra mile, against the odds, around the houses, into wormholes that we may not have thought of.  Sometimes, the way is wild. There is nothing that cannot be dreamed into being. Every strange method, every thing in our world, once existed as a (maybe madcap) mental map.

So I found myself, sometime back in 2009, without access to a studio that housed a decent (recording quality) piano.

I had had previous access to a very fortunate situation – ‘Overtones’ studio, and in permanent situ/loan, the glorious piano of French jazz /concert pianist and friend of Madonna, Katia Labeque. No ordinary instrument, this was a limited edition (one of maybe 4 or 5) Yamaha/Steinway hybrid. It’s presence was that of a mighty galleon – filling the entire room, top lifted like a sail to reveal the guts. It was both ship and whale. The vessel and the journey. I steered it through treacly, dark, mermaid dwelling deeps. Merely pressing a single bass key, was to sound a sonorous bottom end orchestra of vibration through the floor. It’s  sustain pedal was somewhat clunky, but an intrinsic part of its charm.

I cried frustrated tears when the Arts Council cuts that year, slashed the studio right out of existence. 100% gone. The way appeared to be blocked. There followed some self-pity. In time,  with some inspiration from my shamanic lucid dreaming practice, I went into wild vision space. After much patience, trust and affirmative thought process, I dreamed a series of rooms, filled with pianos. Uprights, grands, vintage blonde wood harpsichords, white rock n’ roll kitsch and bluesy baroque curlicue. The rooms had a warehouse, matter of fact quality – not especially beautiful – but piano filled.

About 6 months later, ordinary reality manifested a welcome solution. Imagine my surprise and delight upon discovering Jaques Samuel’s piano studio/practice rooms, in Marble Arch. Inexpensive, friendly, efficient and filled with brand new (tuned weekly) Kawai pianos for hire, practise and purchase. Even a kitchen to make coffee and eat sandwiches.  Myself and genius engineer Felix Macintosh, managed to record the basis of an album here, using small, clip on and free standing mikes and a laptop/portable drive. Also, imaginative scheduling around building works/random flurries of Rachmaninov from prospective customers. (We returned later in the year to record numerous overdubs for my current CD, ‘Dangerous Loving’.)

I’ve come to appreciate the wyrd way, into the unknown, sometimes against conventional wisdom and yet…with the flow. Nature always has a canny plan. Sometimes better than the original plan.

And I’ve come to appreciate the neat, woody, cherry plummery, round sound of Kawai (literally ‘cute’ in Japanese), and the easy depression and weight of the keyboard. Almost like a toy piano.

Katia Labeque’s  gorgeous behemoth ended up at Cheltenham Jazz festival, I hear. (But can be heard on all 11 tracks of my 2006 CD, ‘Going Solo’.)

Brainfood

Some Good Internet resources:

Steven Beckow and Link TV  -  for excellent videos, reportage and commentary from the left field, the back of beyond, the New Age, the cutting edge, the emerging paradigm. Steve Beckow is a gentle, humble Canadian who uses his central site to publish a stream of resources concerning 2012, UFOs, ET ‘Disclosure’, channellings from discarnate, ascended entities, NESARA and the general collapse of time, money, society and government as we know it and the future (rapidly becoming current) 5th dimensional reality.

SOME GOOD BOOKS:

Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes by Daniel Everett - fascinating autobiography by an American missionary and linguist. In this account, his attempts to Christianise the fully present living, numbers-eschewing, Jesus-rejecting, forest dwelling Amazonian Piraha community, results in him losing his religion altogether. A compelling and often self-deprecating chronicle that shows the gradual dismantling of one man’s sense of cultural superiority in the face of happy indifference.

Life After Death – The Book of Answers, by Deepak Chopra – comprehensive musings on our  broader existence beyond physical death. Combining perspectives on animal telepathy, Indian Buddhist parables and quantum physics.

The Silent State – Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy by Heather Brooke - good to read another perspective on what we already suspect.

Best Lesbian Erotica 09, edited by Tristan Taormino – just because.

