To Charlie from a mountain on fire

I write to Charlie a lot. And he writes to me a lot. It's good, it's great. It's my favourite form of communication, probably, maybe after pizzacato.

So, with that in mind, how about a semi-regular feature:

To Charlie from...
 ?

This week's is from Fire on the Mountain Festival, where I played three gigs (one Waitress for the Bees, one with Nuala, one with Beth) yesterday and had a most amazing time. Here, here you go: 

"And oh, it was so good! Such a good festival day, today! Oh, oh, oh.

Some small northern children gave me a survey to find out my nature name. Turns out my nature name is 'Feather.'

And I played my gig and the tent was full and getting fuller and got an encore (at a festival?!) and sold CDS (at a festival!) and lots of nice and good-looking and friendly people said nice things after.

Oh, and a guy from the BBC world service was there approached me and took my card and will-be-in-touch.

And then! Climbed a mountain (Welsh-style mountain. Aka mini) with Liz Greenfield and Beth and were passed first by:

-Five Brown horses

then, a few minutes later, by

-Two Grey horses

then, a few minutes later, by

-One white horse.

Later on there was a point on the trail where it's forest on both sides and a gate in front you have to climb over, and, between us and the gate, all in a clump on the path, were all eight horses. Big huge horses with mega-powered legs. Probably docile and nice, but how could we know for sure? So we scrambled into the forest to try and find another way through, and the horses all tried to follow us. I had to yell at Liz, Dammit, Greenfield, faster! Faster or our lives!

And there was a sauna I went in. And afterwards a drummer friend showed me the one spot where the river was deep and we did cold cold plunges.

And two more gigs. One with wet hair, cold fingers, one without.

It was: very good. And that is the abbreviated story of my day. Yours?

x e"

The time for everything.

Is now. Now is the time for everything. The loose ends of music work braid up and join up and spread themselves in thick heavy blankets across these springsummer months, May, June, July. Festivals, travel, shows, here, there, this, that. Paris last month with WFTB and Pollyanna was wine-full and I did an entire 45 minute set's banter en français and got to play with my favourite other-people-to-play-with maybe ever, almost, and see this clown store and wonder: irony, Paris?

And dark and damp but so friendly venues in Cambridge and London contrasted with the bright yellow light of the Dartmouth music festival, with hiking and swimming in the English Coast Cold between gigs:

And a backroom-bar tomorrow and a bookshop on the sea Thursday and a festival with wigwams on Friday and so on and so on. Springsummer: the musician's harvest.

Greecy Animals

Charlie and I went to Greece, because we'd never been to Greece, and that's a pretty good reason to go somewhere. We had planned to go from Crete, by ferry, to a little tiny island with delicious yogurt, but it was varying degrees of windy from normal-windy to mega-windy which meant the ferries didn't run. So we stayed on Crete, in little Paleohora, and had awesome hiking adventures. And the yogurt was great there too. So, the hiking was great, magnificent, terrifying, endorphinful and awesome, in the biblical sense, but, the best thing about Crete, even better than the yogurt AND the hiking, was the animals. Because I'm not an artist by trade (or, okay, talent) and we were on proper holiday, not doing any kind of real life trade (or talent) things, I (and Charlie too) drew pictures of them for you. First, it turned out to be Greek Orthodox Easter when we arrived. So, everybody (everybody) has a goat on a spit, a-roasting. Some just out there, some wrapped up:

And there were dogs. In barrels. Barrel dogs. Dogs chained to barrels by the side of the road. Not, like, by a house by the side of the road, but just all by themselves, with their barrels, and nothing but road in both directions. Why, Greece? Why do you keep your dogs in barrels by the road? (Two of these are by Charlie. Two are by me.):

And there were piles. Piles and piles and piles of cats. But we didn't draw them. There were too many. It was over-whelming. And, finally, there was Mattress Puppy. A tiny, curly, tiny, tiny, limping, kind of squinting-blind in one eye, unable-to-bark little mutt who lived in a pile of trash under a mattress near the industrial-zone port. It came running out to us when we were on a run there on our last morning. It would approach us a bit, tail wagging, so so happy to see people PEOPLE! People to LOVE it and TAKE IT HOME somewhere that's not a TRASH PILE UNDER AND OLD MATTRESS, and then it would back away, afraid. Then up again, then back. It was dizzy with excitement. It was heart-wrenching. I have never been that into dogs. Margene's great, but, you know, not a dog person. More into piles of cats. But. This puppy. THIS. ONE TRASH MATTRESS PUPPY:

After a while, a small gang of bigger dogs who live on the other side of the port gandered over to see what was up with all the puppy commotion. They sniffed at Mattress Puppy and one of them bit his neck a lot, but mostly gently, so we were able, finally, to run off, knowing that, even if he dies of terrible, homeless-dog-trash-borne diseases before he ever grows up, mattress puppy won't be totally alone. At least.

In the movies

So, a little while ago, you may recall, I decided it might be fun to experiment with stop-motion as a bespoke way of making music videos for my WFTB songs. My first effort, a learning experience, especially in terms of lighting (things musicians don't think about #12: Lighting) was for Diplodocus. Now, one much-better camera, and much-helpful partner later, we've tried again, this time with a bit more lighting detail (but still lots of mistakes), with Ankylosaur

But, here's the neat thing about that: This time, Charlie thought to put it up on Vimeo as well as youtube, something I wouldn't really have thought of, and, get this:

After three days, youtube has an impressive 550 views

and Vimeo has

3,606.
3,606?!

Vimeo! Vimeo. Where the quality is higher and there are no stupid comments. And, where, it turns out, people actually do go to watch videos. I had no idea. So, actually, ignore that link I put up there before, and use this one instead. And maybe spend some time exploring the vimeo-shores before you leave, because, really, it is a more lovely video environment, no?

And he sead the wollf.

Hello, gentle bloggers, and welcome to story time here on Not A Violin.

Curl up with our friends in the moss terrarium, and treat yourself to this tale, as typed on my 1930's Corona typewriter by the small boy brother of one of my students this afternoon.

"Untitled"
by small brother

once apen a time thear was a boy and he was vere avaeroos boy and his father sead do not go out fo the fens other wise you will get eantn by th woolf but he went out of the fens becant he was bord then he ran into the hous and he sead the wollf was after him so his father came out with his gun ttto kill the woolf but it was fack then he did it agen and his father did com ven it was the wollf so the boy did die!



The end.