DMT – The Spirit Molecule, by Rick Strassman – more people know about DMT (dimethyltriptamine) these days, partly due to the New Age and Shamanic/anthropological revival movements of the past 20 years. A substance found in hallucinogenic plant entheogens and the pineal gland (also bone, blood and spinal fluid) of humans, DMT has a mysterious relationship to our concept of  the soul or spirit. Spontaneous releases of DMT during phenomenal events such as conception, birth, death or near-death and dreaming, produce fully involving, transcendent hallucinations that can include communications with non-human worlds and entities. I am not so keen on the science lab context of this book, preferring perspectives that are rooted in authentic shamanic settings. However, it’s illuminating reading nonetheless and the research is worthwhile. A perennial question arises in the mind of the reader – how can naturally occurring bodily substances be classified and subject to legal control by the state? Who owns our bodies, minds, food and medicine – and why do we let them? The next concern that arises for me, is this: I have a troubled, hollow feeling with experiments with magical practice or substances that look to me like pure recreation with no protocol – or just to ‘prove to science that it can happen’.  I respect the Shamanic ethic of knowing why you are going somewhere, for what purpose, in order to do what, for the benefit of whom. Not just to be a tourist.

I Got Thunder – Black Women Songwriters on their Craft, edited by LaShonda Katrice Barnett -  inspirational interviews with 20 seminal female heroes of jazz, gospel and soul. Fascinating and nourishing to hear how other artists create art. Infinite reasons and motivations – lifetimes of determination and sometimes, happy accident.

Left to Tell – Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, by Immacurlee Ilibagiza – difficult but necessary to know stories from this era. I once got into a random conversation with someone at a party. She turned out to be a researcher into genocide, as a phenomenon. She told me that at any given time, there are about 60 genocidal movements taking place on the planet, probably more. We hear about some, and not others – but it’s always present, and something humans can be manipulated into relatively easily. Unspeakable. Words run out. Don’t even have a platitude about the enduring strength of the human spirit in the face of evil blah etc. A great deal of food for a great deal of thought, from a very brave woman, whose tale we are lucky to be able to read.

Onwards…with inspiration, healing, mental fuel and unbounded imagination…

Things to appreciate

Intelligent arty gay Italian movies, with soundtracks that fuse tango, trip hop and hard house, tall copses of Ash trees that roar with harnessed wind and sun,  billowing their silver presence up into the airy blue, swans and their offspring bobbing daintily on green rippling ponds, the gravitas of babies, melting into sudden  beams and chuckles of Buddha gladness, the wobbly old man across the road, robustness of youth still radiating from clenched knuckles, dried slivers of pineapple,  melting gossamer ribbons of surreal seaweed sent from Tokyo with love, Whitney Houston, Lauryn Hill, cool rain falling on nightclub sweat soaked skin, geeky satisfaction of assorted rainbow  plastic plectra molding against my palm then clicking plinkyly on guitar strings, unexpected shamanic presence of genuine spirit medicine showing up during a child’s animal song, modal jazz melody and  harmony, pinched harmonics, serious concentration, the first cup of tea, dreams of swelling ocean waves the size of office blocks, but warm, temperate, navigable, silver birch voices rustling the last rays of solar radiance,  gospel outfit Nu Colours (who remembers them?) multiple viewpoints, agreeing to disagree, going separate ways, re-kindling hope, feeling of oak bokken and jo staff  swinging in the harsh morning air, hair, Randy Crawford, Bach, beetroot, ginger, December, Glastonbury, bitterly sad yet ecstatic memories, particularly, green parakeets in the baking streets of Barcelona, drains, jasmine and pig feet in Bangkok, the collision of past and present, layered, nested multi-dimensional realities, inner travel across familiar yet mysterious lands, roasted tea ice cream, teaching, learning, cats, spiders, shield bugs, ants, snails, elephants, rivers, soil, sage, breathing, stars, jeans, magnets, books, blu-tac, solitude, honey, grass, aeroplanes, snow, bridges, candlelight, sleep, Summer, Autumn, fearlessness, lists of things…

How sweet the sound…

This is me chilling out at ‘Sometime’, a jazz club in Hachi-Oji – cool suburb of Tokyo, late Oct 2010.  So much is encapsulated in this moment. Lunchtime jazz, imaginative sprawls of clairvoyant mental synchronicity riding on the back of effortlessly graceful piano improvisation.  It was an unforgettably dreamy day, filled with strong coffee, laughter, Indian curry, constantly feeling hungry and not wanting it to ever end. Brief interlude, later in Shinjiku – an  African band in the park, more coffee – and a strange, kitsch, Pegasus sculpture in a department store (I dreamt of visiting Japan on a flying horse before I actually did.)

Photo by Haruka Tara Chino.

Trees of Life

Trees. Silent yet present, life-giving denizens of eternal, sustaining breath.  Roots, trunks, branches, leaves, leaflets, veins, capillaries, cells and atoms. Older templates of the human. Entities of wisdom. Transducers of light. Very epitomizers of Green. Solar food. Shade. Ecstasy of shape and form. Sacred mediators between heaven and earth. Celebrants of earth, sky, bird and insect. Mysteries of Being-ness. Holistic containment. Trees.  Oaks, Redwoods and Pine – I met these Tree People in Devon this August.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Female Martial Arts Heroes 9# Michelle Rodriguez

What? Michelle Rodriguez? Yes. Boxing is martial and it’s certainly an art. Girlfight (director: Karyn Kusama, 2000) was Rodriguez’s first ever role, at aged 17, before the later fame of ‘Lost’ and the various other military action heroine parts for which she became known. How many people know that she trained so hard and so well, for the film,that she was approached by boxing coaches and was faced with a choice to continue with boxing, not acting? She rightly received eulogies for her debut, even Marlon Brando comparisons. Enjoy this (quite delicate) clip, then go and watch the whole thing.  I don’t like the title, as it belies the serious content – the film gives us genuine insight into the world of amateur boxing,  (including real footage/boxers) excellent cast and an alternately lyrical/banging latin/hip hop soundtrack.

Female Martial Arts Heroes 8# Jeeja Yanin

Thai boxing star Jeeja Yanin was just 18 when she made the epic movie Chocolate. From the same studio and directors of ‘Ongbak’ and ‘Warrior King’, both starring the legendary Tony Jaa, Chocolate bore similar hallmarks… ultra violent, relentless and rather zany action, and moody cinematography. It’s an odd film – for me, the concept, and narrative pace hang together weirdly – but it’s worth it for the fight sequences. Jeeja plays an autistic teenager, who’s obsessive love of fighting and uncanny ability help her to protect her family from gangsters. It contains unashamed homage to Tony Jaa (at one point she is watching and memorising his moves on TV) and some of the sounds she makes are pure Bruce Lee. The DVD contains fascinating documentary footage of the filming and training, featuring bone crunching, eye watering injuries left right and centre.  No wire work, no CGI,  just punching, kicking, gauging, and kicking ass, in true Muay Thai style. Not for the faint hearted. (The sequel was not as good.)

Female Martial Arts Heroes 7# Cheng Pei Pei

Here is a brilliant sequence from the Shaw Brothers’ Come Drink With Me, starring the very young Cheng Pei Pei. Viewers may take a moment to recognise her – many, many years later she was the powerful, but ultimately tragic sorceress, Jade Fox, in ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’.  She was the first woman ever to receive top billing in a Hong Kong martial arts movie.

Female Martial Arts Heroes 5#, 6#, Yeung Pan Pan/Yukari Oshima

Introducing Yukari Oshima (pictured in freeze frame below) and Yeung Pan Pan. Also known as ‘Lady Jackie Chan’ – Yeung Pan Pan was/is often billed as Sharon Yeung Pan Pan. Like many stars, she began in the Chinese Opera before graduating to film. She stars here, alongside Japanese Karate master, Yukari Oshima, in a  medley from Deadly Target. As always, try to see past the dodgy voice dubbing, makeup and leg warmers and enjoy the action and athleticism, done in an era before CGI (admittedly, there’s some wire work in this sequence.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-snfe7MJiY&feature=related